Of the Judaic traits in Jesus, conspicuous was the prophetic feeling and tone. He was possessed with an absolute fullness of conviction, and spoke in a tone of blended ardor and certitude. "He taught as one having authority." He rarely gave reasons. If in his words we find appeal to precedent or argument, it is really as little more than illustration or picture to clothe his own intuition. His followers believed his words, either because of some conscious witness in their breasts, or because their love and reverence for him won for his assertions an unquestioning acceptance.
From Judaism he took the familiar idea of one all-powerful and holy God; a moral ideal which was chiefly distinguished from that of the Greek-Roman world by its greater emphasis on chastity; and also the belief in a constant divine interposition in human affairs, which soon was to culminate in the establishment of a divine kingdom on earth.
Jesus woke in his followers an ardor for goodness, a tenderness for their fellow men, and a supreme devotion to himself. His words went straight to the springs of character. He brushed aside religious ceremonial as of no importance. He sent the searching light of purity into the recesses of the heart. He made love the law of life and the key of the universe. He interpreted love, as a principle of human conduct, by illustrations the most homely, real, and tender. Love is no mere delicious emotion: it is giving our bread to the hungry, ourselves to the needy. It is not a mere felicity of kindred spirits,—love them that hate you, pray for them that despitefully use you!
Jesus was the greatest of poets. To every fact, to every idea, he gave its most beautiful and spiritual interpretation. When he speaks of God, his speech is the pure poetry of the soul. Yahveh becomes to him the All-father. His providence is over the lilies and the sparrows. His rain and sunshine are shed on the unjust as on the just. His inmost nature is set forth by the human father meeting his returning prodigal a great way off. His very life is shared with his children. It wells up in Jesus himself: the light in his eyes, the tenderness in his tones, the yearning in his heart,—it is my Father ye know in me!
How does that Divine Power appear in the procedure of the universe? What real providence is there for the slain sparrow? What is the actual destiny of those human lives which show only frustration and failure? Jesus does not answer these questions. It does not appear that he tried to answer them. His words are filled with a glad, unquestioning trust. He is not the philosopher seeking to measure life. He is the lover living it, the poet delighting in it.
The secret of Jesus lay in his sense of the "kingdom of God" within him,—of obedience, peace, and joy, which was in itself sufficient. Simply to communicate and impart that was to spread the Kingdom among men.
A teacher like John the Baptist—possessed by the idea of righteousness, and of the world's deficiency, but without tranquillity in his own heart—could look only for a divine interposition, a catastrophe. John is a sort of Carlyle. But Jesus, hearing him, and brooding the deeper truth, goes about proclaiming a present heaven.
The marks of this inner state defined themselves against the conditions of life he saw about him.
Thus, he shows his estimate of wealth in the story of the young ruler.
"Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor!"
Toward the other prize which men most seek, reputation, his feeling is expressed to the two brethren asking chief places: "He that will be chief among you, let him be your servant."