CHAPTER 1<\/p>\n
THE DIVINE BIRTH<\/p>\n
\u201cWho \u2026 emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of man.\u201d\u2014Phil. 2:7.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe unfathomable depths of the divine counsels were moved; the fountains of the great deep were broken up; the healing of the nations was issuing forth; but nothing was seen on the surface of human society but this slight rippling of the water.\u201d\u2014ISAAC WILLIAMS, The Nativity.<\/p>\n
TO the vast majority of true Christians the unalterable belief that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, the Saviour of the World, comes from the witness of the Spirit in their hearts. It is not mainly derived from any one process of argument, or even from the convergence of many different lines of demonstration. Confluent streams of probability may have helped to swell the current of their conviction, but the main reason why their faith remains unshaken by any doubt is because they know Christ and are known of Him. The light which lighteth every man that is born into the world came from Him, and was concentrated upon Him in the fulness of its illuminating splendour. There are many whose whole life is lived by faith in the Son of God. They would say with St. Paul: \u201cWith me to live is Christ.\u201d We may indeed lose this blessed certainty\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cFor when we in our viciousness grow hard,
\nO misery on\u2019t, the wise gods seal our eyes,
\nIn our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us
\nAdore our errors, laugh at us while we strut
\nTo our confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
But \u201cBelief lives in us through Conduct,\u201d and while an immoral Deism produces men like Aretino and Marat, the faith in Christ has produced thousands of such saints as Francis of Assisi and Vincent de Paul. To all whose daily experience is that Christ is with them, and within them, belief has become part of their inmost being. With a power which transcends all earthly knowledge, the Spirit beareth witness with their spirits that they are \u201csons of God,\u201d because they have been admitted into the Brotherhood of Him who was the Son of God. To them He is not only \u201cVerax\u201d and \u201cVerus,\u201d but \u201cipsa Veritas.\u201d
\nTo those who abound in this beautitude of certainty\u2014and they are, thank God, \u201ca great multitude whom no man can number\u201d\u2014argument has become needless. We may modify the words of the Poet and say that\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cIn such high hours
\nOf inspiration from the living God,
\nThought is not, in devotion it expires.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there are millions who have never attained to this experience. To us it seems as though man lived in the very midst of miracles\u2014miracles stupendous, innumerable, incessant. To us \u201cthe starry heavens above,\u201d and still more \u201cthe moral law within,\u201d are a perpetual miracle; nor would the supernaturalness of those miracles be to us diminished, even though every phenomenon of the material, moral, and spiritual Universe could be directly explained by what are called \u201cnatural\u201d laws. To us the outer Universe is but an atom in God\u2019s infinitude, or, as the Rabbis expressed it, \u201cGod (who in Talmudic literature is often called Maq\u00f4m or \u2018Space\u2019) is not the Universe (Ha-Maq\u00f4m), but all the Universe is in God.\u201d To us the natural is itself a supernatural phenomenon. Nature is but a name to express the laws which God has impressed upon His Universe.
\nThose who hold these views\u2014those who think not only that God is but that He \u201cworketh hitherto\u201d; those who believe in God\u2019s perpetual Providence, and do not reduce Him to the Blind Fate of the Stoics, or the Supernal Indifference of the Epicureans; those who accept the words of Scripture that \u201cHe careth for us,\u201d and \u201cis about our path, and about our bed, and spieth out all our ways\u201d\u2014constitute the immense majority of mankind, to whatever religion they may belong. We do not observe that such are, in any respect, less wise, less learned, or less intellectually clear-sighted, nor have they rendered fewer services to mankind, than the minority who take upon them to set aside such views as childish and obsolete superstitions. In this majority are numbered all the most supremely great of those who, compared with their brethren, have been \u201camong the molehills as mountains, and among the thistles as forest trees.\u201d In all the histories of the nations you can scarcely find one man of epoch-making eminence who has not believed in the God who is not far from every one of us, since in Him we live, and move, and have our being. Are we not, then, entitled to say with confidence, as all the best, greatest, and wisest of men have believed, that God has not resigned His care for the creatures of His hand to the exclusive working of what are called \u201cnatural laws\u201d? Securus judicat orbis terrarum.
\nAgain, may we not urge a second argument upon those who, because of the supposed invariableness of natural laws, cannot conceive that God ever works, or has worked, in the affairs of man except in exact accordance with the observed order? May we not ask them to consider that miracles themselves are nothing but an outcome of that Natural Law which, after all, is but a partial synonym for the will of God? If it be perfectly within the power of man to make a machine which should, in unvarying sequence, push out, one by one, every number, from a unit to (say) ten millions, and then\u2014simply by the pre-arranged construction of the machine itself\u2014should skip a number, and go from ten million to ten million and two, how absurd is it to suppose that even the apparent violation, or super-session, of laws may not be due to the very laws themselves\u2014just, for instance, as a balloon, very heavy and laden with human beings, mounts upwards by the very law of gravitation which seems to draw all objects downwards? To start, as sceptics have often done, with the dogma that \u201cMiracles do not\u201d\u2014or even that \u201cmiracles cannot\u2014happen\u201d is surely short-sighted and unphilosophical; to say nothing of the fact that such an axiom sets aside masses of evidence\u2014accumulated in age after age and still accumulating\u2014that miracles (i. e., events which apparently supersede or transcend the every-day order) have happened, and do happen continually. \u201cNature\u201d is but a name for God\u2019s normal and continuous government; and \u201cchance\u201d is but a nickname for His unseen Providence. \u201cWhat is disturbed by a miracle,\u201d said Professor Mozley, \u201cis the mechanical expectation of a recurrence.\u201d \u201cLaw I know; but what is this necessity but an empty shadow of my own mind\u2019s throwing?\u201d
\nWhy, then, should the supernatural birth of the Saviour of the World appear to sceptics to be a difficulty so stupendous, and so insuperable, that it is only fit to be contemptuously set aside? Is it wise to feel such confidence in arguments which, after all, convince very few, and which have not shaken the belief of men whose transcendent intellectual powers could be questioned by none? Are myriads of the most brilliant men of action and men of genius whom the world has ever seen, such utter fools that a sceptic, because of his own peculiar idiosyncrasy, may sweep away, as though it were a mere contemptible nullity, the initial fact in the faith of Christians? If the Virgin-birth of the Saviour of Mankind had stood alone\u2014if nothing had led up to it; if nothing had sprung from it; if the witnesses to it were untrustworthy liars, who were morally capable of having palmed off upon the world a conscious fiction\u2014then doubt would have been natural. But when the event stands, as it does,\u2014quite apart from religion,\u2014as the central point of the destinies of mankind; when we see that all the history of the past led up to it, and that all the illimitable future was, and must still be, dominated by it; when we see how it fulfilled the prophecies and yearnings of Humanity among the heathen as well as among the Jewish race, and how it has been the germ of all that was best and greatest in the progress of the ages which have followed\u2014the fact ceases to stand alone. Had \u201cthe man Christ Jesus\u201d been but one of the millions\u2014if He had been merely distinguished above His fellows by ordinary human greatness\u2014doubt might have been excusable. But when we see in that Babe lying in the cradle One of whom all the Prophets had spoken, and One to whom ever since that Nativity\u2014amid the intensification of all Light, and all Knowledge, and amid the undreamed-of splendour of immeasurable Progress\u2014alike the humblest and the greatest of human intellects have looked;\u2014when we see that (to use the words of the German historian whom a study of history converted to Christianity from unbelief) \u201cChrist lifted the gate of the centuries off its hinges with His bleeding hand\u201d\u2014the case becomes far different. The greatness of Jesus, even if we regard Him simply as a man among men, not only transcends, but transcends inconceivably and immeasurably, the combination of all the forms and varieties of human greatness. The ages which have followed have all looked to<\/p>\n
\u201cHim first, Him last, Him midst, and without end.\u201d<\/p>\n
As they have contemplated Him, in the Unity of the Father and the Holy Spirit, they have exclaimed, \u201cWhom have we in heaven but Thee?\u201d and as they have felt the penetrative, all-absorbing influence of His human personality, they have exclaimed, \u201cThere is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee.\u201d
\n1. HISTORY has borne its witness to Him. The Jews, who in their decadence no longer listened to Moses and the Prophets, but to Sadducean Priests and posing Pharisees, fell into utter and immediate ruin in accordance with His prophecy. The grandeur of the Roman Empire was humbled to the dust, and vanished before Him. The Northern nations, abandoning their ignorance and savagery, knelt humbly before \u201cThe White Christ,\u201d and, conquerors though they were, accepted the religion of the Christians whom they had conquered. \u201cIn all my study of the ancient times,\u201d wrote the German historian Johann von M\u00fcller, \u201cI have always felt the want of something, and it was not till I knew our Lord that all was clear to me; with Him there is nothing that I am not able to solve.\u201d
\nThe great rulers have claimed their authority from Him alone, and have confessed His absolute pre-eminence. The first Christian Emperor wove upon the labarum of his armies His cross of shame; and it is set in jewels on the diadems of many kings. The oldest crown of Europe\u2014the famous iron crown of Lombardy\u2014was venerated most because it was believed to be made of an iron nail from the cross on Golgotha. \u201cBow thy head, Sicambrian,\u201d said St. Remigius to Clovis after the victory of Tolbiac; \u201cburn what thou hast adored, adore what thou hast burned!\u201d Godfrey of Bouillon, when crowned King of Jerusalem, would not wear a crown of gold where his Saviour had worn a crown of thorns. Rudolph of Hapsburg, founder of the great Empire of Germany, when no sceptre could be found amid the tumult of his coronation, grasped a crucifix and swore that that should be his sceptre. Napoleon, the last great conqueror of modern days, said in his exile, \u201cI know men, and Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christ and all other religions whatsoever the distance of infinity: from the first day to the last He is the same\u2014always the same, majestic, simple, infinitely firm and infinitely gentle. Between Him and whoever else in the world there is no possible term of comparison.\u201d
\n2. POETRY is the choicest flower of all human thought; and just as the greatest poets of the ancient world who knew God\u2014like Isaiah, and Amos, and the Psalmists\u2014had sung of the coming Christ, so, since He was born, all the supremest poets without exception\u2014Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Wordsworth, Browning, Tennyson\u2014have come to Him with their singing robes about them, and laid their garlands most humbly at His feet. Truly<\/p>\n
\u201cPiety hath found
\nFriends in the friends of Science, and true prayer
\nHas flowed from lips wet with Castalian dews.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nay, even in the ancient heathen world, supreme poets have stretched blind hands of faith and prayer to the Unknown Deliverer. \u00c6schylus, sublimest of the Athenian tragedians, in his greatest drama, makes Hermes say to Prometheus: \u201cExpect not at all any termination of this thy anguish till some one of the gods appear as a successor to thy toils, and be willing to go down into the unlighted Hades, and around the gloomy depths of Tartarus.\u201d And Virgil, sweetest of all the Roman singers, wrote in his Fourth Eclogue a prophecy of the Golden Age which was at hand, and the Child whose manhood would inaugurate a reign of peace in a world of beauty; and this he wrote in such strains as almost elevated him to the rank of an inspired Seer.
\n3. PHILOSOPHY has occupied the minds of some of the loftiest of the human race, and it has been the lifelong pursuit of many a<\/p>\n
\u201cGrey spirit, yearning in desire
\nTo follow knowledge, like a guiding star,
\nBeyond the utmost bounds of human thought.\u201d<\/p>\n
But these grave and earnest students of the problem of the world have often either sunk into despondency, like Zeno and Marcus Aurelius, for lack of the hope which Christ has inspired into the hearts of men; or, like Plato, they have looked yearningly forward to some Unseen Deliverer whom as yet they knew not, though they were convinced of the awful necessity for His Advent. Kant used indignantly to repel every word spoken against the historic Saviour, and regarded himself as a mere bungler, interpreting Him as best he could. \u201cPhilosophy,\u201d said Pico della Mirandola, \u201cseeks truth \u2026 Religion possesses it.\u201d
\n4. ART reveals to us the Unseen. It teaches us to see, and what to see, and to see more than we see with our bodily eyes; and since Christ was born, all the greatest Art in the world, without exception, has been consecrated to His glory. To Him have been reared those \u201cEpic poems in stone,\u201d those glorious Churches and Cathedrals, shadowy with immortal memories, which make us exclaim,<\/p>\n
\u201cThey dreamt not of a perishable home
\nWho thus could build\u201d;<\/p>\n
and under whose hallowed shade we feel that<\/p>\n
\u201cBubbles burst, and folly\u2019s dancing foam
\nMelts if it cross the threshold.\u201d<\/p>\n
To His glory the greatest of sculptors set free the imprisoned angels which, to his imagination, seemed to be struggling in the blocks of unhewn marble; to His glory Giotto and Leonardo, Raphael and Luini, Vittore Pisano and Lorenzo di Credi, Giovanni Bellini and Carpaccio, Albrecht D\u00fcrer and Holbein\u2014and with them the greatest of all the painters, down to our own Millais, and Burne-Jones, and Holman Hunt\u2014have devoted the strongest and purest of their powers. For love of Him, and with no thought of gain, Fra Angelico and Sandro Botticelli painted their soft and silent pictures, even as, long centuries earlier, the poor and persecuted Christians of the Catacombs had made the walls of those dark corpse-crowded galleries bright with their emblems of Orpheus, the Dove, the Fish, the Vine, and the Fair Shepherd with the lamb or kid upon His shoulder. From the earliest dawn of the Gospel down to the present day, no pictures have been comparable in greatness to those in which the supremest artists have consecrated to the memory of Christ the glory of the fair colours, and the inspiration of hallowed thoughts.
\n5. And to take one other all-embracing sphere of human intellect, the sphere of SCIENCE, in that region, too, the most eminent human souls\u2014men like Copernicus, Bacon, Leibnitz, Descartes, Haller, Pascal, Ray, Franklin, Herschell, Agassiz, Faraday, and many others\u2014not losing sight of the Creator in the multitudinous marvels of His creatures, have looked to Christ as their Lord and their God. \u201cA little Philosophie,\u201d as Bacon said, \u201cinclineth a man\u2019s mind to Atheism, but depth in Philosophie bringeth men\u2019s minds about to religion.\u201d Among the Coryphaei of Science two names stand supreme\u2014Kepler and Newton. Kepler wrote of Christ with the profoundest reverence, and Newton\u2014\u201cthe whitest of human souls\u201d as well as one of the most richly endowed\u2014raised his adoring eyes to heaven in uttermost simplicity, and sincerely believed in the Lord Jesus Christ with all his heart. The first mortal eyes which ever observed the transit of Venus were those of Jeremiah Horrocks, then a humble curate at Hoole. He hurried to his telescope in the intervals between three Sunday services, and, though his observation was of such consummate astronomical importance, he recorded in his diary\u2014and the sentence is carved upon the tablet placed to his memory two centuries later in Westminster Abbey\u2014that he broke off his work to go to the humble service in the little village church\u2014\u201cad majora avocatus quae ob haec parerga negligi non decuit.\u201d
\nOn one occasion a friend, Sir Henry Acland, found Michael Faraday in tears; with his head bent over an open Bible. \u201cI fear you are feeling worse,\u201d he said. \u201cNo,\u201d answered Faraday, \u201cit is not that; but why, oh, why will not men believe the blessed truths here revealed to them?\u201d A humble and reverent study of the laws which God has impressed upon the Universe has made<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pale-featured sage\u2019s trembling hand
\nStrong as a host of armed deities,
\nSuch as the blind Ionian fabled erst:\u201d<\/p>\n
and yet of those sages, from Copernicus to Faraday, and down to the most eminent of our living students of Science, the foremost have not only had faith in God, but also have believed rightly in the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
\n6. So, then, for Earth\u2019s loftiest intellects\u2014as one of the foremost and most learned poets of our own generation has sung\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cThe acknowledgment of God in Christ,
\nAccepted by the reason, solves for thee
\nAll problems in the world, and out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the same is true of those who have evinced a yet diviner greatness by scaling the loftiest moral heights and showing the utmost glories of self-sacrifice. If the men of loftiest genius in the world have acknowledged Christ, this was if possible even more the case with those who have conferred on the human race the highest and most deep-reaching services of pity and goodness. What was it but the Divine trembling pity which he had learned from Christ, and the commission which he had received from Him, that sent forth St. Paul to preach the Gospel amid his daily death of hatreds, miseries, and cruel persecutions, till, like the blaze of beacon fires kindled from hill to hill, its glory flashed from Jerusalem to Antioch, to Ephesus, and to Troas, and thence leapt over the sea to Athens, to Corinth, to Imperial Rome, and even to our Britain, the Ultima Thule of the World? What made the Roman lady Fabiola spend her fortune in founding hospitals at Rome, and in distant lands? Why did St. Jerome bury himself in the Cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem to translate the Bible from the Hebrew into Latin? What made the boy St. Benedict fly from the allurements of Rome to the Rocks of Subiaco and found the order to which learning owes so deep a debt? Why did St. Bonaventura, when asked the source of his great learning, point in silence to his Crucifix? Why did St. Thomas Aquinas, when asked by Christ in vision, Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma. Quam mercedem recipies? reply immediately \u201cNon aliam nisi Te, Domine?\u201d Why did sweet St. Francis of Assisi strip himself of everything, and, by living as a pauper and a beggar, infuse new life and holiness into an apostatising and luxurious world? What led St. Francis Xavier to lay aside his rank and his pleasures, and become a wandering missionary, gaining by his sacrifice a happiness so intense that he even prayed God not to pour upon him such a flood-tide of rapturous beatitude? What sent the Baptist cobbler, William Carey, with his first collection of \u00a313 2s. 6d., to evangelise the mighty Continent of Hindostan? Every one of these, and thousands more of all those whose lives have been a blessing to the world, would have answered \u201cCHRIST.\u201d
\nWhat but the love of Christ constraining him led John Howard to toil among plague-stricken prisoners, until his death at Cherson, on the Black Sea, \u201cclothed a nation in spontaneous mourning,\u201d and \u201che went down to his grave amid the benedictions of the poor\u201d? What made Elizabeth Fry go unaccompanied among the wild, degraded, brutalised women of Newgate, and take them by the hand, and raise them from the depths of their fallen humanity? Why did men like Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharpe, Zachary Macaulay, and William Wilberforce, with an energy which nothing could daunt, with a persistence nothing could interrupt, use their time, their talents, their fortunes, and every energy of their minds and bodies\u2014and that in spite of ridicule, hatred, peril, and reproach\u2014\u201cto save England from the guilt of using the arm of freedom to forge the fetters of the slave\u201d? What sent Father Damien to wretched and squalor-stricken Molokai, to live, and catch the leprosy, and die a leper among the lepers in the dismal isle? What made Lord Shaftesbury vow himself, while yet he was a Harrow boy, to works of mercy which added the brightest jewel to the glory of Queen Victoria\u2019s reign? What enabled him\u2014amid the venomous attacks of the Press and the world, and the chill aloofness of the clergy\u2014to toil on until he had inaugurated the Ragged School movement, and passed the Ten Hours and the Factory Bills? Why should the poor Portsmouth cobbler, John Pounds, have troubled himself, day after day, to gather the ragged waifs into his stall, and teach them with letters torn down from the advertisements upon the walls, and so\u2014poor and ignorant as he was\u2014to give an impulse to our great national system of education? What influenced Robert Raikes, the Gloucester printer, to begin the work which established Sunday Schools throughout the length and breadth of the world? \u201cI thought, Can I do nothing for all these wandering little ones? A voice said to me \u2018Try.\u2019 I did try, and lo! What hath God wrought!\u201d
\nOr take the best and most widely known of the effective workers of to-day amid the slums of unutterable squalor and degradation. Ask them what is the hidden force which sustains them in the long and thankless self-sacrifice of their lives, amid the scorn of worldlings and formalists, who look down upon them from the lordly altitudes of their own utter inferiority. What made General Sir Henry Havelock face so many sneers for holding Bible classes among his soldiers, and winning them to Total Abstinence? What made General Gordon so kind to the poor, ragged, homeless boys of Greenwich?
\nOne and all, they would give the same answer, \u201cThe Love of Christ constraineth us.\u201d They would be ready to say with St. Ignatius, \u201cCome fire, and the cross, and crowds of wild beasts; come tearings, breakings, and crunching of my bones; come the mutilation of my members, and shatterings of my whole body, and all the dreadful torments of the Devil, so I may but attain to Jesus Christ.\u201d He felt that \u201che who is near to the sword, he who is among the wild beasts, is near to God.\u201d
\nWe are trying, they would say, to walk in the footsteps, we are trying to continue the work, of Him who was the Good Physician, of Him who went about doing good. We would fain be imitators of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ\u2014of Him who taught that Love is the fulfilling of the Law; of Him who summed up the Law of God in Love to Him and to our neighbour. Has any unbeliever rendered to mankind the millionth part of such immortal services? I am not aware of a single supreme effort for the amelioration of the manifold miseries of mankind which has not been due to the inspiration of Christian enthusiasm. \u201cThere is nothing fruitful but sacrifice\u201d\u2014and the noblest and most continuous self-sacrifice which the world has seen has sprung simply from the belief in, and the imitation of, Jesus Christ.
\nChristianity, then, is the highest, the most divine, the most eternal blessing in the world. It has been so in all these nineteen centuries; it is so in all the best conditions of our existence, and not to believers only, but even to those who deny, even to those who blaspheme Christ. But Christianity, had it only been a dead creed, or a purified ideal, or an organised society, would have been powerless. As a system of doctrine, or a code of loftier morals, it would have achieved but little. The permanent life, the regenerative force, the irresistible inspiration of Christianity is Christ.
\nIt will be seen, then, that the reason why we believe in the records of that miraculous birth, of those angel melodies, of those bending Magi, is not only because they stand recorded by those who were far too feeble to have invented them, and of whom every one would have said, \u201cI would rather die than lie\u201d\u2014but because, being so recorded, they have received the attestation of God Himself, seeing that the whole subsequent history of the world seems to us to have set its seal to the belief that they are true.
\nTo us the records of Christ in the Gospels seem the reverse of non-natural or needless. If any man can really believe that Humanity is the result of the working of mechanical laws, deaf, and dead, and dumb, \u201cblind as Fate, inexorable as tyranny, merciless as death\u2014which have no ear to hear, no heart to pity, and no arm to save\u201d; if any man can really persuade himself, not that \u201cGod formed man out of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,\u201d but that man is only the accident of accidents\u2014the casual outcome of unconscious material forces\u2014then with such a man it is simply impossible to argue at all. His mental peculiarities must be wholly different in kind from those of the human race in general. And deep below the surface of an avowed infidelity there often lurks an instinctive conviction that, after all, we are the creatures of God\u2019s hand. Even the reckless and depraved conspirator, who made an arrogant boast of his shallow scepticism, cried out on the scaffold, \u201cO God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul!\u201d
\nBut if we believe even so elementary a truth as that God made man, then if God created the first Adam\u2014if God created him who, whether literally or in an allegory, fell by eating that forbidden fruit<\/p>\n
\u201cWhose moral taste
\nBrought sin into the world, and all our woe\u201d\u2014<\/p>\n
we cannot see the least difficulty in the belief that God also clothed with human existence, by the exercise of His supernatural power, His own Son, the second Adam, who came to redeem and save the fallen race. If indeed, God were some ruthless Moloch, to be appeased by<\/p>\n
\u201cBlood
\nOf children\u2019s sacrifice, and parents\u2019 tears\u201d;<\/p>\n
if He were like the Ahriman of the Persians, or the Typhon of the Egyptians, or the Sheeva of the Hindoos, or the Atua of the New Zealanders\u2014we might suppose that He would care nothing whether men perished in utter misery and corruption or not. But to all who believe that God is Love, and that, in spite of the insoluble problem of the existence of evil, \u201clove is creation\u2019s primal law,\u201d to them a Divine interposition for the redemption and deliverance of mankind seems even more in accordance with Eternal Power than man\u2019s original creation. The instinct of mercy in our own nature forbids us to accept the Epicurean dream of gods who lie beside their nectar and<\/p>\n
\u201cSmile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
\nBlight and famine, plague and earthquake, stormy deeps and fiery sands,
\nClanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Creation be but an ordinary exercise of the Divine power, why should Re-creation be less so? If God made man, and \u201cbreathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul,\u201d why was it impossible or unlikely that Christ should be \u201cborn of a pure Virgin\u201d? What seems impossible to man is always possible to God. And when God saw His children\u2014and \u201cwe are all His offspring,\u201d as even the heathen recognised\u2014wandering and lost in the wilderness of shame and death\u2014since God is God, and God is Love, it would have seemed to us infinitely less believable that He would leave the creatures of His hand to perish in their wickedness, than that His mercy should provide for them a way of salvation. There is no other name under heaven whereby we can be saved, except the name of Christ; and this seems to us a sufficient reason for, a sufficient explanation of, the truth that for us men and for our salvation, Christ took our nature upon Him, and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh.
\nAnd the more we study and learn what Christ was, and how He lived, and what He has done, the deeper will be this our conviction that He whom we worship, He whom we acknowledge as the Lord of Glory, came not into the world by the ordinary processes of human birth, but that when the fulness of the time was come, \u201cGod sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.\u201d
\nBut after all, the strongest part of the evidence to us is that we have \u201cthe witness in ourselves.\u201d We know that God is He \u201cwho also stamped us as with a seal for Himself, and gave us the earnest\u201d\u2014the arrhabo, at once pledge and part payment\u2014\u201cof the Spirit in our hearts.\u2019 \u201d It is \u201cwith the heart that man believeth unto righteousness.\u201d If we would see Christ, we must, as Origen said, leave the crowd of faithless disciples with the demoniac whom they cannot cure, and must ascend the mountain top. Of every true Christian it may be said that \u201cHis seed is in him!\u201d and if \u201cthe natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God because \u201cthey are foolishness unto him,\u201d yet spiritual things are spiritually discerned. They who are spiritually-minded recognise the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart. \u201cChristian faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely-pictured windows. Standing without you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any; standing within, each ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendour.\u201d
\nThis is a demonstration stronger than any criticism can take away, though to all such criticism, even on its own chosen ground, we can offer what to us\u2014as to the vast majority of God\u2019s most gifted as well as of His humblest sons\u2014seems to be a decisive refutation.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 2<\/p>\n
THE UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS<\/p>\n
\u201cTo whom will ye liken Me, and make Me equal, and compare Me, that we may be like?\u201d\u2014Is. 46:5.<\/p>\n
\u0391\u1f50\u03c4\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f10\u03bd\u03b7\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03ce\u03c0\u03b7\u03c3\u03b5\u03bd, \u1f33\u03bd\u03b1 \u1f21\u03bc\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c2 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u03b7\u03b8\u1ff6\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd.\u2014ATHANASIUS, De Incarn., p. 51.<\/p>\n
\u201cDicimur et filii Dei; sed Ille aliter Filius Dei.\u201d\u2014AUGUSTINE, in Ps. 2.<\/p>\n
\u201cTry all the ways of righteousness you can think of, and you will find no way brings you to it except the way of Jesus.\u201d\u2014MATTHEW ARNOLD.<\/p>\n
WE believe, then, in the Miraculous Birth of our Saviour Christ; and our belief is confirmed when we examine the records of all history through and through, and find that the Babe, at whose birth the heavens burst open to disclose their radiant minstrelsies, stood ALONE, UNIQUE, SUPREME among all the million millions of every age of all the sons of men. It would be more amazing that such an one\u2014\u201choly, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,\u201d and, even in His human humiliation, but \u201ca little lower than the angels\u201d;\u2014that One who has thus visibly been made \u201cthe heir of all things\u201d;\u2014that One who was foremost in the love and adoration of countless brethren, and to them a motive force of incomparable and inexhaustible vitality,\u2014should have been born not otherwise than the mass of ordinary men. An infinite catastrophe required an infinite interference. God had created men sinless; it required a new man, even the Lord from Heaven, to uplift him from that gulf of sin into which he had been plunged by choosing the evil, and refusing the good, until his whole nature had become perverted, the whole head sick, and the whole heart faint.
\nAnd here is a point which may be tested. The records of the ages are open to us. History unfolds to our eyes her ample page, \u201crich with the spoils of time.\u201d We know enough of tens of thousands of human beings to enable us to judge of them; and we know enough at least of all the greatest of mankind to enable us to compare them with Him whom we worship as the Son of God.
\nThe unique supremacy of Jesus is especially illustrated by His sinlessness. By confession of all Scripture, and of all humanity, from the beginning until now, there never has been any other man who, being in human flesh, was not a sinner. There is no man that sinneth not, no, not one. Our Lord Himself said to His disciples, \u201cWhen ye have done all that is commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants.\u201d A thousand years earlier the Psalmist had said, Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified.\u201d Seven and a half centuries before the Incarnation, Isaiah had said, \u201cWe are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.\u201d But those who knew, and day by day had lived with the Lord Jesus, and had watched His least actions, and shared His inmost thoughts, bear witness with one voice that \u201cHe did no sin.\u201d And He, in whose mouth there was no guile, and who was \u201cmeek and lowly of heart,\u201d yet spoke of Himself, as did all His Apostles, as of one who could not sin, and as always doing the things that pleased God.
\nOther human beings have become the founders of forms of religion adopted by whole peoples and generations, and have been surrounded by legends with a blaze of miracles. Yet enough has been recorded of their lives and teaching to enable us to contrast them with the Saviour of the World, and to show that they lie as far beneath Him as the earth is beneath the highest heaven.
\nLet us take three such\u2014the founders of the three religions to which, with Christianity, the great majority of the human race belong.
\n1. Buddhism is said to number among its votaries many millions of mankind, or nearly one-third of the human race. \u201cTHE BUDDHA\u201d is not the name, but the title of the founder; his name was Gotama, and he was often spoken of as Sakya Muni, or \u201cSakya the Sage.\u201d He was born about B.C. 624. Nearly every fact and detail of his life is lost in the dim mist of extravagant traditions. He lived in prehistoric times, and the sacred book\u2014the Tripitaka, or \u201cThree Baskets\u201d\u2014which professes to record his doctrine, was not given to the world till centuries after his death. Of Sakya Muni therefore we can only judge by the religion which he taught\u2014by the ideal which he set before himself and his followers, and the results which that religion has produced in the world.
\nThough in a certain sense Sakya Muni may be called \u201cThe Light of Asia,\u201d and though Buddhism numbers more adherents than any other religion in the world, yet, tried by any standard whatever, Buddha cannot for a moment be placed in the most distant comparison with Christ.
\nHis ideal was in some essential particulars radically false, and even pernicious. There is an uncleanly abjectness in some of his precepts, a narrow selfishness in his morality. His religion is a dreary atheism which tends to merge into idolatry; his heaven an extinction of individual existence; his piety a perverted bodily service. He taught that there was \u201cno God, no creation, no Creator\u2014nothing but Mind minding itself.\u201d \u201cInsufficient for Time, and rejecting Eternity, the triumph of his religion is to live without fear, and to die without hope.\u201d Its ideal is the life of its Bhikshahs, who, besides professing faith in Buddha, engaged to lead a life of self-denial, celibacy, and mendicancy, and to enstrange themselves from all domestic and social obligations.
\nBuddhism, among many other glaring deficiencies and errors, involves a practical denial of the doctrine of man\u2019s immortality. It is a religion of despair, for it only offers a possibility of weary and endless metamorphoses, to be crowned at last by that obliteration of personal existence\u2014that final loss of individuality\u2014to which he gave the name of Nirv\u00e2na. Barth\u00e9lemy St. Hilaire, who made a special study of the subject, says, \u201chis religion is a spiritualism without soul, a virtue without duty, a morality without liberty, a world without nature and without God.\u201d
\nAnd what have been the religious results of Buddhism? There are men of excellent character and holy life among Buddhists as in all other religious communities, for God doth not leave Himself without witness among those whom He has made, and \u201cin every nation he that feareth God and doeth righteousness is accepted of Him.\u201d But Buddhism as a religion leaves the multitude with little but a false ideal and an unilluminated despair. \u201cVice had no intrinsic hideousness, and virtue was another name for calculating prudence; love was little more than animal sympathy; duty was devoid of moral motive. The Buddhist\u2019s principle of action was \u2018I must\u2019; he could not say \u2018I ought.\u2019 \u201d
\nAnd the national outcome of Buddhism is utterly uninspiring. It wholly fails to create great nations or heroic deeds. The nations which profess it wither into unprogressive uselessness, adding little or nothing to the literature, the art, the science, the political wisdom, or the moral enthusiasm of the human race. \u201cIts inherent principles were such as left it well-nigh powerless in the training of society, and therefore it has left the countries which it over-ran the prey of superstition and of demon-worship, of political misrule and spiritual lethargy.\u201d
\n2. Take another religious founder, CONFUCIUS, or Kung-foo-tsze. He was born B.C. 551, a few years after the death of the Buddha. The personal life of Confucius was highly respectable and correct, but his religion, if religion it can be called, does not furnish us with a single inspiring element. It was all lived on the dead level of conventional commonplace. It was an ideal of cold propriety and artificial respectability. It laid great stress on etiquette. He was narrow, cautious, and conservative. In Confucianism there is hardly any worship except the worship of ancestors, and yet it is very doubtful whether Kung-foo-tsze even believed in the actual continuance of life after death. When closely questioned on the subject he only gave hesitating and uncertain answers. All that he could say was that \u201che sacrificed to the dead as if they were present,\u201d and he said to his disciple Ke Lob, \u201cWhile you do not know about life, how can you know about death?\u201d \u201cHe threw no new light,\u201d says Dr. Legge, \u201con any of the questions that have a world-wide interest. He gave no impulse to religion. He had no sympathy with progress.\u201d \u201cThe last words he uttered savour not of hope and exultation, but of bitter disappointment.\u201d
\nThe religion of Confucius can hardly be called a religion at all. It might be described as conventional polytheism, merging into atheism. He deliberately avoided the subjects of God and Immortality. It is true that, in the arid desert of his writings, one may find here and there a tiny oasis. Once, when his disciple Tsze Kung asked him to sum up all religion in one word, he answered, \u201cIs not reciprocity such a word?\u201d; and by \u201creciprocity\u201d he meant something distantly akin, though immeasurably inferior to \u201caltruism\u201d\u2014a faint and far analogy of our duty to our neighbour. Again, I find in his writings the sentence, \u201cHeaven means principle.\u201d I am informed by a Chinese scholar of the highest authority that it is extremely doubtful whether this translation is correct, for it is taken from the maxims professedly drawn from the works of Kung-foo-tsze by the Jesuit R\u00e9gis, the genuineness and exactitude of whose Confucian aphorisms has been seriously questioned. But here again we must, in any case, interpret the maxim by the illustration of it in the sage\u2019s life; and, put to this test, it shrivels into very small dimensions.
\nAnd what result has Confucius produced in the empire in which his teaching prevails? It is an empire of stagnant decadence, full of corruption and cruelty. The Chinese are like a clever boy, who has grown to manhood, but whose mental development has been arrested at fifteen. Their religion has ended in deplorable morals, contented futility, and unprogressive stagnation. Its meagre formalism has never attracted the least respect from the inquirers of the world.
\n3. We know much more of MOHAMMED, the founder of the fourth great religion of the world, than we do of Sakya Muni or Kung-Foo-Tsze. But to compare him with the Lord Christ would be a falsity too glaring for the most fanatical unbeliever. In his own Qu\u2019ran he stands condemned. He has to defend his sensual irregularities by the fraud, or the self-deception, of pretended revelations. He knew himself too well to make any claim of moral perfection. In one Sura (48) God says to him, \u201cWe have granted thee a decisive victory, that Allah may forgive thee thy sins, both past and future\u201d; and in another (40) he is bidden to pray for the forgiveness of his sins. His last broken words were: \u201cO God, pardon my sins\u2014yes\u2014I come.\u201d
\nLooking at Islam as a religion\u2014its fanatical intolerance, its savage ruthlessness, its demoralising polygamy, its ever-deepening rottenness\u2014who would dream of comparing it even for a moment with the religion of Christ?
\nAnd what has been the destiny of Mohammedan nations? Theoretically, both Mohammed and his followers recognised the holiness and the prophetic mission of Jesus\u2014whom they nominally venerate as the prophet Issa\u2014though in many countries they spit in execration when a Christian passes them. The strength of Mohammedanism in Arabia, and in the countries which were conquered by its votaries, lay in its proclamation of one great forgotten truth\u2014the Unity of God. All that is of eternal validity in Islam its prophet learned directly from Jews and from Christians. Beyond this, it contains hardly a single element of the smallest value. Mohammed did indeed render one service to his adherents by the rigorous prohibition of strong drink. To this is due the fact that a Turk will, in a fortnight, recover from wounds which would send an ordinary English soldier to a certain grave. But when the first \u00e9lan of splendid fanaticism ceased, one Mohammedan nation after another sank into effete corruption. Nothing can be lower, more squalid, more wretched, more depraved than the condition of entire Mohammedan populations in Asia; and in Europe the heart of humanity is sickened by the debasement, the brutality, and the many atrocities of \u201cthe unspeakable Turk.\u201d
\nBy comparison, then, with the founders of the main religions of the world, Jesus stands not only supreme, but absolutely incomparable. He is elevated above them as high as the heaven is above the earth. He is separated from their human imperfections by an interspace as wide as the East is from the West.
\nPerhaps, however, it will be said that Sakya Muni, Kung-foo-tsze, and Mohammed were Easterns and Asiatics; and that Europe has ever been the continent of energy, of progress, of the supremacy of human thought.
\nWell, the annals of the human race lie open before us. We know intimately all that can be known of \u201cthe glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome.\u201d The Greeks and Romans were the dominant progressive races of the ancient world. They belonged to the noblest branch of the human family, and spoke languages memorable for strength, beauty, and perfectness. They have expressed their thoughts and aspirations in literature which can never die. Surely, if anywhere in the wide world, we might look among these great and glorious nations for some men\u2014if such have ever existed\u2014who can be put in comparison with the man Christ Jesus.
\nIs even one such to be found?
\ni. The GREEKS\u2014and especially the Athenians\u2014in the culmination of their national development, were a truly splendid race. Physically they could boast of specimens of beauty, and of perfection in the development of \u201cthe human form divine,\u201d such as the world has never seen surpassed. Intellectually they produced, in the course of little more than one brief century, a galaxy of brilliant stars. Their average intellect was far above the average intellect of Englishmen. They had philosophers like Heraclitus, Thales, Socrates, Plato, Zeno, Epicurus, and Aristotle, \u201cthe master of those who know.\u201d They had poets like Pindar, \u00c6schylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and many more. They had historians like Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon; orators like Demosthenes; statesmen like Pericles; men of science like Archimedes and Euclid; sculptors like Phidias and Praxiteles; painters like Zeuxis and Parrhasius; soldiers like Miltiades, Themistocles, Alexander. Did a race so gifted produce in its zenith one man who can for a moment be placed in comparison with Christ?
\nThe name of SOCRATES might occur to some, but not to any who have most deeply studied what is recorded of him. That no Greek known to us was more outwardly blameless than he, may at once be conceded; yet both of his revering disciples, Xenophon and Plato, represent items of behaviour, and describe incidents in his biography, which, had they been narrated of Christ, would instantly shatter every fragment of belief that He was \u201cGod manifest in the flesh.\u201d The family life of Socrates, his views about ordinary moral questions, his estimate of women, who constitute one-half of the human race, rose in no particular above the ordinary Greek ideal. He could make himself intentionally and intolerably irritating. His attitude towards sin was dangerously, even ruinously, tolerant and familiar. Can we conceive of the humblest of Christ\u2019s followers talking as Socrates talked with Theodota or with Agathon, or making the coarse remark which he made about Critias? or dismissing his wife and children in the hour of death with the cold remark, \u201cLet some one lead her away home.\u201d Even taking the word \u201csinless\u201d (\u1f00\u03bd\u03b1\u03bc\u03b1\u03c1\u03c4\u03b7\u03c4\u1f78\u03c2) in its lowest and most externally legal aspect, Xenophon himself says in so many words, \u201cI see no single human being continuing in a sinless course,\u201d\u2014and that, be it remembered, though sins of sensuality were regarded by most Greeks\u2014even by the most eminent philosophers, and apparently by Socrates himself\u2014as hardly sins at all, but as \u1f00\u03b4\u03b9\u03ac\u03c6\u03bf\u03c1\u03b1, matters of indifference either way. Cicero was a deep student of philosophy, and he tells us that all the philosophers were at variance as to what should be the ideal of a man perfect in wisdom, \u201cif ever he might be expected to exist.\u201d Even from a purely pagan standard he could not have regarded the life of Socrates as spotless, for he says, speaking merely of the victory over pain, \u201cNever yet have we seen any man of perfect wisdom.\u201d Never has the whole world seen any man\u2014save Christ alone\u2014in whom there has been either perfect wisdom or perfect holiness. He at once created and fulfilled that divine ideal.
\nPLATO\u2014amid the exotic perfumes of many of his dialogues, and the dry dialectics of others\u2014has indeed written for us one of the most remarkable of \u201cthe unconscious prophecies of Heathendom.\u201d He has even been called \u201ca plank from the wreck of Paradise, cast upon the shores of idolatrous Greece.\u201d Yet what chance would Christianity have had if its Apostles and Evangelists had written in the tone of the Phaedrus or the Symposium, or devised such a Republic as Plato\u2019s, with its tolerated and worse than tolerated crimes, including the degradation of the multitude, the exposition of children, and the community of women? Well might Plato yearn for the Deliverer for whose coming he, like many of the wisest of the heathen, felt there was an awful necessity, and who (as he believed) would come at last.
\nBut, as far as ethics are concerned, the ideal drawn by Plato is the purely negative one of outward integrity, with no reference to the inner life or to the heart, out of which proceed evil thoughts; nor does he furnish any hint of the means whereby alone this ideal can be attained. He seems only to have regarded it as a picture hanging in the air, and neither says that it has been, nor expresses the belief that it ever will be, realised in human life.
\nii. When we turn from the Greeks to THE ROMANS, we find an imperial race which, strong in patriotism and courage, conquered the choicest part of the habitable world in its purer and better days. But its philosophy was in great measure second-hand, and Roman civilisation grew corrupt to the heart\u2019s core under the triple curses of imperialism, slavery, and sensuality. Conquered Greece terribly and effectually avenged herself on her conquerors by infecting them through and through with her worst vices, till<\/p>\n
\u201cShe whom mightiest kingdoms curtsied to,
\nLike a forlorn and desperate castaway
\nDid shameful execution on herself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Few indeed of the great Roman poets\u2014neither Catullus, nor Virgil, nor Horace\u2014are free from the deadly taint of the worst impurity. \u201cAll things,\u201d says Seneca, \u201care crammed with wickedness and vices \u2026 there is a competition of worthlessness \u2026 Sins are no longer furtive\u2014but openly parade themselves; and so publicly has worthlessness prevailed in all bosoms that innocence is not only rare, but non-existent.\u201d As they reprobated God, He had given them over to a reprobate mind. They became fools in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves wise, they were befooled. The most striking comment on the paraded infamies of the decadent empire may be seen in the hateful sludge of Sodom and Gomorrha which bestrewed every street in Herculaneum and Pompeii. And as a consequence,<\/p>\n
\u201cOn that hard Roman world, disgust
\nAnd utter loathing fell.
\nDeep weariness and sated lust
\nMade human life a hell.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not a few of the Romans, and Cicero among them, regarded the elder CATO as an ideal, yet Cato, in the affairs of private life, was guilty of a callousness and greed which would have stamped with infamy the humblest Christian. What sort of ideal is presented by the virtue of a man who, when his slaves became old and useless, ruthlessly turned them out to starve? or of a man who, meeting a young nobleman coming out of a haunt of vice, congratulated him on his virtue\u2014Macte virtute esto! because he chose only such channels for the gratification of his animal desires?
\nThere are, however, two men in later Roman history\u2014the one a great and brave emperor, the other \u201cpoor and a slave, and lame, yet dear to the immortals\u201d\u2014who did attain to a very high degree of virtue, and may be regarded as \u201cthe bright consummate flowers of pagan morality.\u201d
\nEPICTETUS,<\/p>\n
\u201cThe halting slave who in Nicopolis
\nTaught Arrian, when Vespasian\u2019s brutal son
\nCleared Rome of what most shamed him,\u201d<\/p>\n
wrote in Greek, and can hardly be counted as a Roman, though he was a subject of Rome and a slave in Roman households. It must be remembered that when he and Marcus Aurelius wrote, Christianity had long been in the air. Some breath of its divine teachings had been wafted into the miasma which was ever reeking upwards from the pestilential marshes of heathen corruption. Much pure, though imperfect, morality may be found in the pages of Epictetus. Yet his lofty Stoicism is a flower which has no root on which to live and thrive. His teachings never have been, or could be, a guide to the multitude, or a light to them which sit in darkness; and as for moral perfection, he frankly declares it to be unattainable. \u201cWhat then?\u201d he asks, \u201cis it possible here and now to be faultless? Impossible! But this is possible\u2014to have ever been straining every energy towards the avoidance of sin.\u201d
\nI look on the \u201clittle golden passional\u201d of the Emperor MARCUS AURELIUS as the most perfect moral book which heathen antiquity produced. It is Stoicism, touched\u2014however unconsciously\u2014with something of the Christian truth which the Emperor ignored, though by it he had been indirectly influenced. To ordinary ears it sounded like the despairing cry of an impossible virtue, and it was powerless to produce any effect upon the world. It did not for a moment stem\u2014it was not even meant to stem\u2014the awful tide of putrescence which rushed and swelled around him. It was but the salt of his own inner life preserved in his private diary, but it wholly failed to have any effect on his wife, or his son, or the nearest members of his own family. The personal morality did not reach beyond himself, and it is tinged with an unspeakable sadness. We see him standing, in noble despair, upon the bank of the River of Life, pure as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb:<\/p>\n
\u201cTendentemque manus ripae ulterioris amore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of other pagans it is hardly worth while to speak. No one would hold up SENECA as offering an effective moral example. His ideal is very imperfect, and his life fell immeasurably below even that imperfect ideal.
\nPhilostratus drew a highly coloured picture of the Cappadocian thaumaturge, APOLLONIUS OF TYANA, who flourished in the reign of Nero. It was probably intended to represent him as a loftier being than Christ. But on the showing of his own panegyrist\u2014who evidently drew very largely on his imagination\u2014Apollonius, if he was not a gross impostor, was not a man who commands any deep admiration. He was guilty of glaring faults, and the \u201ccloudy romance of the pagan sophist\u201d who pretended to delineate his individuality has attracted very little notice, and has not exercised the very faintest influence upon the moral progress of the world.
\nIn truth the pagan philosophers and poets disclaimed altogether the very possibility of sinlessness. Horace says:<\/p>\n
\u201cNam vitiis nemo sine nascitur; optimus ille est
\nQui minimis urgetur;\u201d<\/p>\n
and centuries before, Simonides had said: \u201cTo be a good man is impossible and not human; God only has this high prerogative.\u201d \u201cWe have never yet seen any born,\u201d says Cicero, \u201cin whom there has been perfect wisdom.\u201d And Plato warns us that it is futile to exonerate ourselves by casting the blame on fortune, or demons, or anything rather than ourselves.
\nAnd what was the total issue of Paganism in its utmost splendour, and most unquestioned dominance? Did the teaching of any of the great Greek philosophers or Roman moralists produce the slightest appreciable effect in uplifting the world in general into loftier aspirations or a purer atmosphere? It must be sadly confessed that, among the noble and heroic figures of Greek and Roman life, we can scarcely select one who distantly approached the Christian standard of holiness, or even of pure morality. The final culmination of Greek and Roman development in the days of the Empire was an unspeakable corruption. Nothing can be darker than the picture presented so unblushingly by Aristophanes in his day, and by the writers of the Anthologia in theirs. In Juvenal, and Suetonius, and Petronius Arbiter, and Apuleius, we have unbared to us the very depths of Satan.
\nOther writers are like a troubled sea foaming out their own shame with filth unspeakable. Over the history of Tacitus there seems to hang an atmosphere of the deepest gloom. In page after page he reveals the horror of times which, amid all their external gorgeousness, bore on them a truly infernal stamp. But it required the inspired eloquence of a St. Paul effectually to brand the harlot brow of Paganism with the stigma of her abominations; and it is well that, in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, he should have torn the painted mask from that leprous forehead, and should have shown what a heart of agony\u2014rank with hatred, and burnt out with vilest self-indulgence\u2014lay throbbing under the purple robe.
\nI ask, in passing, whether it does not show the unique exaltation of Christ\u2014whether it does not throw a reflected light of antecedent probability on His miraculous birth\u2014that whereas, in all the Pagan world, alike in the East and in the West, we cannot point to so much as one human being to whom we could apply the epithet \u201choly\u201d\u2014that, while, in all Pagan literature, during so many centuries, the very conception of \u201choliness\u201d has no existence\u2014now, because of Christ\u2019s teaching, and the force of His divine indwelling life, there is no town, no village, scarcely even a family, in which we cannot find holy women and holy men?
\n\u201cWhy should it be thought a thing incredible with you,\u201d asked St. Paul of Festus and King Agrippa, \u201cthat God doth raise the dead!\u201d Even then he could say in the presence of his enemies and accusers that \u201cthis thing was not done in a corner.\u201d But he was speaking in the earliest dawn of Christianity, before the facts to which he bore witness had been tested by nineteen centuries of human study and human progress; before the Gospel had proved itself to be a divine regenerative force in all the world; before it had been found by millions of every race and age\u2014from philosophers in their studies to cannibals in the Pacific, and Indians in their wigwams on the frozen shores of Hudson\u2019s Bay\u2014to be the power of God unto salvation to all them that believe. The transcendence, the sinlessness of the Lord of Glory have been searched as with candles by men of the most consummate intellect in many epochs, and not one of them has been able to question His unique superiority or to convince Him of sin. After these nineteen centuries of sanctification, of victory, of wisdom and enlightenment, may we not ask with tenfold force of every sceptic, \u201cWhy should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should have granted to our fallen race the most priceless of all blessing by sending forth His Son into the world, and that He should have done this, not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved?\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 3<\/p>\n
THE UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS (CONTINUED)<\/p>\n
\u201cEven in the Prophets, after they had been anointed by the Holy Spirit, was there found mention of sin.\u201d\u2014\u201cUnwritten Saying\u201d in the Gospel of the Hebrews.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis beauty is eternal, his Kingdom shall have no end.\u201d\u2014RENAN, Vie de J\u00e9sus, p. 457.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ideal representation and guide of Humanity.\u201d\u2014J. S. MILL.<\/p>\n
NO sceptic, I think, will be able to dispute that\u2014in the ancient world of Heathendom, and through all the \u00e6ons during which it existed\u2014neither among the founders of world-wide religions, nor among the greatest philosophers, the brightest poets, and the best men whom all former history records, can so much as one be found who can be offered as a distant parallel to Jesus Christ. The best and greatest of them all do not approach Him within any measurable distance, either in holiness of life, or perfectness of teaching, or in the ever advancing grandeur of the permanent results effected by His influence. But some might expect that, as THE JEWS were the recipients of a special inspiration, and since to them were entrusted \u201cthe oracles of God,\u201d we should be able to find among the twelve Tribes of Israel during the twenty centuries of the Older Dispensation, at least one or two Saints or Prophets whose lives and teaching might place them on the same level with the Son of Man. Yet it needs but little search to prove decisively that such is not the case.
\nWhat need is there to speak of NOAH? Little as we are told of that preacher of righteousness, we think of that shameful scene when he lay drunken and uncovered in his tent, and laid his curse upon his son and grandson,
\nJOB, if he were a real person, and not created by the poetic imagination of the Jewish Haggadah, was in a lower sense \u201ca blameless man and an upright, who feared God and eschewed evil.\u201d Yet he incurred the rebuke of the young Elihu for justifying himself rather than God, and when he is made to apprehend God\u2019s majesty, he can only cry\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore I abhor myself,
\nAnd repent in dust and ashes.\u201d<\/p>\n
ABRAHAM was \u201cthe father of the faithful\u201d and \u201cthe friend of God\u201d; yet Abraham could twice be guilty of deception, and in other respects also shows the limitations of the nomad Sheykh. Other Patriarchs were still more imperfect. Isaac was guilty of deceit; Jacob of fraud, meanness, and partiality.
\nMOSES, the mighty law-giver of Sinai, was God\u2019s chosen mediator to deliver to Israel \u201cthe Ten words,\u201d in which are summed up our duties to God and man; yet Moses claims no exemption from human weakness, and records alike how he murdered the Egyptian and hid him in the sand, and how an outburst of unchastened anger forfeited for him the entrance into the Promised Possession.
\nOf DAVID and his terrible falls and manifold failures, though he was \u201cthe sweet Psalmist of Israel,\u201d there is no need to speak, for he does not conceal his own terrible guilt, and cries, \u201cBehold I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin did my mother conceive me.\u201d
\nELIJAH shewed the imperfection of an angry temper, and his wrathful spirit was far different from the spirit of Christ.
\nJEREMIAH, though some have fancied that his character had suggested to the later Isaiah the ideal of the Sinless Sufferer, yielded to passionate despair, and cursed the day of his birth. Not one of these, nor any of the Prophets or deliverers of Israel, made the slightest claim to perfectness. The plain testimony of their experience invariably is that all alike have gone astray, and that there is not one that sinneth not.
\nThe Jews themselves, deep\u2014almost unbounded\u2014as was their veneration for these Patriarchs and Prophets of their race, never pretend that they were faultless. In one of the apologues of the Talmud, God is represented as demanding from the Jews some surety for their future obedience. They offer Abraham, and Isaac, and Moses. God\u2019s answer is, \u201cNo! Abraham has sinned, and Isaac has sinned, and even Moses has sinned; they cannot be your sureties.\u201d As they can find no sinless man in all their annals, they offer to God their innocent little ones. And God accepted these, saying, \u201cYes, your little ones shall be your sureties,\u201d even as it is written, \u201cOut of the mouth of children and little ones hast Thou built a bulwark, that Thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.\u201d
\nAs for later Judaism, its ideals shrank and shrivelled into utter pettiness.
\nThe two Rabbis whom the Talmud most admires and exalts are HILLEL and AKIBA.
\nHILLEL had sweet and noble elements in his character, but they were accompanied by very unpraiseworthy deficiencies. His highest teaching is defective from its one-sidedness and incompleteness. Anything more ludicrously absurd than the notion\u2014maintained by some Jewish writers, like Geiger and Gr\u00e4tz\u2014that HILLEL was in any sense whatever \u201cthe master of Jesus,\u201d cannot be imagined! HILLEL belonged, in all essential particulars, to the Pharisees, who of all others were most repugnant to the soul of Jesus. His mind and life were occupied in the elaborate discussion of infinitesimal puerilities of ritual, such as whether one might or might not eat an egg which a hen had laid on a feast day, if the feast day was coincident with a Sabbath, whether, when you are carrying myrtles and perfumed oil, you ought first to bless the myrtles and then the oil, or first the oil and then the myrtles; whether you ought or ought not to take off your phylacteries during the performance of certain natural functions; whether you ought first to wash your hands and then fill the glass, or vice versa. Can we imagine how full of holy scorn Jesus would have been at the discussion of these nullities, many of which are even more wearisomely repulsive than those I have mentioned, and some of which are absolutely nauseous? Again, with what holy indignation would Jesus have regarded the application of some of HILLEL\u2019S seven middoth, or rules of exegesis, which were used to turn Scripture into any purpose which Rabbinism might demand! We need not conjecture with what pity and anger the Son of God would have treated HILLEL\u2019S decision that the words \u201cervath dabhar,\u201d in Deut. 24:1, imply that a man may divorce his wife \u201ceven if she cooked his dinner badly\u201d; and the thoroughly disingenuous shuffling by which he managed to set free his countrymen from the onerous Mosaic ordinance of letting property revert to its original owner in the Sabbatic year. He was cramped by the stagnation, the prejudice, the rigidity of party doctrine; he lived and moved and had his being in the confined, heavy, turbid air of the Jewish Schools.
\nOf Rabbi AKIBA in this connection it is not worth while to speak. He too was not only a Pharisee of the straitest sect of later Judaism, but his methods disgusted the more moderate even of his Pharisaic contemporaries. He ostentatiously glorified, and was exclusively absorbed in, the very methods and minuti\u00e6 of externalism which Christ most emphatically repudiated and denounced. His ideal of righteousness was inconceivably paltry and shrunken. The Messiah of this coryph\u00e6us of particularism in its latest and least sensible views was not the Son of Man, but the False Messiah to whom he gave the name of Bar Cochba, \u201cson of a star,\u201d but Whom, after his deadly failure, the Jews characterised as Bar Coziba, the \u201cson of a lie.\u201d<\/p>\n
But if it be granted that, in all the previous centuries, moral perfectness was an unattained and even unimagined ideal, some may ask whether the same is true of the centuries which followed the birth of Christ. May not men have lived since the dawn of the Christian era, who, aided by the inspiration of the Gospel, not only surpassed in holiness the men of all previous ages, but may have even attained to the same moral perfectness as was manifested by their Lord? Again the answer is a demonstrable and emphatic negative. The records of the Apostles and Evangelists themselves show proofs of the spiritual failures which they humbly acknowledge. The confession of ST. PETER\u2014\u201cDepart from me, for I am a sinful man, O, Lord\u201d\u2014is amply confirmed by subsequent records of faithlessness, of misunderstanding, of cowardice, of dissimulation. ST. PAUL, after his conversion, evidently speaks in his own person when, after describing the struggles of \u201ca disintegrated individuality,\u201d he cries, \u201cWretched man that I am, who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?\u201d; and he says with frank humility, \u201cNot that I have already attained, or am already perfected, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before, I press on to the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.\u201d Yet, in spite of these efforts, he not only calls himself \u201cless than the least of the Apostles, who am not meet to be called an Apostle,\u201d but even characterises himself as \u201cthe chief of sinners.\u201d
\nThe faults of the Sons of Thunder\u2014ST. JAMES and ST. JOHN, the disciples whom Jesus loved\u2014are not concealed in the Gospels; and, if the later legends of St. John be true, they still exhibit traces of human passion and impetuosity.
\nNor is there one of all the later saints of Christendom\u2014whether it be St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Basil, or the saints of the later days, sweet St. Francis of Assisi, ardent St. Bernard, St. Bonaventura the Seraphic, St. Thomas of Aquino the Angelic Doctor, St. Francis Xavier, or St. Vincent de Paul\u2014whose ideals were not more or less one-sided or mistaken. Every one of them would, with indignant humility, have repudiated the faintest attempt to represent him as perfect. Every saint of Christendom, kneeling humbly, on his knees, would have said to the Lord of his life, that<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery virtue we possess,
\nAnd every triumph won,
\nAnd every thought of holiness
\nAre thine alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe young and unspotted, the aged and most mature, he who had sinned least, he who had repented most, the fresh innocent brow and the hoary head, they unite in this one litany, \u2018God, be merciful to me, a sinner!\u2019 So was it with St. Ignatius; with St. Aloysius; with St. Rose, the youngest of the saints; with St. Philip Neri, one of the most aged, who, when some one praised him, cried out, \u2018Begone! I am a devil, and not a saint!\u2019 \u201d
\n\u201cWhat are the saints,\u201d asked Luther, \u201ccompared with Christ? They are but as dewdrops scattered upon the head of the Bridegroom, lost in the glory of His hair.\u201d As regards all varieties and combinations of virtue and excellence\u2014all things which are true, pure, honest, lovely, and of good report, which have ever been manifested in the character of the children of God\u2014all Christians would express the conviction that<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are but broken lights of Thee,
\nAnd Thou, O Lord, art more than they.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far, then, we have seen enough to leave us with the secure certainty that of all the multitudes of mankind without number, under every condition, and in every age and clime, not one can be compared to Him who revealed Himself as the Son of Man and the Son of God. And this demonstrable uniqueness and unapproachable superiority\u2014even if it stood alone\u2014would not only go far to remove every shadow of difficulty from the record of His miraculous birth, but would lead us to suppose, were there no such testimony, that Jesus must have come into the world by the special intervention of an Omnipotent Love. The infinite supremacy of Christ Jesus in character and influence\u2014the manner in which He is separated by an untraversable distance from all who have ever lived on earth\u2014would naturally lead us to believe that He could not have been born as other men are, and that the Son of Man, the Second Adam, was, in a far deeper sense than the first Adam, the Son of God.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 4<\/p>\n
THE TESTIMONY OF SCEPTICS AND FREE ENQUIRERS<\/p>\n
\u201cChrist stands alone, and unapproached in the world\u2019s history.\u201d\u2014STRAUSS.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Incomparable Man to whom the universal conscience has decreed the title of Son of God\u2014and that with justice, since He has advanced religion as none other has done.\u201d\u2014RENAN.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe stood in the first rank of the grand family of the true Sons of God.\u201d\u2014IBID.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Chosen of God, His image, His darling, His world-guide, and world-shaper in the history of mankind.\u201d\u2014KEIM.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Well-spring of whatever is best and purest in human life.\u201d\u2014LESSING.<\/p>\n
HITHERTO we have been led to the conclusion that Christ is \u201cthe vital centre of Christianity, the pulsating heart from which it all proceeds, to which it all returns\u201d;\u2014that, without the force of His inspiring and ever-present Personality, Christianity itself would sink into nothing more than a system of morals and scheme of revelation. We have seen also that, demonstrably and by universal admission, Christ stands a Unique Being in the long annals of the world. There have been sceptics who have insinuated a faint and timid disapproval of some of His actions, and many have questioned the truth of the Gospels, and denied the divinity of Him whom they set before us. But it is worth while to pause and show that even over the most unfettered enquirers He has cast a spell which makes them hardly venture to hint at the most distant disparagement of Him. The beauty of His holiness compels them, almost in spite of themselves, to fall upon their knees, and to admit His unapproachable supremacy even when they speak of Him as nothing more than Man.
\n1. SPINOZA (Ep. 23) said: \u201cThis is the highest thing which Christ said of Himself, namely, that He is the Temple of God, since God chiefly manifested Himself in Christ; which St. John, that he might express it more efficaciously, clothed in the expression that \u2018the Word was made flesh.\u2019 \u201d
\n2. LESSING called Christ \u201cthe first trustworthy and practical Teacher of the Immortality of the Soul.\u201d
\n3. ROUSSEAU concludes a famous passage with the words, \u201cIf the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God.\u201d
\n4. The awful transcendency of the life of Jesus overawed even the flippant soul of VOLTAIRE, as we see in the account of his remarkable vision.
\n5. KANT was indignant when a critic compared his teaching with that of Jesus. \u201cOne of those names,\u201d he said, \u201cbefore which the heavens bow, is sacred; the other is only that of a poor scholar, endeavouring to explain to the best of his abilities the teachings of his Master.\u201d
\n6. SCHELLING spoke of Christ as \u201cthe turning-point of the world\u2019s history.\u201d
\n7. STRAUSS was the foremost champion of modern scepticism respecting Him, yet Strauss wrote that Jesus \u201cstands foremost among those who have given a higher ideal to humanity\u201d; and that \u201cit is impossible to refrain from admiring and loving Him.\u201d \u201cNever at any time will it be possible to rise above Him, nor to imagine any one who shall be even equal with Him.\u201d \u201cHe is the highest object we can possibly imagine in respect of religion: the Being without whose presence in the mind perfect piety is impossible.\u201d
\n8. GOETHE calls Him \u201cthe Divine Man, the Holy One, the type and model of all men.\u201d
\n9. CHANNING was a Unitarian, yet he wrote: \u201cI believe Jesus Christ to be more than a human being. The combination of the spirit of Humanity in its loveliest and tenderest form with the consciousness of unrivalled and Divine glories, is the most wonderful distinction of this wonderful character.\u201d
\n10. RENAN says: \u201cBetween Thee and God there is no longer any distinction.\u201d \u201cHis beauty is eternal, His Kingdom shall have no end.\u201d \u201cThis Christ of the Gospels is the most beautiful incarnation of God in the most beautiful of forms.\u201d
\n11. J. S. MILL wrote that \u201cthere is no better rule than so to live that Christ would approve our life.\u201d
\n12. The views of KEIM diverge very widely from those of Churchmen in many points, yet he ends his Jesu von Nazara by saying that \u201cChristianity is the crown of all the creations of God, and Jesus is the chosen of God, God\u2019s image, and best-beloved, and master-workman, and world-shaper in the history of mankind. He and no other is and remains the appointed standard-bearer of the world\u2019s progress, who shall triumph over the quagmires and the spirits of darkness of the nether Kosmos.\u201d
\n13. THEODORE PARKER testifies that \u201cChrist unites in Himself the sublimest precepts and divinest practices. He pours out a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven, and true as God.\u201d
\n14. DR. CONGREVE, the head of the English Positivists, wrote: \u201cThe more truly you serve Christ, the more thoroughly you mould yourself into His image, the more keen will be your sympathy and admiration.\u201d
\n15. DR. MARTINEAU was a Unitarian, yet he speaks of Christ as \u201cthe commissioned Prophet, the merciful Redeemer, the inspired Teacher, the perfect Model, the heavenly Guide.\u201d
\n16. MATTHEW ARNOLD differed widely from views regarded as orthodox, yet, after describing the True God as \u201cthe Eternal who makes for righteousness,\u201d he adds, \u201cfrom whom Jesus came forth, and whose Spirit governs the course of humanity.\u201d
\n17. I will only add the testimony of the anonymous author of Supernatural Religion. He\u2014surely an unprejudiced witness\u2014spoke of Christ as \u201csurpassing in His sublime simplicity the moral grandeur of Sakya Mouni, and putting to the blush the teaching of Socrates and Plato, and presenting the rare spectacle of a life, so far as we can estimate it, uniformly noble and consistent with His own lofty principles.\u201d
\nFrom the first, Jesus was \u201cset for a sign which should be spoken against.\u201d His cross was \u201cto the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Gentiles foolishness.\u201d His earliest Apostles were denounced as \u201cpestilent fellows and ringleaders of sedition.\u201d His Gospel was stigmatised by the haughty Roman historians as a deadly and contemptible folly, to be classed with all monstrous and shameful things; and Christians as \u201ccreatures of a deplorable, illegal, and desperate faction,\u201d devoted to \u201ca depraved and measureless superstition.\u201d His followers were everywhere spoken against as hated for their enormities, as \u201ccharacterised by their hatred for the human race\u201d; as \u201catheists\u201d\u2014so that the cry against one of the poor Martyrs, St. Polycarp, as against Christians in general, was \u201cAway with the godless one!\u201d Is it no proof of the Divine blessing and approval that, in spite of all this hatred and execration, which united all pagan society, philosophy, and literature in a conspiracy of common detestation, the faith of Christ \u201cin the unresistible might of weakness shook the world,\u201d over which, in spite of its being in flagrant disaccord with all that men naturally admire, it has since then maintained the unquestioned dominance? Many who more or less reject Christ\u2019s divinity\u2014such as Hase, Weisse, Schenkel, and others\u2014still describe Christ as \u201cein Unicum,\u201d \u201cein Mysterium.\u201d Thus sceptics (as Mr. Browning so admirably points out)<\/p>\n
\u201cBid us, when we least expect it,
\nTake back our faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
They say:<\/p>\n
\u201cGo home, and venerate the myth
\nI thus have experimented with;
\nThis Man, continue to adore Him
\nRather than all who went before Him,
\nAnd all who ever followed after.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSurely for this I praise you, my brother!
\nWill you take praise in tears or laughter?\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 5<\/p>\n
THE GOSPELS<\/p>\n
\u201cQuousque mens tua humi defixa erit? Sacrilegii enim vel maximi instar est, humi quaerere quod in sublimi debeas invenire.\u201d\u2014CICERO, Somn. Scip. Ad init.<\/p>\n
IN the desire to disprove the Divinity of Christ, every possible ground of objection has been urged; and it may now perhaps be said, \u201cYour argument depends ultimately on the genuineness and authenticity of the Gospels, and against the Gospels the spirit of hostile criticism has concentrated its most powerful light.\u201d
\nYes; but I say unhesitatingly that the result of that close and hostile criticism has not only left the substantial truth and accuracy of the Gospels untouched, but has, by its very failure and weakness, shown them to be of unassailable veracity. The Gospels exhibit on every page the simplex veri sigillum. They have no magnificent eloquence, no thundering denunciations, no high-wrought artificiality, no excited eulogies. They bear on the face of them the stamp of being unadorned and artless narratives of simple faith.
\nWe may compare the Gospels with the greatest books of other religions, and they stand out in magnificent superiority, though the Evangelists may have been far inferior in earthly gifts and philosophic genius to the great sages of the East. \u201cI confess,\u201d says a most competent witness, Professor Max M\u00fcller, \u201cit has been many years a problem to me, how the great books of the East should, by the side of so much that is fresh, natural, simple, beautiful, and true, contain so much that is not only unmeaning, artificial, and silly, but even hideous and repellant. This is a fact, and it must be accounted for in some way or other.\u201d But no one could say this of our Christian Gospels; they do not contain one silly or one repellent word; and what can account for their absolute supremacy, except that their writers bore witness to the simple truth?
\nThe Evangelists simply could not have invented the history which they record. Standing as they do immeasurably below the grandeur of their Master, we feel almost inclined to say that their invention of His teaching and character would have constituted a less believable miracle than any which they narrate. As Rousseau said, \u201cL\u2019inventeur en seroit plus \u00e9tonnant que le h\u00e9ros.\u201d These Galileans could never have subjectively elaborated ideals so inimitable, or morality so divine. They\u2014even the greatest of the Apostles, even a Peter and a John\u2014possessed no particle of what was regarded as learning in their own day. Their words are, as Origen described them, \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u03c9\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03bf\u1f76 \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03b9. When they stood before the Sanhedrin, the High Priests\u2014the Kamhits, and Phabis, and Boethusim and Annanites, and the Rabbis\u2014the Shammaites, the Hillelites, the Gamaliels, who were regarded with such reverence\u2014looked down on these Galileans as \u1f04\u03b3\u03c1\u03ac\u03bc\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf\u03b9 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f30\u03b4\u03b9\u1ff6\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9\u2014mere commonplace nobodies, who had never had a learned education. They spoke a coarse provincial dialect; they possessed none of the exegetic lore of the Scribes; they knew nothing of the Middoth or the Erubhin, nothing of Halacha or the Haggadah; they belonged to the common amharatzim\u2014the multitude who \u201cknew not the law and were accursed.\u201d Such men could not even be pious, and a Pharisee felt polluted (so Hillel declared) if he so much as touched them with the hem of his garment. In the Gospels themselves the Evangelists constantly record incidents which show that they were \u201cdull and slow of heart to believe\u201d; that they ignorantly misunderstood Christ\u2019s allusions; that without the aid of His tender condescension, they could not grasp the significance of His parables; that they were entirely unprepared for His line of action in many cases; that they would fain have hindered His divine purposes; that His plainest prophecies failed to impress their understandings; that they were liable to petty jealousies and ambitions among themselves; and that, even after His resurrection, He had to upbraid them for their unbelief and hardness of heart. Inferiority is far too weak a word to express the depth at which they stood below their Master. How could these Galilean peasants and fishermen, \u201cfresh from their nets, and with their clothes wringing wet\u201d\u2014how could tax gatherers and zealots, and men of individuality so unmarked that their fellows had little or nothing special to record about them, except their imperfections\u2014how could they have invented a story, and imagined a character, which transcended them as infinitely as the heaven is higher than the earth, and which, when it was shining before them in heaven\u2019s own light, they could but very dimly understand? Who will believe that St. Paul, the learned Pharisee, who began with the most furious rage against Christianity, was so credulous that\u2014in defiance of all his predilections, and all his past training\u2014he suddenly accepted as true a mass of myths, freshly invented by unknown Galileans? Is there any one whose capacity for appreciating evidence is so paralysed as to believe \u201cthat the Holiest of Men was a deceiver, His disciples either deluded or liars, and that deceivers would have preached a holy religion of which self-denial is the chief duty?\u201d Whatever else the early Apostles, Disciples, and Evangelists may have been, they were undeniably holy men;\u2014would they have invented falsities, and then, in preaching them, have poured out their lives like water, and sacrificed everything which life holds most dear?
\nThe presence and the work of Jesus in Palestine in the days of the Herods are matters of ordinary history, as certain as any recorded in Tacitus or Dion Cassius. It would be the wildest of hypotheses that the poor Evangelists could have evolved out of their own consciousness a story so entrancing that, nineteen centuries later, it should be read with awe and ecstasy alike by emperors in their palaces and peasants in their hovels. Maories and Fijians, Kaffirs and Negroes, Esquimaux and Tahitians, can delight in the Gospels with no less intensity than men of the finest genius and the most consummate learning.
\nThe Synoptists exhibit no special skill, or power, or insight. Their main function is simply to narrate. They do not enter into theological disquisitions. The technical scholasticism of theologians leaves no trace on their pages. There is no learning in their allusions, no brilliance or profundity in their style. Their records are fragmentary and unchronological. St. Matthew, accustomed to the use of the stylus from his trade as a despised toll-collector, was probably the first to commit to writing a collection of Christ\u2019s \u201csayings\u201d (Logia); and he and the others, though guided by divine inspiration, yet in other respects followed the bent of their own individuality, and wrote as St. Augustine said, \u201cut quisque meminerat, vel ut cuique cordi erat.\u201d It must also be borne in mind that they do not profess to offer complete or exhaustive records. Our Lord uttered His prophetic woe on Chorazin and Bethsaida as cities which had witnessed His mighty works; yet we do not know of a single miracle performed at Chorazin, and only one is recorded to have been performed at Bethsaida.
\nSt. Matthew belonged to the social class which was, of all others, regarded with the greatest contempt, and beyond this we know scarcely a single fact about him. He wrote mainly for the converts from Judaism. It used to be thought that his original work was in Hebrew, but modern scholars now regard his Gospel as a composite one, formed partly from a Greek Gospel resembling that of St. Mark, and partly from a collection of our Lord\u2019s sayings in Greek, used also by St. Luke; the two documents having been welded together by a third redactor.
\nSt. Luke, as \u201ca physician,\u201d had probably belonged at one time to the body of slaves in some wealthy house in Asia Minor.
\nSt. Mark recorded in his Greek Gospel, for Roman readers, some of the vivid reminiscences of St. Peter, the Galilean fisherman. Not one of the three was in any other respect specially remarkable, and though all three wrote in Greek, their records are tinged with the Aramaic phrases of the earliest oral teaching. It is a gross absurdity to suppose that they, and others like them, could have conspired to deceive men by an imaginary character and a false narrative which, ever since, has altered the destinies and stimulated the noblest efforts of the world! \u201cTheir divinity,\u201d it has been said, \u201cis in what they report, not in the way they report.\u201d
\nThere are in the Fourth Gospel more marks of profound and spiritual genius. It concentrates on the person of the Saviour all the manifold sources of witness borne to Him by the Father and the Spirit; and by John the Baptist; and alike by men who believed and disbelieved in His divine authority. Far more deeply than the Synoptic Gospels it reveals the inmost nature of Eternal Life. Its \u201cemphatic monotony,\u201d its mixture of extreme simplicity of language and grammar with unequalled majesty of thought, exercise over the mind a mysterious spiritual fascination. After the brows of the Apostles had been mitred with Pentecostal flame, when the Fall of Jerusalem came as the consummation of the older \u00e6on, and when the progress of years had shown that the \u201cDayspring from on high\u201d was destined to broaden into the boundless noon, the insight of Christians became more intense. The Gospel of St. John is crowded with internal evidences which prove the external attestation that it was the work of the Apostle whom Jesus loved. The \u201cmost spiritual Gospel\u201d is also \u201cthe most concrete.\u201d In some respects it presents Christ under a more purely spiritual light than the Synoptic Gospels. Yet it is in closest agreement with the simpler and earlier narratives which it was written to supplement\u2014and perhaps, in one or two less important particulars, to correct\u2014but mainly (in the New Testament sense) to \u201cfulfil,\u201d i. e., to fill with a diviner plenitude of meaning. It dwells chiefly on the Jud\u00e6an rather than on the Galilean ministry, because there is reason to believe that St. John was more familiar with Jerusalem than were the other Evangelists: but in no instance does St. John contradict the main particulars recorded by his predecessors. He distinctly recognises the ministry both in Galilee and Per\u00e6a, which after the labours of the other Evangelists, it was needless fully to record. In every chapter he confirms the teaching which they preserve, and sets forth in all its majesty, but with more penetrating power, the same character which the Synoptists present. Without the Christ whom they had known, and heard, and loved, the Evangelists in themselves would have been nothing and less than nothing. It is as absurd to say that the Christ of these Gospels is a fiction as it would be to say that one who described the glories of the mountains had evolved out of his own imagination the everlasting hills, or that astronomers have invented the starry heavens.
\nFortunately we have direct proof of the incapacity of fiction to touch the life of Jesus without instantly betraying itself to be fiction. The Apocryphal Gospels were works of imagination, written by unwise and ill-instructed Christians who professed to adore Jesus and to believe in His Godhead. They were popularly attributed to great names, such as Nicodemus, St. Joseph, St. Peter, and St. Thomas. Yet in the desire and endeavour to exalt Him they unconsciously drag Him down to the level of those who wrote them. In the attempt to represent Him as sinless and divine, they pervert his ideal by their own marked imperfections. The four Gospels, because they tell the simple facts, do not record one saying or one incident which we should wish to be obliterated, as weakening our faith or diminishing our reverence: the Apocryphal Gospels, because they indulge in fiction, scarcely tell us a single incident which we do not instinctively reject as false. From the first they deceived no one. They were recognised and denounced as apocryphal, and never won a particle of confidence. They depict Christ only to degrade Him, and thereby prove how impossible it was to set Him forth as divine except by the unadorned and simple truth. And we may estimate the force of contemporary evidence from the fact that it revolutionised the whole life and ideal of \u201ca Pharisee of the Pharisees,\u201d the pupil of Gamaliel, incomparably the ablest Pharisee of his day\u2014the Apostle St. Paul. Against the struggles of his own will, this great contemporary was driven into irresistible conviction, through doubt and denial. His knowledge of Jesus, which began in the vision on the road to Damascus, was \u201cnot the fruit of a blind acceptance of unexamined Christian tradition, but, as the case of his enquiry into the evidences of the Resurrection shows, was arrived at by means of a lucid, keen, searching, sceptical observation, comparison, collection, and collation of such materials as were accessible to him.\u201d
\nSurely, then, we may say of the Gospels with the utmost confidence, that \u201cwe did not follow on the false track of myths, artificially elaborated,\u201d but that we accept the simple truth at the hands of those who neither \u201ctrafficked with,\u201d nor \u201cadulterated,\u201d nor \u201cmutilated,\u201d nor \u201cmisrepresented\u201d the Word of God.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 6<\/p>\n
THE CLAIMS OF JESUS, AND THE SPELL HE EXERCISED<\/p>\n
\u1f35\u03bd\u03b1 \u03bc\u03b5\u03af\u03bd\u1fc3 \u03c4\u1f70 \u03bc\u1f74 \u03c3\u03b1\u03bb\u03b5\u03c5\u03cc\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03b1.\u2014Heb. 12:27.<\/p>\n
\u201cNemo pen se satis valet ut emergat; oportet manum aliquis porrigat, aliquis educat.\u201d\u2014SEN. Ep. 52.<\/p>\n
WE may, then, be assured of the genuineness of the Gospel narratives, and they prove that Jesus was a Perfect Man. All subsequent experience, and the survey of nineteen centuries of history, suffice (as we have seen) to show that, as a Perfect Man, He stands alone in the annals of the world\u2014unapproachable, unparalleled.
\nFrom heathen sources\u2014from Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny\u2014though they all refer to Jesus, nothing is to be learnt. In Jewish sources\u2014Josephus and the Talmudists\u2014we find deliberate silence or frantic calumny. \u201cThe True Word\u201d of the Platonist Celsus (A.D. 176) was sufficiently refuted by Origen. Some of these writers merely mention His name as the founder of a religion, and the Talmudists have a few wild and monstrous fictions about Him, but none of them charge Him with sin or crime. The silence of Josephus\u2014for the famous allusion to Jesus in his Antiquities (xviii. 3, 3) is either an interpolation, or has been tampered with by Christian writers\u2014was obviously intentional. That it was not the silence of ignorance, but of embarrassment, is certain, for he knew all about John the Baptist, and regarded him with high respect; and in speaking of the martyrdom of James, the Lord\u2019s brother, if that passage be genuine, he actually attributes the final destruction of Jerusalem to the Nemesis due to that crime. The allusions in the writings of later Judaism\u2014which will not name Jesus, but speak of Him as \u201cthe fellow,\u201d \u201cthe fool,\u201d or \u201che who ought not to be named\u201d\u2014are beneath contempt. The \u201cinfamous, multiform, medi\u00e6val lampoon\u201d against Jesus, known as the \u201cToldoth Jeshu,\u201d gives expression to the screams and curses of a hatred only excusable because it was partly, alas! due to the savage ruthlessness of Christian persecution.
\nBut in what way do the fourfold records of the Evangelists demonstrate this unique sinlessness and perfectness of the Saviour of Mankind? They do so, because in all they narrate they show us One who lived His life amid the ordinary surroundings of men, yet wholly without a trace of evil, or of incompleteness in His moral supremacy.
\nJesus lived in the full blaze of publicity. (i.) Many followers had been under His constant teaching. (ii.) Myriads had heard His words and seen His works in Galilee. (iii.) He had thousands of enemies, who hated Him with a singular intensity of that unscrupulous hatred which always exhibits itself in its vilest and most ruthless forms among religious disputants.
\nHis followers, who had seen Him in the most private and confidential intercourse of common life, narrated from intimate knowledge the incidents of His ministry. In all that they narrate we see the glory of Godhead veiled in human form, and we cannot find the least trace of that evil impulse (the Yetzer ha-rah) which, the Jewish Rabbis said, divided with the good impulse (the Yetzer ha-tob) the whole domain of human existence.
\nWe see that the sinlessness of Jesus was not a miraculous, but an achieved sinlessness. He was perfectly man, as well as truly God. He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. He was \u201ctempted of the Devil,\u201d not only in the wilderness, but to the end; and the temptations would have been no temptations if it had been antecedently impossible for Him to have succumbed to them. After the great Temptation in the wilderness the Devil left Him, but it was only \u201cfor a season.\u201d He had to face those two-fold and opposite influences to swerve from the path of perfectness, which arise on the one hand from the allurements of ease, and on the other from the agonies of suffering. His temptations appealed to His human nature, His human imagination, His human sensitiveness to anguish; they endeavoured to sway at once the desires of the mind and the weakness of the flesh. Jesus was not humanly endowed with an impossibility of sinning\u2014a non posse peccare; but with the power to achieve the complete and final victory over every impulse to sin\u2014a posse non peccare. This victory, even more than His miracles, was sufficient to convince His followers of His Divine Nature, so that from the earliest days of Christianity, as we learn from Pliny the younger, they sang hymns to Him as God.
\nBe it observed that the superhuman grandeur which seemed to invest Him as with a garment was something wholly apart from all earthly pomp of circumstance, or splendour of endowments. In position He was nothing more than a Galilean peasant, the lowliest of the lowly, \u201cthe carpenter\u201d of despised and proverbial Nazareth. The Prophet whom the multitudes saw before them was a nameless youth, seated on a mountain, or speaking to them from a boat. When the world, even the hostile and sceptical world, involuntarily bows before Him, it is not because of any of the gifts or qualities which ordinarily dazzle mankind. Jesus was no Poet, entrancing the souls of men with passionate melodies. He was no mighty Leader like Moses, emancipating nations from servitude, or, with illuminated countenance, promulgating to them a code of systematic morality. He was no rapt Orator, now stirring them to tumultuous emotion, now holding them hushed as an infant at the mother\u2019s breast. He was no Warrior, smiting down his foes in triumphant victory, and breaking from the necks of the oppressed the yoke of foreign bondage. Yet turning away from the choir of immortal Poets; from all \u201cfamous men and the fathers who begat us\u201d; from mighty Orators who have played on the emotions of men as on an instrument, and swept them into stormy passion, or moved them to sobs of pity, as the wind sweeps into wild music or into soft murmurings the strings of an \u00c6olian harp; from all magnificent Conquerors; from the Pharaohs in their chariots whirled into battle amid the serried ranks of their archers; from Assyrian monarchs leading their captivity captive, and hunting the lion amid their lords; from Babylonian Emperors with the crumbs gathered beneath their tables by vassal kings; from deified C\u00e6sars in their dizzy exaltation; from Aurungzebe or Haroun, flaming in their jewelled robes and surrounded by kotowing courtiers\u2014the world, abandoning all its own predilections, has felt constrained to drop its weapons, to tear the garlands from its hair, to kneel lowly on its knees before the Son of Man in His meek humiliation\u2014in the faded purple of His mockery, in His crown of torturing thorns!
\nAnd His sinlessness is confirmed from every source.
\n(i.) HIS OWN FAMILY witness to it. His mother and His brethren had lived with Him from infancy in the same poor hut at Nazareth; they had eaten and drunk and slept with Him; had been with Him by night, by day, in the most solemn intercourse, at the most unguarded moments, during the bright gaiety of boyhood and the passionate fire of youth, with an intimacy which would have rendered concealment impossible, if, even in His thoughts, He had been unfaithful to God His Father. His ways were not as their ways, nor His thoughts as their thoughts. He set aside their advice; He checked their occasional intrusiveness. He did not adopt their ideals of patriotism; He bitterly disappointed the earthly form of their Messianic hopes\u2014yet they were so convinced of His sinlessness, that, after His resurrection, these Desposyni as they were called\u2014these members of our Lord\u2019s human family\u2014became, like James the Bishop of Jerusalem and Jude the author of the Epistle, pre-eminent and pronounced believers in His divine supremacy.
\n(ii.) ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST was united to Him by earthly kinship, and had probably seen something of Him in His earlier years. This prophet of the wilderness was one of the sternest of mankind\u2014an uncompromising foe to all insincerity; a man who did not for a moment hesitate to rebuke cruel autocrats, and, with rude impetuosity, to strip the mask from the hypocritic face of painted Pharisees; a man who, so far from feeling flattered when he won converts among the pompous religionists of his day, bluntly denounced them as \u201cthe offsprings of vipers.\u201d At the presence of Jesus, though as yet He was but the unknown carpenter of Nazareth, the voice which terrified multitudes and made kings tremble is hushed into accents of humility, and the strong personality which over-awed a proud and passionate nation becomes like that of a timid boy. He who baptised all others, shrank from baptising the Son of Man. Before the ministry of Jesus had begun, or a single miracle had been wrought, John pointed Him out to His disciples as \u201cthe Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world,\u201d and as One whose shoe\u2019s latchet he is not worthy to stoop down and unloose.
\n(iii.) THE APOSTLES lived and moved about with Him under all varieties of outward condition, alike in the sunlight of His early ministry, and amid the deadly hatred and bitter persecution which drove Him forth as a wanderer and a fugitive who had not where to lay His head; and though their worldly Messianic hopes were so utterly blighted, though they had to bear for His sake the loss of all which men most desire\u2014yet, with one voice, they speak of Him as the Holy One of God; as One who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; as One who alone had the words of eternal life; as the Christ, the Son of the Living God; as holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; as the sinless High Priest, who is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
\n(iv.) THE PHARISEES, THE SADDUCEES, THE HERODIANS, all hated Christ with that deadliness of malignity which has been invariably exhibited against all the best and holiest men; alike by Priests, Jesuits, and Inquisitors, against all who oppose their own falsities, and by worldings who resent all unswerving sincerity and stainless authority. These enemies laid traps for Jesus; tried to entangle Him in His talk; combined in shameless and clever machinations to entrap and to destroy Him; did their utmost to embroil Him with the rulers, and to disillusion the Galilean multitude of their devotion for Him. They supported their own false judgments by frantic lies. Yet the only charges which they could bring against Him were that He \u201cbroke the tradition of the elders\u201d\u2014which He did designedly, because the so-called \u201ctradition\u201d had become a paltry rubbish-heap of quantitative goodness\u2014and that \u201cHe had a demon, and cast out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons,\u201d which was a mere scream of insane hatred, and involved the absurdity of supposing that the prince of the demons was going about as an angel of holiness.
\n(v.) ONE of His Apostles, Judas Iscariot, giving himself up to the temptation of greed, and probably maddened with sullen wrath at the frustration and disappointment of all his worldly hopes, became a traitor. Perhaps he laid to his soul the flattering unction that there could be no great sin in doing that which High Priests, and Scribes, and Pharisees urged him to do, and paid him for doing. Yet even after that humiliating condemnation, which he might have been tempted to regard as the final disproof of His Master\u2019s Messianic claims, he was so haunted by the pangs of intolerable remorse that he flung down unspent upon the Temple floor the thirty pieces of silver for which he had sold his soul, and rushed forth to his hideous suicide with the confession that he had been guilty in that he \u201chad betrayed INNOCENT BLOOD.\u201d
\n(vi.) THE SANHEDRISTS, violating the traditional compassionateness of Jewish tribunals, and goaded on by priestly hypocrites, sought false witness against Him, and could find none. There was not a single fault or crime which they could establish against Him, and their eager false witnesses utterly broke down. They condemned Him on His true claim\u2014extorted from Him by the illegal adjuration of the High Priest, and proved by the subsequent history of the whole Jewish and Gentile world\u2014His claim to be the Christ.
\n(vii.) THE ROMAN LADY, Claudia Procula, the wife of Pilate, was so haunted by the thought of Jesus that, terrified by dreams, she bade her husband take no part in condemning \u201cthat Just Person.\u201d
\n(viii.) Before PILATE the Jewish priests, with base and shifty malice, brought against Him four charges: (1) that He was a deceiver; (2) that He stirred up the people; (3) that He forbade to pay tribute to C\u00e6sar; (4) that He called Himself a King. All four charges, in the sense in which they were urged, were absolute lies; and Pilate\u2014bad, cruel, blood-stained, wilful as he was\u2014saw them to be lies, born of the deadliest hatred. Awed by the Prisoner\u2019s meek grandeur, unoffended even by His majestic silence, trembling before the mysterious spell which He exercised while He stood before him with the agony of pain and the marks of shame and spitting upon His brow, the haughty Roman Procurator was constrained to utter again and again the emphatic testimony, \u201cI find in him no fault at all.\u201d
\n(ix.) THE CRUCIFIED MALEFACTOR who witnessed the ultimate humiliation of Jesus; who shared in the unspeakable infamy of His last agonies; who had, at first, joined in the taunts of the other malefactor against Him; who had challenged Him\u2014if He were not the mes\u00eeth whom the priests and religious world of the day declared Him to be\u2014to come down from the cross, and save Himself and His companions in misery;\u2014that crucified robber, who saw Him only in the hour and power of darkness, with the Roman soldiers mocking, and the crowds yelling against Him, and the Hierarchs and Elders passing by and wagging their heads at Him\u2014even that poor robber, overawed to conviction by the triumph of His patient majesty, testified \u201cThis man hath done nothing amiss,\u201d and called Him \u201cLord,\u201d and prayed that He would admit him into His kingdom.
\n(x.) THE ROMAN CENTURION, who had seen Him so grievously insulted by the leaders and religious teachers and mobs of His own countrymen; who had watched the whole scene until the tortures ceased in death; who had been in command of the rude quaternions of soldiers\u2014felt the witness wrung from him, \u201cTruly this was a righteous man.\u201d
\n(xi.) The very mobs which had so frantically yelled against Him seem to have been hushed into awe and silence by the sight of a majesty which no ignominy could humiliate, and after His crucifixion returned to Jerusalem smiting their breasts with remorseful misgiving.
\nThus, alike the friends and the enemies of Jesus became voluntary or unwilling witnesses to His stainless innocence. His friends not only testified to His perfectness through all the remainder of their days, but demonstrated it by the simplicity of their truthful records, and the power of their renovated lives. His opponents, with all the will in the world to blacken His name and depreciate His character, were either constrained to confess His immaculate purity of conduct, or in the charges which they brought against Him were self-convicted of malice, ignorance, and falsehood.
\nYet all these testimonies, and even the stupendous results of His life and death, would not necessarily prove His sinless humanity, or His divine prerogatives, had they not been corroborated by His own repeated and unvarying testimony.
\nHe asked His most raging opponents, \u201cWhich of you convinceth Me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe Me?\u201d
\nThe keynote of Christ\u2019s inner life was heavenliness.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow sour sweet music is
\nWhen time is broke, and no proportion kept;
\nSo is it with the music of men\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the keynote of a man\u2019s life be selfishness, earthliness, greed, self-indulgence, his whole life will be full of \u201charsh chromatic jars.\u201d If we imitate Christ, we shall be enabled to join in the perfect diapason, and keep in tune with heaven. For us, as for our Saviour, \u201cthe path to heaven will then lie through heaven, and all the way to heaven be heaven.\u201d And this heavenliness of Christ was achieved and exhibited in the common round, the trivial task. He never was what Romanists call \u201ca religious.\u201d His life bore no resemblance to those of hermits, monks, or ascetics. His religion was to finish His Father\u2019s work amid the common every-day life of men. In that common every-day life, He shifted the centre of gravity of man\u2019s existence from earth to heaven. He made it not geocentric, but heleocentric. For all who walk in His steps, life is not only ennobled; it is glorified, it is transfigured. \u201cThou shalt show me the path of life; in Thy presence is fulness of joy, and at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.\u201d
\nBearing in mind what He was, only consider the weight of such utterances as these which follow, and consider how\u2014if they had not been so amply justified, both by the short years of His life, and by the nineteen centuries which that life has influenced, and by the ages which it will still influence till Time shall be no more\u2014the fact of uttering them, had they not been the perfect truth, would have lowered Jesus below the level of all other religious teachers; would have branded Him with the weakness of self-deception and the stain of falsehood.
\nConsider His seven \u201cI am\u2019s.\u201d
\n1. \u201cJesus said unto them, I am the Bread of Life.\u201d
\nThis He said when the multitude, impressed with His words and works, yet asked of Him a sign to authenticate His claim that the Father had sent Him to bestow eternal life by the food which He could give. They challenged Him to fulfil the tradition that the Messiah should, like Moses, give them manna from Heaven. They had not realised, as even Philo had done, that \u201cthe heavenly food which feeds the soul\u201d is the true bread from heaven. And when they asked for the bread of God which cometh down from heaven, He told them that He Himself was the Bread of Life; in other words, that they who accepted Him, by faith lived in Him, would never hunger nor thirst, but would have everlasting life. The Apostles showed that they had rightly apprehended His revelation when Simon Peter said, in the name of them all, \u201cLord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast words of eternal life; and we have believed and have come to know that Thou art the Holy One of God.\u201d
\n2. \u201cI am the Light of the World.\u201d
\nThis utterance was another revelation of His divinity, for God is Light. Christ was \u201cthe Sun of Righteousness\u201d of whom Malachi had prophesied that He should rise with healing in His wings. Just as the Pillar of Fire had illuminated the darkness of night in the wilderness, so would Christ illuminate the darkness of the world, and His true disciples should reflect His light.
\n3. \u201cI am the Door of the Fold.\u201d
\nIn Eastern lands separate flocks are often led at night for safety into one large fold. The porter remains to watch over the various flocks, and in the morning the shepherds come and call out their own sheep. The fold is the universal Church\u2014\u201cthe blessed company of all faithful people,\u201d and none can enter into that safe and holy fold except through Christ.
\n4. \u201cI am the Fair Shepherd.\u201d
\nChrist is the genuine Shepherd of the sheep, and not only the \u201cgood,\u201d but the \u201cfair\u201d Shepherd\u2014altogether lovely as well as tender\u2014who knows His sheep, defends them from all danger, and lays down His life for them. He has many \u201cfolds\u201d in His one Flock, but all the sheep shall be gathered at last into the one eternal fold, and become one fold under their one Shepherd. This beautiful image more than any other haunted the minds of the early Christians, as we see from the constant representations of the \u201cFair Shepherd\u201d on the walls of the Catacombs.
\n5. \u201cI am the Resurrection and the Life.\u201d
\nChrist is the Eternal Life shared equally by all who live \u201cin Him.\u201d Whether they be now living on earth, or living in the new form of life beyond the phase of earthly death, death cannot touch them that have life in Him.
\n6. \u201cI am the true Vine.\u201d
\nAs all the branches of a vine derive their life from union with the stem and root, so all believers in Christ share His life. As long as they bear the fruit of such union, they need indeed to be pruned\u2014as men are by suffering\u2014but only that they may become more fruitful. It is only the absolutely and hopelessly barren and withered branches that are taken away and burned.
\n7. \u201cI am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.\u201d
\nChrist is the sole Way whereby we can pass from death to life, and from our evil and perverted self to the Father. He is the Eternal Verity in which all semblances are lost. He is the Life because He is one with the Living Father, apart from whom life is but a living death.
\nBy all these metaphors\u2014of the Manna, and the living Bread, and the Light, and the Door, and the Shepherd, and the Vine, and the Way\u2014did Jesus indicate \u201cthe irrevocable saving significance\u201d which He knew that His life and death possessed for mankind.
\nNo human lips have ever uttered claims so immense and fundamental as these. The fact that Jesus made them would brand Him with condemnation had not age after age demonstrated their simple and eternal truth.
\nAgain, consider such invitations as these:
\n\u201cCome unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.\u201d
\nOr sayings so awful as:
\n\u201cHe that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. How sayest thou, Show us the Father?\u201d
\nOr,
\n\u201cAll things have been delivered unto Me of My Father; and no one knoweth who the Son is save the Father; and who the Father is save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him.\u201d
\nThese utterances are not accidental outcomes of the thought of Jesus. Expressed in every variety of form they are a fundamental part of all His teaching. He accepted worship; He called Himself the Son of God. In the lowest abyss of the shame, agony, and failure outpoured upon His short earthly life\u2014and be it ever remembered that the man Christ Jesus was a young man even when He died\u2014He could yet tell the maddened, sneering Sanhedrin, with death for blasphemy staring Him in the face as the certain and immediate consequence, that He was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that hereafter they should see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
\nOn the cross itself, nailed there in the uttermost humiliation of helpless torture and nakedness, with scarcely one friend to care for Him among the millions whom He came to save, He yet, of His own authority, flung wide open the gates of Paradise to the robber who, in punishment for his crimes, was dying by His side.
\nAnd all these claims\u2014so vast, of such eternal import\u2014were unhesitatingly repeated and proclaimed, even at the peril of life, by those who had seen and known, and whose hands had handled the Word of Life.
\nNow, if such claims, promises, and testimonies were the result of monstrous arrogance, or the delusions of pitiful hallucination, they would degrade Jesus into the position of a self-worshipping fanatic, or an insanely arrogant deceiver. Every line which is written of Him, every day of the long centuries which have passed since the day of His baptism, stamp either alternative as too outrageous even for blasphemy to utter. As He said to the hostile Jews, His works bore witness for Him. They were the seal of attestation affixed to His utterances by His heavenly Father, whom they knew not. Though He bore witness to Himself, yet was His witness true, for He sought not His own glory. It was His Father who glorified Him, and consecrated Him, and bore witness to Him, and He did the works of His Father. The whole ideal and outline of His character, as shewn in all that He said and did, stamps His own witness concerning Himself with an unanswerable force. Liars and deceivers rank among the wickedest of mankind; self-exalting madmen, who claim to be divine, are among the most abject of human creatures. It might seem as if the earth would yawn beneath the feet of any one who\u2014by rejecting this repeated and most awfully solemn testimony, and in defiance of all truth and reverence\u2014dared to relegate the Son of Man to either class. For has not every claim He uttered been superabundantly justified by the witness of God in the renovation of the world wrought through faith in His name?
\nThe validity of the words and promises of Christ has been abundantly justified in matters open to the most ordinary tests. He never commissioned His Apostles to write, yet, in the midst of what might have seemed to be utter and shameful defeat, He calmly said to His little obscure handful of Galilean disciples that heaven and earth would pass away, but His words would not pass away; and so it has been. And when He well knew how near was His death of shame, at a feast in the petty Jud\u00e6an village of Bethany, He promised to Mary\u2019s act of fidelity an immortal memory over the whole habitable earth; and to this day, in every region of the habitable earth, that deed is still proclaimed.
\nThere are, as Kant wrote, two things which move and uplift and overawe the soul, more than all else of which, by our senses and intellect, we can become cognisant\u2014\u201cthe starry heavens above, and the moral law within.\u201d But to these two things, it has been rightly said, we must add a third, yet more sublime, namely, the realisation, the fulfilment, the perfect exhibition of that \u201cmoral law within\u201d in the life of One who was exalted far above all heavens, yet lived in a tent like ours, and of the same material\u2014the man Christ Jesus. \u201cSin is a failure, and perversity an apostasy. He alone conquered sin. In Him alone there was no sin.\u201d
\nYes! God the Father, the Almighty, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, has, in all the consequences achieved by Christ in all the world, stamped His seal of Divine attestation to the mission of His Son Jesus. God has \u201cin manifold figures indicated the unique, irrevocable, saving significance which He knew His preaching to have for men.\u201d The comment upon that saving significance is written broad and large over all the subsequent destinies of mankind. Jesus taught but for one or two short years, moving about among the humble peasants of despised Galilee; yet He \u201cbecame the creator of a new and higher Kosmos, the duration of which is to be reckoned by millenniums and the extent of which is to be conterminous with the whole surface of the earth.\u201d \u201cThe proof of the grace poured out in His life,\u201d says Origen, \u201cis this\u2014that, after a brief space of time, the whole world has been filled with His teaching and the faith of His filial love.\u201d In vain were Philo and Josephus silent respecting Him; in vain did Tacitus dismiss Christianity as an \u201cexitiabilis superstitio,\u201d to be classed with all things \u201catrocia aut pudenda\u201d; in vain did Pliny characterise it as \u201csuperstitio prava et immodica;\u201d in vain did Celsus accumulate his lying slanders; in vain did Suetonius describe Christians as people of a new and malefic superstition; in vain did Talmudic and medi\u00e6val Judaism heap upon Jesus and those who believed on Him their inextinguishable hatred and monstrous calumnies; in vain did the Middle Ages produce the book De Tribus Impostoribus; in vain did Paulus, and Strauss, and Renan, and many more in modern days strive to undermine our faith with their naturalistic explanations, and mythic theories, and historic or philosophic reconstructions\u2014in spite of all these, Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat; and we still pray with perfect faith, \u201cChristus abomni malo plebem suam defendat!\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 7<\/p>\n
THE HUMAN EDUCATION OF JESUS<\/p>\n
\u201cHearken unto me, ye holy children, and bud forth as a rose growing by the brook of the field; and give ye a sweet savour as frankincense, and flourish as a lily, and send forth a smell, and sing a song of praise.\u201d\u2014Ecclus. 39:13, 14.<\/p>\n
\u03c4\u1f78 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03c0\u03b1\u03b9\u03b4\u03af\u03bf\u03bd \u03b7\u1f54\u03be\u03b1\u03bd\u03b5, \u201cThe Little Child grew.\u201d\u2014Luke 2:40.<\/p>\n
THERE is in the Evangelists a deep and holy reserve. What they did not know they would not relate. St. Matthew had only become a disciple when Christ called him from the place of toll beside the Lake of Galilee in Capernaum. St. Mark was probably still a youth at the time of the Crucifixion. He had not been a personal witness of the scenes of the ministry, and though he derived his information from St. Peter, yet St. Peter first met Jesus at the Baptism of John. St. Luke may not have been converted till after the death of Christ; and he frankly tells us that, though he classed himself among those who \u201cfrom the beginning were the eye-witnesses and ministers of the word,\u201d he based his Gospel on what he had ascertained from \u201chaving traced the course of all things accurately from the first.\u201d St. John did not mean his Gospel for a complete record; he disavows the intention of recording \u201cmany other things which Jesus did.\u201d His obvious purpose was to complete the narratives of his predecessors, to supplement what they had left unrecorded of the Jud\u00e6an ministry, and to present the life and teaching of the Lord Jesus under that more immediately spiritual aspect, which, until years of eventful issue had passed by, could not have been adequately understood.
\nThe only persons who could fully have narrated the early years of Jesus were His mother, Mary, and Joseph, and those who are called \u201cHis brethren.\u201d But Mary chose to remain silent. Conscious of overwhelming revelations, she \u201ckept all these things and pondered them in her heart.\u201d Joseph, her husband, seems to have died while Jesus was yet a boy. The \u201cbrethren\u201d\u2014whatever may have been the exact relation in which they stood to Jesus\u2014were not at first among the number of his avowed disciples, and only became so after His resurrection. Further, we may observe that the importance attached to childhood and youth in many modern records was a thing unknown to antiquity, and that stories of early years are very rarely, or never, mentioned in ancient biographies.
\nSt. Matthew narrates the circumstances of the Virgin-birth of Christ. He tells us of the visit of the Magi; the massacre of the innocents at Bethlehem; the flight into Egypt; and the reason why Joseph\u2014abandoning all thoughts of settling in Jud\u00e6a under the suspicious and sanguinary rule of Archelaus\u2014retired to Nazareth, in Galilee. Then, passing over some thirty years of the Saviour\u2019s life, he proceeds at once to describe the preaching of John the Baptist.
\nSt. Mark, in his brief and vivid Gospel, written for Roman readers, plunges at once \u201cin medias res,\u201d and only professes to give an account of the ministry, which was inaugurated by the vision and descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus when John was baptising. All the light which he throws on the childhood, youth, and early manhood of Jesus, is seen (as well as pointed out later) in the flash of a single casual but revealing word.
\nSt. John, writing at the close of the first century, when the Synoptic Gospels, and others less sacred, were already in the hands of Christians, takes the same starting-point as the three Synoptists. He does not lift the curtain for us, though he probably knew more about the early years of Jesus than the other Evangelists, for he was, by birth, a nephew of the Virgin, and had been as a son to her, and\u2014by the tender care of Jesus for His mother\u2014had taken her in her hour of anguish to his own home.
\nIn the silence of the New Testament on the earlier years of Jesus, we see the over-ruling restraint of a Divine Providence. It was not intended that the Gospels should gratify a biographical curiosity; they had a far diviner purpose. Had all been detailed, St. John says, \u201cI suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written.\u201d As it is, the Gospels have been the parents of a literature ever increasing in extent, and already immeasurably vast. There are cases in which silence becomes the most powerful eloquence, and something of the significance of that silence we may see when we come to speak of Christ\u2019s unrecorded years.
\nSt. Luke, a Greek-speaking convert of Asiatic origin, was undoubtedly familiar with Ephesus, which he had visited among the companions of St. Paul; and if the tradition be true that the Virgin died at Ephesus, he may have known her there, and have learnt from her lips the few details about the infancy of Christ, which, in their ineffable sweetness, seem stamped with the tender grace of a mother\u2019s reminiscences.
\nBut among the minor differences between the Gospels, they do not differ in the least in the picture and impression of Jesus which they leave upon our minds. The method of St. John, and the details which he furnishes, diverge in many particulars from the method and details of the Synoptists, but we see on every page alike one and the same Divine Lord.
\nIt is from St. Luke that we learn in a single sentence all that we know of the Divine Infancy. It is that \u201cthe Child grew and waxed strong, becoming full of wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him.\u201d
\nIt is but a single sentence, but it is inestimably precious. It illustrates the truth of the perfect humanity of Jesus. It shows us that Christ was not only \u201ctruly God\u201d (as was finally declared by the decision of the Council of Nice), but that also He was (as the Council of Constantinople decided) \u201cperfectly (\u03c4\u03b5\u03bb\u03ad\u03c9\u03c2) man.\u201d It is a bulwark against the Apollinarianism which denies the full humanity of Christ, a heresy more common in these days, and quite as dangerous as the Arianism which denies His divinity. It shows us the reality of that kenosis, that \u201cemptying Himself\u201d of His glory, and of the divine attributes of Omnipotence and Omniscience, of which St. Paul speaks. It shows us that Jesus grew up simply as a human child, after the common way of all men (as Justin Martyr says), though the grace of God was upon Him; and that His advance in wisdom was as normal as His growth in strength and stature. It pictures to us a natural but holy childhood, \u201clike the flower of roses in the spring of the year, and as lilies by the water courses.\u201d
\nBut St. Luke\u2014and there can be little doubt that he heard the story from the lips of the Virgin, whether at Jerusalem or at Ephesus\u2014alone preserves for us a single anecdote of the boyhood of Jesus, which is full of beauty and preciousness.
\nTwelve silent years glided by\u2014perhaps the twelfth had been completed\u2014and Jesus was considered old enough to accompany His parents to the Paschal Feast. Of the eight stages into which the Jews divided childhood and boyhood, He had now reached the last. He was a bachur, \u201ca full-grown boy.\u201d In Rabbinic phraseology, He was no longer animated by the nephesh, or \u201cnatural life,\u201d but by the ruach or \u201cspirit\u201d; that is, as we should express it, He had attained to years of discretion\u2014for the boys develop much more rapidly in the East than in our Northern climate. At this age, by the rule of tradition, a boy would begin to learn a trade for his own maintenance, and to wear \u201cphylacteries\u201d (tephillin) after presentation by his father in the synagogue on the Shabbath Tephilin. It is, however, highly uncertain whether our Lord ever wore, on arm and forehead, these little leather receptacles for texts, or whether they were common among \u201cthe men of the people\u201d\u2014the amharatzim of Galilee. We have no reference to them in the Gospels, except in Christ\u2019s condemnation of the Pharisees for the vain ostentation with which they made them unusually broad.
\nAs Jesus was now, or shortly afterwards became, \u201ca son of the Covenant\u201d (Bar mitzvah), or \u201ca son of the Law\u201d (Benhattorah), He had already received a considerable part of His early education. What were the most marked features in the training of a Jewish boy of that day?
\nThe Jews were honourably distinguished by the care they took in the education of their children. They regarded their schools as \u201cvineyards.\u201d There is a story in the Talmud how once there had been a long and painful drought, and all the Chief Priests and Rabbis assembled before the people to pray for rain. They prayed, and prayed, but no rain fell. Then rose up one common-looking man, and prayed, and instantly the heavens grew black with clouds, and the rain fell abundantly. \u201cWho art thou,\u201d they asked in astonishment, \u201cthat thy prayer alone should have prevailed?\u201d And he answered, \u201cI am a teacher of little children.\u201d
\nIt is probable that our Lord grew up in the habitual use of two languages\u2014Aramaic and Greek. Aramaic, a dialect of Hebrew, was at that time the current language of Galilee. A great part of Palestine was bilingual, so that there can be no doubt that Jesus also learnt to speak Greek, for He could converse with the Centurion, and the Syro-Ph\u0153nician woman, and Pilate, and others, without any interpreter. He was of course familiar with the Old Testament in the original Hebrew. Since our Lord\u2019s brethren, James and Jude, show in their Epistles that they were well acquainted with the Apocrypha, we may be sure that our Lord was also. This would be decisively proved by the resemblance of Matt. 23:37 to 2 Esdras 1:30\u201333, if it were not nearly certain that much of 2 Esdras is interpolated by a Christian writer.
\nThe teaching of children was, however, mainly confined to the Mosaic and Levitic Law. \u201cI lay aside all the trade of the world,\u201d said R. Nehorai, \u201cand teach my son only the Law; for its reward is enjoyed in this world, and its capital remains for the world to come.\u201d But the teaching of the Law was mainly an exercise of the memory. The commands of the Law were iterated and reiterated, so that the Rabbinic word for \u201cto teach\u201d (shanah) means \u201cto repeat,\u201d and the word for \u201cteaching\u201d is Mishnah (\u201crepetition\u201d). The highest praise for a pupil was to be \u201clike a well, lined with lime, which loses not one drop.\u201d
\nThe main effort, then, was merely to train the memory. We do full justice to the importance which the Jews attached to education, yet we cannot but admit that their views of education were too narrow. We cannot concede to Josephus that \u201cthe Jews by their system of teaching, which combined the teaching of the Law with the practice of morals, surpassed the foremost of the Greeks, since they united the unquestioning obedience of the Spartans with the theoretic instruction of the Athenians.\u201d Jewish boys were taught the Law, as Philo says, by their parents and teachers, from their very swaddling clothes; but, unhappily, the current conception of the Law had been overlaid with deplorable perversions, and was radically erroneous in important particulars.
\nThere can be little doubt that Jesus attended the school which was attached to the synagogue of Nazareth, and that, as He \u201cwas continually growing in wisdom,\u201d He had from the first been carefully trained by His mother and Joseph. That training also was all-but-exclusively Scriptural. The Kindergarten of Jewish children\u2014and the Jews sometimes called their schools \u201cgardens\u201d\u2014was the Beth Hassepher, or \u201cHouse of the Book\u201d; and it was only when a child had been well grounded in \u201cthe Book\u201d that he passed to the Beth Hammidrash, or secondary school.
\nBy that time a boy had been taught to read, and sometimes (though more rarely) to write; to keep the Sabbath; and to fast on the Day of Atonement. A little later he would be taught to repeat the Shema and the Shemoneh Ezreh. The Shema\u2014or \u201cHear, O Israel!\u201d\u2014consisted of the sections Deut. 6:4\u20139, 11:13\u201321; Num. 15:37\u201341, with various benedictions (Berachoth) which were attached to them. The Shemoneh Ezreh consisted of \u201cEighteen Blessings,\u201d mostly expressed in the words of Scripture, and beginning with the words \u201cBlessed art Thou, O Lord.\u201d
\nTo this training was added all that a child learnt almost mechanically from his constant Sabbath-attendances at the synagogue, which was meant for instruction as well as for worship. How familiar must Christ have been with that village Beth Tephilla (House of Prayer) or Beth Hakkeneseth (House of Assembly), as He sat among the other boys of Nazareth in the back seats, behind the chief worshippers! How deeply must He have taken in the divine meaning alike of the Parashoth, or 154 sections of the Law, by which the Pentateuch was read through in three years; and also of the Haphtaroth, or sections of the Prophets, the reading of which had been introduced in the days of the fierce persecution by Antiochus Epiphanes, when the reading of the Law was punished with death. Not only were the passages read by the appointed person\u2014who might even be a boy\u2014in the original Hebrew, but they were translated, paragraph after paragraph, into the Aramaic by the Methurgeman, or interpreter. How deep must have been the expectant interest with which the child Jesus saw the Rosh Hakkeneseth, or \u201cRuler of the Synagogue,\u201d receive from the hand of his clerk (Chazzan) the roll of the Law, or of the Prophets, and appoint the reader, who took his stand behind the elevated Bema, and read the lesson, and then sat down to deliver the explanation or sermon (Derashah). With what a thrill of heart must He have heard the trumpets (Shopharoth) blown at the beginning of the new year and on the solemn feast days.
\nThus the human training of the Christ Child involved a thorough acquaintance with the letter of the Holy Scriptures, which rose infinitely above the wooden literalism, the fantastic expansions, the evasive manipulations of the current exegesis. The right apprehension of Holy Writ came to Him from no human teacher, but from His own pure spirit, and His union with that Father of Lights with whom is no variableness nor shadow cast by turning. Yet, early as He may have seen through the hollowness of the interpretations with which Scripture had been overlaid by the current tendencies of His day, we are quite sure that He was utterly unlike the terrible, ungovernable child of the Apocryphal fictions. Towards all His earthly teachers we are sure that He exhibited that sweet lowliness of heart which, as He grew in wisdom and stature, caused Him to advance also in favour with God and man.
\nThe Son of Sirach asks: \u201cHow can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, that driveth oxen\u2014and whose talk is of bullocks \u2026 so every carpenter and workmaster that laboureth night and day? All these trust to their hands; they shall not be sought for in public counsel \u2026 They shall not understand the covenant of judgment, and where parables are they shall not be found.\u201d Nevertheless, however simple and elementary may have been the training which Jesus received from the Mikredardike, or \u201cteachers of children,\u201d in the local synagogue-school, so deep was His insight into the Scriptures\u2014so far deeper than that derived from the traditions of the Scribes\u2014that when Rabbis and Jerusalemite Pharisees encountered Him in lordly opposition, He could at once refute their insolent tone of superiority by His searching questions, \u201cHave ye never read?\u201d We observe, too, that whereas the system of Jewish education was almost exclusively occupied with the study of the Law, our Lord reverts far more frequently to the great Prophets of Israel, and sets mercy far above sacrifice.
\nIt may be worth while to emphasise in passing the extreme simplicity of the worship in which during all His life the Saviour of mankind, Sabbath after Sabbath, was wont to take His part. The visits to the Temple were few and exceptional, and all His life long He mainly worshipped in the synagogues, which were as bare and as devoid of all ritual, symbolism, or outward gorgeousness as the barest Dissenting chapel. The synagogues were rooms, of which the end usually pointed to Jerusalem (the Kibleh, or consecrated direction of Jewish worship, Dan. 6:10). On one side sat the men; on the other the veiled women. Almost the only piece of furniture in them was the Ark (Tebhah) of painted wood, which contained the Law (Thorah) and the rolls (Tephilloth) of the Prophets. On one side was a Bema (the Jews borrowed the name from the Greeks) for the reader and preacher, and the \u201cchief seats\u201d of the \u201cRuler of the Synagogue\u201d and the Elders (Zekenim). The only servants of the synagogue, in its severe simplicity, were the clerk (Chazzan), the verger (Sheliach), and the deacons (Parnasim, or shepherds). It is clear therefore that rites and ceremonies\u2014in favour of which neither Christ nor His Apostles uttered a single word\u2014were needless for the most intense and exalted worship which the world has ever seen. The only rubric which the New Testament contains is, \u201cLet all things be done decently and in order.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 8<\/p>\n
THE FIRST ANECDOTE<\/p>\n
\u0399\u03b7\u03c3\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c2 \u1f41 \u03c0\u03b1\u1fd6\u03c2.\u2014Luke 2:43.<\/p>\n
2 Macc. 2:22. \u201cThe Temple, renowned all the world over.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTake notice that His doing nothing wonderful was itself a kind of wonder. As there was power in His actions, so is there power in His silence, in His inactivity, in His retirement.\u201d\u2014ST. BONAVENTURA.<\/p>\n
THE other Evangelists give us a passing glimpse of the outer circumstances of the infancy of Jesus, and then pass on to His full manhood.
\nSt. Luke alone, as we have seen, gives us the notice respecting Him\u2014brief, but inestimably precious\u2014when He was \u201ca weaned child.\u201d He also furnishes us with \u201cone solitary floweret out of the enclosed garden of the thirty years, plucked precisely there where the swollen bud, at a distinctive crisis, bursts into flower.\u201d
\nNot before the twelfth year, and, as a rule, not till after its completion, was a boy required to enter into the full obedience of an Israelite, and to attend the Passover. We can imagine how the heart of Jesus must have beat with earnest joy, as, with His parents and the many pilgrims from Nazareth who would attend the Feast, He made His way down the narrow valley from the summit of His native hill. He was doubtless clad in the bright-coloured robes of an Eastern boy\u2014in red caftan, and gay tunic, girded with an embroidered sash, and covered, perhaps, with a loose outer jacket of white or blue. What a rush of new associations would sweep through His soul as He traversed those eighty miles between Nazareth and Jerusalem, and saw the scenes which were indelibly associated in His mind with memories of Sisera and Barak, of Elijah and Elisha, of Joshua and Saul, at Kishon, and Shunem, and Gilboa! He probably passed between Ebal and Gerizin, and by Jacob\u2019s Well, and so by Shiloh and Bethel to the Holy City. How often must the thought have been in His mind, \u201cOur feet shall stand in Thy courts, O Jerusalem!\u201d And when the city glittered before Him on its rocky watershed between the Jordan and the sea, with its three hills of Zion, Moriah, and Acra, surrounded by walls and stately towers\u2014when He saw the Temple, with its white marble, and gilded pinnacles, flaming in the eastern sunlight like a mountain of snow and gold, and rising before Him, terrace above terrace\u2014the words of the Psalmist would almost inevitably be in His mind, \u201cJerusalem is built as a city which is at unity with itself. For thither the tribes go up, even the tribes of the Lord, for a testimony unto Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord.\u201d
\nOr, \u201cWalk about Zion, and go round about her, and tell the towers thereof. Mark well her bulwarks, consider her palaces, that ye may tell them that come after.\u201d The Psalms known as the \u201cSongs of Degrees,\u201d were often sung by the pilgrims as they approached Jerusalem, as they had been\u2014according to tradition\u2014by the exiles who returned with Ezra. We can imagine the enthusiasm with which they would join in such words as:
\n\u201cPeace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy palaces!
\n\u201cFor my brethren and companions\u2019 sakes, I will wish thee prosperity.
\n\u201cYea, because of the House of the Lord our God I will seek to do thee good.\u201d
\nAmid the rose-gardens and pleasances which surrounded Jerusalem, and under the umbrageous multitudes of palms and olives, and figs and cedars, and chestnut trees, would have been scattered the temporary booths of some of the two million pilgrims who flocked to the city for the great yearly feast from every region of the civilised globe. When the pilgrims from Nazareth had passed along the Valleys of Jehoshaphat and Hinnom, the roads and the streets through which they made their way to the Temple must have been densely thronged with ever-increasing crowds.
\nJesus would pass beneath those colossal substructions towering up some 600 feet above His head, and built of vast blocks of stones, still visible, of which some are 20 feet in length and 4 feet in height. Perhaps he crossed the royal bridge over the Valley of the Tyrop\u0153on. And at last\u2014at last\u2014He would enter \u201cthe Mountain of the House\u201d by one of the five gates. If He entered by the gate called Shushan, or \u201cthe Lily Gate,\u201d He would see \u201cSolomon\u2019s Porch\u201d stretching to right and left, and would stand on the many-coloured pavement of the court of that gorgeous Herodian Temple which was one of the wonders of the world. The scene was doubtless one of extraordinary animation, yet it must have presented many repulsive features which it required an intense enthusiasm to overlook. For the colonnades were thronged with the vendors of sheep and oxen for sacrifice, including thousands of Paschal lambs. Here were seated the sellers of the doves, for the offerings of the poor, with their crowded wicker baskets. Here sat and chaffered the two classes of money-changers\u2014those who gave smaller change for gold and silver, and those who took foreign money, with its heathen emblems and inscriptions, in exchange for the Jewish money, which could alone be used for Temple purposes. These men drove hard bargains in noisy and often nefarious traffic. At the south end of this huge Court of the Gentiles was the triple royal colonnade\u2014known as \u201cSolomon\u2019s Porch\u201d\u2014which was reserved for more quiet gatherings. This Forecourt of the Gentiles was marked off from the more sacred enclosures by the double barriers of the Soreg and the Chel (\u05d7\u05d9\u05dc). Through one of the openings of the Soreg Jesus would climb the fourteen steps to the Chel, on which were marble tablets with inscriptions in Greek and Latin forbidding any Gentiles to proceed a step farther on pain of death. Mounting the steps of a terrace which towered sixty feet above the Court of the Gentiles, Jesus would pass, perhaps, through \u201cthe Beautiful Gate\u201d and gaze at the Court of the Women, and the Court of the Israelites. In the latter stood the Lishcath Hag-gazz\u00eeth, or \u201cHall of Square Stones,\u201d to the southeast of the inner forecourt, in which perhaps at that time the Sanhedrin held its meetings. Here, too, was the Treasury, outside of which were the thirteen chests with trumpet-shaped openings (Shopharoth) into which alike the rich and the poor cast their Temple-offerings.
\nTwelve or fifteen steps higher still was the Court of the Priests, on the northwest end of which, on a platform ascended by twelve more steps, rose in white marble \u201cthe joy of the whole earth, the Temple of the Great King.\u201d Its doors were open, but the interior was concealed from vulgar gaze by curtains of Babylonian purple. Over its gilded portico was wreathed the huge Vine with its bunches of golden grapes. On its topmost roof were the gilded spikes (\u201cscare-ravens\u201d) to keep birds from settling on it. Within its mysterious recesses was that awful \u201cHoly of Holies\u201d which was trodden by no human foot save that of the High Priest when he sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice, on the great Day of Atonement, towards the place where once had stood the Ark of the Covenant, overshadowed by the outspread wings of the golden Cherubim. And this was the one most hallowed spot of all the world, towards which, for centuries, every Jew had turned his eyes when he knelt down to pray to the God of his Fathers.
\nAll was as yet entirely new to the Holy Boy, and we can but imagine with what interest He\u2014the unknown heir of David\u2019s line\u2014would have listened to the nine trumpet-blasts which announced the morning and evening sacrifice, and to the sacred songs and solemn litanies of the singers, the sons of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, with their silver trumpets, and harps, and cymbals. He must have watched the army of priests in their turbans and white robes and girdles of purple, and blue, and scarlet, hurrying about the Court of the Priests with their bare feet, and busy from morn till dewy eve in roasting and seething the oxen, and lambs, and kids, and ever washing the gold and silver vessels of the Sanctuary. He would see for the first time the huge altar of burnt-offering standing before the eastern front of the Temple. It was the hugest in the world, forty-eight feet square at the base, and diminishing by stages to its summit. It was built of unhewn stones, untouched by any human tool. It was also approached by an ascent of unhewn stones, and on its broad summit flamed, day and night, the perpetual fire. Beyond it was the great brazen laver in which the priests washed their hands and feet. In this Court the victims were slaughtered, and there were pillars to which their carcasses were hung, and marble tables on which they were skinned and the entrails washed.
\nTo the ordinary eye this Court must often have looked like one huge slaughter-house, in which amid the wreaths of curling smoke were heard the sound of perpetual prayers and formularies, the bleating of sheep, and the lowing of oxen. But it would seem transfigured to eyes that gazed on it with holy enthusiasm. Jesus could only have seen it from the Court of the Israelites; for, under ordinary circumstances, none but the priestly ministers were allowed to enter into its actual precincts. \u201cWhoever has not seen Herod\u2019s Temple,\u201d says the Talmud, \u201chas never seen a beautiful structure in his life. How did Herod build it? Ravah replied, \u2018With white and green marble, so that it appeared in the distance like waves of the sea.\u2019 \u201d
\nBut in the Court below, the full stream of the varied life of Judaism must have passed before His eyes. Here He would have seen the High Priest Hanan (or Annas), son of Seth, before whom He was destined to stand as a prisoner. He would have seen too, the \u201cCaptain of the Temple\u201d (the Ish har hab-B\u00eeth, or \u201cMan of the Mountain of the House\u201d), with his little army of subordinate Levites, in their peaked caps, and with the pockets which held their Law books. Mingled among the crowd would be solemn white-robed Essenes; Pharisees with their broad phylacteries; Herodian courtiers in their gorgeous clothing; Nazarites with their long hair; beggars\u2014blind and lame\u2014seated before the two great bronze valves of the Gate Beautiful; and here and there, perhaps, in the Court of the Gentiles, some Roman soldier in his armour, looking round him with scornful curiosity, and answering with looks of disdain the scowls of hatred sometimes thrown upon him. At sunset Jesus would perhaps stop to witness the closing of the great bronze gate on the east of the Court of the Gentiles, so heavy that it took twenty men to move it, though, sixty years later, before the destruction of the Temple, it was said to have opened of its own accord, while Voices, as of departing Deities, where heard to wail in tones of awful warning, \u201cLet us depart hence!\u201d
\nAnd then, at evening, in some little wattled booth outside the city, among the Galilean pilgrims, or in the humble house of some Galilean friends in Jerusalem, the male members of the Holy Family\u2014although not with their loins girded, their staves in their hands, their shoes on their feet, as the ancient custom was\u2014would have eaten the Paschal meal rejoicing, with hymns and benedictions, and would drink the cups of blessing and thanksgiving which the father of the family passed round.
\nSo the Feast ended, with its tumult of new associations. And then, after this chief event in the whole year, the booths were broken up, the simple belongings of the pilgrims were packed on the backs of asses and camels, and in various groups, the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, amid psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, began to wend their way back to their own quiet homes.
\nHow easy it would be, in such a scene of bustle, to lose sight of one young boy. At first, Joseph and Mary did not notice His absence, feeling no doubt assured that, as He must have known the hour at which the caravan would start, He must be safe and happy amid some group of the rejoicing relatives and friends who had accompanied them from Nazareth. The fact that they did not observe His absence illustrates the naturalness and unconstraint of the conditions in which the Boy Jesus had been trained. To this day the incident of separation from friends in these great caravans is a common one, and excites little anxiety.
\nIt was not till the evening of the first day\u2019s journey\u2014perhaps when they had arrived at Beeroth, some six miles north of Jerusalem\u2014that they missed Him, and by that time wondered why He had not rejoined them. Then, with intense anxiety, they began to search for Him, and their anxiety deepened to agony when he was nowhere to be found in the little companies of Nazarenes or other Galileans. With hearts full of forebodings, they turned back to Jerusalem, looking for Him all along the route. Still they could hear nothing of Him. He was nowhere to be seen in the entire caravans, nor among the later stragglers. It was not till the third day that they discovered Him in the Temple, probably in one of the halls or rooms which surrounded the Court of the Israelities, and were used for purposes of teaching. They were amazed to see the gracious Boy \u201csitting in the midst of the Rabbis, both hearing them and asking them questions.\u201d The instruction of the young was a constant function of the leading Scribes, and they always showed ready kindness to any youthful enquirer. It is not impossible that among these Rabbis may have been men so famous as Hillel and Shammai, and Bava ben Butah, in their extreme old age; and among the younger may have been Rabban Simeon, son of Shammai; and Gamaliel, son of Hillel; and Nicodemus, and Jochanan ben Zakkai.
\nOverawed perhaps at first, Joseph and Mary would hardly venture to thrust themselves into that group of learned officials and Rabbis, surrounded as they were with almost awful reverence; but they took in enough of the scene to notice that \u201call that heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers.\u201d
\nIn the Apocryphal Gospels, and in many books, the significance of the scene has been entirely misunderstood. In pictures, also, Jesus has been represented sitting, or standing, in an attitude of authority, as though He were teaching and catechising these Scribes, the most famed for learning in their day. Such a notion is contrary to all that we know of Christ\u2019s gracious humility. Anything like forwardness or presumption would have awakened nothing but displeasure in Rabbis accustomed to deferential homage; but, on the contrary, the Boy of Nazareth had won their admiration by His modesty and intelligence. He was \u201csitting\u201d at the feet of the Rabbis, \u201chearing them,\u201d i. e., trying to learn all which they could teach; and ingenuously, but with consummate insight, \u201canswering\u201d the questions which they addressed to Him. What most astonished them was His knowledge of the Scriptures, and the wisdom, beyond His boyish age, which His answers manifested. His parents too\u2014for Mary\u2019s awful secret was hidden deep within her heart, and Joseph was regarded as His father\u2014were amazed to see Him so happy, so calmly at ease, in that august assembly. At last His mother ventured to address to Him the agitated question, \u201cChild (\u03c4\u03ad\u03ba\u03bd\u03bf\u03bd), why didst thou thus to us? Behold, thy father and I were seeking thee in sorrow?\u201d To Him\u2014so wrapt up in all that He had seen and heard, and living in inward communion with His Father in Heaven\u2014their distress seemed strange. When they first missed Him, where, He asked, would it have been most natural for them at once to seek Him? \u201cWhy is it that ye were seeking me? Did ye not know that I must be in my Father\u2019s house?\u201d
\nThe rendering of the A. V., \u201cabout my Father\u2019s business,\u201d may now be regarded as having been finally disproved. It would be, in every way, much more difficult to explain; for Jesus had been in the Temple, not in any fulfilment of His mission, but as a boy, to worship and to learn. His kinsfolk must have observed His rapture as He had spent day after day of the Feast in the Temple Courts. They must have been long familiar with His ardent love for instruction, and with the untroubled simplicity with which He always looked up to God as His Father. \u201cWhere then,\u201d He seems to ask them, \u201cwould it be natural for you at once to seek for me, except in my Father\u2019s House?\u201d It was an accident that, when they started homeward, they had not noticed His absence;\u2014but, having missed Him, surely they might have known the one place where they would be most sure to find Him!
\nWhat could they say? They could not take in the full meaning of His words. The answer came to them like a marvellous gleam of light. They felt that worlds of mystery lay hidden in the depths of the Boy\u2019s soul\u2014of mystery which they could not fathom. His mother especially pondered over His words, and kept them in her heart. What would be the end of these things? Whereunto would they ultimately grow?
\nAnd yet to His parents the Divine Boy was all tenderness and meek submission. From His earliest years \u201cHe was meek and lowly of heart.\u201d He returned with them at once, and without question. They soon found themselves once more in Nazareth, among the poor yet happy surroundings of their Holy Home. There was nothing froward or defiant in the bearing of Mary\u2019s Son. His years passed in uneventful calm, as He \u201ckept advancing in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.\u201d
\nMany of the great Prophets of the Old Testament had lived as He did, through a youth of unknown preparation\u2014as did David among the sheepfolds, and Elijah in the tents of the Bed\u2019awin, and Amos as a gatherer of sycamore leaves at Tekoah, and Jeremiah in quiet Anathoth, and the Baptist in the wilderness. They had waited, as He waited, the call which summoned them to perform in the face of the world the high mission of their lives.
\nAnd so, as Iren\u00e6us says, \u201cHe passed through every age, having been made an infant to sanctify infants; a little one among the little ones, sanctifying the little ones; among the youths a youth.\u201d That His childhood and early boyhood were full of happy peace we have every reason to infer from the infinite tenderness which He always displayed towards children, and His sympathetic references to their joyous games and trustful gentleness. His divine nature deepened, it did not quench, the keenness of His human sympathies for His family, for His nation, for all mankind. His greatness was not the separate greatness of Poet, or Artist, or Orator, or Hero, but the unprecedented greatness of Harmony and Peace, Humility and Majesty. His hatred of sin in its every form, combined with tender compassion for even the worst of sinners, made Him the fairest of the children of men, the most supreme representative of man in that union with God which is the sole greatness that it is open to our nature to achieve by the grace which comes from Him alone.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 9<\/p>\n
LESSONS OF THE UNRECORDED YEARS<\/p>\n
\u201cHe shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of the dry ground.\u201d\u2014Isaiah 53:2.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving food and raiment, in these we shall have enough.\u201d\u20141 Tim. 6:8.<\/p>\n
\u201cEcclesia habet quatuor Evangelia, haeresis plurima.\u201d\u2014IREN\u00c6US iii. 11, 9.<\/p>\n
\u201cHE went down with them \u2026 to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.\u201d Such is St. Luke\u2019s brief epitome. It is the only record left to us of nearly twenty years of the life of Christ, from the time when He had attained the age of twelve till when \u201cHe was about thirty years of age.\u201d We are told the one anecdote of boyhood, of which we have been trying to grasp the significance, and, beyond that, only the general facts of His growth in wisdom and stature and favour with God and man, and His sweet filial obedience during His abode in that beautiful Valley of Nazareth. This is literally all that the four Gospels record of all except\u2014at the outside\u2014some three and a half years of the life of the Son of Man and the Son of God.
\nThis is all that they record; but in St. Mark, a single casual word\u2014not meant for any part of the biography, but occurring in the most incidental manner in the discontented murmurs of the people of Nazareth\u2014comes like a revealing flash to illuminate the darkness. That word is \u201cthe Carpenter.\u201d
\nJesus had been teaching in the synagogue so familiar to Him in His early years, and His disciples were with Him. As He taught, the Nazarenes were amazed at His wisdom, and His mighty works, but the humility of His origin was a stumbling-block to them. Was not this man a peasant like themselves? In what respect could He claim any superiority over them? Did they not know Mary His mother, and His four brothers, and His sisters? Had He not laboured among them for His daily bread? Was He not in the eyes of the Scribes a mere ignoramus? How could they accept a teaching so authoritative, claims so lofty? A prophet could expect but little honour in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. \u201cIs not this the Carpenter?\u201d Christ might have come as a Prince like Buddha, or a Philosopher like Confucius, or a Priest like Zoroaster, or a Warrior like Mohammed; but He chose to come as \u201cthe Carpenter of Nazareth.\u201d The name of scorn lingered on through the centuries. \u201cWhat is the Carpenter doing now?\u201d sneeringly asked Libanius, the pagan sophist, of a Christian. \u201cHe is making a coffin,\u201d answered the Christian; and shortly after, Julian, the apostate Emperor, whom Libanius regarded with such proud devotion, was cut short in his brilliant career of statesmanship and victory, and died with the words \u201cThou hast conquered, O Galilean!\u201d upon his lips.
\nThe innate vulgarity which showed itself in the scoff of the Nazarenes has been common in all ages, although, again and again, those who have sprung from the humblest ranks among the people\u2014like Mohammed, and St. Francis of Assisi, and Gregory VII., and Luther, and Shakespeare, and Bunyan\u2014have shown themselves to be moving forces in the world. But the low sneer becomes to us an illuminating truth, revealing to us the methods and purposes of God.
\nThe very silence of the Evangelists about those long years is full of eloquence. Contrast it with the profane babblings and old wives\u2019 fables of unauthorised invention, and it becomes rich in most blessed significance!
\nLet us consider what it means.
\nIt shows the truthfulness of the Evangelists. It might well have seemed most strange to them, as at first sight it does to us, that He in whom they recognised the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, should have spent in lowly obscurity and unrecorded silence all but so small a fraction of His years on earth. They must have yearned, as we yearn, to lift the curtain of apparent oblivion which had been suffered to rest upon the Life of Lives. But they would not be of the \u201cfools\u201d who<\/p>\n
\u201cRush in where angels fear to tread\u201d;<\/p>\n
nor would they surround the brow of Christ with a halo of lying miracles. They would record nothing where nothing was given them to record.
\nThroughout these four narratives they show a great simplicity, which is the most certain stamp of truthfulness. They burst into no raptures, they abandon themselves to no ecstasies, they indulge in no notes of admiration. \u201cIls se souviennent, voil\u00e0 tout!\u201d
\nYet this reticence is in itself rich in the deepest and most necessary lessons.
\n\u201cFruit is seed.\u201d What the soil and the grain have been, that will the harvest be. When we see the perfect rose we know at once that there can have been no blight, no imperfection in the bud. So far, then, as the revelation of Christ\u2019s Person is concerned, we recognise, without special record, that those unrecorded years must have been years of holy and sinless humility.
\nBut, further, the one word preserved (with such apparent casualness) by St. Mark, brings clearly home to us that those long years of Jesus in Nazareth were years of preparation, of poverty, of obscurity, of labor.
\n(i.) They were years of preparation: However deep must have been the consciousness in the soul of the youthful Christ that He was, in a special sense, the Son of His Heavenly Father, and that He was born to do His work, yet, in meekness and lowliness of heart, He would abide God\u2019s good time, He would await the pointing of His finger, the whisper of His voice. \u201cHe shall not strive, nor cry, neither shall His voice be heard in the streets. A bruised reed will He not break, and the smoking flax will He not quench, until He send forth judgment unto victory.\u201d The life with God and in God sufficed Him. Men might look for manifestations of God in the earthquake or the thunder, or the mighty strong wind which shakes the mountains and rends their rocks: to Jesus, hidden in the cleft of that mountain valley, they came, as to Elijah, in the \u201cstill, small voice.\u201d
\n(ii.) And it teaches us a most blessed lesson, that God Himself, hid in the veil of mortal flesh, should voluntarily have undergone those long silent years from childhood to manhood in the lot of poverty, of obscurity, of labour.
\nOf poverty. The Gospel of Christ is a Gospel to the poor, who are the many. Poverty is the normal lot of the vast majority of mankind. There was nothing squalid, nothing torturing, nothing degraded in this poverty. It was the modest competence, earned by manly toil, which suffices to provide all that men truly need, though not all that they passionately desire. It was the poverty which is content with food and raiment. Men, by myraids, strive passionately for wealth. In all ages Mammon has been the god of their commonest worship,\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cMammon, the least erected spirit that fell
\nFrom heaven; for e\u2019en in heaven his looks and thoughts
\nWere always downward bent, admiring more
\nThe riches of heaven\u2019s pavement, trodden gold,
\nThan aught divine or holy else enjoyed
\nIn vision beatific.\u201d<\/p>\n
Men strive and agonise for gold; they toil and moil, and cheat, and steal, and oppress, and poison, and ruin their brethren to get money; they sell their souls, they turn their whole lives into a degradation and a lie, because of the false glamour of riches. The old song says rightly:\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cThe gods from above the mad labour behold,
\nAnd pity mankind who would perish for gold.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet after all it is but very few who, with all their passionate endeavours, attain to riches. The Dives who is clad in purple and fine linen, and fares sumptuously every day, is but one out of every hundred thousand; and very often his earthly wealth tends only to ossify and dehumanise his heart. The lesson of Christ\u2019s poverty has helped myraids of the humble to say, with brave Martin Luther, \u201cMy God, I thank Thee that Thou hast made me poor and a beggar upon earth.\u201d And, as the wise king had prayed: \u201cGive me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me,\u201d so Christ, by the example of these long, silent years of poverty, gave deeper emphasis to His own teaching: \u201cLay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves dig through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not dig through nor steal.\u201d In the workshop at Nazareth, faithful in that which was little, Christ revealed to mankind where to seek, and how to enjoy the true riches. By long example He added force to His own precept: \u201cBe not anxious for the morrow, for the morrow will be anxious for the things of itself.\u201d \u201cBe not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body than raiment.\u201d
\n(iii.) And it was a life of obscurity. Men love fame; they will risk life itself, they will face the cannon which pour forth destruction into the midst of them, to win renown, and \u201cfly victorious in the mouths of men.\u201d This passion to win fame is not so grovellingly ignoble as that love of money which is a root of all kinds of evil?<\/p>\n
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
\n(That last infirmity of noble minds),
\nTo scorn delights, and live laborious days;
\nBut the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
\nAnd think to burst out into sudden blaze,
\nComes the blind Fury with th\u2019 abhorr\u00e8d shears
\nAnd slits the thin-spun life.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is infinitely difficult to disillusion men from this passion, although in age after age the greatest have been among the saddest of mankind. \u201cOmnia fui, et nihil expedit,\u201d sighed the Roman Emperor, who had risen from lowliness to the topmost summit of earthly grandeur. \u201cAll my life long I have been prosperous in peace and victorious in war, feared by my enemies, loved and honoured by my friends,\u201d wrote Abdalrahman the Magnificent, in his private diary. \u201cAmid all this wealth and glory I have counted the days of my life which I could call happy. They amount to fourteen!\u201d Our great dramatist makes his holy king say:\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cMy crown is in my heart, not on my head,
\nNot set with diamonds, or Indian stones,
\nNor to be seen: my crown is called Content\u2014
\nA crown it is which seldom kings enjoy!\u201d<\/p>\n
And again:\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cI swear \u2019tis better to be lowly born
\nAnd range with humble dwellers in content,
\nThan to be perked up in a glistering grief,
\nAnd wear a golden sorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI never spent such tedious hours in all my life,\u201d exclaimed Napoleon I., as he flung into the corners of the room the superb coronation robes which he had worn when the Pope of Rome, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, had placed the crown of St. Louis on the brows of him who had, a few years before, been the poor and struggling sub-lieutenant of artillery. \u201cRight well I know\u201d\u2014such are the words which one of the chief poets of our generation puts into the mouth of the mighty Merlin\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cRight well know I that fame is half dis-fame,
\nThe cackle of the unborn about the grave.
\nSweet were the days when I was all unknown,
\nBut when my name was lifted up, the storm
\nBrake on the mountain, and I cared not for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so the \u201cEmptiness of emptiness, emptiness of emptiness, all is emptiness!\u201d of the richest, wisest, and most splendid of earthly kings has been reverberated from century to century; and with that verdict of disillusionment comes the old wise lesson, \u201cSeekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not, saith the Lord.\u201d Jesus gave to the lesson of this world-wide experience His seal of confirmation by His unknown years at Nazareth; and thus, by example as by His words, He says to us: \u201cCome unto Me \u2026 for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.\u201d
\n(iv.) And His was a life of manual toil. In this respect also how inestimable a boon did He confer upon the toiling millions of mankind:<\/p>\n
\u201cNot to the rich He came, nor to the ruling,
\nMen full of meat, whom most His heart abhors;
\nNot to the fools, grown insolent in fooling,
\nMost when the poor are dying out of doors.\u201d<\/p>\n
There has been a haughty tendency in all ages to despise manual labour, and look down on those who live by it. All trade and mechanic work was to the ancient world despicable (\u03b2\u03ac\u03bd\u03b1\u03c5\u03c3\u03bf\u03bd), a thing to be left to slaves, or those but a little above them. So it was in the days of the Roman Empire; so it was even among our Teutonic forefathers. A \u201cbase mechanic\u201d was quite an ordinary description, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, for the mass of the people, and to this day the insolent ineptitude of commonplace vulgarity thinks it an immense disparagement to call a man \u201ca mere tradesman.\u201d The Jews alone among the nations rose to a wiser standpoint, though even among them we find such haughty sentence as: \u201cHow can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough \u2026 whose talk is of bullocks?\u201d
\nEven \u201cthe sweet and noble Hillel,\u201d though he rose from a position of the lowliest poverty, was so tainted by the pride of leisurely sciolism as to say, \u201cNo am-ha-aretz can be pious.\u201d The lot of artisans was, however, indefinitely raised among the Jews by the fact that the greatest Rabbis were taught that it was well to be able to maintain themselves by a trade. What sublimer lesson could Jesus have taught to mankind than by spending thirty unknown years as the humble Carpenter of Nazareth? How fundamentally did He thus rectify the judgments of man\u2019s feeble and erring day! How did He thus illustrate the truth that \u201call honest labour is an honour to the labourer\u201d! How did He further demonstrate by this example that man has no essential dignity except that which comes from his inherent nature as created in the image of God! Shakespeare complains:<\/p>\n
\u201cNot a man for being simply man
\nHath any honour; but honour for those honours
\nWhich are without him, as place, riches, favour,
\nPrizes of accident as oft as merit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buddhism has its Arhats; Brahminism its Yogis; Mohammedanism its Dervishes; Manichean asceticism has its monks and hermits. But Christ wished to show that He who, by His Divine Being, was immeasurably and inconceivably greater than the greatest in all the world, lost no particle of His grandeur by living the common every-day life, and by learning to labour truly, and earning His bread by the sweat of His brow.
\n\u201cHe who is without friends, without money, without home, without country, is still at the least a man; and he who has all these is no more.\u201d To all alike\u2014to the poorest, the lowliest, the most oppressed, the most persecuted\u2014God in Christ gives an equal chance of happiness. Complete earthly insignificance is the lot of the mass of mankind. Millions might say, \u201cWe are the merest cyphers.\u201d All but the very few, when death comes might murmur:<\/p>\n
\u201cI shall be gone to the crowd untold
\nOf men by the cause they served unknown,
\nWho lie in the myriad graves of old,
\nNever a story, and never a stone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some men are inclined to ask why God placed them in depths where their voices can never be heard. The answer is that life means something infinitely more precious than power and fame. The object of life\u2014as the silent, unrecorded years of Christ\u2019s life teach us\u2014is neither to be known, nor to be praised, but simply to do our duty, and to the best of our power to serve our brother-men. The inch-high dignities of man on the insignificant stage of his little greatness are annihilated in the infinitude of God, to whom all human life, apart from Him, is but as \u201ca trouble of ants \u2019mid a million million of suns!\u201d But<\/p>\n
\u201cAll service is true service, while it lasts,\u201d<\/p>\n
and<\/p>\n
\u201cAll service ranks the same with God,
\nWhose puppets are we, one and all;
\nThere is no great and small.\u201d<\/p>\n
If we realise this truth in the light of Christ\u2019s early life, we add an undreamed-of \u201cgrandeur to the beatings of the heart.\u201d If we live blameless and harmless children of God without rebuke, we may make our lives as splendid in the sight of our Heavenly Father as though we stood on the summits of humanity, clad with angels\u2019 wings. The Archangel Gabriel thought it as high an honour to help back to its nest the little struggling ant as to save the great King from committing a sin.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did God\u2019s work, to him all one,
\nIf on the earth, or in the sun.\u201d<\/p>\n
All readers then, will, I trust, agree with me that the silence of the Evangelists about those thirty years in the earthly life of the Lord of Glory is the grandest eloquence; and that merely by living this unknown life of labour as a peasant in a Galilean village, Christ set the very example, and taught the very lesson, which the untold millions of mankind most deeply need\u2014it was the lesson that life comes indeed differently to the good and to the bad, to the wise and to the foolish, but that it has gifts of equal blessedness for the low and for the high, for the poor and for the rich. To all true men, with no respect of persons, are flung equally wide<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Gates of Heaven, on golden hinges moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it is perfectly lawful and reverent for us, though we cannot narrate a single incident of Christ\u2019s youth and early manhood, yet to try to realise all that can be ascertained of the outer circumstances in the midst of which that life was spent.
\n\u201cHe went down \u2026 to Nazareth and was subject unto them.\u201d
\nWhat was the scenery around the humble home in which Jesus grew up? I need not repeat the description which I have given elsewhere of that little white village on the hill\u2014\u201curbs florida et virgultis consita\u201d\u2014lying amid its green and umbrageous fields \u201clike a handful of pearls in a goblet of emerald.\u201d Suffice it to say that, while the scenery is by no means grand or overwhelming, it is full of peaceful loveliness. In this, as in all else, there was nothing exceptional in the conditions which surrounded the youth and early manhood of the Saviour.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeeds no show of mountain hoary,
\nWinding shore, or deepening glen,
\nWhere the landscape in its glory
\nTeaches truth to wondering men;
\nGive true hearts but earth and sky,
\nAnd some flowers to bloom and die;
\nHomely scenes and simple views,
\nLowly thoughts may best infuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the boy Jesus stood on the hill-top of His native town, gazing over scenes rich in the historic memories of the Chosen People, and rejoicing as the wind of the mountains and the sea played in His long hair, He would have seen the pelicans, with their great white wings, flying in long lines to the Lake of Galilee; and the roller-bird, with its plumage of vivid blue, flash like a living sapphire among the pale grey olive-trees; and the kingfisher, perched on a reed beside the waters, fishing eagerly from hour to hour; and the harmless doves, soiled sometimes as they lighted on the dustheaps of the streets, but \u201ccovered with silver wings, and their feathers like gold\u201d when they soared once more into the azure, and reflected the sunlight from every varying plume. He had watched with loving eye the eagle soaring with supreme dominion in the cloudless sky; the vultures which gather round the fallen carcass; the ravens which lay up no store for food, and yet the Heavenly Father feedeth them; the innumerable little brown sparrows which twittered in the over-grown foliage of the water-courses\u2014so valueless that you could buy two of them for a farthing, and, if you spent two farthings, could get five, so that one would be thrown in for nothing, and yet not one of them falling to the ground without our Father\u2019s love. He had noticed \u201cthe hen, with passionate maternal love, clucking to gather its young beneath the shelter of its widespread wings; the lambs blithely following their shepherd, yet going astray, and roaming into the wild\u201d; the sower flinging out the grains of wheat which sometimes fell on rocky, or trodden, or thorny ground, or sank into the good soil, to die indeed, but to spring up again in the hundredfold of golden harvests. He would watch the green blade passing into the ear, and then into the full corn in the ear; and the fig-tree in springtide putting forth its tender leaves; and the vine-branch hung with its rich purple clusters; and the grain of mustard-seed, smallest of all seeds, but growing up into the largest and bushiest of garden herbs, so that the birds of the air took shelter in its branches; and the rushes whispering and wavering in the evening wind; and the lilies of the field brightening the meadows and the mountain sides with blue and purple and scarlet, like the broidery on the girdle of the High Priest; and the many-coloured tulip, the golden armaryllis, the scarlet anemone arrayed more splendidly than Solomon in all his glory. He would notice, too, all the wild creatures with an eager and tender gaze\u2014the sly wisdom of the serpent, the fox creeping to its hole, the wild wolves and prowling jackals, as well as the sheep which hear the voice of their shepherd and follow him when he calls them by their names. He would watch the lightning hurling its flame to earth, or flashing from the East even to the West, and gaze on the sky red with the promise of golden days, or lurid with the menace of the storm. He would listen to the welcome plash of the fertilising rain, and to the rush of the swollen streams, and to the south wind with its burning heat, and to the breeze of which we hear the sound but cannot tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth. Nature was to Him no blank impervious barrier between the soul and God, but a glorious crystal mirror in which the Creator was reflected; and every one of these sights and sounds of common nature, treasured up in His pure and sinless soul, became parables of spiritual truth and illustrations of eternal wisdom.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo Thee all nature\u2019s oracles unfold
\nTheir wondrous meaning, deep-concealed of old,
\nNow by Thy touch of sympathy laid bare:
\nTo Thee the richness of their truth they yield,
\nEach sparrow, and each lily of the field,
\nPreaching the gospel of a Father\u2019s care.
\nThe shepherd seeking his lost lambs again,
\nThe housewife\u2019s bread, the gently falling rain,
\nThe morning sun that climbs the heavenly height;
\nThe green grass, and the spirits of careless youth,
\nAre all but garments of the living truth
\nThat through them shines, and fills our lives with light.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nor was it otherwise with the commonest sights and sounds and incidents of daily life. To Him all became fruitful as vehicles of the holiest teaching, which was the more impressive because all alike could understand it, from the highest to the lowest. The form which His teaching took furnishes an indirect proof of His daily familiarity with the common life of the people during the long years which He spent as one of the labouring classes. He had watched the processions of the bridegrooms, and the games of the little ones, and the gay clothing of the courtiers from Tiberias. \u201cHe was at home,\u201d says Hausrath, \u201cin those poor, windowless Syrian hovels, in which the housewife must light a candle in the daytime in order to seek for her lost piece of silver. He is acquainted with the secrets of the bakehouse, and the gardener, and the builder, and with things which the higher classes never see\u2014such as the \u2018good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over,\u2019 of the cornchandler; the rotten, leaking wine-skin of the wine-dealer; the clumsy patchwork of the peasant-woman; and the brutal manners of the upper servants towards the lower. A hundred other features of a similar kind are enwoven by Him into His parables. Reminiscences given of His more special handicraft have been found, it is believed, in some of His sayings. The parable of the Splinter and the Beam is said to recall the carpenter\u2019s shop; the uneven foundation of the houses, the building-yard; the cubit that is added, His workshop; the distinction in the appearance of the green and dry wood, the drying shed; but from the frequency of expressions peculiar to Him, it would be possible to find similar evidence for every other handicraft. Nevertheless the circumstance that His discourses are not drawn from rare spectacles and unusual processes, but always move in the sphere of the ordinary man\u2019s activity, has contributed to establish their special popularity.\u201d
\nWe may say then of Jesus, that, for the infinite consolation of the poor, during by far the greater part of His life, He showed by an example more powerful than any teaching, that \u201cMan is as great as he is in God\u2019s sight, and no greater.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 10<\/p>\n
THE HOME AT NAZARETH<\/p>\n
\u201cLove had he found in huts where poor men lie;
\nHis only teachers were the woods and rills,
\nThe silence that is in the starry sky,
\nThe peace that is in the eternal hills.\u201d
\n\u2014WORDSWORTH.<\/p>\n
THE hill-town of Nazareth on the southwest of the old tribal district of Zabulon was remote, insignificant, and poor. It was traversed by one of the roads from Ptolemais to Damascus, and was near large and populous townships, like Sepphoris and Tiberias, but it never rose into prominence. It is not once mentioned in the Old Testament, nor in the Talmud, nor in the Midrashim. The recent attempts to make out that it was the centre of a busy commerce are entirely unsuccessful. It is not alluded to by any Gentile writer, nor even by Josephus, though he writes so much about Galilee. The Jews despised it so entirely as to have among them the proverb, \u201cCan any good thing come out of Nazareth?\u201d And afterwards the brethren of Jesus spoke of work in Galilee as work \u201cin secret.\u201d
\nThe position of an artisan in such a place must have been humble indeed. The picture of a carpenter\u2019s shop at Nazareth, drawn by Mr. Holman Hunt, will probably give a very true conception of what such a shop looked like in the days of Christ; for in the unchanging East the aspect of things remains the same for century after century. It was probably a house and workshop in one, and lighted mostly from the door, except by night, when the single lamp suspended in the centre was lit, \u201cshowing curiously commingled the furniture of the family and the tools of the mechanic.\u201d I have noticed in the homes of Nazareth the gay-coloured quilts, neatly rolled up in the daytime, and placed in a corner of the room, which at night are the beds of the family. There is usually no table, but a little circular or octagonal stand, sometimes gaily painted or inlaid, on which is placed the common dish of libban, or stewed fruit, and the bread which form the staple meals. The bronze basin and ewer are brought out after the meal by the youngest member of the family, that he may pour water over the hands of all who have been helping themselves out of the common dish.
\nSuch was the home, for thirty years, of the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. He lived amid the most ordinary conditions. He would not seek for Himself an exceptional lot, but one which most closely resembled the common life of men, of whom all but a very few live humble, unknown lives, and earn their bread by the labour of their hands. There was nothing squalid or repellent in such a life, but it served as the most forcible of proofs that the true greatness of man consists in the immortal nature which God has bestowed upon him, and not in the adjuncts by which he is surrounded. Christ, by the years of His earthly obscurity, meant to teach us that God judges not as man judges, but that the sole appreciable greatness of any man, be he emperor or peasant, lies in the fact that God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life\u2014that God made him a little lower than the angels, to crown him with glory and honour.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 11<\/p>\n
THE FAMILY AT NAZARETH<\/p>\n
\u201cHome is Heaven for beginners; the place of peace; the shelter not only from all injury but from all terror, doubt, and division.\u201d<\/p>\n
IN the humble abode of the carpenter, Jesus learnt the strength and tenderness of human affection which breathes through all His utterances. Joseph and Mary were so poor that the Virgin could only offer at her purification the pair of turtle doves which none but the humblest mothers were permitted by the Law to present in the place of lambs. The fact that she was a descendant of David\u2014which His enemies never denied, and which is even admitted by the Talmud\u2014made no difference in the lowliness of the position of the Holy Family. The great Hillel is also said to have been of David\u2019s race, yet until manhood he was in so humble a lot as barely to be able to earn his daily bread by toiling as an artisan. There is many an obscure working-man in England at this moment who has the blood of the Plantagenets in his veins. A few centuries entirely obliterate any dignity which may be derivable from a royal origin. In Egypt and Arabia we constantly see common beggars who wear the green turban which shows them to be of the family of Mohammed.
\nJoseph, according to tradition, was considerably older than the Virgin Mary, and as he is not once mentioned in the Gospels after the Passover visit to Jerusalem, and as no other trace of him, or allusion to him, has been preserved, except in the Apocryphal Gospel which goes by his name, it is probable that he died soon after Jesus was thirteen years old. The rest of the family consisted of four brothers, and several sisters. They seem to have continued to live together, with Mary and with Jesus. The names of these \u201cbrethren\u201d were James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon.
\nWhat was their exact relationship to Jesus? The Helvidian theory takes the language of the New Testament in its natural sense, and regards them as full brothers; the Epiphanian describes them as elder sons of Joseph by a previous or a Levirate marriage; the Hieronymian\u2014which is the weakest and most foundationless\u2014speaks of them as the cousins of Jesus. From the unvarying language of the Gospels about them, we might naturally infer that they were sons of Mary and her husband Joseph, born after the birth of Christ. The belief in the Aeiparthenia, or perpetual virginity of the mother of Jesus, was an after-thought, unknown to the primitive Christians. It does not seem to have been turned into an actual dogma before the third century, and even then there were some\u2014called the Antidicomarianit\u0153\u2014who followed Helvidius in rejecting this new doctrine. It must be borne in mind that one of the views most universally current among the Jews was the inherent duty and sanctity of marriage. To the earliest Christians it would have seemed no derogation whatever from the holy dignity of the Virgin, but rather the reverse, if she had added the sacredness of ordinary motherhood to the blessing of one who had been so highly favoured by the Lord.
\nIf, however, these four \u201cbrethren of Jesus\u201d were not the sons of His mother, they can only have been (i.) either His cousins, or (ii.) the sons of Joseph by a previous or a Levirate marriage.
\nThe notion that they were the cousins of our Lord\u2014suggested by St. Jerome only as a desperate expedient of argument in which he himself hardly believed\u2014turns on the supposition that Mary, the wife of Cleopas (Alph\u00e6us), was a sister of the Virgin, and that these were her four sons.
\nThat this Mary was a sister of the Virgin is on other grounds probable. The fact that two sisters should have borne the same name is by no means unprecedented, and it could not have been a very uncommon circumstance in days when distinctive names, especially of women, were extremely few in number. But it is fatal to this hypothesis (a) that no one ever seems to have heard of it before Jerome invented it; and (b) that, if they were Christ\u2019s cousins, there is no conceivable reason why the word \u201ccousin\u201d (\u1f00\u03bd\u03ad\u03c8\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2), or \u201ckinsman\u201d (\u03c3\u03c5\u03b3\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03ae\u03c2), should not have been used of them, nor why, without a single variation, they should have been called \u201cbrethren\u201d; and (c) that two, perhaps four, of the sons of Mary and Alph\u00e6us were Apostles of Christ, so that it could not have been said, \u201cneither did His brethren believe on Him.\u201d On the other hand, if they were sons of Joseph by a Levirate marriage, they would not have been officially regarded as his sons, but rather as sons of his deceased brother. And if they were sons of Joseph by a previous marriage, they, and not Jesus, were the elder heirs of David\u2019s line.
\nIn calling them Christ\u2019s \u201cbrethren\u201d we adopt the language of the Evangelists, and there is no evidence to justify us in explaining it away out of deference to later fancies, which seem to be purely subjective, and derive no support of any kind from Scripture. If the \u201cPerpetual Virginity\u201d had been regarded as a doctrine of any importance the Evangelists would have guarded themselves against language so liable to misinterpretation as Matt. 1:24, Luke 2:7.
\nOf these brethren, the two of most marked individuality\u2014the only two of whom any record survives\u2014are James \u201cthe Lord\u2019s brother,\u201d and Jude the \u201cbrother of James,\u201d to each of whom we owe one of the Epistles of the New Testament.
\nST. JAMES was a man of most powerful and independent personality\u2014pure and holy, yet with a certain natural sternness of character. If the traditions preserved by Hegesippus be true, he had been a Nazarite from his birth, and the long locks of the Nazarite flowed over his shoulders. It is manifest from his Epistle that he was a devoted Jew. He addresses \u201cthe sojourners of the Dispersion\u201d; he speaks of the Christian assembly as \u201ca synagogue\u201d; his mind was evidently steeped in Jewish literature, both Scriptural and Apocryphal. There is a tone of severity in his moral appeals and objurgations which recalls John the Baptist. His Epistle is the least directly Christological in the New Testament, yet Luther made an utter mistake when he ventured to speak of it as a \u201cdownright strawy Epistle.\u201d One passage in it especially has the profoundest Gospel significance. It is the one in which he says, \u201cPutting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with meekness the Implanted Word which is able to save your souls.\u201d
\nStill the Epistle shows us one who, while he believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, had not broken loose from the traditions of Judaism. In this respect he carried out the early custom of St. Peter and St. John, who, being Jews, after the Resurrection and after Pentecost still attended the Temple services. Indeed, it is clear, if we accept the story of Hegesippus, that St. James stood very high in the estimation of the Jews, who even called him Obliam, or \u201cThe Bulwark of the People\u201d (Ophel am). Yet so absolute was his fidelity to Christ, that, in His name and for His sake, he braved a martyr\u2019s death (A.D. 62.)
\nOf ST. JUDE, who modestly calls himself \u201cthe brother of James,\u201d we know much less. Tradition has preserved no particulars respecting him, except that he was the grandfather of those descendants of David who were known as \u201cthe Desposyni.\u201d We have, however, St. Jude\u2019s Epistle by which to form some estimate of his character. We find in it the same qualities of moral sternness as in that of his brother; and besides the evident traces of a strict Judaic training, it contains uncommon allusions to Levitic institutions, and the apocryphal legends of the Jewish Haggadah. Some of these are softened down in the rifacimento of the Epistle which we find in the second chapter of the Second Epistle of St. Peter.
\nIt is clear, then, that the family of Joseph was trained in the strictest traditions of Mosaism, and it is one of the numberless proofs of the Divine individuality of the Son of Man that He was not swayed by such near and powerful representatives of the Old Dispensation. There is not a whisper or a trace of any disagreement or disunion within the narrow limits of that humble home at Nazareth. But the testimony of the Evangelists shows that when our Lord began His mission, when he claimed the right to speak with authority, and not as the Scribes; when He set aside the Oral Law, which his brethren had been taught to reverence as \u201cthe tradition of the Elders\u201d; when He openly broke with the all-venerated religious teachers of His day\u2014His brethren were startled by the immensity of His claims. They even seem to have attributed them to a dangerous enthusiasm, for\u2014dreading, perhaps, lest they should lead to some terrible catastrophe\u2014they induced His mother to join them in the endeavour to put some gentle restraint on what they, with eyes as yet unenlightened, regarded as perilous impulses.
\nAnd again, on a later occasion, His brethren tried to exercise an unwarrantable influence over His methods and actions, since their eyes were not yet opened to His Divine authority. They held to the current conceptions of the coming Messiah, and urged Him to go openly to the Feast of Tabernacles, and show His works, and claim his due position He was compelled, therefore, to set aside their intrusiveness. He would not go to the Feast with them. He would not follow the wisdom or the ways of this world. He was compelled to repudiate their officiousness, and He did not take them into His confidence. He went up to Jerusalem, not officially, but privately, after they had departed, and did not appear in the Temple till the midst of the Feast.
\nWe see, however, clearly that if these \u201cbrethren of the Lord\u201d were men of somewhat unbending convictions, they were nevertheless men of lofty moral character. They seem to have been convinced and converted by the Resurrection of Christ; for though, during His ministry, they had not fully or adequately believed on Him, immediately afterwards we find them among his leading disciples. His brother James, though not one of the Twelve, was elected Bishop of Jerusalem after the martyrdom of James the son of Zebedee. St. Paul, among six appearances of the Risen Christ, mentions two only which are unrecorded in the Gospels. One of these is, \u201cafter that He appeared to James.\u201d This has often been supposed to be the appearance, not to the son of Zebedee, but to the eldest brother of Jesus, which is mentioned in the Gospel according to the Hebrews. We are told that, after the Crucifixion, James said that he would neither eat nor drink till he had seen Christ risen from the dead; and that Christ, appearing to him, said, \u201cEat and drink, my brother, for the Son of Man is risen from the dead.\u201d
\nThe descendants of Jude, known as \u201cmembers of the Lord\u2019s family,\u201d are mentioned in the famous story of the Emperor Domitian, who (A.D. 81), hearing from Josephus and from certain Nazarean heretics that some of the family of Christ in Palestine claimed royal descent, suspected that they might become possible leaders of sedition, and sent for them to come to Rome. But on seeing at a glance that they were only poor peasants whose hands were rough and hard with toil, and hearing from them that they only tilled seven acres of land, he contemptuously dismissed them to their humble Galilean farms.
\nIn Christian History there is no more mysterious figure than that of THE MOTHER OF OUR LORD. In that carpenter\u2019s shop at Nazareth what was her influence over the early years of her Divine Son?
\nAfter the events of the Nativity, the Virgin, strange to say, almost disappears, not only from the New Testament, but even from all the records of the Early Church. From the incident in the Temple when Jesus had completed His early boyhood, and from the fact that it was Mary, not Joseph, who addressed Him, we infer that her share in the training of His early years was more marked than was usual in the case of Jewish mothers. We see again in the record of the first miracle at Cana that she occupied a leading position. There is no possible explanation of her remark to Christ, \u201cThey have no wine,\u201d; except that it was an indirect suggestion that by some word or deed of power He should prevent the joy of the wedding-feast from being destroyed by an apparent failure of the sacred duties of hospitality. His answer, \u201cWoman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come,\u201d sounds to our ears far more harsh than it was. It set aside the right of Mary to direct His actions, yet was an implicit granting of her request. The address, \u201cWoman,\u201d in accordance with ancient idiom, was perfectly tender and respectful, and might be used even to Queens. The \u201cwhat have I to do with thee?\u201d spoken in tones of perfect gentleness, meant merely, \u201cThis is a point which I must arrange, not thou.\u201d The words might have been used by the most gentle and affectionate son of full age, to his mother. The direction immediately given by Mary to the servants shows that, so far from feeling any sense of a repulse, she anticipated the granting of her petition, which followed, without delay.
\nThe Virgin is prominently mentioned in the Gospels in but one other incident. It was on the occasion when she came with the Lord\u2019s brethren to prevent, if possible, what they regarded as the continuance of a deeply imperilled career. Not only did Jesus decline to see them, but He uttered a remark which seemed most decisively to show that the time had now come when His work as the Son of God transcended all the earthly conditions of the Son of Man. Looking round on His assembled hearers at Capernaum, He exclaimed, \u201cWho is My mother, and who are My brethren?\u201d And stretching forth His hand towards His disciples, He said, \u201cBehold My mother and My brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother, and sister, and mother.\u201d
\nAnother incident tends still more strongly to emphasise our conviction that any form of what has been called \u201cMariolatry\u201d is entirely alien from the teaching of the pure Gospel of Christ. Our Lord had been teaching in one of the synagogues, when a woman in the assembly, carried away by the intensity of her feelings, cried out in the hearing of all, \u201cBlessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the breasts which Thou hast sucked.\u201d But though that might have seemed to be the most natural of sentiments, yet our Lord corrects its too material and human point of view. He systematically discouraged the exaltation of mere outward contact with His person, and taught that the presence of His Spirit was something nearer and more to be desired than any relationship with Him after the flesh (John 14:16, 2 Cor. 5:16). \u201cHow many women have blessed the Holy Virgin,\u201d says St. Chrysostom, \u201cand desired to be such a mother as she was! What hinders them? Christ has made for us a wide way to this happiness, and not only women but men may tread it\u2014the way of obedience. This it is which makes such a mother, and not the throes of parturition.\u201d
\nThe last time during His life on earth that the Virgin is mentioned is in the intensely pathetic incident when Jesus, as He hung upon His Cross of Shame, saw His mother standing by, and the disciple whom He loved. Thoughtful, even at that supreme moment, for her desolate future, He said, indicating by a movement of His head the Beloved Disciple, \u201cWoman, behold thy son!\u201d and to John, \u201cBehold thy mother!\u201d She had now drunk to the very dregs the cup of anguish. John led her away, and from that hour took her to his own home. In the surmises of which the Lives of Christ are full, this incident has been much discussed. I think the answer to any difficulty lies in some obvious considerations. St. John was \u201cthe disciple whom Jesus loved,\u201d and was His kinsman. Having been admitted into Christ\u2019s closest and most tender friendship, he would be more likely to enter into the unspeakable depth of Mary\u2019s feelings than the \u201cbrethren\u201d who, up to that time, had never fully accepted His Divine claims. Then again there are indications that St. John was in a somewhat less struggling worldly position than the sons of Joseph the carpenter. Unlike \u201cthe brethren of the Lord,\u201d he was unmarried. He was familiar with Jerusalem, and probably had a home there, in which, according to one tradition, the Virgin lived from that time until her death.
\nFrom this moment the Virgin Mary, though her name is just mentioned among those who formed the assemblies of the early believers, practically disappears from Christian History. Even apocryphal tradition scarcely so much as mentions her. It is not known how long she lived. It is not certain whether she died at Jerusalem or at Ephesus. She is not referred to as a source of information, still less as a fount of authority, though she could have told more than any living being about the birth of the Saviour, and the thirty long years of His humble obscurity. She \u201ckept all these and pondered them in her heart.\u201d But though she must ever be cherished in Christian reverence as the chosen handmaid of the Lord, and \u201cblessed among women,\u201d it is impossible not to see in these indisputable facts the strongest possible condemnation of that utterly unauthorised worship of the Virgin, which centuries afterwards, began to corrupt the turbid stream of Christianity. As though by a Divine prevision of the dangerous aberrations which were to come, in which Christians by millions were taught to adore the creature even more than the Creator, who is blessed for evermore, the name Mary is scarcely noticed in the whole New Testament after the beginning of Christ\u2019s ministry, and indeed after the one incident of His boyhood. In three of the instances in which it is introduced, our Lord says, \u201cWoman, what have I to do with thee?\u201d; \u201cHe that doeth the will of God the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother\u201d; and, \u201cYea rather, blessed are they that do the word of God and keep it.\u201d It might, therefore, seem as if special care had been taken to discourage and obviate the corrupted forms of Christianity which have thrust the Virgin Mary into the place of her Eternal Son, and made her more an object of rapturous worship than God, to whom alone all worship is due.<\/p>\n
Here we may perhaps revert for a moment to the question on which I have already spoken elsewhere, as to the human aspect of the Lord of Life. The early Christians\u2014looking almost daily for the visible return of Christ in glory, and habitually regarding Him, no longer as \u201cthe Man Christ Jesus,\u201d who for a few short years moved about upon this earth, but rather as the Divine, the Eternal, the ever-present God\u2014have preserved for us no outline of a picture, not even so much as a passing tradition, of His appearance as a man among men. The early Christians\u2014feeling that He was with them, and within them, and that He was \u201cGod of God, Lord of Lords, very God of very God\u201d\u2014cared nothing for relics, or holy places, or semblances of His mortal face. Hence, as far back as the second century, nothing whatever was known which could even decide the question whether He was tall and stately and humanly beautiful, or whether He was the very reverse. Ancient writers could only fall back on the language of Prophecy. Among the Greek Fathers and the earlier Latin writers the tendency was to borrow the conception of His earthly aspect from the prophecies of Isaiah (52:14, 53:2\u20133), and to speak of Him as \u201cwithout form or comeliness,\u201d inglorious, nay, even mean in appearance, \u201cshort, ignoble, ill-favoured in body.\u201d But later on it began to be felt that such notions were utterly untenable. We may safely infer from the Gospels themselves that there must have been some grandeur about the appearance of Jesus\u2014\u201cSidereum quiddam,\u201d as St. Jerome says\u2014which on many occasions won His friends and overawed His enemies. No one who had lived a life of sinless innocence and the supremest moral nobleness could be otherwise than \u201cfairer than the children of men\u201d (Ps. 45:3). This was the view of Jerome and Augustine, and it became established in the Church of the West, though Byzantine art continued to depict Him in traditional ugliness.
\nThe two late descriptions of Jesus\u2014that by the pseudo Publius Lentulus, preserved by John of Damascus in the eighth, and that by Nicephorus in the fourteenth century\u2014are very beautiful, but purely ideal. All that we may be sure of is that if \u201cbeauty\u201d be \u201cthe sacrament of goodness,\u201d the Sinless Purity of the Son of Man could not but have created for itself a noble Presence, and a Countenance full of all human sweetness and all Divine dignity. It is certain that pretended likeness of Christ originated among heretics like the Carpocratians (Iren. i. 25), and we must still say generally with St. Augustine, \u201cQua fuerit Ille facie, penitus ignoramus.\u201d It must be remembered that St. Augustine gave this decisive judgment when hundreds of pretended likenesses were in existence, all of which, he says, differed most widely from each other.<\/p>\n
And now the greater part of Christ\u2019s human life had passed. The long thirty years were over. As yet He had wrought no miracle, had given no sign, had uttered no revelation of the Divine claims which were part of the teaching destined to revolutionise the world. He had lived unknown and unnoticed, in the small Galilean town, as an ordinary and humble mechanic, not challenging any place among its provincial aristocracy, not interfering even with the extremely modest prerogatives of the officials in its synagogue. He had fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:<\/p>\n
\u201cHe shall not strive, nor cry aloud;
\nNeither shall any one hear His voice in the streets.
\nA bruised reed shall He not break,
\nAnd smoking flax shall He not quench,
\nTill He send forth judgment unto victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
We may here sum up the deep lessons involved in these long years of obscure and silent labour. They involve in the most striking of all possible forms a testimony to the value and sacredness of the ordinary life of man. They were destined to furnish the most vivid possible proof that the life is more than the food, and the body than the raiment; that God created man for incorruption, and made him an image of His own everlastingness; that to receive Him into the soul is perfect righteousness, and to know His dominion is the root of immortality. The lot of all but the very few in every million of human beings is the lot of struggle and obscurity. The Psalmist sang, ages ago, that<\/p>\n
\u201cAs for man, his days are as grass,
\nAs a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
\nFor the wind passeth over it and it is gone,
\nAnd the place thereof shall know it no more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christ came to live, in all external respects, the commonest life of man, that the multitude might not regard their lives as mere stubble of the field, and themselves as things of no account with God, because they constitute but<\/p>\n
\u201cOf men, the common rout
\nThat, wandering loose about,
\nGrow up and perish, as the summer fly;
\nHeads without name, no more remember\u00e8d.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the life which they live, in its namelessness and little apparent value to mankind, was the very life lived by the Son of God Himself, the Lord of Glory, for all but the brief years of His ministry. It sufficed Him, and He thereby taught us how infinite is the inherent preciousness of life itself, apart from those concomitants of pride, success, and riches, which to many men seem alone to make it worth living. Tried by the world\u2019s standard, our existence may seem deplorably insignificant; but what is taught us by the thirty years passed in the shop of the Nazarene carpenter by \u201cthe Lord of Time and all the worlds,\u201d is that each man has a right to say with humble faith:<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I could never be,
\nAll men ignored in me,
\nThis was I worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.\u201d<\/p>\n
And in all the early years of His life, with their experiences and meditations, Jesus looked far more on what is good in human nature than on what is evil. He became filled more and more with a boundless compassion for man, springing from absolute love for God. \u201cHere,\u201d says Keim, \u201cwe are made aware in Him of an ascending effort to get beyond the boundaries of the natural, beyond the limitations of human nature;\u2014a renunciation of the whole world, a feeling of the nothingness of riches, and of the utter helplessness of all human existence which lives but from the alms, and crumbs, of the Eternal: but yet, instead of the leap of self-annihilation, the plunging of man\u2019s nothingness into God\u2019s Eternity\u2014a profound repose of the creature in itself; an inward contemplation of inward riches along with outward neediness; a joyful recognition of the bright light and everlasting worth of a human soul; a self-confirmation in the right to endless existence; and belief in the personal elevation and dignity of mankind at large, in such strength of conviction as had never been before, and as became henceforth the motive-power of all the future life of humanity.\u201d Even the most abject and wretched were, in Christ\u2019s apprehension, still sons and daughters of Abraham, still children of the Heavenly Father, of the true and everlasting God.
\nIt was Christ\u2019s intense realisation of God\u2019s infinitude of love which raised Him into the all-embracing love of Man. It was His sense of the infinite grandeur of the Divine Perfection which made Him insist on the nature of true worship as consisting in a communion of the soul with God. The self-deceiving littlenesses of a theatrical externalism hinder rather than promote the depth of that communion of man with God which uplifts our souls at last into that mystery wherein God in man is one with man in God.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 12<\/p>\n
THE CONDITION OF THE WORLD<\/p>\n
\u201cIn whatsoever I may find you, in this will I also judge you.\u201d\u2014Unwritten Saying of Christ. CLEM. Hom. 2:5. JUST. MART. Dial. 47.<\/p>\n
\u201cDivina Providentia agitur mundus et homo.\u201d\u2014OROSIUS.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo incident in the Gospel story, no word in the teaching of Jesus Christ, is intelligible apart from its setting in Jewish History, and without a clear understanding of that world of thought distinctive of the Jewish People.\u201d\u2014SCH\u00dcRER, Hist. of the Jewish People, Div. 1, Vol. 1, p. 1.<\/p>\n
BUT the time had now come, when, in fulfilment of the mission which was to regenerate mankind and to inaugurate the last \u00e6on of the Divine Dispensation, Christ had to reveal Himself to the world. Nazareth, secluded as it was, was in a central position for observing the movements and tendencies of the age. The Galileans\u2014an eager and emotional race\u2014were in constant contact with Jerusalem and Samaria, and their hearts thrilled to the religious questions of the day. They were within a short distance from Decapolis, and the heathen or semi-heathen cities of Sepphoris, Hippos, Bethsaida Julias, and Tiberias. Not far from them, in the plain of Esdraelon, was an encampment of Roman soldiers, which still retains the name of \u201cLegion\u201d (Lejj). They were under the dominance of the meanest of the Herods, and were well aware that their political existence was ultimately dependent on the will of those whom Herod the Great had called \u201cthe almighty Romans\u201d and their deified Emperors. From the hill-top of Nazareth was visible the blue Mediterranean traversed by \u201cthe ships of Chittim\u201d\u2014the narrow and open pathway to the Greek and Asiatic world and the Isles of the Gentiles. And though there is no proof that Nazareth itself was in any sense a centre of commercial activity, it was within easy access of the roads from Damascus to the sea, the great Southern road which led ultimately to Egypt, and the Eastern road which led from Acre to Bethlehem. In the festal visits to Jerusalem Jesus must have mingled among crowds in which there were \u201cParthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Jud\u00e6a and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and the parts of Libya about Cyrene, Alexandrians and Cilicians, and sojourners from Rome, both Jews and Proselytes, Cretans and Arabians.\u201d A Passover crowd in the Temple Courts was an epitome of the civilised world.
\nJesus must, therefore, have often meditated on the general conditions of the life of His day, both among the Jews and among the Gentiles. And the epoch was a deplorable one. The darkness was deepest before the approach of dawn.<\/p>\n
I. THE GENTILES<\/p>\n
As regards the Gentile world, no epoch could have been worse, no period more deeply plunged into the Dead Sea of corruption, or more despairingly conscious of its own moral degradation. The mimes of Paganism reeked with moral corruption, and the sanguinary amphitheatres were schools of callous cruelty. Infanticide was so universal that a senator challenged the members of a full Senate to say whether nearly every one of them had not exposed infant children to die. Their very religion was corrupt at the fountain-head. The pictures in the Temples, and the representations of stories of their religious mythology, were potent sources of corruption, such as even light poets observed and bewailed; and the dark mysterious recesses of consecrated shrines were scenes of gross demoralisation. The old Roman virtues had been quenched, partly in consequence of the closer contact of Rome with Greek immorality, partly because the dead weight of military despotism, as represented by the Emperors, had crushed out the old freedom and nobleness. A highborn Roman historian, Cremutius Cordus, was driven to suicide in the days of Tiberius for speaking of Cassius as \u201cthe last of the Romans.\u201d The age was under no illusion as to its own degeneracy, and it was pervaded by the gloomiest dread. The lowest of the mob were conscious of the unsurpassable abominations which ran riot in the recesses of the palace, and were envied and reproduced, not only in the houses of the great senators, but even in those of the middle class. How could any nobleness or purity survive the sway of adored and deified monsters such as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero; Vitellius, Otho, and Domitian? Was ever a more deplorable picture drawn of a state of morals rotten to its inmost depths, than that delineated by such historians as Tacitus and Suetonius? The picture which our Lord drew in one of His last discourses, of wars and tumults, of nations in perplexity for the roaring of the sea and the billows, and of men fainting for fear and expectation of the things which are coming on the world, is the exact parallel of the description of the same epoch by Tacitus as one \u201crich in disasters, savage with battles, rent with factions, cruel even in peace; the swallowing up or overthrow of cities, the pollution of sacred functions, the prevalence of adulteries, the corruption of slaves against their masters, of freedmen against their patrons, and, when there was no open enemy, the ruin of friends by friends.\u201d Could anything be more debased than the tone of vileness unblushingly presented by Juvenal, Martial; and Petronius? Already, in the better days of Augustus, Horace had sung:<\/p>\n
\u201cDamnosa quid non imminuit dies?
\nAetas parentum pejor avis dabit
\nNos nequiores, mox daturos
\nProgeniem vitiosiorem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bad as his age was, the poet thought it might conceivably be worse, and prophesied for future generations a still more irredeemable decadence. But Juvenal, in the days of Nero, with no conscious reference to what Horace had said, wrote that wickedness had now reached its absolute culmination, and that though future generations might be as bad as his was, they could not be more vile.<\/p>\n
\u201cNil erit ulterius quod nostris moribus addat
\nPosteritas; eadem cupient, facientque minores
\nOmne in praecipiti vitium stetit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their hideous taurobolies and kriobolies\u2014of which the first trace is found on an inscription, A.D. 133\u2014were but vain outward forms of expiation, which neither diminished the violence of their passions, nor cooled the anguish of their accusing consciences. Judaism did not reach them. They fancied that the Jews were descended from lepers who had been driven out of Egypt; that they worshipped, some said an ass, and others the clouds of heaven; that they were a nation of cheats and liars; that they kept Sabbaths on pretence of superstition, but solely as an excuse for idleness; and that they hated all men, as all men hated them.
\nAnd the anguish of retribution was equal to the wickedness of universal abandonment to vile affections. Insolence, arrogance, greed, and the superabundance of flagitiousness, filled Rome with whisperers, liars, slanderers, professional informers\u2014of whom some, to the common terror, exercised their infernal trade openly, others secretly. The Emperor Tiberius had sunk to the lowest depths of degradation in his sty at Capre\u00e6, as an \u201cinventor of evil things,\u201d so that new words had to be coined to describe his vileness; and he was, as even Pliny says of him, \u201cnotoriously the most wretched of mankind.\u201d He himself wrote to his Senate, \u201cWhat to write, or how to write to you, Conscript Fathers, or what not to write, at the present moment, may all the gods and goddesses destroy me worse than I feel myself to be daily perishing, if I know.\u201d The comment of the stern historian on those words is that his crimes and enormities turned to his own punishment; that neither his splendour nor his solitude saved him from suffering the torments and penalties which he confessed; and that he illustrated the wise remark that, if the minds of tyrants could be laid open to view, they would be as visibly lacerated by the scourges of cruelty, lust, and wicked counsels as bodies are by the lash.
\nThis awful condition of things created an unspeakable weariness of life; and so deep was the conviction that the life of men is but a matter of indifference, or even a constant comedy in the eyes of the gods, that suicide was no longer regarded as a crime, but had come to be looked upon as a sign of moral nobleness. Nor are these the rhetorical exaggerations of poets, historians, and satirists. Seneca was a grave philosopher, and one who tried to be sincere, and he wrote, \u201cHe who denies that we may forcibly end our life, does not see that he is closing the path of liberty. The eternal law hath done nothing better than that it has given us one entrance to life, but many exits.\u201d
\nSelf-murder was belauded as an act of real magnanimity by many, both of Greeks and Romans. Even an Epictetus and a Marcus Aurelius did not rise above this point of view. Not a few who were counted by the Greeks and Romans among their noblest sons had died by their own hands, and among them such philosophers as Zeno and Kleanthes. \u201cHaving gone through every species of wickedness,\u201d says Theophylact, \u201cHuman Nature needed to be healed.\u201d
\nThus the Gentiles are convicted out of the mouths of their own writers, and it is proved that when St. Paul, in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, drew, in such deep dark lines, the sketch of Pagan wickedness, and showed how the heathen had \u201cbecome vain in their reasonings and their senseless heart was darkened,\u201d and how they were given up to passions of dishonour and reprobate uncleanness, he was not actuated by feelings of national or religious hatred, but was speaking, with holy dignity, the words of soberness and truth. The worst fact about them was that they were \u201cpast feeling\u201d; they had felt once, but now were \u201chardened in wickedness.\u201d<\/p>\n
II. THE JEWS<\/p>\n
Nor must it be supposed that this leprosy of Pagan wickedness was visible only in great Roman centres and heathen lands. There were many Gentiles, and large contingents of soldiers, in Palestine, and the wickedness of \u201cthem that knew not God\u201d was not restrained by contact with Judaism. The stories told of things done by Roman soldiers, even in Jerusalem; their close alliance, in the days of Felix, with the murderous Sicarii; the cruel slaughters of the defenceless in which they took a share; the act of gross indecency openly displayed for purposes of insult by a Roman legionary in sight of all the worshippers in the Temple at a great festival; the abominable deeds of brutalism enacted by the soldiers and people after the death of Agrippa, in the cities of C\u00e6sarea and Sebaste\u2014are incidents which sufficiently prove that the contagion of heathendom was diffused even into the Holy Land.
\nHerod the Great and his sons were open patrons of idolatry everywhere but in Jerusalem. They were not Jews at all. Herod, who came to the throne in A.D. 39, and held it for thirty-seven years, was the son of an Edomite father and an Arabian mother. He could afford to defy the shuddering hatred of the Jews so long as by flattering subservience and supple complaisance he could retain the favour of his Roman lords. These aliens built temples, in the Holy Land itself, to heathen deities and to deified Emperors. Herod the Great had even introduced into the Holy City the looseness of the theatre and the sanguinary ferocity of the gladiatorial games. Herod Philip, the tetrarch of Itur\u00e6a, ruled as a heathen among heathens. He stamped his coinage with the temple of Augustus, and the laureated effigies of Augustus and Tiberius, and he called the town of Bethsaida \u201cJulias\u201d in honour of the infamous daughter of Augustus. Besides this it was universally known, nor was there even a pretence at concealing the fact, that the darkest vices of fallen humanity were practised in the Herodian palaces; and that Herod\u2019s sons, while still mere youths, had carried back with them from Rome, where they were educated, sins which the Mosaic law punished with death. So deeply indeed had this contamination sunk that, for the sake of political dominance, Alexandra, the mother of the beautiful Mariamne and of the young High Priest Aristobulos, had, with the worst purposes, sent the likenesses of her son and daughter to the lewd Mark Antony, in order that she might secure an influence over him by means of his most shameless depravities. And this was the family which, under the protection first of the Triumvirate, and then of Augustus and Tiberius, held in their hands the autocracy of the Land of Israel!
\nPhilip, the tetrarch of Itur\u00e6a, was the only one of the Herodian family who was unstained by crimes of lust and bloodshed; and he, as we have seen, was an open patron of a decadent idolatry. It was in vain for the Rabbis to protest against the Chokmath Javanith or \u201cGreek science,\u201d and to say that, since men ought to study the Law day and night, Hellenic books could only be studied at some time which was neither day nor night. Hellenism, in its literary aspect, deeply affected the views even of Philo; in its practical influences it was felt not only throughout the Dispersion, but in large areas of Palestine itself. In the palace of Herod the Great were to be found cultivated Hellenists like Nicolas of Damascus, a man of most versatile ability, and time-serving fortune hunters of the \u201cGr\u0153culus esuriens\u201d type, and even a youth like Carus, who represented the lowest decadence of heathen immorality and shame. There were still righteous and holy men among the Jews; yet very shortly after the days of Christ, St. Paul, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, draws a very dark picture of the moral condition of his countrymen, and accuses them of imposture, impurity, and theft. He says of the Jews: \u201cThey please not God, and are contrary to all men\u201d; and adds that though they professed \u201cto discriminate the transcendent,\u201d they caused the Name of God to be blasphemed among the Gentiles. The Pharisees thought so lightly of the mass of their own people as to call them \u201caccursed.\u201d The Roman writers attach to the name of Jew such epithets as \u201cgens sceleratissima, teterrima, projectissima ad libidinem.\u201d Their own historian Josephus declares that the nation had become so wicked and depraved that the Holy City would have been swallowed up by an earthquake, or overthrown by Sodomitic lightning, had not the Romans executed judgment upon it. Divorce had become disgracefully common. Adultery was so rife that pretexts had to be devised for getting rid of the fearful ordeal of \u201cthe water of jealousy.\u201d Judaism had become a \u201csentina iniquitatis,\u201d and Jerusalem was a \u201claniena prophetarum.\u201d<\/p>\n
III. THE DISPERSION<\/p>\n
If Heathendom brought its taint into the Promised Land of the People of the Covenant, it might have been hoped that the vast majority of the Jewish nation, now known as the Galootha, or Dispersion, which was scattered throughout the civilised world, would have disseminated some higher moral ideals and some knowledge of the true God. It is to be feared that this was not the case. In Rome itself, since Pompey (B.C. 63) had brought back with him his multitude of captives, there had been a large and formidable colony of Jews in the Imperial city, where their ancient burial-places (columbaria) may still be seen. They were so numerous as at times to create real alarm, and they made themselves specially terrible to returning Provincial Governors who had treated their compatriots with severity. In Cicero\u2019s days they assembled in the Forum in such threatening crowds that in B.C. 59 he had to deliver his speech in favour of Flaccus\u2014who was obnoxious to them\u2014in a tone of voice too low for them to hear. Julius C\u00e6sar had always been their friend, and their mourning ceremonies after his murder were expressive of such unrestrained grief as to amaze the people of the city. Tiberius had multitudes of them impressed into the army, and sent to the pestilential regions of Sardinia, in accordance with a universal feeling that if they all perished by malaria it would be a very cheap loss. Claudius passed an edict which expelled them all from Rome because they were continually rioting \u201cunder the impulse of Christus.\u201d They did indeed make some proselytes, but almost exclusively among women. Josephus claims Popp\u00e6a, the wife of Nero, as a Jewish proselyte. But two circumstances prevented Jews from exercising a beneficent influence over their heathen neighbours. One was the impression they made of being the devotees of a superstition which gave them no moral superiority. Cicero calls their religion \u201ca barbarous superstition,\u201d and the elder Pliny brands them as \u201cnoted for a contempt of the gods.\u201d Coarser stories spoke of them as a nation who worshipped the head of an ass. The vile cheating practised on a Roman lady in Rome in the reign of Nero greatly deepened the hatred felt for them. They were regarded as beggars, swindlers, and sacrilegious robbers; and were believed to alienate to their private use the sums of money which were contributed as the \u201cTemple didrachm.\u201d
\nThe other impediment to their influence rose from their attitude of habitual disdain and hatred for those around them. \u201cAdversus omnes alios,\u201d says Seneca, \u201chostile odium.\u201d St. Paul, with inspired insight, lays his finger on both sources of failure. \u201cThey are contrary to all men,\u201d he says in his letter to the Thessalonians; and in the Epistle to the Romans he turns on the self-satisfied Jews with a series of crushing questions. \u201cThou therefore that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that teachest that a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou rob temples? Thou that makest thy boast in the Law, through breaking the Law dishonourest thou God?\u201d We see, then, that the Jews as a nation had shown themselves false to the high ideal which had been set before them. Their religion was nothing more than a decrepit survival. They had failed to accomplish the mission which intended them to be the moral and religious teachers of the ancient world. Josephus says (B. J. v.\u2013vi. 10) that no age had ever bred a generation more fruitful in wickedness since the beginning of the world.<\/p>\n
IV. THE SAMARITANS<\/p>\n
Within the limits of the Holy Land itself there were three closely connected yet often widely antagonistic nationalities\u2014the Jews, the Samaritans, and the Galileans.
\nThe Samaritans were a people of mongrel origin. They had sprung from the mixture of the Israelitish population with immigrants sent into the ancient territory of the kings of Israel by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, after his capture of Samaria. At first these immigrants had continued the forms of idolatry to which they had been accustomed; but on the devastation of the land by lions they asked the king of Assyria to have a priest sent to them who should teach them \u201cthe religion of the God of the land.\u201d This was done, and they learned to worship Jehovah, though their various communities mingled His worship with that of all sorts of idols, Nerjal and Ashimah, Nibhaz and Tartuk, Adrammelech and Ananmelech. The Jews looked askance upon them, and called them by the contemptuous name of \u201clion-proselytes\u201d and \u201cCuth\u00e6ans,\u201d and \u201cthat foolish people that dwell in Sichem.\u201d Gradually, however, the descendants of these settlers and the original people of the land shook off the old idolatries, accepted Mosaism, claimed the special heritage of Jacob, and built a Temple on Mount Gerizim, which they (perhaps rightly) regarded as the scene of Abraham\u2019s sacrifice of Isaac, and of the meeting of Abraham with Melchisedech, and as the scene of Jacob\u2019s vision. They referred to Deut. 27, and to the fact that at Shechem Abrabam had built his first altar to the Lord (Gen. 12:7). Since Gerizim had been chosen as \u201cthe Mount of Blessing,\u201d they regarded it\u2014and not Jerusalem\u2014as being \u201cthe place which the Lord thy God shall choose.\u201d Their religion was the earliest form of Judaism, though they accepted only the Pentateuch as their sacred book. They were monotheists; they adopted circumcision; they kept the Sabbath and the chief festivals.
\nThe antagonism between them and the Jews was specially accentuated by the building of their Temple on Gerizim in the days of Alexander the Great. It was destroyed by John Hyrcanus in B.C. 110, but the mountain was still their sacred shrine. The breach might have been healed if the Jews in the days Zerubbabel had accepted their offer of co-operation in rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem. The refusal of this offer led to centuries of embitterment. The Jews did not in general rank them above Edomites and Philistines, though in a few respects they gave them a grudging recognition. It was not till the days of the Talmud that they were slanderously charged with worshipping a dove. The treatment they received at the hands of their neighbours caused a bitter hostility, which still raged in our Lord\u2019s day. In former times they had purposely caused confusion by kindling fire signals to mislead Jews as to the time of the Easter moon. They frequently annoyed any Jewish Passover pilgrims who ventured to pass through their territory. The people of En-Gannim (Gin\u00e6a), on the Samaritan frontier, actually refused hospitality to our Lord and the Apostles on their way to His last Passover, \u201cbecause His face was as though He would go to Jerusalem.\u201d Even when Jesus, in His thirst and weariness, asked the Samaritan woman for some water from Jacob\u2019s well, she was astonished at so small a request, because \u201cJews have no dealings with Samaritans.\u201d It was probably for this reason that, on sending out the Apostles on a mission, Jesus said, \u201cInto any city of the Samaritans enter ye not.\u201d
\nThe hatred between the two peoples was raised to white heat, partly by the promise of an impostor (in A.D. 35) to lead the Samaritans to Gerizim, and there reveal to them the buried treasures of the old Temple; and partly by a detestable act of some Samaritans at the Passover. During the Feast the Temple was kept open at night, and Samaritans had entered the sacred precincts and prevented the possibility of keeping the Passover by scattering dead men\u2019s bones about the courts. The Samaritans have now dwindled down to a small community of some sixty souls, and it is probable that they may soon disappear altogether. They alone have been able yearly to kill the Paschal lamb, because they regard the summit of Gerizim as the chosen place for that sacrifice, whereas the Jews, since the destruction of Jerusalem, have only been able to observe a \u201cmemorial\u201d (\u03bc\u03bd\u03b7\u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03b5\u03c5\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03bd) and not a \u201csacrificial\u201d (\u03b8\u03c5\u03c3\u03b9\u03bc\u03cc\u03bd) Passover.
\nBut the same hatred and alienation still exists. A modern traveller relates how he saw a Jew and a Samaritan tugging at each other\u2019s beards, and thought that \u201cthere were very rough dealings between the Jews and Samaritans.\u201d They are still reviled as \u201cworshippers of the pigeon\u201d; and the Jewish traveller, Dr. Frankl, tells us that, on informing a lady in Samaria that he had been spending a morning with the Samaritans, she drew back from him with the exclamation, \u201cTake a purifying bath!\u201d
\nOur Lord utterly discountenanced this spirit of furious bigotry and mutual injuries. Although among the Jews it was the bitterest term of reproach to call a man \u201ca Samaritan\u201d\u2014as when they said to Jesus, \u201cThou art a Samaritan, and hast a demon\u201d\u2014He chose the compassion of the hated and heretical Samaritan as an example to Priests and Pharisees, and gladly accepted the hospitality of these detested aliens. This was the more remarkable because the Galileans, no less than the Jews, were on terms of bitterest animosity with them, and Tacitus tells us of \u201cpillaging upon both sides, marauding bands despatched against each other, ambuscades devised, and at times regular engagements.\u201d But Jesus habitually breathed that empyreal air of love towards all men, in which it was impossible that personal or national animosities should continue to exist.<\/p>\n
V. THE GALILEANS<\/p>\n
We must next consider what was the condition of the Galileans among whom our Lord spent the greater part of His life, and to whom the main part of His teaching was addressed.
\nGalilee (derived from Gal\u00eel, \u201ccircle,\u201d or \u201cring\u201d) was a district of some 1600 square miles, measuring about 36 miles from east to west, and about 50 miles from north to south. With its hills and valleys, rivers, lakes and plains, it had every variety of scenery. It was well watered by many streams, which took their origin from the accumulated snows of Lebanon, and even in ancient days it had been famous for its fertility, comprising as it did the tribes of Asher, Zabulon and Naphthali. It was a densely populated country, which contained, according to Josephus, 204 towns, 15 fortified places, and 3,000,000 inhabitants. It was chiefly remarkable for the mixture of populations which had gained it the name of \u201cGalilee of the Gentiles.\u201d
\nFew Jews had settled in the district after the return from Babylon, and in B.C. 164 Simon the Maccabean had removed them to Jud\u00e6a. Many of the population had, however, returned between B.C. 165\u2013135, in the reign of John Hyrcanus. Galilee was crowded with Ph\u0153nicians, Syrians, Arabs, and Greeks. Scythopolis, on the road from Jezreel to the Valley of the Jordan, was practically a Gentile city. The great roads which ran through Galilee were constantly traversed by throngs of foreign traders. Sepphoris, so near Nazareth, looked like a Roman city, and at Tiberias Herod Antipas had not scrupled to adorn the frieze of his palace with the figures of animals. The Galileans were much more cosmopolitan in their tolerance, and far less scrupulously bigoted, than the Jews. But the Syrians had infected them with superstition so that they were specially susceptible to \u201cdemoniacal possession.\u201d They were gay and quick-witted, and though they did not resist Hellenic and other influences they remained faithful Jews and ardent patriots, whose old traditional bravery and passionate idealism often hurried them into tumults. Even at Jerusalem their excitability had led to a massacre, in which Pilate had mingled their blood with their sacrifices.
\nJudas the Galilean, who came from Gamala, had headed the Zealots (A.D. 6), who were the extremest section of the Pharisees. He took for his watchword, \u201cNo Lord but Jehovah; no tax but the Temple didrachma; no friend but the Zealot.\u201d Judas, indeed, as Gamaliel tells us (Acts 5:37), perished; but not till after a furious struggle, which warned the Romans not to attempt the taxation of the country.
\nHis mantle fell on his sons, James, Simon, Menahem, and Eleazar, who still maintained internecine hostility against Rome. The family of Judas ended with the fearful deed of his grandson Eleazar at Magada, when he and all his garrison died by their own hands, set the fortress in flames, and left nothing for the Roman Conqueror but blackened ruins and half-burnt corpses. Hence, as Josephus says, a Galilean revolt of two months \u201cdisturbed Rome for seventy years, turned Palestine into a desert, destoyed the Temple, and scattered Israel over the face of the earth.\u201d
\nThe Jews ridiculed the rough patois of the Galileans, which made them mispronounce the most common letters.
\nThe Pharisees, with a strange ignorance of history, said that \u201cout of Galilee ariseth no prophet.\u201d Even Nathanael had asked Philip, \u201cCan any good thing come out of Nazareth?\u201d and at Pentecost the amazement of the assembled multitude at the Gift of Tongues was increased by the question, \u201cBehold, are not all these who speak Galileans?\u201d \u201cNazarene\u201d was a term of opprobrium even in the first century, and it continues to be the contemptuous designation for Christians in Palestine to this day. Nevertheless, though they were not without serious faults, and were highly excitable and liable to sudden changes of temperament, and though Josephus describes them as ever fond of innovation, we may say in accordance with both ancient and modern testimony, that \u201cthey were still a healthy people whose conscience would not get corrupted by Rabbinical sophistries, and among whom full-grown men were elevated far above their Jewish kinsfolk sickening with fanaticism.\u201d The Talmud itself bears witness that whereas the Jews cared more for money, the Galileans cared more for honour.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 13<\/p>\n
THE STATE OF RELIGION IN PALESTINE<\/p>\n
\u201cCorruptio optimi, pessima.\u201d<\/p>\n
THE conditions of the world in general woke, then, echoes even in Nazareth, and must have had their influence on the human mind of Jesus during the silent years. Still more would He feel and meditate over the state of things in His own province, and in those which bordered upon it. As regards questions of eternal moment, the thoughts of the people of Palestine, of the countless Jews of the Dispersion, and indirectly of all who were under the sway of Imperial Rome, were affected by the religious views of the Priests and religious teachers in Jud\u00e6a, and most of all in Jerusalem itself. And there the aspects of religious life and religious opinion, which we must now more closely scrutinise, might well awaken the deepest misgivings.
\n(i.) Of the ZEALOTS we need say but little further. They represented the extreme wing of Pharisaic fanaticism, and seem first to have acquired their distinctive name in the rising of Judas the Galilean in A.D. 6. In Jerusalem and Jud\u00e6a the Zealots were rarely able to achieve anything. The destruction of the Golden Eagle which Herod had put over the Temple Gate, by the wild scholars of the Rabbis Judas and Matthias, was punished by wholesale executions. The party became more prominent in later days. Many of them degenerated into mere assassins (sicarii) and conspirators, like the forty who bound themselves under a curse (Cherem) that they would neither eat nor drink till they had murdered Paul.
\n(ii.) Nor is it necessary to dwell long on the ESSENES, for the accounts which we have of them vary so much that they must either be inaccurate or refer to different sections of the general body. The very derivation of the name is quite uncertain. Philo seems to connect it with \u201choly ones.\u201d Others derive it from Jesse. Bishop Lightfoot connects it with chasha, \u201cto be silent\u201d; Ewald, from chazan, \u201cto be strong\u201d; Gfr\u00f6rer, from as\u00ee;, \u201chealers\u201d; Gr\u00e4tz, from sacha, \u201cto bathe.\u201d If Philo\u2019s account of them in his book, Quod omnis probus liber, be correct, they lived mainly in villages, avoided trade, disapproved of war, formed social communities of which all the members ate at a common table, and lived a life of celibacy and labour. The notion that they worshipped the sun seems to have been a calumny or a blunder. Josephus also speaks of them. He compares them with the Pythagoreans, and adds such particulars as that they avoided the use of oil, refused to take oaths, and were very scrupulous in all matters of ceremonial cleanness. He mentions Judas the Essene and Menahem as exercising gifts of prophecy, and Simon the Essene as an interpreter of dreams. Pliny the Elder describes one of their communities which was settled in the neighbourhood of Engadi and Masada.
\nThey are not even mentioned in the New Testament, or in the Mishnah, and they do not seem to have exercised any effective influence on the religion of the nation. They were exclusive and self-righteous ascetics, who abandoned the world, which only regarded them with cold and distant curiosity. Their Manich\u00e6an tenet that \u201cenjoyment is vile,\u201d is utterly unlike the teaching of Christ, who never encouraged self-macerating abstemiousness for its own sake, but \u201ccame eating and drinking.\u201d \u201cEssenism was in reality only a confession of helplessness against the actual state of things, a renunciation of all attempts to reconstruct a united Israel.\u201d
\nThe fancy that John the Baptist was an Essene is sufficiently refuted by the fact that he wore a dress of camel\u2019s hair, whereas they dressed in white linen; and that he fed on locusts, whereas they seem to have abjured animal food. We are not told that our Lord or His Apostles once came into contact with them, and nothing is more absolutely baseless than the notion that He was Himself an Essene. They were Separatists; His life was spent among the multitudes. They were ascetics; He came eating and drinking, and living in outward particulars the common life of men. They were Sabbatarians of the strictest school, whereas He set aside the rules of Pharisaic Sabbatism. They forbade the use and even the manufacture of weapons; He said, \u201cHe that hath no sword, let him sell his cloak and buy one.\u201d They were vegetarians; He was not. They would never touch food not prepared by the members of their sect; He reclined alike at the banquets of the Publican and of the Pharisee, and swept away hosts of petty Halachoth about ceremonial uncleanness. They shunned and despised women; He was followed by a band of ministering women. They washed themselves if a stranger touched them; He suffered the penitent harlot to wet His feet with her tears, and to wipe them with the hairs of her head. So far as they aimed at holiness, and believed in a universal Priesthood, they resembled the Christians, but their religious opinions and practices diverged most widely from the teachings of Christ, and would have been absolutely powerless for the regeneration of the world.
\n(iii.) THE SADDUCEES played a far greater part in the politics and destiny of Palestine that the Essenes, and exercised a wider influence over the fortunes of the people. In Jerusalem the Sadducees and Pharisees absorbed or over-shadowed all other sects.
\nThe entire religion of Israel underwent a change during the Babylonian Captivity, quite apart from any Persian influences which the Jews imbibed.
\nBefore the Captivity the people had shown an incessant tendency to relapse into idolatry. After the Captivity they abhorred idols with the whole intensity of their convictions.
\nBut the peril of idolatry was replaced by the peril of a dead ritual, and by the ruinous results of substituting an outward and mechanical worship for the service of pure hearts and holy lives.
\nFrom the days of Ezra, all the ordinances which may be summed up under the head of \u201cLevitism\u201d\u2014all the Levitic ordinances of the later Mosaic Law\u2014assumed a new and immense prominence. During the long centuries from the entrance of Israel into Canaan to the Return from the Exile, there is scarcely the slightest trace that they existed, and certainly they do not attract the least attention. The Day of Atonement, which came to be regarded as the most memorable day of the year, is not mentioned even in narratives where everything would have led us to suppose that it would have occupied a most prominent place. The name of Azazel, the evil spirit to whom the scape-goat was devoted, only occurs in Lev. 16., and is alluded to nowhere else in the whole Bible. But after the days of Ezra, \u201cordinances which were not good, and statutes whereby they could not live\u201d\u2014given to the Jews originally only \u201cbecause of the hardness of their hearts\u201d; this system of ordinances\u2014against the slavish use of which the great Prophets of Israel had spoken in tones of thunder\u2014became the main religion, and ultimately the almost mechanical fetish of the religionists of the nation. The patriotism, and the fervour for the institutions of Moses, aroused by the cruel persecutions and apostatising Hellenism of some of the Priests, created the party of the Chasidim, or \u201cthe Pious.\u201d The party which rejected legal stringency gradually acquired the name of Sadducees. The origin of the name is uncertain. The Fathers\u2014as Epiphanius and St. Jerome\u2014connected it with Tsadd\u00eek\u00eem, \u201cthe righteous,\u201d but the form of the name perhaps indicates a connection with Tsadduk, or Zadok. The sons of Zadok formed one of the priestly families, and the name may have been immediately derived from Zadok, the High Priest in the days of David (Ezek. 40:46; 1 Chr. 12:28; Ex. 2:2); or from Zadok, the pupil of Antigonus of Socho, and successor of Simeon the Just. Antigonus is said to have left behind him the rule that \u201cwe ought not to do righteousness for the sake of reward.\u201d As the notion that salvation must be earned by legal scrupulosities was rooted in the system of the Pharisees, the opposition to this view became the mark of Sadducees. The Chasidim developed into the Perushim (Separatists), or Pharisees; and the Sadducees, as representing the Priests, rejected more and more the authority of the Pharisaic Rabbis. They would only accept the Written Law, and ignored \u201cthe traditions of the Elders\u201d with which it was overlaid.
\nBut besides the endless disputes which arose between the two parties about the interpretation of Levitic rules, there were other lines of demarcation. The Sadducees were the more aristocratic party, and also the more worldly and cosmopolitan. Almost all the leading Priests were Sadducees, and this sacerdotal party, contenting itself with sacrificial functions, was always inclined to temporise. Even in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah the Priests had shown a tendency to be at ease amid their privileges and emoluments, to adopt motives of worldly policy, and to relax the most binding ordinances. Thus Eliashib the Priest, in direct defiance of the Mosaic Law (Deut. 23:3, 4), had roused the righteous indignation of Nehemiah by clearing out a chamber in the Temple which had been used for storing tithes and frankincense, and assigning it to the use of Tobiah the Ammonite. In later days the Priests Manasseh and Onias had proved themselves traitors to the nation and its religion in their dealings with the Seleucid\u00e6, and Joshua had openly assumed the heathen name of Jason.
\nThe Asmon\u00e6an Priest-Prince Alexander Jann\u00e6us, disgusted with the arrogance, insolence, and dishonesty of the Pharisaic leader, Simeon ben Shetach, had joined the Sadducees. He showed his contempt for Pharisaic tradition at the Feast of Tabernacles, by pouring out the libation on the ground, and not on the altar. The people were always with the Pharisees, and in their fury at this neglect of customary ritual, they pelted Jann\u00e6us with the citrons and branches (lulabim) which they carried in their hands. This resulted in a tumult and a massacre, but the Priest-Prince became so conscious of the power of the Pharisees that on his deathbed he ordered his widow to reconcile herself with them.
\nIn the days of Herod the Great, Sudduceeism assumed its fullest dimensions, for then the priests could reckon on the aid of Roman and Idum\u00e6an despotism. Herod had summoned to the High Priesthood the obscure Ananeel, of Babylon. After this the High Priesthood, as we shall see hereafter, became the coveted appanage of a few worldly families\u2014the House of Annas, the Boethusim, the Kamhits, and others. These Priests, while they professed the utmost strictness about sacrificial minuti\u00e6, had the worst reputation among the people for greed, tyranny, and arrogance, and denied such essential elements of religion as the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, the future Messianic kingdom, the world of angels and spirits, and even (it is said) the over-ruling Providence of God in the affairs of men. The Sadducees remained to the last the aristocratic and exclusive party, luxurious time-servers, insouciant sceptics, noted at once for cruelty and Epicureanism. Disliked by the nation, and strong only by their alliance with the ruling powers, they had to allow the Pharisees to dominate in the Sanhedrin. \u201cThe eloquence of the Synagogue,\u201d says Hausrath, \u201chad won the victory over the splendour of the Temple, but only to dig a pit for the State, in which the Temple and School were together buried.\u201d Whatever the Sadducees may have been in their origin, they had, before the days of our Lord, degenerated into \u201ctypical opportunists,\u201d bent above all things on holding fast their own rights, privileges, and immunities.
\n(iv.) THE HERODIANS need not occupy much of our attention. They are only mentioned on two occasions in the Gospels (Mark. 3:6, 12:13; Matt. 22:16). Josephus defines them generally as \u201cthe partisans of Herod\u201d (\u03bf\u1f31 \u03c4\u1f70 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u1f29\u03c1\u03ce\u03b4\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c6\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6\u03bd\u03c4\u03b5\u03c2), and it is evident that they were a political rather than a religious party. It is true that Tertullian says that they tried to represent Herod the Great as a sort of political Messiah, and they certainly claimed the adherence of so prominent an Essene as Menahem (Manaen), whose son was a foster-brother of Herod. But though they recognised in Jesus an enemy to their worldly views, and were ready to plot with Pharisees and Sadducees, and attempted to entangle Him by their insidious questions as to the lawfulness of paying tribute-money to C\u00e6sar, they played no prominent part among the religious sects of Palestine.
\n(v.) We shall recur to the subject of the distinctive views of the PHARISEES when we have to show our Lord\u2019s dealings with them and their system.
\nThe Perushim rose into prominence in those times of priestly Hellenising which were known as the \u201cdays of the mingling\u201d; and the word Perishooth, or \u201cseparatism,\u201d represents the \u1f00\u03bc\u03b9\u03be\u03af\u03b1 of legalised and intentional unsociability (2 Macc. 14:3, 38). In the days of Christ they had risen into marked prominence, and are said to have numbered 6000 adherents of their sect. Their main characteristic was devotion to the Oral Law, with its masses of inferential tradition, and a slavish reverence for the Lawyers, Scribes, and Rabbis, to whose misplaced and microscopic ingenuity the development of this system was due. The Talmud is, of course, a late and most untrustworthy authority. It is utterly unhistoric, and full of confusions, anachronisms, and sheer inventions; yet to a certain extent it represents the continuity of older traditions. The Talmudists leave a false impression when they represent the Zougoth, or \u201cCouples\u201d\u2014that is, the two leading teachers of the Schools in successive generations\u2014as having been the Presidents (the Nasi and the Ab-beth-Din) of the Sanhedrin\u2014for the Nasi was always the High Priest. The leading Rabbis merely held positions in the non-political Sanhedrin of the Schools. Those of them who were specially and, so to speak, professionally, devoted to the study of the Law, were called \u201cLawyers,\u201d i. e., \u201cTeachers of the Law,\u201d or \u201cScribes,\u201d of whom the Son of Sirach says, \u201cWhere subtle parables are, he will be there also. He will seek out the hidden meaning of similitudes, and be conversant in the dark sayings of parables.\u201d
\nThere were many particulars in which Pharisaism was nearer to Christianity than Sadduceeism. The Pharisees believed in the coming of the Messianic Kingdom, though they mistook its nature. They believed in the immortality of the soul, and the overruling Providence of God. But the more they sank into petty ceremonialism\u2014the more extravagantly they valued mere external acts\u2014the more radically did they degrade the conception of the true nature of God. Their religionism led to a hypocrisy all the deeper because it was half unconscious. What shall we think of the Talmudic representation of God, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, as a kind of magnified Rabbi, who repeats the Sh\u2019ma to Himself daily; wears phylacteries on the wrist and forehead; occupies Himself three hours every day in studying His own law; has disputes with the Angels about legal minuti\u00e6; and finally summons a Rabbi to settle the difference? Religion must always suffer in the worst degree when the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who filleth Infinitude and Eternity, is dwarfed into a small-minded precisionist, to be pleased and pacified by prostrations, genuflexions, ablutions, and infinitestimal minuti\u00e6, as though these paltry externals could be substitutes for that inward holiness which alone He requires.
\nIt is not too much to say that Pharisaism sank more and more into a system which, while it travestied the burdensome externalities of developed Levitism, ignored all that was noblest and most spiritual in the whole teaching of the Old Testament Scriptures. It nullified and superseded the plainest injunctions of Moses by casuistic Halachoth and tricky Erubhin; and took into no real account the magnificent and unbroken series of utterances which, in book after book of Scripture, laid it down with unmistakable plainness that such things are to true religion but as the small dust of the balance. With deplorable self-deceit the Pharisees aborbed themselves in numbering the threads of tassels, and tithing the stalks of potherbs, while for such cheap things they neglected the weightier matters of the Law\u2014Justice, Mercy, and Truth. That was why they drew down upon themselves \u201cthe sevenfold flash of Christ\u2019s terrible invective.\u201d Utterly absorbed in making their \u201chedge round the Law,\u201d they emptied the Law itself\u2014especially its most pure and spiritual elements\u2014of all the deepest significance. Paralysed by self-induced hypocrisy they showed far less real sincerity than the blindest of Pagan devotees, and while they posed as religious teachers, they poisoned religion at its fountain-head, made it petty and unreal, and precipitated the catastrophe which overwhelmed themselves and the nation which they had misled.
\nThe Prophets of the Old Testament furnished a direct antithesis to the current Pharisaism of the Gospel era; their declarations of the inmost will of God are valid for all time, and constitute the final distinctions between conceited will-worship and that religion which is pure and undefiled before God and the Father.
\nWhat said the mighty MOSES?
\n\u201cAnd now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him?\u201d
\nWhat said the holy SAMUEL?
\n\u201cHath the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.\u201d
\nWhat said KING SOLOMON?
\n\u201cTo do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.\u201d
\nWhat said the inspired gatherer of sycamore leaves\u2014the Prophet AMOS?
\n\u201cI hate, I despise your feast-days, and I will not dwell in your solemn assemblies \u2026 But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.\u201d
\nWhat said the sad-hearted HOSHEA, in words which were the favourite quotation of our Lord?
\n\u201cI desired mercy and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings.\u201d
\nWhat said the burning ISAIAH, again and again, in words which were like thunder?
\n\u201cTo what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me, saith the Lord \u2026 Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto Me. Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well.\u201d
\nWhat said the royal DAVID in his broken-hearted penitence?
\n\u201cThou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; Thou delightest not in burnt-offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.\u201d
\nWhat said the sweet PSALMISTS of Israel?
\n\u201cLord, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in Thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.\u201d
\n\u201cWho shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul to vanity nor sworn to deceive his neighbour. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.\u201d
\nWhat said JEREMIAH, in language startling in its emphasis?
\n\u201cI spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices; but this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey My voice, and I will be your God.\u201d
\nWhat said EZEKIEL?
\n\u201cThey sit before thee as My people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them. For with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness.\u201d
\nWhat said the eloquent MICAH?
\n\u201cWherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the Most High God? Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?\u201d
\nWhat said HABAKKUK?
\n\u201cThe just shall live by faith,\u201d or \u201cin his faithfulness.\u201d
\nWhat said ZECHARIAH in answer to inquiries about fasting?
\n\u201cExecute true judgment, and show mercy and compassion every man to his brother.\u201d \u201cThese are the things that ye shall do. Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour. And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts.\u201d
\nThe teaching of the whole New Testament as to the nature of true religion, and as to what God desires, is in closest accordance with these utterances of the Prophets. This must be patent to every one who has not blinded and benumbed his own soul by the super-exaltation of traditional nothings. Suffice it to point to the explicit words of Christ Himself. When the young man asked Him, \u201cWhat must I do to be saved?\u201d he received the answer, \u2018If thou wouldst enter into the kingdom of heaven, keep the commandments.\u201d When the Scribe, tempting Him, asked, \u201cWhich is the great commandment of the Law?\u201d He said that on the two commandments, \u201cLove God with all thy heart,\u201d and \u201cLove thy neighbour as thyself,\u201d hang all the Law, and the Prophets.\u201d
\nTo quote but two of His special utterances, he said:
\n\u201cNot every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.\u201d
\nAnd He said:
\n\u201cWhatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them: for this is the Law and the Prophets.\u201d
\nContrast these with some of the Pharisaic utterances in the Talmud, which constantly confound an easy, useless, and self-deceiving legalism with the holiness which God requires.
\nThe Mosaic rule about wearing fringes (Num. 15:38) (Tsitsith, \u03ba\u03c1\u03ac\u03c3\u03c0\u03b5\u03b4\u03b1, Matt. 9:20), at the \u201cwings,\u201d i. e., corners of garments, and to put on them a thread of blue, is probably of Egyptian origin; and there was nothing either burdensome or unreasonable about it, since the white wool and blue threads might stand as symbols of innocence and heaven. But to this the Scribes had added a mountainous mass of oral pedantries. The fringe was to be made of four threads of white wool, of which one was to be wound round the others first 7 times with a double knot, then 8 times with a double knot, then 11 times with a double knot, then 13 times with a double knot; because 7 + 8 + 11 = 26, the numerical value of the letters of Jehovah (\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d4), and 13 is the numerical value of Achad, \u201cone,\u201d so that the number of windings represents the words \u201cJehovah is one.\u201d
\nThe great Rashi said, \u201cThe precept concerning fringes is as weighty as all the other precepts put together; for it is written (Num. 15:39), \u2018And remember all the commandments of the Lord.\u2019 \u201d Now numerically (by what the Rabbis called Gematria) the word fringes (Tsitsith) = 600; and this with 8 threads and 5 knots makes 613. And Rabbi Samlai had said that Moses gave 613 commandments, namely, 365 negative (Gezaroth), as many as the days of the year, and 248 positive (Tekanoth), as many as the members of the human body = 613; and this he proved by saying that Thorah, \u201cLaw,\u201d by Gematria = 611; which with \u201cI am,\u201d and \u201cThou shalt have no other\u201d = 613.
\nAgain, Rashi said that \u201che who observes the precepts about fringes shall have 2800 slaves to wait on him\u201d: for, in Zech. 8:23, we are told that ten men of all nations shall take hold of the skirt of a Jew, and as there are seventy nations, and four corners of a garment, 70 \u00d7 10 \u00d7 4 = 2800.
\nIn the same Talmudic treatise we are also told that Rabbi Joseph ben Rabba declared that \u201cthe law about fringes\u201d was the one which should be most strongly inculcated, and that his father Rabba having once accidentally trodden on his fringe and torn it while he was standing on a ladder, stayed where he was, and would not move till it was mended.
\nOur Lord, when He warned the people and His disciples against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, said not only that \u201cthey enlarge the border of their garments\u201d (which is an allusion to the \u201cfringes\u201d), but also that \u201cthey make broad their phylacteries,\u201d Tephill\u00een.
\nIt is at least doubtful whether Moses ever intended these Tephill\u00een to be worn. He said indeed, \u201cIt [the institution of the Passover] shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes\u201d; and \u201cIt shall be for a token upon thine hand, and for frontlets between thine eyes.\u201d There is the strongest probability that the words were only metaphorical, just as in Prov. 3:3, \u201cBind them on thy neck; write them on the tablet of thine heart.\u201d For there is no trace of any early use of these prayer-boxes, and the passages inscribed on the vellum are by no means the most memorable that might have been selected. On these grounds the sensible Karaites rejected the use of them, and St. Jerome rightly explains the passages to mean that the Jews should meditate constantly on these commands. The Scribes and Pharisees, however, attached the most exaggerated importance to the use of them, and made them as showily broad as they could. The arm-phylacteries (Tephill\u00een shel rosh) were bound on the left arm, so as to be near the heart; and the head-phylacteries (Tephill\u00een shel rosh) were bound between the eyes. The leather strips by which they were tied were regarded as symbols of \u201cthe self-fettering of the Divine commands.\u201d On the phylactery of the forehead the four passages were to be written on four strips, and each placed in a separate compartment of the calfskin receptacle, and each was to be tied round with well-washed hair from the tail of a calf, with the letter Shin, \u05e9\u05c1, with three prongs on the right side (for Shaddai, Almighty), and with four prongs on the left side. In the \u201carm-phylactery\u201d the four passages were to be written on a single slip of parchment in four columns of seven lines each, and the thong was to be passed round the arm three times for \u05e9\u05c1, and then to have seven more twists. Rabbi Simon Hassida deduced from Ex. 33:23 that God had revealed to Moses the way to make the knot of the phylacteries, and also that the Eternal Himself wears \u201cphylacteries.\u201d So vast was the importance attached to these fetishes that the Rabbis said, \u201cHe who has Tephill\u00een on his arm, and Tsitsith on his garment, and Mezuzoth on his door, has every possible guarantee that he will not sin.\u201d Yet they said that, since some of the words of the Law were \u201clight\u201d and some \u201cheavy,\u201d it was venial to deny that phylacteries had ever been enjoined; but since all the words of the Scribes were \u201cheavy,\u201d i. e., of consummate importance, it was a capital offence to say that the division of the prayer-box should have five compartments and not four! Salvation by works, and by such paltry nothings as these, was the direct contradiction of the righteousness which Jesus taught. Thus we may say of the Pharisees that their fear towards God was taught by the precepts of men.
\n\u201cMankind,\u201d said Bishop Butler, \u201care for placing the stress of their religion anywhere rather than upon virtue.\u201d Nevertheless in virtue\u2014or to use the higher and better words, \u201cin righteousness and true holiness\u201d\u2014all that is essential in true religion is comprised. The vast error both of Sadducees and Pharisees was that they laid more stress on rules which had degenerated into external rites and petty puerilities than on temperance, chastity, and soberness. And that was why Christ addressed them as \u201cYe hypocrites!\u201d and quoted against them the words of the Evangelical Prophet: \u201cThis people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth and honoureth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me. But in vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.\u201d<\/p>\n
In these pages we have been able to furnish but the slightest glimpse of the religious condition of the Jews in the time of our Lord, as represented by their leading parties. But in the Talmud itself we find the elements of their emphatic condemnation. The people, while they continued to pay conventional honour to the Priests, deeply suspected them of betraying the national interests for their own aggrandisement, and gave their main confidence to the Pharisees. On the great Day of Atonement, on one occasion, the High Priest left the Temple followed by a crowd of worshippers, just after he had pronounced the promises of God\u2019s pardon; but on seeing the Pharisaic \u201ccouple\u201d of the day, Shemaiah and Abtalion, the crowd immediately deserted the High Priest to give an escort to the Rabbis. \u201cGreeting to the men of the people!\u201d said the sarcastic and indignant Pontiff. \u201cGreeting,\u201d answered the Rabbis, \u201cto the men of the people who do the works of Aaron, not to the sons of Aaron who do not resemble Aaron.\u201d
\nThus, of the Sadducean families of Priests in the days of the Herods we read:
\n\u201cWoe to the family of Boethos! woe to their spears!\u201d
\n\u201cWoe to the family of Hanan (Annas)! woe to their serpent-hissings!\u201d
\n\u201cWoe to the family of Kanthera! woe to their pens!\u201d
\n\u201cWoe to the family of Ishmael ben Phabi! woe to their fists!\u201d
\n\u201cThey themselves are High Priests. Their sons are the treasurers; their sons-in-law captains of the Temple; and their servants smite the people with their rods.\u201d
\nIn another passage we read that \u201cthe threshold of the Sanctuary uttered four cries, \u2018Depart hence, ye descendants of Eli; you defile the Temple of Jehovah!\u2019
\n\u201c \u2018Depart hence, Issachar of Kephar Barkai, who only carest for thyself, and profanest the victims consecrated to heaven\u2014[for he wore silk gloves when he sacrificed!]
\n\u201c \u2018Open yourselves wide, ye portals! let Ishmael ben Phabi enter, the disciple of Pinekai.
\n\u201c \u2018Open yourselves wide, ye gates! let Johanan ben Nebedai enter, the disciple of gluttons, that he may gorge himself on the victims!\u2019 \u201d
\nAnd of the Pharisees, we read:
\nThere are eight sects of Pharisees, viz., these:
\n1. The shoulder Pharisees, i. e., he who, as it were, shoulders his good works, to be seen of men.
\n2. The time-gaining Pharisee, he who says, \u201cWait a little while; let me first perform this or that good work.\u201d
\n3. The compounding Pharisee, he who says, \u201cMay my few sins be deducted from my many virtues, and so atoned for.\u201d
\n4. The mortar Pharisee (medorkia), who so bends his back with his eyes on the ground, as to look like an inverted mortar.
\nThis seems to be the same as the tumbling Pharisee, who is so humble that he will not lift his feet from the ground; and the hump-backed Pharisee who walked as though his shoulders bore the whole weight of the Law.
\n5. The tell-me-another-duty-to-do-and-I-will-do-it Pharisee.
\n6. The Shechemite Pharisee, who is a Pharisee only for reward. (Com. Gen. 34:19.)
\n7. The timid Pharisee, who is a Pharisee only from dread of Punishment.
\nTo which Rabbi Nathan adds:
\n8. The born Pharisee.
\nAnd some substituted for one of these classes the bleeding Pharisee (kinai), who shuts his eyes and knocks his face against walls, lest he should happen to see a woman.
\nIn their unbounded self-exaltation, and undisguised contempt for all except their own set, they thrust themselves into the place of God, and identified their small decisions with the very voice of the Almighty. They fostered the \u201cenormous delusion\u201d that sensuous and finical scrupulosities constituted an acceptable service, and could suspend the vengeance of God, which they imagined as ever ready to burst upon those who neglected and despised their \u201ccommandments of men.\u201d Punctilious trifles were substituted for holy lives, and immorality was concealed under a cloak \u201cdoubly-lined with the fox-fur of hypocrisy.\u201d
\nDr. Emmanuel Deutsch says that the Talmud inveighs even more bitterly and caustically than the New Testament against what it calls \u201cthe plague of Pharisaism\u201d\u2014\u201cthe dyed ones who do evil deeds and claim godly recompense\u201d; \u201cthey who preach beautifully, but do not act beautifully.\u201d Parodying their exaggerated logical arrangements, their scrupulous divisions and sub-divisions, the Talmud, among its classes of unworthy pretenders, says that the real and only Pharisee is he who doeth the will of his Father in heaven because he loves Him. But the charge of hypocrisy against the Pharisees was not new in the days of Christ. Even Alexander Jann\u00e6us had warned his wife against \u201cpainted Pharisees, who do the deeds of Zimri and look for the reward of Phinehas.\u201d
\nYet there must be in the human mind an instinctive tendency to substitute outward observance for heart-religion, and to make exaggerated legalism usurp the place of true holiness; for Pharisaism, from its incipient stage in the days of the Scribes of the Great Synagogue till the time when it was codified in the Mishnah, covered a space of six centuries; and, in the grotesque developments of Talmudism, it lasted on, in greater or less degree, down to modern times. The explanation of the tendency is that externalism is easy, and generates a self-satisfaction which enables men to pose as \u201creligious,\u201d while they despise others. Nothing is more easy than to live with boundless self-complacency in an elaborate round of functions dictated by some empty Directorium of useless and obsolete tradition: but, as even a heathen could say, it is difficult\u2014difficult and not so easy as it seems\u2014to be good and not bad.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 14<\/p>\n
THE MESSIANIC HOPE<\/p>\n
\u201cProclaim glad tidings in Jerusalem, for God hath had mercy upon Israel in her visitation. Set thyself, O Jerusalem, upon a high place, and behold thy sons and thy daughters from the morning unto the evening, brought together for ever by the Lord.\u201d\u2014Ps. Salom 11.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the prophets prophesied of nothing else than of the days of the Messiah.\u201d\u2014Bab. Berachoth, f. 34, 2.<\/p>\n
SUCH was the condition of the world and of religion as Jesus heard of it, and saw it, and meditated upon it, while in holy and obscure poverty He toiled in the shop of the village carpenter. But He was also profoundly conscious of the deep unrest, of the passionate longing for deliverance, which moved the inmost hearts of thousands, and caused so many of the best and holiest to live in constant and yearning hope for \u201cthe redemption of Jerusalem\u201d and \u201cthe consolation of Israel.\u201d
\nThere are epochs in the world\u2019s history when men feel a depressing sense of uncertainty and misery which tends to deepen into despair. At such times they yearn with the whole strength of their being for some fresh communication of the mind and will of God. The lamp of revelation has a tendency to burn dim as the ages advance; not only because it remains untrimmed, but also because the requirements of the ages differ, and that which sufficed the needs of one millennium loses much of its force in another. For this reason God has renewed again and again His communications with mankind. From the first dim promise of deliverance to the fallen progenitors of the human race\u2014from the days of Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and Jacob, and Moses, again and again has<\/p>\n
\u201cGod, stooping, showed sufficient of His light
\nFor those i\u2019 the dark to walk by.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then came the succession of Prophets, from Samuel to Amos, and Isaiah to Malachi. After five centuries of Scribism, not unenlightened by the appearance of a few noble personalities like Judas the Maccabee and Simon the Just, and by a few great writers like the Son of Sirach, we come down to the Messianic era. The olden prophets had spoken of a coming Deliverer\u2014a Davidic King, who should give victory, peace, and prosperity to His people; or of a Servant of Jehovah, who should bear the sins of many. The Book of Daniel\u2014the favourite book of the days of Christ\u2014and various Apocryphal books, of more recent date, pointed to the establishment of an everlasting kingdom, and looked for a return of Elijah, or one of the Prophets, to prepare the way of its Founder. It was a current belief that Jeremiah might re-appear to restore to the nation the five missing glories of the Temple, some of which he was supposed to have hidden. But in parts of the Book of Enoch (B.C. 70), and the Sibylline Prophecies, and in the Psalms of Solomon (B.C. 70\u201340), the belief in the Advent of a Davidic King had been revived, though it is not found in the Assumption of Moses or the Book of Jubilees. The Psalms of Solomon were specially full of a passionate conviction that the day was at hand when the coming Messiah should cleanse Jerusalem with His sanctification, even as it was at the first, so that nations would come from the ends of the earth to behold its glory. \u201cNo evil will prevail among them in those days, for all shall be holy, and their King is Christ the Lord.\u201d The great Alexandrian thinker, Philo, though he moved for the most part in a region of chill philosophical abstractions, yet sometimes dwells on the coming glory of Messianic days. Josephus, though intensely cautious lest he should offend his Roman patrons, shows that he, too, shared to some extent in the hopes of his people. Since the days of Queen Alexandra, many like Simeon and Joseph of Arimath\u00e6a had been \u201cwaiting for the Consolation of Israel\u201d and for the Kingdom of God; so that at the coming of the Baptist the people were in expectation, \u201cand many reasoned in their hearts of John whether haply he were the Christ.\u201d The generality of the expectation explains the daring violence of the Pharisaic youths who, at the instigation of Matthias and Judas, destroyed the golden eagle which Herod had placed over the entrance-gate of his new Temple. It also accounts for the multitude of followers who gathered round Simon, Athronges, and Judas of Galilee, and even such a miserable impostor as Theudas. The multitude clung with convulsive hope or despairing frenzy to almost anyone who seemed to promise any form or possibility of emancipation\u2014to Hyrcanus; to the beautiful young High Priest Aristobulus; to the impostor Alexander; to Agrippa I.;\u2014some Jews even regarded Herod the Great as a Divinely appointed Deliverer; while Josephus looked, or professed to look, to Vespasian and the power of Rome as a source of hope for the future. It was not until after the final overthrow of Bar Cochba, \u201cthe Son of a Star\u201d (A.D. 135), that such movements became impossible for ever. With the enthusiastic Pharisee, Rabbi Akiba, ended the Rabbinic Schools, which expected for Israel a temporal deliverance.
\nThe older Messianic Hope had mainly concerned itself with the future glories of Israel; the later form of Messianic Expectation began to regard the Messiah as the Deliverer of the whole world, and the Comforter of individual miseries. It also enriched and enlarged the horizon of mortal life by the doctrine of a future Resurrection\u2014in which the Pharisees believed, though it was rejected by the Priests and Sadducees. The Olam Habbah, or \u201cfuture \u00e6on,\u201d was to be in every respect more splendid and happy than the Olam Hazzeh, or \u201cpresent \u00e6on.\u201d But the happy age was to be preceded by days of immense tribulation, of which the only alleviation lay in the knowledge that they were \u201cthe birth-throes\u201d (\u1f60\u03b4\u1fd6\u03bd\u03b5\u03c2: Matt. 24:8; Mark 13:8; B. J. vi. 5, 4), the Chebly Hammeshiach, or travail-pangs of the Messiah (Hos. 13:13).
\nSuch expectations had even been disseminated in the heathen world. They have left their traces on the pages of Horace and of Virgil. \u201cIn the whole East,\u201d says Suetonius, \u201chad prevailed an ancient and fixed opinion, that, at this time, it was a decree of destiny that some who came from Jud\u00e6a would become masters of the whole world. Events subsequently proved that such a prophecy had some reference to a Roman Emperor; but the Jews, forcing its interpretation to themselves, rose in rebellion.\u201d Josephus was probably the first who gave this interpretation to the prophecy. Tacitus, like Suetonius, attributes the revolt of the Jews to their perverted application to themselves of a prediction which referred to the Roman Conquerors. The rumoured appearance of the Ph\u0153nix in Egypt, after the lapse of many centuries, excited the wildest surmise in an age which felt that the mass of mankind had sunk into a condition too horrible for continuance, and which had been affrighted by endless misfortunes and omens. Men had also been deeply moved by the story of the cry, \u201cGreat Pan is dead!\u201d which had been heard by the sailors in the reign of Tiberius, and had evoked a burst of multitudinous wailing. Before things had assumed their worst aspect, Virgil, in his vaticination of the future glories of the son of Asinius Pollio, had sung:<\/p>\n
\u201cAspice convexo nutantem pondere mundum
\nTerr\u00e6que tractusque maris, c\u0153lumque profundum,
\nAdspice venturo l\u00e6tantur ut omnia s\u00e6clo!\u201d<\/p>\n
The restless belief as to some overwhelmingly important world-crisis, which would have its origin in Eastern lands, affected even the most godless of Roman Emperors. It was the passionate desire of Caius Caligula to set up the gilded colossus of himself in the Temple of Jerusalem. As we have seen, Popp\u00e6a, the wife of Nero, was, according to Josephus, a Jewish proselyte; and Nero himself had been taught, perhaps by Jews, to look to the East, and even to Jerusalem, as the seat of a future dominion.
\nIt was not strange that, amid the deep and ever-deepening darkness, men should be expectant of a coming Dawn. It is, however, important to observe that the True Messiah was so little the natural evolution of current Messianic expectations that, coming neither as a King nor as a Victor, nor as a temporal Emancipator of His people, nor as a mere man at all, but as a Divine and crucified Nazarene, He reversed and violated all the most cherished expectations of His land and age. He was not \u201ca more victorious Joshua, a more magnificent Herod, a wider-reaching C\u00e6sar, a wiser Moses, a holier Abraham.\u201d He was no burning Isaiah, no vengeful Elijah, no learned Hillel, or passionate Akiba\u2014no ringleader of rising multitudes, like Judas the Gaulonite, or Bar Cochba.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came, but not in regal splendour drest\u2014
\nThe haughty diadem, the Tyrian vest;
\nNot armed in flame all glorious from afar,
\nOf hosts the Captain, and the Lord of war\u201d;<\/p>\n
but He came as \u201cthe Carpenter,\u201d as the meek and lowly, as the wearer of the crown of thorns; and He established His claim as Universal Victor by means of a few obscure and timid followers, after He had perished amid the banded obloquies of His nation and of His age.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 15<\/p>\n
JOHN THE BAPTIST<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is Elijah which was for to come.\u201d\u2014Matt. 11:14.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn, than which man a sadder and a greater
\nNot till this day had been of woman born;
\nJohn, like some iron peak by the Creator
\nFired with the red glow of the rushing morn.\u201d
\n\u2014F. MYERS.<\/p>\n
WHEN the hour has struck\u2014when \u201cthe shadow has crept to the appointed line on the dial-plate of destiny\u201d\u2014God calls forth the man.
\nThe chief need of the world is the death-defying courage of true men. The only power which can reclaim the world in ages of sloth, decadence, and self-deceiving religionism is the power of insight and burning sincerity which He inspires into the hearts of saints and Prophets. No prayer is more constantly needed than that God would grant to His Church a succession of men,\u2014not of incarnate conventionalities, who think that the truth will perish with them, or that it has been frozen for ever in channels of stagnant function. Through such channels the living water flows no longer. The cry which springs spontaneously from our hearts is\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cGod give us men! A time like this demands
\nGreat hearts, strong minds, true faith, and willing hands;
\nMen whom the lust of office does not kill,
\nMen whom the spoils of office cannot buy,
\nMen who possess convictions and a will,
\nMen who have honour, men who dare not lie.\u201d<\/p>\n
This has been felt even in heathen lands. We know how Diogenes went through the streets of Athens with a lantern, seeking for a man; and when some of the crowd came to him he beat them away with the contemptuous exclamation, \u201cI want men; ye are \u03c3\u03ba\u03cd\u03b2\u03b1\u03bb\u03b1.\u201d Much more has it been felt in Churches which have stagnated into pretence and unreality under the ruinous influences of priestly usurpation. \u201cRun ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,\u201d said Jeremiah, \u201cand see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that doeth justly and seeketh faithfulness, and I will pardon her.\u201d But he could find no such man. There were many who said, \u201cThe Lord liveth,\u201d but they swore falsely, and made their faces harder than a rock even against chastisement. And if these were mainly the poor and foolish, the great men and leaders were even worse. They had altogether broken the yoke and burst the bands. The nation as a nation continued to trust in dead formul\u00e6 which, so used, had dwindled into lying words. \u201cIgnorant of God\u2019s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.\u201d Convinced that they were themselves righteous, and despising others, they had degraded God into the leader of a sect, and in their opinionated infallibility furiously condemned and did their utmost to suppress, by mean slanders and by open or subterranean violence, those who had some glimpses of the true light. Like the snail, which, as the Hindoo proverb says, \u201csees nothing but its own shell, and thinks it the grandest place in the universe,\u201d so they saw nothing beyond the pettinesses which they glorified as though they were the essence of holy service.
\nOut of the heart of this spiritual stagnancy which had lost sight of righteousness in ritualism, and fancied that a mass of meaningless minuti\u00e6 were essential things; out of the very heart of this dead and half-putrescent system, which was abundantly breeding its \u201coffspring of vipers\u201d\u2014God called a MAN. He was by birth a priest, the son of a priest of the order of Abijah, and was therefore in a position to observe at first hand the moral decay of a sacerdotalism which within was full of extortion and excess. The mission of John expressed a revolt against Levitism, and a republication\u2014as from a new Sinai\u2014of the eternal moral law. It was a declaration that religion means \u201ca good mind and a good life,\u201d and that when it ceases to mean this, it means worse than nothing. It was a preaching of the old, simple, obliterated truth that \u201cthe righteous Lord loveth righteousness.\u201d John came, as our Lord said, \u201cin the way of righteousness.\u201d His mission was a return to the mighty moral teaching of those old prophets who were the glory of Hebraism. John the Baptist did not so much as allude to one of the myriad rules of Pharisaism. Priest and Nazarite though he was, he did not once refer to the ceremonial law to which the current orthodoxy made the Prophets a mere appendage. But he re-echoed, in tones of thunder, the burning messages of the Prophets themselves, and especially of Isaiah. The essence of his teaching was to be found in the messages of \u201cthe Evangelical Prophet,\u201d of Amos, Micah, Jeremiah, and Hoshea.
\nHis aspect emphasised his message. His preached not in Temple or synagogue, but among the wild rocks of \u201cthe appalling desolation\u201d (Jeshimon), in the Valley of the Dead Sea, \u201cthe haunt of thirst, where the dragons and demons howl.\u201d He wore no priestly vestments, but a shaggy skin. His girdle was a strip of untanned leather\u2014not a girdle of fine linen embroidered with threads of gold and silver, like those worn by such as lived in kings\u2019 houses. His food was such as nature supplied. It consisted of the wild honey which exudes from the leaves of tropical plants, or is left by the bees in the clefts of the rocks; and of the locusts, which the south wind swept from Arabia, and scattered among the valleys of the Dead Sea, but which few could eat without disgust. John poured open scorn on all luxury. He came like a new Elijah, in all the uncompromising sternness of his prototype. He did not preach smooth things and prophesy deceits, but told of One whose fan was in His hand, who should thoroughly purge His floor, and burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. This constituted the terribly original feature of his message. \u201cOf all the Messianic passages which we find written in Sibyls, Apocalypses, and Jubilees, not one has struck this tone, which fell like rolling thunder on the ears of the people.\u201d
\nHis preaching was avowedly preparative\u2014it was that of a Forerunner. He told the deputation of Priests and Levites which came to him from Jerusalem that he was not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the expected Prophet, but that he was \u201cthe Voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the Prophet Isaiah.\u201d John baptised with water only, as a preparation for Him who already stood among them, though they knew Him not, who should baptise them with the Holy Ghost and with fire, but who would not be finally manifested except after a time of judgment\u2014\u201cthe great and terrible day of the Lord.\u201d
\nJohn\u2019s preaching aimed at religious awakenment. The priests were indolently absorbed in \u201csacrificing and celebrating,\u201d and were sunk in greed, routine, and ambitious worldliness. The masses of the people and of their teachers were trusting in lying words, saying, \u201cWe be Abraham\u2019s sons\u201d; and in outward privileges\u2014\u201cThe Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are these.\u201d They were occupied with badges of party, and tithes of mint, anise, and cumin, and with artificial moralities which altogether benumbed the sense of truth and reality. The fogs needed to be scattered by thunder and hurricane. From the sickly and perfumed air of contentment with the infinitesimal, and hypocrisy as to the essential\u2014from the conventional optimism \u201cwhich sweetened the present, and gilded the future with the lazy fancy of a well-fed piety\u201d\u2014he roused them as with shocks of earthquake. It was not his to say smooth things and prophesy deceits; not his to bow low before the idol of fashionable \u201cviews,\u201d nor \u201cto glide softly into the hearts of party votaries.\u201d His object was to tear off the mask from the pretenders who disguised themselves as angels of light, and to smite them in the face. The preaching of John was \u201cas the sweeping storms of March before the soft rustling of the vernal breezes of the Gospel.\u201d
\nHe stood up, an Incarnate Conscience rising in revolt against \u201cthe shows and shams of a self-soothing piety.\u201d This child\u2014nurtured amid the free winds and lonely grandeur of the wilderness\u2014represented Reality confronting Sham. What he demanded was genuine penitence and amendment of life. He had nothing to say about \u201cbowing the head like a bulrush,\u201d offering sacrificial atonements, or being particular about fasts and feasts\u2014but he thundered forth, \u201cWash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings; flee from the wrath to come; bring forth fruits worthy of your repentance.\u201d In all this (as we have seen) he was but returning to the central messages of the Old Testament Scriptures before the religion of Israel had been overlaid with the filmy network of Scribism and formality.
\nHence his preaching was necessarily a preaching of repentance in the sternest of tones. Never was there a more fierce denouncer of disguised hypocrisy. \u201cOffspring of vipers,\u201d he said to the Pharisees and Sadducees, \u201cwho warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth, therefore, fruit worthy of repentance. And think not to say within yourselves, \u2018We have Abraham to our father,\u2019 for I say unto you that God is able of these stones (Abanim) to raise up children (Banim) to Abraham.\u201d He did not speak to Jews as a Jew, but as a man to men, \u201cthat all men through him might believe.\u201d Addressing his hearers quite irrespectively of their nationality or prerogatives, he discouraged the materialised hopes of his people no less than their boasted prerogatives. The things about which they prided themselves, and postured before others, were not of the smallest importance. Their fastings, their casuistical theologies, and multiplied ablutions\u2014their phylacteries, whether broad or narrow\u2014were beneath his notice. Their whole system of religion was but the blighted tree on which the axe, already at its backmost poise, should swoop with a final crash; or as the barren chaff which should soon be burnt with unquenchable fire.
\nThe preaching of John dealt, as all true preaching should, with plain, simple, unconventional holiness. It is not the work of such men to compass heaven and earth to make one proselyte, and then to make him \u201ctenfold more the child of hell than themselves.\u201d His work was to preach the \u201cpure, unsophisticated, dephlegmated, def\u00e6cated\u201d moral law; to tell the publicans to exact no more than that which was legal; to bid the soldiers be content with their wages, to accuse none falsely, and to do no violence; to convince the people that they must substitute righteousness for idle self-confidence, give alms to their fellow-men with the most ample and generous self-sacrifice, and by love serve one another.
\nNo wonder that such preaching in the wild desert of Jeshimon\u2014preaching so utterly new, so fearless, so heart-searching\u2014uttered by a man who had broken with the traditional religionism of his day, and desired something deeper and more real than its narcotics, something higher and more heroical than its functions, something more healing and essential than its petty effeminacies\u2014caused multitudes to stream out to \u201cthe horror\u201d of the desert, to see this \u201cshocking figure\u201d in camel\u2019s skin and leathern girdle, who only cared to sustain life on locusts and wild honey. The religious despots might self-complacently pronounce that \u201che had a demon,\u201d but the multitude heard the message of God in the voice of a true man. Here was a man \u201cwhose manifestation was like a burning torch; whose whole life was a very earthquake; whose whole being was a sermon.\u201d Here was one who, alone among the teachers of his day, scornfully tore to shreds the rags of hypocrisy, and while he showed men that they were something better than \u201chungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites,\u201d strove to bring them face to face with the Unseen, and make them realise the grandeur of God, and feel the supremacy of righteousness and true holiness.
\nBut there was also an element of Hope in his discourses. Sharing in the intense Messianic expectations of the day, he promised the speedy advent of the stern yet righteous Deliverer, who should purify the air infected with heathen influences and Sadducean unbelief, and pour life into a religion which had become like the thin iridescence over the stagnancy of a putrescent pool.
\nThe career of a Prophet or a true saint\u2014especially if he denounces current unrealities, and shows no respect for dominant religious autocrats\u2014is hardly complete unless it be surrounded with the malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness of the world and of the nominal Church. The normal lot of the loftiest teachers is some form or other of martyrdom at the hands of all who love falsity. Popularity, and party adulation, and the soft murmur of applause are not for such, but for those natures who, in self-complacent usurpation of prerogatives which are not theirs, answer the world according to its idols! The stake, the dungeon, the torture-chamber, the roar of violent abuse, the viper\u2019s hiss of creeping malice, the subterranean calumnies of religious partisans, the bale-fires of the Inquisitors, have been the ordinary destiny of the noblest of the sons of God. Their crown and sceptre have been like those of their Saviour\u2014a crown of torturing thorns, the sceptre of a mocking reed. Such is the teaching alike of the Old and of the New Testament. By Priests and Kings, \u201cwith fierce lies maddening the blind multitude,\u201d the saints are stoned, are sawn asunder, are slain with the sword, destitute, afflicted, tormented, because the world is not worthy of them. And worst of all, much of their work often seems\u2014though only seems\u2014to have been in vain.
\nSo it was with St. John the Baptist. First came cold neglect and indifference, and the sneer of the religious leaders that he was a demoniac; then the sword flashed, and the life of the noblest of the Prophets was shorn away. The \u201cviper\u2019s brood,\u201d the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the adulterous king, the wicked matron, the dancing girl, prevailed; and all that was left of him, than whom no greater had been born of woman, was a head on a charger in a harlot\u2019s hand, and a bleeding trunk in the dungeon of a grim fortress among the desert hills.
\nNevertheless his work lived on. Not only did many, even at Ephesus, own his leadership nearly thirty years later (Acts 18:25, 19:3), but\u2014what was of infinitely greater importance\u2014he had effectually prepared the way for Him \u201cwhose shoe\u2019s latchet he was not worthy to unloose.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last and greatest herald of heaven\u2019s King,
\nGirt with rough skins, hies to the deserts wild:
\nHis food was locusts, and what there doth spring,
\nWith honey that from virgin-hives distilled;
\nThen burst he forth, \u2018All ye whose hopes rely
\nOn God, with me among the deserts mourn:
\nRepent! repent! and from old errors turn!\u2019
\nWho listened to his voice, obeyed his cry?
\nOnly the echoes which he made relent
\nRung from their flinty caves\u2014\u2018Repent! repent!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 16<\/p>\n
THE BAPTISM OF JESUS<\/p>\n
\u03bf\u1f50\u03c7 \u1f61\u03c2 \u1f10\u03bd\u03b4\u03b5\u1fb6 \u2026 \u1f00\u03bb\u03bb\u02bc \u1f51\u03c0\u1f72\u03c1 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2
\n\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f00\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03ce\u03c0\u03c9\u03bd.\u2014JUST. MART. Dial. 88.<\/p>\n
THE Ministry of St. John the Baptist falls into two well-marked epochs, separated from each other by the Baptism of Christ.
\nTo Jesus, in His obscure and humble home, the thrill which passed through every section of society at the voice of the Baptist, and the appearance of a true Man among the ignoble shadows and self-satisfied hypocrisies, came as a sign from His Heavenly Father that the time had arrived for His manifestation to the world. For now, by John\u2019s work as an avowed Forerunner, the long-slumbering hope was aroused, and, \u201cwith mighty billows the Messianic movement surged through the entire people.\u201d Was he the promised Forerunner, Elijah, whom in so many respects he resembled? Was he the expected Jeremiah come to restore to them the Ark and the Mercy Seat, and the Urim which he was supposed to have hidden in a cave on Mount Nebo? Many even wondered whether he might not himself be the promised Messiah. \u201cAll men mused in their hearts of John whether he were the Christ or not.\u201d
\nIn going to listen to the preaching of John, our Lord doubtless followed that inward guidance which was the supreme law of His life. He offered Himself for baptism. The full meaning of this act is beyond our apprehension. The baptism of John was no mere Essene or Levitical ablution. It was accompanied by the confession of sins. It was not \u201ca laver of regeneration\u201d (Tit. 3:5), but \u201ca baptism of repentance.\u201d It was a sign that a man desired to cleanse himself from moral defilement, to abandon all righteousness of his own, and \u201cto draw nigh unto God in full assurance of faith, having his heart sprinkled from an evil conscience, and his body washed with pure water.\u201d How, then, could it be accepted by the Divine and sinless Son of Man? To others\u2014but not to Him\u2014could have been applied the words of Ezekiel, \u201cThen will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean.\u201d All that we know is what the Gospels tell us. We see that the stern Prophet, who was no respecter of persons, but had dared to address Scribes and Pharisees in words of scornful denunciation, was overawed before the innate majesty of the Son of God. This new Elijah, in his shaggy robe of camel\u2019s hair with its coarse leathern girdle\u2014this ascetic dweller in the deserts\u2014this herald whose voice rang with sternest rebukes to startle drowsy souls, and stir them to repentance\u2014is at once hushed into timidity at the Presence of the Lord of Love. So far from welcoming the acknowledgment of his ministry by one whom he instinctively recognised as his Lord, he made an earnest and continuous effort to prevent Him from accepting his baptism. He even said, \u201cI have need to be baptised of Thee, and comest Thou to Me?\u201d But the only explanation given to us is in the words of our Lord Himself. He overcame John\u2019s hesitating scruples by saying, \u201cSuffer it to be so now; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.\u201d \u201cHe placed the confirmation of perfect righteousness,\u201d says St. Bernard, \u201cin perfect humility.\u201d Many have supposed that He only submitted to the baptism as a corporate act, desiring to identify Himself with the nation whose guilt He came to bear and remove; others that He accepted it vicariously and solely for the sake of mankind; others that He regarded the act for Himself personally as a consecration to the Messianic kingdom. Others, again, have thought that as, to the mass of the people, the immersion in the Jordan and the rising out of the water indicated a death unto sin and a new life unto righteousness, so to Christ it marked by way of symbol the close of His former life of seclusion, and the entrance into that Divine mission to which he was henceforth dedicated. Whatever be the exact explanation, it was as He went up out of the water, and stood praying, that both to Him and to the Baptist the sign was given which had been promised, and which led John to recognise Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God. He beheld the Spirit, probably in some gleam of heavenly brightness, descending out of the parted heavens as a dove with soft and hovering motion, and abiding upon Him, while a Voice from Heaven said, \u201cThis is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.\u201d Henceforth Jesus felt Himself finally consecrated by the will of His Father to be the Founder of the kingdom of heaven on earth. As a man He now became fully \u201cconscious of a power of the Spirit within Him corresponding to the new form of His work.\u201d
\nAfter this it was destined that Jesus should increase and John decrease. For though John was \u201cthe lamp kindled and burning,\u201d his work showed the inevitable limitations of all human work. He preached the preliminaries necessary for the advent of the Kingdom; it was beyond his power to found the Kingdom itself. Indeed, it is probable that though he differed so widely from the religious teachers of his day in his moral ideals, he may have shared in their special Messianic hopes. He may have looked, not for a suffering, but for a triumphant Christ\u2014for one who should be a magnificent Potentate and Deliverer of His nation\u2014though the establishment of His Kingdom was to be preceded by earthquake and eclipse, such as the Hebrew Prophets had foretold. Softened in tone as his ministry had evidently been by the appearence of Jesus, it is very likely that he failed to understand a Messiah at whose presence the nations did not tremble, nor the mountains visibly flow down; who was not outwardly \u201ca consuming fire,\u201d and did not do terrible things in His wrath. The humble humanity, and untempestuous quietude of a Deliverer who did not strive nor cry, neither was His voice heard in the streets, became a decided stumbling-block in the path of his Messianic faith. Jesus did not attempt to found any such earthly kingdom as John had imagined. The whole ideal of the Saviour\u2019s work was different from that of John. He did not frequent the wilderness, or appear as an ascetic in hairy garb, or hurl thunderbolts. He moved about in lowly simplicity as a man with men\u2014and that among the most stained and despised outcasts, whom Pharisees and Sadducees would not touch with the hem of their garments.
\nAfter the Baptist\u2019s work had culminated in the pointing out of the Messiah, he seems to have lost much of his power and insight. His disciples, if not he himself, began to mistake means for ends. They did not become direct disciples of Jesus. There austere self-denials did not meet with our Lord\u2019s approval. Outward asceticism\u2014like that of the Pharisees\u2014was brought by them into injurious prominence. This was to put a patch of undressed cloth upon an old garment. What was intended to fill up the rent only made it worse. It was to put unfermented wine into old wine-skins. The new wine fermented, in contact with the yeasty particles left adhering to the leather\u2014\u201cthe skins burst and the wine was spilled.\u201d There is something infinitely pathetic in the fact that, in the gloomy recesses of his frightful dungeon, haunted by demons and surrounded by inaccessible crags; doubt as to Him whom he had pointed out as the promised Christ seems for a moment to have overshadowed the Baptist\u2019s soul. \u201cA reed shaken by the wind\u201d he was not, and could not be; but he might be compared to \u201ca cedar, half uprooted by the storm.\u201d He foretold, he announced, the Kingdom of Christ, but can hardly be said to have entered into it, so that\u2014on the principle \u201cminimum maximi est majus maximo minimi\u201d\u2014he who is but little (\u1f41 \u03bc\u03b9\u03ba\u03c1\u03cc\u03c4\u03b9\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2) in the kingdom of heaven was greater than he. Nevertheless, Jesus pronounced on him the splendid eulogy that \u201cOf them that have been born of women there is none greater than John the Baptist\u201d; and we may feel sure that any doubt which may have crossed his mind was dispelled by the merciful forbearance of Him whom he had pointed out as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world. It disappeared for ever in the glorious light of that world where all is judged of truly. There he would learn the meaning of Christ\u2019s saying, \u201cThe kingdom of God is within you,\u201d and that they only can enter it, who enter it in the spirit of little children, with meekness and perfect self-surrender.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 17<\/p>\n
THE TEMPTATION<\/p>\n
\u201cThou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder, the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under foot.\u201d\u2014Ps. 91:13.<\/p>\n
\u03a0\u03ad\u03c0\u03bf\u03bd\u03b8\u03b5\u03bd \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c0\u03b5\u03b9\u03c1\u03b1\u03c3\u03b8\u03b5\u03af\u03c2.\u2014Heb. 2:18, 4:15.<\/p>\n
\u0394\u03b9\u1f70 \u03c4\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2 \u1f00\u03c3\u03b8\u03b5\u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03c2 \u1f21\u03c3\u03b8\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03c5\u03bd, \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03b4\u03b9\u1fb2 \u03c4\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u03c0\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd\u1ff6\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03c2 \u1f10\u03c0\u03b5\u03af\u03bd\u03c9\u03bd, \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03b4\u03b9\u1f70 \u03c4\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2 \u03b4\u03b9\u03c8\u1ff6\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03c2 \u1f10\u03b4\u03af\u03c8\u03c9\u03bd\u2014\u201cUnwritten Saying\u201d of Christ.\u2014ORIG. (in Matt. 17:21).<\/p>\n
\u201cOmnis diabolica illa Tentatio foris non intus fuit.\u201d\u2014GREG. M. Hom. 1:16.<\/p>\n
\u201cThou Spirit that ledd\u2019st this glorious Eremite
\nInto the desert, His victorious field
\nAgainst the spiritual foe, and brought\u2019st Him thence
\nBy proof the undoubted Son of God.\u201d
\n\u2014MILTON, Par. Reg. 1.<\/p>\n
LITTLE as we may think it right to enter into the boundless field of speculation, yet the history of the Temptation of our Lord is of such importance to a right understanding of all that is revealed respecting Him in the Gospels as to demand our patient endeavour to understand it aright.
\nIt is narrated most circumstantially in the first and third Gospels. In St. Mark it is compressed into one characteristic but vivid verse, and he alone tells us, both, that \u201cHe was with the wild beasts,\u201d and that \u201cangels were continuously ministering (\u03b4\u03b9\u03b7\u03ba\u03cc\u03bd\u03bf\u03c5\u03bd) unto Him.\u201d As St. John was not professing to write a complete narrative, but intended only to supplement in certain essential particulars the records of the three Synoptic Gospels, it did not fall within the scope of his work to narrate it once more. Yet, so far was this from being\u2014as it has been falsely represented\u2014a designed suppression intended to exalt the Divinity of Christ, that St. John, no less than the other Evangelists, shows us that the soul of Jesus could be troubled and perplexed; and that He regarded His work as a triumph over the Prince of this world, who, through Him, should be \u201ccast out\u201d when He should draw all men unto Him. St. John also describes temptation as due to the direct influence of Satan; he quotes the words of Jesus\u2014which describe the result of the Tempation\u2014that \u201cthe Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me\u201d; and says that Christ should \u201cconvict the world in respect of judgment, because the Prince of this world hath been judged.\u201d
\nThe author of the Epistle to the Hebrews greatly helps us to apprehend the significance of the Temptation when he writes:
\n\u201cWe have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.\u201d
\nAnd again:
\n\u201cWherefore it behoved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted.\u201d
\n\u201cWe may represent the truth to ourselves best,\u201d says Bishop Westcott, \u201cby saying that Christ assumed humanity under the conditions of life belonging to man fallen, though not with sinful promptings from within.\u201d
\nFirst then let us consider the occasion, the locality, and the circumstances of the Temptation.
\nChrist\u2014who \u201clived in a tent like ours, and of the same material,\u201d seeing that, as all the Gospels and Epistles teach us, He was \u201cperfectly man\u201d\u2014must have been swayed in His human soul no less than in the mortal body by the conditions which affect humanity. To Him therefore the Baptism in the waters of Jordan, the opening heavens which indicated a new relation with God, the Divine Voice which called Him a Beloved Son, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon and into Him, there to abide in plenitude, were the signs that the hour was at hand to begin His Messianic work of Redemption. It was, as it were, the final call to come forth from the Galilean village, and fulfil His eternal purpose as the Teacher and Deliverer of mankind. In proportion as we realise the stupendous character of the work shall we be able to understand the profound human emotion with which the Son of Man contemplated the as yet unknown events and destines of His earthly mission. In all such high hours of visitation from the Living God there is, and must be, an intensity of feeling which pervades the whole being, and creates an imperious demand for solitude and meditation. Man must be alone, and \u201cof the people there must be none with him,\u201d when he treads the winepress of his decisive hours. We can therefore understand the expression of St. Matthew and St. Luke that \u201cthen He was led up into the wilderness\u201d; and that \u201cfull of the Holy Spirit, He was led in the Spirit into the wilderness\u201d; and even the more forcible phrase of St. Mark: \u201cstraightway the Spirit driveth Him forth into the wilderness.\u201d In the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah had spent forty days of spiritual crisis in lonely places, and Paul, after his conversion, retired to Arabia.
\n\u201cInto the wilderness\u201d:\u2014we cannot say with certainty what wilderness it was, for the tradition which gives its name to the desert of the Forty Days (Quarantania) is quite uncertain; but the awful associations with which Jewish imagination filled these solitudes would correspond with the tension of the spirit of Jesus. \u201cHe was,\u201d says St. Mark, \u201cwith the wild beasts.\u201d The Prophet Isaiah had spoken of the Tsiyyim, and Ochim, and Iyyim, \u201cthe droughty ones\u201d and \u201cshaggy monsters and groaners,\u201d \u201cthe daughters of screaming,\u201d the owls, and the arrow-snakes, and Lilith, \u201cthe night fairy,\u201d\u2014half demoniac creatures which made their homes amid its wild vegetation. Those rugged and desolate places were also the dwelling place of Azazel, the demon to whom the scapegoat was dismissed. \u201cWhen the evil spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places\u201d\u2014through the stony, waterless deserts\u2014\u201cseeking rest, and he findeth it not.\u201d The evil demon of \u201cthe dry places\u201d was associated with the thought of temptation, and there our Lord was tempted, as in famine and solitude He wrestled mentally with the vast problems of His predestined work. He felt an irrepressible impulse to be alone in spirit with His Heavenly Father, however much He might be surrounded by the snares of the Evil One. He did not indeed feel the stings of privation\u2014scant as must have been the nourishment which the wilderness afforded\u2014till the close of the forty days; for it was only at their close\u2014so St. Matthew tells us\u2014that \u201cafterwards He hungered.\u201d But the Temptation, though it was subsequently concentrated into three mighty special assaults, was, in its essence, continuous. \u201cHe was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by the devil,\u201d says St. Mark, and St. Luke uses the same expression. It was a period of mental strain and moral struggle, and it involved the decisive victory over the assaults of Satan. Henceforth it became possible for all to experience the truth of the promise given by St. James, the Lord\u2019s brother, \u201cResist the devil, and he will flee from you.\u201d
\nTwo truths we must firmly apprehend.
\n(i.) One is that the Temptation was real, not a mere semblance. Our Lord, under stress of genuine temptation, had to win the victory, in man and for man, by evincing self-denial, self-control, disregard for selfish advantage; absolute renunciation of power, honour, and self-gratification; and complete self-surrender to His Heavenly Father\u2019s will. If the struggle had not been an actual struggle, there would have been no significance in the victory. The Gospels represent Jesus as subject to temptations from without, not only at this crisis, but during all His life. He said to Peter, \u201cGet thee behind Me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto Me\u201d; and He said to His Apostles, \u201cYe are they which have continued with Me in my temptations.\u201d The only difference between the temptations of Christ and our own is that His came from without, but ours come also from within. In Him \u201cthe tempting opportunity\u201d could not appeal to \u201cthe susceptible disposition.\u201d With us sin acquires its deadliest force because we have yielded to it. We can only conquer it when, by the triumph of God\u2019s grace within us, we are able to say with the dying hero of Azincour, \u201cGet thee hence, Satan; thou hast no part in me; my part is in the Lord Jesus Christ.\u201d
\n(ii.) The other truth which must be firmly grasped is that the force and reality of the outward temptation did not impair\u2014nay, it illustrated\u2014Christ\u2019s sinlessness. It is, as Luther said, one thing to feel temptation (sentire tentationem), and quite another thing to yield to it (assentire tentationi); or, as our own great poet so well expresses it:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
\nAnother thing to fall.\u201d<\/p>\n
The temptations came to Christ externally, through the craft and subtlety of the devil, and, in defeating them, He illustrated His own parable about the conquest of the Evil One: \u201cWhen the strong man, fully armed, guardeth his own court, his goods are in peace; but when a stronger than he shall come upon him, he taketh from him his whole armour wherein he trusted, and divideth the spoil.\u201d By His victory He gave power over the demons to all who trust in Him, so that in all the power of the enemy nothing should be able to hurt them. And for this very end has He been manifested, \u201cthat He might destroy the works of the devil.\u201d He did not, like the parents of our fallen race, dabble with temptation, or go halfway to meet it, but, by the instant rejection of it with the whole force of His inner nature, He secured His transcendent and perfect victory.
\nThe question how the details of the Temptation became known to the Apostles and Evangelists is not specially important, but the answer to it seems clear. They could only have learnt it from the Lord Himself. Nor, again, is it in any way essential for the lessons which the narrative is designed to teach us, whether we suppose that, in revealing it, He clothed the essential facts under the veil of symbols or not. If He did so, it was only that we might have a more vivid apprehension of truths which it would have been impossible for us to understand had they been expressed in spiritual or metaphysical terms. Nor need we enter into the discussion as to whether Satan appeared to Christ in a visible shape or not. There is nothing in the form of expression which forces this conclusion upon us, anymore than in our Lord\u2019s words, \u201cI was gazing on Satan fallen as lightning from heaven.\u201d Even the question as to the personality of the Tempter is one which does not concern us here. It is sufficient to say that Satan, the Accuser, the Tempter, the Destroyer, is set before us throughout the New Testament as a really existent and concrete being, and, in any case, there exists for every one of us, as we know by fatal experience, a reality of evil without us, \u201ca force not ourselves\u201d which impels to all sin and unrighteousness, and which it is our perpetual duty, as well as our only safety, to resist to the uttermost.
\nIt is much more important for us to observe that the three temptations of our Lord fall generally under the comprehensive summary under which St. John sums up all forms of temptation, namely, those that arise from \u201cthe lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.\u201d We are perhaps hardly in a position to decide whether the order of the Temptations as given by St. Matthew or that as given by St. Luke is the more exact. In spiritual crises we cannot take note of the ordinary sequences of time; they<\/p>\n
\u201cCrowd eternity into an hour,
\nAnd stretch an hour into eternity.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is clear from the expressions used by St. Mark and St. Luke that, though the temptations of Satan came to a head in one great final conflict, they were, in some shape or other, continuous; and our Lord\u2019s victory is our example, that we are not to love the world, neither the things that are in the world, for if any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him. \u201cNothing rises higher than its source. The desire of things earthly, as though they were ends in themselves, comes from the world, and is bounded by the world. It is, therefore, incompatible with the love of the Father.\u201d
\n(i.) The first appeal of Satan was an appeal to the desire of the flesh in its simplest and most innocent form. It was a temptation through suffering. It was not a temptation to \u03c6\u03b9\u03bb\u03b7\u03b4\u03bf\u03bd\u03af\u03b1, the love of pleasure for its own sake, but rather to the exercise of an inherent power for the extinction of pain. Nothing could seem more plausible than the suggestion that Jesus should appease the pangs of hunger by the exercise of a prerogative which had been conferred on Him. The wilderness abounds in stones, which sometimes look like melons or cucumbers, and sometimes bear the exact appearance of loaves of bread. It would make hunger more keen to see the semblance of food. And had not God fed His whole people with manna in the wilderness in answer to their cry? And had He not sustained Moses during the forty days of awful communion on Sinai? And had not an angel ministered to the needs of the unhappy and fugitive Elijah? And had not a voice from the heavens, which seemed to be bursting open to their depths, accompanied by the hovering gleam of the descending Spirit, proclaimed Him to be the beloved Son in whom God was well pleased? What could be more natural, what more harmless, than that He should, under these circumstances, work the miracle which was suggested to Him? If He did so would it not be a decisive test whether such a power were absolutely His or not?
\nHe now knew Himself to be called to His work as the promised Messiah. Was it not one popular conception of the Messiah\u2019s work that, like Moses, He should again feed His people with bread from heaven? Was not this a most favourable opportunity to exercise this power for the supply of His own urgent needs, that, having thus tested its reality, He might ever afterwards put it forth for the blessing of the world which He had come to save?
\nThus, beyond the mere agony of hunger, there might well be this longing for support, this desire for assurance, this impulse to test what, in the human sphere\u2014though He had laid aside His glory and taken upon Him the form of a servant\u2014might be permitted to Him, in a manner which was in itself perfectly innocent. But whence did the suggestion come? It came from something without Him, appealing to a bodily instinct. Quite clearly it was of the earth, and came from the Prince of the Power of the Air, suggesting to Him an inward doubt, or an open self-assertion. And what was hunger? Could not hunger be borne, if God had sent it? If God desired to satiate hunger by a miracle it was a duty to await His good time, and not to use supernatural gifts for personal alleviation. In any case there is the higher as well as the lower life. The Tempter had indirectly suggested the thought of the manna; but in the wilderness God had suffered His people to hunger, expressly that He might try their faith and constancy before He supplied their needs by the manna which neither they nor their fathers had known. Jesus, therefore, repelled the temptation by the words which follow in the Book of Deuteronomy\u2014that God had acted thus \u201cthat He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every thing that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.\u201d Thus to the Israelites the manna became \u201cspiritual food.\u201d And had not Jeremiah also said, \u201cThy words were found, and I did eat them, and Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart; for I am called by Thy name, O Lord God of Hosts.\u201d Our Lord would neither sate His hunger, nor challenge His Almighty Father by putting His own miraculous powers to the test.
\nThus, by \u201cthe sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,\u201d the first temptation was victoriously encountered, and plainly shown to be a temptation through all its subtle speciousness.
\n(ii.) But the Tempter was not yet foiled. His next temptation should be separate from anything which could seem even remotely to have in it any admixture of selfishness or of personal desires. It should be a purely imaginative temptation, appealing solely to the deep thoughts about His Messianic work, which had been occupying the mind of Jesus during His forty days in the wilderness, and only suggesting that He should put to the test the miraculous endowments which seemed indispensable to the fulfilment of the mighty issues before Him. Appealing this time to the pride of life, the Tempter suggests, \u201cThou hast been proclaimed to be the Son of God, and if Thou art the Son of God, no harm can happen to Thee. See! Thou art on the pinnacle of the Temple; cast Thyself down. Thy safety will be a glorious, a decisive proof of Thy Divine origin. Even of God\u2019s ordinary human saints it is written\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201c \u2018There shall no harm happen unto thee,
\nFor He shall give His angels charge concerning thee
\nTo keep thee in all thy ways;
\nAnd on their hands they shall bear thee up,
\nLest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Thus did the Devil cite Scripture for his purpose, and clothe his temptation in the most seeming-innocent guise. But he omitted from his quotations the words \u201cto keep thee in all thy ways,\u201d because those words implied that God\u2019s promise did not extend to \u201cthe precipice in the Temple, the regions of mid-air, or any devious paths of mere presumption, but only to the ways of obvious duty.\u201d
\nIf, as many have supposed\u2014though in the brief narrative of this spiritual struggle in the two Evangelists no hint of the kind is distantly suggested\u2014if the temptation was really one to descend miraculously among the people assembled in the court below; to flash upon them as it were at once in one sudden supernatural Epiphany of divine power\u2014it might seem to acquire additional force. What a splendid manifestation would this be? How irresistibly would He thus inaugurate the work which His Father had given Him to do!
\nBut again Jesus saw into the hidden heart of the temptation. It was an allurement to self-will, to self-assertion, to the independent challenge and use of heavenly powers. He repels the allurement by refuting the misapplication of Satan\u2019s Scriptural quotation. The promise which the Evil One had quoted was a promise that God would keep His children amid the inevitable, unsought dangers of life. Scripture is not to be identified\u2014as it constantly is\u2014with any perversion, to alien ends, of its mere words: Scripture is solely what Scripture means. The Devil can quote Scripture for his purpose, but it is always a perversion of Scripture. The Psalmist had never meant to encourage the audacious demand for God\u2019s supernatural interferences to enable us to escape from self-created perils. Jesus would not be guilty of forcing or of challenging God\u2019s purposes. His reliance on His Heavenly Father should be one of absolute dependence. He knew that He would never be left alone while He did always the things which were pleasing in God\u2019s sight. So He met Satan\u2019s false references to Scripture by another quotation which was of eternal validity. \u201cIt stands written again,\u201d He said, \u201cThou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.\u201d This second answer, like the first, involved the repudiation of all self-will; the determination to follow only the Divine order, not any promptings, whether subjective or objective, which did not come from the Father of Lights. \u201cTrust in God must be accompanied by humble submission to His will, and is incompatible with the attempt to bring the power of God into the service of one\u2019s own caprice.\u201d
\n(iii.) The form in which the third Temptation is narrated illustrates most decisively that our Lord, in revealing the story of His temptations in the wilderness, threw them into such a form as would bring them most vividly before the minds of His Apostles. The form of the story\u2014that Satan set Jesus on an exceeding high mountain, and showed him, in a moment of time, all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them\u2014is doubtless an anthropomorphic picture which summarises the result of a mental conflict. The offer to give all these to Jesus on the condition \u201cthat He would fall down and do reverence before him,\u201d is obviously one which, in this form, would have been too coarsely and audaciously crude to have been a possible temptation to the Son of God. But not so the underlying significance of the picture. Our Lord had been proclaimed to be the Messiah, and He was aware of the nature of the Messianic hopes shared by the whole of His nation. But how could He carry out such hopes? how could He come up to the ideal of One whom John had painted as a Ruler, thoroughly purging His floor with mighty winnowing-fan, and gathering the wheat into His garner, but burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire? Surely the fulfilment of such magnificent anticipations would be impossible so long as He did not rise above the humble worldly position of a peasant and a Nazarene? Conscious of His Divine nature, and His as yet unexercised powers\u2014anxious, as a man among men, to inaugurate the Kingdom\u2014He must have felt how easy it would be to kindle His countrymen into a flame of zeal in comparison with which the enthusiasm aroused by Judas of Galilee would have been as nothing;\u2014into zeal which would have gathered them as one man under one banner, and not only have broken in sunder the galling yoke of Roman dominion, but have carried Him forward to a world-wide dominion of glory and righteousness.
\nThe \u201cdesire of the eyes\u201d could have had no share in this temptation, for to Him the riches of the world and the glory of them must have seemed no better than dross in comparison with the things unseen and eternal. It is only in a secondary and spiritual sense that what St. John calls \u201cthe braggart vaunt of life,\u201d its vain pomp and splendour, could have had the smallest allurement for One who lived in His Father\u2019s presence. But the temptation may have come as a suggestion of the readiest and most triumphant means by which He could subdue the world, and make its kingdoms the kingdoms of God, at no other cost than that of concession to earthly prejudices. The temptation was most ingeniously veiled, as though it involved nothing more than a politic accommodation to outward conditions\u2014the condescension of employing human means for high ends. But this temptation also\u2014this half-hidden offer of the \u03ba\u03bf\u03c3\u03bc\u03bf\u03ba\u03c1\u03ac\u03c4\u03bf\u03c1, \u201cthe ruler of this world\u201d\u2014to promote establishment of a Messianic empire\u2014was decisively rejected. \u201cThe god of this world\u201d could not blind the eyes of a Wisdom which came from heaven, nor could his fiery darts remain unquenched on the shield of perfect faith. Decisive and energetic was the rejection of this last assault: \u201cGet thee hence, Satan! for it standeth written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.\u201d
\nAfter so absolute a defeat, the Devil might well leave Him \u201cuntil a season,\u201d i. e., till he could see some new opportunity for assault; and angels came and were ministering unto Him. He left the wilderness with mind determined, with will resolutely fixed, to walk only in God\u2019s way\u2014in the path which, step by step, the Heavenly Father should make clear to Him, whithersoever it might lead. The principle which would henceforth sustain His whole life should be to shrink from no self-sacrifice, however awful; to drink the cup, however bitter, which God should send to Him; and to annihilate every prompting which should have its source only in the earthly self.
\nFinally victorious over all the assaults and blandishments of \u201cthe prince of the power of the air,\u201d Jesus felt the clear conviction that the path of His Messianic deliverance of Israel and of the world did not lie over the radiant mountain-heights of human glory, but through the deep Valley of Humiliation; and that the one inflexible purpose of every act of His mortal life must be, in absolute self-abnegation, \u201cto do the will of Him that sent Him, and to finish His work.\u201d The whole narrative of the Temptation is a comment on our Lord\u2019s saying, \u201cThe prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 18<\/p>\n
SCENES OF CHRIST\u2019S MINISTRY<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the former time He brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time He hath made it glorious, by the way of the sea \u2026 Galilee of the nations.\u2014Is. 9:1.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuare Vocatur Gennazar? ob hortos principum (ganne sarim).\u201d\u2014LIGHTFOOT, Cent. Chorogr. lxxix.<\/p>\n
I PASS over the pathetically beautiful events which took place when, on the return of Jesus from the Desert of the Temptation, He once more visited the scenes where John, having left the Wilderness of Jud\u00e6a, was now baptising. John was at Bethany, beyond Jordan, near the well-known Per\u00e6an ford of Bethabara, within a day\u2019s journey of Nazareth. The second stage of His ministry had begun. The Baptist now knew full well that his mission was practically finished, and he was inspired to point out the Lamb of God to some of his own disciples, openly avowing that He must increase, and he himself must decrease. I shall speak farther on of the earliest disciples to obey the call of Christ\u2014Andrew, John, Simon, Philip, and Nathanael. With them He visited Cana and wrought His earliest miracle. At the first Passover of His ministry He cleansed the Temple, and had His nocturnal interview with Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel. After this He continued for a time to work in Jud\u00e6a, and permitted His disciples to baptise, though He himself baptised not. It was at this time that, in answer to the jealous complaints of John\u2019s disciples, the great Forerunner bore emphatic witness to Him as to One who cometh from heaven, who spoke the words of God, and to whom the Spirit had been given without measure\u2014nay more, as the Son, into whose hands the Father had given all things. Soon after this, Herod consummated his crimes by throwing John into the prison at Mach\u00e6rus. Jesus then retired from Jud\u00e6a into Galilee, and it may have been on this journey\u2014for the exact chronology of events must ever remain uncertain\u2014that He spoke with the Samaritan woman by Jacob\u2019s Well. To this first year of His ministry also belonged the healing of the son of the court officer (\u03b2\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03bb\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03c2) of Capernaum, and His rejection by the Nazarenes when He preached in their synagogue.
\nThat pre-eminently bright and fruitful period of His ministry which has been called \u201cthe Galil\u00e6an Spring\u201d began with His retirement from Nazareth to Capernaum. No small portion of the Gospels is occupied by the narratives of the work and teaching in the Plain of Gennesareth, beside the Sea of Galilee. Remote and narrow in extent is this corner of Galilee, from which issued forth to all the world the words of eternal life. Yet the scenery eminently suited the Divine teaching, which was addressed to the humble, but was intended to bring new life to all mankind. The words of Jesus had few or none of the thunderous elements which marked the preaching of the Baptist. They were spoken, not in the waste and howling wilderness, nor, like those of Moses, among the more awful aspects of nature, but amid the soft delightful fields which lie on the west of the Lake of Galilee. There is a quiet enchantment about the whole locality. I once rode into the plain from the top of Kur\u2019n Hatt\u00een\u2014the Mount of Beatitudes\u2014down the Wady Hammam, or \u201cVale of Doves,\u201d rich with its Eastern vegetation. The road descends to the lake through the wretched village of El Mejdel (Magdala), where (a certain sign of squalor) the little children run about naked in the street. So desolate are the shores of the Sea of Galilee in these days, that, as I rode for hours through the tall flowering oleanders, laden with their pink blossoms, there was scarcely a sign of human life. The white-winged pelicans floated on the water, and the kingfishers perched on the reeds beside the lake, and the masses of green entangled foliage along the water-courses were alive with myriads of twittering birds; but, with the exception of a little group of fishermen who were fishing with a drag-net from the shore, and four splendidly mounted Bedouin Arabs, I saw no one during many hours; nor did the whole surface of the lake for thirteen miles from north to south show one single sail of the smallest fishing-boat.
\nThe green plain itself\u2014Gennesareth, \u201cthat unparalleled garden of God\u201d\u2014is but three miles long, and a mile and a half broad. Yet it gave its name to the sea, of which the Talmud has this remarkable eulogy: \u201cSeven seas, spake the Lord God, have I created in the land of Canaan, but only one have I chosen for myself, the Sea of Gennezar.\u201d It was \u201csurrounded by pleasant towns,\u201d and its famous hot springs attracted numerous visitors.
\nIn the days of Jesus Christ the little plain was densely populated, and was far more lovely than now it is in its prolific luxuriance, which perhaps gained it the name of the Garden of Princes. Then as now the lake abounded in rare and delicious varieties of fish; then as now the grass was enamelled with a profusion of the lilies of the field; then as now the barren basaltic hills of the Eastern shore flung the shadows of their abrupt precipices upon the waters, and the gusts which rushed down their narrow valleys often swept the little inland sea into sudden storm. But the contemporary description given of it by the Jewish historian will show how widely its present desolation differs from the aspect which it presented to the eyes of the Saviour of the World. \u201cThe waters,\u201d he says, \u201care sweet, and very agreeable for drinking; they are finer than the thick waters of other fens. The lake is also pure, and on every side ends directly at the shores and at the sand; it is also of a temperate nature when you draw it up, and of a more gentle nature than river or fountain water, and yet always cooler than one could expect. Now when this water is kept in the open air it is as cold as snow. There are several kinds of fish in it, different both to the taste and the sight from those elsewhere \u2026 The country also that lies over against this lake hath the same name of Gennesareth. Its nature is wonderful as well as its beauty; its soil is so fruitful that all sorts of trees can grow upon it \u2026 for the temper of the air is so well mixed that it agrees very well with the several sorts \u2026 walnuts in vast plenty \u2026 palm trees \u2026 fig-trees \u2026 olives. One may call this place the ambition of nature, where it forces those plants which are naturally enemies to one another to grow together; it is a happy contention of the Seasons, as if every one of them lay claim to this country.\u201d
\n\u201cOh, why,\u201d asked a Rabbi, \u201care the fruits of Jerusalem not so good as those of Galilee?\u201d \u201cBecause else,\u201d is the answer, \u201cwe should live at Jerusalem for the sake of the fruits, and not for Divine service.\u201d It was in these regions that the Prophet Hoshea \u201cpoured forth his warm and deep-felt words in which the excitable temper of the Galileans especially found expression\u201d; and the Song of Songs had been composed \u201cby a poet, into whose heart the cheerful vicinage had poured its sunniest beams, and whose eyes were open to note how the flowers gleam and the fig-tree puts forth its green figs, and the vine sprouts, and the bloom of the pomegranates unfolds itself.\u201d And \u201camid this luxuriance of nature there lived still a healthy people, whose conscience was not yet corrupted by Rabbinical sophistries, and where full-grown men were elevated far above their Jewish kinsfolk, sickening with fanaticism.\u201d
\nThe commercial road which ran by the lake to Damascus made Gennesareth familiar to foreign merchants, and various Gentile elements were to be found among the population. Tiberias, the new and half-heathen capital of Herod, into which we are not told that our Lord so much as once entered, exhibited to the offended eyes of the Jews its Palace ornamented with Grecian sculptures. Jesus never seems to have visited Sepphoris or Tariche\u00e6 or other populous cities; but three village-towns (\u03ba\u03c9\u03bc\u03bf\u03c0\u03cc\u03bb\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2) of Gennesareth were specially familiar with the words and works of the Son of Man\u2014Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. These are mentioned by Christ Himself as the main scenes of His ministry in the towns of Galilee.
\n\u201cWoe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which have been done in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes \u2026
\n\u201cAnd thou, Capernaum, shalt thou be exalted into heaven? Thou shalt be brought down unto Hades! for if the mighty works had been done in Sodom which were done in thee, it would have remained unto this day.\u201d
\nSo fragmentary is our knowlege of the continuous work of Christ, that, though Chorazin is mentioned first among the towns which Jesus had thus signally endowed with the privilege of witnessing His miracles of mercy, it is not once again alluded to in the Gospels, nor do we know of a single miracle which was wrought in it. Though we learn from the Talmud that it was once famous for the fineness of its wheat, it was deserted even in the fourth century after Christ, and it is only within the last few years that its site has been identified with Kherazeh, a heap of indistinguishable ruins not quite three miles from Tell H\u00fbm. Its unusually stately synagogue had five aisles, and a quadruple row of columns adorned with Corinthian capitals, and decorative details elaborately carved in hard, black basalt. Over the upheaped and weed-grown d\u00e9bris of its forgotten prosperity might well be written the inscription:<\/p>\n
\u201cWoe unto thee, Chorazin!\u201d<\/p>\n
The site of Bethsaida is to this day uncertain, though it was the native place of Andrew, Peter, and Philip, and was the frequent scene of the Lord\u2019s manifestations. It was near Capernaum and Chorazin, and its name (\u201cHouse of Fish\u201d) seems to indicate that it was on the shore of the lake. The scanty remains at Ain et Tabijah, \u201cthe fountain of the fig-tree,\u201d seem to meet the necessary requirements.
\nThe site of Capernaum is also still a matter of dispute, though more than any other town it became Christ\u2019s \u201cown city,\u201d and was the scene of His constant \u201csigns.\u201d It is not mentioned either in the Old Testament or the Apocrypha, but in Christ\u2019s day it was \u201cexalted to heaven\u201d by His presence and gracious words. Tell H\u00fbm seems to me to correspond most nearly with the indications of its locality furnished by the Gospels. Capernaum is a corruption of Kaphar Nah\u00fbm, \u201cthe village of Nah\u00fbm,\u201d and Tell H\u00fbm may mean \u201cthe ruinous mound of (Na)h\u00fbm.\u201d It is near Chorazin. Among its ruins still stands the fragment of a synagogue, over the gate of which is carved the pot of manna, which may have turned the thoughts of the people to Moses\u2019 gift of \u201cbread from heaven.\u201d This is, perhaps, the very synagogue which the town owed to the munificence of the friendly Roman centurion. In this city Matthew was called from \u201cthe place of toll,\u201d and here Jesus had at least a temporary home, perhaps in a house which may have been partly occupied by Simon and Andrew. No town, so far as we are aware, witnessed anything like the same number of miracles. Here great multitudes gathered to Him; here He healed the nobleman\u2019s son, and the centurion\u2019s servant, and Simon\u2019s mother-in-law, and the paralytic, and the unclean demoniac, and the woman with the issue of blood, and raised the daughter of Jairus, and showed many other unrecorded signs. Here He taught humility to the disputing disciples by the example of a little child. Here, too, in the synagogue He delivered that memorable discourse about \u201cthe Bread of Life,\u201d and about \u201ceating His flesh and drinking His blood,\u201d which caused such deep-seated offence, but which He Himself explained to be a metaphor when He said, \u201cIt is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto yon are spirit and are life.\u201d If that explanation, given by Christ Himself, had been rightly considered and apprehended, we might have been saved from masses of superstition. \u201cThe letter,\u201d as St. Paul says, \u201ckilleth; it is only the Spirit that giveth life.\u201d \u201cNothing can carry us beyond the limits of its own realms. The new life must come from that which belongs properly to the sphere in which it moves.\u201d There is no room for a wooden literalism. \u201cGratia Dei,\u201d says St. Augustine, \u201cnon consumitur morsibus.\u201d There is no more excuse for giving a literal meaning to \u201cMy flesh is meat indeed,\u201d than for understanding literally the words, \u201cHe that believeth on Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.\u201d
\nIt was first in the synagogues, and then in the marketplaces of these cities, and in the highways and the hedges, that the Saviour of the World manifested forth His glory. Here \u201cOriental misery in its most terrible shape became the dearest object of His care.\u201d Here the lepers cried to Him amid the degradation of their hideous deformity, and the helpless crippled beggars\u2014the blind, and the halt, and the maimed. Jesus had nothing but love and healing pity for wretches who lived on the scraps flung out of the rich man\u2019s door, and for the wild, naked, howling demoniacs, and the miserable, degraded harlots, and those whom Priests and Pharisees spurned and loathed as the very outcasts of society. Nor did He in the least resemble the self-deceivers who<\/p>\n
\u201cSigh for wretchedness, but shun the wretched,
\nNursing in some delicious solitude
\nTheir dainty loves and slothful sympathies.\u201d<\/p>\n
He never withheld the fulness of His miraculous mercy from the sick and sorrowful, the weary and heavy laden. Yet He came not to these alone, but to all around them; and as He regarded them with His kingly eye of love, He used the simplest incidents of their everyday lives to give point to His parables and vividness to His instruction of the poor. In the common illustrations which He employed, \u201cday labourers are hired in the market, and paid in the evening; with plough reversed the labourer takes his homeward way; even at a distance from the village the singing and dancing of the holiday-makers can be heard; in the market-place the children wrangle in their sports; until late at night the noise of revelry and knocking at closed doors continues. The drunken steward storms at, and beats, and otherwise misuses the men-servants and maid-servants. In short, from morning till night life is much occupied, and boisterous and gay, and the busy people find no time for meditating on the kingdom of God. The one has bought a piece of ground and must needs go and see it; the other must prove the oxen that have been knocked down to him; the third has other business\u2014a feast, or a funeral, or a marriage.\u201d \u201cThey ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded, they married and were given in marriage.\u201d So does Jesus describe the restless, busy life of His native land.
\nAt first Jesus seems largely to have used the synagogues as the scenes of His teaching. They were, during all His life, the normal resorts of His Sabbath worship, and He required no other adjuncts than the bare simplicity of the desk and platform for preaching, and the cupboard in which the Thorah was kept. But when even in the synagogues He began to be opposed, and worried by the petty legalities of the officials who were instigated to annoy Him by their local Scribes, and by Pharisaic spies sent from Jerusalem to watch and harass His movements, then more and more He deserted the synagogues, and taught under the open air of heaven those outcasts of the world and of nominal Churches from whom He meant to gather the children of the Kingdom.
\nIt is a strange thought that there are but three or four actual spots where we may be certain that the feet of the Saviour of mankind have stood. One is in the rocky road full of sepulchral caves which mounts from the Plain of Esdraelon to Nein (the Nain of the Gospel) up the sides of Little Hermon (Jebel ed-D\u00fbhy), where He raised to life the widow\u2019s son. Another is the rocky platform where the road from Bethany sweeps to the northward round the shoulder of the Mount of Olives, and Jerusalem first bursts on the view. The third is the summit of Kur\u2019n Hatt\u00een, from which Safed, \u201cthe city set on a hill,\u201d stands full in view, where Jesus uttered \u201cthe Sermon on the Mount.\u201d
\nTo these we may perhaps add the Har-ha-Beit, or \u201cHill of the House,\u201d on the broad platform of which once stood the Temple which was \u201cthe joy of the whole earth\u201d; and perhaps Gethsemane, of which the traditional site has much to be said in its favour. But we do not know with distant approach to certainty the sites even of the Crucifixion, or of the Holy Sepulchre. That the sites where events took place which have swayed the whole temporal and eternal destinies of the human race could have been forgotten might well seem passing strange; but the earliest generations of believers, in the days of primitive Christianity, attached no importance to localities or relics. The Lord Christ was to them far less the human Jesus, who, for one brief lifetime had moved among men, than He was the Risen, the Eternal, the Glorified Christ, their Lord and their God. They habitually contemplated Him, not as on the Cross, but as on the Throne; not as the humiliated sufferer, but as the King exalted far above all heavens. They never regarded Him as taken away from them, but on the contrary as nearer to them than He had been while on earth even to the Disciple whom He loved, and who bowed his head upon His breast. So far from being absent from them, He was, as He had expressly taught, ever with them and within them. To minds pervaded by such thoughts, the scenes of His earthly pilgrimage were comparatively as nothing. Their thoughts were with Him in the \u201cfar more exceeding and eternal weight of glory\u201d wherein, though He now lived amid \u201cthe sevenfold chorus of Hallelujahs and harping symphonies,\u201d He was yet no less in the midst of them, wheresoever two or three were gathered together in His name.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 19<\/p>\n
CHRIST\u2019S METHODS OF EVANGELISATION<\/p>\n
\u03a0\u03c4\u03c9\u03c7\u03bf\u1f76 \u03b5\u1f50\u03b1\u03b3\u03b3\u03b5\u03bb\u03af\u03b6\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9.\u2014Matt. 11:5.<\/p>\n
\u0392\u03c1\u03b1\u03c7\u03b5\u0342\u03b9\u03c2 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76, \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03bc\u03bf\u1f76 \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u02bc \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03b9 \u03b3\u03b5\u03b3\u03cc\u03bd\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd. \u03bf\u1f50 \u03b3\u1f70\u03c1 \u03c3\u03bf\u03c6\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u1f76\u03c2 \u1f50\u03c0\u1fc6\u03c1\u03c7\u03b5\u03bd \u1f00\u03bb\u03bb\u1f70 \u0394\u03cd\u03bd\u03b1\u03bc\u03b9\u03c2 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u1f41 \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u1f26\u03bd.\u2014JUSTIN MARTYR, Apol. i. 14.<\/p>\n
THE manner in which the Son of God preached the Gospel of His Kingdom was characterised by the perfect simplicity which marked His whole career. He came to give an example to all mankind of what might be the ordinary state of men, not exalted by any factitious rank, nor glorified by any external magnificence, nor rendered prominent by any adventitious circumstances, but elevated transcendently above the low malarious swamps of common humanity by the sinlessness of that spiritual life which He came not only to exemplify but to impart. The High Priest on the Day of Atonement went into the holy place in hierarchic pomp, in his golden garments, encircled with his girdle of blue and purple and scarlet, and the jewelled Urim on his breast; the Essene affected white robes, and a predetermined look of sanctified asceticism; the Pharisee, while he was devouring widows\u2019 houses, and for a pretence making long prayers, chose the chief seats in feasts and synagogues, loved to walk in long robes, and to pose in saintly attitudes, delighted in ceremonious greetings, sounded a trumpet before him when he did his alms, made broad his phylacteries, enlarged the tassels of his garment, and did all his works to be seen of men. The Lord of Life went about in humble sincerity, wearing neither the mantle of the Prophet, nor the hairy garb and leathern girdle of the eremite, but making His appeal to the hearts of men by the sacred elements of the humanity which was the common gift of God alike to the rich and to the poor, to the great and to the lowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Himself was all His state,
\nMore solemn than the tedious pomp that waits
\nOn princes, when their rich retinue long
\nOf horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold,
\nDazzles the crowd, and sets them all agape.\u201d<\/p>\n
His was that most simple and deep-reaching form of evangelisation which, in the persons of His holiest followers\u2014a Paul, a Peter, a Francis of Assisi, a Francis Xavier, a Wesley, a Whitefield\u2014has ever been ten-thousandfold more effective than the most elaborately gorgeous ceremonials of Popes and Priests. And though He wore the peasant garb, and associated constantly with the peasant multitude, and had not about Him a single attribute of earthly state, there was something so heart-searching in His very look that it troubled the world-entangled soul of the young ruler; and broke the heart of Peter; and impressed the arrogant cynicism of the Roman Procurator; and again and again left an indelible impression on the minds of His disciples, and even of the multitude.
\nWhen He was at Jerusalem He taught sometimes in the Temple\u2014but only in the open courts and porticoes, because they were the common places of resort where alone in the Holy City His voice could be heard by the multitudes who thronged thither to the feasts. But the rites and ceremonies of that desecrated Temple, infinitely elaborated as they were, received from Him no word of approval. The wild joy of the ceremony of drawing water in the Feast of Tabernacles only caused Him to exclaim, \u201cIf any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink\u201d; and when the people were exulting in the glory of the huge golden candelabra and numberless lamps which shed their glow over the Treasury and the Temple Courts, He said, \u201cI am the Light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life.\u201d
\nThese obvious, but unrecorded, indications that Christ\u2019s teaching was suggested by immediate circumstances lead us to suppose that this was constantly the case. The Parable of the Pounds was suggested by the history of King Archelaus, which was brought into our Lord\u2019s mind by the sight of the palace which he had built at Jericho. The allusion to the wind which bloweth where it listeth, in the discourse with Nicodemus, would naturally arise from the soughing of the night wind outside the booth. The allegory of the Ideal Vine may have been suggested by the vineyards near the Kidron, or by the Golden Vine over the Temple door.
\nThere are some minds which seem to think that worship must be imperfect if it is not surrounded with splendour and symbolism. Thus a Roman Catholic author wrote: \u201cOh! then what delight! what joy unspeakable! The stoups are filled to the brim; the lamp of the Sanctuary burns bright, and the albs hang in the oaken ambries, and the cope-chests are filled with osphreyed baudekins, and pyx, and pax, and chrismatory are there, and thurible and cross!\u201d Strange sources, indeed, to any manly and spiritual mind for such ecstatic rapture! How many millions of true saints have enjoyed the utmost bliss of holy worship without any need of being excited or distracted by \u201cpyx,\u201d or \u201cpax,\u201d or \u201cchrismatory,\u201d or \u201coaken ambries,\u201d or even \u201cosphreyed baudekins!\u201d Such things as the thurible and the crucifix were unknown to, and avoided by, primitive Christians in the centuries when Christianity was most effective and most pure. Artificial religious externalism receives no approval from the lips of Christ. Nothing which remotely resembles it is distantly alluded to, either by Him or His Apostles, as constituting a desirable adjunct of holy worship. Even Levitism, destined to meet the requirements of a people whose hearts were gross, and their ears dull of hearing, offers no analogy to the spirituality, simplicity, and sincerity of worship which are the sole requirements for our approach to Him who is a Spirit, and who requires them that worship Him to worship Him in spirit and in truth. Alike by His precepts and by His practice, He who came from the bosom of the Father illustrates the truth that sincere devotion can make even the mud floor of the humblest cottage \u201cas sacred as the rocks of Sinai.\u201d
\nHence Jesus taught sometimes in the house which at Capernaum served Him as a home; sometimes in Peter\u2019s house, or the house of Martha and Mary at Bethany. Sometimes\u2014as in the house of Simon the Pharisee, and of other Pharisaic rulers\u2014He made an ordinary meal the occasion of some of His deepest lessons, and borrowed His images from bread, and salt, and wine, and the washing of hands. He taught and healed in the market-places, and at city gates; and in the broader streets and roads. Much of His most solemn instruction was given, especially to His Apostles, as He journeyed with them on the frequented highways, or in lonely places to which He had retired, or \u201cin the fields as they went from village to to village.\u201d Some of His richest Parables were addressed to the multitudes who crowded the beach while the little boat, which was always at His disposal, rocked gently on the bright ripples of the lake He loved. Sometimes He spoke to throngs composed of poor pilgrims from every nation, as they sat round Him on the hilltop; and sometimes on the broad and lonely plains whither great multitudes flocked to Him on foot from all the cities. He loved to speak in the open air under God\u2019s blue heaven, and among the lilies of the field. Teaching, with His feet among the mountain flowers, He could point to the golden amaryllis, or the scarlet anemones, or the gorgeous tulips, and tell His hearers to trust in God\u2019s free bounty, since not even \u201cSolomon in all his glory\u201d was arrayed like one of these, which were but the perishing \u201cgrass of the field.\u201d Teaching with the soft wind of heaven upon His brow, He could point the lessons to be learnt from the ravens and the sparrows and the bright or lowering sky. But, for the greater part of His life, the simple worship of the synagogues sufficed Him. \u201cAs His custom was He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read\u201d; and \u201cHe taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.\u201d
\nBut it did not seem to make the least difference to the depth and power of His teaching whether He was speaking to the ears of a single auditor, like Nicodemus, the timid Chakam who came to Him by night, or the Samaritan woman by the noonday well, or the blind man whom He had healed; or whether He was in the midst of \u201cmyriads,\u201d who \u201cpressed, and crushed Him,\u201d and \u201ctrode on one another\u201d in their eagerness to hear the gracious words which proceeded from His lips.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 20<\/p>\n
THE FORM OF CHRIST\u2019S TEACHING<\/p>\n
\u03a0\u03bf\u03bb\u03c5\u03bc\u03b5\u03c1\u1ff6\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03c5\u03c4\u03c1\u03cc\u03c0\u03c9\u03c2.\u2014Heb. 1:1.<\/p>\n
THE form of Christ\u2019s teaching was as varied and as simple as were its methods. It was the spontaneous outcome of the requirements of the moment. Whatever was most exactly needed for the defence of a truth, or the blighting of a hypocrisy, or the startling of self-satisfaction into penitence, or the consolation of despondency, was instantaneously clothed in its best form, whether of reproach, or question, or deep irony, or tender apostrophe, or exquisitely poetic image. It was a \u03a0\u03bf\u03bb\u03c5\u03c0\u03cc\u03b9\u03ba\u03b9\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c3\u03bf\u03c6\u03af\u03b1, \u201ca richly variegated wisdom,\u201d which, like the King\u2019s daughter, was \u201ccircumamicta varietatibus\u2014clothed in raiment of various colours.\u201d His lessons were not, it would seem, often expressed in long and didactic addresses, to which the Sermon on the Mount offers the nearest approach. There was in them nothing of recondite metaphysics. \u201cWhat Jesus had to offer,\u201d it has been said, \u201cwas not a new code with its penal enactments, not a new system of doctrine with its curse upon all who should dare to depart from it, but a sure promise of deliverance from misery, of consolation under all suffering, and perfect satisfaction for all the wants of the soul.\u201d And this was set forth, not in gorgeous metaphor, or sonorous rhetoric, but in language of the most perfect simplicity, unencumbered by the pedantry of scholasticism, or the minuti\u00e6 of logic. There ran throughout His discourses \u201cthe two weighty qualities of impressive pregnancy and popular intelligibility.\u201d And to make what He said more clear in its brevity, His words were illuminated with constant illustrations, not drawn from remote truths of science, but suggested by the commonest sights, sounds, and scenes of nature, and the most familiar incidents of humble life\u2014the rejoicing shepherd carrying back on his shoulders the recovered lamb; the toiling vine-dressers; the harvesters in the fields of ripe corn; the children busy in gathering the tares for burning; the woman seeking for the lost coin out of her forehead-circlet; the man going to borrow from his neighbour a loaf for his hungry and unexpected guest. He taught by picturesque and concrete examples, or when He laid down general rules applied them to actual cases. Instead of speaking in the abstract of the beauty of Humility, He took a little child and set him in the midst, and bade the disciples receive the Kingdom of Heaven as that little child. Instead of warning them that they were liable to constant temptation, He says, \u201cBehold, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat.\u201d Instead of saying, \u201cYou must not be content to keep your convictions for your private guidance,\u201d He says, \u201cIs the lamp brought to be put under the bushel or under the bed, and not to be put on the stand?\u201d By multitudes of such pictures He caused a spontaneous recognition of the truth which to every enlightened conscience would itself be as an authoritative command.
\n\u201cA theoretical philosophy strictly so called,\u201d says Sch\u00fcrer, \u201cwas a thing entirely foreign to genuine Judaism. Whatever it did happen to produce in the way of philosophy (Chokmah, \u2018wisdom\u2019) either had practical religious problems as its theme (as in Job and Ecclesiastes), or was of a directly practical nature\u2014being directions based upon a thoughtful study of human things in order so to regulate our life as to ensure our being truly happy. The form in which these contemplations and instructions were presented was that of the \u2018proverb\u2019 or aphorism (Mashai), which contained a single thought expressed in concise and comprehensive terms, in a form more or less poetical, and in which there was nothing of the nature of discussion or argument.\u201d Jewish literature possessed a collection of such aphorisms in the Proverbs of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach; and later we find them in the Talmudic book, Pirqe Av\u00f4th, or \u201cSayings of the Fathers.\u201d Our Lord frequently adopted this gnomic mode of instruction in concise sayings, of which these are but a few specimens; although, as a glance suffices to prove, He infuses into them a depth of spiritual meaning which finds no parallel in any other form of proverbial instruction.<\/p>\n
\u201cA city set on a hill cannot be hid.\u201d
\n\u201cBeware of the leaven of the Pharisees.\u201d
\n\u201cGod is not the God of the dead, but of the living.\u201d
\n\u201cLeave the dead to bury their own dead.\u201d
\n\u201cIf the light in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.\u201d
\n\u201cSalt is good; but if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith will ye season it?\u201d
\n\u201cDo men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?\u201d
\n\u201cIf the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into a pit.\u201d
\n\u201cIt is not meet to take the children\u2019s bread, and cast it to the dogs.\u201d
\n\u201cHe that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.\u201d
\n\u201cThey that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick.\u201d
\n\u201cBe ye wise as serpents, but harmless as doves.\u201d<\/p>\n
If these be compared with the sayings of Heraclitus (for instance) among the Greeks, or of Hillel, who furnishes the best specimens which we can find in the Talmud, their immense superiority will at once be recognised. There is nothing strained or obscure about them; they are intensely concrete and picturesque. Their marvellous concentration excludes every superfluous word, yet admits no lurking fallacy. They have the illuminating force of the lightning; they compress words of wisdom into a single line. A child may understand them, but the wisest philosopher cannot exhaust their infinite significance.
\nOur Lord taught, it has been truly said, in ideas, not in limitations; and the essence of faith is \u201ca permanent confidence in the idea\u2014a confidence never to be broken down by apparent failures, or by examples by which ordinary people prove that qualification is necessary. It was precisely because Jesus taught the idea, and nothing below it, that the effect produced by Him could not have been produced by anybody nearer to ordinary humanity.\u201d
\nAgain, in order to arrest the attention and stimulate the jaded and conventional moral sense of His hearers, our Lord often adopted the form of paradox to state \u201cexceptionless principles,\u201d such as could only be perverted by a stupid literalism. Exceptions which are inevitable, and are a matter of course, may easily be omitted. In fact, some of Christ\u2019s vivid questions and concentrated appeals are thrown into the form which was known to the Greeks as oxymoron\u2014which is defined as a saying which is the more forcible from its apparent extravagance.
\nTake, for instance, such a rule as:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, nor thy kinsfolk, nor rich neighbours; lest haply they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, bid the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
No one of the most ordinary intelligence would fail to see that the rule is not intended for literal application, but that it was meant to point out that there is no merit in hospitality which is only directed by the \u201cslightly expanded egotism\u201d of family selfishness, or only intended to bring about a return in kind; but that the highest and most genuine hospitality is disinterested, loving, and compassionate. It must also be borne in mind that our Lord naturally spoke in the idioms of His country, and that in Hebrew \u201cnot\u201d often means \u201cnot only\u2014but also,\u201d or \u201cnot so much\u2014as.\u201d In other words, \u201cnot\u201d is often used to deny, not absolutely, but conditionally and comparatively.
\nAgain, when He said, \u201cWhosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also,\u201d He merely meant to present the essential ideas of forbearance and forgiveness \u201cwith the greatest clearness and in the briefest compass.\u201d He showed by His own example\u2014as indeed His hearers would have easily understood\u2014that He did not mean such paradoxes to be taken in the letter; for when He was Himself smitten on the cheek by the servant of the High Priest He did not turn the other cheek, but addressed to the insolent offender a dignified rebuke in the words, \u201cIf I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why smitest thou Me?\u201d
\nSo, too, when He said, \u201cIf any man cometh unto Me, and hateth not his own father and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple,\u201d He was speaking to those who were perfectly familiar with Jewish idioms, which put truth in its extremest form, and\u2014as a figure of speech\u2014emphasised a precept by the exclusion of all exceptions.
\nThis fact is illustrated by the way in which St. Matthew records the saying;\u2014which is \u201cHe that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.\u201d Thus, in our Lord\u2019s favourite quotation from the Prophet Hoshea, \u201cI desire mercy and not sacrifice,\u201d neither the ancient Prophet nor our Lord meant to abrogate the whole Levitic law of sacrifice, but only to express the transcendence of the duty of mercy.
\nIn teaching which was pre-eminently intended to arrest the attention and to linger in the memory, the form of expression is of the utmost importance. Our Lord\u2019s discourses were often delivered in the current Aramaic, and if we possessed them in their original form it is more than possible that we should find that they abounded in those assonances and forcible plays on words which often have a hidden power of their own. Thus, the words (Matt. 11:17),<\/p>\n
\u201cWe piped unto you and ye did not dance,
\nWe wailed, and ye did not beat the breast,\u201d<\/p>\n
in addition to their rhythmic and antithetic parallelism would have been still more forcible if the words used for \u201cdanced\u201d and \u201cmourned\u201d were rakedtoon and arkedtoon. The phrase \u201cthe gates of Hades\u201d (Matt. 17:18) may have acquired impressiveness from the alliteration, Shaare Sheol. Again, what a new light falls on the familiar words, \u201cCome unto Me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. For I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls,\u201d when we know the assonances between \u201cI will give you rest\u201d (anikhkhon), \u201cmeek\u201d (nikh) and \u201crest\u201d (Nikha).
\nIn Matt. 3:9, St. John the Baptist plays on the assonance between Abanim (\u201cstones\u201d) and Banim (\u201csons\u201d). In Matt. 10:30, we read, \u201cThe very hairs of your head are all numbered.\u201d This is a paronomasia between Mene (\u201chairs\u201d) and mamyan (\u201cnumbered\u201d). In Luke 7:41, 42, the words chav (\u201cowe\u201d) and achab (\u201cone another\u201d) resemble each other. In John 1:5, the Syriac would be, \u201cThe light shineth in darkness (Gebal), and the darkness comprehended (gibbal) it not.\u201d
\nIt has not perhaps been sufficiently noticed that our Lord sometimes adopted for His teaching the form of spontaneous poetry\u2014engraving the words on the memory of His hearers by adopting the rhythmic parallelism of Hebrew verse, characterised by that climax and refrain in which Eastern poetry delights. The parallelism which is the distinctive characteristic of Hebrew poetry falls under three main heads\u2014antithetic, synthetic, and synonymous. We find all three forms utilised in Christ\u2019s teaching. We have antithetic paralellism in such sayings as<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery one that exalteth himself shall be humbled.
\nAnd he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.\u201d<\/p>\n
We have synthetic, or progressive parallelism in<\/p>\n
\u201cHe that receiveth you receiveth Me,
\nAnd he that recevieth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Synonymous, or illustrative parallelism is found in such sayings as<\/p>\n
\u201cThey that are whole have no need of a physician,
\nBut they that are sick.\u201d
\n\u201cI came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The following is a specimen of synthetic parallelism in which the second line not only emphasises but advances the sense of the first; and to which in the last two lines is added a specimen of antithetic parallelism:<\/p>\n
\u201cThink not that I came to send peace on earth:
\nI came not to send peace, but a sword.
\nFor I came to set a man at variance against his father,
\nAnd the daughter against her mother,
\nAnd the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
\nAnd a man\u2019s foe shall be they of his own household.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe that findeth his life shall lose it;
\nAnd he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Again<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men,
\nBut the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven.
\nAnd whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him;
\nBut whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him.
\nNeither in this \u00e6on, nor in the coming one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here two antithetic parallelisms are followed by a strong synthetic conclusion, Again, in Matt. 25:34\u201346 there is a lovely and powerful rhythmic passage in which \u201ceach division consists of a triplet or stanza of three lines, followed by a stanza of six lines, which, in the form of a climax, state the reason of the sentence; then the response of those that receive the sentence, then the reply of the Judge; lastly, the concluding couplet describes the passage to their doom of the just and of the unjust.\u201d
\nThis poetic structure is often traceable in the Sermon on the Mount, as in the lines of synthetic and introverted parallelism in which the first corresponds to the fourth, and the second to the third.<\/p>\n
\u201cGive not that which is holy unto the dogs,
\nNeither cast ye your pearls before swine,
\nLest haply they trample them under their feet
\nAnd turn again and rend you.\u201d<\/p>\n
And in the next two verses there are \u201ctriplets with an ascending climax.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAsk, and it shall be given you;
\nSeek, and ye shall find;
\nKnock, and it shall be opened unto you
\nFor every one that asketh receiveth,
\nAnd he that seeketh findeth,
\nAnd to him that knocketh it shall be opened.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, not to multiply examples, there is a peculiarly lovely and finished specimen of synthetic and antithetic parallelism in the address of our Lord to Simon the Pharisee.<\/p>\n
\u201cSimon, dost thou mark this woman?
\nI entered into thine house,
\nThou gavest me no water for my feet;
\nBut she hath wetted my feet with her tears
\nAnd wiped them with her hair.
\nThou gavest me no kiss;
\nBut she, since the time I came in,
\nHath not ceased to kiss my feet.
\nMy head with oil thou didst not anoint;
\nBut she hath anointed my feet with spikenard.
\nHer sins, which are many, are forgiven,
\nFor she loved much;
\nBut to whom little is forgiven,
\nThe same loveth little.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 21<\/p>\n
THE FORM OF CHRIST\u2019S TEACHING THE PARABLES (CONTINUED)<\/p>\n
\u201cA parable of knowledge is in the treasures of wisdom.\u201d\u2014Ecclus. 1:25.<\/p>\n
\u201cApples of gold in baskets of silver.\u201d\u2014Prov. 25:11.<\/p>\n
\u201cThough truths in manhood darkly join,
\nDeep-seated in our mystic frame,
\nWe yield all blessing to the Name
\nOf Him who made them current coin.\u201d
\n\u2014TENNYSON.<\/p>\n
THE teachings of our Lord, especially after the earliest phase of His Ministry, was more habitually and essentially pictorial and illustrative than that of any other teacher of mankind. The word \u201cparable\u201d\u2014derived from \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03b2\u1f00\u03bb\u03bb\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd, \u201cto place side by side,\u201d and so \u201cto compare\u201d\u2014is used in the Gospels with a wider latitude than we ordinarily give to it. The parable differs from (i.) a fable because it only moves within the limits of possibility; from (ii.) an allegory in not being throughout identical with the truth illustrated; from (iii.) a simile, in its more complete and dramatic development. There is no direct parable in the Gospel of St. John, but there are many \u201csymbolic comparisons,\u201d of which the majority are drawn from Nature\u2014such as that of the wind blowing where it listeth (3:8); the growth of the grain of wheat (12:24); sowing and reaping (4:35\u201338); and there are two allegories, those of the Fair Shepherd, and the Vine and its branches. St. John does not use the word \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03b2\u03bf\u03bb\u03ae once, but he uses the word \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03bf\u03b9\u03bc\u03af\u03b1 (\u201cproverb\u201d) four times (10:6, 16:25, 29). Elsewhere this word only occurs in 2 Peter 2:22.
\nThe name, \u201cparable,\u201d is given, not only to continuous narratives, but to condensed maxims such as:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch?\u201d
\n\u201cPhysician, heal thyself.\u201d
\n\u201cThe whole have no need of the physician, but the sick.\u201d
\n\u201cNo man rendeth a piece from a new garment and putteth it on an old garment, or putteth new wine into old wine-skins.\u201d
\n\u201cDo men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?\u201d<\/p>\n
In point of fact, the words \u201cparable\u201d and \u201cproverb\u201d are used to some extent interchangeably, and both words are, in the Septuagint, chosen to translate the Hebrew Mashal. In this sense of the word even the Sermon on the Mount abounds in parables, for it contains fully fourteen comparisons, any one of which might have been expanded into a little narrative.
\nIn ordinary English, however, the word \u201cparable\u201d is used to describe the illustrations which, whether derived from nature or from human life, are used as pictorial figures of spiritual and moral truths. These have been divided into symbolic (which are the more numerous) and typical. Symbolic parables are those which, like the Parables of the Sower, the Mustard Seed, or the Fisher\u2019s Net, are descriptive pictures set forth in a narrative form; typical parables are those like the Parables of the Good Samaritan, or Dives and Lazarus, which convey instruction and warning by the incidents or histories of human life. The Old Testament supplies us with one example of each kind. Nathan\u2019s Parable of the Ewe Lamb is typical; Isaiah\u2019s Parable of the Vineyard is symbolic. In the Psalms of Solomon, the Book of Enoch, and in later Rabbinic literature, parables are found, both symbolic and typical; but whereas not one of them has seized the imagination of mankind, the parables of Jesus remain to this day a source of delight and of deepest instruction to all sorts and conditions of men, and in age after age have exercised over the world a memorable influence.
\nIt is interesting to observe that our Lord expressly used parables to instruct the simple and ignorant multitude, whereas by earlier teachers they had been regarded as the prerogative of the Chaberim, or \u201cpupils of the wise.\u201d Tillers and herdsmen, says the Son of Sirach, are not found where parables are spoken.
\nIt is further remarked that, amid all the crude and audacious inventions of the Apocryphal Gospels, they do not venture to invent a single parable. The Divine Wisdom necessary to offer even a remote parallel to such instruction lay wholly beyond the sphere of the capacity of crude fabulists.
\nThe parables of Jesus took their tone in a great measure from the circumstances by which He was surrounded, and the class of people whom He was addressing. For instance, the first series, delivered at Capernaum\u2014seven or eight in number\u2014deals with the founding of God\u2019s Kingdom; the second series, mainly given by St. Luke (10\u201319.) describes the progressive development of the Kingdom, and the attitude of its members toward God and toward the world; the final series, which belong to the last period of Christ\u2019s ministry, relates to the future completion of the Kingdom at the end of its temporal development.
\nOne series of these parables was practically consecutive. \u201cThe Sower exhibits the rise of the kingdom; the Weeds sown by the devil, its obstacles; the Mustard Seed and the Leaven, its growth; the Treasure and the Pearl, its appropriation by mankind; the Net, the separation at the judgment, which closes the history of its development.\u201d
\nThere was a reason for the adoption of the parabolic form of teaching, which our Lord explained. His parables resembled the pillar of fire, which to the hostile Egyptians was a pillar of cloud. At first He had spoken to the multitudes in similitudes indeed, but such as explained themselves; and when He first resorted to parables the disciples were astonished. In answer to their question He explained the double object of this change of method. It was at once helpful and penal. To the earnest and faithful they gave light; to the wilful and perverse they were as a veil. To the earnest, the sincere, the humble-minded, in proportion to their faithfulness, the parables were, as Seneca said of fables, \u201cadminicula imbecillitatis\u201d; but, to those who cared nothing for the truth, or directly set themselves against it, the indifference which caused them to disdain the truth made of the parables a shroud to hide it from them. Thus, as Bacon said, \u201cA parable has a double use\u2014it tends to veil, and it tends to illustrate a truth. In the latter case it seems designed to teach; in the former to conceal.\u201d
\nHow far any of the typical parables were borrowed from actual facts which had come under the cognisance of Jesus we are unable to say, though many of them read like descriptions of real events. None of them show any improbability; much less do they even transgress the limits of the possible. It is, however, a most interesting fact that we are able to trace the origin of one parable\u2014though of one only\u2014that of the Pounds. It was delivered on the journey from Jericho towards Jerusalem, and unintelligible as the notion of \u201ca nobleman going into a far country to seek a kingdom\u201d might seem to us, there was not one of our Lord\u2019s hearers who would not at once think of Herod the Great, and of his son Archelaus, both of whom had done this very thing. They could not reign over Jud\u00e6a without the permission of the all-powerful C\u00e6sar, and they had to seek it at Rome. Jesus had just passed by the splendid palace reared by Archelaus among the balsam-groves of Jericho, and the thought of the tyrant would naturally be brought into His mind. The parable recalls some actual incidents of the Ethnarch\u2019s history, and since Christ utilised these events to convey deep and awful lessons, we are justified in the conjecture that many others of the parables may have derived fresh force because they were directly borrowed from circumstances which were known to those who heard them. This parable also, like those of the Unjust Judge and the Unjust Steward, proves that the details of parables are not to be extravagantly forced; for our Lord here employs the movements and actions of a bad and cruel prince to shadow forth certain truths in the relations of God to men.
\nAbsolute simplicity was the characteristic of the preaching of the Son of God. It is interesting to notice that the first groups of parables are derived from natural facts; the other three are not narratives, but dwell on single incidents.
\nThe second group consists of parables mainly drawn from human events, and addressed to the disciples on the way from Galilee to Jerusalem, and before the closing scenes.
\nThe last group of parables\u2014which were delivered during the closing days of Christ\u2019s earthly life\u2014are all derived from human conduct.
\nBy far the larger number of parables are recorded by St. Matthew and St. Luke; St. John has no parable, and St. Mark only one which is peculiarly his own\u2014that of the Seed growing secretly (4:26). If we compare the parables preserved respectively by St. Matthew and St. Luke, we shall see that (as Archbishop Trench says) \u201cSt. Matthew\u2019s are more theocratic, St. Luke\u2019s more ethical; St. Matthew\u2019s are more parables of judgment, St. Luke\u2019s of mercy; those are statelier, these tenderer.\u201d
\nIn the parables generally we mark \u201cthe lessons which we may learn from the natural world on the progress and scope of Revelation, and the testimony which man\u2019s own heart renders to the Christian morality.\u201d Christ\u2019s parables were the exact antithesis to those \u201csubtle\u201d and \u201criddling\u201d parables in which the son of Sirach tells us that the Scribes and ideal wise men delighted. The general teaching of them all is in the direction of that large view of religion which uplifts it entirely above the formul\u00e6 and functions with which it has been confused by the majority of mankind. Their one main object is to inculcate holiness, and to show that the only religion for which God cares is the religion of the heart. Again and again they impress on us the great duties of love, watchfulness, humility, and prayer, and show that perfect love toward God is most surely evinced by perfect love towards, and service of, our fellow-men. They set before us the one supreme end of human life, which is to live in the conviction of God\u2019s presence, and the knowledge that in His presence is life. And with these eternal lessons are intermingled the awful notes of necessary warning\u2014that man cannot sin with impunity; that our sins will always find us out; that, against all pride, cruelty, hypocrisy, and wickedness, \u201cour God is a consuming fire.\u201d These lessons run through the whole of Scripture; but \u201cnever man spake like this Man.\u201d He taught, says Bishop Jeremy Taylor, \u201cby parables, under which were hid mysterious senses, which shined through the veil, like a bright sun through an eye closed with a thin eyelid.\u201d Was it strange that all the people \u201changed on Him as the bee doth on the flower, the babe on the breast, the little bird on the bill of her dam? Christ drew the people after Him by the golden chain of His heavenly eloquence.\u201d
\nThe parables remain as the most winning, yet at the same time the richest and divinest sources of moral and spiritual guidance. They do not furnish us with scholastic forms of creed, or intricate systems of morality, but they teach throughout one main doctrine\u2014\u201ca consistent view of the right ideal relation between God and men, thoroughly pervaded by the idea of God as the living Father.\u201d Who could exhaust the depths of tenderness, and warning, and appeal, and revelation of Him whose mercy endureth for ever, which Jesus compressed into the few thrilling verses that tell the story of the Prodigal Son? Truly, of this parable we may say with special force:<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
\nWhere truth in closest words shall fail,
\nWhen truth embodied in a tale
\nShall enter in at lowly doors.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hard dogmatism and theoretic minuti\u00e6 of an arrogant theology vanish like oppressive nightmares before this single parable in which Jesus reveals the heavenly secret of human redemption, not according to any mystical or criminal theory of punishment, but anthropologically, psychologically, theologically, to every pure eye that looks into the perfect laws of Olivet. Were we to be asked to name one page of all the literature of all the world since time began which had caused the deepest blessings, and kindled in the despairing hearts of men the most effectual belief in the possibility and efficacy of repentance, would any one hesitate to name the Parable of the Prodigal Son? It shatters to pieces all the common theological conceptions of God the Father as a wrathful Judge, whose flaming countenance can only be softened by the compassion of God the Son; or who only deals with men in the form of forensic arrangement by means of substitutes, and equivalents, and exact retributive vengeance. It sets Him forth as the All Merciful, whose heart is filled with a Father\u2019s love; who is more ready to hear than we to pray; who desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his sins and be saved. It is the Evangelium in Evangelio, and, even after long centuries of Christianity, towers transcendently above the elder-brotherly spirit which so many who \u201cprofess and call themselves Christians\u201d display in all their dealings with their fellow-men, and even with their brother-religionists whose belief varies ever so little from their own.
\nGoebel classifies the parables under the heads of\u2014I. 1. The Founding of the Kingdom, The Sower. 2. The Development of the Kingdom (a) in the immediate future; (b) in its development to the end. 3. The Consummation of the Kingdom. II. The Right Attitude of the Members of the Kingdom (i.) towards God; (ii.) towards the world; (iii.) to men; (iv.) to worldly goods.
\nBishop Westcott has given a classification of the parables in his Introduction to the Study of the Gospels (pp. 478\u2013480). In main outline he divides them into\u2014I. Parables drawn FROM THE MATERIAL WORLD\u2014The Sower; The Tares; The Seed growing secretly; The Mustard Seed; The Leaven. [5]
\nII. Parables drawn from the RELATION OF MAN\u2014(i.) To the Lower the World: The Draw-net; The Barren Fig-tree; The Lost Sheep; The Lost Drachm. [4] (ii.) To his Fellowmen, and in the Family: The Unmerciful Servant; The Two Debtors; The Prodigal Son; The Two Sons. [4] (iii.) In Social Life: The Friend at Midnight; The Unjust Judge; The Ten Virgins; The Lower Seats (Luke 14:7\u201311); The Great Supper; The King\u2019s Marriage Feast. [6] (iv.) To God\u2019s Service: The Tower Builders; The King Making War; The Unjust Steward; The Talents; The Pounds; The Wicked Husbandman; The Unprofitable Servants; The Labourers in the Vineyard. [8] (v.) To Providence: The Hid Treasure; The Man Seeking Pearls; The Rich Fool. [3]
\nThere are also three symbolic narratives:\u2014The Publican and the Pharisee; The Good Samaritan; and Dives and Lazarus\u2014which illustrate (in opposition to Judaism) the essential spirituality, the universal love, and the outward lowliness of Christianity.
\nWe may further notice that the general characteristics of our Lord\u2019s parables were influenced by circumstances. In the brighter period of His ministry, before the enmity of the Pharisees had developed into deadly opposition, His parables mainly dwelt on the growth, holiness, and glory of the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 13.). After the Transfiguration, and when He fully foresaw the end which awaited Him, they have stronger elements of warning mixed with their exhortations (Luke 10\u201314.). The third series is more directly judicial and predictive (Luke 19, and in Matt. 18\u201325.). This is specially true of the Parables of the Rich Fool, the Barren Fig-tree, and the Great Supper, which convey the most solemn warnings. On the other hand, the whole depths of Divine tenderness are unfolded before us in the three Parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Drachm, and the Prodigal Son. The duties of righteousness and mercy are enforced in the Parables of the Dishonest Steward, Dives and Lazarus, and the Unmerciful Servant. The peril of self-righteousness is set forth in a few powerful touches in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican.
\nWhile in every parable there is one main central lesson, there are many touches and incidental details which are often rich in instruction. Almost every marked phase in the history of human life comes within the compass of the story of the Prodigal Son. Yet we must be carefully on our guard against pressing every incident into the service of vast structures of theological dogmatism. It is, for instance, entirely unwarrantable to force the story of the Rich Man into the proof of the ghastly dogma of endless torments in hell fire; and it is a horrible perversion of the story of the King\u2019s Marriage Feast to distort the incidental phrase \u201cconstrain them to come in\u201d\u2014as many Roman Catholic theologians have done\u2014into a command to practise the atrocities of the Inquisition, and the hellish crime of burning men alive for their religious opinions.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 22<\/p>\n
THE SUBSTANCE OF CHRIST\u2019S TEACHING<\/p>\n
\u201cI am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.\u201d\u2014John 14:6.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegnum c\u00e6lorum quo emitur? Paupertate, regnum; dolore gaudium; labore, requies; vilitate, gloria; morte, vita.\u201d\u2014AUGUSTINE, De Serm. in Morte.<\/p>\n
THE heart of man\u2014which in its hardness and pride is so naturally prepense to all that is worldly\u2014has shown, everywhere and always, a tendency to corrupt the very elements of spiritual religion. Without incessant watchfulness, and unless God sends to age after age His Prophets and Saints\u2014whose usual reward has been the hate, slander, and persecution of their fellow-men\u2014the tendency of all religions has been to sink into formal religiosity. Men think it sufficient to draw nigh unto God with their mouth, and honour Him with their lips, while their hearts are far from Him; and they worship Him in vain because, with innate hypocrisy, they substitute for His requirements the commandments of men.
\nThe one remedy for erring generations and perverted priesthoods, if they have left in them the faintest elements of sincerity, is to go back from the ever-accumulating masses of false human traditions to the teaching of Him whom they profess to worship as their Lord and their God. Much that to this day is taught and paraded as the doctrine of \u201cthe church\u201d is in direct and flagrant antagonism to the teaching and example of the Son of God and of His immediate Apostles.
\nNow, as far as the outward aspect of Judaism was concerned, there were in Christ\u2019s days but two prominent \u201cschools\u201d of religion, namely, those of the Priests and of the Legalists.
\nChrist entered into no relations with the Priests. He said nothing in commendation of them, or approval of their ideals, or acceptance of their religious views. They were absorbed in selfish worldliness and a ritualism which their insincerity had emptied of its original subordinate significance. The whole body of Priests were Sadducees who had become unspiritual sceptics and worshippers of Mammon. Jesus thought nothing of their pretensions, or of their system. Apart from an allusion to the High Priest Abiathar, who rightly broke the law by giving the shew-bread to David in his hunger, He scarcely mentions priests at all. In one parable He described the cold-hearted and supercilious formalist who on the way to perform his functions passed with heartless indifference by the wounded wayfarer; and He told lepers, whom He had already cleansed by His word, to get from the priests the ordinary legal certificate that their leprosy was healed. Otherwise He has nothing to say either to them or of them, because they had no connection with the essential truths which He came to reveal. They were not teachers at all; they had sunk into mere functionaries who contributed nothing to spiritual religion, or even to elementary morality.
\nThe more numerous and predominant party was that of the Pharisees. Of them we have already spoken, and shall have to speak again later on. All that need here be said is that Christ rejected Pharisaism so utterly that, whereas to all others His words were full of merciful tenderness, He was compelled again and again to denounce in burning utterances\u2014which have been shown to be necessary in each successive generation\u2014the deep-rooted hypocrisies of these haughty and pretentious formalists.
\nWhat Christ with unvarying consistency taught, both by His words and His example, was inward reality, not outward conformities. His religious practices were marked by undeviating simplicity. He taught that the kingdom of God is within us, and that it consists not in meats and drinks, but in righteousness, peace, and joy in believing. He taught that the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but holiness, and love, and joy in the Holy Ghost. He taught that it is not the food which goeth into a man which defiles him, but the evil thoughts which come out of him. Thus, by one word, \u201cHe made all meats clean.\u201d He would have said with Jeremiah, \u201cThus said the Lord of Hosts, Add your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices and eat flesh. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day when I brought them out of the land of Egypt concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices: but this thing I commanded them, saying, Obey My Voice.\u201d
\nAgain, the Pharisees delighted in outward ablutions\u2014hand-washings and the washing of cups and platters and brazen vessels and tables. For such practices Christ had no word of recognition, and many words of disparagement. The whole of what He had to reveal bore on the essence of heart-reality and spiritual pureness. We shall see hereafter some of the minute and tortuous regulations on which the Pharisees insisted in the matter of fasts and ablutions. Christ practised no formal fast, and discouraged His disciples from doing so; He despised the hand-washings and ablutions of cups and platters which had nothing to do with cleanliness, but only with religious formalism. For those who desire to learn of Him, religion will be the love of God shown in love to man, and rites and ceremonies will sink into the most infinitesimal proportions. There is no true piety except such as consists in the bond of union between God and man\u2014that direct and immediate relation of the personal creature to the personal Creator by which all true life can alone be determined.
\nWithout heart-sincerity, and rectitude of life, all forms, however ancient, are worthless. It is dangerous to elaborate and magnify the outward ceremonies of worship when they tend (as they too often do) to breed self-deceit, supercilious arrogance, and opinionated lawlessness. It is of no use to be free from outward crimes if the heart be unclean; it is of no use to abstain from murder if the thoughts be full of hatred, and the words full of rage and slander; it is of no use even to do good works if they are only done to obtain the applause or approval of men. Christ evidently regards the Levitic law, whatever may have been its date and origin, as given to the Israelites because of the hardness of their hearts, and as consisting intrinsically in \u201cweak and beggarly rudiments,\u201d fitted only to train the disobedient childhood of the race. He came to abrogate it all. \u201cIt hath been said to them of old time\u2014but I say unto you.\u201d The essential conception of holiness from henceforth was to be faith and love towards God and the exhibition of that faith and love in constant service to our brethren who are in the world. And the chief means of attaining to this height was prayer\u2014not formal prayers, verbose, stereotyped, wearisome, and interminable, abounding in vain repetitions and artificial phrases; not prayers accompanied, like those of Dervishes and Stylites, with endless crossings, prostrations, and genuflexions\u2014but brief prayers of humble, simple, and trustful earnestness.
\nAll this teaching had become most necessary. The Jews had abandoned the idolatry of false gods during the seventy years of disastrous exile; but almost from the days of their restoration they began to fall into a new idolatry\u2014the worship of the symbol and the letter. While they professed to deify the Law, they emptied it of all its significance, and with cunning casuistry managed to evade its most searching requirements. The result was a mixture of arrogant tyranny and spiritual uselessness\u2014it was that common form of religionism which may be defined as \u201cself-complacency flavoured by a comprehensive uncharitableness.\u201d Religious attitudinising ended in a hypocritic life; a terrible obliquity of moral precepts and conduct; a deplorable confusion of holiness with Levitic purity, and of sin with ceremonial defilements; a futile attempt to extort Divine favour by a mass of observances while it was disgracefully indifferent to inward holiness. If any regard this view of Pharisaism as too severe, let me remind them that the Lord of Love characterised its votaries as \u201cfools and blind\u201d; as \u201cthe offspring of vipers\u201d; devouring widows\u2019 houses, and for a pretence making long prayers; as washing the outside of the cup and of the platter, while within they were full of extortion and uncleanness.
\nThe Sermon on the Mount was the promulgation of the laws of Christ\u2019s new kingdom. Conceive what the Sermon on the Mount would have been if it had been delivered by Caiaphas the Priest, or Simon the Pharisee, or any of their modern representatives! Would it not have been full of priestly usurpations, and petty orthodoxies, and the small proprieties of the infinitely little? Would it not have been deplorably empty of moral manliness and spiritual freedom? Christ touched on none of these things. Apart from two sacraments, accompanied by rites of the most elementary simplicity, He did not lay down one liturgical ordinance, or ceremonial injunction, or priestly tradition, or Pharisaic observance. No, but He pronounced beatitudes on the meek and the loving, and precepts of self-denial, and inculcations of tenderness and sympathy. So broad, so simple, so free, so eternal and natural, are the essentials of real saintliness; so universal are the sole requirements of Him who said, \u201cLearn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.\u201d To wash the hands in innocency, and so to come to God\u2019s altar\u2014that is sainthood. To have the heart sprinkled from an evil conscience, void of offence toward God and toward man\u2014that is sainthood. To behold the face of our brother in love; to be pure, peaceable, gentle; to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance\u2014that is the only sainthood of which Christ set the example, which Christ approves, which Christ will reward for ever.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 23<\/p>\n
THE UNIQUENESS OF CHRIST\u2019S TEACHING<\/p>\n
\u03c4\u03af \u1f10\u03c3\u03c4\u03af \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c4\u03bf; \u0394\u03b9\u03b4\u03b1\u03c7\u1f74 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b9\u03bd\u1f74.\u2014Mark 1:27.<\/p>\n
\u201cChristianus miser videri potest, inveniri non potest.\u201d\u2014MINUC. FEL. Oct. 37.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if earth
\nBe but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
\nEach to the other like more than on earth is thought?\u201d
\n\u2014MILTON.<\/p>\n
THE broad eternal characteristic of the teaching of the Lord of Life was that it ignored all that was not spiritual and essential. It constantly insisted on two fundamental truths\u2014the infinite love of God, and the moral duty of man. We see the depth and uniqueness of Christ\u2019s teaching, as well as the unequalled power of its methods, illustrated from the first in the eight opening beatitudes with which He began to train the disciples and the assembled multitudes. \u201cThey may be regarded,\u201d says Dr. Plummer, \u201cas an analysis of perfect spiritual well-being, and nowhere in non-Christian literature shall we find so sublime a summary of the felicity attainable by man. They correct all low and carnal views of human happiness. They do not describe eight different classes of people, but eight different elements of excellence, and may all be contained in one and the same man.\u201d
\nChrist had nothing to say to the wretched questions which now agitate and distract Church parties. There is not the slightest allusion to his having ever used a purification for ceremonial uncleanness. His only reference to Jewish sacrificial worship was in His repeated reference to the Prophet Hoshea, \u201cI will have mercy and not sacrifice.\u201d He swept away with a divine scorn the idolatry of symbols. He was not in the most distant degree interested in \u201cthe sorts and qualities of sacrificial wood,\u201d or \u201cthe right burning of the two kidneys and the fat.\u201d It is hardly possible to conceive the immeasurable disdain with which such questions as crowd the Talmud, and fill whole reams of religious literature, would have been regarded by the Son of God. All that He had to say of the formalism which the ignorant people confounded with saintliness, was that they who practised it had made the word of God of none effect by their traditions. His attitude to the ceremonial Law was that it was obsolete and abrogated. The popular religion had filled it with falsities and emptied it of meaning. He came to purge it from useless trivialities and to substitute for it righteousness and true holiness. Nothing was more abhorrent to Him than the notion that the Infinite, Eternal, Almighty Father cared for, or was to be propitiated by external scrupulosities. Of what use, He asked, was the outward glistering of the whitewashed grave, which within was full of dead men\u2019s bones and all uncleanness?
\nWe see the essence of His teaching in His first great discourse. It has been well described as an answer to the question, \u201cWhat ought to be a man\u2019s daily care upon earth?\u201d The answer is to be found in the one word, Whole-heartedness. A double-souled man (\u03b4\u03af\u03c8\u03c5\u03c7\u03bf\u03c2) is, as St. James says, \u201cunstable in all his ways.\u201d He falls into the countless host of trimmers, who are content to be one hundredth part for God, and ninety-nine parts for themselves and for the world. These are the mammon-worshippers and the self-worshippers, who devote themselves to greed, envy, self-importance, and the indulgence of their own guilty passions.
\nBut God will be content with no scant and divided service. Therefore Christ set Himself to teach us, Let your treasure be with your heart, in heaven. Be in no wise anxious about the things of this world. If you are seeking with all your strength the approval of God, care nothing for the hate or scorn of men. Trust implicitly in God\u2019s infinite goodness. For His sake love your brethren who are in the world. Regard all men as your brethren, pardoning and loving even the worst, and leaving them to God\u2019s merciful judgment, not to that of your own spiritual conceit. Above all, beware of secret hypocrisy. Sanctimonious externalism may deceive men; it cannot deceive God. Religion is not Pharisaism; it is to love God with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself. This is the Law and the Prophets, and he who builds on this foundation builds upon a rock, and the house of his life can never be swept away by any earthly storms.
\nBy living up to this teaching we shall find that the Kingdom of Heaven is now established upon earth. It is written, \u201cSeek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all else shall be added unto you.\u201d
\nAnd this is illustrated by the attitude of our Lord toward the ancient Scriptures. The people, as they heard Him, might well exclaim, \u201cWhat is this? A new teaching!\u201d In direct antithesis to the inferences which the tortuous ingenuity of men had forced out of the Law of Moses by putting it on the rack to their own destruction, He taught that all forms of righteousness were worthless, all precepts of righteousness insignificant, unless they rule the conduct, and dominate the heart. So far, indeed, from coming to destroy the Law and the Prophets, His object was to give them their sole valid and permanent significance.
\nAs regards the moral law, which Rabbinism, even in fundamental matters, often contrived to evade, He taught that it could only be fulfilled by fidelity to God in the inmost thoughts. From quantitative extensions of ordinance He recalled the thoughts of men to central obligations. Instead of the allegorising casuistry of the Jewish fourfold exegesis, the Rabbinic PARDES, i. e., the Peshat or explanation, the Remez or \u201chint,\u201d the Darush or homiletic inference, the Sod or \u201cmystery\u201d\u2014and the fourfold arguments and Seven Middoth or \u201cRules\u201d of Hillel\u2014He bade men study the innermost meaning of the word of God. He appealed most often to the Prophets, and ratified their sweeping depreciation of the whole ceremonial Law when its requirements are made a substitute for true religion. Prophecy had long been dead in Israel, as it always dies when sacerdotalism reigns. \u201cThe creative period had ceased,\u201d even \u201cthe interpretative period\u201d had ceased; what now prevailed was the period of false literalism, mingled with ingenious perversions. The living voice had long been silent; it had been replaced by \u201cspent echoes, broken into confused and inarticulate sound.\u201d The pool of popular religion had become turbid, as it must do when it is not flushed by the living streams of that river of inspiration which maketh glad the city of God. The surface glitter of the Dead Sea shore does but hide the blight and barrenness beneath. It has been said that \u201cwhat Jesus really did was to give utterance to a new principle, which explains all His teaching and furnishes the key to the mystery of His own religious genius. This great principle may be described, according to the side from which it is approached, as the Worth of Man, or the Love of God.\u201d
\nThe whole of religion must ultimately and essentially depend on the ideas which we form of God, and it is in their mean and narrow conceptions of God that all false religions, and all perversions and degradations of true religion, have gone astray.
\nIf, with the Sadducees, we hold that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, we shall try to line our pockets well in the world, and with complete insouciance to go through certain functions whether we believe in their efficacy or not; and with Caiaphas and his brother-priests we shall be ready to commit any crime if we regard it as \u201cexpedient\u201d for our interests, or our party, and for the maintenance of the present state of things which we regard as advantageous to ourselves.
\nIf we be cruel and wrathful, we shall conceive of God as the Egyptian conceived of his Typhon, or the Moabite of his Chemosh, and shall suppose that He is a terrific, supra-human monster, a<\/p>\n
\u201cMoloch, horrid King, besmeared with blood
\nOf human sacrifice, and parents\u2019 tears;
\nThough, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud,
\nTheir children\u2019s cries unheard who passed thro\u2019 fire
\nTo His grim idol.\u201d<\/p>\n
If we be jealously wrapped up in the serene infallibility of our own opinionated ignorance, and determined to crush all freedom of thought in order that we may keep our own usurped power over the hearts and consciences of our fellow-men, we shall be ready to rekindle the accursed balefires of Smithfield or of Seville, and to blacken the golden light of heaven with the smoke of hell, to get rid of men who are wiser and holier than ourselves.
\nIf we be dwarfed, and petty, and exacting in our conceptions; we shall multiply fantastic obligations till they become like a mountain suspended by a single hair of false teaching; and we shall slander, and belittle, and persecute all who see deeper into the reality of things than ourselves. We shall look upon our whole relation to God as a sort of small bargaining in which we shall be repaid exact equivalents for all our tithes of mint, and anise, and cumin. What becomes of others who do not pay them we shall not greatly care, but shall say with the Pharisees, \u201cThis people that knoweth not the Law is accursed.\u201d
\nIf our hearts be full of gloom and self-absorbed individualism\u2014if we never raise our eyes upwards from our own unworthiness, but regard God as a sternly pitiless Avenger, dealing with us after our sins, rewarding us after our iniquities, and never appeased till we have paid the uttermost farthing\u2014then we shall adopt an exaggerated asceticism, and shut ourselves up in a half-dazed seclusion equally injurious to ourselves and useless to the world.
\nNow He who came from the bosom of the Father to reveal Him repudiated all such corruptions. He taught the Fatherhood of God towards all His creatures. He taught man<\/p>\n
\u201cto turn
\nTo the deep sky, and from its splendours learn
\nBy stars, by sunsets, by soft clouds that rove
\nIts blue expanse, or sleep in silvery rest,
\nThat nature\u2019s God hath left no place unblest
\nWith founts of beauty for the eye of love.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was His essential revelation. He pointed to this as the teaching of Nature. Doth not God cause His sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and send His rain to the just and to the unjust? Doth He not clothe the lilies of the field, though they toil not, neither do they spin, with a glory surpassing the magnificence of Solomon? Doth He not feed the ravens, though they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns? Doth He not care even for each one of the millions of feeble sparrows, so that not one of them falleth to the ground without His will?
\nAnd if this be the revelation of Nature, how much more is it the revelation of Grace? Hence the Parable of the Prodigal Son represents the essence of Christ\u2019s teaching as to the relation of God to men. The wild, dissolute youth had flung away the love and left the holy home of his father; had hastened into the far country; had there lived the life of a riotous, self-indulgent debauchee, disgracing the name he bore, and devouring his living with harlots; and he had sunk by inevitable retribution into contempt and misery. Deserted by his fair-weather friends the moment when nothing more was to be got out of him, he had passed from extravagant luxury into abject serfdom. In the lowest abyss of his degradation, he had been sent into the fields to feed swine; and, since it was no longer possible to sate the gnawing of his hunger, he would fain at least have filled his belly with the coarse carob-pods which were the food of swine; yet even of these no man gave unto him. It was only when he had sounded the uttermost abyss of misery that he thought of his loving father, and of his lost home, and of his willing forfeiture of all that he had received of nobleness and grace, once more took possession of his thoughts. He \u201ccame to himself.\u201d He had abandoned, he had done his utmost to destroy and obliterate, his true self. But though the light of grace may dwindle to a spark, and the lamp of the Holy Spirit within us be almost quenched, it cannot be wholly lost in this life, or man would sink irredeemably into a beast or a demon. In this awful catastrophe the poor, lost youth determined to fling himself unreservedly on his father\u2019s love, and to plead for read-mission into the home of his early innocence\u2014no longer as a son, but as a hired servant. So he arose and returned; and while he was yet a long way off his father saw him, and ran to meet him with the outstretched arms of infinite compassion, and kissed him tenderly; and when the son had sobbed forth upon his neck the confession of his despairing penitence, the father ordered the best robe to be brought at once to cover his swinish rags, and the fatted calf to be killed for his banquet.
\nThis is the picture of God\u2019s full, free, unconditioned forgiveness to all who seek Him, and call upon Him, and repent of their old sins. There is no question of reparation; no demand for the equivalent payment of a debt; no claim for the pound of flesh; no requirement of a \u201csubstitute\u201d; no need for the intrusion of intermediaries; but, as a father pitieth his own children, even so is the Lord pitiful to them that fear Him. The prodigal\u2019s anguish of loving penitence was dearer to the father\u2019s heart than the prim, loveless, quantitative goodness and unlovely spite of the elder son, who was still far astray and saw no need for repentance. And all this, let us observe, was taught with a simplicity which a child might understand. It was not expanded into vast folios of a Summa Theologi\u0153;. It was not thrown into rigid and technical formul\u00e6. It was set forth in words exquisitely beautiful as a simple, eternal, transcendent truth, clothed in a form intelligible to the humblest and least instructed souls, yet full of sublime meanings inexhaustible by men of the loftiest genius.
\nWas it wonderful if, after having become familiar with such teaching, St. Peter should exclaim on behalf of all the Apostles, \u201cLord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.\u201d
\nIn this relation of God to man was implicitly involved the duty of man to God. The first step towards the Kingdom of Heaven was to realise the truth that love to God necessitated the feeling of brotherhood to man. When the candid Scribe recognised that the Ten Commandments were summed up in Two, and said, \u201cOf a truth, Master, Thou hast well said that there is none other but God; and to love Him with all the heart, and to love his neighbour as himself, is much more than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices,\u201d Jesus said unto him, \u201cThou art not far from the kingdom of God.\u201d
\nThis was the practical summary of Christ\u2019s earliest teaching. He pointed out the secret of salvation; the inmost essence of love and joy and peace. This is the Magna Charta of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Beatitudes reversed all the judgments of the world, as well as of the Sadducees and of the Scribes. They set forth the four virtues of humility, holy sorrow, meekness, and yearning after righteousness; and the virtues of mercy, purity, peaceableness, and the endurance of persecution and reproach. Thus did Jesus cancel, revise, or fill with far deeper spiritual reality the moral teaching of the world. He showed that what the world regarded as misery might not only lead to, but actually be, the present fulness of holy joy. God\u2019s blessing rests not on the arrogant, and the self-satisfied, but on the seekers after God, and those who with pure hearts devote their lives to works of compassion, in saving the world from corruption, and setting a shining example to its slaves and votaries. He extended the obligations of the Decalogue to the thoughts of the heart. The essence of murder consists in hatred, in unreasoning anger, and bitter speech; the true fulfilment of the sixth commandment lies in peace towards all men. The essence of adultery lies in dissolute imaginations, and no sacrifice is too severe which is required for the attainment of inward purity. The lex talionis\u2014a concession to wild and unprotected times\u2014may be reversed by a spirit of non-resistance and self-suppression. Love, which the Rabbis had confined to love of our neighbours, must be extended to our enemies. Ostentation in well-doing, or in alms-giving, corrupts all its blessedness. Prayer must be humble, secret, sincere, free from vain repetitions, the outcome of an intense longing to fulfil God\u2019s law. Desire for earthly treasure must be superseded by a love for God which expels minor affections, and a trust in God which excludes the possibility of earthly anxieties. For the censoriousness which is ever passing judgment on others, the children of the kingdom must aim at the sincerity, which is only severe to our own shortcomings. God\u2019s mercy and lovingkindness are infinite, and as we rely on His bounty for ourselves, we must show the same to others. \u201cNarrow is the gate and straitened the way\u201d which leads to the attainment of these aims. We must never suffer ourselves to be turned from that narrow gate, or driven out of that strait path. We must judge of religion not by its demonstrativeness, but by its fruits. Love, obedience, sincerity simplicity\u2014these are the eternal bases of the spiritual life.
\nThe only superstructure of religion which can ever abide the rush of the whirlwind and the sweeping of the flood is that which is built on the words and deeds of the Son of Man. Alike in form and substance His teaching stands alone. It is at once radiantly simple, and unutterably profound. It is, as St. Augustine said, like a great ocean on whose surface is the \u1f00\u03bd\u03b7\u03c1\u03b9\u03b8\u03bc\u1f78\u03bd \u03b3\u03ad\u03bb\u03b1\u03c3\u03bc\u03b1, the \u201cever-twinkling smile\u201d which charms even children, yet whose depths are unfathomable. It bears upon it a certain ineffable stamp of divinity which Priests and Pharisees have often perverted; but which no human being\u2014no Prophet who came before Jesus, no Apostle or Evangelist, who followed Him; no Gentile philosopher, no Eastern Theosophist, no self-satisfied Agnostic, no modern enquirer with all the learning and wisdom of the world to draw from at his will\u2014has ever been able in the most distant degree to equal, much less to surpass. Many have uttered wise words, and written noble books; but either they have soon been comparatively forgotten, or have only reached the few. The simplest words of Christ have been as arrows of lightnings which still quiver in the hearts of millions of every race, as they have done in every age, and which are blessedly powerful to heal the very wounds which they inflict on the awakened consciences of men.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 24<\/p>\n
THE TITLES OF JESUS AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first man, Adam, became a living soul; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.\u201d\u20141 Cor. 15:45.<\/p>\n
OUR Lord used various titles to describe Himself.
\nHe called Himself \u201cthe Christ,\u201d i. e., the Messiah, the Anointed One, anointed by the grace of God to preach the Gospel to the poor. At an earlier period of the ministry He did not wish His Messiahship to be openly proclaimed (Mark 8:31), and He separated from the idea of Messiahship the notion of earthly kingship. The Messianic faith was a desire, a hope, a promise, and Jesus fulfilled this idea.
\nHe alludes to His Davidic descent, and was often addressed by others as the Son of David.
\nHe sometimes spoke of Himself as the Son of God; but this title was generally given Him by others. Once only, in St. John, He describes Himself as \u201cthe Paraclete,\u201d or Divine Advocate. He does not use of Himself the title of \u201cThe Chosen One\u201d (Luke 9:35, 23:35).
\nThe remarkable designation of \u201cThe Word\u201d is given to Christ by St. John alone (John 1:14). As he opens his Gospel with the phrase, \u201cIn the beginning,\u201d which is also the first word in the Book of Genesis (Beresh\u00eeth), the title may be a reference to the truth that \u201cthe worlds were made by the Word of God.\u201d Christ was the Incarnate Word. Philo had written much of the Logos, but without the most distant approach to any conception that the Word could could ever \u201cbe made flesh, and dwell among us.\u201d In the Targums\u2014ancient paraphrases of the Hebrew Scriptures\u2014\u201cthe action of God is constantly, though not consistently, referred to His Word (Memra and Deburah).\u201d In the Talmudic writings we find the Metatron, a sort of divine intermediary between God and man. In the Apocryphal books of the pr\u00e6-Christian epoch we find \u201cWisdom\u201d spoken of repeatedly as a person; even in the Pentateuch and the Prophets we find mention of \u201cthe Angel of the Presence\u201d (Gen. 32:24; Ex. 33:12; Hos. 12:4; Is. 63:9, etc.). St. John was doubtless well aware of these unconscious, or half-conscious, prophecies; but the identification of \u201cthe Word\u201d with the Man Christ Jesus transcends all that had previously been thought or written. St. John was inspired to reveal with perfect clearness that \u201cthe personal Being of the Word was realised in active intercourse and in perfect communion with God,\u201d and at the same time in historic manifestation and nearest spiritual influence upon the hearts of men.
\nBut the designation which Christ ordinarily adopted, and which He chose for Himself, was \u201cthe Son of Man.\u201d
\nThere may be in this title a dim and indirect allusion to Dan. 7:13, where the word is Bar-Enosh. The phrase is used ninety times of the Prophet Ezekiel, though he never applies it to himself. Christ used it eighty times, and always of Himself. It is only applied to Him by others in passages which, like Acts 7:56, Rev. 1:13\u201320, imply His exaltation. But since in Dan. 7:13 this phrase is explained to be equivalent to \u201cthe saints of the Most High,\u201d in antithesis to \u201cthe beasts\u201d who represent the kingdoms of the world, the allusion to Daniel could only be very indirect. The prophet does not speak of \u201cthe Son of Man,\u201d but of \u201cone like a son of man.\u201d In the later Jewish Apocalypses\u2014the Psalms of Solomon, the Book of Enoch, and the Apocalypse of Baruch\u2014the Messiah is indeed a Person, a King and Judge; but not in the Book of Daniel. \u201cThe Second Man is the Lord from heaven.\u201d That the title was not a synonym for \u201cthe Messiah\u201d seems to be proved by the question, \u201cWho do men say that I the Son of Man am?\u201d
\nUpon the lips of Christ the title had a very deep meaning, which throws light on His entire mission and revelations. He used the phrase \u201cThe Son of Man\u201d to imply His federal Headship of Humanity, as one whom God had highly exalted because of His self-humiliation in taking our flesh (Phil. 2:6\u201311). It called attention to Him as \u201cthe Second Adam,\u201d who came to restore the Eden lost by the sins of the First Adam. In the Old Testament the phrase \u201cSon of Man\u201d had been constantly used to represent man in his feebleness, man in his nothingness before the Majesty of God; and Jesus adopted it because, in all senses and to the full, He came to bear our griefs and to carry our sorrows, while nevertheless He came as the Ideal, as the Representative, of Humanity in all its possible nobleness, when it has been forgiven, redeemed, and filled with the Holy Spirit of God. \u201cThe Son of God,\u201d says St. Augustine, \u201cwas made the Son of Man, that ye who were sons of men might be made sons of God.\u201d He came as the divine yet human Brother of the whole human race; as the Elder Brother in the great family of man. He came to extend to all mankind that infinite tenderness which the particularism of the Jews had supposed to be confined to the sons of their own nation. In the Old Testament God by the voice of His Prophets had addressed words of tender, compassionate affection to the children of Israel. He had said:<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an eagle stirreth up her nest,
\nFluttereth over her young,
\nSpreadeth abroad her wings,
\nTaketh them, beareth them on her wings,
\nSo the Lord alone did lead him.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had said\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cIs Ephraim My dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still. Therefore My heart is troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had said\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cThey shall be Mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels, and I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the Son of Man had come to reveal that God has no favourites; that He is the merciful and loving Father of all the race of man; that He has not merely flung us into the chaos of a wretched and inexplicable existence by the unimpeded operation of blind laws, \u201cdark as night, inexorable as destiny, merciless as death, which have no ear to hear, no heart to pity, no arm to save\u201d; but that \u201cHis tender mercy is over all His works\u201d; and that, above all, \u201cthe Spirit which He made to dwell in us yearneth over us even to jealous envy,\u201d and \u201cmaketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.\u201d
\nNothing could have been more radically subversive of the current Jewish views in their narrow exclusiveness than this teaching of the Son of Man, and the way in which He illustrated it by all the relations of His life. The religion of man is essentially dependent on the ideas which it cherishes of God and of Man. The Pharisees had degraded both conceptions. To them God was a Being who chiefly delighted in nullities; and on the majority of men they looked down from the inch-high pedestal of their own imaginary superiority.
\nAlike by all His words and all His deeds the Son of Man came to sweep away this sandhill of pretentious ignorance, and to substitute for it the Eternal Temple of the Living God.
\nHence the unlimited kindness, courtesy, forbearance, respect which He observed always to all sorts and conditions of men, in the world. The poet says that:<\/p>\n
\u201cNot a man for being simply man
\nHath any honour; but honour for those honours
\nWhich are without him, as place, riches, favour\u2014
\nPrizes of accident as oft as merit.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the bearing of the Son of Man alike to the high and to the low, to the rich and to the poor, to the sick and to the sound, to the gifted and to the ignorant, was always full of that infinite respect for the work of God\u2019s hands which founded the brotherhood of men upon the living rock of the fatherhood of God. He called Himself the Son of Man, because, as the representative of all that is beautiful and good in human nature, He came to restore to man that ineffaceable dignity which he had forfeited and lost.
\n(i.) Nothing could be more virulent than the hatred of the Jews for the Samaritans, which still continues, and which naturally provoked the most violent reprisals. A little tact, a little conciliatoriness on the part of the Jews, even in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, might have obviated the miseries which arose from this age-long friction. If the Samaritans denied all hospitality to Jewish pilgrims; if they were ready to refuse even a cup of cold water, which the primary principle of Eastern hospitality required; if they mocked, and attacked, and sometimes slew, those who were on their way to the Jewish feasts; if they caused confusion and irregularity by mock fire-signals at Passovertide; if some of their fanatics had even stolen into the Temple, when the gates were open at midnight during the Feast, to render the Passover impossible by strewing the Temple with dead men\u2019s bones,\u2014the Jews were in no small measure to blame for this deep-seated animosity. They had admitted into one of their half-sacred books the passage:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere be two manner of nations which my heart abhorreth; and the the third is no nation. They that sit upon the mountain of Samaria, and they that dwell among the Philistines, and that foolish people that dwell in Sichem.\u201d<\/p>\n
In our Lord\u2019s time, to call a man \u201ca Samaritan\u201d was as bad as to call him a demoniac. Samaritans were regarded as excommunicate and accursed; they were denied all share in the Resurrection; it was doubtful whether it was lawful to partake of any of the produce of their soil; to eat their bread was like eating the flesh of swine; and their women were despised as specially abhorrent.
\nYet the Son of Man, as in the hot noonday He sat \u201cthus\u201d by Jacob\u2019s well, did not for a moment hesitate to ask drink of a poor sinful woman of Samaria; to speak to her with uttermost kindness; to reveal to her\u2014and to her first\u2014His Messiahship; to preach to, and stay among her hated and heretical countrymen, making no difference between them and the dwellers in Holy Jerusalem. Nay, even when He and His disciples were churlishly rejected, and refused ordinary hospitality at the border village of Engannim, and when \u201cthe Sons of Thunder,\u201d in their impetuous indignation, wanted Him to call down fire from heaven upon them, even as Elijah did, He at once, without a gleam of resentment against the churlish villagers, turned and rebuked James and John with the words, \u201cYe know not of what spirit ye are, ye. For the Son of Man came not to destroy men\u2019s lives, but to save.\u201d Very shortly after this He pronounced His pathetic eulogy on the only one of the ten cleansed lepers who returned to give Him thanks, and he was a Samaritan. And, more even than this, He chose the hated and heretical Samaritan as a model of right action to mocking Scribes, cold-hearted Priests, and unmerciful Levites.
\n(ii.) For the Gentiles also He showed the same large considerateness. He was indeed primarily sent to \u201cthe lost sheep of the House of Israel.\u201d But when the Gentile centurion of Capernaum came to Him, relying on the mere utterance of His word, and not deeming himself worthy that He should enter under his roof, the Son of Man not only granted his petition, but added, \u201cI have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.\u201d He seemed, indeed, to chill the urgency of the poor Syro-Ph\u0153nician woman, but it was only because He desired to evoke and to crown the indomitable resoluteness of her faith. He unfavourably contrasted His own generation in their hard unbelief with the people of Nineveh, and the Queen of the South, and the widow of Sarepta, and declared that it should be better for Tyre and Sidon, yea, even for Sodom and Gomorrha, in the Day of Judgment, than for Chorazin and Bethsaida, and His own Capernaum. And when some Gentiles who had come to His last Passover\u2014\u201ccertain Greeks\u201d\u2014came to Philip to find some way of arranging a meeting with Him, so far from coldly and haughtily repudiating their desire, He rejoiced in this sign that the hour was come that the Son of Man should be glorified. He had declared, long before, in language of unprecedented\u2014and to His Jewish hearers, of repellent\u2014strangeness, that \u201cmany a Gentile should be admitted into the kingdom of heaven: but the children of the kingdom should be cast out.\u201d These were preliminary indications of the vast mission which He left to be carried out after His departure: \u201cGo ye into all the world and preach the Gospel, and make disciples of all the nations.\u201d The Chosen People had rejected Him, and Crucified Him to their own destruction; thenceforth His servants were to go forth into the highways and hedges and constrain to come in even the poor, and the maimed, and the blind, and the lame.
\nIn the Eternal Temple of Christ there was no Chel or Soreg, with inscriptions threatening death to any Gentile who dared to enter, and by entering to pollute, the hallowed enclosure. The middle wall of partition was broken down; nay, the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and free access was given into its very Holy of Holies to the more genuine priesthood of all who were pure in heart. The Jews regarded all Gentiles as utterly unclean, and all intercourse with them as a source of ceremonial pollution. The Jews, as St. Paul says, were \u201ccontrary to all men.\u201d It was unlawful for a Jew to enter the house of a Gentile or to hold any close communion with him. The Talmudic treatise, Avoda Zara, directs that if a Jew brought so much as a stone or a gridiron from a Gentile, it must be made red-hot before it could be accounted clean, and it was illegal even to drink milk if a heathen had milked the cow. What a tremendous reversal of such \u201creligious\u201d conceptions was the declaration that Gentiles from the East and the West should be preferred to Jews, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob themselves at the marriage supper of the Lamb!
\n(iii.) No less deep was Christ\u2019s tender regard for the poor, the destitute, the ignorant, the physically wretched, those of whom men spoke as \u201ccommon people,\u201d and \u201cthe vulgar multitude\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u201cOf men the common rout
\nThat, wandering loose about,
\nGrow up and perish as the summer fly,
\nHeads without name, no more remember\u00e8d.\u201d<\/p>\n
These were all swept by Pharisaic contempt into one common dust-heap, unworthy of notice\u2014except the drawing back the hem of the garment so as not to touch them. They were disdainfully massed together under the common name of \u201cthe people of the land.\u201d To these they applied Is. 27:11. \u201cIt is a people of no understanding, therefore He that hath made them will not have mercy upon them.\u201d Hence even Rabbi the Holy once exclaimed, \u201cWoe is me! I have given my morsel to an Am haarets!\u201d\u2014a man who does not recite the Shema! a man who wears no Tsitsith and no phylacteries, and does not wait on the pupils of the wise! No parley must be held with such; no Chaber, i. e., no member of the Rabbinic school, must buy fruit from them or sell it to them, or receive one of them as a guest, or travel with them, or regard their wives and daughters as other than an abomination. Nay, they might be \u201ctorn open like a fish.\u201d Their salutations were only to be noticed by a reluctant nod of the head. No calamity ever befalls the world except through them. If an am ha-arets but touched a vine-cluster, the whole wine-press, according to Rabbi Chejah, became unclean; and everything within reach of his hand is defiled.
\nIt may be imagined, then, how startling was the reversal of current judgments, how absolute the reprobation of Pharisaic prejudices, when the Son of Man came to seek and save those despised and lost ones; mingled with them, ate with them, taught them, healed them, extended His main work of compassion and amelioration to the physically destitute and the utterly ignorant! The \u201cpeople of the land,\u201d on whom the religious leaders looked down with such unutterable contempt, were the normal hearers whom the Son of Man addressed in Galilee. They might be chilled and brutalised by contempt, but could only be uplifted to the true possibilities of human greatness and goodness by sympathy and tenderness\u2014\u201cby quickening them to a sense of their own worth, and restoring them to self-respect.\u201d He did not speak to them with lofty condescension, but with brotherly tenderness.
\n(iv.) If there was one class in Palestine which was more hated and despised than all others, it was the class of the Publicans, or tax-collectors. The strict Jews were sufficiently horrified by the thought that the Holy Land, which in their view could only be lawfully taxed for sacred purposes, should in any way be liable to pay imposts to heathen conquerors for the use of a heathen state and a heathen emperor. But the maladministration, cheating, and extortions which prevailed throughout the Roman Empire were felt in Jud\u00e6a with peculiar keenness. The tax-farmers\u2014usually Roman knights, who, singly or in companies, purchased from the government the proceeds of a tax, and then proceeded to make as much as they could out of it\u2014were universally regarded even by Pagans with a mixture of dislike and contempt. Suetonius, in his \u201cLife of Vespasian,\u201d records that the Emperor\u2019s father, whose name was Sabinus, actually had a statue raised to him by several cities as that astonishingly exceptional personage, \u201can excellent publican\u201d; and, in answer to the question, \u201cWhich are the worst of wild beasts?\u201d Theocritus answers, \u201cOn the mountains, bears and lions: in the cities, publicans and pettifoggers.\u201d Suidas describes the life of a publican as \u201cUnrestrained plunder, unblushing greed, unreasonable pettifogging, shameless business.\u201d Among the Jews, who made it a question of conscience whether under any circumstances it was lawful to pay tribute to C\u00e6sar, these feelings were intensified. In A.D. 17 Roman taxation had caused the insurrection of Judas the Gaulonite, whose motto was, \u201cNo Lord but Jehovah; no tax but to the Temple.\u201d Jud\u00e6a seethed with chronic disaffection. The Jews were confronted on every side with the irritating worry of oppressive demands and illegal extortion. There was the poll-tax, and the land-tax, which demanded a tenth of the corn and a fifth of the produce of vineyards and fruit trees; and there were endless tolls on the most necessary wares relentlessly exacted at frontiers, at ferries, at bridges, in markets, and on roads, of which no small part went, as the cost of administration, not to the State at all, but to the wealthy and greedy publican. The system was radically bad. It put a premium on dishonesty. The State got the sum it wanted from the men who farmed the tax, and was selfishly indifferent to the methods which they and their agents adopted.
\nThe consequence was, in many provinces, an amount of misery and bankruptcy analogous to that created by the same vile methods in the Turkish Empire. The Roman knights and Company-Directors (Publicani, Mancipes) necessarily required an army of subordinate agents (socii); and in addition to their own exorbitant demands\u2014for which they had established a sort of official impunity\u2014the rapacity of these underlings had to be sated, and was kept in very inefficient check. If the upper publicani were hated, how much more was this the case with the portitores or exactors, to whom fell the daily disagreeable task of enforcing the payment which gorged their own avarice as well as that of their masters! That a Jew should accept such a post for the sake of filthy lucre, or even to get a bare living, placed him beneath the reach of the utmost capacity for disdain in the hearts of his stricter countrymen; and this spirit of detestation for these lower officials was exacerbated by daily scorn and ingenious annoyances. They, and all things that belonged to them, were regarded as hopelessly unclean, and as a source of pollution which any number of purifications could hardly clear away. Now when a class is thus radically despised it is apt to become despicable, and to defy contempt by ostentatious vileness. Hence \u201cpublicans\u201d\u2014by which in the Gospel is meant these inferior portitores\u2014are classed with sinners, harlots, thieves, and murderers. They were the worst pariahs of the Holy Land, whose very existence was regarded as offensive, whose hand was against every man, and every man\u2019s hand against them. The ordinary tax-collector (Gabbai) was hated and scorned, but the toll-collector (Mokes) was still more an object of execration.
\nHow deeply seated, then, was the amazement at, and how strong the indignation against, the Son of Man, when\u2014sent as He was to seek and save those that were lost\u2014He deliberately chose one of these subordinate tax-gathers\u2014not even a Gabbai, but a Mokes\u2014to be one of His Chosen Twelve Apostles; took him from \u201cthe place of toll,\u201d and sat down at his farewell banquet with other publicans and sinners! Many loudly murmured at His condescending love. \u201cWith arid heart,\u201d says St. Gregory the Great, \u201cthey blamed the very Fount of Mercy.\u201d In all ages it has been the fault of such religionists that \u201cthey sought not the lost.\u201d
\nYet Christ\u2019s action was part of a distinct purpose. He held up the humility of the penitent publican who smote on his breast with the cry of \u201cGod be merciful to me the sinner,\u201d as an example to the posing Pharisee, who bragged of his immaculate superiority rather than prayed for needed pardon.
\n(v.) Again, throughout the East generally the position of woman is more or less despised and down-trodden, so that in some Eastern countries it was a common prayer, \u201cO God, let not my infant be a girl; for very wretched is the life of women.\u201d Their position in Jud\u00e6a was not quite so low, yet a Pharisee thought it a disgrace to speak to a woman in public, even if the woman was his own wife. The Apostles were so much infected with this current spirit of fancied superiority that they were amazed when they saw Jesus talking \u201cwith a woman!\u201d But He always displayed towards all women the same fine respect and tenderness. Ministering women\u2014Salome, and Mary the wife of Cleopas, and Joanna the wife of Chuzas, Herod\u2019s steward, and the Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven devils\u2014followed His wanderings, and ministered to Him of their substance. When a poor woman stole from Him a work of mercy, by secretly touching the hem of His garment among the throng, and thus communicating to Him her ceremonial uncleanness, so far from sternly rebuking her trembling presumption, He said, \u201cDaughter, be of good cheer, thy faith hath saved thee.\u201d
\nNay, more even than this, He did not repulse the \u201cwoman who was a sinner,\u201d whom Simon the Pharisee eyed with such supercilious disgust, regarding it as a proof that Jesus was no Prophet since not repulsing her stained touch, He suffered her to kiss His feet, and wet them with her tears, and wipe them with the hairs of her head. But Jesus calmly rebuked the Pharisee by a parable, and saved the soul of the sinner by compassion.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe sat and wept beside His feet; the weight
\nOf sin oppressed her heart; for all the shame,
\nAnd the poor malice of the worldly blame,
\nFor her were past, extinct, and out of date.
\nShe would be melted by the heat of love\u2014
\nBy fires far fiercer than are blown to prove,
\nAnd purge the silver ore adulterate.<\/p>\n
She sat and wept, and with her untressed hair
\nStill wiped the feet she was so blessed to touch:
\nAnd He wiped off the soiling of despair
\nFrom her sweet soul, because she loved so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nay, even when the Scribes brought to Him a woman taken in adultery, hoping either to get Him into trouble with the Romans by condemning her to death by stoning, or to give them an excuse for accusing Him of violation of the Mosaic Law, He defeated their base plot by sending the arrow of conviction into their own hardened consciences. When, self-convicted, they had stolen away, and He raised His eyes from the ground\u2014to which He had bent them in an intolerable sense of shamed indignation at their coarse cruelty\u2014and found Himself standing there alone, with the guilty woman before Him, He only said to her, \u201cWoman, where are they? Did no man condemn thee? Neither do I condemn thee. Go thy way; from henceforth sin no more.\u201d
\n(vi.) The Jews did not indeed despise little children, but, like all ancient nations, they left them all but exclusively to the charge of women, repressed them, kept them in the background, did little or nothing to mould their infant years. When the eager, loving mothers brought their children to Christ that He should bless them, the disciples were impatient at what they regarded as feminine intrusiveness, and rebuked those that brought them. But Jesus was more than usually displeased at this lack of sympathy. He took the little ones in His arms, laid His hands upon them, and blessed them, and said, \u201cSuffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.\u201d He held up for an example their gentle innocence and blameless receptivity. He had watched with a loving eye their little games in the market-place, as they amused themselves by playing at marriages or funerals. Home, with its commonest incidents, was to Him an infinitely sacred place. When the mothers brought to Him, not only their little children, but \u201ceven their babes,\u201d He did not disdain to take in His arms their helpless infancy, and more than once He rebuked the ambitious selfishness of the disciples in their disputes as to which was the greater of them by taking a little child, setting him in the midst of them, and bidding them take example from his humble innocence. As the poet describes it:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe twelve disputing who was first and chief,
\nHe took a little child, knit holy arms
\nRound the brown, flower-soft boy, and smiled and said,
\n\u2018Here is the first and chiefest! If a man
\nWill be the greatest, see he make himself
\nLowest and least, a servant unto all;
\nMeek as my small disciple here, who asks
\nNo place nor praise, but takes unquestioning
\nLove, as the river-lilies take the sun,
\nAnd pays it back with rosy folded palms
\nClasped round My neck, and simple head reclined
\nOn his Friend\u2019s breast.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Thus, by all His words and works did Jesus show that He came to be the representative of Humanity, to save the most fallen, to rescue the most miserable, to inspire the most hopeless, to reverence the very weakest, and as the Son of Man to bring home to every soul the revelation which He came to impart as the Son of God. Nor ought we to ignore, as is almost habitually done, the fact that our Lord\u2019s promises are often unlimited in scope. Thus, He said that \u201cGod sent not His son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.\u201d And He said, \u201cI, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me;\u201d and He came to be \u201cthe Saviour of the world\u201d and \u201cthe Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.\u201d \u201cThe sad realities of present experience,\u201d says Bishop Westcott, \u201ccannot change the truth thus made known, however little we may be able to understand the way in which it will be accomplished.\u201d
\nIt must not be for a moment supposed that the Divine claims were veiled under the title of \u201cThe Son of Man\u201d; for our Lord not unfrequently used, and allowed others to use, the title of \u201cThe Son\u201d in a pre-eminent sense, as the Son of the Almighty Father. In St. Mark, indeed, it only occurs in 13:32; and in the other synoptic Gospels only in Matt. 11:27, Luke 10:22; but it is found twenty-two times, and always in the highest sense and with the most Eternal claims, in the Gospel of St. John. And in the synoptic Gospels, where the title is not directly used, it is constantly referred to and implied. Christ spoke of God the Father as in a very unique sense His Father. Again and again he speaks of My heavenly Father, in a sense different from and higher than the phrase your Father, which was also frequently upon His lips. Stupendous, indeed, was the revelation that He, the persecuted peasant-teacher of Nazareth, was not only \u201ca Son of God\u201d\u2014as, in one sense, all men are\u2014but \u201cthe Son of God.\u201d Yet, amid all His humiliations, at the apparent nadir of His earthly rejection and defeat, this truth\u2014such was the power of His daily presence and influence\u2014burnt itself deeply into the hearts of His poor Apostles. It forced from the lips of Peter the great confession, \u201cThou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.\u201d That acknowledgment was the crowning crisis of Christ\u2019s earthly ministry. It proved that His essential work was now accomplished. And as Keim strikingly observes, \u201cWe do not know which first to designate great, whether this lofty flight of the disciples who renounce the Jewish standard, quash the verdict of the hierarchs, leap over the popular opinion which hung midway between the two extremes, find loftiness and Divinity in the downtrodden and insignificant, because, spiritually to spiritual eyes, it remains something Divine; or, that Personality of Jesus which compels such weak disciples, even under the paralysing influence of all external facts, distinctly and simply and nobly to mirror back the total impression of His Ministry.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 25<\/p>\n
CHRIST\u2019S CONDEMNATION OF PHARISAIC RELIGIONISM<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet are not washed from their filthiness.\u201d\u2014Prov. 30:12.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich say, \u2018Stand by thyself; come not near to me, for I am holier than thou!\u2019 These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the day.\u201d\u2014Is. 65:5.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeggarly elements.\u201d\u2014Gal. 4:9.<\/p>\n
\u1f08\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03af\u03b1.\u2014ORIGEN, Opp. i. 119.<\/p>\n
\u201cStupenda inanitas et vafrities.\u201d\u2014LIGHTFOOT, Ded. in Hor. Hebr.<\/p>\n
ALREADY in a previous chapter we have seen something of the wretched series of minuti\u00e6 into which the Pharisees had degraded the Levitic System, though that system consisted, as St. Paul says, of \u201cweak and beggarly rudiments,\u201d and was nothing more than \u201ca yoke of bondage,\u201d necessitated by ignorance and hardness of heart. The fundamental differences between the religion of the letter and of the spirit, between the righteousness of the law and \u201cthe righteousness which is through faith in Christ,\u201d will be found summarily described in the answer of Christ to the Scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem, who came to act as spies upon His ministry.
\nThe Pharisees were the only body of the Jewish people with whom Christ entered into a position of direct antagonism, forced upon Him by their subterranean baseness, as well as by the paltriness of their conceptions and the arrogance which resulted from their fundamental misapprehension of what is and is not truly sacred in the eyes of God. Their system was an elaborate \u201cexternalization of holiness\u201d; His teaching was that \u201cGod is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.\u201d It was the main object of the Lord of Life to bring to erring men that true life which they can only acquire by union with God. Formalities of every kind, will-worship, even severities of the body, are easy; but, as St. Paul so emphatically says, they are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. It is easy to bow the head like a bulrush, but not easy to offer from the depths of a penitent heart the prayer of the Publican, \u201cGod be merciful to me, the sinner.\u201d The Pharisees called their Rabbis \u201cUprooters of Mountains,\u201d \u201cLights of Israel,\u201d \u201cGlories of the Law,\u201d \u201cThe Great,\u201d \u201cThe Holy,\u201d but the mass of the people were in their eyes mere boors, \u201cempty wells,\u201d \u201cpeople of the earth,\u201d \u201cwho knew not the Law and were accursed.\u201d Yet \u201cthe boldest religionists and mock-prophets,\u201d says Henry More, \u201care very full of heat and spirits; and have their imagination too often infected with the fumes of those lower parts, the full sense and pleasure whereof they prefer before all the subtle delights of reason and generous contemplation.\u201d
\nAlways kind, always courteous, always forbearing even towards meddling spies\u2014ready to meet their quibbles, ready to answer their questions, ready to accept their supercilious hospitality, ready with the most gracious courtesy to meet their hard and calumnious criticisms\u2014Jesus was compelled at last \u201cto break into plain thunderings and lightnings\u201d against them, in order to strip bare their hypocrisies, and to blight the influence they exerted over hosts of deluded followers and proselytes, whom, to use His own terrible expression, they \u201cmade tenfold more the children of Gehenna than themselves.\u201d He could not reveal to the world the unchangeable truths which constitute the Alpha and Omega of genuine holiness, without showing how mean a parody was substituted for it by these \u201cshallow and selfish men, bigots in creed and in conduct, capable of no sin disapproved by tradition, incapable of any virtue unenjoined by it; too respectable to be publicans and sinners, but at once too ungenerous to forgive any sin against their own order, and too blind to see the sins within it; who remain for all time our most perfect types of fierce and inflexible devotion to a worship instituted and administered by man, but of relentless and unbending antagonism to religion, as the service of God in spirit and in truth.\u201d
\nThe Pharisees were the Tartuffes of ancient days. The Gospel system could not be established without the overthrow of that which had become the corporate expression of the cardinal sin of Judaism, the corruption of man\u2019s worship of God to a mere outward service by acts formal and artificial, through instruments and articles sensuous, external, purchasable. Shammai, the rival of Hillel, was a luxurious and selfish man; yet so particular was he about senseless scrupulosities that he almost starved his little son on the Day of Atonement, and made a booth over the childbed of his daughter-in-law that his first-born grandson might keep the Feast of Tabernacles! If they had understood the most elementary teaching of the Psalms, the Prophets, and even of their own Law, they would not have elaborated their eye-service of men-pleasers which usurped the place of that singleness of heart without which forms and ceremonies are but as a booming gong or a clanging cymbal. They ordained rites which corresponded to nothing, and made their scrupulosities a cloak of maliciousness. Christ extended the Decalogue itself to the thoughts of the heart, and summed up all the Commandments in the Law of Love. And in point of fact this was not in disaccord with their own best teaching in their saner moments, for we read in Soteh (p. 14, 1), \u201cThe beginning of the Law is benevolence, and in benevolence it ends. At the beginning God clothed the naked (Gen. 3:21), at the end He buried the dead (Deut. 34:5, 6).\u201d
\nWhat was the so-called Oral Law which the Pharisees so extravagantly valued? The first sentence of the Pirqe Av\u00f4th tells us how Moses received the Thorah from God on Mount Sinai, and that through Joshua, the Elders, and the Prophets it was transmitted to the men of the Great Synagogue, who, in accordance with the literal translation of Lev. 18:30 (\u201cmake a Mishmereth to my Mishmereth\u201d) handed it down as a duty to \u201cmake a fence to the Thorah\u201d (seyyag la-Thorah). The Rabbis held that Moses received two Laws on Sinai, both the Written (Thorah Shebektab) and the Oral Law (Thorah shebeal Peh)\u2014\u201cthe law on the lip.\u201d Hence they described the Mishnah as \u201cthe Halachah\u201d (or \u201cRule\u201d) given to Moses on Sinai; and Rabbi Simon Ben Lakdeh assigned a Mosaic origin even to the Gemara, including Halachoth, Haggadoth, and Midrashim. Nay, they exalted their tradition above the written Law, and said, \u201cThe words of the Scribes are more noble than the words of the Law.\u201d In the Baba Metzia we are told that to read the Mishnah and Gemara is far more meritorious than to read the words of Scripture. \u201cThe sayings of the elders,\u201d they said, \u201care weightier than those of the Prophets.\u201d Not to read the Shema, according to Rabbi Abba Bar-Eshera, in the name of Rabbi Judah Bar-Pari, deserves but a slight punishment, for it only breaks an affirmative precept; but not to read it according to the rule of Hillel deserves capital punishment, for \u201cwhoso breaketh a hedge (the Seyyag la-Thorah) a serpent shall bite him\u201d! (Eccl. 10:8). If a man\u2019s father and his Rabbi are carrying burdens, he is to lighten the Rabbi first. If both are in captivity he must first ransom his Rabbi. Pride went hand in hand with littleness. They loved the chief seats in synagogues and the uppermost place at feasts, and greetings in the market places, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. Modern criticism has proved it to be at least possible that much of the Levitic system did not assume its present form until after the Exile. The futile elaborations of this Levitism\u2014imperfect and secondary as it was\u2014had their origin in the endeavour to separate Israel from all contact with the nations by a network of traditions. The Scribes had developed it into a sort of abracadabra without limit and without end. \u201cThe whole history of religion proves that a ceremony- and tradition-ridden time is infallibly a morally corrupt time\u2014artificial ceremonies, whether originating with Jewish Rabbis or Christian \u2018priests,\u2019 are of no spiritual value. Recommended by their zealous advocates, often sincerely, as tending to promote the culture of morality and piety, they often prove fatal to both. Well are they called in the Epistle to the Hebrews \u2018dead works.\u2019 If they have any life at all, it is life feeding upon death, the life of fungi growing on dead trees; if they have any beauty, it is the beauty of decay, of autumnal leaves, sere and yellow \u2026 when the woods are about to pass into their winter state of nakedness.\u201d
\nLet us see how Jesus dealt with this state of things in separate instances.
\n(i.) The Oral Law attached immense importance to the ceremonial purifications, which occupy no less than twelve treatises of the sixth Seder of the Mishnah, including Yada\u02beim or \u201cHandwashings,\u201d and Migvaoth, \u201cthe water used for baths and ablutions, and for the stalks of fruit which convey uncleanness.\u201d
\nOur Lord said to the Pharisees, \u201cNow do ye Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter, but your inward part is full of extortion and wickedness.\u201d; or, as it is in St. Matthew, \u201cbut within they are full from extortion and excess.\u201d The Pharisaic rules about the washing of \u201ccups and platters\u201d were ludicrously minute. In the treatise Kelim we read that the air in hollow earthen vessels, like the hollow of the foot, contracts and propagates uncleanness, so that they must be broken, and if a piece be left large enough to anoint the little toe with, it is still \u201ca vessel,\u201d and therefore capable of defilement. They are to be accounted as \u201cbroken\u201d if there be a hole in them as large as a medium-sized pomegranate! Hillel caused endless trouble throughout the Dispersion by deciding, in accordance with the rule of Joseph Ben Jezzer and Joseph Ben Johanan, that even glass vessels were capable of conveying defilement. This legalised and intentional unsociability (Perishooth, \u03b1\u03bc\u03b9\u03be\u03af\u03b1) did infinite harm to the Jews and prevented them from fulfilling the Divine mission which they might otherwise have accomplished for the ennoblement of the world. Such puerilities could only excite contempt in any healthy mind.
\nAgain, as we know, the Jerusalemite spies, Scribes and Pharisees, had seen some of the disciples \u201ceat bread with defiled (lit. common), that is, unwashen hands,\u201d whereas they themselves, following the tradition of the Elders, washed their hands \u03c0\u03c5\u03b3\u03bc\u1fc7 (diligently?), which is by some interpreted to mean \u201cup to the elbow,\u201d or \u201cwith the fist,\u201d and by others \u201cup to the wrist.\u201d The rule given in the Talmudic book Soteh (f. 4, 6) is that \u201cHe who eats bread without having first washed his hands, commits as it were fornication.\u201d According to Shabbath (f. 14, 2) a Bath Kol, or voice from heaven, had pronounced Solomon blessed when he instituted the laws respecting hand-washings; and when a man washes his hands he is to first wash the right hand, then the left, whereas in anointing the hands he is first to anoint the left hand, then the right. \u201cIf a man poured on one hand one gush his hand is clean; but if one gush on both hands R. Meir pronounces them unclean, until one poured out a quarter log of water upon them.\u201d Moreover the scribes said it were better to cut off the hands than to touch the nose, mouth, and ears with them without having first washed them, as this causes blindness, deafness, foul breath, and polypus. According to R. Nathan an evil spirit named Bath Chorin haunts the hands at night, and only departs if they are washed three times! Akiba preferred to die of thirst rather than not wash his hands. The treatise Yadayim, in four chapters, is mainly devoted to this subject. According to another treatise\u2014the Kitzur Sh\u02belah\u2014a man who does not wash his hands before eating will have as little rest as a murderer and will be transmigrated into a cataract; and in this treatise we are taught that the proper way to wash the hands is to stretch out the fingers, turning the palms upwards, and say \u201cLift ye up your holy hands.\u201d Further, every one should have a vessel of water by his bed, and if he walks four ells without washing his hands after getting up \u201che has forfeited his life as a Divine punishment.\u201d Most truly may it be said of the Rabbinic writings, as Lightfoot says of them, \u201cNugis ubique scatent.\u201d
\nIt should be observed that the question was not in the least a question of health or cleanliness, but only of imaginary and incidental defilements; and our Lord swept aside this whole mass of contemptible traditions in the one sentence, \u201cto eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.\u201d Between Christ\u2019s teaching of spiritual simplicity and the boundless \u1f10\u03b6\u03b5\u03bb\u03bf\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c3\u03bf\u03b8\u03c1\u03b7\u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03af\u03b1 (as Epiphanius admirably calls it) of the Pharisees, there could be no middle term.
\n(ii.) Again, the Scribes and Pharisees had developed from the Levitic law reams of inferential littlenesses about the distinction between clean and unclean meats. According to the Mishnah, God, in giving the law to Moses, had assigned forty-nine reasons in every case for pronouncing one thing unclean and another clean. Seven hundred kinds of fish and twenty-four kinds of birds were pronounced unclean. Our Lord made very short work of all these laws of Kashar and Tame (which still prevail in Jewish communities) when he said, \u201cThat which proceedeth out of the man\u2014out of the heart of men\u2014that defileth the man \u2026 whatsoever from without goeth into the man cannot defile him.\u201d This he said, making all meats clean. He bade the disciples simply to eat such things as were set before them, just as St. Paul told his Gentile converts to eat whatsoever was sold in the shambles, \u201casking no questions.\u201d
\n(iii.) To fasting the Pharisees ascribed an exaggerated and most mistaken importance. The ninth treatise of the second Seder of the Mishnah is devoted to fasts. In the Levitic Law only one fast day was appointed in the whole year (Lev. 16:29)\u2014the Kippur, or Day of Atonement. By the time of Zechariah four yearly fasts had come into vogue (Zech. 8:19), but the Prophet declared that they \u201cshould be to the House of Judah joy, and gladness, and cheerful feasts,\u201d and when he was consulted about them he in no way encouraged their observance (7:1\u201314), but, in their place, enforced the duties of mercy and compassion. Over and over again the great Prophets of Israel had taught the uselessness of a fasting which had not the least connection with goodness and charity. In the age of Christ the Pharisees had established two weekly fasts, one on Thursday, when Moses was supposed to have ascended Sinai, and one on Monday, when he descended, and they plumed themselves in a manner which the Lord heartily disapproved upon these empty observances. They probably became mere sham functions, fasting of the effeminate amateur kind, in which case they were beneath contempt; or if they were real fasts, they were a needless and injurious burden. The Scribes made them still more injurious by parading their sanctimoniousness and regarding it as a means for extorting Divine favours. But when, on one of these fast-days, they, with the disciples of the Baptist, who in the imperfection of his views had adopted the practice, came to complain, in all the carping fretfulness which fasting produces, that neither our Lord nor His Apostles took the least notice of this \u201ctradition of the Elders,\u201d our Lord pointed out to them the only conditions under which fasting becomes natural\u2014the conditions of overwhelming sorrow. He Himself \u201ccame eating and drinking\u201d\u2014that is, not depriving our human life of the necessary support and innocent enjoyments which God supplies and permits. This He did so openly as to give to those who thought it right \u201cto lie for God,\u201d the excuse for the abhorrent calumny, \u201cBehold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber.\u201d His disciples, \u201csons of the Bride-chamber,\u201d could not fast while the Bridegroom was with them, but should fast, not of necessity, but in heaviness of heart, when they had seen Him die on the Cross, and in the coming days of overwhelming persecution. To interpret \u201cthe days when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them,\u201d of the whole Christian Dispensation, and on that misinterpretation to found the false inference that Christians ought continually to fast, is one of the most egregious of the many egregious blunders of ignorant will-worship. It ignores the innermost revelation of the Saviour that His physical absence was actually \u201cexpedient\u201d for His disciples, involving, as it did, the richer blessing of a closer spiritual nearness. Hence the characteristics of the early Christians were not gloomy anguish and morose asceticism, but, on the contrary, exultation and simplicity of heart.
\n(iv.) Again our Lord entirely discountenanced the whole method of Rabbinic exegesis with its \u201cever-widening spiral ergo,\u201d drawn from the aperture of single texts. He never referred except with disdain to Halachoth, which were but masses of cobwebs spun out of their own fancy. He ignored the Midrash, which was far less an explanation of the Law and the Prophets than an inverted pyramid of distortions built on its isolated phrases. In Ps. 62:11 we read<\/p>\n
\u201cGod hath spoken once;
\nTwice have I heard this;\u201d<\/p>\n
and this was interpreted by Rabbi Akiba to mean \u201cGod spake one thing; what I heard is twofold,\u201d which wrests the whole passage from its true meaning. This is in accordance with the common Rabbinic comment, \u201cRead not thus, but thus.\u201d But our Lord\u2019s comments are always on what the Bible means, not on those ingenious perversions of it for party purposes which constituted no small part of current exegesis. He held with the saner Rabbis that \u201cScripture speaks in the tongue of the sons of men.\u201d Jesus charged the Scribes with deliberately setting at nought by their traditions the very Law round which, as the most sacred object of their lives, they professed it to be their duty to \u201cmake a hedge.\u201d They explained it \u201cin as many ways as a hammer dashes a rock into fragments.\u201d He never referred to the \u201cdecision of the Scribes,\u201d nor to the Kabbalistic mode of interpretation known as Geneth, nor to one of their unprofitably minute precepts. But He did upbraid them with their hypocrisy. Thus by means of their Erubhin (or \u201cmixtures\u201d) they nullified some of the Mosaic laws which they professed most profoundly to respect, so much so that in Menachoth Moses himself is represented as standing amazed at the fatuous inferences established by R. Akiba from the horns and tips of letters. Well might Christ say to them, \u201cYe search the Scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life, and those very Scriptures testify of Me; yet ye will not come to Me that ye may have life.\u201d
\nFor instance, the law of the Sabbatic year was regarded as fundamental. But as time went on, it was found to be very inconvenient for commerce, so Hillel got rid of it by a subterfuge called Prosbol, a preconcerted farce for the evasion of the law, by which the creditor said to the debtor, \u201cThis being the Sabbatic year I release you from your debt,\u201d and the debtor replied (as had been prearranged), \u201cMany thanks, but I prefer to pay it!\u201d Thus did they honour God with their lips, but denied Him in their double heart. Long prayers, and devouring of widows\u2019 houses; flaming proselytism and subsequent moral neglect; rigorous stickling for the letter, boundless levity as to the spirit; high-sounding words as to the sanctity of oaths, and cunning reservations of casuistry; fidelity in trifles, gross neglect of essential principles; the mask of godliness without the reality; petty orthodoxy and artificial morals\u2014such was Pharisaism. It was a false system, based on egotism and self-seeking; a semblable goodness swayed by \u201ca tame conscience,\u201d which had no power over the heart. And that was why the Pharisees were \u201cthe only class which Jesus cared publicly to expose.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 26<\/p>\n
CHRIST AND THE SABBATH<\/p>\n
IT was as regards the non-observance of the traditions of the Elders about the Sabbath that the Pharisees raised the fiercest clamour against Christ. They had established a number of arbitrary rules, whereas the principle and the practice of Christ was that of the olden Law, that \u201cthe Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.\u201d The Sabbath of the \u201cBook of the Covenant\u201d had been greatly altered in the later priestly laws. No one on that day was to walk more than 2000 yards, because, in Ex. 16:29, a Jew is forbidden \u201cto go out of his place\u201d (Makom), but, in Ex. 21:13, the homicide may fly to the Levitic suburb, which was 2000 yards from the camp; hence, by one of Hillel\u2019s Middoth (known as \u201canalogy\u201d), every one might walk 2000 yards on the Sabbath. But supposing a Pharisee wanted to dine with another on the Sabbath, was he to forego his pleasure on this account? Oh, no! By putting up sham lintels and doorposts, the whole street, even if it were miles long, becomes a part of their own house! And no man might carry anything more than four ells on a Sabbath; but at the end of the four ells he might hand it to another and he to another, and so get it conveyed a hundred miles if necessary.
\nAgain, no man might buy anything on the Sabbath, but he might go to a shopkeeper and say, \u201cGive me this or that,\u201d and call and pay for it next day. No Jew might carry any burden on the Sabbath, however small, not even a pocket-handkerchief; but he might tie a pocket-handkerchief round his knee, and regard it as a garter! This \u1f00\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03af\u03b1, as Origen calls it, has lasted for ages, for even in the third century the Jews had decided that on the Sabbath a man might wear one kind of shoe, but not another. Our Lord denounces such mean modes of trying to deceive God, in the matter of the Corban, in the rule about hating enemies, and on the subject of divorce. He taught on the principle that Scripture does not cover any number of inferences which can be extorted out of isolated expressions, but that we are to abide by all that is permanent in the plain meaning of Holy Writ. Scripture is what Scripture means. To quote a phrase, and attribute to its literal significance a meaning which it never had, and never could have had, is a mere trick of ignorant hypocrisy.
\nWe read in the Book of Jubilees (50), \u201cEvery one who desecrates the Sabbath, or declares that he intends to make a journey on it, or speaks either of buying or selling, or he who draws water and has not provided it upon the sixth day, and he who lifts a burden in order to take it out of his dwelling-place, or out of his house, shall die. And every man who makes a journey, or attends to his cattle, and he who kindles a fire, or rides upon any beast, or sails upon a ship on the sea upon the Sabbath day, shall die.\u201d The rules about the Sabbath were divided into Av\u00f4th, \u201cfathers,\u201d and Told\u00f4th, \u201cgenerations\u201d\u2014i. e., primary and derivative rules.
\nThe Av\u00f4th were thirty-nine in number, and they forbade all such works as sowing, ploughing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, etc. To these rules the Pharisees of Christ\u2019s day seem to have added another, that no one was to be healed on a Sabbath day, so little did they recognise in their blindness that charity is above rubrics, and mercy better than sacrifice. Now, our Lord, in order to combat this folly, performed no less than seven miraculous healings on the Sabbath Day. To refute their fanatical formalism He appealed not only to His inherent authority as \u201cLord of the Sabbath\u201d (Mark 2:28; John 5:17\u201347), but also to Scripture precedents (Luke 6:3\u20135), as well as to common sense and to eternal principles (6:9). Sometimes, too, He used, with crushing force, the argumentum ad hominem, showing the selfish insincerity with which they applied and modified their own regulations.
\nThe rules of the Rabbis were so minute in what Origen calls their \u201cfrigid traditions\u201d that you might put wine on the eyelid on the \u201cSabbath,\u201d but not into the eye, because that is healing; and you might put vinegar into your mouth for a toothache, but might not rinse the mouth with it! Yet our Lord never violated even their best principles:\u2014for they said, \u201cThe Sabbath may be broken when life is in danger\u2014a child, for instance, may be saved from drowning.\u201d They distinguished, however, between saving life and doing any other work of mercy; for instance, if a woman has a toothache she may keep a piece of salt in her mouth, but only on condition that she has put it in the day before! \u201cIn no case was this miserable micrology carried to greater lengths.\u201d
\nOur Lord wished to restore the two divine principles that God loves mercy rather than sacrifice; and that God desires our service solely because He desires that we should be happy. He desired for the sake of Mankind to redeem the Sabbath from a miserable fetish into the blessed boon for which God had intended it. Therefore, on the Sabbath days He healed the Demoniac; and Simon\u2019s wife\u2019s mother; and the man with the withered hand; and the woman bound by a spirit of infirmity; and the man with the dropsy; and the paralytic at Bethesda; and the man born blind. The Jews vehemently denounced Him for these deeds of compassion, even though they involved no labour. Our Lord showed the inherent hypocrisy of their denunciations by pointing out that, in far smaller matters they violated their own professions, since none of them hesitated to loose his ox or ass from the manger and lead him away to watering; or to draw out on the Sabbath an animal that had fallen into a pit. When Shemaiah and Abtalion had found Hillel almost frozen on the outer window-sill of their lecture-room on a Sabbath, they had not hesitated to spend a considerable amount of labour to rub, and warm, and rouse him; and so far from being blamed for this, their remark that \u201che was worthy that the Sabbath should be profaned on his behalf\u201d had met with universal approval. So too, when their opponents were not concerned in the matter, the Talmudic writings can praise Rabbis for even bearing burdens on the Sabbath! In the Midrash Koheleth, Abba Techama is praised for carrying a sick man into a town, and going back\u2014though it was the Sabbath\u2014to fetch his bundle.
\nThe rule laid down by our Lord with perfect distinctness was, \u201cIt is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.\u201d Could there be a stronger contrast to the Rabbinic inanity, which allowed bathing on the Sabbath, but not in the Dead Sea or the Mediterranean, because the waters of those seas were supposed to be medicinal, and healing is unlawful on the Sabbath Day!
\nThe objection to the Sabbath healings was sometimes complicated by the fact that Jesus had broken one of the trivial Pharisaic Told\u00f4th or derivative rules. Thus He had bidden the healed man to take up his bed and walk, and the Jews \u201csought to slay Him because He had done these things on the Sabbath day.\u201d But the so-called \u201cbed\u201d was a mere mat or pallet, the carrying of which was necessary for the man, and involved no labour. The act bore no relation to the real meaning of Jer. 17:21, 22, \u201cTake heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath day, neither carry forth a burden out of your houses,\u201d which was spoken to prevent the profanation of the Sabbath by daily toil and commerce. Although, therefore, the Rabbis had decided that \u201cto carry anything from a public place to a private house on the Sabbath\u201d rendered a man liable to death by stoning, our Lord intentionally ignored the literalism which strained out a gnat yet swallowed a camel.
\nAgain, when Jesus healed the man born blind, the miracle went for nothing in the obstinate perversion of the Pharisees; but, because He had effected the miracle by anointing the man\u2019s eyes with clay moistened with saliva, they declared that \u201cHe was not of God, because He keepeth not the Sabbath;\u201d and said, \u201cWe know that this man is a sinner.\u201d Clay and saliva were both regarded as therapeutic agents, and our Lord had used both as helps to the faith of those whom He cured. The Jews themselves held that there was \u201cno Sabbatism in the Temple,\u201d and therefore that the Priests \u201cprofaned the Sabbath in the Temple and were blameless.\u201d To Christ the Temple of God was the Temple of infinite, all-embracing compassion.
\nAgain, on a certain Sabbath the disciples, in their poverty and hunger, as they were making their way through the cornfields, began to pluck the ears of corn, and to rub them in the palms of their hands. Now, by two of the thirty-nine Av\u00f4th or primary rules, all reaping and threshing on the Sabbath were forbidden; and one of the numberless Told\u00f4th or \u201cderivative rules\u201d regarded plucking the ears of corn (even to satisfy hunger!) as a kind of reaping, and rubbing them as a kind of threshing. Immediately, therefore, the Phariasic spies came down on them with their contemptuous censure, \u201cWhy do ye do that which is not lawful on the Sabbath Day?\u201d and going at once to Jesus, who seems to have been walking apart from the Apostles, they said, \u201cSee\u201d (pointing to the Apostles,) \u201cwhy do they do on the Sabbath Day what is not lawful?\u201d The vitality of these artificial trivialities among the Jews is remarkable. Abarbanel relates that when in 1492 the Jews were driven from Spain, and not allowed to enter the city of Fez, lest they should cause a famine, \u201cthey had to live on grass, but \u2018religiously\u2019 avoided the violation of their Sabbath by plucking the grass with their hands!\u201d Yet in order to keep the small regulation, they gave themselves the infinitely greater Sabbath-labour of grovelling on their knees, and cropping the grass with their teeth! But our Lord at once defended His poor Apostles from censure by reminding these literalists how on the Sabbath no less a saint than their own David had illustrated the principle that physical necessities abrogated ceremonial obligations, and had fearlessly violated the letter of the law by eating the sacred shew-bread with his companions, though it was \u201cmost holy,\u201d and was expressly reserved for the Priests alone. Mercy is always a thing infinitely more sacred than \u201cmiserable micrology.\u201d
\nAfter the narration of this incident in Luke 6:1\u20137, we find in the Cambridge Uncial Manuscript D. the famous Codex Bez\u0153;, the passage: \u201cOn the same day, observing one working on the Sabbath, He said, \u2018O man, if indeed thou knowest what thou art doing, thou art blessed, but if thou knowest not, thou art accursed, and a transgressor of the Law.\u2019 \u201d
\nThe authority of a single manuscript is, of course, insufficient to establish the genuineness of this passage as a part of St. Luke\u2019s Gospel; but there is much to be said for the authenticity of the fact recorded. A man would not indeed have dared to work openly on the Sabbath, for then he would have incurred the certainty of being stoned; but if he had been compelled in some way\u2014say in his own house\u2014to toil for some purpose of necessity, piety, or charity, then his toil was perfectly justified by our Lord\u2019s own teaching. Even the wiser Rabbis agreed that it was better to work seven days in the week than to beg one\u2019s bread. No less a personage than Rabbi Jochanan said\u2014\u201cin the name of the people of Jerusalem\u201d\u2014\u201cMake thy Sabbath as a week-day rather than depend upon other people.\u201d In any case, if there be any basis for the story, in some agraphon dogma of Christ current in early Christian days, His meaning could only have been, \u201cIf thy work is of faith\u2014if thou art thoroughly persuaded in thine inmost heart and conscience that thy Sabbath work is justifiable\u2014then thou art acting with true insight; but if thy work is not of faith, it is sin.\u201d
\nNot all the Pharisees were scribes or lawyers. In Mark 2:16 we read of \u201cThe Scribes of the Pharisees.\u201d They were the \u201cdoctors\u201d or \u201ctheologians\u201d of the Pharisaic party, and were held in the highest honour. When one of them complained that, in His strong denunciations of the Pharisees, Jesus insulted them also, He emphasised His disapproval by pointing out their supercilious tyranny (Luke 11:46), their insincerity and persecuting rancour (47\u201351), and their arrogant exclusiveness (52). But His eight-fold \u201cwoe\u201d on the Pharisees was even more severe. He upbraided them for their frivolous scrupulosity (Luke 11:39, 40), mingled with hypocrisy (41); for their gross lack of reality in religion (42); for their pride, ambition, and self-seeking (43); and for their hidden depths of corruption, which made them like tombs glistering with whitewash, or graves over which men walked without being aware of the putrescence underneath (44). In the seven great \u201cwoes\u201d pronounced in the Temple on the last day of His public ministry, He spoke yet more fully of their blind folly, which carefully strained out the gnat, yet swallowed the camel; which tithed the stalks of pot-herds, yet neglected justice, mercy, and faith; which professed external scrupulosity, while within they were full from extortion and excess; which bound heavy burdens on men\u2019s shoulders, and would not move them with one of their fingers; which shut the gate of the kingdom of heaven against men, and neither entered nor suffered them to enter; which compassed sea and land to make one proselyte, and then made him tenfold more a son of Gehenna than themselves; which devoured widows\u2019 houses, while for a pretence they made long prayers. Severe as are these denunciations, they are amply supported by many scathing passages in the Talmud. To this day in Jerusalem, \u201cYou are a Porish\u201d (i. e., a Pharisee) is, says Dr. Frankl, a Jewish writer, \u201cthe bitterest term of reproach.\u201d \u201cThey proudly separate themselves,\u201d he says, \u201cfrom the rest of their co-religionists. Fanatical, bigoted, intolerant, quarrelsome, and in truth irreligious, with them the outward observance of the ceremonial law is everything; the moral law little binding, morality itself of no importance.\u201d And the results of Pharisaism were wholly bad. Formalism killed religion, as the strangling ivy kills the oak round which it twines. \u201cAt last over the whole inert stagnation of the soul there grew a scurf of feeble corruption. Petty vices, meannesses, littlenesses were rife, and there appeared at last nothing to mark the religious man except a little ill-temper, a faint spite against those who held different opinions, and a feeble, self-important pleasure in detecting heresy.\u201d
\nIf the Pharisees had only listened to the words of Eternal Wisdom, how different might have been the course of history! But, although Jesus had at first tried to win them by gentle courtesy, they set their faces as a flint against Him, and tried in every way to thwart His efforts and stir up the multitudes to kill Him. They displayed the deadliest insolence\u2014treating with continuous and scornful jeers even His warnings against their besetting avarice. The words of most just judgment which had at last to be uttered by the lips of love, involved the final breach between Him and the self-constituted religious teachers of His day. At the close of one of these utterances, the Pharisees, in a scene of violence almost unique in His ministry, began to press vehemently upon Him, and tried to catch grounds of accusation against Him about very many things by treacherous questions, lying in wait for Him to hunt something out of His mouth, until the very multitude, in alarm and excitement, gathered for His personal protection round the door of the house in which the scene had taken place.
\nBut He came \u201cto cast fire upon the earth\u201d\u2014the fire which is salutary as well as retributive; which warms and purifies as well as consumes. One of the most remarkable of the \u201cunwritten sayings\u201d is \u201cHe who is near Me, is near the fire.\u201d
\nCan there be the least doubt, we ask, after this survey of the invariable teaching of Christ, wherein pure religion does, and wherein it does not, consist? May it not be summed up even in the words of the Old Testament\u2014\u201cHe hath shown thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?\u201d St. Paul is emphatic in teaching that in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith working by love. The revelation of Christ\u2019s will is unmistakably plain, His commandments are summed up in the one word \u201clove.\u201d He said that to do unto others as we would they should do unto us is the Law and the Prophets; that to say, \u201cLord, Lord,\u201d is nothing, but to do the will of His Father in heaven; that if we would enter into life we must keep His commandments; that he who heareth the Word of God and keepeth it, the same is His brother and His sister and His mother. If we care at all for what Christ taught we shall think less than nothing of the devotee\u2019s will-worship, or the ascetic\u2019s self-torture, or artificial absolutions, or vestments, or shibboleths, or Church exclusiveness, or hierarchic usurpations. What we shall desire will be simple faithfulness in \u201cthe daily round, the common task,\u201d the humble prayer offered in secret, the sweet silent charities of common life\u2014the imitation of Christ, learnt, not from corrupt manuals, or ecclesiastical traditions, but from His own lips, and His own life, and His own Spirit shed abroad in the hearts of all of every communion who humbly desire to be His true servants, and who prefer His teaching and His example to the intrusive inventions and tyrannies of men deceiving and self-deceived.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 27<\/p>\n
THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST<\/p>\n
\u201cMiraculum voco quicquid arduum aut insolitum supra spem vel facultatem mirantis apparet.\u201d\u2014AUGUSTINE, De Util. Cred. 16.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuisquis prodigia ut credat requirit, magnum est ipse prodigium, qui, mundo credente, non credit.\u201d\u2014AUG. De Civ. Dei, c. 22.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrima miracula confestim fecit, ne videretur cum labore facere; postea quum auctoritatem satis constituerat, moram interum adhibuit salutarem.\u201d\u2014BENGEL.<\/p>\n
I SHALL not here pause to enter once more into the question of the credibility of the Gospel miracles. Enough for us to say that the attempt to account for all Christ\u2019s miracles by hallucination or exaggeration breaks down in every direction before the utter simplicity of the Gospel narratives, which differ toto c\u0153lo from the portents of the Apocryphal Gospels, and from those invented to glorify medi\u00e6val saints. Had the Apostles been capable of deceitful intentions, their narratives would not have been marked by such extreme sobriety and moderation. The miracles which Christ wrought were not denied by the Pharisees, and are admitted even in the Talmud. The Evangelists regarded John the Baptist as the great Forerunner, as the promised Elijah. Yet they acknowledge with the frankest truthfulness that \u201cJohn did no miracle,\u201d and they represent the Son of Man as habitually repressing and restraining His miraculous gifts (Matt. 26:53); as only exercising them for definite ends; and as forbidding many of those who received them to blazon them abroad. He only appealed to His works as giving further emphasis to the grandeur of His words. To all believing Christians the one surpassing, overwhelming miracle is that of the Incarnation. Christ being what He was, miracles wrought out of compassion would radiate from Him as naturally as sunbeams from the sun.
\nIn the endeavour to grasp the essential characteristics of our Lord\u2019s miracles, and the relation in which they stand to His whole work, we may learn important lessons from the names by which they are ordinarily described. It will be seen at once that they all involved deeds of mercy, or conveyed lessons of truth, and do not bear the slightest relation to the senseless prodigies of Eastern invention, or Apocryphal romance.
\n1. In the Synoptic Gospels they are often called \u201cPowers\u201d (\u03b4\u03c5\u03bd\u03ac\u03bc\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2); seven times in St. Matthew, and twice in St. Mark and St. Luke; and the word \u201cPower\u201d (A. V. \u201cVirtue\u201d) is applied to the source from which they emanated. By this designation they are represented as the outcome of a divine gift.
\n2. The word \u201cwonders,\u201d or \u201cportents\u201d (\u03c4\u03ad\u03c1\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1), is only used of them three times, and always in connection with \u201csigns.\u201d This word describes them by the effect of amazement which they produced upon the minds of those who witnessed them. The rousing of astonishment was the lowest and poorest result of our Lord\u2019s exercise of His divine gifts, and one which He always discouraged. His object was to lead men beyond the miracle to the facts it was designed to prove.
\n3. The word \u201cSign\u201d and \u201cSigns\u201d (\u03c3\u03b7\u03bc\u03b5\u1fd6\u03b1) is used frequently in the Gospels, and is the designation ordinarily employed by St. John. This word indicates the main purpose for which they were wrought. They were the credentials of Christ\u2019s divine power, and of His unity with the Father.
\n4. The fourth name, \u201cWorks,\u201d is almost peculiar to St. John, where it occurs many times. It is the deepest and most characteristic of the four terms. It represents the miracles as the natural outcome of Christ\u2019s relation to the Father, who was the real doer of the works. \u201cThey are the periphery of the circle of which He is the centre. The great miracle is the Incarnation; all else, so to speak, follows naturally and of course. It is no wonder that He whose name is \u2018Wonderful\u2019 (Is. 9:6) does works of wonder; the only wonder would be if He did them not.\u201d They were the normal fruit of the heavenly tree; the effluence spontaneously irradiated from the Sun of Righteousness. In the miracle of His personality all that might otherwise startle us in the story of His miracles is completely absorbed. The influence of a higher nature finds expression in \u201cworks\u201d which are not contrary to, but are beyond, and above, the ordinary working of earth\u2019s natural laws.
\nIt is important to observe that miracles do not seem to have been primarily intended as evidences of Christ\u2019s divinity, but rather as adding emphasis to His teaching, and calling attention to His unity with the Father. Our Lord was well aware that miracles will not convince the obstinate and the hardened. His miracles were forms of Revelation. Had they been meant to prostrate opposition, or to enforce belief, their characteristics would have been different; nor, in that case, would our Lord have persistently refused to exhibit the startling and overwhelming \u201csign from heaven\u201d\u2014the miracle of constantly-descending manna to supply bodily needs, or the portent in the sun or moon or stars\u2014which the Pharisees and the multitude demanded. In all true and transforming faith there is a moral and spiritual element, and Jesus taught that it was a higher thing to believe in His words, and to recognise that the words which He spake were Spirit and were Life, than to believe for the works\u2019 sake. The miracles were not acts of His divinity working apart from His humanity. He was truly God, perfectly man, indivisibly God-Man, distinctly God and Man; and He appeals to His works only to prove that the Father dwelt in Him, with whom He was indissolubly united. He was co-ordinately the Doer of the works. Hence the miracles \u201cbelong properly to the believer and not to the doubter. They are a treasure rather than a bulwark. They are in their inmost sense instruction and not evidence.\u201d
\nAll of our Lord\u2019s miracles fall under the three heads of miracles on Nature, on man, and on the spirit-world.
\n1. The miracles exercised in the world of Nature are, for reasons already indicated, the rarest. With the exception of the two miracles of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes\u2014of which, perhaps, the real character was scarcely understood by most of the 5000 and of the 4000 for whose benefit they were wrought\u2014the Nature-miracles were only directly witnessed by Christ\u2019s nearest disciples. These were the changing of water into wine, the stilling of the storm, the walking on the sea, and the withering of the barren fig-tree. The miracles of the two draughts of fishes are probably to be regarded rather as instances of supernatural knowledge than as supersessions of the normal course of natural laws.
\n2. The miracles on man were, without exception, works of mercy to relieve the sick and the suffering. They are healings of the blind; of the deaf and dumb; of the impotent; of the sick; of lepers; of the palsied; of the dropsical; of the fever-stricken; of the man with the withered hand; of the woman with the issue. They were granted either to the faith of personal suppliants, or to the intercession of their parents or friends.
\n3. The miracles on the spirit-world are chiefly those extended to men or women possessed of the demons, who afflicted them either with wild and convulsive madness, or with grievous physical calamities. There were also three instances in which Jesus raised the dead\u2014the daughter of Jairus; the young son of the widow of Nain; and Lazarus whom he loved. The whole series of miracles, of which thirty-three are recorded by the Evangelists, was crowned by our Lord\u2019s own Resurrection and Ascension, when by death He had conquered him that hath the power of death\u2014that is the Devil.
\nIt is not unnatural to ask how it came about that such miracles of power and mercy, and many which were wrought collectively, and on a large scale, did not\u2014even apart from our Lord\u2019s teaching\u2014exercise a more decisive effect in hushing all criticism, and overcoming all opposition. The answer seems to be twofold. On the one hand, miracles, or what passed as such, were not unknown in the Eastern world. Various Rabbis are said to have wrought miracles, and our Lord Himself tells us that exorcism was commonly practised among the Jews themselves. \u201cIf I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore shall they be your judges.\u201d Indeed, according to Josephus, the power to eject demons has been specially bestowed upon his people, and he tells one remarkable story respecting it. What was known as demoniacal possession often showed itself in forms of violent nervous excitement, by which the sin-polluted mind swayed the functions and temperaments of the degraded and weakened body. Such emotional conditions are capable of being affected by the influence of stronger wills and holier personalities. It was easy, within certain limits, even for an impostor to excite a belief in his possession of supernatural powers, as was the case with Theudas, who led hundreds of deluded followers to feel confident that he could divide the Jordan before them, and lead them over dryshod; and during the procuratorship of Felix no less than 30,000 had assembled on the Mount of Olives in the belief that another impostor would throw down the walls of Jerusalem before their advancing footsteps. The Pharisees, without the smallest tendency to believe in Christ, yet admitted, and were forced to admit, that He did work miracles, and that His miracles were works of love and mercy.
\nBut, secondly, the Pharisees nullified the effect of them on the minds of the multitude by attributing them to the co-operation of evil spirits. They constantly averred that Christ \u201chad a demon,\u201d who conferred on Him the power of doing wonders. They challenged Him to perform some \u201csign from heaven,\u201d such as no demon could perform; but He refused to meet a challenge which would not, even if it had been performed, have really swept away their doubts; and He pointed them to His teaching, and the sign of the Prophet Jonah. The preaching of Jonah had converted the Ninevites; the Queen of the South had come all the way to Jerusalem to hear the wisdom of Solomon; if they refused to listen to one greater than Jonah or Solomon they would harden their hearts even to the end.
\nHis Miracles of Mercy, the course of which seems to have begun with the healing of the demoniac at Capernaum, were in the great majority of instances miracles of simple compassion. Jesus suffered with those whom He saw suffer, and St. Mark records how, at the sight of human infirmity, a sigh was wrung from His inmost heart. \u201cI have compassion on the multitude,\u201d was a feeling which always filled the Saviour\u2019s soul. His miracles all look back to the Incarnation, and forward to the Ascension, now bringing God to man, and now raising man to God, as signs of the full accomplishment of his earthly work. They differ fundamentally from the legends and miracles of other religions. Each miracle was also the revelation of a mystery, and all tend to raise us from a blind idolatry of physical laws to the consciousness of a nobler presence, and of a higher power. Thus they are a prophecy of a more glorious world, and a revelation of a near God unseen\u2014an Epiphany of sovereignty and of mercy. They involve a revelation of hope, of restoration, of forgiveness. The same powers which conquered sickness and death are not less mighty to overcome their spiritual antitypes, \u201cthe blindness of sensuality and the leprosy of caste, the fever of restlessness, the palsy of indolence, the death of sin.\u201d
\nI have already pointed out that it is no small indication of the simple truthfulness of the Gospels that although John stood among the greatest of the Prophets they do not attribute to him a single miracle. \u201cJohn did no miracle,\u201d yet he exercised over the people a stupendous influence. The Evangelists only attribute to Christ these works, and signs, and powers, because they narrated things as they were, with no desire to suppress any more than to invent.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 28<\/p>\n
THE GLADNESS AND SORROW OF THE CHRIST<\/p>\n
\u03c4\u1f78 \u03b4\u03ac\u03ba\u03c1\u03c5\u03bf\u03bd \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03c7\u03b1\u03c1\u1f70 \u1f21\u03bc\u03b5\u03c4\u03c1\u03ac.\u2014ATHANASIUS, De Incarn.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrede mihi, res severa est verum gaudium.\u201d\u2014AUGUSTINE.<\/p>\n
IT has been an error, and one not wholly devoid of disastrous consequences, to regard the life of our Lord on earth as a life of continuous and almost overwhelming sorrow. This has arisen from too exclusive a contemplation of His last year of flight and rejection, and of the anguish of His death and passion; and it has led to the overlooking of the indications which point to the many gladder hours of the Son of Man. He did, indeed, \u201cbear our griefs and carry our sorrows\u201d; but man\u2019s life is not an unbroken misery, and Jesus had the deepest sympathy with all natural and innocent sources of gladness. Nay more, He often called attention to the truth that, in despite of earthly trials and persecution, the Christian\u2019s joy shines on like a lamp, unquenched by the darkness of the tomb. In the midst of the worst misfortunes which the devil or the world could inflict, He bade His followers to be not only patient in tribulation, but also to rejoice in hope;\u2014to \u201crejoice and be exceeding glad,\u201d for great was their reward in heaven; nay, even to recognise their deep blessedness and \u201cto leap for joy.\u201d He never intended to reduce the natural blessedness of life to an artificial monotony of woe-begone abjectness. It was one of the objects of His life to give to men \u201cthe oil of exultation for mourning, the spirit of joy for the spirit of heaviness\u201d; by His gift they should exult \u201cwith joy unspeakable and full of glory.\u201d
\nWhen the seventy returned with joy at the proof that even demons were subject unto them in Christ\u2019s name, He bade them to rejoice still more that their names were written in heaven. The word \u1f00\u03b3\u03b1\u03bb\u03bb\u03af\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2, \u201cexultation,\u201d means \u201cabounding and overflowing joy,\u201d and not only did Jesus bid His disciples \u201cto exult,\u201d but in witnessing the success of their simple-hearted ministrations He Himself \u201cexulted in spirit.\u201d
\nMust we not feel confident that, during the thirty almost unrecorded years of life, in the lovely country, in the pure and happy home, in the humble and honourable toil, Jesus must have tasted of the most limpid well-springs of human happiness? This happiness must have been immeasurably increased because His heart, unstained by any shadow of guilt, reflected the very blue of heaven. Let any one consider how much our human life is darkened by the deceitfulness of sin; by the stings of shame; by the voice of a self-reproach which cannot be silenced; by the memory of wasted hours and desecrated gifts; by erring judgments; by the constant sense of moral failure and unworthiness\u2014and he will then be able to estimate what must have been the boyish and youthful happiness of one whose thoughts were ever\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cPleasant as roses in the thickets blown,
\nAnd pure as dew bathing their crimson leaves.\u201d<\/p>\n
But do not we further see the constant elements of simple gladness throughout our Lord\u2019s ministry? He discountenanced the showy abstinences of the Pharisees; He practised no form of Essene rigorism; He had nothing of the habitual fulmination and stern asperities of the Baptist: He neither practised fasting Himself, nor encouraged His disciples to do so. His whole attitude towards life show us that \u201cself-chosen, self-inflicted suffering, where it is not a wise discipline, is ingratitude to God, or rather it is partial suicide. The suffering in itself is nothing worth, the moral end for which it is the means gives it its value.\u201d
\nHe only recognised fasting as the natural expression of natural grief. He was radically opposed to the conception which looked upon self-inflicted burdens as a method for extorting God\u2019s approval. He compared the ministry of John to children playing at funerals in the market-places, among companions who would not mourn; and His own ministry to the games of merry children, playing at weddings, and piping for sullen comrades who would not dance. Throughout His life Jesus must have had in His heart pure fountains of perennial joy. He never knew, He could not know\u2014except by keen sympathy with the lost\u2014the accumulated miseries of selfishness, and its inevitable disappointments. He never knew, He could not know, those terrors of a fearful expectation of most just judgment when \u201cIniquity hath played her part, and Vengeance leaps upon the stage\u201d\u2014when \u201cman\u2019s gifts begin to fade as though a worm were gnawing at them\u201d\u2014when \u201cthe gnawing conscience reawakens the warning conscience\u201d\u2014when \u201cFear and Anguish divide the man\u2019s soul between them, and the Furies of Hell leap upon his heart like a stage\u201d\u2014when \u201cThought calleth to Fear, Fear whistleth to Horror; Hatred beckoneth to Despair, and saith, \u2018Come and help me to torment this sinner.\u2019 One saith that she cometh from this sin, and another saith that she cometh from that sin\u2014so the man goes through a thousand deaths and cannot die. Irons are laid upon his body like a prisoner. All his lights are put out at once.\u201d
\nThese worst tragedies of human existence could never be personally experienced by Him who was \u201choly, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.\u201d
\nAll that we read of His ministry illustrates the noble words of the poet:<\/p>\n
\u201cGladness be with Thee, Saviour of the world!
\nI think this is the essential sign and seal
\nOf goodness, that it ever waxes glad,
\nAnd more glad, till the gladness blossoms forth
\nInto a rage to suffer for mankind
\nAnd recommence at sorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was almost exclusively after the culmination of His ministry that sorrows burst like a hurricane upon the life of the Saviour of the world. His afflictions came from the wickedness of men, and always, in our human career,<\/p>\n
\u201cMan is to man the sorest, surest ill.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet we have learnt from Him that \u201cour light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us, more and more exceedingly, an eternal weight of glory, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.\u201d We must remember that, far more than is the case with us, Christ, in the midst of things temporal, and the worst trials which they could bring, was living in the constant realisation of the things unseen and eternal. The human privations\u2014the homeliness of Him who had not where to lay His Head, the poverty, the wanderings, the intense, bitter, unscrupulous hatred and opposition of the religious leaders of His day, the calumnious meanness of those who called Him \u201ca gluttonous man and a wine-bibber,\u201d \u201ca Samaritan,\u201d \u201ca blasphemer,\u201d \u201ca Sabbath-breaker,\u201d and said that He had a demon, and was the agent of Beelzebul\u2014these He could lightly disregard. They simply arose from the fact that\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cThe base man, judging of the good,
\nPuts his own baseness to him, by default
\nOf will and nature.\u201d<\/p>\n
It has never been otherwise in any age or nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the penalty of being great
\nStill to be aimed at\u201d;<\/p>\n
and even Plato wrote, \u201cThe just man will be scourged, racked, bound, blinded and after suffering many ills, will be crucified\u201d (\u1f00\u03bd\u03b1\u03c3\u03c7\u03b9\u03bd\u03b4\u03c5\u03bb\u03b5\u03c5\u03b8\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9).
\nCalumny and misrepresentation pained Him, not at all on His own account, but out of pity for the wretches who, under pretence of religion, could be so grossly guilty of such slanderous lies. That men who proposed to teach truth should revel in falsehood; that men who claimed to be sources of light should live in a self-chosen darkness; that men who ought to have set the example of love and humility should use every power they possessed to disseminate an arrogant hatred\u2014these were thorns in His crown of sorrow; and<\/p>\n
\u201cFace loved of little children long ago,
\nHead hated of the Priests and Elders then,
\nSay was not this Thy sorrow\u2014to foreknow
\nIn Thy last hour the deeds of Christian men?\u201d<\/p>\n
Christ bore the worst which a bad world and a corrupted Church could inflict upon Him; yet, through His invisible aid and presence, His followers in all ages have learnt how to be in need as well as how to abound. Amid the utmost evils with which men could torture them, they have known how to be \u201cpressed on every side, yet not straitened; perplexed, yet not unto despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in their body.\u201d
\nThere was one trial which, most of all, made the iron enter into Christ\u2019s soul. When the gleam of enthusiasm which welcomed His early preaching had died out; when the people took wilful offence at the words which they would not understand; when he began to doubt whether even His beloved disciples might not fall away from Him; when He could hardly speak in any Synagogue without seeing the Scribes and Pharisees, who came to spy upon Him from Jerusalem, scowling at Him in bitter envy, or regarding Him with supercilious smiles of fancied superiority; when He heard their<\/p>\n
\u201cBlind and naked Ignorance
\nDelivering brawling judgments all day long
\nOn all things unashamed\u201d;<\/p>\n
when He, in His Divine, ethereal loftiness of soul, was thrust into daily contact with every form of meanness and misery, in the vulgarities, the garrulities, the disgraces, the insinuated slanders, the infinitesimal littleness of fallen human souls, which boasted of their immaculate uprightness; when He was hardly safe from personal molestation even in the towns and villages of Galilee; when He heard that \u201cthe fox\u201d Herod Antipas had designs to seize Him; when He learnt that not only the disciples of John, but even the Baptist himself, in his rocky dungeon, were beginning to yield to doubts respecting Him; when flight into heathen lands and concealment in distant cities became a necessity; when on every side He encountered opposition and unbelief; when He witnessed around Him the ravages of disease and the triumphs of the Evil One, and looked out over a Dead Sea of human debasement, whose raging and swelling waters cast up mire and dirt; when He saw \u201cfaces with the terrible stamp of various degradation, and features scarred by sickness, dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, pinched by poverty, shadowed by sorrow, branded with remorse, broken down by labour, tortured by disease, dishonoured with foul uses;\u201d when He saw religion itself degraded into petty feebleness and rotted with conceit and posturing hypocrisy; when He saw \u201cintellects without power, hearts without life, men with their bones full of the sin of their youth;\u201d when instead of what should be the true nobleness of Humanity, with<\/p>\n
\u201cIts godlike head crowned with spiritual stars
\nAnd touching other worlds,\u201d<\/p>\n
He saw the pretence of religion conjoined with the depths of wickedness:\u2014then, that which was far more full of anguish to the perfect holiness of Jesus than the sting of death itself, was trembling pity for the victims of the world, the flesh, and the devil, in their apparently hopeless overthrow; in their awful, and, to all love short of the Divine, their apparently irremediable degradation.
\nIt is interesting and deeply instructive to consider the words used by the Evangelists to indicate the emotions of Jesus as He was brought face to face with these all but universal indications of human weakness, misery, and sin\u2014of false religion and of hopes vain or vile.
\n1. One of the commonest feelings attributed to Him is Pity. St. Paul tells his beloved Phillippians how he longed after them all \u201cin the tender mercies of Jesus Christ\u201d; and we are told again and again in the Gospels of the yearning compassion of Jesus over human beings in their afflictions. Thus, when He saw the multitudes in the cities and villages, \u201cHe was moved with compassion for them because they were harassed and scattered, as sheep when they have no shepherd.\u201d And when the great multitudes had followed Him on foot out of their cities into a desert place, He had compassion on them, and healed their sick, and would not let them depart in hunger, but<\/p>\n
\u201cHe fed their souls with bread from Heaven
\nThen stayed their sinking frame.\u201d<\/p>\n
Again, on the eastern side of the lake, after healing the lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many whom they cast down at His feet, He said, \u201cI have compassion on the multitude,\u201d and, once more, miraculously provided for their needs. He had compassion on Bartim\u00e6us and his blind companion at Jericho; and on the leper who came beseeching Him as He descended from the Mount of Beatitudes, and on the Demoniac Boy, and on the widow of Nain. We cannot doubt that His heart was thrilled by incessant pity. We cannot fathom the depths of His sympathy. But this sorrow had its own alleviation, for it was the intensest joy to Him to relieve the sufferings of men.
\n2. We are also told of the \u201cwonder\u201d or \u201csurprise\u201d of Jesus. This was sometimes awakened by the happy discovery of faith in unexpected quarters, as, for instance, in the Gentile Centurion at Capernaum. More often His wonder was mingled with deepening regret at the unbelief of those who should have known Him, and who prevented all possibility of His doing many good works among them by their lack of faith. This was the case at His own city, Nazareth, and here it must have grieved him most.
\n3. Sometimes this surprise deepened into grief and anger. In the synagogue, when He was about to heal the man with the withered hand, and came into collision with the obstinate, conceited, sham-infallibility of the small-minded sticklers for religious convention, \u201cHe looked round about on them with anger, being at the same time grieved at the callosity of their heart.\u201d Jesus also felt most deeply the sting of thanklessness in those who had been the recipients of inestimable gifts. He sometimes felt as if all His mercies were \u201cfalling into a deep, silent grave,\u201d and He might have said:<\/p>\n
\u201cBlow, blow, thou winter wind,
\nThou art not so unkind
\nAs man\u2019s ingratitude.\u201d<\/p>\n
This the only passage in which \u201canger\u201d (\u1f40\u03c1\u03b3\u03ae) is directly attributed to Jesus; and the only other scene in which His \u201cgrief\u201d is spoken of is when in the Garden of Gethsemane His soul was \u201cexceeding sorrowful even unto death.\u201d
\n4. It is interesting to observe that the verb \u201cHe was much displeased,\u201d or, more accurately, \u201cwas indignant\u201d (\u1f20\u03b3\u03b1\u03bd\u03ac\u03ba\u03c4\u03b7\u03c3\u03b5), is used of our Lord but once (Mark 10:14). It is used of the Apostles, and of the Chief Priests, and of the foolish ruler of the synagogue; but only once of Christ. And what was it that thus kindled the indignation of the \u201cBlessed One\u201d? Simply the fact that the Apostles in their lack of sympathy had gone so far as to \u201crebuke\u201d the mothers who brought to Jesus the little children whom He so tenderly loved. Nothing so deeply stirs the heart of the Lord of love as the lack of love in those whom He loves.
\n5. We find, however, a strong and expressive verb (\u1f10\u03bc\u03b2\u03c1\u03b9\u03bc\u03ac\u03bf\u03bc\u03b1\u03b9) used to indicate His self-restraint amid the impulses of holy indignation. In the Authorised and Revised Versions it is rendered \u201cHe groaned in the spirit\u201d (Vulg. infremuit spiritu), and in the margin, \u201cHe was moved with indignation in the spirit.\u201d This feeling was caused by the heart-rending spectacle of the wailing of the Jews, and of Martha and Mary, for the dead Lazarus. It perhaps implies emotion \u201cat the sight of the momentary triumph of evil, as death, or the devil, who had brought sin into the world, and death through sin, which was here shown under circumstances of the deepest pathos.\u201d
\n6. It is followed by the word, \u201cHe was troubled,\u201d or (more literally) \u201cHe troubled Himself.\u201d This is a peculiar and striking expression. It is true that in other passages St. John merely says that our Lord \u201cwas troubled in Spirit;\u201d but still the phrase \u201cHe troubled Himself\u201d seems to imply His entire control over all the impulses of His own heart. His emotions never swept Him away, as ours do, with a resistless force, but were firmly under His own power. The emotion of Jesus shows that though He did not approve of the Stoic apathy, His feelings were always kept under the holy bonds of self-restraint. \u201cTurbatus est,\u201d says St. Augustine, \u201cquia voluit.\u201d
\nAs regards the outward expressions of emotion, we are told once, and once only, that Jesus \u201csighed deeply,\u201d once only that He \u201cwept,\u201d once only that He was well-nigh \u201cstupefied with grief,\u201d once only that He \u201cwailed aloud.\u201d
\n7. He sighed, or perhaps \u201cgroaned,\u201d at the sight of the helplessness of the blind man whom He healed, for He never looked with indifference on the spectacle of human infirmity.
\n8. He shed \u201csilent tears\u201d at the grave of Lazarus, not only \u201cbecause He loved him\u201d\u2014as the Jews surmised, for He knew that He was about immediately to recall him from the grave\u2014but because He then saw, on every side of Him in the wailing Jews and the wailing family, the proofs of ruined earth and sinful man\u2014the outcome of that first transgression which lost for man his prim\u00e6val Paradise, and \u201cbrought sin into the world and all our woe.\u201d
\n9. The word \u1f00\u03b4\u03b7\u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03b5\u0342\u03b9\u03bd, a word which expresses the crushing and stunning weight of overwhelming sorrow, is only used of the Agony in the Garden. It swayed His human spirit with awful power.
\n10. He \u201cwailed aloud\u201d (\u1f14\u03ba\u03bb\u03b1\u03c5\u03c3\u03b5\u03bd) but once, and again it was from the sense of profoundest pity. It was when, from the rocky plateau at the turn of the road from Bethany to Jerusalem, the glorious guilty city burst suddenly upon His view, rising out of the deep umbrageous valley with its \u201cimperial mantle of proud towers.\u201d There stood the Temple with its pinnacles and gilded roofs, reflecting the morning light with such fiery splendour as to force the spectator to avert his gaze. And well might He wail aloud! Was not the city of Jerusalem the most \u201creligious\u201d city in the the world? Was it not wholly devoted to religion, or, at any rate, to religionism? Could not its Temple Service number its white-robed array of 40,000 priests, and its endless army of attendant Levites? Did not the blast of silver trumpets announce daily its morning and evening sacrifices? Did not the High Priest enter its Holy of Holies every year with the golden censer and the blood of Atonement in his hands? Were not some 2,000,000 pilgrims, from every region of the world, with Gentile proselytes among them, streaming on that very day to its Paschal Feast? Ah, yes! there was sumptuous ritual enough, and more than enough, but no righteousness; abundant externalism, but no religion pure and undefiled; and to His eyes the city was but as a glistering sepulchre, a hollow sham. He knew that the Priests and Levites, and Scribes and Pharisees, were, at that very moment, on the verge of the deadliest sin in all the world, and that that sin would involve the ultimate doom of them and of their whole nation, amid the death-throes of an agony more everwhelming than any which History has ever known. All this He knew\u2014and for the only time in all His life He wailed aloud. For:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is an hour, and Justice marks the date
\nFor long-enduring Clemency to wait:
\nThat hour elapsed, the incurable revolt
\nIs punished\u2014and down comes the thunder-bolt!\u201d<\/p>\n
The scene which burst upon His view, and caused Him to stop the progress of the humble, joyful procession of those who loved Him, and believed in Him, and were so full of hope, was the most visible proof that He had \u201ccome unto His own possessions, and His own people received Him not.\u201d In the concentrated agony and bitterness of that conviction\u2014the conviction that, in spite of His unbounded tenderness and infinite self-sacrifice, their House would so soon be left unto them desolate\u2014He wailed aloud. He would fain have gathered their children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings; but now they should be covered indeed, but by \u201cthe desolating wing of abomination.\u201d
\nHe \u201cwailed aloud\u201d out of deep pity; but, afterwards, all the unspeakable agonies of His coming doom, and all the forms of exquisite torture and brutal insult, could not wring from Him one single groan. Personal anguish and affliction could not affect even His humanity half so deeply as the sight of human degradation and the fore-knowledge of all the miseries which sin involves, and of all the deadly catastrophes which it precipitates so unceasingly on the heads of its miserable and deluded votaries.
\nForty years afterwards Jerusalem perished amid unspeakable horrors of slaughter and conflagation; and Josephus says that so awful were the calamities that fell on the guilty nation that \u201ctheir misery was an object of commiseration not to Jews only, but even to those that hated them, and had been the authors of that misery.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 29<\/p>\n
THE APOSTLES<\/p>\n
\u201cI know Mine own, and Mine own know Me.\u201d\u2014John 10:14.<\/p>\n
AMONG the many decisive proofs of the Divine Supremacy and Eternal Mission of our Lord, one is the colossal work effected in the world by the twelve humble Galilean peasants who were the chosen few. In themselves they were nothing, and less than nothing. The lordly Priests and supercilious Pharisees of the Sanhedrin contemptuously set aside their greatest leaders\u2014Peter and John\u2014as ignorant nobodies and common peasants, only fit to be thrust into ward, and threatened, and on due opportunity got rid of. They were wholly outside the sphere of Roman notice. Over and over again their lack of apprehension, their unimaginative literalism, their slowness of heart to believe, their struggles for precedence, their disputes as to which was the greatest, together with the dulness of their understanding and the selfishness of their individual claims, wrung from the very depths of His heart\u2014wrung from Him, in spite of His compassion and love for them, such sad complaints as, \u201cWhy reason ye because ye have no bread? Perceive ye not yet, neither understand? Have ye your hearts yet hardened? Having eyes see ye not, and having ears hear ye not? Do ye not remember? How is it that ye do not understand?\u201d
\nOn one occasion He exclaimed to them, \u201cO faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?\u201d He addressed them as \u201cO ye of little faith.\u201d He had to shame their worldly-mindedness by the rebuke, \u201cVerily, I say unto you, except ye become as the little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.\u201d They did not grasp His abolition of the distinction between clean and unclean meats. They could not comprehend His teaching about His death and earthly humiliation, and were too much awestruck to ask Him. To their leader He had to say, \u201cGet thee behind me, Satan; thou art a stumbling-block unto me, for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men;\u201d and again, \u201cSimon, Simon, Satan obtained you by asking, that he may sift you as wheat.\u201d James and John pained Him by their request for pre-eminent thrones, and by the vindictive fierceness of their Elijah-spirit in desiring to call down fire on the the offending Samaritan village. Even \u201cthe disciple whom He loved\u201d incurred rebuke by forbidding the exorciser who used His name, but \u201cfollowed not them,\u201d to cast out demons. There was something full of charm about the characters of Philip and Thomas, yet to one he had to say, \u201cHave I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip?\u201d and to Thomas, \u201cBe not faithless, but believing.\u201d At the very last, in the hour of His over-whelming peril, His nearest and dearest could not even watch with Him for one hour, and at the terrible moment of His arrest \u201call the disciples forsook Him and fled.\u201d And though He had so often indicated to them His Resurrection from the dead, they treated the earliest reports of those who had seen Him as mere \u03bb\u1fc6\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2\u2014mere idle talk.
\nIt is no small testimony to the simple truthfulness of the Gospels that the Apostles and Evangelists thus humbly recorded their own low rank, imperfect education, and utter inadequacy, and handed down the memory of the rebukes which they drew upon themselves by their blank dulness, petty quarrels, and unworthy self-seeking. Yet because they loved Him, and believed in Him, and had remained with Him in His trials, and wandered with Him over the fields of Galilee, and in His flight to heathen lands, in poverty and hunger, and amid the manifold taunts, brutalities, and scorn of men; because they did not leave Him when men took up stones to stone Him in the Temple courts; because they shared with Him the burning noon-tides and the homeless nights, He made them blessed above kings and wise men, and sent them forth to ennoble and regenerate the whole wide world. He spent much of the time of His ministry in training them for their high task. He made them His Apostles\u2014Sheloochim. He \u201csent them forth\u201d to be His authorised delegates among mankind, His fishers of men. He called them His \u201cchildren,\u201d \u201cHis \u201clittle flock,\u201d His \u201cfriends\u201d and \u201cchosen companions,\u201d \u201cthe salt of the earth,\u201d \u201csons of light,\u201d \u201ca city set upon a hill.\u201d Men might despise them and call them \u201cBeelzebul,\u201d \u201cas they had called their Master, but their infinite reward was that they became the soldiers, the servants, the beloved emissaries of the Lord of Glory. At His touch, like the gems on the oracular Urim, the character of each of them gleamed into the most heavenly lustre, and in a reality more lofty than the metaphor they sat on thrones, judging the tribes of Israel. He gave them the fullest instruction on their commission, their trials, their consolation and their reward, and they were privileged more than any men to enter into the inmost heart and mind of the Son of Man.
\nThe lists of the Apostles, as given by the Evangelists, fall into three well-marked tetrads, ranged in the order of their nearness to Christ, and the special closeness of intimacy into which He admitted them.
\n1. The first tetrad consisted of the two pairs of brothers\u2014Simon and Andrew, James and John. They were the \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03b9\u03ba\u03ce\u03c4\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf\u03b9, the \u1f10\u03ba\u03bb\u03b5\u03ba\u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f10\u03ba\u03bb\u03b5\u03ba\u03c4\u03cc\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03bf\u03b9, the ecclesiola in ecclesia, the inmost circle of Christ\u2019s friends. Andrew seems to have been the link of communication between Him and the others. As the first of all the disciples to accept Jesus, he deserved the high honour of being among the most chosen, a position for which this fisherman of Bethsaida was well fitted by his humble, blameless, contemplative character. The other three of the first tetrad\u2014Peter, James, and John, are sometimes called \u201cthe Pillar Apostles.\u201d They were the only ones admitted to be with Christ at the raising of Jairus\u2019 daughter, at the Transfiguration, and at Gethsemane. James and John were the sons of Zebedee, and of Salome, who, it is nearly certain, was a sister of the Virgin Mary.
\n2. The second tetrad consisted of Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, and Matthew. Philip may have been closely connected with Bartholomew; and Thomas, whose surname was \u201cDidymus,\u201d or \u201cthe Twin,\u201d may possibly have been a brother of Matthew.
\n3. The third tetrad consisted of two fathers and two sons\u2014James, the son of Alph\u00e6us, and his son Jude (also called Thadd\u00e6us and Lebb\u00e6us); Simon the Zealot, and his son Judas Iscariot. If Alph\u00e6us, or Clopas (Chalpai), was, as tradition says, a brother of Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, then James was our Lord\u2019s first cousin, and Jude His first cousin once removed. It is therefore possible, and not improbable, that in this band of twelve there were four sets of brothers\u2014Simon and Andrew; James and John; Philip and Bartholomew; Matthew, Thomas, and James, sons of Alph\u00e6us; and that there were two sets of Apostles who stood to each other in the relation of father and son\u2014namely, James, son of Alph\u00e6us, and Jude; Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot. It is also a deeply interesting and far from improbable view, that no less than six of the Apostles\u2014James, John, Thomas, Matthew, James the Less, and Jude Thadd\u00e6us\u2014were cousins of our Lord.
\nThey were all Galileans with the possible exceptions of Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who were, perhaps, Jews from the little town of Kerioth\u2014Kuryetein\u2014ten miles south of Hebron.
\nOf some of these Apostles we know next to nothing individually. No incident is recorded of Simon the Zealot, or of James the son of Alph\u00e6us, called by St. Mark (15:40) \u201cthe Little,\u201d or \u201cShort of Stature.\u201d Nothing is told us about Jude the son of James, except his one perplexed question at the Last Supper. In spite of the nearness of Andrew to Jesus, little that is distinctive is told us about him, though he was the earliest disciple, and one of the four who specially spoke to Jesus on Mount Olivet. Philip became one of the earliest disciples by the special call of Jesus, but after his call (John 1:44) he is only mentioned by St. John in two little incidents\u2014one being the interesting occasion when the Greeks came to him desiring to see Jesus; and another, the remark, \u201cLord show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.\u201d Matthew, or Levi, is only spoken of in connection with his office and his call, but it is an intensely significant fact that Christ should have chosen for His immediate follower on the one hand a man who had belonged to the fierce uncompromising national party of the Zealots, and on the other a man who had not only accepted the Roman domination, but held the despised and detested office of a Mokes, or toll-gatherer. The character of Thomas, at once faithful and despondent, is depicted for us in a few delicate touches by St. John, but we see that even when he took the darkest view of the future he was still ready to die with Christ.
\nIn the case of Bartholomew, who was undoubtedly the same as Nathanael, we are only told that he was of Cana in Galilee; and that our Lord, when He gained him as a disciple by reading the inmost thoughts of his heart, described him as \u201can Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.\u201d He was one of the happy band of seven to whom the Risen Lord appeared on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, \u201cwhen the morning was come.\u201d
\nThus little do we know of the great majority of those whom Christ bade to \u201cbe wise as serpents yet simple as doves\u201d; to whom He promised the Spirit of His Father; and whom He bade to go forth and face the very worst that the world could do to them, certain that through Him they could do all things, and should receive at last their unimaginable reward.
\nBut is it not an immensely powerful ratification of all that we believe of Jesus as the Son of God, that, with instruments so feeble\u2014by the agency of men humble, poor, unknown, insignificant in the judgment of the world\u2014He should have subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, and altered the entire conditions and destinies of the race of man? Truly \u201cGod chose the foolish things of the world that He might put to shame the wise; and God chose the weak things of the world to confound the strong; and the base and despised things of the world, and the things that are not, to bring to naught the things that are.\u201d
\nThe poet makes Cassius say of the great C\u00e6sar:<\/p>\n
\u201cYe gods! it doth amaze me
\nThat man of such a feeble temper should
\nSo get the start of the majestic world,
\nAnd bear the palm alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
But what works did the mighty C\u00e6sar accomplish which are distantly comparable in eternal significance to the renovation of mankind, the overthrow of the entire conditions of the ancient world, and of the ancient religions, by the agency of this handful of Galilean peasants? Is there any thing parallel to this in the entire history of the world?<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch is His will\u2014He takes and He refuses,
\nChooseth Him ministers whom men deny;
\nGreat ones nor mighty for His work He chooses\u2014
\nNo! Such as Paul, or Gideon, or I.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whence did they derive this unequalled force, this amazing influence? Not from themselves, but solely from the training of their Lord; from the enthusiasm and the conviction which He had inspired; from the memory of His sinlessness; from His words of eternal life; above all, from the outpouring of His Spirit upon them at Pentecost. After that day, indeed, we lose sight of most of them, and the stories of their travels and their martyrdoms are only recorded by unauthenticated legend. Nevertheless, they sowed the little seed which sprang into the living and mighty tree of Christianity; and:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe seed,
\nThe tiny seed men laughed at in the dark,
\nHas risen, and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk
\nOf spanless girth, that lays on every side
\nA thousand arms, and rushes to the sun.
\nThere dwelt an iron nature in the grain;
\nThe glittering axe was broken in men\u2019s arms,
\nTheir arms were shattered to the shoulder-blade.
\nIts enemies have fall\u2019n, but this shall grow,
\nA Night of Summer from the heat, a breath
\nOf Autumn, dropping fruits of power\u2014and rolled
\nWith Music on the growing breeze of Time
\nThe tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs
\nShall move the stony bases of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Apart from Christ they were feeble and insignificant. All their strength, all their wisdom, all their influence came from Him, and Him alone.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 30<\/p>\n
ST. PETER, ST. JOHN, AND JUDAS<\/p>\n
\u201cLet both grow together until the harvest.\u201d\u2014Matt. 13:30.<\/p>\n
PERHAPS it may be said that though the rest of the Apostles remain but little known, two of them at least were men of unique endowments\u2014Peter and John. I do not add the name of James, because this other \u201cSon of Thunder,\u201d though he shared the early fiery impetuosity of his brother, is never mentioned in any incident apart from him. He was indeed the first Apostolic Martyr, as John was the last survivor of the band, and the fact that he was chosen to be the head of the Infant Church in Jerusalem is one illustration of his \u201clight and leading,\u201d just as the traditions of his martyrdom illustrate the sweet and tender elements in his character. Yet we cannot trace any results of the influence which he exercised which are at all comparable to those achieved by St. Peter and St. John.
\nThe character of PETER\u2014Symeon, or Simon, the son of John or Jonas\u2014stands out before us with strange distinctness alike in its strength and in its weakness, in its elements of heroic fidelity and of deplorable fear, of entire self-sacrifice and of self-seeking vulgarism. The quick susceptibility and impetuous eagerness of this warm Galilean heart are again and again illustrated. The Fathers spoke of him as \u201cthe symbol of practical life,\u201d whereas St. John was \u201cthe symbol of theoria,\u201d the contemplative life. St. Chrysostom calls him \u201cthe ever-impassioned, the coryph\u00e6us of the choir of the Apostles.\u201d He it was who, when so many were deserting Christ, said, \u201cLord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.\u201d He it was who justified the name of Kepha which Christ gave him, by earning chief prominence among the Apostles, often speaking in their name, answering when all were addressed, and taking a marked lead among them after the Ascension. He it was who formulated the great confession, \u201cThou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.\u201d Yet immediately afterwards he incurred sternest rebuke as \u201ca Satan,\u201d and a stumbling-block. He accepts the early call of Christ, but at the second call cries, \u201cDepart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.\u201d He wishes to walk to meet his Master over the stormy waters, yet immediately he began to do so his faith fails, and he cries out, \u201cLord, save me: I perish!\u201d He refuses Christ\u2019s act of infinite tenderness in kneeling to wash his feet, yet immediately afterwards cries, \u201cLord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.\u201d He strikes the first and only blow for his Master at Gethsemane, yet the very same night, at the questioning of a servant-maid, denies Him with oaths and curses. He does not recognise Christ on the shore after the Resurrection so soon as John, but the moment he does so he girds his fisher\u2019s coat about him, and plunges into the sea to swim to Him. He is the first, with consummate boldness, to baptise, and eat and drink with, a Gentile convert, yet long afterwards, at Antioch, afraid of \u201ccertain who came from James,\u201d with timid lack of candour, he belies his former courage in mixing freely with the Gentiles, and carries Barnabas away with him in his dissimulation. This surely is sufficient to show that if he, individually, was \u201cthe Rock\u201d on which Christ built His Church, the rock was one which was often as shifting sand; and that the expression on which so huge a superstructure of fraud, tyranny, and superstition has been built, referred only to the fact that, in reward for his quick insight and bold confession, he was regarded as being in some ways a leader\u2014though by no means an exclusive or finally authoritative leader\u2014among the Apostles, and that to him was granted the glorious prerogative of preparing for the evangelisation of the whole world by being the first to admit the Gentiles into the fold of Christ\u2019s Church. But it was only in this secondary and metaphorical sense that Christ built His Church on Peter as a rock; for elsewhere we are told that the Church is built on the foundation, not of one erring man, but of all the Apostles and Prophets, and still more on Christ Himself, who is at once the Foundation and the Chief Corner-stone. We may well ask with David, and with Isaiah, \u201cWho is a rock, save our God?\u201d and say with St. Paul, \u201cOther foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus.\u201d Nor, in any case, has the privilege granted to St. Peter the most distantly remote bearing on the colossal usurpations of the Church of Rome.
\nST. JOHN\u2019S faults\u2014his jealousy of \u201coutsiders,\u201d his vindictiveness, his passion to have the pre-eminence are set forth with the same unvarnished faithfulness as those of St. Peter; yet it will be his glory to all time to have been \u201cthe disciple whom Jesus loved,\u201d the disciple who, at the Last Supper, leaned his young head upon His breast. To the last, as is proved by the rich traditions respecting his later years, he retained his burning energy, his impetuous horror against wickedness and apostasy which gained from Christ the name of \u201cSons of Thunder\u201d (Ben\u00ee Regesh?) for the brothers whose life was often as lightning and their words as thunder. It is in the Apocalypse, in his Gospel, and in his Epistles that we learn to understand the depth, force, and loveliness of this disciple\u2019s character; his rare combination of meditativeness and passion, of strength and sweetness, of imperious force and most tender affection. We lose sight of him for many years, which he doubtless spent in preparation for the work which he would have to do when the call came, and in devoted care of the Virgin Mother, whom Christ had so specially entrusted to his charge. Who can measure the value of the elements which he contributed to the age-long dominance of Christianity by the burning Apocalypse, and the spiritual Gospel and Epistles, in which he seems to be soaring heavenwards on the wings, now of the eagle which has been chosen for his appropriate symbol, and now of the dove which is covered with silver wings and her feathers like gold?
\nIn the Apocalypse we still trace the passionate energy of his convictions; in the Gospel they have become as the lightning which slumbers in the dewdrop. \u201cThe Son of Thunder,\u201d says Weiss, \u201cbecame, through the training of the Spirit, refined and matured into a mystic, in whom the flames of youth had died down into the glow of a holy love.\u201d
\nIt is strange\u2014amid this little band of men who, in spite of their original weaknesses, were noble and pure-hearted enthusiasts,\u2014to find the dreadful, sullen, saturnine figure of JUDAS, \u201cwho became a traitor\u201d\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cThat furtive mien, that scowling eye;
\nOf hair that red and tufted fell.\u201d<\/p>\n
We shudder at the depth of wickedness involved in such a crime; at the desperate blindness and callosity of heart, mingled with almost demoniac madness, which, after belonging to that holy fellowship, after spending those years with the sinless Son of Man, after hearing His words of eternal wisdom, after such close familiarity with the divine beauty of His daily life\u2014could for \u201cthirty pence\u201d betray Him into the scheming, tyrannous, greedy hands of Priests and Pharisees! All that we can suppose was that Judas was not always \u201cthe traitor.\u201d Could not Christ read the hearts of men? Undoubtedly He could. He could see\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the green the mouldered tree,
\nAnd ruined towers as soon as built.\u201d<\/p>\n
The depraved, hardened sinner is a very different being from the youth who has not yet been stereotyped in wickedness, and who still has within him the boundless possibilities of good. We might well exclaim, \u201cO quam dissimiles hic vir, et ille puer!\u201d The Judas whom Christ chose among His twelve was not yet the same man as he \u201cwho also became a betrayer.\u201d We only see him in the poisonous crimson flower and deadly fruitage of his wickedness, in the concentrated degradation of slavery to a mean temptation. But he was once an innocent child; he was once, perhaps, a bright-hearted boy, an ardent youth, capable of noble aspirations, not yet possessed by the seven devils of a brooding sullenness and an unresisted temptation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not worst at once. The course of evil
\nBegins so slowly, and from such slight source,
\nAn infant\u2019s hand might stem the breach with clay.
\nBut let the stream grow wider, and Philosophy,
\nAye, and Religion too, may strive in vain
\nTo stem the headlong current.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judas remains to all time an awful incarnate warning against the peril of yielding to a besetting sin. We are left to surmise the incidents of his career. If he was the son of Simon the Zealot, he may have shared as a youth the wild impulses of patriotism, and the glowing anticipations of a temporal Messiah\u2014who should shatter the yoke of Rome, and restore the kingdom to Israel\u2014which fired the untamed hearts of Judas of Gamala, and of his sons and followers. If so, we can imagine how the gradual chilling and final quenching of such Messianic hopes had worked in his heart side by side with the growth of a petty, dishonest greed, fostered by the fact that he carried the bag which contained the little common store of Jesus and His poor Apostles. The heart of Judas was one<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich fancies, like to vermin in the nut,
\nHave fretted all to dust and bitterness.\u201d<\/p>\n
To this was added the fact that he could not be unaware that Christ saw through him, penetrated the guilty secrets of his heart long before his fellow-disciples had learnt to do so. He could not miss the significance of some of the allusions by which Christ strove to check him in his awful career. The climax came when he was robbed of the chance of getting, and partly appropriating, \u201cthe three hundred denarii\u201d for which the precious pistic spikenard might have been sold, with which Mary of Bethany with glorious wastefulness anointed the head and feet of the Lord whom she loved. It was the spasm of dreadful disappointment thus caused to his avarice which drove him to the consummation of his crime. He felt that, at all costs, he must indemnify himself\u2014were it only by thirty shekels\u2014for the loss of a larger chance of gain. The Priests weighed out to him the thirty pieces of silver, and we know all that followed. We know how Christ washed the traitor\u2019s feet; how, in answer to the cold, formal question, \u201cRabbi, is it I?\u201d He whispered to him the discovery of his guilt; how He privately indicated to John and Peter that He was conscious of the man\u2019s nefarious plot; how the traitor led the Roman soldiers, and Temple-guard, and High Priest\u2019s servants to Gethsemane and said, \u201cRabbi, Rabbi, hail!\u201d and covered Him with kisses; we know, lastly, of the awful overwhelming revulsion of feeling, the sickening horror with which he became aware of the transcendent deadliness of the crime into which he had fallen; the frantic passion of remorse with which, when he realised the anguish to which his foul deed had doomed his Lord, he flung the hated silver\u2014which now seemed to burn his hands\u2014upon the Temple floor, and rushed away to hideous suicide. His crime kindled in his heart a lurid glare by which he first realised its awful enormity. \u201cPerfecto demum scelere, magnitudo ejus intellecta est,\u201d as the Roman historian so strikingly observes. The very horror, intensity, and hopelessness of his remorse may perhaps help us to gauge what his better feelings must once have been. Who can say whether after he had gone to \u201chis own place,\u201d he may not, even in that abyss, have been reached by the Divine tenderness and pardoning compassion of his Lord, and, like the healed demoniac, have sat at His feet at last, clothed and in his right mind? A son of perdition indeed he was; in the most terrible of earthly senses \u201che perished\u201d because he was \u201ca son of perishing\u201d: but it is doubtful whether our Lord meant to pronounce over him the terrible sentence that \u201cit would have been better for him never to have been born\u201d; for the curious order of the words, and the context, make it at least possible that what our Lord meant was, \u201cGood were it for Him (the Son of Man) if that man had not been born.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 31<\/p>\n
THE APOSTOLIC COMMISSION<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are ambassadors, therefore, on behalf of Christ \u2026 we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God.\u201d\u20142 Cor. 5:20.<\/p>\n
IT was to His little band of Apostles that Jesus gave His great Commission, and on them He conferred the rich spiritual prerogatives metaphorically expressed in the words, \u201cThe Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven,\u201d and the powers to \u201cloose\u201d and \u201cbind,\u201d to \u201cremit\u201d and \u201cretain\u201d sins. It was not till after His death\u2014it was not till their hearts had been filled with the Spirit and their brows encircled with hovering flame that they sprang to their full spiritual stature, and began first to understand the words of Christ and their full significance. Nor must we forget that from two\u2014it may practically be said, from three of them\u2014emanated the Four Gospels which contain the richest treasures of our knowledge of Christ. The Gospel of St. Matthew, of which the nucleus seems to have been (as Papias tells us) a collection of the Sayings (Logia) of Christ, was perhaps the earliest which became current, and may have assumed its present form some thirty-seven years after the Crucifixion. It is the Gospel for the Jew, the Gospel of the Messiah, the Gospel of the Past, the Gospel of Prophecy fulfilled. The Gospel of St. Mark, as we know alike from internal evidence and ancient tradition, in its brief, vivid, practical delineation, reflects the memories of St. Peter, and is the Gospel for the Roman, the Gospel of the Present. The Gospel of St. Luke reflects the mind of St. Paul, and is the Gospel for the Greeks. The Gospel of St. John is \u201cthe Spiritual Gospel,\u201d the last utterance of the last survivor, and of \u201cthe best beloved,\u201d of the Apostolic band, who could look back over nearly a century, and could interpret the Gospel of Eternity in its final meaning. It is the Gospel of the Church of all time.
\nI have already mentioned that Christ only once used the word \u201cChurch.\u201d The exclusiveness which is too often connected with the boast of \u201cChurchmanship\u201d\u2014the contemptuous tone towards others so frequently adopted by those who delight to call themselves \u201cGood Churchmen\u201d\u2014is entirely alien from the teaching of Christ. He described Himself as coming to establish a Kingdom in which all are alike the subjects of the one King. And by His Church He did not mean this or that body of exclusive claimants, but all the many folds in the one true flock; in the language of our Prayer Book, \u201cthe blessed company of all faithful people;\u201d \u201call true Christians dispersed throughout the world;\u201d all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth; \u201call who in every place call on the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours.\u201d
\n1. What is called \u201cthe power of the keys\u201d is a symbol only explicable by its current meaning among the Jews. The key was not a sacerdotal emblem. It was a sign of authority, and in the highest sense that Key was retained by Christ Himself. But it was granted to Peter\u2014as one of the Apostles\u2014because, just as the Jewish Scribes were supposed to have the key of the treasuries of wisdom and knowledge stored up in Scripture and in tradition, so the Apostles were authorised to admit men into the kingdom of Christ, and to lay open before them its eternal riches. But the keys were not entrusted to Peter individually. \u201cClaves dat\u0153 sunt,\u201d says St. Augustine, \u201cnon uni sed unitati.\u201d The keys, the powers to loose and bind, the power to remit and retain sin, refer neither to individual priests nor to sacerdotal caste, but to the didactic, the legislative, and the prophetic powers of the whole Church of God.
\n2. The power \u201cto loose\u201d and \u201cbind\u201d was also a familiar Jewish metaphor of the day, which was not applied to Priests, but only to Rabbis. \u201cTo loose\u201d was to remove the yoke of some legal or traditional precept: \u201cto bind\u201d was to enforce its obligatoriness. It was a Jewish saying that \u201cHillel loosed\u201d and \u201cShammai bound,\u201d because in some respects Hillel and his school were inclined to take a lenient view of traditional obligations, whereas Shammai insisted on their most punctilious observance. In the days of the Primitive Church the Apostles were naturally appealed to, in all uncertain questions, to decide what rules of Judaism were still incumbent on Christians, and what rules were now abrogated. St. James and the Council of Jerusalem exercised the powers both of \u201cloosing\u201d and of \u201cbinding\u201d in their decisions about what was necessary for the Gentile Churches; and while Paul frequently \u201cbound,\u201d he exercised the prerogative of \u201cloosing\u201d on a stupendous scale when he pronounced the Gentile Church to be free from the yoke of the Levitic law, and\u2014taking the ordinance to which the Jews attached the most immense importance\u2014declared thrice over that \u201ccircumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing,\u201d but \u201ca new creature;\u201d but \u201ckeeping the commandments of God;\u201d but \u201cfaith energising by love.\u201d
\n3. A still loftier prerogative was conferred by the words spoken, not to the Apostles only\u2014this is a point of consummate importance, which is habitually ignored\u2014but to the disciples generally, as we are expressly told by St. Luke\u2014\u201cto the eleven, and those that were with them.\u201d As my Father hath sent Me (\u1f00\u03c0\u03ad\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03bb\u03ba\u03b5), Christ said, \u201ceven so am I sending (\u03c0\u03ad\u03bc\u03c0\u03c9 you;\u201d and then, after breathing on them, He added, \u201cTake ye the Holy Spirit; whosesoever sins ye forgive they are forgiven unto them; whosesoever sins ye retain they are retained.
\nDangerous errors have risen in the Church from the failure to observe that the commission was given, not to Apostles only, not to ordained ministers only, but to the whole Christian community;\u2014to the Church as a Church, not to any class or caste within it. It is only by the gift of the Spirit, only by the prophetic insight which the Spirit can alone bestow, that the Church can \u201cremit\u201d or \u201cretain\u201d sins by declaring the conditions on which God remits or retains them, and deciding whether those conditions do or do not exist. It is \u201cYe\u201d\u2014the Christian Community\u2014who alone possess this power, and it is exercised on men collectively rather than on individual sinners. Christ conferred upon the Church the right, not indeed of deciding whether this or that man shall be saved or lost, but of declaring what men she can admit into, or reject from, her community. The claim of \u201cpriests\u201d that they can absolve from sin entirely perverts the true meaning of Christ\u2019s words. All that priests can do is to state\u2014not by their individual authority, but solely in agreement with the mind of the whole Church\u2014the conditions on which sin can alone be forgiven. Those conditions the Church may set forth. They are the conditions of sincere repentance and genuine amendment. If any one fulfil these conditions, he not only will be, but is forgiven, and has everlasting life. If a man have not fulfilled those conditions he is not forgiven, though all Popes and priests should pronounce their absolutions over him, and call him \u201cSaint.\u201d Apart from a miraculous power of reading the heart, any \u201cabsolution\u201d which is not simply declaratory and hypothetic is a false pretence, founded on the perversion of a phrase which has no such meaning\u2014a pretence more meaningless than the idle wind. Who can forgive sins but God only?
\nThe following remarks of Bishop Westcott should be carefully considered by those who, on this subject, have been misled into false conclusions by relying on an isolated and misinterpreted phrase, and who pay no attention to certain truths. \u201cThe main thought is that of the reality of the power of absolution from sin granted to the Church, and not of the particular organisation through which the power is administered. There is nothing in the context to show that this gift was confined to any particular group (as the Apostles) among the whole company present. The commission, therefore, must be regarded properly as the commission of the Christian Society, and not as that of the Christian Ministry. As the promise formerly given to the Society (Matt. 18:18) gave the power of laying down the terms of fellowship, so this gives a living and abiding power to declare the fact and conditions of forgiveness. The conditions refer to character (Luke 24:47). The gift and the refusal of the gift are regarded in relation to classes and not in relation to individuals. It is impossible to contemplate an absolute individual exercise of the power of \u2018retaining\u2019; so far it is contrary to the scope of the passage to seek in it a direct authority for the absolute individual exercise of the \u2018remitting.\u2019; At the same time the exercise of the power must be placed in the closest connection with the faculty of Spiritual discernment consequent upon the gift of the Holy Spirit.\u201d It does not need much observation to see that priests, in all ages, have been in no respect more richly endowed with anything which can be called \u201cspiritual discernment\u201d than whole classes of men whom they despise.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 32<\/p>\n
ORDER OF EVENTS IN OUR LORD\u2019S LIFE<\/p>\n
And so the Word had breath, and wrought
\nWith human hands the creed of creeds,
\nIn loveliness of perfect deeds
\nMore strong than all poetic thought.
\n\u2014TENNYSON.<\/p>\n
I SHALL not here enter into the difficult details of chronology on which I have already spoken in my \u201cLife of Christ,\u201d and in the notes on St. Luke\u2019s Gospel. After the mass of close investigation which has been devoted to this question, it may be regarded as probable, even if it cannot be established as certain, that our Lord was born in the winter of B.C. 4. Our present mode of calculation, which fixes the birth four years later, was only introduced by the Abbot Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth century (A.D. 525), and was founded on the necessarily imperfect knowledge of his day. The question is an open one, for there is no agreement in the traditions of the Church as to either the year, the day, or the month of our Lord\u2019s Advent.
\nIt is still a stranger fact, and one even more to be regretted, that there is no agreement among Christian scholars as to the length of our Lord\u2019s ministry. Many of the Fathers, building their conclusion wholly without reason on the phrase of Isaiah, \u201cthe acceptable year of the Lord,\u201d confine the period of His active work to a single year. Others consider that the ministry lasted one and a half years, or two years and one or two months. But most inquirers are now agreed that our Lord\u2019s public work extended over about three and a half years, or, at any rate, three years and some weeks or months. The question is further complicated by the opinion of some of the Fathers that our Lord, at His death, was between forty and fifty years old. This is a mere mistake of tradition, based on the surprised question of the Jews (in John 8:57), \u201cThou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?\u201d On this verse, Chrysostom, Eythymius, and others adopt the reading \u201cforty,\u201d which, again, in all probability is a mere conjectural correction of the text. It is a curious fact that Iren\u00e6us\u2014the scholar of Polycarp, who is said to have received the tradition directly from St. John\u2014says that our Lord was about fifty at the time of His passion. Such an error is, however, easily accounted for by mistaken inferences from this text. The view that our Lord lived fifty years would be subversive to all our records. The Jews only mentioned fifty years as a round number for complete manhood. Hippolytus was a pupil of Iran\u00e6us, yet even he mentions thirty-three as the age at which our Lord died; and Eusebius, Theodoret, Jerome, and other Fathers agree with him.
\nThe main elements on which we must decide what was the length of our Lord\u2019s ministry are derived from St. John, who groups his entire narrative round the Jewish festivals, to which he makes six allusions.
\n1. \u201cThe Passover of the Jews\u201d (11:13).
\n2. \u201cA [or the] Feast of the Jews\u201d (5:1).
\n3. \u201cThe Passover, the Feast of the Jews\u201d (6:4).
\n4. \u201cThe Feast of the Jews, the Tabernacles\u201d (7:2).
\n5. \u201cThe Feast of the Dedication\u201d (The Enc\u00e6nia) (10:22).
\n6. \u201cThe Passover of the Jews\u201d (11:55).
\nIt may, then, be regarded as certain that St. John mentions three Passovers. This necessarily implies a ministry of two years; and if (as seems probable) there was one Passover during the ministry which our Lord did not attend, or if the unnamed feast of John 5:1 was this Passover, we should have clear proof that the ministry lasted three years at least. But as St. John distinctly mentions the Great Feasts by name, it is unlikely that he should not have called this Feast by its name if it was either the Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles. It was possibly the Feast of the Purim, which he would not be likely to mention by name, as it was (unlike the Enc\u00e6nia) unfamiliar to the Greeks. This is inferred by many commentators from a comparison of John 4:35: \u201cSay ye not, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest?\u201d with 6:4: \u201cNow the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.\u201d Bishop Westcott, however, thinks that St. John meant the Feast of Trumpets, which was held on the new moon of September, the beginning of the Jewish civil year. It was suggestive of thoughts which might seem to be reflected in the subsequent discourses, and we know from the incidents at the Feast of Tabernacles\u2014when the discourse on the Living Water was suggested by the Feast of Drawing Water from Siloam, and that on the Light of the World by the illumination of the Temple with great candelabra\u2014that Christ often drew the colouring of His addresses from the sourrounding circumstances.
\nThese details do not, perhaps, admit of a certain interpretation; nevertheless the Gospels do give us a clear picture of the main outlines and divisions of Christ\u2019s public ministry.
\nWe know the events of His infancy. The birth in the manger was followed by the circumcision on the eighth day after the birth; by the purification and presentation in the Temple; by the visit of the Magi; the massacre of the Innocents; the flight into Egypt; the return; and the settlement of the Holy Family in Nazareth of Galilee.
\nOf His childhood we have no record beyond the statement that \u201cHe grew, and was waxing strong, becoming full of wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him.\u201d Of His boyhood nothing is recorded but the visit to the Temple at the first Passover, and the fact that on His return to Nazareth He lived in humble submissiveness to His parents, and advanced in wisdom, and age, and in favour with God and man.
\nOf His youth and early manhood, as has been shown, we know nothing except that He worked in Nazareth as a village carpenter, living in the humble abode with His mother, and with those who were always regarded as his brethren and sisters.
\nThen, when He was about thirty years old, He began his public life by going to the Jordan, and accepting the Baptism of John, and receiving the Heavenly Sign that his time was come. Immediately afterwards He went, under the influence of the Spirit, into the wilderness, to be tempted of the Devil for forty days.
\nFrom this point begins His active ministry; and, amid all difficulties of detail, we see that it falls into four periods. The first was that of initial work; the second was the period of successful preaching, which has been called \u201cthe happy blossoming-time in Galilee\u201d; the third was the period of struggle and opposition, culminating in flight into heathen regions, and including a slow progress to Jerusalem, followed by a time of deep retirement; the fourth includes the journey to the last Passover, the final discourses in the Temple, the Last Supper, betrayal, trial, and Crucifixion. The precise arrangement of all details in the varying order adopted by the Evangelist is impossible, but the broad outlines of the ministry as thus arranged are now generally accepted.<\/p>\n
FIRST PERIOD<\/p>\n
On His return from His victorious resistance to temptation, Jesus stayed for a short time in the district about the trans-Jordanic Bethany, where John was baptising. He there attracted round Him the first little group of five disciples\u2014Andrew, John, Simon, Philip, and Nathanael. With them He took his departure to the marriage festival at Cana of Galilee, where He wrought His first sign\u2014the turning of the water into wine\u2014which was not only a work of gracious kindness, but also a symbol and a prophecy of the New Dispensation which was now dawning on the world.
\nFrom Cana, accompanied by His mother, His brethren, and His disciples, Jesus went down to Capernaum, on the shores of the Lake of Gennesareth, where He stayed not many days. From thence He went to the Passover at Jerusalem. It was on this occasion that He cleansed the Temple of the crowd of huckstering profaners of its sanctity, and startled the Jewish authorities by His enigmatic words, \u201cDestroy this Temple, and in three clays I will raise it up.\u201d The saying was treasured up against Him, but even the disciples did not understand that \u201cHe spake of the sanctuary of His body\u201d until after He had risen from the dead. The only other event recorded of this visit is the night interview with the eminent Sanhedrist, Nicodemus.
\nBut though there is no other account of what occurred during this part of His ministry, there are indications that Jesus had been met by a stolid and watchful hostility. He therefore retired into Jud\u00e6a, and there permitted His disciples to baptise, though He Himself never performed the rite. John the Baptist was at \u00c6non, on the borders of Galilee and Samaria. The baptism by the disciples of Jesus was carried on at some part of the Jordan valley which belonged to Jud\u00e6a. Some unknown Jew seems to have gone from this scene to \u00c6non, and there to have raised a question with John\u2019s disciples \u201cabout purifying\u201d\u2014perhaps about the relative significance of the baptisms of John and of Jesus. The Baptist\u2019s disciples, with something of bitterness and jealousy for their Master, came to John and said, \u201cRabbi, He that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou hast borne witness, behold the same baptiseth, and all men come to Him.\u201d They only elicited from the Baptist the noble answer that he was not the Bridegroom, but only the friend of the Bridegroom; that \u201cHe must increase, but I must decrease.\u201d
\nBut this successful inauguration of His ministry on the banks of the Jordan had other effects. It kindled still more the animosity of the Pharisees, to which sect \u201cthe Jew\u201d who had disputed with John\u2019s disciples may have belonged. Further than this, the news reached Jesus that Herod Antipas had now seized John, and cast him into his dungeon at Mach\u00e6rus. It was, therefore, obviously wise to avoid unnecessary peril, and He left Jud\u00e6a, and departed through Samaria into Galilee. It was during this journey that He had the memorable conversation with the Samaritan woman by Jacob\u2019s well, in which He first clearly announced His own Messiahship. At the earnest request of the Samaritans of Shechem He stayed with them two days, and won many disciples. He then made His way to Galilee, and first visited Cana, where His healing of the courtier\u2019s son by a word filled the mouths of all men with his fame.
\nThe Galileans had seen what He had done at Jerusalem, and received Him with enthusiasm as He taught in their synagogues, journeying towards His native town of Nazareth. But \u201cHe Himself testified that a Prophet hath no honour in his own country,\u201d and at Nazareth He was not only received with jealousy and hatred, but the inhabitants, stung by his reproach, tried to hurl Him over the brow of the hill on which their city was built. They were, however, overawed by the calm majesty of His bearing, and he left them, perhaps never to return. Henceforth Capernaum by the silver waves of Galilee became His home, so far as we can speak of the home of One who often had not where to lay his head.<\/p>\n
SECOND PERIOD<\/p>\n
His main work in Galilee now began. It was by far the brightest and most triumphant part of His ministry, and in its radiant hopefulness and beneficence has been called \u201cthe Galilean Spring.\u201d He called Peter and Andrew, James and John, to a closer relation to Himself, and a more continuous ministry of self-sacrifice, astonishing their minds by the miraculous draught of fishes, and promising to make them fishers of men. His first Sabbath at Capernaum was a memorable day. He preached in the synagogue, amazed the listeners by His wisdom and authority, and healed the demoniac. He went thence to the house of Peter, and healed his mother, who was lying ill of a fever. In the evening the people of the city thronged densely round Peter\u2019s house, bringing their demoniacs and their diseased. He \u201cwho bore our griefs and carried our sorrows\u201d moved among them, pitied them, and healed them. After this He went away to a secluded place to spend the night in quiet prayer; but the multitudes searched for Him, and Simon with his friends almost \u201chunted\u201d for Him, and sought with gentle force to detain Him in their midst. He may have spent one more day with them, preaching perhaps from the little boat upon the shore; after which He went around the villages of Galilee in circle. It was soon after this that He selected His Twelve Apostles for their great work, and promulgated the laws of his new kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount. As He descended from the Mount of Beatitudes He healed the leper. His fame had now grown so great, and He appeared to be immersed in a life of such incessant work and excitement, that even his kinsmen, influenced probably by the instigations of Priests and Pharisees, made a too bold and irreverent attempt to interfere with and restrain His movements.
\nIt was this year of His Galilean ministry which was mainly marked by a succession of miracles: such were the healing of the centurion\u2019s servant; the opening of the lips of the dumb, and the ears of the deaf; the raising of the widow\u2019s son at Nain; and the miracles performed on those whom He cured in order to strengthen the overclouded faith of the imprisoned Baptist. One great section of this part of his life circles round the feast given to Him by Matthew, one of the hated toll-collectors whom He summoned to be His apostle. He healed the paralytic let down to Him from the roof, raised the daughter of Jairus, and healed the blind men and the woman with the issue of blood. Another great phase of work commences with the sermon in the boat to the multitude on the shore, when He delivered the Parable of the Sower, and began His parabolic teaching. After this, in the urgent desire for rest, He set sail for the more lonely Eastern shore, and on the way had brief interviews with the three imperfect aspirants for discipleship. Then followed the stilling of the storm on the lake, which had risen while He lay sleeping the sleep of deep weariness on the steersman\u2019s cushion. After He had landed He healed the wild naked demoniac of Gergesa, and at the request of the Gergesenes, who were terrified by the loss of their swine, He returned to Capernaum.
\nBut the burning enthusiasm of the Galilean multitudes was gradually cooled by the open opposition and secret machinations of the Pharisees, and was beginning to be replaced in the hearts of many by suspicion, dislike, and even hostility. It was perhaps towards the close of His first year of ministry that Jesus heard the terrible news that John had been beheaded in prison. A deputation of religious spies from Jerusalem began to watch his conduct and dog His footsteps. Nevertheless His work had produced deep results, and about this time He personally traversed the cities and villages in Galilee, in deep pity for the multitude, whom He regarded as sheep harassed by wolves, and lying in the fields thirsty and neglected because they had no shepherd. At the close of these journeys He despatched the Twelve Apostles, two and two, with a special commission to heal and teach. During their absence He seems to have continued His work nearly alone, perhaps as He slowly made His way to the unnamed Feast at Jerusalem which is mentioned in John 5:1. This, as we have seen, was probably the Feast of Purim, and it is quite possible that our Lord\u2019s visit to the Holy City was mainly with reference to the Passover which occurred a month later.
\nBut that Passover He never attended. For at the pool of Bethesda, by the sheep gate, He performed the miracle of the healing of the impotent man, which, having been done on the Sabbath, roused the still more furious hostility of the Pharisees. Their rage was goaded to fury by the lofty rebukes which He addressed to their materialism and ignorance. His discourse created such bitter exasperation that they began a systematic persecution, and persistently sought an opportunity to kill Him, on the double charge that He was a breaker of the Sabbath and a blasphemer against God, whom \u201cHe had called His Father, making Himself equal with God.\u201d
\nSo dangerous a plot compelled Him to return to Galilee without waiting for the celebration of the Passover. In Galilee He seems to have ministered again to eager multitudes, until He retired once more in order to secure rest for Himself and His Apostles in \u201ca desert place\u201d near Bethsaida Julias, at the northeastern corner of the lake. But His departure had been observed, and thousands of Galileans, and others who were on their way to the Passover at Jerusalem, went round the end of the lake on foot and awaited the arrival of His little vessel. He taught them all day long, and, in the evening, compassionating their hunger, He fed the five thousand with the five barley loaves and two small fishes. Then He dismissed them and His disciples, and went up alone to the mountain to pray. A great storm followed, and He came to them walking on the sea, and arrived with them at Capernaum once more.
\nThe next day He delivered the great discourse on the Bread of Life, in the synagogue at Capernaum. This led to a decisive crisis in His career. It caused many who had hitherto been His disciples to abandon Him, and it alienated the multitude by His refusal to grant them the sign which they had been instigated to demand. Had they been in the least degree sincere, it would have been easy for them to understand that the words of Christ were merely descriptive of the full spiritual appropriation of His life and of His death. The offence they chose to take was wilful. The metaphor, \u201cExcept ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves,\u201d had been used centuries before in their own sacred writings to imply the fulness of acceptance, and incorporation. \u201cCrede et manducasti,\u201d said St. Augustine. Truly and wisely to believe, is to eat. Christ removed all excuse for coarse materialism when He uttered the words, \u201cThe flesh profith nothing; the words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life.\u201d
\nFrom this time the clouds gathered more and more densely around Him. Many of His disciples, St. John tells us, walked no more with Him. In spite of His works of miraculous healing, He was more and more pressed with criticism and calumnies. He had given deep offence by saying to the paralytic and others, \u201cThy sins be forgiven thee,\u201d and was charged with arrogating to Himself the attributes of God. Because He and His disciples fasted not, they called Him \u201ca gluttonous man and a wine-bibber,\u201d as well as \u201ca friend of publicans and sinners.\u201d His Sabbath healings, His defence of His hungry Apostles for plucking the ears of the corn on the Sabbath and rubbing them in their hands, made the Jud\u00e6an spies denounce Him as an open violator of the Law. His neglect of ceremonial ablutions led them to brand Him as one who openly ignored \u201cthe traditions of the Elders.\u201d His persistent enemies explained His casting out of demons by calling Him an ally of Beelzebul, prince of the demons. He continued His discourses and His parables, but the Pharisaic spies were always able to interrupt Him with their \u201cMaster, we would see a sign from Thee.\u201d At last, on one great day of incessant conflict, when the Scribes and Pharisees openly threw off the mask and began shamefully \u201cto press on, and worry him,\u201d He was troubled in spirit, and when the myriads gathered suddenly about the door for His protection, He went out to them and strongly denounced the hypocrisy of the Pharisees before the agitated multitude.<\/p>\n
THIRD PERIOD<\/p>\n
Thus did the Galilean ministry, which had begun so brightly, end in clouds and darkness, and Jesus went forth with His Apostles to wander for months of flight in heathen and semi-heathen lands as far as the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. Of His works and teaching during this period we are told but little. His main miracle was performed to reward the heroic faith of the poor Syro-Ph\u0153nician woman. It is probable that He was occupied almost wholly in the training of His Apostles for their mighty mission in the world.
\nOn his return to Decapolis He healed the deaf and dumb man, and being once more received by multitudes, Jews and Greeks, who had flocked and stayed to hear His words, He performed His second miracle of feeding a multitude by distributing the seven loaves and a few fishes among the four thousand.
\nHe then returned to Galilee, but being once more met by the hostile emissaries from Jerusalem, with their demand for \u201ca sign from heaven,\u201d He sailed away. After healing a blind man at Bethsaida Julias, He went towards C\u00e6sarea Philippi. It was during this journey that He put to His Apostles the momentous question, \u201cWho say ye that I am?\u201d and heard from Peter the answer which showed that now His main work was accomplished, \u201cThou art the Christ, the Holy One of God.\u201d Then first He began plainly to tell them of His coming death, and uttered His terrible rebuke to Peter for trying to put a stumbling-block on the destined path of His humiliation. This was one of the most decisive events in the whole ministry. It was the full relisation and acceptance of the fact that the path of His glorification and the redemption of men led through the awful valley of the shadow, and that by the endurance of shame and death He must overcome the powers of death. He had prepared His disciples for some great manifestation by telling them that \u201csome of them should not taste of death till they had seen the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.\u201d Ascending Mount Hermon with Peter, James, and John, He was transfigured before them. On their descent from the scene of this vision of glory, He healed the demoniac boy. Perhaps the sense that something great had happened kindled the selfish ambition of the disciples, and caused that unseemly dispute as to \u201cwhich was the greatest\u201d which He reproved by setting the little child in the midst of them, and telling them that the highest place in the kingdom should be the reward, not of soaring ambition, but of humility, love, and unselfish service. It may have been during a brief rest at Capernaum that the incident occurred of His payment of the Temple tribute.
\nAfter this\u2014setting aside the intrusive advice of His too presumptuous brethren\u2014He went privately to Jerusalem to the Feast of Tabernacles. Here again He encountered a most deadly opposition. The Pharisees scornfully represented Him as an ignoramus\u2014not a Chaber, who had attended the schools of the Rabbis, but an Am ha-arets, who had never learnt \u201cletters\u201d in their sense;\u2014a \u201cmesith\u201d who was leading the multitude astray. To His mention of the fact that some of them were going about to kill Him, they answered that \u201cHe had a demon.\u201d They again engaged Him in acrimonious Sabbath disputes, and it was constantly on their lips that He was \u201ca Samaritan\u201d and a demoniac. Yet He went on teaching as He sat in the Treasury, the most frequented part of the Temple. With reference to two great events in the Feast, the joy of the Festival of Drawing Water, and the illumination of the Temple with great golden candelabra\u2014which originally commemorated the smitten rock and the pillar of fire\u2014He uttered His memorable discourses on the Living Water and the Light of the World. It was at this feast that the incident occurred of the dragging into His presence of the woman taken in adultery, after which His enemies were so roused to fury by His reproaches, and revelations of His Eternal Being, that they took up stones to stone Him. Shortly after this He opened the eyes of the man born blind, who, as a result of his faith in, and gratitude to, One whom they denounced as a sinner, incurred the ban of their excommunication.
\nFrom Jerusalem He returned to Galilee. Before He bade His last sad farewell to the cities and country which had heard His sermons and parables and witnessed most of His wonderful works, He uttered the \u201cwoe\u201d on Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, which was afterwards so terribly fulfilled. It seems to have been at this time that He sent the Seventy on their mission.
\nThe Pharisees warned Him of a pretended design of Herod Antipas to seize Him, but He saw through their machinations. He then set out on His journey to Jerusalem, and the greater part of the two months between the Feast of Tabernacles and that of Dedication seems to have been occupied with that slow journey of which the details are furnished to us only by St. Luke. He had meant to go through Samaria, but was churlishly refused hospitality by the Samaritans of En Gannim, where He rebuked the vengeful wrath of the Sons of Thunder. Turning to the road which led by the other route to Jerusalem, through Per\u00e6a, He cleansed the ten lepers, of whom one only\u2014and he a Samaritan\u2014returned to express his gratitude. During this journey He preached in various synagogues, healed the bowed woman, and the man with the dropsy, and once again refuted the ignorant and self-satisfied Sabbatarianism of small-minded local officials. It was perhaps during this journey that He \u201cexulted in spirit,\u201d cheered by the return of the Seventy from their mission; and amid deep discourses and solemn warnings He enshrined some of His most solemn parables\u2014such as the Parables of the Good Samaritan, Dives and Lazarus, and the Prodigal Son.
\nAt the close of His progress through Per\u00e6a, we find Jesus domiciled at Bethany, in the quiet home which was very dear to Him, the house of Martha and Mary, and Lazarus whom he loved. It was here that He taught to the eager, busy Martha that \u201cone thing is needful\u201d; and it was from this house that He walked over the Mount of Olives to the Temple, to be present at the Feast of the Dedication, which was kept about December 20. It was during this visit that He spoke the allegory of the Fair Shepherd, who would protect not only His own sheep, but also those other sheep which were not \u201cof His fold,\u201d (\u03b1\u1f50\u03bb\u1f74), but which should nevertheless be united hereafter into \u201cone flock\u201d (\u03c0\u03bf\u03af\u03bc\u03bd\u03b7). Here, as He paced up and down the splendid eastern porch of the Temple, the Pharisaic party and their leaders suddenly surrounded Him, and imperiously demanded of Him whether He was the Messiah or not. In reply He referred them to His teaching and His works; and in the course of his address used the words, \u201cI and My Father are one.\u201d The result was a burst of fury, and they took up some of the heavy stones which were scattered about for the yet unfinished restoration of the Temple, that they might stone Him to death. But they were overawed by the calm majesty with which He continued His appeals and arguments; and, alone and defenceless though He was, they did not even dare to seize Him. He now felt that it was useless to continue His words to men who only glared upon him with fierce hatred on their scowling faces. He retired therefore into comparative seclusion, to the Bethany beyond Jordan, where John once baptised, and where many accepted His teaching.
\nIt was perhaps during, or just before, this last stay in Per\u00e6a that the touching incident took place of \u201cthe great refusal\u201d made by the eager young ruler who had sought for something higher and more heroical in religion than the current religionism offered, but who failed to meet the test which he had sought. In the deep discourses which followed this scene, and in answer to the question of Peter, \u201cLo, we have forsaken all and followed Thee; what shall we have, therefore?\u201d He told the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard.
\nWhile he was still living in semi-retirement at the Per\u00e6an Bethany, He received from the sisters at the other Bethany the urgent message, \u201cLord, he whom Thou lovest is sick.\u201d Then followed the memorable scenes and revelations in connection with the raising of Lazarus from the dead, described by St. John with such characteristic vividness. The rumours of so stupendous a miracle fanned into white heat the jealous rage of the Sadducees, and at a private meeting of Sanhedrists, the High Priest, Joseph Caiaphas, son-in-law of Annas\u2014a thorough Sadducee, who had gained his High-Priesthood by bribery\u2014propounded the hideous suggestion of political expediency that Jesus must at all hazards be seized and slain. This secret fiat became known, and thenceforth He was living with a price upon His head. He again retired into the still deeper secrecy of a little obscure town called Ephraim, on the edge of the wilderness, and there He stayed till His last Passover.<\/p>\n
FOURTH PERIOD<\/p>\n
Jesus knew that His only chance of even temporary protection from the hierarchs at Jerusalem lay in the presence of the numerous Galilean pilgrims, of whom so many loved and believed on Him. When, therefore, from the hill of Ephraim. He saw them streaming down the Jordan valley on their way to the Holy City, He set forth to join them, walking before His disciples in such a Transfiguration of self-sacrifice as to fill them with terror and amazement, especially when, for the first time, He revealed to them the crowning horror that He was not only to be rejected and put to death, but that He was to be crucified. This they could not or would not understand; but\u2014perhaps led into earthly hopes of a speedily coming Messianic splendour\u2014James and John, with their mother Salome, chose this most inopportune moment to ask for thrones on His right hand and His left hand in His kingdom. This gave Him the opportunity to impress yet more deeply on the minds of the throne-seekers, and of the Apostles who were indignant with them for their forwardness, the eternal rewards of humility and love.
\nSo they advanced to the environs of Jericho, the city of roses and palms and balsam gardens. Here Jesus healed blind Bartim\u00e6us, and with a few words of mercy transformed Zacch\u00e6us from a greedy publican into a true and generous son of Abraham. During the progress towards Bethany the sight of the splendid Herodian palace built by Archelaus led Him, as we have seen, to weave some incidents in the history of that worthless tyrant into the Parable of the Pounds.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 33<\/p>\n
THE CLOSING DAYS<\/p>\n
\u201cGreater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.\u201d\u2014John 15:13.<\/p>\n
THE records which follow the arrival of Christ at Bethany are devoted to the history of the closing scenes in the life of Christ, which occupy so large a space in the collective records of the Gospels.
\nJesus and His Apostles, escorted by large numbers of Galilean pilgrims, reached Bethany probably on the evening of Thursday, Nisan 7, or Friday, Nisan 8 (March 31, A.D. 30), six days before the beginning of the Passover. He spent the Sabbath in quiet, and in the evening they made Him a supper, at which Mary anointed His head and feet with the precious spikenard, which she had perhaps reserved from her brother\u2019s funeral. Jesus protected her from the murmurs of the disciples who, instigated by Judas, denounced this act of loving generosity as a meaningless waste.
\nHow marvellously has His promise been fulfilled, that the act of love performed at a humble feast in an obscure Jud\u00e6an village should be commemorated ever afterwards through all the world! We may say of Mary of Bethany, \u201cBecause of the perfume of thy sweet ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth.\u201d
\nThis, as I have said, was the turning-point in the career of Judas, because it goaded into terrible force his besetting sin. Obviously his chances of gain were over, for Jesus spoke of His approaching burial, and this was the death-blow to all possibility of earthly Messianic hopes. Thus did \u201cthe tempting opportunity\u201d meet \u201cthe susceptible disposition.\u201d
\nIt was on the next day\u2014Palm Sunday\u2014that Jesus, mounted on the ass\u2019s colt, rode in the humble procession of which the exultant joy was over-shadowed when He paused at the turning of the road to wail aloud over Jerusalem and its coming doom. Once more He cleansed the Temple courts of the noisy traffickers; defended the Levitic choir boys, with whose Hosannas the Pharisees were displeased; and probably admitted to an interview the Greeks who had gone to Philip desiring to see Him. Then He heard, for the third time, the Voice from Heaven, which uplifted and cheered His soul. He explained its significance to the people who did not dare to confess Him, because to do so was to face the ban of the Sanhedrin. In the evening He left the Holy City, and went to bivouac with His disciples somewhere under the shadows of the Mount of Olives.
\nThe Monday of Passion week was a day of parables. In the morning took place the acted parable of the barren fig-tree. He met the challenge of the Priests as to His authority by His counter-question as to the mission of John, and during the course of the day addressed to the listening multitudes the Parables of the Two Sons; of the Rebellious Husbandmen; of the Rejected Corner-stone; and of the Marriage of the King\u2019s Son. The obvious import of these parables filled His enemies with madness, and they would gladly have seized Him then and there; but they were still afraid of the multitude, and Jesus once more retired unmolested to the Mount of Olives.
\nThe next day (Tuesday in Passion week) was the day of temptations\u2014the last, and in some respects the most memorable, day in the earthly ministry of Christ. On the previous evening various machinations, in the form of dangerous and entangling questions, had been secretly contrived against Him by each main class of His enemies. First came the plot of the Herodians to entrap Him by the question about the lawfulness of paying tribute money to C\u00e6sar. Then followed the poor, casuistical question of the Sadducees about the seven-fold widow. The sovereign wisdom with which He defeated these subtle conspiracies, and the divine lessons which He appended to His demonstration of the errors of His enemies, won the admiration even of some of the Scribes. One of them, however, wishing to test Him further, asked Him the common Rabbinic question: \u201cMaster, which is the great commandment of the Law?\u201d Our Lord needed only to remind the questioner of the passages transcribed in his own phylacteries, which summed up the whole essence of the Law in love to God and love to our neighbour. The Scribe so fully acknowledged the justice and wisdom of the answer that Jesus said to him: \u201cThou are not far from the Kingdom of Heaven.\u201d
\nBut now, to show the Pharisees how little they were endowed with wisdom, He convicted them of being \u201cblind leaders of the blind,\u201d by exposing their inability to answer the question, \u201cHow He whom David called his Lord could be his Son?\u201d And then, \u201csince Love had played her part in vain, Vengeance leaped upon the stage,\u201d and He uttered against the Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, His eight-fold \u201cwoe.\u201d His spirit must have been terribly agitated by hours of such manifold excitement, but the last incident and the last words in the Temple were peaceful. He saw the rich ostentatiously casting their offerings into the Shopharoth, or trumpet-shaped alms-boxes, and among them came one poor widow who had nothing to give but two mites, which make one farthing. This, He said, was the true charity, for out of her penury she \u201chad cast in all that she had.\u201d
\nAfter this He left the Temple; and when the disciples called His attention to its stateliness and splendour, He prophesied that not one stone of it should be left upon another. As they sat on the Mount of Olives they asked Him, \u201cWhen shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?\u201d In answer to this question He delivered His great eschatological discourse, dealing first with the destruction of Jerusalem, and the awful catastrophes with which the Old Dispensation should come to an end, and glancing beyond it to the close of \u201cthe coming age,\u201d and the final end of the world. To deepen their sense of the need of watchfulness, He told them the exquisite Parables of the Ten Virgins and of the Talents, and ended by warning them that \u201cafter two days was the Passover, and the Son of Man is betrayed to be crucified.\u201d Such were the thoughts which occupied our Lord and His disciples on that last sad walk towards Bethany.
\nThe Wednesday in Passion week was evidently spent by our Lord in seclusion from the world, in company with His chosen Apostles. Alike His friends and His enemies may have expected to see Him as usual teaching in the Temple courts, and doubtless the Priests and Sadducees had hatched fresh plots of their own, in conjunction with Judas. But Jesus came not. It was necessary for Him to prepare His soul for the awful baptism of blood; and doubtless He rejoiced to be for one day at peace, unassailed by the tempting questions and subtly dangerous malignities of priestly hypocrites. Who can say what infinite peace and refreshment He gained from that day of holy intercourse with His Father in Heaven, and in the society of those whom He could trust and love?
\nOn the morning of Thursday\u2014\u201cGreen Thursday,\u201d as it used to be called\u2014His disciples asked Him where they should prepare for Him the Paschal Feast, and He gave them a secret and mysterious sign which would lead them to the house (as has been conjectured) of the father of St. Mark, who was probably a secret disciple. Thither they would go after sunset, when the shadows of the evening began to fall; and there (so far as they knew and expected) after the evening meal of that day\u2014known as the Chagigah, or \u201cThanksgiving,\u201d to which a quasi-Paschal character was given\u2014they could the next day eat of the real Passover, and sacrifice the Paschal Lamb. But it was not so to be. It was written in the decrees of Eternal Providence that our Lord was not to eat the Paschal Lamb, but Himself to be sacrificed, \u201cthat the reality might correspond to the figure, and the true Lamb might be slain on the same day as the lamb which was His antitype.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 34<\/p>\n
THE LAST SUPPER<\/p>\n
\u201cNo longer do I call you servants \u2026 but I have called you friends.\u201d\u2014John 15:15.<\/p>\n
ON that Thursday evening they met in the upper room\u2014probably the same which was afterwards the scene of Pentecost. To us it might seem almost incredible that, when they began to recline for the feast, a dispute should arise among the Apostles about precedence. We can only account for it by the fact that, though a deep gloom seemed to overshadow them, because they were all conscious that some awful crisis was at hand, they yet cherished the conviction that, however that crisis might end for the moment, it could not but finally issue in that promised glory when, in figurative language, they should sit on twelve thrones judging the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Perhaps with the more reprehensible self-seeking was mingled a longing, in the heart of each of them, to be as near as possible to his Lord. But Jesus rebuked their murmured jealousies by the loveliest of acted parables. \u201cThough He knew that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He came from God, and was going to God,\u201d He arose from supper, and, \u201ctaking upon Him the form of a slave,\u201d laid aside His upper garments, the simchah and cetoneth, girt Himself round the waist with a slave\u2019s apron, and kneeling down began without a word to wash His disciples\u2019 feet, and wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded. He washed\u2014oh, unfathomable love and compassion!\u2014even the traitor\u2019s feet; and explained to the impetuous Peter that if He washed not his feet, he had no share in Him, but that \u201che that hath been bathed needeth not save to wash his feet.\u201d
\nThe story of that Last Supper is one of the divinest and most tender of all human records. Pages of more moving and exquisite instructiveness were never written than St. John\u2019s narrative of its incidents, and of those discourses \u201cso rarely mixed of sorrows and joys, and studded with mysteries as with emeralds.\u201d The declaration that one of them should betray Him; the eager, passionate questions, \u201cLord, is it I?\u201d followed by the cold, formal \u201cIs it I, Rabbi?\u201d of the betrayer; the whispered questions of Peter to John; the quick change of attitude of the young disciple whom Jesus loved, and who was at the right of Jesus, reclining with his head upon His breast; the giving of the sop to Judas, and his stepping forth into the night\u2014were incidents which occurred in quick succession. No sooner was Judas gone than the spirits of all the little band seemed to be freed from a terrible incubus. Calling them His \u201clittle children,\u201d Jesus founded the Lord\u2019s Supper as a continual memorial of His death and passion by a participation in what St. Paul calls \u201cspiritual food\u201d and \u201cspiritual drink.\u201d Then He began to give them His last revelations. He bade them love one another; and trust in his and His Father\u2019s ever-present love. He assured them that by His Holy Spirit He would be with them always, \u201ceven to the end of the world.\u201d The golden stream of His utterance was broken by an occasional question from one or other of the disciples. \u201cLord, whither goest thou?\u201d asked St. Peter, and \u201cWhy cannot I follow Thee now?\u201d and in answer he received a warning of the deepest solemnity, yet also of the most loving tenderness. To the last the Apostles often mistook the real force of His words, as they showed by the ignorant literalism of their remark, \u201cLord, here are two swords.\u201d \u201cLord, we know not whither Thou goest, and how can we know the way?\u201d asked the perplexed and despondent Thomas. \u201cLord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us,\u201d said Philip. Judas Lebb\u00e6us evinced his perplexity by the question, \u201cLord, how it is that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?\u201d
\nWhen the Lord had answered these questions, and dwelt on the further thoughts which they suggested, He said, \u201cArise, let us go hence.\u201d Before starting they joined in singing a hymn, probably a part of the Great Hallel (Ps. 136). Perhaps the allegory of the True Vine was spoken on the way to the Kidron, and suggested by the vineyards through which they were passing; or, as some conjecture, the little band went to the Temple, which at the Passover was opened at midnight, and the allegory may have been pointed by the sight of the Golden Vine over the Temple door. After speaking to them of union with Him, and of the Promised Comforter, and of the issue of sorrow in joy and of defeat in victory, He received the expression of their earnest thankfulness. At first they could not understand all He said, and were afraid to ask Him; but as He clothed His revelations in clearer and clearer form, He called forth their gratitude in the words, \u201cLord, now speakest Thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now know we that Thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask Thee; by this we believe that Thou camest forth from God.\u201d Alas! did they indeed now believe? He asked. The hour was close at hand when they should all abandon Him. Yet He had spoken to them that in Him they might have peace, and though in the world they should have tribulations, let them be of good cheer, for He had overcome the world.
\nThen Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven, and uttered the great High-Priestly prayer for Himself, and His loved ones, and for all who should believe through their word. After that they walked on under the moonlight, and followed Him under the moonlit-silvered leaves of the olives with an awful dread brooding over their spirits, as He walked before them with bowed head on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 35<\/p>\n
GETHSEMANE<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.\u201d\u2014Lam. 1:12.<\/p>\n
AND now the night deepened, and Jesus knew that the awful hour was close at hand. He told the majority of the Apostles to sit down in the garden while He Himself withdrew for prayer. They sank into sleep, weary with the burdens and trials of the day; but He had slept His last sleep on earth. He took with Him the three nearest and dearest of His chosen followers\u2014Peter and James and John\u2014because His awfully agitated human spirit felt in that supreme hour the need for human sympathy. He bade them to watch and pray for Him. But now the flood-tide of unspeakable anguish began to roll its waves over His soul. Even the presence of the three was more than He could bear, and, telling them that His soul was very heavy, even unto death, He tore Himself away from them, and again urging them to watch and pray, went about a stone\u2019s throw from them, and falling upon His knees, and then upon His face, prayed in an awful intensity of suffering that, if it were His Father\u2019s will, the cup might pass from Him. And in the passion of His emotion the sweat poured down from His uplifted countenance as in great gouts of blood. Thrice He prayed thus, and thrice going back to the most chosen of His chosen, He found them sleeping from grief and utter weariness. He might have cried in the words of the Psalmist: \u201cThy rebuke hath broken My heart, I am full of heaviness; I looked for some to have pity upon Me, but there was no man; neither found I any to comfort Me.\u201d An angel from heaven strengthened Him. Ere long the power of His willing self-sacrifice, of His absolute acquiescence in His Heavenly Father\u2019s will, won the complete and final victory over the tornadoes of His agony, and when He returned to His disciples it was to tell them, with a perfect and untroubled calm, which remained undisturbed until the end, that now His hour had come, and the betrayer was at hand.
\nThe light of many torches and lanterns began to twinkle through the olive grove; the tramp of soldiers echoed along the rocky paths; there was a clank of swords and of armour, and the hoarse murmur of an advancing crowd. Judas had discovered where He was; the High Priest had ordered the attendance of the Captain of the Temple and his myrmidons; Pilate\u2014warned that there might be a tumult\u2014had lent some of his soldiers from Fort Antonia, under their Chiliarch or Tribune. They were now near at hand\u2014both Jews and Gentiles. Judas hurried forward with the words, \u201cRabbi, Rabbi!\u201d and saluted Jesus with fervent and over-acted kisses. \u201cComrade!\u201d said Jesus sternly; \u201cthat for which thou art come \u2026\u201d Then followed the rash blow of Peter; the supernatural terror of the crowd; the seizing, the binding, and leading away of Jesus; the flight of all His disciples, and of the young man\u2014probably St. Mark\u2014who fled away naked when the captors took hold of the sind\u00f4n which he had thrown loosely over his shoulders.
\nBut Jesus had won His final triumph over the hour and power of darkness. He had only a few more hours to live, but from this moment no brutalism of insult, no refinement of mockery, no outburst of rage and scorn, no complication of torture and agony, ruffled for one instant the divine serenity of that majesty which, in spite of themselves, sensibly overawed and impressed even the most recklessly unscrupulous of His enemies. The complicated intensities of His sufferings only served to bring into more supernatural lustre the unapproachable brightness of His glory.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 36<\/p>\n
THE TRIALS BEFORE THE JEWS<\/p>\n
\u201cI gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not My face from shame and spitting.\u201d\u2014Is. 50:6.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt cannot be that a Prophet perish out of Jerusalem.\u201d\u2014Luke 13:33.<\/p>\n
I HAVE, elsewhere, minutely followed and endeavoured to illustrate, from history and from other sources, the full and fourfold narratives of the Gospels respecting the various phases of the trials of Christ before the High Priests and Sanhedrin, and before the Roman Procurator. I shall here only endeavour to summarise and to point the significance of the events recorded.
\nWe are struck first with the monstrous illegality of the mock trials as they were carried out by Annas and Caiaphas and the chief Priests, by the Sudducean priestly party in general, and by the Pharisees, who, though they no longer took a prominent part in the proceedings, yet must have consented to them, since they, at this time, constituted the majority of the Sanhedrin. We know of two only\u2014Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimath\u00e6a\u2014\u201cwho had not consented to the will and deed of them.\u201d Even Rabban Gamaliel, the famous grandson of the great Hillel, must have been among those who allowed complicated irregularities to proceed without any public protest against them.
\nOne of the awful warnings to be derived from this most terrible event in the history of mankind is the blindness, the vanity, the capability of unutterable wickedness which may co-exist with the pretentious scrupulosities of an external religionism. The Priests and Pharisees had sunk into hypocrisy so deep and habitual that it had become half-unconscious, because it had narcotised and all but paralysed the moral sense. They were infinitely particular about peddling littlenesses, but, with a hideous cruelty and a hateful indifference to all their highest duties to God and man, they murdered on false charges the Lord of Glory. A vile self-interest\u2014the determination at all costs to maintain their own prerogatives, and to prevent all questioning of their own traditional system\u2014had swallowed up every other consideration in the minds of men whose very religion had become a thing of rites and ceremonies, and had lost all power to touch the heart, or to inspire the moral sense. \u201cThe religion of Israel,\u201d it has been said, \u201cfalsified by priests, perverted from the service of the Living God into a sensuous worship\u2014where the symbol superseded the reality, the Temple over-shadowed the God, and the hierarchy supplanted His law\u2014could find no love in its heart, no reverence in its will, for the holiest Person of its race; met Him not as the fruition of its hopes, and the end of its being, but as the last calamity of its life, a Being who must perish that it might live.\u201d
\nHow many of the nominal Pontiffs who, at the will of the Romans and the Herods, had \u201cpassed the chair\u201d of the High Priesthood, and may have taken part in the trial of Jesus, we do not know. Besides Annas and Caiaphas, there may have been present Ishmael ben Phabi; Eleazar (a son of Annas); Simon ben Kamhith; and of those who subsequently became High Priests, Jonathan, Theophilus, and Matthias (sons of Annas), Simon Kantheras, Joseph ben Kamhith, and others. Even among the Jews, as we have already seen from the Talmud, the names of these worldly and avaricious Pontiffs were held in detestation.
\nAnnas and his son-in-law, Caiaphas, were the leading spirits in this evil conclave. Josephus, in one passage, calls Annas the most fortunate of men because \u201che had five sons who had all held the office of High Priest, as well as Caiaphas, his son-in-law.\u201d
\nHe had been appointed High Priest A.D. 6 by Quirinius, and deposed in A.D. 15 by Valerius Gratus. His youngest son, Annas the second, was the murderer of James, the Lord\u2019s brother. For this crime\u2014impudently committed during the interregnum between two procuratorships\u2014Albinius deposed him. Later on, the long-delayed vengeance fell on him. During the Jewish war the house of Annas was destroyed by a furious mob, this last son of the house was scourged and beaten to his place of murder, and his dead body flung out naked to be the food of dogs and wild beasts.
\nThe name of Hanan (Annas) means \u201cmerciful\u201d\u2014the exact opposite of the man\u2019s real nature. The High Priest who bore it has left a disastrous record of himself and his family. The Sadducees as a body were notorious for their cruel severity, and this family was among the worst. Though now an old man, Annas was an astute, avaricious worldling. Josephus tells us that there was, in this age, a sedition between the High Priests and the chief leaders of the people. Each party had violent adherents who often interchanged not only reproachful words, but showers of stones, and produced an epoch of misrule in Jerusalem. \u201cAnd such,\u201d he says, \u201cwas the impudence and boldness that had seized on the High Priests, that they had the hardness to send their servants to the threshing floors to seize tithes due to priests, so that the poorer sort of priests died for want.\u201d If the priests resisted, they beat them. Besides these acts of audacious tyranny, the members of the house of Annas were universally condemned for greed. Wealthy as they were, they had set up four booths (Chanuy\u00f4th) on the Mount of Olives for the sale of materials for sacrifice, and especially for the sale of doves\u2014the offerings of the poor\u2014from which they extracted great gain. It is said that the Sanhedrin, after ceasing to meet in the Lishcath Haggazith, or \u201cHall of Square-stones,\u201d used to hold their assemblies in these Chanuy\u00f4th, whence\u2014after the \u201cbooths\u201d had been destroyed at the time of the murder of the younger Annas\u2014they returned to Jerusalem. The house of Annas as the most influential Sadducean and High-Priestly family was mainly responsible for the invasion of the Temple courts by the greedy traffickers whom Christ drove forth both at the beginning and at the end of His ministry.<\/p>\n
I. THE TRIAL BEFORE ANNAS<\/p>\n
It was into the presence of this cunning and powerful hierarch that our Lord was first taken after the night arrest. Although Annas had ceased to be High Priest de facto, he was still regarded by strict Jews as High Priest de jure, as it was only by the Roman Governor that he had been deprived of his office. Whether he still held any official position in the Sanhedrin\u2014such as Nasi (in the High Priest\u2019s absence), or Chakam, or Ab-beth Din\u2014is uncertain, but in any case his influence was predominant, since all the highest functions were still carried on by his nearest relatives. Everything, therefore, depended on the view which Annas would take, and the course which he would approve, after his preliminary investigation of the charge against Jesus.
\nThe minor details are not narrated by the four Evangelists with sufficient precision to enable us to arrive at certainty; but the majority of those who have written since the publication of my Life of Christ have come in the main to the same view as is there presented. Annas, who seems to be alluded to as \u201cthe High Priest\u201d in St. John 18:19, asked Jesus about His disciples and His doctrine. In thus acting he was adopting a course which was flagrantly illegal. He was acting as a sole Judge, though the Jewish rule was, \u201cBe not a sole judge, for there is no sole judge but One\u201d; he was conducting a private investigation, whereas Hebrew justice demanded the utmost publicity; he was trying to entrap the Accused by his own admissions, in spite of the distinct requirement that \u201cone man shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity.\u201d It was against these gross violations of the law that our Lord made His calm and majestic protest, in return for which an insolent menial, unreproved by his vile superiors, first profaned with a blow of his brutal hand the face on which angels desire to look. From this circumstance Jesus saw that the whole proceeding was to be one glaring travesty of justice, and to these Jewish Priests and Sanhedrists, until adjured by the name of God, He uttered no further word. This preliminary examination was probably held between two and three o\u2019clock at night.<\/p>\n
II. THE TRIAL BEFORE CAIAPHAS<\/p>\n
No law was more stringent than the Jewish as to the necessity of assuming innocence until guilt was proved; yet, as though Jesus had been a legally convicted criminal, Annas sent Him bound to Caiaphas. Another night examination, in defiance of Hebrew law, ensued; and it is probable that Caiaphas was supported by at least a committee of Sanhedrists. These unjust judges, instead of waiting till witnesses spontaneously came forward, deliberately sought for witness, and even for false witness, against their victim. Yet, eager as they were to fix on Him some charge of blasphemy, the witnesses broke down. Their testimony did not agree. It was too flagrantly loose, discordant, and invalid to be used even by men bent on injustice and murder. At last false witnesses came whose testimony might seem to be more available. But the only definite charge which they could bring against Him was the \u201csign\u201d which He had offered to His questioners in the first year of His ministry about rebuilding the Temple in three days. Some witnesses declared that He had said, \u201cI will destroy this Temple.\u201d Others, that He had said, \u201cI am able to destroy this Temple.\u201d In point of fact, He had used neither of these incriminated phrases, but had said, \u201cDestroy ye this Temple, and I will raise it up in three days\u201d; in other words, Consummate your work, and I will accomplish Mine. No other charge was brought against Him, and justice was again defied, since they called no witnesses in His favour. Still the accusation, indirect as it was, had broken down. Nor could they in any way establish the charge that Jesus was a Mesith\u2014a \u201cseducer\u201d or \u201cmisleader\u201d of the people. Caiaphas and his party began to feel that, after all, their enemy might escape from their clutches, in spite of their determination\u2014in the cause, not of right, but of that \u201cexpediency\u201d which they interpreted to be the maintenance of their own unhallowed predominance and vile gains\u2014to put Him to death. Moreover, they were perplexed and overawed by the majestic silence which Jesus maintained. They felt that His silence was their condemnation; that the Accused was justly sitting in judgment on His own unjust judges. Yet they knew that His teaching, even if they could not bring it under the charge of constructive blasphemy, had involved claims of supernatural, though of purely spiritual, pre-eminence. What was to be done? How was the awful silence of the Accused, which shamed and overawed their souls, to be goaded into speech? There was but one way. It was disgracefully unfair, disgracefully illegal. But did that matter, when the night trial, and the private examination before Annas, and the seeking for false witnesses, and the suppression of any one to support the cause of the Accused, and every other feature in the entire proceeding, were equally unjust? The hard, worldly, unscrupulous High Priest came to their rescue. Defying the most initial principle of Hebrew Law\u2014which was that no one was to be condemned to death on his own confession\u2014he made to Jesus a tremendous appeal. \u201cI adjure Thee by the Living God,\u201d he cried, \u201cthat Thou tell us whether Thou be the Christ, the Son of God.\u201d So adjured, our Lord could not refuse to answer. He replied: \u201cThou hast said: and hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming in the clouds of heaven.\u201d Then the High Priest, in well-acted mock agitation, cried, \u201cBlasphemy!\u201d and rent his priestly Ketoneth of fine linen, and the assembly shouted, \u201cHe is Ish Maveth!\u201d (a man of death). Then followed the derision by the menials of the Sanhedrin, during the time that elapsed before the morning of Friday when the full Sanhedrin could legally meet. But even this meeting was again illegal, for, after a preliminary condemnation, the Law required that a whole day should intervene before the final judgment.<\/p>\n
III. THE TRIAL BEFORE THE SANHEDRIN<\/p>\n
At earliest dawn Christ was led before this full assembly of seventy members, assembled in the Beth Din, or House of Judgment. He was set before them as a condemned criminal. There a similar scene occurred. The Sanhedrin desired to condemn Him out of His own mouth; and His most determined and unscrupulous enemies kept urging Him with the furious question, \u201cArt Thou the Christ? tell us.\u201d He answered not. But at last, to end the unholy farce, He said, \u201cIf I tell you ye will not believe. And if I also ask you\u201d\u2014if I question you as to your authority for these proceedings\u2014if I press you also with questions\u2014\u201cye will not answer Me.\u201d And they all said: \u201cArt Thou then the Son of God?\u201d And He said unto them, \u201cYe say that I am.\u201d After that, He was once more formally condemned to death; and as He had been derided and misused by knaves and menials, so now\u2014which was harder to bear\u2014He was coarsely insulted by Priests and Pharisees. Although the merciful custom was to regard a condemnation to death by the Sanhedrin as a deplorable event, even when justice required it\u2014and so deplorable that after such a verdict the day should be spent in fasting\u2014they could not repress their savage delight at having at last got into their power the Prophet whom, again and again, they had vainly endeavoured to seize and slay. \u201cHow is the faithful city become an harlot! She that was full of justice! Righteousness lodged in her: but now murderers.\u201d
\nSo ended this shameful mockery of justice, illegal at almost every stage and in almost every particular. It was illegal (1) because it was conducted by night; (2) because the Hebrew Law required that every effort should be used to secure the acquittal of a prisoner, whereas every effort had here been used to secure his condemnation; (3) because witnesses had been sought for the accusation, and none called for the defence; (4) because after the witnesses had broken down\u2014which ought to have been followed by the immediate acquittal of the Accused\u2014Jesus had been adjured, by the name of God, to answer a question which might give the false judges an opportunity to condemn Him out of His own mouth; (5) because a claim which\u2014setting aside its truth\u2014was not blasphemy, or only constructive blasphemy\u2014was treated as a capital offence; (6) because no proper interval of a full day was allowed to intervene between the hasty, illegal, night-condemnation before the Committee of Sanhedrists and the formal condemnation before the Sanhedrin as a body; (7) because the Victim had been misused, smitten, insulted, without any interference, by the lacqueys of the Priests and by the Priests and Sanhedrists themselves; (8) because Jesus was tried on a capital charge on a Friday, not only on the day before the Sabbath (which was unlawful), but before a Sabbath which, as being at the beginning of the Passover, was in an unusually sacred sense a High Day.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 37<\/p>\n
THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE<\/p>\n
\u201cAuctor nominis ejus, Christus, Tiberio imperitante, per Procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat.\u201d\u2014TAC. Ann. xv. 44.<\/p>\n
THE account of the trial of Christ before Pilate, especially as given by St. John\u2014brief though it is\u2014is unparalleled in the whole world\u2019s literature for its vividness and verisimilitude. I shall not relate it at length, but only indicate its varying phases. How varied and agitating those phases were, and how powerfully the presence of Jesus, in His sleeplessness and misery, affected even so hard a heart as that of Pilate, may be seen from the fact that the Procurator, no less than three times, entered into the Pr\u00e6torium to question Jesus apart from His enemies (18:33\u201337, 19:1\u20133, 8\u201311), and made four or five strong and separate attempts to rescue One whom he recognised to be incomparably truer, nobler, and more innocent than the crowd of lying Priests, and the multitude whom they hounded to His destruction.
\nThe Jews had condemned our Lord to death, but, according to the best historic authorities, had no power to carry into execution their own decree. A tumultuary murder, like that of St. Stephen, might, indeed, have been overlooked by the contempt of Roman insouciance, especially in a matter which the haughty Gentile rulers might despise as one of words, and names, and of Jewish law. But the Priestly party could not have stoned Christ without many difficulties and dangers; and, further, they desired to inflict on Him the most abject and awful form of death, which could only be sanctioned by the Romans. They wished also to overawe those whom they regarded as His violent but deluded Galilean followers, by showing that He was condemned by their Roman governors as well as by their religious authorities. Their object was to inflict upon Him an accumulation of shame and horrible agony which should be witnessed by the whole multitude assembled to keep the Passover. They thought that such a fate would finally extinguish every attempt to represent Him as a Divine Teacher. And, as is always the case, they most effectually carried out the purposes of God by the human wickedness with which they strove to render them impossible.
\nBesides all this, the matter was not one which could be hastily hushed up. It is evident that it had already come under the cognisance of Pilate, since otherwise they could not have used the Roman tribune and part of his cohort as agents in the arrest.
\n1. While it was still early morning, therefore, the imposing body of High Priests, Priests, and Sanhedrists, headed doubtless by Annas and Caiaphas, accompanied Jesus to the tribunal of the Procurator. He was led\u2014a bound and weary prisoner, after so many hours of sleepless anguish and excitement\u2014across the bridge which spanned the Valley of the Tyrop\u0153on, to the splendid Herodian palace now occupied by the Procurator. Greatly as they feared and detested the Roman knight who had thrice been involved in deadly conflict with them and their nation, they assumed that they would easily overawe him by the pomp of their sacred authority. They thought nothing of the guilt of shedding innocent blood; but since they meant that evening to keep the Passover, their religious scruples prevented them from facing the ceremonial uncleanness involved in entering a house from which leaven had not been removed. In scornful condescension Pilate came out to them from the Pr\u00e6torium. But he was clad in all the stupendous power of the Roman Empire, being a direct representative of Tiberius C\u00e6sar, and he had, amid all his crimes, the stern sense of Roman justice which made him disdain to condemn to death a man in whose trial he had had no share. He knew what sort of men the Priests were, and had not the smallest respect for their profession of integrity. He asked them, \u201cWhat accusation bring ye against this man?\u201d This took them by surprise. They did not want a fresh trial; they only wanted Pilate to crucify One whom they had brought to him as \u201ca malefactor.\u201d When they sullenly told him that they had a law, and by their law He ought to die, Pilate\u2019s contemptuous reply was, \u201cThen deal with Him yourselves.\u201d They reminded him that they had no power to put a man to death, and since the charge of \u201cblasphemy,\u201d on which they had condemned Him, was one which Pilate would have disdainfully refused to examine, they heaped up a mass of false accusations, in which three are specifically discernible, namely, that\u2014
\n(i.) He was a ringleader of sedition\u2014a Mesith, or \u201cdeceiver,\u201d who was seducing and perverting the nation.
\nThat charge broke down totally and ipso facto, for Pilate was perfectly well aware that there had been no tumults or signs of insurrection connected with the name of Jesus. He also knew well that none of the political rulers\u2014not even the suspicious Antipas, who lived close beside the central scene of the ministry of Jesus\u2014had ever made the slightest complaint against Him.
\n(ii.) He had (they said) forbidden the people to give tribute to C\u00e6sar.
\nThis charge was a most flagrant falsehood, and was in fact the very reverse of the truth, since Jesus only two days before, when an attempt was made to entrap Him in the Temple, had openly said, \u201cRender unto C\u00e6sar the things that are C\u00e6sar\u2019s.\u201d It was also grossly hypocritical; for they themselves abhorred the indignity of paying tribute to C\u00e6sar, and would have hailed any chance of throwing off the Imperial yoke. Pilate saw through their falsity, and it deepened his utter contempt for them.
\n(iii.) He had said that \u201cHe Himself is Christ, a King.\u201d
\nThis charge might be regarded as true in a sense, although, as they were well aware, it was not true in the sense in which they wished it to be understood; and<\/p>\n
\u201cA lie that is half a truth is ever the greatest of lies.\u201d<\/p>\n
They intended Pilate to understand the charge in a seditious and temporal sense, though they knew that Christ\u2019s Kingdom was \u201cnot of this world,\u201d and had no bearing on Roman dominion. If, however, they could get Pilate to accept unexamined this accusation of l\u00e6sa majestas, they felt that it was the most deadly which they could possibly bring.
\nBut Pilate was a Roman, and the Romans knew what justice meant. He would not hand Jesus over to death untried and uncondemned, and ordered Him to be led into the palace to be questioned, for he was amazed that He should have stood in calm silence amid these storms of furious false witness. He therefore put to Him the question, \u201cArt Thou the King of the Jews?\u201d He received an answer such as confirmed the feeling, which became deeper in his mind every moment, that this was no ordinary prisoner, but a man of transcendent innocence, about whom some awful shadow of the Unknown seemed to hang. He heard from the lips of Jesus a gentle and courteous explanation as to the true nature of the Kingdom which He claimed. Pilate did, indeed, brush aside, with the hard, practical shrewdness of a commonplace intellect, the allusion which Christ had made to \u201cthe Truth.\u201d This he probably regarded as a piece of harmless transcendentalism, with which he, a Roman Governor, had nothing to do; but, filled with the conviction that the detested Jews were hounding to death One who was infinitely nobler than themselves, he strode out of the palace again, and emphatically pronounced to the raging hierarchs his conviction that the Victim for whose blood they thirsted was absolutely innocent.
\n2. Amid the roar of denunciations which this acquittal provoked, he heard the name \u201cGalilee,\u201d and, catching at any straw to get rid of this bad business, inquired \u201cif the man were a Galilean?\u201d Being informed that He was, he sent Jesus to Herod. The Sanhedrists accompanied Him to the old Asmon\u00e6an Palace in which Herod Antipas was living, and renewed their vehement denunciations:\u2014but there also Jesus maintained His unbroken silence. Why should He waste words on \u201cthat fox\u201d? How could an adulterer, a coward, a sluggish and cunning parasite, a murderer of the Prophets, comprehend anything that He could say?
\nAntipas could make nothing of Him, but evidently saw and knew enough to convince him that the whole accusation was a conspiracy based on lies. In his petulant vexation that Jesus would say nothing to him, he allowed his myrmidons to mock the Prisoner, but sent Him back to Pilate practically acquitted.
\n3. The tumult, however, continued, and the guilty conscience and agitated career of Pilate made him anxious, if he could, while saving Jesus from death, to make some concession to this raging crowd of Jews hounded on by their religious leaders. He came out on the Bena, and again emphatically told the Chief Priests that both he and Herod saw clearly that they were trying to destroy an innocent man. Pilate\u2014of whom it is a remarkable fact that the Evangelists speak far more moderately than Jewish writers like Philo and Josephus\u2014was, as Tertullian says, \u201cjam pro conscientia sua Christianus.\u201d Nevertheless he was willing to scourge Jesus; to make Him no longer dangerous by so agonising and shameful a humiliation, and then to set Him free.
\n4. This concession His enemies angrily rejected; and then, perhaps, he clutched at some suggestion that they might consent to set Jesus free in accordance with the annual act of grace by which he released a prisoner to them at the Passover. This was \u201cthe first step in that downward course of weakness which the world knows so well;\u2014a course which, beginning with indecision and complaisance, passed through all the phases of alternate bluster, subserviency, persuasion, suasion, protest, compromise, superstitious dread, conscientious reluctance, cautious duplicity, and other moral cowardice, until this Roman remains photographed for ever as the perfect feature of the unjust judge, deciding<\/p>\n
\u201cAgainst his better knowledge, not deceived.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Jews, however, shouted in favour of his releasing a notorious criminal named Jesus Barabbas, a rebel and murderer, who had been guilty of the very crimes of which they were falsely accusing Jesus, and of crimes much more flagrant! Pilate, by his guilty and cowardly concessions, had only involved himself in more hopeless difficulties. He was still deeply unwilling to sacrifice an innocent man, who had inspired his callous mind with a sensation of awe such as he had never felt before. This awe was intensified by the message brought to him on the tribunal from his wife, Claudia Procula, that \u201che was to have nothing to do with that Just Man, since she had, that night, suffered many things in a dream because of Him.\u201d What justice required he had not a moment\u2019s doubt; but personal fear, and the consciousness that serious charges might be made against him by the Jews, hung over him, and tempted him to the unwilling sacrifice of all that yet remained to him of nobler principle. He had publicly proclaimed that Jesus was innocent, yet\u2014Roman as he was\u2014in dread of the yelling conspirators, he degraded himself to the iniquity of handing Him over to death as guilty.
\nAt last the cry, \u201cIf thou let this man go, thou are not C\u00e6sar\u2019s friend,\u201d decided him. He dared not face the deadly jealousies and awful cruelty of the gloomy Emperor Tiberius, a man who, surrounded by the unscrupulous informers whom he encouraged, was torn to pieces by mad and reckless suspicion. Dreading a delation of himself to this horrible tyrant, Pilate set Barabbas free, and ordered Jesus to be scourged. This scourging was a recognised preliminary to crucifixion, not an attempt to get Jesus spared out of pity; though after it had been inflicted, Pilate seized one more chance of getting the prisoner released, out of sheer compassion for an agony worse than death.
\n5. From that awful scourging, Jesus came forth mangled, bleeding, agonised, wearing the crown of torturing thorns, and clad in the war cloak of faded scarlet in which the soldiers had mocked Him; but still so unsurpassable in His majesty that even this hardened Roman general could only exclaim, \u201cBehold the Man!\u201d But the unmoved Jews were still yelling \u201cCrucify!\u201d \u201cCrucify Him yourselves,\u201d said Pilate, \u201cfor I find no fault in Him.\u201d \u201cBy our law,\u201d they shouted,\u201d He ought to die, because He made Himself a Son of God.\u201d
\n6. Here was a new and startling allegation! Pilate could not but make one final effort. He caused Jesus to be led into the Judgment Hall of the palace once more, and asked Him in awe and amazement, \u201cWhence art Thou?\u201d Jesus answered not, but when Pilate, driven to anger, reminded Him that the power of life and death was in his hands, Jesus gently told him that \u201che could have no power if it were not given him from above:\u201d\u2014then, half acquitting his own judge, He added, \u201ctherefore he that betrayed Me to thee hath the greater sin.\u201d Was it possible that the multitude could still remain unaffected by the awful pathos of such moral and spiritual grandeur involved in such horrible misery? Pilate thought not. He led Him forth, and as he sat in his seat of judgment on the shining pavement, said, with awestruck accents:
\n\u201cBehold your King!\u201d
\nThe answer was a fresh clamour of \u201cCrucify! Crucify!\u201d \u201cShall I crucify your King?\u201d asked Pilate. Then came the fatal and apostate shout which terrified him from pity and from justice, \u201cWe have no king but C\u00e6sar!\u201d At that cry the last barriers of the Procurator\u2019s conscience were swept away. In vain pretence of shifting the responsibility, he washed his hands as he sat on the tribunal before the people, and said, \u201cI am innocent of the blood of this Just Person! See ye to it.\u201d Would whole oceans have washed away his guilt? Would not his hands rather have \u201cincarnadined the multitudinous seas?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAh nimium faciles qui tristia crimina c\u00e6dis
\nFluminea tolli posse putatis aqua.\u201d<\/p>\n
They cried; \u201cHis blood be on us and on our children!\u201d Then Pilate uttered the awful final words, \u201cIbis ad crucem. I miles expedi crucem.\u201d
\nPilate himself must have deeply felt the disgrace of being driven by personal cowardice into a flagrant and admitted violation of that sense of the sacredness of justice which was the strongest moral conviction in the mind of every genuine Roman. He had tried every device he could. He had said:<\/p>\n
\u201cTake ye Him, and judge Him\u201d (John 18:31).
\n\u201cI find in Him no fault at all\u201d (18:38).
\n\u201cWill ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews?\u201d (18:39).
\n\u201cBehold I bring Him forth unto you that ye may know that I find in Him no fault\u201d (19:4).
\n\u201cBehold the man!\u201d (5).
\n\u201cI find no fault in Him\u201d (6).
\n\u201cBehold your King!\u201d (14).
\n\u201cShall I crucify your King?\u201d (15).
\n\u201cI am innocent of the blood of this Just Person. See ye to it\u201d (Matt. 27:24).<\/p>\n
Yet, after all these declarations, a mere desire for personal safety\u2014which proved to be perfectly useless!\u2014made him condescend to the infamy of rending asunder every dictate of his own conscience, and of giving up to death One whose perfect innocence he had so repeatedly declared.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 38<\/p>\n
THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS<\/p>\n
\u1f18\u03b2\u03b1\u03c3\u03af\u03bb\u03b5\u03c5\u03c3\u03b5\u03bd [\u1f00\u03c0\u1f78 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03be\u03cd\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5.].\u2014Ps. 96:10.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrudelissimum t\u00e6terrimuque supplicium.\u201d\u2014CIC. Verr. v. 64.<\/p>\n
\u201cNomen ipsum Crucis absit non modo a corpore civium Romanorum, sed etiam a cognitione, oculis, auribus.\u201d\u2014CIC. pro Rab. 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuid dicam in crucem tolli? Verbo satis digno tam nefaria res appellari nullo modo potest.\u201d\u2014CIC. Verr. v. 66.<\/p>\n
\u03a4\u1f78 \u03c0\u03ac\u03b8\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c7\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u1f21\u03bc\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f00\u03c0\u03ac\u03b8\u03b5\u03b9\u03ac \u1f10\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03bd, \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f41 \u03b8\u03ac\u03bd\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u1f21\u03bc\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f00\u03b8\u03b1\u03bd\u03b1\u03c3\u03af\u03b1.\u2014ATHANAS., De Incarn.<\/p>\n
IT is difficult adequately to realise the multitude and variety of the forms of spiritual distress and mental anguish, of scorn, and torture, to which the sinless Son of Man was continuously subjected from the time that He left the Mount of Olives to enter Jerusalem for the Last Supper.
\n1. At the Last Supper He had the heavy sorrow of reading the heart of the traitor, and of uttering His last farewells\u2014mingled with prophecies of persecution as the path to final triumph\u2014to those whom He loved best on earth.
\n2. Then came the agony in the garden, which filled Him with speechless amazement and shuddering, until He had to fling Himself with His face to the earth in the tense absorption of prayer, and His sweat was like great gouts of blood streaming to the ground.
\n3. Then the horror of Judas\u2019s over-acted traitor-kiss, the seizure, the binding, the leading away, the desertion of Him by all His disciples in His hour of need.
\n4. Then the long trials which, only broken by insult, lasted the whole night through; the sense of utter injustice; the proof that all those hierophants who should have been the very first to welcome Him with humble yet triumphant gladness, were fiercely bent on destroying Him by any means, however foul.
\n5. Then the insolent blow in the face from one of the servants.
\n6. Then the hearing His chief Apostle deny Him with oaths and curses.
\n7. Then the night trial before Caiaphas and his most confidential adherents, with all its agitating incidents, its tumult of sneering voices, its dreadful adjuration, and the sentence on Him as \u201ca Man of Death\u201d by the \u201cspiritual\u201d court.
\n8. Then the accumulations of brutal insult as the crowd of vile underlings mocked Him, and slapped and beat Him, and spat in his face, and, bandaging His eyes, bade Him name the wretches who had smitten Him.
\n9. Then the early morning trial before the whole Sanhedrin, with its continuance of agitating appeals, and the final proof that \u201cHe had come unto His own possessions, and His people received Him not.\u201d
\n10. Then, if we read the record rightly, another derision by the Priests and Sanhedrists.
\n11. Then the long and thrilling scenes of the trial before Pilate, as He stood in the centre of a crowd thirsting for His blood, yelling for His crucifixion; heaping lies and insults upon Him; preferring to Him the robber and the murderer; defeating, by their ferocious pertinacity, the obvious desire of the Roman Governor to set Him free.
\n12. Then the leading through the city to Herod, and the vain attempt of that despicable prince to wring some answer or some sign from Him.
\n13. Then the coarse derision of Herod\u2019s myrmidons as, in mock homage, they stripped Him of His own garments and arrayed Him in a shining robe, with every accumulation of disdainful insolence and cruelty.
\n14. Then the final sentence of crucifixion, pronounced by Pilate after vain appeals and efforts to overcome the furious animosity of His accusers.
\n15. Then the brutal mockery by the whole band of Roman soldiers as He stood helpless among them. These coarse legionaries were only too much rejoiced to pour on Him the contempt and detestation which they felt for all Jews, and seized the opportunity to vent their callous savagery on One who, as they were taught to believe, had claimed to be a King. This King should have the insignia of royalty\u2014a cast-off military sagum of scarlet; a crown\u2014only twisted of torturing thorns; a sceptre\u2014a reed which they could every now and then snatch out of His tied hands, and beat Him with it as well as with rods; the mock homage of bended knees varied by execrable spitting, and blows on the head, and slaps on the face with the open palm, and words of uttermost contempt.
\n16. Then He was mangled and lacerated almost to death by the horrible and excruciating flagellum, inflicted by executioners who had no sense of pity, with scourges loaded with balls of lead and sharp-pointed bones.
\n17. Then came the stripping bare of the robes, and the bending under the load of the cross\u2014or rather, of its patibulum\u2014the transverse beam of the cross, which He was too much exhausted to carry, while the herald went before Him proclaiming the supposed crime for which He was condemned.
\n18. Then the sight of the weeping and wailing daughters of Jerusalem.
\n19. Then the driving of the lacerating, crushing nails through His feet, and through either hand, and the uplifting on the cross, that \u201cservile,\u201d \u201cinfame,\u201d \u201ccrudelissimum,\u201d \u201ct\u00e6terrimum,\u201d \u201cextremum,\u201d \u201csupplicium.\u201d;
\n20. Then the sight of all the world\u2019s worst vileness flowing beneath His eyes in its noisy stream, as the Elders, in their heartlessness, wagged their heads at Him, and jeered, and blasphemed; and the soldiers mocked, and the crowd howled their insults, and the two wretched robbers who shared with Him that hour of shame\u2014though they were guilty and He was innocent\u2014joined in the continuous pitiless reviling.
\n21. Then the sight of His mother in her unspeakable desolation.
\n22. Then the darkening by anguish of His human soul, which wrung from Him the cry, \u201cMy God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?\u201d
\nYet, amid all these accumulations of anguish, only one word of physical pain was wrung from Him\u2014the cry, \u201cI thirst\u201d;\u2014and so deep was the impression caused by His majestic patience, as well as by the portents which followed, that the whole crowd was overawed and hushed, and returned to Jerusalem beating their breasts, and saying, \u201cTruly, this was a righteous man;\u201d and the penitent robber implored Him to receive him into His Kingdom; and even the Pagan Roman centurion spoke of Him as \u201ca Son of God.\u201d
\nThe uttermost depth of superhuman woe seems to be revealed by His cry, \u201cMy God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?\u201d; But it has often been pressed to unwarrantable conclusions. The twenty-second Psalm was doubtless present to his mind as a whole, when He hung in the extremity of His lonely anguish; and it should never be forgotten that David\u2019s cry of despair is but the brief human prelude to the expression of uttermost trust, and to the outpouring of confident hope and triumphant praise. If in the \u201cburning fiery furnace\u201d of Nebuchadnezzar the Spirit of God was to the Three Children as \u201ca moist whistling wind,\u201d we are not warranted in pressing the quotation by our Lord of one sad verse of a Psalm of which the gladness and trust no less than the sorrow must have been present to His mind, though He only uttered aloud the first verse of it. Nor must it be overlooked that, if one of the seven utterances from the Cross expressed spiritual anguish, and another the extreme of physical torment, all the other five were words of love, of forgiveness, and of triumph. The first was the prayer for His murderers; the second was the promise to the pardoned penitent; the third, the tender provision for the future of His mother: then came the \u201cWhy dost thou forsake me?\u201d and \u201cI thirst;\u201d but they were followed by the one loud, triumphant word, \u201c\u03c4\u03b5\u03c4\u03ad\u03bb\u03b5\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9,\u201d \u201cIt is over for ever!\u201d and the ejaculation, \u201cFather, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit,\u201d with which He bowed His head, and yielded up His human life. \u201cWith a word,\u201d says Tertullian, \u201cHe voluntarily gave up His Spirit, anticipating the duty of the executioner.\u201d \u201cHe died,\u201d says St. Augustine, \u201cbecause He willed it, when He willed, as He willed.\u201d The blood and water which burst from His riven side did, indeed, constitute a proof of death, but were a symbol of life and regeneration\u2014of \u201cthe cleansing from sin and the quickening by the Spirit which are both consequent on the death of Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 39<\/p>\n
THE RIGHT VIEW OF CHRIST\u2019S SUFFERINGS<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Fair Shepherd layeth down His life for the sheep.\u201d\u2014John 10:11.<\/p>\n
IT must be admitted that the Church\u2014not, indeed, the Early Christian Church, but the Church after some six or seven centuries had elapsed, and most of all amid the dense and ever-deepening superstitions and aberrations of the Middle Ages\u2014has no Scriptural or primitive warrant for its deification of pain for its own sake. That was an outcome of Eastern Manich\u00e6ism. \u201cSuso,\u201d we are told, \u201cused to lie in a miserable hole, on an old door for a bed, and in the depth of winter thought it a sin to approach the stove for warmth.\u201d He used to tear himself with iron tags for scourges; and \u201cthough filled with a feverish thirst, with the waters of the Lake Constance sparkling on all sides round his monastery, he would often pass the whole day without suffering a drop to moisten his lips.\u201d One of the sayings of \u201cJohn of the Cross,\u201d was, \u201cWhatever you find pleasant to soul or body, abandon. Whatsoever is painful, embrace it.\u201d Such examples and such precepts are founded in absolute error, and are totally alien from the teaching of Christ and His Apostles. They are a distortion of the true meaning of self-denial and self-conquest, and have often led to results the exact opposite of those which they were supposed to promote. Such examples do not, after all, represent a self-torture and self-maceration so severe as those which are inflicted on themselves by many a brainless idolator. They are alien importations into true Christianity. They are utterly unlike the example set by Christ. They represent an ordinance-ridden will-worship which becomes a direct intensification alike of bodily and mental temptations. \u201cHave not the loosest of men,\u201d asks Dean Milman, \u201cbeen often found with the roughest sackcloth swathing their limbs; the proudest with bare feet, and the cord around their loins; the most cruel among those who have most severely mortified their own bodies? Monks have ever been the most ready and remorseless executioners of persecution. Quench the habitual affections, in the long run you quench humanity.\u201d
\nThe anguish which Christ endured for our sakes was not self-sought. Though voluntarily endured as an inevitable portion of His great self-sacrifice, it was inflicted on Him by the wickedness of men, and could not have been avoided except at the impossible cost of swerving from the path of duty or righteousness. Under such conditions our Lord showed us by His example that any accumulation of anguish is to be preferred to the slightest abandonment of the cause of true holiness. But neither was any portion of his sufferings self-inflicted, nor (as we have seen) did it involve a lifetime of self-maceration.
\nThe notion that mirth and pleasure are in themselves sinful is an idle superstition. The cross which we are to take up is not one of our own devising, but only the cross which God may see fit to lay upon us. Nor must we forget that all sorrow which is not self-sought and not self-inflicted has its own boundless and eternal consolations\u2014as it had so abundantly for our Blessed Lord.
\nIt is again a serious error to separate, or rather to isolate, the death of Christ from all His life, as though on His death alone, and not on His Incarnation and his whole life, depended the work of our salvation. \u201cNon hoc pr\u00e6cipuum amicorum munus est,\u201d admirably said the dying Germanicus, \u201cprosequi defunctum ignavo qu\u00e6stu, sed qu\u00e6 voluerit meminisse, qu\u0153 mandaverit exsequi.\u201d True sorrow for our lost ones is best shown, not by idle wailings, but by active accomplishment of their wishes and continuance of their work.
\nMost of the erroneous notions which have been thrust into the forefront of the religion of erring Churches have been built on the isolation from their context of separate texts or phrases, which thus are robbed of their proper historic meaning. In favour of lives of ascetic self-torture, some have quoted the words of our Lord, \u201cWhosoever shall seek to gain his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it,\u201d or \u201cbring it to a new birth.\u201d How important this utterance was is proved by the fact that our Lord repeated it on four separate occasions, and that it is (alone of all his sayings) recorded by all four Evangelists. The words involve the duty of absolute self-sacrifice when it is required in the cause of God; the duty of bearing and of braving all that God sends to us when we are walking in the paths of His service. To interpret them of self-inflicted miseries and macerations is to wrest them from their context; to rob them of their real and deep meaning; to divorce them from the example personally set to us by Christ\u2019s own life; and to make them the basis of false systems. Whatever God sends or requires we must gladly bear; He will send all that is necessary to train and ennoble us: it is nothing but a faithless folly to invent needless miseries for ourselves.
\nAn isolated phrase, or emotional expression, unless it harmonise with the whole body of sacred teaching, is misused and perverted when it is treated as though it were a complete revelation. Now in the New Testament the death of Christ is never thrust into exclusive prominence. \u201cIt is Christ that died,\u201d says St. Paul, \u201cyea, rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.\u201d \u201cNon Mors, sed voluntas placuit sponte morientis,\u201d said St. Bernard. \u201cChrist\u2019s death,\u201d says Dr. Littledale, \u201cin ancient Christian theology, did not pervade by any means so much space as it has done for several centuries past; but it was regarded as a single incident\u2014of transcendent importance indeed, but still only a single incident\u2014in the great chain of events from the Incarnation to the Ascension. Suffering in itself is valueless and works no deliverance.\u201d The sufferings of Christ on the Cross, which could barely wring one cry of anguish from the Sufferer, were necessary because of man\u2019s vileness, selfishness, and sin, and were caused by the most awful object lesson which could have been given of the perversity of false religion. But they were a revelation not of defeat, but of victorious majesty. They indicate \u201cthe measure of our need, and of Christ\u2019s sympathy; the destruction of the selfishness of man, the consummation of the counsel of God.\u201d The Italian poet and ecclesiastic Tomaso Campanella (as translated by John Addington Symonds) writes\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Christ was only six hours crucified,
\nAfter few years of toil and misery,
\nWhich for mankind He suffered willingly,
\nWhile Heaven was won for ever when He died;
\nWhy should He still be shown on every side,
\nPainted and preached in nought but agony,
\nWhose pains were light, matched with His victory,
\nWhen the world\u2019s power to harm Him was defied?
\nWhy rather speak and write not of the realm
\nHe rules in Heaven, and soon will bring below,
\nUnto the praise and glory of His name?
\nAh! foolish crowd! This world\u2019s thick vapours whelm
\nYour eyes, unworthy of that glorious show,
\nBlind to His splendour, bent upon His shame.\u201d<\/p>\n
Campanella here wrote in strictest accordance with the views of primitive Christianity, and indeed of all the purest Christain thought for many centuries. All early Christian art is joyous. There is not a single Latin cross, much less a representation of the crucifixion, before the days of Constantine. The earliest known Latin cross is on the tomb of Galla Placidia at Ravenna, A.D. 451. The early Christians would have regarded a crucifix as an audacious profanation of the awful majesty of Him who now sitteth for ever, as Eternal God, on the throne of His glory. Even St. Gregory, when He sent to Queen Theodolinda an ampulla on which was painted the scene of Golgotha, had the two robbers represented nailed to their crosses; but by the side of the cross of Christ kneel two angels, and the cross is empty, while over it is the image of Christ in glory. But in ancient art, for six centuries after Christ, painters did not venture to go so far even as this. In the Church of St. Apollinaris at Ravenna are painted consecutive scenes of the Life of Christ; but they end with Pilate washing his hands, and from that scene they pass\u2014as they do on many sarcophagi\u2014at once to the Resurrection. \u201cIt may well be doubted,\u201d says Bishop Westcott, whose authority as a theologian none will question, \u201cwhether the Crucifixion is, in any immediate shape, a proper subject for art. The image of the dead Christ is foreign to Scripture. Even in the record of the Passion death is swallowed up in victory. And the material representations of what St. John shows to have been life through death, perpetuate thoughts foreign to the Gospel.\u201d And again he writes, \u201cWe must not for one moment rest in the images of outward dissolution. We must keep together in closest union the Resurrection and the Passion; Easter Day and Good Friday, Life and Death. The Crucifix and the Dead Christ obscures our faith. Our thoughts rest not upon a dead, but upon a living Christ. The closed eye and the bowed head are not the true marks of Him who reigns from the Cross, who teaches us to see through every sign of weakness the fulfilment of His own words, \u2018I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Myself.\u2019 The Cross is a revelation not of humiliation but of majesty.\u201d One reading of Ps. 96:10 was \u1f10\u03b2\u03b1\u03c3\u03af\u03bb\u03b5\u03c5\u03c3\u03b5\u03bd \u1f00\u03c0\u1f78 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03be\u03cd\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5, Regnavit a ligno.
\nUtterly vain and futile is the wailing over the brief hours of physical sufferings which were but the episode of an Eternity of Glory. The Cross was Christ\u2019s throne. He speaks of His Crucifixion as His glorification. \u201cThe hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified.\u201d In answer to His prayer, \u201cFather, glorify Thy name,\u201d came a Voice from heaven, \u201cI have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.\u201d And when Judas went out to betray Him, He said, \u201cNow is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; and God shall glorify Him in Himself, and straightway shall He glorify Him.\u201d It was thus that He overcame the world and will draw all men unto Him.
\nCenturies ago so true a saint as St. Bernard\u2014monk and ascetic as he was\u2014warned men, though in vain, of \u201cthe error and the danger of extending the sufferings of Christ either in body or mind into the reign of His glory.\u201d Any contemplation of the Cross which inspires us to do all and bear all for His sake who died for us and rose again, is right; but the artificial heresy of \u201csobbing over the five wounds of the crucifix by way of Pity for the Eternal God is not in accordance with anything in Scripture.\u201d Those who lived nearest to the day of the Crucifixion, those who saw the Risen Lord with the marks of His wounds upon Him\u2014did not indulge themselves by moaning in abject sorrow over His recent anguish. On the contrary\u2014recognising that the revelation of suffering was coincident with the revelation of redemption, they were filled with a constant and superabounding joy. And why? Because \u201cHis loneliness is the breaking up of our solitude; His mourning our comfort; His thirst our supply; His weakness our strength. If we want power, we have the power of the Cross; if wisdom, we have the wisdom; if peace, we have the peace of His Cross. Thus is Christ crucified a treasure to His Church, full of all-sufficient provision both for its necessity and delight.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 40<\/p>\n
THE ATONEMENT<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mystery is for Me, and for the sons of My house.\u201d\u2014Unwritten Saying of Christ. CLEM. ALEX. Strom. v. 10, 64.<\/p>\n
\u201cLearn to say, I do not know.\u201d\u2014Rabbinic Saying.<\/p>\n
\u201c \u2018Cur\u2019 et \u2018quomodo\u2019 exitiales vocul\u00e6.\u201d\u2014LUTHER.<\/p>\n
MANY and serious are the misapprehensions, or purely one-sided views, respecting the whole doctrine of the Atonement.
\n(i) How false, for instance, and not only un-scriptural but anti-scriptural, is the teaching which represents the supposed wrath of God the Father as only averted by the mercy of God the Son\u2014a view represented in such lines as those of Sir Henry Wotton\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cOne rosy drop from Jesus\u2019s heart
\nWas worlds of seas to quench God\u2019s ire\u201d;;<\/p>\n
or of Dr. Watts\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cRich were the drops of Jesu\u2019s blood
\nThat calmed God\u2019s frowning face;
\nThat sprinkled o\u2019er the burning throne,
\nAnd turned the wrath to grace.\u201d<\/p>\n
No epithet but \u201cdeplorable\u201d can be given to the sort of theology which thus disintegrated the entire conception of the Trinity, and regarded the Father and the Son as actuated by antithetic impulses.
\n(ii.) How unwarranted, again, is such anthropomorphism as was habitually used till very recent times in the crude and ignorant language of many sermons. As Dr. Campbell rightly said, \u201cThe Scriptures do not represent the love of God to man as the effect, and the Atonement as the cause, but just the contrary; the love of God as the cause, and the Atonement as the effect.\u201d Men have made themselves \u201cenemies of God\u201d (Rom. 5:10), but the attitude of God to man even in his worst aberration and lowest fall is always described as an attitude of forbearance and tenderest love. It is not \u201cPerish, as you deserve, under the fury of My hatred\u201d; but it is \u201cTurn ye, why will ye die?\u201d Nor is it said, as in the erroneous rendering of our Authorised Version, that God forgave us \u201cfor Christ\u2019s sake,\u201d but\u2014which is indefinitely more blessed\u2014that \u201cGOD IN CHRIST\u201d forgave us our sins. \u201cThere was no wrath in God which was not in Christ; and no mercy in Christ which is not in God.\u201d
\n(iii.) Again, what entirely false conceptions have been mixed up with the notion of what is called \u201cvicarious suffering.\u201d How alien from true theology are the juristic and forensic theories introduced by St. Anselm, though he substituted them for the preposterous, age-long perversion that God had paid the ransom of Christ\u2019s sufferings to the Devil! Anselm only introduced a fresh error in representing that Christ suffered, as our substitute, in order to reconcile God\u2019s justice with His compassion\u2014as though they were conflicting elements in the mind of God! The Bible never and nowhere represents the Death of Christ as effecting any change in the mind of God. \u201cOne is the kindness of their mercy as the sentence of their justice,\u201d said the Pope St. Leo the Great, \u201cnor is there any division in action where there is no diversity in will.\u201d Its doctrine is one of free forgiveness, not of vicarious punishment, nor does it once use the popular phrases of \u201cvicarious,\u201d \u201csubstitution,\u201d \u201csatisfaction,\u201d \u201cexpiation,\u201d or \u201cimputed righteousness\u201d; nor does it ever say that Christ saved us from the penalty due to our sins; nor that His death was a penalty at all. It is only by a wooden literalism; by turning rhetoric into logic; by mistaking the impassioned utterances of emotion for the formal statements of rigid reasoning; by extorting boundless conclusions out of isolated metaphors which only touch the subject at a single point; and by building inverted pyramids of system on the narrow apex of single texts, that the whole meaning of the Atonement has been radically obscured.
\n(iv.) Fully admitting, and believing, all the mysteries which may lie under the word \u201cpropitiation,\u201d we yet see that, as regards God the Father, the sufferings of Christ, who was Himself Very God of Very God, are beyond our apprehension. If we pretend to explain them, we shall<\/p>\n
\u201cFind no end, in wandering mazes lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
But when we think of the suffering and death of Christ, in their relation to men, we shall find them the source of hope, of joy, and of deliverance. Among many theories on the subject, some have regarded the sufferings of Christ as \u201csimply incidental to His prophetic office.\u201d Some theologians regard them as mainly expressive of Christ\u2019s sympathy as a revelation of divine self-sacrifice to win the hearts of men. Some look on the death simply as the crown of a life of obedience, and unbroken fellowship with the Father, set forth as an example. More common than these is the theory of \u201cequivalent substitution,\u201d which is based on the futile desire to give logical distinctness to anthropomorphic metaphor. It should be enough to say, without any attempt \u201cto soar up into the secrets of the Deity on the waxen wings of the senses,\u201d that Christ offered for us all one sacrifice for sins for ever, by the perfect example of self-surrender to the Divine will which He gave as the representative of our race; and that thus, in a way far beyond our power to explain, He became \u201cthe propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.\u201d \u201cThe doctrine of the Atonement,\u201d says Prof. Mozley, \u201cparts company with the gross and irrational conception of mere naked material substitution of one term for another, and it takes its stand upon the power of love.\u201d
\nWe must, then, be content to accept the death of Christ as a transcendent fact which we cannot categorise under systematically logical forms. It is set forth in varying metaphors which admit of varying interpretations, and which indicate its results as regards us men and our salvation, not the incomprehensible mystery of its exact place in the Divine councils. These metaphors are diverse, and cannot be rigidly harmonised with each other. They cannot be treated as \u201cliteral equivalents of spiritual truth.\u201d The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews writes much about sacrifices; but all that he thinks it reverent to say when he comes to speak of the death of Christ is that \u201cit became God\u201d\u2014it was fitting that God\u2014\u201cin bringing many sons to glory should make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings\u201d; and that, as every Jewish High Priest offered gifts and sacrifices, \u201cit is necessary that this High Priest also have somewhat to offer.\u201d But not once in the New Testament are we told that Christ saved us from the punishment due to iniquity, or that His death was \u201ca punishment\u201d at all. The metaphors of Is. 53 are applied by St. Matthew to His healings of the sick. \u201cIn the whole Jewish ritual,\u201d says Archdeacon Norris, \u201cthere is no trace of the idea that sacrifices were meant to reconcile the offender to God by the death of the Innocent in the place of the guilty.\u201d By the \u201cblood\u201d of Christ is meant always the essential life of Christ. It would be well if theologians would bear in mind the warning of Bishop Butler that \u201call conjectures\u201d about the manner of Christ\u2019s Atonement \u201cmust be, if not evidently absurd, at least uncertain.\u201d
\nIn conclusion, then\u2014passing over the monstrous errors of nearly a thousand years from Iren\u00e6us to St. Anselm, and from St. Anselm to the present day, when the Atonement has been represented as a forensic transaction between the Father and the Son\u2014we must say that Scripture describes the Atonement, not in its inmost essence, which surpasses our powers of apprehension, but in its effects. Ignorando cognoscitur. \u201cScripture,\u201d says Bishop Butler, \u201chas left this matter of the satisfaction of Christ mysterious, left somewhat in it unrevealed.\u201d Let it be enough for us that \u201cGod was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself\u201d (2 Cor. 5:19); and that, as regards its results, \u201cGod set forth Christ to be a propitiation\u201d (Rom. 3:25). The three great creeds of Christendom carefully avoid all attempts to express the significance of the Atonement by any rigid formul\u00e6 of explanation; they do not build figurative illustrations into huge edifices of dogmatic theology. They are content to indicate that \u201cafter a certain admirable manner\u201d\u2014but how, we are unable to define\u2014the Life and Death of Christ, as one great eternal whole, were \u201ca full, perfect, and sufficient redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world\u201d; and that \u201cthere is none other satisfaction for sin but that alone.\u201d In this sense we may say with Hooker, \u201cLet it be counted folly or fury, or phrensy, or whatsoever, it is our wisdom and our comfort; we care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man hath sinned and God hath suffered; that God hath made Himself the sin of men, and that men are made the righteousness of God.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 41<\/p>\n
THE RESURRECTION<\/p>\n
\u201cYet though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now know we Him so no more.\u201d\u20142 Cor. 5:16.<\/p>\n
\u201cChrist is risen! Christ is risen!
\nHe hath left the cloudy prison,
\nAnd the white-robed angels glimmer mid the cerements of His grave:
\nHe hath smiten with His thunder
\nAll the gates of brass asunder,
\nHe hath burst the iron fetters, irresistible to save!\u201d
\n\u2014F. W. F.<\/p>\n
THE history of Christianity proves that it is far from being so easy as it might seem to keep \u201cthe due proportion\u201d of the faith. If we would know Christ aright we must not isolate one part of His teaching to the exclusion of the rest, nor must we emphasise one part of His life and work in such a manner as to exclude the due significance of the whole. To do this is, as I have said, to make the same mistake as is committed by so many when they fix on a single text or even word of Scripture, and use it in such a way as to nullify its meaning as well as the meaning of all the rest of Scripture. The New Testament, I must once more urge, does not teach us to look at Christ\u2019s death only, but always to regard it in due connexion with His Incarnation, His revelation by His life, and words, and works, His Resurrection, His Ascension, His eternal exultation at the right hand of God. The one-sidedness of party-systems of theology has partly arisen from failure to catch the due shade of meaning in St. Paul\u2019s words, \u201cFor I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.\u201d The emphasis of the statement lies in the words \u201cJesus Christ\u201d: the words \u201cand Him crucified\u201d are added because the crucifixion was to the Jews a stumbling-block and to Gentiles foolishness, as it was to all \u201cthe perishing.\u201d It was necessary, therefore, to insist on the truth that the very Christ, in all \u201cthe glory of the only begotten of the Father,\u201d was none other than the man Christ Jesus, whom Priests and Romans had nailed to the Cross, so that the Crucified Teacher was one with the Risen Saviour, the power and wisdom of God. St. Paul\u2019s own practice shows that, rightly as he gloried in the Cross of Christ, he did not make it the sum-total of his teaching, nor did he identify man\u2019s Atonement with the death of Christ only, but with all that He was, and all that He did.
\nOur Lord Himself taught the devoted, impassioned Magdalene, in the first great lesson which He uttered after His Resurrection, that the time for the ecstasies of human affection was over. He said to her, \u201cCling not to Me.\u201d If the Scriptures had been duly studied and understood, those words alone ought to have sufficed to condemn the emotional sensuousness\u2014unscriptural, unprimitive, uncatholic\u2014of going on hands and knees to kiss crucifixes, and adoring the five wounds. St. Paul expressed this lesson with almost startling plainness when he said, \u201cFrom henceforth I know no man after the flesh. Yea, though I have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth know I Him no more.\u201d In other words, the Christ of St. Paul was no longer an agonised victim, but an Eternal King, requiring our love and service, but exalted infinitely above all need of, or desire for, our compassion. \u201cWhat do you mean by a likeness of Christ?\u201d wrote Eusebius of C\u00e6sarea to the Empress Constantia. \u201cNot of course the image of Him as He is, truly and substantially; nor yet of His human nature as it has been glorified, of which the Transfiguration in its overpowering splendour offered some pledge or likeness \u2026 Since we confess that our Saviour is God, and Lord, we prepare and purify our hearts to see Him. And if, before that Vision which shall be face to face, you value likenesses of the Saviour, what better artist can there be than the God-Word Himself?\u201d
\nIn point of fact, the Resurrection holds a place at least as prominent as the Crucifixion in the teaching of the Apostles and Evangelists. St. Matthew dwells on its glorious majesty; St. Mark on its reality; St. Luke on its spiritual necessity; St. John on its influence over men. They are careful never to let Christ\u2019s sufferings absorb the thoughts of Christians in such a way, or to such an extent, as to obscure the sense that, though for our sakes He passed through the brief moment of suffering and death, He desires not our pity, but our endless adoration, as the Divine King, seated on the throne of His Eternal Glory. Christ had taught them that \u201cthey who are accounted worthy to attain the world to come are sons of God, being sons of the Resurrection.\u201d He had said, \u201cI am the Resurrection and the Life.\u201d It was the condition of the Apostolate to have been a witness of the Resurrection. The cause of the first persecution by the Priests and Sadducees was that the Apostles \u201cproclaimed in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.\u201d St. Paul woke the ridicule of the Stoics and Epicureans at Athens because he preached \u201cJesus and the resurrection.\u201d When he was seized and imprisoned at Jerusalem, it was \u201cconcerning the resurrection of the dead\u201d that he was called in question, and because he had preached \u201cthat the Christ must suffer, and how that He first by the resurrection of the dead should proclaim light both to the people and the Gentiles.\u201d He began his Epistle to the Romans by the declaration \u201cthat Christ Jesus was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection of the dead.\u201d In one of the most glorious chapters of all his Epistles, he based man\u2019s hope of resurrection exclusively on the resurrection of Christ. He tells the beloved Philippians that his own desire is \u201cto know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed until His death, if by any means we may attain unto the resurrection of the dead.\u201d When he says (Rom. 8:34), \u201cIt is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us,\u201d; it is almost as if he foresaw, and wished to correct, any partial onesidedness in our conception of Christ. The whole Epistle to the Ephesians had been rightly described as \u201cthe Epistle of the Heavenlies,\u201d the Epistle of the Resurrection; and to the Corinthians he said, \u201cIf Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain.\u201d St. Peter\u2019s first utterance to the Elect of the Dispersion is to thank \u201cthe Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who beget us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.\u201d The predominant thought of all the early Christian teachers was \u201cJesus, whom God raised up.\u201d
\nIt was the stupendous fact of the Resurrection of Christ by His own Divine Power\u2014a fact which the Jews regarded as impossible\u2014which changed the whole character of the Apostles, and uplifted them from what they had been\u2014timid, and dull, and even half faithless\u2014to what they became as the inspired teachers and converters of the world; the heralds of the world\u2019s last \u00e6on; the proclaimers and appointed founders of the kingdom which shall have no end. The Resurrection, as we have seen, was \u201cno mere accessory of their message, but the sum and the centre of the message itself.\u201d They grasped, if millions of Christians have failed to do so, the meaning of the angel message, \u201cWhy seek ye the Living among the dead? He is not here; He is risen, as He said.\u201d They did not preach a dead Christ, but rather a Risen Christ; not a lost Christ, but a Christ ever Present; not one who was habitually to be regarded as a tortured and agonising sufferer, but one who liveth for evermore, and imparts to us His life and His joy, so that in the midst of death, we are still in life. They had been but as children, full of wavering misapprehension and timidity, because \u201cas yet they knew not the Scripture that He must rise again from the dead.\u201d After the Resurrection they sprang into the full stature of men, because then first they began fully to apprehend all that Jesus was as \u201cthe only name under heaven, given among men whereby we must be saved.\u201d When Jesus finally parted from them at the Ascension they returned to Jerusalem \u201cwith great joy.\u201d All things had become new to them. They saw that the awful humiliation of apparent defeat was but the work of a self-sacrifice infinitely fruitful; that the death of Christ, immediately followed by His resurrection, was the inauguration of a new and the final \u00e6on in the world\u2019s history, in which God would not only be among them, but dwell in them, and walk in them. It was in this conviction that they went forth in Christ\u2019s name, conquering and to conquer.
\nHence the Resurrection, together with the Incarnation, forms the most central event in the history of the world. It was the glorious consummation of all the past, the splendid inauguration of all that was most precious in all the future. And it should be noted that not only is it said that \u201cGod raised Christ from the dead\u201d (Gal. 1:1), but also that Christ did not hesitate to attribute it also to His own divine power. \u201cDestroy ye this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.\u201d
\nSt. Paul clearly saw, and decisively argued, that man can have no pledge of his immortality apart from the resurrection of Christ. If Christ has not risen, we shall not rise. Life becomes not worth living if it be but a term of affliction, and progressive decay, and constant sorrow, which ends with itself, and brings no hope whatever of a purer and happier existence beyond the grave. Life then becoms frail and futile, and there is no hope of redress. The terrible picture of the poet would then be no exaggeration\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cLo! \u2019tis a gala night,
\nWithin the lonesome latter years!
\nAn angel throng, bewinged, bedight
\nIn veils, and drowned in tears,<\/p>\n
Sit in a theatre, to see
\nA play of hopes and fears,
\nWhile the orchestra breathes fitfully
\nThe music of the spheres.<\/p>\n
\u201cMimes, in the form God on high,
\nMutter and mumble low;
\nAnd hither and thither fly\u2014
\nMere puppets they, who come and go
\nAt bidding of vast formless things,
\nThat shift the scenery to and fro,
\nFlapping from out their condor wings
\nInvisible woe!<\/p>\n
\u201cBut see, amid the mimic rout,
\nA crawling shape intrude\u2014
\nA blood-red thing that writhes from out
\nThe scenic solitude!
\nIt writhes! it writhes! With mortal pangs
\nThe mimes become its food,
\nAnd the angels sob at vermin fangs
\nIn human gore imbued.<\/p>\n
\u201cOut\u2014out are the lights!\u2014out all!
\nAnd over each quivering form
\nThe curtain, a funeral pall,
\nComes down with the rush of a storm!
\nAnd the angels, all pallid and wan,
\nUprising, unveiling, affirm
\nThat the play is the tragedy Man,
\nAnd its hero the Conqueror Worm.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Christ never rose from the dead, this awful vision would have elements of deep reality. If Christ be not risen from the dead, and we are yet in our sins, our faith is vain, and they that have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. All that is most glorious, most beautiful, most inspiring, most holy in the thought and progress of the world has risen, directly or indirectly, from faith in Christ. If He was crucified and did not rise, the Apostles were false witnesses of God, and the world\u2019s loftiest hopes were impossibly built upon a delusion, and all that is best slips from us into dust and ashes, and Time becomes<\/p>\n
\u201cA maniac scattering dust,
\nAnd life a fury slinging flame.\u201d<\/p>\n
Had it not been for the Resurrection, no defeat of all that is divine in the life of man could have been more complete than was involved in the Crucifixion; and therefore the evidences of the Resurrection were, by God\u2019s mercy, made overwhelming. There was not in all the world\u2019s history\u2014there was not even in the age-long history of the Jewish people\u2014the slightest anticipation of such a possibility as that One who had died, could win the complete victory over death, and say to the world, \u201cI am He that liveth, and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore.\u201d Jesus had foretold to His disciples that He would thus rise; but they did not receive or understand His prophecy. It did not touch their \u201cunbelief and hardness of heart.\u201d In spite of such prophecies they had not the faintest expectation that any such thing would take place. Nay, when the women and Mary Magdalene reported that they had seen Him, they regarded such statements as mere women\u2019s talk. Not till they had gone into the empty sepulchre did any gleam of hope enter into the hearts of their leaders, Peter and John. When He had appeared to all the Apostles except Thomas, Thomas still refused to believe. Not till He had opened their eyes\u2014not till they had again seen, and heard, and their hands had handled the Word of Life\u2014not till \u201cHe showed Himself alive to them by many infallible proofs, being seen of them and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God\u201d did they begin to apprehend that their Lord had broken the bonds of death, \u201cbecause He could not be holden of it.\u201d Then, indeed, they were taught to see that the Resurrection, so far from standing alone, was the crowning event of the history of all the past; the opening of the history of all the future even to the consummation of the ages; the sole hope of the life of all the world; and the sole explanation of all its mysteries. Absolutely and finally convinced, they became the irresistible heralds of the last Dispensation, and before thirty years had elapsed they had everywhere proclaimed Jesus, and the mystery of His death, and the Power of His resurrection as the Power of an endless Life.
\nCould anything short of so immense a divine interposition as the Resurrection, and the subsequent outpouring of the Spirit, have accounted for the faith which overcame the world; the faith by virtue of which the Jewish Dispensation, now that it had waxed old, was swept away; the faith on which has been founded for ever that Universal Church of Christ which is \u201cthe blessed company of all faithful people;\u201d the faith which gave a wholly new glory and meaning to human life; the faith on which was founded the perpetuity of the Christian sacraments, and the observance of the Lord\u2019s Day; the faith which wrought righteousness, subdued kingdoms, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire; the faith which so transformed the nature of man by the constraining love of Christ, that when the Pagan mobs yelled \u201cChristianos ad leones\u201d the weakest boy could answer with exultation Christianus sum; the faith which was in no wise affected by the earthquakes which shook the Roman Empire to the dust; the faith which converted and swayed the wild hordes of northern barbarians, and inspired them with the thoughts and aims which have achieved all that is greatest in modern civilisation; that faith which even, most marvellous of all, has survived the gross falsities which have been taught, and the hideous crimes which have for centuries been committed, in its name; which has succeeded in bursting out of the foul dungeon in which it had been imprisoned by priestly usurpers; which has shaken off the influence of centuries of medi\u00e6val impostures, ignorance, and corruption; which has even outlined the infamies of the Inquisition, and of the Moloch fires kindled in the name of Christianity by its falsest representatives in spite of its plainest teachings, to sicken into loathing the hearts of all who worshipped Christ in sincerity and truth?
\nHence we see that the recorded evidences of the Resurrection do not stand alone. St. Paul, within a few years of the death of Jesus on Calvary, tells us how He was seen of Cephas; of the Twelve; of about five hundred brethren at once, of whom the majority were living when he wrote; of James; of all the Apostles; and, last of all, of him also as of the abortive-born of the Apostolic band. The Evangelists narrate to us how He appeared to the women at the Sepulchre, and to Mary Magdalene, and to the Ten Apostles, and to other disciples with them, to all of whom He gave His great Commission; and to the Eleven Apostles when Thomas was with them; and to the two disciples on their way to Emmaus; and to Peter, John, Andrew, Philip, and Bartholomew, on the old familiar shore of the sea of Galilee; and to the Eleven on the mountain in Galilee; and, possibly at the same time, to a multitude of more than five hundred disciples when He bade them go and make disciples of all the nations. Besides these eleven recorded appearances, He appeared doubtless on other occasions \u201cby the space of forty days,\u201d and (apart from the visions seen by St. Stephen and St. Paul) He showed Himself last of all to the assembled disciples when He parted from them to continue His visible intercourse with them on earth no more.
\nThis, surely, is distinct, decisive, and varied evidence; yet it acquires a thousandfold greater force from the fact that, so far from standing alone, it is charged with the deepest moral significance; that it is only the fraction of a vast whole; that it corresponds with all that we know of the nature and purposes of God; that it accords with our faith in all God\u2019s workings in the past which found their completion in the Incarnation; that, apart from it, all which has followed for well-nigh two thousand years would be inexplicable; that it is our sole positive pledge of the immortality which makes us instinctively feel that we were not born to die for ever; that it transfigured the whole nature of the Apostles, and alone rendered possible that work which has issued in the potential, and will issue in the final, regeneration of the world; that it has visibly affected all the subsequent destinies of the human race; that in it alone does the whole meaning of Christ\u2019s mission find its accomplishment and the secret and the explanation of its universal triumph.
\nIt is evident that our thoughts are turned exclusively to the reality, not to the modes or details of this mighty consummation of our Lord\u2019s work. No eye witnessed the Resurrection. The earthquake, and the vision of a white-robed angel with countenance like lightning who had come and rolled away the stone, and sat upon it, had terrified the guards, and made them as dead men; but neither they, nor any believer, saw the Christ Himself rise out of the sepulchre. The angel told the women that He had already risen, and invited them to see the place where the Lord lay. Particulars and incidents of the actual miracle were wisely\u2014let us say, rather, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit\u2014left undescribed by the Evangelists. They did not admit of description. But the brief and reverent records show us that the mortal body of Christ was already changed, and was no longer subjected to the limitations of ordinary humanity. The Resurrection was something wholly different from other \u201craisings from the dead,\u201d like that of Lazarus. It was a Resurrection which, by Christ\u2019s inherent Godhead, finally overcame death, and him who, in one sense, has the power of death\u2014that is the Devil.
\nThe Resurrection-body of the Lord had been in some way transformed. He was not immediately recognisable by Mary or by His disciples on the way to Emmaus, until by His voice or His action He made Himself known to them. When the assembled Apostles first saw Him they were terrified, and thought they saw a Spirit. Even when He appeared to the five hundred or more brethren on the mountain in Galilee, \u201csome doubted.\u201d Nor was His body any longer subject to the ordinary laws of nature. He appeared and disappeared. He passes through the closed door and suddenly stands in the midst of them. The forty days of His earthly manifestations were, so to speak, an initial form of the ascended life. He was something more than He who, wont to stray,<\/p>\n
\u201cA pilgrim in the world\u2019s highway,
\nOppressed by power and mocked by pride\u2014
\nThe Nazarene, the Crucified.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCling not to Me,\u201d He said, \u201cfor I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.\u201d \u201cI am ascending\u201d (\u1f00\u03bd\u03b1\u03b2\u03ac\u03b9\u03bd\u03c9); the passing into the Father\u2019s presence, there to reign with Him, world without end, had already in one sense begun.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 42<\/p>\n
THE ASCENSION<\/p>\n
THE Ascension was the natural and necessary completion of the Resurrection, but there are two different points of view from which it may be regarded.
\nThat Christ \u201cascended into the heavens\u201d is, of course, the belief of all Christians. Our Lord had asked, \u201cWhat and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascending where He was before?\u201d Almost the earliest words of the Risen Christ were, \u201cI have not yet ascended to the Father; I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.\u201d St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, speaks of Him as \u201cHe that ascended far above all the heavens;\u201d and says \u201cthat He was received up in glory.\u201d The Epistle to the Hebrews describes Him as \u201chaving passed through the heavens,\u201d and \u201chaving become loftier than the heavens.\u201d But this language is necessarily anthropomorphic, seeing that heaven is no more physically above our heads than it is beneath our feet. Heaven is a state, not a locality. It has<\/p>\n
\u201cNo limits, nor is circumscribed
\nIn one self place.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is the abode of the Omnipresent God, who has neither body, parts, nor passions, but is everywhere, and filleth all things with all things. When we speak therefore of Christ\u2019s Ascension, we mean primarily that He withdrew Himself from physical manifestations to His servants on earth, in order to bestow on them that nearer, more intense, more spiritual presence\u2014that indwelling which was more blessed and more expedient for them\u2014which began with the promised gift at Pentecost. Since that time Christ is with us even to the end of the world. God\u2019s temple on earth is no longer a material structure in Jerusalem, nor is it the human body of His Incarnate Son: it is the heart of all true believers. This is, henceforth, the earthly abode of Him who loves,<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore all temples, the upright heart and pure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Besides this belief in the Ascension, it is regarded, by many, as the termination of Christ\u2019s ministry by the visible rising from earth upwards through the air in the presence of His disciples. So the scene is often represented in Christian Art, and most notably in the famous picture of Raphael. It is doubtful whether this view is correct, or whether the Ascension can be properly represented by Art. That the special mode in which Christ left the earth was not meant to occupy a prominent place in our thoughts is proved by the fact that it is scarcely alluded to in the Gospels. St. Matthew does not mention it. In St. Mark it only occurs in the spurious addition made to the Gospel, whether by Aristion or another, and there it is only alluded to in a mixed quotation from 2 Kings 2:11, \u201cHe was received into heaven;\u201d and Psalm 110:1, \u201cand sat on the right hand of God:\u201d\u2014an allusion which does not bear at all on any visible rising through the air. There is no narration of the event in St. John, but only the general references which I have quoted. The sole authority for the material scene is St. Luke, and even in St. Luke the reference is vague and very brief. He merely says that, after the last farewells of Jesus to His beloved followers, \u201cHe stood apart from them.\u201d; The words which follow, \u201cand was borne up into heaven,\u201d are almost certainly spurious, as they are not found in the best and earliest manuscripts.
\nThe only other reference is in the Acts of the Apostles, where we are told that, after His last words, \u201cHe was taken up, and while they were looking on, a cloud received Him out of their sight.\u201d; If we interpret the first word (\u1f10\u03c0\u03ae\u03c1\u03b8\u03b7) in the general sense, and combine it with the \u201cstood apart from them\u201d of the Gospel, we might suppose that Christ simply vanished from the presence of His loved ones into an overshadowing and shining cloud. They all understood that it was the final parting, the end of earthly companionship; but as they stood with faces upturned towards the sky, which they regarded as the Throne of God, the Angel said to them, \u201cYe men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?\u201d He whom \u201ca cloud had received out of their sight\u201d should return in the clouds of heaven, in the human form which he had for ever united to His Godhead.
\nAll authority was given unto Him in heaven and on earth, and now they were to go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; \u201cteaching them to observe all things whatsoever He had commanded them;\u201d and \u201clo, He would be with them all the days even unto the consummation of the age.\u201d Thenceforth grace was given \u201cunto each one of us according to the measure of the gift of Christ; wherefore He saith\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen He ascended on high, He led captivity captive,
\nAnd gave gifts unto men.\u201d<\/p>\n
We have seen, then, that the manner of the Ascension is barely more than referred to, and only in general terms, by a single Evangelist. Similarly, in the Epistles the actual rising heavenwards is nowhere narrated, and the references are all to the heavenly super-exaltation. But the fact of the Ascension of Christ \u201cfar above all heavens;\u201d\u2014the fact that having left the earthly life, He is seated for ever at the right hand of the Majesty on High;\u2014underlies the whole Christian revelation. It is the basis of all our faith and all our hope.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe very God!\u2014think, Abib!\u2014dost thou think?
\nSo the All-Great were the All-Loving too\u2014
\nSo, through the thunder comes a human voice,
\nSaying, \u2018O heart I made, a heart beats here!
\nFace, My hands fashioned, see it in Myself.
\nThou hast no power, nor may\u2019st conceive of Mine;
\nBut Love I gave thee, with Myself to love,
\nAnd thou must love Me, who have died for thee.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 43<\/p>\n
THE FINAL ISSUES<\/p>\n
\u201cSecurus judicat orbis terrarum.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe World was only created for the Messiah.\u201d\u2014SANHEDRIN. f. 98, 2.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u1f49 \u03b8\u03b1\u03c5\u03bc\u03ac\u03c3\u03b1\u03c2 \u03b2\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03bb\u03b5\u03cd\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f41 \u03b2\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03bb\u03b5\u03cd\u03c3\u03b1\u03c2 \u1f01\u03bd\u03b1\u03c0\u03b1\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9.\u2014Clem. Alex. Strom. ii. 9, 45.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmem Te plusquam me, nec me nisi propter Te.\u201d\u2014IMITATIO CHRISTI.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Him was Yea.\u201d\u20142 Cor. 1:19.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this counsel or this work be of men it will be overthrown; but if it is of God ye will not be able to overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to be fighting against God.\u201d\u2014Acts 5:39.<\/p>\n
HOW little did the Sadducean hierarchy and the Pharisaic externalists grasp the real significance of the deadly crime which they had committed! How little did they recognise that this deed of theirs, designed to maintain their party falsities, was the beginning of the awful end of the whole Jewish dispensation! Very shortly after the Death of Christ Caiaphas was deposed. Pilate was recalled, banished, and overwhelmed with disaster, dying at last by his own hand at Vienne in Gaul. Antipas was deposed, and condemned and banished. The Emperor Tiberius died with a soul haunted by the demons of crime and misery. In the lifetime of many who had taken part in the awful tragedy, the House of Annas was destroyed, and his last son murdered. Jerusalem was besieged and went through spasms of inconceivable horror. It sank into a hell\u2014a city of despairing madmen and raging cannibals. The Temple was desecrated and burned into a blackened ruin; the Jews were crucified in such thousands that wood failed to provide crosses for them; the Holy City became a frightful desolation, unrecognisable by those who visited it; the Jewish system of religion was obliterated for ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cVengeance! thy fiery wing their race pursued,
\nThy thirsty poniard blushed with infant blood,
\nRoused at thy call, and panting still for game,
\nThe bird of war, the Latian eagle came.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen Judah raged by ruffian discord led,
\nDrunk with the steamy carnage of the dead;
\nShe saw her sons by dubious slaughter fall,
\nAnd war without, and death within the wall.
\nWide-wasting Plague, gaunt Famine, mad Despair,
\nAnd dire debate, and clamorous strife were there.
\nLove, strong as Death, retain\u2019d his might no more,
\nAnd the pale parent drank her children\u2019s gore.<\/p>\n
Ah, fruitful now no more! an empty coast,
\nShe mourn\u2019d her sons enslav\u2019d, her glories lost:
\nIn her wide streets the lonely raven bred,
\nThere barked the wolf, and dire hy\u00e6nas fed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes! from the hour when the Priests and Rabbis of a corrupted and hypocritic religion, consisting of outward forms and inward falsity, had achieved their crowning iniquity, began \u201cthe long, endless, hopeless history of Jewish decadence, and the historic and terrible corruption which, under the co-operation of tyrannous emperors, puppet kings, carnal patriots, and spiritually festering masses of the people, lasted for a generation, only to close with the frightful coup de gr\u00e2ce given by Titus\u2019s destruction of Jerusalem.\u201d The death of Christ was the close of an age-long Dispensation:\u2014it was \u201cthe consummation of the age:\u201d\u2014the close of all the previous \u00e6ons of the world\u2019s history; the beginning of the last \u00e6on, and of the end of the world.
\nIf ever God by the whole course of human history has set the seal to the truth of a Divine Revelation, it is in the progress of all the ages since Christ died. The history of Christianity has been a history of advancing victories. It has brought new life into a weary world. It has been as a regenerative force, not only to multitudes of men of the loftiest minds, but to Paganism in all its forms. \u201cOld things have passed away; behold, they have become new.\u201d Christ has revealed such a knowledge of God as was wholly unknown to the earlier world. What word of His has failed? God has granted to mankind a new Life, and \u201cthat life\u201d is\u2014not in systems, or shibboleths, or churches, or priesthoods, but only \u201cin His Son.\u201d \u201cNeither is there salvation in any other; but in every nation he that feareth God and doeth righteousness is accepted of Him.\u201d
\nEven those who do not unreservedly accept the belief in Christ\u2019s Godhead, yet confess that \u201cwith reference to religion, He remains to us the highest we know and are able to conceive;\u201d that \u201cin the domain of the inner relations of Godhead and Humanity He has reached the extreme and unsurpassable stage of union;\u201d that \u201cthe anxious inquiry after something higher in achievement and personal character must be relegated to silence as a Dream, and as a subtlety unworthy of a reasonable being;\u201d that \u201cthe prejudices and the weakness of thousands of years fell into ruins before His masterwork;\u201d that \u201cthe religious consciousness reached its acme and high personal greatness in the Founder of Christianity.\u201d History has given decisive proofs, to repeat words cited earlier in this volume, that \u201cChristianity is the crown of all the revelations of God, and that Jesus is the chosen of God, God\u2019s image, and best-beloved, and master-workman, and world-shaper in the history of mankind.\u201d
\nHow could the Almighty have given more decisively the Witness of History to Christ? How could He have shown more finally \u201cthat it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell,\u201d and \u201cthrough Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, having made peace through the blood of His Cross; through Him I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens\u201d? How could God more decisively have evinced to man that \u201cHe is our peace, who hath made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances\u201d? When we try to explain and formulate the exact way in which Christ\u2019s life and death procured our deliverance, we pass far beyond the region of human logic; yet it may be given to every one of us to know and feel, with a reality which passeth knowledge, that Christ has \u201cblotted out the bond that was against us by its ordinances, which was contrary to us; and He hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the Cross:\u201d and that \u201chaving put off from Himself His body, He made a show of the principalities, and the powers, triumphing over them in it.\u201d
\nThose verses represent, in the language of Scripture, the blessedness of personal salvation. The progressive consequences of the Life and Death of Christ over all the world are written plainly in \u201call the volumes vast\u201d of Human History. Since His Resurrection, and as its direct consequence,<\/p>\n
\u201cA new created world
\nSprings up at God\u2019s command.\u201d<\/p>\n
The conception of \u201cHoliness,\u201d unknown to the ancient world of Paganism, became thenceforth a conception familiar to mankind. Read all the literature of the ancient heathen world, and though here and there you find a noble and righteous man, it would be difficult to find even one in the long ages of the story of Greece and Rome to whom you could apply the epithet \u201choly.\u201d Now we may trust that there is scarcely a village, scarcely a family, which has not been blessed by visible fulfilments of this divine ideal. In ancient days life was but a brief vision haunted by the grim spectre of death. The cry of despair rose from innumerable hearts. Man seemed to be but \u03c3\u03ba\u03af\u03b1\u03c2 \u1f44\u03bd\u03b1\u03c1, the dream of a shadow. The future life was but the dim guess of a few. Shakespeare asks\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cWho would these fardels bear,
\nTo grunt and sweat under a weary life,
\nBut that the dread of something after death\u2014
\nThat undiscovered country from whose bourn
\nNo traveller returns\u2014puzzles the will,
\nAnd makes us rather bear those ills we have
\nThan fly to others that we know not of!\u201d<\/p>\n
But that dread of death has an effect most salutary, for it teaches us that life is a thing too solemn and sacred to be desecrated by vile pleasures, or frittered away in frivolous pursuits. And when Life, in the realisation of its immortal dignity, is devoted to high and worthy ends, it reflects a light from heaven\u2014a \u201clight that never was on sea or land.\u201d It is transfigured by the thought that, as we have been planted in the likeness of Christ\u2019s death, so shall we be also in the likeness of His Resurrection. These convictions have made the humblest human life blessed and precious. The common conviction of antiquity was that life was not worth living, and many a sentiment of ancient philosophers might be summed up in the lines of the unhappy poet\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cKnow that, whatever thou hast been,
\n\u2019Tis something better not to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, in place of the natural apathy and utter hopelessness even of Stoicism, Christianity has taught us, day by day, to thank God for our creation and preservation, as well as for all the blessings of this life. And therefore Christ says (Luke 12:29) to us all, even amid life\u2019s wildest storms, \u039c\u1f74 \u03bc\u03b5\u03c4\u03b5\u03c9\u03c1\u03b9\u03b6\u03b5\u03c3\u03b6\u03b5, \u201cBe not of doubtful mind\u201d\u2014be not like ships which toss in the stormy offing, instead of clinging to the anchor sure and steadfast which keeps them safe in the harbour\u2019s mouth.
\nThe sinlessness of Jesus has been our example\u2014an \u201cunderwriting\u201d (\u1f51\u03c0\u03bf\u03b3\u03c1\u03b1\u03bc\u03bc\u03cc\u03bd) over which the best of the saints have striven faintly to trace their lives. He has been to the world, as is said in the Epistle to Diognetus, \u201ca Nurturer, a Father, a Teacher, a Counsellor, a Physician, the mind, light, honour, strength, glory\u201d of all who have received and trusted in Him. The Cross was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness; but \u201cthe foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.\u201d The faith of Christ came of God, and therefore men cannot overthrow it. No small part of the deadly hatred which Christians incurred was due to their hostility to the worst vices\u2014the impurities and the cruelties\u2014of Paganism. They would have nothing to do with \u201cthe madness of the circus, the lewdness of the theatre, the heartlessness of the arena, or the vanity of the xystus\u201d: and because they would not be present at such spectacles, the heathen sneered and railed at them as \u201cpallid, pitiful, stupid, wretched creatures;\u201d \u201ca lurking and light-shunning people, mute in public, and garrulous in corners;\u201d \u201cunlearned, rude, unpolished, rustic, barbarous, madmen, nondescripts\u2014of trivial and sordid speech.\u201d Yet unaided by any, opposed by all, Christianity conquered the world. \u201cWe are but of yesterday,\u201d says Tertullian, \u201cyet we have filled all that belongs to you, your cities, your islands, your fortresses, your free towns, your council chambers, your camps, tribes, decuries, the Palace, the very Senate; we leave to you your Temples only.\u201d
\nTo Christianity alone belongs the full conception of \u1f00\u03b3\u03b1\u03c0\u1f74, or brotherly love. In classical Greek the word in that sense does not exist, and \u201cCharity\u201d in the Christian sense has risen far above the narrow connotation of the Latin caritas. `Humility, again, is a word which owes all its loveliness to Christianity; in Latin it is a term of contempt and means abjectness! The Greek word, \u03c4\u03b1\u03c0\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd\u03bf\u03c6\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03cd\u03bd\u03b7, was regarded as a synonym of poor-spirited baseness. St. Peter, thinking how Christ girded himself with a towel, and washed the disciples\u2019 feet, bids Christians tie humble-mindedness round them with knots like a slave\u2019s apron. Humanitas meant in Latin \u201chuman nature,\u201d or \u201crefined culture;\u201d in Christian language it means love to the whole brotherhood of man. Well may the author of the Epistle to Diognetus say, \u201cWhat the soul is to the body, that Christianity is to the world.\u201d
\nHere, perhaps, I may be allowed to repeat words which I have used before, and to say that the effects of the work of Christ are, even to the unbeliever, indisputable and historical. It expelled cruelty, it curbed passion, it branded suicide; it punished and suppressed an execrable, yet all but universal, infanticide; it drove the naked shamelessness of heathen impurities into a congenial darkness. There was hardly a class whose wrongs it did not remedy. It rescued the gladiator; it freed the slave; it protected the captive; it nursed the sick; it sheltered the orphan; it elevated the woman; it shrouded as with a halo of sacred innocence the tender years of the child. In every region of life its ameliorating influence was felt. It changed pity from \u201ca vice of the mind\u201d to a holy virtue. It elevated poverty from a curse into a beatitude. It ennobled labour from a vulgarity into a dignity and a duty. It sanctified marriage from little more than a burdensome convention to little less than a blessed sacrament. It revealed the angelic beauty of a purity of which men had despaired, and of a meekness at which they scoffed. It created the very conception of charity, and broadened the limits of its obligation from the \u201cslightly expanded egotism\u201d of the family to the broadest horizon of the race. It evolved the Idea of Humanity as a common brotherhood, and cleansed the life and elevated the soul of each individual man. Mankind lay among the pots, and it clad them as it were with the wings of a dove which is covered with silver wings and her feathers like gold. Christianity inspired into its weakest children a splendid heroism. \u201cCall us sarmenticii and semaxii,\u201d exclaims Tertullian, \u201cnames derived from the wood wherewith we are burned, and the stakes to which we are bound; this is the garment of our victory, our embroidered robe, our triumphal chariot.\u201d \u201cThe nearer I am to the sword,\u201d said Ignatius, \u201cthe nearer am I to God.\u201d \u201cWe were condemned to the wild beasts,\u201d said St. Perpetua, \u201cand with hearts full of joy returned to our prison.\u201d Whence came this rapture in the very face of doom? It came from the constraining love of Christ.
\nAt last, finding that they had to do with a host of Sc\u00e6volas, \u201cthe proudest of earthly powers, arrayed in the plenitude of material resources, humbled herself before a power founded on a mere sense of the Unseen.\u201d The Instans Tyrannus, striving in vain to crush or undermine his humble opponents, was forced to exclaim\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen sudden\u2014how think ye the end?
\nDid I say \u2018without friend\u2019?
\nSay rather from marge to the blue marge
\nThe whole heaven grew his targe,
\nWith the sun\u2019s self for visible boss,
\nWhile an arm ran across
\nWhich the earth heaved beneath like a breast\u2014
\nWhen the wretch was safe pressed!
\nDo you see? Just my vengence complete,
\nThe man sprang to his feet,
\nStood erect, caught at God\u2019s skirt, and prayed:\u2014
\nSo I was afraid!\u201d<\/p>\n
And having subdued and won the Empire, Christianity, by its nobleness and sympathy, subdued and won the wild horde of Northern barbarism. Gibbon is a most unprejudiced witness, and he says, \u201cThe progress of Christianity has been marked by two glorious and decisive victories, over the learned and luxurious civilisation of the Roman Empire, and even the warlike barbarians of Scythia and Germany, who subverted the Empire and embraced the religion of the Romans.\u201d Attila the Hun was overawed by Pope Leo III. at Ponte Molino, and Genseric the Vandal at the gates of Rome. Totila listened humbly to the rebukes and predictions of Benedict. The bishops of the Church won the title of Defensores Civitatis, and as Mr. J. S. Mill says, \u201ctreated with the conquerors in the name of the natives. It was their adhesion which guaranteed the general obedience; and after the conversion of the conquerors it was to their sacred character that the conquered were indebted for whatever mitigation they experienced of the fury of conquest.\u201d Thus did the Church preserve \u201cthe real property of the past amid the trembling destinies of the future.\u201d Christian missionaries converted and thereby civilised the world. Ulfila converted the Goths; St. Anskar the Scandinavians; St. Boniface the Germans; St. Patrick the Irish; St. Columba the Northern Britons; St. Aidan the Northumbrians; St. Remigius the Franks; St. Augustine, of Canterbury, the English. Two nations, England and Spain, owed their conversion to Gregory the Great. The heralds of the Cross went forth into every region conquering and to conquer. To prove how the tide of Christianity is ever advancing, it may suffice to say that if at the end of the third century the whole race of mankind had passed by in long procession, not more than one in one hundred and twenty would have been a Christian. Had they passed by fifty years ago, not more than one in five; but were they at this moment to pass one by one before our eyes, it is probable that one in three would have heard the name and accepted the faith of Christ. The Faith of Mankind has not been dimmed but rather brightened by the long progress of the centuries; and while we sing<\/p>\n
\u201cWaft, waft, ye winds the story,
\nAnd you ye waters roll,
\nTill like a sea of glory
\nIt spreads from pole to pole:
\nTill o\u2019er our ransomed nature
\nThe Lamb for sinners slain,
\nRedeemer, King, Creator,\u201d
\nReturns in bliss to reign,\u201d<\/p>\n
we may feel an ever-deepening confidence that now the time is not far distant when He who was lifted on the Cross will draw all men unto Him.
\nPerhaps the divinest gift of Christ to the Human Race has been that it has enabled every one of them\u2014by the imitation of His example; by the gift of His grace; by the Holy Spirit; Who will make a temple of the mortal bodies of all who do not drive Him forth by self-chosen slavery to their own lowest desires and passions\u2014to be true men, to be all that they may be and that God intended them to be.
\nYes\u2014and even if we accept the old sad Greek proverb that \u201cmost men are bad\u201d\u2014let us not be blinded to the fact that Christ has immeasurably elevated the standard of human life in millions of individuals; that He has ameliorated the abjectness even of many who are bad; that he has bestowed on all alike the possibility of an infinitely blessed and ever-advancing holiness, and even to the fallen has extended the grace which extinguishes a fearful despair. The world is still infinitely far from perfect; but yet, to countless myriads more than in the Pagan world or the ancient Dispensation, God has granted the fulfilment of the promise, \u201cThou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under thy feet.\u201d The Christian Dispensation is, in comparison with all others which preceded it, \u201cas sunlight to moonlight,\u201d and in spite of many causes for anxiety and discouragement, it still advances, and holds out to all human souls the means of ennoblement, the path of repentance, the hope full of immortality.<\/p>\n
\u201cAskest thou in exultation
\nWhat the Cross of Christ has done?
\nAsk the splendours of creation
\nIf they feel the noonday Sun;
\nAsk reviving vegetation,
\nRushing forth on joyous wing,
\nIf it feels the inspiration
\nOf the breath-enchanting Spring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since Christ lived, and died, and rose again for us men and our salvation, no soul of man need lie in the dark depths of despair; and all of the multitude without number who love and fear His name, in every clime, may say to one another with humble exultation, \u201cBeloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHaste then, and wheel away a shattered world,
\nYe slow-revolving seasons! We would see
\nA world which does not dread or hate Christ\u2019s laws,
\nWhere Violence shall never lift the sword,
\nNor Cunning justify the proud man\u2019s wrong,
\nLeaving the poor no remedy but tears!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTerrena c\u0153lestibus cedunt.\u201d What Christ has done is a pledge of what He will do; and the fact that His name is now known and worshipped by at least one-third of all the Race of Man is a prophecy to us that ere long \u201cthe glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.\u201d If there be not this hope for the human race, there is assuredly no other. And therefore we pray with all our hearts, \u201cOh, Lord, hasten Thy Kingdom! Put on Thy royal robes, oh, Prince of the Kings of all the world, for now Thy Church calleth Thee, and all nations sigh to be redeemed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The life of lives further studies in the life of Christ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CHAPTER 1 THE DIVINE BIRTH \u201cWho \u2026 emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of man.\u201d\u2014Phil. 2:7. \u201cThe unfathomable depths of the divine counsels were moved; the fountains of the great deep were broken up; the healing of the nations was issuing forth; but nothing was seen on the … <\/p>\n