[ p. 88 ]
MEANWHILE the report of Jesus’ doings had spread far and wide. It had reached Jerusalem, it had reached his family in Nazareth. He was proclaiming that men were God’s sons, he was forgiving sins, he had openly declared himself above the Law.
We know little indeed of Jesus’ family, but we know enough of his brother James from Paul’s letter to the Galatians to see that he at least was a pious and fanatical legalist; and there is one strange glimpse of him in the early father, Hegesippus, which reveals him as an unshaven, unwashen “holy man” of the East, who may well have learned his exorbitant asceticism from following John the Baptist. A vision of Jesus after death seems to have brought him into the early Church, in which he quickly gained a position of supreme authority in virtue of his relation to Jesus. He was the stubborn opponent of Paul’s [ p. 89 ] mission to the Gentiles, and he became an early martyr. From this we may fairly picture him as an ascetic and superstitious Jew, to whom not the abrogation, but the reduplication of the Law, would have been the good news.
He and his brothers were horrified at the report of Jesus, whom they had barely seen since they went down together to be baptized by John. Jesus had departed alone into the desert, and when he had returned to Nazareth it had been only for a moment. An impassable gulf had yawned between them, so that Jesus had left Nazareth for Capernaum immediately. The gladness of his good news and the gloom of their fanatical asceticism could not exist together. He left his home forever and made a new one for himself in Capernaum.
But now he had broken out into impious action and blasphemous claims. The disgrace to the devout and rigid family of Nazareth was intolerable. Man was lord of the Sabbath! Jesus was mad. People said so, and the mother and the brothers of Jesus agreed. Now that he had appeared once more at Capernaum and crowds were listening to him again, they had the chance to save him from [ p. 90 ] himself and their own name from ignominy. With this righteous purpose they left Nazareth and came to Capernaum.
Jesus had returned to Simon’s house. There he was thronged with people, so that he and his disciples had neither time nor space to eat.
Scribes had been sent down from Jerusalem to counteract his influence and turn the people from him. It was his power as a healer of the demented and the conscience-stricken that they had to combat. This was his chief renown: as a healer of afflicted souls, in the height and breadth of the phrase. They could not deny that he healed them ; but they denied absolutely that he healed by the spirit and power of God. It was the spirit of Evil that dwelt within him they said and truly believed. “He casts out daemons by the power of the Prince of daemons.”
They had no choice. To have admitted that the Spirit of God was upon him was impossible. The Spirit of God could not inhabit a breaker of God’s Law. Yet the souls were healed, the daemons were cast out; therefore they were cast out by the Spirit of Evil.
The Scribes were not dishonest men; but they [ p. 91 ] had their God, their Revelation, and their Law. A new revelation was to them unthinkable, as it has always been to the defenders of a Church and a Tradition! When a man comes forward claiming to be the vehicle of a new revelation, the defenders of a Church and a Tradition have always said the same: “He has Beelzebub.”
Jesus heard of their denunciation and called them into the house to speak with him. He said to them :
How can Satan cast out Satan? For if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot endure; and if a house is divided against itself, that house will not last. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is risen against himself and is divided. His end is come.
And if I cast out evil spirits by the Spirit of Evil, by whom do your sons cast them out? They shall be your judges.
But if I cast out evil spirits by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God is come upon you unawares.
And in truth no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder it, except he has first bound the strong man ; then he will plunder his house.
[ p. 92 ]
Either call the tree good because its fruits are good, or call the tree rotten because its fruits are rotten, for the tree is known by its fruits.
“Theref ore I say to you : ‘The sons of men shall be forgiven all their sins, and all the blasphemies which they shall utter. But whoever shall blaspheme against the Spirit of God shall never be forgiven. He is guilty of an everlasting sin.’ ”
The mysterious sin against the Holy Ghost is not mysterious at all. But it is terrible. It is to call the source of good, evil. On this simple knowledge that good must come from good, Jesus’ whole answer rests. It was good that sick souls should be healed. Therefore it could not be the work of the Evil One, for it is not in the power of evil to do good.
It sounds a simple faith. But few men have dared to hold it. It is based on an utterly clear spiritual intuition. If a man cannot absolutely trust his own knowledge of what is good, it is no faith for him. It was no faith for the Pharisee, who needed the Law to live by. What man needs to live by, that becomes his truth and his God. To the Pharisee Jesus, therefore, to Jesus the Pharisee, was the enemy of God. To the Pharisee Jesus, to [ p. 93 ] the Pharisee, committed the unforgivable sin. Jesus denied God’s Law; they denied his risible presence.
It has been said that Jesus was unjust to the Pharisees. In the conflict of eternal opposites neither justice nor injustice can be done. The Pharisees were not unjust to Jesus. It was not justice which would have taught the Pharisees to recognise the visible presence of God ; it was not justice which made Jesus turn at the last with “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” ; it was love. How could the servants of a just God understand the son of a loving one, or he them? But in the name of God one murdered, and the other forgave. That is the difference. Jesus could not understand what was less, the Pharisee what was more, than himself. Those are both misunderstandings ; but only one is divine.
And Jesus’ anger was divine. He turned fiercely on the Scribes:
“But how can you speak what is good, when you are evil? For the mouth speaks out of the heart’s overflow. The good man from his store of good utters good things ; and the evil man from his store of evil utters evil things. I say to you, at the Day [ p. 94 ] of Judgment men will be called to account for every idle word they say. For by your words you will be justified and by your words condemned.”
“Prove your claim,” said the Scribes and Pharisees. “If it is not the Spirit of Evil that works in you, but the Spirit of God, prove it. Show us a sign.”
It was not unreasonable. After all, the casting out of daemons was no sign for them. Their own sons cast out daemons : Jesus himself had said so. But their sons did not break the Law ; they did not claim, like Jesus, to be above the Law. And Jesus’ healings were no signs to them: they had seen them, and they had seen things like them before. They asked for a real sign, a miracle, to compel them to assent to Jesus’ claim to be above the Law. Till then the sufficient sign to them was that he broke the Law.
Jesus answered:
“It is an evil and adulterous generation that demands a sign; and a sign shall not be given it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah. The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the Judgment with this generation and shall condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah ; and behold ! a [ p. 95 ] greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South shall rise up in the Judgment with this generation and shall condemn it For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold! a greater than Solomon is here.”
The quality of his message was the only sign ; there was no other. His power over sick souls might be to himself a sign that God was with him : it was not so to them. He knew it, and did not appeal to it. The voice of God, the accent of truth, in his message was the only sign. They could not hear it. They heard only the words: “A greater than Jonah I A greater than Solomon !” More blasphemy ! Truly he had Beelzebub. And they went away.
Jesus turned to his disciples, squatting on the floor about him, and began to speak to them concerning evil spirits and the Spirit of Evil. For him it was in the Scribes; for them, it was in him. He would tell them of the power of the Spirit of Evil ; he had known it in himself.
His mother and brothers arrived. They stood outside the house, calling him to come out to them. Doubtless he heard the familiar voices crying: [ p. 96 ] “Yes, we know he is mad ; we have come to take him away.”
He paid no heed, but went on speaking to his disciples, spread in a circle round him.
Some one came in and said :
“Do you not hear your mother and your brothers outside, calling to you?”
Jesus said: “Who are my mother and my brothers?”
Then he swept his glance over the circle of his listeners, and said:
“These are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and my sister and my mother.”
The one message, in its simplest form. The old family was no more; the new family was the brotherhood of the sons of God : and the sons of God were those who did their Father’s will.
Then he went on to tell his followers how, when the Spirit of Evil was driven out from a man, it returned to him with sevenfold force. He was speaking out of the depths of his own knowledge, learned in the Wilderness.
“When the unclean spirit leaves the man, it wanders through the waterless places, seeking rest, and [ p. 97 ] finds none. Then it says: ‘I will return to my house whence I came out.’ And coming, it finds it empty and swept and adorned. Then it goes and takes to itself seven spirits worse than itself, and enters and dwells there; and the last state of the man is worse than the first.”
Jesus was speaking of the experience of rebirth, warning and strengthening his hearers, by telling them of the trials they must expect. It was not an arid discussion of lunatic relapses, nor an unconvincing parable concerning an evil generation. Until they were wholly possessed by the Spirit of God, all men were possessed, more or less, by Spirits of Evil. It was against the barren moment when the light has been, and is no more, that he was warning them. He was giving them some of the wisdom he had learned, and the strength he had gained in the Wilderness, the barren and dry place that was for him the very home of the Spirit of Evil.
It went home to one of his hearers. A woman lifted her voice and cried :
“Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the breasts which thou hast sucked 1”
He answered:
[ p. 98 ]
“Nay: blessed are those who listen to the word of God and keep it”
Much had happened on that day: the religion of his country, the religion to which he belonged, had finally cast him out. It had passed its judgment: he was a son, not of God, but of the Devil. And his mother and his brothers had acquiesced. They had condemned him in milder terms, saying merely that he was mad ; but they had condemned him with the same condemnation. Jesus knew it. “He that is not with me,” he said on that day to his disciples, “is against me; and he that gathers not with me, scatters.”
On the same day, at the same moment, the ties between him and his earthly country, between him and his earthly family, were snapped. His mother and his brothers had gone over to the enemy. Jesus accepted it, and by his own word made the severance absolute. From henceforth he had, and he recognised, no mother, nor brother, nor sister: he had no kin save his fellow-sons of God.