In a general sense, it is therefore true to say that Jesus was only thaumaturgus and exorcist in spite of himself. Miracles are ordinarily the work of the public much more than of him to whom they are attributed. Jesus persistently shunned the performance of the wonders which the multitude would have created for him; the greatest miracle would have been his refusal to perform any; never would the laws of history and popular psychology have suffered so great a derogation. The miracles of Jesus were a violence done to him by his age, a concession forced from him by a passing necessity. The exorcist and the thaumaturgus have alike passed away; but the religious reformer will live eternally.
Even those who did not believe in him were struck with these acts, and sought to be witnesses of them.[1] The pagans, and persons unacquainted with him, experienced a sentiment of fear, and sought to remove him from their district.[2] Many thought perhaps to abuse his name by connecting it with seditious movements.[3] But the purely moral and in no respect political tendency of the character of Jesus saved him from these entanglements. His kingdom was in the circle of disciples, whom a like freshness of imagination and the same foretaste of heaven had grouped and retained around him.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiv. 1, and following; Mark vi. 14; Luke ix. 7, xxiii. 8.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. viii. 34; Mark v. 17, viii. 37.]
[Footnote 3: John vi. 14, 15.]
CHAPTER XVII.
DEFINITIVE FORM OF THE IDEAS OF JESUS RESPECTING THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
We suppose that this last phase of the activity of Jesus continued about eighteen months from the time of his return from the Passover of the year 31, until his journey to the feast of tabernacles of the year 32.[1] During this time, the mind of Jesus does not appear to have been enriched by the addition of any new element; but all his old ideas grew and developed with an ever-increasing degree of power and boldness.
[Footnote 1: John v. 1, vii. 2. We follow the system of John, according to whom the public life of Jesus lasted three years. The synoptics, on the contrary, group all the facts within the space of one year.]
The fundamental idea of Jesus from the beginning, was the establishment of the kingdom of God. But this kingdom of God, as we have already said, appears to have been understood by Jesus in very different senses. At times, we should take him for a democratic leader desiring only the triumph of the poor and the disinherited. At other times, the kingdom of God is the literal accomplishment of the apocalyptic visions of Daniel and Enoch. Lastly, the kingdom of God is often a spiritual kingdom, and the approaching deliverance is a deliverance of the spirit. In this last sense the revolution desired by Jesus was the one which has really taken place; the establishment of a new worship, purer than that of Moses. All these thoughts appear to have existed at the same time in the mind of Jesus. The first one, however—that of a temporal revolution—does not appear to have impressed him much; he never regarded the earth or the riches of the earth, or material power, as worth caring for. He had no worldly ambition. Sometimes by a natural consequence, his great religious importance was in danger of being converted into mere social importance. Men came requesting him to judge and arbitrate on questions affecting their material interests. Jesus rejected these proposals with haughtiness, treating them as insults.[1] Full of his heavenly ideal, he never abandoned his disdainful poverty. As to the other two conceptions of the kingdom of God, Jesus appears always to have held them simultaneously. If he had been only an enthusiast, led away by the apocalypses on which the popular imagination fed, he would have remained an obscure sectary, inferior to those whose ideas he followed. If he had been only a puritan, a sort of Channing or "Savoyard vicar," he would undoubtedly have been unsuccessful. The two parts of his system, or, rather, his two conceptions of the kingdom of God, rest one on the other, and this mutual support has been the cause of his incomparable success. The first Christians were dreamers, living in a circle of ideas which we should term visionary; but, at the same time, they were the heroes of that social war which has resulted in the enfranchisement of the conscience, and in the establishment of a religion from which the pure worship, proclaimed by the founder, will eventually proceed.