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Libraries.) | |
THE MAN OF GALILEE | |
BY | |
ATTICUS G. HAYGOOD | |
Lord, to whom shall we go but unto thee? Thou hast the words of | |
eternal life.--_Simon Peter._ | |
_NEW YORK: HUNT & EATON | |
CINCINNATI: CRANSTON & STOWE_ | |
1889 | |
Copyright, 1889, by | |
ATTICUS G. HAYGOOD, | |
NEW YORK. | |
TO | |
THE “EMORY BOYS,” | |
WHO WERE WITH ME IN THE OLD COLLEGE IN 1876-84, | |
THIS LITTLE BOOK IS | |
Dedicated | |
BY ONE WHO LOVES THEM ALL. | |
THE AUTHOR. | |
DECATUR, GA., _April 9, 1889_. | |
PREFATORY. | |
DECATUR, GA., _April 9, 1889_. | |
MY DEAR LUNDY: | |
You and many others of my students at Emory of the years 1876-1884 have | |
often asked me to put into permanent form the thoughts concerning “The | |
Man of Galilee”--“Jesus of Nazareth”--I brought before you when we were | |
together at the old college in Oxford. In this little book I have had | |
the boys in mind all the way through, as if they were before me in my | |
lecture-room in “Seney Hall.” Many times the very faces of the boys | |
seemed to be about me as I have written, and I could almost hear them | |
ask me questions as they used to do. | |
Scattered about the world now--not a few of them in distant mission | |
fields--my heart follows them every one, and these pages, which would | |
never have appeared but for them, bear them the assurance of an | |
interest in them that can never die. | |
Your friend, | |
ATTICUS G. HAYGOOD. | |
The REV. LUNDY H. HARRIS, | |
_Professor in Emory College, Oxford, Ga._ | |
CONTENTS. | |
CHAPTER I. | |
Did the Evangelists Invent Jesus? 9 | |
CHAPTER II. | |
“No Dramatist Can Draw Taller Men than Himself” 18 | |
CHAPTER III. | |
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Neither Good nor Great Enough 24 | |
CHAPTER IV. | |
Is Jesus an Ideal Jew of the Time of Tiberius? 35 | |
CHAPTER V. | |
Jesus and Myths 42 | |
CHAPTER VI. | |
Jesus and Hebrew Human Nature 51 | |
CHAPTER VII. | |
His Method of Thought Differences Him from Men 60 | |
CHAPTER VIII. | |
“Never Man Spake Like this Man” 68 | |
CHAPTER IX. | |
The Son of Man and Sin 80 | |
CHAPTER X. | |
The Magnitude of the End He Proposed and Set About 92 | |
CHAPTER XI. | |
Never Man Planned Like this Man 97 | |
CHAPTER XII. | |
Jesus Neither Theologian nor Ecclesiastic 109 | |
CHAPTER XIII. | |
“Jesus Christ Took the Way of Perishing” 116 | |
CHAPTER XIV. | |
His Grasp upon Mankind 123 | |
CHAPTER XV. | |
What Jesus Claims and Demands 133 | |
CHAPTER XVI. | |
Jesus the One Universal Character 141 | |
CHAPTER XVII. | |
The Christ, the Son of the Living God 148 | |
THE MAN OF GALILEE. | |
CHAPTER I. | |
DID THE EVANGELISTS INVENT JESUS? | |
Who and what was Jesus of Nazareth? In this question and its answer is | |
involved the whole of what we mean by Christianity. | |
If it could be demonstrably proved that there never existed such a | |
person as Jesus, Christianity, as a living force, would cease from | |
the earth. There would indeed be a history, a literature that would | |
interest people according to their tastes; but there would be no | |
heart-changing, world-up-lifting system of vital and vitalizing truths | |
and corresponding duties, binding upon the conscience of every human | |
being and inspiring hope in every breast. | |
In the discussions we are about to enter nothing will be assumed except | |
what is too obvious to question. It will not be assumed that the little | |
books called “gospels” were inspired at all. You will not be asked to | |
consider any miracle, said to have been performed by Jesus, as making | |
proof of his divinity. Nor will I quote proof-texts to show that he is | |
divine. | |
The first question to ask is this: Did such a person as Jesus is | |
described to have been ever really exist? Did Jesus really live in | |
Nazareth and work in Joseph’s shop? Did he, for some three years and | |
six months, go to and fro among men teaching them? Was there, in the | |
days of Herod and Pilate, a Jesus as surely as there was a Cæsar? | |
This much is certain: we have in these four little books--compared | |
with what is every day written about common men how small they | |
are!--attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, a most distinct | |
character, known to us and known to history as Jesus. Whether the men | |
whose names the little books bear, or some other men whose names are | |
lost to us wrote them, matters not in the least. What books contain is | |
more important than the question of authorship. No matter who wrote | |
them, the character we know as Jesus is in the books; there can be no | |
dispute about this; here it is, before our eyes. And this character is | |
as surely in history, in literature, in men’s thoughts, in all that we | |
mean by Christian civilization, as it is in the writings of the four | |
men we call evangelists. | |
Not only do we have the character, but we see clearly that it is | |
a character absolutely unique. It is unique in many respects, but | |
pre-eminently in this--it is the one perfect character that has | |
appeared in the world that ever had a place in the history or the | |
thought of men. It is said that the volatile Voltaire once compared | |
Jesus to Fletcher of Madeley, thinking him as good a man as the | |
Nazarene. But the light Frenchman understood neither the one nor the | |
other. As one said of an unfit biographer of Fletcher’s great friend, | |
John Wesley: “He had nothing to draw with, and the well was deep.” | |
Is there one solitary defect, the very least, in this character that | |
we find in the evangelists? Is there one weak spot, or suggestion | |
of fault, or intimation of infirmity, or suspicion of failure, the | |
slightest, to do and to be what was right for him to do and to be? | |
Look at him as he is set before us in these brief writings; look, | |
reverently if you will, but with open and fearless eyes, to see all | |
that may be seen of him. What least flaw can be found in him? Is | |
there the least possible shadow of reason for reversing, or so much | |
as questioning, Pilate’s verdict, “I find no fault in him?” Is there | |
in all history one other character of which you can say or believe as | |
much? Is there any other you are willing to name second to him? | |
If you are making an estimate of any other character--whether of a | |
real person, as a sage, a statesman, or a philanthropist, or of some | |
imaginary person, as the hero of a story--how would you judge him most | |
severely? You would compare him with Jesus. We must remember that it | |
is to Jesus we owe those higher standards by which we judge men in our | |
times. Christ-likeness expresses the highest ideal of character we are | |
capable of conceiving. | |
Some writers, as you know, have denied that Jesus, the Jesus of the | |
four gospels, did at any time really live, a man among men. Of far | |
more importance than any mere denials in books is the failure of many | |
thousands to realize in their inmost consciousness that the story of | |
the evangelists is the record of a life actually lived. | |
We will demand of those who deny or doubt that Jesus really lived to | |
account to us for the existence of the character. This they must do, | |
for the existence of the character they cannot deny; it is here before | |
men’s eyes, as it is in men’s thoughts and lives. This character is not | |
in these little books only; it is in a hundred thousand books. It was | |
not only in the minds of four writers long ago; it is in the minds of | |
millions of men, women, and children to-day. If any deny or doubt the | |
historic Jesus, let them explain to us how this character, flawless | |
and perfect, ever got itself into the thoughts of men and is now in | |
history, literature, art, law, custom, in human life itself. | |
Some have tried to explain the existence of the character, while | |
denying that Jesus really lived among men, by telling us the | |
evangelists invented the Jesus of these stories. They tell us Jesus is | |
the product of the dramatic genius of the four men whose names go with | |
the brief account we have of him, his words, and his deeds. It would | |
not alter the case to deny that these four wrote the books, and to say | |
some other writers whose names we do not know invented the character. | |
Let us look carefully and fairly at this view of the subject. If it be | |
reasonable it may be true; if it be true we need not fear to accept | |
it. Nothing in Jesus calls on men to profess to believe what to them | |
is not the truth; nothing can be more unlike him than to use words | |
without convictions. We cannot do otherwise than “hold fast that which | |
is true” to us; indeed we cannot hold fast to any thing else, though it | |
be called truth by never so many voices of men. | |
The theory that Jesus is an invention is another way of saying that | |
he is the hero of a romance, a creation of constructive imagination. | |
It involves this: four Jews at about the same time, among a people | |
not given to making books of any kind--least of all books of the | |
imagination--were seized with desire to write books, and thus it came | |
about that they have given to the world, as the product of dramatic | |
genius, this character of Jesus. As, for illustration, it may be said, | |
in a sense, that Bulwer invented the “Margrave” of _A Strange Story_. | |
Let us inquire into the antecedent probabilities that these men would | |
naturally attempt to construct and put into form such a work of the | |
imagination; nay, more: whether they were likely to attempt any | |
dramatic work at all. | |
We are not left to guesses in considering such questions. It is | |
historically certain that the Hebrew mind in ancient days was not given | |
to this sort of literary work. The Greek mind gave dramas to the world, | |
matchless of their kind; the Hebrew mind gave none. There is nothing | |
in Hebrew literature of the period assigned to Jesus, of the period | |
succeeding him, or from the time of Moses, to indicate so much as a | |
tendency to such creations of the imagination. | |
We have much to judge by, and there can be no mistake. We have the | |
Old Testament Scriptures, the apocryphal books, the comments of the | |
scribes--called Targums--upon their sacred writing, the little book | |
called “Acts of the Apostles,” the other New Testament writings, and | |
the works of Josephus as specimens, showing the trend and method of | |
Hebrew literature. | |
The Hebrew mind in ancient days was not given to art, but to morals. | |
The Jew did not develop art impulses till he had become cosmopolitan | |
and Christianity had changed the world. In ancient Hebrew literature, | |
whether in plain prose--in history, statute laws, or proverbs; whether | |
in psalms or other poetry; whether in the magnificent imagery of the | |
prophets, we find that morals, not art, inspire the thought and form | |
the expression. There are neither paintings, nor statues, nor dramas. | |
Their architecture was borrowed from the Phenicians; they were original | |
in their ideas of morals and in their laws and customs relating to | |
rights and wrongs. Their literature is dominated by religion, and not | |
by art, in any of its manifold developments. | |
Read it all--all ancient Hebrew literature; we have history, laws, | |
proverbs, poetry, prophecies, but we have no dramas. | |
You may cite me to the book of Job. This is more like a drama than any | |
other. If this be allowed, it is the one exception. But it belongs to a | |
period very remote from that of the evangelists, and if it be a drama | |
it is, as may be shown, such a work as a Hebrew might have written. But | |
the story of Jesus is not such a drama as a Hebrew of his period might | |
have written, allowing, what is not true, that at some other period it | |
might have been imagined by a Hebrew, or any other writer of books. As | |
to the book of Job, it is in harmony with Hebrew characteristics and | |
with the time and country in which its scenes are laid. The books of | |
the evangelists are not in harmony with them; they contradict them all | |
and utterly. | |
Consider well the four little books of the evangelists that we call | |
gospels; study them just as you would any other ancient writings. See | |
what is in them, that you may know what manner of men they were who | |
wrote them. Reject them all, if there be reason, but look carefully | |
to this one thing--whether these writers were given to dramatic | |
creations, or, indeed, had faculty for such work. There is evidence | |
enough in their writings that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not | |
of the literary and book-making classes. They were of the common | |
people; unlearned and unskilled in literature, laboring and business | |
men, trained as laymen. Their lives were very far removed from the | |
occupations and influences that dominated the very feeble literary | |
instinct that belonged to that period of Hebrew literature. | |
I conclude that it was antecedently as improbable that the evangelists | |
would have attempted the production of any drama whatever, as I will | |
show that it was impossible, had they made the attempt, for them to | |
have invented such a story as they tell us of “The Man of Galilee.” | |
CHAPTER II. | |
“NO DRAMATIST CAN DRAW TALLER MEN THAN HIMSELF.” | |
The doctrine I set forward concerning Jesus is this: Such a person must | |
have actually lived, as the condition of conceiving such a character, | |
for the reason that the power of creating such a character was never in | |
the Hebrew mind, or any other. | |
At this point let me tell you how my thoughts were directed in the | |
lines the argument takes in this discussion. | |
In the month of April, 1861, while a pastor in Sparta, Ga., I was | |
reading one of Hugh Miller’s books, _First Impressions of England and | |
Its People_. The writer of this to me entertaining and instructive | |
volume was comparing, on the occasion of a visit to the grave of | |
Shakespeare, the great poet, Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens. Hugh | |
Miller said (I believe the quotation is substantially correct; I have | |
not seen the book in a long time--it was loaned to some of you): “No | |
dramatist, whatever he may attempt, can draw taller men than himself.” | |
I closed the book and said to myself: “Then Matthew, Mark, Luke, and | |
John did not invent Jesus.” | |
It was not till February, 1864, that the thought, which I often | |
brooded, was brought into a discussion. While in camp as a missionary | |
chaplain with Longstreet’s corps of the Army of Virginia, near | |
Greenville, East Tennessee, I sketched rudely enough, one snowy day, | |
the outlines of an argument, using it one night, soon after, in a | |
sermon preached in the First Methodist Church, Atlanta, Ga. In the | |
course of years it grew upon me into a series of lectures delivered to | |
senior classes in Emory College. It outgrew the limits of a sermon at | |
Monticello, Ga., August, 1878. My old students and certain life-long | |
friends will pardon this much of personal reminiscence. For reasons | |
connected with them these personal statements are introduced. | |
“No dramatist can draw taller men than himself.” Hugh Miller did not | |
mean that a writer may not describe greater men than himself, but that | |
he cannot invent a character greater than his own. It is as plain as | |
the axiom in physics that water cannot rise above its level. That which | |
is created cannot be greater than that which creates. | |
It is very common for us to write of “taller men” than ourselves; we | |
all do this. When you were but a college-boy you did not, as you | |
will remember, shrink from writing essays upon Cromwell, Washington, | |
Gladstone, Bismarck, and the few such men who have lived. I have | |
known a young man to write fairly well of even Socrates. But he had | |
the cyclopedias. He was not creating--thinking out for himself and of | |
himself--the good and wise old sage. | |
Hugh Miller says, “Dickens knows his place.” The gifted novelist did | |
not attempt great characters. Shakespeare did; he was greater than any | |
character he produced; “taller” than any man he “drew.” | |
When you come to ask whether these four Jews, the evangelists, could | |
have invented the character we know as Jesus you must remember that | |
they had, first of all, in order to do it, to throw themselves outside | |
the sphere of Jewish thought and sentiment. If to them had been granted | |
all personal qualifications the conditions under which they lived made | |
the invention of such a character impossible; they could not breathe | |
the intellectual, social, and moral air in which they lived and do it. | |
For this character, the Jesus of the evangelists, is not in harmony | |
with the essential characteristics of the Jewish race or with the | |
dominant influences of that time; this character antagonizes these | |
characteristics and influences at every point. | |
Granting--and it is admitting an intellectual miracle that staggers | |
credulity--that these men did meet the first condition for the | |
invention of such a character, and overcame, as no other men ever | |
did in any nation or time, the controlling influences under which | |
they lived, let us ask whether, in view of what they reveal in these | |
writings of themselves, they were capable of such an intellectual and | |
spiritual feat as inventing a drama that should give Jesus to the world. | |
To have achieved such a result they must have been in breadth, depth, | |
and elevation of intellect capable of thinking out the mighty doctrines | |
that Jesus taught. And this, we may well believe, was the least part of | |
their task. | |
To me it is incredible that these four men could have thought out the | |
teachings of Jesus. For such thinking they lacked all things that | |
history and philosophy show to be necessary for such thinking. | |
Why could not Socrates and Plato, great, learned, wise, and good, to | |
whom came more than glimpses of heavenly truths, think out what the | |
Sermon on the Mount contains? | |
Socrates and Plato, if mere men could do such thinking, ought to have | |
thought out the Sermon on the Mount; for they had every gift that | |
nature could bestow and every opportunity cultured Athens could offer. | |
And they did their best to think out the truths that bind man and God | |
together. They failed; and Plato sighed for the coming of a divine man | |
who would make clear what to him was dark. | |
If Jesus never lived then the four evangelists, or men like them, | |
thought out his wonderful doctrines. It is unthinkable. | |
But theirs was a far harder task than thinking out the truths | |
attributed to Jesus in the gospels; they had also to think out a man | |
who lived up to them. It is easier to write a great speech than to set | |
before the reader a man he knows to be capable of making it; but this | |
is easier than to proclaim a lofty doctrine of morals and show a man | |
as living up to it. Their problem, if they thought it all out, was | |
immeasurably more than the invention of the Sermon on the Mount and | |
of the other discourses that move so easily on the same high plane of | |
thought and spiritual life; it was to invent a life and reveal a life | |
in absolute harmony with these matchless discourses. But Jesus lived | |
the Sermon on the Mount and all else that he ever taught. Not once, in | |
the least particular, in word or deed, does he fail; always he lives | |
up to his teaching; he incarnated his doctrine. No other human being, | |
before or since Jesus, ever lived up to the Sermon on the Mount; the | |
best men and women have only approximated it; and it is the best who | |
have most realized their failure. But Jesus lived his teachings so | |
perfectly that it is only in his life that we truly read their meaning. | |
How shall we measure the capacity of these four, Matthew, Mark, Luke, | |
and John, for creating this character of Jesus? By the revelations they | |
make in their writings of themselves: their capacity and character. | |
CHAPTER III. | |
MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE, AND JOHN NEITHER GOOD NOR GREAT ENOUGH. | |
How little the evangelists were capable of inventing such a character | |
as the Jesus of the four gospels is made very plain by comparing Jesus | |
and his doctrines with them and their notions. | |
It must be assumed here that you have, to some extent at least, | |
considered what the character of Jesus is and what his teachings mean. | |
As to your conception of him and his teachings, this I am sure of: if | |
you continue to study him and his words your best ideas now will, by | |
and by, seem to you to be very unworthy. | |
Measure the evangelists and their thoughts by Jesus and his thoughts. | |
How small, narrow, meager, and lean of soul they are! When they speak, | |
when they act in these histories, they give us the gauge and the level | |
of very common men. They misapprehend him till he is rent with grief at | |
their dullness and hardness of heart. They misinterpret his simplest | |
words. They show in many ways what even to us seems to be amazing | |
spiritual stupidity and spiritual incapacity. | |
This is a fair specimen of them and their thinking powers: Jesus said | |
to them one day, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the | |
Sadducees.” “And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because | |
we have taken no bread,” supposing that he meant they must not eat | |
bread with these people. | |
This also gives us the drift and gauge of their thoughts: Jesus was | |
constantly and in many ways speaking to them of the “kingdom of | |
heaven,” and they kept dreaming and talking of a “kingdom of Israel,” | |
the restoration of David’s throne. This was the common thought and talk | |
of their circle. One of the best of the women who followed Jesus and | |
loved him, braving danger and contempt for his sake, Salome, preferred | |
ambitious requests for her two sons, James and John, who were in their | |
mother’s secret and sympathy, seeking high places for them in what they | |
so longed for--the coming dispensation of national deliverance and | |
dominion. | |
So far below his thoughts are their thoughts, so unlike him are they, | |
that no Christian child, who has but partially learned of Jesus what he | |
means by the “kingdom of God,” can read what Salome and her sons say to | |
Jesus without recoiling from them. | |
Were the evangelists good enough--did they have the moral elevation | |
necessary to the conception of such truths as Jesus taught? Of such a | |
life as Jesus lived? Of Jesus himself? | |
If you know what is in these gospels it is too plain to you to need | |
argument that these men were very far below the sphere of Jesus as to | |
morals, rights and wrongs, and whatever relates to spiritual life. | |
While he was proclaiming self-renunciation as the condition precedent | |
to entering into life at all in common with his life, these men, while | |
claiming to be his disciples and best friends, were wont to “dispute” | |
with one another about seats of honor at dinings, as well as places of | |
honor in the earthly kingdom they were looking for. | |
Some of them showed that they could fight upon occasion--their Galilean | |
blood was equal to that; but they greatly lacked moral courage. They | |
were afraid not only of men’s anger, but of their criticism. But it is | |
impossible to think of Jesus as hesitating, for one instant, from any | |
sort of fear of men, fear of death or criticism, in uttering one truth | |
or doing one right thing. We cannot think of Jesus as feeling the pulse | |
of public sentiment in order to determine what he should say. We cannot | |
think of Jesus as, for one instant, looking about him to read in the | |
faces of his hearers, whether they were Galilean peasants or the chief | |
estates of Jerusalem, the probable reception of his words. We cannot | |
think of him as veering the thickness of a line from the perfect truth | |
as he saw it in order to win favor or avoid resentment. It is certain | |
to us that such thoughts were never in his mind--that such feelings | |
were never in his heart. His “eye was single,” his “whole body full of | |
light.” | |
Do these men whose names go with the four gospels show right feeling, | |
sentiment, for inventing such a character, granting, what we know they | |
did not have, all other qualifications? Seeing what they were, what | |
they show themselves to have been, is it possible to believe that, in | |
their inmost souls, they were in sympathy with the character they have | |
given us in the gospels? To invent a truly great, all-round character, | |
there must be not only adequate gifts of intellect and force of | |
conscience; there must be also right sensibility. There must not only | |
be a large mind and a true conscience; there must be a good heart. The | |
evangelists were not bad men, but they were unspiritual. If one cannot, | |
as an original conception of the intellect, “draw a taller man than | |
himself,” much less can he draw a better man than himself. | |
Test their capacity for such a work as inventing the Jesus of the | |
gospels in any direction. Compare these men with Jesus as to his | |
doctrine and practice as to toleration and human brotherhood. They | |
shrink into nothingness. | |
Jesus goes to the house of the publican, Zaccheus, whom all Jericho | |
hated. Jesus dines with the man who was unpopular, who was despised; | |
he preaches the full Gospel to him; he is kind to him; he loves him. | |
The disciples were in sympathy not with Jesus, but the crowd that | |
“murmured.” They were mortified, displeased, afraid, scandalized; Jesus | |
had done so imprudent a thing as to dine with a man who had no friends, | |
but many foes. | |
You know of Jesus from his words, above all from his life, that he was | |
incapable of prejudice; that no wretched or mean man of any class or | |
race could appeal to him in vain. You know that Jesus was as free from | |
all intolerance, from all caste feeling and race prejudice, as the | |
virgin snow is free from stain. But his disciples, these men who have | |
told us of him, were saturated and poisoned with these feelings; they | |
lived on the low plane of their race and time, and not above it. In | |
the “Acts of the Apostles” we see what that plane was; the Jew hated | |
Gentiles. Consider the history of Peter’s visit to Cornelius, and you | |
will see how deep and inveterate is the feeling that opened a gulf | |
between the Jews and other races. Consider what is meant by the sudden | |
outburst of rage at the word “Gentile” that day Paul spoke to the mob | |
in the temple-court, as he stood on the castle stairs. All history | |
illustrates this intense race prejudice. In this country, in the spring | |
of 1888, a Jew celebrated the funeral of his daughter because she had | |
married a Gentile. | |
Read the story of the Syrophenician woman, the parable of the good | |
Samaritan, his heavenly doctrines about loving our enemies, and then | |
think of these writers inventing Jesus and his doctrines. | |
See the false shame on their faces when they find Jesus talking with | |
the woman of Sychar by Jacob’s well, and ask whether men like these | |
lived in the same world with him! | |
Consider the attitude of Jesus toward fallen women. See how he bore | |
himself with the woman who washed his feet with her tears in Simon’s | |
house; see his tender respect for Magdalene; see him, his cheeks aflame | |
with shame and confusion, his eyes dewy with pity, as he made marks on | |
the ground with his finger that day they brought a sinful girl to him | |
and demanded judgment upon her. | |
These men who wrote of Jesus were as incapable of such sentiments and | |
conduct as they were incapable of building worlds. God pity us! as | |
incapable as we, his disciples of to-day, are, who, after all that | |
he has taught us and done for us, in our meanness and cowardice abide | |
still in heathenism, and scorn those whom Jesus did not scorn. We may | |
judge these evangelists by ourselves; they were as we are. They were | |
ashamed of him when he spoke respectfully and kindly to fallen women; | |
we would be ashamed of him now if he were again among us in the flesh, | |
bearing himself toward our outcasts as he did when he was in Galilee. | |
If possible, these evangelists were as incapable as we are of inventing | |
the character of Jesus. | |
In what has been said of the ability of these men to conceive such | |
a character as Jesus remember we are not speaking of copyists, but | |
creators; not of those who merely put together a story from materials | |
furnished by history, or from some life that has been lived, but of | |
those who invent, think out a character. The copyists, the historians, | |
the biographers, the novelists, easily enough write and talk of greater | |
and better men than themselves. This sort of literary work, this sort | |
of thinking, is done every day; it is as common as the “making of | |
books.” If the materials are furnished us we may well enough write | |
of those who are beyond and above us. We will naturally and often | |
necessarily do this in describing one who actually lived. Great and | |
good men and women have often had biographers immeasurably inferior to | |
them. A clever literary man may draw a fair picture of Julius Cæsar. | |
Froude did it. A man of hard and narrow spirit may so write of heroes | |
as to make us feel their superiority. Carlyle did this for not a few. A | |
small man may tell us of his master. Even Boswell could do this. | |
But in considering whether these four writers could have invented the | |
character of Jesus we are not speaking of the sort of work historians | |
and biographers do, but of pure creative work; the thinking out of a | |
character never described by another and that never lived. For the | |
theory we are now considering is that Jesus never lived; that he is | |
only the product of the dramatic genius of these four writers, Matthew, | |
Mark, Luke, and John. | |
Now, you will conclude when you have considered it, that very little, | |
if any, of this sort of work is ever done. Perhaps we should hesitate | |
to affirm that such creative work is impossible, but it may well be | |
doubted whether any character in any fiction or drama of any sort, by | |
any writer in any age, is a pure invention. Is there not for every | |
character in fiction as well as in history a man somewhere, in some | |
form? some facts in actual life that furnish the materials for the | |
conception and delineation of that form of life that the writing | |
presents to us? Is there in any writing any character that has not | |
intellectual descent from some life actually lived, or in some way | |
other than by creative processes brought into the writer’s thoughts? | |
Consider Shakespeare’s plays. Life furnished the materials; his heroes | |
and heroines have real men and women back of them. Take Milton’s Satan. | |
He is very like Milton in force and sublimity; but the poet did not | |
create the character. His Satan is a composite work from Bible hints | |
and heathen mythology. This Satan had lived in the thoughts of men | |
before that Milton took him in hand. | |
Only think how difficult, if not impossible, it must be to think out | |
a perfectly new type of character, a type that has nothing in life to | |
stand for it. It would be like trying to conceive of a sixth sense. | |
Back of legends the noblest and the ignoblest there is some form of | |
life or some form of fact. It may be that all ideas even not revealed | |
have their type or origin somewhere in nature or in life. Whether with | |
hand or brain man works upon materials furnished him; man creates | |
nothing; man is created. | |
But there was in no nation whatever--and these four men knew the | |
Jewish nation only with any fullness of knowledge--any character, any | |
life, any facts, that could have so much as suggested Jesus. They were | |
shut up to Hebrew history, and that could furnish no materials to | |
the evangelists for the construction of such a character. It was not | |
suggested by the Hebrew prophets; for it is evident that the disciples | |
did not understand these prophecies as pointing to Jesus till after | |
he had lived his life, till his mission was ended. Nay, with all the | |
backward-shining light of his life no four men in the world to-day | |
could, without the actual story, construct the character and life of | |
Jesus out of what the prophets say. | |
There has been a good deal of fanciful writing concerning certain | |
characters in the Old Testament history, considered as types of the | |
Messiah. Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David--even magnificent and profligate | |
Solomon and the coarse, dull Samson have been set forth as types of the | |
true Son of man. Adam himself has been discussed and portrayed in this | |
connection. Some of these men were among the greatest and best of the | |
human race. But whatever they were as types of the Teacher, Prince, and | |
Saviour foretold by the prophets, there was nothing in these men that | |
could have suggested the invention of the Christ of the evangelists. | |
So far as the predictions in Hebrew prophecy may be urged as accounting | |
for the conception of Jesus by the evangelists, they not only did not | |
understand them so as to make such use of them, they misunderstood | |
them, and, in common with their people, supposed that they foretold | |
another and altogether different character than that of the Jesus of | |
the gospels. Jesus had to live and die before they could understand the | |
prophets as referring to him; it was he who unlocked their meaning. | |
The whole Christ is not in the prophets--could not be; words could not | |
manifest him; he had to live to be known. | |
Non-Christian Hebrews are to this day looking for a different | |
character to appear and fulfill the prophets. The “Jews’ Wailing | |
Place” in Jerusalem tells travelers of our time how they cling to an | |
interpretation of the prophets that excludes the lowly Nazarene, of | |
whom the evangelists have told us. | |
CHAPTER IV. | |
IS JESUS AN IDEAL JEW OF THE TIME OF TIBERIUS? | |
We will consider the notion that Jesus is the product of dramatic | |
genius from other stand-points. Have the evangelists given form and | |
voice to national ideals? | |
Jesus cannot be in those writings the crystallization of national | |
legends; there are no such legends. Had these writers constructed the | |
character out of national legends or national hopes Jesus would have | |
been a national deliverer, not a personal Saviour, talking to men of | |
sin and salvation. He was not at all, as these writings and as other | |
Hebrew writings make plain, the nation’s ideal of a hero and deliverer. | |
Jesus was any thing but such an ideal; he utterly spoiled the national | |
ideal of the Shiloh who was to come; he disappointed every expectation | |
that rose to greet him. | |
Once, when the people and the priests thought they might use him as a | |
national leader, they tried to force a king’s crown upon his head. He | |
refused their crown, and they crucified him. | |
There is another fatal objection to the notion that Jesus is only the | |
invention of four romance writers, suddenly springing up among a people | |
who did not write romances. If they invented him we should have four | |
Christs, not one. | |
There are differences enough in their statements that we cannot explain | |
in any honest way, but that would, I suppose, cease to be differences | |
if only we knew all the facts to show that these writers were not in | |
collusion to tell a story that would hold together. We do not know all | |
the facts; St. John, you will remember, tells us that many things are | |
not recorded; perhaps we have only the smaller part of them. | |
These four men are not alike; no two men are. They differ in style and, | |
therefore, in temperament, gifts, training, and character. They are as | |
different as any four writers you know; for illustration, as Carlyle, | |
Emerson, Macaulay, and Irving differ. | |
To make plainer the thought I wish you to consider, take Satan as a | |
character in literature. Compare the Satans of Milton, Goethe, Bailey, | |
Browning, and Byron. These writers show us five, not one chief of | |
devils. They are as unlike as their authors; and they are like their | |
authors. | |
Only a woman could have drawn the Satan of Mrs. Browning. Milton’s | |
Satan is a copy of the Miltonic intellect and character--grand, | |
scholarly, metaphysical, austere; Puritan is the hero of the _Paradise | |
Lost_. Bailey’s Satan grew in the atmosphere of Temple Court, and is a | |
London lawyer of the first order with a diabolical nature. Byron’s is | |
like Byron--brilliant, moody, desperate, and vain. Goethe’s is German, | |
and brought up in Weimar. He is like the high-priest and poet of | |
materialism who gave us _Faust_; like Goethe, university bred, learned, | |
scientific, literary, all-accomplished, gay and cynical by turns, a man | |
of the world, gentlemanly even in diabolisms, one familiar with the | |
best society, cosmopolitan in his tastes, and nineteenth century in | |
dress and manners as well as in his opinions and habits. | |
But these four men who wrote of Jesus, these men so different in their | |
training and manner of life--Matthew, who had been a tax-collector | |
under the Roman Government; Mark, a mere child when Jesus was among | |
men, and brought up under a careful mother; Luke, a “physician | |
beloved;” and John, a fisherman of Galilee--these have given us one | |
Jesus, not four. The differences are such as four photographs of one | |
man show in different postures taken by the same artist in the same | |
day. No matter by whose pen recorded, the words and deeds of Jesus in | |
the four gospels are the words and deeds of one man. | |
But there is another view of the notion that the evangelists invented | |
the character of Jesus. | |
Granting that these men had the mental and spiritual capacity to have | |
created such a character as that of Jesus; granting that, by some | |
strange chance, although without precedent or succession, and in utter | |
contradiction of all we know of the laws of the human mind, these | |
writers, in themselves and their circumstances so different, invented | |
not four, but one character, there is another thing to be considered, | |
and it alone is conclusive: they were bound to have invented a | |
different Jesus from the Jesus of the gospels. | |
It is impossible but that these men were under the influences that | |
not only characterized their times but made them what they were. The | |
gospels themselves show that these men were not only thoroughly Hebrew | |
in their thoughts and dispositions, but Hebrews of that period. No | |
writer can any more escape the intellectual and moral atmosphere of | |
his time than he can escape the heredity that is in his blood. These | |
influences will show themselves in any work of the imagination as | |
certainly as children will resemble their ancestors. | |
Now Jesus, though a Jew, is not like his time or people. He is a Jew | |
only in blood; he is not a Jew in thought or character. | |
The Jew of that period, saying nothing of what was past or of | |
what was to come to that most wonderful people, was narrow in his | |
sympathies; Jesus was as broad as humanity. The Jew was exclusive; | |
Jesus made welcome all who came to him. The Jew had small toleration | |
for opinions that were not his own, and none for men of other races; | |
no cosmopolitanism, or even Christian charity, has ever yet reached | |
the divine tolerance of Jesus. The Jew felt only contempt for the | |
mongrel tribes of Samaria; Jesus makes a Samaritan teach us universal | |
brotherhood. The Jew felt that contact with other nations defiled him; | |
there is not in Jesus the faintest flavor of any sort of race or caste | |
prejudice. | |
The master passion that dominated Jewish life in the days of Jesus | |
was a fierce patriotism that expended its fires in bitter and undying | |
hatred of Rome; Jesus, while loving his people and weeping over their | |
impending calamities, said, “Love your enemies.” If these writers were | |
inventing a character when they wrote the gospels their hero would have | |
been in sympathy with his time and people. Such a Christ would have | |
unfurled the lion-ensign of Judah, and every sword would have leaped | |
from its scabbard from the mountains of Lebanon to the borders of Edom. | |
But Jesus paid tribute to Cæsar and commanded his disciples to do it. | |
Of Jesus we may well say what he said of himself: he is “The Son of | |
man.” He belongs to all; he is a universal character, and the only one | |
in history. He is brother to every human being; he loves one as well as | |
another and each one perfectly. He means as much to us of to-day as to | |
those friends in Bethany whom he loved, or as he meant to that “beloved | |
disciple” who leaned upon his breast at the Last Supper. | |
The necessary conclusion is, such a character could not have been | |
created by dramatic genius, least of all by the four writers of that | |
period who have given us the gospels. The Jesus of the gospels must | |
have lived, to have been conceived or described. | |
This conclusion agrees with the method these writers adopt in | |
presenting this character to us. It is the method of perfect | |
simplicity. They nowhere try to tell us what he was or what he | |
was like. There are no comparisons, no analyses of qualities, no | |
character-sketching; there is no effort, not the least, to draw a | |
portrait of him. They simply write down what they saw him do and what | |
they heard him say; and they make it plain that they understood neither | |
his deeds nor his words, and that least of all they understood him. | |
The loftiest genius could not have invented the character of Jesus. | |
Plain men, like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, could write of a life | |
that was lived; they could write down the words they heard him speak; | |
they could record the story of the good works they saw him do, and so | |
make us to know Jesus, “who and what manner of man he was.” | |
CHAPTER V. | |
JESUS AND MYTHS. | |
Some learned men, in seeking a way to account for the Jesus of the New | |
Testament without accepting the reality of his existence, have sought | |
to set up a notion like this: It is true that the evangelists did not | |
invent this character, yet Jesus never really lived; he is only the | |
myth of Hebrew history. | |
We are to think of Jesus, they tell us, as we do of the Greek | |
Theseus, of the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, of the Thor and Odin of | |
the Scandinavian legends, of the Hindustanee Vishnu, or of Buddha, | |
and of scores of other myths that belong to the poetry, traditions, | |
superstitions, and religions of other nations. Much scholarship has | |
been mustered into the service of this notion. All this may appear more | |
absurd than serious to one whose education has made Jesus of Nazareth | |
real to his thoughts. It may indeed be so; but we must be fair even to | |
those who seem to us to advance absurd views. I cannot doubt that some | |
able and sincere minds have accepted a theory of Jesus that makes him | |
out only a Hebrew myth. | |
Let us look at this theory in a common-sense way, without burdening | |
these pages with tiresome and confusing quotations. There are some | |
things which may be plain enough to those who are unlearned in the | |
writings and legends referred to--some things that the learned cannot | |
deny. Myths are growths, and whatever grows--whether a tree, a man, a | |
thought, or a legend--grows under certain laws that cannot be violated. | |
There may be some laws under which myths develop unknown to me. But | |
some of these laws are unmistakable. I mention them, and you will see | |
for yourself that none of them are observed in the story of Jesus. The | |
story we find in the evangelists violates them all. If the conceptions | |
among other nations that are called myths are myths then Jesus cannot | |
be counted among them. | |
1. Myths originate and, as conceptions, are complete before written | |
history. In all nations the earliest historians relate mythological | |
stories that antedate all letters and all records. In some nations a | |
fragmentary history went to a sort of record before there was a true | |
written language. Rude pictures engraved on stone or painted, and what | |
are called cuneiform characters, such as are found on the bricks | |
or clay cylinders among the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, and such | |
hieroglyphics as are found on ancient tombs in Egypt, in Mexico, and | |
other countries--these tell us of national myths that belonged to a | |
period ages before even these crude attempts at writing were made. The | |
principle--it is invariable as a law--holds good in every nation that | |
has a myth or written history of any sort. | |
But the Jesus of the evangelists appeared, and the story of his life | |
was written, long after the most eventful and important history of the | |
Hebrew race was recorded. | |
2. About all myths there is something grotesque if not monstrous. They | |
are exaggerations of men or animals. Sometimes they are natural forces | |
represented as becoming incarnate in some fantastic shape. If in human | |
form the mythical characters are gigantic, strange, verging upon the | |
unnatural and impossible. But Jesus appears as a man, simply; he has | |
not a personal peculiarity to set him apart from his neighbors and | |
companions. Not a word in the story suggests any thing abnormal or even | |
singular. There is not a word to tell us of his personal appearance; | |
there is no suggestion of any thing un-human or extra-human in his form | |
or manner as he appeared among men. The halo about his head you see in | |
pictures is the pretty conceit of the painters; there is not a hint of | |
this, or any thing like it, in the story of the evangelists. There is | |
not so much as a word concerning his complexion, his stature, the color | |
of his hair or eyes, or the tones of his voice. He is just a man among | |
men--one who might have walked unnoticed in the streets of Jerusalem. | |
Read what the old books tell you of Grecian, Roman, Egyptian, and other | |
myths. How strange they are, how different from men! Jesus appears as | |
a man, and the evangelists have not one word to indicate that he was | |
peculiar in appearance in any respect. | |
3. Myths reflect their time, place, and race. This statement is without | |
exception. Theseus is of ancient Greece and is Greek in every sinew and | |
lineament. Odin and Thor come to us out of the dark German forests, | |
and are but exaggerations, in their virtues and vices, of the mighty | |
barbarians who dwelt in them. Isis and Osiris are as like Egypt as | |
the desert, the Nile, and its mysterious sources. Bel-Merodach is as | |
like Chaldea as the valley of the Euphrates and its lost civilization | |
could make him. Vishnu is as Hindustanee as the Ganges and its terrible | |
jungles and the fierce beasts that made men afraid. And so of them | |
every one, from the loftiest and noblest conceptions of godlike men | |
that ever inspired the Greek imagination with great ideals down to the | |
meanest and most devilish that ever filled the superstitions of African | |
or Australian bushmen with terrors. But in Jesus there is not a trace | |
of coloring from any scene or period in Hebrew history, from Abraham in | |
Ur of the Chaldees to the days of Cæsar Augustus. | |
4. In all nations myths defy chronology; they are without dates. In the | |
imagination of their people they seem to have existed not only from | |
the beginnings of national life, but to have gone before it. Think of | |
any of them--those that have come down to us from ancient nations, | |
as well as those that still hold their place in the folk-lore of | |
barbarous peoples. They are all without dates. We do not read of Isis | |
and Osiris appearing in the capital of Egypt in the days of Rameses | |
II.; the Egyptian gods are older than any of their dynasties and lived | |
before men kept genealogies. And so of all the gods of mythology; | |
they are without contemporaries known to any history. Myths precede | |
the invention of calendars; if time was counted at all the years were | |
without dates. How utterly different is the story of Jesus, that some | |
men tell us is only a Hebrew myth! | |
Of Jesus and the time of his appearing it is written: | |
“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from | |
Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was | |
first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.” Augustus was emperor; | |
Cyrenius was governor in Syria; Herod was king in Judea. | |
5. Myths defy topography as they do chronology; they are not only | |
without dates, they are without definite localities. They appeared not | |
only some when that cannot be fixed in time, but somewhere that cannot | |
be found as a place. Their origin is shrouded in mystery. Some of the | |
contemporaries of Jesus made it a point against him, “As to this man we | |
know whence he is.” | |
In the story of Jesus we are told of places with such exactness that | |
the statements of the evangelists are to this day the best guides to | |
the scholarly men who make explorations in order to find relics and | |
fragments of lost history in Palestine. They do not tell us of Jesus | |
as appearing somewhere in their country, as Galilee, Samaria, Judea. | |
They tell us of Nazareth, Bethlehem, Bethsaida, Capernaum, Bethphage, | |
Bethany, the Mount of Olives. They tell us of the “beautiful gate of | |
the temple” which, he and his disciples looked upon, and of “Jacob’s | |
well” “near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son | |
Joseph”--the very spot where Jesus sat to rest, while his disciples | |
went to Sychar to buy bread of the baker--the well from which a woman | |
of the Samaritans drew water and gave him to drink. | |
6. Myths are not completed at once. They require long time--ages--for | |
their development. But the conception of the character of Jesus comes | |
into the thought of men with his manifestation and abides through the | |
centuries that have followed as it was first given to the world. | |
There is absolutely nothing like it in all Hebrew history that went | |
before him, as there is nothing like it in the history that comes after | |
him. And the conception of Jesus that is given by the brief accounts | |
of the evangelists is so finished, so complete, that the attempts of | |
after times to add to it in the stories of the so-called apocryphal | |
gospels have utterly failed of their design. No marvelous stories, | |
handed down from one generation to another, have in the least added to | |
or taken from the Jesus of the evangelists. What Jesus signified when | |
the gospels were written he has been through the centuries that have | |
followed him. What he was then he is to-day. | |
7. All myths belong to the infancy, never to the age of any nation. | |
They spring out of the morning mists; they never appear in the light of | |
day. If the story of Jesus had been placed in Chaldea, before the call | |
of Abraham, it also would have belonged to the infancy of a race. To | |
harmonize with the laws that govern the development of myths the story | |
of Jesus should have anticipated the first chapters in Hebrew history; | |
it should have been placed in that uncertain period that includes the | |
dispersion from Armenia, the second cradle of the human race. | |
But the story of Jesus is given to the world, fresh and complete, with | |
not one hint of it in all preceding history, in the last years, the | |
closing days of Hebrew national life in Judea. | |
The story antedates but a little while the destruction of Jerusalem | |
by Vespasian and his Roman legions; when Jesus was born Augustus was | |
emperor; when Jesus entered upon his ministry Tiberius Cæsar was in the | |
fifteenth year of his reign; his lieutenant, Pontius Pilate, governed | |
Judea as a subject province, and his soldiers kept the peace in the | |
holy city. | |
Consider how impossible it is for myths to originate after written | |
history, in the sun-glare of life in a full-grown nation. Even the | |
pretty stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table belong | |
to that far-away period in England when there was no written history | |
worth the name, when letters were almost unknown, when all was young | |
and fresh and ignorant, and the fairies still ruled in the forests. | |
Think of a myth starting up to-day in London under the shadow of St. | |
Paul’s and Parliament House. Think of the world in our time talking of | |
“Chinese Gordon” if there had lived no “Chinese Gordon.” If the people | |
who have letters, and write histories, and “turn the world upside-down” | |
with the gospel story, should leave the poor savages of the Congo | |
Valley to themselves, thousands of years from our times Livingstone | |
and Stanley will live in African traditions as godlike men; and so new | |
myths will be born, will grow and fix themselves in the legends of | |
these lands where they have done many wonderful works--but London and | |
New York will breed no myths concerning Livingstone and Stanley. | |
CHAPTER VI. | |
JESUS AND HEBREW HUMAN NATURE. | |
There are writers who see clearly that the four evangelists could not | |
have invented the character of Jesus, and who know that the story of | |
his manifestation violates every known law that governs the birth and | |
growth of myths; but they tell us Jesus was nevertheless only a man. | |
They say he did really live in Palestine in the days of Augustus, | |
Tiberius, Herod, and Pilate, and that he was only a man after all--a | |
man of very great gifts and virtues, the best man and the greatest | |
teacher that ever lived. This means that human nature was capable of | |
producing Jesus; it means that Hebrew human nature in that country | |
and in that age was capable of producing Jesus, his doctrines and his | |
life. In other words, he was a most extraordinary but still a natural | |
product of his race, country, and time; the normal product, though the | |
consummate flower, of Jewish life. | |
In considering that the evangelists, granting them ability of all sorts | |
for the invention of so perfect a character and such a character, must | |
have given us a different character, some of the difficulties of the | |
natural development theory were incidentally brought into view. But | |
there are other matters to be fairly considered in connection with this | |
method of accounting for Jesus. | |
Jesus, in one of the simplest--yet it is one of the profoundest and | |
most comprehensive of philosophical principles--gave us the germ of our | |
inductive philosophy and our modern scientific method. When he said, | |
“By their fruits ye shall know them,” he taught us that we are to make | |
our theories conform to ascertained facts rather than explain our facts | |
by our preconceived theories. It is by the fruit we are to know what | |
the quality of the tree is. | |
What manner of fruit grew on this long-lived Hebrew tree? You can seek | |
the answer for yourself; all Hebrew history will tell you. | |
Begin with the story of Abraham, in Genesis, and follow through | |
the centuries the thread of Hebrew history to the times of Cæsar | |
Augustus and of Jesus, if you will, till our own time. We find in | |
that history patriarchs, law-givers, priests, judges, soldiers, | |
kings, statesmen, poets, reformers, and prophets. We have Abraham and | |
the other patriarchs; Moses, Aaron, and his successors; Joshua and | |
his compatriots; Samuel, last and best of a long line of judges; | |
Saul, David--poet, as well as soldier and king; Solomon, genius and | |
philosopher, sage and profligate; Isaiah and the other prophets; | |
Nehemiah and other reformers; Daniel, the statesman, in the service of | |
an alien prince, the conqueror of his people. In later times we have | |
Judas Maccabæus, the heroic defender of his country, and the other | |
mighty men who gave their lives in a hopeless struggle for the freedom | |
of their nation. Still later we read of men like Annas and Caiaphas, | |
the wicked high-priests of an evil time. We have Gamaliel, learned in | |
the law, and his pupil, Saul of Tarsus. (But for Jesus there would have | |
been no Paul.) We have the men brought to view as “disciples” of Jesus. | |
Later on appear such a man as Josephus and the brave men who fought the | |
Romans and died for Jerusalem. Consider them all, the strong and the | |
weak, the good and the bad, as they grew upon this Hebrew tree. These | |
men show the best as well as the worst it could do. We must judge this | |
tree by its fruits. | |
Can we place Jesus among them and count him as one of them--the best of | |
them? Could a tree which produces these others produce him? To ask the | |
question is to answer it. | |
I know what some writers have to say when they speak of finding types | |
of Jesus among those who lived before him; what they say of Moses, | |
Joshua, and others. Some of them were truly great and good men--among | |
the best the human race can show for itself. But we cannot place Jesus | |
among them; they do not approach him, and they are not like him. He | |
stands alone and apart. He is not only above them, he is unlike them. | |
The question is not simply whether the Hebrew tree, judging it by all | |
its other fruits, was capable of producing this one perfect character | |
in all the world, but also whether it could have produced this kind | |
of character? Certainly it never did before him or after him. Search | |
history for one shadow of proof that this race--wonderful and unique in | |
all times and countries--from Abraham to Disraeli had in it any powers | |
that could, as a normal development, produce Jesus of Nazareth. | |
If you will you may give your inquiries wider range. Forget that Jesus | |
was a Jew by blood and birth and training. Try all history; search | |
the records of other nations. Tell me of the sages and reformers--the | |
great and good men of other peoples and countries; of Zoroaster, | |
Confucius, Socrates, Buddha, and the rest; of Moses or any other Jew | |
you could name along with them. Is Jesus only one of them? The best of | |
them perhaps--but only one of them? Read all you may of them as their | |
best friends tell their stories, and you would recoil if some maker of | |
cyclopedias should talk of only adding the name of Jesus. | |
It is not simply that you have heard your mother pray to Jesus; it | |
is not simply the prompting of your “cradle faith.” The reason lies | |
deeper; if to-day for the first time you were to read of the great and | |
holy men of other nations and of Jesus you must think of him, without | |
waiting to reason why, in a place by himself, as a great star shines | |
alone. No light is so splendid but the eye knows the sunlight for what | |
it is. | |
But it is not, as you know, a question as to what the human race in | |
some age could do; it is, what could the Hebrew race do in the age of | |
Cæsar Augustus? For Jesus was of the Hebrew race and of that age. | |
But for the moment forget this limitation of our inquiry and ask, What | |
could that age do? It is like asking, What could the Roman race and | |
civilization do? For the glory of Egypt and Babylon had long departed, | |
and the great Greeks were before the time of Jesus. Roman life then | |
dominated the world, and Roman life did its utmost in producing | |
Julius Cæsar. But there was not in Roman life, tradition, thought, | |
sentiment, one quality or influence of any sort whatsoever that could | |
have any relation to the production of a character like this that the | |
evangelists have given us. | |
But at last we must ask simply this question: What could the Hebrew | |
race in that age do? | |
Only Jewish influences entered into the life of Jesus. There is not | |
in any single thought or word of his so much as an echo of any thing | |
characteristic of other peoples. There is not an undertone in his | |
thoughts from the Greek or Roman masters. He had nothing from other | |
teachers or thinkers. He was only a Jew, never out of Palestine, of a | |
peasant family in Galilee. The Galilean was a narrow, suspicious, and | |
revengeful man; provincial to the last degree; holding fast old ideas | |
and rejecting new ones with little regard to argument or evidence--the | |
“Bourbon” of his time. He was a man of bitterer prejudices than | |
characterized even the men of Judea. But even Galilee had its best and | |
its worse, and Jesus was brought up in a disreputable mountain town. | |
“Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” was a common proverb, | |
carrying its own answer and indicating the estimate placed upon the | |
little town by the better people of the country. | |
Jesus was untaught in the greater schools of his own people. “How | |
knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” implies more than | |
that his hearers knew his history well enough to know he was not | |
school-trained as their scribes were; it means that they knew he did | |
not speak as their scholars spoke. Jesus did not talk like a book; | |
he was not learned in books; his language indicates, so far as books | |
count, knowledge of the Scriptures only; he could read, but he was no | |
scholar. | |
Compare now the conditions under which this young carpenter of | |
Nazareth, working at his trade, and doing good work till he was thirty | |
years old, grew into manhood; consider what his people were at their | |
best; consider how little of what was best in Hebrew life entered | |
into his Galilean bringing up; consider the hard conditions and the | |
narrow limitations of his life, and tell me whether Jesus is a normal | |
development of his race and time and place? | |
We will not now speak of his teachings; compare him with his natural | |
conditions. There is nothing in all human history that makes it | |
possible to believe that a mere Jew, brought up in that Nazareth, could | |
have become this flawless, perfect character. If it be otherwise there | |
is nothing, absolutely nothing, in heredity or environment; then any | |
soil can produce any fruits. Better expect to find the kingly trees of | |
the Yosemite Valley growing with the stunted sage of Arizona. | |
Consider the teachings of Jesus and tell me can this perfection of | |
truth come out of Nazareth? Consider what he teaches about God, the | |
human soul, sin, reconciliation, salvation and immortality. Consider | |
how he teaches and illustrates in his life the brotherhood of the human | |
race. Consider his ethics--his doctrines of rights and wrongs. What | |
he teaches about rights and wrongs, in principle and practice, is so | |
absolutely full and perfect that good men--the best men in the world | |
to-day, so long after his time--cannot so much as conceive of one | |
single virtue he did not teach or of one single evil that he did not | |
condemn. Nay, the wisest and best are always trying to teach men the | |
truth Jesus taught; and his standard is so high that no sane and honest | |
man has ever professed to have reached it. | |
One writer has ventured, in order to find one spot on this sun, to | |
say, Jesus did not teach patriotism! His whole life was devoted to | |
his people; his doctrines nourish and conserve patriotism. He did not | |
teach the thing a mere partisan of a clan or tribe calls patriotism; | |
then he would have been only a Galilean zealot. He teaches the only | |
patriotism a good man can respect--a love of country that believes in | |
righteousness and the golden rule that loves its own and another’s | |
too. If Jesus be only a man--a Galilean Jew, we must remember--he | |
contradicts in his flawless all-round character and perfect teaching | |
the conditions of his life. This perfection of character and teaching | |
on the one hand, and this Galilean Jew and Nazarene carpenter on the | |
other, not only do not agree, they cannot exist together. It is by | |
his life that we realize how imperfect all others are; it is by his | |
teachings that we test the rights and wrongs of all other teachings. | |
There is absolutely nothing in his race or age that accounts for Jesus. | |
That he was a normal product of his race and age contradicts every law | |
of life we know. If it be not so all history goes for nothing and there | |
is no law or reason in the nature of things. | |
CHAPTER VII. | |
HIS METHOD OF THOUGHT DIFFERENCES HIM FROM MEN. | |
In studying the story of the evangelists let us try to come nearer to | |
Jesus. We need not fear; he would have us find out all about him that | |
we can; he would have us know what manner of man he is. If we love | |
beauty, goodness, and truth, we will approach him with reverence. No | |
good man, no man you can respect or trust, will speak of Jesus with | |
flippant words. But we may go to him without hesitation; he who took | |
little children in his arms and blessed and kissed them will not | |
receive the humblest student with coldness. Indeed, the more one needs | |
him the more welcome he is. It was he who said to the “weary and heavy | |
laden,” “Come unto me.” | |
Let us consider now, as best we may, what we must call his method of | |
thought. It differences him utterly from all mere human teachers. We | |
can find many illustrations. | |
In the first place, Jesus does not seek the same end that the great | |
thinkers, who have given the world its philosophy and its science, | |
always seek--the creation of an intellectual system of and for the | |
universe. Humboldt, who was a very learned and gifted man, gives us a | |
great work he calls _Cosmos_. It tells all he knew, or thought he knew, | |
of the universe, and explains it all as best he could. He is one among | |
many; all the philosophers try to account for things, and the greater | |
they are the more they try. | |
In the human mind there is a resistless tendency to search into secret | |
things, and to construct a philosophy of them. Aristotle gave us his | |
_Categories_; the moderns try their hand in the same line of things. It | |
means only this: men who are philosophers and thinkers seek to classify | |
all facts and to find out and express--“formulate” is the word--a | |
complete, all-embracing, all-explaining law of them. | |
Witty Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his _Poet at the Breakfast-Table_, | |
gives us a pretty satire on this invincible disposition and always | |
disappointed and disappointing effort of thinkers. His “Philosopher” | |
was ever just about to find expression for his great discovery--just | |
about to state the all-comprehensive law, the perfect formula, that | |
left out nothing and explained all. | |
It is essentially a man’s way; in all departments we see the tendency | |
and effort of men to explain the universe. | |
The chemist talks of “atoms” because he wishes to get down to the basis | |
of things--to know the ultimate fact, beyond which analysis cannot go. | |
The ontologist talks of “germs” for a like reason; he is ever striving | |
to find a something--a substance or a force--that will explain to him | |
not one but every life process. And the greater ones are seeking always | |
to explain the origin of all things--to show how the universe was | |
started or got itself going. | |
The philosopher who studies mind seeks the same sort of end--the | |
construction of a mental science that embraces every fact and explains | |
every mystery of mental action. The theologian is in the same drift; he | |
wants a philosophy of religion. He seeks to explain God, and, in not a | |
few instances, seems to labor more earnestly to show how God can save a | |
sinner consistently with his own nature and government than to show the | |
sinner how to be saved. The theologian labors to show what the origin | |
of evil is, and to make his view a philosophy that will harmonize all | |
differences and explain all mysteries. | |
The strength of this tendency in mere men--and it is strongest in the | |
greatest--to find a statement that may account for all things is shown | |
in the absurd conclusions that some of them, entirely sane on other | |
subjects, accept for themselves and urge upon other minds. A great | |
chemist concludes that the universe was “once latent in a fiery cloud,” | |
and seems content with a form of pretty words. Another expounder of | |
mysteries accounts for life in our world by telling us that “germs” | |
were first brought from somewhere in space by “falling meteorites,” | |
pays his worship to what he dreams is science, and is content to push | |
his problem further from him. The notion that the word “protoplasm” is | |
supposed to stand for represents another effort to explain all things, | |
albeit by a theory harder to understand than the universe it would | |
embrace and expound. These are only specimens; both ancient and modern | |
times abound in them. Wiser, perhaps, and quite as scientific was | |
the desperation of that student of the mysteries of life and man who | |
concluded that the “missing link” must be in the bottom of the Indian | |
Ocean; for no diver can prove what is not in water so deep as this | |
fathomless sea. | |
What we are now considering is a resistless tendency in thinking minds. | |
It is not peculiar to one class of men; it does not characterize one | |
age. It is simply human nature to ask questions and seek explanations. | |
Consider a few names now mentioned and see for yourself that the | |
greater the mere man the more he tries to explain the universe--to | |
find a formula large enough to contain it, to classify its facts and | |
correlate its forces. Think of these men and the few whose names should | |
go with them--Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Origen, Augustine, Pelagius, | |
Athanasius, Calvin, Edwards, Leibnitz, Bacon, Humboldt, Kant, Cuvier, | |
and, perhaps, some new men. Philosophers, scientists, theologians, they | |
are all alike in this--they are building a system, a philosophy of the | |
universe. | |
Do not mistake my purpose in these illustrations; the disposition which | |
we have been considering is a pure human instinct; it is resistless, | |
and it is the condition of mental activity. The mind that does not | |
ask questions, that does not knock at the closed doors of knowledge, | |
is stagnant and will perish. Progress and growth depend upon inquiry. | |
Wise men will cheer every earnest student, whether he is trying to find | |
what an atom is or what the stars contain. It is a man’s way to seek to | |
explain all things; the effort affords the drill and discipline that | |
make growth and progress possible to the race. | |
But in these respects, as in so many others, Jesus is utterly unlike | |
the philosophers and scientists and theologians. He does not in the | |
least seek the end that mere men seek. He makes us understand the | |
universe--matter and mind, man and God--better than all of them put | |
together. But he nowhere accounts for things. He has not a word about | |
the “cosmos.” He makes no inquiry, raises no question, offers no | |
explanation concerning the origin of things. In him there seems to be | |
no consciousness of the mysteries of the universe, either as to its | |
origin or nature. | |
But it may be said Jesus taught morals, religion, not science or | |
philosophy, and he had no occasion to construct a system of the | |
universe. In morals and religion, more than anywhere else, do mere | |
men build systems when they think, explain things when they teach. | |
But Jesus, teaching morals and religion, was unlike all others, mere | |
men, teaching morals and religion. He said not one word--he, the only | |
teacher who seemed to understand it--about the “origin of evil,” the | |
subject that has vexed not a little theology into lunacy; he, the only | |
one who has seemed capable of doing it, has given us no “theodicy,” nor | |
so much as seemed to think of it at all. | |
He did not, he who made claim to perfect knowledge of God, explain | |
God or philosophize about God; Jesus did not so much as give us | |
a philosophy of himself, his life, or his mission. It was John, | |
the disciple, not Jesus, the Master, who wrote of the Logos. | |
Jesus offers no philosophy of the plan of salvation; he does not | |
philosophize concerning faith, or prayer, or immortality. | |
As to evil, Jesus tells men what evil is, shows the ruin it brings upon | |
them, and points out to them the way of deliverance. He talks to men of | |
their evil and the way to make an end of it. | |
Jesus never investigates. He never doubts his knowledge or questions | |
for one instant the grounds of it. We have no fit word for his method; | |
intuition is perhaps as good as any. His thinking is not a process; | |
it is like seeing, not learning, the truth; seeing not the outside of | |
things as men see them, but the inside of them as God sees them. | |
Jesus never uses those forms of logic that are absolutely necessary to | |
all others. We are speaking of his “method of thought;” perhaps such | |
words do not apply to him at all. How did he find out what was true? He | |
did not seem to find it out at all; it seemed to be in him. He never | |
seems to discover a truth. He does not, by reasoning from what is to | |
what must be, find out what he did not know before. | |
In geometry we begin with what we call “axioms,” a few simple | |
principles that need no proof. We call them “self-evident,” because we | |
see that they are true, that they must be true, the instant we know | |
what the words mean that state them to us. Upon these we build our | |
geometry and all the science and art that rest upon it or grow out of | |
it. When we prove one thing we did not know by something that, being | |
self-evident, needs no proof, we put the two together and prove a | |
third, and so on as far as we can go. Jesus would have known the third, | |
and the hundredth, and the last, as he knew the first--without this | |
building-up process. He would know all that the axioms contain as we | |
know the axioms. | |
For want of fitter words we have been speaking of his “method of | |
thought.” As these words have significance to mere men, Jesus, it | |
seems, had no method of thought; he did not, as men must do, think to | |
know; he knew things. Perhaps this is in part what he meant when he | |
said to Pilate, “I am the Truth.” | |
CHAPTER VIII. | |
“NEVER MAN SPAKE LIKE THIS MAN.” | |
We will consider the method of Jesus as a teacher, and the word is | |
appropriate now. He did have a method in teaching men the truths that | |
he knew without reasoning about them, the truths that he did not | |
discover by investigation, the truths he knew because they were in him. | |
To begin with, Jesus does not seek to prove things to his hearers; | |
he announces what is truth as God announces truth. He is a divine | |
dogmatist; he offers no proof of what he sets forth as truth. | |
No other teacher ever taught as Jesus did. What we may call his | |
logic-form is pre-eminently the teacher’s; but no teacher ever employed | |
it as did he who came out of Nazareth. He reasons from the weaker to | |
the stronger reason. He does not reason to prove truth to others, as he | |
does not reason to discover it for himself, but to teach it. This is | |
the form of reasoning we find in all his parables and illustrations. | |
His arguments are designed to help his learners understand what he | |
meant and to impress it upon their minds. He never seems concerned | |
about proving to men the truth of what he said, but only to make it | |
plain and to enforce it. Many illustrations might be given; let a few | |
suffice. | |
One day Jesus was teaching his disciples the doctrine of God’s | |
providence. He makes no argument to prove that there is a providence; | |
he does not seek to convince them, but only to help them realize | |
in their own thoughts the all-embracing, unfailing, and gracious | |
providence that kept them. And he did this not to make them understand | |
the doctrine of providence, but to help them trust in it. He seeks to | |
bring home to them the truth he does not seek to prove. How does he set | |
about it? What is his method? Not a mere man’s method. It is indeed an | |
absolutely simple method; but no other teacher, who has not learned it | |
of him, has used it so in discoursing of such truths. | |
He begins with what they knew: “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.” | |
They knew the lilies--that is, they were used to seeing them, the | |
little flowers so common, so insignificant, yet so beautiful. Jesus | |
concludes: “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?” | |
In the same way he reasons of sparrows and men. He would inspire his | |
disciples with the courage that has its root in faith in God’s loving | |
and unfailing providence. He says to them the great God not only feeds | |
the poor little birds, but cares for them, “Are not two sparrows sold | |
for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without | |
your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye | |
not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.” | |
He would teach his disciples the folly of forgetting what is essential | |
in brooding anxieties about small things: “And which of you with taking | |
thought [worrying] can add to his stature one cubit? If ye then be | |
not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the | |
rest?... Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what | |
ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. The life is | |
more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.” | |
He would make men see how perfectly simple and unmysterious is prayer | |
and how absolutely certain it is that God will answer. Have we not | |
listened to mere men--preachers they called themselves, yet doing, | |
it may be, the best they could--mystifying simple-minded people and | |
little children--themselves most of all--with tortuous disquisitions | |
concerning the “subjective” and “objective” results of their devotions! | |
Answering infidels, they suppose! | |
Jesus makes no argument about the nature of prayer; he has not a word | |
to prove its reasonableness or to harmonize the doctrine with law. He | |
says: “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.” | |
How does he prove what he affirms? He does not prove it; he brings it | |
home to them: “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?” | |
Every hearer, whether parent or child, answered out of his heart, | |
“There is not such a man among us.” Jesus concludes: “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?” | |
The cold and cruel Pharisees, playing at religion and seeking their | |
own, complained one day that Jesus healed a poor maimed man on the | |
Sabbath day. Jesus made no argument about the nature of the Sabbath. | |
He reminded them that they would lift a sheep out of the ditch on the | |
Sabbath day, and concludes with a question that brought the truth home | |
to them: “How much then is a man better than a sheep?” | |
These same people, contending about the forms of religion and | |
forgetting God and man, complained that Jesus kept company with | |
“publicans and sinners,” and was kind to them. In answer he told them | |
of the shepherd who, missing one sheep from his flock of a hundred, | |
could not be content with the ninety and nine, but went out into the | |
wilderness seeking the lost one; he told them how glad the shepherd was | |
when in his arms he had tenderly brought it home. He told them also | |
of the woman who could not rest till, with broom and candle, she had | |
searched her house for the piece of money she had lost. He told them of | |
her neighbors rejoicing with her when she had found it. Why he cared | |
for publicans and sinners he made plain when he added: “I tell you | |
there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that | |
repenteth.” | |
Jesus would make these hard guardians of what they called the Church | |
and despisers of their brother-men realize the Fatherhood of God. He | |
made no argument of the sort mere men would make. | |
He tells them of the two sons and how glad the old father was when | |
his poor prodigal got home. The conclusion no human heart can miss: | |
the infinite Father, infinitely better than any earthly father, is | |
infinitely glad when his prodigals return to him. The heart that once | |
takes in this story of the two sons can never again tremble and cower | |
before that horribly heathen conception of God that makes him only an | |
infinite terror, seated on the throne of the universe, to be afraid of, | |
fled from, and hated forever. | |
Jesus sought to encourage the most despondent and abject to trust | |
in the divine justice as well as mercy. There is no lofty argument | |
concerning the righteousness of God. He tells of the widow and the | |
unjust judge, who feared not God nor regarded man, the judge who made | |
a boast of heartlessness and apologized to himself for seeming to | |
do a good deed. He grants the widow’s prayer because he was selfish | |
and mean; he would not be “wearied with her importunities.” Jesus | |
concludes: “And shall not God avenge his own darlings who cry day and | |
night unto him?” | |
How clear Jesus made what mere human teachers make dark! What even some | |
preachers of our times, too proud in their false learning to be simple | |
in their methods and language, make so tiresome and so bewildering to | |
hungry souls who ask for bread and get chaff! | |
We will not understand how unlike the methods of mere men is the method | |
of Jesus till we have wearied ourselves with what they call reasonings; | |
till we have come to understand that no man can teach religion who | |
rejects the methods of Jesus for what he thinks are the methods of what | |
he calls logic and philosophy, truly understanding neither. | |
What we may call his manner, as distinguished from his method of | |
teaching, differences Jesus from mere men. No great teacher, unless it | |
be some one who has learned of him the true secret of teaching--and how | |
far below the Teacher the best and wisest fall!--ever before or since | |
has the manner of Jesus. | |
There is a sort of fatality about men’s teaching. Vanity or ignorance | |
makes them seek to appear profound when they are only obscure. What | |
an unspeakable relief and blessing it would bring to all churches | |
and schools if pastors and teachers would only study the method of | |
Jesus and seek to imitate the simplicity of Jesus! Teachers, not a | |
few of them, burden and bewilder their pupils with the dead lumber | |
of learning that is not knowledge; preachers, not a few of them, | |
mystify and mislead their hearers with reasonings, philosophies, | |
and argumentations, mere war of words for the most part, that are | |
not gospel nor life. When Jesus talked of the deepest and highest | |
questions, of God and man, of rights and wrongs, of life and death, of | |
time and eternity, of heaven and hell, it is said, “The common people | |
heard him gladly.” This could never be said of even the good Socrates, | |
or the great Plato; for the “common people” could not understand them. | |
It is indeed a rare thing that the “common people” hear “gladly” a | |
teacher of science, philosophy, or religion whom the uncommon people | |
call great. As a rule, the greater one is, as men measure greatness, | |
the less do “common people” hear him “gladly,” and least of all when he | |
speaks or writes upon the very greatest of themes. Is it because such | |
teachers are not themselves brothers to the common people? One reason | |
is the great men do not truly understand what they teach. And herein is | |
a reason for patience. | |
Perhaps, for the most part, the great ones do the best they can. It | |
seems that, when a mere man seeks to think profoundly or to speak | |
strongly, he must fall into obscurity. This obscurity cannot be due to | |
any inherent difficulty in the truth itself, but to those limitations, | |
mental and spiritual, that belong to mere human teachers. But Jesus | |
taught the greatest truths in language as simple and clear as when he | |
spoke of the most familiar duties of daily life. His manner is as easy | |
and his words as plain when speaking of immortality as when telling men | |
to be honest and to “love one another.” | |
Compare the Sermon on the Mount and the writings of the greatest and | |
best of men who have discoursed upon these themes. How perfectly simple | |
and transparent and easy the manner and style of Jesus! How complex and | |
dark and difficult the manner and style of men! How it should shame | |
mere men into meek simplicity when they read of Jesus, the divine | |
Teacher, “The common people heard him gladly!” | |
After all, it may be that our method of thought is as unfitted for | |
understanding the Gospel as our method of teaching is unfitted for | |
expounding it. It may be that if we worried ourselves less with what | |
men have written of his words--too often trying to read into his | |
teachings thin philosophies; if we brooded more upon his words and less | |
upon men’s notions of his words, we would understand Jesus better. Then | |
we also could teach the people. Then, it may be, the “common people” | |
would hear us “gladly.” If we preached his “text” more and books | |
about his “text” less we would preach more truth that saves and less | |
philosophy that bewilders. | |
In speaking of the method and manner of Jesus there is another matter, | |
not easy to discuss, that should be mentioned; I refer to the effect | |
upon himself of his thoughts and words. | |
There is a divine calmness in him never seen in mere men; that is | |
impossible to them. In this also he stands apart from men. | |
His greatest discourses are without intellectual heats. This is very | |
wonderful to me. He shows himself to be the tenderest-hearted teacher | |
who ever sought to lead men out of darkness into light. We know that | |
he is not cold of heart; we know how deep is his compassion on men; | |
how infinite his concern for them. But he delivers the most tremendous | |
truths with the most perfect composure and balance of spirit. If a | |
mere man were to see clearly for the first time what the Sermon on the | |
Mount, the third chapter of John, the parable of the Prodigal, and a | |
score of other discourses and revelations like them really signify; | |
if a mere man were, so to speak, to come suddenly upon such thoughts, | |
such conceptions, so vast, deep and high, it would unbalance him. His | |
brain would be on fire and his heart would break with holy excitement. | |
But Jesus speaks these truths with perfect calmness; they were not | |
new thoughts to him; there was no effort in order to grasp them or to | |
express them. Yet Jesus was full of sympathy. He wept with the sisters | |
at the grave of Lazarus and bewailed the fate of Jerusalem with sobs | |
and tears. | |
You have read a story of Sir Isaac Newton, which, whether it be | |
historically true or false, well illustrates, for it is very like a | |
man, what is here brought to your attention, as showing how Jesus | |
differs from a mere man. When Sir Isaac had nearly finished his deep | |
and long-continued studies of the laws which govern the movement of the | |
heavenly bodies, and was near enough the end of his great mathematical | |
calculations to foresee the result and to realize that it would justify | |
his sublime speculations concerning the controlling law of the material | |
universe, he became so excited--cold philosopher and trained to | |
self-control as he was--that he could not complete the simple processes | |
involved in his formula. It was necessary to call in a friend to finish | |
the easy work for him; for the moment the great astronomer was out of | |
balance. | |
Sir Isaac’s was exactly a mere man’s way; great inventors have gone mad | |
when they were within one step of triumph. | |
But Jesus was calm when speaking, in the simplest way, of the greatest | |
truths of life and the most stupendous events that await eternity for | |
their unfolding. | |
No wonder those who, on one occasion, were sent to lay hands on him | |
had only this answer when they returned to their masters without him: | |
“Never man spake like this man.” | |
CHAPTER IX. | |
THE SON OF MAN AND SIN. | |
When we compare the work Jesus proposed to do in the world with the | |
schemes of earth’s greatest ones we cannot classify him with mere men. | |
What did he think he came into the world to do? What did he consider | |
his mission to be? | |
We cannot be in the least doubt for the answer; there was no confusion | |
in his thought, no ambiguity in his words. If we ask what Jesus thought | |
his mission was we will easily find the answer--unparalleled by the | |
thought of any, absolutely unique, stupendous, but as unmistakable in | |
meaning as simple in the form of expression. | |
We will answer in his own words: “The Son of man is come to seek and | |
to save that which is lost.” “I came not to call the righteous, but | |
sinners to repentance.” “God sent not his Son into the world to condemn | |
the world, but that the world through him might be saved.” “I came not | |
to judge the world, but to save the world.” More forcibly, if possible, | |
than in his words, his conception of his mission is shown by his work, | |
his living, and his dying. St. Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, gives | |
us in a simple statement the whole history; it is, in a line, the | |
biography of the God-man, “He went about doing good.” | |
That Jesus should have seen in the world evil that needed to be | |
remedied, that he should have tried to remedy the evil he saw, does | |
not, in itself, difference him from good and wise men who have observed | |
the facts of human life and have deplored human miseries. All the | |
great teachers and reformers have recognized evil in the world, and | |
many of them have distinctly recognized this evil as moral evil. The | |
doctrine of Jesus is peculiar in this; all the evil that is in the | |
world is moral evil, and all moral evil is, at its root, sin, and sin, | |
considered as a quality in man’s character, is a state of being that is | |
out of harmony with God; considered as a fact, it is life in violation | |
of God’s law. The bad man is, in his spirit, at enmity with God; in his | |
life he breaks God’s law. He loves evil because evil is in him; his | |
life is wicked because his heart is bad. | |
And Jesus comes to take away sin; to deliver men from it, its penalty, | |
and its power. Said the angel to Mary: “Thou shalt call his name Jesus, | |
for he shall save his people from their sins.” | |
In the view of Jesus sin is the one evil; deliverance from sin is | |
deliverance from all evil; it is salvation. He struck at sin as | |
the root of all possible evil; he recognized no evil that was in | |
man’s circumstances, as if his evil came out of fate or in some way | |
invincible by him; it is all of sin. | |
Wherefore Jesus does not set about bettering man’s circumstances, by | |
direct effort improving the sanitary, economic, political, or social | |
conditions of life; he works upon man himself. Whatever improves man’s | |
condition is, in the doctrine of Jesus, to be desired; but it is not | |
enough to make man comfortable; he must be made good. He teaches that | |
all that is truly good and needful will come to men who are delivered | |
from sin, and that no real good can come to him whose sin remains in | |
him. First, last, all the time, Jesus makes deliverance from sin the | |
one thing needful--the chief good. | |
As his manner was, he does not argue about it; he states his doctrine | |
positively, “with authority,” as one knowing the whole truth of the | |
case. There is no qualifying word to tone down his statements and to | |
leave place for retreat from possible mistakes. | |
His doctrine he taught and illustrated in every possible way. It is in | |
his more formal discourses, his briefest comments on men and things, | |
his most occasional conversations and most incidental remarks. His | |
doctrine is in all his efforts to do men good, as it is in every | |
warning and every promise. | |
And there is never a shadow of doubt, a suspicion of hesitation. From | |
his first word to the last, from the beatitudes to the prayer on the | |
cross, it is always the same thing; man’s trouble is all in his sin; | |
his only salvation is deliverance from sin. | |
It comes out in the most incidental way. When the penitent Magdalene | |
washed his feet with her tears, at Simon’s table, he said not a word | |
about her lost social position or of its possible restoration. He said, | |
“Thy sins are forgiven; thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.” | |
When the four kind and loving friends of Capernaum--whose names we | |
would like to know--had brought their palsied neighbor to Peter’s | |
house, and had at last, with much trouble, through the broken roof laid | |
him down at the feet of Jesus, the first words were not about palsy and | |
healing, but about sin and salvation: “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” | |
This is what the story of the penitent publican, crying out, “God be | |
merciful to me a sinner,” means. It is what the story of the prodigal | |
means; it is what the whole life and teaching of Jesus mean. | |
We must notice particularly that the mere conception of a divine | |
incarnation is not peculiar to the story of Jesus. The notion | |
of incarnation, the idea of the gods taking a form of flesh and | |
manifesting themselves to men, is in the traditions of almost every | |
nation. It has been said, hastily, I believe, that there are some | |
races, at least some tribes, so low in development as to have no idea | |
of God whatever. It is easy to be mistaken in such matters; it is | |
difficult for a cultivated man to find out what a savage really thinks | |
about any subject, least of all his religion. Perhaps the language | |
difficulty is the least bar to understanding in such a case; the | |
differences between men are not measured by differences in speech only. | |
It is certain that the conception of God is, in some form, in most | |
nations. I believe it is in all. And in every nation there is some sort | |
of notion of divine manifestation. | |
The attempt to represent the gods in stone, in metal, in wood, or even | |
in rude drawings and paintings, comes after a traditional belief has | |
long held its place in men’s thoughts of their manifestation in some | |
visible and tangible form. | |
It is not always a human form; it is generally not a human form, | |
except as it is part of the conception: as in the eagle-headed Belus | |
of Babylon, as in the winged bulls, with the head of a man and the | |
feet of a lion, that Layard found in the ruins of Nineveh. These | |
composite images represented ideas of the gods, not facts concerning | |
them. Thus the image found in the ruins of Nineveh represented | |
strength, swiftness, courage, intelligence. But the ideas expressed | |
in these strange and grotesque forms grew out of traditions of divine | |
manifestation, of incarnation. | |
All the mythologies tell us of incarnations; but the idea of divine | |
incarnation in the story of the evangelists differs, not in some | |
incidents, but in all essentials from all others. One unique fact, | |
as has heretofore, in a different connection, been pointed out, is | |
that Jesus was simply a man who, as to his appearance, had absolutely | |
nothing that was peculiar. Neither stature, beauty, swiftness, nor | |
strength is attributed to Jesus. | |
We might speak of the limitations that go with other conceptions of | |
gods incarnate. They are specialized by race and localized by country. | |
This thought has been illustrated elsewhere. It may answer now simply | |
to remind you that Vishnu is Hindustanee, Isis and Osiris Egyptian, | |
Odin and Thor Scandinavian. Not one of them has relations to the whole | |
human race. But Jesus, who calls himself “the Son of man,” is of all, | |
and belongs to all. | |
But the most notable difference to be considered now, that which alone | |
would place Jesus apart from all others, whether men or legendary | |
gods, is in the end he proposed to accomplish. The gods became | |
incarnate and appeared to men, or dwelt among them, to do many and very | |
different things; Jesus to do just one thing, and to do what no other | |
ever proposed to do, or so much as thought of doing. He, “the Son of | |
man,” was of all and for all, and he proposes an end that concerns all. | |
The evil he would remove from all is not a Hebrew trouble; it is in the | |
human race. | |
This is plainer in comparison. Vishnu, the supreme god of Hindustanee | |
mythology, has condescended, so the old stories tell us, to almost | |
innumerable incarnations. But for what end? Always to work some | |
prodigies; to do some strange things on the plane of men’s lives; to do | |
things affecting men’s circumstances, not men’s character. He comes to | |
do something in a limited sphere; something for his people, Hindustanee | |
people, not for the whole race of man. Vishnu, when he comes in mercy, | |
comes to remedy external conditions; he delivers from pestilence, | |
famine, wild beasts, poisonous serpents. When he comes in wrath it is | |
to crush his enemies. | |
In mythology the very conception men had of the coming of the gods | |
grew out of their circumstances. Thus in India the conception of evil | |
itself was determined by conditions peculiar to India. With them | |
evil grew out of the jungles where pestilence was bred, serpents | |
abounded, and fierce man-eating tigers hid themselves and waited for | |
their prey. It was determined by those conditions of life peculiar to | |
dense populations, subject to the scourges that followed war, and evil | |
natural conditions--plague and famine. | |
The evil Jesus considered was peculiar to no people and to no country; | |
it did not grow out of natural conditions; it was in man himself, and | |
it was sin. | |
Among warlike nations the gods came down to take part in mere national | |
matters; they fought the battles of their friends and punished their | |
enemies. Your Homer tells you all this in the story of the siege of | |
Troy. Virgil tells you the same thing; your classical authors are full | |
of it. The poor Indians and <DW64> tribes tell of such incarnations. | |
It was this very human conception of divine incarnation that filled | |
the national imagination and sustained the national hopes before Jesus | |
came. Such an incarnation they were longing for when they rejected him | |
because they could not use him for their ends; it is a conception that | |
to this day lingers in Hebrew thought and hope. They looked and prayed | |
for a divine warrior-king who would lead their armies, restore their | |
nation, and give it dominion over the world. | |
How incredible the idea that the evangelists have only given us a | |
reflection of popular sentiment, the outgrowth of national traditions! | |
These sentiments and traditions were utterly spoiled by the sort of | |
incarnation the evangelists describe. The nation resented unto death | |
the conception Jesus had of his mission to men; before such a king as | |
Jesus they preferred the Cæsar they hated; they put to death the man | |
who only sought to save them from their sins because he disappointed | |
them in their patriotic ambitions. | |
Speaking in a general way, the gods of the nations, when they become | |
incarnate, come to do a man’s sort of work. They work upon the outside | |
of life; they seek to deliver man from external evils and to improve | |
his external conditions. The “twelve labors of Hercules” tell us what | |
men thought they needed a divine man to do; the evangelists tell us | |
what the divine Man thought men needed that he should do. When the gods | |
of mythology become incarnate they work in the realm of circumstances; | |
Jesus speaks only of the man himself, his heart, his character, and | |
seeks only to make him good. | |
Here is, therefore, the essential difference: his conception of evil, | |
and back of that, of course, his conception of man himself. | |
As we have seen, in the thought of Jesus the evil and the good, the | |
woes and the blessings of humanity are in man himself; they are not | |
in externals, but internals; not in circumstances, but in character. | |
Jesus does not, therefore, dwell upon poverty or wealth, sickness or | |
health, enemies or friends, contempt or favor, servitude or freedom, | |
early death or long life. He is not concerned about any circumstances | |
whatever that merely determine man’s external life; he is concerned | |
about man himself. If there be any real good or any real evil the good | |
and the evil are inside, not outside the man. | |
Let us note, too, Jesus never places man’s moral evil, which is the one | |
evil he recognizes, in mere ignorance of truth, as if instruction and | |
merely changing man’s opinions could remedy the evil; he always places | |
it in that something that alienates man’s love from God, that something | |
that Jesus calls sin, that something that is sin because it antagonizes | |
the pure will of God. And Jesus teaches that the very constitution of | |
man’s nature is such that no bettering of his external conditions can | |
bring any real help whatsoever; that so long as man is out of harmony | |
with God there can be for him, neither in this world nor the next, any | |
real good. This he meant in the question that makes a man outweigh a | |
world: “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and | |
lose his own soul?” | |
Jesus took very great pains to teach men that in themselves, and not in | |
their circumstances, was their real evil and their real good. He used | |
almost every form of speech to teach them to think of a man as a man, | |
and not as the sport of circumstances. | |
For poverty Jesus did not care; for wealth he had no respect. The | |
story of the barn-builder gives us his solemn judgment upon a man who | |
achieved very great worldly success; who was what most men long and | |
strive to be--rich and great. But he was a man out of harmony with | |
God--rich in purse, bankrupt in soul. Jesus, in the face of all human | |
opinion, plainly calls such a man “a fool.” | |
The drama of the rich man and Lazarus turns the light of both worlds | |
upon the question of man’s chief and only good, and emphasizes, by | |
the despair of the prince in hell, his verdict upon the case of the | |
prosperous and self-satisfied barn-builder, in whose thoughts and plans | |
neither his own soul nor the God who made him had any place. | |
Always--whether speaking of his own personal work or in instructing his | |
disciples as to their work--Jesus looks to bettering men, not their | |
conditions. He did not care for conditions, except as they connected | |
men with influences that made them good or evil; he cared for men only. | |
Hence he always stressed character and nothing else. | |
Character, in the teaching of Jesus, is all; it is both test and | |
measure of what a man is, and there is no other test or measure for | |
which man ought to care, for which God does care. | |
The amazement of comfortable and cultured Nicodemus shows us that these | |
ideas of Jesus were not borrowed from the men of his time and race. | |
Summing up what is here presented as to the conception Jesus had of his | |
mission to men, a conception as unique as his own character: only one | |
thing he hated and sought to destroy--sin; only one thing he loved for | |
man and sought to bestow--goodness. | |
Only one thing his true disciples hate--sin; only one thing is worth | |
striving, living and dying for--goodness: which is another name for | |
Christ-likeness. | |
CHAPTER X. | |
THE MAGNITUDE OF THE END HE PROPOSED AND SET ABOUT. | |
Let us now consider briefly the magnitude of the work Jesus proposed to | |
do as the end of his mission to men. | |
It is the baldest commonplace to say the work Jesus proposed to | |
accomplish transcends all the dreams of the boldest imagination. | |
It is a deep offense that once, at St. Helena, Napoleon contrasted | |
the work Jesus proposed to do with the dreams that he and Alexander | |
and Julius Cæsar had indulged of world-changing conquests. It is no | |
great thing that selfish, ambitious, and gifted men have dreamed of | |
conquering what we call the world by force. Cæsar, Alexander, Mohammed, | |
Napoleon, even poor wild El Mahdi of the desert, may dream such dreams. | |
But what are such dreams when we think of Jesus and the work he | |
proposed to do and set himself to do? | |
We do not like to think of the dreams of ambition, the loftiest that | |
ever dared or planned a worldwide scheme of conquest, when we are | |
listening to Jesus concerning his mission to men. Jesus speaks of the | |
conquest of all nations, not as they then were, but of all nations | |
for all times. It is nothing less and nothing else than the moral and | |
spiritual re-creation of the human race, the absolute conquest of the | |
love of men’s hearts for time and eternity. | |
Say what men may of Jesus, it was worth dying, in shame and agony, upon | |
a Roman cross to have had such thoughts, even for one moment. No mere | |
man ever had such thoughts, could originate such thoughts, or for long | |
hold such thoughts in his grasp. The end Jesus proposed to himself is | |
as far above the noblest thoughts of the noblest men as the splendors | |
of the midnight heavens are above the cheap glitter of a toy-shop. | |
The thought of saving a race was as extra-human and superhuman as the | |
thought of the universe; the saving of a race, the saving of one man, | |
is as far beyond man’s power as the creation itself. | |
We cannot grasp the conception Jesus had of the work he came to do; it | |
makes us dizzy when we contemplate it steadily; it is like trying to | |
realize the distances of the fixed stars. Its splendor blinds us; it is | |
like looking at the unclouded sun. | |
No one, whatever may be his opinion of Jesus or attitude toward him, | |
can question that he believed absolutely in the success of the work | |
he proposed to accomplish. His plans embrace the entire race of man | |
and require eternity for their consummation, but he speaks of these | |
stupendous things with the perfect assurance and simplicity of a little | |
child: “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” | |
It was hard to say which is most unlike a mere man: the character of | |
the work he proposed to do, the magnitude of it, the unhasting zeal | |
with which he set about it, or his absolute confidence, calmness, and | |
simplicity of manner in telling men about it. | |
It is impossible to write worthily on such a theme. Let us, if only for | |
a moment, try to see how unlike a mere man it all is. | |
Jesus considers the sources of man’s misery and the nature of his | |
remedy. It is all open, clear, and certain to his thoughts. He has not | |
the least possible doubt that he has gone to the root of the subject | |
and absolutely knows it all. What has confounded all human thinkers is | |
in the sunlight to his vision. When the strongest and best of men tries | |
to mine into the depths of man’s nature and misery he labors heavily | |
and breathes hard, like a diver in his coat of mail down in the deep | |
sea. When a man attempts to tell what he thinks he sees in the shadows | |
from which he cannot escape, while meditating these difficult and to | |
him impossible themes, he is in sore travail for words; utterance is | |
heavy and confused. But Jesus makes no effort to grasp the truth; his | |
thoughts are clear and complete to him; his language simple and clear | |
to us. It is like this: “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts.” | |
Therefore, there must be, not reformation only, but change. “Ye must be | |
born again,” is his first word to Nicodemus and to all who come to him. | |
There is another thought to be considered at this point in taking | |
note of characteristics which difference Jesus from men. A mere man | |
discovering in his reflections the abysmal depths of man’s spiritual | |
malady, a mere man clearly comprehending, as no man ever yet | |
comprehended, the evil of sin, would be crushed by despair. Many good | |
men, seeing but a little way into this darkness, have been made mad by | |
what they saw. Where it is not morbid sentiment or philosophic play | |
this is the origin of pessimism. | |
There is nothing of this in Jesus. He saw it all; its uttermost deeps | |
were open to his eyes; but he faces the trouble with infinite calmness. | |
He announces a remedy adequate to the evil. He speaks to a weary and | |
sin-stricken race: “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 in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your | |
souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” | |
And this is what he offers to a sinning and troubled world. He says he | |
will change men, make them new and good, make them well again. | |
But there are no lunatic airs, common to dreamers and enthusiasts. | |
No mere man could think such thoughts and earnestly say such things | |
without lunacy. But there never was such perfect mental and spiritual | |
equilibrium as we see plainly in Jesus. He speaks of the moral conquest | |
of the entire race; he asks for the perfect love of men, that he may | |
save them from all evil by saving them from their sins; he speaks of | |
his work as comprehending time and eternity; he offers to the faithful | |
immortality and eternal life. And his calmness of spirit is absolute; | |
his simplicity of manner is perfect. | |
CHAPTER XI. | |
NEVER MAN PLANNED LIKE THIS MAN. | |
What are we to say of the means which Jesus proposes to use for the | |
accomplishment of his vast and unheard-of ends? | |
I say broadly, and with certain assurance, Jesus proposes none of the | |
means which mere men would use; of the sort they have always used. | |
His plans and methods are utterly unlike the plans and methods of | |
men, except as they have learned most imperfectly from him in humble | |
and earnest efforts to do his will. The methods that mere men trust | |
in--always trust in--he will have none of. | |
Jesus utterly excludes mere force. His symbol is not a sword; it is a | |
cross. He said, “He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword.” | |
Some weak thinkers or insincere men have tried to fasten on | |
Christianity the guilt of barbarous cruelties, and many wicked and | |
horrible deeds, perpetrated by ignorant or wicked men in the holy name | |
of Christ. Bad men, in the darkness of ignorance and in the malignity | |
of sin, have used his name to force their brothers to think their | |
thoughts. The rack for Galileo was an evil thought and a wicked method | |
of bad and ignorant men. But Jesus does not tolerate force in carrying | |
on his work, nor persecution of any sort whatsoever. | |
On one occasion two of his disciples, John and James, were offended | |
because a Samaritan village did not offer hospitality to Jesus and his | |
friends. Then said the brothers, “Lord, wilt thou that we command fire | |
to come down from heaven and consume them?” They were men, and their | |
method was pure human. What Jesus said to them he says to all: “But he | |
turned and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye | |
are of.” | |
To charge upon Christianity the wicked deeds of those who have violated | |
the teachings of its founder is like charging upon medicine the death | |
of men who, in the name of medicine, have been doctored to their death | |
by impostors. | |
Force could not do any of his work; it was man’s love that he sought; | |
and love cannot be forced by God or man. Love dies under force. The | |
Cæsars use force; it is a man’s way. The God-man uses love. | |
Jesus does not trust in the purchasing power of wealth, or of money, | |
its representative. He hardly spoke of money except to show the danger | |
of it. The love of money he denounced. He taught that greed of money | |
is debasing. Getting to heaven, for a rich man, is like a camel’s | |
passing through the eye of a needle--only “harder.” The only rich man | |
who volunteered discipleship turned sorrowfully away when told to | |
sell his estates and give the proceeds to the poor. Jesus warns his | |
disciples with gracious vehemence of the folly and danger of laying up | |
treasure upon earth. Personally he had no concern about wealth, except | |
to warn his disciples of the terrible spiritual dangers that lurk in | |
riches. He provides no treasure for carrying on his work. He taught | |
that the love of money is the source of more moral evils than any other | |
thing in the world. | |
It is a man’s way to bribe and buy favor and success. Satan believes in | |
the power of money absolutely. To Jesus himself the devil offered the | |
submission of the world if he would only pay him allegiance. | |
Men of our time will not believe what Jesus says upon these subjects, | |
and their prompt rejection of his doctrine is evidence enough that in | |
rejecting from his plans the power of money to buy influence he did | |
not plan like a man. For money, as money, Jesus felt only contempt. He | |
taught that wealth held for its own sake, or used only in selfishness, | |
shows its possessor to be a “fool;” that it both degrades and damns. In | |
his view it can in one way only be even honorable to be rich--to use | |
riches unselfishly and usefully. Even then it is dangerous. | |
In his day, as they do now, men of the world reviled his doctrine; “the | |
Pharisees, who were covetous, derided him.” | |
For the teachings of Jesus concerning money and its right uses few, | |
even of those who claim to be his disciples and friends, have perfect | |
respect. He seems to them to be “visionary” in his views, and his words | |
seem to be “unbusinesslike.” A man says to himself, “Jesus says money | |
is dangerous to my soul; he tells me that I am only a steward holding | |
money in trust, and that I must give it away to those who need. I | |
cannot carry on business on his plan; I will risk my plan.” | |
Such a man does not believe what Jesus teaches; unless one should so | |
far qualify the statement as to say--unless it be that gold has so | |
blinded his eyes that he does not understand what the plain words of | |
the Master really mean. | |
From his method Jesus excludes diplomacy, the art of playing one | |
selfishness against another. “Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, | |
nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.” His disciples | |
must, indeed, be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves;” but they | |
must live the truth. Deception is abhorrent to him. The Talleyrands | |
understand and use diplomatic arts. The “Berlin Conference” is a modern | |
instance; it illustrates a man’s method. Not necessarily a bad method, | |
but a man’s. | |
Consider a phrase we see every day in the papers, “The balance of | |
power in Europe.” See how the “great powers” and the small ones | |
give themselves to all manner of intrigues, using wily state-craft | |
to circumvent, deceive, coerce, hold their own, or rob their weaker | |
neighbors, or by combination reduce the stronger ones. | |
Many well-founded complaints have been brought against “priest-craft,” | |
which is state craft in church circles. Its crimes, by the ill-informed | |
and the evil-disposed, have been laid at the door of Christianity. No | |
charge can be more unjust; it is as unjust as to blame Jesus with the | |
treachery of Judas. | |
Priest-craft is an invention of men; it has no more place in the plans | |
of Jesus than state-craft; he considers neither, except as he may | |
overrule them and force them against their nature into his service, so | |
that the cunning as well as the “wrath of man shall praise him.” | |
What is called the “Church” is not synonymous with “kingdom of heaven.” | |
Men of worldly temper may within church circles do their own work; they | |
do not do Christ’s work by diplomatic arts. | |
Jesus not only excludes appeal to all forms of selfishness, he | |
antagonizes them to the death. His first and last word, his ultimatum, | |
is, “If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself, and take | |
up his cross daily and follow me.” His first word is a challenge to | |
surrender the stronghold of self-will. Till surrender is complete | |
there can be no peace. A mere man would be counted insane--and justly | |
enough--to talk of advancing any little scheme of improving things | |
about him in any such way--and because it is so utterly unlike a man’s | |
way. | |
Jesus offers no inducement to mere self-interest. He promises | |
absolutely nothing of the things the world is in sore travail and | |
anxiety to secure. He does not promise pleasure, or honor, or fortune, | |
or power, or health, or long life. He does say God will see to it that | |
true Christians shall have what is good for them. But in many ways he | |
makes plain that “what is good for them” will often include what the | |
world calls evil. | |
Jesus nowhere so much as seems to think of what men of the world call | |
good; the things they strive for so, and give their time and strength | |
and lives to gain. | |
It is an utter mistake to suppose that Jesus offers worldly prosperity | |
as a reward for duty, a premium on piety. Those who try to read this | |
meaning into an apostle’s writings misread him; it is against all his | |
teaching. It is true, doubtless, as Paul says, “Godliness is profitable | |
unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is and of that | |
which is to come.” But “the promise of the life that now is” cannot, | |
in the kingdom of Jesus, mean worldly things; it means goodness, God’s | |
peace in man’s soul, Christ-likeness in man’s heart here and now. | |
Undoubtedly religion makes this a better world, but not because it | |
makes man richer, but purer. | |
If we believe in Jesus and in his work in the world at all we may, if | |
we wish, find out what he meant by what has followed. It is true that | |
the religion that makes men good restrains them and protects them from | |
the follies and sins that waste energy and squander fortune; but it is | |
utterly misleading and confusing to try to read into the words of Jesus | |
the idea that he appeals to any mere selfish interest by promising | |
fortune to the good. It is like making worldly riches the reward of | |
meekness and long life the premium on obedience to parents. | |
Some very rich people have been deeply religious, but in spite of their | |
wealth. It is as Jesus said, “All things are possible with God.” It was | |
he also who said, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into | |
the kingdom of God.” But Christ’s best ones have not succeeded in this | |
world according to money or other such gauges. | |
If the work of Jesus--who excludes from his plans force and the | |
cunning of diplomacy, who denounces all selfishness and ignores | |
all self-interest, who demands absolute self-surrender at the very | |
outset--is to abide in the world, is to succeed, then it must go | |
against the tide, and not with it. | |
At one time Jesus seemed to think his hearers might possibly | |
misapprehend him, and he told them plainly that poverty, trouble, | |
sorrow, persecutions in this world, awaited them if they followed him. | |
And he told them plainly, also, that if they would have any part in him | |
and with him they must flinch at nothing--that they must die if need | |
be. When they did understand him “many went back from following him.” | |
And many are joining their company to this day. | |
What he said to the young ruler he said to all; nay, says to us all | |
to-day: “The foxes have holes; and the birds of the air have nests, | |
but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” And we do him the | |
deep dishonor of believing that he spoke the words of mere sentiment! | |
He could only mean by his words to the rich young man, “Come with me | |
and welcome; I will help you, I will save you; but for this world I can | |
promise you nothing.” He himself was always a poor man, and his poverty | |
was not an accident in his manner of life. There never was a man too | |
poor to be a friend to Jesus, never a man so rich that he could find | |
special favor in those eyes that were “single” and “full of light.” | |
Jesus could not have offered holiness to men as the chief good of | |
man, with worldly blessings as a reason for being good; it would have | |
spoiled the Gospel. He never promised that his disciples should be | |
better off in this world than he was. He asked them one day, “Shall the | |
servant be above his lord, the disciple above his Master?” | |
But we explain all this away. | |
Jesus was not indulging sentiment when he taught his disciples that | |
following him meant a self-renunciation that would brave all things. | |
He distinctly told them to expect persecutions and tribulations. And | |
some persuade themselves that he was speaking only for those who were | |
then his disciples; that such ideas do not fit civilized times and | |
countries. An apostle, being a mere man, might well enough give his | |
“judgment” as to what best suited an existing condition of life and | |
society; but Jesus, who belongs to all times, speaks no word of simply | |
local and temporary significance and importance. | |
It was so certain that suffering and persecution of some sort would | |
follow fidelity that Jesus gave his disciples and all who should come | |
after them a test by which they might judge of their personal fidelity | |
to him: “Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you.” Can we | |
imagine that Jesus did not mean such words for all men, of all times | |
and countries? | |
He knew how his friends would need to stand firm, and how fearful the | |
pressure of temptation would be to deny him. | |
He told them they would “for his sake” be “brought before kings,” and | |
that “some of them would be killed.” But he told them not to be afraid; | |
they were to fear God and no other whatever. | |
One day Jesus was urging his disciples to be faithful and courageous in | |
proclaiming his whole truth to the world, and thus he encouraged and | |
exhorted them: “And I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them | |
that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But | |
I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath | |
killed hath power to cast into hell: yea, I say unto you, Fear him.” | |
Instead of trusting in any wise to self-interest Jesus demands its | |
crucifixion. When he says, “If any man will be my disciple, let him | |
deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me;” when he | |
demands self-renunciation absolute; when he says that no interest | |
possible in this world--whether houses, lands, father, mother, brother, | |
sister, child, or wife--must come between him and his disciples; | |
when he raises a cross by his own upon which selfishness must die, he | |
stands apart from all men. His method is not a man’s. His plans are as | |
different from a man’s as the end he proposed is above a man’s thought | |
and different from it. | |
If no man ever spoke like Jesus no man ever planned like him. | |
In considering further some things in the methods which Jesus adopted | |
for doing the work he proposed to himself we may mention, as different | |
from a man’s method, that Jesus excludes from his plans for discipling | |
the world reliance upon mere argument and force of intellect. | |
Jesus left no room, not the least, for the fanatical superstition | |
that his cause is to be advanced by ignorance. His doctrine furnishes | |
every inspiration for the very highest development of mind; and the | |
best educational work of the world is the outgrowth of Christian | |
institutions. | |
But Jesus does teach his disciples that they must not, in extending | |
his kingdom, depend upon learning, upon mere force of intellect and | |
argument. If they did this they would fail. So he taught them, and | |
history makes it plain to us that his disciples have failed when they | |
have forgotten his teachings. Alas! that it is so easy to pervert great | |
gifts. It seems to be almost as difficult not to trust in great gifts | |
of genius as it is to possess great wealth without loving it. | |
With the end Jesus had in view he could not depend upon mere learning, | |
mental gifts, and force of argument. For the essential trouble is not | |
with men’s intellects, but their hearts. It is not that opinions are so | |
wrong; it is that dispositions are so alienated from God. Man needs not | |
a new opinion, but a new love. The task of Jesus was a far harder one | |
than the correction of errors; it was the winning of hearts. Love is | |
free; men may be convinced against their will, but love consents. | |
CHAPTER XII. | |
JESUS NEITHER THEOLOGIAN NOR ECCLESIASTIC. | |
Jesus did none of the things a man would do who proposed to establish | |
and perpetuate any sort of kingdom, or school of beliefs, even in this | |
world. | |
He established no institutions with formal constitutions. He did | |
not draw up a code--not so much as a system of moral philosophy. He | |
left no “theological institutes,” with precise definitions and exact | |
limitations. Some of his true friends have done their best at such | |
work; he did not. Theirs is a man’s way; his was not. | |
He left no formal creed; he never mentioned such a thing; he did not | |
seem to think of it at all. It is so much a man’s way to do such things | |
that we are not yet familiar with the idea that Jesus did not. It comes | |
to many with a sudden surprise when they discover that Jesus said not | |
a word about systematic theology, that to many is so precious. In all | |
his words are no “articles of religion;” not a hint of them. He did not | |
so much as put into form a doctrine of his own nature and person. Very | |
often and in many ways he spoke of himself and God, and of his relation | |
to the eternal Father, but he made no definition. Often he spoke of | |
himself, of the Father and of the Holy Ghost, but he said not a word of | |
the “hypostatic union” of three persons in one Godhead; not a word of | |
the “economic relations” of the Holy Trinity. | |
Some good people, if they chance to read what is here put down, will be | |
so certain in their own minds that Jesus did employ some of the methods | |
of a mere man, in order to preserve his teachings in the world, that | |
they will suspect the writer of irreverence; at least of indifference, | |
if not of something they think less of, in what is said concerning | |
“creeds” and “theologies.” They will be in error, as is common with | |
them on such questions; the writer is only stating facts that no man | |
can deny as to what Jesus did and did not do. Some admirable and good | |
people have not yet learned the difference between arguing for their | |
Church and pleading for Christianity; between defending their own | |
notions and expounding the teachings of Jesus. And not a few confound | |
their notions about God with the fact of his existence, as others | |
mistake their theory of inspiration for the divine authority of the | |
Holy Scriptures. | |
Our way of teaching is a man’s way. If it is the best we can do let us | |
be content; if not, let us amend our way. But let us not defend our way | |
by pleading his example; let us follow our way because it is our way, | |
if there be no better reason. Certain it is that the way Jesus took | |
of teaching and perpetuating his doctrines was not a man’s way in any | |
respect whatever. | |
Jesus wrote no book--not a line. He founded no school or other training | |
institution; his three years’ loving and painstaking companionship with | |
his disciples was indeed a training, but it was not an institution. | |
This does not mean that his friends should not do such things; it is | |
the only way they can do: but he did not do such things. | |
He did not so much as establish a Church; the Church grew out of his | |
life as well as out of his teachings; it was compacted by the sympathy | |
of men, women, and little children of common beliefs and hopes; above | |
all, by the sympathy born of a common love for him--this far more, then | |
as now, than by what they understood or believed of his teachings. He | |
left for the government of the Church “no rules of order,” no book of | |
“discipline.” He ordained no form of church government, “with checks | |
and balances,” whatever. All those things may be good, and order in | |
government is necessary; but he did not provide them. He left all such | |
things to the common sense and best judgment, guided by providence | |
and the Holy Spirit, of his disciples. In Church as well as State the | |
principle is this: God ordains the power; he does not prescribe the | |
form; he ordains government, but leaves the form of it to the good | |
sense and personal preferences of those who are to live under it. | |
All these things we have mentioned here belong to the works and ways | |
of men; they are good or bad as they serve the ends of his kingdom. | |
Moses, though an inspired lawgiver, yet a mere man, gave many forms and | |
prescribed the order of doing many things; Jesus, the divine man, gave | |
none. | |
In nothing is Jesus more unlike men than in his utter disregard of | |
“forms” in the doing of the duties he enjoined. He has no word about | |
forms except the terrible words he used concerning the many forms | |
punctiliously observed by certain Pharisees and hypocrites who were | |
playing at religion. His life was full of worship, but he left not a | |
hint as to any forms or attitudes for devotion. That simplest and most | |
comprehensive of all prayers, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” is not a | |
form; he said, “After this manner pray ye.” The prayer might take any | |
form of words, or leave all words unsaid. And this prayer he gave his | |
disciples in response to a request for a form. Jesus had no forms; he | |
cared for none. | |
Nor did Jesus care for the “letter,” except as to the danger that good | |
men might make a fetish of it. He said of the “letter, it killeth;” | |
“the Spirit giveth life.” The Spirit is every thing, the letter | |
nothing. If we were to use of him the language that fits the case of a | |
man we would feel like saying, Jesus looked upon punctilious eagerness | |
about “forms” and the “letter” as mere child’s play, that he scorned | |
such unspiritual folly. | |
This is certain: the only thing he denounced in a tone that was | |
almost anger was zealous adherence to the form and to the letter, and | |
sanctimonious contentment with this poor substitute for religion when | |
the spirit of worship and service was dead. It will be the plainer to | |
us that his was very far from being a man’s way when we remember that, | |
with men, the less of spirit and reality an institution has the more | |
anxious they are about mere form and letter. A spiritually dead man | |
will contend more zealously about the form of a duty than the duty | |
itself. And this is not unnatural; when a Church is dead there is | |
nothing left but form--a body ready for burial. | |
What terrific words Jesus used in what he said of such things! Let us | |
hear him and try to understand how much he means for us of to-day: | |
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of | |
mint, and anise, and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of | |
the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and | |
not to leave the other undone. | |
“Ye blind guides, which strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel. | |
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean | |
the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of | |
extortion and excess. | |
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto | |
whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are | |
within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” | |
Had Jesus been only a man, conceiving vast plans for propagating his | |
doctrines and perpetuating his kingdom, he would have done all the | |
things he did not do. He would have relied on force, money, diplomacy, | |
argument. He would have considered what human selfishness is, and he | |
would have appealed to it. He would have provided institutions and | |
have founded schools. There would have been a “propaganda” compassing | |
the world in its plans, and his agents would have been drilled in | |
forms and methods after the manner of men. He would, to have been | |
at all like a man in his plans, have left a system of “ethics” or | |
“theology.” He would have formulated a “creed”; he would have drawn up | |
a “constitution” with “bylaws” for his Church, stating in terms every | |
principle and providing, according to the foresight given him, for | |
every contingency, as did John Wesley with his Discipline and Legal | |
Hundred. (Can it be necessary to say this illustration is no reflection | |
upon the great and good English reformer, who was a mere man?) He would | |
have set for rigid observance forms and ceremonies of which he had none | |
and prescribed none, not so much as telling men how they were to do in | |
the matter of the sacraments--baptism and the memorial supper. | |
Mere men always do such things. Jesus did not adopt a man’s way in any | |
of his work or plans, unless we except those who have learned of him | |
something of the divine art of doing good to the souls and bodies of | |
men. | |
CHAPTER XIII. | |
“JESUS CHRIST TOOK THE WAY OF PERISHING.” | |
If Jesus was only a man there is another marvelous thing you must | |
have thought of before this time. He talked of a kingdom that was to | |
endure forever, that was to conquer the world, and that was to bind the | |
human race into a holy brotherhood; but he made no preparation for a | |
successor. He expected to die early, as he did; he told his disciples, | |
time and again, that he would not be with them long; but he provided | |
for no representative or visible headship when he was gone. The idea | |
of such a representative did not occur in all his thoughts, as it was | |
not intimated in any of his words. Napoleon shows us a man’s way in his | |
eager concern for a successor and in the cruel and wicked method he | |
took to secure his ends. | |
What Jesus did not ordain and require men may use in his work, if their | |
methods be in themselves good, and consistent with the spirit of his | |
kingdom. But what he did not require men must not demand of his free | |
children. | |
So far as plans are concerned, of a sort recognizable by men as | |
plans--of a sort they will admit who believe he was only a man--there | |
was just one thing he did and commanded. He called about him a few | |
fishermen and other plain people--of what are called by some the “lower | |
classes”--and said in effect: “Go up and down through the earth and | |
tell every body what you have seen me do and what you have heard me | |
say; tell the people of me; tell them to go on repeating the story; | |
tell them to hand it down through the ages, telling it over and over.” | |
These are the very words: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in | |
earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all 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 have commanded you; and lo, I | |
am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” | |
Mere men, undertaking great and perilous enterprises, conceal from | |
their followers the hardships and perils that await them; they tell | |
them of victories and rewards. So did the Genoese, mustering a crew to | |
help him find a new world. So all mere human leaders do. And no mere | |
man in such a case ever yet clearly saw the difficulty and danger of | |
the undertaking; if men could see clearly the toils and tribulations | |
between them and success they would never enter upon any great and | |
hazardous enterprise. But Jesus saw all the antagonisms that were | |
in his path and, unlike any other leader that ever lived, told his | |
disciples what awaited them. In words like these he spoke to his | |
disciples: | |
“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye | |
therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: | |
for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you | |
in their synagogues; and ye shall be brought before governors and kings | |
for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.... And ye | |
shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to | |
the end shall be saved.... The disciple is not above his master, nor | |
the servant above his lord. If they have called the master of the house | |
Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?... He | |
that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. | |
He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for | |
my sake shall find it.” | |
Let us think of all this. Such an end to accomplish, such a plan, such | |
a claim, such a promise! If Jesus was only a man this was lunacy, | |
unless we should impeach his sincerity. | |
Yet with perfect simplicity, perfect composure, perfect confidence, | |
Jesus relies upon such a plan as this. It is not a man’s way at all; it | |
is not only above and beyond a man’s way, it is unlike it, foreign to | |
it, and impossible to a mere man. | |
How do men plan? Read history; look about you. It is easy to find out | |
from books; if you know how to read men it is easier to find out from | |
observation. | |
Alexander, Cæsar, Mohammed, among warriors and conquerors; Richelieu, | |
Macchiavelli, Jefferson, Hamilton, Disraeli, Bismarck, among statesman | |
and the men who know state-craft; the fathers and popes, Ignatius | |
Loyola, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, among churchmen--these show us the | |
methods of men. Studying the lives of those mentioned here and of | |
others of their order we will find plans many and diverse--wise and | |
foolish, good and bad--but they show a man’s way. | |
If you wish something more like a parallel consider the plans of | |
those who fastened what is called Buddhism, or Confucianism, upon | |
hundreds of millions. Or consider Mohammedanism. In these systems we | |
see the handiwork of men. The authors of these systems recognize the | |
ordinary influences that determine men’s conduct and use them with | |
rare human skill. These employ agencies that Jesus repudiates; they | |
appeal to motives that he ignored; offer inducements that he utterly | |
denied; these planned as men plan in all they did. What Pascal says, | |
in effect, in comparing Christ and Mohammed, we may say of Christ | |
and any other founder of a religion: “If Mohammed took the way of | |
succeeding, according to human calculations, Jesus Christ took the way | |
of perishing, according to human calculations.” | |
Never did Jesus look to using the strongest drifts in human nature to | |
secure his ends; his ends required him to arrest and reverse these | |
drifts. He was not ignorant of the forces locked up in human nature; | |
no man ever so deeply read the heart, so absolutely “knew what was in | |
man.” As no other who ever taught men the truth Jesus knew the force | |
of the torrent that bore down upon him--the Niagara his cause had to | |
ascend. | |
If Jesus was only a man how happened it that the methods he adopted are | |
as unlike the methods of men as the end he sought is unlike the end | |
that any man ever yet proposed to himself? How happened it that in his | |
plans he did every thing that a man would not do, and nothing--all | |
history being witness--that a man would do? | |
These pages are not written for exhortation; but would it not be better | |
every way, for the cause they stand for, if his friends studied the | |
plans of Jesus more and their own plans less? | |
Placing ourselves, in imagination, in the company of those few | |
faithful friends, men and women--who were of the humble and obscure | |
people--among those who received his command to “disciple all nations,” | |
let us look about us and consider what are our prospects of success. | |
What predominant influence in the world is friendly to the cause of | |
our Lord and Master? The only people who believe in the Lord God have | |
crucified Jesus. The Romans are masters not only in the holy city but | |
in all the world we know, and the Roman power has just sanctioned the | |
death of Jesus. The Greeks still give philosophy and art to the world, | |
but there is not among the Greeks sympathy with the teachings and work | |
of Jesus. No people befriend his cause; no hand is stretched out to his | |
disciples; the world is against his cause, and for his sake against us, | |
his disciples. | |
Looking at it all as a man might, was there then a single human | |
probability that the cause represented by the crucified Galilean would | |
have the least place in history? That it would abide among men for a | |
single generation? If Jesus was only a man could any thing conceivable | |
by the human mind be more impossible than the realization of the dream | |
(if he was only a man it was but a dream) of this man of Galilee, | |
crucified like a felon? | |
No wonder certain men, while Jesus was yet among them, “laughed him to | |
scorn.” | |
CHAPTER XIV. | |
HIS GRASP UPON MANKIND. | |
So far we have been studying the character and work of Jesus as he | |
is presented in the evangelists, just as we might study any other | |
character of that period. We have not yet considered Jesus as he now | |
affects the world--a presence and force of our own times. | |
When the scientists proved the indestructibility of matter, when they | |
discovered the doctrine of the conservation of energy, showing us how | |
the coal measures, that warm millions of homes and drive the machinery | |
of land and sea, are but stored-up sunbeams of untold ages gone, they | |
showed us that through all her wonderful changes Nature loses none | |
of her substance. In this splendid formulation of natural law the | |
scientists have done a secondary but more important service; they have | |
given us a symbol from things material, an illustration of a law of the | |
higher sphere. Nothing is ever lost in the spiritual world. | |
A thought with life and truth in it, once set going, can no more | |
be lost than a drop of water falling on the fields can be lost. | |
Professor Harrison, of England, is right in his doctrine of posthumous | |
immortality, as far as it goes. He sees part of a truth and states it | |
well. Whatever force there may be in any human life abides in human | |
life. We may not be able to trace it, as we may not trace the identical | |
dew-drop that glittered on the grass this morning and that, exhaled | |
by the rising sun, has now disappeared from our view, but not from | |
existence. | |
It may well be that the influences that have conspired in shaping | |
our lives--in making us what we are to-day--have in some way come to | |
us from many thousands of lives. In a true sense Moses, David, Paul, | |
Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Luther, Calvin, | |
Wesley, with many others--our parents and teachers above all--all | |
these, and, it may be, myriads more unnamable, live in us to-day. This | |
is what Froude meant when he wrote of Martin Luther, “No man of our | |
times is what he would have been but for Luther.” This is true because | |
Luther’s life so enters into the influences of our times that no man | |
ever brought into relations with him could escape that influence. | |
And few have escaped it; none of the European nations, none of the | |
nations that have been brought into any sort of relations with | |
Christianity and the civilizations that have grown out of it; few, | |
if any, of what we call heathen nations; for the influences of | |
Luther’s life and doctrines are in the missionary movement of our | |
times, that now promises to do for these nations what the coming of | |
Christianity did for Europe, Eastern Asia, and Northern Africa in the | |
first centuries of our era--so changed them as to make a new epoch in | |
history; we might say, a new world. | |
What is true of such a man as Luther is true in a measure--less | |
extensive it may be, less real it cannot be--of every life that has | |
gone before us, and that has, in any way, entered into our own. | |
It would be easy to offer illustrations. Consider Francis | |
Bacon--perhaps Roger Bacon still more--in relation to the scientific | |
methods of our times. Think of Shakespeare, not in poetry only, but | |
in all literature; or of Kant, Spinoza, Locke, in philosophy; Calvin, | |
Wesley, and the rest, in theology and moral reforms. Or think of the | |
artists and inventors, the great soldiers and statesmen. You may easily | |
make out a very long list of names of human lives that, going before | |
us, now live in us. The list will show names that stand for diverse and | |
antagonistic elements; but all these enter into our lives, just as, to | |
return to our illustration from the world of waters, the water pure | |
from the clouds, sparkling in mountain springs, foul and reeking from | |
swamps and all manner of ugly places, enters, it well may be, into the | |
constituent elements of the dew-drop that reflects the sun upon each | |
grass-blade in the fields. | |
It is nothing peculiar to the life of Jesus of Nazareth that his | |
influence should abide in human history. Every human life, the humblest | |
and unworthiest, so abides. But the influence of Jesus is different | |
from that of other men. I am not now speaking of degree, but kind. As | |
his method of thinking, of teaching; as the work he proposed to do | |
and as the plans he adopted difference him from mere men, so does the | |
history of the influence that flowed out from him into life and so | |
made modern civilization, so does the character of his influence now | |
difference him from men. | |
It would carry us too far for the design of these discussions to enter | |
now into the subject of the relation of Jesus to the history of his | |
era. Our calendar intimates the extent and power of that influence; | |
we count time from his birth; this is 1889, A. D. That influence has | |
entered into whatever has made the world of our times. The history of | |
this influence is the history of the Christian era. | |
We will consider the influence of Jesus, as it may be a matter of | |
observation and consciousness. | |
Consider the power of the teachings of Jesus upon the human conscience. | |
This is to me a growing wonder. Other men’s words stimulate the | |
conscience to a degree, but only when they echo his or approach harmony | |
with them. This is so strangely true that no words of any teacher stir | |
the conscience--except to protest--that antagonize and contradict | |
Jesus. There is no risk of exaggeration or dogmatism here; it is | |
perfectly safe and perfectly fair to say no doctrine of God or man, | |
of rights and wrongs, that repudiates or denies what Jesus teaches, | |
has any power over the human conscience. Other words and doctrines may | |
quicken the intellect and dominate it; may excite the imagination and | |
stir the emotions; but if they are contrary to his doctrines and his | |
life they have no grasp upon the moral side of man. | |
It is easy to make the experiment and to make it conclusively. Read | |
books that contradict his doctrines--that seek to overthrow them. If | |
you read with candor I am not afraid for you to read what his fiercest | |
enemies say. Take Voltaire, where he ridicules the Bible; Paine, | |
in that very misnamed pamphlet, _The Age of Reason_; Hume, in his | |
speculations concerning providence, miracles, inspiration, and the | |
whole agnostic literature of our day. These writings do not take hold | |
upon the conscience except as they may weaken or paralyze it; they do | |
not strengthen any purpose to do right, confirm any sense of personal | |
obligation, invigorate any will for right doing. Make the experiment | |
with any words of men that contradict or repudiate Jesus, the lightest | |
and weightiest, the silliest and subtlest; mere platform declamations | |
or the sober scientific worship of materialism that knows no | |
spirit--man, angel, or God. Do any of them stir our sense of obligation | |
to high duty? Do any of them make our perception of duty clearer? Our | |
love of virtue stronger? Our hatred of evil intenser? All who have made | |
the experiment may answer for themselves. | |
I do not say that only the words of Jesus take hold upon the | |
conscience; this would not be true. There are passages in Seneca, in | |
Epictetus, in Socrates, in Plato, in Confucius, in the words of many | |
ancient sages and modern teachers, that do stir the conscience. Your | |
Shakespeare will furnish many illustrations. So will George Eliot, | |
Hawthorne, and very many other writers. But these things I do say with | |
perfect assurance: | |
1. No words or teachings of any writer or teacher, of any age, that | |
antagonize or repudiate the words of Jesus have power over the | |
conscience. | |
2. Those words and teachings of men who never knew Jesus--as Socrates, | |
Confucius, and other such men--that most affect the conscience are | |
those words and teachings of theirs most in harmony with the doctrines | |
and character of Jesus. All light is good, but that which is nearest | |
sunlight is best. | |
3. The words and teachings of those who do know Jesus, that most | |
powerfully affect the conscience, are those that most perfectly echo | |
his words. | |
Furthermore, this is true: The words and teachings of Jesus not only | |
stir the conscience as no others do; they illuminate the conscience. | |
Others may affect the sensibility of conscience to a degree, but leave | |
it in the shadows as to the very rights and wrongs of things. The | |
words of Jesus--once their meaning is understood--as they apply to any | |
concrete case of rights and wrongs, not only awaken the sensibility | |
of conscience so that the feeling of obligation to do right and avoid | |
wrong is most pronounced and unmistakable, but this also is true: the | |
light which his words pour on the question in consideration makes | |
transparent what the right thing is and what the wrong thing is. | |
There is something here that defies analysis, something that will not | |
be held in logic forms. Take any doctrine Jesus taught and exemplified. | |
It may be about truth, honesty, chastity, charity. Read it, see what | |
it means, apply it to your case, and conscience says, “Amen” to it, | |
and upon the instant. Conscience receives it as the reason receives | |
an axiom. Given the facts, you need only to apply his tests, and that | |
instant you not only suppose, not only think, you know what is your | |
right and your wrong in the case. If there were no other reason, herein | |
there is reason enough to follow the Man of Galilee wherever he leads. | |
I urge upon you for your use in the tests that await you, as a method | |
of finding out rights and wrongs and determining duty, what I have | |
tried under many conditions of life and action; a most simple principle | |
of action--one that has never for one moment failed me or left me | |
in doubt. It is worth more than all reasonings, than all books of | |
casuistry, than all advices of friends; nay, it is better than mere | |
praying as if for some new light or other revelation than that which | |
has come to enlighten every man that cometh into the world. It is to | |
ask, “What does Jesus teach here? What would he say if he were to | |
speak? What would he do if this were his case?” | |
Blunders of judgment, many and grievous; failures in living up to | |
the light that the Master gives, more grievous than any blunders of | |
judgment--these things I confess to sorrowfully and with bitter shame; | |
but for the truth’s sake, my conscience’ sake, and my Lord’s sake, | |
this much I must say, and I cannot say less: never have I asked, | |
“What would he do?” but that the light has shined resplendent and | |
all-revealing, and the right and the wrong stood out clear, sharp, as | |
when electric lights shine about us, and I knew what I ought or ought | |
not to do. | |
At this point we may recur a moment to what was, in part, considered | |
heretofore: the fullness, the completeness of his teachings difference | |
him from all others. | |
There is not in any other teacher such statement of principles that | |
you cannot find outside their teachings one single ethical principle | |
that they have not taught. Other teachers give us many principles of | |
ethics; does any of them give all? Jesus does, though he wrote no book | |
and elaborated no system; though we have but few of his words recorded. | |
What I ask is this: Is there in any teacher of any nation one single | |
principle of rights and wrongs that the suffrage of the race could | |
approve, that Jesus does not teach? Is there one single principle of | |
Jesus as to rights and wrongs that the suffrage of good men can condemn | |
as false? Men may, indeed, reject his teachings, and oppose them with | |
bitterest hate, but which one of them--the least or the greatest--can | |
they show to be immoral, wrong? | |
As all colors are potentially contained in the pure white light, and | |
as the composition of all colors produces the pure white light, so the | |
teachings of Jesus contain in principle all the forms of ethical truth | |
that were ever in the minds of men. But here the analogy fails. All the | |
ethical truth that all others have taught when brought together fails | |
to make the sum total of his teachings; some colors are lacking in | |
them; together they do not make the pure white light of the gospels. | |
CHAPTER XV. | |
WHAT HE CLAIMS AND DEMANDS. | |
There is a fact, personal to Jesus, that not only enters vitally into | |
this argument, but more than any thing else explains the power of his | |
words on the conscience: what was considered in another relation in | |
the outset--the perfection of his own character; his sinlessness: his | |
absolute purity. | |
A perfect doctrine will no doubt affect the conscience, but a perfect | |
doctrine uttered by one who lives a holy life has tenfold the power of | |
the mere statement of doctrine. And it is not simply that the hearer | |
recoils from a doctrine stated by an inconsistent or insincere man | |
because he is inconsistent and insincere, but such a man cannot so much | |
as utter the truth in its fullness; he cannot conceive the truth in its | |
completeness. | |
When Jesus utters a truth it lays hold upon the conscience and life | |
not simply because it is the truth, but because he is the “Truth and | |
the Life.” His conscience goes with the word and it enters into our | |
conscience. It was this quality in him, more than aught else, that led | |
his hearers, when the Sermon on the Mount was ended, to “wonder at his | |
doctrine, for he taught them as one having authority.” It is living a | |
truth more than learning about a truth that gives the teacher authority. | |
An illustrative incident may help us here. The late Mr. Wray was a | |
Baptist missionary in India. He was a man of known consistency of | |
religious character. A child who knew him well was asked the question: | |
“What is holiness?” A man would have done as so many do with lamentable | |
failure, attempted a “definition;” the child answered: “Holiness is the | |
way Mr. Wray lives.” The child was nearly, if not quite, at the bottom | |
of the subject. | |
The learner in the school of Jesus may find here a truth of first | |
importance. It is twofold: 1. The best way to learn more truth is to | |
live the truth he does know. 2. The only way to rightly teach any truth | |
in morals, in things spiritual, is to live it. Religion, like science, | |
believes in experiment and teaches by facts. The incarnate truth is | |
the truth that has life in it. It is said with reverence, but with | |
confidence, Jesus teaches what spiritual life is more by living it than | |
by his words. His life expounds his doctrine, and without his life we | |
could not understand his teachings. | |
Try the principle by any test of him. For example, he teaches us that | |
forgiveness is a duty and that revenge is a sin. What does he mean? | |
What he did. You remember his last prayer: “Father, forgive them; they | |
know not what they do.” He teaches us to love our enemies. What does he | |
mean? What he did; always blessing them when he could. He teaches that | |
we best serve God by doing good to men, and that the best proof and | |
only proof of loving God is in loving men. What does he mean? What he | |
did. He was always doing good. And so his life expounds his teachings, | |
and is the one safe and true commentary upon his words. | |
Contemplate that life for a moment. Begin at Bethlehem and follow him | |
to Bethany, where, it is said, he ascended to heaven. That life is | |
blameless, flawless. He did not lack abuse, denunciation, defamation, | |
persecutions. Men called him a drunkard and a glutton because he was | |
not an ascetic; they said he “had a devil” because they could not | |
understand how any man would do a thing only because it was right. Some | |
called him a lunatic; “he is beside himself,” they said, because he was | |
unworldly, was what they considered “unbusinesslike,” because they, | |
with their selfishness and pride, could not imagine themselves living | |
as he did unless they had lost their reason. Many hated him then, as | |
they do now, because he was, as he is, in the way of their self-seeking | |
and their sins. Bad men cannot be at rest where he is. | |
No wonder the perfect teaching of a blameless man has power upon the | |
human conscience. To this hour good men indorse Pilate’s verdict; bad | |
men can find no error in it. | |
When we look more closely into his innermost character we will find | |
qualities that difference him from mere men broadly and unmistakably. | |
We see in him no fault that we can name as attaching to his life; but | |
we do see in him two manifestations of all others most marvelous and | |
out of the range of mere human life. 1. There does not appear in him | |
any, the very least, consciousness of fault. 2. In his religion there | |
is no effort. | |
Now these things appear in no others who are sincere--who know what | |
they are and what goodness is. The best men and women are conscious of | |
faults, and the best are most conscious of them. If a man should say, | |
“I am faultless,” we would question his sincerity, his sanity, or his | |
knowledge of words, or his conception of goodness. And we would be | |
right. No sane man, with any high ideal of goodness and knowing the | |
meaning of words, ever yet used of himself words that fit only Jesus. | |
It is like a true artist’s ideal: the better artist he is the less | |
he satisfies his own conception in what he does; so in religion, the | |
saintliest most realize the distance between them and the Christ. An | |
unbeliever has said that Mary at the sepulcher idealized him, and so | |
made Christianity possible! He supposed he had accounted for the most | |
stupendous fact of all time. Why is it that only Jesus has become the | |
highest ideal that ever filled the human soul? That nineteen centuries | |
have added nothing to him--taken nothing from him? | |
As to men, religion is war with nature. Saint Paul so teaches us. It | |
was his experience; the holiest men best understand this and most | |
frankly confess it. Paul’s writings are full of terms that illustrate | |
religion from agonistic struggles. When Jesus himself urges men to seek | |
the life of religion he says, “Strive to enter in at the strait gate.” | |
The word translated strive is the Greek form of our word of pain and | |
conflict--agonize. | |
But the religion of Jesus was effortless; there was never in his heart | |
antagonism to goodness. His religion shines like the sun because it is | |
full of light; it is a going forth from fountains that, in his inmost | |
soul, were in spontaneous and perpetual play. He did have conflicts, | |
but with the evil that was without him; there was none in him. | |
The story of his temptation does not at all militate against this | |
statement. The force of the attack from without he felt, for it is | |
said, “He suffered, being tempted.” But when we read the story we feel | |
that it was not only right for him to resist, but natural. We see so | |
clearly that we never doubt; there is in him nothing in sympathy with | |
the evil to which he was solicited. | |
What does Jesus say of himself as to these things? What does he claim | |
for himself? He says to Pilate, “I am the truth;” and it does not shock | |
us to hear him say this. He says in one place, “I do always the will of | |
my Father;” and we believe him--not only that he thinks he does, but | |
that he does. In trying to give to his disciples the one true ideal | |
of humanity he says, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in | |
heaven is perfect.” Then he offers himself as an example to the human | |
race, and we are satisfied that he is what he says, for we can “find | |
no fault in him.” And with it all we recognize perfect sincerity, | |
simplicity, humility. If a mere man were to say such things to us we | |
would despise him; the scorn of the world would drive him from the | |
presence of men. But he says such things and we feel that it is right; | |
it is the truth; he is what he says. | |
In the same way we feel that he is entitled to make upon us the most | |
tremendous claims for human service, devotion, and love ever put into | |
words. He says, “If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself | |
and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” “He that loveth father or | |
mother more than me is not worthy of me.” All must be in abeyance to | |
his will. We are to forsake lands, homes, parents, children, wives, all | |
for him. Nothing in the universe must come between him and the loyal, | |
all-sacrificing love of his disciples. He must be first in our hearts; | |
whatever comes between him and our love forfeits all claim upon him. | |
If a mere man made these demands the world would despise him, and the | |
world would be right. | |
But he sets up other claims of a sort no sincere and sane man, who is | |
only a man, can think of for a moment. He claims the right to forgive | |
sins. His critics were right--assuming him to be only a man. “Why does | |
this man thus speak blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God only?” | |
He not only claims, as no other prophet ever did, to represent the | |
eternal Father, but he claims a perfect knowledge of God that no mere | |
man can claim. “All things are delivered unto me of my Father; and no | |
man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father | |
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.” The | |
night before he died he said to his disciples: “Let not your heart be | |
troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.” | |
He says in many ways and in many places that he is, in origin and | |
character, more than a man; that he is supernatural. He says, “I and my | |
Father are one.” He says that he is divine--that he is God. | |
If Jesus was only a man such claims cannot be reconciled with | |
his sanity or his sincerity. Augustine was right when he reduced | |
this argument to its last analysis: “_Christus, si non deus, non | |
bonus_”--Christ, if he be not God, is not good. | |
CHAPTER XVI. | |
JESUS THE ONE UNIVERSAL CHARACTER. | |
In considering Jesus as he is now in the world, not in the story of the | |
evangelists and in books simply, but in human life, there are other | |
views to be taken. We can take views only; we cannot see all that they | |
indicate. | |
We must consider more carefully now what we looked at for a moment in | |
the argument that compels us to believe that this character could not | |
have been invented, and that such a personality could not have been a | |
normal outgrowth of Hebrew life: Jesus is a universal character--the | |
one and only universal character that has ever appeared in history, | |
that has ever been described, that has ever had a place in human | |
thought. | |
There are great differences in men. Some are so narrow and meager of | |
soul as scarcely to have a thought or sympathy beyond the little circle | |
in which they are born, in which they live, and out of which they go | |
utterly when they die. There are lives so localized that men out of | |
their sphere they cannot understand, and that men out of their sphere | |
cannot understand them. For every limited dialect in human speech | |
there are limited thoughts and lives back of it. What do we mean by | |
“provincialism” as applied to a man, or to the people of a State or | |
country? It means limitation. Illustrations are every-where. Take a | |
Scotch Highlander, an Irishman of some seldom-visited farming region, | |
or, in our own country, a New Englander born and bred, never from home; | |
or a village Georgian, a thorough-going old time Southerner. These men | |
are provincial. They may have admirable and indeed noble qualities, but | |
they are limited in their views, narrow in their sympathies, and by so | |
much they are cut off from the sympathies of their fellow-men of other | |
conditions in life. Savage people show us the extremes of provincialism. | |
But let us take now our illustration from the loftiest ranges of life. | |
Among the ancients take Plato--broad-minded as any. What is he? Grecian | |
to the core. There was no greater Roman than Julius Cæsar. But he was | |
essentially Roman; he was localized by race and country; there was much | |
in him that only a Roman could understand, and therefore much that | |
limited him in his knowledge of the men of other nations. | |
Come to more modern times. Only a few years ago the Protestant world | |
celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of Martin | |
Luther. There was enough in Luther to perpetuate his influence through | |
many generations. In every nation where the effect of the Lutheran | |
reformation is felt there was real interest in the celebration of | |
the anniversary of the great German’s birth. There was sympathy with | |
Luther; moreover, more or less understanding of him. There was enough | |
forceful life in Luther to overflow Germany and enrich other lands; yet | |
he was a German, and so not a universal, but a limited, character. And | |
so it is that he means more to Germany than to England, or France, or | |
America. It is not simply that Germans are more interested in him as | |
a patriotic sentiment growing out of national pride in their greatest | |
man; they understand him better than other people can. If he could come | |
back to the world he would understand Germans better than he would | |
other people. | |
Among great men in civil life take American Washington. Great man | |
though he was, and having in him qualities that all true men recognize | |
and approve, he was yet essentially American. He was also essentially | |
Virginian, and plantation-aristocratic Virginian of his time, and no | |
other. | |
Take English Gladstone, of living men. Broad-minded, well-informed, | |
ripe in wisdom, rich in learning, all-accomplished, he is, it may well | |
be supposed, second to no man of our times in greatness of heart and | |
range of sympathies. But he is English; there is much in him that no | |
foreigner can fully understand, and there is much in any foreigner that | |
Gladstone cannot understand. | |
Take one more illustration--the man we call “myriad-minded”--the prince | |
of poets, the king of dramatists, William Shakespeare. He could, I | |
think, put himself into the consciousness of a man of a different | |
nation as fully as any man who ever wrote. He is as nearly as one can | |
be “poet of the human race.” But it is a mere commonplace of literature | |
to say that many of the best thoughts in his great dramas cannot bear | |
translation into foreign tongues; just as the finest oranges that | |
grow, as travelers tell us, a variety grown in Brazil, cannot bear | |
transportation to other countries. If it be said this is a language | |
difficulty, this itself implies the limitation that goes with mere men. | |
But this does not explain the difficulty of translation altogether; it | |
is in the limitations that characterize men. No foreigner can rightly | |
understand Shakespeare, who was English. | |
It has been said by some writer: “Shakespeare dramatized the sixteenth | |
century Englishman.” He wrote of others; he dramatized the Englishman | |
of his time. He knew him. He did not dramatize the sixteenth century | |
man. There is no character who can be at home in every country; who can | |
stand for the race. Still less did he dramatize the nineteenth century | |
man; genius is not equal to such a forecast. For mere men are not only | |
localized in thought, sympathy, and character, by place, they are, if | |
possible, still more limited by time; the influences that went before | |
them and shut them in while they lived. | |
But what do we find when we consider Jesus of Nazareth in respect to | |
time and place, blood and country, education and language? This: we do | |
not at all think of him, though we use the words, as Jesus of Nazareth. | |
We do not think of him as a Jew--as an Asiatic even. The Galilean, the | |
Jew, the Asiatic is lost in the man. Circumstances left no such impress | |
upon Jesus as to localize him--as to limit his sympathy--as to mar in | |
the least his all-round, harmonious, perfect humanity. | |
If translators have thorough language-knowledge the words of Jesus | |
bear translation as no words of men bear it. I do not believe that his | |
thoughts lose any thing, any flavor, any color, by being translated. | |
Where they are properly translated his thoughts mean to an American | |
what they meant to the people who first heard him speak. They produce | |
in men of different races and tongues the same thoughts, excite the | |
same convictions, stir the same sympathies, and lead to the same | |
conclusions about rights, and wrongs, and duties, in every language | |
that has ever repeated them. When these words of Jesus are obeyed | |
they produce the same essential characteristics alike in men of every | |
nation, the most enlightened and the most savage. It does not depend | |
on race, or heredity, or environment; the results in character of | |
receiving and living the Gospel are the same always and every-where. | |
Whether Greek, or Roman, or Scythian, or Hebrew in the early days of | |
Christianity; whether Caucasian, Asiatic, African to-day, the the man | |
who follows the Christ is transformed into his likeness. No soil, no | |
climate, no time changes the fruit of this tree. | |
Above all, and least like any mere man, not only do his words mean to | |
us what they meant to his first disciples; he means as much to us. He | |
is to a sinful and penitent woman of our times just what he was to | |
that Mary who kissed his feet in the house of the proud Pharisee. He | |
is to any vile wretch who needs and wants him just what he was to the | |
man full of leprosy, or to him of Gadara. To Marys and Marthas weeping | |
their dead to-day he means just as much as to the sisters of Bethany. | |
All this agrees with what he said of himself as “the Son of man.” Did | |
any other ever have such a conception of himself, of the human race, | |
and of his relation to it? Not one word, not one act of his is shut up | |
to his time or race. Jesus is “the Son of man;” the ideal and universal | |
man, the representative man of the entire race, the brother of every | |
man, woman, and child in the world; loving all and adoringly lovable by | |
all. | |
CHAPTER XVII. | |
THE CHRIST, THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD. | |
What has been set forth concerning the power of the teachings of | |
Jesus to stir and stimulate and enlighten the conscience; what has | |
been said of his own character and life as incarnating, and thereby | |
expounding, making clear and enforcing, his doctrine; what has been | |
suggested concerning the absolute universality of his character, making | |
him brother to every human being and therefore as much to one as to | |
another, all this brings us to speak briefly of a wonderful but very | |
common fact of daily observation and experience, a fact that cannot | |
be dissevered from the character, nature, and personality of Jesus | |
himself: the effect of his doctrines and of himself upon men. | |
It is not meant that all who are called Christians show these results; | |
that all who are Christians show all these results; that any man or | |
woman who ever was called Christian has shown all the results possible | |
to humanity as the natural sequence of receiving fully the doctrine of | |
Jesus and living up to it. No more than I will plead for counterfeit | |
coins; no more than I would say that all coins that have pure gold in | |
them are of full weight and without alloy of baser metal. But this I | |
do say: we do find, and always find, in those who receive and obey | |
the teachings of Jesus the results he pointed out as following their | |
reception; that the results follow in proportion to the thoroughness | |
with which these teachings are observed; that those who best keep them | |
become most like him, the one blameless and perfect Man. | |
We will not enter into any theological discussions; we do not touch | |
the metaphysics of the subject; but this may be affirmed roundly and | |
without qualification: those who believe and receive and obey his | |
words are not only changed in their manner of life, they are, so far | |
as we can have any means of judging men, changed in their spirit of | |
life. So it does come to pass in those who keep his words; old things | |
become new, not only in the sphere of action, but also in the sphere of | |
thinking, feeling, willing. | |
As it seems to me, there can be nothing in this world harder to do | |
than to change, not men’s external lives merely, but men themselves. | |
Changing men’s hearts is like making worlds. | |
Who else who ever taught, lived, or died, does this? Does this while | |
among men? Does this, being for nearly two thousand years gone out of | |
the sight and hearing of men? But Jesus works this miracle now, and | |
in men of all races and conditions, civilized and savage, learned and | |
unlearned. And their number is as the sands by the sea-shore and as the | |
stars of heaven for multitude. | |
Candid thinkers in accounting for Jesus--in characterizing and | |
classifying him--must take account of the effects produced in human | |
character, as well as in human lives, and in human lives because in | |
human character. | |
The men of science tell us we must take account of facts in forming our | |
conclusions; and they are right. It was Jesus who taught this principle | |
long before Bacon; “By their fruits ye shall know them.” In studying | |
Jesus we must take account of those facts in human life which seem to | |
be connected with him. | |
We have spoken of the change in character--call it by any name or | |
none--that follows obedience to Jesus. In this connection there is | |
another most wonderful thing to be considered. What I am to mention now | |
is, on the mere grounds of common sense and worldly reasoning, the most | |
marvelous and inexplicable of all facts observed among men in relation | |
to any being not with them in visible, tangible form; I refer to the | |
matchless love his true disciples feel toward him, not as a teacher, | |
but as a person. | |
None can deny it. Who, if Jesus was only a man, can explain it? | |
No man who knows history, or the world to-day, will doubt for one | |
moment that millions on millions of human beings--men, women, and | |
little children--have felt and shown for the person of Jesus the most | |
absorbing love; a love that drove out all fear and mastered every other | |
love. Some great teachers and leaders while they were yet in the flesh | |
have had followers and friends who loved them well enough to hazard | |
life for them and to die for them. We can understand the soldier who, | |
on one occasion, when a shell fell close by the first Napoleon, while | |
it was just exploding flung himself between the fatal bomb and his | |
loved chief, and throwing his arms about him died in his stead. But | |
when Napoleon was an exile in St. Helena he complained one day that, | |
among all those he had befriended in the days of his power, there were | |
none to draw sword for him when he was an exile. Who would die for | |
Napoleon now? | |
There have been thinkers, poets, orators, philosophers, who have | |
enthusiastic admirers who contend for them in the pretty war of | |
words. Shakespeare has as many such admirers as the foremost in all | |
the world. But who loves him--the man--in any such deep, absorbing | |
fashion as untold millions have loved and do now love the Man--Jesus of | |
Nazareth? It surprises you to hear such a question. If Jesus was only a | |
man the question should not surprise. How does it come about that such | |
love as the great army of martyrs and confessors have shown was never | |
felt for any except this Galilean peasant? | |
There is not now, there never was such love for Buddha or Mohammed. | |
Such love was never professed for the founders of Buddhism or | |
Mohammedanism. Such love was never felt for any person long gone from | |
the midst of men. | |
This love is not like the fanaticism that fights for one’s own idea; | |
it is the love of a person for a person. This love for Jesus has shown | |
itself to be the master love that ever held sway in the human heart. | |
For this love all other loves have been given up--have been crucified. | |
Do men and women, in their senses, give their strength and life-long | |
service for any other name? Die cheerfully for any other name? Die for | |
one long gone away from them--gone out of the world and, so far as | |
sense and reason know, gone forever? But neither lapse of centuries, | |
distance by separating seas, distances unknown between this world and | |
the world men do not know, or separation by differences of race, cools | |
this love. What the martyrs did in Jerusalem they soon afterward did | |
in Rome, in Alexandria, in every city and country of that age and that | |
part of the world. They did the same thing--died with songs on their | |
lips for this Man of Galilee--in after centuries. So did they in the | |
Middle Ages in every country of Europe. So they have done in our own | |
time in that great island, Madagascar, that has shown in the dark sons | |
of the tropics, whose fathers were heathen idolaters, the overmastering | |
love of men, women, and children, for the Jesus they had never seen; | |
who lived on the other side of the world from them, and taught men how | |
to be saved nearly two thousand years ago. They died in Madagascar as | |
they died in Rome, “the love of Christ constraining them.” | |
And the best people in the world to-day would so die for him in every | |
country where his word has gone. And this love grows fuller and | |
stronger; Jesus is more in the thoughts and love of men than he ever | |
was before. | |
If you would in some sense realize the wonder of which we are now | |
speaking, try to imagine such a passion coming into the hearts of | |
millions of men to-day as would impel them to die with rejoicings | |
for Socrates, or any other born of woman, save the Man who was once | |
a carpenter in Joseph’s shop in Nazareth of Galilee. You cannot | |
imagine such a thing. As to Jesus, and love for him, it is not left to | |
imagination; we have history. And we know a great multitude who would | |
gladly die for Jesus now if to them should come the martyr’s test. | |
When Jesus disappeared from the sight of men there was not a human | |
probability that his name would be other than a reproach, till, like | |
any common felon--like the forgotten thieves between whom he died--his | |
name and fate should drop out of the memory of men. Humanly speaking, | |
it was certain that he would never have a solitary follower. No | |
sane man, reckoning on the ordinary probabilities of human motives | |
and action, could have conceived the possibility of a vast body of | |
disciples, ever growing, and pushing on his conquests round the world, | |
holding together through passing centuries, enduring all manner of | |
opposition and bitter persecution, and now, in this year 1889, the | |
master-force of the world; a force that, beyond all cavil, is now the | |
most active, aggressive, and revolutionizing influence ever set going | |
among men. | |
It could not have been conceived; every dominant power of the world was | |
arrayed against him; there was not a star shining for Jesus if he was | |
only a man. | |
But Jesus crucified lives on. Around his cross has been the | |
battle-ground of the ages. All that human skill and bitter hate could | |
do has been done to put out the light he kindled on Calvary. But he | |
lives on--lives in men to-day; single-handed he goes on his conquering | |
way. His servants, because they love him, are pushing his cause in | |
every nation under heaven. As in the old days, in the lands that | |
bordered the Mediterranean, so now among the great pagan nations--in | |
India, China, Japan, Africa, and in the islands of the sea, they are | |
telling the story he commanded them to repeat till he should come | |
again. And, telling it, they are now, as in the days of his first | |
apostles, “turning the world upside down.” | |
In every land his children are building up his kingdom. They die for | |
him, and others take their places; and so the work begun in Jerusalem | |
never ceases. History confirms his promise, “I am with you alway, even | |
unto the end of the world.” | |
Such a character could not have been conceived had not such a life | |
been lived; such a life could not have sprung out of Hebrew soil; no | |
mere man ever knew the deepest truths without investigation or taught | |
them without proving them; no mere man ever conceived of such a work | |
as Jesus proposed to himself, and no mere man would have adopted the | |
methods Jesus used; no mere man ever conceived so vast an undertaking | |
as the moral conquest of the race; no mere man ever took such masterful | |
hold upon the conscience, love, and will of mankind. | |
* * * * * | |
What Simon Peter said stands to-day as the faith of the Church: “Thou | |
art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The great words of St. John | |
stand firm as the teaching of Scripture and the verdict both of reason | |
and history: “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.... And the | |
Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the | |
glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” | |
The facts of his humanity and of his work and influence in the world | |
forbid us to classify Jesus with men, and the recognition of his | |
divinity alone explains the facts of his humanity. Considered as | |
God-man all is in harmony; miracles take their proper place in the | |
records of his history, and mind and nature, heaven and earth, God and | |
man meet in Jesus, the Christ. | |
But--if he be only a man--he is such a man as were a thousand times | |
worth dying for and following forever, through time and eternity. | |
OTHER BOOKS BY ATTICUS G. HAYGOOD. | |
OUR BROTHER IN BLACK: His Freedom and His Future. | |
_Price, post-paid, $1._ | |
New York: HUNT & EATON; Cincinnati: CRANSTON & STOWE; Nashville, Tenn.: | |
SOUTHERN METHODIST PUBLISHING HOUSE. | |
It goes to the very kernel of affairs.--_Atlanta_ (Ga.) _Constitution._ | |
A most exhaustive and interesting study of the <DW52> man, his present | |
condition and future prospects.--_New York Herald._ | |
A more powerful plea for the <DW64> than any <DW64> ever | |
made.--_Cincinnati Star-Times._ | |
We recall no other work on the subject so entirely | |
satisfactory.--_Christian Intelligencer._ | |
---------:O:--------- | |
PLEAS FOR PROGRESS. | |
_Price, post-paid, $1._ | |
New York: HUNT & EATON: Cincinnati: CRANSTON & STOWE. | |
Discusses <DW64> citizenship and <DW64> education on all sides, the | |
Neglected Classes, the Social Evil, Public Education, Prohibition, and | |
kindred topics. | |
A remarkable book, that should be in every public library, North and | |
South.--_Chicago Advance._ | |
Covers almost every phase of the momentous race question.--_Zion’s | |
Herald._ | |
No book of our day will serve the needs of information, North | |
and South, as this volume. It discusses our civilization and its | |
future.--_Richmond_ (Va.) _Christian Advocate._ | |
This is the kernel of the Southern question.--_Des Moines_ (Iowa) | |
_Christian Advocate._ | |
---------:O:--------- | |
SERMONS AND SPEECHES. | |
_Price, post-paid, $1 25._ | |
New York: HUNT & EATON. | |
Discusses the vital points of religion and daily duty. Most of these | |
are discourses delivered to the young men of Emory College, Oxford, Ga. | |
---------:O:--------- | |
OUR CHILDREN. | |
_Price, post-paid, $1 25._ | |
New York: HUNT & EATON. | |
There are single chapters worth more than the whole book.--_New York | |
Christian Advocate._ | |
Most excellent, wholesome, and practical.--_Zion’s Herald._ | |
The best treatise of the kind of which we have any knowledge.--_Dr. T. | |
O. Summers, in Christian Advocate._ | |
It is a book for every household.--_Bishop J. H. Vincent._ | |
A book that will at once instruct and arouse.--_Western Methodist._ | |
Placed in every family in the land, and carefully read, it would create | |
a perceptible moral uplifting.--_Holston Methodist._ | |
Will be helpful to all Christian parents and teachers.--_New York | |
Observer._ | |
SEND TO PUBLISHERS, OR TO | |
A. G. HAYGOOD, Jr., | |
Decatur, Ga. | |
Transcriber’s Note: | |
Spelling and hyphenation have been retained as they appear in the | |
original publication except the following: | |
Page 66 | |
he does not philosphize _changed to_ | |
he does not philosophize | |
Page 94 | |
It were hard to say which _changed to_ | |
It was hard to say which | |
Page 106 | |
in any wise to self interest _changed to_ | |
in any wise to self-interest | |
Page 157 | |
present conditiom and future _changed to_ | |
present condition and future | |
End of Project Gutenberg's The Man of Galilee, by Atticus G. Haygood | |
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