What is the evidence of the major premiss? The moment it is questioned it is seen to be invalid. Nothing could be more natural than that Moses, or any other Hebrew, should speak of his God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, meaning that those great forefathers of his race had adored and been protected by the same Jehovah in their day, but not therefore that they were still living. The Sadducees must have been weak indeed if such an argument could weigh with them for a moment.
After this a scribe or lawyer drew from Jesus the important declaration that in his opinion the two greatest commandments were that we should love God with the whole heart, soul, mind, and strength; and our neighbors as ourselves (Mk. xii. 28-34; Mt. xxii. 34-40; Lu. x. 25-37). How gratuitous the imputations of ill-will thrown out against those who interrogate Jesus may be, is admirably shown in the present instance. One Gospel (the most trustworthy) asserts that the question about the first commandment was put by a scribe, who thought that Jesus had answered well, and who, moreover, expressed emphatic approval of the reply given to himself. Such (according to this account) was his sympathy with Jesus, that the latter declared that he was not far from the kingdom of God. Mark now the extraordinary color given to this simple transaction in another Gospel. The Pharisees, we are told, saw that the Sadducees had been silenced, and therefore drew together. Apparently as a result of their consultation (though this is not stated), one of them who was a lawyer asked a question, tempting him, namely, Which is the great commandment in the law? Diverse, again, from both versions is the narrative of a third. In the first place, all connection with the preceding questions is broken off, and without any preliminaries, a lawyer stands up, and, tempting him, inquires, "Master, by what conduct shall I inherit eternal life?" To which Jesus replies by a counter-question, "What is written in the law?" and then, strange to say, these two great commandments are enunciated, not by him, but by the unknown lawyer, whose answer receives the commendation of Jesus.
The bias thus evinced by the Evangelists, even in reporting the fairest questions, seems to show that Christ did not like his opinions to be elicited from him by this method, feeling perhaps that it was likely to expose his intellectual weaknesses. In this way, and possibly in others, a sentiment of hostility grew up between himself and the dominant sects, which, until the closing scenes of his career, was far more marked on his side than on theirs. Beautiful maxims about loving one's enemies and returning good for evil did not keep him from reproaching the Pharisees on many occasions. Unfortunately, a man's particular enemies are just those who scarcely ever appear to him worthy of love, and this was evidently the case with Jesus and the men upon whom he poured forth his denunciations. Judging by his mode of speaking, we should suppose that all religious people who did not agree with him were simply hypocrites. This is one of the mildest terms by which he can bring himself to mention the Pharisees or the scribes. Of the latter, he declares that they devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers; therefore they would receive the greater damnation (Mk. xii. 40; Mt. xxiii. 14). The scribes and the Pharisees, it is said, bind heavy burdens on others, and refuse to touch them themselves (surely an improbable charge). They do all their works to be seen of men (their outward behavior then was virtuous). One of their grievous sins is that they make their phylacteries broad, and enlarge the borders of their garments. Worse still: they like the best places at dinner-parties and in the synagogues (to which perhaps their position entitled them). They have a pleasure in hearing themselves called "Rabbi," a crime of which Christ's disciples are especially to beware. They shut up the kingdom of heaven, neither entering themselves, nor allowing others to enter. They compass sea and land to make one proselyte, but all this seeming zeal for religion is worthless: when they have the proselyte, they make him still more a child of hell than themselves. They pay tithes regularly, but omit the weightier virtues; unhappily too common a failing with the votaries of all religions. They make the outside of the cup and platter clean, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Like whited sepulchres, they look well enough outside, but this aspect of righteousness is a mere cloak for hypocrisy and wickedness. They honor God with their lips, but their heart is far from him.[30]
He uses towards them such designations as these: "Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites;" "you blind guides;" "you fools and blind;" "thou blind Pharisee;" "you serpents, you generation of vipers." If we may believe that he was the author of a parable contained only in Luke, he used a Pharisee as his typical hypocrite, and held up a publican—one of a degraded class—as far superior in genuine virtue to this self-righteous representative of the hated order (Lu. xviii. 9-14).
Had the Pharisees been actually guilty of the exceeding wickedness which Jesus thought proper to ascribe to them, his career would surely have been cut short at a much earlier stage. As it was, they seem to have borne with considerable patience the extreme license which he permitted himself in his language against them. Nay, I venture to say that had he confined himself to language, however strong, he might have escaped the fate which actually befell him. And the evidence of this proposition is to be found in the extreme mildness with which his apostles were afterwards treated by the Sanhedrim, even when they acted in direct disobedience to its orders (Acts iv. 15-21, and v. 27-42). Only Stephen, who courted martyrdom by his language, was put to death, and that for the legal offense of blasphemy. Ordinary prudence would have saved Jesus. For his arrest was closely connected with his expulsion of the money-changers from the temple court. Not indeed that he was condemned to death on that account, but that this ill-considered deed was the immediate incentive of the legal proceedings, which subsequently ended, contrary perhaps to the expectation of his prosecutors, in his conviction by the Sanhedrim on a capital charge. Let us consider the evidence of this. For the convenience of persons going to pay tribute to the temple, some money-changers—probably neither better nor worse than others of their trade—sat outside for the purpose of receiving the current Roman coinage and giving the national money, which alone the authorities of the temple received in exchange. Certain occasions in life requiring an offering of doves, these too were sold in the precincts of the temple, obviously to the advantage of the public. Had Jesus disapproved of this practice, he might have denounced it in public, and have endeavored to persuade the people to give it up. Instead of this, he entered the temple, expelled the buyers and sellers (by what means we do not know), upset the money-changers' tables and the dove-sellers' seats, and permitted no one to carry a vessel through the temple. "Is it not written," he exclaimed, "'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations?' but you have made it a den of thieves" (Mk. xi. 15-18; Mt. xxi. 12, 13; Lu. xix. 45-48). The action and the words were alike unjustifiable. The extreme care of the Jews to preserve the sanctity of their temple is well known from secular history. Nothing that they had done or were likely to do could prevent it from remaining a house of prayer. And even if they had suffered it to be desecrated by commerce, was it, they would ask, for Jesus to fall suddenly upon men who were but pursuing a calling which custom had sanctioned, and which they had no reason to think illegal or irreligious? Was it for him to stigmatize them all indiscriminately as "thieves"? Plainly not. He had, in their opinion, exceeded all bounds of decorum, to say nothing of law, in this deed of violence and of passion. Thus, there was nothing for it now but to restrain the further excesses he might be tempted to commit.
No immediate steps were, however, taken to punish this outrage. It is alleged that Jesus escaped because of the reputation he enjoyed among the people. At any rate, the course of the authorities was the mildest they could possibly adopt. They contented themselves with asking Jesus by what authority he did these things, a question which assuredly they had every right to put. He answered by another question, promising if they answered it, he would answer theirs. Was John's baptism from heaven or from men? Hereupon the Evangelists depict the perplexity which they imagine arose among the priests. If they said, from heaven, Jesus would proceed to ask why they had not received him; if from men, they would encounter the popular impression that he was a prophet. All this, however, may be mere speculation; we return within the region of the actual knowledge of the Evangelists when we come to their answer. "And they say in answer to Jesus, 'We do not know.' And Jesus says to them, 'Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.'" (Mk. xi. 27-33; Mt. xxi. 23-27; Lu. xx. 1-8). Observe in this reply the conduct of Jesus. He had promised the priests that if they answered his question, he would also answer theirs. They did answer his question as best they could, and he refused to answer theirs! Even in the English version, where the contrast between him and them is disguised by the employment of the same word "tell" as the translation of two very different verbs in the original, the distinction between "We cannot tell" and "I do not," that is "will not tell" is palpable enough. But it is far more so in the original. The priests did not by any means decline to answer the question; they simply said, what may very likely have been true, that they did not know whence the baptism of John was. In the divided state of public opinion about John, nothing could be more natural. They could not reply decidedly if their feelings were undecided. Their reply, "We do not know," was then a perfectly proper one. The corresponding reply on the part of Jesus would have been, "I do not know by what authority I do these things;" but this of course it was impossible to give. The chief priests, scribes and elders had more right to ask Jesus to produce his authority for his assault than he had to interrogate them about their religious opinions. But Jesus, though he had for the moment evaded a difficulty, must have been well aware that he was not out of danger. He found it necessary to retire to a secret spot, known only to friends. Here, however, he was discovered by his opponents, and brought before the Sanhedrim to answer to the charges now alleged against his character and doctrine.
To some extent these charges are matter of conjecture. The Gospels intimate that there was much evidence against him which they have not reported. Now it is impossible for us to do complete justice to the tribunal which heard the case unless we know the nature and number of the offences of which the prisoner was accused. One of them, the promise to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, may have presented itself to their minds as an announcement of a serious purpose, especially after the recent violence done to the traders. However this may be, there was now sufficient evidence before the court to require the high priest to call upon Jesus for his reply. He might therefore have made his defense if he had thought proper. He declined to do so. Again the high priest addressed him, solemnly requiring him to say whether he was the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus admitted that such was his conviction, and declared that they would afterwards see him return in the clouds of heaven. Hereupon the high priest rent his clothes, and asked what further evidence could be needed. All had heard his blasphemy; what did they think of it? All of them concurred in condemning him to death (Mk. xv. 53-64; Mt. xxvi. 57-66; Lu. xxii. 66-71).
The three Evangelists who report the trial all agree that the blasphemy thus uttered was accepted at once as full and sufficient ground for the conviction of Jesus. Now, I see no reason whatever to doubt that the priests who were thus scandalized by his declaration were perfectly sincere in the horror they professed. All who have at all realized the extremely strong feelings of the Jews on the subject of Monotheism, will easily understand that anything which in the least impugned it would be regarded by them with the utmost aversion. And a man who claimed to be the Son of God certainly detracted somewhat from the sole and exclusive adoration which they considered to be due to Jehovah. As indeed the event has proved; for the Christian Church soon departed from pure Monotheism, adopting the dogma of the Trinity; while Christ along with his Father, and even more than his Father, became an object of its worship. So that if the Jews considered it their supreme obligation to preserve the purity of their Jehovistic faith, as their Scriptures taught them to believe it was, they were right in putting down Jesus by forcible means. No doubt they were wrong in holding such an opinion. It was not, in fact, their duty to guard their faith by persecution. They would have been morally better had they understood the modern doctrine of religious liberty, unknown as it was to Christians themselves until some sixteen centuries after the death of Christ. But for their mistaken notions on this head they were only in part responsible. They had inherited their creed with its profound intolerance. Their history, their legislators, their prophets, all conspired to uphold persecution for the maintenance of religious truth. They could not believe in their sacred books, and disbelieve the propriety of persecution. Before they could leave Jesus at large to teach his subversive doctrines, they must have ceased to be Jews; and this it was impossible for them to do. We must not be too hard upon men whose only crime was that they believed in a false religion.
According to the dictates of that religion, Jesus ought to have been stoned. But the Roman supremacy precluded the Jews from giving effect to their own laws. Jesus was therefore taken before the procurator, and accused of "many things." The charge of blasphemy of course would weigh nothing in the mind of a Roman; and it is evident that another aspect of the indictment was brought prominently before Pilate: namely, the pretension of Jesus to be king of the Jews. As to the substantial truth of this second charge, we are saved the necessity of discussion, for Jesus himself, when questioned by Pilate, at once admitted it. But whether it was made in malice, and in a somewhat different sense from that in which Pilate understood it, is not so clear. Jesus at no time, so far as we know, put forward any direct claim to immediate temporal dominion. At the same time it must be remembered that the ideas of Messiahship and possession of the kingdom were so intimately connected in the minds of the Jews, that they were probably unable to dissociate them. Unfit as Jesus plainly was for the exercise of the government, they might well believe that, if received by any considerable number of the people, it would be forced upon him as the logical result of his career. Nor were these fears unreasonable. His entry into Jerusalem riding on an ass (an animal expressly selected as emblematic of his royalty), with palm-branches strewed before him, and admirers calling "Hosanna!" as he went, pointed to a very real and serious danger. Another such demonstration might with the utmost ease have passed into a disturbance of the peace, not to say a tumult, which the Romans would have quenched in blood unsparingly and indiscriminatingly shed. Jesus was really therefore a dangerous character, not so much to the Romans, as to the Jews. Not being prepared to accept him as their king in fact, they were almost compelled in self-preservation to denounce him as their would-be king to Pilate.
His execution followed. His supposed resurrection, and the renewed propagation of his faith, followed that. It has been widely believed that because Christianity was not put down by the death of its founder, because, indeed, it burst out again in renewed vigor, therefore the measures taken against him were a complete failure, and served only to confer additional glory and power on the religion he had taught. But this opinion arises from a confusion of ideas. If they aimed at preserving their own nation from what they deemed an impious heresy—and I see no proof that they aimed at anything else—the Jewish authorities were perfectly successful. Christianity, which, if our accounts be true, threatened to seduce large numbers of people from their allegiance to the orthodox creed, was practically extinguished among the Jews themselves by the death of Christ. They could not possibly believe in a crucified Messiah. Only a very small band of disciples persisted in adhering to Jesus, justifying their continued faith by asserting that he had risen from the tomb. But it was no longer among the countrymen of Jesus, whom he had especially sought to attach to his person and his doctrine, that this small remnant of his followers could find their converts. Neither then, nor at any subsequent time, has Christianity been able to wean the Jews from their ancient faith. The number of those who, from that time to this, have abandoned it in favor of the more recent religion has been singularly small. If, as is probable, there was during the earthly career of Jesus a growing danger that his teaching might lead to the formation of a sect to which many minds would be attracted, that danger was completely averted.