The story of Jesus Christ : an interpretation

Front matter

May not Inay® ny, wet be rouet — ay, ALO ae Oe

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Fiction THE EMPTY HOUSE. Illustrated.

Contents

PRESAGE . ‘ ms -

. Tue Boy ¢ : :

. A Beavtirut Scene .

II

There have been in all ages three kinds of persons: those who never see mystical appearances, those who think they do, and those who do; and the three types may be confounded. It is also to be suggested that visitors from. an invisible life, if such there are, and whoever such there are, may be responsive to the absence or the presence of welcome, like any other superior or sensitive being. Angels, like people, might come where they are wanted, trusted, or expected.

In fact, there are laws of spiritual hospitality, breach of which may, for aught we know to the contrary, deprive a human creature of the mystical privileges. The soul of this Hebrew girl was hostess to all that was pure and perfect, delicate, ethe- ‘real, devout. As the flower receives the sun at dawn, as the earth the rain at drought, she instinetively received the divine.

The angel stood quietly. He seemed to wish not to alarm the girl. She thought him a spirit of hich rank. He spoke with the tenderness natural to strength and to superiority alone. Was he used to stand in the presence of God? Yet he said, “ Fear not, Mary.”

How astonishing the conversation which followed ! The scene moved on steadily to its solemn climax. Question and answer succeeded with increasing courage on the part of the Galilean girl, and with growing definiteness on that of her celestial guest. Clearly but gently she was given to understand that she had not been made the subject of an inconsequent apparition, such as were frequent enough in Oriental experience or imagination; but that she was the agent of the most tremendous revelation which this planet has ever known.

Chosen out of all the world, the Hebrew maiden whose qualifications for her solemn mission were the simple, womanly ones of a pure heart and a devout life received the angel’s message as she who could be chosen by it would be sure to do. The fiat of Deity was in the magnificent attitude of the angel ; he stood tall, erect, majestic. Awed, the woman fell upon her knees before the messenger of God, _and veiled her face from sight of him. “Be it unto me,” she said, “ according to thy word.”

Now, when he perceived that Mary understood the import of his embassy, the angel left her. Gabriel, a great spirit, mighty in rank, went his way to that mysterious condition of life from which invisible beings may wander — why not? — not for petty purposes, but when sufficient cause exists to summon a superior to an inferior creature from a higher to a lower system of things.

The woman was left, in a world like ours, to her unique experience.

She had received from the vision a prediction whose nature so utterly transcends all mortal laws and all mortal experience that he would profane the very courts of mystery who should descend to offer for it any human explanation.

There is no quibbling possible with the marvel. It must be rejected or accepted on its own great grounds. No compromise between fact and fancy has dignity in the isolation of the case.

Shall we be less high-minded than the instinct of the race and the faith of the ages?

Take the wonder as it is told.

The incarnation of Deity is an idea older than the time when the Galilean girl in Nazareth received a spirit’s message. This mystical possibility has been a favorite with certain crude and ancient religions. Instances might be given of it, but not here; they jar upon the lofty and beautiful character of the Christian story, which so far surpasses them in purity, in pathos, and in philosophy, that one has not the rudeness of heart to introduce them in its matchless, opening chapter.

Was all the fable but a perplexed, prophetic yearning for the fact? At last, in this simple, hallowed way, has history met it?

Gabriel seems to have been something of a philosopher (as well as altogether an angel) when he reminded the astonished woman, at the close of his announcement of the incredible facts, that with God nothing is impossible. These were astute words under the circumstances, and worthy of a superior intelligence. The argument admitted of no reply.

Mary listened to it gently. Her soul was a lily. All motherhood has been dignified forever by the spotless mystery. All humanity is nobler for the delicacy of the womanly nature from which the Son of the Highest should be born into a low world.

Iif

The story of the Gospels was written by men. Men have studied and expounded it for two thousand years. Men have been its commentators, its translators, its preachers. All the feminine element in it has come to us passed through the medium of masculine minds. Of the exquisite movements in the thought and feeling of Mary at this crisis of her history, what man could speak? Only the hearts of women can approach her, when, quite without angelic endorsement or even human protection, she is left to meet the consequences of the will of God upon her life.

The angel had disappeared in his own ether. The music of a celestial voice was replaced by the chat of the villagers, the plain, usual people to whom marvels did not happen; who would understand nothing. She who had heard the accents of heaven shrank from the tones of earth. Fragments

_ of family conversation — the note, though most familiar, often least sympathetic to the listener — had a foreign sound. .

Had Mary a mother living? or loving? It is touching to know that the first act of the wondering girl, after the angel had explained the nature of her future to her, was to seek the sympathy of another woman, and that woman not of her own household.

There was a village, Juda by name, in the south of Palestine in the hill country of Judea; it was a hard journey of about five days from Nazareth. There Mary had a friend. She took the journey.

An elderly woman, reticent, dignified, devout, herself the subject of a strange experience, received the girl. Mary crept into her arms; she found it hard to speak, even to Elizabeth. Then she found it harder to be silent. Her sensitive nature vibrated between exaltation and anxiety. There is a song famous and sacred in musical history — an inimitable outburst of religious and poetic feeling. In the home of Elizabeth Mary uttered the Magnificat. The two women confided in each other. Mary thought of the hard journey back to Nazareth ; of the caravan of curious neighbors or kinsfolk which she must join; her heart sank. Oh, to stay on and on, protected and respected, quiet, and safe! Dreading to return to her own home, she lingered in the house of her relative. Shielded, trusted, understood, how should she face the cruel storm that awaited her? She clung to this brief, slight anchorage.

The suffering element in the life of the son began early in the soul of the mother. A desolate mater. nity forecast the melancholy of the child.

And now, the inexorable action of the greatest drama in the world began to move. The claims of her father’s 1 roof summoned the absent girl. Her kinswoman might shelter her no longer. With dignity, with sweetness, and in silence, Mary gathered her courage, and came back with her secret to her home and her neighbors.

The angel of the mystery had borne a significant name, — Gabriel, the Might of God, or a Mighty One isGod. But Gabriel had vanished. No angel was visibly courier to Mary, when, in the weakness of woman, she took the weary journey back again to face her unknown fate.

IV

In his shop in Nazareth, Joseph the carpenter worked drearily. Hammer and saw fell from his dispirited hand; his basket of wooden nails lay unused. His dejected eyes wandered through the opening which served as door and window to his simple place of business. His heart was far from his work, and heavy as doom. »

This grave, honest man,” a middle-aged person, with experience of life behind him, loved the girl to whom he was betrothed. His restrained and unself- — ish tenderness had chosen her with that decision

1 Joachim, born in Nazareth ; her mother, Anna, native of Beth. lehem. Tradition. * A widower. Tradition.

which belongs to mature affection, whose depth is te a youthful fancy as the Mediterranean Sea beyond the mountains was to the spring at Nazareth. The whole nature of the man was involved. His mind ‘moved heavily about the central fact. The cruelest of disasters seemed to have struck his promised wife — this sweet, this saintly girl. The marvel that had befallen her was scoffingly received.

This elect and tender being was bearing in patient loneliness an unspeakably pathetic lot.

Thus again, the awful law of sacrifice which was to become the ruling passion in the life of the son, began in the courageous and noble maternity foreshadowing his character.

Joseph, the betrothed of Mary, meditating on her virtues and her beauty and her danger until he was sick at heart, fell asleep at last, from weariness, in his shop among his tools. It is easy to see the carpenter, almost as he was. Ages move and customs vanish, but certain facts remain,—the shape of a shaving cut by a sharp edge from wood is the same, and so is the fashion of a manly heart.

The betrothed of Mary woke from his sleep, resolved. The Jews were a people accustomed to place great significance upon dreams, especially upon those of a sacred character, and Joseph had dreamed the dream which was to decide, from a practical point of view, the fate of the world.

Had he carried his terrible perplexity in prayer to the very gates of sleep? And had God met it there, because it was ready to be met? The carpenter rose, refreshed and relieved. He had in this manner, occult to us and to our time, but perfectly natural to him and to his, received the command most welcome to his loyal heart. He had been directed to trust and to wed his promised wife.

Betrothal was an important rite among his people, not less so than actual marriage. Betrothal was beautifully called “the making sacred.” It was a formal, festive occasion, lasting several days. A great social affair was made of the whole scene.

Joseph and Mary, being poor, had been quietly betrothed. No invitations to a costly feast were ‘sent out; they passed their vows in the simplest and severest manner. Nevertheless, the vows were passed. The sanctity of the relation was unimpeachable. Mary awaited, in the seclusion of her troubled home, the will of God and of men upon her future. Her eyes widened and darkened with patient sadness. How piteous her position no man has ever told us; few have guessed, and none could understand.

At this crisis in the story one straightforward, chivalrous act set everything right. Joseph the carpenter, being of royal blood, strode like a man through the gossip of the village, and took his promised bride to be his wife. In the Oriental phrase and custom, this *“‘ redeemed” her. In the shelter ‘of her husband’s home misapprehension could not touch her, and gossip might forget her. Has his tory, or has reverence, ever done justice to Joseph? It seems hardly. In our admiration for the everwomanly which Mary’s ideal has left in a world that needed it, we have a little overlooked the ever | manly, the simple, noble, loyal deed, the gentleman mechanic who knew how to love a woman and to protect her, thinking more of her and less of himself, as a man should do. And of this ideal, too, the world has need.

Vv

The political situation among the race to which Joseph and Mary belonged was, at this time, extremely interesting. The Hebrews were above all things a hero-loving nation; and their heroes were dead. They were a people of a marked literary quality, and their literature was a thing of the past. Their poets, like all other men of importance among them, were of a religious temperament and bore the name of prophets. The Jews revered their prophets. Now, at the time of. which we write, there were no prophets. Most nations undergo crises in which the higher qualities among their leaders sink underground for a time like subterranean rivers. Such a crisis was now drawing down the Hebrews. The hero- worshipers were without heroes. The idealists were perishing for ideals. The thinkers were suffering for stimulation. The common citizen was dully and thoroughly disheartened.

The Jews were notable in this respect, that they had experimented at a theocracy and had failed in it. Their dejection was proportional to their defeated aspiration. It was, after all, a fine idea, that of selecting the Almighty for a chartered Ruler, and accepting nothing less than his personal control. This superb national conception was apparently a doomed one, for the Hebrews were a conquered nation, and had been for nearly forty years.

In certain respects, more humiliating than enslavement to Babylonia, Greece, or Egypt, was enslavement to Rome. By the irony of fortune these proud people were now subjects in their own land, were but the disdained provincials of a vast empire. This is to say, that Caesar Augustus occupied the Roman throne, and Herod, his vassal king, the palace at Jerusalem.

From a time near the beginning of the national history the religious poets of the Jews had foretold a strange event. Even Moses, the law-giver, had intimated it. ‘Phe great poet Isaiah had sung of it like a sibyl. The strenuous Daniel had insisted on it like a homesick captive. The national records preserved it as dreary mines preserve the secret of a strange and cheerful jewel.

The theocracy, in a word (that was the idea) had not been neglected by its invisible King. Jehovah had never forgotten the people who had elected to be his subjects. A substitute appointed by Him would appear before the ruin of the nation was complete ; would unite the scattered tribes, would mend the broken machinery of government; would grasp the shattered power, restore the lost glory, and make the future splendid.

The appearance of this deputy of God was expected by this wretched and poetic people with a confidence which is the more striking when we come to the dénouement of the story. Whoever, whatever, he should be, — wherever, however he should mani:

fest himself — the Wonder was to come. To this unknown, unseen, unborn, was given the name of the Messiah, or the Anointed ; a recognition of a fact which the mass of the people were exceedingly dull at understanding: that he was to have a sacred as well as a political character. The rich imagination of the nation had always been smouldering about this being. But a touch was needed to set it afire. He was the Hero of heroes. To his mysterious image all their disappointed hero-worship clung.

In the year of which we speak, “ all the world” (such was the imperial audacity of the phrase) was complaining under especial grievance. A census preparatory to extra taxation was ordéred; and the consequence was a tumult. The people were bitterly angry; but escape from the great hand of Rome was impossible. Cesar Augustus was ruler of the world. Herod, his creature, controlled more territory than any dead Jewish King had ever done. The once splendid and sacred throne of David now existed, a pitiable farce, only to extend the forces of execrated and alien heathenism. Raging and ‘impotent, the subjects prepared to obey. |

To Nazareth, as to other villages in Palestine, the Roman fiat came.

Long and severe were the journeys required of the country people who must answer to this enrollment: edict. KEvery citizen was obliged to register himself at the town whence his family had sprung. This involved a national commotion. The Jews were not only in the stir of revolt, but in the irritation of travel, — poor of pocket, uncomfertable in body, and sore at heart.

VI

Two plain people of Nazareth started ‘at dawn one winter day to take one of these annoying journeys. Joseph and Mary, husband and wife, traveled as poor people must; on. foot, or with one beast of burden between them.

There was a little town, about six miles south of Jerusalem, between seventy and eighty from Nazareth. Bethlehem was the birthplace of David the King; and Joseph the builder, descendant of David, must register there.

Mary, his wife, went with him. Why? She, too, was a daughter of kings. Did she own some bit of property in Bethlehem ? — real estate, perhaps, unmarketable, but taxable, such as only made _ her “land poor;” giving her no income, but yielding some to Rome? Did she, too, register? But this was not necessary. Women were not obliged to present themselves personally; a written report of their property sufficed for them. Why, then, did Mary —who had the gravest of reasons at that time for wishing rest and shelter — take that crnel journey over one of the roughest of Palestinian pathways ?

Precisely because she had reasons for doing’ the thing that her heart craved. And her heart craved that she should at that time of all others be near her husband, who understood her. Joseph must go to Bethlehem, and go just then. Mary would not allow him to leave her behind alone. The cir: cumstances were too unusual. Her need of him was absolute. Indeed, it might not have been safe for her to stay at home unprotected.

There was another reason; but how far this influenced her only the heart of Mary ever wholly knew. Did she share this visionary idea with the quiet man who loved and guarded her, as they came down from the hill-country into the caravan route? Or did she keep it shyly to herself?

Her child would have been born in Nazareth, but for this accident of the census. But was it only an accident that the census must come. into the question just then ?— that the family must register, and in Bethlehem? Was it one of those divine incidents in which the great Will rides over little human wills, and brings everything out as no one could possibly have expected, as no one could have planned? For Mary was a reader of the poets of her people; and learned in all their Scriptures. A thousand years ago those ancient dreamers had associated strange things with the town of Bethlehem. Did she remember them? If she did, could she discuss them ? There, it had been written, the Governor of her people should be sought. There the Wonderful should enter the world. Could she dwell on this, and hold her courage? Could she forget it, and be Mary?

Strictly speaking, there were no roads between Nazareth and Bethlehem. Rome built roads, but not at this time for her enslaved Hebrews. The caravan routes that traversed Palestine were hard traveling. Rough past rudeness were the foot-ways and the hoof-ways that led from Nazareth down through the valley, over mountain side, and rolling rock, and jagged limestone, and through sliding dust ; a severe journey of five days or more, as you might make it, according to one’s means of locomotion or the strength of the travelers.

The wife’s store of strength was small, and the journey dragged. She was such a young creature ! —a mere girl — and delicate of organization, as we know.

Think of it as December, too, and that means the chilly season in Palestine, with roads across the plains in bad condition. The rains were over; sunshine smote the hills, and the silver leaves of the olives glanced like little steel swords in the wet light. Even frost was possible at that time of the year. Snow was not unheard of. |

The two travelers arrived in Bethlehem at night, foot-worn and chilled and faint. The wife, perishing of fatigue, had passed the stage of physical suffering when one takes any care or thought for what is to happen next. Because of her weakness, they had lagged behind the other travelers, and the town was already brimming over with strangers like themselves. very house was crowded. Her anxious husband took her from threshold to threshold in vain. The climb to the village up a steep hill had added a last hardship. <A faint light, swinging on a rope across a doorway, signified the village inn. They toiled up; the woman half dead of this last effort. But the khan could not admit them.

Alarmed by the condition of his wife, Joseph persisted manfully in his determination to find her shelter. Mary asked no question, expressed no concern. Her head fell upon her breast. The poor, homesick, young creature was dumb with suffering. Oh, the mistake of coming on this miserable journey! She thought of her home at Nazareth, of her bed, perhaps of her mother’s face ; or of that other, Elizabeth, who had understood and cherished her.

Dully, at length, she heard her husband say that there was a stable behind the inn, and that for the common humanity of the deed, the people of the khan would let her in. He carried her to the stable: she crept among the straw, like the animals around her; and there — hastened probably by her eruel journey —the anguish of motherhood overtook the exhausted wife.

VII Mary, presently, looked about the stable. Wo. men are merciful to each other in this one respect at least, and we are not forbidden to think that | some matrons of the inn had ministered to the homeless young traveler. The child was not dressed, but wrapped tightly in a long band, —the babyclothes of the East. The women had left the young mother, now, with her husband and the eattle. She faintly regarded the stable.

The khan to which Joseph and Mary had applied was not a comfortable place; and the stable in which the baby was born was a rude affair. Mary saw that it was a cave in the heart of a rock; a species of grotto. A little flat lamp of clay whose wick floated in oil, or a rude kind of lantern made by straining waxed cloth over a frame of rings, was allowed her. It struggled feebly with the damp darkness. By the weak light she saw the cattle, prevented from sleeping by the presence of their unusual neighbors, and perplexedly ruminating. Straw was about, and hay and provender. Mud was beneath. The walls of the grotto dripped. She and Joseph were alone —no, not alone: there lay the child, breathing beside her.

It must have been far on in the night, probably towards morning, that she stirred uneasily, and, out of fitful slumber, broken. by conscious suffering, turned again, broad awake, and looked about her.

No, it was no dream. She was not at home in happy Nazareth. Strange to the eye, strange to the ear, strange to the heart, were her rude surroundings. She was used to decent poverty, not to outcast, squalid scenes like this. Joseph sat silently regarding her. Had Joseph not slept? A tired man, himself in need of rest — how loyal was he to his precious charge! But Joseph had arisen, and stood straight and strong between her eyes and the entrance to the grotto. Voices were audible. Joseph was speaking. Question and answer fol: lowed. Visitors were in the stable.

Day was breaking. The gray light crept in with a kind of reverence, as if the morning were on its knees. In the cold color Mary saw the visitors.

Their ealling was stamped on their dark, weather. tinted faces, and on their rough, warm clothing. They wore mantles of woolen stuff, and heavy, sheepskin cloaks. They carried powerful sticks, strong enough to kill a wild beast. They were shepherds. Some fierce dogs accompanied them. Mary did not speak. She lay on the straw, and listened perplexedly. The court of the khan was quite open to the public. The poor young mother had not been even allowed the privacy sacred to her emergency. That had been hard enough; but visitors! And now! She winced when the intruders, all speaking fast in their excitement, pushed their way towards her. Their eyes were fastened eagerly upon one object. She heard exclamations and answers, and the low, controlled replies of Joseph. She saw the great, tanned fingers of the men pointing at the baby. She heard one say to another : —

“That was the sign!”

And another answer : —

‘Inamanger! There he is!”

Then the shepherds spoke all together, their sentences falling over each other. But Mary — for her ear was delicate and quick — made out as much as this: in their pastures, a mile or more out of Bethlehem, these strong, not untender men, iron of fist to wolves and robbers, silken of touch to sheep and lambs, — men wakeful of eye and ear by profession, apt to see or hear what others slept through, sud- . denly, in the deep of the night, had seen the sky blossom with celestial forms and faces, and heard the ether ring with celestial tongues and songs.

Half in terror, half in delight, they had hurried up to the town to tell and to test their wonderful experience. Had the baby been in a respectable bed, had he been born like a comfortable child, they could not have found him. Only one newborn infant in Bethlehem lay in the manger of a public stable.

Now these were not ordinary, coarse herdsmen, but men selected for a superior position — that of guarding the flocks dedicated to the uses of the Temple; therefore they and their ewes, and the lambs destined for sacrifice, were encamped within easy distance of Jerusalem all the year round. Winter, like the summer, found these men at their posts of duty. They were important servants of the Temple, not without respect among the people, certain to command a hearing. They went straight out from the stable, and told their experience to anybody and everybody in the crowded town. The village, overflowing with guests from all parts of Palestine, listened to this strange tale; and travelers, returning to their homes, carried the rumor of it widely.

The shepherds went back to their sheep. They had seen their only angels. The next night, the next year, brought no more. They talked all their lives about this one great experience. Did they search the skies midnight upon midnight for that flower of life? Did they tell their children’s children how the splendid Oriental zenith burst that only time into celestial bloom? How the soft, winter wind broke into articulate speech? How he looked — the mighty one, who was General of the Heavenly Host? And how they found that spirits spoke the truth. For there was the child; and the manger.

But the young mother did not speak when she heard about the angels, and the sign. She was glad when the shepherds were gone out of the stable. She looked at the baby mutely. Her heart was like a white flower, closing over a drop of dew. She kept these things, and pondered them.

Joseph, too, was quiet. He was one of the plain men who make no fuss about duty ; but he had been in a hard position. He thought about the shepherds, the angels, their startling message, and the dream of his in Nazareth. It was impossible to think how it would have been, if he had not trusted it, and her. The eyes of the girl wife questioned her husband gently. The mysterious child slept beside them. The hand of Joseph silently clasped that of Mary.

VIII

Kepler, the astronomer, in the year 1604 had a pupil superior to the common run of students, —a thoughtful man, with his eyes open, and not afraid to say what he saw with them. In December of the preceding year, a conjunction of two of the superior planets (Saturn and Jupiter) had interested all scholars of the sky. Ina few months, Mars had marched into the society of these celestial comrades, making one of the important stellar events of the time. Following this conjunction, in the autumn of 1604, there flashed into the sky a new and short-lived star. This the pupil of Kepler pointed out to his master, and this the master studied. It was a very brilliant star, more like a diamond than a comet, and sparkling with changing colors.

This star burned for a year, waned and wasted out of sight. But its life was long enough for the great astronomer to conceive a great idea.

Kepler was familiar with astrology, as all masters of an accurate science ought to be with its kindred imaginative studies; and he knew quite well how the dreamers of the East in the times of which we are thinking were governed by the speculations of that art. Kepler, from the astronomer’s point of view, fell to studying certain events which are interwound with the opening scenes in the history of Christianity. The result was one of the dramatic theories of science, liable to be held only by men of imagination.

According to the calculations of the great astronomer, in the Roman year 747, or at a time closely preceding the birth of the strange child in the Bethlehem stable, a similar conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter had appeared in the Oriental heavens, and Mars had joined the two in the spring of 748, making a brilliant exhibition. Kepler boldly hazarded the belief that the course of this conjunction was followed, like that of 1604, by a temporary star. His position has not been altogether approved by modern astronomers, but it is far too interesting to omit from any record of a curious historical fact on which astronomy has a peculiar judicial claim.