in 1852. In 1856 he organized the banking firm of M. K. Jesup & Company, which after two reorganizations became Cuyler, Morgan & Jesup. He became widely known as a financier, retiring from active business in 1884. He was best known, however, as a munificent patron of scientific research, a large contributor to the needs of education, and a public-spirited citizen of wide interests, who did much for the betterment of social conditions in New York. He contributed largely to the funds for the Arctic expeditions of Commander Robert E. Peary, becoming president of the Peary Arctic Club in 1899. To the American museum of natural history, in New York City, he gave large sums in his lifetime and bequeathed $1,000,000. He was president of the New York chamber of commerce from 1899 until 1907, and was the largest subscriber to its new building. To his native town he gave a fine public library. He died in New York City on the 22nd of January 1908.
JESUS CHRIST. To write a summary account of the life of Christ, though always involving a grave responsibility, was until recent years a comparatively straightforward task; for it was assumed that all that was needed, or could be offered, was a chronological outline based on a harmony of the four canonical Gospels. But to-day history is not satisfied by this simple procedure. Literary criticism has analysed the documents, and has already established some important results; and many questions are still in debate, the answers to which must affect our judgment of the historical value of the existing narratives. It seems therefore consonant alike with prudence and reverence to refrain from attempting to combine afresh into a single picture the materials derivable from the various documents, and to endeavour instead to describe the main contents of the sources from which our knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as an historical personage is ultimately drawn, and to observe the picture of Him which each writer in turn has offered to us.
The chief elements of the evidence with which we shall deal are the following:—
1. First, because earliest in point of time, the references to the Lord Jesus Christ in the earliest Epistles of St Paul.
2. The Gospel according to St Mark.
3. A document, no longer extant, which was partially incorporated into the Gospels of St Matthew and St Luke.
4. Further information added by St Matthew’s Gospel.
5. Further information added by St Luke’s Gospel.
6. The Gospel according to St John.
With regard to traditional sayings or doings of our Lord, which were only written down at a later period, it will suffice to say that those which have any claim to be genuine are very scanty, and that their genuineness has to be tested by their correspondence with the great bulk of information which is derived from the sources already enumerated. The fictitious literature of the second and third centuries, known as the Apocryphal Gospels, offers no direct evidence of any historical value at all: it is chiefly valuable for the contrast which it presents to the grave simplicity of the canonical Gospels, and as showing how incapable a later age was of adding anything to the Gospel history which was not palpably absurd.
1. Letters of St Paul.—In the order of chronology we must give the first place to the earliest letters of St Paul. The first piece of Christian literature which has an independent existence and to which we can fix a date is St Paul’s first Epistle to the Thessalonians. Lightfoot dates it in 52 or 53; Harnack places it five years earlier. We may say, then, that it was written some twenty years after the Crucifixion. St Paul is not an historian; he is not attempting to describe what Jesus Christ said or did. He is writing a letter to encourage a little Christian society which he, a Jew, had founded in a distant Greek city; and he reminds his readers of many things which he had told them when he was with them. The evidence to be collected from his epistles generally must not detain us here, but we may glance for a moment at this one letter, because it contains what appears to be the first mention of Jesus Christ in the literature of the world. Those who would get a true history cannot afford to neglect their earliest documents. Now the opening sentence of this letter is as follows: “Paul and Silvanus and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you, and peace.” Three men with Greek or Latin names are writing to some kind of assembly in a city of Macedonia. The writers are Jews, to judge by their salutation of “peace,” and by their mention of “God the Father,” and of the assembly or society as being “in” Him. But what is this new name which is placed side by side with the Divine Name—“in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”? An educated Greek, who knew something (as many at that time did) of the Greek translation of the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, if he had picked up this letter before he had ever heard the name of Jesus Christ, would have been deeply interested in these opening words. He would have known that “Jesus” was the Greek form of Joshua; that “Christ” was the Greek rendering of Messiah, or Anointed, the title of the great King for whom the Jews were looking; he might further have remembered that “the Lord” is the expression which the Greek Old Testament constantly uses instead of the ineffable name of God, which we now call “Jehovah” (q.v.). Who, then, he might well ask is this Jesus Christ who is lifted to this unexampled height? For it is plain that Jesus Christ stands in some close relation to “God the Father,” and that on the ground of that relation a society has been built up, apparently by Jews, in a Greek city far distant from Palestine. He would learn something as he read on; for the letter makes a passing reference to the foundation of the society, and to the expansion of its influence in other parts of Greece; to the conversion of its members from heathenism, and to the consequent sufferings at the hands of their heathen neighbours. The writers speak of themselves as “apostles,” or messengers, of Christ; they refer to similar societies “in Christ Jesus,” which they call “churches of God,” in Judaea, and they say that these also suffer from the Jews there, who had “killed the Lord Jesus” some time before. But they further speak of Jesus as “raised from the dead,” and they refer to the belief which they had led the society to entertain, that He would come again “from heaven to deliver them from the coming wrath.” Moreover, they urge them not to grieve for certain members of the society who have already died, saying that, “if we believe that Jesus died and rose again,” we may also be assured that “the dead in Christ will rise” and will live for ever with Him. Thus the letter assumes that its readers already have considerable knowledge as to “the Lord Jesus Christ,” and as to His relation to “God the Father,” a knowledge derived from teaching given in person on a former visit. The purpose of the letter is not to give information as to the past, but to stimulate its readers to perseverance by giving fresh teaching as to the future. Historically it is of great value as showing how widely within twenty or twenty-five years of the Crucifixion a religion which proclaimed developed theological teaching as to “the Lord Jesus Christ” had spread in the Roman Empire. We may draw a further conclusion from this and other letters of St Paul before we go on. St Paul’s missionary work must have created a demand. Those who had heard him and read his letters would want to know more than he had told them of the earthly life of the Lord Jesus. They would wish to be able to picture Him to their minds; and especially to understand what could have led to His being put to death by the Romans at the requisition of the Jews. St Paul had not been one of his personal disciples in Galilee or Jerusalem; he had no memories to relate of His miracles and teaching. Some written account of these was an obvious need. And we may be sure that any such narrative concerning One who was so deeply reverenced would be most carefully scrutinized at a time when many were still living whose memories went back to the period of Our Lord’s public ministry. One such narrative we now proceed to describe.
2. St Mark’s Gospel.—The Gospel according to St Mark was written within fifteen years of the first letter of St Paul to the Thessalonians—i.e. about 65. It seems designed to meet the requirements of Christians living far away from Palestine. The author was not an eye-witness of what he relates, but he writes with the firm security of a man who has the best authority behind him. The characteristics of his work confirm the early belief that St Mark wrote this Gospel for the Christians of Rome under the guidance of St Peter. It is of the first importance that
