Christianity and Problems of To-day: Lectures Delivered Before Lake Forest College on the Foundation of the Late William Bross

by John H. Finley; Jeremiah Whipple Jenks; Charles Foster Kent; Paul Elmer More; Robert Bruce Taylor

In Capernaum Jesus found all types of men, women, and children. Here were presented superlative needs and superlative possibilities. Here every phase of the social problem was in evidence. Here were the rich and poor, learned and ignorant, honest and dishonest, happy and unhappy, reputable citizens and outcasts, the well and the sick. With each of these classes Jesus came into intimate contact. From every rank he drew the followers who became members of the fraternal community that he was seeking to found. A social plan that succeeded in the greater Capernaum had world-wide possibilities. That great metropolis, with its population of perhaps a quarter of a million, was a fitting laboratory for the world’s greatest social psychologist.

Into this great field Jesus threw himself with untiring zeal and enthusiasm. His final words, as he left it to escape the treachery of the Pharisees and of Herod Antipas, indicate clearly that he had hoped to transform this huge city into one great fraternal community: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For had the marvellous deeds that have been performed in you been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes; I tell you it will be better for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. Will you, Capernaum, be exalted to the sky? No, you will go down to destruction. For had the marvellous deeds performed in you been done in Sodom, it would have remained standing until this day.”

To-day the site of the greater Capernaum is an uninhabited ruin. A dread silence has settled down upon it. Yet no student of history can for a moment doubt the implication of Jesus’ pathetic words. Capernaum might to-day and through the intervening centuries and for all time have been “exalted to the sky” had its citizens in the first Christian century responded to their great opportunity. Then and there the problems common to all human society might have been solved. There the whole world might have beheld the glorious vision of a vast city in which sin and sickness and suffering had been banished, and love and loyalty and zeal to serve the common cause bound all together into one great fraternal community. There the students of all nations and ages might have studied in concrete form the principles and laws that lie at the foundation of a perfect society. Within even the limits of the first century the Capernaum plan might have been transplanted and developed in all the great cities of the earth.

From the moment that Jesus entered Capernaum he went to work to gather about him and train a band of helpers that would effect the great transformation. He did not make the mistake of many later social creators of trusting merely to external organization. He began by remaking men and by training individual citizens. He personally selected each of his helpers and first freed their bodies from disease, their minds from error and prejudice, and their hearts from hate and jealousy. In turn he filled their minds with a broad, practical philosophy of life and their hearts with faith and love and the desire to co-operate. After he had trained them by careful teaching and thorough apprenticeship, he sent them forth under his direction to become fishers of men—that is, to attract and train definite men and women, so that they also might be prepared to become worthy citizens in the fraternal community.

The plan was as simple as it was practical. It was in perfect accord with all the laws, natural, social, and psychological, that later scientific study has disclosed. That it met at once with partial success is an established historic fact, for of the five hundred disciples to whom Paul refers in 1 Corinthians 15:6, probably the great majority, if not all, belonged to the Capernaum community. But it is equally clear that Jesus’ success at Capernaum was not commensurate with his hopes and that his relative failure was due to that which the Infinite has made a basic principle in the universe—the freedom of the human will. The convincing common sense, the radiant sympathy and love, and the attractive social plan of the Master Teacher were not able to conquer the fixed habits and prejudices and hatreds of a majority of the inhabitants of the greater Capernaum. The wooden orthodoxy and the narrow jealousy of the Pharisees led them to block and undermine, rather than support his work. The opposition of these acknowledged religious leaders confused the minds of the people. How electrical and far-reaching would Jesus’ great social experiment have been, had it met with the immediate success he craved, only the imagination can picture. That from Capernaum might have gone forth mighty influences that would have quickly transformed human society as a whole is not beyond the realm of practical possibility, for the world was closely knit together in the first Christian century and nothing is more potent in society than practical demonstration. Even as it was, the social leaven that Jesus placed in greater Capernaum spread with remarkable rapidity, so that before the close of the first Christian century fraternal communities were found not only in Damascus, Cæsarea, and Antioch, but in all the great cities and even the remote provinces of the Roman Empire.

The strength of Jesus’ social plan lay in its simplicity. Society in the first century, as at present, had become hopelessly complex. The individual was but a spoke in the wheel of things. He was so enmeshed in a rigid social organization that he had few opportunities for spontaneous self-expression. Jesus quietly set aside all this complex social machinery and substituted a simple neighborhood organization, so simple that its members were unconscious of any organization at all. The warm, fraternal spirit of the fraternal community, which was simply an extension of the high ideals and traditions of the Jewish home, provided the atmosphere that every man, and especially “the lost,” the millions of detached men, women, and children in the old Roman Empire, were craving. In these Christian communities they found friendship and good-will. If they were needy, here they were sure of help. If they were sad, they found sympathy and comfort. If they stumbled and fell, they were tenderly lifted up, given counsel, and guided in the way of life.

Here the deepest yearnings of their hearts were satisfied, for they were taught to listen to the inward voice. The Master himself set the example of devoting many hours in his crowded ministry to prayer and meditation. Under his guidance they learned to enter the inner chamber of their souls, and there to gain peace, joy, and inspiration from communion with him who reveals himself to all who seek him in sincerity and truth.

The fraternal community enabled each member to gratify his higher desire for self-expression. Jesus also had the marvellous power of arousing these desires. The needs and work of the community gave each member, however great or however humble be his gifts, abundant opportunity to use them. The humblest could enjoy the proud consciousness of serving the community, even if it be only in serving the food at the common meal. Those who possessed the gifts of teaching or preaching or healing had ample opportunity to use them in a social environment that was receptive and appreciative. If the task be outside and attended with danger, those who served were always sure of warm support and sympathy within the community.

Mark tells us that the life of the fraternal community that Jesus founded at Capernaum was characterized by a joyousness that aroused the harsh criticisms of the captious Pharisees. They complained that, unlike John the Baptist, Jesus never taught his followers to fast. The Master acknowledged the charge, and likened their lives together to one continuous wedding-feast. When we recall that a wedding-feast was the one event in the ancient East that brought joy and recreation and amusement to all members of the community, we begin to gain a true conception of the charm of that community life which Jesus developed, and to understand why it appealed to young and old alike. Here recreation and religion were perfectly blended. Here every man found physical, mental, and spiritual life, and that in abundant measure. Had not the Pharisees, as Jesus said, persistently blocked the door, the masses would undoubtedly have sought admission to the fraternal community in great numbers, for we are told that the common people heard him gladly.

Jesus was not content merely to open wide the door to all who were seeking fellowship and inspiration to fuller living. From the first he began to train his disciples that they might go forth on a mission of healing, preaching, and teaching. His social plan included an aggressive, organized missionary propaganda. He not only himself sought the lost, but also trained and taught his followers to do the same. This fact explains not only the tremendous drawing, but also the kinetic power of early Christianity.