CHAPTER V

HIS PLAN

JESUS had a plan. There is a decisiveness in his proclamations and a sure-footedness in his goings, which bespeak a goal clearly in view. What was this goal? and how did he propose practically to attain it?

As has already been hinted, Jesus was conversant with the world politics of his time. For this Workingman of Nazareth had an intellect of the first magnitude - a point in him that has not received the attention it deserves. To turn the stream of history from its wonted channel and give it a new direction argues a great heart, but it argues even more a great mind. Ecstatics, such as Francis of Assissi, create a stir; but the world, with a passing attention to the rhapsodizer, continues to jog along pretty much the same. When however an epoch is made, so much so that the world redates its calendar, we are certified that a thinker has appeared. Jesus had one of the master intellects of all time. In its sweep, its incisiveness, its granitic texture and firmness, and in its masculine power to impregnate other minds, it yields to the intellect of no Aristotle or Bacon or Newton. Above every other trait in him, the Carpenter of Galilee was a thinker. To know one's own time is the surest mark of mentality. This mark was his he applied his master intellect to the world politics of his day.

In fact the march of world events occupies so fundamental a position in his teaching, that his mission can almost be summed up in the phrase he himself used -to awaken the people to "the signs of the times." Jesus was a publicist. He had in highest degree the journalist temperament. No other person of that day, not the emperor himself on his uplifted throne by the Tiber, read the times so discerningly nor traced the trend of events with so statesmanly an eye.

For such a reading of the world, Palestine was a more favourable location than Italy. It was more at the centre. In the clash between Europe and Asia which was impending, this hill country of Judah occupied a midmost position. The great eras in human history have lain at the collision point of ideas. The Norman Conquest is an instance; also the Renaissance, when the Crusaders had brought Europe and Asia into contact. Ever the conflict between the East and the West has been the most prolific source of humanity's awakenment, and therefore of humanity's advancement. Such a conflict was about to take place now, with Palestine the meeting point of the racial currents. This was not the first time she had played the part of a buffer state. In earlier days the history of the world had centred around the clash between Egypt and Mesopotamia. To the Old Testament prophets have been ascribed supernatural powers of insight, because they discerned so clearly the outlines of this clash. But their geographical position was in large part the secret. Palestine, set square between these rival powers, and yet aloof from them because of its mountain fastness-hedged in by sea on one side and

desert on the other was a natural observatory. This had been more of a help to those Old Testament journalists than they themselves probably realized.

Now Egypt was replaced by Rome. And instead of the eastern empires of Nineveh and Babylon, were the hosts of Persia Parthian warriors waiting to dispute Rome's claim; with India and the Far East dim in the mists of vast distances, but now bearing into view since the campaigns of Alexander. Mark Antony had sensed this awakening of the East, due to the aggressions of the invasive Roman, and had displayed a real quality of statesmanship in his move to build up from Alexandria as a centre an empire of the East which should rival that of Rome. The importance at this time of the East, as compared with the raw and undeveloped West, appears in the persistent rumours, toward the end of his career, that Julius Cæsar was planning to move the capital of the empire to Ilion, Alexandria, or some eastern centre-rumours which eventually found their fulfilment when the capital was transferred to Constantinople. Had Antony been master of himself, as was Augustus, to give to preparations for war the priceless hours which he spent in dalliance with Cleopatra, the outcome of his fight with Italy might have been different, and a new direction imparted to history.

The clash was to be one between materialism and idealism. From Palestine, to the westward stretched a civilization of roofs; to the eastward, a civilization of tents. The Asiatic mind, bred to the eternal mystery of the desert and evaluating exterior things as but instrumental and tributary to man, has developed soul

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as its chief product. All of the religions have had their origin in Asia. But to the Western world- and Rome was its representative - things were more important than men. Steadily these two opposite civilizations had expanded; now they touched. The combat was on. Jesus foresaw the clash. At that moment Palestine was the focus of the world: and Galilee was the focus of Palestine. Removed from the race exclusiveness of the Jerusalem district, Galilee was cosmopolitan. Friendly intercourse with travellers from many nations had given to the minds of its people a wide horizon. Almost any child in Galilee knew the flow of the world tides, better than a sage in the cloistered Jerusalemite set. From the hill above Nazareth the beholder looked down upon the waters of the Mediterranean, where passed the ships of every nation - corn fleets from Egypt, slavers, the galleys of Antony and Cleopatra, ships of war with their three banks of oars, merchant vessels from a hundred ports. To the eastward from the same hilltop, one sees the Jordan and the district beyond, where Asia's sandy reaches set in. From those same heights Jesus saw to the north the ribbon-like road where ladened camels plodded between Damascus and the coast, trafficking in the spices of Ceylon, the silks of China. And to the south he looked down upon the legions at march along the Roman road from Acre to the Jordan, by the Esdraelon route. Dense indeed would have been the mind that knew not what the presence of those legions meant, and their grim garrisons defacing the landscape. From the Nazareth heights he could almost make out Cæsarea on the coast, where Herod with lavish expenditure had

built a bulkhead into the Mediterranean, to serve as Rome's maritime base for a grim invasion of Asia. (The Parthians, secure in their Persian fastnesses, had thrice defeated the Romans humiliations which, unavenged, would tremble Italy's world empire. For the Parthians would be a nucleus around which the awakening East would rally. And Rome would lose her richest hunting ground.)

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Two civilizations were colliding. As Rome represented the western element, the religion of Israel represented the eastern supremacy of Things, as against the supremacy of Man. Whenever a nation of imperialistic bent comes into contact with some people of a strongly national sentiment, an explosive situation is created. Switzerland, Ireland, the Transvaal, are in proof. Now two continents were in head-on collision. Two opposing lines of historic development, the one culminating in Israel, the other culminating in Rome, were meeting face to face. The issue was joined. There was no longer room in the world for both. Conflict was irrepressible. The greatest imperialistic force the world has seen was square up against the most intense nationality ever known. It was the dramatic moment in history.

The record states that the ferment produced in Jesus by the swirl of these tides, so pregnant of fateful issues, took him for a time well nigh out of himself. The intensity of this particular experience suggests throughout his entire youth a wild warfare of conflicting elements within him, before he had become a coherent being; and now it had reached its crest. So energetic was the