But we know that there were such men, and too many, among the
scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem. And human nature is the same in
every age. Be that as it may--however retired His life, He could not
long be hid. He would shortly exercise, almost without attempting it, an
enormous public influence.
But yet, as in Judea of old, would He not be only too successful? Would
He not be at once too liberal for some, and too exacting for others?
Would He not, as in Judea of old, encounter not merely the active envy of
the vain and the ambitious, which would follow one who spoke as never man
spoke; not merely the active malignity of those who wish their fellow-
creatures to be bad and not good; not merely the bigotry of every sect
and party; but that mere restless love of new excitements, and that dull
fear and suspicion of new truths, and even of old truths in new words,
which beset the uneducated of every rank and class, and in no age more
than in our own? And therefore I must ask, in sober sadness, how long
would His influence last? It lasted, we know, in Judea of old, for some
three years.
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