Chapter VII: Part 7

These are the resurrections narrated by the Evangelists, and from their account we can draw some observations which will allow us to dispense with learned, that is to say with unsuitable, commentaries. In all His life, Jesus raised from the dead only three persons, and this He did, not to make a show of His power and to strike the imagination of the people, but only because He was touched by the sorrow of those who loved the dead, to console a mother, a father, two sisters. Two of these resurrections were public; one, that of the daughter of Jairus, was accomplished in the presence of very few, and Jesus asked those few to say nothing about it.

Another point, and the most important; in all these three cases Jesus spoke to the dead person as if he were not dead but only asleep. He had no time to say anything about the condition of the son of the widow, because that decision was taken too rapidly, but even to him, He said, as to a child, idly oversleeping, “Young man, I say unto thee, arise.” When they told Him that the daughter of Jairus was dead, He answered, “Weep not, she is not dead but sleepeth.” When they confirmed the news of the death of Lazarus, He insisted, “He is not dead but sleepeth.” He made no claim to bring back from the dead, only to awaken. Death for Him was only a sleep, a deeper sleep than the common sleep of everyday, a sleep only to be broken by a superhuman love. This love was for the survivors more than for the dead; it was the love of one whose tears flow at the sight of others’ tears.

THE MARRIAGE AT CANA

Jesus liked to go to weddings. For the man of the people who very seldom gives way to lavishness and gayety, who never eats and drinks as much as he would like, the day of his wedding is the most remarkable of all his life, a rich passage of generous gayety in his long, drab, commonplace existence. Wealthy people who can have banquets every evening, moderns who gulp down in a day what would have sufficed for a week to the poor man of olden times, no longer feel the solemn joyfulness of that day. But the poor man in the old days, the workingman, the countryman, the Oriental who lived all the year round on barley-bread, dried figs and a few fish and eggs, and only on great days killed a lamb or a kid, the man accustomed to stint himself, to calculate closely, to dispense with many things, to be satisfied with what is strictly necessary, saw in weddings the truest and greatest festival of his life. The other festivals, those of the people and those of the Church, were the same for everybody, and they are repeated every twelfth month; but a wedding was his very own festival and only came once for him in all the cycle of his years.

Then all the delights and splendors of the world were centered around the bride and groom, to make the day unforgettable for them. Torches went at night to meet the groom with singers, dancers and musicians. The house was filled with abundance, all sorts of meats cooked in all sorts of ways; wine-skins of wine leaning against the walls, vases of unguents for the friends; light, music, perfumes, gayety, dancing; nothing was lacking for the gratification of the senses. On that one day all the things which are the daily privilege of princes and rich men triumphed in the poor man’s house.

Jesus was pleased by this innocent joy, and touched by the exultation of those simple souls, snatched for those few hours from the gloomy, niggardly poverty of their everyday life. In weddings He saw more than a mere festival. Marriage is the supreme effort of the youth of man to conquer Fate with love, with the union of two affections, with the joining of two loving youths. It is the affirmation of a double faith in life, in the continuity and stability of life. The man who marries is a hostage in the hands of human society. Making himself the head of a new society and father of a new generation, he frees himself while he professes to bind himself. Marriage is a promise of happiness, and an acceptance of suffering. Illusion and conscience have their part in it. In the shadow of tragedy, which sends over the future a trembling hope of joy, is the heroic and holy greatness of marriage, which cannot be dispensed with, and yet, in the light of selfish reason, should not be accepted. Who has ever seen, except in this case, a condemnation so eagerly longed for?

For Jesus marriage has a still deeper meaning: it is the beginning of something eternal. Whom God hath joined, man cannot put asunder. When hearts have been united and bodies joined, no law nor sword can sever them. In this our human life, changeable, ephemeral, evasive, failing, frail, there is only one thing that ought to last forever till death and beyond death,—marriage, the only link of eternity in the perishable chain.

Jesus often speaks of weddings and banquets. Among the most beautiful parables is that of the King who sent out invitations to the wedding of his son, that other of the Virgins who wait by night for the arrival of the bridegroom’s friend; and that of the Lord who prepared a banquet. Christ compares Himself to a bridegroom feasted by His friends when He answers those who are scandalized because His disciples eat and drink.

He did not despise wine, and when with His Twelve, He drinks that wine which is His blood, He thinks of the new wine of the Kingdom. It is not surprising therefore that He should have accepted the invitation to the wedding at Cana. Every one knows the miracle He wrought that day. Six jars of water were changed by Jesus into wine, and into wine better than that which had been drunk. Old rationalists say that this was a present of wine kept hidden until then, a surprise of Jesus at the end of the meal, in honor of the bride and groom. And six hundred quarts of wine, they add, are a fine present, showing the liberality of the Master.

These Voltairian vermin have not noticed that only John, the man of allegories, the philosophizer, tells of the Marriage at Cana. It was not a sleight-of-hand trick, but a true transmutation, performed with the power of Spirit over matter, and at the same time it is one of those Parables in fact, instead of in words, a Parable told by actual deeds.

But whoever does not stop at the literal meaning of the story, sees that the water turned into wine symbolizes the new epoch which begins with the Gospel. Before the Annunciation and the vigil in the desert, water was enough; the world was left to sorrow. But now the joyful tidings are come, the Kingdom is at hand, happiness is near. Men are about to pass from sadness to joy, from the widowhood of the old law to the new marriage with the new law. The Bridegroom is with us. Now is no time for sadness, but for enthusiasm. There will be no more fasting but rejoicings; no more water but wine.

Remember the words of the steward to the Bridegroom, “Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but Thou hast kept the good wine until now.” Such was the old usage, the usage of the Jews of old times and of the heathen. But Jesus meant to overturn this old amphictyonic usage also. The men of old gave the good and then the poor; He, after the good wine, gives better. Sour, unripened wine, the poor quality which was drunk at the beginning, symbolizes the wine of the old law, the wine that has turned sour and can no longer be drunk. Christ’s wine, finer and stronger, which cheers the heart and warms the blood, is the new wine of the Kingdom, wine intended for the marriage of Heaven and earth, wine which gives that divine intoxication which will be called later, “the foolishness of God.”

The marriage of Cana, which in John is the first miracle, is an allegory of the evangelical revolution.

THE ACCURSED FIG-TREE

Another parable expressed in the form of a miracle is that of the withered fig-tree. One morning towards Easter, returning from Bethany to Jerusalem, Jesus was hungry. He came up to a fig-tree and found only leaves. It was too early to expect fruit, even from the earliest species. Yet Jesus, according to Matthew and Mark, was angry at the poor tree and cursed it.

According to Matthew, “Let no fruit grow on thee hence-forward forever.” And presently the fig-tree withered away.

According to Mark, “No man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever.... And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig-tree dried up from the roots.”

In the Evangelists the account of the curse is followed by a return to the thought many times expressed by Jesus, that anything can be obtained if asked for with powerful faith.

Others instead see here a metaphorical lament which many times returned to Jesus’ lips. The fig-tree is Israel, the old Judaic religion, which from now on will bear only unnourishing leaves of rites and ceremonies, leaves fated to shrivel without nourishing men. Jesus, hungry for justice, hungry for love, sought among the leaves for sustaining fruits of mercy and holiness. He did not find them. Israel did not feed His hunger nor fulfill His hope. From now on nothing can be expected from the old trunk, leafy but sterile. May it be dead to all eternity! Other races will henceforth be fruitful.

The miracle of the cursed fig-tree is at bottom nothing more than a very apparent gloss of the parable of the sterile fig-tree in Luke. “A certain man had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?”

And he answering said unto him, “Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it and dung it: and if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.”

The tree was not condemned at first, but after three years of sterility, and even then by the intercession of the workman, was given a year’s respite, and in that year the plant was handled and treated with loving care. That was to be the final test: only if all care was unavailing was it to be hewn down and burned.

For three years Jesus had preached to the Jews, and He was thinking of giving them up, and announcing the Kingdom to others. But one of His workers, a disciple still attached to his people, asked for mercy; one respite more. We shall see whether even great love could convert this adulterous and bastard generation. But when they were on the road from Bethany, Judaism had been put to the test, Christ had only His Cross to expect. The evil fig-tree of Judaism deserved to be burned and from that time on no one will eat its tardy, withered fruit.

BREAD AND FISHES

On two occasions there was a multiplication of bread, alike in all details except the proportions of the quantities involved,—that is, in exactly what give them their real spiritual meaning.

Thousands of poor people had followed Jesus into a place in the wilderness, far from any settlements. For three days they had not eaten, so hungry were they for the bread of life which is His word. But on the third day, Jesus took pity on them—there were women and children among them—and ordered His disciples to feed the multitude. But they had only a little bread and a few fishes, and there were thousands of mouths. Then Jesus had them all sit down on the ground on the green grass, in circles of fifty to a hundred, He blessed the small amount of food they had; all were satisfied, and baskets of the broken pieces were left.

The less there is of the true bread, the bread of truth, the more it satisfies. The old law is abundant, copious, divided into innumerable sections. There are hundreds of precepts written in the books and thousands more invented by the Scribes and Pharisees. At first sight it seems a gigantic table where a whole race could be satisfied. But all these precepts, these rules and formulas are only dry leaves, shavings, trash. No one can live on such fare. The more numerous they are, the less they satisfy. Humble and simple people cannot satisfy their hunger for justice with these innumerable but inedible viands. Instead, one Word alone sums up all the words and transcends the petrified bigotry beloved by the complacent and satiated; one Word which fills the soul, which reconciles hearts, which calms the hunger for justice; the multitudes will be satisfied and there will be enough to eat also for those who were not present on that day. Spiritual bread is in itself miraculous. A loaf of wheat bread is only enough for a very few, and when they have finished it, there is no more for any one! But the bread of truth, that mystic bread of Joy is never finished, can never be finished. Give it out to thousands and it is always there; distribute it to millions, and it is always intact. Every one has taken his part as the men and women in the wilderness did, and as much as was given out, so much the more remains for those who are to come.

Another day when the disciples found themselves without bread, Jesus admonished them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. And the disciples, almost always slow to understand Him, said among themselves, “It is because we have taken no bread.” Which when Jesus perceived he said unto them, “O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? Do ye not yet understand neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets ye took up? Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many baskets ye took up? How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees?” That is, of the blind guardians of the degenerate law.

They are the Twelve, the chosen, the blest, the faithful, and yet they cannot understand at once, do not sufficiently believe.

Again in the boat, the night of the tempest, Jesus was obliged to reprove them. The Master had gone to sleep in the stern, His head on the pillow of one of the rowers. Suddenly the wind rose, a storm came down on the lake, the waves beat against the boat and it seemed from one moment to the next that they would be wrecked. The disciples, alarmed, awakened Jesus, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, “Peace, be still.” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. And He said unto them, “Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?” And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, “What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

There is one, Simon Peter, who has no fear. Not only does his nature transcend the human, but great is his faith, great his love, great his power of will. Nothing animate nor inanimate can resist these three great qualities. A man who possesses them has renounced all that is temporal and is victorious over time. He has renounced the good things of the flesh, and for this reason can save the flesh; he has renounced material things and so is master of matter. Every one can partake of this power. Faith is sufficient, but it must not be faith only in oneself.

A few years before Christ, a great Italian, captain in many wars, corrupt but a fitting ruler over the putrefaction of the Republic, was on the sea, on a real sea, in a boat with a few rowers, in search of an army which had not come up in time to win the victory for him. The wind began to blow, the tempest bore down on the boat and the pilot wished to turn back to the harbor. But Cæsar, taking the hand of the pilot, said to him, “Go forward, fear not, Cæsar is with thee and his fortune sails with you.” These words of haughty self-confidence heartened the crew; every one, as if a little of Cæsar’s strength had entered into his soul, did his best to overcome the opposition of the sea. But notwithstanding the efforts of the seamen the ship was nearly sunk and was obliged to turn back. Cæsar’s faith was only pride and ambition, faith in himself: Christ’s faith was all love, love for the Father, love for men.

With this love He could walk to meet the boat of the disciples tacking against a contrary wind, and could step upon the water as on the grass of a meadow. They thought in the darkness that it was a specter, and once again He was obliged to reassure them, “Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid.” As soon as He was in the boat, the wind fell and in a few minutes they reached the shore. Once again they were astounded because, says the honest Mark, “For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened.”

This comparison may seem ingenuous, but it is revealing, for the miracle of the loaves is the foundation of all the others. Every parable spoken in poetic words or expressed with visible prodigies was as bread prepared in different manners, so that His own followers, at least His very own, should understand the one needful truth that the Spirit is the only fare worthy of man, and that the man who is nourished on that fare is master of the world.

NOT SECRETIVE: A POET

Jesus seems at first sight secretive. He orders those affected by miracles to say to no man who has cured them; He wishes prayers and charity to be done secretly; when the disciples recognize that He is the Christ, He charges them not to repeat it; after the Transfiguration He bids the three keep silence, and when He teaches He uses parables which all men are not capable of understanding.

On further thought, on really considering the matter, it is apparent that Jesus has nothing of the esoteric. He has no secret doctrine to impart to a few acolytes. His words are public and open. He always speaks in the public squares of cities, on the beaches of lakes, in the Synagogue, in the midst of the people. He forbids speaking of His miracles in order that He may not be confused with wizards and exorcists; He commands to do good secretly in order to keep vainglory from destroying merit; He does not wish the Twelve to proclaim Him the Christ before His entry into Jerusalem, the public inauguration of His Messiahship; and He speaks in parables to be better understood by the simple who listen more willingly to a story than to a sermon, and remember a narration better than an argument.

Three of the Evangelists report a speech of Jesus, which seems to contradict this view. “Unto you,” He is speaking to the disciples, “it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to others it is not given; therefore I speak to them in parables that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.”

But Jesus means only to say this, “You understand these mysteries, but the many do not understand them, although they have ears and spirits like yours. And to them that they may understand I speak in parables,—that is, in a figurative language of facts because it is easier and more familiar.” You teach children with fables and the simple with stories, and “the many” have remained like the simple and the childish. To overcome the slowness of their minds I use words adapted to their nature. They are all fancy, and little intellect; and the parables are an appeal to the imagination more than to the reasoning powers. I do not employ them therefore to hide the truth, but the better to reveal it to those who could not see it in a purely rational form. For if then they do not understand, it is the fault of their obstinacy, which often closes the eyes and ears of the soul.

Jesus had no mysteries to dissemble. It was His wish that all, even the most humble and ignorant, should understand Him. The parables were not made to hide His teaching from the profane, but to make it more explicit and understandable to every one. That sometimes even the intelligence of the Twelve is inferior to this task is a melancholy conclusion by no means unknown to Jesus.

The marvelous content of His message has cast into the shade His poetic originality, not less marvelous. Jesus never wrote—once only He wrote on the sand, and the wind destroyed forever His handwriting—but in the midst of a people of powerful imagination, of the people who wrote the Psalter, the story of Ruth, the book of Job, the Song of Songs, He would have been one of the greatest poets of all times. His victorious youthfulness of spirit, the racy, popular language of the country where He grew up, the books He had read, few but among the richest of all poetry—His loving communion with the life of the fields and of animals and above all His divine and passionate yearning to give light to those who suffer in the dark, to save those who are being lost forever, to carry supreme happiness to the most unhappy (because true poetry does not catch its fire from the light of the lantern but at the light of the stars and of the sun, is not found in the writings left behind by great-grandfathers, but in love, in sorrow in the deeply moved soul); these things combined made of Jesus a poet, an inventor of living and eternal images with which he achieved a miracle on which the Evangelists make no comment,—the miracle of communicating the highest truth by the means of stories so simple, familiar, full of grace that after twenty centuries they shine with that unique youth which is eternity. Some of these stories are only idyllic or epic restatements of revelations which at other times He expounded in abstract words; but there are some which express things never said in any other form in His teaching. The parables are the imaginative comments on the Sermon on the Mount, such as could be made only by a poet who merits the title of divine more truly than any other poet ever born.

YEAST

City ladies do not make their own bread, but old countrywomen and housewives know what yeast is. A handful of dough from the last baking as big as a child’s hand, wet with warm water and put into the new dough, raises even as much as three measures of flour.

Among the seeds of plants that of the mustard is among the smallest; it can hardly be seen, but from this tiny little seed, if it is put into good earth, springs up a fine shrub, and the fowls of the air lodge in the branches of it. The grain of wheat is not large, the farmer throws it into the ground and then goes on about his other affairs; he sleeps, he goes away from home and comes back. Days pass and nights pass, no thought is given to the seed, but underneath there in the moist, plowed field the seed has germinated. There comes out a blade of green and at the top of this blade an ear, at first green and graceful, then little by little becoming golden grain. Now the field is ready for the mowing and the farmer can commence his harvesting.

Likewise with the Kingdom of Heaven and the first news of it. A word seems nothing. What is a word? Syllables, sounds, which come from the lips, enter with difficulty into the ears and only when they come from the heart find other hearts; it is a little thing, small, a breath, a sigh, a sound which comes and goes and the wind carries it away. And yet the word of the Kingdom is like yeast. If it goes into good flour, clean honest flour not adulterated with other grains, it ferments and grows. It is like the seed of the fields which germinates deep under the ground, patient as the earth which hides it, which, when Spring comes, grows green and strong and with the beginning of summer, lo, the harvest is ready!

The gospel is made up of few words, “The Kingdom is at hand, change your souls!” but if it falls into the heart of men ready for it, of simple men who wish to become great, of righteous men who wish to become holy, of sinners who seek in good for that happiness which they have vainly sought in evil, then those words take root in the depths, put out buds and shoots, flourish up in clusters and ears, and luxuriate in a summer never to be followed by the decay of Autumn.

Only a few men of those living about Christ believed in the Kingdom and prepared themselves for the great day. Only a few, insignificant men, scattered like tiny particles of yeast in the midst of the divided nations and the immense Empires, but these few dozen insignificant men gathered together in the midst of a predestined people were to become, through the contagion of their example, thousands upon thousands, and only three hundred years after them, in the place of Tiberius, ruled a man who bowed the knee before the heirs of the Apostles.

But men must renounce everything else if they are to enjoy the promised Kingdom. Worldly-minded men do the same in their temporal affairs. If a man working in another’s field discovers a treasure-store, he quickly hides it again and hurries to sell all that he has to buy that field. If a merchant looking for marvelous jewels worthy to be offered to monarchs, finds a pearl larger and purer than any he has ever seen, he goes and sells everything that he has, even the other pearls of less price, to buy this unique and wonderful pearl.

If the workman and the merchant, material-minded men, who are satisfied with frail acquisitions, are thus ready to sell all their goods to acquire a treasure which seems to them more precious than anything they possess, even though it is only a material and perishable treasure, how much more reason there is for men to renounce what they hold most dear, in order to achieve the Kingdom of God. If the laboring-man and the merchant for a money gain, likely to be stolen or destroyed, thus consent to a provisional sacrifice which will give them a hundred per cent profit, ought not we for an infinitely greater, infinitely higher profit, throw away the best we have, even if it has seemed until now of inestimable price?

But before we make this renunciation we must take thought and be sure that what remains to us will be enough to take us to the end of this new undertaking. We must measure the forces of our soul, that it may not happen to us as to the man who wished to build up a tower, a beautiful tower which would soar up to the sky like that of Jerusalem. He took no account of the cost but called the diggers, had the foundations excavated; called the masons and had the four walls of the foundations begun; but when the tower had scarcely been raised above the level of the earth, and was not yet as high as the roof of a house, he was obliged to stop because he had no more money to pay for the mortar, the stones, the bricks and the working men; and the tower remained thus, low and unsightly, in memory of his presumption: and his neighbors mocked at him.

A king who wants to make war on another king first takes account of his soldiers, and if he can count only on ten thousand and the other has twenty thousand, he puts off any idea of war, and sends an embassy of peace before his enemy can take the first hostile step. He who is not sure of himself, of being able to conquer to the last, does not follow Christ. For the foundation of the Kingdom is infinitely harder work than the building of a tower, and the creation of the new man is war not less harsh than external war, although silent and inner.

THE BANQUET

Only the clean of heart can enter into the Kingdom. The Kingdom is an eternal feast, and only those dressed for a feast can go there. There was a King who celebrated his son’s wedding, and those whom he invited did not come. Then the King called in the common people, the passers-by, the beggars, every one; but when the King came into the banqueting hall and saw one of the guests all filthy with grease and mud, he had him cast outside the door, to gnash his teeth in the coldness of night.

At the banquet of the Kingdom if the first called do not come, all are accepted; even the wretched and the sinners. The King had invited first the chosen people; but one had bought a piece of ground, another five yoke of oxen, a third had taken a wife that day. They were all deep in their affairs, and some did not even trouble to send an excuse. Then the King sent his servants to pick up out of the streets the blind, the poor, the maimed and the halt, the lowest of the rabble; and still there was room. Then he commanded that those who passed in front of his palace should be forced to come in, whoever they might be; and the banquet began. It was a royal banquet, a rich and magnificent feast; but after all, it consisted in enjoying lamb and fish, in getting drunk on wine and cider. At the break of day the bonfire was burned out, the tables were cleared, every one had to return to his home and to his poverty. If some of those whom the King first invited preferred another material pleasure to this material pleasure it was pardonable.

But the invitation to the banquet of the Kingdom is a promise of spiritual happiness, absolute, satisfying, perpetual. Something else than the passing amusements of terrestrial life: nauseating drunkenness, food that distends the stomach, sensual pleasures that leave a man bone-weary and defiled. And yet the men whom Jesus chose among all other men, and called first of all to the divine feast of the reborn, did not respond. They made wry faces, complained, slipped away and continued their habitual low actions. They preferred the rubbish of carnal goods to the splendor of high hope which is the only reasonable reason for living.

Then all the others were called in their place: beggars instead of the rich, sinners instead of Pharisees, women of the streets instead of fine ladies, the sick and sorrowing instead of the strong and happy.

Even the latest arrivals if they come in time will be admitted to the feast. The master of the vineyard saw in the marketplace certain laborers who were waiting for work, sent them out to prune his vines, and agreed on their wages. Later at noon-day he saw others without work and sent also those; and still later more again, and he sent them all. And they all worked, some at pruning and some at hoeing, and when the evening came the master gave the same pay to all. But those who had begun in the morning early, murmured, “Why do those who have worked less than we receive the same payment?” But the master answered one of them and said, “Didst not thou agree with me for a penny; why then dost thou lament? If it is my pleasure to give the same to the working men of the last hour, is that robbing you others?”

The apparent injustice of the master is only a more generous justice. To all he gives what he has promised, and he who arrived last but works with equal hope has the same right as the others to enjoy that Kingdom for which he has labored until the night.

Woe to him who comes too late! No one knows the exact day, but after that hour he who has not gone in will knock at the door, and it will not be opened to him, and he will mourn in outer darkness.

The master has gone to the wedding and the servants do not know when he will come back. Fortunate are those who have waited for him and whom he will find awake. The master himself will seat them at the table and will serve them. But if he find them sleeping, if no one is ready to receive him, if they make him knock at the door before opening it, if they come to meet him disheveled, tousled, half-clad, and if he finds in the house no lamp lighted, no water warmed, he will take the servants by the arm and drive them out without pity.

Every one should be ready because the Son of Man is like a thief in the night who sends no word beforehand when he will come. Or like a bridegroom who has been detained by some one in the street. In the house of the bride there are ten virgins who are waiting to go to meet him with the light of the procession. Five, the wise virgins, take oil for their lamps, and wait to hear the voices and the steps of the approaching bridegroom. The other five, the foolish, do not think of the oil, and, tired of waiting, fall asleep. And suddenly there is the sound of the nuptial procession arriving. The five wise virgins light their lamps and run out into the street joyfully to welcome the bridegroom. The other five wake up with a start and ask their companions to give them a little oil. But the others say, “Why did you not provide for that sooner? Go and buy some.” And the foolish run from one house to another to get a little oil; but everybody is asleep, and nobody answers them, and the shops are closed and the roaming dogs bark at their heels. They go back to the house of the wedding, but now the door is closed. The five wise virgins are already there and feasting with the bridegroom. The five foolish virgins knock and beg and cry out, but no one comes to open for them. Through the cracks in the window casings they see the glowing lights of the supper. They hear the clatter of the dishes, the clinking of the cups, the songs of the young men, the sound of the musical instruments, but they cannot enter. They must stay there until morning, in the dark, and the wind. Shut out from the pleasures of the evening festival, they tremble and shake in terror.

THE NARROW GATE

“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Those who will try to enter will fail, because the master of the house, when he has shut his door, will no longer recognize any one.

Until the great day, until it is too late, “Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.” Even hard, slothful, obstinate men give way to persistent entreaty. If even men are not always insensible to pleadings how much surer will be the response from a Father who loves us?

A man at midnight knocks at the door of a friend and wakens him. Through the door he says to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves; For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.” But the other, still half asleep, replies, “Trouble me not: for I am tired, and I do not wish to arise. And here in my bed I have my children who are asleep and if I get up I will wake them and chill them.” But the other will not give up, and knocks again on the door and raises his voice and begs with clasped hands that the other one will do him this service, for he has no other friends near, and the hour is late and his guest hungry and waiting for him. And he storms so at the door that his friend gets out of bed and lets him come in and gives him as many loaves as he needs. The friend was weak, but good-hearted. And even the bad-hearted do as he does. There was in a certain city a judge who cared for no one, a morose and scornful man who wanted to do everything as it suited him best. A widow went every day before him and asked for justice, and although her cause was just the judge always sent her away and would not do what she wished. But the widow patiently endured all his repulses and did not weary in her importunity. And finally the judge to get rid of this woman who wore him out with her supplications, pleadings, and prayers, gave the sentence and sent her in peace.

But no more must be asked than can be expected. He who has accomplished his task will eat and drink but will not have any special place of honor, nor will he be better served than his brother, and certainly not so well as his superior. When the servant, having been in the field sowing or pasturing the cattle, comes back to the house, the master does not call him to eat at his own table, but first is served himself and afterwards gives the servant the meal which is due him. This is a Parable which Jesus meant for His Apostles, who were already disputing about who would have the highest place in the Kingdom. “Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which were commanded you, say: We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.”

The only thing which counts is the actual doing. There are those who say “yes” to orders but who after this do nothing. Such men shall be condemned more severely than those who refused openly and then afterwards, repentant, obeyed. A father had two sons and said to the older, “Son, go work to-day in my vineyard.” And the son answered, “I go, sir,” but instead of going to work in the vineyard he lay down in the shade to sleep. And the father said to the second, “Go too and work with your brother.” But the son answered, “No, to-day I wish to rest because I am not well.” But later, thinking of the old man who could not do the work himself any longer, he took back his refusal, overcame his indolence and went to the vineyard and worked with a will till evening.

To listen to the word of the Kingdom is not enough. To consent verbally and to live just as before, without effort to change the heart, is less than nothing. “Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like; He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock, and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.”

The same teaching is in the Parable of the Sowing, “A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it, and some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up and bare fruit an hundredfold.” This is the Parable which the Twelve were incapable of understanding. Jesus was obliged to explain it Himself. The seed is the Word of God. Those by the wayside are they that hear, then cometh Satan and taketh the Word out of their hearts lest they should believe and be saved. They on the rock are they which when they hear receive the Word with joy, and these have no root which for a while believe and in time of temptation fall away. And that which fell among thorns are they which when they have heard go forth and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they which in an honest and good heart having heard the Word keep it and bring forth fruit with patience. But it is not enough to hear it merely, to understand it, to practice it. He who has received it should not keep it to himself. Who is the man who having a lamp hides it under the bed or covers it with a vessel? The light should stand high in the center of the room that they which enter in may see it and be lighted.

A Lord traveling into a far country left to each of his servants ten talents with the understanding that they should use the money to good purpose. And when he came back he reckoned with them. And the first delivered to him twenty talents, because with the first ten he had earned ten other talents. And the Lord made him steward over all his goods. And the second delivered him fifteen talents, for he had not been able to earn more than five more. But the third presented himself timorously and showed him, wrapped up in a napkin, the ten talents which he had received. “Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talents in the earth.” And the Lord answered, “Thou wicked and slothful servant, I will judge thee by thine own words. Take the talents and give them to him who has twenty.” But he has already plenty. “I say unto you,” answered the Lord, “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” And the unprofitable servant was cast into outer darkness, where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth. He who has received the Word ought to double his wealth. He has received so great a treasure that if he leaves it useless, he deserves to have it taken away from him. From him who does not add to it shall be taken away even that which he has, and unto him who has doubled his treasures shall be given even more. Those who do not use the treasure of the Word are not poverty-stricken men who need gifts because they are destitute, but faithless and slothful husbandmen, to whom was entrusted the most fruitful field in all the universe. Happy the steward whom the Master shall find attentive to act justly and to give to all their rightful part of the harvest. But if the steward begins to oppress the serving men and women and thinks only of eating and getting drunk he will be scourged and punished when the Master returns, just punishment for the faithless!

The servant who does not know what the Master wishes done, and so, not knowing, does not carry out His wishes, shall be less punished than he who knew, and still does the contrary, for he shall be driven out of the house where he gave orders. The bearers of the Word have no excuse if they are not the first to obey God’s wishes. From him to whom much was given, much shall be required.

THE PRODIGAL SON

A man had two sons. His wife was dead, but he still had these two sons, only two. But two are always better than one. If the first is away from home, the second is still there; if the younger fall ill, the older works for two; if one should die ... even children die, even the young die, and sometimes before the old ... if one of the two should die, there is at least one left who will care for the poor father.

This man loved his sons, not only because they were of his blood but because he had a loving heart. He loved them both, the older and the younger; perhaps the younger a little more than the older, but so little that he did not realize it himself. Fathers and mothers often have a weakness for the youngest because he is the smallest, he is the sweetest, he is the last baby, and after his birth there was never another one, so that his boyhood, still so recent, so prolonged, stretches out to the sill of his young manhood like a lingering halo of tenderness. It seems only yesterday that he was a baby at the breast, that he took his first stumbling steps, that he sprang up to embrace his father, or sat astride his knees.

But this man was not partial. He loved his sons like his two eyes and his two hands, equally dear, one at the left, one at the right, and he saw to it that both were happy. Nothing lacked for either one.

And yet, even in the case of sons of one father, it almost never happens that two brothers have the same tastes or even similar tastes. The older was a serious-minded young man, sedate, settled, who seemed already grown up and mature, a husband, the head of a family. He respected his father, but more as master than as father, without any impulsive show of affection. He worked faithfully, but he was hard and captious with the servants; he went through all the religious forms, but did not let the poor come about him. Although the house was full of all possible good things, yet for them there was never anything. He pretended to love his brother, but his heart was full of the poison of envy. When people say “to love like a brother” they say the contrary of what ought to be said. Brothers very rarely love each other. Jewish history, not to speak of any other, begins with Cain, goes on with Jacob’s cheating Esau, with Joseph sold by his brothers, with Absalom, who killed Amon, with Solomon who had Adonijah killed: a long bloody road of jealousy, opposition and betrayal. It would be more correct to say “a father’s love,” rather than a brother’s.

The second son seemed of another race. He was younger and was not ashamed to be young. He splashed about and made merry in his youth as in a warm lake. He had all the desires, the graces, and the defects of his age. He was fitful with his father. One day he hurt him, the next, put him into the seventh heaven; he was capable of not saying a word for weeks together and then suddenly throwing himself on his father’s neck in the highest spirits. Good times with his friends were more to his taste than work. He refused no invitations to drink, stared at women and dressed better than other people. But he was warmhearted; he gave money to the needy, was charitable without boasting of it, never sent away any one disconsolate. He was seldom seen at the synagogue, and for this and for other reasons the middle-class people of the neighborhood, timid, colorless people, religious and self-seeking, did not think well of him and advised their sons to have nothing to do with him. So much the more because the young man wanted to spend more than his father’s resources allowed him—a good man, they said, but weak and blinded—and because he talked recklessly and said things which were not fitting for the son of a good family brought up as he ought to be. The little life of that little country hole was repugnant to him; he said it was better to look for adventure in rich countries, populous, far away, beyond the mountains and the sea, where the big, luxurious cities are, with marble buildings and the best wines and shops full of silk and silver, and women dressed in fine clothes like queens fresh from aromatic baths who lightly give themselves for a piece of gold.

There in the country you had to obey orders and work hard, and there was no outlet for gypsy-like and nomadic tastes. His father, although he was rich, although he was good, measured out the drachma as if they were talents. His brother was vexed if he bought a new tunic or came home a little tipsy; in the family all they knew was the field, the furrow, the pasture, the stock; a life that was not a life but one long effort.

And one day (he had thought of it many times before, but had never had the courage to say it) he hardened his heart and his face and said to his father, “Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me, and I will ask nothing more of thee.”

When the old man heard this, he was deeply hurt, but he made no answer, and went away into his room that his tears should not be seen, and for a while neither of them spoke any more of this matter. But the son suffered, was sullen, and lost all his ardor and animation even to the fresh color of his face. And the father, seeing his son suffer, suffered himself, and yet suffered more at the thought of losing him. But finally paternal love conquered self-love. The estimations and valuations of the property were made, and the father gave to both his sons their rightful part and kept the rest for himself. The young man lost no time, he sold what he could not carry away, gathered together a goodly sum, and one evening, without saying anything to any one, mounted his fine horse and went away. The older brother was rather pleased by his departure; the younger would never have the courage to come back; so now he was the only son, first in command, and no one would take away the rest of his inheritance from him.

But the father secretly wept many tears, all the tears of his old wrinkled eyelids. Every line of his old face was washed with tears, his aged cheeks were soaked with his grieving. His son was gone and he needed all the love of the remaining son to make up for the sorrow of the separation.

But he had an intuition that perhaps he had not lost his son forever, his second-born, that before his death he would have the happiness to kiss him again; and this idea helped him to endure the loneliness.