Again, later, we have the estrangement from his mother in a more pronounced form. "A certain woman of the company," according to St. Luke, lifted up her voice and said unto him: 'Blessed the womb that bore thee and the paps which thou has sucked!' But he said: 'Yea, rather, blessed they that hear the word of God and keep it.' "
It is extremely difficult to see him through the mist cast about him by his biographers. He begins his Sermon on the Mount with a series of aphorisms such as young men of talent are accustomed to make, some of them intensely characteristic: "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth"- surely the strangest prediction ever made to the children of men!
And later, the encouragement:
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you.
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
Then the most beautiful of alclass="underline"
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
But after these superb phrases, which seem to show us the very spirit of the young prophet, come verses which one cannot understand at alclass="underline"
Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.
Verily I say unto thee, thou shall by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.
This childish morality, based on fear, is out of time with the rest of the chapter; it was perhaps some youthful expression of submission to authority.
Jesus returns to the theme again toward the end of the chapter, and lifts it to new heights:
Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shall love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.
And again the ineffable word which remains as a commandment: Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
But the point which first made him clear to me was the revelation of his physical weakness. Why did he fall under the cross? Most men would find it easy enough to carry the cross, which was of dried wood and wasn't very heavy. The first time I saw one was in the Russo-Turkish war of '76–77, when the Turks had crucified some of their opponents; these crosses one could have carried a long time without any difficulty, with one end over one's shoulder and the other trailing on the ground.
But the chief proof of his weakness is that he is said to have died on the cross within a few hours; at this, we are told, "Pilate marvelled"-and well he might, for most men can endure the torture of the cross for days; and it was to convince themselves that he was really dead that a soldier put the spear into his side and "forthwith came there out blood and water."
Now if he were dead, he must have been dead for some time, the time at least necessary for someone to go to Jerusalem and see Pilate and return again to Calvary with the order to test the apparent death. If he were dead for a couple of hours, surely nothing would come out of a wound save a little moisture; I therefore draw the conclusion that he had fainted merely and afterwards came to, and through the care of the women who loved him, was able to show himself to his disciples; but the crucifixion had broken him, and the dreadful doubt-"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" — and soon afterwards he died.
As I told Renan, I disliked his insistence on the personal beauty of Jesus.
Mohammed was said by every one to be astonishingly good-looking, with splendid eyes, but no disciple at the time seems to have said anything like this of Jesus. What took them was that "he spoke as never man spoke"; and although his face must have been transfigured by his emotion, still it was the message and not the face of the messenger which struck every one as most important.
Best of all his sayings, I love the story of the woman taken in adultery, the greatest story in the world, if I may judge it.
It is only recorded by John: was he the beloved disciple because he would recall the highest word?
Jesus had said time and again that he had come to fulfill the law of Moses and not to change it; and now the Jews brought him a woman "taken in adultery, in the very act," and said: "Moses commanded that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou?"
Jesus was caught in a flagrant contradiction; he had always said that he had come to fulfill the law, so now to gain time for thought, he stooped and with his finger wrote upon the ground, "as though he heard them not."
And then he took counsel with his own soul and answered divinely: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
And the Jews were so honest that "being convicted by their own conscience," they went out, one by one.
When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, "Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?"
She said, "No man, Lord!"
And Jesus said unto her, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."
Now what does this "Neither do I condemn thee!" mean, save that he, too, was not without sin?
The puzzling things in the Gospel narrative are the contradictions in spirit: think of that verse in St. Luke: "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before ne. And in almost every one of the Gospels there is some dreadful contradiction of this sort which brings one near doubt. For example, Mark tells us in his first chapter how Jesus came from Nazareth and was baptized of John in Jordan, and the heavens opened and the Spirit like a dove descended upon him. And there came a voice from heaven saying: "Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."
Afterwards, John was cast into prison, and while there, if we can believe Matthew, he heard of the works of Christ and sent two of his disciples to ask him: "Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?" In other words: "Art thou the Messiah?"
But how extraordinary, for when John baptized Jesus, he must have seen the heavens opened and the spirit in the form of a dove descending and heard the voice saying: "Thou art my beloved Son." How then could John doubt?
Even the prayer Jesus taught his disciples hardly reaches his highest: "Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation." I should prefer simply:
"Give and forgive."
Why then believe at all in the existence of Jesus? Why not accept the conclusion of Mr. Robertson and others, and, I am told, the great majority of Rabbis, who think that he never existed?
First of all, it is my conviction that every great movement in the world comes from a great man. I cannot believe that the verses: "Love your enemies…" and "Be ye therefore perfect…" ever came as a part of ordinary belief: such words are the very perfume, so to speak, of an extraordinary and noble nature.
Besides this, there are the two almost contemporary records: the one in Josephus and the other in Tacitus. The one in Josephus has been tampered with In the interest of so-called Christianity, but the fact that it was inserted already testifies to a personality: and the phrase in Tacitus: "quidam Jesu," confessing contempt-"a certain fellow called Jesus"-is purely Roman, and comes from the same man who thought the murder of fifty thousand Jews, men, women, and children, In the streets of Syracuse "a good riddance."
Beyond all doubt Jesus lived and died as his disciples tell us, and what consolation there is for all of us in his ultimate triumph. Here is a poor Jew, known only to a few fishermen in a small and despised province of the Roman Empire, speaking a dialect that was only understood by a handful of sectaries, and condemned when between thirty and forty years of age to a shameful death.