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"John Watson mto all tD^o lobe Pra in jrtncerttt ^ A Co:itents A Prologue: The Inevitable Christ I : The Fulness of Time II : The Generation of Jesus III : The Idyll of Bethlehem IV: The Home of Jesus V: The Call of the Messiah VI: The Forerunner VII: The Baptism VIII : The Temptation IX: A Reasonable Method X: A Reasonable Life XI : The Verdidl of Jerusalem XII : His Own City XIII : The Rejection of Nazareth XIV : Heretics of Samaria XV: Jesus and the Nations XVI : Jesus and the Proletariat XVII: The Apologia of Jesus XVIII : An Arraignment of the Respedables XIX: A V/arning to the Rich XX: With the Children XXI : The Twelve XXII ; Three Interviews XXIII: Twenty-four Hours with Jesus XXIV : The Home of Bethany XXV : The Conspiracy Against Goodness [vii] I II 19 29 37- 45 J 3 63 7' 79 89. 99 109. 117. 127 135 145 155 165 173 181 189 201 209 223 235 I '■•-1 n CONTENTS XXVI: A Last Encounter XXVII : Before the Council XXVIII: Before Pontius Pilate XXIX: The Death of Jesus Epilogue: The Eternal Christ 255 265 273 • 283 . 293 *t [viu] A List of the Colored Plates The Meeting of Jesus and Martha Fronti t piece Rachel's Tomb Shepherds Abiding in the Field The Flight Jesus Labouru f; at Home with Joseph The Voice of One Crying The Temptation The Calling of Four Disciples Cana from the Road to Nazareth and Facing page Mary 12 30 34 42 58 72 82 90 Site of Bethsaida 116 Jesus Walking on the Water The Rich Man and Lazarus 140 178 Jesus and Nicodemus 204 View of Bethlehem 218 When it is Evening The Transfiguration 240 258 n; [ix] Note Thf paintings by Mr. Corwin Knapp Livjon were made especially to illustrate Dr. Watson's work. These paintings, herein reproduced m color, represent the best of the result of several voyages which Mr. Linson made to Palestine, gathering material, studying the types, the landscape and the architecture, so that his work would have, besides its sr ritual and reverential inspiiation, all the value of genuine documents of the Holy Land, where the manners and customs have hardly changed since the time of Christ [X] THE LIFE OF THE MASTER 4. s I . 4 N*^ t A Prologue : The Inevitable Christ T is mid-autumn as I write, and another year is dying before our eyes. The greenery of June has faded and changed into the colours of decay. At the merest breath the leaves loosen and fall to the ground like rustling rain. The wind gathers them into heaps, or whirls them in circles on thr lawn, or scatters them in clouds, or drivt 'hem along the open road. Helpless and worthless — th^ remains of the glory of summer soon to be buried out of sight— the withered leaves affcft one with sadness and sympathy They are a parable of human life, which also has its fleeting seasons and ih nnal disappearance. First comes spring-time, when the buds burst on the branches, and life is a boundless possibility then follows .ummer, when life rises to its fulness of strength • by-and-by autumn checks the flow of sap. and begins to detach us from life ; and. last of all. winter, with a timely kindness, covers our hves and our faults beneath the cold pure snow. For a day our neighbours speak of us; for a short while the men who served with us in the great enterprise of life miss our presence; for a longer t,me some friend will recall us; and all her life, till the faithful heart grov.s cold in death, a woman will keep our memory green. Then the last of those who knew us will also [•] -f THE LIFE OF THE MASTER be covered by the snow, and our remembrance will cease upon the earth. Among the countless millions of the race a few have defied this law of oblivion, whose leaf has not faded, and whose names cannot be forgotten. Their achievements rise like Alps above the plane of human labour; their services remain the perma- nent heritage of the race. We are wiser, and stronger, and holier, and gladder, because such men have lived and worked. One opened the kingdom of letters with his poems; another asked for us the deepest questions of the soul in his dialogues ; a third discovered a new world, and doubled our dwelling- place ; a fourth expounded the secret of the physical universe, and arranged the stars on a map ; a fifth cleansed away the cor- ruption of the Church, and restored her strength; and a sixth, the greatest of all, showed unto the world righteousness, and wrote the Ten Words on our conscience. The names of Homer and Socrates, of Columbus and Copernicus, of Luther and Moses, can never be blotted from the pages of human history. In their lives the sap of the race flowered and bore fruit, which has been gathered and stored for all generations. These mighties belong to no country or century; they are citizens of the world, and their fame is ageless. Their immortality is undeniable and honourable, but yet it is, after all, secondary and impersonal. We venerate them, not for what they were, but for what they did. They are the benefadlors of all men, they are not the friends. Apart from their work, they had not passed the frontiers of their town ; and if the work be divorced from the man, in him we would have but the slenderest interest. If it be proved that Homer was but a name with which to bind the first sheaf of a golden harvest, if it be insisted that the story of Moses is studded with legends, then we may feel a pious regret ; but we shall not be cast down as those who have suffered irremediable [2] THE INEVITABLE CHRIST loss. We shall still read the Iliad with enjoyment; we shall still repeat the Commandments with reverence. What are the men to .-s? Their bequests live for us. the men do not. We have not spoken with them, nor looked into their faces, nor had fellowship with them; to deny their existence or assert their unworthiness were not to rifle the treasures of our soul. We bow before those great ones because they have lived, and are a strength to our humanity, but we do not love them. One Man has immortality of the first order, who does not live in books or works, but has His eternal home in the heart of His disciples. He is not distant, but present, more reai than those we see and touch, to whom an innumerable multitude bow their souls morning and evening every day. If they could be convinced, which is impossible, that Jesus had never lived according to the Gospels, or that if we blew aside the imag- ination of His friends He was a self-deceived enthusiast, then the faith and hope of millions would be eclipsed and they would fall into despair. Without Jesus risen from the dead and stainless in His perfection, some would hardly care to live and for Jesus, who left this world almost nineteen centuries ago, more men and women would die than for any other cause on earth, and they would be the best blood of the race What circumstances lent their help to this Man? What part did He take in face of the world? What means did He use to win this authority? Tliree years or less was the measure of Jesus' public career, from the day the Baptist declared Him the Lamb of God spoken of by ancient prophecy, to the day when He was offered on the cross as the Passover Lamb according to the prophets. He was born of a nation which had been scattered and peeled — without a king, without lib- erty, without a voice ; a nation suspected, discredited, hated. The son of a peasant mother, he was a carpenter by trade and a poor man all His days; as soon as He became known to [3] fi ?*f* ' : THE LIFE OF THE MASTER His people He was persecuted, and in th« end condemned to death as a blasphemer. He lived all His days in an obscure province of the Roman empire, about the size of the princi- pality of Wales or the state of New Jersey in the American Union, and was careful not to pass beyond its borders. Dur- ing His ministry He never wrote a word, and He left no book behind Him; He had no office, no standing, no sword. Was there ever a life so lowly, was there ever one so helpless, as that of Jesus? One had exp^ded that He would hardly have been noticed in His own day, and one had been certain that beyond it none would ever hear His name. With Jesus it is the unexpefted which ever happens, and this obscure Man agitated society in His own time as when a great ship passes through a quiet land-locked bay, so that to this day the swell can be felt in the Gospels. No sooner was He born than wise men from the East came to worship Him, and Herod at His own door sent soldiers to murder Him. His own fam- ily was divided over Him — His mother, with some fears and doubts, clinging to Him, His brothers refusing to believe in Him. When He had preached for the first time in the syn- agogue of Nazareth, where He had lived from infancy and every one knew Him, His neighbours were first amazed at His grace, and then in a sudden fury would have flung Him down a precipice. The Council of the nation was divided about Him, certain leaning to His side, and others declaring that no prophet could come out of Galilee ; and the people were torn in twain, so many holding that Jesus was a good man, so many that He was a deceiver. If a family was rent in those days, you might be sure Jesus was the cause; and if two people argued in a heat at the corner of a street, the conten- tion would be Jesus. A Roman judge condemned Him, but not before his own wife had interceded for Him ; if Roman soldiers nailed Him to the Cross, a Roman officer bore wit- [4] THE INEVITABLE CHRIST nc88 to His righteousness; and if the thief crucified on one side insulted Jesus, the thief on the other side believed in Him. None could be neutral, none could disregard Him- there was a division of the people concerning Jesus. This controversy will doubtless be laid to rest by His death and only fill a footnote in the history of the Jewish peopled Jc«us of Nazareth, a local agitator and heretic, crucified under Pontius Pilate, about 33. Nothing could be more unlikely th 1 that a commotion in a petty province should affedt pagan society, and a Galilean prophet arouse the Roman Empte The attitude of Rome to all religions was consistent and char- aaeristic— a policy of cynical contempt and worldly oppor- tunism. Gods no doubt there were, and this was. on the whole, the misfortune of the race. Each nation had its own particular deities, and knew best how to propitiate them Let each manage its own religion, and on no account interfere with that of another people. Upon those terms the provincial might worship his god after any fashion he pleased, and Rome would secure him liberty of conscience. Rome, as the ruler of the world, also gave hospitable welcome to foreig.. c cities in the capital, and honoured them in a Pantheon. The most oppo- site cults flourished side by side in on<- family, and we would have said that one religion more would iiave made little differ- cncc. As It happened, however, the faith of Jesus was so virile and assured, so insistent and aggressive, that it came as a living torch into society, and set every man on fire as frienJ or foe. Roman magistrates, accustomed to compromise, and anxious at any cost to keep good order, were reduced to despair, and were compelled to persecute Jesus in the person of His apostles. Within a century the Nazarene had rent the empire in twain and put all the gods to open shame. Nor was it enough for this exafting personality that His pres- ence threw the multitude into confusion and changed the [S] /I 1 I THE LIFE OF THE MASTER market place into a battle-ground. He invaded the schools and gave a new task to philosophy. For a while it was enough for the disciples of Jesus to believe in Him ; by-and-by they began to speculate about Him. It was a matter of intelleftual necessity to ask who He was, and vWth that question was added a new science, the most subtle the most majestic, the most daring of all the departments of ordered knowledge. Theology began her work when the ancient learning was dying ; she opened a new means of culture when the for-.ier was exhausted. Never had the human intelledl faced so mys- terious a problem as the person of Christ, never has there been a controversy so keen and so absorbing. Philosophy, abandoning the world of abstrad ideas, gave her energy to the study of fa6ts, — the fads of Jesus' life; and on the life and death of this crucified prophet, scholarship, baptised from paganism, created the Christian doArine, as to this day it is scholarship which argues and defends the dogmas of the Christian Faith. It came to pass that One Who was despised in His own day and by His own people, because He had not letters, has opened a school wherein the master thinkers of the race have been working ever since with mixed joy and despair. Once this Man had established Himself in history He became a permanent factor, a disturbing force never to be evaded, ever to be reckoned with. As a rock standing out from the midst of a stream, upon Jesus has the current of human life and thought beat and been broken from the first centuries to the nineteenth. The great movement of the Middle Ages was the Crusades, and therein the chivalry of the West flung itself on the East, for the most romantic -*nd, to recover the tomb of Jesus from the Saracen. The Reformation opened the modern age ; and while many causes fed its strength, the deepest was the relation of the human soul to Jesus. No wars have been so fierce or relentless as the wars of religion, v hich have drenched [6] THE INEVITABLE CHRIST many lands in blood, and without jcsus of Nazareth they had never been known. As he moves down the paths of the West, kings and peoples seize their swords; Jesus confounds politics and con.merce; He lights the fires of persecution and fierce debate; He creates inquisitors and martyrs; no ruler could make a plan without counting in Jesus; no treaty could stand unless it had Jesus' name; no peace could last a month unless it had His blessing. It may seem that in our century we have thrown off this do- minion of Jesus and are able to forget Him, but it is only an afltdtation of indifference. Never were there so many lives of Jcsus written; never so much attention given to His aftual words ; never such anxiety to send forth His Gospel. Were a parchment discovered in an Egyptian mound, six inches square, containing fifty words which were certainly spoken by Jesus, this utterance would count more than all the books which have been published since the first century. If a veritable pidlure of the Lord could be unearthed from a catacomb, and the world could sec with its own eyes what like He was, it would not matter that its colours were faded, and that it was roughly drawn, that pidure would have at once a solitary place amid the treasures of art. A vast number of persons are interested in the question cFcvolution, solely because it may affedt the position of Jesus, and they would accept it at once were they convinced that the new principle h?d a rightful place for the . Master. While we arc silent, we are also nervously conscious of Jesus; at a hint of His appearance we do Him homage. If one desired to realise how this Jew— His words. His life. His spirit, — has been woven into the warp and woof of life, ' let him imagine the effed of Jesus' influence removed as by a stroke and the pattern which remains. One would then see a city dotted with empty places, which are covered neither by grass nor flowers, where once had stood churches, orphanages ■ [7] ' ' /' THE LIFE OF THE MASTER asylums, and hospitah. The whole machinery of charity and philanthropy would have disappeared, together with every monument to pity. Libraries would remain, but they would be robbed of those noble classics of many tongues which owe their genius a.ui charm to the Master. There might still be gal- leries, but without Raphael. Michelangelo, Fra Angelico, Da Vinci, from whom their subjeds and their inspiration had been taken. Music, in her most searching and solemn notes, would be no longer heard in that place; and if law be administered It would be stripped of its majesty and life. Exchanges would be open, but the Sermon on the Mount would no longer restrain the madness of competition, and the injustice of the strong; and there would be prisons, as in the pagan days, but places now for punishment only, not for remedy. The city would still be there with only a few buildings wanting, but they would be the monuments to kindness, to mercy, to hope, to God. It woL.d be a city despiritualised, from which the visi- ble glory of religion had departed. And still one has not appreciated the continual and pervasive influence of Jesus in present-day life. It is more subtle and con- vmcing than can be proved by any building or book: it is an atmosphere into which we have been born and which we breathe, of which we are unconscious, and which we may allow ourselves sometimes to deny. The home of which we are part has been created by Christ, and its arrangements are instincft with His Spirit. Whatever is pure and merciful and spiritual and unselfish in social life, flows from His influence; and the very motives which regulate our best deeds, and to which we appeal in another man. have been implanted by the unseen hand of the Master. The most beautiful type of character, that of humility and tenderness, has been reared in the school of Jesus, although in many a case the pupil does not know his teacher; and the most violent attacks on Christianity have [8] ft' THE INEVITABLE CHRIST only been possible because they have been made under the toleration of Jesus. There is no plac. when one could live with his family in peace and pursue the highest ends of life unless Jesus had been there before; and if the spirit of Jesus were withdrawn, modern civilisation would in three generations re- turn to the morality of paganism. If any one should have the heart to criticise the Gospel of Jesus, he will find that the best person he knows is pursuing Jesus' ideal ; and if any one had the audacity to deny that Jesus ever lived, he would next mo- ment touch the Master, living now, in one of His disciples. It is the life of this Man we shall now study, and after a plan which will not compete with biographies which have been written by learned persons and are in our hands. We shall not endeavor to compass every detail of the Master's life from Bethlehem to Calvary, nor shall we weary any reader with questions of order, for indeed the chronology and harmony of the Gospels are past finding out by ordinary folk. It will be assumed that in the four Gospels we have sufficiently accurate accounts of how Jesus carried Himself to His fellow-men, and what He did on certain occasions before their eyes, and what befell Him at their hands. And various incidents will be selected and grouped into chapters, each complete in itself and each affording a facet of the whole. We do not dare to promise that after he has read the last page of the Life of the Master he will be wiser on a site or a date, but we dare to hope that he will have a clearer vision of the august Figure Who invites the judgment of each man's conscience, Who lays His hand on each man's heart. 1 [9] ■ ■I Chapter I : The Fulness of Time O one can study any of the great movements which have made history without observing that it had two conditions — there was the man, and he came at the time. Certain ideas had long bren simmering in the popular mind, a train of cir- cumstances had been laid, a multitude was ready to rise; but these were only forerun- ners, anticipations, auxiliaries. Nothing would have come to pass, and the morning glow would have faded into darkness, had not the secret yearning in many hearts taken shape in a single man. No one could have foretold his origin ; no one can take credit for training him ; no one can boast afterwards of having been his colleague. From behind the veil he comes — from a palace, or from a cottage, or from a college, or from a desert. Upon him is laid one burden, and he rests not till it be fulfilled ; he is incalculable, concentrated, forceful, autocratic. Now he is the idol of the people; now he is their vidtim; he is ever independent of them, and ever their champion. They may not understand him, yet he expresses them ; they may put him to death, yet he accomplishes their desire. These are the makers of the race through whom God intervenes in human his- tory, and the chief in whom God became incarnate was Jesus. ["] THE MFE OF THE MASTER Between the man and his time there munt be a certain corrc pondencc else he cannot have full course. Nothing is more pathefc than the experience of one who ha. arrived too soon dehvermg a message which will be understood to-morrow, but which to-day is a dream : attempting a work which to-morrow the world w,ll welcome, which to-duy it considers madness. He dies of a broken heart an hour befo-e sunrise. Nothing is more .ronical than the effort of one whc has arrived too late tor whom there was an audience yesterday, for whose cau .' there was an opportunity; but now the audience has dispersed, and the held .s taken ; he has missed his tide, and for him another will not come. It may be said that Jesus was indepen- dent of time and environment. As a person, yes! Who never could have been hid or altogether have failed. As a worker, no! for this were to ask an endless miracle. Had Jesus come in Samuel s day. no one would have understood His Kingdom- had He come in the second century, there had been no open- ing for -i.s Kingdom. There was a brief space when the life seed of .ebrew thought was ready for the sower, and the Roman Empire still remained a quiet field for the sowing. This was the fulness of time, and Jesus appeared For the supreme success of the enterprise four conditions were necessary, and the first was apostles. Within a province Jesus achieved H.s vidlory over .sin and the world; to Jewish con- gregations and a handful of personal friends He gave His Gos- pel ; but this was only the battle-ground of a few fields on which the fate of empires hung. It was for the world Jesus died at Jerusalem; ;t was the world He would teach in the synagogue of Capernaum. For this purpose it was necessary to have mes- sengers to carry the tidings of this work and word unto the ends of the known earth. Without them He had been helpless - a provincial, teaching and dying in obscurity, a name in the annals of the day. a Saviour thwarted of His opportunity Yet [12] i : H it- re n, ut w 8. is I. n RACHELS TOMB pillT Of Rwhcl . grave unto this day. - Ge„csi,, XXXV. ,9-ao. HI rtairi?/ (rijETflq I r,i ,Lfi i/li .. :,.::it<\ ^CH bn« fi-jih [3H«H IjftA .os-vi .'f /.A'/ ,^li■.■^n9'ti .//:!> ^ifli uinu •jye'tg a'l'jrilsM 'to ijtllf^ THE FULNESS OF TIME where can the apostle r " t.arh a mission be found ? How gen- erous and catholic i l st be his eqiii . .-nent ! Gifts the most splen- did and the most ( ppoiite must he- combined in him; his must have been experien.;"9 the most t rofound and the most con- tradidlory. For this envoy of Jc as must be immovable in his own conviaions, else he will be a reed in the outer wind; and he must be universal in his sympathies, else he will have no access to strange minds. He must be one who carries one land in his heart that he may be loyal ; yet one at home in all lands, that he may understand the Kingdom of God. He must be strong, hardy, determined, fearless; for his role will be mar- tyrdom; he must be sensitive, susceptible, emotional, for he preaches the Evangel. He must be firmly, even fiercely, moral, since his cause is built on the Eternal Law; he must be satu- rated with religion, since he is the preacher of grace. Intense, patriotic, robust, legal, also cosmopolitan, accommodating, deli- cate, spiritual. This man seems an impossible demand until one remembers the Jew. The whole world and all ages could not afford so perfedl an ambassador for Jesus as a Jew of His own day. We are accustomed to speak of the training of the twelve Apostles, and we mean the three years with Jesus; we have lim- ited the time. The Jew began to be trained say two thousand years before, when Abraham heard the inward call of the Eter- nal and set cut on his Divine quest. He had been separated that he might be open to receive a new revelation; he had been secluded that he might learn the lesson of the One God ; he had been scattered that he might see the world-life; he had been brought back that he might wait for the Messiah. Shut in by desert and sea, he had been in the very heart of things; tried and persecuted, he had learned the idea of sacrifice. Vis- ited by prophets, he had his eyes on the future ; and his wor- ship a poem, he was filled with spiritual dreams. Polytheism was burnt out of him by coals of fire; monotheism had been ['3] !| THE LIFE OF THE MASTER wrought into the very texture of his soul by deliverances, mer- cies, revelations. There was no city where this exile could not make himself at home, manipulate affairs, gain the ear of women, creep into courts, affedl thought. Yet with every emi- gration he clung more fondly to Jerusalem. Never has any one cast a faster anchor or swung by a longer chain; never could any one be more inflexible or more supple, more devoted to the past, or more open to the present, more absolutely him- self, more entirely a citizen of the world. Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, the anonymous writers of Jonah and Ecclesiastes,* Maccabean patriots and Apocalyptic seers, had all done their part to educate the evangelist of the world, and it only re- mained that Jesus should seleft the flower of the race, should sanftify them by His Spirit, and charge them with His sublime message. Another imperative condition for the inauguration of Jesus' enterprise was a way. It would have availed little that Jesus had lived and the Apostles had bee, prepared if they had been confined to the Holy Land — imprisoned evangelists without access to another country. Had their mission been at an earlier time, this would have been their hopeless defeat ; for then every nation stood apart from its neighbour— isolated, suspicious, hostile. For the evangelising of the world in such circumstanced Jesus must have been born into a hundred peoples, and among each have reared His apostolate. A forerunner was needed in the vast outer world of the Gentiles, as the Baptist went before the face of the Messiah in Jewry, to make the crooked places straight and the rough places plain that there might be a high- way for the Lord. This was the high ofiice of Rome, which laboured in unconscious alliance with Jerusalem for the coming of Jesus. Unto this power had been given by the Eternal not only a stout heart and the genius of war, but the noble virtues of justice and peace. Not only had Rome attacked and con- [14] THE FULNESS OF TIME quered nation after nation, with her fine genius for government she had also conciliated and pacified. All subjugated peoples be- came integral and willing provinces of the Empire. The world was a single state in the first century, with one capital, one ruler, one law. From Rome the open way ran by land and sea unto the distant frontiers, and along it the Roman citizen jour- neyed in the peace of Rome and under the protedlion of the Eagles. Her roads, straight and strong, can still be seen, after all these centuries, in England and other lands, and they are the silent witnesses not only to her work of civilisation, but also to her mission of religion. Her High Priest was called with stria justice the Chief Bridge-Maker, for it was her high part to lay in many a morass the sure foundations of law, and to cast over many a dividing stream the bridge of human unity. She stretched her highways and she set up her bridges that the chariot of Casar might run smoothly thereon ; and afterward came the Prince of Peace, whose kingdom was to extend where the Eagles had '■ <' ilown, and to weld unheard-of peoples in a more lasting ..:■ Thf; third conOi .or the success of Jesus was a tongue. What would avail a prepared messenger and an unfettered pas- sage if there were no common speech between the people and the preacher ? No barrier surely is so hopeless and exasperating as confusion of tongues; for here are two men who have fore- gathered from the ends of the earth, and have met in peace, who are in sympathy with one another, and have something to say, and they have no medium. To-day one of the initial ind gigantic labours of the missionary of Christ's Cross is to master the language of foreign peoples; and one of the brilliant achieve- ments of Christian scholarship has been to reduce to order the speech of a savage tribe, and to save it forever from oblivion by placing in its charge the Evangel of Jesus. This is possible in these later days, because the Church has been the heir of the past, ['S] THE LIFE OF THE MASTER with treasures of wealth and learning, because the sci-.nce of language .s full-grown, and the instruments of knowledge are unhm.tedTh,s endeavour had been vain in that day Ihen Jesus sent forth His first heralds to go into all the world with the news of His salvation. If only there were a language not corhned to a single province, but understood round the shores of the whole Mediterranean ! Not austere and merciless like the Hebrew, the language of the law; nor 'ormal and inflexible, the language of rule; but gracious and persuasive_a fitting instrument for the message of grace, One has the instind thai there ought to have been a language prepared for the declaration of the Gospel, and that people should have been trained in its use. And this very thing had come to pass in the world of Jesus' day, for there was a conspiracy of nations to prepare the way for our Master. If the Hebrew discipline trained His missionaries, and Roman authority got them access, Greece provided them WKh a speech perfeft for its high purpose. A Jew spoke a dialed of Hebrew ; any one who moved in public life knew the phrases of official Latin; but every person, from Jerusalem to Rome, spoke and understood Greek. It was the neutral ground where strangers met. the free speech where all stood equal For a time the dream of a universal speech had been realised and the catastrophe of Babel had been repaired. If the world had waited long for such a univc.al speech, it was worthy of the Evangel of Jesus when it came. No choicer -ehicle for the reasonable and winsome message of th^ Master could be imag- ined than the language of Homer and Plato._so soft and per- suasive that it offered the invitation of Jesus with something of the grace that v-as poured into His own lips; so flexible and adaptable that it could create new words for the profound mys- teries and beautiful experiences of a Heavenly Faith ; so philo- sophic and exad that it would embody the speculations and dogmas of a new science of religion. So perfed is this harmony [16] u THE FULNESS OF TIME that it seems as if the Evangel had been preparing for centu- nes for Us Greek dress, and the liquid Greek speech had been brought to us perfedHon to clothe, and. if that' were poss^," adorn the words of Jesus. possioie, desire for there was a time when the world would have Hven no welcome to esus, for it had no need of Him. There was day. in the youth of the world, when the spirit of man awoke and rejoiced in the splendour and abundance of physical nature when It was enough that the sky was blue, and t'he gra^wa; green and the blood was red. and the body was strong tI was the age of paganism, with its jocund gods and ga'y L anH ? U . "" '^""'''"S '^' "^" "'"'^ «f ^he first vintage His Cross had been a speftre at the feast. By-and-by the cud tl's Tw""' ^'"^ " ''^ '''^'' ^"^ sated'disgust's n e on lust, and Rome be filled with unspeakable religions of the Ea^ Then It is time for the Holy Child. There Jas also a day n the manhood of the Race when its nobler minds could no Wer be satisfied with appearances; they were touched by" Divine curiosity to know what was behind, and they set out the huma" rT^ "'u'"'^' ^"'^ ^"^^^'^^'^ ^^e content's o the human mind, and searched into the system of things and unveiled tne world cf ideas. When it seemed possible ha; Ee eternal secre, could be discovered by reason, then thinkers wer not prepared to receive the sublime intuitions of Jesus. It was mark "To th" 1 ""' *° ^°" ""^^' ^"^ ''^'^ ^^ "^ ^ighes mark . To the unknown God." If any one can soTve the great problem on another line, and can give pledges of certain^ [•7] ^ THE LIFE OF THE MASTER the world is ready to hear him now with open thirsty heart This was the day for the Master. And there came to the world a day when the law of righteousness, long held in solution in the universal conscience, crystallised in the Ten Words, and the most intense nation in the world gave all its strength to the keeping thereof till the Prophets continually called their people to the judgment of this standard, and the Psalmist sang its praises, declaring it to be sweeter than honey, more precious than gold. So long as the perfedion of the law seemed within reach, it had been vain to appear as a Saviour; when the law had reduced pious and honest hearts to despair, and changed the shallow and narrow people into hypocrites, the hour of Jesus was at hand. The world was ready for a Redeemer. Naturalism, philosophy, and law had been the preparation for Jesus. Whom Plato and Virgil foretold ; Jesus answered the de- sire of all nations, and came into a prepared heritage when He said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." [18] I i Chapter II : The G eneration of Jesus ■^^^^^^^^^^^jOME teachers have been so bound up with their own gen- eration that they have been strangers in the outer world- like plants which flourish in one zone and die in the next. Their message may have been efFedlual, but it was provincial ; their accent may have been forceful, but it was a dialed. ,^ . , , ^ They are the prophets of a day, the leaders of a local cause, the children of their circum- stances Other teachers, the seled few of history, have had such a breadth of thought, such a grasp of principles, such a spring of humanity, that their work could not be confined, but has ouched the race. The greatest souls cannot be nationalised hej are cosmopolitans; they need not be dated, they belong of traduions and the barriers of geography. What th^y say is true ,n the first century and in the nineteenth: it is said with perfedl simplicity which is unfettered by any form; it has the umversa note. In this class one places Isaiah and St. John, but above all the prophets Jesus possesses the ages. The Master transcends all the conditions which fetter and Lalise ordln" men. It were possible for one to live b> His words although he did not know where Jesus had been born or how He lived [«9] 4 [I THE LIFE OF THE MASTER It remains, however, that one gains without measure, if he not only has the Master's word but also its environment. Jesus did at times set Himself to speak in fulfilment of a fixed purpose, as in the Sermon on the Mount, or in the Upper Room, but far more frequently He spake upon occasion. He answered a question. He corrected a mistake. He defended himself against an attack. Jesus was never isolated and indifferent in the midst of the intense human life of His day: He was played upon from every side; He was responsive even to a look. Those people who loved or hated Him, studied, criticised, admired, slandered Him, are the first commentators on the Lord's words. They called them forth ; they dictated their form ; they sharpened their edge. His generation was the mould into which the molten gold of Jesus' speech ran, and therefore one who desires to appreciate not only the unchangeable and eternal value of the Master's teaching, but also its perfedl form, must give some thought to His contemporaries. It is useful to know the geog- raphy of the Holy Land, and the customs of the people in the days of the Lord, but ten times more vital to have in our minds the four representative men whom He faced, with whom He dealt, and who made His generation. The first is a Pharisee, who was in evidence during Jesus' whole public career, and whose name is now the byword of religious speech. It were too late in the day to offer an apology for this man, or to repeal his just condemnation, but it is needful to understand him. If we consider him as nothing more or less than an ignorant bigot or an unscrupulous hypocrite, we cannot hope to understand the inwardness of the public duel which lasted for two years at least between him and Jesus. Such a Pharisee — one who was a mere travesty upon morality — could never have won the suffrages of the Jewish people; such an opponent could never have defeated Jesus, even for a day, even in appearance. The Pharisee must once have won the respedl [20] ■A THE GENERATION OF JESUS of his n-Ttion ; he must still be giving some pledges of sincerity, and, as a matter .,f fadt. a good case could be made for the average Pharisee. His was the patriotic party which, from the time of Ezra, and through the heroic struggle of the Macca- bees, when the piirst? were their allies, sustained the national spirit and repudiated the foreign yoke. His iueal of God's com- monwealth may have been narrow, but it was intense; his attitude to the outside world may have been bitter, but it was sincere. His social ritual was burdensome and absurd, but it was well-intentioned and had its strength in conscience: it was an honest effort to guard the religious life of the family from the corruption of intercourse with strangers and sinners. One great service, beyond all question, was rendered by the Pharisee for he preserved the revelation of his fathers with unswerving loy- alty, and in especial defended its late but priceless addition. _ faith in immortality and the unseen world. For his patriotism and courage, for his conscientiousness and spirituality, the Pha- risee ought to be approved. He had at least a just pride in his nation's past; he was not willing to gather gain out of the foreign oppression; he believed with all his soul in the destiny of the Jew. and was ready to make the last sacrifices to main- tain It inviolate. It the degeneration of the best which makes the worst; and it is one of the paradoxes of history that this man, who was in his full intention the loyal heir of his fathers and the jealous rustodian of the national treasures, should be the opprobrium of the Gospels, and should deal the death-stroke of his people. From our distance it is a light task to explain his declension: it has its analogy in every age. The Pharisee be leved so blindly in the God of the fathers that he was not able to believe in the God of the children, considering revela- tion to be closed; he honoured so utterly the good men of the past that he supposed wisdom to have died with them, counting tradivio]! as sacred as the law; he clung so fiercely to his own [21] hi IHE LIFK OF THE MASI EK conception of thr Messiah that h.s .„ind wa« sealed against Iight-receiving a spiritual Ch. ist as an i.npo.stor. 1 lis earnest- ness had degenerated into tanatici.sm. his cns-.ientiousne.ss into unreahty h.s resolution into obstinacy, till vain customs were more to h.m than righteousness, till he hated the very good- ness ot God when it was i.,carnate hefore his eyes. U:idcr the Phar.sees s.n had captured religion. From almost the first and certainly to the last, of Jesus' public life, the Pharisee was' His watchful, ingenious, ungenerous, unrelenting foe; and as we follow the Master's history our anger will be hot against the f harisee, and we shall wish to stone him; but let us be sure that we have the right. Would we have been broader and wiser than this man had we lived in his day and been fed on his doctrines? Suppose that the Master had come at the opening of the twentieth century, which prides itself upon its light and c-liarity. and ,r --.d Himself after a similar fashion to that which oftended t',e , pleof thef^rst century; had He brushed aside the dogmas of our day and our religious customs, our traditions of the elders, and our washing of hands; had He avoided the circles of professional religionists in every city and associated Himself with disreputable people— would His holi- ness and Hisgracehaveproteded Him from censure and slander and persecution ? HadHcbeen a minister of religion, would He not have been deposed from His office? had He been a layman would He not have been put under the ban of the Church ? and IS any man so convinced of his own insight and charity as to be sure that he would not have had his share in this injustice? The second man Jesus met was the Sadducee; and although there may be some dispute as to the origin of his name there is none regarding his party. The Sadducees may or may not have been the descendants of the great priestly family of Zadok they certainly formed a priestly caste. If the Pharisees were the national party, and with all their faults and limitations they did [23] THE GENEKATION OF JESIS represent the mind of ,he nation, the Sadducees constituted l.c anstocracy. The priests we.e the only hereditary order in the nation I hey had an as.sured position which could not he from r'l *V'""'""« '^'^ '""""• '^'^y '>-» ^ '-KC revenue trom the I cmple taxes, and. in the case of their chief families -mmcnse power in high positions. An aristocracy of this kind may at a t„„e share the national aspirations and make sacririces tor the commonwealth, and it is never to be forgotten that the Maccabees were pr.csts. but there must always be a rift between an aristocracy and a democracy, and a tendency to separate The aristocracy is maintained at the cost of the people ; L members haye no s1,are in the struggles of the people; it is able to defy the wishes of the people. From the days of Aaron, who hindered Moses and taught Israel to worship the golden calf, on to the dapof Caiaphaswhosecuredthecrucirixionof Jesus. thepriests of Israel had with here and there a noble exception, been a curse rather than a blessing to the nation. They reached in Jesus' tune their height ot ambition and pride and insolence and u'.rld- hness. \ or did their priestly office, with its sacred duties, in any way redeem the order ; it rather added to the chief priests their last offence from a Jewish and religious standpoint. It was neces- sary for such ecclesiastics of high estate to belieye with all their .night m what was unseen and eternal, and to live humbly or It was ineyitable that they would be blinded by ti.is present world and become ambitious. For one to offer solemn sacri- hces unto God and not continually realise him. for one to re- ceive great gain from thedischargeofreligiousdutiesandregard them only as a lucrative superstition, must end in utter scep- ticism and moral deterioration. And this is what came to pass with the Jewish priests of high rank. While it was part of their craft to uphold the sacrificial law and make much of the Temple, the Sadducees had ceased to hold the faith of the un- seen, -the existence of spiritual beings, the immortality of [ 23 ] h IHK LIFE OF IHK MASIEK the 8«ul. and the Divine government. They were the agno8tic« ot the day. and the worst of agn.«tics_ worldly and unbeliev- ing ecclesiastic.. — whi«c most perfect parallel k Pope Leo X.. that son of the pagan renaissance, to wh<.m Luther was a mad monk, and Le..s court, to which the rites of the Christian faith were a jest. As one may imagine, it'is party was hated by the people on the two sufficient grounds of their unbelief and their pride, and with the people as judges, it had no chance against the Phari- sees. The Sadducees did not lay themselves out to win the suffrages of the people— it was enough that they obtained the money of the people; their energy was given to alliances with the Romans and the Herods. whereby they might gain prac- tical power and add to their social comfort. They did not count as a fador in the national thought or life, holding neither the national faith nor sharing the national hope, while they put to shanie the ancient religion of Israel and preyed as vampires on the resources of the poor. Until the close of His life, Jesus came neither into collision nor contadt with the hierarchy so that while one hears at every turn of the Pharisees, one has'no complaint of their opponents. This was not, of course, because the Sadducees had the slightest sympathy with Jesus; it was amply because He was beneath their notice. If they had ever heard of Him — and, nodoubt. His enthusiastic effort to cleanse the Temple for the moment compelled their attention — He would seem to them simply an illiterate person and a vulgar agitator, another fanatic such as the popular religion bred from time to time. So long as Jesus confined Himself to preach- ing His ideas and arguing with the Pharisees He gave the Sad- ducees no concern. Waen evidence was at length brought before the leaders of the priestly aristocracy that Jesus had made an attack on the Temple, and that their gains were in danger, then the proud isolation and contemptuous indifference of the [24J I THE GKNEHATION OF JESl s aristocracy were thrown to the wind-, and they fell into a vul- gur renzy of hatred. While Je.us only taught the reality of everlasting hte and opposed to sense the visionn of the Father's h..use and the holy angels the Sadducees maintained their high composure. When Jesus, as was supposed, would reduce their .ncome these superior people condescended to the last ,nean- ncss to send Him to the cros.s. This culd be said in defence of the r hansees. that if they were fanatics, it was for dogma • this must be sa.d in exposure of the Sadducees. that they were fanatics tor the.r pockets When these dignified aristocrat; changed into a disorderly rabble, clamouring for Jesus' death, it was ,n.t faith but greed wh.ch excited them. Theirs was that form of culture which IS able to treat with contempt the august verities of re- ligion but IS goaded into fury by the loss of a f^^v shekels Behind the Pharisees and Sadducees was another party which stands in the shadow and which has been the cause of much controversy. Its name does not occur in the CJospels and lesus does not once mention it. but it is a grave question whether He .s not thinking of its members where He refers to those who voluntarily refrain from marriage, and whether he does not so far approve their spirit in His directions of poverty and unworld- l.ncss Perhaps one comes nearest the truth about the Essenes in considering them to be the religious extremists. just as thTZeal- ots were the political extremists of the Jewish faith The Es- senes could be found in towns, but for the most part they lived in villages and communities, where they could carry out their habit of life more perfectly. They were arranged in ranks of increasing .severity and deeper knowledge; they were celibates but were ready to adopt children and bring them up in thei^ fellowship; they bathed frequently in cold water and wore white garment.s; they laboured with their hands and had a common purse. Their life was that ideal of simplicity and purity which has ever floated before the minds of the saints and has been [ =5 ] THE LIFE OF THE MASTER chiefly loved in evil days, when faith and righteousness have almost d,ed out of the land. Allowing for circumstances, the Essencs were the forerunners of the Anchorites of the desert and the associates of St. Francis, and the " Friends of God " of the Middle Ages, and certain modern communities which have attempted the common life. It is impossible to doubt that the sacnhce and devotion of the Essenes must have told on the re- hg.ous spirit and practice of the day ; it also proves the impo- tence of the secluded and monastic life that in the great con- troversies of that day and in the historical movement of Jesus these mteresting people had no share. They mourned the back- sliding ot the day and despaired of the Kingdom of God. so they withdrew themselves: others waited and prayed for that Kingdom in the ways of daily life, and to them the Kingdom came and they helped in its foundation. Because the Essenes left their brethren that they might save their own souls they were in turn left alone; and because Peter and John remained in their places as the salt of Bethsaida and Capernaum they were called to be Jesus' Apostles and to be the salt of the world If those parties only had made up the nation in the day when Jesus began His work, it had fared ill for disciples, but there was then, as there is ever, a body of people whom the Sadducees despised for their lowliness, and the Pharisees for their sim- plicity and whom the Essenes censured as too much concerned with this world, but who were the clean, honest soil for the Evangel. They were quiet, modest, reverent, well-living folk who quarrelled with none, contemned none, judged none, but' desired for themselves the best things of the soul and received them thankfully from any quarter. This party, the party of goodness, was scattered up and down all the land, and to it belonged the village maiden of Nazareth to whom the Angel Gabriel appeared, and Joseph the carpenter, and Simeon, who waited for the consolation of Israel, and Anna, the prophetess [26] i I THE GENERATION OF JESUS who served God night and day. and certain young fishermen of Gahlee. Unto this kind of people Jesus made His appeal, and they heard His voice: from them He made His disciples, and called His Apostles, and with their hearts full of love to God and man, He laid the foundations of His Kingdom, and with the same He builds it up from age to age. [271 i I uf % I'.. Ill u ' Chapter III: The Idyll of Bethlehem O event is so charged with mean- ing as a birth; nothing is so incalculable as a young child. Unto sight what is it? — a tiny, helpless, dependent mor- sel of life, unable to think, unconscious of itself, with no speech but a wail. Blot it out, who had missed this creature save its mother? What had the world lost? Nothing save a unit out of millions, another labourer, perhaps another crim-' inal. Unto vision a new force enters into life with the coming of a child, whether he be born in a cottage or a palace. What impresses a thoughtful person as he looks on an infant is not its futility, but its possibility; not what it is, but what it is going j to become. One person has ever something of this imagina- tion. As she looks on her babe's face, his mother dwells on a hundred signs which, to her fondness, prophesy the coming greatness, and she treasures them up in her heart. She is shy, and guards these prophecies jealously ; it may be that they will be but spring blossom to be scattered by the wind, but it may also be that they will set into the fruit of autumn. Geography may yet be rearranged, or history rewritten, or nations re- deemed, or the unseen revealed, by this littie one when God's hand is on him and he comes into His Kingdom. Has it no^ [29] i'^!« THE LIFE OF THE MASTER happened that a single year is lifted out of a century and a day therein glorified, because on that day a poet, a painter, a con- queror, an apostle, has been born. A child was born in a road- side inn nineteen hundred years ago, and time has been redated ' from that day. Unto those who had eyes to see and a soul to understand, the Nativity was attended by favourable omens in heaven above and on the earth beneath. The story is told in St. Luke's Gospel with a very delicate and lovely touch, and the atmosphere is one of great joy and spiritual expedlation. The coming of Jesus was heralded and celebrated by songs which have passed into the praise of the Christian Church. They all sang who had to do with the Holy Child — the angels who escorted Him from the heavenly places and bore the message of the Divine good- will ; Elizabeth, as she received her young kinswoman, and did <,}y honour to the mother of her Lord ; Zacharias, whose son was to run before his face clad in camel's hair and girt with a leather girdle; Simeon, who was to hold the Infant Messiah in his arms and be ready to die in peace; and chiefly the Blessed Virgin, on whom the very crown of motherhood rested. The heavens shed forth their light on earth, and a star rested above Beth- lehem. Wise men from afar — the ambassadors of the great, and shepherds from the flocks — the ambassadors of the poor came and knelt by this cradle, where the hope of ages has been ful- filled, and God Himself has entered into human life. Between the outer circumstances and the inner spirit of an event there is a quickening contrast, so that a tyrant is born in a palace and dies upon a scafl^old, so that a prophet is born in a cottage and lives forever in a nation's heart, and there are two scenes of the Nativity. One is what appeared unto every traveller who happened to rest that night at Bethlehem and was an eye- witness of the chief incident in human history. What he saw was a roadside inn of the East, a place of four bare walls with [30] ^^^1tS5ii3-^F*E:* : SHEPHERDS ABIDING IN THE FIELD And there were in the same country, shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night-^St. Luke II. 8. :'ft I H li w ;t. aril rti ;3fiibKi/: zbisrifjariit ,nitW')j jius^. -jtii lu aiav/ si^rii ijtif, .tl .41 3;lu»I .» Si THE LIFE OF THE MASTER one meets h.8 br.de, to fear none and nothing save God-then shall that son be twice born of his mother Jonce of her bo^y and once of her soul ; and her son may be cast out of synlg^L' a saTnt "^ °^ ''^^ '«" "* ^^^ "^^'^^ ^^^ hero and After his mother the next most potent influence in a lad's life s knowledge, which is gathered from wise men. from book, and from places of learning. Nazareth was a village too simple and rough to have many instructors, but it were nft just to fo get Joseph, to whose calm judgment and proved har ty to whose discretion and faithfulness, the young child must have which, with Mao^ s faith, secured quietness of life. Before the oul He had learned the excellence of earthly fatherhood, and Llent tt """' T"\"'"' J"" Pronounc'esfather there isa ilenttest.monytothechara^^^'= ^^^y- whctLtha; humble household had any other portion of the Divine Law in written form is doubtful, so that what the poorest child may have to-day was most likely denied to the Master-the posses- from a law of Jesus the son of Gamaliel, the high priest about [40] THE HOME OF JESUS A.D. 64 — a school in such a village as Nazareth, where the young boys would be educated by a teacher, and the education would be in the Scriptures. Here day by day Jesus would com- mit to memory portions of the Old Testament, and so He gathered that treasure of Holy Scripture whence He drew argu- ments, defences, promises, guidance in the days of His ministry. As we know. He had learned Aramaic, the dialect of Syria; as we are nearly certain, He understood Hebrew, which is to Aramaic what Latin is to Italian ; as we take for granted, Jesus also spoke Greek, being an inhabitant of Galilee of the Gen- tiles; and, as is possible, He may have known something of Latin, the language of government, the Master was not without the culture of varied speech, although He never had the dubious privilege of attending the schools of the rabbis in Jerusalem, and was happily free from the cultus of Jewish theology. Besides Joseph and His mother, Jesus had to do with certain who were called His brethren, and for a time may have lived in the house with Him. Certain have held that these men were His full brethren, that is, the sons of Joseph and Mary; but against this it must be urged that the whole bearing of these brethren is that not of younger but of older men ; that if they had been the sons of the Virgin, Jesus would have committed her to their charge before His death, and also that after the birth of Jesus, to suppose that Mary was the mother of chil- dren by Jo?eph is to many minds incredible and profane. If they were the half-brethren of Jesus, and the sons of some less spiritual mother than Mary, one can understand their unbelief in thi> younger brother with his unworldly ideals and Divine aspirations. One can also understand that Jesus must have suf- fered in the home during His early years through iheir misun- standing and criticism, and that He was, i\\ some measure, prepared by this discipline for the gauntlet of Pharisaic fault- finding and slander. It must have been one of the veriest trials and [40 THE LIFE OF THE MASTER reproaches of J«>U8, that while He made such unreserved and confident claims upon His followers, they of His own household did not believe in Him; and this is another illustration of the pathetic fact that those who are nearest are often blindest to goodness and cannot see what is plain to all the world. Among the fadlors which went to form the charadter of the Master one must not forget or belittle labour, since for at least fifteen years Jesus followed the trade of Joseph and wrought as a carpenter. One imagines Him fashioning the wood with much the same tools which are used in Nazareth this day, taking care that the last touch of perfedlion be not wanting, and casting away the labour of a day if it were faulty, carrying His finished work to some rich man's house, asking for His wage that He might relieve His mother's care, and leaving without it to come back some other day. So the Master of us all has set the whole- some example of labour to all His disciples ; so He has made Himself one unto all generations with them who toil and sweat; so He has dignified and sanctified honest work of every kind — from that of the hand-laljourer to that o? the poet. As He struggled with intradtable material and accomplished perfect shapes with poor rough tools, the Master was learning already that patience and hopefulness, that skill in handling knotty and unpromising human material, whereby He was to change sin- ners into saints and Galilean peasants into apostles. For he who has never had to do with anything save books and ideas is apt to be repelled and daunted by stupidity, but he who has wrought in wood can see the carved tabernacle hidden within the gnarled trunk. They counted it a loss in His day that Jesus had not studied in the schools of the rabbis at Jerusalem ; we are thank- ful that instead He worked with His hands at Nazareth, and that for His Apostles He chose men whose nerves were calm and strong, whose minds were habituated to the slew, persever- ing methods of toil. [43] I :> I JESUS LAIRING AT HOME WITH JOSEPH AND MARY And he went down with them, and ifttb^t unto them. — Luke, il» |i. Nazareth, and was ■*?•« If, i A / U. <•(:g the valley of the Dead Sea, and thrusts itself to within a few miles of Jerusalem. Here John saw tne bleahed white stones out of which God could raise up children unto Al.raham in pi: e if a wicked generation, and the vipers escaping from the burning bushes to which he compared the Pharisees. This unprofitable and unlovely waste, where none but wild beasts and reptiles made their home, was to t'le vision of the Baptist a too faithfulpidlureofhii generation, which had lost all greenness of faith, and harboured in its bosom all manner of secret, treach- erous sins. His library in his retreat was chiefly to be found within his own soul and in the pifture of that forsaken desert, but he was not without his teacher of the ancient time. If he was to be the real Elijah in his coming and office, he was to be the echo of the two Isaiahs in his thought and preaching. As the former took up the Lord's controversy against His people and rated Jerusalem soundly for her hollow ritualism and elaborate hy- pocrisy, which made "many prayers," with her hands "fi " of blood," so the Baptist laid his indidlment against his generation for their vain show of religion and their hardness of heart. From that heroic witness of the eighth century John learned his self-aSncgation, his single-heartedness, his spiritual patriot- ism, and his unshaken courage. From the second Isaiah, the most evangelical of the whole succession, John received ? more gracious and yet more effiidlive message, for it is evident that John knev, not onl) the beginning of the book of Isaiah, but also ivs fifty-third chapjrr. After a day of sad reflexion on the ungodliness of h 3 people and of righteous indignation, he would sii dov/n, and in the fading light, when the fierce glare of the day V as over, content himself with the ^bought of the Servant o^ God on 'vhom the Lord would lay the iniquities of Israel. [59] I THE LIFE OF THE MASTEH and who would be led a» a lamb to the ulaughter. As he medi- tated with softening heart on the Hoi) VidUm and the Lord'i mei cy, then the bare and stony land would change oefore hit eyes, and, behold, green grast and fountains of water, and the promise regarding the Kingdom of God was fulfilled: "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the rose." It was good that the Baptist should live in the fearful and lonely desert that he might thunder repentance in the ears of the pass- ing caravans, till a nation came to hear and trembled. For a prophet's first duty is to bring the men in his charge face to face with reality, and to hold them there till they do righteous- ness. People are apt in all ages to speculate about religion, and to take their own ideas for truth; to invent all kinds of rites, and to forget that these arc but poor machinery at the best; to fall into a multitude of customs which are in their spirit selfish and sinful; to call themselves by flattering names, while they are dead. It is for the prophet to break up these refuges of lies, and to pull down eviry painted screen, and to leave the man naked that he may settle his account with God. It can neve- be right to think what is not true, never right to do what is wrong, never wise to rely on anything save truth and righteous- ness. What are you believing, what are you doing, not before man, but before God? is the prophet's continued question. He must arouse and alarm and hr oS till human beings abandon all shams and make-belie' s, ana conventions, and forms. He stands, not before this world, which iz in his eyes but a vain show: he stands before the Eternal, and recalls men to the sense of God. While thr world lasts there will be room for this Elias-work, but it is only temporary and elementary ; Elias prepares for Him who is to follow. Elijah did bravely according to his light when he put to death the priests of Baal, for the Baal-worship was a foul, base thing; but Isaiah struck a nobler note in his [60] u THE FORERUNNER conception of the suffering Mewiah.John Haptist wrought a great woric when he told the scribes and Pharisees that the axr was at the ro< of their tree, ind that the fruitless trees would certain!' be burned; when he warned the publicans against dishonesty and the soldiers against violence, and commanded charity for all men — but this was only the preface to his mcs- •age. He summoned to repentance, because only penitents would have a right to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, and the Kingdom was at hand. He baptised with water in Apn that He was comiiv Who would baptise them with the H. . ^ Jhost 'and with fire. As the Baptist preached, his eyes sou, '.t .1 jong the people for Him, the latchet of Whose shoes he counted hi-nself not worthy to loose; and John had fulfilled his min- is > when he said to spiritual and penitent men, " Behold the Lamb of God, Who is taking away the tin of the world." ' [61] I I' Chapter VII: The Baptism HE meeting of Jesus and John, and the recognition of the Messiah by His forerunner, is one of the picturesque situ- ations in the Gospel history, and it is perfedl in its sponta- neity. As the Baptist brooded in the wilderness over the prophecies of the ancient time, and as he declared unto the multitude with strong conviaion that the " kingdom of God " was at hand, the one passion of his life rose to white heat, and his eager heart was eaten up with expedlation. The atmosphere of the age was charged with the sense of the Messiah, and the lonely prophet strained his e&'-s to catch the first sound of His feet. Any day, and, for that matter, any hour, the romance of faith might cul- minate, and the Hope of Israel appear. Every morning the hermit would rise and leave his home hewn out of the rock, which tradition gives him for a dwelling-place, to wait for the breaking of the day, since the rising of the sun might be the shining of His face, and he would lie down with sad reluc- tance, and hardly dare to sleep lest the darkness be the shadow of his Lord. Was the Christ already in the land, hidden and unknown, or would He come from afar with sudden glory ? Would He show Himself by infallible signs, so that all men [63] ,1= THE LIFE OF THE MASTER should be compelled to own Him, or would He appear secretly, putting all men to the test by His presence, and already, before He was recognised, doing the part of a husbandman, with His fan separating the wheat from the chaff? It is certain that the Baptist had been saved from one vain delusion by his study of Isaiah : he did not expedl the imperial Messiah of the gross Jewish imagination, but as little was he prepared to recognise his Lord, before Whom he had run, and Whose voice he had been, among the crowd who heard his message of repentance and submitted to the sacrament of penitence. Yet it was in these circumstances that the Baptist one day identified Jesus of Naza- reth as the Christ, and knew that his work had not been in vain. It may be suggested, with some reason, that John had surely known for years the birth and calling of Jesus, and ought not to have waited as in a mystery. Was he not the kinsman of Jesus, and had not a tender confidence passed between Eliza- beth his mother and Mary the mother of Jesus? When John separated himself from his home and his people, and gave himself in his youth to be the herald of the Messiah, and Jesus declared to His mother that He had come to do the work of His Father in Heaven, would not other confidences pass be- tween the holy women, and Elizabeth rejoice that as she had done homage to Mary her son was preparing the way for Jesus ? As we weave this romance of the Holy Family, we set it in the light of afterwards, and forget how the most sacred and vivid spiritual experiences fade and lose their meaning even with saintly souls, so that Jesus once gently chided His mother be- cause she forgot the mystery of His annunciation and nativity, saying, " Wist ye not ? " And John had evidently learned nothing of his august Kinsman from Elizabeth, for he once declared unto the Pharisees, " I knew Him not." With even these intense and holy persons, rare and exalted experiences remained only [64] THE BAPTISM a faint, fragrant memory, which might be quickened into life, but meanwhile carried no pradtical influence The Baptist had never, so far as we know, seen Jesus before, and It was a gain and not a loss, that he did not know the Messiah after the flesh, for in that moment of revelation he recognised Him. with the vision of the soul, after the spirit. When John was arrested by the visible holiness of Jesus, and identified Him as the Christ on Whose head rested the mystical Dove, and afterwards declared boldly that He was the Lamb of God he proved at once his own fine spiritual perception and thcinheient gloryof Jesus As he lived alone in the wilderness and studied the outlines of the Messiah's likeness in the mirror of Isaiah It had grown real and living before his eyes, and the very face was printed on his soul. One day that which he had imagined flashed on him in all its spiritual loveliness, and the Baptist did the Messiah instant homage. It is related of St. Francis, and it IS perhaps the most beautiful incident in the peVfedl life of the saint, that, seeing a pure white lamb in the midst of a flock of goats, he stood still and was much afl^efted. "Behold." said he to his foUowers-for to St. Francis the outer world was ever a sacrament of the spiritual- "Jesus in the midst of sinners." It was after this fashion Jesus was identified as the Messiah— a portrait of perfedt holiness framed in the blackness of those sinners of Jerusalem. When the day of His discovering to Israel had fully come just asm a lower world birds know the seasons of their .omingand going. Jesus, moved by the infallible instindl of the Messiah- ship, left His home, where from childhood to manhood He had done the will of God in quietness. He took His way by the road which crosses the plain of Jezreel. and follows the moun- tains of Samaria and Judea. and comes at last to the place where John was baptising in the Jordan. It could rot have been by chance that the prophet chose this font for the sacrament of [6S] THE LIFE OF THE MASTER penitence, for it was sandlioned by ancient history, full of in- strudlion and inspiration. Here, as the Catholic historian of the Master points out, the children of Israel crossed with Joshua into the promised land, and here Elijah, the pioneer of proph- ecy, smote the waters with his mantle. To-day the ford is called the " Place of Passage," and the western bank is green, and cov- ered with willows and tamarisks. Whole flocks of wood-pigeons find here a home, so here are all the signs of the great affair of regeneration, the pure water, the passage from old things to new, and the gentle white dove, which is the symbol of the Holy Ghost. It was most fitting, like everything else in Jesus' life, that where sinful men had gathered in contrition and were waitinj for God's kingdom, the Anointed of God should appear; but when Jesus not only was a hearer of the new Gospel, but also desired to have the sinner's baptism, one is not astonished that the Bap- tist was staggered and shrank back with pious horror. Unto the Baptist, the Savonarola of his day, came the ignorant people, sordid and greedy through the struggle for life; the publicans swollen with the gains of oppression ; the rough soldiers, who wrought their unchecked will on the helpless; the miserable women, who were the open ulcer of society; and even the Pharisees, shaken out of their pride for a space. A great wave of religious emotion had swept this mixed mass of evil-doers to the feet of the prophet and the laver of the Jordan. They were where they ought to be, where they could find salvation. Re- morse and shame had sped them in anxiety and terror to confess their sins and seek the Divine mercy. What had brought Him Who was holy, harmless, and undefiled? Nothing less than the sacred waters of the Jordan could avail for this mass of rascal- dom and hypocrisy, but what could any water do for Him or His whiteness? For the hands, themselves sinful, which plunged publicans and harlots into the flowing water, to touch the holi- [66] T THE BAPTISM ncss of Jesus was an impossible sacrilege, and the dismay of the Baptist was so manifest that Jesus could only ask him to suffer His desire. When Jesus gave His reason to His servant and declared that His baptism would fulfil "all righteousness," it was in the very sound a staking utterance, but it is not quite clear on first sight what the Master intended. It is no explanation to read right- eousness in a sfridlly legal sense, and to see in the baptism an- other illustration of the Master's respeftful regard for the laws of His national religion, since this lustration of penitence was not an ancient regulation of Judaism, and had no binding force • It was a voluntary rite and not a universal commandment Still less IS It to be suggested that Jesus had any moral need for such a cleansing because He had sinned in thought or deed, for it was His whiteness against their blackness which moved the Baptist to his indignant refusal. Nor could the baptism of the Jordan be a ceremony introducing Jesus to His Messianic office, since the greater could not be blessed of the lesser, the servant instal his T ord. It was not indeed possible that Jesus could gain by this rite of humility, but it is possible that He could give; and as Jesus submits to the waters of the Jordan in the company of sin- \ ners, we see an ad's Be- / loved Son. [69] 'ii Chapter VIII: The Temptation HEN we read in the Gospels that after Jesus was baptised of John He was led into the wilder- ness to be tempted, the order of events is not merely temporal, it is also spiritual. If any one be moved to dedicate himsel' '• ithout reserve to the cause of God and the service of his fel- low-m;n, it is an aft of im- mens'i significance, and it must needs be followed by a retreat. It had not been fitting that as soon as Jesus had ccme up from the Jordan, with the water still on His head. He should begin to preach the Kingdom. He would have been without any plan of work and without possession of Himself for the Messianic enterprise. Before Jesus presented Himself to the people or called His first disciples, He must realise within His consciousness not only that He is the Hope of the Prophets, but also must determine the appointed lines of the Messiah's career, as One in Whom is stored unused and un- known resources. For f"^ rty days — a number of sacred tradition — Jesus secluded Himself in the wildernesa, that His soul, being freed from the bondage of the body and the turmoil of life, might enter into the will of God. No man can come through a spi'-itual crisis without physical reaftion, and, according to the intensity of the soul will be the [71] THE LIFE OF THE MASTER [ ? Ilf II' i exhaustion of the body. On such occasions it seems as if the blood had been drained through a wound, . s if the nerves had been stretched unto the breaking. Never is the strongest sou] more depressed, never does it lie more open to attack. And it was at the close of the forty days that Jesus, Who may have been lightly tried before in Nazareth, passed through His first great tempta- tion. As the KingdoHt of God, with its hopes and visions, had in those days been opened unto Him, and His eyes had seen its unclouded bright::^, w'th its hosts of Angels, its red'^emed souls, its vidlories of holiness, its morning song of joy, so now He must, with His human eyes, behold the kingdom of evil, hardly suspefted as He lived '.vith Mary in Nazareth, with its suggestions of evil, its hatred of goodness, its pitiful persecution of the soul, its hideous shapes of si.i, its black despair. For the Son of Man must know good and evil, that being thoroughly prepared He may be the Saviour of His brethren. It is a reasonable question whether the circumstances of the temptation were a(5tual or figurative. Did the Evil One appear in bodily shape to Jesus? was Jesus adtually placed on a pinnacle of the Temple? were kingdoms of the world shown to Him as in a magical mirror? Or did Jesus, in relating this experience to his friends afterwards, clothe spiritual events in physical dress, to convey by a pi(flure what had happened in His soul? The essential truth of the narrative and the reality of the incident are the same either way, and each person will conceive it as best suits his own mind, but the spiritual interpretation has two ad- vantages. For one thing, it is more reasonable ; for there is no other instance of the Evil One appearing in visible shape, and it were surely less than becoming that Jesus should be at Satan's disposal, to be whirled from the wilderness to the Temple, from the Temple to the wilderness. Besides, just so far as one imagines the Temptation to be a drama without, and not within, the soul, he separates the trial of the Master from that of His brethren, [7=] ■ i I -J THE TEMPTATION And he was there in the wilderness forty days tempted by Saun; and was with the wild beasts.— Mark I. 13. -1 in iini ;rti:Ur' vf! S ''f)! r/ I'M/ rr !iti M If": 'ft* \m it THE TEMPTATION and so far robs them of His sympathy and His vidory. What- ever may have happened in the case of Jesus, during Whose public hfe there was a special conflict of spiritual powers, holy and evil, the battle, in our case, is within and unseen. While the world IS carrying on its work around us. and no one is conscious of the crisis, our affedions. reason, will, are assailed; and while the world laughs and goes on its ways, unconscious of the su- preme tragedy of life, we are inwardly overcome and put to shame. Unfortunately for is, we do not always understand the meanmg of the conflift ourselves, and we have not the power to describe it; but if we had the insight and the imagination then we also should have our pinnacles of spiritual exaltation and our glimpses of this present world. Another question is more vital, and that is the spiritual reality of Jesus temptation. It is not whether He was perfedly good -that every one will take for granted, -but whether His per- tea goodness was of such a kind as to give Him immunity from the danger of temptation. Was He tempted like one of us in the sense that the suggestion of the Evil One made a genuine appeal to Him from the outside.?— that He had the power of yielding or resisting, and that He conquered with real pain.? Should one say No— no temptation could affeft Jesus any more than a lighted match falling on ice-then he has paid a disastrous honour to the Master, for in one breath he has denied the true humanity of His nature and the aftual veracity of His life If Jesus did not sin, not because He would not, but because He could not, then the difference between His disciples and Him- self is not superiority of the same nature— a supreme degree of sainthood— but genuine distindion in nature— the possession ot a superhuman nature. Jesus is not then bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, as we had fondly imagined, but a Being of another order ; and while in the daily duel betw^»n evil and one ot us the rapier of Satan can pierce our heart and spill our life- [73] I lit 11 m THE LIFE OF THE MASTER blood, in Jesus it passed harmlessly through the shadowy form of a ghost. It will also follow that these accounts of conflids taken from His own lips, so vivid, so intense, so encouraging, are, after all, only descriptions of a sham fight, where the car- tridges were blank, and the issues were arranged beforehand. If, however, we come to the life of Jesus without any precon- ceived ideas, or any dodtrines to safeguard, and if we read the record in its natural and reasonable sense, then the Temptation throbs and glows with intense reality. Jesus overcame not be- cause He was invulnerable, but because He was strong; and, therefore, h.;re is no man or woman anywhere, sorely beset in the spiritual warfare, who has not in Him a Friend and Saviour. Three times was Jesus attacked in this classical battle — each occasion through a different avenue — and the first approach was laid through the body. It does not fojlow that every sensible temptation must be sensual, and it goes without saying that the spiritual and beautiful nature of Jesus rendered Him impervious to certain temptation^ which would have appealed to other young men of Nazareth. If His senses were ever to betray Him, the Master must be deceived by a show of innocence and simply fall into an adlion with a tang of wrong in it so subtle as to seem like goodness. Forty days had this man, in the fulness of His strength, denied Himself ordinary food, and lived in a state of high spiritual tension, and now His body — the body not of an ascetic but of a strong workman — asserted itself, and He was an hungered. No appetite is more imperious than hunger, for from its stimulus has sprung the first energy of the race. None is more innocent, since to deny its satisfaction, in ordinary cir- cumstances, were suicide. Round Jesus, as He came oui from His spiritual trance and became conscious of physical things, lay the white stones of the desert, mocking Him by their colour and shape with the suggestion of the homely bread His mother [74] 'lFr:?T3&.-''-"i -S^'Mijn.' THE TEMPTATION baked in Nazareth, and which He ate with honest zest at the close of a hard day's work. If indeed He were endowed with the power of God, so that whatsoever He pleased He could do and whatsoever He desired He could have, why should He noJ change the unprofitable stones into loaves of bread, as the Bap- tist declared God could make them into sons of Abraham, and eat and go on to His work in the strength thereof? It was the most reasonable and practical of temptations. The days were near at hand when Jesus would use His Divine power to feed a hungry multitude, to heal the loathsome disease of leprosy to raiseaman three days dead. Why not to revive His own strength? Because m this case He would have used His power to relieve Himself from one of the conditions of human life, and to secure His own ease, and because, had He made this concession to Him- self, why should He not afterwards have employed the same power to clothe Himself in purple and fine linen? to escape the weariness of a poor man's travel? to shield Himself from the cruelties of His enemies? After all, as Jesus answered, the chief good of life is not meat — to satisfy oneself, but the words which come from the mouth of God — to fulfill spiritual ends; not to live for the senses, but for the soul. When it was insinuated into Jesus' mind that He might turn .t ■ es into bread for His own service, it was a veiled sedudion ot selfishness ; and when the Master spurned it. He gave a pledge of sacrifice which antici- pated the Cross and he day when the priests, who gave the stones unto the people and seized the breau for themselves, should mock Him, saying, "He saved others: Himself He can- not save." Jesus' next temptation shifted the field from the body to the soul, and had a fair show of religion, as the last had of reason Is not the very heart of religion faith in God, a faith so un- reserved and unquestioning that it will leave the person abso- lutely in the hands of God? Ought not such faith to vindicate [75] i I: THE LIFE OF THE MASTER itself sometimes, and put God to the test by some daring adl of confidence? Suppose that Jesus should cast Himself from the highest point of the Father's House in face of all the people, and allow God to bear Him up on angels' wings, — would not this be a fitting evidence of His faith on the threshold of the Master's public career ? Would it not afford Him a convincing assuraice of His Father's care as He entered on His perilous way? Would it not commend His Messiahship to the nation with an unanswerable sign ? Apparently it was an appeal to Jesus' filial spirit; really it was an invitation *.o spiritual pride and un- holy presumption upon the favour of God — the very sin which by its arrogance and self-complacency had created PYuii :saism and devastated the religious life of Israel. If many fall through sins of the senses, as many fall through sins of the spirit, and dar- ing irreverence in the shape of filial freedom is surely the most deceptive of all spiritual sins. What was represented as a loyal acceptance of one of the most gracious of the Divine promises Jesus declared to be sheer blasphemy, and a straining of the Divine patience unto the breaking. With this new rebuff to the Evil One, Jesus added to His abnegation a humility of faith which was never to fail till, from the tragic height of the Cross, where God's will had placed Him, into the depths of the grave, whither He was willing to go. He committed His soul to His Father, and His Father did not put Him to confusion. Once more at this time Satan tried the Master, and now it is neither through His body, nor His soul, but through His work. From a high mountain the Tempter shows unto this young Man all the kingdomsof the world, of which in theseclusion of Naza- reth Jesus may have heard, and their glory, which He could not have imagined. This is the world — not that world of sin, and shame, and sorrow, and pain, in its immense pathos, which God loved and Jesus was to save; but that world of luxury, and pag- eantry, and cruelty, and unbelief, in its proud insolence, which [76] r y»- THE TEMPTATION would flout God and crucify Jesus. With the same outlook the Master saw His task and His hindrance, and in this meeting was begotten the Temptation. How altogether noble was the task ! Was the hindrance inevitable ? If Jesus would only do one a lifi A REASONABLE METHOD When one turns from the religious world of to-day, with its platforms, committees, papers, meetings, where every one is speakin£j at the pitch of his voice, and no one seems to be say- ir I .\r.y hi.ig particular, and joins the Master as He moves to a 'd fro establish;: g the Kingdom of God in individual lives, i- II \:o when on- escapes from a country fair, with its drums and sL v ■, ts o uidy wares and deafening noise, and finds himself in a country lane where the wild roses brush him from the hedge, and thebirdssing overhead. Foras He found the first six disciples He found all, with the same shrinking from sensationalism, by the same personal dealing. If great multitudes followed Him, He healed them all in the prodigality of His mercy ; then He charged that they should not make it known in His horror of notoriety. Nor wa such a case to be explained by local circumstances — it was His principle. Whether He raised a young girl to life, or opened the eyes of the blind man, or loosed the tongue of the dumb, or healed ten lepers, or was transfigured before His dis- ciples, or was revealed to Peter as the Christ, His one command- ment was that it should not be made known. People did spread His miracles abroad — it was against His will; they followed Him in crowds — He hid Himself. We are astonished by His condudl, and commentators are at their wits' end for an explana- tion. It seems natural to us that any one who had made so great an impression would advertise himself in every possible way, natural to estimate a successful ministry by the crowds which attend, and the food for public talk. We have come to imagine an efFeftual and useful servant of the Kingdom as one who does strive and cry, and who uses all kinds of means to make his voice heard everywhere. This may be very arresting, but it may not be irrelevant to point out that it was not the method of Jesus, since the chief feature of His public work was spiritual modesty and refinement. No one ever proposed to do so great a work; no one ever had so [83] i u m THE LIFE OF THE MASTER ingenuous a plan. No reformer has ever appeared so influential as Jesus, none made so little noise. No evangelist can be men- tioned beside Jesus; none has been so calm. Follow Jesus in the little synagogues of Galilee or the Temple of Jerusalem, on the mountain side or the lake shore, into private houses or judg- ment-halls, and His manner is the same. If there be two ex- ceptions, they only prove the rule — where He cleanses the Temple with a certain violence, and where He pours forth His invedlive on the Pharisees; and then we are amazed. This hot indignation and dramatic anger were unlike Jesus, and prove the intolerable abuses of contemporary religion. His was not the manner of this bustling and feverish world : it was the grand manner of the Kingdom of God, beautiful in its simplicity. Jesus did His unique work, from His interview with John to His speech with the penitent thief, in a fashion which is beyond the most fastidious criticism. He never posed for effedt, never raised His voice to secure attention, never condescended to vul- garity, never allowed Himself to slip into extravagance, never treated His hearers with spiritual insolence. Our Master did not set Himself ^o attraft mobs; He tried to come into contadt with individual souls; He was uneasy with a following, gaping at miracles and waiting for a dole of bread; He was at home with a few disciples concerned about spiritual things. His idea was that (almost) every man could be reached by reason, whether he be Pharisee or publican, although, of course, in the end he might not obey. Jesus did not therefore scold, or terrify, or per- plex men, nor was He given either to empty appeals which have no real meaning, or to playing on the emotions by pathetic images. He rather plied His hearers with such clear, sweet, persuasive reasoning concerning the love of God, the misery of sinning, the greatness of the soul, the excellence of the King- dom of God, that His voice was like the lyre of Orpheus, which made Tantalus forget his thirst; and His disciples were made [84] il ' i A REASONABLE METHOD willing in the day of His power because all that was noblest within them consented and gave joyful welcome to His appeal. It is at this point in an estimate of the method of Jesus that one ought to distinguish between two words which were constantly confounded by Mr. Isaac Taylor and other v liters at the be- ginning of the century, and which are not kept very clearly apart unto this day. One is Enthusiasm, and the other is Fanati- cism. It is not uncommon to hear some self-confident and aggres- sive individual saying: ' They call me a fanatic; well, I am not ashamed of the name: it were good for the world were there ten times more fanaticism"; while he really ought to be very much troubled to be such a man, and ought to know that it would be a fearful disaster if the world were given over to this mad and gloomy spirit. What he very likely means is that he has been charged with enthusiasm, and accepts the charge, as he very well may, as a compliment. Enthusiasm is a temper of mind altogether holy and beautiful, and Jesus was the Chief of all enthusiasts. Fanaticism is a question of method, and from this excess Jesus was altogether and always free. When St. Francis '•ent to preach the Gospel to the soldiers, and offered to go ugh fire if it would convert the Saracen to Christ ; or when _er, stretching out his hands to tb-; farthest East, cried, " More suflferings, more sufferings. Lord, ' one has very beautiful instances of enthusiasm. When Simon Stylites stood upon a pillar for no end but vainglory, and the monks of Alexandria tore Hypatia to pieces for the glory of God, you have conspicuous illustrations of fanaticism. An enthusiast is always worthy of respedt, from Moses, who threw in his lot with the children of Israel, to Gordon, who gave his life for Africa. No one indeed has ever done work of the first order in whose breast this Divine spark did not burn. Fanaticism is sometimes weak and silly, sometimes fierce and intolerant, it is always injurious and to be condemned. Fanaticism is the degeneration of enthusiasm, [85] ^'^1 Ul il THE LIFE OF THE MASTER it. bastard shape; it is enthusiasm without intelligence or ele- vat.on As often as one is inclin .d to confound the two, let him work of God and the service of man ? Was there ever any life so cleansed from foolishness and bitterness? Did ever fire burn with so unquenchable and so pure a flame ? One can imagine Jesus_as is written in the Gospels ^takine H- Va r '" "' """' ^"' '''^^'"^ '^-' - stretching ::! sW .r "Tr""°^^"^-"°^'^'"g country folk and aying, "Come unto Me. all ye that labour and are heavy laden lican' T '"f T'"' " ^P"'''"g '^° g'-^-°-'y - ^ pub-' broken r" /' '' '""-^ """' P"""" °^>^- ^^^^ f^lHike Pe erLdhT- r^T' "'"^^ o-ppeanng alone to Simon Pete and hearing his confession. Those are acts entirely becom- ing Jesus, and the very outcome of His ber atiful soul. One can- not imagine the Master making a young child come forward at a public meeting and tell when it was converted, or asking His disciples m an audience to stand up while the others sat if their places; or breaking in upon the holiest of all within a human soul with some rude question, or insisting on one of the heart-broken penitents who crowded to His side relating his ex- periences in the far country. Such things are not written in the Gospels: if we read them in a newly-discovered Gospel, we should know that Gospel to be apocryphal; and if an angel from heaven to'; them, we should not believe him. for we know that they were impossible for Tesus. They are the religious gaucheries of men whose sPTuual sense is dull, and whose mental fibre i pedl for the soul to make such mistakes. It is almost a profanity to mention such methods in the same breath with the name of Jesus, but that only shows as by a foil how perfed were all His ways and how divme was His method. This method of Jesus rests on two principles He was ever preach- [86] A REASONABLE METHOD ing or exemplifying ; and the first was the paramount value of charadter. While the Pharisees had taught the pciple that reli- gion consisted in repeating certain shibboleths and performing certain rites, and that he who was orthodox in dodrine and cer-^- mony was a good man, Jesus in.-'ited that religion stood in the condition of the soul, and that he whose s-^.ul was holy alone was good. It were better to stamp a spiritual pattern on one soul than to persuade a thousand men to say, "Lord, Lord." The Kingdom of God was within — an atmosphere of humility, sacrifice, purity, love, a spirit of heavenly thoughts and unselfish adlions. It came therefore slowly, surely, quietly, as each man was inwardly changed into the Divine likeness. And Jesus be- lieved that the best means of accomplishing this change was the influence of a person. What all the dodrines and all the rules in the world cannot do, may be attained efFedtually and uncon- sciously by a friendship. In the company of a frjend who lives with God and brings God near to the soul, one is ashamed of himself, and aspires after better things. He slips his past, and puts on a new shape; he catches his friend's spiritual accent and atti- tude; he begins to think with him, and ends by adting like him. Jesus proposes to save His disciples by giving u new charadter to the soul, and this He would convey by uniting His disciples and Himself in a lasting and spiritual private friendship. Perhaps the simplicity of Jesus' method may at first cause dis- appointment, and seem to have a poor chance of success. How long it will take the Messiah to fulfil the visions of the Prophets and His own commissi'^n by making friends with a man here and there, even although He makes the man like Himself! But is there no other test of success than numbers? and are we sure that noise and noisy methods have had the larger harvests? The most efFcdtive apostle who ever preached in England was John Wesley, and he was the sanest and quietest of men. No preacher of this century has given such an impetus to Christian thought [87] h ^1 THE LIFE OF THE MASTER as Robertson of Brighton, and Robertson had an almost morbid dislike of garish popularity. No evangelist of our time did so much to change the lives of young men as Henry Drummond, and none could be farther removed from rant and coarseness. Fanaticism is a confession of weakness; he who has the truth does not need to shout; he who does God's work can dispense with sensationalism. Every servant in God's cause can make his choice: he can work either by faith or sight; and if he works by faith, he will have his trials. It is hard to see others succeed by means his conscience does not allow him to use; to be counted an incapable and a failure; to work in narrow circumstances and to reap slender harvests. Yet this faithful servant has his own encouragements, and they are not to be despised. If he has lost the present, his is the future ; and if only one voice approves, that is the voice of the Master. f' If [if [88] Chapter X: A Reasonable Life HEN any one has undertaken a Iiigh office, no slight interest attaches to his first public ac- tion, and it has often revealed the spirit of his whole future life. As Moses stands before Pharaoh, and calls the king to repentance and justice, one sees the lawgiver of Israel who shall lay the Ten Words on the con- science of his people. It was no accident that Elijah should make his first appearance at Ahab's court with the prophecy of a long drought, for his role was judg- ment, and his very face an omen of trouble to a weak and wicked king. No sooner had St. Paul been converted and baptised than he showed himself in the synagogues, where he had been so dis- tinguished by his rabbinical learning, and where now he was to use his unmatched dialectic for the preaching and defence of Jesus. And when John Baptist arrested some travellers one day with his commandment of repentance, and left them trembling, he struck that note which was to sound with insistent reit.;ra- tion till its wholesome harshness was lost in the sound of Jesus' Evangel. As soon as Jesus had collected His six friends, the be- ginning of the world-wide society. He could not be long hid, for now He had claimed to be a Master, and must take a Master's place before the people. And Jesus made His entrance into life [89] I K i :< f' THE LIFE OF THE MASTER as the Christ not in the Temple, nor in a synagogi ;, nor at a funeral, nor in a sick room, but at a marriage ♦last. It seems that the mother of Jesus and His family had removed from Nazareth to Cana about the time that He left His home and went to be baptised of John, and that a marriage was to take place in the circle. As the Virgin carried herself on the occasion with the anxiety and authority of a near relative, either the bride or bridegroom must have been of her family. The choice will therefore lie between the son or the daughter of one of Jesus' elder brethren ; and since we read that He was formally bidden to the marriage, and the marriage feast was held in the bridegroom's house, we may safely conclude that the bridegroom was the stranger, and the bride of His family. Between the bride and Jesus there would have been a close and pleasant tie in Naza- reth since her infancy. It was not in His manhood and public life that the Master first learned to love children, and became their friend. Between the children of Nazareth and the gentle Carpenter there must have been much pleasant traffic, as they loitered by His door and watched Him at work, yet never so busy but He could fling ihem some gracious word, or wandered with Him on the hillside at eventide, where He would show unto His young playmates the wonderful beauty of the flowers and of all His Father's works. Among the children this little maid would be especially dear, as being of His own people, and between her and Jesus there would spring up an intimacy, so that to Him she would turn in the little joys and sorrows of her life; and when her chief joy came, this bride would most of all desire that Jesus, who seemed to her the very perfeftion of holiness and wisdom, should be at her wedding and give His blessing. Before that day arrived the change had come in Jesus' life, and He had gone out from Nazareth and been baptised into His Messianic work. Behind Him lay for ever the little home, [90] CANA (KEFR-KENNA) FROM THE ROAD TO NAZARETH ^' k il; J yy (i/.(>>i !ijr r/.('>i.i t///.u .i^.i/i /,//'> li 4 M III m h1 tJBi::- '2 -Ty a w v Tgy « A REASONABLE LIFE tnd the «imp)e toil of the workshop, and the pleasant leisure hours, and the fellowship of the family circle. Before Him now were lonely nights of vigil, and repeated temptations of the fvil One, and days of exhausting spiritual labour, and conriidts of hot debate, and woeful persecutions. Already He had tasted the Messianic life in the Jordan and the wilderness. His people knew that He had gone to be a Teacher; He only knew what that meant. It was not to be expeded that at the beginning of His enterprise Jesus should turn aside from great affairs to attend a village wedding ; it was hardly fitting that the Messiah should in- troduce Himself and His disciples to the people on so simple and joyous an occasion. No one guiding himself by conventional rules, no ordinary man, had dared. It was altogether characteris- tic ot the Master to leave the Jordan and arrange this journey so as to be present at His friend's wedding, and altogether char- acteristic of His mission that this should be its revelation. When the Messiah comes forth from the shadow it is at a marriage feast. It is likely that He had been despaired of; it is certain that His band of disciples could not have been anticipated— who were now invited on very short notice —and it v/as too late now to reinforce the feast. There was enough of bread, but the wine for that humble home was harder to obtain, and it threatened to fail ; and if it should seem to any one that this would matter little to temperate folk, he has missed the inwardness of the in- cident. Two families would be put to shame on a high day in their life because they had bidden their guests and had failed in hospitality, the bride's almost as much as the bridegroom's. The Virgin, with her motherly sympathy and quick understand- ing of narrow circumstances, takes in the situation, and turns to her Son. He had been her resort in every little strait of those years, and He had never failed to bring her help. She could hardly have imagined what He would do, but she had learned [9«] ^"tSDBR-. -laHiAsf^^ftiE-, .1! 1 THE LIFE OF THE MASTER to believe that any matter might be left with Him. He could not be expedled to know that the wine was coming to an end, and that His young kinswoman would be put to confusion. Call- ing Him aside. His mother told Him so that none but John heard, "They have no wine." His answer was kindly and respedlful, however it may sound in our ears, which have lost the beautiful accent in "woman"; but it marked a certain change in the relation between Jesus and His mother. Hitherto He had been a private person, with no obligations save to her — ready to hear her advice, willing to give way to her, concerned only that she should have com- fort, satisfied if she were satisfied. Now He was the Anointed of God, with the charge of a high work laid on Him, for which He must make the last sacrifices, to which He must give all His time, in which He could take no direftions save from God. Unto the last hour of His life would the Master love and cherish His mother; but with the great affair of His calling she must not meddle. Unto her had come that hour of mixed pain and pride to a mother, when her son goes out on his own course, and when even she must be second to his life work. She must now stand aside and watch Him in silence, while He did what she did not understand, and went beyond the care she would have bestowed upon Him. Her faith was sometimes to fail in the days to come, but at Cana she was calm and confident. Mary turned unto the servants, "Whatsoever He saith unto ycu do it." Jesus was soon to do greater wonders in raising the dead ; but when He turned the water into wine, we have an altogether delightful opening to the public life of Jesus. It was an adl pcr- fedlly becoming the circumstances, because it was so thoughtful, so genial, so courteous, so overflowing, conceived to crown this marriage with dignity and joy. He was to be in every situation that which was fitting, so that from Cana to Calvary one is lost [92] A REASONABLE LIFE in admiration at the sweet reasonableness of the Master's life. If Jesus once used a term of bitter contempt, and called a man " that fox," it was Herod Antipas, the most contemptible crea- ture in the Gospels. Once He broke out into invedtive so scath- ing that we read it with trembling unto this day ; it was against the opprobrium of religion in all ages — the Pharisees who pro- fessed instead of doing, and proselytised instead of saving. Once Jesus turned on a faithful friend, and called him a devil : it was when Simon Peter advised Jesus to play the coward and avoid the Cross. Once He rebuked His beloved John: it was when the hot-tempered disciple would have called down fire upon a Samaritan village for discourtesy. Once he grew suddenly angry : it was when meddlesome disciples would have kept little chil- dren at a distance. If coarse-mi ndcd men tried to put a guilty woman to shame in His presence. He would not lift His eyes till they had departed. If a fallen woman washed His feet with her tears. He detected her penitence, and sent her into peace. If He dined at a Pharisee's house, He gently ridiculed the scramble for seats; if He went into a publican's, it was to set at Ml crty the soul of His host. When the Galileans wished to make riim a king. He hid Himself; when the Judeans wanted to cru- cify Him, He yielded Himself. When an honest scribe asked a plain question. He satisfied him; when certain tried to trick Him about Cassar's penny. He put a fool's cap on them. Take Jesus where you will He is ever beyond criticism. He never con- fuses either men or circumstances, never spares a kn?'-: or a hypocrite, never hurts a penitent or a good man. Whetner He i denounces or approves, agrees or refuses, your reason says, " Well | done." Jesus was ever "behoveful," as Hooker has it, or as the ' people themselves once said, having an unconscious sense of something wonderfully becoming, " He doeth all things well." The reasonableness of the Master's life appears when one marks how He avoided the falsehood of extremes. Human life has been [93] THE LIFE OF THE MASTER too often deformed because it has been distrafted between two one-sided ideals. The one cares for the body to the depreciation of the soul, the other exalts the soul to the contempt of the body. The one rejoices without reserve in this fair world, the other ignores it beside the glory of the world to come. The one counts knowledge the chief good, the other, faith. The one makes culture the end of life, the other, righteousness. The nation which embodied the former ideal was the Greek, the nation which embodied the latter was the Jew. The nearest in- dividual type of the former was a Pagan man of letters, the best representative of the latter was John Baptist. To-day we see one kind of life in a cultivated man of the world, with his literary tastes, his love of art, his genial charity, his sympathy with every- thing human, his general sweetness; we see the opposite tendency in, let us say, a soldier of the Salvation Army (whose devotion the writer regards with sincere respeft), or a Plymouth Brother, or some other of our modern Montanists, with his suspicion of cul- ture, his indifference to the beauty of the world, his avoidance of human society, his superiority over his fellow-Christians, his sad austerity, his admirable religious intensity. Were one to nime a writer of the past, instindt with that paganism which is still in our grain beneath a veneer of Christian civilisation, and which comes at times to the surface of our thinking and writing, I should say Horace (Virgil was a semi-Christian saint) ; and for another saturated with that unrelenting asceticism which blends with Catholicism and Protestantism alike, and is ever rising up in revolt against our paganism, I should give the author of the Imitation of Christ. Upon many study tables Horace and A Kem- pis lie side by side, each expressing one side of our complex human nature. It ought at once to be granted that asceticism has its place and function, and that the Baptist was as much justified as Jesus. There are days when the world becomes so swollen and cor- [94] A REASONABLE LIFE rupt, so insolent and dominant, that the prophets of God are bound to put on sackcloth and deny themselves things lawful, and go into the lonely wilderness and lift up their voice in un- compromising and insistent protest. There are also special forms of moral and religious service to which a few are distindlly called, and for which they must make sacrifices of meat and drink, home and family ties. As there have been ascetics of science, of letters, and of arms, so there are ascetics of religion, to whom all honour is to be paid, on whom the blessing of God has most evidently rested. As a general rule of life, however, asceticism has not been justified either by its pradical results or by the char- after of its subjects. The asc^tical strain which came in after Jesus, and without His author' j or example, has wrought more mischief to our religion than all the forces of the world. It has introduced a barbaric element into theology, seen in the bleed- ing Christs of the crucifixes and the gloomy conceptions of God expressed in certain creeds; it has lowered the purity of the family to a second order, and placed a nun above a mother ; it has refused to recognise the hand of God beyond a certain sphere, and has again and again divorced culture and religion; it has darkened many lives and embittered the sweetness of life. It has been the nightmare of religion. Of course if there are only the two ways of it — the way of the Sadducees and the way of the Baptist — and one had to choose either to be a pagan or an ascetic, then any serious person would take asceticism without hesitation. If harmonious and all-round perfedlion be impossible for human nature, and a man must be maimed somewhere, let us have perfedtion on those highest reaches where the soul has communion with God, and let other sides of our nature wither and perish. Better be a monk writhing on his cell floor than a pagan crowned with roses; but one does not want to be a monk, and both extremes are unreasonable. When a certain type of modern resolves the sense of sin into [95] THE LIFE OF THE MASTER dyspepsia, he offen^s against reason because he has denied the spiritual in man. When a saint departs without bidding his mother farewell, and walks a day's journey beside the lovely Lake of Geneva without seeing it, he also offends against reason, for he has denied the human in man. Paganism is a headless figure, asceticism one without hands or feet; and if we cannot have the whole, let us have the head. If it be needful, then let a man fling Horace into the fire, with Homer and Virgil, and keep A Kempis; but if he has chosen the better portion,' still it remains that he has missed perfedion. One of the moderns, whose delicate lambent satire played very profitably round the limitations of our religious thought, has asked how Virgil and Shakespeare would have lived in the May- flower with the Puritans, and leaves it to be inferred not over well. Perhaps not; but that does not mean that either party was perfed: it only means that the Humanists had something which the ascetics lacked, and that the ascetics were strong where the Humanists were weak. We dare not belittle Puritanism: we must love Humanism, and we cling to the belief that they are not enemies. Would not the perfedt life be one wherein that sympathy with every human interest, which is the charm of Shakespeare, is combined with that passion for God which burned in the hearts of the Hebrew prophets? This would be life not divided and crippled, but harmonious and complete; life without fear or bondage, life rich and fruitful. This would be life according to the very ideal of reason ; it has never been seen but once, and that was in the Gospels. You turn from the classics, charmed but dissatisfied; something is wanting — spirituality; you turn from the Puritans, stimulated but dissatisfied; some- thing is wanting— humanity. You turn to Jesus, to find earth and heaven meeting in His life. Jesus came from the awful solitude of the wilderness and the temptation of the Evil One. He threw Himself into the joy of [96] A REASONABLE LIFE a marriage feast, and would delight to speak of Himself after- wards as a Bridegroom. He spent nights in prayer on the moun- tain side, and by day would enter into the games of the children. Every day He denied Himself, being poor and homeless, and He feasted also with publicans and sinners. His meat and His drink were to found the kingdom of God, and unto that end He died upon the Cross, but He was not indifferent to the flowers of the field or the glory of the sky, or the springing of the seed, or the birds of the air. Jesus was chiefly intent on the salvation of the soul with its vast possibilities and opportunities, but He entered kindly into the labours, joys, humour, sorrows of ordi- nary human life. Nothing Divine was foreign to Him, nor any- thing human. Jesus stands aside in His gravity from a world that was crying, " What shall we eat and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?" He also stands in His sympathy apart from the Baptist with His rdment of camel's hair and leathern girdle. He only has never come short and never exceeded. He only has compassed the length and breadth and depth and height of life. Who "Saw life steadily and saw it whole," and in His presence and at His word the water of life, in all its vessels of love and labour, culture and religion, has turned into wine. [97] Chapter XI: TheVerdid of Jerusalem URING His public life Jesus visited many distridls within His fixed boundary of the Holy Land, from the banks of the Jordan, where He made His first disciples among pious Jews, to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, where He was amazed at the faith of a Canaanite woman; from Sychar, where He gave a Samaritan to drink of the water of life, to C^sarea Philippi, where St. Peter made his classical confession. His name will, however, be associ- ated with four places only: the village where He was born; that other where He spent His private life; the town which He made His own by word and miracle ; and the city which crucified Him; but, among the four, one has a final preemi- nence. In His own day it was one of the many ironies of His lot to be called a Nazarene, and to have it flung in His face that no good thing could come out of Nazareth; while, in fadl. He was born in the home of David, and the people of Naza- reth disowned Him with rude violence. In later days it has been one of the glories of His fame that, while He seledled Caper- naum for its candour and kindliness, and made it His residence, and while He never entered Jerusalem except of necessity, and Jerusalem gave Him nothing but a cross, it is not to the heap [99] THE LIFE OF THE MASTER i If of ruins by the Galilean lake, the very doubtful site of Jesus' own city, that pilgrims make their way, but to the Mount of Olives, and to the Church of the Sepulchre. Time changes the proportion of things ; and although Jesus lived months in Capernaum, for days in Jerusalem, every one knows that Jesus won His crowning vidlory, not where He healed the sick and raised the dead in Galilee, but where He Himself was bound, and where He died in Jewry. And as conquerors take their titles from chief battlefields, so the Master, who was once Jesus of Nazareth, is now, in our ..bought if not our speech, Jesus of Jerusalem. It was, after all, of secondary importance where the birth- place of Jesus was, or the scene of His labors; it was impos- sible that He Himself or His car*" should be independent of Jt rusalem. The capital of a country is not as any other city, however large and interesting: it is supreme. While a nation is young and unconscious, while it is only forming and has not realised itself, the capital is but a nume. As soon as the nation is a unity with a character, a tradition, a mission, it concen- trates itself in a centre. One place becomes not only its seat of government, but its seat of thought and feeling. Into it are gathered the thinkers, leaders, flower of the people. Within the length and breadth of the land there may be many types, but the metropolitan is the one which rules and is representative. The metropolis is the brain into which the nerves gather, from which the will adls, where everything is felt, appreci- ated, decided. When one speaks of the Roman empire, one means Rome ; Greece is a synonym for Athens ; Paris has monopolised France; and Berlin has come to be the heart of the greater Germany ; notwithstanding a constitution protedt- ing local independence, and the vast distances of the United States, Washington is asserting her place; and with every year London is more and more absorbing the strength of England. [lOO] THE VERDICT OF JERUSALEM Towards the capital the masters in every department of letters, art, politics, religion, gravitate: it is on that field great issues are fought and decided. While the provinces have a voice, the capital, for weal oi woe, decides the destinies of a land and a people. Among the chief cities of the world, Jerusalem had (and still has) a place beyond parallel. She was chosen in the first flush of Hebrew nationalism, and established by the founder of the royal dynasty, round whose person gathers a perennial fascina- tion, and whose name, under the hand of each new prophet, blossoms afresh into magnificent predictions. Jerusalem stood on the site of an ancient fortress, and was beautiful for situa- tion, being girt about with hills, and of striking elevation. Aus- tere, strong, commanding, massive, it became this city to be the capital of the Hebrew people, and the shrine of the Hebrew faith. Here the throne of David was established, and from Sion went forth the Law. Here also in due time was built the Temple of Jehovah, and the ark came to rest. Unto this place, from the ends of the land and of the world, came the pious Jew to worship God in His House on the great festivals, going up with a song, his children and his kinsfolk with him. Far away in some foreign land, the exiled Jew poured out his heart in unequalled threnodies, wherein he tiiirsted for God as the hart for the water brooks, and envied the bird which made its nest under the eaves of God's House. The Jew car- ried Jerusalem not in his memory or in his loyalty, but in his heart, till this city grew into the very hope and ideal of God's kingdom, so that St. Paul compared the state of grace unto the new Jerusalem, and St. John saw the Holy City coming down from Heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. The dispersion of the Jews and the loss of national independ- ence did not reduce, but rather reinforced, Jerusalem, giving her a stronger and more pious hold on her children. More than [lOl] THE LIFE OF THE MASTER ever she became the centre ot" union for a people politically broken and persecuted, more than ever their authoritative guide in the growing perplexities and difficulties of their life. When an army is defeated, it falls back (if it should be so fortunate) on an impregnable base; and on ths capital, with her history, traditions, sandlity, the Jew rested wit!, unquestioning faith in the days of our Lord. Here as in a citadel, was preserved safe from harm the pure c> jed; here was held forth the i xample of divine worship; here the supreme court of thought and con- duct sat. If any one stepped forth from private life and pre- sumed to teach, to Jerusalem he must come for approval, from Jerusalem he could neither escape nor hide. If he went into the wilderness, there would her agents Hnd and question him; if he kept himself to Galilee, there would her spies dog him. He might go to distant cities of the Gentiles, but his case would be reported to Jerusalem, and a decision issued. As soon as Jesus assumed the position of a rabbi He came within the province of Jerusalem, and sooner or later must be judged by the authorities of the Jewish Church. Jesus began His ministry in Galilee, ar ' seems at once to have won the good will of the people, so t' He paid His first visit to Jerusalem as a prophet with so ' . reputation, and it ap- peared as if He might leave the provinces behind Him. This matters little in any country, and in th.u land it mattered nothing; it was only at the best a success of estimation. G?li- lee did itself honour by its reception of Jesus, and one can understand its ready appreciation. The atmosphere in that northern province was simple, unafFedtcd, liberal; the atmos- phere of Jerusalem was conventional, narrow, artificial. It were wrong to conclude that Galilee had never produced prophets and great men, for she also had her prophots and heroes ; or that Galilee was rude and uncivilised, for that province was saturated with Gentile civilisation ; but there is no doubt that [102] THE VERDICT OF JERUSALEM in Jesus' day the native Galilean was considered unlearned ac- cording to the standard of culture in Jerusalem, ai d that his very accent was an offence in the capital. He was but a poor ally in a conflidl with the central Power — qui.k to respond, quick also to desist, full of sympathy, but easily cowed; a man whose enthusiastic hosanna woulu die away into a timid quaver before the fierce, strident cry of the Jew of Jerusalem, "Cru- cify Him, crucify Him." Ajj,ainst the sullen and massive strength of Jerusalem the bright spirit and kindly devotion of Galilee would dash itself in vain. It is difficult to imagine any one from the provinces conciliating Jerusalem; but when one came from Nazareth, a by-word for Philistinism, and came not with the theology of the schools, but with a fresh and win- some Evangel which had in it the breath of the wmd and the fragrance of the flowers, it was not difficult to prophesy his fate. If any one could have awaited the judgment of Jerusalem with confidence, it was Jesus, for here the light of ancient faith had burned most clearly, and Jesus was the very glory preached by the Prophets. If Isaiah alone had not made the scholars of Israel ready for the Master, then it would seem as if neither prophecy nor scholarship were of any use. From the eighth century the best minds of a nation were being trained in the likeness of the Messiah, and yet the most famous and honoured could not distinguish it from that of a heretic and a criminal when he stood before Him. It is, beyond measure, distressing — so sad an irony on all human study; it is almost incredible — so immense a stupidity. One must, however, remember, in order to appreciate the situation, that from that very date on to Jesus' day there had been two schools of religious thought in Jerusalem with very different tendencies and effefts. One was ritual and dogmatic, wnich laid the emphasis on sacri- fices and observance, on nationalism and customs, so that one who kept the Temple rites and made many prayers and Iiated [103] THE LIFE OF THE MASTER the Gentiles was a good Jew. The other was moral and ipir- ttual, laying stress on the character of the heart, on the con- dud ot life, on the knowledge of God. so that he who loved mercy and did justly and walked humbly with God was the true son of Israel. The priest was the type of the one party, although, owing to circ-nistances, the Pharisee was its defender m Jesus' day ; the predict was the forefront of the other, and between the two there had been a long and irreconcilable feud, which .ndctii has extended to all lands and all ages. What the priests di i we can see in the minute and wearisome ceremo- nial, which was fastened as an intolerable yoke on the Jewish people. What the prophets said we have read in the most virile and elevated religious literature ever produced by any people. Against the bondage and futility, the unreality and hypocrisy, of ritual the prophets lifted up their voice with biting sarcasm,' with hot indignation, and with irresistible spiritual force. They did not spare the foolishness of sacrifices, with their minute and loathsome regulations, "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?" They were very severe on those early Pharisees who offered ceremonies instead of righteous- ness. "Bring no more vain oblations: incense is an abomina- tion to Me: the new moons and sabbaths ... I cannot away with Wash you, make you clean ... cease to do evil, learn to do well." They struck out the eternal and searching contrast be- tween rites and reality. "Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire. . . . Then said I, Lo, I come. ... I delight to do Thy will, O God." They pierced below all forms to the heart of things. "Thou desirest not sacrifice. . . Thou delightest not in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise."' [104] THE VERDICT OF JERUSALEM Between these schools there can be no reconciliation nor any via media. The priest may admit that righteousness of life is desirable, but he will insist that it can be of no avail without sacrifices; and the prophet will at once grant that through the barhariiim of sacrifices men have struggled into the secret of religion, but he will insist that the ground of acceptance with God must be the obedience i)f the heart, not the blood of goats and bulls. For long centuries in Israel had the priest and the prophet been at war, and there can be no question who was the better. Among the priests there were some brave and good men, from Phinehas, who executed judgment, to Zacharias, the father of Jesus' forerunner, and there were liars and char- latans among the prophets, but on the whole and as a class the priests were a hindrance and burden to Israel, from Aaron, who taught the people to worship the golden calf, to Caiaphas, who led his nation to the great crime of history; and on the whole and as a class the prophets were a strength and inspira- tion, from Moses, who gave to Israel the moral code, untoi John Baptist, who prepared them for Jesus. Unfortunately there can be as little question who, to appearance, won. The priest was established, endowed, honoured, obeyed; the prophet was solitary, feared, persecuted ; the priest had every advantage of prejudice and custom; the prophet had only the secret respeft of the reason anu conscience. It was easy to satisfy the priest — follow the ritual a ■! do then as you please; the prophet demanded holinebs. The ;-rtcjt taught that you belonged to an exclusive nation — the f?>'ourites of God, but the prophet would on occasion suggcjt that Nineveh was as dear to God. So the prophet was defeated and slain, and the priest rejoiced in his insolence at Jerusalem. And Jesus was a prophet in whom the intensity and spirituality of all the prophets, from Elijah to the Baptist, had been gathered up and glorified. ['051 U'^ THE LIFE OF THE MASTER The collision between Jesus and Jerusalem was inevital le from the beginning, and, as it happened, it came on Jesus' first offi- cial visit to the capital. As a lad at a critical period of His life He had visited the Temple, and there He had been in- spired by the teaching of the rabbis. Now he saw things with larger, deeper eyes. Unto Jesus the Temple of Jerusa- lem was the visible symbol of His Father's House, although there was ever before His eyes that House not made with hands, eternal and spiritual in the Heavenly Places; and the honour and purity of the Temple were dear to the Master. To Jesus as a prophet the dangers of an elaborate ritual must have been very present, and to Him as a man the barbarity of the sacrifices must have been a keen offence. Conceive what must have been the horror and disgust of this tender and delicate Soul as He witnessed that carnival of butchery — the streaming al- tars, the stench of carnage, the gory priests, the gutters running blood. It was chara(fleristic of Jesus, however, that He let this savagery of worship pass, as it had been to pious souls of the past a gross pidlure of the hideousness of sin and the surrender of self to God, as it was not at least a hypocrisy and worldly gain. There was that going on within the outer places of the Tem- ple which Jesus could not for an instant tolerate, because it had nothing to do with piety, because it was the very destruc- tion of religion. Since an immense number of unfortunate animals were needed for the sacrifices, certain enterprising traders had started a cattle market in the outer court; and as it was necessary to change Gentile coins into shekels where- with to pay the Temple tax, other enterprising bankers had started a money exchange. Within the very precinfts of God's House cattle were bought and sold, with loud, heated bargains, and the chink of money was heard from morning to night, and it occurs to one at once that it would be the traders and not the simple folk from the country who would have the [106] A THE VERDICT OF JERUSALEM _ best of the transadions. As Jesus looked upon the scene — the big, coarse, cattle dealers bullying some poor Jew of the Dis- persion, the sly moneychangers cheating a widow on the turn of exchange — He was very angry. Availing Himself of His prophetical authority, before which this herd of hucksters trembled and cowered, and supported by the goodwill of the people. He drove far the cattle and upset the money stalls, using a whip of small cords, and declaring that they had turned a House of Prayer into a den of thieves. If one should look at this adlion from a worldly point of view, it can hardly be called an auspicious opening to Jesus' pro- phetical career in Jerusalem. His condud: was unguarded and uncompromising, showing little sense either of the awfulness of Jerusalem or the obscurity of Galilee. By one stroke He offended the priests, whose interests were bound up with the Temple merchandise, and the Pharisees, who stood by the cus- toms of the past. What would this daring young Prophet do next? Who would be safe? If the hucksters were cast out to- day, it would be the turn of the priests with their empty sac- rifices to-morrow, and the scribes with their empty dodtrines the day after. If one regards the cleansing of the Temple from a spiritual standpoint, then it was grand, and a good omen of Jesus' prophetical work. A Prophet had arisen who revived the ancient spirit of Isaiah, and who dared to attack the abuses of religion before the eyes of all the people. Nor was He a hermit like the Baptist, or a mere iconoclast, for He was one who re- joiced in everything human, and wrought miracles of mercy. Hisgentleness was to the weak, Hisanger against thestrong; and if He was eaten up with zeal, it was the zeal of God's House. The cleansing of the Temple declared Jesus to be on the side of the prophets and against the priests ; and on that visit the authorities marked the Master as a turbulent and dangerous demagogue, whom they must watch and might have to sup- [107] ^\\ Hi - THE LIFE OF THE MASTER press. It was not their policy to show their hand or to aft rashly, since they were not indifferent to the favour of the peo- ple, and the influence of John Baptist had to be reckoned with. The prophets had been a power — very disturbing to priests and they had secured one advantage at least for real religion — that a prophet must be heard. It would be madness to silence Jesus at once ; He was, at least, a candidate for the prophetship, and even such an iconoclastic action as the cleans- ing of the Temple was sandioned by prophetical usage. Peo- ple were already quoting from Isaiah in his favour, and He had Himself used certain words of Jeremiah in a very bold fashion. Let Him rather be put to a conventional and unobjeftionable test : and so the rulers came to the Master, representing with smooth courtesy and plausible words, that as He did the proph- et's work He ought to show them the prophet's sign. It was not that they douhted or wished to criticise Him, but they had a responsibility in this matter of religion, and the sign was to be simply for their satisfadtion and His confirmation. Jesus re- plied with one of His charafteristic riddles, which He used to baffle dishonest people and to stimulate His disciples' thought. Destroy this Temple in its strength and magnificence by which He evidently intended the worn-out system of sacri- fices and forms — and in three days — a proverbial figure for a short time — I will raise it up ; by which He meant that He would create a new and nobler religion. His critics could make nothing of His answer at the time, but they stored it away, in all its audacity and perplexity, and some two years later it served the rulers' purpose, for by this very answer, twisted to their own meaning by perjured witnesses, the Mas- ter's life was sworn away. Nothing more passed at that time between Jesus and the Sanhedrim, but the Jewish Church had pradtically rejected Jesus, and His death charge was al- ready in the archives of the Jewish Inquisition. [108] m Chapter XII: His Own City I'S^r--.^ I^^^3Hh^^9HH T is a law of human life that while the seen passes and is forgotten, the unseen remains and is treasured. What confers on a place immortality and a secure hold, on history and men's hearts, is not its situation or size, its wealth or grandeur, but the heroes who have lived there and the work they have done. Unto the end of the chapter people will pass kings* castles and huge cities to visit Stratford-on-Avon and Grasmere, Concord and Assisi, for the sake of choice souls who have made life richer and brought Heaven nearer. Generation after generation wants to see the woods of Shakespere, the hills of Wordsworth, the sweet Um- brian ways along which St. Francis sang of Jesus, the path to Thoreau's wood Emerson paced so often. Contemporaries can- not tell for certain who are the immortals of their day; time alone, like an irresistible and impartial acid, will destroy the common paste and declare the imperishable gem. We are apt to be impressed by some blatant personage, swollen with the honours of the people; we overlook the man of genius whose name will pass into the records of the race. Shrewd traders may cram a city with silver and gold and its name be forgotten in a century; let one of its people write a hundred pages of true [109] I Li I f THE LIFE OF THE MASTER literature, and he will have rescuer! his birthplace from ob- livion for ever. It is not the king, nor the soldier, nor the mil- lionaire who glorifies his dwelling-place unto all generations; it is the poet, the saint, and the prophet. A supreme illustration of this law can be found on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. In the beginning of the first century two towns stood on the w -stern edge of the Sea of Galilee, and only a short distance apart, which were a visible and striking con- trast. One was Tiberias, the political capital of the province of Galilee and the residence of Herod Antipas,its Tetrarch, whose magnificent palace was reflefted on the bosom of the lake, and whose licentious court scandalised the distridt. The other was Capernaum, a town which had neither distinftion nor feshion, but depended for a modest prosperity on its fishing industry,* Its cistom house, and its situation on the caravan road between Damascus and the coast. It was a busy little commercial town m the shadow of glittering, brazen Tiberias, whose citizens worked hard for their bread, and saw, the great folk pass in their glory to and from the local capital. There is no mention of the town in Old Testament history; and if Joscphus gives It a place in his pages, it is only because he was carried there after an accident, yet to-day, save for a medical mission, the miserable village of Tiberias is negledled. while learned per- sons dispute keenly the site of Capernaum, and travellers are thankful that amid the ruins of Tell-Hum the remains of a synagogue can still be found. Some devout Christians will not visit Palestine because theglory of the land has departed under the Turkish blight and the pro- fanity of modern improvements. This Galilee, barren and de- serted, is very different from the smiling land, with its crowded villages, through which Jesus moved in His pity and grace. Others have a pious interest in seeing the lake which Jesus so often crossed, and treading the great roads along which He went [no] fi HIS OWN CITY on His journeys. Whether they have ever seen the Holy Land or not, all the disciples of the Master must carry within their imagination the map of Galilee for ever associated with Jesus, and this map has been created by love. It matters not how pros- perous or famous a town may have been, if Jesus did not honour it with His presence, it will have no place in this sa- cred geography; it is nothing that a village was small and ob- scure if the Master wrought His mighty works there, or found a disciple, or received a kindness, its name is written in im- perishable letters; and this map, which is rather a pidture and a home, has for its heart and centre not Tiberias but Capernaum, since Tiberias was only the city of Herod Anti- pas, but Capernaum was Jesus' own city. It is usually a man's lot to live in various places, but there will be one which is his choice and to which his heart is given. Jesus was born in Bethlehem; He was educated in Nazareth; He was crucified in Jerusalem; in none of those arrangements had He any voice. For three years or so He could arrange His life as He pleased, and His first act of freedom on the thresh- old of His great career, was to fix upon the sphere of His labour and the centre from which He would evangelise it. Three places already competed for His favour, and each made its own appeal. He might have fixed His home in the wilderness of Judea whither John Baptist had drawn the people and made them ready for the kingdom. Here, where Jesus had accepted the guilt of the people, He might have saved them; where He had conquered Satan He might h:\ve cast Satan out. But Jesus had • love for what was repulsiveand inhuman — thedesertand the Id beast. Dear to our Master was the sight of human faces, and the works ( of men, and the sound of children's voices, and the softness of \ Nature. It would seem as if Jerusalem was determined before- hand to be the city of Jesus, — as indeed in the end it was to be His by the conquest of the Cross — for outofjerusalema prophet [III] THE LIFE OF THE MASTER \ i could hardly perish, and there had the chief prophets declared the Will of God. Here was surely the vantage ground from which the new voice could reach the ends of the Jewish world; here were the men who could understand the new message and be its fit apostles. On the other hand, it is plain that Jesus would really have had no opportunity in the capital and would have had every one against Him — the priests whose interests He touched, the Pharisees whose doctrines He did not hold, and the Romans who were suspicious of every reference to a king- dom. It was inevitable that He should be persecuted ; it was cer- tain that He would be put to death, but He must have a space wherein to sow His seed, and that He could not have in Judea. Nazareth, again, had none of the dangers of the capital, and it had been His home for thirty years. Here in the bosom of the hills, far from the bigotry of Jerusalem and the ferment of the towns. He might lay the foundations of His society. But it is not always an advantage to be among your own people, and Jesus did not desire a secluded village for His jirst effort. For His mis- sion was ncededatownundominatedbythccapital, in touch with a large population, with an open-minded people. Capernaum ful- filled every condition, and Jesus chose it for His own city. For the Master and His work, as the Evangelist of the Divine Love, it was not the least advantage that by general consent the Lake of Galilee was byfar the loveliest spot in the HolyLand,so that the rabbis had a saying, "The land has seven seas, but Gen- nesaret God made for himself" Twelve miles long and rather more than seven at its widest, shaped like a lyre, and broken as to its shores into many curves and little headlands, with blue water and white sand, the Lake of Galilee lay amid its sloping green hills a vision of peace and beauty. On the eastern side the ground rose in billows of green, cut by ravines into the wilderness, where Jesus went for solitude and where He spent so many hours of intimate communion with God. Between the hills and the lake [112] HIS OWN CITY on the western side lay the Plain of Gennesarct, than which there was no more fertile spot in the world. In this garden, watered by mountain streams and rich in volcanic soil, Nature, Josephus declares, had outdone herself, casting aside for once her limitations of place and season and revelling in the very license of produftion, for the walnut, the palm, the olive and the vine grew side by side, and for ten months out of the twelve fruit could be found in Gennesarct. All Galilee was, in those happy days, a land of streams and fountains, of woodsand flowers, and the very heart thereof was the Lake of Tiberias. While the des- ert ot Judea, with its arid sands, suggested the austerity of life, the valleys of Galilee, smiling with corn, were a parable of the gladness of life. It was fitting that the Baptist should thunder re- pentance amid a scene of desolation; it was fitting that Jesus should proclaim the excellent grace of the Kingdom of Heaven with a background of beauty. Galilee had this further attradtion for the Master, that it was not only blessed by Nature, but also crowded with people. Some fif- teen towns lay on the shores of the lake, prosperous and stirring with life,making an almost continuous line of human homcs.Thc lake was never without the sails of a fishing boat or the glitter of a royal galley. Along her great west road, called the Way by theSea, camecaravansfrom Damascus to Greece; down her south road went droves of camels to Egypt, and her innumerable by- ways were crowded with many feet in that mostpopulous of prov- inces. The stir of the Gentile world was felt in Galilee ; her own life was bright and strenuous. If the Galileans had a provincial accent, like a western man in New York, or a Lancashire man in London, and if they were ignorant of the refinements of the- ological culturein which Jerusalem delighted, they were quicker and keener than the Judeans. They were less held by conven- tionalities, and less fettered by prejudices ; they were more open and enthusiastic ; they were nearer the heart of things. When ["3] THE LIFE OF THE MASTER I hi. Jesus began His ministry in Galilee, He laid His hand on the living pulse of the nation and of the world. As some centre was needed from which the Master could go out on His missionary journeys, Jesus chose the village of Caperna- um, and there He was more or less resident during His Galilean ministry. Round this town, whose very site is doubtful, gathers an afFedtionate interest, andsomany were the incidents that hap- pened here that one can reconstruft His Capernaum from the Gospels, till its streets be familiar ground, and we know its houses at sight. Here is the modest little synagogue, which the Ro- man officer in command of the local garrison built as a mark of respedt for the Jewish religion — whose excellency he had dis- covered beneath its crust of fanatical bigotry ; and as a testimony of his own faith in God — to whose knowledge he had come through the Hebrew Scriptures. Yonder ire the quarters where his servant lay sick, and whence he sent ihe message which won so high approval from Jesus. It was in this synagogue that Jesus cast out a devil one Sabbath, and, latef on, delivered His great discourse on Everlasting Life. Upon the outskirts stood the op- probrium of Capernaum, and the object of undying Jewish hate — a Roman custom house ; and here any day you might see Levi receiving taxes from those who journeyed along the Way of the Sea, and there, within stone's throw, is his private house, where one day he assembled his friends together, all fellow out- casts from society, and entertained Jesus at a feast in celebration of his new life. If we go to the other end of Capernaum, where live the magnates of the little community, we are still in the Gos- pels, for that is the house of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, where Jesus raiseJ i^ little maid from death and filled the house with gladness ; and on the other side of the street is the impos- ing residence of Simon the Pharisee, wh - Jesus was treated with such cold courtesy, and Mary Magdal' -ntered into peace. This again is only a street of poor homes, i. t yet it is memo- [«U] .>*M HIS OWN CITY rable, and cannot be passed by, for it was here that four faithful souls lifted the roof of a house and laid their sick friend at Jesus' feet; and the woman lived who touched the hem of Jesus' gar- ment and was healed. Near to the shore is the dwelling of Si- mon Peter.wherejesus wasa guest.andatwhosedoorthesickof Capernaum were gatheredone evening for His blessing, and here is the very place where the people stood while Jesus preached from a boat moored a little distance from the shore. Upon that lake Jesus walked, and Peter went to meet him ; through one of its sudden, dangerous storms Jesus lay asleep in the boat ; from its waters came the miraculous draught of fishes, and on its shore the Master showed Himself after the Resurredion. Never in the history of religion has any place had such privi- leges as Capernaun^ For two years the Master lived among its people, homely an "accessible, easy to be entreated and friendly with all. They could hear Him in the synagogue or in the open air; they could speak with Him on the street or in His lodgings. There was no kind of mighty work He did not perform in Ca- pernaum; there was no sorrow He did not compassionate. Never could the power and love of God have been brought so near hu- man hearts as in this favoured place. And it would not be true to say that Jesus laboured in vain, for from this place and neigh- bourhood He drew His Apostles; and here He found some of His most loyal friends. It remains, however, undeniable and most lamentable that the desire of Jesus' heart was not fulfilled, and that He bade farewell to the towns ofthe lake with asense of dis- appointment and a confession of failure. Galilee had given the Master a cordial hearing, and surrounded Him with enthusiasm, and afforded Him apostles, but Galilee as a whole had not be- lieved in Him nor cast in its lot with His kingdom; only a few had heard the Divine call and obeyed; the rest had been as the shallow soil, wherein the seed springs up quickly, and then as quickly withers awixy, So it came to pass that Galilee rejeded [115] i i . f t n THE LIFE OF THE MASTER Jc8U8, through fickleness, as Jerusalem was to crucify Him through bigotry ; and the guilt of Galilee was the greater. As Jesus thought of the day of salvation given unto the cities of the lake and their foolishness. He lifted up His voice in sorrow and in- dignation, " Woe unto thee, Chorazin I" " Woe unto thee, Beth- saida!" and then as He looked on the city that He had made His own by His choice and labour, bathed in thelight of the set- ting sun. His voice takes a deeper note, " And thou. Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell:' ifthemighty workswhichhavebeen done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have remained unto this day. But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee." \n [ii6] i. SITE OF BETHSAIDA ON THE LAKE f F GALILEE f I.JJLiA,) \() AA/ A nil /') MIl/ynriH lo } I 1^ if ! Chapter XIII: The Rejeaion of Nazareth ETWEEN the outgoing of Je- sus from Nazareth, when He went to the baptism of John, and His home-coming, when He returned to Nazareth from Capernaum, there were, pos- sibly, only a few months in time, bat there was an incal- culable difference in life. He left with the recent convic- tion of the Messiahship, and He returned with the open witness of God to His call. He left with the sense of latent power. He returned with the sandion of mighty works. The spiritual impulses and heavenly dreams of youth — the blossoms of spring — had come to fruit, and His mysterious aloofness, as of one living here in disguise, had been vindicated. At the quiet hour of noon when He rested from labour, or in the evening as He wandered on the hill- side above the village. He hid imagined the outer world and the work before Hirn. Now He came down from the glory of the capital, and up from the stir of Capernaum, having laid His hand to God's work, and not having been put to confu- sion. It was not possible that He could be elated, for from the day of His baptism to the day of His crucifixion He was the lo'vliest in all the land; nor could He be free from a certain sad anticipation. Who already knew that He would be rejedted ["7] amm "frr I n THE LIFE OF THE MASTER by the rulers of His people. .Still it was with a just sense of His new position that He revisitf d the scenes of His youth, and the one desire in His heart was to confer that blessing with which He was charged, and which had already made glad Capernaum. , Notwithstanding the lamentable sscene that was to take place in the synagogue, we may believe that on the Friday evening, as Jesus came up the village street, His fellow townsmen re- garded His return with kindly interest. It has to be accepted as a lamentable fad that the perplexity of dull minds, which cannot appreciate spiritual genius near at hand, hindered His own family from believing on Him, and that religious bigotry in the end turned tht hearts of His fellow citizens against Him; but it is not credible that Jesus could have lived for thirty years in Nazareth, going out and in among His fellow- men, even with all the reserves of those days, without being marked and loved. If in His youth He worked no miracles. He had the heart ••o sympathise with suffering; and if He preached no discourse. He must have dropped sayings which were treasured in some pious hearts. Nor is it possible that of all in Nazareth, however uncouth, dull and unspiritual the lit- tle town may have been, none anticipated His greatness. Even in Nazareth there must have been a few discerning souls — His teacher of the synagogue, a fellow scholar brighter than his class, some aged saint with whom he hrxd conversed on spir- itual things, a friend of later years, like the young men of Galilee — who were not astonished when the news of His ap- pearances in Capernaum reached the highland town, and who went that memorable Sabbath morning to the synagogue with a high hope. It is not possible to exaggerate the position of the synagogue in a village like Nazareth, and its nearest parallel may be found in that land which has copied so much from the Jewish [Il8] I THE REJECTION OF NAZARETH Church, and into whose charader so much of the Jewish strength has been woven. As the traveller passes through some rural parish in Scotland, he will notice in some sheltered place, facing the sun, a clump of buildings which are withered with age, and have a certain simple dignity. They are the kirk and the manse, the school and schoolmaster's house, with God's acre round the kirk, and this is the heart and brain of the par- ish. It is here that the people have learned all they know of this world and the next; here that they are bound by their free- dom and the graves of their fathers to the generations which are gone, by their children and the Resurredtion of the Lord to the generations to come ; here that they have been made in- telligent men and sturdy patriots, and believing Christians; here that they realise their unity, and their duties, and their fellowship as part of a religious and political commonwealth. The Jewish synagogue was not pi