Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Japan" (part) to "Jeveros" / Volume 15, Slice 3

by Various

When His disciples, having watched Him at prayer, desired to be taught how to pray, they were bidden to address God as “Father”; to ask first for the hallowing of the Father’s name, and the coming of His kingdom; then for their daily food, for the pardon of their sins and for freedom from temptation. It was the prayer of a family—that the sons might be true to the Father, and the Father true to the sons; and they were further encouraged by a parable of the family: “Ask and ye shall receive.... Every one that asketh receiveth”: for the heavenly Father will do more, not less, than an earthly father would do for his children. After He had cast out a dumb demon, some said that His power was due to Beelzebub. He accordingly asked them by whom the Jews themselves cast out demons; and He claimed that His power was a sign that the kingdom of God was come. But He warned them that demons cast out once might return in greater force. When they asked for a sign from heaven, He would give them no more than the sign of Jonah, explaining that the repentant Ninevites should condemn the present generation: so, too, should the queen of Sheba; for that which they were now rejecting was more than Jonah and more than Solomon. Yet further warnings were given when a Pharisee invited Him to his table, and expressed surprise that He did not wash His hands before the meal. The cleansing of externals and the tithing of garden-produce, He declares, have usurped the place of judgment and the love of God. Woe is pronounced upon the Pharisees: they are successors to the murderers of the prophets. Then citing from Genesis and 2 Chronicles, the first and last books in the order of the Jewish Bible, He declared that all righteous blood from that of Abel to that of Zachariah should be required of that generation. After this the disciples are encouraged not to fear their murderous opponents. The very sparrows are God’s care—much more shall they be; the hairs of their head are all counted. In the end the Son of Man will openly own those who have owned Him before men. For earthly needs no thought is to be taken: the birds and the flowers make no provision for their life and beauty. God will give food and raiment to those who are seeking His kingdom. Earthly goods should be given away in exchange for the imperishable treasures. Suddenly will the Son of Man come: happy the servant whom His Master finds at his appointed task. In brief parables the kingdom of God is likened to a mustard-seed and to leaven. When Jesus is asked if the saved shall be few, He replies that the door is a narrow one. Then, changing His illustration, He says that many shall seek entrance in vain; for the master of the house will refuse to recognize them. But while they are excluded, a multitude from all quarters of the earth shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the prophets in the kingdom of God.

His eyes are now fixed on Jerusalem, where, like the prophets, He must die. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often have I desired to gather thy children together, as a bird her brood beneath her wings, but ye refused.” “Ye shall not see Me, until ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” After this we have the healing of a dropsical man on the Sabbath, with a reply to the murmuring Pharisees; and then a parable of the failure of invited guests and the filling of their places from the streets. A few fragmentary passages remain, of which it will be sufficient to cite a word or two to call them to remembrance. There is a warning that he who forsakes not father and mother cannot be a disciple, nor he who does not bear his cross. Savourless salt is fit for nothing. The lost sheep is brought home with a special joy. “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” Scandals must arise, but woe to him through whom they arise. The Son of Man will come with the suddenness of lightning; the days of Noah and the days of Lot will find a parallel in their blind gaiety and their inevitable disaster. He who seeks to gain his life will lose it. “One shall be taken, and the other left.” “Where the carcase is, the vultures will gather.” Then, lastly, we have a parable of the servant who failed to employ the money entrusted to him; and a promise that the disciples shall sit on twelve thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. We cannot say by our present method of determination, how this document closed; for in the narratives of the Passion and the Resurrection St Matthew and St Luke only coincide in passages which they have taken from St Mark.

Now that we have reconstructed in outline this early account of the Lord Jesus, so far as it has been used by both the later evangelists, we may attempt to compare the picture which it presents to us with that which was offered Comparison with St Mark. by St Mark. But in doing so we must remember that we know it only in fragments. There can be little doubt that much more of it is embedded in St Luke’s Gospel, and something more also in St Matthew’s; but in order to stand on firm ground we have considered thus far only those portions which both of these writers elected to use in composing their later narratives. To go beyond this is a work of delicate discrimination. It can only be effected by a close examination of the style and language of the document, which may enable us in some instances to identify with comparative security certain passages which are found in St Luke, but which St Matthew did not regard as suitable for his purpose. Among these we may venture, quite tentatively, to mention the sermon at Nazareth which opened with a passage from the Book of Isaiah, the raising of the widow’s son at Nain, and the parable of the good Samaritan. These are found in St Luke, but not in St Matthew. On the other hand, it is not improbable that the wonderful words which begin, “Come unto Me all ye that labour,” were drawn by St Matthew from the same document, though they are not recorded by St Luke. But here we have entered upon a region of less certainty, in which critical scholarship has still much to do; and these passages are mentioned here only as a reminder that the document must have contained more than what St Matthew and St Luke each independently determined to borrow from it. Looking, then, at the portions which we have indicated as having this two-fold testimony, we see that in their fragmentary condition we cannot trace the clear historical development which was so conspicuous a feature of St Mark’s Gospel; yet we need not conclude that in its complete form it failed to present an orderly narrative. Next, we see that wherever we are able to observe its method of relating an incident, as in the case of the healing of the centurion’s servant, we have the same characteristics of brevity and simplicity which we admired in St Mark. No comment is made by the narrator; he tells his tale in the fewest words and passes on. Again, we note that it supplies just what we feel we most need when we have reached the end of St Mark’s story, a fuller account of the teaching which Jesus gave to His disciples and to the people at large. And we see that the substance of that teaching is in complete harmony with the scattered hints that we found in St Mark. If the fatherhood of God stands out clearly, we may remember a passage of St Mark also which speaks of “the Heavenly Father” as forgiving those who forgive. If prayer is encouraged, we may also remember that the same passage of St Mark records the saying: “All things whatsoever ye pray for and ask, believe that ye have received them and ye shall have them.” If in one mysterious passage Jesus speaks of “the Father” and “the Son”—terms with which the Gospel of St John has made us familiar—St Mark also in one passage uses the same impressive terms—“the Son” and “the Father.” There are, of course, many other parallels with St Mark, and at some points the two documents seem to overlap and to relate the same incidents in somewhat different forms. There is the same use of parables from nature, the same incisiveness of speech and employment of paradox, the same demand to sacrifice all to Him and for His cause, the same importunate claim made by Him on the human soul.

But the contrast between the two writers is even more important for our purpose. No one can read through the passages to which we have pointed without feeling the solemn sternness of the great Teacher, a sternness which can The Element of Warning. indeed be traced here and there in St Mark, but which does not give its tone to the whole of his picture. Here we see Christ standing forth in solitary grandeur, looking with the eyes of another world on a society which is blindly hastening to its dissolution. It may be that if this document had come down to us in its entirety, we should have gathered from it an exaggerated idea of the severity of our Lord’s character. Certain it is that as we read over these fragments we are somewhat startled by the predominance of the element of warning, and by the assertion of rules of conduct which seem almost inconsistent with a normal condition of settled social life. The warning to the nation sounded by the Baptist, that God could raise up a new family for Abraham, is heard again and again in our Lord’s teaching. Gentile faith puts Israel to shame. The sons of the kingdom will be left outside, while strangers feast with Abraham. Capernaum shall go to perdition; Jerusalem shall be a desolate ruin. The doom of the nation is pronounced; its fate is imminent; there is no ray of hope for the existing constitution of religion and society. As to individuals within the nation, the despised publicans and sinners will find God’s favour before the self-satisfied representatives of the national religion. In such a condition of affairs it is hardly surprising to find that the great and stern Teacher congratulates the poor and has nothing but pity for the rich; that He has no interest at all in comfort or property. If a man asks you for anything, give it him; if he takes it without asking, do not seek to recover it. Nothing material is worth a thought; anxiety is folly; your Father, who feeds His birds and clothes His flowers, will feed and clothe you. Rise to the height of your sonship to God; love your enemies even as God loves His; and if they kill you, God will care for you still; fear them not, fear only Him who loves you all.

Here is a new philosophy of life, offering solid consolation amid the ruin of a world. We have no idea who the disciple may have been who thus seized upon the sadder elements of the teaching of Jesus; but we may well think of him as one of those who were living in Palestine in the dark and threatening years of internecine strife, when the Roman eagles were gathering round their prey, and the first thunder was muttering of the storm which was to leave Jerusalem a heap of stones. At such a moment the warnings of our Lord would claim a large place in a record of His teaching, and the strange comfort which He had offered would be the only hope which it would seem possible to entertain.

4. Additions by the Gospel according to St Matthew.—We have now examined in turn the two earliest pictures which have been preserved to us of the life of Jesus Christ. The first portrays Him chiefly by a record of His actions, The Earlier Narratives. and illustrates His strength, His sympathy, and His freedom from conventional restraints. It shows the disturbing forces of these characteristics, which aroused the envy and apprehension of the leaders of religion. The first bright days of welcome and popularity are soon clouded: the storm begins to lower. More and more the Master devotes Himself to the little circle of His disciples, who are taught that they, as well as He, can only triumph through defeat, succeed by failure, and find their life in giving it away. At length, in fear of religious innovations and pretending that He is a political usurper, the Jews deliver Him up to die on a Roman cross. The last page of the story is torn away, just at the point when it has been declared that He is alive again and about to show Himself to His disciples. The second picture has a somewhat different tone. It is mainly a record of teaching, and the teaching is for the most part stern and paradoxical. It might be described as revolutionary. It is good tidings to the poor: it sets no store on property and material comfort: it pities the wealthy and congratulates the needy. It reverses ordinary judgments and conventional maxims of conduct. It proclaims the downfall of institutions, and compares the present blind security to the days of Noah and of Lot: a few only shall escape the coming overthrow. Yet even in this sterner setting the figure portrayed is unmistakably the same. There is the same strength, the same tender sympathy, the same freedom from convention: there is the same promise to fulfil the highest hopes, the same surrender of life, and the same imperious demand on the lives of others. No thoughtful man who examines and compares these pictures can doubt that they are genuine historical portraits of a figure wholly different from any which had hitherto appeared on the world’s stage. They are beyond the power of human invention. They are drawn with a simplicity which is their own guarantee. If we had these, and these only, we should have an adequate explanation of the beginnings of Christianity. There would still be a great gap to be filled before we reached the earliest letters of St Paul; but yet we should know what the Apostle meant when he wrote to “the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” and reminded them how they had “turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivereth us from the wrath to come.”

If these two narratives served the first needs of Christian believers, it is easy to see that they would presently stimulate further activity in the same direction. For, to begin with, they were obviously incomplete: many incidents and teachings known to the earliest disciples found no place in them; and they contained no account of the life of Jesus Christ before His public ministry, no record of His pedigree, His birth or His childhood. Secondly, their form left much to be desired; for one of them at least was rude in style, sometimes needlessly repetitive and sometimes brief to obscurity. Moreover the very fact that there were two challenged a new and combined work which perhaps should supersede both.

Accordingly, some years after the fall of Jerusalem—we cannot tell the exact date or the author’s name—the book which we call the Gospel according to St Matthew was written to give the Palestinian Christians a The Gospel of St Matthew. full account of Jesus Christ, which should present Him as the promised Messiah, fulfilling the ancient Hebrew prophecies, proclaiming the kingdom of heaven, and founding the Christian society. The writer takes St Mark as his basis, but he incorporates into the story large portions of the teaching which he has found in the other document. He groups his materials with small regard to chronological order; and he fashions out of the many scattered sayings of our Lord continuous discourses, everywhere bringing like to like, with considerable literary art. A wide knowledge of the Old Testament supplies him with a text to illustrate one incident after another; and so deeply is he impressed with the correspondence between the life of Christ and the words of ancient prophecy, that he does not hesitate to introduce his quotations by the formula “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet.”

His Hebrew instinct leads him to begin with a table of genealogy, artificially constructed in groups of fourteen generations—from Abraham to David, from David to the Captivity, and from the Captivity to the Christ. The royal descent of the Messiah is thus declared, and from the outset His figure is set against the background of the Old Testament. He then proceeds to show that, though His lineage is traced through Joseph’s ancestors, He was but the adopted son of Joseph, and he tells the story of the Virgin-birth. The coming of the Child draws Eastern sages to his cradle and fills the court of Herod with suspicious fears. The cruel tyrant kills the babes of Bethlehem, but the Child has been withdrawn by a secret flight into Egypt, whence he presently returns to the family home at Nazareth in Galilee. All this is necessarily fresh material, for the other records had dealt only with the period of public ministry. We have no knowledge of the source from which it was drawn. From the historical standpoint its value must be appraised by the estimate which is formed of the writer’s general trustworthiness as a narrator, and by the extent to which the incidents receive confirmation from other quarters. The central fact of the Virgin-birth, as we shall presently see, has high attestation from another early writer.

The next addition which St Matthew’s Gospel makes to our knowledge is of a different kind. It consists of various important sayings of our Lord, which are combined with discourses found in the second document and are worked Discourses and Parables. up into the great utterance which we call the Sermon on the Mount. Such grouping of materials is a feature of this Gospel, and was possibly designed for purposes of public instruction; so that continuous passages might be read aloud in the services of the Church, just as passages from the Old Testament were read in the Jewish synagogues. This motive would account not only for the arrangement of the material, but also for certain changes in the language which seem intended to remove difficulties, and to interpret what is ambiguous or obscure. An example of such interpretation meets us at the outset. The startling saying, “Blessed are ye poor,” followed by the woe pronounced upon the rich, might seem like a condemnation of the very principle of property; and when the Christian Church had come to be organized as a society containing rich and poor, the heart of the saying was felt to be more truly and clearly expressed in the words, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” This interpretative process may be traced again and again in this Gospel, which frequently seems to reflect the definite tradition of a settled Church.