YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

THE MAN CALLED JESUS

"The humanity of Christ, what is it? His inner personality, His
individual life, the courses of His thought, the lights and shadows of
His affections, the conflicts of His will, as He passed through the
drama of His years on earth, and moved before the eyes of mankind,
and was heard by living ears in His teaching by day, and overheard in
His prayers by night. This assemblage of characteristics belongs to
the realm of positive fact, more or less visible and appreciable by
observers ; and there, in the midst, if anywhere, in the foldings of His
secret worship, and the lines of His spiritual attitude, must whatever
was divine in Him have worked and told its tale." — MaRtineau,
"The Seat of Authority in Religion," p. 574.

" The ultimate symbol of Divinity
How can we dream of? We have got no sense
Whereby to seize it ; but in Him we touch
The ultimate symbol of Humanity ;
Humanity that touches the divine,
By some fine link intangible to us,
Upon that side of mortal consciousness
That looks towards Death." " The Disciples.'

THE

MAN CALLED JESUS

BY

JOHN P. KINGSLAND

cO foBpanros 5 Ae'yo/iez'oy 'Itjitovs. — JOHN ix. II.

NEW YORK
THOMAS WHITTAKER
2t>3 BIBLE HOUSE
i9°3

fale Divinity Library

INTRODUCTION.

It is a matter of prime importance that the Christian
should gain as true and deep an insight as he possibly
can into the Character of Him whom he professes to
adore and serve.
The goal of the Christian life is the attainment of
Christlikeness. But, " if we are to try to be like
Christ, we must know what He was like."* Nay
further, if we are to gain a true knowledge of God,
we must learn to know Him through the Man who
alone fully declares Him. We apprehend the
Character of God, truly, only to the extent to which we
have apprehended the Character of Jesus Christ.
But though the witness of the Gospels has been
before the world for eighteen centuries, it will hardly
be seriously questioned by any thoughtful mind that
we are still very far indeed from a true and thorough
apprehension of Him whose life and teaching they so
simply and graphically record.
This admission does not of itself involve those who
have hitherto undertaken to unfold Christian truth in
any reproach. The Son of God — the Light of the
world — must always transcend the comprehension of
* Stalker, " Imago Christi."

vi INTRODUCTION.
those who aspire to know Him. Even as the Apostle
Paul acknowledged, after he had been for many years
an apostle, that " to know Him '' was still one of his
unrealised ambitions, so must all feel who have come
face to face with that inexhaustible Personality.
But have those who have hitherto undertaken the
task of expounding Christianity and leading Christian
thought striven, as they should, to gain, and, after they
have gained it, to unfold, a true and full knowledge of
Jesus Christ ? Have they assigned to this department
of Christian teaching its due importance? We fear
that it must be admitted that they have not.
At some periods of the history of the Christian
Church, and doubtless, among individuals in all ages,
the prime importance of a true apprehension of Christ's
Character has been clearly recognised. In Apostolic
days, and to a considerable extent in the Alexandrian
school of the fourth century, this was undoubtedly the
case. We can thankfully acknowledge also that
during recent years attention has become more and
more fixed on this subject. The many " Lives of
Christ " which the last century has seen, and the
many works (among which " Ecce Homo " stands
conspicuous) which have had for their object a fuller
unfolding of the Mind and Spirit of Christ, bear abun
dant witness to this fact.
But, broadly speaking, until quite recently, Christian
writers and thinkers have not occupied themselves as
they should with this theme. They have for the most
part devoted their attention to other, and, we venture
to think, in comparison with this, far less profitable
subjects ; or if they have taken up this one, they have

INTRODUCTION. Vll
preferred to discuss the metaphysical, rather than the
moral and spiritual aspects of the Person of Christ.
Moreover, even when the prime importance of the true
apprehension of the Character of Christ has been
recognised, few thoughtful attempts have been
made to unfold that Character from the Gospel
narratives. What the writer I have already quoted says con
cerning the author of the " Imitation of Christ," is, in
the main, true of all writers who have dealt with the
Character of Christ, from the early centuries down
almost to the present day. " While to him (i.e., the
author of the ' Imitation ') Christ is the union and
sum of all possible excellencies, he constructs Christ
out of his own notions of Excellence, instead of going
to the records of His life, and painting the portrait
with the colours they supply."
We need only point to the conception of Christ
which prevailed during the Middle Ages, and which to
a considerable extent still prevails in Roman Catholic
countries, and to the prevalence of Mariolatry, which
to a great extent has resulted from that conception,
to show how far men's notions of Christ have failed to
correspond with the truth.
In the present day the necessity of a reconsideration,
we might almost say, of a reconstruction of the
Character of Christ is an urgent one. The widespread
prevalence of doubt and scepticism demonstrates that
the current conceptions concerning Him are inade
quate for the spiritual needs of many thoughtful men ;
which is only another way of saying that they are too
far removed from the truth. We have entered on a

viii INTRODUCTION.
new age, and need a new — i.e. a truer — Christ to set
before it. Such a Christ can only be found by sub
jecting the Gospels to a new and more thoughtful
examination. There are many in these days who find it impossible
to accept, and who consequently refuse to be guided
by, those conclusions concerning the Person of Christ
which orthodoxy propounds. The authority of the
Christian grammar has been, to them, seriously im
paired. They cannot take it and use it as a guide in
their search for truth. If they are to find the truth,
they must find it by the inductive, not the deductive,
method. They must start from, and reconsider, the
facts of the life of Christ with which the Records
furnish us, if they are to be led to re-affirm those
dogmas which summarise previous deductions.
It is doubtless true that this method will not com
mend itself to the majority of professing Christians.
They may regard it as superfluous, and even, possibly,
as irreverent. The majority are quite prepared to accept
the dogma of the Deity of Christ as the terminus a quo
of their religious thinking; and are quite willing to
follow the deductive method in their study of the
Gospels. They probably will have little sympathy
with a work which only attempts to make that dogma
the terminus ad quern. The writer, therefore, wishes
it to be clearly understood that this book has not been
written for those who take that position. He has no
desire to unsettle the minds of those who are fully
established in the faith. To those who find them
selves able to believe in the Deity of Christ, and to
study the Gospels in the light of that truth, he would

INTRODUCTION. IX.
not say one word to tempt them to abandon that be
lief and that method ; and he trusts that if any such
happen to read the following pages, they will not find
in them anything which will disturb their faith, or jar
on their susceptibilities. But he would repeat that the
book is not primarily intended for them.
It is to those who feel unable to accept and work
from the dogma of Jesus Christ's Deity — to the type of
mind which is represented by Philip, to whom
Jesus Christ made the appeal " Believe me for the
very works' sake" (John xiv. n), that the writer
addresses himself chiefly in the following pages. The
book is a humble attempt, by the use of the inductive
method, to lead those in doubt and perplexity up to
faith. " That is not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural " has been the guiding principle the
writer has ever striven to keep in mind. Jesus Christ's
divinity lies in — shines through — His humanity. It
must be discoverable there. If He was Godlike — if
there was in Him the " union and sum of all possible
excellencies," we must be able to find them if we only
steadfastly look. His Mind and Spirit must be such
that, on examination, we must be able — nay — com
pelled, to pronounce them franscendently beautiful
and good. We must find in Him, as a Man, all those
qualities and perfections which we instinctively recog
nise as divine, if we are to hail Him sincerely and in
telligently as the Son of God.
Such is the conviction of the writer ; and, impelled
by it, he has been led to the endeavour, of which the
following pages are the result, to demonstrate, by a
careful and reverent examination of some of the lead-

X INTRODUCTION.
ing incidents of Christ's life, how full of grace and
truth that matchless Spirit was.
If even in the smallest degree he has succeeded in
showing how superhumanly perfect His Character,
when carefully studied, reveals itself to be, and can
thus lead his readers to exclaim with more of the
heartiness of clear-sighted conviction, " Of a truth this
is the Son of God," he will feel that his labour has not
been in vain.
The writer is well aware that no demonstration of
the divine beauty and perfection which Christ's
Character displays, however full and complete — even
were such a complete demonstration possible —
is of itself sufficient to effect the salvation of
men. It is faith that saves, and faith is an act
and attitude of the soul, which it can rarely, if ever,
be led to adopt by being confronted with proofs,
however overwhelming, of its reasonableness. After
it has been most conclusively shown that Jesus Christ
is infinitely worthy of trust, it still remains for men to
trust Him. You can lead men to the gate of the King
dom of God ; but the new birth, by undergoing which
they can alone pass through it, you cannot accomplish
for them.
But still, the more truly and fully Jesus Christ is
presented to men in all the unsurpassable fulness of
that grace and truth which He manifested in His life
and death — grace and truth which the Gospels, frag
mentary as they are, not unworthily portray, and which
consequently can be dug out of the Gospels by those
who< will diligently, and with unbiassed minds, search

INTRODUCTION. XI
for these spiritual treasures — the more likely are men
to be led to the faith which saves.
And this remains true in spite of the indubitable fact
that it is not so much because they need their minds
illuminating, as because they need their hearts chang
ing, that men continue in unbelief.
The writer is quite prepared to admit that, in spite
of the marred and imperfect representations of Jesus
Christ which have been presented to the world, He has
always been presented with sufficient clearness to
" convict the world of sin because it has not believed
on Him." It has not been because Christ has not,
even in the darkest age, shone as the world's Light,
but because men, their deeds being evil, have loved
darkness rather than light, that they have refused to
believe on Him.
But that fact can never be used as an argument
against any attempt to unfold the grace and truth
which He manifested. Eyes blinded by " the god of
this world " may be impervious to the strongest light,
but there is less excuse for them when the light which
pulses round them is the light of the unclouded sun,
than when it comes to them from a sky overshadowed
by clouds, robbed of much of its splendour and
warmth. The writer would be the last to deny that the best
way to get to know the Character of Jesus Christ, and
to realise His divine perfection, is not by merely study
ing the Gospel narratives, however thoroughly and
carefully, but by supplementing that study by earnest
endeavour to follow His example, to copy His life, to

xii INTRODUCTION.
keep His commandments. More light will only come
to those who faithfully strive to live up to the light
they have. This, too, is the only way by which men
can attain to that sweet, mysterious consciousness of
" fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus
Christ," and of the presence of the abiding Spirit —
the Spirit of Truth, Who will lead into all truth —
which to have, is to possess a knowledge not " about "
but " of " Christ, and God in Him ; a knowledge which
is a spiritual, and not merely an intellectual knowledge
of Him ; to have which knowledge, the Apostle John
declares, is to have eternal life. (John xvii. 3.)
One other remark the writer feels compelled to
make. The plan which he has followed in these pages
has obliged him to lay great stress on the true
humanity of Jesus Christ ; and although he trusts he
has not been altogether unsuccessful in his attempt to
show that that humanity lacked none of the elements
of Divine perfection, some readers may feel that the
conclusion arrived at falls short of, and does not
adequately account for, those statements in the Gospels
which emphasise His " proper Deity " ; the fact, for
instance, that He was the eternal Son who " came out
from the Father and came into the world," and the fact
of His pre-existence* which the doctrine of the In
carnation implies. To such as feel that in this respect
these meditations are defective the writer would sub
mit that his object has by no means been to elaborate
a complete and consistent portrait of Jesus Christ in
* The writer has made an attempt to deal with the question
of Jesus Christ's pre-existence, within the lines to which he has
confined himself, in the last chapter.

INTRODUCTION. Xlll
harmony with the antithetical statements of the creeds.
That were, indeed, an audacious attempt. No such
portrait has ever yet been painted : it is doubtful if
such a portrait ever can be painted. The Person of
Christ must ever remain mysterious. We can appre
hend Him : we cannot comprehend Him. No com
position, however elaborate and well-balanced, can
combine and include in a perfect and satisfying har
mony all the notes and tones with which the Gospels
furnish us of that unique life. Quomodo Deus homo ?
is probably an unanswerable question, though it is one
which the human mind cannot but continue to ask.
The completest answer can be found, not by indulg
ing in a priori speculations, but by contemplating
the Man Christ Jesus as the Gospel narratives present
Him to our gaze ; by tracing up the scattered lines of
light which radiate from His life, till they lose them
selves in the dazzling splendour of the Eternal Light
and Life.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
CHAPTER I.
The Boyhood of Jesus ..... i
CHAPTER II. i
The Eighteen Years of Silence . . . .11
CHAPTER III.
The Baptism  24
CHAPTER IV.
The First Temptation  4°
CHAPTER V.
The Second Temptation  S2
CHAPTER VI.
The Third Temptation , , . . . 60

xvi CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER VII.
The Visit to Nazareth  7°

CHAPTER VIII.
The Galilean Crisis  89
CHAPTER IX.
He Set His Face Steadfastly . . . .114
CHAPTER X.
The Arrival at Jerusalem  132
CHAPTER XI.
The Death  148
CHAPTER XII.
The Resurrection  246
CHAPTER XIII.
The Spiritual Consciousness of Jesus . . 281

THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
CHAPTER I.
The Boyhood of Jesus (Luke ii. 40-52).
THIS is the only glimpse which we get of Jesus Christ
during all the thirty years which elapsed between
His birth and His baptism.
There are, it is true, apocryphal stories which at
tempt to make up for the silence of the Gospels, but
their tone and character are so entirely out of harmony
with these, that there cannot be the slightest hesitation
in pronouncing them incredible. They are valuable
only as showing how impossible it is that any man, or
any number of men, could have invented the Gospel
narratives. One further hint is furnished us with regard to this
silent period of the life of Jesus— ^he hint contained
in the question, " Is not this the carpenter ? "
(Mark vi. 3) ; but this account of His visit to> Jerusa
lem in His twelfth year is the only one in which He
is brought clearly before us — the only one which per
mits us not simply to infer, but to see what manner of
Boy He was.
It heightens our desire to know more ; but proba
bly no biographer could have told us anything more
B

2 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
which would have materially added to our knowledge
of Him. " The child grew and waxed strong, filled
with wisdom : and the grace of God was upon Him.'-
" He advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favour
with God and men." " He went down with His
parents and came to Nazareth, and He was subject
unto them." These brief statements, probably as
completely as accurately, summarise both His inner
and His outward life. If we add : " And he worked
at His father's trade," the account of these thirty years
is as complete as biography can make them. No bio
grapher could have told us by what silent, slow
degrees, that " advance in wisdom and stature " was
accomplished ; no biographer could have told us — for
He told no one1 — what deep, unutterable thoughts the
wonderful literature of His nation stirred within Him
as He made acquaintance with it ; or what were His
meditations as He plied His tools, or walked the
streets of Nazareth ; or what deep, and ever deeper
draughts of truth His Spirit drank in, as He roamed
the hills, and revelled in the beauty of God's fair
world. There were no " Sorrows of Werther," no " Ever
lasting No's " to be recorded in His case ; only such
experiences as are too silent and too deep to be
depicted. Yet we cannot be too profoundly grateful for this
one clear glimpse of Him, during this long period of
silent growth, which we are able to catch. For it
enables us to see clearly that in His case too "the
child is father of the man." The portrait which is
presented to us here harmonises perfectly with that

THE BOYHOOD OF JESUS. 3
which is given us of His ripe manhood — in that respect
contrasting must strikingly with the apocryphal stories
of His childhood. The lifted veil discloses to us just
such a Boy as we could have hoped to find, though the
reality, while it justifies, yet far surpasses all hope.
We find in the Boy traits precisely similar to those
which we find subsequently in the Man. We find that
the unique Personality is there already, not as yet
fully developed, but nevertheless, rich with all the
promise and the potency of the perfect Son of Man
and Son of God.
Let us endeavour, then, by a reverent analysis of
this incident, to bring out some of the most important
traits of character displayed by this twelve years old
Boy. Note first, His thirst for truth — the craving as of
the bud, for the light and dew of heaven — under the
impulse of which His mind expanded more and more,
until He had gained that perfect knowledge of the
truth which characterised His mature years.
It was this which prompted this Boy of twelve to go
fearlessly to the Rabbinical school ; and made Him
not only sit and listen at the feet of the learned men
there, but boldly stand forward and ask them
questions. And the fact that He was not, as other boys of His
age would most assuredly have been, wholly absorbed
in wonder and surprise at the strange sights which
presented themselves to His gaze in the famous city —
then for the first time visited — and in the tumult of the
feast ; but that He sought the school of the Rabbis, to
listen and to question, throws a flood of light on the

4 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
tone and temper of His mind, and enables us without
hesitation to say what kind of spirit and disposition
must have been His, both then and in previous years.
It shows that already He must have had His mind
occupied with thoughts and problems, which present
themselves only to the few, and to them only in far
later years. It shows us that in the quiet of the home
at Nazareth, His deep, pure, earnest spirit had, even
long before that time, begun to absorb truth from
every available source. And now, alert and eager,
with a hundred questions on His lips to which no one
at Nazareth had been able to> give an answer, He
presses forward to drink from this new fountain,
to which for the first time He has access.
He must have found it very far from a satisfying
one. But little of the living water of life was to be
found at that time in those ancient wells — far from
sufficient to quench His thirst. But this He could
hardly have known before He had been there to see.
It seems evident that it was in the expectation of
satisfying His craving for knowledge and truth that
He sought the temple school ; a craving which He
naturally expected the learned doctors there would
be able to satisfy. The point to be noted as most
remarkable is, that He should have gone there, to
listen and to ask questions, when most boys— is it too
much to say, all other boys of His age ? — would have
thought of, and cared for, nothing beyond the
spectacle presented by the famous city and its moving
crowds. The second remarkable trait in the Boy Jesus which
this incident reveals is, His wisdom : " All who heard

THE BOYHOOD OF JESUS. 5
Him were amazed at His understanding and His
answers." That is an extraordinary thing to be said of a boy of
twelve! These men He listened to and questioned
were some of the most learned men in Israel — men
deeply versed in the Scriptures, and well acquainted
with the vast mass of comment and criticism thereon,
which centuries of earnest study had accumulated.
It is true they had almost entirely lost their hold on
the spirit of those Scriptures, by a slavish adherence
to the letter of them, but that did not hinder them
from recognising understanding and wisdom when
they encountered it.
And this Boy amazed them : He already gave
evidence of possessing a wisdom which exceeded their
own. In the seclusion of His home at Nazareth, and
with no one to teach Him except His uneducated
parents, and the scribe attached to the village syna
gogue, He had gained a wisdom which astonished the
wisest of the land ! Already we discern in Him, well-
developed, the wisdom which, on so many occasions
during His public ministry, He so conspicuously dis
played — the wisdom which on more than one occasion
baffled and silenced His enemies, and compelled them
to admit that " never man spake like this man."
These traits are exceedingly remarkable, but the
one which comes before us next is still more extra
ordinary. His thirst for truth, and His wisdom, are evidences
that He was a Boy wonderfully endowed — that He
had not only great natural gifts, but that undefinable
quality which we term " genius." But His answer to

6 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
His parents gives us a glimpse into the depths of a
consciousness which already we cannot but pronounce
superhuman — a consciousness which stands out in
startling contrast to its surroundings, and which dis
plays such unique features, that the question is forced
on us : " Whence hath this Boy these things? "
"Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's
business ? " or, as the Revised Version renders it, " In
My Father's house ? "
There are two remarkable things in this reply : the
word He uses for God, and His consciousness of
having a mission.
Whence did this Boy obtain the knowledge that
God was His Father? It is only in a very few pas
sages in the Old Testament that this term is applied
to God, and in these it is never used to describe His
relations with the individual, but only with the nation :
it certainly was not the name by which the Jews of
Jesus' day were in the habit of speaking of Him.
But even if we admit that from His study of the
Scriptures, or from His home teaching, He had learnt
to call God by that name, the wonder is hardly
lessened. For He says, " My Father," indicating that
He already had the consciousness of personal union
and communion with God, on that basis of trust, and
affection, and obedience, on which only a Son in whom
the Father is well pleased, can stand.
No thoughtful reader who ponders this expression
can fail to realise that we have revealed to us here a
consciousness, the depths of which are beyond our
fathoming. The spirit of this Boy of twelve is already
alive with that eternal life which consists in knowing

THE BOYHOOD OF JESUS. 7
God — alive to a degree which we but poorly define
by calling it "remarkable," or even "unexampled."
How can we adequately express its uniqueness, except
by calling Him " the only-begotten " ?
It will be appropriate here, though almost super
fluous, to point out how strikingly in harmony with
His subsequent teaching is this name which He gives
to God, and the consciousness of relationship with
Him which His use of it implies. The Fatherhood of
God, and the life of Sonship with Him — is not the
whole of Christian truth summarised in these two
articles of faith ? And here we find that already, He
who gave these truths in all their fulness to the world,
had grasped them, and was in possession of the life
which results from a vital realisation of them, at an
age when most children have not yet begun to despise
their toys !
And no less remarkable — no less startling in its
singularity — is His consciousness of having a mission.
Whatever the exact meaning may be of the phrase •.
ev tok tov -KaTpo? pov, the underlying consciousness
to which it gives expression is manifest. He had a God-
appointed life-work to do, and already He knew it.
" Wist ye not that I must be in My Father's house? I
should have thought you would have known that I
should be found here, where I can best gain that know
ledge and wisdom with which I must equip myself for
my appointed work." That is what His answer
implies. Language altogether fails us in the attempt to do
justice to such a wonderful manifestation of purpose-
fulness (such a purpose too !) in one so young ; and

8 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
as to explaining it ! How can we explain it otherwise
than by acknowledging that this Spirit, and this Con
sciousness, is the Spirit and the Consciousness of the
incarnate Word of God ?
But we have not yet exhausted the intellectual and
spiritual wealth which this glimpse into the mind and
spirit of this Boy discloses.
His obedience is no less remarkable than the other
traits of Character of which we find Him to have given
evidence. " He went down with His parents and
came to Nazareth ; and He was subject unto them,"
we are told.
It would not have been at all surprising if such a
Boy, conscious of His superiority, not only to His
uneducated parents, but to the Jerusalem doctors, had
resented parental interference ; even developed con
ceit and self-will, and deemed Himself able to judge
and decide' for Himself much better than His parents
could judge and decide for Him.
And certainly the temptation, on this occasion, to
resist the will of His parents must have been no small
one. In all probability He must have earnestly desired to
remain in Jerusalem, and avail Himself of the oppor
tunities it afforded of mental culture, and of gaining
a wider knowledge of men and things.
Nazareth must have been a very dull place to go
back to, after He had made acquaintance with Jerusa
lem — Nazareth with its little school, its uncultured
society, and its dull monotony of daily toil. Here was
a chance of gaining knowledge and wisdom — of
" being about His Father's business," which, it might

THE BOYHOOD OF JESUS. 9
easily have seemed to Him, not merely unwise, but
wrong to let slip.
But if such thoughts came to Him, He did not allow
them to influence Him.
He not only recognised, with perfect clearness, what
was the right and fitting course to be pursued on this
occasion — thus giving evidence that already He pos
sessed that unique clear-sightedness with regard to
duty, i.e., the Will of His Father, which He invariably
displayed in after life ; a clear-sightedness which did
not fail Him even when at length — amid many tempt
ing alternatives — His Father's will decreed the Cross :
— He not only saw, with marvellous correctness of
spiritual vision, that at that time to obey His parents
was a more important duty than even to be about His
Father's business (or perhaps it would be more correct
to say, He saw that this subjection to His parents was,
at the time, the best way of being about that business),
but — and this is what is so remarkable — He showed
a perfect willingness to obey.
" He went back to Nazareth, and was subject to
them." He went back to Nazareth and, for eighteen
years more, He grew and waited.
With a patience and a self-control no less remark
able than the other traits of Character which this
incident demonstrates Him to have possessed, He sub
jected Himself to His parents, and kept to Himself
the great thoughts, and the great purpose, which
possessed His mind and heart.
He waited and ripened in solitude and silence,
working as a carpenter in His father's shop, till He was
thirty — (think of it! think of the effort, of the patience,

10 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
and self-control, which were required in order to do
that!)— till in the voice of John He recognised the
voice of His Father, saying to Him, " Go now, Thou
art ready."
This, briefly sketched, is what is revealed to us of
the Boy Jesus in this one incident of His boyhood
which the Evangelists record.
A thirst for truth, a wisdom, a consciouness of God,
and of having a call from God, an insight into duty,
an obedience, a patience, and a self-control, each
separately most remarkable, most marvellous, in a Boy
of His age,* and in combination constituting a
Character absolutely unexampled— a Personality whose
depths already are far beyond our fathoming — this
is what this glimpse of Him reveals. " The child was
father of the man." He who at twelve years of age
showed Himself to be possessed of all these combined
excellencies, did not disappoint the promise of His
early years. He ripened into the wise, calm, patient,
loving, sinless, perfect Man, whom all the ages have ac
knowledged to be the Express Image of the invisible
God — the only-begotten Son of the Eternal Father.
* Some allowance should possibly be made on account of
the more rapid development of children in the East ; a Jewish
boy of twelve is probably as advanced as a boy of fifteen or
sixteen is with us ; any fair allowance, however, which we may
feel bound to make on this account, does not materially lessen
the singularity of the Character and Consciousness of the Boy
Jesus as He is presented to us in this incident.

CHAPTER II.
The Eighteen Years of Silence.
In the previous chapter we have endeavoured to show,
by an analysis of the only incident of the Boyhood of
Jesus which the Evangelists record, what kind of a
Boy Jesus was at the age of twelve.
We wish now to consider that period of His life
which lies between His first visit to Jerusalem, and His
entrance on His public ministry: to try to estimate
the significance of the fact that beyond the brief state
ments of Luke, " He went down with His parents and
came to Nazareth, and He was subject unto them " ;
" And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in
favour with God and men " ; and the casual reference
to this period of His life which is contained in the
question, " Is not this the Carpenter ? " (Mark vi. 3)
nothing is told us about Him, or what He did between
the ages of twelve and thirty.
Eighteen silent years forfowed that one most note
worthy and significant incident of His boyhood. " He
went down to Nazareth and was subject to His
parents " : that was in the beginning of His thirteenth
year .- we hear no more of Him till we are told, " In

Ii THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
those days" (i.e., when John was baptizing) "Jesus
came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized of
John in the Jordan (Mark i. 9) ; at which time " He
was about thirty years of age " (Luke iii. 23).
The silence, viewed in the light which the incident
recorded of His boyhood throws upon His Character
when He entered this silent period, and in the light
which streams from His ripe manhood, is in reality
more impressive and significant than the fullest record.
That there is nothing to tell of these years, that He
should so have conducted Himself that no memory of
them survived, beyond the fact that He was a Car
penter, speaks volumes. It gives us a revelation of
His Character which is perfectly in keeping with what
precedes, and with what follows. It is not what we
should have expected. No one — no novelist — en
deavouring to depict a perfect man, would have dreamt
of passing in silence over those eighteen years. They
cover just that period of life which, as the novelist
knows, is usually most full of incident, and most fate
ful. And yet when we ponder the fact that in the
case of Jesus nothing is told us of these years, we can
see that the silence is natural and right. We can see
that no other course of action than that which Jesus
adopted, and which left nothing to be recorded of
Him except that He practised a trade, would have
harmonised with His Character as we find it develop
ing in the Boy, and as we find it perfected in the
Man. The fact that He could, and that He did, keep Him
self to Himself, and live a life of unnoticed toil for
eighteen years, reveals to us a divine wisdom and

THE EIGHTEEN YEARS OF SILENCE. 13
strength, and perfection in Him, no less striking than,
while perfectly in keeping with, the qualities He dis
played in boyhood : we can see that such a period of
silence and self-restraint was necessary, inevitable ;
that it formed a suitable preface to, that it constituted
the only possible preparation for, the faultless perfec
tion of His manhood.
Let us try to realise the true significance of these
eighteen years of silence. Let us try to understand
what indications of the Character of the Man are
furnished us by the fact of His silence : let us try to see
how divinely strong and wise He must have been, to be
silent all those years.
Bearing in mind what His Character and disposition
as a Boy was, at the time when He entered on this
silent period, let us first compare (or perhaps it will be
more correct to say, contrast) His life during the next
eighteen years with the corresponding period of the
lives of other men.
From twelve to thirty! Just the most important
period of a man's life. The period in which his
character is moulded. The period when the blood is
hottest ; when the imagination paints the future in the
brightest colours. The period during which the spirit
is most eager ; when it is most difficult for a man to
control and subordinate to wise use his enthusiasms ;
when his disgust at the slow-going, conservative old
world, jogging on in her well-worn ruts of custom, is
greatest, and he is most likely to run his head against
stone walls. A time when " knowledge comes but
wisdom lingers " ; when any one who is conscious of
strength, or who has a spark of ambition — especially

14 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
any one who is moved by the promptings of genius-
is sure to attempt something ; is sure to feel that he
ought to be up and doing something ; either in the way
of making a name for himself, or of securing for him
self a position in the world, or of forwarding the cause
of truth and right.
Nearly all men of the greatest genius have made
their mark in the world during this period of life.
Alexander the Great before he was thirty had con
quered half the world. Pompey had quelled a rebel
lion and earned the name " great." Napoleon by the
time he was thirty had blown away the Revolution
with his " whiff of grape-shot," and had made himself
First Consul of France. Shakespeare at that age had
written many of his Plays, and had made a name.
Shelley's career was over when he had only passed
that age by a few months. Keats wrote all his poems
and died before he was twenty- seven. Byron
at thirty had reached the height of his fame.
And this youth- — Jesus? did nothing! Year
after year He remained at Nazareth working at
the carpenter's bench. Year after year He
kept pent up within Him the desires and longings
and aspirations of His heart — kept to Himself the
truths which were continually orbing themselves more
and more clearly to His mind ; gave no hint of the
consciousness that He had a mission ; year after year
He restrained His desire to be about His Father's
business, and contented Himself with toiling at His
trade. Is not that wonderful? wonderful that He should
have selected such a path of silence for Himself ; still

THE EIGHTEEN YEARS OF SILENCE. IS
more wonderful that He should have unswervingly
kept to it !
What a contrast to the early careers of other gifted
young men is here presented to us. What a different
spirit this Youth manifests from that of so many
youths of genius, who, born and brought up like Him
in humble and narrow circumstances, have striven
wildly to " burst the bands of circumstance," have
grappled with what they deemed their evil star, and
have succeeded, or have died in the attempt, but have
never thought of submission.
What might He not have become if He had resisted
the will of His parents, and remained at Jerusalem to
study at the schools? What a name he might have
made for Himself ! What opportunities of self-culture
He threw away, by occupying in mere manual labour
the years which might have been devoted to learning !
Was not that tempting path — the path which most of
the gifted youths of His nation followed — the one
wherein He might best fit Himself for " His Father's
business " ?
Doubtless these thoughts — these temptations —
came to Him : He would not have been human, and
" in all points tempted like as we are," if they had not
come. But in a wonderful1 way He overcame them —
put them aside,- He had the conviction that that hard
path of self -repression and silence was the right path
for Him — the path which His Father desired Him to
tread. And so, with the great thoughts, and hopes,
and purpose, which we have seen Him to- possess at
the time of His visit to the temple — great then, and
undoubtedly ever growing greater — He waited.

16 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
Keeping them all to Himself, He lived on unnoticed,
unappreciated ; performing the humble round of daily
duties which came to Him ; known to His friends and
associates only as the Son of Joseph, the carpenter ;
while all the time He grew into clearer consciousness
of the fact that He was the Son of God ; and, by His
choice of this hard path, and by the unswerving stead
fastness with which He walked it, He was adding
proof to proof that His Sonship was a reality, and that
" He that sent Him was with Him, because He did
always the things which were pleasing to Him."
Such was the difference between the conduct of this
Youth and that of other gifted youths ; and when we
consider what He was, and what He became, we are
lost in wonder and astonishment, both at the fact that
He felt He ought to wait, and at the fact that He was
content to< wait. Nothing is more astonishing than
the fact that He should choose, and that He should
keep to, a path so strange and so difficult — yet, as we
can see now, the right path.
For, that that path was the right and best one for
Him to tread, is plainly shown by the results which
were produced by His treading it. When we see what
kind of a Man He was when He emerged from his ob
scurity, and entered on His public career, we see how
wisely and rightly He acted, in keeping silent so long.
These eighteen years of silence enabled Him to develop
into full-orbed perfectness. Silently and secretly the
best things ripen, and they ripen best when they are
not forced. So it was with Him. When He did
come forward He was completely ready. His subse
quent career displays no single trace of immaturity, of

THE EIGHTEEN YEARS OF SILENCE. 17
hesitation, or of weakness. His will had gained
an iron strength by His long self -repression ; His mind
had developed into crystalline clearness ; His Spirit
had ripened into the perfect beauty of holiness.
It is of course possible for any one to argue that
some other path than this which He chose, might have
produced similar results. It would perhaps be some
what difficult to disprove such an assertion — though
we think it could be disproved — but it is quite
sufficient to point out that the path He did choose —
that hard, strange path of silence — produced in
Him results which the choice of no other path could
have excelled : for the result was — perfection. They
were not wasted years, those years of silent toil. He
lost during them nothing worth losing, and He gained
— who can say how much ? — by renouncing the tempt
ing path of learning, and making choice instead of the
quiet obscurity of Nazareth. It was a long, long wait
ing, which must have tried His faith and patience to
the utmost, but He proved Himself the Son in whom
the Father was well pleased, by the way in which He
stood the test, and, in the end, faith was justified, and
patience reaped the reward of her perfect work. It
was a hard discipline to which His Father subjected
Him — none but those who have felt the promptings
of genius, and the burnings of passionate desire to
serve God and man, can say how hard it must have
been for Him to sit still and wait : — it was as long and
hard a training and discipline as any son of man has
been subjected to — nay ! longer and harder ; where can
we find a parallel to it ? It was nevertheless a training
and discipline fit and necessary for Him who was pre-

1 8 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
destined to the awful glory of perfect Sonship. His
submission to it without a murmur proves Him to be
the Son. That He emerged from it what He was
when He went to John to be baptized : — the Man who
could conquer the temptations in the wilderness ; the
Man who could conceive, and could unswervingly
abide by the unique plan of action which He adopted ;
the Man who could choose the path of suffering, and
poverty, and shame, instead of the path of worldly
success, and resolve to found a spiritual kingdom in
the world, and not a temporal one ; the Man in whom
even His enemies could find no sin ; the Man whose
trust in His Father never wavered, whose self-control
was perfect, whose wisdom was faultless, whose love
led Him to the cross : — that He emerged from His
silence such a Man as this — the peerless Jesus of the
Gospels — proves that His long, hard training had not
been too long, or too hard — proves that it was no> other
than the loving, moulding, unfaltering pressure of
His Father's hands, fashioning Him with stern, relent
less patience — as a potter lovingly and laboriously
fashions some priceless vase — into the peerless perfec
tion of His well-beloved.
These, briefly sketched, were the results which the
eighteen years of silence accomplished. Jesus entered
upon them such a Boy as we have seen in our examina
tion of the account of His first visit to Jerusalem with
His parents : He emerged from them such a Man.
We shall have frequent occasion in the course of
these pages for dwelling on various aspects of the full-
orbed perfection of that Manhood ; but we cannot
complete our examination of this silent period of the

THE EIGHTEEN YEARS OF SILENCE. 19
life of Jesus, without some attempt to infer what the
Character of the Youth and Man must have been, who
could choose, and could so long continue in, such a
strange and difficult path.
Must we not admit, then, in the first place that He
displayed a consummate wisdom in His choice of that
path of silence, and those years of obscurity? The
doctors in the temple were astonished at His wisdom ;
that same wisdom is displayed in this choice of His,
and it may well astonish us.
That it was a supremely wise choice does not admit
of doubt. His spirit could ripen and mature in the
quiet of the little town of Nazareth, and amid the
sweet influences of home and of nature, far better than
in the schools at Jerusalem. At Jerusalem indeed He
might have gained a book-learning which He never
did gain; but, knowing what the teaching of the
schools was at that time, we can unhesitatingly assert
that it was far better for Him to be without the
barren knowledge which they strove to impart.
It is not improbable that His three days
experience amply convinced Him of this- — that
His quick intelligence discerned that He could
" search the scriptures " to far more profit at home than
there. That at any rate He did gain a knowledge of
the scriptures, without the aid of the schools, which
astonished His enemies, and was more than sufficient
to enable Him to cope with them in argument, we
know. And by studying them for Himself, He was
able to read them without the " veil " which, as Paul
says, lay on the hearts of His countrymen when they
read Moses. He gained an understanding of the

20 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
spirit of the Old Testament writings by His quiet
study of them, which the Rabbis could readily have
helped Him to miss, but could have afforded Him little
help in gaining.
Yes! home and quiet were undoubtedly the best
for Him ; but how supremely wise He must have been
to be able to see that they were the best ! How mar
vellous, that He was not dazzled by the glamour of
learning, and that He discerned the hollowness of the
ambition to become a Rabbi! Can we point to any
parallel instance? Is not such wisdom unexampled,
unique? Here is a young man conscious of power,
possessed with the desire to gain knowledge, and to fit
Himself for noble work in the world, conscious too< of
having a splendid mission to accomplish, and burning
with an enthusiastic desire to be about it ; the one
right and best path for Him is the path of silence and
obscurity for eighteen years : and He sees and
chooses it !
The world would have called Him mad — would
have said, perhaps did say, He was throwing away His
chances, wasting the best years of His life. There
has never been another youth who would not have
said the world was right." He, with supreme, amazing
wisdom saw that that was the best. We can readily
understand that Pie felt His need of being "per
fected "—felt that He ought to develop all His powers
to the full, before He set about, and in order in the
best way to set about, His Father's business; but
how, how, did He know that they needed no forcing
in any hothouse of human learning, but would develop
best unaided, at the carpenter's bench, in the society

TffE EIGHTEEN YEARS OF SILENCE. zx
of His parents, and on the lonely hills of Galilee?
It is marvellous! it is sublime! Language fails us
utterly in the attempt to do justice to the insight and
wisdom displayed in such a choice.
And no less marvellous than the wisdom of which
the choice of such a path gives evidence, is the patience
and the self-control to which it bears witness.
For, what sublime patience He must have had, to- be
able to wait year after year : to feel Himself every
year growing in wisdom, and stature, and in favour
with God and man, and still to wait ! Eighteen years !
and as every year came round the voice of duty still
said to Him, " Not yet " : and He took to His tools
again. And what self-control! What an iron strength of
will He must have had, to be able to thus hold Him
self back! What a mighty power of self -repression !
The great sinning, suffering, dying world lay around
Him; He could not go outside His door without
seeing how greatly it stood in need of a Saviour ; and
within Him was the ever growing sense of power to
save it, and the growing desire to go and preach good
tidings to the meek, to bind up the broken hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of
sight to the blind — a growing pity, and compassion,
and love ; and still He waited. All these feelings and
desires — all this intensity of emotion — was pent
up within Him, a titanic force. In the case
of any other man it would have burst forth
and found relief in some premature, and more or less
faultily conceived endeavour to regenerate the world.
But He had all His feelings and emotions under the

22 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
control of that iron Will. He never for even a moment
let them get the upper hand. He was never other
than complete master of Himself ; and, all the time
that they grew in strength and intensity, He appeared
outwardly so calm that His brethren and kinsfolk
never suspected their existence: to them He was
only '' the carpenter."
And then again, what complete trast in God, and
what absolute submission to His Will, this long wait
ing reveals!
It is marvellous that when His parents found Him
in the temple, He should have at once recognised that
their claims on Him were, at that time, supreme — that
their will was, for the present, God's will for Him —
and that He should have at once yielded to them a
free and full submission. But it is still more marvel
lous that, as year after year went by, He should have
continued to recognise and respect those claims.
Even if, as has been supposed by some, He was com
pelled by the early death of His father to become the
bread-winner of the family, it is not the less surprising
that a youth of his genius and spirit should have recog
nised that path as the path of duty, and should have
humbly resigned himself to walk it. Any other
youth would in all probability have decided that duty
coincided with inclination : would have said then, as
He said later on, " Who is my mother ? and who are
my brethren? can there be a doubt that my duty to
the world is superior to my duty to my family ? " He
saw that the highest duty was the duty which lay
nearest to Plim — that that was His Father's will for
Him— and with resolute submission He set about the

THE EIGHTEEN YEARS OF SILENCE. 23
doing of it. With perfect trustfulness He committed
Himself to His Father's keeping, confident that the
call to higher duty would surely come, when the
Father deemed Him ready.
We see here an obedience and a trustfulness dis
played, which enable us to understand how He could
be obedient unto death ; and how He could trust His
Father, even when He offered Him Gethsemane's
bitter cup.
• These are some of the most prominent traits of
Character which the fact that He remained silent and
in obscurity till He was thirty, justifies us in assigning,
if it does not absolutely compel us to assign to Jesus.
These silent years speak for Him with an eloquence
which no speech can rival : they are too full of mean
ing for any analysis to be exhaustive. The more they
are pondered the more will they reveal a combination
of moral and spiritual excellencies so unique, so well
balanced, that we are forced to exclaim, " This is
perfection ; this is nothing else than the beauty and
strength, the grace and truth of a faultless Spirit : no
Son of Man could more completely demonstrate that
He was the Son of God."

CHAPTER III.
The Baptism.
(Matt. iii. 13-17, Mark i. 9-1 1, Luke iii. 21-22.)
The Baptism of Jesus by John, the account of which
is preserved for us in all three Synoptic Gospels* was
a most important event in the life of our Lord.
It marks a great crisis in His history.
To go from His quiet home at Nazareth to the new
prophet who had appeared beyond Jordan, and who
was attracting such multitudes to him, was the first
decided step which Jesus took towards the carrying
out of His mission : thus first did He actively set
about " His Father's business."
We get here the first glimpse of the Man Christ
Jesus. It is only the third glimpse we get of Him
during all those first thirty years. We see Him as a
helpless babe : we see Him at the age of twelve a
wise, devout, obedient Boy; then we lose sight of
Him for eighteen years. Not a single incident of His
youth or manhood is recorded* prior to His taking this
decided step of leaving His home, and offering Him
self to John for baptism.
* John does not explicitly narrate the fact, but it is implied
in his account of the Baptist's testimony concerning Jesus
(i- 33)-

THE BAPTISM. *S
But not only is this event of importance as marking
the hour when1 He emerged from obscurity, and com
menced His public career, but also because of the
results which it produced on Himself. There is very
little doubt that His baptism was the occasion on
which He finally resolved to devote Himself to the
life of a teacher and reformer. This resolve in
evitably sprang from the clear and complete self-
knowledge to which He then attained, and from the
consciousness of the possession of the gifts which
fitted Him for the work, a consciousness which then
first came to Him, or more probably, which then first
orbed itself to the full.
It was the occasion on which the keystone was fitted
to the arch of that perfect Character which had been
slowly a-building for thirty years. He received then
the crowning gift of the Holy Spirit, or rather entered
then upon the measureless possession of it. He ex
panded from a perfect bud into a perfect blossom.
Henceforward nothing was lacking to His fully
developed and rounded perfection. Henceforward
He was the approved, the well-beloved Son ;
the perfect instrument wherewith the Father
could accomplish His mighty purpose — the regenera
tion of the world : He was the Son of Man who, by
a faultless life, an amazing death, and a glorious resur
rection could prove Himself to be the Son of God.
This event, then, in the life of Jesus is one which
well merits careful consideration. If we can grasp
its true significance, we cannot fail to gain some new
insight into the Mind and Character of Him, whom
His forerunner and baptiser proclaimed to be the

26 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
Lamb of God, and who, from that hour, shone with all
the unsullied light of the Eternal Life.
There are three points in the narrative on which we
may fix attention : — The Baptist and his mission ; the
effect which the appearance of John as the avowed
forerunner of the Messiah produced on Jesus; the
baptism and its results.
i. At the beginning of the Christian era there
existed a widespread expectation among the Jews that
their long-hoped-for Messiah was about to appear.
This expectation was immensely intensified by the
appearance of a genuine prophet. No genuine pro
phetic voice had been heard in the nation for hundreds
of years. Four centuries had elapsed since Malachi
prophesied, and yet not one strong, original man had
in all that time appeared, to speak to the nation in the
name of the Lord. The nation during that period
had produced many patriots and scholars, but no one
fit to lay claim to the mantle of the prophets ; no one
who could speak with authority and say, " thus saith
the Lord."
But now at length such a man appeared — John by
name— a man who had for years lived a rigorously
ascetic life in the desert, but who yet was well ac
quainted with the condition of his nation, and could
read men accurately. Matthew Arnold's estimate of
Goethe may fitly be applied to him :
" He took the suffering, human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear ;
And struck his finger on the place,
And said, ' Thou ailest here, and here !

j jj

All classes of the community flocked to Him ; multi
tudes of the common people, publicans, soldiers, even

THE BAPTISM. 27
Pharisees and Sadducees ; and to all he delivered the
same message : — peTavoeiTe ! " change your minds, for
the kingdom of Heaven is at hand," and administered
the rite of baptism, coupled with practical admonitions
as to what change of conduct should follow on this
change of mind.
It will be worth while to consider for a moment the
true significance of the message which John proclaimed
to his countrymen ; what he really called on them to
do. A clear understanding on this point will, we think,
enable us to give a satisfactory answer to the question
which has perplexed many minds : " What need was
there for Jesus to undergo the baptism of John ? "
Why should He offer Himself as a candidate for " the
baptism of repentance unto remission of sins ? "
It might indeed be replied that the effects which
it evidently produced in Him, or at any rate the results
which followed immediately, in His case, on the per
formance of the rite, are of themselves a sufficient justi-
cation of the step He took in coming forward to be
baptised. But it will enable us more clearly to under
stand the reason of His action, as well as to understand
what the results of baptism in His case really were, if
we gain a clear apprehension of the real nature
of John's baptism.
It was, according to the rendering of our English
Version : " the baptism of repentance for the [Revised
Version "unto"] remission of sins."
Unfortunately, that translation gives not only an
inadequate, but a misleading idea of the meaning of
the word which was the keynote of John's message ;
and consequently of the significance of that symbolical

28 THE MAN CALLED^ JESUS'.
V.
act which he performed on those, who, by the very
fact of their being willing to submit to the rite,
had presumably taken to heart his word of exhor
tation. To repent means, " to look back^xvith sorrow on what
has been done amiss ; " " to grieve over an act which
has rendered you liable to punishment ; " and
although, because that sorrowful looking back has
generally been followed by a change of heart and life,
the word has now got associated with it the idea of
reformation, yet still the central meaning which
attaches to it is, the contemplation of, and sorrow for,
what has been done in the past.
Now, the exhortation which John addressed to his
countrymen was not, primarily, an exhortation to
" repentance " at all, but to " change of mind." It
was not, in the main drift of it, an appeal to them to
direct their sorrowful attention to what had been sinful
in their past lives, but to direct their hopeful attention
to, and to get into a state of preparedness for, that
coming Event — that great approaching Influence, by
which the reformation of their lives would, or could be
accomplished. It was not principally a call to look
back, but to look forward.
A new revelation of God, he announced, was about
to be given to the world — not by himself, he was only
a forerunner, his mission was only to proclaim the
coming of "One mightier" than he, the latchet of
whose shoes, even, he was not worthy to unloose ;
One who would baptize not with water, but with the
Holy Ghost and with fire. And this approaching
revelation would throw such a new light upon life,

THE BAPTISM. 29
would so revolutionise their present conceptions of
God, and their views of truth, that a re-formation of
all their thoughts would be absolutely necessary before
they could understand it, or be willing to accept it.
" Therefore," said he, "' you must change your minds ;
shake yourselves free from old modes of thought, and
old views of truth, no less than from old and vicious
habits of life ; shake yourselves up, and hold your
selves in readiness for this great and unprecedented
change ; otherwise you will not be able to enter this
new kingdom which is about to be established in the
world." This was the gist of John's message, and
baptism was (or was presumed to be) the sign and
pledge of the fact that those who underwent it had
accepted that message — had taken to heart his
exhortation. But inasmuch as " repentance " was — in the case of
all those he baptized save One — an indispensable pre
liminary to, if indeed it did not form an essential part
of, this " change of mind " ; because, in sinful men, the
hopeful expectation of becoming members of this new
and better moral and social order, the approaching
foundation of which John announced, was necessarily
accompanied by a regretful looking back on past sins ;
therefore, it was natural that those who were baptized
by John should, undergoing the rite, make confession
of sin. And, because those who came to him were
continually asking for practical advice — asking " what
shall we do in order to effect this change of mind, and
be ready for the approaching kingdom ?" — it was also
natural that exhortations to repentance and amend
ment of life should form part of his teaching. But

30 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
still, these features of John's preaching were rather
incidental than fundamental to it. The main burden
of his cry was not " repent," but " change your minds."
" Take a new mind upon you, for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand ; " " and," he added, " show that you
have done so, and that you are ready for this new
kingdom, by bringing forth fruits worthy of, appro
priate to, this change of mind : demonstrate your pre
paredness in this practical way."
Such an exhortation as this was the exactly appro
priate one to precede the coming of the kingdom of
heaven. For, as we know, the minds of the men of
that generation were full of false and erroneous ideas
concerning religion and duty, as also concerning the
Messiah whom they were expecting. It was absolutely
necessary, therefore, that they should be made ready
for His coming by the warning that they must be
prepared to shake themselves loose from, and to dis
card these ; otherwise (as indeed was the case with
the vast majority) they would be too blind, and too
biassed, to recognise, or to accept Him when He actu
ally appeared.
But in the light of these facts concerning the pro
clamation and the baptism of John, may we not
venture the suggestion .- That there might be an entire
appropriateness in that " One mightier " than the
Baptist undergoing the rite at his hands ? Might not
He, too, require to experience a change of mind — not
indeed accompanied by repentance, and issuing in
amendment of life, if in His case the ground for these
was wanting ; but a change to complete His develop
ment, and bring Him to rounded perfection ; a cMnge

THE BAPTISM. 3'
of which the baptism might be the fitting occasion, if
not the efficient cause ?
We venture to think that this was the case ; but
before we develop that thought it will be necessary to
consider what was the probable condition of the Mind
of Jesus at the time when John began to preach ; and
what was the effect which the appearance of the latter,
as the avowed forerunner of the Messiah, produced on
Him. With regard to the latter point : there can be little,
if any doubt, that Jesus recognised in the appearance
of the Baptist the long expected signal for action. He
saw in it the clear call of His Father to leave the work
shop in which He had so long toiled — the indication
that now at length the long period of silence and self-
repression had come to an end, and that the time for
Him to be about His Father's business had arrived.
And if we recollect what superhuman strength of
will, what power of faith, what completeness of sub
mission to His Father's Will must have been called
forth in Him by His years of silent waiting ; and realise
what He must have learnt by that hard discipline ; we
shall be able, with some degree of accuracy, to infer
the state of His feelings when at length He perceived
in the preaching of the Baptist a clear intimation that
His hour was come. Not, we may unhesitatingly
assert, with the wild exultant feelings of the youth,
who —
" Hears his days before him, and the tumult of his life,"
but with the seriousness and earnestness of ripe man
hood ; with a joy solemnised by a clear realisation of

32 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
the tremendous importance of the step He was about
to take, and with an enthusiasm tempered by a deep
knowledge of human nature, and sustained by no
delusive visions of brilliant success — for His study of
the Scriptures must have shown Him how His nation
had always treated her prophets and reformers ; and
He must have known, even before He left home, what
His own fate was likely to be — it must have been with
such feelings as these that He laid aside His tools,
and, from the seclusion of Nazareth, went across the
Jordan to Bethabara.
It is not so easy to pronounce with certainty on the
exact degree of self-knowledge to which Jesus had
attained, at the time when He decided to visit the
Baptist. Did He fully and clearly recognise that He
was the Messiah whose coming the prophet was
announcing'; or did He simply read the appearance
and preaching of the Baptist as the long expected
signal for action, without being fully conscious of Him
self, and without fully realising the true nature, and
the unique importance, of the " business " which His
Father was about to entrust to Him? It seems most
probable that the latter was the true state of His mind.
We can hardly think otherwise without discounting
the significance both of the Baptism, and of the
Temptation. It seems most probable that it was the Baptism
which fully revealed Him to Himself; that it con
summated His development, by placing Him in final
possession of that full-orbed consciousness of what He
was, which He ever afterwards gave evidence
of possessing ; and by lifting Him, at the same

THE BAPTISM. 33
time, to that complete consciousness of com
munion and oneness with His Father which
permitted Him henceforward, without shrinking,
to claim equality with Him. It seems most probable
that it was the baptism also which enabled Him to
attain to that clear knowledge of what He had to
accomplish, on which He ever afterwards unswervingly
acted. Previously to that, though He clearly recog
nised that He had a special work to do, He could
hardly have felt certain that He was the long-expected
Messiah; and, though His consciousness of fellowhip
with God was (as we have seen) amazingly clear and
deep, it could hardly have had that measureless-
ness which belongs to perfect Sonship : otherwise the
gift of the Holy Spirit to Him on the occasion of His
baptism would have been a superfluous one.
Such then, we conclude, was the state of self-
knowledge at which Jesus had arrived at this time ;
and such were the feelings and anticipations which
filled His soul as He journeyed — probably in company
with other of His townsfolk — to the place where John
was baptizing.
It is hardly likely that Jesus presented Himself
immediately for baptism. It is more probable that
He remained some little time listening to, and observ
ing the preaching and methods of John; and,
possibly, cultivating his acquaintance. This supposi
tion accords with, and explains the fact that (as
Matthew records) John was at first unwilling to
administer the rite to Him. " I have need to be bap
tized of thee, and comest thou to me ? " he said ; and it
enables us to reconcile this statement with the appa-
D

34 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
rently inconsistent admission of John, recorded in the
Fourth Gospel : " I knew Him not." If Jesus
remained some time in the Baptist's company
before offering Himself for baptism, John must
have discerned sufficiently what His Character and
endowments were, to feel convinced that he was in the
presence of his superior, yet without arriving at the
certainty that He was " He who should come." At
any rate, it was not until he had administered the rite
to Him that John indubitably recognised Him as the
Messiah : on Jesus coming up out of the water, " he
saw the heavens rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove
descending upon Plim ; and a voice came out of the
heavens : Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am
well pleased." (Mark i. 10, n, Revised Version.)
This account of what happened on this occasion
brings us face to face with the extremely interesting
but difficult question : " were these phenomena of the
dove and of the voice subjective impressions, or were
they objective realities? Is the language here em
ployed purely symbolical — a figurative mode of setting
forth spiritual truth — of describing the spiritual change
which the baptism wrought in Jesus, and the recog
nition of it by John (whereby his previous impression
that this must be the Messiah was confirmed) ; or are
we to* interpret it literally ? "
There is great diversity of opinion among com
mentators on this question. For our own part we hold
firmly to the former alternative. Heaven is economical
of miracles ; and on an occasion such as this, when
neither John nor Jesus needed an objective sign to
convince them of the truth, it is not easy to see why

THE BAPTISM. 35
one should have been vouchsafed ; while it is easy to
see how natural the use of figurative language by the
narrator is, to describe what occurred.
The baptism accomplished two things : it revealed
Jesus to Himself, and it revealed Him to John ; and
neither of these revelations needed the aid of super
natural phenomena. We have seen what, in all proba
bility, were the results which the eighteen years of
silence accomplished in Jesus; we have also seen
what were His feelings, and what the degree of His
self-knowledge, when He set out from Nazareth. We
can readily understand, therefore, that such an im
pressive ceremony as that of public baptism (for
which Jesus could not have volunteered without deep
and earnest reflection, and such solemn resolves as
were in harmony with His Mind and Character), would
accomplish in Him just that final self-revelation, and
that consummation of His fellowship with God, which
He needed in order to complete His development : it
would place Him in the possession of the clear know
ledge that He was the beloved Son, in whom the
Father was well pleased, and to whom He had en
trusted the Office and Work of the Messiah.
And we can also readily understand that when John
— who, we must remember, had been previously struck,
even awed, by the majesty and grace displayed in
His face and mien (and perhaps in His conversation),
saw Him in all the added glory of that spiritual exalta
tion which He betrayed at the moment when the rite
was performed — a spiritual exaltation neces
sarily resulting from that self-revelation, and God-
revelation, which came to His soul at that

36 THE MAA CALLED JESUS.
moment, which is described in the narrative as the
descent of the Spirit upon Him, and which could not
but betray itself in His looks and mien — he could not
help being impressed by the change — could not help
having his previous surmise changed into the convic
tion, that this was indeed " He who should come."
And all this we can conceive of as happening, without
need arising for the occurrence of anything super
natural to produce, or to endorse, either the conviction
of the one, or the heightened consciousness of the
other. But at any rate, whether there were, on this occasion
any supernatural phenomena or not,* it is certain that
the chief interest and importance of the narrative
centres in the spiritual occurrences which took place ;
to which physical signs and tokens, if vouchsafed,
could have been, at least, merely supplementary.
We are far from saying that if either John or Jesus
had required any such physical phenomena to confirm
their spiritual impressions, these would not have been
vouchsafed : we are only arguing that they did not
require them. John must have been able to discern
the grace, and beauty, and majesty of the Man whom
he baptized, without the aid of any physical sign : Jesus
must have been able to arrive at that final self-know
ledge, and God-knowledge which He needed, in order
to complete His development, and to arrive at rounded
perfection, without the help of an audible voice from
heaven. That John did recognise that Jesus was in-
* The attempts to find a via media between these alterna
tives, by deeming the phenomena objective but natural [i.e.,
the dove, a flight of pigeons, the voice, thunder] cannot be
regarded as at all satisfactory.

THE BAPTISM. 37
dubitably the Messiah ; and that Jesus did experience
that final expansion of consciousness which He
required to undergo, both in order to become, and to
know Himself as the perfect and well-beloved Son : —
these facts we hold to be indisputable, and these con
stitute the kernel of the narrative.
And now let us see whether, in the light of these
facts concerning the condition of the Mind of Jesus
prior to, and subsequent to, His baptism ; and in the
light of the real nature of the baptism of John, which
we have been endeavouring to unfold, we cannot give
a satisfactory answer to the question : Why did Jesus
present Himself to John for baptism?
If it is true that Jesus Himself required to undergo
a " change of mind " before He could be fully prepared
for His work ; if He required an expansion of con
sciousness, inward and Godward, in order to complete
His " growth in wisdom and stature " ; if before He
could reach the topmost height of perfection, and be
Himself the perfect embodiment of that changed state
of heart, and mind, and life to which He was destined
to lead mankind, He needed to receive the crowning
gift of the Holy Spirit without measure ; and if, as is
probable, if not certain, He felt when He went to the
Baptist that He needed some such " change of mind "
as this : — then it was most natural that He should seek
to be baptized of him.
It was most appropriate too, that He who was to
accomplish that mighty revolution in the world's
thought and life, which John proclaimed as about to
commence through the coming of the Kingdom of
Heaven, should Himself receive His final preparation

38 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
for His work, in the same way as His brethren were
being prepared for it : — that His Mind and Spirit
should pass through that last stage of development
which was necessary in order to bring Him to perfec
tion, by means of that same outward act, whereby
those whom He was about to save, entered on the first
stage of that change which was to lead them to like-
mindedness with Himself.
There was of course this great difference between
the effect of the baptism on Him, and its effect on the
rest : in His case it was the occasion of — was syn
chronous with — the final process of His wonderful
solution : in theirs it signified primarily — when it had
any true significance at all — not evolution but revolu
tion, a crisis which it was necessary for them to under
go before evolution on the lines of His life could
begin. He only needed to be baptized in order to
expand into the fully opened flower of Ideal Man
hood : they needed the rite as a pledge, which bound
them to begin that long and laborious process of
" being saved," in the course of which all their thoughts
and feelings would gradually undergo reconstruction,
and be brought into harmony with His. He needed it
in order that — without conflict and travail — He might
pass from the incomplete to the complete fulness of
His being : they needed it in order that they might
be in a position to place themselves at the starting
point of the line of march which extends to " the
measure of the stature of His fulness."
But though there were these important differences
between Him and them, both He and they needed
to " change their minds " ; and so it was

THE BAPTISM. 39
most appropriate that He, as well as they,
should be baptized with the baptism of change
of mind — He in order that He might become
the perfected leader of that great change : they that
they might get into a position to accept His leadership.
Thus moreover was it demonstrated that " both He
thaf sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of
one " — all brethren of the common Father.

CHAPTER IV.
The First Temptation.
(Matt. iv. 1-4; Mark i. 12, 13; Luke iv. 1-4.)
MUCH has been written on the Temptation : so
much that it is impossible, in dealing with the subject,
to avoid some repetition of what has often been said
before. But no attempt to unfold the Character of Jesus can
be regarded as satisfactory which ignores such an
important incident in His life, and one which, more
over, opens such a vista into the depths of His Spirit.
Perhaps, too, if we keep steadily in view the aim
which we have set before ourselves in these pages
¦ — not to assume, but, by careful synthesis, to un
fold the perfection which He displayed, and thus to
lead the reader to apprehend the fulness of grace and
truth which dwelt in Him — we shall be led to regard
the subject from a point of view which, though not
new, is not one which has been ordinarily assumed ; a
hasty glance at it from this point of view being all that
the majority of writers seem to have given.
The Temptation is recorded by all the synoptists as
having taken place immediately after the Baptism.
No great stress can, as a rule, be laid on the order of
events in the narratives, the method which the Evan-

THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 41
gelists adopted not being that of chronological arrange
ment But in this case there can be no hesitation in
accepting the sequence, for such a spiritual wrestling
as is here portrayed was bound to be the sequel to
such a spiritual expansion as we have seen the Baptism
to have occasioned.
Jesus, we have seen, at His baptism perfected His j
development. He received the crowning gift of the ,
Spirit; He attained to the clear conviction that Hej
was the Messiah ; He entered into the fulness of the -f
consciousness of His Sonship, and of fellowship with '
the Father. And this heightened consciousness in-/
evitably brought with it the sense of power — not
merely the power to work miracles, but the conscious
ness of having limitless means at His command
whereby He might accomplish His purposes — power
to sway men, and to master circumstances, as well as
power to control, or make use of, natural forces. He
could not become fully conscious of Himself, and
attain to complete self-knowledge, far less could He
attain to the consciousness of perfect fellowship with
God, without becoming conscious, to a supreme degree,
of the dominion to which He could lay claim.
But such an expansion of consciousness of necessity
brought Him face to face with tremendous difficulties.
To know that He was the Messiah, appointed by God
to establish His kingdom in the world ; and to feel that
so far as His power was concerned, He was quite un
restricted in His choice of methods — that all paths
were open to Him — inevitably led Him to the question :
what method shall I adopt, what path shall I choose ?
He was bound to define a plan before He commenced

42 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
His work ; He was bound to weigh the alternatives ;
and how difficult to discern what was the wisest and
best method! How difficult to make a final decision,
with so many paths open, and so much dependent on
His choice!
The narrative of the Temptation, then, records just
such a mental and spiritual struggle as we should have
expected Jesus to have gone through at this stage of
His career. It is impossible to suppose that He could
have decided upon the wonderful plan of action which
He unswervingly followed during the remainder of
His life, instantaneously, without long meditation, and
much conflict. The alternatives to that plan were
numerous, and the reasons for their adoption weighty :
not till they had been deeply pondered could they
reveal themselves in their true aspects — as tempta
tions of the Evil One — and be rejected as such.
Viewed in this light the Temptation is seen to be
a natural — an inevitable event in the life of
Jesus. It is the record of that mental and
spiritual travail which such an One, called to such
a work, was bound to undergo, in process of arriving
at a final decision concerning His future course of
action. It is the record of how, by the elimination
from His thoughts of seductive but unwise, and, in
their essence, immoral alternatives, He attained at last
to' clearness of vision — was able to see unmistakably
what was the one right and best path to follow, and
resolved to tread it.
This we regard as the truest and most significant
aspect in which to view the narrative. Doubtless there
are other aspects in which it can be viewed. The con-

THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 43
densed and parabolic form in which His experiences
at this time are recorded, is capable of expansion in
many directions, and of interpretation in many ways.
No analysis can completely lay bare the universe of
thought and feeling which lies hidden behind the brief
outline which alone the Evangelists have sketched for
us. But we are confident that, in regarding the story
as the record of a mental and spiritual conflict, which
resulted from the confirmed conviction of His Messiah-
ship, and which centred on the question : how could
He best accomplish the work which His Father had
given Him to do? we are regarding it in its central
aspect, and in one the contemplation of which enables
us, with no uncertain voice, to testify concerning the
Mind and Spirit of the Master.
What has been said above will indicate to the reader
the view we adopt with regard to the form of the
narrative of the Temptation. We hold strongly to the
opinion that it cannot be regarded otherwise than' as a
summarised and pictorial representation of a travail
of Spirit which Jesus underwent at this period of His
career. Of course it is quite possible that external objects,
and incidents unknown to us, may have played a part
therein ; but it seems more likely that the experience
was wholly a spiritual one, which Jesus Himself nar
rated to His disciples in the parabolic form in which it
has come down to us, in order to bring it within the
range of their intelligence. The author of " Ecce
Homo " acutely observes that the account could only
have come from Jesus Himself ; and it was quite in
accordance with His method of representing spiritual

44 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
things, for Him to narrate His experiences, not in
" closest words," but " embodied in a tale."
This view of the matter, though strongly condemned
by many thoughtful and learned writers, has the sup
port of so many no less thoughtful and learned, that
the weight of authority, at any rate, cannot be urged
against it. Opinion on the subject is so hopelessly
divided, that each thoughtful student of the Scriptures
must have liberty accorded him to form his own judg
ment. It is by no means necessary, however, to decide this
question either one way or the other, before appre
hending, and in order rightly to apprehend, the true
significance of the narrative. Even those who hold
most strongly to its literal truthfulness, admit that it is
not in the form, but in the spiritual experiences por
trayed thereby, that the interest centres.
Whether Satan appeared to our Lord in bodily
presence or not, and whether he actually adopted the
methods recorded, in order to seduce His Soul, are
questions which can be very well left open ones. The
intrinsic significance of the narrative lies in the fact
that it tells us how, immediately after His Baptism,
Jesus was brought face to face with the question :
which of the alternative methods of action which were
open to Him ought He to adopt ; which of the various
uses to which He could put the power entrusted to
Him ought He to choose? And it records how He
faced and answered that question.
The narrative reveals Him steadily, with unerring
wisdom, and with indomitable Will, rejecting those
methods and practices which sprang from the root of

THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 45
selfishness, or which savoured of rashness, or which
were lacking in the elements of perfect stability.
These rejected, the one hard, perfect path which He
actually trod alone lay open to Him ; and He chose it.
It is when viewed in this light that the narrative
best enables us to read clearly the Character of Jesus,
and in this light we purpose now to examine it more
in detail.
The form in which the first Temptation is recorded
may possibly be not entirely parabolic. It may at
any rate have been suggested by Jesus' actual
experience in the wilderness.
It is quite natural to suppose that, after His Baptism
He may have remained oblivious to the needs of the
body — lost in soaring thought, and in meditation on the
future — until the pangs of hunger became too keen to
be ignored ; and it is quite possible that then the
Temptation as recorded may have presented itself to
His mind.
Too much stress, however, cannot be laid on the
literalness even of this first Temptation. It is more
probable that Jesus narrated His experience to His
disciples in this concrete form, not because this was
the form which it had actually assumed with Him, but
because in that form He could best summarise His
travail of Spirit, and best enable His disciples to appre
hend what it had been. And at any rate, if this was
the form in which it actually came to Him, it could only
have been the accident of His circumstances at the time
which led it to assume that form. The great problem
in His mind may have narrowed itself to> a point in
some such way as this, when He became conscious of

46 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
His physical needs ; but it could not have been merely
His sense of physical need which suggested the pro
blem, and which gave an opening for the Temptation.
For we can plainly see that there is a great principle
involved in the question, whether He should or should
not turn stones into bread, in order to satisfy His
hunger. It was merely a concrete form in which the
great problem took shape: would it be allowable
for Him, under any circumstances, to use on His own
behalf the power which He felt that He possessed?
Might He " save Himself," or did His work demand
such a complete denial of Self that, even in the matter
of pressing bodily needs — even when it became a ques
tion of life or death — He must rigidly and absolutely
refuse to put forth His power ? That was a problem
which Jesus was bound to face and to solve before He
entered on His work. And wise, and unselfish, and
unambitious as He was, it could not have been easy
for Him to find the right solution to it.
There were many weighty, as well as many plausible
reasons, why He should not absolutely prohibit Him
self such a use of His power. How could He other
wise overcome the opposition with which He was sure
to meet : how could He otherwise even hope to escape
an untimely death, before His Father's business was
half accomplished ?
The problem indeed was indissolubly connected
with, and formed part of, that larger one, out of which
all the Temptations issued : the problem as to the way
in which He was to set about His work. His decision
— not under any circumstances to use His power
selfishly — involved the rejection of many possible

THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 47
plans of action. It bound Him to a life of toil ;
it diminished, if it did not virtually annihilate, His
:hance of having what the world would call " a success
ful career " ; it marked out the way to the Cross.
When we recognise the principle involved in this
Temptation — the tremendous question at issue in it,
and the difficulties to be overcome before a right
decision could be arrived at — we are almost forced
to the conclusion that the narrative in the gospels is
no other than a figurative presentation of a mighty
travail of Spirit which Jesus underwent — a travail
which is concentrated in the narrative into a single
suggestion and reply, because these are sufficient to
reveal clearly the great principle at stake, and our
Lord's final decision, but which we cannot suppose to
have been either so short, or so effortless, as the narra
tive, at first sight, would lead us to imagine.
We are almost forced to the conclusion that the
Temptation1 — " If thou be the Son of God, command
that these stones become bread "—is no more than the
briefest condensation of the floods of thought which
poured through His mind as He meditated on the
work His Father had given Him to do; and more
particularly as He debated the question: whether,
under any circumstances, the use of His power on His
own behalf would be permissible ; or whether, casting
Himself entirely on His Father's care, He must tread
the path of perfect self-denial, and make no attempts
to " save Himself."
We are far from suggesting that this question pre
sented itself to Him in any forms incompatible with
that divine perfection which we have already seen that

48 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
He possessed. We hold most strongly that the light
which the previous incidents we have considered
throws on His Character, as well as the light which this
narrative of His Temptation affords, reveals Him as a
Man " without sin." It is difficult — it is perhaps even
impossible — for us to conceive accurately how such an
One was " in all points tempted like as we are " — what
forms of the Temptation we are considering, for
instance, were compatible with a perfectly pure and
holy Spirit, and what were incompatible. A sin-
biassed mind can hardly conceive of such a Temptation,
except under forms which betray its bias. We dare
not venture, therefore, to do more than hint at the
nature of the travail which Jesus underwent at this
time. We content ourselves with pointing out that it
was a travail — that the Temptation could hardly
have presented itself to Him in the brief and simple
form in which it is recorded — that He was bound to
look at the problem in all its many aspects and bear
ings ; and that He could not have found its solution
easily, without doubt and hesitation; without, more
over, an assault being made upon His Will, which
tested its divine steadfastness, and loyalty to the
highest duty.
This brief attempt to unfold the inner meaning of
the Temptation we are considering — to' show what
lies behind, and is implied in, the simple record of the
gospels — is an attempt which it was necessary to
make. No exposition of the Man called Jesus, which
did not include such an attempt, could be regarded
as complete. Whether entirely successful or not, it
will have served its purpose if, in any degree, it enables

THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 49
the reader to see Him more clearly, to realise His
situation more vividly, and to surmise what were the
thoughts of His heart.
But it is not by regarding the narrative from this
point of view that we can gain, through it, the deepest
insight into the Mind of the Master. It is not the fact
that He underwent a mighty travail of spirit, which is
of chief importance for us to note, but the outcome of
the travail — the birth which resulted from it.
Many another man has had a similar travail on the
eve of taking a decisive step in life ; but where can we
point to any other man who formed such a resolution
as He formed ; who gained such a victory as He
gained? His subsequent career entirely confirms this
brief record of the resolution then formed, the victory
then gained. Throughout His life He steadfastly
refused to make use of His power to save Himself —
would speak no word to avoid hunger, or toil, or
weariness; would summon no angels to His aid,
though ten legions were at His command ; would not
even come down from the Cross and confound His
taunting enemies, though it lay entirely within the
power of His volition to do' so.
What are we to think of the Man who not only was
able to conceive such a plan of divine self-abnegation
and self-restraint, but who was able to resolve on its
adoption, and to carry it out ! What divine wisdom is
this, which can discern that the world's Helper must
be, as regards Himself, helpless ; that He who had
power to heal the sick, and raise the dead, must wholly
consecrate that power to the service of others, and, for
His own part, rely entirely on the natural providence
E

So THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
of God ! What divine wisdom is this, which can dis
cern that the Messiah's mission can only be rightly
accomplished by a complete kevuxiis — by a life wholly
confined to the ordinary conditions of humanity —
— which can discern that the completest revelation of
God cannot be given in a life which rests the main
proof of its divinity on the manifestation of over
whelming power and authority, but in a life of perfect
self-sacrifice and love ! It is the truth ; now He has
lived that Life we can see that it is the truth : but
whence came the wisdom which could recognise it to
be the truth, in an age which regarded the manifesta
tion of supernatural power as the chief evidence of
the presence of God, and which expected the Messiah
to appear as a conquering king ?
And if the wisdom displayed in such a conception
is divine, what shall we say concerning the resolution
to live such a life — to adopt such a course of action?
What self-denial, what self-control, what strength of
will, what amazing faith it implies! What an entire
absence of selfishness too ; what a knowledge of the
Pleart and Will of His Father ; what a ready and com
plete obedience ! When once the problem became clear
to Him ; when He discerned that any attempt to
make use of His powers on His own behalf would be
inconsistent with the spirit of the Life of His Father,
God, and would prevent Him from clearly proclaiming
His Name, and revealing His Nature ; when, conse
quently, He recognised that all those considerations
which seemed to favour such a course of action were1 in
reality temptations of the evil one ; there is no trace
of hesitation — of unwillingness to make that supreme

THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 51
renunciation of self — or of fear, lest, having resolved,
He should not have strength to tread that difficult
path. With Him, to see what was the highest duty,
the divinest life, was alone necessary, was of itself
sufficient, to make Him resolve to live it. The Word
of God came to Him at length, after long travail in the
wilderness, telling Him clearly how He ought to shape
His life — what degree of self-renunciation His
Messiahship necessitated ; and immediately, without
demur, without a thought of disobeying, by that Word
He resolved to live.
Is the wisdom here displayed in any respect less
than divine? Does the Spirit here displayed in any
respect fall short of perfection ? Is it possible to con
ceive of a more Godlike Son of Man ?

CHAPTER V.
The Second Temptation.
(Matt. iv. 5-7 ; Luke iv. 9-12.)
There can be hardly any doubt that the Second
Temptation (we follow the order of Matthew) resulted
naturally from the rejection of the first. The narrative
of .it records how Jesus successfully wrestled with a
new problem, which inevitably presented itself to His
mind immediately that the previous one had been
solved. The form in which it is recorded is doubtless
purely parabolic, but it embodies a spiritual experience
which, after the resolution He had formed to make
no use of His power on His own behalf — to rely
wholly on the natural providence of God, Jesus was
bound to undergo.
For, having come to such a resolution, it became
necessary for Him to determine accurately what were
the limits of that filial confidence which He had
resolved to exercise ; whether it entirely absolved Him
from the duty of taking any steps, under any circum
stances, to " save Himself "—at what point trustful
ness became rashness ; to what extent prudence and
foresight should supplement faith, so that, by avoiding
circumstances and methods which would lead to un
necessary danger, He might also avoid subjecting His
Father's wise care and holy love to an illegitimate
test,

THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 53
A most necessary question to answer, and a most
difficult one — one which we cannot imagine that He
succeeded in answering without much meditation and
travail of Spirit. Previously to this time such a pro
blem could hardly have presented itself to His mind.
His service had been to stand and wait. His filial
confidence had thereby been tested to the full, but for
that very reason the question as to how far faith ought
to be supplemented by action — to what extent He
ought to help Himself while, as before, relying on
Heaven to help Him, could hardly have been an
urgent one. But now that His Father called on Him
no longer passively to wait, but to engage actively
in the work of the Messiah; now, too, especially,
when He had taken His first great decision with
regard to the way in which He must set about that
work, He was bound to face that question : He could
not think out a perfect plan of action without answer
ing it.
It is a question which (it is hardly necessary to
remark) only presents itself to those who have strong
faith. But to such it is bound to present itself at some
time or other : and most difficult it is to find the right
answer to it. It is most difficult for such souls on the
one hand to avoid the dangers of quietism, and, on the
other, those arising from a confidence which presumes
too much, and is more rash than wise. It is most
difficult for faith to avoid leaving either too much in
God's hands, or too little — either relying on the inter
vention of Providence as a substitute for action, or
taking such action as cannot without that intervention
justify itself. Jesus must have been tempted to go to

54 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
both these extremes. The inevitable result of the
victory He had just won was, that it produced a re
action in the direction of faith ; it forced on Him the
question, whether it was necessary to supplement His
Father's care for Him by any carefulness of His own.
At the same time His intense desire to be about His
Father's business must have prompted Him to ask
what risks He might legitimately run, what situations
of danger He might place Himself in without tempting
God. The question was one which concerned equally
the limits of His action, and the extent of His passion
— how far His filial confidence demanded and justified
the one and the other, and in what relations. In the
course of determining this most difficult question many
suggestions must have come to Him which only by
degrees revealed themselves to Him as unwise, and
unworthy of His high calling ; suggestions which, con
sequently, He could only gradually, and through much
travail of spirit unmask, and come to see in their true
light as temptations of the evil one. What these sug
gestions actually were we can only very dimly surmise.
But in the words : " If Thou be the Son of God cast
Thyself down, for it is written : He shall give His
angels charge concerning Thee," there is no doubt that
we have the conflict accurately summarised ; and they
enable us clearly to see the point on which it centred.
We can see that the very strength and purity of His
faith, proved by the issue of the previous conflict,
placed Him in danger of relying, either too presump
tuously or too exclusively, on the aid of God. Not
easily could He have determined what was the perfect
line of action ; that, namely, in which self-help and

THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 55
faith, action and passion, met in' equilibrium and
mutually supplemented each other. Not easily could
He have decided how to shape His life so that danger
and death might be neither courted nor shunned.
His work demanded the exercise of the greatest pru
dence ; it also demanded the exhibition of the
greatest boldness ; it demanded a walk so circumspect
that His Father's intervention' on His behalf would
be unnecessary, at the same time that it demanded a
confident reliance on God so absolute as to enable
Him, when the time was ripe, to throw Himself into
the arms of death, with the clear knowledge that He
would not, by any supernatural intervention, be saved
from the consequences of such an act.
This we conceive to have been the real nature of
this second Temptation, and it may be noted that the
Gospels record several occasions in our Lord's subse
quent career in which the results of such a travail and
victory seem to manifest themselves. Thus we find
that Jesus withdrew to a desert place on hearing of
the death of John. Though more than one motive
seems to have influenced Him in taking this step,
there is little doubt that one reason was His desire
not to expose Himself at that time to a similar fate.
Again : " He would not walk in Judaea because the
Jews sought to kill Him." (John vii. i.) On both of
these occasions He recognised that to expose Himself
to danger would be to tempt God.
On the other hand we read : " It came to pass when
the days were well nigh come that He should be
received up, He steadfastly set His face to go to
Jerusalem." And again, when the Pharisees came to

56 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
Him saying, " Get thee out and go hence, for Herod
would fain kill thee," He refused to swerve from His
course, though He knew that He was going to certain
death. These facts harmonise with and endorse the
Temptation narrative. They show how perfectly He
succeeded in shaping His path so as to avoid tempting
God, by placing Himself in situations of unnecessary
danger, as long as He saw that God required Him to
live and work ; and yet how boldly, when He saw that
God's Will for Him was that He should suffer and die,
He committed Himself to His Father's keeping, and
plunged into the jaws of death.
The foregoing reflections compel us to note once
more the marvellous and unerring wisdom which Jesus
displayed during these spiritual wrestlings in the
wilderness. The demands of faith do not blind Him
in the least to the demands of reverence ; reverence
both for Himself, and for His Father. He discerns
clearly and accurately the extent to which His filial
confidence needs to be supplemented by respect for
the natural resources, which His Father has placed at
His command — that any reliance on His Father which
ignores or neglects these, is inconsistent with a sober
faith. Such a sobriety, in combination with such a
confidence, is altogether unique — unsurpassable ; we
can confidently assert that such a balance of mind as is
here revealed in no respect falls short of perfection.
But, as with the first Temptation, so with this, the
record is precious not chiefly on this account, but
because of the insight it gives us into the Spirit of the
Master. We could not indeed do full justice to the
narrative, without drawing attention to the evidence it

THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 57
affords of Jesus' matchless wisdom; but we should
do it far less than justice did we not further draw
attention to the fact that what it records is a spiritual
struggle and victory; not merely the triumphant
solution of a difficult intellectual problem. That
Jesus on this occasion was brought face to face with
such a problem, and that He was completely successful
in finding its solution, is, we hold, plainly implied in
the narrative. And the wisdom which enabled Plim
to discern which of the suggestions which came to
Him, as He grappled with the difficulties which beset
His path, were masked temptations of the evil one,
was, without doubt, one essential element of His
divine perfection.
But we require evidence that He was the possessor
of much else besides a consummate wisdom, before we
can pronounce His perfection divine, and hail Him as
the Son of God. Wisdom to discern the right and
perfect path does not necessarily involve and imply
power and willingness to follow it. What was His
spiritual attitude throughout this conflict? that is the
all-important question. Did He display any signs of
spiritual weakness ; did He evince any hesitation in
accepting the Will of God, when He saw clearly what
that Will was ; did He stand firm against the tempta
tion to tempt God by outstepping the limits of a sober
faith, or did He waver? To these questions the
narrative enables us to give an unhesitating answer. It
brings clearly before us, and emphasises, precisely that
feature of the conflict which it is most essential that
we should recognise — precisely those characteristics in
Jesus of which it is most essential that we should be

58 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
assured — precisely those spiritual qualities which
demonstrate Him to be the divine Son. We infer
His wisdom ; we see His spiritual perfection.
The narrative portrays Him as resolutely, unwaver
ingly refusing to tempt God ; there is no hesitation,
no dallying with the temptation ; the act of rejecting
it follows instantaneously on the act of recognising it.
Doubtless He suffered being tempted — suffered in
this struggle even more than in the previous one, since
the natural impulse which He was compelled to
restrain was, in this case, a purely spiritual one, and
for such a Man as He was, it must have been harder to
keep within bounds the promptings of His faith, urg
ing Him to temerity, than those which urged Him to
" save Himself."
But though we are bound to believe that He suffered
in this temptation — that His obedience, and submis
sion to the will of God were put to the test by it —
that it required a mighty effort of self-repression to
conquer it, and necessitated a resolute rejection of
methods which He might well have deemed it not
only wise, but imperative to adopt, after the resolve
He1 had just taken — for the question must have pre
sented itself to Plim, " Can I rely too absolutely in the
power of God, since I have resolved not to use my
own ? "¦ — yet the narrative gives us clearly to under
stand that the issue was never in doubt. There is not
the slightest trace of any inclination to yield to the
temptation. His will is absolutely fixed in its loyalty
to duty, so absolutely fixed that the resolve not to
tempt God seems to come without effort, and only a

THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 59
careful analysis of the situation enables us to realize
that it was the outcome of a conflict.
But it is just this apparent absence of effort which
is the clearest indication of His spiritual perfection.
What language can do justice to the quality of a Spirit
so divinely strong and holy, that it can dismiss such a
temptation as this without a trace of struggle ? What
language can do justice to a balance of nature so
perfect, and so stable, that two such assaults on it as
we have been contemplating recoil from it without dis
turbing its equilibrium? Self-denials and resolves to
which other men only attain by dint of mighty
struggles, and after many failures — if it is possible to
compare the noblest self-denial, and mightiest resolves
of other men with these of His — He makes with ease !
Duties which to other men seem hard, if not impos
sible, He unhesitatingly accepts the moment they be
come clear to Him — accepts as calmly and simply as
a child accepts the proffered hand of his father !
Is it not sublime — this calm strength of will which,
even in conflict, seems to be in repose ? Is it not god
like — this perfect beauty of holiness which His Spirit
displays ? How can we name Him, so as to give Him
His due rank in the creation, except by calling Him
the Son of God?

CHAPTER VI.
The Third Temptation.
(Matt. iv. 8-n; Luke iv. 5-8.)
THE interest of the Temptation narrative culminates,
and the meaning and significance of the entire record
is most clearly revealed, in the account which is given
us of our Lord's third Temptation. It furnishes us with
the key to the whole of these spiritual wrestlings in
the wilderness ; it enables us to see the point on
which they all centred. And just because it does this,
it affords us the clearest evidence concerning the
Mind and Spirit of Him who' was so tempted, and
who conquered such a Temptation. Victory over such
a Temptation meant complete victory all along the
line. The powers of evil exhausted themselves in this
last attempt to seduce His soul. Henceforward, if
He was to be troubled at all again, it could only be
by the recurrence of such suggestions as He had
already fully considered and rejected — not by the
intrusion of any new and uncontemplated ones. And
meanwhile, for the present, all doubt and hesitation
vanished when the great resolution, which is recorded
in this Temptation, was taken — when this third spiritual
fight was fought and won. Peace and joy, confidence
and assurance, took possession of His Spirit. In the

THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 6«
language of the narrative, " Then the devil leaveth
Him; and behold, angels came and ministered unto
Him." We have already pointed out that the whole of that
mental and spiritual travail which the Temptation
narrative records, arose from the necessity Jesus felt
Himself to be under of deciding what must be His
future course of action, in view of the fact that God
had called Him to the work of the Messiah. And in
considering the previous temptations we have at
tempted to show that they were suggestions which
came to Him in the course of His endeavour to decide
this difficult question.
But in the first two Temptations the main issue was
not directly before Him, but only lay in the back
ground. Before He could come face to face with that,
He was obliged to grapple with some of the pre
liminary difficulties — to decide certain personal ques
tions, which most naturally first presented themselves
to His mind, and which, if left unanswered, would
render a decision on the main question impossible.
It is quite possible, indeed, that we are not justified
in dividing the Temptations so sharply from one
another as they appear to be divided in the narrative.
The experiences of the three were, as likely as not,
interwoven; and our Lord, in narrating them to His
disciples, may have narrated as a sequence, and drawn
a distinction between, the various features of an
experience which, in fact, was only one great spiritual
fight. Be that as it may, it is certain that in the third
Temptation we are introduced to the heart of the

62 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
conflict, and contemplate, in the outcome, the crown
ing victory.
It is true that, coming to it after we have considered
the other two, we are led to confidently anticipate, 1
and almost cease to be surprised at, that outcome.
We1 feel that the Man who refused to make a selfish
use of His power, or to' permit His faith to lead Himi
to any act of rashness or presumption, was no more
than true to Himself, when He rejected the temptation
to found an earthly kingdom, and resolved to found
a spiritual one. And doubtless any other decision —
any other termination to the Temptation than this —
would have been wholly inconsistent with the
Character and Spirit which we have seen Him hitherto
to have displayed. Nevertheless, because human
nature does frequently display such an inconsistency,
the importance, and the merit, of the victory He
gained over this Temptation is in no wise minimised by
these considerations. He could not have proved Him
self the strong and perfect Son of God, if He had not
conquered in this last fight ; but the fact that He did
conquer— that He was able to give this utmost proof
of His strength and perfection — is none the less won
derful and unique.
Let us, however, before we say more on this point,
consider more particularly the nature of this third
Temptation, and what is implied in His rejection of it.
After what has been previously said concerning the
form of the narrative, it is hardly necessary to remark,
that we regard the account given of this Temptation as
being no less parabolic than the others. Those who
maintain most strenuously that the narrative should be

THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 63
accepted in all its literalness, admit that it is impossible
to understand how the devil could show Him " all the
kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them " (" in a
moment of time," Luke adds), even though the moun
tain to which he took Him wa's '' exceeding high."
But the explanation we have previously given of the
narrative, renders it as needless as the poet admits it
is fruitless to inquire,
" By what strange parallax or optic skill
Of vision, multiplied through air, or glass
Of telescope,"
such a feat was accomplished.
The experience was an inward one. Our Lord
simply narrated it in this parabolic form (and we
cannot too highly admire the vividness of the picture
He draws, or the skill with which He portrays all thei
essential features of this spiritual struggle of His, in'
a few brief sentences) to suit the apprehension of His
hearers, and also, without doubt, because He knew
that in this form it was much more likely to be
remembered. Let us not cling too closely to the letter
which killeth ; let us endeavour to grasp the spirit of
the narrative.
There can be no doubt that the Temptation arose
in the course of His meditation on what, as we have
said, was the main question before Him during His ,
retirement in the wilderness : — the question : What!
kind of a kingdom ought the kingdom of heaven on I
earth to be ?
That it was a kingdom which God, in appointing
Him to the work of the Messiah, required Him to

64 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
establish — a kingdom, not a school, or a sect — He
could hardly have doubted. The voices of the pro-^.
phets, the proclamation of John, and the expectations j
of His nation alike pointed to the adoption of that
plan. And, bearing in mind the nature of these expec
tations, as well as the character of the great majority
of the prophecies, the wonder is, not that the Tempta
tion to found an earthly kingdom came to Him, but
that He should have hesitated at all to adopt that plan
— that He should have seen it to be a temptation at
all. Did not the Scriptures again and again foretell that
the Messiah would come as a conquering king ? Was
not His nation eagerly expecting His appearing, and
was it not prepared to respond enthusiastically to His
summons to arms?
Not that those things which make kingship j
attractive in the eyes of most men — wealth, and;
pomp, and power — could have appeared attrac- !
tive to Him. His pure and unselfish Spirit could not
have deemed kingship desirable on account of any
such things as these. It must have been the oppor
tunities which sovereignty presented for abolishing
tyranny and injustice, and for establishing a reign of
righteousness and peace on the earth, which could
alone have given weight to such a plan in His estima
tion, and which gave power to the Temptation. But,
bearing that in mind, we can readily understand how
real and powerful the Temptation was. The considera
tion was one which could not lightly be set aside,
that by conquering the world He would be able to
establish a righteous rule in it. And besides, by plac
ing Himself " In that fierce light which beats upon a

THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 6

3

throne," would He not be able, better than anywhere
else, to reveal the Name and Nature of God to men ?
Not easily could He have discerned this suggestion
to be a Temptation of the evil one ; not easily could
He have resolved to dismiss this dream of earthly f
dominion ; to run counter to the expectations of His
nation; and to choose a path which (He must have I
seen) could hardly end otherwise than in His rejection !
and death.
It is impossible to do justice to the wisdom which
Jesus displayed in recognising that these suggestions
which came to Him, prompting Him to found an
earthly kingdom, were Temptations of the devil. It is
impossible to do justice to the splendid originality of
the idea which He conceived, of founding a spiritual
kingdom in the hearts of men. It is impossible to do
justice to those qualities of Spirit which He displayed
when He rejected the tempting alternative, and boldly
resolved to found such a spiritual kingdom in the
world. In the light of the realised conception — now that
the kingdom He resolved to found has become a fact,
we can see how incomparably superior, in every
respect to the plan which He rejected, was the one
which He adopted.
We can see that if He had attempted to found an
earthly kingdom, though He certainly would have suc
ceeded, He would have had to make use of means
which would have degraded both Him and His Father
in the eyes of men, and instruments which, as He rightly
discerned, were the devil's tools. We can see that
such a kingdom, when founded, would have lacked
F

66 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
the elements of permanency; like the empire of I
Alexander, it would have fallen to pieces when its
founder was removed. We can see moreover that the
attempt to establish the reign of justice and righteous
ness by force, could not have succeeded, since the
wisest laws, and the strictest justice, can do little
more than restrain evil ; they are powerless to annihi
late it, because its source is the corrupt heart of man.
We can see that the method He adopted was the
one perfect method by which an everlasting kingdom
could be established ; the one perfect method by
which, while God's Name and Nature could be fully I
manifested, man's heart and life could be transformed, \
and the serpent-head of evil crushed.
We can see this now ; but, how divinely wise must
He have been, to see it at a time when the world
had never dreamt of such a spiritual kingdom as this ;
when Scripture only vaguely hinted at it, and when
the whole current of popular opinion ran counter to it !
It is impossible to point to anything which mars the
absolute clear-sightedness of a Mind which could thus
discern1 that God's kingdom could not be established
by force, and that the reasons which favoured such a
method were, in reality, deadly temptations of the evil
one; a Mind too, which could track the world's evil
to its source, and which could successfully devise a
plan for overcoming it.
We do but scant justice to our Lord's conception
of the kingdom of heaven, when we call it the most
splendidly original idea which has ever shaped itself
in the mind of man. Its audacity is as conspicuous as
its originality.

THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 67
Think what it meant! "I will not conquer the
world by force; I will not establish the reign of
righteousness on a basis of fear; I will draw men
away from evil by means of the superior attractiveness
of goodness ; I will draw them to Me by the power of
a holy and self-sacrificing life ; I will reveal the whole
of My Father's heart to them ; I will compel them to
love and serve Him, by convincing them that He is
infinitely worthy of being loved and served; I will
manifest the eternal life of Sonship to them ; I will
show them that such a life is possible ; I will reveal
its glories ; I will lift them up to it by winning their
love, and thus securing their loyalty, and their utmost
devotion to Me and my Father."
What a stupendous conception ! what an audacious
resolve ! One knows not what to admire and wonder
at most ; — the splendid originality of the idea ; or the
amazing self-confidence, and the equally amazing God-
confidence, and, still further, the marvellous confi
dence in human nature implied in the resolve ; or yet
again, the indomitable strength of will, and the perfect
obedience, which He displayed in His rejection of the
tempting alternative, and in His unhesitating accept
ance of what He saw to be the right and best
path. What are we to think of the Man who could dare to
think of founding such a spiritual kingdom as this ;
who could dare to resolve to cast Himself defenceless
on the world, and to fight its gigantic evils with no
other weapons than those of the Spirit — the weapons
of truthfulness, meekness, purity, self-sacrifice, and
love ; who could dare to hope that by sacrificing Hira-

68 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
self utterly for the world's sake, He could win the
world ; and who succeeded?
What are we to think of the Man who saw that all
the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them were
within His grasp — that He had only to make the
choice, and adopt the fitting means, and a world-wide
dominion would be His — and who would not make the
choice, would not adopt the means, but chose instead
the way of the Cross ; chose the hard and thankless
task of teaching, and ministering to, and living a
divine life in the midst of, an effete, faithless, and per
verse nation ; chose a life of toil, weariness, and
poverty — and death at thirty-three!
Truly, in the light of these facts and considerations,
this Man stands revealed as so divinely wise, and
strong, and holy, that the difficulty in the way of
accepting Him as the express image of the Divine
Being lies, not in the fact that His Character does
not display all those combined perfections which our
clearest ideas, and deepest intuitions, and most pas
sionate longings prompt us to assign to the Most
High ; but that it manifests a beauty of holiness and a
fulness of grace and truth which so far exceeds these
— it shines with a light so pure and dazzling — that the
announcement which He made to- His disciples : " He
that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," seems well-
nigh too good to be true.
We do not claim in the foregoing pages to have
given an exhaustive analysis of the Temptation narra
tive ; nor do we pretend to have done full justice to the
Character of Jesus as it stands revealed thereby. The

THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 69
glimpses it gives us into His Mind and Spirit are
glimpses into depths too> deep to fathom ; they reveal
a boundless perfection which it is impossible to cir
cumscribe. If we have in any degree enabled the
reader to realise this, our object will have been attained.
What we do claim is, that such riches of grace and
truth as we have attempted to unfold, do indeed come
from this mine ; that we have legitimately extracted
them from the narrative, not read them into it. Such
manner of Man, we maintain, He must have been,
who faced and conquered these Temptations : at the
very least no less divine than this.
In conclusion, we will only point to the importance
of the Temptation narrative as a link between the
private and public life of Jesus. It furnishes us with
the key to His subsequent career. In the light which
it throws upon His inner life, the course which He
adopted is revealed as a natural, and an entirely con
sistent one. Without that narrative, though we could
still have discerned that He was shaping His life in
harmony with certain fixed principles and convictions,
we should be at a loss to understand how and when
these became fixed and unalterable. We should not
be able without it to see, through what inward ex
periences—experiences which confirm His humanity,
at the same time that they demonstrate Him divine —
the Carpenter of Nazareth passed, before He
responded to the call of God ; — by what travail and
victory He consummated His thirty years of training,
and proved Himself to be the strong Son of God,
equal to the gigantic task of conquering evil, and of
establishing the kingdom of heaven upon the earth.

CHAPTER VII.
The Visit to Nazareth.
(Luke iv. 16-30, Matt. xiii. 54-58, Mark vi. 1-6.)
In the Gospel according to Luke the interesting and
graphic account of the visit of Jesus to Nazareth, and
of the way in which He was received by His fellow-
townsmen, follows almost immediately on the account
of the Temptation. Readers of the Gospel are, in con
sequence, naturally led to suppose that it took place;, at
any rate, very soon after He commenced His public
ministry. This, however, is not the fact. For not only does
the paragraph which Luke inserts between the account
of this visit and the Temptation narrative imply the
lapse of a considerable time,* but the remark which, in
His speech in the Synagogue, Jesus supposes His
fellow-townsmen to be making to Him : " Whatsoever
we have heard done at Capernaum, do also here in
thine own country," obliges us to conclude that He
had, at least for some months, been occupied in teach
ing and healing, before He paid this visit to the place
" where He had been brought up."
* Of course, it is not quite certain that the Evangelist in
this paragraph is simply summarising the course of Jesus'
life prior to this visit, though this is the natural interpreta
tion to give to the passage.

THE VISIT TO NAZARETH. ?i
The mention of Capernaum in particular, and the
allusion to the mighty works He had done there, seem
to point to this conclusion ; for it is pretty certain that
Jesus made that town His head-quarters during the
early part of His public life ; and from Mark ii. I, we
gather that He had a home there* It is not quite
certain whether the accounts given us in Matthew and
Mark of a visit to Nazareth (Matt. xiii. 54-58 ; Mark
vi. 1-6) refer to the same visit which Luke records;
but if, as is most probable, they do, the fact that this
visit was not paid till after the lapse of some months
seems to be established.
It is important to bear this fact in mind in con
sidering the narrative. In the light of it this graphic
record is seen to be of surpassing interest.
For the Man whom we see here is not, as some have
supposed, the young enthusiast fresh from His victories
in the wilderness, hastening home to tell His fellow-
townsmen of His call to the work of the Messiah ; we
do not see Him at a moment when a tide of the
Spirit has uplifted Him to an unusual height of con
fidence and assurance, but rather as He habitually
appeared when " He preached in their Synagogues,
being glorified of all."
Many of the circumstances were, indeed, in this
instance peculiar, and doubtless led Him to shape His
conduct somewhat differently from the way in which
He usually did. It is hardly possible, for instance,
that in His preaching elsewhere He announced so
boldly, as He did on this occasion, that the Messianic
* Cf. Rev. Ver. Mark ii. 1 ; margin.

72 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
prophecies were fulfilled in Himself. Elsewhere His
audiences had been, for the most part, sympathetic,
and He had not found it difficult to inspire them with
that confidence which He demanded as a preliminary
to' the exercise of His miraculous gifts; here the
people He addressed were critical and sceptical, and
demanded an exhibition of His power as a proof of
His claims. Elsewhere He addressed strangers ;
here He spoke to those who had known Him from
childhood. But these circumstances did not deter Him from fol
lowing, at Nazareth, His usual custom of entering
into the Synagogue on the Sabbath Day, and standing
up to read. And though His address on this occasion
can hardly be considered a typical one — the character
of His preaching being suited to the peculiar circum
stances — we are justified in inferring that it fairly
represents His general style of preaching during this
stage of His career.
And, indeed, the fact that the circumstances in this
case were, to some extent, peculiar, gives us exception
ally good opportunities for forming an estimate of His
Mind and Spirit.
We are able to see how He comported Himself —
with what boldness, wisdom, firmness and self-control
— in a most trying and difficult situation. This was,
we have reason to believe, the first occasion since the
commencement of His public ministry, on which His
popularity received a decided check — the first on
which He encountered opposition and unbelief — the
first on which the shadow of the Cross fell definitely
across His path. It was an occasion, therefore, which

THE VISIT TO NAZARETH. 73
put an unusual tax upon both His wisdom and His
faith ; one in which He must again have had to fight
the devil — i.e., on which He again encountered the
temptation to make an illegitimate use of His power,
and on which He was called, more decidedly than He
had hitherto been, to carry out the resolutions He had
arrived at in the wilderness.
At the same time we have presented to us, in this
narrative, a very vivid picture of His habitual conduct
and method of work : " He went, as His custom was,
into the synagogue." Thus we are able to see here,
perhaps more clearly than we can see in any other
incident which is recorded of His early ministry (that
is, up to the time when He ceased to be popular),
what manner of Man He was.
For these reasons the narrative demands a close
attention, and will well repay the student who is
desirous of apprehending the Mind of Jesus.
We would remark before we go further, that the
fact that He went to Nazareth at all, knowing (as He
must have done) with what kind of reception He was
likely to meet, furnishes us with no slight indication as
to His Character.
He was evidently away from His head-quarters at
the time, on a preaching tour in Galilee. Nazareth lay
in His track. He might easily have avoided it, avoid
ing at the same time an unpleasant experience. But
duty called Him to proclaim the good news of the
Kingdom there, as elsewhere, and He would not shirk
it. And so, " He came to Nazareth where He had
been brought up, and He entered into the synagogue,

74 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
as His custom was, on the Sabbath day, and stood up
to read."
Before we consider the narrative more in detail, we
cannot refrain from saying one word concerning its
merits as a piece of literature. It is one of the most
charmingly simple and graphic narratives in the whole
of the New Testament. The narrator must have been
an eye-witness, and one who with loving watchfulness
noted every action of his Master. " He stood up to
read : " " He opened the roll and found the place
where it was written, etc." " He closed the roll, and
gave it back to the attendant, and sat down : " " The
eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on Him."
With what admirable clearness the whole scene is
brought before us! And how completely the writer
effaces himself! He gives evidence that he was
possessed by that perfect devotion to his subject which
is indispensable to the best work. He wrote, not to
glorify himself, but his Lord. He " lost his life," and
verily thereby he has saved it, for he lives now in
his work, and will for ever live.
And now let us follow the narrative, and see what
we can learn from it concerning the Man who is its
central figure.
It was a Sabbath day, and in the quiet village of
Nazareth the people, as usual, assembled in the
synagogue to engage in public worship.
But there was unusual excitement among them on
that Sabbath. For it was known that the son of
Joseph the carpenter had come to' visit His old home ;
it was certain that He would be in the synagogue that
day, and it was probable that He would address them.

THE VISIT TONTAZARETH. IS
He had been away for some months ; and, during His
absence, astonishing news concerning Him had been
conveyed to His native place. It was well known by
report that He had come forward as a Teacher ; that
He had also wrought wonderful miracles ; that every
where people were talking about Him, and were
marvelling at His words and works.
This was very astonishing to the Nazarenes. He
had lived with them for thirty years ; they had
associated with Him familiarly ; and they had never
discovered that He differed in a marked degree from
themselves — never discovered that He had the making
of a prophet in Him. They were inclined to be very
sceptical on that point. Surely if He did possess
such wonderful power — if He had the gifts which fitted
Him for the work He had undertaken, they would
have discovered it long ago! But they very much
doubted if He had. They were inclined to think
Him a presumptuous young upstart. The reports of
His miracles, they were inclined to think, were, in
all probability, greatly exaggerated. They were
determined not to believe Him capable of doing
anything so wonderful, until He had given them some
signal proof of His power. Had they not reason
to be sceptical? Were not His mother and His
brethren living quietly among them ? Why should He
suddenly step out of the sphere in which He had so
long moved with them, and take to the role of teacher
and miracle worker?
But while they were thus sceptical, there was, at the
same time an undercurrent of conviction that the re
ports concerning Him were true. And they were

76 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
very angry with Him in consequence; and it was
their anger, as much as anything, which led them to
refuse to believe on Him. They were angry (as
we gather from His speech) because He had selected
Capernaum as the place in which to do His mighty
works, instead of Nazareth ; and because, when He
did come amongst them, He refused to do for their
gratification similar deeds of power to those which
He had done there. This they regarded as a great
slight. And in their anger they determined to con
strue His unwillingness as inability. He ought, they
considered, to have bestowed on them, first of all, the
benefits which, as the Messiah, He could confer — if
indeed He were the Messiah ; but this they deter
mined not to believe, on account of the neglect with
which He had treated them.
This was the state of mind in which the majority
of His fellow-townsmen went to the synagogue on
that Sabbath morning. They, perhaps, half expected
(Jesus seems to indicate as much in His speech) to
see Him do some mighty work — to give them a
" sign " in justification of His conduct and claims.
At the same time they were very much inclined to
doubt whether He could thus justify Himself. For
the rest, they evidently felt that they had a right to
demand some proof of this kind ; they assumed that
they had a perfect right, and were fully competent,
to sit in judgment on Him; they never dreamt that
He would have the presumption to judge them!
Jesus, as they expected, came to the synagogue,
and, probably by pre-arrangement with the authorities,
stood up to read. " And there was delivered unto

THE VISIT TO NAZARETH. 77
Him the roll of the prophet Isaiah." This most likely
was the roll which contained the ordinary lesson for
the day ; but, though it is possible that, by a striking
coincidence, the passage He read formed part of that
lesson, it is more probable, and the language of Luke
seems to imply, that He departed from the ordinary
routine, and selected a passage which suited His
purpose. " He opened the roll, and found the place
where it was written : ' The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me, because (or wherefore) He anointed me to preach
good tidings to the poor ; He hath sent me to proclaim
release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the
blind ; to set at liberty them that are bruised ; to
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.' And
He closed the roll, and gave it back to the attendant,
and sat down," — indicating by so doing that He was
about to speak.
For a few moments there was a deathlike silence
in the place, for His choice of that remarkable
prophecy in Isaiah, the tone of His voice, and the
look in His face as He read it, had riveted their
attention, and had made them feel that He was
about to say something of importance ; so they waited
expectant for Him to' begin.
Let us pause for a moment before1 we consider what
He said, to admire the calm deliberation which
attended Jesus' actions on this occasion — the quiet
strength of character of which He gave evidence ;
and the boldness with which, without hesitation and
without parade, He undertook the difficult duty of
the hour.
He was in the presence of those who had known

78 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
Him from childhood — critical friends and sceptical
acquaintances ; yet people to whom His heart went
out with a great yearning. There was hardly a face
in the synagogue that morning which was not familiar
to> Him; there was hardly a man or woman, boy or
girl, with whom He had not had some intercourse ;
His mother, and brothers, and sisters were there;
there must have been many more whom He knew
intimately ; doubtless there were not a few whom He
loved. It is difficult for a man in these circumstances to
be perfectly composed ; thrice difficult when he knows
that what he has to say will be very unpalatable to
his audience, and will probably arouse their anger
and resentment.
But He was as calm as He could possibly have been
if there had been nothing extraordinary in the
circumstances — as calm and deliberate in His move
ments as He was afterwards in situations of equal,
and even of greater difficulty — when, for instance, He
stilled the storm ; and when He stood in the presence
of Pilate. He quietly unrolls the parchment till He
finds the passage He wants ; He quietly hands it back
to the attendant when He has read it ; He quietly
takes His seat in the preacher's chair, while " the eyes
of all in the synagogue were fastened on Him."
And how appropriate was the passage He chose!
What a perfectly fitting introduction to the message
He was about to deliver; indeed, that was the
message, though the character of His audience
compelled Him to enlarge on it. He selects from the
pages of the Scriptures the one passage which most

the Visit to nazareth. 79
clearly proclaims the truth about Himself — the
strange, amazing truth, about which His audience is
so dubious. He will hide nothing : He will extenuate
nothing : He calmly, boldly proclaims to His sceptical
hearers the simple truth.
Can we imagine a course of conduct more firm and
dignified, more wise and truthful, than that which
Jesus adopted on this occasion? Was it not the
exactly right and fitting course for the Son in Whom
the Father was well pleased, to take ?
And He began to say unto them — sitting there
quietly, and in the gaze of His expectant and already
half-hostile audience, " To-day hath this scripture been
fulfilled in your ears."
What He said in this first part of His speech, the
Evangelist does not record; he simply summarises it
in these words. It is only when he comes to that part
of Jesus' discourse which roused the fury of His
hearers, that he gives the actual words ; and probably
even here he does not record the whole of what He
said. We cannot but regret that he did not give us the
discourse in full. We should have liked one complete
sample of Jesus' preaching in the synagogues — should
have liked to know what these " words of grace "
were, which caused even His sceptical, unsympathetic
townsfolk to " bear Him witness and wonder."
We must be thankful, however, that we are told
so much. We are told what was the drift of it, and
can infer a good deal concerning both its form and
substance, from what is recorded of the latter part
of the speech : — how rich, for instance, it must have

80 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
been in quotations from the Scriptures, and in lucid
explanations of the ancient prophecies.
" To-day hath this scripture been fulfilled in your
ears," that was the burden of it. " The Spirit of the
Lord is upon me; he hath anointed me to preach
good tidings to the poor; He hath sent me to pro
claim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to
the blind ; to set at liberty them that are bruised ; to
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." As He
expounded this to them, and unfolded its inner mean
ing — told them what the good tidings were, what was
the bondage from which He could release them, what
the vision He could bring to their blind eyes, what the
liberty with which He could make them free, what the
privileges of the year of Jubilee that had come, — as
He told them all this, with a light in His eyes they had
never seen before, and a ring of solemn earnestness
in His familiar voice, no wonder they marvelled, and
said, " Is not this Joseph's son? "
But ere long their astonishment was turned to
anger ; for He proceeded to tell them many unpala
table truths.
" You do not believe in me, and you are offended
at me. You want me to do here, what you have heard
that I have been doing at Capernaum ; to establish
these claims of mine by giving some signal proof of
my power. You say, ' If he wanted to come forward
as a prophet, why didn't he begin here? why should
he go away to Capernaum to do all his mighty works
there ? ' Verily I say unto you, no prophet is accept
able in his own country." And then He proceeded
to justify His actions by citing two instances from the

THE VISIT TO NAZARETH. 81
history of the nation, in which prophets had set Him
an example in this respect — had taken up their abode
among, and had used their powers to aid, strangers
and aliens, while passing by many nearer home, who
equally needed, and who apparently had a far better
claim on their presence and help. " It was to a widow
of Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, that Elijah was
sent, not to any of the many widows of Israel. It was
Naaman the Syrian who was cleansed of his leprosy
by Elisha, not any of the lepers of his own land."
But this plain speaking was more than His audience
could put up with. " They were all filled with wrath
in the synagogue as they heard these things." What !
did this young carpenter come posing to them as a
prophet and miracle-worker — as the very Messiah, for
sooth, — and then actually dare to tell them that they,
who certainly were as good as He, and who surely,
on the grounds of long acquaintance, if on no other,
had the first claim on His attention, and the best rights
to the benefits He had to bestow, if He were indeed
the Messiah — did He dare to tell them they were
neither capable of pronouncing judgment on His
claims nor worthy to receive His ministrations! It
was intolerable ! And, moved by a common impulse,
they rose up, and hustled Him out of the synagogue
and the town, and began to lead Him to the height
which overlooked it, that they might throw him down
headlong. But, ere they reached it, their anger began
to cool, and His calm dignity began to impress them.
Numbers of them, doubtless, dropped away, not wish
ing to take any active part in the deed of violence ; the
remainder began to hesitate, and finally allowed Him
G

82 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
to pass through their midst uninjured, and to go His
way. Such is the account of the first, and possibly —
though this is not quite certain — the only visit which
Jesus paid to His native town after He had begun His
public ministry ; this is how He was received ; and this
is how He bore Himself, in circumstances so difficult,
and among people so blind, faithless, and perverse.
We have already touched upon the chief features
of His conduct and Character which the narrative
affords us an opportunity for noting : — features which
we have every reason to suppose were habitual, though
the peculiar circumstances throw them into stronger
relief in this instance.
In going to the synagogue, in standing up to read,
and in afterwards addressing the congregation, we
know He only acted in accordance with His usual
custom. And we can be certain that at all the other
cities and villages where He " preached in their
synagogues," He showed the same calm strength, the
same wisdom, the same boldness, the same transparent
truthfulness, the same loyalty to the highest duty, the
same devotion to His Father's business, as He did on
this occasion. We may be sure also that His preach
ing elsewhere was characterised by the same wealth
of Scripture quotation and illustration, and the same
insight into its spirit ; and we may legitimately infer
that in taking up one of the ancient prophecies, and
unfolding its inner meaning, and showing how it was
about to be fulfilled in the establishment of the
Kingdom of Heaven by Himself, He was doing no

THE VISIT TO NAZARETH. 83
more than following His ordinary methods of
exposition. But above and beyond these features of His conduct
and methods, which we feel justified in believing that
He habitually exhibited, the peculiar circumstances
connected with this visit to Nazareth made extra
ordinary demands upon Him, — put His Character and
His powers to a severer test than usual, — perhaps to
a severer test than they had undergone since His
temptations in the wilderness. It is necessary to
take this into account in forming a true estimate of the
Man, as He stands revealed by this incident.
There are two circumstances connected with this
visit to Nazareth — in addition to the fact that the
people were critical and hostile — which are peculiar to
it: — two circumstances which made that day one of
peculiar trial and difficulty for Him. To cope with
these successfully required the exercise of the highest
moral and spiritual power. They put His divine Son-
ship to the severest proof; in the light of them the
wisdom, firmness, and self-control which He displayed
are revealed as doubly divine.
These are : the fact that the Nazarenes made the
demand of Him, " whatsoever we have heard done at
Capernaum, do also here in thine own country " ; and
the fact that they rejected, and attempted to murder
Him. These, therefore, require to be considered a
little more in detail
The Nazarenes, we have seen, were both angry
and sceptical, their scepticism being to a considerable
extent (though not entirely) the outcome of their

84 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
anger. They were angry because Jesus refused to
do among them the mighty works He had done at
Capernaum, and this led them to harden their hearts
in unbelief.
We must suppose that during the time He had been
with them previous to this Sabbath*, Jesus had led
them to see that they were not to expect Him to give
any such exhibition of His power as He had given
elsewhere. Matthew and Mark give* us the reason ;
they were sceptical to begin with, and Jesus* having
strictly resolved that He would not make use of His
power simply to astonish and overawe — that He
would not gratify the popular craving for a " sign " —
could not, because He would not, do many mighty
works there (nothing beyond laying His hands on a
few sick folk, Mark vi. 6) " because of their unbelief,"
i.e., because the conditions were not present under
which alone Pie had determined to exercise His
power. This refusal of His angered them, and at the same
time confirmed them in their scepticism.
Still the narrative in Luke seems to indicate that
they after all half expected that He would work
a " sign " among them. We infer from it that they
came to the synagogue that morning so eagerly to
hear Him, because they anticipated that He would
declare Himself — in the only way in which their dull
minds and gross imaginations could conceive of Him
doing it — by performing some marvellous work of
wonder. *Cf. Mark vi. 2. " When the Sabbath was come," which indi
cates that He had been among them for some, days previously.

THE VISIT TO NAZARETH. 85
Now, bearing in mind that this was the attitude and
expectation of His audience — an expectation which
indeed they had had during the previous week, but
which was concentrated on this occasion — we can
realise what a test this Sabbath's experience was to
Jesus — what a temptation He had to fight — what
strength of will and self-control He had to exert.
Why should He not gratify His countrymen's
craving for a sign? Why should He not give them
the proof they demanded that He was the Messiah ?
He might thereby turn their hostility into friendship —
their incredulity into enthusiastic devotion — and after
wards succeed in disabusing their minds of the low,
material conceptions which filled them with regard to
the Messiah and His work, and bring them to the
knowledge of the truth ; would not this be better than
leaving them in darkness and unbelief? We cannot
say for certain that such suggestions as these came
to Him, but we think it probable, for we can con
fidently assert that they were such as would natu
rally present themselves to one in His position, and
was He not " in all points tempted like as we are " ?
That He never for a moment entertained them —
that, so far as we can gather from His conduct, they
were, if they came at all, instantaneously dismissed,
is certain. And in either case — whether His mind was
so pure and holy — whether His victory in the wilder
ness had been so complete — that such thoughts never
came to Him; or whether they came and were
dismissed, His conduct and Character bear the stamp
of an excellence — a perfection, — which is wholly
divine. Not only would He work no miracle to justify

86 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
Himself ; He would adopt no means other than purely
spiritual ones to draw men to Himself. He resolutely
refused to win the approval of His fellow-countrymen,
by proving to them that He was a wonder-worker.
He would aim at nothing less than the winning of
their loyalty and affection by the manifestation of
grace and truth ; and as He could not succeed, He
" marvelled at their unbelief," and " went His way."
Thus we see how severely tested on this occasion were
both the resolve He made in the wilderness concerning
the use to which He would put His miraculous power ;
and His resolve to win men by love, not by force or
fear. We find Him, with a firmness and calmness
so perfect, so natural, as to be apparently without
effort, victoriously meeting the tests to which life's
experience subjected His great resolutions; we find
Him proving Himself to be the Son of God, by
manifesting, in these difficult circumstances, a godlike
strength, and wisdom, and purity, and grace.
The second circumstance peculiar to this occasion
was the wrath which He encountered — wrath so blind
and reckless that it led His countrymen not only to
cast Him out of the synagogue, but to seek to kill
Him. This was the first occasion, apparently, on
which Jesus encountered opposition. Previously He
had " preached in their synagogues, being glorified of
all." But now, for the first time, the shadow of death
fell across His path. He received a clear warning
that His popularity could not last, — that His nation
would not accept Him as the Messiah, but would, if
He persisted in the plan He had adopted, — if He
refused to conform to their ideas of Messiahship, — if

THE VISIT TO NAZARETH. 87
He continued to " bear witness of the truth," regardless
of the prejudices and prepossessions of His hearers —
angrily reject Him, and compass His death.
It is not likely, indeed, that the reception which
His countrymen accorded Him could have taken Him
by surprise ; nor that the warning with which it
furnished Him could have been unanticipated. He
must have anticipated before He went to the syna
gogue that morning, the effect His words would pro
duce ; and He must have foreseen, before He com
menced His public ministry, the Cross at its close.
But it is one thing, with most men, to foresee and
resolve ; it is quite another thing to be firm and
unflinching, in circumstances which confirm the fore
sight, and test the resolve. Many a man has made
noble resolves, clearly foreseeing the consequences
which would ensue, but has failed to keep true to
them when the hour of trial has come. Many a Peter
has denied his Lord in the judgment hall, who has
previously declared, " Though I should die with thee
yet will I not deny thee."
Not so Jesus. On this first occasion on which His
resolves were severely tested, and on all subsequent
occasions, even to that last one when they were tested
to the utmost, He showed not the least sign of
wavering; He exhibited an immovable firmness, an
unruffled calm. Duty called Him to speak to His
angry and unbelieving fellow-townsmen plain words
of warning and reproof ; and He spoke them as boldly,
as calmly, as if He were addressing an audience of
enthusiastic admirers. As they led Him to the brow
of the hill to consummate their rage in murder, He was

88 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
still so calm, so dignified, that at length they were
overawed, and allowed Him to pass through their
midst uninjured. Calmly He left them, and went
His way; but not to brood in moody solitude over
the great rebuff He had experienced ; not to
reconsider His plans ; not to mourn over His
approaching doom. No! He left tliem and went
His way, to calmly continue elsewhere the great work
He had undertaken, — to prosecute it unflinchingly,
though ere long, all Galilee turned against Him, like
Nazareth, and all Judaea like Galilee ; till the whole
nation took up the cry, " Crucify Him, crucify Him " ;
till the fate which this Sabbath day's proceedings
foreshadowed, in grim reality overtook Him, and still
calm, and unmoved by doubt or fear, though despised
and rejected of men, He was led out of Jerusalem to
die.

CHAPTER VIII.
The Galilean Crisis.
(John vi., Matt, xiv., Mark vi. 14-56, Luke ix. 7-17.)
THE sixth chapter of the Gospel according to John
contains a record of what has been aptly called " the
Galilean Crisis."
The events which immediately preceded, and which
led up to this crisis : — the retirement of Jesus with his
disciples to the north-eastern corner of the Lake of
Galilee, the following of Him by the multitudes, and
the miracle of the feeding of them — are related by all
the Synoptists, as well as in the Fourth Gospel.
Matthew and Mark record also the events of the suc
ceeding night — the retirement of Jesus to a mountain
to pray, after having first sent His disciples away by
boat, and then dismissed the multitude ; and His walk
ing on the sea. Matthew further records the incident
of Peter's attempt to imitate his master.
The actual crisis itself, however, which occurred at
Capernaum on the following day, is only recorded in the
Fourth Gospel. The Synoptists give us no hint of it.
If we had their accounts alone, we should gather that
Jesus, on His return " to Gennesaret," resumed the
methods of work which He had previously practised,
amid unabated popularity. (Matt. xiv. 34-36. Mark

90 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
vi. 53-56). It is only from what is recorded in the
subsequent chapters — the opposition of the Pharisees
and Scribes from Jerusalem ; His retirement to the
borders of Tyre, and His attempt to make His disciples
realize the fate which awaited Him — that we can infer
from them (and that by no means with certainty), that
about this time anything of the nature of a crisis
occurred — a revulsion of popular feeling with regard
to Him, which made it impossible for Him any longer
to pursue the course He had previously adopted, for
the accomplishment of the work His Father had given
Him to do.
There is no reason, however, for doubting the sub
stantial accuracy of the account of the actual crisis
which the Fourth Gospel gives us.
We say " the substantial accuracy," because there
is considerable reason for doubting whether the
account of the controversy with " the Jews," which
actually caused the crisis, is in form correct.
Some of the best commentators acknowledge that
the controversy as it is recorded in John vi. 25-58, was
not a continuous one — that there were two, if not
three, breaks in it,* and if this was so> we cannot have
here more than an abstract of what actually occurred,
thrown into dramatic form by the narrator. It is very
doubtful, indeed, how far we can insist on any of the
language used in this controversy as being the
" ipsissima verba " of Jesus. The teaching of Jesus
* Cf. Edersheim, "Life and Times of Jesus,'' 11, 29,
31, 32. Westcott on John vi. y; and 41. We have discussed
fully the problem of the fourth Gospel in the chapter on
" The Spiritual Consciousness of Jesus,"

THE GALILEAN CRISIS. 9'
as we have it in the Fourth Gospel has, as the
critics have long recognised, "passed through the
mould of a remarkable mind,"* and when we compare
it with the teaching recorded by the Synoptists, there
remains little doubt that, in passing through that
mould, both the language and the ideas of Jesus have
undergone important modification.
It is not necessary, however, for us to enter here on
a discussion of the question: how far the writer of
the Fourth Gospel is a correct reporter of Jesus'
sayings. The subject is an interesting one, but it is
beyond the scope of our present purpose.
Our aim now is to discover what manner of man the
Man called Jesus was, by examining how He com
ported Himself in this crisis of His career. In order
to do this, we need not assume more than that the
crisis actually occurred in some such manner as the
Evangelist records, i.e., that Jesus, at this point in
His public ministry, by plain speaking concerning
Himself and His mission, effectually dispelled the
hopes and anticipations which He had aroused in the
minds of the multitude, and, by so doing, also effectu
ally quenched popular enthusiasm ; from that moment
entering on the narrow path which led straight to the
Cross. We will only remark further by way of preface,
that though the Synoptists give us no account of this
crisis, and we could not certainly gather from them
that anything of the sort occurred in the life of our
* Cf . Gore's Essay on Inspiration in " Lux Mundi." M
Arnold, " God and the Bible," " The Fourth Gospel."

92 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
Lord, yet in the light of the record of it given in the
Fourth Gospel, much in them becomes plain.
Unchronological as their accounts are, we can
plainly gather from them not only that a time came
when Jesus ceased to " preach in the synagogues,
being glorified of all," but when Capernaum ceased to
be His home, and His career as a popular teacher and
healer ended. (Cf. Matt, xi., 23.) It is evident also
that it was not until His disciples had been for some
time associated with Him, that He began to throw out
hints to them concerning His death. This, of course,
may have been because He did not consider them
previously sufficiently enlightjened, and sufficiently
attached to Him to be able to bear to hear the
truth ; but it seems likely that it was also, and quite
as much, because He Himself did not for some time
clearly recognise that that must be the inevitable
end. At any rate, amid the first blaze of popularity,
thoughts of that end, if they came to Him, must have
come only at intervals. It could only have been after
His popularity had waned — it could only have been
after some such crisis as is recorded in the Fourth
Gospel — that the frequent and serious contemplation
of it must have been forced upon Him.
And, let us add, on other grounds, it is more than
probable — it is, indeed, practically certain — that a
crisis of this sort occurred in the public ministry of
Jesus. We could unhesitatingly make that assertion,
even though none of the Evangelists had left us
any account of it. The account in the Fourth Gos
pel harmonises perfectly with the Character of the
Jesus of the Synoptists ; it harmonises also with

THE GALILEAN CRISIS. 93
universal experience. Jesus could not have continued
to be the popular teacher and healer. No man of
unworldly character and lofty spiritual aims —
no great religious reformer — no man of in
flexible fidelity to truth, can continue long to be
the idol of the populace. It was natural that at first,
when He went about sowing the seed of the Kingdom
— preaching in the synagogues, or wherever men con
gregated, and healing the sick — He should be
" glorified of all." But it was quite as natural that a
time should come when He could no longer continue
in such a course, without being unfaithful to the great
purpose which He had set Himself to accomplish.
It was natural and inevitable that a time should
arrive, when He had to make choice between
accommodating His preaching and life to the
prejudices, and preconceptions, and anticipations of
the people, or alienating them by stern refusal to thus
accommodate Himself to them, and by a plain setting
forth of the real aim and object of His mission. More
over, a time was bound to come when such genuine
fruit as His sowing had resulted in was ripe for gather
ing; when all the good that could be accomplished
by following the method which He adopted
when He commenced His public ministry had
been accomplished, and only harm could result
from pursuing it further; when it became abso
lutely necessary for Him to sift His followers,
and to discern who were His disciples indeed,
by such a declaration of His purposes as should render
it impossible for any to continue with Him, except
such as were genuinely attached to Him, and had

94 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
desires, not only for " the meat which perisheth," but
also for that which " abideth unto eternal life."
It becomes abundantly evident, when we supplement
the account of the occurrences which led up to the
crisis, given us in the Fourth Gospel, by those fur
nished us by the Synoptists, that such a time arrived in
the history of Jesus — apparently towards the middle of
His public career. A combination of circumstances
rendered it at length imperative that He should
damp the popular enthusiasm, and devote Himself
henceforth, principally at any rate, to the training of
the faithful few.
We will briefly consider what these circumstances
were, before we proceed to study the Character of the
Man, as it stands revealed to us by His conduct amid
them, and in the crisis which followed.
The Fourth Gospel does not assign any reason for
the withdrawal of Jesus from Capernaum to the other
side of the Sea of Galilee. (John vi. i.) We gather
from the Synoptists, however, that there was a two
fold reason for this withdrawal. Mark distinctly tells
us that the primary reason was the need which the
disciples had of rest, after their return from their
missionary tour. (Mark vi. 31.) But Matthew and
Luke inform us that there was another reason also.
Herod got to hear of all that Jesus was doing, and
" was much perplexed." Matthew reports that Herod
himself believed that it was John, whom he had be
headed, risen from the dead, and is corroborated by
Mark. Luke, however, informs us that this was only
one of the reports current concerning Jesus — a report
which Herod himself did not credit. "John I be-

THE GALILEAN CRISIS. 95
headed," Luke reports Herod to have said, " but who
is this about whom I hear such things ? " Luke's
account is doubtless the more correct one. Herod was
not the man to believe in resurrections. John, he felt
convinced, was dead and done with, he would not be
troubled by John any more. But here, according to
report, was some one making even a greater stir than
John. Herod's curiosity was excited, and perhaps he
was not altogether free from alarm. John had created
commotion enough ; might not this new prophet prove
more troublesome and dangerous than he ? He must
satisfy himself on the point. And so, Luke signifi
cantly tells us (Luke ix. 9), " He sought to see him."
Jesus had no desire to get into Herod's clutches,
and to share John's fate. Later on in His career,
when He foresaw that His death was inevitable, and
that it was necessary His mission should have such a
consummation, He did not hesitate to defy Herod,
and to go on His way, unmoved by reports that he
was seeking to kill him. (Luke xii. 3-34.)
But the time for that had not yet come. And so,
as Matthew distinctly tells us, when Jesus got to know
that Herod had heard about Him, and was speculating
concerning Him, He deemed it prudent to withdraw
for a while from public notice. With this object in
view He accordingly "withdrew from thence," i.e.,
from Capernaum — which up to that time He had made
His headquarters, and where in all probability He
had a settled residence — " to a desert place apart."
(Matt. xiv. 13.)
We need hardly remark that there is no incom
patibility between the reason assigned by Matthew for

96 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
the withdrawal, and that assigned by Mark. Both
reasons may well, and almost equally, have
influenced Jesus in the course which He
adopted. Mark, indeed, like Matthew, gives the
account of the death of John, prefacing it
also by the statement that Herod had got to
bear of it; and to speculate about Jesus ; though he
does not, like Matthew, distinctly connect this with
the fact of the withdrawal. Luke, it is to be noted,
though he records both the fact that Herod sought
to see Jesus, and the fact of the return of the Apostles,
in close connection with the withdrawal, does not dis
tinctly assign either as the reason for it.
After comparing and combining the different narra
tives it seems quite safe to assert that Jesus, at this
stage of His career, desired to withdraw awhile from
public notice ; partly in order to rest the disciples
after their missionary labours, partly in order to avoid
Herod. Doubtless also He desired an opportunity
for instructing His disciples more fully in the great
truths concerning the Kingdom of God. Such an
opportunity He could not possibly find when " there
were many coming and going, and they had no leisure
so much as to eat." (Matt. vi. 31.) He may have
hoped also that, after His departure, popular
enthusiasm — which He must have seen was rising to
a dangerous height — would gradually subside, and
with it Herod's desire to see Him.
A yet further reason has been assigned by some,
based on the fact, recorded in the Fourth Gospel, that
" the passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand."
For Jesus to have gone up to Jerusalem to this pass-

THE GALILEAN CRISIS. 97
over would have been to court the fate of John. It was
natural, however, that He should wish to spend the
passover season in quiet rest ; and moreover, at no
period could He better pause in His labours than at
a time when such large numbers of His countrymen
would be away from their homes on the annual visit
to Jerusalem.
What course Jesus would have pursued if He
had been permitted undisturbed to carry out His
design of going into temporary retirement, and
how long He would have continued in that retirement
— whether He would have taken up again the work in
which He had previously been engaged, or whether
He would quietly have dropped the rdle of popular
preacher and healer, and have devoted Himself hence
forth — as He was compelled to do after the crisis had
occurred — principally to the work of training the
twelve : — about these questions it is futile to speculate.
For, as we know, circumstances did not permit Him to
carry out His plan. He could not shake Himself free
of the multitudes. When they saw Him take ship
with His disciples, and sail away towards Bethsaida,
they immediately started in pursuit of Him — going
by land round the head of the lake — and, Mark in
forms us, " outwent them," so that on approaching the
land Jesus found, instead of solitude, a great crowd
awaiting Him.
He might have sailed away again without landing ;
but when " He came forth ;: (from the little cabin, in
all probability, in which He had been taking a much-
needed rest), and saw the multitude, " He had compas
sion on them, because they were as sheep not having
H

9S THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
a shepherd," (Mark vi. 34), and resumed once more
the duties of teacher and healer. Then followed the
miracle of the feeding of them ; and this created such
enthusiasm that, the Fourth Gospel informs us, the
people determined forcibly to make Him king.
This fact, which the other Gospels do not
record, is, to our mind, the most important
one of the whole series of events which led
up to the crisis. In the light of it, the
events which followed — the hasty sending away of the
disciples (for which Matthew and Mark, who both re
cord it, furnish us with no reasons), the retirement of
Jesus to the Mountain, the return to Capernaum, and
the plain speaking in which He indulged after his
return — are perfectly intelligible. Such an ebullition
of popular feeling was what Jesus must have long
feared, and just what He was most anxious to avoid.
Its occurrence at this particular time, when He not
only desired rest, but when it was most necessary
to avoid the notice of Herod, was, as we should say,
" most unfortunate." It required to be met by prompt
and decisive action, for it threatened the utter ruin
of all His hopes and plans for the establishment of a
Kingdom of God in the world. He must stop at once
and for ever all attempts at king-making. That He
recognised clearly. He saw that He had reached the
turning point of His career. He was convinced, from
that moment, that He could no longer with either
safety or profit continue in the course which He had
hitherto pursued. If the great majority of those to
whom He had so often spoken concerning the King
dom of God, had failed to attain to any higher concep-

THE GALILEAN CRISIS. 99
tion of it than that, it was high time for Him to ascer
tain if there were any by whom His teaching had
really begun to be apprehended, and to devote Him
self to the feeding of them with the spiritual food
which He had to impart. To continue teaching and
ministering to the multitude, who sought Him only
for the sake of material benefits, and, after all His un
folding of the nature of the Kingdom He came to
establish, wished to make Him leader of the revolt,
was to cast pearls before swine. He must, at the risk —
or rather with the certainty — of alienating the sympa
thies of the great majority of His followers, so plainly
declare what was the great purpose which He was
striving to accomplish, that the selfish and worldly-
minded should no longer have any excuse for follow
ing Him. He must enter the lonely valley of the
shadow of death.
It was to these conclusions that Jesus came, if not
immediately on perceiving that the multitude was
about to take Him by force to make Him king, yet
certainly by the following day. Meantime He pro
ceeded at once to take such steps as the situation
demanded. He first of all hastily sent away His disciples. In
all probability they sympathised to a very great extent
with the desire of the multitude, and it was necessary
to get them out of the way. Besides He wanted to
be alone, to meditate and pray.
He then proceeded to dismiss the multitude. In
the previous chapter we have seen how He overawed,
and passed unharmed through the midst of an excited
and angry throng, and we can easily understand that

ioo THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
He found no great difficulty, on the present occasion,
in controlling the enthusiasm which He had roused,
and in persuading at least the majority of the people to
quietly disperse.
He plainly saw, however, that it was necessary to do
much more besides temporarily damping the ardour of
the multitude. He must adopt such measures as
should effectually prevent it from rising again to such
a dangerous height.
Whether, however, when He sent the disciples away,
He had already decided to take the course which He
afterwards adopted, at Capernaum, we have no means
of deciding. It seems most reasonable to suppose that
He had not. Circumstances which He could not have
foreseen determined the form in which the crisis was
precipitated. It was the exigence of the moment
which led Him to despatch His disciples. It was their
toil-worn and perilous condition on the storm-tossed
waves which led Him to join them, " about the fourth
watch of the night." It was the fact that many among
the multitude would not take His dismissal of them as
final, but lingered till the following morning at " the
place where they ate the bread after the Lord had
given thanks," and then, when they could not find Him
there, returned to Capernaum in search of Him: — it
was this chain of unforeseen events which led Him, on
encountering them there, to enter into the controversy
which produced the crisis.
Meantime what He most urgently needed was time
for quiet meditation and prayer. He needed to reflect
on the events of the afternoon, in order to realise their
significance, and to determine their full bearing on

THE GALILEAN CRISIS. 101
His work and mission. He needed renewal of
spiritual strength, to enable Him to steadfastly face
the changing circumstances of His career ; He needed,
we will not say to review and reconsider, but to fortify
Himself anew in those mighty resolutions which He
had formed at the commencement of His public life —
from which now, if at any stage of His career, He must
have been tempted to swerve ; He needed that com
fort and consolation amid the disappointment and
failure of the hour — and the fact that the multitude
wished to make Him king was proof enough that He
had failed — which He could only gain by communion
with His Father.
And so, " after He had sent the multitude away,
He went up into the mountain apart to pray."
(Matt. xiv. 23.)
It was, as we have remarked, the exigence of the
moment which led Jesus to send His disciples away.
Apparently He told them not to wait for Him, but to
return to Capernaum. It is not probable that, at the
time when He gave them this direction, He had
considered the question, how He should rejoin them ;
nor yet whether He should pursue the intention which
He had in view when He so recently left that place —
the intention of obtaining rest. The business of the
hour was too urgent, and the development of events
too uncertain, to permit Him to make any plans of
that sort. And, after He had retired to the mountain
to pray, He was, for some hours, too much occupied
with higher matters, and more difficult questions, to
think of the immediate future. A circumstance,
evidently unforeseen, determined the course which He

102 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
adopted. Happening, in the dim dawn, to cast a
glance over the lake, He caught sight of the boat in
which His disciples were, in a position of difficulty, if
not of danger.
One of those sudden storms which sweep down so
suddenly upon the Sea of Galilee, had met them in
their progress. After hours of rowing in the face of
it, they had not made much more than half the dis
tance to the other side, and were by this time ex
hausted with toil. Jesus apprehended the situation at
a glance, and immediately recognising and responding
to the duty which lay nearest to Him, " cometh unto
them walking on the sea."
Appearing in such an unexpected manner, He was
not at first recognised by His disciples. On catching
sight of Him they were terrified, saying, " It is an
apparition ; " but coming within hail, He reassured
them, and — after Peter's characteristic attempt to join
Him in the water, recorded by Matthew, — " went up
unto them into the boat."
Matthew and Mark record the fact that at the same
time " the wind ceased," and the Fourth Gospel says,
" straightway the boat was at the land whither they
were going." Whether these circumstances were
miraculous or not, it does not concern us now to
inquire. The fact to be noted is that within twenty-
four hours of the time when Jesus had started from
Capernaum, with the intention of avoiding publicity
and gaining rest, He was back there again, with His
plans upset, and with the whole aspect of His mission
changed : — with the stern duty before Him of shatter
ing His popularity, and of realising henceforth that

THE GALILEAN CRISIS. 103
conception of God's servant which the prophet
depicted when he wrote, " He was despised and
rejected of men."
The opportunity for accomplishing the task the
necessity of which had been demonstrated by the
previous day's experience, was not long in presenting
itself. Though He had, on the previous evening, succeeded
in curbing the enthusiasm of the multitude, and in
avoiding their ill-advised attempt to proclaim Him
king, that enthusiasm still remained a potent force,
and rendered the attempt liable to repetition.
Some portion of the people, probably the more
ardent, after the retirement of Jesus to the mountain,
lingered in the neighbourhood throughout the night,
expecting that He would rejoin them on the following
morning ; but as He did not appear, they hailed some
boats which had been driven to that unfrequented
place by the storm, and returned in them to
Capernaum, " seeking Jesus."
They appear to have had no difficulty in finding
Him. He does not seem to have made any attempt to
escape notice. Probably He expected their return,
and had fully decided on the course He would adopt
when He encountered them again. On hearing of His
whereabouts they hastened into His presence, inquir
ing with gaping astonishment, " Rabbi, when earnest
thou hither?"
Jesus at once seized the opportunity afforded by
this question to precipitate the crisis. He ad
ministered to them, first of all, a stern reproof for seek
ing Him from selfish and ignoble motives, and not

104 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
because they were animated by any desire to be
spiritually enlightened and fed. And then He pro
ceeded to explain to them what the real object of His
mission was — to feed, not their bodies, but their souls ;
not to minister to, or to gratify, carnal or worldly
desires, but spiritual ones ; not to help them to live
the life of relations with the things which are seen,
but to teach them to live the eternal life, by teaching
them to know and to do the will of His Father — God.
This, to them, strange and disappointing announce
ment, led apparently to a prolonged discussion and
controversy, the details of which, as regards time and
place, the Fourth Gospel does not record, beyond stat
ing the fact that part of it was carried on in a syna
gogue. Nor can we, as we have already pointed out,
accept the report of the controversy itself without
reservation. We cannot regard it as anything more
than an abstract of what took place, thrown into dra
matic form by the writer of the Fourth Gospel.
How far the words put into our Lord's mouth by
the Evangelist, and the metaphors employed, i.e., the
eating of heavenly bread, and the eating and drinking
of the flesh and blood of the Son of Man — were those
actually used by Him, it is impossible to say.
But from the account given, the general drift of the
discussion is easily discerned, and we need not hesitate
to accept it as — in substance, though not in form — a
truthful record of what actually occurred. Jesus set
Himself to convince His hearers that He had no
sympathy whatever with the narrow hopes and low
desires which the majority of them alone cherished ; —
that His aim and mission differed radically from their

THE GALILEAN CRISIS. 105
conceptions concerning it, and their wishes with
regard to it. He made it plain to all the selfish and
worldly-minded among them, that He had no material
benefits to bestow upon those who attached themselves
to Him. At the same time, for the benefit of those
who had not been following Him solely from selfish
motives, He unfolded — probably more fully than He
had ever done in public before — the real aim and
object of His mission ; insisting most strongly on the
fact that God had appointed Him to the work which
He had undertaken, and confidently claiming to be
able to completely satisfy the spiritual needs of those
who would attach themselves to Him.
The results of this controversy were just what Jesus
had anticipated, and indeed desired. " Many of His
disciples went back and walked no more with Him."
The death blow had been given to His popularity ;
and though, during His last journey to Jerusalem, it
seems to have revived to some extent, it never
henceforth could be said of Him that He was
" glorified of all."
The twelve, however, or, to speak more accurately,
eleven of them, remained faithful to Him ; and, from
that day forward, shunning as much as possible public
notice, He occupied Himself chiefly in instructing
them in the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, and in
framing them for their destined work.
Such then, as we interpret it, was the important
crisis in the public ministry of Jesus, of which
the author of the Fourth Gospel has left us a record.
It is possible that some readers may not be able to
see eye to eye with us in the view we have taken of it.

106 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
This is inevitable, seeing that the narrative of the crisis
is to be found only in that Gospel, the authorship and
reliability of which are still, and are likely long to
remain, the subjects of animated controversy.
But, unless the Fourth Gospel be regarded as alto
gether unreliable, we can hardly hesitate to accept, as
substantially true, its record of what occurred on this
occasion. And we have no reason for doubting the
plain intimation which it gives us that the crisis was
brought about by deliberate action on the part of
Jesus. It was not in spite of, but in con
sequence of what He did, and said, that His popu
larity was destroyed. Had He wished to remain
popular, He might easily have done so. He need
not have returned to Capernaum at all ; nor need
He, when there, have indulged in the plain
speaking which so offended and disappointed
His hearers. That He acted deliberately, in response
to the clear call of duty, and that He did so calmly and
unhesitatingly, not shrinking from, though He clearly
foresaw, the consequences and outcome of the course
He determined to adopt ; this, we think, is clearly
implied in, if not demonstrated by, the narrative.
And if this view of the matter be the correct one,
what an insight is given us here into the Mind and
Spirit of the Divine Man whose Character we are
endeavouring to unfold. Could any conduct be wiser,
bolder, nobler, more courageous, more self-sacrificing,
more sublime in its unswerving loyalty to God and
truth, than this which Jesus displayed in this
difiicult and dangerous crisis of His life?
Our previous study of His Character would un-

THE GALILEAN CRISIS. 107
doubtedly lead us to anticipate that He would act
wisely, promptly, and unselfishly in such a crisis ; but
the reality in this case, as in all cases in which we are
brought face to face with the living Man, far surpasses
all expectation. We are not altogether surprised to
find that He who put aside the temptation to found an
earthly kingdom, should have sternly repressed the
ebullition of popular enthusiasm which burst forth on
this occasion ; but if we had not had it on record,
should we have dared to anticipate that He would not
only clearly and instantly see the warning conveyed
by that event — clearly and instantly see that He had
reached a point in His career at which it was necessary
for Him either to destroy His popularity, or to be un
faithful to the great purpose to which He had conse
crated His life — but that, on seeing this, He would at
once, resolutely, and without hesitation, strike such a
blow at His popularity as to shatter the allegiance of
the great majority of His followers, and make it doubt
ful whether even the twelve would not forsake Him?
That in doing this He adopted the supremely right
and best course of action, we hold to be beyond
doubt. After such a manifestation of the feelings and
desires of the multitude as had just been displayed in
the endeavour to take Him by force and make Him
king, Jesus could not have continued in the course He
had hitherto pursued without constant danger of a
popular rising in His favour — an event which would
undoubtedly have been fatal to the success of the
work He was bent on accomplishing. The popular
hopes and expectations concerning the Messiah, had
He not taken such effectual means to damp them,

to8 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
would have more and more centred in Him, and
would have more and more hindered the reception, by
the minds of those who listened to Him, of the good
seed of the Kingdom of God which it was His chief
object to sow.
It was absolutely necessary that He should make it
indubitably plain, to all who looked to Him to gratify
such hopes and expectations, that He had no sym
pathy whatever with them, and was determined on
accomplishing an entirely different work. Neverthe
less, even if we admit that, to such a Mind and Spirit
as His, the temptation which the occasion presented
of reconsidering His resolutions, and adopting the
method of founding His kingdom which He had pre
viously rejected, offered no attractions — perhaps never
crossed His mind at all — (an admission which of itself
is one of the highest tributes we can give to His
Character and aims) — the resolution with which He
undertook the hard, stern duty of enlightening and
disillusioning His many sympathisers and friends ; the
confident reliance on God which that act implied, and
the splendid courage He displayed in gathering up the
few poor genuine fruits of His previous work which
the crisis left to Him, and in setting Himself to tread
the only path which remained open to Him — these
traits in His Character are beyond all praise. Daunt
less in His loyalty to God and truth, He proved that
popularity had not spoilt Him, and that adversity
could not appall Him ; He proved Himself once more
to be the strong Son of God — the one Man whose
meat and drink it ever was to do the will of His Father
in Heaven.

THE GALILEAN CRISIS. 109
And let us not forget that this crisis did put His
Divine Manhood to the proof — as indeed it was
continually being put to the proof, during every day
and hour of His life.
Unless we hold conceptions concerning His Nature
which are irreconcilable with the fundamental fact of
His true Humanity, we are bound to recognise that He
was free, in this crisis, to act in any way that the
circumstances permitted.
It was His loyalty to duty, and His love for God
and man which prompted Him to act in the way in
which He did. It lay altogether within His power
either to take advantage of the opportunity which now
presented itself, of posing as a patriot, and taking the
place of leader in a revolt against the hated Roman
yoke — or, to temporise, and so if possible avoid, or, at
any rate, postpone the crisis. He was, we repeat, per
fectly free to act. It was due entirely to the Divine
quality of His Spirit that He acted as He did. He
would not be untrue to Himself and to God. With
amazing wisdom, He saw the exactly right and true
course of action to adopt, and with amazing strength
of will, and with matchless fidelity, He proceeded
forthwith to do it. Thus once more, in new and
difficult circumstances, He proved Himself the wise,
faithful, obedient, perfect Son, with whom the Father
was — indeed, could not fail to be — well pleased.
In this endeavour to unfold the Character of the
Man Jesus, as it reveals itself in this important crisis
of His life which we have been considering, we are
met by a difficulty which we have previously felt in
dealing with other incidents of His career. It is a

"o THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
difficulty which all those who attempt to apprehend
His Mind and Spirit cannot but feel, and is in itself the
supreme proof of His Divine perfection. We feel the
impossibility of doing anything like justice to His
Godlike Character by any synthetic study of the
various incidents which the Gospels record. In
dealing with any other character with which History
furnishes us, we can, with a fair amount of accuracy,
define its limits, point to its defects,
" Put our finger on the place
And say, ' thou ailest here and here.' "
But in dealing with the Character of Jesus we
feel this to be impossible. We cannot point to
any bias disturbing its perfect balance ; we cannot
point to any flaw or weakness impairing its perfection.
We cannot even point to any virtue or excellence
which, by being in -excess, can be construed into a
defect, and be pointed at as marring the perfect
symmetry of the whole.
He is always master of Himself, and master of the
situation in which He finds Himself. He always acts
in the supremely wise and right way, — without
hesitation, without ostentation, apparently without
effort, as if it were simply the one and only way in
which it were possible to act under the circumstances.
He always responds fully to the call of duty, so
willingly, so naturally, that duty never seems to fetter
His perfect freedom of action. He never allows His
courage to lead Him into rashness. He never allows
His faith to lead Him into presumption. He is pitiful,
and full of compassion, in the presence of sickness

THE GALILEAN CRISIS. in
and suffering, but never weak in the way in which He
yields to those impulses, — never overmastered by
them. He can speak the tenderest words to sinners
convicted of their sin, and most encouraging words
to men and women anxious to live nobler and better
lives ; but He never, by word or look, causes men to
feel otherwise than that sin is exceeding sinful ; and,
when occasion demands, He can show Divine anger
at the hardness of men's hearts, and can denounce, in
most scathing language, hypocrisy and wrong
doing. And in this crisis, none of these marks of surpassing
greatness which, on the other occasions of His life we
have considered, we have found Him to possess, are
wanting. He acted exactly in the wisest and best way
in this difficult crisis — the only way in which an
entirely true and faithful man, burdened with such a
mission as His, could act in such circumstances, and
remain true to Himself, and to Him who had sent
Him Viewing His career from a standpoint from which
we can regard it as a whole, this fact becomes
indubitably plain. The Spirit of the Cross — the Spirit
of a Man who had determined to devote Himself to
the salvation of men in the one highest and best way,
by leading them to God and goodness, and who
shrank from no sacrifice in order to accomplish that
divine purpose — pervades, determines His whole
conduct throughout this crisis.
But just because this is the case, it becomes
impossible by any synthesis to do justice to a Spirit so
unimaginably, so superhumanly divine.

"2 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
When we have pointed out the courage, the wisdom,
the loyalty, the self-sacrifice, the singleness of aim, the
indomitable faith in God, and, we must add, in
humanity also, which His conduct on this occasion
reveals, we feel that we have done but little to
unfold its rounded perfection. All these qualities
are displayed, and many more could be brought out
by a more subtle and exhaustive inquiry ; but after
all our efforts, we should feel that we were as far as
ever from a complete and satisfying representation of
the true Character and Spirit of the Man. Every fresh
attempt to accomplish this task convinces us that it
cannot be accomplished. It is within our power to
apprehend much of His unexampled excellence and
worth, but to comprehend the grace and truth which
He manifested in their fulness, is impossible.
But when we have come to recognise, — when we
have felt ourselves forced to confess — this, can we
hesitate in the use of any language, however clear and
explicit, which declares that such a Soul must rank
on an equality with Him who, in the words of a
distinguished modern writer* " is identical with our
Highest, the supreme term in the hierarchy of spiritual
natures; blending in Himself the superlatives of all
that we reverence as great and good ; the eternal life
of moral perfection ? " Does not the language of the
apostle John seem altogether appropriate when he
says of this Man, " the Life was manifested . . . the
eternal Life which was with the Father, and was
manifested to us " ; or that of the author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews : "God's Son . . . who was the
* Martineau, " Study of Religion. Vol. II. , p. 42.

THE GALILEAN CRISIS. 113
effulgence of His glory and the very image of His
substance " ?
Are we not compelled to endorse the confession of
Peter, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God"?

CHAPTER IX.
He set His Face steadfastly.
(Luke ix. 51.)
AFTER the Galilean crisis Jesus was compelled to
make a large change in His methods of work. Having
by His attitude in this crisis struck a fatal blow at
His popularity, it was useless for Him to attempt to
carry on His work on the old lines. Consequently we
find that He avoided publicity as much as possible
during the remainder of the time He spent in the
north of Palestine. From this time forth He almost
entirely ceased to teach the multitudes, and to work
miracles in public. He travelled about from place to
place with His disciples- — we read of His going to
Tyre and Sidon, then to Cassarea Philippi, then we
find Him in Decapolis — but no longer as the popular
Teacher. His journeys are made with the view to
avoid notice, and to enable Him in quiet to instruct
those who remained true to Him. This was the chief
work to which He now devoted Himself — the work of
making the few followers who clave to Him better
acquainted with the real character of His mission, and

HE SET HIS FACE STEADFASTLY. 115
the true nature of the Kingdom which, as God's
Messiah, He was going to establish in the world.
It is in accordance with this design that we find Him
now plainly intimating to His disciples that He is about
to suffer and die. Again and again we find Him tell
ing them most explicitly what is about to happen to
Him. " Let these words sink into your ears," He said
to them only a few hours after the transfiguration,
" for the Son of Man shall be delivered up into the
hands of men." " But," says the candid Evangelist,
" they understood not this saying, and it was concealed
from them that they should not perceive it." (Luke ix.
44. 450
The chronology of the Gospels is so uncertain, that
it is impossible to decide how long Jesus remained in
the north after the Capernaum crisis ; and it is ex
tremely difficult to decide whether He visited Jeru
salem yet once more, and returned again to Galilee,
before the time when " He steadfastly set His face," to
go up there for the last time. The account of the
" secret " visit to the capital which we find in John vii.,
is difficult to reconcile with the last journey through
Samaria recorded by Luke* On the other hand there
is no account in the Synoptic Gospels of this previous
visit, and John (x. 22), by omitting all mention of a
return to Galilee, seems to imply that Jesus remained
in, or near, Jerusalem during the time which elapsed
between the Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast of
the Dedication. It is not necessary, however, for the
* Though Neander suggests that such a reconciliation is
possible. Cf. " Life of Christ," p. 332. Bohn's Edition.

116 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
purpose we have in view, to attempt to decide this
question. It is simply necessary to point out that, in
either the summer or autumn of the year before His
death,* Jesus turned his back on Galilee for the last
time, and " steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem."
(Luke ix. 51.) It is evident that He fully realised the
importance of this step. He knew that to go to
Jerusalem meant death. It is not at all necessary to
assume that He had any supernatural knowledge of
the fate that awaited Him. He must have foreseen,
as early at least as the time of His great travail of
Spirit in the wilderness, to what end the path of life
which His Father required Him to tread would lead.
The Shadow of Death must always have accompanied
Him during His public career; not at first intruding
itself on His notice, or greatly occupying His attention,
yet plainly discerned by Him at any rate as early as
the time of His visit to Nazareth, and yet more plainly
when the Galilean crisis came — becoming at last His
constant companion, as it became evident to Him that
Judea was even more hostile to Him than Galilee, and
that if He were not to remain a wanderer, and to
renounce, or at least, leave incomplete, His purpose of
devoting Himself to the salvation of the nation, He
must go to Jerusalem to die.
When we recognise the fact that not only did Jesus
plainly foresee the consequences of His going to Jeru
salem, but also that He must have been aware that
it was not His only alternative — that other courses of
* As the journey through Samaria was a leisurely one,
He must have started on it some considerable time before
the Feast which He purposed attending.

HE SET HIS FACE STEADFASTLY. 117
action were possible, — and when we realise how seduc
tive some of those other paths must have appeared,
and how easily He might have persuaded Himself (or
at least any other man might) into thinking that to go
to Jerusalem was not the right and best course to
adopt — then, and then only, shall we be in a position
to recognise the sublimity of this act of His, and to
realise what the Mind and Spirit must have been of
Him who could thus steadfastly resolve to go to
certain death.
In making this resolve He voluntarily took the first
step towards death. The act involved both the clear
recognition of the fact that this path was the path of
duty, and also the deliberate choice of that path ; and,
the more we ponder it, the more shall we be amazed,
both at the spiritual intuition which He displayed in
discerning that that hard path was the one His Father
desired Him to tread — the one whereby alone the
world's salvation could be accomplished — and at the
sublime submission and self-renunciation which the
treading of it involved.
It is not easy for readers of the Gospels to do full
justice to the wonderful insight into duty which Jesus
Christ displayed in determining on this course. Nor
is it easy to realise the strength of the temptation by
which He must have been assailed, to avoid the fate
which awaited Him at Jerusalem, and consequently,
the strength of will with which His rejection of the
alternatives offered to Him compels us to credit
Him. For, regarding this resolution of His — as we cannot
easily avoid doing — in the light of His death and resur-

u8 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
rection, we see it so splendidly justified — we recognise
so clearly that the path He chose was the right and
best path— that it is difficult for us to place ourselves
in the position in which He stood when He made the
resolve ; difficult to realise how strange and hard a
path it must have appeared to Him, in the prime of
His manhood, and with the wide world open to Him.
If indeed we regard Him — as He too commonly has
been regarded, rather as an actor, dramatising a pre
arranged scheme of redemption, than as a living,
responsible Man, working out slowly, and step by step,
His own complete salvation, and thereby accomplish
ing the salvation of the world, we need not try to over
come these difficulties ; for in that case we cannot
admit that the path He chose did seem strange to
Him, or that any other alternative seriously occupied
His thoughts.
But the Christ of many men's preconceptions — the
Christ who was always conscious of the fulness of His
Godhead ; who always foresaw clearly the exact
course of His career ; who always had in view the
destiny and scheme of the Cross ; who never laboured
under any perplexity as to the course He should take ;
— such a Christ is not the Christ of the Gospels. The
Christ of the Gospels is a Man who did not always
live in the full consciousness of what He really was ;
did not always clearly foresee what was His Father's
will for Plim, or why that will was right ; was in all
points tempted like as we are ; loved, hoped, feared,
willed, as we do, with all the energy and responsibility
of manhood ; howbeit of manhood animated by a per
fectly disinterested love, and consecrated to a per-

HE SET HIS FACE STEADFASTLY. 119
fectly unselfish purpose, and regulated by a perfectly
balanced, and God-magnetised will*
It is this Man into whose Mind we are endeavour
ing to get some insight ; and in order to see it clearly,
and without prejudice, in the light in which this
incident reveals it, we must endeavour, as far as
possible, to regard the step which He took on this
occasion apart from its outcome ; and must strive to
realise how difficult it must have been for Him to see
what was the path of duty, and how hard to resolve
to tread it.
He was, we must remember, at this time only three
and thirty. He had only been about His Father's
business some three years, and only in one little corner
of the world. Could it be possible that it was the
Father's will that He should die ; so young ; so
little work done ; so many methods of work untried ;
so many ripe harvest-fields unreaped? Was it not
much more probable, in view of these considerations,
that the right path lay aivay from Jerusalem, not
towards it ; that the voice within Him, urging Him to
go up, was the voice of the tempter, and not the voice
of God ? Could He not perform the work His Father
had given Him to do better by living than by dying —
by retiring to the desert, and there completing the
training of those who had remained faithful to Him ;
or by going to the Gentiles, and at least making
* The reader will find the same thought in Dr. Forsyth's
"Religion in Recent Art," p. 2 13 (1889 Ed.). We have ventured
to make use of some of Dr. Forsyth's language in the above
paragraph ; but in a way which does not readily permit of
acknowledgment by quotation marks.

120 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
certain that they would give Him no better reception
than His countrymen ?
Some such thoughts and doubts — natural, inevitable
under the circumstances — must have passed through
His Mind, and perplexed His Spirit. Indeed, we are
not without direct evidence both that the great world
with its great needs, which lay outside the limits of
His country, was often in His thoughts ; and also that
it was not without a struggle, probably more than once
renewed, that He put aside the temptation to' avoid
the fate which awaited Him at Jerusalem.
" Other sheep I have which are not of this fold,"
He said on one occasion ; and when, during the last
week of His life, some Greeks requested an interview
with Him, the request seems to have brought vividly
to His Mind all the possibilities which lay open to
Him in the heathen world, in contrast to the darkness
of the hour which was at hand, and His Soul was
troubled ; and it was only by prayer, by falling back
on the conviction that it undoubtedly was His Father's
will that He should face that hour, and by meditating
on the unique results which He was fully convinced,
in His moments of clearest foresight, that His death
would achieve, that He succeeded in regaining His
calm. But though we are compelled to believe that alter
natives to the step which Jesus took, when He
" steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem," must
have presented themselves to His Mind, and in so
tempting a form that the path of duty was not easy
to discover, — this fact only brings into stronger relief
the sublime perfection of His Spirit — the marvellous

HE SET HIS FACE STEADFASTLY. 121
clearness with which He discerned what was the Will
of the Father, and the resolute, unswerving obedience
which He accorded to it.
As was the case during His wrestlings in
the wilderness, so now; He was tempted, but
He never for one moment yielded to the
temptation. His one desire being to do the
will of His Father, He was enabled — it is the supreme
instance of the way in which duty becomes plain to
him who with his whole soul desires to do- it — to
unmask the temptation, and to attain to absolute
certainty as to what God's will for Him was. And so,
resolutely, unswervingly, convinced that that path,
however hard and strange, was the right path for Him
to tread, He " steadfastly set His face to go to
Jerusalem." And though, ere He had trodden it to the
end, His soul was more than once troubled, and the
desire surged strong within Him that the hour might
pass, that the cup might be removed from His lips, He
was disturbed by no doubts as to whether He might
not have mistaken His Father's will, and He never
thought of attempting to save Himself from that hour
— never dreamt of refusing to drink the cup. " Father,
glorify Thy name," " Father, Thy will be done," was
what alone He prayed ; and when He recognised that
it was His Father's steadfast purpose to glorify His
name in that way, He submitted without a murmur,
and calmly went to His death.
In considering the fact that Jesus, with marvellous
spiritual insight, recognised that it was His duty to
go> up to Jerusalem- to die, we come face to face with
the difficult question ; to what extent did He recognise

f22 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
that this path was not only the path of duty, but the
way to glory? How far did He foresee the unique
results which His death would accomplish ? to what
extent was He conscious of the fact that, in order
to crown and consummate His life and His mission,
it was necessary that He should voluntarily surrender
His life — that by that means alone He could fully
reveal the Father-heart of His God to men, and could
constrain a sinful world to believe on Him and be
saved? When He thus steadfastly set His face
to go to Jerusalem, and up to the time of His death,
how far was He walking by faith, and how far by
sight ?
It may appear to some that such a distinct prediction
of His death and resurrection as is recorded in Matt.
xx. 17-19; and also such utterances as, "Except a
grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth
by itself alone, but if it die it beareth much fruit ; "
and, " I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all
men unto myself," give a decisive answer to these
questions. And if these were the only records which
we possessed of His thoughts and feelings with regard
to this supreme event, we might accept the state
ment of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews ; "
" Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the
Cross, despising the shame," as an entirely true
description of His attitude towards death, and of His
fore-knowledge of its results.
But we must not forget that there is another side
to the picture. For it is recorded that " He set His
face steadfastly',' which seems to imply that His

HE SET HIS FACE STEADFASTLY. 123
resolve to go to Jerusalem was not carried out without
a strong effort of will ; from which we infer that " the
joy that was set before Him " was, to say the least,
not more apparent to Him than the darkness and
difficulty of the path He was called to tread. At
any rate it seems to indicate a different state of feeling
and expectation from that with which so many
Christian martyrs have followed in His steps ; and
why, if He clearly foresaw the Crown beyond the
Cross, should He have been less joyful, nay, eager,
than they ?
But, (not to insist too strongly on the inferences
which it seems legitimate to draw from this description
of His attitude) we must not forget that, as we have
already indicated, we have records of two occasions,
during the last week of His life, on which His soul
was troubled at the thought of His approaching
death : first when the Greeks desired an interview
with Him ; and again in the garden of Gethsemane,
immediately before His arrest.
It seems quite impossible to reconcile either of these
incidents (and more especially the latter) with the
theory that Jesus clearly and uninterruptedly recog
nised how divinely right and good His Father's will
for Him was, and foresaw the glorious results which
would follow from His drinking of that bitter cup.
Whatever .were the causes which produced His agony,
the narrative of it compels us to admit that, while it
lasted, He was unable to realise — what He evidently
did realise with wonderful clearness at times during
this last period of His life — why it was necessary

I24 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
that He should suffer and die, and what joy
and glory awaited Him beyond the Gates of
death. In that dark hour He could not see,
He could only trust, that the will of the
Father was good. Had it been otherwise — had
any foreknowledge, or even any hope, of His resur
rection and ascension been present in His mind — it
is difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to account for
His agony.* It seems doubtful, indeed, whether at
any time between His agony and His death, His faith
was supplemented by sight. His perfect calmness and
self-possession were the results of perfect faith, not of
anticipation of the "joy that was set before Him."
His words to the malefactor : " To-day shalt thou be
with me in paradise," do not necessarily imply more
than perfect confidence in His Father's wisdom and
love — they do not imply that He knew where and what
" paradise " would be. His exclamation, " Father,
into thy hands I commend my spirit," seems plainly to
indicate that He did not realise the glorious resur
rection that awaited Him ; and His cry, " My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" could only have
come from the lips of one in whom faith and hope were
temporarily eclipsed.
When these facts are taken into account, the con
clusion seems to be inevitable (and it is a conclusion to
which the recognition of His true Humanity naturally
leads us) that His feelings, and hopes, and anticipa-
* " He shows us the spectacle of a true man weighted with
a crushing burden, the dread of a catastrophe awful and
unfathomed. It was only because the future was not clear
that He could pray, ' O my Father, if it be possible, let this
cup pass away from me.'" Gore. Bampton Lectures, 1891.

HE SET HIS FACE STEADFASTLY. 125
tions with regard to the great sacrifice which God
called Him to make, His insight into its necessity, His
foresight of its results, fluctuated. At times He could
speak calmly of " His decease which He was about to
accomplish at Jerusalem," and could even confidently
predict His resurrection ; at other times He could
anticipate without the least fear or shrinking His
" going away," because He felt sure He was " going to
the Father." But again, at other times, hope and con
fidence were dethroned by doubt and fear; the way
in which the Father was leading Him seemed dark and
dreadful ; He had to fight for faith, to be content to
simply trust; and for a time even faith drooped her
wing, and His soul was anguished by the unendurable
thought that God had forsaken Him.
If the above conclusion is correct ; if it was only at
times that Jesus was enabled to realise that, in calling
Him to die, His Father was only asking Him to do
what would divinely consummate His mission, and that
He " would not leave His soul to Sheol nor suffer His
Holy One ' to see corruption " — the path of duty at
other times (perhaps we are justified in saying, for the
most part) being strange and dark to Him ; we shall
have no great difficulty in realising what is implied
in the statement of the Evangelist, " He steadfastly
set His face to go to Jerusalem " — what sublime reso
lution and self-sacrifice the act demanded ; what the
tone and quality of His Spirit must have been, Who,
when He recognised that as the will of the Father,
straightway, without demur or hesitation, proceeded
to do it.
For it enables us to give a rational answer to the

136 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
question which otherwise would be very difficult to
answer : why did Jesus find it so hard to die ? Why
did even His trustful and confident Spirit shrink from
that cup?
The answer only becomes clear in proportion as we
recognise and do justice to the fact that He, in a real
and not in a fictitious sense, partook of our humanity ;
and that, consequently, though His clear Mind and
consecrated Spirit permitted Him not only an un
erring recognition of the path of duty, but, at times, a
wonderful insight into the perfect wisdom and bene
ficence of the Father's dealings with Him ; and though
He was enabled to attain, not unfrequently, to a height
of hope so lofty that it is hardly distinguishable from
clear foresight ; yet He, like other men, walked by
faith and not by sight. He, too, was subject to the
fluctuations of mood and feeling to which all men are
subject. His faith was sublime ; His obedience was
perfect ; but He did not, could not, know whither God
was leading Him ; what would be the issue of His
death ; into what glorious life His flesh-hampered
Spirit would blossom when the gates of death were
passed. He could only hope and trust ; and it was
inevitable, in consequence, that sometimes, the hard,
stern realities of His situation — the apparent failure of
His mission, and the untimeliness and injustice of His
fate, as well as the degradation and the physical agony
which were involved in it — should present themselves
so forcibly to His mind, that hope and confidence
should be compelled temporarily to abdicate their
sway, and faith itself should have to fight for life. We
are far from saying that this gives a complete answer

HE SET HIS FACE STEADFASTLY. 127
to the question we have propounded. There is a mys
terious element of anguish mingled with the cup which
His Father placed to His lips, which it seems doubtful
if the deepest thought and meditation can elucidate.
That He, the Holy and Innocent One, the Well
beloved of the Father, who loved men and longed to
save them, should, of all men, be despised, rejected,
crucified — hated of men, and apparently forsaken by
God! How strange! How hard to understand the
weight of woe which rested on Him as He thus bore
the sins of the world !
We will not attempt to fathom the mystery of that
suffering. But it is a pertinent question to ask : could
He have suffered at all, or at any rate to anything like
the extent to which He evidently did suffer, had He
realised clearly and continuously the purpose and out
come of His sufferings ; " the glories which should
follow them"? Could suffering and death have
appeared fearful and dark to Him, unless the reason
and necessity for the suffering were, to a great extent,
at any rate, hidden from Him — unless the issue of
His death was unknown, or at least only discerned by
the eye of faith, and expected by the confidence of
hope — faith, which cannot always see clearly through
the mists of earth ; hope, which cannot always uplift
the sense-bound soul ? Are we not entirely at a loss to
understand why He should not have met death as
joyfully and confidently as many of His martyrs have
done, if we hold that He knew that beyond the Cross
the glories of the Resurrection were awaiting Him,
and that His brief hours of suffering would be fol
lowed by an eternity of honour, and would secure Him

128 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
the love and adoration of the whole human race ?
Could even the bearing of the sins of the whole world,
— in any way in which it is conceivable that a holy and
innocent Man, in whom the Father was always well-
pleased, could have borne them — have been contem
plated by Him with such fear and shrinking as to
compel Him to pray that the cup might pass, if He
had realised that by so doing He was accomplishing
the salvation of the world, leading the hosts of
humanity to the glory of the eternal life? We con
fidently answer, " No." He could not have known all
this ; though, as we have pointed out, there is evidence
that His faith and hope in God enabled Him at
times, with wonderful clearness, to anticipate that His
sufferings and death would have a glorious outcome.
He set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem ; He
resolutely refused to avoid the fate that awaited Him
there ; He endured the Cross, despising the shame,
not because He knew that the path of duty was the
way to glory, but simply because He recognised that
it was the path of duty, and He would not refuse to
tread it, even though it seemed to lead to utter loss.
We have felt compelled to discuss this question
at some length ; because, in order to realise the
sublimity of the step He took in voluntarily going to
Jerusalem to die, it is essential that we should
endeavour to understand what were His thoughts and
feelings with regard to it — in what light or lights He
contemplated it. Unless we, to some extent, at any
rate, understand why the way was dark and difficult
for Him, we cannot understand how dark and difficult
it was ; and consequently we cannot justly and truly

HE SET HIS FACE STEADFASTLY. 119
appreciate the Spirit of the Man who resolved to tread
it. An intelligent recognition of what made the way
of the Cross a way of self-sacrifice is absolutely neces
sary, before a right estimate can be formed of the
moral quality of the act which we are contem
plating. If the conclusions we have arrived at in the fore
going pages concerning the thoughts and feelings of
Jesus be correct, there is no difficulty in thus
realising why He needed to " steadfastly set His face."
To such an one as we have depicted, even though His
obedience was perfect, and His faith sublime, the way
of the Cross could not but be dark and difficult ; and
it is because we think that it is quite possible to under
stand in a great measure why it was so dark and
difficult, that we have, at such length, endeavoured
to enter into His situation, and to view the circum
stances from His standpoint.
It is, however, not on our attempted explanation of
the situation that we wish to lay emphasis. It is a
clear recognition of the Character of the Man, as
He comes before us here, to which we chiefly desire
to> help our readers to attain.
As long as they intelligently recognise that this
resolve of His to surrender His life in obedience to
the will of His Father did involve a supreme
renunciation of self, — that this call to go to Jerusalem
to die did test His faith, His confidence in God, and
His submissiveness to His will, to the utmost — it
matters little whether they agree with our view of
what constituted it a test and a self-renunciation.
The realisation of the darkness and the difficulty of
K

r3° THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
the path He set His face, like a flint, to tread, is the
key to the situation. That fact once realised, the
Character of the Man, who so steadfastly set Himself
to tread that hard path, at once becomes luminous.
No sooner did He clearly recognise that this was
His Father's will for Him, than He, without hesitation
or demur, proceeded to do it ! That is the simple fact.
And it is not possible to do- adequate justice to such
an unhesitating acceptance of such a supremely
difficult duty. We all know what a vast difference
there is between knowing what God's will is, and
doing it. Jesus, we will not say, never recognised,
but we will say, never, in any of His actions dis
played, that difference. This is what makes the
distance which separates Him from the rest of
humanity incalculably great ; this is what constituted
Him the only begotten Son : with Him to know was
to do.
Step by step, as His life unfolded, He kept adding
to the proofs that He was the Son of God, by
victoriously overcoming ever temptation to do> His
own will instead of His Father's ; proved Himself
superior to every inducement to swerve from the path
of perfect obedience ; still made it His meat and drink
to do- the will of God, even when He recognised that
God's will was that He should go to Jerusalem to die !
And so, the path which He was to tread having become
plain to Him, and the days being well-nigh come that
He should be received up, with a magnificent resolution
and submission, to which no language can do adequate
justice, He deliberately turned His face towards the
city of His doom ; He firmly suppressed His natural

HE SET HIS FACE STEADFASTLY. 131
craving for life ; majestically waved aside the alluring
temptation to save Himself, even for further service ;
crushed the hopes and longings which rose up within
Him in opposition to such an heroic resolution — such
a complete renunciation — in a word He sacrificed
Himself utterly, in obedience to His Father's call ;
and by so doing, proved Himself equal to the severest
test to which His Father could subject Him, and
conclusively established His claim to be the Son of
God, in whom the Father was ever well pleased.
No language, we repeat, can do justice to the heroic
grandeur of this resolution, nor to the daily dying to
self, and living to God which the carrying of it out
involved. No words can adequately describe the
quality of the Spirit of Him who was thus obedient
even unto death. There is no parallel which we can
draw with it in human history. The world has wit
nessed many heroic deeds, many acts of sublime self-
sacrifice, but which of them all can we compare with
this, of the lonely Jesus deliberately renouncing all
hopes, joys, ambitions, preferences, and walking day
by day unfalteringly to the. terrible fate which He
foresaw awaiting Him at Jerusalem — to desertion,
rejection, stripes, insults, the Cross?
It is matchless, perfect, divine ! " Of a truth," we are
compelled once more to exclaim, "this was the Son
of God."

CHAPTER X.
The Arrival at Jerusalem.
(Mark xi. i-ii, Matt. xxi. .1-17, Luke xix. 29-46.)
Jesus, as we have seen, having clearly recog
nised that it was His Father's will that He should
go up to Jerusalem, though He plainly foresaw
what was the fate which awaited Him there,
with unhesitating obedience, set His face like
a flint to perform that supremely difficult duty.
Without haste, but without the least wavering,
" He went on His way through cities and villages,
teaching, and journeying on unto Jerusalem." (Luke
xiii. 22.) . 1 1 _ |'j
To any one less clear-sighted than He the path
which He had set himself to tread might, indeed, up to
the very day on which Jerusalem was reached, have
appeared anything but a difficult one, and any antici
pations of desertion, rejection, and death, might have
been lulled to sleep ; for He was accompanied, at
least during the latter part of the journey, by " a great
multitude," the majority of whom were probably, like
Himself, going to Jerusalem to the feast. (Mark x.
46.) The enthusiasm and excitement He aroused was
as great as at any previous time during his Galilean
ministry: it seemed as if He had regained all His
early popularity. The news of His coming preceded
Him, and the Pharisees, fearing the consequences of
His arrival at the head of such an enthusiastic follow-

THE ARRIVAL AT JERUSALEM. 133
ing, made a vain attempt to stop Him. (Luke. xiii.
31-33.) The answer which He returned them on this
occasion might, if they had understood it, have con
vinced them that their fears were groundless. It indi
cates that Jesus knew well the worth, or rather the
worthlessness, of this ebullition of popular feeling.
He knew that it derived its strength from erroneous
conceptions of His Messiahship, and was based on
hopes and expectations concerning the course of action
He would adopt, which it was quite imr ssible for
Him to gratify. Knowing this, and for seeing how
speedily it would be effectually damped by the course
He had resolved to pursue, He suffered it to have its
way ; but He was not in the least misled by it, and it
could not in any way have brightened, but, on the
contrary, must have rendered additionally dark the
prospect which lay before Him.
The popular enthusiasm reached its culminating
point on the day of His entry into Jerusalem. This
doubtless was partly due to the great miracle He had
wrought in the raising of Lazarus ; partly to the fact
that, of the multitudes who were wending their way to j
the city, many, if not the majority, must have pre- !
viously seen and heard Him, and were ready to eagerly \
welcome His reappearance ; partly, perhaps, also to \
the thoughts and emotions which the sight of the*'
famous city — the goal of their pilgrimage — could not
fail to arouse in the minds of many.
Jesus quietly submitted to a demonstration which it
would have been useless at that time to attempt to
restrain. He even went some way towards encourag
ing it, by sending two of His disciples to procure an

i34 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
ass's colt for Him to ride on, and by refusing the
demand of some of the Pharisees that He should re
buke His disciples: "I tell you that if these should
hold their peace," He replied, " the very stones will
cry out." There could, however, have been nothing
gratifying to Him in the demonstration itself, and
little gladness in His heart as He rode along, sur
rounded by the acclaiming throng ; foreseeing, as He
must have done, that this same multitude who now
shouted : " Hosanna ! Blessed is He that cometh in
the name of the Lord ; Blessed is the Kingdom that
cometh, the Kingdom of our Father David," would in
a very few days be crying, " Crucify Him ! crucify
Him ! " Still, He must have recognised an appro
priateness in the way in which He, who claimed to be,
and indeed knew Himself to be, a king, was thus con
ducted into the City of David ; and, interpreting the
acclaims of the people in a deeper sense than they
had any conception of, He must have seen them to
be a true proclamation and prophecy of the King
dom of Heaven which He was establishing in the
world.* * Harnack thinks that Jesus, towards the later part of His
career, publicly proclaimed himself the Messiah. He says :
" Ultimately, when He thought well to reveal himself to the
whole nation as the Messiah — how He came to the decision
and carried it out are points in which we are left in the dark — -
He made His entry into Jerusalem as a king." (" What is
Christianity ?" p. 102. Eng. Trans.) And again : — '' Such a
story as that of Christ's entry into Jerusalem would have to
be simply expunged, if the theory is to be maintained that
He did not consider himself the promised Messiah, and also
desire to be accepted as- such." {Ibid., pp. 131, 132.) His
attitude towards the demonstration, as well as the accla
mations of the multitude, certainly seem to demand such an
explanation.

THE ARRIVAL AT JERUSALEM. 135
" And when He was come into Jerusalem," says
Matthew, " all the city was stirred, saying, ' Who is
this ? ' And the multitudes said, ' This is the prophet,
Jesus, from Nazareth, of Galilee.' "
What did Jesus do when He arrived in the city?
We are fortunately able to give a clear answer to this
important question : important because the answer to
it throws a wonderful light upon His Character, as
well as enables us to understand the subsequent
events of this fateful week. It explains the complete
revulsion of feeling which took place among the multi
tudes concerning Him ; why those who hailed Him
with Hosannas on this occasion, made no attempt to
rescue Him when, a few days later, they saw Him a
helpless prisoner in the hands of His enemies, but,
on the contrary, clamoured for His death.
It is to Mark that we are indebted for a brief state
ment concerning the course which Jesus adopted on
this eventful afternoon after His arrival in the city,
which enables us clearly to realise the whole situa
tion : the Man and the hour are thereby illuminated,
and the events which followed are rendered perfectly
intelligible. " He entered into Jerusalem, into the temple," says
Mark (xi. 11), "and when He had looked round
about on all things, it being now eventide, He went
out unto Bethany with the twelve'.'
If we had not this statement of Mark — followed up
by the account of the cleansing of the temple on the
succeeding day — we should have been inclined to
think — following the narratives of Matthew and Luke
 that Jesus set about the task of cleansing the temple
immediately on His arrival.

136 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
But not only the indications that the account in
Mark is that of an eye-witness,* but a consideration
of the probabilities, leads us to accept this Evangelist's
narrative as the correct one. When the situation is
realised, we are obliged to admit that it is very im
probable that Jesus proceeded immediately to the
work of cleansing the temple. He was in fact, we
shall see, compelled to do just what Mark records
Him to have done, and no more than that ; i.e., to
simply " look round about on all things."
The city, it must be borne in mind, was crowded
' with people who had come up to the feast. And of
this crowd, there was hardly a man who was not ani
mated by an intense patriotism, and also by what was
a necessary corollary to that patriotism — an intense
hatred of the Roman yoke. It was often only with
the greatest difficulty that the Roman Governor could
preserve order on these occasions. The tumult which
arose about Paul, of which we have a record in Acts
(xxi., xxii.), shows how easily the city was thrown into
an uproar. On more than one occasion, we know that
a popular outbreak was only suppressed by ruthless
bloodshed. The electrical condition of the social atmosphere
was, moreover, immensely intensified by the almost
universal expectation that the long-expected Messiah
was at hand — that He might at any moment come
forward and declare Himself, and lead the nation to
victory over her foes. More than one man during
this period of the nation's history, prompted by ambi-
* Cf. the account of the finding of the colt (v. 4) and the
note of the time, " It being now eventide."

THE ARRIVAL AT JERUSALEM. 137
tion or misled by delusions, actually took advantage
of this hope and expectation — proclaimed himself to
be the Messiah, and headed a revolt.
It is hardly necessary to point out that, blinded by
the letter of the ancient prophecies, the people did not
dream that the Messiah would come otherwise than
as a conquering king; did not dream that His king
dom would be anything else than a kingdom " of this
world." But they were ready to follow with the
utmost devotion, and at a moment's notice, a leader
giving far fewer proofs of power than Jesus had given,
if only he would adopt the attitude which harmonised
with their preconceptions, and substantiate his claims
by an appeal to arms.
Such then was the state of the popular feeling;
and we can easily understand how the arrival of Jesus,
in such a public and apparently ostentatious way, must
have aroused expectation to the highest pitch.
Nearly everybody must have known, or at least
have heard of Him. Many really believed Him to be
the Messiah ; many more were only waiting to believe
— waiting until He should come forward and declare
Himself, in a way which coincided with their ideas
and hopes. And when He rode into the city, accom
panied by the crowds who hailed Him king, thousands
of hearts must have throbbed with eager expectation ;
multitudes must have felt certain that at last the long-
expected hour was come. The situation was indeed
most thrilling, and most critical. A word would have
sufficed. He had only to come forward and cry :
" To arms, all lovers of your country ! I am your
Messiah ; down with the foreign tyrant," and a thou-

138 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
sand swords would have flashed from their scab
bards ; tens of thousands of voices would have hailed
Him king; hundreds of thousands in a few days
would have flocked to His standard, and would have
followed Him to what, with such a leader, must have
been certain victory.
And He, what did He do? He did nothing,
uttered no word, gave no sign! True to the wise
and noble resolution He had taken in the wilderness,
He let this supreme opportunity for founding an
earthly kingdom pass : He simply went to the temple
and " looked round about on all things," and then,
" It being now eventide," retired to Bethany with the
twelve. The light in which the Character of Jesus stands
revealed by the incident is perfectly dazzling in
its brightness. His self-renunciation, His strength
of will, His loyalty to those noblest ideals which ani
mated Him throughout His life, His submission to the
will of the Father, are all seen to be perfect.
If Cassar, on that night when he stood long in doubt
on the banks of the Rubicon, had decided to renounce
his ambition, and to spare his country all the horrors
which, as he well knew, were bound to ensue if he
crossed that stream ; if Napoleon, animated by
motives as noble and disinterested, had declined to fire
off that " whiff of grapeshot " which was preliminary
to Austerlitz, and Jena, the Moscow retreat, and Leip-
sic, and Waterloo, these self-renunciations would have
deserved the world's highest praise. But what Caesar
and Napoleon might have done sinks into insignifi
cance beside the spectacle of what Jesus actually

THE ARRIVAL AT JERUSALEM. 139
did on this occasion. With a far more splendid
opportunity than they had ever had of becoming the
conqueror of the world, He would not take advantage
of it. He walked in silence round the temple, while
thousands watched His every movement, and eagerly
waited for the expected word, and then, to their in
tense disappointment and disgust, retired at nightfall
from the city, with that word still unspoken.
Without doubt, it was this refusal of His to justify \
the popular expectation which sealed His fate — which ;
led the multitude a few days later to clamour for His
death. The revulsion of popular feeling was instan
taneous and almost complete. There remained, for a
day or two, enough of lingering belief and hope in
Him to enable Him to cleanse the temple without
opposition, and to make the chief priests and rulers
afraid to arrest Him openly; but as day after day
passed, and He still gave no sign, the last remnants of
His popularity faded away; and when the
multitude, a few days afterwards, saw Him alone
and helpless in the power of the authorities, they were
so thoroughly disappointed in Him, and so incensed
at His (to them) stupid and unpatriotic conduct, that
they were almost as eager as their rulers to have Him
crucified. Most grand and most pathetic, when we thus come
to realise its significance, is the picture which is here
presented to us of Him who was indeed the Messiah
the nation was so anxiously expecting, silently " look
ing round- about on all things" — compelled to be
silent ; reduced to powerlessness, by the blindness and
sinfulness of the nation He longed to save.

140 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
He was, as we well know, animated by a nobler
patriotism than even the noblest of those who watched
Him had any conception of; His heart was bursting
with desire and longing to save His people. That
very day, Luke tells us (xix. 42) He had wept when
He beheld the city, lamenting that it " knew not the
things that belong to peace." But His conception of
salvation was not theirs. He knew that the throwing
off of the Roman yoke would not help them on one
step towards securing that spiritual salvation which
alone would make them free indeed. And so He
steadfastly refused to take such action as would alone,
in their eyes, be a justification of His claims. They,
on the other hand, would not consent to be saved in
any way but their own. Separated thus by an impass
able gulf, what more could He do for them? What
hope of winning them by further teaching, by further
witness-bearing to the truth ? His mission was ended.
Two alternatives alone remained ; the one, such as
any man but He would, we venture to think, have
deemed the right one to adopt under the circum
stances — for which, if He had adopted it, who would
have dared to judge Him ? — was to leave Bethany the
next morning, and instead of returning to Jerusalem,
to go and seek the " other sheep not of that fold " in
the wide realms of the Roman Empire — to say to His
disciples, " I can do nothing more for this people, they
are so blind and prejudiced that I am powerless to
save them ; come, let us try Alexandria or Rome ! "
(and there was nothing at that time, nor indeed up to
the very night of His arrest, to prevent Him from
putting such a plan into execution, nothing but His

THE ARRIVAL AT JERUSALEM. 141
sense of duty and His amazing love) : — the other —
magnificent in its conception beyond the power of all
language to describe, unparalleled in its boldness, a
perfect, divine idea, which only One perfectly divine
could have conceived, which only a perfect Son of God
could have dared to carry out (for it was based on a
confidence in God, in the power of the truth, and in
human nature as capable of recognising and willing
to respond to the truth, which was nothing short of
perfect ; and it demanded for its execution a perfect
self-sacrifice, and implied a fathomless love) — the
other alternative was to bear final witness to the truth
— to give a final proof of His willingness, His yearning
desire, to save the people who refused to be saved by
Him — b-f dying for them: to consummate His mission

so

We know which alternative He chose. Not that His
choice was made for the first time on that memorable
afternoon : we have seen that He had long foreseen
His duty and His fate ; but that afternoon He irrevoc
ably confirmed it. He could not consent to save His
people in the way in which they wished to be saved ;
their doom as a nation was fixed. But He could and
would die for them, and so pave the way — not only for
them, but for the whole world — to that true salvation
which He had all along offered, and which it was His
mission to accomplish. And so, while they drifted
on to the horrors of the war with Titus, and of the
destruction of Jerusalem, — to national extinction and
age-long retribution — He went to His Cross, and to
His eternal seat on the right hand of the Father.
Let us not, however, by anticipating the outcome of

142 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
the divine conception and resolve which guided Him
in the course He pursued on this occasion, lose sight
of the actual situation. Let us remember that the
Cross was still before Him ; let us remember how
dark and difficult the way of the Cross appeared to
Him ; how, though His duty was clear, faith and hope
did not always keep His Spirit from being troubled
at the thought of the "hour" which was so fast
approaching — did not, we have seen, always permit
Him to indulge in confident anticipation of what lay
beyond that hour. Only by bearing this in mind can
we realise the grandeur of His attitude on this occa
sion, and do justice to the sublime self-sacrifice and
steadfastness which He displayed. If His Spirit had
been marred by the least taint of self-seeking ; if His
knowledge of God's will, and His loyalty to it, had not
both been perfect ; if His confidence in His Father
had not been absolutely firm ; if His love had not been
fathomless ; then surely He would either have suc
cumbed to the great temptation — would have re
nounced His ideals, and seized this supreme oppor
tunity of self-aggrandisement, persuading Himself
that " vox populi " could not be otherwise than " vox
Dei '' (what presumption ! to deem Himself right and
the whole nation wrong !) — or He would have adopted
the other alternative which lay open to Him, and that
night have shaken off the dust of the doomed city
from His feet, and left His deluded and ungrateful
countrymen for ever.
He did neither. He went to the temple and silently
" looked round about Him on all things " ; not one
whit shaken in His convictions, in His loyalty, or in

THE ARRIVAL AT JERUSALEM. 143
His faith, by the popular excitement and expectation.
Pie went out at eventide to Bethany ; but only to
return in the morning, and morning after morning, to
the city ; courting death, till death came.
Is it possible to conceive of, or imagine a course
of conduct nobler or wiser than that which Jesus
pursued on this occasion? Is it possible to conceive
of, or imagine, a truer, more self-sacrificing, diviner
Man? Is not such manhood as this perfect, ideal? —
such manhood as God Himself alone could have be
gotten — such manhood as a Son of God alone could
have realised in life ?
Our meditation on the Character of the Man as it is
revealed to us by this incident, would hardly be com
plete, did we not endeavour to penetrate beneath this
silent " looking round " of His, and to read the mean
ing of His looks. What, let us reverently ask, were
the feelings and emotions stirring in that noble heart
as He " looked round about on all things " ?
The looks of Jesus on several occasions are recorded
by the Evangelists, and on two occasions the feelings
which prompted them are recorded also.
He looked round about on the self-righteous and
bigoted Pharisees who sat watching Him in the
synagogue, to see if He would dare to heal the man
with the withered hand on the Sabbath day (Luke vi.
10, Mark iii. 5). Luke simply records the fact that He
looked on them, but Mark tells us that it was " with
anger." Again, He is recorded to have looked on the rich
young man who came to Him asking what He should
do to inherit eternal life, and who went away sorrowful

144 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
when He was told to sell all His possessions. The
incident is recorded by all the Synoptists, but it is
Mark alone who tells us ; " Jesus, looking on Him,
loved him." (Mark x. 21.)
Besides these two occasions, we are told of three
others in which His looks were noted, and we can
without difficulty surmise the emotions which they
depicted. He looked up to Heaven as He blessed and broke
the loaves with which He fed the five thousand in the
desert (Matt. xiv. 19, — Mark vi. 41, — Luke ix. 16),
with a look which must have expressed thankfulness
and trust. He looked on His disciples when they
were astonished at His saying : " how hardly can they
who' have riches enter into the kingdom of Heaven "
(Mark x. 27), and that look must have been one of
tender pity for their ignorance, and of loving desire to
enlighten them.
He " turned and looked upon Peter " — reproach
fully, yet with pity and love — with a look which went
straight to Peter's heart — when the cock crew after
he had three times denied Him, by the fire, in the
court of the High-priest's house. (Luke xxii. 61.)
We may add, though the fact is not distinctly recorded
by the Evangelist, that it was apparently because
shame and anger affected Him too strongly to permit
Him for a time either to speak or look, that " He
stooped down and with His finger wrote on the
ground," when the Pharisees brought to' Him the
woman taken in adultery. (John viii. 6.) Then, when
they continued asking Him for His verdict, what a look
that must have been which He gave them as " He lifted

THE ARRIVAL AT JERUSALEM. 145
up Himself and said unto them, ' He that is without
sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.' " !
These recorded instances of the looks of Jesus
will perhaps enable us to understand the varied
emotions which were portrayed in those looks of His
which He directed " round about on all things," on the
occasion we are considering. Varied emotions they
must have been, for the sights which met His gaze as
He traversed the temple that afternoon — the excited
multitudes, the malignant Pharisees, the unseemly
traffic in the temple courts, the splendid buildings
(doomed, as He knew, to destruction), and all the
business and tumult of the great city at feast time —
must have aroused within Him nearly every feeling of
which a noble heart is capable.
Stern looks, expressing the righteous wrath which,
on the following day, moved Him to such energetic
action, must have been those which He directed at the
buyers and sellers who were turning the house of
prayer into a market, and a den of robbers. He
found, even as Isaiah had prophesied, " Iniquity and
the solemn assembly " — " wickedness and worship " —
going hand in hand ; and He could not look upon it
without being moved to' anger. This must have been
the feeling which largely predominated at first; and
probably it was the majestic sternness of His looks
and mien, as He walked in silence through the temple
courts, which overawed both friends and foes — effectu
ally preventing the former from continuing the
demonstration in His favour, and the latter from offer
ing any opposition to His progress, or to His with
drawal to Bethany at eventide. L

146 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
But the Man who only a few hours previously had
shed tears of sorrow and pity, because the city He
behejld "knew not the things which belong unto
peace ; " the Man who, a few days later, on the road
to Calvary, turned to the weeping women who
followed Him and said, " Daughters of Jerusalem,
weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your
children," could not have been simply moved to
righteous anger, as He looked round about on all
things. The deepest fountains of sorrow and pity
must have been stirred within Him by the sights
which presented themselves to- His gaze, and by the
thoughts which they suggested to Him.
This splendid temple, how soon it would become a
heap of ruins! These busy, thoughtless multitudes,
how little they suspected the fate that awaited them!
And, oh the pity of it! that He should be there,
longing to save them, longing to lift them up to the
life which is life indeed, and that they, blind, foolish,
and sinful, should refuse His salvation, and prefer to
kill Him rather than renounce their prejudices and
reform their lives ! " They will not come to' me that
they may have life," " they have seen and hated both
me and my Father." Thus He must have meditated
as He looked around that afternoon ; and sorrow and
pity must have mingled with His anger, as these
thoughts came to Him, and must have paved the way
for the expression in His looks of what, we are justi
fied in confidently asserting, was, on this occasion, as
on every occasion, the deepest and most constant feel
ing of His matchless heart— the feeling of holy,
divine, immeasurable Love.

THE ARRIVAL AT JERUSALEM. 147
Yes, Love! That after all must have been the
emotion which those looks of His most clearly ex
pressed. The looks of anger, of sorrow, and of pity,
which He directed round about on all things as He
traversed the temple courts, must have become merged
ere long in one deep, set expression of countenance ;
unintelligible and awe-inspiring to His foes, and
scarcely less so to His disciples and friends; the
indescribable, unimaginable look of Him who loved
these foolish, perverse, sinful men and women with a
love which was stronger than death ; the divine look
of Him who had resolved to die for the nation which
had seen and hated both Him and His Father.

CHAPTER XI.
The Death.
(Matt. xxvi. 14 — xxvii. 56. Mark xiv. 10 — xv. 41. Luke
xxii. 1 — xxiii. 49. John xviii. 1 — xix. 37.)
We have now to contemplate the Mind and Spirit of
Jesus as they reveal themselves in that supremely
important event which brought His career to a close —
His death by crucifixion.
It is an event which can be contemplated from many
different points of view, but which arrests attention
and demands explanation from whatever standpoint
it may be regarded. Even if we confine our atten
tion to its " natural " aspects — if we regard it simply
as the closing act of the life of the Man Jesus —
we cannot but acknowledge that it is an event of sur
passing interest and importance.
So striking and significant is the fact that Jesus'
life had such a termination, that no thoughtful man
can rest content with the bare recognition of the fact.
It cannot be contemplated with any seriousness
without giving birth to the conviction — a conviction
which steadily grows the longer the fact is contem
plated — that here is an event which for depth of
meaning has not its equal in the whole range of his
tory. And that conviction will not owe its strength

THE DEATH. 149
mainly to the fact that the death of Jesus has
become the corner-stone of Christian teaching, and
has produced such unparalleled results in every age,
and in every sphere of human1 life, since it was ac
complished. The deed itself, quite independently of
the results which have flowed from it, suggests — nay,
compels reflection. In pondering it, we shall find our
selves brought face to face with some of the greatest
mysteries and the profoundest problems of life.
"Why," we find ourselves compelled to, ask, "was this
the end of a life so pure, so wondrously full of grace
and truth? Why did One so wise, and so supremely
gifted, permit Himself to be taken prisoner, and put
to death by His enemies ? What was the spirit which
prompted Him to adopt this remarkable course of
action? What were the motives by which He was
influenced? What is the quality of this deed of the
Cross? Does it harmonise with the rest of that
divine life? Does it crown and consummate it? "
We have not to search long for answers to at least
some of these questions ; answers which place the
quality of the deed, at any rate, beyond dispute. We
cannot read the Gospel narratives of Jesus' Passion
without being constrained to acknowledge that they
record the divinest deed of a Life which was through
out divinely lovely with "the loveliness of perfect
deeds." We can unhesitatingly assert that the deed of the
Cross was the crowning work of His life — the consum
mation of His work. The other events of His life
which we have considered in these pages have afforded
us deep and precious glimpses into His Mind and

150 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
Spirit ; but, for depth of meaning and significance — as
expressions of the tone and quality of the life which
He manifested — they cannot be compared with this
one. His death is the one act of His life in which His
Mind and Spirit are fully revealed. It epitomises
and clearly expresses all that He was. It completes
and perfects that revelation of Character which we
have in Him — that perfect manifestation of divine
manhood which the men of faith, in all the ages since,
have joyfully recognised and accepted as the perfect
and satisfying revelation of the Life and Character of
God. This being so, it is supremely difficult to deal
with this event of Jesus' life satisfactorily. An ade
quate and exhaustive treatment of such a theme is im
possible. We cannot comprehend Him " in Whom it
pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell," as
that fulness is manifested in the Cross. No human
lens can catch and focus all the light which shines from
that diamond deed of many facets. We can appre
hend something of the meaning which it carries in
it, in some of the aspects in which it presents itself
to us ; but we can never declare : " this is all that it
means." This, doubtless, is more particularly the case
with the Godward aspects of the deed of the Cross.
The Cross has invariably been recognised by Chris
tians as the sign and seal of the completely accom
plished atonement which Jesus Christ has effected
between God and man. But eighteen centuries of
Christian thinking on this wondrous theme has failed
to exhaust it. Each and every theory yet propounded

THE DEATH. 151
of the nature of the atonement has, sooner or later,
been found to be inadequate. Some of these theories
have indeed met with a wide acceptance, and have
dominated the minds of men for generations ; but we
are as far off as ever from a theory on this great sub
ject which shall satisfy the mind of Christendom as
completely as, for instance, the undulating theory of
light, or the Darwinian theory, has satisfied the
minds of scientists.
In view of this fact, the reader may think us pre
sumptuous in attempting any exposition of this most
difficult theme. Indeed, he may fairly urge that to do
so is to go beyond the limits within which the writer is
pledged to confine himself in these pages.
We reply, and we trust that the reader will, before
he has completed the perusal of this chapter, acknow
ledge that the plea is a just and sufficient one — that it
is impossible adequately to grasp the meaning and sig
nificance of the death of Jesus — as long as we
keep within the limits of " that which is natural."
We shall endeavour to confine ourselves within
these limits as long as possible ; for we feel that there
is some need for the attempt to be made to unfold the
meaning of the crowning event of Jesus' life on the
lines we have attempted to follow in the previous
pages. Countless volumes have been written on the
Godward aspect of the death of Jesus Christ, volumes
in which, as in the " Imitation of Christ," it is as
sumed that, in the Cross, every possible grace and
virtue are manifested in highest perfection ; but very
few books, so far as we are aware, are to be found in
which the attempt has been made to draw in full the

152 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
portrait of the suffering and dying Man, and thereby
to reveal the dazzling splendour of the glory of divine
manhood which radiates from His Cross.
Many will reply that this is because such an attempt
is superfluous — that the glory is so manifest that no
magnifying-glass is required to enable us to see it.
This doubtless is true. And yet, a clear and intelli
gent apprehension of its surpassing glory cannot be
attained to by a mere look, or even by a prolonged
gaze, unless, while thus gazing, we note, mot merely the
general effect, but the details by which that effect is
produced. Either synthesis or analysis — the one or the
other according to the standpoint which we take in
contemplating this amazing deed — is absolutely neces
sary, if our apprehension of its meaning is to be clear
and intelligent.
The synthetic method is the one which we have
adopted in these pages*; and, in endeavouring to
follow it in our contemplation of the death of Jesus, we
necessarily begin with " that which is natural ; " and,
as we have just said, we shall keep in that region as
long as we find it possible.
But we warn the reader at the outset that we shall
find it impossible to confine ourselves to that region
when we come to consider the weighty question : why
was it necessary that Jesus should die? We shall
find that an adequate reason for that necessity
can only be discovered when, taking the step of faith,
we pass into " that which is spiritual," and regard Him
not only as the Son of Man, but also as the Son of
God. We will not, however, forestall the conclusions which

THE DEATH. 153
we hope to arrive at, but will proceed at once with
our inquiry.
In striving to apprehend the meaning and signifi
cance of the death of Jesus, it will be necessary first
of all to review the circumstances under which it took
place. Jesus probably arrived at Bethany on the Friday
previous to the Passover, and remained there, to
rest, during the, following day— which was the Sab
bath — staying at the house of His friends, Martha,
Mary, and Lazarus. The next day He went on to
Jerusalem, making His triumphal entry, and " looking
round on all things " — a day's doings the meaning and
import of which we have discussed in the previous
chapter. He did not take lodgings in Jerusalem, but
returned in the evening to Bethany it was a con
venient place at which to lodge during the feast, being
only half-an-hour's walk from the city; and, besides,
it was doubtless some small consolation to Him, in the
midst of His terrible loneliness, and in face of His im
pending doom, to have at His disposal the shelter of a
home, and the affection of faithful friends.
On the following day He went again to Jerusalem,
and (according to Mark's Gospel) undertook the sig
nificant task of clearing the temple courts of the
traffickers who infested it. He also seems to have
spent some part of the day in teaching the people.
On the Tuesday morning He once more appeared
in the city, and began again X.o teach in the temple.
But now the authorities interfered. Alarmed at the
popularity of which His triumphal entry was so strik
ing an evidence, and indignant at His assumption of

154 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
authority in clearing the temple, the leaders of the
three great factions into which Jewish opinion was
at that time divided combined to make common cause
against Him.
Carefully selecting their champions and their topics
beforehand, they went to Him in the temple, demand
ing to know who had given Him the authority to act in
the way He did, and plying Him with questions, in
attempting to answer which they hoped that He might
be betrayed into some statement which they could
use as a handle against Him.
A most striking scene, this, of the Galilean carpenter
standing alone in the temple, in the midst of malignant
enemies and a fickle populace, undergoing cross-
examination on the most difficult subjects which the
keenest intellects of the nation could select ! A critical
hour! since to falter, or to make a mistake, involved
His own disgrace, and the triumph of His foes.
But He never faltered, He made no mistake. He
answered every question which they propounded with
profoundest wisdom. With the most consummate
skill He avoided every trap laid for Him ; yet at the
same time He was perfectly straightforward, sincere,
and truthful in all the replies which He gave ; perfectly
just also, and willing to accord a generous recognition
to any wise or truthful word which those who- were
opposing Him might speak. (Cf. Mark xii. 28-34.)
At last He emerged from the contest completely
victorious ; and His enemies, convicted of disingenu-
ousness, of duplicity, and of ignorance, slunk away, not
daring to question Him further.
Then, and not till then, did He give vent to the

THE DEATH. 155
burning indignation which their conduct, not only on
this occasion, but on many previous ones, had caused
Him to feel. In the most scathing philippic which has
ever been uttered by mortal lips He denounced their
hypocrisy, and their wickedness, poured out on them
the vials of His scorn and wrath, and pronounced on
them the doom of woe.
It made the breach between Him and them com
plete. Such a man they felt to be intolerable! and
that very day the Sanhedrin unanimously resolved to
compass His death.
This task, however, they found to be a very difficult
one to accomplish — at least with the speed which their
malignant hate desired — both because it was necessary
to have some semblance of an accusation against Him,
and also because of His popularity with the multitudes
who, at that time, filled the city.
But just as they had reluctantly arrived at the con
clusion that they must wait until the feast was over,
and the bulk of the people had departed to their
homes, an opportunity was afforded them for almost
immediately gratifying their revenge. Judas Iscariot,
one of His own disciples, appeared before them, and
offered to betray Him into their hands. " And they,
when they heard it, were glad, and promised to give
him money. And he sought how he might conveni
ently deliver Him unto them."
Meanwhile Jesus returned again to Bethany ; at
which place He apparently remained during the
Wednesday, not visiting the city again until the even
ing of the following day (Thursday), when, after
previously sending two of His disciples to make the

156 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
necessary preparations, He once more entered it, to
eat the passover.
We need not dwell on the familiar details of that
last meal with His disciples which, happily, have been
so fully preserved for us. Never had He displayed
greater sublimity of spirit ; never had He unbosomecL
Himself to them so completely, or fed them with richer
spiritual food. It was not, however, until the traitor
had been dismissed, that He was able to give Himself
up to unrestrained communion with His chosen
followers. As long- as Judas remained, the shadow
of his impending treachery clouded the soul of his
Master. But when, at a hint from Jesus, he went away
to do his deed of shame, the Spirit of the Master
soared to the loftiest heights of faith and hope and
love, and the path of shame and agony which He was
in a few hours to tread was completely forgotten in
the clear anticipation of the glorious results which
would follow from the completion of His work. At
midnight they left the house, and made their way
through the silent streets to the eastern gate, from
which ran the familiar road which led to Bethany.
They did not, however, go as far as the village. There
was to be no rest or sleep for Him that night — no rest
or sleep any more for Him, in this life, until His life
less body hung on the Cross.
They went instead to a garden at the foot of Olivet
called Gethsemane — evidently a frequent haunt of His,
since Judas made sure of finding Him there. There
ensued a terrible reaction from the exalted mood
which He had lately experienced. Temptation
assailed Him ; doubt and fear racked His Mind ; in

THE DEATH. 157
an agony, the intensity of which is entirely beyond our
comprehension — since we can form no adequate con
ception of His knowledge and feelings with regard to
the elements which were mingled in His cup of woe —
He prayed three times that the cup might pass.
It was a request which His Father could not grant ;
but He gave instead the strength which He required
to meet His "hour." He rose from His knees
perfectly resigned to His Father's will, and with His
soul in the possession of a peace which remained un
ruffled till He closed His eyes in death.
Meanwhile Judas had obtained a band "of soldiers
with their officers from the authorities. Followed by
these, and a " multitude " — probably partly consisting
of servants and dependants of the chief priests and
scribes, and partly of people attracted by curiosity —
he led the way, amid the clashing of arms and the
flashing of lights, to the place where he knew he
would find his Master.
He was thus prepared for either opposition, or an
attempt at flight ; but such preparation was altogether
unnecessary. Jesus came at once to meet him, sub
mitted to his traitorous kiss, and promptly restrained
a feeble attempt at resistance on the part of His
disciples. Solicitous for their welfare to the last, He
requested that His followers might be allowed to
depart — a request the answer to which they hardly
seem to have waited to hear, for no sooner did they
see Him in the hands of His enemies than they all fled
away into the darkness. Then He submitted to be
bound, and was led, a helpless prisoner, back to the
city.

158 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
He was now completely in the power of His
enemies j but even now they did not find it easy to
accomplish the deed upon which they had resolved.
It was necessary to give some semblance, of legality
to the sentence they had already determined to' pro
nounce, but how to do it baffled their ingenuity.
His captors took Him first to the residence of Annas.
He had formerly been high priest, and still retained
the title, though his son-in-law, Caiaphas, was the
actual holder of the office. He occupied a position of
great social influence, and was really, though not
nominally, the head of the Sanhedrin. He had not
the power to try Jesus, but he wished to see and ques
tion Him concerning His teaching and His followers.
Jesus, however, refused to answer him, stating that all
that He had done He had done openly before the
eyes of the world, and that there were plenty of
witnesses who could testify concerning His works and
deeds. This embarrassing answer so angered one of
the officials, that he struck Jesus a brutal blow on the
mouth ; an act which Annas apparently allowed to
pass without reproof, but which called forth from the
sufferer the stern rebuke : " If I have spoken evil, bear
witness of the evil, but if well, why smitest thou me ? "
(John xviii. 19-24.)
Finding that he could get nothing out of Jesus,
Annas sent Him on to Caiaphas. It was still night,
and a legal meeting of the Sanhedrin could not be held
before sunrise. Nevertheless, its members had already
assembled in the palace of Caiaphas, in anticipation of
Jesus' arrest ; and though they seem to have held a
second formal meeting in the morning, to confirm the

THE DEATH. 159
proceedings of the informal trial which now took place,
it was in the darkness, and before this illegal assembly,
that Jesus was actually tried.*
They had not found it difficult to procure a number
of witnesses against Him, who were willing enough to
accommodate their evidence to the obvious desires of
His judges. " Many bore false witness against Him "
(Mark xiv. 56). But, perhaps owing to the fact that
they had not had time to " work up " the case properly,
they met with an unexpected difficulty in obtaining
any agreement of testimony. At least two witnesses
were required to establish any charge, and no two
could be found in this case whose witness agreed
together. After many had been examined, two> men did at
length succeed in agreeing that He had made a state
ment, or threat, to the effect that He would, or could,
destroy the temple. But even their testimony was not
in agreement, and such a statement as that, even if
amply substantiated, would not justify a sentence of
death.t * Compare Matt. xxvi. 57-68 with Matt, xxvii. 1, and Mark
xiv. 53-65 with Mark xv. 1. Luke in his account of Peter"s
denial of his Lord (Luke xxii. 54-65), which occurred before
cock-crow, plainly implies this first trial, though he records
the solemn adjuration which the high priest addressed to Jesus
to tell them if He was the Christ, the Son of God, and our
Lord's reply, as taking place at the morning assembly.
(Luke xxii. 66-71). John does not give any account of the
proceedings before the Sanhedrin.
t Mark says of these two witnesses : " not even so did their
witness agree together." Perhaps in the accounts of their
testimony which are recorded by Mark and Matthew, and which
are by no means in perfect agreement, we have the evidence
which the one and the other gave. (Cf. Matt, xxvii. 61,
Mark xiv. 57-58).

160 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
Jesus meanwhile stood silent, not condescending
to make any reply to the charges brought against
Him; indeed, it was unnecessary — the contradictory
nature of the evidence made any reply superfluous.
His calm, contemptuous silence, and the fear that the
case was going to completely break down, at last
threw the president, Caiaphas, into a transport of rage.
He rose from his seat, and indignantly demanded to
know why Jesus refused to speak ; and when He still
remained silent, he solemnly adjured Him by the living
God to say whether He was the Christ, the son of
God. He might still have remained silent, and thus have
prevented His judges from making use of any words
of His, uttered in their presence, as a handle against
Him. But had He adopted this course; they might
have interpreted His silence as a denial of His claim.
There are some questions to which, however unfair
it may be to ask them, no thoroughly truthful man can
refuse to give an answer, when solemnly adjured to
speak. He knew that He was their Messiah, and the
well-beloved Son of the Father. And so, though He
was well aware that they would not believe Him, and
would deem His answer blasphemous, He immediately
answered the high priest's question in the affirmative —
adding that the vision and prophecy which is recorded
in the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel would
henceforward begin to be fulfilled : " Jesus saith unto
him, ' Thou hast said : nevertheless I say unto you,
Henceforth ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the
right hand of power, and coming on, the clouds of

THE DEATH. 161
heaven.' "* This clear statement of the truth concern
ing Himself His judges at once seized upon as a
sufficient ground for pronouncing sentence upon Him.
Caiaphas, rending his clothes, declared it to be
blasphemy — which undoubtedly it would have been
if it had not been the simple truth— and putting the
question immediately to the assembly, the verdict
" worthy of death " was unanimously pronounced.
This midnight trial, as we have previously intimated,
was an informal one ; and even if the verdict had been
just, it would have been unjust and illegal to regard
the prisoner, after such an examination, as a con
demned criminal. But justice and law had been
totally disregarded already, and we are hardly sur
prised to find that a further act of shameful injustice
was now perpetrated. We will not dwell on the dis
graceful scene — the vile abuse — the insults. — the blows
to which this innocent, holy, divine Man was sub
jected, — in which apparently even the members of the
Sanhedrin, wholly losing sight of their dignity, in the
intensity of their hatred, took part ; it is too sickening.
As early in the morning as possible, the formal
meeting of the Sanhedrin was held to confirm the
proceedings of the previous night; and then they
went immediately in a body, with their prisoner, to the
Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilate, to demand that the
death sentence which they had decreed should be
confirmed by him.
Pilate was residing at the time in the splendid palace
* Matt. xxvi. 64. (Compare Mark xiv. 62, and see Daniel
vii. 13-14)- M

[6a THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
which Herod the Great had built. He usually resided
at Cassarea, but it was the custom of the procurator
to go> up to Jerusalem at the times of the great feasts
to preserve order. Thus the Jewish authorities were
able to> make their appeal to him without delay.
As they would have been made ceremonially
unclean — and consequently would have been unable to
eat the Passover — if they had entered the residence of
a Gentile, they halted at the paved court in front of
the palace, and sent a message to Pilate.
They evidently expected that he would not put
himself to the trouble of making any inquiry into the
case, but would grant their request without delay,
and were surprised when he came out to them and
asked, " What accusation bring ye against this man ? "
" If this man were not an evil-doer," they indignantly
replied, " we should not have delivered him up unto
thee." But, either because he had heard something about
Jesus, or because he was not in a good humour, or
perhaps because he was not altogether insensible to
the claims of justice, this answer did not satisfy
Pilate* If the man was no more than an evil-doer (or
" disturber of the public peace ") if this was the only
charge they had to bring against him, they need not
trouble him in the matter ; they might take and judge
him according to their law, he intimated.
But the Romans had taken from them the power
of inflicting capital punishment, and it was death which
they were determined to see inflicted in this case.
* "He knew that for envy they had delivered Him up."
(Matt, xxvii. 18.)

THE DEATH. 163
In their own court they had condemned Him for
blasphemy ; but they knew that such a charge would
not be sufficient in the eyes of the Gentile governor,
and so they hastily formulated others. " They accused
him of many things," amongst others of claiming to
be king, of perverting the people, and of forbidding
the payment of tribute to Rome, — endeavouring thus
to make Him appear a man who endangered the peace
of the country, and taught revolutionary doctrines.
Such charges the Roman procurator, well knowing
the inflammable materials of which the nation he
governed was composed, could not overlook ; and as
Jesus stood silent all the while, he at length turned to
Him and asked Him what He had to say in reply to
all these accusations. But Jesus still kept silent.
" He gave him no answer, not even to one word, inso
much that the governor marvelled greatly." (Matt.
xxvii. 14). And now a conflict of feelings began in
Pilate's mind, which we can plainly trace in all the
subsequent proceedings. On the one hand he was
convinced that the prisoner was innocent, and was
impressed by His silence, and the dignity of His bear
ing in the presence of His accusers ; on the other hand
he was afraid of offending the Jews, and of giving them
any grounds for accusing him to the emperor. He
had a genuine wish to do. what was just and right in
the matter, but unfortunately expediency and self-
interest prompted a different course, and, as we might
expect in the case of a worldly-minded, selfish, corrupt
man such as he was, the claims of self-interest and
expediency finally won the day.
Not without a prolonged fight, however; and the

1 64 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
fact that the struggle was so prolonged — that he strove
so hard to accomplish the impossible feat of persuading
the prisoner's enemies to release Hinii or to be content
with some punishment less than death — bears striking
witness to the depth of the impression which Jesus, by
His mien and bearing, and the few words which He
spoke, produced upon Pilate. Why should he have
been so reluctant to hand over this Galilean peasant to
His enemies? He was, in all probability, not by any
means the only man he had unjustly delivered over
to. death. But there was something in this man which
impressed even Pilate — stirred in him all the better
feelings of his nature, made him almost afraid to be
unjust. His sin, when he did yield, was, as Jesus
Himself told him, the sin of mis-using the power
entrusted to him in his own interests — a sufficiently
heinous one, but not so great as that of Caiaphas and
the Jews, in whom the divine perfection of Jesus
stirred no feelings except those of diabolical hatred —
who beheld the light and called it darkness.
Thinking that perhaps the prisoner would be more
willing to speak if he examined Him privately, he had
Him taken into the palace, and asked Him whether
He really claimed the title of king. It was a question
which Jesus could not answer until He knew more
definitely what Pilate meant by it, and so He replied
by a counter-question : " Sayest thou this of thyself,
or did others tell it thee concerning me ? " — " Do you
really want to know if I claim royal dignity, and in
what sense, or are you simply adopting at random the
vague accusation which my enemies outside have been
making against me ? "

THE DEATH. 165
" Am I a Jew ? " Pilate scornfully replied. " Do you
think I care anything about Jewish matters or
opinions ? But I want to know what you have done,
and how it is that your own nation, and the chief
priests, have brought you to me — you who claim
to be their king — and are clamouring for your
death." Jesus' reply (if Pilate could only have under
stood it) was a complete answer to both his questions.
It stated the sense in which He did lay claim to the
title of king, and in doing so it disclosed the reason
of the opposition of His countrymen. " My kingdom
is not of this world ; if it had been, my followers would
have fought for me, and I should not have been
here." " So then you are a king after all," Pilate scornfully
exclaimed. The correct interpretation of Jesus'
reply is somewhat uncertain. It may be either a
definite acceptance of the title, or a leaving of the
matter for Pilate to decide as he chose. Probably
the latter interpretation is the correct one. Jesus
cared nothing for the mere title ; but He was desirous
that Pilate should be under no misapprehension as to
the character of His sovereignty, and the claim which
He made on men's allegiance ; and so He added that
His mission was to bear witness to the truth, and that
all truth-loving men were bound to be His followers.
This answer elicited from Pilate his famous reply:
" What is truth ? " — an exclamation rather than a
question, to which he apparently did not expect an
answer (and would not have got one if he had
expected it), for he immediately went out and told the

'66 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
Jews that he had failed to find the prisoner guilty of
any crime.
This decision was received with shouts of rage.
They began to reiterate the charges they had made
against Him, saying that He had stirred up the people
from one end of the country to the other, "from
Galilee even unto this place." (Luke xxiii. 5.)
The mention of Galilee suggested to Pilate a way
of getting rid of this troublesome business, and of
shifting the responsibility of coming to a decision on
to the shoulders of some one else.
Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, was at that
time in Jerusalem, and it would be quite in accordance
with the requirements of Roman law if the case were
settled by Herod instead of himself. It would, at the
same time, be a graceful act, affording him an oppor
tunity of healing the breach which at the time existed
between Herod and himself. Accordingly, having
ascertained that Jesus was a Galilean, and con
sequently rightly came under Herod's jurisdiction, he
sent Him over to him, in charge of a guard, and
accompanied by His accusers.
This despicable prince1 — the husband of Herodias,
the murderer of the Baptist — was glad when he saw
who the prisoner was, for he had heard about Him,
and had long wished to see Him. He was prompted
in this desire by nothing higher than curiosity, and the
hope of seeing Jesus work a miracle. Capricious,
sensual, and superstitious, he was even more incapable
than Pilate of recognising and being impressed by the
majesty, and grace, and purity of the Man before him.
He plied Jesus with questions — foolish or imper-

THE DEATH. 167
tinent ones, doubtless — to which our Lord vouchsafed
no reply whatever; any more than He did to the
accusations which the chief priests and scribes poured
out against Him, hoping to induce the frivolous king
to pronounce the sentence they desired.
In this, however, they were disappointed. For some
reason or other Herod refused to. try the case. Find
ing that he could get nothing out of the prisoner, he
and his bodyguard revenged themselves by making
sport of Him They decked Him in a white robe, to
indicate that He was a candidate for the Jewish
throne, and after making Him the butt of their gibes
and mockery, sent Him, thus arrayed, back through
the crowded streets to Pilate.
When the procurator found that he would be
obliged after all to decide the case, he was as
unwilling as ever to yield to the demand of the Jews,
yet was afraid to brave their rage ; and, like many
another unprincipled and time-serving man, he thought
he might be able to get out of the difficulty by means
of a compromise. He therefore summoned the chief
priests and rulers to his presence, and told them that
as neither he nor Herod had been able to. discover that
there was any ground for the accusations which they
had made against the prisoner, he had determined to
have Him scourged and then to release Him. To inflict
any punishment at all on a man who, he was convinced,
was perfectly innocent, was a scandalous injustice;
and he showed how little he understood the nature of
the case, and the temper of the nation over which he
ruled, in thinking that, by thus partially yielding to
their evident hatred of the prisoner, he would be able

168 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
to satisfy them. It was a surrender of principle which
proved wholly futile — a sin and a blunder which led
him from one false position to another, till he finally
threw all principle to the winds, and gave his sanction
to the greatest crime that the world has ever wit
nessed — little knowing what he was doing, and wholly
unconscious that he was saddling himself with the
scorn and contempt of all future ages.
Just at this juncture, however, a circumstance
happened which interrupted the proceedings. Up to
this point the authorities had been the accusers of
Jesus. They had gone to Pilate early, hoping to get
his sanction at once, so that the execution might be ac
complished before the populace knew anything about
what was going on. But the procurator's unexpected
obstinacy, and the time occupied in sending Jesus to
Herod, had frustrated their design. Jerusalem was
now astir, and the time had come for the people to go
and claim a highly-prized privilege from the governor.
And now the crowd appeared, streaming towards the
palace, and shouting their demand for the release of a
prisoner. (Mark xv. 8.)
The appearance of the multitude at this point is
one of those striking coincidences, in which we seem
to come across clear traces of an overruling providence
in the affairs of men. This deed of wickedness is not
to be done in a corner ; the nation is not to be allowed
to shuffle out of its responsibility by laying the blame
on its rulers. The people are to be given a voice in
the judgment ; they are to be allowed to choose
between their Messiah and a robber.
They came, apparently not knowing that Jesus had

THE DEATH. 169
been arrested, and was now undergoing trial. They
came shouting for the release of Barabbas, a man of
whom nothing is known except what the Evangelists
tell us — that he was a robber (John xviii. 40), who
had committed murder in an insurrection (Mark xv.
7) in the city (Luke xxiii. 19).
Pilate — once more fatally misunderstanding the
temper and disposition of the nation he governed —
welcomed their appearance, thinking it would afford
him a way of escape from the difficulty. Surely, if
he offered them this prisoner, who had won such
popularity, and made such a stir throughout the land,
they would eagerly accept the offer! Surely they
would prefer the Man who claimed to be their king,
to one who was merely an unsuccessful leader in a
rebellion! And so, confident of the result, he gave
them the choice. If the reading of many later MSS.
is correct, Barabbas' name was also Jesus ; and his
question to them was, " Whom will ye that I release to
you, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus Christ ? "
Taken by surprise, at first they seem to have
hesitated. A crowd has little or no mind of its own :
it can shout a catchword ; it can and will readily accept
the decision of its leaders ; but it will hesitate to de
cide, unless a clue is given it. Each man is afraid of
expressing his opinion till he is sure that it is in agree
ment with his neighbour's. But leaders were there,
and the clue was soon given. The members of the
Sanhedrin dispersed themselves among the crowd,
and began urging the people to demand the release of
Barabbas, and the crucifixion of Jesus. And with
fatal facility the people yielded to their insistence.

'7° THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
They probably did not need much persuasion ; for we
have already seen how thoroughly Jesus had alienated
their sympathies, on the day of His triumphal entry
into Jerusalem, by refusing to conform His actions to
their hopes and expectations concerning the Messiah.
And they were not likely to have the feelings of
disgust and contempt which His conduct, on that
occasion, had aroused in them, softened or changed by
beholding Him in the plight in which they now found
Him> — bound, forlorn, and helpless in the hands of
His enemies. That man claim to be their king! It
was too ridiculous; Barabbas was more of a man
than He!
Poor deluded mob! blind, and led by the blind!
We can feel sure that it was not the stern, but the
tender feelings of Jesus' nature, which were roused
by the shouts they raised : " Not this man, but
Barabbas " ; not wrath, but sorrow, and a choking
flood of pity, even when, in reply to Pilate's further
question : " What, then, shall I do unto Jesus who is
called Christ ? " they shouted " Crucify Him, crucify
Him! "
Even then Pilate did not at once yield. There is a
slight discrepancy at this point between the accounts
given us by the Synoptists, and the narrative of the
Fourth Gospel. They all agree that Pilate made more
than one effort still to save the prisoner ; but according
to the Synoptists, his reiterated appeal to the multitude
was made before he gave the order that the prisoner
should be scourged — the usual preliminary to cruci
fixion, which would naturally not be inflicted until
sentence had been passed — and no mention is made

THE DEATH. 171
by them of his making any attempt subsequent to the
infliction of that punishment to save the prisoner's life.
According to the Fourth Gospel, however, the
scourging occurred before Pilate, taking his place on
the judgment seat, reluctantly pronounced the sen
tence they desired, and it was between these two
events that he made his thrice repeated attempt to turn
the multitude from their purpose.
The Fourth Gospel probably gives the more accurate
account of the course of events,* and from it we gather
that, in spite of the result of his appeal to the mob,
Pilate still held to his original intention of scourging
Jesus and then releasing Him. He seems to have
thought that the sight of the bleeding victim would
arouse their compassion, and that when he then again
asked them to decide what should be done with Him,
they would clamour for His release — a request which
he evidently, at that stage of the proceedings, would
have been willing enough to grant, even if he had had
to release Barabbas as well.
Accordingly he now gave the order that Jesus
should be scourged. We need not dwell on the details
of that pitiable and revolting spectacle ; the pure and
holy Son of Man in the hands of the brutal soldiery,
enduring this excruciating and degrading punishment !
The physical pain which He experienced must have
been most intense; but still more intense must have
* The writer apparently had at his disposal sources of
information not available to the Synoptists, inasmuch as he
records what took place at both of the private or semi-private
interviews which Pilate had with Jesus. Cf. John xviii. 33 ;
xix. 9.

172 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
been the mental and spiritual agony which He en
dured. Not only was it an outrage on justice, it was
an insult to humanity. And not only must those feel
ings of respect and reverence which the perfect Son of
Man undoubtedly had for the " human form divine "
have been insulted and lacerated, but those deeper
feelings also, of faith in, and reverence for, the God
like in man, how they must have been wounded in
this personal encounter with the brutal and the vile !
For the soldiers were evidently cruel and degraded
enough to take pleasure in His sufferings. Nor did
even that content them. For when the savage punish
ment was over, they placed their exhausted Victim on
a seat, and, decking Him in an old cloak, and thrusting
a rod into His hand, and pressing upon His brows a
hastily plaited garland of thorns, they passed before
Him in turns, bending to Him in mock homage, at the
same time spitting on Him, and striking Him, either
with their hands, or with the reed which they snatched
from His grasp. When at length they tired of their
sport, they led Him out to the pavement in front of the
palace again, with the cloak and the crown of thorns
still on Him, to exhibit Him to the waiting crowd.
Pilate had just preceded them. He was as anxious
as ever to save Jesus, and he came to announce once
more that he could find no crime in this man. " Behold
the Man ! " he exclaimed, as the marred and humiliated
form of Jesus appeared among the group of soldiers
issuing from the Praetorium. He hoped to
rouse the pity of His enemies; he only succeeded in
intensifying their hatred. It maddened them to think
that such a forlorn creature should claim to be their

THE DEATH. 173
king ; and the chief priests and their subordinates —
probably fathoming Pilate's design, and anticipating
any effect which the pitiable spectacle might have
upon the multitude — at once gave the cue by raising
again the cry, " Crucify Him, crucify Him."
Pilate met the cry with an angry sneer : " Crucify
Him yourselves. If you want to judge the man, you
can : for my part, I find nothing with which He can be
charged ! "
Their reply was to the effect that they had already
judged Him, and found Him by their law — a law to
which he, as governor, ought to give effect — worthy of
death, "because He made Himself the Son of
God." Though the sceptical Roman could form no ade
quate conception of the real nature of this claim, he
was troubled and afraid when he heard of it. It
deepened the impression of awe with which this re
markable prisoner had inspired him, and he was super
stitious enough to believe in the possibility of its
being true. Mythology was full of stories of sons of
the gods who had appeared from time to time on the
earth; might not this mysterious being be one of
these ; might he not really be an emissary from the
national divinity of this strange people over whom he
ruled? The thought so troubled him that he once
more took Jesus aside with him into the palace, and
with mingled awe and curiosity asked Him, " Whence
art Thou?" "But Jesus gave him no answer." It
was a question, the full and clear answer to which
would have been entirely beyond Pilate's apprehen
sion. Moreover, it was irrelevant; there was no

174 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
necessity for Pilate to ask it, in order to arrive at a just
decision of the case before him. Still, there is a deep
significance in Jesus' silence ; for He might, with per
fect truthfulnes's, have given such an answer as
would have confirmed all Pilate's superstitious fears,
and determined him at all hazards to acquit Him.
This was one of the many points in the protracted
trial at which He might — without, so far as we can
judge, any sacrifice of principle — have '' saved His
life " ; and He did not take advantage of it.
Pilate did not know what to make of the silence of
Jesus. It both surprised, and troubled, and irritated
him. He hardly knew whether to regard it as an in
dication that this man was really what He claimed
to be ; or as an indication that He was merely an
ignorant and deluded enthusiast, who did not under
stand the gravity of the situation in which He stood,
or the importance of giving respectful answers to his
questions. But a glance at the forlorn and almost ludicrous
spectacle which the prisoner before him presented —
for most likely Jesus still had on the cloak in which
the soldiers had arrayed Him, and the crown of
thorns ; and the marks of their violent abuse must
have been plain upon His face, and the blood which the
lash had drawn, on His garments — a glance seems to
have convinced him that the latter was the only pos
sible view to take ; and he sternly demanded : " Speak
est thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have
power to release thee, and have power to crucify
thee?" To this question Jesus did reply. With quiet dig-

THE DEATH. 175
nity He corrected His judge, and with sad solemnity
He condemned those who had already condemned
Him. Pilate had spoken as if his authority was abso
lute ; in a certain sense it was, but in the highest sense
it was not ;- it was a trust committed to him, and also
committed to the authorities who had already judged
and sentenced Him, by a superior power ; a trust the
abuse of which was a crime and a sin.
Pilate in all probability was incapable of grasping
the full significance of Jesus' reply.
The only superior power he recognised was that of
the Roman Emperor. But Caiaphas, the head of the
Jewish theocracy, professed to hold his power from
God. This important difference Jesus recognised
in His judgment of the two. The greater guilt,
because the larger light, belonged to Caiaphas. " Thou
wouldest," He said, " have no power against me,
except it were given thee from above; therefore he
that delivered me unto thee hath greater sin."
This striking reply seems to have altered the opinion
which the silence of the prisoner has caused His judge
to hastily form. The man who gave such an answer
could not be merely an ignorant enthusiast. It
deepened the impression which Jesus had previously
produced on him, and strengthened the superstitious
fears which this impression, combined with the charge
which the Jews had just made, had aroused in him. It
confirmed his desire to release Him ; and he went out
to> the Pavement, and communicated his decision to
the expectant multitude.
But, alas for his boasted power! He was as weak
as water in face of the angry threat which the leaders.

176 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
hurled against him, as soon as they heard what his
decision was.
" If thou release this man thou art not Cassar's
friend ; every one that maketh himself a king opposeth
Caesar." Pilate well knew that they would make this
accusation against him to the Emperor, if he persisted
in his intention ; and he knew too that this charge,
backed as it was sure to be by other charges, for which
his administration had furnished only too much griound,
was pretty sure to make him lose his post.
And to a man like Pilate what were the claims of
justice and pity, in comparison with the claims of self-
interest ? He was genuinely desirous of being just and
merciful in the present instance, but not in the least
willing to pay the price which such a course of action
would involve. Justice and mercy were luxuries with
which he could dispense ; place and power were neces
saries. And so, after one more feeble attempt to have
his own way, he yielded.
He had Jesus brought out to him, and sat down on
the judgment seat. " Behold your king," he said to
them bitterly. He felt that he must yield, but he
would not yield with a good grace. He was very
angry, and filled at the same time with a superstitious
fear — a fear which must have been intensified by the
striking message which Matthew informs us (xxvii. 19)
his wife sent him in the course of the trial : " Have
thou nothing to do with that just man, for I have
suffered many things this day in a dream because of
Him." Besides he seems to have been haunted by
the feeling that this man, for whose death they are
clamouring, and whom he was about to unjustly
sentence, might really be what He claimed to be.

THE DEATH. 177
Again they raised the cry, " Crucify Him, crucify
Him ! "
" Shall I crucify your king ? " he retorted, per
sisting in giving his prisoner the title — chiefly in his
anger against the Jews, because he saw that they
were enraged at the suggestion, and indignantly' re
jected the claim, but also partly because of the feeling
which haunted him. " We have no king but Cassar,"
the chief priests replied, thereby formally renouncing
the theocratic idea, and abandoning the Messianic
hope to which the nation had so long clung*
We gather from Matthew's Gospel that Pilate,
before he gave the final order, had recourse to a strik
ing symbolical act, in order to impress upon the people
the fact that the responsibility of Jesus' death rested
entirely upon them, and in order to soothe his own
troubled conscience. He may even have thought that
he could really transfer the whole guilt of the deed
to them in this way.
He ordered water to be brought, and washed his
hands before the multitude, saying, " I am innocent of
this blood ; see ye to it." And all the people answered
and said, " His blood be upon us, and on our children."
Then, apparently without formally pronouncing sen
tence upon Him, he delivered Jesus up to be
crucified. It was now nearly noon, and no time was lost in
carrying out the sentence. Jesus and two others,
robbers, who had been sentenced to the same cruel
* " The kingdom of God, in the confession of its rulers,
had become the kingdom of the world. In the place of the
Christ they have found the Emperor. They first rejected
Jesus as the Christ, and then, driven by the irony of circum
stances, they rejected the Christ altogether." Westcott :
Gospel of St. John, in loc. N

178 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
death, were taken in charge by a small Roman guard ;
they were given their crosses to carry, and the melan
choly procession at once started for the place of execu
tion. The chief priests and the multitude accom
panied them, and the crowd was doubtless largely
augmented in the passage through the busy streets.
Two incidents of the journey are recorded by the
Evangelists. The first is, that the soldiers, on the way,
impressed a passer-by, and compelled him to carry the
cross of Jesus. They would hardly have taken the
trouble to do this if He had not been obviously
too. exhausted to carry it Himself. The probability is
that He stumbled, or fainted, under the burden, and
could not proceed till He had been relieved of it. The
second incident recorded is, that among the multitude
which followed were some women who were friendly
and sympathetic, and who gave utterance to
their grief in sobs and laments. To these
He turned and spoke, and His words give
us a precious glimpse of His thoughts and feel
ings in this hour of His agony. They display
a spirit absolutely unselfish, and completely free from
bitterness or indignation at the cruel wrong which was
being done to Him — a mind, too, which was perfectly
clear-sighted in its estimate of the deed which was
being done, and of the consequences which would
ensue from it. " Weep not for me," He said, " weep
for yourselves and for your children ; for such woe ia
coming as shall make you hail childlessness as a
blessing, and welcome death as a deliverer. For if
they do these things in the green tree, what shall be
done in the dry ? "

THE DEATH. 179
Golgotha, the usual place of execution, was not far
from the city, and was soon reached. Here the soldiers
erected the crosses — after nailing the victims to them
— placing Jesus in the middle. Before the actual cruci
fixion took place He was offered the usual medicated
draught which philanthropy provided on such
occasions ; but He refused it, wishing to keep His
senses clear. After the execution the soldiers, accord
ing to custom, divided the garments of the three
amongst them, casting lots for Jesus' tunic, which was
made in a single piece, and which they decided it
was a pity to tear.
They remained after this to keep guard — a pre
caution which it was necessary to adopt in the case
of such a lingering death as crucifixion, in order to
prevent friends and sympathisers from taking down
the sufferers. By Pilate's orders a superscription,
written in three languages, was affixed to the cross,
announcing, " This is the king of the Jews."
Five hours of mortal agony followed. We need
not dwell on the physical suffering which Jesus
must have endured; we have no means of telling
whether it was more intense than that endured by the
other sufferers, it certainly was not so prolonged* On
His spiritual suffering we dare not dwell. What His
pure, noble, loving Spirit suffered in those hours of
* It seems very probable that Jesus' sufferings were
more intense than the sufferings of the majority of those who
have died a similar death. We infer it from the fact that He
must have had an exquisite physical organism, that He
refused the opiate, and that He died in such a surprisingly
short time.

180 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
final contact and conflict with the sin and evil of the
world, no human mind can comprehend. He hung
there, the victim of the hatred and malice of those who
should have loved and esteemed Him ; exposed to the
taunts and jeers of the people He longed to save. Evil
exhausted its venom on Him in that last hour; it
manifested itself in its extremest form ; it did its very
worst against the one Man who was the incarnation of
goodness. He overcame it ; taunts failed to move
Him from His steadfast determination not to use His
power to save Himself ; insults and scorn failed to
arouse in His pure soul any vindictive or unworthy
feelings — failed to extract from Him any answering
word of scorn ; hatred failed to quench His love. He
overcame ; but at what a cost of mental and spiritual
anguish we shall never know.
Seven utterances of His, as He hung there,
have been recorded by the Evangelists. They
afford us precious glimpses into His Mind. They
enable us to see that in those awful hours, while
slowly dying, He displayed just those same
qualities which we have noted in Him on previous
occasions. He prayed for the soldiers as they
were nailing Him to the cross. He responded wil
lingly to the petition which one of His fellow-sufferers
addressed to Him. He gave directions to a disciple to
provide His mother with a home. Then for a long
time He relapsed into silence; what His thoughts
were we may perhaps partially surmise from the cry
which at length escaped Him, "My God, my God,
why hast Thou forsaken me? " Later still He asked
for a drink to allay the pangs of thirst. Finally His

THE DEATH. 181
spirit seems to have recovered its perfect serenity : " It
is finished," He exclaimed as the end drew near. At
the very last His faith and hope were strong and
clear : " Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,"
He cried, with a loud voice ; and then He died.
We have deemed it necessary to review thus fully
the familiar details of the arrest, and trials, and
crucifixion of Jesus, in order that the reader may have
them vividly in mind in reading the attempt we are
about to make to apprehend the significance of this
closing act of His life, and to interpret it as a
revelation of His Mind and Spirit.
For reasons which we have already stated, we can
not hope that this attempt will even approximate to
success, in the sense of enabling us to comprehend the
length, and breadth, and height, and depth of this
deed of the Cross. But we make it because the theme
is one which cannot possibly be avoided in any
exposition of the Character of Jesus which makes any
claim to completeness. We make it also because we
trust that such an attempt may prove useful to some
who have not adequately realised the divine quality of
the deed which brought the earthly life of this Son of
Man to a close ; and what a claim it makes — even
when regarded simply from its " natural " side — on
their admiration and wonder, their faith and their
love. We would begin by pointing out one feature in the
tragedy, which indeed cannot fail to impress anyone
who seriously contemplates it, but which requires to
be brought clearly into view, since it is — from the

18* THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
standpoint from which we are contemplating it — and
indeed from any standpoint — the most extra
ordinary feature of the event. It is the one feature
which, estimated at its true value, differentiates the
death of Jesus from that of all other men who
have been innocently and unjustly put to death —
which demands explanation, and yet which (we think
the reader will find as he proceeds) baffles all attempts
at complete and satisfactory explanation — at any rate
as long as we keep to the region of the "natural."
We refer to the fact that the death of Jesus was,
clearly and indubitably, a purely voluntary act.
The other features of the drama do not differ
markedly from those of many another tragedy in
human history; indeed, they may almost be called
the stock features of every tragedy of a similar kind.
We have bitter and malignant enemies ; a fickle
populace ; a traitor ; an unjust judge — features
common to many a similar deed of injustice — without
one or more of which, indeed, such deeds would not
be possible.
But what is not so common; what is indeed
absolutely unique and unexampled, when we realise
it fully and truly, is the attitude and bearing of the
Central Figure of the tragedy — how He comported
Himself throughout these closing scenes of His life —
what He did, and what He abstained from doing.
In contemplating Him as He appears before us on
this supreme occasion, we are constrained to
acknowledge that He is not one whit the creature of
circumstance. On the contrary, never more clearly
than among these trying circumstances does He

THE DEATH. 183
stand revealed as master of His fate — submitting to
it, not coerced into it ; willing to die, not compelled
to it ; voluntarily laying down His life, not surrender
ing it as a helpless victim.
This voluntary submission of His is indeed com
plete and evident throughout. He sets His face
steadfastly to go to Jerusalem, clearly anticipating the
fate which awaits Him there ; He permits Himself to
be betrayed and arrested* He abstains from
making any defence before His judges ; He submits
without protest to insults and degrading punishment ;
He makes no remonstrance when His Roman judge
hands Him over to His enemies ; and He is led away
and crucified with His mood of passive submission
unchanged. All these things happen to Him not
because He has made any miscalculation, or because
circumstances are too strong for Him, but because He
permits them to happen to Him; had He willed it
He might have avoided them all.
It may be urged, and truly urged, that the mere fact
that Jesus' death was a voluntary one, does not
by any means constitute it a unique fact in history. It
may be pointed out that there have been countless
instances in which men have sacrificed themselves —
even unto death — for friends, for country, for a cause,
or for truth. This we may readily and frankly
acknowledge. Nay, we may go further, and recognise
* He might easily, as we have pointed out in a previous
chapter, have made His escape from Jerusalem and from
Palestine at any time up to the very hour of His arrest.
He knew of Judas' intention to betray Him, but abstained
from any attempt either to turn him from his purpose, or
to thwart him.

184 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
that, up to a certain point, a true parallel may be
drawn between any such instance of genuine self-
sacrifice, and the voluntary surrender of Jesus to
death. But only up to a certain point. Beyond that the
parallelism fails. When the facts of Jesus'
death are fully and truly recognised, it must be
acknowledged that it cannot be completely paralleled
by any or all the instances, though history is so
gloriously full of them, in which men have died self-
sacrificing deaths. It is quite true to say that He
died for His friends, for His country, for a cause, for
truth — quite true, but very far indeed from being the
whole truth. To explain His death thus is to fall
obviously short of a complete explanation. We
realise at once that the motives of friendship and
patriotism, and even the motives of devotion to a
cause (even though that cause was the noble one of
founding a Kingdom of Heaven upon earth), and of
loyalty to' truth, do not suffice to account for His
voluntary death. We recognise, even in a case in
which the parallelism seems most complete — i.e., in
the case of the death of Socrates — that it is imperfect
at best, and inadequate to a degree which we may at
least call indefinite, if not infinite.
As the point is of importance, and as it is not always
recognised as clearly as it should be, it will be worth
while to dwell briefly on those features of Jesus'
self-sacrificing death which differentiate it from all
others which can with any plausibility be placed in the
same category, and constitute it a deed unexampled
in the world's history.

THE DEATH. 185
These are to be found partly in the Character of
the Man ; partly in the Purpose to which He devoted
His life; and partly, in the close — the organic —
relation in which His death stands to both of
these. (I.) In any fair attempt to gauge the significance,
and estimate the moral and spiritual worth of the
death of Jesus, we must bear in mind the Character
of the Man who elected to bring His earthly life
to a close on a Cross.
What His Character was- — how noble, how strong,
how Godlike, how firmly and symmetrically compacted
of all the highest and most spiritual qualities and
excellencies which human nature can display;
untainted by any alloy of selfishness, of weakness, or
of sinfulness ; towering to an immeasurable height of
grandeur, and attaining to an incalculable degree of
fulness, — this we trust the reader has already
realised. And He, who is indubitably the noblest, divinest
Man who has ever walked this earth of ours, submits to
having — or rather, as we have just said, elects to have
— His life prematurely ended by a violent and unjust
death. Surely this is a wholly unparalleled fact in the
world's history, if only because the Character of the
Man, who thus voluntarily surrendered His life, is
wholly unparalleled. In proportion as we realise the
singular and significant position into which the
Character of Jesus elevates Him above the human
race, we must also recognise the importance of the
fact that He voluntarily ended His life on a Cross.
The fact that such a Man should elect to finish His

1 86 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
career in such a way -is so surprising, that it cannot
fail to arrest the attention of the world ; it is so
strange and wonderful that it compels us to ask : Why
did He elect thus to die? What were the reasons
which decided Him ; the motives which prompted
Him — to do this amazing deed ? And these are ques
tions to which, the more we ponder His Character, the
more difficult we shall find it to give any "natural"
answer which can be considered adequate and satis
factory. (II.) And the difficulty is increased when, to the
unique Character of the man we link the unique Pur
pose to which He devoted His life.
In the light of that Purpose — which was no less
than the founding of a world-wide Spiritual Kingdom
in the hearts of men* — the inadequacy of the explana
tions to which we have alluded, to account for His
voluntary death, is manifest.
He was evidently not merely a friend dying for His
friends ; nor yet a patriot dying for His country.
Perhaps not quite so evidently, but still none the less
indubitably, He was not simply a Leader dying for a
cause. There is no direct and evident connection
between His voluntary death and the success of the
Cause He had at heart. At first it seemed likely to
ensure, not its success, but its failure ; and unless we
can discover deeper motives, and a profounder neces
sity than this, we cannot assert confidently that by
* This definition which we give of His Purpose is suffi
ciently clear and comprehensive to bring out the point on
which we are at present dwelling. The reader will find the
matter more fully discussed in the Chapter on the Resurrec
tion.

THE DEATH. 187
dying He promoted the success of the Cause better
than He would have done had He continued to live.
Nor was He simply a martyr to truth. Doubtless
His Purpose required that He should bear witness to
the truth, and manifest an unswerving loyalty to it;
but it did not, obviously, require that He should die
for it ; at any rate not at the time, and under the cir
cumstances, in which His death actually took place.
No ! in the light of His Purpose these explanations of
His death themselves need explaining, or rather they
need to be supplemented by explanations as to why
the Cause He had at heart, and the truth to which He
bore such steadfast witness, required that He should
voluntarily surrender His life for them. And any
adequate attempt to do this (an attempt which we shall
make later on) forces us to attach a significance to His
death which incalculably transcends the limits of
simple devotion to a cause, or of simple loyalty to
truth. (III.) This fact is placed beyond doubt by a con
sideration of the third unique feature of His self-
sacrificing death, i.e., the close — we have even ventured
to say, the organic — relation in which that death
stands both to His Character and to His Purpose.
For it is not sufficient to point out, as we have done
just now, that the unexampled sublimity of His
Character elevates His death into a position of un
paralleled significance. We are forced to supplement
this by acknowledging that it is in His death, and in
that event alone, that His Character fully displays all
its matchless sublimity.
If we hesitate to say that His voluntary surrender to

188 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
death was necessary in order to make Him the perfect
Son, we can at least say that it was necessary in order
that that perfection might be fully and adequately re
vealed. It consummated its manifestation ; and we
can unhesitatingly assert, not only that in no other
event of His life was it so fully manifested, but also
that in no other conceivable way could it have been
better, or more fully manifested.
If He had not ended His life as He did, we should
still have been compelled to acknowledge Him to be
the divinest Man who ever walked our earth ; but our
conceptions of divine manhood must have for ever
fallen short of those which we now can form from Him,
to an extent which we cannot calculate. He dwelt
amongst men, full of grace and truth ; but how full,
men would never have known, had He not recognised
and obeyed the will of His Father, and submitted to
the baptism of death.
But we are brought face to face with the most
unique feature of Jesus' death, and can only
then begin to adequately realise its sublimity — realis
ing at the same time what deep soundings we must
take if we are to fathom its meaning — when we recog
nise the close — the organic — relation in which it
stands to the Purpose which He set Himself to
accomplish. That Purpose was, as we have pointed out, the
splendidly original, and enormously difficult one of
founding a Spiritual Kingdom in the world — a King
dom founded on Truth, regulated by righteousness,
swayed by love. He undertook no less a task than
that of shifting the centre of gravity of the human

THE DEATH. 189
heart; of changing its bias towards sin into a bias
towards holiness. He undertook to reconstitute
human nature after the image of Him who created it ;
to restore to mankind its birthright, and to fulfil its
destiny, by leading it into the liberty of the glory of
sonship with God.
And nothing is more evident than the fact that He
recognised, very early in His public career, if not from
its very commencement, that in order to accomplish
this gigantic task, it would be necessary for Him to*
die. The reasons for that necessity we will consider
shortly. At present we are simply noting the in
dubitable fact that it was a necessity, which He clearly
recognised, and resolutely braced Himself to face.
He regarded it as an integral part of the work which
His Father had given Him to do. He contemplated
it at different times with very different feelings.
Sometimes, with perfect calmness, He spoke of it to
His disciples as if it were almost a matter of course,
and He was chiefly anxious that they should not be
perplexed or dismayed when it happened. Again He
spoke of it as a "baptism," and declared He was
" straitened " till it was accomplished. On another
occasion He seems to have had a clear prevision of the
results which it would accomplish : " I, if I be lifted
up," He said, " will draw all men unto me," though
this, and the calm and unemotional way in which He
spoke of it at the Last Supper, did not, as we know,
prevent His soul from being troubled to its depths
as He waited for His betrayer in Gethsemane.
But the varying emotions which swayed His Spirit

190 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
when He contemplated it, did not for a moment
alter His conviction with regard to its necessity. Nor
did they for a moment cause Him to waver in His
steadfast resolve to submit to it. His feelings varied,
but His will was immovably fixed. He recognised
that His death was to form the final and indispensable
link in the chain of that mighty Purpose which He
had set Himself to accomplish ; and recognising that,
He calmly and resolutely accepted the fact, and bowed
in submission to it. Convinced that His mission
required that He should sacrifice Himself even unto
death, He was never for a moment less than perfectly
willing to die. Nothing in Jesus' life is so re
markable — so unexampled — as this feature to which
we are now calling attention, i.e., His clear recognition
of the fact that His death was necessary for the accom
plishment of the work which His Father had given
Him to do ; and nothing is so sublime as His willing
submission to the necessity. Explain it how we will, the
fact is indubitable, that He always regarded His death
as standing in so essential a relation to His Purpose,
that personal considerations not only did not influence
Him, but did not apparently present themselves to
His mind at all. He always looked upon His suffer
ings and His sad fate as detached from, and (in some
sense) external to, Himself — necessary for the accom
plishment of His mission, but not expressing in any
way His Father's judgment on Himself. Conse
quently we find no trace or hint of any feeling in His
mind that it was either a hardship, or an injustice that
He should be tried, scourged, condemned, and crucified.
Nor is He in the least perplexed or dismayed to find

THE DEATH. 191
that He, the Son in whom the Father is well pleased,
must face the shame and agony of the Cross, and end
His life so disastrously. It is not for Him the
daughters of Jerusalem should weep, but for them
selves and for their children ; there is a divine neces
sity in His fate, which He recognises, and to which He
willingly bows ; and He is thus able to face the shame
and disaster of His destiny calmly, and without dismay.
In the light of these unique features, and especially
in the light of the one we have just considered,
Jesus' voluntary death reveals itself as an act which
immeasurably transcends, in sublimity and in impor
tance, any other self-sacrificing death which the world
has witnessed. It is sublime in proportion as the
Character of the Man, and the Purpose which He set
Himself to accomplish, are sublime ; it is supremely
important, because it bears such an essential relation
ship to the perfect manifestation of His Character, and
to the complete accomplishment of His Purpose.
What the manifestation of Character which He dis
played in dying actually was, we may now pause for a
moment to consider a little more closely.
The moral and spiritual significance of the deed
of the Cross becomes sufficiently evident in the light
of Jesus' Purpose, and of the fact that He
recognised its necessity, and willingly bowed to it.
Though a consideration of the reasons which made
it necessary that He should die may introduce us to
sublimer aspects of His Nature, it will enable us to
form no loftier conception of His Character than we

192 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
can form from the data already before us. For we can
see now that this Man voluntarily died for the world.
In the light of His Purpose that fact is indisputable.
That Purpose was world-wide and age-long. The
Cause He died for was the Cause of Humanity. The
direct object He had in view was no less an one than
the salvation of His race. The race was sin-bound,
and His purpose was to set it free from the
fetters of sin. The race, created in the image
of God, was failing to realise its divine possibilities,
and His purpose was to make men Godlike. But He
realised (no matter now, how or why ; the fact is
sufficient for the present) that, in order to accomplish
that Purpose, He must voluntarily sacrifice His life,
and He was willing to do it.
So much we can say concerning the death of the
Man Jesus without overstepping the limits of
" that which is natural." No less than this we must say,
if we are to do justice to the deed of the Cross con
templated simply within these limits.
And in the light of these facts His Character reveals
itself in a dazzling splendour of glory, and in a fulness
of perfection to which no language can do justice.
The motives which prompted Him are seen to be the
highest and purest which can animate the soul of man ;
the moral and spiritual qualities which He displayed
are seen to be the grandest and noblest which the dis
cipline of life can evoke.
Though we cannot hope by any elaborateness of
exposition, to adequately unfold these to the reader,
we will briefly draw attention to some of the most
conspicuous.

THE DEATH. 193
And first we would point out the splendid Faith to
which the deed of the Cross bears evidence.
His faith indeed was of so splendid a quality, and
at times lifted Him to such heights of confidence, and
linked itself so closely with a clearness of foresight
and insight which is hardly distinguishable from fore
knowledge — that we hesitate to make use of a word,
the ordinary connotation of which is so much shallower,
to describe this spiritual quality in Him. It seems
inadequate, and almost inappropriate, to describe that
attitude and poise of Spirit which, for instance, He
displayed at the Last Supper, as based upon, and
being the outcome of faith.
And doubtless if He had maintained that attitude
and poise throughout, " faith," as we ordinarily under
stand it, would have been a word altogether inade
quate to describe a spiritual quality so unique in its
effects. But as we know, the sublime confidence and repose
of the supper chamber was followed by the despon
dency, the fear, and the agony of Gethsemane ; and
however far beyond our comprehension that scene in
our Lord's life may be, in some of its aspects, it is
certain that, in that awful hour, the wings of His faith
drooped — drooped to such an extent that His Spirit
lost its confidence, and His insight into the necessity
for His death, as well as His foresight as to its results,
were eclipsed by doubt and fear.
In that hour — in which He became uncertain about
the necessity, and even the expediency, of treading
the path His Father was calling Him to tread — (for He
prayed that the cup might pass, if it were possible,
O

194 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
which He would not have done if He had not thought
that it might be possible), His faith became so like
what faith often, perhaps invariably, is, when severely
put to the test — not confident, but fearful ; not a song,
but a cry; not the reposeful grasp, but the terrified
death-grip on the hand of the Father — that we need
not hesitate to speak of it as faith.
In that hour He did not know, He only trusted that
His Father's will was good and right. He bowed in
perfect submission to it, and He gained through His
submission strength to meet His hour ; but the lofty —
the superhuman — mood of the supper-hour did not
return ; and it was in the strength of faith, and not
in the strength of any such superhuman elevation of
Spirit, that He faced and endured the dreadful closing
hours of His life.
And, indeed, both the mood of the supper-hour and
the mood of Gethsemane were abnormal. They show
us how wide apart stood the extreme poles of feel
ing — the extreme limits of insight on the one hand,
and of doubt and darkness on the other — between
which His Spirit fluctuated ; but they leave undecided
the question : to what extent He habitually walked
by faith, and to what extent faith with Him merged
into sight.
Consequently we cannot infer from either of these
incidents what was the normal light in which He
regarded His death, and to what extent His faith was
called into action, and tested, by it.
We have however discussed this point at some
length in a previous chapter* and it will be sufficient
* Chapter IX., " He set His face steadfastly."

THE DEATH. 195
to remind the reader that the conclusion arrived at was,
that He did not always (perhaps not even often)
contemplate His passion in a light which robbed it of
its mystery, and its terrors. The Way of the Cross
was, for the most part, strange and dark to Him ; a
path which no son of man had ever trodden before
Him, and which He trod alone — and trod not mainly
in the strength of a clear fore-knowledge of its issue,
but in the strength of a splendid trust and confidence
in His Father, which enabled Him to be obedient
even unto death.
How splendid an act of faith that obedience of His
unto death actually was, we can hardly hope to realise
now by any effort of the imagination. For between
us and this lonely Son of Man, treading the dark and
awful road to Calvary, now stands that subsequent
event — the Resurrection — by which the Father
justified and glorified His trustful, obedient Son.
And it is difficult, if not impossible, to shut off the
light which streams from that event upon the life
of Jesus, and to see Him clearly as He lived and
died, before that transcendent miracle occurred.
We can see plainly enough, in the light of the
Resurrection, that the way of the Cross was good and
right ; but we cannot fully realise how little good and
right it must sometimes have seemed to Him while
treading it, and while Resurrection was, at best, only
an expectation and a hope. There is some doubt as
to whether the Evangelists themselves (and especially
the author of the Fourth Gospel) do not give us
recollections of our Lord which that event had, in
some respects at any rate, considerably modified ; and

'96 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
if the sources of our knowledge are thus affected,
we may well despair of fully realising how dark and
lonely the way of the Cross must have been to Him
who actually trod it, and what degree of faith it
consequently demanded.
It is always hard to die. But to die as He died —
voluntarily surrendering Himself into the hands of
His enemies, and submitting to an ignominious death,
while as yet the pulse of life beat strong within Him ;
and the world was before Him ; and He had accom
plished nothing so far but the alienation of His
countrymen, and the partial education of a handful
of followers ; and what He was to accomplish by His
death was only surmised and hoped in moments of
insight — not confidently known: — how difficult that
must have been! How sublime His faith must have
been, to enable Him to tread that path with
confidence, and at the end to trustfully surrender His
Spirit into His Father's hands — with the future still
dark! And, in conjunction with this sublime faith, the deed
of the Cross reveals in this Man another spiritual
quality, equally sublime — His perfect obedience to His
Father's will.
This subordination of His own will to God's is
indeed SO' invariable and consistent a feature of His
Character, that we are in some danger of taking it
for granted, and consequently of failing to realise its
sublimity and moral worth. Yet the power of choice
must have been His, no less than it is ours ; and con
sequently the power of disobedience. How wonderful
then that He never thought of disobeying, even when

THE DEATH. 197
His Father asked Him to drink the cup of shame and
utter loss !
He became " obedient even unto death." No
greater test of filial obedience was possible than that.
But such a supreme test was absolutely necessary in
order that the perfection of His filial obedience might
be demonstrated. Until He had made the greatest
and the last surrender which man can make — the
surrender of life itself — at the call of duty, and at the
instance of the spiritual light by which He directed
His life, the fact could neither be absolutely clear,
nor absolutely certain, that He possessed the filial
spirit " without measure." It would always have been
possible to say : " He might have failed if He had
been subjected to that test ; His life was sublime, and
so far as we can see, perfect in the filial spirit which
it displayed ; but how would it have been if He had
been called to die ? "
We cannot say that now. He was called to die, —
to die under circumstances which made death most
painful, most shameful, most inglorious — to die a
death which seemed to affix to His life-work the mark
of utter failure — which exposed Him to the scorn and
contempt of His countrymen, and bewildered and
offended even His chosen followers. He was called
to tread a path which seemed to lead to utter loss ;
a path altogether dark, except for the light which
faith and hope shed upon it ; a path which none but
He could, at the time, see that He was called to tread,
or even justified in treading. How He came to know
with absolute certainty that it was His Father's will
that He should tread that path is, as we have

198 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
previously pointed out, a mystery which we cannot
hope to fathom; but it seems certain that He was.
never perplexed by any doubts on that point. His
Father's will was plain to Him ; but it was plain not
because of, but in spite of, the circumstances by which
He was surrounded. There was nothing in the
circumstances to justify the course He adopted. His
only justification was an inward conviction. The light
by which He steered His course was purely spiritual —
it was not the light of reason and common sense, but
the light which flooded His trustful and loving Spirit
from the eternal source of Light and Life.
Nor did His natural desires help Him at all in
treading this path. He did not wish to die ; He only
willed it, because it was His Father's will. He was
not tired of life, and anxious to escape from it. On
the contrary, the pulses of life beat strong in Him,
and He felt Himself straitened and hampered in
the narrow path which He saw to be the path of
duty. In the light of these facts we can realise how
supreme a test of His obedience was this call which
He received — to die; and how perfect is the quality
of the obedience which He manifested in His
acceptance of the call. " Obedient unto death, even
the death of the Cross " ; what greater proof of
obedience, we repeat, could the Father demand of
any Son than that? Because this Son stood even
that test — gave even that proof of filial submission —
we are only claiming His due when we claim for Him
the rank of Captain and Leader among the Sons of
men ; the rank of the First Born of the Sons of God.

THE DEATH. i g9
But Undoubtedly the master motive which prompted
Jesus to accomplish the deed of the Cross was
Love. It is the.light of an amazing love — a love bear
ing, hoping, believing, enduring all things for mankind
which was its object — it is this light — matchless in
its purity, and dazzling in its splendour — which orbs
itself against the dark background of hatred, and
injustice, and cruelty; of sorrow, and shame, and
agony, in which the Cross of Jesus is set. For
though it is perfectly true that He surrendered Him
self to death because He knew that it was His Father's
Will that He should tread that path, it is not the whole
truth. He did not simply obey the voice of duty;
He was influenced by a higher motive than mere
obedience. He deliberately chose the way of the
Cross, because His unerring insight enabled Him to
discern that in that way He could best accomplish
His Purpose. That Purpose, we again repeat, was
the stupendously grand, and perfectly unselfish one,
of rescuing the human race from the dominion of sin,
and winning them to love, and trust, and obey His
Father. There is only one motive which could have
prompted Him to undertake such a Purpose, and to
go through with it, as He did, at all costs. That
motive is love. He loved God, and He knew how
good and blessed was the life of communion and
fellowship, of trust and obedience which He lived
with God. He loved God, and He knew God loved
Him. And thus knowing what life and love are — the
Life and Love of God, and the life and the love which
man can share with God — love, which was His life,
prompted Him, alike for God's sake and for man's

200 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
sake, to try and win the world, at all costs, to the life
and the love which was His and God's.
What it cost Him we can only know in part ; but
we can see and know enough to be filled with wonder
and amazement, gratitude and devotion at the
spectacle of this strong Son of Man, and Son of God,
living for the world's sake a life of toil and lowly
service, and consummating that life by a death of
utter self-renunciation — not deeming the surrender of
life itself too great a sacrifice to make, in order to
accomplish His divine purpose of saving the world,
and leading the hosts of humanity to the glory and
the blessedness of the eternal life.
Yes, it cost Him everything which it is possible for
manhood to renounce ; and the cost is inestimable,
because we cannot comprehend, but only imperfectly
apprehend, what the riches of His Manhood were.
We have ample evidence that He was so richly
endowed that all the paths of life were open to Him.
He could have succeeded magnificently in anything
and everything which He chose to attempt. Wealth,
fame, honour, power, the kingdoms of the world and
the glory of them, they might all have been His. He
renounced them all, and chose instead the way of the
Cross! And why? Because in His heart there
burned an inextinguishable flame of love for the race
with which, in spite of His incomparable superiority,
He delighted to recognise and to claim kinship. That
flame of love neither misunderstanding, nor contempt,
nor slander, nor injustice, nor hatred could quench.
The extremest manifestations of evil could not eclipse
it; the most noisome exhalations from sin-corrupted

THE DEATH. 201
hearts could not stifle it. Prompted by love He lived
for man ; and prompted by love He died — the victim,
yet_the victor — surrendering all, yet thereby gaining
all ; despised and rejected of men, yet from that hour
honoured and reverenced, and worshipped, and loved
by all — all, that is, who have realised the amazing
truth that He became poor, emptied Himself of His
glory, died, for them ; that they through His poverty,
might be rich, through His renunciation of glory,
glorious, through His death alive with the eternal life.
We cannot dwell further on this transcendent theme
of the love of Jesus, as it reveals itself in His self-
sacrificing death. We will simply point out before we
pass on, how supremely important an event in the
history of the world that death reveals itself to be,
in the light of this master-motive which we have just
been considering. Without passing beyond the limits
of " that which is natural " we are obliged to acknow
ledge that nothing in human history is comparable in
importance — because nothing is so calculated to
inspire hope, and kindle admiration and love — with
this indubitable fact that one Man has appeared among
the sons of men in whose heart burned a flame of
unquenchable love for His fellow men — that one Man
has lived who thought the world worth dying for, and
who did die for it, in pure unselfishness, in order to
accomplish the spiritual ends to which He had
devoted His life.
In the light of that " natural " fact, the spiritual
truths concerning God which He proclaimed surely
receive confirmation enough to justify an acceptance
of them ; and the highest hopes of a glorious outcome

202 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
of this present travail of the creation are seen to be
not merely baseless dreams.
In considering these grand and fundamental
spiritual qualities which the deed of the Cross reveals
in the Man Jesus- — faith, obedience, love — we have
contemplated His Passion as a whole.
But we must not neglect a closer inspection of His
Character, as it is revealed in His words and actions
during the long and weary hours which elapsed
between His arrest and death, if we wish to make the
sketch complete, even in outline.
Faith, obedience, and love, were the roots of His
Life's tree, going deep down into the soil of eternal
things ; and from these roots sprang the noble stem
of that sublime Purpose to accomplish which He
devoted His life, and which He consummated by His
voluntary death.
But root and stem developed further into leaf, and
flower, and fruit. It is only when we contemplate the
tree as it robes itself in the beauty of summer verdure,
or displays its wealth of autumn fruit, that we can
know and appreciate it truly and fully.
And so (to drop the metaphor) we must contemplate
the virtues and graces which Jesus manifested,
while He was draining this bitter cup which His
Father gave Him to drink, if we are to form an ade
quate estimate of His Character, as this closing act of
His life reveals it to us.
In order to duly appreciate His attitude and de
meanour, we must distinctly bear in mind the
peculiarities of the situation. We must remember

THE DEATH. 203
that He was perfectly innocent of any crime — so com
pletely innocent that even the malice of His enemies
could not invent a charge which offered a justifiable
pretext for His condemnation.
Still He knew that He must die, and He was
perfectly willing to die. It was His Father's will, and
He bowed in complete submission to it. It was this
conviction which prevented Him from taking any steps
to avoid arrest, and which restrained Him from any
attempt to vindicate His innocence before His judges.
It led Him to adopt the only attitude which, in these
peculiar circumstances, He could adopt — the atti
tude of complete passivity. He let things take their
course, well knowing what course they would take.
He made no attempt to persuade either the Sanhedrin,
or Pilate, to deal with Him justly — made no appeal
to the laws — no appeal to the facts of His life and
teaching — no attempt to refute the false charges
which were brought against Him, and no protest
against the unjust sentence which was pronounced on
Him. But while, on the one hand, He made no attempt to
persuade His judges to be just, He did nothing which
could afford them any excuse for being unjust. Many
innocent men have prejudiced their case by failing
to comport themselves wisely and prudently before
their judges ; by indulging in passionate outbursts of
scorn and indignation when dealt with unjustly, or by
answering the questions put to them in such a way as
to compromise themselves.
Jesus made no such mistakes. To the exasperation
of the Sanhedrin, and to the wonder of Pilate, He

204 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
maintained a remarkable silence during the testimony
of the false witnesses, and the clamour of His foes. It
was only when the high priest solemnly adjured Him
to speak, that He broke the silence — which if continued
might have been construed into a denial of the truth —
and replied to His question : it was only when Pilate
put to Him questions which were relevant — questions
which he needed to have answered in order to rightly
understand and fairly judge the case — that He con
descended to speak. To such irrelevant ones as
"Whence art thou?" "What is truth?" He would
vouchsafe no reply.
This impressive silence of His is in perfect keeping
with that attitude of passivity which the voluntariness
of His surrender necessitated. He is under a moral
necessity — knowing as He does that it is His Father's
Will that He should die — to abstain from making
any attempt to avoid His fate. This He clearly recog
nises ; and, not because He cannot, but because He
will not, He makes no effort to influence the course of
events. He both permits the powers of evil to seize
Him in their grasp, and when they have seized Him
to work their will upon Him. He who could heal the
sick, and still the winds and waves, and raise the dead,
will work no miracle to confound His foes. He who
spake as never man spake, will utter no word to
persuade His judges to be just. He deliberately
places Himself where the tide of evil can surround
Him, and as deliberately permits it unhindered to
sweep Him to destruction.
There is a clear and evident connection between this
passive surrender of Himself to the forces of evil,* and

THE DEATH. 205
the Purpose which He had set Himself to accomplish
in the world. The causes which produced the tragedy
of His death rendered it necessary that there should be
such a tragedy. He could not conquer evil except by
submitting to it, and letting it do its worst with Him.
He could not save Himself, and at the same time save
the world. This, however, we will touch upon more
fully later, when we come to consider the reasons
which made His death a necessity. At present we
merely note those features of His Character which this
attitude and bearing of His bring into greatest
prominence. These are to some extent new to us, since the situa
tion in which He is now placed has no parallel in His
previous career. We find Him now for the first time
the victim of gross injustice ; subjected to vile abuse ;
treated with open scorn and contempt. We see Him
suffering, not merely from the natural ills of the flesh,
but from the blows and stripes of cruel and malignant
enemies, and brutal strangers.
How does He comport Himself in these new and
trying circumstances? With a humility, a meekness,
and a self-control, combined with a noble dignity and
a divine calmness, which are absolutely perfect! He
shows Himself as strong — as Godlike — when He is
called to endure, as He has shown Himself when
called to act. At the fitting time, and at the call of
duty, He who has proved Himself to be surpassingly
rich in all that constitutes the wealth of manhood, can
renounce it all, and place Himself on a level with the
poorest and most helpless of His race ; can humble
Himself to submit to the very worst that sinful man

206 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
can do to Him, without complaint, without impatience,
without an angry or imprudent word ; can show Him
self even more divine in this His hour of complete hu
miliation and weakness, than in the hour of His greatest
exaltation and most superhuman power. This is
the amazing fact which is disclosed to us when we
contemplate the Man Jesus as the Gospel narra
tives of His Passion reveal Him to us — not merely the
fact that He was willing and able to accomplish this
act of absolute renunciation, but that He did it so
graciously — did it, and yet displayed in the doing of it
a Character no less perfect — a Spirit no less full of
grace and truth — than in any previous part of His
career. In this hour of failure, and shame, and pain,
He is in no wise thrown off His balance ; His Spirit is
calm and unruffled ; His mien displays a noble, quiet
dignity ; He exhibits inexhaustible patience, amazing
meekness, perfect self-restraint, divine self-forgetful-
ness. In a word, He is still, in this hour when His
Father subjects Him to the supremest test of life —
calling on Him to renounce everything, to humble
Himself to the lowest level of humiliation, to endure
the extremest pangs which evil and cruel men can
inflict on soul and body — He is still the Ideal Man —
the perfect and Divine Son — full of grace and truth
to a degree of fulness far beyond that to which (but
for Him) we could have deemed the spirit of man
capable of attaining, or could even have imagined the
Divine Spirit to be.
There is one feature of Jesus' attitude during
these closing hours of His life to which we have
already briefly alluded, but which deserves to be

THE DEATH. 207
contemplated a little more closely: we allude to His
perfect self-restraint and self-control — that feature
which particularly impressed the impetuous Peter ;
"follow His steps . . . who when He was reviled,
reviled not again ; when He suffered, threatened not."
(1 Peter, ii. 23). But it is not chiefly in the fact that
He altogether abstained from wild and hasty words,
when suffering from the abuse and blows of His
enemies, that the strength of His self-control can be
most clearly discerned. It is only when we realise what
He might have done, but would not do — realise that this
apparently helpless victim of the malice and cruelty
of man, had at His command boundless power ; un
limited ability to confound and annihilate His ene
mies — knew that all the forces of Nature were ready
to do His will, and the Father prepared at a word to
send the legions of Heaven to His rescue ; knew,
when Pilate boasted of his power, that the power
which had been given him from above was as nothing
compared with His — knew when, hanging on the
Cross, His enemies taunted Him : " Let the Christ,
the King of Israel, now come down from the Cross,
that we may see and believe" (Mark xv. 32), that He
could come down, and confound them in a moment —
it is only when we realise all this, that the perfection
of the self-control which made the perfection of the
self-renunciation possible, becomes apparent ; and in
spite of the previous evidences we have had of His
complete self-mastery, and sublime unselfishness in the
use of His power, we marvel that He could have done
it. We are lost in wonder and astonishment when we
contemplate such an exhibition of character as this —

208 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
when we behold Him who was subject to' the fiercest
storm of hate which ever beat upon a human soul, or
wrecked a human life ; and the victim of the cruellest
wrong which man can inflict upon his fellow-man,
remaining as loyal and true, as noble and strong, as
patient and self-forgetful, as calm and unmoved, as
we have previously found Him when facing His en
raged fellow-townsmen ; or dealing with the crisis of
His affairs in Galilee ; or setting His face to go to
Jerusalem ; or looking round about on all things in the
temple, in the presence of the expectant multitudes.
Of a truth, we are compelled to acknowledge, this
Man is absolute master of Himself; a Man who can
endure unshaken all the tests of life ; invincible by
circumstances ; proof against all the assaults and se
ductions of evil — a Man to be rapturously hailed as
King and Lord by all the sons of men who, amid
the tests and temptations of life, have not stood firm.
We might continue indefinitely this inspection of
the Character of Jesus as it reveals itself in
the way in which He bore Himself during His Pas
sion. For the fulness of grace and truth which He
displayed orbs itself more and more fully the more
we contemplate it : we cannot exhaust the theme.
But we trust we have said sufficient to convince the
reader that it is inexhaustible — that the Character
which we have been contemplating is a Character
boundless in its fulness, and flawless in its perfection.
Some may say that the attempt we have been mak
ing to show that this is the case is a superfluous one ;
but we have not been writing for such. If others say
that what we have been writing has not led them to

THE DEATH. 2°9
conviction, we cannot hope to produce conviction in
them by pursuing this line of meditation any further.
We pass on to consider the important point which
remains to be discussed ; the question with which we
have come face to face more than once in the course
of this chapter : Why was it necessary that Jesus
should die?
The ground we have already traversed in the pre
vious pages clearly indicates the direction in which we
must look, if we are to find an adequate reply to that
question. We have pointed out that His death stands in close,
organic relation to the Purpose which He set Himself
to accomplish ; that He very early in His career, if
not at the very commencement, recognised its neces
sity, and steadily contemplated it as the consumma
tion of His work.
What we have now to do is to endeavour to dis
cover the reasons for that dire necessity — why the
sublime Purpose that He set Himself to achieve could
not be accomplished without His undergoing such a fate.
We shall take the first step towards answering that
question by ascertaining the difficulties which inter
posed themselves to the accomplishment of that Pur
pose. What, let us ask, were the obstacles which lay
in the path of any reformer and saviour of the race —
which had to be overcome by any one who undertook
the task of elevating humanity from the moral and
spiritual condition in which Jesus found it — in which
indeed the great majority of men still remain — to the
dignity and fulness of the life of sonship with God.
P

210 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
They were mainly twto — human ignorance, and
human sinfulness.
The human race was in a state of ignorance — ignor
ance of God, and consequently of the life which God
desired them to live.
True, this ignorance was not absolute. God has not
left Himself at any time without witnesses in the
world. Conscience has always, in every man, testified
to some extent for Him. There has always been that
light lightening every man who' has been born into the
world. And, in addition to that, to every nation have
come, from time to time, men in whom the light of con
science has shone more clearly than in their fellows.
Prophets, seers, poets, philosophers — every nation has
had its share of these ; not all equally endowed, nor
all manifesting the light in the same way, but all alike
in this respect : — they have had a clearer insight into
truth and righteousness, and caught glimpses of a
higher ideal of life than those among whom they
lived. The nation to which Jesus belonged, and to
which He confined His energies, has been, we need
hardly point out, the one most favoured in this
respect ; and its literature — in which the truth and
light which its most gifted men apprehended, is en
shrined — rightly, on that account, takes precedence
over all other literatures, and has become part of the
one great world-book, the Bible.
The light and truth which the gifted men of that
nation apprehended was, as we now know, partial and
incomplete. Their highest conceptions of the Charac
ter of God fell far short of the full truth ; as conse-

THE DEATH. 21!
quently did also their highest ideals of hfe and con
duct. This they themselves recognised, and continu
ally and consistently anticipated the advent of One
who would fulfil their hopes and aspirations, and
give them a satisfying revelation of truth and
righteousness. We know how they received Him when He actually
appeared. The reason for that we will not con
sider at present ; it will become abundantly evident
when we come to consider the second great difficulty
which a world-reformer has to encounter.
What we wish to point out now is that if ignorance,
or lack of full knowledge, had been the only difficulty
which such a reformer had to encounter, a life such as
Jesus lived would indeed still have been a necessity,
but not such a death as He died.
The world would have needed — did need — a fuller
revelation of the Character of God, to supplement the
incomplete conceptions of the Hebrew prophets and
seers ; and a fuller manifestation of life and conduct
than it had previously beheld in the lives of its most
gifted and saintly men ; to dispel the darkness of
ignorance, or to change the twilight of partial know
ledge into the full daylight of the truth ; but it would
not have required Him who embodied this complete
revelation of truth and light to die a cruel and shame
ful death.
To have taught and lived the truth would have
been, in that case, sufficient for the accomplishment of
His purpose : His life might have been an idyll ;
there would have been no need for it to be a tragedy.
It was, then, we are forced to conclude, that disease

212 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
and bias in human nature which we call Sin, which
made His death a necessity. It was the second, and
by far the greater difficulty which the world's re
formers have had to encounter, which He — by a divine
instinct — recognised could only be overcome at such a
cost as that. Oh! the wonder of it! That He was
willing to> pay that price in order to overcome it !
We have brought the reader now to the point at
which " That which is natural " in the death of
Jesus links itself indissolubly to " that which is
spiritual." The conclusion we have come to, that it
was human sinfulness which made Jesus' death
a necessity, brings us face to face with the central doc
trine of Christianity — the doctrine of the Atonement.
All Christians agree that by His death Jesus
made atonement for the sins of the world. They
differ widely in their conceptions of how He did this ;
but that He did it, they are at one in agreeing. How
ever different have been their conceptions of the
modus operandi, they have all alike regarded His
death as the basis of assurance that the guilt of their
sin has been removed ; that its power over them has
been broken ; and that henceforth a new life — a life of
filial relations with the God and Father of the Lord
Jesus — commences ; a life whose only limit of expan
sion is "the measure of the stature of the fulness of
Christ." But this recognition of the saving efficacy of the
atoning work of Jesus is impossible as long as we walk
by sight, and keep our feet on "that which is
natural." It is impossible because the sense of guilt, which

THE DEATH. 413
invariably accompanies the consciousness of sinful
ness, is not merely, or chiefly, the sense of wrong which
we have done to our fellow men, but the sense of
wrong which we have done to God ; and it is not satis
fied by the assurance of the forgiveness of our fellow
men ; it craves for, and can only be satisfied by, the
assurance that God forgives.
How can that assurance be gained ? How can sin
ful man attain to the conviction that "there is for
giveness with God, that He may be feared"? The
unanimous answer which all who have attained to that
conviction give to that momentous question is, that it
can only be apprehended by Faith. And ever since
the Man whose Character we are contemplating
lived, and died, and rose again, the unanimous verdict
of the centuries has been that " in none other is there
salvation : for neither is there any other name under
heaven, that is given among men wherein we must
be saved." That is to say, Faith — which can be
clearly distinguished from credulity by the fact that
it always rests on grounds which are satisfactory and
satisfying, both to the reason and to the moral sense
of the individual who exercises it — Faith has found
nothing on which she can rest, with anything
like the same feeling of confidence with which
she can rest on the facts of the life, and death, and
resurrection of Jesus ; she has found no man save Him,
in whom she can place entire reliance ; she has found
no grounds of assurance concerning the mercy and the
love of the Creator comparable with those which are
furnished by the teaching, person, and work of the
historic Jesus.

214 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
What we desire to clearly point out now is that,
though faith has found it possible to rest securely in
Him, it is faith, and faith alone, which will enable any
man to attain to, or to continue in, that resting-place.
The truth which faith can apprehend — that in Jesus
is to be found a true and full manifestation of
the Life and Heart of the Eternal Father — the clear
assurance of His mercy towards, and His love for,
man — is a truth which can only be apprehended by
faith. It is a truth which " never can be proved." It is
impossible, by any kind of demonstration, to prove
absolutely that Jesus' teaching concerning God
and Life is true ; it is impossible to prove that
His life, beautiful and wonderful though it is, is a
true manifestation of the life of God ; it is impossible
to prove that by His death, God " commends His love
towards us." Sight and reason fail us directly we try
to pass beyond the limits of the " natural." Faith
alone can grasp the spiritual — can apprehend the
things which are not seen, and which are eternal.
" The steps of faith
Fall on the seeming void, and find
The rock beneath."
Our endeavour in this work has been to lead the
reader step by step to this point, where sight ends and
faith begins — the point at which the recognition of
the amazing uniqueness of the Character of Jesus
and admiration of His Mind and Spirit, can
pass, by an easy transition, into trust in Him as the
Son of God. Surely, after what we have seen Him to
be, and what we have seen Him willing to do, the

THE DEATH. ' '5
step onward into faith in Him as the Son — one in
Heart, and Mind, and Will with the invisible Father,
whom He proclaimed, in fellowship with whom He
lived, in obedience to whose will He died — is not
difficult. It is, at any rate, far more difficult to dis
cover, or invent, an adequate explanation of Him, when
this step is not taken. And seeing that, in the light of
the conclusion we have come to — that it was human
sinfulness which made His death a necessity — we can
not proceed further in our inquiry without taking this
step of faith — (for we cannot in any adequate degree
understand why it was necessary for Him to die, in
order to overcome the difficulty which human sinful
ness interposed to the accomplishment of His Pur
pose, unless we accept Him as God's authorised Mes
senger and Representative, and recognise that, in some
way or other, there is an indissoluble connection
between His self-sacrificing death and that assurance
of God's forgiveness which mankind absolutely re
quires, if the burden of the guilt of sin is to be
removed) — we will assume that the reader is now
prepared to take that step : to believe that " God
in Christ forgives us." Thus, and thus only, can we
open the way for the inquiry : Why was it necessary
for Him to die, before, and in order that, Sin might
be overcome, man be reconciled to God, and the
divine life of Sonship be entered upon by the human
race? This great question can be regarded from two
points of view — the human and the divine. There
are two parties to every reconciliation — two persons
whose needs and requirements are to be considered.

216 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
No full answer to the question can be obtained, unless
we look at it in both these aspects.
Let us first of all look at it from the point of view
of the needs of man — the subjective view, as it is
commonly called.
Man needed — we have pointed out — the assurance
of divine forgiveness. How, let us ask, could that
assurance be conveyed to him?
Two methods by which the truth could be made
known at once suggest themselves — two methods by
which " in divers portions," and with more or less com
pleteness, it has been again and again revealed to the
world. The first method is by the truth being taught — by
its authoritative proclamation, as a message delivered
from God, by some prophet or seer of finer moral
fibre, and keener spiritual insight than his fellows,
who has apprehended it, or to whom it has been
revealed. This, as we know, was the method by which the
truth was conveyed to the Hebrew nation. The
Hebrew literature is crowded with proclamations of
the mercy and forgiveness of Jehovah. And the
men who proclaimed the truth unhesitatingly claimed
to be authorised by God to make the proclamation ;
their final court of appeal was always a " thus saith the
Lord." But the history of the Hebrew nation abundantly
testifies to the fact that this method alone was not
adequate for the needs of the human heart.
The prophets' continual announcement of God's
willingness to forgive, and their urgent calls to re-

THE DEATH. 217
pentance and reformation, failed to produce any wide
spread conviction, or any lasting moral reformation.
Their scornful and uncompromising contempt for and
denunciation of sacrifices, produced little or no effect.
Men continued to endeavour to propitiate the deity by
sacrifices and offerings, even though their prophets
proclaimed that God abhorred them. The mere pro
clamation of the divine forgiveness was insufficient.
Men deeply conscious of sinfulness are not in a posi
tion to accept a mere message. Their sense of guilt
is too keen, and their conceptions of the Character of
God — warped by sin — are too imperfect, to permit
them to believe that He is willing to freely forgive
them. Justification by faith is a truth to which they
cannot attain. They think that He requires works as
well — not merely the work of repentance and reforma
tion, but the performance of some act, or the observ
ance of some rite or ceremony, which is costly and
laborious ; which will assuage His supposed wrath, and
cause Him to look with favour on the doer of them.
The continuance of the temple sacrifices right up to
the time of Jesus, and the laborious attempts of
the religious classes in His day to win justification by
the works of the law, abundantly testify to the fact
that the needs of the sinful heart of man could not be
adequately met by the mere proclamation of the truth
of the divine forgiveness. A few could, and did, re
ceive it — those who constituted the spiritual aristo
cracy of the nation ; but, for the needs of the nation
as a whole, it was inadequate ; and much more, there
fore, was it inadequate for the needs of the whole
world.

218 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
The second method by which the assurance of the
divine forgiveness could be (and has been) conveyed
to Man, is by the manifestation of the Divine Charac
ter in life. To live the truth — to manifest a merciful,
and long-suffering, and magnanimous spirit to the
world — that, especially when combined with a profes
sion of faith in the mercy and pity of God, and most
especially when combined with the claim to be God's
prophet and representative, has never failed to arrest
the world's attention, and to produce, at any rate in
some, the conviction of its truthfulness.
But that method, too, has proved inadequate for
the needs of the world. Sinful men can no more be
brought to believe that God freely forgives them, be
cause they see a fellow-man manifesting a forgiving
spirit — even though that manifestation is consistent,
and is given by one who is an acknowledged saint —
than they can be brought to believe the message alone.
The salvation of the world would have been an easy
task, if the example of beautiful lives, and forgiving
dispositions, had been sufficient to assuage the con
sciousness of guilt — to convince men that that was the
spirit of God's life, and to lead them to repentance
and reformation. The power of a godly life has
undoubtedly been sufficient to lead many to God :
those who have been, spiritually, most richly endowed,
and who have never sounded the deeper depths of
sinfulness, have been able, in all ages, to trust in the
forgiveness of God, and have been stimulated to live
righteous and holy lives, by the influence which godly
lives have had over them.
More particularly since Jesus lived His perfect
life, many men have found it possible to accept,

THE DEATH. 219
and to rest content with, the testimony of that Life
to the Character of God ; and have not felt the need
of seeking for any deeper ground of assurance, or
any more powerful stimulus to righteousness.
But it is a notorious fact that those forms of Chris
tianity which have sprung from the teaching of this
aspect of truth alone, have not manifested the signs of
a healthy and permanent vitality; and have not
flourished as living branches of the true vine. They
have conspicuously failed to win the masses ; because
they have failed to proclaim the message of the divine
forgiveness in such a way as to convince the more de
praved, and to present the Divine Character in such
aspects of winning loveliness as to compel sinful hearts
to yield, and sinbound wills to submit.
As a matter of fact, we know that the effect pro
duced on the more sinful of mankind, by the spectacle
of a righteous and holy life, has generally been the
reverse of that which is needed. Such lives have
aroused, not contrition and faith, but hatred, and all
the most diabolical feelings and passions of which the
human heart is capable. Evil, far from being over
come by such manifestations of the truth, has, in the
presence of it, been stimulated to greater activity. It
caused the Jewish nation to kill the prophets, and
stone them that were sent unto them. It committed
its wildest outrage — it revealed itself in blackest form
— against Him who was the very light and truth of
God. He manifested the truth, as we have seen, to
a degree beyond which it is impossible to conceive or
imagine anything more perfectly divine ; and they
crucified Him.
The line of thought which we have been following,

220 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
— and especially the terrible fact to which we have just
alluded — brings us face to face with a second great
need of sinful man ; a need which indeed, when the
gravity of the fact of human sinfulness is adequately
realised, cannot but be regarded as of primary im
portance ; for it must be met before any message or
demonstration of the divine forgiveness can have a
chance of acceptance.
We refer to the need which many men have (an
unfelt need, but none the less real on that account) of
having the fact of their sinfulness brought home to
them. Men must be convinced that they are sinners, and
must feel the need of forgiveness, before they will
begin to look for a convincing assurance of forgiveness.
In theological language, conviction of sin must precede
repentance. Now the history of the Hebrew nation, and the
tragic termination of the life of Jesus, demon
strate most clearly that that need cannot be adequately
met, either by the most scathing exposure of the
wickedness of men's lives, and the most urgent calls
to repentance, or by the clearest demonstration
of what God requires of His creatures — whether that
demonstration be given by teaching, or by a holy life.
The Hebrew prophets, and Jesus Himself, em
ployed these methods in order to overcome that initial
difficulty in the way of the salvation of men, and failed.
Their scathing denunciations aroused anger, not
remorse ; their calls to repentance fell on ears too
deaf to hear; their righteous lives kindled hatred,
not respect and reverence. They were stoned, and

THE DEATH. 221
killed, and crucified, because they failed to arouse in
those who most needed it, the desire for better things ;
because none of these methods are powerful enough
to perform that process of spiritual chemistry which
the stony heart of man must undergo before repen
tance and reformation are possible — the breaking-up
of its stubborn base of pride and self-will, and the
transmutation of these flinty elements into the saving
salt of contrition, and the hydrate of humility.
There is no necessity for dwelling further on this
great primary need of the sinful heart of man — this
tremendous difficulty which must be faced and over
come before any reformer can begin to hope for suc
cess. It is a difficulty, the greatness of which, in the
case of any reformer daring to embrace the whole
world in the scope of his endeavour, can only be
accurately estimated by realising what sin is at its
worst — in men like lago, or Caesar Borgia, or those
who crucified Jesus.
But we have not yet enumerated all the needs of
man which have to be met before he can be saved from
sin, and won to the life of holiness.
For, even if we suppose the difficulties we have
enumerated to have been overcome — even if we sup
pose conviction of sin, and recognition and acceptance
of the divine mercy to have been accomplished — he
needs yet a double assurance, before he can begin the
attempt to work out his salvation.
Conviction of sin does not free him from the power
of sin ; it only enables him to realise how completely
sin holds him in its octopus grasp. The assurance
of pardon will arouse him to no effort to shake himself

222 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
free from its grip, unless it is accompanied by the
hope that he can thus free himself. The good news
that God freely pardons sin, must be a continual
source of sorrow and anguish to the contrite sinner
who sees no prospect before him, except that of going
on sinning. He needs some clear and satisfying
assurance that sin can be overcome ; the hope that in
the future he will not need God's forgiveness as much
as he does now ; the hope that ultimately he will not
need it at all. That is, he needs the assurance and
the hope that sanctification is possible — that the time
will come when his life will be altogether well-
pleasing in the sight of God, because altogether free
from the power of sin, and altogether ruled by
righteousness. And meanwhile — while this is only an assurance and
a hope, not a realised fact — he needs strength, power,
to begin, and to continue to the end, the struggle and
conflict with sin — power to master the evil dispositions,
and inclinations, and habits which are the only too
evident proofs of the dominion of sin over him.
Where is he to find this assurance, and hope, and
power? Not within himself. His own condition
furnishes no ground for hope, but only for despair.
He knows only too well that sin has him in its grip,
and that he is powerless to shake it off. He most
likely has made the attempt, time and again, before he
got to' his present position, and has failed. By bitter
experience he has proved that he is fast bound by a
chain of sinful tendencies and habits, and that it is too
strong for him to break. What he absolutely needs is
some power of which he can avail himself, stronger

THE DEATH. 223
than the power of sin ; some emotion, some affection,
some attractive influence, which shall impart new
strength to his spirit, which shall enable him to shake
off the fefters with which the past has shackled him,
and to set out joyfully on a new course.
Where is such power to be found? Not in any
moral teaching, however pure and lofty. Duty and
righteousness have no power of themselves to get
themselves accepted and embodied in life. They can
testify, they cannot constrain. Not in a holy and
righteous life, unless that life is linked by indissoluble
bonds to the life of the sinner. " Example is better
than precept " undoubtedly, but the power of example
is only strong in cases where the hope of achievement
is present — that is, when the consciousness of the
possession of the power to copy the example is already
there. And in the case we are contemplating, it is just
that consciousness of power which is lacking. The
spectacle of a holy life will only heighten the contrite
sinner's despair, so long as it stands before him merely
as an example : he will see in it a model of
what he might, have been, and ought to have
been; but he will derive from the contem
plation of it no quickening impulse : he may
admire, but he will not be stimulated to imitate. Only
when the cold alpine snows of purity become tinged
with the ruddy hues of affection, will his pulses begin
to beat more quickly as he contemplates them ; only
when the pure and holy one comes near, and taking
the sinner's hand, looks into his face with the look of
love, and demonstrates by irrefutable proofs that for
love's sake he is willing to link his life with his — to

224 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
share the burden of his sin, to help him, cheer him,
live for him, and die for him if necessary — only then
will he be stimulated to imitation ; compelled by the
power of love to prove himself not all unworthy of
such great condescension.
And there is yet another need which sin has created,
which we have just alluded to above. The sinner
needs some one to share with him the burden of his
sin. All sin has to be paid for by some one, for all
sin is violation of God's laws, and none of God's laws
can be violated with impunity.
The burden of guilt, until it is removed by the
acceptance of pardon, must be borne by the sinner him
self ; no one can share that burden with him. But the
burden of the consequences of sin — the pain, the
sorrow, the misery which it entails — must be shared by
some one ; the sinner cannot, if he would, restrict all
the consequences of his sin to himself.
In other words, sin can only be atoned for, its
debt paid, by vicarious suffering — by the innocent
sharing with the guilty the penalty which is always
attached to the transgression of the divine laws.
But there are two kinds of vicarious suffering, and
there are very important differences between the
two. The most common form of it is that in which the
innocent suffer for the guilty either unconsciously,
or unwillingly. We are all living examples of this
form of vicarious suffering. We suffer every day and
hour of our lives for the sins of our progenitors, and
the sins of those with whom we associate. The
harvest of pain and misery which sin entails is very

THE DEATH. 225
often not reaped (it is not exaggerating the truth to
say, it is never fully reaped) by the generation that
sows it. God visits the sins of the fathers upon the
children to the third and fourth generation. And the
worst natural consequences of sin, and even many of
its spiritual consequences, are not confined to the
sinner ; they work out their effects on those who may
have been, and often are, wholly innocent of any
participation in his sin.
But, in the vast majority of cases, this sin-bearing is
not done consciously ; and — what is still more impor
tant to note — even if it is done consciously, it is not
done willingly.
We often cannot fully trace the causes of our suffer
ings — sometimes we cannot trace them at all ; but
when we can trace them, the feelings they arouse in us
against those who have brought them upon us are,
almost invariably, those of anger and resentment. We
find it very hard, if not impossible, to forgive those
who have done us such wrong, and we only endure
the wrong because we are compelled to, not because
we are willing to endure it.
We need not dwell further on this form of vicarious
suffering ; it is too familiar a form to need insisting
on. We will only point out that this form of it, as it is
free from merit, is also free from efficacy, so far as
the cancelling of the consequences of sin is concerned.
Being unwilling, in the vast majority of cases, to
accept these consequences, men bear only that portion
of them which they are absolutely compelled to bear,
passing on to others the remainder. Thus the bitter
harvest which they have been compelled to reap they
Q

226 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
do not destroy (as they might do if they were willing
sin-bearers), but scatter it as seed in the fields of other
lives ; where it is only too certain to germinate, and
produce fresh harvests in the future*
But there is another kind of vicarious suffering;
that, namely, which is endured not merely in the place
of, but also for the sake of another ; that which is both
conscious and willing, and which consequently has an
altogether different moral quality from the first, and
produces altogether different results.
This kind the world has always regarded as
meritorious — deserving of honour and praise ; because
its spirit is so unlike, and so much better than, the
spirit in which the majority of men endure the con
sequences of others' sins. And the world has also, to
some extent (though not often fully and clearly)
realised that this kind of vicarious suffering is effica
cious also, and that by it, and by it alone, the conse
quences of sin can be annihilated.
Let us consider this kind of vicarious suffering atten-
* We may give as an example the case (we have used the
illustration further on, but we will point to it here for the
sake of clearness) of one who inherits some physical weakness
or disease, which is the direct result of sins which his
progenitors have committed. If such an one (who, we will
suppose, is unfit to marry) is not willing to accept that
restriction of life's joys which is the penalty that must
be paid if the consequences of the sin are to be annihilated,
and consequently transmits to another generation the disease
from which he suffers, he is a partial sin-bearer, inasmuch
as he is a sufferer from the disease which is the direct result
of sin ; but he is an unwilling sufferer, whose vicarious
suffering is without merit, and also, it is obvious, without
efficacy, so far as the cancelling of the consequences of sin
is concerned.

THE DEATH. 227
tively, that we may realise its true nature, and under
stand how and why it can annihilate sin.
It is distinguished from the other — we have pointed
out — by the fact that it is a conscious and a willing
sacrifice, i.e., that he who thus sacrifices himself realises
what he is doing when he takes upon his own
shoulders the burden of consequences which sin
entails — that he counts the cost of pain, and suffering,
and self-renunciation which it will involve, and is
willing to pay it. This kind of vicarious suffering
consequently implies and involves condescension on
the part of him who makes it — a voluntary descent,
from a position of superiority or advantage, to the
level of an inferior and less advantageously circum
stanced life ; a voluntary appropriation of burdens
which he is not compelled to bear, and only can bear
by identifying himself, more or less closely, with the
life to which he stoops.
There have been many glorious examples of this
kind of vicarious sacrifice in all ages — instances too
numerous to quote of men and women who have
sacrificed position, fame, reputation — even life itself —
for the sake of the poor, the wretched, and the sinful.
And in all cases the impelling motive has been the
same ; since there is only one motive which is strong
enough to induce any human spirit thus to condescend,
—only one impulse which can move the soul so power
fully as to make it willing to share the pain and the
sorrow of other lives: — and that is the impulse, the
passion of love.
No voluntary vicarious suffering is possible without
love. Love may not always be the only impelling

228 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
motive, and it may often be present in the lower
form of pity, rather than in the higher form of affec
tion, but it must always be present in some degree,
and in some form, as a living force in the heart of any
one who voluntarily stoops to share the burden of
other lives. It is the only spiritual force which will
give a man strength to endure those things which are
naturally repugnant to him, and from which flesh and
blood shrink — pain, and misery, and disease — strength
to endure also those things which wound his spirit more
than any physical evils do his flesh — foul speech,
sordid ambition, mean selfishness, suspicion, scorn and
contempt, the rejection of his offers of help by those
whom for love's sake he stoops to save.
Vicarious sacrifice can go, and has gone, to the
length of enduring some or all of these physical and
moral evils ; the length to which it is willing to go
being dependent on the strength and purity of the
impelling motive, love. The man in whom love
is strong enough, must and will go all lengths, in tak
ing upon himself the burden of the consequences of
sin, and identifying himself with the. lives of sinners —
even to the extent of suffering death at their hands for
their sake.
The reader will note that we are careful to say, the
burden of the consequences of sin — not its guilt. For
he who voluntarily becomes a sin-bearer for others,
while he can and will, in proportion as his love is
strong and pure, endure anything and everything that
sin and sinners can do, cannot share with the sinner
the guilt of his sin, nor that consciousness of aliena
tion from God, and of the wrath of God, which sin

THE DEATH. 229
produces. There are personal relations between God
and every spirit which He has made, with which no
other spirit can identify himself — amid the sanctities
of which he cannot intrude. By facing and enduring the
worst manifestations and the worst consequences of
sin, the sinbearer may — nay, must — realise both its ex
ceeding sinfulness, and God's exceeding wrath against
it; but he cannot realise it as his sinfulness, and as
God's wrath against him.
That becomes more and more impossible in propor
tion to the degree in which the sin-bearer is himself
free from sin, and in sympathy with God, and
animated by His master-motive of love.
Concerning the meritoriousness of such vicarious
sacrifice there is no need for us to speak. It compels
our praise, and esteem, and reverence ; we instinc
tively do it homage, and recognise that its spirit is
that of a higher, diviner life than the life of this sin-
enthralled world. It is — men have always felt — a
breath, a manifestation of the life of God.
Nor is there much need for us to dwell upon its
efficacy — at any rate not upon its efficacy as a saving
and uplifting power in the lives of sinners.
It is the one power which has proved itself strong
enough to break the stony heart of the sinner : not
always, we are compelled to admit, even when it has
gone all lengths ; often not soon nor easily ; but it has
succeeded again and again, where everything else has
failed, in producing repentance and reformation in the
hardest hearts. Its power has proved so great that
we can venture to indulge the confident hope that, even
when it has seemed to fail, it has only been because

230 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
the time limits of this life prevent us from noting the
supreme effects which can be accomplished by its
unwearied persistence.
There is, however, perhaps more need to dwell a
little on the efficacy of this kind of vicarious sacrifice
as a salutary absorbent of sin ; and as an annihilating
force, when it interposes itself between the sinner
and at least some of the consequences of his sin.
It has not always been clearly understood that it
is by this kind of vicarious sacrifice alone that the
effects of sin can be checked and annihilated — that the
seed which the sinner sows can by this means, and
by this means alone, be rendered sterile, and pre
vented from springing up in new harvests of pain and
woe. And yet it is obvious that, whenever you find a man
willing to take upon himself the consequences of the
sins of others — willing to bear the effects of which sin
has been the cause, whatever form of pain, or sorrow,
or woe, these effects may assume — you find a barrier
beyond which the effects of sin cannot pass.
The man who, suffering in body for the sins of his
progenitors, accepts the burden thus laid upon him,
and resolves not to marry, in order that his burden
may not be transmitted to the next generation, by this
act of voluntary self-sacrifice, absorbs these effects of
sin. He checks their energy as effectually as the target
checks the energy of motion in the bullet ; he trans
mutes it by the opposing force of love, into energy of
a different kind.
Similarly the husband or wife, the brother or sister,
the mother or child, or friend who voluntarily share

THE DEATH. 231
the burden of consequences, which the sins of those
with whom they are associated have heaped up, —
sacrificing their own pleasure, and happiness, and com
fort, and health, in order to make that burden lighter
for others— effectually prevent these consequences
from producing further effects of a similar kind.
They accept part of the wages of sin which others
have earned ; wages which sin always pays, but never
pays twice; wages which, by voluntarily retaining —
instead of spending them as most men do — they
cancel. We have been careful to say " some of the con
sequences," " part of the wages " ; because just as no
sinner can hand over the guilt of his sin to another,
so there are some of its wages which he is bound to
retain. No one can take up, in the sinner's stead, the
vitiated constitution which his sins have produced ; no
one can give him back his wasted years, his lost oppor
tunities, his squandered physical and intellectual
capital. If he remains in the far country after he has
wasted his substance, he must remain a swineherd ; if
he returns to his father's house, it must be as a beggar,
and only through his father's bounty can he be again
enriched. Before we close this brief exposition of the twofold
nature of vicarious suffering, we cannot refrain from
alluding to another remarkable property of vicarious
sacrifice, although it does not lie strictly in the line
of our present inquiry.
We have already hinted at it, in the language we
have used to describe the absorbing and cancelling
effects which such voluntary sacrifice accomplishes,

232 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
when it opposes itself to the outbreaks and conse
quences of sin.
Vicarious sacrifice does not simply annihilate these
efforts and effects of sin. Energy of any kind it is
impossible to annihilate ; its form can be changed, its
force remains for ever constant. The flight of the
bullet is stopped by the target, but its energy is not
lost ; it is only transmuted from the force of motion
into the force of heat. And similarly, when the
efforts and effects of sin impinge themselves on the
heart and life of a man who is willing to meet and bear
them, they completely change their form, but they do
not on that account fail to produce results. They are
transmuted into spiritual light and heat ; they act as
fuel to feed the fire of the divine hfe ; they stimulate
the self-sacrificing soul to exhibit a more unwearied
patience ; to give a clearer manifestation of the fruits
of the spirit, and a diviner revelation of self-renounc
ing love.
In the convicted and repentant sinner himself they
begin to produce these results as soon as ever he
begins to be a willing sin-bearer ; in Him whom we
are contemplating in these pages — who knew no sin —
they struck out the amazing, the dazzling, the im
measurable splendour and warmth of spiritual light
and heat, which radiate from the deed of the Cross.
In the light of this brief consideration of the needs
of sinful man, the answer to the question we are
considering becomes plain.
It is not too much to say that, in view of the diffi
culties which sin interposes in the path of a world-

THE DEATH. 233
Reformer, any man who undertook the gigantic task
of rescuing mankind from the guilt and power of sin,
would be bound to sacrifice himself even unto death.
He would need to do this : (1) because mankind
requires a proof that God is willing to pardon sin,
greater than can be given by the clearest and most
emphatic teaching, and by the divinest manifestation
of the truth in a holy, and merciful, and self-sacrificing
life. (2) Because the world required a manifestation of
love and self-sacrifice so amazing and overwhelming,
as to be capable of producing conviction of sin in the
heart of the most hardened sinner, and of changing
pride into humility, and self-will into a "broken and
contrite spirit," in even the worst of men. (The world's
need must be measured by the condition of the world's
worst.) (3) Because sinful men need an impulse and a
power to enable them to shake off the bondage of sin,
such as a love which is stronger than death alone can
give. (4) Because men needed the proof of a life obedient
unto death — a life which could face the utmost assaults
of sin and still be true and loyal to the highest duty —
(i.e., to the will of God), in order to gain the assurance
that sin could be overcome.*

* This suggests the true answer to the question we left
unanswered in a previous chapter, " Why did Jesus con
fine His energies to the narrow limits of His own country,
and why did He not, when His nation rejected Him, go to
His 'other sheep not of that fold'?" The answer is: Be
cause in order to accomplish His Purpose He required to
demonstrate that it was possible to be a Son in spite of all

234 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
(5) Because man needed some one willing volun
tarily to share the burden of his sin — some one who
should, by setting an example of perfect self-sacrifice,
show how sin could be annihilated ; some one to found
an enduring society of voluntary sin-bearers, a society
which should continue and complete the conquest of
sin which its founder had begun.
Each df these reasons is sufficient in itself to
demonstrate the necessity of the voluntary death of
the man who should dare to attempt to save the world
from the guilt and power of sin. To- be successful in
the attempt he would be bound to completely satisfy
all these needs — bound to sacrifice himself even unto
death — so that the illimitable mercy of God, and the
all-surrendering (and therefore all-compelling) nature
of love, and the perfection of obedience, and the most
magnificent example of voluntary self-surrender,
should all be fully expressed and revealed in that one
act, and should demonstrate Him who accomplished
it to be the Life, and Light, and Hope of the world, and
the approved and accepted Messenger and Mediator
between God and man.
Since the hour in which the gloom and dismay of
Calvary were dissipated by the joyful news : " The
Lord has risen," the conviction has been held by an
the assaults of evil. And nowhere could evil be encountered
in greater strength, and in a more virulent form, than at
Jerusalem. Moreover, the darkness of the deed which evil
wrought upon Him could nowhere be so completely mani
fested as there. For the nation which crucified Him was
the nation that had had the clearest revelation of truth and
righteousness vouchsafed to it ; and which consequently in
curred a fuller share of moral responsibility in rejecting and
crucifying Him than any other nation would have done.

THE DEATH. 235
ever increasing number of those who have constituted
the successive generations of this sin-stained race,
that Jesus on His Cross has revealed and expressed
all this.
The most sinful have seen in Him crucified a con
vincing proof of the mercy of God ; the hardest hearts,
and most stubborn wills, have been broken by that
amazing proof of love ; the most sin-bound lives have
gained from it the power to shake off the bondage in
which they have been held ; the most despairing have
gained from it the hope and assurance that sin can be
overcome; the most heavily burdened have seen in
it a supreme example of sin-bearing — an' effort and an
agony which embraced the whole world's sin in the
grasp of one mighty self-sacrifice ; a sacrifice which, by
showing how sin, thus willingly borne, can be trans
muted into spiritual light and life, has made their
burden light, and has enabled them to contemplate
the groaning and travailing of the creation around
them in the steady light of a glorious hope.
Having thus contemplated the death of Jesus
from the standpoint of the needs of sinful humanity —
having seen what abundant necessity there was that
He who undertook the gigantic task of reconciling
the world to God, should voluntarily surrender Him
self to death, the question remains : In what relation
does God stand to that voluntary death? Did this
Son, when He voluntarily died, do more than overcome
the obstacles which Sin had interposed between man
and the attainment of His birthright? Were there
also obstacles to be overcome in the Divine Nature?

236 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
To put the question quite plainly, did God require to
be reconciled to the world ; and is the death of Jesus
His Son the means by which He reconciles Himself ;
as well as the means by which He reconciles the world
to Himself?
The answer, clear and unequivocal, which the
prophets of Israel, Jesus Himself, and the Apostles
give to this question, is " No." There is no hint of any
difficulty in the Divine Nature, which requires to be
overcome before the divine forgiveness can be exer
cised, in any of the Old Testament writings : God's
forgiveness is always represented as free, spontaneous,
unrestricted. There is no hint in the teaching, or in any of the
recorded utterances of Jesus, that the Father
requires to be propitiated before He will pardon
penitent sinners. There is no- trace in the life of
Jesus of any feeling that He was enduring the
wrath of God — no trace, even in His Passion, of any
feeling or consciousness on His part that He was
thereby reconciling His Father to His brethren, by
paying a debt, of which God demanded payment,
before He could or would be reconciled.
But, some readers may say ; At least there is some
trace of this view of the Atonement in the writings of
the Apostles ?
Again we are bold to say, " No." We cannot enter
into a detailed examination of the various passages
which (some have thought) give colour to this view.
They are all of them figures of speech, drawn from
those " shadows " of the truth — the ordinances of the
Mosaic ritual ; they cannot for a moment be placed

THE DEATH. 237
beside, or be regarded as modifying, the clear and
reiterated statements that it is the grace and the love
of God — His free, unrestricted impulse and feeling — •
which have been manifested in Jesus ; not His
favour which has been won for us by Jesus. The
apostles, equally with Jesus, and with the
prophets, consistently and unanimously declare the
spontaneous and unqualified nature of the divine for
giveness. They continually set forth the death of
Jesus as the sufficient ground and reason for
the acceptance of that forgiveness by sinful man ; but
never as the sufficient ground and reason in the Divine
Mind for the exercise of forgiveness.
This indeed is so clearly the testimony of Scripture,
that there would be no need to assert the fact, were it
not also a fact that conceptions of the Character of
God, and of the nature of the Atonement, such as we
have just controverted, have long held sway in
Theology, and are by no means yet extinct. How has
it come to pass that these erroneous conceptions have
so long prevailed ?
The answer undoubtedly is, that they have sprung
from human ignorance and human sinfulness, — from
an imperfect apprehension of the truth as it is in
Jesus, and from the difficulty which sinful men1 have
always experienced of apprehending the true
grandeur, and fulness, and freedom of the divine for
giveness. We cannot treat this interesting point as fully as
it deserves. We would simply draw the reader's
attention to the indubitable fact that it is difficult, if
not impossible, for men who have deeply sinned, and

238 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
who have never felt the nobler influences of a pure
and loving spirit, to realise at once the full grandeur
of the Character of God revealed in Jesus.
When such men come to realise their sinfulness, they
realise both how much they need to be forgiven, and
also how difficult — impossible, we may even say- —
they would find it to forgive those who have deeply
wronged them, freely, and without any " quid pro quo."
They are therefore fain to regard the Atonement in
the only way in which, through the mists of sin, and
ignorance, they can contemplate it at all, — to grasp
the fact, not as it really is, but as it seems to them to
be ; to see it in clearer light being impossible for them
till their understandings, with their hearts, have
received further expansion and illumination.
That this is the true explanation of the wide
prevalence of these conceptions of the nature of the
Atonement, is demonstrated by the history of the
doctrine. The crude form in which it was at first
promulgated (i.e., that Christ's ransom was paid to
the devil) has long been rejected ; and since then it is
very noteworthy that no modified form of this con
ception has won complete assent, and that the
continual tendency of thought on the subject has been
in the direction of minimising the difficulties which, it
has been supposed, prevented God from exercising a
free forgiveness. Many of the most thoughtful of
modern writers limit His demands to a perfect
exhibition of righteousness, and a perfect confession
of man's sinfulness ; thus eliminating the conception
that there was anything penal in the sufferings of
Christ, and making His Atonement purely moral and
spiritual in its nature.

THE DEATH. 239
But though we are bound to attribute the conception
that God needs to be propitiated, before He can or will
exercise forgiveness, to human sinfulness and
ignorance — though the prophets of Israel, and
Jesus and His apostles alike consistently represented
the grace, and mercy, and love of God as free,
spontaneous, and unqualified by any restrictions — it
does not follow that there is no objective side to the
atoning work of Jesus Christ ; it does not follow
that it was simply the needs of sinful man which
made His death a necessity.
There are, we have pointed out, two parties to every
reconciliation. We have briefly reviewed the needs
of one party — man — in the great reconciliation.
What, let us ask, in view of the fact that mercy and
love are free, spontaneous, original feelings and
promptings of the Divine Nature, are the needs of the
other Person — God?
There is one great need, we can unhesitatingly
assert, which such a God must feel ; and that is : the
need for giving a full and complete expression to the
feelings and promptings of His nature ; the need,
consequently, of a medium by which these could be
satisfactorily manifested to mankind; the need of
some one to perfectly express the glory of His grace
and love.
Some one we say; for it requires no argument to
prove that the Spirit and Life of God can only be
adequately expressed by the spirit and life of a Man.
No theophany, no demonstration or revelation of the
nature of God either in nature, or through the medium
of a superior order of spirits, could reveal to mankind
the Spirit and the Life of God so clearly and satisfac-

240 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
torily as the spirit and life of one " made in the like
ness of men," " in all points tempted like as we are,"
yet " without sin," and dwelling among us, " full of
grace and truth."
We trust that we have, by the line of thought we
have followed in the previous pages, established the
conclusion that God has found such a Medium,
whereby His Name and Nature are fully expressed,
in " the Man called Jesus."
We do not pretend to have fathomed the mystery of
His human-divine nature ; we have only attempted to
lead the reader, by a contemplation of His perfect
humanity, to the conviction that we have in Him a
perfect expression of the glory of God — that He and
His Father are " one " in spirit, and heart, and life. No
metaphysics can satisfactorily explain the nature of
this oneness, but the understanding can sufficiently
apprehend it to accept it as a fact — a fact which shows
God in man, and man in God, united in an eternal
union. The opinion has been widely held that, until God in
the Man Jesus found such a perfect Medium, through
whom He could, at one and the same time, both
perfectly express Himself, and also perfectly realise His
conception of humanity, He could not be reconciled to .
man. That He was ^satisfied with humanity until He
thus saw In it His own image, and " received full satis
faction by beholding the perfect sacrifice of the will of
the man to the will of God,"* in the life and death of
* Vide Robertson's Lectures on Corinthians. Lee. xlvi.

THE DEATH. 241
Jesus, we can well believe ; but not that He
was d?Msatisfied, and required such a sacrifice before
He could be reconciled to His creatures.-
Jesus undoubtedly consummated the Purpose
of God with regard to humanity; and by so doing
satisfied the Father's Mind and Heart. But it is im
possible to hold that the state of the Father's Mind
and Heart previous to the life of Jesus was
a state of dissatisfaction, which nothing but such
a life as Jesus lived, and such a sacrifice as He
offered, could change to complaisance, in the sense of
making Him willing to be reconciled to man.
For this implies a power on the part of man to
thwart, through the abuse of moral freedom, the Pur
pose of God, which we cannot maintain that He pos
sesses without landing ourselves in inextricable
difficulties. For there is another need which — speaking with all
reverence, and acknowledging that we cannot fully
comprehend the ground plan of the Creation, and that
in all probability we have not yet discovered the right
category for the mystery of evil — we may yet affirm
that the God with whom Jesus is " one," must
have felt, ever since man began to misuse the capa
city for moral life with which He had endowed
•Him. Whether that misuse was inevitable or not, God
must always, since it became a fact in the history of
the race, have felt the need to which we refer ; though
our conceptions of its character must necessarily be
modified by our conceptions of the relations in which
evil stands to the purposes of the Creator.
R

242 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
That need, stated in its most general form, we may
define as the need of accomplishing the Purpose
which He purposed when He created man.
It is impossible to hold that man's misuse of moral
freedom could thwart the Purpose which God had in
view when He endowed mankind with it. It is very
difficult to hold that that misuse was not foreseen, and
deliberately anticipated, and included in the scope of
the Divine Purpose : — foreseen as a necessary incident
in the working out of that Purpose, and deliberately
included in it as the best way in which to accomplish its
consummation. But, in whatever relation we regard
evil as standing to the Purpose of the Creator,
we can boldly say that, when it actually appeared,
He needed to express in an adequate and
conclusive way His superiority to it ; nay more, His
acceptance of the responsibility for it, and His willing
ness to bear all the loss, and to share with His
creation all the pain and sorrow which its presence
involves. Consequently, the Man who completely manifested
the Spirit and Life of God was under a moral and
spiritual necessity to sacrifice Himself vicariously to
the utmost, i.e., to die for the world. In no other way
could He adequately express the willingness of Him
with whom He was " one " to accept the consequences
resulting from His creative Purpose ; in no. other
way could He adequately demonstrate that the end
will justify the means, and that the final victory will
rest with all-enduring Love.
Thus God required His perfect Son to voluntarily

THE DEATH. 243
sacrifice Himself even unto death ; because no other
wise could the fulness and intensity of the love where
with He loved the world be manifested, and the un
qualified nature of His forgiveness be expressed.
Thus " Him who knew no sin He made to be sin
on our behalf," and required Him to take upon Himself
the extremest consequences of sin ; in order to
demonstrate that the God who created evil (Is. xlv. 7)
takes upon Himself the full responsibility; that
from the beginning He has counted the cost of
the Plan and Idea of humanity which He conceived,
and which He is working out on the stage of
Time — has counted the cost, and is willing to pay it ;
has been all through the ages paying it indeed.
For Jesus' sacrifice and sufferings only represent
and express what the God with whom He is " one "
has been doing and bearing ever since sin entered into
the world ; they are only a perfect manifestation of
the eternal endurance of wrong, and the eternal sym
pathy with pain and sorrow, which God has suffered
and felt. They show how God triumphs over sin by
the untiring patience, and forbearance, and endurance
of Love; letting sin work out its full results, and
accepting them Himself, that it may show itself
to be "exceeding sinful," and that the souls He
has made may learn " by means of evil that good
is best."
And thus we arrive at the conclusion, that through
the Cross of Jesus we gaze into the most beautiful
and awful depths of the Divine Life, and find it to be
a Life of pure and perfect love. For Jesus' Cross
must ever remain the index to the sublimest mystery

244 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
of the Life of God upon which the human mind can
meditate — the mystery of the cost to Him " who spared
not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all,"
of that full, free grace which is manifested in Jesus.
This light on the objective side of the Atonement —
these glimpses into the abysmal depths of the Divine
Mind — we get by contemplating the Character of Jesus
as it is expressed in the Deed of the Cross ; when by
faith we grasp the truth that He who accomplished
that Deed is the Image of the Invisible God, and
the Son of His love.
Some readers may have been unable to take the
step of faith which we have previously asked them to
take, in order that they may place themselves in a
position to contemplate these divine mysteries.
If so, we must leave them to answer for them
selves the question, in seeking to answer which
we have felt compelled to pass from " that which is
natural " to " that which is spiritual "• — the question :
" Why was it necessary that the Divinest Man who has
ever lived on earth should die a cruel and shameful
death ? " We can only reaffirm our conviction that the
true answer is, that it was sin which made that death
a necessity — that He died to meet and satisfy the
needs of man, and the needs of God, produced by the
sinful condition of humanity.
This was the answer which His Apostles gave ; this
has been the answer which the overwhelming majority
of His professed followers have accepted. No other
answer has been given (and we venture to assert that
no other answer can be given), which any thoughtful

THE DEATH. 245
man, contemplating the facts with an unbiassed mind,
can regard otherwise than as hopelessly incomplete
The alternatives which alone present themselves, if
this answer is rejected, are indeed so inadequate, that
they cannot be fairly regarded as answers at all : they
leave the Deed of the Cross an insoluble enigma.

CHAPTER XII.
The Resurrection.
(Matt, xxviii., Mark xvi., Luke xxiv., John xx.)
We have, in the previous chapters, endeavoured to
unfold the Character of Jesus by considering some
of the most striking incidents of His Life recorded by
the Evangelists ; and in the last chapter we have
endeavoured to set before the reader the Character of
the Man as it reveals itself in the last hours and in
the supreme crisis of His life ; and we have striven
to. gauge the meaning and significance of the death
which He voluntarily died.
We trust we have in some measure enabled the
reader to realise the unparalleled uniqueness of the
Mind, and Spirit of the Man whom we have been
contemplating ; and have thus prepared him to antici
pate an unparalleled sequel to that event which
compels| the biographer to inscribe " finis " to his
record of the lives of other men.
For undoubtedly the contemplation of the Life and
Character of the Man Jesus brings us face to face
with a fulness of Life so boundless, and a sublimity
of Character so unrivalled, that we are prepared to
hear of an unique sequel to its astonishing earthly
close. Marvellous and unexampled asi the records

THE RESURRECTION. 247
which the Gospels give us of the reappearances after
death of this Man certainly are, they are not really
more astonishing and unexampled than the records
which they give us of His earthly life.
As we realise what He was, the possibility merges
into probability, and the probability passes, by the aid
of the evangelic and apostolic records, into certainty,
that in the case of a Soul so elevated above the
ordinary run of humanity — a Soul so charged with life,
a Soul so closely linked in fellowship with God — the
ordinary laws which produce the phenomenon of death
would be relaxed. The destruction of the mortal
frame in which that unique Soul tabernacled — that
Soul so overflowing with love for our race, so daunt-
lessly bent on redeeming it from sin — might not, we
can easily conceive, "could not," we can boldly say,
when we consider the evidence for the Resurrection, and
when we contemplate the need for such a post-mortem
manifestation — banish it for ever into the silences
into which the souls of other mortals pass.
We do not intend in this chapter to take up the
controversy which has been carried on so long, and
which is still being carried on, concerning the Resur
rection. The arguments for and against the fact are
accessible to all, and it would be superfluous to
reproduce them here. We simply reoord our con
viction that the testimony in favour of the fact is over
whelmingly strong. No attempt to overthrow that
testimony, and to account for the teaching and belief
of the Apostles, by any other hypothesis save the one
which accepts the fact as true, has ever (we hold)
come within measurable distance of success.

248 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
\ It will be advisable, however, for us to consider,
; before we proceed further, the true significance of the
facts recorded in the Gospels concerning the
reappearances of Jesus after His death; and
also the teaching of the Apostles on the subject which
we find in the Epistles. After that we shall be pre
pared to contemplate the need which there was
for such a consummation of our Lord's earthly life —
how necessary it was that His teaching, and life, and
death should have such a consummation, if they were
not to remain unprofitable and enigmatic. That there
was such a necessity is not of itself by any means
\ sufficient to prove the fact of the Resurrection ; but
after we have considered the facts recorded, and the
teaching based on the facts, a consideration of the
Apostles' and the world's need of such a consummation
will, we think, strengthen and confirm the conclusion
that the Man Jesus did indeed rise from the dead —
thereby proving Himself to be the Son of God with
power, and demonstrating that He had been "made
after the power of an endless life."
It is the more necessary to consider attentively, first
of all, the significance of the facts recorded concerning
the reappearances of Jesus, as well as the teach
ing of the Apostles on the subject, because of certain
misconceptions as to' the real nature of the Resurrec
tions which — we have reason to believe — are rather
widely prevalent.
There are not a few people who have an entire
belief in the fact of the Resurrection ; but who, in their
conceptions concerning it, fail to see its true
significance. They lay chief — if not exclusive —

THE RESURRECTION. 249
emphasis on the fact that the body in which
Jesus reappeared was the same body in which He
tabernacled while in the flesh — the same body in
which He was crucified, and which was laid in the
tomb. Now a little consideration will, we think, make it
evident that the chief emphasis ought to be laid, not
on the similarities, but on the differences which
manifested themselves to the disciples in the
appearance and the movements of Jesus on the
various occasions on which He came to them after
His crucifixion^ as compared with those which had
been characteristic of His earthly career.
Doubtless it was absolutely necessary that He
should so manifest Himself to them, as to convince
them of His identity ; and the best — probably the only
— way in which to do this was by appearing in the nail-
marked and spear-pierced body which they had laid
in the grave. No other manifestation would have won
them to entire conviction that it was He. Appearances
either in a different body, or in a glorified form to
which earthbound senses are unfamiliar, would have
left room for doubt, or would have roused fear and
dismay in their minds, rather than joy and hope.
But beyond the fact that by thus reappearing in
the form which they had known, He completely
established His identity, no importance whatever is
to be attached to this aspect of His reappearances.
For there is no Gospel in it. It demonstrates the
fact that the bodily life survived death in His case ;
and it would naturally arouse in them the joy which

250 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
we feel when one whom we think to be dead, oomes
back to1 life again.
But even if all doubt could in that case have been
removed, as to whether He had really died ; and even
if His return to life could be taken as proof of the
general fact of immortality, there would still be no
Gospel in it. We should be at a loss to understand
why the Resurrection of their Lord wrought such a
change in the minds of His disciples, and why they
consistently regarded it as the key-stone of the arch
of Christian truth.
For there is nothing inspiring in the mere fact that
the bodily life can survive death ; there is nothing
hopeful in the message which (in the case we are
supposing) would have been the only message which
their reappearing Lord could have communicated to
His followers — the message that He was, after His
death, continuing to live such a life as He had lived
oni earth.
Even if we could, in that case, satisfactorily explain
the reason why He did not completely take up His
earthly life again — as we may presume Lazarus, and
the son of the Widow of Nain did — and could account
for His speedy and complete disappearance, we could
find no Gospel in such a reappearance. Though men
instinctively cling to life, yet there have been few
indeed who would have been willing to live their lives
over again, and fewer still who could contemplate
with equanimity an indefinite (to. say nothing of an
infinite) continuance of such existence as they have
now. Endless existence, of the kind which the vast
majority of the human race now endure, would! mean

THE RESURRECTION. 251
endless toil, suffering, and sin. To prove no more
than that that lies ahead, is only to prove that
existence is terrible, frightful, — involving mankind in
endless dissatisfaction and woe.
But the accounts of Jesus' reappearances which
we have in the Gospels; the effect which they pro
duced on the disciples ; and the teaching concerning
them which we find in the Acts and in the Epistles,
make it abundantly evident that the entire significance
of the Resurrection lies in the fact, that it demonstrated
that Jesus — while retaining His identity — had
assumed at death a new and more glorious body
than that in which He had lived and died, and had
attained to a fuller and more glorious life.
It is true that we cannot form any definite or
adequate conception either of the real nature and
capacities of His Resurrection body, or of the fulness
of the hfe to which He had attained. Probably He
could not, if He had been willing (possibly He would
not, if He had been able), have given His disciples,
and the world through them, anything like a complete
manifestation of the capacities of that body, or of the
fulness of that life. The senses and the mind of
man are probably incapable of perceiving and appre
hending " the body which shall be," its relations to
the material universe, and the full scope of its
powers. Nevertheless the records of the Resurrection
appearances of our Lord make it abundantly evident
that His Resurrection life was not merely the old life
revived. There is even room for doubt whether the
visible and tangible body in which He appeared was

252 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
always that physical frame in which He had been
crucified. Mary at the sepulchre did not recognise
Him at first when He spoke to her ; " she supposed
Him to be the gardener." And if we can account for
her mistake by supposing that her grief, and the
entire absence of any hope or expectation that she
would ever see Him again, prevented her from
recognising His voice, and that at His first question
she did not look al Him; it is far more difficult to
explain the fact that the two disciples with whom He
walked to Emmaus remained in ignorance concerning
His identity for so long. Except on the supposition
that the physical form which He then assumed was
not the familiar form of Jesus of Nazareth, it is not
easy to suppose that face, voice, and manner could
have been so disguised as to leave them unsuspicious,
to the very end of that memorable interview.
Be that as it may, it is certain that even when the
form in which our Lord reappeared was the very body
of " flesh and bones " (Luke xxiv. 39) which had
been nailed to the Cross, He was able to do in it
things (such for instance as passing into the chamber
in which His disciples were assembled when " the
doors were shut" (John xx. 19), and disappearing at
will) which are impossible to an ordinary mortal, and
to which there is no parallel in the records of His
earthly life.
We will not lay stress on the fact that in the inter
view with Thomas to which we have just alluded, He
says " flesh and bones," rather than " flesh and blood,"
though the unusual expression does not seem, with
out significance in view of the fact that the blood must

THE RESURRECTION. 253
have been well-nigh drained from His body on the
Cross, by the nail-wounds and the spear-thrust.
Nor yet will we lay emphasis on the fact that He
asked Thomas to put His finger into the nail-wounds,
and his hand into the hole the spear had made ;
though it is difficult to understand how such an
operation could be performed on any one possessing
flesh and blood. If the wounds had healed
naturally, they would have closed ; and even then,
we must suppose a miraculous acceleration of nature's
processes. If, as was apparently the case, they were
open, we are almost compelled to suppose conditions of
the physical frame in which He appeared to which our
experience furnishes no analogy. But without laying
stress on these facts, we have abundant evidence that
our Lord controlled the body of "flesh and bones,"
in which He manifested Himself to His disciples., in
a way markedly different from, that which He con
sistently followed throughout His earthly life.
It is idle to speculate as to how He did this. We
know too little concerning the laws of the physical
universe either to attempt to explain the facts re
corded, or to dogmatise concerning their impossibility.
We know nothing of the Resurrection body — of
its relations with matter, or of the powers of the soul
in it ; nothing beyond the glimpse which is given us
in the facts we are considering. We cannot say that
it is impossible for the Spirit, after it has left the
body, and entered that "body which shall be," to
temporarily re-inhabit the cast-off frame. We cannot
say that it has not power to reappear and establish
its identity to our senses in some "astral" form,

254- THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
which is like, though not identical with, the body
which it has laid aside. We grope in vain for
" explanations " ; all is dark. Yet in the case of Jesus
it is certain that He succeeded in convincing
His followers, both that it was He himself who
appeared to them after His death, and also that,
though the same, He was not the same — that the
body He had entered was a " glorious body," and not
merely His earthly body resuscitated ; and that the
life which He had won was wide, and full, and free in
ways, and to a degree, which indeed their minds could
not comprehend, nor their imagination fully picture ;
but which nevertheless justified them in reposing in
their risen Lord a most confident faith ; and in build
ing on the glimpse which He had given them of His
continued life, a boundless hope ; and inspired them
to go. into the world proclaiming that " life and incor-
ruption " had been brought to light in Him.
This is the consistent doctrine of the Resurrection
which we find both in the Acts of the Apostles and
in the Epistles.
The supreme importance which the Apostles
, attached to the Resurrection, even before they began
their public ministry, is attested by the fact that when
they undertook the filling up of the gap which the
suicide of Judas had made in their ranks, it was the
need in which they stood of having an additional
" witness with them of His resurrection " (Acts i. 22),
which Peter urged as the chief reason why they should
appoint to the vacant place " one of the men who have
companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus
went in and went out among us."

THE RESURRECTION. 255
In the address which Peter gave on the day of
Pentecost (Acts ii. 14-36), in his defence before
the Sanhedrin (Acts iv. 8-12), and in his speech in the
house of Cornelius (Acts x. 34-43), it is on the fact
of the Resurrection that we find him chiefly insisting —
the Resurrection as the convincing proof that Jesus is
Lord and Christ; the risen Christ as the source of
their power ; the Christ who had manifested himself
to them, and with whom they " did eat and drink
after He rose from the dead " (Acts x. 41), who had
charged them to preach and to testify concerning
Him. Stephen, in his address to the Council, was
interrupted before he got to the climax to which he
was evidently working his way; but that if he had
been permitted to end his speech, he would have
proclaimed the Resurrection of " the Righteous One,
of whom ye have now become betrayers and
murderers," is evident from his exclamation after he
had been interrupted : " I see the heavens opened,
and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of
God." (Acts vii. 56.)
Paul, in all his addresses recorded in the Acts, lays j
chief stress on the same fact; in the synagogue atj
Antioch in Pisidia (Acts xiii. 30-37); on Mars' Hill!
(Acts xvii. 31); on the stairs of the castle at Jerusalem'
(Acts xxii. 14); at Caesarea before Felix (Acts xxiv.
15-21), and again before Agrippa (Acts xxvi. 8-23).;
But it is in his epistles that we get the clearest state
ments of the truth to which we are now drawing
attention. The fact that Paul anticipated the second \
coming of the Lord in his own life-time does not'"'

256 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
prevent him from realising that the significance of the
Resurrection of Jesus, and the ground of hope which
Christians find in it, consists in the fact that He
demonstrated thereby that He had attained to' a new
and more glorious body and life ; a body and life to
which at death, or at His coming, those who believe
on Him will likewise attain. " Our citizenship is in
heaven ; from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the
Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body
of our humiliation (i.e., the present body) that it may
be conformed to the body of His glory" (i.e. the
body which He gave evidence of possessing after His
Resurrection). (Phil. iii. 20-21). " That which thou thy
self sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be . . .
So also is the resurrection of the dead — it is sown a
natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. We shall
not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. For this
corruptible must put on incorruption, and this
mortal must put on immortality." (1 Cor. xv.). " We
know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle —
" bodily frame " (R.V, margin) — be dissolved, we
have a building from God, a house not made
with hands, eternal, in the heavens. In this tabernacle
we groan being burdened, not for that we would be
unclothed, but clothed upon, that what is mortal may
be swallowed up of life. Now He that wrought us for
this very thing is God." (2 Cor. v.)
We need not pursue this line of thought further.
The evidence which we have adduced — both of facts
and teaching — is consistent throughout, and seems to
us to conclusively demonstrate the point on which we
have been insisting, namely, that while Jesus

THE RESURRECTION. 257
so manifested Himself to His followers after His death
as to convince them of His identity, neither He nor
they laid stress on the fact that He reappeared in the
body in which He had been crucified, except for the
purpose of completely establishing that identity.
What the Apostles do lay stress on — a truth with
which, as we have seen, the facts recorded concerning
His appearances are in complete harmony and
endorse — is that their risen Lord, though the same,
was not the same. Through the crucified form in which
He at least twice reappeared (John xx. 20-27), and
(possibly) through other human semblances which He
temporarily assumed, they caught glimpses of a " body
of glory," which had become the abode of His Spirit —
a " spiritual body," a " habitation which is from
heaven," " incorruptible," and endowed with power
beyond the limits of human comprehension.
They lay stress on the fact that by His Resurrection
He has conclusively demonstrated Himself to be the
Christ ; " declared Himself to be the Son of God with
power " (Rom. i. 4) ; " brought life and incorruption
to light" (2 Tim. i. 10); "begotten them unto a
living hope — unto an inheritance incorruptible,
undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in
heaven " (1 Peter i. 3-4). In a word, His Resurrection
convinced them that His life had not merely
survived death, but had, in harmony with eternal laws,
taken to itself, by the force of its own inherent
vitality, a new and more glorious body, and stepped
through the gates of death into an altogether higher
plane of existence.
But the full significance of the fact of the Resur-
S

258 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
rection to the minds of His followers did not consist
solely in the evidence it afforded them that their
Master had survived the shock of death, and attained
to a fuller and more glorious life. Nor can we under
stand the need for such an unique sequel to His hfe
and death by confining our attention to this aspect of
it alone. Viewed in this aspect alone the Resurrection still
contains no gospel for mankind. Jesus — as we
trust we have abundantly shown in the previous
chapters — was an altogether unique Specimen of
humanity ; endowed with a fulness of Spiritual Life
Ithan which we can conceive of nothing more perfect
land complete ; conscious of a fellowship with God,
absolutely without parallel in human experience, and
(claiming a closeness of relationship with Him which
^extended to the perfect equality and oneness of
perfect sonship.
His disciples hardly needed a Resurrection to con
vince them that such a Life could not be extinguished
by death. The common Jewish belief would at
least have enabled them to believe and hope that He
and they would meet" again " in the resurrection at the
last day :: (John xi. 24), even if His life and teaching
had not enabled them to modify that belief into a
conviction, that such a Life as He had could know no
sleep in the tomb, but would continue without break
in the silences which lie beyond death.
If the Resurrection had done no more than convince
them that, in the case of their Master, the Jewish
doctrine of the resurrection needed modification, its
results would have been insignificant out of all

THE RESURRECTION. 259
proportion to the startling and altogether unexampled
character of the event. There would have been
nothing in that on which to base a personal hope. It
would not have convinced them that they at death
would attain to a similar immortality.
But that is just the conviction to which, by the
Resurrection of their Lord, they did attain. And in
order to understand how it was that the Resurrection
begat in them that " living hope," it is necessary to
clearly realise that it demonstrated, not merely that
Jesus had continued His Life in a " glorious
body" after His death, but that He had done SO' in
harmony with the eternal laws which governed that
kind of Life — that the Life which He manifested on
earth was necessarily, essentially, immortal in its
nature ; and that further He had quickened an
identical kind of Life in them.
The Epistles, not only of Paul, but also of the other
Apostles, abound with evidences that these were the
convictions which filled the minds of Jesus' fol
lowers ; and that it was the Resurrection of their
Lord, and that event alone, which produced in them
these convictions.
So numerous are the references to these facts in the
Epistles that it will be impossible for us here to
quote them all. We will simply draw attention to.
some of the most prominent. 'C ,'
We have already quoted the passages in 2 Tim.
1 -10, and 1 Pet. i. 3-4, in which the writers speak of
Jesus as the abolisher of death, and " our Saviour
who brought life and incorruption to light " ;
and as having " begat them into a living hope — unto

26o THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
an inheritance incorruptible, and undented, and that
fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you." In
these passages the conviction of the essentially
immortal nature of their Lord's Life is evident ; as well
as the fact that their personal hope of immortality is
based on the conviction that that Life has already
been kindled in them.
We have also quoted from I Cor. xv, and need not
| allude to it further, save to' remark that the whole
of the long argument which is contained in that
,' chapter, is directed to showing that the Christian hope
of immortality pivots on the fact of the Resurrection.
" If Christ hath not been raised then our preaching is
vain, your faith also is vain." " If in this hfe only we
have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable."
Christ by His Resurrection had shown that His Life,
" sown in corruption," is " raised in incorruption " ;
" sown in dishonour," is " raised in glory " ; " sown in
weakness," is " raised in power " ; " sown a natural
body," is " raised a spiritual body." And Paul and his
converts had been quickened with that Life by Him —
" the last Adam " — who had become " a life-giving
Spirit " ; and consequently " at His coming," " we
shall all be changed." * " For this corruption must
* We have already pointed out that it was the belief in
the second coming of Christ during his own lifetime which led
the Apostle to put the doctrine of the Resurrection in this
form. It has always seemed to the writer that the passage " the
trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised " (v. 52),
is inconsistent with the main teaching of this chapter, as well
as with the Apostle's teaching elsewhere concerning the Re
surrection. For it implies that the dead " sleep," i.e., do not
pass at once into their " incorruptible " body, but lie dormant
till " the last trump." This undoubtedly was the orthodox

THE RESURRECTION. 261
put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on
immortality." That is the gist of his argument.
The frequent references to " eternal life " in the
Epistles all add to the weight of the evidence which
they contain, that the Resurrection had assured the
apostles of the imperishable nature of the Life which
Jesus Christ had manifested; and that it was the
fact that the same Life had begun in them which was
the ground of all their hope. " The free gift of God
is eternal life, in Christ Jesus our Lord " (Rom. vi. 23).
" God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His
Son" (1 John v. 11). "These things have I written
unto you that ye may know that ye have eternal life "
(v- 13)-
Even more striking is the fact that the Apostle
Paul, in 2 Cor. iv., regards " the life of Jesus " in him-
teaching of the Pharisees concerning the resurrection (with
one important modification ; for Paul teaches that they will
not rise — as the Jewish doctrine held — in the bodies in which
they had been buried, but in an " incorruptible " body), and
doubtless the Apostle got it from that source. But it does
not quite harmonise with what He says in v. 36, which
implies that the death of the body, like the death of the seed,
is synchronous with the quickening of the new life. Nor
does it harmonise with his teaching concerning the Resurrec
tion, in 2 Cor. v, where he plainly implies that we " shall be
clothed upon with our house which is from heaven," as soon
as " the earthly house of our tabernacle " is dissolved.
The facts of Christ's Resurrection, and, in the main, the
teaching of the Apostles, seem to the writer to conclusively
demonstrate that there is no pause or interval between the
laying down of the bodily life and the taking up of the
"habitation which is from heaven." The Apostle Paul seems
to have held that belief in his maturer years (cf. Phil. i. 21-23),
but for some time he does not seem to have completely
emancipated himself from his old pharisaic beliefs ; and
through him the belief in the sleep of the soul till the judg
ment day has crept into the Christian Church.

262 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
self and his converts as the only thing worth calling
" Life " ; and speaks as if those who had that Life were
alone truly alive. " We who live," he says : appropri
ating the word to denote the life of the " inward man,"
which the light of the knowledge of the glory of God,
shining in the face of Jesus Christ, had kindled in their
hearts, and using the phrases " our outward man,"
" our mortal flesh," to describe what the world called
" life." And, consistently with the conception of the
Christ-life in them as being incommensurable, by
reason of its superiority, with the life which the world
was living, he speaks of his converts, in Eph. ii. i, as
having been " dead " before God in Christ " quick
ened " them with the new Life. Elsewhere, too (Col.
ii. 20; iii. I ; 2 Cor. v. 14-15), he uses the words
" death " and " resurrection " in opposition, to denote
the greatness of the change which Christianity had
wrought in them ; and declares that " if any man is in
Christ, he is a new creation" (2 Cor. v. 17); with
which we may compare the assertion of the Apostle
John : " We know that we have passed out of death
into life " (1 John iii. 14).
Nor have the Apostles any difficulty in defining this
new Life of which they and their converts have become
possessed ; nor in proving that it is of the same nature
as the immortal Life of the crucified and risen Jesus.
They point to the evident fact that a new Spirit has
entered into them, and transformed their lives. Again
and again they refer to the " Spirit " which they have
received ; often they further define it by its distinctive
characteristic as " the Holy Spirit " ; sometimes they
call it the " Spirit of adoption " ; sometimes " the

THE RESURRECTION. 263
Spirit of God " (cf. " the Spirit of Him who raised up
Jesus Christ from the dead," Rom. viii. 11); often
" the Spirit of Christ " ; and sometimes simply
" Christ dwelling in you " ; — in this way completely
identifying it with the immortal Life of their risen Lord.
They speak, too, of having " Christ in you the hope of
glory " (Col. i. 27) ; and of the Spirit as " the earnest
of our inheritance," the sample and commencement of
the eternal Life which they were winning.
They speak also of the " fruit of the Spirit," which,
it is unnecessary to point out to the reader, is identical
with the graces and virtues which Jesus displayed
during His earthly life ; and they identify the Spirit
which God has given them, with "the mind of
Christ" (1 Cor. ii. 10, 12, 16).
These are only some of the passages in the Epistles
which demonstrate the facts to which we are calling
attention — the fact that the Resurrection has con
vinced the Apostles that the kind of Life which Jesus
had manifested was essentially eternal, imperish
able, in its nature ; and (coupled with the convic
tion that that Life was possible for them — that indeed
they had actually begun to live it) the fact that this
conviction had filled them with a " living hope " of
winning "the life, the eternal life, which was with
the Father and was manifested unto us " (1 John i. 2).
It cannot fail to strike the reader that there is a con
sistency and harmony in all this teaching concerning
the Resurrection which, granted that t hef acts on which
it is based are true, is perfectly intelligible ; but which
becomes amazing and inexplicable, directly we deny
the reality of the facts, and try to explain the teaching

264 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
by some other hypothesis. If we deny the fact of the
Resurrection, we must attempt to explain the accounts
of the reappearances of Jesus which the Gospels
contain ; the great change in the disciples which un
doubtedly took place within a very short time of their
Lord's death, and their consistent explanation of the
reason of the change — and, further, the undeniable
fact that the Apostles based on the Resurrection, and
succeeded in persuading their converts to base on it,
a mighty hope — a hope which shifted the centre of
gravity of their lives from " the things which are
seen " to " the things which are not seen " — in a word,
the harmonious unfolding of the doctrine of the Resur
rection which the Epistles contain ; we must attempt to
explain all this on some hypothesis of delusion, fixed
idea, or prepossession. Many such attempts have
been made ; that they have completely failed is no
mere private opinion of the writer ; it is the conviction
of the overwhelming majority of those who have atten
tively studied the facts. The judgment of the ages on
this question is that the record of the New Testament
is true.
Having thus unfolded what we regard as the sig
nificance of the facts of the Resurrection recorded in
the Gospels, and having shown how the teaching of
the Apostles harmonises with this interpretation, we
may proceed to consider the further question of the
relation in which the Resurrection stands to the life,
and teaching, and purpose of Him whose earthly
career had such an unique culmination.
If it can be shown that there was an absolute need

THE RESURRECTION. 265
that the work which Jesus set Himself to
accomplish — the great purpose for which He lived and
died — should be justified and crowned in this un
exampled way ; if the strong probability — if not the
absolute certainty — is that, but for the Resurrection,
Christianity would never have taken root in the world,
and the Cross of Christ, instead of being the hope and
inspiration of the world, would have been its great
enigma; then — though, as we have already pointed
out, the existence of an imperative need is not of itself
sufficient to prove that the reported fact, which satis
fied the need, actually occurred — the demonstration of
the need cannot fail to strengthen and confirm the
conviction which a sober examination of the records
forces us to adopt. If the need was imperative, and
if — as is not denied by any — the Apostles met it by a
firm belief in, and consistent teaching concerning, the
Resurrection, we are bound to believe in one of two
marvels : the marvel of the fact of the Resurrection ;
or the marvel of the fact that the followers of
Jesus should have invented, and consistently believed
in and proclaimed such a consummation of their
Master's career. And, with all deference to those
who have tried to build an' argument leading to an
opposite conclusion on these lines, we unhesitatingly
assert that the more imperative the need of such a
justification and consummation of Jesus' life, the
less likelihood would there have been that the
disciples would have tried, or if they did try, would
have succeeded in their attempt, to construct out of
their own imaginations facts, and a doctrine founded
on them, which would completely meet that need, and

266 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
be at one and the same time credible, consistent, and
infinitely inspiring.
Was the need, then, for the Resurrection imperative ?
Did the life, and teaching, and death of Jesus
absolutely require to be confirmed and justified in this
unexampled way, in order to become effective?
The answer could, we think, be given in no un
certain tone by following the line of speculation con
cerning the probable results which would have fol
lowed from Jesus' career, if there had been
nothing to record concerning Him subsequent to His
death. In that case it is probable that His disciples
would long have sorrowfully cherished His memory.
It is possible that they might have founded a sect,
and have endeavoured to embody in their lives, and to
propagate, the truths (so far as they had apprehended
them) which He had taught, and so graciously mani
fested in His life. And thus the story of the wonder
ful Man whose career in Palestine was cut short by
His malicious enemies some forty years before the
destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, might have been
handed down through the centuries, and His influence
as a great religious teacher might have been felt even
till to-day.
This is the barely possible outcome which His
efforts as a teacher, and the noble beauty of His
Character, might have had.
The probability, however, is that even His memory
would not have survived the destruction of the nation,
and the downfall of Rome; and it is certain that, if
a new civilisation had been able to rear its head from
the ashes of the expiring Empire, it would not have

THE RESURRECTION. 267
owed its inspiration, far less its existence — as our
civilisation undoubtedly does owe both — to Him.
It is, however, unsatisfactory, and it is unnecessary,
to speculate on the " might have been." The impera
tive need for the Resurrection can, we think, be demon
strated by following a very different — and a far
sounder — line of argument than this.
It is by considering carefully what was the great
Purpose which Jesus set Himself to accomplish in the
world — the clear, unwavering Purpose which reveals
itself equally in His teaching, His life, and His death —
that we can best apprehend the necessity for the
Resurrection — can see that by such a consummation,
and such a consummation alone, could His Purpose be
fulfilled, His Life be demonstrated to be the true
and eternal Life, and He Himself be revealed as the
Son of God and the Saviour of the world.
Jesus' Purpose, or Mission, or Aim — it matters
not which term we make use of so long as we
make it connote what He set Himself to accomplish
in and for the world — can be regarded from several
different points of view, and can consequently be ex
pressed in several different ways. He Himself spoke
of it on different occasions under one or other of its
various aspects ; as for instance, when He spoke of
Himself as having come to fulfil the law and the
prophets (Matt. v. 17); or when He told His disciples :
" My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me and
to accomplish His work " (John iv. 34) ; or again when,
as He so frequently did, He set Himself forth as the
founder of a kingdom ; or when, in answer to Pilate's
question : " Art thou a king? " He defined at one and

268 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
the same time, the nature of His kingship, and the
aim of His life : " To this end have I been born, and
to this end am I come into the world, that I should
bear witness unto the truth." (John xviii. 57.)
The aspects of His mission which have naturally
very largely claimed the attention of His followers —
those namely which have earned for Him the titles
" Saviour " and " Redeemer," — it was impossible for
Him to do more than hint at as long as the great re
demptive act of His life remained unaccomplished.
But hints concerning these aspects of it are plainly
thrown out in answer to Zacchaeus : " To-day is
salvation come to this house — for the Son of
Man came to seek and to save that which
was lost" (Luke xix. 9-10); in the parable of the
lost sheep (Luke xv. 3-7) ; and in many other pas
sages ; not the least significant of which is His reply
to the Jews who believed on Him : " If ye abide in my
word then are ye truly my disciples, and ye shall know
the truth, and the truth shall make you free." " Every-'
one that committeth sin is the bond-servant of sin."
" If the Son shall make you free ye shall be free
indeed " (John viii. vv. 31, 34, 36) ; in which the double
aspect of His redemptive work, as accomplishing
salvation from the servitude of sin, and salvation to
the freedom of the truth, is clearly brought out.-
This latter aspect of His work has often been greatly
overlooked by those who have recognised and pro
claimed Him as the Saviour and the Redeemer. And
yet it can hardly be denied that it is the most impor
tant of all, and the one on which both He and His
Apostles laid the greatest stress. The aspects of His

THE RESURRECTION. 269
mission and aim in which He can be regarded as the
Saviour and Redeemer of men from the slavery, and
guilt, and ignorance, and " death " of sin, are necessarily
subsidiary to those in which He can be regarded as
the Bestower of liberty, the Uniter of man with God,
the Revealer of the truth, and the Life-giver. If we
want to define His Purpose in the broadest and most
comprehensive terms, we must use those which clearly
define the goal — the terminus ad quern — not those
which simply define how He overcame the difficulties
which lay in the path to that goal. Consequently,
unless we read into the terms " Saviour " and
" Redeemer " a meaning which is not generally
understood — unless we connect them, not with the past,
but with the future, not with what man has been, but
with what man may be — they do not (however approxi
mately they may express one very important aspect
of His work) satisfactorily define His great purpose
and aim. That aim was wider and deeper than salva
tion or redemption from the guilt and misery of sin —
wider and deeper than that of reinstating the
race in the position which it might have occupied but
for the entrance of sin into the world. In Jesus'
conception the golden age of the world did
not lie in the past. He did not dream of restoring
man to a lost Eden, but of enrolling Him as a member
of a Kingdom which was yet to come. His Purpose
was not simply to clear away the hindrances which
prevented the race from realising its highest ideal of
life and happiness ; but to set before it, and to lead
it to, a new ideal of life and blessedness.
Hence, in defining His Aim or Purpose, there is

270 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
only one word which is comprehensive enough to
fully express it, and that is the word " life." This is
the word which both He and His Apostles most often
made use of; either with or without the qualifying
word "eternal," which defined the character and
quality of the life which He came to impart.
" I came that men may have life, and that they may
have it abundantly," He said on one occasion (John x.
10). " I am the life," He told His disciples at the
Last Supper; and it is evident, not only from the
numerous references which we find in the Gospels^*
but also from the fact that in the Epistles " life," or
" eternal life," is the word most frequently used to
denote " the gift of God through Jesus Christ (both
the aim and the result of His ministry) : — it is evident,
we say, that He and His apostles regarded this term
as the most appropriate one by which to. denote the
grand Purpose which He undertook to accomplish in
the world.
It was then, the Purpose and Mission of Jesus to give
men life — eternal life. What is eternal life ? How is
it to be distinguished from that which we commonly
denominate " life " ?
The answer is clearly given in the New Testament ;
given both in the teaching and in the life of Jesus,
and also in the teaching and lives of His followers.
It is — to use the language of the Apostle Paul — that
* Cf. Matt, xviii. 8, " It is better to enter into life halt."
Matt. xix. 16, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?"
Matt. xxv. 46, " The righteous shall go into life eternal."
Mark x. 30, " Shall receive ... in the world to come eternal
life ; " and especially in the Fourth Gospel : iii. 1.5-36 ; iv. 36 ;
v. 29-40; vi. 33-54; viii. 12; x. 28; xi. 25; xii. 25; xviii 2.

THE RESURRECTION. 271
which results from a " looking at the things which are
not seen " — eternal things ; — while life, in the ordinary
sense, is that which results from a looking at things
which are seen (which from their very nature are tem
poral). It is, to use Herbert Spencer's definition, " cor
respondence with " a spiritual " environment." It is
that which results from the exercise of the faculties of
the " inward man "¦ — faith, hope, obedience, love
(which we cannot better define than as " the spirit ")
in vital relationship with the God who is Spirit. It is
to live, and act, and feel, and think, as a son, in the
presence of, and in fellowship with, the eternal
Father. There is no need to refer to the numerous passages,
both in the Gospels and Epistles, which could be
quoted in support of this definition of the life in pos
session of which it was the aim of Jesus to place man
kind ; because, after all, the great definition has been
given to us, not in words, but in " the loveliness of per
fect deeds." Jesus' life is the only perfect expres
sion of " eternal life " to which we can point. " In
Him was life " ; " the life — the eternal life — was
manifested in Him " ; no elaborateness of definition
will enable us to transcend these simple yet com
prehensive statements.
We have in the previous chapters dwelt suffi
ciently on the uniqueness of that life ; and it will only
be necessary, for our present purpose, to call attention
to two or three of its broad features, which serve to
distinguish it from anything which the world had seen
before. The most distinctive feature of the life of Jesus is the

2 72 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
personal relationship between Himself and God', on
which it is based, and of which it is the outcome. He
hved in continual fellowship with " the Father." Love
and loyalty to the Father were the keynotes to which
Hi's life's music was pitched ; His meat and drink was
to do the will of the Father ; all His actions, and all
His words, harmonised with that filial relationship in
which He stood to the living, holy Being whom He
called " my Father and your Father, my God and
your God."
Now the life which He manifested, and which re
sulted from this personal relationship with, and loyalty
to, God, differed from any life which had been lived
previously by holy and God-fearing men, not merely
in that it was wholly loyal and true to the relationship
in which Pie conceived Himself to be standing to God,
and to the ideal of Character which He attributed to
God, but in that the relationship itself far surpassed in
clearness and intimacy anything to which man had
previously attained ; and that the ideal which He held
of God's Nature and Character transcended — while at
the same time it fulfilled — all previous conceptions of
the truth. No son of man before Him had lived the
perfect life of a Son of God in the world ; not simply
because sin had marred the best efforts of men to serve
and obey God, but also because' the full truth concern
ing the Nature and Character of God had not been
realised, and consequently the full possibilities of
fellowship with God which man possessed could not
be developed. We are justified, therefore, in assert
ing that the life of loyalty and obedience to His
Father — God — (the filial life) which Jesus lived (the

THE RESURRECTION. 273
life of what we have just defined as " the spirit " —
the spirit which impressed itself on, and expressed
itself in, every word He spoke, and every deed He
did) was, both in kind and in degree, new to the world.
The world's most devout and religious men — even the
noblest and most God-fearing of the Hebrew race —
had never dreamed of pitching life to such a keynote
as that ; had never — because their knowledge of God
was not, as we have pointed out, sufficiently full and
clear — dared to set before themselves the life of trust,
and obedience, and communion with God as the one
true, and perfect, and satisfying life, in and for itself,
and apart altogether from the natural consequences
which the living of it might involve
And, of course, to the vast majority of men, " dead
in trespasses and sins," the manifestation of life which
Jesus gave was bound to appear an altogether
new and undreamt-of thing — a revelation of the pos
sibilities of life so new and wonderful — so entirely
different from anything which had come under their
notice, or even entered their thoughts before, that,
when they realised its significance, they would feel
compelled to tax the capacities of language to the
uttermost, in order to adequately express the differ
ence between it and what they had previously deno
minated " life."
Such a shifting of the centre of gravity of life as is
involved in living in and for " the things not seen,"
instead of in and for " the things seen," — such a revolu
tion as is involved in making life pivot on faith in and
love to the invisible Father, and on finding in the
doing of His will, and in the spiritual joy and
T

274 THB MAN CALLED JESUS.
blessedness which results from loyalty to Him and
fellowship with Him, the supremely satisfying end of
existence — could only be adequately described by
drawing the strongest possible contrast between it
and the kind of life which the majority of men had
previously lived, and were still living.
And this is what we find the Apostle Paul con
tinually doing — either describing the condition in
which his converts had been living previous to their
conversion, as a state of " death," or appropriating the
word " life " to denominate exclusively that new rela
tionship with God to which they had attained through
faith in Jesus*
The grand Purpose or Aim of Jesus was then, we
conclude, to lift mankind up to, and to enable it to
live, this new kind of life. He lived, and He died, to
demonstrate the fact that man can live the life of a
son, in fellowship with the Eternal Father — that it is
his high privilege and destiny to share in the life of
God — and that all living which is not conducted on
these lines is profitless and vain : it shall not profit a
man to gain the whole world, if he miss that life.
And this brings us to the point to set forth which
we have followed this line of thought concerning the
Purpose of Jesus.
There is no doubt that Jesus taught that this
filial life which Pie proclaimed, and which He lived, was
the best and highest kind of life for man to hve ; for
this reason, amongst others — perhaps we should not be
going too far in saying, for this reason before all others
* Cf. Eph. ii. 1-5. 2 Cor. iv. 10-11.

THE RESURRECTION. 2?J
— because it is intrinsically eternal in its nature. The
life which is lived in relation with " things seen " is
necessarily — because these are transitory, and subject
to change and decay — an unstable and unenduring life.
Moth and rust corrupt, and thieves break through and
steal earthly treasures ; death snatches the rich man
from all that he has gathered and made his home in,
at the moment when he is planning new develop
ments. Life can find no anchorage among the things
of time and sense : " the world passeth away, and the
lust thereof." But the things which are not seen are
eternal. Faith, hope, and love abide, because God
abides. To know God is to have eternal life,
Jesus declared. " If a man keep my word, he shall
never taste of death " (John viii. 52) ; and again,
" My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and
they follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life, and
they shall never perish " (x. 27-28).
But, just as it required more than the spoken word
and the manifested life, to fully reveal to the world
and fully convince the world of the truth concerning
the Father; just as it was necessary for Jesus to die
in order to bring home to the minds and hearts of
sinful men the full truth, which it was His Purpose
to reveal; so, we can unhesitatingly say, it was
necessary for Him to demonstrate the eternal nature
of the Life which He manifested, by more than " closest
words," if mankind was to be inspired to begin to walk
in His footsteps.
If Jesus' life had ended in the failure and
ignominy of the Cross, its charm and beauty would
doubtless still have appealed powerfully to all lovers

276 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
of nobility and goodness; and the memory of His
purity and graciousness, as well as some echo of His
lofty teaching concerning God and life, would probably
have been preserved in the minds of some of His
followers, and, possibly, would have been handed down
through the ages, and would have constituted an ideal
which devout religious souls would have long recog
nised and accepted.
But, even to the minds of the most spiritually-
minded, it would, in that case, only have appealed be
cause of its intrinsic nobility and excellence ; not be
cause it was justified by results. Those who came
under His attractive influence would have felt com
pelled to accept His teaching, and to admire and
reverence His life, because these satisfied their spiri
tual instincts, and claimed their hearts' reverence and
admiration — with that supreme claim which truth and
beauty always make. But the influence which His
teaching and life exerted over them would have failed
to rouse Hope in their souls — that indispensable
element in salvation (Rom. viii. 24) ; and they
would have followed Him blindly, and well-
nigh despairingly. For, in spite of those
allusions which we find Him making to His joy,
and His peace, and in spite of the serenity which
His soul habitually enjoyed, the lesson which His
life would have taught would not have been that the
life which He lived was obviously the best and truest
life for man — satisfying and sufficient in and for itself.
The impression that He was a man of sorrows,
despised and rejected of men, would have been
stronger than the conviction that His life brought Him

THE RESURRECTION. 277
satisfying blessedness. And the Cross would not —
could not — have taught the lesson which it teaches now
— now that it is seen in the light of the Resurrection
— the lesson that the filial life can, and ought to be,
lived — even if it involves the loss of everything, even
life itself — because it is certain of ultimate justification
and glorification. Rather the Cross of Jesus
would have pointed in that case, to the hopeless
conclusion that by being consistently and entirely
true to the noblest beliefs, and by living wholly
in and for the highest moral and spiritual
instincts of his nature, a man is certain to lose the
world, and to be rejected and hated by the vast
majority of his fellows, without being certain of find
ing, if he thus continues true till death, even an oppor
tunity of continuing that life ; to say nothing of an
opportunity for demonstrating on the other side of the
gates of death, that he has been justified in living it.
This, it seems probable, would have been the effect
produced in the noblest minds by the life and teach
ing of Jesus, if His life had ended on the Cross.
On the bulk of mankind, the impression would
have been much more unfavourable. It would
have been impossible to convince men sunk
in sin and selfishness that such a life was the
true life for them to live. That such a life
as Jesus lived should have ended so, would have
proved to them nothing but the obvious futility of
the- attempt to live above the world. " Cui bono ? "
they would have asked : " He lost the world ; what did
He gain ? And what shall we gain by walking in His
footsteps? He has passed into the darkness, and we

278 THE 'MAN CALLED JESUS.
know no more about Him than1 we do about any of
those who are dead. He may have reaped a rich har
vest of life from the fields of death ; He may have
found compensation for all that He renounced and all
that He suffered here ; but we cannot tell ; all is
dark." The Resurrection renders all such objections impos
sible. It proves that the Life which Jesus Christ mani
fested is eternal, imperishable ; that death glorifies it,
gives it room to expand into unimaginable fulness and
power. It proves that even if the living of that Life
involves the loss of all worldly things — even the
loss of life itself — it is still the right and the best Life
to live ; because " sown in corruption, it is raised in
incorruption ; sown in weakness, it is raised in power ;
sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body " ;
having in it " the power of an endless life."
It is not, we are convinced, an overstatement of the
facts, to assign this supreme importance to the Resur
rection as the consummation of Jesus' Purpose to lift
mankind up to the enjoyment of the eternal Life.
Nothing but such a convincing demonstration as this
of the eternal nature, and of the certain and glorious
development of that Life which He manifested in the
world, would have inspired men to begin to live it. To
accomplish such a tremendous revolution in the world
as He set Himself to accomplish (the shifting of the
centre of gravity of man's life from the things which
are seen to the things which are not seen1 — the induc
ing of weak and sinful man to. love God and spiritual
things instead of self and material things) it was abso
lutely necessary to demonstrate, not merely the in-

THE RESURRECTION. 27g
trinsic nobility, but also the incomparable superiority
of that new Life — to prove that it was Life, and had
in it power to vindicate its superiority (alike by its in
herent vitality and by its results), as this could not be
demonstrated through the experiences and in the cycle
of an earthly existence.
This the Resurrection did ; and we are bold to de
clare that nothing but the return of Him who lived
that perfect, filial Life, after the tragic close of His
earthly career, in a glorified body, and with evidences
of possessing an expanded hfe, could have completed
His purpose, and ensured its success.
This is the consistent view which the Apostles took
of the Resurrection — their own explanation of the im
portance which they attach to it. It is the main point
of the first portion of the Apostle Paul's great argu
ment in I Cor. xv. ; " If Christ hath not been raised,
then is our preaching vain, your faith is also vain."
" If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are
of all men most pitiable " ; because we sacrifice this
world and this life without any hope of gaining an
other; because "we are always delivered unto death
for Jesus' sake," without any solid ground for hope that
" the life of Jesus," which we are trying to develop in
our " mortal flesh," will be " raised up."*
The same thought also appears in the Apostle's
Second Epistle to Timothy : " Faithful is the saying,
For if we die with Him, we shall also live with Him ;
if we endure we shall also reign with Him."
It is the Resurrection, the Apostle writes, in Rom. i.
* See 2 Cor. iv. 14.

280 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
4, which declares Jesus Christ " with power " to be the
Son of God. It is the Resurrection, Peter declares
(i Pet. i. 3), which " begat us again unto a living
hope." But there is no need to multiply references.
No careful reader of the New Testament Epistles can
fail to note that they are saturated with the convic
tion, that the justification of the message which the
writers have delivered, and the demonstration of the
superiority of the life which they call upon their con
verts to live — as well as the reasonableness of the at
tempt to win it, in spite of the " daily dying " which
it involves :— that all this is to be found in the fact that
God raised the Lord Jesus from the dead ; in that
fact, and in that alone.
It cannot be denied that if that event, which with
evident and entire conviction they believed to have
taken place, and made the pivot of all their teaching
and all their hope, did really occur, they were justified
in teaching and in hoping as they did. But, if they
laboured under a delusion on this cardinal point —
alas! for them, and alas! for us.

CHAPTER XIII.
The Spiritual Consciousness of Jesus.
We pointed out in our First Chapter, when comment
ing on the reply which Jesus gave to His parents, that
even at the age of twelve He gave evidence of
possessing a consciousness the depths of which are
far beyond our fathoming. Not only did He call
God " Father," but He called Him " My Father," — an
expression which not only indicates that He already
had a knowledge of, and a communion with, God, mar
vellously full and clear, but which seems to assume
and imply a relationship with the Eternal such as no
other son of man has dared to claim. If we are not
absolutely obliged to recognise that such language
implies a consciousness, and a sense of relationship
with God differing in kind from that which any other
human being has given evidence of possessing, we at
any rate must admit that, in degree, it differs to an
extent which is immeasurable. If we are not forced
to conceive of the union and communion with God
which is implied in it as resting on such a basis of
equality as no human being could, without the most
outrageous presumption, postulate in his relations
with his Maker, we are forced to conceive of it as an
union and communion entirely without parallel in the
world's history ; an absolutely unique phenomenon

282 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
among the almost infinitely varied manifestations of
human consciousness.
We do not propose in this chapter to make any
attempt to fathom a mystery which we have already
admitted to be unfathomable. We shall simply
endeavour to unfold those aspects of this unique
spiritual consciousness of Jesus of which we subse
quently get glimpses in the Gospels. With all rever
ence, let us endeavour to ascertain from the language
which He made use of during His public ministry, and
from such of His actions as throw light on the sub
ject, what relations with God He gave evi
dence of habitually sustaining in His riper manhood,
Who at twelve called Him "My Father";
let us endeavour to realise how closely this
Son of Man, on this, the deepest side of His
nature, felt Himself to be united to the Eternal, when
boyhood and youth had passed, and the burden and
heat of the day had to be borne.
The Gospels do not fail us when we atten
tively study them with a view to answering
this question. They record both words and
actions of Jesus which make it abundantly plain
that we have not over-estimated the significance
of the language He made use of in His reply to His
parents when a boy. They prove that that reply was
not merely the expression of boyish enthusiasm, of
youthful presumption, or of imperfect self-knowledge ;
but of a fundamental consciousness, which He kept
unimpaired through the long discipline of the eighteen
years of silence, and continually showed Himself to
possess amidst the toil, and care, and sorrow of His
manhood. They show that here too "The child is

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 283
father of the man " ; most marvellously do they sub
stantiate and confirm the evidence with which the
solitary glimpse of His boyhood furnishes us, con
cerning this amazing feature of His personality.
The Fourth Gospel is richest in direct statements of
our Lord on this subject ; but let no one suppose that it
is the Fourth Gospel alone which furnishes us with
evidence that Pie possessed such a consciousness. The
Synoptic Gospels imply that He possessed it — imply it
so plainly and so unmistakably that the explicit state
ments recorded in the Fourth Gospel are, so far as
proof of the fact is concerned, superfluous. The per
vading presence of the daylight is no more infallible
proof of the existence of the orb of day, than are the
words and deeds of Jesus as recorded by the
Synoptists, of the existence in Him of this abiding
consciousness of a close, personal, unexampled fellow
ship and relationship with God.
On this point the evidence with which His recorded
teaching furnishes us is, of itself, conclusive.
In the first place, " He taught as one having
authority" — as one who was intimately acquainted
with the Mind and Heart of God. He did not hesitate
to abrogate, or to supplement the divinely instituted
laws and maxims of the old dispensation by a " verily,
verily, I say unto you " — a phrase constantly on His
lips, and one which at least implies that He held Him
self to have a clearer knowledge of the Divine Will,
and a firmer grasp of divine truth than any of the
inspired lawgivers or prophets who had preceded
Him. Moreover, He did not hesitate to unfold to His
hearers the Character of God in language which is not

284 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
only clear and decisive, and which expresses thoughts
and truths concerning Him, if not altogether new, yet
such as the world's noblest and best had only imper
fectly groped after, and falteringly expressed before ;
but thoughts and truths which could only come
from the lips of One who felt Himself to
be in close and intimate spiritual communion
with God. Spiritual knowledge (that is, knowledge
of the spiritual nature of God) such as His — so
clear and full, so original, so untrammelled by the
grooves in which the thought and life of Plis nation
had hitherto moved — can only be explained as the out
come of direct spiritual life. To spiritual life (which
necessarily involves communion with the God who is
Spirit) in the souls of men we are bound to trace
ultimately all the rills and streams of truth, and
light, and knowledge of divine things which peren
nially flow to us from the pages of the Old Testament.
Inspiration, as has been frequently pointed out, is not
in the Book, but in the men who wrote it. And in
proportion as the quality and volume of any such
stream of truth is superior, to that extent are we bound
to postulate as its source a fuller and deeper spiritual
life in the man from whom it originates. No one will
deny that in the case of Jesus we have no mere rill
or stream, but a mighty river — nay, rather — an ocean
tide, of light, and truth, and knowledge of divine things,
which fulfilled the law and the prophets, as the tide
fills to the full every creek and estuary of the land ; a
tide in which rill, and stream, and river lose them
selves, but only because they have gone full circle, and
found that which is both their source and their home.

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 285
And so, we are not only justified in inferring, but
are bound to infer, that the source and origin of that
wonderful teaching which the Synoptists record is the
spiritual life which Jesus possessed ; that His teaching
is the direct outcome of His fellowship and communion
with God — a fellowship and communion, closer and
fuller than that to which we trace the inspired
utterances of other saints and seers, in proportion as
the truth which He unfqlds is fuller and clearer than
that which they impart. And when we find that, in
authoritative tones, Jesus, in that teaching, sets forth
God as the merciful, magnanimous, and loving Father,
with a clearness and attractiveness which has no
parallel, and which for eighteen centuries has been
deemed by the world's saintliest and best a satisfy
ing expression of the truth ; and then, boldly postulat
ing the capacity for Divine Sonship in man, sets before
men, as the ideal of duty and obligation, nothing
less than the imitation of the Father — the
attaining to His perfection (and, be it noted
in passing: the very fact that the perfection
of the Father is set forth by Jesus as the mark
to be aimed at, implies a knowledge, on His part, of
that perfection), how are we to express the difference
between His knowledge and His teaching, and the
knowledge and teaching of those who' were His fore
runners, except in such language as Scripture makes
use of? The light which came from them came in
divers portions and divers manners ; He shines as
the effulgence of God's glory; He stands forth as
the image of His substance. How are we to express
the difference between the various degrees of spiritual

28b THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
life which they possessed, and that which tabernacled
in Him, except by saying : they were1 servants ; He
was a Son ; they had the Spirit in measure ; in Him
it existed in immeasurable fulness?
But the fact that Jesus in His ripe manhood retained
that unexampled consciousness of communion and fel
lowship with God which we have found Him to pos
sess in childhood, can be substantiated by other
proofs, with which the pages of the Synoptists furnish
us, besides those which are to be drawn from the tone
and quality of His teaching.
We have pointed out the significant fact that, in His
reply to His parents, He does not say "our Father,"
but " my Father " ; and have stated what inferences
are to be drawn from His use of such phraseology. To
some readers they may have seemed inferences too
large and sweeping to pivot on a single phrase. Let
us consider, then, the language which He makes use
of when speaking of God to His friends, or to the
multitude, during His public ministry.
Surely it cannot be a mere coincidence — surely it is
most significant to find that, with one exception, the
phrase " our Father " is never recorded to have been
used by Plim. Glancing through the Synoptic Gospels
we find that (including parallel passages) the phrase
" your Father " is used twenty-two times by Jesus ;
the phrase " my Father " twenty times ; " the Father "
occurs five times ; " Father," " O Father," or " Abba
Father " nine times ; " His Father " (referring to the
Son of Man) twice ; and " their Father " (referring to
the righteous) once. The one exception occurs in the
Lord's Prayer, as recorded by Matthew. (Matt. vi. 9.)

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 287
"After this manner, therefore, pray ye; Our Father
which art in heaven."*
It is obvious that this exception has no weight so
far as the point we are considering is concerned. It
would only have had weight if He had said, " After
this manner let us pray." As it is, it only confirms
the startling fact that not once does Jesus, in the
language recorded by the Synoptists, bracket Himself
with His audience when speaking of God.
Surely, we repeat, this cannot be a mere coincidence.
Surely we are justified in assuming that His language
faithfully mirrored His thought and feeling, and that
He never used the phrase " our Father " because He
was convinced that He sustained a communion and
fellowship with God which His hearers did not share ;
because He felt that He knew the Father with a ful
ness of knowledge which isolated Him from the rest of
men, and which made it impossible for Him to assume
that He and they stood on a common basis of relation
ship to God. Surely the fact that the language which
we find Him using, when speaking of God, in His ripe
manhood, is entirely in harmony with the startling
language which He is recorded to have used in His
boyhood, justifies the inferences which we have
drawn ; compels us to assume that both in boyhood
and in manhood Jesus was conscious of a fellow
ship and communion with God absolutely unexampled
— unique, an oneness with Him of Mind, and Heart,
* In the parallel passage in Luke (xi. 2), the Revisers do
not consider that the words " Our  which art in Heaven,"
have sufficient MS. authority, and simply put "Father" in
the text.

288 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
and Spirit, which amply justifies His use of such a
phrase as " the Son of Man," or even " the Son,"*
and which can only be adequately expressed in human
language by according Him the title of " the Son of
God." Nor do we find any inconsistency — anything out of
harmony with such an assumption — when we turn from
His words to His actions, and study the portrait of the
Living Man with which the Synoptists furnish us.
Deeds speak louder than words ; the conclusions we
have drawn from the language which Pie employed,
could not be maintained if we found that His actions
in any way failed to justify His implied claim — if His
Character exhibited traits unworthy of one who
deemed Himself peculiarly a Son of the Father.
But the Character of the Man as sketched by the
Evangelists is consistent throughout. Jesus was no
recluse, no ascetic; He "came eating and drinking."
We find Him in all sorts of society ; we see Him in
most of the relationships which men and women sus
tain to one another : as son, brother, friend j_ as scholar
and as teacher, as host and as guest ; with friends
and with foes ; in popularity and in unpopularity ; at
work and at rest ; free, and in bonds. And everywhere
and always He is the same true, pure, faithful, fearless,
Godlike Man, expressing His Spirit's sweetness, and
strength, and light in
" The loveliness of perfect deeds ; "
unfailingly giving evidence of the reality and the close
ness of His relations with the sources of Spiritual
* Vide Matt. xi. 27, Matt. xxiv. 36, Luke x. 22, Mark xiii. 32.

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 289
Power and Life ; ever manifesting that right, and
holy, and willing spirit (cf. Ps. li.) for which we should
look in a Son, beloved of the Father.
To sketch more in detail the portrait of Jesus as
presented to us by the Synoptists, in order to show
how completely it harmonises with — and indeed can
only be accounted for by — the presence in Him of such
a consciousness of fellowship and oneness with God as
(we have seen) the tone and quality of His teaching,
and the language He uses when speaking of the Father,
justifies us in assuming, would be beyond the scope of
this chapter.
But before we leave this portion of our subject, we
may call attention to two striking features in that por
trait, which add not a little to the weight of evidence
that He felt and knew Himself to be a Son of God,
in such an exceptional sense, and to such an excep
tional degree, as we have maintained.
We refer to the fact that He is represented by the
Evangelists both as working miracles and forgiving
sins ; on one occasion (Mark ii. 5-1 1, Luke v. 20-24) as
exercising the former power in order to show that He
was entitled to exercise the latter.
Many attempts have been made to eliminate the
miraculous element from the Gospel narratives, but no
impartial critic can maintain that they have been
successful. It is possible, and even probable, that the
Evangelists do not always report what occurred with
strict accuracy. It is certain that the works of healing
which Jesus wrought seemed to them miraculous,
whereas we should deem many of them perfectly
explicable on "natural" grounds. Nevertheless,
U

290 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
after making all reasonable concessions, and
allowing the most liberal discount on these
grounds, a very large miraculous element remains
in the Gospel narratives. It is, moreover, so closely
interwoven with the rest of the narrative, and so. in
timately associated with the Character of the Man, that
it cannot be eliminated, without disintegrating the one>
and emasculating the other. If we are to accept the
Gospel records of the life of Jesus as, even in the main,
worthy of trust, we are compelled to believe that He
possessed, and exercised not infrequently, an unex
ampled power over disease, and the forces of the
natural world, and could even compel death to obey
His life-giving word.
And this is a feature which we should expect to find
in the life of One who held such close relations with
the Source of all Power. Any man who was conscious
of such a fellowship and oneness with God as Jesus
(we are endeavouring to show) possessed, could not help
working miracles, or what — to those less in touch with
spiritual things, and with less intimate knowledge of
that " One God, one law, one element," which pervades
the universe — seemed to be such. Such an one would
naturally, inevitably perform many deeds inexplicable
and marvellous in the eyes of ordinary men. To Him
they would seem — they did seem — almost matters of
course. He never placed a high value on them ; never
rated them higher than spiritual things ; and one of
the most remarkable features of the Gospel narratives
is the sobriety, and self-restraint, and the absence of all
ostentation, which characterises His use of this
remarkable power.

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 291
The point we wish to lay emphasis on, however, is
this ; that if we do not admit that Jesus was, in an
unique degree, united to God by the bonds of spiritual
sympathy and communion, the miraculous element in
the Gospel narratives offers insuperable difficulties to
any one attempting to read and understand His
Character and life. But, granting that unique
spiritual bond, the difficulties vanish. We may not be
able to " explain " His miracles, but we can believe that
in recording them the Evangelists are recording facts,
no less worthy of credence than those in which He is
presented to us as eating, and drinking, and walking,
and teaching, and sleeping. For we should expect an
element of the inexplicable in the records of the life
of One whose Character, and teaching, and influence
on the world are so unexampled. We should expect
such a Godlike Son of Man to. be able to exercise an
altogether unprecedented influence and control over
the forces of nature. Do. not our modern inventions
and contrivances seem miraculous to the savage ? And
what is the distance which separates us from the
savage compared with that which separates us from
the one Man who has fulfilled the prophecy, and
realised the ideal of manhood of the Hebrew
poet?
" Thou hast made Him but little lower than God,
And crownest Him with glory and honour ;
Thou madest Him to have dqminion over the works of thy
hands;
Thou hast put all things under His feet."
And the same may be said, with even more force, of
the other striking fact recorded by the Evangelists, to

292 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
which we have alluded — the fact that Jesus exercised
the power of forgiving sin.
" Why doth this man thus speak ? He blasphemeth,
who can forgive sins but one, even God ? " said certain
of the scribes, on hearing Jesus say to the man sick of
the. palsy, " Son, thy sins are forgiven." And they
were right, if Jesus did not possess in an unique degree
the consciousness of fellowship with God — if He did
not feel and know Himself to be a Son of God, so truly
and fully that He could speak for His Father even in
such a matter as the forgiveness of sin.
In view of the fact that Jesus boldly exercised this
power, it is absolutely necessary to> assume that He was
conscious of a spiritual bond uniting Him to God so
closely as to enable Him to read His Mind and Heart
with perfect clearness, and to authoritatively express
His Spirit: — unless we hold Him guilty of an out
rageous presumption, or deem Him the victim of a
fatal self- deception*. But neither of these alternatives
will harmonise with the rest of His Character as pre
sented to us by the Evangelists ; nor can any thought
ful reader deem them appropriate interpretations of
the spirit He displayed on the occasions when He
exercised this power. There is no trace of either pre
sumption or self-deception in His use of this awful
authority. On the contrary, on each of the three
occasions on which He is recorded to have forgiven sin,
His action finds ample justification in the attitude and
disposition of those whose sin He pronounced forgiven.
However unjustifiable it might seem to men steeped in
the prejudices of Judaism, no one who has appre
hended — or been in even the smallest degree in-

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 293
fluenced by — the spirit of large-hearted charity, and
profound yet perfectly balanced sympathy and pity
displayed by this Son of Man ; no one who has ob
served how these traits of His Character are combined
with — and harmonise with — a spotless purity, and an
uncompromising hostility to sin in every form ;
and no one who has accepted His presentation of
the Character of God, can fail to admit that
in responding to the faith of the man sick
of the palsy, to the contrition and love of the Magda
lene, and to the penitence of the dying thief, He acted
rightly; He only expressed the Mind and Spirit of
His Father.
But we, even when most uplifted by His Spirit, and
when our realisation of the pity and mercy of God is
most piofound, can only dare to say to the penitent
sinner, " God forgives you." How intimate must His
relation to God have been who presumed authorita
tively to declare : " Thy sins are forgiven thee " ;
" Her sins, which are many, are forgiven " ; " To-day
shalt thou be with me in Paradise " !
It must be evident to all readers that it is only by
accepting the hypothesis which we have already seen
to be supported by such ample proofs — the hypo
thesis that in Jesus we are brought face to face with a
consciousness and a personality absolutely unique, a
type of spiritual life altogether sui generis — that we
can calmly contemplate the fact that He boldly took
upon Himself to pronounce the sins of men forgiven.
If we cannot go so far as to say, in this case, what we
have said concerning His exercise of miraculous power
— that we should expect such an unique Man to

294 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
display such power (and we cannot say that
simply because we have had no example in
human history of a man whose knowledge of
God has been full and clear enough, and his
consciousness of fellowship with God intense enough
to enable him to exercise this power in such a way as
to permit of such an expectation ; though the tone of
some of the Hebrew prophets might lead us to expect
much in this direction), yet we can at least say this : that
the fact that He is recorded by the Synoptists to have
exercised this power, comes as no shock to us, when we
realise with what kind of a Spirit, and what intensity of
God-consciousness we are obliged, on other grounds,
to credit Him. This feature in the marvellous story
of His life does not clash with the rest ; rather it
takes its place as one more link in the chain of
evidence that here we have a Son of Man whom we
can only adequately denominate by calling Him " the
Son of God."
Before we leave this portion of our subject it will be
well to note another fact recorded by the Evangelists,
which is both of interest and importance in relation to
the spiritual consciousness which Jesus possessed. We
allude to the fact that He is represented on several
occasions as praying. There can be no doubt indeed,
that prayer with Him was habitual — that He felt it to
be an indispensable link in the chain which united
Him to God.
" In the morning, a great while before day, He rose
up and went out, and departed into, a desert place, and
there prayed." (Mark i. 35.) "And it came to pass
in those days, that He went into the mountain to pray,

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 295
and He continued all night in prayer to God."
(Luke vi. 12.) " And after He had sent the multitudes
away, He went up into the mountain apart to pray."
(Matt. xiv. 23, Mark vi. 46.)
These passages, as well as several others in which
He is recorded to have prayed (notably the accounts
of His agony in the garden) show that however full
and clear His knowledge of God, and His conscious
ness of fellowship with Him may have been, Jesus'
spiritual union with the Father did not enable Him to
dispense with that method of communication with Him
which humanity has ever found to be the most effec
tive, and the most indispensable. It is important to
realise this fact, in all its significance, in trying to
apprehend this deepest and most mysterious side of
His nature which we are contemplating. For it
enables us to see how completely He was a man, and
was bound by the conditions, and limited by the limita
tions, which circumscribe human nature — even in this
direction, where His humanity " touches the Divine,
By some fine link intangible to us
Upon that side of mortal consciousness
That looks towards death."
Had we not the distinct and repeated record of the
fact, we might have been inclined to think that One
who habitually spoke and acted on such an immeasur
ably higher level of knowledge of divine things, and
consciousness of divine communion, than has been
attained by any other son of man, would have been
able to adopt some more direct and intimate method
of communication with the God who is Spirit — some

296 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
such method, for instance, as the mystic has thought
he could employ — which would have rendered inter
course through the medium of spoken words
superfluous. But it was not so. Again and again we find Him
resorting to prayer in order to refresh His Spirit, and
to renew His grasp of the Divine Hand ; even here,
where we should most expect to find Him differing
from the rest of humanity, we find Him united to us
by the bonds of a common need ; in this respect, too,
He shows Himself a Son of Man — none the less so that,
by means of this method which we all adopt, He was
able to sustain Himself at such an unexampled height
of oommunion and fellowship with the Father as
entitles Him to be named the Son of God.
Having now briefly reviewed the evidence with
which the Synoptic Gospels furnish us concerning the
unique spiritual consciousness of Jesus, we may pro
ceed to consider the view of His Person and Nature
which is presented to us in the Fourth Gospel.
It will hardly be denied that the conclusions to
which we have been led by our previous inquiry,
bring us to a point of view of the Person of Jesus which,
if it does not coincide with that which we find in the
Fourth Gospel, predisposes us to sympathise with it
to a large extent.
We have found the Synoptic Gospels so full of
evidence that Jesus was conscious of sustaining a
spiritual relationship with God, absolutely unexampled
and unfathomable, that, as we have said, so far as proof
of the fact is concerned, the explicit statements He is

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 297
reported in the Fourth Gospel to have made on this
subject are superfluous.
The Synoptic Gospels, moreover, not only furnish
us with a large amount of cumulative evidence on this
point, but they are not wanting in direct proof that
Jesus at times gave expression to His consciousness of
fellowship with the Father, in language which shows
how amazingly deep and full that consciousness must
have been ; language, moreover, which is strikingly in
harmony with that which the Fourth Gospel on several
occasions reports Him to have used, and which con
tains a claim to divine Sonship as stupendous as any
which we find in that Gospel. (Cf. Matt. xi. 27,
Luke x. 22.)
Nevertheless it cannot be denied that the Fourth
Gospel presents problems of very great difficulty ; and
inasmuch as, at the present time, it cannot be said that
these problems have been finally solved, we can hardly
make use of the evidence with which it furnishes us
concerning the spiritual consciousness of Jesus with
the same confidence as we can use that of the Synoptic
Gospels. Let us briefly consider the difficulties which stand in
the way of an unqualified acceptance of its report.
In the first place the questions : " Who was its
author ? " and " What was the probable date at which
it was written ? " are still open ones. Critical opinion is
hopelessly divided on these points ; and though it is
becoming clear that the Gospel must be assigned to a
much earlier date than the extreme school of critics until
very recently contended for, it cannot yet be proved
to belong to the first century ; nor can it be said that

298 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
the arguments in favour of the Johannine authorship
are overwhelmingly strong.
But, even if the questions concerning date and
authorship were finally settled, the difficulty standing
in the way of an unqualified acceptance of the portrait
of Jesus sketched by the author of this Gospel would
be by no means altogether removed.
The difficulties present themselves in this form. The
Gospel is avowedly written from an altogether different
standpoint from that assumed by the Synoptists.
" The Fourth Gospel is distinguished from the other
three in that it is shaped with a conscious design to
illustrate and establish an assumed conclusion."*
" These have been written that ye may believe that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing
ye may have life in his name." (John xx. 3 1 .)
Moreover, the whole Gospel is pitched to the key
note which is struck in the prologue, i.e., to. the con
ception of the Person of Jesus embodied in the doc
trine of the Logos which is there unfolded. " It is
undoubtedly true that as we read St. John's Gospel in
the light of the prologue, we transfer the full teach
ing which that contains into all the later parts of the
narrative, and that they derive their complete meaning
from it."t
The full teaching which that contains is the teaching
that Jesus is the Son of God, in the sense of being the
incarnate Logos, who was in the beginning with God,
and was God.
This remark applies more particularly to the dis-
* Westcott : " Gospel according to St. John," Introduction,
p. xii. t Ibid., lix.

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 299
courses of Jesus which the author of the Fourth Gospel
records. " In the discourses of St. John— the Lord
after the beginning of Plis public ministry turns the
thoughts of His hearers in each case to Himself, as the
one centre of hope."*
Now it is generally admitted that these discourses
cannot be accepted as verbatim reports of the utter
ances of Jesus. " It is undeniable that the discourses
of the Lord which are peculiar to St. John's Gospel,
are for the most part, very brief summaries of elaborate
discussions and expositions in relation to central topics
of faith. It is wholly out of the question that they
can be literal reports of what was said. From the
necessities of the case the Evangelist has condensed
his narrative. He has not given, and he could not
have given, consistently with the nature of this work,
all the words which were actually spoken ; and this
being so, it follows that he cannot have given the exact
words, or only the words which were spoken. Com
pression involves adaptation of phraseology. And
when we once realise the inevitable conditions of con
densation, we find ourselves constrained to trust (in
this case as in others) to the insight and power of him
who selects, arranges, emphasises words which are,
in his judgment, best suited to convey the propor
tionate impression of discourses which he apprehends
in their totality."!
Now the writer of the Fourth Gospel tells us that
he beheld the glory of Jesus (i.e., " the word become
* Westcott : " Gospel according to St. John," Introduction,
p. lix. t Ibid., lvii.

300 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
flesh ") and it was " glory as of an only begotten from
a father." (R. V. mar.)'
That is to say, the conviction to which he had been
led by his association with Jesus was that He was, in
an absolutely unique sense, the Son of God. " St. John
had been enabled to see what Jesus of Nazareth was :
' the Christ ' and ' the Son of God ' ; it remained for
him to bring home his convictions to others. The
Truth was clear to himself, how could he so> present it
as to show that it gave reality to the thoughts with
which his contemporaries were busied? The answer
is, by using, with necessary modifications, the current
language of the highest religious speculation to inter
pret a fact, to reveal a Person, to illuminate the ful
ness of actual life. Accordingly he transferred to the
region of history the phrases in which men before him
had spoken of ' logos,' ' the word,' ' the reason,' in
the region of metaphysics."*
In other words he appropriated the current doctrine
of the Logos (whether the form in which he adopted
it was shaped by Jewish or by Alexandrine modes of
thought matters not for our present purpose), and
" with necessary modifications " set it forth as the best
and truest explanation of the "glory" which he had
beheld in Jesus; the fullest and clearest interpreta
tion of which he could conceive, of the mystery of His
Person. But (and this is the great difficulty which stands in
the way of an unqualified acceptance of his report,
more especially of his reports of the discourses of
* Westcott : " Gospel according to St. John," Introduction,
p. xv.

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 301
Jesus) is it certain that he appropriated " the current
language of the highest religious speculation," merely
because he found it to be the most perfect instrument
to make use of when compressing and condensing the
actual language employed by Jesus — because he was
convinced that in using it he was most accurately
setting forth the gist of what Jesus really said ?
Can we be certain that he did not to some extent
interpret the "glory" of Jesus in the light of these
religious speculations, rather than these religious
speculations by the " glory " ?
May not his conviction that Jesus was the Christ,
the Son of God, have got so linked with them that
they exerted an influence not only on the form, but to
some extent on the substance of his memories of the
words of his Lord ? Using as he does, a great philo
sophic idea, the idea of the Logos, for the purpose of
interpreting the Person of Jesus, is it certain that he
is not sometimes more under the sway of that idea than
of a faithful and accurate memory ? Is it certain that he
always avoids the error of shaping the discourses of
which he is endeavouring to give a condensed report,
so as to bring them into harmony with that idea, re
gardless (perhaps unconscious) of the fact that he is
departing widely from the line of thought' which they
actually took ?
Moreover, bearing in mind the fact that he ad
mittedly writes to demonstrate a settled conviction,
— and at a time long subsequent to his Lord's earthly
life, and when His full " glory " had been confirmed by
the Resurrection — is it certain, or even probable, that
the author successfully overcame all the difficulties

302 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
which the human mind has to encounter in any such
attempt as he makes in his work ?
It is not easy to accurately report a conversation
after fifty years have elapsed. It is very difficult
indeed, even when it has recently been listened to, to
retain the substance of such a conversation while com
pletely altering its form. It is well-nigh impossible to
do this, with a mind preoccupied with the conviction
that He whose conversations the writer is thus trans
lating and epitomising, fulfils the root idea of the
philosophy in the terms of which he is endeavouring
to express the main ideas of the conversations. And
when we remember in addition, that the writer could
hardly avoid regarding the " glory " of the earthly life
of his Lord in the light of His death and Resurrection,
the probability of his being able to so '' select, arrange,
and emphasise " the words he makes use of, as to suc
cessfully " convey the proportionate impression of dis
courses which he apprehends in their totality," is still
further diminished.
These are some of the doubts and questionings
which present themselves when we study the Fourth
Gospel, and especially when we consider the conver
sations of our Lord which are reported in that Gospel.
We have stated them in their most modified form, the
form they take if we accept the Johannine authorship.
Even in this form they are sufficiently strong and perti
nent to prevent us from according an unqualified trust
to. the writer, as a correct reporter, when reading his
" compressed " reports of the discourses of Jesus. They
make us hesitate, for instance, to accept as historical
those statements which the Evangelist puts in His

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 303
mouth, in which He distinctly affirms His conscious
ness of His pre-existence. " Before Abraham, was, I
am." (John viii. 58.) " I came out from the Father
and am come into the world." (xvi. 28.) " The glory
which I had with thee before the world was." (xvii. 5.)
" Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world."
(xvii. 24.) We have no hint in the Synoptic Gospels
that Jesus possessed such a consciousness of His pre-
existence. But a writer who regarded Him as the in
carnated Logos could not fail to conceive of Him as
possessing it. And the question must be faced — did
our Lord ever, when speaking of Himself, make claims,
and use expressions which were at any rate equivalent
to those which the writer puts into His mouth ; or
must we hold that the Evangelist shapes his com
pressed report so as to harmonise it with the meta
physical conception which dominates his thought?
And if, as we hold, there is strong reason to suspect
that the latter surmise is correct, then the question
to which we must try to find the answer is : what was
the actual consciousness of Jesus in this respect ; is the
justification of the language which the writer of the
Gospel makes Him use, to. be found in what He was,
though He may never have given such explicit expres
sion to His consciousness as the writer reports ?
We will not at this point discuss the question as to
what the actual consciousness of Jesus was in this
particular respect. We simply mention the matter
now because it is the one in connection with which the
doubt most forcibly suggests itself as to whether the
writer of the Fourth Gospel can be regarded as an
accurate reporter.

304 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
And, of course, inasmuch as the arguments for and
against the Johannine authorship of the Gospel are so
evenly balanced that we are bound to admit it to be
quite probable that the Apostle John did not write it,
there is still larger room for the doubts we have
suggested. For in that case the probabilities are (even if we
hold the writer to have been a friend of the Apostle)
that he brought to the study of the Person of Jesus
a mind previously trained in the religious speculations
of the age concerning the Logos. And while
we admit how transcendent must have been the im
pression made upon him by Christian teaching to
enable him to hail Jesus as the Word made flesh, we
must also admit that that impression, as it is pre
sented to us in the pages of his Gospel, may have been
largely coloured by the metaphysical ideas to which
he had wedded it.
Having effected an union between his philosophic
ideas and his Christian faith, it is quite as probable
that the writer viewed the Person of Jesus in the
light of these ideas, as that he viewed these ideas in the
light of the historic Jesus.
We have not in this case memories of the actual
teaching of Jesus condensed by an Apostle, but (at
best) a disciple's condensed report of what the Apostle
reported concerning his Lord's discourses. How
can we, in such a case, say how far the reports
express merely the disciple's thoughts concerning
Jesus, and how far Jesus' thoughts and convictions
concerning Himself?
Our uncertainty, moreover, is greatly increased

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 305
when we find that the author more than once passes
from what is supposed to be a direct report of a dis
course to comment, and reflection, and explanation,
without any hint of the transition, and without any
change of style. (Cf. i. 16-18 ; iii. vv. 16, 23, 31, 36 ;
xvii. 3.)
This peculiarity of the writer does not help us to
believe that his mind is wholly intent on producing
a faithful and accurate abstract of the discourses he is
reporting ; nor does it predispose us to believe that he
simply " selects, arranges, and emphasises words which
are . best suited to convey the proportionate im
pression of discourses which he apprehends in their
totality." We have felt bound to state somewhat fully the
doubts and 'difficulties which present themselves when
we study the portrait of Jesus which is sketched for
us in the Fourth Gospel; or rather, we would say
(for we have confined ourselves to this aspect of the
question), when we read His discourses as reported in
that Gospel. For it is more particularly when we con
sider the question : To what extent do these dis
courses contain the actual language which He used con
cerning himself, or rather (since it is granted that the
Evangelist has condensed his narrative, and conse
quently " cannot have given the exact words, or only
the words which were spoken,") to what extent can
they be regarded as an accurate expression of the
thoughts to which on various occasions He gave
utterance?- — that the doubts we have suggested arise.
We hold it indisputable that the historic framework
of the Gospel is in the main reliable.
X

306 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
To some readers these difficulties may not seem to
have much weight. They may hold that the insight,
power, and judgment of the writer in the selection and
arrangement of his language are worthy of entire
trust, and may be convinced that, if not the actual
language, at least the essential thoughts of Jesus are
embodied in his condensed reports.
We are far from saying that this may not be the
case ; but it seems to us that these difficulties are so
real, and so likely to vitiate the testimony of the
Gospel to the spiritual consciousness of Jesus in the
minds of many, that we are not justified, in our present
inquiry, in making use of the language reported in
that Gospel to have been spoken by Jesus, as direct
evidence of the quality and depth of the spiritual con
sciousness which He possessed.
That, however, does not prevent us from making
use of it as indirect evidence. And that evidence is
most impressive. The Fourth Gospel stands out as
the most splendid testimony to the effect which the
personality of Jesus produced on a mind (no ordinary
one) which had exceptional opportunities of becoming
acquainted with Him.
That the author should boldly enlist the current
speculations of the age concerning the Logos in his
service ; more especially that he should arrive at the .
conviction that these speculations found their justifi
cation and their fulfilment in One who had dwelt
among men full of grace and truth ; testifies to> the
overwhelming impression which the " glory " of Jesus
produced on him.
And even though the language in which, in this

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 307
Gospel, Jesus is reported to have spoken of Himself,
cannot be accepted as His ipsissima verba, and there
is grave doubt as to whether He, on any occasion,
explicitly unfolded His thoughts and convictions con
cerning Himself as the writer represents ; yet it is less
difficult to believe that the Evangelist gives us, in sub
stance, a faithful representation of our Lord's spiritual
consciousness, than it is to believe that he is mainly
giving us his own thoughts about Jesus, and his
conception of the way in which He who was the
incarnate Logos would feel and think.
The Gospel furnishes indisputable evidence that it is
not a romance — not a mere production of the imagina
tion — but is dealing with the facts of an historic life.
And it is impossible to' believe that the writer could
have put into the mouth of Jesus the language which
he reports Him to have used, without having justifica
tion for his words in the Manifested Life which he is
portraying, if not in the actual language which
Jesus employed. He could not have invented the
conception of One making the claim : " I and my
Father are one " ; he could not have conceived of One
claiming to be the Son of God, and to have the right
and the power to do " what things soever the Father
doeth," if Jesus had never used language, or assumed
authority, or manifested power which justified that
claim. To account for the language which the Fourth
Gospel puts into the mouth of Jesus, we are bound to
postulate an historic Person who, by the life He lived,
the deeds He wrought, and the words He spoke, pro
duced in the minds of those who associated with Him

308 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
such a transcendent impression, that they did not
hesitate to regard Him as essentially divine — the Son
of God, conscious of absolute fellowship with the
Father, and claiming all the rights, while at the same
time performing all the duties which devolve on per
fect Sonship.
Thus the final conclusion to which we are led
concerning the conception of the Person of Jesus
which we find in the pages of the Fourth Gospel,
more especially as that conception finds expression in
the discourses of the Lord which this Gospel contains,
is this : while that conception may, to a considerable
extent, have derived its form from the metaphysical
speculations of the age, and — being in the mind of the
writer previous to the writing of the Gospel — may have
so. influenced him when reporting the discourses of
Jesus as to lead him to infuse a considerable didactic
element into his report, so that it may be difficult to
decide to what extent he is giving expression in them
to his own thoughts and convictions concerning his
Lord, rather than giving a faithful abstract of the lines
of thought which, on various occasions, Jesus actually
followed in His teaching — yet it is impossible not to
believe that in substance his witness is true, that his
conception had its counterpart in a historic Person
who manifested such a boundless fulness of Life, and
Grace, and Power as to justify the highest claims which
He is represented to have made to knowledge of, and
to fellowship and union with the Father. If there are
difficulties in the way of believing that Jesus in His
teaching actually made for Himself the stupendous
claims which in the Fourth Gospel He is reported to

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 309
have made, there are still greater difficulties to be
faced by those who refuse to believe that these claims
find their justification in the Life which was manifested
in Him. For we may boldly aver that if the Man
Jesus was not what He is reported by the
author of the Fourth Gospel to have been, then the
author of that Gospel must himself have been such an
one as the Man whom he depicts. So impossible does
it appear to us for any one to. have sketched such a
portrait unless it was either drawn from life, or the
man who sketched it was himself endowed with the
life and consciousness with which he credits his
subject* * The writer has been gratified to find the views which
he has set forth in the preceding pages substantially con
firmed by Mr. Peyton, in his most suggestive book, " The
Memorabilia of Jesus," which did not come into his hands
until some time after the present chapter was written :
" The aim of the Memorabilia is not information, but
impression, and the impression of a singular fact, even the
profound intimacy between Christ and the ideal, mystic, and
spiritual world : that He is the Son of the eternal Father, as
no one else before Him was, and as such He is the creator
of a life not before found amongst men. It traces the growth
and the forms of His consciousness. This intimacy of Jesus
colours the literature from beginning to end. And the
intended impression is no doubt conveyed, not exactly in the
diction which Christ employed when speaking to His un
trained students, but in a diction which John later on felt
more appropriate. It is visible on the surface that the
Memorabilia represents Christ speaking in a style different
from that in which He is reported by the Synoptics. This
' Memorabilia ' touches the Synoptics only in four places ;
it selects the occasions when Christ spoke on other topics;
it gives detailed conversations and condenses long argu
ments. Have we the very words of Jesus ? Suppose we have
not. Does the paper on which the letter is written affect its
veracity ? We want ideas, not words. Words are the paper
on which ideas write themselves. The ideas translated into

3io THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
In the light of the conclusion at which we have now~
arrived we may proceed to consider the testimony of
the Fourth Gospel concerning the spiritual conscious
ness of Jesus. More especially we may direct our
attention to those features of the portrait which seem
to be peculiar to this Gospel.
What new light, we may ask, does this Gospel throw
upon our inquiry? Does it disclose any new depth
in the consciousness of Jesus, of which we have no
hint in the Synoptic Gospels? Does it enable us to
gain a deeper insight into His marvellous personality ?
Many would unhesitatingly answer these questions
in the affirmative. We hesitate, however, to do so.
For it seems to us that the Fourth Gospel differs from
the other three rather in presenting the consciousness
of Jesus in a different aspect, than in making us ac
quainted with new and deeper features of it. At the
same time this aspect to which the Fourth Gospel
introduces us is, in more respects than one, so unlike
an idiom of Greek words are ideas still. For an epic or
drama, it was even necessary that they should suffer this
translation. . . What mind in that age could have origin
ated ideas and emotions such as are here reported, which
have not their parallel anywhere ? Who but one inspired
by Christ, through whom Christ's thoughts have passed as
into a prism, could have written this literature ? Could such
thoughts be an invention ? Could the situation in which they
were spoken be the creation of a novelist ? Has a species of
human life been ever created by romancing ? They are no
other than the shivered rays in which the light of Christ's
mind as it passed through John's analysed itself. Perhaps
some of John's thoughts had passed into another mind before
they found expression in the Memorabilia, but they have
not suffered in the transmission. The Memorabilia does not
betray the piecing of different minds."
(Memorabilia of Jesus, pp. 40, 41.)

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 311
that which we contemplate in the Synoptic Gospels,
that it behoves us attentively to consider it.
We find then that the chief peculiarity of the por
trait of Jesus which the Fourth Gospel brings before
us is, that while in the Synoptic Gospels we are left
to infer the nature and depth of the spiritual con
sciousness which He possessed from the character of
His teaching, the language He employs when speak
ing of God, and the power He exercised in working
miracles and forgiving sins, and (with the remarkable
exception reported in Matt. xi. 27 ; Luke x. 22) never
find Him giving direct expression to it ; the Fourth
Gospel represents Him in every discourse which it
records, as turning the thoughts of His hearers to
Himself ; and as continually making affirmations con
cerning His unique relationship with God ; His con
sciousness of absolute knowledge of and fellowship
with Him ; and on several occasions, His consciousness
of pre-existence with Him.
With the exception of this last point, which we will
discuss more in detail presently, it cannot be said that
these affirmations introduce us to any deeper aspect
of His Nature than we have discovered in the Synoptic
narratives. We have already found from our study of
these that we are bound to credit Jesus with an abso
lutely unique and unfathomable consciousness of com
munion and fellowship with God ; and the explicit
statements which, in the Fourth Gospel, He is reported
to have made on these points, do but formulate what
we cannot but regard as the truth concerning His
spiritual consciousness.
At the same time it cannot be denied that it is

3 r2 THE MAN CALLED JESUS,
not easy to reconcile the Jesus of the Fourth
Gospel with the Jesus of the Synoptists. It is difficult
to understand why He should " charge His disciples
to tell no man that He was the Christ " (Matt. xvi. 20 ;
Mark viii. 30), when He Himself (according to' the
Fourth Gospel) on many occasions either distinctly
asserted that to be the fact (John iv. 26), or made
claims which implied it.
The modest, retiring Jesus of the Synoptists seems
to be a very different Man from the self-assertive, con
troversial Jesus of the Fourth Gospel discourses. The
Jesus who habitually uses the parabolic method of
teaching, is startlingly different from the Jesus who
teaches by direct affirmations concerning Himself.
The Jesus who is the trusting, obedient, suffering Son
of Man, who apparently only at times attained to the
full consciousness of His divine Sonship, and did not
always clearly foresee the exact course of His career,
nor understand the way in which His Father was lead
ing Him^ is One whom it is difficult to recognise in the
Jesus who' seems habitually conscious of His Deity,
and who habitually speaks and acts as One who knows
that the Father has given all things into His hands,
and that He came forth from God, and is going to
God. Doubtless there are not wanting in the Synoptic
Gospels (as we have already pointed out) indications
of those traits which the Fourth Gospel represents as
being normally characteristic of Jesus ; just as there
are not wanting in the Fourth Gospel traits which
bring His humanity prominently before us. But these
divine and human traits are proportioned in the

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 313
Synoptic Gospels so differently to the way in which
they are proportioned in the Fourth Gospel, that the
explanation commonly given, that " differences of form
and substance correspond to differences of person and
place,"* does not seem satisfactory.
The differences are so great that we gladly escape
from the difficulty of reconciling the two portraits by
accepting the conclusion to which we have been led
by the considerations we have advanced above :
i.e., that while in substance the testimony of the
Fourth Gospel is true, and while it is quite possible
that Jesus may have given, on various occasions,
direct expression to the unique spiritual consciousness
which He possessed, yet it must always remain
doubtful whether the form into which the Evan
gelist throws his testimony can be regarded as an
accurate report of historic scenes in His life — whether
in the discourses of the Lord as reported by him we
are not listening to the writer expounding Jesus,
rather than to Jesus unfolding Himself. At any rate,
as we have previously stated, we do not feel justified
in this inquiry in making use of these discourses as
direct evidence concerning the spiritual consciousness
of Jesus. The fact that He possessed such a con-
ciousness is, it seems to us, indubitable ; we can afford
to leave the question in doubt as to whether He so
boldly and frequently expressed Himself concerning it,
as the author of the Fourth Gospel would lead us to
v believe. We have now arrived at a point in our inquiry when
* Westcott : " Gospel according to St. John," Introduction,
p. lxxx.

314 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
we can calmly consider what is undoubtedly one of
the most difficult, as it is one of the most interesting
points in connection with the subject we are discuss
ing ; the question, namely, how are we to regard the
statements which the Fourth Gospel on several oc
casions reports Jesus to have made, in which He dis
tinctly asserts His consciousness of His personal pre-
existence ?
The following are the passages in which this claim
to pre-existence most distinctly appears (though
possibly it is implied in others — cf. John viii. 14
and 23; xvii. 18). "No man hath ascended into
heaven, but He that descended out of heaven, even
the Son of Man " (John iii. 13) ; " The bread of God
is that which cometh down out of heaven." " I
am the living bread." " I am come down from
heaven" (vi. w. 33, 35, 38); "I came forth and
am come from God " (viii. 42) ; " Before Abra
ham was, I am" (viii. 58); "I came out from the
Father and am come into the world ; again I leave the
world and go unto the Father " (xvi. 28) ; " O Father,
glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory
which I had with thee before the world was " (xvii. 5) ;
" Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world "
(xvii. 24).
Such distinct and repeated statements cannot be
ignored. Nor can they be explained away. For our
previous inquiry has compelled us to admit that the
witness of the Fourth Gospel is at least substantially
true, and that — even though we may permit the doubt
to remain whether the discourses of Jesus which it
reports are only and altogether brief abstracts of His

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 315
historic utterances — there can be no doubt whatever
that His Person and consciousness must have been
such as to justify the Evangelist's conception of Him.
In dealing with these remarkable statements in this
inquiry (in which, we would remind our readers, we
have throughout endeavoured to keep a firm hold on
" that which is natural," while feeling our way towards
" that which is spiritual ") we deem it well first of all, at
the risk of repetition, to take note of our landmarks,
and to clearly recognise the point at which we have
aheady arrived in our attempt to apprehend the
consciousness of Jesus.
We have found, then, from our study of the Synoptic
Gospels, that we are bound to credit Jesus with an
absolutely unique and unfathomable consciousness of
fellowship and communion with God — a fulness of
spiritual Life which can only be adequately expressed
by calling Him " the Son of God," in a very special, if
not in an altogether peculiar sense. We have found
Him exercising transcendent power both in the
physical and in the spiritual world ; presuming to for
give sin, no less than to heal the sick and raise the dead.
And from our examination of the Fourth Gospel,
we have arrived at the conclusion that the portrait it
draws, though perhaps idealised,* must have had its
counterpart and its complete justification in an historic
life ; the imaginative conception of such a Man as the
Evangelist depicts being an impossibility.
* In the sense of being shaped throughout by that highest
conception of it which it was only possible to form after the
life of Jesus had been consummated by the Crucifixion and
glorified by the Resurrection.

3 [6 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
We are already then close to. the border-line of a
region in whicli " that which is natural " passes alto
gether into " that which is spiritual." And now we
come face to face with this further and most startling
feature of the portrait. Is it possible to. account for
it, and yet to. keep our feet on the " natural " ; or does
the ground fall away from us, not permitting us to
advance further ? Do we here stand on the edge of
the abysmal depths of the unseen universe?
Striving as long as we can to keep our feet on the
solid ground of the humanity of Him whose marvellous
consciousness we are considering, we may advance the
following considerations.
(i) We are in absolute ignorance of the way in
which souls come to be. No theory which has been
propounded to explain the origin of the spiritual part
of our nature — that part in virtue of which we are not
merely animals but men — can be said to be even
moderately satisfactory.
The body forms in the womb under the strict con
trol of physical law ; and when it has reached a certain
stage of development, " out of the dark " rushes the
vital spark which constitutes it a living soul, dowered
with all the possibilities of manhood.
But from what vast reservoir of life that spark comes,
and whether, prior to finding its tabernacle in the
human body, it has previously tabernacled elsewhere ;
or existed merely as a potentiality ; or shared the
Consciousness of the Conscious Source of all Life ;
concerning this we know absolutely nothing.
(2) Again, we cannot circumscribe human nature —
either its capacities or its consciousness — with any

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 317
lines of limitation. We are absolutely prohibited from
dogmatizing concerning the range of its possibilities.
Experience is our only guide to an opinion (or con
viction) concerning what man may be able to do or be.
What the wisest and the best have done and have been,
that alone enables us to speak confidently concerning
the powers and capacities of Manhood.
Where human life has manifested itself in greatest
power and fulness ; whether intellectually, as in Homer,
Shakespeare, or Michael Angelo ; or spiritually, as in
Buddha, Isaiah, or Jesus ; however surprising and un
precedented these lives may have been, we are bound
to accept them as indications of the range and scope of
human capacity ; we must draw the circle within which
human nature is supposed to be restricted at least
with such a diameter as to include these.
(3) And yet again : though prior to its manifesta
tion we could form only a very imperfect idea con
cerning Ideal Manhood, and how it would comport
itself on the stage of the world, yet we might reason
ably anticipate, from what experience has taught us
concerning the powers and capacities of Manhood,
that if, at any time and place, human life did culminate
in an ideal Man, such an one would exhibit a fulness
of life and power, and a perfection of character, in line
indeed with the noblest who had preceded Him; yet so
far transcending them as to make his life absolutely
unique in the world's history — unique not only in
its combination of qualities, capacities, and charac
teristics, but also and chiefly in the modes of his
spiritual consciousness. We should anticipate this,
not only because it is on the spiritual side that man's

318 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
nature seems to open on the infinite ; not only because
that part of human life which consists of relations
with the unseen — or in other words, the faith, hope,
obedience, and love which man is capable of displaying
towards God — seems to promise the most boundless
possibilities of development (possibilities which in an
Ideal Man would become actualities) ; but also because
of the nature of the testimony which the spiritual con
sciousness of mankind has consistently, though with
very varied degrees of fulness and clearness, furnished
concerning itself — concerning its essential nature, and
its lofty function-
Man's quality and rank in the scale of being have
ever been borne witness to by the many, in that men
have never been able to do without some religion or
other ; and though they have often worshipped igno-
rantly, and have often sunk into gross superstition,
they have still been bearing witness to the fact that
human life consists not merely in correspondence with
things seen and temporal, but also, with things unseen
and eternal.
And that to which the many have vaguely and un
consciously borne witness, the few, who have been the
spiritual aristocracy of the race, have clearly and
boldly proclaimed. Not only the unique Man we are
now contemplating, but the world's best and most
spiritually-minded men in all ages, have clearly and
uniformly insisted on the fact that there is an affinity
between the nature of man and the nature of God ;
that " in the beginning God created man in his own
image " ; that, " Thou madest him a little lower than

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 319
God, and crownest him with glory and honour " ; that
" we are his offspring."
In other words, the best consciousness of the race
has consistently testified that the capacity for divine
sonship is the inalienable birthright of man.
Unless the world's best and noblest have been
deluded dreamers we may hold it proved that the
Creator's architectonic idea with regard to man is
the idea of a race of beings who shall know, and serve,
and love Him as sons — with full knowledge, with
willing service, and with whole-hearted love ; a race
which shall share His Glory, and participate in His
eternal Life.
But, granting that this be true, then that capacity
for divine sonship which is the central thought and
idea of God concerning man, involves the fact that
God and man are akin.
It necessitates participation in the Divine Nature :
it compels the belief that we are offshoots of the
Eternal Life, and Mind, and Will ; that we all are, as the
creed asserts of Him who is our Ideal and Representa
tive, " begotten not made." Though the way in which
the Eternal Spirit does thus project into separate
existence such offshoots of Himself is an inscrutable
mystery, the facts of consciousness, as displayed in the
best samples of our race, seem to demand this explana
tion, and to be capable of interpretation on these
lines alone. We have existed from eternity in the
thought and emotion of God.
" Trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, Who is our home."

320 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
But this being so, what limits can we assign to the
consciousness of fully developed manhood ? Can we
not at least say this : that any Man who fully em
bodies the idea of the Creator must have the con
sciousness that He is not merely a creature, but a Son,
and must realise that He can lay claim to all the rights
and privileges, as well as that it devolves upon Him to
fulfil all the duties, which pertain to, and develop upon,
Divine Sonship ? And, though we are absolutely pre
cluded from dogmatising on the subject, we hold that
it would be reasonable to anticipate that such a Man
(whose nature and being must be intrinsically divine,
since the divine idea of Manhood, which is Sonship,
is embodied in Him) would have a consciousness of life
so full, so boundless, that Time's barriers would be
submerged by it. The fathomless eternity which we
are forced to conceive of as lying behind us, could
have no existence for One who never had any other
consciousness than that consciousness of fellowship
and oneness with the Creator-Father, which consti
tutes the essence of the life of manhood as designed
by God. As soon as ever such an One began to be
conscious of Himself, He would be conscious of
a Life at one with the life of the' Creator,
eternal, without either beginning or ending; for that
is the essential nature of the life of Sonship, and
(according to our hypothesis) His rank would be that
of a perfect Son, the rank of a Firstborn.
Nay ! could we postulate any beginning of being to
such an One? Would not His Life, from its very
nature, be a conscious portion of the Life of God ? If
there is an affinity between the nature of man and the

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 321
nature of God, must not Ideal Manhood be conscious
of its origin, i.e., participate in the consciousness of
God? And when such Ideal Manhood " became flesh," was
embodied in a human being, we should necessarily
have both an incarnation and a kenosis : — an incarna
tion, because such Manhood is necessarily a perfect
revelation of the Deity; a kenosis, because perfect
Manhood cannot perfectly reveal itself in flesh and
blood, and in such a material world as this ; for these
are but the swaddling clothes and the nursery of the
heirs of God.
What kind of life such a " Son of Man " and " Son
of God " would live ; and how much consciousness of
His eternal being He would display ; these questions
we should find it impossible to answer from any
a priori reasoning ; the manifested Life would alone
enable us to answer them.
It may seem to the reader that we have been diverg
ing into a region of speculation very far removed
indeed from " that which is natural." Yet into such
high regions we are inevitably led when we recognise
the truth that human nature is akin to the Divine ; and
in these regions alone can we hope to find any explana
tion worthy of being called such, of the consciousness
of the historic Man we are contemplating, and more
especially of that astounding phase of it which we are
now considering.
Jesus is undoubtedly the " Firstborn " of the human
race; we cannot conceive of or imagine a nobler,
diviner Manhood than that which He displayed. And
He undoubtedly laid claim both to the title " Son of

322 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
Man," and also to that of " The Son " (of God). We
have seen what a depth and fulness of conscious fel
lowship with God He possessed. Do not these indis
putable facts harmonise with and confirm the truth
fulness of the line of reflection we have been
following? If (as it seems to the writer) they do, then
we ought to expect that such an One should some
times speak in language which revealed a fathomless
consciousness of Life — Life eternal, Life uncreated —
because Life consciously united to the eternal un
created Source of Life — the Creator-Father, God.
In the light of the foregoing considerations it is, we
think, possible — while still keeping a firm foothold on
" that which is natural "—to arrive at something ap
proaching a definite conclusion on the question which
has suggested them, i.e., the question of the pre-
existence of the Man Jesus.
We do not anticipate that this conclusion will be
sufficiently definite to satisfy many minds, and it doubt
less will be deemed unsatisfactory to those who accept
without reserve the birth stories of Matthew and
Luke ; but we consider it sufficiently remarkable to
merit a clear statement, since it shows us how far we
can travel towards the conclusions which the Christian
Church has formulated in her creeds concerning this
deep mystery, without the aid of the birth stories, and
while still keeping to the lines on which we have
attempted to conduct this inquiry.
Whether, in the light of the conclusion we are about
to state, the birth stories themselves may not assume
a new significance, and be capable of a new interpreta
tion we will leave the reader to decide. Our endeavour

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 323
now is limited to the attempt to point out the
inferences which can be legitimately drawn concerning
the Person of this divine Man from the investigation
of His spiritual consciousness which we have under
taken. Let us assume then, that Jesus Christ came into the
world no otherwise than as other human beings come,
i.e., that He was the child of human parents, and that
the ordinary processes of nature were not interfered
with when "out of the dark " He came.
Yet we have found that there is overwhelming
evidence to establish the truthfulness of the statements
of the Apostles : " It pleased the Father that in Him
should all fulness dwell " ; " the life — the eternal life
which was with the Father — was manifested ... in
Him " ; " God has revealed Himself unto us in a Son."
He was the Ideal Man — God's idea of Manhood em
bodied — and because He was that, He was the Son of
God — the perfect Revealer of the Father — necessarily
so, since man has been made in the image of God, and
an Ideal Man must be a perfect image of the invisible
God. We have already pointed out that such a manifesta
tion of Ideal Manhood involves both an incarnation
and a kenosis. But let us endeavour to arrive at a
more exact conclusion concerning the pre-existence
of Him who was, we have been led to conclude, both
" God manifest in the flesh," and " Man — crowned with
glory and honour."
Is a definite belief in His pre-existence necessarily
involved in this conclusion ! The only answer we can
give to that question is " yes, and no."

324 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
" Yes," because, as we have pointed out, He was
conscious of the possession of Life, at one with the
Life of God; and of that Life we can postulate no
beginning: it is timeless, eternal, uncreated.
But if we ask : " Did He exist as an Individual
Person : did He, after endless ages of conscious per
sonal Life, compress Himself into the limits of a
human soul, emptying Himself of the glory which He
had with God before the world was ? " — to the ques
tion, when put in that form, we must unhesitatingly
answer: "No."
We grant that the human mind, interpreting baldly
some of the New Testament statements on the subject,
shows a strong tendency — under stress of the logical
rules by which it works — to arrive at some such con
clusion as that. But it is a conclusion which is open to
this fatal objection ; it is impossible to hold it, and at
the same time to hold the truth of Jesus Christ's true
humanity. To hold that truth is of vital importance ;
and to hold it with any definiteness is, as it seems to us,
impossible, if we postulate in His case either any
difference of " nature," or any difference of origin from
our own.
Is it possible, then, to formulate the truth concerning
Jesus' pre-existence in such a way as to do justice to
His boundless consciousness of Life, while at the same
time retaining our hold on His true and full humanity?
The prologue to the Fourth Gospel furnishes the
answer to this question : " The Word was with God
and was God ... the Word became flesh." The
author of that Gospel undoubtedly did not conceive of

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 325
" the Word " as pre-existing as a conscious Individual,
but as the conscious eternal Mind of God*
The conclusion we arrive at then is this: that the
pre-existence of Jesus Christ (as commonly conceived
of and beheved in) is not so much untrue to fact as a
partial and inadequate statement and conception of
fact. He pre-existed, but only as we, in virtue of our
kinship with God, are bound to believe that we have
pre-existed. But, in His case, His unfathomable con
sciousness of Life enabled Him to identify Himself
with the Source of all Life — to feel and know that He
had Life in Himself, and that that Life was a part of
the timeless Life of God.
That is a conclusion in which, as it seems to us,
Christian believers can rest, and in which they should
be content to rest. " In Him was Life " — boundless
fulness of Life, God's own Life. We can be sure of
that, and we know nothing definitely beyond that —
nothing that is, which throws light upon, and which
will enable us more clearly to understand the inscru
table mystery of the life which is His and ours —
nothing which will enable us to make any other reply
to the question which we are considering, when put
categorically — the question: did He pre-exist? —
except the one we have given : " Yes, He did, because
He was the Life ; No, He did not, because He was the
Son of Man, and came into conscious personal being
* " John had formulated the proposition : ' The Logos is
Jesus Christ.' But, with John, this proposition had not
¦become the basis of every speculative idea about Christ ; with
him 'the Logos ' was only a predicate." Harnack, " What is
Christianity?" p. 203.

326 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
no otherwise than as such children of men as our
selves." Doubtless this answer will not content many minds.
Many men find it difficult to rest on any conclusion
which does not take the form of a positive statement
or a positive denial. Yet it seems certain that the
highest truths with which the human mind can become
acquainted are not capable of being expressed in cate
gorical form : their adequate expression requires both
a positive assertion and a positive denial.*
And in contemplating the Person of Jesus we are
contemplating the crowning mystery of Life and Truth
which God has vouchsafed to manifest to human senses
and human understandings — a mystery which can be
apprehended indeed, but never comprehended.
We stand face to face with One who was altogether
human, and altogether Divine ; One who conse
quently could not have pre-existed otherwise than as
every human soul has pre-existed, and yet who must
have pre-existed, since He participated in the conscious
Life of the uncreated Source of all Life — was with
God from the beginning, and was God.

Here we close our brief inquiry concerning the
spiritual consciousness of Jesus. Brief and sadly
inadequate we recognise it to be ; but had it
been twice as lengthy, we cannot believe that it would
have been less inadequate.
For in the consciousness of Jesus we meet with Life
* Vide Life and Letters of Robertson of Brighton, vol. ii.
P- 'S3-

THE SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS. 327
so immeasurably full, so unfathomably deep, so sur
passingly rich, that to comprehend it is impossible ;
the completest synthesis, the most elaborate explana
tions, still leave it mysterious, inexplicable.
But though it is not possible to comprehend this
amazing phenomenon, it is possible to apprehend it ;
and it is in the hope that the line of thought we have
followed may enable some to attain to a clearer in
sight into the depths of the riches of His glory, and
to apprehend more firmly " truth as it is in Him," that
we have written the foregoing pages.

EPILOGUE.
Reader, we began these pages by contemplating
" that which is natural " in the life of the Man we have
been studying, and as long as we could, we strove to
take the measure of His stature as the Son of Man.
Even then we found that the terms " the only
begotten," and " the Son of God," could alone ade
quately express His rank and worth.
But the contemplation of His death and Resurrec
tion have compelled us to take the step from " that
which is natural " into " that which is spiritual " — to
attempt the exploration of regions where sight and
reason fail, and faith and hope alone can guide us.
We have seen that it was impossible to adequately
gauge the significance of His death without contem
plating the mysteries of sin and redemption, not only
from the point of view of man — the sinner, but also
from the point of view of God — the sinned-against ;
and we found that faith in Him, who voluntarily died
to save the world from sin, as the Son of God — the
acceptance of Him as a perfect manifestation of Deity,
as well as the recognition of Him as the Ideal of
Humanity — was absolutely necessary if we were to
explore the heights and depths of His great redemp
tive act; nay, that in order to reach a position from
which a comprehensive view of His glorious act of

EPILOGUE. 329
self-sacrifice could be obtained, the standpoint of faith
in His Divine Sonship must first be won.
We have seen further that the unexampled event
which is recorded in the Gospels as following on His
amazing death, was consistently regarded by His
Apostles as the consummation of His life and Purpose,
and the justification of the faith and hope which they
reposed in Him as the Christ and the Son of God.
We have endeavoured to show that the view they took
of that event, and the supremely important place which
they assigned it in their teaching are sober and correct,
by showing that such a demonstration as the Resurrec
tion gives us of the fact that His Life was " eternal,"
and His Purpose " of God," was an absolutely necessary
demonstration, since not otherwise could His life, and
teaching, and death have been completely explained
and justified, and mankind be inspired to accept Him
as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
We are painfully conscious of the feebleness of the
attempt we have made to set forth these great matters.
We have throughout had to face a double difficulty:
the difficulty of the subject itself, and the difficulty
arising from the fact that it is a subject which is not
new — which has been written upon by innumerable
writers in the past, and upon which fresh libraries are
being produced in the present day.
Yet in these very difficulties we venture to find some
justification for our attempt. If the life of Jesus
did not still present to the student many difficulties, it
would not be what the New Testament claims it to
be — the manifested Life of the Father, the Life of One
in whom it pleased the Father that all fulness should

330 THE MAN CALLED JESUS.
dwell ; and therefore inexhaustible. The fact that
fresh writers are continually attempting to unfold that
fulness is proof that it has not yet been fully unfolded ;
proof that —
" The Lord hath yet more light and truth
To break forth from His Word."
We have tried to set forth in these pages the Light
and Truth as it has broken forth from God's Word on
us. If they contain no new light for some readers,
they may at least, we venture to hope, present the old
light with some freshness. In this hope we have
written them, and with this hope we send them forth.
In all sincerity we can say with one of the first
writers who attempted to unfold the meaning of that
Life which was lived among men "full of grace and
truth " :—
" These are written that ye may believe that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, ye
may have life in His name." (John xx. 31.)

Finis.

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