DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEAS OF JESUS RESPECTING THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
Up to the arrest of John, which took place about the summer of the
year 29, Jesus did not quit the neighborhood of the Dead Sea and of
the Jordan. An abode in the desert of Judea was generally considered
as the preparation for great things, as a sort of "retreat" before
public acts. Jesus followed in this respect the example of others, and
passed forty days with no other companions than savage beasts,
maintaining a rigorous fast. The disciples speculated much concerning
this sojourn. The desert was popularly regarded as the residence of
demons.[1] There exist in the world few regions more desolate, more
abandoned by God, more shut out from life, than the rocky declivity
which forms the western shore of the Dead Sea. It was believed that
during the time which Jesus passed in this frightful country, he had
gone through terrible trials; that Satan had assailed him with his
illusions, or tempted him with seductive promises; that afterward, in
order to recompense him for his victory, the angels had come to
minister to him.[2]
[Footnote 1: _Tobit_ viii. 3; Luke xi. 24.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. iv. 1, and following; Mark i. 12, 13; Luke iv. 1,
and following. Certainly, the striking similarity that these
narratives present to the analogous legends of the _Vendidad_ (farg.
xix.) and of the _Lalitavistara_ (chap. xvii., xviii., xxi.) would
lead us to regard them only as myths. But the meagre and concise
narrative of Mark, which evidently represents on this point the
primitive compilation, leads us to suppose a real fact, which
furnished later the theme of legendary developments.]
It was probably in coming from the desert that Jesus learned of the
arrest of John the Baptist. He had no longer any reason to prolong his
stay in a country which was partly strange to him. Perhaps he feared
also being involved in the severities exercised toward John, and did
not wish to expose himself, at a time in which, seeing the little
celebrity he had, his death could in no way serve the progress of his
ideas. He regained Galilee,[1] his true home, ripened by an important
experience, and having, through contact with a great man, very
different from himself, acquired a consciousness of his own
originality.
[Footnote 1: Matt. iv. 12; Mark i. 14; Luke iv. 14; John iv. 3.]
On the whole, the influence of John had been more hurtful than useful
to Jesus. It checked his development; for everything leads us to
believe that he had, when he descended toward the Jordan, ideas
superior to those of John, and that it was by a sort of concession
that he inclined for a time toward baptism. Perhaps if the Baptist,
whose authority it would have been difficult for him to escape, had
remained free, Jesus would not have been able to throw off the yoke of
external rites and ceremonies, and would then, no doubt, have remained
an unknown Jewish sectary; for the world would not have abandoned its
old ceremonies merely for others of a different kind. It has been by
the power of a religion, free from all external forms, that
Christianity has attracted elevated minds. The Baptist once
imprisoned, his school was soon diminished, and Jesus found himself
left to his own impulses. The only things he owed to John, were
lessons in preaching and in popular action. From this moment, in fact,
he preached with greater power, and spoke to the multitude with
authority.[1]
[Footnote 1: Matt. vii. 29; Mark i. 22; Luke iv. 32.]
It seems also that his sojourn with John had, not so much by the
influence of the Baptist, as by the natural progress of his own
thought, considerably ripened his ideas on "the kingdom of heaven."
His watchword, henceforth, is the "good tidings," the announcement
that the kingdom of God is at hand.[1] Jesus is no longer simply a
delightful moralist, aspiring to express sublime lessons in short and
lively aphorisms; he is the transcendent revolutionary, who essays to
renovate the world from its very basis, and to establish upon earth
the ideal which he had conceived. "To await the kingdom of God" is
henceforth synonymous with being a disciple of Jesus.[2] This phrase,
"kingdom of God," or "kingdom of heaven," was, as we have said,
already long familiar to the Jews. But Jesus gave it a moral sense, a
social application, which even the author of the Book of Daniel, in
his apocalyptic enthusiasm, had scarcely dared to imagine.
[Footnote 1: Mark i. 14, 15.]
[Footnote 2: Mark xv. 43.]
He declared that in the present world evil is the reigning power.
Satan is "the prince of this world,"[1] and everything obeys him. The
kings kill the prophets. The priests and the doctors do not that which
they command others to do; the righteous are persecuted, and the only
portion of the good is weeping. The "world" is in this manner the
enemy of God and His saints:[2] but God will awaken and avenge His
saints. The day is at hand, for the abomination is at its height. The
reign of goodness will have its turn.
[Footnote 1: John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11. (Comp. 2 _Cor._ iv. 4;
_Ephes._ ii. 2.)]
[Footnote 2: John i. 10, vii. 7, xiv. 17, 22, 27, xv. 18, and
following; xvi. 8, 20, 33, xvii. 9, 14, 16, 25. This meaning of the
word "world" is especially applied in the writings of Paul and John.]
The advent of this reign of goodness will be a great and sudden
revolution. The world will seem to be turned upside down; the actual
state being bad, in order to represent the future, it suffices to
conceive nearly the reverse of that which exists. The first shall be
last.[1] A new order shall govern humanity. Now the good and the bad
are mixed, like the tares and the good grain in a field. The master
lets them grow together; but the hour of violent separation will
arrive.[2] The kingdom of God will be as the casting of a great net,
which gathers both good and bad fish; the good are preserved, and the
rest are thrown away.[3] The germ of this great revolution will not be
recognizable in its beginning. It will be like a grain of
mustard-seed, which is the smallest of seeds, but which, thrown into
the earth, becomes a tree under the foliage of which the birds
repose;[4] or it will be like the leaven which, deposited in the meal,
makes the whole to ferment.[5] A series of parables, often obscure,
was designed to express the suddenness of this event, its apparent
injustice, and its inevitable and final character.[6]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xix. 30, xx. 16; Mark x. 31; Luke xiii. 30.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 24, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xiii. 47, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xiii. 31, and following; Mark iv. 31, and
following; Luke xiii. 19, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xiii. 33; Luke xiii. 21.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. xiii. entirely; xviii. 23, and following; xx. 1,
and following; Luke xiii. 18, and following.]
Who was to establish this kingdom of God? Let us remember that the
first thought of Jesus, a thought so deeply rooted in him that it had
probably no beginning, and formed part of his very being, was that he
was the Son of God, the friend of his Father, the doer of his will.
The answer of Jesus to such a question could not therefore be
doubtful. The persuasion that he was to establish the kingdom of God
took absolute possession of his mind. He regarded himself as the
universal reformer. The heavens, the earth, the whole of nature,
madness, disease, and death, were but his instruments. In his paroxysm
of heroic will, he believed himself all powerful. If the earth would
not submit to this supreme transformation, it would be broken up,
purified by fire, and by the breath of God. A new heaven would be
created, and the entire world would be peopled with the angels of
God.[1]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxii. 30.]
A radical revolution,[1] embracing even nature itself, was the
fundamental idea of Jesus. Henceforward, without doubt, he renounced
politics; the example of Judas, the Gaulonite, had shown him the
inutility of popular seditions. He never thought of revolting against
the Romans and tetrarchs. His was not the unbridled and anarchical
principle of the Gaulonite. His submission to the established powers,
though really derisive, was in appearance complete. He paid tribute to
Cæsar, in order to avoid disturbance. Liberty and right were not of
this world, why should he trouble his life with vain anxieties?
Despising the earth, and convinced that the present world was not
worth caring for, he took refuge in his ideal kingdom; he established
the great doctrine of transcendent disdain,[2] the true doctrine of
liberty of souls, which alone can give peace. But he had not yet said,
"My kingdom is not of this world." Much darkness mixed itself with
even his most correct views. Sometimes strange temptations crossed his
mind. In the desert of Judea, Satan had offered him the kingdoms of
the earth. Not knowing the power of the Roman empire, he might, with
the enthusiasm there was in the heart of Judea, and which ended soon
after in so terrible an outbreak, hope to establish a kingdom by the
number and the daring of his partisans. Many times, perhaps, the
supreme question presented itself--will the kingdom of God be realized
by force or by gentleness, by revolt or by patience? One day, it is
said, the simple men of Galilee wished to carry him away and make him
king,[3] but Jesus fled into the mountain and remained there some time
alone. His noble nature preserved him from the error which would have
made him an agitator, or a chief of rebels, a Theudas or a Barkokeba.
[Footnote 1: [Greek: Apochatastasis pantôn], _Acts_ iii. 21.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xvii. 23-26; xxii. 16-22.]
[Footnote 3: John vi. 15.]
The revolution he wished to effect was always a moral revolution; but
he had not yet begun to trust to the angels and the last trumpet for
its execution. It was upon men and by the aid of men themselves that
he wished to act. A visionary who had no other idea than the proximity
of the last judgment, would not have had this care for the
amelioration of man, and would not have given utterance to the finest
moral teaching that humanity has received. Much vagueness no doubt
tinged his ideas, and it was rather a noble feeling than a fixed
design, that urged him to the sublime work which was realized by him,
though in a very different manner to what he imagined.
It was indeed the kingdom of God, or in other words, the kingdom of
the Spirit, which he founded; and if Jesus, from the bosom of his
Father, sees his work bear fruit in the world, he may indeed say with
truth, "This is what I have desired." That which Jesus founded, that
which will remain eternally his, allowing for the imperfections which
mix themselves with everything realized by humanity, is the doctrine
of the liberty of the soul. Greece had already had beautiful ideas on
this subject.[1] Various stoics had learned how to be free even under
a tyrant. But in general the ancient world had regarded liberty as
attached to certain political forms; freedom was personified in
Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus and Cassius. The true Christian
enjoys more real freedom; here below he is an exile; what matters it
to him who is the transitory governor of this earth, which is not his
home? Liberty for him is truth.[2] Jesus did not know history
sufficiently to understand that such a doctrine came most opportunely
at the moment when republican liberty ended, and when the small
municipal constitutions of antiquity were absorbed in the unity of the
Roman empire. But his admirable good sense, and the truly prophetic
instinct which he had of his mission, guided him with marvelous
certainty. By the sentence, "Render unto Cæsar the things which are
Cæsar's, and to God the things which are God's," he created something
apart from politics, a refuge for souls in the midst of the empire of
brute force. Assuredly, such a doctrine had its dangers. To establish
as a principle that we must recognize the legitimacy of a power by the
inscription on its coins, to proclaim that the perfect man pays
tribute with scorn and without question, was to destroy republicanism
in the ancient form, and to favor all tyranny. Christianity, in this
sense, has contributed much to weaken the sense of duty of the
citizen, and to deliver the world into the absolute power of existing
circumstances. But in constituting an immense free association, which
during three hundred years was able to dispense with politics,
Christianity amply compensated for the wrong it had done to civic
virtues. The power of the state was limited to the things of earth;
the mind was freed, or at least the terrible rod of Roman omnipotence
was broken forever.
[Footnote 1: See Stobæus, _Florilegium_, ch. lxii., lxxvii., lxxxvi.,
and following.]
[Footnote 2: John viii. 32, and following.]
The man who is especially preoccupied with the duties of public life,
does not readily forgive those who attach little importance to his
party quarrels. He especially blames those who subordinate political
to social questions, and profess a sort of indifference for the
former. In one sense he is right, for exclusive power is prejudicial
to the good government of human affairs. But what progress have
"parties" been able to effect in the general morality of our species?
If Jesus, instead of founding his heavenly kingdom, had gone to Rome,
had expended his energies in conspiring against Tiberius, or in
regretting Germanicus, what would have become of the world? As an
austere republican, or zealous patriot, he would not have arrested the
great current of the affairs of his age, but in declaring that
politics are insignificant, he has revealed to the world this truth,
that one's country is not everything, and that the man is before, and
higher than, the citizen.
Our principles of positive science are offended by the dreams
contained in the programme of Jesus. We know the history of the earth;
cosmical revolutions of the kind which Jesus expected are only
produced by geological or astronomical causes, the connection of which
with spiritual things has never yet been demonstrated. But, in order
to be just to great originators, they must not be judged by the
prejudices in which they have shared. Columbus discovered America,
though starting from very erroneous ideas; Newton believed his foolish
explanation of the Apocalypse to be as true as his system of the
world. Shall we place an ordinary man of our time above a Francis
d'Assisi, a St. Bernard, a Joan of Arc, or a Luther, because he is
free from errors which these last have professed? Should we measure
men by the correctness of their ideas of physics, and by the more or
less exact knowledge which they possess of the true system of the
world? Let us understand better the position of Jesus and that which
made his power. The Deism of the eighteenth century, and a certain
kind of Protestantism, have accustomed us to consider the founder of
the Christian faith only as a great moralist, a benefactor of mankind.
We see nothing more in the Gospel than good maxims; we throw a prudent
veil over the strange intellectual state in which it was originated.
There are even persons who regret that the French Revolution departed
more than once from principles, and that it was not brought about by
wise and moderate men. Let us not impose our petty and commonplace
ideas on these extraordinary movements so far above our every-day
life. Let us continue to admire the "morality of the gospel"--let us
suppress in our religious teachings the chimera which was its soul;
but do not let us believe that with the simple ideas of happiness, or
of individual morality, we stir the world. The idea of Jesus was much
more profound; it was the most revolutionary idea ever formed in a
human brain; it should be taken in its totality, and not with those
timid suppressions which deprive it of precisely that which has
rendered it efficacious for the regeneration of humanity.
The ideal is ever a Utopia. When we wish nowadays to represent the
Christ of the modern conscience, the consoler, and the judge of the
new times, what course do we take? That which Jesus himself did
eighteen hundred and thirty years ago. We suppose the conditions of
the real world quite other than what they are; we represent a moral
liberator breaking without weapons the chains of the negro,
ameliorating the condition of the poor, and giving liberty to
oppressed nations. We forget that this implies the subversion of the
world, the climate of Virginia and that of Congo modified, the blood
and the race of millions of men changed, our social complications
restored to a chimerical simplicity, and the political stratifications
of Europe displaced from their natural order. The "restitution of all
things"[1] desired by Jesus was not more difficult. This new earth,
this new heaven, this new Jerusalem which comes from above, this cry:
"Behold I make all things new!"[2] are the common characteristics of
reformers. The contrast of the ideal with the sad reality, always
produces in mankind those revolts against unimpassioned reason which
inferior minds regard as folly, till the day arrives in which they
triumph, and in which those who have opposed them are the first to
recognize their reasonableness.
[Footnote 1: _Acts_ iii. 21.]
[Footnote 2: _Rev._ xxi. 1, 2, 5.]
That there may have been a contradiction between the belief in the
approaching end of the world and the general moral system of Jesus,
conceived in prospect of a permanent state of humanity, nearly
analogous to that which now exists, no one will attempt to deny.[1] It
was exactly this contradiction that insured the success of his work.
The millenarian alone would have done nothing lasting; the moralist
alone would have done nothing powerful. The millenarianism gave the
impulse, the moralist insured the future. Hence Christianity united
the two conditions of great success in this world, a revolutionary
starting-point, and the possibility of continuous life. Everything
which is intended to succeed ought to respond to these two wants; for
the world seeks both to change and to last. Jesus, at the same time
that he announced an unparalleled subversion in human affairs,
proclaimed the principles upon which society has reposed for eighteen
hundred years.
[Footnote 1: The millenarian sects of England present the same
contrast, I mean the belief in the near end of the world,
notwithstanding much good sense in the conduct of life, and an
extraordinary understanding of commercial affairs and industry.]
That which in fact distinguishes Jesus from the agitators of his time,
and from those of all ages, is his perfect idealism. Jesus, in some
respects, was an anarchist, for he had no idea of civil government.
That government seemed to him purely and simply an abuse. He spoke of
it in vague terms, and as a man of the people who had no idea of
politics. Every magistrate appeared to him a natural enemy of the
people of God; he prepared his disciples for contests with the civil
powers, without thinking for a moment that there was anything in this
to be ashamed of.[1] But he never shows any desire to put himself in
the place of the rich and the powerful. He wishes to annihilate riches
and power, but not to appropriate them. He predicts persecution and
all kinds of punishment to his disciples;[2] but never once does the
thought of armed resistance appear. The idea of being all-powerful by
suffering and resignation, and of triumphing over force by purity of
heart, is indeed an idea peculiar to Jesus. Jesus is not a
spiritualist, for to him everything tended to a palpable realization;
he had not the least notion of a soul separated from the body. But he
is a perfect idealist, matter being only to him the sign of the idea,
and the real, the living expression of that which does not appear.
[Footnote 1: Matt. x. 17, 18; Luke xii. 11.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. v. 10, and following; x. entirely; Luke vi. 22, and
following; John xv. 18, and following; xvi. 2, and following, 20, 33;
xvii. 14.]
To whom should we turn, to whom should we trust to establish the
kingdom of God? The mind of Jesus on this point never hesitated. That
which is highly esteemed among men, is abomination in the sight of
God.[1] The founders of the kingdom of God are the simple. Not the
rich, not the learned, not priests; but women, common people, the
humble, and the young.[2] The great characteristic of the Messiah is,
that "the poor have the gospel preached to them."[3] The idyllic and
gentle nature of Jesus here resumed the superiority. A great social
revolution, in which rank will be overturned, in which all authority
in this world will be humiliated, was his dream. The world will not
believe him; the world will kill him. But his disciples will not be of
the world.[4] They will be a little flock of the humble and the
simple, who will conquer by their very humility. The idea which has
made "Christian" the antithesis of "worldly," has its full
justification in the thoughts of the master.[5]
[Footnote 1: Luke xvi. 15.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. v. 3, 10, xviii. 3, xix. 14, 23, 24, xxi. 31, xxii.
2, and following; Mark x. 14, 15, 23-25; Luke iv. 18, and following;
vi. 20, xviii. 16, 17, 24, 25.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xi. 5.]
[Footnote 4: John xv. 19, xvii. 14, 16.]
[Footnote 5: See especially chapter xvii. of St. John, expressing, if
not a real discourse delivered by Jesus, at least a sentiment which
was very deeply rooted in his disciples, and which certainly came from
him.]