The life of Jesus, the Christ

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

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Preface

I HAVE undertaken to write a Life of Jesus, the Christ, in the hope of inspiring a deeper interest in the noble Personage of whom those matchless histories, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the chief authentic memorials. I have endeavored to present scenes that occurred two thousand years ago as they would appear to modern eyes if the events had taken place in our day.

The Lives of Christ which have appeared of late years have naturally partaken largely of the dialectic and critical spirit. They have either attacked or defended. The Gospel, like a city of four gates, has been taken "and retaken by alternate parties, or held in part by opposing hosts, while on every side the marks of siege and defence cover the ground. This may be unfortunate, but it is necessary. As long as great learning and acute criticism are brought to assail the text of the Gospels, their historic authenticity, the truth of their contents, and the ethical nature of their teachings, so long must great learning and sound philosophy be brought to the defence of those precious documents.

But such controversial Lives of Christ are not the best for general reading. "While they may lead scholars from doubt to certainty, they are likely to lead plain people from certainty into doubt, and to ieave them there. I have therefore studiiv PREFACE.

ously avoided a polemic spirit, seeking to produce conviction without controversy.

Joubert 1 finely says: "State truths of sentiment, and do not try to prove them. There is danger in such proofs; for in arguing it is necessary to treat that which is in question as something problematic ; now that which we accustom ourselves to treat as problematic ends by appearing to us as really doubtful. In things that are visible and palpable, never prove what is believed already; in things that are certain and mysterious, — mysterious by their greatness and by their nature, — make people believe them, and do not prove them ; in things that are matters of practice and duty, command, and do not explain. 'Fear God' has made many men pious; the proofs of the existence of God have made many men atheists. From the defiance springs the attack ; the advocate begets in his hearer a wish to pick holes ; and men are almost always led on from a desire to contradict the doctor to the desire to contradict the doctrine. Make Truth lovely, and do not try to arm her."

The history of the text, the authenticity of the several narratives, the many philosophical questions that must arise in such a field, I have not formally discussed; still less have I paused to dispute and answer the thousands of objections which swarm around the narrative in the books of the sceptical school of criticism. Such a labor, while very important, would constitute a work quite distinct from that which I have proposed, and would infuse into the discussion a controversial element which I have especially sought to avoid, as inconsistent with the moral ends which I had in view.

1 As quoted by Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism, p. 234 (London ed.), 1865.

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PREFACE. V

I have however attentively considered whatever has been said, on every side, in the works of critical objectors, and have endeavored as far as possible so to state the facts as to take away the grounds from which the objections were aimed.

Writing in full sympathy with the Gospels as authentic historical documents, and with the nature and teachings of the great Personage whom they describe, it is scarcely necessary to say that I have not attempted to show the world what Matthew and John ought to have heard and to have seen, but did not; nor what things they did not see or hear, but in their simplicity believed that they did. In short, I have not invented a Life of Jesus to suit the critical philosophy of the nineteenth century.

The Jesus of the four Evangelists for wellnigh two thousand years has exerted a powerful influence upon the heart, the understanding, and the imagination of mankind. It is that Jesus, and not a modern substitute, whom I have sought to depict, in his life, his social relations, his disposition, his deeds and doctrines.

This work has been delayed far beyond the expectation of the publishers, without fault of theirs, but simply because, with the other duties incumbent upon me, I could not make haste faster than I have. Even after so long a delay the first Part only is ready to go forth ; and for the second I am obliged to solicit the patience of my readers. But I aim to complete it • within the year.

The order of time in the four Evangelists has always been a perplexity to harmonists, and it seems likely never to be less. But this is more especially characteristic of details whose value is little affected by the question of chronological order, than of the great facts of the life of Jesus.

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I have followed, though not without variations, the order given by Ellicott, 1 and especially Andrews. 2 But a recent " Gospel History Consolidated," published in London by Bagster, 3 so generally accords with these that I have made it the working basis; and, instead of cumbering the margin with references to the passages under treatment, have preferred to reproduce at the end of this volume a corresponding portion of the text of the " Gospels Consolidated," by a reference to which, chapter by chapter, those who wish to do so will find the groundwork on which this Life is founded.

Although the general arrangement of the " Gospels Consolidated" has been followed, it -will be seen that I have frequently deviated from it in minor matters. For example, believing that the reports of the Sermon on the Mount, as given in Matthew and in Luke, are but two separate accounts of the one discourse, I have not treated Luke's record as that of a second delivery of the same matter, as is sometimes done. The two accounts of the discourse and uproar at Nazareth I have regarded as referring to but a single transaction, while the " Gospels Consolidated " treats them as separate events. But such differences in mere arrangement are inevitable, and not important. No two harmonists ever did agree in all particulars, and it is scarcely possible that any two ever will. The very structure of the Gospels makes it wellnigh impossible.

1 Historical Lectures on the Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ. C. <T. Ellicott.

2 Tlie Life of Our Lord upon Earth. Samuel J. Andrews.

8 Imported and sold in the United States by John Wiley and Son, New York.

4 I would not be understood as recommending the " Gospels Consolidated " as a substitute for the four Gospels, but as an auxiliary. The fulness with which transactions are there made to stand out will help' the common reader to attain conceptions to which scholars come by a laborious intercomparison of the four narratives.

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PREFACE. vii

They are not like the " dissected maps," or pictures, whose severed parts can, with some patience, be fitted together into the original whole, a hundred times exactly alike. They are little more, often, than copious indexes of a voluminous life, without dates or order. It is not probable that a single note was taken, or a line written, in Christ's lifetime. The Gospels are children of the memory. They were vocally delivered hundreds of times before being written out at all ; and they bear the marks of such origin, in the intensity and vividness of individual incidents, while chronological order and literary unity are but little regarded. In the arrangement of particulars, therefore, when no clew to the real order of time could be found, I have felt at liberty to select such order as would best help the general impression.

That this work may carry to its readers the richest blessing which I can imagine, a sympathetic insight into the heart of its great subject, Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world, and a vital union with him, is my earnest wish and devout prayer.

HENRY WARD BEBCHER.

Brooklyn, N. Y., August, 1871.

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CONTENTS OF PART I.

CHAPTEE I.

T Page

CHAPTEE II.

The Overture op Angels .8

CHAPTEE III.

The Doctrinal Basis 34

CHAPTEE IV.

Childhood and Eesidence at Nazareth 42

CHAPTEE V.

The Voice in the Wilderness 63

CHAPTEE VI.

CHAPTEE VII.

Jesus, his Personal Appearance 102

CHAPTEE VIII.

The Outlook 118

CHAPTEE IX.

The Household Gate 136 r

Contents

CHAPTER X.

The First Jud^ean Ministry * 5 "

CHAPTER XI.

Chapter I. Introductory

HOW well the Hebrew Priest, but especially the Prophet, had clone his work, may best be seen in that moral element which made Judaism to religion what the Greek spirit had been to the intellectual life of the world. Nowhere out of Judsea were to be found such passionate moral fervor and such intense spiritual yearnings. But this spirit had spent itself as a formative power; it. had already overshot the multitude, while- higher natures were goaded by it to excess. There was need of a new religious education. This was the desire and expectation of the best men of the Jewish Church. How their spiritual quickening was to come, they knew not. That it was coming was generally believed, and also that the approaching deliverance would in ome mysterious way bring God nearer to men. " Of the day and of the hour " knew no man. The day had come when a new manifestation of God was to be made. A God of holiness, a God of power, and a God of mercy had been clearly revealed. The Divine Spirit was now to be clothed with flesh, subjected to the ordinary laws of matter, placed in those conditions in which men live, become the subject of care, weariness, sorrow, and of death itself.

The history of this divine incarnation we are now to trace, in so far as the religious knowledge which has sprung from it can be carried back to its sources, and bo made to illustrate the sublime truths and events of the Lord's earthly mission.

Since there are four inspired lives of our Lord, — two of them by the hands of disciples who were eye-witnesses of the events recorded, namely, those by Matthew and John, and two, those of Mark and Luke, by men who, though not disciples, were yet the companions of the Apostles, and derived their materials, in part, from them, — why should it be necessary to frame other histories of Jesus, the Christ ? Since the materials for any new life of Christ must be derived from the four Evangelists, is it likely that uninspired men, after a lapse of nearly nineteen hundred years, can do better than they did who were either witnesses or contemporaries of the Lord, and who were appointed and guided by the Divine Spirit to make a record of truth for all time ?

The impression produced by such suggestions will be materially modified upon a close examination of the Gospels.

1. The very fact that there are four lives, which strikes one as a fourfold blessing, and which surely is an advantage, carries with it also certain disadvantages. For a clear view of the life and teachings of our Lord, four fields are to be reaped instead of one.

The early ages needed testimony ; our age needs teaching. Four witnesses are better for testimony. But for biography one complete narrative, combining in it the materials of the four, would have given a picture of our Lord more in accordance with the habits and wants of men in our day.

This diversity of witnesses subserves other important ends. No single man could have represented all sides of the Saviour's teaching. A comparison of Matthew's Gospel with that of John will show how much would have been lost, had there been only a single collector and reporter of Christ's discourses.

It is not easy, even for one trained to investigation, to gather out of the four Evangelists a clear and consistent narrative of our Lord's ministry ; and still less will unstudious men succeed in doing it.

No one will deny that every Christian man should seek a comprehensive, and not a fragmentary, knowledge of his Lord, In other words, every Christian reader seeks, for himself, out of the other four, to weave a fifth life of Christ. Why should not this indispensable work be performed for men, with all the aids of elaborate investigation ?

2. The impression derived from this general view is greatly strengthened by a critical examination of the contents of the Gospels.

It is one of the striking facts in history, that One whose teachings were to revolutionize human ideas, and to create a new era in the world's affairs, did not commit a single syllable to paper, and did not organize a single institution. An unlimited power of

-a acting upon the world without these subsidiary and, to men, indispensable instruments, — viz. writing and organization, — and only by the enunciation of absolute truths in their relation to human conduct, is one of the marks of Divinity.

There is no evidence that Jesus appointed any of his disciples to perform the work of an historian. None of them claim such authorization. Only Luke 1 makes any reference to the motives which led him to undertake the task of writing, and he claims no other than a personal desire to record a knowledge which he deemed fuller than that of others.

The four Gospels are evidently final and authoritative collections of oral histories and compilations of narratives which were already circulating among the early Christians. In the cases of Matthew and John, these materials were wrought upon the fabric of their own personal observation and experience.

There is in none of them any consistent regard to the order of time or of place. The principle of arrangement evidently is to be found in the moral similarities of the materials, and not in their chronological sequences. Different events are clustered together which were widely separated. Whole chapters of parables are given as if they had been delivered in a single discourse. We should never have known from Matthew, Mark, or Luke, that our Lord was accustomed to go up to Jerusalem to the great Jewish feasts ; but we do get it from John, who is mainly concerned with the history and discourses of his Master in Judaea. Matthew, on the other hand, bestows his attention upon that part of the Saviour's life which was spent in Galilee. Moreover, he seldom enters, as John does, upon interior and profoundly spiritual experiences. John almost as little notices the merely external facts and events of the Lord's life, which Matthew habitually regards. 2

1 Luke i. 1-4. " Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word ; it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all tilings from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed."

2 "The first three Evangelists describe especially those things which Christ did in our flesh, and relate the precepts which He delivered on the duties to be performed by us, while we walk on earth and dwell in the flesh. But St. John soars to heaven, as an eagle, above the clouds of human infirmity, and reveals to us the mysteries of Christ's Godhead, and of the Trinity in Unity, and the felicities of Life Eternal, and gazes on the Light of rfl— — th

In their structure the Evangelical narratives have been well compared to Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates. They are clusters of events, parables, miracles, discourses, in which the order of time is sometimes obscure, and sometimes wholly inverted.

In every age of the Church it has been deemed wise to attempt to form a harmony of the four Gospels. Since the year A. D. 1500, there have been more than fifty harmonies made by most eminent Christian scholars. Of Lives of Christ and Harmonies there have been more than one hundred and fifty.

But for some such help, the difficulties arising from a comparison of the different narratives would be insoluble. Many obstacles are thus removed, many apparent contradictions are congruously explained, many apparent inconsistencies are harmonized ; and it is shown that, of the inexplicable facts remaining, none are important, — certainly not as respects the great truths or the essential events of the narrative.

3. It is probable that no equal amount of truth was ever expressed in a mode so well fitted for universal circulation. And yet, as the Gospels were written by Jews, and with primary reference to certain wants of the age in which the writers lived, they are full of allusions, references, customs, and beliefs, which have long since passed away or have become greatly modified. There are also in the New Testament allusions to customs of which there is no knowledge whatever preserved.

But far more important is it to observe the habits of thought, the whole mental attitude of the Apostolic age, and the change which has since come upon the world. Truths remain the same ; but every age has its own style of thought. Although this difference is not so great as is the difference between one language and another, it is yet so great as to require restatement or, as it were, translation. The truth which Paul argues to the Romans is as important for us as it was for them. But we are not Jews. 1 We care nothing for circumcision. The Hebrew law has never

Immutable Truth with a keen and steady ken." — St. Augustine, translated hy Dr. Wordsworth. Introduction to Commentaries on the New Testament.

1 Jews were dispersed through all the civilized world, and in general, both in Greek and Roman cities, there were synagogues, in which the Old Testament Scriptures were ■read, and in which the Apostles made known to their own countrymen the fulfilment of those Scriptures in the history of our Lord. See Acts xxviii. 1G - 24.

tl • tfir ^ : a entangled us. We have our prejudices and obstinacies, but they are not the same as those which the Apostle combated. The truth of the Epistle to the Romans, when separated from the stalk and ear on which it grew, is of universal nutriment. But in Paul's own day the stem and the husk also were green and succulent ; they were living and indispensable parts of his statement of the truth. Far less is this distinction applicable to the Gospels, and yet it is, in a measure, true of them.

Our age has developed wants no deeper, perhaps, nor more important, than those in the Apostolic age, but needs essentially different. We live for different ends. We have other aspirations. We are plagued with new infidelities of our own. We are proud in a different way, and vain after our own manner. To meet all these ever-changing necessities of the human heart and of society, men are ordained to preach the gospel. If merely reading the text as it was originally delivered were enough, why should there be preachers ? It is the business of preachers to readapt truth, from age to age, to men's ever-renewing wants.

And what is this, but doing by single passages of Scripture what a Life of Christ attempts to do systematically, and in some dramatic form, for the whole ? Some have said, almost contemptuously, " The only good Lives of Christ are those by the four Evangelists." And yet these very men are so little content with these same Evangelists, that they spend their lives in restating, illustrating, and newly applying the substance and matter of the Evangelical writings, — thus by their own most sensible example refuting their own most foolish criticism !

4. But there are reasons yet deeper why the Life of Christ should be rewritten for each and every age. The life of the Christian Church has, in one point of view, been a gradual unfolding and interpretation of the spiritual truths of the Gospels. The knowledge of the human heart, of its yearnings, its failures, its sins and sorrows, has immensely increased in the progress of centuries.

Has nothing been learned by the Christian world of the methods of moral government, of the communion of the Holy Ghost, of the power of the Divine Spirit to cleanse, enrich, and fire the soul, after so many centuries of experience ? Has this world no lore of love, no stores of faith, no experience of joy unfolded from the original germs, which shall fit it to go back to the truths of the New Testament with a far larger understanding of their contents than they had who wrote them ? Prophets do not always understand their own visions ; Apostles deliver truths which are far deeper, and more glorious in their ulterior forms, than even their utterers suspect.

It is both a privilege and a duty of the Church of Christ to gather up, from time to time, these living commentaries upon divine truth, — these divine interpretations, by means of human experience, of the truth as it is in Jesus, — and carry back this light and knowledge to the primal forms and symbols. Our Lord himself declared that his kingdom of truth was as a seed. But what shall interpret a seed like its own growth and harvest ? To us the narratives of the Gospel ought to mean far more than to the primitive disciple, or they have been germs without development, seed without a harvest.

All critics of the Gospels, though, in each group, differing by many shades among themselves, may be reduced to two classes : —

1. Those who believe that the writings of the Evangelists are authentic historical documents, that they were divinely inspired, and that the supernatural elements contained in them are real, and to be credited as much as any other parts of the history ; and, —

2. Those who deny the inspiration of the Gospels, regarding them as unassisted human productions, filled with mistakes and inaccuracies ; especially, as filled with superstitions and pretended miracles.

These latter critics set aside all traces of the supernatural. They feel at liberty to reject all miracles, either summarily, with " philosophic " contempt, or by explanations as wonderful as the miracles are marvellous. In effect, they act as if there could be no evidence except that which addresses itself to the material senses. Such reasoning chains philosophy to matter : to which statement many already do not object, but boldly claim that, in our present condition, no truth can be known to men except that which conforms itself to physical laws. There is a step further, and one that must soon be taken, if these reasons are logically consistent ; namely, to hold that there is no evidence of a God, unless Nature be that God. And this is Pantheism,, which, being interpreted, is Atheism.

We scarcely need to -say, that we shall take our stand with those who accept the New Testament as a collection of veritable historical documents, with the record of miracles, and with the train of spiritual phenomena, as of absolute and literal truth. The miraculous element constitutes the very nerve-system of the Gospel. To withdraw it from credence is to leave the Gospel histories a mere shapeless mass of pulp.

What is left when these venerable records are stripped of the ministry of angels, of the mystery of the divine incarnation, of the wonders and miracles which accompanied our Lord at every step of his career? Christ's miracles were not occasional and occult, but in a long series, with every degree of publicity, involving almost every element of nature, and in numbers so great that they are summed up as comprehending whole villages, towns, and neighborhoods in their benefactions. They produced an excitement in the public mind so great that ofttimes secrecy was enjoined, lest the Eoman government should interfere.

That Christ should be the centre and active cause of such stupendous imposture, on the supposition that miracles were but deceptions, shocks the moral feeling of those even who disbelieve his divinity. Widely as men differ on every topic connected with the Christ, there is one ground on which all stand together, namely, that Jesus was good. Even Infidelity would feel bereaved in the destruction of Christ's moral character. But to save that, and yet to explain away the miracles which he wrought, has put ingenuity to ludicrous shifts.

Renatst, to save the character of his poetic hero, is obliged to depict him as the subject of an enthusiasm which grew upon him until it became a self-deceiving fanaticism. It seems, then, that the whole world has been under the influence of one who was not an impostor, only because he was mildly insane !

That such a conclusion should give no pain to men utterly destitute of religious aspirations may well be conceived. But all others, looking upon this wanton and needless procedure, will adopt the language of Mary, and say, " They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him."

THE SHEPHERDS' FIELD.

Chapter II. The Overture Of Angels

HAD it been the design of Divine Providence that the Gospels should be wrought up like a poem for literary and artistic effect, surely the narrative of the angelic appearances would have glowed in all the colors of an Oriental morning. They are, indeed, to those who have an eye to discern, a wonderful and exquisitely tinted prelude to the dawn of a glorious day. It is not to be supposed that the earth and its dull inhabitants knew what was approaching. But heavenly spirits knew it. There was movement and holy ecstasy in the Upper Air, and angels seem, as birds when new-come in spring, to have flown hither and thither, in songful mood, dipping their white wings into our atmosphere, just touching the earth or glancing along its surface, as sea-birds skim the surface of the sea. And yet birds are far too rude, and wings too burdensome, to express adequately that feeling of unlabored angelic motion which the narrative produces upon the imagination. Their airy and gentle coming would perhaps be better compared to the glow of colors flung by the sun upon morning clouds that seem to be born just where they appear. Like a beam of light striking through some orifice, they to-

-a shine upon Zacharias in the Temple. As the morning light finds the flowers, so found they the mother of Jesus. To the shepherds' eyes they filled the midnight arch like auroral beams of light; but not as silently, for they sang, and more marvellously than when "the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy."

The new era opens at Jerusalem. The pride with which a devout Jew looked upon Jerusalem can scarcely be imagined in our prosaic times. Men loved that city with such passionate devotion as we are accustomed to see bestowed only on a living person. When the doctrine of immortality grew more distinctly into the belief of holy men, no name could be found which would make the invisible world so attractive as that of the beloved city. New Jekusalem was the chosen name for Heaven.

Upon this city broke the morning rays of the Advent. A venerable priest, Zacharias, belonging to the retinue of the Temple, had spent his whole life in the quiet offices of religion. He was married, but childless. To him happened a surprising thing.

It was his turn to burn incense, — the most honorable function of the priestly office. Upon the great altar of sacrifice, outside the holy of holies, the burnt-offering was placed. At a signal the priest came forth, and, taking fire from this altar, he entered the inner and most sacred place of the Temple, and there, before the altar of incense, putting the fragrant gum upon the coals, he swung the censer, filling the air with wreaths of smoke. The people who had gathered on the outside, as soon as the smoke ascended silently sent up their prayers, of which the incense was the symbol. " And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord, standing on the right side of the altar."

That he trembled with fear and awe is apparent from the angel's address, — "Fear not!" The key-note of the new disc:

pensation was sounded! Hereafter, God was to be brought nearer, to seem less terrible ; and a religion of the spirit and of love was soon to dispossess a religion of ceremonials and of fear.

" Fear not, Zacharias : for thy prayer is heard ; And thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, And thou shalt call his name John.

And thou shalt have joy and gladness ; And many shall rejoice at his birth.

For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, And shall drink neither wine nor strong drink ;

And he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, To turn the hearts of the parents to the children, And the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; To make ready a people prepared for the Lord."