38

THE UNBELIEF OF THE JEWS

reasons, although they are not ostentatiously thrust forward, to suspect that the unbelief of the Jews was not so great nor so general as this objection supposes. In one passage we are expressly told that many of the chief men believed in Jesus, although their fear of their equals did not allow them to confess it.* We are informed also that his enemies once and again dared not lay hands on him, because he was so generally favoured by the people. And then the seizure of his person, which took place in the night, and the disgraceful hurry of the Jewish court, by which he was pronounced guilty of blasphemy, create the idea that he fell a victim to a faction. The priests knew well enough that if they could only present him before the people in the condition of a prisoner and a criminal, the association of such circumstances with his pretensions as the Messiah would shock the public mind and exasperate a mob against him. Shortly after his final disappearance we read of the conversion of three thousand persons to the Christian faith.† This is usually represented as sudden and miraculous. But surely it is more natural to suppose that this large body of converts was composed mainly of those who had listened to the words and witnessed the works of Jesus. The tide of popular feeling was setting strongly in his favour, and the priesthood saw that his success must be their destruction; and I cannot but think that he was put to death by means

ADMITS OF EXPLANATION.

39

of a sudden revulsion of feeling which the priests succeeded in producing.

But allowing the unbelief of the Jews to have been as inveterate and universal as is commonly represented, it may be perfectly accounted for, I apprehend, upon the known principles and constitution of human nature. Experience and observation bear witness that when men are swayed by any inveterate bias or passion, they are impregnable to the strongest evidence contradictory of their idolized notions. Every day we see men unaffected by facts and considerations, whose force miracles could not increase. The slave of intemperance, for instance, sees his wife and children perishing before his eyes. Shame and ruin and death stare him in the face, and still he persists in his darling indulgence, and keeps on in the downward path of destruction. The love of power intoxicates in a similar way. The Jews were burning with the thirst of national glory-of earthly prosperity and success. They had long considered themselves a sacred people—the peculiar favourites of Heaven; and they were stung to madness at the thought of the foreign domination under which they had been brought-of the insolence of the Gentiles

"the sinners-the dogs," as they were wont to call them, who had enslaved them. They longed for triumph and revenge. They had set their hearts, like spoiled children, upon the appearance of a temporal prince and warrior to lead them on to victory and boundless renown. While absorbed by these passions, they could not bear to listen to one who, like Jesus, breathed peace and love and

40

STATED WITHOUT EXPLANATION

forgiveness. They could not endure to have those hopes disappointed which they had so long cherished, and which, as they believed, their religion encouraged and sanctified.

In fact the unbelief of the Jews not only admits of the explanation at which I have briefly hinted, but when duly considered it becomes an indirect and inverted evidence of the power manifested by Jesus. It could not have been any ordinary thing that wound them up to such a degree of exasperation. There must have been no little weight in the words and works of Jesus, or they would never have raged against him with so much violence.

But it is not my object now to give a full account of the unbelief of those in whose presence the wonderful works related in the Gospels were wrought. There is one thing upon which I wish to fasten the attention of the reader. Where is it that we learn that the Jewish people were unaffected by what was said and done by the man of Nazareth? who is it that has told us that he was doubted and gainsaid by the mass of those among whom he lived and taught? It is the authors of the Gospels themselvesit is they, who without the slightest equivocation have recorded the fact that the majority of the people, including the teachers of the Law, the leading men of the time and community, yes, and the members of his own family, gave no credence to the pretensions of Jesus. This fact they have recorded so unreservedly that they cease to appear as his friends and adherents. They rather seem like impartial and uninterested spectators, having no feeling for the one side or the other; no feeling, at least, that for a

moment disturbs their determination to tell the truth. I say their determination. And yet this does not seem to be the proper word. For there is no appearance of effort, or constraint or labour, as if conscious of a temptation to unfairness they had to guard themselves accordingly. They write straight on as naturally as they breathe, stating with equal explicitness or with equal brevity, the words and works of Jesus, and the objections and incredulity of those around him, making no explanations, betraying no anxiety to influence the mind of the reader. In fine, their candour is for nothing more remarkable than for its unconsciousness. They do not seem to know that they are candid, or that they are actuated by a spirit in any degree remarkable and praiseworthy. Their honesty has no appearance of being put on. It is rather a part of their nature, the breath of their nostrils. If after all there is any mind so diseased with doubt as to fear that this character may have been assumed, I observe that it not only strikes me as utterly impossible, but if it were possible, then, for such deep laid and incredible cunning, there must have been the inducement of some most selfish and corrupt design, for the existence of which not a shadow of proof appears. But it is abundantly enough to say that if this is not candour-honesty, there is no telling what honesty is; there can be no indubitable tokens of its presence, and we can have no ground for faith or confidence in man.

The honesty of these narratives reveals itself in another way.

42

THE GOSPELS, NOT EULOGIES.

It is evident that Jesus Christ is their principal subject. They are histories of his life. Their authors obviously considered him worthy of profound reverence and implicit credit. And yet their accounts have not the faintest shadows of the character or style of eulogies, panegyrics. How truly has it been said that "biographers, translators, editors, all, in short, who employ themselves in illustrating the lives or the works of others, are peculiarly exposed to the Boswellian disease of admiration." Whether the individual described be a creature of the imagination, or a real personage, he becomes the hero of the writer, and the utmost pains are taken to set him off in the most glowing colours-to magnify his least excellence-to be silent about every trace of imperfection in him-to guard everything he says or does against misconstruction, or the slightest impression of an unfavourable nature. Nothing of this sort appears in the Christian Records. embellishment can be detected.

No attempt at There are no expres

sions of admiration, no prompting, no challenging of the applause of the reader. All is calm, direct, and simple.

Indeed, in some cases it would appear that, so far from being conscious of any endeavour to heighten the effect of the things they relate, they not only do not do justice to the great subject of their biographies, but absolutely do not seem to have understood Jesus in all his elevation. There are passages from which one may incidentally, but on that account not the less fairly, infer that the conduct and meaning of Jesus were more beautiful than they have represented or even understood it. There is one curious case in point, which I proceed to consider. I do not af