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 worshiped the heathen
gods. 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 gods 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 God.
They seemed incapable of understanding anything He said. He talked by
figures and parables--He told them stories--He talked of His father
God--and His sonship--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. Asserting things was not
enough. "Prove to us that you are God by doing wonders." As He never
had said that He was God 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 circumstances 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 passed,
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 shore, and there, from this improvised altar on the
sea, talk to the crowds on the shore.
And what did He say to the people standing on the shore? "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 illustrated 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 God'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
ships 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 multitudes 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
multitude. 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 ship touched the
shore, 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 multitudes, 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 worshiped. 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 fashion 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 compassion. "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.