So they chattered, and he heard. Then the talk took another turn, and tales were told—bad eyes flashed and lips smacked, as one story-teller eclipsed the other in the familiar vein. The Arabian Nights are tales of the crowd, it is said, rather than literature in their origin, and will give clues enough to what might be told. Jesus heard, and he saw what it meant; and afterwards he told his friends: "From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders … foolishness; all these evil things come from within, and defile the man" (Mark 7:21-23). The evil thought takes shape to find utterance, and gains thereby a new vitality, a new power for evil, and may haunt both speaker and listener for ever with its defiling memory.
By and by he intervened and spoke himself. Every one was shocked, and said, "Blasphemy!" They were not used to think of God as he did, and it seemed improper.
Then the whole question of human speech rises for him. What did they mean by their words? What could their minds be like? God dragged in and flung about like a counter, in a game of barter—but if you speak real meaning about God it is blasphemy. "Rabbi, Rabbi" to the great man's face—he turns his back—and his name is smirched for ever by a witty improvisation. Why? Why should men do such things? The magic in the idle tale—ten minutes, and the memory is stained for ever with what not one of them would forget, however he might wish to try to forget. The words are loose and idle, careless, flung out without purpose but to pass the moment—and they live for ever and work mischief. How can they be so light and yet have such power?
Later on he told his friends what he had seen in this matter of words. They come from within, and the speaker's whole personality, false or true, is behind what he says—the good or bad treasure of his heart. There are no grapes growing on the bramble bush. No wonder that of every idle word men shall give account on the day of Judgement (Matt. 12:36). The idle word—the word unstudied—comes straight from the inmost man, the spontaneous overflow from the spirit within, natural and inevitable, proof of his quality; and they react with the life that brought them forth.[13]
So he grows up—in a real world and among real people. He goes to school with the boys of his own age, and lives at home with mother and brothers and sisters. He reads the Old Testament, and forms a habit of going to the Synagogue (Luke 4:16). All points to a home where religion was real. The first word he learnt to say was probably "Abba", and it struck the keynote of his thoughts. But he knew the world without as well,—turned on to it early the keen eyes that saw all, and he recognized what he saw. Knowledge of men, but without cynicism, a loving heart still in spite of his freedom from illusions—these are among the gifts that his environment gave him, or failed to take away from him.
CHAPTER III
THE MAN AND HIS MIND
It is a commonplace with those who take literature seriously that what is to reach the heart must come from the heart; and the maxim may be applied conversely—that what has reached a heart has come from a heart—that what continues to reach the heart, among strange peoples, in distant lands, after long ages, has come from a heart of no common make. The Anglo-Saxon boy is at home in the Odyssey; and when he is a man—if he has the luck to be guided into classical paths—he finds himself in the Aeneid; and from this certain things are deduced about the makers of those poems—that they knew life, looked on it with bright, keen eyes, loved it, and lived it over again as they shaped it into verse.
When we turn to the first three Gospels, we find the same thing. Here are books with a more worldwide range than Homer or Virgil, translated again and again from the first century of their existence on to the latest—and then more than ever—into all sorts of tongues, to reach men all over the globe; and that purpose they have achieved. They have done it not so much for the literary graces of the translators or even of the original authors, though in one case these are more considerable than is sometimes allowed. That the Gospels owe their appeal to the recorded sayings and doings of our Lord, is our natural way of putting it to-day; but if for "our Lord" we put a plainer description, more congenial to the day in which the Gospels were written, we shall be in a better position to realize the significance of the worldwide appeal of his words. Thus and thus, then, spoke a mere provincial, a Jew who, though far less conspicuous and interesting, came from the region of Meleager and Philodemos—not from their town of Gadara, nor possibly from their district, but from some place not so very far away.
It was not to be expected that he should win the hearts of men as he did. He had not the Greek culture of the two Gadarenes. Celsus even found his style of speech rather vulgar. But he has, as a matter of common knowledge—so common as hardly to be noted—won the hearts of men in every race and every land. The fact is familiar, but we have as historians and critics to look for the explanation. What has been his appeal? And what the heart and nature, from which came this incredible power and reach of appeal? "Out of the abundance (the overflow) of the heart the mouth speaketh," he said. (Matt. 12:34). This he amplified, as we have seen, by his insistence on the weight of every idle word (Matt. 12:36)—the unstudied and spontaneous expression or ejaculation—the reflex, in modern phrase—which gives the real clue to the man's inner nature and deeper mind, which "justifies" him, therefore, or "condemns" him (Matt. 12:37). The overflow of the heart, he holds, shows more decisively than anything else the quality of the spring in its depths.