My life and loves Vol. 4

by Frank Harris

  It has always seemed strange to me that Jesus called his disciples, and as many as twelve. Most able men have two or three who cherish their sayings and love to be with them, but we have no record of their selection by the teacher: usually it is the disciples who choose. The story seems to me a little difficult to understand because it is very unusual, and so far as I can discover, not symbolic.

  A little later Jesus will not see his mother or his brethren, nor acknowledge the claims of kinship. There is a possible, even a likely explanation of this: when he engaged his disciples and began his independent career, he first went back to Nazareth, we are told, but his assumption of authority annoyed the people and "filled them with wrath." "Is not this Joseph's son?" they asked. "And have we not his brothers and sisters here with us?" And he had to hide from the indignation of the people.

  We are told expressly: "Neither did his brethren believe in him." His friends and kinsmen, indeed, appear to have shielded him by saying, "He is beside himself"; and their excuse, I imagine, so wounded him that later he refused to see them, declaring that "Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister and mother."

  Again, later, we have the estrangement from his mother in a more pronounced form. "A certain woman of the company," according to St. Luke, lifted up her voice and said unto him: 'Blessed the womb that bore thee and the paps which thou has sucked!' But he said: 'Yea, rather, blessed they that hear the word of God and keep it.' "

  It is extremely difficult to see him through the mist cast about him by his biographers. He begins his Sermon on the Mount with a series of aphorisms such as young men of talent are accustomed to make, some of them intensely characteristic: "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth"- surely the strangest prediction ever made to the children of men!

  And later, the encouragement:

  Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you.

  Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

  Then the most beautiful of all:

  Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

  But after these superb phrases, which seem to show us the very spirit of the young prophet, come verses which one cannot understand at all:

  Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.

  Verily I say unto thee, thou shall by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

  This childish morality, based on fear, is out of time with the rest of the chapter; it was perhaps some youthful expression of submission to authority.

  Jesus returns to the theme again toward the end of the chapter, and lifts it to new heights:

  Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shall love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy.

  But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.

  And again the ineffable word which remains as a commandment: Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

  But the point which first made him clear to me was the revelation of his physical weakness. Why did he fall under the cross? Most men would find it easy enough to carry the cross, which was of dried wood and wasn't very heavy. The first time I saw one was in the Russo-Turkish war of '76–77, when the Turks had crucified some of their opponents; these crosses one could have carried a long time without any difficulty, with one end over one's shoulder and the other trailing on the ground.

  But the chief proof of his weakness is that he is said to have died on the cross within a few hours; at this, we are told, "Pilate marvelled"-and well he might, for most men can endure the torture of the cross for days; and it was to convince themselves that he was really dead that a soldier put the spear into his side and "forthwith came there out blood and water."

  Now if he were dead, he must have been dead for some time, the time at least necessary for someone to go to Jerusalem and see Pilate and return again to Calvary with the order to test the apparent death. If he were dead for a couple of hours, surely nothing would come out of a wound save a little moisture; I therefore draw the conclusion that he had fainted merely and afterwards came to, and through the care of the women who loved him, was able to show himself to his disciples; but the crucifixion had broken him, and the dreadful doubt-"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" — and soon afterwards he died.

  As I told Renan, I disliked his insistence on the personal beauty of Jesus.

  Mohammed was said by every one to be astonishingly good-looking, with splendid eyes, but no disciple at the time seems to have said anything like this of Jesus. What took them was that "he spoke as never man spoke"; and although his face must have been transfigured by his emotion, still it was the message and not the face of the messenger which struck every one as most important.

  Best of all his sayings, I love the story of the woman taken in adultery, the greatest story in the world, if I may judge it.

  It is only recorded by John: was he the beloved disciple because he would recall the highest word?

  Jesus had said time and again that he had come to fulfill the law of Moses and not to change it; and now the Jews brought him a woman "taken in adultery, in the very act," and said: "Moses commanded that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou?"

  Jesus was caught in a flagrant contradiction; he had always said that he had come to fulfill the law, so now to gain time for thought, he stooped and with his finger wrote upon the ground, "as though he heard them not."

  And then he took counsel with his own soul and answered divinely: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

  And the Jews were so honest that "being convicted by their own conscience," they went out, one by one.

  When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, "Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?"

  She said, "No man, Lord!"

  And Jesus said unto her, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."

  Now what does this "Neither do I condemn thee!" mean, save that he, too, was not without sin?

  The puzzling things in the Gospel narrative are the contradictions in spirit: think of that verse in St. Luke: "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before ne. And in almost every one of the Gospels there is some dreadful contradiction of this sort which brings one near doubt. For example, Mark tells us in his first chapter how Jesus came from Nazareth and was baptized of John in Jordan, and the heavens opened and the Spirit like a dove descended upon him. And there came a voice from heaven saying: "Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."

  Afterwards, John was cast into prison, and while there, if we can believe Matthew, he heard of the works of Christ and sent two of his disciples to ask him: "Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?" In other words: "Art thou the Messiah?"

  But how extraordinary, for when John baptized Jesus, he must have seen the heavens opened and the spirit in the form of a dove descending and heard the voice saying: "Thou art my beloved Son." How then could John doubt?

  Even the prayer Jesus taught his disciples hardly reaches his highest: "Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation." I should prefer simply:

  "Give and forgive."

  Why then believe at all in the existence of Jesus? Why not accept the conclusion of Mr. Robertson and others, and, I am told, the great majority of Rabbis, who think that he never existed?

  First of all, it is my conviction that every great movement in the world comes from a great man. I cannot b
elieve that the verses: "Love your enemies…" and "Be ye therefore perfect…" ever came as a part of ordinary belief: such words are the very perfume, so to speak, of an extraordinary and noble nature.

  Besides this, there are the two almost contemporary records: the one in Josephus and the other in Tacitus. The one in Josephus has been tampered with In the interest of so-called Christianity, but the fact that it was inserted already testifies to a personality: and the phrase in Tacitus: "quidam Jesu," confessing contempt-"a certain fellow called Jesus"-is purely Roman, and comes from the same man who thought the murder of fifty thousand Jews, men, women, and children, In the streets of Syracuse "a good riddance."

  Beyond all doubt Jesus lived and died as his disciples tell us, and what consolation there is for all of us in his ultimate triumph. Here is a poor Jew, known only to a few fishermen in a small and despised province of the Roman Empire, speaking a dialect that was only understood by a handful of sectaries, and condemned when between thirty and forty years of age to a shameful death.

  No record of what he said or did for fifty years after his crucifixion, and then nothing but fragmentary memories of three or four unlettered followers. Yet, by virtue of half a dozen sentences and a couple of little parables — how can one help recalling here the Prodigal Son with its message of pure affection- he has come to be a leader and teacher of hundreds of millions of the most intelligent peoples in the world-in some sort, their idol and God.

  Is it not plain from this one example that the Good is imperishable and Divine and must ultimately conquer even in this world?

  For two thousand years, now, Christianity has been preached to us as an ideal; even the ministers of the gospel have regarded its teaching as impracticable, and from St. Paul down, one and all have sought to mix some hard alloy of conventional morality with the golden evangel of Jesus, in order to give it currency among men.

  I wish to go a step further, to push the light a space on into the all-encircling night. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus stated his belief once for all:

  I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.

  And this is put aside as a counsel of perfection. It seems to me the impartial statement of scientific truth.

  Jesus gave no reason for his gospel; did not attempt to prove it, save to the soul by its own virtue. For many centuries the saying was a stumbling block even to the wisest, but when it came to Shakespeare, he saw its everlasting truth and found a reason for it and so added a coping stone to the divine Temple of Humanity. The passage is in Timon of Athens:

  He's truly valiant that can wisely suffer The worst that man can breathe, and make his wrongs His outsides, to wear them like his raiment, carelessly, And ne'er prefer his injuries to his heart, To bring it into danger.

  In other words, if we nurse hatreds we are doing ourselves harm: we must love our enemies, for if we hate them we prefer our injuries to our heart's well being and bring it into danger.

  Shakespeare did not go further than this; he saw that a man should take wrongs done to him lightly and for his own sake should not cherish resentment. It was a great step forward; but there is still a truth behind, which Shakespeare, the most articulate of men, would surely have expressed, had he seen. It is by the heart we grow; hatred injures the heart; dries up the sympathies; impoverishes the blood, so to speak; stops all growth.

  This further truth was revealed to me by my art. I found that till I loved a man I could not understand him, could not see him as he saw himself, and so could not depict him fairly. But as soon as I began to like him, I began to make excuses for his faults, and when I grew to care for him really, I saw that he had no need even to be excused. Hatred gives nothing but the shadows in the portrait: you can make a likeness with shadows alone; but if you want to reveal a man's soul fully, to make a work of art, you must know the best in the man and use high lights as well; and these you can only get from loving comprehension.

  The road up for all of us is sympathy. How fine the Greek word "sympathy" is, and what a lesson it teaches of the divinity of pain; it means literally "to suffer with." We mortals grow near one another by "suffering with" one another, and so come by pain to love and through love to comprehension. Shelley's word is forever true:

  They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

  The French proverb, "tout comprendre est tout pardonner" (to understand all is to pardon all), does not go far enough. If we understand a man perfectly, there is no need to pardon, for we are then above forgiveness, even beyond good and evil; we see why and how he acted.

  And this effort to love our enemy, and so come to see him as he sees himself, is soul-enriching in a thousand ways. First of all, the getting rid of an enemy is exhilarating and delightful. Then every new friend is an acquisition more precious by far than any great portrait to a collector in his gallery; and when we have forced ourselves to annex several of these rich prizes that we had no title to and money could not buy, we begin to see that this is no alien or difficult world, and not dangerous at all. The woods that seemed so dark and threatening to our childhood, now show us shady nooks and gay green glades and pleasant avenues sun-kissed. Love is the guide; and the good magician, Love.

  A new commandment I give unto you: that ye love one another.

  This is the scientific law of life, the end, if not the beginning, of all human morality!

  I was about forty before I came to understand its supreme significance. It influenced me in my conduct of the Saturday Review, as I have stated, in my desire to get the best men to work with me, careless of their opinions, and to set them, so far as possible, to praise and not to blame.

  The message of Jesus has, I think, influenced my life more and more with every year I have lived since, but still I hardly dare call myself a Christian, because I also believe in the pagan view of life. Who can doubt that it is the first duty of man to develop all his faculties to the uttermost, and to enjoy all the beauties and pleasures of life so far as he can without injuring others? The doctrine of love for others only supplements and crowns this primary creed.

  It seems plain to me that the intense spirituality of Christ's teaching has had an unexpected result in increasing sensuality and the sensuous expression of affection. Was it the love of the Magdalen-which, everyone knows, was the heart of the religious enthusiasm of the Middle Ages-which intensified and in some sense ennobled passion, or was this exaltation of the woman who had "loved much" also a result of increasing sensualism- probably at once both cause and consequence?

  It cannot be denied that the growth of sensuality is the chief note of all the centuries since. It is embodied to me in the coming to honor of the kiss.

  Naturally, the kiss in the beginning was a purely maternal act: it is unknown to the Yellow and Negro races, who rub noses instead; in early Sanskrit literature, too, the kiss was always maternal or filial. The kiss seems to have been unknown as a token of love even to the ancient Greeks: there is no mention of a kiss in the love scenes of Homer; and among the ancient Romans, the kiss was a mere salutation.

  It is possible that the Jews were somewhat more advanced; St. Paul advises his followers to greet one another "with an holy kiss," and there seems to me to be a strange confession in that "holy."

  However that may be, the kiss in our time has become even more than a token of love: I cannot but recall Shakespeare's deathless lines to his dark lady:

  Of many thousand kisses, the poor last

  I lay upon thy lips.

  Saint-Beuve, in one of his rare flashes of insight, says: "Nous sommes tons aujourd'hui fils d'une litterature sensuelle" (We are all today children of a sensual literature).

  It is curious to me that even the greatest have done so little to justify the new commandment of Jesus, to love one another.

  Even Cervantes is silent on the matter: his Don Quixote will fight windmills, but is not Quixotic enough to preach the do
ctrine of love to his neighbor; nor does Goethe; and yet what can be plainer than the fact that unless this gospel of Jesus is learned and put to practice, the generations of men will cease to exist?

  A scientist in London wrote me the other day that already they had under control five or six of the original elements. "When we have control of a dozen," he added, "a man will go about with power enough in his waistcoat pocket to destroy a whole city like London or New York." It seems to me possible that men may win power before goodness, and the race may then come to an untimely end. If not, its survival will be in great part due to the divine spirit of Jesus.

  While passing this chapter through the press, news came to me of the recently discovered version of Josephus in the Russian language. This manuscript of "The Jewish War" was found in Esthonia some twenty years ago; it is of supreme interest because it throws new light on the life of Christ, and even records events which are not to be found in the Greek text of the Gospels.

  The original of Josephus' work was written in Aramaic or Hebrew (as is to be inferred from one passage), and the best scholars are now beginning to see that the newly found text was taken from this version; and that certain allusions to the history of Jesus were omitted by the writer from his Greek translation in order not to offend his Roman patrons. Here are some of the most interesting passages from the Russian manuscript:

  At this time arises a man, if one may call him a man, who by his nature and behavior showed himself as if more than human. His works were wonderful, and he worked wonders, strange and powerful. Thus it is possible for me to call him a man; through looking at him in every way, I would also not call him an angel. And all he did, he did by word and command; as if by some inner power. Some said of him that our first law-giver had risen from the dead and showed forth much healing power. Others considered that he was sent of God. But he opposed altogether the Law; and did not hold the Sabbath according to ancestral custom. Yet he did nothing overtly criminal; but by word he influenced all. And many out of the people followed him and received his teaching. And many souls wavered, wondering whether by it the Jewish tribes could free themselves from Roman hands. Now it was a habit of his to stay much on the Mount of Olives in face of the city. And also there he manifested his healing powers to the people. And there gathered to him "Slaves" a hundred and fifty, and many from among the Folk. When they saw his power that all was as he willed by means of the word, they besought him that "he would enter the city and cut down the Roman soldiers and Pilate, and rule over us." But that he scorned.