INTRODUCTION (continued 6)

But this Duality of the flesh and of the spirit—the most perfect among imperfect human relations—should never be disturbed or interrupted. Adultery corrupts it, divorce destroys it. Adultery treacherously corrodes the union; divorce repudiates it definitely. Adultery is a secret divorce founded upon untruth and betrayal; divorce followed by another marriage is sanctioned adultery.

Jesus always condemns adultery and divorce in the most solemn and absolute manner. His whole nature holds unfaithfulness in horror. There will come a day, he warns people, in speaking of heavenly life, in which men and women will not marry; but up to that day marriage should have at least all the perfections possible to its imperfection. And Jesus who always goes below the surface of things does not call adulterer only the man who robs his brother of his wife, but also the man who looks at her in the street with lustful eyes. The man who has underhand relations with another man’s wife is an adulterer, but no less an adulterer is he who, having put aside his own wife, marries another. On one occasion alone, He seems to admit the possibility of divorce to the husband of an adulteress; but the crime of the repudiated 211wife could never justify the crime which the betrayed man would commit in taking another wife.

Confronted with a law so absolute and so rigorous, even the Disciples took alarm. “If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”

Marriage is a concession to human nature, and to the propagation of life. “All men cannot receive this saying,” are not capable of remaining chaste, virgin, and alone, but only “they to whom it is given.” Perfect celibacy is a grace, a reward of the victory of the spirit over the body.

Any man who wishes to give all his love to a great undertaking must condemn himself to chastity. He cannot serve both humanity and the individual. The man who has a difficult mission to carry out, demanding all his strength up to the last of his days, cannot tie himself to a woman. Marriage means abandoning oneself to another being—but the Saviour must abandon himself to all other beings. The union of two souls is not enough for him—and it would make more difficult, perhaps impossible, union with all other souls. The responsibilities which come with the choice of a mate, the birth of children, the creation of a little community in the midst of the great community of the human race, are so heavy that they would be a daily hindrance to undertakings infinitely more serious. The man who wishes to lead other men, to transform them, cannot bind himself for all his life to one being alone. He would need to be faithless to his wife or to his mission. He loves all his brothers too much to love one only of his sisters. The Hero is solitary. Solitude is his penalty and his greatness. He renounces the pleasures of marital love, but the love which is in his heart, when communicated to all men, is multiplied into a sublimation of sacrifice surpassing all 212earthly joys. The man with no mate is alone, but is free; his soul, unhampered by common and material thoughts, can rise to the heights. He does not beget children of his own flesh, but he brings to a second birth the children of his spirit.

It is not given to every one, however, to resist and abstain. “He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.” The foundation of the Kingdom needs all men who will give all their souls to it; the lusts of the flesh, even when confined to legitimate marriage, are weakening for him who should give all his attention to the things of the spirit.

Those who will know the resurrection of the great day of triumph will have no further temptations. In the Kingdom of Heaven the joining of man and woman, even sanctified as it is by the permanence of marriage, will exist no more. Its real end is the creation of new human beings, but in that day Death will be conquered and the everlasting renewing of the generations will no longer be necessary. “For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.”

With this attainment of eternal and angelic life—the two promises and the two certainties of Christ—what has seemed endurable will become unthinkable, that which seemed pure will become vile, that which was holy will become imperfect. In that supreme and happy world all the trials of the human race will be over. A hasty mating with a stolen woman was enough for the primitive bestial man. Man rose to the higher level of marriage, to union with one woman alone; the saint rose higher yet, to voluntary chastity. But the man who has become an angel in Heaven, who is all spirit and love, will have conquered the flesh even in memory. In a world where there will be no poor, sick, unhappy or enemies, his love will be transfigured into a superhuman contemplation.

The cycle of births will then be closed. The Fourth Kingdom will be forever established. The citizens of the Kingdom will be eternally the same, themselves and no other through all the centuries. Woman will no longer bring forth her young with suffering. The sentence of exile will be revoked, the Serpent will be conquered; the Father will joyfully welcome 213his wandering son. Paradise will be found again and will never more be lost.

FATHERS AND SONS

Jesus was speaking in a house, perhaps at Capernaum, and men and women, all hungering for life and justice, all needing comfort and consolation, had filled the house, had pressed close around Him, and were looking at Him as they would look at their Father returned to them, their Brother healing them, their Benefactor saving them. They were so hungry for His words, these men and women, that Jesus and His friends had not stopped to take a mouthful of food. He had spoken for a long time, and yet they would have liked Him to go on speaking till nightfall, without ever stopping for an instant. They had been waiting for Him for so long! Their fathers and their mothers had waited for Him in wretchedness and dumb resignation for thousands of years. They themselves had waited for Him, year after year, in dull wretchedness. Night after night they had longed for a ray of light, a promise of happiness, a loving word. And now before them was He who was the reward of their long vigil. Now they could wait no longer. These men and these women crowded about Jesus like privileged and impatient creditors who finally have before them the Divine Debtor, for whom they have been eternally waiting; and they claimed their share down to the last penny. He certainly should be able to get along without eating bread just this one time—for centuries and centuries their fathers had been forced to go without the Bread of Truth; for years and years they themselves had not been able to satisfy their hunger for the Bread of Hope.

Jesus therefore went on talking to the people who had filled the house. He repeated the most touching figures of His inspiration, told the most persuasive stories of the Kingdom, looked at them with those luminous eyes which shone down into the soul as the morning sun penetrates the shut-in darkness of a house.

Any one of us would give what remains of his life to be 214looked at by those eyes, to gaze for a moment into those eyes shining with infinite tenderness; to listen for a moment only to that thrilling voice, changing the Semitic vernacular into melodious music. Those men and women who are now dead, those poor men, those poor women, those wretched people who to-day are dust in the air of the desert, or clay under the hoofs of the camels, those men and those women whom in their lifetime no one envied, and whom we the living are forced to envy after their remote and obscure death; those men and those women heard that voice, saw those eyes.

But there came a stir and voices were heard at the door of the house: some one wished to come in. One of those present told Jesus, “Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.” But Jesus did not stir, “Who is my mother or my brethren?” And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, “Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.”

My family is all here and I have no other family. The ties of blood do not count unless they are confirmed in the spirit. My father is the Father who made me like unto Him in the perfection of righteousness; my brothers are the poor who weep; my sisters are the women who have left their loves for Love. He did not mean with these words to deny the Virgin of Sorrows, of whose womb He was the fruit; He meant to say that from the day of His voluntary exile He belonged no more to the little family of Nazareth, but only to His mission as Saviour, to the great family of mankind.

In the new organization of salvation, spiritual affiliations surpass the simple relationships of the flesh. “If any come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Individual love must disappear in universal love. We must choose between the old affections of the old mankind and the unique love of the New Man.

The family will disappear when men, in the celestial life, shall be better than men. In the world as it is, the family is an impediment for him who helps others to rise to higher 215things. “And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father which is in heaven.” He who leaves his family shall be infinitely rewarded. “And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children for the kingdom of God’s sake, Who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.”

Your Heavenly Father will never forsake you, your brothers in the Kingdom will never betray you; but the fathers and the brothers of earthly life might become your assassins. “And ye shall be betrayed both by parents and brethren and kinsfolks and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death.”

And yet fathers at least should be faithful, because, according to Jesus, fathers have more duties toward their sons than sons toward their fathers. The Old Law recognizes only the first. “Honor thy father and thy mother,” said Moses. But he does not add, “Protect and love thy children.” Children seemed to Moses to be the property of those who had begotten them. Life in those times seemed so fair and precious that children were always thought to be in debt to their parents. They were to remain servants forever, everlastingly submissive. They should live only for old age, by the orders of old age.

Here also the divine genius of the Overthrower sees what is lacking in the old ideals and insists upon righting the balance. Fathers should give without sparing and without rest; even if the children are ungrateful, even if they abandon their father, even if they are unworthy in the eyes of the platitudinous sagacity of the world. The Paternoster is a prayer of sons to a Father. It is the prayer which every child might address to his father. He asks for daily bread; the remission of sins, pardon for his failings, and daily protection against evil.

And yet fathers, even when they give everything, are sometimes forsaken. If their sons leave them to throw themselves into evil ways, they must be forgiven as soon as they come back, as the Prodigal Son in the parable was forgiven. If they 216leave their fathers to seek out a higher and more perfect life—like those who are converted to the Kingdom—they will be rewarded a thousand times in this life and the next.

But from every point of view, fathers are debtors. The tremendous responsibility which they have accepted in giving life to a new human being must be met. Like the Heavenly Father, they must give to those of their children who ask and to those who keep silence, to the worthy and the unworthy, to those who sit about the family board and to those who are wanderers over the earth, to the good and to the bad, to the first and to the last. They must never become weary, not even with the children who flee from them, with those who offend against them, with those who deny them.

“Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?” Who will refuse to a son who departs asking nothing, the supreme gift of a love which asks no requital?

LITTLE CHILDREN

All men are children of the Son of Man, but no one could call Him father in the flesh. Among the disappointing joys of men perhaps the only joy which does not disappoint is to hold in one’s arms or on one’s knees a child whose face is rosy with blood which is also yours, who laughs at you with the dawning splendor of his eyes, who stammers out your name, who uncovers the springs of the lost tenderness of your childhood; to feel against your adult flesh, hardened by winds and the sun, this fresh smooth young flesh where the blood seems still to have kept some of the sweetness of milk, flesh that seems made of warm, living petals. To feel that this flesh is yours, shaped in the flesh of your mate, nourished with the milk of her breasts; to watch the birth and slow flowering of the soul in this flesh; to be the sole father of this unique creature, of this flower opening in the light of the world; to recognize your own aspect in his childish eyes, to hear your own voice through his fresh lips; to grow young again through this child in order to be worthy of him; to be nearer to him; 217to make yourself younger, better, purer; to forget all the years which bring us silently nearer to death, to forget the pride of manhood, the vanity of wisdom, the first wrinkles on the face, the expiations, the ignominies of life and to become a virgin again beside this virginity, calm beside this calmness, good with a goodness never known before; to be in short the father of a child of your own, this is certainly the highest human pleasure given to a man who has a soul within his clay.

Jesus, whom no one called Father, was drawn to children as to sinners. Lover of the absolute, He loved only extremes. Complete innocence and complete downfall were for Him pledges of salvation. Innocence because it does not need to be cleansed; abject degradation because it feels more keenly the need to be cleansed. The people in danger are those midway; men half depraved and half intact; men who are foul within and wish to seem upright and just; those who have lost with their childhood their native purity and do not yet recognize the filthiness of their inner depravity.

Jesus loved children with tenderness and sinners with compassion; the pure and those who stood in dire need of purification. His hand willingly caressed the floating hair of the newly weaned child and did not draw back from the perfumed tresses of the prostitute. He drew near to sinners because they often had not the strength to come to Him; but He called children to Him because children know by instinct who loves them, and run willingly to him. Mothers brought their children to Him to have Him touch them. The Disciples, with their habitual roughness, cried out on them—and Jesus once more was obliged to reprove them, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.”

The Disciples, bearded men, proud of their authority as mature men and as lieutenants of their future Lord, could not understand why their Master consented to waste time with children who could not yet speak plainly and could not understand the meaning of grown people’s words. But Jesus set in 218their midst one of these children and said: “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.... And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Here, too, the transposition of values is complete. In the Old Law, the child was to respect the grown man, to revere and imitate the old man. The little child was to take the grown person as his model. Perfection was supposed to lie in years of maturity, or, better yet, in old age. The child was respected only as containing the hope for future manhood. Jesus reversed these ideas; grown people were to take their example from little children, elders were to try to become like infants, fathers were to imitate their sons. In the world as it was, as it is, controlled by force, where the only valued art is the art of acquiring riches and overcoming others, children are at the most only human larvæ. In the New World announced by Christ, which will be governed by fearless purity and innocent love, children are the arch-types of happy citizens. The child who seems an imperfect man is thus more perfect than the grown man. The man who imagines that he has come into the fullness of his time and of his soul is to turn back, despoil himself of his complacent complexities and return to his first youth. From having been imitated he becomes an imitator, from his position as first he becomes last.

Jesus reaffirms His own likeness to a child, and declares with no hesitation that He is identical with the children who seek Him out, “And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.” The saint, the poor man, the poet, present themselves under this new form which sums them all up: the child, pure and candid as the saint, bare and needy as the poor man, marveling and loving like the poet.

Jesus loves children not only as unconscious models for those who wish to attain the perfection of the Kingdom, but as the 219actual mediums of truth. Their ignorance is more illumined than the doctrines of learned men; their ingenuousness is more powerful than the intellect which shows itself in reasoning words. Only a clear and untarnished mirror can reflect the images of the revelation.

“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” Their own wisdom stands in the way of the wise, because they think they understand everything. Their own intelligence is an impediment for the intelligent, because they are not capable of understanding any other light than that of the intellect. Only the simple can understand simplicity, the innocent, innocence, the loving, love. The revelation of Jesus, open only to virginal souls, is all humility, purification and love. But man, as he grows older, becomes more complicated, more corrupt, prouder, and learns the horrible pleasure of hatred. Every day he goes further from Paradise, becomes less capable of finding it. He takes pleasure in his steady downfall and glories in the useless learning which hides from him the only needful truth.

To find the new Paradise, the Kingdom of innocence and love, it is needful to become like children who have already what others must strive and struggle to regain.

Jesus seeks out the company of sinners, of men and women, but He feels Himself with his true brothers only when He lays His hands on the heads of the children whom the Galilean mothers bring to Him as an offering.

MARTHA AND MARY

Women also loved Jesus. He who had the form and flesh of a man, who left His mother and never had a wife, was surrounded all His life and after His death by the warmth of feminine tenderness. The chaste wanderer was loved by women as no man was ever loved, or ever can be loved again. The chaste man, who condemned adultery and fornication, had over women the inestimable prestige of innocence.

All women, who are not mere females, kneel before him 220who does not bow before them. The husband with all his legal love and authority, the satyr with all his mistresses, the eloquent adulterer, the bold ravisher, have not so much power over the spirit of women as he who loves them without touching them, he who saves them without asking for even a kiss as reward. Woman, slave of her body, of her weakness, her desire and of the desire of the male, is drawn to him who frees her, to him who cures her, to him who loves her and asks no more from her than a cup of water, a smile, a little silent attention.

Women loved Jesus. They stopped when they saw Him pass, they followed Him when they saw Him speaking to His friends, they drew near to the house where He had gone in, they brought their children to Him, they blessed Him loudly, they touched His garment to be cured of their ills, they were happy when they could serve Him. All of them might have cried out to Him, like the woman who raised her voice in the midst of the multitude: “Blessed is the womb that bare ye, and the paps which thou hast sucked.”

Many followed Him to death. Salome, mother of the Sons of Thunder; Mary, mother of James the less; Martha and Mary of Bethany.

They would have liked to be His sisters, His servants, His slaves; to serve Him, to set bread before Him, to pour Him wine, to wash His garments, to anoint His tired feet and His flowing hair. Some of them were fortunate enough to be allowed to follow Him, and knew the still greater good fortune of helping Him with their money ... “and the twelve were with him, And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, And Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance.” Women, in whom piety is a native gift of the heart before it is acquired through desire for perfection, were, as they have always been, more generous than men.

When He appears in the house of Lazarus, two women, the two sisters of the man brought back from death, seem distracted 221with joy. Martha rushes towards Him to see what He needs, if He wishes to wash, if He wishes to eat at once, and, bringing Him into the house, she leads Him to the couch that He may lie down, puts over Him a blanket lest He be cold, and runs with a pitcher to get fresh cool water. Then, on her return, she sets to work to prepare for the pilgrim a fine meal, much more abundant than the ordinary dinner of the family. With all haste she lights a great fire, goes to get fresh fish, new-laid eggs, figs and olives; she borrows from one neighbor a piece of new-killed lamb, from another a costly perfume, from another richer than she, a flowered dish. She pulls out from the linen-chest the newest table-cloth, and brings up from the wine-cellar the oldest wine. And while the wood snaps and sparkles in the fire and the water in the kettle begins to simmer, poor Martha, bustling, flushed, hurrying, sets the table, runs between the kneading-trough and the fire, glances at the waiting Master, at the street to see if her brother is coming home, and at her sister, who is doing nothing at all.

For when Jesus passed the sill of their house, Mary fell into a sort of motionless ecstasy from which nothing could arouse her. She sees only Jesus, hears nothing but Jesus’ voice. There is nothing else in the world for her at that moment. She cannot have enough of looking at Him, of listening to Him, of feeling Him there, living, close to her. If He glances at her, she is happy to be looked at; if He does not look at her, she fixes her eyes on Him; if He speaks, His words drop one by one into her heart, there to remain to her death; if He is silent, she draws from His silence a more direct revelation. And she is almost troubled by the bustling and stepping about of her sister. Why should Martha think that Jesus needs an elaborate dinner? Mary is seated at His feet and does not move even if Martha or Lazarus call her. She is at the service of Jesus, but in another way. She has given Him her soul, only her soul, but such a loving soul! And the work of her hands would be inopportune and superfluous. She is a contemplative soul, an adorer. She will take action only to cover the dead body of her God with perfumes. She would move quickly enough if He should ask of her all her life-blood. 222But the rest, all this business of Martha, is only material activity which is no concern of hers.

Women loved Him and He requited this love with compassion. No woman who turned to Him was sent away disconsolate. The sorrow of the widow of Nain made Him sorrow, so that He brought to life her dead son; the prayers of the Canaanite woman, although she was a foreigner to Him, wrought on Him to cure her daughter; the unknown woman which had a “spirit of infirmity” eighteen years, and was bowed together and could in no wise lift herself, was cured, although it was on the Sabbath day and the rulers of the synagogue cried, “Sacrilege!” In the first part of His wanderings He cured Peter’s wife’s mother of fever and the Magdalene of evil spirits. He brought to life the daughter of Jairus, and cured that unknown woman who had suffered for twelve years from a bloody flux.

The learned men of His time had no esteem for women in spiritual matters. They tolerated their presence at the sacred festivals, but they never would have thought of teaching high and secret doctrines to any woman. “The words of the Law,” says a rabbinical proverb of that time, “rather than teach them to a woman, burn them up!” Jesus on the other hand did not hesitate to speak to them of the highest mysteries. When He went alone to the well of Sichar, and the Samaritan woman who had had five husbands came there, He did not hesitate to proclaim His message to her, although she was a woman and an enemy of His people. “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” His Disciples came up, and could not understand what the Master was doing. “And marvelled that he talked with the woman.” They did not yet know that the Church of Christ would make a woman the link between the sons and the Son—the woman who unites in herself the two supreme possibilities of Woman: the Virgin Mother who suffered for us from the night in Bethlehem until the night of Golgotha.

223

WORDS WRITTEN ON THE SAND

On another occasion at Jerusalem, Jesus found Himself before a woman—the Adulteress. A hooting crowd pushed her forward. The woman, hiding her face with her hands and with her hair, stood before Him, without speaking. Jesus had taught that wife and husband should be perfectly one, and He detested adultery. But He detested still more the cowardice of tale-bearers, the hounding by the merciless, the impudence of sinners presuming to set themselves up as judges of sin. Jesus could not absolve the woman who had brutally disobeyed the law of God, but He did not wish to condemn her, because her accusers had no right to be seeking her death. And He stooped down and with His finger wrote upon the ground. It is the first and last time that we see Jesus lower Himself to this trivial operation. No one has ever known what He wrote at that moment, standing there before the woman trembling in her shame, like a deer set upon by a pack of snarling hounds. He chose the sand on which to write expressly that the wind might carry away the words, which would perhaps frighten men if they could read them. But the shameless persecutors insisted that the woman should be stoned. Then Jesus lifted Himself up, looked deep into their eyes and souls, one by one: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

We are all of us guilty of the faults of our brothers. From the first to the last we are all daily accomplices, although too often unpunished. The Adulteress would not have betrayed her husband if men had not tempted her, if her husband had made himself better loved; the thief would not rob if the rich man’s heart were not so hard; the assassin would not kill if he had not been harshly treated; there would be no prostitutes if men knew how to mortify their wantonness. Only the innocents would have the right to judge; but on this earth there are no innocents, and even if there were, their mercy would be stronger than justice itself.

Such thoughts had never occurred to those angry spies, but Christ’s words troubled them. Every one of them thought 224of his own betrayals, his own secret and perhaps recent sins of the flesh. Every soul there was like a sewer which when the stone is raised exhales a fetid gust of nauseous vapor. The old men were the first to go. Then, little by little, all the others, avoiding each other’s eyes, scattered and dispersed. The open place was empty. Jesus had again stooped down to write upon the ground. The woman had heard the shuffling of the departing feet, and heard no longer any voice crying for her death, but she did not dare to raise her eyes because she knew that One alone had remained, the Innocent,—the only one who had the right to throw against her the deadly stones. Jesus for the second time lifted Himself up and saw no one.

“Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?”

“No man, Lord.”

“Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more.”

And for the first time the Adulteress dared to look in the face of her liberator. She did not understand His words. What she had done was evidently a sin in His eyes because he commanded her to “sin no more”; and yet he had so acted that the others did not condemn her. And now He also did not wish to condemn her. What man was this so different from all the others, who hated sin but forgave the sinner? She would have wished to turn to Him with a question, to murmur a word of thanks, to reward Him at least with a smile, because her soul was weak and her lips beautiful. But Jesus had begun again to write on the ground of the court, His head lowered, and she saw only the silky waves of His hair shining in the sun, and His finger moving slowly over the sunlit earth.

THE SINNER

But no woman loved Him so much as the woman who anointed Him with nard and bathed Him with her tears in the house of Simon the Pharisee. Every one of us has seen that picture in imagination; the weeping woman with her hair falling over the feet of the Wanderer; and yet the true meaning of the episode is understood by very few, so greatly has it 225been disfigured by both the ordinary and the literary interpretations. The decadents of the last century, careful workmen in lascivious preciosity, who swarm to the scent of corruption like flies to filth and crows to carrion, have sought out in the Gospel those women who are redolent of sin. And they have made such women their own, adorning them with the velvet of adjectives, the silk of verbs, the jewelry and precious stones of metaphors; the unknown repentant woman, named Mary Magdalene, the unknown adulteress of Jerusalem, Salome the dancer, the sinister Herodias.

The episode of this anointing has been profoundly misrepresented by such writers. It is simpler and infinitely more profound. The praise of Jesus for the woman who brought Him nard is not praise of carnal sin, or of common love as it is commonly understood by men.

This sinning woman who silently entered the house of Simon with her box of alabaster was no longer a sinner. She had seen Jesus, had known Him before that day. And she was no longer a woman for hire; she had heard Jesus speak, and was no longer the public woman, flesh on sale for masculine desires. She had heard the voice of Jesus, had listened to His words; His voice had troubled her, His words had shaken her. The woman who had belonged to every one had learned that there is a love more beautiful than lust, a poverty richer than clinking coins. When she came to the house of Simon she was not the woman she had been, the woman whom the men of the countryside had pointed out sneeringly, the woman whom the Pharisee knew and despised. Her soul was changed, all her life was changed. Now her flesh was chaste; her hand was pure; her lips no longer knew the bitter taste of rouge, her eyes had learned to weep. From now on, according to the promise of the King, she was ready to enter into the Kingdom.

Without taking all this for granted it is impossible to understand the story which follows. The sinning woman wished to reward her Saviour with a token of her gratitude. She took one of the most costly things left to her, a sealed box full of nard, perhaps the gift of a chance lover, thinking to anoint her King’s head with this costly oil. Hers was an act 226of public gratitude. The sinning woman wished publicly to thank Him who had cleansed her soul, who had brought her heart to life, who had lifted her up out of shame, who had given her a hope more glorious than all joys.

She went into the house with her box of alabaster clasped to her breast, timid and shrinking as a little girl on her first day of school, as a released prisoner in his first moment outside the prison. She went in silently with her little box of perfume, raising her eyes for only a moment to see at a glance where Jesus was reclining. She went up to the couch, her knees trembling under her, her hands shaking, her delicate eyelids quivering, because she felt they were all looking at her, all those men’s eyes were fixed on her, staring at her beautiful swaying body, wondering what she was about to do.

She broke the seal of the little alabaster flask, and poured half the oil on the head of Jesus. The large drops shone on His hair like scattered gems. With loving hands she spread the transparent ointment on the curls and did not stay her hand till every hair was softened, silky and shining. The whole room was filled with the fragrance; every eye was fixed on her with astonishment.

The woman, still silent, took up the opened box and knelt by the feet of the Peace-bringer. She poured the remaining oil into her hand and gently, gently rubbed the right foot and the left with the loving care of a young mother who bathes her first child, for the first time. Then she could control herself no longer, she could restrain no longer the great burst of tenderness which filled her heart, made her throat ache and brought tears to her eyes. She would have liked to speak, to say that this was her thanks, her simple, pure, heartfelt thanks for the great help she had received, for the new light which had unsealed her eyes. But in such a moment, with all those men there, how could she find the right words, words worthy of the wonderful grace, worthy of Him? And besides, her lips trembled so that she could not pronounce two words together; her speech would have been only a stammering broken by sobs. Then not being able to speak with her lips, 227she spoke with her eyes: her tears fell down one by one, swift and hot on the feet of Jesus, like so many silent thank-offerings.

Weeping freed her heart of its oppression; the tears relaxed the tension. She saw and felt nothing now but an inexpressible delight which she had never known on her mother’s knees or in men’s arms; it ran through all her blood, made her tremble, pierced her with its poignant joy, shook all her being in that supreme ecstasy in which joy is a pain and sorrow a joy, in which pain and joy become one mighty emotion.

She wept over her past life, the miserable life of her vigil. She thought of her poor flesh sullied by men. She had been forced to have a smile for them all, she had been forced to offer her luxurious bed and her perfumed body to them all. With all of them she had been forced to pretend a pleasure she did not feel. She had been forced to show a smiling face to those whom she despised, to those whom she hated. She had slept beside the thief who had stolen the money to pay her. She had kissed the lips of the murderer and of the fugitive from justice; she had been forced to endure the acrid breath and the repellent fancies of the drunkard.

Never, on a kindly summer night when the eastern sky is all a flashing splendor, had she known the welcoming kiss of a husband who had chosen her, virgin among virgins, that she should be one with him till death. She was outside the community and the laws. She was cut off from her people. She was separated from them all. Women envied her and detested her; men desired her and defamed her.

THE SECOND BAPTISM

But at the same time the tears of the weeping woman were tears of joy and exaltation. She was weeping not only because of her shame, now forever canceled, but because of the poignant sweetness of her life beginning anew.

She was weeping for her virginity restored, for her soul rescued from evil, her purity miraculously recovered, her condemnation forever revoked. Her tears were the tears of joy 228at the second birth, of exultation for truth discovered, of light-heartedness for her sudden conversion, for the saving of her soul, for the miraculous hope which had released her from the degradation of the material and raised her to the illumination of the spirit. The drops of nard and her tears were so many thank-offerings for this incredible blessing.

And yet it was not alone for her own sorrow and her own joy that she wept. The tears which bathed the feet of Jesus were also shed for Him.

The unknown woman had anointed her King like a king of olden times. She had anointed His head as the high priests had anointed the kings of Judea; she had anointed His feet as the lords and guests anointed themselves on festal days. But at the same time the weeping woman had prepared Him for death and burial.

Jesus, about to enter Jerusalem, knew that those were the last days of His life in the flesh. He said to His disciples, “For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial.” Still living, He was embalmed by a woman’s compassion.

Christ was to receive before His death a third baptism, the baptism of infamy, the baptism of the supreme insult; prætorian soldiers were to spit upon his face. But He had now received the baptism of glory and the baptism of death. He was anointed like a king about to triumph in His celestial kingdom. He was perfumed like a corpse about to be laid in the tomb. This anointing unites the twin mysteries of His Messiahship and of the crucifixion.

The poor sinning woman, mysteriously chosen for this prophetic rite, had perhaps a confused presentiment of the appalling meaning of this premonitory embalming. Love’s second-sight, stronger in women than in men, the foresight of exalted and deep emotion, may have made her feel that this body perfumed and caressed by her was in a few days to be an icy, blood-stained corpse. Other women, perhaps she herself, were to go to the tomb to cover Him for the last time with aromatics, but they would not find Him. He who was now feasting with His friends was at that time to be at the doors 229of another Hell. Feeling this presentiment, the weeping woman let her tears fall on Jesus’ feet to the astonishment of all the others, who did not know and did not understand.

Now the feet of the Saviour, the feet of the condemned one, are all bathed with tears, the salt of the tears mingling with the perfume of the nard. The poor sinning woman does not know how to dry those feet, wet by her tears. She has no white cloth with her, and her garment does not seem to her worthy to touch her Lord’s flesh. Then she thinks of her hair, her long hair which has been so much admired for its fine silkiness. She loosens the braids, slips out the pins, unclasps the fastenings. The blue-black mass of her tresses falls over her face, hiding her flushed face and her compassion. And taking up the masses of these flowing curls in her hands, she slowly dries the feet which have brought her King into that house.

Now her tears are ended. All her tears are shed and dried. Her part is done, but only Jesus has understood her silence.

SHE LOVED MUCH

Among the men who were present at this dinner there was no one except Jesus who understood the loving service of the nameless woman. But all, struck with wonder, were silent. They did not understand, but they respected obscurely the solemnity of the enigmatic ceremony. All except two, who wished to interpret the woman’s action as an offense to the guest. These two were the Pharisee and Judas Iscariot. The first said nothing, but his expression spoke more clearly than words. The second, the Traitor, presuming on his familiarity with the Master, ventured to speak.

Simon thought to himself, “This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth Him, for she is a sinner.” The old hypocrite had for the paid woman the scorn of those who have had much to do with them, or of those who have never known them at all. Like his brothers he belonged to the endless cemetery of white sepulchers, which within are full of foulness. It is 230enough for such men to avoid physical contact with what they think is impure, even if their souls are sinks of iniquity. Their morals are systems of ablutions and washings; they would leave a wounded man to die, abandoned on the road, for fear of staining themselves with blood; they would let a poor man suffer hunger to avoid touching money on the Sabbath day: like all men they commit thefts, adulteries, and murders, but they wash their hands so many times a day that they imagine them as clean as those of babes.

He had read the Law, and there were still ringing in his ears the execrations and anathemas of Old Israel against prostitutes. “There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel.... Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination to the Lord thy God.” And Simon, the wise burgher, remembered with equal satisfaction the admonition of the author of the Proverbs: “For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit.... For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread.” The old Jew would perhaps not have felt so bitterly about prostitutes, if they cost nothing! But they are capable, those shameless women, of eating up a patrimony! The old proprietor could not be reconciled to one of those dangerous women in his house, to the fact that she had touched his guest. He knew that the prostitute Rehab had made victory possible for Joshua and that she was the only one to escape from the massacre of Jericho, but he remembered that the invincible Samson, terror of the Philistines, had been betrayed by a worthless woman. The Pharisee could not understand how a man acclaimed by the people as a prophet should not have understood what sort of woman had come to bestow on Him this discreditable honor; but Jesus had read in the heart of the sinning woman and in the heart of Simon, and answered with the parable of the two debtors. “There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose 231that he, to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged.”

And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon: “Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head.

“Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet.

“My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment.

“Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much; but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.

“And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.... Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”

The parable and the comment of Jesus show how great, even to-day, is the lack of understanding of this episode. Every one or nearly every one remembers only those words: “Her sins are forgiven, for she loved much.” An attentive reading of the text shows that this ordinary interpretation is the opposite of the truth. It is thought that Jesus forgave her sins because she had loved many men, or because she had shown her love for Him with her perfume and her kisses. The parable of the two debtors makes it clear that the meaning of Jesus’ words, badly quoted and even more completely misunderstood, is entirely the contrary. The woman had sinned greatly and because of her repentance she was wholly pardoned; and because her pardon was great she greatly loved Him who had saved her, who had forgiven her; the nard and her tears and her kisses were the expression of that grateful love. If before going into the house that evening the sinning woman had not already become transformed by virtue of her pardon, she would not have obtained from Jesus forgiveness for her past life spent in evil, not by using all the perfumes of India and Egypt nor by all the kisses of her lips, nor by all the tears of her eyes. Christ’s forgiveness was not the reward for those acts of homage; those acts were her thank-offerings for her forgiveness already received; and 232they were great because her forgiveness was great, as her forgiveness had been great because great had been her sin.

Jesus would not have repelled the sinning woman even if she had still been a sinner, but if He had not been sure of her conversion He would not perhaps have accepted those tokens of love; from now on even the most rigorous Pharisaical precepts permitted Him to speak with her: “Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”

Simon could think of no answer; but from the side of the disciples a rough, angry voice was raised, well known to Jesus. It was the voice of Judas: “Why was this waste of the ointment made, why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?” And the other disciples, so the Evangelists say, approved the words of Judas, and murmured against the woman. Judas was the man who held the purse; the basest of them all had chosen the basest element,—money.

Money was pleasing to Judas, pleasing in itself and pleasing in its possibility of power. He spoke of the poor, but he did not think of the poor, to whom Jesus had distributed bread in the country-solitudes, as well as to his own companions, too poor as yet to conquer Jerusalem and to found the empire of the Messiah where Judas hoped to be one of the masters. And he was envious as well as grasping; envious as all misers are. That silent anointing which was the consecration of the King and the Messiah, those honors offered by a beautiful woman to his Leader, made him suffer; the everlasting jealousy of man against man, when a woman is concerned, was mingled with the disappointment of his cupidity.

But Jesus answered the words of Judas as He answered the silence of Simon. He did not affront those who had affronted Him, but he defended the woman at His feet. And Jesus said, “Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me. For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always. She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached 233throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.”

The inexpressible sadness of this prophecy escaped perhaps those who sat about Him. They could not be persuaded that Jesus, in order to overcome, should be overcome: that in order to triumph eternally He must die. But Jesus felt the day drawing near, “But me ye have not always, she is come to anoint my body to the burying.” The woman listened in terror to this confirmation of her presentiment and another burst of tears rained down from her eyes. Then with her face hidden in her loosened hair, she went away as silently as she had come.

The disciples were silent, not convinced, but abashed. To hide his chagrin Simon filled the guest’s cup with better wine, but in the yellow light of the lamps the silent table seemed a banquet of ghosts among whom had passed the shadow of death.

“WHO AM I?”

And yet the disciples knew. Those words of death were not the first they had heard from Jesus’ lips. They should have remembered that day, not long before, when on a solitary road near Cæsarea, Jesus had asked what people said of Him. They should have remembered the answer which flashed out like sudden flame, the impetuous outcry of belief from Peter’s heart; and the splendor which had shone on three of them on the summit of the mountain; and the exact prophecies of Christ as to the manner of His death.

They had heard and they had seen, and still they hoped on,—all but one. The truth shone out in them at moments like lightning-flashes in the dark. Then the night fell blacker than ever. The new man in their hearts who recognized Jesus as the Christ, the man born for the second time, the Christian, disappeared to give way to the Jew, deaf and blind, who saw nothing beyond the Jerusalem of bricks and stone.

The question which Jesus had put to the Twelve on the road in Cæsarea must have been the beginning of their complete conversion to the new truth. What need did Jesus have 234to know what others thought of Him? Such a curiosity springs up only in doubtful souls, in those who do not know themselves, in the weak who cannot read in their own hearts, in the blind who are not sure of the ground on which they stand. For any one of us such a question is legitimate, but not for Jesus. No one of us knows really who he is, no one knows with any certainty what is his real nature, his mission, and the name which he has a right to call his own, the eternal name which fits our destiny. The name which was given to us in infancy, together with the salt and water of baptism, the name set down on the municipal register, and written in the records of birth and of death, the name which the mother calls with so much gentleness in the morning, which the sweetheart murmurs with so much desire at night, the name which is cut for the last time on the rectangle of the tomb, that is not our real name. Every one of us has a secret name which expresses our invisible and authentic essence, and which we ourselves will never know until the day of the New Birth, until the full light of the resurrection.

Few of us dare to ask ourselves, “Who am I?” and there are still fewer who can answer. The question “Who art thou?” is the most tremendous, the most weighty which man can put to man. Other human beings are for each of us a sealed mystery even in the moments of supreme passion, when two souls desperately essay to become one. We are all of us a mystery even to ourselves. Unknown to others, we live among others unknown to us. Much of our wretchedness comes from this universal ignorance. Here is a man who acts like a king and believes himself a king and in the absolute he is really only a poor servant, predestined from the beginning of time to dependent mediocrity. Here is another dressed and acting like a judge; look at him well; he is born a dry-goods dealer, his real place is in the country fair. That man there who writes poetry has not understood his inner voice; he should be a goldsmith, because gold which can be turned into coin suits his taste, and he is attracted by filigree, mosaics, chasing, imitation jewels. This other man who is at the head of an army ought to be teaching school. What an expert and eloquent 235professor he might have become! And that fellow there, shouting in the public places, heading a revolution, calling on the people to revolt, is a gardener who has mistaken his calling; the red of tomatoes, long lines of onions, garlic, and cabbages would be the fit reward of his true mission. This other man here, on the contrary, who, cursing his fate, prunes his grape-vines and spreads the manure on the cultivated earth, should have studied in law-books the art of quibbling: no one can invent sophisms and verbal tricks as he can, and even now, how much eloquence he pours out in humble duels about money matters, this poor “leading lawyer” exiled to barns and furrows.

These errors concern us because we do not know, because we have not spiritual eyes strong enough to read in the heart which beats inside our own breasts, and the hearts which beat under the flesh of our neighbors, so irrevocably remote from us. Everything is in confusion because of those Names which we do not know, illegible for us, known to genius alone.

THOU ART THE CHRIST

But what did Jesus care what was said of Him by the men of the lake and of the cities, Jesus who could read in their souls the thoughts hidden even to themselves? Long before that day Jesus alone knew with ineffable certainty what His real name was, and what was his superhuman nature. As a matter of fact He did not ask that He might know, but, now that the end was near, that His faithful followers might know, His real name, at last—even they.

“Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias or, one of the Prophets.”

What were these things to Him, these rudimentary guesses of the poor and the ignorant? He wished the definite answer to come from His Disciples, destined as they were to follow His work and to bear witness to Him among the peoples and the centuries. Even at the last He did not wish to impose by force a belief on those who had seen His life close at hand and had heard Him speak. The recognition of His superb human 236mission, that name which not one of them up to that time had pronounced (as if they were afraid of it, as if it were too dangerous a secret to speak aloud), that recognition on the part of the Twelve should be free and spontaneous, should burst out, an impetuous confession of love, from one of those souls, should be pronounced by one of those mouths.

“But whom say ye that I am?” And then there came to Simon Peter the great light that was almost too great for him, and made him First to all eternity. He could not keep back the words, they came to his lips almost involuntarily in a cry of which he himself the moment before would have believed himself incapable: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Thou hast the word of eternal life, and we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.”

At last from Peter the Rock there sprang forth the wellspring which from that day to this has quenched the thirst of sixty generations of men. It was his right and his reward. Peter had been the first to follow Christ in the divine wanderings: it was for him to be the first to recognize in the wanderer the Proclaimer of the Kingdom, the everlasting and lawful sovereign of that Kingdom, the Messiah whom all men had been awaiting in the desert of the centuries, who had finally come and was there Himself, clothed in flesh, standing before their eyes, with His feet in the dust of the road.

The pure King, the Son of Justice, the Prince of Peace, the Son of Man sent by God, the Saviour, the Anointed, whom the prophets had foretold in the twilight of sorrow and affliction; who had been seen by apocalyptic writers descending upon the earth like lightning, in the fullness of victory and glory; for whom the poor, the wounded, the hungry, the afflicted, had been waiting from century to century, as dry grass waits for rain, as the flower waits for the sun, as the mouth awaits the kiss, and the heart, consolation; the Son of God and of Man, the Man who hid God in human flesh, the God who cloaked His divinity in Adam’s clay, it is He, the dear Brother of every day, who looks quietly into the astounded eyes of those chosen ones!

237The period of waiting is done; ended is the vigil! Why had they not recognized Him until that day? Whence did it come in those simple souls, the first notion of the true name of Him who so many times had taken them by the hand, and had spoken for their ears to hear? They could never think that one of them—a common man like them, a workman and poor as they were—could be the Saviour Messiah announced and awaited by saints and by the centuries. With the intellect alone they could never have discovered Him, nor with the mere bodily senses, nor with the teachings of the scriptures; only with the inspiration, the intuition, the sudden flaming illumination of the heart, as it happened that day in the soul of Peter. “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in Heaven.” Fleshly eyes would not have been able to see what they saw without a revelation from on high.

But weighty consequences flow from the choice of Peter for this proclamation. It is a reward which calls for other recompense, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.”

Weighty words from which have emerged, through the patient germination of long centuries, helped by the fire of faith and by the blood of witnesses, one of the greatest Kingdoms which men have ever established upon the earth; the only one of the old kingdoms which still lives on in the same city which saw the rise and fall of the proudest and most pompous of earthly kingdoms. For these words many men suffered, many were tortured, many were killed. To deny or uphold, to interpret or cancel these words, thousands of men have been killed in city squares and in battles; kingdoms have been divided, societies have been shaken and rent, nations have waged war, emperors and beggars have given their all. But their meaning in Christ’s mouth is plain and simple. He means to say, “Thou, Peter, shalt be hard and staunch as a rock, and upon 238the staunchness of thy faith in me, which thou wast the first to profess, is founded the first Christian society, the humble seed of the Kingdom. Against this Church which to-day has only Twelve citizens but which will be spread to the limits of the earth, the forces of evil cannot prevail, because you are the Spirit and the Spirit cannot be overcome and dimmed by Matter. Thou shalt close forever—and when I speak to thee I am speaking to all those who shall succeed thee united in the same certainty—the Gates of Hell; and thou shalt open to all those who are chosen the Gates of Heaven. Thou shalt bind and thou shalt unloosen in my name. What thou shalt forbid after my death shall be forbidden to-morrow also for that new humanity which I will find on my return; what thou shalt command shalt be justly commanded because thou wilt be only repeating in other words what I have told and taught thee. Thou shalt be, in thy person and in that of thy legitimate heirs, the shepherd of the interregnum, the temporary and provisional guide who shalt prepare, together with comrades obedient to thee, the Kingdom of God and of Love.

“In requital for this revelation and for this promise I lay on you a hard command: to keep silence; for the present you must tell no one who I am. My day is near, but has not yet come; you will be witness to events which you do not expect, which will even be the contrary of what you expect. I know the hour in which I shall speak and in which you shall speak. And when we break our silence, my cry and your cry shall be heard in the most distant realms of Heaven and Earth.”

SUN AND SNOW

A man’s voice, the voice of Peter the Rock, had called Him the Son of Man; another voice issuing from a cloud was to call Him the Son of God.

Very high is the three-peaked mountain of Hermon, covered with snow even in the hot season, the highest mountain of Palestine, higher than Mount Tabor. The Psalmist says, “It is the dew of Hermon that descends upon the mountains of 239Zion.” Jesus became incarnate light on this mountain, the highest mountain in the life of Christ, that life which marks its different stages by great heights—the mountain of the Temptation, the mountain of the Beatitudes, the mountain of the Transfiguration, the mountain of the Crucifixion.

Three Disciples alone were with Him: he who was called Peter, and the Sons of Thunder,—the man with the rugged, mountainous character, and the stormy men—fitting company for the place and hour. He prayed alone, apart from them, higher than all of them, perhaps kneeling in the snow. All of us have seen in winter how the snow on a mountain makes any other whiteness seem dull and drab. A pale face seems strangely dark, white linen seems dingy, paper looks like dry clay. The contrary of all this was seen on that day up in the gleaming, deserted height alone in the sky.

Jesus prayed by Himself apart from the others. Suddenly His face shone like the sun and His raiment became as white as snow in the sunshine, white “as no fuller on earth can white them.” Over the whiteness of the snow a more brilliant whiteness, a splendor more powerful than all known splendors, outshone all earthly light.

The Transfiguration is the Feast and the Victory of Light. Jesus still in the flesh—for so short a time!—took on the most subtle, the lightest and most spiritual aspect of matter. His body awaiting its liberation became sunlight, the light of Heaven, intellectual and supernatural light; His soul transfigured in prayer shone out through the flesh, pierced with its flaming whiteness the screen of His body and His garments, like a flame consuming the walls which close it in, and flashing through them.

But the light was not the same on His face and on His raiment. The light of His face was like the sun; that of His garments was like the brilliance of snow. His face, mirror of the soul, took on the color of fire; His garments, mere material stuff, were white like ice. For the soul is sun, fire, love; but the garments, all garments,—even that heavy garment which is called the human body,—are opaque, cold, dead; and can shine only by reflected light.

240But Jesus, all light, His face gleaming with quiet refulgence, His garments shining white—gold sparkling in the midst of silver—was not alone. Two great figures, returned from death, gleaming like Him, stood by Him, and spoke with Him, Moses and Elias. The first of the Prophets, men of light and fire, came to bear witness to the new Light which shines on Hermon. All those who have spoken with God remain radiant with light. The face of Moses when he came down from Mt. Sinai had become so resplendent that he covered it with a veil, lest he dazzle the others. And Elias was caught up to Heaven in a chariot of fire drawn by fiery steeds. John, the new Elias, announced the baptism of fire, but his face was darkened by the sun and did not shine like the sun. The only splendor which came into his life was the golden platter on which his bloody head was carried, a kingly gift to Herod’s sinister concubine. But on Hermon there was One whose face shone more than Moses’ and whose ascension was to be more splendid than that of Elias,—He whom Moses had promised and who was to come after Elias. They had come there beside him, but they were to disappear thereafter forever. They were no longer necessary after this last revelation. From now on the world can do without their laws and their hopes. A luminous cloud hid the glorious three from the eyes of the obscure three, and from the cloud came out a voice: “This is my beloved Son: hear him.”

The cloud did not hide the light, but increased it. As from the tempest-cloud, the lightning darts out to light up suddenly all the country; from this cloud already shining in itself, flamed out the fire which burned up the Old Covenant and confirmed to all eternity the New Promise. The column of smoke which guided the fleeing Hebrews in the desert towards Jordan, the black cloud which hid the ark in the day of desolation and fear, had finally become a cloud of light so brilliant that it hid even the sunlike splendor of the face which was soon to be buffeted in the dark days, close at hand.

But when the cloud disappeared, Jesus was once more alone. The two precursors and the two witnesses had disappeared. His face had taken on its natural color. His garments had 241their everyday aspect. Christ, once more a loving brother, turned back to his swooning companions. “Arise, and be not afraid.... Tell the vision to no man, until the son of man be risen again from the dead.”

The Transfiguration forecasts the Ascension; but to die in shame always precedes rising in glory.

I SHALL SUFFER MANY THINGS

Jesus had known that He must soon die a shameful death. It was the reward for which he was waiting and no one could have defrauded Him of it. He who saves others is ready to lose himself; he who rescues others necessarily pays with his person (that is, with the only value which is really his and which surpasses and includes all other values); it is fitting that he who loves his enemies should be hated even by his friends; he who brings salvation to all nations must needs be killed by his own people; it suits human ideas of the fitness of things that he who offers his life should be put to death. Every benefaction is such an offense to the native ingratitude of men that it can be paid for only by the heaviest penalty. We lend ears only to voices which cry out from the tombs, and reserve our scanty capacity for reverence for those whom we have assassinated. The only truths which remain in the fleeting memory of the human race are the truths written in blood.

Jesus knew what was awaiting Him at Jerusalem, and as later was said by one worthy to portray Him, His every thought was colored by the thought of death. Three times they had already tried to kill Him; the first time at Nazareth when they took Him up on the summit of the mountain where the city was built and wished to cast Him down; the second time in the Temple, the Jews, offended by His talk, laid their hands on stones to stone Him; and a third time at the feast of the Dedication in winter-time, they took up the stones of the street to silence Him. But for these three times he escaped because His hour was not yet come.

He kept His certainty of death in His own heart for Himself alone until His last hours. For He did not wish to sadden His 242Disciples who would have shrunk from following a condemned man, a man who in His own heart knew Himself at the point of death. But after the triple consecration as Messiah—Peter’s cry, the light of Hermon, the anointing of Bethany—He could no longer keep silence. He knew too well the ingenuous complacency of the Twelve. He knew that when the rare moments of enthusiasm and illumination were gone, their thoughts were often the common thoughts of common people, human even in their highest dreams. He knew that the Messiah for whom they were waiting was a victorious restorer of the Age of Gold and not the Man of Sorrows. They thought of Him as a king on his throne and not as a criminal on the gallows; triumphant, receiving homage and tribute, not spat upon, beaten, and insulted; come to raise the dead and not to be executed like an assassin.

Lest the Disciples should lose this new certainty of Christ’s Messiahship on the day of His ignominy, Christ knew that He must warn them. They must learn from His own mouth that the Messiah would be condemned, that the Victorious One would disappear in a dreadful downfall, that the King of all kings would be insulted by Cæsar’s servants, that the Son of God would be crucified by the ignorant, blind servants of God.

Three times they had tried to put Him to death; three times after Peter’s recognition He announced to the Twelve His imminent death. And there were to be three kinds of men who were to bring about His death: the Elders, the High Priests and the Scribes. The Elders were the Patricians, the aristocrats, the lay delegates of the Hebrew middle-classes, they represented authority and wealth, and Christ had come to transform authority into service and to condemn the rich and their treasures. The High Priests represented the Temple, and He had come to destroy the Temple. The Scribes were the doctors of law, of theology, the interpreters of the Book, the masters of the Scriptures, and represented the authority of word and of tradition; and He had come to transform the Word and to regenerate the tradition. These three orders of men 243never could forgive Him even after they had sent Him to Golgotha.

And there were to be three accomplices to His death: Judas who betrayed Him, Caiaphas who sentenced Him, Pilate who permitted the execution of the sentence. And there were to be three sorts of men to execute the penalty: the guards who arrested Him, the Hebrews who cried “Crucify Him!” before the procurator’s house, the Roman soldiers who nailed Him on the cross.

There were to be three degrees of His afflictions, as He Himself told the disciples. First He was to be spurned and outraged, then spit upon and beaten, and finally killed. But they were not to fear nor to weep. As life has its reward in death, death is the promise of a second life. After three days, He was to rise from the tomb, never more to die. Christ was to be victorious not over earthly kingdoms, but over death. He does not bring golden treasures, nor abundance of grain, but immortality to all those who obey Him, and the cancellation of all sins committed by men. He was to buy this immortality and this liberation by imprisonment and death. The price was hard and bitter, but without those few days of His Passion and burial He could not have secured centuries and centuries of life and freedom for men.

The Disciples were troubled at this revelation and unwilling to believe. But Jesus had already begun His Passion, foreseeing those terrible last days of His life and describing them. From now on the heirs of His work knew all, and He could go on His way towards Jerusalem in order that His words should be fulfilled to the very last.

MARANATHA

And yet for one day at least He was to be like that King awaited by the poor every morning on the thresholds of the holy city.

Easter draws near. It was the beginning of the last week which even now had not yet ended—since the new Sabbath 244has not yet dawned. But this time Jesus does not come to Jerusalem as in other years, an obscure wanderer mingled with the crowd of pilgrims, into the evil-smelling metropolis huddled with its houses, white as sepulchers, under the towering vainglory of the Temple destined to the flames. This time, which is the last time, Jesus is accompanied by His faithful friends, by His fellow-peasants, by the women who were later to weep, by the Twelve who were to hide themselves, by the Galileans who come in memory of an ancient miracle, but with the hope of seeing a new miracle. This time He is not alone; the vanguard of the Kingdom is with Him, and He does not come unknown: the cry of the Resurrection has preceded Him. Even in the capital ruled by the iron of the Romans, the gold of the merchants, the letter of the Pharisees, there are eyes which look towards the Mount of Olives and hearts which beat faster.

This time He does not come on foot into the city which should have been the throne of His kingdom, and which was to be His tomb. When He had come to Bethpage, He sent two disciples to look for an ass, “Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her; loose them, and bring them unto me. And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them.”

Even up to our days it has been said that Jesus wished to ride on an ass as a sign of humble meekness, as if He wished to signify symbolically that He approached His people as the Prince of Peace. It has been forgotten that in the robust early periods of history asses were not the submissive beasts of burden of to-day, weary bones in flogged and ill-treated skin, brought low by many centuries of slavery, used only to carry baskets and bags over the stones of steep hills. The ass of antiquity was a fiery and warlike animal; handsome and bold as a horse, fit to be sacrificed to divinities. Homer, master of metaphors, intended no belittling of Ajax the robust, the proud Ajax, when he likened him to an ass. The Jews moreover used untamed asses for other comparisons: Zophar the Naamithite said to Job, “For vain man would be wise though 245man be born like a wild ass’ colt.” And Daniel tells how Nebuchadnezzar, as expiation of his tyrannies, was driven from the sons of men, and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses.

Jesus asked expressly for an ass not yet broken, never before ridden, something like a wild ass, because on that day, the animal chosen by Him was not a symbol of the humility of his rider but was a symbol of the Jewish people, who were to be liberated and overcome by Christ; the animal, unruly and restive, stiff-necked, whom no prophet and no monarch had mastered and who to-day was tied to a post as Israel was tied with the Roman rope; vain and foolhardy as in the Book of Job; fitting companion for an evil king; slave to foreigners, but at the same time rebellious to the end of time, the Hebrew people had finally found its master. For one day only: it revolted against Him, its legitimate master in that same week; but its revolt succeeded only for a short time. The quarrelsome capitol was pulled down and the god-killing crowd dispersed like the husks of the eternal Winnower over all the face of the earth.

The ass’s back is hard, and Christ’s friends throw their cloaks over it. Stony is the slope which leads from the Mount of Olives and the triumphant crowds throw their mantles over the rough stones. This, too, is symbolical of self-consecration. To take off your mantle is the beginning of stripping yourself, the beginning of that bareness which is the desire for confession and the death of false shame; bareness of the body, promising naked truth for the soul. The loving charity of supreme alms-giving; to give what we have on our backs, “If any man ... shall take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.”

Then began the descent in the heat of the sun and of glory; in the midst of freshly cut branches and of songs of hope. It was at the beginning of breezy April and of the spring. The golden hour of noon lay about the city with its green vineyards, fields and orchards. The sky, immense, deep blue, miraculously calm, clear and joyful as the promise of divine eyes, stretched away into the infinite. The stars could not 246be seen, yet the light of our sun seemed augmented by the quiet brilliance of those other distant suns. A warm breeze, still scented with the freshness of heaven, gently swayed the tender tree-tops and set the young, growing leaves a-flutter. It was one of those days when blue seems bluer, green seems greener, light more brilliant and love more loving.

Those who accompanied Christ in that descent felt themselves swept away by the rapture of the world and of the moment. Never before that day had they felt themselves so bursting with hope and adoration. The cry of Peter became the cry of the fervent little army winding its way down the slope towards the queen-city. “Hosanna to the Son of David!” said the voices of the young men and of the women, in the midst of this impetuous exultation. Even the Disciples almost began to hope, although they had been warned that this would be the last sun, although they knew that they were accompanying a man about to die.

The procession approached the mysterious, hostile city with the roaring tumult of a torrent that has burst its banks. These countrymen, these people from the provinces, came forward flanked as by a moving forest, as if they had wished to carry a little country freshness inside the noisome walls, into the drab alleyways. The boldest had cut palm branches along the road, boughs of myrtle, clusters of olives, willow leaves, and they waved them on high, shouting out the impassioned words of the Psalmist towards the shining face of Him who came in the name of God.

Now the first Christian legion had arrived before the gates of Jerusalem and the voices did not still their homage: “Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest!” Their shouting reached the ears of the Pharisees, who arrived, haughty and severe, to investigate the seditious noise. The cries scandalized those learned ears and troubled those suspicious hearts, and some of them, well wrapped up in their doctoral cloaks, called from among the crowd to Jesus: “Master, rebuke thy disciples.” And then He, without halting, “I tell you that, if these 247should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out!”

The silent, motionless stones which, according to St. John, God could have transformed into sons of Abraham; the hot stones of the desert which Jesus was not willing to change into loaves of bread at the challenge of the Adversary; the hostile stones of the street which twice had been picked up to stone Him; the hard stones of Jerusalem would have been less hard, less icy, less insensitive than the souls of the Pharisees.

But with this answer, Jesus had asserted His right to be called “the Christ.” It was a declaration of war. At the very moment of His entrance into His city, the New King gave the signal for the attack.

THE DEN OF THIEVES

He went up to the Temple where all His enemies were assembled. On the hill-top the sacred fortress sunned its new whiteness in the magnificence of the day. The old Ark of the nomads, drawn by oxen through sweltering deserts and over battlefields, had halted on that height, petrified as a defense for the royal city. The moveable cart of the fugitives had become a heavy citadel of stone and marble, a pompous stronghold of palaces and stairways, shady with colonnades, lighted with courts, enclosed by walls, sheer above the valley, protected by bastions and by towers, a fortress rather than a place of worship. It was not only the precinct of the Holy of Holies, and the sacrificial altar, it was no longer only the Temple, the mystic sanctuary of the people. With its great old towers, its guardrooms, its warehouses for offerings, its strong-boxes for deposits, its open piazzas for trade and covered galleries for meetings and amusement, it was anything rather than a sanctuary for meditation and prayer. It was everything, a fortress in case of assault, a bank-vault, a market-place in time of pilgrimage and feast-days, a bazaar on all days, a forum for the disputes of politicians, the wranglings of doctors and the gossip of idlers; a thoroughfare, a rendezvous, 248a business center. Built by a faithless King to win over the favor of a captious and seditious people, to satisfy the pride and avarice of the priestly caste, an instrument of war and a market-place for trade, it must have seemed to the eyes of Jesus the natural focus for all the enemies of His truth.

Jesus goes up to the Temple to destroy the Temple. He will leave to the Romans of Titus the task of literally dismantling the walls, of scattering the masses of stone, of burning down the buildings, of stealing the bronze and gold, of reducing to a smoky and accursed ruin the great stronghold of Herod; but He will destroy the values which the proud Temple upheld with its piled-up blocks of ordered stone, its paved terraces and its golden doors. Jesus goes up towards the Temple: the Man transfigured on the mountain is set against the scribes parched and withered among their scrolls; the Messiah of the New Kingdom against the usurper of the kingdom defiled by compromises, corrupt with infamy; the Gospel against the Torah; the future against the past; the fire of love against the ashes of the Letter. The day of battle is at hand. Jesus, among the songs of His fervent band, goes up to the sumptuous lair of His enemies. Well does He know the street. How many times He had gone over it as a little child led along by the hand in the crowd of pilgrims, in the midst of noise and dust, in the band of Galileans! Later as an unknown boy, confused by the dust and heat of the sun, tired and bewildered, He used to look toward the walls desperately longing to arrive at the summit, hoping to find up there in the sacred precincts a little shade for His eyes, cool water for His mouth, a word of consolation for His heart.

But to-day everything is transformed. He is not led along. He leads along. He does not come to adore, but to punish. He knows that there inside, behind the beautiful façades of the sublime sepulcher, there are only ashes and corruption: His enemies selling ashes and feeding themselves on corruption. The first adversary who comes before Him is the demon of greed.

He enters into the Court of the Gentiles, the most spacious and most densely crowded of all. The great, sunny, well-paved 249terrace is not the atrium of a sanctuary, but a dirty market-place. An immense, roaring din rises up from the vermin-like crowd of bankers, of buyers and sellers, of money-changers who give and take money. There are herdsmen with their oxen and their flocks of sheep; vendors of pigeons and turtle doves, standing by the long lines of their coops; bird-sellers, with cages of chirping sparrows; benches for money-changers, with bowls overflowing with copper and silver. Merchants, their feet in the fresh-dropped dung, handle the flanks of the animals destined for sacrifice; or call with monotonous iteration women who have come there after child-birth, pilgrims who have come to offer a rich sacrifice, lepers who offer living birds for their cure, obtained or hoped for. Money-changers, with a coin hung at their ears as a mark of their trade, gloatingly plunge their greedy talons into gleaming piles; the go-betweens run about in the swarm of the gossiping groups; niggardly, wary provincials hold excited conferences before loosening the purse strings to change their cash for a votive offering, and from time to time a restless ox drowns out with his deep bellow the thin bleating of the lambs, the thrill voices of the women, the clinking of drachma and shekels.

Christ was familiar with the spectacle. He knew that the house of God had been turned into the house of Mammon, and that, instead of silently invoking the Spirit, material-minded men trafficked there in the filth of the Demon, with the priests as their accomplices. But this time He did not restrain His scorn and His repugnance. To destroy the Temple, He commenced with the destruction of the market-place. The Eternal Mendicant, the poor man, accompanied by his poor friends, flung Himself against the servitors of money. He had in His hand a length of rope, which He knotted together like a whip, and with it He opened a passage-way through the astonished people. The benches of the money-changers crashed down at the first shock. The coins were scattered on the ground amid yells of astonishment and wrath; the seats of the bird-sellers were overturned beside their scattered pigeons. The herdsmen began to urge towards the doors the oxen and 250the sheep. The sparrow-sellers took their cages under their arms and disappeared. Cries rose to Heaven, some scandalized, some approving; from the other court-yards other people came running towards the disturbance. Jesus, surrounded by the boldest of His friends, was brandishing His whip on high, and driving the money-changers towards the door. And He repeated in a loud voice, “My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves!”

And the last money-handlers disappeared from the courts like rubbish scattered by the wind.

BUSINESS THE GOD

This action of Jesus was not only the righteous purification of the sanctuary, but also the public manifestation of His detestation for Mammon and the servants of Mammon. Business, that modern god, was for Him a form of theft. A marketplace was therefore a cave of obsequious brigands, of tolerated thieves. Among all the elements of the legalized theft which is called commerce, none is more detestable and shameful than the use of money. If some one gives you a sheep in exchange for money, you can be sure that he has made you pay more money than the sheep really cost, but at least he gives you something which is not a hateful mineral symbol of wealth. He gives you a living being, which will furnish you wool in the spring time, which will bear you a lamb, and which you can eat if you like. But the exchange of money for money, of coined metal for coined metal, is something unnatural, paradoxical and demoniac. Everything that is known of banks, rates of exchange, discount and usury, is a shameful and repellent mystery which has always been the terror of simple souls, that is, of upright and deep souls. The peasant who sows his grain, the tailor who makes a garment, the weaver who weaves wool or linen, have up to a certain limit a real right that their wealth should increase, because they have added something which before was not in the world, in cloth, in wool. But that a mountain of money should bring forth other money without labor or effort, without production by man of any object 251to be seen, to be consumed, to be enjoyed, is a scandal which goes beyond, and confounds human imagination.

Money-changers, bankers, amassers of silver and gold, are slaves of the witchcraft of the Demon more than all others. And it is to those men, the men of banks and of finance, that the grateful Demon gives power on this earth: they are the ones even to-day who rule nations, instigate wars, who starve nations, and who, by an infernal system of their own, suck out the life of the poor, transformed into gold, dripping with sweat and blood.

Christ, who pitied the rich, but who hated and detested wealth, the great wall which cuts off from men the vision of the Kingdom of Heaven, had broken up the den of thieves and had purified the Temple where He was to teach the last truths which remained to Him to expound. But with that violent action, He had antagonized all the commercial middle-class of Jerusalem. The men He had driven away demanded that their patrons should punish the man who was ruining business on the Holy Hill. These men of money found ready hearing with the men of Law, already embittered for other reasons, so much the more because Jesus in disturbing the business of the Temple had condemned and harmed the priests themselves. The most successful bazars were the property of the sons of Annas, that is, close relations of the High-Priest Caiaphas. All the doves which were sold in the Court of the Gentiles were raised on the property of Annas, and the priests who did business in them made a good income every month out of turtle-doves alone. The money-changers, who should not have been allowed to stay in the Temple, paid the great Sadducee families of the priestly aristocracy a goodly tithe on the thousands of shekels brought in every year by the exchange of foreign money into Hebrew money. Had not the Temple itself perhaps become a great national bank with coffers and strong boxes in treasure chambers?

Jesus had wounded the twenty thousand priests of Jerusalem in their prestige and in their purses. He had overturned the values of the falsified and mutilated Letter, in the name of which they commanded and on which they fattened. More 252than this, He had driven out their associates, the traffickers and bankers. If He had His way, it would ruin them all. But the two threatened castes drew together still more closely, to make way with the dangerous intruder. It was perhaps that very evening that priests and merchants agreed on the purchase of a betrayer and a cross. The bourgeoisie were to give the small amount of money necessary; the clergy to find the religious pretext; the foreign government, naturally desiring to be on good terms with clergy and bourgeoisie, would lend its soldiers.