The man of Nazareth

Foreword

In writing this book, I have had the ordinarily intelligent man constantly in mind, and have tried to answer some of the questions about Jesus, which have often arisen in his thinking but have rarely passed his lips. But while writing for the people, I have never forgotten the experts, a fact which they will quickly perceive, if they will do me the honor to penetrate to the core of the volume. I have tried to observe the rules of the critical game, have practically used only the first three gospels, and, even in them, have clearly differentiated the sources. I am ready to defend my position in the scholarly arena.

This book is not an investigation, but a statement of the results of fourteen years of research, put forth in popular form. There are therefore few critical arguments, few citations from scholarly authorities and not many quotations. Consequently, also, I have not failed to use the con-

V1U FOREWORD

elusions, so laboriously won, for the quickening of faith and courage. As the readers will soon see, I belong to no party, but have attempted to investigate independently, to make a fearless search for truth, and have drawn the picture of Jesus which the facts, as I see them, give me. My whole attitude has been historical rather than theological. The final result will probably fully satisfy nobody, and that may be the best test of its real worth.

This is not a Life of Jesus, nor a summary of his teachings, nor a mere character sketch. It is rather a treatment of the most important problems about Jesus and his career, and that so far as possible from the viewpoint of Jesus himself. I am aware of the boldness of the attempt, but feel that we may reverently penetrate to the very heart of Jesus. Indeed, it is doubtful if we can truly know him in any other way.

It should be understood that Chapter I is merely preliminary, inserted to give a general view of the subject and to create an appetite for something more definite and detailed. In my own mind, Chapters III and IV constitute the principal contribution of the book, and are the real

FOREWORD IS

reason for its publication, though Chapters VII and IX may possibly rank with them.

Of course, it would be impossible for me to give a list of all the books which have influenced my thought on this great subject. The following authors should, however, be mentioned as peculiarly responsible for the final form and indeed some of the phrases of the book. For the first chapter, I am much indebted to a sermon on The Light of the World by my friend, Rev. James A. Francis of Boston, and to Harnack's Christianity and History. My greatest helpers for the most important chapters were Von Soden in his Die Wichtigsten Fragen im Leben Jesu, and Holtzmann in his Das Messianische Bewusstsein Jesu. For the chapter on the teaching, Clarke's The Ideal of Jesus proved valuable. For the discussion of the character, I must mention Bushnell's The Character of Jesus, still inspiring though from the older point of view, and a little book, published since I began to write, Fosdick's The Manhood of the Master, which is sure to prove of lasting worth.

For kindly and yet thorough criticism, my thanks are due to two of my colleagues, Professor

X FOREWORD

Richard M. Vaughan and Mr. James P. Berkeley, and, especially, to my father and mother, who have also labored in many other ways to help me in the production of this book.

Frederick Lincoln Anderson.

Newton Centre, Mass.

April 30, IQ14.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Power Behind the History . . i II. The Situation in Which Jesus Found

Himself 23

Chapter I

Almost two thousand years ago there appeared a man, who changed the course of human history, who, above any other person living or dead, dominates the thought and feeling of our modern world. The most intelligent and progressive part of mankind date their letters, count time, from the year of his birth.

Yet herein lies the deepest mystery, for he had none of the external advantages which men think necessary to such vast influence. He came of a despised race. He was born of the peasant class. He lived nearly all his life in an obscure town of a frontier province. He never had what either his Graeco-Roman or Jewish contemporaries would have called an education. It cannot be proved that he ever read any book except the Old Testament, or that he ever studied the philosophers of Greece. He grew up under the blighting shadow of a fanatical and bigoted religiosity. He never traveled a hundred miles from his home; nor, until his fate was practically sealed, did he ever see any country other than his own. He had no money or any desire to make money. He had no powerful or cultivated friends. He eschewed politics. He championed no popular social reforms. He stirred up no class conflict. He never led an army, or wrote a book, or founded a school. He never invoked the aid of art, music or literature. He either was shut out from all the avenues that in the experience of men lead to greatness, or he refused to use them. His whole public activity extended over little more than three years, quite possibly two, perhaps only one. He was only thirty-five or six at most when he died. His teachings antagonized the religious traditions, the cherished political hopes of his people, the interests of the higher classes, and all the ingrained selfishness of humanity. He continually disappointed his followers and even his dearest friends. He was finally betrayed by one of his own disciples, and was crucified between two robbers, suffering the most shameful death known to that age.

And now the mystery begins. He had hardly stepped out into public life, when all felt that some extraordinary person had come upon the scene. In a few weeks he had focused the attention of the nation on himself. Multitudes hung upon his lips. The leading men of the Jews soon found it necessary to journey to Galilee to oppose this young man, who was like to steal their authority over night. The crowds began to think him another Elijah or Jeremiah, and even to wonder sometimes whether he might not be the Messiah. Contrary to rule, his most familiar friends, his daily table-companions, were more impressed than those who knew him less intimately. They accepted him as their teacher, prophet and king. They found no stain of sin, no shadow of impurity in him. They hailed him as Messiah, although he was so different from what they expected the Messiah to be, and by that name they meant nothing less than that he was God's special Representative on earth, the Founder of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Bringer of Salvation and the Final Judge of Men. After his death, it did not seem unnatural to them that he should have risen from the dead, nor incongruous with what they knew of him that he should be sitting at God's right hand. They confessed him as the Good Shepherd, the Light of the World, the Prince of Life, the Son of God. They said that they had beheld his glory, glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And soon a multitude of Jews and heathen, wise and fools, declared that he was the strength of their life, the Savior of their souls, and that they had seen the glory of God in his face. "This fact, which is as plain as day," says Professor Harnack, "is unique in history, and demands that the personality which lies behind it should be regarded as unique."

These wonderful ascriptions of an almost divine power and glory were soon matched by the facts of history. The impulse of this powerful personality began to make itself felt throughout the world. Within two months after his death, three thousand men and women enthusiastically joined his cause in the very city in which he had been executed as a criminal. His influence extended in ever widening circles. It leaped the barrier of a narrow Judaism and entered upon a career of conquest in the Gentile world. His followers gladly suffered imprisonment, torture and death for his sake. The bitterest persecutions only fanned the flame and scattered the conflagration. The spiritual enthusiasm spread like a prairie fire till the whole Roman Empire was ablaze. The ablest and most thorough of the early persecutors was struck down, and became the most devoted of his followers, the most successful missionary of the faith. Within thirty-five years of Jesus' death, a Roman emperor was burning Christians at the stake in his own gardens in the distant capital of the world. Jesus had against him the power, the culture, the religion, the pride, the self-interest, the prejudices, the traditions and all the selfish passions of the greatest, the richest, the most magnificent civilization that man up to that time had produced. But after a two hundred and fifty year contest in which all these tremendous forces fought with the energy of despair, the Roman Empire at last surrendered. The Galilean peasant had conquered. Emperors, at least nominally Christian, occupied the seat of Nero and Diocletian. The completeness of the triumph is strikingly evidenced by the facts that the priceless marbles which once adorned the throne-room of the ruthless persecutor, Domitian, on the Palatine, are today the pride of the Church of Jesus in the valley below the Capitoline, and that the most magnificent Christian cathedral in the world stands in the very gardens once lighted by the fires of Nero's victims.

By simply associating them with himself, Jesus changed the humble fishermen of Galilee from ordinary men into the leaders of a new and world-wide movement, and has made them famous for all time. More people read Peter, John and Matthew today than read Homer, Virgil or Shakespeare. We call our children John, James, Philip and Thomas, and the name of the mother of Jesus is the commonest of all. A Johnson has been President of the United States. An Andrewson is writing these lines. The Jamesons, the Matthews, the Phillipses, the Thompsons and the Petersons are a great host. These obscure disciples are honored by cities like St. John, St. Paul and St. Petersburg; while the most beautiful and stately buildings of Christendom bear their names, St. Peter's at Rome, St. Paul's in London and St. John the Divine in New York.

It is interesting to note that these names are beginning to invade India, China and Japan.

No character of the past exerts so direct and vast an influence on the present world as Jesus. The movement to which his personality gave the initial impulse has outlived all contemporary governments, philosophies and social systems, has endured all the vicissitudes of nineteen centuries, has crossed all the oceans, has invaded every continent, is strongest in the world's foremost nations and never was more intelligent, more spiritual, more powerful or more hopeful than it is today.

One of the most remarkable features of Christianity is her faculty of self-criticism and self-purification. In this she seems almost to reproduce the functions of a living thing in throwing off what is useless and effete. The impulse and the power are from within. Thus she renewed herself in the Reformation, and again in the Wesleyan revival. In fact the process is continually going on, not only in the body as a whole, but in each living section of it. Outworn forms are cast aside, ancient traditions fade, doctrines are modified. Christianity is always digging deeper foundations for her faith. The apologetic which once satisfied has begun to seem superficial and inadequate. Much she once thought essential, she now sees was not the essence after all. Ever deeper, deeper, deeper she goes, until she founds her faith on the granite rock of reality. This means progress and true growth. It is not the sacrifice of faith, but a truer valuation and appreciation of it.

Christianity is also constantly broadening her outlook. More and more she sees with Paul that all things are hers, because she is Christ's and Christ is God's. She breaks the shell of Judaism, she travels from Asia to Europe. She survives the dissolution of the Roman Empire through the conversion of the northern barbarians. She finds herself able to cut loose from the papacy, and at last from alliance with the state. She crosses the ocean to a new world. Finally she begins to take in earnest the missionary call and the missionary hope, and is now seeing what is really the beginning of a universal break-up of heathenism. She recognizes the opportunity for intensive as well as extensive growth. She lays claim to the secular as well as to the religious sphere. She takes all life as her empire, and looks forward to the day, when not only the inner life and the home, but business, politics, education, art, music, literature and the whole social order shall be Christian. Thus she strengthens and nourishes her hope. Her visions grow larger and more glorious with the ongoing years. Her task seems ever greater and more fundamental and more essential to the good of men. She realizes herself as the Light of the World.

She is the surer of this, for she finds in herself an amazing ability to adapt herself to new situations. Beginning as a simple, unreasoning Jewish faith, she was able to present herself to an age dominated by Stoicism and Neoplatonism, and to wear what seemed to the men of that day a familiar face. When Scholasticism came in, she was a Scholastic, and at the Renaissance still knew how to be in fashion. So the history has gone on until, in our own age, she seems to be thriving on biblical criticism, the conceptions of the new science and the philosophy of evolution. And yet she is always herself. In all these different forms, she is seeking and finding something to round out and complete her truth.

IO THE MAN OF NAZARETH

Fashions in philosophy come, and fashions in philosophy go, but she goes on forever. From each fashion she gains some advantage, but casts the fashions aside, when they no longer help her to make herself known to men. Just now she is getting ready to emphasize her pragmatic side; and she is strong there. She feels sure that no discovery of truth can ever disconcert or harm her, for she knows that in her experience of union with Jesus and communion with God she has touched the rock bottom of life. Thus she is certain of ultimate victory. She knows that when the world gets through with all its experiments, it is bound to come back to her and her experience of God through Jesus.

Our whole point is this, that all this power of self-purification, all this capacity for profounder insight and growing vision, all this adaptability to human hearts and minds in every age, all this stir of hope and certainty of faith, in short, all this actuality and potency of life she constantly refers to the spirit and power of Jesus working in her. In him and him alone she recognizes the source and impulse of her vital energy.

Jesus' influence on our own age may also be

THE POWER BEHIND THE HISTORY II

seen in the fact that he lays hold of men today just as truly and wonderfully as he laid hold of Paul on the road to Damascus, or Augustine in the garden at Milan. These marvels never cease, and science and sociology are at last taking them seriously. Professor James in his Varieties of Religious Experience and Begbie in his Twice Born Men have called the world's attention again to this common, world-wide phenomenon. Such conversions occur in Chicago and Pekin, in London and Madras, in Madagascar and New Zealand, in Greenland and on the Congo; and not only among the degenerates of our own civilization and those sunk in heathen superstition, but also among the educated and prosperous. I sometimes contemplate rivaling Begbie with a book on Twice Bom Respectables. I have a superabundance of material for it. But Jesus lays hold of John and Andrew none the less surely than he does of Paul. Though in such cases the experience is quieter and not calculated to summon and fix the attention of men, yet the life is just as truly moulded and shaped, just as thoroughly, though not as strikingly, changed. There are millions of Christians of this type, and they do not yield in devotion or faith to those of the other sort.

With one voice they all testify, men of every temperament, of every age, of every race and of every social condition, that Jesus has drawn them to himself, has made them moral victors, has led them into communion with the Father, has given unity to their lives, has furnished them with a new and infinitely worthy motive and purpose, has filled them with love to their fellows, has inspired in them the ideals of a new humanity in a new society, and has put into their hearts the faith that overcomes the world.

This life relation with Jesus his followers count their greatest blessing, their most sacred treasure, the unspeakable gift. And, when occasion presents itself, they offer an indisputable proof of the value they set upon it. "All that a man hath will he give for his life," is an ancient proverb, and it is nearly the truth. But there are some things more precious than life, and this blessing which Jesus gives his followers is one of them. Rather than seem untrue to him the Giver, today, as during all the centuries of the past, they will endure supreme tortures and death in its most dreadful forms. Doughty, the English University explorer of Arabia, so radical in his views that many old-fashioned saints would almost deny him the Christian name, spent years absolutely alone among the fanatical Musselmen, but, unlike other western travelers in those lands, he scorned to hide the fact that he was a Christian, and openly approached the very walls of Mecca. His life was in daily danger. The horrid bigotry of the Arabs made every night's sleep a peril, and yet, as he says, he could never make up his mind "to deny the dear name of Jesus," even when threatened with imminent and instant death.

The Christian boys of Uganda in Africa preferred to burn at the stake rather than renounce their lately found Savior, and they died singing amid the flames. The followers of Jesus in Madagascar allowed themselves to be thrown over precipices to the rocks below, although one compromising word would have saved them. Whole families of humble Russian peasants, after years of harassing persecution, have tramped the thousand miles to Siberia across the barren plains in the face of bitter winds and, after suffering all privations, have starved to death in proof of the value they set upon the light and life which Jesus had brought to their souls. And in our century, ten thousand Chinese men, women and children laid down their lives in the anti-christian uprisings in China. One word of repudiation of Jesus, only a word, would have given them life, but that word they would not speak. The allied troops found the whited bones of hundreds of Christians in the palace gardens of Prince Chuang in Pekin, mute and glorious witnesses of the power and blessing of Jesus in our own age. Indeed, there is no living king, emperor or leader, who today could summon so large a host of devoted volunteers, ready to live or die for him, as Jesus. The power of Jesus in society continually increases. He somehow created a new moral and spiritual atmosphere in the world and a new type of human character. Sins, that stalked unashamed before he lived and died, have indeed survived, but they have never recovered caste, and some of them are now almost unknown in Christian lands.

In Jesus mankind made a distinct moral advance and has ever since, despite all waverings and backslidings, lived on a higher plane. Lecky has well said, "The simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. In the character of its Founder, the church has an enduring principle of regeneration." With Jesus' insistence on the seriousness of life and his appreciation of the infinite value of a single human soul, there was ushered in a new civilization, rightly called Christian. With the elevation of woman and the passion for purity, both originating with him, there was created the Christian home. Just before Jesus was born, liberty died in the Graeco-Roman world, but he gave it a new reason for existence, and, more than any other, he is responsible for the modern revival of democracy. It is his spirit, which has abolished slavery and duelling, which frowns on cruelty and oppression, which is behind all the forces of justice, mercy and brotherhood, which is making unrelenting war on all the forces of evil. He is at the bottom of much of our social unrest. His spirit stirs us to bring in the kingdom of righteousness and joy and peace. He has entered into the warp and woof of our social life. As Bushnell says, "It were easier to untwist all the beams of light in the sky and to separate and expunge one of the primary colors, than to get the character of Jesus, which is the true gospel, out of the world."

His utterly unexpected triumphs in recent years nourish the faith of his followers that the day is approaching when he shall rule universally in the hearts of men. His cause seems to be gaining an almost irresistible momentum. His final victory is changing from being a matter of religious faith into being a matter of rational probability. These advances are inextricably intertwined with selfish motives, and disappoint those idealists who do not understand that the history of all progress is like that of a flowing tide, whose new high water marks alternate with ebbings. Recently the incoming waves have reached points hitherto unknown. A universal, idealistic, democratic, essentially Christian movement seems to be encircling the globe, breaking out here and there only to be suppressed. All mature observers rejoice in the new high records of progress, and understand that the retrogressions are merely temporary. The next wave is bound to go higher still. 1 The dethronement of that old serpent, Abdul Hamid, by the Young Turks in 1909 and the reign of the original Committee of Order and Progress in the Ottoman Empire was an event of the highest and most cheering significance. The national rising against despotism in effete Persia and the proof that thousands there were willing to die, as they said, "for the sweet name of liberty," was beyond the faith of the most confirmed optimists. To her shame England has helped Russia put out that light, but Persia and the world can never be the same again. The appeal of the Japanese Minister of Education to the Christian missionaries to help solve the moral problems of the Empire was plainly a turn in the tide. Most amazing of all was the mighty change in China. The West is still dumbfounded at the thought of a great Chinese Republic, and most fittingly its provisional President was a Christian. Who could have believed it ten years ago? Today the Crescent flaps feebly in the breeze behind its last

1 Since these sentences were in print, the general European war of 1914 has broken out. The author, however, on mature reflection sees no reason for changing the wording. Often the greatest ebb precedes the greatest flow.

breastworks in Europe. The old, corrupt Mohammedanism is sinking to irremediable ruin. Whether the Young Turks can create a new Mohammedanism, more in accord with Christian ideals and the thought of Jesus, remains to be seen. It is the only hope the Levantine world has of avoiding Christian domination. All this is partial, stained with sordidness, baseness and blood, subject to temporary reverses, and yet it is a wave of idealism, the pulse of a new life, the splendid promise of a better world, and its ultimate source is Jesus. His teaching and his spirit irresistibly press the nations forward. He is marching on.

All this accords with the philosophy of our time. We do not minimize the influence of ideas, slowly trickling down from the few into the minds of the many until they become a part of life and sometimes decide the fate of nations and of ages. Nor do we forget those strange, almost inexplicable mass movements of human minds, which presage new epochs. Still the truth remains, and without it no history can be rightly written, that the sharp turning points in human progress have been due to great events and the rise of great personalities.

The political evolution naturally led up to Napoleon, but when he unexpectedly appeared, he changed the whole course of the time, remade the map of Europe, and brought in a new era. With the French Revolution and Napoleon, history turned a sharp corner. The world could never move along in the old groove again after the execution of Louis XVI. and the battle of Austerlitz.

The Spanish-American war was not much of a war, but it has had the profoundest influence on our national life. Nothing could have been more unforeseen than the battle of Manila, yet it woke this country on that first of May to a new vision, a new duty and a new career. If an intelligent American had gone to sleep in 1897 and awaked in 1899, ne could not have believed that one brief year could have produced so great a change. This little war was a momentous event. It made the United States a world power, and has brought about a new national feeling which has been and will be of tremendous import.

In the middle of the last century Germany was a chaos of mutually jealous states, but Bismarck rose, unified them into the strongest military empire of our time, and gave the German people the stimulus, which makes them today everywhere feared as business rivals. His iron will, his masterly diplomacy, his courage to fight at the right time, his ability to inspire a whole race, in short, this one man permanently altered the course of European history, and no one doubts that his mighty personality, however many helpers he may have had, was primarily alone'responsible.

What was it that changed the history of the world in the first century?

It would perhaps be fair to our fathers to say that most of them answered, Christianity, and by this they usually meant a certain system of truths, which they regarded as then for the first time revealed and proclaimed. A great deal of stress was laid on the originality of the revelation as proof of its divine character. But the scholars went to work on this proposition, and they have shown that many New Testament ideas were derived from the Old Testament, that there are the most striking parallels to many more in the uncanonical prechristian Jewish literature, that Greek, Persian, Indian and Chinese sages had had some of the same thoughts, that somewhat contemporary mysteries had rites and ideas surprisingly like the Christian. Thus critical investigation seemed to have disproved the uniqueness of Christianity, and some Christians, much disturbed, began to doubt whether anything very remarkable had happened in the first century after all.

But when the new scientific historical school came in, they perceived that in spite of all that had been shown, something of an epoch-making character had occurred in the first century. They traced Christianity back and they found that it had its source in a great personality. Christianity is the most powerful moral and religious force in the world today, and has been, so far as Europe is concerned, for nineteen centuries. Such a movement must have an adequate cause, and no other adequate cause has ever been discovered except the personality of Jesus. Therefore he must be great enough to produce this age-long and world-wide effect. There are limits beyond which radical criticism cannot go and remain scientific. So Professor Schmiedel, one of the foremost radical critics, said to me in Zurich, "We may nibble away at the character of Jesus, but we must at least leave a sufficient initial impulse for this great and living thing called Christianity."

The personality of the Man of Nazareth, then, is the power behind the Christian history.

Chapter II The Situation In Which Jesus Found Himself

Two great factors formed the background of life in the first century, Greek civilization and Roman rule. Alexander had carried the Greek language and Greek culture to the Orient and his great empire had virtually become a Greek world. Even the remoter districts were more or less strongly influenced. Over this Greek world, Rome had extended its political sway. Men of our time are not likely to overestimate the power and efficiency of the Roman government at this period. It knit the various countries around the Mediterranean into one great compact body politic, whose vigorous heart beat in Italy and sent the impulses of its authority to the furthest boundaries.

When Jesus began his ministry, Palestine had

been virtually Roman for nearly a hundred

years, and composed part of the eastern frontier

of the Empire. Judea and Samaria for more than twenty years had constituted a Roman province of the second or third class under a Roman governor, called a procurator. Galilee and Perea for more than thirty years had been ruled by Herod Antipas, the tetrarch, a son of Herod the Great, but he was a mere underling of the Romans. The northeastern part of Palestine had been for the same period under similar conditions the dominion of Philip, the tetrarch, a halfbrother of Antipas.