The World's Greatest Books - Volume 13 Part 28

_A STIMULATING ACQUAINTANCE_

An extraordinary man, whose position remains to some extent enigmatical, appeared about this time and unquestionably had some intercourse with Jesus. About the year 28 of our era there spread through the whole of Palestine the reputation of a certain John, a young ascetic, full of fervour and pa.s.sion. The fundamental practice which characterised his sect was baptism; but baptism with John was only a sign to impress the minds of the people and to prepare them for some great movement. There can be no doubt he was possessed in the highest degree with hope for the coming of the Messiah. He was of the same age as Jesus, and the two young enthusiasts, full of the same hopes and the same hatreds, were able to lend each other mutual support, Jesus recognizing John as his superior, and timidly developing his own individual genius. John was soon cut short in his prophetic career, and cast into prison, from which, however, he still exercised a wide influence.

Jesus returned from the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea and the Jordan to Galilee, his true home, ripened by intercourse with a great man of very different nature, and having acquired full consciousness of his own originality. From that time he preached with greater power and made the mult.i.tude feel his authority. The persuasion that he was to make G.o.d reign upon earth took absolute possession of his spirit. He looked upon himself as the universal reformer. He aimed at founding the Kingdom of G.o.d, or, in other words, the Kingdom of the Soul. Jesus was, in some respects, an anarchist, for he had no idea of civil government. He never showed any desire to put himself in the place of the rich and mighty.

The idea of being all-powerful by suffering and resignation, and of triumphing over force by purity of heart was his peculiar idea. The founders of the Kingdom of G.o.d are the simple--not the rich, not the learned, not the priests; but women, common folk, the humble, and the young. He now boldly announced "the good tidings of the Kingdom of G.o.d,"

and himself as that "Son of Man," whom Daniel in his vision had beheld as the divine herald of the last and supreme revelation.

_EARLY SUCCESSES_

The success of the new prophet's teaching was decisive. A group of men and women, all characterised by the same spirit of childish frankness and simple innocence, adhered to him, and said, "Thou art the Messiah."

The centre of his operations was the little town of Capernaum, on the sh.o.r.e of the Lake of Genesareth. Jesus was much attached to the town and made it a second home. He had attempted to begin the work at Nazareth, but without success. The fact that his family, which was of humble rank, was known in the district lessened his authority too much; and it is moreover remarkable that his family were strongly opposed to him, and flatly declined to believe in his mission. In Capernaum he was much more favourably received, and it became "his own city." These good Galileans had never heard preaching so well adapted to their cheerful imaginations. They admired him, they encouraged him, they found that he spoke well, and that his reasons were convincing. The almost poetical harmony of his discourses won their affections. The authority of the young master increased day by day, and naturally the more that people believed in him the more he believed in himself. Four or five large villages, lying at half an hour's journey from one another, formed the little world of Jesus at this time. Sometimes, however, he wandered beyond his favourite region, once in the direction of Tyre and Sidon, a country which must have been marvellously prosperous at that time. But he returned always to his well-beloved sh.o.r.e of Genesareth. The motherland of his thoughts was there; there he found faith and love.

In this earthly paradise lived a population in perfect harmony with the land itself, active, honest, joyous, and tender of heart, and here Jesus became the centre of a little circle which adored him. In this friendly group he evidently had his favourites. Peter, for whom his affection was very deep, James, son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, formed a sort of privy council. Jesus owed his conquests to the infinite charm of his personality and speech. Everyone thought that he lived in a sphere higher than that of humanity. The aristocracy of the group was represented by a customs-officer, and by the wife of one of Herod's stewards. The rest were fishermen and common folk. Jesus lived with his disciples almost always in the open air, the faithful band leading a joyous wandering life, and gathering the inspirations of the Master in their first bloom. His preaching was soft and gentle, inspired with a feeling for nature and the perfume of the fields. It was above all in parable that the Master excelled. There was nothing in Judaism to give him a model for this delightful feature. He created it. In freeing man from what he called "the cares of this world" Jesus might go to excess and injure the essential conditions of human society; but he founded that spiritual exaltation which for centuries has filled souls with joy in the midst of this vale of tears. In our busy civilisation the memory of the free life of Galilee has been like perfume from another world, like the "dew of Hermon," which has kept drought and grossness from entirely invading the fields of G.o.d.

_A GOSPEL FOR THE POOR_

Jesus very soon understood that the official world of his time would by no means lend its support to his kingdom. He took his resolution with extreme daring. Leaving the world, with its hard heart and narrow prejudices, on one side, he turned towards the simple. A vast rearrangement of cla.s.ses was to take place. The Kingdom of G.o.d was made for children, and those like them; for the world's outcasts, victims of that social arrogance which repulses the good but humble man; for heretics and schismatics, publicans, Samaritans, and the pagans of Tyre and Sidon. That the reign of the poor is at hand was the doctrine of Jesus. This exaggerated taste for poverty could not last very long, but although it quickly pa.s.sed, poverty remained an ideal from which true descendants of Jesus were never afterwards separated.

Like all great men, Jesus was fond of common folk, and felt at his ease with them. He particularly esteemed all those whom orthodox Judaism disdained. Love of the people, pity for their powerlessness, the feeling of the democratic leader who has the spirit of the mult.i.tude quick within him, reveal themselves at every instant in his acts and sayings.

He had no external affection, and made no display of austerity. He did not shun pleasure; but went willingly to marriage feasts. His gentle gaiety found constant expression in amiable pleasantries. Thus he journeyed through Galilee in the midst of continual festivities. When he entered a house, it was considered a joy and a blessing. Children and women adored him. The children, indeed, were like a young guard about him, for the inauguration of his innocent kingship, and gave him little ovations. It was childhood, in fact, in its divine spontaneity, in its simple bewilderment of joy, that took possession of the earth.

How long did this intoxication last? We cannot tell. But whether it filled years or months, the dream was so beautiful that humanity has lived upon it ever since. Happy he to whom it has been granted to behold with his own eyes this divine blossoming, and to share, if but for a day, the incomparable illusion! But yet more happy, Jesus would tell us, shall he be who, by the uprightness of his will, and the poetry of his soul, shall be able to create anew in his own heart the true Kingdom of G.o.d!

_THE PRIEST IN THE PATH_

Nearly every year Jesus went to Jerusalem for the feast of the Pa.s.sover.

It was, it appears, in the year 31 that the most important of these visits took place. Jesus felt that to play a leading part he must leave Galilee and attack Judaism in its stronghold, Jerusalem. There the little Galilean community was far from feeling at home. Jerusalem was a city of pedantry, acrimony, disputation, hatreds, and pettiness of mind.

Its fanaticism was extreme. All the religious discussions of the Jewish schools, all the canonical instruction, even the legal business and civil actions--in a word, all form of national activity, were concentrated in the temple. The Romans refrained from entering the sactuary; the surveillance of the Temple was in the hands of the Jews.

It was in the Temple that Jesus spent his days during his sojourn at Jerusalem, and all that he saw aroused his aversion. These old Jewish inst.i.tutions displeased him, and the necessity of conforming to them gave him pain. He who gave forgiveness to all men, provided they loved him, could find nothing congenial in vain disputations and obsolete sacrifices, and apparently he brought from Jerusalem one idea thenceforth rooted in his mind--that there was no understanding possible between him and the ancient Jewish religion. He no longer took his stand as a Jewish reformer, but as a destroyer of Judaism. In other words, Jesus is no longer a Jew. He is, in the highest degree, a revolutionary; he calls all men to a worship founded solely on the ground of their being children of G.o.d. Love of G.o.d, charity, and mutual forgiveness--in these consisted his whole law. Nothing could be less sacerdotal. It was on his return from Jerusalem, as he pa.s.sed near Shechem, and when talking with a Samaritan woman, that Jesus gave utterance to the saying upon which will rest the edifice of eternal religion--Believe me, the hour cometh when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father ... but the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. On the day when he said these words he was truly Son of G.o.d.

Jesus returned to Galilee full of revolutionary ardour. His innocent aphorisms and beautiful moral precepts now culminated in a decided policy. The law is to be abolished, and it is he that will abolish it.

The Messiah is come, and it is he that is the Messiah. The Kingdom of G.o.d is about to be revealed, and it is he that will reveal it. He knew well that he would be the victim of his own audacity, but it was by cries and the rending of hearts that the kingdom had to be established.

The proposition "Jesus is the Messiah" was followed by the proposition "Jesus is the Son of David," and, by an entirely spontaneous conspiracy, fict.i.tious genealogies arose in the imaginations of his partisans, while he was still alive, to prove his royal descent. We cannot tell whether he knew anything of these legends. He never designated himself Son of David. That he ever dreamed of making himself pa.s.s for an incarnation of G.o.d is a matter about which no doubt can exist. Such an idea was entirely foreign to the Jewish mind. He believed himself to be more than an ordinary man, but separated by an infinite distance from G.o.d. He was the Son of G.o.d, but all men are, or may become so in divers degrees.

Jesus apparently remained a stranger to the theological subtleties which were soon to fill the world with sterile disputations.

_TIME-WORM PROOFS_

Two means of proof--miracles and the accomplishment of prophecies--could alone establish a supernatural mission in the opinion of the contemporaries of Jesus. He himself, but more especially his disciples, employed these two methods of demonstration in perfect good faith. For a long time Jesus had recognised himself in the sacred oracles of the prophets. As to miracles, they were considered at this epoch the indispensable mark of the divine, and the sign of the prophetic vocation. Jesus, therefore, was compelled either to renounce his mission or become a thaumaturgist. It must be remembered that not only did he believe in miracles, but he had not the least idea of an order of nature under the reign of law. On that point, his knowledge was in no way superior to that of his contemporaries. Indeed, one of his most deeply-rooted opinions was that by faith and prayer man had entire power over nature. Almost all the miracles Jesus believed he performed seem to have been miracles of healing. The kind of healing which he most often practised was exorcism, or the expulsion of demons. There can be no doubt that he had in his lifetime the reputation of possessing the greatest secrets of the art. There were many lunatics in Judaea wandering at large, and no doubt Jesus had great influence over these unhappy beings. Circ.u.mstances seem to indicate that he became a thaumaturgist late in life and against his own inclinations. He accepted miracles exacted by public opinion rather than performed them.

_THE NEW KINGDOM OF G.o.d_

During the eighteen months between the return from the Pa.s.sover of the year 31 and his journey to the feast of tabernacles in the year 32, all that was within Jesus developed with an ever-increasing degree of power and audacity. The fundamental idea of Jesus from his earliest days was the establishment of the Kingdom of G.o.d. This kingdom he appears to have understood in divers senses. At times it is the literal consummation of apocalyptic visions relating to the Messiah. At other times it is the spiritual kingdom, and the deliverance at hand is the deliverance of the soul. The revolution desired by Jesus in this last sense is the one which has really taken place. That the coming of the end of the world and the appearance of the Messiah in judgment was taken literally by the disciples, and at certain moments by the Master himself, appears absolutely clear. These formal declarations absorbed the minds of the Christian family for nearly seventy years. The world has not ended, as Jesus announced, and as his disciples believed it would end. But it has been renewed and in one sense renewed as Jesus desired. By the side of the false, cold, impossible idea of an ostentatious advent, he conceived the real City of G.o.d, the raising up of the weak, the love of the people, esteem for the poor, and the restoration of all that is humble and true and simple. This restoration he has depicted, as an incomparable artist, in touches which will last for eternity. His Kingdom of G.o.d was doubtless the apocalypse which was soon to be unfolded in the heavens. But besides this, and probably above all, was the soul's kingdom, founded on freedom, and on the feeling of sonship which the good man knows in his rest on the bosom of his Father. This is what was destined to live. This is what has lived.

_THE CLASH OF OLD AND NEW_

Throughout the first epoch of his career, it seems as though Jesus met with no serious opposition; but when he entered upon a path brilliant with public successes the first mutterings of the storm began to make themselves heard. He recognised only the religion of the heart, while the religion of the Pharisees almost exclusively consisted of observances. As his mission proceeded, his conflicts with official hypocrisy became incessant. His goal was in the future, not in the past.

He was more than the reformer of an obsolete religion; he was the creator of the eternal religion of humanity. A hatred which death alone could satisfy was the consequence of these controversies. The war was to the death. Judaea drew him as by a charm; he wished to attempt one last effort to win the rebellious city, and seemed anxious to fulfil the proverb that a prophet ought not to die outside Jerusalem.

At the feast of tabernacles in the year 32, his relatives, always malevolent and sceptical, pressed him to go there. He set out on the journey unknown to every one and almost alone, and never again saw his beloved northern land.

In Jerusalem, Jesus was a stranger. There he felt a wall of resistance he could not penetrate. At every step he met with obstinate scepticism.

The arrogance of the priests made the courts of the Temple disagreeable to him, and his criticisms naturally exasperated the sacerdotal caste.

Imagine a reformer going, in our own time, to preach the overthrow of Islamism round the Mosque of Omar! His teaching in this new world was greatly modified; he had to become controversialist, jurist, theologian, though when alone with his disciples his gentle and irresistible genius inspired him with accents full of tenderness.

_APPROACHING THE CRISIS_

Jesus spent the autumn and part of the winter in Jerusalem. In the new year he undertook a journey to the banks of the Jordan, the district he had visited when he followed the school of John. After this pilgrimage he returned to Bethany, a place he especially loved, and where he knew a family whose friendship had a great charm for him. In impure and depressing Jerusalem, Jesus was no longer himself. His mission weighed him down, and he let himself be carried away by the torrent. The contrast between his ever-increasing exaltation and the indifference of the Jews became wider day by day. At the same time the public authorities began to be bitter against him. In February, or early in March, the council of the chief priests asked clearly the question "Can Jesus and Judaism exist together?" The High Priest was Joseph Kaiapha, but beside and behind him we always see another man, Hanan, his father-in-law. He had been High Priest, and in reality kept all the authority of the office. During fifty years the pontificate remained in his family almost without interruption. The family spirit was haughty, bold, and cruel. It was Hanan, his family, and the party he represented, who really put Jesus to death. After the death of Jesus was decided, he escaped for a short time by withdrawing to an obscure town, Ephron, and letting the storm pa.s.s over; but when the feast of the Pa.s.sover drew nigh, he set out to see for the last time the unbelieving city. His followers all believed that the Kingdom of G.o.d was about to be realised there. As to Jesus, he grew confirmed in the conviction that he was about to die, but that his death would save the world.

During these last days a deep sadness appears to have filled the soul of Jesus, which was generally so joyous and serene. The enormous weight of the mission he had accepted bore cruelly upon him. All these inward troubles were evidently a sealed chapter to his disciples. His divine nature, however, soon gained the supremacy, and henceforth we behold him entirely himself and with his character unclouded. Each moment of this period is solemn, and counts more than whole ages in the history of humanity. A lofty feeling of love, of concord, of charity, and of mutual deference, animated the memories cherished of these last hours.

_VICTORY THROUGH DEFEAT_

It was in the garden of Gethsemane that the guards of the Temple, supported by a detachment of Roman soldiers, executed the warrant of arrest. The course which the priests had determined to take against Jesus was in perfect conformity with the established law. The warrant of arrest probably came from Hanan, and before this powerful man Jesus was first brought for examination as to his doctrine. Jesus, with just pride, declined to enter into long explanations--he asked the ex-high priest to question those who had listened to him. Hanan then sent him to his son-in-law, Kaiapha, at whose house the Sanhedrim was a.s.sembled. It is probable that here, too, he kept silence. The sentence was already decided, and they only sought for pretexts. With one voice the a.s.sembly declared him guilty of a capital crime. The point now was to get Pilate to ratify the sentence. On being informed of the accusation, Pilate showed his annoyance at being mixed up in the matter, and called upon to play a cruel part for the sake of a law he detested. Perhaps the dignified and calm att.i.tude of the accused made an impression upon him.

To excite the suspicion of the Roman authorities, the charges now made were those of sedition and treason against the government. Nothing could be more unjust, for Jesus had always recognised the Roman government as the established power. Asked by Pilate if he really were the king of the Jews, Jesus, according to the fourth gospel, avowed his kingship, but uttered at the same time the profound saying, "My kingdom is not of this world." Of this lofty idealism Pilate understood nothing. No doubt Jesus impressed him as being a harmless dreamer. When, however, the people began to denounce Pilate's lack of zeal, in protecting an enemy of Caesar, he surrendered, throwing on the Jews the responsibility for what was about to take place. It was not Pilate who condemned Jesus. It was the old Jewish party; it was the Mosaic law. Intolerance is a Jewish characteristic. The Pentateuch has been the first code of religious terrorism in the world. It was, however, the chimerical "King of the Jews," not the heteradox dogmatist, who was punished, and the execution took the Roman form of crucifixion, carried out by Roman soldiers.

The horrors of that ignominious death were suffered by Jesus in all their atrocity. For a moment, according to certain narratives, his heart failed him; a cloud hid from him the face of his Father; he endured an agony of despair more acute a thousand times than all his torments. But his divine instinct again sustained him. In measure as the life of the body flickered out, his soul grew serene, and by degrees returned to its heavenly source. He regained the idea of his mission, in his death he saw the salvation of the world; the hideous spectacle spread at his feet melted from his sight, and profoundly united to his Father, he began upon the gibbet the divine life which he was to live in the heart of humanity through infinite years.

Rest now in thy glory, n.o.ble pioneer! Thy work is achieved, thy divinity established. At the price of a few hours of suffering, which have not even touched thy mighty soul, thou hast purchased the fullest immortality. For thousands of years the world will depend upon thee! A thousand times more alive, a thousand times more loved since thy death than during the days of thy pilgrimage here below, thou shalt become so truly the cornerstone of humanity that to tear thy name from this world were to shake it to its foundations.

Whatever the unexpected phenomena of the future, Jesus will never be surpa.s.sed. His worship will constantly renew its youth; the legend of his life will bring ceaseless tears; his sufferings will soften the best hearts; all the ages will proclaim that amongst the sons of men none has been born who is greater than Jesus.

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG

HEAVEN AND h.e.l.l