purple. He has proved the truth of the Spanish proverb that no evil lasts a century: no hay malo qui dure cien años.

He did not succeed in finding his literary form—the real touchstone of genius, and failing in this, lacked the crown of approval which confers the kingship of faith in self. But how many of his lesser brothers, how many of those who have vainly hitched their wagon to a star, are drawn to him by these almost lyric struggles of a poet's impotence? Success would have destroyed his selfdoubt, made him a different man: and nothing is sadder than his 'omnis moriar', three months before he died. But he was too clearsighted not to see that destiny can shatter us by accomplishing our desires no less than by refusing them, as he tells us on the last page of his Journal. "He who wills only what God wills, escapes both catastrophes. Everything turns out to his good." The faith of his death-bed recalls Dante's line: "In la sua voluntad é nostra pace."

A failure? Perhaps all lives are failures judged in the light and glory of those youthful ideals which Amiel never quite laid aside. The practical man achieves only a practical success, and the pursuit of the practical pushed to its limits resulted in the worldwar. Better than that-if we must choose an extreme—an impractical goal, a goal among the clouds, better even Nirvana and the Wheel of Illusion, however such a search for the infinite be decried by Occidental pragmatists. Better to return now and again to Amiel, if one feel oneself in danger of forgetting the days when one knew how to dream, when one was capable of being touched by dreams like his.

JESUS THE PHILOSOPHER.

THE GREAT TEACHER WAS A MAN IN MIDDLE LIFE AND OF PHILOSOPHICAL TEMPER RATHER THAN A RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIAST BARELY TURNED

W

THIRTY YEARS OF AGE.

BY REV. ROLAND D. SAWYER.

ITH a thousand-fold more books written about Jesus than of any other figure in history, and with hundreds of thousands of preachers and teachers giving their lives to the study of his life, it at first seems venturesome to suggest any revolutionary teachings about the Great Galilean; but let us remember that theology holds its cramping hand on the minds of these many preachers and teachers, and over the authors of these many books. It is as recent as 1863 that the first book was written about Jesus, which treats him as an historic, and not as a theological, figure. Renan's Life of Jesus was the first attempt to interpret Jesus as an historical figure, and it had tremendous influence in reviving interest in Jesus as a real man among men. What we speak of as the Reformation made no study of Jesus; even as a theology, it created no Christology; it accepted the views of the church without question. Writers and teachers of the Reformed churches were theological rather than scientific in their aims, and we could expect no new light to come forth from their work.

Renan sketches the figure of Jesus as he found it in older writings, and he gives us a young, enthusiastic, religious leader of rare personal charm, who easily drew about himself sincere disciples. This Jesus was a poet, a dreamer, a seer, a sort of larger Shelley. In the main, scientific lives of Jesus since Renan, have followed his outline. The only variation has come from the socialistic lives of Jesus, where we see Him as a fiery, young revolutionist; a man of utter unselfishness, devoted to the ideal of freeing the oppressed; in the hands of this class of writers Jesus becomes a larger Robert Emmet, ready to go to the cross for the poor and weak.

Jesus was a poet, a dreamer; He was unselfish and willing to die for the poor and weak; and He was more than these things— He was a wise, well-balanced teacher; a man of over forty years, who had watched life closely, brooded, reflected, learned wisdom by patience and experience, and thus we have in Him not only the supreme literary genius, the hero to honor, we have in Him the teacher from whom we may learn forever; the philosopher who tells us of ourselves and our problems.

No one reading the gospels would for a moment think that the sayings therein collected and attributed to Jesus, were the words of a young man. They are not. They give us the mature thinking of a man of mature years; they are not unlike the words of the greater moralists and philosophers of classic Greece and Rome. The calm, patient treatment of the situation which Jesus uses in the incident recorded in Luke vii. 36-50, is that of the man of middle life rather than that of the young man. Most of what Jesus says is entirely un-natural if we think of him as a young man.

Again it is an un-natural thing for a young man to gather about himself a group of older disciples. All the teachers of ancient Hebrew-land, of Greece and Rome, were men of mature years, who gathered disciples who were younger. Probably the only disciple in Jesus' group, that was near His own age, was Peter; this perhaps accounts for the position of authority which Peter held.

And again Jesus is more than all other of ancient teachers, closely associated with women; they supported Him, were His friends and followers; His relations with these women seem to be such as we would find in a man of forty-five, rather than in a man of thirty.

The enthusiasm of radical German scholarship for the views of Weiss and Schweitzer quite led astray the scientific scholarship of the Christian world. These men held the view that Jesus was an enthusiastic exponent of Jewish Apocalyptic conceptions—that His own conception was to announce Himself as the Messiah and that the eschatological kingdom was at hand. It is evident that the Jewish followers of Jesus who originated the churches, shaped a gospel to preach, and edited the gospel records in the form we now have them, did believe that Jesus was the Messiah. But a careful and critical selection from the gospel-records of the words and ideas of Jesus, does not verify any such view. The original form of Matthew, as best we may reconstruct it, has no messianic con

ception, but is a collection of lofty, moral philosophy and religious trust. And in Mark, which is probably little changed by later hands that the author, there is very little which connects Jesus with the Apocalyptic Messiah. And one of the sayings of Jesus, brought down without change apparently, (Mark xii-35) shows that Jesus rejected messianic conceptions as the Jews held them, and did not regard Himself as the Messiah. Such history of Palestine as we may find, and especially the works of Josephus, show to us that in Jesus' day there were varying streams of lives meeting in the best thought of the serious-minded. Roman religion, Roman religion, Persian cults, Greek philosophy, all had sent their ideas into the general stream. While the Hebrews refused to mingle their religious ideas with those of Romans and oriental cults and Greek mythology, yet how far they accepted Greek philosophical views is seen by the work of Philo and the Wisdom literature.

Jesus went with this group. He sought to modify prevailing Messianic conceptions; He thanked God that the larger light had been given Him, (Matt. xi. 27-29); He was a wandering philosophical teacher; His first followers were disciples, and while later followers taught Him as the Messiah, and put Messianic claims into their accounts of His sayings, it is quite evident from the writings of Justin the Martyr, and the Gospel of John, that there were many of His followers who still upheld Jesus the Philosopher, rather than Jesus the Messiah.

Freeing our minds from the theology of the early disciples, the church of the centuries, the pre-conceptions of modern critics, we find that an unprejudiced reading of the records, would seem to indicate that Jesus was a man who had reached middle life at least. Let us now examine the direct question of His age as we may find light thrown upon it in these records. The only direct reference to His age which is made either by Himself, or by a contemporary, is when in a controversy with the Jews, they rebuke Him by saying, "Thou art not yet fifty years old". Such a statement is unnatural unless Jesus were in the decade between forty and fifty; had he been under forty they would not have thus spoken. All gospel accounts state that Jesus took up the work of John, began his public ministry, when John was cast into prison for protesting against Herod's marriage to Herodias. Recent dates in Latin history seem to fix that marriage as in the year 34. Accordingly Jesus ceased to be the village rabbi, and became the itinerant teacher soon after.

Pilate was recalled in 37, hence Jesus could not have been crucified later than 36, and we can put the time of His public ministry between 34 and 36.

A date for Jesus' birth as early at least as 8 B. C. has a growing number of supporters. Only by putting the birth early can we establish the historic chracter of the account in Luke. Luke says the birth of Jesus was "when Quirinius was governor." Roman history puts Quirinius in Syria 10-8 B. C. Or taking Jewish history and reckoning back from the service of the priests as we have it for the year 70 A. D. reckoning back to the course of Abijah, to which Zacharias belonged, and to whom came the first intimation. of the events leading up to Jesus' birth a few months later, we come to July in the year 9 B. C. Clement of Alexandria puts the birth of Jesus as in the year 9-8; Tertullian says it was when Sentius. Saturninus was governor: Sentius was for a while co-governor with Quirinius, and displaced him in the year 8 B. C. Thus it is evident that the early fathers accepted the early date for Jesus' birth.

Accepting this early date for the birth of Jesus we can not get away from the fact that Jesus in the days of His ministry was over forty years of age. Looking further into the testimony of the fathers as to the age of Jesus during His ministry we find that Irenaeus says that Jesus was forty years of age when He sent out the disciples, and Clement working out a careful chronology accepts the statement without question. How then arose the popular error of thinking Jesus was barely turned thirty at the time of His ministry. It comes from the statement of the gospel that Jesus was about thirty years of age when He was baptized by John. Believing John's ministry to have been unimportant and of a few months duration, the rest followed. Dean Alford carefully points out that the general statement "being about thirty years of age", admits of much latitude either way; that Jesus might have been thirty-two or twenty-eight. The gospel-record gives much prominence to John, and Jesus pays him splendid tribute. Jewish estimates give good space to the work of John, and Josephus indicates his ministry covered a considerable time. Hence the truth seems to be, that John's ministry covered a space of perhaps ten years; that Jesus was baptized and became a follower of John when about thirty, during which time He was a follower of John, and that in 34 when John was imprisoned, He moved to Capernaum and entered His ministry.