[ p. 170 ]
BETHSAIDA was outside Herod’s jurisdiction, yet on the borders of Galilee. It was the natural place for Jesus to seek when he came out of his mountain retreat and was driven out of Galilee. He must have taught and wrought there a long while; but of his ministry in Bethsaida no record remains save the story of the healing of the blind man. Nor can we tell whether that healing was done in Bethsaida itself, or in one of the villages attached to it. Mark speaks of a village, but Bethsaida itself was much more than a village.
Men brought a blind man to Jesus and besought him to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. There he spat into his eyes, and laid his hands upon them, and asked, “Do you see anything?”
The blind man looked up and said : “I see men, for I see things like walking trees.”
[ p. 171 ]
Then Jesus once more laid his hands upon the man’s eyes, and the man saw through the veil and had distinct sight of everything. Jesus sent him home, charging him not even to go into the village.
That is all we know of Jesus’ actual work in Bethsaida; but there was far more than that Bethsaida shares with Chorazin and Capernaum the ignominy of Jesus’ bitter denunciation. Not less than at Capernaum must he have worked there ; and not less than by Capernaum was he rejected by it.
We may suppose that Bethsaida was the last town wherein he sought to work among men. He would have been able to work there after Galilee was closed to him ; and we know that Bethsaida was the last town he visited before the great decision of Caesarea Philippi.
Somewhere in the outskirts of Bethsaida we must imagine him, returned from his last venture into Galilee, with the remnant of his dwindled followers. And Bethsaida would have none of the discredited prophet In Galilee, out of Galilee, he was rejected. He turned away to the north. As he went, he cried out in his bitterness :
“Woe, unto thee, Chorazin 1 Woe unto thee, [ p. 172 ] Bethsaida! Had the works done in you been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes, long ago. And thou, Capernaum! Exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to hell. For if the works done in you had been done in Sodom, Sodom would have lasted to this day. I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”
It was the moment of his extreme defeat, as he led the way northward from Bethsaida. What was he now? What did his men believe he was? He turned to them :
“Who do men say that I am?”
They answered:
“John the Baptist; others say Elijah; others, one of the prophets.”
He asked:
“But youl—who do you say that I am?” Peter answered:
“You are the Messiah.”
Jesus answered:
“You are blessed among men, Simon, son of John, for it was not flesh and blood, but my Father in heaven who revealed this to you.”
[ p. 173 ]
And he charged them that they should speak of it to no man.
Jesus was at the nadir of his earthly career. He had been finally cast forth from his own country of Galilee. He was to revisit it but once more, in disguise and concealed. Whatever dreams he may have had of leading his countrymen into the Kingdom were shattered. He had learned that they would follow only a leader who had a sign; and he could not, and would not, give them one.
He was a prophet, nearing his downfall. There were those that called him John the Baptist; and what forbade that the Baptist should be once more beheaded? There were others wtio called him, as they called John the Baptist before him, Elijah; and what forbade that the. third Elijah should go the way of the second? And to those to whom he was simply some prophet or other well there had been many prophets in the history of Israel, and most of them had come to a bad end. Jesus was well on the way to his.
So to the outward eye. But what was Jesus to his own inward eye? Above all things else, the son of God, who had sought in vain for earthly [ p. 174 ] brothers. By bitter experience he had proved himself God’s only son. He had his choice : either to deny the knowledge that he knew, of his absolute communion with a loving Father or bear his strange destiny to the end.
Of his communion with God he could not doubt. But other men had communed with God. None knew so well as he the authentic voice of God as it came from the lips of the prophets of old. But his communion was different, strangely different: he had known God not as a servant knows a master, but as a long-lost son his hidden father. Jesus was such a man that he could have known God in no other way. Had God been less than he found him, he would have refused him. For him God had to be one in whom all his love could find satisfaction and rest. To him no other God was possible ; and to all other men such a God was impossible.
So he had become, inevitably, God’s only son. The more utterly his message was rejected, the more certainly men refused the birthright that he offered them, to be and to act as God’s sons, the more strange and mysterious and wonderful became his own destiny.
God’s only son. Perhaps the splendor of that [ p. 175 ] loneliness is unthinkable. Yet somehow we must imagine it, even though it be, as it can be, only for a single moment We must know that it was not some mysterious and unimaginable delusion. He had become what he had become by an inexorable necessity. Once grant the fact of this man’s communion with God as he came up from John’s baptism and who, that has eyes to see, can deny it? then he was inevitably bound to become verily and indeed the only son of God.
God’s first-born son, who had found no brother. For such a man what place was there in the world of men? What was his destiny? One position and one alone was marked for him in the Jewish expectation, which he in his own fashion shared. He must be the Messiah, the Anointed One, the appointed Judge, the Son of Man. Yet even that he could not be now, in this world, on the road between Bethsaida and Caesarea. A human Messiah—that was unthinkable. Some mighty change must intervene. The Son of God must put off his garment of flesh and blood before he could be the Son of Man. The burden of a mighty and intolerable destiny lay upon him.
[ p. 176 ]
And as he wrestled with it on the road, he put to Simon the great question, “Who am I?”
For an instant Simon thought the unthinkable thought It was compelled from him by the spirit of the man before him. Truly it was not flesh and blood that revealed it on that day to Simon, the son of John, as he followed his defeated Master on the road, and Jesus suddenly turned back to him. For that answer Simon is indeed blessed, through all the ages. Through those words God’s lonely son, for an instant, touched a brother.
Henceforward this was the secret between Jesus and his near disciples. He was the Messiah-to-be. And he began to unfold to them, quite openly, the secret of his destiny as Messiah. He would suffer many things ; he would be killed ; but he would rise again and come in his new glory as the true Messiah, bringing with him the end of the world and opening of the Kingdom of God.
Substantially, I am convinced, the story of Jesus’ telling the disciples of his rising again is true. I do not believe that he said he would rise again in three days, for the simple reason that there is nothing in the primitive Gospel narrative to show that after the Crucifixion the disciples had the [ p. 177 ] faintest expectation of his being raised from the dead after three days. The disciples are represented as completely surprised by the resurrection. If Jesus had openly declared to them that he would rise again from the dead in three days, such an attitude of surprise would have been impossible; on the contrary, their attitude must have been one of eager and impatient expectation. They would not have left it to the faithful women to visit the tomb on the third morning.
We can but conjecture what Jesus foretold to his disciples concerning his destiny at death. But there are solid grounds for conjecture. For it is apparent from the whole tenor of the various conflicting narratives of the Passion that something which Jesus and his disciples expected to happen did not, in fact, happen. That is the plain and incontrovertible meaning of the despairing cry, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani? His God had forsaken him. When he uttered that cry, Jesus was yet alive, though on the point of death. Therefore, that which was to happen to him, and had not happened to him, was to have happened before the supreme point of physical death. It did not [ p. 178 ] happen : Jesus died with a loud cry, and the last flame of hope of his disciples sank into ashes.
I do not pretend to know, or to be able to imagine, precisely what was this happening in which Jesus trusted. But we may assume that it was of this that Jesus spoke in his reply to the highpriest’s question, “Are you the Christ?” Then he said:
“I am: and you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.”
He was to have experienced a miraculous change before death: to have put off his earthly garment and become the supernatural Messiah of Jewish expectation. I firmly believe that this reply to the chief-priest, which has been repeatedly impugned by modern criticism, is authentic. That was Jesus’ expectation.
For these sufficient reasons, as they seem, I regard the story of his having foretold to his disciples his death and resurrection in three days as a pious invention after the fact He may have told them that he was to die and that he was to rise from the dead ; but his death was not to be actual [ p. 179 ] death. He was indeed to suffer to the extremity, but then he would be changed.
But this conception which had come to birth in Jesus’ soul, of a suffering Messiah, was utterly strange to his disciples. Simon had recognized him as the Messiah, indeed but a suffering Messiah, that was impossible. It was, for the mind of his disciples, an unthinkable thought. It is so familiar to men like ourselves, heirs of two thousand years of Christian thought and feeling, that it is hard for us to realize how utterly inconceivable it was to the fishermen of Galilee. Simon had been lifted up in a moment of inspiration when he proclaimed Jesus the Messiah. To reconcile his vision with the reality was beyond his power. Jesus had spoken his mysterious words concerning his coming suffering, and was walking ahead alone. The disciples pondered the mystery: it was too hard for them. Then Simon hurried to overtake him, and speaking to Jesus from behind, began to rebuke him for his words.
Jesus turned round upon him, and looked upon the disciples gathered behind their spokesmanHe said to Simon:
[ p. 180 ]
“Follow behind me, Satan; you think the thoughts of a man, not the thoughts of God.”
Then he called the outer disciples that followed behind the Twelve up to him, and said to them all :
If any man will follow behind me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever will save his life, will lose it And whoever will lose his life for my sake will save it. For what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? For with what payment can a man buy back his soul?
“For whoever shall be ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
His outer followers did not understand that the Son of Man was Jesus himself. Only the Twelve knew that, for he had charged them to tell no man. To those outside the Twelve such speech referred to the coming of One of whom Jesus was but the forerunner. To the Twelve it had a stranger and more poignant meaning.
Finally Jesus said :
“Verily, I tell you that there are some of those [ p. 181 ] standing here who shall not taste of death until they see the Kingdom of God come with power.”
That was surely no promise of longevity to chosen disciples. It bears its plain meaning, as a vivid and forcible declaration of Jesus’ own belief : that the Kingdom of God would come soon. It would come soon after Jesus had made the sacrifice of himself and was changed from the earthly prophet into the heavenly Messiah.
Nor, for my own part, do I doubt the authenticity of Jesus’ words, “Let him take up his cross 1” The critical objection, that Jesus could not have known that the manner of his death would be crucifixion, leaves me unmoved. I think he knew well that he was to suffer the death of a thief and a robber ; and I have no doubt that he foresaw the manner of his agony.
It would not be profitable to inquire how the conception of a suffering Messiah, which was to remain unintelligible to his disciples, came to be born in Jesus’ secret soul. It is possible, perhaps even certain, that the wonderful picture of Israel as the suffering servant in 53d Isaiah, which was surely so familiar to him that it was almost part of himself , helped to bring to pass the “transvaluation [ p. 182 ] of all values” implied in the thought of a suffering Messiah. Nor would it in the least affect the potency of the second Isaiah’s sublime imagination that he described Israel and not the Messiah. It is the order and quality of the imagination alone that would matter to such a one as Jesus. He was not, as the higher critics so often assume, a higher critic. He was the supreme man—poet, prophet, hero: indeed, I know not what predicate of supreme humanity could be denied him. Into the mind of such a man a scruple so earth-bound and barren as the question : Does this speak of Israel or the Messiah? could not have entered. Was he himself not a prophet, and more than a prophet? Did he not know that the meaning of a prophet’s words was not in the letter, but in the knowledge of God that shone through them? Would he have read the 53d Isaiah as a Herr Professor of Weissnichtwo reads it? It would have meant to him victory out of utter defeat as the inmost secret of God’s plan. If even our dull minds respond to that amazing vision of Isaiah and recognize its inspiration, what would it have been to one whose ears were attuned as no man’s have ever been to hear the secret voice of God?
[ p. 183 ]
But for this very reason we need not to assume any influence of Isaiah working in Jesus’ soul. A greater than Isaiah was there. He needed not even the sublimest voice of all the sublime voices of Israel’s prophets to tell him of God’s strange and wonderful purpose, now. Perhaps far away, in that infinitely distant past when he was a little boy in Nazareth, and had a home and a mother and brothers and sisters, and called to other little boys in the dark across the market place, Isaiah’s vision of the man of sorrows may have helped to tune his hearing to God’s most secret sighing: perhaps, had Isaiah not known and spoken, Jesus’ own knowledge and speech might have been other than they were. But that was far away. What Isaiah had to give him had been given long ago—in another life. Now he needed not such a voice, nor even its comfort He had but to follow his own ineffable destiny to know that the conception of the suffering Messiah was true. He was to be the Messiah and he suffered ; he was to suffer yet more.
God’s only Son was alone with his strange and wonderful destiny—to suffer and to die and to rise again. He must go to Jerusalem, to the city of God, to the fortress of the old covenant, and proclaim [ p. 184 ] his message there. That he would die proclaiming it, there was no doubt: the Pharisees who had driven him into exile from his own dear land of Galilee, where their power was small, would exact the uttermost from him in the Holy City, where their power was great. Into the living center of the old religion of Israel he must go, and there claim the new knowledge of God. The decision was inevitable : where could the Son of God die, but on God’s altar? He was alone. From this hour all the disciples forsook him and fled. Though their bodies followed him yet for a little while, their spirits could not From now onward they saw his face from afar, as in a dream, as though it were an angel’s. It was a man’s.
He was alone, save for his Father. He went up into a high mountain to seek him. With him he took Simon and James and John. They waited apart, and watched him as he prayed. He prayed vehemently and long, till at length evening came on and they were oppressed with sleep. Suddenly they woke, and it seemed to them that his face was changed, and his garments white beyond any human bleaching. They heard him speaking to some [ p. 185 ] one near him concerning the grievous journey to Jerusalem that he must accomplish ; and it seemed to them that there were two majestic figures of men in the half-light at his side, one of whom they took for Moses, and the other for Elijah.
They were beside themselves with fear; and Peter, in trembling, not knowing what to say, called out idle words:
“Master, it is good for us that we are here. Let us make three huts, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
Even as they spoke there was total darkness, and out of the darkness they seemed to hear the very voice of God saying, “This is my beloved Son: hearken to himi” and at the sound of the voice they fell on their faces for fear.
But Jesus came forward. He touched them where they lay, and said, “Do not be afraid.” And they looked up and about them, and there was no one, save Jesus, all alone.
The three disciples kept secret the story of their vision until after Jesus was crucified and they had become persuaded that he had risen bodily from the grave. Indeed, it was only then that they veritably saw the vision. They remembered that from [ p. 186 ] the moment they went up with Jesus into the mountain he was changed : he was the same Jesus whom they had followed, yet he was another Jesus, whom they followed in fear. Truly, on that day, when he communed with his Father on the mountain-top concerning his journey to Jerusalem, he was transfigured. Then he knew that he was indeed the solitary Son of God, and was given strength to bear his destiny as the Son of Man.
Yet, though we may well believe that the face of Jesus was changed as he communed with God and passed into the final knowledge of his mission and his destiny, and the three disciples long afterwards remembered the change in his face, and the voice in the darkness, and their own fears, there was no miraculous happening of a kind to bring them certitude. Had they indeed seen what afterwards they imagined they had seen, they would have felt no doubts as they came down the mountain-side with their Master. If it had been so proved to them that Jesus was the Messiah as they afterwards recounted, they would not have been wondering how he could be the Messiah as they descended.
[ p. 187 ]
They asked him: “Why do the Scribes say that Elijah must come first?”
He answered : “Elijah does indeed come first to restore everything. And he has come already, but they would not recognize him. They worked their will upon him, as it is written. And what is written of the Son of Man himself? That he must suffer many things and be utterly rejected.”
If Jesus spoke these last words, which we may not doubt, he had made the vision of Israel in the 53d Isaiah into a prophecy concerning the Messiah. That it was not, in the strict sense of scholarship and history. Yet it was, from the moment that Jesus made it so ; just as John the Baptist was not Elijah, nor had he restored everything. Jesus made him Elijah.
And it was at this moment that he spoke his words concerning John the Baptist:
What went ye out into the desert to see? A reed shaken by the wind?
But what went ye out to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Those who wear silk are in king’s palaces.
But what went ye out to see? A prophet?
[ p. 188 ]
Yea, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is he of whom it was written :
‘Behold I send my messenger before my face
Who shall prepare the 'way before me!’
Verily, I say to you: Among men born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist But the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of God suffers violence, and men of violence seize it to themselves. For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied up to John. And if you can receive it, this is Elijah that was to come.
“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
In those strange dark words the new secret was spoken. Elijah, the forerunner, had indeed come, and he who was to come after him was there. And Elijah belonged to the old dispensation: he belonged with the Law and the Prophets, and the last word of the last prophet had foretold his coming. But after him had come something unknown, unexpected, and unforetold the Kingdom of God’s love. The least of its members was greater than John, for he belonged to the new creation : he had been reborn.
[ p. 189 ]
And this Kingdom had been plucked by violent hands from heaven: first by the strong, masterful hands of the true Prometheus, who had torn through the Law and the Prophets to find God face to face. He had brought God down from heaven to earth. And then it was plucked from heaven no less by those who listened to his words, and into whom the message of the Kingdom fell as a seed : men who, like their leader, changed themselves and made the Kingdom real.
The teacher of this new violence was the promised one. It was all utterly different from what men had imagined. John the Baptist was Elijah. He had restored nothing; and he had been beheaded. Only he that had ears to hear could understand the mystery. A yet greater mystery of the same kind was the destiny of the Son of Man.
Jesus said :
To what shall I liken this generation?
It is like children who sit in the market place and call to their playmates: ‘We piped for you, and you did not dance ; we wailed, and you did not beat your breasts.’
“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say: ‘He has a devil.’ The Son of Man [ p. 190 ] came eating and drinking, and they say: ‘Look! a glutton and a drunkard I The friend of tax-gatherers and sinners’. But Wisdom is justified by her works.”
The bitterness of his rejection pressed hard upon him at this bitter moment. Rejection had indeed made him the only Son of God and Messiah-to-be ; but the new consciousness of his destiny made rejection harder to bear. It was no longer a prophet whom his countrymen had rejected.
But the bitterness of Jesus passed. Not the bitternesss, but the wonder of his destiny, filled him when he cried :
I praise thee, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and hast revealed them unto babes. Yea, Father, for so it seemed good to thee.
“All knowledge has been given to me by the Father, and no one knows the Son save the Father, nor does any know the Father save the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.”
From the proud pinnacle of this exultant knowledge he spoke the imperishable words :
“Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy [ p. 191 ] laden, and I will give you rest Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Exultation, bitterness, exultation, tenderness—such were the moods of Jesus at the great turningpoint of his destiny. Verily he had gone up into a high mountain and had been transfigured. When he went up, he had believed that he was Messiahto-be ; when he descended he was certain of it. A high imperious certainty speaks in all his words. Like a king indeed who has God’s will for his own, he remolds the past and he creates the future. John is Elijah, and he the Messiah-to-be. And was it not written that the Son of Man should suffer many things? It was not written: Jesus made it*o be written. Isaiah’s picture of the suffering servant would, forever after, become a prophecy of Jesus the Messiah. As the omnipotent judge he was to be, he pronounced sentence upon the cities that had refused him. As the only Son, he praised his Father that his message had been refused. Yet at the last—always the same last with this man—the impulse of his unutterable love conquers all. [ p. 192 ] The King of Men becomes simply their longing and loving brother.
Everything was changed in him when he came down from the mountain; but this will never change. This more than all things else had made him what he was ; and this had changed the joyful preacher of glad news, teacher of wonderful wisdom, into the stern and sorrowful man of destiny. Even his face was changed. The few glimpses we catch of it henceforward are of the face of a transfigured man.
He was the Messiah, going the appointed way of suffering and rejection. He would not, he could not, proclaim himself. He was already a defeated prophet; it was out of his defeat that he had wrung the certainty. But this certainty was for himself alone. To proclaim himself Messiah was to proclaim himself a suffering and rejected Messiah: which to the Jew then and forever was madness. What was a stumbling-block to those who loved him would be a blasphemy to those who hated him. It was a secret between him and his disciples.
Jesus and his three disciples descended from the mountain in the morning. As they came to the rest of the disciples they found them surrounded [ p. 193 ] by a crowd, and Scribes disputing with them. When the crowd saw Jesus, they were astounded and ran to greet him.
Jesus asked his disciples, “What are you disputing with them?”
A man from the crowd called out: “Master, I brought my son to you, for he has a dumb daemon. And whenever it seizes him, it rends him, and he foams and grinds his teeth; he is wasting away. So I asked your disciples to cast it out; but they could not.”
Jesus answered: “O faithless generation! How long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to me.”
So they brought the boy. And the moment he saw Jesus he was convulsed and fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming.
Jesus asked the father, “How long has he had this?”
The father answered : “From a baby. Often it throws him into fire, and into water, to kill him. But have compassion on us and help us, if you canl”
“If I can?” said Jesus. “If you believe, you can have anything.”
[ p. 194 ]
The father instantly cried : “I believe. Help my unbelief!”
Jesus saw that a crowd was running up. Quickly he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying: “Dumb and deaf spirit, I command you: Come out of him, and enter him no more!”
The boy shrieked and was convulsed and lay as though dead. The crowd said he was dead. But Jesus took hold of his hand and raised him up, and he stood upon his feet, cured.
When they were alone together, the disciples asked him why they themselves could not cast the spirit out.
Jesus said: “There is but one means of casting out this kind that is prayer.”
Jesus had prayed indeed on the mountain-top such prayer as few men or none have prayed. Other men have been lifted by prayer into complete communion with God, none into loving union with a Father. In the great prayer of the night before he had known his destiny, and his face was changed.
Veritably changed : so that the dull eyes of men could see. When the crowd looked upon him they saw another man from him who had left them; [ p. 195 ] they were astounded. But it is to Luke we owe the great picture of the change in Jesus’ face at the moment : the sentence stands starkly out of his soft and facile writing, like a rock in a meadow. “He made his face rigid for the journey to Jerusalem.” The destiny of the Son of God was marked upon it.