A journalist, writing in the style of the newspapers of to-day, would have said that our Lord's mission among men was an immediate success. Within a few weeks He became unchallengeably the most prominent Personage in the land. Wherever He went, a multitude followed, drawn from Galilee, with its industries; from the wilder and remoter Decapolis; from royal Judea and ancient Jerusalem; from the regions beyond Jordan; and even from Tyre and Sidon. When He entered Nain, the crowd was there. At Jericho they thronged upon Him. If He crossed the lake, the people took boats after Him, or ran together from all cities on foot to meet Him. At the base of the mountain where He was transfigured, thousands waited for Him. "All men seek for Thee," said Simon Peter, as He proceeded to the "next towns."
In weighing apparent discrepancies in the narratives, we should bear in mind the hurry--the excitement--the Oriental eagerness, of which He was the center. To describe one of His days would be like analyzing the movements of an avalanche. Even the inspired pens of the Evangelists left that task unachieved and unattempted. They laid their sick in the market-places where He healed them. They sought even to touch the hem of His garment, and were thus made whole. They gave Him no leisure, not so much as to eat, invading the very house where He was taking His meals, so that there was no room, not even by the door; and, in those breathless days, He was often an hungered, as when He sought fruit from the barren fig-tree, beneath the walls of Jerusalem. We read how He sat, weary, by the well of Samaria, while His friends brought Him food; how, on one of their little voyages in an open boat, their supplies were inadvertently reduced to one loaf; how, on the Sabbath, His disciples picked corn, as they walked along, rubbing the grain in their hands, and so fed themselves. It seemed as if, in that strenuous career, there was not one moment to be wasted; and in telling the story, St. Mark's favorite word is "immediately." Where John the Baptist stayed by the Jordan and spoke to those who came to him, Jesus walked abroad, searching the highways and the hedges for those He came to save.
Sought by all Classes
Important persons sought our Saviour's acquaintance. There was the king's officer at Capernaum, whose son was healed. There was the centurion, who pleaded for the life of his servant. There was Nicodemus, a (so to say) Member of Congress, who came to Him secretly by night. There was Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, broken-hearted over his daughter's death. Wealthy tax-gatherers, like Matthew and Zacchæus, prepared great banquets for Him. Fashionable ladies, like Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, ministered unto Him of their substance. At Bethany, His home was with Lazarus, and the *sisters Martha and Mary, whom He loved dearly; while at the house of Simon the Leper, hard by--another friend in comfortable circumstances--He was entertained to a dinner, at which Mary of Bethany broke her alabaster box of ointment, very precious, over His feet. In the Sanhedrin itself--a legislature which combined the functions of Convocation and Commons--His credentials were discussed, while Antipas, the tetrarch, frequently asked about Him, and offered an audience. With the children, He was--forgive the familiar term--an especial favorite. Mothers brought them to receive His blessing. They were constantly present while He taught, and never found His words dull. Following Him on the mountains, they walked miles, or were carried, until He had to find food for them, lest they and their mothers should faint on the way. When He entered Jerusalem on His last visit, they were His chief retinue and bodyguard--His Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls. What hurt Him most when He thought of that city's doom was the anguish of the mothers as they clasped their babes to their breasts amid the tumult of war.
Some of us are habitually behind the times. We yearn for the lost happiness of the Middle Ages, or the noble yet vanished institutions of Greece and Rome. Others of us are in advance of the times. Before we can do good, we must have Socialism and Disarmament, and some other remote "system. Christ did not despise either History, which deals with the past, or Prophecy, which reveals the future. On the road to Emmaus, He so talked about the traditions of His race as to fire the hearts of the two disciples with a noble enthusiasm. And He alone foresaw the fearful destiny of Jerusalem. But He had the courage to handle the Present. The time, He said, is now fulfilled. Look, He would exclaim, the fields are already white unto the harvest. Every moment was for Him " the psychological moment." Every utterance was an eternal utterance. The people were amazed by His miracles. But they were not less astonished by His words, which were as wonderful as His works. It was a conversation that captured Nathanael, and another that won the Samaritans. He spoke with an authority of His own, not derived from others, and He also spoke with grace, or, as we should say, with tact, courtesy, sympathy. His was a voice so gentle that it soothed the sick, yet so resonant that it sounded forth above the storms at sea--above the roar of gossip in the Temple, above the tumults around the Cross. The multitudes, on the mountain could hear His every syllable, and He could speak with ease from a boat to the crowds that lined the beach. The very tomb did not exclude those commanding tones, for Lazarus, in his grave-clothes, was awakened and came forth.
The reason why the common people heard Him so gladly was that He always respected His audience. Because they were ignorant and diseased and sinful, He gave them the best. When publicans and sinners came to hear Him, the sight of the Pharisees, those hard and unloving critics, moved Him to utter the three unforgettable illustrations of the infinite sacredness of human life--the one lost sheep in a hundred ; the one lost coin in ten; the one lost son out of only two. Nor were the people irresponsive. When the scribes and Pharisees plotted with the Herodians against the Saviour, they were constantly restrained by public opinion. When they would have seized Him, they feared the multitude. And His arrest, when at last it was achieved, was the result of a betrayal, masked by the darkness of the night.
Popularity and Success
Jesus was not indifferent to popularity. On the contrary, He analyzed and judged it. When His seventy evangelists returned, and in exultant language told Him of their triumphs over evil, His eye flashed with the vision of His enemy, Satan, falling into impotence, It was as if His joy in His own work is less than His satisfaction of soul when "greater things are achieved by those whom He died to save. When the Greeks came to Him, it seemed as if, for the second time, He saw the kingdoms of the world laid at His feet, with the glory of them--a glory that He could now claim, because it came to Him rightly, through His Father, and not through the Devil, and would come again and yet again, as the centuries rolled on. One reason why He was beloved lay in the thoroughness of His methods. Like the good shepherd, He sought until He found. There were many countries richer and of greater political prestige than the Holy Land, but Jesus did not go abroad once, save as a babe to Egypt; and when near the frontier He encountered a Syro-Phoenician woman, He told her truly, yet almost ruthlessly, that He was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. We do not know how often He trod those narrow highways. Many towns, like Capernaum and Bethsaida, He visited over and over again. He did not desire that people should be content with a mere glimpse of Him, but offered Himself to them wholly, frequently, patiently, as an ever-accessible Friend--a Neighbor; not an author to be read and put aside, but the Author and Finisher of our faith. He had no need to complain that His opportunities were restricted, for with Him every opportunity was, as it were, enough. His movement followed natural law; it spread as leaven spreads; it grew as a seed grows: first Jerusalem, then Samaria, then Galilee, and so on, to the uttermost ends of the earth. It was the strategy of that Master-brain whence were devised the concentric waves on the surface of a pool into which a stone has fallen from heaven.
Yet the outward success of His work was in many ways a hindrance to Him. The crowds were selfish in their very admiration. The four stretcher-bearers, who brought a paralytic to Him, as He sat in a house, were nearer His kingdom than the strong and healthy people in the congregation who refused to make way for their afflicted patient. On another occasion that same multitude did not respect His own mother's desire to speak to Him. Zacchæus was anxious not only to see Jesus as He passed, but to make Him welcome in his house, and introduce Him to his friends; yet Zacchæus also was thrust back from the pavement by the very folk who could have easily seen over his head. They who accompanied Him in procession through Jericho did their utmost to silence the pries of blind Bartimæus, until He commanded the man to be brought,--note the strength of that word command,-- and it was only His authority thus expressed that changed their contempt for the beggar into sympathy. The people who seemed to be most attentive to the Master were sometimes farthest from Him, and as we think of those scribes and Pharisees grumbling against the forgiveness of sins, we realize what He meant when He said that many would call Him "Lord, Lord" whom He never knew, save as workers of iniquity.
"Many" and "Few"
There were so many who saw Him and knew about Him; there were so few who followed Him-so many called, so few chosen. That was why He spoke so earnestly of the broad road, where everyone walks, and the strait gate, which is so seldom discovered. Ten lepers were healed, as to-day tens of millions are blessed by the material benefits of the true faith; one only returned to the Redeemer Himself, as a grateful worshiper. Yet He did not desire a testimonial, for when first He cleansed a leper He did it, as it were, confidentially, and thought only of the man visiting the priest and regaining his place in society. It was not the cause that absorbed His affection. He was ever seeking the individual--taking a dumb man, as at Jericho, away by himself, or a blind man, as at Jerusalem; and, gradually, by symbols of His own devising, evoking love and faith from the isolated heart, until ear heard, eye saw, tongue spoke. Of His words, all of them divine, few have been reported and published. His aim was rather, and still is, to speak to people quietly, so that no one else can hear-to make Himself, not so much a public man, as a particular and intimate Friend, "who sticketh closer than a brother," "nearer than hands and feet."
But, as all seemed to be going so well, there came a check and a crisis in His career. When the people desired to make Him a king, He withdrew Himself, not refusing the honor, for it belonged to Him by right, but suggesting an immeasurable distance between their ideas and His. To them kingship was based upon "Panem and Circenses"--the bread which satisfies the body, the miracle which fascinates the eye. Jesus truly fed them, He truly healed them; but by leaving them for a while He tested their allegiance, and found it wanting. What they offered was a throne outside of themselves. What He demanded was the throne within. Where Moses led twelve tribes to the Promised Land, He chose for the Kingdom twelve apostles, of whom three were especially intimate. To teach great crowds was not enough. He must, as it were, get inside the human heart, and expel the evil by His presence there. He must be the very Bread and Wine which sustain His people's souls. He must give His flesh for their hearts' food. He must come to them and sup with them, and they with Him, until they and He are one, as He is one with His Father. So He spoke, and the message destroyed His popularity." When He was seized in the garden, the multitude, who had been taught and healed, came with swords and staves. And His few remaining friends all forsook Him and fled.