As the cooled earth no longer permits us to understand the phenomena of primitive creation, because the fire which penetrated it is extinct, so deliberate explanations have always appeared somewhat insufficient when applying our timid methods of induction to the revolutions of the creative epochs which have decided the fate of humanity. Jesus lived at one of those times when the game of public life is freely played, and when the stake of human activity is increased a hundredfold. Every great part, then, entails death; for such movements suppose liberty and an absence of preventive measures, which could not exist without a terrible alternative. In these days, man risks little and gains little. In heroic periods of human activity, man risked all and gained all. The good and the wicked, or at least those who believe themselves and are believed to be such, form opposite armies. The apotheosis is reached by the scaffold; characters have distinctive features, which engrave them as eternal types in the memory of men. Except in the French Revolution, no historical centre was as suitable as that in which Jesus was formed, to develop those hidden forces which humanity holds as in reserve, and which are not seen except in days of excitement and peril.
If the government of the world were a speculative problem, and the greatest philosopher were the man best fitted to tell his fellows what they ought to believe, it would be from calmness and reflection that those great moral and dogmatic truths called religions would proceed. But it is not so. If we except Cakya-Mouni, the great religious founders have not been metaphysicians. Buddhism itself, whose origin is in pure thought, has conquered one-half of Asia, by motives wholly political and moral. As to the Semitic religions, they are as little philosophical as possible. Moses and Mahomet were not men of speculation; they were men of action. It was in proposing action to their fellow-countrymen, and to their contemporaries, that they governed humanity. Jesus, in like manner, was not a theologian, or a philosopher, having a more or less well-composed system. In order to be a disciple of Jesus, it was not necessary to sign any formulary, or to pronounce any confession of faith; one thing only was necessary—to be attached to him, to love him. He never disputed about God, for he felt Him directly in himself. The rock of metaphysical subtleties, against which Christianity broke from the third century, was in nowise created by the Founder. Jesus had neither dogma nor system, but a fixed personal resolution, which, exceeding in intensity every other created will, directs to this hour the destinies of humanity.
The Jewish people had the advantage, from the captivity of Babylon up to the Middle Ages, of being in a state of the greatest tension. This is why the interpreters of the spirit of the nation during this long period seemed to write under the action of an intense fever, which placed them constantly either above or below reason, rarely in its middle path. Never did man seize the problem of the future and of his destiny with a more desperate courage, more determined to go to extremes. Not separating the lot of humanity from that of their little race, the Jewish thinkers were the first who sought for a general theory of the progress of our species. Greece, always confined within itself, and solely attentive to petty quarrels, has had admirable historians; but before the Roman epoch, it would be in vain to seek in her a general system of the philosophy of history, embracing all humanity. The Jew, on the contrary, thanks to a kind of prophetic sense which renders the Semite at times marvellously apt to see the great lines of the future, has made history enter into religion. Perhaps he owes a little of this spirit to Persia. Persia, from an ancient period, conceived the history of the world as a series of evolutions, over each of which a prophet presided. Each prophet had hishazar, or reign of a thousand years (chiliasm), and from these successive ages, analogous to the Avatär of India, is composed the course of events which prepared the reign of Ormuzd. At the end of the time when the cycle of chiliasms shall be exhausted, the complete paradise will come. Men then will live happy; the earth will be as one plain; there will be only one language, one law, and one government for all. But this advent will be preceded by terrible calamities. Dahak (the Satan of Persia) will break his chains and fall upon the world. Two prophets will come to console mankind, and to prepare the great advent.[1] These ideas ran through the world, and penetrated even to Rome, where they inspired a cycle of prophetic poems, of which the fundamental ideas were the division of the history of humanity into periods, the succession of the gods corresponding to these periods—a complete renovation of the world, and the final advent of a golden age.[2] The book of Daniel, the book of Enoch, and certain parts of the Sibylline books,[3] are the Jewish expression of the same theory. These thoughts were certainly far from being shared by all; they were only embraced at first by a few persons of lively imagination, who were inclined toward strange doctrines. The dry and narrow author of the book of Esther never thought of the rest of the world except to despise it, and to wish it evil.[4] The disabused epicurean who wrote Ecclesiastes, thought so little of the future, that he considered it even useless to labor for his children; in the eyes of this egotistical celibate, the highest stroke of wisdom was to use his fortune for his own enjoyment.[5] But the great achievements of a people are generally wrought by the minority. Notwithstanding all their enormous defects, hard, egotistical, scoffing, cruel, narrow, subtle, and sophistical, the Jewish people are the authors of the finest movement of disinterested enthusiasm which history records. Opposition always makes the glory of a country. The greatest men of a nation are those whom it puts to death. Socrates was the glory of the Athenians, who would not suffer him to live amongst them. Spinoza was the greatest Jew of modern times, and the synagogue expelled him with ignominy. Jesus was the glory of the people of Israel, who crucified him.
[Footnote 1:Yaçna, xiii. 24: Theopompus, in Plut.,De Iside et Osiride, sec. 47;Minokhired, a passage published in theZeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, i., p. 263.]
[Footnote 2: Virg., Ecl. iv.; Servius, at v. 4 of this Eclogue;Nigidius, quoted by Servius, at v. 10.]
[Footnote 3: Book iii., 97-817.]
[Footnote 4: Esther vi. 13, vii. 10, viii. 7, 11-17, ix. 1-22; and in the apocryphal parts, ix. 10, 11, xiv. 13, and following, xvi. 20, 24.]
[Footnote 5: Eccl. i. 11, ii. 16, 18-24, iii. 19-22, iv. 8, 15, 16, v. 17, 18, vi. 3, 6, viii. 15, ix. 9, 10.]
A gigantic dream haunted for centuries the Jewish people, constantly renewing its youth in its decrepitude. A stranger to the theory of individual recompense, which Greece diffused under the name of the immortality of the soul, Judea concentrated all its power of love and desire upon the national future. She thought she possessed divine promises of a boundless future; and as the bitter reality, from the ninth century before our era, gave more and more the dominion of the world to physical force, and brutally crushed these aspirations, she took refuge in the union of the most impossible ideas, and attempted the strangest gyrations. Before the captivity, when all the earthly hopes of the nation had become weakened by the separation of the northern tribes, they dreamt of the restoration of the house of David, the reconciliation of the two divisions of the people, and the triumph of theocracy and the worship of Jehovah over idolatry. At the epoch of the captivity, a poet, full of harmony, saw the splendor of a future Jerusalem, of which the peoples and the distant isles should be tributaries, under colors so charming, that one might say a glimpse of the visions of Jesus had reached him at a distance of six centuries.[1]
[Footnote 1: Isaiah lx. &c.]
The victory of Cyrus seemed at one time to realize all that had been hoped. The grave disciples of the Avesta and the adorers of Jehovah believed themselves brothers. Persia had begun by banishing the multipledévas, and by transforming them into demons (divs), to draw from the old Arian imaginations (essentially naturalistic) a species of Monotheism. The prophetic tone of many of the teachings of Iran had much analogy with certain compositions of Hosea and Isaiah. Israel reposed under the Achemenidae,[1] and under Xerxes (Ahasuerus) made itself feared by the Iranians themselves. But the triumphal and often cruel entry of Greek and Roman civilization into Asia, threw it back upon its dreams. More than ever it invoked the Messiah as judge and avenger of the people. A complete renovation, a revolution which should shake the world to its very foundation, was necessary in order to satisfy the enormous thirst of vengeance excited in it by the sense of its superiority, and by the sight of its humiliation.[2]
[Footnote 1: The whole book of Esther breathes a great attachment to this dynasty.]
[Footnote 2: Apocryphal letter of Baruch, in Fabricius,Cod. pseud.,V.T., ii. p. 147, and following.]
If Israel had possessed the spiritualistic doctrine, which divides man in two parts—the body and the soul—and finds it quite natural that while the body decays, the soul should survive, this paroxysm of rage and of energetic protestation would have had no existence. But such a doctrine, proceeding from the Grecian philosophy, was not in the traditions of the Jewish mind. The ancient Hebrew writings contain no trace of future rewards or punishments. Whilst the idea of the solidarity of the tribe existed, it was natural that a strict retribution according to individual merits should not be thought of. So much the worse for the pious man who happened to live in an epoch of impiety; he suffered, like the rest, the public misfortunes consequent on the general irreligion. This doctrine, bequeathed by the sages of the patriarchal era, constantly produced unsustainable contradictions. Already at the time of Job it was much shaken; the old men of Teman who professed it were considered behind the age, and the young Elihu, who intervened in order to combat them, dared to utter as his first word this essentially revolutionary sentiment, "Great men are not always wise; neither do the aged understand judgment."[1] With the complications which had taken place in the world since the time of Alexander, the old Temanite and Mosaic principle became still more intolerable.[2] Never had Israel been more faithful to the Law, and yet it was subjected to the atrocious persecution of Antiochus. Only a declaimer, accustomed to repeat old phrases denuded of meaning, would dare to assert that these evils proceeded from the unfaithfulness of the people.[3] What! these victims who died for their faith, these heroic Maccabees, this mother with her seven sons, will Jehovah forget them eternally? Will he abandon them to the corruption of the grave?[4] Worldly and incredulous Sadduceeism might possibly not recoil before such a consequence, and a consummate sage, like Antigonus of Soco,[5] might indeed maintain that we must not practise virtue like a slave in expectation of a recompense, that we must be virtuous without hope. But the mass of the people could not be contented with that. Some, attaching themselves to the principle of philosophical immortality, imagined the righteous living in the memory of God, glorious forever in the remembrance of men, and judging the wicked who had persecuted them.[6] "They live in the sight of God; … they are known of God."[7] That was their reward. Others, especially the Pharisees, had recourse to the doctrine of the resurrection.[8] The righteous will live again in order to participate in the Messianic reign. They will live again in the flesh, and for a world of which they will be the kings and the judges; they will be present at the triumph of their ideas and at the humiliation of their enemies.
[Footnote 1: Job xxxiii. 9.]
[Footnote 2: It is nevertheless remarkable that Jesus, son of Sirach, adheres to it strictly (chap. xvii. 26-28, xxii. 10, 11, xxx. 4, and following, xli. 1, 2, xliv. 9). The author of the book ofWisdomholds quite opposite opinions (iv. 1, Greek text).]
[Footnote 3: Esth. xiv. 6, 7 (apocr.); the apocryphal Epistle ofBaruch (Fabricius,Cod. pseud., V.T., ii. p. 147, and following).]
[Footnote 4: 2Macc.vii.]
[Footnote 5:Pirké Aboth., i. 3.]
[Footnote 6:Wisdom, ii.-vi.;De Rationis Imperio, attributed to Josephus, 8, 13, 16, 18. Still we must remark that the author of this last treatise estimates the motive of personal recompense in a secondary degree. The primary impulse of martyrs is the pure love of the Law, the advantage which their death will procure to the people, and the glory which will attach to their name. Comp.Wisdom, iv. 1, and following;Eccl.xliv., and following; Jos.,B.J., II. viii. 10, III. viii. 5.]
[Footnote 7:Wisdom, iv. 1;De Rat. Imp., 16, 18.]
[Footnote 8: 2Macc., vii. 9, 14, xii. 43, 44.]
We find among the ancient people of Israel only very indecisive traces of this fundamental dogma. The Sadducee, who did not believe it, was in reality faithful to the old Jewish doctrine; it was the Pharisee, the believer in the resurrection, who was the innovator. But in religion it is always the zealous sect which innovates, which progresses, and which has influence. Besides this, the resurrection, an idea totally different from that of the immortality of the soul, proceeded very naturally from the anterior doctrines and from the position of the people. Perhaps Persia also furnished some of its elements.[1] In any case, combining with the belief in the Messiah, and with the doctrine of a speedy renewal of all things, it formed those apocalyptic theories which, without being articles of faith (the orthodox Sanhedrim of Jerusalem does not seem to have adopted them), pervaded all imaginations, and produced an extreme fermentation from one end of the Jewish world to the other. The total absence of dogmatic rigor caused very contradictory notions to be admitted at one time, even upon so primary a point Sometimes the righteous were to await the resurrection;[2] sometimes they were to be received at the moment of death into Abraham's bosom;[3] sometimes the resurrection was to be general;[4] sometimes it was to be reserved only for the faithful;[5] sometimes it supposed a renewed earth and a new Jerusalem; sometimes it implied a previous annihilation of the universe.
[Footnote 1: Theopompus, inDiog. Laert., Proem, 9.Boundehesch, xxxi. The traces of the doctrine of the resurrection in the Avesta are very doubtful.]
[Footnote 2: John xi. 24.]
[Footnote 3: Luke xvi. 22. Cf.De Rationis Imp., 13, 16, 18.]
[Footnote 4: Dan. xii. 2.]
[Footnote 5: 2Macc.vii. 14.]
Jesus, as soon as he began to think, entered into the burning atmosphere which was created in Palestine by the ideas we have just stated. These ideas were taught in no school; but they were in the very air, and his soul was early penetrated by them. Our hesitations and our doubts never reached him. On this summit of the mountain of Nazareth, where no man can sit to-day without an uneasy, though it may be a frivolous, feeling about his destiny, Jesus sat often untroubled by a doubt. Free from selfishness—that source of our troubles, which makes us seek with eagerness a reward for virtue beyond the tomb—he thought only of his work, of his race, and of humanity. Those mountains, that sea, that azure sky, those high plains in the horizon, were for him not the melancholy vision of a soul which interrogates Nature upon her fate, but the certain symbol, the transparent shadow, of an invisible world, and of a new heaven.
He never attached much importance to the political events of his time, and he probably knew little about them. The court of the Herods formed a world so different to his, that he doubtless knew it only by name. Herod the Great died about the year in which Jesus was born, leaving imperishable remembrances—monuments which must compel the most malevolent posterity to associate his name with that of Solomon; nevertheless, his work was incomplete, and could not be continued. Profanely ambitious, and lost in a maze of religious controversies, this astute Idumean had the advantage which coolness and judgment, stripped of morality, give over passionate fanatics. But his idea of a secular kingdom of Israel, even if it had not been an anachronism in the state of the world in which it was conceived, would inevitably have miscarried, like the similar project which Solomon formed, owing to the difficulties proceeding from the character of the nation. His three sons were only lieutenants of the Romans, analogous to the rajahs of India under the English dominion. Antipater, or Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and of Peræa, of whom Jesus was a subject all his life, was an idle and useless prince,[1] a favorite and flatterer of Tiberius,[2] and too often misled by the bad influence of his second wife, Herodias.[3] Philip, tetrarch of Gaulonitis and Batanea, into whose dominions Jesus made frequent journeys, was a much better sovereign.[4] As to Archelaus, ethnarch of Jerusalem, Jesus could not know him, for he was about ten years old when this man, who was weak and without character, though sometimes violent, was deposed by Augustus.[5] The last trace of self-government was thus lost to Jerusalem. United to Samaria and Idumea, Judea formed a kind of dependency of the province of Syria, in which the senator Publius Sulpicius Quirinus, well known as consul,[6] was the imperial legate. A series of Roman procurators, subordinate in important matters to the imperial legate of Syria—Coponius, Marcus Ambivius, Annius Rufus, Valerius Gratus, and lastly (in the twenty-sixth year of our era), Pontius Pilate[7]—followed each other, and were constantly occupied in extinguishing the volcano which was seething beneath their feet.
[Footnote 1: Jos.,Ant., VIII. v. 1, vii. 1 and 2; Luke iii. 19.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., XVIII. ii. 3, iv. 5, v. 1.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid., XVIII. vii. 2.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid., XVIII. iv. 6.]
[Footnote 5: Ibid., XVII. xii. 2; andB.J., II. vii. 3.]
[Footnote 6: Orelli,Inscr. Lat., No. 3693; Henzen,Suppl., No.7041;Fasti prænestini, on the 6th of March, and on the 28th ofApril (in theCorpus Inscr. Lat., i. 314, 317); Borghesi,FastesConsulaires(yet unedited), in the year 742; R. Bergmann,De Inscr.Lat. ad. P.S. Quirinium, ut videtur, referenda(Berlin, 1851). Cf.Tac.,Ann., ii. 30, iii. 48; Strabo, XII. vi. 5.]
[Footnote 7: Jos.,Ant., l. XVIII.]
Continual seditions, excited by the zealots of Mosaism, did not cease, in fact, to agitate Jerusalem during all this time.[1] The death of the seditious was certain; but death, when the integrity of the Law was in question, was sought with avidity. To overturn the Roman eagle, to destroy the works of art raised by the Herods, in which the Mosaic regulations were not always respected[2]—to rise up against the votive escutcheons put up by the procurators, the inscriptions of which appeared tainted with idolatry[3]—were perpetual temptations to fanatics, who had reached that degree of exaltation which removes all care for life. Judas, son of Sariphea, Matthias, son of Margaloth, two very celebrated doctors of the law, formed against the established order a boldly aggressive party, which continued after their execution.[4] The Samaritans were agitated by movements of a similar nature.[5] The Law had never counted a greater number of impassioned disciples than at this time, when he already lived who, by the full authority of his genius and of his great soul, was about to abrogate it. The "Zelotes" (Kenaïm), or "Sicarii," pious assassins, who imposed on themselves the task of killing whoever in their estimation broke the Law, began to appear.[6] Representatives of a totally different spirit, the Thaumaturges, considered as in some sort divine, obtained credence in consequence of the imperious want which the age experienced for the supernatural and the divine.[7]
[Footnote 1: Ibid., the books XVI. and XVIII. entirely, andB.J., books I. and II.]
[Footnote 2: Jos.,Ant., XV. x. 4. Compare Book of Enoch, xcvii. 13, 14.]
[Footnote 3: Philo,Leg. ad Caium, § 38.]
[Footnote 4: Jos.,Ant., XVII. vi. 2, and following;B.J., I. xxxiii. 3, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Jos.,Ant., XVIII. iv. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Mishnah,Sanhedrim, ix. 6; John xvi. 2; Jos.,B.J., book IV., and following.]
[Footnote 7:Actsviii. 9. Verse 11 leads us to suppose that Simon the magician was already famous in the time of Jesus.]
A movement which had much more influence upon Jesus was that of Judas the Gaulonite, or Galilean. Of all the exactions to which the country newly conquered by Rome was subjected, the census was the most unpopular.[1] This measure, which always astonishes people unaccustomed to the requirements of great central administrations, was particularly odious to the Jews. We see that already, under David, a numbering of the people provoked violent recriminations, and the menaces of the prophets.[2] The census, in fact, was the basis of taxation; now taxation, to a pure theocracy, was almost an impiety. God being the sole Master whom man ought to recognize, to pay tithe to a secular sovereign was, in a manner, to put him in the place of God. Completely ignorant of the idea of the State, the Jewish theocracy only acted up to its logical induction—the negation of civil society and of all government. The money of the public treasury was accounted stolen money.[3] The census ordered by Quirinus (in the year 6 of the Christian era) powerfully reawakened these ideas, and caused a great fermentation. An insurrection broke out in the northern provinces. One Judas, of the town of Gamala, upon the eastern shore of the Lake of Tiberias, and a Pharisee named Sadoc, by denying the lawfulness of the tax, created a numerous party, which soon broke out in open revolt.[4] The fundamental maxims of this party were—that they ought to call no man "master," this title belonging to God alone; and that liberty was better than life. Judas had, doubtless, many other principles, which Josephus, always careful not to compromise his co-religionists, designedly suppresses; for it is impossible to understand how, for so simple an idea, the Jewish historian should give him a place among the philosophers of his nation, and should regard him as the founder of a fourth school, equal to those of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. Judas was evidently the chief of a Galilean sect, deeply imbued with the Messianic idea, and which became a political movement. The procurator, Coponius, crushed the sedition of the Gaulonite; but the school remained, and preserved its chiefs. Under the leadership of Menahem, son of the founder, and of a certain Eleazar, his relative, we find them again very active in the last contests of the Jews against the Romans.[5] Perhaps Jesus saw this Judas, whose idea of the Jewish revolution was so different from his own; at all events, he knew his school, and it was probably to avoid his error that he pronounced the axiom upon the penny of Cæsar. Jesus, more wise, and far removed from all sedition, profited by the fault of his predecessor, and dreamed of another kingdom and another deliverance.
[Footnote 1: Discourse of Claudius at Lyons, Tab. ii. sub fin. DeBoisseau,Inscr. Ant. de Lyon, p. 136.]
[Footnote 2: 2 Sam. xxiv.]
[Footnote 3: Talmud of Babylon,Baba Kama, 113a;Shabbath, 33b.]
[Footnote 4: Jos.,Ant., XVIII. i. 1 and 6;B.J., II. viii. 1;Actsv. 37. Previous to Judas the Gaulonite, theActsplace another agitator, Theudas; but this is an anachronism, the movement of Theudas took place in the year 44 of the Christian era (Jos.,Ant., XX. v. 1).]
[Footnote 5: Jos.,B.J., II. xvii. 8, and following.]
Galilee was thus an immense furnace wherein the most diverse elements were seething.[1] An extraordinary contempt of life, or, more properly speaking, a kind of longing for death,[2] was the consequence of these agitations. Experience counts for nothing in these great fanatical movements. Algeria, at the commencement of the French occupation, saw arise, each spring, inspired men, who declared themselves invulnerable, and sent by God to drive away the infidels; the following year their death was forgotten, and their successors found no less credence. The Roman power, very stern on the one hand, yet little disposed to meddle, permitted a good deal of liberty. Those great, brutal despotisms, terrible in repression, were not so suspicious as powers which have a faith to defend. They allowed everything up to the point when they thought it necessary to be severe. It is not recorded that Jesus was even once interfered with by the civil power, in his wandering career. Such freedom, and, above all, the happiness which Galilee enjoyed in being much less confined in the bonds of Pharisaic pedantry, gave to this district a real superiority over Jerusalem. The revolution, or, in other words, the belief in the Messiah, caused here a general fermentation. Men deemed themselves on the eve of the great renovation; the Scriptures, tortured into divers meanings, fostered the most colossal hopes. In each line of the simple writings of the Old Testament they saw the assurance, and, in a manner, the programme of the future reign, which was to bring peace to the righteous, and to seal forever the work of God.
[Footnote 1: Luke xiii. 1. The Galilean movement of Judas, son of Hezekiah, does not appear to have been of a religious character; perhaps, however, its character has been misrepresented by Josephus (Ant., XVII. x. 5).]
[Footnote 2: Jos.,Ant., XVI. vi. 2, 3; XVIII. i. 1.]
From all time, this division into two parties, opposed in interest and spirit, had been for the Hebrew nation a principle which contributed to their moral growth. Every nation called to high destinies ought to be a little world in itself, including opposite poles. Greece presented, at a few leagues' distance from each other, Sparta and Athens—to a superficial observer, the two antipodes; but, in reality, rival sisters, necessary to one another. It was the same with Judea. Less brilliant in one sense than the development of Jerusalem, that of the North was on the whole much more fertile; the greatest achievements of the Jewish people have always proceeded thence. A complete absence of the love of Nature, bordering upon something dry, narrow, and ferocious, has stamped all the works purely Hierosolymite with a degree of grandeur, though sad, arid, and repulsive. With its solemn doctors, its insipid canonists, its hypocritical and atrabilious devotees, Jerusalem has not conquered humanity. The North has given to the world the simple Shunammite, the humble Canaanite, the impassioned Magdalene, the good foster-father Joseph, and the Virgin Mary. The North alone has made Christianity; Jerusalem, on the contrary, is the true home of that obstinate Judaism which, founded by the Pharisees, and fixed by the Talmud, has traversed the Middle Ages, and come down to us.
A beautiful external nature tended to produce a much less austere spirit—a spirit less sharply monotheistic, if I may use the expression, which imprinted a charming and idyllic character on all the dreams of Galilee. The saddest country in the world is perhaps the region round about Jerusalem. Galilee, on the contrary, was a very green, shady, smiling district, the true home of the Song of Songs, and the songs of the well-beloved.[1] During the two months of March and April, the country forms a carpet of flowers of an incomparable variety of colors. The animals are small, and extremely gentle—delicate and lively turtle-doves, blue-birds so light that they rest on a blade of grass without bending it, crested larks which venture almost under the feet of the traveller, little river tortoises with mild and lively eyes, storks with grave and modest mien, which, laying aside all timidity, allow man to come quite near them, and seem almost to invite his approach. In no country in the world do the mountains spread themselves out with more harmony, or inspire higher thoughts. Jesus seems to have had a peculiar love for them. The most important acts of his divine career took place upon the mountains. It was there that he was the most inspired;[2] it was there that he held secret communion with the ancient prophets; and it was there that his disciples witnessed his transfiguration.[3]
[Footnote 1: Jos.,B.J., III. iii. 1. The horrible state to which the country is reduced, especially near Lake Tiberias, ought not to deceive us. These countries, now scorched, were formerly terrestrial paradises. The baths of Tiberias, which are now a frightful abode, were formerly the most beautiful places in Galilee (Jos.,Ant., XVIII. ii. 3.) Josephus (Bell. Jud., III. x. 8) extols the beautiful trees of the plain of Gennesareth, where there is no longer a single one. Anthony the Martyr, about the year 600, consequently fifty years before the Mussulman invasion, still found Galilee covered with delightful plantations, and compares its fertility to that of Egypt (Itin., § 5).]
[Footnote 2: Matt. v. 1, xiv. 23; Luke vi. 12.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xvii. 1, and following; Mark ix. 1, and following;Luke ix. 28, and following.]
This beautiful country has now become sad and gloomy through the ever-impoverishing influence of Islamism. But still everything which man cannot destroy breathes an air of freedom, mildness, and tenderness, and at the time of Jesus it overflowed with happiness and prosperity. The Galileans were considered energetic, brave, and laborious.[1] If we except Tiberias, built by Antipas in honor of Tiberius (about the year 15), in the Roman style,[2] Galilee had no large towns. The country was, nevertheless, well peopled, covered with small towns and large villages, and cultivated in all parts with skill.[3] From the ruins which remain of its ancient splendor, we can trace an agricultural people, no way gifted in art, caring little for luxury, indifferent to the beauties of form and exclusively idealistic. The country abounded in fresh streams and in fruits; the large farms were shaded with vines and fig-trees; the gardens were filled with trees bearing apples, walnuts, and pomegranates.[4] The wine was excellent, if we may judge by that which the Jews still obtain at Safed, and they drank much of it.[5] This contented and easily satisfied life was not like the gross materialism of our peasantry, the coarse pleasures of agricultural Normandy, or the heavy mirth of the Flemish. It spiritualized itself in ethereal dreams—in a kind of poetic mysticism, blending heaven and earth. Leave the austere Baptist in his desert of Judea to preach penitence, to inveigh without ceasing, and to live on locusts in the company of jackals. Why should the companions of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? Joy will be a part of the kingdom of God. Is she not the daughter of the humble in heart, of the men of good will?
[Footnote 1: Jos.,B.J., III. iii. 2.]
[Footnote 2: Jos.,Ant., XVIII. ii. 2;B.J., II. ix. 1;Vita, 12, 13, 64.]
[Footnote 3: Jos.,B.J., III. iii. 2.]
[Footnote 4: We may judge of this by some enclosures in the neighborhood of Nazareth. Cf. Song of Solomon ii. 3, 5, 13, iv. 13, vi. 6, 10, vii. 8, 12, viii. 2, 5; Anton. Martyr,l.c.The aspect of the great farms is still well preserved in the south of the country of Tyre (ancient tribe of Asher). Traces of the ancient Palestinian agriculture, with its troughs, threshing-floors, wine-presses, mills, &c., cut in the rock, are found at every step.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. ix. 17, xi. 19; Mark ii. 22; Luke v. 37, vii. 34;John ii. 3, and following.]
The whole history of infant Christianity has become in this manner a delightful pastoral. A Messiah at the marriage festival—the courtezan and the good Zaccheus called to his feasts—the founders of the kingdom of heaven like a bridal procession; that is what Galilee has boldly offered, and what the world has accepted. Greece has drawn pictures of human life by sculpture and by charming poetry, but always without backgrounds or distant receding perspectives. In Galilee were wanting the marble, the practiced workmen, the exquisite and refined language. But Galilee has created the most sublime ideal for the popular imagination; for behind its idyl moves the fate of humanity, and the light which illumines its picture is the sun of the kingdom of God.
Jesus lived and grew amidst these enchanting scenes. From his infancy, he went almost annually to the feast at Jerusalem.[1] The pilgrimage was a sweet solemnity for the provincial Jews. Entire series of psalms were consecrated to celebrate the happiness of thus journeying in family companionship[2] during several days in the spring across the hills and valleys, each one having in prospect the splendors of Jerusalem, the solemnities of the sacred courts, and the joy of brethren dwelling together in unity.[3] The route which Jesus ordinarily took in these journeys was that which is followed to this day through Ginæa and Shechem.[4] From Shechem to Jerusalem the journey is very tiresome. But the neighborhood of the old sanctuaries of Shiloh and Bethel, near which the travellers pass, keeps their interest alive.Ain-el-Haramie,[5] the last halting-place, is a charming and melancholy spot, and few impressions equal that experienced on encamping there for the night. The valley is narrow and sombre, and a dark stream issues from the rocks, full of tombs, which form its banks. It is, I think, the "valley of tears," or of dropping waters, which is described as one of the stations on the way in the delightful Eighty-fourth Psalm,[6] and which became the emblem of life for the sad and sweet mysticism of the Middle Ages. Early the next day they would be at Jerusalem; such an expectation even now sustains the caravan, rendering the night short and slumber light.
[Footnote 1: Luke ii. 41.]
[Footnote 2: Luke ii. 42-44.]
[Footnote 3: See especially Ps. lxxxiv., cxxii., cxxxiii. (Vulg., lxxxiii., cxxi., cxxxii).]
[Footnote 4: Luke ix. 51-53, xvii. 11; John iv. 4; Jos.,Ant., XX. vi. 1;B.J., II. xii. 3;Vita, 52. Often, however, the pilgrims came by Peræa, in order to avoid Samaria, where they incurred dangers; Matt. xix. 1; Mark x. 1.]
[Footnote 5: According to Josephus (Vita, 52) it was three days' journey. But the stage from Shechem to Jerusalem was generally divided into two.]
[Footnote 6: lxxxiii. according to the Vulgate, v. 7.]
These journeys, in which the assembled nation exchanged its ideas, and which were almost always centres of great agitation, placed Jesus in contact with the mind of his countrymen, and no doubt inspired him whilst still young with a lively antipathy for the defects of the official representatives of Judaism. It is supposed that very early the desert had great influence on his development, and that he made long stays there.[1] But the God he found in the desert was not his God. It was rather the God of Job, severe and terrible, accountable to no one. Sometimes Satan came to tempt him. He returned, then, into his beloved Galilee, and found again his heavenly Father in the midst of the green hills and the clear fountains—and among the crowds of women and children, who, with joyous soul and the song of angels in their hearts, awaited the salvation of Israel.
[Footnote 1: Luke iv. 42, v. 16.]
Joseph died before his son had taken any public part. Mary remained, in a manner, the head of the family, and this explains why her son, when it was wished to distinguish him from others of the same name, was most frequently called the "son of Mary."[1] It seems that having, by the death of her husband, been left friendless at Nazareth, she withdrew to Cana,[2] from which she may have come originally. Cana[3] was a little town at from two to two and a half hours' journey from Nazareth, at the foot of the mountains which bound the plain of Asochis on the north.[4] The prospect, less grand than at Nazareth, extends over all the plain, and is bounded in the most picturesque manner by the mountains of Nazareth and the hills of Sepphoris. Jesus appears to have resided some time in this place. Here he probably passed a part of his youth, and here his greatness first revealed itself.[5]
[Footnote 1: This is the expression of Mark vi. 3; cf. Matt. xiii. 55. Mark did not know Joseph. John and Luke, on the contrary, prefer the expression "son of Joseph." Luke iii. 23, iv. 22; John i. 45, iv. 42.]
[Footnote 2: John ii. 1, iv. 46. John alone is informed on this point.]
[Footnote 3: I admit, as probable, the idea which identifies Cana of Galilee withKana el Djélil. We may, nevertheless, attach value to the arguments forKefr Kenna, a place an hour or an hour and a half's journey N.N.E. of Nazareth.]
[Footnote 4: NowEl-Buttauf.]
[Footnote 5: John ii. 11, iv. 46. One or two disciples were of Cana,John xxi. 2; Matt. x. 4; Mark iii. 18.]
He followed the trade of his father, which was that of a carpenter.[1] This was not in any degree humiliating or grievous. The Jewish customs required that a man devoted to intellectual work should learn a trade. The most celebrated doctors did so;[2] thus St. Paul, whose education had been so carefully tended, was a tent-maker.[3] Jesus never married. All his power of love centred upon that which he regarded as his celestial vocation. The extremely delicate feeling toward women, which we remark in him, was not separated from the exclusive devotion which he had for his mission. Like Francis d'Assisi and Francis de Sales, he treated as sisters the women who were loved of the same work as himself; he had his St. Clare, his Frances de Chantal. It is, however, probable that these loved him more than the work; he was, no doubt, more beloved than loving. Thus, as often happens in very elevated natures, tenderness of the heart was transformed in him into an infinite sweetness, a vague poetry, and a universal charm. His relations, free and intimate, but of an entirely moral kind, with women of doubtful character, are also explained by the passion which attached him to the glory of his Father, and which made him jealously anxious for all beautiful creatures who could contribute to it.[4]
[Footnote 1: Mark vi. 3; Justin,Dial. cum Tryph., 88.]
[Footnote 2: For example, "Rabbi Johanan, the shoemaker, Rabbi Isaac, the blacksmith."]
[Footnote 3:Actsxviii. 3.]
[Footnote 4: Luke vii. 37, and following; John iv. 7, and following; viii. 3, and following.]
What was the progress of the ideas of Jesus during this obscure period of his life? Through what meditations did he enter upon the prophetic career? We have no information on these points, his history having come to us in scattered narratives, without exact chronology. But the development of character is everywhere the same; and there is no doubt that the growth of so powerful individuality as that of Jesus obeyed very rigorous laws. A high conception of the Divinity—which he did not owe to Judaism, and which seems to have been in all its parts the creation of his great mind—was in a manner the source of all his power. It is essential here that we put aside the ideas familiar to us, and the discussions in which little minds exhaust themselves. In order properly to understand the precise character of the piety of Jesus, we must forget all that is placed between the gospel and ourselves. Deism and Pantheism have become the two poles of theology. The paltry discussions of scholasticism, the dryness of spirit of Descartes, the deep-rooted irreligion of the eighteenth century, by lessening God, and by limiting Him, in a manner, by the exclusion of everything which is not His very self, have stifled in the breast of modern rationalism all fertile ideas of the Divinity. If God, in fact, is a personal being outside of us, he who believes himself to have peculiar relations with God is a "visionary," and as the physical and physiological sciences have shown us that all supernatural visions are illusions, the logical Deist finds it impossible to understand the great beliefs of the past. Pantheism, on the other hand, in suppressing the Divine personality, is as far as it can be from the living God of the ancient religions. Were the men who have best comprehended God—Cakya-Mouni, Plato, St. Paul, St. Francis d'Assisi, and St. Augustine (at some periods of his fluctuating life)—Deists or Pantheists? Such a question has no meaning. The physical and metaphysical proofs of the existence of God were quite indifferent to them. They felt the Divine within themselves. We must place Jesus in the first rank of this great family of the true sons of God. Jesus had no visions; God did not speak to him as to one outside of Himself; God was in him; he felt himself with God, and he drew from his heart all he said of his Father. He lived in the bosom of God by constant communication with Him; he saw Him not, but he understood Him, without need of the thunder and the burning bush of Moses, of the revealing tempest of Job, of the oracle of the old Greek sages, of the familiar genius of Socrates, or of the angel Gabriel of Mahomet. The imagination and the hallucination of a St. Theresa, for example, are useless here. The intoxication of the Soufi proclaiming himself identical with God is also quite another thing. Jesus never once gave utterance to the sacrilegious idea that he was God. He believed himself to be in direct communion with God; he believed himself to be the Son of God. The highest consciousness of God which has existed in the bosom of humanity was that of Jesus.
We understand, on the other hand, how Jesus, starting with such a disposition of spirit, could never be a speculative philosopher like Cakya-Mouni. Nothing is further from scholastic theology than the Gospel.[1] The speculations of the Greek fathers on the Divine essence proceed from an entirely different spirit. God, conceived simply as Father, was all the theology of Jesus. And this was not with him a theoretical principle, a doctrine more or less proved, which he sought to inculcate in others. He did not argue with his disciples;[2] he demanded from them no effort of attention. He did not preach his opinions; he preached himself. Very great and very disinterested minds often present, associated with much elevation, that character of perpetual attention to themselves, and extreme personal susceptibility, which, in general, is peculiar to women.[3] Their conviction that God is in them, and occupies Himself perpetually with them, is so strong, that they have no fear of obtruding themselves upon others; our reserve, and our respect for the opinion of others, which is a part of our weakness, could not belong to them. This exaltation of self is not egotism; for such men, possessed by their idea, give their lives freely, in order to seal their work; it is the identification of self with the object it has embraced, carried to its utmost limit. It is regarded as vain-glory by those who see in the new teaching only the personal phantasy of the founder; but it is the finger of God to those who see the result. The fool stands side by side here with the inspired man, only the fool never succeeds. It has not yet been given to insanity to influence seriously the progress of humanity.
[Footnote 1: The discourses which the fourth Gospel attributes to Jesus contain some germs of theology. But these discourses being in absolute contradiction with those of the synoptical Gospels, which represent, without any doubt, the primitiveLogia, ought to count simply as documents of apostolic history, and not as elements of the life of Jesus.]
[Footnote 2: See Matt. ix. 9, and other analogous accounts.]
[Footnote 3: See, for example, John xxi. 15, and following.]
Doubtless, Jesus did not attain at first this high affirmation of himself. But it is probable that, from the first, he regarded his relationship with God as that of a son with his father. This was his great act of originality; in this he had nothing in common with his race.[1] Neither the Jew nor the Mussulman has understood this delightful theology of love. The God of Jesus is not that tyrannical master who kills us, damns us, or saves us, according to His pleasure. The God of Jesus is our Father. We hear Him in listening to the gentle inspiration which cries within us, "Abba, Father."[2] The God of Jesus is not the partial despot who has chosen Israel for His people, and specially protects them. He is the God of humanity. Jesus was not a patriot, like the Maccabees; or a theocrat, like Judas the Gaulonite. Boldly raising himself above the prejudices of his nation, he established the universal fatherhood of God. The Gaulonite maintained that we should die rather than give to another than God the name of "Master;" Jesus left this name to any one who liked to take it, and reserved for God a dearer name. Whilst he accorded to the powerful of the earth, who were to him representatives of force, a respect full of irony, he proclaimed the supreme consolation—the recourse to the Father which each one has in heaven—and the true kingdom of God, which each one bears in his heart.
[Footnote 1: The great soul of Philo is in sympathy here, as on somany other points, with that of Jesus.De Confus. Ling., § 14;DeMigr. Abr., § 1;De Somniis, ii. § 41;De Agric. Noë, § 12;DeMutatione Nominum, § 4. But Philo is scarcely a Jew in spirit.]
[Footnote 2: Galatians iv. 6.]
This name of "kingdom of God," or "kingdom of heaven,"[1] was the favorite term of Jesus to express the revolution which he brought into the world.[2] Like almost all the Messianic terms, it came from the book of Daniel. According to the author of this extraordinary book, the four profane empires, destined to fall, were to be succeeded by a fifth empire, that of the saints, which should last forever.[3] This reign of God upon earth naturally led to the most diverse interpretations. To Jewish theology, the "kingdom of God" is most frequently only Judaism itself—the true religion, the monotheistic worship, piety.[4] In the later periods of his life, Jesus believed that this reign would be realized in a material form by a sudden renovation of the world. But doubtless this was not his first idea.[5] The admirable moral which he draws from the idea of God as Father, is not that of enthusiasts who believe the world is near its end, and who prepare themselves by asceticism for a chimerical catastrophe; it is that of men who have lived, and still would live. "The kingdom of God is within you," said he to those who sought with subtlety for external signs.[6] The realistic conception of the Divine advent was but a cloud, a transient error, which his death has made us forget. The Jesus who founded the true kingdom of God, the kingdom of the meek and the humble, was the Jesus of early life[7]—of those chaste and pure days when the voice of his Father re-echoed within him in clearer tones. It was then for some months, perhaps a year, that God truly dwelt upon the earth. The voice of the young carpenter suddenly acquired an extraordinary sweetness. An infinite charm was exhaled from his person, and those who had seen him up to that time no longer recognized him.[8] He had not yet any disciples, and the group which gathered around him was neither a sect nor a school; but a common spirit, a sweet and penetrating influence was felt. His amiable character, accompanied doubtless by one of those lovely faces[9] which sometimes appear in the Jewish race, threw around him a fascination from which no one in the midst of these kindly and simple populations could escape.
[Footnote 1: The word "heaven" in the rabbinical language of that time is synonymous with the name of "God," which they avoided pronouncing. Compare Matt. xxi. 25; Luke xv. 18, xx. 4.]
[Footnote 2: This expression occurs on each page of the synoptical Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and St. Paul. If it only appears once in John (iii. 3, 5), it is because the discourses related in the fourth Gospel are far from representing the true words of Jesus.]
[Footnote 3: Dan. ii. 44, vii. 13, 14, 22, 27.]
[Footnote 4: Mishnah,Berakoth, ii. 1, 3; Talmud of Jerusalem,Berakoth, ii. 2;Kiddushin, i. 2; Talm. of Bab.,Berakoth, 15a;Mekilta, 42b;Siphra, 170b. The expression appears often in theMedrashim.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. vi. 33, xii. 28, xix. 12; Mark xii. 34; Luke xii. 31.]
[Footnote 6: Luke xvii. 20, 21.]
[Footnote 7: The grand theory of the revelation of the Son of Man is in fact reserved, in the synoptics, for the chapters which precede the narrative of the Passion. The first discourses, especially in Matthew, are entirely moral.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. xiii. 54 and following; Mark vi. 2 and following;John v. 43.]
[Footnote 9: The tradition of the plainness of Jesus (Justin,Dial. cum Tryph., 85, 88, 100) springs from a desire to see realized in him a pretended Messianic trait (Isa. liii. 2).]
Paradise would, in fact, have been brought to earth if the ideas of the young Master had not far transcended the level of ordinary goodness beyond which it has not been found possible to raise the human race. The brotherhood of men, as sons of God, and the moral consequences which result therefrom, were deduced with exquisite feeling. Like all the rabbis of the time, Jesus was little inclined toward consecutive reasonings, and clothed his doctrine in concise aphorisms, and in an expressive form, at times enigmatical and strange.[1] Some of these maxims come from the books of the Old Testament. Others were the thoughts of more modern sages, especially those of Antigonus of Soco, Jesus, son of Sirach, and Hillel, which had reached him, not from learned study, but as oft-repeated proverbs. The synagogue was rich in very happily expressed sentences, which formed a kind of current proverbial literature.[2] Jesus adopted almost all this oral teaching, but imbued it with a superior spirit.[3] Exceeding the duties laid down by the Law and the elders, he demanded perfection. All the virtues of humility—forgiveness, charity, abnegation, and self-denial—virtues which with good reason have been called Christian, if we mean by that that they have been truly preached by Christ, were in this first teaching, though undeveloped. As to justice, he was content with repeating the well-known axiom—"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."[4] But this old, though somewhat selfish wisdom, did not satisfy him. He went to excess, and said—"Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also."[5] "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee."[6] "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that persecute you."[7] "Judge not, that ye be not judged."[8] "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven."[9] "Be ye therefore merciful as your Father also is merciful."[10] "It is more blessed to give than to receive."[11] "Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted."[12]
[Footnote 1: TheLogiaof St. Matthew joins several of these axioms together, to form lengthened discourses. But the fragmentary form makes itself felt notwithstanding.]
[Footnote 2: The sentences of the Jewish doctors of the time are collected in the little book entitled,Pirké Aboth.]
[Footnote 3: The comparisons will be made afterward as they present themselves. It has been sometimes supposed that—the compilation of the Talmud being later than that of the Gospels—parts may have been borrowed by the Jewish compilers from the Christian morality. But this is inadmissible—a wall of separation existed between the Church and the Synagogue. The Christian and Jewish literature had scarcely any influence on one another before the thirteenth century.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. vii. 12; Luke vi. 31. This axiom is in the book ofTobit, iv. 16. Hillel used it habitually (Talm. of Bab.,Shabbath, 31a), and declared, like Jesus, that it was the sum of the Law.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. v. 39, and following; Luke vi. 29. CompareJeremiah,Lamentationsiii. 30.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. v. 29, 30, xviii. 9; Mark ix. 46.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. v. 44; Luke vi. 27. Compare Talmud of Babylon,Shabbath, 88b;Joma, 23a.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. vii. 1; Luke vi. 37. Compare Talmud of Babylon,Kethuboth, 105b.]
[Footnote 9: Luke vi. 37. CompareLev.xix. 18;Prov.xx. 22;Ecclesiasticusxxviii. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 10: Luke vi. 36; Siphré, 51b(Sultzbach, 1802).]
[Footnote 11: A saying related inActsxx. 35.]
[Footnote 12: Matt. xxiii. 12; Luke xiv. 11, xviii. 14. The sentencesquoted by St. Jerome from the "Gospel according to the Hebrews"(Comment. inEpist. ad Ephes., v. 4; in Ezek. xviii.;Dial. adv.Pelag., iii. 2), are imbued with the same spirit.]
Upon alms, pity, good works, kindness, peacefulness, and complete disinterestedness of heart, he had little to add to the doctrine of the synagogue.[1] But he placed upon them an emphasis full of unction, which made the old maxims appear new. Morality is not composed of more or less well-expressed principles. The poetry which makes the precept loved, is more than the precept itself, taken as an abstract truth. Now it cannot be denied that these maxims borrowed by Jesus from his predecessors, produce quite a different effect in the Gospel to that in the ancient Law, in thePirké Aboth, or in the Talmud. It is neither the ancient Law nor the Talmud which has conquered and changed the world. Little original in itself—if we mean by that that one might recompose it almost entirely by the aid of older maxims—the morality of the Gospels remains, nevertheless, the highest creation of human conscience—the most beautiful code of perfect life that any moralist has traced.
[Footnote 1:Deut.xxiv., xxv., xxvi., &c.; Isa. lviii. 7;Prov.xix. 17;Pirké Aboth, i.; Talmud of Jerusalem,Peah, i. 1; Talmud of Babylon,Shabbath, 63a.]
Jesus did not speak against the Mosaic law, but it is clear that he saw its insufficiency, and allowed it to be seen that he did so. He repeated unceasingly that more must be done than the ancient sages had commanded.[1] He forbade the least harsh word;[2] he prohibited divorce,[3] and all swearing;[4] he censured revenge;[5] he condemned usury;[6] he considered voluptuous desire as criminal as adultery;[7] he insisted upon a universal forgiveness of injuries.[8] The motive on which he rested these maxims of exalted charity was always the same…. "That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."[9]
[Footnote 1: Matt. v. 20, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. v. 22.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. v. 31, and following. Compare Talmud of Babylon,Sanhedrim, 22a.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. v. 33, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. v. 38, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. v. 42. The Law prohibited it also (Deut.xv. 7, 8), but less formally, and custom authorized it (Luke vii. 41, and following).]
[Footnote 7: Matt. xxvii. 28. Compare Talmud,Masséket Kalla(edit.Fürth, 1793), fol. 34b.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. v. 23, and following.]
[Footnote 9: Matt. v. 45, and following. CompareLev.xi. 44, xix. 2.]
A pure worship, a religion without priests and external observances, resting entirely on the feelings of the heart, on the imitation of God,[1] on the direct relation of the conscience with the heavenly Father, was the result of these principles. Jesus never shrank from this bold conclusion, which made him a thorough revolutionist in the very centre of Judaism. Why should there be mediators between man and his Father? As God only sees the heart, of what good are these purifications, these observances relating only to the body?[2] Even tradition, a thing so sacred to the Jews, is nothing compared to sincerity.[3] The hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who, in praying, turned their heads to see if they were observed, who gave their alms with ostentation, and put marks upon their garments, that they might be recognized as pious persons—all these grimaces of false devotion disgusted him. "They have their recompense," said he; "but thou, when thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thy alms may be in secret, and thy Father, which seeth in secret, Himself shall reward thee openly."[4] "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues, and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him."[5]
[Footnote 1: Compare Philo,De Migr. Abr., § 23 and 24;De VitaContemp., the whole.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xv. 11, and following; Mark vii. 6, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Mark vii. 6, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. vi. 1, and following. CompareEcclesiasticusxvii. 18, xxix. 15; Talm. of Bab.,Chagigah, 5a;Baba Bathra, 9b.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. vi. 5-8.]
He did not affect any external signs of asceticism, contenting himself with praying, or rather meditating, upon the mountains, and in the solitary places, where man has always sought God.[1] This high idea of the relations of man with God, of which so few minds, even after him, have been capable, is summed up in a prayer which he taught to his disciples:[2]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiv. 23; Luke iv. 42, v. 16, vi. 12.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. vi. 9, and following; Luke xi. 2, and following.]
"Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation; deliver us from the evil one."[1] He insisted particularly upon the idea, that the heavenly Father knows better than we what we need, and that we almost sin against Him in asking Him for this or that particular thing.[2]
[Footnote 1:i.e., the devil.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xi. 5, and following.]
Jesus in this only carried out the consequences of the great principles which Judaism had established, but which the official classes of the nation tended more and more to despise. The Greek and Roman prayers were almost always mere egotistical verbiage. Never had Pagan priest said to the faithful, "If thou bring thy offering to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled with thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift."[1] Alone in antiquity, the Jewish prophets, especially Isaiah, had, in their antipathy to the priesthood, caught a glimpse of the true nature of the worship man owes to God. "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats…. Incense is an abomination unto me: for your hands are full of blood; cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, and then come."[2] In later times, certain doctors, Simeon the just,[3] Jesus, son of Sirach,[4] Hillel,[5] almost reached this point, and declared that the sum of the Law was righteousness. Philo, in the Judæo-Egyptian world, attained at the same time as Jesus ideas of a high moral sanctity, the consequence of which was the disregard of the observances of the Law.[6] Shemaïa and Abtalion also more than once proved themselves to be very liberal casuists.[7] Rabbi Johanan ere long placed works of mercy above even the study of the Law![8] Jesus alone, however, proclaimed these principles in an effective manner. Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded to him. An absolutely new idea, the idea of a worship founded on purity of heart, and on human brotherhood, through him entered into the world—an idea so elevated, that the Christian Church ought to make it its distinguishing feature, but an idea which, in our days, only few minds are capable of embodying.
[Footnote 1: Matt. v. 23, 24.]
[Footnote 2: Isaiah i. 11, and following. Compare ibid., lviii. entirely; Hosea vi. 6; Malachi i. 10, and following.]
[Footnote 3:Pirké Aboth, i. 2.]
[Footnote 4:Ecclesiasticusxxxv. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Talm. of Jerus.,Pesachim, vi. 1. Talm. of Bab., the same treatise 66a;Shabbath, 31a.]
[Footnote 6:Quod Deus Immut., § 1 and 2;De Abrahamo, § 22;Quis Rerum Divin. Hæres, § 13, and following; 55, 58, and following;De Profugis, § 7 and 8;Quod Omnis Probus Liber, entirely;De Vita Contemp., entirely.]
[Footnote 7: Talm. of Bab.,Pesachim, 67b.]
[Footnote 8: Talmud of Jerus.,Peah, i. 1.]
An exquisite sympathy with Nature furnished him each moment with expressive images. Sometimes a remarkable ingenuity, which we call wit, adorned his aphorisms; at other times, their liveliness consisted in the happy use of popular proverbs. "How wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."[1]
[Footnote 1: Matt. vii. 4, 5. Compare Talmud of Babylon,BabaBathra, 15b,Erachin, 16b.]
These lessons, long hidden in the heart of the young Master, soon gathered around him a few disciples. The spirit of the time favored small churches; it was the period of the Essenes or Therapeutæ. Rabbis, each having his distinctive teaching, Shemaïa, Abtalion, Hillel, Shammai, Judas the Gaulonite, Gamaliel, and many others, whose maxims form the Talmud,[1] appeared on all sides. They wrote very little; the Jewish doctors of this time did not write books; everything was done by conversations, and in public lessons, to which it was sought to give a form easily remembered.[2] The proclamation by the young carpenter of Nazareth of these maxims, for the most part already generally known, but which, thanks to him, were to regenerate the world, was therefore no striking event. It was only one rabbi more (it is true, the most charming of all), and around him some young men, eager to hear him, and thirsting for knowledge. It requires time to command the attention of men. As yet there were no Christians; though true Christianity was founded, and, doubtless, it was never more perfect than at this first period. Jesus added to it nothing durable afterward. Indeed, in one sense, he compromised it; for every movement, in order to triumph, must make sacrifices; we never come from the contest of life unscathed.
[Footnote 1: See especiallyPirké Aboth, ch. i.]
[Footnote 2: The Talmud, arésuméof this vast movement of the schools, was scarcely commenced till the second century of our era.]
To conceive the good, in fact, is not sufficient; it must be made to succeed amongst men. To accomplish this, less pure paths must be followed. Certainly, if the Gospel was confined to some chapters of Matthew and Luke, it would be more perfect, and would not now be open to so many objections; but would Jesus have converted the world without miracles? If he had died at the period of his career we have now reached, there would not have been in his life a single page to wound us; but, greater in the eyes of God, he would have remained unknown to men; he would have been lost in the crowd of great unknown spirits, himself the greatest of all; the truth would not have been promulgated, and the world would not have profited from the great moral superiority with which his Father had endowed him. Jesus, son of Sirach, and Hillel, had uttered aphorisms almost as exalted as those of Jesus. Hillel, however, will never be accounted the true founder of Christianity. In morals, as in art, precept is nothing, practice is everything. The idea which is hidden in a picture of Raphael is of little moment; it is the picture itself which is prized. So, too, in morals, truth is but little prized when it is a mere sentiment, and only attains its full value when realized in the world as fact. Men of indifferent morality have written very good maxims. Very virtuous men, on the other hand, have done nothing to perpetuate in the world the tradition of virtue. The palm is his who has been mighty both in words and in works, who has discerned the good, and at the price of his blood has caused its triumph. Jesus, from this double point of view, is without equal; his glory remains entire, and will ever be renewed.