A Layman's Life Of Jesus Part 2

The peasants of Palestine knew little of any fixed law of nature. They did not ask as to that. Simply the doing of the unusual was enough for them. They demanded wonders--and healing of the sick by a word, or a touch of the hand, was a great wonder,--a miracle. He who could simply influence mind was the Master. The Galilean was born anointed with the power. He knew it--and only asked others to believe. The people of that day asked for wonders. Mere a.s.sertions of truth were not enough. "Give us a clap of thunder, or shake the earth, if You would have us believe in You. Suddenly cure these sick, and we will know Your power." He did it, not for a show, but out of pity. And the healing made adorers for the truths He taught them. One thing is sure, He never doubted His own beliefs, His G.o.d-given powers. In the solitude of the desert He had reached definite conclusions. All His a.s.sertions were positive. If He said things in parables, it was because His hearers had no understanding of plain truth. We talk to children that way when we tell them stories. His wonders, or miracles, were for the same purpose.

CHAPTER VI

A wandering Teacher. Lives in a borrowed house at Capernaum.

The Testament Books, fragments written from memory. The whole Law of Life boiled down to Seven Words. He visits Tyre by the Ocean. Walking on the Sea. A hard saying, and not understood. His friends begin to leave Him. They demand Wonders, Miracles. Raffael's great picture.

At this time the wonder-working carpenter had some dear friends in beautiful Capernaum by the lake. There were two fishermen there, brothers, Peter and Andrew. Peter was married and his wife and children joined the two brothers in the earnest welcome to the Master whenever He returned from His journeys among the lake villages.

How often He went to Jerusalem never will be surely known. Sometimes He returned to Peter's home right after a long rest in the solitude of the desert, bordering on the east side of the lake. There was a Greek country there called Decapolis. Though also a province of Rome, it was an alliance of ten confederated cities, and all wors.h.i.+ped the heathen G.o.ds. Over into this strange confederacy the Master also went sometimes, and the welcome His kindly message met was as warm as in Galilee itself. He also went over to Tyre and Sidon, by the Mediterranean sea, at times, and learned at first hand the workings of heathendom as practiced by a cultured people. On every hilltop, as He went and came, He saw temples to the G.o.ds of Greece or Rome. Here, as elsewhere, He was going and coming to preach to the poor. He was the poor man's Christ. He himself often had nothing. It has been said that it was only as a poor wandering teacher, possessed of nothing, not even a place to lay His head, that He went all about Galilee. In Capernaum He lived in a borrowed house, or from the hospitality of His two dear friends.

But right now, rich or poor, He is commencing the teachings and the wonders that are to make Him the loved and the hated of the world. To the believing He will show that He is not poor; in fact, that He has a friend ruling in the clouds of Heaven. The disappointed ones, who, mistaking the signs, had looked for a real earthly king, persecuted Him at every roadside. The very orthodox Jews hated Him--called Him a Sabbath-breaker, a glutton among sinners, and a blasphemer of G.o.d.

They seemed incapable of understanding anything He said. He talked by figures and parables--He told them stories--He talked of His father G.o.d--and His sons.h.i.+p--they would not see the spiritual sense in which He said all things. They put false words into His mouth, and then demanded He should prove them true. They listened only to deny, and to defame. Then again they demanded wonders, miracles--more wonders, more miracles. It was their only way of proving things. Had there been no wonders, no miracles, no seeming impossibilities performed, Christ would have had no followers in Palestine. a.s.serting things was not enough. "Prove to us that you are G.o.d by doing wonders." As He never had said that He was G.o.d He could not prove it. "I and my father are one," He told them, but only in the sense that every Christian is one with the father. They could not, would not, see it, and at times would have stoned Him from their towns. In His meekness, His gentleness, He bore it all. Sometimes hundreds, thousands, would hear His words, see His miracles, and believe. Other thousands, though seeing, believed not. Some of His own nearest friends, not grasping His meaning, turned their backs and left Him.

Do not even to-day many feel that He should have spoken plainer, or, is it that our few fragmentary stories of His life are misconceived, confused, misinterpreted, mistranslated--and in a sense falsified by two thousand years of time and change of methods of human thought? No one knows. The Master did not speak the language of the Bible, not even the language of the Jews. His was a Syrian dialect called Arimean. It was the tongue His mother spoke; the same dialect they talked, and laughed and sang in, that night of the marriage in Cana.

Let us not ask too much of the Testament. Time and circ.u.mstances do strange things with human thought and speech. Despite mystery, and despite fragments, in the great story, enough is left clear to teach us the spirit of the Golden Rule. Christ said that was enough. The people who wrote the books of the Testament wrote wholly from memory, and some of them were now old men. John was ninety, and was then almost the last man on earth to have seen Jesus alive. Dates, deeds, times, places, words, are sometimes much confused in the Testament.

Some things are omitted by one and told by another. Yet the spirit of each Testament book is the same--and all as authentic as writing from memory would permit. The Testament books are fragments only--yet piecing them together what a beautiful whole remains! Sometimes one wonders that just plain uncultured fishermen could write so beautifully. It would require a much larger book than this is intended to be to repeat all the tender stories, the touching words, of the Master that are portrayed by these inspired fishermen by the sea.

Even they did not tell all. In every village in Galilee, on all the winding roads, along the dear lake, in every hamlet, synagogue, the feet of the Master went. Every hour saw miracles of healing, and every poor peasant heard words of kindness. What delightful little journeys they were in the beautiful land as the Prince of Peace pa.s.sed, scattering blessings. To the happy little communities it must have sometimes seemed as if the new kingdom, the promised hour, was there already! Such crowds pressed to Him that time and again He would climb into a little boat on Galilee lake, ask His friends to push it a little from the sh.o.r.e, and there, from this improvised altar on the sea, talk to the crowds on the sh.o.r.e.

And what did He say to the people standing on the sh.o.r.e? "They were only the needed things," said in a clear, simple, beautiful language.

If He said them in parables often, it was because the people of His day understood things better said in that way. Things were made clearer, stronger, if ill.u.s.trated in stories. The great Lincoln understood the effectiveness of such an art, and pointed many a political moral by a human story. If, occasionally, the Master spoke in terms too mysterious to be comprehended by even His disciples, it was occasionally only. The needed things the common wayfarer could understand then, understands them to-day. He boiled down the whole duty of life into seven words, "Do as you would be done by." This, He said, was all there is to religion. How simple, how just, how necessary, if we hope for happiness even in our every-day life.

Once at the dawn of a beautiful summer morning in Galilee, the Master stood on the edge of a mountain and chose twelve disciples to help Him teach, and to the whole world delivered the wonderful message known as "The Sermon on the Mount." Lovelier words were never spoken--so simple, so true, so direct, so sustaining to human hearts, that they were to reach through all times and to all men. It ended with the great promise that "unto him who sought G.o.d's kingdom all things should be added." The promise of that morning in Galilee sustains mankind forever.

Once He went over to the little city of Tyre by the Mediterranean, perhaps to teach some there. Possibly it was the only time the Master ever beheld the ocean. Tyre, with its minarets, its monuments, its temples, its white sails on the sea, was a heathen city. One can fancy how profoundly stirred a soul like His, steeped in a love of nature, must have been at the first sight of the ocean. There were the white s.h.i.+ps going to every known land of the earth--there was a new and picturesque people; there was heathendom, in luxurious idolatry. The little journey served Him as material for many a reflection later in His Galilean home.

His name was not wholly strange in the beautiful heathen city by the sea--for it is told how a woman, a Greek, met Him, threw herself at His feet, and beseeched Him to heal her daughter. The persistence, the faith of this heathen woman, that He could do it, even without seeing the afflicted daughter, led to a miracle. As in almost all His life the miracle came only after the absolute show of faith on the part of the one asking. No faith, no miracle, was a constant teaching.

Only a little time there by the blue sea now, and He is soon off for a three days' stay in that heathen land--the desert cities beyond the Jordan. Heathen as they are there, they follow in mult.i.tudes and are astounded at His wonders, for He heals many of the sick.

There, too, almost on the edge of His own country, He feeds another mult.i.tude. It is the five thousand people who have followed Him to a lonesome place in the country. They are filled, and they glorify His name. As darkness comes on the vast crowd that He has fed goes home rejoicing--while the disciples enter a boat, and, despite a coming storm on the lake of Galilee, start to the other side. Jesus Himself goes up on a lonesome mountain to pray. The night is utterly dark on the sea, and the wind howls around the foot of the mountain and over the tempest-tossed waters. Naturally, the disciples and the boatmen are alarmed. Their boat is about going down--the wind is more threatening--midnight is on the sea. Once there is a little rift in the clouds, and the half-light of a summer moon falls over them; the sailors glance out onto the waves and behold the form of a man walking toward them on the billows. It is a spirit. The phantom--as phantom it surely is--fills them with alarm, but a voice cries out, "Be not afraid, it is I." It is said, Peter seeing some one walking on the water tried it himself, and would have drowned had not the strange spirit taken him by the hand. Then the phantom itself got into the boat--the winds at once went down--and, as the little s.h.i.+p touched the sh.o.r.e, the amazed disciples discover the night phantom to be the Lord Himself.

The weird story instantly is sent to all the neighboring villages, and again people come in mult.i.tudes, some to be healed, some to revile.

They were willing enough to be healed, everybody, yet the unbelieving also were there in crowds, and, strangely enough, despite wonders, miracles, and healing, a storm of opposition grows. His Galileans themselves even are joining His opponents. It is all unexplainable.

To us of the twentieth century it would seem that seeing the miracles He did, and hearing the Heavenly teaching that fell from His lips, the whole world would have fallen down and wors.h.i.+ped. Perhaps He said too many things that they could not understand.

He went up to Capernaum that morning for a little bit, and talked to the people in the village synagogue. "I am the Bread of Life," he said, "except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." This was too much for their small understandings--not a soul knew what He meant. "This is a very hard saying," His hearers answered. They puzzled their brains over it a little; loss of faith was seizing on them. Some of them commenced leaving Him. Then He said something harder still, "If this about the flesh and blood startles you, what would you say to see me ascending up where I was?" Now, still, the mystery had deepened; more people left Him. In a tone of overwhelming sadness He asked His twelve apostles "if they too would leave Him"? The storm of hatred was breaking everywhere. Enemies surrounded Him; only a few seemed absolutely faithful. The rabbis, the scribes, and the big doctrinaires at Jerusalem had their spies everywhere, watching for His smallest word to ensnare Him. They surely, earnestly, believed Him a foe to all their Jewish church. He was teaching people to despise their great prophet, Moses, and to follow the vagaries of a new, unheard of religion. He was to them worse than the heathens across the border.

What a change it all was! Even here in His own beautiful Capernaum they began to deny Him. Pharisees, Sadducees, and every conceivable enemy of the new faith are concentrating in crowds to traduce Him.

Once more they demand a sign from Heaven--again, a clap of thunder, a sudden earthquake, or something, if He wants to prove that He is really the Christ. To their insolent demands He naturally makes no reply. Then more than ever conspiracy to destroy Him is rapidly being set on foot everywhere. Shortly He will leave this people by Galilee and their hypocrisies and falseness forever. Of course, His immediate friends all around Lake Galilee and His disciples are mostly sticking to Him, but not all of them--many have gone back on Him.

One day walking on a country road He asked His disciples who the people really said He was? They answered that some thought Him one of the old prophets, risen from the dead.

Herod up at Jerusalem believed Him to be John the Baptist, whom he had murdered to please a dancing girl that night in the castle by the Dead Sea. Herod was much alarmed about it all, too. "But who do you say that I am?" the Master asked again--and Peter said, "Thou art the Christ." "Tell no one this," continued Jesus, and then He explained to them privately His coming sufferings and death. They were all astounded. But these sufferings simply "had to be"; likewise His death. It seemed impossible.

He spoke to them then about life's duties, the futility of riches, of earthly success, and added, "What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" There was much thinking now, but still little believing. In less than a week He took three of His disciples on to a high mountain to pray, and, while there before them, He was transfigured for a little while. "And the fas.h.i.+on of his countenance altered, and his raiment was white and glistening." Not only that--two angels, or spirits, appeared in glory with Him and talked about the death that was to come to Him at Jerusalem. Shortly, as the Master and His disciples went down the mountain side, they met a crowd gesticulating and shouting over an epileptic boy led by his agonized father. Some of the Apostles had tried to cure this boy and failed. The father prayed to Christ for compa.s.sion. "If thou only canst believe," answered Christ, "all things are possible." Weeping, the father said, "Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief"--and the boy at once was healed. The scene on the mountain and the story gave rise to that greatest picture in the world, Raffael's painting of the "Transfiguration." It is in the Vatican at Rome.

CHAPTER VII

Jesus goes alone and on foot to Jerusalem, to try and prove Himself. In six months they will kill Him. The rich Capital no place for Socialism. "If thou be Christ, tell us, plainly." He is a fugitive from a city mob. The Raising of Lazarus. Again the people are following Him. The great Sanhedrin is alarmed. "This Man has everybody believing on Him! He will create a Revolution yet." Jerusalem is in political danger, anyway; so is the Roman Empire. Everything seems going to pieces. "This Man has too many Followers; we must kill Him." Judas is hired to betray Him.

There is but a little stay in Capernaum now, the great Galilean will scarcely walk by His beautiful lake again. He is now thirty-two years old and more.

In a few days His disciples will have gone up to Jerusalem to the great festival, the feast of the tabernacle. It is said that some of the nearest relatives of the Galilean did not believe in Him even now.

It was they, however, who told Him to go up to Jerusalem to the headquarters of the opposition and "prove himself," if He could. "Show Thyself to the world," they said, "these things are not done in secret." And so He went alone and on foot.

Six months--and it will be the end. They will kill Him. His meditation on that lonesome foot journey to Jerusalem, with death and the cross as its last goal, we will never know.

The great Jerusalem is full of strangers. Tens of thousands are now beginning to hear of the great Galilean for the first time. There is great excitement in the city. Most of the newcomers take time to talk of Him. He is on every tongue. "When does He come, and from whence?"

"Galilee?" "No good can come from there; that is sure." "Where is He now?" "Why do the people shout?" "What does He look like?" "Will He be welcomed or stoned?"

Suddenly the sweet face of the Master himself is on the temple porch in Jerusalem. Look, He is teaching the people. How strange, how embarra.s.sing the situation. Save for a little coming of believers and friends, men and women who have come to Him from Galilee, He is almost without a friend in all that splendid city. If many souls, hearing, believe in Him, it is dangerous to say so. All such will be turned out of the synagogue, their houses and their lands taken from them. Anyway this great, unbelieving city is not the place to preach humility in, nor love for the lowly, nor the giving away of property, nor for the reproaching of the rich. That is a kind of socialism usually wanted by people who have nothing. This splendid city, with its minarets and domes, its gorgeous temple, and the magnificent structures built by Roman emperors, is full of rich people, full of aristocrats; and is governed by proud priests, who look upon the Galilean reformer and His small following with utter contempt.

One day when He was walking on Solomon's porch of the temple, numbers of Jews came around Him and tauntingly said, "How long dost Thou make us to doubt? If Thou be the Christ, tell us plainly." He answered, "I have already told you, and ye believed not." "The works I do in my Father's name bear witness of me." Then He happened to say something very mysterious. "I and my Father are one." That was too much for them. Not knowing what it meant, they tried to stone Him out of the city. "I have done many good works," He continued, "for which of those works do you stone me?" "We stone you for blasphemy," they cried, "and because being a man Thou makest Thyself G.o.d." He had to fly. Another bitter charge against Him had been His healing the sick on Sunday. Not even a good deed dare be done on the Sabbath, was a doctrine of these extreme interpreters of the Mosaic law. Once the Lord restored a blind man to sight on a Sunday, and the poor man was almost mobbed because of it.

The wrangling of the scribes and doctors about Him still goes on.

There is not a moment of peace for Him. He is even in constant danger.

On a slope of the Mount of Olives, where He often sits summer evenings looking down to the city at His feet and lamenting over it, stands the little hamlet of Bethany. Three good friends of his live there.

Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. Many a time after tiresome disputes and wranglings with insolent priests and rabbis in the city, who were only trying to entrap Him, He goes to this quiet little home among the olive groves for rest.

After a while He leaves the neighborhood of the great city entirely, and goes over the Jordan near the desert, to the very spot in fact where John baptized Him two years ago. What strange feelings must have possessed His soul while there--there where the dove had come down on Him, and where the great voice had called Him "the beloved Son"! There His public life commenced. And now He is there again. Not with the voice of G.o.d speaking to Him.--No--He is a fugitive from a city mob.

Yet a great many people from the villages come to Him down there by the Jordan and believe on Him. Many wonders are again performed. Many people are healed. A part of this restful time away from Jerusalem is spent close to Jericho. A lovely plain is there with delightful plantations and gardens of perfume. "It is a divine country there,"

said Josephus, the historian, but in those days it was all fresh and green--the climate different from now. Lover of beautiful nature as He was, this little spot of roses and verdure must have delighted His soul.

In a few days His dear friends Mary and Martha, back there in Bethany, send to tell Him that their brother Lazarus, who is very dear to Him, is sick.

"Let us go back there at once," exclaimed the Master. His disciples tried to warn Him. "Why,--they stoned you and you had to fly just now,--will you risk going back?" He reflected a moment in silence, and then told them, sadly, plainly, that Lazarus was dead. "Let us go."

And some of the disciples said, "Let us also go that we may die with Him."

It is only some twenty-five miles perhaps, and they have come near to the village. It seems the friend had been dead four days already. But the coming back is to be followed by one of the astonis.h.i.+ng wonders of Bible history. Lazarus is to be brought to life. The names of Lazarus, with Mary and Martha, had been well known in Jerusalem, and numbers of its good citizens had come out to the village to condole with the bereaved sisters. Hearing of the Master's approach, Martha hurried out to the edge of the village and met Him at the door of her dead brother's tomb, a place cut in the solid rock. "If thou hadst been here, my brother had not died," cried the sister, weeping. "He will rise again," the Master answered, simply. "Yes, I know, at the resurrection," said Martha. Again he spoke. "I am the Resurrection, whosoever believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? Hast thou faith?" And she answered, "Yes." Instantly she ran and told her sister, and she, too, came, believing and wors.h.i.+ping. "Did I not tell thee," said the Master, "that if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of G.o.d?" Then He commanded the door of the tomb to be taken away--and, in a loud voice, bade the dead to rise.

In a moment the living Lazarus walked out of the tomb. Some of the Jews, seeing it, believed. Some of the higher cla.s.ses also believed.

However it was done, it had been an astounding wonder, and the excitement ran like wildfire into the city. The great Sanhedrin and chief priests, hearing of it, instantly called a secret council.

"What shall we do?" they said. "This man doeth many miracles. If let alone, all men will believe on him--and the Romans will come and take our place and nation away from us." There was an ex-high priest named Annas at this secret meeting. He was a religious tyrant, who had never lost his power in the Jewish councils. His son-in-law, Caiaphas, was officially high priest, but only as his tool. Annas was the power behind the throne. His wishes, his commands, prevailed everywhere. The murderous strings were pulled by his hands. Annas hated Jesus, hated the apostles, hated every new doctrine; and possibly, too, he truly feared that any new religion or excitement might disturb Jewish politics, might bring on rebellion, might even bring the hatred of Rome on the Jews. He did not know that the hatred of Rome was already turned against Palestine; nor that Palestine, Jerusalem, Rome itself, were all at that moment on the road to destruction, but it is from causes with which the teaching of the Galilean, whom he is about to murder, has nothing to do. "It is better to kill this religious fanatic and disturber and save ourselves," said Annas to the great council. "We will not do it with our own hands--we will arrest Him, bring Him before the judges, and incite the mob to do the rest."

And so an order was sent out that the kind Jesus should be arrested wherever found. The miracle at the tomb, however performed, or however believed, had proved to be the most important act of the Galilean's life. Now it was, alas, to be a warrant for His death. "Now," said the Sanhedrin council, "it is going too far--all the world is running after Him."

In perhaps a week after this there was a little supper at Martha's home, in Bethany, only two miles out of the city--and the Master was there, and the resurrected Lazarus sat at the table with them.