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HAND BOOK
FOR
E CLASSES.

LIFE OF CHRIST

REV. JAMES STAIKER.M.A

CHICAGO.
NRY. A. SUMNER M)o.

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CHICAGO.

THE LIFE

OF

JESUS CHEIST

REV. JAMES STALKER, M. A.

WITH AH INTRODUCTION BY
REV. GEORGE C. LORIMER, D.D.,

CHICAGO:
HENRY A. SUMNER AND COMPANY.
1882.

COPYRIGHT,
HENRY A. SUMNER AND COMPANY,
1880.

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INTRODUCTION.

The life of Cheist is an exhaustless theme. It reveals a
character of greater massiveness than the hills, of serener
beauty than the stars, of sweeter fragrance than the
flowers; higher than the heavens in sublimity and deeper
than the seas in mystery. As good Jean Paul has elo
quently "said, " It concerns Him who, being the holiest
among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, lift
ed with His pierced hands empires off their hinges, turned
the stream of centuries out of its channels, and still gov
erns the ages."
Christ in history is undoubtedly more marvellous than
Christ in Galilee; but to understand His relation to all
subsequent time, and to the course of human events, His
brief earthly career, and briefer ministry must be carefully
studied and thoroughly mastered. Since His visible pres
ence faded from human sight he has swayed a world-wide
scepter, and has wrought more stupendous miracles than
He performed in Syria. There and then He merely opened
the eyes of a few blind men, restored to health some who
were sick, fed occasionally a hungry crowd, and raised
from among the dead an inconsiderable number to life; but
since His ascension He has removed from nations the veil of
mental darkness, has imparted moral health to entire com
munities, has satisfied the longings of millions for the
imperishable bread, and has rescued tribes, races, and
peoples from the dreariness of spiritual death. For some
nineteen centuries He has been the real leader of the
3

4 INTRODUCTION.
world's progress. Its majestic movements, surprising
revolutions, startling reformations, upheavals, convulsions,
and transformations, are traceable to His influence. His
name and the power of His name, are written in the learn
ing, art, science, government of all these ages, and they
blaze conspicuously on the fair brow of modern civiliza
tion. How intensely interesting, and how immensely
important then must be the biography that explains the
secret of such measureless potency, and that lays bare the
cause of such gigantic and practically boundless sover
eignty. Only in the faithful record of the life, in the
narrative of its origin, surroundings, vicissitudes, peculiari
ties and consummation can the true solution of the" problem
involved be discovered; and it is this conviction that leads
so many thoughtful students to lavish the wealth of their
learning on biographies of Jesus, and that constrains so
many more earnest inquirers to ponder unweariedly the
results of their labors. They alike delve among the roots
that they may understand the flower; they dive into the
spring that they may comprehend the stream; they uncover
the footprints that they may measure the feet, and they
lift once more the dead hand into life that they may ascer
tain how it sways so mighty a scepter.
The author of the following pages has made a fresh
effort in this direction, especially adapted to the young.
Its claims on their attention will be more fully appreciated
by its perusal than by a preparatory review; and yet it
may be said on its behalf that in addition to its modesty
and simplicity, and apart from its incidental, but effective,
treatment of the question of questions, to which allusion
has been made, it suggests to the youthful reader some
highly important thoughts that can not fail to prove of last
ing benefit.
The first of these is, that history can not be explained

INTRODUCTION. 0
on the materialistic principles of Buckle and Draper. It
is neither a science of averages nor a philosophy of fatal
ity. The sources of its movements, and the order of their
occurrence are spiritual and intellectual. They are to be
traced to mind, to thought, to free mental agency, not to a
physical necessity, at once both unchanging and irrevoca
ble. Christ entered the world, and His ministry arrested
the course of human development and progress. He was
not the outgrowth of His times, but their antithesis. He
was not born of their spirit, but was rather its antagonist.
And He changed their character, and laid the foundations
of a new history, a history as different from the past as
cosmos is from chaos. What is true of Him, is, in a less
degree, true of others. Confucius created China, Buddha
fashioned India, and to them may be traced the course of
events which make up the annals of these vast empires.
So inventors, philosophers, reformers, of various ages and
of various countries, are forces that modify and mold so
ciety, and that are constantly diverting the stream of
advancement into new channels. They are the real factors
of history; and the recognition of this fact imparts to
humanity its true importance, and reveals the vastness of
individual power and the awfulness of individual responsi
bility. It is also suggested by this study of Christ's life, that
of all the forces that govern in history, the spiritual are the
most mighty and irresistible. Jesus was not a soldier, not
a temporal sovereign, not a merchant-prince, nor indeed,
anything very great as this world counts greatness. He
was a teacher, a moralist, prophet, preacher, a representa
tive of the classes who are distinguished by ideas, not by
swords, or wealth, or scepters. By the Apostle John He is
called the Word, the symbol of thought, the Word that
was with God, and hence a Word saturated through and

6 INTRODUCTION.
through with spiritual thought, with thought of the Eternal
and Invisible One, and of man's relation and duty to Him.
And it was this that paralyzed the Roman empire, that up
turned its institutions, and introduced a new civilization.
In the progress of art, in the revolutions of various lands,
and in the improvement of government, similar forces are
discernable. They are all rooted in spiritual ideas, and
all grow from spiritual germs. Not only sprang the Refor
mation, with all of its attendant blessings, from this source,
but to it may be traced the rise of liberty and the triumph
of philanthropy. From all of which the young may learn
that the measure of their influence on the age, and on future
ages, will simply be the measure of their spirituality in
thought and life.
But there is a final impression which the perusal of these
pages ought to make upon the reader. It is that man is
greater than his surroundings, and that even the most ad
verse circumstances are no excuse for weakness of charac
ter. It is possible to conquer difficulties, and in so doing
to generate or acquire spiritual force. This is abundantly
illustrated in the life of Christ. From poverty, from an
obscure and ill-reputed village, and from an atmosphere of
superstition and ignorance, He emerged strong in right
eousness and stainless in purity. His after trials, His strug
gles with hunger and weariness, and His conflicts with
wickedness and worldliness dimmed not, nor weakened
His moral excellence, but rather increased its brightness
and its strength. Others, like Jesus, have withstood the
shock of temptation and tribulation, their integrity and
piety taking deeper root on account of the tempests which
have burst upon them and that have threatened them with
destruction. Shall we doubt that this is still possible?
Shall we form the wretched habit of attributing our failures
to unfavorable environments, when not only the lives of

INTRODUCTION. 7
saints, but of poets, artists, and statesmen teach that an
earnest purpose and energetic will are more than able to
surmount and overcome them? No graver error can be
committed by the young. Its evil results are incalculable.
Indolence, supineness, listlessness attend it; and morose-
ness, melancholy, and discontent are its sure and bitter
fruits. It dooms its victims to uselessness and unhappiness;
to dissatisfaction with the present and to dread of the future.
Lord Bacon, referring to the philosopher, who when
contemplating the heavens fell into the stream, says : " If
he had looked down he might have seen the stars in the
water, but looking aloft he could not see the water in the
stars." And there are writers so exclusively and anxiously
concerned about the supernatural in Christ, that they over
look the real value of His life in the flesh, and drown their
influence for good in vague and fathomless speculations.
They should rather permit the earthly to reflect the heav
enly. This our author does; and in so doing, he not only
saves himself and others from profitless speculations, but
in embosoming the Divine in the human, suggests these
practical reflections, which, if applied, must elevate his
readers and bring enduring satisfaction to his own heart.
Chicago, October, 1880. G. C. L.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

The changes introduced into this new edition are few and
slight. But 1 am glad to have this opportunity of pointing
out, more distinctly than is done in the text, that the
names given to the different years of our Lord's public
ministry are descriptive only of their most prominent
characteristics, and especially that in what I have called
the Year of Public Favor, although the disposition of the
general mind toward Him was such as fully to justify the
designation, He was already assailed by the authorities
with much of the kind of opposition which is described in
the fifth chapter.
The kind reception accorded to the first edition of this
little Handbook seems to show that, notwithstanding the
number of works on the same subject which have recently
issued from the press, there was need of a book which, by
exhibiting in the briefest possible space the main features
and the general course of our Lord's life, should cause the
well-known details to flow together in the reader's mind
and shape themselves into an easily comprehended whole.
Kirkcaldy, March 1, 1880.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
CHAP. I. — THE BIRTH, INFANCY AND YOUTH OF JESUS, . . 10
CHAP. II. — THE NATION AND THE TIME, .... 28
DIVISIONS OF HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY, . 48
CHAP. III. — THE YEAR OF OBSCURITY, . 50
CHAP. TV. — THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR, . . 56
CHAP. V. — THE YBAB OF OPPOSITION, 92
CHAP. VI. — THE END, ...  112
CONCLUSION,  ..... 151
HINTS FOE TEACHERS AND QUESTIONS FOR PUPILS, . . 153

CHAPTER I.
THE BIBTH, INFANCY AND YOUTH OF JESUS.
Paragraphs 1-5. The Nativity.
6-10. The Group round the Infant.
7. The Shepherds; 8. Simeon and Anna; 9. The
WiseJVIen; 10. Herod.
11-24. The Silent Years at Nazareth.
11, 12. Lack of Trustworthy Records.
15, 16. His Home.
17-24. Educational Influences —
18. The Old Testament; 19. Human Nature;
20. Scenery of Nazareth; 21-23. Visits to
Jerusalem.

CHAPTER I.
the birth, infancy, and youth OF JESUS.
/. The Nativity. — Augustus was sitting on the throne
of the Roman empire, and the touch of his finger could set
the machinery of government in motion over well-nigh
the whole of the civilized world. He was proud of his
power and wealth, and it was one of his favorite occupa
tions to compile a register of the populations and revenues
of his vast dominions. So he issued an edict, as the Evan
gelist Luke says, " that all the world should be taxed," or
to express accurately what the words probably mean, that
a census, to serve as a basis for future taxation, should be
taken of all his subjects. One of the countries affected by
this decree was Palestine, whose king, Herod the Great,
was a vassal of Augustus. It set the whole land in mo
tion; for, in accordance with ancient Jewish custom, the
census was taken, not at the places where the inhabitants
were at the time residing, but at the places to which they
belonged as members of the original twelve tribes.
2. Among those whom the edict of Augustus thus from
afar drove forth to the highways were a humble pair in the
Galilean village of Nazareth — Joseph, the carpenter of the
village, and Mary, his espoused wife. They had to go a
journey of nearly a hundred miles in order to inscribe
themselves in the proper register; for, though peasants,
they had the blood of kings in their veins, and belonged to
the ancient and royal town of Bethlehem, in the far south
of the country. Day by day the emperor's will, like an in-

12 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
visible hand, forced them southward along the weary road,
till at last they climbed the rocky ascent that led to the gate
of the town, — he terrified with anxiety, and she well-nigh
dead with fatigue. They reached the inn, but found it
crowded with strangers, who, bent on the same errand as
themselves, had arrived before them. No friendly house
opened its door to receive them, and they were fain to
clear for their lodging a corner of the inn-yard, else occu
pied by the beasts of the numerous travelers. There, that
very night, she brought forth her first-born Son; and be
cause there was neither womanly hand to assist her, nor
couch to receive Him, she wrapped Him in swaddling-
clothes and laid Him in a manger.
3. Such was the manner of the birth of Jesus. I never
felt tne full pathos of the scene, till, standing one day in a
room of an old inn in the market-town of Eisleben, in
Central Germany, I was told that on that very spot, four
centuries ago, amidst the noise of a market-day and the
bustle of a public-house, the wife of the poor miner, Hans
Luther, who happened to be there on business, being sur
prised like Mary with sudden distress, brought forth in
sorrow and poverty the child who was to become Martin
Luther, the hero of the Reformation and the maker of
modern Europe.
4. Next morning the noise and bustle broke out again
in the inn and inn-yard; the citizens of Bethlehem went
about their work ; the registration proceeded ; and in the
meantime the greatest event in the history of the world
had taken place. We never know where a great beo-in-
ning may be happening. Every arrival of a new soul in
the world is a mystery and a shut casket of possibilities.
Joseph and Mary alone knew the tremendous secret — that
on her, the peasant maiden and carpenter's bride, had been

BIRTH, INFANCY AND YOUTH. 13
conferred the honor of being the mother of Him who was
the Messiah of her race, the Savior of the world, and the
Son of God.
5. It had been foretold in ancient prophecy that He
should be born on this very spot : " But thou, Bethlehem
Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of
Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto me that is
to be ruler in Israel." The proud emperor's decree drove
southward the anxious couple. Yes ; but another hand
was leading them on — the hand of Him who overrules the
purposes of emperors and kings, of statesmen and parlia
ments, for the accomplishment of His designs, though they
know them not ; who hardened the heart of Pharaoh, called
Cyrus like a slave to His foot, made the mighty Nebuchad
nezzar His servant, and in the same way could overrule for
His own far-reaching purpose the pride and ambition of
Augustus. 6. The Group around the Infant. — Although Jesus made
his entry on the stage of life so humbly and silently ; al
though the citizens of Bethlehem dreamed not what had
happened in their midst ; although the emperor of Rome
knew not that his decree had influenced the nativity of a
king who was yet to bear rule, not only over the Roman
world, but over many a land where Rome's eagles never
flew ; although the history of mankind went thundering
forward next morning in the channels of its ordinary in
terests, quite unconscious of the event which had happened,
yet it did not altogether escape notice. As the babe leaped
in the womb of the aged Elizabeth when the mother of her
Lord approached her, so, when He who brought the new
world with Him appeared, there sprang up anticipations
and forebodings of the truth in various representatives
of the old world that was passing away. There went

14 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
through sensitive and waiting souls, here and there, a dim
and half-conscious thrill, which drew them round the In
fant's cradle. Look at the group which gathered to gaze
on Him ! It represented in miniature the whole of His
future history.
7. First came the Shepherds from the neighboring
fields. That which was unnoticed by the kings and great
ones of this world, was so absorbing a theme to the princes
of heaven, that they burst the bonds of the invisibility in
which they shroud themselves, in order to express their
joy and explain the significance of the great event. And
seeking the most worthy hearts to which they might com
municate it, they found them in these simple shepherds,
living the life of contemplation and prayer in the sugges
tive fields where Jacob had kept his flocks, where Boaz
and Ruth had been wedded, and David, the great Old
Testament type, had spent his youth, and there, by the
study of the secrets and needs of their own hearts, learn
ing far more of the nature of the Savior who was to come
than the Pharisee amidst the religious pomp of the temple,
or the scribe burrowing without the seeing eye among the
prophecies of the Old Testament. The angel directed
them where the Savior was, and they hastened to the
town to find Him. They were the representatives of the
peasant people, with the " honest and good heart," who
afterwards formed the bulk of His disciples.
8. Next to them came Simeon and Anna, the represent
atives of the devout and intelligent students of the Scrip
tures, who at that time were expecting the appearance of
the Messiah, and afterwards contributed some of His most
faithful followers. On the eighth day after His birth, the
Child was circumcised, thus being " made under the law "
entering into the covenant, and inscribing His name in His
own blood in the roll of the nation. Soon thereafter,

BIRTH, INFANCY AND YOUTH. 15
when the days of Mary's purification were ended, they
carried Him from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to present Him
to the Lord in the temple. It was " the Lord of the temple
entering the temple of the Lord;" but few visitors to the
spot could have been less noticed by the priests, for Mary,
instead of offering the sacrifice usual in such cases, could
only afford two turtle doves, the offering of the poor. Yet
there were eyes looking on, undazzled by the shows and
glitter of the world, from which His poverty could not
conceal Him. Simeon, an aged saint, who in answer to
many prayers had received a secret promise that he should
not die till he had seen the Messiah, met the parents and
the child, when suddenly it shot through him like a flash
of lightning that this at last was He, and, taking Him up
in his arms, he praised God for the advent of the Light to
lighten the Gentiles and the Glory of His people Israel.
While he was still speaking, another witness joined the
group. It was Anna, a saintly widow, who literally dwelt
in the courts of the Lord, and had purified the eye of her
spirit with the euphrasy and rue of prayer and fasting till
it could pierce with prophetic glance the veils of sense.
She united her testimony to the old man's, praising God
and confirming the mighty secret to the other expectant
souls who were looking for redemption in Israel.
9. The shepherds and these aged saints were near the
spot where the new force entered the world. But it
thrilled susceptible souls at a much greater distance. It
was probably after the presentation in the temple and after
the parents had carried back their child to Bethlehem,
where it was their intention to reside instead of returning
to Nazareth, that He was visited by the Wise Men of the
East. These were members of the learned class of the
Magians, the repositaries of science, philosophy, medical
skill, and religious mysteries in the countries beyond the

16 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
Euphrates. Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus tell us that
in the regions from whence they came, there then pre
vailed an expectation that a great king was to arise in
Judasa. We know also from the calculations of the great
astronomer Kepler, that at this very time there was visible
in the heavens a brilliant temporary star. Now the Magi
were ardent students of astrology, and believed that any
unusual phenomenon in the heavens was the sign of some
remarkable event on earth; and it is possible that, connect
ing this star, to which their attention would undoubtedly
be eagerly directed, with the expectation mentioned by the
ancient historians, they were led westward to see if it had
been fulfilled. But there must also have been awakened
in them a deeper want, to which God responded. If their
search began in scientific curiosity and speculation, God
led it on to the perfect truth. That is His way always.
Instead of making tirades against the imperfect, He speaks
to us in the language we understand, even if it express
His meaning very imperfectly, and guides us thereby to
the perfect truth. Just as He used astrology to lead the
world to astronomy, and alchemy to conduct it to chem
istry, and as the Revival of Learning preceded the Reform
ation, so He used the knowledge of these men, which was
half falsehood and superstition, to lead them to the Light
of the world. Their visit was a prophecy of how in future
the Gentile world would hail His doctrine and salvation,
and bring its wealth and talents, its science and philosophy,
to offer at His feet.
10. All these gathered round His cradle to worship the
Holy Child, — the shepherds with their simple wonder,
Simeon and Anria with a reverence enriched by the trea
sured wisdom and piety of centuries, and the Magi with
the lavish gifts of the Orient and the open brow of Gentile
knowledge. But while these worthy worshippers were

BIRTH, INFANCY AND YOUTH. 17
gazing down on Him, there came and looked over their
shoulders a sinister and murderous face. It was the face of
Herod. This prince then occupied the throne of the coun
try — the throne of David and the Maccabees. But he was
an alien and low-born usurper. His subjects hated him,
and it was only by Roman favor that he was maintained in
his seat. He was able, ambitious, and magnificent. Yet
he had such a cruel, crafty, gloomy, and filthy mind as you
must go among Oriental tyrants to meet with. He had
been guilty of every crime. He had made his very palace
swim in blood, having murdered his own favorite wife,
three of his sons, and many others of his relatives. He
was now old and tortured with disease, remorse, the sense
.of unpopularity, and a cruel terror of every possible aspi
rant to the throne which he had usurped. The Magi had
naturally turned their steps to the capital, to inquire where
He was to be born whose sign they had seen in the East.
The suggestion touched Herod in his sorest place; but
with diabolical hypocrisy he concealed his suspicions.
Having learned from the priests that the Messiah was to
be born in Bethlehem, ho directed the strangers thither,
but arranged that they should return and tell him the very
house where the new King was. He hoped to cut Him off
at a single blow. But he was foiled; for, being warned by
God, they did not come back to tell him, but returned to
their own country another way. Then his fury burst forth
like a storm, and he sent his soldiers to murder every babe
under two years of age in Bethlehem. As well might he
have attempted to cut a mountain of adamant asunder as
cut the chain of the divine purpose?. " He thrust his
sword into the nest, but the bird was flown." Joseph fled
with the Child to Egypt, and remained there till Herod
died, when he returned and dwelt at Nazareth; being
warned from Bethlehem, because there he would have been
B i*

18 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
in the kingdom of Archelaus, the like-minded son of his
blood-thirsty father. Herod's murderous face, glaring
down on the Infant, was a sad prophecy of how the powers
of the world would persecute Him and cut off His life
from the earth.
//. The Silent Years at Nazareth. — The records which
we possess up to this point are, as we have seen, compara
tively full. But with the settlement at Nazareth, after the
ieturn from Egypt, our information comes to a sudden
stop, and over the rest of the life of Jesus, till His public
ministry begins, a thick covering is drawn, which is only
lifted once. We should have wished the narrative to con
tinue with the same fulness through the years of His boy
hood and youth. In modern biographies there are few
parts more interesting than the anecdotes which they fur
nish of the childhood of their subjects, for in these we can
often see in miniature and in charming simplicity the char
acter and the plan of the future life. What would we not
give to know the habits, the friendships, the thoughts,
the words, and the actions of Jesus during so many years?
Only one flower of anecdote has been thrown over the
wall of the hidden garden, and it is so exquisite as to fill
us with intense longing to see the garden itself. But it
has pleased God, whose silence is no less wonderful than
His words, to keep it shut.
12. It was natural that, where God was silent and
curiosity was strong, the fancy of man should attempt to
fill up the blank. Accordingly, in the early Church there
appeared Apocryphal Gospels, pretending to give full de
tails where the inspired Gospels were silent. They are
particularly full of the sayings and doings of the childhood
of Jesus. But they only show how unequal the human
imagination was to such a theme, and bring out by the

BIRTH, INFANCY AND YOUTH. 19
contrast of glitter and caricature the solidity and truthful
ness of the Scripture narrative. They make him a worker
of frivolous and useless marvels, who moulded birds of
clay and made them fly, changed his playmates into kids,
and so forth. In short, they are compilations of worthless
and often blasphemous fables.
13. These grotesque failures warn us not to intrude
with the suggestions of fancy into the hallowed enclosure.
It is enough to know that He grew in wisdom and stature,
and in favor with God and man. He was a real child and
youth, and passed through all the stages of a natural de
velopment. Body and mind grew together, the one ex
panding to manly vigor, and the other acquiring more and
more knowledge and power. His opening character ex
hibited a grace that made every one who saw it wonder
and love its goodness and purity.
14. But though we are forbidden to let the fancy loose
here, we are not prohibited, but, on the contrary, it is our
duty, to make use of such authentic materials as are sup
plied by the manners and customs of the time, or by inci
dents of His later life which refer back to His earlier
years, in order to connect the infancy with the period when
the narrative of the Gospels again takes up the thread of
biography. It is possible in this way to gain, at least in
some degree, a true conception of what He was as a boy
and a young man, and what were the influences amidst
which His development proceeded through so many silent
years. 15. We know amidst what kind of home influences He
was brought up. His home was one of those which were
the glory of His country, as they are of our own — the
abodes of the godly and intelligent working class. Joseph,
its head, was a man saintly and wise; but the fact that he

20 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
is not mentioned in Christ's afterlife has generally been
believed to indicate that he died during the youth of Jesus,
perhaps leaving the care of the household on His shoulders.
His mother probably exercised the most decisive of all ex
ternal influences on His development. What she was may
be inferred from the fact that she was chosen from all the
women of the world to be crowned with the supreme honor
of womanhood. The song which she poured forth on the
subject of her own great destiny shows her to have been a
woman religious, fervently poetical, and patriotic; a stu
dent of scripture, and especially of its great women, for it
is saturated with Old Testament ideas, and moulded on
Hannah's song; a spirit exquisitely humble, yet capable
of thoroughly appreciating the honor conferred upon her.
She was no miraculous queen of heaven, as superstition
has caricatured her, but a woman exquisitely pure, saintly,
loving, and high-souled. This is aureole enough. Jesus
grew up in her love and passionately returned it...
16. There were other inmates of the household. He
had brothers and sisters. From two of them, James and
Jude, we have epistles in Holy Scripture, in which we may
read what their character was. Perhaps it is not irreverent
to infer from the severe tone of their epistles, that, in their
unbelieving state, they must have been somewhat harsh and
unsympathetic men. At all events, they never believed on
Him during His lifetime, and it is not likely that they were
close companions to Him in Nazareth. He was probably
much alone; and the pathos of His saying, that a prophet
is not without honor save in his own country and in his
own house, probably reached back into the years before
His ministry began.
17. He received His education at home, or from a
scribe attached to the village synagogue. It was only,
however, a poor man's education. As the scribes con-

BIRTH, INFANCY AND YOUTH. 21
temptuously said, He had never learned, or, as we should
say, He was not college-bred. No; but the love of knowl
edge was early awake within Him. He daily knew the
joy of deep and happy thought; He had the best of all
keys to knowledge — the open mind and the loving heart;
and the three great books lay ever open before Him — the
Bible, Man, and Nature.
18. It is easy to understand with what fervent enthusi
asm He would devote Himself to the Old Testament; and
His sayings, which are full of quotations from it, afford
abundant proof of how constantly it formed the food of
His mind and the comfort of His soul. His youthful study
of it was the secret of the marvellous facility with which
He made use- of it afterwards in order to enrich His preach
ing and enforce His doctrine, to repel the assaults of oppo
nents and overcome the temptations of the Evil One. His
quotations also show that He read it in the original He
brew, and not in the Greek translation, which was then in
general use. The Hebrew was a dead language even in
Palestine, just as Latin now is in Italy; but He would
naturally long to read it in the very words in which it was
written. Those who have not enjoyed a liberal education,
but amidst many difficulties have mastered Greek in order
to read their New Testament in the original, will perhaps
best understand how, in a country village, He made Him
self master of the ancient tongue, and with what delight
He was wont, in the rolls of the synagogue, or in such
manuscripts as He may have Himself possessed, to pore
over the sacred page. The language in which He thought
and spoke familiarly was Aramaic, a branch of the same
stem to which the Hebrew belongs. We have fragments
of it in some recorded sayings of His, such as " Talitha,
cumi " and " Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani." He would
have the same chance of learning Greek as a boy born in

22 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
the Scottish Highlands has of learning English, " Galilee
of the Gentiles " being then full of Greek-speaking in
habitants. Thus He was probably master of three lan
guages — one of them the grand religious language of the
world, in whose literature He was deeply versed; another,
the most perfect means of expressing secular thought
which has ever existed, although there is no evidence that
He had any acquaintance with the masterpieces of Greek
literature; and the third, the language of the common peo
ple, to whom His preaching was to be specially addressed.
19. There are few places where human nature can be
better studied than in a country village ; for there one sees
the whole of each individual life and knows all one's neigh
bors thoroughly. In a city far more people are seen, but
far fewer known; it is only the outside of life that is visi
ble. In a village the view outwards is circumscribed; but
the view downwards is deep, and the view upwards unim
peded. Nazareth was a notoriously wicked town, as we
learn from the proverbial question, Can any good thing
come out of Nazareth? Jesus had no acquaintance with
sin in His own soul, but in the town He had a full exhibi
tion of the awful problem with which it was to be His life-
work to deal. He was still further brought into contact
with human nature by His trade. That He worked as a
carpenter in Joseph's shop there can be no doubt. Who
could know better than His own townsmen, who asked,
in their astonishment at His preaching, Is not this the car
penter? It would be difficult to exhaust the significance of
the fact that God chose for His Son, when He dwelt among
men, out of all the possible positions in which He might
have placed Him, the lot of a working man. It stamped
men's common toils with everlasting honor. It acquainted
Jesus with the feelings of the multitude, and helped Him
to know what was in man. It was afterwards said that He

BIRTH, INFANCY AND YOUTH. 23
knew this so well that He needed not that any man should
teach Him.
20. Travelers tell us that the spot where He grew up is
one of the most beautiful on the face of the earth. Naza
reth is situated in a secluded, cup-like valley amid the
mountains of Zebulon, just where they dip down into the
plain of Esdraelon, with which it is connected by a steep
and rocky path. Its white houses, with vines clinging to
their walls, are embowered amidst gardens and groves of
olive, fig, orange, and pomegranate trees. The fields are
divided by hedges of cactus, and enamelled with innumer
able flowers of every hue. Behind the village rises a hill
five hundred feet in height, from whose summit there is
seen one of the most wonderful views in the world — the
mountains of Galilee, with snowy Hermon towering above
them, to the north; the ridge of Carmel, the coast of Tyre,
and the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean, to the west;
a few miles to the east, the wooded, cone-like bulk of
Tabor; and to the south, the plain of Esdraelon, with the
mountains of Ephraim beyond. The preaching of Jesus
shows how deeply He had drunk into the essence of nat
ural beauty and revelled in the changing aspects of the
seasons. It was when wandering as a lad in these fields
that He gathered the images of beauty which he poured
out in His parables and addresses. It was on that hill that
He acquired the habit of His after-life of retreating to the
mountain-tops to spend the night in solitary prayer. The
doctrines of His preaching were not thought out on the
spur of the moment. They were poured out in a living
stream when the occasion came, but the water had been
gathered into the hidden well for many years before. In
the fields and on the mountain-side he had thought them
out during the years of happy and undisturbed meditation
and prayer.

24 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
21. There is still one important educational influence to
be mentioned. Every year, after He was twelve years old,
He went with His parents to the Passover at Jerusalem.
Fortunately we have preserved to us an account of the first
of these visits. It is the only occasion on which the veil is
lifted during thirty years. Every one who can remember
his own first journey from a village home to the capital of
his country will understand the joy and excitement with
which Jesus set out. He traveled over eighty miles of a
country where nearly every mile teemed with historical
and inspiring memories. He mingled with the constantly
growing caravan of pilgrims, who were filled with the reli
gious enthusiasm of the great ecclesiastical event of the
year. His destination was a city which was loved by every
Jewish heart with a strength of affection that has never
been given to any other capital — a city full of objects and
memories fitted to touch the deepest springs of interest
and emotion in his breast. It was swarming at the Pass
over-time with strangers from half-a-hundred countries,
speaking as many languages and wearing as many different
costumes. He went to take part for the first time in an
ancient solemnity suggestive of countless patriotic and
sacred memories. It was no wonder that, when the day
came to return home, He was so excited with the new ob
jects of interest, that He failed to join His party at the
appointed place and time. One spot above all fascinated
His interest. It was the temple, and especially the school
there in which the masters of wisdom taught. His mind
was teeming with questions which these doctors mio-ht be
asked to answer. His thirst for knowledge had an oppor
tunity for the first time to drink its fill. So it was there His
anxious parents, who, missing Him after a day's journey-
northward, returned in anxiety to seek Him, found Him
listening with excited looks to the oracles of the wisdom

BIRTH, INFANCY AND YOUTH. 25
of the day. His answer to the reproachful question of His
mother lays bare His childhood's mind, and for a moment
affords a wide glance over the thoughts which used to en
gross Him in the fields of Nazareth. It shows that already,
though so young, He had risen above the great mass of
men, who drift on through life without once inquiring what
may be its meaning and its end. He was aware that He
had a God-appointed life-work to do, which it was the one
business of His existence to accomplish. It was the pas
sionate thought of all His after-life. It ought to be the
first and last thought of every life. It recurred again and
again in His later sayings, and pealed itself finally forth in
the word with which He closed His career, — It is finished!
22. It has often been asked whether Jesus knew all
along that He was the Messiah, and, if not, when and how
the knowledge dawned upon Him; whether it was sug
gested by hearing from His mother the story of His birth,
or announced to Him from within. Did it dawn upon Him
all at once, or gradually? When did the plan of His ca
reer, which He carried out so unhesitatingly from the be
ginning of His ministry, shape itself in His mind? Was
it the slow result of years of reflection, or did it come to
Him at once? These questions have occupied the greatest
Christian minds and received very various answers. I will
not venture to answer them, and especially with His reply
to His mother before me, I can not trust myself even to
think of a time when He did not know what His work in
this world was to be.
23. His subsequent visits to Jerusalem must have greatly
influenced the development of His mind. If He often went
back to hear and question the rabbis in the temple schools,
He must soon have discovered how shallow was their far-
famed learning. It was probably on these annual visits
that He discovered the utter corruption of the religion of
2

26 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
the day and the need of a radical reform of both doctrine
and practice, and marked the practices and the persons
that He was by and by to- assail, with the vehemence of His
holy indignation.
24. Such were the external conditions amidst which the
manhood of Jesus waxed towards maturity. It would be
easy to exaggerate the influence which they may be sup
posed to have exerted on his development. The greater
and more original a character is, the less dependent is it
on the peculiarities of its environment. It is fed from deep
well-springs within itself, and in its germ there is a type
enclosed which expands in obedience to its own laws and
bids defiance to circumstances. In any other circumstan
ces, Jesus would have grown to be in every important
respect the very same person as He became in Nazareth.

CHAPTER II.
THE NATION AND THE TIME.
Paragraphs 25-53. 26-39. The Theater op His Life.
27. The Political Condition of the Country.
28-38. Its Religious and Social Condition —
28, 29. External Religiosity but Inner Decline ; 30.
Pharisees; 31. Scribes; 32. Sadducees and
Herodians; 33. Different Classes of Society;
35-38. Messianic Hopes.
40-53. The Two Final Stages op His Preparation.
44-49. His Baptism —
45. The Baptist; 46-48. Jesus Baptized ; 49. The
Descent of the Holy Ghost.
50-53. The Temptation.

2S

CHAPTER II.

THE NATION AND THE TIME.

25. We now approach the time when, after thirty years
of silence and obscurity in Nazareth, Jesus was to step
forth on the public stage. This is therefore the place at
which to take a survey of the circumstances of the nation
in whose midst His work was to be done, and also to form
a clear conception of His character and aims. Every great
biography is the record of the entrance into the world of a
new force, bringing with it something different from all
that was there before, and of the way in which it gradually
gets itself incorporated with the old, so as to become a part
of the future. Obviously, therefore, two things are needed
by those who wish to understand it — first, a clear compre
hension of the nature of the new force itself; and secondly,
a view of the world with which it is to be incorporated.
Without the latter the specific difference of the former
can not be understood, nor can the manner of its reception
be appreciated — the welcome with which it is received, or
the opposition with which it has to struggle. Jesus brought
with Him into the world more that was original and des
tined to modify the future history of mankind than any
one else who has ever entered it. But we can neither un
derstand Him nor the fortunes which He encountered in
seeking to incorporate with history the gift He brought,
without a clear view of the condition of the sphere within
which His life was to be passed. 29

30 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
26. The Theater of His Life. — When, having finished
the last chapter of the Old Testament, we turn over the
leaf and see the first chapter of the New, we are very apt
to think that in Matthew we are still among the same peo
ple and the same state of things as we have left in Malachi.
But no idea could be more erroneous. Four centuries
elapsed between Malachi and Matthew, and wrought as
total a change in Palestine as a period of the same length
has almost ever wrought in any country. The very lan
guage of the people had been changed, and customs, ideas,
parties, and institutions had come into existence which
would almost have prevented Malachi, if he had risen from
the dead, from recognizing his country.
27. Politically, the nation had passed through extra
ordinary vicissitudes. After the Exile, it had been or
ganized as a kind of sacred State under its high priests;
but conqueror after conqueror had since marched over it,
changing everything; the old hereditary monarchy had
been restored for a time by the brave Maccabees; the
battle of freedom had many times been won and lost; a
usurper had sat on the throne of David; and now at last
the country was completely under the mighty Roman
power, which had extended its sway over the whole civil
ized world. It was divided into several small portions,
which the foreigner held under different tenures, as the
English at present hold India. Galilee and Peraea were
ruled by petty kings, sons of that Herod under whom Jesus
was born, who occupied a relation to the Roman emperor
similar to that which the subject Indian kings hold to our
Queen; and Jud;ea was under the charge of a Roman offi
cial, a subordinate of the governor of the Roman province
of Syria, who held a relation to that functionary similar to
that which the Governor of Bombay holds to the Governor-
General at Calcutta. Roman soldiers paraded the streets

THE NATION AND THE TIME. 31
of Jerusalem; Roman standards waved over the fastnesses
of the country; Roman tax-gatherers sat at the gate of
every town. To the Sanhedrim, the supreme Jewish organ
of government, only a shadow of power was still conceded,
its presidents, the high priests, being mere puppets of
Rome, set up and put down with the utmost caprice. So
low had the proud nation fallen whose ideal it had ever
been to rule the world, and whose patriotism was a re
ligious and national passion as intense and unquenchable
as ever burned in any country.
28. In religion the changes had been equally great, and
the fall equally low. In external appearance, indeed, it
might have seemed as if progress had been made instead
of retrogression. The nation was far more orthodox than
it had been at many earlier periods of its history. Once
its chief danger had been idolatry; but the chastisement
of the Exile had corrected that tendency for ever, and
thenceforward the Jews, wherever they might be living,
were uncompromising monotheists. The priestly orders
and offices had been thoroughly reorganized after the return
from Babylon, and the temple services and annual feasts
continued to be observed at Jerusalem with strict res-ular-
ity. Besides, a new and most important religious institu
tion had arisen, which almost threw the temple with its
priesthood into the background. This was the synagogue
with its rabbis. It does not seem to have existed in ancient
times at all, but was called into existence after the Exile
by reverence for the written Word. Synagogues were
multiplied wherever Jews lived; every Sabbath they were
filled with praying congregations; exhortations were deliv
ered by the rabbis — a new order created by the need of
expounders to translate from the Hebrew, which had become
a dead language; and nearly the whole Old Testament was
read over once a year in the hearing of the people. Schools

32 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
of theology, similar to our divinity halls, had sprung up, in
which the rabbis were trained and the sacred books inter
preted. 29. But, in spite of all this religiosity, religion had
sadly declined. The externals had been multiplied, but the
inner spirit had disappeared. However rude and sinful
the old nation had sometimes been, it was capable in its
worst periods of producing majestic religious figures, who
kept high the ideal of life and preserved the connection of
the nation with Heaven; and the inspired voices of the
prophets kept the stream of truth running fresh and clean.
But during four hundred years no prophet's voice had been
heard. The records of the old prophetic utterances were
still preserved with almost idolatrous reverence, but there
were not men with even the necessary amount of the
Spirit's inspiration to understand what He had formerly
written. 30. The representative religious men of the time were
the Pharisees. As their name indicates, thev originally
arose as champions of the separateness of the Jews from
other nations. This was a noble idea, so long as the dis
tinction emphasized was holiness. But it is far more diffi
cult to maintain this distinction than such external differ
ences as peculiarities of drecs, food, language, etc. These
were in course of time sub ,tituted for it. The Pharisees
were ardent patriots, ever willing to lay down their lives
for the independence of their country, and hating the for
eign yoke with impassioned bitterness. They despised and .
hated other races, and clung with undying faith to the hope
of a glorious future for their nation. But they had so long
harped on this idea, that they had come to believe them
selves the special favorites of Heaven, simply because they
were descendants of Abraham, and to lose sight of the
importance of personal character. They multiplied their

THE NATION AND THE TIME. 33
Jewish peculiarities, but substituted external observances,
such as fasts, prayers, tithes, washings, sacrifices, and so
forth, for the grand distinctions of love to God and love to
man. 31. To the Pharisaic party belonged most of the scribes.
They were so called because they were both the interpret
ers and copyists of the Scriptures and the lawyers of the
people; for, the Jewish legal code being incorporated in
the Holy Scriptures, jurisprudence became a branch of
theology. They were the chief interpreters in the syna
gogues, although any male worshipper was permitted to
speak if he chose. They professed unbounded reverence
for the Scriptures, counting every word and letter in them.
They had a splendid opportunity of diffusing the religious
principles of the Old Testament among the people, exhib
iting the glorious examples of its heroes and sowing abroad
the words of the prophets; for the synagogue was one of
the most potent engines of instruction ever devised by any
people. But they entirely missed their opportunity. They
became a dry ecclesiastical and scholastic class, using their
position for selfish aggrandisement, and scorning those to
whom they gave stones for bread as a vulgar and unlettered
canaille. Whatever was most spiritual, living, human, and
grand in the Scriptures they passed by. Generation after
generation the commentaries of their famous men multi
plied, and the pupils studied the commentaries instead of
the text. Moreover, it was a rule with them that the cor
rect interpretation of a passage was as authoritative as the
text itself; and, the interpretations of the famous masters
being as a matter of course believed to be correct, the
mass of opinions which were held to be as precious as the
Bible itself grew to enormous proportions. These were
"the traditions of the elders." By degrees an arbitrary
system of exegesis came into vogue, by which almost any
C

34 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
opinion whatever could be thus connected with some text
and stamped with divine authority. Every new invention
of Pharisaic peculiarities was sanctioned in this way.
These were multiplied until they regulated every detail of
life, personal, domestic, social, and public. They became
so numerous, that it required a lifetime to learn them all;
and the learning of a scribe consisted in acquaintance with
them, and with the dicta of the great rabbis and the forms
of exegesis by which they were sanctioned. This was the
chaff with which they fed the people in the synagogues.
The conscience was burdened with innumerable details,
every one of which was represented to be as divinely sanc
tioned as any of the ten commandments. This was the
intolerable burden which Peter said neither he nor his
fathers had been able to bear. This was the horrible night
mare which sat so long on Paul's conscience. But worse
consequences flowed from it. It is a well-known principle
in history, that, whenever the ceremonial is elevated to the
same rank with the moral, the latter will soon be lost sight
of. The scribes and Pharisees had learned how by arbi
trary exegesis and casuistical discussion to explain away
the weightiest moral obligations, and make up for the neg
lect of them by increasing their ritual observances. Thus
men were able to flaunt in the pride of sanctity while in
dulging their selfishness and vile passions. Society was
rotten with vice within, and veneered over with a self-de
ceptive religiosity without.
32. There was a party of protest. The Sadducees im
pugned the authority attached to the traditions of the
fathers, demanding a return to the Bible and nothing but
the Bible, and cried out for morality in place of ritual.
But their protest was prompted merely by the spirit of de
nial, and not by a warm opposite principle of relio-ion.
They were sceptical, cold-hearted, worldly men. Though

THE NATION AND THE TIME. 35
they praised morality, it was a morality unwarmed and un-
illuminated by any contact with that upper region of divine
forces from which the inspiration of the highest morality
must always come. They refused to burden their conscien
ces with the painful punctilios of the Pharisees; but it was
because they wished to live the life of comfort and self-
indulgence. They ridiculed the Pharisaic exclusiveness,
but had let go what was most peculiar in the character, the
faith, and the hopes of the nation. They mingled freely
with the Gentiles, affected Greek culture, enjoyed foreign
amusements, and thought it useless to fight for the freedom
of their country. An extreme section of them were the
Herodians, who had given in to the usurpation of Herod,
and with courtly flattery attached themselves to the favor
of his sons.
33. The Sadducees belonged chiefly to the upper and
wealthy classes. The Pharisees and scribes formed what
we should call the middle class, although also deriving
many members from the higher ranks of life. The lower
classes and the country people were separated by a great
gulf from their wealthy neighbors, but attached themselves
by admiration to the Pharisees, as the uneducated always
do to the party of warmth. Down below all these was
a large class of those who had lost all connection with
religion and well-ordered social life — -the publicans, harlots,
and sinners, for whose souls no man cared.
34. Such were the pitiable features of the society on
which Jesus was about to discharge His influence — a na
tion enslaved; the upper classes devoting themselves to
selfishness, courtiership, and scepticism; the teachers and
chief professors of religion lost in mere shows of ceremo
nialism, and boasting themselves the favorites of God,
while their souls were honeycombed with self-deception
and vice; the body of the people misled by false ideals;

36 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
and seething at the bottom of society, a neglected mass of
unblushing and unrestrained sin.
35. And this was the people of God! Yes; in spite of
their awful degradation, these were the children of Abra
ham, Isaac and Jacob, and the heirs of the covenant and
the promises. Away back beyond the centuries of degra
dation towered the figures of the patriarchs, the kings after
God's own heart, the psalmists, the prophets, the genera
tions of faith and hope. Ay, and in front there was great
ness too! The word of God, once sent forth from heaven
and uttered by the mouths of His prophets, could not re
turn to Him void. He had said that to this nation was to
be given the perfect revelation of Himself, that in it was
to appear the perfect ideal of manhood, and that from it
was to issue forth the regeneration of all mankind. There
fore a wonderful future still belonged to it. The river of
Jewish history was for the time choked and lost in the
sands of the desert, but it was destined to reappear again
and flow forward on its God-appointed course. The time
of fulfilment was at hand, much as the signs of the times
might seem to forbid the hope. Had not all the prophets
from Moses onward spoken of a great One to come, who,
appearing just when the darkness was blackest and the
degradation deepest, was to bring back the lost glory of
the past?
36. So not a few faithful souls asked themselves in the
weary and degraded time. There are good men in the
worst of periods. There were good men even in the selfish
and corrupt Jewish parties. But especially does piety
linger in such epochs in the lowly homes of the people;
and, just as we are permitted to hope that in the Romish
Church at the present time there may be those who
through all the ceremonies put between the soul and Christ,

THE NATION AND THE TIME. 37
reach forth to Him, and by the selection of a spiritual in
stinct seize the truth and pass the falsehood by, so among
the common people of Palestine there were those who,
hearing the Scriptures read in the synagogues and reading
them in their homes, instinctively neglected the cumbrous
and endless comments of their teachers, and saw the glory
of the past, of holiness and of God, which the scribes
failed to see.
37. It was especially to the promises of a Deliverer that
such spirits attached their interest. Feeling bitterly the
shame of national slavery, the hollowness of the times, and
the awful wickedness which rotted under the surface of
society, they longed and prayed for the advent of the
coming One and the restoration of the national character
and glory.
38. The scribes also busied themselves with this ele
ment in the Scriptures; and the cherishing of Messianic
hopes was one of the chief distinctions of the Pharisees.
But they had caricatured the prophetic utterances on the
subject by their arbitrary interpretations, and painted the
future in colors borrowed from their own carnal imagina
tions. They spoke of the advent as the coming of the
kingdom of God, and of the Messiah as the Son of God.
But what they chiefly expected Him to do was, by the
working of marvels and by irresistible force, to free the
nation from servitude and raise it to the utmost worldly
grandeur. They entertained no doubt that, simply because
they were members of the chosen nation, they would be
allotted high places in the kingdom, and never suspected
that any change was needed in themselves to meet Him.
The spiritual elements of the better time, holiness and
love, were lost in their minds behind the dazzling forms of
material glory.*
* I have not tliought it necessary to describe the state of the world beyond Pal
estine; for although the gifts Jesus brought were for all mankind, yet His own

38 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
39. Such was the aspect of Jewish history at the time
when the hour of realizing the national destiny was about
to strike. It imparted to the work which lay before the
Messiah a peculiar complexity. It might have been ex
pected that He would find a nation saturated with the ideas
and inspired with the visions of His predecessors, the pro
phets, at whose head He might place Himself, and from
which He might receive an enthusiastic and effective co
operation. But it was not so. He appeared at a time
when the nation had lapsed from its ideals and caricatured
their sublimest features. Instead of meeting a nation ma
ture in holiness and consecrated to the heaven-ordained
task of blessing all other peoples, which he might easily
lead up to its own final development, and then lead forth
to the spiritual conquest of the world, He found that the
first work which lay before Him was to proclaim a re
formation in His own country, and encounter the opposi
tion of prejudices that had accumulated there through
centuries of degradation.
40. The Final Stages of His Preparation. — Meanwhile
He, whom so many in their own ways were hoping for, was
in the midst of them, though they suspected it not. Little
could they think that He about whom they were specula
ting and praying was growing up in a carpenter's home
activity was confined almost entirely to the house of Israel within its original
home. In a history of Early Christianity, or even a life of the Apostle Paul, it
would be necessary to extend our view over the whole disc of civilization which
surrounded the Mediterranean, and in which the world's center, which has since
shifted to other latitudes, was then to be found; and to show how marvellously, by
the dispersion of the Jews through all civilized countries, the elementary concep
tions of God which were necessary for the reception of Christianity had been dif
fused beforehand far and wide; how the conquests of Alexander had, by making
the Greek language universally understood, prepared a vehicle by which the gospel
might be carried to all nations: how a pathway for it had been provided by the
Roman power, whose military system had made all lands accessible; and above
all, how the decay of the ancient religions and philosophies, thewearing out every
where of the old ideals of life, and the prevalence of heart-sickening sin, had made
the world ready for Him who was the Desire of all nations.

THE NATION AND THE TIME. 39
away in despised Nazareth. Yet so it was. There He was
preparing Himself for His career. His mind was busy
grasping the vast proportions of the task before Him, as
the prophesies of the past and the facts of the case deter
mined it; His eyes were looking forth on the country, and
His heart smarting with the sense of its sin and shame. In
Himself He felt moving the gigantic powers necessary to
cope with the vast design; and the desire was gradually
growing to an irresistible passion, to go forth and utter the
thought within Him, and do the work which had been given
Him to do.
41. Jesus had only three years to accomplish His life-
work. If we remember how quickly three years in an
ordinary life pass away, and how little at their close there
usually is to show for them, we shall see what must have
been the size and quality of that character, and what the
unity and intensity of design in that life, which in so mar
vellously short a time made such a deep and ineffaceable
impression on the world, and left to mankind such a heri
tage of truth and influence.
42. It is generally allowed that Jesus appeared as a
public man- with a mind whose ideas were completely de
veloped and arranged, with a character sharpened over its
whole surface into perfect definiteness, and with designs
that marched forward to their ends without hesitation.
No deflection took place during the three years from the
lines on which at the beginning of them He was moving.
The reason of this must have been, that during the thirty
years before His public work began, His ideas, His char
acter and designs went through all the stages of a thorough
development. Unpretentious as the external aspects of
His life at Nazareth were, it was, below the surface, a life
of intensity, variety and grandeur. Beneath its silence
and obscurity there went on all the processes of growth

40 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
which issued in the magnificent flower and fruit to which
all ages now look back with wonder. His preparation
lasted long. For one with His powers at command, thirty
years of complete reticence and reserve were a long time.
Nothing was greater in Him afterwards than the majestic
reserve in both speech and action which characterized
Him. This, too, was learned in Nazareth. There He
waited till the hour of the completion of His preparation
struck. Nothing could tempt Him forth before the time — ¦
not the burning desire to interfere with indignant protest
amidst the crying corruptions and mistakes of the age, not
even the swellings of the passion to do His fellow-men
good. 43. At last, however, He threw down the carpenter's
tools, laid aside the workman's dress, and bade His home
and the beloved valley of Nazareth farewell. Still, how
ever, all was not ready. His manhood, though it had waxed
in secret to such noble proportions, still required a peculiar
endowment for the work He had to do; and His ideas and
designs, mature as they were, required to be hardened in
the fire of a momentous trial. The two final incidents of
His preparation — the Baptism and the Temptation-— had
still to take place.
44. Jesus did not descend on the nation from the obscu
rity of Nazareth without note of warning. His work may
be said to have been begun before He Himself put His
hand to it.
45. Once more, before hearing the voice of its Messiah,
the nation was to hear the long-silent voice of prophecy.
The news went through all the country that in the desert
of Judasa a preacher had appeared, — not like the numbers
of dead men's ideas who spoke in the synagogues, or the
courtier-like, smooth-tongued teachers of Jerusalem but a

THE NATION AND THE TIME. 41
rude, strong man, speaking from the heart to the heart,
with the authority of one who was sure of his inspiration.
He had been a Nazarite from the womb; he had lived for
years in the desert, wandering, in communion with his
own heart, beside the lonely shores of the Dead Sea; he
was clad in the hair cloak and leather girdle of the old
prophets; and his ascetic rigor sought no finer fare than
locusts and the wild honey which he found in the wilder
ness. Yet he knew life well; he was acquainted with all
the evils of the time, the hypocrisy of the religious parties,
and the corruption of the masses: he had a wonderful
power of searching the heart and shaking the conscience,
and without fear laid bare the darling sins of every class.
But that which most of all attracted attention to him and
thrilled every Jewish heart from one end of the land to the
other, was the message which he bore. It was nothing less
than that the Messiah was just at hand, and about to set up
the kingdom of God. All Jerusalem poured out to him; the
Pharisees were eager to hear the Messianic news; and even
the Sadducees were stirred for a moment from their leth
argy. The provinces sent forth their thousands to his
preaching, and the scattered and hidden ones who longed
and prayed for the redemption of Israel flocked to welcome
the heart-stirring promise. But along with it John had
another message, which excited very different feelings in
different minds. He had to tell his hearers that the nation
as a whole was utterly unprepared for the Messiah; that
the mere fact of their descent from Abraham would not be
a sufficient token of admission to His kingdom; it was to
be a kingdom of righteousness and holiness, and Christ's
very first work would be to reject all who were not marked
with these qualities, as the farmer winnows away the chaff
with his fan, and the master of the vineyard hews down
every tree that brings forth no fruit. Therefore he called

42 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
the nation at large — every class and every individual — to
repentance, so long as there still was time, as an indispen
sable preparation for enjoying the blessings of the new
epoch; and, as an outward symbol of this inward change,
he baptized in the Jordan all who received his message with
faith. Many were stirred with fear and hope and submit
ted to the rite, but many more were irritated by the expo
sure of their sins and turned away in anger and unbelief.
Among these were the Pharisees, upon whom he was spec
ially severe, and who were deeply offended because he had
treated so lightly their descent from Abraham, on which
they laid so much stress.
46. One day there appeared among the Baptist's hearers
One who particularly attracted his attention, and made his
voice, which had never faltered when accusing in the most
vigorous language of reproof even the highest teachers
and priests of the nation, tremble with self-distrust. And
when He presented Himself, after the discourse was done,
among the candidates for baptism, John drew back, feeling
that This was no subject for the bath of repentance, which
without hesitation he had administered to all others, and
that he himself had no right to baptize Him. There were
in His face a majesty, a purity, and a peace which smote
the man of rock with the sense of unworthiness and sin.
It was Jesus, who had come straight hither from the work
shop of Nazareth. John and Jesus appear never to have
met before, though their families were related and the con
nection of their careers had been predicted before their
birth. This may have been due to the distance of their
homes in Galilee and Judasa, and still more to the Baptist's
peculiar habits. But when, in obedience to the injunction
of Jesus, John proceeded to administer the rite, he learned
the meaning of the overpowering impression which the
Stranger had made on him; for the sign was given by

THE NATION AND THE TIME. 43
which, as God had instructed him, he was to recognize the
Messiah, whose forerunner he was. The Holy Ghost de
scended on Jesus, as He emerged from the water in the
attitude of prayer, and the voice of God pronounced Him
in thunder His beloved Son.
47. The impression made on -John by the very look of
Jesus reveals far better than many words could do His
aspect when He was about to begin His work, and the
qualities of the character which in Nazareth had been
slowly ripening to full maturity.
48. The baptism itself had an important significance for
Jesus. To the other candidates who underwent the rite it
had a double meaning; it signified the abandonment of
their old sins, and their entrance into the new Messianic
era. To Jesus it could not have the former meaning, ex
cept in so far as He may have identified Himself with His
nation, and taken this way of expressing His sense of its
need of cleansing. But it meant that He too was now
entering through this door into the new epoch, of which
He was Himself to be the Author. It expressed His sense
that the time had come to leave behind the employments
of Nazareth and devote himself to His peculiar work.
49. But still more important was the descent upon Him
of the Holy Ghost. This was neither a meaningless dis
play nor merely a signal to the Baptist. It was the symbol
of a special gift then given to qualify Him for His work,
and crown the long development of His peculiar powers.
It is a forgotten truth that the manhood of Jesus was from
first to last dependent on the Holy Ghost. We are apt to
imagine that its connection with His divine nature rendered
this unnecessary. On the contrary, it made it far more
necessary, for in order to be the organ of His divine nature,
His human nature had both to be endowed with the highest
gifts and constantly sustained in their exercise. We are

44 THE LIFE OP JESUS CHRIST.
in the habit of attributing the wisdom and grace of His
words, His supernatural knowledge of even the thoughts
of men, and the miracles He performed, to His divine
nature. But in the Gospels they are constantly attributed
to the Holy Ghost. This does not mean that they were
independent of His divine nature, but that in them His
human nature was enabled to be the organ of His divine
nature by a peculiar gift of the Holy Ghost. This gift was
given Him at His baptism. It was analogous to the pos
session of prophets, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, with the
Spirit of inspiration on those occasions, of which they have
left accounts, when they were called to begin their public
life, and to the special outpouring of the same influence
still sometimes given at their ordination to those who are
about to begin the work of the ministry. But to Him it
was given without measure, while to others it has always
been given only in measure ; and it comprised especially
the gift of miraculous powers.
50. An immediate effect of this new endowment appears
to have been one often experienced, in less degree, by
others who, in their small measure, have received this same
gift of the Spirit for work. His whole being was excited
about His work. His desires to be engaged in it were raised
to the highest pitch, and His thoughts were intensely occu
pied about the means of its accomplishment. Although
His preparation for it had been going on for many years,
although His whole heart had long been fixed on it, and
His plan had been clearly settled, it was natural that, when
the divine signal had been given that it was forthwith to
commence, and He felt Himself suddenly put in possession
of the supernatural powers necessary for carrying it out,
His mind should be in a tumult of crowding thoughts and
feelings, and He should seek a place of solitude to revolve

THE NATION AND THE TIME. 45
once more the whole situation. Accordingly, He hastilv
retreated from the bank of the Jordan, driven, we are told,
by the Spirit, which had just been given Him, into the wil
derness, where, for forty days, He wandered among the
sandy dunes and wild mountains, His mind being so highly-
strung with the emotions and ideas which crowded on Him,
that He forgot even to eat.
51. But it is with surprise and awe we learn that His
soul was, during those days, the scene of a frightful strug
gle. He was tempted of Satan, we are told. What could
He be tempted with at a time so sacred? To understand
this we must recall what has been said of the state of the
Jewish nation, and especially the nature of the Messianic
hopes which they were indulging. They expected a Mes
siah who would work dazzling wonders and establish a
world-wide empire with Jerusalem as its center, and they
had postponed the ideas of righteousness and holiness to
these. They completely inverted the divine conception of
the kingdom, which could not but give the spiritual and
moral elements precedence of material and political con
siderations. Now what Jesus was tempted to do was, in
carrying out the great work which His Father had com
mitted to Him, to yield in some measure to these expecta
tions. He must have foreseen that, unless He did so, the
nation would be disappointed and probably turn away from
Him in unbelief and anger. The different temptations
were only various modifications of this one thought. The
suggestion that He should turn stones into bread to satisfy
His hunger was a temptation to use the power of working
miracles, with which He had just been endowed, for a pur
pose inferior to those for which alone it had been given,
and was the precurser of such temptations in His after-life
as the demand of the multitude to show them a sign, or
that He should come down from the cross, that they might

46 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
believe Him. The suggestion that He should leap from
the pinnacle of the temple was probably also a temptation
to gratify the vulgar desire for wonders, because it was a
part of the popular belief that the Messiah should appear
suddenly, and in some marvellous way; as, for instance, by
a leap from the temple roof into the midst of the crowds
assembled below. The third and greatest temptation, to
win the empire of all the kingdoms of the world by an act
of worship to the Evil One, was manifestly only a symbol
of obedience to the universal Jewish conception of the
coming kingdom as a vast structure of material force. It
was a temptation which every worker for God, weary with
the slow progress of goodness, must often feel, and to
which even good and earnest men have sometimes given
way — to begin at the outside instead of within, to get
first a great shell of external conformity to religion, and
afterwards fill it with the reality. It was the temptation
to which Mahomet yielded when he used the sword to sub
due those whom he was afterwards to make religious, and
to which the Jesuits yielded when they baptized the
heathen first and evangelized them afterwards.
52. It is with awe we think of these suggestions pre
senting themselves to the holy soul of Jesus. Could He
be tempted to distrust God, and even to worship the Evil
One? No doubt the temptations were flung from Him, as
the impotent billows retire broken from the breast of the
rock on which they have dashed themselves. But these
temptations pressed in on Him, not only at this time, but
often before in the valley of Nazareth, and often after
wards, in the heats and crises of His life. We must re
member that it is no sin to be tempted, it is only sin to
yield to temptation. And, indeed, the more absolutely
pure a soul is, the more painful will be the point of the
temptation, as it presses for admission into his breast.

THE NATION AND THE TIME. 47
53. Although the tempter only departed from Jesus for
a season, this was a decisive struggle; he was thoroughly
beaten back, and his power broken at its heart. Milton
has indicated this by finishing his Paradise Regained at
this point. Jesus emerged from the wilderness with the
plan of His life, which, no doubt, had been formed long
before, hardened in the fire of trial. Nothing is more con
spicuous in His after-life than the resolution with which
He carried it out. Other men, even those who have ac-
complisned the greatest tasks, have sometimes had no defi
nite plan, but only seen by degrees in the evolution of cir
cumstances the path to pursue; their purposes have been
modified by events and the advice of others. But Jesus
started with His plan perfected, and never deviated from
it by a hair's-breadth. He resented the interference of
His mother or His chief disciple with it as steadfastly as
He bore it through the fiery opposition of open enemies.
And His plan was to establish the kingdom of God in the
hearts of individuals, and rely not on the weapons of polit
ical and material strength, but only on the power of love
and the force of truth.

48 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.

THE DIVISIONS OF HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY.
54. The public ministry of Jesus is generally reckoned
to have lasted three years. Each of them had peculiar
features of its own. The first may be called the Year of
Obscurity, both because the records of it which we possess
are very scanty, and because He seems during it to have
been only slowly emerging into public notice. It was
spent for the most part in Judaea. The second was the
Year of Public Favor, during which the country had be
come thoroughly aware of Him, His activity was incessant,
and His fame rang through the length and breadth of the
land. It was almost wholly passed in Galilee. The third
was the Year of Opposition, when the public favor ebbed
away, His enemies multiplied and assailed Him with more
and more pertinacity, and at last He fell a victim to their
hatred. The first six months of this final year were passed
in Galilee, and the last six in other parts of the land.
55. Thus the life of the Savior in its external outline
resembled that of many a reformer and benefactor of man
kind. Such a life often begins with a period during which
the public is gradually made aware of the new man in its
midst, then passes into a period when his doctrine or reform
is borne aloft on the shoulders of popularity, and ends with
a reaction, when the old prejudices and interests which
have been assailed by him rally from his attack, and, gain
ing to themselves the passions of the crowd, crush him in
their rage.

CHAPTER III.
THE YEAR OF OBSCURITY.
Paragraphs 56-65. 57. The First Disciples; 58. The First Miracle; 59
The Cleansing of the Temple; 60. Nicodemus.
61-65. Reasons for the meagerness of the Records
of this Tear.

50

CHAPTER III.

THE YEAR OF OBSCURITY.

56. The records of this year which we possess are ex
tremely meager, comprising only two or three incidents,
which may be here enumerated, especially as they form a
kind of programme of His future work.
57. When He emerged from the wilderness after the
forty days of temptation, with His grasp of His future
plan tightened by that awful struggle and w.ith the inspira
tion of His baptism still swelling His heart, He appeared
once more on the bank of the Jordan, and John pointed
Him out as the great Successor to himself of whom he had
often spoken. He especially introduced Him to some of
the choicest of His own disciples, who immediately became
His followers. Probably the very first of these to whom
He spoke was the man who was afterwards to be His favor
ite disciple, and to give to the world the divinest portrait
of His character and life. John the Evangelist — for he it
was — has left an account of this first meeting and the in
terview that followed it, which retains in all its freshness
the impression which Christ's majesty and purity made on
his receptive mind. The other young men who attached
themselves to Him at the same time were Andrew, Peter,
Philip, and Nathanael. They had been prepared for their
new Master by their intercourse with the Baptist, and
although they did not at once give up their employments
and follow Him in the same way as they did at a later
period, they received impressions at their very first meet-
51

52 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
ing which decided their whole after-career. The Baptist's
disciples do not seem to have at once gone over in a body
to Christ. But the best of them did so. Some mischief-
makers endeavored to excite envy in his mind by pointing
out how his influence was passing away to Another. But
they little understood that great man, whose chief great
ness was his humility. He answered them that it was his
joy to decrease, while Christ increased, for it was Christ
who as the Bridegroom was to lead home the bride, while
he was only the Bridegroom's friend, whose happiness con
sisted in seeing the crown of festal joy placed on the head
of another. 58. With His newly attached followers Jesus departed
from the scene of John's ministry, and went north to Cana
in Galilee, to attend a marriage to which He had been
invited. Here He made the first display of the miiaculous
powers with which He had been recently endowed, by
turning water into wine. It was a manifestation of His
glory intended specially for his new disciples, who, we are
told, thenceforward believed on Him, which means, no
doubt, that they were fully convinced that He was the
Messiah. It was intended also to strike the key-note of
His ministry as altogether different from the Baptist's.
John was an ascetic hermit, who fled from the abodes of
men and called his hearers out into the wilderness. But
Jesus had glad tidings to bring to men's hearths; He was
to mingle in their common life, and produce a happy revo
lution in their circumstances, which would be like the turn
ing of the water of their life into wine.
59. Soon after this miracle He returned again to Judasa
to attend the Passover, and gave a still more striking proof
of the joyful and enthusiastic mood in which He was then
living, by purging the temple of the sellers of animals and
the money-changers, who had introduced their traffic into

THE YEAR OF OBSCURITY. 53
its courts. These persons were allowed to carry on their
sacrilegious trade under the pretence of accommodating
strangers who came to worship at Jerusalem, by selling
them the victims which they could not bring from foreign
countries, and supplying, in exchange for foreign money,
the Jewish coins in which alone they could pay their tem
ple dues. But what had been begun under the veil of a
pious pretext had ended in gross disturbance of the worship,
and in elbowing the Gentile proselytes from the place
which God had allowed them in His house. Jesus had
probably often witnessed the disgraceful scene with indig
nation during His visits to Jerusalem, and now, with the
prophetic zeal of His baptism upon Him, He broke out
against it. The same look of irresistible purity and
majesty which had appalled John, when He sought baptism,
prevented any resistance on the part of the ignoble crew,
and made the onlookers recognize the lineaments of
the prophets of ancient days, before whom kings and
crowds alike were wont to quail. It was the beginning of
His reformatory work against the religious abuses of the
time. 60. He wrought other miracles during the feast, which
must have excited much talk among the pilgrims from
every land who crowded the city. One result of them was
to bring to His lodging one night the venerable and
anxious inquirer to whom He delivered the marvellous dis
course on the nature of the new kingdom He had come to
found, and the grounds of admission to it, which has been
preserved to us in the third chapter of John. It seemed a
hopeful sign that one of the heads of the nation should
approach Him in a spirit so humble; but Nicodemus was
the only one of them on whose mind the first display of the
Messiah's power in the capital produced a deep and favor
able impression.

54 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
61. Thus far we follow clearly the first steps of Jesus.
But at this point our information in regard to the first year
of His ministry, after commencing with such fulness, comes
to a sudden stop, and for the next eight months we learn
nothing more about Him but that He was baptizing in
Judasa — " though Jesus Himself baptized not, but His dis
ciples" — and that He "made and baptized more disciples
than John."
62. What can be the meaning of such a blank? It is to
be noted, too, that it is only in the Fourth Gospel that we
receive even the details given above. The Synoptists
omit the first year of the ministry altogether, beginning
their narrative with the ministry in Galilee, and merely
indicating in the most cursory way that there was a min
istry in Judaea before.
63. It is very difficult to explain all this. The most
natural explanation would perhaps be, that the incidents of
this year were imperfectly known at the time when the
Gospels were composed. It would be quite natural that
the details of the period when Jesus had not attracted
much public attention should be much less accurately re
membered than those of the period when He was by far
the best known personage in the country. But, indeed,
the Synoptists all through take little notice of what hap
pened in Judasa, till the close of His life draws nigh. It is
to John we are indebted for the connected narrative of His
various visits to the south.
64. But John, at least, could scarcely have been igno
rant of the incidents of eight months. We shall perhaps
be conducted to the explanation by attending to the little-
noticed fact, which John communicates, that for a time
Jesus took up the work of the Baptist. He baptized by
the hands of His disciples, and drew even larger crowds
than John. Must not this mean that He was convinced, by

THE YEAR OF OBSCURITY. 55
the small impression which His manifestation of Himself
at the Passover had made, that the nation was utterly un
prepared for receiving Him yet as the Messiah, and that
what was needed was the extension of the preparatory
work of repentance and baptism, and accordingly, keeping
in the background His higher character, became for the
time the colleague of John? This view is confirmed by the
fact, that it was upon John's imprisonment at this year's
end that he opened fully His Messianic career in Galilee.
65. A still deeper explanation of the silence of the
Synoptists over this period, and their scant notice of
Christ's subsequent visits to Jerusalem, has been suggested.
Jesus came primarily to the Jewish nation, whose authori
tative representatives were to be found at Jerusalem. He
was the Messiah promised to their fathers, the Fulfiller of
the nation's history. He had indeed a far wider mission
to the whole world, but He was to begin with the Jews,
and at Jerusalem. The nation, however, in its heads at
Jerusalem, rejected Him, and so He was- compelled to
found His world-wide community from a different center.
This having become evident by the time the Gospels
were written, the Synoptists passed His activity at the
headquarters of the nation, as a work with merely negative
results, in great measure by, and concentrated attention on
the period of His ministry when He was gathering the
company of believing souls that was to form the nucleus
of the Christian Church. However this may be, certainly
at the close of the first year of the ministry of Jesus there
fell already over Judasa and Jerusalem the shadow of an
awful coming event — the shadow of that most frightful of
all national crimes which the world has ever witnessed, the
rejection and crucifixion by the Jews of their Messiah.

CHAPTER IV.
THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR.
Paragraphs 66-73. Galilee, the Scene op this Tear's Work.
67, 68. Its Size and Population, the Sea of Galilee;
69. Return of Jesus from the South ; 70. Visit to
Nazareth ; 71. Removal of His Home to Caper
naum; 72. Manner of His Life; 73. His Popu
larity.
74-113. The Means He employed.
76-83. Miracles
77. Different Kinds of them; 78-83. Reasons
why He wrought them.
84^104. Pleaching.
86-89. The form of His Preaching.
90-95. The Qualities of the Preacher — 91. Author
ity; 92. Boldness; 93. Power; 94. Gracious-
ness; 95. Human Breadth.
96-102. The matter of His Teaching— 97-100. The
Kingdom of God; 101. Himself; 102. Im
portant Themes which He only slightly
touched.
103-104. His Audiences.
105-113. The Apostolate.
105-108. Call and Training of the Twelve.
109-113. His Human Character — 109. Purposeful-
ness; 110. Faith; 111. Originality; 112.
Love to Men ; 113. Love to God ; 114 Sin-
lessness.
115. The Deity of Christ

56

CHAPTER IV.
THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR.
66. After the year spent in the south, Jesus shifted the
sphere of His activity to the north of the country. In Gali
lee He would be able to address Himself to minds that
were unsophisticated with the prejudices and supercilious
pride of Judasa, where the sacerdotal and learned classes
had their headquarters; and He might hope that, if His
doctrine and influence took a deep hold of one part of the
country, even though it was remote from the center of
authority, He might return to the south backed with an
irresistible national acknowledgement, and carry by storm
even the citadel of prejudice itself.
67. Galilee, — The area of His activity for the next
eighteen months was very limited. Even the whole of
Palestine was a very limited country. Its length was a
hundred miles less than that of Scotland, and its breadth
considerably less than the average breadth of Scotland. It
is important to remember this, because it renders intelligi
ble the rapidity with which the movement of Jesus spread
over the land, and all parts of the country flocked to His
ministry; and it is interesting to remember it as an illus
tration of the fact, that the nations which have contributed
most to the civilization of .the world have, during the
period of their true greatness, been confined to very small
territories. Rome was but a single city, and Greece a very
small country. 57

58 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
68. Galilee was the most northerly of the four provinces
into which Palestine was divided. It was sixty miles long
by thirty broad; that is to say, it was less than some of
our Scottish counties. It was about the size of Aberdeen
shire. It consisted for the most part of an elevated
plateau, whose surface was varied by irregular mountain
masses. Near its eastern boundary it suddenly dropped
down into a great gulf, through which flowed the Jordan,
and in the midst of which, at a depth of five hundred feet
below the Mediterranean, lay the lovely, harp-shaped Sea
of Galilee. Thewhole province was very fertile, and its sur
face thickly covered with large villages and towns. The
population was perhaps as dense as that of Lancashire or
the West Riding of Yorkshire. But the center of activity
was the basin of the lake, a sheet of water thirteen miles
long by six broad. Above its eastern shore, round which
ran a fringe of green a quarter of a mile broad, there tow
ered high, bare hills, cloven with the channels of torrents.
On the western side, the mountains were gently sloped and
their sides richly cultivated, bearing splendid crops of every
description; while at their feet the shore was verdant with
luxuriant groves of olives, oranges, figs, and every product
of an almost tropical climate. At the northern end of the
lake the space between the water and the mountains was
broadened by the delta of the river, and watered with many
streams from the hills, so that it was a perfect paradise of
fertility and beauty. It was called the plain of Gennesa-
reth, and even at this day, when the whole basin of the
lake is little better than a torrid solitude, is still covered
with magnificent corn-fields, wherever the hand of cultiva
tion touches it; and, where idleness leaves it untended, is
overspread with thick jungles of thorn and oleander. In
our Lord's time, it contained the chief cities on the lake,
such as Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin. But the

THE year OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 59
whole shore was studded with towns and villages, and
formed a perfect beehive of swarming human life. The
means of existence were abundant in the crops and fruits
of every description which the fields yielded so richly; and
the waters of the lake teemed with fish, affording employ
ment to thousands of fishermen. Besides, the great high
ways from Egypt to Damascus, and from Phoenicia to the
Euphrates, passed here, and made this a vast center of
traffic. Thousands of boats for fishing, transport, and
pleasure moved to and fro on the surface of the lake, so
that the whole region was a focus of energy and prosperity.
69. The report of the miracles which Jesus had wrought
at Jerusalem, eight months before, had been brought home
to Galilee by the pilgrims who had been south at the feast,
and doubtless also the news of His preaching and baptism
in Judsea had created talk and excitement before He ar
rived. Accordingly, the Galileans were in some measure
prepared to receive Him when He returned to their
midst. 70. One of the first places He visited was Nazareth, the
home of His childhood and youth. He appeared there one
Sabbath in the synagogue, and, being now known as a
preacher, was invited to read the Scriptures and address
the congregation. He read a passage in Isaiah, in which a
glowing description is given of the coming and work of
the Messiah; "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the
poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach
deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the
blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the
acceptable year of the Lord." As He commented on this
text, picturing the features of the Messianic time, — the
emancipation of the slave, the enriching of the poor, the

60 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
healing of the diseased, — their curiosity at hearing for the
first time a young preacher who had been brought up
among themselves passed into spell-bound wonder, and
they burst into the applause which used to be allowed in
the Jewish synagogues. But soon the reaction came.
They began to whisper : Was not this the carpenter who
had worked among them? Had not His father and mother
been their neighbors? Were not His sisters married in
the town? Their envy was excited. And when He pro
ceeded to tell them that the prophecy which He had read
was fulfilled in Himself, they broke out into angry scorn.
They demanded of Him a sign, such as it was reported He
had given in Jerusalem; and when He informed them that
He could do no miracle among the unbelieving, they
rushed on Him in a storm of jealousy and wrath, and hurry
ing Him out of the synagogue to a crag behind the town,
would, if He had not miraculously taken Himself away
from them, have flung Him over, and crowned their pro
verbial wickedness with a deed which would have robbed
Jerusalem of her bad eminence of being the murderess of
the Messiah.
71. From that day Nazareth was His home no more.
Once again, indeed, in His yearning love for His old neigh
bors, He visited it, but with no better result. Hencefor
ward He made His home in Capernaum, on the northwest
ern shore of the Sea of Galilee. This town has completely
vanished out of existence; its very site can not now be
discovered with any certainty. This may be one reason
why it is not connected in the Christian mind with the
life of Jesus in tne same prominent way as Bethlehem,
where He was born, Nazareth, where He was brought up,
and Jerusalem, where He died. But we ought to fix it in
our memories side by side with these, for it was His home
for eighteen of the most important months of His life. It

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 61
is called His own city, and He was asked for tribute in it
as a citizen of the place. It was thoroughly well adapted
to be the center of His labors in Galilee, for it was the
focus of the busy life in the basin of the lake, and was
conveniently situated for excursions to all parts of the
province. Whatever happened there was quickly heard
of in all the regions round about.
72. In Capernaum, then, He began His Galilean work;
and for many months the method of His life was, to be
frequently there as in His headquarters, and from this cen
ter to make tours in all directions, visiting the towns and
villages of Galilee. Sometimes His journey would be in
land, away to the west. At other times it would be a tour
of the villages on the lake, or a visit to the country on its
eastern side. He had a boat that waited on Him, to con
vey Him wherever He might wish to go. He would come
back to Capernaum, perhaps only for a day, perhaps for a
week or two at a time.
73. In a few weeks the whole province was ringing
with His name; He was the subject of conversation in
every boat on the lake and every house in the whole re
gion; men's minds were stirred with the profoundest ex
citement, and everyone desired to see Him. Crowds be
gan to gather about Him. They grew larger and larger.
They multiplied to thousands and tens of thousands. They
followed Him wherever He went. The news spread far
and wide beyond Galilee, and brought hosts from Jerusa
lem, Judsea, and Persea, and even from Idumfea in the far
south, and Tyre and Sidon in the far north. Sometimes
He could not stay in any town, because the crowds blocked
up the streets and trode one on another. He had to take
them out to the fields and deserts. The country was stirred
from end to end, and Galilee was all on fire with excite
ment about Him.

62 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
74. How was it that He produced so great and wide
spread a movement? It was not by declaring Himself the
Messiah. That would indeed have caused to pass through
every Jewish breast the deepest thrill which it could ex
perience. But although Jesus now and then, as at Naza
reth, revealed Himself, in general He rather concealed His
true character. No doubt the reason of this was, that
among the excitable crowds of rude Galilee, with their
grossly materialistic hopes, the declaration would have ex
cited a revolutionary rising against the Roman Government,
which would have withdrawn men's minds from His true
aims and brought down on His head the Roman sword,
just as in Judsea it would have precipitated a murderous
attack on His life by the Jewish authorities. To avert
either kind of interruption, He kept the full revelation of
Himself in reserve, endeavoring to prepare the public mind
to receive it in its true inward and spiritual meaning, when
the right moment for divulging it should come, and in the
meantime leaving it to be inferred from His character and
work who He was.
75. The two great means which Jesus used in His work,
and which created such attention and enthusiasm, were
His Miracles and His Preaching.
76. The Miracle-Worker. — Perhaps His miracles ex
cited the widest attention. We are told how the news of
the first one which He wrought in Capernaum spread like
wildfire through the town, and brought crowds about the
house where He was; and whenever He performed a new
one of extraordinary character, the excitement grew in
tense and the rumor of it spread on every hand. When,
for instance, He first cured leprosy, the most malignant
form of bodily disease in Palestine, the amazement of the
people knew no bounds. It was the same when He first

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 63
overcame a case of possession; and when he raised to life
the widow's son at Nain, there ensued a sort of stupor of
fear, followed by delighted wonder and the talk of thous
ands of tongues. All Galilee was for a time in motion
with the crowding of the diseased of every description
who could walk or totter to be near Him, and with com
panies of anxious friends carrying on beds and couches
those who could not come themselves. The streets of the
villages and towns were lined with the victims of disease
as His benignant figure passed by. Sometimes He had so
many to attend to that he could not find time even to eat;
and at one period He was so absorbed in His benevolent
labors, and so carried along with the holy excitement which
they caused, that His relatives, with indecorous rashness,
endeavored to interfere, saying to each other that He was
beside Himself.
77. The miracles of Jesus, taken altogether, were of
two classes — those wrought on man, and those wrought in
the sphere of external nature, such as the turning of water
into wine, stilling the tempest, and multiplying the loaves.
The former were by far the more numerous. They con
sisted chiefly of cures of diseases less or more malignant,
such as lameness, blindness, deafness, palsy, leprosy, and
so forth. He appears to have varied very much His
mode of acting, for reasons which we can scarcely explain.
Sometimes He used means, such as a touch, or the laying
of moistened clay on the part, or ordering the patient to
wash in water. At other times He healed without any
means, and occasionally even at a distance. Besides these
bodily cures, He dealt with the diseases of the mind.
These seem to have been peculiarly prevalent in Palestine
at the time, and to have excited the utmost terror. They
were believed to be accompanied by the entrance of de
mons into the poor imbecile or raving victims, and this

64 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
idea was only too true. The man whom Jesus cured
among the tombs in the country of the Gadarenes was a
frightful example of this class of disease; and the picture
of him sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right
mind, shows what an effect His kind, soothing, and authori
tative presence had on minds so distracted. But the most
extraordinary of the miracles of Jesus upon man were the
instances in which He raised the dead to life. They were
not frequent, but naturally produced an overwhelmning
impression whenever they occurred. The miracles of the
other class — those on external nature — were of the same
inexplicable description. Some of His cures of mental
disease, if standing by themselves, might be accounted for
by the influence of a powerful nature on a troubled mind;
and in the same way some of His bodily cures might be
accounted for by His influencing the body through the
mind. But such a miracle, as walking on the tempestuous
sea is utterly beyond the reach of natural explanation.
78. Why did Jesus employ this means of working?
Several answers may be given to this question.
79. First, He wrought miracles because His Father
gave Him these signs as proofs that He had sent Him.
Many of the Old Testament prophets had received the
same authentication of their mission, and although John,
who revived the prophetic function, worked no miracles, as
the Gospels inform us with the most simple veracity, it was
to be expected that He who was a far greater prophet than
the greatest who went before Him, should show even
greater signs than any of them of His divine mission. It
was a stupendous claim which He made on the faith of
men when He announced Himself as the Messiah, and it
would have been unreasonable to expect it to be conceded
by a nation accustomed to miracles as the signs of a divine
mission, if He had wrought none.

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 65
80. Secondly, the miracles of Christ were the natural
outflow of the divine fulness which dwelt in Him. God
was in Him, and His human nature was endowed with the
Holy Ghost without measure. It was natural, when such
a Being was in the world, that mighty works should mani
fest themselves in Him. He was Himself the great mir
acle, of which His particular miracles were merely sparks
or emanations. He was the great interruption of the order
of nature, or rather a new element which had entered
into the order of nature to enrich and ennoble it, and His
miracles entered with Him, not to disturb, but to repair its
harmony. Therefore all His miracles bore the .stamp of
His character. They were not mere exhibitions of power,
but also of holiness, wisdom, and love. The Jews often
sought from Him mere gigantesque prodigies, to gratify
their mania for marvels. But He always refused them,
• working only such miracles as were helps to faith. He de
manded faith in all those whom He cured, and never re
sponded either to curiosity or unbelieving challenges to ex
hibit marvels. This distinguishes His miracles from those
fabled of ancient wonder-workers and mediaeval saints.
They were marked by unvarying sobriety and benevolence,
because they were the expressions of His character as a
whole. 81. Thirdly, His miracles were symbols of His spiritual
and saving work. You have only to consider them for a
moment to see that they were, as a whole, triumphs over
the misery of the world. Mankind is the prey of a thous
and evils, and even the frame of external nature bears the
mark of some past catastrophe: " The whole creation
groaneth and travaileth in pain." This huge mass of phy
sical evil in the lot of mankind is the effect of sin. Not
that every disease and misfortune can be traced to special
sin, although some of them can. The consequences of
E 3*

66 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
past sin are distributed in detail over the whole race. But
yet the misery of the world is the shadow of its sin. Ma
terial and moral evil, being thus intimately related, mutually
illustrate each other. When He healed bodily blindness,
it was a type of the healing of the inner eye; when He
raised the dead, He meant to suggest that He was the
Resurrection and the Life in the spiritual world as well;
when He cleansed the leper, His triumph spoke of another
over the leprosy of sin; when He multiplied the loaves, He
followed the miracle with a discourse on the bread of life;
when He stilled the storm, it was an assurance that He
could speak peace to the troubled conscience.
82. Thus His miracles were a natural and essential part
of His Messianic work. They were an excellent means of
making Him known to the nation. They bound those
whom He cured to Him with strong ties of gratitude; and
without doubt, in many cases, the faith in Him as a miracle--
worker led on to a higher faith. So it was in the case of
His devoted follower Mary Magdalene, out of whom He
cast seven devils.
83. To Himself this work must have brought both great
pain and great joy. To His tender and exquisitely sym
pathetic heart, that never grew callous in the least degree,
it must often have been harrowing to mingle with so much
disease, and see the awful effects of sin. But He was in
the right place; it suited His great love to be where help
was needed. And what a joy it must have been to Him to
distribute blessings on every hand and erase the traces of
sin; to see health returning beneath his touch; to meet the
joyous and grateful glances of the opening eyes; to hear
the blessings of mothers and sisters, as He restored their
loved ones to their arms; and to see the light of love and
welcome in the faces of the poor, as He entered their towns
and villages. He drank deeply of the well at which He

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 67
would have his followers to be ever drinking — the bliss of
doing good.
84. The Teacher. — The other great instrument with
which Jesus did His work was His teaching. It was by
far the more important of the two. His miracles were
only the bell tolled to bring the people to hear His words.
They impressed those who might not yet be susceptible to
the subtler influence, and brought them within its range.
85. The miracles probably made most noise, but His
preaching also spread His fame far and wide. There is
no power whose attraction is more unfailing than that
of the eloquent word. Barbarians, listening to their bards
and story-tellers; Greeks, listening to the restrained pas
sion of their orators, and matter-of-fact nations like the
Roman, have alike acknowledged its power to be irre
sistible. The Jews prized it above almost every other at
traction, and among the figures of their mighty dead re
vered none more highly than the prophets — those eloquent
utterers of the truth, whom Heaven had sent them from
age to age. Though the Baptist did no miracles, multi
tudes flocked to Him, because in his accents they recog
nized the thunder of this power, which for so many gene
rations no Jewish ear had listened to. Jesus also was re
cognized as a prophet, and accordingly, His preaching
created wide-spread excitement. " He spake in their syn
agogues, being glorified of all." His words were heard
with wonder and amazement. Sometimes the multitude
on the beach of the lake so pressed upon Him to hear, that
He had to enter into a ship and address them from the
deck, as they spread themselves out in a semicircle on the
ascending shore. His enemies themselves bore witness
that "never man spake like this man;" and meager as are
the remains of His preaching which we possess, they are

68 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
amply sufficient to make us echo the sentiment and under
stand the impression which He produced. All His words
together which have been preserved to us would not oc
cupy more space in print than half-a-dozen ordinary ser
mons; yet it is not too much to say, that they are the most
precious literary heritage of the human race. His words,
like His miracles, were expressions of Himself, and every
one of them has in it something of the grandeur of His
character. 86. The form of the preaching of Jesus was essentially
Jewish. The Oriental mind does not work in the same
way as the mind of the West. Our thinking and speaking,
when at their best, are fluent, expansive, closely reasoned.
The kind of discourse which we admire is one which takes
up an important subject, divides it out into different
branches, treats it fully under each of the heads, closely
articulates part to part, and closes with a moving appeal to
the feelings, so as to sway the will to some practical result.
The Oriental mind, on the contrary, loves to brood long on
a single point, to turn it round and round, to gather up all
the truth about it in a focus, and pour it forth in a few
pointed and memorable words. It is concise, epigrammatic,
oracular. A Western speaker's discourse is a systematic
structure, or like a chain in which link is firmly knit to
link; an Oriental's is like the sky at night, full of innu
merable burning points shining forth from a dark back
ground. 87. Such was the form of the teaching of Jesus. It
consisted of numerous sayings, every one of which con
tained the greatest possible amount of truth in the
smallest possible compass, and was expressed in language
so concise and pointed as to stick in the memory like an
arrow. Read them, and you will find that every one of
them, as you ponder it, sucks the mind in and in like a

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 69
whirlpool, till it is lost in the depths. You will find,
too, that there are very few of them which you do not
know by heart. They have found their way into the
memory of Christendom as no other words have done.
Even before the meaning has been apprehended, the
perfect, proverb-like expression lodges itself fast in the
mind. 88. But there was another characteristic of the form of
Jesus' teaching. It was full of figures of speech. He
thought in images. He had ever been a loving and accu
rate observer of nature around Him — of the colors of the
flowers, the ways of the birds, the growth of the trees, the
vicissitudes of the seasons — and an equally keen observer
of the ways of men in all parts of life — in religion, in
business, in the home. The result was that He could
neither think nor speak without His thought running into
the mould of some natural image. His preaching was
alive with such references, and therefore full of color,
movement, and changing forms. There were no abstract
statements in it; they were all changed into pictures.
Thus, in His sayings, we can still see the aspects of the
country and the life of the time as in a panorama — the
lilies, whose gorgeous beauty His eyes feasted on, waving
in the fields; the sheep following the shepherd; the broad
and narrow city gates; the virgins with their lamps await
ing in the darkness the bridal procession; the Pharisee
with his broad phylacteries and the publican with bent
head at prayer together in the temple; the rich man seated
in his palace at a feast, and the beggar lying at his gate
with the dogs licking his sores; and a hundred other pic
tures that lay bare the inner and minute life of the time,
over which history in general sweeps heedlessly with ma
jestic stride.
89. But the most characteristic form of speech He

70 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
made use of was the parable. It was a combination of
the two qualities already mentioned — concise, memorable
expression, and a figurative style. It used an incident,
taken from common life and rounded into a gem-like pic
ture, to set forth some corresponding truth in the higher
and spiritual region. It was a favorite Jewish mode of
putting truth, but Jesus imparted to it by far the richest
and most perfect development. About one-third of all
His sayings which have been preserved to us consists of
parables. This shows how they stuck in the memory. In
the same way the hearers of the sermons of any preacher
will probably, after a few years, remember the illustrations
they have contained far better than anything else in them.
How these parables have remained in the memory of all
generations since! The Prodigal Son, the Sower, the Ten
Virgins, the Good Samaritan, — these and many others are
pictures hung up in millions of minds. What passages in
the greatest masters of expression — in Homer, in Virgil,
in Dante, in Shakspeare — have secured for themselves so
universal a hold on men, or been felt to be so fadelessly
fresh and true? He never went far for His illustrations.
As a master of painting will make you, with a morsel of
chalk or a burnt stick, a face at which you must laugh, or
weep, or wonder, so Jesus took the commonest objects and
incidents around Him, — the sewing of a piece of cloth on
an old garment, the bursting of an old bottle, the children
playing in the market-place at weddings and funerals, or
the tumbling of a hut in a storm, — to change them into
perfect pictures, and to make them the vehicles for convey
ing to the world immortal truth. No wonder the crowds
followed Him! Even the simplest could delight in such
pictures and carry away as a life-long possession the
expression at least of His ideas, though it might require
the thought of centuries to pierce their crystalline depths.

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 71
There never was speaking so simple yet so profound, so
pictorial yet so absolutely true.
90. Such were the qualities of His style. The qualities
of the Preacher Himself have been preserved to us in the
criticism of His hearers, and are manifest in the remains
of His addresses which the Gospels contain.
91. The most prominent of them seems to have been
Authority: " The people were astonished at His doctrine,
for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the
scribes." The first thing His hearers were struck with was
the contrast between His words and the preaching which
they were wont to hear from the scribes in the synagogues.
These were the exponents of the deadest and driest sys
tem of theology that has ever passed in any age for
religion. Instead of expounding the Scriptures, which
were in their hands, and would have lent living power to
their words, they retailed the opinions of commentators,
and were afraid to advance any statement, unless it was
backed by the authority of some master. Instead of
dwelling on the great themes of justice and mercy, love
and God, they tortured the sacred text into a ceremonial
manual, and preached on the proper breadth of phylac
teries, the proper postures for prayer, the proper length of
fasts, the distance which might be walked on the Sabbath,
and so forth; for in these things the religion of the time
consisted. In order to see anything in modern times at all
like the preaching which then prevailed, we must go back
to the Reformation period, when, as the historian of Knox
tells us, the harangues delivered by the monks were empty,
ridiculous, and wretched in the extreme. " Legendary
tales concerning the founder of some religious order, the
miracles he performed, his combats with the devil, his
watchings, fastings, flagellations; the virtues of holy water,

72 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
chrism, crossing, and exorcism; the horrors of purgatory,
and the numbers released from it by the intercessions of
some powerful saint, — these, with low jests, table-talk,
and fireside scandal, formed the favorite topics of the
preachers, and were served up to the people instead of the
pure, salutary, and sublime doctrines of the Bible." Per
haps the contrast which the Scottish people three and a
half centuries ago felt between such harangues and the
noble words of Wishart and Knox, may convey to our
mind as good an idea as can be got of the effect of the
preaching of Jesus on His contemporaries. He knew
nothing of the authority of masters and schools of inter
pretation, but spoke as One whose own eyes had gazed on
the objects of the eternal world. He needed none to tell
Him of God or of man, for He knew both perfectly. He
was possessed with the sense of a mission, which drove
Him on and imparted earnestness to every word and ges
ture. He knew Himself sent from God, and the words He
spoke to be not His own, but God's. He did not hesitate
to tell those who neglected His words that in the judg
ment they would be condemned by the Ninevites and the
Queen of Sheba, who had listened to Jonah and Solomon,
for they were hearing One greater than any prophet or
king of the olden time. He warned them that on their
acceptance or rejection of the message He bore would
depend their future weal or woe. This was the tone of
earnestness, of majesty and authority that smote His hear
ers with awe.
92. Another quality which the people remarked in Him
was Boldness : " Lo, He speaketh boldly." This appeared
the more wonderful because He was an unlettered man,
who had not passed through the schools of Jerusalem or
received the imprimatur of any earthly authority. But
this quality came from the same source as Hi= authority

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 73
tiveness. Timidity usually springs from self-consciousness.
The preacher who is afraid of his audience, and respects
the persons of the learned and the great, is thinking of
himself and of what will be said of his performance. But
he who feels himself driven on by a divine mission forgets
himself. All audiences are alike to him, be they gentle or
simple; he is thinking only of the message he has to de
liver. Jesus was ever looking the spiritual and eternal
realities in the face; the spell of their greatness held Him,
and- all human distinctions disappeared in their presence;
men of every class were only men to Him. He was borne
along on the torrent of His mission, and what might happen
to Himself could not make Him stop to question or quail.
He discovered His boldness chiefly in attacking the abuses
and ideals of the time. It would be a complete mistake to
think of Him as all mildness and meekness. There is
scarcely any element more conspicuous in His words than
a strain of fierce indignation. It was an age of shams
above almost any that have ever been. They occupied all
high places. They paraded themselves in social life, occu
pied the chairs of learning, and above all debased every
part of religion. Hypocrisy had become so universal that
it had ceased even to doubt itself. The ideals of the peo
ple were utterly mean and mistaken. One can feel throb
bing through His words, from first to last, an indignation
against all this, which had begun with His earliest obser
vation in Nazareth and ripened with His increasing knowl
edge of the times. The things which were highly esteemed
among men, He broadly asserted, were abomination in the
sight of God. There never was in the history of speech a
polemic so scathing, so annihilating, as His against the
figures to which the reverence of the multitude had been
paid before His withering words fell on them — the scribe,
the Pharisee, the priest, and the Levite.
4

74 THE LIFE OP JESUS CHRIST.
93. A third quality which His hearers remarked was
Power : " His word was with power." This was the result
of that unction of the Holy One, without whioh even the.
most solemn truths fall on the ear without effect. He was
filled with the Spirit without measure. Therefore the
truth possessed Him. It burned and swelled in His own
bosom, and He spoke it forth from heart to heart. He had
the Spirit not only in such degree as to fill Himself, but so
as to be able to impart it to others. It overflowed with
His words and seized the souls of His hearers, filling with
enthusiasm the mind and the heart.
94. A fourth quality which was observed in His preach
ing, and was surely a very prominent one, was Gracious-
ness : " They wondered at the gracious words which pro
ceeded out of His mouth." In spite of His tone of au
thority and His fearless and scathing attacks on the times,
there was diffused over all He said a glow of grace and
love. Here especially His character spoke. How could
He who was the incarnation of love help letting the glow
and warmth of the heavenly fire that dwelt in Him spread
over His words? The scribes of the time were hard,
proud, and loveless. They flattered the rich and honored
the learned, but of the great mass of their hearers they
said, " This people, which knoweth not the law, is cursed."
But to Jesus every soul was infinitely precious. It mat
tered not under what humble dress or social deformity the
pearl was hidden; it mattered not even beneath what rub
bish and filth of sin it was buried; He never missed it for
a moment. Therefore He spoke to His hearers of every
grade with the same respect. Surely it was the divine love
itself, uttering itself from the innermost recess of the
divine being, that spoke in the parables of the fifteenth of
Luke. 95. Such were some of the qualities of the Preacher.

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 75
And one more may be mentioned, which may be said to
embrace all the rest, and is perhaps the highest quality of
public speech. He addressed men as men, not as mem
bers of any class or possessors of any peculiar culture.
The differences which divide men, such as wealth, rank,
and education, are on the surface. The elements in which
they are all alike — the broad sense of the understanding,
the great passions of the heart, the primary instincts of the
conscience — are profound. Not that these are the same
in all men. In some they are deeper, in others shallower;
but in all they are far deeper than aught else. He who
addresses them appeals to the deepest thing in His hearers.
He will be equally intelligible to all. Every hearer will
receive his own portion from Him; the small and shallow
mind will get as much as it can take, and the largest and
deepest will get its fill at the same feast. This is why the
words of Jesus are perennial in their freshness. They are
for all generations, and equally for all. They appeal to the
deepest elements in human nature to-day in England or
China as much as they did in Palestine when they were
spoken. 96. When we come to inquire what the matter of Jesus'
preaching consisted of, we perhaps naturally expect to find
Him expounding the system of doctrine which we are our
selves acquainted with, in the forms, say, of the Catechism
or the Confession of Faith. But what we find is very dif
ferent. He did not make use of any system of doctrine.
We can scarcely doubt, indeed, that all the numerous and
varied ideas of His preaching, as well as those which He
never expressed, co-existed in His mind as one world of
rounded truth. But they did not so co-exist in His teach
ing. He did not use theological phraseology, speaking of
the Trinity, of predestination, of effectual calling, although

76 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
the ideas which these terms cover underlay His words, and
it is the undoubted task of science to bring them forth.
But He spoke in the language of life, and concentrated
His preaching on a few burning points, that touched the
heart, the conscience, and the time.
97. The central idea and the commonest phrase of His
preaching was "the kingdom of God." It will be remem
bered how many of His parables begin with " The king
dom of Heaven is like," so and so. He said, " I must
preach the kingdom of God to other cities also," thereby
characterizing the matter of His preaching; and in the
same way He is said to have sent forth the apostles " to
preach the kingdom of God." He did not invent the
phrase. It was a historical one handed down from the
past, and was common in the mouths of His contempora
ries. The Baptist had made large use of it, the burden
of his message being, " The kingdom of God is at hand."
98. What did it signify? It meant the new era, which
the prophets had predicted and the saints had looked for.
Jesus announced that it had come, and that He had brought
it. The time of waiting was fulfilled. Many prophets and
righteous men, He told His contemporaries, had desired to
see the things which they saw, but had not seen them.
He declared that so great were the privileges and glories
of the new time, that the least partaker of them was greater
than the Baptist, though he had been the greatest repre
sentative of the old time.
99. All this was no more than His contemporaries would
have expected to hear, if they had recognized that the
kingdom of God was really come. But they looked round,
and asked where the new era was which Jesus said He had
brought. Here He and they were at complete variance.
They emphasized the first part of the phrase, " the king
dom," He the second, " of God." They expected the new

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 77
era to appear in magnificent material forms, — in a kingdom
of which God indeed was to be the Ruler, but which was
to show itself in worldly splendor, in force of arms, in a
universal empire. Jesus saw the new era in an empire of
God over the loving heart and the obedient will. They
looked for it outside. He said, " It is within you." They
looked for a period of external glory and happiness. He
placed the glory and blessedness of the new time in char
acter. So He began His Sermon on the Mount, that great
manifesto of the new era, with a series of " Blesseds.''
But the blessedness was entirely that of character. And
it was a character totally different from that which was
then looked up to as imparting glory and happiness to its
possessor — that of the proud Pharisee, the wealthy Sad-
ducee, or the learned scribe. Blessed, said He, are the
poor in spirit, they that mourn, the meek, they which do
hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the
pure in heart, the peacemakers, they which are persecuted
for righteousness' sake.
100. The main drift of His preaching was to set forth
this conception of the kingdom of God, the character of
its members, their blessedness in the love and communion
of their Father in heaven, and their prospects in the glory
of the future world. He exhibited the contrast between it
and the formal religion of the time, with its lack of spiritu
ality and its substitution of ceremonial observances for char
acter. He invited all classes into the kingdom, — the rich
by showing, as in the parable of the Rich Man and Laza
rus, the vanity and danger of seeking their blessedness in
wealth; and the poor by penetrating them with the sense
of their dignity, persuading them with the most overflow
ing affection and winning words that the only true wealth
was in character, and assuring them that, if they sought
first the kingdom of God, their heavenly Father, who fed

78 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
the ravens and clothed the lilies, would not suffer them to
want. 101. But the center and soul of His preaching was
Himself. He contained within Himself the new era. He
not only announced it, but created it. The new character
which made men subjects of the kingdom and sharers of
its privileges was to be got from Him alone. Therefore
the practical issue of every address of Christ was the
command to come to Him, to learn of Him, to follow Him.
" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,"
was the key-note, the deepest and final word of all His
discourses. 102. It is impossible to read the discourses of Jesus
without remarking that, wonderful as they are, yet some of
the most characteristic doctrines of Christianity, as it is
set forth in the epistles of Paul and now cherished in
the minds of the most devoted and enlightened Chris
tians, hold a very inconsiderable place in them. Espe
cially is this the case in regard to the great doctrines
of the gospel as to how a sinner is reconciled to God, and
how, in a pardoned soul, the character is gradually pro
duced which makes it like Christ and pleasing to the
Father. The lack of reference to such doctrines may
indeed be much exaggerated, the fact being that there is
not one prominent doctrine of the great apostle the germs
of which are not to be found in the teaching of Christ
Himself. Yet the contrast is marked enough to have given
some color for denying that the distinctive doctrines of
Paul are genuine elements of Christianity. But the true
explanation of the phenomenon is very different. Jesus
was not a mere teacher. His character was greater than
His words, and so was His work. The chief part of that
work was to atone for the sins of the world by His death
on the cross. But His nearest followers never would

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 79
believe that He was to die, and, until His death happened,
it was impossible to explain its far-reaching significance.
Paul's most distinctive doctrines are merely expositions of
the meaning of two great facts, — the death of Christ, and
the mission of the Spirit by the glorified Redeemer. It is
obvious that these facts could not be fully explained in the
words of Jesus Himself, when they had not yet taken
place; but to suppress the inspired explanation of them
would be to extinguish the light of the gospel and rob
Christ of His crowning glory.
103. The audience of Jesus varied exceedingly both in
size and character on different occasions. Very frequently
it was the great multitude. He addressed them every
where — on the mountain, on the sea-shore, on the highway,
in the synagogues, in the temple courts. But He was
quite as willing to speak with a single individual, however
humble. Ho seized every opportunity of doing so. Al
though He was worn-out with fatigue, He talked to the
woman at the well; He received Nicodemus alone; He
taught Mary in her home. There are said to be nineteen
such private interviews mentioned in the Gospels. They
leave to His followers a memorable example. This is per
haps the most effective of all forms of instruction, as it is
certainly the best test of earnestness. A man who
preaches to thousands with enthusiasm may be a mere
orator, but the man who seeks the opportunity of speaking
closely of the welfare of their souls to individuals must
have a real fire from heaven burning in his heart.
104. Often His audience consisted of the circle of His
disciples. His preaching divided His hearers. He has
Himself, in such parables as the Sower, the Tares and the
Wheat, the Wedding Feast, and so forth, described with
unequalled vividness its effects on different classes. Some

80 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
it utterly repelled; others heard it with wonder, without
being touched in the heart; others were affected for a time,
but soon returned to their old interests. It is terrible to
think how few there were, even when the Son of God was
preaching, who heard unto salvation. Those who did so,
gradually formed round Him a body of disciples. They
followed Him about, hearing all his discourses, and often
He spoke to them alone. Such were the five hundred to
whom He appeared in Galilee after His resurrection. Some
of them were women, such as Mary Magdalene, Susanna,
and Joanna the wife of Herod's steward, who, being
wealthy, gladly supplied His few simple wants. To these
disciples He gave a more thorough instruction than to the
crowd. He explained to them in private whatever was ob
scure in His public teaching. More than once He made
the strange statement that He spake in parables to the
multitudes in order that, though hearing, they might not
understand. This could only mean, that those who had no
real interest in the truth were sent away with the mere
beautiful shell, but that the obscurity was intended to pro
voke to further inquiry, as a veil half-drawn over a beau
tiful face intensifies the desire to see it; and to those who
had a spiritual craving for more He gladly communicated
the hidden secret. These, when the nation as a whole de
clared itself unworthy of being the medium of the Mes
siah's world-wide influence, became the nucleus of that
spiritual society, elevated above all local limitations and
distinctions of rank and nationality, in which the spirit
and doctrine of Christ were to be spread and perpetuated
in the world.
105. The Apostolate. — Perhaps the formation of the
Apostolate ought to be placed side by side with miracles
and preaching as a third means by which He did His work.

THE YJ3AR OF PUBLIC FAVOE. 81
The men who became the twelve apostles were at first only
ordinary disciples like many others. This, at least, was the
position of such of them as were already His followers
during the first year of His ministry. At the opening of
His Galilean activity, their attachment to Him entered on
a second stage; He called them to give up their ordinary
employments and be with Him constantly. And probably
not many weeks afterwards, He promoted them to the third
and final stage of nearness to Himself, by ordaining them
to be apostles.
106. It was when His work grew so extensive and
pressing that it was quite impossible for Him to overtake
it all, that He multiplied Himself, so to speak, by appoint
ing them His assistants. He commissioned them to teach
the simpler elements of His doctrine, and conferred on
them miraculous powers similar to His own. In this way
many towns were evangelized which He had not time to
visit, and many persons cured who could not have been
brought into contact with Himself. But, as future events
proved, His aims in their appointment were much more
far-reaching. His work was for all time and for the whole
world. It could not be accomplished in a single lifetime.
He foresaw this, and made provision for it by the early
choice of agents who might take up His plans after He was
gone, and in whom He might still extend His influence
over mankind. He Himself wrote nothing. It may be
thought that writing would have been the best way of per
petuating His influence, and giving the world a perfect
image of H'mself ; and we can not help imagining with a
glow of strong desire what a volume penned by His hand
would have been. But for wise reasons He abstained from
this kind of work and resolved to live after death in the
lives of chosen men.
107. It is surprising to see what sort of persons He
F

82 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
selected for so grand a destiny. They did not belong to
the influential and learned classes. No doubt the heads
and leaders of the nation ought to have been the organs
of their Messiah, but they proved themselves totally
unworthy of the great vocation. He was able to do with
out them; He needed not the influence of carnal power
and wisdom. Ever wont to work with the elements of
character that are not bound to any station of life or grade
of culture, He did not scruple to commit His cause to
twelve simple men, destitute of learning and belonging to
the common people. He made the selection after a night
spent in prayer, and doubtless after many days of delibera
tion. The event showed with what insight into character
He had acted. They turned out to be instruments thor
oughly fitted for the great design; two at least, John and
Peter, were men of supreme gifts; and, though one turned
out a traitor, and the choice of him will probably, after all
explanations, ever remain a very partially explained mys
tery, yet the selection of agents who were at first so
unlikely, but in the end proved so successful, will always
be one of the chief monuments of the incomparable
originality of Jesus.
108. It would, however, be a very inadequate account
of His relation to the Twelve merely to point out the
insight with which He discerned in them the germs of fit
ness for their grand future. They became very great men,
and in the founding of the Christian Church achieved a
work of immeasurable importance. They may be said, in
a sense they little dreamed of, to sit on thrones ruling the
modern world. They stand like a row of noble pillars
towering far across the flats of time. But the sunlight
that shines on them, and makes them visible, comes entirely
from Him. He gave them all their greatness; and theirs
is one of the most striking evidences of His. What must

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 83
He have been whose influence imparted to them such mag
nitude of character, and made them fit for so gigantic a
task! At first they were rude and carnal in the extreme.
What hope was there, that they would ever be able to
appreciate the designs of a mind like His, to inherit His
work, to possess in any degree a spirit so exquisite, and
transmit to future generations a faithful image of His
character? But He educated them with the most affec
tionate patience, bearing with their vulgar hopes and their
clumsy misunderstandings of His meaning. Never forget
ting for a moment the part they were to play in the future,
He made their training His most constant work. They
were much more constantly^ in His company than even the
general body of His disciples, seeing all He did in public
and hearing all He said. They were often His only audi
ence, and then He unveiled to them the glories and mys
teries of His doctrine, sowing in their minds the seeds of
truth, which time and experience were by and by to fructi
fy. But the most important part of their training was one
which was perhaps at the time little noticed, though it was
producing splendid results, — the silent and constant influ
ence of His character on theirs. He drew them to Him
self and stamped His own image on them. It was this
which made them the men they became. For this, more
than all else, the generations of those who love Him look
back to them with envy. We admire and adore at a dis
tance the qualities of His character; but what must it
have been to see them in the unity of life, and for years to
feel their moulding pressure! Can we recall with any
fulness the features of this character whose glory they
beheld and under whose power they lived?
109. The Human Character of Jesus. — Perhaps the
most obvious feature which they would remark in Him

84 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
was Purposefulness. This certainly is the ground-tone
which sounds in all His sayings which have been preserved
to us, and the pulse which we feel beating in all His re
corded actions. He was possessed with a purpose which
guided and drove Him on. Most lives aim at nothing in
particular, but drift along, under the influence of varying
moods and instincts or on the currents of society, and
achieve nothing. But Jesus evidently had a definite ob
ject before Him, which absorbed His thoughts and drew
out His energies. He would often give as a reason for not
doing something, " Mine hour is not yet come," as if His
design absorbed every moment, and every hour had its
own allotted part of the task. This imparted an earnest
ness and rapidity of execution to His life which most lives
altogether lack. It saved Him, too, from that dispersion
of energy on details, and carefulness about little things, on
which those who obey no definite call throw themselves
away, and made His life, various as were its activities, an
unbroken unity.
110. Very closely connected with this quality was an
other prominent one, which may be called Faith, and by
which is meant His astonishing confidence in the accom
plishment of His purpose, and apparent disregard both of
means and opposition. If it be considered in the most
general way how vast His aim was — to reform His nation
and begin an everlasting and world-wide religious move
ment; if the opposition which He encountered, and fore
saw His cause would have to meet at every stage of its
progress, be considered; and if it be remembered what, as
a man, He was — an unlettered Galilean peasant — His
quiet and unwavering confidence in His success will appear
only less remarkable than His success itself. After read
ing the Gospels through, one asks in wonder what He did
to produce so mighty an impression on the world. He

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 85
constructed no elaborate machinery to ensure the effect.
He did not lay hold of the centers of influence — learning
wealth, government, etc. It is true He instituted the
Church. But He left no detailed explanations of its nature
or rules for its constitution. This was the simplicity of
faith, which does not contrive and prepare, but simply goes
onward and does the work. It was the quality which He
said could remove mountains, and which He chiefly desid
erated in His followers. This was the foolishness of the
gospel, of which Paul boasted, as it was going forth, in
the recklessness of power, but with laughable meagerness
of equipment, to overcome the Greek and Roman world.
111. A third prominent feature of His character was
Originality. Most lives are easily explained. They are
mere products of circumstances, and copies of thousands
like them which surround or have preceded them. The
habits and customs of the country to which we belong, the
fashion and tastes of our generation, the traditions of our
education, the prejudices of our class, the opinions of our
school or sect, — these form us. We do work determined
for us by a fortuitous concourse of circumstances; our con
victions are fixed on us by authority from without, instead
of waxing naturally from within; our opinions are blown
to us in fragments on every wind. But what circumstan
ces made the Man Christ Jesus? There never was an age
more dry and barren than that in which He was born. He
was like a tall, fresh palm springing out of a desert. What
was there in the petty life of Nazareth to produce so gigan
tic a character? How could the notoriously wicked village
send forth such breathing purity? It may have been that
a scribe taught Him the vocables and grammar of knowl
edge, but His doctrine was a complete contradiction of all
that the scribes taught. The fashions of the sects never
laid hold of His free spirit. How clearly, amidst the

86 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
sounds which filled the ears of His time, He heard the
neglected voice of truth, which was quite different from
them! How clearly, behind all the pretentious and ac
cepted forms of piety, He saw the lovely and neglected
figure of real godliness! He can not be explained by any
thing which was in the world and might have produced
Him. He grew from within. He directed His eyes straight
on the facts of nature and life and believed what He saw,
instead of allowing His vision to be tutored by what others
had said they saw. He was equally loyal to the truth
in His words. He went forth and spoke out without hesi
tation what He believed, though it shook to their founda
tions the institutions, the creeds, and customs of His coun
try, and loosened the opinions of the populace in a hun
dred points in which they had been educated. It may, in
deed, be said that, though the Jewish nation of His own
time was an utterly dry ground, out of which no green
and great thing could be expected to grow, He reverted to
the earlier history of His nation and nourished His mind
on the ideas of Moses and the prophets. There is some
truth in this. But affectionate and constant as was His
familiarity with them, He handled them with a free and
fearless hand. He redeemed them from themselves and
exhibited in perfection the ideas which they taught only in
germ. What a contrast between the covenant God of
Israel and the Father in heaven whom He revealed; be
tween the temple, with its jiriests and bloody sacrifices,
and the worship in spirit and in truth ; between the national
and ceremonial morality of the Law and the morality of
the conscience and the heart ! Even in comparison with
the figures of Moses, Elijah, and Isaiah, He towers aloft
in lonely originality.
112. A fourth and very glorious feature of His charac
ter was Love to Men. It has been already said that He

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 87
was possessed with an overmastering purpose. But be
neath a great life-purpose there must be a great passion,
which shapes and sustains it. Love to men was the passion
which directed and inspired Him. How it sprang up and
grew in the seclusion of Nazareth, and on what materials
it fed, we have not been informed with any detail. We
only know that, when He appeared in public, it was a
master-passion, which completely swallowed up self-love,
filled Him with boundless pity for human misery, and
enabled Him to go forward without once looking back in
the undertaking to which He devoted Himself. We know
only in general that it drew its support from the concep
tion He had of the infinite value of the human soul. It
overleapt all the limits which other men have put to their
benevolence. Differences of class and nationality usually
cool men's interest in each other; in nearly all countries
it has been considered a virtue to hate enemies; and it is
generally agreed to loathe and avoid those who have out
raged the laws of respectability. But He paid no heed to
these conventions; the overpowering sense of the precious-
ness which He perceived in enemy, foreigner, and outcast
alike, forbidding Him. This marvellous love shaped the
purpose of His life. It gave Him the most tender and in
tense sympathy with every form of pain and misery. It
was His deepest reason for adopting the calling of a healer.
Wherever help was most needed, thither His merciful heart
drew Him. But it was especially to save the soul that His
love impelled Him. He knew this was the real jewel,
which everything should be done to rescue, and that its
miseries and perils were the most dangerous of all. There
has sometimes been love to others without this vital aim.
But His love was directed by wisdom to the truest weal of
those He loved. He knew He was doing His very best
for them when He was saving them from their sins.

88 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
113. But the crowning attribute of His human charac
ter was Love to God. It is the supreme honor and attain
ment of man to be one with God in feeling, thought, and
purpose. Jesus had this in perfection. To us it is very
difficult to realize God. The mass of men scarcely think
about Him at all; and even the godliest confess that it costs
them severe effort to discipline their minds into the habit
of constantly realizing Him. When we do think of Him,
it is with a painful sense of a disharmony between what is
in us and what is in Him. We can not remain, even for a
few minutes, in His presence without the sense in greater
or less degree, that His thoughts are not our thoughts, nor
His ways our ways. With Jesus it was not so. He real
ized God always. He never spent an hour, He never did
an action, without direct reference to Him. God was
about Him like the atmosphere He breathed, or the sun
light in which He walked. His thoughts were God's
thoughts; His desires were never in the least different
from God's; His purpose, He was perfectly sure, was God's
purpose for Him. How did He attain this absolute har
mony with. God? To a largo extent it must be attributed
to the perfect harmony of His nature within itself, yet in
some measure He got it by the same means by which we
laboriously seek it, — by the study of God's thoughts and
purposes in His Word, which, from His childhood, was His
constant delight; by cultivating all His life long the habit
of prayer, for which He found time even when He had not
time to eat; and by patiently resisting temptations to en
tertain thoughts and purposes of His own different from
God's. This it was given which gave Him such faith and
fearlessness in His work; He knew that the call to do it
had come from God, and that He was immortal till it was
done. This was what made Him, with all His self-con-

THE YEAR OF PUBLIC FAVOR. 89
sciousness and originality, the pattern of meekness and
submission; for He was for ever bringing every thought
and wish into obedience to His Father's will. This was
the secret of the peace and majestic calmness which im
parted such a grandeur to His demeanor in the most trying
hours of life. He knew that the worst that could happen
to Him was His Father's will for Him; and this was enough.
He had ever at hand a retreat of perfect rest, silence, and
sunshine, into which He could retire from the clamor and
confusion around Him. This was the great secret He be
queathed to His followers, when He said to them at part
ing, " Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you."
114. The Sinlessness of Jesus has been often dwelt on
as the crowning attribute of His character. The Scrip
tures, which so frankly record the errors of their very
greatest heroes, such as Abraham and Moses, have no sins
of His to record. There is no more prominent character
istic of the saints of antiquity than their penitence: the
more supremely saintly they were, the more abundant and
bitter were their tears and lamentations over their sinful
ness. But although it is acknowledged by all that Jesus
was the supreme religious figure of history, He never ex
hibited this characteristic of saintliness; He confessed no
sin. Must it not have been because He had no sin to con
fess? Yet the idea of sinlessness is too negative to express
the perfection of His character. He was sinless; but He
was so because He was absolutely full of love. Sin against
God is merely the expression of lack of love to God, and
sin against man of lack of love to man. A being quite
full of love to both God and man can not possibly sin
against either. This fulness of love to His Father and His
fellow-men, ruling every expression of His being, consti
tuted the perfection of His character.
4*

90 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
115. To the impression produced on them by their long-
continued contact with their Master the Twelve owed all
they became. We can not trace with any fulness at what
time they began to realize the central truth of the Chris
tianity they were afterwards to publisn to the world, that
behind the tenderness and majesty of this human character
there was in Him something still more august, or by what
stages their impressions ripened to the full conviction that
in Him perfect manhood was in union with perfect Deity.
This was the goal of all the revelations of Himself which
He made to them. But the breakdown of their faith at
His death shows how immature up till that time must have
been their convictions in regard to His personality, how
ever worthily they were able, in certain happy hours, to
express their faith in Him. It was the experience of the
Resurrection and Ascension which gave to the fluid impres
sions, which had long been accumulating in their minds,
the touch by which they were made to crystallize into the
immovable conviction, that in Him with whom it had been
vouchsafed to them to associate so intimately, God was
manifest in the flesh.

CHAPTER V.
THE YEAR OF OPPOSITION.
Paragraphs 116-118. The Change of Sentiment towards Him.
119-131. The Causes of Opposition.
119-131. Opposition of the influential Classes.
119. The Sadducees.
120-130. The Pharisees' Reasons for opposing Him.
122,123. Their Preconceptions; 124. HisLowly
Origin; 125. His Followers; 126. His Dis
regard of Traditions; 127. The Sabbath;
128, 129. Imputations of Blasphemy and
Alliance with the Evil One; 130. Progress
of their Opposition.
131. Herod.
132-135. Alienation of the Common People.
132. Popular Opinions of Him; 133. Effect of
the Feeding of the Five Thousand; 134.
Refusal of Jesus to be their King.
136-143. The Changed Aspect of His Ministry.
136-138. The Sifting of the Disciples.
137. Wanderings with them in Remote Parts,
their Great Confession ; 138. Prediction of
His Sufferings, their Blindness.
139-142. His Own Thoughts and Feelings at this
Period.
140. Prayerfulness ; 141. The Transfiguration;
142. Departure from Galilee and Journey to
Jerusalem.
143. The Sanhedrim resolves on His Death.

92

CHAPTER V.

THE YEAR OF OPPOSITION.

116. For a whole year Jesus pursued His work in Gali
lee with incessant energy, moving among the pitiable
crowds that solicited His miraculous help, and seizing
every opportunity of pouring His words of grace and truth
into the ears of the multitude or of the solitary anxious
inquirer. In hundreds of homes, to whose inmates He had
restored health and joy, His name must have become a
household word; in thousands of minds, whose depths His
preaching had stirred, He must have been cherished with
gratitude and love. Wider and wider rang the echoes of
His fame. For a time it seemed as if all Galilee were to
become His disciples, and as if the movement so set ago
ing might easily roll southward, overbearing all opposition,
and enveloping the whole land in an enthusiasm of love
for the Healer and of obedience to the Teacher.
117. But the twelve months had scarcely passed when
it became sadly evident that this was not to be. The Gal
ilean mind turned out to be stony ground, where the seed
of the kingdom rushed quickly up, but just as quickly
withered away. The change was sudden and complete,
and at once altered all the features of the life of Jesus.
He lingered in Galilee for six months longer; but these
months were very unlike the first twelve. The voices that
rose around Him were no longer the ringing shouts of
gratitude and applause, but voices of opposition, bitter and
blasphemous. He was no longer to be seen moving from
93

94 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
one populous place to another in the heart of the country,
welcomed everywhere by those who waited to experience
or to see His miracles, and followed by thousands eager not
to lose a word of His discourses. He was a fugitive, seek
ing the most distant and outlandish places, and accom
panied only by a handful of followers. At the six months'
end He left Galilee for ever, but not, as might at one time
have been anticipated, borne aloft on the wave of public
acknowledgment, to make an easy conquest of the hearts
of the southern part of the country, and take victorious
possession of a Jerusalem unable to resist the unanimous
voice of the people. He did indeed labor for six months
more in the southern part of the land — in Judaea and
Persea; nor were there awanting, where His miracles were
seen for the first time, the same signs of public enthusiasm
as had greeted Him in the first months of joy in Galilee;
but the most which He effected was to add a few to the
company of His faithful disciples. He did indeed, from
the day He left Galilee, set His face steadfastly towards
Jerusalem; and the six months He spent in Persea and
Judsea may be regarded as occupied with a slow journey
thither; but the journey was begun in the full assurance,
which He openly expressed to the disciples, that in the
capital He was to receive no triumph over enthusiastic
hearts and minds convinced, but meet with a final national
rejection, and be killed instead of crowned.
118. We must trace the causes and the progress of this
change in the sentiment of the Galileans, and this sad
turn in the career of Jesus.
119. From the very first the learned and influential
classes had taken up an attitude of opposition to Him.
The more worldly sections of them, indeed — the Sadducees
and Herodians — for a long time paid little attention to

THE YEAR OF OPPOSITION. 95
Him. They had their own affairs to mind — their wealth,
their court influence, their amusements. They cared little
for a religious movement going on among the lower orders.
The public rumor that one professing to be the Messiah
had appeared did not excite their interest, for they did not
share the popular expectations on the subject. They said
to each other that this was only one more of the pretenders
whom the peculiar ideas of the populace were sure to raise
up from time to time. It was only when the movement
seemed to them to be threatening to lead to a political re
volt, which would bring down the iron hand of the Roman
masters on the country, afford the Procurator an excuse for
new extortions, and imperil their property and comforts,
that they roused themselves to pay any attention to
Him. 120. Very different was it, however, with the more
religious sections of the upper class — the Pharisees and
scribes. They took the deepest interest in all ecclesiastical
and religious phenomena. A movement of a religious
kind among the populace excited their eager attention, for
they themselves aimed at popular influence. A new voice
with the ring of prophecy in it, or the promulgation of any
new doctrine or tenet, caught their ear at once. But, above
all, any one putting himself forward as the Messiah pro
duced the utmost ferment among them; for they ardently
cherished Messianic hopes, and were at the time smarting
keenly under the foreign domination. In relation to the
rest of the community, they corresponded to our clergy
and leading religious laymen, and probably formed about
the same proportion of the population, and exercised at
least as great an influence as these do among us. It has
been estimated that they may have numbered about six
thousand. They passed for the best persons in the country,
the conservators of respectability and orthodoxy; and the

96 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
masses looked up to them as those who had the right to
judge and determine in all religious matters.
121. They can not be accused of having neglected Jesus.
They turned their earnest attention to Him from the first.
They followed Him step by step. They discussed His
doctrines and His claims, and made up their minds. Their
decision was adverse, and they followed it up with acts,
never becoming remiss in their activity for an hour.
122. This is perhaps the most solemn and appalling
circumstance in the whole tragedy of the life of Christ,
that the men who rejected, hunted down, and murdered
Him, were those reputed the best in the nation, its teachers
and examples, the zealous conservators of the Bible and
the traditions of the past, — men who were eagerly waiting
for the Messiah, who judged Jesus, as they believed, accord
ing to the Scriptures, and thought they were obeying the
dictates of conscience and doing God service when they
treated Him as they did. There can not fail sometimes to
sweep across the mind of a reader of the Gospels a strong
feeling of pity for them, and a kind of sympathy with
them. Jesus was so unlike the Messiah whom they were
looking for and their fathers had taught them to expect!
He so completely traversed their prejudices and maxims,
and dishonored so many things which they had been taught
to regard as sacred! They may surely be pitied; there
never was a crime like their crime, and there was never
punishment like their punishment. There is the same sad
ness about the fate of those who are thrown' upon any
great crisis of the world's history, and, not understanding
the signs of the times, make fatal mistakes; as those did,
for example, who at the Reformation were unable to go
forth and join the march of Providence.
123. Yet, at bottom, what was their case ? It was just
this, that they were so blinded with sin that they could not

THE YEAR OF OPPOSITION. 97
discern the light. Their views of the Messiah had been
distorted by centuries of worldliness and un spirituality,
of which they were the like-minded heirs. They thought
Jesus a sinner, because He did not conform to ordinances
which they and their fathers had profanely added to those
of God's Word, and because their conception of a good
man, to whom He did not answer, was utterly false. Jesus
supplied them with evidence enough, but He could not
give them eyes to see it. There is a something at the bot
tom of hearts that are honest and true, which, however
long and deeply it may have been buried under prejudice
and sin, leaps up with joy and desire to embrace what is
true, what is reverend, what is pure and great, when it
draws near. But nothing of the kind was found in them;
their hearts were seared, hardened, and dead. They
brought their stock rules and arbitrary standards to judge
Him by, and were never shaken by His greatness from the
fatal attitude of criticism. He brought truth near them,
but they had not the truth-loving ear to recognize the
enchanting sound. He brought the whitest purity, such as
archangels would have veiled their faces at, near them, but
they were not overawed. He brought near them the very
face of mercy and heavenly love, but their dim eyes made
no response. We may indeed pity the conduct of such
men as an appalling misfortune, but it is better to fear and
tremble at it as appalling guilt. The more utterly wicked
men become, the more inevitable it is that they should sin;
the vaster the mass of a nation's sin becomes, as it rolls
down through the centuries, the more inevitable does some
awful national crime become. But when the inevitable
takes place, it is an object not tor pity only, but also for
holy and jealous wrath.
124. One thing about Jesus which from the first excited
f;heir opposition to Him was the humbleness of His origin.
G 5

98 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
Their eyes were dazzled with the ordinary prejudices of
the rich and the learned, and could not discern the grandeur
of the soul apart from the accidents of position and culture.
He was a son of the people; He had been a carpenter;
they believed He had been born in rude and wicked Gali
lee; He had not passed through the schools of Jerusalem
or drunk at the acknowledged wells of wisdom there. They
thought that a prophet, and above all the Messiah, should
have been born in Judaea, reared at Jerusalem in the center
of culture and religion, and allied with all that was dis
tinguished and influential in the nation.
125. For the same reason they were offended with the
followers He chose and the company He kept. His chosen
organs were not selected from among themselves, the wise
and high-born, but were uneducated laymen, poor fisher
men. Nay, one of them was a publican. Nothing that
Jesus did, perhaps, gave greater offence than the choice of
Matthew, the tax-gatherer, to be an apostle. The tax-
gatherers, as servants of the alien power, were hated by all
who were patriotic and respectable, at once for their trade,
their extortions, and their character. How could Jesus
hope that respectable and learned men should enter a circle
such as that which He had formed about Himself? Besides,
He mingled freely with the lowest class of the population
— with publicans, harlots, and sinners. In Christian times
we have learned to love Him for this more than anything
else. We easily see that, if He really was the Savior from
sin, He could not have been found in more suitable com
pany than among those who needed salvation most. We
know now how He could believe that many of the lost
were more the victims of circumstances than sinners by
choice, and that, if He drew the magnet across the top of
the rubbish, it would attract to itself many a piece of
precious metal. The purest-minded and highest-bom have

THE YEAR OF OPPOSITION. 99
since learned to follow His footsteps down into the purlieus
of squalor and vice to seek and save the lost. But no
such sentiment had up till His time been born into the
world. The mass of sinners outside the pale of respecta
bility were despised and hated as the enemies of society,
and no efforts were made to save them. On the contrary,
all who aimed at religious distinction avoided their very
touch as a defilement. Simon the Pharisee, when he was
entertaining Jesus, never doubted that, if He had been a
prophet and known who the woman was who was touching
Him, He would have driven her off. Such was the senti
ment of the time. Yet when Jesus brought into the world
the new sentiment, and showed them the divine face of
mercy, they ought to have recognized it. If their hearts
had not been utterly hard and cruel, they would have leapt
up to welcome this revelation of a diviner humanity. The
sight of sinners forsaking their evil ways, of wicked women
sobbing for their lost lives, and extortioners like Zaccheus
becoming' earnest and generous, ought to have delighted
them. But it did not, and they only hated Jesus for His
compassion, calling Him a friend of publicans and sinners.
126. A third and very serious ground of their opposi
tion was, that He did not Himself practice, nor encourage
His disciples to practice, many ritual observances, such as
fasts, punctilious washing of the hands before meals, and
so forth, which were then considered the marks of a saintly
man. It has been already explained how these practices
arose. They had been invented in an earnest but mechan
ical age in order to emphasize the peculiarities of Jewish
character, and keep up the separation of the Jews from
other nations. The original intention was good, but the
result was deplorable. It was soon forgotten that they
were merely human inventions; they were supposed to be
binding by divine action; and they were multiplied, till

100 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
they regulated every hour of the day and every action of
life. They were made the substitutes for real piety and
morality by the majority; and to tender consciences they
were an intolerable burden, for it was scarcely possible to
move a step or lift a finger without the danger of sinning
against one or other of them. But no one doubted their
authority, and the careful observance of them was reputed
the badge of a godly life. Jesus regarded them as the
great evil of the time. He therefore neglected them, and
encouraged others to do so; not, however, without at the
same time leading them back to the great principles of
judgment, mercy, and faith, and making them feel the
majesty of the conscience and the depth and spirituality of
the law. But the result was, that He was looked upon as
both an ungodly man Himself, and a deceiver of the
people. 127. It was especially in regard to the Sabbath that
this difference between Him and the religious teachers
came out. In this field their inventions of restrictions and
arbitrary rules had run into the most portentous extrava
gance, till they had changed the day of rest, joy, and bles
sing into an intolerable burden. He was in the habit of
performing His cures on the Sabbath. They thought such
work a breach of the command. He exposed the wrong-
ness of their objections again and again, by explaining the
nature of the institution itself as "made for man," by re
ference to the practice of ancient saints, and even by the
analogy of some of their own practices on the holy day.
But they were not convinced; and, as He continued His
practice in spite of their objections, this remained a stand
ing and bitter ground of their hate.
128. It will be easily understood that, having arrived at
these conclusions on such low grounds, they were utterlv
disinclined to listen to Him when He put forward His

THE YEAR OF OPPOSITION. 101
higher claims — when He announced Himself as the Mes
siah, professed to forgive sins, and threw out intimations of
His high relation to God. Having concluded that He was
an impostor and deceiver, they regarded such assertions as
hideous blasphemies, and could not help wishing to stop the
mouth which uttered them.
129. It may be wondered at, that they were not con
vinced by His miracles. If He really performed the nu
merous and stupendous miracles which are recorded of
Him, how could they resist such evidence of His divine
mission? The debate held with the authorities by the
tough reasoner whom Jesus cured of blindness, and whose
case is recorded in the ninth chapter of John, shows how
sorely they may sometimes have been pressed with such
reasoning. But they had satisfied themselves with an au
dacious reply to it. It is to be remembered that among the
Jews miracles had never been looked upon as conclusive
proofs of a divine mission. They might be wrought by
false as well as true prophets. They might be traceable to
diabolical instead of divine agency. Whether they were
so or not, was to be determined on other grounds. On
these other grounds they had come to the conclusion that
He had not been sent from God; and so they attributed
His miracles to an alliance with the powers of darkness.
Jesus met this blasphemous construction with the utmost
force of holy indignation and conclusive argument; but it
is easy to see that it was a position in which minds like
those of His opponents might entrench themselves with
the sense of much security.
130. Very early they had formed their adverse judg
ment of Him, and they never changed it. Even during
His first year in Judasa they had pretty well decided
against Him. When the news of His success in Galilee

102

THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.

spread, it filled them with consternation, and they sent
deputations from Jerusalem to act in concert with their
local adherents in opposing Him. Even during His year
of joy He clashed with them again and again. At first He
treated them with consideration and appealed to their
reason and heart. But He soon saw that this was hopeless
and accepted their opposition as inevitable. He exposed
the hollowness of their pretensions to His audiences and
warned His disciples against them. Meanwhile they did
everything to poison the public mind against Him. They
succeeded only too well. When, at the year's end, the
tide of His popularity began to recede, they pressed their
advantage, assailing Him more and more boldly.
131. They even succeeded thus early in arousing the
cold minds of the Sadducees and Herodians against Him,
no doubt by persuading them that He was fomenting a
popular revolt, which would endanger the throne of their
master Herod, who reigned over Galilee. That mean and
characterless prince himself also became His persecutor.
He had other reasons to dread Him besides those suggested
by his courtiers. About this very time he had murdered
John the Baptist. It was one of the meanest and foulest
crimes recorded in history, an awful instance of the way in
which sin leads to sin, and of the malicious perseverance
with which a wicked woman will compass her revenge.
Soon after it was committed, his courtiers came to tell him
of the supposed political designs of Jesus. But when he
heard of the new prophet, an awful thought thrilled through
his guilty conscience. "It is John the Baptist," he cried,
"whom I beheaded; he is risen from the dead." Yet he
desired to see Hiin, his curiosity getting the better of his
terror. It was the desire of the lion to see the lamb.
Jesus never responded to his invitation. But just on that
account Herod mav have been the more willing to listen to

THE YEAR OF OPPOSITION. 103
the suggestions of his courtiers that he should arrest Him
as a dangerous person. It was not long before he was
seeking to kill Him. Jesus had to keep out of his way,
and no doubt this helped along with more important things
to change the character of His life in Galilee during: the
last six months of His stay there.
132. It had seemed for a time as if His hold on the
mind and the heart of the common people might become
so strong as to carry irresistibly a national recognition.
Many a movement, frowned upon at first by authorities and
dignitaries, has, by committing itself to the lower classes
and securing their enthusiastic acknowledgment, risen to
take possession of the upper classes and carry the centers
of influence. There is a certain point of national consent
at which any movement which reaches it becomes like a
flood, which no amount of prejudice or official dislike can
successfully oppose. Jesus gave Himself to the common
people of Galilee, and they gave Him in return their love
and admiration. Instead of hating Him like the Pharisees
and scribes, and calling Him a glutton and a win«-bibber,
they believed Him a prophet; they compared Him with the
very greatest figures of the past, and many, according as
they were more struck with the sublime or with the melt
ing side of His teaching, said He was Isaiah or Jeremiah
risen from the dead. It was a common idea of the time
that the coming of the Messiah was to be preceded by the
rising again of some prophet. The one most commonly
thought of was Elijah. Accordingly some took Jesus for
Elijah. But it was only a precursor of the Messiah they
supposed Him to be, not the Messiah Himself. He was
not at all like their conception of the coming Deliverer,
which was of the most grossly material kind. Now and
then, indeed, after He had wrought some unusually striking

104 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
miracle, there might be raised a single voice or a few
voices, suggesting, Is this not He? But, wonderful as
were His deeds and His words, yet the whole aspect of His
life was so unlike their preconceptions, that the truth failed
to suggest itself forcibly and universally to their minds.
133. At last, however, the decisive hour seemed to have
arrived. It was just at that great turning-point to which
allusion has frequently been made — the end of the twelve
months in Galilee. Jesus had heard of the Baptist's death,
and immediately hurried away into a desert place with His
disciples, to brood and talk over the tragic event. He
sailed to the eastern side of the lake, and, landing on the
grassy plain of Bethsaida, went up to a hill with the Twelve.
But soon at its feet there gathered an immense multitude
to hear and see Him. They had found out where He was,
and gathered to Him from every quarter. Ever ready
to sacrifice Himself for others, He descended to address
and heal them. The evening came on, as His discourse
prolonged itself, when, moved with a great access of com
passion for the helpless multitude, He wrought the stupen
dous miracle of feeding the five thousand. Its effect was
overwhelming. They became instantaneously convinced
that this was none other than the Messiah, and, having
only one conception of what this meant, they endeavored
to take Him by force and make Him a king; that is, to
force Him to become the leader of a Messianic revolt, by
which they might wrest the throne from Cassar and the
princelings he had set up over the different provinces.
134. It seemed the crowning hour of success. But to
Jesus Himself it was an hour of sad and bitter shame.
This was all that His year's work had come to! This was
the conception they yet had of Him! And they were to
determine the course of His future action, instead of hum
bly asking what He would have them to do! He accepted

THE YEAR OF OPPOSITION. 105
it as the decisive indication of the effect of His work in
Galilee. He saw how shallow were its results. Galilee
had judged itself unworthy of being the center from which
His kingdom might extend itself to the rest of the land.
He fled from their carnal desires, and the very next day,
meeting them again at Capernaum, He told them how
much they had been mistaken in Him; they were looking
for a Bread-king, who would give them idleness and plenty,
mountains of loaves, rivers of milk, every comfort without
labor. What He had to give was the bread of eternal
life. 135. His discourse was like a stream of cold water
directed upon the fiery enthusiasm of the crowd. From
that hour His cause in Galilee was doomed; " many of His
disciples went back and walked no more with Him." It
was what He intended. It was Himself who struck the
fatal blow at His popularity. He resolved to devote Him
self thenceforward to the few who really understood Him
and were capable of being the adherents of a spiritual
enterprise. 136. The Changed Aspect of His Ministry.— Vet, although
the people of Galilee at large had shown themselves
unworthy of Him, there was a considerable remnant that
proved true. At the center of it were the apostles; but
there were also others, to the number probably of several
hundreds. These now became the objects of His special
care. He had saved them as brands plucked from the
burning, when Galilee as a whole deserted Him. For
them it must have been a time of crucial trial. Their
views were to a large extent those of the populace. They
also expected a Messiah of worldly splendor. They had
indeed learned to include deeper and more spiritual ele
ments in their conception, but, along with these, it still

106 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
contained the traditional and material ones. It must have
been a painful mystery to them that Jesus should so long
delay the assumption of the crown. So painful had this
been to the Baptist in his lonely prison, that he began to
doubt whether the vision he had seen on the bank of the
Jordan and the great convictions of his life had not been
delusions, and sent to ask Jesus if He really was the Christ.
The Baptist's death must have been an awful shock to
them. If Jesus was the Mighty One they thought Him,
how could He alllow His friend to come to such an end"?
Still they held on to Him. They showed what it was which
kept them by their answer to Him, when, after the disper
sion which followed the discourse at Capernaum, He put
to them the sad question, " Will ye also go away?" They
replied, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the
words of eternal life." Their opinions were not clear;
they were in a mist of perplexities; but they knew that
from Him they were getting eternal life. This held them
close to Him, and made them willing to wait till He should
make things clear.
137. During the last six months He spent in Galilee,
He abandoned to a large extent His old work of preaching
and miracle-working, and devoted Himself to the instruc
tion of these adherents. He made long circuits with them
in the most distant parts of the province, avoiding publicity
as much as possible. Thus we find Him at Tyre and Sidon,
far to the north-west; at Cassarea-Philippi, on the far north
east; and in Decapolis, to the south and east of the lake.
These journeys, or rather flights, were due partly to the
bitter opposition of the Pharisees, partly to fear of Herod,
but chiefly to the desire to be alone with His disciples.
The precious result of them was seen in an incident which
happened at Cresarea-Philippi. Jesus began to ask His
disciples what were the popular views about Himself, and

THE YEAR OF OPPOSITION. 107
they told Him the various conjectures which were flying
about, — that He was a prophet, that He was Elias, that He
was John the Baptist, and so on. " But whom say ye that
I am?" He asked; and Peter answered for them all, " Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God." This was the
deliberate and decisive conviction by which they were
determined to abide, whatever might come. Jesus received
the confession with great joy, and at once recognized in
those who had made it the nucleus of the future Church,
which was to be built on the truth to which they had given
expression. 138. But this attainment only prepared them for a
new trial of faith. From that time, we are told, He began
to inform them of His approaching sufferings and death.
These now stood out clearly before His own mind as the
only issue of His career to be looked for. He had hinted
as much to them before, but, with that delicate and loving
consideration which always graduated His teaching to their
capacity, He did not refer to it often. But now they were
in some degree able to bear it; and, as it was inevitable
and near at hand, He kept insisting on it constantly. But
they themselves tell us they did not in the least understand
Him. In common with all their countrymen, they expected
a Messiah who should sit on the throne of David, and of
whose reign there should be no end. They believed Jesus
was this Messiah; and it was to them utterly incomprehen
sible that, instead of reigning, He should be killed on His
arrival in Jerusalem. They listened to Him, they discussed
His words among themselves, but they regarded their
apparent meaning as a wild impossibility. They thought
He was only using one of the parabolic sayings of which
He was so fond, His real meaning being that the present
lowly form of His work was to die and disappear, and His
cause rise, as it were, out of the grave in a glorious and

108 THE LIFE OE JESUS CHRIST.
triumphant shape. He endeavored to undeceive them,
going more and more minutely into the details of His
approaching sufferings. But their minds could not take
the truth in. How completely even the best of them
failed to do so is shown by the frequent wranglings among
them at this period as to which of them should in the
approaching kingdom be the greatest, and by the request
of Salome for her sons, that they should sit the one on the
right and the other on the left hand in His kingdom. When
they left Galilee and went up towards Jerusalem, it was
with the conviction that " the kingdom of God should
immediately appear," — that is, that Jesus, on arriving in
the capital, would throw off the guise of humiliation He
had hitherto worn, and, overcoming all opposition by some
forthputting of His concealed glory, take His place on the
throne of His fathers.
139. What were the thoughts and feelings of Jesus
Himself during this year? To Him also it was a year of
sore trial. Now for the first time the deep lines of care
and pain were traced upon His face. During the twelve
month of successful work in Galilee, He was borne up
with the joy of sustained achievement. But now He be
came, in the truest sense, the Man of Sorrows. Behind
Him was His rejection by Galilee. The sorrow which He
felt at seeing the ground on which He had bestowed so
much labor turning out barren, is to be measured only by
the greatness of His love to the souls He sought to save,
and the depth of His devotion to His work. In front of
Him was His rejection at Jerusalem. That was now cer
tain; it rose up and stood out constantly and unmistakably,
meeting His eyes as often as He turned them to the future.
It absorbed His thoughts. It was a terrible prospect; and,

THE YEAR OF OPPOSITION. 109
now that it drew nigh, it sometimes shook His soul with a
conflict of feelings which we scarcely dare to picture to
ourselves. 140. He was very much in prayer. This had all along
been His delight and resource. In His busiest period,
when He was often so tired with the labors of the day that
at the approach of evening He was ready to fling Himself
down in utter fatigue, He would nevertheless escape away
• from the crowds and His disciples to the mountain-top, and
spend the whole night in lonely communion with His
Father. He never took any important step without such a
night. But now He was far oftener alone than ever before,
setting forth His case to His God with strong crying and
tears. 141. His prayers received a splendid answer in the
Transfiguration. That glorious scene took place in the
middle of the year of opposition, just before He quitted
Galilee and set forth on the journey of doom. It was in
tended partly for the sake of the three disciples who accom
panied Him to the mountain-top, to strengthen their faith
and make them fit to strengthen their brethren. But it was
chiefly intended for Himself. It was a great gift of His
Father, an acknowledgment of His faithfulness up to this
point, and a preparation for what lay before Him. It was
about the decease He was to accomplish at Jerusalem He
conversed with His great predecessors, Moses and Elias,
who could thoroughly sympathize with Him, and whose
work His death was to fulfill.
142. Immediately after this event He left Galilee and
went south. He spent six months on His way to Jerusalem.
It was part of His mission to preach the kingdom over the
whole land, and He did so. He sent seventy of His disci
ples on before Him to prepare the villages and towns to

110 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
receive Him. Again in this new field the same manifesta
tions as Galilee had witnessed during the first months
of His labors there showed themselves, — the multitudes
following Him, the wonderful cures, and so forth. We
have not records of this period sufficient to enable us to
follow Him step by step. We find Him on the borders
of Samaria, in Peraea, on the banks of the Jordan, in Beth
any, in the village of Ephraim. But Jerusalem was His
goal. His face was set like a flint for it. Sometimes He'
was so absorbed in the anticipation of what was to befall
Him there, that His disciples, following His swift, mute
figure along the highway, were amazed and afraid. Now
and then, indeed, He would relax for a little, as when He
was blessing the little children or visiting the home of His
friends at Bethany. But His mood at this period was more
stern, absorbed, and highly strung than ever before. His
contests with His enemies were sharper, the conditions
which He imposed on those who offered to be His disciples
more stringent. Everything denoted that the end was
drawing near. He was in the grip of His grand purpose
of atoning for the sins of the world, and His soul was
straitened till it should be accomplished.
143. The catastrophe drew nigh apace. He paid two
brief visits to Jerusalem, before the final one, during His
last six months. On both occasions the opposition of the
authorities assumed the most menacing form. They en
deavored to arrest Him on the first occasion, and took up
stones to stone Him on the second. They had already
issued a decree that any one acknowledging Him to be the
Messiah should be excommunicated. But it was the ex
citement produced in the popular mind by the raising of
Lazarus at the very gates of the ecclesiastical citadel which
finally convinced the authorities that they could not satisfy

THE YEAR OF OPPOSITION. Ill
themselves with anything short of His death. So they re
solved in council. This took place only a month or two
before the end came, and it drove Him for the time from
the neighborhood of Jerusalem. But He retired only until
the hour which His Father had appointed Him should
strike.

CHAPTER VI.
THE END.
Paragraphs 144-205. 144. The Passover.
145-152. The Final Breach with the Nation.
145. His Arrival in Bethany ; 146-149. The Tri
umphal Entry into Jerusalem ; 150. The Great
Day of Controversy ; 151,152. Judas Iscariot.
153-162. Jesus in Presence of Death.
153, 154. Multitude of His Thoughts ; 155. Pros
pect of Death, Visit of Greeks; 156. Com
passion for His Country; 157, 158. Loneliness;
159. The Consolation of Prayer; 160. In the
Upper Room; 161, 162. Gethsemane.
163-189. The Trial.
164, 165. Double Trial ; Reason of This.
166-173. Ecclesiastical Trial—
166. Before Annas ; 167-171. Before Caiaphas,
Condemnation for Blasphemy; 172. Irregu
larity ; 173. Mockery of Jesus.
174-189. Civil Trial—
174-180. Before Pilate for the First Time—
174-176. Procession to the Palace ; 177.
The Case must be pled; 178. Civil
Charges; 179. " What is Truth ?" 180.
He is pronounced innocent.
181. Before Herod.
182-189. Before Pilate again—
182. Pilate's Diplomacy ; 183. Barabbas ;
184. Scourging ; 185. " Ecce Homo ; "
186. Pilate's Religious Dread ; 187. Threat
to complain to the" Emperor; 188. Pilate
gives way; 189. The Jews surrender their
History.
190-198. The Crucifixion.
191. The Crowd; 192. Calvary; 193. Horrors of
this Form of Death ; 194. * His Triumph over
them; 195. His Mental Sufferings; 196. Bear
ing the Sin of the World ; 197. Darkness;
198. Last Words.
199-205 Tns Resurrection and Ascension.
199. Christianity Dead; 201, 202. Breakdown of
Disciples; 203. Resurrection of Christianity
204. The Risen One; 205. The Ascension.

CHAPTER VI,

THE END.

144. At length the third year of His ministry verged
towards its close, and the revolving seasons brought round
the great annual feast of the Passover. It is said that as
many as two or three millions of strangers were gathered
in Jerusalem on such an occasion. They not only flocked
from every part of Palestine, but came over sea and land
from all the countries in which the seed of Abraham were
dispersed, in order to celebrate the event in which their
national history began. They were brought together by
very various motives. Some came with the solemn thoughts
and deep religious joy of minds responsive to the memor
ies of the venerable occasion. Some looked forward
chiefly to reunion with relatives and friends who had been
long parted from them by residence in distant places. Not
a few of the baser sort brought with them the darling pas
sions of their race, and were chiefly intent on achieving in
so great a concourse some important stroke of business.
But this year the minds of tens of thousands were full of
an unusual excitement, and they came up to the capital ex
pecting to see something more remarkable than they had
ever witnessed there before. They hoped to see Jesus at
the feast, and entertained many vague forebodings as to
what might happen in connection with Him. His name
was the word oftenest passing from mouth to mouth among
the pilgrim bands that crowded along the highways, and
among the Jewish groups that talked together on the decks
H 5" 113

114 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
of the ships coming from Asia Minor and Egypt. Nearly
all His own disciples no doubt were there, and were ar
dently cherishing the hope that at last in this concourse of
the nation He would throw off the guise of humility which
concealed His glory, and in some irresistible way demon
strate His Messiahship. There must have been thousands
from the southern portions of the country, in which He had
recently been spending His time, who came full of the
same enthusiastic views about Him as were entertained in
Galilee at the close of His first year there; and no doubt
there were multitudes of the Galileans themselves who
were favorably disposed towards Him and ready to take the
deepest interest in any new development of His affairs.
Tens of thousands from more distant parts, who had heard
of Him, but never seen Him, arrived in the capital in the
hope that He might be there, and that they might enjoy
the opportunity of seeing a miracle or listening to the
words of the new prophet. The authorities in Jerusalem,
too, awaited His coming with very mingled feelings. They
hoped that some turn of events might give them the chance
of at last suppressing Him; but they could not help fear
ing that He might appear at the head of a provincial fol
lowing which would place them at His mercy.
145. The Final Breach with the Nation. — Six days be
fore the Passover began, He arrived in Bethany, the village
of His friends Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, which lay half-
an-hour from the city on the other side of the summit of
the Mount of Olives. It was a convenient place to lodo-e
during the feast, and He took up His quarters with His
friends. The solemnities were to begin on a Thursday, so
that it was on the previous Friday He arrived there. He
had been accompanied the last twenty miles of His journey
by an immense multitude of the pilgrims, to whom He was

THE END. 115
the center of interest. They had seen Him healing blind
Bartimaeus at Jericho, and the miracle had produced among
them extraordinary excitement. When they reached Beth
any, the village was ringing with the recent resurrection of
Lazarus, and they carried on the news to the crowds who
had already arrived from all quarters in Jerusalem, that
Jesus had come.
146. Accordingly, when, after resting over the Sabbath
in Bethany, He came forth on the Sunday morning to pro
ceed to the city, He found the streets of the village and
the neighboring roads thronged with a vast crowd, consist
ing partly of those who had accompanied Him on the
Friday, partly of other companies who had come up behind
Him from Jericho and heard of the miracles as they came
along, and partly of those who, having heard that He was
at hand, had flocked out from Jerusalem to see Him. They
welcomed Him with enthusiasm, and began to shout
"Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He that com-
eth in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" It
was a Messianic demonstration such as He had formerly
avoided. But now He yielded to it. Probably He was
satisfied with the sincerity of the homage paid to Him;
and the hour had come when no considerations could per
mit Him any longer to conceal from the nation the charac
ter in which He presented Himself and the claim He made
on its faith. But, in yielding to the desires of the multi
tude that He should assume the style of a king, He made
it unmistakable in what sense He accepted the honor. He
sent for an ass-colt, and, His disciples having spread their
garments on it, rode at the head of the crowd. Not armed
to the teeth or bestriding a war-horse did He come, but as
the King of simplicity and peace. The procession swept
over the brow of Olivet and down the mountain-side; it
crossed the Kedron, and, mounting the slope which led to

116 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
the gate of the city, passed on through the streets to the
temple. It swelled as it went, great numbers hurrying
from every quarter to join it; the shouts rang louder and
more loud; the processionists broke off twigs from the
palms and olives, as they passed, and waved them in tri
umph. The citizens of Jerusalem ran to their doors and
bent over their balconies to look, and asked, " Who is this?"
to which the processionists replied with provincial pride,
"This is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth." It was, in fact
an entirely provincial demonstration. The Jerusalemites
took no part in it, but held coldly aloof. The authorities
knew only too well what it meant, and beheld it with rage
and dread. They came to Jesus, and ordered Him to bid
His followers hold their peace, hinting no doubt that, if He
did not do so, the Roman garrison, which was stationed in
the immediate vicinity, would pounce on Him and them,
and punish the city for an act of treason to Caesar.
147. There is no point in the life of Jesus at which we
are more urged to ask, What would have happened if His
claim had been conceded — if the citizens of Jerusalem
had been carried away with the enthusiasm of the provin
cials, and the prejudices of priests and scribes had been
borne down before the torrent of public approval? Would
Jesus have put Himself at the head of the nation and in
augurated an era of the world's history totally different
from that which followed? These questions very soon carry
us beyond our depth, yet no intelligent reader of the Gos
pels can help asking them.
148. Jesus had formally made offer of Himself to the
capital and the authorities of the nation, but met with no
response. The provincial recognition of His claims was
insufficient to carry a national assent. He accepted the
decision as final. The multitude expected a signal from
Him, and in their excited mood would have obeyed it, what-

THE END. 117
ever it might have been. But He gave them none, and,
after looking round about Him for a little in the temple,
left them and returned to Bethany.
149. Doubtless the disappointment of the multitude was
extreme, and an opportunity was offered to the authorities
which they did not fail to make use of. The Pharisees
needed no stimulus; but even the Sadducees, those cold and
haughty friends of order, espied danger to the public peace
in the state of the popular mind, and leagued themselves
with their bitter enemies in the resolution to suppress Him.
150. On Monday and Tuesday He appeared again in
the city and engaged in His old work of healing and teach
ing. But on the second of these days the authorities inter
posed. Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians, high priests,
priests, and scribes were for once combined in a common
cause. They came to Him, as He taught in the temple,
and demanded by what authority He did such things. In
all the pomp of official costume, of social pride and popu
lar renown, they set themselves against the simple Galilean,
while the multitudes looked on. They entered into a keen
and prolonged controversy with Him on points selected
beforehand, putting forward their champions of debate to
entangle Him in His talk, their distinct object being, either
to discredit Him with the audience or to elicit something
from His lips in the heat of argument which might form a
ground of accusation against Him before the civil authority.
Thus, for example, they asked Him if it was lawful to give
tribute to Caesar. If He answered Yes, they knew that
His popularity would perish on the instant, for it would be
a complete contradiction of the popular Messianic ideas.
If, on the contrary, He answered No, they would accuse
Him of treason before the Roman governor. But Jesus
was far more than a match for them. Hour by hour He
steadfastly met the attack. His straightforwardness put

118 THE LIFE OP JESUS CHRIST.
their duplicity to shame, and His skill in argument turned
every spear which they directed at Him round to their own
breasts. At last He carried the war into their own terri
tory, and convicted them of such ignorance or lack of can
dor as completely put them to shame before the onlookers.
Then, when He had silenced them, He let loose the storm
of His indignation, and delivered against them the philip
pic which is recorded in the twenty-third chapter of Mat
thew. Giving unrestrained expression to the pent-up criti
cism of a lifetime, He exposed their hypocritical practices
in sentences that fell like strokes of lightning and made
them a scorn and laughing-stock, not only to the hearers
then, but to all the world since.
151. It was the final breach between Him and them.
They had been utterly humiliated before the whole people,
over whom they were set in authority and honor. They
felt it to be intolerable, and resolved not to lose an hour
in seeking their revenge. That very evening the Sanhe
drim met in passionate mood to devise a plan for making
away with Him. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea
may have raised a solitary protest against their precipitate
proceedings; but they indignantly silenced them, and were
unanimously of opinion that He should forthwith be put to
death. But circumstances checked their cruel haste. At
least the forms of justice would have to be gone through;
and besides, Jesus evidently enjoyed an immense popular
ity among the strangers who filled the city. What might
not the idle crowd do if He were arrested before their
eyes? It was necessary to wait till the mass of the pil
grims had left the city. They had just, with great reluc
tance, arrived at this conclusion, when they received a
most unexpected and gratifying surprise. One of His own
disciples appeared, and offered to betray Him for a price.
152. Judas Iscariot is the byword of the human race.

THE END. 119
In his Vision of Hell, Dante has placed him in the lowest
of the circles of the damned, as the sole sharer with Satan
himself of the very uttermost punishment; and the poet's
verdict is that of mankind. Yet he was not such a mon
ster of iniquity as to be utterly beyond comprehension or
even sympathy. The history of his base and appalling
lapse is perfectly intelligible. He had joined the disciple
ship of Jesus, as the other apostles did, in the hope of
taking part in a political revolution and occupying a distin
guished place in an earthly kingdom. It is inconceivable
that Jesus would have made him an apostle if there had
not at one time been some noble enthusiasm in him, and
some attachment to Himself. That he was a man of supe
rior energy and administrative ability may be inferred from
the fact that he was made the purse-bearer of the apostolic
company. But there was a canker at the root of his char
acter, which gradually absorbed all that was excellent in
him, and became a tyrannical passion. It was the love of
money. He fed it by the petty peculations which he prac
tised on the small sums which Jesus received from His
friends for the necessities of His company and for distribu
tion among the poor with whom He was daily mingling.
He hoped to give it unrestrained gratification when He
became chancellor of the exchequer in the new kingdom.
The views of the other apostles were perhaps as worldly
to begin with as his. But the history of their intercourse
with their Master was totally different. They became ever
more spiritual, he ever more worldly. They never, indeed,
as long as Jesus lived, rose to the idea of a spiritual king
dom apart from an earthly one; but the spiritual elements
which their Master had taught them to add to their material
conception grew more and more prominent, till the earthly
heart was eaten out of it, and merely the empty shell was
left, to be in due time crushed and blown away. But

120 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
Judas' eathly views became more and more engrossing, and
were more and more divested of every spiritual adjunct.
He grew impatient for their realization. Preaching and
healing seemed to him waste of time; the purity and un-
worldliness of Jesus irritated him; why did He not bring
on the kingdom at once, and then preach as much as He
chose afterwards ! At last he began to suspect that there
was to be no kingdom such as he had hoped for at all. He
felt that he had been deceived, and began not only to des
pise but even hate his Master. The failure of Jesus to
take advantage of the disposition of the people on Palm
Sunday finally convinced him that it was useless to hold on
to the cause any longer. He saw that the ship was sinking
and resolved to get out of it. He carried out his resolu
tion in such a way as both to gratify his master-passion
and secure the favor of the authorities. His offer came to
them just at the right moment. They closed with it
greedily, and, having arranged the price with the misera
ble man, sent him away to find a convenient opportunity
for the betrayal. He found it sooner than they expected —
on the next night but one after the dastardly bargain had
been concluded.
153. Jesus in the Prospect of Death. — Christianity has
no more precious possession than the memory of Jesus
during the week when He stood face to face with death.
Unspeakably great as He always was, it may be rever
ently said that He was never so great as during those days
of direst calamity. All that was grandest and all that was
most tender, the most human and the most divine aspects
of His character, were brought out as they had never been
before. 154. He came to Jerusalem well aware that He was
about to die. For a whole year the fact had been staring

THE END. 121
•Him constantly in the face, and the long-looked-for had
come at last. He knew it was His Father's will, and, when
the hour arrived, He bent His steps with sublime fortitude
to the fatal spot. It was not, however, without a terrible
conflict of feelings; the ebb and flow of the most diverse
emotions — anguish and ecstasy, the most prolonged and
crushing depression, the most triumphant joy and the most
majestic peace — swayed hither and thither within Him
like the moods of a vast ocean.
155. Some have hesitated to attribute to Him aught of
that shrinking from death which is natural to man ; but
surely without good reason. It is an instinct perfectly in
nocent; and perhaps the very fact that His bodily organ
ism was pure and perfect may have made it stronger in
Him than it is in us. Remember how young He was —
only three-and-thirty; the currents of life were powerful in
Him; He was full of the instincts of action. To have
these strong currents rolled back and the light and warmth
of life quenched in the cold waters of death must have
been utterly repugnant to Him. An incident which hap
pened on the Monday caused Him a great shock of this in
stinctive pain. Some Greeks who had come to the feast
expressed through two of the apostles their desire for an
interview with Him. There were many heathens in differ
ent parts of the Greek-speaking world who at this period
had found refuge from the atheism and disgusting immor
ality of the times in the religion of the Jews settled in
their midst, and had accordingly become proselytes of the
worship of Jehovah. To this class these inquirers be
longed. But their application shook Him with thoughts
which they little dreamt of. Only two or three times in
the course of His ministry does He seem to have been
brought into contact with representatives of the world
lying outside the limits of His own people, His mission
0

122 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
being exclusively to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
But on every such occasion He met with a faith, a courtesy
and nobility, which He Himself contrasted with the unbe
lief, rudeness, and pettiness of the Jews. How could He
help longing to pass beyond the narrow bounds of Pales
tine and visit nations of such simple and generous disposi
tion? He must often have seen visions of a career like that
afterwards achieved by Paul, when He bore the glad tidings
from land to land, and evangelized Athens, Rome, and
the other great centers of the West. What joy such a
career would have been to Jesus, who felt within Himself
the energy and overflowing benevolence which it would
have exactly suited! But death was at hand to extinguish
all. The visit of the Greeks caused a great wave of such
thoughts to break over Him. Instead of responding to
their request, He became abstracted, His face darkened, and
His frame was shaken with the tremor of an inward conflict.
But He soon recovered Himself, and gave expression to the
thoughts on which in those days He was steadying up His
soul: " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,
it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."
"And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men
unto Me." He could see beyond death, terrible and ab
sorbing as the prospect of it was, and assure Himself that
the effect of His self-sacrifice would be infinitely grander
and more extensive than that of a personal mission to the
heathen world could ever have been. Besides, death was
what His Father had appointed for Him. This was the last
and deepest consolation with which He soothed His hum
ble and trustful soul on this as on every similar occasion:
"Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father
save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto
this hour. Father, glory Thyself."
156. Death approached Him with every terrible accom-

THE END. 123
paniment. He was to fall a victim to the treachery of a
follower of His own, whom He had chosen and loved. His
life was to be taken by the hands of His own nation, in the
city of His heart. He had come to exalt His nation to
heaven, and had loved her with a devotion nourished by
the most intelligent and sympathetic acquaintance with her
past history and with the great men who had loved her be
fore Him, as well as by the sense of all which He Himself
was able to do for her. But His death would bring down
the blight of a thousand curses on Palestine and Jerusalem.
How clearly He foresaw what was coming was shown by
the memorable prophetic discourse of the twenty-fourth of
Matthew, which He spoke on Tuesday afternoon to His dis
ciples, sitting on the side of Mount Olivet, with the
doomed city at His feet. How bitter was the anguish it
caused Him was shown on the Sunday, when, even in His
hour of triumph, as the joyful multitude bore Him down
the mountain road, He stopped at the point where the city
burst upon the view, and with tears and lamentations pre
dicted its fate. It ought to have been the fair city's bridal
day, when she should have been married to the Son of God;
but the pallor of death was on her face. He who would
have taken her to His heart, as the hen gathers her chick
ens under her wings, saw the eagles already in the air, fly
ing fast to rend her in pieces.
157. In the evenings of this week He went out to
Bethany; but in all probability He spent most of the
nights alone in the open air. He wandered about in the
solitude of the hill-top and among the olive-groves and
gardens with which the sides of the mount were covered;
many a time, perhaps, going along the same road down
which the procession had passed, and, as He looked across
the valley, from the point where He had stopped before, at
the city sleeping in the moonlight, startling the night with

124 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST
cries more bitter than the lamentation which overawed the
multitude; many a time repeating to His lonely heart the
great truths He had uttered in the presence of the Greeks.
158. He was terribly alone. The whole world was
against Him, — Jerusalem panting for His life with passion
ate hate, the tens of thousands from the provinces turned
from Him in disappointment. Not one even of His apos
tles, not even John, was in the least aware of the real
situation, or able to be the confidant of His thoughts. This
was one of the bitterest drops in His cup. He felt, as no
other person has ever felt, the necessity of living on in the
world after death. The cause He had inaugurated must
not die. It was for the whole world, and was to endure
through all generations and visit every part of the globe.
But after His departure it would be left in the hands of
His apostles, who were now showing themselves so weak,
unsympathetic, and ignorant. Were they fit for the task?
Had not one of them turned out a traitor? Would not
the cause, when He was gone, — so perhaps the tempter
whispered, — go to wreck, and all His far-reaching plans
for the regeneration of the world vanish like the baseless
fabric of a vision?
159. Yet He was not alone. Among the deep shadows
of the gardens and upon the summits of Olivet, He sought
the unfailing resource of other and less troubled days, and
found it still in His dire need. His Father was with Him;
and, pouring out supplications with strong crying and tears,
He was heard in that He feared. He hushed His spirit
with the sense that His Father's perfect love and wisdom
were appointing all that was happening to Him, and that
He was glorifying His Father and fulfilling the work given
Him to do. This could banish every fear, and fill Him
with a joy unspeakable and full of glory.
160. At last the end drew very near. The Thursday

THE END 125
evening arrived, when in every house in Jerusalem the
Passover was eaten. Jesus also with the Twelve sat down
to eat it. He knew that it was His last night on earth,
and that this was His farewell meeting with His own.
Happily there has been preserved to us a full account of
it, with which every Christian mind is familiar. It was
the greatest evening in His life. His soul overflowed in
indescribable tenderness and grandeur. Some shadows
indeed fell across His spirit in the earlier hours of the
evening. But they soon passed; and throughout the
scenes of the washing of the disciples' feet, the eating of
the Passover, the institution of the Lord's Supper, the
farewell address, and the great high-priestly prayer, the
whole glory of His character shone out. He completely
resigned Himself to the genial impulses of friendship, His
love to His own flowing forth without limit; and, as if He
had forgotten all their imperfections, He rejoiced in the
anticipation of their future successes and the triumph of
His cause. Not a shadow intercepted His view of the
face of His Father or dimmed the satisfaction with which
He looked on His own work just about to be completed.
It was as if the Passion were already past, and the glory
of His Exaltation were already breaking around Him.
161. But the reaction came very soon. Rising from
the table at midnight, they passed through the streets and
out of the town by the eastern gate of the city, and, cross
ing the Kedron, reached a well-known haunt of His at the
foot of Olivet, the garden of Gethsemane. Here ensued
the awful and memorable Agony. It was the final access
of the mood of depression which had been struggling all
the week with the mood of joy and trust whose culmination
had been reached at the supper table. It was the final
onset of temptation, from which His life had never been
free. But we fear to analyze the elements of the scene.

126 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
We know that any conception of ours must be utterly
unable to exhaust its meaning. How, above all, can we
estimate in the faintest degree the chief element in it, —
the crushing, scorching pressure of the sin of the world,
which He was then expiating?
162. But the struggle ended in a complete victory.
While the poor disciples were sleeping away the hours of
preparation for the crisis which was at hand, He had thor
oughly equipped Himself for it; He had fought down the
last remnants of temptation; the bitterness of death was
past; and He was able to go through the scenes which fol
lowed with a calmness which nothing could ruffle, and a
majesty which converted His trial and crucifixion into the
pride and glory of humanity.
163. The Trial. — -He had just overcome in this struggle
when through the branches of the olives He saw, moving
in the moonlight down the opposite slope, the mass of His
enemies coming to arrest Him. The traitor was at their
head. He was well acquainted with his Master's haunt and
probably hoped to find Him there asleep. For this reason
he had chosen the midnight hour for his dark deed. It
suited his employers well too, for they were afraid to lay
hands on Jesus in the day-time, dreading the temper of the
Galilean strangers who filled the city. But they knew how
it would overawe His friends, if, getting His trial over
during the night, they could show Him in the morning,
when the populace awoke, already a condemned criminal
in the hands of the executors of the law. They had brouo-lit
lanterns and torches with them, thinking they mio-ht find
their victim crouching in some cave, or that they mio-ht
have to pursue Him through the wood. But He came
forth to meet them at the entrance to the garden, and they
quailed like cravens before His majestic looks and wither-

THE END. 127
ing words. He freely surrendered Himself into their
hands, and they led Him back to the city. It was probably
about midnight; and the remaining hours of the night and
the early hours of the morning were occupied with the
legal proceedings which had to be gone through, before
they could gratify their thirst for His life.
164. There were two trials, an ecclesiastical one and a
civil one, in each of which there were three stages. The
former took place, first before Annas, then before Caiaphas
and an informal committee of the Sanhedrim, and, lastly,
before a regular meeting of this court; the latter took
place, first before Pilate, then before Herod, and, lastly,
before Pilate again.
165. The reason of this double legal process was the
political situation of the country. Judasa, as has been
already explained, was directly subject to the Roman em
pire, forming a part of the province of Syria, and being
governed by a Roman officer, who resided at Caesarea.
But it was not the practice of Rome to strip those countries
which she had subdued of«all the forms of native govern
ment. Though she ruled with an iron hand, collecting her
taxes with severity, suppressing every sign of rebellion
with promptitude, and asserting her paramount authority
on great occasions, yet she conceded to the conquered as
many of the insignia as possible of their ancient power.
She was especially tolerant in matters of religion. Thus
the Sanhedrim, the supreme ecclesiastical court of the Jews,
was still permitted to try all religious causes. Only, if
the sentence passed was a capital one, its execution could
not take place without the case being tried over again be
fore the governor. So that, when a prisoner was convicted
by the Jewish ecclesiastical tribunal of a capital crime, he
had to be sent down to Caesarea and prosecuted before the
civil court, unless the governor happened to be at the time

128 THE LIFE OE JESUS CHRIST.
in Jerusalem. The crime of which Jesus was accused was
one which naturally came before the ecclesiastical court.
This court passed on Him a death sentence. But it had
not the power to carry it out. It had to hand Him on to
the tribunal of the governor, who happened at the time to
be in the capital, which he generally visited at the Passover.
166. Jesus was conducted first to the palace of Annas.
He was an old man of seventy, who had been high priest
a score of years before, and still retained the title, as did
also five of his sons who had succeeded him, though his
son-in-law Caiaphas was the actual high-priest. His age,
ability, and family influence gave him immense social
weight, and he was the virtual, though not formal, head of
the Sanhedrim. He did not try Jesus,. but merely wished
to see Him and ask a few questions; so that He was very
soon led away from the palace of Annas to that of Caia
phas, which probably formed part of the same group of
official buildings
167. Caiaphas, as ruling high-priest, was president of
the Sanhedrim, before which Jesus was tried. A legal
meeting of this court could not be held before sunrise, per
haps about six o'clock. But there were many of its mem
bers already on the spot, who had been drawn together by
their interest in the case. They were eager to get to work,
both to gratify their own dislike to Him and to prevent the
interference of the populace with their proceedings. Ac
cordingly they resolved to hold an informal meeting at
once, at which the accusation, evidence and so forth might
be put into shape, so that, when the legal hour for openino-
their doors arrived, there might be nothing to do but to
repeat the necessary formalities and carry Him off to the
governor. This was done; and, while Jerusalem slept,
these eager judges hurried forward their dark designs.

THE END: 129
168. They did not begin, as might have been expected,
with a clear statement of the crime with which He was
charged. Indeed, it would have been difficult for them to
do so, for they were divided among themselves. Many
things in His life which the Pharisees regarded as criminal
were treated by the Sadducees with indifference; and other
acts of His, like the cleansing of the temple, which had
enraged the Sadducees, afforded gratification to the Phari
sees. 169. The high-priest began with questioning Him as to
His disciples and doctrine, evidently with the view of dis
covering whether He had taught any revolutionary tenets,
which might form a ground of accusation before the gov
ernor. But Jesus repelled the insinuation, indignantly as
serting that He had ever spoken openly before the world,
and demanded a statement and proof of any evil He had
done. This unusual reply induced one of the minions of
the court to smite Him on the mouth with His fist — an
act which the court apparently did not rebuke, and which
showed what amount of justice He had to expect at the
hands of His judges. An attempt was then made to bring
proof against Him, a number of witnesses repeating va
rious statements they had heard Him make, out of which it
was hoped an accusation might be constructed. But it
turned out a total failure. The witnesses could' not agree
among themselves; and when at last two were got to unite
in a distorted report of a saying of His early ministry,
which appeared to have some color of criminality, it turned
out to be a thing so paltry that it would have been absurd
to appear with it before the governor as the ground of a
serious charge.
170. They were resolved on His death, but the prey
seemed slipping out of their hands. Jesus looked on in
absolute silence, while contradictory testimonies of the
I

130 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
witnesses demolished each other. He quietly took His
natural position far above His judges. They felt it; and
at last the president, in a transport of rage and irritation,
started up and commanded Him to speak. Why was He
so loud and shrill? The humiliating spectacle going on
in the witness-box and the silent dignity of Jesus were be
ginning to trouble even these consciences, assembled in
the dead of night.
171. The case had completely broken down, when Caia
phas rose from his seat, and, with theatrical solemnity,
asked the question: "I adjure Thee by the living God, that
Thou tell us whether Thou be the Christ the Son of God."
It was a question asked merely in order to induce Jesus
to criminate Himself. Yet He who had kept silence when
He might have spoken now spoke when He might have
been silent. With great solemnity He answered in the
affirmative, that He was the Messiah and the Son of God.
Nothing more was needed by His judges. They unani
mously pronounced Him guilty of blasphemy and worthy
of death. 172. The whole trial had been conducted with precipi
tancy and total disregard of the formalities proper to a
court of law. Everything was dictated by the desire to
arrive at guilt, not justice. The same persons were both
prosecutors and judges. No witnesses for the defence
were thought of. Though the judges were doubtless per
fectly conscientious in their sentence, it was the decision
of minds long ago shut against the truth and possessed
with the most bitter and revengeful passions.
173. The trial was now looked upon as past, the legal
proceedings after sunrise being a mere formality, which
would be got over in a few minutes. Accordingly, Jesus
was given up as a condemned man to the cruelty of the
jailors and the mob. Then ensued a scene over which one

THE END. 131
would gladly draw a veil. There broke forth on Him an
Oriental brutality of abuse which makes the blood run
cold. Apparently the Sanhedrists themselves took part in
it. This Man, who had baffled them, impaired their authority
and exposed their hypocrisy, was very hateful to them.
Sadducean coldness could boil up into heat enough when
it was really roused. Pharisaic fanaticism was inventive
in its cruelty. They smote Him with their fists, they spat
on Him, they blindfolded Him, and, in derision of His
prophetic claims, bade Him prophesy who struck Him, as
they took their turn of smiting Him. But we will not
dwell on a scene so disgraceful to human nature.
174. It was probably between six and seven in the
morning when they conducted Jesus, bound with chains,
to the residence of the governor. What a spectacle that
was! The priests, teachers, and judges of the Jewish
nation leading their Messiah to ask the Gentile to put Him
to death! It was the hour of the nation's suicide. This
was all that had come of God's choosing them, bearing
them on eagles' wings and carrying them all the days of
old, sending them His prophets and deliverers, redeeming
them from Egypt and Babylon, and causing His glory for
so many centuries to pass before their eyes! Surely it was
the very mockery of Providence. Yet God was not mocked.
His designs march down through history with resistless
tread, waiting not on the will of man; and even this tragic
hour, when the Jewish nation was turning His dealings
into derision, was destined to demonstrate the depths of
His wisdom and love.
175. The man before whose judgment-seat Jesus was
about to appear was Pontius Pilate, who had been governor
of Judasa for six years. He was a typical Roman, not of
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132 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
man not without some remains of the ancient Roman jus
tice in his soul, yet pleasure-loving, imperious, and corrupt.
He hated the Jews whom he ruled, and, in times of irrita
tion, freely shed their blood. They returned his hatred
with cordiality, and accused him of every crime, malad
ministration, cruelty, and robbery. He visited Jerusalem
as seldom as possible; for, indeed, to one accustomed to
the pleasures of Rome, with its theaters, baths, games, and
gay society, Jerusalem, with its religiousness and ever-
smoldering revolt, was a dreary residence. When he did
visit it, he stayed in the magnificent palace of Herod the
Great; it being common for the officers sent by Rome into
conquered countries to occupy the palaces of the displaced
sovereigns. 176. Up the broad avenue, which led through a fine
park, laid out with walks, ponds, and trees of various kinds,
to the front of the building, the Sanhedrists and the crowd
which had joined the procession, as it moved on through
the streets, conducted Jesus. The court was held in the
open air, on a mosaic pavement in front of that portion of
the palace which united its two colossal wings.
177. The Jewish authorities had hoped that Pilate would
accept their decision as his own, and without going into
the merits of the case, pass the sentence they desired.
This was frequently done by provincial governors, espe
cially in matters of religion, which, as foreigners, they could
not be expected to understand. Accordingly, when he
asked what the crime of Jesus was, they replied, " If He
were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered Him
up unto thee." But he was not in the mood of concession,
and told them that, if he was not to try the culprit, they
must be content with such a punishment as the law per
mitted them to inflict. He seems to have known something
of Jesus. " He knew that for envy they had delivered

THE END. 133
Him." The triumphal procession of Sunday was sure to
be reported to him; and the neglect of Jesus to make use
of that demonstration for any political end may have con
vinced him that He was politically harmless. His wife's
dream may imply that He had been the subject of conver
sation in the palace; and perhaps the polite man of the
world and his lady had felt the ennui of their visit to Jeru
salem relieved by the story of the young peasant enthu
siast who was bearding the fanatic priests.
178. Forced against their hopes to bring forward formal
charges, the Jewish authorities poured out a volley of
accusations, out of which these three clearly emerged, —
that He had perverted the nation, that He forbade to pay
the Roman tribute, and that He set Himself up as a king.
In the Sanhedrim they had condemned Him for blasphemy;
but such a charge would have been treated by Pilate, as
they well knew, in the same way as it was afterwards
treated by the Roman governor Gallio, when preferred
against Paul by the Jews of Corinth. They had therefore
to invent new charges, which might represent Jesus as
formidable to the government. It is humiliating to think
that, in doing so, they resorted not only to gross hypocrisy,
but even to deliberate falsehood; for how else can we
characterize the second charge, when we remember the
answer He gave to their question on the same subject on
the previous Tuesday?
179. Pilate understood their pretended zeal for the
Roman authority. He knew the value of this vehement
anxiety that Rome's tribute should be paid. Rising from
his seat to escape the fanatical cries of the mob, he took
Jesus inside the palace to examine Him. It was a solemn
moment for himself, though he knew it not. What a terri
ble fate it was which brought him to this spot at this time!
There were hundreds of Roman officials scattered over the

134 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
empire, conducting their lives on the same principles as his
was guided by; why did it fall to him to bring them to
bear on this case? He had no idea of the issues he was
deciding. The culprit may have seemed to him a little
more interesting and perplexing than others; but He was
only one of hundreds constantly passing through his hands.
It could not occur to him that, though he appeared to be
the judge, yet both he and the system he represented were
on their trial before One whose perfection judged and
exposed every man and every system which approached
Him. He questioned Him in regard to the accusations
brought against Him, asking especially if He pretended to
be a king. Jesus replied that He made no such claim in
the political sense, but only in a spiritual sense, as King of
the Truth. This reply would have arrested any of the
nobler spirits of heathendom, who spent their lives in the
search for truth, and was perhaps framed in order to find
out whether there was any response in Pilate's mind to
such a suggestion. But he had no such cravings and dis
missed it with a laugh. However, he was convinced that,
as he had supposed, there lurked nothing of the demagogue
or Messianic revolutionist behind this pure, peaceful, and
melancholy face ; and, returning to the tribunal, he announced
to His accusers that he had acquitted Him.
180. The announcement was received with shrieks of
disappointed rage and the loud reiteration of the charges
against Him. It was a thoroughly Jewish spectacle. Many
a time had this fanatical mob overcome the wishes and
decisions of their foreign masters by the sheer force of
clamor and pertinacity. Pilate ought at once to have
released and protected Him. But he was a true son of the
system in which he had been brought up— the statecraft of
compromise and manoeuvre. Amidst the cries with which
they assailed his ears he was glad to hear one which offered

THE END. 135
him an excuse for getting rid of the whole business. They
were shouting that Jesus had excited the populace " through
out all Jewry, beginning from Galilee unto this place." It
occurred to him that Herod, the ruler of Galilee, was in
town, and that he might get rid of the troublesome affair
by handing it over to him; for it was a common procedure
in Roman law to transfer a culprit from the tribunal of the
territory in which he was arrested to that of the territory
in which he was domiciled. Accordingly, he sent Him
away in the hands of his body-guard, and accompanied by
His indefatigable accusers, to the palace of Herod.
181. They found this princeling, who had come to
Jerusalem to attend the feast, in the midst of his petty
court of flatterers and boon companions, and surrounded
by the bodyguard which he maintained in imitation of his
foreign masters. He was delighted to see Jesus, whose
fame had so long been ringing through the territory over
which he ruled. He was a typical Oriental prince, who
had only one thought in life — his own pleasure and amuse
ment. He came up to the Passover merely for the sake of
the excitement. The appearance of Jesus seemed to prom
ise a new sensation, of which he and his court were often
sorely in want; for he hoped to see Him work a miracle.
He was a man utterly incapable of taking a serious view
of anything, and even overlooked the business about which
the Jews were so eager, for he began to pour out a flood of
rambling questions and remarks, without pausing for any
reply. At last, however, he exhausted himself, and waited
for the response of Jesus. But he waited in vain, for Jesus
did not vouchsafe him one word of any kind. Herod had
forgotten the murder of the Baptist, every impression
being written as if on water in his characterless mind; but
Jesus had not forgotten it. He felt that Herod should
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136 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
He would not stoop even to speak to a man who could treat
Him as a mere wonder-worker, who might purchase his
judge's favor by exhibiting his skill; He looked with sad
shame on one who had abused himself till there was no
conscience or manliness left in him. But Herod was utterly
incapable of feeling the annihilating force of such silent
disdain. He and his men of war set Jesus at naught, and,
throwing over His shoulders a white robe, in imitation of
that worn at Rome by candidates who were canvassing for
office, to indicate that He was a candidate for the Jewish
throne, but one so ridiculous that it would be useless to
treat Him with anything but contempt, sent Him back to
Pilate. In this guise He retraced His weary steps to the
tribunal of the Roman.
182. Then ensued a course of procedure on the part of
Pilate by which he made himself an image of the time-
server, to be exhibited to the centuries in the light falling
on him from Christ. It was evidently his duty, when Jesus
returned from Herod, to pronounce at once the sentence of
acquittal. But, instead of doing so, he resorted to expedi
ency, and, being hurried on from one false step to another,
was finally hurled down the slope of complete treachery to
principle. He proposed to the Jews that, as both he and
Herod had found Him innocent, he should scourge and
then release Him; the scourging being a sop to their rao-e,
and the release a tribute to justice.
183. The carrying out of this monstrous proposal was,
however, interrupted by an incident which seemed to offer
to Pilate once more a way of escape from his difficulty. It
was the custom of the Roman governor on Passover morn
ing to release to the people any single prisoner they might
desire. It was a privilege highly prized by the populace
of Jerusalem, for there were always in jail plenty of pris
oners who, by rebellion against the detested foreign yoke,

THE END. 137
had made themselves the heroes of the multitude. At this
stage of the trial of Jesus, the mob of the city, pouring
from street and alley in the excited Oriental fashion, came
streaming up the avenue to the front of the palace, shout
ing for this annual gift. The cry was for once welcome to
Pilate, for he saw in it a loophole of escape from his dis
agreeable position. It turned out, however, to be a noose
through which he was slipping his neck. He offered the
life of Jesus to the mob. For a moment they hesitated.
But they had a favorite of their own, a noted leader of
revolt against the Roman domination; and besides, voices
instantly began to whisper busily in their ears, putting
every art of persuasion into exercise in order to induce
them not to accept Jesus. The Sanhedrists, in spite of the
zeal they had manifested the hour before for law and order,
did not scruple thus to take the side of the champion of
sedition; and they succeeded only too well in poisoning
the minds of the populace, who began to shout for their
own hero, Barabbas. " What, then, shall I do with Jesus?"
asked Pilate, expecting them to answer, " Give us Him too."
But he was mistaken; the authorities had done their work
successfully; the cry came from ten thousand throats, " Let
Him be crucified! " Like priests, like people; it was the
ratification by the nation of the decision of its heads.
Pilate, completely baffled, angrily asked, "Why, what evil
hath He done?" But he had put the decision into their
power; they were now thoroughly fanaticized, and yelled
forth, " Away with Him; crucify Him, crucify Him!"
184. Pilate did not yet mean to sacrifice justice utterly.
He had still a move in reserve; but in the meantime He
sent away Jesus to be scourged — the usual preliminary to
crucifixion. The soldiers took Him to a room in their bar
racks, and feasted their cruel instincts on His sufferings.
We will not describe the shame and pain of this revolting
6*

138 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
punishment. What must it have been to Him, with His
honor and love for human nature, to be handled by those
coarse men, and to look so closely at human nature's utter
most brutality ! The soldiers enjoyed their work and
heaped insult upon cruelty. When the scourging was over,
they set Him down on a seat, and, fetching an old cast-off
cloak, flung it, in derisive imitation of the royal purple, on
His shoulders; they thrust a reed into His hands for a
scepter; they stripped some thorn-twigs from a neighbor
ing bush, and, twining them into the rough semblance of a
crown, crushed down their rending spikes upon His brow.
Then, passing in front of Him, each of them in turn bent
the knee, while, at the same time, he spat in His face, and
plucking the read from His hand, smote Him with it over
the head and face.
185. At last, having glutted their cruelty, they led Him
back to the tribunal, wearing the crown of thorns and the
purple robe. The crowds raised shouts of mad laughter at
the soldiers' joke; and, with a sneer on his face, Pilate
thrust Him forward, so as to meet the gaze of all, and
cried, " Behold the man!" He meant that surely there
was no use of doing any more to Him; He was not worth
their while; could one so broken and wretched do any
harm? How little he understood his own words! That
" Ecce Homo " of his sounds over the world and draws the
eyes of all generations to that marred visage. And lo, as
we look, the shame is gone; it has lifted off Him and fallen
on Pilate himself, on the soldiery, the priests, and the mob.
His outflashing glory has scorched away every speck of
disgrace, and tipped the crown of thorns with a hundred
points of flaming brightness. But just as little did Pilate
understand the temper of the people he ruled, when he
supposed that the sight of the misery and helplessness of
Jesus would satisfy their thirst for vengeance. Their ob-

THE END. 139
jection to Him all along had been that one so poor and un
ambitious should claim to be their Messiah; and the sight
of Him now, scourged and scorned by the alien soldiery,
yet still claiming to be their King, raised their hate to mad
ness, so that they cried louder than ever, " Crucify Him,
crucify Him."
186. Now at last, too, they gave vent to the real charge
against Him, which had all along been burning at the bot
tom of their hearts, and which they could no longer sup
press: " We have a law," they cried, " and by that law
He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of
God." But these words struck a chord in Pilate's mind
which they had not thought of. In the ancient traditions
of his native land there were many legends of sons of the
gods, who in the days of old had walked the earth in hum
ble guise, so that they were indistinguishable from common
men. It was dangerous to meet them, for an injury done
them might bring down on the offender the wrath of the
gods, their sires. Faith in these antique myths had long
died out, because no men were seen on earth so different
from their neighbors as to require such an explanation.
But in Jesus Pilate had discerned an inexplicable some
thing which affected him with a vague terror. And now
the words of the mob, "He made Himself the Son of
God," came like a flash of lightning. They brought back
out of the recesses of his memory the old, forgotten stories
of his childhood, and revived the heathen terror, which
forms the theme of some of the greatest Greek dramas, of
committing unawares a crime which might evoke the dire
vengeance of Heaven. Might not Jesus be the Son of the
Hebrew Jehovah — so his heathen mind reasoned — as Cas
tor and Pollux were the sons of Jupiter? He hastily took
Him inside the palace again, and, looking at Him with new
awe and curiosity, asked, "Whence art Thou?" But

140 THE LIFE OP JESUS CHRIST.
Jesus answered him not one word. Pilate had not listened
to Him when He wished to explain everything to him; he
had outraged his own sense of justice by scourging Him ;
and if a man turns his back on Christ when He speaks, the
hour will come when he will ask and receive no answer.
The proud governor was both surprised and irritated, and
demanded, " Speakest Thou not to me? Knowest Thou not
that I have power to crucify Thee, and have power to re
lease Thee?" to which Jesus answered with the indescri
bable dignity of which the brutal shame of His torture
had in no way robbed Him, "Thou couldst have no power
at all against Me, except it were given thee from above."
187. Pilate had boasted of his power to do what he
chose with the prisoner; but he was in reality very weak.
He came forth from his private interview determined at
once to release Him. The Jews saw it in His face; and it
made them bring out their last weapon, which they had all
along been keeping in reserve: they threatened to com
plain against him to the emperor. This was the meaning
of the cry with which they interrupted his first words, " If
thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend." This
had been in both their minds and his all through the trial.
It was this which made him so irresolute. There was no
thing a Roman governor dreaded so much as a complaint
against him sent by his subjects to the emperor. At this
time it was specially perilous; for the imperial throne was
occupied by a morbid and suspicious tyrant, who delighted
in disgracing his own servants, and would kindle in a mo
ment at the whisper of any of his subordinates favoring a
pretender to royal power. Pilate knew too well that his
administration could not bear inspection, for it had been
cruel and corrupt in the extreme. Nothing is able so per
emptorily to forbid a man to do the good he would do as
the evil of his past life. This was the blast of temptation

THE END. 141
which finally swept Pilate off his feet, just when he had
made up his mind to obey his conscience. He was no hero,
who would obey his convictions at any cost. He was a
thorough man of the world, and saw at once that he must
surrender Jesus to their will.
188. However, he was full not only of rage at being so
completely foiled, but also of an overpowering religious
dread. Calling for water, he wsshed his hands in the
presence of the multitude, and cried, " I am innocent of
the blood of this just Person." He washed his hands when
he should have exerted them. Blood is not so easily
washed off. But the mob, now completely triumphant, de
rided his scruples, rending the air with the cry, " His blood
be upon us and on our children! "
189. Pilate felt the insult keenly, and, turning on them
in his anger, determined that he, too, should have his tri
umph. Thrusting Jesus forward more prominently into
view, he began to mock them by pretending to regard Him
as really their king, and asking, " Shall I crucify your
king?" It was now their turn to feel the sting of mockerv;
and they cried out, " We have no king but Caesar." What
a confession from Jewish lips! It was the surrender of the
freedom and the history of the nation. Pilate took them
at their word, and forthwith handed Jesus over to be cruci
fied. 190. The Crucifixion. — They had succeeded in wresting
their victim from Pilate's unwilling hands, "and they took
Jesus and led Him away." At length they were able to
gratify their hatred to the uttermost, and they hurried Him
off to the place of execution with every demonstration of
inhuman triumph. The actual executioners were the sol
diers of the governer's guard; but in moral significance the
deed belonged entirely to the Jewish authorities. They

142 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
could not leave it in charge of the minions of the law to
whom it belonged, but with undignified eagerness headed
the procession themselves, in order to feast their vindic-
tiveness on the sight of His sufferings.
191. It must by this time have been about ten o'clock
in the morning. The crowd at the palace had been grad
ually swelling. As the fatal procession, headed by the
Sanhedrists, passed on through the streets, it attracted
great multitudes. It happened to be a Passover holiday,
so that there were thousands of idlers, prepared for any
excitement. All those especially who had been inoculated
with the fanaticism of the authorities poured forth to wit
ness the execution. It was therefore through the midst of
myriads of cruel and unsympathizing onlookers that Jesus
went to His death.
192. The spot where He suffered can not now be iden
tified. It was outside the gates of the city, and was doubt
less the common place of execution. It is usually called
Mount Calvary, but there is nothing in the Gospels to jus
tify such a name, nor does there seem to be any hill in the
neighborhood on which it could have taken place. The
name Golgotha, "place of a skull," may signify a skull-like
knoll, but more probably refers to the ghastly relics of the
tragedies happening there that might be lying about. It
was probably a wide, open space, in which a multitude of
spectators might assemble; and it appears to have been on
the side of a much frequented thoroughfare, for, besides
the stationary spectators, there were others passing to and
fro who joined in mocking the Sufferer.
193. Crucifixion was an unspeakably horrible death.
As Cicero, who was well acquainted with it, says, it was
the most cruel and shameful of all punishments. " Let it
never," he adds, "come near the body of a Roman citizen;
nay, not even near his thoughts, or eyes, or ears." It was

THE END. 143
reserved for slaves and revolutionaries whose end was
meant to be marked with special infamy. Nothing could
be more unnatural and revolting than to suspend a living
man in such a position. The idea of it seems to have been
suggested by the practice of nailing up vermin in a kind
of revengeful merriment on some exposed place. Had the
end come with the first strokes in the wounds, it would still
have been an awful death. But the victim usually lingered
two or three days, with the burning pain of the nails in his
hands and feet, the torture of overcharged veins, and,
worst of all, his intolerable thirst, constantly increasing.
It was impossible to help moving the body so as to get re
lief from each new attitude of pain; yet every movement
brought new and excruciating agony.
194. But we gladly turn away from the awful sight, to
think how by His strength of soul, His resignation, and
His love, Jesus triumphed over the shame, the cruelty, and
horror of it; and how, as the sunset with its crimson glory
makes even the putrid pool burn like a shield of gold and
drenches with brilliance the vilest object held up against
its beams, He converted the symbol of slavery and wicked
ness into a symbol for whatever is most pure and glorious
in the world. The head hung free in crucifixion, so that
He was able not only to see what was going on beneath
Him, but also to speak. He uttered seven sentences at in
tervals, which have been preserved to us. They are seven
windows by which we can still look into His very mind and
heart, and learn the impressions made on Him by what was
happening. They show that He retained unimpaired the
serenity and majesty which had characterized Him through
out His trial, and exhibited in their fullest exercise all the
qualities which had already made His character illustrious.
He triumphed over His sufferings not by the cold severity
of a Stoic, but by seff-forgetting love. When He was

144 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
fainting beneath the burden of the cross in the Via Dolo
rosa, He forgot His fatigue in His anxiety for the daughters
of Jerusalem and their children. When they were nailing
Him to the tree, He was absorbed in a prayer for His mur
derers. He quenched the pain of the first hours of cruci
fixion by His interest in the penitent thief and His care to
provide a new home for His mother. He never was more
completely Himself — the absolutely unselfish Worker for
others. 195. It was, indeed, only through His love that He
could be deeply wounded. His physical sufferings, though
intense and prolonged, were not greater than have been
borne by many other sufferers, unless the exquisiteness of
His bodily organism may have heightened them to a degree
which to other men is inconceivable. He did not linger
more than five hours — a space of time so much briefer
than usual, that the soldiers, who were about to break His
legs, were surprised to find Him already dead. His worst
sufferings were those of the mind. He whose very life
was love, who thirsted for love as the hart pants for the
water-brooks, was encircled with a sea of hatred and of
dark, bitter, hellish passion, that surged round Him and
flung up its waves about His cross. His soul was spotlessly
pure; holiness was its very life; but sin pressed itself
against it, endeavoring to force upon it its loathsome con
tact, from which it shrank through every fiber. The mem
bers of the Sanhedrim took the lead in venting on Him
every possible expression of contempt and malicious hate,
and the populace faithfully followed their example. These
were the men He had loved and still loved with an unquench
able passion; and they insulted, crushed, and trampled on
His love. Through their lips the Evil One reiterated again
and again the temptation by which He had been all His
life assaulted, to save Himself and win the faith of the

THE END. 145
nation by some display of supernatural power made for
His own advantage. That seething mass of human beings,
whose faces, distorted with passion, glared upon Him, was
an epitome of the wickedness of the human race. His
eyes had to look down on it, and its coarseness, its sadness,
its dishonor of God, its exhibition of the shame of human
nature were like a sheaf of spears gathered in His breast.
196. There was a still more mysterious woe. Not only
did the world's sin thus press itself on His loving and holy
soul in those near Him; it came from afar, — from the past,
the distant, and the future, — and met on Him. He was
bearing the sin of the world; and the consuming fire of
God's nature, which is the reverse side of the light of His
holiness and love, flamed forth against Him, to scorch it
away. So it pleased the Lord to put Him to grief, when He
who knew no sin was made sin for us.
197. These were the sufferings which made the cross
appalling. After some two hours, He withdrew Himself
completely from the outer world and turned His face to
wards the eternal world. At the same time a strang-e dark
en
ness overspread the land, and Jerusalem trembled beneath
a cloud whose murky shadows looked like a gathering
doom. Golgotha was well-nigh deserted. He hung long
silent amidst the darkness without and the darkness within,
till at length, out of the depths of an anguish which human
thought will never fathom, there issued the cry, " My God,
my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? " It was the moment
when the soul of the Sufferer touched the very bottom of
His misery.
198. But the darkness passed from the landscape and
the sun shone forth again. The spirit of Christ, too,
emerged from its eclipse. With the strength of victory
won in the final struggle, He cried, "It is finished!" and
then, with perfect serenity, breathed out His life on a verse
¥¦ 7

146 THE LIFE OP JESUS CHRIST.
of a favorite psalm: "Father, into Thy hands I commend
My spirit."
199. The Resurrection and Ascension. — There never
was an enterprise in the world which seemed more com
pletely at an end than did that of Jesus on the last Old
Testament Sabbath. Christianity died with Christ, and
was laid with Him in the sepulcher. It is true that when,
looking back at this distance, we see the stone rolled to the
mouth of the tomb, we experience little emotion; for we
are in the secret of Providence and know what is going to
happen. But when He was buried, there was not a single
human being that believed He would ever rise again before
the day of the world's doom.
200. The Jewish authorities were thoroughly satisfied
of this. Death ends all controversies, and it had settled
the one between Him and them triumphantly in their favor.
He had put Himself forward as their Messiah, but had
scarcely any of the marks which they looked for in one
with such claims. He had never received any important
national recognition.' His followers were few and uninflu-
eritial. His career had been short. He was in the grave.
Nothing more was to be thought of Him.
201. The breakdown of the disciples had been complete.
When He was arrested, "they all forsook Him and fled."
Peter, indeed, followed Him to the high-priest's palace, but
only to fall more ignominiously than the rest. John fol
lowed even to Golgotha, and may have hoped against hope
that, at the very last moment, He might descend from the
cross to ascend the Messianic throne. But even the last
moment went by with nothing done. What remained for
them but to return to their homes and their fishing as dis
appointed men, who would be twitted during the rest of
their lives with the folly of following a pretender, and

THE END. 147
asked where the thrones were which He had promised to
seat them on ?
202. Jesus had, indeed, foretold His sufferings, death,
and, resurrection. But they never understood these say
ings; they forgot them or gave them an allegorical turn;
and, when He was actually dead, these yielded them no
comfort whatever. The women came to the sepulcher on
the first Christian Sabbath, not to see it empty, but to em
balm His body for its long sleep. Mary ran to tell the dis
ciples, not that He was risen, but that the body had been
taken away and laid she knew not where. When the
women told the other disciples how He had met them,
"their words seemed to them as idle tales and they be
lieved them not." Peter and John, as John himself informs
us, " knew not the Scripture, that He should rise from the
dead." Could anything be more pathetic than the words
of the two travelers to Emmaus, " We trusted that it had
been He which should have redeemed Israel?" When the
disciples were met together, " they mourned and wept."
There never were men more utterly disappointed and
dispirited. 203. But we can now be glad that they were so sad.
They doubted that we might believe. For hew is it to be
accounted for, that in a few days afterwards these very men
were full of confidence and joy, their faith in Jesus had
revived, and the enterprise of Christianity was again in
motion with a far vaster vitality than it had ever before
possessed? They say the reason of this was that Jesus had
risen, and they had seen Him. They tell us about their
visits to the empty tomb, and how He appeared to Mary
Magdalene, to the other women, to Peter, to the two on the
way to Emmaus, to ten of them at once, to eleven of them
at once, to James, to the five hundred, and so forth: Are
these stories credible? They might not be, if they stood

148 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.
alone. But the alleged resurrection of Christ was accom
panied by the indisputable resurrection of Christianity.
And how is the latter to be accounted for except by the
former? It might, indeed, be said that Jesus had filled
their minds with imperial dreams, which He failed to real
ize; and that, having once caught sight of so magnificent
a career, they were unable to return to their fishing-nets,
and so invented this story, in order to carry on the scheme
on their own account. Or it might be said that they only
fancied they saw what they tell about the Risen One. But
the remarkable thing is that, when they resumed their faith
in Him, they were found to be no longer pursuing worldly
ends, but intensely spiritual ones; they were no longer ex
pecting thrones, but persecution and death; yet they ad
dressed "themselves to their new work with a breadth of
intelligence, an ardor of devotion, and a faith in results
which they had never shown before. As Christ rose from
the dead in a transfigured body, so did Christianity. It
had put off its carnality. What effected this change?
They say it was the resurrection and the sight of the risen
Christ. But their testimony is not the proof that He rose.
The incontestable proof is the change itself, — the fact that
suddenly they had become courageous, hopeful, believing,
wise, possessed with noble and reasonable views of the
world's future, and equipped with resources sufficient to
found the Church, convert the world, and establish Chris
tianity in its purity among men. Between the last Old
Testament Sabbatluand the time, a few weeks afterwards,
when this stupendous change had undeniably taken place,
some event must have intervened which can be regarded
as a sufficient cause for so great an effect. The resurrec
tion alone answers the exigencies of the problem, and is
therefore proved by a demonstration far more cogent than
perhaps any testimony could be. It is a happy thing that

THE END. 149
this event is capable of such a proof; for, if Christ be not
risen, our faith is vain; but if He be risen, then the whole
of His miraculous life becomes credible, for this was the
greatest of all the miracles; His divine mission is demon
strated, for it must have been God who raised Him up;
and the most assuring glance which history affords is given
into the realities of the eternal world.
204. The risen Christ lingered on earth long enough
fully to satisfy His adherents of the truth of His resurrec
tion. They were not easily convinced. The apostles
treated the reports of the holy women with scornful
incredulity; Thomas doubted the testimony of the other
apostles; and some of the five hundred to whom He appeared
on a Galilean mountain doubted their own eyesight, and
only believed when they heard His voice. The loving
patience with which He treated these doubters showed
that, though His bodily appearance was somewhat changed,
He was still the same in heart as ever. This was pathetic
ally shown too by the places which He visited in His glori
fied form. They were the old haunts where He had prayed
and preached, labored and suffered, — the Galilean moun
tain, the well-beloved lake, the Mount of Olives, the village
of Bethany, and, above all, Jerusalem, the fatal city which
had murdered her own Son, but which He could not cease
to love. 205. Yet there were obvious indications that He be
longed no more to this lower world. There was a new
reserve about His risen humanity. He forbade Mary to
touch Him, when she would have kissed His feet. He
appeared in the midst of His own with mysterious sudden
ness, and just as suddenly vanished out of sight. He was
only now and then in their company, no longer according
them the constant and familiar intercourse of former days.
At length, at the end of forty days, when the purpose for

150 THE LIFE OP JESUS CHRIST.
which He had lingered on earth was fully accomplished
and the apostles were ready in the power of their new joy-
to bear to all nations the tidings of His life and work, His
glorified humanity was received up into that world to which
it rightfully belonged.

No life ends even for this world when the body by
which it has for a little been made visible disappears from
the face of the earth. It enters into the stream of the ever-
swelling life of mankind, and continues to act there with
its whole force for evermore. Indeed, the true magnitude
of a human being can often only be measured by what this
after-life shows him to have been. So it was with Christ.
The modest narrative of the Gospels scarcely prepares us
for the outburst of creative force which issued from His
life when it appeared to have ended. His influence on the
modern world is the evidence of how great He was; for
there must have been in the cause as much as there is in
the effect. It has overspread the life of man and caused
it to blossom with the vigor of a spiritual spring. It has
absorbed into itself all other influences, as a mighty river,
pouring along the center of a continent, _ receives tributa
ries from a hundred hills; And its quality has been even
more exceptional than its quantity.
But the most important evidence of what He was, is to
be found neither in the general history of modern civiliza
tion nor in the public history of the visible Church, but in
the experiences of the succession of genuine believers,
who with linked hands stretch back to touch Him through
the Christian generations. The experience of myriads of
souls, redeemed by Him from themselves and from the
world, proves that history was cut in twain by the appear
ance of a Regenerator, who was not a mere link in the
chain of common men, but One whom the race could not
from its own resources have produced — the perfect Type,
the Man of men. The experience of myriads of conscien-
151

152 THE LIPE OP JESUS CHRIST.
ces, the most sensitive to both the holiness of the Divine
Being and their own sinfulness that the world, has ever seen
yet able to rejoice in a peace with God which has been
found the most potent motive of a holy life, proves that in
the midst of the ages there was wrought out an act of rec
onciliation by which sinful men may be made one with a
holy God. The experience of myriads of minds, rendered
blessed by the vision of a God who to the eye purified by
the Word of Christ is so completely Light that in Him
there is no darkness at all, proves that the final revelation
of the Eternal to the world has been made by One who
knew Him so well that He could not Himself have been
less than Divine.
The life of Christ in history can not cease. His in
fluence waxes more and more; the dead nations are waiting
till it reach them, and it is the hope of the earnest spirits
that are bringing in the new earth. All discoveries of the
modern world, every development of juster ideas, of higher
powers, of more exquisite feelings in mankind, are only
new helps to interpret Him; and the lifting-up of life to
the level of His ideas and character is the programme of
the human race.

HINTS FOR TEACHERS AND QUESTIONS FOR
PUPILS.
It will be observed that what has been attempted in the
foregoing pages has been to throw into prominence the
great masses of our Lord's life, and point clearly out its
hinge-events, details being as much as possible curtailed.
These details are more popularly known than any other
part of human knowledge; what most readers of the Gos
pels need is a scheme let down on the details, in whose
divisions they will naturally arrange themselves, so that the
life may present itself to the eye as a whole; and an en
deavor has here been made to supply this want. But in a
Bible-class course extending beyond twelve or fifteen les
sons, more of the details might be introduced with advan
tage. There is therefore subjoined the outline of a more
extended course, along with a few questions on the text
intended to stimulate pupils to further thought and inquiry.*
Preliminary.
/. Characteristics of the Four Gospels. — Matthew —
Hebrew thought and diction; well acquainted with Old
Testament in the original; frequent quotations, "That it
might be fulfilled; " aim to prove that Jesus was the Mes-
*As a teacher's apparatus I would recommend— CD Andrews' Bible Student's
Life of our'Lord, an unpretentious but excellent book, in which the apologetic diffi
culties in the details of the life are treated with much candor and success; (SJ) Ne-
ander's IAfe of Christ (Bohn series), the best life, in my opinion, yet published,
though sadly marred by too great concessions to the spirit of denial, which had
reached its climax in Germany at the time when it was written; and (3) Farrar's
well-known Life, which will lend vividness to the teacher's remarks. These books.
along with a good Commentary on the Gospels, a Harmony of the Gospels, and a
Handbook of Bible Geography, are sufficient. Eugene Stock's Lessons on the Life
of owr Lord are familiar to Sabbath-school teachers.
1S3

154 THE LIEE OF JESUS CHRIST.
siah; "the kingdom " very prominent; methodical group
ings and combinations ; group of parables, chaps, xiii.,
xxiv., xxv. ; of miracles, chaps, viii., ix. Mark — Graphic
and epic; supposed to be pupil of Peter, whose fiery spirit
pervades his book; poetic objectivity and minuteness; de
tails as to the looks and gestures of Jesus, the amazement
rHe created, etc.; aim to show how He proved Himself to
be the Messianic King by a succession of astonishing
deeds; stormful haste, "forthwith," "immediately," and
the like, very frequent. Luke — More of the trained his
torian than the other Evangelists; Hellenic grace of style;
series of cameos; gives reasons of events ; philosophic ;
psychological comments; Pauline spirit and universality;
Christ not only for the Jews but for mankind; genealogy
of Jesus traced back beyond Abraham. John — Supplies
what the other Evangelists omitted; dwells specially on
the work of Jesus in Judasa; His private interviews; His
interior life; His most profound and mysterious sayings;
lyric fervor, profundity, and sublimity of farewell dis
courses. (See Lange, Life of Christ, i. 243-285, and arti
cle by Professor Bruce in Catholic Presbyterian for July,
1879.) 2. When were our Gospels Written? — See Tischendorf's
little pamphlet of this name (translation published by Lon
don Tract Society); Lange, vol. i.; Westcott on The Study
of the Gospels. It would probably be out of place in a
Bible-class course to go at any length into this vexed and
vast question. The most important point is the date of
John's Gospel; see Luthardt, St. John the Author of the
Fourth Gfospel (Clark). " The man who hides from him
self what Christianity and the Christian revelation are takes
the parts of it to pieces, and persuades himself that with
out divine interposition he can account for all the pieces.

HINTS AND QUESTIONS. 155
Here is something from the Jews and something from the
Greeks. Here are miracles that may be partly odd natural
events, partly nervous .impressions, and partly gradually
growing legends. Here are books, of which we may say
that this element was Contributed by this party, a,nd the
other by that, and the general coloring by people who held
partly of both. In such ways as these Christianity is taken
down' and spread over several centuries. But when your
operation is done, the living whole draws itself together
again, looks you in the face, refuses to be conceived in that
manner, reclaims its scattered members from the other cen
turies back to the first, and re-asserts itself to be a great
burst of coherent life and light, centering in Christ. Just
so you might take to pieces a living tissue, and say there is
here only so much nitrogen, carbon, lime, a,nd so forth;
but the energetic peculiarities-of life going on before your
eyes would refute you by the palpable presence of a mys
tery unaccounted for." (Principal Rainy, New College
Inaugural Address, 1874.)
3. Other Sources of the Life of Jesus. — References in
Josephus, Tacitus, etc., of little moment except to show
how small insight these observers had into the most im
portant event of their times. Jewish history and antiqui
ties explain the period. Ancient history exhibits "the full
ness of time." Geography of Palestine.
4. The Annunciation. Prophecy of Baptist's birth.
Visit of Mary to Elizabeth. Events connected with John's
birth. 1. For what reasons may the Life of Christ be regarded as the most
interesting subject of human thought t
2. Why are tlie first three Evangelists called the Synoptists ?
3. What is the meaning of the saying that the scenery of Palestine
is the fifth Gospel?

156 THE LIFE OP JESUS CHRIST.

Chapter I.
Par. 1. On the exact date of the birth of Jesus, see the
essays at the beginning of Andrews' Life. Luke's state
ment that the taxing took place "when Cyrenius was gov
ernor of Syria " used to be pointed to as a mistake, Cyre
nius having been governor ten years later; but the discov
ery that Cyrenius was twice governor (see Andrews, 3-6,
70-73) is a remarkable instance of how alleged mistakes
in the Gospels are often made to disappear by further
inquiry. 2. On the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, see An
drews, in loc.
3. On Bethlehem, see Stanley, Sinai and Palestine.
4. It has often been attempted to throw discredit on
the story of our Lord's supernatural origin by comparing
it to the heathen stories of how sons of the gods were born
of mortal mothers; but, first, such an idea was utterly re
pugnant to the Jewish conception of God, and could not
spring up on Jewish soil; and, secondly, even these stories,
poured forth from the heathen mind, were indications of a
deep sense in humanity of the need of the Incarnation.
9. On the star, see Andrews and Pressense, in loc.
10. The Herods of the New Testament. — 1. Herod the
Great, in whose reign Jesus was born, reigned over the
whole of Palestine; died very soon after Jesus' birth; his
kingdom was divided at his death among his sons. 2.
Herod Antipas, son of the former, was at his father's death
made tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea; the murderer of the
Baptist; Jesus was sent to him by Pilate. 3. Herod
Agrippa I., grandson of Herod the Great, had as great
dominions as he; put to death James, and imprisoned Peter;

HINTS AND QUESTIONS. 157
died miserably, as is related in Acts xii. 4. Herod Agrip-
pa II., son of Agrippa I. ; Paul appeared before him,Acts xxv.
10. Archelaus was soon deposed from the throne of
Judaea, which became a part of the Roman province of
Syria. //. Farrar's chapter on the Youth of Jesus is particularly
good. IS. There are three opinions as to the brothers and
sisters of Jesus: first, that they were His full brothers and
sisters; secondly, that they were the children of Joseph by
a former marriage; thirdly, that they were His cousins.
The Greek word for " brethren " is used with such latitude
as to cover all these meanings. See the note in Plumptre's
Introduction to the Epistle of James.
9. To what extent must this star have been supernatural ?
18. What portions of Scripture were most quoted by Jesus ? What
is the Septuagint? What indications are there that Jesus
did not generally speak on the spur of the moment, but
thought His discourses carefully out beforehand ?
22. What views has Milton expressed on this subject in "Paradise
Begained," and what is their value?

Chapter II.
On the subjects treated in the first half of this chapter,
the first 100 pages of Reuss' Christian Theology in the
Apostolic Age will be found full of light.
27. It would be useful here to give a sketch of the
history of the interval between the Old and New Testament
histories, of which so little is popularly known. See
Ewald's History of Israel, vol. v., or Stanley's Jewish
Church, vol. iii. On the various modes in which Rome

158 THE LIFE OP JESUS CHRIST.
ruled subject territories, see Ramsay's Roman Antiquities,
pp. 131 ff.
22. Synagogue arrangements, Farrar, i. 221 ff. The
ritual of Presbyterian churches is a close imitation of that
of the synagogue, whereas Catholic ritual imitates that of
the temple. See Dods' Presbyterianism older than Chris
tianity. 30, 31. On the Pharisees, see Mozley's remarkable dis
course in his University Sermons. Farrar, i., chap, xxxi.,
will supply useful illustration of what is said in the text in
regard to the Scribes. A fund of information on these
paragraphs in Hausrath's N"eio Testament Times.
35. A somewhat lengthened lesson might here be intro
duced on the old Testament prophecies and types. See
Fairbairn's Prop/hecy and Typology.
45. John the Baptist, excellent subject for class essay.
49. Owen has a remarkable chapter on this subject in
his work on the Holy Spirit (Book II. chap, iv.)
50. Potuit non peccare, or Non potuit peccare ? Ull-
man, Sinlessness of Jesus, and Christian Instructor for
1830, pp. 1-96, and 118-224.
51. The official significance of the Temptation is ex
plained in the text; but it would be well to give also its
personal significance for the character of Jesus and His
relation to His Father. Temptation to unbelief, presump
tion, and pride. Trench, Gospel Studies.
53. On the plan of Jesus, see Neander, in loc.
26. What are the Apocrypha?
31, 32. Give parallels from the history of Christianity.
33. Compare the aspects of society in our country at present with
those of Palestine in the time of Christ.
36. Give tlie names of persons who are said to home been waiting for
the Messiah, and compile from the Song of Mary and else-
wliere an outline of wJiat tlieir expectations were.

HINTS AND QUESTIONS. 159
38. Compile from scattered references in the Gospels an outline of
the conception which the scribes and the populace entertained
of the Messiah and His era.
41. Give instances of men who liave achieved a great life-work in a
short time and died young.
42. It has been maintained that Jesus changed His plan, because He
first addressed Himself to the Jewish nation as a whole, but
. afterwards organised tJie Christian Church from tlie nucleus
of a few disciples. WJuit would you say in answer to such a
view ?
45. Wliat was the difference between John's baptism and Christian
baptism ?
46. Some think that Jesus and John had met before : is it likely ?
On what grounds may it be supposed that the dove and the
voice from heaven 'were perceived only by Jesus and tJie Bap
tist ?
49. Collect the texts which speak of the influence of the Holy Ghost
on the human nature of Jesus.
53. Narrate Milton's account of the Temptation in "Paradise Re
gained." Divisions of the Ministry.
What Andrews says on this subject, p. 109, is very
good and clear, and so are his characterizations of the dif
ferent periods, pp. 120, 167-173, 259, 296-301.
54. Sketch of the Geography of Palestine. See Stanley,
Sinai and Palestine; Thompson, The Land and the Look /
brief sketch in Farrar, p. 52 ff.

Chapter III.
59. There were two cleansings of the temple, the one
at the beginning and the other at the close of the ministry.
Such double accounts of similar events in the Gospels
have been seized upon as examples of the tendency in

160 THE LIFE OP JESUS CHRIST.
speech to multiply one event into two. But it is forgotten
that this is a tendency not only of speech but of action,
and that when a person has done anything once, there is a
likelihood that he will do it again.
The Great Feasts. — 1. The Passover, held in April, just
before the harvest began. 2. Pentecost, held fifty days
after the Passover, at the conclusion of the corn harvest
and before the vintage. 3. The Feast of Tabernacles, held
in autumn after all the fruits had been gathered in. 4. The
Feast of Dedication, which Jesus once attended, took
place in December.
57. Collect the sayings of John about Jesus, and of Jesus about
John.

Chapter IV.
On Galilee, see Farrar, i. chap. xii. Neander's account
of the means of Jesus is very valuable. For the convenience
of teachers who may wish to follow out in detail the inci
dents of each period, the following list of the events of
this year may be given (see Andrews, pp. 198 ff. and 536):
Second call of Peter, Andrew, James, and John.
Busy Sabbath: preaches in synagogue of Capernaum and
cures demoniac ; heals Peter's mother-in-law, and cures
many after sunset.
Next morning goes to mountain to pray, then sets out on
preaching tour in the neighboring towns, in one of which
He cures a leper.
Returns to Capernaum ; heals man " borne of four," forgiving
his sins; accused of blasphemy; walks by seaside and
teaches ; calls Matthew ; accused as Sabbath-breaker for

hints and questions. 161
allowing His disciples to pluck ears of corn and for heal
ing withered hand on Sabbath.
Retires to a mountain ; calls the Twelve ; delivers the Sermon
on the Mount.
Again in Capernaum ; heals centurion's servant.
Another preaching tour; raises widow's son at Nam; receives
message from Baptist and delivers panegyric on him;
dines with Simon the Pharisee, and is anointed by the
woman who was a sinner; parable of Two Debtors.
In Capernaum again ; casts out dumb devil ; visited by His
mother and brethren ; teaches from ship.
Crossing the lake, He stills a tempest; cures demoniacs in
country of Gadarenes.
Back in Capernaum ; Matthew's feast ; raises Jairus' daughter
and cures woman with issue of blood.
On another tour of the Galilean towns He revisits Nazareth ;
sends forth the Twelve; hears of Baptist's murder.
76. Some of the many questions in reference to the
possibility and the proof of miracles would naturally, in an
extended course, be treated here; see Mozley on Miracles.
There can not, I think, be reasonable doubt that our Lord
gave His sanction to the view that the demoniacs were
actually possessed by evil spirits.
80. Connection of the work of Christ with the fate of
nature. 84. On the teaching of Jesus many good remarks will
be found in Harris' Great Teacher. On its parabolic form,
Trench's introductory chapters in his Parables are good.
A much fuller account of what Jesus taught than is given
in the text would be very desirable in an extended course,
and might be gathered from the relative portions of any of
the handbooks of New Testament Theology (Weiss, Reuss,
van Oosterzee, Schmidt).
92, 94, 100, 109-113. It would be a useful exercise for
the members of a class to illustrate these paragraphs by
abundant quotations from the Gospels.
L 7*

162 THE LIFE OP JESUS CHRIST.
103. Christ's method of dealing with inquirers.
105. On the apostolate, see Bruce, Training of the
Twelve. 107. Sketches of the leading apostles. The difficulty
about the choice of Judas is only a fragment of the larger
difficulty of reconciling the foreknowledge of God and
man's free will.
109. For some of the remarks on the character of Jesus
I am indebted to Keim, Geschichte Jesu.
114. Ullmann's Sinlessness of Jesus.
115. Here the two names by which Jesus called Him
self — Son of man and Son of God — should be explained.
76. Mention as many great and good men as you can who heme been
called mad.
77. What reasons may be suggested why Jesus sometimes used means
and sometimes dispensed with them ?
79. What proof of the credibility of the gospel account of tlie mira
cles of Christ is afforded by the confession that John worked
none?
80. Is it correct to speak of the miracles of Jesus as interruptions of
the order of nature?
81. What form of missionary effort seeks to imitate both the preach
ing and healing activity of Christ?
82. Can the popular notions about the wicked life of Mary Magda
lene be proved from the Gospels to be incorrect?
83. With what evidence would you support the statement that Jesus,
though the Man of Sorrows, was yet the most joyful of men ?
86. What portions of the Old Testament specially justify this des
cription of the Oriental mind?
89. Enumerate the parables of Jesus, and make a list of His other
most remarkable figures of speech.
96. How would you account for the great difference between the circle
of Christ's ideas recorded by the Synoptists, and the circle of
His ideas which we find in John?
97. Which of the Evangelists uses the phrase, " the kingdom of
heaven" and what does it mean?
103. Enumerate the private interviews of Jesus.

HINTS AND QUESTIONS. 163
108. What proof of their Master's supernatural greatness is afforded
by the character and achievements of the Twelve ?
114. What conclusions can you dram from the fact tliat Jesus was

115. Prove the divinity of Christ as fully as possible from tlie first
three Evangelists, and show that it is a complete mistake to
allege ikat it is taught only by the fourth of the Evangelists.

Chapter V.
The events of this year were the following : —
Leaving Capernaum, He crosses the lake ; feeds five thousand ;
walks on the sea ; rescues sinking Peter.
Again in Capernaum ; discourse on bread of life ; many dis
ciples forsake Him; He says that Judas has a devil; dis
cussion about eating bread with unwashen hands.
Long journey to Tyre and Sidon, where He cures Syro-Phoeni-
cian woman's daughter; then to Decapolis, where He
heals a deaf man and feeds four thousand; returns to
Capernaum.
Leaves it again ; cures blind man at Bethsaida ; visits Caesarea
Philippi ; the great confession ; the Transfiguration ; cures
demoniac boy ; announces His death.
Again in Capernaum ; pays tribute.
Visit to Jerusalem at Feast of Tabernacles ; teaches in temple ;
attempt to arrest Him ; Nicodemus seeks justice for Him ;
adulteress brought to Him ; heals blind man, who argues
with rulers ; parable of Good Shepherd.
Final departure from Galilee.
Journey towards Jerusalem; John and James wish to rain
fire on a Samaritan village ; the Seventy sent out ; journey
through Persea; parable of the Good Samaritan; the
Lord's Prayer; dumb demoniac healed; encounters with
Pharisees; parable of Rich Fool; " signs of the times;"
heals infirm woman ; warned against Herod.
At Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem ; visit to Bethany ; nearly
stoned in the city.

164 THE LIFE OP JESUS CHRIST.
Retires to Bethabara; while at a feast in a Pharisee's house
on the Sabbath, heals dropsical man, and speaks parable
of Great Supper ; several parables directed against Phari
sees.
Raising of Lazarus.
Retires to Ephraim ; heals ten lepers ; more parables against
the Pharisees ; blesses children ; the rich young man ;
Salome's request ; Jericho — Bartimseus, Zaccheus ; thence
to Bethany.
Luke gives by far the fullest account of the events of
the period between the final departure from Galilee and
the final arrival at Bethany, chaps, ix.-xix.
124-128. It would be a good exercise for the pupils to
collect texts from the Gospels illustrating these paragraphs.
136. The effect of the Baptist's death on the adherents
of Jesus is put in a very striking, perhaps exaggerated way
in Philochristus. 143. At Feast of Tabernacles and Feast of Dedication.
122. How far does conscientiousness justify conduct? Illustrate
your answer by historical parallels to the conduct of the

129. Can you show from the Old Testament that miracles were not
necessarily evidences of a divine mission?

Chapter VI.

Details not referred to in the text :—

Supper at Bethany and anointing of Jesus by Mary ; barren
fig-tree cursed; second purging of temple; widow's
mites ; several parables ; details of parting meeting with
the apostles ; the portents that accompanied His death ;
details of His burial; restoration of Peter.

HINTS AND QUESTIONS. 165
145. The Passover took place this year on April 6th.
146. The anachronism of using the days of the Chris
tian week will be condoned for the sake of clearness.
152. I can not adopt the theory of Judas' career ex
pounded in De Quincey's well-known and brilliant essay
— that he thought Jesus too unworldly and hesitating, and
precipitated Him into a position in which He would be
compelled to exhibit His divine glory, but with no thought
that He would suffer Himself to be executed. Its strong
point is the suicide of Judas, which is held to have shown
a kind of nobility in his nature. But it is inconsistent, I
think, with his peculation and his kiss, and especially with
the tone in which Scripture speaks of him.
156. Here an account might be given of the destruc
tion of Jerusalem, to be got from Josephus.
160. On the difficult question whether it was the Pas
chal supper which Jesus ate with the apostles, and whether
John places the crucifixion on the same day as the other
Evangelists, see Andrews, 368 ff., and Farrar, Excursus x.;
also an article by Rev. G. Brown in the Lritish and For
eign Evangelical Review for October, 1879.
169. The silence of Jesus.
172. On the legal aspects of the trial, see articles by
A. Taylor Innes, Advocate, in Contemporary Review,
August and October, 1877.
180. Herod was ultimately banished by Gaul.
189. Pilate was also ultimately deprived of his position,
and is said by Eusebius to have at length killed himself,
" wearied with misfortunes." His wife, under the name of
Claudia Procula, is included among the Catholic saints.
193. The cross was probably of the form in which it is
familiarly represented, though sometimes it was like the
letter T or the letter X. It only raised the victim a foot or

166 THE LIFE OP JESUS CHRIST.
two above the ground. The soldier was able to reach the
lips of Jesus with a hyssop-stalk.
195. The circumstance that blood and water flowed from
His pierced side has been held by eminent medical authori
ties to prove that Jesus died literally of a broken heart —
broken with sorrow. See the opinions of Sir J. Y. Simp
son and others in the Appendix to Hanna's Last Lay of
our Lord's Passion.
199. With the argument of this section compare Paley,
Evidences of Christianity, Part i.
201. Details of Peter's fall. It was when passing from
the committee-room, where He had been informally tried,
to a barrack-room, where He was detained till the legal
hour for opening the court arrived, that " Jesus turned and
looked upon Peter."
144. Quote a passage from Acts to show from now many different
countries tlie scattered Jews gathered to the annual feast.
147. The meaning of Hosanna and of Hallelujah ?
155. Who were the persons not of Abraham's seed with whom Jesus
came in contact in tlie course of His ministry ?
163. Collect the texts in which the majesty of our Lord's appearance
is mentioned.
181. In what points was the trial of Paul which resulted in his be
ing sent to Rome similar to that of Jesus ?
194. What were the, seven last sentences of Jesus ?
203. What is the meaning of the remark, that the Christian Church
is the best biography of Christ?

Waiting at the Cross.
— BY —
ksv. D. C. EDDY, D. D.

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