(2) But tlie popularity of Jesus was due not onlj- to His personal qiialities, but to His methods as a Teacher and the gospel that He brought, (a) Much lay in His methods — in the simplicity and ilirectness, the homeliness and jiicturesqueness of His language, and its entire freedom from all the professional pedantries of the IJabbis (Mk 1--, cf. 12*"). The undying power of His parables, simplj* as literature, enables us to form some idea of what it must have been to hear those wonderful stories as they first fell from His own lips, (b) But these things were only the outer swathings of His mes- sage— the husk, not the kernel. The form of His teaching migiit appeal to the imagination, but it was the substance — the joyful Galihean gospel of the Kingdom of God — that warmed and thrilled the listening multitudes. Cln-ist's words were 'words of grace' — words about the Heavenly Father's love and the blessings that lay within the
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reach of every one who was willing to be God'ss child ; words of forgiveness for the sinful, and liberty for the captive, of comfort for the mourner, and rest for the weary and heavy-laden soul. ' The gospel of the kingdom ' — in that Clirist's message was all summed up (Mk P^). And if the fore- runner shook the nation to its centre when he cried, ' The kingdom of heaven is at hand ! ' (Mt 3-), what must have been the effect of Christ's pro- clamation that the Kingdom of God was already come (Mt S^^'^ 12^*)— that this was the acceptable year of the Lord (Lk 4i^* ^i).
(3) But it is in the miracles of Jesus above all that we find the explanation of His popularity. His miracles of healing were evidently wrought upon a very wide scale — much wider than the enumeration of individual cases gives any idea of (cf. Mk P^ 31** 655- 5**). And though there were un- grateful recipients of His mere}' (Lk 17'''' ^'*), we know that at otiier times both tliose whom He had cured and their friends and relatives were filled with a jmssion of gratitude and devotion to His Person (w.^^- ^\ Mk S-" lO^^, Jn IP 12^). But these gracious miracles stretched in their effects far beyond the wide circle of the actual benefici- aries. They created great expectations in tlie popular mind — expectations that were immensely heightened by yet more astonishing miracles, in which Clirist's ' compassion for the multitude ' led Him to make them in their thousands the direct partakers of His bounty (Mk 6='^«'- [|, 8i«"- 11, Jn &«■). These great miracles were taken to be 'signs' — signs of wonderful events that might be about to happen in Lsrael. .Jesus, it began to be surmised, was not merely a great prophet as His teaching showed, but much more than a prophet ; not merely a marvellous healer of the sick, but the expected Deliverer of Israel. Unfortunately, however, in spite of all His teaching as to the nature of the Kingdom of God, the popular ideas on the subject were still utterly astray. And so His popularity, just when it seemed to be soaring to its iiighest, was made to rest upon the least worthy foundations. This brings us to the sharp dividing line (see preceding art.) between a popu- larity that is true and a popularity that is false, a popularity that .Jesus could desire and welcome and one that He inevitably loathed and repelled. Jn.'s narrative shows that it was Christ's fame as a miracle-worker, and most of all His feeding of the Five Thousand in the wilderness, that raised His popularity to its point of culmination (Jn gi4. i5j_ ]3^^(^ j£ ^yf^j^ jyjji^ then that .Jesus rejected most emi>hatically a kind of popularity He did not want. And it was also from that day that the tide of popular favour which had swelled so iiigh began to ebb.
3. What value did Jesus attach to His popa- larity? — 'He did not care,' it has been said, 'for tlie thing called popularity, but He loved human beings' (Bruce, Galilean Gospel, p. 10). And it is quite true that there was a kind of popularity that JesuS not only did not care for, but always despised and shunned. And yet, just because He loved human beings so much, He desired a popularity of the riglit sort. Was it not in searcli of it that He came into Galilee preaching the gospel of tiie Kingdom, after He had been coldly received by the ecclesiastical authorities in the capital ? To be popular is just to be beloved of the people, and the highest kind of popularity is Avlien a man is beloved of the people on grounds which God and his own conscience can approve. It is impossible for one who loves, not to wish to have his love returned ; and .Jesus, loving men and women as no other liuman being ever did, undoubtedly desired tliem to love Him, and trust Him, and follow Him. This is the meaning of His invitations to them to
come to Him, and of His words of sorrow and reproach when they refused. His soul, accordingly, must have filled with gladness and thankfulness when He saw the multitude pressing upon Him to hear His word, and listening to it with evident joy, or when He received the assurance of heart- felt gratitude from those whom He had healed or enliglitened or lifted from the depths of self- despair. But, on the other hand, when men came after Him in search of signs and wonders (Mt 12^** 16' . Jii4r'**) — something to confirm them in their false ideals of the Kingdom of God, if not merely to gratify their gaping curiosity ; worse still, when the multitude began to follow Him in the hope of being fuinished gratis with the bread that they might have honestly earned (Jn S^**), and to look to Him to set up by the use of His miraculous powers a kingdom of meat and drink and political privi- lege, He knew that now, under the guise of a dazzling popularity, the same temptation Avas re- turning which He had faced and conquered in the wilderness at the very outset of His ministry (Mt 4'-") — the temptation to love the praise of men more tlian the praise of God, and to attempt to set up the Kingdom of heaven upon earth by metliods tliat were not Divine, but worldly and Satanic.