The mention of emotion in this connexion recalls inevitably the famous definition of religion as ' morality touched with emotion ' (M. Arnold, Lit. and Dogma, ch. ii.). It is indeed a meagre and inadequate conception of religion. Yet there is a /arge element of truth in it, and the emotional element in all true religion allies it with poetry.
That the temperament of Jesus was in the highest way emotional, is so familiar a fact that it needs little dwelling on. Christ as man of feeling is almost too well known. Perhaps we should rather say misknown, for anything of that sentimentality which vulgar minds are accustomed to associate with Him is entirely absent from Him. His emotion is always reticent and controlled, and when it finds e.xpression, it is always utterly real and virile, without a touch of either the fantastic or the effeminate. A splendid example of the sensitive response to emotion which produces literary effect of the most delicate though uncon- scious poetic quality, is to be found in the story of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15). From the beginning to verse 24 no one can fail to feel the rising exhil- aration, an effect manifestly produced by tiie corresponding crescendo in the narrator's feeling. Suddenly, on the entrance of the elder brother, all is damped down, and the story drags itself to the close like a stricken thing.
* This subject is discussed and illustrated in Griflfenhoofe's Unieritten Sayings of Jestts ; and in Briggs' articles in the Ex- Dository Times, viii. [1897] 393, 452, 492, ix. 69, which, however, Sarry the matter further than all readers will be prepared to "oUow the author.
There are many signs of the ebb and flow of feel- ing in connexion with the events of Jesus' own experience. At the critical moments of His life this is naturally most noticeable. There is the outburst on the occasion of His first appearance in tiie synagogue of Nazareth, with the memories of thirty j^ears behind the exhilaration. One can feel yet the thrill of the opening quotation, ' The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,' etc. (Lk 4'* quoted from Is 6V). Correspondingly deep is the depression manifest in His first intimation to His disciples of the inevitable cross whose shadow had begun to lie upon His path. In the words, ' Likewise shall also the Son of Man suffer of them ' (Mt 17'-), there is an almost intolerable pathos. But the cross, as it came nearer, changed its aspect for Him, and as He entered on its terrihc pathway at tlie end, one hears a shout of exultation, almost of laughter, in the words recorded in Jn 12^"-*\ when we are told that He 'rejoiced in spirit.' Yet unmistakable though these instances are, there is even a more poignant emotion in such little casual touches as the contract between the homelessness He felt and the homes of foxes and of birds (Mt 8-") ; or in such a wayside incident as that in which He defended the woman who 'hath wrought a fine work upon me' (26^^^), and whose gracious deed afl'ected Him as with the breath of burial spices.
Countless instances, and those of many kinds, might be gathered from His speech to others. Tiie gardener's pifi/ for the tig-tree (Lk 13^) is a real touch of nature. When He addresses the dead damsel in the homely Aramaic tongue (Mk 5'*M. '^^e have the same tone in which a northern peasant of our own land might say ' Lassie 1 " Nor can we omit those words which must have seemed to the disciple to whom they were s[>oken to gather up together all the tenderness of boyish memories with that of grown man's patient sutt'ering, ' When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest ; but Avhen thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not ' ( Jn •2V^).
Perhaps the point at which the emotion of Jesus reaches its deepest fulness and tenderness of sug- gestion is in regard to the men and women of His nation. The metaphor of the hen and her brood (Lk 13^) was spoken with sobs. But the figure round which His emotion unquestionably gathered most of all was the favourite Israelite figure of the sheplierd and the sheep. The OT image repeated by later prophets from 1 K22''('I saw all Israel scattered upon the hills as sheep that have no shepherd ') had evidently touched His heart most deeply. Carlyle points out in his Essay on Burns how the sheplierd instinct of the poet puts him in the place of the suffering sheep ; and it was the same instinct wliicli drew from Ps 23, and from the passage above quoted, so rich and wonderful a shepherd poetry as the saj-ings of Jesus afibrd. He knows the waj's and the folding of the flock (Jn 10'*-'^). He is touched with compassion for those lost ones of tlie House of Israel who are as sheep without a shepherd (Mt 9*^ 15-^). His Good Shepherd is seen in such detail as only the pitiful heart could have suggested, ' leaving the ninety and nine in the wilderness ' (Lk IS'', Mt 18'-), antl ' going into the mountains ' in search of the wanderer. When the Shepherd is smitten, the sheep will be scattered abroad (Mt 26^'), neverthe- less He will 'go before them into Galilee' (Mk 16"), bringing the scattered flock home.