Preface to Androcles and the Lion | Page 6

Mahometans,

who are, like their prophet, very civil to Jesus, and allow him a place in
their esteem and veneration at least as high as we accord to John the
Baptist. But this British bulldog contempt is founded on a complete
misconception of his reasons for submitting voluntarily to an ordeal of
torment and death. The modern Secularist is often so determined to
regard Jesus as a man like himself and nothing more, that he slips
unconsciously into the error of assuming that Jesus shared that view.
But it is quite clear from the New Testament writers (the chief
authorities for believing that Jesus ever existed) that Jesus at the time of
his death believed himself to be the Christ, a divine personage. It is
therefore absurd to criticize his conduct before Pilate as if he were
Colonel Roosevelt or Admiral von Tirpitz or even Mahomet. Whether
you accept his belief in his divinity as fully as Simon Peter did, or
reject it as a delusion which led him to submit to torture and sacrifice
his life without resistance in the conviction that he would presently rise
again in glory, you are equally bound to admit that, far from behaving
like a coward or a sheep, he showed considerable physical fortitude in
going through a cruel ordeal against which he could have defended
himself as effectually as he cleared the moneychangers out of the
temple. "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild" is a snivelling modern invention,
with no warrant in the gospels. St. Matthew would as soon have
thought of applying such adjectives to Judas Maccabeus as to Jesus;
and even St. Luke, who makes Jesus polite and gracious, does not make
him meek. The picture of him as an English curate of the farcical
comedy type, too meek to fight a policeman, and everybody's butt, may
be useful in the nursery to soften children; but that such a figure could
ever have become a centre of the world's attention is too absurd for
discussion; grown men and women may speak kindly of a harmless
creature who utters amiable sentiments and is a helpless nincompoop
when he is called on to defend them; but they will not follow him, nor
do what he tells them, because they do not wish to share his defeat and
disgrace.
WAS JESUS A MARTYR?
It is important therefore that we should clear our minds of the notion
that Jesus died, as some are in the habit of declaring, for his social and
political opinions. There have been many martyrs to those opinions; but
he was not one of them, nor, as his words show, did he see any more

sense in martyrdom than Galileo did. He was executed by the Jews for
the blasphemy of claiming to be a God; and Pilate, to whom this was a
mere piece of superstitious nonsense, let them execute him as the
cheapest way of keeping them quiet, on the formal plea that he had
committed treason against Rome by saying that he was the King of the
Jews. He was not falsely accused, nor denied full opportunities of
defending himself. The proceedings were quite straightforward and
regular; and Pilate, to whom the appeal lay, favored him and despised
his judges, and was evidently willing enough to be conciliated. But
instead of denying the charge, Jesus repeated the offence. He knew
what he was doing: he had alienated numbers of his own disciples and
been stoned in the streets for doing it before. He was not lying: he
believed literally what he said. The horror of the High Priest was
perfectly natural: he was a Primate confronted with a heterodox street
preacher uttering what seemed to him an appalling and impudent
blasphemy. The fact that the blasphemy was to Jesus a simple
statement of fact, and that it has since been accepted as such by all
western nations, does not invalidate the proceedings, nor give us the
right to regard Annas and Caiaphas as worse men than the Archbishop
of Canterbury and the Head Master of Eton. If Jesus had been indicted
in a modern court, he would have been examined by two doctors; found
to be obsessed by a delusion; declared incapable of pleading; and sent
to an asylum: that is the whole difference. But please note that when a
man is charged before a modern tribunal (to take a case that happened
the other day) of having asserted and maintained that he was an officer
returned from the front to receive the Victoria Cross at the hands of the
King, although he was in fact a mechanic, nobody thinks of treating
him as afflicted with a delusion. He is punished for false pretences,
because his assertion is credible and therefore misleading. Just so, the
claim to divinity made by