Great characters of the New Testament

^^^^ Of ?nwc^

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM
THE GIFT OF TONGUES

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOOK EVER WRITTEN
PAUL AND HIS EPISTLES
JOHN AND HIS WRITINGS

THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS AND THE BOOK OF ACTS

Great Characters of the
New Testament

By
Doremus A. Hayes

THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN

NEW YORK CINCINNATI

SMITH & LAMAR
NASHVILLE DALLAS RICHMOND

Copyright, 1920, by
DOREMUS A. HAYES

Ox Jhe Bible text pnnted in italics m this volume is taken from the American
btandard Edition of the Revised Bible, copyright, 19CI, by Thomas Nelson &
00ns, and is used by permission.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Introduction 7

I. Judas Maccabeus, a Leader of Pre-

New-Testament Times 9

II. John the Baptist 17

III. Jesus the Leader 24

IV. Jesus the Teacher 31

V. Jesus the Messiah 38

VI. Simon Peter, the Leader of the

Apostles 45

VII. Paul the Missionary 51

VIII. Paul the Pastor 57

IX. Paul the Statesman and Writer 63

X. The Unknown Apostolate 69

XI. John the Beloved 76

XII. How the New Testament Was Written 83

INTRODUCTION

This book has been written by the author at the
request of the editors. It is offered as an elective
course in Bible study for teachers and for young
people who look forward to teaching. Together
with a companion volume, Great Characters of the
Old Testament, it is intended especially for those
who are not prepared for the study of the more
thorough Bible study textbooks of our curriculum
of training. There is no thought on the part of
either author or editors that the book is a sufficient
or complete textbook on the New Testament. It is
believed to be so simply written and so interesting
a narrative that it can be used in situations where a
more thorough and technical treatment would be
impracticable. It is hoped that the use of this book
will create an interest in the New Testament that
will lead to further study. It is intended to serve
merely as an introduction to New-Testament study.

There is much to be said for an approach to the
study of the Bible through its great characters. The
author of the Epistle of Hebrews opens with this
declaration: ^'God, having of old time spoken unto

7

8 INTRODUCTION

the fathers in the prophets, . . . hath at the end of
these days spoken unto us in his Son. . . ." The
language is significant. God hath spoken in the
prophets. He hath spoken in the apostles. Above
all hath he spoken in his Son. The characters and
lives of the great men of the Bible are in a very real
and true sense the Word of God. To become ac-
quainted with them, to understand the motives by
which they were moved, to see them in action, to
hold fellowship with them, is to understand the
thought and purpose and will of God.

There is a kind of Bible study that has a tendency
to become lost in the mechanics of the process.
Students have been known to become so absorbed
in the problems of authorship, dates, and textual
criticism as to miss entirely the great moral and
spiritual meanings of the Word. A study of the
lives of the great men of the Bible is not subject to
this danger.

The study of the textbook should be accompanied
by a parallel reading and study of the Bible. The
extent of such study to be expected in a particular
case can be best determined by the teacher. In every
instance some assignments for reading and study
should be made.

The Editors.

CHAPTER I

JUDAS MACCABEUS, A LEADER OF PRE-
NEW-TESTAMENT TIMES

The eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the He-
brews has been called the Westminster Abbey of
the New Testament. It contains the honor roll of
God's heroes of the faith. It lists the great names
from Abel to Moses and tells something of their
great deeds. Then, as time fails in which to make
the list complete, the author gives a summary of the
victories of the later heroes down to the time of the
Maccabees. Of these he says that they were "desti-
tute, afflicted, ill-treated (of whom the world was
not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains
and caves, and the holes of the earth." In First
Maccabees we are told how Mattathias and his
sons were made to flee into the mountains, and in
Second Maccabees the Jews tell how they kept the
Feast of Tabernacles "when they were wandering
in the fields and the caves after the manner of wild
beasts." The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews
may have had these passages in mind when he wrote

9

10 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

the closing words of his summary, and he thought
that while the world was not worthy of these heroes
among the Maccabees, they were well worthy of a
place in his list. We likewise may deem them
worthy of our study.

The armies of Alexander the Great had con-
quered all of the East, and upon his death his em-
pire was divided among his generals. The land of
the Jews fell to one of these and so came under the
Greek dominion and influence. It was the aim of
the Greek conquerors to introduce Greek culture
and civilization among their subjects in the Orient.
Many of the Jews were ready to adopt the new
customs, and in the course of time most of them
seem to have joined themselves with the heathen
and to have forgotten the strict observance of the
Jewish law. There were the pious, who clung to
the traditions of the fathers, but more and more
the people seemed inclined to forsake these and to
enjoy the greater freedom of the foreign ways.

At last Antiochus Epiphanes thought that the
right time had come to root out the Jewish religion
altogether and to put in its place the heathen wor-
ship and faith. He took possession of the city of
Jerusalem and of the Temple. He profaned the
holy place. He ordered that all the Jewish sacrifices
should cease, that the Sabbath should no longer be
kept, and that the Jews should build altars to the

THE NEW TESTAMENT ii

heathen gods and do all their worshiping before
these. The rich and those in political positions and
even some of the priests were disposed to fall into
line with the royal decree. The king's will was done
in Jerusalem, but things did not go so well in the
country.

A priest named Mattathias had withdrawn to a
little village some thirteen miles west of Bethel;
and when the king's messengers came there (to
Modin) to compel the people to sacrifice to the
heathen gods, Mattathias told them that even if all
the nations obeyed King Antiochus so as to depart
from the law of the fathers, he and his sons and
his brethren would be true to that law until death.
Then when a Jew came forward to sacrifice to the
idols, Mattathias slew him and also the king's agent
and representative and then called upon all who
would be faithful to Israel's God to follow him and
his sons into the mountains, where they might
escape from the wrath and power of the king. It
was a most daring act. It was raising the flag of
revolt against a great empire. It seemed utterly
hopeless. This father and his five sons set out to
free the Jews from the hated foreign tyranny.
Many joined them, and a considerable army was
raised. When Mattathias came to die he called all
his sons together and recited to them his own list
of the heroes of the faith in all the Jewish history

12 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

and exhorted them to consider that in all the genera-
tions none that trusted God ever had failed in
strength. Then he appointed Judas, his third son,
to be the leader of the army and to manage the war
of the people.

The after history justified his choice. Judas
came to be known as "the Hammerer," who dealt
sturdy blow upon blow upon the enemy until the
Jewish arms came to be famous and respected
through the whole world. In one year he had de-
feated the Syrian generals Apollonius and Seron,
although they had superior forces, and his own
people had tried to dissuade him from attempting
conclusions with them. Judas replied: *'There is
no difference in the sight of the God of heaven to
deliver with a great multitude or with a small com-
pany; for the success of war is not in the multitude
of the army, but strength cometh from heaven."
His faith was honored in the complete overthrow
of the foe.

Antiochus was angry as well as very disappointed,
and he sent half of his army to destroy these rebel-
lious Jews. His kinsman Lysias was in charge of
the expedition, and three famous generals com-
manded the forces. They arranged beforehand
with slave dealers to purchase the Jewish prisoners
they were sure to capture and came on with a great
multitude of men. Judas and his army fasted and

THE NEW TESTAMENT 13

prayed for one day at Mizpah and then went out
to meet them; for Judas had said to them: "It is
better for us to die in battle than to see the evils
of our nation. Nevertheless, as it shall be the will
of God in heaven, so be it done." In this spirit of
resignation to the worst and of faith for the best
they set forth and fell upon the main army and
defeated it and set fire to its camp; and when a
detachment sent out to entrap them came later and
saw the flames, its members were seized with great
fear and fled away into their own land. It was a
great and almost incredible victory, and all the Jews
were ready to say with Judas, "There is one that
redeemeth and delivereth Israel."

The next year Lysias himself came with a still
larger army, which Judas decisively defeated. Then
Judas and his brethren went up to Jerusalem, where
the Temple worship had been neglected for three
years. They found shrubs growing up in the courts
of the sanctuary as in a forest or on the mountains,
its gate burned, its chambers thrown down, and
its altar profaned. They built a new altar, restored
all the holy vessels, and renewed the Temple wor-
ship. A Feast of Dedication was celebrated at this
time, and this feast was continued, year after year,
as long as the Temple stood. Jesus walked in the
Temple porch during the celebration of the Feast
of the Dedication in his day, when the Jews took

14 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

up stones to stone him because they thought that
he, being a man, made himself God.

The Maccabees never had been defeated thus far
in their struggle, and their victories continued for
some time longer. They freed from their imprison-
ment those of their countrymen who had been shut
up in the fortresses of Gilead and Galilee and be-
gan to think of political independence as a possi-
bility for their people. However, the odds against
them were too great at this time. Lysias advanced
again with a great army, and at Bethzur, Judas
suffered his first defeat. A crisis in the home gov-
ernment called Lysias away at this juncture, and
he made a treaty with Judas and granted religious
liberty to the Jews in the hope that they would
cease to trouble him. This was the prize for which
the Maccabees had fought, so there was great re-
joicing throughout the land. Judas was regarded
as the savior of the national religion and the pre-
server of the prescribed worship of the one true
God.

Antiochus died, and Lysias was killed by a politi-
cal rival; but the new king sent a new army into
Judaea at once. Judas met this army and defeated
it twice, but realized that the imperial forces were
too strong for his little band to cope with, so tried
to make an alliance with the new power of Rome;
but before Roman help could reach him, a new

THE NEW TESTAMENT 15

army, so superior in numbers that it seemed hope-
less to oppose it, entered Judaea. Most of his men
deserted him, but Judas made a brave stand with
eight hundred faithful ones, who did their best but
were defeated. Judas himself was slain. All the
people of Israel bewailed him with great lamenta-
tion and mourned for him many days. They said,
"How is the mighty man fallen, that saved the
people of Israel!"

Jonathan, the brother of Judas, succeeded him
in the leadership of the Jewish forces and was quite
successful both in diplomacy and battle. When he
was made a prisoner and afterward slain, his
brother Simon took his place. Simon was the last
of the brothers and he completed their work by
gaining for his people both religious liberty and
political independence. For thirty years they had
carried on the war their father had begun and they
had been successful beyond their fondest hopes.
Their descendants were not equal to them; and
although they remained the ruling family in Judaea
almost down to the time of Jesus, their weakness
and their corruption proved that they had not pre-
served either the pious or the patriotic spirit of their
fathers. The memory of the first Maccabees kept
alive the nationalistic spirit among the Jews and
their great hope of a coming Deliverer. As a
people they were intensely patriotic and incurably

i6 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

sanguine of their future greatness and dominance
among the nations of the earth. When their Re-
deemer had come, it may well be that the history
of Judas the Hammerer and the fortunes of his
family and their dynasty helped Jesus of Nazareth,
during the days of the great temptation, to conclude
that any lasting redemption of his people and of the
race was not to be found in militarism and violence
and force, and that the kingdom of God could come
only through the preaching and the practice of
righteousness, peace, and love.

Questions for Your Consideration

How far do you think that the church ought to
be subordinate to the state ?

Do you believe that patriotism and religion ever
can be antagonistic in their demands? Can you
give examples?

What would you list as the virtues of Judas, and
what, if any, were his faults?

Books for Reading and Study

The books of Maccabees.
The Age of the Maccabees, Streane.
History of the Jewish People: Maccabean and
Roman Periods, Riggs.

THE NEW TESTAMENT 17

(

CHAPTER II
JOHN THE BAPTIST

The glory of the Maccabees had faded away.
Their dynasty had come to an end. The Romans
now ruled the world, and Herod was king in Jeru-
salem. The Temple worship still went on, but the
Jews were a subject people. They were waiting
for the Messiah promised in the prophets and hop-
ing that he would be a better Saviour to the people
of Israel than even Judas the Hammerer had been.
Then a preacher appeared in the wilderness of
Judaea — a man of strange appearance and of
strange power. The report of his message spread
through all the land, and multitudes went out from
the synagogues and the cities to see this new prophet
and to listen to all he had to say. He became the
most popular preacher of the day, for he was an
honest and earnest man and he had a message that
was well worth speaking — a message of both judg-
ment and hope.

This messenger was John. It had been prophe-
sied of him at the time of his birth that he should

i8 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

turn many of the children of Israel unto the Lord
their God and make ready for the Lord a people
prepared for him. He was a forerunner — a herald
of a better day. He was of priestly descent, but
he possessed the spirit and the power of the prophet
Elijah. He was reared in the solitudes and lived
an abstinent life, studying the Scriptures and com-
muning with nature until he was prepared for his
public message and ministry.

For more than three centuries the voice of
prophecy had not been heard in the land. The last
of the Old-Testament prophets had been Malachi,
and that name meant "my messenger." This man
was a new Malachi, a new messenger from God.
The preachers of the Christian faith were to be
called "apostles," and that word meant "those sent."
This man was a preacher of the Messianic kingdom
at hand; he was a "man sent from God." He was
a Malachi-apostle. He was to close the old dis-
pensation and to usher in the new.

John came to call the people to repentance and
to bear witness of Jesus. As the people received
his message, he baptized them as a symbol of their
readiness to welcome the Messiah when he came.
John preached not to start a revival, to create a
sensation, or to astonish the people with his elo-
quence; he came as a witness, that he might bear
witness of the light. That was the whole of his

THE NEW TESTAMENT 19

work, and he did it well. The revival, the sensa-
tion, the astonished and repentant multitudes, came
in due order. They were the result of honest, per-
sistent, fearless witnessing. A witness is of value
only in so far as his testimony is important. John
realized this to the full. He declared that he was
only a voice, but he had something to say which was
worth hearing. He was of no consequence, but
his message was all-important. The people believed
it, and multitudes of them were baptized In the
Jordan, repenting their sins.

There is no finer illustration of unselfishness to
be found in the pages of history than that furnished
by John the Baptist. He must have had his tempta-
tion in the wilderness as well as his Lord. When
the multitudes flocked out from the cities to hear
him, he found himself the center of a great popular
movement. He seemed to be sweeping everything
before him. There were those among his enthusi-
astic followers who said: ''Nothing like this has
been seen or heard in Israel for hundreds of years.
This is a great prophet. Possibly the greatest of
the prophets is here." There were some who were
saying, "He is Elijah." There were some who were
whispering to each other, "He is the Christ." Was
he never tempted to claim any of these titles ? Did
it never occur to him that he might use for his own
benefit some of the reputation thus thrust upon

20 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

him? It would seem that he must have been more
than human if it did not. We have seen a modern
religious leader yield to just such a temptation and
call himself "the Second Elijah"; but there is no
slightest trace in the history of even a momentary
yielding to the temptation on the part of John. Like
the Master he was continually conqueror. A depu-
tation from Jerusalem, sent by the Pharisees, ques-
tioned him as to his person and mission. He told
them that he was not the Christ and not Elijah and
not the prophet; he said that he was only a voice.
But that voice, while claiming nothing for itself,
was proclaiming a most startling bit of news: '7n
the midst of you standeth one whom ye know not,
, , . the latch'*t of whose shoe I am not worthy to
unloose"

Jesus was standing there, and he heard what
John had to say concerning him. Long afterward,
at Csesarea Philippi, did he recall this scene and
think of the contrast presented? Multitudes here;
the little group of disciples there. The priests and
Levites questioning here or repeating to John the
questions raised everywhere by the people in those
days; Jesus himself questioning there concerning
what the people were saying and thinking. The
first question asked of John the Baptist here, "Art
thou the Christ?"; the first answer made to the
Christ there, "Some say that thou art John the

THE NEW TESTAMENT 21

Baptist.'* The second opinion of the public, pre-
sented to each — "Thou art Elijah" — was emphat-
ically rejected by both; yet there was a sense in
which both were Elijahs. Did not Jesus say of
John the Baptist: "All the prophets and the law
prophesied until John, And if ye are willing to
receive it, this is Elijah, that is to come''? And
did not John the Baptist say of Christ, "I indeed
baptize you with water; hut . . , he shall baptize
you . . . in fire," even as Elijah did? Did not
Christ ascend to heaven, even as Elijah did? What
does Elijah mean but "my God is Jehovah" ? and did
any man ever live who was a truer Elijah than
Jesus or one who could say in a fuller sense :
*'God is my King of old,
Working salvation in the midst of the earth"?
Both series of questions and answers led up to
the great confession here of John the Baptist,
"In the midst of you standeth one , . . the latchet
of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose" ; there
of Peter for the apostles, "Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God." Jesus heard the con-
fession in both instances. He said to Peter, "Upon
this rock I will build my church." He said of
John, "Among them that are born of women there
hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist"
That was John's reward for his self-abnegation.
He said that he was not Elijah and he was not the

22 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

prophet; and Jesus said that he was greater than
these.

John maintained his humility to the end. When
his disciples became a little jealous of the growing
popularity of Jesus and came to him saying, "Rahhi,
he that was with thee beyond the Jordan, to whom
thou hast borne witness, behold, the same baptizeth,
and all men come to him," John answered and said :
*'He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the
friend of the bridegroom, that standeth and heareth
him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's
voice : this my joy therefore is made full. He must
increase, but I must decrease/' Here was a man
in whom self had been conquered. No wonder that
Jesus said that among the ancients there was none
greater than he. In the church calendar John the
Baptist's day is midsummer day — the twenty-fourth
of June. After this the days decrease in length.
The birthday of Jesus is celebrated at Christmas-
time, in midwinter. After Christmas the days in-
crease in length. John was the morning star of the
new day in God's grace. His light was dimmed
only in the greater glory of the Son.

John called all men to repentance and he included
the king. The king feared him for his influence
and, because of his message, put him in prison.
John was an ascetic and fearlessly bore his witness
against the folly and the vice of his day. It was

THE NEW TESTAMENT 23

his fate to have a dancing girl bring about his be-
heading. His disciples laid his corpse in a tomb.
That tomb ought to bear upon it the eulogy of Jesus
followed by the words ''This my joy therefore is
made full." Judas the Hammerer had left a great
memory; John the Baptist revived and intensified
a great hope. A greater Leader than either of these
was at hand. Who and what would he be? The
whole people waited for the self -revelation of Jesus.

For Your Thought

How do you think that the work of John the
Baptist relates itself to the Old Testament?

How does it relate itself to the work of Jesus?

What do you think is the meaning of the eulogy
of Jesus upon John?

Books for Reading and Study

John the Baptist: His Life and Work, Houghton.
John the Baptist, Reynolds.
John the Baptist, Feather.
John the Loyal, Robertson.

24 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

CHAPTER HI

JESUS THE LEADER

Judas the Hammerer had been a hero of the
faith. He had been a great leader of the people.
He and his brothers had been rebels and revolu-
tionists. They had fought for freedom of worship
and then for the independence of their land. They
had had the spirit of Samuel, who hewed Agag
to pieces before the Lord; they had had the spirit
of Elijah, who slew the four hundred and fifty
prophets of Baal. They had had no mercy upon
the enemies of the people of God. Again and again
in the history we read that when they had taken a
city they devoted the people of that city to utter
destruction and burned its towers with fire and all
that were in them. Again and again we read that
they slew every male with the edge of the sword
and made a great slaughter of them. They were
military leaders and heroes. They took up the
sword and they perished with the sword. They
fought for liberty or death and they attained both
liberty and death. In a few generations their
family line was extinct, and the liberties for which
they had fought were lost again. The hated

THE NEW TESTAMENT 2$

Idumean was on the throne, and the Roman power
was supreme in the land.

Jesus could have had a more glorious military
career than Judas the Hammerer ever dreamed of.
He could have become a world conqueror. All the
kingdoms of the world could have been his if he
had been willing to gain them by force. What good
he could have done in the world if he had chosen
such a career! Had not Alexander the Great
founded a world empire and spread the Greek
culture wherever his victorious armies came?
Would it not be possible to spread the Jewish faith
in the same way ? The heathen abominations could
be done away, the cruelties and oppressions of the
nations could be abolished, the captives could be
released, the bruised could be set at liberty, and the
abuses of the poor could be brought to an end.
There would be no limit to the possibilities of good
opened to Jesus if he once attained to the throne
of the world. He would be the most benevolent
Emperor the mind of man can conceive. With the
ideal Ruler the world might be made into the ideal
kingdom of God. Was it only a dream impossible
to realize? Jesus declared it one of the real tempta-
tions of the wilderness, and possibly it was the
greatest temptation he had to encounter in life.

Judas had won great victories with only a hand-
ful of men. God had been with him, and the God

26 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

of heaven could deliver with a great multitude or
with a small company; for none that trust in him
fail in strength. Nothing would be impossible to
the faith of Jesus. He was the Prince and Per-
fecter of the faith that Judas and all the ancient
worthies of Israel had shown. What they had
accomplished was only a faint suggestion of what
he could accomplish along the same lines. Had they
subdued kingdoms, waxed mighty in war, and
turned to flight armies of aliens? Then Jesus, with
his faith in the Father, could put to flight all his
foes and become a world Conqueror and establish
himself at the head of the universal empire of man-
kind. The people were looking for a redeemer like
Judas, a temporal monarch who would lead their
armies and win their liberties and make them the
masters of the world. Would Jesus answer to that
expectation and be the Leader they desired? With
a little compromise of principle and a little pulling
of wires it could be done, and he could have all the
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them for
his reward.

Would he be a leader of that kind? Would he
win his kingdom by force? Would he spread his
faith by the aid of the sword ? Would he fight like
Judas and make a great slaughter of his enemies
and so obtain peace for the world? At the begin-
ning of his ministry Jesus faced these questions and

THE NEW TESTAMENT 27

decided that the method of Judas would not be his
method. That method had failed so lamentably in
the long run. No kingdom won by the sword had
stood for any great length of time. His kingdom
must be world-wide and eternal.

John the Baptist was a leader too. His influence
among the people was so great that even after his
death the chief priests and the scribes and the elders
did not dare to say that his baptism was not from
heaven lest all the people would stone them. John
expected a still greater leader to come after him
and prophesied that this leader would go through
the nation with a winnowing fan in his hand and
would separate the chaff from the wheat and then
would burn up the chaff even as Judas the Ham-
merer had burned up the towers of the pagan cities
with all the men who were in them. He said that
the Coming One, who was greater than he, would
have an ax in his hand and would hew down all
the trees that did not bring forth good fruit, even
as Samuel had hewed Agag to pieces before the
Lord. According to the preaching of John the
Baptist the ministry of Jesus was to be one of
vengeance and wrath. He would visit quick judg-
ment upon wrongdoers and would make the times
hot for all who did not choose the right.

Jesus came, and he became a great Leader; but
he was a great disappointment to John. He did

28 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

not set up a judgment seat, according to John's
advertisement. He was not blazing with denuncia-
tion much of the time. He was not burning any-
body in unquenchable fire. His ministry for the
most part was one of healing and blessing. He
preached good tidings instead of instant and con-
stant woe. John the Baptist could not understand
it. He sent from his prison to know if Jesus really
were the One they had been expecting, or whether
they must look for another. Jesus sent back to
John this message: "I cause the blind to receive
their sight and the lame to walk and the lepers to
be cleansed and the deaf to hear and the dead to
be raised up, and I preach good tidings to the poor.
I have decided that if I am to be a leader among
the people I will be a leader in helpful and gracious
ministries. Do not find any occasion of stumbling
in me on this account."

His conception of his leadership differed from
that of John the Baptist. In that first sermon
preached at Nazareth he laid down the program for
his whole career. He found it in the words of the
ancient prophet and he read those words down to
the statement that the Spirit had anointed him to
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord; and then
he closed the book. It was not the end of the sen-
tence, but the next words were ''[and to proclaim]
the day of vengeance of our God." John the Baptist

THE NEW TESTAMENT 29

would have read those words with relish; Jesus
would not read them at all. That was not his mis-
sion. His message was a message of grace. He
would rather leave the sentence unfinished than to
leave any doubt in any mind upon that point.
-^-Jesus as definitely rejected the ideal of John the
Baptist as he did that of Judas Maccabeus. John
had more zeal than love. He had little or no
patience with the weak. He had little or no sym-
pathy with the sinner. Jesus chose to be a loving
Lord, the patient Sufferer, the compassionate Christ.
He made the right choice. The verdict of the world
has given him the leadership of the race. The great
leaders have been the religious leaders, and there
is no one of these — Mohammed, Zoroaster, Buddha,
Confucius, or Socrates — who will venture to dis-
pute the supremacy with him. His dominion to-day
has no Hmit either of land or of race. World-wide
and eternal, it will have no equal on earth.

Napoleon is reported to have said: "Alexander,
Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires;
but upon what foundations did we rest the creations
of our genius? Upon force. Jesus alone founded
his empire upon love, and at this hour millions of
men would die for him. ... I die before my time,
and my body will be given back to the earth to be-
come the food of worms. Such is the fate of him
who has been called the great Napoleon. What an

30 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

abyss between my deep misery and the eternal king-
dom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, and
adored, and which is extending over the whole
earth!" That sums it all up. Jesus is the great
Leader of the race because he leads by persuasion
and not by compulsion. He does not drive men
from him by denunciation ; he draws them to him by
sympathy and love. His kingdom of love, supreme
over the affections of millions on earth out of every
nation and people and kindred and tongue, pushes
its conquests over the continents and into the isles
of the sea ; and it will conquer them all in the end.

Questions for You to Answer

What was the leadership of Judas Maccabeus and
its result?

What was its attraction to Jesus ?

Why did Jesus refuse to yield to it?

What was John the Baptist's expectation concern-
ing Jesus?

How was it disappointed?

What leadership was preferred by Jesus?

What is the result of his choice?

Books for Reading and Study
Imago Christi: the Example of Jesus Christ,
Stalker.

The Man of Nazareth, Anderson.
Ecce Homo, Seeley.

JHE NEW TESTAMENT 31

CHAPTER IV
JESUS THE TEACHER

There is a tradition in the north country that
a king once went among his people in disguise. He
saw many things that were evil and such things as
kings seldom see. He did many things that were
good and such things as kings only can do. But
the people neither suspected the kingly presence nor
recognized his kingly power. Then, one day, the
king spoke to the people, and they wondered at his
gracious words; and they said one to another: "It
is the king's voice. We have the king here among
us. These are the words of a king."

This tradition of the north country is a parable
that suggests a weightier truth. The King of kings
and Lord of lords, the only begotten Son of God,
dwelt once among men as a man. His deity was
veiled in his humanity, and multitudes of the people
among whom he moved never suspected a Presence
divine. "He was in the world, and the world was
made through him, and the world knew him not/'
He did such works as no other man did, and often
appealed to the witness of his works that the Father

32 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

had sent him and that the Father was with him.
One winter season, at the time of the Feast of the
Dedication, which Judas the Hammerer had first
celebrated, Jesus made this appeal, and those who
heard him took up stones to stone him ; for no won-
derful works could convince those hearts, which
were colder than the winter wind and frozen hard
in their unbelief, that a man so simply clad and so
plain in his appearance, so evidently poor and
obscure, could be the expected King.

Jesus went quietly on his way, talking about the
Father and the kingdom; about faith and purity and
love; about the way, the truth, and the life; and
after a time there were those who began to realize
that these were indeed the words of a King. On
a mountainside Jesus sat and taught his disciples
and the multitudes from Galilee, Decapolis, Jeru-
salem, Judaea, and Syria who had gathered to hear
such teaching as no one of the scribes could give
them. The Master unfolded the constitution of the
kingdom he had come to proclaim, marked out the
broad lines of distinction between his spiritual and
essential religion and all the old ritual worships and
creeds, squared all that was new in his teaching
with all that was good in the old, and then pro-
ceeded to build slowly and securely the glorious
edifice of Christianity's ideal and faith.

He laid for its foundations the Beatitudes of the

THE NEW TESTAMENT 33

poor in spirit and the pure in heart, the mourners,
the merciful, the meek, the peacemakers and the
persecuted, the hungering and the thirsting after
righteousness; and he declared that to them be-
longed the Kingdom, the Father, and the faith. As
the keystone of the structure he lifted high the
command, *'Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your
heavenly Father is perfect." The firm pillars of
support all around were prayer and righteousness
and love. At the end Jesus likened the structure
thus reared to the house built upon a rock.

He said of it : "He is a wise man who will dwell
therein. The rains may descend, and the floods
com.e, and the winds blow and beat upon this house,
and it will not fall, for it is founded upon the rock."

It was all very plain and simple teaching. There
was no fine philosophy, no scientific exposition, no
labored rhetoric, no pomp of power; just one holy
Man in the midst of the multitudes who knew all
hearts and their deepest longings and who knew
where they could find satisfaction and peace. He
used many illustrations. He repeated his truths
many times. He was very direct in his warning
and exhortation. His words were as sunbeams of
hope to darkened consciences and as the bread of life
and the water of life to the spiritually famishing
souls who listened that day. His words went
straight as arrows to their marks and were sharp

34 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

as swords for the piercing of hearts and the divid-
ing asunder of soul peace and secret sin. When
he had finished, the people were astonished and said
one to another : "He speaks as one having authority.
We have the King here among us. These are the
words of a King."

Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, and the two
talked together about the things of the Kingdom;
and Jesus said to Nicodemus: "You must be born
anew. Marvel not how these things can be. Are
you a master in Israel and know you not that it
must all be of God's power and God's grace and
God's love? God has so loved the world that he
has given his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth on him should not perish, but have ever-
lasting life." As he listened the old man bowed his
head in reverence before the young Man's wisdom
and worth. Nicodemus said to Jesus, "Thou art a
teacher come from God.'*

The Roman governor, a cultured man of the
world, an experienced man of affairs, sat in the
judgment hall; and Jesus stood before him to
answer for his life. Pilate examined and cross-
examined the alleged culprit, but could find no guilt
in him. On the contrary, he seemed awed by some-
thing extraordinary in this man. He asked Jesus,
"Art thou then a king?" Jesus answered, "To this
end was I born, and for this cause came I into the

THE NEW TESTAMENT 35

world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.
Everyone who is of the truth heareth my voice,
and everyone who is of the truth recognizes my
voice and knows whether or no I am the king."
It was even so. His speech betrayed him to those
who had ears to hear and hearts to understand.
The servant of the high priest said to Peter at the
time of his denial, "Thou also art one of them ; thy
speech betrayeth thee." In the same way, when
many of the disciples turned away and walked no
more with the Master, and Jesus asked the twelve
if they would go too, Peter answered him: "To
whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal
life. Thy speech betrayeth thee. We have listened
to thy words and we have come to believe and to
know that the King is indeed among us, for thou
art the holy one of God."

"Never man spake like this man." That was the
testimony of the officials sent to arrest him. They
had nothing to do but to obey orders and they had
been ordered to arrest Jesus. His trial, with its
sentence or acquittal, would come later. It lay in
other hands. The only duty of the officers of the
law was to make the arrest without question or
delay. Whether they considered the accused inno-
cent or guilty did not come into consideration. They
were not the judges; they were simply the agents
of the court. If they did not make the arrest when

36 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

ordered they would forfeit their position and them-
selves become culprits in the eyes of the authorities.
Therefore, the Pharisees and chief priests who had
sent their subordinates out to arrest Jesus had no
thought but that they would soon return with the
Teacher bound and helpless in their hands.

They believed that this Jesus was a pestilent fel-
low— a revolutionist who would destroy the old
order of things, about whom the people were whis-
pering already that he must be the expected King.
His career must be ended immediately. They
waited for what seemed a very long time. Jesus
was teaching publicly in the Temple: why did not
the officers bring him at once? At last they ap-
peared, but Jesus was not with them. "Why have
you not brought him?" was the sharp query; and
the strange answer given was "Never man spake
like this man." They had gone to arrest him and
had been themselves arrested by the authority in
his voice and the majesty of his message. They
had listened in spellbound admiration and wonder.
They went back empty-handed, and their only
excuse for the failure to perform that simple duty
of making a public arrest was the simple statement :
"We could not. Never man spake like this man."

It has been the judgment of the centuries. Both
friends and foes have said it: "A great Teacher
has walked among his people. Never man spake

THE NEW TESTAMENT 37

as he spake." Jesus said: "Every idle word that
men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in
the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt
he justified, and by thy words thou shalt be con-
demned." Shall we apply this statement to him-
self? Then all the history of the church and all
the history of the world go to show that never man
spake like this man, for he had the words of eternal
life. He was a Teacher sent from God. His words
are treasured above those of any other teacher of
the race. In them is to be found the saving truth
for all men.

For Additional Study

What proportion of the teaching of Jesus do
you think is preserved in the New Testament ?

In what respects would you say that the teaching
of Jesus was superior to that of other religious
leaders ?

Can you give an outline of the Sermon on the
Mount ?

What are three or four of the distinctive fea-
tures in the teaching of Jesus?

Books for Reading and Study

The Kingdom of God, Bruce.

The Training of the Twelve, Bruce.

The Revelation of Jesus, Gilbert.

38 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

CHAPTER V
JESUS THE MESSIAH

The word "Messiah" is a Hebrew word, and
the word "Christ" is a Greek word. Both words
mean "the Anointed One." The Samaritan woman
at Jacob's well said to Jesus : "/ know that Messiah
Cometh (he that is called Christ) : when he is come,
he will declare unto us all things/' Then Jesus
said to her, "/ that speak unto thee am he/' To
know what those titles meant to each of them we
must look back into the Old Testament. There we
shall find that certain persons were anointed by
way of preparation for special services.

Saul, the son of Kish, searched unsuccessfully
for his father's asses that had strayed. His servant
advised him to counsel with Samuel the seer.
Samuel had been forewarned of his coming and of
the Lord's will concerning him. He met Saul
cordially, and they feasted together. Then, before
parting, Samuel took a vial of oil, poured it upon
Saul's head, kissed him, and said, "Is it not because
the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain over his

THE NEW TESTAMENT 39

inheritance ?" For a time Saul was a king by divine
right; but then the Spirit of the Lord departed
from him, and an evil spirit troubled him. Then
Samuel took a horn of oil and anointed David in
the presence of his father and his elder brethren,
and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from
that day. David's son Solomon was anointed by
Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet; and
they blew a trumpet, and all the people shouted,
"Long live king Solomon !" Thereafter the Jewish
kings always were inaugurated with this simple
ceremony of anointing with the holy oil. After
this ceremony they were the Lord's anointed and
under the Lord's protection, and against them no
man was permitted to put forth his hand.

At Horeb, the mount of God, Elijah listened to
the still small voice, and the Lord said to him,
"Anoint Hazael to be king over Syria, and Jehu
to be king over Israel, and Elisha to be prophet
in thy room." Kings were anointed, and prophets
were anointed too. Consecrated hands poured the
holy oil upon some prophet's head, and the fullness
of the Spirit rested upon him. The secret counsels
of the Most High were intrusted to him. He was
inspired and prophesied. His voice of benediction
and of malediction was the authoritative voice of
his God. He was a seer and a saint. He was one
of the Lord's anointed concerning whom he com-

:40 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

manded, "Touch not mine anointed ones, and do
my prophets no harm."

In that other typical office of the priesthood there
was the anointed priest. All the priests were
anointed to their holy office, but the chief priest
stood at their head as the anointed one. He was
given the peculiar dress of the breastplate and
the miter, the ephod and its robe made of gold,
blue, red, crimson, and fine white linen. He wore
the twelve precious stones of the Urim and Thum-
mim. His ephod was clasped at the shoulders with
two large onyx stones, each engraved with the
names of six tribes of Israel. He alone was
privileged to enter the holy of holies in the inner
temple. There once a year, on the great day of
atonement, he sprinkled the blood of the sin offering
upon the mercy seat and, in the revealed presence
of the Lord Most High, he put the incense upon
the fire before the altar until its rising cloud shielded
him from the dazzling glory that covered the
covenant ark. He alone ever entered in to that
within the veil. He was the Lord's anointed priest.

The Jews had anointed priests and prophets and
kings ; and the whole nation knew that the anointing
of the kings and of the high priest and of the chosen
prophets was only the foreshadowing of the higher
anointing to be given to that consummate flower of
their race — the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed

THE NEW TESTAMENT 4t

One — toward whose coming they had looked, for
whose coming they had longed for many centuries.
The Messiah was to be a King — "great David's
greater Son" — whose glory would far excel that
of Solomon, and of whose dominion there would
be no end. The Messiah was to be a Priest, who
was to abide a Priest continuously — not after the
law of a carnal commandment but after the power
of an endless hfe — made a High Priest forever
after the order of Melchizedek, who was both king
and priest and greater even than Father Abraham.
The Messiah was to be the Prophet of the Highest,
come from far — one with the Father, whose word
would be true and steadfast, since it was the word
of Him who sent him. Prophet, Priest, and King,
the triple anointing would be upon him; and he
would know how to rule, he would know the secrets
of the holy place, he would know with prophetic
certainty all things.

Jesus told the woman at the well that he was
the Messiah, but it was difficult for her to believe
it. He was not the Messiah of the popular expecta-
tion. That Messiah was to be a monarch and
would deliver his people from foreign tyranny, even
as Judas and the Maccabees had done ; this Messiah
was a weary, thirsty traveler, appearing like any
ordinary man. If he was an anointed King, he
must be in disguise. Some of the people were dis-

42 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

posed to think that was true. When Jesus asked
the disciples what the people were saying about him,
they told him that some thought he was Elijah, and
some thought he was Jeremiah, and some thought
he was some one of the other prophets or even the
great Prophet promised in the Messianic day. When
Jesus fed the multitudes in the wilderness, they were
so impressed with the wonder of it that they said,
"Of a truth this is the Prophet that cometh into the
world," and they were about to take him by force
and make him King when Jesus withdrew into the
mountain and thus defeated their design.

They were ready to recognize him as their Mes-
siah, but he kept disappointing them all the time.
In his discourses he claimed a great deal, but he did
not claim enough. If he had claimed to be the
promised King and if he had set about seeking glory
from men, they would have flocked to his standard.
If he had raised the red flag of revolution and had
made a bid for popularity by any demonstration
against the Roman power, they would have rallied
to him. He said that he was the Messiah, but he
did not do what they expected the Messiah to do:
he did not make his glory manifest to all men and
he refused to be crowned the nation^s King. The
Messiah would be no Sabbath-breaker. The Mes-
siah never would say that he could do nothing of
himself. The Messiah would seek for glory, and

THE NEW TESTAMENT 43

he would have glory. He would be a glorious
Messiah, not a plain and ordinary man like this
Jesus of Nazareth. So most of the people reasoned ;
and it did seem reasonable that the Anointed One
should be something more than a poor peasant, a
leader only along spiritual lines, and a teacher only
of spiritual truths.

They rejected him at last and crucified him as a
criminal. Then God raised him from the dead and
made him King of kings and Lord of lords forever.
He himself had told his townspeople at Nazareth
that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, anointing
him to preach the gospel to the poor. He was the
anointed Prophet of the Highest through all his
ministry, as he will be for all future time. Peter
preached to the household of Cornelius that God
had anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy
Spirit and with power, and that he went about
doing good and healing all who were oppressed of
the devil, for God was with him. What he began
to do there in Palestine he continues to do in and
through his church. He is anointed with kingly
power, and this power is at the service of his people
for evermore. A large part of the Epistle to the
Hebrews was written to show that Jesus is the
great High Priest, who has passed through the
heavens and entered once for all into the holy place,
having obtained eternal redemption and, therefore.

44 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

having sat down on the right hand of the throne of
the Majesty on high. He is the one great Prophet,
Priest, and King of the Christian world. He is
the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, through
whom the world has received and will receive its
spiritual truth, its spiritual power, and its eternal
salvation. That was the gospel upon which the
Christian Church was founded. "Know assuredly
that God hath made the crucified Jesus both Lord
and Christ." Those who accept the crucified and
exalted Christ as their Saviour take his name upon
them and are called Christians. They are the
anointed followers of the Anointed One.

Questions to Think About

How were the typical anointings in the Old
Testament fulfilled in Jesus ?

Do you think that anointings or other ceremonies
are of any inherent value?

How far do you believe that Christians may
realize the results of the triple anointings now ?

Books for Reading and Study

The Life and Times of Jesus, the Messiah, Eder-
sheim.

The Life of Christ, Stalker.
The Jesus of History, Glover.
The Days of His Flesh, Smith.
The Life of Christ, Dawson.

THE NEW TESTAMENT 45

CHAPTER VI

SIMON PETER, THE LEADER OF THE
APOSTLES

Peter was a very likable man. Everybody liked
him. Jesus, the other apostles, the members of the
early church, all liked him; and we like him too,
because he is so much like us. Peter had not Paul's
head nor John's heart nor James's saintliness and
stability; but I venture to say that he was at once
the most heady and hearty and human of all the
apostles. He gave so much clearer evidence of all
the frailties which flesh and blood are heir to; he
was a better example of growth in grace than any
or all of his associates. He was so human, so like
tlie rest of us in everything, that his history comes
nearer our own; and the glimpses we have of his
spiritual experience seem like glimpses into the
depths of our own hearts. His biography more
easily than that of the other apostles can be rewritten
as the Autobiography of the Common Man. It was
said long ago, "In Peter is more of human nature
than in any other of the apostles."

He was a heady, hasty man. Headlong and
headstrong, he went about the task set before him

46 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

without waiting to plan out methods of procedure
and without any calculation of consequences. If
Peter had lived in these days he would have had
an automobile as he went here and there and every-
where about his apostolic business, simply because
he would have found it the most rapid means of
locomotion in making a large number of short trips ;
and even after he had learned to manage the thing
like a professional he would have been a public
menace every day of his life simply because of his
failure to look ahead a little and his proneness to
rush on regardless of any obstacle in his way. No
man ever had walked on the water before, but Peter
jumped over the side of the boat to do it without
stopping to think that it was impossible. The other
disciples asked whether they should defend Jesus;
and while they were asking, Peter had drawn his
sword and cut off the right ear of the servant of
the high priest. Peter was the sort of man who
would set the whole world on fire while some other
people were getting ready to light a match.

Peter was an impulsive, impetuous man. He was
the creature of the moment; he acted without reflec-
tion. Did Jesus ask, "Who say ye that I am?"
the others were ready to think about it a while and
then more carefully and judiciously to formulate
a creed; but all of Peter's warm affection and
admiration for his Lord surged forth like an out-

THE NEW TESTAMENT 47

burst of the Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone
Park. He burst out in the first moment, **Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God" It was
the great confession and it told the truth and won
the warmest commendation of the Master. A few
moments later Jesus was foretelling his sufferings
and his crucifixion for the first time ; and Peter, with
the same impulsiveness, burst out into hot remon-
strance: *'Let nothing of this sort ever happen to
thee, Lord! This never shall be!" He knew that
the Master knew more and better than he; but he
acted on the impulse of the moment and without
thinking, as we so often do. He got his just deserts
in the great rebuke: ''Get thee behind me, Satan:
thou art a stumbling-block unto me : for thou mindest
not the things of God, but the things of men."

Peter might be all right one moment and all
wrong the next moment. His nature was some-
thing like that Sea of Galilee upon which he had
spent his life as a fisherman — peaceful and placid
in one hour and lashed into a sudden fury of
tempest in another hour. You never could tell what
was coming next with Peter. There was nothing
tame or commonplace about him. He was as full
of contradictions and inconsistencies as any of us.
He always seemed to be in motion, like a pendulum,
reacting from one extreme to another.

Jesus rebuked Peter more than once, but he

48 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

always liked him. Paul rebuked Peter to his very
face, yet he had a sincere affection for the man.
When Peter repented, Jesus forgave him, and Paul
forgave him, and everybody else forgave him.
Luther once said, "If I could paint a portrait of
Peter, I would paint upon every hair of his head:
*I believe in the forgiveness of sins.* " Why was
it that everybody could forgive Peter so readily?
Because they realized that his faults were not
radically faults at heart. He might seem to be like
Reuben — unstable as water — , but that was only on
the surface of his character. Down deep in his
nature there was the abiding loyalty and right pur-
pose which endeared him to all. No one ever ques-
tioned his love for Jesus. It was his love and his
loyalty that prompted his most foolish conduct as
well as his most noble behavior. Love prompted
the great confession and love prompted the speech
that brought the great rebuke.

At the bottom of his character there was the bed-
rock of an unflinching faith in the Master and an
unfailing loyalty to him. That was the only founda-
tion upon which the Christian Church could be
built. Peter was the rock apostle in that church.
At Pentecost, Peter was the spokesman, and under
the hot flood of his eloquence three thousand souls
were swept into the church in one day. Peter
opened the door of the Christian Church to Cor-

THE NEW TESTAMENT 49

nelius and other Gentiles. He was the leader in
the beginning. That beginning work might not
have been done as well by a rabbi or a seer or a
philosopher or a theologian; but Peter was so hearty
and so human that he won sympathy both for him-
self and for his Master wherever he went. The
church was well founded. Jesus made no mistake
in making him the rock upon which the church
should be built.

Peter was a growing man. He improved with
old age. His sanguine temperament cooled down
a little through the years. His ardor and devotion
remained, but they were not so liable to hasty and
ill-considered manifestations. Peter grew in grace
as long as he lived. The horizon widened before
him until he could see as far as the apostle Paul.
There is no more rounded or stronger character in
the early church than the apostle Peter, of whom
we get glimpses in his Epistle and in the later church
tradition. He is the acknowledged leader among
his brethren, but never arrogating any undue au-
thority unto himself. He is courteous and courage-
ous, humble and brave, obedient to God rather than
to hostile men, so changed for the better that his
very presence was a constant recommendation of
the faith he professed. The richness of his Chris-
tian character was a proof of what Christianity
could do for the weakest and poorest material.

50 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

Peter was a saint in his later years — a saint with
some faults and a saint liable to err on some occa-
sions, but, after all, a saint worthy to stand at the
head of the forming church as a supreme example
of the transforming power it proclaimed to all men.
A character like that of Peter would convict and
convince and attract the average man even more
than the character of John and Paul : his enthusiasm
was so contagious, his transformation was so mar-
velous, and his needs and abilities and achievements
were so patently within the reach of all. He was
a founder and a leader worthy of the Master's
choice. p^j. F^j^thej. Thought

Which would you prefer in a character — enthu-
siasm or caution ?

Which do you think are better — impulses or re-
flections ?

Who do you think would make the more mis-
takes— a Hamlet or a Peter?

Books for Reading and Study

HorcB Petrince: Studies in the Life of St. Peter,
Howson.

Simon Peter: His Early Life, Robinson.

Simon Peter: His Later Life and Labors, Robin-
son.

The Apostle Peter, Griffith-Thomas.

The Making of Simon Peter, Southouse.

THE NEW TESTAMENT 51

CHAPTER Vn
PAUL THE MISSIONARY

Paul believed that all the circumstances of his
birth and early training had helped to prepare him
for his work as a missionary among the Gentiles.
To see that clearly we need only review the facts
in the case. In the first place, Paul was born in
a Jewish family and reared in the Jewish faith.
This gave him ready access to the synagogues in
every city he visited and a hearing among his own
countrymen, to whom he always preached first and
by preference. In the second place, Paul's father
was a Roman citizen, and that meant that Paul
himself was born into Roman citizenship, and all
his life long he claimed and enjoyed all the privi-
leges of that right. In the third place, Paul was
born in Tarsus in Asia Minor, and that city was a
Greek city. In that way the young lad became
familiar with Greek customs and culture and was
prepared to deal with the Greek-speaking peoples.

According to the custom among the Jews of
that day every Jewish boy was taught a trade;

52 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

and Paul was trained as a tentmaker. He found
his knowledge of this trade very useful to him in
his later ministry, when it was necessary to support
himself by day labor in order that he might have
leisure to preach at night. In the fifth place, Paul's
parents sent him to Jerusalem, where he entered
the school of Gamaliel for his finishing education.
Gamaliel was a good man, more tolerant than most
of the Jewish masters; and in his school Paul be-
came familiar with the Scriptures and their current
interpretation. He advanced beyond many of his
own age in knowledge and in zeal and became the
trusted servant of the Sanhedrin in laying waste
the Christian churches and driving the Christian
faith out of existence.

He was on his way to Damascus on this mission
of persecution and destruction when he had a most
extraordinary experience. The risen Jesus ap-
peared to him, convinced him of his identity and
majesty, and then, when Paul had offered his
allegiance, commissioned him to do the work the
Jewish nation had refused to do in witnessing to
the Messiahship of Jesus and in turning the Gentiles
from darkness to light and from the power of Satan
unto God. One man was set in a nation's stead!
One man was asked to do a nation's work! Paul
was chosen to be a world missionary and in his
after life he proved by his unparalleled zeal and

THE NEW TESTAMENT 53

success that he was worthy to receive such a world
commission.

Paul took time to prepare for his missionary
career. His Jewish birth, his Roman citizenship
and his Greek environment, his trade and his school-
ing, his conversion and his commission, were all of
them helps and preparations for his work; but he
did not feel ready for that work until he had gone
down into Arabia and there, through possibly three
years, had studied the Scriptures and, with their
aid and with the aid of his experience, had formu-
lated his theology. He thought the thing through.
He knew what he had to preach before he began
his Christian ministry. Then, in Syria and Cilicia,
for ten years or more, he made practical experiment
of methods and truths and laid the foundations for
the successes of his later years. After three years
of theological study and ten years of apprentice-
ship in missionary labor he was prepared to enter
upon more responsible work.

He was called to Antioch to assist in the affairs
of the church there; and from Antioch, Barnabas
and he were sent out on what is called the first mis-
sionary journey. Their first work was in Cyprus.
From this island they crossed to Perga, in Pam-
phylia, and then went on to Antioch in Pisidia, and
then to Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. They returned
by the way they came. They had traveled about

54 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

fourteen hundred miles and, in the three years, had
estabHshed Christian churches in four cities, at
least, and probably in many more.

From Antioch, Paul and Silas undertook a second
missionary journey together. They visited the
churches of Syria and Cilicia and then traveled
westward to Troas, on the seacoast. There Paul
had a vision that led the missionaries to conclude
that they ought to enter the continent of Europe.
The first European church was founded in Philippi
in Macedonia; the next, in Thessalonica. Then
Berea and Athens and Corinth were visited in suc-
cession. In Corinth the missionaries made a con-
siderable stay and founded a large and prosperous
Christian community. After an absence of two
years and a half they returned to Antioch, having
traveled possibly some twenty-five hundred miles
and having made a good beginning in the evangeli-
zation of Europe.

The third missionary journey included a visit to
the churches of Galatia and Phrygia and then a
stay of two years and more in Ephesus, followed
by a rapid trip through Macedonia and Greece, and
then a homeward journey through Troas, Miletus,
Tyre, and Caesarea to Jerusalem. There Paul was
arrested, and his active missionary career came to
an end. He was a missionary as long as he lived,
but he was not a free man again until after his re-

THE NEW TESTAMENT 55

lease from the imprisonment in Rome. He had
planned missionary work in Spain, but we are not
sure that he ever was able to reach that goal.

Paul labored more abundantly than any of the
other apostles. Peter began the good work, but
Paul carried it far beyond any possibilities Peter
could have attained. Best prepared by all his early
training and advantage for a world mission, he
was the chosen vessel of the Lord to inaugurate the
campaign for the world's evangelization. His conse-
cration was complete; his courage never failed.
There were many dangers to face on the land and
on the sea. There were suffering and sacrifice of
every sort. There were incredible toils and con-
tinual hardships. Through them all Paul approved
himself as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. His
patience and perseverance were unsurpassed; his
devotion and consecration were unparalleled. His
one aim was the conversion of men to the faith and
practice of the Christian life. He was wilHng to
give all his time and strength to that end. With
truth could he say:

"Then with a rush the intolerable craving

Shivers throughout me like a trumpet-call —
Oh, to save these ! to perish for their saving,

Die for their life, be offered for them all!"
Paul was the world's greatest missionary, as he was
one of the world's greatest intellects and one of the
world's greatest saints. Jesus had confined his

56 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

ministry to the province of Palestine and to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel. Peter had neither
the learning nor the adaptability necessary for a
campaign among the Gentiles: he was the apostle
to the circumcision and limited his activities to his
own countrymen. Paul was prepared to face the
philosophers at Athens and the politicians at Rome.
He could be all things to all men and by natural
equipment and acquired education was ready to
carry the gospel message to the ends of the earth.
In his missionary career Christianity was borne out
of Palestine into the wide world and established as
a faith no longer local but aspiring to the conquest
of all men for the service of its Master and Lord.

Consider the Questions

Has God a purpose and plan for each life? Has
he for your life? Can you give any proof or illus-
tration ?

Have modern missionaries traveled or suffered
more than Paul? Can you name any who have?

Why is Paul called the greatest of the mission-
aries ?

Books for Reading and Study

Paul the Missionary, Taylor.
St. Paul the Traveler and Roman Citizen,
Ramsay.

Studies of the Man Paul, Speer.

THE NEW TESTAMENT $7

CHAPTER Vni
PAUL THE PASTOR

The Epistles addressed to Timothy and to Titus
have been called the pastoral Epistles, because so
large a portion of their contents have to do with
pastoral duties and responsibilities. Some have
thought that the two Epistles written to the Corin-
thians deserve this title even more, because the
deep-seated principles governing pastoral relations
and service and authority are set forth here with
such clearness and fullness. Almost any page or
any chapter in the Pauline Epistles would furnish
valuable suggestions concerning Paul the pastor;
and much information on the subject can be gleaned
from the narratives in the book of Acts. For the
purpose of our study the picture given of the
apostle in the beginning of the second chapter of
the First Epistle to the Thessalonians will be suffi-
cient. This was the first of the PauHne Epistles to
be written, but the characteristics of Paul's pastoral
activity given here were those of the whole of his
missionary ministry. What does he say about it?

He declares that opposition and shameful treat-
ment and persecution and suffering never daunted

58 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

him, but rather increased his boldness in preaching
the gospel. Paul was no coward. He had the
courage of his convictions. Antagonism bred
heroism in him. Unflinchingly faithful to the cause
of the Christ, he was ready to do and to die in
behalf of the truth. The message given him through
Ananias at the time of his conversion was : "I will
show him how many things he must suffer for my
name's sake" Paul foresaw the suffering and the
sacrifice of his career and deliberately committed
himself to it. Thereafter if he was treated shame-
fully in one city and driven out from it into another
he preached with increased boldness at the next
opportunity.

Paul claimed and believed that he preached the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
His freedom of speech in the delivery of his mes-
sage rested upon the full assurance of his faith.
He had no misgivings as to the importance of his
gospel; he had no secret doubts concerning it to
conceal. To his mind there was no error in the
substance of his preaching: it was essential to the
world's salvation and was the highest truth ever
offered to the race. Paul says that he preached a
gospel of purity. There was no admixture of un-
cleanness in it, such as was characteristic of the
heathen religions with which it came into contact
and contrast; the Christian faith demanded purity

THE NEW TESTAMENT 59

in speech and action and motive. Paul believed
that a Christian man ought to be clean in every-
thing. He practiced what he preached, allowing
no place for error or uncleanness or guile, in his
conduct or his discourses. Open and aboveboard
in his dealings with everyone, he was honest and
direct in his appeals. Paul never deceived anybody.
He never tried to catch them with guile but only
with the attractive power of the straight and unadul-
terated truth.

Paul made no attempt to curry favor with men
by compromising with the facts of the case. He
never flattered them into thinking that they were
not sinners or that they were good enough to get
along without salvation. He was no man-pleaser;
he sought for the approval of God and was satisfied
when he was assured that the God who proves the
hearts of men was pleased with him. Nor was Paul
a self-seeker. He neither asked for glory nor for
money from men. Although he might have claimed
authority as an apostle of Christ he always was
among men as one who serves. He made of his
office not a dignity but an opportunity. God was
his witness that there was no covetousness, either
of money or of reputation, in his ministry. He
sought nothing but the good of those among whom
he labored and desired above all things thayJEkey
might be saved.

6o GREAT CHARACTERS OF

To that end Paul was gentle and sympathetic with
all. Like a nurse he ministered to all their needs;
like a mother he cherished his converts and lavished
his affection upon them and was ready to sacrifice
time and strength and life itself in their behalf.
They were dear to him, and it was not simply a
duty but also a delight to minister to them. Paul
worked for them day and night. His ministry was
filled with labor and travail. No one was permitted
to suffer because of his indifference and neglect.
His physical and mental powers were spent in the
full proof of his devotion. He knew what utter
exhaustion meant in his pastoral labors, travailing
until men and women were born again into the king-
dom of God.

Paul appealed to his people even as he appealed
unto God to bear witness that he had behaved him-
self holily, righteously, and unblamably among them
at all times. Careful about his conduct, he had
brought no disgrace upon his profession; he had
lived a holy life. He had been righteous in all his
dealings. No one could blame him for anything
he had done. His character was above reproach.
He had been an example to the flock. His people
could imitate him even as he imitated Christ. They
knew just what he was, for they had come to know
him intimately and personally.

Paul dealt with his people in their homes, as a

THE NEW TESTAMENT 6i

father with his children. Not satisfied with preach-
ing at them from a pulpit, he came to close quarters
in personal conversation and private admonition
and instruction. In this way he came to know their
individual needs and could exhort and encourage
them as each case demanded. He told them all that
God called them into his own kingdom and glory,
exhorting them all to walk worthily of God. He
followed up his exhortations with personal visits
and conversations until he was sure that his work
was not in vain. It was slow work but sure work
and was remarkably successful. It captured hea-
then strongholds and turned them into centers of
the Christian faith.

These are the characteristics of Paul's pastoral
work : It was full of boldness and assurance, truth-
ful, guileless, clean, free from flattery and self-seek-
ing, full of sympathy and affection, filled with labor
and travail, holy, righteous, unblamable, dealing
with individuals, and eminently and continuously
successful. It is a model to all Christian workers
for all time.

For Your Deliberation

Which do you consider the more important —
preaching or pastoral work?

From which have you received the more good
through your own life?

62 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

What characteristics would you list for an ideal
pastor? What would you add to Paul's list here?

Books for Reading and Study

The Pastoral Teaching of St. Paul, Chadwick.

Paul the Mystic, Campbell.

St. Paul the M aster-Builder, Lock.

THE NEW TESTAMENT 63

CHAPTER IX
PAUL THE STATESMAN AND WRITER

Paul had a wider outlook than any of the other
apostles. He took the whole world for his parish,
believing that the kingdom of his Christ would be
a far more glorious kingdom than that represented
by the empire of Rome. It would be a spiritual
kingdom, even as Jesus had taught; and it would
be endless in duration and limitless in power, gather-
ing into itself all the nations of men, unifying and
making of them one great brotherhood in the Chris-
tian faith. Paul set out to be a world conqueror.
There was no limit to his holy ambition except
the limit of his physical strength. His plans always
outran his possibiHties. As a pioneer missionary
he would have gone everywhere if that had been
possible to one man in one lifetime.

As it was, Paul labored more abundantly than any
other apostle, doing all that one man could do. He
attacked the strategic centers, working for the most
part in the great cities and making of them centers
of influence for all the surrounding communities.
He insisted that his Gentile converts should be free

64 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

from the old Jewish ordinances, for he realized that
new peoples must have new viewpoints and new
customs. Paul refused to put new wine into old
bottles. He did not attempt to force an Oriental
Christianity upon the Occident. As long as it was
true to the fundamentals of the common faith, he
was ready to leave every nation free to develop a
Christianity of its own type. He knew that a
world-wide church could not be a church of uni-
versal uniformity in matters of opinion and man-
ners of Ufe; it would represent unity in difference,
unity in spirit and the essentials of the faith, with
widest liberty in everything else. Paul's statesman-
ship was manifest in his tolerance, his charity, and
his practical methods for the successful prosecution
of the campaign for the conquest of the world for
his Christ.

As the great general and organizer of this aggres-
sive missionary work Paul traveled more widely,
established more churches, made his influence felt
in more of the great cities, evangelized more people,
and was more successful in his more abundant
labors than any of the older apostles. At the same
time Paul added more to the literature of the primi-
tive church than any other member of the apostolic
circle, being the pioneer in this field as in so many
others. Most if not all of his Epistles appeared
before the Gospels or any of the other books of the

THE NEW TESTAMENT 65

New Testament were written. There are thirteen
of these Epistles, not including the Epistle to the
Hebrews, which probably was written by some
member of the Pauline circle, rather than by Paul
himself.

It is a curious fact that, so far as we know, Paul
wrote nothing during the first fifteen years of his
life as a Christian ; and then, in the last fifteen years,
he wrote these thirteen Epistles. It is another curi-
ous fact that the thirteen Epistles were written at
four different periods in these fifteen years and
therefore fall into four groups separated from each
other by intervals of approximately five years each.
Paul's literary work presents this strange appear-
ance of periodicity. For fifteen years he wrote
nothing. Then he wrote two Epistles, First and
Second Thessalonians, within one year — about A. D.
53. Nothing more did he write for about five
years. Then he composed First and Second Corin-
thians, Galatians, and Romans, probably within one
year's time — about A. D. 58. After another interval
of five years he wrote Philemon, Colossians, Ephe-
sians, and Philippians, and sent three of them at
one time, by one messenger, from Rome to Asia
Minor about A. D. 63. After another interval of
nearly five years Paul wrote First Timothy, Titus,
and Second Timothy about A. D. 67.

These four groups were, in their order, those of

66 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

the second missionary journey, those of the third
missionary journey, those of the first Roman im-
prisonment, and those written between Paul's Hbera-
tion from the first Roman imprisonment and his
second imprisonment, ending in his martyrdom.
Different names have been given to these groups
by different persons. These names may not exactly
describe the several groups but may serve to label
and distinguish them. In their order they have
been called the primer Epistles, the pillar Epistles,
the prison Epistles, and the pastoral Epistles. In
their relation to Paul's ministry these groups have
been called the missionary, the evangelical, the edi-
ficatory, and the valedictory. With reference to
their style or manner they have been distinguished
as the didactic, the argumentative, the contemplative,
and the hortatory. As to their contents they have
been classified as the ones presenting the theology
of the last things, the theology of salvation, the
theology of the person of Christ, and the theology
and discipline of the church.

Paul surpassed all others in his missionary and
evangelistic zeal and success and, in addition, has
made the church and the world his debtor by the
writing of these Epistles, which formulated the
Christian theology and set the standard for the
Christian life through all the centuries. One writer
has said of them : "They compress more ideas into

THE NEW TESTAMENT 67

fewer words than any other writings, human or
divine, except the Gospels. They are of more real
and genuine value to the church than all her later
systems of theology. For eighteen hundred years
they have nourished the faith of Christendom and
will do so to the end of time." It has been said
of the Epistle to the Romans that ''the intelligence
and stability of any generation of believers is ex-
actly proportioned to the degree in which this mar-
rowy and masculine treatise is studied and under-
stood and appreciated," and that statement might
be made to include all the Pauline Epistles. Luther
found the watchword of the Protestant Reforma-
tion, ''justification by faith," in the writings of
Paul; and Wesley got the inspiration for his great
revival movement from the same source. All the
revivals of church history have based themselves
upon the teachings of Paul, and it is safe to predict
that this will be true until the missionary and evan-
gelistic work of the church is done. •

Augustine was converted by reading a sentence
in one of Paul's Epistles. Martin Luther was con-
verted by a study of Paul's doctrine of salvation
by faith. John Wesley was converted while listen-
ing to the reading of Martin Luther's preface to
Paul's Epistle to the Romans. What names can
equal these three in their particular fields ? Augus-
tine was the great theologian, Luther the great re-

68 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

former, and Wesley the great evangelist. They
were converted by the study of the writings of Paul,
the theologian, reformer, evangelist, missionary
statesman, and author without a peer. We too
would do well to study these writings.

Questions to Ponder

What is the difference between a mere missionary
and a statesman-missionary ? Can you illustrate the
latter class?

Tell why you would call these missionaries also
statesmen.

Which would you consider more valuable to the
church — Paul's work or his writing?

Which would you prefer to be — a great author
or a great statesman ? Why ?

Books for Reading and Study

The Life and Epistles of Paul, Conybeare and
Howson.

The Life and Work of St. Paul, Farrar.

Paul of Tarsus, Bird.

Paul and His Epistles, Hayes.

THE NEW TESTAMENT 69

CHAPTER X

THE UNKNOWN APOSTOLATE

Peter and Paul are the two heroes of the book
of Acts. Others of the apostles and evangelists of
the new faith are mentioned, but the larger part of
the book has to do with the work of these two men.
The four Gospels give us the history of Jesus, and
the book of Acts gives us the history of the begin-
nings of the Christian church as founded by Peter
and propagated by Paul. There are no other his-
torical books in the New Testament; and when the
narrative of these books fails us, we are left to con-
jecture or to tradition for all our details of informa-
tion in this field. We are told that Thomas went to
India with the gospel message, that Peter preached
in Rome, and that John labored for many years in
Ephesus and throughout Asia Minor. There are
apocryphal Acts of Peter, Paul, John, Andrew, and
Thomas; but little confidence can be given to their
absurd fabrications. For three centuries of Chris-
tian history we have no biographies of any of the
missionaries or members of the Christian Church
which will compare with those of Peter and Paul

70 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

in the book of Acts. We know little or nothing of
their conversions or the development of their char-
acters or the methods and measures of their success.

Yet in these three centuries the Christian faith
was spread through the whole of the civilized world
of that day. At the close of the third century the
empire had been conquered by the faithful preachers
of the Christian truth. The emperor professed to
be a Christian. The heathen religions were over-
thrown. Christianity was the dominant power in
the world. How was this great change brought
about ? Who was responsible for this great victory ?
There is no one outstanding personality to whom
the credit must be given. The work was done, and
the great triumph won by the unknown apostolate —
the humble workers in the rank and file whose
names are in the book of life, but whose labors were
not recorded in any history either within or without
the Holy Book.

When the risen Jesus appeared to the assembled
disciples he said to them, ''Peace he unto you: as
the Father hath sent me, even so send I you.'' In
the Epistle to the Hebrews, Jesus is called "the
Apostle . . . of our confession." The Father had
sent him to proclaim his will and to preach his
gospel, and in that upper room Jesus commissioned
his disciples to carry on the work he had begun.
Not only the twelve but all his followers were to

THE NEW TESTAMENT 71

be apostles of the faith. In the New Testament
the name "apostle" is given to the twelve and to
Paul, Barnabas, Silas, Andronicus, and Junias ; and
there seems to be no definite limitation to its appli-
cation among the missionary preachers of the Chris-
tian faith. Anyone who was "sent forth" by the
Father and by the church to devote himself to the
spread of the gospel through the world was a recog-
nized apostle, and it is in this wider sense of the
term that we use it here. There were those in the
church who were set apart for continuous itinerant
evangelistic work. They traveled from place to
place and without salary sought to proclaim the
truth and to make converts to the faith. They were
in a sense pubHc officials, and their work was that
of pioneers. They may have laid the foundations,
but the church was built and established in each
community by the faithful few who remained at
their posts and exemplified the good of the Christian
faith in their lives. A brother brought a brother
into the Christian brotherhood, and a friend brought
a friend. Most of the converts came into the church
in that way, as the result of personal effort on the
part of neighbors and friends. Peter was convinced
by a private conversation. Nathanael was brought
to investigate by the newfound joy of his fellow
townsman. The eunuch was converted by a road-
side talk. Timothy was made a Christian by a

y2 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

mother's instructions and a grandmother's prayers.
These New Testament examples are types of the
methods God has blessed most in the whole history
of the church. Zealous new converts like Andrew
and Philip the apostle, colporteurs and evangelists
like Philip the deacon, faithful Christian mothers
and grandmothers like Eunice and Lois, have from
the very beginning sought out friends and neigh-
bors, talked to strangers and to sons, told of their
own newfound revelation of truth and their own
experience of salvation and satisfaction for their
minds and their souls; and more people have been
brought into the church in that way than in any
other.

It was no easy task to be a Christian, and it was
no easy task to make a Christian in those beginning
days of church history. It never is an easy thing
to turn the world upside down while you yourself
are living in it and on it ; yet that is what the Chris-
tians set out to do. They had to combat the preju-
dices and the customs established through the cen-
turies; they had to undermine and overthrow the
ancient idolatries; they had to turn a sinning and
licentious heathen world into the kingdom of the
Lord Christ. The priests were against them, the
political powers were against them, and all the
forces of evil were active then as now to prevent
the triumph of righteousness upon the earth. Yet

THE NEW TESTAMENT 73

one by one individuals were attracted, convinced,
and converted; and every transformed life became
an epistle read and known of all in his acquaintance.
Every Christian was a sermon in shoes; and Jews
and Samaritans and barbarians and Greeks and
Romans, officials and philosophers, soldiers and
slaves, heard the message, saw the results, and con-
cluded that the Christian faith was worth having
both for this life and the life that was to come.

In this way the faith swept over the lands. It
"spread from generation to generation with incon-
ceivable rapidity. Seventy years after the founda-
tion of the very first Gentile Christian church in
Syrian Antioch, Pliny wrote in the strongest terms
about the spread of Christianity throughout remote
Bithynia — a spread which in his view already
threatened the stability of other cults throughout
the province. Seventy years later still the Paschal
controversy reveals the existence of a Christian
federation of churches, stretching from Lyons to
Edessa, with its headquarters situated at Rome.
Seventy years later, again, the Emperor Decius
declared he would sooner have a rival emperor in
Rome than a Christian bishop. And ere another
seventy years had passed, the cross was sewn upon
the Roman colors." This is the conclusion reached
at the end of the second volume of Harnack's study
of the expansion of Christianity. He thinks that

74 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

the church fathers were justified in their beHef that
the Christian faith had had a most astonishing and
unparalleled growth in the world.

What were the reasons for this world conquest?
There were two reasons : first, the gospel itself ; and
second, the unknown apostles, who believed it
and received it and realized it and lived it and
preached it in both life and death. The gospel itself
was superior to all other world faiths. It all cen-
tered about the person, the life, the words, and the
works of Jesus, the crucified and risen Lord.
He was a Saviour — a Saviour from sin. He had
taught the universal Fatherhood of God and the
universal brotherhood of man. The love and
charity he had commanded were made possible
through the Holy Spirit he had promised and had
sent. The Christian church had an authoritative
Book, an adaptable organization, a mystical experi-
ence, practical methods of social relief, a spiritual
power transforming individuals and reforming com-
munities and promising a new and better world. Its
converts were its testimonials; its recruits were its
evangelists. The unknown apostles carried its
banners to victory. They believed that they had the
gospel of life and immortality, and that their Jesus
was to be King over all.

At the end of the second century Tertullian wrote
to the heathen : "We are but of yesterday. Yet we

THE NEW TESTAMENT 75

have filled all your places — cities, villages, markets,
the camp itself, the palace, the senate, the forum.
All we have left to you is your temples." There
were leaders in this army of world conquerors, but
the work was done mainly and almost wholly by
the rank and file, unknown to the world histories
but apostles of the Father and his gospel for men
and with their names written and known in the
records of heaven. They were heroes too — heroic
in effort and, some of them, in martyrdom. We
give them the immeasurable credit which is their
due.

For You to Think About

Which would you prefer — a great leader or a
faithful church?

Are there apostles in the church to-day ? Do you
know any?

What would you consider the duties of an apostle
to-day ?

What reasons have you for thinking that Chris-
tianity ever will be a world religion ?

Books for Reading and Study

The Expansion of Christianity, Harnack.

The Times of the Apostles, Hausrath.

History of the Christian Church: Vol. I, Apos-
tolic Christianity : Vol. II, Ante-Nicene Christianity,
Schaff.

76 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

CHAPTER XI
JOHN THE BELOVED

Peter was the apostle appointed to found the
Christian church; Paul was the chosen vessel to
carry the gospel message through Gentile lands.
John is known as the disciple whom Jesus loved.
Peter was the originator, a bold aggressive spirit
capable of splendid and audacious things; Paul
united intellectual force and practical energy and
was the able and successful champion of Chris-
tianity before the bar of the world. John was
intuitive and receptive, subordinate to these great
leaders in the beginning but outliving them both
and carrying on and completing their work to the
end of the first Christian century.

In all probability John was born in Bethsaida, the
city of Peter and Andrew and Philip. His father's
name was Zebedee, and his mother's name Salome.
James was his brother — probably older, since his
name usually precedes that of John when they are
mentioned together in the New Testament books.
The family seems to have been comparatively well
to do, having servants in their employ. Salome
ministered to Jesus and his disciples of her sub-

THE NEW TESTAMENT yy

stance. John received Mary the mother of Jesus
into his own home after the crucifixion. John and
James aspired to the chief places in the kingdom
and asked to sit the one on the right hand, and the
other on the left hand of the King when he came to
be enthroned.

Salome was a good woman and a good mother,
probably giving her sons religious training. As soon
as John the Baptist began preaching at the Jordan,
her two sons were attracted by the new prophetic
note in his message and became his disciples. When
John the Baptist pointed out Jesus as the Lamb of
God that taketh away the sin of the world, they
became the disciples of Jesus. When the apostolic
band of twelve was formed, John and James be-
longed to the first group of four, sharing that honor
with Peter and Andrew. When the Master chose
three of his disciples to be with him in the raising
of the daughter of Jairus and on the mount of
transfiguration and in the garden of Gethsemane,
John and James were two of the three, and Peter
alone ranked with them. When two of the dis-
ciples were sent to prepare for that last Passover
meal, Peter and John were the two appointed to
that task. At the Last Supper the place nearest
the Master was reserved for his favorite among
the twelve, and that place was yielded without
question to John.

78 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

John was the last of the apostles to remain near
the cross on which the Master was hung and was
the first of the apostles to reach the open tomb on
the resurrection day. He was also the first of them
to grasp the resurrection faith. He was with the
disciples in the upper room at the time of the bap-
tism at Pentecost and was one of the leaders of the
church in Jerusalem for some years following that
great experience. Tradition says that he moved
later to Ephesus and, being exiled to the island of
Patmos, there had the visions of the book of Revela-
tion, setting forth the struggles and the victories of
the Christian Church. Later he wrote the fourth
Gospel and the three short Epistles that bear his
name. He was the last of the apostles to survive
and lived to near the close of the first Christian
century. In his last years all tradition unites in
affirming that he was the beloved leader of the
church, reverenced for his saintliness and for the
fact that during Christ's ministry he had been the
Master's most beloved disciple and friend.

What gave John this position of preeminence in
the apostolic company? What made him the dis-
ciple whom Jesus loved? It must have been that
his character was such as to be attractive to Jesus,
and it must have been that John loved Jesus more
than any of the other disciples did. Love begets
love. Affinity of spirit is found in likeness of aim

THE NEW TESTAMENT 79

and disposition. John had a very real love for
Jesus, and his character was most like that of his
Lord. Therefore, he stood nearest to Jesus and
was dearest to him. That was the greatest distinc-
tion anyone could win. What made John so lovable
to Jesus ? What were the elements of his character
which drew him to Jesus and in turn drew Jesus to
him?

Jesus called John and James "Sons of thunder."
They were men who could flash fire upon occasion.
Both James and John had a high degree of moral
strength, a sublime courage that did not fail in
critical times, and intense convictions that were not
swayed by every breeze. They were capable of a
holy heroism that would enable them to drink of
the cup of which the Master drank without flinching
from the supreme sacrifice. James was the first of
the apostles to be martyred. His boldness and his
courage made him a marked man among the Chris-
tians, and he was the first to suffer the extreme
penalty for his loyalty to the cause. John was just as
brave and as loyal as he, and it is one of the strange
providences of God that he was permitted to out-
live all the other apostles and then to die a natural
and peaceful death. He thundered against sin and
sinners as long as he lived. Jesus loved him for
his loyalty to the truth and the singleness of his
devotion and his manifest hatred for all that was

8o GREAT CHARACTERS OF

opposed to the Master and his cause. He was like
Jesus in refusing to compromise with evil or to
call things by any but their right names.

John could be filled with righteous indignation.
At times he could flame with holy anger. A man
can call other men the children of the devil and
fools and hypocrites and snakes and the offspring
of snakes and still be a saint. We know that is true
because Jesus did it. John was like Jesus. He
called Judas a devil and the son of perdition, and
said that every sinner was a child of the devil, that
every professing Christian who walked in the dark-
ness of sin was a liar, and that everyone who hated
his brother was a murderer. He was a son of
thunder when it came to denouncing unrighteous-
ness of any kind. He was as vehement in language
as Jesus himself, and Jesus loved him for his un-
compromising fidelity.

John was attracted by goodness and strength.
John the Baptist seemed to him a great genius with
genuine prophetic fire, so he left his nets to be-
come John's disciple. Jesus was greater than John
the Baptist, so all the devotion of the young man's
life was laid at his feet. In the company of the
apostles Peter seemed to be the strongest character,
and John attached himself to him; and after the
Master's death Peter and John seem to have been
inseparable companions. He was a modest, mi-

THE NEW TESTAMENT 8i

assuming, self-effacing, devoted companion and
helper to these men, and they all prized him highly
for his reverence and love.

John was a seer. His eyes were the first to recog-
nize Jesus on the shore of the sea when he appeared
to the disciples after the resurrection. It was intui-
tion as much as vision which led him to say with
all certainty, "It is the Lord." He apparently saw
deep into the heart of Jesus, and that made him
capable of remembering and recording the great
spiritual truths of the fourth Gospel. He saw
further into the future history of the church than
did any of his fellow apostles, and that made
him capable of picturing the struggles and the
triumphs of the church to the very end. The eagle
is his symbol. His keen eye could see beyond the
clouds and could look steadily into the face of the
Fountain of Light and Truth.

John had the simplicity of the child in his charac-
ter. He had the child's intuition of goodness and
admiration for greatness. After the deaths of Peter
and Paul he came to the place of primacy in the
Christian Church. Peter had laid the foundations,
and Paul had built a stately structure; John put
the pinnacles and the finishing touches upon the
edifice of the Christian faith. He had been the
first of the three to come to Jesus. In the providence
of God he was reserved to the last to complete the

S2 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

work of the apostolic age. Peter is the apostle of
hope, Paul the apostle of faith, and John the apostle
of love, which is the greatest of all.

For Thoughtful Consideration

Would you have loved John more than any other
apostle? If so, why?

Do you think a radical or a conservative is the
more useful to the church, and why ?

How do John's style and thought compare with
those of Peter and Paul?

Books for Reading and Study

John, Whom Jesus Loved, Culross.

The Two Johns of the New Testament, Stalker.

John and His Writings, Hayes.

THE NEW TESTAMENT 83

CHAPTER Xn

HOW THE NEW TESTAMENT WAS
WRITTEN

The New Testament church was a church with-
out the New Testament. It had a Bible, but its
Bible was the Old Testament. If the preachers of
the new faith had any book in their hands, it was
the book of the Old Testament Scriptures. They
found many of their texts and much of the sub-
stance of their preaching in that volume and read
from it for their edification, finding much in it
which was profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, and for instruction in righteousness.
They had no other sacred book to put beside it as
we put the New Testament beside the Old Testa-
ment in our Bibles to-day. Paul may have lived
and died without seeing a written Gospel. He knew
all about the gospel message and he preached it
with power wherever he went, but it may be that
he never saw a Gospel in manuscript or book form.
It was almost a generation after the death of Jesus
before the first of our Gospels was written, and at

84 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

least two generations had passed away before the
last of our Gospels came into existence. Three or
four centuries passed before the various books that
made up our New Testament were collected into
a single volume. For the first one hundred and
fifty years of our era the Old Testament was the
one and only sacred volume in the Christian Church.
The New Testament church, the church of the first
fifty or sixty years of our era, had no New Testa-
ment.

It is interesting to remember that in the beginning
the Christian Church had no book of its own upon
which to rely for its authority either in form of
organization or in substance of faith, as the Mo-
hammedans had in the Koran, or the Mormons in
the Book of Mormon, or the Christian Scientists in
Science and Health. The Christian Church was
not founded upon a book. The church came first,
and the book came afterward, just as the great
war came first, and a flood of books about the
war came later. Jesus founded the church, and he
founded it upon his own life and teaching and
preaching. We have no record of his writing any-
thing except when he wrote a few words with his
finger in the dust of the Temple floor, and we do
not know what those words were. He was content
with self-revelation in his daily life and his spoken
words. He wrote no books and did not command

THE NEW TESTAMENT 85

the writing of any books; and for years after his
death no one of his disciples thought of writing a
book.

It is easy to see why this was true. In the first
place, the apostles were not literary men. No one
of them ever had written a book; and as laborers,
men of the open air rather than of the study or the
library or the school, they had no liking for writing.
They could tell their story wherever they went and
they much preferred telling it to writing it. It was
much easier for unlettered Gahlaeans to talk than
to write.

Then, in the second place, that was all the Master
had asked them to do. He had told th' m to go
into all the world and preach his gospel to every
creature. They could do that and they could do
it well. They were qualified witnesses. They had
important news to tell and they could not but speak
the things which they had seen and heard. Their
incessant evangelism left them little or no time for
writing even if they had had any inclination for it.

In the third place, it was the custom in all the
Jewish schools for all the instruction to be given
orally. No rabbi committed anything to writing.
It was his business simply to interpret and not to
write anything new. As far as the disciples were
influenced by the traditions and the prejudices of
their race they would not think of sitting down to

86 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

write either a history or a biography or a manual
of doctrine.

Then, in the fourth place, all of the first disciples
seem to have had the idea that their Lord would
soon return. If he were coming a second time, and
coming soon, what need was there of writing any-
thing about his first coming? He soon would be
on hand himself to say and do all that was necessary
for the good of his church. For all these reasons
we can see how natural it was for the first genera-
tion of Christian believers to be content without any
written memorials of their faith.

Sir Thomas More was right when he said that
the gospel was first spread abroad through the world
by words and preaching without writing of any
sort, that the faith came into men's ears and was
written in men's hearts before any word of it was
written in a book, and that no evangelist and no
apostle ever sent the faith to any nation in writing
until they were informed that God had begun his
church in that place; and Sir Thomas adds that
he has no doubt that if the gospel never had been
written, the substance of the faith never would
have fallen out of Christian hearts, but the same
Spirit who first planted it would have preserved it
there and have increased it through the years.
That may be true ; yet we may be profoundly thank-
ful that in process of time the New Testament was

THE NEW TESTAMENT 87

a felt need in the church, and that when the need
was felt it was supplied.

As long as Jesus and the apostles lived they were
final authorities on all matters of the faith; but the
substance of their teaching had to be repeated by
others; and as different persons gave different re-
ports, it became necessary to have some recognized
standard that would be an authority upon all these
things.

Somebody wrote down a collection of the say-
ings of Jesus first of all. Many undertook to make
a narrative of his life. Mark made a record of
the preaching of Peter. Matthew combined the
sources at hand into another, longer book. Luke,
the Gentile, with the Greek historians as his models,
worked over the same gospel story and made exten-
sive additions out of his personal investigations
and put it all into more literary form. He wrote
for a friend and patron nam„ed Theophilus, and his
account of the life of Jesus v^sls so satisfactory that
the same patron asked him to write another book
giving the account of the growth of the Christian
Church from Jerusalem to Rome. So Luke wrote
the book of Acts.

These writings sufficed the church until all the
apostles except Andrew and John had died. Then
John wrote a fourth Gospel — a more spiritual and
more doctrinal narrative, supplementing and com-

88 GREAT CHARACTERS OF

pleting the accounts of the other three. He had
written the book of Revelation some twenty or thirty-
years before, and his second and third Epistles;
and he appended the first Epistle to his Gospel narra-
tive as a sort of practical summary of its contents.
Other Epistles had been written during the first
century by Paul and Peter and James and Jude, and
some unknown author had composed our Epistle
addressed to the Hebrews alone. These Epistles
were either called forth by special emergencies in
local churches or were sent out as circular letters
for use in whole districts or in the whole church.

At first there was no thought of using them as
Scriptures or of collecting them into a sacred Book.
It was only when heretics began to claim apostolic
authority for their doctrines that the church began
to realize that it ought to have a recognized list of
books to which it could appeal as final authority in
setting forth the apostolic faith. Then the writings
of the apostles and of the apostolic days began to
be collected. They had been scattered here and
there throughout the church; but as copies were
exchanged, every added book became a treasure
and was read in the public services, establishing
itself in the confidence and the esteem of the people.
At last church councils and other church authorities
officially determined a list of books containing the
Christian verity as having come down from apes-

THE NEW TESTAMENT 89

tolic times and as having proved their usefulness
for edification in the church.

The New Testament books, written in the first
century, were recognized as Scriptures in another
century and in two more centuries had estabhshed
themselves as an authoritative canon, equal to the
Old Testament in value and superior to it in revela-
tion, in the Christian Church.

For Further Thought and Study

Do you think it would have been an advantage
to have a certified verbatim report of the teaching
of Jesus? If so, why?

How do you think a New Testament book ought
to be certified ?

What books of the New Testament do you regard
as the most valuable, and why ?

Do you know any books outside the New Testa-
ment as valuable to you as some of the New Testa-
ment books?

Books for Reading and Study

The Gospel History and Its Transmission, Bur-
kitt.

The Making of the New Testament, Bacon.
The Rise of the New Testament, Muzzey.

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