PART II.

THE COMMENCEMENT OF HIS MINISTRY.

He dealt with the Age and Country collectively.—Their Character.—Christ, the Incarnate Conscience of both.—He not conscious of Personal Guilt.—Began by rebuking, in order to reform, the Nation.

THE marked difference between the views which are now held of the office of teaching, and those which were prevalent in the ancient world, must not be overlooked. Very extended freedom of investigation and communication was enjoyed in heathen nations by all classes, without distinction. The priesthood were not considered to possess higher rights and powers in this respect than others, and any individual, without violating any law or any established usage, might found a school and promulgate his faith or his skepticism. No restrictive policy, at least as to persons, was sanctioned even in Judea, and even the office of religious teaching was not reserved for the clerical or any other privileged order. There were rabbis, the heads of schools for sacred learning, and there were also scribes and lawyers whose business it was to 68write out copies of the sacred text and to expound its meaning; but they were not necessarily priests nor of the Levitical tribe. There was nothing in the laws or customs of Judea, to hinder any individual from assuming the office of religious teacher. It may therefore have excited little surprise, when Jesus began to teach, that he was no priest or rabbi, or scribe or lawyer. But it must have struck the men of that generation that he was young, and poor, and unlearned; all the outer conditions of his life were such as to make it wonderful that he should aspire to any public office, and to insure that, if he hazarded the attempt, his presumption would be punished with certain. and signal failure.

But the voice of Christ was lifted up, and the world heard, as, indeed, the world hears to this day. In some of the villages of Galilee, he first began to speak, to individuals or to small or large assemblages of persons, as the circumstances might be. He journeyed throughout Galilee, then throughout the other parts of Judea, and was frequently in Jerusalem preaching and teaching. It is the first tones of his voice which we now seek to catch, the commencement of his ministry which we now seek to observe and interpret. He began to deal with facts rather than with doctrines—with this fact especially, that one great era in the world’s history was then closing, and another of higher 69 meaning and of brighter promise was then opening upon men. He began by characterizing the masses rather than individuals by depicting the country and the age collectively, and in their broad and prominent qualities. He foretold the speedy doom of things as they then were, and declared that evil, wide-spread and deep-seated, could no longer be endured and that a radical spiritual revolution was at hand—a kingdom of God in place of a reign of hypocrisy and formalism. And he taught at the same time that the duty of the age was expressed in one word, repentance not in the restricted meaning to which custom has reconciled us, but in the sense of an entire and universal change of mind. “Repent,” he cried as he commenced his public course; “change your minds, for the reign of heaven is at hand.”¹⁶¹⁶   Matt. iv. 17. He thus made it known through the length and breadth of the land, that in his judgment, at least, nothing would avail but a thorough and entire reformation of principles and of manners. It must have been at once evident that Jesus was no panderer to the prejudices and vices of the times in which he lived, or of any favored class of individuals. He pointed with a faithful hand to the opinions, the habits, the morality, the religion, the worship, the entire spirit of the age, and pronounced that the condition of things was utterly corrupt and must be revolutionized. 70The voice of his opening ministry to all classes in the nation was this, “Repent; change your minds, for the reign of heaven is at hand.”

It does not rest on his statements only, but on ample historical evidence, that that particular period bore the character of deep hypocrisy and ungodliness. Rigid observance of religious ceremonies was combined with ignorance of religion itself and with an utter destitution of its spirit. Gross wickedness was hidden beneath the forms and the name of sanctity. Spiritual worship, the veneration and love of a God of righteousness, purity, truth, and all moral excellence, was almost unknown. There was a magnificent temple, an established worship, an ordained priesthood, a vast and gorgeous ritual, and sacrifices, and offerings, and feasts and fasts. There were also synagogues open every day and recognized forms of prayer which were repeated, not only in private, but in the market-places, and at the corners of the streets. It was even sought to invest the food, the dress, the looks, the postures of the body with the sacredness of religion; and if such things as these had constituted piety, that age must have been pre-eminently pious. But Jesus declared that true worship is perfectly separable from these things, and is not essentially connected with any of them, though it may consist along with them all. God looks to the soul alone, to its genuine and unconstrained 71actings, its reverence, trust, and love. Worship in God’s sight is wholly spiritual—always, altogether, only within the soul.

Human virtue was as little understood in that age, as Divine worship. A selfish spirit had consumed the heart of all true goodness, not only as between man and his God, but as between man and man. Morality had become an organized hypocrisy, truth and inward excellence empty names, and ritual observances, which contained no homage of the understanding or of the heart, were the nail thrown over unrighteous and impure lives. Jesus proclaimed the sacredness, dignity, and beauty of moral excellence, and that, without this, there could be no greatness and no worth. He conveyed to the ears of his countrymen, some things altogether new, and others he announced with greater clearness and with new authority. The greatness of humility and the dignity of love as taught by him, were new, and they were too palpably unwelcome, as well as new, to Gentiles and Jews. The pride, ambition, and covetousness of the human heart, the doctrine of retaliation, and the warlike spirit of the times, were utterly opposed to this teaching. Jesus blessed and honored the poor in spirit. He taught that virtue consisted in the patient endurance and the sincere forgiveness of wrongs, and in kindness to the wrong-doer; consisted not in revenge, but in love, in genuine good-will—good-will even to 72enemies. It was then believed—it is still very widely believed—that high self-estimation is essential to dignity of character. Jesus put his hand on the head of a little child, and said, “Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” ¹⁷¹⁷   Matthew xviii. 4. Lowliness is greatness, genuine goodness is greatness, child-like obedience to God is greatness. True dignity is a lowly and guileless state of soul. Humbleness of mind, together with rectitude, purity, truth, love of God and good-will to man, these are the elements of moral grandeur and of the highest spiritual dignity.

Whether or not the ministry of Christ realized at the last what it promised at the commencement, it certainly began with a faithful revelation to that age of its own moral condition. The truest benefactor of any age, is he who exposes and expresses it to itself. Self-knowledge is wealth and well-being, the basis of moral reformation and of moral progress, whether to the individual or to the multitude. In this case, conscience, stronger than the pride and the blindness of the soul, brings up from the depths within an image which the man or the multitude fails not to recognize; and the look of which, though it alarms, corrects and heals. He who shall touch and quicken another’s conscience, who shall present truth to it, and rouse it to fidelity, 73performs an invaluable, but also a difficult and a hazardous service. And the difficulty and the hazard are incalculably augmented when we pass from an individual to a nation for the blindness, the pride, and the perversity of will in this case are beyond measure more inacessible and invincible. The age, like the man, flatters itself, becomes reconciled by habit to any evil—so reconciled, that at length evil is invested with a kind of sacredness. False shame makes it reluctant to confess and to yield: it is eager to find out excellences, and as eager not to see or to forget faults, until there is at last no eye, no ear, no soul to distinguish that which is wrong. A conscience is needed for the age, as for the individual—a power that shall reveal it to itself, and arouse and convict it. Jesus acted in the outset of his career to the men of his generation—not in promise only, but in fact—the part of the truest friend, and traced out before them in broad and faithful lines their moral likeness, in order that they might recognize themselves. The age in its express lineaments at that time, in its ignorance, formalism, pride, hypocrisy, and impurity, he held up to itself. For the time, he was an incarnate conscience to the nation, performing that office which each man owed to himself, but would not discharge; and crying to all in a voice fitted to pierce to the depths of their spiritual nature, “Repent; 74change your minds, for the reign of heaven is at hand.”

Boldness and honesty are not always associated with becoming modesty, and a keen perception of what is wrong in others, is very separable from a quick sensibility to the faults of one’s own character. Had this Jesus, we are entitled to ask, no share in the guilt of his country? Admitting that his powers were extraordinary—that he was, as he seemed to be, able to descend below events and manifestations, down to their hidden causes, and to bring up these causes discovered and interpreted—admitting that in his recorded statements no want of comprehensiveness of observation, sobriety of judgment, or impartiality of spirit, can be detected, are we to forget, that he himself belonged to the country, to the age which he so unqualifiedly condemned; and have we not a right to ask whether he, therefore, was not necessarily involved in their guilt? It will be shown hereafter, and it is scarcely denied by any intelligent and candid rejector of the higher claims of Christianity, that the personal character of Jesus was unimpeachable; at all events was in point of fact unimpeached. Proclaiming the sins of others, he, so far as the evidence goes, was above suspicion, above charge; and in all his utterances, there is nothing to indicate a sense either of personal guilt or personal danger. It often appears, in what he says and does, that the spiritual condition 75of others affected his soul with genuine compassion for them, and with deep solicitude for the great cause of God and man; but there is no token either of fear or of shame, on his own account. He seems rather to stand apart, and only to look down upon the facts of a condition in which he had no personal share.

The question imperatively demands an answer—Who was this, whose mode of looking on human affairs and whose feelings were so original, so superior, and who professed to be gifted with such uncommon insight into the moral state of the world, and with such fore-knowledge, withal, of its coming destinies? What right had he, to pronounce on the spiritual condition and the pressing duty of his country? It is said, in reply to these questions, that the convictions of his conscience were imperative? There is indeed no higher authority than conscience, and no higher virtue than to bow implicitly to that authority. But how did it happen that Christ’s conscience alone was thus clamorous, and that he alone was compelled to speak out? A. man distinguished in the church or the state, venerable by years of sainted character, and of large and ripened experience, may be allowed to do what would be presumptuous in any other. But this was no gifted, experienced, or distinguished character; no statesman, priest, or venerable sage; but to all mortal seeming, an inexperienced, uneducated 76mechanic. The fact is simply this, an obscure youth took it upon himself to be the teacher, reprove; reformer, of his country and his age. Was this possible, in the circumstances, to a mere man—above all, was it possible to such a man as we have found Jesus outwardly was?