flections. To him also must have been
presented the query as to his own proper character and functions;
and, as our author acutely demonstrates, his only choice lay between a
profitless life of exile in Syro-Phoenicia, and a bold return to
Jewish territory in some pronounced character. The problem being thus
propounded, there could hardly be a doubt as to what that character
should be. Jesus knew well that he was not John the Baptist; nor,
however completely he may have been dominated by his sublime enthusiasm,
was it likely that he could mistake himself for an ancient prophet
arisen from the lower world of shades, or for Elijah descended from
the sky. But the Messiah himself he might well be. Such indeed was the
almost inevitable corollary from his own conception of Messiahship.
We have seen that he had, probably from the very outset, discarded the
traditional notion of a political Messiah, and recognized the truth that
the happiness of a people lies not so much in political autonomy as in
the love of God and the sincere practice of righteousness. The people
were to be freed from the bondage of sin, of meaningless formalism, of
consecrated hypocrisy,--a bondage more degrading than the payment of
tribute to the emperor. The true business of the Messiah, then, was to
deliver his people from the former bondage; it might be left to Jehovah,
in his own good time, to deliver them from the latter. Holding these
views, it was hardly possible that it should not sooner or later occur
to Jesus that he himself was the person destined to discharge this
glorious function, to liberate his countrymen from the thraldom of
Pharisaic ritualism, and to inaugurate the real Messianic kingdom of
spiritual righteousness. Had he not already preached the advent of this
spiritual kingdom, and been instrumental in raising many to loftier
conceptions of duty, and to a higher and purer life? And might he
not now, by a grand attack upon Pharisaism in its central stronghold,
destroy its prestige in the eyes of the people, and cause Israel to
adopt a nobler religious and ethical doctrine? The temerity of such a
purpose detracts nothing from its sublimity. And if that purpose should
be accomplished, Jesus would really have performed the legitimate work
of the Messiah. Thus, from his own point of view, Jesus was thoroughly
consistent and rational in announcing himself as the expected Deliverer;
and in the eyes of the impartial historian his course is full