Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/693

JESUS 663 the kingdom which he only announced. The submission to the simple rite of baptism, a rite already familiar to the Jews in the admission of proselytes, was the only sign of the acceptance of his mission which he required ; and the multitudes were so deeply moved by his preaching that they thronged to be baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins. It was in order to receive this baptism, and to ratify the mission of the great forerunner, that Jesus left the deep provincial seclusion in which He had hitherto lived. The stainless personality of his Kinsman overawed the bold and mighty spirit of the desert preacher. He shrank from baptizing one in whom he at once recognized that "royalty of inward happiness," and purity of sinless life, which he could not himself claim. Jesus, however, though He had no sins to confess, bade John to baptize Him, "for thus it becometh us," He said, " to fulfil all righteousness." He received the baptism, as a representative of the people whom He came to save, as a beautiful symbol of moral purification, and as the fit inauguration of a ministry which came not to destroy the law but to fulfil. And during the baptism John saw the overshadowing radiance and heard the voice from heaven which revealed to him that the promised Messiah had now come, and that this Messiah was the Son of God. After this great crisis, which finally closed the private period of the life of Jesus, He was " driven " by the spirit into the wilderness for His mysterious temptation. The details of what occurred could of course only have been derived from what He Himself made known to His apostles. What is clear is that in that region of Quarantania, in the desert of Jericho, He was divinely strengthened for this mission by victoriously wrestling with every suggestion of the powers of evil which could have altered the character of His work. Although this was not His only temptation 1 , it was evidently the most deadly. The first temptation appealed subtly and powerfully to the exhaustion of His physical nature ; the second to spiritual pride, as it would have been manifested by an unwarranted challenge of the providence of God ; the third to unhallowed personal ambition. In the two greatest temptations of His life in the wilderness and at Gethsemane He was tempted both positively and negatively, positively by allurements to a lower line of action, and negatively by the seductive pleas which would have drawn Him aside from the path of suffering. But He won the perfect victory because temptation never passed into even the thought of sin, but was so wrestled with and overcome that it made no deter mining impression upon His heart. 2 After this victory over the power of evil, Jesus returned to the fords of Jordan. It will not of course be possible or needful to dwell on the narratives of His ministry in all their details ; but, since these narratives are confessedly fragmentary, we shall endeavour to furnish from the four Gospels in rapid outline a sketch of the general events of His ministry before touching upon its eternal significance. The events described in the Gospels are often grouped together by subjective considerations, and it was the evident object of St John to dwell preponderantly on the Judfean ministry, and on those discourses which brought out the deeper and more mysterious side of the being of Christ, while the Synoptists chiefly describe the work in Galilee, and preserve what may be called the more exoteric discourses. The combination of these disintegrated records into one harmonious and consecutive whole is a task which can never be accomplished with absolute certainty ; but it is possible, without a single arbitrary conjecture, to construct a continuous narrative which shall simply follow the indi cation of our authorities without doing violence to them 1 Luke iv. 13 ; John vii. 4 ; Heb. ii. 10, 18, iv. 15. 2 See Ullmann, Sinless?iess of Jesus (Eng. tr.), pp. 30, 140. in any instance. In this scheme the ministry of Christ falls into the following epochs : (1) the early scenes, narrated by St John alone, until the beginning of the public preaching in Galilee ; (2) the Galilsean ministry till the murder of the Baptist ; (3) the period of decided opposition ; (4) the period of flight and peril until the final farewell to Galilee ; (5) from the great journey to Jerusalem till the retirement to Ephraim ; (6) from this retirement to the Passover; (7) the last supper, passion, trial, and crucifixion ; (8) the resurrection and ascension. (1) The scenes of the first period are related by St John with a beauty and simplicity which can only be called idyllic. He tells us how the Baptist, on the banks of the Jordan, saw Jesus pass by, and exclaimed, in language of deep significance, " Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world ! " Whether the prominent thought in the Baptist s mind was the paschal lamb, or the lamb of morning and evening sacrifice, or the lamb which Isaiah and Jeremiah had used as an emblem of patient and suffering innocence, it is clear that in the spirit of prophecy he saw in Jesus one who was predestined to a life of sorrows which should be for the salvation of the world. The next day the Baptist repeated the same emphatic testimony in the presence of two Galilaean youths. St Andrew and St John, who were so deeply impressed by it that they followed Jesus, saw Him in the place where He was then dwelling, and became His first disciples. Andrew then brought to Jesus his brother Simon, who also recognized in Him the promised Messiah. Three days afterwards Jesus called Philip, another young fisherman of Galilee, who in his turn brought to Jesus his friend Nathanael, the guileless Israelite who is known in the Gospels as Bartholomew, or the son of Tholmai. Accom panied by these pure and warmhearted young men, and also by His mother, Jesus was a guest at the simple wedding- feast of Cana in Galilee, at which He first displayed His possession of supernatural power by turning the water into wine. Then, after a brief stay at Capernaum, He went to the Passover at Jerusalem. His first visit to the temple as a recognized teacher was signalized by an authoritative Messianic act. He cleansed the temple of its mean and desecrating traffic, although neither priests nor Pharisees nor the Roman authorities had ever taken a step in that direction. When His right to act thus was challenged, He answered in mysterious words, of which the meaning was not thoroughly understood till long afterwards, " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up " speaking of the spiritual temple of His body. 3 The words created so deep an impression that after being distorted both in form and meaning they formed one of the chief charges against Him at His trial. Even at this early phase of His work Jesus touched the heart and won the secret allegiance of Nicodemus, with whom He held at night the memorable discourse on the new birth. But He was met from the first by such signs of opposition that He went with His disciples into Judaea, and there allowed them to baptize. The work of the Baptist was not yet over, and, until it was, Jesus both permitted the disciples to adopt the symbol of puri fication which had been used by His forerunner, and Him self similarly preached " Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Some Jew 4 raised a discussion with the disciples of John about purification, and they in their perplexity and jealousy applied to their great master with the complaint that his ministry was being eclipsed by that of Him whom he had baptized beyond Jordan. John, with noble self-suppression, pointed out that he must 3 John ii. 19. That " the Jews," as St John calls the opponents of Christ, were not so entirely ignorant of His meaning as they chose to appear results from Matt, xxvii. 63. 4 Mera lovSaiov is the true reading in John iii. 25.