Christ still a Jew. Is the Child's escape at Bethlehem still
a secret? Performing wonders. A strange age. Rome still in
the thrall of Heathendom. Augustus dead. Tiberius the Awful.
Palestine itself half Heathen. A Religious Enthusiast. Jesus
is ceasing to be a Jew. A church tyranny. Subjects of
Caesar. Human suffering counted for nothing with the Romans.
The Jews are longing for the New Time when God might come
and rule the world in Pity. An age of Superstitions and
Magic. Laws of Science unknown. Nobody even knew that the
world was round.
But let us go back there to Galilee and stay yet a while with the
village carpenter. The youth is older now. Perhaps He is going back
and forth between Galilee and the solitude of the wilderness. This
so-called "wilderness" is nothing more than the secret hills beyond
the Jordan, or the mysterious edge of the near-by desert coming up to
them like a speechless sea. At this moment He is again in Nazareth,
and the wondering villagers again see Him at His daily toil. He is
still learning by rote the striking maxims and proverbs of the Jewish
masters. He is yet a Jew. Like all Israel He is counting on the
completion of prophecy; a new world is sure to come soon--and with it
a king from Heaven. It will be a glorious thing, that new world, that
great king. The villagers familiarly call Him Jesus--but they know
nothing of the beautiful tradition of His birth--how an angel had
announced it to Mary, and how His name was fixed in Heaven.
No--Mary had meditated much on the angel's visit and on what the angel
had said to her, but steadily she had kept the great secret in her own
heart. She had not even whispered to the villagers about the shepherds
and the star at Bethlehem, nor the sudden flight of herself and the
child to far-off Egypt. Why, her secrecy is just now hard to guess. Is
it possible that Herod or his successor, who would have slain the
child, is still watching for Him--not knowing even of the return from
Egypt years ago? Even now one indiscreet word from her might cause His
death. We wonder if now, on this day, there in His father's workshop,
the youth dreams that some day He is to be a king, and that of his
kingdom there will be no end? I think not. He is not publicly
preaching now. That, Luke says, will come much later. But what
delightful whisperings go about Galilee concerning Him already.
Possibly these beautiful heart-stories about Himself were as familiar
to the young carpenter then as they now are to every reader of the
sacred book. He may have known of them, thought of them, but He, too,
kept them largely to Himself. It was an age of prophecies, of dreams,
of visions, of fables, and of superstitious tales. Perhaps He was
waiting to see if the angel's words to Mary were to be fulfilled. Two
thousand years have not dimmed the beauty of the wondrous tale told of
Mary and the child. If parts of it were only the longings of a few
persons' imaginations, we may never clearly know, nor is it of the
least importance that we should know. The happenings at the birth of
the world's great ones have little to do with the grandeur of their
lives.
Yes, the young carpenter, with the tender eyes and the radiant face,
may have known of some of these wonderful sayings about Himself. Mary
must have told Him some of them; and Joseph working at His side must
have told Him how, on His account, the little children had been
murdered at Bethlehem, and how narrow His own escape had been when he
and Mary and the child had hurried away to Egypt. We can imagine the
wonderful incidents told by Joseph of that strange flight into a
foreign country. Our Testament barely mentions it. His birth is almost
the only bit of history the Testament gives us of almost twenty-five
years of the Galilean's life. They went to Egypt to escape the wrath
of the tyrant Herod. Old writings tell us of two, even seven, years in
Egypt, and of child-miracles in that far-away land. Of all this our
accepted Testament tells us nothing. Hearing that the tyrant was long
dead, Joseph and Mary and the child secretly returned to the old home
in Galilee.
Are they living there in secret yet--and is the new king at Jerusalem
wondering if they are alive--and does he too want the child's blood in
case He was not killed that night at Bethlehem, and does he wonder
what became of the wise men of the east who saw the child, but dared
not go back to tell it? Does he wonder if they are somewhere in hiding
yet? Does he dream that this youth in Galilee is possibly the child
the shepherds told of that wonderful night? Just now we still see Him
standing by the little carpenter shop, ax in hand, possibly thinking
of what His father has told Him of His youth; or of what Mary hinted
to Him of the bright Angel of the Annunciation? Who knows? We only
guess at the secret, for history, sacred and profane, has left it all
a blank. We only know that it was a feeling of the whole Jewish race
that an aspirant to leadership must, first of all, retire to the
desert and live for years in solitude, just as Elias had done. It has
been said that a retreat to the desert was the condition of and the
prelude to high destinies. The Galilean knew all about these men,
from Moses and Elias down to John, who found their inspiration on the
desert, or in secret places. If He was not much in the desert in these
unknown years, where then was He, that no one tells of Him? Was there
indeed nothing for Matthew, nor Mark, nor Luke, nor John, nor
Josephus, nor anybody else to write about Him? Was it all a blank
these long years? If secrecy from Herod, or from his successor
Archelaus, was needed--that would account for everything, even for the
whole world's silence.
This retreat for meditation would not hinder that at far intervals He
return a little to His home in Galilee, where we see Him now with that
ineffable smile of kindness on His face and tenderness shining in His
eyes. The peasants passing by are uplifted, moved by His tender
compassionate look. They wonder why. They wonder too where He has been
so long, and before they are done wondering He is gone. Sometimes He
disappears so suddenly--it was just as if a spirit had come and gone.
Is He again in His hermit cave now beyond the Jordan? Sometimes when
there at home, as now, He has quietly taught the villagers of truth;
He has blessed the poor; He has healed the sick; He has performed
wonders, and they know not how it is done. Some day He will tell them
all.
It is a strange age He has been living in. Let us look at it for a
little while. This Palestine boy had been just fourteen years old when
the news came that the great Augustus at Rome was dead, and that the
awful and licentious emperor Tiberius was governing the Roman empire.
Just now the Galilean is twenty-six, and other news comes--that
Tiberius has gone to the heavenly little island of Capri in the
Mediterranean sea, and is there holding a court that shall shock the
world. No wonder the youth begins to think, with all His people, that
God must soon send somebody to put an end to the wickedness of kings.
Antipater, the idle and licentious favorite at Rome, still rules over
little Galilee as governor, or king. The Roman empire is still in the
thrall of perfect heathendom. There are half as many Gentiles as Jews
in Palestine itself. All over the land beautiful monuments are erected
by Rome to the heathen gods. The young Nazarene can walk across the
hills to Sidon by the sea any day and hear the people chanting hymns
to Jupiter and Apollo. As for Himself, He is still a Jew, like most of
His countrymen; only now, like Philo and like Hillel, and like John
and others, He is more than a Jew; He is passing out of the old
doctrines of the Jewish church into the broad daylight of truth. He
will yet help to do away with the Mosaic law. In a private way, yet
unheard of outside of little Galilee, He himself is teaching that God
is a spirit, and must be worshiped in spirit and not in form, and not
in heathen idols, nor in the way they are doing it at Jerusalem. God
had already become tired of the burnt offering of rams and of the
blood of beasts. Isaiah had told them that, long ago. This Galilean
will go on repeating it so long as He shall live. Like the great
Hillel, He would teach common justice to man--love for one
another--charity to all. This was to be the great commandment.
We are not sure, but in a vague way this young Galilean already feels
the mantle of a prophet falling about Him. He is saying nothing
exactly new to His Galilean neighbors--but He is saying it in a new
and gracious way, and they listen to Him as He converses in the shop,
or on the street. He sees and feels God in the beautiful nature all
about Him there in Galilee, yet more He feels God in himself.
Man holds in himself tremendous hidden powers. Science is rapidly
unveiling them. They were being unveiled to a degree by the Greeks
even in the time of this young carpenter; but the Jewish people
neither believed in nor heeded a school that gave an explanation of
things marvelous. They were set in their superstition. No book that
described certain fixed laws of nature was, for one moment, to take
the place of Moses and the prophets. Even the Galilean himself is
clinging to these old Bible poems. It is the wrong interpretation of
them, possibly, by Himself sometimes, that is driving Him to a
religious rebellion.
The great church doctors might not like it, were they to hear it--this
young carpenter with the soft words, and the radiance in His face,
slipping back and forth from Galilee to the desert and from the desert
to Galilee, proselyting the peasants, and telling them that God is not
to be worshiped in the semi-heathen manner in which they are doing it
at Jerusalem. Yet, no matter. What care the great religious doctors at
the Sacred City? Who ever heard of this Galilean carpenter anyway, or
of His reforms? Some day, and soon, they will hear of Him. They have
already heard of John, but they are about to settle the score with
John. His extremeness and his violence of speech have attracted the
attention of the king of Galilee, and soon news will come that John's
head on a platter has paid for the lascivious dancing of a girl at
court. Some old writers say it was the king's own daughter who did the
dancing that night in Antipater's palace by the Dead sea. Anyway, the
voice of him who called in the wilderness, is soon to be stilled
forever.
No, the carpenter's name has not yet reached outside His Galilee.
Aside from an occasional journey to Jerusalem when He was younger and
His foot tramps to the solitude by the desert, there is little to tell
that He has been outside the little province where He was born. His
life in His home village, aside from His carpenter work, is that of a
religious enthusiast. Some will call Him even a visionary. He has
heard so much of a coming king and an overturning of everything in the
world that He himself almost begins to look for something
extraordinary. Why not? He is yet a Jew, and the teaching of the
rabbis and of the Old Scriptures has been the coming of some kind of a
king--a great Messiah, who, from out little Palestine, shall rule the
world in an age of gold. The age, perhaps, is taking something out of
the Bible that is not in it. Our own age has done that many times. Is
it doing it to-day? Never in this world did imagination reach so high
a pitch as it did among the Jews in that wonderful time. Nothing was
talked of or thought of, but the coming golden age and the new king,
riding in a chariot of the clouds. It was not only a very expectant,
superstitious age, it had been a troubled one. The world had been full
of disorder, conflict. Everywhere had been war and tyranny.
Especially, the whole Jewish race, the especial people of God, had
known too often only of tyranny and sorrow. Even their own church, and
church was the government with them, had drifted into a religious
tyranny--the worst tyranny of all. It was, too, hemmed in by the
awfullest form and ceremony. No one in this twentieth century who is
not familiar with the Jewish Talmud and the earlier writings, can have
the remotest conception of the thousand formalities, ceremonies,
mummeries even, imposed upon the people of the church in the olden
days. Later, ten volumes of the Talmud will be required to explain, to
interpret, establish, and to write down the manner in which the
commonest things of life might be done. The great Sanhedrin, or
Supreme Court and Senate of the Jews at Jerusalem, together with the
scribes and priests about the temple, seemed banded together to make
religion an awful, unbearable burden, and life a farce.
Though all Palestine was a Roman province the Romans interfered but
little with this religious despotism. The Romans had enough wrongs of
their own to inflict upon the people. The whole race of Jews in their
home government had their own laws, their own Jewish customs, habits,
and religion. The Romans simply made them subjects of Cæsar, and they
rendered unto Cæsar only that which was Cæsar's, as this youth of
Galilee, later, would suggest their doing.
The empire collected taxes, very heavy ones, from the people, and
occasionally forced them into its armies. The Roman eagles and the
Roman soldiers were familiar sights in every town and village of
Palestine. The Romans usually had enough to do at home to disincline
them from bothering themselves too much with the religion of the
Jews. Wars they had had everywhere. But just now, at the time of the
Master's coming, there was a sort of peace in the world--a truce for
breath, as it were. That is to say, the Roman empire that has its foot
on almost the whole earth is resting a little. Rome's untold horrors,
wars, corruptions, its licentiousness, its inhumanity to man, its
blood and outrages have stopped their course at the eternal city for a
little while. It is almost out of victims. Violence has ceased, only
because violence has done its work.
The social conditions at Rome just before Augustus came to the throne
were too terrible to be believed. That some of this outrage and terror
had spread into the provinces of Palestine through governors and petty
kings, appointed by, and tools of Rome, is only too well known. Herod
himself was bloody enough to have served as an example for the worst
the Roman empire, even, could endure. In Palestine, however, the great
Jewish church served somewhat as a little hindering-wall to the
element that had been almost crushing decent humanity out of the
world.
All the states, like Palestine, bordering on the Mediterranean, says a
distinguished historian, simply looked at one another--partakers of a
common misfortune. They were tranquil, but it was the silence of
despair. Man was not being considered as an individual by the Romans
any more; he was only a "thing." Human suffering in the provinces
counted for nothing, if only Rome had some political gain. If
Palestine, or any other province, had some advantage by the presence
of Roman legions, it was purely incidental, and scarcely intended. At
this very moment Palestine is groaning under awful taxes paid to Rome,
one-third of all produced, the writers say. No wonder the Jews were
longing for the new time, the great time, the king, the Old Scriptures
had told about. They are so afflicted, so depressed. The government of
man had been a failure with them. Would not the day soon be at hand
when God himself, through some vicegerent, would come to the world
and rule in pity? Then the wicked would no longer thrive, the just
would live in delight, the very face of the world would be changed,
all would be transformed into love and beauty, and Palestine would be
the heart of the new world, and Jerusalem the capital of a perfected
humanity. The Scriptures had said it. The prophets had said it.
Nursing these lovely and lofty expectations the Jews patiently waited,
bearing with many wrongs. All classes shared alike in the great
delusion, rich and poor, high and low, priest and peasant. That a
mighty king on his chariot was coming in the clouds was the common
belief. The too literal reading of the old-time prophets had led a
whole race into a futile misconception. The world was _not_ coming to
an end at all. The Jews were a people easily mis-led. Their confidence
in the supernatural was overwhelming. It was a quality inherited from
their pagan ancestors. Their very neighbors were heathen and worshiped
mystical gods. Tens of thousands, mostly foreigners, had set up
heathen temples and consulted heathen oracles right there in Galilee.
Every time the young carpenter went to Jerusalem His eyes fell on some
vast edifice dedicated to Jove or Juno, and strange gods were
worshiped almost in the shadow of the great temple. This was not all.
The very books read by the Jewish priests in the synagogue, or village
churches, were filled with superstitious tales, with dreams and
visions. In these books the people were told of times when angels
walked upon the earth--they would walk again was the belief. The
outcome of their wonderful superstitions, teachings, and their
surroundings was an abject belief in marvels and impossibilities. If
the most cultured and thinking persons lost their confidence in the
marvelous, they kept it quiet. It was, besides, a day of jugglers,
sleight of hand performers, and magicians. The peasants, mostly
half-educated, could believe in anything. There was no knowledge of
science available to show them the utter falsehood of things their
eyes seemed to behold. The commonest laws of nature were not
understood. The priests themselves did not know that the world was
round. The common people were sufficiently credulous to accept the
most astounding things. In short, the astounding things were to them
the natural things, the expected. No wonder they misunderstood the old
prophets of the Bible, and the signs of the times. No wonder they were
believing and alarmed when John, hurrying from the wilderness, shouted
to them to be ready, to hurry to the Jordan river, confess, and be
baptized.