presence a certain sense of fear. His impatience at the slightest opposition would lead him to commit unaccountable and apparently absurd acts.2 It was not that his virtue weakened; but his struggle in the cause of the ideal against the actual became insupportable. He was bruised and angered by contact with the soil. Obstacles irritated him. His notion of the Son of God became disturbed and exaggerated. Consciousness of the Deity has its flow and ebb; no man is a child of God all his life long, without intermission. One is such at certain times, through sudden illuminations, and then lost in weary darkness. The fatal law which condemns an idea to loss of vigour as soon as 'it seeks to convert men, applies to Jesus. Contact with men lowered him to their level. The tone he had adopted could not be sustained beyond a few months. It was time for death to relax the tension of a situation strained to the utmost; to remove him from the impossibilities of a path that had no issue; to deliver him from a trial too prolonged, and introduce him, henceforth above all frailty, into its heavenly repose. 1 This is especially noticeable in Mark iv. 40, 41; v. 15; ix. 31; x. 32. 2 Mark xi. 12-14, 20-23 [blasting of the fig-tree]. CHAPTER XX. OPPOSITION TO JESUS. DURING the early period of his career, Jesus does not seem to have met any serious opposition. His preaching, thanks to the extreme liberty enjoyed in Galilee and to the great number of teachers who arose on all sides, made no noise outside a quite narrow circle of persons. But when he entered upon a career brilliant with prodigies and public successes, the storm began to threaten. More than once he was obliged to conceal himself and fly.1 Antipas, meanwhile, never interfered with him, though Jesus sometimes expressed himself very severely about him.2 At Tiberias, his usual residence, the tetrarch was only four or five miles distant from the district chosen by Jesus for the field of his activity; he was told of the miracles, which he doubtless took to be clever tricks, and desired to see them.1 The incredulous were at that time very curious about this sort of jugglery. With his ordinary tact, Jesus refused. He took care not to lose his way in an irreligious world, which wished to extort from him some idle amusement; he aspired only to gain the people; for the simple he reserved means suited to them alone. 3 1 Matt. xii. 14-16; Mark iii. 7 and ix. 29, 30. 2 Mark viii. 15; Luke xii. 32. Josephus, Life, 9; Madden, "History of Jewish Coinage," p. 97 et seq. Lucian, Lucius (authorship doubtful), 4. Once the report went about that Jesus was no other than John the Baptist risen from the dead. Antipas became anxious and uneasy;1 he employed artifice to rid his dominions of the new prophet. Certain Pharisees, under the pretence of interest in Jesus, came to tell him that Antipas was seeking to kill him. Jesus, despite his great simplicity, saw the snare, and did not depart. His wholly peaceful bearing, and his remoteness from popular agitation, at length reassured the tetrarch and dissipated the danger. The new doctrine was by no means received with equal favour in all the towns of Galilee. Not only did unbelieving Nazareth continue to reject the man who was to create her glory; not only did his brothers persist in not believing in him,3—but even the towns on the lake-shore, though generally friendly, were not all converted. Jesus often complains of the unbelief and hardness of heart which he encounters; and though it is natural, in such reproaches, to allow for some exaggeration in the preacher, though we hear in it a certain tone of that outcry against the age (convicium seculi) which Jesus seems to have caught from John the Baptist, it is clear that the country was far from thronging in a body to the kingdom of God. "Woe to thee, Chorazin! woe to thee, Bethsaida!" cried he; "for if the mighty works which were done in you had been seen in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes: but I tell you that it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you. And thou Capernaum, that 4 1 Matt. xiv. 1, 2; Mark vi. 14-16; Luke ix. 7-9. 8 John vii. 5. 4 Matt. xii. 39, 45; xiii. 15; xvi. 4. Luke xi. 29. hast been lifted up to heaven, shalt be brought down to hell; for if the mighty works which have been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. It is for this I tell you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee."1 "The queen of Sheba," he added, "will rise up in the day of judgment against the men of this generation, and will condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold a greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the day of judgment against this generation, and will condemn it; because they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and behold a greater than Jonas is here." 2 His wandering life, at first so full of charm, now began to weigh upon him. "The foxes," said he, "have their burrows, and the birds of the air their nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to rest his head." "3 He accused unbelievers of not yielding to evidence. Bitterness and reproach more and more found lodging in his heart. Jesus, in fact, could not accept opposition with the coolness of the philosopher, who understands the ground of the various opinions that divide the world, and so finds it quite natural that all should not be of his mind. One of the principal defects of the Jewish race is its bitterness in controversy, and the abusive tone which it almost always mingles in it. There never were in the world such hot disputes as those of the Jews among themselves. It is a sentiment of nice discernment that makes the polite and moderate man. Now, the lack 1 Matt. xi. 21-24; Luke x. 12–15. of this feeling is one of the most constant features of the Semitic mind. Works of refinement in thought or style such as the Dialogues of Plato, for example are altogether foreign to people of this race. Jesus, who was exempt from almost all the defects of his race, and whose dominant quality was precisely that of an infinite delicacy, was led in spite of himself to employ the general tone in his attack or defence.1 Like John the Baptist,2 he spoke in very harsh terms against his adversaries. Of an exquisite gentleness with the simple, he was embittered in presence of unbelief, however little aggressive. He was no longer the mild teacher who delivered the "Sermon on the Mount," who as yet had met with neither resistance nor difficulty. The passion that underlay his character led him on to the keenest invectives. Thus he applied to himself, not without reason, the passage from Isaiah : 5 "He shall not strive nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench." Yet many of the counsels which he urges upon his disciples contain the germs of a real fanaticism, 7 — germs which in the Middle Age were to grow into a system of extreme cruelty. "6 Are we to reproach Jesus for this? No great change 1 Matt. xii. 34; xv. 14; xxiii. 33. 8 Matt. xii. 30; Luke xxi. 23. 2 Matt. iii. 7. A man of our own 4 This singular mixture ought not to surprise us. times, M. de Lamennais, has forcibly presented the same contrast. In his noble book, "The Words of a Believer," the most immoderate anger and the sweetest relentings alternate, as in a mirage. This man, who was extremely gentle in the intercourse of life, became unreasonably obstinate toward those who did not think as he did. 5 Chap. xlii. 2, 3. Matt. x. 14, 15, 21, 22, 34-39; Luke xix. 27. • Matt. xii. 19, 20. |