How was it that of all men Jesus should be the man subjected to all this? How can we reconcile His character and His destiny?
Let us recollect what Plato had written 400 years earlier:—
“The just man will be scourged, racked, fettered, will have his eyes burned out, and at last, after suffering every kind of torture, will be crucified.”
Now we do not insist on the correspondence in detail between the words of Plato and the death of Christ, although that, while not complete, is sufficiently remarkable; but we wish to emphasize, with all possible force, this most extraordinary fact, that Plato foresaw that a man of the character of Jesus would suffer as He did.
How are we to explain the fact? What is the reason why the men of Christ’s day treated this most humane of men with such barbarous inhumanity? The answer is that it was inevitable. Jesus is the revelation of the uttermost holiness of God, and His attempt to lay that standard upon the human spirit[[182]] roused to its utmost fury against Him all the sinfulness of our common human nature. It is the same contest of which we are each conscious in our daily life between inclination and conscience; only, in the case of Jesus, it seems as if all the little battles of every individual life had met in one gigantic struggle between sinful human nature and its Lord. And the same struggle necessarily continues wherever Christianity goes. The persecutions of the Roman Empire are merely the external signs of the convulsive efforts of the spirit of Paganism to resist the march of the Spirit of God. In every land Christ is met by the same opposition. Everywhere selfishness, self-interest and passion dissuade men from following the Man of Sorrows; and the struggle is there, terrible in its reality and intensity, even if it never break out into open persecution. But, in surveying these surging battles, the careful observer is much struck with this fact, that, while human passions inevitably fight against Christ, yet He has in Conscience an ally, which neither by bribes nor by bullying can be made to desert Him. He is the objective conscience of the human race. He is Plato’s just man.
III. Let us now try to realize what kind of a being the founder of Christianity was. Our chief sources of information are the Gospels; for from the other books of the New Testament and from outside literature we learn only scattered facts about His life on earth. We shall not appeal to the fourth Gospel, for there are still numerous questions with regard to it unsettled, but shall confine ourselves to Matthew, Mark and Luke, books recognized on all hands as of high historical value, and as having been written between 65 and 95 A.D.[[183]] Anyone may very speedily convince himself of the splendid historical reliability of these simple narratives. From Josephus and other Jewish writers of the first and second centuries, and from casual remarks in Greek and Roman books, we are able to learn what the life of these days was like;[[184]] but nowhere do we get such vivid, detailed, realistic pictures as in the Gospels. “They are full of feeling for the time; they understand its men, schools, classes, parties; they know the thoughts that are in the air, the rumours that run along the street; they are familiar with the catchwords and phrases of the period, its conventions, questions, modes of discussion and style of argument. And all is presented with the utmost realism, so grouped round the central figure as to form a perfect historical picture, He and His setting being so built together as to constitute a single organic whole.”[[185]]
How then does Christ appear in them?—His name was Jesus;[[186]] Christ is a title springing from his teaching, as we shall see. He lived in the small town of Nazareth, in the district of Galilee[[187]] in Palestine, and worked as a carpenter there.[[188]] At length, in 26 A.D., He gave up carpentry and began His public career as a preacher.[[189]] The picture given of Him in the Gospels is a most attractive one. Wherever He goes, the sick, the suffering, the distressed crowd around Him. Blind beggars, outcast lepers, hopeless paralytics, even uncontrollable lunatics, receive help from His healing power. He feeds the hungry, breathes hope into the downcast, lifts up the enfeebled patient, helps the helpless. But while every form of suffering and sorrow appeals to His compassion, His heart is set on winning the souls of men. So we find Him preaching in the synagogue and by the sea, on the mountain-side and in the busy street, now stirring vast crowds, now dealing with an individual, and again pouring His rich teaching into the ears of the chosen Twelve. No man ever had such power of convincing men of sin and leading them to repentance: the simple fisherman,[[190]] the fallen woman,[[191]] the wealthy custom-house officer[[192]] and the dying robber,[[193]] all felt condemned in His presence, and through Him entered into the new life.
The character revealed in His words and deeds is beautiful beyond comparison. The most outstanding feature of it is His love for God and the perfect and unbroken serenity of His intercourse with Him. Love for man also shines out everywhere. But the most extraordinary point is this, that He in whom the moral ideal was so lofty, so deep and so broad, He who was so keenly conscious of sin in others, and had such power to make them feel it, betrays absolutely no consciousness of sin Himself, never asks for pardon, and never speaks of having repented, or of having passed through any crisis of the nature of conversion.[[194]] On the other hand the perfect balance of His character is almost as marvellous as His sinlessness: judicial severity controlled by perfect love; supreme authority that is also supreme gentleness; strength filled with tenderness; regal dignity shown in acts of lowliest service; holiness that led Him among the unholy;(sublimest self-consciousness, never leading to anything but self-effacement and self-sacrifice.) And yet again, is there anything about Him so wonderful as His power of winning human love? The Gospels are full of instances of it, and to-day how many millions of men, women and children would count it a supreme joy to die for His sake!
His teaching is a perfectly articulated and unified whole, as may be seen from the scientific studies of it that have been published during the last twenty years.[[195]] But we must not attempt to deal with that fascinating subject here, except in so far as the whole is implied in what He says about Himself. For it is only that part of it, namely, His account of Himself and His mission, that we propose to touch on.