visionary as to imagine that the unregulated promptings of a community are sufficient to insure order, is to forget his feeding of the five thousand,[1] his regard for the conventionalities of ceremonial purifications;[2] his unwillingness to interfere with the the work of John;[3] his systematic evangelization of Palestine;[4] the repeated counsel and instruction which he showered upon his followers. These facts, it is true, do not point towards a theory of the state, but they certainly suggest a mind that was eminently ordered and respectful of formal rather than instinctive order.
IV.
Was then Jesus a socialist, a monarchist, a democrat? Again must it be said he was neither. He stands committed to no political teaching. In this particular he is unique among the great teachers who have affected the West. Others, like Plato and Mahomet, have yielded to the temptation of systematic thought or circumstances and have weighted their philosophy and their religion with political teachings that were either so ideal as to be impracticable or so practicable as to be soon outgrown. Jesus felt the force of the same temptation.[5] It was not through apathy that he refused to enter the sphere of political thought. The people demanded it, the professional teachers expected it, the Romans in name punished him for it. But with that concentration and foresight that continually grows upon the student of his life, he held himself sternly to the duties of a preacher of religion and morals. It was enough when he had shown the fatherly monarchy of God, and the fraternal obedience of men. As in the case of the family, the details through which this conception of society should be approximated would be determined by the spirit of brotherliness and the exigencies of circumstance and time.
- ↑ Mark 6:14.
- ↑ Mark 1:44.
- ↑ John 4:1–3.
- ↑ Mark 1:35–37. Compare his sending out of his disciples for the same purpose.
- ↑ Matt. 4:8.
apostles (Matt. 10:2–4; Mark 3:16–19; Luke 6:14–16). In all accounts the same names (so far as they can be identified) occur in the same group of four, and the first of each of these groups is always Peter, Philip, James.
