href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@30194@[email protected]#chap01fn17" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">17] who was famous for his consistently immoral life, but was stung to the heart one day when one of his companions casually remarked that for him at least no repentance could avail. Then, continues the story, he went forth, and sat between the hills, and said, "Ye mountains and hills, seek mercy for me." But they said, "Before we seek mercy for you, we must seek it for ourselves, for it is said, The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed." Then he said, "Heaven and earth, ask mercy for me." But they said, "Before we ask mercy for you, we must ask it for ourselves, as it is said, The heavens shall vanish like smoke, and the earth shall wax old as a garment." Then he said, "Sun and moon, ask mercy for me." But they said, "Before we ask for you, we must ask for ourselves, as it is said, The moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed." Then he said, "Planets and stars, ask mercy for me." But they said, "Before we ask for you, we must ask for ourselves, as it is said, All the hosts of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heaven shall be rolled up as a scroll." Then he said, "The matter depends wholly upon me." He sank his head between his knees, and cried and wept so long that his soul went forth from him. Then a heavenly voice was heard to say, "Rabbi Eliezer ben Durdaiya has been appointed to the life of the world to come." But Rabbi Jehudah I., the Patriarch, wept and said, "There are those who acquire the world to come in years upon years; there are those who acquire it in an hour." The story is an admirable parallel to that of the Prodigal Son and shows that the best rabbinical and the best Christian teaching on repentance were identical as to its nature and efficacy.

It is thus clear that there was not any essential difference between Jesus and his contemporaries as to either the meaning of the Kingdom of God or the necessity and power of repentance. The difference between them came in the kind of conduct which was necessary for membership in the Kingdom of God and prescribed for repentance. It was at this point that Jesus came into sharp conflict with the two parties previously described, the Fourth Philosophy and the Scribes and Pharisees.

The difference between Jesus and the Pharisees was one of interpretation. Both he and they regarded the Law as the revelation of God's will, and Jesus himself was emphatic in declaring that it was binding and that he did not wish to destroy it. But the Pharisees endeavoured to make the Law cover every detail of human life by combining it with clever verbal interpretations which stretched its meaning in every direction. Jesus, on the other hand, appealed from the letter of the Law to its original purpose, which he held to be the benefit of man.[18] If, therefore, there was any contradiction between the letter of the Law and its original purpose, it was the purpose which was dominant. No one can doubt that in this respect Jesus followed a principle incontestably correct but extraordinarily difficult of application. It contains, moreover, implicit in it an appeal to conscience, for it was really by this rather than by historic knowledge that the ultimate purpose of the Law was revealed. The final test of formularies which appeal to the intellect is whether they are true and of codes defining conduct whether they are right, but the perception of truth and of right depends in the end on reason and on conscience,[19] and the difficulty and obscurity which attend their application constantly frighten men into trying to substitute some easier way for that of Jesus: but here too the saying is true that "narrow is the way that leadeth unto life."

Far more deep-seated was the difference between Jesus and the Fourth Philosophy. It is only necessary to put oneself back in the position of a Jew of Galilee in the first century, inspired by the patriotic teaching of Judas of Galilee and his followers, to understand how extraordinarily unpopular the teaching of Jesus must have been in Galilee. Such a Jew believed that the continuance of the Roman rule was an intolerable injustice, that it ought not to be endured, that resistance to it was right and proper and would be crowned with success by the intervention of God. If he heard Jesus say, "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you ... as ye would that men should do to you do ye to them likewise; for if ye love them that love you what thank have you ... love ye your enemies," what would such a man have thought? In the light of the experiences of our own time there is no reason for wonder that Jesus in the end found it impossible to live in Galilee. The marvel is that he escaped with his life.

The contrast between such teaching and that of the Fourth Philosophy is so obvious that it could never either escape attention or be denied if it were not for the absence of any definite mention of this party in the gospels. The probable explanation is that by the time that the gospels were written the Fourth Philosophy had ceased to exist, and that in Greek circles this party was never prominent. The result was that there was no reason to perpetuate any tradition as to controversy between Jesus and the Fourth Philosophy. The only dispute with the Jews in which the Christians of the generation that produced the gospels were interested was that with the rabbis, the lineal descendants of the Pharisees. Thus they preserved the story of arguments between Jesus and the Pharisees, but not between him and the representatives of other schools. This, however, did not mean that the teaching of Jesus called out by the Fourth Philosophy was not preserved. The teaching itself was given, but, just as in the Talmud the sayings of rabbis are often given without historic context, so also in Christian tradition the sayings of Jesus usually appear without the incidents which had called them out. In exactly the same way, except for the final scene in Jerusalem, the priests and Sadducees are not mentioned; they played no part in the life of the Christian generation which produced the gospels. There was, however, a special reason why the non-resistant teaching of Jesus should be preserved even when its historic background was lost. Though the Fourth Philosophy had ceased to have any contact with the Church, the persecution of Christians was an actual problem, and the practical difficulty of right conduct under its stress kept alive teaching which might otherwise have been forgotten.

The question is sometimes asked whether such teaching is really consistent with the violent cleansing of the Temple. The true answer is probably not to be found in any ingenious harmonisation, but rather in accentuating the fact that the "non-resistant" teaching in the Sermon on the Mount deals with the line of conduct to be observed towards foreign oppressors and violence from without. The sacerdotal money-changers and sellers of doves in the Temple were not the "oppressors of Israel." Israel was called on to suffer under Roman rule, and the righteous to endure violence at the hands of the wicked, for that was the will of God, who in his own good time would shorten the evil days. But the manipulation of the sacrificial system as a means of plundering the pious was a sin of Israel itself, against which, protest and force were justified. What the heathen and the wicked do is their