To the same period belong other parables that contain larger ideas than the Jewish Messiah of the first generation could entertain. Such are the story of the net cast into the sea and gathering in of every kind, that is, "Greeks and Romans, barbarians, Scythians, bond and free," not Hebrews only,—the miscellaneous haul being impartially examined—sweetness of quality, not forms of scale being made the condition of acceptance;—the story of the good Samaritan, designed to place people reckoned idolators and miscreants on a higher spiritual level than anointed priests of whatever order, who postponed mercy to sacrifice. Could the Jewish Messiah attribute to Samaritans a grace that was the highest adornment of faithful Jews? The story of the prodigal son belongs to the same category. The elder brother, who has always been at home, dutiful but ungracious niggardly and covetous, is the Jew who has never left the homestead of faith, but has stayed there, confidently expecting the Messianic inheritance as the reward of his conventional orthodoxy. The younger brother is the Gentile, the infidel, the pagan apostate, who throws off the parental authority and reduces himself to spiritual beggary. He spends all; he contents himself with refuse; is more heathenish than the heathen themselves; swinish in his habits. Yet this spiritual reprobate, by his unseemly behavior, forfeits no privilege. The "mansion" of the Father's house is still open to him when he shall choose to return. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob waits and watches for the penitent; sees him a great way off; runs to meet him; throws his arms about his neck; reinstates him in his place; celebrates his arrival by feasting, and puts him above the elder brother who had been working in the field while the prodigal had been rioting in the city. Such a lesson from the lips of the Jewish Messiah would have been astonishing indeed. It would have gone far towards overturning his claim. We know that some years later the lesson was inculcated as a cardinal doctrine by Paul and regarded as a heresy by the Christ's personal disciples, and it is in accordance with literary laws to refer to this later period the ideas that were native to it.
The religious beliefs imputed to the Messiah we are sketching, are the ordinary beliefs of his age and people. His faith is the faith of the Pharisees. His idea of God is the national idea softened, as it always had been, by a gentle mind. It thinks as his countrymen thought about Providence, fate and freedom, good and evil, destiny, the past and the future of his race. He believes in the resurrection and the judgment, the blessedness that is in store for the faithful Israelite, the misery that awaits the unworthy children of Abraham. His moral classifications are the technical classifications of the enthusiastic patriot, who confounded national with rational principles of judgment. He believes in good and bad angels, in guardian spirits and demoniacal possession. A Pharisee of the narrow literal school he is not. His allegiance to the Mosaic law is spiritual, not slavish; his faith in the perpetuity of the temple worship is unencumbered with formalism; he discriminates between the priestly office and the priestly character, between the form and the essence of sacrifice; yet is he capable of lurid feelings and bitter thoughts towards the Pharisees of another school; he cannot enter into the mind of the Sadducee; and the scribe is a person he cannot respect. On this side his intolerance occasionally breaks forth with inconsiderate heat. He calls his opponents "blind guides," "hypocrites," "whited sepulchres," and threatens them with the wrath of the Eternal.
The Messiah's essential conception of his office does not differ materially from that of his countrymen. He is no military leader; he puts no confidence in the sword; he incites to no revolt. But he does not trust to intellectual methods for his success; the success that he anticipates is not such as follows the promulgation of ideas, or the establishment of moral convictions. He looks for demonstrations of power, not human but super-human. The hosts that surround him, and are reckoned on to sustain him, are the hosts of heaven, marshalled under the Lord and prepared to sweep down upon the Lord's foes when the hour of conflict shall strike. He will not draw the sword himself, or allow his followers to gird on weapons of war; but he is more than willing to avail himself of legions irresistible in might. James Martineau has touched this point with a master hand: "The non-resistant principle meant no more in the early church than that the disciples were not to anticipate the hour fast approaching of the Messiah's descent to claim his throne. But when that hour struck there was to be no want of 'physical force' no shrinking from retribution as either unjust or undivine. The 'flaming fire,' the 'sudden destruction,' the 'mighty angels,' the 'tribulation and anguish,' were to form the retinue of Christ, and the pioneers of the kingdom of God. The new reign was to come with force, and on nothing else in the last resort was there any reliance; only the army was to arrive from heaven before the earthly recruits were taken up. 'My kingdom,' said Jesus, 'is not of this world, else would my servants fight;' an expression which implies that no kingdom of this world can dispense with arms, and that he himself, were he the head of a human polity, would not forbid the sword: but while 'legions of angels' stood ready for his word, and only waited till the Scripture was fulfilled, and the hour of darkness was passed, to obey the signal of heavenly invasion, the weapon of earthly temper might remain in its sheath."
It is not affirmed here that the actual Jesus corresponded to this Messianic representation; that he filled it and no more; that it correctly and adequately reported him. It may possibly present only so much of him as the average of his contemporaries could appreciate. They may be right who are of opinion that the fourth evangelist comes nearer to the historical truth than the first. That the earliest New Testament conception of the Messiah has been correctly portrayed in the preceding sketch may be granted without prejudice to the historical Jesus. They only who assume the identity of this Hebrew Messiah with the man of Nazareth, need place him in the niche that is here made for the Messiah. There are others more noble. Let each decide for himself, on the evidence, to which he belongs. Some will decide that the first account of a wonderful person must, from the nature of the case, be the falsest; others will decide that in the nature of things it must be the truest. Whichever be the decision the literary image remains unimpaired. Whether time should be judged requisite to emancipate the living character from the associations of its environment, and bring it into full view; or whether on the other hand time should be regarded as darkening and confusing the image, for the reason that it allows the growth of legends and distorting theory, is a question that will be touched by-and-by. For the present it suffices to show what the earliest representation was, and to trace its descent from the traditions of the race. The materials are adequate for this, whether for more or not. The form of Jesus may be lost, but the form of the Messiah is distinct.
V.
THE FIRST CHRISTIANS.
The death of the Messiah did not discourage his followers, as it might have done had he presented the coarser type of the anticipation illustrated by Judas of Galilee whose insurrection had been extinguished in blood some years before, yet the movement of Judas did not cease at his death, but troubled the state for sixty years. His two sons, James and John, raised the Messianic standard fifteen years or thereabouts after the crucifixion of Jesus, and were themselves crucified. Their younger brother, Menahem, renewed the attempt twenty years later, and so far succeeded that he cut his way to the throne, assumed the part of a king, went in royal state to the temple, and but for the fury of his fanaticism might have re-erected temporarily the throne of David. But this kind of Messiah, besides being savage, was monotonous. His appeal was to the lower passions; the thoughtful, imaginative, contemplative, poetic, were not drawn to him. His followers, adherents not disciples,—might, at the best, have founded a dynasty, they could not have planted a church. The pure enthusiasm of the Christ, his entire singleness of heart, the absence in him of private ambition or self-seeking, his confidence in the heavenly character of his mission, his reliance on super-human aid, his sincere persuasion that the purpose of his calling would not be thwarted by death, insured his hold on those who had trusted him. They did not lose their conviction that he was the Messiah; they anticipated his return, in glory, to complete his work; in that anticipation they waited, watched and prayed. The name "Christians" was, we are told, given, in derision, to the believers in Antioch. But if they had chosen a name for themselves, they could not have hit on a more precisely descriptive one. "Christians" they were; believers that the Christ had come, that the crucified was the Christ, that he would reappear and vindicate his claim. This was their single controlling thought, the only thought that distinguished them from their countrymen who rejected the Messiahship of their friend. They were Jews, in every respect; Jews of Jews, enthusiastic, devout, pharisaic Jews, the firmest of adherents to the Law of Moses, unqualified receivers of tradition, diligent students of the scriptures, constant attendants at the temple worship, urgent in supplication, literal in creed, and punctual in observance; acquiescent in the claims of the priesthood, scrupulous in all Hebrew etiquette. They were determined that the Master, at his coming, should find them ready.
James, "the Lord's brother," set an example of sanctity worthy of a high-priest. In fact, he assumed the position of a priest, and filled it with such austerity that he was called "the righteous." He tasted, says Hegesippus, neither wine nor strong drink; he ate nothing that had life; his hair was never shorn; his body was never anointed with oil, or bathed in water; his garments were of linen, never of wool; so perfect was he in all righteousness that, though no consecrated priest, he was permitted to enter the holy place behind the veil of the temple, and there he spent hours in intercession for the people, his knees becoming as hard as a camel's from contact with the stone pavement. To those who asked him the way to life, he replied: "Believe that Jesus is the Christ." When some dissenters protested against this declaration and asked him to retract it, he repeated it with stronger emphasis; when the malcontents who revered him, but would have none of his Messiah, raised a tumult and tried to intimidate him, he reiterated the statement, adding: "He sits in heaven, at the right hand of the Supreme power, and will come in clouds." For this testimony, says tradition, he laid down his life.