CHAPTER XX.

OPPOSITION TO JESUS.

During the early period of his career, Jesus does not appear to have encountered any serious opposition. His preaching, thanks to the extreme liberty which was enjoyed in Galilee, and to the great number of teachers who arose on all sides, made no noise outside a somewhat restricted circle of persons. But when Jesus entered upon a career brilliant with prodigies and public successes, the storm began to howl. More than once he was obliged to conceal himself and fly. Antipas, however, 186never interfered with him, although Jesus expressed himself sometimes very severely respecting him. At Tiberias, his usual residence, the Tetrarch was only one or two leagues distant from the district chosen by Jesus for the field of his activity; he was told of his miracles, which he doubtless took to be clever tricks, and desired to see them. The incredulous were at that time very curious about this sort of illusions. With his ordinary tact, Jesus refused to gratify him. He took care not to be led astray by an irreligious world, which wished to extort from him some idle amusement; he aspired only to gain the people; he reserved for the simple, means suitable to them alone.

Once the report was spread that Jesus was no other than John the Baptist risen from the dead. Antipas became anxious and uneasy; he employed artifice to rid his dominions of the new prophet. Certain Pharisees, under the pretence of being interested in Jesus, came to tell him that Antipas was seeking to kill him. Jesus, despite his great simplicity, saw the snare, and did not depart. His wholly pacific attractions, and his remoteness from popular agitation, ultimately reassured the Tetrarch and dissipated the danger.

The new doctrine was by no means received with equal favour in all the towns of Galilee. Not only did incredulous Nazareth continue to reject him who was to become her glory; not only did his brothers persist in not believing in him, but also the cities of the lake themselves, in general well-disposed, were not wholly converted. Jesus often complained of the incredulity and hardness of heart which he encountered, and although it is natural in such reproaches to make allowance for a certain kind of exaggeration of the preacher, although we are sensible of that kind of convicium 187seculi which Jesus affected in imitation of John the Baptist, it is clear that the country was far from yielding itself entirely to the kingdom of God. “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida!” cried he; “for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell; for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee.” “The queen of the south,” added he, “shall rise up in the judgment against the men of this generation, and shall condemn it; for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, a greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and behold, a greater than Jonas is here.” His roaming life, at first so full of charm, now began to weigh upon him. “The foxes,” said he, “have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” He accused unbelievers of not yielding to evidence.

Jesus, in fact, could not withstand opposition with the coolness of the philosopher, who, understanding the reason of the various opinions which divide the world, finds it quite natural that all should not be of his opinion. One of the principal defects of the Jewish race is its harshness in controversy, and the abusive tone which it almost 188always infuses into it. There never were in the world such bitter quarrels as those of the Jews among themselves. It is the sentiment of nice discernment which makes the polished and moderate man. Now, the lack of this feeling is one of the most constant features of the Semitic mind. Refined works, such as the dialogues of Plato, for example, are altogether foreign to these nations. Jesus, who was exempt from almost all the defects of his race, and whose dominant quality was precisely an infinite delicacy, was led in spite of himself to make use of the general style in polemics. Like John the Baptist, he employed very harsh terms against his adversaries. Of an exquisite gentleness with the simple, he was irritated in presence of incredulity, however little aggressive. He was no longer the mild teacher who delivered the “Sermon on the Mount,” who as yet had met with neither resistance nor difficulty. The passion that underlay his character led him to make use of the keenest invectives. This singular mixture ought not to surprise us. A man of our own times, M. de Lamennais, has forcibly presented the same contrast. In his beautiful book, “The Words of a Believer,” the most immoderate anger and the sweetest relentings alternate, as in a mirage. This man, who was extremely kind in the intercourse of life, became foolishly intractable toward those who did not think as he did. Jesus, in like manner, applied to himself, not without reason, the passage from Isaiah: “He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench.” And yet many of the recommendations which he addressed to his disciples contain the germs of a real fanaticism, germs which the Middle Ages were to develop in a cruel manner. Must we 189reproach him for this? No revolution can be effected without some harshness. If Luther, or the actors in the French Revolution, had had to observe the rules of politeness, neither the Reformation nor the Revolution would have taken place. Let us congratulate ourselves in like manner that Jesus encountered no law which punished the outrageous denunciation of one class of citizens. The Pharisees in such a case would have been inviolate. All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles. A critical philosopher would have said to his disciples: Respect the opinion of others, and believe that no one is so completely right that his adversary is completely wrong. But the action of Jesus has nothing in common with the disinterested speculation of the philosopher. To say that we have touched the ideal for a moment, and have been deterred by the wickedness of a few, is a thought insupportable to an ardent soul. What must it have been for the founder of a new world?

The invincible obstacle to the designs of Jesus came in particular from orthodox Judaism, represented by the Pharisees. Jesus drifted away more and more from the ancient Law. Now, the Pharisees were the backbone of Judaism. Although this party had its centre at Jerusalem, it had, nevertheless, adherents either established in Galilee or who often came to the North. They were, in general, men of a narrow mind, giving much attention to externals; with a devoutness that was haughty, formal, and self-satisfied. Their manners were ridiculous, and excited the smiles of even those who respected them. The epithets which the people gave them, and which savour of caricature, prove this. There was the “bandy-legged Pharisee” (Nikfi), who walked in the streets dragging his feet and knocking them 190against the stones; the “bloody-browed Pharisee” (Kizai), who went with his eyes shut in order not to see the women, and dashed his head so much against the walls that it was always bloody; the “pestle Pharisee” (Medoukia), who kept himself bent double like the handle of a pestle; the “Pharisee of strong shoulders” (Schikmi), who walked with his back bent as if he carried on his shoulders the whole burden of the Law; the “What-is-there-to-do?-I-do-it Pharisee,” always on the outlook for a precept to fulfil. To these we must add the “dyed Pharisee,” whose whole outward devotion was but a varnish of hypocrisy. This rigourism was, in fact, often only apparent, and concealed in reality great moral laxity. The people, nevertheless, were duped by it. The people, whose instinct is always right, even when it goes furthest astray on the question of individuals, is very easily deceived by false devotees. That which it loves in them is good and worthy of being loved; but it has not sufficient penetration to distinguish the appearance from the reality.

The antipathy which, in such an impassioned state of society, would necessarily break out between Jesus and persons of this character is easy to understand. Jesus sought only the religion of the heart; the religion of the Pharisees consisted almost exclusively in observances. Jesus sought after the humble and all kinds of outcasts; the Pharisees saw in this an insult to their religion of respectability. The Pharisee was an infallible and impeccable man, a pedant always certain of being in the right, taking the first place in the synagogue, praying in the street, giving alms to the sound of a trumpet, and watching to see whether people saluted him. Jesus maintained that each one ought to await the judgment of God with fear and trembling. The 191bad religious tendency represented by Pharisaism by no means reigned without opposition. Many men before or during the time of Jesus, such as Jesus, son of Sirach (one of the real ancestors of Jesus of Nazareth), Gamaliel, Antigonus of Soco, and especially the gentle and noble Hillel, had taught much more elevated and almost Gospel doctrines. But these good seeds had been choked. The beautiful maxims of Hillel, summing up the whole Law as equity, and those of Jesus, son of Sirach, making worship consist in the pursuit of the good, were forgotten or anathematised. Shammai, with his narrow and exclusive mind, had prevailed. An enormous mass of “traditions” had stifled the Law, under the pretext of protecting and interpreting it. No doubt these conservative measures had their useful side; it is well that the Jewish people loved its Law even to madness, inasmuch as this frantic love in saving Mosaism under Antiochus Epiphanes and under Herod, preserved the leaven necessary for the production of Christianity. But taken by themselves, these obsolete precautions we speak of were only puerile. The synagogue, which was the depository of them, was no more than a parent of error. Its reign was ended; and yet to ask for its abdication was to ask for that which an established power has never done or been able to do.

The conflicts of Jesus with official hypocrisy were continual. The ordinary tactics of the reformers who appeared in the religious state which we have just described, and which might be called “traditional formalism,” were to oppose the “text” of the sacred books to “traditions.” Religious zeal is always an innovator, even when it pretends to be in the highest degree conservative. Just as the neo-Catholics of our days are getting further and further away from the Gospel, so the Pharisees, at 192each step, got further away from the Bible. This is why the Puritan reformer is as a rule essentially “biblical,” setting out with the unchangeable text in order to criticise the current theology, which has changed from generation to generation. Thus acted later the Karaites and the Protestants. Jesus applied the axe to the root of the tree much more energetically. True, we see him sometimes quoting texts against the false masores or traditions of the Pharisees. But, in general, he set little store by exegesis; it was the conscience to which he appealed. With the same stroke he cut through both text and commentaries. He showed indeed to the Pharisees that by their traditions they seriously perverted Mosaism, but he by no means pretended himself to return to Mosaism. His goal was the future, not the past. Jesus was more than the reformer of an obsolete religion; he was the founder of the eternal religion of humanity.

Disputes broke out, especially in regard to a number of external practices introduced by tradition, a tradition which neither Jesus nor his disciples observed. The Pharisees reproached him sharply for this. When he dined with them he scandalised them greatly by not going through the customary ablutions. “Give alms,” said he, “of such things as ye have; and behold, all things are clean unto you.” That which in the highest degree wounded his sensitive nature was the air of assurance which the Pharisees carried into religious matters; their contemptible devotion which ended in a vain seeking after precedents and titles, and not the improvement of their hearts. An admirable parable expressed this thought with infinite charm and justice. “Two men,” said he, “went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank 193thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.' And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.”

A hatred which death alone could assuage was the consequence of these struggles. John the Baptist had previously provoked enmities of the same kind. But the aristocrats of Jerusalem, who despised him, had allowed simple men to regard him as a prophet. In this case, however, the war was to the death. It was a new spirit that had appeared in the world, which shattered all that had preceded it. John the Baptist was a thorough Jew: Jesus was scarcely one at all. Jesus always addressed himself to refined moral sentiment. He was only a disputant when he argued against the Pharisees, his opponents forcing him, as almost always happens, to adopt their tone. His exquisite irony, his stinging remarks, always went to the heart. They were everlasting stings, and have remained festering in the wound. This Nessus-shirt of ridicule which the Jew, son of the Pharisees, has dragged in tatters after him during eighteen centuries, was woven by Jesus with a divine skill. Masterpieces of fine raillery, their features are written in lines of fire upon the flesh of the hypocrite and the false devotee. Incomparable traits worthy of a Son of God! A god alone knows how to kill in this way. Socrates and Molière only grazed the skin. The former carried fire and rage to the very marrow.

But it was also just that this great master of irony should pay for his triumph with his life. Even in Galilee the Pharisees sought to kill him, 194and employed against him the manœuvre which ultimately succeeded at Jerusalem. They endeavoured to interest in their quarrel the partisans of the new political order which was established. The facilities Jesus found for escaping into Galilee, and the weakness of the government of Antipas, baffled these attempts. He exposed himself to danger of his own free will. He saw clearly that his action, if he remained interned in Galilee, was necessarily limited. Judea attracted him as by a charm; he wished to put forth a last effort to gain over the rebellious city, and seemed anxious to undertake the task of fulfilling the proverb—that a prophet must not die outside Jerusalem.