The Man of Galilee

by Atticus G. Haygood

Do these men whose names go with the four gospels show right feeling, sentiment, for inventing such a character, granting, what we know they did not have, all other qualifications? Seeing what they were, what they show themselves to have been, is it possible to believe that, in their inmost souls, they were in sympathy with the character they have given us in the gospels? To invent a truly great, all-round character, there must be not only adequate gifts of intellect and force of conscience; there must be also right sensibility. There must not only be a large mind and a true conscience; there must be a good heart. The evangelists were not bad men, but they were unspiritual. If one cannot, as an original conception of the intellect, “draw a taller man than himself,” much less can he draw a better man than himself.

Test their capacity for such a work as inventing the Jesus of the gospels in any direction. Compare these men with Jesus as to his doctrine and practice as to toleration and human brotherhood. They shrink into nothingness.

Jesus goes to the house of the publican, Zaccheus, whom all Jericho hated. Jesus dines with the man who was unpopular, who was despised; he preaches the full Gospel to him; he is kind to him; he loves him. The disciples were in sympathy not with Jesus, but the crowd that “murmured.” They were mortified, displeased, afraid, scandalized; Jesus had done so imprudent a thing as to dine with a man who had no friends, but many foes.

You know of Jesus from his words, above all from his life, that he was incapable of prejudice; that no wretched or mean man of any class or race could appeal to him in vain. You know that Jesus was as free from all intolerance, from all caste feeling and race prejudice, as the virgin snow is free from stain. But his disciples, these men who have told us of him, were saturated and poisoned with these feelings; they lived on the low plane of their race and time, and not above it. In the “Acts of the Apostles” we see what that plane was; the Jew hated Gentiles. Consider the history of Peter’s visit to Cornelius, and you will see how deep and inveterate is the feeling that opened a gulf between the Jews and other races. Consider what is meant by the sudden outburst of rage at the word “Gentile” that day Paul spoke to the mob in the temple-court, as he stood on the castle stairs. All history illustrates this intense race prejudice. In this country, in the spring of 1888, a Jew celebrated the funeral of his daughter because she had married a Gentile.

Read the story of the Syrophenician woman, the parable of the good Samaritan, his heavenly doctrines about loving our enemies, and then think of these writers inventing Jesus and his doctrines.

See the false shame on their faces when they find Jesus talking with the woman of Sychar by Jacob’s well, and ask whether men like these lived in the same world with him!

Consider the attitude of Jesus toward fallen women. See how he bore himself with the woman who washed his feet with her tears in Simon’s house; see his tender respect for Magdalene; see him, his cheeks aflame with shame and confusion, his eyes dewy with pity, as he made marks on the ground with his finger that day they brought a sinful girl to him and demanded judgment upon her.

These men who wrote of Jesus were as incapable of such sentiments and conduct as they were incapable of building worlds. God pity us! as incapable as we, his disciples of to-day, are, who, after all that he has taught us and done for us, in our meanness and cowardice abide still in heathenism, and scorn those whom Jesus did not scorn. We may judge these evangelists by ourselves; they were as we are. They were ashamed of him when he spoke respectfully and kindly to fallen women; we would be ashamed of him now if he were again among us in the flesh, bearing himself toward our outcasts as he did when he was in Galilee.

If possible, these evangelists were as incapable as we are of inventing the character of Jesus.

In what has been said of the ability of these men to conceive such a character as Jesus remember we are not speaking of copyists, but creators; not of those who merely put together a story from materials furnished by history, or from some life that has been lived, but of those who invent, think out a character. The copyists, the historians, the biographers, the novelists, easily enough write and talk of greater and better men than themselves. This sort of literary work, this sort of thinking, is done every day; it is as common as the “making of books.” If the materials are furnished us we may well enough write of those who are beyond and above us. We will naturally and often necessarily do this in describing one who actually lived. Great and good men and women have often had biographers immeasurably inferior to them. A clever literary man may draw a fair picture of Julius Cæsar. Froude did it. A man of hard and narrow spirit may so write of heroes as to make us feel their superiority. Carlyle did this for not a few. A small man may tell us of his master. Even Boswell could do this.