All the religious ferment attending the preaching of John the Baptist was not only distasteful to him–it was positively repulsive. It distressed him beyond measure to think that it was possible for one man like this John to so stir the nether depths of humanity that all the purity and lucidity of true faith should become turbid. It was incredible to the wise and even-minded priest that any man–be he never so poor, or ignorant, or credulous–could, in that age of light, listen to the blasphemous assertions of an insane fanatic, that God was really about to send a Son into the midst of such a turbulent and disorderly tumult. How was it possible for any human creature to conceive that the Messiah would appear in the midst of such a rabble as that gathered in the wilderness to a mad baptism? Of what use were the teachings of his twenty years of rational religion if, in a moment, his poor parishioners could so rush away from him and the pure and lucid truths of faith, trampling those truths beneath their feet like a herd of swine, in their rush to hear something that stirred their emotions and was new and startling? He had thought that the poor people in his parish were fond of him, and loved to listen to the words of wisdom he was commissioned to speak. Now he felt that they cared nothing for him, and that all the words he had spoken to them had fallen upon their minds as water falls upon the sand, leaving it as parched and barren as before.
Then one day he sent out addresses to all the prominent clergymen of the different denominations of the city, inviting them to a conference at the rectory of the Church of the Advent to consider what was to be done to counteract the growing disorder.
Some few of those to whom these addresses were sent did not respond, but nearly all who received invitations to the meeting were present. Dr. Caiaphas was a very notable, even a famous man, and the invitation was a compliment to every divine who received it.
Nearly all who were present were strangers to the place, and it was an interesting study of human nature to see the different ways in which the different men bore themselves. Those who were not strangers perhaps assumed an air of intimate acquaintance with their surroundings. One young man, for instance, a fashionable clergyman of the day, who had not been in the house a half-dozen times, stood with his back to the fire smoking a cigar with an air of perfect and authoritative ease. “What did you do with the little Rembrandt that used to hang yonder, doctor?” he called across the room.
The doctor laughed. He understood the workings of the young clergyman’s mind. “Oh, that hangs in the upper hall now,” he said.
Others who were strangers to the place gazed about them, at the cases of beautifully bound books, at the walls covered with paintings and water-colors, some with a sort of half-furtive curiosity, others assuming a studied and obvious air of indifference to the richness and exquisite taste of everything, others evidently honestly impressed with the superabundance of beautiful things, one or two ill at ease–some few even overawed at the magnificence of their surroundings.
The meeting resulted in a rather rambling sort of talk; there were other things spoken of besides John the Baptist–mostly general topics of the same sort–discursive discussions of various heresies. The relation of the classes was talked about, and even politics. But still Dr. Caiaphas held the discussion pretty steadily to the topic in hand. Some who were present regarded the matter as serious enough; others were inclined to permit themselves a sort of clerical jocularity concerning it; he himself tried to throw into the talk the weight he felt it deserved. Maybe a series of addresses from the pulpit would be the better way of reaching the attention of the people, he said. Such a series of addresses might be delivered simultaneously in all the churches. “Oh, if it’s a matter of preaching a sermon,” said Mr. Munjoy, a minister of another denomination–“if it’s a matter of preaching a sermon, why I’m right there. To tell you the honest truth”–here he whispered broadly–“I’m sometimes so close pushed for a theme to preach about that I’m only too glad to have one suggested to me.”
Some of those present laughed. Dr. Caiaphas smiled faintly. “I don’t think that we are exactly in search of a theme to preach about,” he said. “I take it we are rather called together here to consider some mutual effort in defence of God’s truth.”
Mr. Munjoy laughed and helped himself to another cigar.
“What impresses me,” said Mr. Bold, a young clergyman with strong revolutionary tendencies, “is that we shall never be able to treat this subject as we should treat it unless we see with our own eyes what is being done at these baptisms, and hear with our own ears what the man has to say. I don’t believe in sitting in a room and imagining how a thing might be, and then combating the notion. For instance, I was reading your sermon reported in the Aurora this morning,” he said, addressing himself directly to Mr. Lovejoy, a mild-mannered, fashionable clergyman, “about the lost woman, you know. It impressed me you were talking about something you imagined rather than about something you had really seen. Now, did you ever happen to study intimately the life of a real harlot?” Mr. Lovejoy looked ineffably shocked, and a sudden silence fell upon all, while Mr. Bold, in spite of his self-assurance, felt uncomfortably that he had expressed himself unfortunately, and that he had not been understood. “What I mean,” he said, “is that unless you really know something about what you attack from the pulpit, I fail to see how your attack is going to amount to anything. Now, I wonder how many of us have heard this man preach.”
“I’m sure I’ve not,” said Mr. Munjoy. And there was not one of all of them who had thought it worth while to go to John the Baptist to hear what he really had to say.
“Then,” said Mr. Bold, “how are you going to attack what he has to say if you don’t know what he does say?”
“There’s a good deal of truth in what our friend says,” said Dr. Caiaphas, after a moment or two of thoughtful silence.
“And how would you propose to approach the matter so as to deal with it knowledgeably?” asked Dr. Kimberly, a minister of still another denomination.
“I don’t know,” said Dr. Caiaphas. “I’m sure the conference is open to suggestions.”
“How would it do to send down a committee of five to interview him, and to ask him what he has to say for himself?” said Mr. Munjoy, jocularly. And then there was a murmur of laughter.
“Really, though,” said Mr. Bold, after the laugh had subsided, “I don’t know that that is a half bad suggestion.”
“Bad!” said Mr. Munjoy. “I should hope not. I hope you don’t think that a minister of my denomination would suggest anything that was bad.” And then there was another laugh.
The idea of the committee had been proposed in jest, but before the meeting closed it was considered seriously, and was finally adopted. There was still a general feeling of half-repressed jocularity about it all, but, nevertheless, the committee was duly appointed. Mr. Munjoy, as the proposer of the committee, was nominated for chairman, but he declined in a very witty and amusing speech, proposing Dr. Caiaphas in his stead. Dr. Caiaphas was not at all pleased with the sense of levity that pervaded the meeting. It seemed to him that the subject was very serious, and he replied to what Mr. Munjoy had said in a very serious manner. He wished, he said, that some younger man had been chosen. Without at all desiring to shift the burden from his own shoulders, he must say that he really felt that his time was so much taken up with the work of the investigation committee appointed to examine into the police department that it would be almost impossible for him to give to this matter that consideration which it seemed to him to deserve. Nevertheless, if it was the will of those present that he should act as chairman, he would so act to the best of his poor powers.
IV
WHAT WENT YE DOWN FOR TO SEE?
IT was a lovely, balmy day–that upon which our priests and Levites went down to the baptisms of John. It was yet early in March, but the day was as soft and as warm as a day in May.
When the clergymen descended from the train they found the platform crowded with those who had come over from the camp to meet arriving friends, and everywhere arose a confused and inarticulate hubbub of voices. The committee almost forced its way across the platform to where the hacks and carriages of all sorts and kinds stood drawn up in a row, and whence the voices of hackmen dominated loudly all the bustle and noise, adding their quota to the bewildering confusion. The crowd struggled and pushed, and through the ceaseless noise and hubbub there sounded the thin, keen wail of a crying baby.
Mr. Bold chose a ’bus, the committee filled it almost more than full, and it was driven off immediately, among the first to quit the station. A cloud of dust surrounded them as they rattled along the level road, leaving farther and farther behind them the still ceaseless tumult of the crowded platform, above which loomed the locomotive, smoking and hissing gigantically.
The owner of the ’bus stood on the steps behind clinging to the door-frame. “Be you ministers?” said he.
“Yes,” said one of the party.
“Come to the baptism?”
The minister laughed. “No, not exactly.”
“But, talking of baptism,” said Mr. Munjoy, “I wish very much we could find a basin of water and a cake of soap somewhere; it was very dusty coming down.”
The hackman leaned to one side and spat into the dusty road that sped away behind. “Yes,” he assented; “you see, we ’ain’t had no rain now for above two weeks.”
“Pretty bad look-out for salvation, I should say, if the dry weather holds,” observed Mr. Munjoy.
Dr. Caiaphas sat quiet and impassive. The uncomfortable feeling had been growing upon him ever since he left home that he was upon a grotesque fool’s errand.
The road over which they were now passing was heavy and sandy. The sun shone down upon it warmly, and, early as was the season, the fresh grass had begun to show itself in irregular patches of light and dark-green. The sky overhead was blue. In the sunshine it was warm, but those on the shady side of the coach drew their overcoats closer about them. Every now and then the hack would pass little groups or single figures, all plodding along in the direction of the camp. Sometimes there were larger groups of men and women and some children or half-grown girls. Some of the men carried their overcoats over one arm. One group which they passed consisted of three women, one man, and three children. One of the women–thin and frail-looking–carried a young baby, and the two other tired children dragged themselves along, holding each by a hand of another of the women. All these people were of the commoner sort. Some appeared to be working-men with their wives, others appeared not even to be laboring men, but of that great, underlying, nameless class that is still lower in the scale of social existence than the class of producers. Most of these people were evidently dressed in their best clothes, as though for a holiday.
After riding for maybe a mile, the hack turned a bend in the road, and from the summit of a little sandy rise of ground the committee came within sudden sight of the camp.
Every one of them was surprised at the extent of the encampment. As they looked down upon it, it stretched away like a great town of tents and huts. In some places the tents and frame sheds were clustered in a confused mass, in other places they were separated into streets and avenues. Upon the outskirts–the suburbs of this nondescript town–were everywhere clustering groups of carts and wagons and restless crowds of people which grew thicker and thicker in the camp, becoming here and there congested into restless, moving ganglia of humanity. These disconnected groups of people gathered most thickly along the banks of the stream, and far away in the distance was a greater crowd surrounding some central point of interest. The visitors surmised that John the Baptist was the centre of that crowd. Beyond the stream were a few scattered huts, and beyond that a level, green marsh. An inlet from the sea made in part a broken, sandy headland. Beyond that, in the distance, was a wide, sparkling stretch of water with the far, blue line of the farther shore. Above all was the windy arch of sky looking down peacefully and calmly upon the clustered, restless masses of human beings below. There was an indefinable odor of salt in the air, and the wind came across from over the marsh, fresh and cool.
The hack rattled down the road and into the camp in a cloud of dust. It was about noon and many of the people were eating their mid-day meal. Everywhere there were clusters of men and women, sitting in farm wagons or carts munching their food and talking among themselves.
The driver drove for some little distance into the camp, checking his horses every now and then and hallooing to the men and women in his road, who scattered right and left to make way for the rather headlong rate at which he drove. At last he stopped in front of a big frame shed with a rude sign above the doorway, informing the passers that there refreshment was to be had at a cheap and popular price. The shed was open at one end, and within you could see rows of benches and long deal tables. Here the committee got out, one by one, and stood looking about them.
Along the wide, street-like space there fronted a long, disjointed line of huts and tents of all sorts and kinds. The air was full of an indescribable odor as of raw boards and crushed grass. The street was full of a restless, passing stream of men and women and boys, and everywhere was the ceaseless buzz of talking, now and then dominated by the call of some one hallooing to a distant comrade.
The visiting clergymen had no doubt whither to bend their steps. All the crowd seemed to drift and centre in one direction, and they knew that thither they would find him whom they sought. As they passed down along the front of the different tents and huts and shanties, they heard everywhere the clatter of dishes and smelt the odor of cooking. Here and there a hut bore a sign indicating that there lodging was to be had. At one place they passed by where a man, evidently stupefied with drink, lay in the sun by the side of a little frame hut with a canvas cover. A thin, bony woman was cooking a meal of food at a stove behind the hut, and the combined smell of the smoke and frying food filled the air. Two little children came around the side of the hut and stood looking at the committee as it passed.
The motley, restless crowd grew thicker and thicker as the committee approached the spot where they knew John must be found, and at last they had some difficulty in pushing their way through the congested groups. As they elbowed their way, the crowd would look at them and then, seeing they were ministers, would make way for them. Suddenly they came upon the Baptist, almost before they had expected to find him. He was eating a meal of indescribable food, sitting upon the ground, holding the plate upon his knees. He was, indeed, a shaggy, wild-looking figure, thin-faced, sallow, with filmy, restless eyes and a black, coarse mat of hair and beard. He wore the same dress of hairy cloth that the picture in the public journal had represented. The heavy brogans were wet and soaked with water, his legs, showing above the shoe-tops, were lean and hairy. A little cluster of his disciples, or attendants, surrounded him; some of them were eating their food, others, who had finished, were lying stretched upon the ground talking in an undertone. They were all rough, common-looking men, several of them apparently fishermen. Surrounding this group, and at a little distance, the people stood in a crowd looking intently at the Baptist. The committee also stood for a while looking at him; then Dr. Caiaphas came forward.
As the priest approached, the Baptist looked towards him with vacant, lustreless eyes. The sun suddenly came out from behind a passing cloud and shone full upon his face, but he did not wink his eyes nor shade them from the glare.
“My friend,” said the rector of the Church of the Advent, “my name is Theodore Caiaphas. I do not know whether you have heard of me or not, but I have heard of you. I am, as you see, an ordained priest. I and my friends”–here he indicated the others of the committee–“have come down to learn just what it is you preach, just what your opinions are, and just what you advocate. Will you tell me, first of all, who you are?”
John sat looking intently but vacantly at him. He did not speak for a little while. Then he said, in a sudden, loud voice, “I am not the Christ.”
“So I understand,” said Dr. Caiaphas. “But are you a prophet–such a one, for instance, as Elijah?”
“I am not,” said the fanatic, still in the same loud voice.
“Ah! Then you are not even a prophet?” said Dr. Caiaphas.
“No.”
“Who are you, then?” said Dr. Caiaphas; “and what are you? Tell us who you are, that we may give an answer to them that sent us.” He tried not to feel the absurdity of the situation, but some of the other clergymen laughed.
John turned up his face and looked almost directly into the dazzling light of the sun above. He raised his lean arms, with his hands outspread and his fingers stretched wide open. “I am,” he cried, in a loud voice, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Make straight the way, as said Isaiah, the prophet.”
Again two or three of the committee laughed. The disciples of John looked sullenly at them, but the Baptist himself paid no attention to them.
“Then, let me understand,” said Dr. Caiaphas, speaking also in a loud voice so that all might hear–“then, let me understand just what it is you have to say for yourself. Let me hear just what is your claim, for it is for that reason that we have come hither. What I want to understand, and what all these poor people here should clearly understand, is this: If you are not the Christ–and you yourself say you are not–nor such a one as Elijah, nor one having authority to preach, as the saints of the Church had authority–if you are only a voice preaching in the wilderness, by what right do you, then, baptize and grant remission of sins? By what authority do you, then, forgive men their sins?”
John, still with eyes uplifted and with hands outspread, cried out: “I baptize with water, but in the midst of you there stands one whom you know not, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear.” Other words he uttered, as uncomprehendable to the clergymen as these. He still held his arm upraised and his hand outspread for a little. Then he ended suddenly, and as suddenly let his hand fall from his knee, and sat looking about him as though to see what effect his words had upon those who heard them. One of the committee laid his hand upon Dr. Caiaphas’s arm. “Do you not see that it is useless to waste time here?” said he. “What good can come of it, doctor? It is plain to me that the man is mad. Any one with eyes to see and ears to hear may see and hear that for himself. Mr. Hicks tells us that the up-train will be due in twenty-five minutes. We have just comfortable time to make it. If we miss it, we’ll have to wait till five o’clock, and not get into town till after dark. I am sure that I, for one, have seen enough to convince me of the man’s insanity without listening any further to what he has to say.”
Dr. Caiaphas looked at his watch. “Well,” he said, reluctantly, “I suppose we might as well return. I would like to have heard him preach to the multitude, though, and to see how he baptizes them. However, I quite agree with you that he is not right in his mind, and I suppose it would be only a mere matter of curiosity to remain longer.”
If Dr. Caiaphas had on his way down from New York feared that he was on a fool’s errand, he was, indeed, certain of it now. He did not say anything until the committee was on its way back to the station in the hack. Then he spoke.
“I am sorry, gentlemen, that I should have brought you all the way down here only for this. I am afraid”–with a smile–“that the committee did not get much satisfaction from the interview.”
Mr. Munjoy laughed. “I am sure,” he said, “that we are all very glad to have suffered a little inconvenience to have satisfied Dr. Caiaphas.”
The words were good-natured enough, but they made Dr. Caiaphas still more uncomfortable. “Indeed,” he said, “I am glad to be satisfied, but that was not exactly my object in bringing you all down here. I am sorry that you have taken a journey that is uncomfortable to yourselves only to satisfy me.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Mr. Munjoy, laughing. “This time to-morrow we’ll have ceased to think anything about the inconveniences of to-day. I am sure many of us have squandered a half-day ever so much more uselessly than this.”
Then there was nothing more said.
Thus I have endeavored to describe that incident as nearly as possible as it occurred. Since then a sentimental lustre has arisen to envelop it, and the world has come to accept it that those priests and Levites were blind in that they did not at once see the truth. But I think intelligent humanity will agree that it was impossible for the priests and Levites among us to accept the divine truth in such an astonishing guise as that which they then beheld.
It is entirely true that God moves ever in ways incomprehensible to the finite mind. His wisdom is not according to our wisdom, nor His order according to our order. But it cannot be possible that He expects us, scribes and pharisees, whom He has endowed with intelligence and reason, to accept that which was so unintelligent and so unreasonable. If He endows us with reason, He cannot expect us to accept that which is unreasonable. Who is there of our class to-day who would not have revolted against the baptism of John when it was first instituted?
AN INTERLUDE
IT is necessary here, and at another place, to introduce an interlude into the story. These interludes are designed as threads to connect the different parts of the narrative together. They are each a suggestion instead of a description; for even a description of things holy would too much shock the sense of propriety of us scribes and pharisees.
For the accepted religion of the civilized world has become so enveloped with wrappings of spiritual ideality that it is impossible to strip away those investments and to show the reality in all its nakedness. Such an exposure would too much violate our accepted religious ideas. It would not do for any man to tell just how it was that Christ actually did appear in the midst of that motley multitude; nor would it do for any pharisee among us to listen to the story.
Either the truth would sound blasphemous, or else, if it were accepted and received, then we scribes and pharisees, priests and Levites of to-day would rise up and stone it and crucify it exactly as we did of old.
Since those times we have grown accustomed to say that we believe in Christ–even though we do not really believe. Expressed belief and real belief are very different matters. What we think we believe in is not the living Christ as He was in the flesh, but a Christ we have created for ourselves–a white-robed, visionary figure that passes through the world of humanity like a spirit rather than like a man of flesh and blood.
For the story of Christ is surrounded by the narrative of such incredibly miraculous happenings that it is necessary for us to create such a spiritual image, or else we cannot believe those narratives at all. It is with us now as it was in those ages past–we cannot bear to have the spiritual image of truth blasphemed by the living fact. In our souls we disbelieve that which seems to us to be unbelievable. We endeavor to stimulate faith, first by saying that we believe, and then by creating for ourselves an imaginary image of Christ who might have performed the miracles if He had really lived.
Nearly all intelligent and thoughtful men really do believe in the existence of an infinitely intelligent and infinitely powerful deity.
For a man has but to gaze about him and he beholds, with the eyes of his flesh, infinity itself–infinity of what is great; infinity of what is minute; infinity of time; infinity of space.
These are actual entities, for we know that there never was and never can be a time in which there was no created thing–not even vacuum–and we know that there can be no limit to space in which everything–even space itself–ceases to exist. The very material universe exists infinitely, and we behold with the eyes of the flesh. We do not comprehend it, yet we know that it really is.
In the hollow vault of night we behold countless myriads of huge and flaming suns, scattered like dust through the sky, or sparkling in points of radiance, and we know that that created stellar system extends, without limit, into the emptiness of limitless space. We know that each incredibly gigantic sun–flaming with light and heat–follows a perfect and well-assigned orbit. We know that about each of these glorious suns there must revolve scores of planets, like this earth upon which we stand.
Seeing this fact with our eyes, it is not possible for the reason to suppose that all this well-ordered and perfect system of enormous stellar and planetary system was created, is governed, is sustained by blind and chaotic chance. Chance never built even so much as a brick wall. How could it, then, create a living sun whose heat and light give life to the planets that revolve about it?
There must be a Creator for these things–a Creator infinitely potent, infinitely intelligent–or else those things could not have been created.
On the other hand, man looks about him upon the earth, and there he beholds an equally and infinitely perfect creation. For every one of the myriad blades of grass, and every one of the myriad leaves of the trees, and every one of the myriad flowers of the field, is, in itself, as tremendously perfect in its every minutest particular as is the greatest sun that flames in the empty heavens. Not only does it live in a minute and orderly sequence of progressive existence, but it possesses an infinitely vital power of procreation, so that each tiny seed, under proper circumstances, has the power of filling the entire universe with its progeny.
Every bird, beast, and fish is not only exactly fitted into its surroundings–not only is each perfect even unto every hair, feather, and scale–not only is each endowed with a vitality that enables it upon an instant to adapt itself to the circumstances of its existence; but each in itself is endowed with the same potentiality of indefinitely procreating its kind with equal bodily perfection.
These things can neither be created nor sustained excepting by an intelligent Creator who makes and sustains them; for it is impossible for any reasoning man to suppose that vacuity and death has created that which is a fact and is alive–that nothingness can have created that which is not only perfect in itself, but which is endowed with such infinite potentiality.
And at the apex of all creation stands man himself, so nicely and perfectly adjusted to the conditions that surround him that it takes only a few degrees in the variation of so small a thing as the temperature of the air to destroy him or to sustain his life. And each man possesses not only volition, but thought and reason to such particularity that each tiny idea may be continued to infinity; or, when applied to the things of nature, may evolve a physical phenomenon that can affect or transform the entire economy of the world in which he lives.
Whence comes this perfect and intelligent life? Man does not cause himself to think, nor does he cause himself to live. He may shape and direct his thoughts, but intelligence comes to him without his own volition. He receives these things, but he does not cause either the one or the other to be created.
That which causes life and intelligence to exist and to inflow into man is and must be infinite vitality and infinite intelligence–an omniscient Creator–or else these things must spring from nothing.
Thus any man who thinks and reasons within himself must perceive that there actually is and does exist a divine and infinite Creator.
But that which we scribes and pharisees, priests and Levites, cannot really accept is the fact that this infinite Creator–this tremendous God, who sustains the universe and who flings blazing suns and planets by the handful through the heavens–that this omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Divinity should actually have become finitely incarnate upon this earth. It is still more impossible for us to believe with our reason that the humble wife of a common carpenter should have given Him birth as a little, whimpering, helpless babe among the cattle of a stable in Palestine.
Our caste has been compelled by the force of circumstances to accept this as a dogma, but we cannot believe it in our hearts. Consequently we build for ourselves an ideal Christ who is so different from the actual Christ that, were the real Christ to appear to-day, we would crucify Him exactly as we did nineteen hundred years ago.
It is, indeed, the crowning truth of the ages that Jehovah did enter finitely into the flesh of a man; that He was miraculously conceived; that He was born in a stable in Bethlehem, and that His mother was the wife of a journeyman carpenter, who had a carpenter-shop in Nazareth. But that truth is not for us; consequently we either become sadducees and deny the resurrection of the soul, or else we are pharisees who, with a helpless hypocrisy, try to cause ourselves, by some hocus-pocus of inverted reasoning, to believe that which we do not believe.
We do not really believe that the actual laws of nature were ever so preposterously violated as the Scriptures tell us. No rational pharisee ever really believed that water, at a touch, can be actually transmuted into wine; or that dead and gangrenous flesh ever was, at a touch, actually transformed into healthy tissues; or that eyes organically imperfect ever were, at a touch, made to receive the light like healthy orbs.