The Jesus of History

other and nearer Being to man." "Jesus," writes Dr. Fosdick, "had the most joyous idea of God that ever was thought of." That joyous sense of God he has given to his fol

s discovered in his acts and his relations. He said to Peter, in effect-for the familiar phrase comes to this in modern English: "You think like a man; you don't think like God" (Mark 8:33). Elsewhere he contrasts God's thoughts with man's-their outlooks are so different "that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God" (Luke 16:15; the Greek words are very interesting). In other words, he would have men see all things as God sees them. That we do not so see them, remains the weak spot in our thinking. What Luther said to Erasmus is true of most of us: "Your thoughts concerning God are too human." "B

e? There is an inherited element in them, but how much else? Whence came the inherited element? How is it that to another man, with the same upbringing as ours, everything is different, everything means more? Remark, at any rate, in the teaching of Jesus, that there is no mysticism of the type so much studied to-day. There is nothing in the least "psychopathic" about him, nothing abnormal-no mystical vision of God, no mystical absorption in God, no mystical union with God, no abstraction, nothing that is th

ation over a telephone wire of infinite length which gets out of order. Even if words travel along that wire, there is so much "buzzing" that they are hardly recognizable. No, says Jesus, God is near, God is here-so near, that Jesus never feels that men have any need of a priesthood to come between, or to help them to God; God does all that. There is no common concern, no matter of food or clothing, no mere detail of the ordinary round of common duty and common life-father and mother, son, wife, friend-nothing of all that, but God is there; God knows about it; God is interested in it; God has taken care of it; God

what is good? (Matt. 7:11). Is it too big a thing for the Giver of Life to give food-which is the more difficult thing to give? (Luke 12:23). Look at God, as Jesus draws him-interested in flowers; God takes care of them, and thinks about their colours, so that even "Solomon in all his glory" is not equal to them (Matt. 6:30). God knows the birds in the nest-knows there is one fewer there to-day than there was yesterday (Matt. 10:29). God cares for them; how much more will he care for you (Matt. 6:26)? "Ye are of more value than many sparrows" (Matt. 10:31). And God thinks out man's life in all i

ite our modern vein. We hardly calculate on God as a factor; we omit him. Jesus did not. God's rule is over all; and in all our perplexity, doubt, and fear, Jesus reminds us that the first thing is faith in God. The fact is that "Thine is the Kingdom" means peace; it is a joyous reminder. For if he speaks of the Kingdom of God, the King is more than the Kingdom. It is the Kingdom, the rule, of the God whom Jesus teaches us to trust and to love. The Father is supreme. But that has more aspects than one. If our

. There is little of this in the Gospels; yet it is implied in the affair of the storm (Matt. 8:26). The disciples in their anxiety wake him. He does not understand their fear. Whose sea is it? Whose wind is it? Whose children are you? Cannot you trust your Father to control his wind and his sea? Of course it is possible that he said more about God as the Author of Nature than our fragmentary reports give us; but it may be that it is because the emphasis on God's care and love for

uppose I must put it down as a bad debt." Jesus says that this creditor took up quite another attitude. He smiled and said to his two troubled friends: "Is that all? Don't let anything like that worry you. What is that between you and me?" He forgave them the debt with such a charm ("echarisato"), Jesus says, that th

ong people, and find them in discord with one another, and their presence stills that; or they come into a man's life, when it is all in disorder and pain, and they bring peace there. They may not quite know it, but they do these things almost without meaning to do them. And Jesus says that this is a family likeness by which men know they are God's children. But it is not every teacher, pagan or Christian, who lays such stress on God's gift of peace, or is so sure of it. He uses Hosea's great saying about God-"I will have mercy and not sacrifice" (Hosea 6:6), as giving the truth about God. Matthew represents him as quoting it twice (Matt. 9

out the analogy. At the end of the Book of Job (ch. 38) the poet carries his reader back to the first sight of a world new-made, and tells how God, like the real artist and creator-we might not have thought of all this, but the poet did-loves his work so much that he must have his friends sharing it with him. He calls them; he shows them the world he has made-"the beauty, and the wonder, and the power," as Browning says. The poet tells us that what followed was that "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." The sight was so good that song and shout came instinctively, almost involuntarily. Is it not the same picture which Jesus d

the innermost thing in a father's relation to his children? Surely something more than the bird's instinct to feed her young, or to gather them under her wings (Luke 13:34). Is not one of the most real features of parenthood enjoyment of the child? Do not men and women frankly enjoy the grappling of the little mind with big things? Is there not a charm, as says one of the Christian Fathers (Minucius Felix), about the "half-words" that a child uses, as he learns to talk and wrestles with a grown-up vocabulary? About the extraordinary pictures h

s response to that instinct which he himself implanted, and which is no accident found here and missing there, but a genuine God-given characteristic of every man, whatever his temperament or his range in emotions may be, his swiftness or slowness of mind. The repeated parables of seed and leaven-

l on a sudden they are transfigured in the light of God, and truth is a new and glowing thing, independent of arguments and the strange evidence of thaumaturgy-this is the normal way; and Jesus holds by it. The great people, men of law and learning, want more; they want something to substantiate God's messages from without. If Jesus comes to them with a word from God, can he not prove its auth

field, it does its work, and its life reveals it. God is known that way. When the chief priests demand of Jesus to be told plainly what is his authority (Mark 11:27), he carries the matter a stage further: Was the baptism of John, he asks, from heaven, i.e. from God, or was it of men? Does God make His message clear, does He properly authenticate Himself? And the uneasy weighing of alternatives, summarized by the evangelist, leads to the answer that they could not tell whence it was; and Jesus rejo

nd the result achieved. Or, it comes more quietly still-the seed grows while the farmer sleeps and rises, night and day; the blade springs up and the ear forms on the blade, the seed grows in the ear; and the end is reached and God's Kingdom is a reality. Or, the knowledge of God comes like a lightning flash-sudden, illuminative, decisive. "The Son reveals" God to the simple, Jesus said (Matt. 11:27). The Son of Man may be a disputable figure-"Whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him" (Mat

. Truth is reached less by ingenuity than by intensity. To the simple mind, to the true heart, to the pure soul (Matt. 5:8), to those whose gift is peace, Truth comes flooding in-new light on old fact, and new light from old fact-and God is evident. So Jesus judged; and here again, before we decide for or against his view, we have to make sure that we know his meaning, and realize the experience by which he reached his thought. And then, perhaps, God will be more evident to us in our turn. "The Kingdom of God cometh not with observa

oreigners, Babylon or Assyria against Egypt, Ptolemies against Seleucids. It was the only available route for attack either on Egypt by land, or on Syria or Mesopotamia or Babylon from the Southern Mediterranean. In such a land when the foreign army marched through, a man had best hide his treasure and hope to find it again in better times, and again and again the secret of its place of burial died with him. The Treasure Finder had no lord of the manor to think of, no Treasury department. He made a great discovery, and made it initial

told of a pearl-a good one. He is not surprised, for pearls are always good when they are offered for sale. But again a glance is enough. The price? Yes, it is high, but he will take the pearl, but he must be allowed till evening to get the money. He goes away and sells his stock-the little collection of pearls in his wallet, representing "the experience of a life-time," all of them good, as he very well knows; and he sells them for what he can get-at a loss, if it must be. Yesterday's bargainer cuts down his price for t

and urgent resolve; and they are both repaid. If we are to understand the two parables in the sense intended by Jesus, the term "God" must become alive to us with all the life and power and love that the name implies for him. Then to grasp that this Father of Jesus is King-that the God of his thoughts, of

surprise God can be, and how joyful a surprise? The Pearl Merchant, on the other hand, has lived in the region where he makes his discovery. He is the type that lives and moves in the atmosphere of high and true thought, that knows whatsoever things are pure and lovely and of good report, of help and use; he is no stranger to great and inspiring ideas. And one da

me wonderful scale as every one of his attributes, and in reality far more intelligible than any of them. That is the picture Jesus draws. The sheer incredible love of God, the wonderful change it means for all life-that is his teaching, and he encourages us, in the words of the Sh

fe of father and child, and it rests on mutual faith. It is Theocentric, positive, active rather than passive-not a state, but a relation and a force. Holiness with him is a living relation with the living God. That is why the first feature in it that strikes us is Courage. "Be of good cheer; be not afraid"; that note rings through the Gospels, and how much it means, and has meant, in sweet temper and cheerfulness in the very chequered history of the Church! His is the great voice of Hope in the world. "The Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Hope," Paul said (1 Tim. 1:1). Even on the Cross, according to one text, Jesus said to the penitent thief: "Courage! To-day thou shalt be with me in paradi

" (Mark 11:22). "Be not afraid, only believe" (Mark 5:36). "All things are possible to him that believeth" (Mark 9:23). When he criticizes his disciples, it is on the score of their want of faith-"O ye of little faith"-it has been taken as almost a nickname for them. In the hour of trial and danger they may

philosophical reasons, which perhaps, as a matter of fact, are not quite as sound as we think, because our def

chooses the disciples (Luke 6:12). He gives thanks to God on the return of the seventy from their missionary journey (Luke 10:21). Prayer is associated with the confession of Caesarea Philippi (Luke 9:18), with the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9:29), with Gethsemane (Luke 22:41). The writer to the Hebrews speaks of his "strong crying and tears" (Heb. 5:7) in prayer. The Gospels even mention what we should call his unanswered prayers. The prayer before the calling of the Twelve does not exclude Judas; and the cup does not pass in spite of the prayer in Gethsemane. It is as if we had something to learn from the unanswered prayers of our Master. Certainly the conten

elt that here was prayer that took them out beyond all they had ever known of prayer. There were men whom John had taught to pray; was it they who asked Jesus to teach them over again? Th

in the strenuousness of Jesus' way in prayer. The importunate widow (Luke 18:2) and the friend at midnight (Luke 11:5) are his types of insistent and incessant earnestness. Do you, he asks, pray with anything like their determination to be heard? The knock at the door and the pleading voice continue till the request is granted-in each case by a reluctant giver. But God is not reluctant, Jesus says, though God, too, will choose his own time to answer (Luke 18

le with God" (Mark 10:27)-"have faith in God" (Mark 11:22). One can imagine how he fixes them with the familiar steady gaze, pauses, and then with the full weight of his personality in his words, and meaning them to give to his words the full value he intends, says: "Have faith in God." T

asp. "Your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things," he says about the matters that weigh heaviest with us (Luke 12:30). Even if we suppose Luke's reference to the Father giving the Holy Spirit to those who ask (Luke 11:13), to owe something to the editor's hand-it was an editor with some Christian experience-it is clear that Jesus steadily implies that the heavenly Father has better things than food and clothing for his children. How much of a human father is available for his children? Then will not the heavenly Father, Jesus suggests, give

at God's Fatherhood implies a

the keynote of all prayer in his thought. "Our Father, who art in heaven," our prayers are to begin-and perhaps they are not to go on till we realize what we are saying in that great for

ith a true heart in full assurance of faith" (Heb. 10:19). In the previous chapter he discards the symbol and "speaks things"-"Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us" (Heb. 9:24). There he touches what has been the faith of the Church throughout-that in Christ we reach th

his disciples to pray for his great work. Identification with God's purposes-identification with the individual needs of those we love and those we ought to love-identification with the world's sin and misery-these seem to be his canons of prayer for us, as for himself. For both in what he teaches others and in what he does himself, he makes it a definite prerequisite of all prayer that we say: "Thy will be done." Prayer is essentially dedication, deeper and fuller as we use

nd it is to them rather than to the obvious little things that Jesus directs our thoughts. Not away from the little things, for if God is a real Father he will wish to have his children talk them over with him-"little things please little minds," yes, and great minds when the little minds are dear to them-but not little things all the time. There is a variant to the saying about s

omplete forgetfulness of self in surrender to God, obedience to God, faith in God, and the acceptance of the sunshine of God's Fatherhood. He means us to go about things in God's way-forgiving our enemies, cherishing kind thoughts about those who hate us or despise us or use us badly (Matt. 5:44), praying for them. This takes us right back into the common world, where we have to live in any case; and it is there that he means us to live with God-not in trance, but at work, in the family, in business, shop, and street, doing all the litt