5

just considered, none whatever attaches to the account of the baptism of Jesus. It forms a part of the Gospel of Mark, one of our earliest sources, and was regarded as so important that each of the other Gospels repeated it. It forms a part of what Professor Bacon twenty years ago happily denominated the autobiography of Jesus. I am not sure but that Bacon has since changed his mind about the matter, but, even if he has, in my judgment his cogent argument stands. At the time that Jesus drew forth from Peter, in the retirement at Cæsarea Philippi, the confession "Thou art the Christ," Jesus himself drew aside for a little the veil of his inner life and recounted enough of his experience at the Baptism and Temptation, so that they could understand on what, in his own soul, the Messianic claim rested. The account of the Baptism and Temptation is then autobiographical material. According to the earliest form of this narrative:

"Straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove descending upon him: and a voice came out of the heavens, 'Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased.'"

These words clearly record an experience of Jesus. It was Jesus who saw the Spirit descending; it was Jesus who heard the voice saying: "Thou art my beloved Son." After the manner of Oriental speech, the language clearly describes in objective terms an experience in the soul of Jesus. This experience, was, however, so intense that Jesus heard the voice speaking. Writers on mysticism tell us that, “In many instances, especially with persons of peculiar psychical 5" The Autobiography of Jesus," in the American Journal of Theology, II, 1898, pp. 527-560.

6 The labored argument of writers like Nathaniel Schmidt, Prophet of Nazareth, New York, 1905, p. 262 ff., by which it is attempted to show that all this material is invention, is peculiarly unconvincing.

disposition, the mystical experience is attended with unusual phenomena, such as automatic voices or visions, profound body changes, swoons, or ecstasies. These physical phenomena are, however, only the more intense and excessive resonances and reverberations which in milder degree accompany all psychical processes." "

From the point of view of healthy-minded experts on mysticism this passage in Mark records a great mystical experience of Jesus. It marked the point when his earlier profound but not fully developed consciousness of intimate relations with that Great Beyond that we call God reached an, epoch-making point in its development, and he realized that he was in a unique sense the Son of God, and that, whatever the real content of the Messianic expectations of the seers of his race might be, it was his mission to fulfill them. When one pictures to himself what such Messianic expectations as those set forth in the Enoch Parables (Enoch, chapters 46 and 48) meant to the devout Jew, what visions of exalted destiny, of preëxistence, and of future mission they must have evoked when, also, one considers what the fine and sensitive psychical organization of Jesus must have been, one realizes a little the intensity of the experience that was his at the moment of his baptism. No wonder that his eye seemed to see a vision, and his ear to hear a voice!

For the events which followed, we still have the authority of the autobiography, for the account of the Temptation is a part of the autobiography. The narrative of the Temptation formed, according to one school of critics, a part of the document Q; according to another, a part of G, or the Galilean document. In either case it was a part of an evangel which was composed but little, if any, later than the Gospel of Mark, and its historical value is as good.

It has been assumed above that the unique sonship of God of which Jesus became conscious at the Baptism carried with

7

Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, IX, 1917, p. 84.

it a realization that he was the Messiah. This is conceded by most writers on the subject, for it was in accord with Old Testament usage. In the Old Testament the king was the Messiah, the Anointed one, and the king is several times called son of God"; cf. 2 Sam. 7: 14; Ps. 82: 6. While the statement of Sanday is no doubt true, that for Jesus the term is far from being exhausted by the holding of a certain office, or the fulfilling of certain functions, such as those of the Messiah - that it means for him the perfection of sonship in relation to God-it doubtless included the Messiahship, and at the moment of the experience the functions of the Messiahship appear to have been uppermost in the thought of Jesus. It was necessary for him to adjust himself to these hoary expectations of the Jewish people before he could center his thought upon the other far-reaching implications of the term.

For this purpose he withdrew alone into the wilderness to think. At first his thoughts were so absorbing that he forgot entirely the demands of the body. From this intense reverie he was at last awakened by the rude pangs of hunger. At first the fact that he could still hunger startled him. Apocalyptists had pictured the Messianic age as a time of unimaginable material plenty. It was to be inaugurated by a great feast. Could he who, alone in a barren wilderness, was famishing without even a scrap of food really be the Messiah? Such was the meaning of the first temptation. Then came the suggestion, "Command this stone that it become bread." Every wilderness in Palestine is full of stones. The Messiah was a heavenly being. The age in which Jesus lived believed that every real prophet, even, could work miracles. Natural laws were hardly known; men lived in an Arabian-Nights

8 Cf. N. Schmidt, "Son of God," Encyclopædia Biblica; W. Sanday, "Son of God in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible; J. Stalker, "Son of God" in Hastings' Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels; B. W. Bacon, Jesus The Son of God, New Haven, 1911, p. 29 ff.

world. The suggestion was most natural. With this insight into the heart of things that characterizes Jesus always, he repelled this suggestion. His mind reverted to the statement of Deut. 8:3: "Man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of Yahweh." In other words Jesus centered his thought in this initial meditation upon his Messianic mission, not on material things bread, feasts, material miracles—but upon the fact that real sonship consists in doing the will of God. The Messiahship, as he viewed it, consisted, not in miraculously escaping the common lot, but in doing the will of God. The Messianic mission was not to enable men to escape the common lot by living in a world where on one vine would be a thousand branches, and each branch would produce a thousand clusters, and each cluster would produce a thousand grapes, and each grape would produce a cor of wine," "9 but to enable them to do the will of God in the world of perplexity, difficulty, and struggle in which they now live.

When these thoughts had passed through the mind of Jesus, there was presented to him, according to the Gospel of Luke (I believe the order of the Temptations in Luke is the true psychological order), a further problem as to the kind of Messiah he would be. According to the Messianic expectations of his race, the Messiah was to rule a worldwide domain. Before the mind's eye of Jesus the kingdoms of the world passed in review. The graphic language of the Gospel represents the devil as saying to him: "To thee will I give all this authority and the glory of them: for it hath been delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship before me, it shall be thine." What does this language mean? We shall not, I believe, go far astray, if we understand it to mean that the temptation was presented to Jesus to proclaim himself the 9 Apocalypse of Baruch, 29:5.

The ancient world had been for

kind of Messiah the Jews were expecting, and to seek worlddominion by force of arms. centuries a scene of slaughter and plunder. There were no international ethics. However much some Babylonian and Egyptian kings may have sought to establish justice within their own borders, the invasion and plunder, the subjugation and pillage of other countries had been a praiseworthy procedure for every monarch whose energy demanded an outlet. To some, such pillage had been a regular trade. The cruelties practiced on such raids were limited only by the fertility of the imaginations of the conquerors and the scientific knowledge at their disposal. Force had ruled. Might made right. All the great empires had been built up on this basis. What that means for mankind, the Germans have, in these past years, made us vividly to realize. For his Messianic kingdom, the Jew had conceived no other basis than force. Such justice as it would mete out was probably in his thought usually limited to members of his own race. Was this the kind of kingdom for Jesus to establish? He knew that thousands of Jews would gladly rally to his standard, if he would but unfurl the banner of the Messiah, and that they would shed their last drop of blood to win world-empire. This was the natural, the easy way. Along this path lay popularity, glory, and revenge upon century-old enemies.

The vision tempted even Jesus for one brief moment, then he put it aside. Such unethical employment of force would be serving Satan. It could establish no kingdom of God. At the best it would but gain the mastery over the bodies of men, while every soul worthy of the name would seethe with hatred and rebellion. "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only thou shalt serve," was the thought that prevailed in his mind. That is, Thou shalt love and reverence justice, kindness, unselfishness, or rather the One who embodies all these. Thou shalt give thy life to establish kindness, fairness, unselfishness, and love in the hearts of