Jesus Christ is the lure of the ages. He is the most interesting figure in history. History says little about Him, yet that little means much to us. It whets the appetite for more knowledge. The little is distinctly fascinating; what would be a full record of His sayings and doings, suppose such a narrative displayed in faded manuscript were unearthed from the musty archives of an old Eastern monastery and brought to daylight in the twentieth century? The fragmentary record that we hold is sufficiently vital to have kept His memory green for nearly two thousand years. What a glorious find a continuation of the wonderful story would be to those hungering for larger knowledge of their Lord's earthly life!
Jesus Christ is the unplaced figure in history. He occupies no niche in the secular temple of Fame. No historian of the country in which He lived paged His name amongst the worthies of the age or gave it mention in a footnote of history. Outside the covers of the Sacred Book Jesus Christ is an unknown quantity. During His lifetime the insignificance of the movement He promoted in Galilee was unworthy of serious attention from the authorities. His disciples were men of obscure origin, a mere handful of ignorant peasants and fishermen, rated as misguided, harmless fanatics following a crazy leader to oblivion, the foreordained end of a madman's escapade. Others before Him had started forth on the splendid expedition to set the world in order and were interrupted in the performance of their formidable task. It was towering madness to suppose permanent results could follow a single-handed fight against the world; to think that He could disturb the well-founded authority of King Herod or challenge Cæsar seated in purple power on the seven hills of Rome: as likely He might uproot the seven hills themselves which cradle the imperial city on their nursing-lap. Yet to-day He ranks above all competing heroes and overlords earth and heaven in the compelling influence His solitary life imposes on the world's activities, and that influence is only just beginning to be felt by us; eventually it will succeed in refashioning the world after His own heart and conforming it to the likeness of His own image.
Jesus Christ is the lonely figure in history. He launched His mission on the world without human patronage to give it a winning start. Illustrious men of the age did not do Him reverence, nor contribute their sympathy and support to stiffen His cause; they were frankly hostile to Him. He had no family influence to help Him in the great adventure; His ancestry was illustrious, but His relatives were poor and uninfluential folk; His father was a village tradesman. He was not a University man distinguished in letters to gain the ear of the cultured classes. He had no well-to-do friends to back Him either socially or financially. No man ever stood more remote from the world's conventional smile than He did. He was a rank outsider. He battled onward through resisting foes, upholding the shining truth as a sun-bright banner for brave men to rally round and fight for the kingdom of God and the empire of good souls on earth. He dwelt in spiritual isolation, for a mighty purpose cut Him off from the current influences of His time. The world's cold stare was the freezing recognition given Him, and it chilled the finer sensibilities of His loving nature.
There was nothing professional about Jesus Christ. He was not a place-seeker. He held no office in Church or State. He was a plain citizen, plainly dressed. His manner was simple and natural and without side. His speech was of the people; He was one of the crowd. No glittering halo aureoled His brow, promoting Him beyond His brethren. As a prophet, appearances were dead against Him. Why should He rise above his class-level and teach His betters and superiors high morality and spiritual truth? He had no crumbs of learning Himself--how could He feed others out of an empty basket? He had never studied in the schools and won academic distinction! Surely He overstepped Himself. His neighbours resented His common everyday look, easy manner, and arrogant pretensions. These things did not mix well together. They denounced His new, strange teachings as dangerous to the community; He was an unchartered, restless demagogue, roaming the country, disturbing the public weal. They scoffed at this common villager and His idle dream of founding a kingdom of righteousness built on the dregs of humanity, and derisively asked "When shall this kingdom come?"
Now, John the Baptist, hermit of the wilderness, was a prophet after their own heart. He played up to their ideal. He quickened their hot imagination. He was aglow with colour. He was a human tornado. His defiant attitude, eccentric apparel, and mystic fervour, were vividly picturesque; they caught the eye and compelled attention. He was an untamed child of the desert; he stood aloof from the common crowd. Even high-toned Pharisees were glamoured by his romantic pose. They listened raptly to his fiery message, and were fascinated by his insolent tongue and audacious words shot bolt-straight at them. His hearers staggered whilst he thundered burning condemnations on their smug sins and sordid lives; they writhed in agony as he lifted them from their feet and suspended them over the bottomless pit, choking in sulphurous fumes ascending from the fires of the damned below. Such ghastly presentment of the truth after the good old method of the prophets churned up the muddy depths of their polluted hearts. It converted the masses quickly, as a visitation of the plague could drop a panicky city to its knees, and when the excitement slowed down be as quickly forgotten as a nine-days' wonder out of fashion. The religious revival subsided like the froth blown off by the welcome wind of a new excitement. The emotions of a day spent down on the banks of the Jordan with John the Baptist, the idol of the people, were exhilarating, and something to be remembered for a lifetime by these hard-headed old Jews, and an interesting story to tell their children's children in years to come. The ministry of Jesus was not effervescent in character. He could have stormed men's imaginations with flaming pomp and splendour; He could have ridden a chariot of fire attended by thunder and lightning as running footmen to announce His presence, but men's hearts would have been unmelted by such fierce demonstrations of power. It might have awoke astonishment and intoxicated them into religious frenzy, but afterward it would have left behind a nasty chill on the heart.
Jesus Christ had no official position in the Church as a teacher. He had no mandate from the powers that be to carry on. He did not present Himself as a high Church dignitary, high as an enthroned archbishop robed in scarlet and gold; nor was He comfortably placed as a canon in a snug cathedral stall; nor even a meek young curate casting longing eyes on Church preferment. The Church of the day would have none of Him. They flung Him from the synagogue. His ideas were unproven and unpalatable to His countrymen; He must build a new romantic world for Himself and His followers to live in outside the orthodox world of His day, if they wanted liberty to breathe, and so He began at the bottom of society and quietly built upwards. He was just a man walking amongst suffering humanity, and was one of the sufferers Himself. He came like dew descending on mown grass, noiseless, fragrant, healing; silently He ministered amongst the people, winning home to human hearts by sympathy and gentleness and love, and gradually the new kingdom of righteousness grew up in the midst of the weary old world. He gained dominion over men by their resistible beauty and power of Divine truth which He expounded, and made attractive by parable and picture and by His own blameless walk and conversation. His teachings were exemplified in His life, and His life shines in undimmed beauty the exemplification of His teaching. He became a living gospel to them which all men could read, and His Divine personality was a centre of healing power which cured men's infirmities of body and mind. He had no money to pay for services rendered to Him, and He gave no hopes of worldly honour or possessions to His followers. He was homeless and at the mercy of friends for the shelter of a roof and the hospitality of His daily meals. He had intense sympathy with men, but He was no deluded optimist. He placed measured value on every man's pledge of fidelity to His cause, for He knew what was in man; with clear insight He saw into their dishonesty, selfishness, misery, but He knew they never had had a chance to do better, and He meant to give them a good chance all round. He frankly told people their sins, yet with all His straight speaking He won men and women to Himself. His manner was gracious, and He was indulgent to the frailties of our human nature with a sympathy that pardons all. The deep longings of His heart were for their happiness and uplifting, and the difficulty He encountered in leading them to follow the things that made for their peace was heartbreaking to His sensitive nature.
He had but few friends, and of the inner circle He gathered round Him all were not loyal; for He was betrayed into the hands of His enemies by one of the intimates of the band, and was forsaken by all in the hour of His supreme trial. He returned good for evil, blessing for cursing, and died in the act of praying for His enemies. No one could bring any serious accusation against Him, and he was declared innocent by the judge who condemned Him to death. Yet He was sacrificed as one whose life did not count; He was thrown as a sop to slake the blood-thirst of a howling Jewish mob. In the annals of the law-court His name is not mentioned, and there is no record of His trial and crucifixion to be found in history.
Looked at from the standpoint of men of His time, His life was a failure, and the delectable vision of a kingdom of righteousness on earth, the coming of which He pictured in glowing, fluent colours, reads like a dainty fairy-tale spun for children's amusement. Yet He himself saw through the darkness into the white light of the future, and beheld the crowning success of His mission. He saw the coming triumph of the Conquering Cross, which should subdue all things unto itself, and in place of the finest legend ever planted on human credulity by an artist in words He saw outlined through the dissolving mists of time, solid and well founded, the City Beautiful, with its shining streets, its many mansions and translucent atmosphere, peopled with white-robed citizens redeemed and ever blest; and the verdict of to-day is that the ministry of Jesus Christ on earth was the turning point in the world's destiny. No other personality has exerted such profound influence on the lives of men as Jesus of Nazareth, the despised and rejected of His day.
The ministry of Christ on earth lasted about three years in all. Until He was thirty years of age He was content to rest in deep obscurity. Nazareth, with its quiet remote valley, was world enough for Him to move in, and when His hour was come He found Himself. He opened His mouth and taught the people. He passed from village to village, a travelling storm-centre, exposing respectable old sins, ripping up time-honoured religious hypocrisies, vexing the Pharisees, and confounding the vain traditions of the elders. He laid down new laws of life and conduct for men's observance, and unfolded the love of God to man in its plenitude of tenderness and pity; even to waifs and strays and outcasts of city slums who had never received a kind, hopeful word from the lips of their own religious teachers. In fact, it was God breaking in upon history, opening a new permanent way into heaven for lost men to return home by, and to cull the wayside flowers of joy and happiness whilst homeward bound.
Thus Jesus in three short years fearlessly and swiftly accomplished His world-wide mission, and died triumphantly in full achievement of His benign purpose.