The Roman conquest of Syria had brought into inunediate and hostile contact two nationalities whose whole history and thought placed them irreconcilabl.y apart. Rome's ideal of secular empire confronted the Jewish hope of the uni\'ersal reign of Messiah. Down to the minutest detail of life the two ideals were opposed. To Rome tribute was the obvious conse- quence of conquest ; the theatre was at once a politic and a generous enrichment of the life of the conquered State. To Israel tribute was a sacrilege, and the theatre which rose in Jerusalem a blasphemy. So hateful was the Roman to the Jew, that Jews were a worthless commodity in the Roman slave- market. So unintelligible was tlie Jew to the Roman, that Tacitus speaks of the nation as ' given over to superstition, dis- inclined to religion' (Hausrath, i. 173-86). These facts are but illustrations of the wider principle, that when a nation with intense national sentiments encounters a nation with strong imperial sentiment, trouble of tlie most violent kind always ensues. For confirmation of this, one has only to remember tiie history of Switzerland, of Ireland, or of the Transvaal. In Israel the struggle was only the more acute and ine\'itable, because the Romanizing policy of tlie Herods had lent to it the additional aspect of a civil war. Nothing could be imagined more explosive than this state of affairs — a fact which was very clear to the enemies of Jesus (Jn It-***).
That Jesus also saw this clearly there can be no question ; and this, among other things, must have been in His mind when He spoke of Himself as sending a sword (Mt lO'*-*), and scattering fii-e on the earth (Lk 12^^). Towards the Roman power He, in contrast with such revolutionaries as Judas of Galilee, maintained a strictly neutral attitude. It is probable that no words ever uttered showed such consummate diplomatic skill as those in which He answered the question about the tribute money (Mt 22'' etc.). His prophecies (242etc.) show how patent to Him was the coming explosion of the forces then at play. His policy was to set the word of the Kingdom so fully at the explosive centre, that when the crash came it would send Christianity across the whole world.
For that ditt'usion everything was ready. Great roads had long been open by land and sea for trade and connnerce. Even then the Romans were laying down those indestructible causeways by which they imited land with land. The Sadducees, who in some respects read skilfully the signs of their times, did all they could to encourage trade in Syria, and to break down the Pharisaic restrictions which hampered it ; and in this Jesus was their powerful ally. From the heights of Nazareth He had seen the march of the legions on the Roman road across Esdraelon from Acre to the Jordan, and watched the long lines of laden camels moving .slowly from the coast to Damascus and back, along the road that lies like a flung ribbon along the hillsides to the north. When in after years St. Paul utilized the Roman roads for the spread of the gospel, he was but carrying out the work which Jesus initiated when He placed that gospel within the charged mine of Palestine.
In tlie light of one further consideration we see the e.xtraordinary Providence which watched over the situation then. It is a commonplace of his- tory, that civilization and all higher developments of human life spring forward at a bound at the
meeting - point of national currents. ' The great civilizations have always arisen in the meeting- ))laces of ideas' (]\Iartin Conway, TliC Dawn of Art, 76). The Norman Conquest offers one of the most conspicuous illustrations, but it is only one of many. The supremely influential meeting of national forces lias always been that betiveen the East and the West. ' The contact bet\veen East and West has always been the i^rolilic source of the advancement of humanity ' (pp. cit. 59, 6U). It was from this con- tact, induced by the Pilgrimages and the Crusades, that the Renaissance arose. But Christianity itself iiad arisen at that earlier point of contact, when the Eastern factor was the Hebrew religion, and the Western was Greece and Rome. At the focus of the world Jesus .set the light of the world.
2. The relations of Jesus with Gentiles. — Not only was Palestine in close proximity with Gentile neighbours in the time of Jesus ; the land itself was overrun with Gentiles, and no account of the meaning of Palestine for Jesus can ignore that fact.
His home in Galilee must have given from the first a very ditterent outlook on the CJentile world from any that would have been possible in Jud;ea. Far from the centre of Jewish exclusiveness, crossed bj' great higli roads from the sea to tlie east, and actually inhabited by multitudes of Gentiles from various lands, Galilee was the most open-minded and tolerant part of the land. Commercial and other interests nifvde the Galiheans acquainted with foreigners, and established mucii friendly human intercourse. Thus at the outset it must be borne in mind that Jesus was from His childhood accus- tomed to a more or less cosmojiolitan world, and to the ideas current in such a society. The tempta- tion of 'the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them' (Mt 4**), indicates no new discovery of worldly grandeur, but a knowledge which had been gathering during the experience of thirty years.