[Footnote 1: Jos., Ant., XV. viii.-xi.; B.J., V. v. 6; Mark xiii. 1, 2.]

[Footnote 2: Tombs, namely, of the Judges, Kings, Absalom, Zechariah, Jehoshaphat, and of St. James. Compare the description of the tomb of the Maccabees at Modin (1 Macc. xiii. 27, and following).]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xxiii. 27, 29, xxiv. 1, and following; Mark xiii. 1, and following; Luke xix. 44, xxi. 5, and following. Compare Book of Enoch, xcvii. 13, 14; Talmud of Babylon, Shabbath, 33 b.]

The temple, at the time of Jesus, was quite new, and the exterior works of it were not completed. Herod had begun its reconstruction in the year 20 or 21 before the Christian era, in order to make it uniform with his other edifices. The body of the temple was finished in eighteen months; the porticos took eight years;[1] and the accessory portions were continued slowly, and were only finished a short time before the taking of Jerusalem.[2] Jesus probably saw the work progressing, not without a degree of secret vexation. These hopes of a long future were like an insult to his approaching advent. Clearer-sighted than the unbelievers and the fanatics, he foresaw that these superb edifices were destined to endure but for a short time.[3]

[Footnote 1: Jos., Ant., XV. xi. 5, 6.]

[Footnote 2: Jos., Ant., XX. ix. 7; John ii. 20.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xxiv. 2, xxvi. 61, xxvii. 40; Mark xiii. 2, xiv. 58, xv. 29; Luke xxi. 6; John ii. 19, 20.]

The temple formed a marvelously imposing whole, of which the present haram,[1] notwithstanding its beauty, scarcely gives us any idea. The courts and the surrounding porticos served as the daily rendezvous for a considerable number of persons—so much so, that this great space was at once temple, forum, tribunal, and university. All the religious discussions of the Jewish schools, all the canonical instruction, even the legal processes and civil causes—in a word, all the activity of the nation was concentrated there.[2] It was an arena where arguments were perpetually clashing, a battlefield of disputes, resounding with sophisms and subtle questions. The temple had thus much analogy with a Mahometan mosque. The Romans at this period treated all strange religions with respect, when kept within proper limits,[3] and carefully refrained from entering the sanctuary; Greek and Latin inscriptions marked the point up to which those who were not Jews were permitted to advance.[4] But the tower of Antonia, the headquarters of the Roman forces, commanded the whole enclosure, and allowed all that passed therein to be seen.[5] The guarding of the temple belonged to the Jews; the entire superintendence was committed to a captain, who caused the gates to be opened and shut, and prevented any one from crossing the enclosure with a stick in his hand, or with dusty shoes, or when carrying parcels, or to shorten his path.[6] They were especially scrupulous in watching that no one entered within the inner gates in a state of legal impurity. The women had an entirely separate court.

[Footnote 1: The temple and its enclosure doubtless occupied the site of the mosque of Omar and the haram, or Sacred Court, which surrounds the mosque. The foundation of the haram is, in some parts, especially at the place where the Jews go to weep, the exact base of the temple of Herod.]

[Footnote 2: Luke ii. 46, and following; Mishnah, Sanhedrim, x. 2.]

[Footnote 3: Suet., Aug. 93.]

[Footnote 4: Philo, Legatio ad Caium, Sec. 31; Jos., B.J., V. v. 2, VI. ii. 4; Acts xxi. 28.]

[Footnote 5: Considerable traces of this tower are still seen in the northern part of the haram.]

[Footnote 6: Mishnah, Berakoth, ix. 5; Talm. of Babyl., Jebamoth, 6 b; Mark xi. 16.]

It was in the temple that Jesus passed his days, whilst he remained at Jerusalem. The period of the feasts brought an extraordinary concourse of people into the city. Associated in parties of ten to twenty persons, the pilgrims invaded everywhere, and lived in that disordered state in which Orientals delight.[1] Jesus was lost in the crowd, and his poor Galileans grouped around him were of small account. He probably felt that he was in a hostile world which would receive him only with disdain. Everything he saw set him against it. The temple, like much-frequented places of devotion in general, offered a not very edifying spectacle. The accessories of worship entailed a number of repulsive details, especially of mercantile operations, in consequence of which real shops were established within the sacred enclosure. There were sold beasts for the sacrifices; there were tables for the exchange of money; at times it seemed like a bazaar. The inferior officers of the temple fulfilled their functions doubtless with the irreligious vulgarity of the sacristans of all ages. This profane and heedless air in the handling of holy things wounded the religious sentiment of Jesus, which was at times carried even to a scrupulous excess.[2] He said that they had made the house of prayer into a den of thieves. One day, it is even said, that, carried away by his anger, he scourged the vendors with a "scourge of small cords," and overturned their tables.[3] In general, he had little love for the temple. The worship which he had conceived for his Father had nothing in common with scenes of butchery. All these old Jewish institutions displeased him, and he suffered in being obliged to conform to them. Except among the Judaizing Christians, neither the temple nor its site inspired pious sentiments. The true disciples of the new faith held this ancient sanctuary in aversion. Constantine and the first Christian emperors left the pagan construction of Adrian existing there,[4] and only the enemies of Christianity, such as Julian, remembered the temple.[5] When Omar entered into Jerusalem, he found the site designedly polluted in hatred of the Jews.[6] It was Islamism, that is to say, a sort of resurrection of Judaism in its exclusively Semitic form, which restored its glory. The place has always been anti-Christian.

[Footnote 1: Jos., B.J., II. xiv. 3, VI. ix. 3. Comp. Ps. cxxxiii. (Vulg. cxxxii.)]

[Footnote 2: Mark xi. 16.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xxi. 12, and following; Mark xi. 15, and following; Luke xix. 45, and following; John ii. 14, and following.]

[Footnote 4: Itin. a Burdig. Hierus., p. 152 (edit. Schott); S. Jerome, in Is. i. 8, and in Matt. xxiv. 15.]

[Footnote 5: Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 1.]

[Footnote 6: Eutychius, Ann., II. 286, and following (Oxford 1659).]

The pride of the Jews completed the discontent of Jesus, and rendered his stay in Jerusalem painful. In the degree that the great ideas of Israel ripened, the priesthood lost its power. The institution of synagogues had given to the interpreter of the Law, to the doctor, a great superiority over the priest. There were no priests except at Jerusalem, and even there, reduced to functions entirely ritual, almost, like our parish priests, excluded from preaching, they were surpassed by the orator of the synagogue, the casuist, and the sofer or scribe, although the latter was only a layman. The celebrated men of the Talmud were not priests; they were learned men according to the ideas of the time. The high priesthood of Jerusalem held, it is true, a very elevated rank in the nation; but it was by no means at the head of the religious movement. The sovereign pontiff, whose dignity had already been degraded by Herod,[1] became more and more a Roman functionary,[2] who was frequently removed in order to divide the profits of the office. Opposed to the Pharisees, who were very warm lay zealots, the priests were almost all Sadducees, that is to say, members of that unbelieving aristocracy which had been formed around the temple, and which lived by the altar, while they saw the vanity of it.[3] The sacerdotal caste was separated to such a degree from the national sentiment and from the great religious movement which dragged the people along, that the name of "Sadducee" (sadoki), which at first simply designated a member of the sacerdotal family of Sadok, had become synonymous with "Materialist" and with "Epicurean."

[Footnote 1: Jos., Ant., XV. iii. 1, 3.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., XVIII. ii.]

[Footnote 3: Acts iv. 1, and following, v. 17; Jos., Ant., XX. ix. 1; Pirke Aboth, i. 10.]

A still worse element had begun, since the reign of Herod the Great, to corrupt the high-priesthood. Herod having fallen in love with Mariamne, daughter of a certain Simon, son of Boethus of Alexandria, and having wished to marry her (about the year 28 B.C.), saw no other means of ennobling his father-in-law and raising him to his own rank than by making him high-priest. This intriguing family remained master, almost without interruption, of the sovereign pontificate for thirty-five years.[1] Closely allied to the reigning family, it did not lose the office until after the deposition of Archelaus, and recovered it (the year 42 of our era) after Herod Agrippa had for some time re-enacted the work of Herod the Great. Under the name of Boethusim,[2] a new sacerdotal nobility was formed, very worldly, and little devotional, and closely allied to the Sadokites. The Boethusim, in the Talmud and the rabbinical writings, are depicted as a kind of unbelievers, and always reproached as Sadducees.[3] From all this there resulted a miniature court of Rome around the temple, living on politics, little inclined to excesses of zeal, even rather fearing them, not wishing to hear of holy personages or of innovators, for it profited from the established routine. These epicurean priests had not the violence of the Pharisees; they only wished for quietness; it was their moral indifference, their cold irreligion, which revolted Jesus. Although very different, the priests and the Pharisees were thus confounded in his antipathies. But a stranger, and without influence, he was long compelled to restrain his discontent within himself, and only to communicate his sentiments to the intimate friends who accompanied him.

[Footnote 1: Jos., Ant. XV. ix. 3, XVII. vi. 4, xiii. 1, XVIII. i. 1, ii. 1, XIX. vi. 2, viii. 1.]

[Footnote 2: This name is only found in the Jewish documents. I think that the "Herodians" of the gospel are the Boethusim.]

[Footnote 3: The treatise of Aboth Nathan, 5; Soferim, iii., hal. 5; Mishnah, Menachoth, x. 3; Talmud of Babylon, Shabbath, 118 a. The name of Boethusim is often changed in the Talmudic books with that of the Sadducees, or with the word Minim (heretics). Compare Thosiphta, Joma, i., with the Talm. of Jerus., the same treatise, i. 5, and Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 19 b; Thos. Sukka, iii. with the Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 43 b; Thos. ibid., further on, with the Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 48 b; Thos. Rosh hasshana, i. with Mishnah, same treatise ii. 1; Talm. of Jerus., same treatise, ii. 1; and Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 22 b; Thos. Menachoth, x. with Mishnah, same treatise, x. 3; Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 65 a; Mishnah, Chagigah, ii. 4; and Megillath Taanith, i.; Thos. Iadaim, ii. with Talm. of Jerus.; Baba Bathra, viii. 1; Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 115 b; and Megillath Taanith, v.]

Before his last stay, which was by far the longest of all that he made at Jerusalem, and which was terminated by his death, Jesus endeavored, however, to obtain a hearing. He preached; people spoke of him; and they conversed respecting certain deeds of his which were looked upon as miraculous. But from all that, there resulted neither an established church at Jerusalem nor a group of Hierosolymite disciples. The charming teacher, who forgave every one provided they loved him, could not find much sympathy in this sanctuary of vain disputes and obsolete sacrifices. The only result was that he formed some valuable friendships, the advantage of which he reaped afterward. He does not appear at that time to have made the acquaintance of the family of Bethany, which, amidst the trials of the latter months of his life, brought him so much consolation. But very early he attracted the attention of a certain Nicodemus, a rich Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrim, and a man occupying a high position in Jerusalem.[1] This man, who appears to have been upright and sincere, felt himself attracted toward the young Galilean. Not wishing to compromise himself, he came to see Jesus by night, and had a long conversation with him.[2] He doubtless preserved a favorable impression of him, for afterward he defended Jesus against the prejudices of his colleagues,[3] and, at the death of Jesus, we shall find him tending with pious care the corpse of the master.[4] Nicodemus did not become a Christian; he had too much regard for his position to take part in a revolutionary movement which as yet counted no men of note amongst its adherents. But he evidently felt great friendship for Jesus, and rendered him service, though unable to rescue him from a death which even at this period was all but decreed.

[Footnote 1: It seems that he is referred to in the Talmud. Talm. of Bab., Taanith, 20 a; Gittin, 56 a; Ketuboth, 66 b; treatise Aboth Nathan, vii.; Midrash Rabba, Eka, 64 a. The passage Taanith identifies him with Bounai, who, according to Sanhedrim (see ante, p. 212, note 2), was a disciple of Jesus. But if Bounai is the Banou of Josephus, this identification will not hold good.]

[Footnote 2: John iii. 1, and following, vii. 50. We are certainly free to believe that the exact text of the conversation is but a creation of John's.]

[Footnote 3: John vii. 50, and following.]

[Footnote 4: John xix. 39.]

As to the celebrated doctors of the time, Jesus does not appear to have had any connection with them. Hillel and Shammai were dead; the greatest authority of the time was Gamaliel, grandson of Hillel. He was of a liberal spirit, and a man of the world, not opposed to secular studies, and inclined to tolerance by his intercourse with good society.[1] Unlike the very strict Pharisees, who walked veiled or with closed eyes, he did not scruple to gaze even upon Pagan women.[2] This, as well as his knowledge of Greek, was tolerated because he had access to the court.[3] After the death of Jesus, he expressed very moderate views respecting the new sect.[4] St. Paul sat at his feet,[5] but it is not probable that Jesus ever entered his school.

[Footnote 1: Mishnah, Baba Metsia, v. 8; Talm. of Bab., Sota, 49 b.]

[Footnote 2: Talm. of Jerus., Berakoth, ix. 2.]

[Footnote 3: Passage Sota, before cited, and Baba Kama, 83 a.]

[Footnote 4: Acts v. 34, and following.]

[Footnote 5: Acts xxii. 3.]

One idea, at least, which Jesus brought from Jerusalem, and which henceforth appears rooted in his mind, was that there was no union possible between him and the ancient Jewish religion. The abolition of the sacrifices which had caused him so much disgust, the suppression of an impious and haughty priesthood, and, in a general sense, the abrogation of the law, appeared to him absolutely necessary. From this time he appears no more as a Jewish reformer, but as a destroyer of Judaism. Certain advocates of the Messianic ideas had already admitted that the Messiah would bring a new law, which should be common to all the earth.[1] The Essenes, who were scarcely Jews, also appear to have been indifferent to the temple and to the Mosaic observances. But these were only isolated or unavowed instances of boldness. Jesus was the first who dared to say that from his time, or rather from that of John,[2] the Law was abolished. If sometimes he used more measured terms,[3] it was in order not to offend existing prejudices too violently. When he was driven to extremities, he lifted the veil entirely, and declared that the Law had no longer any force. On this subject he used striking comparisons. "No man putteth a piece of new cloth into an old garment, neither do men put new wine into old bottles."[4] This was really his chief characteristic as teacher and creator. The temple excluded all except Jews from its enclosure by scornful announcements. Jesus had no sympathy with this. The narrow, hard, and uncharitable Law was only made for the children of Abraham. Jesus maintained that every well-disposed man, every man who received and loved him, was a son of Abraham.[5] The pride of blood appeared to him the great enemy which was to be combated. In other words, Jesus was no longer a Jew. He was in the highest degree revolutionary; he called all men to a worship founded solely on the fact of their being children of God. He proclaimed the rights of man, not the rights of the Jew; the religion of man, not the religion of the Jew; the deliverance of man, not the deliverance of the Jew.[6] How far removed was this from a Gaulonite Judas or a Matthias Margaloth, preaching revolution in the name of the Law! The religion of humanity, established, not upon blood, but upon the heart, was founded. Moses was superseded, the temple was rendered useless, and was irrevocably condemned.

[Footnote 1: Orac. Sib., book iii. 573, and following, 715, and following, 756-58. Compare the Targum of Jonathan, Isa. xii. 3.]

[Footnote 2: Luke xvi. 16. The passage in Matt. xi. 12, 13, is less clear, but can have no other meaning.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. v. 17, 18 (Cf. Talm. of Bab., Shabbath, 116 b). This passage is not in contradiction with those in which the abolition of the Law is implied. It only signifies that in Jesus all the types of the Old Testament are realized. Cf. Luke xvi. 17.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. ix. 16, 17; Luke v. 36, and following.]

[Footnote 5: Luke xix. 9.]

[Footnote 6: Matt. xxiv. 14, xxviii. 19; Mark xiii. 10, xvi. 15; Luke xxiv. 47.]



CHAPTER XIV.

INTERCOURSE OF JESUS WITH THE PAGANS AND THE SAMARITANS.

Following out these principles, Jesus despised all religion which was not of the heart. The vain practices of the devotees,[1] the exterior strictness, which trusted to formality for salvation, had in him a mortal enemy. He cared little for fasting.[2] He preferred forgiveness to sacrifice.[3] The love of God, charity and mutual forgiveness, were his whole law.[4] Nothing could be less priestly. The priest, by his office, ever advocates public sacrifice, of which he is the appointed minister; he discourages private prayer, which has a tendency to dispense with his office.

[Footnote 1: Matt. xv. 9.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. ix. 14, xi. 19.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. v. 23, and following, ix. 13, xii. 7.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. xxii. 37, and following; Mark xii. 28, and following; Luke x. 25, and following.]

We should seek in vain in the Gospel for one religious rite recommended by Jesus. Baptism to him was only of secondary importance;[1] and with respect to prayer, he prescribes nothing, except that it should proceed from the heart. As is always the case, many thought to substitute mere good-will for genuine love of goodness, and imagined they could win the kingdom of heaven by saying to him, "Rabbi, Rabbi." He rebuked them, and proclaimed that his religion consisted in doing good.[2] He often quoted the passage in Isaiah, which says: "This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me."[3]

[Footnote 1: Matt. iii. 15; 1 Cor. i. 17.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. vii. 21; Luke vi. 46.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xv. 8; Mark vii. 6. Cf. Isaiah xxix. 13.]

The observance of the Sabbath was the principal point upon which was raised the whole edifice of Pharisaic scruples and subtleties. This ancient and excellent institution had become a pretext for the miserable disputes of casuists, and a source of superstitious beliefs.[1] It was believed that Nature observed it; all intermittent springs were accounted "Sabbatical."[2] This was the point upon which Jesus loved best to defy his adversaries.[3] He openly violated the Sabbath, and only replied by subtle raillery to the reproaches that were heaped upon him. He despised still more a multitude of modern observances, which tradition had added to the Law, and which were dearer than any other to the devotees on that very account. Ablutions, and the too subtle distinctions between pure and impure things, found in him a pitiless opponent: "There is nothing from without a man," said he, "that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man." The Pharisees, who were the propagators of these mummeries, were unceasingly denounced by him. He accused them of exceeding the Law, of inventing impossible precepts, in order to create occasions of sin: "Blind leaders of the blind," said he, "take care lest ye also fall into the ditch." "O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."[4]

[Footnote 1: See especially the treatise Shabbath of the Mishnah and the Livre des Jubiles (translated from the Ethiopian in the Jahrbuecher of Ewald, years 2 and 3), chap. I.]

[Footnote 2: Jos., B.J., VII. v. 1; Pliny, H.N., xxxi. 18. Cf. Thomson, The Land and the Book, i. 406, and following.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xii. 1-14; Mark ii. 23-28; Luke vi. 1-5, xiii. 14, and following, xiv. 1, and following.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. xii. 34, xv. 1, and following, 12, and following, xxiii. entirely; Mark vii. 1, and following, 15, and following; Luke vi. 45, xi. 39, and following.]

He did not know the Gentiles sufficiently to think of founding anything lasting upon their conversion. Galilee contained a great number of pagans, but, as it appears, no public and organized worship of false gods.[1] Jesus could see this worship displayed in all its splendor in the country of Tyre and Sidon, at Caesarea Philippi and in the Decapolis, but he paid little attention to it. We never find in him the wearisome pedantry of the Jews of his time, those declamations against idolatry, so familiar to his co-religionists from the time of Alexander, and which fill, for instance, the book of "Wisdom."[2] That which struck him in the pagans was not their idolatry, but their servility.[3] The young Jewish democrat agreeing on this point with Judas the Gaulonite, and admitting no master but God, was hurt at the honors with which they surrounded the persons of sovereigns, and the frequently mendacious titles given to them. With this exception, in the greater number of instances in which he comes in contact with pagans, he shows great indulgence to them; sometimes he professes to conceive more hope of them than of the Jews.[4] The kingdom of God would be transferred to them. "When the lord, therefore, of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto these husbandmen? He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons."[5] Jesus adhered so much the more to this idea, as the conversion of the Gentiles was, according to Jewish ideas, one of the surest signs of the advent of the Messiah.[6] In his kingdom of God he represents, as seated at a feast, by the side of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, men come from the four winds of heaven, whilst the lawful heirs of the kingdom are rejected.[7] Sometimes, it is true, there seems to be an entirely contrary tendency in the commands he gives to his disciples: he seems to recommend them only to preach salvation to the orthodox Jews,[8] he speaks of pagans in a manner conformable to the prejudices of the Jews.[9] But we must remember that the disciples, whose narrow minds did not share in this supreme indifference for the privileges of the sons of Abraham, may have given the instruction of their master the bent of their own ideas. Besides, it is very possible that Jesus may have varied on this point, just as Mahomet speaks of the Jews in the Koran, sometimes in the most honorable manner, sometimes with extreme harshness, as he had hope of winning their favor or otherwise. Tradition, in fact, attributes to Jesus two entirely opposite rules of proselytism, which he may have practised in turn: "He that is not against us is on our part." "He that is not with me, is against me."[10] Impassioned conflict involves almost necessarily this kind of contradictions.

[Footnote 1: I believe the pagans of Galilee were found especially on the frontiers—at Kedes, for example; but that the very heart of the country, the city of Tiberias excepted, was entirely Jewish. The line where the ruins of temples end, and those of synagogues begin, is to-day plainly marked as far north as Lake Huleh (Samachonites). The traces of pagan sculpture, which were thought to have been found at Tell-Houm, are doubtful. The coast—the town of Acre, in particular—did not form part of Galilee.]

[Footnote 2: Chap. XIII. and following.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xx. 25; Mark x. 42; Luke xxii. 25.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. viii. 5, and following, xv. 22, and following; Mark vii. 25, and following; Luke iv. 25, and following.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. xxi. 41; Mark xii. 9; Luke xx. 16.]

[Footnote 6: Isa. ii. 2, and following, lx.; Amos ix. 11, and following; Jer. iii. 17; Mal. i. 11; Tobit, xiii. 13, and following; Orac. Sibyll., iii. 715, and following. Comp. Matt. xxiv. 14; Acts xv. 15, and following.]

[Footnote 7: Matt. viii. 11, 12, xxi. 33, and following, xxii. 1, and following.]

[Footnote 8: Matt. vii. 6, x. 5, 6, xv. 24, xxi. 43.]

[Footnote 9: Matt. v. 46, and following, vi. 7, 32, xviii. 17; Luke vi. 32, and following, xii. 30.]

[Footnote 10: Matt. xii. 30; Mark ix. 39; Luke ix. 50, xi. 23.]

It is certain that he counted among his disciples many men whom the Jews called "Hellenes."[1] This word had in Palestine divers meanings. Sometimes it designated the pagans; sometimes the Jews, speaking Greek, and dwelling among the pagans;[2] sometimes men of pagan origin converted to Judaism.[3] It was probably in the last-named category of Hellenes that Jesus found sympathy.[4] The affiliation with Judaism had many degrees; but the proselytes always remained in a state of inferiority in regard to the Jew by birth. Those in question were called "proselytes of the gate," or "men fearing God," and were subject to the precepts of Noah, and not to those of Moses.[5] This very inferiority was doubtless the cause which drew them to Jesus, and gained them his favor.

[Footnote 1: Josephus confirms this (Ant., XVIII. iii. 3). Comp. John vii. 35, xii. 20, 21.]

[Footnote 2: Talm. of Jerus., Sota, vii. 1.]

[Footnote 3: See in particular, John vii. 35, xii. 20; Acts xiv. 1, xvii. 4, xviii. 4, xxi. 28.]

[Footnote 4: John xii. 20; Acts viii. 27.]

[Footnote 5: Mishnah, Baba Metsia, ix. 12; Talm. of Bab., Sanh.,56 b; Acts viii. 27, x. 2, 22, 35, xiii. 16, 26, 43, 50, xvi. 14, xvii. 4, 17, xviii. 7; Gal. ii. 3; Jos., Ant., XIV. vii. 2.]

He treated the Samaritans in the same manner. Shut in, like a small island, between the two great provinces of Judaism (Judea and Galilee), Samaria formed in Palestine a kind of enclosure in which was preserved the ancient worship of Gerizim, closely resembling and rivalling that of Jerusalem. This poor sect, which had neither the genius nor the learned organization of Judaism, properly so called, was treated by the Hierosolymites with extreme harshness.[1] They placed them in the same rank as pagans, but hated them more.[2] Jesus, from a feeling of opposition, was well disposed toward Samaria, and often preferred the Samaritans to the orthodox Jews. If, at other times, he seems to forbid his disciples preaching to them, confining his gospel to the Israelites proper,[3] this was no doubt a precept arising from special circumstances, to which the apostles have given too absolute a meaning. Sometimes, in fact, the Samaritans received him badly, because they thought him imbued with the prejudices of his co-religionists;[4]—in the same manner as in our days the European free-thinker is regarded as an enemy by the Mussulman, who always believes him to be a fanatical Christian. Jesus raised himself above these misunderstandings.[5] He had many disciples at Shechem, and he passed at least two days there.[6] On one occasion he meets with gratitude and true piety from a Samaritan only.[7] One of his most beautiful parables is that of the man wounded on the way to Jericho. A priest passes by and sees him, but goes on his way; a Levite also passes, but does not stop; a Samaritan takes pity on him, approaches him, and pours oil into his wounds, and bandages them.[8] Jesus argues from this that true brotherhood is established among men by charity, and not by creeds. The "neighbor" who in Judaism was specially the co-religionist, was in his estimation the man who has pity on his kind without distinction of sect. Human brotherhood in its widest sense overflows in all his teaching.

[Footnote 1: Ecclesiasticus l. 27, 28; John viii. 48; Jos., Ant., IX. xiv. 3, XI. viii. 6, XII. v. 5; Talm. of Jerus., Aboda zara, v. 4; Pesachim, i. 1.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. x. 5; Luke xvii. 18. Comp. Talm. of Bab., Cholin, 6 a.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. x. 5, 6.]

[Footnote 4: Luke ix. 53.]

[Footnote 5: Luke ix. 56.]

[Footnote 6: John iv. 39-43.]

[Footnote 7: Luke xvii. 16.]

[Footnote 8: Luke x. 30, and following.]

These thoughts, which beset Jesus on his leaving Jerusalem, found their vivid expression in an anecdote which has been preserved respecting his return. The road from Jerusalem into Galilee passes at the distance of half an hour's journey from Shechem,[1] in front of the opening of the valley commanded by mounts Ebal and Gerizim. This route was in general avoided by the Jewish pilgrims, who preferred making in their journeys the long detour through Perea, rather than expose themselves to the insults of the Samaritans, or ask anything of them. It was forbidden to eat and drink with them.[2] It was an axiom of certain casuists, that "a piece of Samaritan bread is the flesh of swine."[3] When they followed this route, provisions were always laid up beforehand; yet they rarely avoided conflict and ill-treatment.[4] Jesus shared neither these scruples nor these fears. Having come to the point where the valley of Shechem opens on the left, he felt fatigued, and stopped near a well. The Samaritans were then as now accustomed to give to all the localities of their valley names drawn from patriarchal reminiscences. They regarded this well as having been given by Jacob to Joseph; it was probably the same which is now called Bir-Iakoub. The disciples entered the valley and went to the city to buy provisions. Jesus seated himself at the side of the well, having Gerizim before him.

[Footnote 1: Now Nablous.]

[Footnote 2: Luke ix. 53; John iv. 9.]

[Footnote 3: Mishnah, Shebiit, viii. 10.]

[Footnote 4: Jos., Ant., XX. v. 1; B.J., II. xii. 3; Vita, 52.]

It was about noon. A woman of Shechem came to draw water. Jesus asked her to let him drink, which excited great astonishment in the woman, the Jews generally forbidding all intercourse with the Samaritans. Won by the conversation of Jesus, the woman recognized in him a prophet, and expecting some reproaches about her worship, she anticipated him: "Sir," said she, "our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth."[1]

[Footnote 1: John iv. 21-23. Verse 22, at least the latter clause of it, which expresses an idea opposed to that of verses 21 and 23, appears to have been interpolated. We must not insist too much on the historical reality of such a conversation, since Jesus, or his interlocutor, alone would have been able to relate it. But the anecdote in chapter iv. of John, certainly represents one of the most intimate thoughts of Jesus, and the greater part of the circumstances have a striking appearance of truth.]

The day on which he uttered this saying, he was truly Son of God. He pronounced for the first time the sentence upon which will repose the edifice of eternal religion. He founded the pure worship, of all ages, of all lands, that which all elevated souls will practice until the end of time. Not only was his religion on this day the best religion of humanity, it was the absolute religion; and if other planets have inhabitants gifted with reason and morality, their religion cannot be different from that which Jesus proclaimed near the well of Jacob. Man has not been able to maintain this position: for the ideal is realized but transitorily. This sentence of Jesus has been a brilliant light amidst gross darkness; it has required eighteen hundred years for the eyes of mankind (what do I say! for an infinitely small portion of mankind) to become accustomed to it. But the light will become the full day, and, after having run through all the cycles of error, mankind will return to this sentence, as the immortal expression of its faith and its hope.



CHAPTER XV.

COMMENCEMENT OF THE LEGENDS CONCERNING JESUS—HIS OWN IDEA OF HIS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER.

Jesus returned to Galilee, having completely lost his Jewish faith, and filled with revolutionary ardor. His ideas are now expressed with perfect clearness. The innocent aphorisms of the first part of his prophetic career, in part borrowed from the Jewish rabbis anterior to him, and the beautiful moral precepts of his second period, are exchanged for a decided policy. The Law would be abolished; and it was to be abolished by him.[1] The Messiah had come, and he was the Messiah. The kingdom of God was about to be revealed; and it was he who would reveal it. He knew well that he would be the victim of his boldness; but the kingdom of God could not be conquered without violence; it was by crises and commotions that it was to be established.[2] The Son of man would reappear in glory, accompanied by legions of angels, and those who had rejected him would be confounded.

[Footnote 1: The hesitancy of the immediate disciples of Jesus, of whom a considerable portion remained attached to Judaism, might cause objections to be raised to this. But the trial of Jesus leaves no room for doubt. We shall see that he was there treated as a "corrupter." The Talmud gives the procedure adopted against him as an example of that which ought to be followed against "corrupters," who seek to overturn the Law of Moses. (Talm. of Jerus., Sanhedrim, xiv. 16; Talm. of Bab., Sanhedrim, 43 a, 67 a.)]

[Footnote 2: Matt. xi. 12; Luke xvi. 16.]

The boldness of such a conception ought not to surprise us. Long before this, Jesus had regarded his relation to God as that of a son to his father. That which in others would be an insupportable pride, ought not in him to be regarded as presumption.

The title of "Son of David" was the first which he accepted, probably without being concerned in the innocent frauds by which it was sought to secure it to him. The family of David had, as it seems, been long extinct;[1] the Asmoneans being of priestly origin, could not pretend to claim such a descent for themselves; neither Herod nor the Romans dreamt for a moment that any representative whatever of the ancient dynasty existed in their midst. But from the close of the Asmonean dynasty the dream of an unknown descendant of the ancient kings, who should avenge the nation of its enemies, filled every mind. The universal belief was, that the Messiah would be son of David, and like him would be born at Bethlehem.[2] The first idea of Jesus was not precisely this. The remembrance of David, which was uppermost in the minds of the Jews, had nothing in common with his heavenly reign. He believed himself the Son of God, and not the son of David. His kingdom, and the deliverance which he meditated, were of quite another order. But public opinion on this point made him do violence to himself. The immediate consequence of the proposition, "Jesus is the Messiah," was this other proposition, "Jesus is the son of David." He allowed a title to be given him, without which he could not hope for success. He ended, it seems, by taking pleasure therein, for he performed most willingly the miracles which were asked of him by those who used this title in addressing him.[3] In this, as in many other circumstances of his life, Jesus yielded to the ideas which were current in his time, although they were not precisely his own. He associated with his doctrine of the "kingdom of God" all that could warm the heart and the imagination. It was thus that we have seen him adopt the baptism of John, although it could not have been of much importance to him.

[Footnote 1: It is true that certain doctors—such as Hillel, Gamaliel—are mentioned as being of the race of David. But these are very doubtful allegations. If the family of David still formed a distinct and prominent group, how is it that we never see it figure, by the side of the Sadokites, Boethusians, the Asmoneans, and Herods, in the great struggles of the time?]

[Footnote 2: Matt. ii. 5, 6, xxii. 42; Luke i. 32; John vii. 41, 42; Acts ii. 30.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. ix. 27, xii. 23, xv. 22, xx. 30, 31; Mark x. 47, 52; Luke xviii. 38.]

One great difficulty presented itself—his birth at Nazareth, which was of public notoriety. We do not know whether Jesus strove against this objection. Perhaps it did not present itself in Galilee, where the idea that the son of David should be a Bethlehemite was less spread. To the Galilean idealist, moreover, the title of "son of David" was sufficiently justified, if he to whom it was given revived the glory of his race, and brought back the great days of Israel. Did Jesus authorize by his silence the fictitious genealogies which his partisans invented in order to prove his royal descent?[1] Did he know anything of the legends invented to prove that he was born at Bethlehem; and particularly of the attempt to connect his Bethlehemite origin with the census which had taken place by order of the imperial legate, Quirinus?[2] We know not. The inexactitude and the contradictions of the genealogies[3] lead to the belief that they were the result of popular ideas operating at various points, and that none of them were sanctioned by Jesus.[4] Never does he designate himself as son of David. His disciples, much less enlightened than he, frequently magnified that which he said of himself; but, as a rule, he had no knowledge of these exaggerations. Let us add, that during the first three centuries, considerable portions of Christendom[5] obstinately denied the royal descent of Jesus and the authenticity of the genealogies.

[Footnote 1: Matt. i. 1, and following; Luke iii. 23, and following.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. ii. 1, and following; Luke ii. 1, and following.]

[Footnote 3: The two genealogies are quite contradictory, and do not agree with the lists of the Old Testament. The narrative of Luke on the census of Quirinus implies an anachronism. See ante, p. 81, note 4. It is natural to suppose, besides, that the legend may have laid hold of this circumstance. The census made a great impression on the Jews, overturned their narrow ideas, and was remembered by them for a long period. Cf. Acts v. 37.]

[Footnote 4: Julius Africanus (in Eusebius, H.E., i. 7) supposes that it was the relations of Jesus, who, having taken refuge in Batanea, attempted to recompose the genealogies.]

[Footnote 5: The Ebionites, the "Hebrews," the "Nazarenes," Tatian, Marcion. Cf. Epiph., Adv. Haer., xxix. 9, xxx. 3, 14, xlvi. 1; Theodoret, Haeret. fab., i. 20; Isidore of Pelusium, Epist. i. 371, ad Pansophium.]

The legends about him were thus the fruit of a great and entirely spontaneous conspiracy, and were developed around him during his lifetime. No great event in history has happened without having given rise to a cycle of fables; and Jesus could not have put a stop to these popular creations, even if he had wished to do so. Perhaps a sagacious observer would have recognized from this point the germ of the narratives which were to attribute to him a supernatural birth, and which arose, it may be, from the idea, very prevalent in antiquity, that the incomparable man could not be born of the ordinary relations of the two sexes; or, it may be, in order to respond to an imperfectly understood chapter of Isaiah,[1] which was thought to foretell that the Messiah should be born of a virgin; or, lastly, it may be in consequence of the idea that the "breath of God," already regarded as a divine hypostasis, was a principle of fecundity.[2] Already, perhaps, there was current more than one anecdote about his infancy, conceived with the intention of showing in his biography the accomplishment of the Messianic ideal;[3] or, rather, of the prophecies which the allegorical exegesis of the time referred to the Messiah. At other times they connected him from his birth with celebrated men, such as John the Baptist, Herod the Great, Chaldean astrologers, who, it was said, visited Jerusalem about this time,[4] and two aged persons, Simeon and Anna, who had left memories of great sanctity.[5] A rather loose chronology characterized these combinations, which for the most part were founded upon real facts travestied.[6] But a singular spirit of gentleness and goodness, a profoundly popular sentiment, permeated all these fables, and made them a supplement to his preaching.[7] It was especially after the death of Jesus that such narratives became greatly developed; we may, however, believe that they circulated even during his life, exciting only a pious credulity and simple admiration.

[Footnote 1: Matt. i. 22, 23.]

[Footnote 2: Gen. i. 2. For the analogous idea among the Egyptians, see Herodotus, iii. 28; Pomp. Mela, i. 9: Plutarch, Quaest. symp., VIII. i. 3; De Isid. et Osir., 43.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. i. 15, 23; Isa. vii. 14, and following.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. ii. 1, and following.]

[Footnote 5: Luke ii. 25, and following.]

[Footnote 6: Thus the legend of the massacre of the Innocents probably refers to some cruelty exercised by Herod near Bethlehem. Comp. Jos., Ant., XIV. ix. 4.]

[Footnote 7: Matt. i., ii.; Luke i., ii.; S. Justin, Dial. cum Tryph., 78, 106; Protoevang. of James (Apoca.), 18 and following.]

That Jesus never dreamt of making himself pass for an incarnation of God, is a matter about which there can be no doubt. Such an idea was entirely foreign to the Jewish mind; and there is no trace of it in the synoptical gospels,[1] we only find it indicated in portions of the Gospel of John, which cannot be accepted as expressing the thoughts of Jesus. Sometimes Jesus even seems to take precautions to put down such a doctrine.[2] The accusation that he made himself God, or the equal of God, is presented, even in the Gospel of John, as a calumny of the Jews.[3] In this last Gospel he declares himself less than his Father.[4] Elsewhere he avows that the Father has not revealed everything to him.[5] He believes himself to be more than an ordinary man, but separated from God by an infinite distance. He is Son of God, but all men are, or may become so, in divers degrees.[6] Every one ought daily to call God his father; all who are raised again will be sons of God.[7] The divine son-ship was attributed in the Old Testament to beings whom it was by no means pretended were equal with God.[8] The word "son" has the widest meanings in the Semitic language, and in that of the New Testament.[9] Besides, the idea Jesus had of man was not that low idea which a cold Deism has introduced. In his poetic conception of Nature, one breath alone penetrates the universe; the breath of man is that of God; God dwells in man, and lives by man, the same as man dwells in God, and lives by God.[10] The transcendent idealism of Jesus never permitted him to have a very clear notion of his own personality. He is his Father, his Father is he. He lives in his disciples; he is everywhere with them;[11] his disciples are one, as he and his Father are one.[12] The idea to him is everything; the body, which makes the distinction of persons, is nothing.

[Footnote 1: Certain passages, such as Acts ii. 22, expressly exclude this idea.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. xix. 17; Mark x. 18; Luke xviii. 19.]

[Footnote 3: John v. 18, and following, x. 33, and following.]

[Footnote 4: John xiv. 28.]

[Footnote 5: Mark xiii. 35.]

[Footnote 6: Matt. v. 9, 45; Luke iii. 38, vi. 35, xx. 36; John i. 12, 13, x. 34, 35. Comp. Acts xvii. 28, 29; Rom. viii. 14, 19, 21, ix. 26; 2 Cor. vi. 18; Gal. iii. 26; and in the Old Testament, Deut. xiv. 1; and especially Wisdom, ii. 13, 18.]

[Footnote 7: Luke xx. 36.]

[Footnote 8: Gen. vi. 2; Job i. 6, ii. 1, xxviii. 7; Ps. ii. 7, lxxxii. 6; 2 Sam. vii. 14.]

[Footnote 9: The child of the devil (Matt. xiii. 38; Acts xiii. 10); the children of this world (Mark iii. 17; Luke xvi. 8, xx. 34); the children of light (Luke xvi. 8; John xii. 36); the children of the resurrection (Luke xx. 36); the children of the kingdom (Matt. viii. 12, xiii. 38); the children of the bride-chamber (Matt. ix. 15; Mark ii. 19; Luke v. 34); the children of hell (Matt. xxiii. 15); the children of peace (Luke x. 6), &c. Let us remember that the Jupiter of paganism is [Greek: pater andron te theon te].]

[Footnote 10: Comp. Acts xvii. 28.]

[Footnote 11: Matt. xviii. 20, xxviii. 20.]

[Footnote 12: John x. 30, xvii. 21. See in general the later discourses of John, especially chap. xvii., which express one side of the psychological state of Jesus, though we cannot regard them as true historical documents.]

The title "Son of God," or simply "Son,"[1] thus became for Jesus a title analogous to "Son of man," and, like that, synonymous with the "Messiah," with the sole difference that he called himself "Son of man," and does not seem to have made the same use of the phrase, "Son of God."[2] The title, Son of man, expressed his character as judge; that of Son of God his power and his participation in the supreme designs. This power had no limits. His Father had given him all power. He had the power to alter even the Sabbath.[3] No one could know the Father except through him.[4] The Father had delegated to him exclusively the right of judging.[5] Nature obeyed him; but she obeys also all who believe and pray, for faith can do everything.[6] We must remember that no idea of the laws of Nature marked the limit of the impossible, either in his own mind, or in that of his hearers. The witnesses of his miracles thanked God "for having given such power unto men."[7] He pardoned sins;[8] he was superior to David, to Abraham, to Solomon, and to the prophets.[9] We do not know in what form, nor to what extent, these affirmations of himself were made. Jesus ought not to be judged by the law of our petty conventionalities. The admiration of his disciples overwhelmed him and carried him away. It is evident that the title of Rabbi, with which he was at first contented, no longer sufficed him; even the title of prophet or messenger of God responded no longer to his ideas. The position which he attributed to himself was that of a superhuman being, and he wished to be regarded as sustaining a higher relationship to God than other men. But it must be remarked that these words, "superhuman" and "supernatural," borrowed from our petty theology, had no meaning in the exalted religious consciousness of Jesus. To him Nature and the development of humanity were not limited kingdoms apart from God—paltry realities subjected to the laws of a hopeless empiricism. There was no supernatural for him, because there was no Nature. Intoxicated with infinite love, he forgot the heavy chain which holds the spirit captive; he cleared at one bound the abyss, impossible to most, which the weakness of the human faculties has created between God and man.

[Footnote 1: The passages in support of this are too numerous to be referred to here.]

[Footnote 2: It is only in the Gospel of John that Jesus uses the expression "Son of God," or "Son," in speaking of himself.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xii. 8; Luke vi. 5.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. xi. 27.]

[Footnote 5: John v. 22.]

[Footnote 6: Matt. xvii. 18, 19; Luke xvii. 6.]

[Footnote 7: Matt. ix. 8.]

[Footnote 8: Matt. ix. 2, and following; Mark ii. 5, and following; Luke v. 20, vii. 47, 48.]

[Footnote 9: Matt. xii. 41, 42; xxii. 43, and following; John viii. 52, and following.]

We cannot mistake in these affirmations of Jesus the germ of the doctrine which was afterward to make of him a divine hypostasis,[1] in identifying him with the Word, or "second God,"[2] or eldest Son of God,[3] or Angel Metathronos,[4] which Jewish theology created apart from him.[5] A kind of necessity caused this theology, in order to correct the extreme rigor of the old Monotheism, to place near God an assessor, to whom the eternal Father is supposed to delegate the government of the universe. The belief that certain men are incarnations of divine faculties or "powers," was widespread; the Samaritans possessed about the same time a thaumaturgus named Simon, whom they identified with the "great power of God."[6] For nearly two centuries, the speculative minds of Judaism had yielded to the tendency to personify the divine attributes, and certain expressions which were connected with the Divinity. Thus, the "breath of God," which is often referred to in the Old Testament, is considered as a separate being, the "Holy Spirit." In the same manner the "Wisdom of God" and the "Word of God" became distinct personages. This was the germ of the process which has engendered the Sephiroth of the Cabbala, the AEons of Gnosticism, the hypostasis of Christianity, and all that dry mythology, consisting of personified abstractions, to which Monotheism is obliged to resort when it wishes to pluralize the Deity.

[Footnote 1: See especially John xiv., and following. But it is doubtful whether we have here the authentic teaching of Jesus.]

[Footnote 2: Philo, cited in Eusebius, Praep. Evang., vii. 13.]

[Footnote 3: Philo, De migr. Abraham, Sec. 1; Quod Deus immut., Sec. 6; De confus. ling., Sec. 9, 14 and 28; De profugis, Sec. 20; De Somniis, i. Sec. 37; De Agric. Noe, Sec. 12; Quis rerum divin. haeres, Sec. 25, and following, 48, and following, &c.]

[Footnote 4: [Greek: Metathronos], that is, sharing the throne of God; a kind of divine secretary, keeping the register of merits and demerits; Bereshith Rabba, v. 6 c; Talm. of Bab., Sanhedr., 38 b; Chagigah, 15 a; Targum of Jonathan, Gen., v. 24.]

[Footnote 5: This theory of the [Greek: Logos] contains no Greek elements. The comparisons which have been made between it and the Honover of the Parsees are also without foundation. The Minokhired or "Divine Intelligence," has much analogy with the Jewish [Greek: Logos]. (See the fragments of the book entitled Minokhired in Spiegel, Parsi-Grammatik, pp. 161, 162.) But the development which the doctrine of the Minokhired has taken among the Parsees is modern, and may imply a foreign influence. The "Divine Intelligence" (Maiyu-Khratu) appears in the Zend books; but it does not there serve as basis to a theory; it only enters into some invocations. The comparisons which have been attempted between the Alexandrian theory of the Word and certain points of Egyptian theology may not be entirely without value. But nothing indicates that, in the centuries which preceded the Christian era, Palestinian Judaism had borrowed anything from Egypt.]

[Footnote 6: Acts viii. 10.]

Jesus appears to have remained a stranger to these refinements of theology, which were soon to fill the world with barren disputes. The metaphysical theory of the Word, such as we find it in the writings of his contemporary Philo, in the Chaldean Targums, and even in the book of "Wisdom,"[1] is neither seen in the Logia of Matthew, nor in general in the synoptics, the most authentic interpreters of the words of Jesus. The doctrine of the Word, in fact, had nothing in common with Messianism. The "Word" of Philo, and of the Targums, is in no sense the Messiah. It was John the Evangelist, or his school, who afterward endeavored to prove that Jesus was the Word, and who created, in this sense, quite a new theology, very different from that of the "kingdom of God."[2] The essential character of the Word was that of Creator and of Providence. Now, Jesus never pretended to have created the world, nor to govern it. His office was to judge it, to renovate it. The position of president at the final judgment of humanity was the essential attribute which Jesus attached to himself, and the character which all the first Christians attributed to him.[3] Until the great day, he will sit at the right hand of God, as his Metathronos, his first minister, and his future avenger.[4] The superhuman Christ of the Byzantine apsides, seated as judge of the world, in the midst of the apostles in the same rank with him, and superior to the angels who only assist and serve, is the exact representation of that conception of the "Son of man," of which we find the first features so strongly indicated in the book of Daniel.

[Footnote 1: ix. 1, 2, xvi. 12. Comp. vii. 12, viii. 5, and following, ix., and in general ix.-xi. These prosopopoeia of Wisdom personified are found in much older books. Prov. viii., ix.; Job xxviii.; Rev. xix. 13.]

[Footnote 2: John, Gospel, i. 1-14; 1 Epistle v. 7; moreover, it will be remarked, that, in the Gospel of John, the expression of "the Word" does not occur except in the prologue, and that the narrator never puts it into the mouth of Jesus.]

[Footnote 3: Acts x. 42.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. xxvi. 64; Mark xvi. 19; Luke xxii. 69; Acts vii. 55; Rom. viii. 34; Ephes. i. 20; Coloss. iii. 1; Heb. i. 3, 13, viii. 1, x. 12, xii. 2; 1 Peter iii. 22. See the passages previously cited on the character of the Jewish Metathronos.]

At all events, the strictness of a studied theology by no means existed in such a state of society. All the ideas we have just stated formed in the mind of the disciples a theological system so little settled, that the Son of God, this species of divine duplicate, is made to act purely as man. He is tempted—he is ignorant of many things—he corrects himself[1]—he is cast down, discouraged—he asks his Father to spare him trials—he is submissive to God as a son.[2] He who is to judge the world does not know the day of judgment.[3] He takes precautions for his safety.[4] Soon after his birth, he is obliged to be concealed to avoid powerful men who wish to kill him.[5] In exorcisms, the devil cheats him, and does not come out at the first command.[6] In his miracles we are sensible of painful effort—an exhaustion, as if something went out of him.[7] All these are simply the acts of a messenger of God, of a man protected and favored by God.[8] We must not look here for either logic or sequence. The need Jesus had of obtaining credence, and the enthusiasm of his disciples, heaped up contradictory notions. To the Messianic believers of the millenarian school, and to the enthusiastic readers of the books of Daniel and of Enoch, he was the Son of man—to the Jews holding the ordinary faith, and to the readers of Isaiah and Micah, he was the Son of David—to the disciples he was the Son of God, or simply the Son. Others, without being blamed by the disciples, took him for John the Baptist risen from the dead, for Elias, for Jeremiah, conformable to the popular belief that the ancient prophets were about to reappear, in order to prepare the time of the Messiah.[9]

[Footnote 1: Matt. x. 5, compared with xxviii. 19.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvi. 39; John xii. 27.]

[Footnote 3: Mark xiii. 32.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. xii. 14-16, xiv. 13; Mark iii. 6, 7, ix. 29, 30; John vii. 1, and following.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. ii. 20.]

[Footnote 6: Matt. xvii. 20; Mark ix. 25.]

[Footnote 7: Luke viii. 45, 46; John xi. 33, 38.]

[Footnote 8: Acts ii. 22.]

[Footnote 9: Matt. xiv. 2, xvi. 14, xvii. 3, and following; Mark vi. 14, 15, viii. 28; Luke ix. 8, and following, 19.]

An absolute conviction, or rather the enthusiasm, which freed him from even the possibility of doubt, shrouded all these boldnesses. We little understand, with our cold and scrupulous natures, how any one can be so entirely possessed by the idea of which he has made himself the apostle. To the deeply earnest races of the West, conviction means sincerity to one's self. But sincerity to one's self has not much meaning to Oriental peoples, little accustomed to the subtleties of a critical spirit. Honesty and imposture are words which, in our rigid consciences, are opposed as two irreconcilable terms. In the East, they are connected by numberless subtle links and windings. The authors of the Apocryphal books (of "Daniel" and of "Enoch," for instance), men highly exalted, in order to aid their cause, committed, without a shadow of scruple, an act which we should term a fraud. The literal truth has little value to the Oriental; he sees everything through the medium of his ideas, his interests, and his passions.

History is impossible, if we do not fully admit that there are many standards of sincerity. All great things are done through the people; now we can only lead the people by adapting ourselves to its ideas. The philosopher who, knowing this, isolates and fortifies himself in his integrity, is highly praiseworthy. But he who takes humanity with its illusions, and seeks to act with it and upon it, cannot be blamed. Caesar knew well that he was not the son of Venus; France would not be what it is, if it had not for a thousand years believed in the Holy Ampulla of Rheims. It is easy for us, who are so powerless, to call this falsehood, and, proud of our timid honesty, to treat with contempt the heroes who have accepted the battle of life under other conditions. When we have effected by our scruples what they accomplished by their falsehoods, we shall have the right to be severe upon them. At least, we must make a marked distinction between societies like our own, where everything takes place in the full light of reflection, and simple and credulous communities, in which the beliefs that have governed ages have been born. Nothing great has been established which does not rest on a legend. The only culprit in such cases is the humanity which is willing to be deceived.



CHAPTER XVI.

MIRACLES.

Two means of proof—miracles and the accomplishment of prophecies—could alone, in the opinion of the contemporaries of Jesus, establish a supernatural mission. Jesus, and especially his disciples, employed these two processes of demonstration in perfect good faith. For a long time, Jesus had been convinced that the prophets had written only in reference to him. He recognized himself in their sacred oracles; he regarded himself as the mirror in which all the prophetic spirit of Israel had read the future. The Christian school, perhaps even in the lifetime of its founder, endeavored to prove that Jesus responded perfectly to all that the prophets had predicted of the Messiah.[1] In many cases, these comparisons were quite superficial, and are scarcely appreciable by us. They were most frequently fortuitous or insignificant circumstances in the life of the master which recalled to the disciples certain passages of the Psalms and the Prophets, in which, in consequence of their constant preoccupation, they saw images of him.[2] The exegesis of the time consisted thus almost entirely in a play upon words, and in quotations made in an artificial and arbitrary manner. The synagogue had no officially settled list of the passages which related to the future reign. The Messianic references were very liberally created, and constituted artifices of style rather than serious reasoning.

[Footnote 1: For example, Matt. i. 22, ii. 5, 6, 15, 18, iv. 15.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. i. 23, iv. 6, 14, xxvi. 31, 54, 56, xxvii. 9, 35; Mark xiv. 27, xv. 28; John xii. 14. 15, xviii. 9, xix. 19, 24, 28, 36.]

As to miracles, they were regarded at this period as the indispensable mark of the divine, and as the sign of the prophetic vocation. The legends of Elijah and Elisha were full of them. It was commonly believed that the Messiah would perform many.[1] In Samaria, a few leagues from where Jesus was, a magician, named Simon, acquired an almost divine character by his illusions.[2] Afterward, when it was sought to establish the reputation of Apollonius of Tyana, and to prove that his life had been the sojourn of a god upon the earth, it was not thought possible to succeed therein except by inventing a vast cycle of miracles.[3] The Alexandrian philosophers themselves, Plotinus and others, are reported to have performed several.[4] Jesus was, therefore, obliged to choose between these two alternatives—either to renounce his mission, or to become a thaumaturgus. It must be remembered that all antiquity, with the exception of the great scientific schools of Greece and their Roman disciples, accepted miracles; and that Jesus not only believed therein, but had not the least idea of an order of Nature regulated by fixed laws. His knowledge on this point was in no way superior to that of his contemporaries. Nay, more, one of his most deeply rooted opinions was, that by faith and prayer man has entire power over Nature.[5] The faculty of performing miracles was regarded as a privilege frequently conferred by God upon men,[6] and it had nothing surprising in it.

[Footnote 1: John vii. 34; IV. Esdras, xiii. 50.]

[Footnote 2: Acts viii. 9, and following.]

[Footnote 3: See his biography by Philostratus.]

[Footnote 4: See the Lives of the Sophists, by Eunapius; the Life of Plotinus, by Porphyry; that of Proclus, by Marinus; and that of Isidorus, attributed to Damascius.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. xvii. 19, xxi. 21, 22; Mark xi. 23, 24.]

[Footnote 6: Matt. ix. 8.]

The lapse of time has changed that which constituted the power of the great founder of Christianity into something offensive to our ideas, and if ever the worship of Jesus loses its hold upon mankind, it will be precisely on account of those acts which originally inspired belief in him. Criticism experiences no embarrassment in presence of this kind of historical phenomenon. A thaumaturgus of our days, unless of an extreme simplicity, like that manifested by certain stigmatists of Germany, is odious; for he performs miracles without believing in them; and is a mere charlatan. But, if we take a Francis d'Assisi, the question becomes altogether different; the series of miracles attending the origin of the order of St. Francis, far from offending us, affords us real pleasure. The founder of Christianity lived in as complete a state of poetic ignorance as did St. Clair and the tres socii. The disciples deemed it quite natural that their master should have interviews with Moses and Elias, that he should command the elements, and that he should heal the sick. We must remember, besides, that every idea loses something of its purity, as soon as it aspires to realize itself. Success is never attained without some injury being done to the sensibility of the soul. Such is the feebleness of the human mind that the best causes are ofttimes gained only by bad arguments. The demonstrations of the primitive apologists of Christianity are supported by very poor reasonings. Moses, Christopher Columbus, Mahomet, have only triumphed over obstacles by constantly making allowance for the weakness of men, and by not always giving the true reasons for the truth. It is probable that the hearers of Jesus were more struck by his miracles than by his eminently divine discourses. Let us add, that doubtless popular rumor, both before and after the death of Jesus, exaggerated enormously the number of occurrences of this kind. The types of the gospel miracles, in fact, do not present much variety; they are repetitions of each other and seem fashioned from a very small number of models, accommodated to the taste of the country.

It is impossible, amongst the miraculous narratives so tediously enumerated in the Gospels, to distinguish the miracles attributed to Jesus by public opinion from those in which he consented to play an active part. It is especially impossible to ascertain whether the offensive circumstances attending them, the groanings, the strugglings, and other features savoring of jugglery,[1] are really historical, or whether they are the fruit of the belief of the compilers, strongly imbued with theurgy, and living, in this respect, in a world analogous to that of the "spiritualists" of our times.[2] Almost all the miracles which Jesus thought he performed, appear to have been miracles of healing. Medicine was at this period in Judea, what it still is in the East, that is to say, in no respect scientific, but absolutely surrendered to individual inspiration. Scientific medicine, founded by Greece five centuries before, was at the time of Jesus unknown to the Jews of Palestine. In such a state of knowledge, the presence of a superior man, treating the diseased with gentleness, and giving him by some sensible signs the assurance of his recovery, is often a decisive remedy. Who would dare to say that in many cases, always excepting certain peculiar injuries, the touch of a superior being is not equal to all the resources of pharmacy? The mere pleasure of seeing him cures. He gives only a smile, or a hope, but these are not in vain.

[Footnote 1: Luke viii. 45, 46; John xi. 33 and 38.]

[Footnote 2: Acts ii. 2, and following, iv. 31, viii. 15, and following, x. 44 and following. For nearly a century, the apostles and their disciples dreamed only of miracles. See the Acts, the writings of St. Paul, the extracts from Papias, in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., iii. 39, &c. Comp. Mark iii. 15, xvi. 17, 18, 20.]

Jesus had no more idea than his countrymen of a rational medical science; he believed, like every one else, that healing was to be effected by religious practices, and such a belief was perfectly consistent. From the moment that disease was regarded as the punishment of sin,[1] or as the act of a demon,[2] and by no means as the result of physical causes, the best physician was the holy man who had power in the supernatural world. Healing was considered a moral act; Jesus, who felt his moral power, would believe himself specially gifted to heal. Convinced that the touching of his robe,[3] the imposition of his hands,[4] did good to the sick, he would have been unfeeling, if he had refused to those who suffered, a solace which it was in his power to bestow. The healing of the sick was considered as one of the signs of the kingdom of God, and was always associated with the emancipation of the poor.[5] Both were the signs of the great revolution which was to end in the redress of all infirmities.

[Footnote 1: John v. 14, ix. 1, and following, 34.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. ix. 32, 33, xii. 22; Luke xiii. 11, 16.]

[Footnote 3: Luke viii. 45, 46.]

[Footnote 4: Luke iv. 40.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. xi. 5, xv. 30, 31; Luke ix. 1, 2, 6.]

One of the species of cure which Jesus most frequently performed, was exorcism, or the expulsion of demons. A strange disposition to believe in demons pervaded all minds. It was a universal opinion, not only in Judea, but in the whole world, that demons seized hold of the bodies of certain persons and made them act contrary to their will. A Persian div, often named in the Avesta,[1] Aeschma-daeva, the "div of concupiscence," adopted by the Jews under the name of Asmodeus,[2] became the cause of all the hysterical afflictions of women.[3] Epilepsy, mental and nervous maladies,[4] in which the patient seems no longer to belong to himself, and infirmities, the cause of which is not apparent, as deafness, dumbness,[5] were explained in the same manner. The admirable treatise, "On Sacred Disease," by Hippocrates, which set forth the true principles of medicine on this subject, four centuries and a half before Jesus, had not banished from the world so great an error. It was supposed that there were processes more or less efficacious for driving away the demons; and the occupation of exorcist was a regular profession like that of physician.[6] There is no doubt that Jesus had in his lifetime the reputation of possessing the greatest secrets of this art.[7] There were at that time many lunatics in Judea, doubtless in consequence of the great mental excitement. These mad persons, who were permitted to go at large, as they still are in the same districts, inhabited the abandoned sepulchral caves, which were the ordinary retreat of vagrants. Jesus had great influence over these unfortunates.[8] A thousand singular incidents were related in connection with his cures, in which the credulity of the time gave itself full scope. But still these difficulties must not be exaggerated. The disorders which were explained by "possessions" were often very slight. In our times, in Syria, they regard as mad or possessed by a demon (these two ideas were expressed by the same word, medjnoun[9]) people who are only somewhat eccentric. A gentle word often suffices in such cases to drive away the demon. Such were doubtless the means employed by Jesus. Who knows if his celebrity as exorcist was not spread almost without his own knowledge? Persons who reside in the East are occasionally surprised to find themselves, after some time, in possession of a great reputation, as doctors, sorcerers, or discoverers of treasures, without being able to account to themselves for the facts which have given rise to these strange fancies.

[Footnote 1: Vendidad, xi. 26; Yacna, x. 18.]

[Footnote 2: Tobit, iii. 8, vi. 14; Talm. of Bab., Gittin, 68 a.]

[Footnote 3: Comp. Mark xvi. 9; Luke viii. 2; Gospel of the Infancy, 16, 33; Syrian Code, published in the Anecdota Syriaca of M. Land, i., p. 152.]

[Footnote 4: Jos., Bell. Jud., VII. vi. 3; Lucian, Philopseud., 16; Philostratus, Life of Apoll., iii. 38, iv. 20; Aretus, De causis morb. chron., i. 4.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. ix. 33, xii. 22; Mark ix. 16, 24; Luke xi. 14.]

[Footnote 6: Tobit, viii. 2, 3; Matt. xii. 27; Mark ix. 38; Acts xix. 13; Josephus, Ant., VIII. ii. 5; Justin, Dial. cum Tryph., 85; Lucian, Epigr., xxiii. (xvii. Dindorf).]

[Footnote 7: Matt. xvii. 20; Mark ix. 24, and following.]

[Footnote 8: Matt. viii. 28, ix. 34, xii. 43, and following, xvii. 14, and following, 20; Mark v. 1, and following; Luke viii. 27, and following.]

[Footnote 9: The phrase, Daemonium habes (Matt. xi. 18: Luke vii. 33; John vii. 20, viii. 48, and following, x. 20, and following) should be translated by: "Thou art mad," as we should say in Arabic: Medjnoun ente. The verb [Greek: daimonan] has also, in all classical antiquity, the meaning of "to be mad."]

Many circumstances, moreover, seem to indicate that Jesus only became a thaumaturgus late in life and against his inclination. He often performs his miracles only after he has been besought to do so, and with a degree of reluctance, reproaching those who asked them for the grossness of their minds.[1] One singularity, apparently inexplicable, is the care he takes to perform his miracles in secret, and the request he addresses to those whom he heals to tell no one.[2] When the demons wish to proclaim him the Son of God, he forbids them to open their mouths; but they recognize him in spite of himself.[3] These traits are especially characteristic in Mark, who is pre-eminently the evangelist of miracles and exorcisms. It seems that the disciple, who has furnished the fundamental teachings of this Gospel, importuned Jesus with his admiration of the wonderful, and that the master, wearied of a reputation which weighed upon him, had often said to him, "See thou say nothing to any man." Once this discordance evoked a singular outburst,[4] a fit of impatience, in which the annoyance these perpetual demands of weak minds caused Jesus, breaks forth. One would say, at times, that the character of thaumaturgus was disagreeable to him, and that he sought to give as little publicity as possible to the marvels which, in a manner, grew under his feet. When his enemies asked a miracle of him, especially a celestial miracle, a "sign from heaven," he obstinately refused.[5] We may therefore conclude that his reputation of thaumaturgus was imposed upon him, that he did not resist it much, but also that he did nothing to aid it, and that, at all events, he felt the vanity of popular opinion on this point.

[Footnote 1: Matt. xii. 39, xvi. 4, xvii. 16; Mark viii. 17, and following, ix. 18; Luke ix. 41.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. viii. 4, ix. 30, 31, xii. 16, and following; Mark i. 44, vii. 24, and following, viii. 26.]

[Footnote 3: Mark i. 24, 25, 34, iii. 12; Luke iv. 41.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. xvii. 16; Mark ix. 18; Luke ix. 41.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. xii. 38, and following, xvi. 1, and following; Mark viii. 11.]

We should neglect to recognize the first principles of history if we attached too much importance to our repugnances on this matter, and if, in order to avoid the objections which might be raised against the character of Jesus, we attempted to suppress facts which, in the eyes of his contemporaries, were considered of the greatest importance.[1] It would be convenient to say that these are the additions of disciples much inferior to their Master who, not being able to conceive his true grandeur, have sought to magnify him by illusions unworthy of him. But the four narrators of the life of Jesus are unanimous in extolling his miracles; one of them, Mark, interpreter of the apostle Peter,[2] insists so much on this point, that, if we trace the character of Christ only according to this Gospel, we should represent him as an exorcist in possession of charms of rare efficacy, as a very potent sorcerer, who inspired fear, and whom the people wished to get rid of.[3] We will admit, then, without hesitation, that acts which would now be considered as acts of illusion or folly, held a large place in the life of Jesus. Must we sacrifice to these uninviting features the sublimer aspect of such a life? God forbid. A mere sorcerer, after the manner of Simon the magician, would not have brought about a moral revolution like that effected by Jesus. If the thaumaturgus had effaced in Jesus the moralist and the religious reformer, there would have proceeded from him a school of theurgy, and not Christianity.

[Footnote 1: Josephus, Ant., XVIII. iii. 3.]

[Footnote 2: Papias, in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., iii. 39.]

[Footnote 3: Mark iv. 40, v. 15, 17, 33, 36, vi. 50, x. 32; cf. Matt. viii. 27, 34, ix. 8, xiv. 27, xvii. 6, 7, xxviii. 5, 10; Luke iv. 36, v. 17, viii. 25, 35, 37, ix. 34. The Apocryphal Gospel, said to be by Thomas the Israelite, carries this feature to the most offensive absurdity. Compare the Miracles of the Infancy, in Philo, Cod. Apocr. N.T., p. cx., note.]

The problem, moreover, presents itself in the same manner with respect to all saints and religious founders. Things now considered morbid, such as epilepsy and seeing of visions, were formerly principles of power and greatness. Physicians can designate the disease which made the fortune of Mahomet.[1] Almost in our own day, the men who have done the most for their kind (the excellent Vincent de Paul himself!) were, whether they wished it or not, thaumaturgi. If we set out with the principle that every historical personage to whom acts have been attributed, which we in the nineteenth century hold to be irrational or savoring of quackery, was either a madman or a charlatan, all criticism is nullified. The school of Alexandria was a noble school, but, nevertheless, it gave itself up to the practices of an extravagant theurgy. Socrates and Pascal were not exempt from hallucinations. Facts ought to explain themselves by proportionate causes. The weaknesses of the human mind only engender weakness; great things have always great causes in the nature of man, although they are often developed amidst a crowd of littlenesses which, to superficial minds, eclipse their grandeur.

[Footnote 1: Hysteria Muscularis of Shoenlein.]

In a general sense, it is therefore true to say that Jesus was only thaumaturgus and exorcist in spite of himself. Miracles are ordinarily the work of the public much more than of him to whom they are attributed. Jesus persistently shunned the performance of the wonders which the multitude would have created for him; the greatest miracle would have been his refusal to perform any; never would the laws of history and popular psychology have suffered so great a derogation. The miracles of Jesus were a violence done to him by his age, a concession forced from him by a passing necessity. The exorcist and the thaumaturgus have alike passed away; but the religious reformer will live eternally.

Even those who did not believe in him were struck with these acts, and sought to be witnesses of them.[1] The pagans, and persons unacquainted with him, experienced a sentiment of fear, and sought to remove him from their district.[2] Many thought perhaps to abuse his name by connecting it with seditious movements.[3] But the purely moral and in no respect political tendency of the character of Jesus saved him from these entanglements. His kingdom was in the circle of disciples, whom a like freshness of imagination and the same foretaste of heaven had grouped and retained around him.

[Footnote 1: Matt. xiv. 1, and following; Mark vi. 14; Luke ix. 7, xxiii. 8.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. viii. 34; Mark v. 17, viii. 37.]

[Footnote 3: John vi. 14, 15.]



CHAPTER XVII.

DEFINITIVE FORM OF THE IDEAS OF JESUS RESPECTING THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

We suppose that this last phase of the activity of Jesus continued about eighteen months from the time of his return from the Passover of the year 31, until his journey to the feast of tabernacles of the year 32.[1] During this time, the mind of Jesus does not appear to have been enriched by the addition of any new element; but all his old ideas grew and developed with an ever-increasing degree of power and boldness.

[Footnote 1: John v. 1, vii. 2. We follow the system of John, according to whom the public life of Jesus lasted three years. The synoptics, on the contrary, group all the facts within the space of one year.]

The fundamental idea of Jesus from the beginning, was the establishment of the kingdom of God. But this kingdom of God, as we have already said, appears to have been understood by Jesus in very different senses. At times, we should take him for a democratic leader desiring only the triumph of the poor and the disinherited. At other times, the kingdom of God is the literal accomplishment of the apocalyptic visions of Daniel and Enoch. Lastly, the kingdom of God is often a spiritual kingdom, and the approaching deliverance is a deliverance of the spirit. In this last sense the revolution desired by Jesus was the one which has really taken place; the establishment of a new worship, purer than that of Moses. All these thoughts appear to have existed at the same time in the mind of Jesus. The first one, however—that of a temporal revolution—does not appear to have impressed him much; he never regarded the earth or the riches of the earth, or material power, as worth caring for. He had no worldly ambition. Sometimes by a natural consequence, his great religious importance was in danger of being converted into mere social importance. Men came requesting him to judge and arbitrate on questions affecting their material interests. Jesus rejected these proposals with haughtiness, treating them as insults.[1] Full of his heavenly ideal, he never abandoned his disdainful poverty. As to the other two conceptions of the kingdom of God, Jesus appears always to have held them simultaneously. If he had been only an enthusiast, led away by the apocalypses on which the popular imagination fed, he would have remained an obscure sectary, inferior to those whose ideas he followed. If he had been only a puritan, a sort of Channing or "Savoyard vicar," he would undoubtedly have been unsuccessful. The two parts of his system, or, rather, his two conceptions of the kingdom of God, rest one on the other, and this mutual support has been the cause of his incomparable success. The first Christians were dreamers, living in a circle of ideas which we should term visionary; but, at the same time, they were the heroes of that social war which has resulted in the enfranchisement of the conscience, and in the establishment of a religion from which the pure worship, proclaimed by the founder, will eventually proceed.

[Footnote 1: Luke xii. 13, 14.]

The apocalyptic ideas of Jesus, in their most complete form, may thus be summed up. The existing condition of humanity is approaching its termination. This termination will be an immense revolution, "an anguish" similar to the pains of child-birth; a palingenesis, or, in the words of Jesus himself, a "new birth,"[1] preceded by dark calamities and heralded by strange phenomena.[2] In the great day, there will appear in the heavens the sign of the Son of man; it will be a startling and luminous vision like that of Sinai, a great storm rending the clouds, a fiery meteor flashing rapidly from east to west. The Messiah will appear in the clouds, clothed in glory and majesty, to the sound of trumpets and surrounded by angels. His disciples will sit by his side upon thrones. The dead will then arise, and the Messiah will proceed to judgment.[3]

[Footnote 1: Matt. xix. 28.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. xxiv. 3, and following; Mark xiii. 4, and following; Luke xvii. 22, and following, xxi. 7, and following. It must be remarked that the picture of the end of time attributed to Jesus by the synoptics, contains many features which relate to the siege of Jerusalem. Luke wrote some time after the siege (xxi. 9, 20, 24). The compilation of Matthew, on the contrary (xxvi. 15, 16, 22, 29), carries us back exactly to this precise period, or very shortly afterward. There is no doubt, however, that Jesus predicted that great terrors would precede his reappearance. These terrors were an integral part of all the Jewish apocalypses. Enoch, xcix., c., cii., ciii. (division of Dillman); Carm. sibyll., iii. 334, and following, 633, and following, iv. 168, and following, v. 511, and following. According to Daniel also, the reign of the saints will only come after the desolation shall have reached its height. Chap. vii. 25, and following, viii. 23, and following, ix. 26, 27, xii. 1.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xvi. 27, xix. 28, xx. 21, xxiv. 30, and following, xxv. 31, and following, xxvi. 64; Mark xiv. 62; Luke xxii. 30; 1 Cor. xv. 52; 1 Thess. iv. 15, and following.]

At this judgment men will be divided into two classes according to their deeds.[1] The angels will be the executors of the sentences.[2] The elect will enter into delightful mansions, which have been prepared for them from the foundation of the world;[3] there they will be seated, clothed with light, at a feast presided over by Abraham,[4] the patriarchs and the prophets. They will be the smaller number.[5] The rest will depart into Gehenna. Gehenna was the western valley of Jerusalem. There the worship of fire had been practised at various times, and the place had become a kind of sewer. Gehenna was, therefore, in the mind of Jesus, a gloomy, filthy valley, full of fire. Those excluded from the kingdom will there be burnt and eaten by the never-dying worm, in company with Satan and his rebel angels.[6] There, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.[7] The kingdom of heaven will be as a closed room, lighted from within, in the midst of a world of darkness and torments.[8]

[Footnote 1: Matt. xiii. 38, and following, xxv. 33.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 39, 41, 49.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xxv. 34. Comp. John xiv. 2.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. viii. 11, xiii. 43, xxvi. 29; Luke xiii. 28, xvi. 22, xxii. 30.]

[Footnote 5: Luke xiii. 23, and following.]

[Footnote 6: Matt. xxv. 41. The idea of the fall of the angels, detailed in the Book of Enoch, was universally admitted in the circle of Jesus. Epistle of Jude 6, and following; 2d Epistle attributed to Saint Peter, ii. 4. 11; Revelation xii. 9; Gospel of John viii. 44.]

[Footnote 7: Matt. v. 22, viii. 12, x. 28, xiii. 40, 42, 50, xviii. 8, xxiv. 51, xxv. 30; Mark ix. 43, &c.]

[Footnote 8: Matt. viii. 12, xxii. 13, xxv. 30. Comp. Jos., B.J., III. viii. 5.]

This new order of things will be eternal. Paradise and Gehenna will have no end. An impassable abyss separates the one from the other.[1] The Son of man, seated on the right hand of God, will preside over this final condition of the world and of humanity.[2]

[Footnote 1: Luke xvi. 28.]

[Footnote 2: Mark iii. 29; Luke xxii. 69; Acts vii. 55.]

That all this was taken literally by the disciples and by the master himself at certain moments, appears clearly evident from the writings of the time. If the first Christian generation had one profound and constant belief, it was that the world was near its end,[1] and that the great "revelation"[2] of Christ was about to take place. The startling proclamation, "The time is at hand,"[3] which commences and closes the Apocalypse; the incessantly reiterated appeal, "He that hath ears to hear let him hear!"[4] were the cries of hope and encouragement for the whole apostolic age. A Syrian expression, Maran atha, "Our Lord cometh!"[5] became a sort of password, which the believers used amongst themselves to strengthen their faith and their hope. The Apocalypse, written in the year 68 of our era,[6] declares that the end will come in three years and a half.[7] The "Ascension of Isaiah"[8] adopts a calculation very similar to this.

[Footnote 1: Acts ii. 17, iii. 19, and following; 1 Cor. xv. 23, 24, 52; 1 Thess. iii. 13, iv. 14, and following, v. 23; 2 Thess. ii. 8; 1 Tim. vi. 14; 2 Tim. iv. 1; Tit. ii. 13; Epistle of James v. 3, 8; Epistle of Jude 18; 2d Epistle of Peter, iii. entirely; Revelations entirely, and in particular, i. 1, ii. 5, 16, iii. 11, xi. 14, xxii. 6, 7, 12, 20. Comp. 4th Book of Esdras, iv. 26.]

[Footnote 2: Luke xvii. 30; 1 Cor. i. 7, 8; 2 Thess. i. 7; 1 Peter i. 7, 13; Revelations i. 1.]

[Footnote 3: Revelations i. 3, xxii. 10.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. xi. 15, xiii. 9, 43; Mark iv. 9, 23, vii. 16; Luke viii. 8, xiv. 35; Revelations ii. 7, 11, 27, 29, iii. 6, 13, 22, xiii. 9.]

[Footnote 5: 1 Cor. xvi. 22.]

[Footnote 6: Revelations xvii. 9, and following. The sixth emperor, whom the author represents as reigning, is Galba. The dead emperor, who was to return, is Nero, whose name is given in figures (xiii. 18).]

[Footnote 7: Revelations xi. 2, 3, xii. 14. Comp. Daniel vii. 25, xii. 7.]

[Footnote 8: Chap. iv., v. 12 and 14. Comp. Cedrenus, p. 68 (Paris, 1647).]

Jesus never indulged in such precise details. When he was interrogated as to the time of his advent, he always refused to reply; once even he declared that the date of this great day was known only by the Father, who had revealed it neither to the angels nor to the Son.[1] He said that the time when the kingdom of God was most anxiously expected, was just that in which it would not appear.[2] He constantly repeated that it would be a surprise, as in the times of Noah and of Lot; that we must be on our guard, always ready to depart; that each one must watch and keep his lamp trimmed as for a wedding procession, which arrives unforeseen;[3] that the Son of man would come like a thief, at an hour when he would not be expected;[4] that he would appear as a flash of lightning, running from one end of the heavens to the other.[5] But his declarations on the nearness of the catastrophe leave no room for any equivocations.[6] "This generation," said he, "shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled. There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom."[7] He reproaches those who do not believe in him, for not being able to read the signs of the future kingdom. "When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather; for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day; for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?"[8] By an illusion common to all great reformers, Jesus imagined the end to be much nearer than it really was; he did not take into account the slowness of the movements of humanity; he thought to realize in one day that which, eighteen centuries later, has still to be accomplished.

[Footnote 1: Matt. xxiv. 36; Mark xiii. 32.]

[Footnote 2: Luke xvii. 20. Comp. Talmud of Babyl., Sanhedrim, 97 a.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xxiv. 36, and following; Mark xiii. 32, and following; Luke xii. 35, and following, xvii. 20, and following.]

[Footnote 4: Luke xii. 40; 2 Peter iii. 10.]

[Footnote 5: Luke xvii. 24.]

[Footnote 6: Matt. x. 23, xxiv., xxv. entirely, and especially xxiv. 29, 34; Mark xiii. 30; Luke xiii. 35, xxi. 28, and following.]

[Footnote 7: Matt. xvi. 28, xxiii. 36, 39, xxiv. 34; Mark viii. 39; Luke ix. 27, xxi. 32.]

[Footnote 8: Matt. xvi. 2-4; Luke xii. 54-56.]

These formal declarations preoccupied the Christian family for nearly seventy years. It was believed that some of the disciples would see the day of the final revelation before dying. John, in particular, was considered as being of this number;[1] many believed that he would never die. Perhaps this was a later opinion suggested toward the end of the first century, by the advanced age which John seems to have reached; this age having given rise to the belief that God wished to prolong his life indefinitely until the great day, in order to realize the words of Jesus. However this may be, at his death the faith of many was shaken, and his disciples attached to the prediction of Christ a more subdued meaning.[2]

[Footnote 1: John xxi. 22, 23.]

[Footnote 2: John xxi. 22, 23. Chapter xxi. of the fourth Gospel is an addition, as is proved by the final clause of the primitive compilation, which concludes at verse 31 of chapter xx. But the addition is almost contemporaneous with the publication of the Gospel itself.]

At the same time that Jesus fully admitted the Apocalyptic beliefs, such as we find them in the apocryphal Jewish books, he admitted the doctrine, which is the complement, or rather the condition of them all, namely, the resurrection of the dead. This doctrine, as we have already said, was still somewhat new in Israel; a number of people either did not know it, or did not believe it.[1] It was the faith of the Pharisees, and of the fervent adherents of the Messianic beliefs.[2] Jesus accepted it unreservedly, but always in the most idealistic sense. Many imagined that in the resuscitated world they would eat, drink, and marry. Jesus, indeed, admits into his kingdom a new passover, a table, and a new wine;[3] but he expressly excludes marriage from it. The Sadducees had on this subject an apparently coarse argument, but one which was really in conformity with the old theology. It will be remembered that according to the ancient sages, man survived only in his children. The Mosaic code had consecrated this patriarchal theory by a strange institution, the levirate law. The Sadducees drew from thence subtle deductions against the resurrection. Jesus escaped them by formally declaring that in the life eternal there would no longer exist differences of sex, and that men would be like the angels.[4] Sometimes he seems to promise resurrection only to the righteous,[5] the punishment of the wicked consisting in complete annihilation.[6] Oftener, however, Jesus declares that the resurrection shall bring eternal confusion to the wicked.[7]

[Footnote 1: Mark ix. 9; Luke xx. 27, and following.]

[Footnote 2: Dan. xii. 2, and following; 2 Macc. vii. entirely, xii. 45, 46, xiv. 46; Acts xxiii. 6, 8; Jos., Ant., XVIII. i. 3; B.J., II. viii. 14, III. viii. 5.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvi. 29; Luke xxii. 30.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. xxii. 24, and following; Luke xx. 34-38; Ebionite Gospel, entitled, "Of the Egyptians," in Clem. of Alex., Strom. ii. 9, 13; Clem. Rom., Epist. ii. 12.]

[Footnote 5: Luke xiv. 14, xx. 35, 36. This is also the opinion of St. Paul: 1 Cor. xv. 23, and following; 1 Thess. iv. 12, and following.]

[Footnote 6: Comp. 4th book of Esdras, ix. 22.]

[Footnote 7: Matt. xxv. 32, and following.]

It will be seen that nothing in all these theories was absolutely new. The Gospels and the writings of the apostles scarcely contain anything as regards apocalyptic doctrines but what might be found already in "Daniel,"[1] "Enoch,"[2] and the "Sibylline Oracles,"[3] of Jewish origin. Jesus accepted the ideas, which were generally received among his contemporaries. He made them his basis of action, or rather one of his bases; for he had too profound an idea of his true work to establish it solely upon such fragile principles—principles so liable to be decisively refuted by facts.

[Footnote 1: See especially chaps. ii., vi.-viii., x.-xiii.]

[Footnote 2: Chaps. i., xiv., lii., lxii., xciii. 9, and following.]

[Footnote 3: Book iii. 573, and following; 652, and following; 766, and following; 795, and following.]

It is evident, indeed, that such a doctrine, taken by itself in a literal manner, had no future. The world, in continuing to exist, caused it to crumble. One generation of man at the most was the limit of its endurance. The faith of the first Christian generation is intelligible, but the faith of the second generation is no longer so. After the death of John, or of the last survivor, whoever he might be, of the group which had seen the master, the word of Jesus was convicted of falsehood.[1] If the doctrine of Jesus had been simply belief in an approaching end of the world, it would certainly now be sleeping in oblivion. What is it, then, which has saved it? The great breadth of the Gospel conceptions, which has permitted doctrines suited to very different intellectual conditions to be found under the same creed. The world has not ended, as Jesus announced, and as his disciples believed. But it has been renewed, and in one sense renewed as Jesus desired. It is because his thought was two-sided that it has been fruitful. His chimera has not had the fate of so many others which have crossed the human mind, because it concealed a germ of life which having been introduced, thanks to a covering of fable, into the bosom of humanity, has thus brought forth eternal fruits.