CHAPTER XIX.

INCREASING PROGRESSION OF ENTHUSIASM AND OF EXALTATION.

It is clear that such a religious society, founded exclusively on the expectation of the kingdom of God, must be in itself very incomplete. The first Christian generation lived almost entirely upon expectations and dreams. On the eve of seeing the world come to an end, it regarded as useless everything which served but to prolong the world. The desire to possess property was regarded as reprehensible. Everything which attaches man to earth, everything which draws him aside from heaven, was to be avoided. Although several of the disciples were married, there was, it seems, to be no more marriage after one became a member of the sect. The celibate was greatly preferred. At one time the master seems to approve of those who should mutilate themselves in view of the kingdom of God. In this he acted up to his precept. “If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee; it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell-fire.” The cessation of generation was often considered as the symbol and condition of the kingdom of God.

We can perceive that this primitive Church never could have formed a durable society but for the great variety of germs embraced in the teaching of Jesus. It required more than another 178century for the true Christian Church—that which has converted the world—to disengage itself from this small sect of “latter-day saints,” and to become a framework applicable to the whole of human society. The same thing, moreover, took place in Buddhism, which at first was founded only for monks. The same thing would have happened in the order of St. Francis, if that order had succeeded in its attempt to become the rule of the whole of human society. Being Utopian in their origin, and succeeding by their very exaggeration, the great systems of which we have just been speaking have only spread over the world after being profoundly modified, and after abandoning their excesses. Jesus did not overstep this first and entirely monachal period, in which it was believed that the impossible could be attempted with impunity. He did not make any concession to necessity. He boldly preached war against nature and a total rupture with the ties of blood. “Verily I say unto you,” said he, “there is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.”

The instruction which Jesus is alleged to have given to his disciples breathes the same exaltation. He who was so lenient with the outside world, he who contented himself sometimes with formal adhesions, exercised towards his own an extreme rigour. He would have no “all buts.” We should call it an “order,” founded upon the most austere rules. Wrapped up in his idea that the cares of life trouble and debase man, Jesus required of his companions a complete detachment from the earth, an absolute devotion to his work. They ought not to carry with them either money or provisions for the way, not even a scrip, or a 179change of raiment. They ought to practise absolute poverty, live on alms and hospitality. “Freely ye have received, freely give,” said he, in his beautiful language. Arrested and arraigned before the judges, they were not to prepare their defence; the heavenly advocate would inspire them as to what they should say. The Father would confer upon them His spirit from on high. This spirit would regulate all their acts, direct their thoughts, and guide them through the world. If chased from one town, they were to cast at it the dust from their shoes, and that none might plead ignorance, declaring always the proximity of the religion of God. “Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel,” added he, “till the Son of man shall have appeared.”

A strange ardour animates all these discourses, which may in part be the creation of the enthusiasm of his disciples, but which even in that case came indirectly from Jesus, since such enthusiasm was his work. Jesus informed those who wanted to follow him that they would be subjected to severe persecutions and the hatred of mankind. He sent them forth as lambs in the midst of wolves. They would be scourged in the synagogues, and dragged to prison. Brother should deliver up brother to death, the father the son. When they were persecuted in one country, they were to flee to another. “The disciple,” said he, “is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.” “Whosoever, therefore,” continued he, “shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before 180my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.”

In these fits of severity he went the length of suppressing the desires of the flesh. His requirements had no longer any bounds. Despising the healthy limits of man's nature, he demanded that the latter should exist only for him, that he should love him alone. “If any man come to me,” said he, “and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” There was something strange and more than human thus mixed up in his speech; it was like a fire consuming light to its root, and reducing everything to a frightful wilderness. The harsh and gloomy sentiment of distaste for the world, and of the excessive self-abnegation which characterises Christian perfection, was for the founders not the refined and cheerful moralist of his earlier days, but the sombre giant whom a kind of presentiment was withdrawing, more and more without the pale of humanity. We should even say that, in these moments, when warring against the most legitimate cravings of the heart, Jesus had forgotten the pleasure of living, of loving, of seeing, and of feeling. Employing more unmeasured language, he dared to say, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and follow me. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake and the Gospel's shall find it. What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Two anecdotes 181of the kind we cannot accept as historical, which were intended to be an exaggeration of a trait of character, clearly illustrating this defiance of nature. He said to one man, “Follow me!”— But he said, “Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.” Jesus answered, “Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.” Another said to him, “Lord I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.” Jesus replied, “No man, having put his hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” An extraordinary assurance, and at times accents of singular sweetness, reversing all our ideas of him, made these exaggerations acceptable. “Come unto me,” cried he, “all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me: for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

A great danger might result in the future from this exalted memory, which was expressed in hyperbolical language and with a terrible energy. By thus detaching man from earth, the ties of life were severed. The Christian would be praised for being a bad son, or a bad patriot, if it was for Christ that he resisted his father and fought against his country. The ancient city, the parent republic, the state, or the law common to all, were thus placed in hostility with the kingdom of God. A fatal germ of theocracy was introduced into the world.

From this point another consequence may be perceived. This morality, invented for a time of crisis, being transported into a peaceful country, into the bosom of a society assured of its own duration, must seem impossible. The Gospel was thus destined to become for Christians a Utopia, which 182very few would give themselves the trouble to inquire into. These terrible maxims, for the greater number sunk into profound oblivion, were encouraged by the clergy itself; the Gospel man was a dangerous man. The most selfish, proud, hard, and worldly of all human beings, a Louis XIV., for instance, found priests to persuade him, in spite of the Gospel, that he was a Christian. But, on the other hand, there have always been holy men who accepted the sublime paradoxes of Jesus literally. Perfection being placed beyond the ordinary conditions of society, a complete Gospel life could only be led away from the world, and thus the principle of asceticism and of monasticism was established. Christian societies would have two moral rules; the one moderately heroic for common men, the other exalted in the extreme for the perfect man; and the perfect man would be the monk, subjected to rules which professed to realise the Gospel ideal. It is certain that this ideal, were it only on account of the celibacy and poverty it imposed, could not become the common law. The monk would thus, in some respects, be the only true Christian. Ordinary common sense revolts at these excesses; and to believe in the latter is to believe that the impossible is a mark of weakness and error. But ordinary common sense is a bad judge where the question at issue has reference to great things. To obtain little from humanity, we must ask much. The immense moral progress due the Gospel is the result of its exaggerations. It is thus that it has been, like stoicism, but with infinitely greater fulness, a living argument for the divine powers, which are, in man, an exalted monument of the potency of the will.

We may readily imagine that to Jesus, at this period of his life, everything which did not belong to the kingdom of God had absolutely disappeared. He 183was, if we may say so, totally outside nature: family, friendship, country, had no longer any meaning for him. He, no doubt, from this moment, had already sacrificed his life. At times, we are tempted to believe that, seeing in his own death a means of founding his kingdom, he conceived the purpose of allowing himself to be killed. At other times, although such a thought was only afterwards erected into a doctrine, death presented itself to him as a sacrifice, destined to appease his Father and to save mankind. A singular taste for persecution and torments possessed him. His blood appeared to him as the water of a second baptism with which he ought to be saturated, and he seemed possessed by a strange haste to anticipate this baptism, which alone could quench his thirst.

The grandeur of his views upon the future was at times surprising. He did not deceive himself as to the terrible storm he was about to cause in the world. “Think not,” said he, boldly and beautifully, “that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. There shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.” “I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?” “They shall put you out of the synagogues,” he continued; “yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.” “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. Remember the word that I said unto you: The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

Carried away by this fearfully increasing enthusiasm, and governed by the necessities of a preaching more and more exalted, Jesus was no longer free; he belonged to his mission, and, in one sense, to mankind. Sometimes it might have been averred that his reason was disturbed. He suffered great mental anguish and agitation. The great vision of the kingdom of God, dangling constantly before his eyes, bewildered him. It must be remembered that, at times, those about him believed him to be mad, while his enemies declared him to be possessed. His excessively impassioned temperament carried him incessantly beyond the bounds of human nature. His work not being a work of the reason, jeering at all the laws of the human mind, that which he most imperiously required was “faith.” This was the word most frequently repeated in the little guest-chamber. It is the watchword of all popular movements. It is clear that none of these movements would take place, if it were necessary that their author should gain his disciples one by one by force of logic. Reflection leads only to doubt, and if the authors of the French Revolution, for instance, had had to be previously convinced by lengthened meditations, they would all have become old without accomplishing anything. Jesus, in like manner, aimed less at convincing his hearers than at exciting their enthusiasm. Urgent and imperative, he suffered no opposition: men must be converted, nothing less would satisfy him. His natural gentleness seemed to have abandoned him; he was sometimes harsh and capricious. His disciples at times did not understand him, and experienced in his presence a feeling akin to fear. Sometimes his displeasure at the slightest opposition led him to commit inexplicable and apparently absurd acts.

It was not that his virtue deteriorated; but his 185struggle in the cause of the ideal against the reality became insupportable. Contact with the world pained and revolted him. Obstacles irritated him. His notion of the Son of God became disturbed and exaggerated. One is such at certain times, through sudden illuminations, and is lost in the midst of long obscurities. Divinity has its intermittencies; one is not the Son of God all his life and in consecutive manner. The fatal law which condemns an idea to decay as soon as it seeks to convert men, was applicable to Jesus. Contact with men degraded him to their level. The tone he had adopted could not be sustained beyond a few months; it was time that death came to liberate him from an endurance strained to the utmost, to remove him from the impossibilities of an interminable path, and by delivering him from a trial in danger of being too prolonged, introduce him henceforth sinless into celestial peace.