I would add that I shall pass over in silence many details, which though important are not essential to the end which I propose to myself. It is to be observed, indeed, that my title is not "The Ministry of Jesus Christ," but "Jesus Christ during his Ministry,' which is different. I propose, in fact, to speak above all things of Jesus himself, to ask what he thought, what he purposed to do, what he professed to be, and, as my general title says, what he said of his person, what authority he claimed, and what work he desired to do. I desire to look for nothing else, and to speak of nothing else; and here, as in my first volume, I judge it to be needless to repeat what the Gospels say. I shall particularly seek for what they have not said, but in this search I take as point of departure certain data given by the Gospels themselves. It is therefore not my intention to follow the usual method of Lives of Jesus, setting forth the New Testament narratives in a or less chronological order, and more studying them critically and exegetically. I shall take the Bible story as a whole, and shall try to draw from the impression left by reading it a picture of the person of Christ, and especially a history of his thought. I shall touch upon the events which occurred in the life of Jesus only so far as they may serve to throw light upon what took place in his soul. In this, as in the first volume, the reader will see that Jesus "destroyed" nothing, and that he "fulfilled" all things. This word is the key of many apparent enigmas and contradictions. I hope to show that everything that Jesus said, did, thought, and preached had its roots in the past, and by a slow and sure evolution was made by him entirely new. One word more: In writing this book I would not forget that the moral and religious life is not to be studied as natural history is studied, that a simple statement of facts does not explain everything, and that the methods which lead to an acquaintance with the spiritual world can by no means be the same as those which lead to a knowledge of the world of nature. Here as elsewhere the saying of Pascal is true: "The heart has its reasoning which the reason knows nothing of;" and the soul may have intuitions of the true which objective observation will forever fall short of giving to the learned. |