What Jesus has in mind is not humanity, but a particular race. Israel is the nation that monopolizes his attention, and even in that nation his interest is limited to those that believe in him as the Messiah. The idea of a world-salvation was utterly foreign to his sympathies. His disciples were all of one race, and he emphatically warned them against going into the cities of the Gentiles to preach the gospel. He tells them that he was sent expressly and exclusively for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Of course, we are familiar with the "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature," but Jesus is supposed to have given that commandment after his death. In his life time, he said, "Go not into the cities and towns of the Gentiles." If he said, "Go not, to the Gentiles!" when he was living, the "Go to the Gentiles," after his death, has all the ear-marks of an interpolation. The two statements squarely contradict each other. Granting that Jesus knew what he was talking about, he could not have given both commandments. Moreover, from the conduct of the apostles who refused to go to the Gentiles until Paul came about,—who had never seen or heard Jesus,—it may be concluded that Jesus did not change his mind to the very last on the matter of his being sent "only for the lost children of the House of Israel."
But the thought of Jesus is as Hebraic as are his sympathies. His God is invariably the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Suppose he had also called God, "The God of Abraham, Confucius and Socrates." Ah, if Jesus had only said that! The idea of the larger God was in the human mind, but not in his. The idea was in the air, but Jesus was not tall enough to reach it. He did not look beyond a tribal Deity. The God of Jesus was a Hebrew. To Jesus David was the only man who looked big in history. Of Alexander, for example, who conquered the world and made the Greek language universal—the language in which his own story, the story of Jesus, is written, and which story, in all probability would never have come down to us but for the Greek language and Alexander; of Socrates, whose daily life was the beauty of Athens; of Aristotle, of whom Goethe said that he was the greatest intellect the world had produced; of the Caesars, who converted a pirate station on the Tiber to an Eternal City—Jesus does not seem to have heard at all—and if he had, he does not seem to care for them, any more than would a Gypsy Smith.
The heaven of Jesus is also quite Semitic. His twelve apostles are to sit upon twelve thrones—to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. There is no mention of anybody else sitting on a throne, or of anybody else in heaven except Jews. People will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south to meet their father, Abraham, in heaven. The cosmography or topography of the world to come is also Palestinian. It has as many gates as there are sons of Jacob; all its inhabitants have Hebrew names; and just as on earth, outside of Judea, the whole world was heathen, in the next world, heaven is where Abraham and his children dwell; the rest is hell. Indeed, to Jesus heaven meant Abraham's bosom. And we repeatedly come across the phrase, "heavenly Jerusalem" in the New Testament, as the name of the abode of the blessed? Is it likely that a man so racial, so sectarian, so circumscribed in his thought and sympathies,—so local and clannish,—could assume and fulfill the role of a universal teacher?
But not only was the world of Jesus a mere speck on the map, but it was also a world without a future. Jesus expected the world to come to an end in a very short time. And what was the use of trying to get acquainted with, or interested in, a world about to be abandoned? The evidence is very conclusive that Jesus believed the end of the world to be imminent. He says: "Verily I say unto you, ye shall not have gone through the cities of Israel before the son of man come." As Palestine was a small country, and its few cities could easily be visited in a short time, it follows that Jesus expected the almost immediate end of the world. In another text he tells his disciples that this great event would happen in the lifetime of those who were listening to him: "This generation," he says, "shall not pass away," before the world ends. This belief in the approaching collapse of the world was shared by his apostles. Paul, for instance, is constantly exhorting Christians to get ready for the great catastrophe, and he describes how those still living will be transformed when Jesus appears in the clouds.
The earliest Christian Society was communistic, because all that they needed was enough to subsist upon before Jesus reappeared. It would have been foolish from their point of view to "lay up treasures on earth" when the earth was soon to be burnt up. Moreover, they were not commanded to labor, but to "watch and pray." The fruits of labor require time to ripen in, and there was no time. The cry was, "Behold the bridegroom is at the door." Hence, to "watch and pray" was the only reasonable occupation. We can see for ourselves how this belief in the near end of the world would create a kind of morality altogether unsuitable to people living in a world that does not come to an end. Jesus never dreamt that the world was going to last, for at least another two thousand years. If anyone had whispered such a thing in his ears, he would have gasped for breath. Could the curtain of the future have been lifted high enough for Jesus to have seen in advance some of the changes that have come upon the world during the past twenty centuries,—the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Mohammedanism,—carrying two continents and throwing the third into a state of panic,—wresting the very Jerusalem of Jesus from the Christians and holding it for a thousand years; had Jesus been able to foresee the Dark Ages, the Italian Renaissance, the German Reformation, the French Revolution, the American Revolution with its Declaration of Independence, and later on, its Emancipation Proclamation,—and finally, had Jesus caught even the most distant gleam of that magnificent and majestic Empire, the Empire of Science, with its peaceful reign and bloodless conquests, slowly and serenely climbing above the horizon, bringing to man such a hope as had never before entered his breast, and giving him the stars for eyes, and the wind for wings—had but a glimpse of all this crossed the vision of this Jerusalem youth, his conception of a world soon to be smashed would have appeared to him as the infantile fancy of a—well, what shall I say?—I shall not say of a fanatic, I shall not say, of an illiterate,—let me say—of an enthusiast. The morality of Jesus not only lacked universality, but it was also framed to fit a world under sentence of immediate destruction.
Jesus' doctrine of a passing world was born of his pessimism. The old, whether in years, or in spirit, as Shakespeare says, are always wishing "that the estate of the Sun were now undone." Weariness of life is a sign of exhaustion. The strong and the healthy love life. The young are not pessimists. Jesus had the disease of aged and effete Asia. He was not European in ardor or energy. He contemplated a passing panorama, a world crashing and tumbling into ruins all about him, with Oriental resignation. The groan of a dying world was music to him. He enjoyed the anticipation of calamity. The end of the world would put an end to effort and endeavor, both of which the Asiatic dislikes. To tell people that the world is coming to an end soon,—today, tomorrow, is not to kindle, but to extinguish hope; and without hope our world would be darker even than if the sun were to be blotted out of the sky.
The objection against Christianity, as also against its parent, Judaism, is that it seeks to divert the attention of man from the work in hand to something visionary and distant. It was to direct men's thoughts to some other world that Jesus belittled this.
What are you doing, asks the preacher.
I am laboring for my daily bread.
Indeed! Have you not heard that Jesus said: "Labor not for the meat that perisheth?"