CHAPTER V.

THE FIRST SAYINGS OF JESUS—HIS IDEAS OF A “FATHER-GOD” AND OF A PURE RELIGION—FIRST DISCIPLES.

Joseph died before his son had assumed any public position. Mary remained, in a manner, the head of the family; and this explains why Jesus, when it was desired to distinguish him from others of the same name, was most frequently called “the son of Mary.” It would seem that having, through her husband's death, become friendless in Nazareth, she retired to Cana, which was probably her native place. Cana was a little town about two or two and a half hours' journey from Nazareth, at the base of the hills which bound the plain of Asochis on the north. The prospect, less grand than that at Nazareth, extends over the whole plain, and is bounded in the most picturesque manner by the mountains of Nazareth and the hills of Sepphoris. Jesus appears to have resided in this place for some time. There he probably passed a part of his youth, and his first manifestations were made at Cana.

He followed the same occupation as his father—that of a carpenter. This was no humiliating or vexatious circumstance. The Jewish custom demanded that a man devoted to intellectual work should assume a handicraft. The most celebrated doctors had their trades; it was thus that St. Paul, whose education was so elaborate, was a tent-maker, or upholsterer. Jesus never married. All his power of loving expended itself on what he considered his heavenly vocation. The extremely delicate sentiment 44which one observes in his manner towards women did not interfere with the exclusive devotion he cherished for his idea. Like Francis d'Assisi and Francis de Sales, he treated as sisters the women who threw themselves into the same work as he did; he had his Saint Clare, and his Françoise de Chantals. However, it is probable that they loved himself better than his work; he was certainly more beloved than loving. As happens frequently in the case of very lofty natures, his tenderness of heart transformed itself into an infinite sweetness, a vague poetry, a universal charm. His relations, free and intimate, but of an entirely moral kind, with women of doubtful character, are also explained by the passion which attached him to the glory of his Father, and which made him jealously anxious for all beautiful creatures who could contribute to it.

What was the progress of thought in Jesus during this obscure period of his life? Through what meditations did he enter upon his prophetic career? We cannot tell, his history having come to us in the shape of scattered narratives and without exact chronology. But the development of living character is everywhere the same, and it cannot be doubted that the growth of a personality so powerful as that of Jesus obeyed very rigorous laws. An exalted conception of the Divinity—which he did not owe to Judaism, and which appears to have been in all its parts the creation of his great intellect—was in a manner the source of all his power. It is essential here that we put aside the ideas familiar to us, and the discussions in which little minds exhaust themselves. In order properly to understand the precise character of the piety of Jesus, we must forget all that is placed between the gospel and ourselves. Deism and Pantheism have become the two poles of theology. The paltry 45discussions of scholasticism, the dryness of spirit of Descartes, the deep-rooted irreligion of the eighteenth century, by lessening God, and by limiting Him, in a manner, by the exclusion of everything which is not His very self, have stifled in the breast of modern rationalism all fertile ideas of the Divinity. If God, in fact, is a fixed entity outside of us, he who believes himself to have peculiar relations with God is a “visionary,” and, as the physical and physiological sciences have shown us that all supernatural visions are illusions, the logical Deist finds it impossible to understand the great beliefs of the past. Pantheism, on the other hand, in suppressing the Divine personality, is as far as it can be from the living God of the ancient religions. Were the men who have best comprehended God—Sakya-Mouni, Plato, St. Paul, St. Francis d'Assisi, and St. Augustine (at some periods of his fluctuating life)—Deists or Pantheists? Such a question has no meaning. The physical and metaphysical proofs of the existence of God were quite indifferent to them. They felt the Divine within themselves.

We must place Jesus in the first rank of this great family of the true sons of God. Jesus had no visions; God did not speak to him as to one outside of himself; God was in him; he felt himself with God, and he drew from his own heart all he said of his Father. He lived in the bosom of God by an unceasing communication; he did not see Him, but he understood Him, without need of the thunder or the burning bush of Moses, of the revealing tempest of Job, of the oracle of the old Greek sages, of the familiar genius of Socrates, or of the angel Gabriel of Mahomet. The imagination and the hallucination of a Saint Theresa, for example, are valueless here. The intoxication of the Soufi proclaiming himself identical with God is also a totally different 46thing. Jesus never once announced the sacrilegious theory that he was God. He believed himself to be in direct communication with God—he believed himself to be the Son of God. The highest consciousness of God which has existed in the bosom of humanity is that of Jesus.

We understand, on the other hand, that Jesus, commencing his work with such a disposition of mind, could never be a speculative philosopher like Sakya-Mouni. Nothing is further from scholastic theology than the Gospel. The speculations of the Greek doctors on the Divine essence proceed from an entirely different spirit. God, conceived simply as Father, was all the theology of Jesus. And this was not with him a theoretical principle, a doctrine more or less proved, which he sought to inculcate in others. He did not argue with his disciples; he demanded from them no effort of attention. He did not preach his opinions; he preached himself. Very great and very disinterested minds often present, associated with much elevation, that character of perpetual attention to themselves, and extreme personal susceptibility, which, in general, is peculiar to women. Their conviction that God is in them, and occupies Himself perpetually with them, is so strong that they have no fear of obtruding themselves upon others; our reserve, and our respect for the opinion of others, which is a part of our weakness, could not belong to them. This exaltation of self is not egotism; for such men, possessed by their idea, give their lives freely, in order to seal their work; it is the identification of self with the object it has embraced, carried to its utmost limit. It is regarded as vain glory by those who see in the new teaching only the personal phantasy of the founder; but it is the finger of God to those who see the result. The fool stands side by side here with the inspired man, only the 47fool never succeeds. It has not yet been given to mental aberration to influence seriously the progress of humanity.

Jesus, no doubt, did not reach at one step this high assertion of himself. But it is probable that, from the first, he looked on himself as standing with God in the relation of a son to his father. This was his grand act of originality; there was nothing here in common with his race. Neither the Jew nor the Mussulman has understood this delightful theology of love. The God of Jesus is not the tyrannical master who kills, damns, or saves us, just as it pleases Him. The God of Jesus is our Father. We hear Him while listening to the gentle inspiration which cries within us—“Father.” The God of Jesus is not the partial despot who has chosen Israel for His people, and protects them against all the world. He is the God of humanity. Jesus would not be a patriot like the Maccabees, or a theocrat like Judas the Gaulonite. Boldly elevating himself above the prejudices of his nation, he would establish the universal Fatherhood of God. The Gaulonite maintained that it was better for one to die than to give the title of “Master” to any other than God; Jesus would allow any man to take this name, but reserves for God a title dearer still. Yielding to the powerful of the earth, who were to him the representatives of force, a respect full of irony, he establishes the supreme consolation—the recourse to the Father whom each one has in heaven, and the true kingdom of God which every man carries in his heart.

This expression—“the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of heaven”—was the favourite term of Jesus to describe the revolution he was bringing into the world. Like nearly all the terms relating to the Messiah, it came from the book of Daniel. According to the author of that extraordinary book, 48the four profane empires destined to extinction would be succeeded by a fifth empire— that of the saints, which should endure for ever. This reign of God upon earth naturally led to the most diverse interpretations. In the later days of his life Jesus believed that this reign would be realised in a material form by a sudden renovation of the world. But this was, doubtless, not his first idea. The admirable moral which he drew from the notion of the Father-God is not that of enthusiasts who believe the world to be nearly at an end, and who prepare themselves by asceticism for a chimerical catastrophe; it is that of a world which has lived and would live still. “The kingdom of God is within you,” he said to those who cunningly sought for external signs. The realistic conception of the Divine Advent was only a cloud, a transient error, which his death has made us forget. The Jesus who founded the true kingdom of God, the kingdom of the meek and the humble, was the Jesus of early life, of those pure and cloudless days when the voice of his father re-echoed within his bosom in clearer tones. It was then for some months—a year perhaps—that God truly dwelt on earth. The voice of the young carpenter acquired all at once an extraordinary sweetness. An infinite charm was exhaled from his person, and those who had hitherto seen him recognised him as the same no longer. He had not as yet any disciples, and the group of people which gathered round him was neither a sect nor a school; but there was already felt among them a common spirit, and an influence both sweet and penetrating. His amiable character, and doubtless one of those exquisite faces which sometimes appear in the Jewish race, threw around him a fascination from which no one, in the midst of these kindly and fresh-minded peoples, could escape.

Paradise would, in fact, have been brought to earth if the ideas of the young Master had not far transcended that level of ordinary goodness which the human race has found it hitherto impossible to pass. The brotherhood of men, as sons of God, and the moral consequences which have resulted from it, were deduced with exquisite feeling. Like all the rabbis of the period, Jesus little affected consecutive reasonings, but clothed his teaching in concise aphorisms, and in an expressive form, oft-times enigmatical and singular. Some of these maxims came from the books of the Old Testament. Others were the thoughts of more modern sages, especially of Antigonus of Soco, Jesus, son of Sirach, and Hillel, which had reached him, not through a course of learned study, but as oft-repeated proverbs. The synagogue was rich in very happily-expressed maxims, which formed a sort of current proverbial literature. Jesus adopted almost all this oral teaching, but imbued it with a superior spirit. Generally exceeding the duties laid down by the Law and the elders, he demanded perfection. All the virtues of humility, pardon, charity, abnegation, and self-denial—virtues which have been called with good reason Christian—if it is meant by this that they have been truly preached by Christ—were found in germ in this first declaration. As to justice, he contented himself with repeating the well-known axiom—“Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.” But this old wisdom, selfish enough as it was, did not satisfy him. He went to excess, declaring—“Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.” “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee.” “Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you; pray 50for them that persecute you.” “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” “Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.” “Be therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.” “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” “Whosoever shalt exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.”

In regard to alms, pity, good works, kindness, the desire for peace, and complete disinterestedness of heart, he had little to add to the teaching of the synagogue. But he stamped them with an emphasis full of unction, and thus gave novelty to those aphorisms which had long been current. Morality is not composed of principles more or less well-expressed. The poetry of the precept, which makes one love it, is more than the precept itself, viewed as an abstract truth. Now, it cannot be denied that these maxims, borrowed by Jesus from his predecessors, produce quite a different effect in the Gospel to that in the ancient Law, in the Pirké Aboth, or in the Talmud. It is neither the ancient Law nor the Talmud which has conquered and changed the world. Little original in itself—if it is meant by that that one might recompose it almost entirely by means of more ancient maxims—the morality of the Gospel remains no less the loftiest creation of the human conscience, the most beautiful code of perfect life which any moralist has traced.

Jesus did not speak against the Mosaic law; but it is clear that he saw its insufficiency, and he let this be distinctly understood. He repeated constantly that more must be done than the ancient sages commanded. He forbade the least harsh word; he prohibited divorce, and all swearing; he censured revenge; he condemned usury; he held voluptuous desire to be as criminal as adultery. He demanded a universal forgiveness of injuries. The motive on which he grounded these maxims of 51exalted charity was always the same. . . . . “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good.” “For if,” he added, “ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

A pure worship, a religion without priests or external observances, resting entirely on the feelings of the heart, on the imitation of God, on the direct communication between the conscience and the heavenly Father, was the result of these principles. Jesus never shrank from this daring consequence, which made him, in the very centre of Judaism, a revolutionist of the first rank. Why should there be any intermediaries between man and his Father? As God only looks on the heart, of what use are these purifications—these observances which only relate to the body? Even tradition, a thing so sacred to the Jew, is nothing compared to a pure feeling. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who, in praying, turned their heads to see if they were observed, who gave alms with ostentation, and put on their garments marks by which they might be recognised as pious persons—all these grimaces of false devotion disgusted him. “They have their reward,” said he; “but thou, when thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thy alms may be in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, Himself shall reward thee openly.” “And thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. 52But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do; for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him.”

He did not affect any outward sign of asceticism, contenting himself with praying, or rather meditating, upon the mountains and in those solitary places where man has always sought God. This lofty idea of the relations of man with God, of which so few minds, even after him, have been capable, is summed up in a prayer which he compiled from some pious phrases already current amongst the Jews, and which he taught his disciples: —

“Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation; deliver us from the evil one.” Jesus insisted particularly upon the idea that the heavenly Father knows better than we do what we need, and that we almost sin against Him in asking Him for this or that particular thing.

Jesus did nothing more in this matter than to carry out the consequences of the great principles which Judaism had established, but which the official classes of the nation inclined more and more to despise. The Greek and Roman prayers were almost always full of egotism. Never had Pagan priest said to the faithful, “If thou bring thy offering to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way; first be reconciled with thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” Alone in antiquity, the Jewish prophets, especially Isaiah, in their antipathy to the priesthood, had discovered a little 53of the true nature of the worship which man owes to God. “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. Incense is an abomination unto me: for your hands are full of blood; cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, and then come.” In later times such doctors as Simeon the Just, Jesus son of Sirach, and Hillel, almost reached this point, and declared that the sum of the Law was righteousness. Philo, in the Judæo-Egyptian world, attained at the same time as Jesus ideas of a high moral sanctity; and the consequence of this was a decreasing regard for the customs of the Law. Shemaïa and Abtalion also more than once showed themselves very liberal casuists. Rabbi Johanan ere long went so far as to place works of mercy above even the study of the Law! Jesus alone, however, proclaimed this principle in an effective manner. Never has any man been less a priest than Jesus, and never has there been a greater enemy of forms which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. In this way we are all his disciples and his successors; in this way he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is the essential thing for humanity, by this he has merited the divine rank which men have awarded him. An absolutely new idea—the idea of a worship founded upon purity of heart and on human brotherhood—made, through him, its entrance into the world—an idea so elevated that the Christian Church ought by this fact to disclose exhaustively its design, but an idea which, in our days, only some minds are able to grasp.

An exquisite sympathy with nature furnished Jesus with expressive images at every turn. Sometimes a wonderful ingenuity, which we call wit, 54adorned his aphorisms; at other times their vivacity consisted in the happy use of popular proverbs. “How wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull the mote out of thine eye; and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite; first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother's eye.”

These lessons, long concealed in the heart of the young Master, soon gathered round him a few disciples. The spirit of the age was in favour of small churches; it was the time of the Essenes or Therapeutæ. Certain Rabbis, each having his own distinctive teaching, Shemaïa, Abtalion, Hillel, Shammaï, Judas the Gaulonite, Gamaliel, and many others whose maxims form the Talmud, appeared on all sides. They wrote very little; the Jewish doctors of that age did not make books; everything was done by conversation and public lessons, to which it was sought to give a form easily remembered. The day when the youthful carpenter of Nazareth began openly to proclaim those maxims, for the most part already propagated, but which, thanks to him, have been able to regenerate the world, marked therefore no very startling event. It was only one Rabbi more (true, the most fascinating of them all), and around him a few young people, greedy to hear him and to search for the unknown. It requires time to awaken men from inattention. There was not as yet any Christian, though true Christianity was founded already, and doubtless it has never been more perfect than at this first period. Jesus added nothing more enduring to it afterwards. What do I say? In one sense he compromised it; for every idea, in order to prevail, must make sacrifices; we never come out of the battle of life unscathed.

To conceive the good, in fact, is not enough; it is necessary to make it succeed amongst men. To 55this end, less pure paths must be followed. No doubt, if the Gospel were confined to some chapters of Matthew and Luke, it would be more perfect, and would certainly not be open now to so many objections; but without miracles would it have converted the world? If Jesus had died at the period of his career which we have now reached, there would not have been in, his life a single page that could wound us; but, although greater thus in the eyes of God, he would have remained unknown to men; he would have been lost in the crowd of great unknown spirits—himself the noblest of them all; the truth would not have been promulgated, and the world would not have profited by the immense moral superiority with which the Father had endowed him. Jesus, the son of Sirach, and Hillel had uttered aphorisms nearly as elevated as his own. Hillel, however, will never be reckoned as the true founder of Christianity. In morals, as in art, precept is nothing; practice is everything. The idea which lies hidden in a picture of Raphael is of small moment; it is the picture itself which is prized. In the same manner, in morals, truth is very little thought of when it only reaches the condition of being a mere feeling; it only attains its full value when it is realised in the world as a certain fact. Some men of mediocre morality have written a number of good maxims. Some very virtuous men, on the other hand, have done nothing to continue in the world the tradition of virtue. The palm is his who has been powerful both in words and deeds, who has discerned the good, and at the price of his blood, has made it triumph. Jesus, from this double point of view, is without equal; his glory remains entire, and will ever be renewed.