Chapter XIV: Part I: Preparatory (3)

69. That unfolding is pictured in an early stage in the story given us from the youth of Jesus. It was customary for a Jewish boy not long after passing his twelfth year to come under full adult obligation to the law. The visit to Jerusalem was probably in preparation for such assumption of obligation by Jesus. All his earlier training had filled his mind with the sacredness of the Holy City and the glory of the temple. It is easy to feel with what joy he would first look upon Zion from the shoulder of the Mount of Olives, as he came over it on his journey from Galilee; to conceive how the temple and the ritual would fill him with awe in his readiness not to criticise, but to idealize everything he saw, and to think only of the significance given by it all to the scripture; to imagine how eagerly he would talk in the temple court with the learned men of his people about the law and the promises with which in home and school his youth had been made familiar. Nor is it difficult to appreciate his surprise, when Joseph and Mary, only after long searching for him, at last found him in the temple, for he felt that it was the most natural place in which he could be found. In his wondering question to Mary, "Did not you know that I must be in my Father's house?" (Luke ii. 49), there is a premonition of his later consciousness of peculiarly intimate relation to God. The question was, however, a sincere inquiry. It was no precocious rebuke of Mary's anxiety. The knowledge of himself as Son of God was only dawning within him, and was not yet full and clear. This is shown by his immediate obedience and his subjection to his parents in Nazareth through many years. It is safe, in the interpretation of the acts and words of Jesus, to banish utterly as inconceivable anything that savors of the theatrical. We must believe that he was always true to himself, and that the subjection which he rendered to Joseph and Mary sprang from a real sense of childhood's dependence, and was not a show of obedience for any edifying end however high.

70. That question "Did not you know?" is the only hint we possess of Jesus' inner life before John's call to repentance rang through the land. Meanwhile the carpenter's son became himself the carpenter. Joseph seems to have died before the opening of Jesus' ministry. For Jesus as the eldest son, this death made those years far other than a time of spiritual retreat; responsibility for the home and the pressing duties of trade must have filled most of the hours of his days. This is a welcome thought to our healthiest sentiment, and true also to the earliest Christian feeling (Heb. iv. 15). John the Baptist had his training in the wilderness, but Jesus came from familiar intercourse with men, was welcomed in their homes (John ii. 2), knew their life in its homely ongoing, and was the friend of all sorts and conditions of men. After that visit to Jerusalem, a few more years may have been spent in school, for, whether from school instruction, or synagogue preaching, or simple daily experience, the young man came to know the traditions of the elders and also to know that observance of them is a mockery of the righteousness which God requires. Yet he seems to have felt so fully in harmony with God as to be conscious of nothing new in the fresh and vital conceptions of righteousness which he found in the law and prophets. We may be certain that much of his thought was given to Israel's hope of redemption, and that with the prophets of old and the singer much nearer his own day (Ps. of Sol. xvii. 23), he longed that God, according to his promise, would raise up unto his people, their King, the Son of David.

71. He must also have read often from that other book open before him as he walked upon the hills of Nazareth. The beauty of the grass and of the lilies was surely not a new discovery to him after he began to preach the coming kingdom, nor is it likely that he waited until after his baptism to form his habit of spending the night in prayer upon the mountain. We may be equally sure that he did not first learn to love men and women and long for their good after he received the call, "Thou art my beloved son" (Mark i. 11). He who in later life read hearts clearly (John ii. 25) doubtless gained that skill, as well as the knowledge of human sin and need, early in his intercourse with his friends and neighbors in Nazareth; while a clear conviction that God's kingdom consists in his sovereignty over loyal hearts must have filled much of his thought about the promised good which God would bring to Israel in due time. Thus we may think that in quietness and homely industry, in secret life with God and open love for men, in study of history and prophecy, in longing for the actual sway of God in human life, Jesus lived his life, did his work, and grew in "wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man" (Luke ii. 52).

VI

John The Baptist

Matt. iii. 1-17; iv. 12; xiv. 1-12; Mark i. 1-14; vi. 14-29; Luke i. 5-25, 57-80; iii. 1-22; ix. 7-9; John i. 19-37; iii. 22-30.

72. The first reappearance of Jesus in the gospel story, after the temple scene in his twelfth year, is on the banks of the Jordan seeking baptism from the new prophet. One of the silent evidences of the greatness of Jesus is the fact that so great a character as John the Baptist stands in our thought simply as accessory to his life. For that the prophet of the wilderness was great has been the opinion of all who have been willing to seek him in his retirement. One reason for the common neglect of John is doubtless the meagreness of information about him. But though details are few, the picture of him is drawn in clearest lines: a rugged son of the wilderness scorning the gentler things of life, threatening his people with coming wrath and calling to repentance while yet there was time; a preacher of practical righteousness heeded by publicans and harlots but scorned by the elders of his people; a bold and fearless spirit, yet subdued in the presence of another who did not strive, nor cry, nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets. When the people thought to find in John the promised Messiah, with unparalleled self-effacement he pointed them to his rival and rejoiced in that rival's growing success. Side by side they worked for a time; then the picture fails, but for a hint of a royal audience, with a fearless rebuke of royal disgrace and sin; a prison life, with its pathetic shaking of confidence in the early certainties; a long and forced inaction, and the question put by a wavering faith, with its patient and affectionate reply; then a lewd orgy, a king's oath, a girl's demands, a martyr's release, the disciples' lamentation and their report to that other who, though seeming a rival, was known to appreciate best the greatness of this prophet. Such is the picture in the gospels.

73. John, unlike his greater successor, has a highly appreciative notice from Josephus: "Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment for what he did against John, who was called the Baptist. For Herod had had him put to death though he was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to justice towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for baptism would be acceptable to God, if they made use of it not in order to expiate some sin, but for the purification of the body, provided that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. Now, as many flocked to him, for they were greatly moved by hearing his words, Herod, fearing that the great influence, John had over the people might lead to some rebellion (for the people seemed likely to do anything he should advise), thought it far best, by putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties by sparing a man who might make him repent of his leniency when it should be too late. Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, in consequence of Herod's suspicious temper, to Machaerus, the fortress before mentioned, and was there put to death. So the Jews had the opinion that the destruction of this army [by Aretas] was sent as a punishment upon Herod and was the mark of God's displeasure at him" (Ant. xviii. 5. 2). This section is commonly accepted as trustworthy. Superficially different from the gospel record and assigning quite another cause for John's imprisonment and death, it correctly describes his character and his influence with the people, and leaves abundant room for a more intimately personal motive on the part of Antipas for the imprisonment of John. If the jealousy of Herodias was the actual reason for John's arrest, it is highly probable that another cause would be named to the world, and a likelier one than that given by Josephus could not be found.

74. The first problem that offers itself in the study of this man is the man himself. Whence did he come? Everything about him is surprising. He appears as a dweller in the desert, an ascetic, holding aloof from common life and content with the scanty fare the wilderness could offer; yet he was keenly appreciative of his people's needs, and he knew their sins,--the particular ones that beset Pharisees, publicans, soldiers. If a recluse in habit, he was far from such in thought; he was therefore no seeker for his own soul's peace in his desert life. His dress was strikingly suggestive of the old prophet of judgment on national infidelity (I. Kings xvii. 1; II. Kings i, 8), the Elijah whom John would not claim to be. His message was commanding, with its double word "Repent" and "The kingdom is near." His idea of the kingdom was definite, though not at all developed; it signified to him God's dominion, inaugurated by a divine judgment which should mean good for the penitent and utter destruction for the ungodly; hence the prophet's call to repentance. His ministry was one of grace, but the time was drawing near when the Greater One would appear to complete by a swift judgment the work which his forerunner was beginning. That Greater One would hew down the fruitless tree, winnow the wheat from the chaff on the threshing floor, baptize the penitent with divine power, and the wicked with the fire of judgment, since his was to be a ministry of judgment, not of grace.

75. Whence, then, came this strange prophet? Near the desert region where he spent his youth and where he first proclaimed his message of repentance and judgment was the chief settlement of that strange company of Jews known as Essenes. It has long been customary to think that during his early years John was associated with these fellow-dwellers in the desert, if he did not actually join the order. He certainly may have learned from them many things. Their sympathy with his ascetic life and with his thorough moral earnestness would make them attractive to him, but he was far too original a man to get from them more than some suggestions to be worked out in his own fashion. The simplicity of his teaching of repentance and the disregard of ceremonial in his preaching separate him from these monks. John may have known his desert companions, may have appreciated some things in their discipline, but he remained independent of their guidance.

76. The leaders of religious life and thought in his day were unquestionably the Pharisees. The controlling idea with them, and consequently with the people, was the sanctity of God's law. They were conscious of the sinfulness of the people, and their demand for repentance was constant. It is a rabbinic commonplace that the delay of the Messiah's coming is due to lack of repentance in Israel. But near as this conception is to John's, we need but to recall his words to the Pharisees (Matt. iii. 7) to realize how clearly he saw through the hollowness of their religious pretence. With the quibbles of the scribes concerning small and great commandments, Sabbaths and hand-washings, John shows no affinity. He may have learned some things from these "sitters in Moses' seat," but he was not of them.

77. John's message announced the near approach of the kingdom of God. It is probable that many of those who sought his baptism were ardent nationalists,--eager to take a hand in realizing that consummation. Josephus indicates that it was Herod's fear lest John should lead these Zealots to revolt that furnished the ostensible cause of his death. But similar as were the interests of John and these nationalists, the distance between them was great. The prophet's replies to the publicans and to the soldiers, which contain not a word of rebuke for the hated callings (Luke iii. 13, 14), show how fundamentally he differed from the Zealots.

78. But there was another branch of the Pharisees than that which quibbled over Sabbath laws, traditions, and tithes, or that which itched to grasp the sword; they were men who saw visions and dreamed dreams like those of Daniel and the Revelation, and in their visions saw God bringing deliverance to his people by swift and sudden judgment. There are some marked likenesses between this type of thought and that of John,--the impending judgment, the word of warning, the coming blessing, were all in John; but one need only compare John's words with such an apocalypse as the Assumption of Moses, probably written in Palestine during John's life in the desert, to discover that the two messages do not move in the same circle of thought at all; there is something practical, something severely heart-searching, something at home in every-day life, about John's announcement of the coming kingdom that is quite absent from the visions of his contemporaries. John had not, like some of these seers, a coddling sympathy for people steeped in sin. He traced their troubles to their own doors, and would not let ceremonies pass in place of "fruits meet for repentance." He came from the desert with rebuke and warning on his lips; with no word against the hated Romans, but many against hypocritical claimants to the privileges of Abraham; no apology for his message nor artificial device of dream or ancient name to secure a hearing, but the old-fashioned prophetic method of declaration of truth "whether men will hear or whether they will forbear." "All was sharp and cutting, imperious earnestness about final questions, unsparing overthrow of all fictitious shams in individual as in national life. There are no theories of the law, no new good works, no belief in the old, but simply and solely a prophetic clutch at men's consciences, a mighty accusation, a crushing summons to contrite repentance and speedy sanctification" (KeimJN. II. 228). We look in vain for a parallel in any of John's contemporaries, except in that one before whom he bowed, saying, "I have need to be baptized of thee."

79. John had, however, predecessors whose work he revived. In Isaiah's words, "Wash you, make you clean" (Isa. i 16), one recognizes the type which reappeared in John. The great prophetic conception of the Day of the Lord--the day of wrath and salvation (Joel ii. 1-14)--is revived in John, free from all the fantastic accompaniments which his contemporaries loved. The invitations to repentance and new fidelity which abound in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and Joel; the summons to simple righteousness, which rang from the lips of Micah (vi. 8), and of the great prophet of the exile (Isa. lviii.), these tell us where John went to school and how well he learned his lesson. It is hard for us to realize how great a novelty such simplicity was in John's day, or how much originality it required to attain to this discipleship of the prophets. From the time when the curtain rises on the later history of Israel in the days of the Maccabean struggle to the coming of that "voice crying in the wilderness," Israel had listened in vain for a prophet who could speak God's will with authority. The last thing that people expected when John came was such a simple message. He was not the creature of his time, but a revival of the older type; yet, as in the days of Elijah God had kept him seven thousand in Israel that had not bowed the knee to Baal, so, in the later time, not all were bereft of living faith. These devout souls furnished the soil which could produce a life like John's, gifted and chosen by God to restore and advance the older and more genuine religion.

80. If John was thus a revival of the older prophetic order, a second question arises: Whence came his baptism, and what did it signify? The gospels describe it as a "baptism of repentance for the remission of sins" (Mark i. 4). John's declaration that his greater successor should baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire (Matt. iii. 11) shows that he viewed his baptism as a symbol, rather than as a means, of remission of sin. But it was more than a sign of repentance, it was a confession of loyalty to the kingdom which John's successor was to establish. It had thus a twofold significance: (_a_) confession of and turning from the old life of sin, and (_b_) consecration to the coming kingdom. Whence, then, came this ordinance? Not from the Essenes, for, unlike John's baptism, the bath required by these Jewish ascetics was an oft-repeated act. Further, John's rite had a far deeper religious significance than the Essene washings. These performed their ablutions to secure ritual cleanness as exemplary disciples of the Mosaic ideal. The searching of heart which preceded John's baptism, and the radical change of life it demanded, seem foreign to Essenism. The baptism of John, considered as a ceremony of consecration for the coming kingdom, was parallel rather to the initiatory oaths of the Essene brotherhood than to their ablutions. Their custom may have served to suggest to John a different application of the familiar sacred use of the bath; indeed John could hardly have been uninfluenced by the usage of his contemporaries; yet in this, as in his thought, he was not a product of their school.

81. John's baptism was equally independent of the pharisaic influence. The scribes made much of "divers washings," but not with any such significance as would furnish to John his baptism of repentance and of radical change of life. That he was not following a pharisaic leading appears in the question put to him by the Pharisees, "Why, then, baptizest thou?" (John i. 25). They saw something unique in the ceremony as he conducted it.

82. Many have held that he derived his baptism from the method of admitting proselytes into the Jewish fellowship. It is clear, at least, that the later ritual prescribed a ceremonial bath as well as circumcision and sacrifice for all who came into Judaism from the Gentiles, and it is difficult to conceive of a time when a ceremonial bath would not seem indispensable, since Jews regarded all Gentile life as defiling. While such an origin for John's baptism would give peculiar force to his rebuke of Jewish confidence in the merits of Abraham (Matt. iii. 9), it is more likely, as Keim has shown (JN. II. 243 and note), that in this as in his other thought John learned of his predecessors rather than his contemporaries. Before the giving of the older covenant from Sinai, it is said that Moses was required "to sanctify the people and bid them wash their garments" (Ex. xix. 10). John was proclaiming the establishment of a new covenant, as the prophets had promised. That the people should prepare for this by a similar bath of sanctification seems most natural. John appeared with a revival of the older and simpler religious ideas of Israel's past, deriving his rite as well as his thought from the springs of his people's religious life.

83. This revival of the prophetic past had nothing scholastic or antiquarian about it. John was a disciple, not an imitator, of the great men of Israel; his message was not learned from Isaiah or any other, though he was educated by studying them. What he declared, he declared as truth immediately seen by his own soul, the essence of his power being a revival, not in letter but in spirit, of the old, direct cry, "Thus saith the Lord." Inasmuch as John's day was otherwise hopelessly in bondage to tradition and the study of the letter, by so much is his greatness enhanced in bringing again God's direct message to the human conscience. John's greatness was that of a pioneer. The Friend of publicans and sinners also spoke a simple speech to human hearts; he built on and advanced from the old prophets, but it was John who was appointed to prepare the people for the new life, "to make ready the way of the Lord" (Mark i. 3). The clearness of his perception of truth is not the least of his claims to greatness. His knowledge of the simplicity of God's requirements in contrast with the hopeless maze of pharisaic traditions, and his insight into the characters with whom he had to deal, whether the sinless Jesus or the hypocritical Pharisees, show a man marvellously gifted by God who made good use of his gift. This greatness appears in superlative degree in the self-effacement of him who possessed these powers. Greatness always knows itself more or less fully. It was not self-ignorance that led John to claim to be but a voice, nor was it mock humility. The confession of his unworthiness in comparison with the mightier one who should follow is unmistakably sincere, as is the completed joy of this friend of the bridegroom rejoicing greatly because of the bridegroom's voice, even when the bridegroom's presence meant the recedence of the friend into ever deepening obscurity (John iii. 30).

84. But John had marked limitations. He knew well the righteousness of God; he knew, and, in effect, proclaimed God's readiness to forgive them that would turn from their wicked ways; he knew the simplicity as well as the exceeding breadth of the divine commandment; but beyond one flash of insight (John i. 29-36), which did not avail to remould his thought, he did not know the yearning love of God which seeks to save. It is not strange that he did not. Some of the prophets had more knowledge of it than he, his own favorite Isaiah knew more of it than he, but it was not the thought of John's day. The wonder is that the Baptist so far freed himself from current thought; yet he did not belong to the new order. He thundered as from Sinai. The simplest child that has learned from the heart its "Our Father" has reached a higher knowledge and entered a higher privilege (Matt. xi. 11). John's self-effacement, wonderful as it was, fell short of discipleship to his greater successor; in fact, at a much later time there was still a circle of disciples of the Baptist who kept themselves separate from the church (Acts xix. 1-7). He was doubtless too strenuous a man readily to become a follower. He could yield his place with unapproachable grace, but he remained the prophet of the wilderness still. He seemed to belong consciously to the old order, and, by the very circumstances ordained of God who sent him, he could not be of those who, sitting at Jesus' feet, learned to surrender to him their preconceptions and hopes, and in heart, if not in word, to say, "To whom shall we go, thou hast the words of eternal life?" (John vi. 68).

VII

The Messianic Call

Matt. iii. 13 TO iv. 11; Mark i. 9-13; Luke iii. 21, 22; iv. 1-13; John i. 30-34

85. In the circle about John all classes of the people were represented: Pharisees and Sadducees, jealous of innovation and apprehensive of popular excitement; publicans and soldiers, interested in the new preacher or touched in conscience; outcasts who came in penitence, and devout souls in consecration. The wonder of the new message was carried throughout the land and brought great multitudes to the Jordan. Jesus in Nazareth heard it, and recognized in John a revival of the long-silent prophetic voice. The summons appealed to his loyalty to God's truth, and after the multitudes had been baptized (Luke iii. 21) he too sought the prophet of the wilderness.

86. The connection which Luke mentions (i. 36) between the families of Jesus and John had not led to any intimacy between the two young men. John certainly did not know of his kinsman's mission (John i. 31), nor was his conception of the Messiah such that he would look for its fulfilment in one like Jesus (Matt. iii. 10-12). One thing, however, was clear as soon as they met,--John recognized in Jesus one holier than himself (Matt. iii. 14). With a prophet's spiritual insight he read the character of Jesus at a glance, and although that character did not prove him to be the Messiah, it prepared John for the revelation which was soon to follow.

87. The reply of Jesus to the unwillingness of John to give him baptism (Matt. iii. 15) was an expression of firm purpose to do God's will; the absence of any confession of sin is therefore all the more noticeable. In all generations the holiest men have been those most conscious of imperfection, and in John's message and baptism confession and repentance were primary demands; yet Jesus felt no need for repentance, and asked for baptism with no word of confession. But for the fact that the total impression of his life begat in his disciples the conviction that "he did no sin" (I. Pet. ii. 22; compare John viii. 46; II. Cor. v. 21), this silence of Jesus would offend the religious sense. Jesus, however, had no air of self-sufficiency, he came to make surrender and "to fulfil all-righteousness" (Matt. iii. 15). It was the positive aspect of John's baptism that drew him to the Jordan. John was preaching the coming of God's kingdom. The place held by the doctrine of that kingdom in the later teaching of Jesus makes it all but certain that his thought had been filled with it for many years. In his reading of the prophets Jesus undoubtedly emphasized the spiritual phases of their promises, but it is not likely that he had done much criticising of the ideas held by his contemporaries before he came to John. As already remarked he seems to have been quicker to discover his affinity with the older truth than to be conscious of the novelty of his own ways of apprehending it (Matt. v. 17). When, then, Jesus heard John's call for consecration to the approaching kingdom he recognized the voice of duty, and he sought the baptism that he might do all that he could to "make ready the way of the Lord."

88. This act of consecration on Jesus' part was one of personal obedience. There were no crowds present (Luke iii. 21), and his thoughts were full of prayer. It was an experience which concerned his innermost life with God, and it called him to communion with heaven like that in which he sought for wisdom before choosing his apostles (Luke vi. 12), and for strength in view of his approaching death (Luke ix. 28, 29). His outward declaration of loyalty to the coming kingdom was thus not an act of righteousness "to be seen of men," but one of personal devotion to him who is and who sees in secret (Matt. vi. 1, 6). As the transfiguration followed the prayer on Hermon, so this initial consecration was answered from heaven. A part of the answer was evident to John, for he saw a visible token of the gift of the divine Spirit which was granted to Jesus for the conduct of the work he had to do, and he recognized in Jesus the greater successor for whom he was simply making preparation (Mark i. 10; John i. 32-34). To Jesus there came also with the gift of the Spirit a definite word from heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased" (Mark i. 11). The language in Mark and Luke, and the silence of the Baptist concerning the voice from heaven (John i. 32-34), indicate that the word came to Jesus alone, and was his summons to undertake the work of setting up that kingdom to which he had just pledged his loyalty. The expression "My beloved Son" had clear Messianic significance for Jesus' contemporaries (comp. Mark xiv. 62), and the message can have signified for him nothing less than a Messianic call. It implied more than that child-relation to God which was the fundamental fact in his religious life from the beginning: it had an official meaning.

89. For Jesus the sense of being God's child was normally human, and in his ministry he invited all men to a similar consciousness of sonship. Yet his early years must have brought to him a realization that he was different from his fellows. That in him which made a confession at the baptism unnatural and which led to John's word, "I have need to be baptized by thee," was ready to echo assent when God said, "Thou art my Son." He accepted the call and the new office and mission which it implied, and he must have recognized that it was for this moment that all the past of his life had been making preparation.

90. The gift of the Spirit to Jesus, which furnished to John the proof that the Greater One had appeared, was not an arbitrary sign. The old prophetic thought (Isa. xi. 2; xlii. 1; lxi. 1) as well as a later popular expectation (Ps. of Sol. xvii. 42) provided for such an anointing of the Messiah; and in the actual conduct of his life Jesus was constantly under the leading of this Spirit (see Matt. xii. 28 and John iii. 34). The temptation which followed the baptism, and in which he faced the difficulties in his new task, was the first result of the Spirit's control. Its later influence is not so clearly marked in the gospels, but they imply that as the older servants of God were guided and strengthened by him, so his Son also was aided,--with this difference, however, that he possessed completely the heavenly gift (John iii. 34). Jesus' uniform confession of dependence on God confirms this teaching of the gift of the divine Spirit; and his uniform consciousness of complete power and authority confirms the testimony that he had the Spirit "without measure."

91. The temptation to which the Spirit "drove" Jesus after his baptism gives proof that the call to assume the Messianic office came to him unexpectedly; for the three temptations with which his long struggle ended were echoes of the voice which he had heard at the Jordan, and subtle insinuations of doubt of its meaning. Some withdrawal to contemplate the significance of his appointment to a Messianic work was a mental and spiritual necessity. As has often been said, if the gospels had not recorded the temptation, we should have had to assume one. Jesus being the man he was, could not have thought that his call was a summons to an entire change in his ideals and his thoughts about God and duty. Yet he must have been conscious of the wide differences between his conceptions of God's kingdom and the popular expectation. Those differences, by the measure of the definiteness of the popular thought and the ardor of the popular hope, were the proof of the difficulty of his task. The call meant that the Messiah could be such as he was; it meant that the kingdom could be and must be a dominion of God primarily in the hearts of men and consequently in their world; it meant that his work must be religious rather than political, and gracious rather than judicial. These essentials of the work which he could do contradicted at nearly every point the expectations of his people. How could he succeed in the face of such opposition? His long meditation during forty days doubtless showed him the difficulty of his task in all its baldness, yet it did not shake his certainty that the call had come to him from God, nor his faith that what God had called him to do he could accomplish.

92. The gospels show no hesitation in calling the experience of these days a temptation, nor had the Christian feeling of the first century any difficulty in thinking of its Lord as actually suffering temptation (Heb. ii. 18; iv. 15). A temptation to be real cannot be hypothetical; evil must actually present itself as attractive to the tempted soul. A suggestion of evil that takes no hold concretely of the heart is no temptation, nor is the resistance of it any victory. The sinlessness of him who sought baptism with no confession on his lips nor sense of penitence in his heart offers no barrier to his experience of genuine temptation, unless we think him incapable of sin, and therefore not "like unto his brethren." Not only do the gospels repeatedly refer to his temptations (Luke iv. 13; Mark viii. 31-33; Luke xxii. 28; compare Heb. v. 7-9), but they also depict clearly the reality of these initial testings. The account as given in Matthew and Luke represents the experience with which the forty days' struggle culminated. The absorption of Jesus' mind had been so complete that he had neglected the needs of his body, and when he turned to think of earthly things he was pressed by hunger. A popular notion at a later time, and probably also in Jesus' day, was that the Messiah would be able to feed his people as Moses had given them manna in the wilderness (John vi. 30-32; see EdersLJM. I. 176). He had just been endowed with the divine Spirit for the work before him; it was therefore no fantastic idea when the suggestion came that he should use his power to supply his own needs in the desert. Nor was the temptation without attractiveness; his own physical nature urged its need, and Jesus was no ascetic who found discomfort a way of holiness. The evil in the suggestion was that it asked him to use his newly given powers for the supply of his own needs, as if doubting that God would care for him as for any other of his children. There was more than distrust of God suggested; the temptation came with a hint of another doubt,--"_If_ thou art God's Son." A miracle would prove to himself his appointment and his power. The suggested doubt of his call he passed unnoticed; distrust of God he repudiated instantly, falling back on his faith in the God he had served these many years (Deut. viii. 3). His victory is remarkable because his spirit conquered unhesitatingly after a long ecstasy which would naturally have induced a reaction and a surrender for the moment to the demand of lower needs.

93. This firmness of trust opened the way for another evil suggestion. In the work before him as God's Anointed many difficulties were on either side and across his path. He knew his people, their prejudices, and their hardness of heart; and he knew how far he was from their ideal of a Messiah. He knew also the watchful jealousy of Rome. Others before him, like Judas of Galilee, had tried the Messianic rôle and had failed. He, however, was confident of his divine call: should he not, therefore, press forward with his work, heedless of all danger and regardless of the dictates of prudence,--as heedless as if, trusting God's promised care, he should cast himself down from a pinnacle of the temple to the rocks in Kidron below? A fanatic would have yielded to such a temptation. Many another than Jesus did so,--Theudas (Acts v. 36), the Egyptian (Acts xxi. 38); and Bar Cochba (Dio Cassius, lxix. 12-14; Euseb. Ch. Hist. iv. 6). Jesus, however, showed his perfect mental health, repudiating the temptation by declaring that while man may trust God's care, he must not presumptuously put it to the test (Matt. iv. 7). The after life of Jesus was a clear commentary on this reply. He constantly sought to avoid situations which would compromise his mission or cut short his work (see John vi. 15), and when at the end he suffered the death prepared for him by his people's hatred, it was because his hour had come and he could say, "I lay down my life of myself" (John x. 18). His marvellous control of enthusiasm and his self-mastery in all circumstances separate Jesus from all ecstatics and fanatics. Yet presumption must have seemed the easier course, and could readily wear the mask of trust. He was tempted, yet without sin.

94. As the refusal to doubt led to the temptation to presume, so the determination to be prudent opened the way for a third assault upon his perfect loyalty to God. The world he was to seek to save was swayed by passions; his own people were longing for a Messiah, but they must have their kind of a Messiah. If he would acknowledge this actual supremacy of evil and self-will in the world, the opposition of passion and prejudice might be avoided. If he would own the evil inevitable for the time, and accommodate his work to it, he might then be free to lead men to higher and more spiritual views of God's kingdom. His knowledge of his people's grossness of heart and materialism of hope made a real temptation of the suggestion that he should not openly oppose but should accommodate himself to them. Jesus did not underestimate the opposition of "the kingdoms of the world," but he truly estimated God's intolerance of any rivalry (Matt. iv. 10), and he was true to God and to his own soul. Again, in this as in the preceding temptations, Jesus conquered the evil suggestions by appropriating to himself truth spoken by God's servants to Israel. Tempted in all points like his brethren, he resisted as any one of them could have resisted, and won a victory possible, ideally considered, to any other of the children of men.

95. It is not idle curiosity which inquires whence the evangelists got this story of the temptation of Jesus. Even if the whole transaction took place on the plane of outer sensuous life, and Jesus was bodily carried to Jerusalem and to the mountain-top, there is no probability that any witnesses were at hand who could tell the tale. But the fact that in any case the vision of the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time (Luke iv. 5) could have been spiritual only, since no mountain, however high (Matt. iv. 8), could give, physically, that wide sweep of view, suggests that the whole account tells in pictorial language an intensely real, inner experience of Jesus. This in no respect reduces the truthfulness of the narratives. Temptation never becomes temptation till it passes to that inner scene of action and debate. Since Jesus shows in all his teaching a natural use of parabolic language to set forth spiritual truth, the inference is almost inevitable that the gospels have in like manner adopted the language of vivid picture as alone adequate to depict the essential reality of his inner struggle. In any case the narrative could have come from no other source than himself. How he came to tell it we do not know. On one of the days of private converse with his disciples after the confession at Cæsarea Philippi he may have given them this account of his own experience, in order to help his loyal Galileans to understand more fully his work and the way of it, and to prepare them for that disappointment of their expectations which they were so slow to acknowledge as possible.

96. From this struggle in the wilderness Jesus came forth with the clear conviction that he was God's Anointed, and in all his after life no hesitation appeared. The kingdom which he undertook to establish was that dominion of simple righteousness which he had learned to know and love in the years of quiet life in Nazareth. He set out to do his work fearlessly, but prudently, seeking to win men in his Father's way to acknowledge that Father's sovereignty. There is no evidence that, beyond such firm conviction and purpose, he had any fixed plan for the work he was to do, nor that he saw clearly as yet how his earthly career would end. The third temptation, however, shows that he was not unprepared for seeming defeat. The struggle had been long and serious,--for the three temptations of the end are doubtless typical of the whole of the forty days,--and the victory was great and final. With the light of victory as well as the marks of warfare on his face, he took his way back towards Galilee.

VIII

The First Disciples

John i. 19 TO ii. 12

97. After the withdrawal of Jesus into the wilderness, John the Baptist continued his ministry of preaching and baptizing, moving northward up the Jordan valley to Bethany, on the eastern side of the river, near one of the fords below the Sea of Galilee (John i. 28). Here Galilee, doubtless, contributed more to his audience than Judea. It is certain that some from the borders of the lake were at this time among his constant attendants: Andrew and Simon of Bethsaida, John the son of Zebedee, and perhaps his brother James, probably also Philip of Bethsaida and Nathanael of Cana (John i. 40, 41, 43-45; compare xxi. 2).

98. The leaders in Jerusalem, becoming apprehensive whither this work would lead, sent an embassy to question John. They chose for this mission priests and Levites of pharisaic leaning as most influential among the people. The impression John and his message were making on the popular mind is seen in the questions put to him, "Art thou the Messiah?" "Elijah?" "The prophet?" (see Deut. xviii. 15), and in the challenge, "Why, then, baptizest thou?" when John disclaimed the right to any of these names. John's reply is the echo of his earlier proclamation of the one mightier than he who should baptize with the Spirit (Mark i. 7, 8), only now he added that this one was present among them (John i. 26, 27).

99. This interview occurred several weeks after Jesus' baptism, for upon the next day John saw Jesus (John i. 29), now returned from the temptation, and pointed him out to a group of disciples. Something in Jesus' face or in his bearing, as he came from his temptation, must have impressed John even more than at their first meeting; for he was led to think of a prophetic word for the most part ignored by the Messianic thought of his day, "He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter" (Isa. liii. 7). As he looked on Jesus the mysterious oracle was illuminated for him, and he cried, "Behold the lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." Once again on the next day the same thought rushed to his lips when, with two disciples, he saw Jesus passing by (John i. 35, 36). Then as Jesus left John's neighborhood and took up again the round of ordinary life, John seems to have reverted to his more ordinary Messianic thought, his momentary insight into highest truth standing as a thing apart in his life. Such a moment's insight, caused by extraordinary circumstances, no more requires that John should retain the high thought constantly than does Peter's confession of Christ at Cæsarea Philippi exclude his later rebuke of his Lord (Mark viii. 32, 33), or his denials (Mark xiv. 66-72).

100. The disciples who heard these testimonies from John understood them to be Messianic (John i. 30-34), though their later consternation, when the cross seemed to shatter their hopes (John xx. 9, 10, 24, 25), shows that they did not comprehend their deeper meaning. Two of these disciples at once attached themselves to Jesus, and one of them, Andrew of Bethsaida, was so impressed by the new master that, having sought out his brother Simon, he declared that they had found the Messiah. The other of these earliest followers was John the son of Zebedee, and it is possible that he also found his brother and introduced James from the very first into the circle of the disciples. Jesus was about to take his departure for Galilee, and on the next day, as he was leaving, added Philip of Bethsaida to the little company of followers. Philip, impressed as Andrew had been, brought Nathanael of Cana to Jesus. The undefined something about Jesus which drew noble hearts irresistibly to himself, and his marvellous knowledge of this new comer, produced the same effect in Nathanael, as was seen earlier in Andrew and Philip, and he acknowledged the new master as "Son of God, King of Israel" (John i. 49).

101. These early confessions in the fourth gospel present a difficulty in view of Jesus' warm approval of Peter's acknowledgment of him at Cæsarea Philippi (Matt. xvi. 13-20). Jesus saw in that confession a distinct advance in the disciples' thought and faith. Yet the religious feeling which early questioned whether the Baptist even were not the Messiah (Luke iii. 15) would almost certainly have concluded that John's greater successor must be God's anointed. The very fact that men's thoughts about the Messiah were varied and complex made them ready for some modifications of their preconceptions. One with such subtle personal power as Jesus had exercised was almost sure to be hailed by some with enthusiasm as the looked-for representative of God. In fact, it is probable that at any time in the early days of his ministry Jesus could have been proclaimed Messiah, provided he had accepted the people's terms. Such a confession would have been merely the outcome of enthusiasm. The people, even the disciples, did not know Jesus. They all had high hopes and somewhat fixed ideas about the Messiah, nearly every one of which was destined to rude shock. How little they knew him Jesus realized (John i. 51), and his self-mastery is manifest in his attitude to this early enthusiasm. He was no visionary; he had a great work to do and a long lesson to teach, and he was patient enough to teach it little by little. He did not rebuke the ill-informed faith of a Nathanael, but sought gradually to supplant the old thought of the Messiah and of the kingdom by new truth, and to bind men's affections to himself for his own sake and the truth's sake, not simply for the idea which he impersonated to them.

102. The visit to Cana seems to have found a place in the fourth gospel, because there the new disciples discovered in their master miraculous powers which were to them a sign that he was in truth God's anointed. It is probable that at the time of this miracle the disciples thought only of the power and the marvel, yet the sharp contrast between John's ascetic habit and Jesus' use of his divine resources to relieve embarrassment at a wedding feast must have impressed every man among them. Their minds, however, were as yet too full of Messianic hopes to leave much room for reflection. They were content to have a sign, for in the view of Jesus' contemporaries signs were essential marks of the Messiah (John vi. 30; vii. 31; Mark viii. 11). They did their reflecting later (John ii. 22).

103. Miracles are as great a stumbling-block to modern thought as they were a help to the contemporaries of Jesus. The study of Jesus' life cannot ignore this fact, nor make little of it. It is fair to insist, however, that the question is one of evidence, not of metaphysical possibility. Men are wisely slow to-day to claim that they can tell what are the limits of the possible. If the question is one of evidence, it is in an important sense true that the evidence for miracle in the life of Jesus is appreciable only when that life is viewed in its completeness. The miracles attributed to Jesus may be studied, however, for the disclosure which they give of his character, and of his relation to common human need. So it is with this first sign at Cana. Jesus had just heard the call to be Messiah, and in his lonely struggle in the wilderness had given a loyal answer to that call, and had set out to do his Father's business in his Father's way. He who by the Jordan still carried the marks of struggle, so that the Baptist saw in him the suffering Saviour of Isaiah liii., now returned to the ordinary daily life in Galilee, and as a guest at a wedding feast he commenced that ministry of simple human friendliness (Matt. xi. 19; compare Mark ii. 15-17; Luke xv. 1, 2), which set him in sharp contrast alike with John's asceticism and with the ritualism and pedantry of the Pharisees.

104. His human friendliness is all the more worthy of note, inasmuch as on his return to Cana Jesus did not take up again the old relations of life as they existed before his baptism. This is clear from his reply to his mother when she reported the scarcity of wine (John ii. 3-5). While it is true that the title by which Jesus addressed Mary was neither disrespectful nor unkind (John xix. 26), the reply itself was a warning that now he was no longer hers in the old sense. A new mission had been given him, which henceforth would determine all his conduct, and in that mission she could not now share. Here is one of the many indications (compare Mark iii. 21, 31-35; Luke ii. 48) that Mary did not understand her son nor his work until much later (John xix. 25; Acts i. 14). That with such a clear sense of his new and serious mission Jesus' first official act was one of kindly relief for social embarrassment is most significant. He chose to show his divine authority to his new disciples in a way that brought joy to a festal company. Little as the disciples were likely to appreciate it at the time, it was beautifully indicative of the simplicity and everyday lovableness of Jesus' idea of the earnest service of God.

105. With the disciples thus strengthened in faith, and the mother not separated from him though unable to know his deepest thoughts, and the brethren who could not yet nor later understand their kinsman and his work, Jesus went down to Capernaum (John ii. 12), which proved thenceforth to be the centre of his greatest work and teaching. There for a time, how long cannot be known, he continued in quiet fellowship with his new friends, until the approach of the Passover drew him to Jerusalem to make formal opening of his Messianic work in that centre of his people's religious life.