Carried away by this fearful progression of enthusiasm, and governed by the necessities of a preaching becoming daily more exalted, Jesus was no longer free; he belonged to his mission, and, in one sense, to mankind. Sometimes one would have said that his reason was disturbed. He suffered great mental anguish and agitation.[1] The great vision of the kingdom of God, glistening before his eyes, bewildered him. His disciples at times thought him mad.[2] His enemies declared him to be possessed.[3] His excessively impassioned temperament carried him incessantly beyond the bounds of human nature. He laughed at all human systems, and his work not being a work of the reason, that which he most imperiously required was "faith."[4] This was the word most frequently repeated in the little guest-chamber. It is the watchword of all popular movements. It is clear that none of these movements would take place if it were necessary that their author should gain his disciples one by one by force of logic. Reflection leads only to doubt. If the authors of the French Revolution, for instance, had had to be previously convinced by lengthened meditations, they would all have become old without accomplishing anything; Jesus, in like manner, aimed less at convincing his hearers than at exciting their enthusiasm. Urgent and imperative, he suffered no opposition: men must be converted, nothing less would satisfy him. His natural gentleness seemed to have abandoned him; he was sometimes harsh and capricious.[5] His disciples at times did not understand him, and experienced in his presence a feeling akin to fear.[6] Sometimes his displeasure at the slightest opposition led him to commit inexplicable and apparently absurd acts.[7] [Footnote 1: John xii. 27.] [Footnote 2: Mark iii. 21, and following.] [Footnote 3: Mark iii. 22; John vii. 20, viii. 48, and following, x. 20, and following.] [Footnote 4: Matt. viii. 10, ix. 2, 22, 28, 29, xvii. 19; John vi. 29, etc.] [Footnote 5: Matt. xvii. 16; Mark iii. 5, ix. 18; Luke viii. 45, ix. 41.] [Footnote 6: It is in Mark especially that this feature is visible; iv. 40, v. 15, ix. 31, x. 32.] [Footnote 7: Mark xi. 12-14, 20, and following.] It was not that his virtue deteriorated; but his struggle for the ideal against the reality became insupportable. Contact with the world pained and revolted him. Obstacles irritated him. His idea of the Son of God became disturbed and exaggerated. The fatal law which condemns an idea to decay as soon as it seeks to convert men applied to him. Contact with men degraded him to their level. The tone he had adopted could not be sustained more than a few months; it was time that death came to liberate him from an endurance strained to the utmost, to remove him from the impossibilities of an interminable path, and by delivering him from a trial in danger of being too prolonged, introduce him henceforth sinless into celestial peace. CHAPTER XX. OPPOSITION TO JESUS.