To understand more definitely his own recognition, and further, his use and application of this great truth, it is of value to get an adequate understanding or rather picture of the condition of the people of the time with whom he came in contact.n7256 ¶1
The people of Judza were a portion of a race that had been a very devout and Godled people. Many inspired ones had arisen in their ranks—-many prophets and great teachers. The time had come, however, when they had become settled in the dead-level of the commonplace, through tradition, through dogma, kept alive and administered by a well-founded ecclesiastical institution or system. The soul’s windows were not kept open toward Jehovah as formerly, but now toward Jerusalem.n7256 ¶2
All inspiration had gone, it was all form and ceremony—the spirit was nowhere. All teachings were based upon the teachings of the inspired ones of former times. There was no longer any realisation among them. The church, the law, authority had become everything. There was no utterance of anything without, “it is said,” “it is written,” “the prophets have said,” “ Moses has said,” “thus saith the Lord.” The organisation of ecclesiasticism with its dead dogmas had taken the place of the living spirit speaking and moving through living men. The spirit was dead; the empty forms alone remained.n7256 ¶3
Into these surroundings came this young Judzan teacher, who had this clear, this almost startling, this mighty vision of the essential oneness of the human life with the Divine, with all its tremendous possibilities, not only for himself, but as he never failed to teach in season and out of season—for every human soul.n7256 ¶4
He despised their dead forms, their harking back continually to, “it is written,” “ Moses taught.” He spoke with such simple candour and with such vigour that those in authority— the church officials and overseers, and the members of the established society, ridiculed him and grew to despise him; but when they fully perceived how the common people heard him gladly, and how they were enthused by his teachings, then they feared him.n7256 ¶5
They tried to trap him, they passed certain remarks about him, his parentage, his kinsfolk, his humble calling—that of an ordinary daylabourer—a country carpenter. They accused him of sacrilege and of blasphemy. Had he not—in their eyes—spoken slightingly of Moses and the prophets? Had he not presumed to speak on his own authority and not on the authority of the church? Such was one type of opposition that he encountered and in it lurked a danger.n7256 ¶6
Then there were the Roman governors to contend with, representing the might of the Roman Empire. Although still powerful, Rome had already entered upon her decline. Long before this the seeds of national destruction, through appalling excesses, had been sown. She was merciless in dealing with subject peoples, and her ever-growing and shameless greed for gain was driving her at a merciless speed. In addition to the regular sums collected in taxes and tributes, vast amounts were realised from the sale of slaves—numbers of which were captured in her conquests. At first this was but an incident, a result of a Roman campaign—the driving away and the selling of her captives as slaves. The demands of her rulers for money in their extravagances and excesses became so great, that conquests began to be carried on solely for the purpose of gain through loot.n7256 ¶7
Many times after the conclusion of a campaign, the sale of the capiwes as slaves not only paid the entire expenses of the campaign, but netted large sums to the good. At the close of one campaign fifty thousand slaves were sold; after another between a hundred and a hundred and fifty thousand. Her wars became matters of business, her campaigns raids. But a few years before this some thirty thousand Jews were captured and made into slaves. There was a time when almost the entire populations of towns were carried off and sold into slavery. But forty years after this period in the life of Jesus a Roman army swept over and captured Palestine and carried off a hundred thousand of his countrymen.n7256 ¶8
So, when this teacher appeared who seemed to recognise no authority, who was quite as much of a fanatic as his cousin John—the Baptist— and whose teachings were based upon a much deeper foundation, Rome began to take notice. They were daring things for him to do, to teach a truth that would make men and women stand upon their own feet; recognise their own worth and their own rights. It would lead inevitably in time to the exchanging of their spirit of servility in slavery for that of independence and freedom. Give these truths to a sufficient number of people and it means damnation to all authority as it was then constituted. It is little wonder that he became recognised as a “ stirrer-up of the people.” It was a brave but a dangerous thing to do. He was killed for it within two short years. But a God-inspired man sees his vision, follows where it leads, stops not to count or even to recognise the cost—because he cannot do otherwise. Even with a recognition of the costs to him personally, for he realised them fully before he paid them, not for a moment did he hesitate to give forth his message. Those in authority thought that by killing him they would put an end to his influence; but they reckoned without their full data. The same thing has often been repeated since his time.n7256 ¶9
These, then, were the conditions of the times: a people of an ancestry for generations back to whom the voice of God was not unknown in that it had spoken frequently to them through various ones of their prophets—men who were capable of hearing and interpreting the divine inner leadings and of speaking them out as recognised authorities to the people. It was a people, however, who had come under a time when all direct leadings, all direct relations with God had become merely a memory. Their religion had lost its vitality, as had their institutions and their personal relations. A well-established, a dead, dogmatic, ceremonial system, one that continually harked back to its former leaders and teachers, was in existence among them. This was one of the chief characteristics of the time.n7256 ¶10
Another chief characteristic was that this once proud people was now in a state of bondage and was under the domination of the Roman Empire—at this particular time perhaps the most merciless ruler in the world. Her chief motive had become taxes, tributes, loot, that her rulers and ruling classes might live in an excessive luxury and display that had already degenerated into bestiality, and that was driving them, as well as the Empire, to destruction. Under these conditions nothing seemed to satisfy her insatiable greed. Her subjugating hand had already reached and covered all Judza and all Palestine.n7256 ¶11
For a long time there had been a tradition that a Messiah, a deliverer, would come to them. They had grown weary in waiting. Notwithstanding this they were always expectant, and there was a tradition among the more lowly that he might be born in any, even the simplest and humblest home. In an exceptionally humble home—his father and mother, earnest, devout people, but smarting under the injustices and the tyranny of a foreign rule as all their neighbours and kinsfolk were—Jesus was born. Following him came other brothers and sisters.n7256 ¶12
As was the custom of the time he learned the trade of his father, that of a carpenter, and worked at it. So far as we know he had not received the regulation education of the religious schools. From all accounts, however, he early showed a marvellous aptitude for the things of the Spirit. This gave him a great and clear vision of the divinity of the human soul, of the indwelling of the Divine in the human in the degree that the human through desire and will realises and appropriates it—the Fatherhood of God and the Divine Sonship of man, and following it as a matter of sequence, the tremendous fact of the Brotherhood of Man. He became so possessed with this truth that he set out in a definite way to realise it for himself, which he did with a wonderful completeness. He spent but little time at public worship—the prescribed forms, rituals, and ceremonies of the established religion —but he spent much time out on the mountainside alone in communion with his Father. The more he did this the less the religious teachings of the established order impressed him. He soon began to realise the hollowness, the uselessness, and more, the deadening influence of it all.n7256 ¶13
Finally, in the fulness of time, he responded to the call from within and went about, at first in a very simple manner, presenting this great saving truth to the people. At first it was in his own immediate neighbourhood to little groups where his kinsfolk, his brothers and sisters, and his neighbours were.n7256 ¶14
He claimed no supernatural power for himself: he never made mention of it. He possessed and exercised—to them—unusual power. He attributed it not to himself, but to the power that worked within him—It is the Father that worketh in me. My Father works and I work—it all seemed so natural to him. He never claimed any unusual birth, and he never even mentioned such a thing. Such a thought undoubtedly was entirely foreign to him. He was looked upon as the son of his father and mother, the same as his other brothers and sisters were. The matter of a manner of birth in violation of the established laws—a supernatural birth—was forced upon him when his simple, direct teachings of the divinity of human life were perverted, and his great and unique personality was taken to build an organisation upon by an age that could not understand the basis of his vision and his own self-realised union, that he laboured so hard and so earnestly to impress upon his hearers and even his immediate followers.n7256 ¶15
He formed natural human attachments; he spent much time with his few congenial friends, but more by himself in communion with his Father. He counted gain, reputation, everything secondary to the giving of his stirring message to all who would hear it.n7256 ¶16
He used simple, homely illustrations in the presentation of his teachings—illustrations cast many times in the form of parables that all could understand. They were always illustrations and parables taking the tang of the common life—the workshop, the tilling of the soil, the husbandman and his vines, the shepherd and his flocks, the cattle on the hillsides, the ox and its yoke, the fields and the flowers, the market-place with its children playing about, the labourer waiting for his hire, tradesmen and customers doing business, and where all classes gathered and gossiped. Feasts, marriages, and waiting on marriages, all were used by him in his efforts simply, concretely, convincingly, to present his truth.n7256 ¶17
He did not attempt to found any new religion ; he brought no new religion, never made mention of any such thing, but on the contrary, he declared that his purpose was not to destroy but to fulfil—to awaken in them the spirit of the living God to which the age was dead. His teachings, the same as his illustrations, were of the simplest. Anything with an element of mystery or shrouded with mystery, was entirely foreign to him. He told in plain simple language the secret—not the mystery—of his own insight and power. He lived always simply, communed much with the Father, took himself often from his associates for quiet and communion, and always went back with a renewed message to the people.n7256 ¶18
This wonderful truth—the redemption of man to an active fellowship with and life in God became his all-absorbing idea. Even friendships and, in time, ties of relationship became secondary to his making this great helper and beautifier of life known to those who heard him. He chose his simple followers, all from the same humble walks of life, possibly that they might come the more as open channels to hear, to learn, and to help interpret his message. Probably his choosing of them was because they were the most available, and it never occurred to him to choose any others. Some of them were simple fisher-folks, with a limited education, and most of them were his neighbours.n7256 ¶19
He had a vision and hopes of his teachings spreading. He incurred the displeasure and he aroused the fear which developed into the hostility of the powers that were—ecclesiastical, social, economic, and civil. He trod upon tradition and he set at naught authority in religion. He was a stirrer-up of the people, and as his teachings spread, they were arousing the people in hostility to their overlords.n7256 ¶20
He foresaw his probable fate. He dreaded it, but was not deterred in his course by it. It was by no means uncommon to do away with those who for any reason incurred the hostility of the ruling powers. He prayed in the anguish of his heart that if possible he might be spared this end and this shame. He was put to death in a manner common to the times. Crucifixion was the Roman method of dealing death to slaves and felons. He met his death as dauntlessly and as heroically as he had proclaimed his message of the glad tidings. Once when the tortures of.the human almost overcame his divine self-realisation, and his faith wavered and his anchorage for the moment almost gave way, there was revealed the most pathetic feature of his entire life. “ My God, my God,” cried he, “ why hast thou forsaken me?” But his life-long faith, and his realisation of his oneness with his Father, after this momentary lapse, gained again the ascendency, and as his spirit escaped his tortured, suffering physical body, it was with the expression on his lips: “ Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”n7256 ¶21
There are others who have been misunderstood, reviled, persecuted, and have given their lives, and have given them willingly, for their steadfastness in presenting and in standing for a great truth or ideal that so possessed their souls, and that so pushed them on, that they could not do otherwise. There have been many before Jesus’ time and many since his _ time. None, however, have willingly paid the penalty for a more universal, a more far-reaching, and a more soul-inspiring and soul-saving truth than did this young Galilean with his God-filled mind and heart. His teachings of the union of the human with the Divine, of man’s direct personal relations with God without any intermediary, were upsetting the very foundations of the whole scheme of the formulated ecclesiastical system of the time. He was giving forth a great living truth on its own authority in distinction from the authority of Moses and the prophets.n7256 ¶22
He was not seeking to set up his own authority, but he was nevertheless challenging the authority upon which the very foundations of their dead but allcompassing religious institutions were based. No man—no one—when we fully appreciate the conditions of the times, could do this in the way he was doing it and remain unmolested. To an economic and political slavery, which has its basis always in human degradation, these same teachings of self-respect of Jesus were becoming a great menace. To render unto Czesar the things that are Czsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s, is not a way of showing a healthy respect for an authority that has established an economic and political slavery in any land. The teaching— Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, builds an entirely new foundation for all human relations.n7256 ¶23
Institutions founded on custom, and laws as well as authority established by force, cannot remain safe when this new foundation for humanity is laid. At the instigation of the ecclesiastical authorities the Judzean teacher is ordered to be put to death by the Roman governor of Judza, Pontius Pilate.n7256 ¶24
But already a great truth has been liberated to the world—a great truth that if at all adequately perceived will spell the doom of all external authority over men’s minds and souls by liberating the spirit of the living God within them—a truth that if carried into effect will spell the doom of all ecclesiastical and all political slavery.n7256 ¶25
ste Omn7256 ¶26