The Life of Jesus Christ

The changes introduced into this new edition are few and slight. But I am glad to have this opportunity oi pointing out more distinctly than is done in the text that the names given to the different years of our Lord’s public ministry are descriptive only of their most prominent characteristics, and especially that in what I have called the Year of Public Favour, although the disposition of the general mind towards Him was such as fully to justify the designation, He was already assailed by the authorities with much of the kind of opposition which is described in the fifth chapter.

The kind reception accorded to the first edition of this little Handbook seems to show that, notwithstanding the number of works on the same subject which have recently issued from the press, there was need of a book which, by exhibiting in the briefest possible space the main features and the general course of our Lord’s life, should cause the well-known details to flow together in the reader’s mind and shape themselves into an easily comprehended whole.

Kirkcaldy, March i, 1880.

1. The Nativity. — Augustus was sitting on the throne of the Roman empire, and the touch of his finger could set the machinery of government in motion over well-nigh the whole cf the civilised world. He was proud of his power and wealth, and it was one of his favourite occupations to compile a register of the populations and revenues of his vast dominions. So he issued an edict, as the Evangelist Luke says, ’ that all the world should be taxed,’ or, to express accurately what the words probably mean, that a census, to serve as a basis for future taxation, should be taken of all his subjects. One of the countries affected by this decree was Palestine, whose king, Herod the Great, was a vassal of Augustus. It set the whole land in motion; for, in accordance with ancient Jewish custom, the census was taken, not at the places where the inhabitants were at the time residing, but at the places to which they belonged as members of the original twelve tribes.

2. Among those whom the edict of Augustus thus from afar drove forth to the highways were a humble pair in the Galilean village of Nazareth — Joseph, the carpenter of the village, and Mary, his espoused wife. They had to go a journey of nearly a hundred miles in order to inscribe themselves in the proper register; for, though peasants, they had the blood of kings in

their veins, and belonged to the ancient and royal town of

Bethlehem, in the far south of the country. Day by day the emperor’s will, like an invisible hand, forced them southward along the weary road, till at last they climbed the rocky ascent that led to the gate of the town, — he terrified with anxiety, and she well-nigh dead with fatigue. They reached the inn, but found it crowded with strangers, who, bent on the same errand as themselves, had arrived before them. No friendly house opened its door to receive them, and they were fain to clear for their lodging a corner of the inn-yard, else occupied by the beasts of the numerous travellers. There, that very night, she brought forth her first-born Son; and because there was neither womanly hand to assist her nor couch to receive Him, she wrapped Him in swaddling-clothes and laid Him in a manger.

3. Such was the manner of the birth of Jesus. I never felt the full pathos of the scene, till, standing one day in a room of an old inn in the market-town of Eisleben, in Central Germany, I was told that on that very spot, four centuries ago, amidst the noise of a market-day and the bustle of a public-house, the wife of the poor miner, Hans Luther, who happened to be there on business, being surprised like Mary with sudden distress, brought forth in sorrow and poverty the child who was to become Martin Luther, the hero of the Reformation and the maker of modern Europe.

4. Next morning the noise and bustle broke out again in the inn and inn-yard; the citizens of Bethlehem went about their work; the registration proceeded; and in the meantime the greatest event in the history of the world had taken place. We never know where a great beginning may be happening. Every arrival of a new soul in the world is a mystery and a shut casket of possibilities. Joseph and Mary alone knew the tremendous secret — that on her, the peasant maiden and carpenter’s bride, had been conferred the honour of being the mother of Him who was the Messiah of her race, the Saviour of the world, and the Son of God.

5. It had been foretold in ancient prophecy that He should be born on this very spot: ‘But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel.’ The proud emperor’s decree drove southward the anxious couple. Yes; but another hand was leading them on — the hand of Him who overrules the purposes of emperors and kings, of statesmen and parliaments, for the accomplishment of His designs, though they know them not; who hardened the heart of Pharaoh, called Cyrus like a slave to His foot, made the mighty Nebuchadnezzar His servant, and in the same way could overrule for His own far-reaching purpose the pride and ambition of Augustus.

6. The Group round the Infant. — Although Jesus made His entry on the stage of life so humbly and silently; although the citizens of Bethlehem dreamed not what had happened in their midst; although the emperor at Rome knew not that his decree had influenced the nativity of a King who was yet to bear rule, not only over the Roman world, but over many a land where Rome’s eagles never flew; although the history of mankind went thundering forward next morning in the channels of its ordinary interests, quite unconscious of the event which had happened, yet it did not altogether escape notice. As the babe leaped in the womb of the aged Elizabeth when the mother of her Lord approached her, so, when He who brought the new world with Him appeared, there sprang up anticipations and forebodings of the truth in various representatives of the old world that was passing away. There went through sensitive and waiting souls, here and there, a dim and half-conscious thrill, which drew them round the Infant’s cradle. Look at the group which gathered to gaze on Him! It represented in miniature the whole of His future history.

7. First came the Shepherds from the neighbouring fields. That which was unnoticed by the kings and great ones of this world, was so absorbing a theme to the princes of heaven, that they burst the bounds of the invisibility in which they shroud themselves, in order to express their joy and explain the significance ot the great event. And seeking the most worthy hearts to which they might communicate it, they found them in these simple shepherds, living the life of contemplation and prayer in the suggestive fields where Jacob had kept his flocks, where Boaz and Ruth had been wedded, and David, the great Old Testament type, had spent his youth, and there, by the study of the secrets and needs of their own hearts, learning far more of the nature of the Saviour who was to come than the Pharisee amidst the religious pomp of the temple, or the scribe burrowing without the seeing eye among the prophecies of the Old Testament. The angel directed them where the Saviour was, and they hastened to the town to find Him. They were the representatives of the peasant people, with the * honest and good heart,’ who afterwards formed the bulk of His disciples.

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