The Sojourn at Rome

132:4.1Je­sus did not de­vote all his leisure while in Rome to this work of prepar­ing men and women to be­come fu­ture dis­ci­ples in the on­com­ing king­dom. He spent much time gain­ing an in­ti­mate knowl­edge of all races and classes of men who lived in this, the largest and most cos­mopoli­tan city of the world. In each of these nu­mer­ous hu­man con­tacts Je­sus had a dou­ble pur­pose: He de­sired to learn their re­ac­tions to the life they were liv­ing in the flesh, and he was also minded to say or do some­thing to make that life richer and more worth while. His re­li­gious teach­ings dur­ing these weeks were no dif­fer­ent than those which char­ac­ter­ized his later life as teacher of the twelve and preacher to the mul­ti­tudes.

132:4.2Al­ways the bur­den of his mes­sage was: the fact of the heav­enly Fa­ther’s love and the truth of his mercy, cou­pled with the good news that man is a faith-son of this same God of love. Je­sus’ usual tech­nique of so­cial con­tact was to draw peo­ple out and into talk­ing with him by ask­ing them ques­tions. The in­ter­view would usu­ally be­gin by his ask­ing them ques­tions and end by their ask­ing him ques­tions. He was equally adept in teach­ing by ei­ther ask­ing or an­swer­ing ques­tions. As a rule, to those he taught the most, he said the least. Those who de­rived most ben­e­fit from his per­sonal min­istry were over­bur­dened, anx­ious, and de­jected mor­tals who gained much re­lief be­cause of the op­por­tu­nity to un­bur­den their souls to a sym­pa­thetic and un­der­stand­ing lis­tener, and he was all that and more. And when these mal­ad­justed hu­man be­ings had told Je­sus about their trou­bles, al­ways was he able to of­fer prac­ti­cal and im­me­di­ately help­ful sug­ges­tions look­ing to­ward the cor­rec­tion of their real dif­fi­cul­ties, al­beit he did not ne­glect to speak words of pres­ent com­fort and im­me­di­ate con­so­la­tion. And in­vari­ably would he tell these dis­tressed mor­tals about the love of God and im­part the in­for­ma­tion, by var­i­ous and sundry meth­ods, that they were the chil­dren of this lov­ing Fa­ther in heaven.

132:4.3In this man­ner, dur­ing the so­journ in Rome, Je­sus per­son­ally came into af­fec­tion­ate and up­lift­ing con­tact with up­ward of five hun­dred mor­tals of the realm. He thus gained a knowl­edge of the dif­fer­ent races of man­kind which he could never have ac­quired in Je­ru­sa­lem and hardly even in Alexan­dria. He al­ways re­garded this six months as one of the rich­est and most in­for­ma­tive of any like pe­riod of his earth life.

132:4.4As might have been ex­pected, such a ver­sa­tile and ag­gres­sive man could not thus func­tion for six months in the world’s metropo­lis with­out be­ing ap­proached by nu­mer­ous per­sons who de­sired to se­cure his ser­vices in con­nec­tion with some busi­ness or, more of­ten, for some project of teach­ing, so­cial re­form, or re­li­gious move­ment. More than a dozen such prof­fers were made, and he uti­lized each one as an op­por­tu­nity for im­part­ing some thought of spir­i­tual en­no­ble­ment by well-cho­sen words or by some oblig­ing ser­vice. Je­sus was very fond of do­ing things—even lit­tle things—for all sorts of peo­ple.

132:4.5He talked with a Ro­man sen­a­tor on pol­i­tics and states­man­ship, and this one con­tact with Je­sus made such an im­pres­sion on this leg­is­la­tor that he spent the rest of his life vainly try­ing to in­duce his col­leagues to change the course of the rul­ing pol­icy from the idea of the gov­ern­ment sup­port­ing and feed­ing the peo­ple to that of the peo­ple sup­port­ing the gov­ern­ment. Je­sus spent one evening with a wealthy slave­holder, talked about man as a son of God, and the next day this man, Claudius, gave free­dom to one hun­dred and sev­en­teen slaves. He vis­ited at din­ner with a Greek physi­cian, telling him that his pa­tients had minds and souls as well as bod­ies, and thus led this able doc­tor to at­tempt a more far-reach­ing min­istry to his fel­low men. He talked with all sorts of peo­ple in ev­ery walk of life. The only place in Rome he did not visit was the pub­lic baths. He re­fused to ac­com­pany his friends to the baths be­cause of the sex promis­cu­ity which there pre­vailed.

132:4.6To a Ro­man sol­dier, as they walked along the Tiber, he said: “Be brave of heart as well as of hand. Dare to do jus­tice and be big enough to show mercy. Com­pel your lower na­ture to obey your higher na­ture as you obey your su­pe­ri­ors. Re­vere good­ness and ex­alt truth. Choose the beau­ti­ful in place of the ugly. Love your fel­lows and reach out for God with a whole heart, for God is your Fa­ther in heaven.”

132:4.7To the speaker at the fo­rum he said: “Your elo­quence is pleas­ing, your logic is ad­mirable, your voice is pleas­ant, but your teach­ing is hardly true. If you could only en­joy the in­spir­ing sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing God as your spir­i­tual Fa­ther, then you might em­ploy your pow­ers of speech to lib­er­ate your fel­lows from the bond­age of dark­ness and from the slav­ery of ig­no­rance.” This was the Mar­cus who heard Pe­ter preach in Rome and be­came his suc­ces­sor. When they cru­ci­fied Si­mon Pe­ter, it was this man who de­fied the Ro­man per­se­cu­tors and boldly con­tin­ued to preach the new gospel.

132:4.8Meet­ing a poor man who had been falsely ac­cused, Je­sus went with him be­fore the mag­is­trate and, hav­ing been granted spe­cial per­mis­sion to ap­pear in his be­half, made that su­perb ad­dress in the course of which he said: “Jus­tice makes a na­tion great, and the greater a na­tion the more so­lic­i­tous will it be to see that in­jus­tice shall not be­fall even its most hum­ble cit­i­zen. Woe upon any na­tion when only those who pos­sess money and in­flu­ence can se­cure ready jus­tice be­fore its courts! It is the sa­cred duty of a mag­is­trate to ac­quit the in­no­cent as well as to pun­ish the guilty. Upon the im­par­tial­ity, fair­ness, and in­tegrity of its courts the en­durance of a na­tion de­pends. Civil gov­ern­ment is founded on jus­tice, even as true re­li­gion is founded on mercy.” The judge re­opened the case, and when the ev­i­dence had been sifted, he dis­charged the pris­oner. Of all Je­sus’ ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing these days of per­sonal min­istry, this came the near­est to be­ing a pub­lic ap­pear­ance.