66 hedrim assembled in utter consternation. The case seemed hopeless; but these high priests and elders were never at a loss. They gave the soldiers a great sum of money and said, Spread it about that his disciples came and stole him away while you were asleep. Should the procurator hear about it, we will find means of appeasing him, and you have no need to fear." The soldiers took the money and repeated their lesson to every one they could get hold of. And that is the origin of the lying story of the theft. Was such a foolish report really circulated among the Jews? In any case this story, which is worked out elaborately in the "Gospel of Nicodemus," is quite absurd. Is it likely that the enemies of Jesus would have heard a prophecy of his rising again when his very friends never dreamed of it for a moment, and when he had never once spoken of his "resurrection" in public? Is not the conduct here ascribed to the councillors and the soldiers the latter of whom would have needlessly exposed themselves to the heaviest punishmentso clumsy and childish as to be impossible? But once set aside these difficulties and accept the picture as emblematic, and how fine and true its strokes appear! The powers of Church and State have combined against the Nazarene and brought him to his fall. On the one side the high priests and Pharisees defending the Law, the temple, and last, not least, their own authority and influence, against the sacrilegious blows of this seducer of the people; on the other side, the procurator, who cherishes no personal hostility to him, but overcomes his own indifferent toleration, and sacrifices the Nazarene in the interests of order. The new religious movement is crushed for ever by this combination. Both Church and State combine to keep it down. They take measures which cannot fail. The one puts its seal upon the stone, the other sets its watch before the grave, - in vain! As by the finger of God the seal is broken and the watch is smitten down. Jesus stands up! Though hurled to the ground, he rises again; his momentary defeat was but a step to his abiding triumph. The alliance of ecclesiastical and civil authorities is powerless against the truth, against the kingdom of God, against the Christ. The triumph is his! In the following pages we shall trace the history of this triumph in the establishment of the apostolic community and the preaching of the gospel to the heathen. This triumph has its witnesses in every age, in our age, in our hearts, whenever the principles of Jesus vanquish the obstinate re sistance of routine and prejudice, of impurity and selfishness ; whenever his ideal conquers the commonplace reality. Of this triumph every Easter that Christians observe is the grateful record and the joyful promise. In this, the truest sense, "Christ is arisen" indeed! A CHAPTER II. THE COMMUNITY AT JERUSALEM. ACTS I. 15-V., XII. 1-23.1 VEIL of obscurity hangs over the short period which separates the death of Jesus from the work of Paul. Only two facts shine through it. Of the first we have already spoken, and its significance will become still clearer presently. It is that the followers of Jesus regained their faith in his Messianic dignity, — which faith took the form of a belief that he had risen from the regions of the dead, and had been exalted to heaven, whence he would soon return. The second fact which now demands our attention is that a community of believers was formed at Jerusalem, and had its branches in other parts of the Holy Land. But with regard to this matter our curiosity is rather excited than satisfied; for the accounts we possess are very meagre, and at the same time far from trustworthy; and since we have no means of controlling them, we must use all the greater caution in accepting what they tell us. Not only is the length of the period in question unknown; not only are we left completely in the dark as to many details, - but even the great facts and the general course of events are far from clear. We are, therefore, driven to suppositions which we cannot really substantiate, and of which we must consequently be very sparing. - The first question that forces itself upon us is, How came the disciples of Jesus to establish themselves at Jerusalem? It is true that we need not suppose any collective emigration on a large scale to have taken place; but nevertheless it is true that at a certain period, not long after the Master's death, a certain number of disciples, whose example was 1 soon followed by others, felt it their duty to leave their be loved and entrancing country, their nearest relatives, and their several callings, and go and settle in the hostile capital. Unquestionably this movement was made with a view to the establishment of the kingdom of God at the approaching return of the Christ. "The City of the Lord" was the natural centre of the glories of this future age; and moreover Jesus himself had made it the scene of his last labors, and of that sublime effort frustrated, alas! by the unbelief of the people. But a step that required such courage and involved such sacrifices2 as the removal to Jerusalem did would hardly be undertaken except on some definite occasion and with some definite object. As to the occasion we cannot find even a hint in the book of Acts, which never lets the Apostles return to Galilee at all. Their object was probably something more than to wait at Jerusalem in longing for the Messiah; it was to prepare for and if possible hasten his return by taking up his work, by preaching the kingdom of God to Israel in a city which might well be deemed the nation's heart. We find the number of the disciples given as about one hundred and twenty souls; but this figure raises our suspicion by being just ten times the number of the tribes and of the Apostles, and it is rendered still more doubtful by the fact that we have already heard of five hundred brethren in the Epistle to the Corinthians. The statement that the mother and brothers of Jesus were among the believers approves itself more readily to our acceptance, for the Epistle just referred to mentions that the Christ appeared to James, who was probably the head of the family. It would be extremely interesting to know when and how their disbelief was overcome; for we must take the vision not as the cause but as the result of James's faith. But our search for further light on this point is fruitless. The first step which the band of disciples took, before the outside world knew any thing of its existence, is said to have been the selection of an Apostle to take the place of Judas. Of course the traitor had lost his place among the Twelve for ever; but beyond that we are told that the divine vengeance had already fallen upon him. Various traditions were current on this point. In the first place we hear that within a few hours of the consummation of his crime, when he saw his Master condemned to death by the Sanhedrim and handed 1 See pp. 326, 327. 8 See p. 476. 2 See pp. 345, 331, 187 ff. over to the Roman governor, he came to himself. He saw (too late, alas!) the enormity of his crime, and could think of nothing but returning to the Sanhedrim as if that would avail! — and giving them back the thirty shekels, the price of blood, which burned in his hands. "I have sinned," he cried, "in giving up an innocent man to death!" But they would not take the money back; and answered dryly, “That is your affair, not ours! Then the wretched man fell a prey to despair. He rushed into the temple, flung the coins upon the floor, went out and hanged himself. The high priests, as scrupulous as ever, considered what they could do with the money. As the price of blood, it could not be thrown into the treasury. Finally they determined to purchase the Potter's Field with it, and make it a burial place for strangers. Hence the name Hakeldama, or Blood-acre, was given to this field, which lay south of Sion, in the valley of Hinnom.2 Another legend, embodied in the account of the selection of a new Apostle, brings this same burial ground into connection with Judas in an equally arbitrary, though quite a different manner. According to this version he had bought a piece of land for the price of his treachery, and had subsequently come to a miserable end there, though not by his own hand. He had fallen down, his bowels had burst asunder, and his blood, that streamed over his newly-acquired possession, gave it the name it subsequently bore. A third tradition, not contained in the Bible, told how the wretched man was tortured by a fearful dropsy; how his body swelled until at last a cart could easily pass through a space too narrow for him to go through; and how, after nameless agonies, he died, stock blind, whether crushed by a cart, or a loathsome victim of disease. We feel at once that these stories are without historical foundation, though, for the honor of humanity, we would willingly accept as true the account of Judas's repentance. The general purport of the stories is determined by the Jewish belief in retribution, while the details are furnished by misapplied passages of the Old Testament, the story of Ahithophel, who betrayed David; the prophecies of the earliest Zechariah (not Jeremiah, as the first Evangelist says); and above all the cursing psalms, one of which speaks of a snare, a dese ted inheritance, and darkened 4 1 See p. 394. 8 See vol. ii. p. 49. 2 See Map IV. eyes; another of an early death, deposition from a post of honor, and a curse that penetrates like water into the enemy's bowels. As a matter of fact, we are wholly ignorant as to what befell Judas. Let us return then to the faithful disciples at Jerusalem We are told that Peter stood up one day among the brethren, who were about a hundred and twenty in number, and after showing that the Scripture foretold the fearful fate of the betrayer, and that another should take his place, urged the appointment of a successor. The choice must fall on one who, with the Twelve, had been a faithful and steadfast follower of Jesus from the baptism of John to the ascension of the Master; one who might join the elder Apostles in bearing testimony to the resurrection of Jesus. Then the assembly selected two of its members who fully complied with all the conditions laid down, and whose spirit and power fitted them for so sublime a task. They were Joseph, the son of Sabbas, surnamed "the just," and Matthias. The choice between these two they determined to leave to the Omniscient, and so had recourse to lots. After offering a prayer to God, the knower of hearts, that he would show them whom he had chosen to take the place of the castaway, they drew a lot for each of the two; and the result was that Matthias was received into the apostolic circle. The Apostolate is here represented as a definite office of superintendence conferred on a certain number of men, who form a close college, and are the only qualified witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus; and this may well lead us to suspect that the whole story is invented, with the specific purpose of showing that there was no vacancy for Paul in the college, and that moreover he was entirely incompetent and unsuited for the post of an Apostle, inasmuch as he had not been a follower of Jesus during his public ministry. If this is really what the story means, then the writer of Acts must have simply accepted the tradition without understanding its drift. In itself, however, apart from the legend of Judas and the citation of texts connected with it; apart from the whole discourse of Peter, the fictitious character of which is palpable at the first glance, apart, in a word, from all the accessories, it is not impossible that the number of twelve was again completed by the choice of Matthias; and a certain amount of probability is given to the supposition by the fact 4 1 Psalm lxix. 22 (Matthew xxvii. 5), 25 (Acts i. 18-20), 23. 4 Acts i. 18, 19 |