promised, all which makes the discourses of Jesus so confessedly superior to human morality, made little impression on this class, who in some respects, as the most intellectual, might be considered as in the highest state of advancement, and therefore most likely to understand the real spirit of the new religion. The authority of Jesus could not coexist with that of the Scribes and Pharisees ; and this was the great principle of the fierce opposition and jealous hostility, with which he was in general encountered by the best instructed teachers of the people. In Capernaum, however, no resistance seems to have been made to his success: the synagogue was open to him on every Sabbath; and wonderful cures, that of a demoniac in the synagogue itself, that of Simon's wife's mother, and of many others within the same town, established and strengthened his growing influence (1). From Capernaum he set forth to make a regular progress through the whole populous province of Galilee, which was crowded, if we are Progress through to receive the account of Josephus, with flourishing towns and cities, beyond almost any other region of the world (2). According to the statements of this author, the number of towns, and the population of Galilee, in a district of between fifty and sixty miles in ness of length, and between sixty and seventy in breadth, was no less than Galilce. 204 cities and villages, the least of which contained 15,000 souls (3). Galilee. Populous. Reckoning nothing for smaller communities, and supposing each town and village to include the adjacent district, so as to allow of no scattered inhabitants in the country, the population of the province would amount to 3,060,000; of these, probably, much the larger proportion were of Jewish descent, and spoke a harsher dialect of the Aramaic, than that which prevailed in Judæa, though in many of the chief cities there was a considerable number of Syrian Greeks and of other foreign races (4). Each of these towns had one or more synagogues, in which the people met for the ordinary purposes of worship, while the more religious attended regularly at the festivals in Jerusalem. The province of Galilee with Peræa formed the tetrarchate of Herod Antipas, who, till his inAntipas, cestuous marriage, had treated the Baptist with respect, if not with deference, and does not appear at first to have interfered with the proceedings of Jesus. Though at one time decidedly hostile, he appears neither to have been very active in his opposition, nor to have entertained any deep or violent animosity against the person of Jesus, even at the time of his final trial. No doubt Jerusalem and Herod (1) Mark, i. 23-28.; Luke, iv. 33-37.; Matt. viii. 14, 15.; Mark, i. 29-31.; Luke, iv. 28-39. (2) Matt. iv. 23-25.; Mark., i. 32-39.; (3) Josephi Vita, ch. xlv. B. J. 111–111. 2. Josephus states of Tiberias in particular, that it was inhabited by many strangers; Scythopolis was almost a Greek city. In Cæsarea, and many of the other towns, the most dreadful conflicts took place, at the commencement of the war, between the two races. Hist. of the Jews, ii. 234-236. its adjacent province were the centre and stronghold of Jewish religious and political enthusiasm; the pulse beat stronger about the heart than at the extremities. Nor, whatever personal apprehensions Herod might have entertained of an aspirant to the name of the Messiah, whom he might suspect of temporal ambition, was he likely to be actualed by the same jealousy, as the Jewish Sanhedrin, of a teacher, who confined himself to religious instruction (1). His power rested on force, not on opinion; on the strength of his guards and the protection of Rome, not on the respect which belonged to the half religious, half political pre-eminence of the rulers in Jerusalem. That which made Jesus the more odious to the native government in Judæa, his disappointment of their hopes of a temporal Messiah, and his announcement of a revolution purely moral and religious, would allay the fears and secure the indifference of Herod; to him Christianity, however imperfectly understood, would appear less dangerous than fanatical Judaism. The Pharisees were in considerable numbers, and possessed much influence over the minds of the Galileans (2); but it was in Judæa that this overwhelming faction completely predominated, and swayed the public opinion with irresistible power. Hence the unobstructed success of Jesus in this remoter region of the Holy Land, and the wisdom of selecting that part of the country where, for a time at least, he might hope to pursue unmolested his career of blessing. During this first progress he seems to have passed from town to town uninterrupted, if not cordially welcomed. Either astonish- passes d ment, or prudent caution, which dreaded to offend his numerous througly followers; or the better feeling which had not yet given place to the fiercer passions; or a vague hope that he might yet assume all that they thought wanting to the character of the Messiah, not only attracted around him the population of the towns through which he passed, but as he approached the borders, the inhabitants of Decapolis (the district beyond the Jordan), of Judæa, and even of Jerusalem, and the remoter parts of Peræa, thronged to profit both by his teaching, and by the wonderful cures which were wrought on all who were afflicted by the prevalent diseases of the country (3). How singular the contrast (familiarity with its circumstances, or deep and early reverence, prevent us from appreciating it justly) between the peaceful progress of the Son of Man, on the one hand healing maladies, relieving afflictions, restoring their senses to the dumb or blind; on the other gently instilling into the minds of the people those pure, and humane, and gentle principles of moral goodness, to which the wisdom of ages has been able to add nothing; (1) The supposition of Grotius, adopted by Mr. Greswell, that Herod was absent at Rome during the interval between the imprisonment and the death of John, and therefore during the first progress of Jesus, appears highly pro' (2) Luke, v. 17. Jesus molested Galilee. son with lutions. and every other event to which it can be compared, in the history Compari- of human kind. Compare the men who have at different periods authors of Wrought great and beneficial revolutions in the civil or the moral other revo- state of their kind; or those mythic personages, either deified men or humanised deities, which appear as the parents, or at some marked epoch in the history of different nations, embodying the highest notions of human nature or divine perfection to which the age or the people have attained-compare all these, in the most dispassionate spirit, with the impersonation of the divine goodness in Jesus Christ. It seems a conception, notwithstanding the progress in moral truth which had been made among the more intellectual of the Jews, and the nobler reasoners among the Greeks, so completely beyond the age, so opposite to the prevalent expectations of the times, as to add no little strength to the belief of the Christian in the divine origin of his faith. Was the sublime notion of the Universal Father, the God of Love, and the exhibition of as much of the divine nature as is intelligible to the limited faculties of man, his goodness and beneficent power, in the "Son of Man," first developed in the natural progress of the human mind among the peasants of Galilee (1)? Or, as the Christian asserts with more faith, and surely not less reason, did the great Spirit, which created and animates the countless worlds, condescend to show this image and reflection of his own inconceivable nature, for the benefit of one race of created beings, to restore them to, and prepare them for, a higher and eternal state of existence? Teaches in gogues open air. The synagogues, it has been said, appear to have been open to the syna- Jesus during the whole of his progress through Galilee; but it was and in the not within the narrow walls of these buildings that he confined his instructions. It was in the open air, in the field, or in the vineyard, on the slope of the hill, or by the side of the lake, where the deck of one of his followers' vessels formed a kind of platform or tribune, that he delighted to address the wondering multitudes. His language teems with allusions to external nature, which, it has often been observed, seem to have been drawn from objects immediately around him. It would be superfluous to attempt to rival, and unjust to an author of remarkable good sense and felicity of expression, to alter the language in which this peculiarity of Christ's teaching has Manner of already been described :- "In the spring our Saviour went into his dis- the fields and sat down on a mountain, and made that discourse Quotation which is recorded in St. Matthew, and which is full of observations Jortin. arising from the things which offered themselves to his sight. For courses. from when he exhorted his disciples to trust in God, he bade them behold the fowls of the air, which were then flying about them, and were fed by Divine Providence, though they did not sow nor reap, nor 1) Compare the observations at the end of the first chapter, 6 gather into barns.' He bade them take notice of the lilies of the field which were then blown, and were so beautifully clothed by the same power, and yet toiled not' like the husbandmen who were then at work. Being in a place where they had a wide prospect of a cultivated land, he bade them observe how God caused the sun to shine, and the rain to descend upon the fields and gardens, even of the wicked and ungrateful. And he continued to convey his doctrine to them under rural images, speaking of good trees and corrupt trees-of wolves in sheep's clothing-of grapes not growing upon thorns, nor figs on thistles of the folly of casting precious things to dogs and swine-of good measure pressed down, and shaken together, and running over. Speaking at the same time to the people, many of whom were fishermen and lived much upon fish, he says, What man of you will give his son a serpent, if he ask a fish? Therefore when he said in the same discourse to his disciples, Ye are the light of the world; a city that is set on a hill, and cannot be hid, it is probable that he pointed to a city within their view, situated upon the brow of a hill. And when he called them the salt of the earth, he alluded, perhaps, to the husbandmen, who were manuring the ground and when he compared every person who observed his precepts, to a man who built a house upon a rock, which stood firm; and every one who slighted his word, to a man who built a house upon the sand, which was thrown down by the winds and floods-when he used this comparison, 'tis not improbable that he had before his eyes houses standing upon high ground, and houses standing in the valley in a ruinous condition, which had been destroyed by inundations (1)." on the Mount. It was on his return to Capernaum, either at the close of the pre- Sermon sent or of a later progress through Galilee, that among the multitudes who had gathered around him from all quarters, he ascended an eminence, and delivered in a long continuous address the memorable Sermon on the Mount (2). It is not our design to enter at length on the trite, though in our opinion by no means exhausted, subject of Christian morality. We content ourselves with indicating some Principles of those characteristic points which belong, as it were, to the histo- of Chris rical development of the new religion, and cannot be distinctly com- rality. prehended unless in relation to the circumstances of the times : (1) Jortin's Discourses. The above is quoted and the idea is followed out at greater length and with equal beauty in Bishop Laws Reflections on the Life of Christ, at the end of his Theory of Religion. (2) Scarcely any passage is more perplexing to the harmonist of the Gospels than the Sermon on the Mount, which appears to be inserted at two different places by St. Matthew and St. Luke. That the same striking truths should be delivered more than once in nearly the same language, or even that the same commanding situation should he more than once selected, from which to ad dress the people, appears not altogether impro- tian mo with the age. i. Not in 1. The morality of Jesus was not in unison with the temper or the unison feelings of his age. II. It was universal morality, adapted for the whole human race, and for every period of civilisation. III. It was morality grounded on broad and simple principles, which had hitherto never been laid down as the basis of human action. I. The great principle of the Mosaic theocracy was the strict apportionment of temporal happiness or calamity, at least to the nation, if not to the individual, according to his obedience or his rebellion against the divine laws. The natural consequence of this doctrine seemed to be, that prosperity was the invariable sign of the divine approval, adversity of disfavour. And this, in the time of Jesus, appears to have been carried to such an extreme, that every malady, every infirmity, was an evidence of sin in the individual, or a punishment inherited from his guilty forefathers. The only question which arose about the man born blind was, whether his affliction was the consequence of his own or his parents' criminality: he bore in his calamity the hateful evidence that he was accursed of God. This principle was perpetually struggling with the belief in a future state, and an equitable adjustment of the apparent inequalities in the present life, to which the Jewish mind had gradually expanded; and with the natural humanity, inculcated by the spirit of the Mosaic law, towards their own brethren. But if the miseries of this life were an evidence of the divine anger, the blessings were likewise of his favour (1). Hence the prosperous, the wealthy, those exempt from human suffering and calamity, were accustomed to draw even a more false and dangerous line of demarcation than in ordinary cases, between themselves and their humble and afflicted brethren. The natural haughtiness which belonged to such superiority, acquired, as it were, a divine sanction; nor was any vice in the Jewish character more strongly reproved by Jesus, or more hostile to his reception as the Messiah. For when the kingdom of Heaven should come-when the theocracy should be restored in more than its former splendour-who so secure of its inestimable blessings as those who were already marked and designated by the divine favour? Among the higher orders the expectation of a more than ordinary share in the promised blessings might practically be checked from imprudently betraying itself, by the natural timidity of those who have much to lose, and by their reluctance to hazard any political convulsion. Yet nothing could be more inexplicable, or more contrary to the universal sentiment, than that Jesus should disregard the concurrence, and make no particular advances towards those who formed the spiritual as well as the temporal aristocracy of the (1) Compare Mosheim, ii. 12. He considers this feeling almost exclusively prevalent among the Sadducees; but from many passages of our Lord's discourses with the Pharisees, it should seem to have been almost universal. Pauperes et niseros existimare debebant Deum criminibus et peccatis offendisse, justamque ejus ultionem sentire. |