BOOK 4<\/p>\n
THE DESCENT:<\/p>\n
FROM THE MOUNT OF TRANSFIGURATION INTO THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION AND DEATH.<\/p>\n
\u2018But god forbede but men shulde leve
\nWel more thing then men han seen with eye
\nMen shal not wenen euery thing a lye
\nBut yf him-selfe yt seeth or elles dooth
\nFor god wot thing is neuer the lasse sooth
\nThogh euery wight ne may it nat y-see.\u2019
\nCHAUCER: Prologue to the Legend of Good Women.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 1<\/p>\n
THE TRANSFIGURATION<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 17:1\u20138; St. Mark 9:2\u20138; St. Luke 9:28\u201336.)<\/p>\n
THE great confession of Peter, as the representative Apostle, had laid the foundations of the Church as such. In contradistinction to the varying opinions of even those best disposed towards Christ, it openly declared that Jesus was the Very Christ of God, the fulfilment of all Old Testament prophecy, the heir of Old Testament promise, the realisation of the Old Testament hope for Israel, and, in Israel, for all mankind. Without this confession, Christians might have been a Jewish sect, a religious party, or a school of thought, and Jesus a Teacher, Rabbi, Reformer, or Leader of men. But the confession which marked Jesus as the Christ, also constituted His followers the Church. It separated them, as it separated Him, from all around; it gathered them into One, even Christ; and it marked out the foundation on which the building made without hands was to rise. Never was illustrative answer so exact as this: \u2018On this Rock\u2019\u2014bold, outstanding, well-defined, immovable\u2014\u2018will I build My Church.\u2019
\nWithout doubt this confession also marked the high-point of the Apostles\u2019 faith. Never afterwards, till His Resurrection, did it reach so high. Nay, what followed seems rather a retrogression from it: beginning with their unwillingness to receive the announcement of His Decease, and ending with their unreadiness to share His sufferings or to believe in His Resurrection. And if we realise the circumstances, we shall understand, at least, their initial difficulties. Their highest faith had been followed by the most crushing disappointment; the confession that He was the Christ, by the announcement of His approaching Sufferings and Death at Jerusalem. The proclamation that He was the Divine Messiah had not been met by promises of the near glory of the Messianic Kingdom, but by announcements of certain, public rejection and seeming terrible defeat. Such possibilities had never seriously entered into their thoughts of the Messiah; and the declaration of the very worst, and that in the near future, made at such a moment, must have been a staggering blow to all their hopes. It was as if they had reached the topmost height, only to be cast thence into the lowest depth.
\nOn the other hand, it was necessary that at this stage in the History of the Christ, and immediately after His proclamation, the sufferings and the rejection of the Messiah should be prominently brought forward. It was needful for the Apostles, as the remonstrance of Peter showed; and, with reverence be it added, it was needful for the Lord Himself, as even His words to Peter seem to imply: \u2018Get thee behind Me; thou art a stumbling-block unto Me.\u2019 For\u2014as we have said\u2014was not the remonstrance of the disciple in measure a re-enactment of the great initial Temptation by Satan after the forty days\u2019 fast in the wilderness? And, in view of all this, and of what immediately afterwards followed, we venture to say, it was fitting that an interval of \u2018six\u2019 days should intervene, or, as St. Luke puts it, including the day of Peter\u2019s confession and the night of Christ\u2019s Transfiguration, \u2018about eight days.\u2019 The chronicle of these days is significantly left blank in the Gospels, but we cannot doubt, that it was filled up with thoughts and teaching concerning that Decease, leading up to the revelation on the Mount of Transfiguration.
\nThere are other blanks in the narrative besides that just referred to. We shall try to fill them up, as best we can. Perhaps it was the Sabbath when Peter\u2019s great confession was made; and the \u2018six days\u2019 of St. Matthew and St. Mark become the \u2018about eight days\u2019 of St. Luke, when we reckon from that Sabbath to the close of another, and suppose that at even the Saviour ascended the Mount of Transfiguration with the three Apostles: Peter, James, and John. There can scarcely be a reasonable doubt, that Christ and His disciples had not left the neighbourhood of C\u00e6sarea, and hence, that \u2018the mountain\u2019 must have been one of the slopes of gigantic, snowy Hermon. In that quiet semi-Gentile retreat of C\u00e6sarea Philippi could He best teach them, and they best learn, without interruption or temptation from Pharisees and Scribes, that terrible mystery of His Suffering. And on that gigantic mountain barrier which divided Jewish and Gentile lands, and while surveying, as Moses of old, the land to be occupied in all its extent, amidst the solemn solitude and majestic grandeur of Hermon, did it seem most fitting that, both by anticipatory fact and declaratory word, the Divine attestation should be given to the proclamation that He was the Messiah, and to this also, that, in a world that is in the power of sin and Satan, God\u2019s Elect must suffer, in order that, by ransoming, He may conquer it to God. But what a background, here, for the Transfiguration; what surroundings for the Vision, what echoes for the Voice from heaven!
\nIt was evening, and, as we have suggested, the evening after the Sabbath, when the Master and those three of His disciples, who were most closely linked to Him in heart and thought, climbed the path that led up to one of the heights of Hermon. In all the most solemn transactions of earth\u2019s history, there has been this selection and separation of the few to witness God\u2019s great doings. Alone with his son, as the destined sacrifice, did Abraham climb Moriah; alone did Moses behold, amid the awful loneliness of the wilderness, the burning bush, and alone on Sinai\u2019s height did he commune with God; alone was Elijah at Horeb, and with no other companion to view it than Elisha did he ascend into heaven. But Jesus, the Saviour of His people, could not be quite alone, save in those innermost transactions of His soul: in the great contest of His first Temptation, and in the solitary communings of His heart with God. These are mysteries which the outspread wings of Angels, as reverently they hide their faces, conceal from earth\u2019s, and even heaven\u2019s, vision. But otherwise, in the most solemn turning-points of this history, Jesus could not be alone, and yet was alone with those three chosen ones, most receptive of Him, and most representative of the Church. It was so in the house of Jairus, on the Mount of Transfiguration, and in the Garden of Gethsemane.
\nAs St. Luke alone informs us, it was \u2018to pray\u2019 that Jesus took them apart up into that mountain. \u2018To pray,\u2019 no doubt in connection with \u2018those sayings;\u2019 since their reception required quite as much the direct teaching of the Heavenly Father, as had the previous confession of Peter, of which it was, indeed, the complement, the other aspect, the twin height. And the Transfiguration, with its attendant glorified Ministry and Voice from heaven, was God\u2019s answer to that prayer.
\nWhat has already been stated, has convinced us that it could not have been to one of the highest peaks of Hermon, as most modern writers suppose, that Jesus led His companions. There are three such peaks: those north and south, of about equal height (9,400 feet above the sea, and nearly 11,000 above the Jordan valley), are only 500 paces distant from each other, while the third, to the west (about 100 feet lower), is separated from the others by a narrow valley. Now, to climb the top of Hermon is, even from the nearest point, an Alpine ascent, trying and fatiguing, which would occupy a whole day (six hours in the ascent and four in the descent), and require provisions of food and water; while, from the keenness of the air, it would be impossible to spend the night on the top. To all this there is no allusion in the text, nor slightest hint of either difficulties or preparations, such as otherwise would have been required. Indeed, a contrary impression is left on the mind.
\n\u2018Up into an high mountain apart,\u2019 \u2018to pray.\u2019 The Sabbath-sun had set, and a delicious cool hung in the summer air, as Jesus and the three commenced their ascent. From all parts of the land, far as Jerusalem or Tyre, the one great object in view must always have been snow-clad Hermon. And now it stood out before them\u2014as, to the memory of the traveller in the West, Monte Rosa or Mont Blanc\u2014in all the wondrous glory of a sunset: first rose-coloured, then deepening red, next \u2018the death-like pallor, and the darkness relieved by the snow, in quick succession.\u2019 From high up there, as one describes it, \u2018a deep ruby flush came over all the scene, and warm purple shadows crept slowly on. The Sea of Galilee was lit up with a delicate greenish-yellow hue, between its dim walls of hill. The flush died out in a few minutes, and a pale, steel-coloured shade succeeded.\u2026 A long pyramidal shadow slid down to the eastern foot of Hermon, and crept across the great plain; Damascus was swallowed up by it; and finally the pointed end of the shadow stood out distinctly against the sky\u2014a dusky cone of dull colour against the flush of the afterglow. It was the shadow of the mountain itself, stretching away for seventy miles across the plain\u2014the most marvellous shadow perhaps to be seen anywhere. The sun underwent strange changes of shape in the thick vapours\u2014now almost square, now like a domed temple\u2014until at length it slid into the sea, and went out like a blue spark.\u2019 And overhead shone out in the blue summer-sky, one by one, the stars in Eastern brilliancy. We know not the exact direction which the climbers took, nor how far their journey went. But there is only one road that leads from C\u00e6sarea Philippi to Hermon, and we cannot be mistaken in following it. First, among vine-clad hills stocked with mulberry, apricot, and fig trees; then, through corn-fields where the pear tree supplants the fig; next, through oak coppice, and up rocky ravines to where the soil is dotted with dwarf shrubs. And if we pursue the ascent, it still becomes steeper, till the first ridge of snow is crossed, after which turfy banks, gravelly slopes, and broad snow-patches alternate. The top of Hermon in summer\u2014and it can only be ascended in summer or autumn\u2014is free from snow, but broad patches run down the sides, expanding as they descend. To the very summit it is well earthed; to 500 feet below it, studded with countless plants, higher up with dwarf clumps.
\nAs they ascended in the cool of that Sabbath evening, the keen mountain air must have breathed strength into the climbers, and the scent of snow\u2014for which the parched tongue would long in summer\u2019s heat\u2014have refreshed them. We know not what part may have been open to them of the glorious panorama from Hermon, embracing as it does a great part of Syria from the sea to Damascus, from the Lebanon and the gorge of the Litany to the mountains of Moab; or down the Jordan valley to the Dead Sea; or over Galilee, Samaria, and on to Jerusalem, and beyond it. But such darkness as that of a summer\u2019s night would creep on. And new the moon shone out in dazzling splendour, cast long shadows over the mountain, and lit up the broad patches of snow, reflecting their brilliancy on the objects around.
\nOn that mountain-top \u2018He prayed.\u2019 Although the text does not expressly state it, we can scarcely doubt, that He prayed with them, and still less, that He prayed for them, as did the Prophet for his servant, when the city was surrounded by Syrian horsemen: that his eyes might be opened to behold heaven\u2019s host\u2014the far \u2018more that are with us than they that are with them.\u2019 And, with deep reverence be it said, for Himself also did Jesus pray. For, as the pale moonlight shone on the fields of snow in the deep passes of Hermon, so did the light of the coming night shine on the cold glitter of Death in the near future. He needed prayer, that in it His Soul might lie calm and still\u2014perfect, in the unruffled quiet of His Self-surrender, the absolute rest of His Faith, and the victory of His Sacrificial Obedience. And He needed prayer also, as the introduction to, and preparation for, His Transfiguration. Truly, He stood on Hermon. It was the highest ascent, the widest prospect into the past, present, and future, in His Earthly Life. Yet was it but Hermon at night. And this is the human, or rather the Theanthropic view of this prayer, and of its sequence.
\nAs we understand it, the prayer with them had ceased, or it had merged into silent prayer of each, or Jesus now prayed alone and apart, when what gives this scene such a truly human and truthful aspect ensued. It was but natural for these men of simple habits, at night, and after the long ascent, and in the strong mountain-air, to be heavy with sleep. And we also know it as a psychological fact, that, in quick reaction after the overpowering influence of the strongest emotions, drowsiness would creep over their limbs and senses. \u2018They were heavy\u2014weighted\u2014with sleep,\u2019 as afterwards in Gethsemane their eyes were weighted. Yet they struggled with it, and it is quite consistent with experience, that they should continue in that state of semi-stupor during what passed between Moses and Elijah and Christ, and also be \u2018fully awake\u2019 \u2018to see His Glory, and the two men who stood with Him.\u2019 In any case this descriptive trait, so far from being (as negative critics would have it), a \u2018later embellishment,\u2019 could only have formed part of a primitive account, since it is impossible to conceive any rational motive for its later addition.
\nWhat they saw was their Master, while praying, \u2018transformed.\u2019 The \u2018form of God\u2019 shone through the \u2018form of a servant;\u2019 \u2018the appearance of His Face became other,\u2019 it \u2018did shine as the sun.\u2019 Nay, the whole Figure seemed bathed in light, the very garments whiter far than the snow on which the moon shone\u2014\u2018so as no fuller on earth can white them,\u2019 \u2018glittering,\u2019 \u2018white as the light.\u2019 And more than this they saw and heard. They saw \u2018with Him two men,\u2019 whom, in their heightened sensitiveness to spiritual phenomena, they could have no difficulty in recognising, by such of their conversation as they heard, as Moses and Elijah. The column was now complete: the base in the Law; the shaft in that Prophetism of which Elijah was the great Representative\u2014in his first Mission, as fulfilling the primary object of the Prophets: to call Israel back to God; and, in his second Mission, this other aspect of the Prophets\u2019 work, to prepare the way for the Kingdom of God; and the apex in Christ Himself\u2014a unity completely fitting together in all its parts. And they heard also, that they spake of \u2018His Exodus\u2014outgoing\u2014which He was about to fulfil at Jerusalem.\u2019 Although the term \u2018Exodus,\u2019 \u2018outgoing,\u2019 occurs otherwise for \u2018death,\u2019 we must bear in mind its meaning as contrasted with that in which the same Evangelic writer designates the Birth of Christ, as His \u2018incoming.\u2019 In truth, it implies not only His Decease, but its manner, and even His Resurrection and Ascension. In that sense we can understand the better, as on the lips of Moses and Elijah, this about His fulfilling that Exodus: accomplishing it in all its fulness, and so completing Law and Prophecy, type and prediction.
\nAnd still that night of glory had not ended. A strange peculiarity has been noticed about Hermon in \u2018the extreme rapidity of the formation of cloud on the summit. In a few minutes a thick cap forms over the top of the mountain, and as quickly disperses and entirely disappears.\u2019 It almost seems as if this, like the natural position of Hermon itself, was, if not to be connected with, yet, so to speak, to form the background to what was to be enacted. Suddenly a cloud passed over the clear brow of the mountain\u2014not an ordinary, but \u2018a luminous cloud,\u2019 a cloud uplit, filled with light. As it laid itself between Jesus and the two Old Testament Representatives, it parted, and presently enwrapped them. Most significant is it, suggestive of the Presence of God, revealing, yet concealing\u2014a cloud, yet luminous. And this cloud overshadowed the disciples: the shadow of its light fell upon them. A nameless terror seized them. Fain would they have held what seemed for ever to escape their grasp. Such vision had never before been vouchsafed to mortal man as had fallen on their sight; they had already heard Heaven\u2019s converse; they had tasted Angels\u2019 Food, the Bread of His Presence. Could the vision not be perpetuated\u2014at least prolonged? In the confusion of their terror they knew not how otherwise to word it, than by an expression of ecstatic longing for the continuance of what they had, of their earnest readiness to do their little best, if they could but secure it\u2014make booths for the heavenly Visitants\u2014and themselves wait in humble service and reverent attention on what their dull heaviness had prevented their enjoying and profiting by, to the full. They knew and felt it: \u2018Lord\u2019\u2014\u2018Rabbi\u2019\u2014\u2018Master\u2019\u2014\u2018it is good for us to be here\u2019\u2014and they longed to have it; yet how to secure it, their terror could not suggest, save in the language of ignorance and semi-conscious confusion. \u2018They wist not what they said.\u2019 In presence of the luminous cloud that enwrapt those glorified Saints, they spake from out that darkness which compassed them about.
\nAnd now the light-cloud was spreading; presently its fringe fell upon them. Heaven\u2019s awe was upon them: for the touch of the heavenly strains, almost to breaking, the bond betwixt body and soul. \u2018And a Voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is My Beloved Son: hear Him.\u2019 It had needed only One other Testimony to seal it all; One other Voice, to give both meaning and music to what had been the subject of Moses\u2019 and Elijah\u2019s speaking. That Voice had now come\u2014not in testimony to any fact, but to a Person\u2014that of Jesus as His \u2018Beloved Son,\u2019 and in gracious direction to them. They heard it, falling on their faces in awestruck worship.
\nHow long the silence had lasted, and the last rays of the cloud had passed, we know not. Presently, it was a gentle touch that roused them. It was the Hand of Jesus, as with words of comfort He reassured them: \u2018Arise, and be not afraid.\u2019 And as, startled,\u2019 they looked round about them, they saw no man save Jesus only. The Heavenly Visitants had gone, the last glow of the light-cloud had faded away, the echoes of Heaven\u2019s Voice had died out. It was night, and they were on the Mount with Jesus, and with Jesus only.
\nIs it truth or falsehood; was it reality or vision\u2014or part of both, this Transfiguration-scene on Hermon? One thing, at least, must be evident: if it be a true narrative, it cannot possibly describe a merely subjective vision without objective reality. But, in that case, it would be not only difficult, but impossible, to separate one part of the narrative\u2014the appearance of Moses and Elijah\u2014from the other, the Transfiguration of the Lord, and to assign to the latter objective reality, while regarding the former as merely a vision. But is the account true? It certainly represents primitive tradition, since it is not only told by all the three Evangelists, but referred to in 2 Peter 1:16\u201318, and evidently implied in the words of St. John, both in his Gospel, and in the opening of his First Epistle. Few, if any, would be so bold as to assert that the whole of this history had been invented by the three Apostles, who professed to have been its witnesses. Nor can any adequate motive be imagined for its invention. It could not have been intended to prepare the Jews for the Crucifixion of the Messiah, since it was to be kept a secret till after His Resurrection; and, after that event, it could not have been necessary for the assurance of those who believed in the Resurrection, while to others it would carry no weight. Again, the special traits of this history are inconsistent with the theory of its invention. In a legend, the witnesses of such an event would not have been represented as scarcely awake, and not knowing what they said. Manifestly, the object would have been to convey the opposite impression. Lastly, it cannot be too often repeated, that, in view of the manifold witness of the Evangelists, amply confirmed in all essentials by the Epistles\u2014preached, lived, and bloodsealed by the primitive Church, and handed down as primitive tradition\u2014the most untenable theory seems that which imputes intentional fraud to their narratives, or, to put it otherwise, non-belief on the part of the narrators of what they related.
\nBut can we suppose, if not fraud, yet mistake on the part of these witnesses, so that an event, otherwise naturally explicable, may, through their ignorance or imaginativeness, have assumed the proportions of this narrative? The investigation will be the more easy, that, as regards all the main features of the narrative, the three Evangelists are entirely agreed. Instead of examining in detail the various rationalistic attempts made to explain this history on natural grounds, it seems sufficient for refutation to ask the intelligent reader. to attempt imagining any natural event, which by any possibility could have been mistaken for what the eyewitnesses related, and the Evangelists recorded.
\nThere still remains the mythical theory of explanation, which, if it could be supported, would be the most attractive among those of a negative character. But we cannot imagine a legend without some historical motive or basis for its origination. The legend must be in character\u2014that is, congruous to the ideas and expectancies entertained. Such a history as that of the Transfiguration could not have been a pure invention; but if such or similar expectancies had existed about the Messiah, then such a legend might, without intentional fraud, have, by gradual accretion, gathered around the Person of Him Who was regarded as the Christ. And this is the rationale of the so-called mythical theory. But all such ideas vanish at the touch of history. There was absolutely no Jewish expectancy that could have bodied itself forth in a narrative like that of the Transfiguration. To begin with the accessories\u2014the idea, that the coming of Moses was to be connected with that of the Messiah, rests not only on an exaggeration, but on a dubious and difficult passage in the Jerusalem Targum. It is quite true, that the face of Moses shone when he came down from the Mount; but, if this is to be regarded as the basis of the Transfiguration of Jesus, the presence of Elijah would not be in point. On the other hand\u2014to pass over other inconsistencies\u2014anything more un-Jewish could scarcely be imagined than a Messiah crucified, or that Moses and Elijah should appear to converse with Him on such a Death! If it be suggested, that the purpose was to represent the Law and the Prophets as bearing testimony to the Dying of the Messiah, we fully admit it. Certainly, this is the New Testament and the true idea concerning the Christ; but equally certainly, it was not, and it is not, that of the Jews concerning the Messiah.
\nIf it is impossible to regard this narrative as a fraud; hopeless, to attempt explaining it as a natural event; and utterly unaccountable, when viewed in connection with contemporary thought or expectancy\u2014in short, if all negative theories fail, let us see whether, and how, on the supposition of its reality, it will fit into the general narrative. To begin with: if our previous investigations have rightly led us up to this result, that Jesus was the Very Christ of God, then this event can scarcely be described as miraculous\u2014at least in such a history. If we would not expect it, it is certainly that which might have been expected. For, first, it was (and at that particular period) a necessary stage in the Lord\u2019s History, viewed in the light in which the Gospels present Him. Secondly, it was needful for His own strengthening, even as the Ministry of the Angels after the Temptation. Thirdly, it was \u2018good\u2019 for these three disciples to be there: not only for future witness, but for present help, and also with special reference to Peter\u2019s remonstrance against Christ\u2019s death-message. Lastly, the Voice from heaven, in hearing of His disciples, was of the deepest importance. Coming after the announcement of His Death and Passion, it sealed that testimony, and, in view of it, proclaimed Him as the Prophet to Whom Moses had bidden Israel hearken, while it repeated the heavenly utterance concerning Him made at His Baptism.
\nBut, for us all, the interest of this history lies not only in the past; it is in the present also, and in the future. To all ages it is like the vision of the bush burning, in which was the Presence of God. And it points us forward to that transformation, of which that of Christ was the pledge, when \u2018this corruptible shall put on incorruption.\u2019 As of old the beacon-fires, lighted from hill to hill, announced to them far away from Jerusalem the advent of solemn feast, so does the glory kindled on the Mount of Transfiguration shine through the darkness of the world, and tell of the Resurrection-Day.
\nOn Hermon the Lord and His disciples had reached the highest point in this history. Henceforth it is a descent into the Valley of Humiliation and Death!<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 2<\/p>\n
ON THE MORROW OF THE TRANSFIGURATION<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 17:9\u201321; St. Mark 9:9\u201329; St. Luke 9:37\u201343.)<\/p>\n
IT was the early dawn of another summer\u2019s day when the Master and His disciples turned their steps once more towards the plain. They had seen His Glory; they had had the most solemn witness which, as Jews, they could have; and they had gained a new knowledge of the Old Testament. It all bore reference to the Christ, and it spake of His Decease. Perhaps on that morning better than in the previous night did they realise the vision, and feel its calm happiness. It was to their souls like the morning-air which they breathed on that mountain.
\nIt would be only natural, that their thoughts should also wander to the companions and fellow-disciples whom, on the previous evening, they had left in the valley beneath. How much they had to tell them, and how glad they would be of the tidings they would hear! That one night had for ever answered so many questions about that most hard of all His sayings: concerning His Rejection and violent Death at Jerusalem; it had shed heavenly light into that terrible gloom! They\u2014at least these three\u2014had formerly simply submitted to the saying of Christ because it was His, without understanding it; but now they had learned to see it in quite another light. How they must have longed to impart it to those whose difficulties were at least as great, perhaps greater, who perhaps had not yet recovered from the rude shock which their Messianic thoughts and hopes had so lately received. We think here especially of those, whom, so far as individuality of thinking is concerned, we may designate as the representative three, and the counterpart of the three chosen Apostles: Philip, who ever sought firm standing-ground for faith; Thomas, who wanted evidence for believing; and Judas, whose burning Jewish zeal for a Jewish Messiah had already begun to consume his own soul, as the wind had driven back upon himself the flame that had been kindled. Every question of a Philip, every doubt of a Thomas every despairing wild outburst of a Judas, would be met by what they had now to tell.
\nBut it was not to be so. Evidently, it was not an event to be made generally known, either to the people or even to the great body of the disciples. They could not have understood its real meaning; they would have misunderstood, and in their ignorance misapplied to carnal Jewish purposes, its heavenly lessons. But even the rest of the Apostles must not know of it: that they were not qualified to witness it, proved that they were not prepared to hear of it. We cannot for a moment imagine, that there was favouritism in the selection of certain Apostles to share in what the others might not witness. It was not because these were better loved, but because they were better prepared\u2014more fully receptive, more readily acquiescing, more entirely self-surrendering. Too often we commit in our estimate the error of thinking of them exclusively as Apostles, not as disciples; as our teachers, not as His learners, with all the failings of men, the prejudices of Jews, and the unbelief natural to us all, but assuming in each individual special forms, and appearing as characteristic weaknesses.
\nAnd so it was that, when the silence of that morning-descent was broken, the Master laid on them the command to tell no man of this vision, till after the Son of Man were risen from the dead. This mysterious injunction of silence affords another presumptive evidence against the invention, or the rationalistic explanations, or the mythical origin of this narrative. It also teaches two further lessons. The silence thus enjoined was the first step into the Valley of Humiliation. It was also a test, whether they had understood the spiritual teaching of the vision. And their strict obedience, not questioning even the grounds of the injunction, proved that they had learned it. So entire, indeed, was their submission, that they dared not even ask the Master about a new and seemingly greater mystery than they had yet heard: the meaning of the Son of Man rising from the Dead. Did it refer to the general Resurrection; was the Messiah to be the first to rise from the dead, and to waken the other sleepers\u2014or was it only a figurative expression for His triumph and vindication? Evidently, they knew as yet nothing of Christ\u2019s Personal Resurrection, as separate from that of others, and on the third day after His Death. And yet it was so near! So ignorant were they, and so unprepared! And they dared not ask the Master of it. This much they had already learned: not to question the mysteries of the future, but simply to receive them. But in their inmost hearts they kept that saying\u2014as the Virgin-Mother had kept many a like saying\u2014carrying it about \u2018with them\u2019 as a precious living germ that would presently spring up and bear fruit, or as that which would kindle into light and chase all darkness. But among themselves, then and many times afterwards, in secret converse, they questioned what the rising again from the dead should mean.
\nThere was another question, and it they might ask of Jesus, since it concerned not the mysteries of the future, but the lessons of the past. Thinking of that vision, of the appearance of Elijah and of his speaking of the Death of the Messiah, why did the Scribes say that Elijah should first come\u2014and, as was the universal teaching, for the purpose of restoring all things? If, as they had seen, Elijah had come\u2014but only for a brief season, not to abide, along with Moses, as they had fondly wished when they proposed to rear them booths; if he had come not to the people but to Christ, in view of only them three\u2014and they were not even to tell of it; and, if it had been, not to prepare for a spiritual restoration, but to speak of what implied the opposite: the Rejection and violent Death of the Messiah\u2014then, were the Scribes right in their teaching, and what was its real meaning? The question afforded the opportunity of presenting to the disciples not only a solution of their difficulties, but another insight into the necessity of His Rejection and Death. They had failed to distinguish between the coming of Elijah and its alternative sequence. Truly \u2018Elias cometh first\u2019\u2014and Elijah had \u2018come already\u2019 in the person of John the Baptist. The Divinely intended object of Elijah\u2019s coming was to \u2018restore all things.\u2019 This, of course, implied a moral element in the submission of the people to God, and their willingness to receive his message. Otherwise there was this Divine alternative in the prophecy of Malachi: \u2018Lest I come to smite the land with the ban\u2019 (Cherem). Elijah had come; if the people had received his message, there would have been the promised restoration of all things. As the Lord had said on a previous occasion: \u2018If ye are willing to receive him, this is Elijah, which is to come.\u2019 Similarly, if Israel had received the Christ, He would have gathered them as a hen her chickens for protection; He would not only have been, but have visibly appeared as, their King. But Israel did not know their Elijah, and did unto him whatsoever they listed; and so, in logical sequence, would the Son of Man also suffer of them. And thus has the other part of Malachi\u2019s prophecy been fulfilled: and the land of Israel been smitten with the ban.
\nAmidst such conversation the descent from the mountain was accomplished. Presently they found themselves in view of a scene, which only too clearly showed that unfitness of the disciples for the heavenly vision of the preceding night, to which reference has been made. For, amidst the divergence of details between the narratives of St. Matthew and St. Mark, and, so far as it goes, that of St. Luke, the one point in which they almost literally and emphatically accord is, when the Lord speaks of them, in language of bitter disappointment and sorrow, as a generation with whose want of faith, notwithstanding all that they had seen and learned, He had still to bear, expressly attributing their failure in restoring the lunatick to their \u2018unbelief.\u2019
\nIt was, indeed, a terrible contrast between the scene below and that vision of Moses and Elijah, when they had spoken of the Exodus of the Christ, and the Divine Voice had attested the Christ from out the luminous cloud. A concourse of excited people\u2014among them once more \u2018Scribes,\u2019 who had tracked the Lord and come upon His weakest disciples in the hour of their greatest weakness\u2014is gathered about a man who had in vain brought his lunatick son for healing. He is eagerly questioned by the multitude, and moodily answers; or, as it might almost seem from St. Matthew, he is leaving the crowd and those from whom he had vainly sought help. This was the hour of triumph for these Scribes. The Master had refused the challenge in Dalmanutha, and the disciples, accepting it, had signally failed. There they were, \u2018questioning with them\u2019 noisily, discussing this and all similar phenomena, but chiefly the power, authority, and reality of the Master. It reminds us of Israel\u2019s temptation in the wilderness, and we should scarcely wonder, if they had even questioned the return of Jesus, as they of old did that of Moses.
\nAt that very moment, Jesus appeared with the three. We cannot wonder that, \u2018when they saw Him, they were greatly amazed, and running to Him saluted Him.\u2019 He came\u2014as always, and to us also\u2014unexpectedly, most opportunely, and for the real decision of the question in hand. There was immediate calm, preceding victory. Before the Master\u2019s inquiry about the cause of this violent discussion could be answered, the man who had been its occasion came forward. With lowliest gesture (\u2019kneeling to Him\u2019) he addressed Jesus. At last he had found Him, Whom he had come to seek; and, if possibility of help there were, oh! let it be granted. Describing the symptoms of his son\u2019s distemper, which were those of epilepsy and mania\u2014although both the father and Jesus rightly attributed the disease to demoniac influence\u2014he told, how he had come in search of the Master, but only found the nine disciples, and how they had presumptuously attempted, and signally failed in the attempted cure.
\nWhy had they failed? For the same reason, that they had not been taken into the Mount of Transfiguration\u2014because they were \u2018faithless,\u2019 because of their \u2018unbelief.\u2019 They had that outward faith of the \u2018probatum est\u2019 (\u2018it is proved\u2019); they believed because, and what, they had seen; and they were drawn closer to Christ\u2014at least almost all of them, though in varying measure\u2014as to Him Who, and Who alone, spake \u2018the words of eternal life,\u2019 which, with wondrous power, had swayed their souls, or laid them to heaven\u2019s rest. But that deeper, truer faith, which consisted in the spiritual view of that which was the unseen in Christ, and that higher power, which flows from such apprehension, they had not. In such faith as they had, they spake, repeated forms of exorcism, tried to imitate their Master. But they signally failed, as did those seven Jewish Priest-sons at Ephesus. And it was intended that they should fail, that so to them and to us the higher meaning of faith as contrasted with power, the inward as contrasted with the merely outward qualification, might appear. In that hour of crisis, in the presence of questioning Scribes and a wondering populace, and in the absence of the Christ, only one power could prevail, that of spiritual faith; and \u2018that kind\u2019 could \u2018not come out but by prayer.\u2019
\nIt is this lesson, viewed also in organic connection with all that had happened since the great temptation at Dalmanutha, which furnishes the explanation of the whole history. For one moment we have a glimpse into the Saviour\u2019s soul: the poignant sorrow of His disappointment at the unbelief of the \u2018faithless and perverse generation,\u2019 with which He had so long borne; the infinite patience and condescension, the Divine \u2018need be\u2019 of His having thus to bear even with His own, together with the deep humiliation and keen pang which it involved; and the almost home-longing, as one has called it, of His soul. These are mysteries to adore. The next moment Jesus turns Him to the father. At His command the lunatick is brought to Him. In the Presence of Jesus, and in view of the coming contest between Light and Darkness, one of those paroxysms of demoniac operation ensues, such as we have witnessed on all similar occasions. This was allowed to pass in view of all. But both this, and the question as to the length of time the lunatick had been afflicted, together with the answer, and the description of the dangers involved, which it elicited, were evidently intended to point the lesson of the need of a higher faith. To the father, however, who knew not the mode of treatment by the Heavenly Physician, they seemed like the questions of an earthly healer who must consider the symptoms before he could attempt to cure. \u2018If Thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us.\u2019
\nIt was but natural\u2014and yet it was the turning-point in this whole history, alike as regarded the healing of the lunatick, the better leading of his father, the teaching of the disciples, and that of the multitude and the Scribes. There is all the calm majesty of Divine self-consciousness, yet without trace of self-assertion, when Jesus, utterly ignoring the \u2018if Thou canst,\u2019 turns to the man and tells him that, while with the Divine Helper there is the possibility of all help, it is conditioned by a possibility in ourselves, by man\u2019s receptiveness, by his faith. Not, if the Christ can do anything or even everything, but, \u2018If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.\u2019 The question is not, it can never be, as the man had put it; it must not even be answered, but ignored. It must ever be, not what He can, but what we can. When the infinite fulness is poured forth, as it ever is in Christ, it is not the oil that is stayed, but the vessels which fail. He giveth richly, inexhaustibly, but not mechanically; there is only one condition, the moral one of the presence of absolute faith\u2014our receptiveness. And so these words have to all time remained the teaching to every individual striver in the battle of the higher life, and to the Church as a whole\u2014the \u2018in hoc signo vinces\u2019 over the Cross, the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
\nIt was a lesson, of which the reality was attested by the hold which it took on the man\u2019s whole nature. While by one great outgoing of his soul he overleapt all, to lay hold on the one fact set before him, he felt all the more the dark chasm of unbelief behind him, but he also clung to that Christ, Whose teaching of faith had shown him, together with the possibility, the source of faith. Thus through the felt unbelief of faith he attained true faith by laying hold on the Divine Saviour, when he cried out and said: \u2018Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.\u2019 These words have remained historic, marking all true faith, which, even as faith, is conscious of, nay implies, unbelief, but brings it to Christ for help. The most bold leap of faith and the timid resting at His Feet, the first beginning and the last ending of faith, have alike this as their watchword.
\nSuch cry could not be, and never is, unheard. It was real demoniac influence which, continuing with this man from childhood onwards, had well-nigh crushed all moral individuality in him. In his many lucid intervals these many years, since he had grown from a child into a youth, he had never sought to shake off the yoke and regain his moral individuality, nor would he even now have come, if his father had not brought him. If any, this narrative shows the view which the Gospels and Jesus took of what are described as the \u2018demonised.\u2019 It was a reality, and not accommodation to Jewish views, when, as He saw \u2018the multitude running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to him: Dumb and deaf spirit, I command thee, come out of him, and no more come into him.\u2019
\nAnother and a more violent paroxysm, so that the bystanders almost thought him dead. But the unclean spirit had come out of him. And with strong gentle Hand the Saviour lifted him and with loving gesture delivered him to his father.
\nAll things had been possible to faith; not to that external belief of the disciples, which failed to reach \u2018that kind,\u2019 and ever fails to reach such kind, but to true spiritual faith in Him. And so it is to each of us individually, and to the Church, to all time. \u2018That kind,\u2019\u2014whether it be of sin, of lust, of the world, or of science falsely so called, of temptation, or of materialism\u2014cometh not out by any of our ready-made formulas or dead dogmas. Not so are the flesh and the Devil vanquished; not so is the world overcome. It cometh out by nothing but by prayer: \u2018Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.\u2019 Then, although our faith were only what in popular language was described as the smallest\u2014\u2018like a grain of mustard-seed\u2019\u2014and the result to be achieved the greatest, most difficult, seemingly transcending human ability to compass it\u2014what in popular language was designated as \u2018removing mountains\u2019\u2014\u2019nothing shall be impossible\u2019 unto us. And these eighteen centuries of suffering in Christ, and deliverance through Christ, and work for Christ, have proved it. For all things are ours, if Christ is ours.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 3<\/p>\n
THE LAST EVENTS IN GALILEE\u2014THE TRIBUTE-MONEY, THE DISPUTE BY THE WAY, THE FORBIDDING OF HIM WHO COULD NOT FOLLOW WITH THE DISCIPLES, AND THE CONSEQUENT TEACHING OF CHRIST<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 17:22\u201318:22; St. Mark 9:30\u201350; St. Luke 9:43\u201350.)<\/p>\n
NOW that the Lord\u2019s retreat in the utmost borders of the land, at C\u00e6sarea Philippi, was known to the Scribes, and that He was again surrounded and followed by the multitude, there could be no further object in His retirement. Indeed, the time was coming that He should meet that for which He had been, and was still, preparing the minds of His disciples\u2014His Decease at Jerusalem. Accordingly, we find Him once more with His disciples in Galilee\u2014not to abide there, nor to traverse it as formerly for Missionary purposes, but preparatory to His journey to the Feast of Tabernacles. The few events of this brief stay, and the teaching connected with it, may be summed up as follows.
\n1. Prominently, perhaps, as the summary of all, we have now the clear and emphatic repetition of the prediction of His Death and Resurrection. While He would keep His present stay in Galilee as private as possible, He would fain so emphasize this teaching to His disciples, that it should sink down into their ears and memories. For it was, indeed, the most needful for them in view of the immediate future. Yet the announcement only filled their loving hearts with exceeding sorrow; they comprehended it not; nay, they were\u2014perhaps not unnaturally\u2014afraid to ask Him about it. We remember, that even the three who had been with Jesus on the Mount, understood not what the rising from the dead should mean, and that, by direction of the Master, they kept the whole Vision from their fellow-disciples; and, thinking of it all, we scarcely wonder that, from their standpoint, it was hid from them, so that they might not perceive it.
\n2. It is to the depression caused by His insistence on this terrible future, to the constant apprehension of near danger, and the consequent desire not to \u2018offend,\u2019 and so provoke those at whose hands, Christ had told them, He was to suffer, that we trace the incident about the tribute-money. We can scarcely believe, that Peter would have answered as he did, without previous permission of his Master, had it not been for such thoughts and fears. It was another mode of saying, \u2018That be far from Thee\u2019\u2014or, rather, trying to keep it as far as he could from Christ. Indeed, we can scarcely repress the feeling, that there was a certain amount of secretiveness on the part of Peter, as if he had apprehended that Jesus would not have wished him to act as he did, and would fain have kept the whole transaction from the knowledge of his Master.
\nIt is well known that, on the ground of the injunction in Exod. 30:13 &c., every male in Israel, from twenty years upwards, was expected annually to contribute to the Temple-Treasury the sum of one half-shekel of the Sanctuary, that is, one common shekel, or two Attic drachms, equivalent to about 1s. 2d. or 1s. 3d. of our money. Whether or not the original Biblical ordinance had been intended to institute a regular annual contribution, the Jews of the Dispersion would probably regard it in the light of a patriotic as well as religious act.
\nTo the particulars previously given on this subject a few others may be added. The family of the Chief of the Sanhedrin (Gamaliel) seems to have enjoyed the curious distinction of bringing their contributions to the Temple-Treasury, not like others, but to have thrown them down before him who opened the Temple-Chest, when they were immediately placed in the box from which, without delay, sacrifices were provided. Again, the commentators explain a certain passage in the Mishnah and the Talmud as implying that, although the Jews in Palestine had to pay the tribute-money before the Passover, those from neighbouring lands might bring it before the Feast of Weeks, and those from such remote countries as Babylonia and Media as late as the Feast of Tabernacles. Lastly, although the Mishnah lays it down, that the goods of those might be distrained, who had not paid the Temple-tribute by the 25th Adar, it is scarcely credible that this obtained at the time of Christ, at any rate in Galilee. Indeed, this seems implied in the statement of the Mishnah and the Talmud, that one of the \u2018thirteen trumpets\u2019 in the Temple, into which contributions were cast, was destined for the shekels of the current, and another for those of the preceding, year. Finally, these Temple-contributions were in the first place devoted to the purchase of all public sacrifices, that is, those which were offered in the name of the whole congregation of Israel, such as the morning and evening sacrifices. It will be remembered, that this was one of the points in fierce dispute between the Pharisees and Sadducees, and that the former perpetuated their triumph by marking its anniversary as a festive day in their calendar. It seems a terrible irony of judgment when Vespasian ordered, after the destruction of the Temple, that this tribute should henceforth be paid for the rebuilding of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.
\nIt will be remembered that, shortly before the previous Passover, Jesus with His disciples had left Capernaum, that they returned to the latter city only for the Sabbath, and that, as we have suggested, they passed the first Paschal days on the borders of Tyre. We have, indeed, no means of knowing where the Master had tarried during the ten days between the 15th and the 25th Adar, supposing the Mishnic arrangements to have been in force in Capernaum. He was certainly not at Capernaum, and it must also have been known, that He had not gone up to Jerusalem for the Passover. Accordingly, when it was told in Capernaum, that the Rabbi of Nazareth had once more come to what seems to have been His Galilean home, it was only natural, that they who collected the Temple-tribute should have applied for its payment. It is quite possible, that their application may have been, if not prompted, yet quickened, by the wish to involve Him in a breach of so well-known an obligation, or else by a hostile curiosity. Would He, Who took so strangely different views of Jewish observances, and Who made such extraordinary claims, own the duty of paying the Temple-tribute? Had it been owing to His absence, or from principle, that He had not paid it last Passover-season? The question which they put to Peter implies, at least, their doubt.
\nWe have already seen what motives prompted the hasty reply of Peter. He might, indeed, also otherwise, in his rashness, have given an affirmative answer to the inquiry, without first consulting the Master. For there seems little doubt, that Jesus had on former occasions complied with the Jewish custom. But matters were now wholly changed. Since the first Passover, which had marked His first public appearance in the Temple at Jerusalem, He had stated\u2014and quite lately in most explicit terms\u2014that He was the Christ, the Son of God. To have now paid the Temple-tribute, without explanation, might have involved a very serious misapprehension. In view of all this, the history before us seems alike simple and natural. There is no pretext for the artificial construction put upon it by commentators, any more than for the suggestion, that such was the poverty of the Master and His disciples, that the small sum requisite for the Temple-tribute had to be miraculously supplied.
\nWe picture it to ourselves on this wise. Those who received the Tribute-money had come to Peter, and perhaps met him in the court or corridor, and asked him: \u2018Your Teacher (Rabbi), does He not pay the didrachma?\u2019 While Peter hastily responded in the affirmative, and then entered into the house to procure the coin, or else to report what had passed, Jesus, Who had been in another part of the house, but was cognisant of all, \u2018anticipated him.\u2019 Addressing him in kindly language as \u2018Simon,\u2019 He pointed out the real state of matters by an illustration which must, of course, not be too literally pressed, and of which the meaning was: Whom does a King intend to tax for the maintenance of his palace and officers? Surely not his own family, but others. The inference from this, as regarded the Temple-tribute, was obvious. As in all similar Jewish parabolic teaching, it was only indicated in general principle: \u2018Then are the children free.\u2019 But even so, be it as Peter had wished, although not from the same motive. Let no needless offence be given; for, assuredly, they would not have understood the principle on which Christ would have refused the Tribute-money, and all misunderstanding on the part of Peter was now impossible. Yet Christ would still further vindicate His royal title. He will pay for Peter also, and pay, as heaven\u2019s King, with a Stater, or four-drachm piece, miraculously provided.
\nThus viewed, there is, we submit, a moral purpose and spiritual instruction in the provision of the Stater out of the fish\u2019s mouth. The rationalistic explanation of it need not be seriously considered; for any mythical interpretation there is not the shadow of support in Biblical precedent or Jewish expectancy. But the narrative in its literality has a true and high meaning. And if we wished to mark the difference between its sober simplicity and the extravagances of legend, we would remind ourselves, not only of the well-known story of the Ring of Polycrates, but of two somewhat kindred Jewish Haggadahs. They are both intended to glorify the Jewish mode of Sabbath observance. One of them bears that one Joseph, known as \u2018the honourer\u2019 of the Sabbath, had a wealthy heathen neighbour, to whom the Chald\u00e6ans had prophesied that all his riches would come to Joseph. To render this impossible, the wealthy man converted all his property into one magnificent gem, which he carefully concealed within his head-gear. Then he took ship, so as for ever to avoid the dangerous vicinity of the Jew. But the wind blew his head-gear into the sea, and the gem was swallowed by a fish. And, lo! it was the holy season, and they brought to the market a splendid fish. Who would purchase it but Joseph, for none as he would prepare to honour the day by the best which he could provide. But when they opened the fish, the gem was found in it\u2014the moral being: \u2018He that borroweth for the Sabbath, the Sabbath will repay him.\u2019
\nThe other legend is similar. It was in Rome (in the Christian world) that a poor tailor went to market to buy a fish for a festive meal. Only one was on sale, and for it there was keen competition between the servant of the Prince and the Jew, the latter at last buying it for not less than twelve dinars. At the banquet, the Prince inquired of his servants why no fish had been provided. When he ascertained the cause, he sent for the Jew with the threatening inquiry, how a poor tailor could afford to pay twelve dinars for a fish? \u2018My Lord,\u2019 replied the Jew, \u2018there is a day on which all our sins are remitted us, and should we not honour it?\u2019 The answer satisfied the Prince. But God rewarded the Jew, for, when the fish was opened, a precious gem was found in it, which he sold, and ever afterwards lived of the proceeds.
\nThe reader can scarcely fail to mark the absolute difference between even the most beautiful Jewish legends and any trait in the Evangelic history.
\n3. The event next recorded in the Gospels took place partly on the way from the Mount of Transfiguration to Capernaum, and partly in Capernaum itself, immediately after the scene connected with the Tribute-money. It is recorded by the three Evangelists, and it led to explanations and admonitions, which are told by St. Mark and St. Luke, but chiefly by St. Matthew. This circumstance seems to indicate, that the latter was the chief actor in that which occasioned this special teaching and warning of Christ, and that it must have sunk very deeply into his heart.
\nAs we look at it, in the light of the then mental and spiritual state of the Apostles, not in that in which, perhaps naturally, we regard them, what happened seems not difficult to understand. As St. Mark puts it, by the way they had disputed among themselves which of them would be the greatest\u2014as St. Matthew explains, in the Messianic Kingdom of Heaven. They might now the more confidently expect its near Advent from the mysterious announcement of the Resurrection on the third day, which they would probably connect with the commencement of the last Judgment, following upon the violent Death of the Messiah. Of a dispute, serious and even violent, among the disciples, we have evidence in the exhortation of the Master, as reported by St. Mark, in the direction of the Lord how to deal with an offending brother, and in the answering inquiry of Peter. Nor can we be at a loss to perceive its occasion. The distinction just bestowed on the three, in being taken up the Mount, may have roused feelings of jealousy in the others, perhaps of self-exaltation in the three. Alike the spirit which John displayed in his harsh prohibition of the man that did not follow with the disciples, and the self-righteous bargaining of Peter about forgiving the supposed or real offences of a brother, give evidence of anything but the frame of mind which we would have expected after the Vision on the Mount.
\nIn truth, most incongruous as it may appear to us, looking back on it in the light of the Resurrection-day, nay, almost incredible\u2014evidently, the Apostles were still greatly under the influence of the old spirit. It was the common Jewish view, that there would be distinctions of rank in the Kingdom of Heaven. It can scarcely be necessary to prove this by Rabbinic quotations, since the whole system of Rabbinism and Pharisaism, with its separation from the vulgar and ignorant, rests upon it. But even within the charmed circle of Rabbinism, there would be distinctions, due to learning, merit, and even to favouritism. In this world there were His special favourites, who could command anything at His hand, to use the Rabbinic illustration, like a spoilt child from its father. And in the Messianic age God would assign booths to each according to his rank. On the other hand, many passages could be quoted bearing on the duty of humility and self-abasement. But the stress laid on the merit attaching to this shows too clearly, that it was the pride that apes humility. One instance, previously referred to, will suffice by way of illustration. When the child of the great Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai was dangerously ill, he was restored through the prayer of one Chanina ben Dosa. On this the father of the child remarked to his wife: \u2018If the son of Zakkai had all day long put his head between his knees, no heed would have been given to him.\u2019 \u2018How is that?\u2019 asked his wife; \u2018is Chanina greater than thou?\u2019 \u2018No,\u2019 was the reply, \u2018he is like a servant before the King, while I am like a prince before the King\u2019 (he is always there, and has thus opportunities which I, as a lord, do not enjoy).
\nHow deep-rooted were such thoughts and feelings, appears not only from the dispute of the disciples by the way, but from the request proffered by the mother of Zebedee\u2019s children and her sons at a later period, in terrible contrast to the near Passion of our Lord. It does, indeed, come upon us as a most painful surprise, and as sadly incongruous, this constant self-obtrusion, self-assertion, and low, carnal self-seeking; this Judaistic trifling in face of the utter self-abnegation and self-sacrifice of the Son of Man. Surely, the contrast between Christ and His disciples seems at times almost as great as between Him and the other Jews. If we would measure His Stature, or comprehend the infinite distance between His aims and teaching and those of His contemporaries, let it be by comparison with even the best of His disciples. It must have been part of His humiliation and self-exinanition to bear with them. And is it not, in a sense, still so as regards us all?
\nWe have already seen, that there was quite sufficient occasion and material for such a dispute on the way from the Mount of Transfiguration to Capernaum. We suppose Peter to have been only at the first with the others. To judge by the later question, how often he was to forgive the brother who had sinned against him, he may have been so deeply hurt, that he left the other disciples, and hastened on with the Master, Who would, at any rate, sojourn in his house. For, neither he nor Christ seem to have been present when John and the others forbade the man, who would not follow with them, to cast out demons in Christ\u2019s name. Again, the other disciples only came into Capernaum, and entered the house, just as Peter had gone for the Stater, with which to pay the Temple-tribute for the Master and himself. And, if speculation be permissible, we would suggest that the brother, whose offences Peter found it so difficult to forgive, may have been none other than Judas. In such a dispute by the way, he, with his Judaistic views, would be specially interested; perhaps he may have been its chief instigator; certainly, he, whose natural character, amidst its sharp contrasts to that of Peter, presented so many points of resemblance to it, would, on many grounds, be specially jealous of, and antagonistic to him.
\nQuite natural in view of this dispute by the way is another incident of the journey, which is afterwards related. As we judge, John seems to have been the principal actor in it; perhaps, in the absence of Peter, he claimed the leadership. They had met one who was casting out demons in the Name of Christ\u2014whether successfully or not, we need scarcely inquire. So widely had faith in the power of Jesus extended; so real was the belief in the subjection of the demons to Him; so reverent was the acknowledgment of Him. A man, who, thus forsaking the methods of Jewish exorcists, owned Jesus in the face of the Jewish world, could not be far from the Kingdom of Heaven; at any rate, he could not quickly speak evil of Him. John had, in name of the disciples, forbidden him, because he had not cast in his lot wholly with them. It was quite in the spirit of their ideas about the Messianic Kingdom, and of their dispute, which of His close followers would be greatest there. And yet, they might deceive themselves as to the motives of their conduct. If it were not almost impertinence to use such terms, we would have said that there was infinite wisdom and kindness in the answer which the Saviour gave, when referred to on the subject. To forbid a man, in such circumstances, would be either prompted by the spirit of the dispute by the way\u2014or else must be grounded on evidence that the motive was, or the effect would ultimately be (as in the case of the sons of Sceva) to lead men \u2018to speak evil\u2019 of Christ, or to hinder the work of His disciples. Assuredly, such could not have been the case with a man, who invoked His Name, and perhaps experienced its efficacy. More than this\u2014and here is an eternal principle: \u2018He that is not against us is for us;\u2019 he that opposeth not the disciples, really is for them\u2014 saying still more clear, when we adopt the better reading in St. Luke, a \u2018He that is not against you is for you.\u2019
\nThere was reproof in this, as well as instruction, deeply consistent with that other, though seemingly different, saying: \u2018He that is not with Me is against Me.\u2019 The distinction between them is twofold. In the one case it is \u2018not against,\u2019 in the other it is \u2018not with;\u2019 but chiefly it lies in this: in the one case it is not against the disciples in their work, while in the other it is\u2014not with Christ. A man who did what he could with such knowledge of Christ as he possessed, even although he did not absolutely follow with them, was \u2018not against\u2019 them. Such an one should be regarded as thus far with them; at least be let alone, left to Him Who knew all things. Such a man would not lightly speak evil of Christ\u2014and that was all the disciples should care for, unless, indeed, they sought their own. Quite other was it as regarded the relation of a person to the Christ Himself. There neutrality was impossible\u2014and that which was not with Christ, by this very fact was against Him. The lesson is of the most deep-reaching character, and the distinction, alas! still overlooked\u2014perhaps, because ours is too often the spirit of those who journeyed to Capernaum. Not, that it is unimportant to follow with the disciples, but that it is not ours to forbid any work done, however imperfectly, in His Name, and that only one question is really vital\u2014whether or not a man is decidedly with Christ.
\nSuch were the incidents by the way. And now, while withholding from Christ their dispute, and, indeed, anything that might seem personal in the question, the disciples, on entering the house where He was in Capernaum, addressed to Him this inquiry (which should be inserted from the opening words of St. Matthew\u2019s narrative): \u2018Who, then, is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?\u2019 It was a general question\u2014but Jesus perceived the thought of their heart; He knew about what they had disputed by the way, and now asked them concerning it. The account of St. Mark is most graphic. We almost see the scene. Conscience-stricken \u2018they held their peace.\u2019 As we read the further words: \u2018And He sat down,\u2019 it seems as if the Master had at first gone to welcome the disciples on their arrival, and they, \u2018full of their dispute,\u2019 had, without delay, addressed their inquiry to Him in the court or antechamber, where they met Him, when, reading their thoughts, He had first put the searching counter-question, what had been the subject of their dispute. Then, leading the way into the house, \u2018He sat down,\u2019 not only to answer their inquiry, which was not a real inquiry, but to teach them what so much they needed to learn. He called a little child\u2014perhaps Peter\u2019s little son\u2014and put him in the midst of them. Not to strive who was to be greatest, but to be utterly without self-consciousness, like a child\u2014thus, to become turned and entirely changed in mind: \u2018converted,\u2019 was the condition for entering into the Kingdom of Heaven. Then, as to the question of greatness there, it was really one of greatness of service\u2014and that was greatest service which implied most self-denial. Suiting the action to the teaching, the Blessed Saviour took the happy child in His Arms. Not, to teach, to preach, to work miracles, nor to do great things, but to do the humblest service for Christ\u2019s sake\u2014lovingly, earnestly, wholly, self-forgetfully, simply for Christ, was to receive Christ\u2014nay, to receive the Father. And the smallest service, as it might seem\u2014even the giving a cup of cold water in such spirit, would not lose its reward. Blessed teaching this to the disciples and to us; blessed lesson, which, these many centuries of scorching heat, has been of unspeakable refreshing, alike to the giver and the receiver of the cup of water in the Name of Christ, in the love of Christ, and for the sake of Christ.
\nThese words about receiving Christ, and \u2018receiving in the Name of Christ,\u2019 had stirred the memory and conscience of John, and made him half wonder, half fear, whether what they had done by the way, in forbidding the man to do what he could in the Name of Christ, had been right. And so he told it, and received the further and higher teaching on the subject. And, more than this, St. Mark and, more fully, St. Matthew, record some further instruction in connection with it, to which St. Luke refers, in a slightly different form, at a somewhat later period. But it seems so congruous to the present occasion, that we conclude it was then spoken, although, like other sayings, it may have been afterwards repeated under similar circumstances. Certainly, no more effective continuation, and application to Jewish minds, of the teaching of our Lord could be conceived than that which follows. For, the love of Christ goes deeper than the condescension of receiving a child, utterly un-Pharisaic and un-Rabbinic as this is. To have regard to the weaknesses of such a child\u2014to its mental and moral ignorance and folly, to adapt ourselves to it, to restrain our fuller knowledge and forego our felt liberty, so as not \u2018to offend\u2019\u2014not to give occasion for stumbling to \u2018one of these little ones,\u2019 that so through our knowledge the weak brother for whom Christ died should not perish: this is a lesson which reaches even deeper than the question, what is the condition of entrance into the Kingdom, or what service constitutes real greatness in it. A man may enter into the Kingdom and do service\u2014yet, if in so doing he disregard the law of love to the little ones, far better his work should be abruptly cut short; better, one of those large millstones, turned by an ass, were hung about his neck and he cast into the sea! We pause to note, once more, the Judaic, and, therefore, evidential, setting of the Evangelic narrative. The Talmud also speaks of two kinds of millstones\u2014the one turned by hand (\u05e8\u05d7\u05d9\u05d9\u05dd \u05d3\u05d9\u05d3\u05d0), referred to in St. Luke 17:35; the other turned by an ass (\u03bc\u03cd\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f40\u03bd\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc\u03c2), just as the Talmud also speaks of \u2018the ass of the millstone\u2019 (\u05d7\u05de\u05e8\u05f3 \u05d3\u05e8\u05d9\u05d7\u05d9\u05d0). Similarly, the figure about a millstone hung round the neck occurs also in the Talmud\u2014although there as figurative of almost insuperable difficulties. Again, the expression, \u2018it were better for him,\u2019 is a well-known Rabbinic expression (Mutabh hayah lo). Lastly, according to St. Jerome, the punishment which seems alluded to in the words of Christ, and which we know to have been inflicted by Augustus, was actually practised by the Romans in Galilee on some of the leaders of the insurrection under Judas of Galilee.
\nAnd yet greater guilt would only too surely be incurred! Woe unto the world! Occasions of stumbling and offence will surely come, but woe to the man through whom such havoc was wrought. What then is the alternative? If it be a question as between offence and some part of ourselves, a limb or member, however useful\u2014the hand, the foot, the eye\u2014then let it rather be severed from the body, however painful, or however seemingly great the loss. It cannot be so great as that of the whole being in the eternal fire of Gehenna, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. Be it hand, foot, or eye\u2014practice, pursuit, or research\u2014which consciously leads us to occasions of stumbling, it must be resolutely put aside in view of the incomparably greater loss of eternal remorse and anguish.
\nHere St. Mark abruptly breaks off with a saying in which the Saviour makes general application, although the narrative is further continued by St. Matthew. The words reported by St. Mark are so remarkable, so brief, we had almost said truncated, as to require special consideration. It seems to us that, turning from this thought, that even members which are intended for useful service may, in certain circumstances, have to be cut off to avoid the greatest loss, the Lord gave to His disciples this as the final summary and explanation of all: \u2018For every one shall be salted for the fire\u2019\u2014or, as a very early gloss, which has strangely crept into the text, paraphrased and explained it, \u2018Every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.\u2019 No one is fit for the sacrificial fire, no one can himself be, nor offer anything as a sacrifice, unless it have been first, according to the Levitical Law, covered with salt, symbolic of the incorruptible. \u2018Salt is good; but if the salt,\u2019 with which the spiritual sacrifice is to be salted for the fire, \u2018have lost its savour, wherewith will ye season it?\u2019 Hence, \u2018have salt in yourselves,\u2019 but do not let that salt be corrupted by making it an occasion of offence to others, or among yourselves, as in the dispute by the way, or in the disposition of mind that led to it, or in forbidding others to work who follow not with you, but \u2018be at peace among yourselves.\u2019
\nTo this explanation of the words of Christ it may, perhaps, be added that, from their form, they must have conveyed a special meaning to the disciples. It was a well-known law, that every sacrifice burned on the Altar must be salted with salt. Indeed, according to the Talmud, not only every such offering, but even the wood with which the sacrificial fire was kindled, was sprinkled with salt. Salt symbolised to the Jews of that time the incorruptible and the higher. Thus, the soul was compared to the salt, and it was said concerning the dead: \u2018Shake off the salt, and throw the flesh to the dogs.\u2019 The Bible was compared to salt; so was acuteness of intellect. Lastly, the question: \u2018If the salt have lost its savour, wherewith will ye season it?\u2019 seems to have been proverbial, and occurs in exactly the same words in the Talmud, apparently to denote a thing that is impossible,
\nMost thoroughly anti-Pharisaic and anti-Rabbinic as all this was, what St. Matthew further reports leads still farther in the same direction. We seem to see Jesus still holding this child, and, with evident reference to the Jewish contempt for that which is small, point to him and apply, in quite other manner than they had ever heard, the Rabbinic teaching about the Angels. In the Jewish view, only the chiefest of the Angels were before the Face of God within the curtained Veil, or Pargod, while the others, ranged in different classes, stood outside and awaited His behest, The distinction which the former enjoyed was always to behold His Face, and to hear and know directly the Divine counsels and commands. This distinction was, therefore, one of knowledge; Christ taught that it was one of love. Not the more exalted in knowledge, and merit, or worth, but the simpler, the more unconscious of self, the more receptive and clinging\u2014the nearer to God. Look up from earth to heaven; those representative, it may be, guardian, Angels nearest to God, are not those of deepest knowledge of God\u2019s counsel and commands, but those of simple, humble grace and faith\u2014and so learn, not only not to despise one of these little ones, but who is truly greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven!
\nViewed in this light, there is nothing incongruous in the transition: \u2018For the Son of Man is come to save that which was lost.\u2019 This, His greatest condescension when He became the Babe of Bethehem, is also His greatest exaltation. He Who is nearest the Father, and, in the most special and unique sense, always beholds His Face, is He that became a Child, and, as the Son of Man, stoops lowest, to save that which was lost. The words are, indeed, regarded as spurious by most critics, because certain leading manuscripts omit them, and they are supposed to have been imported from St. Luke 19:10. But such a transference from a context wholly unconnected with this section seems unaccountable, while, on the other hand, the verse in question forms, not only an apt, but almost necessary, transition to the Parable of the Lost Sheep. It seems, therefore, difficult to eliminate it without also striking out that Parable; and yet it fits most beautifully into the whole context. Suffice it for the present to note this. The Parable itself is more fully repeated in another connection, in which it will be more convenient to consider it.
\nYet a further depth of Christian love remained to be shown, which, all self-forgetful, sought not its own, but the things of others. This also bore on the circumstances of the time, and the dispute between the disciples, but went far beyond it, and set forth eternal principles. Hitherto it had been a question of not seeking self, nor minding great things, but, Christ-like and God-like, to condescend to the little ones. What if actual wrong had been done, and just offence given, by a \u2018brother\u2019? In such case, also, the principle of the Kingdom\u2014which, negatively, is that of self-forgetfulness, positively, that of service of love\u2014would first seek the good of the offending brother. We mark, here, the contrast to Rabbinism, which directs that the first overtures must be made by the offender, not the offended; and even prescribes this to be done in presence of numerous witnesses, and, if needful, repeated three times, As regards the duty of showing to a brother his fault, and the delicate tenderness of doing this in private, so as not to put him to shame, Rabbinism speaks the same as the Master of Nazareth. In fact, according to Jewish criminal law, punishment could not be inflicted unless the offender (even the woman suspected of adultery) had previously been warned before witnesses. Yet, in practice, matters were very different; and neither could those be found who would take reproof, nor yet such as were worthy to adminster it.
\nQuite other was it in the Kingdom of Christ, where the theory was left undefined, but the practice clearly marked. Here, by loving dealing, to convince of his wrong him who had done it, was not humiliation nor loss of dignity or of right, but real gain: the gain of our brother to us, and eventually to Christ Himself. But even if this should fail, the offended must not desist from his service of love, but conjoin in it others with himself so as to give weight and authority to his remonstrances, as not being the outcome of personal feeling or prejudice\u2014perhaps, also, to be witnesses before the Divine tribunal. If this failed, a final appeal should be made on the part of the Church as a whole, which, of course, could only be done through her representatives and rulers, to whom Divine authority had been committed. And if that were rejected, the offer of love would, as always in the Gospel, pass into danger of judgment. Not, indeed, that such was to be executed by man, but that such an offender, after the first and second admonition, was to be rejected. He was to be treated as was the custom in regard to a heathen or a publican\u2014not persecuted, despised, or avoided, but not received in Church-fellowship (a heathen), nor admitted to close familiar intercourse (a publican). And this, as we understand it, marks out the mode of what is called Church discipline in general, and specifically as regards wrong done to a brother. Discipline so exercised (which may God restore to us) has the highest Divine sanction, and the most earnest reality attaches to it. For, in virtue of the authority which Christ had committed to the Church in the persons of her rulers and representatives, what they bound or loosed\u2014declared obligatory or non-obligatory\u2014was ratified in heaven. Nor was this to be wondered at. The Incarnation of Christ was the link which bound earth to heaven; through it whatever was agreed upon in the fellowship of Christ, as that which was to be asked, would be done for them of His Father Which was in heaven, Thus, the power of the Church reached up to heaven through the power of prayer in His Name Who made God our Father. And so, beyond the exercise of discipline and authority, there was the omnipotence of prayer\u2014\u2018if two of you shall agree \u2026 as touching anything \u2026 it shall be done for them\u2019\u2014and, with it, also the infinite possibility of a higher service of love. For, in the smallest gathering in the Name of Christ, His Presence would be, and with it the certainty of nearness to, and acceptance with, God.
\nIt is bitterly disappointing that, after such teaching, even a Peter could\u2014either immediately afterwards, or perhaps after he had had time to think it over, and apply it\u2014come to the Master with the question, how often he was to forgive an offending brother, imagining that he had more than satisfied the new requirements, if he extended it to seven times. Such traits show better than elaborate discussions the need of the mission and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. And yet there is something touching in the simplicity and honesty with which Peter goes to the Master, with such a misapprehension of His teaching, as if he had fully entered into its spirit. Surely, the new wine was bursting the old bottles. It was a principle of Rabbinism that, even if the wrongdoer had made full restoration, he would not obtain forgiveness till he had asked it of him whom he had wronged, but that it was cruelty in such circumstances to refuse pardon. The Jerusalem Talmud adds the beautiful remark: \u2018Let this be a token in thine hand\u2014each time that thou showest mercy, God will show mercy on thee; and if thou showest not mercy, neither will God show mercy on thee.\u2019 And yet it was a settled rule, that forgiveness should not be extended more than three times. Even so, the practice was terribly different. The Talmud relates, without blame, the conduct of a Rabbi, who would not forgive a very small slight of his dignity, though asked by the offender for thirteen successive years, and that on the Day of Atonement\u2014the reason being, that the offended Rabbi had learned by a dream that his offending brother would attain the highest dignity, whereupon he feigned himself irreconcilable, to force the other to migrate from Palestine to Babylon, where, unenvied by him, he might occupy the chief place!
\nAnd so it must have seemed to Peter, in his ignorance, quite a stretch of charity to extend forgiveness to seven, instead of three offences. It did not occur to him, that the very act of numbering offences marked an externalism which had never entered into, nor comprehended, the spirit of Christ. Until seven times? Nay, until seventy times seven! The evident purport of these words was to efface all such landmarks. Peter had yet to learn, what we, alas! too often forget: that as Christ\u2019s forgiveness, so that of the Christian, must not be computed by numbers. It is qualitative, not quantitative: Christ forgives sin, not sins\u2014and he who has experienced it, follows in His footsteps.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 4<\/p>\n
THE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM\u2014CHRONOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE LAST PART OF THE GOSPEL-NARRATIVES\u2014FIRST INCIDENTS BY THE WAY<\/p>\n
(St. John 7:1\u201316; St. Luke 9:1\u201356; 57\u201362; St. Matthew 8:19\u201322.)<\/p>\n
THE part in the Evangelic History which we have now reached has this peculiarity and difficulty, that the events are recorded by only one of the Evangelists. The section in St. Luke\u2019s Gospel from chapter 9:51 to chapter 18:14 stands absolutely alone. From the circumstance that St. Luke omits throughout his narrative all notation of time or place, the difficulty of arranging here the chronological succession of events is so great, that we can only suggest what seems most probable, without feeling certain of the details. Happily, the period embraced is a short one, while at the same time the narrative of St. Luke remarkably fits into that of St. John. St. John mentions three appearances of Christ in Jerusalem at that period: at the Feast of Tabernacles, at that of the Dedication, and His final entry, which is referred to by all the other Evangelists. But, while the narrative of St. John confines itself exclusively to what happened in Jerusalem or its immediate neighbourhood, it also either mentions or gives sufficient indication that on two out of these three occasions Jesus left Jerusalem for the country east of the Jordan (St. John 10:19\u201321; St. John 10:39\u201342, where the words in ver. 39, \u2018they sought again to take Him,\u2019 point to a previous similar attempt and flight). Besides these, St. John also records a journey to Bethany\u2014though not to Jerusalem\u2014for the raising of Lazarus, and after that a council against Christ in Jerusalem, in consequence of which He withdrew out of Jud\u00e6an territory into a district near \u2018the wilderness\u2019\u2014as we infer, that in the north, where John had been baptising and Christ been tempted, and whither He had afterwards withdrawn, We regard this \u2018wilderness\u2019 as on the eastern bank of the Jordan, and extending northward towards the eastern shore of the Lake of Galilee.
\nIf St. John relates three appearances of Jesus at this time in Jerusalem, St. Luke records three journeys to Jerusalem, the last of which agrees, in regard to its starting point, with the notices of the other Evangelists, always supposing that we have correctly indicated the locality of \u2018the wilderness\u2019 whither, according to St. John 11:54, Christ retired previous to His last journey to Jerusalem. In this respect, although it is impossible with our present information to localise \u2018the City of Ephraim,\u2019 the statement that it was \u2018near the wilderness,\u2019 affords us sufficient general notice of its situation. For, the New Testament speaks of only two \u2018wildernesses,\u2019 that of Jud\u00e6a in the far South, and that in the far North of Per\u00e6a, or perhaps in the Decapolis, to which St. Luke refers as the scene of the Baptist\u2019s labours, where Jesus was tempted, and whither He afterwards withdrew. We can, therefore, have little doubt that St. John refers to this district. And this entirely accords with the notices by the other Evangelists of Christ\u2019s last journey to Jerusalem, as through the borders of Galilee and Samaria, and then across the Jordan, and by Bethany to Jerusalem.
\nIt follows (as previously stated) that St. Luke\u2019s account of the three journeys to Jerusalem fits into the narrative of Christ\u2019s three appearances in Jerusalem as described by St. John. And the unique section in St. Luke supplies the record of what took place before, during, and after those journeys, of which the upshot is told by St. John. Thus much seems certain; the exact chronological succession must be, in part, matter of suggestion. But we have now some insight into the plan of St. Luke\u2019s Gospel, as compared with that of the others. We see that St. Luke forms a kind of transition, is a sort of connecting link between the other two Synoptists and St. John. This is admitted even by negative critics. The Gospel by St. Matthew has for its main object the Discourses or teaching of the Lord, around which the History groups itself. It is intended as a demonstration, primarily addressed to the Jews, and in a form peculiarly suited to them, that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. The Gospel by St. Mark is a rapid survey of the History of the Christ as such. It deals mainly with the Galilean Ministry. The Gospel by St. John, which gives the highest, the reflective, view of the Eternal Son as the Word, deals almost exclusively with the Jerusalem Ministry. And the Gospel by St. Luke complements the narratives in the other two Gospels (St. Matthew and St. Mark), and it supplements them by tracing, what is not done otherwise: the Ministry in Per\u0153a. Thus, it also forms a transition to the Fourth Gospel of the Jud\u00e6an Ministry. If we may venture a step further: The Gospel by St. Mark gives the general view of the Christ; that by St. Matthew the Jewish, that by St. Luke the Gentile, and that by St. John the Church\u2019s view. Imagination might, indeed, go still further, and see the impress of the number five\u2014that of the Pentateuch and the Book of Psalms\u2014in the First Gospel; the numeral four (that of the world) in the Second Gospel (4 \u00d7 4=16 chapters); that of three in the Third (8 \u00d7 3=24 chapters); and that of seven, the sacred Church number, in the Fourth Gospel (7 \u00d7 3=21 chapters). And perhaps we might even succeed in arranging the Gospels into corresponding sections. But this would lead, not only beyond our present task, but from solid history and exegesis into the regions of speculation.
\nThe subject, then, primarily\u2019 before us, is the journeying of Jesus to Jerusalem. In that wider view which St. Luke takes of this whole history, he presents what really were three separate journeys as one\u2014that towards the great end. In its conscious aim and object, all\u2014from the moment of His finally quitting Galilee to His final Entry into Jerusalem\u2014formed, in the highest sense, only one journey. And this St. Luke designates in a peculiar manner. Just as he had spoken, not of Christ\u2019s Death but of His \u2018Exodus,\u2019 or outgoing, which included His Resurrection and Ascension, so he now tells us that, \u2018when the days of His uptaking\u2019\u2014including and pointing to His Ascension,\u2014\u2018were being fulfilled, He also steadfastly set His Face to go to Jerusalem.\u2019
\nSt. John, indeed, goes farther back, and speaks of the circumstances which preceded His journey to Jerusalem. There is an interval, or, as we might term it, a blank, of more than half a year between the last narrative in the Fourth Gospel and this. For, the events chronicled in the sixth chapter of St. John\u2019s Gospel took place immediately before the Passover, which was on the fifteenth day of the first ecclesiastical month (Nisan), while the Feast of Tabernacles began on the same day of the seventh ecclesiastical month (Tishri). But, except in regard to the commencement of Christ\u2019s Ministry, that sixth chapter is the only one in the Gospel of St. John which refers to the Galilean Ministry of Christ. We would suggest, that what it records is partly intended to exhibit, by the side of Christ\u2019s fully developed teaching, the fully developed enmity of the Jerusalem Scribes, which led even to the defection of many former disciples. Thus, chapter 6. would be a connecting-link (both as regards the teaching of Christ and the opposition to Him) between chapter 5., which tells of His visit at the \u2018Unknown Feast,\u2019 and chapter 7., which records that at the Feast of Tabernacles. The six or seven months between the Feast of Passover and that of Tabernacles, and all that passed within them, are covered by this brief remark: \u2018After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for He would not walk in Jud\u00e6a, because the Jews [the leaders of the people] sought to kill Him.\u2019
\nBut now the Feast of Tabernacles was at hand. The pilgrims would probably arrive in Jerusalem before the opening day of the Festival. For, besides the needful preparations\u2014which would require time, especially on this Feast, when booths had to be constructed in which to live during the festive week\u2014it was (as we remember) the common practice to offer such sacrifices as might have previously become due at any of the great Feasts to which the people might go up. Remembering that five months had elapsed since the last great Feast (that of Weeks), many such sacrifices must have been due. Accordingly, the ordinary festive companies of pilgrims, which would travel slowly, must have started from Galilee some time before the beginning of the Feast. These circumstances fully explain the details of the narrative. They also afford another most painful illustration of the loneliness of Christ in His Work. His disciples had failed to understand, they misapprehended His teaching. In the near prospect of His Death they either displayed gross ignorance, or else disputed about their future rank. And His own \u2018brethren\u2019 did not believe in Him. The whole course of late events, especially the unmet challenge of the Scribes for \u2018a sign from heaven,\u2019 had deeply shaken them. What was the purpose of \u2018works,\u2019 if done in the privacy of the circle of Christ\u2019s Apostles, in a house, a remote district, or even before an ignorant multitude? If, claiming to be the Messiah, He wished to be openly known as such, He must use other means. If He really did these things, let Him manifest Himself before the world\u2014in Jerusalem, the capital of their world, and before those who could test the reality of His Works. Let Him come forward, at one of Israel\u2019s great Feasts, in the Temple, and especially at this Feast which pointed to the Messianic ingathering of all nations. Let Him now go up with them in the festive company into Jud\u00e6a, that so His disciples\u2014not the Galileans only, but all\u2014might have the opportunity of \u2018gazing\u2019 on His Works.
\nAs the challenge was not new, so, from the worldly point of view, it can scarcely be called unreasonable. It is, in fact, the same in principle as that to which the world would now submit the claims of Christianity to men\u2019s acceptance. It has only this one fault, that it ignores the world\u2019s enmity to the Christ. Discipleship is not the result of any outward manifestation by \u2018evidences\u2019 or demonstration. It requires the conversion of a child-like spirit. To manifest Himself! This truly would He do, though not in their way. For this \u2018the season\u2019 had not yet come, though it would soon arrive. Their \u2018season\u2019\u2014that for such Messianic manifestations as they contemplated\u2014was \u2018always ready.\u2019 And this naturally, for \u2018the world\u2019 could not \u2018hate\u2019 them; they and their demonstrations were quite in accordance with the world and its views. But towards Him the world cherished personal hatred, because of their contrariety of principle, because Christ was manifested, not to restore an earthly kingdom to Israel, but to bring the Heavenly Kingdom upon earth\u2014\u2018to destroy the works of the Devil.\u2019 Hence, He must provoke the enmity of that world which lay in the Wicked One. Another manifestation than that which they sought would He make, when His \u2018season was fulfilled;\u2019 soon, beginning at this very Feast, continued at the next, and completed at the last Passover; such manifestation of Himself as the Christ, as could alone be made in view of the essential enmity of the world.
\nAnd so He let them go up in the festive company, while Himself tarried. When the noise and publicity (which He wished to avoid) were no longer to be apprehended, He also went up, but privately, not publicly, as they had suggested. Here St. Luke\u2019s account begins. It almost reads like a commentary on what the Lord had just said to His brethren, about the enmity of the world, and His mode of manifestation\u2014who would not, and who would receive Him, and why. \u2018He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become children of God \u2026 which were born \u2026 of God.\u2019
\nThe first purpose of Christ seems to have been to take the more direct road to Jerusalem, through Samaria, and not to follow that of the festive pilgrim-bands, which travelled to Jerusalem through Per\u00e6a, in order to avoid the and of their hated rivals. But His intention was soon frustrated. In the very first Samaritan village to which the Christ had sent beforehand to prepare for Himself and His company, His messengers were told that the Rabbi could not be received; that neither hospitality nor friendly treatment could be extended to One Who was going up to the Feast at Jerusalem. The messengers who brought back this strangely un-Oriental answer met the Master and His followers on the road. It was not only an outrage on common manners, but an act of open hostility to Israel, as well as to Christ, and the \u2018Sons of Thunder,\u2019 whose feelings for their Master were, perhaps, the more deeply stirred as opposition to Him grew more fierce, proposed to vindicate the cause, alike of Israel and its Messiah-King, by the open and Divine judgment of fire called down from heaven to destroy that village. Did they in this connection think of the vision of Elijah, ministering to Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration\u2014and was this their application of it? Truly, they knew not of what Spirit they were to be the children and messengers. He Who had come, not to destroy, but to save, turned and rebuked them, and passed from Samaritan into Jewish territory to pursue His journey. Perhaps, indeed, He had only passed into Samaria to teach His disciples this needful lesson. The view of this event just presented seems confirmed by the circumstance, that St. Matthew lays the scene immediately following \u2018on the other side\u2019\u2014that is, in the Decapolis.
\nIt was a journey of deepest interest and importance. For, it was decisive not only as regarded the Master, but those who followed Him. Henceforth it must not be, as in former times, but wholly and exclusively, as into suffering and death. It is thus that we view the next three incidents of the way. Two of them find, also, a place in the Gospel by St. Matthew, although in a different connection, in accordance with the plan of that Gospel, which groups together the Teaching of Christ, with but secondary attention to chronological succession.
\nIt seems that, as, after the rebuff of these Samaritans, they \u2018were going\u2019 towards another, and a Jewish village, \u2018one\u2019 of the company, and, as we learn from St. Matthew, \u2018a Scribe,\u2019 in the generous enthusiasm of the moment\u2014perhaps, stimulated by the wrong of the Samaritans, perhaps, touched by the love which would rebuke the zeal of the disciples, but had no word of blame for the unkindness of others\u2014broke into a spontaneous declaration of readiness to follow Him absolutely and everywhere. Like the benediction of the woman who heard Him, it was one of those outbursts of an enthusiasm which His Presence awakened in every susceptible heart. But there was one eventuality which that Scribe, and all of like enthusiasm, reckoned not with\u2014the utter homelessness of the Christ in this world\u2014and this, not from accidental circumstances, but because He was \u2018the Son of Man.\u2019 And there is here also material for still deeper thought in the fact that this man was \u2018a Scribe,\u2019 and yet had not gone up to the Feast, but tarried near Christ\u2014was \u2018one\u2019 of those that followed Him now, and was capable of such feelings! How many whom we regard as Scribes, may be in analogous relation to the Christ, and yet how much of fair promise has failed to ripen into reality in view of the homelessness of Christ and Christianity in this world\u2014the strangership of suffering which it involves to those who would follow, not somewhere, but absolutely, and everywhere?
\nThe intenseness of the self-denial involved in following Christ, and its contrariety to all that was commonly received among men, was, purposely, immediately further brought out. This Scribe had proffered to follow Jesus. Another of His disciples He asked to follow Him, and that in circumstances of peculiar trial and difficulty. The expression \u2018to follow\u2019 a Teacher would, in those days, be universally understood as implying discipleship. Again, no other duty would be regarded as more sacred than that they, on whom the obligation naturally devolved, should bury the dead. To this everything must give way\u2014even prayer, and the study of the Law. Lastly, we feel morally certain, that, when Christ called this disciple to follow Him, He was fully aware that at that very moment his father lay dead. Thus, He called him not only to homelessness\u2014for this he might have been prepared\u2014but to set aside what alike natural feeling and the Jewish Law seemed to impose on him as the most sacred duty. In the seemingly strange reply, which Christ made to the request to be allowed first to bury his father, we pass over the consideration that, according to Jewish law, the burial and mourning for a dead father, and the subsequent purifications, would have occupied many days, so that it might have been difficult, perhaps impossible, to overtake Christ. We would rather abide by the simple words of Christ. They teach us this very solemn and searching lesson, that there are higher duties than either those of the Jewish Law, or even of natural reverence, and a higher call than that of man. No doubt Christ had here in view the near call to the Seventy\u2014of whom this disciple was to be one\u2014to \u2018go and preach the Kingdom of God.\u2019 When the direct call of Christ to any work comes\u2014that is, if we are sure of it from His own words, and not (as, alas! too often we do) only infer it by our own reasoning on His words\u2014then every other call must give way. For, duties can never be in conflict\u2014and this duty about the living and life must take precedence of that about death and the dead. Nor must we hesitate, because we know not in what form this work for Christ may come. There are critical moments in our inner history, when to postpone the immediate call, is really to reject it; when to go and bury the dead\u2014even though it were a dead father\u2014were to die ourselves!
\nYet another hindrance to following Christ was to be faced. Another in the company that followed Christ would go with Him, but he asked permission first to go and bid farewell to those whom he had left in his home. It almost seems as if this request had been one of those \u2018tempting\u2019 questions, addressed to Christ. But, even if otherwise, the farewell proposed was not like that of Elisha, nor like the supper of Levi-Matthew. It was rather like the year which Jephtha\u2019s daughter would have with her companions, ere fulfilling the vow. It shows, that to follow Christ was regarded as a duty, and to leave those in the earthly home as a trial; and it betokens, not merely a divided heart, but one not fit for the Kingdom of God. For, how can he draw a straight furrow in which to cast the seed, who, as he puts his hand to the plough, looks around or behind him?
\nThus, these are the three vital conditions of following Christ: absolute self-denial and homelessness in the world; immediate and entire self-surrender to Christ and His Work; and a heart and affections simple, undivided, and set on Christ and His Work, to which there is no other trial of parting like that which would involve parting from Him, no other or higher joy than that of following Him. In such spirit let them now go after Christ in His last journey\u2014and to such work as He will appoint them!<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 5<\/p>\n
FURTHER INCIDENTS OF THE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM\u2014THE MISSION AND RETURN OF THE SEVENTY\u2014THE HOME AT BETHANY\u2014MARTHA AND MARY<\/p>\n
(St. Luke 10:1\u201316; St. Matt. 9:36\u201338; 11:20\u201324; St. Luke 10:17\u201324; St. Matt. 11:25\u201330; 13:16; St. Luke 10:25; 38\u201342.)<\/p>\n
ALTHOUGH, for the reasons explained in the previous chapter, the exact succession of events cannot be absolutely determined, it seems most likely, that it was on His progress southwards at this time that Jesus \u2018designated\u2019 those \u2018seventy\u2019 \u2018others,\u2019 who were to herald His arrival in every town and village. Even the circumstance, that the instructions to them are so similar to, and yet distinct from, those formerly given to the Twelve, seems to point to them as those from whom the Seventy are to be distinguished as \u2018other.\u2019 We judge, that they were sent forth at this time, first, from the Gospel of St. Luke, where this whole section appears as a distinct and separate record, presumably, chronologically arranged; secondly, from the fitness of such a mission at that particular period, when Jesus made His last Missionary progress towards Jerusalem; and, thirdly, from the unlikelihood, if not impossibility, of taking such a public step after the persecution which broke out after His appearance at Jerusalem on the Feast of Tabernacles. At any rate, it could not have taken place later than in the period between the Feast of Tabernacles and that of the Dedication of the Temple, since, after that, Jesus \u2018walked no more openly among the Jews.\u2019
\nWith all their similarity, there are notable differences between the Mission of the Twelve and this of \u2018the other Seventy.\u2019 Let it be noted, that the former is recorded by the three Evangelists, so that there could have been no confusion on the part of St. Luke. But the mission of the Twelve was on their appointment to the Apostolate; it was evangelistic and missionary; and it was in confirmation and manifestation of the \u2018power and authority\u2019 given to them. We regard it, therefore, as symbolical of the Apostolate just instituted, with its work and authority. On the other hand, no power or authority was formally conferred on the Seventy, their mission being only temporary, and, indeed, for one definite purpose; its primary object was to prepare for the coming of the Master in the places to which they were sent; and their selection was from the wider circle of disciples, the number being now Seventy instead of Twelve. Even these two numbers, as well as the difference in the functions of the two classes of messengers, seem to indicate that the Twelve symbolised the princes of the tribes of Israel, while the Seventy were the symbolical representatives of these tribes, like the seventy elders appointed to assist Moses. This symbolical meaning of the number Seventy continued among the Jews. We can trace it in the LXX. (supposed) translators of the Bible into Greek, and in the seventy members of the Sanhedrin, or supreme court.
\nThere was something very significant in this appearance of Christ\u2019s messengers, by two and two, in every place He was about to visit. As John the Baptist had, at the first, heralded the Coming of Christ, so now two heralds appeared to solemnly announce His Advent at the close of His Ministry; as John had sought, as the representative of the Old Testament Church, to prepare His Way, so they, as the representatives of the New Testament Church. In both cases the preparation sought was a moral one. It was the national summons to open the gates to the rightful King, and accept His rule. Only, the need was now the greater for the failure of John\u2019s mission, through the misunderstanding and disbelief of the nation. This conjunction with John the Baptist and the failure of his mission, as regarded national results, accounts for the insertion in St. Matthew\u2019s Gospel of part of the address delivered on the Mission of the Seventy, immediately after the record of Christ\u2019s rebuke of the national rejection of the Baptist. For St. Matthew, who (as well as St. Mark) records not the Mission of the Seventy\u2014simply because (as before explained) the whole section, of Which it forms part, is peculiar to St. Luke\u2019s Gospel\u2014reports \u2018the Discourses\u2019 connected with it in other, and to them congruous, connections.
\nWe mark, that, what may be termed \u2018the Preface\u2019 to the Mission of the Seventy, is given by St. Matthew (in a somewhat fuller form) as that to the appointment and mission of the Twelve Apostles; and it may have been, that kindred words had preceded both. Partially, indeed, the expressions reported in St. Luke 10:2 had been employed long before. Those \u2018multitudes\u2019 throughout Israel\u2014nay, those also which \u2018are not of that flock\u2019\u2014appeared to His view like sheep without a true shepherd\u2019s care, \u2018distressed and prostrate,\u2019 and their mute misery and only partially conscious longing appealed, and not in vain, to His Divine compassion. This constituted the ultimate ground of the Mission of the Apostles, and now of that of the Seventy, into a harvest that was truly great. Compared with the extent of the field, and the urgency of the work, how few were the labourers! Yet, as the field was God\u2019s, so also could He alone \u2018thrust forth labourers\u2019 willing and able to do His work, while it must be ours to pray that He would be pleased to do so.
\nOn these introductory words, which ever since have formed \u2018the bidding prayer\u2019 of the Church in her work for Christ, followed the commission and special directions to the thirty-five pairs of disciples who went on this embassy. In almost every particular they are the same as those formerly given to the Twelve. We mark, however, that both the introductory and the concluding words addressed to the Apostles are wanting in what was said to the Seventy. It was not necessary to warn them against going to the Samaritans, since the direction of the Seventy was to those cities of Per\u00e6a and Jud\u00e6a, on the road to Jerusalem, through which Christ was about to pass. Nor were they armed with precisely the same supernatural powers as the Twelve. Naturally, the personal directions as to their conduct were in both cases substantially the same. We mark only three peculiarities in those addressed to the Seventy. The direction to \u2018salute no man by the way\u2019 was suitable to a temporary and rapid mission, which might have been sadly interrupted by making or renewing acquaintances. Both the Mishnah and the Talmud lay it down, that prayer was not to be interrupted to salute even a king, nay, to uncoil a serpent that had wound round the foot. On the other hand, the Rabbis discussed the question, whether the reading of the Shema and of the portion of the Psalms called the Hallel might be interrupted at the close of a paragraph, from respect for a person, or interrupted in the middle, from motives of fear. All agreed, that immediately before prayer no one should be saluted, to prevent distraction, and it was advised rather to summarise or to cut short than to break into prayer, though the latter might be admissible in case of absolute necessity. None of these provisions, however, seems to have been in the mind of Christ. If any parallel is to be sought, it would be found in the similar direction of Elisha to Gehazi, when sent to lay the prophet\u2019s staff on the dead child of the Shunammite.
\nThe other two peculiarities in the address to the Seventy seem verbal rather than real. The expression, \u2018if the Son of Peace be there,\u2019 is a Hebraism, equivalent to \u2018if the house be worthy,\u2019 and refers to the character of the head of the house and the tone of the household. Lastly, the direction to eat and drink such things as were set before them is only a further explanation of the command to abide in the house which had received them, without seeking for better entertainment. On the other hand, the whole most important close of the address to the Twelve\u2014which, indeed, forms by far the largest part of it\u2014is wanting in the commission to the Seventy, thus clearly marking its merely temporary character.
\nIn St. Luke\u2019s Gospel, the address to the Seventy is followed by a denunciation of Chorazin and Bethsaida. This is evidently in its right place there, after the Ministry of Christ in Galilee had been completed and finally rejected. In St. Matthew\u2019s Gospel, it stands (for a reason already indicated) immediately after the Lord\u2019s rebuke of the popular rejection of the Baptist\u2019s message. The \u2018woe\u2019 pronounced on those cities, in which \u2018most of His mighty works were done,\u2019 is in proportion to the greatness of their privileges. The denunciation of Chorazin and Bethsaida is the more remarkable, that Chorazin is not otherwise mentioned in the Gospels, nor yet any miracles recorded as having taken place in (the western) Bethsaida. From this two inferences seem inevitable. First, this history must be real. If the whole were legendary, Jesus would not be represented as selecting the names of places, which the writer had not connected with the legend. Again, apparently no record has been preserved in the Gospels of most of Christ\u2019s miracles\u2014only those being narrated, which were necessary in order to present Jesus as the Christ, in accordance with the respective plans on which each of the Gospels was constructed.
\nAs already stated, the denunciations were in proportion to the privileges, and hence to the guilt, of the unbelieving cities. Chorazin and Bethsaida are compared with Tyre and Sidon, which under similar admonitions would have repented, while Capernaum, which, as for so long the home of Jesus, had truly \u2018been exalted to heaven,\u2019 is compared with Sodom. And such guilt involved greater punishment. The very site of Bethsaida and Chorazin cannot be fixed with certainty. The former probably represents the \u2018Fisherton\u2019 of Capernaum, the latter seems to have almost disappeared from the shore of the Lake. St. Jerome places it two miles from Capernaum. If so, it may be represented by the modern Ker\u00e2zeh, somewhat to the north-west of Capernaum. The site would correspond with the name. For Ker\u00e2zeh is at present \u2018a spring with an insignificant ruin above it,\u2019 and the name Chorazin may well be derived from Keroz (\u05db\u05b0\u05e8\u05d5\u05b9\u05d6) a water-jar\u2014Cherozin, or \u2018Chorazin,\u2019 the water-jars. If so, we can readily understand that the \u2018Fisherton\u2019 on the south side of Capernaum, and the well-known springs, \u2018Chorazin,\u2019 on the other side of it, may have been the frequent scene of Christ\u2019s miracles. This explains also, in part, why the miracles there wrought had not been told as well as those done in Capernaum itself. In the Talmud a Chorazin, or rather Chorzim, is mentioned as celebrated for its wheat. But as for Capernaum itself\u2014standing on that vast field of ruins and upturned stones which marks the site of the modern Tell H\u00fbm, we feel that no description of it could be more pictorially true than that in which Christ prophetically likened the city in its downfall to the desolateness of death and \u2018Hades.\u2019
\nWhether or not the Seventy actually returned to Jesus before the Feast of Tabernacles, it is convenient to consider in this connection the result of their Mission. It had filled them with the \u2018joy\u2019 of assurance; nay, the result had exceeded their expectations, just as their faith had gone beyond the mere letter unto the spirit of His Words. As they reported it to Him, even the demons had been subject to them through His Name. In this they had exceeded the letter of Christ\u2019s commission; but as they made experiment of it, their faith had grown, and they had applied His command to \u2018heal the sick\u2019 to the worst of all sufferers, those grievously vexed by demons. And, as always, their faith was not disappointed. Nor could it be otherwise. The great contest had been long decided; it only remained for the faith of the Church to gather the fruits of that victory. The Prince of Light and Life had vanquished the Prince of Darkness and Death. The Prince of this world must be cast out. In spirit, Christ gazed on \u2018Satan fallen as lightning from heaven.\u2019 As one has aptly paraphrased it: \u2018While you cast out his subjects, I saw the prince himself fall.\u2019 It has been asked, whether the words of Christ referred to any particular event, such as His Victory in the Temptation. But any such limitation would imply grievous misunderstanding of the whole. So to speak, the fall of Satan is to the bottomless pit; ever going on to the final triumph of Christ. As the Lord beholds him, he is fallen from heaven\u2014from the seat of power and of worship; for, his mastery is broken by the Stronger than he. And he is fallen like lightning, in its rapidity, dazzling splendour, and destructiveness. Yet as we perceive it, it is only demons cast out in His Name. For still is this fight, and sight continued, and to all ages of the present dispensation. Each time the faith of the Church casts out demons\u2014whether as they formerly, or as they presently vex men, whether in the lighter combat about possession of the body, or in the sorer fight about possession of the soul\u2014as Christ beholds it, it is ever Satan fallen. For, He sees of the travail of His soul, and is satisfied! And so also is there joy in heaven over every sinner that repenteth.
\nThe authority and power over \u2018the demons,\u2019 attained by faith, was not to pass away with the occasion that had called it forth. The Seventy were the representatives of the Church in her work of preparing for the Advent of Christ. As already indicated, the sight of Satan fallen from heaven is the continuous history of the Church. What the faith of the Seventy had attained was now to be made permanent to the Church, whose representatives they were. For, the words in which Christ now gave authority and power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the Enemy, and the promise that nothing should hurt them, could not have been addressed to the Seventy for a Mission which had now come to an end, except in so far as they represented the Church Universal. It is almost needless to add, that those \u2018serpents and scorpions\u2019 are not to be literally but symbolically understood. Yet it is not this power or authority which is to be the main joy either of the Church or the individual, but the fact that our names are written in heaven. And so Christ brings us back to His great teaching about the need of becoming children, and wherein lies the secret of true greatness in the Kingdom.
\nIt is beautifully in the spirit of all this, when we read that the joy of the disciples was met by that of the Master, and that His teaching presently merged into a prayer of thanksgiving. Throughout the occurrences since the Transfiguration, we have noticed an increasing antithesis to the teaching of the Rabbis. But it almost reached its climax in the thanksgiving, that the Father in heaven had hid these things from the wise and the understanding, and revealed them unto babes. As we view it in the light of those times, we know that \u2018the wise and understanding\u2019\u2014the Rabbi and the Scribe\u2014could not, from their standpoint, have perceived them; nay, that it is matter of never-ending thanks that, not what they, but what \u2018the babes,\u2019 understood, was\u2014as alone it could be\u2014the subject of the Heavenly Father\u2019s revelation. We even tremble to think how it would have fared with \u2018the babes,\u2019 if \u2018the wise and understanding\u2019 had had part with them in the knowledge revealed. And so it must ever be, not only the law of the Kingdom and the fundamental principle of Divine Revelation, but matter for thanksgiving, that, not as \u2018wise and understanding,\u2019 but only as \u2018babes\u2019\u2014as \u2018converted,\u2019 \u2018like children\u2019\u2014we can share in that knowledge which maketh wise unto salvation. And this truly is the Gospel, and the Father\u2019s good pleasure.
\nThe words, with which Christ turned from this Address to the Seventy and thanksgiving to God, seem almost like the Father\u2019s answer to the prayer of the Son. They refer to, and explain, the authority which Jesus had bestowed on His Church: \u2018All things were delivered to Me of My Father;\u2019 and they afford the highest rationale for the fact, that these things had been hid from the wise and revealed unto babes. For, as no man, only the Father, could have full knowledge of the Son, and, conversely, no man, only the Son, had true knowledge of the Father, it followed, that this knowledge came to us, not of wisdom or learning, but only through the Revelation of Christ: \u2018No 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.\u2019
\nSt. Matthew, who also records this\u2014although in a different connection, immediately after the denunciation of the unbelief of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum\u2014concludes this section by words which have ever since been the grand text of those who, following in the wake of the Seventy, have been ambassadors for Christ. On the other hand, St. Luke concludes this part of his narrative by adducing words equally congruous to the occasion, which, indeed, are not new in the mouth of the Lord. From their suitableness to what had preceded, we can have little doubt that both that which St. Matthew, and that which St. Luke, reports was spoken on this occasion. Because knowledge of the Father came only through the Son, and because these things were hidden from the wise and revealed to \u2018babes,\u2019 did the gracious Lord open His Arms so wide, and bid all that laboured and were heavy laden come to Him. These were the sheep, distressed and prostrate, whom to gather, that He might give them rest, He had sent forth the Seventy on a work, for which He had prayed the Father to thrust forth labourers, and which He has since entrusted to the faith and service of love of the Church. And the true wisdom, which qualified for the Kingdom, was to take up His yoke, which would be found easy, and a lightsome burden, not like that unbearable yoke of Rabbinic conditions; and the true understanding to be sought, was by learning of Him. In that wisdom of entering the Kingdom by taking up its yoke, and in that knowledge which came by learning of Him, Christ was Himself alike the true lesson and the best Teacher for those \u2018babes.\u2019 For He is meek and lowly in heart. He had done what He taught, and He taught what He had done; and so, by coming unto Him, would true rest be found for the soul.
\nThese words, as recorded by St. Matthew\u2014the Evangelist of the Jews\u2014must have sunk the deeper into the hearts of Christ\u2019s Jewish hearers, that they came in their own old familiar form of speech, yet with such contrast of spirit. One of the most common figurative expressions of the time was that of \u2018the yoke\u2019 (\u05e2\u05d5\u05dc), to indicate submission to an occupation or obligation. Thus, we read not only of the \u2018yoke of the Law,\u2019 but of that of \u2018earthly governments,\u2019 and ordinary \u2018civil obligations.\u2019 Very instructive for the understanding of the figure is this paraphrase of Cant. 1:10: \u2018How beautiful is their neck for bearing the yoke of Thy statutes; and it shall be upon them like the yoke on the neck of the ox that plougheth in the field, and provideth food for himself and his master.\u2019 This yoke might be \u2018cast off,\u2019 as the ten tribes had cast off that \u2018of God,\u2019 and thus brought on themselves their exile. On the other hand, to \u2018take upon oneself the yoke\u2019 (\u05e7\u05d1\u05dc \u05e2\u05d5\u05dc) meant to submit to it of free choice and deliberate resolution. Thus, in the allegorism of the Midrash, in the inscription, Prov. 30:1, concerning \u2018Agur, the son of Jakeh\u2019\u2014which is viewed as a symbolical designation of Solomon\u2014the word \u2018Massa,\u2019 rendered in the Authorised Version \u2018prophecy,\u2019 is thus explained in reference to Solomon: \u2018Massa, because he lifted on himself (Nasa) the yoke of the Holy One, blessed be He.\u2019 And of Isaiah it was said, that he had been privileged to prophesy of so many blessings, \u2018because he had taken upon himself the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven with joy.\u2019 And, as previously stated, it was set forth that in the \u2018Shema,\u2019 or Creed\u2014which was repeated every day\u2014the words, Deut. 6:4\u20139, were recited before those in 11:13\u201321, so as first generally to \u2018take upon ourselves the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, and only afterwards that of the commandments.\u2019 And this yoke all Israel had taken upon itself, thereby gaining the merit ever afterwards imputed to them.
\nYet, practically, \u2018the yoke of the Kingdom\u2019 was none other than that \u2018of the Law\u2019 and \u2018of the commandments;\u2019 one of laborious performances and of impossible self-righteousness. It was \u2018unbearable,\u2019 not \u2018the easy\u2019 and lightsome yoke of Christ, in which the Kingdom of God was of faith, not of works. And, as if themselves to bear witness to this, we have this saying of theirs, terribly significant in this connection: \u2018Not like those formerly (the first), who made for themselves the yoke of the Law easy and light; but like those after them (those afterwards), who made the yoke of the Law upon them heavy!\u2019 And, indeed, this voluntary making of the yoke as heavy as possible, the taking on themselves as many obligations as possible, was the ideal of Rabbinic piety. There was, therefore, peculiar teaching and comfort in the words of Christ; and well might He add, as St. Luke reports, that blessed were they who saw and heard these things. For, that Messianic Kingdom, which had been the object of rapt vision and earnest longing to prophets and kings of old, had now become reality.
\nAbounding as this history is in contrasts, it seems not unlikely, that the scene next recorded by St. Luke stands in its right place. Such an inquiry on the part of a \u2018certain lawyer,\u2019 as to what he should do to inherit eternal life, together with Christ\u2019s Parabolic teaching about the Good Samaritan, is evidently congruous to the previous teaching of Christ about entering into the Kingdom of Heaven. Possibly, this Scribe may have understood the words of the Master about these things being hid from the wise, and the need of taking up the yoke of the Kingdom, as enforcing the views of those Rabbinic teachers, who laid more stress upon good works than upon study. Perhaps himself belonged to that minority, although his question was intended to tempt\u2014to try whether the Master would stand the Rabbinic test, alike morally and dialectically. And, without at present entering on the Parable which gives Christ\u2019s final answer (and which will best be considered together with the others belonging to that period), it will be seen how peculiarly suited it was to the state of mind just supposed.
\nFrom this interruption, which, but for the teaching of Christ connected with it, would have formed a terrible discord in the heavenly harmony of this journey, we turn to a far other scene. It follows in the course of St. Luke\u2019s narrative, and we have no reason to consider it out of its proper place. If so, it must mark the close of Christ\u2019s journey to the Feast of Tabernacles, since the home of Martha and Mary, to which it introduces us, was in Bethany, close to Jerusalem, almost one of its suburbs. Other indications, confirmatory of this note of time, are not wanting. Thus, the history which follows that of the home of Bethany, when one of His disciples asks Him to teach them to pray, as the Baptist had similarly taught his followers, seems to indicate, that they were then on the scene of John\u2019s former labours\u2014north-east of Bethany; and, hence, that it occurred on Christ\u2019s return from Jerusalem. Again, from the narrative of Christ\u2019s reception in the house of Martha, we gather that Jesus had arrived in Bethany with His disciples, but that He alone was the guest of the two sisters. We infer that Christ had dismissed His disciples to go into the neighbouring City for the Feast, while Himself tarried in Bethany. Lastly, with all this agrees the notice in St. John 7:14, that it was not at the beginning, but \u2018about the midst of the feast,\u2019 that \u2018Jesus went up into the Temple.\u2019 Although travelling on the two first festive days was not actually unlawful, yet we can scarcely conceive that Jesus would have done so\u2014especially on the Feast of Tabernacles; and the inference is obvious, that Jesus had tarried in the immediate neighbourhood, as we know He did at Bethany in the house of Martha and Mary.
\nOther things, also, do so explain themselves\u2014notably, the absence of the brother of Martha and Mary, who probably spent the festive days in the City itself. It was the beginning of the Feast of Tabernacles, and the scene recorded by St. Luke would take place in the open leafy booth which served as the sitting apartment during the festive week. For, according to law, it was duty during the festive week to eat, sleep, pray, study\u2014in short, to live\u2014in these booths, which were to be constructed of the boughs of living trees. And, although this was not absolutely obligatory on women, yet, the rule which bade all make \u2018the booth the principal, and the house only the secondary dwelling,\u2019 would induce them to make this leafy tent at least the sitting apartment alike for men and women. And, indeed, those autumn days were just the season when it would be joy to sit in these delightful cool retreats\u2014the memorials of Israel\u2019s pilgrim-days! They were high enough, and yet not too high; chiefly open in front; close enough to be shady, and yet not so close as to exclude sunlight and air. Such would be the apartment in which what is recorded passed; and, if we add that this booth stood probably in the court, we can picture to ourselves Martha moving forwards and backwards on her busy errands, and seeing, as she passed again and again, Mary still sitting a rapt listener, not heeding what passed around; and, lastly, how the elder sister could, as the language of verse 40 implies, enter so suddenly the Master\u2019s Presence, bringing her complaint.
\nTo understand this history, we must dismiss from our minds preconceived, though, perhaps, attractive thoughts. There is no evidence that the household of Bethany had previously belonged to the circle of Christ\u2019s professed disciples. It was, as the whole history shows, a wealthy home. It consisted of two sisters\u2014the elder, Martha (a not uncommon Jewish name, being the feminine of Mar, and equivalent to our word \u2018mistress\u2019); the younger, Mary; and their brother Lazarus, or, Laazar. Although we know not how it came, yet, evidently, the house was Martha\u2019s, and into it she received Jesus on His arrival in Bethany. It would have been no uncommon occurrence in Israel for a pious, wealthy lady to receive a great Rabbi into her house. But the present was not an ordinary case. Martha must have heard of Him, even if she had not seen Him. But, indeed, the whole narrative implies, that Jesus had come to Bethany with the view of accepting the hospitality of Martha, which probably had been proffered when some of those \u2018Seventy,\u2019 sojourning in the worthiest house at Bethany, had announced the near arrival of the Master. Still, her bearing affords only indication of being drawn towards Christ\u2014at most, of a sincere desire to learn the good news, not of actual discipleship.
\nAnd so Jesus came\u2014and, with Him and in Him, Heaven\u2019s own Light and Peace. He was to lodge in one of the booths, the sisters in the house, and the great booth in the middle of the courtyard would be the common living apartment of all. It could not have been long after His arrival\u2014it must have been almost immediately, that the sisters felt they had received more than an Angel unawares. How best to do Him honour, was equally the thought of both. To Martha it seemed, as if she could not do enough in showing Him all hospitality. And, indeed, this festive season was a busy time for the mistress of a wealthy household, especially in the near neighbourhood of Jerusalem, whence her brother might, after the first two festive days, bring with him, any time that week, honoured guests from the City. To these cares was now added that of doing sufficient honour to such a Guest\u2014for she, also, deeply felt His greatness. And so she hurried to and fro through the courtyard, literally, \u2018distracted about much serving.\u2019
\nHer younger sister, also, would do Him all highest honour; but, not as Martha. Her homage consisted in forgetting all else but Him, Who spake as none had ever done. As truest courtesy or affection consists, not in its demonstrations, but in being so absorbed in the object of it as to forget its demonstration, so with Mary in the Presence of Christ. And then a new Light, another Day, had risen upon her; a fresh life had sprung up within her soul: \u2018She sat at the Lord\u2019s Feet, and heard His Word.\u2019 We dare not inquire, and yet we well know, of what it would be. And so, time after time\u2014perhaps, hour after hour\u2014as Martha passed on her busy way, she still sat listening and living. At last, the sister who, in her impatience, could not think that a woman could, in such manner, fulfil her duty, or show forth her religious profiting, broke in with what sounds like a querulous complaint: \u2018Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister did leave me to serve alone?\u2019 Mary had served with her, but she had now left her to do the work alone. Would the Master bid her resume her neglected work? But, with tone of gentle reproof and admonition, the affectionateness of which appeared even in the repetition of her name, Martha, Martha\u2014as, similarly, on a later occasion, Simon, Simon\u2014did He teach her in words which, however simple in their primary meaning, are so full, that they have ever since borne the most many-sided application: \u2018Thou art careful and anxious about many things: but one thing is needful; and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.\u2019
\nIt was, as we imagine, perhaps the first day of, or else the preparation for, the Feast. More than that one day did Jesus tarry in the home of Bethany. Whether Lazarus came then to see Him\u2014and, still more, what both Martha and Mary learned, either then, or afterwards, we reverently forbear to search into. Suffice it, that though the natural disposition of the sisters remained what it had been, yet henceforth, \u2018Jesus loved Martha and her sister.\u2019<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 6<\/p>\n
AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES\u2014FIRST DISCOURSE IN THE TEMPLE<\/p>\n
(St. John 7:11\u201336.)<\/p>\n
IT was Chol ha Moed\u2014as the non-sacred part of the festive week, the half-holy days were called. Jerusalem, the City of Solemnities, the City of Palaces, the City of beauty and glory, wore quite another than its usual aspect; other, even, than when its streets were thronged by festive pilgrims during the Passover-week, or at Pentecost. For this was pre-eminently the Feast for foreign pilgrims, coming from the farthest distance, whose Temple-contributions were then received and counted. Despite the strange costumes of Media, Arabia, Persia, or India, and even further; or the Western speech and bearing of the pilgrims from Italy, Spain, the modern Crimea, and the banks of the Danube, if not from yet more strange and barbarous lands, it would not be difficult to recognise the lineaments of the Jew, nor to perceive that to change one\u2019s clime was not to change one\u2019s mind. As the Jerusalemite would look with proud self-consciousness, not unmingled with kindly patronage, on the swarthy strangers, yet fellow-countrymen, or the eager-eyed Galilean curiously stare after them, the pilgrims would, in turn, gaze with mingled awe and wonderment on the novel scene. Here was the realisation of their fondest dreams ever since childhood, the home and spring of their holiest thoughts and best hopes\u2014that which gave inward victory to the vanquished, and converted persecution into anticipated triumph.
\nThey could come at this season of the year\u2014not during the winter for the Passover, nor yet quite so readily in summer\u2019s heat for Pentecost. But now, in the delicious cool of early autumn, when all harvest-operations, the gathering in of luscious fruit and the vintage were past, and the first streaks of gold were tinting the foliage, strangers from afar off, and countrymen from Jud\u00e6a, Per\u00e6a, and Galilee, would mingle in the streets of Jerusalem, under the ever-present shadow of that glorious Sanctuary of marble, cedarwood, and gold, up there on high Moriah, symbol of the infinitely more glorious overshadowing Presence of Him, Who was the Holy One in the midst of Israel. How all day long, even till the stars lit up the deep blue canopy over head, the smoke of the burning, smouldering sacrifices rose in slowly-widening column, and hung between the Mount of Olives and Zion; how the chant of Levites, and the solemn responses of the Hallel were borne on the breeze, or the clear blast of the Priests\u2019 silver trumpets seemed to waken the echoes far away! And then, at night, how all these vast Temple-buildings stood out, illuminated by the great Candelabras that burned in the Court of the Women, and by the glare of torches, when strange sound of mystic hymns and dances came floating over the intervening darkness! Truly, well might Israel designate the Feast of Tabernacles as \u2018the Feast\u2019 (haChag), and the Jewish historian describe it as \u2018the holiest and greatest.\u2019
\nEarly on the 14th Tishri (corresponding to our September or early October), all the festive pilgrims had arrived. Then it was, indeed, a scene of bustle and activity. Hospitality had to be sought and found; guests to be welcomed and entertained; all things required for the feast to be got ready. Above all, booths must be erected everywhere\u2014in court and on housetop, in street and square, for the lodgment and entertainment of that vast multitude; leafy dwellings everywhere, to remind of the wilderness-journey, and now of the goodly land. Only that fierce castle, Antonia, which frowned above the Temple, was undecked by the festive spring into which the land had burst. To the Jew it must have been a hateful sight, that castle, which guarded and dominated his own City and Temple\u2014hateful sight and sounds, that Roman garrison, with its foreign, heathen, ribald speech and manners. Yet, for all this, Israel could not read on the lowering sky the signs of the times, nor yet knew the day of their merciful visitation. And this, although of all festivals, that of Tabernacles should have most clearly pointed them to the future.
\nIndeed, the whole symbolism of the Feast, beginning with the completed harvest, for which it was a thanksgiving, pointed to the future. The Rabbis themselves admitted this. The strange number of sacrificial bullocks\u2014seventy in all\u2014they regarded as referring to \u2018the seventy nations\u2019 of heathendom. The ceremony of the outpouring of water, which was considered of such vital importance as to give to the whole festival the name of \u2018House of Outpouring,\u2019 was symbolical of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. As the brief night of the great Temple-illumination closed, there was solemn testimony made before Jehovah against heathenism. It must have been a stirring scene, when from out the mass of Levites, with their musical instruments, who crowded the fifteen steps that led from the Court of Israel to that of the Women, stepped two priests with their silver trumpets. As the first cockcrowing intimated the dawn of morn, they blew a threefold blast; another on the tenth step, and yet another threefold blast as they entered the Court of the Women. And, still sounding their trumpets, they marched through the Court of the Women to the Beautiful Gate. Here, turning round and facing westwards to the Holy Place, they repeated: \u2018Our fathers, who were in this place, they turned their backs on the Sanctuary of Jehovah, and their faces eastward, for they worshipped eastward, the sun; but we, our eyes are towards Jehovah.\u2019 \u2018We are Jehovah\u2019s\u2014our eyes are towards Jehovah.\u2019 Nay, the whole of this night- and morning-scene was symbolical: the Temple-illumination, of the light which was to shine from out the Temple into the dark night of heathendom; then, at the first dawn of morn the blast of the priests\u2019 silver trumpets, of the army of God, as it advanced, with festive trumpet-sound and call, to awaken the sleepers, marching on to quite the utmost bounds of the Sanctuary, to the Beautiful Gate, which opened upon the Court of the Gentiles\u2014and, then again, facing round to utter solemn protest against heathenism, and make solemn confession of Jehovah!
\nBut Jesus did not appear in the Temple during the first two festive days. The pilgrims from all parts of the country\u2014perhaps, they from abroad also\u2014had expected Him there, for everyone would now speak of Him\u2014\u2018not openly,\u2019 in Jerusalem, for they were afraid of their rulers. It was hardly safe to speak of Him without reserve. But they sought Him, and inquired after Him\u2014and they did speak of Him, though there was only a murmuring\u2014a low, confused discussion of the pro and con. in this great controversy among the \u2018multitudes,\u2019 or festive bands from various parts. Some said: He is a good man, while others declared that He only led astray the common, ignorant populace. And now, all at once, in Chol ha Moed, Jesus Himself appeared in the Temple, and taught. We know that, on a later occasion, He walked and taught in \u2018Solomon\u2019s Porch,\u2019 and, from the circumstance that the early disciples made this their common meeting-place, we may draw the inference that it was here the people now found Him. Although neither Josephus nor the Mishnah mention this \u2018Porch\u2019 by name, we have every reason for believing that it was the eastern colonnade, which abutted against the Mount of Olives and faced \u2018the Beautiful Gate,\u2019 that formed the principal entrance into the \u2018Court of the Women,\u2019 and so into the Sanctuary. For, all along the inside of the great wall which formed the Temple-enclosure ran a double colonnade\u2014each column a monolith of white marble, 25 cubits high, covered with cedar-beams. That on the south side (leading from the western entrance to Solomon\u2019s Porch), known as the \u2018Royal Porch,\u2019 was a threefold colonnade, consisting of four rows of columns, each 27 cubits high, and surmounted by Corinthian capitals. We infer that the eastern was \u2018Solomon\u2019s Porch,\u2019 from the circumstance that it was the only relic left of Solomon\u2019s Temple. These colonnades, which, from their ample space, formed alike places for quiet walk and for larger gatherings, had benches in them\u2014and, from the liberty of speaking and teaching in Israel, Jesus might here address the people in the very face of His enemies.
\nWe know not what was the subject of Christ\u2019s teaching on this occasion. But the effect on the people was one of general astonishment. They knew what common unlettered Galilean tradesmen were\u2014but this, whence came it? \u2018How does this one know literature (letters, learning), never having learned?\u2019 To the Jews there was only one kind of learning\u2014that of Theology; and only one road to it\u2014the Schools of the Rabbis. Their major was true, but their minor false\u2014and Jesus hastened to correct it. He had, indeed, \u2018learned,\u2019 but in a School quite other than those which alone they recognised. Yet, on their own showing, it claimed the most absolute submission. Among the Jews a Rabbi\u2019s teaching derived authority from the fact of its accordance with tradition\u2014that it accurately represented what had been received from a previous great teacher, and so on upwards to Moses, and to God Himself. On this ground Christ claimed the highest authority. His doctrine was not His own invention\u2014it was the teaching of Him that sent Him. The doctrine was God-received, and Christ was sent direct from God to bring it. He was God\u2019s messenger of it to them. Of this twofold claim there was also twofold evidence. Did He assert that what He taught was God-received? Let trial be made of it. Everyone who in his soul felt drawn towards God; each one who really \u2018willeth to do His Will,\u2019 would know \u2018concerning this teaching, whether it is of God,\u2019 or whether it was of man. It was this felt, though unrealised influence which had drawn all men after Him, so that they hung on His lips. It was this which, in the hour of greatest temptation and mental difficulty, had led Peter, in name of the others, to end the sore inner contest by laying hold on this fact: \u2018To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life\u2014and we have believed and know, that Thou art the Holy One of God.\u2019 Marking, as we pass, that this inward connection between that teaching and learning and the present occasion, may be the deeper reason why, in the Gospel by St. John, the one narrative is immediately followed by the other, we pause to say, how real it hath proved in all ages and to all stages of Christian learning\u2014that the heart makes the truly God-taught (\u2018pectus facit Theologum\u2019), and that inward, true aspiration after the Divine prepares the eye to behold the Divine Reality in the Christ. But, if it be so, is there not evidence here, that He is the God-sent\u2014that He is a real, true Ambassador of God? If Jesus\u2019 teaching meets and satisfies our moral nature, if it leads up to God, is He not the Christ?
\nAnd this brings us to the second claim which Christ made, that of being sent by God. There is yet another logical link in His reasoning. He had said: \u2018He shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from Myself.\u2019 From Myself? Why, there is this other test of it: \u2018Who speaketh from himself, seeketh his own glory\u2019\u2014there can be no doubt or question of this, but do I seek My own glory?\u2014\u2018But He Who seeketh the glory of Him Who sent Him, He is true [a faithful messenger], and unrighteousness is not in Him.\u2019 Thus did Christ appeal and prove it: My doctrine is of God, and I am sent of God!
\nSent of God, no unrighteousness in Him! And yet at that very moment there hung over Him the charge of defiance of the Law of Moses, nay, of that of God, in an open breach of the Sabbath-commandment\u2014there, in that very City, the last time He had been in Jerusalem; for which, as well as for His Divine Claims, the Jews were even then seeking \u2018to kill Him.\u2019 And this forms the transition to what may be called the second part of Christ\u2019s address. If, in the first part, the Jewish form of ratiocination was already apparent, it seems almost impossible for any one acquainted with those forms to understand how it can be overlooked in what follows. It is exactly the mode in which a Jew would argue with Jews, only the substance of the reasoning is to all times and people. Christ is defending Himself against a charge which naturally came up, when He claimed that His Teaching was of God and Himself God\u2019s real and faithful Messenger. In His reply the two threads of the former argument are taken up. Doing is the condition of knowledge\u2014and a messenger had been sent from God! Admittedly, Moses was such, and yet every one of them was breaking the Law which he had given them; for, were they not seeking to kill Him without right or justice? This, put in the form of a double question, represents a peculiarly Jewish mode of argumentation, behind which lay the terrible truth, that those, whose hearts were so little longing to do the Will of God, not only must remain ignorant of His Teaching as that of God, but had also rejected that of Moses.
\nA general disclaimer, a cry \u2018Thou hast a demon\u2019 (art possessed), \u2018who seeks to kill Thee?\u2019 here broke in upon the Speaker. But He would not be interrupted, and continued: \u2018One work I did, and all you wonder on account of it\u2019\u2014referring to His healing on the Sabbath, and their utter inability to understand His conduct. Well, then, Moses was a messenger of God, and I am sent of God. Moses gave the law of circumcision\u2014not, indeed, that it was of his authority, but had long before been God-given\u2014and, to observe this law, no one hesitated to break the Sabbath, since, according to Rabbinic principle, a positive ordinance superseded a negative. And yet, when Christ, as sent from God, made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath (\u2018made a whole man sound\u2019), they were angry with Him! Every argument which might have been urged in favour of the postponement of Christ\u2019s healing to a week-day, would equally apply to that of circumcision; while every reason that could be urged in favour of Sabbath-circumcision, would tell an hundredfold in favour of the act of Christ. Oh, then, let them not judge after the mere outward appearance, but \u2018judge the right judgment.\u2019 And, indeed, had it not been to convince them of the externalism of their views, that Jesus had on that Sabbath opened the great controversy between the letter that killeth and the spirit that maketh alive, when He directed the impotent man to carry home the bed on which he had lain?
\nIf any doubt could obtain, how truly Jesus had gauged the existing state of things, when He contrasted heart-willingness to do the Will of God, as the necessary preparation for the reception of His God-sent Teaching, with their murderous designs, springing from blind literalism and ignorance of the spirit of their Law, the reported remarks of some Jerusalemites in the crowd would suffice to convince us. The fact that He, Whom they sought to kill, was suffered to speak openly, seemed to them incomprehensible. Could it be that the authorities were shaken in their former ideas about Him, and now regarded Him as the Messiah? But it could not be. It was a settled popular belief, and, in a sense, not quite unfounded, that the appearance of the Messiah would be sudden and unexpected. He might be there, and not be known; or He might come, and be again hidden for a time. As they put it, when Messiah came, no one would know whence He was; but they all knew \u2018whence this One\u2019 was. And with this rough and ready argument of a coarse realism, they, like so many among us, settled off-hand and once for all the great question. But Jesus could not, even for the sake of His poor weak disciples, let it rest there. \u2018Therefore\u2019 He lifted up His voice, that it reached the dispersing, receding multitude. Yes, they thought they knew both Him and whence He came. It would have been so had He come from Himself. But He had been sent, and He that sent Him \u2018was real;\u2019 it was a real Mission, and Him, Who had thus sent the Christ, they knew not. And so, with a reaffirmation of His twofold claim, His Discourse closed. But they had understood His allusions, and in their anger would fain have laid hands on Him, but His hour had not come. Yet others were deeply stirred to faith. As they parted they spoke of it among themselves, and the sum of it all was: \u2018The Christ, when He cometh, will He do more miracles (signs) than this One did?\u2019
\nSo ended the first teaching of that day in the Temple. And as the people dispersed, the leaders of the Pharisees\u2014who, no doubt aware of the presence of Christ in the Temple, yet unwilling to be in the number of His hearers, had watched the effect of His Teaching\u2014overheard the low, furtive, half-outspoken remarks (\u2018the murmuring\u2019) of the people about Him. Presently they conferred with the heads of the priesthood and the chief Temple-officials. Although there was neither meeting, nor decree of the Sanhedrin about it, nor, indeed, could be, orders were given to the Temple-guard on the first possible occasion to seize Him. Jesus was aware of it, and as, either on this or another day, He was moving in the Temple, watched by the spies of the rulers and followed by a mingled crowd of disciples and enemies, deep sadness in view of the end filled His heart. \u2018Jesus therefore said\u2019\u2014no doubt to His disciples, though in the hearing of all\u2014\u2018yet a little while am I with you, then I go away to Him that sent Me. Ye shall seek Me, and not find Me; and where I am, thither ye cannot come.\u2019 Mournful words, these, which were only too soon to become true. But those who heard them naturally failed to comprehend their meaning. Was He about to leave Palestine, and go to the Diaspora of the Greeks, among the dispersed who lived in heathen lands, to teach the Greeks? Or what could be His meaning? But we, who hear it across these centuries, feel as if their question, like the suggestion of the High-Priest at a later period, nay, like so many suggestions of men, had been, all unconsciously, prophetic of the future.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 7<\/p>\n
\u2018IN THE LAST, THE GREAT DAY OF THE FEAST.\u2019<\/p>\n
(St. John 7:37\u20138:11.)<\/p>\n
IT was \u2018the last, the great day of the Feast,\u2019 and Jesus was once more in the Temple. We can scarcely doubt that it was the concluding day of the Feast, and not, as most modern writers suppose, its Octave, which, in Rabbinic language, was regarded as \u2018a festival by itself.\u2019 On the Octave of the Feast probably Ps. 12. was chanted (see Sopher. 19. beg.). But such solemn interest attaches to the Feast, and this occurrence on its last day, that we must try to realise the scene. We have here the only Old Testament type yet unfulfilled; the only Jewish festival which has no counterpart in the cycle of the Christian year, just because it points forward to that great, yet unfulfilled hope of the Church: the ingathering of Earth\u2019s nations to the Christ.
\nThe celebration of the Feast corresponded to its great meaning. Not only did all the priestly families minister during that week, but it has been calculated that not fewer than 446 Priests, with, of course, a corresponding number of Levites, were required for its sacrificial worship. In general, the services were the same every day, except that the number of bullocks offered decreased daily from thirteen on the first, to seven on the seventh day. Only during the first two, and on the last festive day (as also on the Octave of the Feast), was strict Sabbatic rest enjoined. On the intervening half-holydays (Chol haMoed), although no new labour was to be undertaken, unless in the public service, the ordinary and necessary avocations of the home and of life were carried on, and especially all done that was required for the festive season. But \u2018the last, the Great Day of the Feast,\u2019 was marked by special observances.
\nLet us suppose ourselves in the number of worshippers, who on \u2018the last, the Great Day of the Feast,\u2019 are leaving their \u2018booths\u2019 at daybreak to take part in the service. The pilgrims are all in festive array. In his right hand each carries what is called the Lulabh, which, although properly meaning \u2018a branch,\u2019 or \u2018palm-branch,\u2019 consisted of a myrtle and willow-branch tied together with a palm-branch between them. This was supposed to be in fulfilment of the command, Lev. 23:40. \u2018The fruit (A.V. \u2018boughs\u2019) of the goodly trees,\u2019 mentioned in the same verse of Scripture, was supposed to be the Ethrog, the so-called Paradise-apple (according to Ber. R. 15, the fruit of the forbidden tree), a species of citron. This Ethrog each worshipper carries in his left hand. It is scarcely necessary to add, that this interpretation of Lev. 23:40 was given by the Rabbis; perhaps more interesting to know, that this was one of the points in controversy between the Pharisees and Sadducees.
\nThus armed with Lulabh in their right, and Ethrog in their left hands, the festive multitude would divide into three bands. Some would remain in the Temple to attend the preparation of the Morning Sacrifice. Another band would go in procession \u2018below Jerusalem\u2019 to a place called Moza, the \u2018Kolonia\u2019 of the Jerusalem Talmud, which some have sought to identify with the Emmaus of the Resurrection-Evening. At Moza they cut down willow-branches, with which, amidst the blasts of the Priests\u2019 trumpets, they adorned the altar, forming a leafy canopy about it. Yet a third company were taking part in a still more interesting service. To the sound of music a procession started from the Temple. It followed a Priest who bore a golden pitcher, capable of holding three log. Onwards it passed, probably, through Ophel, which recent investigations have shown to have been covered with buildings to the very verge of Siloam, down the edge of the Tyrop\u0153on Valley, where it merges into that of the Kedron. To this day terraces mark where the gardens, watered by the living spring, extended from the King\u2019s Gardens by the spring Rogel down to the entrance into the Tyrop\u0153on. Here was the so-called \u2018Fountain-Gate,\u2019 and still within the City-wall \u2018the Pool of Siloam,\u2019 the overflow of which fed a lower pool. As already stated, it was at the merging of the Tyrop\u0153on into the Kedron Valley, in the south-eastern angle of Jerusalem. The Pool of Siloam was fed by the living spring farther up in the narrowest part of the Kedron Valley, which presently bears the name of \u2018the Virgin\u2019s Fountain,\u2019 but represents the ancient En-Rogel and Gihon. Indeed, the very canal which led from the one to the other, with the inscription of the workmen upon it, has lately been excavated. Though chiefly of historical interest, a sentence may be added. The Pool of Siloam is the same as \u2018the King\u2019s Pool\u2019 of Neh. 2:14. It was made by King Hezekiah, in order both to divert from a besieging army the spring of Gihon, which could not be brought within the City-wall, and yet to bring its waters within the City. This explains the origin of the name Siloam, \u2018sent\u2019\u2014a conduit\u2014or \u2018Siloah,\u2019 as Josephus calls it. Lastly, we remember that it was down in the valley at Gihon (or En-Rogel), that Solomon was proclaimed, while the opposite faction held revel, and would have made Adonijah king, on the cliff Zoheleth (the modern Zahweileh) right over against it, not a hundred yards distant, where they must, of course, have distinctly heard the sound of the trumpets and the shouts of the people as Solomon was proclaimed king.
\nBut to return. When the Temple-procession had reached the Pool of Siloam, the Priest filled his golden pitcher from its waters. Then they went back to the Temple, so timing it, that they should arrive just as they were laying the pieces of the sacrifice on the great Altar of Burnt-offering, towards the close of the ordinary Morning-Sacrifice service. A threefold blast of the Priests\u2019 trumpets welcomed the arrival of the Priest, as he entered through the \u2018Water-gate,\u2019 which obtained its name from this ceremony, and passed straight into the Court of the Priests. Here he was joined by another Priest, who carried the wine for the drink-offering. The two Priests ascended \u2018the rise\u2019 of the altar, and turned to the left. There were two silver funnels here, with narrow openings, leading down to the base of the altar. Into that at the east, which was somewhat wider, the wine was poured, and, at the same time, the water into the western and narrower opening, the people shouting to the Priest to raise his hand, so as to make sure that he poured the water into the funnel. For, although it was held, that the water-pouring was an ordinance instituted by Moses, \u2018a Halakhah of Moses from Sinai,\u2019 this was another of the points disputed by the Sadducees. And, indeed, to give practical effect to their views, the High-Priest Alexander Jann\u00e6us had on one occasion poured the water on the ground, when he was nearly murdered, and in the riot, that ensued, six thousand persons were killed in the Temple.
\nImmediately after \u2018the pouring of water,\u2019 the great \u2018Hallel,\u2019 consisting of Psalms 113. to 118. (inclusive), was chanted antiphonally, or rather, with responses, to the accompaniment of the flute. As the Levites intoned the first line of each Psalm, the people repeated it; while to each of the other lines they responded by Hallelu Yah (\u2018Praise ye the Lord\u2019). But in Psalm 118. the people not only repeated the first line, \u2018O give thanks to the Lord,\u2019 but also these, \u2018O then, work now salvation, Jehovah,\u2019 \u2018O Lord, send now prosperity;\u2019 and again, at the close of the Psalm, \u2018O give thanks to the Lord.\u2019 As they repeated these lines, they shook towards the altar the Lulabh which they held in their hands\u2014as if with this token of the past to express the reality and cause of their praise, and to remind God of His promises. It is this moment which should be chiefly kept in view.
\nThe festive morning-service was followed by the offering of the special sacrifices for the day, with their drink-offerings, and by the Psalm for the day, which, on \u2018the last, the Great Day of the Feast,\u2019 was Psalm 82. from verse 5. The Psalm was, of course, chanted, as always, to instrumental accompaniment, and at the end of each of its three sections the Priests blew a threefold blast, while the people bowed down in worship. In further symbolism of this Feast, as pointing to the ingathering of the heathen nations, the public services closed with a procession round the Altar by the Priests, who chanted \u2018O then, work now salvation, Jehovah! O Jehovah, send now prosperity.\u2019 But on \u2018the last, the Great Day of the Feast,\u2019 this procession of Priests made the circuit of the altar, not only once, but seven times, as if they were again compassing, but now with prayer, the Gentile Jericho which barred their possession of the promised land. Hence the seventh or last day of the Feast was also called that of \u2018the Great Hosannah.\u2019 As the people left the Temple, they saluted the altar with words of thanks, and on the last day of the Feast they shook off the leaves on the willow-branches round the altar, and beat their palm-branches to pieces. On the same afternoon the \u2018booths\u2019 were dismantled, and the Feast ended.
\nWe can have little difficulty in determining at what part of the services of \u2018the last, the Great Day of the Feast,\u2019 Jesus stood and cried, \u2018If any one thirst, let him come unto Me and drink!\u2019 It must have been with special reference to the ceremony of the outpouring of the water, which, as we have seen, was considered the central part of the service. Moreover, all would understand that His words must refer to the Holy Spirit, since the rite was universally regarded as symbolical of His outpouring. The forthpouring of the water was immediately followed by the chanting of the Hallel. But after that there must have been a short pause to prepare for the festive sacrifices (the Musaph). It was then, immediately after the symbolic rite of water-pouring, immediately after the people had responded by repeating those lines from Psalm 118.\u2014given thanks, and prayed that Jehovah would send salvation and prosperity, and had shaken their Lulabh towards the altar, thus praising \u2018with heart, and mouth, and hands,\u2019 and then silence had fallen upon them\u2014that there rose, so loud as to be heard throughout the Temple, the Voice of Jesus. He interrupted not the services, for they had for the moment ceased: He interpreted, and He fulfilled them.
\nWhether we realise it in connection with the deeply-stirring rites just concluded, and the song of praise that had scarcely died out of the air; or think of it as a vast step in advance in the history of Christ\u2019s Manifestation, the scene is equally wondrous. But yesterday they had been divided about Him, and the authorities had given directions to take Him; to-day He is not only in the Temple, but, at the close of the most solemn rites of the Feast, asserting, within the hearing of all, His claim to be regarded as the fulfilment of all, and the true Messiah! And yet there is neither harshness of command nor violence of threat in His proclamation. It is the King, meek, gentle, and loving; the Messiah, Who will not break the bruised reed, Who will not lift up His Voice in tone of anger, but speak in accents of loving, condescending compassion, Who now bids, whosoever thirsteth, come unto Him and drink. And so the words have to all time remained the call of Christ to all that thirst, whence- or what-soever their need and longing of soul may be. But, as we listen to these words as originally spoken, we feel how they mark that Christ\u2019s hour was indeed coming: the preparation past; the manifestation in the present, unmistakable, urgent, and loving; and the final conflict at hand.
\nOf those who had heard Him, none but must have understood that, if the invitation were indeed real, and Christ the fulfilment of all, then the promise also had its deepest meaning, that he who believed on Him would not only receive the promised fulness of the Spirit, but give it forth to the fertilising of the barren waste around. It was, truly, the fulfilment of the Scripture-promise, not of one but of all: that in Messianic times the Nabhi, \u2018prophet,\u2019 literally the weller forth, viz., of the Divine, should not be one or another select individual, but that He would pour out on all His handmaidens and servants of His Holy Spirit, and thus the moral wilderness of this world be changed into a fruitful garden. Indeed, this is expressly stated in the Targum which thus paraphrases Is. 44:3: \u2018Behold, as the waters are poured out on arid ground and spread over the dry soil, so will I give the Spirit of My Holiness on thy sons, and My blessing on thy children\u2019s children.\u2019 What was new to them was, that all this was treasured up in the Christ, that out of His fulness men might receive, and grace for grace. And yet even this was not quite new. For, was it not the fulfilment of that old prophetic cry: \u2018The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon Me: therefore has He Messiahed (anointed) Me to preach good tidings unto the poor\u2019? So then, it was nothing new, only the happy fulfilment of the old, when He thus \u2018spake of the Holy Spirit, which they who believed on Him should receive,\u2019 not then, but upon His Messianic exaltation.
\nAnd so we scarcely wonder that many, on hearing Him, said, though not with that heart-conviction which would have led to self-surrender, that He was the Prophet promised of old, even the Christ, while others, by their side, regarding Him as a Galilean, the Son of Joseph, raised the ignorant objection that He could not be the Messiah, since the latter must be of the seed of David and come from Bethlehem. Nay, such was the anger of some against what they regarded a dangerous seducer of the poor people, that they would fain have laid violent hands on Him. But amidst all this, the strongest testimony to His Person and Mission remains to be told. It came, as so often, from a quarter whence it could least have been expected. Those Temple-officers, whom the authorities had commissioned to watch an opportunity for seizing Jesus, came back without having done their behest, and that, when, manifestly, the scene in the Temple might have offered the desired ground for His imprisonment. To the question of the Pharisees, they could only give this reply, which has ever since remained unquestionable fact of history, admitted alike by friend and foe: \u2018Never man so spake as this man.\u2019 For, as all spiritual longing and all upward tending, not only of men but even of systems, consciously or unconsciously tends towards Christ, so can we measure and judge all systems by this, which no sober student of history will gainsay, that no man or system ever so spake.
\nIt was not this which the Pharisees now gainsaid, but rather the obvious, and, we may add, logical, inference from it. The scene which followed is so thoroughly Jewish, that it alone would suffice to prove the Jewish, and hence Johannine, authorship of the Fourth Gospel. The harsh sneer: \u2018Are ye also led astray?\u2019 is succeeded by pointing to the authority of the learned and great, who with one accord were rejecting Jesus. \u2018But this people\u2019\u2014the country-people (Am ha-arez), the ignorant, unlettered rabble\u2014\u2018are cursed.\u2019 Sufficient has been shown in previous parts of this book to explain alike the Pharisaic claim of authority and their almost unutterable contempt of the unlettered. So far did the latter go, that it would refuse, not only all family connection and friendly intercourse, but even the bread of charity, to the unlettered; nay, that, in theory at least, it would have regarded their murder as no sin, and even cut them off from the hope of the Resurrection. But is it not true, that, even in our days, this double sneer, rather than argument, of the Pharisees is the main reason of the disbelief of so many: Which of the learned believe on Him? but the ignorant multitude are led by superstition to ruin.
\nThere was one standing among the Temple-authorities, whom an uneasy conscience would not allow to remain quite silent. It was the Sanhedrist Nicodemus, still a night-disciple, even in brightest noon-tide. He could not hold his peace, and yet he dared not speak for Christ. So he made compromise of both by taking the part of, and speaking as, a righteous, rigid Sanhedrist. \u2018Does our Law judge (pronounce sentence upon) a man, except it first hear from himself and know what he doeth?\u2019 From the Rabbinic point of view, no sounder judicial saying could have been uttered. Yet such common-places impose not on any one, nor even serve any good purpose. It helped not the cause of Jesus, and it disguised not the advocacy of Nicodemus. We know what was thought of Galilee in the Rabbinic world. \u2018Art thou also of Galilee? Search and see, for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.\u2019
\nAnd so ended this incident, which, to all concerned, might have been so fruitful of good. Once more Nicodemus was left alone, as every one who has dared and yet not dared for Christ is after all such bootless compromises; alone\u2014with sore heart, stricken conscience, and a great longing.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 8<\/p>\n
TEACHING IN THE TEMPLE ON THE OCTAVE OF THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES<\/p>\n
(St. John 8:12\u201359.)<\/p>\n
THE startling teaching on \u2018the last, the Great Day of the Feast,\u2019 was not the only one delivered at that season. The impression left on the mind is, that after silencing, as they thought, Nicodemus, the leaders of the Pharisees had dispersed. The Addresses of Jesus which followed must, therefore, have been delivered, either later on that day, or, what on every account seems more likely, chiefly, or all, on the next day, which was the Octave of the Feast, when the Temple would be once more thronged by worshippers.
\nOn this occasion we find Christ, first in \u2018The Treasury,\u2019 and then in some unnamed part of the sacred building, in all probability one of the \u2018Porches.\u2019 Greater freedom could be here enjoyed, since these \u2018Porches,\u2019 which enclosed the Court of the Gentiles, did not form part of the Sanctuary in the stricter sense. Discussions might take place, in which not, as in \u2018the Treasury,\u2019 only \u2018the Pharisees,\u2019 but the people generally, might propound questions, answer, or assent. Again, as regards the requirements of the present narrative, since the Porches opened upon the Court, the Jews might there pick up stones to cast at Him (which would have been impossible in any part of the Sanctuary itself), while, lastly, Jesus might easily pass out of the Temple in the crowd that moved through the Porches to the outer gates.
\nBut the narrative first transports us into \u2018the Treasury,\u2019 where \u2018the Pharisees\u2019\u2014or leaders\u2014would alone venture to speak. It ought to be specially marked, that if they laid not hands on Jesus when He dared to teach in this sacred locality, and that such unwelcome doctrine, His immunity must be ascribed to the higher appointment of God: \u2018because His hour had not yet come.\u2019 An arch\u00e6ological question may here be raised as to the exact localisation of \u2018the Treasury,\u2019 whether it was the colonnade around \u2018the Court of the Women,\u2019 in which the receptacles for charitable contributions\u2014the so-called Shopharoth, or \u2018trumpets\u2019\u2014were placed, or one of the two \u2018chambers\u2019 in which, respectively, secret gifts and votive offerings were deposited. The former seems the most likely. In any case, it would be within \u2018the Court of the Women,\u2019 the common meeting-place of the worshippers, and, as we may say, the most generally attended part of the Sanctuary. Here, in the hearing of the leaders of the people, took place the first Dialogue between Christ and the Pharisees.
\nIt opened with what probably was an allusion alike to one of the great ceremonies of the Feast of Tabernacles, to its symbolic meaning, and to an express Messianic expectation of the Rabbis. As the Mishnah states: On the first, or, as the Talmud would have it, on every night of the festive week, \u2018the Court of the Women\u2019 was brilliantly illuminated, and the night spent in the demonstrations already described. This was called \u2018the joy of the feast.\u2019 This \u2018festive joy,\u2019 of which the origin is obscure, was no doubt connected with the hope of earth\u2019s great harvest-joy in the conversion of the heathen world, and so pointed to \u2018the days of the Messiah.\u2019 In connection with this we mark, that the term \u2018light\u2019 was specially applied to the Messiah. In a very interesting passage of the Midrash we are told, that, while commonly windows were made wide within and narrow without, it was the opposite in the Temple of Solomon, because the light issuing from the Sanctuary was to lighten that which was without. This reminds us of the language of devout old Simeon in regard to the Messiah, as \u2018a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of His people Israel.\u2019 The Midrash further explains, that, if the light in the Sanctuary was to be always burning before Jehovah, the reason was, not that He needed such light, but that He honoured Israel with this as a symbolic command. In Messianic times God would, in fulfilment of the prophetic meaning of this rite, \u2018kindle for them the Great Light,\u2019 and the nations of the world would point to them, who had lit the light for Him Who lightened the whole world. But even this is not all. The Rabbis speak of the original light in which God had wrapped Himself as in a garment, and which could not shine by day, because it would have dimmed the light of the sun. From this light that of the sun, moon, and stars had been kindled. It was now reserved under the throne of God for the Messiah, in Whose days it would shine forth once more. Lastly, we ought to refer to a passage in another Midrash, where, after a remarkable discussion on such names of the Messiah as \u2018the Lord our Righteousness,\u2019 \u2018the Branch,\u2019 \u2018the Comforter,\u2019 \u2018Shiloh,\u2019 \u2018Compassion,\u2019 His Birth is connected with the destruction, and His return with the restoration of the Temple. But in that very passage the Messiah is also specially designated as the \u2018Enlightener,\u2019 the words: \u2018the light dwelleth with Him,\u2019 being applied to Him.
\nWhat has just been stated shows, that the Messianic hope of the aged Simeon most truly expressed the Messianic thoughts of the time. It also proves, that the Pharisees could not have mistaken the Messianic meaning in the words of Jesus, in their reference to the past festivity: \u2018I am the Light of the world.\u2019 This circumstance is itself evidential as regards this Discourse of Christ, the truth of this narrative, and even the Jewish authorship of the Fourth Gospel. But, indeed, the whole Address, the argumentation with the Pharisees which follows, as well as the subsequent Discourse to, and argumentation with, the Jews, are peculiarly Jewish in their form of reasoning. Substantially, these Discourses are a continuation of those previously delivered at this Feast. But they carry the argument one important step both backwards and forwards. The situation had now become quite clear, and neither party cared to conceal it. What Jesus had gradually communicated to the disciples, who were so unwilling to receive it, had now become an acknowledged fact. It was no longer a secret that the leaders of Israel and Jerusalem were compassing the Death of Jesus. This underlies all His Words. And He sought to turn them from their purpose, not by appealing to their pity nor to any lower motive, but by claiming as His right that, for which they would condemn Him. He was the Sent of God, the Messiah; although, to know Him and His Mission, it needed moral kinship with Him that had sent Him. But this led to the very root of the matter. It needed moral kinship with God: did Israel, as such, possess it? They did not; nay, no man possessed it, till given him of God. This was not exactly new in these Discourses of Christ, but it was now far more clearly stated and developed, and in that sense new.
\nWe also are too apt to overlook this teaching of Christ\u2014perhaps have overlooked it. It is concerning the corruption of our whole nature by sin, and hence the need of God-teaching, if we are to receive the Christ, or understand His doctrine. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit; wherefore, \u2018marvel not that I said, Ye must be born again.\u2019 That had been Christ\u2019s initial teaching to Nicodemus, and it became, with growing emphasis, His final teaching to the teachers of Israel. It is not St. Paul who first sets forth the doctrine of our entire moral ruin: he had learned it from the Christ. It forms the very basis of Christianity; it is the ultimate reason of the need of a Redeemer, and the rationale of the work which Christ came to do. The Priesthood and the Sacrificial Work of Christ, as well as the higher aspect of His Prophetic Office, and the true meaning of His Kingship, as not of this world, are based upon it. Very markedly, it constitutes the starting-point in the fundamental divergence between the leaders of the Synagogue and Christ\u2014we might say, to all time between Christians and non-Christians. The teachers of Israel knew not, nor believed in the total corruption of man\u2014Jew as well as Gentile\u2014and, therefore, felt not the need of a Saviour. They could not understand it, how \u2018Except a man\u2019\u2014at least a Jew\u2014were \u2018born again,\u2019 and, \u2018from above,\u2019 he could not enter, nor even see, the Kingdom of God. They understood not their own Bible: the story of the Fall\u2014not Moses and the Prophets; and how could they understand Christ? they believed not them, and how could they believe Him? And yet, from this point of view, but only from this, does all seem clear: the Incarnation, the History of the Temptation and Victory in the Wilderness, and even the Cross. Only he who has, in some measure, himself felt the agony of the first garden, can understand that of the second garden. Had they understood, by that personal experience which we must all have of it, the Proto-Evangel of the great contest, and of the great conquest by suffering, they would have followed its lines to their final goal in the Christ as the fulfilment of all. And so, here also, were the words of Christ true, that it needed heavenly teaching, and kinship to the Divine, to understand His doctrine.
\nThis underlies, and is the main object of these Discourses of Christ. As a corollary He would teach, that Satan was not a merely malicious, impish being, working outward destruction, but that there was a moral power of evil which held us all\u2014not the Gentile world only, but even the most favoured, learned, and exalted among the Jews. Of this power Satan was the concentration and impersonation; the prince of the power of \u2018darkness.\u2019 This opens up the reasoning of Christ, alike as expressed and implied. He presented Himself to them as the Messiah, and hence as the Light of the World. It resulted, that only in following Him would a man \u2018not walk in the darkness,\u2019 but have the light\u2014and that, be it marked, not the light of knowledge, but of life. On the other hand, it also followed, that all, who were not within this light, were in darkness and in death.
\nIt was an appeal to the moral in His hearers. The Pharisees sought to turn it aside by an appeal to the external and visible. They asked for some witness, or palpable evidence, of what they called His testimony about Himself, well knowing that such could only be through some external, visible, miraculous manifestation, just as they had formerly asked for a sign from heaven. The Bible, and especially the Evangelic history, is full of what men ordinarily, and often thoughtlessly, call the miraculous. But, in this case, the miraculous would have become the magical, which it never is. If Christ had yielded to their appeal, and transferred the question from the moral to the coarsely external sphere, He would have ceased to be the Messiah of the Incarnation, Temptation, and Cross, the Messiah-Saviour. It would have been to un-Messiah the Messiah of the Gospel, for it was only, in another form, a repetition of the Temptation. A miracle or sign would at that moment have been a moral anachronism\u2014as much as any miracle would be in our days, when the Christ makes His appeal to the moral, and is met by a demand for the external and material evidence of His Witness.
\nThe interruption of the Pharisees was thoroughly Jewish, and so was their objection. It had to be met, and that in the Jewish form in which it had been raised, while the Christ must at the same time continue His former teaching to them concerning God and their own distance from Him. Their objection had proceeded on this fundamental judicial principle\u2014\u2018A person is not accredited about himself.\u2019 Harsh and unjust as this principle sometimes was, it evidently applied only in judicial cases, and hence implied that these Pharisees sat in judgment on Him as one suspected, and charged with guilt. The reply of Jesus was plain. Even if His testimony about Himself were unsupported, it would still be true, and He was competent to bear it, for He knew, as a matter of fact, whence He came and whither He went\u2014His own part in this Mission, and its goal, as well as God\u2019s\u2014whereas they knew not either. But, more than this: their demand for a witness had proceeded on the assumption of their being the judges, and He the panel\u2014a relation which only arose from their judging after the flesh. Spiritual judgment upon that which was within belonged only to Him, that searcheth all secrets. Christ, while on earth, judged no man; and, even if He did so, it must be remembered that He did it not alone, but with, and as the Representative of, the Father. Hence, such judgment would be true. But, as for their main charge, was it either true, or good in law? In accordance with the Law of God, there were two witnesses to the fact of His Mission: His own, and the frequently-shown attestation of His Father. And, if it were objected that a man could not bear witness in his own cause, the same Rabbinic canon laid it down, that this only applied if his testimony stood alone. But, if it were corroborated (even in a matter of greatest delicacy), although by only one male or female slave\u2014who ordinarily were unfit for testimony\u2014it would be credited.
\nThe reasoning of Christ, without for a moment quitting the higher ground of His teaching, was quite unanswerable from the Jewish standpoint. The Pharisees felt it, and, though well knowing to Whom He referred, tried to evade it by the sneer\u2014where (not Who) His Father was? This gave occasion for Christ to return to the main subject of His Address, that the reason of their ignorance of Him was, that they knew not the Father, and, in turn, that only acknowledgment of Him would bring true knowledge of the Father.
\nSuch words would only ripen in the hearts of such men the murderous resolve against Jesus. Yet, not till His, not their, hour had come! Presently, we find Him again, now in one of the Porches\u2014probably that of Solomon\u2014teaching, this time, \u2018the Jews.\u2019 We imagine they were chiefly, if not all, Jud\u00e6ans\u2014perhaps Jerusalemites, aware of the murderous intent of their leaders\u2014not His own Galileans, whom He addressed. It was in continuation of what had gone before\u2014alike of what He had said to them, and of what they felt towards Him. The words are intensely sad\u2014Christ\u2019s farewell to His rebellious people, His tear\u2014words over lost Israel; abrupt also, as if they were torn sentences, or, else, headings for special discourses: \u2018I go My way\u2019\u2014\u2018Ye shall seek Me, and in your sin shall ye die\u2019\u2014\u2018Whither I go, ye cannot come!\u2019 And is it not all most true? These many centuries has Israel sought its Christ, and perished in its great sin of rejecting Him; and whither Christ and His Kingdom tended, the Synagogue and Judaism can never come. They thought that He spoke of His dying, and not, as He did, of that which came after it. But, how could His dying establish such separation between them? This was the next question which rose in their minds. Would there be anything so peculiar about His dying, or, did His expression about going indicate a purpose of taking away His Own life?
\nIt was this misunderstanding which Jesus briefly but emphatically corrected by telling them, that the ground of their separation was the difference of their nature: they were from beneath, He from above; they of this world, He not of this world. Hence they could not come where He would be, since they must die in their sin, as He had told them\u2014\u2018if ye believe not that I am.\u2019
\nThe words were intentionally mysteriously spoken, as to a Jewish audience. Believe not that Thou art! But \u2018Who art Thou?\u2019 Whether or not the words were spoken in scorn, their question condemned themselves. In His broken sentence, Jesus had tried them\u2014to see how they would complete it. Then it was so! All this time they had not yet learned Who He was; had not even a conviction on that point, either for or against Him, but were ready to be swayed by their leaders! \u2018Who I am?\u2019\u2014am I not telling you it even from the beginning; has My testimony by word or deed ever swerved on this point? I am what all along, from the beginning, I tell you. Then, putting aside this interruption, He resumed His argument. Many other things had He to say and to judge concerning them, besides the bitter truth of their perishing if they believed not that it was He\u2014but He that had sent Him was true, and He must ever speak into the world the message which He had received. When Christ referred to it as that which \u2018He heard from Him,\u2019 He evidently wished thereby to emphasise the fact of His Mission from God, as constituting His claim on their obedience of faith. But it was this very point which, even at that moment, they were not understanding. And they would only learn it, not by His Words, but by the event, when they had \u2018lifted Him up,\u2019 as they thought, to the Cross, but really on the way to His Glory. Then would they perceive the meaning of the designation He had given of Himself, and the claim founded on it: \u2018Then shall ye perceive that I am.\u2019 Meantime: \u2018And of Myself do I nothing, but as the Father taught Me, these things do I speak. And He that sent Me is with Me. He hath not left Me alone, because what pleases Him I do always.\u2019
\nIf the Jews failed to understand the expression \u2018lifting up,\u2019 which might mean His Exaltation, though it did mean, in the first place, His Cross, there was that in His Appeal to His Words and Deeds as bearing witness to His Mission and to the Divine Help and Presence in it, which by its sincerity, earnestness, and reality, found its way to the hearts of many. Instinctively they felt and believed that His Mission must be Divine. Whether or not this found articulate expression, Jesus now addressed Himself to those who thus far\u2014at least for the moment\u2014believed on Him. They were at the crisis of their spiritual history, and He must press home on them what He had sought to teach at the first. By nature far from Him, they were bondsmen. Only if they abode in His Word would they know the truth, and the truth would make them free. The result of this knowledge would be moral, and hence that knowledge consisted not in merely believing on Him, but in making His Word and teaching their dwelling\u2014abiding in it. But it was this very moral application which they resisted. In this also Jesus had used their own forms of thinking and teaching, only in a much higher sense. For their own tradition had it, that he only was free who laboured in the study of the Law. Yet the liberty of which He spoke came not through study of the Law, but from abiding in the Word of Jesus. But it was this very thing which they resisted. And so they ignored the spiritual, and fell back upon the national, application of the words of Christ. As this is once more evidential of the Jewish authorship of this Gospel, so also the characteristically Jewish boast, that as the children of Abraham they had never been, and never could be, in real servitude. It would take too long to enumerate all the benefits supposed to be derived from descent from Abraham. Suffice here the almost fundamental principle: \u2018All Israel are the children of Kings,\u2019 and its application even to common life, that as \u2018the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not even Solomon\u2019s feast could be too good for them.\u2019
\nNot so, however, would the Lord allow them to pass it by. He pointed them to another servitude which they knew not, that of sin, and, entering at the same time also on their own ideas, He told them that continuance in this servitude would also lead to national bondage and rejection: \u2018For the servant abideth not in the house for ever.\u2019 On the other hand, the Son abode there for ever; whom He made free by adoption into His Family, they would be free in reality and essentially. Then, for their very dulness, He would turn to their favourite conceit of being Abraham\u2019s seed. There was, indeed, an obvious sense in which, by their natural descent, they were such. But there was a moral descent\u2014and that alone was of real value. Another, and to them wholly new, and heavenly teaching this, which our Lord presently applied in a manner they could neither misunderstand nor gainsay, while He at the same time connected it with the general drift of His teaching. Abraham\u2019s seed? But they entertained purposes of murder, and that, because the Word of Christ had not free course, made not way in them. His Word was what He had seen with (before) the Father, not heard\u2014for His Presence there was Eternal. Their deeds were what they had heard from their father\u2014the word \u2018seen\u2019 in our common text depending on a wrong reading. And thus He showed them\u2014in answer to their interpellation\u2014that their father could not have been Abraham, so far as spiritual descent was concerned. They had now a glimpse of His meaning, but only to misapply it, according to their Jewish prejudice. Their spiritual descent, they urged, must be of God, since their descent from Abraham was legitimate. But the Lord dispelled even this conceit by showing, that if theirs were spiritual descent from God, then would they not reject His Message, nor seek to kill Him, but recognise and love Him.
\nBut whence all this misunderstanding of His speech? Because they were morally incapable of hearing it\u2014and this because of the sinfulness of their nature: an element which Judaism had never taken into account. And so, with infinite Wisdom, Christ once more brought back His Discourse to what He would teach them concerning man\u2019s need, whether he be Jew or Gentile, of a Saviour and of renewing by the Holy Ghost. If the Jews were morally unable to hear His Word and cherished murderous designs, it was because, morally speaking, their descent was of the Devil. Very differently from Jewish ideas did He speak concerning the moral evil of Satan, as both a murderer and a liar\u2014a murderer from the beginning of the history of our race, and one who \u2018stood not in the truth, because truth is not in him.\u2019 Hence \u2018whenever he speaketh a lie\u2019\u2014whether to our first parents, or now concerning the Christ\u2014\u2018he speaketh from out his own (things), for he (Satan) is a liar, and the father of such an one (who telleth or believeth lies).\u2019 Which of them could convict Him of sin? If therefore He spake truth, and they believed Him not, it was because they were not of God, but, as He had shown them, of their father, the Devil.
\nThe argument was unanswerable, and there seemed only one way to turn it aside\u2014a Jewish Tu quoque, an adaptation of the \u2018Physician, heal thyself\u2019: \u2018Do we not say rightly, that Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a demon?\u2019 It is strange that the first clause of this reproach should have been so misunderstood, and yet its direct explanation lies on the surface. We have only to retranslate it into the language which the Jews had used. By no strain of ingenuity is it possible to account for the designation \u2018Samaritan,\u2019 as given by the Jews to Jesus, if it is regarded as referring to nationality. Even at that very Feast they had made it an objection to His Messianic claims, that He was (as they supposed) a Galilean. Nor had He come to Jerusalem from Samaria; nor could He be so called (as Commentators suggest) because He was \u2018a foe\u2019 to Israel, or \u2018a breaker of the Law,\u2019 or \u2018unfit to bear witness\u2019\u2014for neither of these circumstances would have led the Jews to designate Him by the term \u2018Samaritan.\u2019 But, in the language which they spoke, what is rendered into Greek by \u2018Samaritan,\u2019 would have been either Kuthi (\u05db\u05d5\u05ea\u05d9), which, while literally meaning a Samaritan, is almost as often used in the sense of \u2018heretic,\u2019 or else Shomroni (\u05e9\u05de\u05e8\u05d5\u05e0\u05d9). The latter word deserves special attention. Literally, it also means \u2018Samaritan;\u2019 but, the name Shomron (perhaps from its connection with Samaria), is also sometimes used as the equivalent of Ashmedai, the prince of the demons. According to the Kabbalists, Shomron was the father of Ashmedai, and hence the same as Sammael, or Satan. That this was a wide-spread Jewish belief, appears from the circumstance that in the Kor\u00e2n (which, in such matters, would reproduce popular Jewish tradition), Israel is said to have been seduced into idolatry by Shomron, while, in Jewish tradition, this is attributed to Sammael. If, therefore, the term applied by the Jews to Jesus was Shomroni\u2014and not Kuthi, \u2018heretic\u2019\u2014it would literally mean, \u2018Child of the Devil.\u2019
\nThis would also explain why Christ only replied to the charge of having a demon, since the two charges meant substantially the same: \u2018Thou art a child of the devil and hast a demon.\u2019 In wondrous patience and mercy He almost passed it by, dwelling rather, for their teaching, on the fact that, while they dishonoured Him, He honoured His Father. He heeded not their charges. His concern was the glory of His Father; the vindication of His own honour would be brought about by the Father\u2014though, alas! in judgment on those who were casting such dishonour on the Sent of God. Then, as if lingering in deep compassion on the terrible issue, He once more pressed home the great subject of His Discourse, that only \u2018if a man keep\u2019\u2014both have regard to, and observe\u2014His \u2018Word,\u2019 \u2018he shall not gaze at death [intently behold it] unto eternity\u2019\u2014for ever shall he not come within close and terrible gaze of what is really death, of what became such to Adam in the hour of his Fall.
\nIt was, as repeatedly observed, this death as the consequence of the Fall, of which the Jews knew nothing. And so they once more misunderstood it as of physical death, and, Since Abraham and the prophets had died, regarded Christ as setting up a claim higher than theirs. The Discourse had contained all that He had wished to bring before them, and their objections were degenerating into wrangling. It was time to break it off by a general application. The question, He added, was not of what He said, but of what God said of Him\u2014that God, Whom they claimed as theirs, and yet knew not, but Whom He knew, and Whose Word He \u2018kept.\u2019 But, as for Abraham\u2014he had \u2018exulted\u2019 in the thought of the coming day of the Christ, and, seeing its glory, he was glad. Even Jewish tradition could scarcely gainsay this, since there were two parties in the Synagogue, of which one believed that, when that horror of great darkness fell on him, Abraham had, in vision, been shown not only this, but the coming world\u2014and not only all events in the present \u2018age,\u2019 but also those in Messianic times. And now, theirs was not misunderstanding, but wilful misinterpretation. He had spoken of Abraham seeing His day; they took it of His seeing Abraham\u2019s day, and challenged its possibility. Whether or not they intended thus to elicit an avowal of His claim to eternal duration, and hence to Divinity, it was not time any longer to forbear the full statement, and, with Divine emphasis, He spake the words which could not be mistaken: \u2018Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I AM.\u2019
\nIt was as if they had only waited for this. Furiously they rushed from the Porch into the Court of the Gentiles\u2014with symbolic significance, even in this\u2014to pick up stones, and to cast them at Him. But, once more, His hour had not yet come, and their fury proved impotent. Hiding Himself for the moment, as might so easily be done, in one of the many chambers, passages, or gateways of the Temple, He presently passed out.
\nIt had been the first plain disclosure and avowal of His Divinity, and it was \u2018in the midst of His enemies,\u2019 and when most contempt was cast upon Him. Presently would that avowal be renewed both in Word and by Deed; for \u2018the end\u2019 of mercy and judgment had not yet come, but was drawing terribly nigh.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 9<\/p>\n
THE HEALING OF THE MAN BORN BLIND<\/p>\n
(St. John 9.)<\/p>\n
AFTER the scene in the Temple described in the last chapter, and Christ\u2019s consequent withdrawal from His enemies, we can scarcely suppose any other great event to have taken place on that day within or near the precincts of the Sanctuary. And yet, from the close connection of the narratives, we are led to infer that no long interval of time can have elapsed before the healing of the man born blind. Probably it happened the day after the events just recorded. We know that it was a Sabbath, and this fresh mark of time, as well as the multiplicity of things done, and the whole style of the narrative, confirm our belief that it was not on the evening of the day when He had spoken to them first in \u2018the Treasury,\u2019 and then in the Porch.
\nOn two other points there is strong presumption, though we cannot offer actual proof. Remembering, that the entrance to the Temple or its Courts was then\u2014as that of churches is on the Continent\u2014the chosen spot for those who, as objects of pity, solicited charity; remembering, also, how rapidly the healing of the blind man became known, and how soon both his parents and the healed man himself appeared before the Pharisees\u2014presumably, in the Temple; lastly, how readily the Saviour knew where again to find him,\u2014we can scarcely doubt that the miracle took place at the entering to the Temple, or on the Temple-Mount. Secondly, both the Work, and especially the Words of Christ, seem in such close connection with what had preceded, that we can scarcely be mistaken in regarding them as intended to form a continuation of it.
\nIt is not difficult to realise the scene, nor to understand the remarks of all who had part in it. It was the Sabbath\u2014the day after the Octave of the Feast, and Christ with His disciples was passing\u2014presumably when going into the Temple, where this blind beggar was wont to sit, probably soliciting alms, perhaps in some such terms as these, which were common at the time: \u2018Gain merit by me;\u2019 or, \u2018O tenderhearted, by me gain merit, to thine own benefit.\u2019 But on the Sabbath he would, of course, neither ask nor receive alms, though his presence in the wonted place would secure wider notice, and perhaps lead to many private gifts. Indeed, the blind were regarded as specially entitled to charity; and the Jerusalem Talmud relates some touching instances of the delicacy displayed towards them. As the Master and His disciples passed the blind beggar, Jesus \u2018saw\u2019 him, with that look which they who followed Him knew to be full of meaning. Yet, so thoroughly Judaised were they by their late contact with the Pharisees, that no thought of possible mercy came to them, only a truly and characteristically Jewish question, addressed to Him expressly, and as \u2018Rabbi:\u2019 through whose guilt this blindness had befallen him\u2014through his own, or that of his parents.
\nFor, thoroughly Jewish the question was. Many instances could be adduced, in which one or another sin is said to have been punished by some immediate stroke, disease, or even by death; and we constantly find Rabbis, when meeting such unfortunate persons, asking them, how or by what sin this had come to them. But, as this man was \u2018blind from his birth,\u2019 the possibility of some actual sin before birth would suggest itself, at least as a speculative question, since the \u2018evil impulse\u2019 (Yetser haRa), might even then be called into activity. At the same time, both the Talmud and the later charge of the Pharisees, \u2018In sins wast thou born altogether,\u2019 imply that in such cases the alternative explanation would be considered, that the blindness might be caused by the sin of his parents. It was a common Jewish view, that the merits or demerits of the parents would appear in the children. In fact, up to thirteen years of age a child was considered, as it were, part of his father, and as suffering for his guilt. More than that, the thoughts of a mother might affect the moral state of her unborn offspring, and the terrible apostasy of one of the greatest Rabbis had, in popular belief, been caused by the sinful delight his mother had taken when passing through an idol-grove. Lastly, certain special sins in the parents would result in specific diseases in their offspring, and one is mentioned as causing blindness in the children. But the impression left on our minds is, that the disciples felt not sure as to either of these solutions of the difficulty. It seemed a mystery, inexplicable on the supposition of God\u2019s infinite goodness, and to which they sought to apply the common Jewish solution. Many similar mysteries meet us in the administration of God\u2019s Providence\u2014questions, which seem unanswerable, but to which we try to give answers, perhaps, not much wiser than the explanations suggested by the disciples.
\nBut why seek to answer them at all, since we possess not all, perhaps very few of, the data requisite for it? There is one aspect, however, of adversity, and of a strange dispensation of evil, on which the light of Christ\u2019s Words here shines with the brightness of a new morning. There is a physical, natural reason for them. God has not specially sent them, in the sense of His interference or primary causation, although He has sent them in the sense of His knowledge, will, and reign. They have come in the ordinary course of things, and are traceable to causes which, if we only knew them, would appear to us the sequence of the laws which God has imposed on His creation, and which are necessary for its orderly continuance. And, further, all such evil consequences, from the operation of God\u2019s laws, are in the last instance to be traced back to the curse which sin has brought upon man and on earth. With these His Laws, and with their evil sequences to us through the curse of sin, God does not interfere in the ordinary course of His Providence; although he would be daring, who would negative the possibility of what may seem, though it is not, interference, since the natural causes which lead to these evil consequences may so easily, naturally, and rationally be affected. But there is another and a higher aspect of it, since Christ has come, and is really the Healer of all disease and evil by being the Remover of its ultimate moral cause. This is indicated in His words, when, putting aside the clumsy alternative suggested by the disciples, He told them that it was so in order \u2018that the works of God might be made manifest in him.\u2019 They wanted to know the \u2018why,\u2019 He told them the \u2018in order to,\u2019 of the man\u2019s calamity; they wished to understand its reason as regarded its origin, He told them its reasonableness in regard to the purpose which it, and all similar suffering, should serve, since Christ has come, the Healer of evil\u2014because the Saviour from sin. Thus He transferred the question from intellectual ground to that of the moral purpose which suffering might serve. And this not in itself, nor by any destiny or appointment, but because the Coming and Work of the Christ has made it possible to us all. Sin and its sequences are still the same, for \u2018the world is established that it cannot move.\u2019 But over it all has risen the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings; and, if we but open ourselves to His influence, these evils may serve this purpose, and so have this for their reason, not as regards their genesis, but their continuance, \u2018that the works of God may be made manifest.\u2019
\nTo make this the reality to us, was \u2018the work of Him\u2019 Who sent, and for which He sent, the Christ. And rapidly now must He work it, for perpetual example, during the few hours still left of His brief working-day. This figure was not unfamiliar to the Jews, though it may well be that, by thus emphasising the briefness of the time, He may also have anticipated any objection to His healing on the Sabbath. But it is of even more importance to notice, how the two leading thoughts of the previous day\u2019s Discourse were now again taken up and set forth in the miracle that followed. These were, that He did the Work which God had sent Him to do, and that He was the Light of the world. As its Light He could not but shine so long as He was in it. And this He presently symbolised (and is not every miracle a symbol?) in the healing of the blind.
\nOnce more we notice, how in His Deeds, as in His Words, the Lord adopted the forms known and used by His contemporaries, while He filled them with quite other substance. It has already been stated, that saliva was commonly regarded as a remedy for diseases of the eye, although, of course, not for the removal of blindness. With this He made clay, which He now used, adding to it the direction to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam, a term which literally meant \u2018sent.\u2019 A symbolism, this, of Him Who was the Sent of the Father. For, all is here symbolical: the cure and its means. If we ask ourselves why means were used in this instance, we can only suggest, that it was partly for the sake of him who was to be healed, partly for theirs who afterwards heard of it. For, the blind man seems to have been ignorant of the character of his Healer, and it needed the use of some means to make him, so to speak, receptive. On the other hand, not only the use of means, but their inadequacy to the object, must have impressed all. Symbolical, also, were these means. Sight was restored by clay, made out of the ground with the spittle of Him, Whose breath had at the first breathed life into clay; and this was then washed away in the Pool of Siloam, from whose waters had been drawn on the Feast of Tabernacles that which symbolised the forthpouring of the new life by the Spirit. Lastly, if it be asked why such miracle should have been wrought on one who had not previous faith, who does not even seem to have known about the Christ, we can only repeat, that the man himself was intended to be a symbol, \u2018that the works of God should be made manifest in him.\u2019
\nAnd so, what the Pharisees had sought in vain, was freely vouchsafed when there was need for it. With inimitable simplicity, itself evidence that no legend is told, the man\u2019s obedience and healing are recorded. We judge, that his first impulse when healed must have been to seek for Jesus, naturally, where he had first met Him. On his way, probably past his own house to tell his parents, and again on the spot where he had so long sat begging, all who had known him must have noticed the great change that had passed over him. So marvellous, indeed, did it appear, that, while part of the crowd that gathered would, of course, acknowledge his identity, others would say: \u2018No, but he is like him;\u2019 in their suspiciousness looking for some imposture. For there can be little doubt, that on his way he must have learned more about Jesus than merely His Name, and in turn have communicated to his informants the story of his healing. Similarly, the formal question now put to him by the Jews was as much, if not more, a preparatory inquisition than the outcome of a wish to learn the circumstances of his healing. And so we notice in his answer the cautious desire not to say anything that could incriminate his Benefactor. He tells the facts truthfully, plainly; he accentuates by what means he had \u2018recovered,\u2019 not received, sight; but otherwise gives no clue by which either to discover or to incriminate Jesus.
\nPresently they bring him to the Pharisees, not to take notice of his healing, but to found on it a charge against Christ. Such must have been their motive, since it was universally known that the leaders of the people had, of course informally, agreed to take the strictest measures, not only against the Christ, but against any one who professed to be His disciple. The ground on which the present charge against Jesus would rest was plain: the healing involved a manifold breach of the Sabbath-Law. The first of these was that He had made clay. Next, it would be a question whether any remedy might be applied on the holy day. Such could only be done in diseases of the internal organs (from the throat downwards), except when danger to life or the loss of an organ was involved. It was, indeed, declared lawful to apply, for example, wine to the outside of the eyelid, on the ground that this might be treated as washing; but it was sinful to apply it to the inside of the eye. And as regards saliva, its application to the eye is expressly forbidden, on the ground that it was evidently intended as a remedy.
\nThere was, therefore, abundant legal ground for a criminal charge. And, although on the Sabbath the Sanhedrin would not hold any formal meeting, and, even had there been such, the testimony of one man would not have sufficed, yet \u2018the Pharisees\u2019 set the inquiry regularly on foot. First, as if not satisfied with the report of those who had brought the man, they made him repeat it. The simplicity of the man\u2019s language left no room for evasion or subterfuge. Rabbinism was on its great trial. The wondrous fact could neither be denied nor explained, and the only ground for resisting the legitimate inference as to the character of Him Who had done it, was its inconsistence with their traditional law. The alternative was: whether their traditional law of Sabbath-observance, or else He Who had done such miracles, was Divine? Was Christ not of God, because He did not keep the Sabbath in their way? But, then, could an open transgressor of God\u2019s Law do such miracles? In this dilemma they turned to the simple man before them. \u2018Seeing that He opened\u2019 his eyes, what did he say of Him? what was the impression left on his mind, who had the best opportunity for judging?
\nThere is something very peculiar, and, in one sense, most instructive, as to the general opinion entertained even by the best-disposed who had not yet been taught the higher truth, in his reply, so simple and solemn, so comprehensive in its sequences, and yet so utterly inadequate by itself: \u2018He is a Prophet.\u2019 One possibility still remained. After all, the man might not have been really blind; and they might, by cross-examining the parents, elicit that about his original condition which would explain the pretended cure. But on this most important point, the parents, with all their fear of the anger of the Pharisees, remained unshaken. He had been born blind; but as to the manner of his cure, they declined to offer any opinion. Thus, as so often, the machinations of the enemies of Christ led to results the opposite of those wished for. For, the evidential value of their attestation of their son\u2019s blindness was manifestly proportional to their fear of committing themselves to any testimony for Christ, well knowing what it would entail.
\nFor to persons so wretchedly poor as to allow their son to live by begging, the consequences of being, \u2018un-Synagogued,\u2019 or put outside the congregation\u2014which was to be the punishment of any who confessed Jesus as the Messiah\u2014would have been dreadful. Talmudic writings speak of two, or rather, we should say, of three, kinds of \u2018excommunication,\u2019 of which the two first were chiefly disciplinary, while the third was the real \u2018casting out,\u2019 \u2018un-Synagoguing,\u2019 \u2018cutting off from the congregation.\u2019 The general designation for \u2018excommunication\u2019 was Shammatta, although, according to its literal meaning, the term would only apply to the severest form of it The first and lightest degree was the so-called Neziphah or Neziphutha; properly, \u2018a rebuke,\u2019 an inveighing. Ordinarily, its duration extended over seven days; but, if pronounced by the Nasi, or Head of the Sanhedrin, it lasted for thirty days. In later times, however, it only rested for one day on the guilty person. Perhaps St. Paul referred to this \u2018rebuke\u2019 in the expression which he used about an offending Elder. He certainly adopted the practice in Palestine, when he would not have an Elder \u2018rebuked,\u2019 although he went far beyond it when he would have such \u2018entreated.\u2019 In Palestine it was ordered, that an offending Rabbi should be scourged instead of being excommunicated. Yet another direction of St. Paul\u2019s is evidently derived from these arrangements of the Synagogue, although applied in a far different spirit. When the Apostle wrote: \u2018An heretic after the first and second admonition reject;\u2019 there must have been in his mind the second degree of Jewish excommunication, the so-called Niddui (from the verb to thrust, thrust out, cast out). This lasted for thirty days at the least, although among the Babylonians only for seven days. At the end of that term there was \u2018a second admonition,\u2019 which lasted other thirty days. If still unrepentant, the third, or real excommunication, was pronounced, which was called the Cherem, or ban, and of which the duration was indefinite. Any three persons, or even one duly authorised, could pronounce the lowest sentence. The greater excommunication (Niddui)\u2014which, happily, could only be pronounced in an assembly of ten\u2014must have been terrible, being accompanied by curses, and, at a later period, sometimes proclaimed with the blast of the horn. If the person so visited occupied an honourable position, it was the custom to intimate his sentence in a euphemistic manner, such as: \u2018It seems to me that thy companions are separating themselves from thee.\u2019 He who was so, or similarly addressed, would only too well understand its meaning. Henceforth he would sit on the ground, and bear himself like one in deep mourning. He would allow his beard and hair to grow wild and shaggy; he would not bathe, nor anoint himself; he would not be admitted into any assembly of ten men, neither to public prayer, nor to the Academy; though he might either teach, or be taught by, single individuals. Nay, as if he were a leper, people would keep at a distance of four cubits from him. If he died, stones were cast on his coffin, nor was he allowed the honour of the ordinary funeral, nor were they to mourn for him. Still more terrible was the final excommunication, or Cherem, when a ban of indefinite duration was laid on a man. Henceforth he was like one dead. He was not allowed to study with others, no intercourse was to be held with him, he was not even to be shown the road. He might, indeed, buy the necessaries of life, but it was forbidden to eat or drink with such an one.
\nWe can understand, how everyone would dread such an anathema. But when we remember, what it would involve to persons in the rank of life, and so miserably poor as the parents of that blind man, we no longer wonder at their evasion of the question put by the Sanhedrin. And if we ask ourselves, on what ground so terrible a punishment could be inflicted to all time and in every place\u2014for the ban once pronounced applied everywhere\u2014simply for the confession of Jesus as the Christ, the answer is not difficult. The Rabbinists enumerate twenty-four grounds for excommunication, of which more than one might serve the purpose of the Pharisees. But in general, to resist the authority of the Scribes, or any of their decrees, or to lead others either away from \u2018the commandments,\u2019 or to what was regarded as profanation of the Divine Name, was sufficient to incur the ban, while it must be borne in mind that excommunication by the President of the Sanhedrin extended to all places and persons.
\nAs nothing could be elicited from his parents, the man who had been blind was once more summoned before the Pharisees. It was no longer to inquire into the reality of his alleged blindness, nor to ask about the cure, but simply to demand of him recantation, though this was put in the most specious manner. Thou hast been healed: own that it was only by God\u2019s Hand miraculously stretched forth, and that \u2018this man\u2019 had nothing to do with it, save that the coincidence may have been allowed to try the faith of Israel. It could not have been Jesus Who had done it, for they knew Him to be \u2018a sinner.\u2019 Of the two alternatives they had chosen that of the absolute rightness of their own Sabbath-traditions as against the evidence of His Miracles. Virtually, then, this was the condemnation of Christ and the apotheosis of traditionalism. And yet, false as their conclusion was, there was this truth in their premisses, that they judged of miracles by the moral evidence in regard to Him, Who was represented as working them.
\nBut he who had been healed of his blindness was not to be so betrayed into a denunciation of his great Physician. The simplicity and earnestness of his convictions enabled him to gain even a logical victory. It was his turn now to bring back the question to the issue which they had originally raised; and we admire it all the more, as we remember the consequences to this poor man of thus daring the Pharisees. As against their opinion about Jesus, as to the correctness of which neither he nor others could have direct knowledge, there was the unquestionable fact of his healing, of which he had personal knowledge. The renewed inquiry now by the Pharisees, as to the manner in which Jesus had healed him, might have had for its object to betray the man into a positive confession, or to elicit something demoniacal in the mode of the cure. The blind man had now fully the advantage. He had already told them; why the renewed inquiry? As he put it half ironically: Was it because they felt the wrongness of their own position, and that they should become His disciples? It stung them to the quick; they lost all self-possession, and with this their moral defeat became complete. \u2018Thou art the disciple of that man, but we (according to the favourite phrase) are the disciples of Moses.\u2019 Of the Divine Mission of Moses they knew, but of the Mission of Jesus they knew nothing. The unlettered man had now the full advantage in the controversy. \u2018In this, indeed,\u2019 there was \u2018the marvellous,\u2019 that the leaders of Israel should confess themselves ignorant of the authority of One, Who had power to open the eyes of the blind\u2014a marvel which had never before been witnessed. If He had that power, whence had He obtained it, and why? It could only have been from God. They said, He was \u2018a sinner\u2019\u2014and yet there was no principle more frequently repeated by the Rabbis, than that answers to prayer depended on a man being \u2018devout\u2019 and doing the Will of God. There could therefore be only one inference: If Jesus had not Divine Authority, He could not have had Divine Power.
\nThe argument was unanswerable, and in its unanswerableness shows us, not indeed the purpose, but the evidential force of Christ\u2019s Miracles. In one sense they had no purpose, or rather were purpose to themselves, being the forthbursting of His Power and the manifestation of His Being and Mission, of which latter, as applied to things physical, they were part. But the truthful reasoning of that untutored man, which confounded the acuteness of the sages, shows the effect of these manifestations on all whose hearts were open to the truth. The Pharisees had nothing to answer, and, as not unfrequently in analogous cases, could only, in their fury, cast him out with bitter reproaches. Would he teach them\u2014he, whose very disease showed him to have been a child conceived and born in sin, and who, ever since his birth, had been among ignorant, Law-neglecting \u2018sinners\u2019?
\nBut there was Another, Who watched and knew him: He Whom, so far as he knew, he had dared to confess, and for Whom he was content to suffer. Let him now have the reward of his faith, even its completion; and so shall it become manifest to all time, how, as we follow and cherish the better light, it riseth upon us in all its brightness, and that faithfulness in little bringeth the greater stewardship. Tenderly did Jesus seek him out, wherever it may have been; and, as He found him, this one question did He ask, whether the conviction of his experience was not growing into the higher faith of the yet unseen: \u2018Dost thou believe on the Son of God?\u2019 He had had personal experience of Him\u2014was not that such as to lead up to the higher faith? And is it not always so, that the higher faith is based on the conviction of personal experience\u2014that we believe on Him as the Son of God, because we have experience of Him as the God-sent, Who has Divine Power, and has opened the eyes of the blind-born\u2014and Who has done to us what had never been done by any other in the world? Thus is faith always the child of experience, and yet its father also; faith not without experience, and yet beyond experience; faith not superseded by experience, but made reasonable by it.
\nTo such a soul it needed only the directing Word of Christ. \u2018And Who is He, Lord, that I may believe on Him?\u2019 It seems as if the question of Jesus had kindled in him the conviction of what was the right answer. We almost see how, like a well of living water, the words sprang gladsome from his inmost heart, and how he looked up expectant on Jesus. To such readiness of faith there could be only one answer. In language more plain than He had ever before used, Jesus answered, and with immediate confession of implicit faith the man lowly worshipped. And so it was, that the first time he saw his Deliverer, it was to worship Him. It was the highest stage yet attained. What contrast this faith and worship of the poor, unlettered man, once blind, now in every sense seeing, to the blindness of judgment which had fallen on those who were the leaders of Israel! The cause alike of the one and the other was the Person of the Christ. For our relationship to Him determines sight or blindness, as we either receive the evidence of what He is from what He indubitably does, or reject it, because we hold by our own false conceptions of God and of what His Will to us is. And so is Christ also for \u2018judgment.\u2019
\nThere were those who still followed Him\u2014not convinced by, nor as yet decided against Him\u2014Pharisees, who well understood the application of His Words. Formally, it had been a contest between traditionalism and the Work of Christ. They also were traditionalists\u2014were they also blind? But, nay, they had misunderstood Him by leaving out the moral element, thus showing themselves blind indeed. It was not the calamity of blindness; but it was a blindness in which they were guilty, and for which they were responsible, which indeed was the result of their deliberate choice: therefore their sin\u2014not their blindness only\u2014remained!<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 10<\/p>\n
THE \u2018GOOD SHEPHERD\u2019 AND HIS \u2018ONE FLOCK\u2019\u2014LAST DISCOURSE AT FEAST OF TABERNACLES<\/p>\n
(St. John 10:1\u201321.)<\/p>\n
THE closing words which Jesus had spoken to those Pharisees who followed Him breathe the sadness of expected near judgment, rather than the hopefulness of expostulation. And the Discourse which followed, ere He once more left Jerusalem, is of the same character. It seems, as if Jesus could not part from the City in holy anger, but ever, and only, with tears. All the topics of the former Discourses are now resumed and applied. They are not in any way softened or modified, but uttered in accents of loving sadness rather than of reproving monition. This connection with the past proves, that the Discourse was spoken immediately after, and in connection with, the events recorded in the previous chapters. At the same time, the tone adopted by Christ prepares us for His Per\u00e6an Ministry, which may be described as that of the last and fullest outgoing of His most intense pity. This, in contrast to what was exhibited by the rulers of Israel, and which would so soon bring terrible judgment on them. For, if such things were done in \u2018the green tree\u2019 of Israel\u2019s Messiah-King, what would the end be in the dry wood of Israel\u2019s commonwealth and institutions?
\nIt was in accordance with the character of the Discourse presently under consideration, that Jesus spake it, not, indeed, in Parables in the strict sense (for none such are recorded in the Fourth Gospel), but in an allegory in the Parabolic form, hiding the higher truths from those who, having eyes, had not seen, but revealing them to such whose eyes had been opened. If the scenes of the last few days had made anything plain, it was the utter unfitness of the teachers of Israel for their professed work of feeding the flock of God. The Rabbinists also called their spiritual leaders \u2018feeders,\u2019 Parnasin (\u05e4\u05e8\u05e0\u05e1\u05d9\u05df)\u2014a term by which the Targum renders some of the references to \u2018the Shepherds\u2019 in Ezek. 34. and Zech. 11. The term comprised the two ideas of \u2018leading\u2019 and \u2018feeding,\u2019 which are separately insisted on in the Lord\u2019s allegory. As we think of it, no better illustration, nor more apt, could be found for those to whom \u2018the flock of God\u2019 was entrusted. It needed not therefore that a sheepfold should have been in view, to explain the form of Christ\u2019s address. It only required to recall the Old Testament language about the shepherding of God, and that of evil shepherds, to make the application to what had so lately happened. They were, surely, not shepherds, who had cast out the healed blind man, or who so judged of the Christ, and would cast out all His disciples. They had entered into God\u2019s Sheepfold, but not by the door by which the owner, God, had brought His flock into the fold. To it the entrance had been His free love, His gracious provision, His thoughts of pardoning, His purpose of saving mercy. That was God\u2019s Old Testament-door into His Sheepfold. Not by that door, as had so lately fully appeared, had Israel\u2019s rulers come in. They had climbed up to their place in the fold some other way\u2014with the same right, or by the same wrong, as a thief or a robber. They had wrongfully taken what did not belong to them\u2014cunningly and undetected, like a thief; they had allotted it to themselves, and usurped it by violence, like a robber. What more accurate description could be given of the means by which the Pharisees and Sadducees had attained the rule over God\u2019s flock, and claimed it for themselves? And what was true of them holds equally so of all, who, like them, enter by \u2018some other way.\u2019
\nHow different He, Who comes in and leads us through God\u2019s door of covenant-mercy and Gospel-promise\u2014the door by which God had brought, and ever brings, His flock into His fold! This was the true Shepherd. The allegory must, of course, not be too closely pressed; but, as we remember how in the East the flocks are at night driven into a large fold, and charge of them is given to an under-shepherd, we can understand how, when the shepherd comes in the morning, \u2018the doorkeeper\u2019 or \u2018guardian\u2019 opens to him. In interpreting the allegory, stress must be laid not so much on any single phrase, be it the \u2018porter,\u2019 the \u2018door,\u2019 or the \u2018opening,\u2019 as on their combination. If the shepherd comes to the door, the porter hastens to open it to him from within, that he may obtain access to the flock; and when a true spiritual Shepherd comes to the true spiritual door, it is opened to him by the guardian from within, that is, he finds ready and immediate access. Equally pictorial is the progress of the allegory. Having thus gained access to His flock, it has not been to steal or rob, but the Shepherd knows and calls them, each by his name, and leads them out. We mark that in the expression: \u2018when He has put forth all His own,\u2019\u2014the word is a strong one. For they have to go each singly, and perhaps they are not willing to go out each by himself, or even to leave that fold, and so He \u2018puts\u2019 or thrusts them forth, and He does so to \u2018all His own.\u2019 Then the Eastern shepherd places himself at the head of his flock, and goes before them, guiding them, making sure of their following simply by his voice, which they know. So would His flock follow Christ, for they know His Voice, and in vain would strangers seek to lead them away, as the Pharisees had tried. It was not the known Voice of their own Shepherd, and they would only flee from it.
\nWe can scarcely wonder, that they who heard it did not understand the allegory, for they were not of His flock and knew not His Voice. But His own knew it then, and would know it for ever. \u2018Therefore,\u2019 both for the sake of the one and the other, He continued, now dividing for greater clearness the two leading ideas of His allegory, and applying each separately for better comfort. These two ideas were: entrance by the door, and the characteristics of the good Shepherd\u2014thus affording a twofold test by which to recognise the true, and distinguish it from the false.
\nI. The door.\u2014Christ was the Door. The entrance into God\u2019s fold and to God\u2019s flock was only through that, of which Christ was the reality. And it had ever been so. All the Old Testament institutions, prophecies, and promises, so far as they referred to access into God\u2019s fold, meant Christ. And all those who went before Him, pretending to be the door\u2014whether Pharisees, Sadducees, or Nationalists\u2014were only thieves and robbers: that was not the door into the Kingdom of God. And the sheep, God\u2019s flock, did not hear them; for, although they might pretend to lead the flock, the voice was that of strangers. The transition now to another application of the allegorical idea of the \u2018door\u2019 was natural and almost necessary, though it appears somewhat abrupt. Even in this it is peculiarly Jewish. We must understand this transition as follows: I am the Door; those who professed otherwise to gain access to the fold have climbed in some other way. But if I am the only, I am also truly the Door. And, dropping the figure, if any man enters by Me, he shall be saved, securely go out and in (where the language is not to be closely pressed), in the sense of having liberty and finding pasture.
\nII. This forms also the transition to the second leading idea of the allegory: the True and Good Shepherd. Here we mark a fourfold progression of thought, which reminds us of the poetry of the Book of Psalms. There the thought expressed in one line or one couplet is carried forward and developed in the next, forming what are called the Psalms of Ascent (\u2018of Degrees\u2019). And in the Discourse of Christ also the final thought of each couplet of verses is carried forward, or rather leads upward in the next. Thus we have here a Psalm of Degrees concerning the Good Shepherd and His Flock, and, at the same time, a New Testament version of Psalm 23. Accordingly its analysis might be formulated as follows:\u2014
\n1. Christ the Good Shepherd, in contrast to others who falsely claimed to be the shepherds. Their object had been self, and they had pursued it even at the cost of the sheep, of their life and safety. He \u2018came\u2019 for them, to give, not to take, \u2018that they may have life and have abundance.\u2019
\n\u2018Life,\u2019\u2014nay, that they may have it, I \u2018lay down\u2019 Mine: so does it appear that \u2018I am the Good Shepherd.\u2019
\n2. The Good Shepherd Who layeth down His life for His sheep! What a contrast to a mere hireling, whose are not the sheep, and who fleeth at sight of the wolf (danger), \u2018and the wolf seizeth them, and scattereth (viz., the flock): (he fleeth) because he is a hireling, and careth not for the sheep.\u2019 The simile of the wolf must not be too closely pressed, but taken in a general sense, to point the contrast to Him \u2018Who layeth down His Life for His sheep.\u2019
\nTruly He is\u2014is seen to be\u2014\u2018the fair Shepherder,\u2019 Whose are the sheep, and as such, \u2018I know Mine, and Mine know Me, even as the Father knoweth Me, and I know the Father. And I lay down My Life for the sheep.\u2019
\n3. For the sheep that are Mine, whom I know, and for whom I lay down My Life! But those sheep, they are not only \u2018of this fold,\u2019 not all of the Jewish \u2018fold,\u2019 but also scattered sheep of the Gentiles. They have all the characteristics of the flock: they are His; and they hear His Voice; but as yet they are outside the fold. Them also the Good Shepherd \u2018must lead,\u2019 and, in evidence that they are His, as He calls them and goes before them, they shall hear His Voice, and so, O most glorious consummation, \u2018they shall become one flock and one Shepherd.\u2019
\nAnd thus is the great goal of the Old Testament reached, and \u2018the good tidings of great joy\u2019 which issue from Israel \u2018are unto all people.\u2019 The Kingdom of David, which is the Kingdom of God, is set up upon earth, and opened to all believers. We cannot help noticing\u2014though it almost seems to detract from it\u2014how different from the Jewish ideas of it is this Kingdom with its Shepherd-King, Who knows and Who lays down His Life for the sheep, and Who leads the Gentiles not to subjection nor to inferiority, but to equality of faith and privileges, taking the Jews out of their special fold and leading up the Gentiles, and so making of both \u2018one flock.\u2019 Whence did Jesus of Nazareth obtain these thoughts and views, towering so far aloft of all around?
\nBut, on the other hand, they are utterly un-Gentile also\u2014if by the term \u2018Gentile\u2019 we mean the \u2018Gentile Churches,\u2019 in antagonism to the Jewish Christians, as a certain school of critics would represent them, which traces the origin of this Gospel to this separation. A Gospel written in that spirit would never have spoken on this wise of the mutual relation of Jews and Gentiles towards Christ and in the Church. The sublime words of Jesus are only compatible with one supposition: that He was indeed the Christ of God. Nay, although men have studied or cavilled at these words for eighteen and a half centuries, they have not yet reached unto this: \u2018They shall become one flock, one Shepherd.\u2019
\n4. In the final Step of \u2018Ascent\u2019 the leading thoughts of the whole Discourse are taken up and carried to the last and highest thought. The Good Shepherd that brings together the One Flock! Yes\u2014by laying down His Life, but also by taking it up again. Both are necessary for the work of the Good Shepherd\u2014nay, the life is laid down in the surrender of sacrifice, in order that it may be taken up again, and much more fully, in the Resurrection-Power. And, therefore, His Father loveth Him as the Messiah-Shepherd, Who so fully does the work committed to Him, and so entirely surrenders Himself to it.
\nHis Death, His Resurrection\u2014let no one imagine that it comes from without! It is His own act. He has \u2018power\u2019 in regard to both, and both are His own, voluntary, Sovereign, and Divine acts.
\nAnd this, all this, in order to be the Shepherd-Saviour\u2014to die, and rise for His Sheep, and thus to gather them all, Jews and Gentiles, into one flock, and to be their Shepherd. This, neither more nor less, was the Mission which God had given Him; this, \u2018the commandment\u2019 which He had received of His Father\u2014that which God had given Him to do.
\nIt was a noble close of the series of those Discourses in the Temple, which had it for their object to show, that He was truly sent of God.
\nAnd, in a measure, they attained that object. To some, indeed, it all seemed unintelligible, incoherent, madness; and they fell back on the favourite explanation of all this strange drama\u2014He hath a demon! But others there were\u2014let us hope, many, not yet His disciples\u2014to whose hearts these words went straight. And how could they resist the impression? \u2018These utterances are not of a demonised\u2019\u2014and, then, it came back to them: \u2018Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?\u2019
\nAnd so, once again, the Light of His Words and of His Person fell upon His Works, and, as ever, revealed their character, and made them clear.
\nNOTE.\u2014It seems right here, in a kind of \u2018Postscript-Note,\u2019 to call attention to what could not have been inserted in the text without breaking up its unity, and yet seems too important to be relegated to an ordinary footnote. In Yoma 66 b, lines 18 to 24 from top, we have a series of questions addressed to Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanos, designed\u2014as it seems to me\u2014to test his views about Jesus and his relation to the new doctrine. Rabbi Eliezer, one of the greatest Rabbis, was the brother-in-law of Gamaliel 2., the son of that Gamaliel at whose feet Paul sat. He may, therefore, have been acquainted with the Apostle. And we have indubitable evidence that he had intercourse with Jewish Christians, and took pleasure in their teaching; and, further, that he was accused of favouring Christianity. Under these circumstances, the series of covered, enigmatic questions, reported as addressed to him, gains a new interest. I can only repeat, that I regard them as referring to the Person and the Words of Christ. One of these questions is to this effect: \u2018Is it [right, proper, duty] for the Shepherd to save a lamb from the lion?\u2019 To this the Rabbi gives (as always in this series of questions) an evasive answer, as follows: \u2018You have only asked me about the lamb.\u2019 On this the following question is next put, I presume by way of forcing an express reply: \u2018Is it [right, proper, duty] to save the Shepherd from the lion?\u2019 and to this the Rabbi once more evasively replies: \u2018You have only asked me about the Shepherd.\u2019 Thus, as the words of Christ to which covert reference is made have only meaning when the two ideas of the Sheep and the Shepherd are combined, the Rabbi, by dividing them, cleverly evaded giving an answer to his questioners. But these inferences come to us, all of deepest importance: 1. I regard the questions above quoted as containing a distinct reference to the words of Christ in St. John 10:11. Indeed, the whole string of questions, of which the above form part, refers to Christ and His Words. 2. It casts a peculiar light, not only upon the personal history of this great Rabbi, the brother-in-law of the Patriarch Gamaliel 2., but a side-light also on the history of Nicodemus. Of course, such evasive answers are utterly unworthy of a disciple of Christ, and quite incompatible with the boldness of confession which must characterise them. But the question arises\u2014now often seriously discussed by Jewish writers: how far many Rabbis and laymen may have gone in their belief of Christ, and yet\u2014at least in too many instances\u2014fallen short of discipleship; and, lastly, as to the relation between the early Church and the Jews, on which not a few things of deep interest have to be said, though it may not be on the present occasion. 3. Critically also, the quotation is of the deepest importance. For, does it not furnish a reference\u2014and that on the lips of Jews\u2014to the Fourth Gospel, and that from the close of the first century? There is here something which the opponents of its genuineness and authenticity will have to meet and answer.
\nAnother series of similar allegorical questions in connection with R. Joshua b. Chananyah is recorded in Bekhor 8 a and b, but answered by the Rabbi in an anti-Christian sense. See Mandelstamm, Talmud. Stud. 1. But Mandelstamm goes too far in his view of the purely allegorical meaning, especially of the introductory part.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 11<\/p>\n
THE FIRST PER\u00c6AN DISCOURSES\u2014TO THE PHARISEES CONCERNING THE TWO KINGDOMS\u2014THEIR CONTEST\u2014WHAT QUALIFIES A DISCIPLE FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD, AND HOW ISRAEL WAS BECOMING SUBJECT TO THAT OF EVIL<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 12:22\u201345; St. Luke 11:14\u201336.)<\/p>\n
IT was well that Jesus should, for the present, have parted from Jerusalem with words like these. They would cling about His hearers like the odour of incense that had ascended. Even \u2018the schism\u2019 that had come among them concerning His Person made it possible not only to continue His Teaching, but to return to the City once more ere His final entrance. For, His Per\u00e6an Ministry, which extended from after the Feast of Tabernacles to the week preceding the last Passover, was, so to speak, cut in half by the brief visit of Jesus to Jerusalem at the Feast of the Dedication. Thus, each part of the Per\u00e6an Ministry would last about three months; the first, from about the end of September to the month of December; the second, from that period to the beginning of April. Of these six months we have (with the solitary exception of St. Matthew 12:22\u201345), no other account than that furnished by St. Luke, although, as usually, the Jerusalem and Jud\u00e6an incidents of it are described by St. John. After that we have the account of His journey to the last Passover, recorded, with more or less detail, in the three Synoptic Gospels.
\nIt will be noticed that this section is peculiarly lacking in incident. It consists almost exclusively of Discourses and Parables, with but few narrative portions interspersed. And this, not only because the season of the year must have made itinerancy difficult, and thus have hindered the introduction to new scenes and of new persons, but chiefly from the character of His Ministry in Per\u00e6a. We remember that, similarly, the beginning of Christ\u2019s Galilean Ministry had been chiefly marked by Discourses and Parables. Besides, after what had passed, and must now have been so well known, illustrative Deeds could scarcely have been so requisite in Per\u00e6a. In fact, His Per\u00e6an was, substantially, a resumption of His early Galilean Ministry, only modified and influenced by the much fuller knowledge of the people concerning Christ, and the greatly developed enmity of their leaders. This accounts for the recurrence, although in fuller, or else in modified, form, of many things recorded in the earlier part of this History. Thus, to begin with, we can understand how He would, at this initial stage of His Per\u00e6an, as in that of His Galilean Ministry, repeat, when asked for instruction concerning prayer, those sacred words ever since known as the Lord\u2019s Prayer. The variations are so slight as to be easily accounted for by the individuality of the reporter. They afford, however, the occasion for remarking on the two principal differences. In St. Luke the prayer is for the forgiveness of \u2018sins,\u2019 while St. Matthew uses the Hebraic term \u2018debts,\u2019 which has passed even into the Jewish Liturgy, denoting our guilt as indebtedness (\u05de\u05d7\u05d5\u05e7 \u05db\u05dc \u05e9\u05d8\u05e8\u05d9 \u05d7\u05d5\u05d1\u05d5\u05ea\u05d9\u05e0\u05d5). Again, the \u2018day by day\u2019 of St. Luke, which further explains the petition for \u2018daily bread,\u2019 common both to St. Matthew and St. Luke, may be illustrated by the beautiful Rabbinic teaching, that the Manna fell only for each day, in order that thought of their daily dependence might call forth constant faith in our \u2018Father Which is in heaven.\u2019 Another Rabbinic saying places our nourishment on the same level with our redemption, as regards the thanks due to God and the fact that both are day by day. Yet a third Rabbinic saying notes the peculiar manner in which both nourishment and redemption are always mentioned in Scripture (by reduplicated expressions), and how, while redemption took place by an Angel, nourishment is attributed directly to God.
\nBut to return. From the introductory expression: \u2018When (or whenever) ye pray, say\u2019\u2014we venture to infer, that this prayer was intended, not only as the model, but as furnishing the words for the future use of the Church. Yet another suggestion may be made. The request, \u2018Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples,\u2019 seems to indicate what was \u2018the certain place,\u2019 which, now consecrated by our Lord\u2019s prayer, became the school for ours. It seems at least likely, that the allusion of the disciples to the Baptist may have been prompted by the circumstance, that the locality was that which had been the scene of John\u2019s labours\u2014of course, in Per\u00e6a. Such a note of place is the more interesting, that St. Luke so rarely indicates localities. In fact, he leaves us in ignorance of what was the central place in Christ\u2019s Per\u00e6an Ministry, although there must have been such. In the main the events are, indeed, most likely narrated in their chronological order. But, as Discourses, Parables, and incidents are so closely mixed up, it will be better, in a work like the present, for clearness\u2019 and briefness\u2019 sake, to separate and group them, so far as possible. Accordingly, this chapter will be devoted to the briefest summary of the Lord\u2019s Discourses in Per\u00e6a, previous to His return to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple.
\nThe first of these was on the occasion of His casting out a demon, and restoring speech to the demonised; or if, as seems likely, the cure is the same as that recorded in St. Matt. 12:22, both sight and speech, which had probably been paralysed. This is one of the cases in which it is difficult to determine whether narratives in different Gospels, with slightly varying details, represent different events or only differing modes of narration. It needs no argument to prove, that substantially the same event, such as the healing of a blind or dumb demonised person, may, and probably would, have taken place on more than one occasion, and that, when it occurred, it would elicit substantially the same remarks by the people, and the same charge against Christ of superior demoniac agency which the Pharisees had now distinctly formulated. Again, when recording similar events, the Evangelists would naturally come to tell them in much the same manner. Hence, it does not follow that two similar narratives in different Gospels always represent the same event. But in this instance, it seems likely. The earlier place which it occupies in the Gospel by St. Matthew may be explained by its position in a group denunciatory of the Pharisees; and the notice there of their blasphemous charge of His being the instrument of Satan probably indicates the outcome of their \u2018council,\u2019 how they might destroy Him.
\nIt is this charge of the Pharisees which forms the main subject of Christ\u2019s address, His language being now much more explicit than formerly, even as the opposition of the Pharisees had more fully ripened. In regard to the slight difference in the narratives of St. Matthew and St. Luke, we mark that, as always, the Words of the Lord are more fully reported by the former, while the latter supplies some vivid pictorial touches. The following are the leading features of Christ\u2019s reply to the Pharisaic charge: First, It was utterly unreasonable, and inconsistent with their own premisses, showing that their ascription of Satanic agency to what Christ did was only prompted by hostility to His Person. This mode of turning the argument against the arguer was peculiarly Hebraic, and it does not imply any assertion on the part of Christ, as to whether or not the disciples of the Pharisees really cast out demons. Mentally, we must supply\u2014according to your own professions, your disciples cast out demons. If so, by whom are they doing it?
\nBut, secondly, beneath this logical argumentation lies deep and spiritual instruction, closely connected with the late teaching during the festive days in Jerusalem. It is directed against the flimsy, superstitious, and unspiritual views entertained by Israel, alike of the Kingdom of evil and of that of God. For, if we ignore the moral aspect of Satan and his kingdom, all degenerates into the absurdities and superstitions of the Jewish view concerning demons and Satan, which are fully described in another place. On the other hand, introduce the ideas of moral evil, of the concentration of its power in a kingdom of which Satan is the representative and ruler, and of our own inherent sinfulness, which makes us his subjects\u2014and all becomes clear. Then, truly, can Satan not cast out Satan\u2014else how could his kingdom stand; then, also, is the casting out of Satan only by \u2018God\u2019s Spirit,\u2019 or \u2018Finger:\u2019 and this is the Kingdom of God. Nay, by their own admission, the casting out of Satan was part of the work of Messiah. Then had the Kingdom of God, indeed, come to them\u2014for in this was the Kingdom of God; and He was the God-sent Messiah, come not for the glory of Israel, nor for anything outward or intellectual, but to engage in mortal conflict with moral evil, and with Satan as its representative. In that contest Christ, as the Stronger, bindeth \u2018the strong one,\u2019 spoils his house (divideth his spoil), and takes from him the armour in which his strength lay (\u2018he trusted\u2019) by taking away the power of sin. This is the work of the Messiah\u2014and, therefore also, no one can be indifferent towards Him, because all, being by nature in a certain relation towards Satan, must, since the Messiah had commenced His Work, occupy a definite relationship towards the Christ Who combats Satan.
\nIt follows, that the work of the Christ is a moral contest waged through the Spirit of God, in which, from their position, all must take a part. But it is conceivable that a man may not only try to be passively, but even be actively on the enemy\u2019s side, and this not by merely speaking against the Christ, which might be the outcome of ignorance or unbelief, but by representing that as Satanic which was the object of His Coming. Such perversion of all that is highest and holiest, such opposition to, and denunciation of, the Holy Spirit as if He were the manifestation of Satan, represents sin in its absolute completeness, and for which there can be no pardon, since the state of mind of which it is the outcome admits not the possibility of repentance, because its essence lies in this, to call that Satanic which is the very object of repentance. It were unduly to press the Words of Christ, to draw from them such inferences as, whether sins unforgiven in this world might or might not be forgiven in the next, since, manifestly, it was not the intention of Christ to teach on this subject. On the other hand, His Words seem to imply that, at least as regards this sin, there is no room for forgiveness in the other world. For, the expression is not \u2018the age to come\u2019 (\u05e2\u05ea\u05d9\u05d3 \u05dc\u05d1\u05d5\u05d0), but, \u2018the world to come\u2019 (\u05e2\u05d5\u05dc\u05dd \u05d4\u05db\u05d0, or, \u05e2\u05dc\u05de\u05d0 \u05d3\u05d0\u05ea\u05d9), which, as we know, does not strictly refer to Messianic times, but to the future and eternal, as distinguished both from this world (\u05e2\u05d5\u05dc\u05dd \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4), and from \u2018the days of the Messiah\u2019 (\u05d9\u05de\u05d5\u05ea \u05d4\u05de\u05e9\u05d9\u05d7).
\n3. But this recognition of the spiritual, which was the opposite of the sin against the Holy Ghost, was, as Christ had so lately explained in Jerusalem, only to be attained by spiritual kinship with it. The tree must be made good, if the fruit were to be good; tree and fruit would correspond to each other. How, then, could these Pharisees \u2018speak good things,\u2019 since the state of the heart determined speech and action? Hence, a man would have to give an account even of every idle word, since, however trifling it might appear to others or to oneself, it was really the outcome of \u2018the heart,\u2019 and showed the inner state. And thus, in reality, would a man\u2019s future in judgment be determined by his words; a conclusion the more solemn, when we remember its bearing on what His disciples on the one side, and the Pharisees on the other, said concerning Christ and the Spirit of God.
\n4. Both logically and morally the Words of Christ were unanswerable; and the Pharisees fell back on the old device of challenging proof of His Divine Mission by some visible sign. But this was to avoid the appeal to the moral element which the Lord had made; it was an attempt to shift the argument from the moral to the physical. It was the moral that was at fault, or rather, wanting in them; and no amount of physical evidence or demonstration could have supplied that. All the signs from heaven would not have supplied the deep sense of sin and of the need for a mighty spiritual deliverance, which alone would lead to the reception of the Saviour Christ. Hence, as under previous similar circumstances, He would offer them only one sign, that of Jonas the prophet. But whereas on the former occasion Christ chiefly referred to Jonas\u2019 preaching (of repentance), on this He rather pointed to the allegorical history of Jonas as the Divine attestation of his Mission. As he appeared in Nineveh, he was himself \u2018a sign unto the Ninevites;\u2019 the fact that he had been three days and nights in the whale\u2019s belly, and that thence he had, so to speak, been sent forth alive to preach in Nineveh, was evidence to them that he had been sent of God. And so would it be again. After three days and three nights \u2018in the heart of the earth\u2019\u2014which is a Hebraism for \u2018in the earth\u2019\u2014would His Resurrection Divinely attest to this generation His Mission. The Ninevites did not question, but received this attestation of Jonas; nay, an authentic report of the wisdom of Solomon had been sufficient to bring the Queen of Sheba from so far; in the one case it was, because they felt their sin; in the other, because she felt need and longing for better wisdom than she possessed. But these were the very elements wanting in the men of this generation; and so both Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba would stand up, not only as mute witnesses against, but to condemn, them. For, the great Reality of which the preaching of Jonas had been only the type, and for which the wisdom of Solomon had been only the preparation, had been presented to them in Christ.
\n5. And so, having put aside this cavil, Jesus returned to His former teaching concerning the Kingdom of Satan and the power of evil; only now with application, not, as before, to the individual, but, as prompted by a view of the unbelieving resistance of Israel, to the Jewish commonwealth as a whole. Here, also, it must be remembered, that, as the words used by our Lord were allegorical and illustrative, they must not be too closely pressed. As compared with the other nations of the world, Israel was like a house from which the demon of idolatry had gone out with all his attendants\u2014really the \u2018Beel-Zibbul\u2019 whom they dreaded. And then the house had been swept of all the foulness and uncleanness of idolatry, and garnished with all manner of Pharisaic adornments. Yet all this while the house was left really empty; God was not there; the Stronger One, Who alone could have resisted the Strong One, held not rule in it. And so the demon returned to it again, to find the house whence he had come out, swept and garnished indeed\u2014but also empty and defenceless. The folly of Israel lay in this, that they thought of only one demon\u2014him of idolatry\u2014Beel-Zibbul, with all his foulness. That was all very repulsive, and they had carefully removed it. But they knew that demons were only manifestations of demoniac power, and that there was a Kingdom of evil. So this house, swept of the foulness of heathenism and adorned with all the self-righteousness of Pharisaism, but empty of God, would only become a more suitable and more secure habitation of Satan; because, from its cleanness and beauty, his presence and rule there as an evil spirit would not be suspected. So, to continue the illustrative language of Christ, he came back \u2018with seven other spirits more wicked than himself\u2019\u2014pride, self-righteousness, unbelief, and the like, the number seven being general\u2014and thus the last state\u2014Israel without the foulness of gross idolatry and garnished with all the adornments of Pharisaic devotion to the study and practice of the Law\u2014was really worse than had been the first with all its open repulsiveness.
\n6. Once more was the Discourse interrupted, this time by a truly Jewish incident. A woman in the crowd burst into exclamations about the blessedness of the Mother who had borne and nurtured such a Son. The phraseology seems to have been not uncommon, since it is equally applied by the Rabbis to Moses, and even to a great Rabbi. More striking, perhaps, is another Rabbinic passage (previously quoted), in which Israel is described as breaking forth into these words on beholding the Messiah: \u2018Blessed the hour in which Messiah was created; blessed the womb whence He issued; blessed the generation that sees Him; blessed the eye that is worthy to behold Him.\u2019
\nAnd yet such praise must have been peculiarly unwelcome to Christ, as being the exaltation of only His Human Personal excellence, intellectual or moral. It quite looked away from that which He would present: His Work and Mission as the Saviour. Hence it was, although from the opposite direction, as great a misunderstanding as the Personal depreciation of the Pharisees. Or, to use another illustration, this praise of the Christ through His Virgin-Mother was as unacceptable and unsuitable as the depreciation of the Christ, which really, though unconsciously, underlay the loving care of the Virgin-Mother when she would have arrested Him in His Work, and which (perhaps for this very reason) St. Matthew relates in the same connection. Accordingly, the answer in both cases is substantially the same: to point away from His merely Human Personality to His Work and Mission\u2014in the one case: \u2018Whosoever shall do the Will of My Father Which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother;\u2019 in the other: \u2018Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it.\u2019
\n7. And now the Discourse draws to a close by a fresh application of what, in some other form or connection, Christ had taught at the outset of His public Ministry in the \u2018Sermon on the Mount.\u2019 Rightly to understand its present connection, we must pass over the various interruptions of Christ\u2019s Discourse, and join this as the conclusion to the previous part, which contained the main subject. This was, that spiritual knowledge presupposed spiritual kinship. Here, as becomes the close of a Discourse, the same truth is practically applied in a more popular and plain, one might almost say realistic, manner. As here put, it is, that spiritual receptiveness is ever the condition of spiritual reception. What was the object of lighting a lamp? Surely, that it may give light. But if so, no one would put it into a vault, nor under the bushel, but on the stand. Should we then expect that God would light the spiritual lamp, if it be put in a dark vault? Or, to take an illustration of it from the eye, which, as regards the body, serves the same purpose as the lamp in a house. Does it not depend on the state of the eye whether or not we have the sensation, enjoyment, and benefit of the light? Let us, therefore, take care, lest, by placing, as it were, the lamp in a vault, the light in us be really only darkness. On the other hand, if by means of a good eye the light is transmitted through the whole system\u2014if it is not turned into darkness, like a lamp that is put into a vault or under a bushel, instead of being set up to spread light through the house\u2014then shall we be wholly full of light. And this, finally, explains the reception or rejection of Christ: how, in the words of an Apostle, the same Gospel would be both a savour of life unto life, and of death unto death.
\nIt was a blessed lesson with which to close His Discourse, and one full of light, if only they had not put it into the vault of their darkened hearts. Yet presently would it shine forth again, and give light to those whose eyes were opened to receive it; for, according to the Divine rule and spiritual order, to him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that he hath.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 12<\/p>\n
THE MORNING-MEAL IN THE PHARISEE\u2019S HOUSE\u2014MEALS AND FEASTS AMONG THE JEWS\u2014CHRIST\u2019S LAST PER\u00c6AN WARNING TO PHARISAISM<\/p>\n
(St. Luke 11:37\u201354.)<\/p>\n
BITTER as was the enmity of the Pharisaic party against Jesus, it had not yet so far spread, nor become so avowed, as in every place to supersede the ordinary rules of courtesy. It is thus that we explain that invitation of a Pharisee to the morning-meal, which furnished the occasion for the second recorded Per\u00e6an Discourse of Christ. Alike in substance and tone, it is a continuation of His former address to the Pharisees. And it is probably here inserted in order to mark the further development of Christ\u2019s anti-Pharisaic teaching. It is the last address to the Pharisees, recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke. A similar last appeal is recorded in a much later portion of St. Matthew\u2019s Gospel, only that St. Luke reports that spoken in Per\u00e6a, St. Matthew that made in Jerusalem. This may also partly account for the similarity of language in the two Discourses. Not only were the circumstances parallel, but the language held at the end may naturally have recurred to the writer, when reporting the last controversial Discourse in Per\u00e6a. Thus it may well have been, that Christ said substantially the same things on both occasions, and yet that, in the report of them, some of the later modes of expression may have been transferred to the earlier occasion. And because the later both represents and presents the fullest anti-Pharisaic Discourse of the Saviour, it will be better to postpone our analysis till we reach that period of His Life.
\nSome distinctive points, however, must here be noted. The remarks already made will explain, how some time may have elapsed between this and the former Discourse, and that the expression, \u2018And as He spake\u2019 must not be pressed as a mark of time (referring to the immediately preceding Discourse), but rather be regarded as indicating the circumstances under which a Pharisee had bidden Him to the meal. Indeed, we can scarcely imagine that, immediately after such a charge by the Pharisees as that Jesus acted as the representative of Beelzebul, and such a reply on the part of Jesus, a Pharisee would have invited Him to a friendly meal, or that \u2018Lawyers,\u2019 or, to use a modern term, \u2018Canonists,\u2019 would have been present at it. How different their feelings were after they had heard His denunciations, appears from the bitterness with which they afterwards sought to provoke Him into saying what might serve as ground for a criminal charge. And there is absolutely no evidence that, as commentators suggest, the invitation of the Pharisee had been hypocritically given, for the purpose of getting up an accusation against Christ. More than this, it seems entirely inconsistent with the unexpressed astonishment of the Pharisee, when he saw Jesus sitting down to food without having first washed hands. Up to that moment, then, it would seem that he had only regarded Him as a celebrated Rabbi, though perhaps one who taught strange things.
\nBut what makes it almost certain, that some time must have elapsed between this and the previous Discourse (or rather that, as we believe, the two events happened in different places), is, that the invitation of the Pharisee was to the \u2018morning-meal.\u2019 We know that this took place early, immediately after the return from morning-prayers in the Synagogue. It is, therefore, scarcely conceivable, that all that is recorded in connection with the first Discourse should have occurred before this first meal. On the other hand, it may well have been, that what passed at the Pharisee\u2019s table may have some connection with something that had occurred just before in the Synagogue, for we conjecture that it was the Sabbath-day. We infer this from the circumstance that the invitation was not to the principal meal, which on a Sabbath \u2018the Lawyers\u2019 (and, indeed, all householders) would, at least ordinarily, have in their own homes. We can picture to ourselves the scene. The week-day family-meal was simple enough, whether breakfast or dinner\u2014the latter towards evening, although sometimes also in the middle of the day, but always before actual darkness, in order, as it was expressed, that the sight of the dishes by daylight might excite the appetite. The Babylonian Jews were content to make a meal without meat; not so the Palestinians. With the latter the favourite food was young meat: goats, lambs, calves. Beef was not so often used, and still more rarely fowls. Bread was regarded as the mainstay of life, without which no entertainment was considered as a meal. Indeed, in a sense it constituted the meal. For, the blessing was spoken over the bread, and this was supposed to cover all the rest of the food that followed, such as the meat, fish, or vegetables\u2014in short, all that made up the dinner, but not the dessert. Similarly, the blessing spoken over the wine included all other kinds of drink. Otherwise it would have been necessary to pronounce a separate benediction over each different article eaten or drunk. He who neglected the prescribed benedictions was regarded as if he had eaten of things dedicated to God, since it was written: \u2018The earth is the Lord\u2019s, and the fulness thereof.\u2019 Beautiful as this principle is, it degenerated into tedious questions of casuistry. Thus, if one kind of food was eaten as an addition to another, it was settled that the blessing should be spoken only over the principal kind. Again, there are elaborate disputations as to what should be regarded as fruit, and have the corresponding blessing, and how, for example, one blessing should be spoken over the leaves and blossom, and another over the berries of the caper. Indeed, that bush gave rise to a serious controversy between the Schools of Hillel and Shammai. Another series of elaborate discussions arose, as to what blessing should be used when a dish consisted of various ingredients, some the product of the earth, others, like honey, derived from the animal world. Such and similar disquisitions, giving rise to endless argument and controversy, busied the minds of the Pharisees and Scribes.
\nLet us suppose the guests assembled. To such a morning-meal they would not be summoned by slaves, nor be received in such solemn state as at feasts. First, each would observe, as a religious rite, \u2018the washing of hands.\u2019 Next, the head of the house would cut a piece from the whole loaf\u2014on the Sabbath there were two loaves\u2014and speak the blessing. But this, only if the company reclined at table, as at dinner. If they sat, as probably always at the early meal, each would speak the benediction for himself. The same rule applied in regard to the wine. Jewish casuistry had it, that one blessing sufficed for the wine intended as part of the meal. If other wine were brought in during the meal, then each one would have to say the blessing anew over it; if after the meal (as was done on Sabbaths and feast-days, to prolong the feast by drinking), one of the company spoke the benediction for all.
\nAt the entertainment of this Pharisee, as indeed generally, our Lord omitted the prescribed \u2018washing of hands\u2019 before the meal. But as this rite was in itself indifferent, He must have had some definite object, which will be explained in the sequel. The externalism of all these practices will best appear from the following account which the Talmud gives of \u2018a feast.\u2019 As the guests enter, they sit down on chairs, and water is brought to them, with which they wash one hand. After this the cup is taken, when each speaks the blessing over the wine partaken of before dinner. Presently they all lie down at table. Water is again brought them, with which they now wash both hands, preparatory to the meal, when the blessing is spoken over the bread, and then over the cup, by the chief person at the feast, or else by one selected by way of distinction. The company respond by Amen, always supposing the benediction to have been spoken by an Israelite, not a heathen, slave, nor law-breaker. Nor was it lawful to say it with an unlettered man, although it might be said with a Cuth\u00e6an (heretic, or else Samaritan), who was learned. After dinner the crumbs, if any, are carefully gathered\u2014hands are again washed, and he who first had done so leads in the prayer of thanksgiving. The formula in which he is to call on the rest to join him, by repeating the prayers after him, is prescribed, and differs according to the number of those present. The blessing and the thanksgiving are allowed to be said not only in Hebrew, but in any other language.
\nIn regard to the position of the guests, we know that the uppermost seats were occupied by the Rabbis. The Talmud formulates it in this manner: That the worthiest lies down first, on his left side, with his feet stretching back. If there are two \u2018cushions\u2019 (divans), the next worthiest reclines above him, at his left hand; if there are three cushions, the third worthiest lies below him who had lain down first (at his right), so that the chief person is in the middle (between the worthiest guest at his left and the less worthy one at his right hand). The water before eating is first handed to the worthiest, and so in regard to the washing after meat. But if a very large number are present, you begin after dinner with the least worthy, till you come to the last five, when the worthiest in the company washes his hands, and the other four after him. The guests being thus arranged, the head of the house, or the chief person at table, speaks the blessing, and then cuts the bread. By some it was not deemed etiquette to begin eating till after he who had said the prayer had done so, but this does not seem to have been the rule among the Palestinian Jews. Then, generally, the bread was dipped into salt, or something salted, etiquette demanding that where there were two they should wait one for the other, but not where there were three or more.
\nThis is not the place to furnish what may be termed a list of menus at Jewish tables. In earlier times the meal was, no doubt, very simple. It became otherwise when intercourse with Rome, Greece, and the East made the people familiar with foreign luxury, while commerce supplied its requirements. Indeed, it would scarcely be possible to enumerate the various articles which seem to have been imported from different, and even distant, countries.
\nTo begin with: the wine was mixed with water, and, indeed, some thought that the benediction should not be pronounced till the water had been added to the wine. According to one statement, two parts, according to another, three parts, of water were to be added to the wine. Various vintages are mentioned: among them a red wine of Saron, and a black wine. Spiced wine was made with honey and pepper. Another mixture, chiefly used for invalids, consisted of old wine, water, and balsam; yet another was \u2018wine of myrrh;\u2019 we also read of a wine in which capers had been soaked. To these we should add wine spiced, either with pepper, or with absinth; and what is described as vinegar, a cooling drink made either of grapes that had not ripened, or of the lees. Besides these, palm-wine was also in use. Of foreign drinks, we read of wine from Ammon, and from the province Asia, the latter a kind of \u2018must\u2019 boiled down. Wine in ice came from the Lebanon; a certain kind of vinegar from Idum\u00e6a; beer from Media and Babylon; a barley-wine (zythos) from Egypt. Finally, we ought to mention Palestinian apple-cider, and the juice of other fruits. If we adopt the rendering of some, even liqueurs were known and used.
\nLong as this catalogue is, that of the various articles of food, whether native or imported, would occupy a much larger space. Suffice it that, as regarded the various kinds of grain, meat, fish, and fruits, either in their natural state or preserved, it embraced almost everything known to the ancient world. At feasts there was an introductory course, consisting of appetising salted meat, or of some light dish. This was followed by the dinner itself, which finished with dessert (Aphiqomon or terugima), consisting of pickled olives, radishes and lettuce, and fruits, among which even preserved ginger from India is mentioned. The most diverse and even strange statements are made as to the healthiness, or the reverse, of certain articles of diet, especially vegetables. Fish was a favourite dish, and never wanting at a Sabbath-meal. It was a saying, that both salt and water should be used at every meal, if health was to be preserved. Condiments, such as mustard or pepper, were to be sparingly used. Very different were the meals of the poor. Locusts\u2014fried in flour or honey, or preserved\u2014required, according to the Talmud, no blessing, since the animal was really among the curses of the land. Eggs were a common article of food, and sold in the shops. Then there was a milk-dish, into which people dipped their bread. Others, who were better off, had a soup made of vegetables, especially onions, and meat, while the very poor would satisfy the cravings of hunger with bread and cheese, or bread and fruit, or some vegetables, such as cucumbers, lentils, beans, peas, or onions.
\nAt meals the rules of etiquette were strictly observed, especially as regarded the sages. Indeed, two tractates are added to the Talmud, of which the one describes the general etiquette, the other that of \u2018sages,\u2019 and the title of which may be translated by \u2018The Way of the World\u2019 (Derekh Erets), being a sort of code of good manners. According to some, it was not good breeding to speak while eating. The learned and most honoured occupied not only the chief places, but were sometimes distinguished by a double portion. According to Jewish etiquette, a guest should conform in everything to his host, even though it were unpleasant. Although hospitality was the greatest and most prized social virtue, which, to use a Rabbinic expression, might make every home a sanctuary and every table an altar, an unbidden guest, or a guest who brought another guest, was proverbially an unwelcome apparition. Sometimes, by way of self-righteousness, the poor were brought in, and the best part of the meal ostentatiously given to them. At ordinary entertainments, people were to help themselves. It was not considered good manners to drink as soon as you were asked, but you ought to hold the cup for a little in your hand. But it would be the height of rudeness, either to wipe the plates, to scrape together the bread, as though you had not had enough to eat, or to drop it, to the inconvenience of your neighbour. If a piece were taken out of a dish, it must of course not be put back; still less must you offer from your cup or plate to your neighbour. From the almost religious value attaching to bread, we scarcely wonder that these rules were laid down: not to steady a cup or plate upon bread, nor to throw away bread, and that after dinner the bread was to be carefully swept together. Otherwise, it was thought, demons would sit upon it. The \u2018Way of the World\u2019 for Sages, lays down these as the marks of a Rabbi: that he does not eat standing; that he does not lick his fingers; that he sits down only beside his equals\u2014in fact, many regarded it as wrong to eat with the unlearned; that he begins cutting the bread where it is best baked, nor ever breaks off a bit with his hand; and that, when drinking, he turns away his face from the company. Another saying was, that the sage was known by four things: at his cups, in money matters, when angry, and in his jokes. After dinner, the formalities concerning handwashing and prayer, already described, were gone through, and then frequently aromatic spices burnt, over which a special benediction was pronounced. We have only to add, that on Sabbaths it was deemed a religious duty to have three meals, and to procure the best that money could obtain, even though one were to save and fast for it all the week. Lastly, it was regarded as a special obligation and honour to entertain sages.
\nWe have no difficulty now in understanding what passed at the table of the Pharisee. When the water for purification was presented to Him, Jesus would either refuse it; or if, as seems more likely at a morning-meal, each guest repaired by himself for the prescribed purification, He would omit to do so, and sit down to meat without this formality. No one, who knows the stress which Pharisaism laid on this rite would argue that Jesus might have conformed to the practice. Indeed, the controversy was long and bitter between the Schools of Shammai and Hillel, on such a point as whether the hands were to be washed before the cup was filled with wine, or after that, and where the towel was to be deposited. With such things the most serious ritual inferences were connected on both sides. A religion which spent its energy on such trivialities must have lowered the moral tone. All the more that Jesus insisted so earnestly, as the substance of His teaching, on that corruption of our nature which Judaism ignored, and on that spiritual purification which was needful for the reception of His doctrine, would He publicly and openly set aside ordinances of man which diverted thoughts of purity into questions of the most childish character. On the other hand, we can also understand what bitter thoughts must have filled the mind of the Pharisee, whose guest Jesus was, when he observed His neglect of the cherished rite. It was an insult to himself, a defiance of Jewish Law, a revolt against the most cherished traditions of the Synagogue. Remembering that a Pharisee ought not to sit down to a meal with such, he might feel that he should not have asked Jesus to his table. All this, as well as the terrible contrast between the punctiliousness of Pharisaism in outward purifications, and the inward defilement which it never sought to remove, must have lain open before Him Who read the inmost secrets of the heart, and kindled His holy wrath. Probably taking occasion (as previously suggested) from something that had passed before, He spoke with the point and emphasis which a last appeal to Pharisaism demanded.
\nWhat our Lord said on that occasion will be considered in detail in another place. Suffice it here to mark, that He first exposed the mere externalism of the Pharisaic law of purification, to the utter ignoring of the higher need of inward purity, which lay at the foundation of all. If the primary origin of the ordinance was to prevent the eating of sacred offerings in defilement, were these outward offerings not a symbol of the inward sacrifice, and was there not an inward defilement as well as the outward? To consecrate what we had to God in His poor, instead of selfishly enjoying it, would not, indeed, be a purification of them (for such was not needed), but it would, in the truest sense, be to eat God\u2019s offerings in cleanness. We mark here a progress and a development, as compared with the former occasion when Jesus had publicly spoken on the same subject. Formerly, He had treated the ordinance of the Elders as a matter not binding; now, He showed how this externalism militated against thoughts of the internal and spiritual. Formerly, He had shown how traditionalism came into conflict with the written Law of God; now, how it superseded the first principles which underlay that Law. Formerly, He had laid down the principle that defilement came not from without inwards, but from within outwards; now, He unfolded this highest principle that higher consecration imparted purity.
\nThe same principle, indeed, would apply to other things, such as to the Rabbinic law of tithing. At the same time it may have been, as already suggested, that something which had previously taken place, or was the subject of conversation at table, had given occasion for the further remarks of Christ. Thus, the Pharisee may have wished to convey his rebuke of Christ by referring to the subject of tithing. And such covert mode of rebuking was very common among the Jews. It was regarded as utterly defiling to eat of that which had not been tithed. Indeed, the three distinctions of a Pharisee were: not to make use nor to partake of anything that had not been tithed; to observe the laws of purification; and, as a consequence of these two, to abstain from familiar intercourse with all non-Pharisees. This separation formed the ground of their claim to distinction. It will be noticed that it is exactly to these three things our Lord adverts: so that these sayings of His are not, as might seem, unconnected, but in the strictest internal relationship. Our Lord shows how Pharisaism, as regarded the outer, was connected with the opposite tendency as regarded the inner man: outward purification with ignorance of the need of that inward purity, which consisted in God-consecration, and with the neglect of it; strictness of outward tithing with ignorance and neglect of the principle which underlay it, viz., the acknowledgment of God\u2019s right over mind and heart (judgment and the love of God); while, lastly, the Pharisaic pretence of separation, and consequent claim to distinction, issued only in pride and self-assertion. Thus, tried by its own tests, Pharisaism terribly failed. It was hypocrisy, although that word was not mentioned till afterwards; and that both negatively and positively: the concealment of what it was, and the pretension to what it was not. And the Pharisaism which pretended to the highest purity, was, really, the greatest impurity\u2014the defilement of graves, only covered up, not to be seen of men!
\nIt was at this point that one of \u2018the Scribes\u2019 at table broke in. Remembering in what contempt some of the learned held the ignorant bigotry of the Pharisees, we can understand that he might have listened with secret enjoyment to denunciations of their \u2018folly.\u2019 As the common saying had it, \u2018the silly pietist,\u2019 \u2018a woman Pharisee,\u2019 and the (self-inflicted) \u2018blows of Pharisaism,\u2019 were among the plagues of life. And we cannot help feeling, that there is sometimes a touch of quiet humour in the accounts which the Rabbis give of the encounters between the Pharisees and their opponents. But, as the Scribe rightly remarked, by attacking, not merely their practice, but their principles, the whole system of traditionalism, which they represented, was condemned. And so the Lord assuredly meant it. The \u2018Scribes\u2019 were the exponents of the traditional law: those who bound and loosed in Israel. They did bind on heavy burdens, but they never loosed one; all these grievous burdens of traditionalism they laid on the poor people, but not the slightest effort did they make to remove any of them. Tradition, yes! the very profession of it bore witness against them. Tradition, the ordinances that had come down\u2014they would not reform nor put aside anything, but claim and proclaim all that had come down from the fathers as a sacred inheritance to which they clung. So be it! let them be judged by their own words. The fathers had murdered the prophets, and they built their sepulchres; that, also, was a tradition\u2014that of guilt which would be avenged. Tradition, learning, exclusiveness\u2014alas! it was only taking away from the poor the key of knowledge; and while they themselves entered not by \u2018the door\u2019 into the Kingdom, they hindered those who would have gone in. And truly so did they prove that theirs was the inheritance, the \u2018tradition,\u2019 of guilt in hindering and banishing the Divine teaching of old, and murdering its Divine messengers.
\nThere was terrible truth and solemnity in what Jesus spake, and in the Woe which He denounced on them. The history of the next few months would bear witness how truly they had taken upon them this tradition of guilt; and all the after-history of Israel shows how fully this \u2018Woe\u2019 has come upon them. But, after such denunciations, the entertainment in the Pharisee\u2019s house must have been broken up. The Christ was too terribly in earnest\u2014too mournfully so over those whom they hindered from entering the Kingdom, to bear with the awful guilt of their trivialities. With what feelings they parted from Him, appears from the sequel.
\n\u2018And when He was come out from thence, the Scribes and the Pharisees began to press upon Him vehemently, and to provoke Him to speak of many things; laying wait for Him, to catch something out of His Mouth.\u2019<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 13<\/p>\n
TO THE DISCIPLES\u2014TWO EVENTS AND THEIR MORAL<\/p>\n
(St. Luke 12:1\u201313:17.)<\/p>\n
THE record of Christ\u2019s last warning to the Pharisees, and of the feelings of murderous hate which it called forth, is followed by a summary of Christ\u2019s teaching to His disciples. The tone is still that of warning, but entirely different from that to the Pharisees. It is a warning of sin that threatened, not of judgment that awaited; it was for prevention, not in denunciation. That such warnings were most seasonable, requires scarcely proof. They were prompted by circumstances around. The same teaching, because prompted by the same causes, had been mostly delivered, also, on other occasions. Yet there are notable, though seemingly slight, divergences, accounted for by the difference of the writers or of the circumstances, and which mark the independence of the narratives.
\n1. The first of these Discourses naturally connects itself with what had passed at the Pharisee\u2019s table, an account of which must soon have spread. Although the Lord is reported as having addressed the same language chiefly to the Twelve when sending them on their first Mission, we shall presently mark several characteristic variations. The address\u2014or so much of it as is reported, probably only its summary\u2014is introduced by the following notice of the circumstances: \u2018In the mean time, when the many thousands of the people were gathered together, so that they trode upon each other, He began to say to His disciples: \u201cFirst [above all, \u05d1\u05ea\u05d7\u05dc\u05d4], beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.\u201d \u2019 There is no need to point out the connection between this warning and the denunciation of Pharisaism and traditionalism at the Pharisee\u2019s table. Although the word \u2018hypocrisy\u2019 had not been spoken there, it was the sum and substance of His contention, that Pharisaism, while pretending to what it was not, concealed what it was. And it was this which, like \u2018leaven,\u2019 pervaded the whole system of Pharisaism. Not that as individuals they were all hypocrites, but that the system was hypocrisy. And here it is characteristic of Pharisaism, that Rabbinic Hebrew has not even a word equivalent to the term \u2018hypocrisy.\u2019 The only expression used refers either to flattery of, or pretence before, men, not to that unconscious hypocrisy towards God which our Lord so truly describes as \u2018the leaven\u2019 that pervaded all the Pharisees said and did. It is against this that He warned His disciples\u2014and in this, rather than conscious deception, pretence, or flattery, lies the danger of the Church. Our common term, \u2018unreality,\u2019 but partially describes it. Its full meaning can only be gathered from Christ\u2019s teaching. But what precise term He may have used, it is impossible to suggest.
\nAfter all, hypocrisy was only self-deception. \u2018But, there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed.\u2019 Hence, what they had said in the darkness would be revealed, and what they had spoken about in the store-rooms would be proclaimed on the housetops. Nor should fear influence them. Fear of whom? Man could only kill the body, but God held body and soul. And, as fear was foolish, so was it needless in view of that wondrous Providence which watched over even the meanest of God\u2019s creatures. Rather let them, in the impending struggle with the powers of this world, rise to consciousness of its full import\u2014how earth\u2019s voices would find their echo in heaven. And then this contest, what was it? Not only opposition to Christ, but, in its inmost essence, blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Therefore, to succumb in that contest, implied the deepest spiritual danger. Nay, but let them not be apprehensive; their acknowledgment would be not only in the future; even now, in the hour of their danger, would the Holy Ghost help them, and give them an answer before their accusers and judges, whoever they might be\u2014Jews or Gentiles. Thus, if they fell victims, it would be with the knowledge\u2014not by neglect\u2014of their Father; here, there, everywhere\u2014in their own hearts, before the Angels, before men, would He give testimony for those who were His witnesses.
\nBefore proceeding, we briefly mark the differences between this and the previous kindred address of Christ, when sending the Apostles on their Mission. There (after certain personal directions), the Discourse began with what it here closes. There it was in the form of warning prediction, here in that of comforting reassurance; there it was near the beginning, here near the close, of His Ministry. Again, as addressed to the Twelve on their Mission, it was followed by personal directions and consolations, and then, transition was made to the admonition to dismiss fear, and to speak out publicly what had been told them privately. On the other hand, when addressing His Per\u00e6an disciples, while the same admonition is given, and partly on the same grounds, yet, as spoken to disciples rather than to preachers, the reference to the similarity of their fate with that of Christ is omitted, while, to show the real character of the struggle, an admonition is added, which in His Galilean Ministry was given in another connection. Lastly, whereas the Twelve were admonished not to fear, and, therefore, to speak openly what they had learned privately, the Per\u00e6an disciples are forewarned that, although what they had spoken together in secret would be dragged into the light of greatest publicity, yet they were not to be afraid of the possible consequences to themselves.
\n2. The second Discourse recorded in this connection was occasioned by a request for judicial interposition on the part of Christ. This He answered by a Parable, which will be explained in conjunction with the other Parables of that period. The outcome of this Parable, as to the utter uncertainty of this life, and the consequent folly of being so careful for this world while neglectful of God, led Him to make warning application to His Per\u00e6an disciples. Only here the negative injunction that preceded the Parable, \u2018beware of covetousness,\u2019 is, when addressed to \u2018the disciples,\u2019 carried back to its positive underlying principle: to dismiss all anxiety, even for the necessaries of life, learning from the birds and the flowers to have absolute faith and trust in God, and to labour for only one thing\u2014the Kingdom of God. But, even in this, they were not to be careful, but to have absolute faith and trust in their Father, \u2018Who was well pleased to give\u2019 them \u2018the Kingdom.\u2019
\nWith but slight variations the Lord had used the same language, even as the same admonition had been needed, at the beginning of His Galilean Ministry, in the Sermon on the Mount. Perhaps we may here, also, regard the allusion to the springing flowers as a mark of time. Only, whereas in Galilee this would mark the beginning of spring, it would, in the more favoured climate of certain parts of Per\u00e6a, indicate the beginning of December, about the time of the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple. More important, perhaps, is it to note, that the expression rendered in the Authorised and Revised Versions, \u2018neither be ye of doubtful mind,\u2019 really means, \u2018neither be ye uplifted,\u2019 in the sense of not aiming, or seeking after great things. This rendering of the Greek word (\u03bc\u03b5\u03c4\u03b5\u03c9\u03c1\u03af\u03b6\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd) is in accordance with its uniform use in the LXX., and in the Apocrypha; while, on the other hand, it occurs in Josephus and Philo, in the sense of \u2018being of a doubtful mind.\u2019 But the context here shows, that the term must refer to the disciples coveting great things, since only to this the remark could apply, that the Gentile world sought such things, but that our Father knew what was really needful for us.
\nOf deepest importance is the final consolation, to dismiss all care and anxiety, since the Father was pleased to give to this \u2018little flock\u2019 the Kingdom. The expression \u2018flock\u2019 carries us back to the language which Jesus had held ere parting from Jerusalem. Henceforth this designation would mark His people. Even its occurrence fixes this Discourse as not a repetition of that which St. Matthew had formerly reported, but as spoken after the Jerusalem visit. It designates Christ\u2019s people in distinction to their ecclesiastical (or outward) organisation in a \u2018fold,\u2019 and marks alike their individuality and their conjunction, their need and dependence, and their relation to Him as the \u2018Good Shepherd.\u2019 Small and despised though it be in the eyes of men, \u2018the little flock\u2019 is unspeakably noble, and rich in the gift of the Father.
\nThese admonitions, alike as against covetousness, and as to absolute trust and a self-surrender to God, which would count all loss for the Kingdom, are finally set forth, alike in their present application and their ultimate and permanent principle, in what we regard as the concluding part of this Discourse. Its first sentence: \u2018Sell that ye have, and give alms,\u2019 which is only recorded by St. Luke, indicates not a general principle, but its application to that particular period, when the faithful disciple required to follow the Lord, unencumbered by worldly cares or possessions. The general principle underlying it is that expressed by St. Paul, and finally resolves itself into this: that the Christian should have as not holding, and use what he has not for self nor sin, but for necessity. This conclusion of Christ\u2019s Discourse, also, confirms the inference that it was delivered near the terrible time of the end. Most seasonable would be here the repetition\u2014though in slightly different language\u2014of an admonition, given in the beginning of Christ\u2019s Galilean Ministry, to provide treasure in heaven, which could neither fail nor be taken away; for, assuredly, where the treasure was, there also would the heart be.
\n3. Closely connected with, and yet quite distinct from, the previous Discourse is that about the waiting attitude of the disciples in regard to their Master. Wholly detached from the things of the world, their hearts set on the Kingdom, only one thing should seem worthy their whole attention, and engage all their thoughts and energies: their Master! He was away at some joyous feast, and the uncertainty of the hour of His return must not lead the servants to indulge in surfeiting, nor to lie down in idleness, but to be faithful to their trust, and eagerly expectant of their Master. The Discourse itself consists of three parts and a practical application.
\n1. The Disciples as Servants in the absence of their Master: their duty and their reward. This part, containing what would be so needful to these Per\u00e6an disciples, is peculiar to St. Luke. The Master is supposed to be absent, at a wedding\u2014a figure which must not be closely pressed, not being one of the essentials in the Parable. At most, it points to a joyous occasion, and its mention may chiefly indicate that such a feast might be protracted, so that the exact time of the Master\u2019s return could not be known to the servants who waited at home. In these circumstances, they should hold themselves in readiness, that, whatever hour it might be, they should be able to open the door at the first knocking. Such eagerness and devotion of service would naturally meet its reward, and the Master would, in turn, consult the comfort of those who had not allowed themselves their evening-meal, nor lain down, but watched for His return. Hungry and weary as they were from their zeal for Him, He would now, in turn, minister to their personal comfort. And this applied to servants who so watched\u2014it mattered not how long, whether into the second or the third of the watches into which the night was divided.
\nThe \u2018Parable\u2019 now passes into another aspect of the case, which is again referred to in the last Discourses of Christ. Conversely\u2014suppose the other case, of people sleeping: the house might be broken into. Of course, if one had known the hour when the thief would come, sleep would not have been indulged in; but it is just this uncertainty and suddenness\u2014and the Coming of the Christ into His Kingdom would be equally sudden\u2014which should keep the people in the house ever on their watch till Christ came.
\nIt was at this particular point that a question of Peter interrupted the Discourse of Christ. To whom did this \u2018Parable\u2019 apply about \u2018the good man\u2019 and \u2018the servants\u2019 who were to watch: to the Apostles, or also to all? From the implied\u2014for it is not an express\u2014answer of the Lord, we infer, that Peter expected some difference between the Apostles and the rest of the disciples, whether as regarded the attitude of the servants that waited, or the reward. From the words of Christ the former seems the more likely. We can understand how Peter might entertain the Jewish notion, that the Apostles would come with the Master from the marriage-supper, rather than wait for His return, and work while waiting. It is to this that the reply of Christ refers. If the Apostles or others are rulers, it is as stewards, and their reward of faithful and wise stewardship will be advance to higher administration. But as stewards they are servants\u2014servants of Christ, and ministering servants in regard to the other and general servants. What becomes them in this twofold capacity is faithfulness to the absent, yet ever near, Lord, and to their work, avoiding, on the one hand, the masterfulness of pride and of harshness, and, on the other, the self-degradation of conformity to evil manners, either of which would entail sudden and condign punishment in the sudden and righteous reckoning at His appearing. The \u2018Parable,\u2019 therefore, alike as to the waiting and the reckoning, applied to work for Christ, as well as to personal relationship towards Him.
\nThus far this solemn warning would naturally be afterwards repeated in Christ\u2019s Last Discourses in Jud\u00e6a, as equally needful, in view of His near departure. But in this Per\u00e6an Discourse, as reported by St. Luke, there now follows what must be regarded, not, indeed, as a further answer to Peter\u2019s inquiry, but as specifically referring to the general question of the relation between special work and general discipleship which had been raised. For, in one sense, all disciples are servants, not only to wait, but to work. As regarded those who, like the professed stewards or labourers, knew their work, but neither \u2018made ready,\u2019 nor did according to His Will, their punishment and loss (where the illustrative figure of \u2018many\u2019 and \u2018few stripes\u2019 must not be too closely pressed) would naturally be greater than that of them who knew not\u2014though this also involves guilt\u2014that their Lord had any will towards them, that is, any work for them. This, according to a well-understood principle, universally, almost instinctively, acted upon among men.
\n2. In the absence of their Master! A period this of work, as well as of waiting; a period of trial also. Here, also, the two opening verses, in their evident connection with the subject-matter under the first head of this Discourse, but especially with the closing sentences about work for the Master, are peculiar to St. Luke\u2019s narrative, and fit only into it. The Church had a work to do in His absence\u2014the work for which He had come. He \u2018came to cast fire on earth,\u2019\u2014that fire which was kindled when the Risen Saviour sent the Holy Ghost, and of which the tongues of fire were the symbol. Oh, how He longed, that it were already kindled! But between Him and it lay the cold flood of His Passion, the terrible waves in which He was to be baptized. Oh, how He felt the burden of that coming Agony! That fire must they spread: this was the work in which, as disciples, each one must take part. Again, in that Baptismal Agony of His they also must be prepared to share. It was fire: burning up, as well as purifying and giving light. And here it was in place to repeat to His Per\u00e6an disciples the prediction already addressed to the Twelve when going on their Mission, as to the certain and necessary trials connected with carrying \u2018the fire\u2019 which Christ had cast on earth, even to the burning up of the closest bonds of association and kinship.
\n3. Thus far to the disciples. And now for its application to \u2018the multitudes\u2019\u2014although here also He could only repeat what on a former occasion He had said to the Pharisees. Let them not think that all this only concerned the disciples. No; it was a question between Israel and their Messiah, and the struggle would involve the widest consequences, alike to the people and the Sanctuary. Were they so blinded as not \u2018to know how to interpret the time\u2019? Could they not read its signs\u2014they who had no difficulty in interpreting it when a cloud rose from the sea, or the sirocco blew from the south? Why then\u2014and here St. Luke is again alone in his report\u2014did they not, in the circumstances, of themselves judge what was right and fitting and necessary, in view of the gathering tempest?
\nWhat was it? Even what he had told them before in Galilee, for the circumstances were the same. What common sense and common prudence would dictate to every one whom his accuser or creditor baled before the magistrate: to come to an agreement with him before it was too late, before sentence had been pronounced and executed. Although the illustration must not be pressed as to details, its general meaning would be the more readily understood that there was a similar Rabbinic proverb, although with very different practical application.
\n4. Besides these Discourses, two events are recorded before Christ\u2019s departure to the \u2018Feast of the Dedication.\u2019 Each of these led to a brief Discourse, ending in a Parable.
\nThe first records two circumstances not mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus, nor in any other historical notice of the time, either by Rabbinic or other writers. This shows, on the one hand, how terribly common such events must have been, when they could be so generally omitted from the long catalogue of Pilate\u2019s misdeeds towards the Jews. On the other hand, it also evidences that the narrative of St. Luke was derived from independent, authentic sources\u2014in other words, the historical character of his narrative\u2014when he could refer as well known to facts, which are not mentioned in any other record of the times; and, lastly, that we are not warranted in rejecting a notice, simply because we find no other mention of it than on the pages of the Third Gospel.
\nIt appears that, just then, or quite soon afterwards, some persons told Christ about a number of His own Galileans, whom Pilate had ordered to be cut down, as we infer, in the Temple, while engaged in offering their sacrifices, so that, in the pictorial language of the East, their blood had mingled with that of their sacrifices. Clearly, their narration of this event must be connected with the preceding Discourse of Jesus. He had asked them, whether they could not discern the signs of the terrible national storm that was nearing. And it was in reference to this, as we judge, that they repeated this story. To understand their object, we must attend to the answer of Christ. It is intended to refute the idea, that these Galileans had in this been visited by a special punishment of some special sin against God. Two questions here arise. Since between Christ\u2019s visit to Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles and that at the Dedication of the Temple no Festival took place, it is most probable that this event had happened before Christ\u2019s visit to Jerusalem. But in that case it seems most likely\u2014almost certain\u2014that Christ had heard of it before. If so, or, at any rate, if it was not quite a recent event, why did these men tell Him of it then and there? Again, it seems strange that, although the Jews connected special sins with special punishments, they should have regarded it as the Divine punishment of a special sin to have been martyred by a Pilate in the Temple, while engaged in offering sacrifices.
\nAll this becomes quite plain, if we regard these men as trying to turn the edge of Jesus\u2019 warning by a kind of \u2018Tu quoque\u2019 argument. Very probably these Galileans were thus ruthlessly murdered, because of their real or suspected connection with the Nationalist movement, of which Galilee was the focus. It is as if these Jews had said to Jesus: Yes, signs of the times and of the coming storm! These Galileans of yours, your own countrymen, involved in a kind of Pseudo-Messianic movement, a kind of \u2018signs of the times\u2019 rising, something like that towards which you want us to look\u2014was not their death a condign punishment? This latter inference they did not express in words, but implied in their narration of the fact. But the Lord read their thoughts and refuted their reasoning. For this purpose He adduced another instance, when a tower at the Siloam-Pool had fallen on eighteen persons, and killed them, perhaps in connection with that construction of an aqueduct into Jerusalem by Pilate, which called forth, on the part of the Jews, the violent opposition, which the Roman so terribly avenged. As good Jews, they would probably think that the fall of the tower, which had buried in its ruins these eighteen persons, who were perhaps engaged in the building of that cursed structure, was a just judgment of God! For Pilate had used for it the sacred money which had been devoted to Temple-purposes (the Qorban), and many there were who perished in the tumult caused by the Jewish resistance to this act of profanation. But Christ argued, that it was as wrong to infer that Divine judgment had overtaken His Galilean countrymen, as it would be to judge that the Tower of Siloam had fallen to punish these Jerusalemites. Not one party only, nor another; not the supposed Messianic tendency (in the shape of a national rising), nor, on the other hand, the opposite direction of absolute submission to Roman domination, was in fault. The whole nation was guilty; and the coming storm, to the signs of which He had pointed, would destroy all, unless there were spiritual repentance on the part of the nation. And yet wider than this, and applying to all time, is the underlying principle, that, when a calamity befalls a district or an aggregation of individuals, we ought not to take to ourselves judgment as to its special causation, but to think spiritually of its general application\u2014not so much seek to trace what is the character of its connection with a district or individuals, as to learn its lessons and to regard them as a call addressed to all. And conversely, also, this holds true in regard to deliverances.
\nHaving thus answered the implied objection, the Lord next showed, in the Parable of the Fig-tree, the need and urgency of national repentance.
\nThe second event recorded by St. Luke in this connection recalls the incidents of the early Jud\u00e6an and of the Galilean Ministry. We observe the same narrow views and externalism as before in regard to the Sabbath on the part of the Jewish authorities, and, on the part of Christ, the same wide principles and spiritual application. If we were in search of evidence of the Divine Mission of Jesus, we would find it in this contrariety on so fundamental a point, since no teacher in Israel nor Reformer of that time\u2014not the most advanced Sadducee\u2014would have defended, far less originated, the views as to the Sabbath which Christ now propounded. Again, if we were in quest of evidence of the historical truthfulness of the Gospel-narratives, we would find it in a comparison of the narratives of the three Sabbath-controversies: in Jerusalem, in Galilee, and in Per\u00e6a. In all the spirit was the same. And, although the differences between them may seem slight, they are characteristic, and mark, as if they pointed to it with the finger, the locality and circumstances in which each took place. In Jerusalem there is neither reasoning nor rebuke on the part of the Jews, but absolute persecution. There also the Lord enters on the higher exposition of His action, motives, and Mission. In Galilee there is questioning, and cunning intrigue against Him on the part of the Jud\u00e6ans who dogged His steps. But while no violence can be attempted against Him, the people do not venture openly to take His part. But in Per\u00e6a we are confronted by the clumsy zeal of a country-Archisynagogos (Chief Ruler of a Synagogue), who is very angry, but not very wise; who admits Christ\u2019s healing power, and does not dare to attack Him directly, but, instead, rebukes, not Christ, not even the woman who had been healed, but the people who witnessed it, at the same time telling them to come for healing on other days, not perceiving, in his narrow-minded bigotry, what this admission implied. This rustic Ruler had not the cunning, nor even the courage, of the Jud\u00e6an Pharisees in Galilee, whom the Lord had formerly convicted and silenced. Enough, to show this obscure Per\u00e6an partisan of Pharisaism and the like of him their utter folly, and that by their own admissions. And presently, not only were His adversaries ashamed, while in Galilee they went out and held a council against Him, but the people were not afraid, as the Galileans had been in presence of their rulers, and openly rejoiced in the glorious working of the Christ.
\nLittle more requires to be added about this incident in \u2018one of the Synagogues\u2019 of Per\u00e6a. Let us only briefly recall the scene. Among those present in this Synagogue had been a poor woman, who for eighteen years had been a sufferer, as we learn, through demoniac agency. It is quite true that most, if not all, such diseases were connected with moral distemper, since demoniac possession was not permanent, and resistance might have been made in the lucid intervals, if there had been moral soundness. But it is ungrounded to distinguish between the \u2018spirit of infirmity\u2019 as the moral and psychical, and her being \u2018bent,\u2019 as indicating the physical disease, or even to describe the latter as a \u2018permanent curvature of the spine.\u2019 The Greek word here rendered \u2018infirmity\u2019 has passed into Rabbinic language (Isteniseyah, \u05d0\u05d9\u05e1\u05ea\u05e0\u05d9\u05e1\u05d9\u05d4), and there means, not any particular disease, but sickliness, sometimes weakliness. In fact, she was, both physically and morally, not sick, but sickly, and most truly was hers \u2018a spirit of infirmity,\u2019 so that \u2018she was bowed together, and could in no wise lift herself up.\u2019 For, we mark that hers was not demoniac possession at all\u2014and yet, though she had not yielded, she had not effectually resisted, and so she was \u2018bound\u2019 by \u2018a spirit of infirmity,\u2019 both in body and soul.
\nWe recognise the same \u2018spirit of infirmity\u2019 in the circumstances of her healing. When Christ, seeing her\u2014probably a fit symbol of the Per\u00e6ans in that Synagogue\u2014called her, she came; when He said unto her, \u2018Woman, thou hast been loosed from thy sickliness,\u2019 she was unbound, and yet in her weakliness she answered not, nor straightened herself, till Jesus \u2018laid His Hands on her,\u2019 and so strengthened her in body and soul, and then she was immediately \u2018made straight, and glorified God.\u2019
\nAs for the Archisynagogos, we have, as already hinted, such characteristic portraiture of him that we can almost see him: confused, irresolute, perplexed, and very angry, bustling forward and scolding the people who had done nothing, yet not venturing to silence the woman, now no longer infirm\u2014far less, to reprove the great Rabbi, Who had just done such a \u2018glorious thing,\u2019 but speaking at Him through those who had been the astounded eye-witnesses. He was easily and effectually silenced, and all who sympathised with him put to shame. \u2018Hypocrites!\u2019 spake the Lord\u2014on your own admissions your practice and your Law condemn your speech. Every one on the Sabbath looseth his ox or ass, and leads him to the watering. The Rabbinic law expressly allowed this, and even to draw the water, provided the vessel were not carried to the animal. If, as you admit, I have the power of \u2018loosing\u2019 from the bonds of Satan, and she has been so bound these eighteen years, should she\u2014a daughter of Abraham\u2014not have that done for her which you do for your beasts of burden?
\nThe retort was unanswerable and irresistible; it did what was intended: it covered the adversaries with shame. And the Per\u00e6ans in that Synagogue felt also, at least for the time, the blessed freedom which had come to that woman. They took up the echoes of her hymn of praise, and \u2018rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him.\u2019 And He answered their joy by rightly directing it\u2014by setting before them \u2018the Kingdom,\u2019 which He had come both to preach and to bring, in all its freeness, reality, power, and all-pervading energy, as exhibited in the two Parables of the \u2018Mustard-seed\u2019 and \u2018the Leaven,\u2019 spoken before in Galilee. These were now repeated, as specially suited to the circumstances: first, to the Miracle they had witnessed; then, to the contention that had passed; and, lastly, to their own state of feeling. And the practical application of these Parables must have been obvious to all.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 14<\/p>\n
AT THE FEAST OF THE DEDICATION OF THE TEMPLE<\/p>\n
(St. Luke 13:22; St. John 10:22\u201342.)<\/p>\n
ABOUT two months had passed since Jesus had left Jerusalem after the Feast of Tabernacles. Although we must not commit ourselves to such calculations, we may here mention the computation which identifies the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles of that year with Thursday the 23rd September; the last, \u2018the Great Day of the Feast,\u2019 with Wednesday the 29th; the Octave of the Feast with the 30th September; and the Sabbath when the man born blind was healed with the 2nd of October. In that case, \u2018the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple,\u2019 which commenced on the 25th day of Chislev, and lasted eight days, would have begun on Wednesday the 1st, and closed on Wednesday the 8th December. But, possibly, it may have been a week or two later. At that Feast, or about two months after He had quitted the City, we find Christ once more in Jerusalem and in the Temple. His journey thither seems indicated in the Third Gospel (St. Luke 13:22), and is at least implied in the opening words with which St. John prefaces his narrative of what happened on that occasion.
\nAs we think of it, there seems special fitness\u2014presently to be pointed out\u2014in Christ\u2019s spending what we regard as the last anniversary season of His Birth in the Temple at that Feast. It was not of Biblical origin, but had been instituted by Judas Maccab\u00e6us in 164 B.C., when the Temple, which had been desecrated by Antiochus Epiphanes, was once more purified, and re-dedicated to the Service of Jehovah. Accordingly, it was designated as \u2018the Dedication of the Altar.\u2019 Josephus calls it \u2018The Lights,\u2019 from one of the principal observances at the Feast, though he speaks in hesitating language of the origin of the festival as connected with this observance\u2014probably because, while he knew, he was ashamed to avow, and yet afraid to deny his belief in the Jewish legend connected with it. The Jews called it Chanukkah, \u2018dedication\u2019 or \u2018consecration,\u2019 and, in much the same sense, Enkainia in the Greek of the LXX., and in the New Testament. During the eight days of the Feast the series of Psalms known as the Hallel was chanted in the Temple, the people responding as at the Feast of Tabernacles. Other rites resembled those of the latter Feast. Thus, originally, the people appeared with palm-branches. This, however, does not seem to have been afterwards observed, while another rite, not mentioned in the Book of Maccabees\u2014that of illuminating the Temple and private houses\u2014became characteristic of the Feast. Thus, the two festivals, which indeed are put in juxtaposition in 2 Macc. 10:6, seem to have been both externally and internally connected. The Feast of the \u2018Dedication,\u2019 or of \u2018Lights,\u2019 derived from that of Tabernacles its duration of eight days, the chanting of the Hallel, and the practice of carrying palm-branches. On the other hand, the rite of the Temple-illumination may have passed from the Feast of the \u2018Dedication\u2019 into the observances of that of \u2018Tabernacles.\u2019 Tradition had it, that, when the Temple-Services were restored by Judas Maccab\u00e6us, the oil was found to have been desecrated. Only one flagon was discovered of that which was pure, sealed with the very signet of the High-Priest. The supply proved just sufficient to feed for one day the Sacred Candlestick, but by a miracle the flagon was continually replenished during eight days, till a fresh supply could be brought from Thekoah. In memory of this, it was ordered the following year, that the Temple be illuminated for eight days on the anniversary of its \u2018Dedication.\u2019 The Schools of Hillel and Shammai differed in regard to this, as on most other observances. The former would have begun the first night with the smallest number of lights, and increased it every night till on the eighth it was eight times as large as on the first. The School of Shammai, on the other hand, would have begun with the largest number, and diminished, till on the last night it amounted to an eighth of the first. Each party had its own\u2014not very satisfactory\u2014reasons for its distinctive practice, and its own adherents. But the \u2018Lights\u2019 in honour of the Feast were lit not only in the Temple, but in every home. One would have sufficed for the whole household on the first evening, but pious householders lit a light for every inmate of the home, so that, if ten burned on the first, there would be eighty on the last night of the Festival. According to the Talmud, the light might be placed at the entrance to the house or room, or, according to circumstances, in the window, or even on the table. According to modern practice the light is placed at the left on entering a room (the Mezuzah is on the right). Certain benedictions are spoken on lighting these lights, all work is stayed, and the festive time spent in merriment. The first night is specially kept in memory of Judith, who is supposed then to have slain Holofernes, and cheese is freely partaken of as the food of which, according to legend, she gave him so largely, to incite him to thirst and drunkenness. Lastly, during this Festival, all fasting and public mourning were prohibited, though some minor acts of private mourning were allowed.
\nMore interesting, perhaps, than this description of the outward observances is the meaning of this Festival and its connection with the Feast of Tabernacles, to both of which reference has already been made. Like the Feast of Tabernacles, it commemorated a Divine Victory, which again gave to Israel their good land, after they had once more undergone sorrows like those of the wilderness; it was another harvest-feast, and pointed forward to yet another ingathering. As the once extinguished light was relit in the Temple\u2014and, according to Scriptural imagery, might that not mean the Light of Israel, the Lamp of David?\u2014it grew day by day in brightness, till it shone quite out into the heathen darkness, that once had threatened to quench it. That He Who purified the Temple, was its True Light, and brought the Great Deliverance, should (as hinted) have spent the last anniversary season of His Birth at that Feast in the Sanctuary, shining into their darkness, seems most fitting, especially as we remember the Jewish legend, according to which the making of the Tabernacle had been completed on the 25th Chislev, although it was not set up till the 1st of Nisan (the Paschal month).
\nThoughts of the meaning of this Feast, and of what was associated with it, will be helpful as we listen to the words which Jesus spake to the people in \u2018Solomon\u2019s Porch.\u2019 There is a pictorialness in the description of the circumstances, which marks the eyewitness. It is winter, and Christ is walking in the covered Porch, in front of the \u2018Beautiful Gate,\u2019 which formed the principal entrance into the \u2018Court of the Women.\u2019 As He walks up and down, the people are literally barring His Way\u2014\u2018came round about\u2019 Him. From the whole circumstances we cannot doubt, that the question which they put: \u2018How long holdest Thou us in suspense?\u2019 had not in it an element of truthfulness or genuine inquiry. Their desire, that He should tell them \u2018plainly\u2019 if He were the Christ, had no other motive than that of grounding on it an accusation. The more clearly we perceive this, the more wonderful appears the forbearance of Christ and the wisdom of His answer. Briefly He puts aside their hypocrisy. What need is there of fresh speech? He told them before, and they \u2018believe not.\u2019 From words He appeals to the mute but indisputable witness of deeds: the works which He wrought in His Father\u2019s Name. Their non-belief in presence of these facts was due to their not being of His Sheep. As He had said unto them before, it was characteristic of His Sheep (as generally of every flock in regard to its own shepherd) to hear\u2014recognise, listen to\u2014His Voice and follow Him. We mark in the words of Christ, a triplet of double parallelisms concerning the Sheep and the Shepherd, in ascending climax, as follows:\u2014<\/p>\n
My sheep hear My Voice,
\nAnd I know them,
\nAnd they follow Me:
\nAnd I give unto them eternal life;
\nAnd they shall never perish.
\nAnd no one shall snatch them out of My Hand.
\nThe hireling
\nI
\nIs an hireling,
\nAm the good Shepherd,
\nCareth not for the sheep.
\nKnow the sheep,
\nFleeth
\nLay down My Life.<\/p>\n
Richer or more comforting assurance than that recorded above could not have been given. But something special has here to be marked. The two first parallelisms always link the promise of Christ to the attitude of the sheep; not, perhaps, conditionally, for the relation is such as not to admit conditionalness, either in the form of \u2018because\u2014therefore,\u2019 or even of \u2018if\u2014then,\u2019 but as a matter of sequence and of fact. But in the third parallelism there is no reference to anything on the part of the sheep; it is all promise, and the second clause only explains and intensifies what is expressed in the first. If it indicates attack of the fiercest kind and by the strongest and most cunning of enemies, be they men or devils, it also marks the watchfulness and absolute superiority of Him Who hath them, as it were, in His Hand\u2014perhaps a Hebraism for \u2018power\u2019\u2014and hence their absolute safety. And, as if to carry twofold assurance of it, He reminds His hearers that His Work being \u2018the Father\u2019s Commandment,\u2019 it is really the Father\u2019s Work, given to Christ to do, and no one could snatch them out of the Father\u2019s Hand. It is a poor cavil, to try to limit these assurances by seeking to grasp and to comprehend them in the hollow of our human logic. Do they convey what is commonly called \u2018the doctrine of perseverance\u2019? Nay! but they teach us, not about our faith but about His faithfulness, and convey to us assurance concerning Him rather than ourselves; and this is the only aspect in which \u2018the doctrine of perseverance\u2019 is either safe, true, or Scriptural.
\nBut one logical sequence is unavoidable. Rightly understood, it is not only the last and highest announcement, but it contains and implies everything else. If the Work of Christ is really that of the Father, and His Working also that of the Father, then it follows that He \u2018and the Father are One\u2019 (\u2018one\u2019 is in the neuter). This identity of work (and purpose) implies the identity of Nature (Essence); that of working, the identity of power. And so, evidently, the Jews understood it, when they again took up stones with the intention of stoning Him\u2014no doubt, because He expressed, in yet more plain terms, what they regarded as His blasphemy. Once more the Lord appealed from His Words, which were doubted, to His Works, which were indubitable. And so He does to all time. His Divine Mission is evidence of His Divinity. And if His Divine Mission be doubted, He appeals to the \u2018many excellent works\u2019 (\u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u1f70 \u1f14\u03c1\u03b3\u03b1) which He hath \u2018showed from the Father,\u2019 any one of which might, and, in the case of not a few, had, served as evidence of His Mission. And when the Jews ignored, as so many in our days, this line of evidence, and insisted that He had been guilty of blasphemy, since, being a man, He had made Himself God, the Lord replied in a manner that calls for our special attention. From the peculiarly Hebraistic mode of designating a quotation from the Psalms as \u2018written in the Law,\u2019 we gather that we have here a literal transcript of the very words of our Lord. But what we specially wish, is, emphatically, to disclaim any interpretation of them, which would seem to imply that Christ had wished to evade their inference: that He claimed to be One with the Father\u2014and to convey to them, that nothing more had been meant than what might lawfully be applied to an ordinary man. Such certainly is not the case. He had claimed to be One with the Father in work and working; from which, of course, the necessary inference was, that He was also One with Him in Nature and Power. Let us see whether the claim was strange. In Ps. 82:6 the titles \u2018God\u2019 (Elohim) and \u2018Sons of the Highest\u2019 (Beney Elyon) had been given to Judges as the Representatives and Vicegerents of God, wielding His delegated authority, since to them had come His Word of authorisation. But here was authority not transmitted by \u2018the word,\u2019 but personal and direct consecration, and personal and direct Mission on the part of God. The comparison made was not with Prophets, because they only told the word and message from God, but with Judges, who, as such, did the very act of God. If those who, in so acting, had received an indirect commission, were \u2018gods,\u2019 the very representatives of God, could it be blasphemy when He claimed to be the Son of God, Who had received, not authority through a word transmitted through long centuries, but direct personal command to do the Father\u2019s Work; had been directly and personally consecrated to it by the Father, and directly and personally sent by Him, not to say, but to do, the work of the Father? Was it not rather the true and necessary inference from these premisses?
\nAll would, of course, depend on this, whether Christ really did the works of the Father. That was the test; and, as we instinctively perceive, both rationally and truly. But if He did the works of His Father, then let them believe, if not the words yet the works, and thus would they arrive at the knowledge, \u2018and understand\u2019\u2014distinguishing here the act from the state\u2014that \u2018in Me is the Father, and I in the Father.\u2019 In other words, recognising the Work as that of the Father, they would come to understand that the Father worked in Him, and that the root of His Work was in the Father.
\nThe stones, that had been taken up, were not thrown, for the words of Christ rendered impossible the charge of explicit blasphemy which alone would, according to Rabbinic law, have warranted such summary vengeance. But \u2018they sought again to seize Him,\u2019 so as to drag Him before their tribunal. His time, however, had not yet come, \u2018and He went forth out of their hand\u2019\u2014how, we know not.
\nOnce more the Jordan rolled between Him and His bitter persecutors. Far north, over against Galilee, in the place of John\u2019s early labours, probably close to where Jesus Himself had been baptized, was the scene of His last labours. And those, who so well remembered both the Baptist and the testimony which he had there borne to the Christ, recalled it all as they listened to His Words and saw His Works. As they crowded around Him, both the difference and the accord between John and Jesus carried conviction to their minds. The Baptist had done \u2018no sign,\u2019 such as those which Jesus wrought; but all things which John had spoken of Him, they felt it, were true. And, undisturbed by the cavils of Pharisees and Scribes, many of these simple-minded, true-hearted men, far away from Jerusalem, believed on Him. To adapt a saying of Bengel: they were the posthumous children of the Baptist. Thus did he, being dead, yet speak. And so will all that is sown for Christ, though it lie buried and forgotten of men, spring up and ripen, as in one day, to the deep, grateful, and eternal joy of them who had laboured in faith and gone to rest in hope.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 15<\/p>\n
THE SECOND SERIES OF PARABLES\u2014THE TWO PARABLES OF HIM WHO IS NEIGHBOUR TO US: THE FIRST, CONCERNING THE LOVE THAT, UNASKED, GIVES IN OUR NEED; THE SECOND, CONCERNING THE LOVE WHICH IS ELICITED BY OUR ASKING IN OUR NEED<\/p>\n
(St. Luke 10:25\u201337; 11:5\u201313.)<\/p>\n
THE period between Christ\u2019s return from the \u2018Feast of the Dedication\u2019 and His last entry into Jerusalem, may be arranged into two parts, divided by the brief visit to Bethany for the purpose of raising Lazarus from the dead. Even if it were possible, with any certainty, chronologically to arrange the events of each of these periods, the variety and briefness of what is recorded would prevent our closely following them in this narrative. Accordingly, we prefer grouping them together as the Parables of that period, its Discourses, and its Events. And the record of the raising of Lazarus may serve as a landmark between our Summary of the Parables and that of the Discourses and Events which preceded the Lord\u2019s final appearance in Jerusalem.
\nThese last words help us to understand the necessary difference between the Parables of this and of the preceding and the following periods. The Parables of this period look back upon the past, and forward into the future. Those spoken by the Lake of Galilee were purely symbolical. They presented unseen heavenly realities under emblems which required to be translated into earthly language. It was quite easy to do so, if you possessed the key to the heavenly mysteries; otherwise, they were dark and mysterious. So to speak, they were easily read from above downwards. Viewed from below upwards, only most dim and strangely intertwining outlines could be perceived. It is quite otherwise with the second series of Parables. They could, as they were intended, be understood by all. They required no translation. They were not symbolical but typical, using the word \u2018type,\u2019 not in the sense of involving a predictive element, but as indicating an example, or, perhaps, more correctly, an exemplification. Accordingly, the Parables of this series are also intensely practical. Lastly, their prevailing character is not descriptive, but hortatory; and they bring the Gospel, in the sense of glad tidings to the lost, most closely and touchingly to the hearts of all who hear them. They are signs in words, as the miracles are signs in works, of what Christ has come to do and to teach. Most of them bear this character openly; and even those which do not, but seem more like warning, have still an undertone of love, as if Divine compassion lingered in tender pity over that which threatened, but might yet be averted.
\nOf the Parables of the third series it will for the present suffice to say, that they are neither symbolical nor typical, but their prevailing characteristic is prophetic. As befits their historical place in the teaching of Christ, they point to the near future. They are the fast falling, lengthening shadows cast by the events which are near at hand.
\nThe Parables of the second (or Per\u00e6an) series, which are typical and hortatory, and \u2018Evangelical\u2019 in character, are thirteen in number, and, with the exception of the last, are either peculiar to, or else most fully recorded in, the Gospel by St. Luke.
\n1. The Parable of the Good Samaritan.\u2014This Parable is connected with a question, addressed to Jesus by a \u2018lawyer\u2019\u2014not one of the Jerusalem Scribes or Teachers, but probably an expert in Jewish Canon Law, who possibly made it more or less a profession in that district, though perhaps not for gain. Accordingly, there is a marked absence of that rancour and malice which characterised his colleagues of Jud\u00e6a. In a previous chapter it has been shown, that this narrative probably stands in its proper place in the Gospel of St. Luke. We have also suggested, that the words of this lawyer referred, or else that himself belonged, to that small party among the Rabbinists who, at least in theory, attached greater value to good works than to study. At any rate, there is no occasion to impute directly evil motives to him. Knowing the habits of his class, we do not wonder that he put his question to \u2018tempt\u2019\u2014test, try\u2014the great Rabbi of Nazareth. There are many similar instances in Rabbinic writings of meetings between great Teachers, when each tried to involve the other in dialectic difficulties and subtle disputations. Indeed, this was part of Rabbinism, and led to that painful and fatal trifling with truth, when everything became matter of dialectic subtlety, and nothing was really sacred. What we require to keep in view is, that to this lawyer the question which he propounded was only one of theoretic, not of practical interest, nor matter of deep personal concern, as it was to the rich young ruler, who, not long afterwards, addressed a similar inquiry to the Lord.
\nWe seem to witness the opening of a regular Rabbinic contest, as we listen to this speculative problem: \u2018Teacher, what having done shall I inherit eternal life?\u2019 At the foundation lay the notion, that eternal life was the reward of merit, of works: the only question was, what these works were to be. The idea of guilt had not entered his mind; he had no conception of sin within. It was the old Judaism of self-righteousness speaking without disguise: that which was the ultimate ground of the rejecting and crucifying of the Christ. There certainly was a way in which a man might inherit eternal life, not indeed as having absolute claim to it, but (as the Schoolmen might have said: de congruo) in consequence of God\u2019s Covenant on Sinai. And so our Lord, using the common Rabbinic expression \u2018what readest thou?\u2019 (\u05de\u05d0\u05d9 \u05e7\u05e8\u05d0\u05ea), pointed him to the Scriptures of the Old Testament.
\nThe reply of the \u2018lawyer\u2019 is remarkable, not only on its own account, but as substantially, and even literally, that given on two other occasions by the Lord Himself. The question therefore naturally arises, whence did this lawyer, who certainly had not spiritual insight, derive his reply? As regarded the duty of absolute love to God, indicated by the quotation of Deut. 6:5, there could, of course, be no hesitation in the mind of a Jew. The primary obligation of this is frequently referred to, and, indeed, taken for granted, in Rabbinic teaching. The repetition of this command, which in the Talmud receives the most elaborate and strange interpretation, formed part of the daily prayers. When Jesus referred the lawyer to the Scriptures, he could scarcely fail to quote this first paramount obligation. Similarly, he spoke as a Rabbinic lawyer, when he referred in the next place to love to our neighbour, as enjoined in Lev. 19:18. Rabbinism is never weary of quoting as one of the characteristic sayings of its greatest teacher, Hillel (who, of course, lived before this time), that he had summed up the Law, in briefest compass, in these words: \u2018What is hateful to thee, that do not to another. This is the whole Law; the rest is only its explanation.\u2019 Similarly, Rabbi Akiba taught, that Lev. 19:18 was the principal rule, we might almost say, the chief summary of the Law (\u05db\u05dc\u05dc \u05d2\u05d3\u05d5\u05dc \u05d1\u05ea\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4). Still, the two principles just mentioned are not enunciated in conjunction by Rabbinism, nor seriously propounded as either containing the whole Law or as securing heaven. They are also, as we shall presently see, subjected to grave modifications. One of these, as regards the negative form in which Hillel put it, while Christ put it positively, has been previously noticed. The existence of such Rabbinic modifications, and the circumstance, already mentioned, that on two other occasions the answer of Christ Himself to a similar inquiry was precisely that of this lawyer, suggest the inference, that this question may have been occasioned by some teaching of Christ, to which they had just listened, and that the reply of the lawyer may have been prompted by what Jesus had preached concerning the Law.
\nIf it be asked, why Christ seemed to give His assent to the lawyer\u2019s answer, as if it really pointed to the right solution of the great question, we reply: No other answer could have been given him. On the ground of works\u2014if that had been tenable\u2014this was the way to heaven. To understand any other answer, would have required a sense of sin; and this could not be imparted by reasoning: it must be experienced. It is the preaching of the Law which awakens in the mind a sense of sin. Besides, if not morally, yet mentally, the difficulty of this \u2018way\u2019 would soon suggest itself to a Jew. Such, at least, is one aspect of the counter-question with which \u2018the lawyer\u2019 now sought to retort on Jesus.
\nWhatever complexity of motives there may have been\u2014for we know nothing of the circumstances, and there may have been that in the conduct or heart of the lawyer which was specially touched by what had just passed\u2014there can be no doubt as to the main object of his question: \u2018But who is my neighbour?\u2019 He wished \u2018to justify himself,\u2019 in the sense of vindicating his original question, and showing that it was not quite so easily settled as the answer of Jesus seemed to imply. And here it was that Christ could in a \u2018Parable\u2019 show how far orthodox Judaism was from even a true understanding, much more from such perfect observance of this Law as would gain heaven. Thus might He bring even this man to feel his shortcomings and sins, and awaken in him a sense of his great need. This, of course, would be the negative aspect of this Parable; the positive is to all time and to all men.
\nThat question: \u2018Who is my neighbour?\u2019 has ever been at the same time the outcome of Judaism (as distinguished from the religion of the Old Testament), and also its curse. On this point it is duty to speak plainly, even in face of the wicked persecutions to which the Jews have been exposed on account of it. Whatever modern Judaism may say to the contrary, there is a foundation of truth in the ancient heathen charge against the Jews of odium generis humani (hatred of mankind). God had separated Israel unto Himself by purification and renovation\u2014and this is the original meaning of the word \u2018holy\u2019 and \u2018sanctify\u2019 in the Hebrew (\u05e7\u05d3\u05e9). They separated themselves in self-righteousness and pride\u2014and that is the original meaning of the word \u2018Pharisee\u2019 and \u2018Pharisaism\u2019 (\u05e4\u05e8\u05d5\u05e9). In so saying no blame is cast on individuals; it is the system which is at fault. This question: \u2018Who is my neighbour?\u2019 frequently engages Rabbinism. The answer to it is only too clear. If a hypercriticism were to interpret away the passage which directs that idolators are not to be delivered when in imminent danger, while heretics and apostates are even to be led into it, the painful discussion on the meaning of Exod. 23:5 would place it beyond question. The sum of it is, that, except to avert hostility, a burden is only to be unloaded, if the beast that lieth under it belongeth to an Israelite, not if it belong to a Gentile; and so the expression, \u2018the ass of him that hateth thee,\u2019 must be understood of a Jewish, and not of a Gentile enemy (\u05e9\u05d5\u05e0\u05d0 \u05d9\u05e9\u05e8\u05d0\u05dc \u05d5\u05dc\u05d0 \u05e9\u05d5\u05e0\u05d0 \u05d0\u05f4\u05d4).
\nIt is needless to follow the subject further. But more complete rebuke of Judaistic narrowness, as well as more full, generous, and spiritual world-teaching than that of Christ\u2019s Parable could not be imagined. The scenery and colouring are purely local. And here we should remember, that, while admitting the lawfulness of the widest application of details for homiletical purposes, we must take care not to press them in a strictly exegetical interpretation.
\nSome one coming from the Holy City, the Metropolis of Judaism, is pursuing the solitary desert-road, those twenty-one miles to Jericho, a district notoriously insecure, when he \u2018fell among robbers, who, having both stripped and inflicted on him strokes, went away leaving him just as he was, half dead.\u2019 This is the first scene. The second opens with an expression which, theologically, as well as exegetically, is of the greatest interest. The word rendered \u2018by chance\u2019 (\u03c3\u03c5\u03b3\u03ba\u03c5\u03c1\u03af\u03b1) occurs only in this place, for Scripture commonly views matters in relation to agents rather than to results. As already noted, the real meaning of the word is \u2018concurrence,\u2019 much like the corresponding Hebrew term (\u05de\u05e7\u05e8\u05d4). And better definition could not be given, not, indeed, of \u2018Providence,\u2019 which is a heathen abstraction for which the Bible has no equivalent, but for the concrete reality of God\u2019s providing. He provides through a concurrence of circumstances, all in themselves natural and in the succession of ordinary causation (and this distinguishes it from the miracle), but the concurring of which is directed and overruled by Him. And this helps us to put aside those coarse tests of the reality of prayer and of the direct rule of God, which men sometimes propose. Such stately ships ride not in such shallow waters.
\nIt was by such a \u2018concurrence,\u2019 that, first a priest, then a Levite, came down that road, when each, successively, \u2018when he saw him, passed by over against (him).\u2019 It was the principle of questioning, \u2018Who is my neighbour?\u2019 which led both priest and Levite to such heartless conduct. Who knew what this wounded man was, and how he came to lie there; and were they called upon, in ignorance of this, to take all the trouble, perhaps incur the risk of life, which care of him would involve? Thus Judaism (in the persons of its chief representatives) had, by its exclusive attention to the letter, come to destroy the spirit of the Law. Happily, there came yet another that way, not only a stranger, but one despised, a semi-heathen Samaritan. He asked not who the man was, but what was his need. Whatever the wounded Jew might have felt towards him, the Samaritan proved a true \u2018neighbour.\u2019 \u2018He came towards him, and beholding him, he was moved with compassion.\u2019 His resolution was soon taken. He first bound up his wounds, and then, taking from his travelling provision wine and oil, made of them what was regarded as the common dressing for wounds. Next, having \u2018set\u2019 (lifted) him on his own beast, he walked by his side, and brought him to one of those houses of rest and entertainment, whose designation (\u03c0\u03b1\u03bd\u03b4\u03bf\u03c7\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bf\u03bd) has passed into Rabbinic language (\u05e4\u05d5\u05e0\u05d3\u05e7\u05d0). These khans, or hostelries, by the side of unfrequented roads, afforded free lodgment to the traveller. But generally they also offered entertainment, in which case, of course, the host, commonly a non-Israelite, charged for the victuals supplied to man or beast, or for the care taken. In the present instance the Samaritan seems himself to have tended the wounded man all that evening. But even thus his care did not end. The next morning, before continuing his journey, he gave to the host two dinars\u2014about one shilling and threepence of our money, the amount of a labourer\u2019s wages for two days,\u2014as it were, two days\u2019 wages for his care of him, with this provision, that if any further expense were incurred, either because the wounded man was not sufficiently recovered to travel, or else because something more had been supplied to him, the Good Samaritan would pay it when he next came that way.
\nSo far the Parable: its lesson \u2018the lawyer\u2019 is made himself to enunciate. \u2018Which of these three seems to thee to have become neighbour of him that fell among the robbers?\u2019 Though unwilling to take the hated name of Samaritan on his lips, especially as the meaning of the Parable and its anti-Rabbinic bearing were so evident, the \u2018lawyer\u2019 was obliged to reply, \u2018He that showed mercy on him,\u2019 when the Saviour finally answered, \u2018Go, and do thou likewise.\u2019
\nSome further lessons may be drawn. The Parable implies not a mere enlargement of the Jewish ideas, but a complete change of them. It is truly a Gospel-Parable, for the whole old relationship of mere duty is changed into one of love. Thus, matters are placed on an entirely different basis from that of Judaism. The question now is not \u2018Who is my neighbour?\u2019 but \u2018Whose neighbour am I?\u2019 The Gospel answers the question of duty by pointing us to love. Wouldst thou know who is thy neighbour? Become a neighbour to all by the utmost service thou canst do them in their need. And so the Gospel would not only abolish man\u2019s enmity, but bridge over man\u2019s separation. Thus is the Parable truly Christian, and, more than this, points up to Him Who, in our great need, became Neighbour to us, even at the cost of all He had. And from Him, as well as by His Word, are we to learn our lesson of love.
\n2. The Parable which follows in St. Luke\u2019s narrative seems closely connected with that just commented upon. It is also a story of a good neighbour who gives in our need, but presents another aspect of the truth to which the Parable of the Good Samaritan had pointed. Love bends to our need: this is the objective manifestation of the Gospel. Need looks up to love, and by its cry elicits the boon which it seeks. And this is the subjective experience of the Gospel. The one underlies the story of the first Parable, the other that of the second.
\nSome such internal connection between the two Parables seems, indeed, indicated even by the loose manner in which this second Parable is strung to the request of some disciples to be taught what to pray. Like the Parable of the \u2018Good Samaritan,\u2019 it is typical, and its application would be the more felt, that it not only points to an exemplification, but appeals to every man\u2019s consciousness of what himself would do in certain given circumstances. The latter are as follows. A man has a friend who, long after nightfall, unexpectedly comes to him from a journey. He has nothing in the house, yet he must provide for his need, for hospitality demands it. Accordingly, though it be so late, he goes to his friend and neighbour to ask him for three loaves, stating the case. On the other hand, the friend so asked refuses, since, at that late hour, he has retired to bed with his children, and to grant his request would imply not only inconvenience to himself, but the disturbing of the whole household. The main circumstances therefore are: Sudden, unthought-of sense of imperative need, obliging to make what seems an unseasonable and unreasonable request, which, on the face of it, offers difficulties and has no claim upon compliance. It is, therefore, not ordinary but, so to speak, extraordinary prayer, which is here alluded to.
\nTo return to the Parable: the question (abruptly broken off from the beginning of the Parable in ver. 5) is, what each of us would do in the circumstances just detailed. The answer is implied in what follows. It points to continued importunity, which would at last obtain what it needs. \u2018I tell you, even if he will not give him, rising up, because he is his friend, yet at least on account of his importunity, he will rise up and give him as many as he needeth.\u2019 This literal rendering will, it is hoped, remove some of the seeming difficulties of the Parable. It is a gross misunderstanding to describe it as presenting a mechanical view of prayer: as if it implied, either that God was unwilling to answer; or else, that prayer, otherwise unheard, would be answered merely for its importunity. It must be remembered, that he who is within is a friend, and that, under ordinary circumstances, he would at once have complied with the request. But, in this case, there were special difficulties, which are represented as very great: it is midnight; he has retired to bed, and with his children; the door is locked. And the lesson is, that where, for some reasons, there are, or seem, special difficulties to an answer to our prayers (it is very late, the door is no longer open, the children have already been gathered in), the importunity arising from the sense of our absolute need, and the knowledge that He is our Friend, and that He has bread, will ultimately prevail. The difficulty is not as to the giving, but as to the giving then\u2014\u2018rising up,\u2019 and this is overcome by perseverance, so that (to return to the Parable), if he will not rise up because he is his friend, yet at least he will rise because of his importunity, and not only give him \u2018three\u2019 loaves, but, in general, \u2018as many as he needeth.\u2019
\nSo important is the teaching of this Parable, that Christ makes detailed application of it. In the circumstances described a man would persevere with his friend, and in the end succeed. And, similarly, the Lord bids us \u2018ask,\u2019 and that earnestly and believingly; \u2018seek,\u2019 and that energetically and instantly; \u2018knock,\u2019 and that intently and loudly. Ask\u2014He is a Friend, and we shall \u2018receive;\u2019 \u2018seek,\u2019 it is there, and we shall \u2018find;\u2019 \u2018knock,\u2019\u2014our need is absolute, and it shall be opened to us. But the emphasis of the Parable and its lesson are in the word \u2018every one\u2019 (\u03c0\u1fb6\u03c2). Not only this or that, but \u2018every one,\u2019 shall so experience it. The word points to the special difficulties that may be in the way of answer to prayer\u2014the difficulties of the \u2018rising up,\u2019 which have been previously indicated in the Parable. These are met by perseverance which indicates the reality of our need (\u2018ask\u2019), the reality of our belief that the supply is there (\u2018seek\u2019), and the intensity and energy of our spiritual longing (\u2018knock\u2019). Such importunity applies to \u2018every one,\u2019 whoever he be, and whatever the circumstances which would seem to render his prayer specially difficult of answer. Though he feel that he has not and needs, he \u2018asks;\u2019 though he have lost\u2014time, opportunities, mercies\u2014he \u2018seeks;\u2019 though the door seem shut, he \u2018knocks.\u2019 Thus the Lord is helper to \u2018every one;\u2019 but, as for us, let us learn the lesson from what we ourselves would do in analogous circumstances.
\nNay, more than this, God will not deceive by the appearance of what is not reality, He will even give the greatest gift. The Parabolic relation is now not that of friends, but of father and son. If the son asks for bread, will the father give what seems such, but is only a stone? If he asks for a fish, will he tender him what looks such, but is a serpent? If he seek an egg, will he hand to him what breeds a scorpion? The need, the hunger, of the child will not, in answer to its prayer, receive at the Father\u2019s Hands, that which seems, but gives not the reality of satisfaction\u2014rather is poison. Let us draw the inference. Such is our conduct\u2014how much more shall our heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. That gift will not disappoint by the appearance of what is not reality; it will not deceive either by the promise of what it does not give, or by giving what would prove fatal. As we follow Christ\u2019s teaching, we ask for the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit, in leading us to Him, leads us into all truth, to all life, and to what satisfies all need.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 16<\/p>\n
THE THREE PARABLES OF WARNING: TO THE INDIVIDUAL, TO THE NATION, AND TO THE THEOCRACY\u2014THE FOOLISH RICH MAN\u2014THE BARREN FIG-TREE\u2014THE GREAT SUPPER<\/p>\n
(St. Luke 12:13\u201321; 13:6\u20139; 14:16\u201324.)<\/p>\n
THE three Parables, which successively follow in St. Luke\u2019s Gospel, may generally be designated as those \u2018of warning.\u2019 This holds specially true of the last two of them, which refer to the civil and the ecclesiastical polity of Israel. Each of the three Parables is set in an historical frame, having been spoken under circumstances which gave occasion for such illustration.
\n1. The Parable of the foolish rich man. It appears, that some one among them that listened to Jesus conceived the idea, that the authority of the Great Rabbi of Nazareth might be used for his own selfish purposes. This was all he had profited, that it seemed to open possibilities of gain\u2014stirred thoughts of covetousness. But other inferences also come to us. Evidently, Christ must have attracted and deeply moved multitudes, or His interposition would not have been sought; and, equally evidently, what He preached had made upon this man the impression, that he might possibly enlist Him as his champion. The presumptive evidence which it affords as regards the effect and the subject-matter of Christ\u2019s preaching is exceedingly interesting. On the other hand, Christ had not only no legal authority for interfering, but the Jewish law of inheritance was so clearly defined, and, we may add, so just, that if this person had had any just or good cause, there could have been no need for appealing to Jesus. Hence it must have been \u2018covetousness,\u2019 in the strictest sense, which prompted it\u2014perhaps, a wish to have, besides his own share as a younger brother, half of that additional portion which, by law, came to the eldest son of the family. Such an attempt for covetous purposes to make use of the pure unselfish preaching of love, and to derive profit from His spiritual influence, accounts for the severity with which Christ rejected the demand, although, as we judge, He would, under any circumstances, have refused to interfere in purely civil disputes, with which the established tribunals were sufficient to deal.
\nAll this accounts for the immediate reference of our Lord to covetousness, the folly of which He showed by this almost self-evident principle, too often forgotten\u2014that \u2018not in the super-abounding to any one [not in that wherein he has more than enough] consisteth his life, from the things which he possesseth.\u2019 In other words, that part of the things which a man possesseth by which his life is sustained, consists not in what is superabundant; his life is sustained by that which he needs and uses; the rest, the superabundance, forms no part of his life, and may, perhaps, never be of use to him. Why, then, be covetous, or long for more than we need? And this folly also involves danger. For, the love of these things will engross mind and heart, and care about them will drive out higher thoughts and aims. The moral as regarded the Kingdom of God, and the warning not to lose it for thought of what \u2018perisheth with the using,\u2019 are obvious.
\nThe Parable itself bears on all these points. It consists of two parts, of which the first shows the folly, the second the sin and danger, of that care for what is beyond our present need, which is the characteristic of covetousness. The rich man is surveying his land, which is bearing plentifully\u2014evidently beyond its former yield, since the old provision for storing the corn appears no longer sufficient. It seems implied\u2014or, we may at least conjecture\u2014that this was not only due to the labour and care of the master, but that he had devoted to it his whole thought and energy. More than this, it seems as if, in the calculations which he now made, he looked into the future, and saw there progressive increase and riches. As yet, the harvest was not reaped; but he was already considering what to do, reckoning upon the riches that would come to him. And so he resolved to pull down the old, and build larger barns, where he would store his future possessions. From one aspect there would have been nothing wrong in an act of almost necessary foresight\u2014only great folly in thinking, and speaking, and making plans, as if that were already absolutely his which might never come to him at all, which was still unreaped, and might be garnered long after he was dead. His life was not sustained by that part of his possessions which were the \u2018superabounding.\u2019 But to this folly was also added sin. For, God was not in all his thoughts. In all his plans for the future\u2014and it was his folly to make such absolutely\u2014he thought not of God. His whole heart was set on the acquisition of earthly riches\u2014not on the service of God. He remembered not his responsibility; all that he had, was for himself, and absolutely his own, to batten upon; \u2018Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry.\u2019 He did not even remember, that there was a God Who might cut short his years.
\nSo had he spoken in his heart\u2014proud, selfish, self-indulgent, God-forgetting\u2014as he looked forth upon what was not yet, even in an inferior sense, his own, but which he already treated as such, and that in the most absolute sense. And now comes the quick, sharp, contrast, which is purposely introduced quite abruptly. \u2018But God said unto him\u2019\u2014not by revelation, nor through inward presentiment, but, with awful suddenness, in those unspoken words of fact which cannot be gainsaid or answered: \u2018Thou fool! this very night\u2019\u2014which follows on thy plans and purposings\u2014\u2018thy soul is required of thee. But, the things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be?\u2019 Here, with the obvious evidence of the folly of such state of mind, the Parable breaks off. Its sinfulness\u2014nay, and beyond this negative aspect of it, the wisdom of righteousness in laying up the good treasure which cannot be taken from us, appears in this concluding remark of Christ\u2014\u2018So is he who layeth up treasure (treasureth) for himself, and is not rich towards God.\u2019
\nIt was a barbed arrow, we might say, out of the Jewish quiver, but directed by the Hand of the Lord. For, we read in the Talmud that a Rabbi told his disciples, \u2018Repent the day before thy death;\u2019 and when his disciples asked him: \u2018Does a man know the day of his death?\u2019 he replied, that on that very ground he should repent to-day, lest he should die to-morrow. And so would all his days be days of repentance. Again, the Son of Sirach wrote: \u2018There is that waxeth rich by his wariness and pinching, and this is the portion of his reward: whereas he saith, I have found rest, and now will eat continually of my goods; and yet he knoweth not what time shall come upon him, and that he must leave those things to others, and die.\u2019 But we sadly miss in all this the spiritual application which Christ made. Similarly, the Talmud, by a play on the last word (\u05d7\u05dc\u05d3), in the first verse of Psalm 49., compares man to the weasel, which laboriously gathers and deposits, not knowing for whom, while the Midrash tells a story, how, when a Rabbi returned from a feast where the host had made plans of storing his wine for a future occasion, the Angel of Death appeared to him, grieved for man, \u2018since you say, thus and thus shall we do in the future, while no one knoweth how soon he shall be called to die,\u2019 as would be the case with the host of that evening, who would die after the lapse of thirty days. But once more we ask, where is the spiritual application, such as was made by Christ? So far from it, the Midrash adds, that when the Rabbi challenged the Angel to show him the time of his own death, he received this reply, that he had not dominion over the like of him, since God took pleasure in their good works, and added to their days!
\n2. The special warning intended to be conveyed by the Parable of the Barren Fig-tree sufficiently appears from the context. As explained in a previous chapter, the Lord had not only corrected the erroneous interpretation which the Jews were giving to certain recent national occurrences, but pointed them to this higher moral of all such events, that, unless speedy national repentance followed, the whole people would perish. This Parable offers not merely an exemplification of this general prediction of Christ, but sets before us what underlies it: Israel in its relation to God; the need of repentance; Israel\u2019s danger; the nature of repentance, and its urgency; the relation of Christ to Israel; the Gospel; and the final judgment on impenitence.
\nAs regards the details of this Parable, we mark that the fig-tree had been specially planted by the owner in his vineyard, which was the choicest situation. This, we know, was not unusual. Fig-trees, as well as palm and olive-trees, were regarded as so valuable, that to cut them down, if they yielded even a small measure of fruit, was popularly deemed to deserve death at the Hand of God. Ancient Jewish writings supply interesting particulars of this tree and its culture. According to Josephus, in favoured localities the ripe fruit hung on the tree for ten months of the year, the two barren months being probably April and May, before the first of the three crops which it bore had ripened. The first figs ripened towards the end of June, sometimes earlier. The second, which are those now dried and exported, ripened in August; the third, which were small and of comparatively little value, in September, and often hung all winter on the trees. A species (the Benoth Shuach) is mentioned, of which the fruit required three years for ripening. The fig-tree was regarded as the most fruitful of all trees. On account of its repeated crops, it was declared not subject to the ordinance which enjoined that fruit should be left in the corners for the poor. Its artificial inoculation was known. The practice mentioned in the Parable, of digging about the tree (\u05de\u05e2\u05d3\u05e8\u05d9\u05df), and dunging it (\u05de\u05d5\u05d1\u05dc\u05d9\u05df), is frequently mentioned in Rabbinic writings, and by the same designations. Curiously, Maimonides mentions three years as the utmost limit within which a tree should bear fruit in the land of Israel. Lastly, as trees were regarded as by their roots undermining and deteriorating the land, a barren tree would be of threefold disadvantage: it would yield no fruit; it would fill valuable space, which a fruit-bearer might occupy; and it would needlessly deteriorate the land. Accordingly, while it was forbidden to destroy fruit-bearing trees, it would, on the grounds above stated, be duty to cut down a \u2018barren\u2019 or \u2018empty\u2019 tree (Ilan seraq).
\nThese particulars will enable us more fully to understand, the details of the Parable. Allegorically, the fig-tree served in the Old testament as emblem of the Jewish nation\u2014in the Talmud, rather as that of Israel\u2019s lore, and hence of the leaders and the pious of the people. The vineyard is in the New Testament the symbol of the Kingdom of God, as distinct from the nation of Israel. Thus far, then, the Parable may be thus translated: God called Israel as a nation, and planted it in the most favoured spot: as a fig-tree in the vineyard of His own Kingdom. \u2018And He came seeking,\u2019 as He had every right to do, \u2018fruit thereon, and found none.\u2019 It was the third year that He had vainly looked for fruit, when He turned to His Vinedresser\u2014the Messiah, to Whom the vineyard is committed as its King\u2014with this direction: \u2018Cut it down\u2014why doth it also deteriorate the soil?\u2019 It is barren, though in the best position; as a fig-tree it ought to bear figs, and here the best; it fills the place which a good tree might occupy; and besides, it deteriorates the soil (literally: \u05de\u05d7\u05dc\u05d9\u05d3 \u05d0\u05ea \u05d4\u05e7\u05e8\u05e7\u05e2). And its three years\u2019 barrenness has established (as before explained) its utterly hopeless character. Then it is that the Divine Vinedresser, in His infinite compassion, pleads, and with far deeper reality than either Abraham or Moses could have entreated, for the fig-tree which Himself had planted and tended, that it should be spared \u2018this year also,\u2019 \u2018until then that I shall dig about it, and dung it,\u2019\u2014till He labour otherwise than before, even by His Own Presence and Words, nay, by laying to its roots His most precious Blood. \u2018And if then it bear fruit\u2019\u2014here the text abruptly breaks off, as implying that in such case it would, of course, be allowed to remain; \u2018but if not, then against the future (coming) year shalt thou cut it down.\u2019 The Parable needs no further commentation. In the words of a recent writer: \u2018Between the tree and the axe nothing intervenes but the intercession of the Gardener, Who would make a last effort, and even His petition applies only to a short and definite period, and, in case it pass without result, this petition itself merges in the proposal, \u201cBut if not, then cut it down.\u201d \u2019 How speedily and terribly the warning came true, not only students of history, but all men and in all ages have been made to know. Of the lawfulness of a further application of this Parable to all kindred circumstances of nation, community, family, nay, even of individuals, it is not necessary to speak.
\n3. The third Parable of warning\u2014that of the Great Supper\u2014refers not to the political state of Israel, but to their ecclesiastical status, and their continuance as the possessors and representatives of the Kingdom of God. It was spoken after the return of Jesus from the Feast of the Dedication, and therefore carries us beyond the point in this history which we have reached. Accordingly, the attendant circumstances will be explained in the sequel. In regard to these we only note, how appropriately such a warning of Israel\u2019s spiritual danger, in consequence of their hardness of heart, misrepresentation, and perversion of God\u2019s truth, would come at a Sabbath-meal of the Pharisees, when they lay in wait against Him, and He first challenged their externalising of God\u2019s Day and Law to the subversion of its real meaning, and then rebuked the self-assertion, pride, and utter want of all real love on the part of these leaders of Israel.
\nWhat led up to the Parable of \u2018the Great Supper\u2019 happened after these things: after His healing of the man with the dropsy in sight of them all on the Sabbath, after His twofold rebuke of their perversion of the Sabbath-Law, and of those marked characteristics of Pharisaism, which showed how far they were from bringing forth fruit worthy of the Kingdom, and how, instead of representing, they misrepresented the Kingdom, and were utterly unfit ever to do otherwise. The Lord had spoken of making a feast, not for one\u2019s kindred, nor for the rich\u2014whether such outwardly, or mentally and spiritually from the standpoint of the Pharisees\u2014but for the poor and afflicted. This would imply true spirituality, because that fellowship of giving, which descends to others in order to raise them as brethren, not condescends, in order to be raised by them as their Master and Superior. And He had concluded with these words: \u2018And thou shalt be blessed\u2014because they have not to render back again to thee, for it shall be rendered back to thee again in the Resurrection of the Just.\u2019
\nIt was this last clause\u2014but separated, in true Pharisaic spirit, from that which had preceded, and indicated the motive\u2014on which one of those present now commented, probably with a covert, perhaps a provocative, reference to what formed the subject of Christ\u2019s constant teaching: \u2018Blessed whoso shall eat bread in the Kingdom of Heaven.\u2019 An expression this, which to the Pharisee meant the common Jewish expectancy of a great feast at the beginning of the Messianic Kingdom. So far he had rightly understood, and yet he had entirely misunderstood, the words of Christ. Jesus had, indeed, referred to the future retribution of (not, for) deeds of love, among which He had named as an instance, suggested by the circumstances, a feast for, or rather brotherly love and fellowship towards, the poor and suffering. But although the Pharisee referred to the Messianic Day, his words show that he did not own Jesus as the Messiah. Whether or not it was the object of his exclamation, as sometimes religious commonplaces or platitudes are in our days, to interrupt the course of Christ\u2019s rebukes, or, as before hinted, to provoke Him to unguarded speech, must be left undetermined. What is chiefly apparent is, that this Pharisee separated what Christ said about the blessings of the first Resurrection from that with which He had connected them\u2014we do not say as their condition, but as logically their moral antecedent: viz., love, in opposition to self-assertion and self-seeking. The Pharisee\u2019s words imply that, like his class, he, at any rate, fully expected to share in these blessings, as a matter of course, and because he was a Pharisee. Thus to leave out Christ\u2019s anteceding words was not only to set them aside, but to pervert His saying, and to place the blessedness of the future on the very opposite basis from that on which Christ had rested it. Accordingly, it was to this man personally that the Parable was addressed.
\nThere can be no difficulty in understanding the main ideas underlying the Parable. The man who made the \u2018Great Supper\u2019 was He Who had, in the Old Testament, prepared \u2018a feast of fat things.\u2019 The \u2018bidding many\u2019 preceded the actual announcement of the day and hour of the feast. We understand by it a preliminary intimation of the feast then preparing, and a general invitation of the guests, who were the chief people in the city; for, as we shall presently see, the scene is laid in a city. This general announcement was made in the Old Testament institutions and prophecies, and the guests bidden were those in the city, the chief men\u2014not the ignorant and those out of the way, but the men who knew, and read, and expounded these prophecies. At last the preparations were ended, and the Master sent out His Servant, not necessarily to be understood of any one individual in particular\u2014such as John the Baptist\u2014but referring to whomsoever He would employ in His Service for that purpose. It was to intimate to the persons formerly bidden, that everything was now ready. Then it was that, however differing in their special grounds for it, or expressing it with more or less courtesy, they were all at one in declining to come. The feast, to which they had been bidden some time before, and to which they had apparently agreed to come (at least, this was implied), was, when actually announced as ready, not what they had expected, at any rate not what they regarded as more desirable than what they had, and must give up in order to come to it. For\u2014and this seems one of the principal points in the Parable\u2014to come to that feast, to enter into the Kingdom, implies the giving up of something that seems if not necessary yet most desirable, and the enjoyment of which appears only reasonable. Be it possession, business, and pleasure (Stier), or the priesthood, the magistracy, and the people generally (St. Augustine), or the priesthood, the Pharisees, and the Scribes, or the Pharisees, the Scribes, and the self-righteously virtuous, with reference to whom we are specially to think of the three-fold excuse, the main point lies in this, that, when the time came, they all refused to enter in, each having some valid and reasonable excuse. But the ultimate ground of their refusal was, that they felt no real desire, and saw nothing attractive in such a feast; had no real reverence for the host; in short, that to them it was not a feast at all, but something much less to be desired than what they had, and would have been obliged to give up, if they had complied with the invitation.
\nThen let the feast\u2014for it was prepared by the goodness and liberality of the Host\u2014be for those who were in need of it, and to whom it would be a feast: the poor and those afflicted\u2014the maimed, and blind, and lame, on whom those great citizens who had been first bidden would look down. This, with reference to, and in higher spiritual explanation of, what Christ had previously said about bidding such to our feasts of fellowship and love. Accordingly, the Servant is now directed to \u2018go out quickly into the (larger) streets and the (narrow) lanes of the City\u2019\u2014a trait which shows that the scene is laid in \u2018the City,\u2019 the professed habitation of God. The importance of this circumstance is evident. It not only explains who the first bidden chief citizens were, but also that these poor were the despised ignorant, and the maimed, lame, and blind\u2014such as the publicans and sinners. These are they in \u2018the streets\u2019 and \u2018lanes;\u2019 and the Servant is directed, not only to invite, but to \u2018bring them in,\u2019 as otherwise they might naturally shrink from coming to such a feast. But even so, \u2018there is yet room;\u2019 for the great Lord of the house has, in His great liberality, prepared a very great feast for very many. And so the Servant is once more sent, so that the Master\u2019s \u2018house may be filled.\u2019 But now he is bidden to \u2018go out,\u2019 outside the City, outside the Theocracy, \u2018into the highways and hedges,\u2019 to those who travel along the world\u2019s great highway, or who have fallen down weary, and rest by its hedges; into the busy, or else weary, heathen world. This reference to the heathen world is the more apparent that, according to the Talmud, there were commonly no hedges round the fields of the Jews. And this time the direction to the Servant is not, as in regard to those naturally bashful outcasts of the City\u2014who would scarcely venture to the great house\u2014to \u2018bring them in,\u2019 but \u2018constrain\u2019 [without a pronoun] \u2018to come in.\u2019 Not certainly as indicating their resistance and implying force, but as the moral constraint of earnest, pressing invitation, coupled with assurance both of the reality of the feast and of their welcome to it. For, these wanderers on the world\u2019s highway had, before the Servant came to them, not known anything of the Master of the house, and all was quite new and unexpected. Their being invited by a Lord Whom they had not known, perhaps never heard of before, to a City in which they were strangers, and to a feast for which\u2014as wayfarers, or as resting by the hedges, or else as working within their enclosure\u2014they were wholly unprepared, required special urgency, \u2018a constraining,\u2019 to make them either believe in it, or come to it from where the messengers found them, and that without preparing for it by dress or otherwise. And so the house would be filled!
\nHere the Parable abruptly breaks off. What follows are the words of our Lord in explanation and application of it to the company then present: \u2018For I say unto you, that none of those men which were bidden shall taste of My Supper.\u2019 And this was the final answer to this Pharisee and to those with him at that table, and to all such perversion of Christ\u2019s Words and misapplication of God\u2019s Promises as he and they were guilty of.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 17<\/p>\n
THE THREE PARABLES OF THE GOSPEL: OF THE RECOVERY OF THE LOST\u2014OF THE LOST SHEEP, THE LOST DRACHM, THE LOST SON<\/p>\n
(St. Luke 15.)<\/p>\n
A SIMPLE perusal of the three Parables, grouped together in the fifteenth chapter of St. Luke\u2019s Gospel, will convince us of their connection. Although they treat of \u2018repentance,\u2019 we can scarcely call them \u2018The Parables of Repentance;\u2019 for, except in the last of them, the aspect of repentance is subordinate to that of restoration, which is the moral effect of repentance. They are rather peculiarly Gospel- Parables \u2018of the recovery of the lost:\u2019 in the first instance, through the unwearied labour; in the second, through the anxious care, of the owner; and in the third Parable, through the never-ceasing love of the Father.
\nProperly to understand these Parables, the circumstances which elicited them must be kept in view. As Jesus preached the Gospel of God\u2019s call, not to those who had, as they imagined, prepared themselves for the Kingdom by study and good works, but as that to a door open, and a welcome free to all, \u2018all the publicans and sinners were [constantly] drawing near to Him.\u2019 It has formerly been shown, that the Jewish teaching concerning repentance was quite other than, nay, contrary to, that of Christ. Theirs was not a Gospel to the lost: they had nothing to say to sinners. They called upon them to \u2018do penitence,\u2019 and then Divine Mercy, or rather Justice, would have its reward for the penitent. Christ\u2019s Gospel was to the lost as such. It told them of forgiveness, of what the Saviour was doing, and the Father purposed and felt for them; and that, not in the future and as reward of their penitence, but now in the immediate present. From what we know of the Pharisees, we can scarcely wonder that \u2018they were murmuring at Him, saying, This man receiveth \u201csinners,\u201d and eateth with them.\u2019 Whether or not Christ had on this, as on other occasions, joined at a meal with such persons\u2014which, of course, in the eyes of the Pharisees would have been a great aggravation of His offence\u2014their charge was so far true, that \u2018this One,\u2019 in contrariety to the principles and practice of Rabbinism, \u2018received sinners\u2019 as such, and consorted with them. Nay, there was even more than they charged Him with: He not only received them when they sought Him, but He sought them, so as to bring them to Him; not, indeed, that they might remain \u2018sinners,\u2019 but that, by seeking and finding them, they might be restored to the Kingdom, and there might be joy in heaven over them. And so these are truly Gospel-Parables, although presenting only some aspects of it.
\nBesides their subject-matter, these three Parables have some other points in common. Two things are here of chief interest. They all proceed on the view that the work of the Father and of Christ, as regards \u2018the Kingdom,\u2019 is the same; that Christ was doing the work of the Father, and that they who know Christ know the Father also. That work was the restoration of the lost; Christ had come to do it, and it was the longing of the Father to welcome the lost home again. Further, and this is only second in importance, the lost was still God\u2019s property; and he who had wandered farthest was a child of the Father, and considered as such. And, although this may, in a wider sense, imply the general propriety of Christ in all men, and the universal Fatherhood of God, yet, remembering that this Parable was spoken to Jews, we, to whom these Parables now come, can scarcely be wrong in thinking, as we read them, with special thankfulness of our Christian privileges, as by Baptism numbered among the sheep of His Flock, the treasure of His Possession, and the children of His Home.
\nIn other particulars there are, however, differences, all the more marked that they are so finely shaded. These concern the lost, their restoration, and its results.
\n1. The Parable of the Lost Sheep.\u2014At the outset we remark that this Parable and the next, that of the Lost Drachm, are intended as an answer to the Pharisees. Hence they are addressed to them: \u2018What man of you?\u2019 \u2018or what woman?\u2019 just as His late rebuke to them on the subject of their Sabbath-cavils had been couched: \u2018Which of you shall have a son or an ox fallen into a well?\u2019 Not so the last Parable, of the Lost Son, in which He passed from defence, or rather explanation, of His conduct, to its higher reason, showing that He was doing the work of the Father. Hence, while the element of comparison (with that which had not been lost) appears in most detailed form in the first Parable, it is generalised in the second, and wholly omitted in the third.
\nOther differences have to be marked in the Parables themselves. In the first Parable (that of the Lost Sheep) the main interest centres in the lost; in the second (that of the Lost Drachm), in the search; in the third, in the restoration. And although in the third Parable the Pharisees are not addressed, there is the highest personal application to them in the words which the Father speaks to the elder son\u2014an application, not so much of warning, as of loving correction and entreaty, and which seems to imply, what otherwise these Parables convey, that at least these Pharisees had \u2018murmured,\u2019 not so much from bitter hostility to Christ, as from spiritual ignorance and misunderstanding.
\nAgain, these Parables, and especially that of the Lost Sheep, are evidently connected with the preceding series, that \u2018of warnings.\u2019 The last of these showed how the poor, the blind, lame, and maimed, nay, even the wanderers on the world\u2019s highway, were to be the guests at the heavenly Feast. And this, not only in the future, and after long and laborious preparation, but now, through the agency of the Saviour. As previously stated, Rabbinism placed acceptance at the end of repentance, and made it its wages. And this, because it knew not, nor felt the power of sin, nor yet the free grace of God. The Gospel places acceptance at the beginning, of repentance, and as the free gift of God\u2019s love. And this, because it not only knows the power of sin, but points to a Saviour, provided of God.
\nThe Lost Sheep is only one among a hundred: not a very great loss. Yet which among us would not, even from the common motives of ownership, leave the ninety-and-nine, and go after it, all the more that it has strayed into the wilderness? And, to take these Pharisees on their own ground, should not the Christ have done likewise to the straying and almost lost sheep of His own flock? Nay, quite generally and to all time, is this not the very work of the \u2018Good Shepherd,\u2019 and may we not, each of us, thus draw from it precious comfort? As we think of it, we remember that it is natural for the foolish sheep so to wander and stray. And we think not only of those sheep which Jewish pride and superciliousness had left to go astray, but of our own natural tendency to wander. And we recall the saying of St. Peter, which, no doubt, looked back upon this Parable: \u2018Ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.\u2019 It is not difficult in imagination to follow the Parabolic picture: how in its folly and ignorance the sheep strayed further and further, and at last was lost in solitude and among stony places; how the shepherd followed and found it, weary and footsore; and then with tender care lifted it on his shoulder, and carried it home, gladsome that he had found the lost. And not only this, but when, after long absence, he returned home with his found sheep, that now nestled close to its Saviour, he called together his friends, and bade them rejoice with him over the erst lost and now found treasure.
\nIt needs not, and would only diminish the pathos of this exquisite Parable, were we to attempt interpreting its details. They apply wherever and to whatever they can be applied. Of these three things we think: of the lost sheep; of the Good Shepherd, seeking, finding, bearing, rejoicing; and of the sympathy of all who are truly friends\u2014like-minded with Him. These, then, are the emblems of heavenly things. In heaven\u2014oh, how different the feeling from that of Pharisaism! View \u2018the flock\u2019 as do the Pharisees, and divide them into those who need and who need not repentance, the \u2018sinners\u2019 and the \u2018righteous,\u2019 as regards man\u2019s application of the Law\u2014does not this Parable teach us that in heaven there shall be joy over the \u2018sinner that repenteth\u2019 more than over the \u2018ninety-and-nine\u2019 \u2018righteous,\u2019 which \u2018have not need of repentance\u2019? And to mark the terrible contrast between the teaching of Christ and that of the Pharisees; to mark also, how directly from heaven must have been the message of Jesus, and how poor sinners must have felt it such, we put down in all its nakedness the message which Pharisaism brought to the lost. Christ said to them: \u2018There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.\u2019 Pharisaism said\u2014and we quote here literally\u2014\u2018There is joy before God when those who provoke Him perish from the world.\u2019
\n2. In proceeding to the second Parable, that of the Lost Drachm, we must keep in mind that in the first the danger of being lost arose from the natural tendency of the sheep to wander. In the second Parable it is no longer our natural tendency to which our loss is attributable. The drachm (about 7 1\/2d. of our money) has been lost, as the woman, its owner, was using or counting her money. The loss is the more sensible, as it is one out of only ten, which constitute the owner\u2019s property. But it is still in the house\u2014not like the sheep that had gone astray\u2014only covered by the dust that is continually accumulating from the work and accidents around. And so it is more and more likely to be buried under it, or swept into chinks and corners, and less and less likely to be found as time passes. But the woman lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and seeks diligently, till she has found it. And then she calleth together those around, and bids them rejoice with her over the finding of the lost part of her possessions. And so there is joy in the presence of the Angels over one sinner that repenteth. The comparison with others that need not such is now dropped, because, whereas formerly the sheep had strayed\u2014though from the frowardness of its nature\u2014here the money had simply been lost, fallen among the dust that accumulates\u2014practically, was no longer money, or of use; became covered, hidden, and was in danger of being for ever out of sight, not serviceable, as it was intended to be and might have been.
\nWe repeat, the interest of this Parable centres in the search, and the loss is caused, not by natural tendency, but by surrounding circumstances, which cover up the bright silver, hide it, and render it useless as regards its purpose, and lost to its owner.
\n3. If it has already appeared that the two first Parables are not merely a repetition, in different form, of the same thought, but represent two different aspects and causes of the \u2018being lost\u2019\u2014the essential difference between them appears even more clearly in the third Parable, that of the Lost Son. Before indicating it in detail, we may mark the similarity in form, and the contrast in spirit, of analogous Rabbinic Parables. The thoughtful reader will have noted this even in the Jewish parallel to the first Parable, where the reason of the man following the straying animal is Pharisaic fear and distrust, lest the Jewish wine which it carried should become mingled with that of the Gentiles. Perhaps, however, this is a more apt parallel, when the Midrash relates how, when Moses fed the sheep of Jethro in the wilderness, and a kid had gone astray, he went after it, and found it drinking at a spring. As he thought it might be weary, he laid it on his shoulder and brought it back, when God said that, because he had shown pity on the sheep of a man, He would give him His own sheep, Israel, to feed. As a parallel to the second Parable, this may be quoted as similar in form, though very different in spirit, when a Rabbi notes, that, if a man had lost a Sela (drachm) or anything else of value in his house, he would light ever so many lights (\u05de\u05d3\u05dc\u05d9\u05e7 \u05db\u05de\u05d4 \u05e0\u05e8\u05d5\u05ea \u05db\u05de\u05d4 \u05e4\u05ea\u05d9\u05dc\u05d5\u05ea) till he had found what provides for only one hour in this world. How much more, then, should he search, as for hidden treasures, for the words of the Law, on which depends the life of this and of the world to come! And in regard to the high place which Christ assigned to the repenting sinner, we may note that, according to the leading Rabbis, the penitents would stand nearer to God than the \u2018perfectly righteous\u2019 (\u05e6\u05d3\u05d9\u05e7\u05d9\u05dd \u05d2\u05de\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd), since, in Is. 57:19, peace was first bidden to those who had been afar off, and then only to those near. This opinion was, however, not shared by all, and one Rabbi maintained, that, while all the prophets had only prophesied with reference to penitents (this had been the sole object of their mission), yet, as regarded the \u2018perfectly righteous,\u2019 \u2018eye hath not seen, O God, beside Thee, what He hath prepared\u2019 for them. Lastly, it may, perhaps, be noted, that the expression \u2018there is joy before Him\u2019 (\u05d4\u05d9\u05ea\u05d4 \u05e9\u05c1\u05de\u05d7\u05d4 \u05dc\u05e4\u05e0\u05d5\u05b4) is not uncommon in Jewish writings with reference to events which take place on earth.
\nTo complete these notes, it may be added that, besides illustrations, to which reference will be made in the sequel, Rabbinic tradition supplies a parallel to at least part of the third Parable, that of the Lost Son. It tells us that, while prayer may sometimes find the gate of access closed, it is never shut against repentance, and it introduces a Parable in which a king sends a tutor after his son, who, in his wickedness, had left the palace, with this message: \u2018Return, my son!\u2019 to which the latter replied: \u2018With what face can I return? I am ashamed!\u2019 On which the father sends this message: \u2018My son, is there a son who is ashamed to return to his father\u2014and shalt thou not return to thy father? Thou shalt return.\u2019 So, continues the Midrash, had God sent Jeremiah after Israel in the hour of their sin with the call to return, and the comforting reminder that it was to their Father.
\nIn the Parable of \u2018the Lost Son,\u2019 the main interest centres in his restoration. It is not now to the innate tendency of his nature, nor yet to the work and dust in the house that the loss is attributable, but to the personal, free choice of the individual. He does not stray; he does not fall aside\u2014he wilfully departs, and under aggravated circumstances. It is the younger of two sons of a father, who is equally loving to both, and kind even to his hired servants, whose home, moreover, is one not only of sufficiency, but of super-abundance and wealth. The demand which he makes for the \u2018portion of property falling\u2019 to him is founded on the Jewish Law of Inheritance. Presumably, the father had only these two sons. The eldest would receive two portions, the younger the third of all movable property. The father could not have disinherited the younger son, although, if there had been several younger sons, he might have divided the property falling to them as he wished, provided he expressed only his disposition, and did not add that such or such of the children were to have a less share or none at all. On the other hand, a man might, during his lifetime, dispose of all his property by gift, as he chose, to the disadvantage, or even the total loss, of the first-born, or of any other children; nay, he might give all to strangers. In such cases, as, indeed, in regard to all such dispositions, greater latitude was allowed if the donor was regarded as dangerously ill, than if he was in good health. In the latter case a legal formality of actual seizure required to be gone through. With reference to the two eventualities just mentioned\u2014that of diminishing or taking away the portion of younger children, and the right of gift\u2014the Talmud speaks of Testaments, which bear the name Diyatiqi, as in the New Testament. These dispositions might be made either in writing or orally. But if the share of younger children was to be diminished or taken away, the disposition must be made by a person presumably near death (Shekhibh mera). But no one in good health (Bari) could diminish (except by gift) the legal portion of a younger son.
\nIt thus appears that the younger son was, by law, fully entitled to his share of the possessions, although, of course, he had no right to claim it during the lifetime of his father. That he did so, might have been due to the feeling that, after all, he must make his own way in the world; to dislike of the order and discipline of his home; to estrangement from his elder brother; or, most likely, to a desire for liberty and enjoyment, with the latent belief that he would succeed well enough if left to himself. At any rate, his conduct, whatever his motives, was most heartless as regarded his father, and sinful as before God. Such a disposition could not prosper. The father had yielded to his demand, and, to be as free as possible from control and restraint, the younger son had gone into a far country. There the natural sequences soon appeared, and his property was wasted in riotous living. Regarding the demand for his inheritance as only a secondary trait in the Parable, designed, on the one hand, more forcibly to bring out the guilt of the son, and, on the other, the goodness, and afterwards the forgiveness, of the Father, we can scarcely doubt that by the younger son we are to understand those \u2018publicans and sinners\u2019 against whose reception by, and fellowship with, Christ the Pharisees had murmured.
\nThe next scene in the history is misunderstood when the objection is raised, that the young man\u2019s misery is there represented as the result of Providential circumstances rather than of his own misdoing. To begin with, he would not have been driven to such straits in the famine, if he had not wasted his substance with riotous living. Again, the main object is to show, that absolute liberty and indulgence of sinful desires and passions ended in anything but happiness. The Providence of God had an important part in this. Far more frequently are folly and sin punished in the ordinary course of Providence than by special judgments. Indeed, it is contrary to the teaching of Christ, and it would lead to an unmoral view of life, to regard such direct interpositions as necessary, or to substitute them for the ordinary government of God. Similarly, for our awakening also we are frequently indebted to what is called the Providence, but what is really the manifold working together of the grace, of God. And so we find special meaning in the occurrence of this famine. That, in his want, \u2018he clave (\u1f10\u03ba\u03bf\u03bb\u03bb\u03ae\u03b8\u03b7) to one of the citizens of that country,\u2019 seems to indicate that the man had been unwilling to engage the dissipated young stranger, and only yielded to his desperate importunity. This also explains how he employed him in the lowest menial service, that of feeding swine. To a Jew, there was more than degradation in this, since the keeping of swine (although perhaps the ownership rather than the feeding) was prohibited to Israelites under a curse. And even in this demeaning service he was so evil entreated, that for very hunger he would fain have \u2018filled his belly with the carob-pods that the swine did eat.\u2019 But here the same harshness, which had sent him to such employment, met him on the part of all the people of that country: \u2018and no man gave unto him,\u2019 even sufficient of such food. What perhaps gives additional meaning to this description is the Jewish saying: \u2018When Israel is reduced to the carob-tree, they become repentant.\u2019
\nIt was this pressure of extreme want which first showed to the younger son the contrast between the country and the circumstances to which his sin had brought him, and the plentiful provision of the home he had left, and the kindness which provided bread enough and to spare for even the hired servants. There was only a step between what he said, \u2018having come into himself,\u2019 and his resolve to return, though its felt difficulty seems implied in the expression: \u2018I will arise.\u2019 Nor would he go back with the hope of being reinstated in his position as son, seeing he had already received, and wasted in sin, his portion of the patrimony. All he sought was to be made as one of the hired servants. And, alike from true feeling, and to show that this was all his pretence, he would preface his request by the confession, that he had sinned \u2018against heaven\u2019\u2014a frequent Hebraism for \u2018against God\u2019\u2014and in the sight of his father, and hence could no longer lay claim to the name of son. The provision of the son he had, as stated, already spent; the name he no longer deserved. This favour only would he seek, to be as a hired servant in his father\u2019s house, instead of in that terrible, strange land of famine and harshness.
\nBut the result was far other than he could have expected. When we read that, \u2018while he was yet afar off, his father saw him,\u2019 we must evidently understand it in the sense, that his father had been always on the outlook for him, an impression which is strengthened by the later command to the servants to \u2018bring the calf, the fatted one,\u2019 as if it had been specially fattened against his return. As he now saw him, \u2018he was moved with compassion, and he ran, and he fell on his neck, and covered him with kisses.\u2019 Such a reception rendered the purposed request, to be made as one of the hired servants, impossible\u2014and its spurious insertion in the text of some important manuscripts affords sad evidence of the want of spiritual tact and insight of early copyists. The father\u2019s love had anticipated his confession, and rendered its self-spoken sentence of condemnation impossible. \u2018Perfect love casteth out fear,\u2019 and the hard thoughts concerning himself and his deserts on the part of the returning sinner were banished by the love of the father. And so he only made confession of his sin and wrong\u2014not now as preface to the request to be taken in as a servant, but as the outgoing of a humbled, grateful, truly penitent heart. Him whom want had humbled, thought had brought to himself, and mingled need and hope led a suppliant servant\u2014the love of a father, which anticipated his confession, and did not even speak the words of pardon, conquered, and so morally begat him a second time as his son. Here it deserves special notice, as marking the absolute contrast between the teaching of Christ and Rabbinism, that we have in one of the oldest Rabbinic works a Parable exactly the reverse of this, when the son of a friend is redeemed from bondage, not as a son, but to be a slave, that so obedience might be demanded of him. The inference drawn is, that the obedience of the redeemed is not that of filial love of the pardoned, but the enforcement of the claim of a master. How otherwise in the Parable and teaching of Christ!
\nBut even so the story of love has not come to an end. They have reached the house. And now the father would not only restore the son, but convey to him the evidence of it, and he would do so before, and by the servants. The three tokens of wealth and position are to be furnished him. \u2018Quickly\u2019 the servants are to bring forth the \u2018stola,\u2019 the upper garment of the higher classes, and that \u2018the first\u2019\u2014the best, and this instead of the tattered, coarse raiment of the foreign swineherd. Similarly, the finger-ring for his hand, and the sandals for his unshod feet, would indicate the son of the house. And to mark this still further, the servants were not only to bring these articles, but themselves to \u2018put them on\u2019 the son, so as thereby to own his mastership. And yet further, the calf, \u2018the fatted one\u2019 for this very occasion, was to be killed, and there was to be a joyous feast, for \u2018this\u2019 his son \u2018was dead, and is come to life again; was lost, and is found.\u2019
\nThus far for the reception of \u2018publicans and sinners,\u2019 and all in every time whom it may concern. Now for the other aspect of the history. While this was going on, so continues the Parable, the elder brother was still in the field. On his return home, he inquired of a servant the reason of the festivities which he heard within the house. Informed that his younger brother had come, and the calf long prepared against a feast had been killed, because his father had recovered him \u2018safe and sound,\u2019 he was angry, would not go in, and even refused the request to that effect of the father, who had come out for the purpose. The harsh words of reproach with which he set forth his own apparent wrongs could have only one meaning: his father had never rewarded him for his services. On the other hand, as soon as \u2018this\u2019 his \u2018son\u2019\u2014whom he will not even call his brother\u2014had come back, notwithstanding all his disservice, he had made a feast of joy!
\nBut in this very thing lay the error of the elder son, and\u2014to apply it\u2014the fatal mistake of Pharisaism. The elder son regarded all as of merit and reward, as work and return. But it is not so. We mark, first, that the same tenderness which had welcomed the returning son, now met the elder brother. He spoke to the angry man, not in the language of merited reproof, but addressed him lovingly as \u2018son,\u2019 and reasoned with him. And then, when he had shown him his wrong, he would fain recall him to better feeling by telling him of the other as his \u2018brother.\u2019 But the main point is this. There can be here no question of desert. So long as the son is in His Father\u2019s house He gives in His great goodness to His child all that is the Father\u2019s. But this poor lost one\u2014still a son and a brother\u2014he has not got any reward, only been taken back again by a Father\u2019s love, when he had come back to Him in the deep misery of his felt need. This son, or rather, as the other should view him, this \u2018brother,\u2019 had been dead, and was come to life again; lost, and was found. And over this \u2018it was meet to make merry and be glad,\u2019 not to murmur. Such murmuring came from thoughts of work and pay\u2014wrong in themselves, and foreign to the proper idea of Father and son; such joy, from a Father\u2019s heart. The elder brother\u2019s were the thoughts of a servant: of service and return; the younger brother\u2019s was the welcome of a son in the mercy and everlasting love of a Father. And this to us, and to all time!<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 18<\/p>\n
THE UNJUST STEWARD\u2014DIVES AND LAZARUS\u2014JEWISH AGRICULTURAL NOTES\u2014PRICES OF PRODUCE\u2014WRITING AND LEGAL DOCUMENTS\u2014PURPLE AND FINE LINEN\u2014JEWISH NOTIONS OF HADES<\/p>\n
(St. Luke 16.)<\/p>\n
ALTHOUGH widely differing in their object and teaching, the last group of Parables spoken during this part of Christ\u2019s Ministry are, at least outwardly, connected by a leading thought. The word by which we would string them together is Righteousness. There are three Parables of the Unrighteous: the Unrighteous Steward, the Unrighteous Owner, and the Unrighteous Dispenser, or Judge. And these are followed by two other Parables of the Self-righteous: Self-righteousness in its Ignorance, and its dangers as regards oneself; and Self-righteousness in its Harshness, and its dangers as regards others. But when this outward connection has been marked, we have gone the utmost length. Much more close is the internal connection between some of them.
\nWe note it, first and chiefly, between the two first Parables. Recorded in the same chapter, and in the same connection, they were addressed to the same audience. True, the Parable of the Unjust Steward was primarily spoken \u2018to His disciples,\u2019 that of Dives and Lazarus to the Pharisees. But then the audience of Christ at that time consisted of disciples and Pharisees. And these two classes in the audience stood in peculiar relation to each other, which is exactly met in these two Parables, so that the one may be said to have sprung out of the other. For, the \u2018disciples,\u2019 to whom the first Parable was addressed, were not primarily the Apostles, but those \u2018publicans and sinners\u2019 whom Jesus had received, to the great displeasure of the Pharisees. Them He would teach concerning the Mamon of unrighteousness. And, when the Pharisees sneered at this teaching, He would turn it against them, and show that, beneath the self-justification, which made them forget that now the Kingdom of God was opened to all, and imagine that they were the sole vindicators of a Law which in their everyday practice they notoriously broke, there lay as deep sin and as great alienation from God as that of the sinners whom they despised. Theirs might not be the Mamon of, yet it might be that for unrighteousness; and, while they sneered at the idea of such men making of their Mamon friends that would receive them into everlasting tabernacles, themselves would experience that in the end a terrible readjustment before God would follow on their neglect of using for God, and their employment only for self of such Mamon as was theirs, coupled as it was with harsh and proud neglect of what they regarded as wretched, sore-covered Lazarus, who lay forsaken and starving at their very doors.
\nIt will have been observed, that we lay once more special stress on the historical connection and the primary meaning of the Parables. We would read them in the light of the circumstances in which they were spoken\u2014as addressed to a certain class of hearers, and as referring to what had just passed. The historical application once ascertained, the general lessons may afterwards be applied to the widest range. This historical view will help us to understand the introduction, connection, and meaning, of the two Parables which have been described as the most difficult: those of the Unjust Steward, and of Dives and Lazarus.
\nAt the outset we must recall, that they were addressed to two different classes in the same audience. In both the subject is Unrighteousness. In the first, which is addressed to the recently converted publicans and sinners, it is the Unrighteous Steward, making unrighteous use of what had been committed to his administration by his Master; in the second Parable, which is addressed to the self-justifying, sneering Pharisees, it is the Unrighteous Possessor, who uses only for himself and for time what he has, while he leaves Lazarus, who, in his view, is wretched and sore-covered, to starve or perish, unheeded, at his very door. In agreement with its object, and as suited to the part of the audience addressed, the first Parable points a lesson, while the second furnishes a warning. In the first Parable we are told, what the sinner when converted should learn from his previous life of sin; in the second, what the self-deceiving, proud Pharisee should learn as regarded the life which to him seemed so fair, but was in reality so empty of God and of love. It follows\u2014and this is of greatest importance, especially in the interpretation of the first Parable\u2014that we must not expect to find spiritual equivalents for each of the persons or incidents introduced. In each case, the Parable itself forms only an illustration of the lessons, spoken or implied, which Christ would convey to the one and the other class in His audience.
\n1. The Parable of the Unjust Steward.\u2014In accordance with the canon of interpretation just laid down, we distinguish\u20141. The illustrative Parable. 2. Its moral. 3. Its application in the combination of the moral with some of the features of the Parable.
\n1. The illustrative Parable. This may be said to converge to the point brought out in the concluding verse: the prudence which characterises the dealings of the children of this world in regard to their own generation\u2014or, to translate the Jewish forms of expression into our own phraseology, the wisdom with which those who care not for the world to come choose the means most effectual for attaining their worldly objects. It is this prudence by which their aims are so effectually secured, and it alone, which is set before \u2018the children of light,\u2019 as that by which to learn. And the lesson is the more practical, that those primarily addressed had hitherto been among these men of the world. Let them learn from the serpent its wisdom, and from the dove its harmlessness; from the children of this world, their prudence as regarded their generation, while, as children of the new light, they must remember the higher aim for which that prudence was to be employed. Thus would that Mamon which is \u2018of unrighteousness,\u2019 and which certainly \u2018faileth,\u2019 become to us treasure in the world to come\u2014welcome us there, and, so far from \u2018failing,\u2019 prove permanent\u2014welcome us in everlasting tabernacles. Thus, also, shall we have made friends of the \u2018Mamon of unrighteousness,\u2019 and that, which from its nature must fail, become eternal gain\u2014or, to translate it into Talmudic phraseology, it will be of the things of which a man enjoys the interest in this world, while the capital remains for the world to come.
\nIt cannot now be difficult to understand the Parable. Its object is simply to show, in the most striking manner, the prudence of a worldly man, who is unrestrained by any other consideration than that of attaining his end. At the same time, with singular wisdom, the illustration is so chosen as that its matter (materia), \u2018the Mamon of unrighteousness,\u2019 may serve to point a life-lesson to those newly converted publicans and sinners, who had formerly sacrificed all for the sake, or in the enjoyment of, that Mamon. All else, such as the question, who is the master and who the steward, and such like, we dismiss, since the Parable is only intended as an illustration of the lesson to be afterwards taught.
\nThe connection between this Parable and what the Lord had previously said concerning returning sinners, to which our remarks have already pointed, is further evidenced by the use of the term \u2018wasting\u2019 (\u03b4\u03b9\u03b1\u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03c1\u03c0\u03af\u03b6\u03c9\u03bd), in the charge against the steward, just as the prodigal son had \u2018wasted\u2019 (\u03b4\u03b9\u03b5\u03c3\u03ba\u03cc\u03c1\u03c0\u03b9\u03c3\u03b5) his substance. Only, in the present instance, the property had been entrusted to his administration. As regards the owner, his designation as \u2018rich\u2019 seems intended to mark how large was the property committed to the steward. The \u2018steward\u2019 was not, as in St. Luke 12:42\u201346, a slave, but one employed for the administration of the rich man\u2019s affairs, subject to notice of dismissal. He was accused\u2014the term implying malevolence, but not necessarily a false charge\u2014not of fraud, but of wasting, probably by riotous living and carelessness, his master\u2019s goods. And his master seems to have convinced himself that the charge was true, since he at once gives him notice of dismissal. The latter is absolute, and not made dependent on the \u2018account of his stewardship,\u2019 which is only asked as, of course, necessary, when he gives up his office. Nor does the steward either deny the charge or plead any extenuation. His great concern rather is, during the time still left of his stewardship, before he gives up his accounts, to provide for his future support. The only alternative before him in the future is that of manual labour or mendicancy. But for the former he has not strength; from the latter he is restrained by shame.
\nThen it is that his \u2018prudence\u2019 suggests a device by which, after his dismissal, he may, without begging, be received into the houses of those whom he has made friends. It must be borne in mind, that he is still steward, and, as such, has full power of disposing of his master\u2019s affairs. When, therefore, he sends for one after another of his master\u2019s debtors, and tells each to alter the sum in the bond, he does not suggest to them forgery or fraud, but, in remitting part of the debt\u2014whether it had been incurred as rent in kind, or as the price of produce purchased\u2014he acts, although unrighteously, yet strictly within his rights. Thus, neither the steward nor the debtors could be charged with criminality, and the master must have been struck with the cleverness of a man who had thus secured a future provision by making friends, so long as he had the means of so doing (ere his Mamon of unrighteousness failed).
\nA few arch\u00e6ological notices may help the interpretation of details. From the context it seems more likely, that the \u2018bonds,\u2019 or rather \u2018writings,\u2019 of these debtors were written acknowledgments of debt, than, as some have supposed that they were, leases of farms. The debts over which the steward variously disposed, according as he wished to gain more or less favour, were considerable. In the first case they are stated as \u2018a hundred Bath of oil,\u2019 in the second as \u2018a hundred Cor of wheat.\u2019 In regard to these quantities we have the preliminary difficulty, that three kinds of measurement were in use in Palestine\u2014that of the \u2018Wilderness,\u2019 or, the original Mosaic; that of \u2018Jerusalem,\u2019 which was more than a fifth larger; and that of Sepphoris, probably the common Galilean measurement, which, in turn, was more than a fifth larger than the Jerusalem measure. To be more precise, one Galilean was equal to 3\/2 \u2018Wilderness\u2019 measures. Assuming the measurement to have been the Galilean, one Bath would have been equal to an Attic Metr\u00eat\u00eas, or, about 39 litres. On the other hand, the so-called \u2018Wilderness measurement\u2019 would correspond with the Roman measures, and, in that case, the \u2018Bath\u2019 would be the same as the Amphora, or amount to a little less than 26 litres. The latter is the measurement adopted by Josephus. In the Parable, the first debtor was owing 100 of these \u2018Bath,\u2019 or, according to the Galilean measurement, about 3,900 litres of oil. As regards the value of a Bath of oil, little information can be derived from the statements of Josephus, since he only mentions prices under exceptional circumstances, either in particularly plentiful years, or else at a time of war and siege. In the former, an Amphora, or 26 litres, of oil seems to have fetched about 9d.; but it must be added, that, even in such a year, this represents a rare stroke of business, since the oil was immediately afterwards re-sold for eight times the amount, and this\u20143s. for half an Amphora of about 13 litres\u2014would probably represent an exceptionally high war-price. The fair price for it would probably have been 9d. For the Mishnah informs us, that the ordinary \u2018earthenware casks\u2019 (the Gerabh) held each 2 Seah, or 48 Log, or about 26 litres. Again, according to a notice in the Talmud, 100 such \u2018casks,\u2019 or, 200 Seah, were sold for 10 (presumably gold) dinars, or 250 silver dinars, equal to about 7l. 10s. of our money. And as the Bath (= 3 Seah) held a third more than one of those \u2018casks,\u2019 or Gerabhin, the value of the 100 Bath of oil would probably amount to about 10l. of our money, and the remission of the steward, of course, to 5l.
\nThe second debtor owed \u2018a hundred Cor of wheat\u2019\u2014that is, in dry measure, ten times the amount of the oil of the first debtor, since the Cor was ten Ephah or Bath, the Ephah three Seah, the Seah six Qabh, and the Qabh four Log. This must be borne in mind, since the dry and the fluid measures were precisely the same; and here, also, their threefold computation (the \u2018Wilderness,\u2019 the \u2018Jerusalem,\u2019 and the \u2018Galilean\u2019) obtained. As regards the value of wheat, we learn that, on an average, four Seah of seed were expected to produce one Cor\u2014that is, seven and a half times their amount; and that a field 1,500 cubits long and 50 wide was expected to grow a Cor. The average price of a Cor of wheat, bought uncut, amounted to about 25 dinars, or 15s. Striking an average between the lowest prices mentioned and the highest, we infer that the price of 3 Seah or an Ephah would be from two shillings to half-a-crown, and accordingly of a Cor (or 10 Ephah) from 20 to 25 shillings (probably this is rather more than it would cost). On this computation the hundred Cor would represent a debt of from 100l. to 125l., and the remission of the steward (of 20 Cor), a sum of from 20l. to 25l. Comparatively small as these sums may seem, they are in reality large, remembering the value of money in Palestine, which, on a low computation, would be five times as great as in our own country. These two debtors are only mentioned as instances, and so the unjust steward would easily secure for himself friends by the \u2018Mamon of unrighteousness,\u2019 the term Mamon, we may note, being derived from the Syriac and Rabbinic word of the same kind (\u05de\u05b8\u05de\u05d5\u05b9\u05df, from \u05de\u05d5\u05df = \u05de\u05e0\u05d9, \u05de\u05e0\u05d4, to apportion).
\nAnother point on which acquaintance with the history and habits of those times throws light is, how the debtors could so easily alter the sum mentioned in their respective bonds. For, the text implies that this, and not the writing of a new bond, is intended; since in that case the old one would have been destroyed, and not given back for alteration. It would be impossible, within the present limits, to enter fully on the interesting subject of writing, writing-materials, and written documents among the ancient Jews. Suffice it to give here the briefest notices.
\nThe materials on which the Jews wrote were of the most divers kind: leaves, as of olives, palms, the carob, &c.; the rind of the pomegranate, the shell of walnuts, &c.; the prepared skins of animals (leather and parchment); and the product of the papyrus, used long before the time of Alexander the Great for the manufacture of paper, and known in Talmudic writings by the same name, as Papir or Apipeir, but more frequently by that of Nayyar\u2014probably from the stripes (Nirin) of the plant of which it was made. But what interests us more, as we remember the \u2018tablet\u2019 (\u03c0\u03b9\u03bd\u03b1\u03ba\u03af\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd) on which Zacharias wrote the name of the future Baptist, is the circumstance that it bears not only the same name, Pinaqes or Pinqesa, but that it seems to have been of such common use in Palestine. It consisted of thin pieces of wood (the Luach) fastened or strung together. The Mishnah enumerates three kinds of them: those where the wood was covered with papyrus, those where it was covered with wax, and those where the wood was left plain to be written on with ink. The latter was of different kinds. Black ink was prepared of soot (the Deyo), or of vegetable or mineral substances. Gum Arabic and Egyptian (Qumos and Quma) and vitriol (Qanqanthos) seem also to have been used in writing. It is curious to read of writing in colours and with red ink or Siqra, and even of a kind of sympathetic ink, made from the bark of the ash, and brought out by a mixture of vitriol and gum. We also read of a gold-ink, as that in which the copy of the Law was written which, according to the legend, the High-Priest had sent to Ptolemy Philadelphus for the purpose of being translated into Greek by the LXX. But the Talmud prohibits copies of the Law in gold letters, or more probably such in which the Divine Name was written in gold letters. In writing, a pen, Qolemos, made of reed (Qaneh) was used, and the reference in an Apostolic Epistle to writing \u2018with ink and pen\u2019 (\u03b4\u03b9\u1f70 \u03bc\u03ad\u03bb\u03b1\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u03ac\u03bc\u03bf\u03c5) finds even its verbal counterpart in the Midrash, which speaks of Milanin and Qolemin (ink and pens). Indeed, the public \u2018writer\u2019\u2014a trade very common in the East\u2014went about with a Qolemos, or reed-pen, behind his ear, as badge of his employment. With the reed-pen we ought to mention its necessary accompaniments: the penknife, the inkstand (which, when double, for black and red ink, was sometimes made of earthenware, Qalamarim), and the ruler\u2014it being regarded by the stricter set as unlawful to write any words of Holy Writ on any unlined material, no doubt to ensure correct writing and reading.
\nIn all this we have not referred to the practice of writing on leather specially prepared with salt and flour, nor to the Qelaph, or parchment in the stricter sense. For we are here chiefly interested in the common mode of writing, that on the Pinaqes, or \u2018tablet,\u2019 and especially on that covered with wax. Indeed, a little vessel holding wax was generally attached to it (Pinaqes sheyesh bo beth Qibbul shaavah). On such a tablet they wrote, of course, not with a reed-pen, but with a stylus, generally of iron. This instrument consisted of two parts, which might be detached from each other: the hard pointed \u2018writer\u2019 (Kothebh), and the \u2018blotter\u2019 (Mocheq), which was flat and thick for smoothing out letters and words which had been written or rather graven in the wax. There can be no question that acknowledgments of debt, and other transactions, were ordinarily written down on such wax-covered tablets; for not only is direct reference made to it, but there are special provisions in regard to documents where there are such erasures, or rather effacements: such as, that they require to be noted in the document, under what conditions and how the witnesses are in such cases to affix their signatures, just as there are particular injunctions how witnesses who could not write are to affix their mark.
\nBut although we have thus ascertained that \u2018the bonds\u2019 in the Parable must have been written on wax\u2014or else, possibly, on parchment\u2014where the Mocheq, or blotter, could easily efface the numbers, we have also evidence that they were not, as so often, written on \u2018tablets\u2019 (the Pinaqes). For, the Greek term, by which these \u2018bonds\u2019 or \u2018writings\u2019 are designated in the Parable (\u03b3\u03c1\u03ac\u03bc\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1), is the same as is sometimes used in Rabbinic writings (Gerammation) for an acknowledgment of debt; the Hebraised Greek word corresponding to the more commonly used (Syriac) term Shitre (Shetar), which also primarily denotes \u2018writings,\u2019 and is used specifically for such acknowledgments. Of these there were two kinds. The most formal Shetar was not signed by the debtor at all, but only by the witnesses, who were to write their names (or marks) immediately (not more than two lines) below the text of the document, to prevent fraud. Otherwise, the document would not possess legal validity. Generally, it was further attested by the Sanhedrin of three, who signed in such manner as not to leave even one line vacant. Such a document contained the names of creditor and debtor, the amount owing, and the date, together with a clause attaching the property of the debtor. In fact, it was a kind of mortgage; all sale of property being, as with us, subject to such a mortgage, which bore the name Acharayuth (probably, \u2018guarantee\u2019). When the debt was paid, the legal obligation was simply returned to the debtor; if paid in part, either a new bond was written, or a receipt given, which was called Shobher or Tebhara, because it \u2018broke\u2019 the debt.
\nBut in many respects different were those bonds which were acknowledgments of debt for purchases made, such as we suppose those to have been which are mentioned in the Parable. In such cases it was not uncommon to dispense altogether with witnesses, and the document was signed by the debtor himself. In bonds of this kind, the creditor had not the benefit of a mortgage in case of sale. We have expressed our belief that the Parable refers to such documents, and we are confirmed in this by the circumstance that they not only bear a different name from the more formal bonds (the Shitre), but one which is perhaps the most exact rendering of the Greek term (\u05db\u05ea\u05d1 \u05d9\u05d3\u05d5, a \u2018writing of hand,\u2019 \u2018note of hand\u2019). For completeness\u2019 sake we add, in regard to the farming of land, that two kinds of leases were in use. Under the first, called Shetar Arisuth, the lessee (Aris = \u03bf\u1f56\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2) received a certain portion of the produce. He might be a lessee for life, for a specified number of years, or even a hereditary tiller of the ground; or he might sub-let it to another person. Under the second kind of lease, the farmer\u2014or Meqabbel\u2014entered into a contract for payment either in kind, when he undertook to pay a stipulated and unvarying amount of produce, in which case he was called a Chokher (Chakhur or Chakhira), or else a certain annual rental in money, when he was called a Sokher.
\n2. From this somewhat lengthened digression, we return to notice the moral of the Parable. It is put in these words: \u2018Make to yourselves friends out of [by means of] the Mamon of unrighteousness, that, when it shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting tabernacles.\u2019 From what has been previously stated, the meaning of these words offers little serious difficulty. We must again recall the circumstance, that they were primarily addressed to converted publicans and sinners, to whom the expression \u2018Mamon of unrighteousness\u2019\u2014of which there are close analogies, and even an exact transcript in the Targum\u2014would have an obvious meaning. Among us, also, there are not a few who may feel its aptness as they look back on the past, while to all it carries a much needed warning. Again, the addition of the definite article leaves no doubt, that \u2018the everlasting tabernacles\u2019 mean the well-known heavenly home; in which sense the term \u2018tabernacle\u2019 is, indeed, already used in the Old Testament. But as a whole we regard it (as previously hinted) as an adaptation to the Parable of the well-known Rabbinic saying, that there were certain graces of which a man enjoyed the benefit here, while the capital, so to speak, remained for the next world. And if a more literal interpretation were demanded, we cannot but feel the duty incumbent on those converted publicans, nay, in a sense, on us all, to seek to make for ourselves of the Mamon\u2014be it of money, of knowledge, of strength, or opportunities, which to many has, and to all may so easily, become that \u2018of unrighteousness\u2019\u2014such lasting and spiritual application: gain such friends by means of it, that, \u2018when it fails,\u2019 as fail it must when we die, all may not be lost, but rather meet us in heaven. Thus would each deed done for God with this Mamon become a friend to greet us as we enter the eternal world.
\n3. The suitableness both of the Parable and of its application to the audience of Christ appears from its similarity to what occurs in Jewish writings. Thus, the reasoning that the Law could not have been given to the nations of the world, since they had not observed the seven Noachic commandments (which Rabbinism supposes to have been given to the Gentiles), is illustrated by a Parable in which a king is represented as having employed two administrators (Apiterophin); one over the gold and silver, and the other over the straw. The latter rendered himself suspected, and\u2014continues the Parable\u2014when he complained that he had not been set over the gold and silver, they said unto him: Thou fool, if thou hast rendered thyself Suspected in regard to the straw, shall they commit to thee the treasure of gold and silver? And we almost seem to hear the very words of Christ: \u2018He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much,\u2019 in this of the Midrash: \u2018The Holy One, blessed be His Name, does not give great things to a man until he has been tried in a small matter;\u2019 which is illustrated by the history of Moses and of David, who were both called to rule from the faithful guiding of sheep.
\nConsidering that the Jewish mind would be familiar with such modes of illustration, there could have been no misunderstanding of the words of Christ. These converted publicans might think\u2014and so may some of us\u2014that theirs was a very narrow sphere of service, one of little importance; or else, like the Pharisees, and like so many others among us, that faithful administration of the things of this world (\u2018the Mamon of unrighteousness\u2019) had no bearing on the possession of the true riches in the next world. In answer to the first difficulty, Christ points out that the principle of service is the same, whether applied to much or to little; that the one was, indeed, meet preparation for, and, in truth, the test of the other. \u2018He that is faithful\u2019\u2014or, to paraphrase the word (\u03c0\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2), he that has proved himself, is accredited (answering to \u05e0\u05d0\u05de\u05df)\u2014\u2018in the least, is also faithful [accredited] in much; and who in the least is unjust is also in much unjust.\u2019 Therefore, if a man failed in faithful service of God in his worldly matters\u2014in the language of the Parable, if he were not faithful in the Mamon of unrighteousness\u2014could he look for the true Mamon, or riches of the world to come? Would not his unfaithfulness in the lower stewardship imply unfitness for the higher? And\u2014still in the language of the Parable\u2014if they had not proved faithful in mere stewardship, \u2018in that which was another\u2019s,\u2019 could it be expected that they would be exalted from stewardship to proprietorship? And the ultimate application of all was this, that dividedness was impossible in the service of God. It is impossible for the disciple to make separation between spiritual matters and worldly, and to attempt serving God in the one and Mamon in the other. There is absolutely no such distinction to the disciple, and our common usage of the words secular and spiritual is derived from a terrible misunderstanding and mistake. To the secular, nothing is spiritual; and to the spiritual, nothing is secular: No servant can serve two Masters; ye cannot serve God and Mamon.
\n2. The Parable of Dives and Lazarus.\u2014Although primarily spoken to the Pharisees, and not to the disciples, yet, as will presently appear, it was spoken for the disciples. The words of Christ had touched more than one sore spot in the hearts of the Pharisees. This consecration of all to God as the necessary condition of high spiritual service, and then of higher spiritual standing\u2014as it were \u2018ownership\u2019\u2014such as they claimed, was a very hard saying. It touched their covetousness. They would have been quite ready to hear, nay, they believed that the \u2018true\u2019 treasure had been committed to their trust. But that its condition was, that they should prove themselves God-devoted in \u2018the unrighteous Mamon,\u2019 faithful in the employment of it in that for which it was entrusted to their stewardship, this was not to be borne. Nor yet, that such prospects should be held out to publicans and sinners, while they were with-held from those who were the custodians of the Law and of the Prophets. But were they faithful to the Law? And as to their claim of being the \u2018owners,\u2019 the Parable of the Rich Owner and of his bearing would exhibit how unfaithful they were in \u2018much\u2019 as well as in \u2018little,\u2019 in what they claimed as owners as well as in their stewardship\u2014and this, on their own showing of their relations to publicans and sinners: the Lazarus who lay at their doors.
\nThus viewed, the verses which introduce the second Parable (that of Dives and Lazarus) will appear, not \u2018detached sayings,\u2019 as some commentators would have us believe, but most closely connected with the Parable to which they form the Preface. Only, here especially, must we remember, that we have only Notes of Christ\u2019s Discourse, made years before by one who had heard it, and containing the barest outline\u2014as it were, the stepping-stones\u2014of the argument as it proceeded. Let us try to follow it. As the Pharisees heard what Christ said, their covetousness was touched. It is said, moreover, that they derided Him\u2014literally, \u2018turned up their noses at Him.\u2019 The mocking gestures, with which they pointed to His publican-disciples, would be accompanied by mocking words in which they would extol and favourably compare their own claims and standing with that of those new disciples of Christ. Not only to refute but to confute, to convict, and, if possible, to convince them, was the object of Christ\u2019s Discourse and Parable. One by one their pleas were taken up and shown to be utterly untenable. They were persons who by outward righteousness and pretences sought to appear just before men, but God knew their hearts; and that which was exalted among men, their Pharisaic standing and standing aloof, was abomination before Him. These two points form the main subject of the Parable. Its first object was to show the great difference between the \u2018before men\u2019 and the \u2018before God;\u2019 between Dives as he appears to men in this world, and as he is before God and will be in the next world. Again, the second main object of the Parable was to illustrate that their Pharisaic standing and standing aloof\u2014the bearing of Dives in reference to a Lazarus\u2014which was the glory of Pharisaism before men, was an abomination before God. Yet a third object of the Parable was in reference to their covetousness, the selfish use which they made of their possessions\u2014their Mamon. But a selfish was an unrighteous use; and, as such, would meet with sorer retribution than in the case of an unfaithful steward.
\nBut we leave for the present the comparative analysis of the Parable to return to the introductory words of Christ. Having shown that the claims of the Pharisees and their standing aloof from poor sinners were an abomination before God, Christ combats these grounds of their bearing, that they were the custodians and observers of the Law and of the Prophets, while those poor sinners had no claims upon the Kingdom of God. Yes\u2014but the Law and the Prophets had their terminus ad quem in John the Baptist, who \u2018brought the good tidings of the Kingdom of God.\u2019 Since then \u2018every one\u2019 had to enter it by personal resolution and \u2018force.\u2019 Yes\u2014it was true that the Law could not fail in one tittle of it. But, notoriously and in everyday life, the Pharisees, who thus spoke of the Law and appealed to it, were the constant and open breakers of it. Witness here their teaching and practice concerning divorce, which really involved a breach of the seventh commandment.
\nThus, when bearing in mind that, as previously stated, we have here only the \u2018heads,\u2019 or rather the \u2018stepping stones,\u2019 of Christ\u2019s argument\u2014from notes by a hearer at the time, which were afterwards given to St. Luke\u2014we clearly perceive, how closely connected are the seemingly disjointed sentences which preface the Parable, and how aptly they introduce it. The Parable itself is strictly of the Pharisees and their relation to the \u2018publicans and sinners\u2019 whom they despised, and to whose stewardship they opposed thoughts of their own proprietorship. With infinite wisdom and depth the Parable tells in two directions: in regard to their selfish use of the literal riches\u2014their covetousness\u2014and in regard to their selfish use of the figurative riches: their Pharisaic righteousness, which left poor Lazarus at their door to the dogs and to famine, not bestowing on him aught from their supposed rich festive banquets.
\nOn the other hand, it will be necessary in the interpretation of this Parable to keep in mind, that its Parabolic details must not be exploited, nor doctrines of any kind derived from them, either as to the character of the other world, the question of the duration of future punishments, or the possible moral improvement of those in Gehinnom. All such things are foreign to the Parable, which is only intended as a type, or exemplification and illustration, of what is intended to be taught. And, if proof were required, it would surely be enough to remind ourselves, that this Parable is addressed to the Pharisees, to whom Christ would scarcely have communicated details about the other world, on which He was so reticent in His teaching to the disciples. The Parable naturally falls into three parts.
\n1. Dives and Lazarus before and after death, or the contrast between \u2018before men\u2019 and \u2018before God;\u2019 the unrighteous use of riches\u2014literal and figurative; and the relations of the Pharisaic Dives to the publican Lazarus, as before men and as before God: the \u2018exalted among men\u2019 an \u2018abomination before God.\u2019 And the application of the Parable is here the more telling, that alms were so highly esteemed among the Pharisees, and that the typical Pharisee is thus set before them as, on their own showing, the typical sinner.
\nThe Parable opens by presenting to us \u2018a rich man\u2019 \u2018clothed in purple and byssus, joyously faring every day in splendour.\u2019 All here is in character. His dress is described as the finest and most costly, for byssus and purple were the most expensive materials, only inferior to silk, which, if genuine and unmixed\u2014for at least three kinds of silk are mentioned in ancient Jewish writings\u2014was worth its weight in gold. Both byssus\u2014of which it is not yet quite certain, whether it was of hemp or cotton\u2014and purple were indeed manufactured in Palestine, but the best byssus (at least at that time) came from Egypt and India. The white garments of the High-Priest on the Day of Atonement were made of it. To pass over exaggerated accounts of its costliness, the High-Priest\u2019s dress of Pelusian linen for the morning service of the Day of Atonement was said to have cost about 36l.; that of Indian linen for the evening of the same day about 24l. Of course, this stuff would, if of home-manufacture, whether made in Galilee or in Jud\u00e6a, be much cheaper. As regarded purple, which was obtained from the coasts of Tyre, wool of violet-purple was sold about that period by weight at the rate of about 3l. the Roman pound, though it would, of course, considerably vary in price.
\nQuite in accordance with this luxuriousness\u2014unfortunately not uncommon among the very high-placed Jews, since the Talmud (though, no doubt, exaggeratedly) speaks of the dress of a corrupt High-Priest as having cost upwards of 300l.\u2014was the feasting every day, the description of which conveys the impression of company, merriment, and splendour. All this is, of course, intended to set forth the selfish use which this man made of his wealth, and to point the contrast of his bearing towards Lazarus. Here also every detail is meant to mark the pitiableness of the case, as it stood out before Dives. The very name\u2014not often mentioned in any other real, and never in any other Parabolic story\u2014tells it: Lazarus, Laazar, a common abbreviation of Elazar, as it were, \u2018God help him!\u2019 Then we read that he \u2018was cast\u2019 (\u1f10\u03b2\u03ad\u03b2\u03bb\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf) at his gateway, as if to mark that the bearers were glad to throw down their unwelcome burden. Laid there, he was in full view of the Pharisee as he went out or came in, or sat in his courtyard. And as he looked at him, he was covered with a loathsome disease; as he heard him, he uttered a piteous request to be filled with what fell from the rich man\u2019s table. Yet nothing was done to help his bodily misery, and, as the word \u2018desiring\u2019 (\u1f10\u03c0\u03b9\u03b8\u03c5\u03bc\u1ff6\u03bd) implies, his longing for the \u2018crumbs\u2019 remained unsatisfied. So selfish in the use of his wealth was Dives, so wretched Lazarus in his view; so self-satisfied and unpitying was the Pharisee, so miserable in his sight and so needy the publican and sinner. \u2018Yea, even the dogs came and licked his sores\u2019\u2014for it is not to be understood as all alleviation, but as an aggravation of his ills, that he was left to the dogs, which in Scripture are always represented as unclean animals.
\nSo it was before men. But how was it before God? There the relation was reversed. The beggar died\u2014no more of him here. But the Angels \u2018carried him away into Abraham\u2019s bosom.\u2019 Leaving aside for the present the Jewish teaching concerning the \u2018after death,\u2019 we are struck with the sublime simplicity of the figurative language used by Christ, as compared with the wild and sensuous fancies of later Rabbinic teaching on the subject. It is, indeed, true, that we must not look in this Parabolic language for Christ\u2019s teaching about the \u2018after death.\u2019 On the other hand, while He would say nothing that was essentially divergent from, at least, the purest views entertained on the subject at that time\u2014since otherwise the object of the Parabolic illustration would have been lost\u2014yet, whatever He did say must, when stripped of its Parabolic details, be consonant with fact. Thus, the carrying up of the soul of the righteous by Angels is certainly in accordance with Jewish teaching, though stripped of all legendary details, such as about the number and the greetings of the Angels. But it is also fully in accordance with Christian thought of the ministry of Angels. Again, as regards the expression \u2018Abraham\u2019s bosom,\u2019 it occurs, although not frequently, in Jewish writings. On the other hand, the appeal to Abraham as our father is so frequent, his presence and merits are so constantly invoked; notably, he is so expressly designated as he who receives (\u05de\u05e7\u05d1\u05dc) the penitent into Paradise, that we can see how congruous especially to the higher Jewish teaching, which dealt not in coarsely sensuous descriptions of Gan Eden, or Paradise, the phrase \u2018Abraham\u2019s bosom\u2019 must have been. Nor surely can it be necessary to vindicate the accord with Christian thinking of a figurative expression, that likens us to children lying lovingly in the bosom of Abraham as our spiritual father.
\n2. Dives and Lazarus after death: The \u2018great contrast\u2019 fully realised, and how to enter into the Kingdom.\u2014Here also the main interest centres in Dives. He also has died and been buried. Thus ends all his exaltedness before men. The next scene is in Hades or Sheol, the place of the disembodied spirits before the final Judgment. It consists of two divisions: the one of consolation, with all the faithful gathered unto Abraham as their father; the other of fiery torment. Thus far in accordance with the general teaching of the New Testament. As regards the details, they evidently represent the views current at the time among the Jews. According to them, the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life were the abode of the blessed. Nay, in common belief, the words of Gen. 2:10: \u2018a river went out of Eden to water the garden,\u2019 indicated that this Eden was distinct from, and superior to, the garden in which Adam had been originally placed. With reference to it, we read that the righteous in Gan Eden see the wicked in Gehinnom, and rejoice; and, similarly, that the wicked in Gehinnom see the righteous sitting beatified in Gan Eden, and their souls are troubled. Still more marked is the parallelism in a legend told about two wicked companions, of whom one had died impenitent, while the other on seeing it had repented. After death, the impenitent in Gehinnom saw the happiness of his former companion, and murmured. When told that the difference of their fate was due to the other\u2019s penitence, he wished to have space assigned for it, but was informed that this life (the eve of the Sabbath) was the time for making provision for the next (the Sabbath). Again, it is consonant with what were the views of the Jews, that conversations could be held between dead persons, of which several legendary instances are given in the Talmud. The torment, especially of thirst, of the wicked, is repeatedly mentioned in Jewish writings. Thus, in one place, the fable of Tantalus is apparently repeated. The righteous is seen beside delicious springs, and the wicked with his tongue parched at the brink of a river, the waves of which are constantly receding from him. But there is this very marked and characteristic contrast, that in the Jewish legend the beatified is a Pharisee, while the sinner tormented with thirst is a Publican! Above all, and as marking the vast difference between Jewish ideas and Christ\u2019s teaching, we notice that there is no analogy in Rabbinic writings to the statement in the Parable, that there is a wide and impassable gulf between Paradise and Gehenna.
\nTo return to the Parable. When we read that Dives in torments \u2018lifted up his eyes,\u2019 it was, no doubt, for help, or, at least, alleviation. Then he first perceived and recognised the reversed relationship. The text emphatically repeats here: \u2018And he,\u2019\u2014literally, this one (\u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2), as if now, for the first time, he realised, but only to misunderstand and misapply it, how easily superabundance might minister relief to extreme need\u2014\u2018calling (viz., upon = invoking) said: \u201cFather Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus.\u201d \u2019 The invocation of Abraham, as having the power, and of Abraham as \u2018Father,\u2019 was natural on the part of a Jew. And our Lord does not here express what really was, but only introduces Jews as speaking in accordance with the popular notions. Accordingly, it does not necessarily imply on the part of Dives either glorification of carnal descent (gloriatio carnis, as Bengel has it), nor a latent idea that he might still dispose of Lazarus. A Jew would have appealed to \u2018Father Abraham\u2019 under such or like circumstances, and many analogous statements might be quoted in proof. But all the more telling is it, that the rich Pharisee should behold in the bosom of Abraham, whose child he specially claimed to be, what, in his sight, had been poor Lazarus, covered with moral sores, and, religiously speaking, thrown down outside his gate\u2014not only not admitted to the fellowship of his religious banquet, but not even to be fed by the crumbs that fell from his table, and to be left to the dogs. And it was the climax of the contrast that he should now have to invoke, and that in vain, his ministry, seeking it at the hands of Abraham. And here we also recall the previous Parable about making, ere it fail, friends by means of the Mamon of unrighteousness, that they may welcome us in the everlasting tabernacles.
\nIt should be remembered that Dives now limits his request to the humblest dimensions, asking only that Lazarus might be sent to dip the tip of his finger in the cooling liquid, and thus give him even the smallest relief. To this Abraham replies, though in a tone of pity: \u2018Child,\u2019 yet decidedly\u2014showing him, first, the rightness of the present position of things; and, secondly, the impossibility of any alteration, such as he had asked. Dives had, in his lifetime, received his good things; that had been his things, he had chosen them as his part, and used them for self, without communicating of them. And Lazarus had received evil things. Now Lazarus was comforted, and Dives in torment. It was the right order\u2014not that Lazarus was comforted because in this world he had suffered, nor yet that Dives was in torment because in this world he had had riches. But Lazarus received there the comfort which had been refused to him on earth, and the man who had made this world his good, and obtained there his portion, of which he had refused even the crumbs to the most needy, now received the meet reward of his unpitying, unloving, selfish life. But, besides all this, which in itself was right and proper, Dives had asked what was impossible: no intercourse could be held between Paradise and Gehenna, and on this account a great and impassable chasm existed between the two, so that, even if they would, they could not, pass from heaven to hell, nor yet from hell to those in bliss. And, although doctrinal statements should not be drawn from Parabolic illustrations, we would suggest that, at least so far as this Parable goes, it seems to preclude the hope of a gradual change or transition after a life lost in the service of sin and self.
\n3. Application of the Parable, showing how the Law and the Prophets cannot fail, and how we must now press into the Kingdom. It seems a strange misconception on the part of some commentators, that the next request of Dives indicates a commencing change of mind on his part. To begin with, this part of the Parable is only intended to illustrate the need, and the sole means of conversion to God\u2014the appeal to the Law and the Prophets being the more apt that the Pharisees made their boast of them, and the refusal of any special miraculous interposition the more emphatic, that the Pharisees had been asking for \u2018a sign from heaven.\u2019 Besides, it would require more than ordinary charity to discover a moral change in the desire that his brothers might\u2014not be converted, but not come to that place of torment!
\nDismissing, therefore, this idea, we now find Dives pleading that Lazarus might be sent to his five brothers, who, as we infer, were of the same disposition and life as himself had been, to \u2018testify unto them\u2019\u2014the word implying more than ordinary, even earnest, testimony. Presumably, what he so earnestly asked to be attested was, that he, Dives, was in torment; and the expected effect, not of the testimony but of the mission of Lazarus, whom they are supposed to have known, was, that these, his brothers, might not come to the same place. At the same time, the request seems to imply an attempt at self-justification, as if, during his life, he had not had sufficient warning. Accordingly, the reply of Abraham is no longer couched in a tone of pity, but implies stern rebuke of Dives. They need no witness-bearer: they have Moses and the Prophets, let them hear them. If testimony be needed, theirs has been given, and it is sufficient\u2014a reply this, which would specially appeal to the Pharisees. And when Dives, now, perhaps, as much bent on self-justification as on the message to his brothers, remonstrates that, although they had not received such testimony, yet \u2018if one come to them from the dead,\u2019 they would repent, the final, and, as, alas! history has shown since the Resurrection of Christ, the true answer is, that \u2018if they hear not [give not hearing to] Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be influenced [moved: their intellects to believe, their wills to repent], if one rose from the dead.\u2019
\nAnd here the Parable, and the warning to the Pharisees, abruptly break off. When next we hear the Master\u2019s voice, it is in loving application to the disciples of some of the lessons which were implied in what He had spoken to the Pharisees.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 19<\/p>\n
THE THREE LAST PARABLES OF THE PER\u00c6AN SERIES: THE UNRIGHTEOUS JUDGE\u2014THE SELF-RIGHTEOUS PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN\u2014THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT<\/p>\n
(St. Luke 18:1\u201314; St. Matt. 18:23\u201335.)<\/p>\n
IF we were to seek confirmation of the suggestion, that these last and the two preceding Parables are grouped together under a common viewpoint, such as that of Righteousness, the character and position of the Parables now to be examined would supply it. For, while the Parable of the Unjust Judge evidently bears close affinity to those that had preceded\u2014especially to that of him who persisted in his request for bread\u2014it evidently refers not, as the other, to man\u2019s present need, but to the Second Coming of Christ. The prayer, the perseverance, the delay, and the ultimate answer of which it speaks, are all connected with it. Indeed, it follows on what had passed on this subject immediately before\u2014first, between the Pharisees and Christ, and then between Christ and the disciples.
\nAgain, we must bear in mind that between the Parable of Dives and Lazarus and that of the Unjust Judge, not, indeed, a great interval of time, but most momentous events, had intervened. These were: the visit of Jesus to Bethany, the raising of Lazarus, the Jerusalem council against Christ, the flight to Ephraim, a brief stay and preaching there, and the commencement of His last journey to Jerusalem. During this last slow journey from the borders of Galilee to Jerusalem, we suppose the Discourses and the Parable about the Coming of the Son of Man to have been spoken. And although such utterances will be best considered in connection with Christ\u2019s later and full Discourses about \u2018The Last Things,\u2019 we readily perceive, even at this stage, how, when He set His Face towards Jerusalem, there to be offered up, thoughts and words concerning the \u2018End\u2019 may have entered into all His teaching, and so have given occasion for the questions of the Pharisees and disciples, and for the answers of Christ, alike by Discourse and in Parable.
\nThe most common and specious, but also the most serious mistake in reference to the Parable of \u2018the Unjust Judge,\u2019 is to regard it as implying that, just as the poor widow insisted in her petition and was righted because of her insistence, so the disciples should persist in prayer, and would be heard because of their insistence. But this is an entirely false interpretation. When treating of the Parable of the Unrighteous Steward, we disclaimed all merely mechanical ideas of prayer, as if God heard us for our many repetitions. This error must here also be carefully avoided. The inference from the Parable is not, that the Church will be ultimately vindicated because she perseveres in prayer, but that she so perseveres, because God will surely right her cause: it is not, that insistence in prayer is the cause of its answer, but that the certainty of that which is asked for should lead to continuance in prayer, even when all around seems to forbid the hope of answer. This is the lesson to be learned from a comparison of the Unjust Judge with the Just and Holy God in His dealings with His own. If the widow persevered, knowing that, although no other consideration, human or Divine, would influence the Unjust Judge, yet her insistence would secure its object, how much more should we \u2018not faint,\u2019 but continue in prayer, who are appealing to God, Who has His people and His cause at heart, even though He delay, remembering also that even this is for their sakes who pray. And this is fully expressed in the introductory words: \u2018He spake also a Parable to them with reference to the need be (\u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f78 \u03b4\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd) of their always praying, and not fainting.\u2019
\nThe remarks just made will remove what otherwise might seem another serious difficulty. If it be asked, how the conduct of the Unjust Judge could serve as illustration of what might be expected from God, we answer, that the lesson in the Parable is not from the similarity but from the contrast between the Unrighteous human and the Righteous Divine Judge. \u2018Hear what the Unrighteous Judge saith. But God [mark the emphatic position of the word], shall He not indeed [\u03bf\u1f50 \u03bc\u03ae] vindicate [the injuries of, do judgment for] His elect \u2026?\u2019 In truth, this mode of argument is perhaps the most common in Jewish Parables, and occurs on almost every page of ancient Rabbinic commentaries. It is called the Qal vaChomer, \u2018light and heavy,\u2019 and answers to our reasoning a fortiori or de minore ad majus (from the less to the greater). According to the Rabbis, ten instances of such reasoning occur in the Old Testament itself.
\nGenerally, such reasoning is introduced by the words Qal vaChomer; often it is prefaced by, Al achath Kammah veKammah, \u2018against one how much and how much,\u2019 that is, \u2018how much more.\u2019 Thus, it is argued that, \u2018if a King of flesh and blood\u2019 did so and so, shall not the King of Kings, &c.; or, if the sinner received such and such, shall not the righteous, &c.? In the present Parable the reasoning would be: \u2018If the Judge of Unrighteousness\u2019 said that he would vindicate, shall not the Judge of all Righteousness do judgment on behalf of His Elect? In fact, we have an exact Rabbinic parallel to the thought underlying, and the lesson derived from, this Parable. When describing, how at the preaching of Jonah Nineveh repented and cried to God, His answer to the loud persistent cry of the people is thus explained: \u2018The bold (he who is unabashed) conquers even a wicked person [to grant him his request], how much more the All-Good of the world!\u2019
\nThe Parable opens by laying down as a general principle the necessity and duty of the disciples always to pray\u2014the precise meaning being defined by the opposite, or limiting clause: \u2018not to faint,\u2019 that is, not \u2018to become weary.\u2019 The word \u2018always\u2019 must not be understood in respect of time, as if it meant continuously, but at all times, in the sense of under all circumstances, however apparently adverse, when it might seem as if an answer could not come, and we would therefore be in danger of \u2018fainting\u2019 or becoming weary. This rule applies here primarily to that \u2018weariness\u2019 which might lead to the cessation of prayer for the Coming of the Lord, or of expectancy of it, during the long period when it seems as if He delayed His return, nay, as if increasingly there were no likelihood of it. But it may also be applied to all similar circumstances, when prayer seems so long unanswered that weariness in praying threatens to overtake us. Thus, it is argued, even in Jewish writings, that a man should never be deterred from, nor cease praying, the illustration by Qal vaChomer being from the case of Moses, who knew that it was decreed he should not enter the land, and yet continued praying about it.
\nThe Parable introduces to us a Judge in a city, and a widow. Except where a case was voluntarily submitted for arbitration rather than judgment, or judicial advice was sought of a sage, one man could not have formed a Jewish tribunal. Besides, his mode of speaking and acting is inconsistent with such a hypothesis. He must therefore have been one of the Judges, or municipal authorities, appointed by Herod or the Romans\u2014perhaps a Jew, but not a Jewish Judge. Possibly, he may have been a police-magistrate, or one who had some function of that kind delegated to him. We know that, at least in Jerusalem, there were two stipendiary magistrates (Dayyaney Gezeroth), whose duty it was to see to the observance of all police-regulations and the prevention of crime. Unlike the regular Judges, who attended only on certain days and hours, and were unpaid, these magistrates were, so to speak, always on duty, and hence unable to engage in any other occupation. It was probably for this reason that they were paid out of the Temple-Treasury, and received so large a salary as 225l., or, if needful, even more. On account of this, perhaps also for their unjust exactions, Jewish wit designated them, by a play on the words, as Dayyaney Gezeloth\u2014Robber-Judges, instead of their real title of Dayyaney Gezeroth (Judges of Prohibitions, or else of Punishments). It may have been that there were such Jewish magistrates in other places also. Josephus speaks of local magistracies. At any rate there were in every locality police-officials, who watched over order and law. The Talmud speaks in very depreciatory terms of these \u2018village-Judges\u2019 (Dayyaney deMegista), in opposition to the town tribunals (Bey Davar), and accuses them of ignorance, arbitrariness, and covetousness, so that for a dish of meat they would pervert justice. Frequent instances are also mentioned of gross injustice and bribery in regard to the non-Jewish Judges in Palestine.
\nIt is to such a Judge that the Parable refers\u2014one who was consciously, openly, and avowedly inaccessible to the highest motive, the fear of God, and not even restrained by the lower consideration of regard for public opinion. It is an extreme case, intended to illustrate the exceeding unlikelihood of justice being done. For the same purpose, the party seeking justice at his hands is described as a poor, unprotected widow. But we must also bear in mind, in the interpretation of this Parable, that the Church, whom she represents, is also widowed in the absence of her Lord. To return\u2014this widow \u2018came\u2019 to the Unjust Judge (the imperfect tense in the original indicating repeated, even continuous coming), with the urgent demand to be vindicated of her adversary, that is, that the Judge should make legal inquiry, and by a decision set her right as against him at whose hands she was suffering wrong. For reasons of his own he would not; and this continued for a while. At last, not from any higher principle, nor even from regard for public opinion\u2014both of which, indeed, as he avowed to himself, had no weight with him\u2014he complied with her request, as the text (literally translated) has it: \u2018Yet at any rate because this widow troubleth me, I will do justice for her, lest, in the end, coming she bruise me\u2019\u2014do personal violence to me, attack me bodily. Then follows the grand inference from it: If the \u2018Judge of Unrighteousness\u2019 speak thus, shall not the Judge of all Righteousness\u2014God\u2014do judgment, vindicate [by His Coming to judgment and so setting right the wrong done to His Church] \u2018His Elect, which cry to Him day and night, although He suffer long on account of them\u2019\u2014delay His final interposition of judgment and mercy, and that, not as the Unjust Judge, but for their own sakes, in order that the number of the Elect may all be gathered in, and they fully prepared?
\nDifficult as the rendering of this last clause admittedly is, our interpretation of it seems confirmed by the final application of this Parable. Taking the previous verse along with it, we would have this double Parallelism: \u2018But God, shall He not vindicate [do judgment on behalf of] His Elect?\u2019 \u2018I tell you, that He will do judgment on behalf of them shortly\u2019\u2014this word being chosen rather than \u2018speedily\u2019 (as in the A. and R.V.), because the latter might convey the idea of a sudden interposition, such as is not implied in the expression. This would be the first Parallelism; the second this: \u2018Although He suffer long [delay His final interposition] on account of them\u2019 (verse 7), to which the second clause of verse 8 would correspond, as offering the explanation and vindication: \u2018But the Son of Man, when He have come, shall He find the faith upon the earth?\u2019 It is a terribly sad question, as put by Him Who is the Christ: After all this long-suffering delay, shall He find the faith upon the earth\u2014intellectual belief on the part of one class, and on the part of the Church the faith of the heart which trusts in, longs, and prays, because it expects and looks for His Coming, all undisturbed by the prevailing unbelief around, only quickened by it to more intensity of prayer! Shall He find it? Let the history of the Church, nay, each man\u2019s heart, make answer!
\n2. The Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, which follows, is only internally connected with that of \u2018the Unjust Judge.\u2019 It is not of unrighteousness, but of self-righteousness\u2014and this, both in its positive and negative aspects: as trust in one\u2019s own state, and as contempt of others. Again, it has also this connection with the previous Parable, that, whereas that of the Unrighteous Judge pointed to continuance, this to humility in prayer.
\nThe introductory clause shows that it has no connection in point of time with what had preceded, although the interval between the two may, of course, have been very short. Probably, something had taken place, which is not recorded, to occasion this Parable, which, if not directly addressed to the Pharisees, is to such as are of Pharisaic spirit. It brings before us two men going up to the Temple\u2014whether \u2018at the hour of prayer,\u2019 or otherwise, is not stated. Remembering that, with the exception of the Psalms for the day and the interval for a certain prescribed prayer, the service in the Temple was entirely sacrificial, we are thankful for such glimpses, which show that, both in the time of public service, and still more at other times, the Temple was made the place of private prayer. On the present occasion the two men, who went together to the entrance of the Temple, represented the two religious extremes in Jewish society. To the entrance of the Temple, but no farther, did the Pharisee and the Publican go together. Within the sacred enclosure\u2014before God, where man should least have made it, began their separation. \u2018The Pharisee put himself by himself, and prayed thus: O God, I thank Thee that I am not as the rest of men\u2014extortioners, unjust, adulterers\u2014nor also as this Publican [there].\u2019 Never, perhaps, were words of thanksgiving spoken in less thankfulness than these. For, thankfulness implies the acknowledgment of a gift; hence, a sense of not having had ourselves what we have received; in other words, then, a sense of our personal need, or humility. But the very first act of this Pharisee had been to separate himself from all the other worshippers, and notably from the Publican, whom, as his words show, he had noticed, and looked down upon. His thanksgiving referred not to what he had received, but to the sins of others by which they were separated from him, and to his own meritorious deeds by which he was separated from them. Thus, his words expressed what his attitude indicated; and both were the expression, not of thankfulness, but of boastfulness. It was the same as their bearing at feasts and in public places; the same as their contempt and condemnation of \u2018the rest of men,\u2019 and especially \u2018the publicans;\u2019 the same that even their designation\u2014\u2018Pharisees,\u2019 \u2018Separated ones,\u2019 implied. The \u2018rest of men\u2019 might be either the Gentiles, or, more probably, the common unlearned people, the Am haArets, whom they accused or suspected of every possible sin, according to their fundamental principle: \u2018The unlearned cannot be pious.\u2019 And, in their sense of that term, they were right\u2014and in this lies the condemnation of their righteousness. And, most painful though it be, remembering the downright earnestness and zeal of these men, it must be added that, as we read the Liturgy of the Synagogue, we come ever and again upon such and similar thanksgiving\u2014that they are \u2018not as the rest of men.\u2019
\nBut this was not all. From looking down upon others the Pharisee proceeded to look up to himself. Here Talmudic writings offer painful parallelisms. They are full of references to the merits of the just, to \u2018the merits and righteousness of the fathers,\u2019 or else of Israel in taking upon itself the Law. And for the sake of these merits and of that righteousness, Israel, as a nation, expects general acceptance pardon, and temporal benefits\u2014for, all spiritual benefits Israel as a nation, and the pious in Israel individually, possess already, nor do they need to get them from heaven, since they can and do work them out for themselves. And here the Pharisee in the Parable significantly dropped even the form of thanksgiving. The religious performances which he enumerated are those which mark the Pharisee among the Pharisees: \u2018I fast twice a week, and I give tithes of all that I acquire.\u2019 The first of these was in pursuance of the custom of some \u2018more righteous than the rest,\u2019 who, as previously explained, fasted on the second and fifth days of the week (Mondays and Thursdays). But, perhaps, we should not forget that these were also the regular market days, when the country-people came to the towns, and there were special Services in the Synagogues, and the local Sanhedrin met\u2014so that these saints in Israel would, at the same time, attract and receive special notice for their fasts. As for the boast about giving tithes of all that he acquired\u2014and not merely of his land, fruits, &c.\u2014it has already been explained, that this was one of the distinctive characteristics of \u2018the sect of the Pharisees.\u2019 Their practice in this respect may be summed up in these words of the Mishnah: \u2018He tithes all that he eats, all that he sells, and all that he buys, and he is not a guest with an unlearned person [Am haArets, so as not possibly to partake of what may have been left untithed].\u2019
\nAlthough it may not be necessary, yet one or two quotations will help to show how truly this picture of the Pharisee was taken from life. Thus, the following prayer of a Rabbi is recorded: \u2018I thank Thee, O Lord my God, that Thou hast put my part with those who sit in the Academy, and not with those who sit at the corners [money-changers and traders]. For, I rise early and they rise early: I rise early to the words of the Law, and they to vain things. I labour and they labour: I labour and receive a reward, they labour and receive no reward. I run and they run: I run to the life of the world to come, and they to the pit of destruction.\u2019 Even more closely parallel is this thanksgiving, which a Rabbi puts into the mouth of Israel: \u2018Lord of the world, judge me not as those who dwell in the big towns [such as Rome]: among whom there is robbery, and uncleanness, and vain and false swearing.\u2019 Lastly, as regards the boastful spirit of Rabbinism, we recall such painful sayings as those of Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai, to which reference has already been made\u2014notably this, that if there were only two righteous men in the world, he and his son were these; and if only one, it was he!
\nThe second picture, or scene, in the Parable sets before us the reverse state of feeling from that of the Pharisee. Only, we must bear in mind, that, as the Pharisee is not blamed for his giving of thanks, nor yet for his good-doing, real or imaginary, so the prayer of the Publican is not answered, because he was a sinner. In both cases what decides the rejection or acceptance of the prayer is, whether or not it was prayer. The Pharisee retains the righteousness which he had claimed for himself, whatever its value; and the Publican receives the righteousness which he asks: both have what they desire before God. If the Pharisee \u2018stood by himself,\u2019 apart from others, so did the Publican: \u2018standing afar off,\u2019 viz. from the Pharisee\u2014quite far back, as became one who felt himself unworthy to mingle with God\u2019s people. In accordance with this: \u2018He would not so much as lift his eyes to heaven,\u2019 as men generally do in prayer, \u2018but smote his breast\u2019\u2014as the Jews still do in the most solemn part of their confession on the Day of Atonement\u2014\u2018saying, God be merciful to me the sinner.\u2019 The definite article is used to indicate that he felt. as if he alone were a sinner\u2014nay, the sinner. Not only, as has been well remarked, \u2018does he not think of any one else\u2019 (de nemine alio homine cogitat), while the Pharisee had thought of every one else; but, as he had taken a position not in front of, but behind, every one else, so, in contrast to the Pharisee, who had regarded every one but himself as a sinner, the Publican regarded every one else as righteous compared with him \u2018the sinner.\u2019 And, while the Pharisee felt no need, and uttered no petition, the Publican felt only need, and uttered only petition. The one appealed to himself for justice, the other appealed to God for mercy.
\nMore complete contrast, therefore, could not be imagined. And once more, as between the Pharisee and the Publican, the seeming and the real, that before men and before God, there is sharp contrast, and the lesson which Christ had so often pointed is again set forth, not only in regard to the feelings which the Pharisees entertained, but also to the gladsome tidings of pardon to the lost: \u2018I say unto you, This man went down to his house justified above the other\u2019 [so according to the better reading, \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u1fbd \u1f10\u03ba\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd\u03bf\u03bd]. In other words, the sentence of righteousness as from God with which the Publican went home was above, far better than, the sentence of righteousness as pronounced by himself, with which the Pharisee returned. This swing casts also light on such comparisons as between \u2018the righteous\u2019 elder brother and the pardoned prodigal, or the ninety-nine that \u2018need no repentance\u2019 and the lost that was found, or, on such an utterance as this: \u2018Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.\u2019 And so the Parable ends with the general principle, so often enunciated: \u2018For every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.\u2019 And with this general teaching of the Parable fully accords the instruction of Christ to His disciples concerning the reception of little children, which immediately follows.
\n3. The Parable with which this series closes\u2014that of the Unmerciful Servant, can be treated more briefly, since the circumstances leading up to it have already been explained in chapter 3. of this Book. We are now reaching the point where the solitary narrative of St. Luke again merges with those of the other Evangelists. That the Parable was spoken before Christ\u2019s final journey to Jerusalem, appears from St. Matthew\u2019s Gospel. On the other hand, as we compare what in the Gospel by St. Luke follows on the Parable of the Pharisee and Publican with the circumstances in which the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant is introduced, we cannot fail to perceive inward connection between the narratives of the two Evangelists, confirming the conclusion, arrived at on other grounds, that the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant belongs to the Per\u00e6an series, and closes it.
\nIts connection with the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican lies in this, that Pharisaic self-righteousness and contempt of others may easily lead to unforgiveness and unmercifulness, which are utterly incompatible with a sense of our own need of Divine mercy and forgiveness. And so in the Gospel of St. Matthew this Parable follows on the exhibition of a self-righteous, unmerciful spirit, which would reckon up how often we should forgive, forgetful of our own need of absolute and unlimited pardon at the hands of God\u2014a spirit, moreover, of harshness, that could look down upon Christ\u2019s \u2018little ones,\u2019 in forgetfulness of our own need perhaps of cutting off even a right hand or foot to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
\nIn studying this Parable, we must once more remind ourselves of the general canon of the need of distinguishing between what is essential in a Parable, as directly bearing on its lessons, and what is merely introduced for the sake of the Parable itself, to give point to its main teaching. In the present instance, no sober interpreter would regard of the essence of the Parable the King\u2019s command to sell into slavery the first debtor together with his wife and children. It is simply a historical trait, introducing what in analogous circumstances might happen in real life, in order to point the lesson, that a man\u2019s strict desert before God is utter, hopeless, and eternal ruin and loss. Similarly, when the promise of the debtor is thus introduced: \u2018Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all,\u2019 it can only be to complete in a natural manner the first part of the Parabolic history and to prepare for the second, in which forbearance is asked by a fellow-servant for the small debt which he owes. Lastly, in the same manner, the recall of the King\u2019s original forgiveness of the great debtor can only be intended to bring out the utter incompatibility of such harshness towards a brother on the part of one who has been consciously forgiven by God his great debt.
\nThus keeping apart the essentials of the Parable from the accidents of its narration, we have three distinct scenes, or parts, in this story. In the first, our new feelings towards our brethren are traced to our new relation towards God, as the proper spring of all our thinking, speaking, and acting. Notably, as regards forgiveness, we are to remember the Kingdom of God: \u2018Therefore has the Kingdom of God become like\u2019\u2014\u2018therefore\u2019: in order that thereby we may learn the duty of absolute, not limited, forgiveness\u2014not that of \u2018seven,\u2019 but of \u2018seventy times seven.\u2019 And now this likeness of the Kingdom of Heaven is set forth in the Parable of \u2018a man, a King\u2019 (as the Rabbis would have expressed it, \u2018a king of flesh and blood\u2019), who would \u2018make his reckoning\u2019 (\u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03af\u03c1\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd) \u2018with his servants\u2019\u2014certainly not his bondservants, but probably the governors of his provinces, or those who had charge of the revenue and finances. \u2018But after he had begun to reckon\u2019\u2014not necessarily at the very beginning of it\u2014\u2018one was brought to him, a debtor of ten thousand talents.\u2019 Reckoning them only as Attic talents (1 talent=60 minas=6,000 dinars) this would amount to the enormous sum of about two and a quarter millions sterling. No wonder, that one who during his administration had been guilty of such peculation, or else culpable negligence, should, as the words \u2018brought to him\u2019 imply, have been reluctant to face the king. The Parable further implies, that the debt was admitted; and hence, in the course of ordinary judicial procedure\u2014according to the Law of Moses, and the universal code of antiquity\u2014that \u2018servant,\u2019 with his family and all his property, was ordered to be sold, and the returns paid into the treasury.
\nOf course, it is not suggested that the \u2018payment\u2019 thus made had met his debt. Even this would, if need were, confirm the view, previously expressed, that this trait belongs not to the essentials of the Parable, but to the details of the narrative. So does the promise, with which the now terrified \u2018servant,\u2019 as he cast himself at the feet of the King, supported his plea for patience: \u2018I will pay thee all.\u2019 In truth, the narrative takes no notice of this, but, on the other hand, states: \u2018But, being moved with compassion, the lord of that servant released him [from the bondage decreed, and which had virtually begun with his sentence], and the debt forgave he him.\u2019 A more accurate representation of our relation to God could not be made. We are the debtors to our heavenly King, Who has entrusted to us the administration of what is His, and which we have purloined or misused, incurring an unspeakable debt, which we can never discharge, and of which, in the course of justice, unending bondage, misery, and utter ruin would be the proper sequence. But, if in humble repentance we cast ourselves at His Feet, He is ready, in infinite compassion, not only to release us from meet punishment, but\u2014O blessed revelation of the Gospel!\u2014to forgive us the debt.
\nIt is this new relationship to God which must be the foundation and the rule for our new relationship towards our fellow-servants. And this brings us to the second part, or scene, in this Parable. Here the lately pardoned servant finds one of his fellow-servants, who owes him the small sum of 100 dinars, about 4l. 10s. Mark now the sharp contrast, which is so drawn as to give point to the Parable. In the first case, it was the servant brought to account, and that before the King; here it is a servant finding, and that his fellow-servant; in the first case, he owed talents, in the second, dinars (a six-thousandth part of them); in the first, ten thousand talents; in the second, one hundred dinars. Again, in the first case payment is only demanded, while in the second the man takes his fellow-servant by the throat\u2014a not uncommon mode of harshness on the part of Roman creditors\u2014and says: \u2018Pay what,\u2019 or, according to the better reading, \u2018if thou owest anything.\u2019 And, lastly, although the words of the second debtor are almost the same as those in which the first debtor besought the King\u2019s patience, yet no mercy is shown, but he is \u2018cast\u2019 [with violence] into prison, till he have paid what was due.
\nIt can scarcely be necessary to show the incongruousness or the guilt of such conduct. But this is the object of the third part, or scene, in the Parable. Here\u2014again for the sake of pictorialness\u2014the other servants are introduced as exceedingly sorry, no doubt about the fate of their fellow-servant, especially in the circumstances of the case. Then they come to their lord, and \u2018clearly set forth,\u2019 or \u2018explain\u2019 (\u03b4\u03b9\u03b1\u03c3\u03b1\u03c6\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd) what had happened, upon which the Unmerciful Servant is summoned, and addressed as \u2018wicked servant,\u2019 not only because he had not followed the example of his lord, but because, after having received such immense favour as the entire remission of his debt on entreating his master, to have refused to the entreaty of his fellow-servant even a brief delay in the payment of a small sum argued want of all mercy and positive wickedness. And the words are followed by the manifestation of righteous anger. As he has done, so is it done to him\u2014and this is the final application of the Parable. He is delivered \u2018to the tormentors,\u2019 not in the sense of being tormented by them, which would scarcely have been just, but in that of being handed over to such keepers of the prison, to whom criminals who were to be tortured were delivered, and who executed such punishment on them: in other words, he is sent to the hardest and severest prison, there to remain till he should pay all that was due by him\u2014that is, in the circumstances, for ever. And here we may again remark, without drawing any dogmatic inferences from the language of the Parable, that it seems to proceed on these two assumptions: that suffering neither expiates guilt, nor in itself amends the guilty, and that as sin has incurred a debt which can never be discharged, so the banishment, or rather the loss and misery of it, will be endless.
\nWe pause to notice, how near Rabbinism has come to this Parable, and yet how far it is from its sublime teaching. At the outset we recall that unlimited forgiveness\u2014or, indeed, for more than the farthest limit of three times\u2014was not the doctrine of Rabbinism. It did, indeed, teach how freely God would forgive Israel, and it introduces a similar Parable of a debtor appealing to his creditor, and receiving the fullest and freest release of mercy, and it also draws from it the moral, that man should similarly show mercy; but it is not the mercy of forgiveness from the heart, but of forgiveness of money debts to the poor, or of various injuries, and the mercy of benevolence and beneficence to the wretched. But, however beautifully Rabbinism at times speaks on the subject, the Gospel conception of forgiveness, even as that of mercy, could only come by blessed experience of the infinitely higher forgiveness, and the incomparably greater mercy, which the pardoned sinner has received in Christ from our Father in Heaven.
\nBut to us all there is the deepest seriousness in the warning against unmercifulness; and that, even though we remember that the case here referred to is only that of unwillingness to forgive from the heart an offending brother who actually asks for it. Yet, if not the sin, the temptation to it is very real to us all\u2014perhaps rather unconsciously to ourselves than consciously. For, how often is our forgiveness in the heart, as well as from the heart, narrowed by limitations and burdened with conditions; and is it not of the very essence of sectarianism to condemn without mercy him who does not come up to our demands\u2014ay, and until he shall have come up to them to the uttermost farthing?<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 20<\/p>\n
CHRIST\u2019S DISCOURSES IN PER\u00c6\u2014CLOSE OF THE PER\u00c6AN MINISTRY<\/p>\n
(St. Luke 13:23\u201330, 31\u201335; 14:1\u201311, 25\u201335; 17:1\u201310.)<\/p>\n
FROM the Parables we now turn to such Discourses of the Lord as belong to this period of His Ministry. Their consideration may be the more brief, that throughout we find points of correspondence with previous or later portions of His teaching.
\nThus, the first of these Discourses, of which we have an outline, recalls some passages in the \u2018Sermon on the Mount,\u2019 as well as what our Lord had said on the occasion of healing the servant of the centurion. But, to take the first of these parallelisms, the differences are only the more marked for the similarity of form. These prove incontestably, not only the independence of the two Evangelists in their narratives, but, along with deeper underlying unity of thought in the teaching of Christ, its different application to different circumstances and persons. Let us mark this in the Discourse as outlined by St. Luke, and so gain fresh evidential confirmation of the trustworthiness of the Evangelic records.
\nThe words of our Lord, as recorded by St. Luke, are not spoken, as in \u2018The Sermon on the Mount,\u2019 in connection with His teaching to His disciples, but are in reply to a question addressed to Him by some one\u2014we can scarcely doubt, a representative of the Pharisees: \u2018Lord, are they few, the saved ones [that are being saved]?\u2019 Viewed in connection with Christ\u2019s immediately preceding teaching about the Kingdom of God in its wide and deep spread, as the great Mustard-Tree from the tiniest seed, and as the Leaven hid, which pervaded three measures of meal, we can scarcely doubt that the word \u2018saved\u2019 bore reference, not to the eternal state of the soul, but to admission to the benefits of the Kingdom of God\u2014the Messianic Kingdom, with its privileges and its judgments, such as the Pharisees understood it. The question, whether \u2018few\u2019 were to be saved, could not have been put from the Pharisaic point of view, if understood of personal salvation; while, on the other hand, if taken as applying to part in the near-expected Messianic Kingdom, it has its distinct parallel in the Rabbinic statement, that, as regarded the days of the Messiah (His Kingdom), it would be similar to what it had been at the entrance into the land of promise, when only two (Joshua and Caleb), out of all that generation, were allowed to have part in it. Again, it is only when understanding both the question of this Pharisee and the reply of our Lord as applying to the Kingdom of the Messiah\u2014though each viewing \u2018the Kingdom\u2019 from his own standpoint\u2014that we can understand the answering words of Christ in their natural and obvious sense, without either straining or adding to them a dogmatic gloss, such as could not have occurred to His hearers at the time.
\nThus viewed, we can mark the characteristic differences between this Discourse and the parallels in \u2018the Sermon on the Mount,\u2019 and understand their reason. As regarded entrance into the Messianic Kingdom, this Pharisee, and those whom he represented, are told, that this Kingdom was not theirs, as a matter of course\u2014their question as to the rest of the world being only, whether few or many would share in it\u2014but that all must \u2018struggle [agonise] to enter in through the narrow door.\u2019 When we remember, that in \u2018the Sermon on the Mount\u2019 the call was only to \u2018enter in,\u2019 we feel that we have now reached a period, when the access to \u2018the narrow door\u2019 was obstructed by the enmity of so many, and when it needed \u2018violence\u2019 to break through, and \u2018take the Kingdom\u2019 \u2018by force.\u2019 This personal breaking through the opposing multitude, in order to enter in through the narrow door, was in opposition to the many\u2014the Pharisees and Jews generally\u2014who were seeking to enter in, in their own way, never doubting success, but who would discover their terrible mistake. Then, \u2018when once the Master of the house is risen up,\u2019 to welcome His guests to the banquet, and has shut to the door, while they, standing without, vainly call upon Him to open it, and He replies: \u2018I know you not whence ye are,\u2019 would they begin to remind Him of those covenant-privileges on which, as Israel after the flesh, they had relied (\u2018we have eaten and drunk in Thy presence, and Thou hast taught in our streets\u2019). To this He would reply by a repetition of His former words, now seen to imply a disavowal of all mere outward privileges, as constituting a claim to the Kingdom, grounding alike His disavowal and His refusal to open on their inward contrariety to the King and His Kingdom: \u2018Depart from Me, all ye workers of iniquity.\u2019 It was a banquet to the friends of the King: the inauguration of His Kingdom. When they found the door shut, they would, indeed, knock, in the confident expectation that their claims would at once be recognised, and they admitted. And when the Master of the house did not recognise them, as they had expected, and they reminded Him of their outward connection, He only repeated the same words as before, since it was not outward but inward relationship that qualified the guests, and theirs was not friendship, but antagonism to Him. Terrible would then be their sorrow and anguish, when they would see their own patriarchs (\u2018we have eaten and drunk in Thy Presence\u2019) and their own prophets (\u2018Thou hast taught in our streets\u2019) within, and yet themselves were excluded from what was peculiarly theirs\u2014while from all parts of the heathen world the welcome guests would flock to the joyous feast. And here pre-eminently would the saying hold good, in opposition to Pharisaic claims and self-righteousness: \u2018There are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.\u2019
\nAs a further characteristic difference from the parallel passage in \u2018the Sermon on the Mount,\u2019 we note, that there the reference seems not to any special privileges in connection with the Messianic Kingdom, such as the Pharisees expected, but to admission into the Kingdom of Heaven generally. In regard to the latter also the highest outward claims would be found unavailing; but the expectation of admission was grounded rather on what was done, than on mere citizenship and its privileges. And here it deserves special notice, that in St. Luke\u2019s Gospel, where the claim is that of fellow-citizenship (\u2018eaten and drunk in Thy Presence, and Thou hast taught in our streets\u2019), the reply is made, \u2018I know you not whence ye are;\u2019 while in \u2018the Sermon on the Mount,\u2019 where the claim is of what they had done in His Name, they are told: \u2018I never knew you.\u2019 In both cases the disavowal emphatically bears on the special plea which had been set up. With this, another slight difference may be connected, which is not brought out in the Authorised or in the Revised Version. Both in the \u2018Sermon on the Mount\u2019 and in St. Luke\u2019s Gospel, they who are bidden depart are designated as \u2018workers of iniquity.\u2019 But, whereas in St. Matthew\u2019s Gospel the term (\u1f00\u03bd\u03bf\u03bc\u03af\u03b1) really means \u2018lawlessness,\u2019 the word used in that of St. Luke should be rendered \u2018unrighteousness\u2019 (\u1f00\u03b4\u03b9\u03ba\u03af\u03b1). Thus, the one class are excluded, despite the deeds which they plead, for their real contrariety to God\u2019s Law; the other, despite the plea of citizenship and privileges, for their unrighteousness. And here we may also note, as a last difference between the two Gospels, that in the prediction of the future bliss from which they were to be excluded, the Gospel of St. Luke, which had reported the plea that He had \u2018taught\u2019 in their \u2018streets,\u2019 adds, as it were in answer, to the names of the Patriarchs, mention of \u2018all the prophets.\u2019
\n2. The next Discourse, noted by St. Luke, had been spoken \u2018in that very day,\u2019 as the last. It was occasioned by a pretended warning of \u2018certain of the Pharisees\u2019 to depart from Per\u00e6a, which, with Galilee, was the territory of Herod Antipus, as else the Tetrarch would kill Him. We have previously shown reason for supposing secret intrigues between the Pharisaic party and Herod, and attributing the final imprisonment of the Baptist, at least in part, to their machinations. We also remember, how the conscience of the Tetrarch connected Christ with His murdered Forerunner, and that rightly, since, at least so far as the Pharisees wrought on the fears of that intensely jealous and suspicious prince, the imprisonment of John was as much due to his announcement of the Messiah as to the enmity of Herodias. On these grounds we can easily understand that Herod should have wished to see Jesus, not merely to gratify curiosity, nor in obedience to superstitious impulses, but to convince himself, whether He was really what was said of Him, and also to get Him into his power. Probably, therefore, the danger of which these Pharisees spoke might have been real enough, and they might have special reasons for knowing of it. But their suggestion, that Jesus should depart, could only have proceeded from a wish to get Him out of Per\u00e6a, where, evidently, His works of healing were largely attracting and influencing the people.
\nBut if our Lord would not be deterred by the fears of His disciples from going into Jud\u00e6a, feeling that each one had his appointed working day, in the light of which he was safe, and during the brief duration of which he was bound to \u2018walk,\u2019 far less would He recede before His enemies. Pointing to their secret intrigues, He bade them, if they chose, go back to \u2018that fox,\u2019 and give to his low cunning, and to all similar attempts to hinder or arrest His Ministry, what would be a decisive answer, since it unfolded what He clearly foresaw in the near future. \u2018Depart\u2019?\u2014yes, \u2018depart\u2019 ye to tell \u2018that fox,\u2019 I have still a brief and an appointed time to work, and then \u2018I am perfected,\u2019 in the sense in which we all readily understand the expression, as applying to His Work and Mission. \u2018Depart!\u2019 \u2018Yes, I must \u201cdepart,\u201d or go My brief appointed time: I know that at the goal of it is death, yet not at the hands of Herod, but in Jerusalem, the slaughter-house of them that \u201cteach in her streets.\u201d \u2019
\nAnd so, remembering that this message to Herod was spoken in the very day, perhaps the very hour that He had declared how falsely \u2018the workers of wickedness\u2019 claimed admission on account of the \u2018teaching in their streets,\u2019 and that they would be excluded from the fellowship, not only of the fathers, but of \u2018all the prophets\u2019 whom they called their own\u2014we see peculiar meaning in the reference to Jerusalem as the place where all the prophets perished. One, Who in no way indulged in illusions, but knew that He had an appointed time, during which He would work, and at the end of which He would \u2018perish,\u2019 and where He would so perish, could not be deterred either by the intrigues of the Pharisees nor by the thought of what a Herod might attempt\u2014not do, which latter was in far other hands. But the thought of Jerusalem\u2014of what it was, what it might have been, and what would come to it\u2014may well have forced from the lips of Him, Who wept over it, a cry of mingled anguish, love, and warning. It may, indeed, be, that these very words, which are reported by St. Matthew in another, and manifestly most suitable, connection, are here quoted by St. Luke, because they fully express the thought to which Christ here first gave distinct utterance. But some such words, we can scarcely doubt, He did speak even now, when pointing to His near Decease in Jerusalem.
\n3. The next in order of the Discourses recorded by St. Luke is that which prefaced the Parable of \u2018the Great Supper,\u2019 expounded in a previous chapter. The Rabbinic views on the Sabbath-Law have been so fully explained, that a very brief commentation will here suffice. It appears, that the Lord condescended to accept the invitation to a Sabbath-meal in the house \u2018of one of the Rulers of the Pharisees\u2019\u2014perhaps one of the Rulers of the Synagogue in which they had just worshipped, and where Christ may have taught. Without here discussing the motives for this invitation, its acceptance was certainly made use of to \u2018watch Him.\u2019 And the man with the dropsy had, no doubt, been introduced for a treacherous purpose, although it is not necessary to suppose that he himself had been privy to it. On the other hand, it is characteristic of the gracious Lord, that, with full knowledge of their purpose, He sat down with such companions, and that He did His Work of power and love unrestrained by their evil thoughts. But, even so, He must turn their wickedness also to good account. Yet we mark, that He first dismissed the man healed of the dropsy before He reproved the Pharisees. It was better so\u2014for the sake of the guests, and for the healed man himself, whose mind quite new and blessed Sabbath-thoughts would fill, to which all controversy would be jarring.
\nAnd, after his departure, the Lord first spake to them, as was His wont, concerning their misapplication of the Sabbath-Law, to which, indeed, their own practice gave the lie. They deemed it unlawful \u2018to heal\u2019 on the Sabbath-day, though, when He read their thoughts and purposes as against Him, they would not answer His question on the point. And yet, if \u2018a son, or even an ox,\u2019 of any of them, had \u2018fallen into a pit,\u2019 they would have found some valid legal reason for pulling him out! Then, as to their Sabbath-feast, and their invitation to Him, when thereby they wished to lure Him to evil\u2014and, indeed, their much-boasted hospitality: all was characteristic of these Pharisees\u2014only external show, with utter absence of all real love; only self-assumption, pride, and self-righteousness, together with contempt of all who were regarded as religiously or intellectually beneath them\u2014chiefly of \u2018the unlearned\u2019 and \u2018sinners,\u2019 those in \u2018the streets and lanes\u2019 of their city, whom they considered as \u2018the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.\u2019 Even among themselves there was strife about \u2018the first places\u2019\u2014such as, perhaps, Christ had on that occasion witnessed, amidst mock professions of humility, when, perhaps, the master of the house had afterwards, in true Pharisaic fashion, proceeded to re-arrange the guests according to their supposed dignity. And even the Rabbis had given advice to the same effect as Christ\u2019s\u2014and of this His words may have reminded them.
\nBut further\u2014addressing him who had so treacherously bidden Him to this feast, Christ showed how the principle of Pharisaism consisted in self-seeking, to the necessary exclusion of all true love. Referring, for the fuller explanation of His meaning, to a previous chapter, we content ourselves here with the remark, that this self-seeking and self-righteousness appeared even in what, perhaps, they most boasted of\u2014their hospitality. For, if in an earlier Jewish record we read the beautiful words: \u2018Let thy house be open towards the street, and let the poor be the sons of thy house,\u2019 we have, also, this later comment on them, that Job had thus had his house opened to the four quarters of the globe for the poor, and that, when his calamities befell him, he remonstrated with God on the ground of his merits in this respect, to which answer was made, that he had in this matter come very far short of the merits of Abraham. So entirely self-introspective and self-seeking did Rabbinism become, and so contrary was its outcome to the spirit of Christ, the inmost meaning of Whose Work, as well as Words, was entire self-forgetfulness and self-surrender in love.
\n4. In the fourth Discourse recorded by St. Luke, we pass from the parenthetic account of that Sabbath-meal in the house of the \u2018Ruler of the Pharisees,\u2019 back to where the narrative of the Pharisees\u2019 threat about Herod and the reply of Jesus had left us. And, if proof were required of the great influence exercised by Jesus, and which, as we have suggested, led to the attempt of the Pharisees to induce Christ to leave Per\u00e6a, it would be found in the opening notice, as well as in the Discourse itself which He spoke. Christ did depart\u2014from that place, though not yet from Per\u00e6a; but with Him \u2018went great multitudes.\u2019 And, in view of their professed adhesion, it was needful, and now more emphatically than ever, to set before them all that discipleship really involved, alike of cost and of strength\u2014the two latter points being illustrated by brief \u2018Parables\u2019 (in the wider sense of that term). Substantially, it was only what Christ had told the Twelve, when He sent them on their first Mission. Only it was now cast in a far stronger mould, as befitted the altered circumstances, in the near prospect of Christ\u2019s condemnation, with all that this would involve to His followers.
\nAt the outset we mark, that we are not here told what constituted the true disciple, but what would prevent a man from becoming such. Again, it was now no longer (as in the earlier address to the Twelve), that he who loved the nearest and dearest of earthly kin more than Christ\u2014and hence clave to such rather than to Him\u2014was not worthy of Him; nor that he who did not take his cross and follow after Him was not worthy of the Christ. Since then the enmity had ripened, and discipleship become impossible without actual renunciation of the nearest relationship, and, more than that, of life itself. Of course, the term \u2018hate\u2019 does not imply hatred of parents or relatives, or of life, in the ordinary sense. But it points to this, that, as outward separation, consequent upon men\u2019s antagonism to Christ, was before them in the near future, so, in the present inward separation, a renunciation in mind and heart, preparatory to that outwardly, was absolutely necessary. And this immediate call was illustrated in twofold manner. A man who was about to begin building a tower, must count the cost of his undertaking. It was not enough that he was prepared to defray the expense of the foundations; he must look to the cost of the whole. So must they, in becoming disciples, look not on what was involved in the present following of Christ, but remember the cost of the final acknowledgment of Jesus. Again, if a king went to war, common prudence would lead him to consider whether his forces were equal to the great contest before him; else it were far better to withdraw in time, even though it involved humiliation, from what, in view of his weakness, would end in miserable defeat. So, and much more, must the intending disciple make complete inward surrender of all, deliberately counting the cost, and, in view of the coming trial, ask himself whether he had, indeed, sufficient inward strength\u2014the force of love to Christ\u2014to conquer. And thus discipleship, then, and, in measure, to all time, involves the necessity of complete inward surrender of everything for the love of Christ, so that if, and when, the time of outward trial comes, we may be prepared to conquer in the fight. He fights well, who has first fought and conquered within.
\nOr else, and here Christ breaks once more into that pithy Jewish proverb\u2014only, oh! how aptly, applying it to His disciples\u2014\u2018Salt is good;\u2019 \u2018salt, if it have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?\u2019 We have preferred quoting the proverb in its Jewish form, to show its popular origin. Salt in such condition was neither fit to improve the land, nor, on the other hand, to be mixed with the manure. The disciple who had lost his distinctiveness would neither benefit the land, nor was he even fit, as it were, for the dunghill, and could only be cast out. And so, let him that hath ears to hear, hear the warning!
\n5. We have still to consider the last Discourses of Christ before the raising of Lazarus. As being addressed to the disciples, we have to connect them with the Discourse just commented upon. In point of fact, part of these admonitions had already been spoken on a previous occasion, and that more fully, to the disciples in Galilee. Only we must again bear in mind the difference of circumstances. Here, they immediately precede the raising of Lazarus, and they form the close of Christ\u2019s public Ministry in Per\u00e6a. Hence they come to us as Christ\u2019s parting admonitions to His Per\u00e6an followers.
\nThus viewed, they are intended to impress on the new disciples these four things: to be careful to give no offence; to be careful to take no offence; to be simple and earnest in their faith, and absolutely to trust its all-prevailing power; and yet, when they had made experience of it, not to be elated, but to remember their relation to their Master, that all was in His service, and that, after all, when everything had been done, they were but unprofitable servants. In other words, they urged upon the disciples holiness, love, faith, and service of self-surrender and humility.
\nMost of these points have been already considered, when explaining the similar admonitions of Christ in Galilee. The four parts of this Discourse are broken by the prayer of the Apostles, who had formerly expressed their difficulty in regard to these very requirements: \u2018Add unto us faith.\u2019 It was upon this that the Lord spake to them, for their comfort, of the absolute power of even the smallest faith, and of the service and humility of faith. The latter was couched in a Parabolic form, well calculated to impress on them those feelings which would keep them lowly. They were but servants; and, even though they had done their work, the Master expected them to serve Him, before they sat down to their own meal and rest. Yet meal and rest there would be in the end. Only, let there not be self-elation, nor weariness, nor impatience; but let the Master and His service be all in all. Surely, if ever there was emphatic protest against the fundamental idea of Pharisaism, as claiming merit and reward, it was in the closing admonition of Christ\u2019s public Ministry in Per\u00e6a: \u2018When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do.\u2019
\nAnd with these parting words did He most effectually and for ever separate, in heart and spirit, the Church from the Synagogue.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 21<\/p>\n
THE DEATH AND THE RAISING OF LAZARUS\u2014THE QUESTION OF MIRACLES AND OF THIS MIRACLE OF MIRACLES\u2014VIEWS OF NEGATIVE CRITICISM ON THIS HISTORY\u2014JEWISH BURYING-RITES AND SEPULCHRES<\/p>\n
(St. John 11:1\u201354.)<\/p>\n
FROM listening to the teaching of Christ, we turn once more to follow His working. It will be remembered, that the visit to Bethany divides the period from the Feast of the Dedication to the last Paschal week into two parts. It also forms the prelude and preparation for the awful events of the End. For, it was on that occasion that the members of the Sanhedrin formally resolved on His Death. It now only remained to settle and carry out the plans for giving effect to their purpose.
\nThis is one aspect of it. There is yet another and more solemn one. The raising of Lazarus marks the highest point (not in the Manifestation, but) in the Ministry of our Lord; it is the climax in a history where all is miraculous\u2014the Person, the Life, the Words, the Work. As regards Himself, we have here the fullest evidence alike of His Divinity and Humanity; as regards those who witnessed it, the highest manifestation of faith and of unbelief. Here, on this height, the two ways finally meet and part. And from this high point\u2014not only from the resolution of the Sanhedrists, but from the raising of Lazarus\u2014we have our first clear outlook on the Death and Resurrection of Christ, of which the raising of Lazarus was the typical prelude. From this height, also, have we an outlook upon the gathering of the Church at His empty Tomb, where the precious words spoken at the grave of Lazarus received their full meaning\u2014till Death shall be no more. But chiefly do we now think of it as the Miracle of Miracles in the history of the Christ. He had, indeed, before this raised the dead; but it had been in far-off Galilee, and in circumstances essentially different. But now it would be one so well known as Lazarus, at the very gates of Jerusalem, in the sight of all men, and amidst surroundings which admitted not of mistake or doubt. If this Miracle be true, we instinctively feel all is true; and Spinoza was right in saying, that if he could believe the raising of Lazarus, he would tear to shreds his system, and humbly accept the creed of Christians.
\nBut is it true? We have reached a stage in this history when such a question, always most painful, might seem almost uncalled for. For, gradually and with increasing clearness, we have learned the trustworthiness of the Evangelic records; and, as we have followed Him, the conviction has deepened into joyous assurance, that He, Who spake, lived, and wrought as none other, is in very deed the Christ of God. And yet we ask ourselves here this question again, on account of its absolute and infinite importance; because this may be regarded as the highest and decisive moment in this History; because, in truth, it is to the historical faith of the Church what the great Confession of Peter was to that of the disciples. And, although such an inquiry may seem like the jarring of a discord in Heaven\u2019s own melody, we pursue it, feeling that, in so doing, we are not discussing what is doubtful, but rather setting forth the evidence of what is certain, for the confirmation of the faith of our hearts, and, as we humbly trust, for the establishment of the faith as it is in Jesus.
\nAt the outset, we must here once more meet, however briefly, the preliminary difficulty in regard to Miracles, of which the raising of Lazarus is, we shall not say, the greatest\u2014for comparison is not possible on such a point\u2014but the most notable. Undoubtedly, a Miracle runs counter, not only to our experience, but to the facts on which our experience is grounded; and can only be accounted for by a direct Divine interposition, which also runs counter to our experience, although it cannot logically be said to run counter to the facts on which that experience is grounded. Beyond this it is impossible to go, since the argument on other grounds than of experience\u2014be it phenomenal [observation and historical information] or real [knowledge of laws and principles]\u2014would necessitate knowledge alike of all the laws of Nature and of all the secrets of Heaven.
\nOn the other hand (as indicated in a previous part), to argue this point only on the ground of experience (phenomenal or real), were not only reasoning \u00e0 priori, but in a vicious circle. It would really amount to this: A thing has not been, because it cannot be; and it cannot be, because, so far as I know, it is not and has not been. But, to deny on such \u00e0 priori prejudgment the possibility of Miracles, ultimately involves a denial of a Living, Reigning God. For, the existence of a God implies at least the possibility, in certain circumstances it may be the rational necessity, of Miracles. And the same grounds of experience, which tell against the occurrence of a Miracle, would equally apply against belief in a God. We have as little ground in experience (of a physical kind) for the one as for the other. This is not said to deter inquiry, but for the sake of our argument. For, we confidently assert and challenge experiment of it, that disbelief in a God, or Materialism, involves infinitely more difficulties, and that at every step and in regard to all things, than the faith of the Christian.
\nBut we instinctively feel that such a Miracle as the raising of Lazarus calls for more than merely logical formulas. Heart and mind crave for higher than questions of what may be logically possible or impossible. We want, so to speak, living evidence, and we have it. We have it, first of all, in the Person of the Incarnate God, Who not only came to abolish death, but in Whose Presence the continuance of disease and death was impossible. And we have it also in the narrative of the event itself. It were, indeed, an absurd demand to prove a Miracle, since to do so were to show that it was not a Miracle. But we may be rationally asked these three things: first, to show, that no other explanation is rationally possible than that which proceeds on the ground of its being a Miracle; secondly, to show, that such a view of it is consistent with itself and with all the details of the narrative; and, thirdly, that it is harmonious with what precedes and what follows the narrative. The second and third of these arguments will be the outcome of our later study of the history of this event; the first, that no other explanation of the narrative is rationally possible, must now be briefly attempted.
\nWe may here dismiss, as what would not be entertained by any one familiar with historical inquiries, the idea that such a narrative could be an absolute invention, ungrounded on any fact. Again, we may put aside as repugnant to, at least English, common sense, the theory that the narrative is consistent with the idea that Lazarus was not really dead (so, the Rationalists). Nor would any one, who had the faintest sympathy with the moral standpoint of the Gospels, entertain the view of M. Renan, that it was all a \u2018pious fraud\u2019 concocted between all parties, and that, in order to convert Jerusalem by a signal miracle, Lazarus had himself dressed up as a dead body and laid in the family tomb. Scarcely more rational is M. Renan\u2019s latest suggestion, that it was all a misunderstanding: Martha and Mary having told Jesus the wish of friends, that He should do some notable miracle to convince the Jews, and suggesting that they would believe if one rose from the dead, when He had replied, that they would not believe even if Lazarus rose from his grave\u2014and that tradition had transformed this conversation into an actual event! Nor, finally, would English common sense readily believe (with Baur), that the whole narrative was an ideal composition to illustrate what must be regarded as the metaphysical statement: \u2018I am the Resurrection and the Life.\u2019 Among ourselves, at least, no serious refutation of these and similar views can be necessary.
\nNor do the other theories advanced require lengthened discussion. The mythical explanation of Strauss is, that as the Old Testament had recorded instances of raising from the dead, so Christian tradition must needs ascribe the same to the Messiah. To this (without repeating the detailed refutation made by Renan and Baur), it is sufficient to reply: The previous history of Christ had already offered such instances, why needlessly multiply them? Besides, if it had been \u2018a legend,\u2019 such full and minute details would not have been introduced, and while the human element would have been suppressed, the miraculous would have been far more accentuated. Only one other theory on the subject requires notice: that the writer of the Fourth Gospel, or rather early tradition, had transformed the Parable of Dives and Lazarus into an actual event. In answer, it is sufficient to say: first, that (as previously shown) there is no connection between the Lazarus of the Parable and him of Bethany; secondly, that, if it had been a Parable transformed, the characters chosen would not have been real persons, and that they were such is evident from the mention of the family in different circumstances in the three Synoptic Gospels, of which the writer of the Fourth Gospel was fully aware. Lastly, as Godet remarks, whereas the Parable closes by declaring that the Jews would not believe even if one rose from the dead, the Narrative closes on this wise: \u2018Many therefore of the Jews, which came to Mary and beheld that which He did, believed on Him.\u2019
\nIn view of these proposed explanations, we appeal to the impartial reader, whether any of them rationally accounts for the origin and existence of this history in Apostolic tradition? On the other hand, everything is clear and consistent on the supposition of the historical truth of this narrative: the minuteness of details; the vividness and pictorialness of the narrative; the characteristic manner in which Thomas, Martha, and Mary speak and act, in accordance with what we read of them in the other Gospels or in other parts of this Gospel; the Human affection of the Christ; the sublime simplicity and majesty of the manner of the Miracle; and the effects of it on friend and foe. There is, indeed, this one difficulty (not objection), that the event is not mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels. But we know too little of the plan on which the Gospels, viewed as Lives of Christ, were constructed, to allow us to draw any sufficient inference from the silence of the Synoptists, whilst we do know that the Jud\u00e6an and Jerusalem Ministry of Christ, except so far as it was absolutely necessary to refer to it, lay outside the plan of the Synoptic Gospels, and formed the special subject of that by St. John. Lastly, we should remember, that in the then state of thought the introduction of another narrative of raising from the dead could not have seemed to them of such importance as it appears to us in the present state of controversy\u2014more especially, since it was so soon to be followed by another Resurrection, the importance and evidential value of which far overshadowed such an event as the raising of Lazarus. Their Galilean readers had the story of the raising of the widow\u2019s son at Nain, and of Jairus\u2019 daughter at Capernaum; and the Roman world had not only all this, but the preaching of the Resurrection, and of pardon and life in the Name of the Risen One, together with ocular demonstration of the miraculous power of those who preached it. It remained for the beloved disciple, who alone stood under the Cross, alone to stand on that height from which he had first full and intense outlook upon His Death, and the Life which sprang from it, and flowed into all the world.
\nWe may now, undisturbed by preliminary objections, surrender ourselves to the sublimeness and solemnity of this narrative. Perhaps the more briefly we comment on it the better.
\nIt was while in Per\u00e6a, that this message suddenly reached the Master from the well-remembered home at Bethany, \u2018the village of Mary\u2019\u2014who, although the younger, is for obvious reasons first mentioned in this history\u2014\u2018and her sister Martha,\u2019 concerning their (younger) brother Lazarus: \u2018Lord, behold he whom Thou lovest is sick!\u2019 They are apparently the very words which \u2018the sisters\u2019 bade their messenger tell. We note as an important fact to be stored in our memory, that the Lazarus, who had not even been mentioned in the only account preserved to us of a previous visit of Christ to Bethany, is described as \u2018he whom Christ loved.\u2019 What a gap of untold events between the two visits of Christ to Bethany\u2014and what modesty should it teach us as regards inferences from the circumstance that certain events are not recorded in the Gospels! The messenger was apparently dismissed by Christ with this reply: \u2018This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, in order that the Son of God may be glorified thereby.\u2019 We must here bear in mind, that this answer was heard by such of the Apostles as were present at the time. They would naturally infer from it that Lazarus would not die, and that his restoration would glorify Christ, either as having foretold it, or prayed for it, or effected it by His Will. Yet its true meaning\u2014even, as we now see, its literal interpretation, was, that its final upshot was not to be the death of Lazarus, but that it was to be for the glory of God, in order that Christ as the Son of God might be made manifest. And we learn, how much more full are the Words of Christ than they often appear to us; and how truly, and even literally, they may bear quite another meaning than appears to our honest misapprehension of them\u2014a meaning which only the event, the future, will disclose.
\nAnd yet, probably at the very time when the messenger received his answer, and ere he could have brought it to the sisters, Lazarus was already dead! Nor\u2014and this should be specially marked\u2014did this awaken doubt in the minds of the sisters. We seem to hear the very words which at the time they said to each other, when each of them afterwards repeated it to the Lord: \u2018Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died.\u2019 They probably thought the message had reached Him too late, that Lazarus would have lived if Christ had been appealed to in time, or had been able to come\u2014at any rate, if He had been there. Even in their keenest anguish, there was no failure of trust, no doubt, no close weighing of words on their part\u2014only the confidence of love. Yet all this while Christ knew that Lazarus had died, and still He continued two whole days where He was, finishing His work. And yet\u2014and this is significantly noted before anything else, alike in regard to His delay and to His after-conduct\u2014He \u2018loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.\u2019 Had there been no after-history, or had it not been known to us, or before it became known, it might have seemed otherwise\u2014and in similar circumstances it often does seem otherwise to us. And again, what majestic calm, what self-restraint of Human affections and sublime consciousness of Divine Power in this delay: it is once more Christ asleep, while the disciples are despairing, in the bark almost swamped in the storm! Christ is never in haste: least of all, on His errands of love. And He is never in haste, because He is always sure.
\nIt was only after these two days that Christ broke silence as to His purposes and as to Lazarus. Though thoughts of him must have been present with the disciples, none dared ask aught, although not from misgiving, nor yet from fear. This also of faith and of confidence. At last, when His work in that part had been completed, He spoke of leaving, but even so not of going to Bethany, but into Jud\u00e6a. For, in truth, His work in Bethany was not only geographically, but really, part of His work in Jud\u00e6a; and He told the disciples of His purpose, just because He knew their fears and would teach them, not only for this but for every future occasion, what principle applied to them. For when, in their care and affection, they reminded the \u2018Rabbi\u2019\u2014and the expression here almost jars on us\u2014that the Jews \u2018were even now seeking to stone\u2019 Him, He replied by telling them, in figurative language, that we have each our working day from God, and that while it lasts no foe can shorten it or break up our work. The day had twelve hours, and while these lasted no mishap would befall him that walked in the way [he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world]. It was otherwise when the day was past and the night had come. When our God-given day has set, and with it the light been withdrawn which hitherto prevented our stumbling\u2014then, if a man went in his own way and at his own time, might such mishap befall him, \u2018because,\u2019 figuratively as to light in the night-time, and really as to guidance and direction in the way, \u2018the light is not in him.\u2019
\nBut this was only part of what Jesus said to His disciples in preparation for a journey that would issue in such tremendous consequences. He next spoke of Lazarus, their \u2018friend,\u2019 as \u2018fallen asleep\u2019\u2014in the frequent Jewish (as well as Christian) figurative sense of it, and of His going there to wake him out of sleep. The disciples would naturally connect this mention of His going to Lazarus with His proposed visit to Jud\u00e6a, and, in their eagerness to keep Him from the latter, interposed that there could be no need for going to Lazarus, since sleep was, according to Jewish notions, one of the six, or, according to others, five symptoms or crises in recovery from dangerous illness. And when the Lord then plainly stated it, \u2018Lazarus died,\u2019 adding, what should have aroused their attention, that for their sakes He was glad He had not been in Bethany before the event, because now that would come which would work faith in them, and proposed to go to the dead Lazarus\u2014even then, their whole attention was so absorbed by the certainty of danger to their loved Teacher, that Thomas had only one thought: since it was to be so, let them go and die with Jesus. So little had they understood the figurative language about the twelve hours on which God\u2019s sun shone to light us on our way; so much did they need the lesson of faith to be taught them in the raising of Lazarus!
\nWe already know the quiet happy home of Bethany. When Jesus reached it, \u2018He found\u2019\u2014probably from those who met Him by the way \u2014that Lazarus had been already four days in the grave. According to custom, he would be buried the same day that he had died. Supposing his death to have taken place when the message for help was first delivered, while Jesus continued after that two whole days in the place where He was, this would leave about a day for His journey from Per\u00e6a to Bethany. We do not, indeed, know the exact place of His stay; but it must have been some well-known centre of activity in Per\u00e6a, since the sisters of Bethany had no difficulty in sending their messenger. At the same time we also infer that, at least at this period, some kind of communication must have existed between Christ and His more intimate disciples and friends\u2014such as the family of Bethany\u2014by which they were kept informed of the general plan of His Mission-journeys, and of any central station of His temporary sojourn. If Christ at that time occupied such a central station, we can the more readily understand how some of His Galilean disciples may, for a brief space, have been absent at their Galilean homes when the tidings about Lazarus arrived. Their absence may explain the prominent position taken by Thomas; perhaps, also, in part, the omission of this narrative from the Synoptic Gospels. One other point may be of interest. Supposing the journey to Bethany to have occupied a day, we would suggest the following as the order of events. The messenger of the Sisters left Bethany on the Sunday (it could not have been on the Sabbath), and reached Jesus on the Monday. Christ continued in Per\u00e6a other two days, till Wednesday, and arrived at Bethany on Thursday. On Friday the meeting of the Sanhedrists against Christ took place, while He rested in Bethany on the Friday, and, of course, on the Sabbath, and returned to Per\u00e6a and \u2018Ephraim\u2019 on the Sunday.
\nThis may be a convenient place for adding to the account already given, in connection with the burying of the widow\u2019s son at Nain, such further particulars of the Jewish observances and rites, as may illustrate the present history. Referring to the previous description, we resume, in imagination, our attendance at the point where Christ met the bier at Nain and again gave life to the dead. But we remember that, as we are now in Jud\u00e6a, the hired mourners\u2014both mourning-men (for there were such) and mourning-women\u2014would follow, and not, as in Galilee, precede, the body. From the narrative we infer that the burial of Lazarus did not take place in a common burying-ground, which was never nearer a town than 50 cubits, dry and rocky places being chosen in preference. Here the graves must be at least a foot and a half apart. It was deemed a dishonour to the dead to stand on, or walk over, the turf of a grave. Roses and other flowers seem to have been planted on graves. But cemeteries, or common burying-places, appear in earliest times to have been used only for the poor, or for strangers. In Jerusalem there were also two places where executed criminals were buried. All these, it is needless to say, were outside the City. But there is abundant evidence, that every place had not its own burying-ground; and that, not unfrequently, provision had to be made for the transport of bodies. Indeed, a burying-place is not mentioned among the ten requisites for every fully-organised Jewish community. The names given, both to the graves and to the burying-place itself, are of interest. As regards the former, we mention such as \u2018the house of silence;\u2019 \u2018the house of stone;\u2019 \u2018the hostelry,\u2019 or, literally, \u2018place where you spend the night;\u2019 \u2018the couch;\u2019 \u2018the resting-place;\u2019 \u2018the valley of the multitude,\u2019 or \u2018of the dead.\u2019 The cemetery was called \u2018the house of graves;\u2019 or \u2018the court of burying;\u2019 and \u2018the house of eternity.\u2019 By a euphemism, \u2018to die\u2019 was designated as \u2018going to rest;\u2019 \u2018being completed;\u2019 \u2018being gathered to the world\u2019 or \u2018to the home of light;\u2019 \u2018being withdrawn,\u2019 or \u2018hidden.\u2019 Burial without coffin seems to have continued the practice for a considerable time, and rules are given how a pit, the size of the body, was to be dug, and surrounded by a wall of loose stones to prevent the falling in of earth. When afterwards earth-burials had to be vindicated against the Parsee idea of cremation, Jewish divines more fully discussed the question of burial, and described the committal of the body to the ground as a sort of expiation. It was a curious later practice, that children who had died a few days after birth were circumcised on their graves. Children not a month old were buried without coffin or mourning, and, as some have thought, in a special place. In connection with a recent controversy it is interesting to learn that, for the sake of peace, just as the poor and sick of the Gentiles might be fed and nursed as well as those of the Jews, so their dead might be buried with those of the Jews, though not in their graves. On the other hand, a wicked person should not be buried close to a sage. Suicides were not accorded all the honours of those who had died a natural death, and the bodies of executed criminals were laid in a special place, whence the relatives might after a time remove their bones. The burial terminated by casting earth on the grave.
\nBut, as already stated, Lazarus was, as became his station, not laid in a cemetery, but in his own private tomb in a cave\u2014probably in a garden, the favourite place of interment. Though on terms of close friendship with Jesus, he was evidently not regarded as an apostate from the Synagogue. For, every indignity was shown at the burial of an apostate; people were even to array themselves in white festive garments to make demonstration of joy. Here, on the contrary, as we gather from the sequel, every mark of sympathy, respect, and sorrow had been shown by the people in the district and by friends in the neighbouring Jerusalem. In such case it would be regarded as a privilege to obey the Rabbinic direction of accompanying the dead, so as to show honour to the departed and kindness to the survivors. As the sisters of Bethany were \u2018disciples,\u2019 we may well believe that some of the more extravagant demonstrations of grief were, if not dispensed with, yet modified. We can scarcely believe, that the hired \u2018mourners\u2019 would alternate between extravagant praises of the dead and calls upon the attendants to lament; or that, as was their wont, they would strike on their breast, beat their hands, and dash about their feet, or break into wails and mourning songs, alone or in chorus. In all probability, however, the funeral oration would be delivered\u2014as in the case of all distinguished persons\u2014either in the house, or at one of the stations where the bearers changed, or at the burying-place; perhaps, if they passed it, in the Synagogue. It has previously been noted, what extravagant value was, in later times, attached to these orations, as indicating both a man\u2019s life on earth and his place in heaven. The dead was supposed to be present, listening to the words of the speaker and watching the expression on the faces of the hearers. It would serve no good purpose to reproduce fragments from these orations. Their character is sufficiently indicated by the above remarks.
\nWhen thinking of these tombs in gardens, we so naturally revert to that which for three days held the Lord of Life, that all details become deeply interesting. And it is, perhaps, better to give them here rather than afterwards to interrupt, by such inquiries, our solemn thoughts in presence of the Crucified Christ. Not only the rich, but even those moderately well-to-do, had tombs of their own, which probably were acquired and prepared long before they were needed, and treated and inherited as private and personal property. In such caves, or rock-hewn tombs, the bodies were laid, having been anointed with many spices, with myrtle, aloes, and, at a later period, also with hyssop, rose-oil, and rose-water. The body was dressed and, at a later period, wrapped, if possible, in the worn cloths in which originally a Roll of the Law had been held. The \u2018tombs\u2019 were either \u2018rock-hewn,\u2019 or natural \u2018caves\u2019 or else large walled vaults, with niches along the sides. Such a \u2018cave\u2019 or \u2018vault\u2019 of 4 cubits\u2019 (6 feet) width, 6 cubits\u2019 (9 feet) length, and 4 cubits\u2019 (6 feet) height, contained \u2018niches\u2019 for eight bodies\u2014three on each of the longitudinal sides, and two at the end opposite the entrance. Each \u2018niche\u2019 was 4 cubits (6 feet) long, and had a height of seven and a width of six handbreadths. As these burying \u2018niches\u2019 were hollowed out in the walls, they were called Kukhin. The larger caves or vaults were 6 cubits (9 feet) wide, and 8 cubits (12 feet) long, and held thirteen bodies\u2014four along each side-wall, three opposite to, and one on either side of the entrance. These figures apply, of course, only to what the Law required, when a vault had been contracted for. When a person constructed one for himself, the dimensions of the walls and the number of Kukhin might, of course, vary. At the entrance to the vault was \u2018a court\u2019 6 cubits (9 feet) square, to hold the bier and its bearers. Sometimes two \u2018caves\u2019 opened on this \u2018court.\u2019 But it is difficult to decide whether the second \u2018cave,\u2019 spoken of, was intended as an ossary (ossarium). Certain it is, that after a time the bones were collected and put into a box or coffin, having first been anointed with wine and oil, and being held together by wrappings of cloths. This circumstance explains the existence of the mortuary chests, or osteophagi, so frequently found in the tombs of Palestine by late explorers, who have been unable to explain their meaning. This unclearness is much to be regretted, when we read, for example, of such a \u2018chest\u2019 as found in a cave near Bethany. One of the explorers has discovered on them fragments of Hebrew inscriptions. Up to the present, only few Hebrew memorial inscriptions have been discovered in Palestine. The most interesting are those in or near Jerusalem, dating from the first century B.C. to the first A.C. There are, also, many inscriptions found on Jewish tombs out of Palestine (in Rome, and other places), written in bad Greek or Latin, containing, perhaps, a Hebrew word, and generally ending with shalom, \u2018peace,\u2019 and adorned with Jewish symbols, such as the Seven-branched Candle-stick, the Ark, the festive emblems of the Feast of Tabernacles, and others. In general, the advice not to read such inscriptions, as it would affect the sight, seems to imply the common practice of having memorial inscriptions in Hebrew. They appear to have been graven either on the lid of the mortuary chest, or on the Golel, or great stone \u2018rolled\u2019 at the entrance to the vault, or to the \u2018court\u2019 leading into it, or else on the inside walls of yet another erection, made over the vaults of the wealthy, and which was supposed to complete the burying-place, or Qebher.
\nThese small buildings surmounting the graves may have served as shelter to those who visited the tombs. They also served as \u2018monuments,\u2019 of which we read in the Bible, in the Apocrypha, and in Josephus. In Rabbinic writings they are frequently mentioned, chiefly by the name Nephesh, \u2018soul,\u2019 \u2018person\u2019\u2014transferred in the sense of \u2018monument,\u2019 or, by the more Scriptural name of bamah, or, by the Greco-Aramaic, or the Hebrew designation for a building generally. But of gravestones with inscriptions we cannot find any record in Talmudic works. At the same time, the place where there was a vault or a grave was marked by a stone, which was kept whitened, to warn the passer-by against defilement.
\nWe are now able fully to realise all the circumstances and surroundings in the burial and raising of Lazarus.
\nJesus had come to Bethany. But in the house of mourning they knew it not. As Bethany was only about fifteen furlongs\u2014or about two miles\u2014from Jerusalem, many from the City, who were on terms of friendship with what was evidently a distinguished family, had come in obedience to one of the most binding Rabbinic directions\u2014that of comforting the mourners. In the funeral procession the sexes had been separated, and the practice probably prevailed even at that time for the women to return alone from the grave. This may explain why afterwards the women went and returned alone to the Tomb of our Lord. The mourning, which began before the burial, had been shared by the friends who sat silent on the ground, or were busy preparing the mourning meal. As the company left the dead, each had taken leave of the deceased with a \u2018Depart in peace!\u2019 Then they had formed into lines, through which the mourners passed amidst expressions of sympathy, repeated (at least seven times) as the procession halted on the return to the house of mourning. Then began the mourning in the house, which really lasted thirty days, of which the first three were those of greatest, the others, during the seven days, or the special week of sorrow, of less intense mourning. But on the Sabbath, as God\u2019s holy day, all mourning was intermitted\u2014and so \u2018they rested on the Sabbath, according to the commandment.\u2019
\nIn that household of disciples this mourning would not have assumed such violent forms, as when we read that the women were in the habit of tearing out their hair, or of a Rabbi who publicly scourged himself. But we know how the dead would be spoken of. In death the two worlds were said to meet and kiss. And now they who had passed away beheld God. They were at rest. Such beautiful passages as Ps. 112:6, Prov. 10:7, Is. 11:10, last clause, and Is. 57:2, were applied to them. Nay, the holy dead should be called \u2018living.\u2019 In truth, they knew about us, and unseen still surrounded us. Nor should they ever be mentioned without adding a blessing on their memory.
\nIn this spirit, we cannot doubt, the Jews were now \u2018comforting\u2019 the sisters. They may have repeated words like those quoted as the conclusion of such a consolatory speech: \u2018May the Lord of consolations (\u05d1\u05e2\u05dc \u05e0\u05d7\u05de\u05d5\u05ea) comfort you! Blessed be He Who comforteth the mourners!\u2019 But they could scarcely have imagined how literally a wish like this was about to be fulfilled. For, already, the message had reached Martha, who was probably in one of the outer apartments of the house: Jesus is coming! She hastened to meet the Master. Not a word of complaint, not a murmur, nor doubt, escaped her lips\u2014only what during those four bitter days these two sisters must have been so often saying to each other, when the luxury of solitude was allowed them, that if He had been there, their brother would not have died. And, even now\u2014when it was all too late\u2014when they had not received what they had asked of Him by their messenger, it must have been, because He had not asked it, though He had said that this sickness was not unto death; or else because He had delayed to work it till He would come. And still she held fast by it, that even now God would give Him whatsoever He asked. Or, did they mean more: were they such words of unconscious prophecy, or sight and sound of heavenly things, as sometimes come to us in our passion of grief, or else winged thoughts of faith too soon beyond our vision? They could not have been the expression of any real hope of the miracle about to take place, or Martha would not have afterwards sought to arrest Him, when He bade them roll away the stone. And yet is it not even so, that, when that comes to us which our faith had once dared to suggest, if not to hope, we feel as if it were all too great and impossible\u2014that a very physical \u2018cannot be\u2019 separates us from it?
\nIt was in very truth and literality that the Lord meant it, when He told Martha her brother would rise again, although she understood His Words of the Resurrection at the Last Day. In answer, Christ pointed out to her the connection between Himself and the Resurrection; and, what He spoke, that He did when He raised Lazarus from the dead. The Resurrection and the Life are not special gifts either to the Church or to humanity, but are connected with the Christ\u2014the outcome of Himself. The Resurrection of the Just and the General Resurrection are the consequence of the relation in which the Church and humanity in general stand to the Christ. Without the Christ there would have been no Resurrection. Most literally He is the Resurrection and the Life\u2014and this, the new teaching about the Resurrection, was the object and the meaning of the raising of Lazarus. And thus is this raising of Lazarus the outlook, also, upon His own Resurrection, Who is \u2018the first-fruits from the dead.\u2019
\nAnd though the special, then present, application, or rather manifestation of it, would be in the raising of Lazarus\u2014yet this teaching, that accompanied it, is to \u2018all believers:\u2019 \u2018He that believeth in Me, even if [though] he die, shall live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall not die for ever\u2019 (unto the \u00c6on)\u2014where possibly we might, for commentation, mentally insert the sign of a pause (\u2014) between the words \u2018die\u2019 and \u2018for ever,\u2019 or \u2018unto the \u00c6on.\u2019 It is only when we think of the meaning of Christ\u2019s previous words, as implying that the Resurrection and the Life are the outcome of Himself, and come to us only through Him and in Him, that we can understand the answer of Martha to His question: \u2018Believest thou this? Yea, Lord, I have believed that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God [with special reference to the original message of Christ], He that cometh into the world [\u2018the Coming One into the world\u2019=the world\u2019s promised, expected, come Saviour].
\nWhat else passed between them we can only gather from the context. It seems that the Master \u2018called\u2019 for Mary. This message Martha now hasted to deliver, although \u2018secretly.\u2019 Mary was probably sitting in the Chamber of mourning, with its upset chairs and couches, and other melancholy tokens of mourning, as was the custom; surrounded by many who had come to comfort them; herself, we can scarcely doubt, silent, her thoughts far away in that world to, and of which the Master was to her \u2018the Way, the Truth, and the Life.\u2019 As she heard of His coming and call, she rose \u2018quickly,\u2019 and the Jews followed her, under the impression that she was again going to visit, and to weep at the tomb of her brother. For, it was the practice to visit the grave, especially during the first three days. When she came to Jesus, where He still stood, outside Bethany, she was forgetful of all around. It was, as if sight of Him melted what had frozen the tide of her feelings. She could only fall at His Feet, and repeat the poor words with which she and her sister had these four weary days tried to cover the nakedness of their sorrow: poor words of consolation, and poor words of faith, which she did not, like her sister, make still poorer by adding the poverty of her hope to that of her faith\u2014the poverty of the future to that of the past and present. To Martha that had been the maximum, to Mary it was the minimum of her faith; for the rest, it was far, far better to add nothing more, but simply to worship at His Feet.
\nIt must have been a deeply touching scene: the outpouring of her sorrow, the absoluteness of her faith, the mute appeal of her tears. And the Jews who witnessed it were moved as she, and wept with her. What follows is difficult to understand; still more difficult to explain: not only from the choice of language, which is peculiarly difficult, but because its difficulty springs from the yet greater difficulty of expressing what it is intended to describe. The expression, \u2018groaned in spirit,\u2019 cannot mean that Christ \u2018was moved with indignation in the spirit,\u2019 since this could not have been the consequence of witnessing the tears of Mary and what, we feel sure, was the genuine emotion of the Jews. Of the various interpretations, that commends itself most to us, which would render the expression: \u2018He vehemently moved His Spirit and troubled Himself.\u2019 One, whose insight into such questions is peculiarly deep, has reminded us that \u2018the miracles of the Lord were not wrought by the simple word of power, but that in a mysterious way the element of sympathy entered into them. He took away the sufferings and diseases of men in some sense by taking them upon Himself.\u2019 If, with this most just view of His Condescension to, and union with, humanity as its Healer, by taking upon Himself its diseases, we combine the statement formerly made about the Resurrection, as not a gift or boon but the outcome of Himself\u2014we may, in some way, not understand, but be able to gaze into, the unfathomed depth of that Theanthropic fellow-suffering which was both vicarious and redemptive, and which, before He became the Resurrection to Lazarus, shook His whole inner Being, when, in the words of St. John, \u2018He vehemently moved His Spirit and troubled Himself.\u2019
\nAnd now every trait is in accord. \u2018Where have ye laid him?\u2019 So truly human\u2014as if He, Who was about to raise the dead, needed the information where he had been laid; so truly human, also, in the underlying tenderness of the personal address, and in the absorption of the whole Theanthropic energy on the mighty burden about to be lifted and lifted away. So, also, as they bade Him come and see, were the tears that fell from Him (\u1f10\u03b4\u03ac\u03ba\u03c1\u03c5\u03c3\u03b5\u03bd), not like the violent lamentation (\u1f14\u03ba\u03bb\u03b1\u03c5\u03c3\u03b5\u03bd) that burst from Him at sight and prophetic view of doomed Jerusalem. Yet we can scarcely think that the Jews rightly interpreted it, when they ascribed it only to His love for Lazarus. But surely there was not a touch either of malevolence or of irony, only what we feel to be quite natural in the circumstances, when some of them asked it aloud: \u2018Could not this One, Which opened the eyes of the blind, have wrought so that [in order] this one also should not die?\u2019 Scarcely was it even unbelief. They had so lately witnessed in Jerusalem that Miracle, such as had \u2018not been heard\u2019 \u2018since the world began,\u2019 that it seemed difficult to understand how, seeing there was the will (in His affection for Lazarus), there was not the power\u2014not to raise him from the dead, for that did not occur to them, but to prevent his dying. Was there, then, a barrier in death? And it was this, and not indignation, which once more caused that Theanthropic recurrence upon Himself, when again \u2018He vehemently moved His Spirit.\u2019
\nAnd now they were at the cave which was Lazarus\u2019 tomb. He bade them roll aside the great stone which covered its entrance. Amidst the awful pause which preceded obedience, one voice only was raised. It was that of Martha. Jesus had not spoken of raising Lazarus. But what was about to be done? She could scarcely have thought that He merely wished to gaze once more upon the face of the dead. Something nameless had seized her. She dared not believe; she dared not disbelieve. Did she, perhaps, not dread a failure, but feel misgivings, when thinking of Christ as in presence of commencing corruption before these Jews\u2014and yet, as we so often, still love Him even in unbelief? It was the common Jewish idea that corruption commenced on the fourth day, that the drop of gall, which had fallen from the sword of the Angel and caused death, was then working its effect, and that, as the face changed, the soul took its final leave from the resting-place of the body. Only one sentence Jesus spake of gentle reproof, of reminder of what He had said to her just before, and of the message He had sent when first He heard of Lazarus\u2019 illness, but, oh, so full of calm majesty and consciousness of Divine strength. And now the stone was rolled away. We all feel that the fitting thing here was prayer\u2014yet not petition, but thanksgiving that the Father \u2018heard\u2019 Him, not as regarded the raising of Lazarus, which was His Own Work, but in the ordering and arranging of all the circumstances\u2014alike the petition and the thanksgiving having for their object them that stood by, for He knew that the Father always heard Him: that so they might believe, that the Father had sent Him. Sent of the Father\u2014not come of Himself, not sent of Satan\u2014and sent to do His Will!
\nAnd in doing this Will, He was the Resurrection and the Life. One loud command spoken into that silence; one loud call to that sleeper; one flash of God\u2019s Own Light into that darkness, and the wheels of life again moved at the outgoing of The Life. And, still bound hand and foot with graveclothes [\u2018bands,\u2019 Takhrikhin], and his face with the napkin, Lazarus stood forth, shuddering and silent, in the cold light of earth\u2019s day. In that multitude, now more pale and shuddering than the man bound in the graveclothes, the Only One majestically calm was He, Who before had been so deeply moved and troubled Himself, as He now bade them \u2018Loose him, and let him go.\u2019
\nWe know no more. Holy Writ in this also proves its Divine authorship and the reality of what is here recorded. The momentarily lifted veil has again fallen over the darkness of the Most Holy Place, in which is only the Ark of His Presence and the cloudy incense of our worship. What happened afterwards\u2014how they loosed him, what they said, what thanks, or praise, or worship, the sisters spoke, and what were Lazarus\u2019 first words, we know not. And better so. Did Lazarus remember aught of the late past, or was not rather the rending of the grave a real rending from the past: the awakening so sudden, the transition so great, that nothing of the bright vision remained, but its impress\u2014just as a marvellously beautiful Jewish legend has it, that before entering this world, the soul of a child has seen all of heaven and hell, of past, present, and future; but that, as the Angel strikes it on the mouth to waken it into this world, all of the other has passed from the mind? Again we say: We know not\u2014and it is better so.
\nAnd here abruptly breaks off this narrative. Some of those who had seen it believed on Him; others hurried back to Jerusalem to tell it to the Pharisees. Then was hastily gathered a meeting of the Sanhedrists, not to judge Him, but to deliberate what was to be done. That He was really doing these miracles, there could be no question among them. Similarly, all but one or two had no doubt as to the source of these miracles. If real, they were of Satanic agency\u2014and all the more tremendous they were, the more certainly so. But whether really of Satanic power, or merely a Satanic delusion, one thing, at least, was evident, that, if He were let alone, all men would believe on Him. And then, if He headed the Messianic movement of the Jews as a nation, alike the Jewish City and Temple, and Israel as a nation, would perish in the fight with Rome. But what was to be done? They had not the courage of, though the wish for, judicial murder, till he who was the High-Priest, Caiaphas, reminded them of the well-known Jewish adage, that it \u2018is better one man should die, than the community perish.\u2019 Yet, even so, he who spoke was the High-Priest; and for the last time, ere in speaking the sentence he spoke it for ever as against himself and the office he held, spake through him God\u2019s Voice, not as regards the counsel of murder, but this, that His Death should be \u2018for that nation\u2019\u2014nay, as St. John adds, not only for Israel, but to gather into one fold all the now scattered children of God.
\nThis was the last prophecy in Israel; with the sentence of death on Israel\u2019s true High-Priest died prophecy in Israel, died Israel\u2019s High-Priesthood. It had spoken sentence upon itself.
\nThis was the first Friday of dark resolve. Henceforth it only needed to concert plans for carrying it out. Some one, perhaps Nicodemus, sent word of the secret meeting and resolution of the Sanhedrists. That Friday and the next Sabbath Jesus rested in Bethany, with the same majestic calm which He had shown at the grave of Lazarus. Then He withdrew, far away to the obscure bounds of Per\u00e6a and Galilee, to a city of which the very location is now unknown. And there He continued with His disciples, withdrawn from the Jews\u2014till He would make His final entrance into Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 22<\/p>\n
ON THE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM\u2014DEPARTURE FROM EPHRAIM BY WAY OF SAMARIA AND GALILEE\u2014HEALING OF TEN LEPERS\u2014PROPHETIC DISCOURSE OF THE COMING KINGDOM\u2014ON DIVORCE: JEWISH VIEWS OF IT\u2014THE BLESSING TO LITTLE CHILDREN<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 19:1, 2; St. Mark 10:1; St. Luke 17:11; St. Luke 17:12\u201319; St. Matt. 19:3\u201312; St. Mark 10:2\u201312; St. Matt. 19:13\u201315; St. Mark 10:13\u201316; St. Luke 18:15\u201317.)<\/p>\n
THE brief time of rest and quiet converse with His disciples in the retirement of Ephraim was past, and the Saviour of men prepared for His last journey to Jerusalem. All the three Synoptic Gospels mark this, although with varying details. From the mention of Galilee by St. Matthew, and by St. Luke of Samaria and Galilee\u2014or more correctly, \u2018between (along the frontiers of) Samaria and Galilee,\u2019 we may conjecture that, on leaving Ephraim, Christ made a very brief detour along the northern frontier to some place at the southern border of Galilee\u2014perhaps to meet at a certain point those who were to accompany Him on His final journey to Jerusalem. This suggestion, for it is no more, is in itself not improbable, since some of Christ\u2019s immediate followers might naturally wish to pay a brief visit to their friends in Galilee before going up to Jerusalem. And it is further confirmed by the notice of St. Mark, that among those who had followed Christ there were \u2018many women which came up with Him unto Jerusalem.\u2019 For, we can scarcely suppose that these \u2018many women\u2019 had gone with Him in the previous autumn from Galilee to the Feast of Tabernacles, nor that they were with Him at the Feast of the Dedication, or had during the winter followed Him through Per\u00e6a, nor yet that they had been at Bethany. All these difficulties are obviated if, as suggested, we suppose that Christ had passed from Ephraim along the border of Samaria to a place in Galilee, there to meet such of His disciples as would go up with Him to Jerusalem. The whole company would then form one of those festive bands which travelled to the Paschal Feast, nor would there be anything strange or unusual in the appearance of such a band, in this instance under the leadership of Jesus.
\nAnother and deeply important notice, furnished by SS. Matthew and Mark, is, that during this journey through Per\u00e6a, \u2018great multitudes\u2019 resorted to, and followed Him, and that \u2018He healed\u2019 and \u2018taught them.\u2019 This will account for the incidents and Discourses by the way, and also how, from among many deeds, the Evangelists may have selected for record what to them seemed the most important or novel, or else best accorded with the plans of their respective narratives.
\nThus, to begin with, St. Luke alone relates the very first incident by the way, and the first Discourse. Nor is it difficult to understand the reason of this. To one who, like St. Matthew, had followed Christ in His Galilean Ministry, or, like St. Mark, had been the penman of St. Peter, there would be nothing so peculiar or novel in the healing of lepers as to introduce this on the overcrowded canvas of the last days. Indeed, they had both already recorded what may be designated as a typical healing of lepers. But St. Luke had not recorded such healing before; and the restoration of ten at the same time would seem to the \u2018beloved physician\u2019 matter, not only new in his narrative, but of the deepest importance. Besides, we have already seen, that the record of the whole of this East-Jordan Ministry is peculiar to St. Luke; and we can scarcely doubt, that it was the result of personal inquiries made by the Evangelist on the spot, in order to supplement what might have seemed to him a gap in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark. This would explain his fulness of detail as regards incidents, and, for example, the introduction of the history of Zacch\u00e6us, which to St. Mark, or rather to St. Peter, but especially to St. Matthew (himself once a publican), might appear so like that which they had so often witnessed and related, as scarcely to require special narration. On the same ground we account for the record by St. Luke of Christ\u2019s Discourse predictive of the Advent of the Messianic Kingdom. This Discourse is evidently in its place at the beginning of Christ\u2019s last journey to Jerusalem. But the other two Evangelists merge it in the account of the fuller teaching on the same subject during the last days of Christ\u2019s sojourn on earth.
\nIt is a further confirmation of our suggestion as to the road taken by Jesus, that of the ten lepers whom, at the outset of His journey, He met when entering into a village, one was a Samaritan. It may have been that the district was infested with leprosy; or these lepers may, on tidings of Christ\u2019s approach, have hastily gathered there. It was, as fully explained in another place, in strict accordance with Jewish Law, that these lepers remained both outside the village and far from Him to Whom they now cried for mercy. And, without either touch or even command of healing, Christ bade them go and show themselves as healed to the priests. For this it was, as will be remembered, not necessary to repair to Jerusalem. Any priest might declare \u2018unclean\u2019 or \u2018clean,\u2019 provided the applicants presented themselves singly, and not in company, for his inspection. And they went at Christ\u2019s bidding, even before they had actually experienced the healing! So great was their faith, and, may we not almost infer, the general belief throughout the district, in the Power of \u2018the Master.\u2019 And as they went, the new life coursed in their veins. Restored health began to be felt, just as it ever is, not before, nor yet after believing, but in the act of obedience of a faith that has not yet experienced the blessing.
\nBut now the characteristic difference between these men appeared. Of the ten, equally recipients of the benefit, the nine Jews continued their way\u2014presumably to the priests\u2014while the one Samaritan in the number at once turned back, with a loud voice glorifying God. The whole event may not have occupied many minutes, and Jesus with His followers may still have stood on the same spot whence He bade the ten lepers go show themselves to the priests. He may have followed them with His eyes, as, but a few steps on their road of faith, health overtook them, and the grateful Samaritan, with voice of loud thanksgiving, hastened back to his Healer. No longer now did he remain afar off, but in humblest reverence fell on his face at the Feet of Him to Whom he gave thanks. This Samaritan had received more than new bodily life and health: he had found spiritual life and healing.
\nBut why did the nine Jews not return? Assuredly, they must have had some faith when first seeking help from Christ, and still more when setting out for the priests before they had experienced the healing. But perhaps, regarding it from our own standpoint, we may overestimate the faith of these men. Bearing in mind the views of the Jews at the time, and what constant succession of miraculous cures\u2014without a single failure\u2014had been witnessed these years, it cannot seem strange that lepers should apply to Jesus. Nor yet perhaps did it, in the circumstances, involve very much greater faith to go to the priests at His bidding\u2014implying, of course, that they were or would be healed. But it was far different to turn back and to fall down at His Feet in lowly worship and thanksgiving. That made a man a disciple.
\nMany questions here suggest themselves: Did these nine Jews separate from the one Samaritan when they felt healed, common misfortune having made them companions and brethren, while the bond was snapped so soon as they felt themselves free of their common sorrow? The History of the Church and of individual Christians furnishes, alas! not a few analogous instances. Or did these nine Jews, in their legalism and obedience to the letter, go on to the priests, forgetful that, in obeying the letter, they violated the spirit of Christ\u2019s command? Of this also there are, alas! only too many parallel cases which will occur to the mind. Or was it Jewish pride, which felt it had a right to the blessings, and attributed them, not to the mercy of Christ, but to God; or, rather, to their own relation as Israel to God? Or, what seems to us the most probable, was it simply Jewish ingratitude and neglect of the blessed opportunity now within their reach\u2014a state of mind too characteristic of those who know not \u2018the time of their visitation\u2019\u2014and which led up to the neglect, rejection, and final loss of the Christ? Certain it is, that the Lord emphasised the terrible contrast in this between the children of the household and \u2018this stranger.\u2019 And here another important lesson is implied in regard to the miraculous in the Gospels. This history shows how little spiritual value or efficacy they attach to miracles, and how essentially different in this respect their tendency is from all legendary stories. The lesson conveyed in this case is, that we may expect, and even experience, miracles, without any real faith in the Christ; with belief, indeed, in His Power, but without surrender to His Rule. According to the Gospels, a man might either seek benefit from Christ, or else receive Christ through such benefit. In the one case the benefit sought was the object, in the other the means; in the one, it was the goal, in the other, the road to it; in the one, it gave healing, in the other, brought salvation; in the one, it ultimately led away from, in the other, it led to Christ and to discipleship. And so Christ now spake it to this Samaritan: \u2018Arise, go thy way; thy faith has made thee whole.\u2019 But to all time there are here to the Church lessons of most important distinction.
\n2. The Discourse concerning the Coming of the Kingdom, which is reported by St. Luke immediately after the healing of the ten lepers, will be more conveniently considered in connection with the fuller statement of the same truths at the close of our Lord\u2019s Ministry. It was probably delivered a day or so after the healing of the lepers, and marks a farther stage in the Per\u00e6an journey towards Jerusalem. For, here we meet once more the Pharisees as questioners. This circumstance, as will presently appear, is of great importance, as carrying us back to the last mention of an interpellation by the Pharisees.
\n3. This brings us to what we regard as, in point of time, the next Discourse of Christ on this journey, recorded both by St. Matthew, and, in briefer form, by St. Mark. These Evangelists place it immediately after their notice of the commencement of this journey, For reasons previously indicated, St. Luke inserts the healing of the lepers and the prophetic Discourse, while the other two Evangelists omit them. On the other hand, St. Luke omits the Discourse here reported by St. Matthew and St. Mark, because, as we can readily see, its subject-matter would, from the standpoint of his Gospel, not appear of such supreme importance as to demand insertion in a narrative of selected events.
\nThe subject-matter of that Discourse is, in answer to Pharisaic \u2018tempting,\u2019 an exposition of Christ\u2019s teaching in regard to the Jewish law and practice of divorce. The introduction of this subject in the narratives of St. Matthew and St. Mark seems, to say the least, abrupt. But the difficulty is entirely removed, or, rather, changed into undesigned evidence, when we fit it into the general history. Christ had advanced farther on His journey, and now once more encountered the hostile Pharisees. It will be remembered that He had met them before in the same part of the country, and answered their taunts and objections, among other things, by charging them with breaking in spirit that Law of which they professed to be the exponents and representatives. And this He had proved by reference to their views and teaching on the subject of divorce. This seems to have rankled in their minds. Probably they also imagined, it would be easy to show on this point a marked difference between the teaching of Jesus and that of Moses and the Rabbis, and to enlist popular feeling against Him. Accordingly, when these Pharisees again encountered Jesus, now on His journey to Jud\u00e6a, they resumed the subject precisely where it had been broken off when they had last met Him, only now with the object of \u2018tempting Him.\u2019 Perhaps it may also have been in the hope that, by getting Christ to commit Himself against divorce in Per\u00e6a\u2014the territory of Herod\u2014they might enlist against Him, as formerly against the Baptist, the implacable hatred of Herodias.
\nBut their main object evidently was to involve Christ in controversy with some of the Rabbinic Schools. This appears from the form in which they put the question, whether it was lawful to put away a wife \u2018for every cause\u2019? St. Mark, who gives only a very condensed account, omits this clause; but in Jewish circles the whole controversy between different teachers turned upon this point. All held that divorce was lawful, the only question being as to its grounds. We will not here enter on the unsavoury question of \u2018Divorce\u2019 among the Jews, to which the Talmud devotes a special tractate. There can, however, be no question that the practice was discouraged by many of the better Rabbis, alike in word and by their example; nor yet, that the Jewish Law took the most watchful care of the interests of the woman. In fact, if any doubt were raised as to the legal validity of a letter of divorce, the Law always pronounced against the divorce. At the same time, in popular practice, divorce must have been very frequent; while the principles underlying Jewish legislation on the subject are most objectionable. These were in turn due to a comparatively lower estimate of woman, and to an unspiritual view of the marriage-relation. Christianity has first raised woman to her proper position, not by giving her a new one, but by restoring and fully developing that assigned to her in the Old Testament. Similarly, as regards marriage, the New Testament\u2014which would have us to be, in one sense, \u2018eunuchs for the Kingdom of God,\u2019 has also fully restored and finally developed what the Old Testament had already implied. And this is part of the lesson taught in this Discourse, both to the Pharisees and to the disciples.
\nTo begin with, divorce (in the legal sense) was regarded as a privilege accorded only to Israel, not to the Gentiles. On the question: what constituted lawful grounds of divorce, the Schools were divided. Taking their departure from the sole ground of divorce mentioned in Deut. 24:1: \u2018a matter of shame [literally, nakedness],\u2019 the School of Shammai applied the expression only to moral transgressions, and, indeed, exclusively to unchastity. It was declared that, if a woman were as mischievous as the wife of Ahab, or [according to tradition] the wife of Korah, it were well that her husband should not divorce her, except it be on the ground of adultery. At the same time, this must not be regarded as a fixed legal principle, but rather as an opinion and good counsel for conduct. The very passages, from which the above quotations are made, also afford only too painful evidence of the laxity of views and practices current. And the Jewish Law unquestionably allowed divorce on almost any ground; the difference being, not as to what was lawful, but on what grounds a man should set the Law in motion, and make use of the absolute liberty which it accorded him. Hence, it is a serious mistake on the part of commentators to set the teaching of Christ on this subject by the side of that of Shammai.
\nBut the School of Hillel proceeded on different principles. It took the words \u2018matter of shame\u2019 in the widest possible sense, and declared it sufficient ground for divorce, if a woman had spoiled her husband\u2019s dinner. Rabbi Akiba thought, that the words, \u2018if she find no favour in his eyes,\u2019 implied that it was sufficient if a man had found another woman more attractive than his wife. All agreed that moral blame made divorce a duty, and that in such cases a woman should not be taken back. According to the Mishnah, women could not only be divorced, but with the loss of their dowry, if they transgressed against the Law of Moses or of Israel. The former is explained as implying a breach of the laws of tithing, of setting apart the first of the dough, and of purification. The latter is explained as referring to such offences as that of going in public with uncovered head, of spinning in the public streets, or entering into talk with men, to which others add, that of brawling, or of disrespectfully speaking of her husband\u2019s parents in his presence. A troublesome, or quarrelsome wife might certainly be sent away; and ill repute, or childlessness (during ten years) were also regarded as valid grounds of divorce.
\nIncomparably as these principles differ from the teaching of Christ, it must again be repeated, that no real comparison is possible between Christ and even the strictest of the Rabbis, since none of them actually prohibited divorce, except in case of adultery, nor yet laid down those high eternal principles which Jesus enunciated. But we can understand how, from the Jewish point of view, \u2018tempting Him,\u2019 they would put the question, whether it was lawful to divorce a wife \u2018for every cause.\u2019 Avoiding their cavils, the Lord appealed straight to the highest authority\u2014God\u2019s institution of marriage. He, Who at the beginning [from the first, originally, \u05de\u05e8\u05d9\u05e9\u05d0] had made them male and female, had in the marriage-relation \u2018joined them together,\u2019 to the breaking of every other, even the nearest, relationship, to be \u2018one flesh\u2019\u2014that is, to a union which was unity. Such was the fact of God\u2019s ordering. It followed, that they were one\u2014and what God had willed to be one, man might not put asunder. Then followed the natural Rabbinic objection, why, in such case, Moses had commanded a bill of divorcement. Our Lord replied by pointing out that Moses had not commanded divorce, only tolerated it on account of their hardness of heart, and, in such case, commanded to give a bill of divorce for the protection of the wife. And this argument would appeal the more forcibly to them, that the Rabbis themselves taught that a somewhat similar concession had been made by Moses in regard to female captives of war\u2014as the Talmud has it, \u2018on account of the evil impulse.\u2019 But such a separation, our Lord continued, had not been provided for in the original institution, which was a union to unity. Only one thing could put an end to that unity\u2014its absolute breach. Hence, to divorce one\u2019s wife (or husband) while this unity lasted, and to marry another, was adultery, because, as the divorce was null before God, the original marriage still subsisted\u2014and, in that case, the Rabbinic Law would also have forbidden it. The next part of the Lord\u2019s inference, that \u2018whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery,\u2019 is more difficult of interpretation. Generally, it is understood as implying that a woman divorced for adultery might not be married. But it has been argued, that, as the literal rendering is, \u2018whoso marrieth her when put away,\u2019 it applies to the woman whose divorce had just before been prohibited, and not, as is sometimes thought, to \u2018a woman divorced [under any circumstances].\u2019 Be this as it may, the Jewish Law, which regarded marriage with a woman divorced under any circumstances as unadvisable, absolutely forbade that of the adulterer with the adulteress.
\nWhatever, therefore, may be pleaded, on account of \u2018the hardness of heart\u2019 in modern society, in favour of the lawfulness of relaxing Christ\u2019s law of divorce, which confines dissolution of marriage to the one ground (of adultery), because then the unity of God\u2019s making has been broken by sin\u2014such a retrocession was at least not in the mind of Christ, nor can it be considered lawful, either by the Church or for individual disciples. But, that the Pharisees had rightly judged, when \u2018tempting Him,\u2019 what the popular feeling on the subject would be, appears even from what \u2018His disciples\u2019 [not necessarily the Apostles] afterwards said to Him. They waited to express their dissent till they were alone with Him \u2018in the house,\u2019 and then urged that, if it were as Christ had taught, it would be better not to marry at all. To which the Lord replied, that \u2018this saying\u2019 of the disciples, \u2018it is not good to marry,\u2019 could not be received by all men, but only by those to whom it was \u2018given.\u2019 For, there were three cases in which abstinence from marriage might lawfully be contemplated. In two of these it was, of course, natural; and, where it was not so, a man might, \u2018for the Kingdom of Heaven\u2019s sake\u2019\u2014that is, in the service of God and of Christ\u2014have all his thoughts, feelings, and impulses so engaged that others were no longer existent. For, we must here beware of a twofold misunderstanding. It is not bare abstinence from marriage, together, perhaps, with what the German Reformers called immunda continentia (unchaste continency), which is here commended, but such inward preoccupation with the Kingdom of God as would remove all other thoughts and desires. It is this which requires to be \u2018given\u2019 of God; and which \u2018he that is able to receive it\u2019\u2014who has the moral capacity for it\u2014is called upon to receive. Again, it must not be imagined that this involves any command of celibacy; it only speaks of such who in the active service of the Kingdom feel, that their every thought is so engrossed in the work, that wishes and impulses to marriage are no longer existent in them.
\n4. The next incident is recorded by the three Evangelists. It probably occurred in the same house where the disciples had questioned Christ about His teaching on the Divinely sacred relationship of marriage. And the account of His blessing of \u2018infants\u2019 and \u2018little children\u2019 most aptly follows on the former teaching. It is a scene of unspeakable sweetness and tenderness, where all is in character\u2014alas! even the conduct of the \u2018disciples,\u2019 as we remember their late inability to sympathise with the teaching of the Master. And it is all so utterly unlike what Jewish legend would have invented for its Messiah. We can understand how, when One Who so spake and wrought, rested in the house, Jewish mothers should have brought their \u2018little children,\u2019 and some their \u2018infants,\u2019 to Him, that He might \u2018touch,\u2019 \u2018put His Hands on them, and pray.\u2019 What power and holiness must these mothers have believed to be in His touch and prayer; what life to be in, and to come from Him; and what gentleness and tenderness must His have been, when they dared so to bring these little ones! For, how utterly contrary it was to all Jewish notions, and how incompatible with the supposed dignity of a Rabbi, appears from the rebuke of the disciples. It was an occasion and an act when, as the fuller and more pictorial account of St. Mark informs us, Jesus \u2018was much displeased\u2019\u2014the only time this strong word is used of our Lord\u2014and said unto them: \u2018Suffer the little children to come to Me, hinder them not, for of such is the Kingdom of God.\u2019 Then He gently reminded His own disciples of their grave error, by repeating what they had apparently forgotten, that, in order to enter the Kingdom of God, it must be received as by a little child\u2014that here there could be no question of intellectual qualification, nor of distinction due to a great Rabbi, but only of humility, receptiveness, meekness, and a simple application to, and trust in, the Christ. And so He folded these little ones in His Arms, put His Hands upon them, and blessed them, and thus for ever consecrated that child-life, which a parent\u2019s love and faith brought to Him; blessed it also by the laying-on of His Hands\u2014as it were, \u2018ordained it,\u2019 as we fully believe to all time, \u2018strength because of His enemies.\u2019<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 23<\/p>\n
THE LAST INCIDENTS IN PER\u00c6A\u2014THE YOUNG RULER WHO WENT AWAY SORROWFUL\u2014TO LEAVE ALL FOR CHRIST\u2014PROPHECY OF HIS PASSION\u2014THE REQUEST OF SALOME, AND OF JAMES AND JOHN<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 19:16\u201322; St. Mark 10:17\u201322; St. Luke 18:18\u201323; St. Matt. 19:23\u201330; St. Mark 10:23\u201331; St. Luke 18:24\u201330; St. Matt. 20:17\u201319; St. Mark 10:32\u201334; St. Luke 18:31\u201334; St. Matt. 20:20\u201328; St. Mark 10:35\u201345.)<\/p>\n
As we near the goal, the wondrous story seems to grow in tenderness and pathos. It is as if all the loving condescension of the Master were to be crowded into these days; all the pressing need also, and the human weaknesses of His disciples. And with equal compassion does He look upon the difficulties of them who truly seek to come to Him, and on those which, springing from without, or even from self and sin, beset them who have already come. Let us try reverently to follow His steps, and learn of His words.
\nAs \u2018He was going forth into the way\u2019\u2014we owe this trait, as one and another in the same narrative, to St. Mark\u2014probably at early morn, as He left the house where He had for ever folded into His Arms and blessed the children brought to Him by believing parents\u2014His progress was arrested. It was \u2018a young man,\u2019 \u2018a ruler,\u2019 probably of the local Synagogue, who came with all haste, \u2018running,\u2019 and with lowliest gesture [kneeling], to ask what to him, nay to us all, is the most important question. Remembering that, while we owe to St. Mark the most graphic touches, St. Matthew most fully reports the words that had been spoken, we might feel inclined to adopt that reading of them in St. Matthew which is not only most strongly supported, but at first sight seems to remove some of the difficulties of exposition. This reading would omit in the address of the young ruler the word \u2018good\u2019 before \u2018Master, what good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?\u2019 and would make Christ\u2019s reply read: \u2018Why askest thou Me concerning the good [that which is good]? One there is Who is good.\u2019 This would meet not only the objection, that in no recorded instance was a Jewish Rabbi addressed as \u2018Good Master,\u2019 but the obvious difficulties connected with the answer of Christ, according to the common reading: \u2018Why callest thou Me good? none is good, save only One: God.\u2019 But on the other side it must be urged, that the undoubted reading of the question and answer in St. Mark\u2019s and St. Luke\u2019s Gospels agrees with that of our Authorised Version, and hence that any difficulty of exposition would not be removed, only shifted, while the reply of Christ tallies far better with the words \u2018Good Master,\u2019 the strangeness of such an address from Jewish lips giving only the more reason for taking it up in the reply: \u2018Why callest thou Me good? none is good save only One: God.\u2019 Lastly, the designation of God as the only One \u2018good\u2019 agrees with one of the titles given Him in Jewish writings: \u2018The Good One of the world\u2019 (\u05d8\u05d5\u05d1\u05d5 \u05e9\u05dc \u05e2\u05d5\u05dc\u05dd).
\nThe actual question of the young Ruler is one which repeatedly occurs in Jewish writings, as put to a Rabbi by his disciples. Amidst the different answers given, we scarcely wonder that they also pointed to observance of the Law. And the saying of Christ seems the more adapted to the young Ruler when we recall this sentence from the Talmud: \u2018There is nothing else that is good but the Law.\u2019 But here again the similarity is only of form, not of substance. For, it will be noticed, that, in the more full account by St. Matthew, Christ leads the young Ruler upwards through the table of the prohibitions of deeds to the first positive command of deed, and then, by a rapid transition, to the substitution for the tenth commandment in its negative form of this wider positive and all-embracing command: \u2018Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.\u2019 Any Jewish \u2018Ruler,\u2019 but especially one so earnest, would have at once answered a challenge on the first four commandments by \u2018Yes\u2019\u2014and that not self-righteously, but sincerely, though of course in ignorance of their real depth. And this was not the time for lengthened discussion and instruction: only for rapid awakening, to lead up, if possible, from earnestness and a heart-drawing towards the Master to real discipleship. Best here to start from what was admitted as binding\u2014the ten commandments\u2014and to lead from that in them which was least likely to be broken, step by step, upwards to that which was most likely to awaken consciousness of sin.
\nAnd the young Ruler did not, as that other Pharisee, reply by trying to raise a Rabbinic disputation over the \u2018Who is neighbour to me?\u2019 but in the sincerity of an honest heart answered that he had kept\u2014that is, so far as he knew them\u2014\u2018all these things from his youth.\u2019 On this St. Matthew puts into his mouth the question\u2014\u2018What lack I yet?\u2019 Even if, like the other two Evangelists, he had not reported it, we would have supplied this from what follows. There is something intensely earnest, genuine, generous, even enthusiastic, in the higher cravings of the soul in youth, when that youth has not been poisoned by the breath of the world, or stricken with the rottenness of vice. The soul longs for the true, the higher, the better, and, even if strength fails of attainment, we still watch with keen sympathy the form of the climber upwards. Much more must all this have been the case with a Jewish youth, especially in those days; one, besides, like this young Ruler, in whose case affluence of circumstances not only allowed free play, but tended to draw out and to give full scope to the finer feelings, and where wealth was joined with religiousness and the service of the Synagogue. There was not in him that pride of riches, nor the self-sufficiency which they so often engender; nor the pride of conscious moral purity and aim after righteousness before God and man; nor yet the pride of the Pharisee or of the Synagogue-Ruler. What he had seen and heard of the Christ had quickened to greatest intensity all in him that longed after God and heaven, and had brought him in this supreme moral earnestness, lowly, reverently, to the Feet of Him in Whom, as he felt, all perfectness was, and from Whom all perfectness came. He had not been first drawn to Christ, and thence to the pure, as were the publicans and sinners; but, like so many\u2014even as Peter, when in that hour of soul-agony he said: \u2018To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life,\u2019\u2014he had been drawn to the pure and the higher, and therefore to Christ. To some the way to Christ is up the Mount of Transfiguration, among the shining Beings of another world; to some it is across dark Kedron, down the deep Garden of Gethsemane with its agonies. What matters it, if it equally lead to Him, and equally bring the sense of need and experience of pardon to the seeker after the better, and the sense of need and experience of holiness to the seeker after pardon?
\nAnd Jesus saw it all: down, through that intense upward look; inwards, through that question, \u2018What lack I yet?\u2019 far deeper down than that young man had ever seen into his own heart\u2014even into depths of weakness and need which he had never sounded, and which must be filled, if he would enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus saw what he lacked; and what He saw, He showed him. For, \u2018looking at him\u2019 in his sincerity and earnestness, \u2018He loved him\u2019\u2014as He loves those that are His Own. One thing was needful for this young man: that he should not only become His disciple, but that, in so doing, he should \u2018come and follow\u2019 Christ. We can all perceive how, for one like this young man, such absolute and entire coming and following Christ was needful. And again, to do this, it was in the then circumstances both of this young man and of Christ necessary, that he should go and part with all that he had. And what was an outward, was also, as we perceive it, an inward necessity; and so, as ever, Providence and Grace would work together. For, indeed, to many of us some outward step is often not merely the means of, but absolutely needful for, spiritual decision. To some it is the first open profession of Christ; to others, the first act of self-denial, or the first distinct \u2018No\u2019-saying; to some, it may be, it is the first prayer, or else the first act of self-consecration. Yet it seems, as if it needed not only the word of God but a stroke of some Moses\u2019-rod to make the water gush forth from the rock. And thus would this young Ruler have been \u2018perfect;\u2019 and what he had given to the poor have become, not through merit nor by way of reward, but really, \u2018treasure in heaven.\u2019
\nWhat he lacked\u2014was earth\u2019s poverty and heaven\u2019s riches; a heart fully set on following Christ; and this could only come to him through willing surrender of all. And so this was to him alike the means, the test, and the need. To him it was this; to us it may be something quite other. Yet each of us has a lack\u2014something quite deep down in our hearts, which we may never yet have known, and which we must know and give up, if we would follow Christ. And without forsaking, there can be no following. This is the law of the Kingdom\u2014and it is such, because we are sinners, because sin is not only the loss of the good, but the possession of something else in its place.
\nThere is something deeply pathetic in the mode in which St. Mark describes it: \u2018he was sad\u2019\u2014the word painting a dark gloom that overshadowed the face of the young man. Did he then not lack it, this one thing? We need scarcely here recall the almost extravagant language, in which Rabbinism describes the miseries of poverty; we can understand his feelings without that. Such a possibility had never entered his mind: the thought of it was terribly startling. That he must come and follow Christ, then and there, and, in order to do so, sell all that he had and give it away among the poor, and be poor himself, a beggar, that he might have treasure in heaven; and that this should come to him as the one thing needful from that Master in Whom he believed, from Whose lips he would learn the one thing needful, and Who but a little before had been to him the All in All! It was a terrible surprise, a sentence of death to his life, and of life to his death. And that it should come from His lips, at Whose Feet he had run to kneel, and Who held for him the keys of eternal life! Rabbinism had never asked this; if it demanded almsgiving, it was in odious boastfulness; while it was declared even unlawful to give away all one\u2019s possessions\u2014at most, only a fifth of them might be dedicated.
\nAnd so, with clouded face he gazed down into what he lacked\u2014within; but also gazed up in Christ on what he needed. And, although we hear no more of him, who that day went back to his rich home very poor, because \u2018very sorrowful,\u2019 we cannot but believe that he, whom Jesus loved, yet found in the poverty of earth the treasure of heaven.
\nNor was this all. The deep pity of Christ for him, who had gone that day, speaks also in His warning to His disciples. But surely those are not only riches in the literal sense which make it so difficult for a man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven\u2014so difficult, as to amount almost to that impossibility which was expressed in the common Jewish proverb, that a man did not even in his dreams see an elephant pass through the eye of a needle. But when in their perplexity the disciples put to each other the saddened question: Who then can be saved? He pointed them onward, then upward, as well as inward, teaching them that, what was impossible of achievement by man in his own strength, God would work by His Almighty Grace.
\nIt almost jars on our ears, and prepares us for still stranger and sadder to come, when Peter, perhaps as spokesman of the rest, seems to remind the Lord that they had forsaken all to follow Him. St. Matthew records also the special question which Simon added to it: \u2018What shall we have therefore?\u2019 and hence his Gospel alone makes mention of the Lord\u2019s reply, in so far as it applied only to the Apostles. For, that reply really bore on two points: on the reward which all who left everything to follow Christ would obtain; and on the special acknowledgment awaiting the Apostles of Christ. In regard to the former we mark, that it is twofold. They who had forsaken all \u2018for His sake\u2019 \u2018and the Gospel\u2019s,\u2019 \u2018for the Kingdom of God\u2019s sake\u2019\u2014and these three expressions explain and supplement each other\u2014would receive \u2018in this time\u2019 \u2018manifold more\u2019 of new, and better, and closer relationships of a spiritual kind for those which they had surrendered, although, as St. Mark significantly adds, to prevent all possible mistakes, \u2018with persecutions.\u2019 But by the side of this stands out unclouded and bright the promise for \u2018the world to come\u2019 of. \u2018everlasting life.\u2019 As regarded the Apostles personally, some mystery lies on the special promise to them. We could quite understand, that the distinction of rule to be bestowed on them might have been worded in language taken from the expectations of the time, in order to make the promise intelligible to them. But, unfortunately, we have here no explanatory information to offer. The Rabbis, indeed, speak of a renovation or regeneration of the world (\u05de\u05d7\u05d3\u05e9 \u05d0\u05ea \u05e2\u05d5\u05dc\u05de\u05d5) which was to take place after the 7,000 or else 5,000 years of the Messianic reign. Such a renewal of all things is not only foretold by the prophets, and dwelt upon in later Jewish writings, but frequently referred to in Rabbinic literature. But as regards the special rule or \u2018judgment\u2019 of the Apostles, or ambassadors of the Messiah, we have not, and, of course, cannot expect any parallel in Jewish writings. That the promise of such rule and judgment to the Apostles is not peculiar to what is called the Judaic Gospel of St. Matthew, appears from its renewal at a later period, as recorded by St. Luke. Lastly, that it is in accordance with Old Testament promise, will be seen by a reference to Dan. 7:9, 10, 14, 27; and there are few references in the New Testament to the blessed consummation of all things in which such renewal of the world, and even the rule and judgment of the representatives of the Church, are not referred to.
\nHowever mysterious, therefore, in their details, these things seem clear, and may without undue curiosity or presumption be regarded as the teaching of our Lord: the renewal of earth; the share in His rule and judgment which He will in the future give to His saints; the special distinction which He will bestow on His Apostles, corresponding to the special gifts, privileges, and rule with which He had endowed them on earth, and to their nearness to, and their work and sacrifices for Him; and, lastly, we may add, the preservation of Israel as a distinct, probably tribal, nation. As for the rest, as so much else, it is \u2018behind the veil,\u2019 and, even as we see it, better for the Church that the veil has not been further lifted.
\nThe reference to the blessed future with its rewards was followed by a Parable, recorded, as, with one exception, all of that series, only by St. Matthew. It will best be considered in connection with the last series of Christ\u2019s Parables. But it was accompanied by what, in the circumstances, was also a most needful warning. Thoughts of the future Messianic reign, its glory, and their own part in it might have so engrossed the minds of the disciples as to make them forgetful of the terrible present, immediately before them. In such case they might not only have lapsed into that most fatal Jewish error of a Messiah-King, Who was not Saviour\u2014the Crown without the Cross\u2014but have even suffered shipwreck of their faith, when the storm broke on the Day of His Condemnation and Crucifixion. If ever, it was most needful in that hour of elation to remind and forewarn them of what was to be expected in the immediate future. How truly such preparation was required by the disciples, appears from the narrative itself.
\nThere was something sadly mysterious in the words with which Christ had closed His Parable, that the last should be first and the first last \u2014and it had carried dark misgivings to those who heard it. And now it seemed all so strange! Yet the disciples could not have indulged in illusions. His own sayings on at least two previous occasions, however ill or partially understood, must have led them to expect at any rate grievous opposition and tribulations in Jerusalem, and their endeavour to deter Christ from going to Bethany to raise Lazarus proves, that they were well aware of the danger which threatened the Master in Jud\u00e6a. Yet not only \u2018was He now going up to Jerusalem,\u2019 but there was that in His bearing which was quite unusual. As St. Mark writes, He was going \u2018before them\u2019\u2014we infer, apart and alone, as One, busy with thoughts all-engrossing, Who is setting Himself to do His great work, and goes to meet it. \u2018And going before them was Jesus; and they were amazed [utterly bewildered, viz. the Apostles]; and those who were following, were afraid.\u2019 It was then that Jesus took the Apostles apart, and, in language more precise than ever before, told them how all things that were \u2018written by the prophets shall be accomplished on the Son of Man\u2019\u2014not merely, that all that had been written concerning the Son of Man should be accomplished, but a far deeper truth, all-comprehensive as regards the Old Testament: that all its prophecy ran up into the sufferings of the Christ. As the three Evangelists report it, the Lord gave them full details of His Betrayal, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. And yet we may, without irreverence, doubt whether on that occasion He had really entered into all those particulars. In such case it would seem difficult to explain how, as St. Luke reports, \u2018they understood none of these things, and the saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken;\u2019 and again, how afterwards the actual events and the Resurrection could have taken them so by surprise. Rather do we think, that the Evangelists report what Jesus had said in the light of after-events. He did tell them of His Betrayal by the leaders of Israel, and that into the hands of the Gentiles; of His Death and Resurrection on the third day\u2014yet in language which they could, and actually did, misunderstand at the time, but which, when viewed in the light of what really happened, was perceived by them to have been actual prediction of those terrible days in Jerusalem and of the Resurrection-morning. At the time they may have thought that it pointed only to His rejection by Jews and Gentiles, to Sufferings and Death\u2014and then to a Resurrection, either of His Mission or to such a reappearance of the Messiah, after His temporary disappearance, as Judaism expected.
\nBut all this time, and with increasing fierceness, were terrible thoughts contending in the breast of Judas; and beneath the tramp of that fight was there only a thin covering of earth, to hide and keep from bursting forth the hellish fire of the master-passion within.
\nOne other incident, more strange and sad than any that had preceded, and the Per\u00e6an stay is for ever ended. It almost seems as if the fierce blast of temptation, the very breath of the destroyer, were already sweeping over the little flock, as if the twilight of the night of betrayal and desertion were already falling around. And now it has fallen on the two chosen disciples, James and John\u2014\u2018the sons of thunder,\u2019 and one of them, \u2018the beloved disciple!\u2019 Peter, the third in that band most closely bound to Christ, had already had his fierce temptation, and would have it more fiercely\u2014to the uprooting of life, if the Great High-Priest had not specially interceded for him. And, as regards these two sons of Zebedee and of Salome, we know what temptation had already beset them, how John had forbidden one to cast out devils, because he followed not with them, and how both he and his brother, James, would have called down fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans who would not receive Christ. It was essentially the same spirit that now prompted the request which their mother Salome preferred, not only with their full concurrence, but, as we are expressly told, with their active participation. There is the same faith in the Christ, the same allegiance to Him, but also the same unhallowed earnestness, the same misunderstanding\u2014and, let us add, the same latent self-exaltation, as in the two former instances, in the present request that, as the most honoured of His guests, and also as the nearest to Him, they might have their places at His Right Hand and at His Left in His Kingdom. Terribly incongruous as is any appearance of self-seeking at that moment and with that prospect before them, we cannot but feel that there is also an intenseness of faith and absoluteness of love almost sublime, when the mother steps forth from among those who follow Christ to His Suffering and Death, to proffer such a request with her sons, and for them.
\nAnd so the Saviour seems to have viewed it. With unspeakable patience and tenderness, He, Whose Soul is filled with the terrible contest before Him, bears with the weakness and selfishness which could cherish such thoughts and ambitions even at such a time. To correct them, He points to that near prospect, when the Highest is to be made low. \u2018Ye know not what ye ask!\u2019 The King is to be King through suffering\u2014are they aware of the road which leads to that goal? Those nearest to the King of sorrows must reach the place nearest to Him by the same road as He. Are they prepared for it; prepared to drink that cup of soul-agony, which the Father will hand to Him\u2014to submit to, to descend into that Baptism of consecration, when the floods will sweep over Him? In their ignorance, and listening only to the promptings of their hearts, they imagine that they are. Nay, in some measure it would be so; yet, finally to correct their mistake: to sit at His Right and at His Left Hand, these were not marks of mere favour for Him to bestow\u2014in His own words: it \u2018is not Mine to give except to them for whom it is prepared of My Father.\u2019
\nBut as for the other ten, when they heard of it, it was only the pre-eminence which, in their view, James and John had sought, which stood out before them, to their envy, jealousy, and indignation. And so, in that tremendously solemn hour would the fierce fire of controversy have broken out among them, who should have been most closely united; would jealousy and ambition have filled those who should have been most humble, and fierce passions, born of self, the world, and Satan, have distracted them, whom the thought of the great love and the great sacrifice should have filled. It was the rising of that storm on the sea, the noise and tossing of those angry billows, which He hushed into silence when He spoke to them of the grand contrast between the princes of the Gentiles as they \u2018lord it over them,\u2019 or the \u2018great among them\u2019 as they \u2018domineer\u2019 over men, and their own aims\u2014how, whosoever would be great among them, must seek his greatness in service\u2014not greatness through service, but the greatness of service; and, whosoever would be chief or rather \u2018first\u2019 among them, let it be in service. And had it not been thus, was it not, would it not be so in the Son of Man\u2014and must it not therefore be so in them who would be nearest to Him, even His Apostles and disciples? The Son of Man\u2014let them look back, let them look forward\u2014He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. And then, breaking through the reserve that had held Him, and revealing to them the inmost thoughts which had occupied Him when He had been alone and apart, going before them on the way, He spoke for the first time fully what was the deepest meaning of His Life, Mission, and Death: \u2018to give His Life a ransom for many\u2019 \u2014to pay with His Life-Blood the price of their redemption, to lay down His Life for them: in their room and stead, and for their salvation.
\nThese words must have sunk deep into the heart of one at least in that company. A few days later, and the beloved disciple tells us of this Ministry of His Love at the Last Supper, and ever afterwards, in his writings and in his life, does he seem to bear them about with him, and to re-echo them. Ever since also have they remained the foundation-truth, on which the Church has been built: the subject of her preaching, and the object of her experience.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 24<\/p>\n
IN JERICHO AND AT BETHANY\u2014JERICHO\u2014A GUEST WITH ZACCH\u00c6US\u2014THE HEALING OF BLIND BARTIM\u00c6US\u2014THE PLOT AT JERUSALEM\u2014AT BETHANY, AND IN THE HOUSE OF SIMON THE LEPER<\/p>\n
(St. Luke 19:1\u201310; St. Matt. 20:29\u201334; St. Mark 10:46\u201352; St. Luke 18:35\u201343; St. John 11:55\u201312:1; St. Matt. 26:6\u201313; St. Mark 14:3\u20139; St. John 12:2\u201311.)<\/p>\n
ONCE more, and now for the last time, were the fords of Jordan passed, and Christ was on the soil of Jud\u00e6a proper. Behind Him were Per\u00e6a and Galilee; behind Him the Ministry of the Gospel by Word and Deed; before Him the final Act of His Life, towards which all had consciously tended. Rejected as the Messiah of His people, not only in His Person but as regarded the Kingdom of God, which, in fulfilment of prophecy and of the merciful Counsel of God, He had come to establish, He was of set purpose going up to Jerusalem, there to accomplish His Decease, \u2018to give His Life a Ransom for many.\u2019 And He was coming, not, as at the Feast of Tabernacles, privately, but openly, at the head of His Apostles, and followed by many disciples\u2014a festive band going up to the Paschal Feast, of which Himself was to be \u2018the Lamb\u2019 of sacrifice.
\nThe first station reached was Jericho, the \u2018City of Palms,\u2019 a distance of only about six hours from Jerusalem. The ancient City occupied not the site of the present wretched hamlet, but lay about half an hour to the north-west of it, by the so-called Elisha-Spring. A second spring rose an hour further to the north-north-west. The water of these springs, distributed by aqueducts, gave, under a tropical sky, unsurpassed fertility to the rich soil along the \u2018plain\u2019 of Jericho, which is about twelve or fourteen miles wide. The Old Testament history of the \u2018City of Palms\u2019 is sufficiently known. It was here also that King Zedekiah had, on his flight, been seized by the Chaldeans, and thither a company of 345 men returned under Zerubbabel. In the war of liberation under the Maccabees the Syrians had attempted to fortify Jericho. These forts were afterwards destroyed by Pompey in his campaign. Herod the Great had first plundered, and then partially rebuilt, fortified, and adorned Jericho. It was here that he died. His son Archelaus also built there a palace. At the time of which we write, it was, of course, under Roman dominion. Long before, it had recovered its ancient fame for fertility and its prosperity. Josephus describes it as the richest part of the country, and calls it a little Paradise. Antony had bestowed the revenues of its balsam-plantations as an Imperial gift upon Cleopatra, who in turn sold them to Herod. Here grew palm-trees of various kinds, sycamores, the cypress-flower, the myrobalsamum, which yielded precious oil, but especially the balsam-plant. If to these advantages of climate, soil, and productions we add, that it was, so to speak, the key of Jud\u00e6a towards the east, that it lay on the caravan-road from Damascus and Arabia, that it was a great commercial and military centre, and, lastly, its nearness to Jerusalem, to which it formed the last \u2018station\u2019 on the road of the festive pilgrims from Galilee and Per\u00e6a\u2014it will not be difficult to understand either its importance or its prosperity.
\nWe can picture to ourselves the scene, as our Lord on that afternoon in early spring beheld it. There it was, indeed, already summer, for, as Josephus tells us, even in winter the inhabitants could only bear the lightest clothing of linen. We are approaching it from the Jordan. It is protected by walls, flanked by four forts. These walls, the theatre, and the amphitheatre, have been built by Herod; the new palace and its splendid gardens are the work of Archelaus. All around wave groves of feathery palms, rising in stately beauty; stretch gardens of roses, and especially sweet-scented balsam-plantations\u2014the largest behind the royal gardens, of which the perfume is carried by the wind almost out to sea, and which may have given to the city its name (Jericho, \u2018the perfumed\u2019). It is the Eden of Palestine, the very fairyland of the old world. And how strangely is this gem set! Deep down in that hollowed valley, through which tortuous Jordan winds, to lose his waters in the slimy mass of the Sea of Judgment. The river and the Dead Sea are nearly equidistant from the town\u2014about six miles. Far across the river rise the mountains of Moab, on which lies the purple and violet colouring. Towards Jerusalem and northwards stretch those bare limestone hills, the hiding-place of robbers along the desolate road towards the City. There, and in the neighbouring wilderness of Jud\u00e6a, are also the lonely dwellings of anchorites\u2014while over all this strangely varied scene has been flung the many-coloured mantle of a perpetual summer. And in the streets of Jericho a motley throng meets: pilgrims from Galilee and Per\u00e6a, priests who have a \u2018station\u2019 here, traders from all lands, who have come to purchase or to sell, or are on the great caravan-road from Arabia and Damascus\u2014robbers and anchorites, wild fanatics, soldiers, courtiers, and busy publicans\u2014for Jericho was the central station for the collection of tax and custom, both on native produce and on that brought from across Jordan. And yet it was a place for dreaming also, under that glorious summer-sky, in those scented groves\u2014when these many figures from far-off lands and that crowd of priests, numbering, according to tradition, half those in Jerusalem, seemed fleeting as in a vision, and (as Jewish legend had it) the sound of the Temple-music came from Moriah, borne in faint echoes on the breeze, like the distant sound of many waters.
\nIt was through Jericho that Jesus, \u2018having entered,\u2019 was passing. Tidings of the approach of the festive band, consisting of His disciples and Apostles, and headed by the Master Himself, must have preceded Him, these six miles from the fords of Jordan. His Name, His Works, His Teaching\u2014perhaps Himself, must have been known to the people of Jericho, just as they must have been aware of the feelings of the leaders of the people, perhaps of the approaching great contest between them and the Prophet of Nazareth. Was He a good man; had He wrought those great miracles in the power of God or by Satanic influence\u2014was He the Messiah or the Antichrist; would He bring salvation to the world, or entail ruin on His own nation: conquer or be destroyed? Was it only one more in the long list of delusions and illusions, or was the long-promised morning of heaven\u2019s own day at last to break? Close by was Bethany, whence tidings had come, most incredible yet unquestioned and unquestionable, of the raising of Lazarus, so well known to all in that neighbourhood. And yet the Sanhedrin\u2014it was well known\u2014had resolved on His death! At any rate there was no concealment about Him; and here, in face of all, and accompanied by His followers\u2014humble and unlettered, it must be admitted, but thoroughly convinced of His superhuman claims, and deeply attached\u2014Jesus was going up to Jerusalem to meet His enemies!
\nIt was the custom, when a festive band passed through a place, that the inhabitants gathered in the streets to bid their brethren welcome. And on that afternoon, surely, scarce any one in Jericho but would go forth to see this pilgrim-band. Men\u2014curious, angry, half-convinced; women, holding up their babes, it may be for a passing blessing, or pushing forward their children that in after years they might say they had seen the Prophet of Nazareth; traders, soldiers\u2014a solid wall of onlookers before their gardens was this \u2018crowd\u2019 along the road by which Jesus \u2018was to pass.\u2019 Would He only pass through the place, or be the guest of some of the leading priests in Jericho; would He teach, or work any miracle, or silently go on His way to Bethany? Only one in all that crowd seemed unwelcome; alone, and out of place. It was the \u2018chief of the Publicans\u2019\u2014the head of the tax and customs department. As his name shows, he was a Jew; but yet that very name Zacch\u00e6us, \u2018Zakkai,\u2019 \u2018the just,\u2019 or \u2018pure,\u2019 sounded like mockery. We know in what repute Publicans were held, and what opportunities of wrong-doing and oppression they possessed. And from his after-confession it is only too evident, that Zacch\u00e6us had to the full used them for evil. And he had got that for which he had given up alike his nation and his soul: \u2018he was rich.\u2019 If, as Christ had taught, it was harder for any rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, what of him who had gotten his riches by such means?
\nAnd yet Zacch\u00e6us was in the crowd that had come to see Jesus. What had brought him? Certainly, not curiosity only. Was it the long working of conscience; or a dim, scarcely self-avowed hope of something better; or had he heard Him before; or of Him, that He was so unlike those harsh leaders and teachers of Israel, who refused all hope on earth and in heaven to such as him, that Jesus received\u2014nay, called to Him the publicans and sinners? Or was it only the nameless, deep, irresistible inward drawing of the Holy Ghost, which may perhaps have brought us, as it has brought many, we know not why nor how, to the place and hour of eternal decision for God, and of infinite grace to our souls? Certain it is, that, as so often in such circumstances, Zacch\u00e6us encountered only hindrances which seemed to render his purpose almost impossible. The narrative is singularly detailed and pictorial. Zacch\u00e6us, trying to push his way through \u2018the press,\u2019 and repulsed; Zacch\u00e6us, \u2018little of stature,\u2019 and unable to look over the shoulders of others: it reads almost like a symbolical story of one who is seeking \u2018to see Jesus,\u2019 but cannot push his way because of the crowd\u2014whether of the self-righteous, or of his own conscious sins, that seem to stand between him and the Saviour, and which will not make room for him, while he is unable to look over them because he is, so to speak, \u2018little of stature.\u2019
\nNeedless questions have been asked as to the import of Zacch\u00e6us\u2019 wish \u2018to see who Jesus was.\u2019 It is just this vagueness of desire, which Zacch\u00e6us himself does not understand, which is characteristic. And, since he cannot otherwise succeed, he climbs up one of those wide-spreading sycamores in a garden, perhaps close to his own house, along the only road by which Jesus can pass\u2014\u2018to see Him.\u2019 Now the band is approaching, through that double living wall: first, the Saviour, viewing that crowd, with, ah! how different thoughts from theirs\u2014surrounded by His Apostles, the face of each expressive of such feelings as were uppermost; conspicuous among them, he who \u2018carried the bag,\u2019 with furtive, uncertain, wild glance here and there, as one who seeks to gather himself up to a terrible deed. Behind them are the disciples, men and women, who are going up with Him to the Feast. Of all persons in that crowd the least noted, the most hindered in coming\u2014and yet the one most concerned, was the Chief Publican. It is always so\u2014it is ever the order of the Gospel, that the last shall be first. Yet never more self-unconscious was Zacch\u00e6us than at the moment when Jesus was entering that garden-road, and passing under the overhanging branches of that sycamore, the crowd closing up behind, and following as He went along. Only one thought\u2014without ulterior conscious object, temporal or spiritual\u2014filled his whole being. The present absolutely held him\u2014when those wondrous Eyes, out of which heaven itself seemed to look upon earth, were upturned, and that Face of infinite grace, never to be forgotten, beamed upon him the welcome of recognition, and He uttered the self-spoken invitation in which the invited was the real Inviter, the guest the true Host. Did Jesus know Zacch\u00e6us before\u2014or was it only all open to His Divine gaze as \u2018He looked up and saw him\u2019? This latter seems, indeed, indicated by the \u2018must\u2019 of His abiding in the house of Zacch\u00e6us\u2014as if His Father had so appointed it, and Jesus come for that very purpose. And herein, also, seems this story spiritually symbolical.
\nAs bidden by Christ, Zacch\u00e6us \u2018made haste and came down.\u2019 Under the gracious influence of the Holy Ghost he \u2018received Him rejoicing.\u2019 Nothing was as yet clear to him, and yet all was joyous within his soul. In that dim twilight of the new day, and at this new creation, the Angels sang and the Sons of God shouted together, and all was melody and harmony in his heart. But a few steps farther, and they were at the house of the Chief Publican. Strange hostelry this for the Lord; yet not stranger in that Life of absolute contrasts than that first hostelry\u2014the same, even as regards its designation in the Gospel, as when the manger had been His cradle; not so strange, as at the Sabbath-feast of the Pharisee Rulers of the Synagogue. But now the murmur of disappointment and anger ran through the accompanying crowd\u2014which perhaps had not before heard what had passed between Jesus and the Publican, certainly, had not understood, or else not believed its import\u2014because He was gone to be guest with a man that was a sinner. Oh, terribly fatal misunderstanding of all that was characteristic of the Mission of the Christ! oh, terribly fatal blindness and jealousy! But it was this sudden shock of opposition which awoke Zacch\u00e6us to full consciousness. The hands so rudely and profanely thrust forward only served to rend the veil. It often needs some such sudden shock of opposition, some sudden sharp contest, to waken the new convert to full consciousness, to bring before him, in clear outline, alike the past and the present. In that moment Zacch\u00e6us saw it all: what his past had been, what his present was, what his future must be. Standing forth, not so much before the crowd as before the Lord, and not ashamed, nay, scarcely conscious of the confession it implied\u2014so much is the sorrow of the past in true repentance swallowed up by the joy of the present\u2014Zacch\u00e6us vowed fourfold restoration, as by a thief, of what had become his through false accusation, as well as the half of all his goods to the poor. And so the whole current of his life had been turned, in those few moments, through his joyous reception of Christ, the Saviour of sinners; and Zacch\u00e6us the public robber, the rich Chief of the Publicans, had become an almsgiver.
\nIt was then, when it had been all done in silence, as mostly all God\u2019s great works, that Jesus spake it to him, for his endless comfort, and in the hearing of all, for their and our teaching: \u2018This day became\u2014arose\u2014there salvation to this house,\u2019 \u2018forasmuch as,\u2019 truly and spiritually, \u2018this one also is a son of Abraham.\u2019 And, as regards this man, and all men, so long as time endureth: \u2018For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.\u2019
\nThe Evangelic record passes with significant silence over that night in the house of Zacch\u00e6us. It forms not part of the public history of the Kingdom of God, but of that joy with which a stranger intermeddleth not. It was in the morning, when the journey in company with His disciples was resumed, that the next public incident occurred in the healing of the blind by the wayside. The small divergences in the narratives of the three Evangelists are well known. It may have been that, as St. Matthew relates, there were two blind men sitting by the wayside, and that St. Luke and St. Mark mention only one\u2014the latter by name as \u2018Bar Tim\u00e6us\u2019\u2014because he was the spokesman. But, in regard to the other divergence, trifling as it is, that St. Luke places the incident at the arrival, the other two Evangelists at the departure of Jesus from Jericho, it is better to admit our inability to conciliate these differing notes of time, than to make clumsy attempts at harmonising them. We can readily believe that there may have been circumstances unknown to us, which might show these statements to be not really diverging. And, if it were otherwise, it would in no way affect the narrative itself. Historical information could only have been derived from local sources; and we have already seen reason to infer that St. Luke had gathered his from personal inquiry on the spot. And it may have been, either that the time was not noted, or wrongly noted, or that this miracle, as the only one in Jericho, may have been reported to him before mention was made of the reception of Christ by Zacch\u00e6us. In any case, it shows the independence of the account of St. Luke from that of the other two Evangelists.
\nLittle need be said of the incident itself: it is so like the other Deeds of His Life. So to speak\u2014it was left in Jericho as the practical commentary, and the seal on what Christ had said and done the previous evening in regard to Zacch\u00e6us. Once more the crowd was following Jesus, as in the morning He resumed the journey with His disciples. And there by the wayside, begging, sat the blind men\u2014there, where Jesus was passing. As they heard the tramp of many feet and the sound of many voices, they learned that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. It is all deeply touching, and deeply symbolical. But what must their faith have been, when there, in Jericho, they not only owned Him as the true Messiah, but cried\u2014in the deep significance of that special mode of address, as coming from Jewish lips: \u2018Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!\u2019 It was quite in accordance with what one might almost have expected\u2014certainly with the temper of Jericho, as we learned it on the previous evening, when \u2018many,\u2019 the \u2018multitude,\u2019 \u2018they which went before,\u2019 would have bidden that cry for help be silent as an unwarrantable intrusion and interruption, if not a needless and meaningless application. But only all the louder and more earnest, rose the cry, as the blind felt that they might for ever be robbed of the opportunity that was slipping past. And He, Who listens to every cry of distress, heard this. He stood still, and commanded the blind to be called. Then it was that the sympathy of sudden hope seized the \u2018multitude\u2019\u2014the wonder about to be wrought fell, so to speak, in its heavenly influences upon them, as they comforted the blind in the agony of rising despair with the words, \u2018He calleth thee.\u2019 As so often, we are indebted to St. Mark for the vivid sketch of what passed. We can almost see Bartim\u00e6us as, on receiving Christ\u2019s summons, he casts aside his upper garment and hastily comes. That question: what he would that Jesus should do unto him, must have been meant for those around more than for the blind. The cry to the Son of David had been only for mercy. It might have been for alms\u2014though, as the address, so the gift bestowed in answer, would be right royal\u2014\u2018after the order of David.\u2019 But our general cry for mercy must ever become detailed when we come into the Presence of the Christ. And the faith of the blind rose to the full height of the Divine possibilities opened before them. Their inward eyes had received capacity for The Light, before that of earth lit up their long darkness. In the language of St. Matthew, \u2018Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes.\u2019 This is one aspect of it. The other is that given by St. Mark and St. Luke, in recording the words with which He accompanied the healing: \u2018Thy faith hath saved thee.\u2019
\nAnd these two results came of it: \u2018all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God;\u2019 and, as for Bartim\u00e6us, though Jesus had bidden him \u2018go thy way,\u2019 yet, \u2018immediately he received his sight,\u2019 he \u2018followed Jesus in the way,\u2019 glorifying God. And this is Divine disobedience, or rather the obedience of the spirit as against the observance of the letter.
\nThe arrival of the Paschal band from Galilee and Per\u00e6a was not in advance of many others. In truth, most pilgrims from a distance would probably come to the Holy City some days before the Feast, for the sake of purification in the Temple, since those who for any reason needed such\u2014and there would be few families that did not require it\u2014generally deferred it till the festive season brought them to Jerusalem. We owe this notice, and that which follows, to St. John, and in this again recognise the Jewish writer of the Fourth Gospel. It was only natural that these pilgrims should have sought for Jesus, and, when they did not find Him, discuss among themselves the probability of His coming to the Feast. His absence would, after the work which He had done these three years, the claim which He made, and the defiant denial of it by the priesthood and the Sanhedrin, have been regarded as a virtual surrender to the enemy. There was a time when He need not have appeared at the Feast\u2014when, as we see it, it was better He should not come. But that time was past. The chief priests and the Pharisees also knew it, and they \u2018had given commandment that, if any one knew where He was, he would show it, that they might take Him.\u2019 It would be better to ascertain where He lodged, and to seize Him before He appeared in public, in the Temple.
\nBut it was not as they had imagined. Without concealment Christ came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom He had raised from the dead. He came there six days before the Passover\u2014and yet His coming was such that they could not \u2018take Him.\u2019 They might as well take Him in the Temple; nay, more easily. For, the moment His stay in Bethany became known, \u2018much people of the Jews\u2019 came out, not only for His sake, but to see that Lazarus whom He had raised from the dead. And, of those who so came, many went away believing. And how, indeed, could it be otherwise? Thus one of their plans was frustrated, and the evil seemed only to grow worse. The Sanhedrin could perhaps not be moved to such flagrant outrage of all Jewish Law, but \u2018the chief priests,\u2019 who had no such scruples, consulted how they might put Lazarus also to death.
\nYet, not until His hour had come could man do aught against Christ or His disciples. And, in contrast to such scheming, haste, and search, we mark the majestic calm and quiet of Him Who knew what was before Him. Jesus had arrived at Bethany six days before the Passover\u2014that is, on a Friday. The day after was the Sabbath, and \u2018they made Him a supper.\u2019 It was the special festive meal of the Sabbath. The words of St. John seem to indicate that the meal was a public one, as if the people of Bethany had combined to do Him this honour, and so share the privilege of attending the feast. In point of fact, we know from St. Matthew and St. Mark that it took place \u2018in the house of Simon the Leper\u2019\u2014not, of course, an actual leper\u2014but one who had been such. Perhaps his guest-chamber was the largest in Bethany; perhaps the house was nearest to the Synagogue; or there may have been other reasons for it, unknown to us\u2014least likely is the suggestion that Simon was the husband of Martha, or else her father. But all is in character. Among the guests is Lazarus; and, prominent in service, Martha; and Mary (the unnamed woman of the other two Gospels, which do not mention that household by name), is also true to her character. She had \u2018an alabaster\u2019 of \u2018spikenard genuine,\u2019 which was very precious. It held \u2018a litra\u2019 (\u05dc\u05d9\u05d8\u05b0\u05e8\u05b8\u05d0 or \u05dc\u05d9\u05de\u05b7\u05e8\u05b0\u05ea\u05b8\u05bc\u05d0), which was a \u2018Roman pound,\u2019 and its value could not have been less than nearly 9l. Remembering the price of Nard, as given by Pliny, and that the Syrian was only next in value to the Indian, which Pliny regarded as the best ointment of \u2018genuine\u2019 Nard\u2014unadulterated and unmixed with any other balsam (as the less expensive kinds were), such a price (300 dinars=nearly 9l.) would be by no means excessive; indeed, much lower than at Rome. But, viewed in another light, the sum spent was very large, remembering that 200 dinars (about 6l.) nearly sufficed to provide bread for 5,000 men with their families, and that the ordinary wages of a labourer amounted to only one dinar a day.
\nWe can here offer only conjectures. But it is, at least, not unreasonable to suppose\u2014remembering the fondness of Jewish women for such perfumes\u2014that Mary may have had that \u2018alabaster\u2019 of very costly ointment from olden days, before she had learned to serve Christ. Then, when she came to know Him, and must have learned how constantly that Decease, of which He ever spoke, was before His Mind, she may have put it aside, \u2018kept it,\u2019 \u2018against the day of His burying.\u2019 And now the decisive hour had come. Jesus may have told her, as He had told the disciples, what was before Him in Jerusalem at the Feast, and she would be far more quick to understand, even as she must have known far better than they, how great was the danger from the Sanhedrin. And it is this believing apprehension of the mystery of His Death on her part, and this preparation of deepest love for it\u2014this mixture of sorrow, faith, and devotion\u2014which made her deed so precious, that, wherever in the future the Gospel would be preached, this also that she had done would be recorded for a memorial of her. And the more we think of it, the better can we understand, how, at that last feast of fellowship, when all the other guests realised not\u2014no, not even His disciples\u2014how near the end was, she would \u2018come aforehand to anoint His Body for the burying.\u2019 Her faith made it a twofold anointing: that of the best Guest at the last feast, and that of preparation for that Burial which, of all others, she apprehended as so terribly near. And deepest humility now offered, what most earnest love had provided, and intense faith, in view of what was coming, applied. And so she poured the precious ointment over His Head, over His Feet\u2014then, stooping over them, wiped them with her hair, as if, not only in evidence of service and love, but in fellowship of His Death. \u2018And the house was filled\u2019\u2014and to all time His House, the Church, is filled\u2014\u2018with the odour of the ointment.\u2019
\nIt is ever the light which throws the shadows of objects\u2014and this deed of faith and love now cast the features of Judas in gigantic dark outlines against the scene. He knew the nearness of Christ\u2019s Betrayal, and hated the more; she knew of the nearness of His precious Death, and loved the more. It was not that he cared for the poor, when, taking the mask of charity, he simulated anger that such costly ointment had not been sold, and the price given to the poor. For he was essentially dishonest, \u2018a thief,\u2019 and covetousness was the underlying master-passion of his soul. The money, claimed for the poor, would only have been used by himself. Yet such was his pretence of righteousness, such his influence as \u2018a man of prudence\u2019 among the disciples, and such their sad weakness, that they, or at least \u2018some,\u2019 expressed indignation among themselves and against her who had done the deed of love, which, when viewed in the sublimeness of a faith, that accepted and prepared for the death of a Saviour Whom she so loved, and to Whom this last, the best service she could, was to be devoted, would for ever cause her to be thought of as an example of loving. There is something inexpressibly sad, yet so patient, gentle, and tender in Christ\u2019s \u2018Let her alone.\u2019 Surely, never could there be waste in ministry of love to Him! Nay, there is unspeakable pathos in what He says of His near Burying, as if He would still their souls in view of it. That He, Who was ever of the poor and with them, Who for our sakes became poor, that through His poverty we might be made rich, should have to plead for a last service of love to Himself, and for Mary, and as against a Judas, seems, indeed, the depth of self-abasement. Yet, even so, has this falsely-spoken plea for the poor become a real plea, since He has left us this, as it were, as His last charge, and that by His own Death, that we have the poor always with us. And so do even the words of covetous dishonesty become, when passing across Him, transformed into the command of charity, and the breath of hell is changed into the summer-warmth of the Church\u2019s constant service to Christ in the ministry to His poor.<\/p>\n
BOOK 5<\/p>\n
The Cross and the Crown.<\/p>\n
\u2018Ave, scala peccatorum,
\nQua ascendit rex c\u0153lorum,
\nUt ad choros Angelorum
\nHomo sic ascenderet;
\nIn te vitam reparavit
\nAuctor vit\u00e6, proles David,
\nEt sic se humiliavit.
\nUt mundum redimeret.
\nAp. DANIEL, Thes. Hymnol. vol. 5. p. 183
\n\u2018The blessing from the cloud that: showers,
\nIn wondrous twofold birth
\nOf heaven is and earth\u2014
\nHe is both yours, ye hosts, and ours:
\nHosannah, David\u2019s Son,
\nFor victory is won!
\nHe left us with a blessing here,
\nAnd took it to the sky;
\nThe blessing from on high
\nBespeaks to us His Presence near:
\nHosannah, David\u2019s Son,
\nFor victory is won!\u2019
\n(From an Ascension Hymn).\u2014A. E.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 1<\/p>\n
THE FIRST DAY IN PASSION-WEEK\u2014PALM SUNDAY\u2014THE ROYAL ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 21:1\u201311; St. Mark 11:1\u201311; St. Luke 19:29\u201344; St. John 12:12\u201319.)<\/p>\n
AT length the time of the end had come. Jesus was about to make Entry into Jerusalem as King: King of the Jews, as Heir of David\u2019s royal line, with all of symbolic, typic, and prophetic import attaching to it. Yet not as Israel after the flesh expected its Messiah was the Son of David to make triumphal entrance, but as deeply and significantly expressive of His Mission and Work, and as of old the rapt seer had beheld afar off the outlined picture of the Messiah-King: not in the proud triumph of war-conquests, but in the \u2018meek\u2019 rule of peace.
\nIt is surely one of the strangest mistakes of modern criticism to regard this Entry of Christ into Jerusalem as implying that, fired by enthusiasm, He had for the moment expected that the people would receive Him as the Messiah. And it seems little, if at all better, when this Entry is described as \u2018an apparent concession to the fevered expectations of His disciples and the multitude \u2026 the grave, sad accommodation to thoughts other than His own to which the Teacher of new truths must often have recourse when He finds Himself misinterpreted by those who stand together on a lower level.\u2019 \u2018Apologies\u2019 are the weakness of \u2018Apologetics\u2019\u2014and any \u2018accommodation\u2019 theory can have no place in the history of the Christ. On the contrary, we regard His Royal Entry into the Jerusalem of Prophecy and of the Crucifixion as an integral part of the history of Christ, which would not be complete, nor thoroughly consistent, without it. It behoved Him so to enter Jerusalem, because He was a King; and as King to enter it in such manner, because He was such a King\u2014and both the one and the other were in accordance with the prophecy of old.
\nIt was a bright day in early spring of the year 29, when the festive procession set out from the home at Bethany. There can be no reasonable doubt as to the locality of that hamlet (the modern El-\u2019Azar\u00edye, \u2018of Lazarus\u2019), perched on a broken rocky plateau on the other side of Olivet. More difficulty attaches to the identification of Bethphage, which is associated with it, the place not being mentioned in the Old Testament, though repeatedly in Jewish writings. But, even so, there is a curious contradiction, since Bethphage is sometimes spoken of as distinct from Jerusalem, while at others it is described as, for ecclesiastical purposes, part of the City itself. Perhaps the name Bethphage\u2014\u2018house of figs\u2019\u2014was given alike to that district generally, and to a little village close to Jerusalem where the district began. And this may explain the peculiar reference, in the Synoptic Gospels, to Bethphage (St. Matthew), and again to \u2018Bethphage and Bethany.\u2019 For, St. Matthew and St. Mark relate Christ\u2019s brief stay at Bethany and His anointing by Mary not in chronological order, but introduce it at a later period, as it were, in contrast to the betrayal of Judas. Accordingly, they pass from the Miracles at Jericho immediately to the Royal Entry into Jerusalem\u2014from Jericho to \u2018Bethphage,\u2019 or, more exactly, to \u2018Bethphage and Bethany,\u2019 leaving for the present unnoticed what had occurred in the latter hamlet.
\nAlthough all the four Evangelists relate Christ\u2019s Entry into Jerusalem, they seem to do so from different standpoints. The Synoptists accompany Him from Bethany, while St. John, in accordance with the general scheme of his narrative, seems to follow from Jerusalem that multitude which, on tidings of His approach, hastened to meet Him. Even this circumstance, as also the paucity of events recorded on that day, proves that it could not have been at early morning that Jesus left Bethany. Remembering, that it was the last morning of rest before the great contest, we may reverently think of much that may have passed in the Soul of Jesus and in the home of Bethany. And now He has left that peaceful resting-place. It was probably soon after His outset, that He sent the \u2018two disciples\u2019\u2014possibly Peter and John\u2014into \u2018the village over against\u2019 them\u2014presumably Bethphage. There they would find by the side of the road an ass\u2019s colt tied, whereon never man had sat. We mark the significant symbolism of the latter, in connection with the general conditions of consecration to Jehovah\u2014and note in it, as also in the Mission of the Apostles, that this was intended by Christ to be His Royal and Messianic Entry. This colt they were to loose and to bring to Him.
\nThe disciples found all as He had said. When they reached Bethphage, they saw, by a doorway where two roads met, the colt tied by its mother. As they loosed it, \u2018the owners\u2019 and \u2018certain of them that stood by\u2019 asked their purpose, to which, as directed by the Master, they answered: \u2018The Lord [the Master, Christ] hath need of him,\u2019 when, as predicted, no further hindrance was offered. In explanation of this we need not resort to the theory of a miraculous influence, nor even suppose that the owners of the colt were themselves \u2018disciples.\u2019 Their challenge to \u2018the two,\u2019 and the little more than permission which they gave, seem to forbid this idea. Nor is such explanation requisite. From the pilgrim-band which had accompanied Jesus from Galilee and Per\u00e6a, and preceded Him to Jerusalem, from the guests at the Sabbath-feast in Bethany, and from the people who had gone out to see both Jesus and Lazarus, the tidings of the proximity of Jesus and of His approaching arrival must have spread in the City. Perhaps that very morning some had come from Bethany, and told it in the Temple, among the festive bands\u2014specially among His own Galileans, and generally in Jerusalem, that on that very day\u2014in a few hours\u2014Jesus might be expected to enter the City. Such, indeed, must have been the case, since, from St. John\u2019s account, \u2018a great multitude\u2019 \u2018went forth to meet Him.\u2019 The latter, we can have little doubt, must have mostly consisted, not of citizens of Jerusalem, whose enmity to Christ was settled, but of those \u2018that had come to the Feast.\u2019 With these went also a number of \u2018Pharisees,\u2019 their hearts filled with bitterest thoughts of jealousy and hatred. And, as we shall presently see, it is of great importance to keep in mind this composition of \u2018the multitude.\u2019
\nIf such were the circumstances, all is natural. We can understand, how eager questioners would gather about the owners of the colt (St. Mark), there at the cross-roads at Bethphage, just outside Jerusalem; and how, so soon as from the bearing and the peculiar words of the disciples they understood their purpose, the owners of the ass and colt would grant its use for the solemn Entry into the City of the \u2018Teacher of Nazareth, Whom the multitude was so eagerly expecting; and, lastly, how, as from the gates of Jerusalem tidings spread of what had passed in Bethphage, the multitude would stream forth to meet Jesus.
\nMeantime Christ and those who followed Him from Bethany had slowly entered on the well-known caravan-road from Jericho to Jerusalem. It is the most southern of three, which converge close to the City, perhaps at the very place where the colt had stood tied. \u2018The road soon loses sight of Bethany. It is now a rough, but still broad and well-defined mountain-track, winding over rock and loose stones; a steep declivity on the left; the sloping shoulder of Olivet above on the right; fig-trees below and above, here and there growing out of the rocky soil.\u2019 Somewhere here the disciples who brought \u2018the colt\u2019 must have met Him. They were accompanied by many, and immediately followed by more. For, as already stated, Bethphage\u2014we presume the village\u2014formed almost part of Jerusalem, and during Easter-week must have been crowded by pilgrims, who could not find accommodation within the City walls. And the announcement, that disciples of Jesus had just fetched the beast of burden on which Jesus was about to enter Jerusalem, must have quickly spread among the crowds which thronged the Temple and the City.
\nAs the two disciples, accompanied, or immediately followed by the multitude, brought \u2018the colt\u2019 to Christ, \u2018two streams of people met\u2019\u2014the one coming from the City, the other from Bethany. The impression left on our minds is, that what followed was unexpected by those who accompanied Christ, that it took them by surprise. The disciples, who understood not, till the light of the Resurrection-glory had been poured on their minds, the significance of \u2018these things,\u2019 even after they had occurred, seem not even to have guessed, that it was of set purpose Jesus was about to make His Royal Entry into Jerusalem. Their enthusiasm seems only to have been kindled when they saw the procession from the town come to meet Jesus with palm-branches, cut down by the way, and greeting Him with Hosanna-shouts of welcome. Then they spread their garments on the colt, and set Jesus thereon\u2014\u2018unwrapped their loose cloaks from their shoulders and stretched them along the rough path, to form a momentary carpet as He approached.\u2019 Then also in their turn they cut down branches from the trees and gardens through which they passed, or plaited and twisted palm-branches, and strewed them as a rude matting in His way, while they joined in, and soon raised to a much higher pitch the Hosanna of welcoming praise. Nor need we wonder at their ignorance at first of the meaning of that, in which themselves were chief actors. We are too apt to judge them from our standpoint, eighteen centuries later, and after full apprehension of the significance of the event. These men walked in the procession almost as in a dream, or as dazzled by a brilliant light all around\u2014as if impelled by a necessity, and carried from event to event, which came upon them in a succession of but partially understood surprises.
\nThey had now ranged themselves: the multitude which had come from the City preceding, that which had come with Him from Bethany following the triumphant progress of Israel\u2019s King, \u2018meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.\u2019 \u2018Gradually the long procession swept up and over the ridge where first begins \u201cthe descent of the Mount of Olives\u201d towards Jerusalem. At this point the first view is caught of the south-eastern corner of the City. The Temple and the more northern portions are hid by the slope of Olivet on the right; what is seen is only Mount Zion, now for the most part a rough field.\u2019 But at that time it rose, terrace upon terrace, from the Palace of the Maccabees and that of the High-Priest, a very city of palaces, till the eye rested in the summit on that castle, city, and palace, with its frowning towers and magnificent gardens, the royal abode of Herod, supposed to occupy the very site of the Palace of David. They had been greeting Him with Hosannas! But enthusiasm, especially in such a cause, is infectious. They were mostly stranger-pilgrims that had come from the City, chiefly because they had heard of the raising of Lazarus. And now they must have questioned them which came from Bethany, who in turn related that of which themselves had been eyewitnesses. We can imagine it all\u2014how the fire would leap from heart to heart. So He was the promised Son of David\u2014and the Kingdom was at hand! It may have been just as the precise point of the road was reached, where \u2018the City of David\u2019 first suddenly emerges into view, \u2018at the descent of the Mount of Olives,\u2019 \u2018that the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen.\u2019 As the burning words of joy and praise, the record of what they had seen, passed from mouth to mouth, and they caught their first sight of \u2018the City of David,\u2019 adorned as a bride to welcome her King\u2014Davidic praise to David\u2019s Greater Son wakened the echoes of old Davidic Psalms in the morning-light of their fulfilment. \u2018Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed be He that cometh in the Name of the Lord.\u2026 Blessed the Kingdom that cometh, the Kingdom of our father David.\u2026 Blessed be He that cometh in the Name of the Lord \u2026 Hosanna \u2026 Hosanna in the highest \u2026 Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.\u2019
\nThey were but broken utterances, partly based upon Ps. 118., partly taken from it\u2014the \u2018Hosanna,\u2019 or \u2018Save now,\u2019 and the \u2018Blessed be He that cometh in the Name of the Lord,\u2019 forming part of the responses by the people with which this Psalm was chanted on certain of the most solemn festivals. Most truly did they thus interpret and apply the Psalm, old and new Davidic praise mingling in their acclamations. At the same time it must be remembered that, according to Jewish tradition, Ps. 118. vv. 25\u201328, was also chanted antiphonally by the people of Jerusalem, as they went to welcome the festive pilgrims on their arrival, the latter always responding in the second clause of each verse, till the last verse of the Psalm was reached, which was sung by both parties in unison, Psalm 103:17 being added by way of conclusion. But as \u2018the shout rang through the long defile,\u2019 carrying evidence far and wide, that, so far from condemning and forsaking, more than the ordinary pilgrim-welcome had been given to Jesus\u2014the Pharisees, who had mingled with the crowd, turned to one another with angry frowns: \u2018Behold [see intently], how ye prevail nothing! See\u2014the world is gone after Him!\u2019 It is always so, that, in the disappointment of malice, men turn in impotent rage against each other with taunts and reproaches. Then, psychologically true in this also, they made a desperate appeal to the Master Himself, Whom they so bitterly hated, to check and rebuke the honest zeal of His disciples. He had been silent hitherto\u2014alone unmoved, or only deeply moved inwardly\u2014amidst this enthusiastic crowd. He could be silent no longer\u2014but, with a touch of quick and righteous indignation, pointed to the rocks and stones, telling those leaders of Israel that, if the people held their peace, the very stones would cry out. It would have been so in that day of Christ\u2019s Entry into Jerusalem. And it has been so ever since. Silence has fallen these many centuries upon Israel; but the very stones of Jerusalem\u2019s ruin and desolateness have cried out that He, Whom in their silence they rejected, has come as King in the Name of the Lord.
\n\u2018Again the procession advanced. The road descends a slight declivity, and the glimpse of the City is again withdrawn behind the intervening ridge of Olivet. A few moments and the path mounts again, it climbs a rugged ascent, it reaches a ledge of smooth rock, and in an instance the whole City bursts into view. As now the dome of the Mosque El-Aksa rises like a ghost from the earth before the traveller stands on the ledge, so then must have risen the Temple-tower; as now the vast enclosure of the Mussulman sanctuary, so then must have spread the Temple courts; as now the grey town on its broken hills, so then the magnificent City, with its background\u2014long since vanished away\u2014of gardens and suburbs on the western plateau behind. Immediately before was the Valley of the Kedron, here seen in its greatest depth as it joins the Valley of Hinnom, and thus giving full effect to the great peculiarity of Jerusalem, seen only on its eastern side\u2014its situation as of a City rising out of a deep abyss. It is hardly possible to doubt that this rise and turn of the road\u2014this rocky ledge\u2014was the exact point where the multitude paused again, and \u201cHe, when He beheld the City, wept over it.\u201d \u2019 Not with still weeping (\u1f10\u03b4\u03ac\u03ba\u03c1\u03c5\u03c3\u03b5\u03bd), as at the grave of Lazarus, but with loud and deep lamentation (\u1f14\u03ba\u03bb\u03b1\u03c5\u03c3\u03b5\u03bd). The contrast was, indeed, terrible between the Jerusalem that rose before Him in all its beauty, glory, and security, and the Jerusalem which He saw in vision dimly rising on the sky, with the camp of the enemy round about it on every side, hugging it closer and closer in deadly embrace, and the very \u2018stockade\u2019 which the Roman Legions raised around it; then, another scene in the shifting panorama, and the City laid with the ground, and the gory bodies of her children among her ruins; and yet another scene: the silence and desolateness of death by the Hand of God\u2014not one stone left upon another! We know only too well how literally this vision has become reality; and yet, though uttered as prophecy by Christ, and its reason so clearly stated, Israel to this day knows not the things which belong unto its peace, and the upturned scattered stones of its dispersion are crying out in testimony against it. But to this day, also, do the tears of Christ plead with the Church on Israel\u2019s behalf, and His words bear within them precious seed of promise.
\nWe turn once more to the scene just described. For, it was no common pageantry; and Christ\u2019s public Entry into Jerusalem seems so altogether different from\u2014we had almost said, inconsistent with\u2014His previous mode of appearance. Evidently, the time for the silence so long enjoined had passed, and that for public declaration had come. And such, indeed, this Entry was. From the moment of His sending forth the two disciples to His acceptance of the homage of the multitude, and His rebuke of the Pharisees\u2019 attempt to arrest it, all must be regarded as designed or approved by Him: not only a public assertion of His Messiahship, but a claim to its national acknowledgment. And yet, even so, it was not to be the Messiah of Israel\u2019s conception, but He of prophetic picture: \u2018just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass.\u2019 It is foreign to our present purpose to discuss any general questions about this prophecy, or even to vindicate its application to the Messiah. But, when we brush aside all the trafficking and bargaining over words, that constitutes so much of modern criticism, which in its care over the letter so often loses the spirit, there can, at least, be no question that this prophecy was intended to introduce, in contrast to earthly warfare and kingly triumph, another Kingdom, of which the just King would be the Prince of Peace, Who was meek and lowly in His Advent, Who would speak peace to the heathen, and Whose sway would yet extend to earth\u2019s utmost bounds. Thus much may be said, that if there ever was true picture of the Messiah-King and His Kingdom, it is this; and that, if ever Israel was to have a Messiah or the world a Saviour, He must be such as described in this prophecy\u2014not merely in the letter, but in the spirit of it. And, as so often indicated, it was not the letter but the spirit of prophecy\u2014and of all prophecy\u2014which the ancient Synagogue, and that rightly, saw fulfilled in the Messiah and His Kingdom. Accordingly, with singular unanimity, the Talmud and the ancient Rabbinic authorities have applied this prophecy to the Christ. Nor was it quoted by St. Matthew and St. John in the stiffness and deadness of the letter. On the contrary (as so often in Jewish writings), two prophecies\u2014Isa. 62:11, and Zech. 9:9\u2014are made to shed their blended light upon this Entry of Christ, as exhibiting the reality, of which the prophetic vision had been the reflex. Nor yet are the words of the Prophets given literally\u2014as modern criticism would have them weighed out in the critical balances\u2014either from the Hebrew text, or from the LXX. rendering; but their real meaning is given, and they are \u2018Targumed\u2019 by the sacred writers, according to their wont. Yet who that sets the prophetic picture by the side of the reality\u2014the description by the side of Christ\u2019s Entry into Jerusalem\u2014can fail to recognise in the one the real fulfilment of the other?
\nAnother point seems to require comment. We have seen reason to regard the bearing of the disciples as one of surprise, and that, all through these last scenes, they seem to have been hurried from event to event. But the enthusiasm of the people\u2014their royal welcome of Christ\u2014how is it to be explained, and how reconciled with the speedy and terrible reaction of His Betrayal and Crucifixion? Yet it is not so difficult to understand it; and, if we only keep clear of unconscious exaggeration, we shall gain in truth and reasonableness what we lose in dramatic effect. It has already been suggested, that the multitude which went to meet Jesus must have consisted chiefly of pilgrim-strangers. The overwhelming majority of the citizens of Jerusalem were bitterly and determinately hostile to Christ. But we know that, even so, the Pharisees dreaded to take the final steps against Christ during the presence of these pilgrims at the Feast, apprehending a movement in His favour. It proved, indeed, otherwise; for these country-people were but ill-informed; they dared not resist the combined authority of their own Sanhedrin and of the Romans. Besides, the prejudices of the populace, and especially of an Eastern populace, are easily raised, and they readily sway from one extreme to the opposite. Lastly, the very suddenness and completeness of the blow, which the Jewish authorities delivered, would have stunned even those who had deeper knowledge, more cohesion, and greater independence than most of them who, on that Palm-Sunday, had gone forth from the City.
\nAgain, as regards their welcome of Christ, deeply significant as it was, we must not attach to it deeper meaning than it possessed. Modern writers have mostly seen in it the demonstrations of the Feast of Tabernacles, as if the homage of its services had been offered to Christ. It would, indeed, have been symbolic of much about Israel if they had thus confounded the Second with the First Advent of Christ, the Sacrifice of the Passover with the joy of the Feast of Ingathering. But, in reality, their conduct bears not that interpretation. It is true that these responses from Ps. 118., which formed part of what was known as the (Egyptian) Hallel, were chanted by the people on the Feast of Tabernacles also, but the Hallel was equally sung with responses during the offering of the Passover, at the Paschal Supper, and on the Feasts of Pentecost and of the Dedication of the Temple. The waving of the palm-branches was the welcome of visitors or kings, and not distinctive of the Feast of Tabernacles. At the latter, the worshippers carried, not simple palmbranches, but the Lulabh, which consisted of palm, myrtle, and willow branches interwined. Lastly, the words of welcome from Ps. 118. were (as already stated) those with which on solemn occasions the people also greeted the arrival of festive pilgrims, although, as being offered to Christ alone, and as accompanied by such demonstrations, they may have implied that they hailed Him as the promised King, and have converted His Entry into a triumph in which the people did homage. And, if proof were required of the more sober, and, may we not add, rational view here advocated, it would be found in this, that not till after His Resurrection did even His own disciples understand the significance of the whole scene which they had witnessed, and in which they had borne such a part.
\nThe anger and jealousy of the Pharisees understood it better, and watched for the opportunity of revenge. But, for the present, on that bright spring-day, the weak, excitable, fickle populace streamed before Him through the City-gates, through the narrow streets, up the Temple-mount. Everywhere the tramp of their feet, and the shout of their acclamations brought men, women, and children into the streets and on the housetops. The City was moved, and from mouth to mouth the question passed among the eager crowd of curious onlookers: \u2018Who is He?\u2019 And the multitude answered\u2014not, this is Israel\u2019s Messiah-King, but: \u2018This is Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.\u2019 And so up into the Temple!
\nHe alone was silent and sad among this excited multitude, the marks of the tears He had wept over Jerusalem still on His cheek. It is not so, that an earthly King enters His City in triumph; not so, that the Messiah of Israel\u2019s expectation would have gone into His Temple. He spake not, but only looked round about upon all things, as if to view the field on which He was to suffer and die. And now the shadows of evening were creeping up; and, weary and sad, He once more returned with the twelve disciples to the shelter and rest of Bethany.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 2<\/p>\n
THE SECOND DAY IN PASSION-WEEK\u2014THE BARREN FIG-TREE\u2014THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE\u2014THE HOSANNA OF THE CHILDREN<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 21:12\u201322; St. Mark 11:15\u201326; St. Luke 19:45\u201348.)<\/p>\n
How the King of Israel spent the night after the triumphal Entry into His City and Temple, we may venture reverently to infer. His royal banquet would be fellowship with the disciples. We know how often His nights had been spent in lonely prayer, and surely it is not too bold to associate such thoughts with the first night in Passion-week. Thus, also, we can most readily account for that exhaustion and faintness of hunger, which next morning made Him seek fruit on the fig-tree on His way to the City.
\nIt was very early on the morning of the second day in Passion-week (Monday), when Jesus, with His disciples, left Bethany. In the fresh, crisp, spring air, after the exhaustion of that night, \u2018He hungered.\u2019 By the roadside, as so often in the East, a solitary tree grew in the rocky soil. It must have stood on an eminence, where it caught the sunshine and warmth, for He saw it \u2018afar off,\u2019 and though spring had but lately wooed nature into life, it stood out, with its wide-spreading mantle of green, against the sky. \u2018It was not the season of figs,\u2019 but the tree, covered with leaves, attracted His attention. It might have been, that they hid some of the fruit which hung through the winter, or else the springing fruits of the new crop. For it is a well-known fact, that in Palestine \u2018the fruit appears before the leaves,\u2019 and that this fig-tree, whether from its exposure or soil, was precocious, is evident from the fact that it was in leaf, which is quite unusual at that season on the Mount of Olives. The old fruit would, of course, have been edible, and in regard to the unripe fruit we have the distinct evidence of the Mishnah, confirmed by the Talmud, that the unripe fruit was eaten, so soon as it began to assume a red colour\u2014as it is expressed, \u2018in the field, with bread,\u2019 or, as we understand it, by those whom hunger overtook in the fields, whether working or travelling. But in the present case there was neither old nor new fruit, \u2018but leaves only.\u2019 It was evidently a barren fig-tree, cumbering the ground, and to be hewn down. Our mind almost instinctively reverts to the Parable of the Barren Fig-tree, which He had so lately spoken. To Him, Who but yesterday had wept over the Jerusalem that knew not the day of its visitation, and over which the sharp axe of judgment was already lifted, this fig-tree, with its luxuriant mantle of leaves, must have recalled, with pictorial vividness, the scene of the previous day. Israel was that barren fig-tree; and the leaves only covered their nakedness, as erst they had that of our first parents after their Fall. And the judgment, symbolically spoken in the Parable, must be symbolically executed in this leafy fig-tree, barren when searched for fruit by the Master. It seems almost an inward necessity, not only symbolically but really also, that Christ\u2019s Word should have laid it low. We cannot conceive that any other should have eaten of it after the hungering Christ had in vain sought fruit thereon. We cannot conceive that anything should resist Christ, and not be swept away. We cannot conceive, that the reality of what He had taught should not, when occasion came, be visibly placed before the eyes of the disciples. Lastly, we seem to feel (with Bengel) that, as always, the manifestation of His true Humanity, in hunger, should be accompanied by that of His Divinity, in the power of His Word of judgment.
\nWith St. Matthew, who, for the sake of continuity, relates this incident after the events of that day (the Monday) and immediately before those of the next, we anticipate what was only witnessed on the morrow. As St. Matthew has it: on Christ\u2019s Word the fig-tree immediately withered away. But according to the more detailed account of St. Mark, it was only next morning, when they again passed by, that they noticed the fig-tree had withered from its very roots. The spectacle attracted their attention, and vividly recalled the Words of Christ, to which, on the previous day, they had, perhaps, scarcely attached sufficient importance. And it was the suddenness and completeness of the judgment that had been denounced, which now struck Peter, rather than its symbolic meaning. It was rather the Miracle than its moral and spiritual import\u2014the storm and earthquake rather than the still small Voice\u2014which impressed the disciples. Besides, the words of Peter are at least capable of this interpretation, that the fig-tree had withered in consequence of, rather than by the Word of Christ. But He ever leads His own from mere wonderment at the Miraculous up to that which is higher. His answer now combined all that they needed to learn. It pointed to the typical lesson of what had taken place: the need of realising, simple faith, the absence of which was the cause of Israel\u2019s leafy barrenness, and which, if present and active, could accomplish all, however impossible it might seem by outward means. And yet it was only to \u2018have faith in God;\u2019 such faith as becomes those who know God; a faith in God, which seeks not and has not its foundation in anything outward, but rests on Him alone. To one who \u2018shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what he saith cometh to pass, it shall be to him.\u2019 And this general principle of the Kingdom, which to the devout and reverent believer needs neither explanation nor limitation, received its further application, specially to the Apostles in their coming need: \u2018Therefore I say unto you, whatsoever things, praying, ye ask for, believe that ye have received them [not, in the counsel of God, but actually, in answer to the prayer of faith], and it shall be to you.\u2019
\nThese two things follow: faith gives absolute power in prayer, but it is also its moral condition. None other than this is faith; and none other than faith\u2014absolute, simple, trustful\u2014gives glory to God, or has the promise. This is, so to speak, the New Testament application of the first Table of the Law, summed up in the \u2018Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.\u2019 But there is yet another moral condition of prayer closely connected with the first\u2014a New Testament application of the second Table of the Law, summed up in the \u2018Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.\u2019 If the first moral condition was God-ward, the second is man-ward; if the first bound us to faith, the second binds us to charity, while hope, the expectancy of answered prayer, is the link connecting the two. Prayer, unlimited in its possibilities, stands midway between heaven and earth; with one hand it reaches up to heaven, with the other down to earth; in it, faith prepares to receive, what charity is ready to dispense. He who so prays believes in God and loves man; such prayer is not selfish, self-seeking, self-conscious; least of all, is it compatible with mindfulness of wrongs, or an unforgiving spirit. This, then, is the second condition of prayer, and not only of such all-prevailing prayer, but even of personal acceptance in prayer. We can, therefore, have no doubt that St. Mark correctly reports in this connection this as the condition which the Lord attaches to acceptance, that we previously put away all uncharitableness. We remember, that the promise had a special application to the Apostles and early disciples; we also remember, how difficult to them was the thought of full forgiveness of offenders and persecutors; and again, how great the temptation to avenge wrongs and to wield miraculous power in the vindication of their authority. In these circumstances Peter and his fellow-disciples, when assured of the unlimited power of the prayer of faith, required all the more to be both reminded and warned of this as its second moral condition: the need of hearty forgiveness, if they had aught against any.
\nFrom this digression we return to the events of that second day in Passion-week (the Monday), which began with the symbolic judgment on the leafy, barren fig-tree. The same symbolism of judgment was to be immediately set forth still more clearly, and that in the Temple itself. On the previous afternoon, when Christ had come to it, the services were probably over, and the Sanctuary comparatively empty of worshippers and of those who there carried on their traffic. When treating of the first cleansing of the Temple, at the beginning of Christ\u2019s Ministry, sufficient has been said to explain the character and mode of that nefarious traffic, the profits of which went to the leaders of the priesthood, as also how popular indignation was roused alike against this trade and the traders. We need not here recall the words of Christ; Jewish authorities sufficiently describe, in even stronger terms, this transformation of \u2018the House of Prayer\u2019 into \u2018a den of robbers.\u2019 If, when beginning to do the \u2018business\u2019 of His Father, and for the first time publicly presenting Himself with Messianic claim, it was fitting He should take such authority, and first \u2018cleanse the Temple\u2019 of the nefarious intruders who, under the guise of being God\u2019s chief priests, made His House one of traffic, much more was this appropriate now, at the close of His Work, when, as King, He had entered His City, and publicly claimed authority. At the first it had been for teaching and warning, now it was in symbolic judgment; what and as He then began, that and so He now finished. Accordingly, as we compare the words, and even some of the acts, of the first \u2018cleansing\u2019 with these accompanying and explaining the second, we find the latter, we shall not say, much more severe, but bearing a different character\u2014that of final judicial sentence.
\nNor did the Temple-authorities now, as on the former occasion, seek to raise the populace against Him, or challenge His authority by demanding the warrant of \u2018a sign.\u2019 The contest had reached quite another stage. They heard what He said in their condemnation, and with bitter hatred in their hearts sought for some means to destroy Him. But fear of the people restrained their violence. For, marvellous indeed was the power which He wielded. With rapt attention the people hung entranced on His lips, \u2018astonished\u2019 at those new and blessed truths which dropped from them. All was so other than it had been! By His authority the Temple was cleansed of the unholy, thievish traffic which a corrupt priesthood carried on, and so, for the time, restored to the solemn Service of God; and that purified House now became the scene of Christ\u2019s teaching, when He spake those words of blessed truth and of comfort concerning the Father\u2014thus truly realising the prophetic promise of \u2018a House of Prayer for all the nations.\u2019 And as those traffickers were driven from the Temple, and He spake, there flocked in from porches and Temple-Mount the poor sufferers\u2014the blind and the lame\u2014to get healing to body and soul. It was truly spring-time in that Temple, and the boys that gathered about their fathers and looked in turn from their faces of rapt wonderment and enthusiasm to the Godlike Face of the Christ, and then on those healed sufferers, took up the echoes of the welcome at His entrance into Jerusalem\u2014in their simplicity understanding and applying them better\u2014as they burst into \u2018Hosanna to the Son of David!\u2019
\nIt rang through the courts and porches of the Temple, this Children\u2019s Hosanna. They heard it, whom the wonders He had spoken and done, so far from leading to repentance and faith, had only filled with indignation. Once more in their impotent anger they sought, as the Pharisees had done on the day of His Entry, by a hypocritical appeal to His reverence for God, not only to mislead, and so to use His very love of the truth against the truth, but to betray Him into silencing those Children\u2019s Voices. But the undimmed mirror of His soul only reflected the light. These Children\u2019s Voices were Angels\u2019 Echoes, echoes of the far-off praises of heaven, which children\u2019s souls had caught and children\u2019s lips welled forth. Not from the great, the wise, nor the learned, but \u2018out of the mouth of babes and sucklings\u2019 has He \u2018perfected praise.\u2019 And this, also, is the Music of the Gospel.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 3<\/p>\n
THE THIRD DAY IN PASSION-WEEK\u2014THE EVENTS OF THAT DAY\u2014THE QUESTION OF CHRIST\u2019S AUTHORITY\u2014THE QUESTION OF TRIBUTE TO C\u00c6SAR\u2014THE WIDOW\u2019S FARTHING\u2014THE GREEKS WHO SOUGHT TO SEE JESUS\u2014SUMMARY AND RETROSPECT OF THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF CHRIST<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 21:23\u201327; St. Mark 11:27\u201333; St. Luke 20:1\u20138; St. Matt. 22:15\u201322; St. Mark 12:13\u201317; St. Luke 20:20\u201326; St. Matt. 22:41\u201346; St. Luke 21:1\u20134; St. John 12:20\u201350.)<\/p>\n
THE record of this third day is so crowded, the actors introduced on the scene are so many, the occurrences so varied, and the transitions so rapid, that it is even more than usually difficult to arrange all in chronological order. Nor need we wonder at this, when we remember that this was, so to speak, Christ\u2019s last working-day\u2014the last, of His public Mission to Israel, so far as its active part was concerned; the last day in the Temple; the last, of teaching and warning to Pharisees and Sadducees; the last, of His call to national repentance.
\nThat what follows must be included in one day, appears from the circumstance that its beginning is expressly mentioned by St. Mark in connection with the notice of the withering of the fig-tree, while its close is not only indicated in the last words of Christ\u2019s Discourses, as reported by the Synoptists, but the beginning of another day is afterwards equally clearly marked.
\nConsidering the multiplicity of occurrences, it will be better to group them together, rather than follow the exact order of their succession. Accordingly, this chapter will be devoted to the events of the third day in Passion Week.
\n1. As usually, the day commenced with teaching in the Temple. We gather this from the expression: \u2018as He was walking,\u2019 viz., in one of the Porches, where, as we know, considerable freedom of meeting, conversing, or even teaching, was allowed. It will be remembered, that on the previous day the authorities had been afraid to interfere with Him. In silence they had witnessed, with impotent rage, the expulsion of their traffic-mongers; in silence they had listened to His teaching, and seen His miracles. Not till the Hosanna of the little boys\u2014perhaps those children of the Levites who acted as choristers in the Temple\u2014wakened them from the stupor of their fears, had they ventured on a feeble remonstrance, in the forlorn hope that He might be induced to conciliate them. But with the night and morning other counsels had come. Besides, the circumstances were somewhat different. It was early morning, the hearers were new, and the wondrous influence of His Words had not yet bent them to His Will. From the formal manner in which \u2018the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders\u2019 are introduced, and from the circumstance that they so met Christ immediately on His entry into the Temple, we can scarcely doubt that a meeting, although informal, of the authorities had been held to concert measures against the growing danger. Yet, even so, cowardice as well as cunning marked their procedure. They dared not directly oppose Him, but endeavoured, by attacking Him on the one point where He seemed to lay Himself open to it, to arrogate to themselves the appearance of strict legality, and so to turn popular feeling against Him.
\nFor, there was no principle more firmly established by universal consent than that authoritative teaching required previous authorisation. Indeed, this logically followed from the principle of Rabbinism. All teaching must be authoritative, since it was traditional\u2014approved by authority, and handed down from teacher to disciple. The highest honour of a scholar was, that he was like a well-plastered cistern, from which not a drop had leaked of what had been poured into it. The ultimate appeal in cases of discussion was always to some great authority, whether an individual Teacher or a Decree by the Sanhedrin. In this manner had the great Hillel first vindicated his claim to be the Teacher of his time and to decide the disputes then pending. And, to decide differently from authority, was either the mark of ignorant assumption or the outcome of daring rebellion, in either case to be visited with \u2018the ban.\u2019 And this was at least one aspect of the controversy as between the chief authorities and Jesus. No one would have thought of interfering with a mere Haggadist\u2014a popular expositor, preacher, or teller of legends. But authoritatively to teach, required other warrant. In fact, there was regular ordination (Semikhah) to the office of Rabbi, Elder, and Judge, for the three functions were combined in one. According to the Mishnah, the \u2018disciples\u2019 sat before the Sanhedrin in three rows, the members of the Sanhedrin being recruited successively from the front-rank of the Scholars. At first the practice is said to have been for every Rabbi to accredit his own disciples. But afterwards this right was transferred to the Sanhedrin, with the proviso that this body might not ordain without the consent of its Chief, though the latter might do so without consent of the Sanhedrin. But this privilege was afterwards withdrawn on account of abuses. Although we have not any description of the earliest mode of ordination, the very name\u2014Semikhah\u2014implies the imposition of hands. Again, in the oldest record, reaching up, no doubt, to the time of Christ, the presence of at least three ordained persons was required for ordination. At a later period, the presence of an ordained Rabbi, with the assessorship of two others, even if unordained, was deemed sufficient. In the course of time certain formalities were added. The person to be ordained had to deliver a Discourse; hymns and poems were recited; the title \u2018Rabbi\u2019 was formally bestowed on the candidate, and authority given him to teach and to act as Judge [to bind and loose, to declare guilty or free]. Nay, there seem to have been even different orders, according to the authority bestowed on the person ordained. The formula in bestowing full orders was: \u2018Let him teach; let him teach; let him judge; let him decide on questions of first-born; let him decide; let him judge!\u2019 At one time it was held that ordination could only take place in the Holy Land. Those who went abroad took with them their \u2018letters of orders.\u2019
\nAt whatever periods some of these practices may have been introduced, it is at least certain that, at the time of our Lord, no one would have ventured authoritatively to teach without proper Rabbinic authorisation. The question, therefore, with which the Jewish authorities met Christ, while teaching, was one which had a very real meaning, and appealed to the habits and feelings of the people who listened to Jesus. Otherwise, also, it was cunningly framed. For, it did not merely challenge Him for teaching, but also asked for His authority in what He did; referring not only to His Work generally, but, perhaps, especially to what had happened on the previous day. They were not there to oppose Him; but, when a man did as He had done in the Temple, it was their duty to verify his credentials. Finally, the alternative question reported by St. Mark: \u2018or\u2019\u2014if Thou hast not proper Rabbinic commission \u2018 \u2018who gave Thee this authority to do these things?\u2019 seems clearly to point to their contention, that the power which Jesus wielded was delegated to Him by none other than Beelzebul.
\nThe point in our Lord\u2019s reply seems to have been strangely overlooked by commentators. As His words are generally understood, they would have amounted only to silencing His questioners\u2014and that, in a manner which would, under ordinary circumstances, be scarcely regarded as either fair or ingenuous. It would have been simply to turn the question against themselves, and so in turn to raise popular prejudice. But the Lord\u2019s words meant quite other. He did answer their question, though He also exposed the cunning and cowardice which prompted it. To the challenge for His authority, and the dark hint about Satanic agency, He replied by an appeal to the Baptist. He had borne full witness to the Mission of Christ from the Father, and \u2018all men counted John, that he was a prophet indeed.\u2019 Were they satisfied? What was their view of the Baptism in preparation for the Coming of Christ? No? They would not, or could not, answer! If they said the Baptist was a prophet, this implied not only the authorisation of the Mission of Jesus, but the call to believe on Him. On the other hand, they were afraid publicly to disown John! And so their cunning and cowardice stood out self-condemned, when they pleaded ignorance\u2014a plea so grossly and manifestly dishonest, that Christ, having given what all must have felt to be a complete answer, could refuse further discussion with them on this point.
\n2. Foiled in their endeavour to involve Him with the ecclesiastical, they next attempted the much more dangerous device of bringing Him into collision with the civil authorities. Remembering the ever watchful jealousy of Rome, the reckless tyranny of Pilate, and the low artifices of Herod, who was at that time in Jerusalem, we instinctively feel, how even the slightest compromise on the part of Jesus in regard to the authority of C\u00e6sar would have been absolutely fatal. If it could have been proved, on undeniable testimony, that Jesus had declared Himself on the side of, or even encouraged, the so-called \u2018Nationalist\u2019 party, He would have quickly perished, like Judas of Galilee. The Jewish leaders would thus have readily accomplished their object, and its unpopularity have recoiled only on the hated Roman power. How great the danger was which threatened Jesus, may be gathered from this, that, despite His clear answer, the charge that He preverted the nation, forbidding to give tribute to C\u00e6sar, was actually among those brought against Him before Pilate.
\nThe plot, for such it was, was most cunningly concocted. The object was to \u2018spy\u2019 out His inmost thoughts, and, if possible, \u2018entangle\u2019 Him in His talk. For this purpose it was not the old Pharisees, whom He knew and would have distrusted, who came, but some of their disciples\u2014apparently fresh, earnest, zealous, conscientious men. With them had combined certain of \u2018the Herodians\u2019\u2014of course, not a sect nor religious school, but a political party at the time. We know comparatively little of the deeper political movements in Jud\u00e6a, only so much as it has suited Josephus to record. But we cannot be greatly mistaken in regarding the Herodians as a party which honestly accepted the House of Herod as occupants of the Jewish throne. Differing from the extreme section of the Pharisees, who hated Herod, and from the \u2018Nationalists,\u2019 it might have been a middle or moderate Jewish party\u2014semi-Roman and semi-Nationalist. We know that it was the ambition of Herod Antipas again to unite under his sway the whole of Palestine; but we know not what intrigues may have been carried on for that purpose, alike with the Pharisees and the Romans. Nor is it the first time in this history, that we find the Pharisees and the Herodians combined. Herod may, indeed, have been unwilling to incur the unpopularity of personally proceeding against the Great Prophet of Nazareth, especially as he must have had so keen a remembrance of what the murder of John had cost him. Perhaps he would fain, if he could, have made use of Him, and played Him off as the popular Messiah against the popular leaders. But, as matters had gone, he must have been anxious to rid himself of what might be a formidable rival, while, at the same time, his party would be glad to join with the Pharisees in what would secure their gratitude and allegiance. Such, or similar, may have been the motives which brought about this strange alliance of Pharisees and Herodians.
\nFeigning themselves just men, they now came to Jesus with honeyed words, intended not only to disarm His suspicions, but, by an appeal to His fearlessness and singleness of moral purpose, to induce Him to commit Himself without reserve. Was it lawful for them to give tribute unto C\u00e6sar, or not? were they to pay the capitation-tax of one drachm, or to refuse it? We know how later Judaism would have answered such a question. It lays down the principle, that the right of coinage implies the authority of levying taxes, and indeed constitutes such evidence of de facto government as to make it duty absolutely to submit to it. So much was this felt, that the Maccabees, and, in the last Jewish war, Bar Kokhabh, the false Messiah, issued a coinage dating from the liberation of Jerusalem. We cannot therefore doubt, that this principle about coinage, taxation, and government was generally accepted in Jud\u00e6a. On the other hand, there was a strong party in the land, with which, not only politically but religiously, many of the noblest spirits would sympathise, which maintained, that to pay the tribute-money to C\u00e6sar was virtually to own his royal authority, and so to disown that of Jehovah, Who alone was Israel\u2019s King. They would argue, that all the miseries of the land and people were due to this national unfaithfulness. Indeed, this was the fundamental principle of the Nationalist movement. History has recorded many similar movements, in which strong political feelings have been strangely blended with religious fanaticism, and which have numbered in their ranks, together with unscrupulous partisans, not a few who were sincere patriots or earnest religionists. It has been suggested in a former part of this book, that the Nationalist movement may have had an important preparatory bearing on some of the earlier followers of Jesus, perhaps at the beginning of their inquiries, just as, in the West, Alexandrian philosophy proved to many a preparation for Christianity. At any rate, the scruple expressed by these men would, if genuine, have called forth sympathy. But what was the alternative here presented to Christ? To have said No, would have been to command rebellion; to have said simply Yes, would have been to give a painful shock to deep feeling, and, in a sense, in the eyes of the people, the lie to His own claim of being Israel\u2019s Messiah-King!
\nBut the Lord escaped from this \u2018temptation\u2019\u2018\u2014because, being true, it was no real temptation to Him. Their knavery and hypocrisy He immediately perceived and exposed, in this also responding to their appeal of being \u2018true.\u2019 Once more and emphatically must we disclaim the idea that Christ\u2019s was rather an evasion of the question than a reply. It was a very real answer, when, pointing to the image and inscription on the coin, for which He had called, He said, \u2018What is C\u00e6sar\u2019s render to C\u00e6sar, and what is God\u2019s to God.\u2019 It did far more than rebuke their hypocrisy and presumption; it answered not only that question of theirs to all earnest men of that time, as it would present itself to their minds, but it settles to all time and for all circumstances the principle underlying it. Christ\u2019s Kingdom is not of this world; a true Theocracy is not inconsistent with submission to the secular power in things that are really its own; politics and religion neither include, nor yet exclude, each other: they are, side by side, in different domains. The State is Divinely sanctioned, and religion is Divinely sanctioned\u2014and both are equally the ordinance of God. On this principle did Apostolic authority regulate the relations between Church and State, even when the latter was heathen. The question about the limits of either province has been hotly discussed by sectarians on either side, who have claimed the saying of Christ in support of one or the opposite extreme which they have advocated. And yet, to the simple searcher after duty, it seems not so difficult to see the distinction, if only we succeed in purging ourselves of logical refinements and strained inferences.
\nIt was an answer not only most truthful, but of marvellous beauty and depth. It elevated the controversy into quite another sphere, where there was no conflict between what was due to God and to man\u2014indeed, no conflict at all, but Divine harmony and peace. Nor did it speak harshly of the Nationalist aspirations, nor yet plead the cause of Rome. It said not whether the rule of Rome was right or should be permanent\u2014but only what all must have felt to be Divine. And so they, who had come to \u2018entangle\u2019 Him, \u2018went away,\u2019 not convinced nor converted, but marvelling exceedingly.
\n3. Passing for the present from the cavils of the Sadducees and the gainsaying of the Scribes, we come unexpectedly on one of those sweet pictures\u2014a historical miniature, as it is presented to us\u2014which affords real relief to the eye, amidst the glare all around. From the bitter malice of His enemies and the predicted judgment upon them, we turn to the silent worship of her who gave her all, and to the words with which Jesus owned it, all unknown to her. It comes to us the more welcome, that it exhibits in deed what Christ had said to those hypocrites who had discussed it, whether the tribute given to C\u00e6sar was not robbing God of what was His. Truly here was one, who, in the simplicity of her humble worship, gave to the Lord what was His!
\nWeary with the contention, the Master had left those to whom He had spoken in the Porches, and, while the crowd wrangled about His Words or His Person, had ascended the flight of steps which led from \u2018the Terrace\u2019 into the Temple-building. From these steps\u2014whether those leading up to the \u2018Beautiful Gate,\u2019 or one of the side gates\u2014He could gain full view into \u2018the Court of the Women,\u2019 into which they opened. On these steps, or within the gate (for in no other place was it lawful), He sat Him down, watching the multitude. The time of Sacrifice was past, and those who still lingered had remained for private devotion, for private sacrifices, or to pay their vows and offerings. Although the topography of the Temple, especially of this part of it, is not without its difficulties, we know that under the colonnades, which surrounded \u2018the Court of the Women,\u2019 but still left in the middle room for more than 15,000 worshippers, provision was made for receiving religious and charitable contributions. All along these colonnades were the thirteen trumpet-shaped boxes (Shopharoth); somewhere here also we must locate two chambers: that of \u2018the silent,\u2019 for gifts to be distributed in secret to the children of the pious poor, and that where votive vessels were deposited. Perhaps there was here also a special chamber for offerings. These \u2018trumpets\u2019 bore each inscriptions, marking the objects of contribution\u2014whether to make up for past neglect, to pay for certain sacrifices, to provide incense, wood, or for other gifts.
\nAs they passed to this or that treasury-box, it must have been a study of deep interest, especially on that day, to watch the givers. Some might come with appearance of self-righteousness, some even with ostentation, some as cheerfully performing a happy duty. \u2018Many that were rich cast in much\u2019\u2014yes, very much, for such was the tendency that (as already stated) a law had to be enacted, forbidding the gift to the Temple of more than a certain proportion of one\u2019s possessions. And the amount of such contributions may be inferred by recalling the circumstance, that, at the time of Pompey and Crassus, the Temple-Treasury, after having lavishly defrayed every possible expenditure, contained in money nearly half a million, and precious vessels to the value of nearly two millions sterling.
\nAnd as Jesus so sat on these steps, looking out on the ever-shifting panorama, His gaze was riveted by a solitary figure. The simple words of St. Mark sketch a story of singular pathos. \u2018It was one pauper widow.\u2019 We can see her coming alone, as if ashamed to mingle with the crowd of rich givers; ashamed to have her offering seen; ashamed, perhaps, to bring it; a \u2018widow,\u2019 in the garb of a desolate mourner; her condition, appearance, and bearing that of a \u2018pauper.\u2019 He observed her closely and read her truly. She held in her hand only the smallest coins: \u2018two Perutahs\u2019\u2014and it should be known that it was not lawful to contribute a less amount. Together these two Perutahs made a quadrans, which was the ninety-sixth part of a denar, itself of the value of about sevenpence. But it was \u2018all her living\u2019 (\u03b2\u03af\u03bf\u03c2), perhaps all that she had been able to save out of her scanty housekeeping; more probably, all that she had to live upon for that day, and till she wrought for more. And of this she now made humble offering unto God. He spake not to her words of encouragement, for she walked by faith; He offered not promise of return, for her reward was in heaven. She knew not that any had seen it\u2014for the knowledge of eyes turned on her, even His, would have flushed with shame the pure cheek of her love; and any word, conscious notice, or promise would have marred and turned aside the rising incense of her sacrifice. But to all time has it remained in the Church, like the perfume of Mary\u2019s alabaster that filled the house, this deed of self-denying sacrifice. More, far more, than the great gifts of their \u2018superfluity,\u2019 which the rich cast in, was, and is to all time, the gift of absolute self-surrender and sacrifice, tremblingly offered by the solitary mourner. And though He spake not to her, yet the sunshine of His words must have fallen into the dark desolateness of her heart; and, though perhaps she knew not why, it must have been a happy day, a day of rich feast in the heart, that when she gave up \u2018her whole living\u2019 unto God. And so, perhaps, is every sacrifice for God all the more blessed, when we know not of its blessedness.
\nWould that to all time its lesson had been cherished, not theoretically, but practically, by the Church! How much richer would have been her \u2018treasury\u2019: twice blessed in gift and givers. But so is not legend written. If it had been a story invented for a purpose, or adorned with the tinsel of embellishment, the Saviour and the widow would not have so parted\u2014to meet and to speak not on earth, but in heaven. She would have worshipped, and He spoken or done some great thing. Their silence was a tryst for heaven.
\n4. One other event of solemn joyous import remains to be recorded on that day. But so closely is it connected with what the Lord afterwards spoke, that the two cannot be separated. It is narrated only by St. John, who, as before explained, tells it as one of a series of progressive manifestations of the Christ: first, in His Entry into the City, and then in the Temple\u2014successively, to the Greeks, by the Voice from Heaven, and before the people.
\nPrecious as each part and verse here is, when taken by itself, there is some difficulty in combining them, and in showing their connection, and its meaning. But here we ought not to forget, that we have, in the Gospel-narrative, only the briefest account\u2014as it were, headings, summaries, outlines, rather than a report. Nor do we know the surrounding circumstances. The words which Christ spoke after the request of the Greeks to be admitted to His Presence may bear some special reference also to the state of the disciples, and their unreadiness to enter into and share His predicted sufferings. And this may again be connected with Christ\u2019s prediction and Discourse about \u2018the last things.\u2019 For the position of the narrative in St. John\u2019s Gospel seems to imply that it was the last event of that day\u2014nay, the conclusion of Christ\u2019s public Ministry. If this be so, words and admonitions, otherwise somewhat mysterious in their connection, would acquire a new meaning.
\nIt was then, as we suppose, the evening of a long and weary day of teaching. As the sun had been hastening towards its setting in red, He had spoken of that other sun-setting, with the sky all aglow in judgment, and of the darkness that was to follow\u2014but also of the better Light that would rise in it. And in those Temple-porches they had been hearing Him\u2014seeing Him in His wonder-working yesterday, hearing Him in His wonder-speaking that day\u2014those \u2018men of other tongues.\u2019 They were \u2018Proselytes,\u2019 Greeks by birth, who had groped their way to the porch of Judaism, just as the first streaks of the light were falling within upon its altar. They must have been stirred in their inmost being; felt, that it was just for such as they, and to them that He spoke; that this was what in the Old Testament they had guessed, anticipated, dimly hoped for, if they had not seen it\u2014its grand faith, its grander hope, its grandest reality. Not one by one, and almost by stealth, were they thenceforth to come to the gate; but the portals were to be flung wide open, and as the golden light streamed out upon the way, He stood there, that bright Divine Personality, Who was not only the Son of David, but the Son of Man, to bid them the Father\u2019s welcome of good pleasure to the Kingdom.
\nAnd so, as the lengthening shadows gathered around the Temple-court and porches, they would fain have seen Him, not afar off, but near: spoken to Him. They had become \u2018Proselytes of Righteousness,\u2019 they would become disciples of \u2018the Lord our Righteousness;\u2019 as Proselytes they had come to Jerusalem \u2018to worship,\u2019 and they would learn to praise. Yet, in the simple self-unconscious modesty of their religious childhood, they dared not go to Jesus directly, but came with their request to Philip of Bethsaida. We know not why to him: whether from family connections, or that his education, or previous circumstances, connected Philip with these \u2018Greeks,\u2019 or whether anything in his position in the Apostolic circle, or something that had just occurred, influenced their choice. And he also\u2014such was the ignorance of the Apostles of the inmost meaning of their Master\u2014dared not go directly to Jesus, but went to his own towns-man, who had been his early friend and fellow-disciple, and now stood so close to the Person of the Master\u2014Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter. Together the two came to Jesus, Andrew apparently foremost. The answer of Jesus implies what, at any rate, we would have expected, that the request of these Gentile converts was granted, though this is not expressly stated, and it is extremely difficult to determine whether, and what portion of what He spake was addressed to the Greeks, and what to the disciples. Perhaps we should regard the opening words as bearing reference to the request of the Greeks, and hence as primarily addressed to the disciples, but also as serving as introduction to the words that follow, which were spoken primarily to the Greeks, but secondarily also to the disciples, and which bear on that terrible, ever near, mystery of His Death, and their Baptism into it.
\nAs we see these \u2018Greeks\u2019 approaching, the beginning of Christ\u2019s History seems re-enacted at its close. Not now in the stable of Bethlehem, but in the Temple, are \u2018the wise men,\u2019 the representatives of the Gentile world, offering their homage to the Messiah. But the life which had then begun was now all behind Him\u2014and yet, in a sense, before Him. The hour of decision was about to strike. Not merely as the Messiah of Israel, but in His world-wide bearing as \u2018the Son of Man,\u2019 was He about to be glorified by receiving the homage of the Gentile world, of which the symbol and the firstfruits were now before Him. But only in one way could He thus be glorified: by dying for the salvation of the world, and so opening the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers. On a thousand hills was the glorious harvest to tremble in the golden sunlight; but the corn of wheat falling into the ground, must, as it falls, die, burst its envelops, and so spring into a very manifoldedness of life. Otherwise would it have remained alone. This is the great paradox of the Kingdom of God\u2014a paradox which has its symbol and analogon in nature, and which has also almost become the law of progress in history: that life which has not sprung of death abideth alone, and is really death, and that death is life. A paradox this, which has its ultimate reason in this, that sin has entered into the world.
\nAnd as to the Master, the Prince of Life, so to the disciples, as bearing forth the life. If, in this world of sin, He must fall as the seed-corn into the ground and die, that many may spring of Him, so must they also hate their life, that they may keep it unto life eternal. Thus serving, they must follow Him, that where He is they may also be, for the Father will honour them that honour the Son.
\nIt is now sufficiently clear to us, that our Lord spake primarily to these Greeks, and secondarily to His disciples, of the meaning of His impending Death, of the necessity of faithfulness to Him in it, and of the blessing attaching thereto. Yet He was not unconscious of the awful realities which this involved. He was true Man, and His Human Soul was troubled in view of it: True Man, therefore He felt it; True Man, therefore He spake it, and so also sympathised with them in their coming struggle. Truly Man, but also truly more than Man\u2014and hence both the expressed desire, and at the same time the victory over that desire: \u2018What shall I say? \u201cFather, save Me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour!\u201d \u2019 And the seeming discord is resolved, as both the Human and the Divine in the Son\u2014faith and sight\u2014join in glorious accord: \u2018Father, glorify Thy Name!\u2019
\nSuch appeal and prayer, made in such circumstances, could not have remained unacknowledged, if He was the Messiah, Son of God. As at His Baptism, so at this Baptism of self-humiliation and absolute submission to suffering, came the Voice from Heaven, audible to all, but its words intelligible only to Him: \u2018I both glorified it, and will again glorify it!\u2019 Words these, which carried the Divine seal of confirmation to all Christ\u2019s past work, and assured it for that which was to come. The words of confirmation could only be for Himself; \u2018the Voice\u2019 was for all. What mattered it, that some spoke of it as thunder on a spring-evening, while others, with more reason, thought of Angel-Voices? To Him it bore the assurance, which had all along been the ground of His claims, as it was the comfort in His Sufferings, that, as God had in the past glorified Himself in the Son, so would it be in the future in the perfecting of the work given Him to do. And this He now spake, as, looking on those Greeks as the emblem and first-fruits of the work finished in His Passion, He saw of the travail of His Soul, and was satisfied. Of both He spake in the prophetic present. To His view judgment had already come to this world, as it lay in the power of the Evil One, since the Prince of it was cast out from his present rule. And, in place of it, the Crucified Christ, \u2018lifted up out of the earth\u2019\u2014in the twofold sense\u2014was, as the result of His Work, drawing, with sovereign, conquering power, \u2018all\u2019 unto Him, and up with Him.
\nThe Jews who heard it, so far understood Him, that His words referred to His removal from earth, or His Death, since this was a common Jewish mode of expression (\u05e1\u05dc\u05e7 \u05de\u05df \u05d4\u05e2\u05d5\u05dc\u05dd). But they failed to understand His special reference to the manner of it. And yet, in view of the peculiarly shameful death of the Cross, it was most important that He should ever point to it also. But, even in what they understood, they had a difficulty. They understood Him to imply that He would be taken from earth; and yet they had always been taught from the Scriptures that the Messiah was, when fully manifested, to abide for ever, or, as the Rabbis put it, that His Reign was to be followed by the Resurrection. Or did He refer to any other One by the expression \u2018Son of Man\u2019? Into the controversial part of their question the Lord did not enter; nor would it have been fitting to have done so in that \u2018hour.\u2019 But to their inquiry He fully replied, and that with such earnest, loving admonition as became His last address in the Temple. Yes; it was so! But a little while would the Light be among them. Let them hasten to avail themselves of it, lest darkness overtake them\u2014and he that walked in darkness knew not whither he went. Oh, that His love could have arrested them! While they still had \u2018the Light,\u2019 would that they might learn to believe in the Light, that so they might become the children of Light!
\nThey were His last words of appeal to them, ere He withdrew to spend His Sabbath of soul before the Great Contest. And the writer of the Fourth Gospel gathers up, by way of epilogue, the great contrast between Israel and Christ. Although He had shown so many miracles, they believed not on Him\u2014and this their wilful unbelief was the fulfilment of Esaias\u2019 prophecy of old concerning the Messiah. On the other hand, their wilful unbelief was also the judgment of God in accordance with prophecy. Those who have followed the course of this history must have learned this above all, that the rejection of Christ by the Jews was not an isolated act, but the outcome and direct result of their whole previous religious development. In face of the clearest evidence, they did not believe, because they could not believe. The long course of their resistance to the prophetic message, and their perversion of it, was itself a hardening of their hearts, although at the same time a God-decreed sentence on their resistance. Because they would not believe\u2014through this their mental obscuration, which came upon them in Divine judgment, although in the natural course of their self-chosen religious development\u2014therefore, despite all evidence, they did not believe, when He came and did such miracles before them. And all this in accordance with prophecy, when Isaiah saw in far-off vision the bright glory of Messiah, and spoke of Him. Thus far Israel as a nation. And though, even among their \u2018chief rulers,\u2019 there were many who believed on Him, yet dared they not \u2018make confession,\u2019 from fear that the Pharisees would put them out of the Synagogues, with all the terrible consequences which this implied. For such surrender of all were they not prepared, whose intellect might be convinced, but whose heart was not converted\u2014who \u2018loved the glory of men more than the glory of God.\u2019
\nSuch was Israel. On the other hand, what was the summary of the Christ\u2019s activity? His testimony now rose so loud, as to be within hearing of all (\u2018Jesus cried\u2019). From first to last that testimony had pointed from Himself up to the Father. Its substance was the reality and the realisation of that which the Old Testament had infolded and gradually unfolded to Israel, and through Israel to the world: the Fatherhood of God. To believe on Him was really not faith in Him, but faith in Him that sent Him. A step higher: To behold Christ was to behold Him that had sent Him. To combine these two: Christ had come a Light into the world, God had sent Him as the Sun of Righteousness, that by believing on Him as the God-sent, men might attain moral vision\u2014no longer \u2018abide in darkness,\u2019 but in the bright spiritual Light that had risen. But as for the others, there were those who heard and did not keep His words; and, again, those who rejected Him, and did not receive His words. Neither in one nor the other case was the controversy as between His sayings and men. As regarded the one class, He had come into the world with the Word of salvation, not with the sword of judgment. As regarded His open enemies, He left the issue till the evidence of His word should appear in the terrible judgment of the Last Day.
\nOnce more, and more emphatic than ever, was the final appeal to His Mission by the Father. From first to last it had not been His own work: what He should say, and what He should speak, the Father \u2018Himself\u2019 had given Him commandment. Nay, this commandment, and what He spoke in it, was not mere teaching, nor Law: it was Life everlasting. And so it is, and ever shall be\u2014eternal thanks to the love of Him Who sent, and the grace of Him Who came: that the things which He spake, He spake as the Father said unto Him.
\nThese two things, then, are the final summary by the Apostle of the History of the Christ in His public activity. On the one hand, he shows us how Israel, hardened in the self-chosen course of its religious development, could not, and, despite the clearest evidence, did not, believe. And, on the other hand, he sets before us the Christ, absolutely surrendering Himself to do the Will and Work of the Father; witnessed by the Father; revealing the Father; coming as the Light of the world to chase away its moral darkness; speaking to all men, bringing to them salvation, not judgment, and leaving the vindication of His Word to its manifestation in the Last Day; and finally, as the Christ, Whose every message is commanded of God, and Whose every commandment is life everlasting\u2014and therefore and so speaking it, as the Father said unto Him.
\nThese two things: concerning the history of Israel and their necessary unbelief, and concerning the Christ as God-sent, God-witnessed, God-revealing, bringing light and life as the Father\u2019s gift and command\u2014the Christ as absolutely surrendering Himself to this Mission and embodying it\u2014are the sum of the Gospel-narratives. They explain their meaning, and set forth their object and lessons.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 4<\/p>\n
THE THIRD DAY IN PASSION-WEEK\u2014THE LAST CONTROVERSIES AND DISCOURSES\u2014THE SADDUCEES AND THE RESURRECTION\u2014THE SCRIBE AND THE GREAT COMMANDMENT\u2014QUESTION TO THE PHARISEES ABOUT DAVID\u2019S SON AND LORD\u2014FINAL WARNING TO THE PEOPLE: THE EIGHT \u2018WOES\u2019\u2014FAREWELL<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 22:23\u201333; St. Mark 12:18\u201327; St. Luke 20:27\u201339; St. Matt. 22:34\u201340; St. Mark 12:28\u201334; St. Matt. 22:41\u201346; St. Mark 12:35\u201340; St. Luke 20:40\u201347; St. Matt. 23.)<\/p>\n
THE last day in the Temple was not to pass without other \u2018temptations\u2019 than that of the Priests when they questioned His authority, or of the Pharisees when they cunningly sought to entangle Him in His speech. Indeed, Christ had on this occasion taken a different position; He had claimed supreme authority, and thus challenged the leaders of Israel. For this reason, and because at the last we expect assaults from all His enemies, we are prepared for the controversies of that day.
\nWe remember that, during the whole previous history, Christ had only on one occasion come into public conflict with the Sadducees, when, characteristically, they had asked of Him \u2018a sign from heaven.\u2019 Their Rationalism would lead them to treat the whole movement as beneath serious notice, the outcome of ignorant fanaticism. Nevertheless, when Jesus assumed such a position in the Temple, and was evidently to such extent swaying the people, it behoved them, if only to guard their position, no longer to stand by. Possibly, the discomfiture and powerlessness of the Pharisees may also have had their influence. At any rate, the impression left is, that those of them who now went to Christ were delegates, and that the question which they put had been well planned.
\nTheir object was certainly not serious argument, but to use the much more dangerous weapon of ridicule. Persecution the populace might have resented; for open opposition all would have been prepared; but to come with icy politeness and philosophic calm, and by a well-turned question to reduce the renowned Galilean Teacher to silence, and show the absurdity of His teaching, would have been to inflict on His cause the most damaging blow. To this day such appeals to rough and ready common-sense are the main stock-in-trade of that coarse infidelity, which, ignoring alike the demands of higher thinking and the facts of history, appeals\u2014so often, alas! effectually\u2014to the untrained intellect of the multitude, and\u2014shall we not say it?\u2014to the coarse and lower in us all. Besides, had the Sadducees succeeded, they would at the same time have gained a signal triumph for their tenets, and defeated, together with the Galilean Teacher, their own Pharisaic opponents. The subject of attack was to be the Resurrection\u2014the same which is still the favourite topic for the appeals of the coarser forms of infidelity to \u2018the common sense\u2019 of the masses. Making allowance for difference of circumstances, we might almost imagine we were listening to one of our modern orators of materialism. And in those days the defence of belief in the Resurrection laboured under twofold difficulty. It was as yet a matter of hope, not of faith: something to look forward to, not to look back upon. The isolated events recorded in the Old Testament, and the miracles of Christ\u2014granting that they were admitted\u2014were rather instances of resuscitation than of Resurrection. That grand fact of history, than which none is better attested\u2014the Resurrection of Christ\u2014had not yet taken place, and was not even clearly in view of any one. Besides, the utterances of the Old Testament on the subject of the \u2018hereafter\u2019 were, as became alike that stage of revelation and the understanding of those to whom it was addressed, far from clear. In the light of the New Testament it stands out in the sharpest proportions, although as an Alpine height afar off; but then that Light had not yet risen upon it.
\nBesides, the Sadducees would allow no appeal to the highly poetic language of the Prophets, to whom, at any rate, they attached less authority, but demanded proof from that clear and precise letter of the Law, every tittle and iota of which the Pharisees exploited for their doctrinal inferences, and from which alone they derived them. Here, also, it was the Nemesis of Pharisaism, that the postulates of their system laid it open to attack. In vain would the Pharisees appeal to Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, or the Psalms. To such an argument as from the words, \u2018this people will rise up,\u2019 the Sadducees would rightly reply, that the context forbade the application to the Resurrection; to the quotation of Isaiah 26:19, they would answer that that promise must be understood spiritually, like the vision of the dry bones in Ezekiel; while such a reference as to this, \u2018causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak,\u2019 would scarcely require serious refutation. Of similar character would be the argument from the use of a special word, such as \u2018return\u2019 in Gen. 3:19, or that from the twofold mention of the word \u2018cut off\u2019 in the original of Num. 15:31, as implying punishment in the present and in the future dispensation. Scarcely more convincing would be the appeal to such passages as Deut. 32:39: \u2018I kill and make alive,\u2019 or the statement that, whenever a promise occurs in the form which in Hebrew represents the future tense, it indicates a reference to the Resurrection. Perhaps more satisfactory, although not convincing to a Sadducee, whose special contention it was to insist on proof from the Law, might be an appeal to such passages as Dan. 12:2, 13, or to the restoration to life by certain of the prophets, with the superadded canon, that God had in part prefiguratively wrought by His prophets whatever He would fully restore in the future.
\nIf Pharisaic argumentation had failed to convince the Sadducees on Biblical grounds, it would be difficult to imagine that, even in the then state of scientific knowledge, any enquiring person could have really believed that there was a small bone in the spine which was indestructible, and from which the new man would spring; or that there existed even now a species of mice, or else of snails, which gradually and visibly developed out of the earth. Many clever sayings of the Pharisees are, indeed, here recorded in their controversies, as on most subjects, and by which a Jewish opponent might have been silenced. But here, especially, must it have been felt that a reply was not always an answer, and that the silencing of an opponent was not identical with proof of one\u2019s own assertion. And the additions with which the Pharisees had encumbered the doctrine of the Resurrection would not only surround it with fresh difficulties, but deprive the simple fact of its grand majesty. Thus, it was a point in discussion, whether a person would rise in his clothes, which one Rabbi tried to establish by a reference to the grain of wheat, which was buried \u2018naked,\u2019 but rose clothed. Indeed, some Rabbis held, that a man would rise in exactly the same clothes in which he had been buried, while others denied this. On the other hand, it was beautifully argued that body and soul must be finally judged together, so that, in their contention to which of them the sins of man had been due, justice might be meted out to each\u2014or rather to the two in their combination, as in their combination they had sinned Again, it was inferred from the apparition of Samuel that the risen would look exactly as in life\u2014have even the same bodily defects, such as lameness, blindness, or deafness. It was argued, that they were only afterwards to be healed, lest enemies might say that God had not healed them when they were alive, but that He did so when they were dead, and that they were perhaps not the same persons. In some respects even more strange was the contention that, in order to secure that all the pious of Israel should rise on the sacred soil of Palestine, there were cavities underground in which the body would roll till it reached the Holy Land, there to rise to newness of life.
\nBut all the more, that it was so keenly controverted by heathens, Sadducees, and heretics, as appears from many reports in the Talmud, and that it was so encumbered with realistic legends, should we admire the tenacity with which the Pharisees clung to this doctrine. The hope of the Resurrection-world appears in almost every religious utterance of Israel. It is the spring-bud on the tree, stript by the long winter of disappointment and persecution. This hope pours its morning carol into the prayer which every Jew is bound to say on awakening; it sheds its warm breath over the oldest of the daily prayers which date from before the time of our Lord; in the formula \u2018from age to age,\u2019 \u2018world without end,\u2019 it forms, so to speak, the rearguard to every prayer, defending it from Sadducean assault; it is one of the few dogmas denial of which involves, according to the Mishnah, the loss of eternal life, the Talmud explaining\u2014almost in the words of Christ\u2014that in the retribution of God this is only \u2018measure according to measure;\u2019 nay, it is venerable even in its exaggeration, that only our ignorance fails to perceive it in every section of the Bible, and to hear it in every commandment of the Law.
\nBut in the view of Christ the Resurrection would necessarily occupy a place different from all this. It was the innermost shrine in the Sanctuary of His Mission, towards which He steadily tended; it was also, at the same time, the living corner-stone of that Church which He had builded, and its spire, which, as with uplifted finger, ever pointed all men heavenwards. But of such thoughts connected with His Resurrection Jesus could not have spoken to the Sadducees; they would have been unintelligible at that time even to His own disciples. He met the cavil of the Sadducees majestically, seriously, and solemnly, with words most lofty and spiritual, yet such as they could understand, and which, if they had received them, would have led them onwards and upwards far beyond the standpoint of the Pharisees. A lesson this to us in our controversies.
\nThe story under which the Sadducees conveyed their sneer was also intended covertly to strike at their Pharisaic opponents. The ancient ordinance of marrying a brother\u2019s childless widow had more and more fallen into discredit, as its original motive ceased to have influence. A large array of limitations narrowed the number of those on whom this obligation now devolved. Then the Mishnah laid it down that, in ancient times, when the ordinance of such marriage was obeyed in the spirit of the Law, its obligation took precedence of the permission of dispensation, but that afterwards this relationship became reversed. Later authorities went further. Some declared every such union, if for beauty, wealth, or any other than religious motives, as incestuous, while one Rabbi absolutely prohibited it, although opinions continued divided on the subject. But what here most interests us is, that what are called in the Talmud the \u2018Samaritans,\u2019 but, as we judge, the Sadducees, held the opinion that the command to marry a brother\u2019s widow only applied to a betrothed wife, not to one that had actually been wedded. This gives point to their controversial question, as addressed to Jesus.
\nA case such as they told, of a woman who had successively been married to seven brothers, might, according to Jewish Law, have really happened. Their sneering question now was, whose wife she was to be in the Resurrection. This, of course, on the assumption of the grossly materialistic views of the Pharisees. In this the Sadducean cavil was, in a sense, anticipating certain objections of modern materialism. It proceeded on the assumption that the relations of time would apply to eternity, and the conditions of the things seen hold true in regard to those that are unseen. But perchance it is otherwise; and the future may reveal what in the present we do not see. The reasoning as such may be faultless; but, perchance, something in the future may have to be inserted in the major or the minor, which will make the conclusion quite other! All such cavils we would meet with the twofold appeal of Christ to the Word and to the Power of God\u2014how God has manifested, and how He will manifest Himself\u2014the one flowing from the other.
\nIn His argument against the Sadducees Christ first appealed to the power of God. What God would work was quite other than they imagined: not a mere re-awakening, but a transformation. The world to come was not to be a reproduction of that which had passed away\u2014else why should it have passed away\u2014but a regeneration and renovation; and the body with which we were to be clothed would be like that which Angels bear. What, therefore, in our present relations is of the earth, and of our present body of sin and corruption, will cease; what is eternal in them will continue. But the power of God will transform all\u2014the present terrestrial into the future heavenly, the body of humiliation into one of exaltation. This will be the perfecting of all things by that Almighty Power by which He shall subdue all things to Himself in the Day of His Power, when death shall be swallowed up in victory. And herein also consists the dignity of man, in virtue of the Redemption introduced, and, so to speak, begun at his Fall, that man is capable of such renovation and perfection\u2014and herein, also, is \u2018the power of God,\u2019 that He hath quickened us together with Christ, so that here already the Church receives in Baptism into Christ the germ of the Resurrection, which is afterwards to be nourished and fed by faith, through the believer\u2019s participation in the Sacrament of fellowship with His Body and Blood. Nor ought questions here to rise, like dark clouds, such as of the perpetuity of those relations which on earth are not only so precious to us, but so holy. Assuredly, they will endure, as all that is of God and good; only what in them is earthly will cease, or rather be transformed with the body. Nay, and we shall also recognise each other, not only by the fellowship of the soul; but as, even now, the mind impresses its stamp on the features, so then, when all shall be quite true, shall the soul, so to speak, body itself forth, fully impress itself on the outward appearance, and for the first time shall we then fully recognise those whom we shall now fully know\u2014with all of earth that was in them left behind, and all of God and good fully developed and ripened into perfectness of beauty.
\nBut it was not enough to brush aside the flimsy cavil, which had only meaning on the supposition of grossly materialistic views of the Resurrection. Our Lord would not merely reply, He would answer the Sadducees; and more grand or noble evidence of the Resurrection has never been offered than that which He gave. Of course, as speaking to the Sadducees, He remained on the ground of the Pentateuch; and yet it was not only to the Law but to the whole Bible that He appealed, nay, to that which underlay Revelation itself: the relation between God and man. Not this nor that isolated passage only proved the Resurrection; He Who, not only historically but in the fullest sense, calls Himself the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, cannot leave them dead. Revelation implies, not merely a fact of the past\u2014as is the notion which traditionalism attaches to it\u2014a dead letter; it means a living relationship. \u2018He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live unto Him.\u2019
\nThe Sadducees were silenced, the multitude was astonished, and even from some of the Scribes the admission was involuntarily wrung: \u2018Teacher, Thou hast beautifully said.\u2019 One point, however, still claims our attention. It is curious that, as regards both these arguments of Christ, Rabbinism offers statements closely similar. Thus, it is recorded as one of the frequent sayings of a later Rabbi, that in the world to come there would be neither eating nor drinking, fruitfulness nor increase, business nor envy, hatred nor strife, but that the just would sit with crowns on their heads, and feast on the splendour of the Shekhinah. This reads like a Rabbinic adaptation of the saying of Christ. As regards the other point, the Talmud reports a discussion on the Resurrection between \u2018Sadducees,\u2019 or perhaps Jewish heretics (Jewish-Christian heretics), in which Rabbi Gamaliel 2. at last silences his opponents by an appeal to the promise \u2018that ye may prolong your days in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give unto them\u2019\u2014\u2018unto them,\u2019 emphasises the Rabbi, not \u2018unto you.\u2019 Although this almost entirely misses the spiritual meaning conveyed in the reasoning of Christ, it is impossible to mistake its Christian origin. Gamaliel 2. lived after Christ, but at a period when there was lively intercourse between Jews and Jewish Christians; while, lastly, we have abundant evidence that the Rabbi was acquainted with the sayings of Christ, and took part in the controversy with the Church. On the other hand, Christians in his day\u2014unless heretical sects\u2014neither denied the Resurrection, nor would they have so argued with the Jewish Patriarch; while the Sadducees no longer existed as a party engaging in active controversy. But we can easily perceive, that intercourse would be more likely between Jews and such heretical Jewish Christians as might maintain that the Resurrection was past, and only spiritual. The point is deeply interesting. It opens such further questions as these: In the constant intercourse between Jewish Christians and Jews, what did the latter learn? and may there not be much in the Talmud which is only an appropriation and adaptation of what had been derived from the New Testament?
\n2. The answer of our Lord was not without its further results. As we conceive it, among those who listened to the brief but decisive passage between Jesus and the Sadducees were some \u2018Scribes\u2019\u2014Sopherim, or, as they are also designated, \u2018lawyers,\u2019 \u2018teachers of the Law,\u2019 experts, expounders, practitioners of the Jewish Law. One of them, perhaps he who exclaimed: Beautifully said, Teacher! hastened to the knot of Pharisees, whom it requires no stretch of the imagination to picture gathered in the Temple on that day, and watching, with restless, ever foiled malice, the Saviour\u2019s every movement. As \u2018the Scribe\u2019 came up to them, he would relate how Jesus had literally \u2018gagged\u2019 and \u2018muzzled\u2019 the Sadducees\u2014just as, according to the will of God, we are \u2018by well-doing to gag the want of knowledge of senseless men.\u2019 There can be little doubt that the report would give rise to mingled feelings, in which that prevailing would be, that, although Jesus might thus have discomfited the Sadducees, He would be unable to cope with other questions, if only properly propounded by Pharisaic learning. And so we can understand how one of the number, perhaps the same Scribe, would volunteer to undertake the office; and how his question was, as St. Matthew reports, in a sense really intended to \u2018tempt\u2019 Jesus.
\nWe dismiss here the well-known Rabbinic distinctions of \u2018heavy\u2019 and \u2018light\u2019 commandments, because Rabbinism declared the \u2018light\u2019 to be as binding as \u2018the heavy,\u2019 those of the Scribes more \u2018heavy\u2019 (or binding) than those of Scripture, and that one commandment was not to be considered to carry greater reward, and to be therefore more carefully observed, than another. That such thoughts were not in the mind of the questioner, but rather the grand general problem\u2014however himself might have answered it\u2014appears even from the form of his inquiry: \u2018Which [qualis] is the great\u2014\u2018the first\u2019\u2014commandment in the Law?\u2019 So challenged, the Lord could have no hesitation in replying. Not to silence him, but to speak the absolute truth, He quoted the well-remembered words which every Jew was bound to repeat in his devotions, and which were ever to be on his lips, living or dying, as the inmost expression of his faith: \u2018Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.\u2019 And then continuing, He repeated the command concerning love to God which is the outcome of that profession. But to have stopped here would have been to propound a theoretic abstraction without concrete reality, a mere Pharisaic worship of the letter. As God is love\u2014His Nature so manifesting itself\u2014so is love to God also love to man. And so this second is \u2018like\u2019 \u2018the first and great commandment.\u2019 It was a full answer to the Scribe when He said: \u2018There is none other commandment greater than these.\u2019
\nBut it was more than an answer, even deepest teaching, when, as St. Matthew reports, He added: \u2018on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.\u2019 It little matters for our present purpose how the Jews at the time understood and interpreted these two commandments. They would know what it meant that the Law and the Prophets \u2018hung\u2019 on them, for it was a Jewish expression (\u05ea\u05dc\u05d5\u05d9\u05df). He taught them, not that any one commandment was greater or smaller, heavier or lighter, than another\u2014might be set aside or neglected, but that all sprang from these two as their root and principle, and stood in living connection with them. It was teaching similar to that concerning the Resurrection: that, as concerning the promises, so concerning the commandments, all Revelation was one connected whole; not disjointed ordinances of which the letter was to be weighed, but a life springing from love to God and love to man. So noble was the answer, that for the moment the generous enthusiasm of the Scribe, who had previously been favourably impressed by Christ\u2019s answer to the Sadducees, was kindled. For the moment, at least, traditionalism lost its sway; and, as Christ pointed to it, he saw the exceeding moral beauty of the Law. He was not far from the Kingdom of God. Whether or not he ever actually entered it, is written on the yet unread page of its history.
\n3. The Scribe had originally come to put his question with mixed motives, partially inclined towards Him from His answer to the Sadducees, and yet intending to subject Him to the Rabbinic test. The effect now wrought in him, and the silence which from that moment fell on all His would-be questioners, induced Christ to follow up the impression that had been made. Without addressing any one in particular, He set before them all, what perhaps was the most familiar subject in their theology, that of the descent of Messiah. Whose Son was He? And when they replied: \u2018The Son of David,\u2019 He referred them to the opening words of Psalm 110., in which David called the Messiah \u2018Lord.\u2019 The argument proceeded, of course, on the two-fold supposition that the Psalm was Davidic and that it was Messianic. Neither of these statements would have been questioned by the ancient Synagogue. But we could not rest satisfied with the explanation that this sufficed for the purpose of Christ\u2019s argument, if the foundation on which it rested could be seriously called in question. Such, however, is not the case. To apply Psalm 110., verse by verse and consistently, to any one of the Maccabees, were to undertake a critical task which only a series of unnatural explanations of the language could render possible. Strange, also, that such an interpretation of what at the time of Christ would have been a comparatively young composition, should have been wholly unknown alike to Sadducee and Pharisee. For our own part, we are content to rest the Messianic interpretation on the obvious and natural meaning of the words taken in connection with the general teaching of the Old Testament about the Messiah, on the undoubted interpretation of the ancient Jewish Synagogue, on the authority of Christ, and on the testimony of History.
\nCompared with this, the other question as to the authorship of the Psalm is of secondary importance. The character of infinite, nay, Divine, superiority to any earthly Ruler, and of course to David, which the Psalm sets forth in regard to the Messiah, would sufficiently support the argument of Christ. But, besides, what does it matter, whether the Psalm was composed by David, or only put into the mouth of David (David\u2019s or Davidic), which, on the supposition of its Messianic application, is the only rational alternative?
\nBut we should greatly err if we thought that, in calling the attention of His hearers to this apparent contradiction about the Christ, the Lord only intended to show the utter incompetence of the Pharisees to teach the higher truths of the Old Testament. Such, indeed, was the case\u2014and they felt it in His Presence. But far beyond this, as in the proof which He gave for the Resurrection, and in the view which He presented of the great commandment, the Lord would point to the grand harmonious unity of Revelation. Viewed separately, the two statements, that Messiah was David\u2019s Son, and that David owned Him Lord, would seem incompatible. But in their combination in the Person of the Christ, how harmonious and how full of teaching\u2014to Israel of old, and to all men\u2014concerning the nature of Christ\u2019s Kingdom and of His Work!
\nIt was but one step from this demonstration of the incompetence of Israel\u2019s teachers for the position they claimed to a solemn warning on this subject. And this appropriately constitutes Christ\u2019s Farewell to the Temple, to its authorities, and to Israel. As might have been expected, we have the report of it in St. Matthew\u2019s Gospel. Much of this had been said before, but in quite other connection, and therefore with different application. We notice this, when comparing this Discourse with the Sermon on the Mount, and, still more, with what Christ had said when at the meal in the house of the Pharisee in Per\u00e6a. But here St. Matthew presents a regular series of charges against the representatives of Judaism, formulated in logical manner, taking up successively one point after the other, and closing with the expression of deepest compassion and longing for that Jerusalem, whose children He would fain have gathered under His sheltering wings from the storm of Divine judgment.
\nTo begin with\u2014Christ would have them understand, that, in warning them of the incompetence of Israel\u2019s teachers for the position which they occupied, He neither wished for Himself nor His disciples the place of authority which they claimed, nor yet sought to incite the people to resistance thereto. On the contrary, so long as they held the place of authority, they were to be regarded\u2014in the language of the Mishnah\u2014as if instituted by Moses himself, as sitting in Moses\u2019 seat, and were to be obeyed, so far as merely outward observances were concerned. We regard this direction, not as of merely temporary application, but as involving an important principle. But we also recall that the ordinances to which Christ made reference were those of the Jewish canon-law, and did not involve anything which could really affect the conscience\u2014except that of the ancient, or of our modern Pharisees. But while they thus obeyed their outward directions, they were equally to eschew the spirit which characterised their observances. In this respect a twofold charge is laid against them: of want of spiritual earnestness and love, and of mere externalism, vanity, and self-seeking. And here Christ interrupted His Discourse to warn His disciples against the first beginnings of what had led to such fearful consequence, and to point them to the better way.
\nThis constitutes the first part of Christ\u2019s charge. Before proceeding to those which follow, we may give a few illustrative explanations. Of the opening accusation about the binding (truly in bondage: \u03b4\u03b5\u03c3\u03bc\u03b5\u03cd\u03c9) of heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and laying them on men\u2019s shoulders, proof can scarcely be required. As frequently shown, Rabbinism placed the ordinances of tradition above those of the Law, and this by a necessity of the system, since they were professedly the authoritative exposition and the supplement of the written Law. And although it was a general rule, that no ordinance should be enjoined heavier than the congregation could bear, yet (as previously stated) it was admitted, that, whereas the words of the Law contained what \u2018lightened\u2019 and what \u2018made heavy,\u2019 the words of the Scribes contained only what \u2018made heavy.\u2019 Again, it was another principle, that, where an \u2018aggravation\u2019 or increase of the burden had once been introduced, it must continue to be observed. Thus the burdens became intolerable. And the blame rested equally on both the great Rabbinic Schools. For, although the School of Hillel was supposed in general to make the yoke lighter, and that of Shammai heavier, yet not only did they agree on many points, but the School of Hillel was not unfrequently even more strict than that of his rival. In truth, their differences seem too often only prompted by a spirit of opposition, so that the serious business of religion became in their hands one of rival authority and mere wrangling.
\nIt is not so easy to understand the second part of Christ\u2019s accusation. There were, indeed, many hypocrites among them, who might, in the language of the Talmud, alleviate for themselves and make heavy for others. Yet the charge of not moving them with the finger could scarcely apply to the Pharisees as a party\u2014not even in this sense, that Rabbinic ingenuity mostly found some means of evading what was unpleasant. But, as previously explained, we would understand the word rendered \u2018move\u2019 as meaning to \u2018set in motion,\u2019 or \u2018move away,\u2019 in the sense that they did not \u2018alleviate\u2019 where they might have done so, or else with reference to their admitted principle, that their ordinances always made heavier, never lighter\u2014always imposed grievous burdens, but never, not even with the finger, moved them away.
\nWith this charge of unreality and want of love, those of externalism, vanity, and self-seeking are closely connected. Here we can only make selection from the abundant evidence in support of it. By a merely external interpretation of Exod. 13:9, 16, and Deut. 6:8; 11:18, the practice of wearing Phylacteries, or, as they were called, Tephillin, \u2018prayer-fillets,\u2019 was introduced. These, as will be remembered, were square capsules, covered with leather, containing on small scrolls of parchment, these four sections of the law: Exod. 13:1\u201310; 11\u201316; Deut. 6:4\u20139; 11:13\u201321. The Phylacteries were fastened by long leather straps to the forehead, and round the left arm, near the heart. Most superstitious reverence was attached to them, and in later times they were even used as amulets. Nevertheless, the Talmud itself gives confirmation that the practice of constantly wearing phylacteries\u2014or, it might be, making them broad, and enlarging the borders of the garments, was intended \u2018for to be seen of men.\u2019 Thus we are told of a certain man who had done so, in order to cover his dishonest practices in appropriating what had been entrusted to his keeping. Nay, the Rabbis had in so many words to lay it down as a principle, that the Phylacteries were not to be worn for show.
\nDetailed proof is scarcely required of the charge of vanity and self-seeking in claiming marked outward honours, such as the upper most places at feasts and in the Synagogue, respectful salutations in the market, the ostentatious repetition of the title \u2018Rabbi,\u2019 or \u2018Abba,\u2019 \u2018Father,\u2019 or \u2018Master,\u2019 or the distinction of being acknowledged as \u2018greatest.\u2019 The very earnestness with which the Talmud sometimes warns against such motives for study or for piety sufficiently establishes it. But, indeed, Rabbinic writings lay down elaborate directions, what place is to be assigned to the Rabbis, according to their rank, and to their disciples, and how in the College the most learned, but at feasts the most aged, among the Rabbis, are to occupy the \u2018upper seats.\u2019 So weighty was the duty of respectful salutation by the title Rabbi, that to neglect it would involve the heaviest punishment. Two great Rabbis are described as literally complaining, that they must have lost the very appearance of learning, since in the market-place they had only been greeted with \u2018May your peace be great,\u2019 without the addition \u2018My masters.\u2019
\nA few further illustrations of the claims which Rabbinism preferred may throw light on the words of Christ. It reads like a wretched imitation from the New Testament, when the heathen Governor of C\u00e6sarea is represented as rising up before Rabbis because he beheld \u2018the faces as it were of Angels;\u2019 or like an adaptation of the well-known story about Constantine the Great when the Governor of Antioch is described as vindicating a similar mark of respect to the Rabbis by this, that he had seen their faces and by them conquered in battle. From another Rabbi rays of light are said to have visibly proceeded. According to some, they were Epicur\u00e6ans, who had no part in the world to come, who referred slightingly to \u2018these Rabbis.\u2019 To supply a learned man with the means of gaining money in trade, would procure a high place in heaven. It was said that, according to Prov. 8:15, the sages were to be saluted as kings; nay, in some respects, they were higher\u2014for, as between a sage and a king, it would be duty to give the former priority in redemption from captivity, since every Israelite was fit to be a king, but the loss of a Rabbi could not easily be made up. But even this is not all. The curse of a Rabbi, even if uncaused, would surely come to pass. It would be too painful to repeat some of the miracles pretended to have been done by them or for them, occasionally in protection of a lie; or to record their disputes which among them was \u2018greatest,\u2019 or how they established their respective claims. Nay, their self-assertion extended beyond this life, and a Rabbi went so far as to order that he should be buried in white garments, to show that he was worthy of appearing before his Maker. But perhaps the climax of blasphemous self-assertion is reached in the story, that, in a discussion in heaven between God and the heavenly Academy on a Halakhic question about purity, a certain Rabbi\u2014deemed the most learned on the subject\u2014was summoned to decide the point! As his soul passed from the body he had exclaimed: \u2018Pure, pure,\u2019 which the Voice from Heaven applied to the state of the Rabbi\u2019s soul; and immediately afterwards a letter had fallen from heaven to inform the sages of the purpose for which the Rabbi had been summoned to the heavenly assembly, and afterwards another enjoining a week\u2019s universal mourning for him on pain of excommunication.
\nSuch daring profanities must have crushed out all spiritual religion, and reduced it to a mere intellectual display, in which the Rabbi was always chief\u2014here and hereafter. Repulsive as such legends are, they will at least help us to understand what otherwise might seem harsh in our Lord\u2019s denunciations of Rabbinism. In view of all this, we need not discuss the Rabbinic warnings against pride and self-seeking when connected with study, nor their admonitions to humility. For, the question here is, what Rabbinism regarded as pride, and what as humility, in its teachers? Nor is it maintained that all were equally guilty in this matter; and what passed around may well have led the more earnest to energetic admonitions to humility and unselfishness. But no ingenuity can explain away the facts as above stated, and, when such views prevailed, it would have been almost superhuman wholly to avoid what our Lord denounced as characteristic of Pharisaism. And in this sense, not with Pharisaic painful literalism, but as opposed to Rabbinic bearing, are we to understand the Lord\u2019s warning to His own not to claim among brethren to be \u2018Rabbi,\u2019 or \u2018Abba,\u2019 or \u2018guide.\u2019 The Law of the Kingdom, as repeatedly taught, was the opposite. As regarded aims, they were to seek the greatness of service; and as regarded that acknowledgment which would come from God, it would be the exaltation of humiliation.
\nIt was not a break in the Discourse, rather an intensification of it, when Christ now turned to make final denunciation of Pharisaism in its sin and hypocrisy. Corresponding to the eight Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount with which His public Ministry began, He now closed it with eight denunciations of woe. These are the forthpouring of His holy wrath, the last and fullest testimony against those whose guilt would involve Jerusalem in common sin and common judgment. Step by step, with logical sequence and intensified pathos of energy, is each charge advanced, and with it the Woe of Divine wrath announced.
\nThe first Woe against Pharisaism was on their shutting the Kingdom of God against men by their opposition to the Christ. All knew how exclusive were their pretensions in confining piety to the possession of knowledge, and that they declared it impossible for an ignorant person to be pious. Had they taught men the Scriptures, and shown them the right way, they would have been true to their office; but woe to them who, in their position as leaders, had themselves stood with their back to the door of the Kingdom, and prevented the entrance of others.
\nThe second Woe was on their covetousness and hypocrisy. They made long prayers, but how often did it only cover the vilest selfishness, even to the \u2018devouring\u2019 of widows\u2019 houses. We can scarcely expect the Talmud here to furnish us with illustrative instances, and yet at least one such is recorded; and we recall how often broad phylacteries covered fraudulent minds.
\nThe third Woe was on their proselytism, which issued only in making their converts twofold more the children of hell than themselves. Against this charge, rightly understood, Judaism has in vain sought to defend itself. It is, indeed, true that, in its pride and exclusiveness, Judaism seemed to denounce proselytism, laid down strict rules to test the sincerity of converts, and spoke of them in general contempt as \u2018a plague of leprosy.\u2019 Yet the bitter complaint of classical writers, the statements of Josephus, the frequent allusions in the New Testament, and even the admissions of the Rabbis, prove their zeal for making proselytes\u2014which, indeed, but for its moral sequences, would neither have deserved nor drawn down the denunciation of a \u2018woe.\u2019 Thus the Midrash, commenting on the words: \u2018the souls that they had gotten in Haran,\u2019 refers it to the converts which Abraham had made, adding that every proselyte was to be regarded as if a soul had been created. To this we may add the pride with which Judaism looked back upon the 150,000 Gibeonite converts said to have been made when David avenged the sin of Saul; the satisfaction with which it looked forward to the times of Messiah as those of spontaneous conversion to the Synagogue; and the not unfrequent instances in which a spirit favourable to proselytism is exhibited in Jewish writings, as, also, such a saying as this, that when Israel is obedient to the will of God, He brings in as converts to Judaism all the just of the nations, such as Jethro, Rahab, Ruth, &c. But after all, may the Lord not have referred, not to conversion to Judaism in general, but to proselytism to the sect of the Pharisees, which was undoubtedly sought to the compassing of sea and land?
\nThe fourth Woe is denounced on the moral blindness of these guides rather than on their hypocrisy. From the nature of things it is not easy to understand the precise allusion of Christ. It is true that the Talmud makes the strangest distinction between an oath or adjuration, such as \u2018by heaven\u2019 or \u2018by earth,\u2019 which is not supposed to be binding, and that by any of the letters of which the Divine Name was composed, or by any of the attributes of the Divine Being, when the oath is supposed to be binding. But it seems more likely that our Lord refers to oaths or adjurations in connection with vows, where the casuistry was of the most complicated kind. In general, the Lord here condemns the arbitrariness of all such Jewish distinctions, which, by attaching excessive value to the letter of an oath or vow, really tended to diminish its sanctity. All such distinctions argued folly and moral blindness.
\nThe fifth Woe referred to one of the best-known and strangest Jewish ordinances, which extended the Mosaic law of tithing, in most burdensome minuteness, even to the smallest products of the soil that were esculent and could be preserved, such as anise. Of these, according to some, not only the seeds, but, in certain cases, even the leaves and stalks, had to be tithed. And this, together with grievous omission of the weightier matters of the Law: judgment, mercy, and faith. Truly, this was \u2018to strain out the gnat, and swallow the camel!\u2019 We remember that this conscientiousness in tithing constituted one of the characteristics of the Pharisees; but we could scarcely be prepared for such an instance of it, as when the Talmud gravely assures us that the ass of a certain Rabbi had been so well trained as to refuse corn of which the tithes had not been taken! And experience, not only in the past but in the present, has only too plainly shown, that a religious zeal which expends itself on trifles has not room nor strength left for the weightier matters of the Law.
\nFrom tithing to purification the transition was natural. It constituted the second grand characteristic of Pharisaic piety. We have seen with what punctiliousness questions of outward purity of vessels were discussed. But woe to the hypocrisy which, caring for the outside, heeded not whether that which filled the cup and platter had been procured by extortion or was used for excess. And, alas for the blindness which perceived not, that internal purity was the real condition of that which was outward!
\nWoe similarly to another species of hypocrisy, of which, indeed, the preceding were but the outcome: that of outward appearance of righteousness, while heart and mind were full of iniquity\u2014just as those annually-whited sepulchres of theirs seemed so fair outwardly, but within were full of dead men\u2019s bones and all uncleanness. Woe, lastly, to that hypocrisy which built and decorated sepulchres of prophets and righteous men, and by so doing sought to shelter itself from share in the guilt of those who had killed them. It was not spiritual repentance, but national pride, which actuated them in this, the same spirit of self-sufficiency, pride, and impenitence which had led their fathers to commit the murders. And were they not about to imbrue their hands in the blood of Him to Whom all the prophets had pointed? Fast were they in the Divine judgment filling up the measure of their fathers.
\nAnd thicker and heavier than ever before fell the hailstorm of His denunciations, as He foretold the certain doom which awaited their national impenitence. Prophets, wise men, and scribes would be sent them of Him; and only murder, sufferings, and persecutions would await them\u2014not reception of their message and warnings. And so would they become heirs of all the blood of martyred saints, from that of him whom Scripture records as the first one murdered, down to that last martyr of Jewish unbelief of whom tradition spoke in such terms\u2014Zechariah, stoned by the king\u2019s command in the Court of the Temple, whose blood, as legend had it, did not dry up those two centuries and a half, but still bubbled on the pavement, when Nebuzar-adan entered the Temple, and at last avenged it.
\nAnd yet it would not have been Jesus, if, while denouncing certain judgment on them who, by continuance and completion of the crimes of their fathers, through the same unbelief, had served themselves heirs to all their guilt, He had not also added to it the passionate lament of a love which, even when spurned, lingered with regretful longing over the lost. They all knew the common illustration of the hen gathering her young brood for shelter, and they knew also what of Divine protection, blessing, and rest it implied, when they spoke of being gathered under the wings of the Shekhinah. Fain and often would Jesus have given to Israel, His people, that shelter, rest, protection, and blessing\u2014but they would not. Looking around on those Temple-buildings\u2014that House, it shall be left to them desolate! And He quitted its courts with these words, that they of Israel should not see Him again till, the night of their unbelief past, they would welcome His return with a better Hosanna than that which had greeted His Royal Entry three days before. And this was the \u2018Farewell\u2019 and the parting of Israel\u2019s Messiah from Israel and its Temple. Yet a Farewell which promised a coming again; and a parting which implied a welcome in the future from a believing people to a gracious, pardoning King!<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 5<\/p>\n
THE THIRD DAY IN PASSION-WEEK\u2014THE LAST SERIES OF PARABLES: TO THE PHARISEES AND TO THE PEOPLE\u2014ON THE WAY TO JERUSALEM: THE PARABLE OF THE LABOURERS IN THE VINEYARD\u2014IN THE TEMPLE: THE PARABLE OF THE \u2018NO\u2019 AND \u2018YES\u2019 OF THE TWO SONS\u2014THE PARABLE OF THE EVIL HUSBANDMEN EVILLY DESTROYED\u2014THE PARABLE OF THE MARRIAGE OF THE KING\u2019S SON AND OF THE WEDDING GARMENT<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 19:30\u201320:16; St. Matt. 21:28\u201332; St. Matt. 21:33\u201346; St. Mark 12:1\u201312; St. Luke 20:9\u201319; St. Matt. 22:1\u201314.)<\/p>\n
ALTHOUGH it may not be possible to mark their exact succession, it will be convenient here to group together the last series of Parables. Most, if not all of them, were spoken on that third day in Passion-week: the first four to a more general audience; the last three (to be treated in another chapter) to the disciples, when, on the evening of that third day, on the Mount of Olives, He told them of the \u2018Last Things.\u2019 They are the Parables of Judgment, and in one form or another treat of \u2018the End.\u2019
\n1. The Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard.\u2014As treating of \u2018the End,\u2019 this Parable evidently belongs to the last series, although it may have been spoken previously to Passion-Week, perhaps on that Mission-journey in Per\u00e6a, in connection with which it is recorded by St. Matthew. At any rate, it stands in internal relation with what passed on that occasion, and must therefore be studied with reference to it.
\nWe remember, that on the occasion of the rich young ruler\u2019s failure to enter the Kingdom, to which he was so near, Christ had uttered an earnest warning on the danger of \u2018riches.\u2019 In the low spiritual stage which the Apostles had as yet attained, it was, perhaps, only natural that Peter should, as spokesman of the rest, have, in a kind of spiritual covetousness, clutched at the promised reward, and that in a tone of self-righteousness he should have reminded Christ of the sacrifices which they had made. It was most painfully incongruous, yet part of what He, the Lord, had always to bear, and bore so patiently and lovingly, from their ignorance and failure to understand Him and His work. And this want of true sympathy, this constant contending with the moral dulness even of those nearest to Him, must have been part of His great humiliation and sorrow, one element in the terrible solitariness of His Life, which made Him feel that, in the truest sense, \u2018the Son of Man had not where to lay His Head.\u2019 And yet we also mark the wondrous Divine generosity which, even in moments of such sore disappointment, would not let Him take for nought what should have been freely offered in the gladsome service of grateful love. Only there was here deep danger to the disciples: danger of lapsing into feelings kindred to those with which the Pharisees viewed the pardoned Publicans, or the elder son in the Parable his younger brother; danger of misunderstanding the right relations, and with it the very character of the Kingdom, and of work in and for it. It is to this that the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard refers.
\nThe principle which Christ lays down is, that, while nothing done for Him shall lose its reward, yet, from one reason or another, no forecast can be made, no inferences of self-righteousness may be drawn. It does not by any means follow, that most work done\u2014at least, to our seeing and judging\u2014shall entail a greater reward. On the contrary, \u2018many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.\u2019 Not all, nor yet always and necessarily, but \u2018many.\u2019 And in such cases no wrong has been done; there exists no claim, even in view of the promises of due acknowledgment of work. Spiritual pride and self-assertion can only be the outcome either of misunderstanding God\u2019s relation to us, or else of a wrong state of mind towards others\u2014that is, it betokens mental or moral unfitness.
\nOf this the Parable of the Labourers is an illustration. It teaches nothing beyond this. But, while illustrating how it may come that some who were first are \u2018last,\u2019 and how utterly mistaken or wrong is the thought that they must necessarily receive more than others, who, seemingly, have done more\u2014how, in short, work for Christ is not a ponderable quantity, so much for so much, nor yet we the judges of when and why a worker has come\u2014it also conveys much that is new, and, in many respects, most comforting.
\nWe mark, first, the bearing of \u2018the householder, who went out immediately, at earliest morn (\u1f05\u03bc\u03b1 \u03c0\u03c1\u03c9\u0390), to hire labourers into his vineyard.\u2019 That he did not send his steward, but went himself, and with the dawn of morning, shows both that there was much work to do, and the householder\u2019s anxiety to have it done. That householder is God, and the vineyard His Kingdom; the labourers, whom with earliest morning He seeks in the market-place of busy life, are His Servants. With these he agreed for a denarius a day, which was the ordinary wages for a day\u2019s labour, and so sent them into the vineyard; in other words, He told them He would pay the reward promised to labourers. So passed the early hours of the morning. About the third hour (the Jewish working day being reckoned from sunrise to sunset), that is, probably as it was drawing towards a close, he went out again, and, as he saw \u2018others\u2019 standing idle in the market-place, he said to them, \u2018Go ye also into the vineyard.\u2019 There was more than enough to do in that vineyard; enough and more to employ them. And when he came, they had stood in the market-place ready and waiting to go to work, yet \u2018idle\u2019\u2014unemployed as yet. It might not have been precisely their blame that they had not gone before; they were \u2018others\u2019 than those in the market-place when the Master had first come, and they had not been there at that time. Only as he now sent them, he made no definite promise. They felt that in their special circumstances they had no claim; he told them, that whatsoever was right he would give them; and they implicitly trusted to his word, to his justice and goodness. And so happened it yet again, both at the sixth and at the ninth hour of the day. We repeat, that in none of these instances was it the guilt of the labourers\u2014in the sense of being due to their unwillingness or refusal\u2014that they had not before gone into the vineyard. For some reason\u2014perhaps by their fault, perhaps not\u2014they had not been earlier in the market-place. But as soon as they were there and called, they went, although, of course, the loss of time, however caused, implied loss of work. Neither did the Master in any case make, nor they ask for, other promise than that implied in his word and character.
\nThese four things, then, stand out clearly in the Parable: the abundance of work to be done in the vineyard; the anxiety of the householder to secure all available labourers; the circumstance that, not from unwillingness or refusal, but because they had not been there and available, the labourers had come at later hours; and that, when they had so come, they were ready to go into the vineyard without promise of definite reward, simply trusting to the truth and goodness of him whom they went to serve. We think here of those \u2018last,\u2019 the Gentiles from the east, west, north, and south; of the converted publicans and sinners; of those, a great part of whose lives has, alas! been spent somewhere else, and who have only come at a late hour into the market-place; nay, of them also whose opportunities, capacity, strength, or time have been very limited\u2014and we thank God for the teaching of this Parable. And if doubt should still exist, it must be removed by the concluding sentences of this part of the Parable, in which the householder is represented as going out at the last hour, when, finding others standing, he asks them why they stood there all the day idle, to which they reply, that no man had hired them. These also are, in turn, sent into the vineyard, though apparently without any expressed promise at all. It thus appears, that in proportion to the lateness of their work was the felt absence of any claim on the part of the labourers, and their simple reliance on their employer.
\nAnd now it is even. The time for working is past, and the Lord of the vineyard bids His Steward [here the Christ] pay His labourers. But here the first surprise awaits them. The order of payment is the inverse of that of labour: \u2018beginning from the last unto the first.\u2019 This is almost a necessary part of the Parable. For, if the first labourers had been paid first, they would either have gone away without knowing what was done to the last, or, if they had remained, their objection could not have been urged, except on the ground of manifest malevolence towards their neighbours. After having received their wages, they could not have objected that they had not received enough, but only that the others had received too much. But it was not the scope of the Parable to charge with conscious malevolence those who sought a higher reward or deemed themselves entitled to it. Again, we notice, as indicating the disposition of the later labourers, that those of the third hour did not murmur, because they had not got more than they of the eleventh hour. This is in accordance with their not having made any bargain at the first, but trusted entirely to the householder. But they of the first hour had their cupidity excited. Seeing what the others had received, they expected to have more than their due. When they likewise received every man a denarius, they murmured, as if injustice had been done them. And, as mostly in like circumstances, truth and fairness seemed on their side. For, selecting the extreme case of the eleventh hour labourers, had not the Householder made those who had wrought only one hour equal to them who had \u2018borne the burden of the day and the heat\u2019? Yet, however fair their reasoning might seem, they had no claim in truth or equity, for had they not agreed for one denarius with him? And it had not even been in the general terms of a day\u2019s wages, but they had made the express bargain of one denarius. They had gone to work with a stipulated sum as their hire distinctly in view. They now appealed to justice; but from first to last they had had justice. This as regards the \u2018so much for so much\u2019 principle of claim, law, work, and pay.
\nBut there was yet another aspect than that of mere justice. Those other labourers, who had felt that, owing to the lateness of their appearance, they had no claim\u2014and, alas! which of us must not feel how late we have been in coming, and hence how little we can have wrought\u2014had made no bargain, but trusted to the Master. And as they had believed, so was it unto them. Not because they made or had any claim\u2014\u2018I will, however, to give unto this last, even as unto thee\u2019\u2014the word \u2018I will\u2019 (\u03b8\u03ad\u03bb\u03c9) being emphatically put first to mark \u2018the good pleasure\u2019 of His grace as the ground of action. Such a Master could not have given less to those who had come when called, trusting to His goodness, and not in their deserts. The reward was now reckoned, not of work nor of debt, but of grace. In passing we also mark, as against cavillers, the profound accord between what negative critics would call the \u2018true Judaic Gospel\u2019 of St. Matthew, and what constitutes the very essence of \u2018the anti-Judaic teaching\u2019 of St. Paul\u2014and we ask our opponents to reconcile on their theory what can only be explained on the ground that St. Paul, like St. Matthew, was the true disciple of the true Teacher, Jesus Christ.
\nBut if all is to be placed on the new ground of grace, with which, indeed, the whole bearing of the later labourers accords, then (as St. Paul also shows) the labourers who murmured were guilty either of ignorance in failing to perceive the sovereignty of grace\u2014that it is within His power to do with His own as He willeth\u2014or else of malevolence, when, instead of with grateful joy, they looked on with an evil eye\u2014and this in proportion as \u2018the Householder\u2019 was good. But such a state of mind may be equally that of the Jews, and of the Gentiles. And so, in this illustrative case of the Parable, \u2018the first shall be last, and the last first.\u2019 And in other instances also, though not in all\u2014\u2018many shall be last that are first; and first that are last.\u2019 But He is the God, Sovereign in grace, in Whose Vineyard there is work to do for all, however limited their time, power, or opportunity; Whose labourers we are, if His Children; Who, in His desire for the work, and condescension and patience towards the workers, goeth out into the market-place even to the eleventh hour, and, with only gentlest rebuke for not having earlier come thither and thus lost our day in idleness, still, even to the last, bids us come; Who promises what is right, and gives far more than is due to them who simply trust Him: the God not of the Jews nor of the Gentiles only, but our Father; the God Who not only pays, but freely gives of His own, and in Whose Wisdom and by Whose Grace it may be, that, even as the first shall be last, so the last shall be first.
\nAnother point still remains to be noticed. If anywhere, we expect in these Parables, addressed to the people, forms of teaching and speaking with which they were familiar\u2014in other words, Jewish parallels. But we equally expect that the teaching of Christ, while conveyed under illustrations with which the Jews were familiar, would be entirely different in spirit. And such we find it notably in the present instance. To begin with, according to Jewish Law, if a man engaged a labourer without any definite bargain, but on the statement that he would be paid as one or another of the labourers in the place, he was, according to some, only bound to pay the lowest wages in the place; but, according to the majority, the average between the lowest and the highest. Again, as regards the letter of the Parable itself, we have a remarkable parallel in a funeral oration on a Rabbi, who died at the early age of twenty-eight. The text chosen was: \u2018The sleep of a labouring man is sweet,\u2019 and this was illustrated by a Parable of a king who had a vineyard, and engaged many labourers to work in it. One of them was distinguished above the rest by his ability. So the king took him by the hand, and walked up and down with him. At even, when the labourers were paid, this one received the same wages as the others, just as if he had wrought the whole day. Upon this the others murmured, because he who had wrought only two hours had received the same as they who had laboured the whole day, when the king replied: \u2018Why murmur ye? This labourer has by his skill wrought as much in two hours as you during the whole day.\u2019 This in reference to the great merits of the deceased young Rabbi.
\nBut it will be observed that, with all its similarity of form, the moral of the Jewish Parable is in exactly the opposite direction from the teaching of Christ. The same spirit of work and pay breathes in another Parable, which is intended to illustrate the idea that God had not revealed the reward attaching to each commandment, in order that men might not neglect those which brought less return. A king\u2014so the Parable runs\u2014had a garden, for which he hired labourers without telling them what their wages would be. In the evening he called them, and, having ascertained from each under what tree he had been working, he paid them according to the value of the trees on which they had been engaged. And when they said that he ought to have told them, which trees would bring the labourers most pay, the king replied that thereby a great part of his garden would have been neglected. So had God in like manner only revealed the reward of the greatest of the commandments, that to honour father and mother, and that of the least, about letting the mother-bird fly away\u2014attaching to both precisely the same reward.
\nTo these, if need were, might be added other illustrations of that painful reckoning about work, or else sufferings, and reward, which characterises Jewish theology, as it did those labourers in the Parable.
\n2. The second Parable in this series\u2014or perhaps rather illustration\u2014was spoken within the Temple. The Saviour had been answering the question of the Pharisees as to His authority by an appeal to the testimony of the Baptist. This led Him to refer to the twofold reception of that testimony\u2014on the one hand, by the Publicans and harlots, and, on the other, by the Pharisees.
\nThe Parable, which now follows, introduces a man who has two sons. He goes to the first, and in language of affection (\u03c4\u03ad\u03ba\u03bd\u03bf\u03bd) bids him go and work in his vineyard. The son curtly and rudely refuses; but afterwards he changes his mind and goes. Meantime the father, when refused by the one, has gone to his other son on the same errand. The contrast here is marked. The tone is most polite, and the answer of the son contains not only a promise, but we almost see him going: \u2018I, sir!\u2014and he did not go.\u2019 The application was easy. The first son represented the Publicans and harlots, whose curt and rude refusal of the Father\u2019s call was implied in their life of reckless sin. But afterwards they changed their mind\u2014and went into the Father\u2019s vineyard. The other son, with his politeness of tone and ready promise, but utter neglect of obligations undertaken, represented the Pharisees with their hypocritical and empty professions. And Christ obliged them to make application of the Parable. When challenged by the Lord, which of the two had done the will of his father, they could not avoid the answer. Then it was that, in language equally stern and true, He pointed the moral. The Baptist had come preaching righteousness, and, while the self-righteous Pharisees had not believed him, those sinners had. And yet, even when the Pharisees saw the effect on these former sinners, they changed not their minds that they might believe. Therefore the Publicans and harlots would and did go into the Kingdom before them.
\n3. Closely connected with the two preceding Parables, and, indeed, with the whole tenor of Christ\u2019s sayings at that time, is that about the Evil Husbandmen in the Vineyard. As in the Parable about the Labourers sought by the Householder at different times, the object here is to set forth the patience and goodness of the owner, even towards the evil. And as, in the Parable of the Two Sons, reference is made to the practical rejection of the testimony of the Baptist by the Jews, and their consequent self-exclusion from the Kingdom, so in this there is allusion to John as greater than the prophets, to the exclusion of Israel as a people from their position in the Kingdom, and to their punishment as individuals. Only we mark here a terrible progression. The neglect and non-belief which had appeared in the former Parable have now ripened into rebellion, deliberate, aggravated, and carried to its utmost consequences in the murder of the King\u2019s only and loved Son. Similarly, what formerly appeared as their loss, in that sinners went into the Kingdom of God before them, is now presented alike as their guilt and their judgment, both national and individual.
\nThe Parable opens, like that in Is. 5., with a description of the complete arrangements made by the Owner of the Vineyard, to show how everything had been done to ensure a good yield of fruit, and what right the Owner had to expect at least a share in it. In the Parable, as in the prophecy, the Vineyard represents the Theocracy, although in the Old Testament, necessarily, as identified with the nation of Israel, while in the Parable the two are distinguished, and the nation is represented by the labourers to whom the Vineyard was \u2018let out.\u2019 Indeed, the whole structure of the Parable shows, that the husbandmen are Israel as a nation, although they are addressed and dealt with in the persons of their representatives and leaders. And so it was spoken \u2018to the people,\u2019 and yet \u2018the chief priests and Pharisees\u2019 rightly \u2018perceived that He spake of them.\u2019
\nThis vineyard the owner had let out to husbandmen, while he himself \u2018travelled away\u2019 [abroad], as St. Luke adds, \u2018for a long time.\u2019 From the language it is evident, that the husbandmen had the full management of the vineyard. We remember, that there were three modes of dealing with land. According to one of these (Arisuth), \u2018the labourers\u2019 employed received a certain portion of the fruits, say, a third or a fourth of the produce. In such cases it seems, at least sometimes, to have been the practice, besides giving them a proportion of the produce, to provide also the seed (for a field) and to pay wages to the labourers. The other two modes of letting land were, either that the tenant paid a money rent to the proprietor, or else that he agreed to give the owner a definite amount of produce, whether the harvest had been good or bad. Such leases were given by the year or for life; sometimes the lease was even hereditary, passing from father to son. There can scarcely be a doubt that it is the latter kind of lease (Chakhranutha, from \u05d7\u05db\u05e8) which is referred to in the Parable, the lessees being bound to give the owner a certain amount of fruits in their season.
\nAccordingly, \u2018when the time of the fruits drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen to receive his fruits\u2019\u2014the part of them belonging to him, or, as St. Mark and St. Luke express it, \u2018of the fruits of the vineyard.\u2019 We gather, that it was a succession of servants, who received increasingly ill treatment from these evil husbandmen. We might have expected that the owner would now have taken severe measures; but instead of this he sent, in his patience and goodness, \u2018other servants\u2019\u2014not \u2018more,\u2019 which would scarcely have any meaning, but \u2018greater than the first,\u2019 no doubt, with the idea that their greater authority would command respect. And when these also received the same treatment, we must regard it as involving, not only additional, but increased guilt on the part of the husbandmen. Once more, and with deepening force, does the question arise, what measures the owner would now take. But once more we have only a fresh and still greater display of his patience and unwillingness to believe that these husbandmen were so evil. As St. Mark pathetically puts it, indicating not only the owner\u2019s goodness, but the spirit of determined rebellion and the wickedness of the husbandmen: \u2018He had yet one, a beloved son\u2014he sent him last unto them,\u2019 on the supposition that they would reverence him. The result was different. The appearance of the legal heir made them apprehensive of their tenure. Practically, the vineyard was already theirs; by killing the heir, the only claimant to it would be put out of the way, and so the vineyard become in every respect their own. For, the husbandmen proceeded on the idea, that as the owner was \u2018abroad\u2019 \u2018for a long time,\u2019 he would not personally interfere\u2014an impression strengthened by the circumstance that he had not avenged the former ill-usage of his servants, but only sent others in the hope of influencing them by gentleness. So the labourers, \u2018taking him [the son], cast him forth out of the vineyard, and killed him\u2019\u2014the first action indicating that by violence they thrust him out of his possession, before they wickedly slew him.
\nThe meaning of the Parable is sufficiently plain. The owner of the vineyard, God, had let out His Vineyard\u2014the Theocracy\u2014to His people of old. The covenant having been instituted, He withdrew, as it were\u2014the former direct communication between Him and Israel ceased. Then in due season He sent \u2018His Servants,\u2019 the prophets, to gather His fruits\u2014they had had theirs in all the temporal and spiritual advantages of the covenant. But, instead of returning the fruits meet unto repentance, they only ill-treated His messengers, and that increasingly, even unto death. In His longsuffering He next sent on the same errand \u2018greater\u2019 than them\u2014John the Baptist. And when he also received the same treatment, He sent last His own Son, Jesus Christ. His appearance made them feel, that it was now a decisive struggle for the Vineyard\u2014and so, in order to gain its possession for themselves, they cast the rightful heir out of His own possession, and then killed Him!
\nAnd they must have understood the meaning of the Parable, who had served themselves heirs to their fathers in the murder of all the prophets, who had just been convicted of the rejection of the Baptist\u2019s message, and whose hearts were even then full of murderous thoughts against the rightful Heir of the Vineyard. But, even so, they must speak their own judgment. In answer to His challenge, what in their view the owner of the vineyard would do to these husbandmen, the chief priests and Pharisees could only reply: \u2018As evil men evilly will He destroy them. And the vineyard will He let out to other husbandmen, which shall render Him the fruits in their seasons.\u2019
\nThe application was obvious, and it was made by Christ, first, as always, by a reference to the prophetic testimony, showing not only the unity of all God\u2019s teaching, but also the continuity of the Israel of the present with that of old in their resistance and rejection of God\u2019s counsel and messengers. The quotation, than which none more applicable could be imagined, was from Ps. 118:22, 23, and is made in the (Greek) Gospel of St. Matthew\u2014not necessarily by Christ\u2014from the LXX. Version. The only, almost verbal, difference between it and the original is, that, whereas in the latter the adoption of the stone rejected by the builders as head of the corner (\u2018this,\u2019 hoc, \u05d6\u05b9\u05d0\u05ea) is ascribed to Jehovah, in the LXX. its original designation (\u03b1\u1f55\u03c4\u03b7) as head of the corner (previous to the action of the builders), is traced to the Lord. And then followed, in plain and unmistakable language, the terrible prediction, first, nationally, that the Kingdom of God would be taken from them, and \u2018given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof;\u2019 and then, individually, that whosoever stumbled at that stone and fell over it, in personal offence or hostility, should be broken in pieces, but whosoever stood in the way of, or resisted its progress, and on whom therefore it fell, it would \u2018scatter him as dust.\u2019
\nOnce more was their wrath roused, but also their fears. They knew that He spake of them, and would fain have laid hands on Him; but they feared the people, who in those days regarded Him as a prophet. And so for the present they left Him, and went their way.
\n4. If Rabbinic writings offer scarcely any parallel to the preceding Parable, that of the Marriage-Feast of the King\u2019s Son and the Wedding Garment seems almost reproduced in Jewish tradition. In its oldest form it is ascribed to Jochanan ben Zakkai, who flourished about the time of the composition of the Gospel of St. Matthew. It appears with variety of, or with additional details in Jewish commentaries. But while the Parable of our Lord only consists of two parts, forming one whole and having one lesson, the Talmud divides it into two separate Parables, of which the one is intended to show the necessity of being prepared for the next world\u2014to stand in readiness for the King\u2019s feast; while the other is meant to teach that we ought to be able to present our soul to God at the last in the same state of purity in which we had (according to Rabbinic notions) originally received it. Even this shows the infinite difference between the Lord\u2019s and the Rabbinic use of the Parable. In the Jewish Parable a King is represented as inviting to a feast, without, however, fixing the exact time for it. The wise adorn themselves in time, and are seated at the door of the palace, so as to be in readiness, since, as they argue, no elaborate preparation for a feast can be needed in a palace; while the foolish go away to their work, arguing there must be time enough, since there can be no feast without preparation. (The Midrash has it, that, when inviting the guests, the King had told them to wash, anoint, and array themselves in their festive garments; and that the foolish, arguing that, from the preparation of the food and the arranging of the seats, they would learn when the feast was to begin, had gone, the mason to his cask of lime, the potter to his clay, the smith to his furnace, the fuller to his bleaching-ground.) But suddenly comes the King\u2019s summons to the feast, when the wise appear festively adorned, and the King rejoices over them, and they are made to sit down, eat and drink; while he is wroth with the foolish, who appear squalid, and are ordered to stand by and look on in anguish, hunger and thirst.
\nThe other Jewish Parable is of a king who committed to his servants the royal robes. The wise among them carefully laid them by, while the foolish put them on when they did their work. After a time the king asked back the robes, when the wise could restore them clean, while the foolish had them soiled. Then the king rejoiced over the wise, and, while the robes were laid up in the treasury, they were bidden go home in peace. \u2018But to the foolish he commanded that the robes should be handed over to the fuller, and that they themselves should be cast into prison.\u2019 We readily see that the meaning of this Parable was, that a man might preserve his soul perfectly pure, and so enter into peace, while the careless, who had lost their original purity [no original sin here], would, in the next world, by suffering, both expiate their guilt and purify their souls.
\nWhen, from these Rabbinic perversions, we turn to the Parable of our Lord, its meaning is not difficult to understand. The King made a marriage for his Son, when he sent his Servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding. Evidently, as in the Jewish Parable, and as before in that of the guests invited to the great Supper, a preliminary general invitation had preceded the announcement that all was ready. Indeed, in the Midrash on Lament. 4:2, it is expressly mentioned among other distinctions of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, that none of them went to a feast till the invitation had been given and repeated. But in the Parable those invited would not come. It reminds us both of the Parable of the Labourers for the Vineyard, sought at different times, and of the repeated sending of messengers to those Evil Husbandmen for the fruits that were due, when we are next told that the King sent forth other servants to tell them to come, for he had made ready his \u2018early meal\u2019 (\u1f04\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd, not \u2018dinner,\u2019 as in the Authorised and Revised Version), and that, no doubt with a view to the later meal, the oxen and fatlings were killed. These repeated endeavours to call, to admonish, and to invite, form a characteristic feature of these Parables, showing that it was one of the central objects of our Lord\u2019s teaching to exhibit the longsuffering and goodness of God. Instead of giving heed to these repeated and pressing calls, in the words of the Parable: \u2018But they [the one class] made light of it, and went away, the one to his own land, the other unto his own merchandise.\u2019
\nSo the one class; the other made not light of it, but acted even worse than the first. \u2018But the rest laid hands on his servants, entreated them shamefully, and killed them.\u2019 By this we are to understand, that, when the servants came with the second and more pressing message, the one class showed their contempt for the king, the wedding of his son, and the feast, and their preference for and preoccupation with their own possessions or acquisitions\u2014their property or their trading, their enjoyments or their aims and desires. And, when these had gone, and probably the servants still remained to plead the message of their lord, the rest evil entreated, and then killed them\u2014proceeding beyond mere contempt, want of interest, and preoccupation with their own affairs, to hatred and murder. The sin was the more aggravated that he was their king, and the messengers had invited them to a feast, and that one in which every loyal subject should have rejoiced to take part. Theirs was, therefore, not only murder, but also rebellion against their sovereign. On this the king, in his wrath, sent forth his armies, which\u2014and here the narrative in point of time anticipates the event\u2014destroyed the murderers, and burnt their city.
\nBut the condign punishment of these rebels forms only part of the Parable. For it still leaves the wedding unprovided with guests, to sympathise with the joy of the king, and partake of his feast. And so the narrative continues: \u2018Then\u2019\u2014after the king had given commandment for his armies to go forth, he said to his servants, \u2018The wedding indeed is ready, but they that were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the partings of the highways [where a number of roads meet and cross], and, as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.\u2019 We remember that the Parable here runs parallel to that other, when, first the outcasts from the city-lanes, and then the wanderers on the world\u2019s highway, were brought in to fill the place of the invited guests. At first sight it seems as if there were no connection between the declaration that those who had been bidden had proved themselves unworthy, and the direction to go into the crossroads and gather any whom they might find, since the latter might naturally be regarded as less likely to prove worthy. Yet this is one of the main points in the Parable. The first invitation had been sent to selected guests\u2014to the Jews\u2014who might have been expected to be \u2018worthy,\u2019 but had proved themselves unworthy; the next was to be given, not to the chosen city or nation, but to all that travelled in whatever direction on the world\u2019s highway, reaching them where the roads of life meet and part.
\nWe have already in part anticipated the interpretation of this Parable. \u2018The Kingdom\u2019 is here, as so often in the Old and in the New Testament, likened to a feast, and more specifically to a marriage-feast. But we mark as distinctive, that the King makes it for His Son. Thus Christ, as Son and Heir of the Kingdom, forms the central Figure in the Parable. This is the first point set before us. The next is, that the chosen, invited guests were the ancient Covenant-people\u2014Israel. To them God had sent first under the Old Testament. And, although they had not given heed to His call, yet a second class of messengers was sent to them under the New Testament. And the message of the latter was, that \u2018the early meal\u2019 was ready [Christ\u2019s first coming], and that all preparations had been made for the great evening-meal [Christ\u2019s Reign]. Another prominent truth is set forth in the repeated message of the King, which points to the goodness and longsuffering of God. Next, our attention is drawn to the refusal of Israel, which appears in the contemptuous neglect and preoccupation with their own things of one party, and the hatred, resistance, and murder by the other. Then follow in quick succession the command of judgment on the nation, and the burning of their city\u2014God\u2019s army being, in this instance, the Romans\u2014and, finally, the direction to go into the crossways to invite all men, alike Jews and Gentiles.
\nWith verse 10 begins the second part of the Parable. The \u2018Servants\u2019\u2014that is, the New Testament messengers\u2014had fulfilled their commission; they had brought in as many as they found, both bad and good: that is, without respect to their previous history, or their moral and religious state up to the time of their call; and \u2018the wedding was filled with guests\u2019\u2014that is, the table at the marriage-feast was filled with those who as guests \u2018lay around it\u2019 (\u1f00\u03bd\u03b1\u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03c9\u03bd). But, if ever we are to learn that we must not expect on earth\u2014not even at the King\u2019s marriage-table\u2014a pure Church, it is, surely, from what now follows. The King entered to see His guests, and among them he descried one who had not on a wedding-garment. Manifestly, the quickness of the invitation and the previous unpreparedness of the guests did not prevent the procuring of such a garment. As the guests had been travellers, and as the feast was in the King\u2019s palace, we cannot be mistaken in supposing that such garments were supplied in the palace itself to all those who sought them. And with this agrees the circumstance, that the man so addressed \u2018was speechless\u2019 [literally, \u2018gagged,\u2019 or \u2018muzzled\u2019]. His conduct argued utter insensibility as regarded that to which he had been called\u2014ignorance of what was due to the King, and what became such a feast. For, although no previous state of preparedness was required of the invited guests, all being bidden, whether good or bad, yet the fact remained that, if they were to take part in the feast, they must put on a garment suited to the occasion. All are invited to the Gospel-feast; but they who will partake of it must put on the King\u2019s wedding-garment of Evangelical holiness. And whereas it is said in the Parable, that only one was descried without this garment, this is intended to teach, that the King will not only generally view His guests, but that each will be separately examined, and that no one\u2014no, not a single individual\u2014will be able to escape discovery amidst the mass of guests, if he has not the \u2018wedding-garment.\u2019 In short, in that day of trial, it is not a scrutiny of Churches, but of individuals in the Church. And so the King bade the servants\u2014\u03b4\u03b9\u03b1\u03ba\u03cc\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2\u2014not the same who had previously carried the invitation (\u03b4\u03bf\u03cd\u03bb\u03bf\u03b9\u03c2), but others\u2014evidently here the Angels, His \u2018ministers,\u2019 to bind him hand and foot, and to \u2018cast him out into the darkness, the outer\u2019\u2014that is, unable to offer resistance and as a punished captive, he was to be cast out into that darkness which is outside the brilliantly lighted guest-chamber of the King. And, still further to mark that darkness outside, it is added that this is the well-known place of suffering and anguish: \u2018there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.\u2019
\nAnd here the Parable closes with the general statement, applicable alike to the first part of the Parable\u2014to the first invited guests, Israel\u2014and to the second, the guests from all the world: \u2018For\u2019 (this is the meaning of the whole Parable) \u2018many are called, but few chosen.\u2019 For the understanding of these words we have to keep in view that, logically, the two clauses must be supplemented by the same words. Thus, the verse would read: Many are called out of the world by God to partake of the Gospel-feast, but few out of the world\u2014not, out of the called\u2014are chosen by God to partake of it. The call to the feast and the choice for the feast are not identical. The call comes to all; but it may be outwardly accepted, and a man may sit down to the feast, and yet he may not be chosen to partake of the feast, because he has not the wedding-garment of converting, sanctifying grace. And so one may be thrust even from the marriage-board into the darkness without, with its sorrow and anguish.
\nThus, side by side, yet wide apart, are these two\u2014God\u2019s call and God\u2019s choice. The connecting-link between them is the taking of the wedding-garment, freely given in the Palace. Yet, we must seek it, ask it, put it on. And so here also, we have, side by side, God\u2019s gift and man\u2019s activity. And still, to all time, and to all men, alike in its warning, teaching, and blessing, is it true: \u2018Many are called, but few chosen!\u2019<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 6<\/p>\n
THE EVENING OF THE THIRD DAY IN PASSION-WEEK\u2014ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES: DISCOURSE TO THE DISCIPLES CONCERNING THE LAST THINGS<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 24.; St. Mark 13.; St. Luke 21:5\u201338; 12:35\u201348.)<\/p>\n
THE last and most solemn denunciation of Jerusalem had been uttered, the last and most terrible prediction of judgment upon the Temple spoken, and Jesus was suiting the action to the word. It was as if He had cast the dust off His Shoes against \u2018the House\u2019 that was to be \u2018left desolate.\u2019 And so He quitted for ever the Temple and them that held office in it.
\nThey had left the Sanctuary and the City, had crossed black Kidron, and were slowly climbing the Mount of Olives. A sudden turn in the road, and the Sacred Building was once more in full view. Just then the western sun was pouring his golden beams on tops of marble cloisters and on the terraced courts, and glittering on the golden spikes on the roof of the Holy Place. In the setting, even more than in the rising sun, must the vast proportions, the symmetry, and the sparkling sheen of this mass of snowy marble and gold have stood out gloriously. And across the black valley, and up the slopes of Olivet, lay the dark shadows of those gigantic walls built of massive stones, some of them nearly twenty-four feet long. Even the Rabbis, despite their hatred of Herod, grow enthusiastic, and dream that the very Temple-walls would have been covered with gold, had not the variegated marble, resembling the waves of the sea, seemed more beauteous. It was probably as they now gazed on all this grandeur and strength, that they broke the silence imposed on them by gloomy thoughts of the near desolateness of that House, which the Lord had predicted. One and another pointed out to Him those massive stones and splendid buildings, or spake of the rich offerings with which the Temple was adorned. It was but natural that the contrast between this and the predicted desolation should have impressed them; natural, also, that they should refer to it\u2014not as matter of doubt, but rather as of question. Then Jesus, probably turning to one\u2014perhaps to the first, or else the principal\u2014of His questioners, spoke fully of that terrible contrast between the present and the near future, when, as fulfilled with almost incredible literality, not one stone would be left upon another that was not upturned.
\nIn silence they pursued their way. Upon the Mount of Olives they sat down, right over against the Temple. Whether or not the others had gone farther, or Christ had sat apart with these four, Peter and James and John and Andrew are named as those who now asked Him further of what must have weighed so heavily on their hearts. It was not idle curiosity, although inquiry on such a subject, even merely for the sake of information, could scarcely have been blamed in a Jew. But it did concern them personally, for had not the Lord conjoined the desolateness of that \u2018House\u2019 with His own absence? He had explained the former as meaning the ruin of the City and the utter destruction of the Temple. But to His prediction of it had been added these words: \u2018Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord.\u2019 In their view, this could only refer to His Second Coming, and to the End of the world as connected with it. This explains the twofold question which the four now addressed to Christ: \u2018Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy Coming, and of the consummation of the age?\u2019
\nIrrespective of other sayings, in which a distinction between these two events is made, we can scarcely believe that the disciples could have conjoined the desolation of the Temple with the immediate Advent of Christ and the end of the world. For, in the very saying which gave rise to their question, Christ had placed an indefinite period between the two. Between the desolation of the House and their new welcome to Him, would intervene a period of indefinite length, during which they would not see Him again. The disciples could not have overlooked this; and hence neither their question, nor yet the Discourse of our Lord, have been intended to conjoin the two. It is necessary to keep this in view when studying the words of Christ; and any different impression must be due to the exceeding compression in the language of St. Matthew, and to this, that Christ would purposely leave indefinite the interval between \u2018the desolation of the house\u2019 and His own Return.
\nAnother point of considerable importance remains to be noticed. When the Lord, on quitting the Temple, said: \u2018Ye shall not see Me henceforth,\u2019 He must have referred to Israel in their national capacity\u2014to the Jewish polity in Church and State. If so, the promise in the text of visible reappearance must also apply to the Jewish Commonwealth, to Israel in their national capacity. Accordingly, it is suggested that in the present passage Christ refers to His Advent, not from the general cosmic viewpoint of universal, but from the Jewish standpoint of Jewish, history, in which the destruction of Jerusalem and the appearance of false Christs are the last events of national history, to be followed by the dreary blank and silence of the many centuries of the \u2018Gentile dispensation,\u2019 broken at last by the events that usher in His Coming.
\nKeeping in mind, then, that the disciples could not have conjoined the desolation of the Temple with the immediate Advent of Christ into His Kingdom and the end of the world, their question to Christ was twofold: When would these things be? and, What would be the signs of His Royal Advent and the consummation of the \u2018Age\u2019? On the former the Lord gave no information; to the latter His Discourse on the Mount of Olives was directed. On one point the statement of the Lord had been so novel as almost to account for their question. Jewish writings speak very frequently of the so-called \u2018sorrows of the Messiah\u2019 (Chebhley shel Mashiach ). These were partly those of the Messiah, and partly\u2014perhaps chiefly\u2014those coming on Israel and the world previous to, and connected with, the Coming of the Messiah. There can be no purpose in describing them in detail, since the particulars mentioned vary so much, and the descriptions are so fanciful. But they may generally be characterised as marking a period of internal corruption and of outward distress, especially of famine and war, of which the land of Palestine was to be the scene, and in which Israel were to be the chief sufferers. As the Rabbinic notices which we possess all date from after the destruction of Jerusalem, it is, of course, impossible to make any absolute assertion on the point; but, as a matter of fact, none of them refers to desolation of the City and Temple as one of the \u2018signs\u2019 or \u2018sorrows\u2019 of the Messiah. It is true that isolated voices proclaimed that fate of the Sanctuary, but not in any connection with the triumphant Advent of Messiah; and, if we are to judge from the hopes entertained by the fanatics during the last siege of Jerusalem, they rather expected a Divine, no doubt Messianic, interposition to save the City and Temple, even at the last moment. When Christ, therefore, proclaimed the desolation of \u2018the house,\u2019 and even placed it in indirect connection with His Advent, He taught that which must have been alike new and unexpected.
\nThis may be the most suitable place for explaining the Jewish expectation connected with the Advent of the Messiah. Here we have first to dismiss, as belonging to a later period, the Rabbinic fiction of two Messiahs: the one, the primary and reigning, the Son of David; the other, the secondary and warfaring Messiah, the Son of Ephraim or of Manasseh. The earliest Talmudic reference to this second Messiah dates from the third century of our era, and contains the strange and almost blasphemous notices that the prophecy of Zechariah, concerning the mourning for Him Whom they had pierced, referred to Messiah the Son of Joseph, Who would be killed in the war of Gog and Magog; and that, when Messiah the Son of David saw it, He \u2018asked life\u2019 of God, Who gave it to Him, as it is written in Ps. 2: \u2018Ask of Me, and I will give Thee,\u2019 upon which God informed the Messiah that His father David had already asked and obtained this for Him, according to Ps. 21:4. Generally the Messiah, Son of Joseph, is connected with the gathering and restoration of the ten tribes. Later Rabbinic writings connect all the sufferings of the Messiah for sin with this Son of Joseph. The war in which \u2018the Son of Joseph\u2019 succumbed would finally be brought to a victorious termination by \u2018the Son of David,\u2019 when the supremacy of Israel would be restored, and all nations walk in His Light.
\nIt is scarcely matter for surprise, that the various notices about the Messiah, Son of Joseph, are confused and sometimes inconsistent, considering the circumstances in which this dogma originated. Its primary reason was, no doubt, controversial. When hardly pressed by Christian argument about the Old Testament prophecies of the sufferings of the Messiah, the fiction about the Son of Joseph as distinct from the Son of David would offer a welcome means of escape. Besides, when in the Jewish rebellion under the false Messiah \u2018Bar-Kokhba\u2019 (\u2018the Son of a Star\u2019) the latter succumbed to the Romans and was killed, the Synagogue deemed it necessary to rekindle Israel\u2019s hope, that had been quenched in blood, by the picture of two Messiahs, of whom the first should fall in warfare, while the second, the Son of David, would carry the contest to a triumphant issue.
\nIn general, we must here remember that there is a difference between three terms used in Jewish writings to designate that which is to succeed the \u2018present dispensation\u2019 or \u2018world\u2019 (Olam hazzeh), although the distinction is not always consistently carried out. This happy period would begin with \u2018the days of the Messiah\u2019 (\u05d9\u05de\u05d5\u05d7 \u05d4\u05de\u05e9\u05d9\u05d7). These would stretch into the \u2018coming age\u2019 (Athid labho), and end with \u2018the world to come\u2019 (Olam habba)\u2014although the latter is sometimes made to include the whole of that period. The most divergent opinions are expressed of the duration of the Messianic period. It seems like a round number when we are told that it would last for three generations. In the fullest discussion on the subject, the opinions of different Rabbis are mentioned, who variously fix the period at from forty to one, two, and even seven thousand years, according to fanciful analogies.
\nWhere statements rest on such fanciful considerations, we can scarcely attach serious value to them, nor expect agreement. This remark holds equally true in regard to most of the other points involved. Suffice it to say, that, according to general opinion, the Birth of the Messiah would be unknown to His contemporaries; that He would appear, carry on His work, then disappear\u2014probably for forty-five days; then reappear again, and destroy the hostile powers of the world, notably \u2018Edom,\u2019 \u2018Armilos,\u2019 the Roman power\u2014the fourth and last world-empire (sometimes it is said: through Ishmael). Ransomed Israel would now be miraculously gathered from the ends of the earth, and brought back to their own land, the ten tribes sharing in their restoration, but this only on condition of their having repented of their former sins. According to the Midrash, all circumcised Israel would then be released from Gehenna, and the dead be raised\u2014according to some authorities, by the Messiah, to Whom God would give \u2018the Key of the Resurrection of the Dead.\u2019 This Resurrection would take place in the land of Israel, and those of Israel who had been buried elsewhere would have to roll under ground\u2014not without suffering pain\u2014till they reached the sacred soil. Probably the reason of this strange idea, which was supported by an appeal to the direction of Jacob and Joseph as to their last resting-place, was to induce the Jews, after the final desolation of their land, not to quit Palestine. This Resurrection, which is variously supposed to take place at the beginning or during the course of the Messianic manifestation, would be announced by the blowing of the great trumpet. It would be difficult to say how many of these strange and confused views prevailed at the time of Christ; which of them were universally entertained as real dogmas; or from what sources they had been originally derived. Probably many of them were popularly entertained, and afterwards further developed\u2014as we believe, with elements distorted from Christian teaching.
\nWe have now reached the period of the \u2018coming age\u2019 (the Athid labho, or s\u00e6culum futurum). All the resistance to God would be concentrated in the great war of Gog and Magog, and with it the prevalence of all wickedness be conjoined. And terrible would be the straits of Israel. Three times would the enemy seek to storm the Holy City. But each time would the assault be repelled\u2014at the last with complete destruction of the enemy. The sacred City would now be wholly rebuilt and inhabited. But oh, how different from of old! Its Sabbath-boundaries would be strewed with pearls and precious gems. The City itself would be lifted to a height of some nine miles\u2014nay, with realistic application of Is. 49:20, it would reach up to the throne of God, while it would extend from Joppa as far as the gates of Damascus! For, Jerusalem was to be the dwelling-place of Israel, and the resort of all nations. But most glorious in Jerusalem would be the new Temple which the Messiah was to rear, and to which those five things were to be restored which had been wanting in the former Sanctuary: the Golden Candlestick, the Ark, the Heaven-lit fire on the Altar, the Holy Ghost, and the Cherubim. And the land of Israel would then be as wide as it had been sketched in the promise which God had given to Abraham, and which had never before been fulfilled\u2014since the largest extent of Israel\u2019s rule had only been over seven nations, whereas the Divine promise extended it over ten, if not over the whole earth.
\nStrangely realistic and exaggerated by Eastern imagination as these hopes sound, there is, connected with them, a point of deepest interest on which, as explained in another place, remarkable divergence of opinion prevailed. It concerns the Services of the rebuilt Temple, and the observance of the Law in Messianic days. One party here insisted on the restoration of all the ancient Services, and the strict observance of the Mosaic and Rabbinic Law\u2014nay, on its full imposition on the Gentile nations. But this view must have been at least modified by the expectation, that the Messiah would give a new Law. But was this new Law to apply only to the Gentiles, or also to Israel? Here again there is divergence of opinions. According to some, this Law would be binding on Israel, but not on the Gentiles, or else the latter would have a modified or condensed series of ordinances (at most thirty commandments). But the most liberal view, and, as we may suppose, that most acceptable to the enlightened, was, that in the future only these two festive seasons would be observed: The Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Esther (or else that of Tabernacles), and that of all the sacrifices only thank-offerings would be continued. Nay, opinion went even further, and many held that in Messianic days the distinctions of pure and impure, lawful and unlawful, as regarded food, would be abolished. There can be little doubt that these different views were entertained even in the days of our Lord and in Apostolic times, and they account for the exceeding bitterness with which the extreme Pharisaic party in the Church at Jerusalem contended, that the Gentile converts must be circumcised, and the full weight of the yoke of the Law laid on their necks. And with a view to this new Law, which God would give to His world through the Messiah, the Rabbis divided all time into three periods: the primitive, that under the Law, and that of the Messiah.
\nIt only remains briefly to describe the beatitude of Israel, both physical and moral, in those days, the state of the nations, and, lastly, the end of that \u2018age\u2019 and its merging into \u2018the world to come\u2019 (Olam habba). Morally, this would be a period of holiness, of forgiveness, and of peace. Without, there would be no longer enemies nor oppressors. And within the City and Land a more than Paradisiacal state would prevail, which is depicted in even more than the usual realistic Eastern language. For that vast new Jerusalem (not in heaven, but in the literal Palestine) Angels were to cut gems 45 feet long and broad (30 cubits), and place them in its gates; the windows and gates were to be of precious stones, the walls of silver, gold, and gems, while all kinds of jewels would be strewed about, of which every Israelite was at liberty to take. Jerusalem would be as large as, at present, all Palestine, and Palestine as all the world. Corresponding to this miraculous extension would be a miraculous elevation of Jerusalem into the air. And it is one of the strangest mixtures of self-righteousness and realism with deeper and more spiritual thoughts, when the Rabbis prove by references to the prophetic Scriptures, that every event and miracle in the history of Israel would find its counterpart, or rather larger fulfilment, in Messianic days. Thus, what was recorded of Abraham would, on account of his merit, find, clause by clause, its counterpart in the future: \u2018Let a little water be fetched,\u2019 in what is predicted in Zech. 14:8; \u2018wash your feet,\u2019 in what is predicted in Is. 4:5; \u2018rest yourselves under the tree,\u2019 in what is said in Is. 4:4; and \u2018I will fetch a morsel of bread,\u2019 in the promise of Ps. 72:16.
\nBut by the side of this we find much coarse realism. The land would spontaneously produce the best dresses and the finest cakes; the wheat would grow as high as palm-trees, nay, as the mountains, while the wind would miraculously convert the grain into flour, and cast it into the valleys. Every tree would become fruit-bearing; nay, they were to break forth, and to bear fruit every day; daily was every woman to bear child, so that ultimately every Israelitish family would number as many as all Israel at the time of the Exodus. All sickness and disease, and all that could hurt, would pass away. As regarded death, the promise of its final abolition was, with characteristic ingenuity, applied to Israel, while the statement that the child should die an hundred years old was understood as referring to the Gentiles, and as teaching that, although they would die, yet their age would be greatly prolonged, so that a centenarian would be regarded as only a child. Lastly, such physical and outward loss as Rabbinism regarded as the consequence of the Fall, would be again restored to man.
\nIt would be easy to multiply quotations even more realistic than these, if such could serve any good purpose. The same literalism prevails in regard to the reign of King Messiah over the nations of the world. Not only is the figurative language of the prophets applied in the most external manner, but illustrative details of the same character are added. Jerusalem would, as the residence of the Messiah, become the capital of the world, and Israel take the place of the (fourth) world-monarchy, the Roman Empire. After the Roman Empire none other was to rise, for it was to be immediately followed by the reign of Messiah. But that day, or rather that of the fall of the (ten) Gentile nations, which would inaugurate the Empire of Messiah, was among the seven things unknown to man. Nay, God had conjured Israel not to communicate to the Gentiles the mystery of the calculation of the times. But the very origin of the wicked world-Empire had been caused by Israel\u2019s sin. It had been (ideally) founded when Solomon contracted alliance with the daughter of Pharaoh, while Romulus and Remus rose when Jeroboam set up the worship of the two calves. Thus, what would have become the universal Davidic Rule had, through Israel\u2019s sin, been changed into subjection to the Gentiles. Whether or not these Gentiles would in the Messianic future become proselytes, seems a moot question. Sometimes it is affirmed; at others it is stated that no proselytes would then be received, and for this good reason, that in the final war and rebellion these proselytes would, from fear, cast off the yoke of Judaism and join the enemies.
\nThat war, which seems a continuation of that of Gog and Magog, would close the Messianic era. The nations, who had hitherto given tribute to Messiah, would rebel against Him, when He would destroy them by the breath of His mouth, so that Israel alone would be left on the face of the earth. The duration of that period of rebellion is stated to be seven years. It seems, at least, a doubtful point, whether a second or general Resurrection was expected, the more probable view being, that there was only one Resurrection, and that of Israel alone, or, at any rate, only of the studious and the pious, and that this was to take place at the beginning of the Messianic reign. If the Gentiles rose at all, it would only be immediately again to die.
\nThen the final Judgment would commence. We must here once more make distinction between Israel and the Gentiles, with whom, nay, as more punishable than they, certain notorious sinners, heretics, and all apostates, were to be ranked. Whereas to Israel the Gehenna, to which all but the perfectly righteous had been consigned at death, had proved a kind of purgatory, from which they were all ultimately delivered by Abraham, or, according to some of the later Midrashim, by the Messiah, no such deliverance was in prospect for the heathen nor for sinners of Israel. The question whether the fiery torments suffered (which are very realistically described) would at last end in annihilation, is one which at different times received different answers, as fully explained in another place. At the time of Christ the punishment of the wicked was certainly regarded as of eternal duration. Rabbi Jos\u00e9, a teacher of the second century, and a representative of the more rationalistic school, says expressly, \u2018The fire of Gehinnom is never quenched.\u2019 And even the passage, so often (although only partially) quoted, to the effect, that the final torments of Gehenna would last for twelve months, after which body and soul would be annihilated, excepts from this a number of Jewish sinners, specially mentioned, such as heretics, Epicureans, apostates, and persecutors, who are designated as \u2018children of Gehenna\u2019 (ledorey doroth, to \u2018ages of ages\u2019). And with this other statements agree, so that at most it would follow that, while annihilation would await the less guilty, the most guilty were to be reserved for eternal punishment.
\nSuch, then, was the final Judgment, to be held in the valley of Jehoshaphat by God, at the head of the Heavenly Sanhedrin, composed of the elders of Israel. Realistic as its description is, even this is terribly surpassed by a passage in which the supposed pleas for mercy by the various nations are adduced and refuted, when, after an unseemly contention between God and the Gentiles\u2014equally shocking to good taste and blasphemous\u2014about the partiality that had been shown to Israel, the Gentiles would be consigned to punishment. All this in a manner revolting to all reverent feeling. And the contrast between the Jewish picture of the last Judgment and that outlined in the Gospels is so striking, as alone to vindicate (were such necessary) the eschatological parts of the New Testament, and to prove what infinite distance there is between the Teaching of Christ and the Theology of the Synagogue.
\nAfter the final judgment we must look for the renewal of heaven and earth. In the latter neither physical nor moral darkness would any longer prevail, since the Yetser haRa, or \u2018Evil impulse,\u2019 would be destroyed. And renewed earth would bring forth all without blemish and in Paradisiacal perfection, while alike physical and moral evil had ceased. Then began the \u2018Olam habba,\u2019 or \u2018world to come.\u2019 The question, whether any functions or enjoyments of the body would continue, is variously answered. The reply of the Lord to the question of the Sadducees about marriage in the other world seems to imply, that materialistic views on the subject were entertained at the time. Many Rabbinic passages, such as about the great feast upon Leviathan and Behemoth prepared for the righteous in the latter days, confirm only too painfully the impression of grossly materialistic expectations. On the other hand, passages may be quoted in which the utterly unmaterial character of the \u2018world to come\u2019 is insisted upon in most emphatic language. In truth, the same fundamental divergences here exist as on other points, such as the abode of the beatified, the visible or else invisible glory which they would enjoy, and even the new Jerusalem. And in regard to the latter, as indeed to all those references to the beatitudes of the world to come, it seems at least doubtful, whether the Rabbis may not have intended to describe rather the Messianic days than the final winding up of all things.
\nTo complete this sketch of Jewish opinions, it is necessary, however briefly, to refer to the Pseudepigraphic Writings, which, as will be remembered, expressed the Apocalyptic expectancies of the Jews before the time of Christ. But here we have always to keep in mind this twofold difficulty: that the language used in works of this kind is of a highly figurative character, and must therefore not be literally pressed; and that more than one of them, notably 4 Esdras, dates from post-Christian times, and was, in important respects, admittedly influenced by Christian teaching. But in the main the picture of Messianic times in these writings is the same as that presented by the Rabbis. Briefly, the Pseudepigraphic view may be thus sketched. Of the so-called \u2018Wars of the Messiah\u2019 there had been already a kind of prefigurement in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, when armed soldiery had been seen to carry on warfare in the air. This sign is mentioned in the Sibylline Books as marking the coming end, together with the sight of swords in the starlit sky at night, the falling of dust from heaven, the extinction of the sunlight and the appearance of the moon by day, and the dropping of blood from the rocks. A somewhat similar, though even more realistic, picture is presented in connection with the blast of the third trumpet in 4. (2.) Esdras. Only that there the element of moral judgment is more clearly introduced. This appears still more fully in another passage of the same book, in which, apparently in connection with the Judgment, the influence of Christian teaching, although in an externalised form, may be clearly traced. A perhaps even more detailed description of the wickedness, distress, and physical desolation upon earth at that time, is given in the Book of Jubilees.
\nAt last, when these distresses have reached their final height, when signs are in the sky, ruin upon earth, and the unburied bodies that cover the ground are devoured by birds and wild beasts, or else swallowed up by the earth, would God send \u2018the King,\u2019 Who would put an end to unrighteousness. Then would follow the last war against Jerusalem, in which God would fight from heaven with the nations, when they would submit to, and own Him. But while in the Book of Enoch and in another work of the same class the judgment is ascribed to God, and the Messiah represented as appearing only afterwards, in the majority of these works the judgment or its execution is assigned to the Messiah.
\nIn the land thus restored to Israel, and under the rule of King Messiah, the new Jerusalem would be the capital, purified from the heathen, enlarged, nay, quite transformed. This Jerusalem had been shown to Adam before his Fall, but after that both it and Paradise had been withdrawn from him. It had again been shown to Abraham, to Moses, and to Ezra. The splendour of this new Jerusalem is described in most glowing language. Of the glorious Kingdom thus instituted, the Messiah would be King, although under the supremacy of God. His reign would extend over the heathen nations. The character of their submission was differently viewed, according to the more or less Judaic standpoint of the writers. Thus, in the Book of Jubilees the seed of Jacob are promised possession of the whole earth; they would \u2018rule over all nations according to their pleasure; and after that draw the whole earth unto themselves, and inherit it for ever.\u2019 In the \u2018Assumption of Moses\u2019 this ascendency of Israel seems to be conjoined with the idea of vengeance upon Rome, although the language employed is highly figurative. On the other hand, in the Sibylline Books the nations are represented as, in view of the blessings enjoyed by Israel, themselves turning to acknowledge God, when perfect mental enlightenment and absolute righteousness, as well as physical well-being, would prevail under the rule and judgeship (whether literal or figurative) of the Prophets. The most \u2018Grecian\u2019 view of the Kingdom, is, of course, that expressed by Philo. He anticipates, that the happy moral condition of man would ultimately affect the wild beasts, which, relinquishing their solitary habits, would first become gregarious; then, imitating the domestic animals, gradually come to respect man as their master, nay, become as affectionate and cheerful as \u2018Maltese dogs.\u2019 Among men, the pious and virtuous would bear rule, their dignity inspiring respect, their terror fear, and their beneficence good will. Probably intermediate between this extreme Grecian and the Judaic conception of the Millennium, are such utterances as ascribe the universal acknowledgment of the Messiah to the recognition, that God had invested Him with glory and power, and that His Reign was that of blessing.
\nIt must have been remarked, that the differences between the Apocalyptic teaching of the Pseudepigrapha and that of the New Testament are as marked as those between the latter and that of the Rabbis. Another point of divergence is, that the Pseudepigrapha uniformly represent the Messianic reign as eternal, not broken up by any further apostasy or rebellion. Then would the earth be renewed, and this would be followed, lastly, by the Resurrection. In the Apocalypse of Baruch, as by the Rabbis, it is set forth that men would rise in exactly the same condition which they had borne in life, so that, by being recognised, the reality of the Resurrection would be attested, while in the re-union of body and soul each would receive its due meed for the sins committed in their state of combination while upon earth. But after that a transformation would take place: of the just into the Angelic splendour of their glory, while, on view of this, the wicked would correspondingly fade away. Josephus states that the Pharisees taught only a Resurrection of the Just. As we know that such was not the case, we must regard this as one of the many assertions made by that writer for purposes of his own\u2014probably to present to outsiders the Pharisaic doctrine in the most attractive and rational light of which it was capable. Similarly, the modern contention, that some of the Pseudepigraphic Writings propound the same view of only a Resurrection of the Just, is contrary to evidence. There can be no question that, according to the Pseudepigrapha, in the general Judgment, which was to follow the universal Resurrection, the reward and punishment assigned are represented as of eternal duration, although it may be open to question, as in regard to Rabbinic teaching, which of those who had been sinners would suffer final and endless torment.
\nThe many and persistent attempts, despite the gross inconsistencies involved, to represent the teaching of Christ concerning \u2018the Last Things\u2019 as only the reflection of contemporary Jewish opinion, have rendered detailed evidence necessary. When, with the information just summarised, we again turn to the questions addressed to Him by the disciples, we recall that (as previously shown) they could not have conjoined, or rather confounded, the \u2018when\u2019 of \u2018these things\u2019\u2014that is, of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple\u2014with the \u2018when\u2019 of His Second Coming and the end of the \u2018Age.\u2019 We also recall the suggestion, that Christ referred to His Advent, as to His disappearance, from the Jewish standpoint of Jewish, rather than from the general cosmic view-point of universal, history.
\nAs regards the answer of the Lord to the two questions of His disciples, it may be said that the first part of His Discourse is intended to supply information on the two facts of the future: the destruction of the Temple, and His Second Advent and the end of the \u2018Age,\u2019 by setting before them the signs indicating the approach or beginning of these events. But even here the exact period of each is not defined, and the teaching given intended for purely practical purposes. In the second part of His Discourse the Lord distinctly tells them, what they are not to know, and why; and how all that was communicated to them was only to prepare them for that constant watchfulness, which has been to the Church at all times the proper outcome of Christ\u2019s teaching on the subject. This, then, we may take as a guide in our study: that the words of Christ contain nothing beyond what was necessary for the warning and teaching of the disciples and of the Church.
\nThe first Part of Christ\u2019s Discourse consists of four Sections, of which the first describes \u2018the beginning of the birth-woes\u2019 of the new \u2018Age\u2019 about to appear. The expression: \u2018The End is not yet\u2019 clearly indicates, that it marks only the earliest period of the beginning\u2014the farthest terminus a quo of the \u2018birth-woes.\u2019 Another general consideration, which seems of importance, is, that the Synoptic Gospels report this part of the Lord\u2019s Discourse in almost identical language. If the inference from this seems that their accounts were derived from a common source\u2014say, the report of St. Peter\u2014yet this close and unvarying repetition also conveys an impression, that the Evangelists themselves may not have fully understood the meaning of what they recorded. This may account for the rapid and unconnected transitions from subject to subject. At the same time it imposes on us the duty of studying the language anew, and without regard to any scheme of interpretation. This only may be said, that the obvious difficulties of negative criticism are here equally great, whether we suppose the narratives to have been written before or after the destruction of Jerusalem.
\n1. The purely practical character of the Discourse appears from its opening words. They contain a warning, addressed to the disciples in their individual, not in their corporate, capacity, against being \u2018led astray.\u2019 This, more particularly in regard to Judaic seductions leading them after false Christs. Though in the multitude of impostors, who, in the troubled times between the rule of Pilate and the destruction of Jerusalem, promised Messianic deliverance to Israel, few names and claims of this kind have been specially recorded, yet the hints in the New Testament, and the references, however guarded, by the Jewish historian, imply the appearance of many such seducers. And their influence, not only upon Jews, but on Jewish Christians, might be the more dangerous, that the latter would naturally regard \u2018the woes,\u2019 which were the occasion of their pretensions, as the judgments which would usher in the Advent of their Lord. Against such seduction they must be peculiarly on their guard. So far for the \u2018things\u2019 connected with the destruction of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Jewish commonwealth. But, taking a wider and cosmic view, they might also be misled by either rumours of war at a distance, or by actual warfare, so as to believe that the dissolution of the Roman Empire, and with it the Advent of Christ, was at hand. This also would be a misapprehension, grievously misleading, and to be carefully guarded against.
\nAlthough primarily applying to them, yet alike the peculiarly Judaic, or, it might be even Christian, and the general cosmic sources of misapprehension as to the near Advent of Christ, must not be limited to the times of the Apostles. They rather indicate these twofold grounds of misapprehension which in all ages have misled Christians into an erroneous expectancy of the immediate Advent of Christ: the seductions of false Messiahs, or, it may be, teachers, and violent disturbances in the political world. So far as Israel was concerned, these attained their climax in the great rebellion against Rome under the false Messiah, Bar Kokhba, in the time of Hadrian, although echoes of similar false claims, or hope of them, have again and again roused Israel during the night of these many centuries into brief, startled waking. And, as regards the more general cosmic signs, have not Christians in the early ages watched, not only the wars on the boundaries of the Empire, but the condition of the state in the age of Nero, the risings, turmoils, and threatenings; and so onwards, those of later generations, even down to the commotions of our own period, as if they betokened the immediate Advent of Christ, instead of marking in them only the beginning of the birth-woes of the new \u2018Age\u2019?
\n2. From the warning to Christians as individuals, the Lord next turns to give admonition to the Church in her corporate capacity. Here we mark, that the events now described must not be regarded as following, with strict chronological precision, those referred to in the previous verses. Rather is it intended to indicate a general nexus with them, so that these events begin partly before, partly during, and partly after, those formerly predicted. They form, in fact, the continuation of the \u2018birth-woes.\u2019 This appears even from the language used. Thus, while St. Matthew writes: \u2018Then\u2019 (\u03c4\u03cc\u03c4\u03b5, at that time) \u2018shall they deliver you up,\u2019 St. Luke places the persecutions \u2018before all these things;\u2019 while St. Mark, who reports this part of the Discourse most fully, omits every note of time, and only emphasises the admonition which the fact conveys. As regards the admonition itself, expressed in this part of the Lord\u2019s Discourse, we notice that, as formerly to individuals, so now to the Church two sources of danger are pointed out: internal, from heresies (\u2018false prophets\u2019) and the decay of faith, and external, from persecutions, whether Judaic and from their own kindred, or from the secular powers throughout the world. But, along with these two dangers, two consoling facts are also pointed out. As regards the persecutions in prospect, full Divine aid is promised to Christians\u2014alike to individuals and to the Church. Thus all care and fear may be dismissed: their testimony shall neither be silenced, nor shall the Church be suppressed or extinguished; but inward joyousness, outward perseverance, and final triumph, are secured by the Presence of the Risen Saviour with, and the felt indwelling of the Holy Ghost in His Church. And, as for the other and equally consoling fact: despite the persecution of Jews and Gentiles, before the End cometh \u2018this the Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the inhabited earth for a testimony to all the nations. This, then, is really the only sign of \u2018the End\u2019 Of the present \u2018Age.\u2019
\n3. From these general predictions, the Lord proceeds, in the third part of this Discourse, to advertise the Disciples of the great historic fact immediately before them, and of the dangers which might spring from it. In truth, we have here His answer to their question, \u2018When shall these things be?\u2019 not, indeed, as regards the when, but the what of them. And with this He conjoins the present application of His general warning regarding false Christs, given in the first part of this Discourse. The fact of which He now, in this third part of His Discourse, advertises them, is the destruction of Jerusalem. Its twofold dangers would be\u2014outwardly, the difficulties and perils which at that time would necessarily beset men, and especially the members of the infant-Church; and, religiously, the pretensions and claims of false Christs or prophets at a period when all Jewish thinking and expectancy would lead men to anticipate the near Advent of the Messiah. There can be no question, that from both these dangers the warning of the Lord delivered the Church. As directed by Him, the members of the Christian Church fled at an early period of the siege of Jerusalem to Pella, while the words in which He had told that His Coming would not be in secret, but with the brightness of that lightning which shot across the sky, prevented not only their being deceived, but perhaps even the record, if not the rise of many who otherwise would have deceived them. As for Jerusalem, the prophetic vision initially fulfilled in the days of Antiochus would once more, and now fully, become reality, and the abomination of desolation stand in the Holy Place. This, together with tribulation to Israel, unparalleled in the terrible past of its history, and unequalled even in its bloody future. Nay, so dreadful would be the persecution, that, if Divine mercy had not interposed for the sake of the followers of Christ, the whole Jewish race that inhabited the land would have been swept away. But on the morrow of that day no new Maccabee would arise, no Christ come, as Israel fondly hoped; but over that carcase would the vultures gather; and so through all the Age of the Gentiles, till converted Israel should raise the welcoming shout: \u2018Blessed be He that cometh in the Name of the Lord!\u2019
\n4.The Age of the Gentiles, \u2018the end of the Age,\u2019 and with it the new allegiance of His now penitent people Israel; \u2018the sign of the Son of Man in heaven,\u2019 perceived by them; the conversion of all the world, the Coming of Christ, the last Trumpet, the Resurrection of the dead\u2014such, in most rapid sketch, is the outline which the Lord draws of His Coming and the End of the world.
\nIt will be remembered that this had been the second question of the disciples. We again recall, that the disciples did not, indeed, could not have connected, as immediately subsequent events, the destruction of Jerusalem and His Second Coming, since He had expressly placed between them the period\u2014apparently protracted\u2014of His Absence, with the many events that were to happen in it\u2014notably, the preaching of the Gospel over the whole inhabited earth. Hitherto the Lord had, in His Discourse, dwelt in detail only on those events which would be fulfilled before this generation should pass. It had been for admonition and warning that He had spoken, not for the gratification of curiosity. It had been prediction of the immediate future for practical purposes, with such dim and general indication of the more distant future of the Church as was absolutely necessary to mark her position in the world as one of persecution, with promise, however, of His Presence and Help; with indication also of her work in the world, to its terminus ad quem\u2014the preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom to all nations on earth.
\nMore than this concerning the future of the Church could not have been told without defeating the very object of the admonition and warning which Christ had exclusively in view, when answering the question of the disciples. Accordingly, what follows in ver. 29, describes the history, not of the Church\u2014far less any visible physical signs in the literal heavens\u2014but, in prophetic imagery, the history of the hostile powers of the world, with its lessons. A constant succession of empires and dynasties would characterise politically\u2014and it is only the political aspect with which we are here concerned\u2014the whole period after the extinction of the Jewish State. Immediately after that would follow the appearance to Israel of the \u2018Sign\u2019 of the Son of Man in heaven, and with it the conversion of all nations (as previously predicted), the Coming of Christ, and, finally, the blast of the last Trumpet and the Resurrection.
\n5. From this rapid outline of the future the Lord once more turned to make present application to the disciples; nay, application, also, to all times. From the fig-tree, under which, on that spring-afternoon, they may have rested on the Mount of Olives, they were to learn a \u2018parable.\u2019 We can picture Christ taking one of its twigs, just as its softening tips were bursting into young leaf. Surely, this meant that summer was nigh\u2014not that it had actually come. The distinction is important. For, it seems to prove that \u2018all these things,\u2019 which were to indicate to them that it was near, even at the doors, and which were to be fulfilled ere this generation had passed away, could not have referred to the last signs connected with the immediate Advent of Christ, but must apply to the previous prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Jewish Commonwealth. At the same time we again admit, that the language of the Synoptists seems to indicate, that they had not clearly understood the words of the Lord which they reported, and that in their own minds they had associated the \u2018last signs\u2019 and the Advent of Christ with the fall of the City. Thus may they have come to expect that Blessed Advent even in their own days.
\n2. It is at least a question, whether the Lord, while distinctly indicating these facts, had intended to remove the doubt and uncertainty of their succession from the minds of His disciples. To have done so would have necessitated that which, in the opening sentence of the Second Division of this Discourse, He had expressly declared to lie beyond their ken. The \u2018when\u2019\u2014the day and the hour of His Coming\u2014was to remain hidden from men and Angels. Nay, even the Son Himself\u2014as they viewed Him and as He spake to them\u2014knew it not. It formed no part of His present Messianic Mission, nor subject for His Messianic Teaching. Had it done so, all the teaching that follows concerning the need of constant watchfulness, and the pressing duty of working for Christ in faith, hope, and love\u2014with purity, self-denial, and endurance\u2014would have been lost. The peculiar attitude of the Church: with loins girt for work, since the time was short, and the Lord might come at any moment; with her hands busy; her mind faithful; her bearing self-denying and devoted; her heart full of loving expectancy; her face upturned towards the Sun that was so soon to rise; and her ear straining to catch the first notes of heaven\u2019s song of triumph\u2014all this would have been lost! What has sustained the Church during the night of sorrow these many centuries; what has nerved her with courage for the battle, with steadfastness to bear, with love to work, with patience and joy in disappointments\u2014would all have been lost! The Church would not have been that of the New Testament, had she known the mystery of that day and hour, and not ever waited as for the immediate Coming of her Lord and Bridegroom.
\nAnd what the Church of the New Testament has been, and is, that her Lord and Master made her, and by no agency more effectually than by leaving undetermined the precise time of His Return. To the world this would indeed become the occasion for utter carelessness and practical disbelief of the coming Judgment. As in the days of Noah the long delay of threatened judgment had led to absorption in the ordinary engagements of life, to the entire disbelief of what Noah had preached, so would it be in the future. But that day would come certainly and unexpectedly, to the sudden separation of those who were engaged in the same daily business of life, of whom one might be taken up (\u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03bb\u03b1\u03bc\u03b2\u03ac\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9, \u2018received\u2019), the other left to the destruction of the coming Judgment.
\nBut this very mixture of the Church with the world in the ordinary avocations of life indicated a great danger. As in all such, the remedy which the Lord would set before us is not negative in the avoidance of certain things, but positive. We shall best succeed, not by going out of the world, but by being watchful in it, and keeping fresh on our hearts, as well as on our minds, the fact that He is our Lord, and that we are, and always most lovingly, to look and long for His Return. Otherwise twofold damage might come to us. Not expecting the arrival of the Lord in the night-time (which is the most unlikely for His Coming), we might go to sleep, and the Enemy, taking advantage of it, rob us of our peculiar treasure. Thus the Church, not expecting her Lord, might become as poor as the world. This would be loss. But there might be even worse. According to the Master\u2019s appointment, each one had, during Christ\u2019s absence, his work for Him, and the reward of grace, or else the punishment of neglect, were in assured prospect. The faithful steward, to whom the Master had entrusted the care of His household, to supply His servants with what was needful for their support and work, would, if found faithful, be rewarded by advancement to far larger and more responsible work. On the other hand, belief in the delay of the Lord\u2019s Return would lead to neglect of the Master\u2019s work, to unfaithfulness, tyranny, self-indulgence, and sin. And when the Lord suddenly came, as certainly He would come, there would be not only loss, but damage, hurt, and the punishment awarded to the hypocrites. Hence, let the Church be ever on her watch, let her ever be in readiness! And how terribly the moral consequences of unreadiness, and the punishment threatened, have ensued, the history of the Church during these eighteen centuries has only too often and too sadly shown.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 7<\/p>\n
EVENING OF THE THIRD DAY IN PASSION-WEEK\u2014ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES\u2014LAST PARABLES: TO THE DISCIPLES CONCERNING THE LAST THINGS\u2014THE PARABLE OF THE TEN VIRGINS\u2014THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS\u2014SUPPLEMENTARY PARABLE OF THE MINAS AND THE KING\u2019S RECKONING WITH HIS SERVANTS AND HIS REBELLIOUS CITIZENS<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 25:1\u201313; St. Matt. 25:14\u201330; St. Luke 19:11\u201328.)<\/p>\n
1. As might have been expected, the Parables concerning the Last Things are closely connected with the Discourse of the Last Things, which Christ had just spoken to His Disciples. In fact, that of the Ten Virgins, which seems the fullest in many-sided meaning, is, in its main object, only an illustration of the last part of Christ\u2019s Discourse. Its great practical lessons had been: the unexpectedness of the Lord\u2019s Coming; the consequences to be apprehended from its delay; and the need of personal and constant preparedness. Similarly, the Parable of the Ten Virgins may, in its great outlines, be thus summarised: Be ye personally prepared; be ye prepared for any length of time; be ye prepared to go to Him directly.
\nBefore proceeding, we mark that this Parable also is connected with those that had preceded. But we notice not only connection, but progression. Indeed, it would be deeply interesting, alike historically and for the better understanding of Christ\u2019s teaching, but especially as showing its internal unity and development, and the credibility of the Gospel-narratives, generally to trace this connection and progress. And this, not merely in the three series of Parables which mark the three stages of His History\u2014the Parables of the Founding of the Kingdom, of its Character, and of its Consummation\u2014but as regards the Parables themselves, that so the first might be joined to the last as a string of heavenly pearls. But this lies beyond our task. Not so, to mark the connection between the Parable of the Ten Virgins and that of the Man without the Wedding-Garment.
\nLike the Parable of the Ten Virgins, it had pointed to the future. If the exclusion and punishment of the Unprepared Guest did not primarily refer to the Last Day, or to the Return of Christ, but perhaps rather to what would happen in death, it pointed, at least secondarily, to the final consummation. On the other hand, in the Parable of the Ten Virgins this final consummation is the primary point. So far, then, there is both connection and advance. Again, from the appearance and the fate of the Unprepared Guest we learned, that not every one who, following the Gospel-call, comes to the Gospel-feast, will be allowed to partake of it; but that God will search and try each one individually. There is, indeed, a society of guests\u2014the Church; but we must not expect either that the Church will, while on earth, be wholly pure, or that its purification will be achieved by man. Each guest may, indeed, come to the banqueting-hall, but the final judgment as to his worthiness belongs to God. Lastly, the Parable also taught the no less important opposite lesson, that each individual is personally responsible; that we cannot shelter ourselves in the community of the Church, but that to partake of the feast requireth personal and individual preparation. To express it in modern terminology: It taught Churchism as against one-sided individualism, and spiritual individualism as against dead Churchism. All these important lessons are carried forward in the Parable of the Ten Virgins. If the union of the Ten Virgins for the purpose of meeting the Bridegroom, and their a priori claims to enter in with Him\u2014which are, so to speak, the historical data and necessary premisses in the Parable\u2014point to the Church, the main lessons of the Parable are the need of individual, personal, and spiritual preparation. Only such will endure the trial of the long delay of Christ\u2019s Coming; only such will stand that of an immediate summons to meet the Christ.
\nIt is late at even\u2014the world\u2019s long day seems past, and the Coming of the Bridegroom must be near. The day and the hour we know not, for the Bridegroom has been far away. Only this we know, that it is the Evening of the Marriage which the Bridegroom had fixed, and that His word of promise may be relied upon. Therefore all has been made ready within the bridal house, and is in waiting there; and therefore the Virgins prepare to go forth to meet Him on His Arrival. The Parable proceeds on the assumption that the Bridegroom is not in the town, but somewhere far away; so that it cannot be known at what precise hour He may arrive. But it is known that He will come that night; and the Virgins who are to meet Him have gathered\u2014presumably in the house where the Marriage is to take place\u2014waiting for the summons to go forth and welcome the Bridegroom. The common mistake, that the Virgins are represented in verse 1 as having gone forth on the road to meet the Bridegroom, is not only irrational\u2014since it is scarcely credible that they would all have fallen asleep by the wayside, and with lamps in their hands\u2014but incompatible with the circumstance, that at midnight the cry is suddenly raised to go forth and meet Him. In these circumstances, no precise parallel can be derived from the ordinary Jewish marriage-processions, where the bridegroom, accompanied by his groomsmen and friends, went to the bride\u2019s house, and thence conducted the bride, with her attendant maidens and friends, into his own or his parents\u2019 home. But in the Parable, the Bridegroom comes from a distance and goes to the bridal house. Accordingly, the bridal procession is to meet Him on His Arrival, and escort Him to the bridal place. No mention is made of the Bride, either in this Parable or in that of the Marriage of the King\u2019s Son. This, for reasons connected with their application: since in the one case the Wedding Guests, in the other the Virgins, occupy the place of the Bride. And here we must remind ourselves of the general canon, that, in the interpretation of a Parable, details must not be too closely pressed. The Parables illustrate the Sayings of Christ, as the Miracles His Doings; and alike the Parables and the Miracles present only one or another, not all the aspects of the truth.
\nAnother arch\u00e6ological inquiry will, perhaps, be more helpful to our understanding of this Parable. The \u2018lamps\u2019\u2014not \u2018torches\u2019\u2014which the Ten Virgins carried, were of well-known construction. They bear in Talmudic writings commonly the name Lappid, but the Aramaised form of the Greek word in the New Testament also occurs as Lampad and Lampedas. The lamps consisted of a round receptacle for pitch or oil for the wick. This was placed in a hollow cup or deep saucer\u2014the Beth Shiqqua\u2014which was fastened by a pointed end into a long wooden pole, on which it was borne aloft. According to Jewish authorities, it was the custom in the East to carry in a bridal procession about ten such lamps. We have the less reason to doubt that such was also the case in Palestine, since, according to rubric, ten was the number required to be present at any office or ceremony, such as at the benedictions accompanying the marriage-ceremonies. And, in the peculiar circumstances supposed in the Parable, Ten Virgins are represented as going forth to meet the Bridegroom, each bearing her lamp.
\nThe first point which we mark is, that the Ten Virgins brought, presumably to the bridal house, \u2018their own lamps.\u2019 Emphasis must be laid on this. Thus much was there of personal preparation on the part of all. But while the five that were wise brought also \u2018oil in the vessels\u2019 [presumably the hollow receptacles in which the lamp proper stood], the five foolish Virgins neglected to do so, no doubt expecting that their lamps would be filled out of some common stock in the house. In the text the foolish Virgins are mentioned before the wise, because the Parable turns on this. We cannot be at a loss to interpret the meaning of it. The Bridegroom far away is Christ, Who is come for the Marriage-Feast from \u2018the far country\u2019\u2014the Home above\u2014certainly on that night, but we know not at what hour of it. The ten appointed bridal companions who are to go forth to meet Him are His professed disciples, and they gather in the bridal house in readiness to welcome His arrival. It is night, and a marriage-procession: therefore, they must go forth with their lamps. All of them have brought their own lamps, they all have the Christian, or, say, the Church-profession: the lamp in the hollow cup on the top of the pole. But only the wise Virgins have more than this\u2014the oil in the vessels, without which the lamps cannot give their light. The Christian or Church-profession is but an empty vessel on the top of a pole, without the oil in the vessels. We here remember the words of Christ: \u2018Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father Which is in heaven.\u2019 The foolishness of the Virgins, which consisted in this that they had omitted to bring their oil, is thus indicated in the text: \u2018All they which [\u03b1\u1f35\u03c4\u03b9\u03bd\u03b5\u03c2] were foolish, when they brought their own lamps, brought not with them oil:\u2019 they brought their own lamps, but not their own oil. This (as already explained), probably, not from forgetfulness\u2014for they could scarcely have forgotten the need of oil, but from wilful neglect, in the belief that there would be a common stock in the house, out of which they would be supplied, or that there would be sufficient time for the supply of their need after the announcement that the Bridegroom was coming. They had no conception either of any personal obligation in this matter, nor that the call would come so suddenly, nor yet that there would be so little interval between the arrival of the Bridegroom and \u2018the closing of the door.\u2019 And so they deemed it not necessary to undertake what must have involved both trouble and carefulness\u2014the bringing their own oil in the hollow vessels in which the lamps were fixed.
\nWe have proceeded on the supposition that the oil was not carried in separate vessels, but in those attached to the lamps. It seems scarcely likely that these lamps had been lighted while waiting in the bridal house, where the Virgins assembled, and which, no doubt, was festively illuminated. Many practical objections to this view will readily occur. The foolishness of the five Virgins therefore consisted, not (as is commonly supposed) in their want of perseverance\u2014as if the oil had been consumed before the Bridegroom came, and they had only not provided themselves with a sufficient extra-supply\u2014but in the entire absence of personal preparation, having brought no oil of their own in their lamps. This corresponds to their conduct, who, belonging to the Church\u2014having the \u2018profession\u2019\u2014being bridal companions provided with lamps, ready to go forth, and expecting to share in the wedding feast\u2014neglect the preparation of grace, personal conversion and holiness, trusting that in the hour of need the oil may be supplied out of the common stock. But they know not, or else heed not, that every one must be personally prepared for meeting the Bridegroom, that the call will be sudden, that the stock of oil is not common, and that the time between His arrival and the shutting of the door will be awfully brief.
\nFor\u2014and here begins the second scene in the Parable\u2014the interval between the gathering of the Virgins in readiness to meet Him and the arrival of the Bridegroom is much longer than had been anticipated. And so it came, that both the wise and the foolish Virgins \u2018slumbered and slept.\u2019 Manifestly, this is but a secondary trait in the Parable, chiefly intended to accentuate the surprise of the sudden announcement of the Bridegroom. The foolish Virgins did not ultimately fail because of their sleep, nor yet were the wise reproved for it. True, it was evidence of their weakness\u2014but then it was night; all the world was asleep; and their own drowsiness might be in proportion to their former excitement. What follows is intended to bring into prominence the startling suddenness of the Bridegroom\u2019s Coming. It is midnight\u2014when sleep is deepest\u2014when suddenly \u2018there was a cry, Behold, the Bridegroom cometh! Come ye out to the meeting of Him. Then all those Virgins awoke, and prepared (trimmed) their lamps.\u2019 This, not in the sense of heightening the low flame in their lamps, but in that of hastily drawing up the wick and lighting it, when, as there was no oil in the vessels, the flame, of course, immediately died out. \u2018Then the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are going out. But the wise answered, saying: Not at all\u2014it will never suffice for us and you! Go ye rather to the sellers, and buy for your own selves.\u2019
\nThis advice must not be regarded as given in irony. The trait is introduced to point out the proper source of supply\u2014to emphasise that the oil must be their own, and also to prepare for what follows. \u2018But while they were going to buy, the Bridegroom came; and the ready ones [they that were ready] went in with Him to the Marriage-Feast, and the door was shut.\u2019 The sudden cry at midnight: \u2018The Bridegroom cometh!\u2019 had come with startling surprise both to the wise and the foolish Virgins; to the one class it had come only unexpectedly, but to the other also unpreparedly. Their hope of sharing or borrowing the oil of the wise Virgins being disappointed, the foolish were, of course, unable to meet the Bridegroom. And while they hurried to the sellers of oil, those that had been ready not only met, but entered with the Bridegroom into the bridal house, and the door was shut. It is of no importance here, whether or not the foolish Virgins finally succeeded in obtaining oil\u2014although this seems unlikely at that time of night\u2014since it could no longer be of any possible use, as its object was to serve in the festive procession, which was now past. Nevertheless, and when the door was shut, those foolish Virgins came, calling on the Bridegroom to open to them. But they had failed in that which could alone give them a claim to admission. Professing to be bridesmaids, they had not been in the bridal procession, and so, in truth and righteousness, He could only answer from within: \u2018Verily I say unto you, I know you not.\u2019 This, not only in punishment, but in the right order of things.
\nThe personal application of this Parable to the disciples, which the Lord makes, follows almost of necessity. \u2018Watch therefore, for ye know not the day, nor the hour.\u2019 Not enough to be in waiting with the Church; His Coming will be far on in the night; it will be sudden; it will be rapid: be prepared therefore, be ever and personally prepared! Christ will come when least expected\u2014at midnight\u2014and when the Church, having become accustomed to His long delay, has gone to sleep. So sudden will be His Coming, that after the cry of announcement there will not be time for anything but to go forth to meet Him; and so rapid will be the end, that, ere the foolish Virgins can return, the door has been for ever closed. To present all this in the most striking manner, the Parable takes the form of a dialogue, first between the foolish and the wise Virgins, in which the latter only state the bare truth when saying, that each has only sufficient oil for what is needed when joining the marriage-procession, and no one what is superfluous. Lastly, we are to learn from the dialogue between the foolish Virgins and the Bridegroom, that it is impossible in the day of Christ\u2019s Coming to make up for neglect of previous preparation, and that those who have failed to meet Him, even though of the bridal Virgins, shall be finally excluded as being strangers to the Bridegroom.
\n2. The Parable of the Talents\u2014their use and misuse\u2014follows closely on the admonition to watch, in view of the sudden and certain Return of Christ, and the reward or punishment which will then be meted out. Only that, whereas in the Parable of the Ten Virgins the reference was to the personal state, in that of \u2018the Talents\u2019 it is to the personal work of the Disciples. In the former instance, they are portrayed as the bridal maidens who are to welcome His Return; in the latter, as the servants who are to give an account of their stewardship.
\nFrom its close connection with what precedes, the Parable opens almost abruptly with the words: \u2018For [it is] like a Man going abroad, [who] called His own servants, and delivered to them His goods.\u2019 The emphasis rests on this, that they were His own servants, and to act for His interest. His property was handed over to them, not for safe custody, but that they might do with it as best they could in the interest of their Master. This appears from what immediately follows: \u2018and so to one He gave five talents (about 1,170l.), but to one two (about 468l.), and to one one (=6,000 denarii, about 234l.), to each according to his own capability\u2019\u2014that is, He gave to each according to his capacity, in proportion as He deemed them severally qualified for larger or smaller administration. \u2018And He journeyed abroad straightway.\u2019 Having entrusted the management of His affairs to His servants, according to their capacity, He at once went away.
\nThus far we can have no difficulty in understanding the meaning of the Parable. Our Lord, Who has left us for the Father\u2019s Home, is He Who has gone on the journey abroad, and to His own servants has He entrusted, not for custody, but to use for Him in the time between His departure and His return, what He claims as His own \u2018goods.\u2019 We must not limit this to the administration of His Word, nor to the Holy Ministry, although these may have been preeminently in view. It refers generally to all that a man has, wherewith to serve Christ; for, all that the Christian has\u2014his time, money, opportunities, talents, or learning (and not only \u2018the Word\u2019), is Christ\u2019s, and is entrusted to us, not for custody, but to trade withal for the absent Master\u2014to further the progress of His Kingdom. And to each of us He gives according to our capacity for working\u2014mental, moral, and even physical\u2014to one five, to another two, and to another one \u2018talent.\u2019 This capacity for work lies not within our own power; but it is in our power to use for Christ whatever we may have.
\nAnd here the characteristic difference appears. \u2018He that received the five talents went and traded with them, and made other five talents. In like manner he that had received the two gained other two.\u2019 As each had received according to his ability, so each worked according to his power, as good and faithful servants of their Lord. If the outward result was different, their labour, devotion, and faithfulness were equal. It was otherwise with him who had least to do for his Master, since only one talent had been entrusted to him. He \u2018went away, digged up earth, and hid the money of his Lord.\u2019 The prominent fact here is, that he did not employ it for the Master, as a good servant, but shunned alike the labour and the responsibility, and acted as if it had been some stranger\u2019s, and not his Lord\u2019s property. In so doing he was not only unfaithful to his trust, but practically disowned that he was a servant of his Lord. Accordingly, in contradistinction to the servant who had received much, two others are introduced in the Parable, who had both received comparatively little\u2014one of whom was faithful, while the other in idle selfishness hid the money, not heeding that it was \u2018his Lord\u2019s.\u2019 Thus, while the second servant, although less had been entrusted to him, was as faithful and conscientious as he to whom much had been given, and while both had, by their gain, increased the possessions of their Master, the third had by his conduct rendered the money of his Lord a dead, useless, buried thing.
\nAnd now the second scene opens. \u2018But after a long time cometh the Lord of those servants, and maketh reckoning with them.\u2019 The notice of the long absence of the Master not only connects this with the Parable of the Ten Virgins, but is intended to show, that the delay might have rendered the servants who traded more careless, while it also increased the guilt of him, who all this time had not done anything with his Master\u2019s money. And now the first of the servants, without speaking of his labour in trading, or his merit in \u2018making\u2019 money, answers with simple joyousness: \u2018Lord, five talents deliveredst Thou unto me. See, other five talents have I gained besides.\u2019 We can almost see his honest face beaming with delight, as he points to his Master\u2019s increased possession. His approval was all that the faithful servant had looked for, for which he had toiled during that long absence. And we can understand, how the Master welcomed and owned that servant, and assigned to him meet reward. The latter was twofold. Having proved his faithfulness and capacity in a comparatively limited sphere, one much greater would be assigned to him. For, to do the work, and increase the wealth of his Master, had evidently been his joy and privilege, as well as his duty. Hence also the second part of his reward\u2014that of entering into the joy of his Lord\u2014must not be confined to sharing in the festive meal at His return, still less to advancement from the position of a servant to that of a friend who shares his Master\u2019s lordship. It implies far more than this: even satisfied heart-sympathy with the aims and gains of his Master, and participation in them, with all that this conveys.
\nA similar result followed on the reckoning with the servant to whom two talents had been entrusted. We mark that, although he could only speak of two talents gained, he met his Master with the same frank joyousness as he who had made five. For he had been as faithful, and laboured as earnestly as he to whom more had been entrusted. And, what is more important, the former difference between the two servants, dependent on greater or less capacity for work, now ceased, and the second servant received precisely the same welcome and exactly the same reward, and in the same terms, as the first. And a yet deeper, and in some sense mysterious, truth comes to us in connection with the words: \u2018Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things.\u2019 Surely, then, if not after death, yet in that other \u2018dispensation,\u2019 there must be work to do for Christ, for which the preparation is in this life by faithful application for Him of what He has entrusted to us\u2014be it much or little. This gives quite a new and blessed meaning to the life that now is\u2014as most truly and in all its aspects part of that into which it is to unfold. No; not the smallest share of \u2018talents,\u2019 if only faithfully used for Christ, can be lost, not merely as regards His acknowledgment, but also their further and wider employment. And may we not suggest, that this may, if not explain, yet cast the halo of His purpose and Presence around what so often seems mysterious in the removal of those who had just attained to opening, or to full usefulness, or even of those who are taken from us in the early morn of youth and loveliness. The Lord may \u2018have need\u2019 of them, where or how we know not\u2014and beyond this working-day and working-world there are \u2018many things\u2019 over which the faithful servant in little may be \u2018set,\u2019 that he may still do, and with greatly enlarged opportunities and powers, the work for Christ which he had loved so well, while at the same time he also shares the joy of his Lord.
\nIt only remains to refer to the third servant, whose sad unfaithfulness and failure of service we already, in some measure, understand. Summoned to his account, he returned the talent entrusted to him with this explanation, that, knowing his Master to be a hard man, reaping where He did not sow, and gathering (the corn) where He did not \u2018winnow,\u2019 he had been afraid of incurring responsibility, and hence hid in the earth the talent which he now restored. It needs no comment to show that his own words, however honest and self-righteous they might sound, admitted dereliction of his work and duty as a servant, and entire misunderstanding as well as heart-alienation from his Master. He served Him not, and he knew Him not; he loved Him not, and he sympathised not with Him. But, besides, his answer was also an insult and a mendacious pretext. He had been idle and unwilling to work for his Master. If he worked it would be for himself. He would not incur the difficulties, the self-denial, perhaps the reproach, connected with his Master\u2019s work. We recognise here those who, although His servants, yet, from self-indulgence and worldliness, will not do work for Christ with the one talent entrusted to them\u2014that is, even though the responsibility and claim upon them be the smallest; and who deem it sufficient to hide it in the ground\u2014not to lose it\u2014or to preserve it, as they imagine, from being used for evil, without using it to trade for Christ. The falseness of the excuse, that he was afraid to do anything with it\u2014an excuse too often repeated in our days\u2014lest, peradventure, he might do more harm than good, was now fully exposed by the Master. Confessedly, it proceeded from a want of knowledge of Him, as if He were a hard, exacting Master, not One Who reckons even the least service as done to Himself; from misunderstanding also of what work for Christ is, in which nothing can ever fail or be lost; and, lastly, from want of joyous sympathy with it. And so the Master put aside the flimsy pretext. Addressing him as a \u2018wicked and slothful servant,\u2019 He pointed out that, even on his own showing, if he had been afraid to incur responsibility, he might have \u2018cast\u2019 (a word intended to mark the absence of labour) the money to \u2018the bankers,\u2019 when, at His return, He would have received His own, \u2018with interest.\u2019 Thus he might, without incurring responsibility, or much labour, have been, at least in a limited sense, faithful to his duty and trust as a servant.
\nThe reference to the practice of lodging money, at interest, with the bankers, raises questions too numerous and lengthy for full discussion in this place. The Jewish Law distinguished between \u2018interest\u2019 and \u2018increase\u2019 (neshekh and tarbith), and entered into many and intricate details on the subject. Such transactions were forbidden with Israelites, but allowed with Gentiles. As in Rome, the business of \u2018money-changers\u2019 (argentarii, nummularii) and that of \u2018bankers\u2019 (collectarii, mensularii) seem to have run into each other. The Jewish \u2018bankers\u2019 bear precisely the same name (Shulchani, mensularius, \u03c4\u03c1\u03b1\u03c0\u03b5\u03b6\u03af\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2). In Rome very high interest seems to have been charged in early times; by-and-by it was lowered, till it was fixed, first at 8 \u00bd, and then at 4 1\/6, per cent. But these laws were not of permanent duration. Practically, usury was unlimited. It soon became the custom to charge monthly interest at the rate of 1 per cent. a month. Yet there were prosperous times, as at the close of the Republic, when the rate of interest was so low as 4 per cent.; during the early Empire it stood at 8 per cent. This, of course, in what we may call fair business transactions. Beyond them, in the almost incredible extravagance, luxury, and indebtedness of even some of the chief historical personages, most usurious transactions took place (especially in the provinces), and that by people in high position (Brutus in Cyprus, and Seneca in Britain). Money was lent at 12, 24, even 48 per cent.; the bills bore a larger sum than that actually received; and the interest was added to the capital, so that debt and interest alike grew. In Greece there were regular State banks, while in Rome such provision was only made under exceptional circumstances. Not unfrequently the twofold business of money-changing and banking was combined. Such \u2018bankers\u2019 undertook to make payments, to collect moneys and accounts, to place out money at interest\u2014in short, all the ordinary business of this kind. There can be no question that the Jewish bankers of Palestine and elsewhere were engaged in the same undertakings, while the dispersion of their race over the world would render it more easy to have trusted correspondents in every city. Thus, we find that Herod Agrippa borrowed from the Jewish Alabarch at Alexandria the sum of 20,000 drachms, which was paid him in Italy, the commission and interest on it amounting to no less than 8 \u00bd per cent. (2,500 drachms).
\nWe can thus understand the allusion to \u2018the bankers,\u2019 with whom the wicked and unfaithful servant might have lodged his lord\u2019s money, if there had been truth in his excuse. To unmask its hollowness is the chief object of this part of the Parable. Accordingly, it must not be too closely pressed; but it would be in the spirit of the Parable to apply the expression to the indirect employment of money in the service of Christ, as by charitable contributions, &c. But the great lesson intended is, that every good and faithful servant of Christ must, whatever his circumstances, personally and directly use such talent as he may have to make gain for Christ. Tried by this test, how few seem to have understood their relation to Christ, and how cold has the love of the Church grown in the long absence of her Lord!
\nBut as regards the \u2018unprofitable\u2019 servant in the Parable, the well-known punishment of him that had come to the Marriage-Feast without the wedding-garment shall await him, while the talent, which he had failed to employ for his master, shall be entrusted to him who had shown himself most capable of working. We need not seek an elaborate interpretation for this. It points to the principle, equally true in every administration of God, that \u2018unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall be placed in abundance; but as to him that hath not, also what he hath shall be taken away from him.\u2019 Not a cynical rule this, such as the world, in its selfishness or worship of success, caricatures it; nor yet the worship of superior force; but this, that faithful use for God of every capacity will ever open fresh opportunities, in proportion as the old ones have been used, while spiritual unprofitableness must end in utter loss even of that which, however humble, might have been used, at one time or another, for God and for good.
\n3. To these Parables, that of the King who on His return makes reckoning with His servants and His enemies may be regarded as supplemental. It is recorded only by St. Luke, and placed by him in somewhat loose connection with the conversion of Zacch\u00e6us. The most superficial perusal will show such unmistakable similarity with the Parable of \u2018The Talents,\u2019 that their identity will naturally suggest itself to the reader. On the other hand, there are remarkable divergences in detail, some of which seem to imply a different standpoint from which the same truth is viewed. We have also now the additional feature of the message of hatred on the part of the citizens, and their fate in consequence of it. It may have been that Christ spoke the two Parables on the two different occasions mentioned respectively by St. Luke and St. Matthew\u2014the one on the journey to Jerusalem, the other on the Mount of Olives. And yet it seems difficult to believe that He would, within a few days of telling the Parable recorded by St. Luke, have repeated it in almost the same words to the disciples, who must have heard it in Jericho. This objection would not be so serious, if the Parable addressed, in the first instance, to the disciples (that of the Talents) had been afterwards repeated (in the record of St. Luke) in a wider circle, and not, as according to the Synoptists, the opposite. If, however, we are to regard the two Parables of the Talents and of the Pieces of Money as substantially the same, we would be disposed to consider the recension by St. Matthew as the original, being the more homogeneous and compact, while that of St. Luke would seem to combine with this another Parable, that of the rebellious citizens. Perhaps it is safest to assume, that, on His way to Jerusalem, when His adherents (not merely the disciples) would naturally expect that He would inaugurate His Messianic Kingdom, Christ may have Spoken the latter Parable, to teach them that the relation in which Jerusalem stood towards Him, and its fate, were quite different from what they imagined, and that His Entrance into the City and the Advent of His Kingdom would be separated by a long distance of time. Hence the prospect before them was that of working, not of reigning; after that would the reckoning come, when the faithful worker would become the trusted ruler. These points were, of course, closely connected with the lessons of the Parable of the Talents, and, with the view of presenting the subject as a whole, St. Luke may have borrowed details from that Parable, and supplemented its teaching by presenting another aspect of it.
\nIt must be admitted, that if St. Luke had really these two Parables in view (that of the King and of the Talents), and wished to combine them into new teaching, he has most admirably welded them together. For, as the Nobleman Who is about to entrust money to His servants, is going abroad to receive a Kingdom, it was possible to represent Him alike in relation to rebellious citizens and to His own servants, and to connect their reward with His \u2018Kingdom.\u2019 And so the two Parables are joined by deriving the illustration from political instead of social life. It has been commonly supposed, that the Parable contains an allusion to what had happened after the death of Herod the Great, when his son Archelaus hastened to Rome to obtain confirmation of his father\u2019s will, while a Jewish deputation followed to oppose his appointment\u2014an act of rebellion which Archelaus afterwards avenged in the blood of his enemies. The circumstance must have been still fresh in popular remembrance, although more than thirty years had elapsed. But if otherwise, applications to Rome for installation to the government, and popular opposition thereto, were of such frequent occurrence amidst the quarrels and intrigues of the Herodians, that no difficulty could have been felt in understanding the allusions of the Parable.
\nA brief analysis will suffice to point out the special lessons of this Parable. It introduces \u2018a certain Nobleman,\u2019 Who has claims to the throne, but has not yet received the formal appointment from the suzerain power. As He is going away to receive it, He deals as yet only with His servants. His object, apparently, is to try their aptitude, devotion, and faithfulness; and so He hands\u2014not to each according to his capacity, but to all equally, a sum, not large (such as talents), but small\u2014to each a \u2018mina,\u2019 equal to 100 drachms, or about 3l. 5s. of our money. To trade with so small a sum would, of course, be much more difficult, and success would imply greater ability, even as it would require more constant labour. Here we have some traits in which this differs from the Parable of the Talents. The same small sum is supposed to have been entrusted to all, in order to show which of them was most able and most earnest, and hence who should be called to largest employment, and with it to greatest honour in the Kingdom. While \u2018the Nobleman\u2019 was at the court of His suzerain, a deputation of His fellow-citizens arrived to urge this resolution of theirs: \u2018We will not that this One reign over us.\u2019 It was simply an expression of hatred; it stated no reason, and only urged personal opposition, even if such were in the face of the personal wish of the sovereign who appointed him king.
\nIn the last scene, the King, now duly appointed, has returned to His country. He first reckons with His servants, when it is found that all but one have been faithful to their trust, though with varying success (the mina of the one having grown into ten; that of another into five, and so on). In strict accordance with that success is now their further appointment to rule\u2014work here corresponding to rule there, which, however, as we know from the Parable of the Talents, is also work for Christ: a rule that is work, and work that is rule. At the same time, the acknowledgment is the same to all the faithful servants. Similarly, the motives, the reasoning, and the fate of the unfaithful servant are the same as in the Parable of the Talents. But as regards His \u2018enemies,\u2019 that would not have Him reign over them\u2014manifestly, Jerusalem and the people of Israel\u2014who, even after He had gone to receive the Kingdom, continued the personal hostility of their \u2018We will not that this One shall reign over us\u2019\u2014the ashes of the Temple, the ruins of the City, the blood of the fathers, and the homeless wanderings of their children, with the Caincurse branded on their brow and visible to all men, attest, that the King has many ministers to execute that judgment which obstinate rebellion must surely bring, if His Authority is to be vindicated, and His Rule to secure submission.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 8<\/p>\n
THE FOURTH DAY IN PASSION WEEK\u2014JESUS IN HIS LAST SABBATIC REST BEFORE HIS AGONY, AND THE SANHEDRISTS IN THEIR UNREST\u2014THE BETRAYAL\u2014JUDAS: HIS CHARACTER, APOSTASY, AND END<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 26:1\u20135, 14\u201316; St. Mark 14:1, 2, 10, 11; St. Luke 22:1\u20136.)<\/p>\n
FROM the record of Christ\u2019s Sayings and Doings, furnished by St. Matthew, we turn once more to that of public events, as, from one or another aspect, they are related by all the Evangelists. With the Discourses in the Temple the public Teaching of Christ had come to an end; with that spoken on the Mount of Olives, and its application in the Parables of the \u2018Virgins\u2019 and the \u2018Talents,\u2019 the instruction of the disciples had been concluded. What follows in His intercourse with His own is par\u0153netic, rather than teaching,\u2014exhortation, advice, and consolation: rather, perhaps, all these combined.
\nThe three busy days of Passion-Week were past. The day before that on which the Paschal Lamb was to be slain, with all that was to follow, would be one of rest, a Sabbath to His Soul before its Great Agony. He would refresh Himself, gather Himself up for the terrible conflict before Him. And He did so as the Lamb of God\u2014meekly submitting Himself to the Will and Hand of His Father, and so fulfilling all types, from that of Isaac\u2019s sacrifice on Mount Moriah to the Paschal Lamb in the Temple; and bringing the reality of all prophecy, from that of the Woman\u2019s Seed that would crush the Serpent\u2019s head to that of the Kingdom of God in its fulness, when its golden gates would be flung open to all men, and Heaven\u2019s own light flow out to them as they sought its way of peace. Only two days more, as the Jews reckoned them\u2014that Wednesday and Thursday\u2014and at its Even the Paschal Supper! And Jesus knew it well, and He passed that day of rest and preparation in quiet retirement with His disciples\u2014perhaps in some hollow of the Mount of Olives, near the home of Bethany\u2014speaking to them of His Crucifixion on the near Passover. They sorely needed His words; they, rather than He, needed to be prepared for what was coming. But what Divine calm, what willing obedience, and also what outgoing of love to them, with full consciousness of what was before Him, to think and speak of this only on that day! So would not a Messiah of Jewish conception have acted; nay, He would not have been placed in such circumstances. So would not a Messiah of ambitious aims or of Jewish Nationalist aspirations have acted; He would have done what the Sanhedrin feared, and raised a \u2018tumult of the people,\u2019 prepared for it as the multitude was, which had so lately raised the Hosanna-cry in street and Temple. So would a disillusioned enthusiast not have acted; he would have withdrawn from the impending fate. But Jesus knew it all\u2014far more than the agony of shame and suffering, even the unfathomable agony of soul. And the while He thought only of them in it all. Such thinking and speaking is not that of Man\u2014it is that of the Incarnate Son of God, the Christ of the Gospels.
\nHe had, indeed, before that, sought gradually to prepare them for what was to happen on the morrow\u2019s night. He had pointed to it in dim figure at the very opening of His Ministry, on the first occasion that He had taught in the Temple, as well as to Nicodemus. He had hinted it, when He spoke of the deep sorrow when the Bridegroom would be taken from them, of the need of taking up His Cross, of the fulfilment in Him of the Jonah-type, of His Flesh which He would give for the life of the world, as well as in what might have seemed the Parabolic teaching about the Good Shepherd, Who laid down His Life for the Sheep, and the Heir Whom the evil husbandmen cast out and killed. But He had also spoken of it quite directly\u2014and this, let us specially notice, always when some high-point in His History had been reached, and the disciples might have been carried away into Messianic expectations of an exaltation without humiliation, a triumph not a sacrifice. We remember, that the first occasion on which He spoke thus clearly was immediately after that confession of Peter, which laid the foundation of the Church, against which the gates of hell should not prevail; the next, after descending from the Mount of Transfiguration; the last, on preparing to make His triumphal Messianic Entry into Jerusalem. The darker hints and Parabolic swings might have been misunderstood. Even as regarded the clear predictions of His Death, preconceived ideas could find no room for such a fact. Deep veneration, which could not associate it with His Person, and a love which could not bear the thought of it, might, after the first shock of the words was past, and their immediate fulfilment did not follow, suggest some other possible explanation of the prediction. But on that Wednesday it was impossible to misunderstand; it could scarcely have been possible to doubt what Jesus said of His near Crucifixion. If illusions had still existed, the last two days must have rudely dispelled them. The triumphal Hosannas of His Entry into the City, and the acclamations in the Temple, had given place to the cavils of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes, and with a \u2018Woe\u2019 upon it Jesus had taken His last departure from Israel\u2019s Sanctuary. And better far than those rulers, whom conscience made cowards, did the disciples know how little reliance could be placed on the adherence of the \u2018multitude.\u2019 And now the Master was telling it to them in plain words; was calmly contemplating it, and that not as in the dim future, but in the immediate present\u2014at that very Passover, from which scarcely two days separated them. Much as we wonder at their brief scattering on His arrest and condemnation, those humble disciples must have loved Him much to sit around Him in mournful silence as He thus spake, and to follow Him unto His Dying.
\nBut to one of them, in whose heart the darkness had long been gathering, this was the decisive moment. The prediction of Christ, which Judas as well as the others must have felt to be true, extinguished the last glimmering of such light of Christ as his soul had been capable of receiving. In its place flared up the lurid flame of hell. By the open door out of which he had thrust the dying Christ \u2018Satan entered into Judas.\u2019 Yet, even so, not permanently. It may, indeed, be doubted, whether, since God is in Christ, such can ever be the case in any human soul, at least on this side eternity. Since our world\u2019s night has been lit up by the promise from Paradise, the rosy hue of its morning has lain on the edge of the horizon, deepening into gold, brightening into day, growing into midday-strength and evening-glory. Since God\u2019s Voice wakened earth by its early Christmas-Hymn, it has never been quite night there, nor can it ever be quite night in any human soul.
\nBut it is a terrible night-study, that of Judas. We seem to tread our way over loose stones of hot molten lava, as we climb to the edge of the crater, and shudderingly look down its depths. And yet there, near there, have stood not only St. Peter in the night of his denial, but mostly all of us, save they whose Angels have always looked up into the Face of our Father in heaven. And yet, in our weakness, we have even wept over them! There, near there, have we stood, not in the hours of our weakness, but in those of our sore temptation, when the blast of doubt had almost quenched the flickering light, or the storm of passion or of self-will broken the bruised reed. But He prayed for us\u2014and through the night came over desolate moor and stony height the Light of His Presence, and above the wild storm rose the Voice of Him, Who has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Yet near to us, close to us, was the dark abyss; and we can never more forget our last, almost sliding, foothold as we quitted its edge.
\nA terrible night-study this of Judas, and best to make it here, at once, from its beginning to its end. We shall, indeed, catch sudden glimpse of him again, as the light of the torches flashes on the traitor-face in Gethsemane; and once more hear his voice in the assemblage of the haughty, sneering councillors of Israel, when his footfall on the marble pavement of the Temple-halls, and the clink of those thirty accursed pieces of silver shall waken the echoes, wake also the dirge of despair in his soul, and he shall flee from the night of his soul into the night that for ever closes around him. But all this as rapidly as we may pass from it, after this present brief study of his character and history.
\nWe remember, that \u2018Judas, the man of Kerioth,\u2019 was, so far as we know, the only disciple of Jesus from the province of Jud\u00e6a. This circumstance; that he carried the bag, i.e. was treasurer and administrator of the small common stock of Christ and His disciples; and that he was both a hypocrite and a thief\u2014this is all that we know for certain of his history. From the circumstance that he was appointed to such office of trust in the Apostolic community, we infer that he must have been looked up to by the others as an able and prudent man, a good administrator. And there is probably no reason to doubt, that he possessed the natural gift of administration or of \u2018government\u2019 (\u03ba\u03c5\u03b2\u03ad\u03c1\u03bd\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2). The question, why Jesus left him \u2018the bag\u2019 after He knew him to be a thief\u2014which, as we believe, he was not at the beginning, and only became in the course of time and in the progress of disappointment\u2014is best answered by this other: Why He originally allowed it to be entrusted to Judas? It was not only because he was best fitted\u2014probably, absolutely fitted\u2014for such work, but also in mercy to him, in view of his character. To engage in that for which a man is naturally fitted is the most likely means of keeping him from brooding, dissatisfaction, alienation, and eventual apostasy. On the other hand, it must be admitted that, as mostly all our life-temptations come to us from that for which we have most aptitude, when Judas was alienated and unfaithful in heart, this very thing became also his greatest temptation, and, indeed, hurried him to his ruin. But only after he had first failed inwardly. And so, as ever in like circumstances, the very things which might have been most of blessing become most of curse, and the judgment of hardening fulfils itself by that which in itself is good. Nor could \u2018the bag\u2019 have been afterwards taken from him without both exposing him to the others, and precipitating his moral destruction. And so he had to be left to the process of inward ripening, till all was ready for the sickle.
\nThis very gift of \u2018government\u2019 in Judas may also help us to understand how he may have been first attracted to Jesus, and through what process, when alienated, he came to end in that terrible sin which had cast its snare about him. The \u2018gift of government\u2019 would, in its active aspect, imply the desire for it. From thence to ambition in its worst, or selfish, aspect, there is only a step\u2014scarcely that: rather, only different moral premisses. Judas was drawn to Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, and he believed in Him as such, possibly both earnestly and ardently; but he expected that His would be the success, the result, and the triumphs of the Jewish Messiah, and he also expected personally and fully to share in them. How deep-rooted were such feelings even in the best, purest, and most unselfish of Jesus\u2019 disciples, we gather from the request of the mother of John and James for her sons, and from Peter\u2019s question: \u2018What shall we have?\u2019 It must have been sorrow, the misery of moral loneliness, and humiliation, to Him Who was Unselfishness Incarnate, Who lived to die and was full to empty Himself, to be associated with such as even His most intimate disciples, who in this sense also could not watch with Him even one hour, and in whom, at the end of His Ministry, such heaviness was mentally and morally the outcrop, if not the outcome. And in Judas all this must have been an hundredfold more than in them who were in heart true to Christ.
\nHe had, from such conviction as we have described, joined the movement at its very commencement. Then, multitudes in Galilee followed His Footsteps, and watched for His every appearance; they hung entranced on His lips in the Synagogue or on \u2018the Mount\u2019; they flocked to Him from every town, village, and hamlet; they bore the sick and dying to His Feet, and witnessed, awestruck, how conquered devils gave their testimony to His Divine Power. It was the spring-time of the movement, and all was full of promise\u2014land, people, and disciples. The Baptist, who had bowed before Him and testified to Him, was still lifting his voice to proclaim the near Kingdom. But the people had turned after Jesus, and He swayed them. And, oh! what power was there in His Face and Word, in His look and deed. And Judas, also, had been one of them who, on their early Mission, had temporarily had power given him, so that the very devils had been subject to them. But, step by step, had come the disappointment. John was beheaded, and not avenged; on the contrary, Jesus withdrew Himself. This constant withdrawing, whether from enemies or from success\u2014almost amounting to flight\u2014even when they would have made Him a King; this refusal to show Himself openly, either at Jerusalem, as His own brethren had taunted Him, or, indeed, anywhere else; this uniform preaching of discouragement to them, when they came to Him elated and hopeful at some success; this gathering enmity of Israel\u2019s leaders, and His marked avoidance of, or, as some might have put it, His failure in taking up the repeated public challenge of the Pharisees to show a sign from heaven; last, and chief of all, this constant and growing reference to shame, disaster, and death\u2014what did it all mean, if not disappointment of all those hopes and expectations which had made Judas at the first a disciple of Jesus?
\nHe that so knew Jesus, not only in His Words and Deeds, but in His inmost Thoughts, even to His night-long communing with God on the hill-side, could not have seriously believed in the coarse Pharisaic charge of Satanic agency as the explanation of all. Yet, from the then Jewish standpoint, he could scarcely have found it impossible to suggest some other explanation of His miraculous power. But, as increasingly the moral and spiritual aspect of Christ\u2019s Kingdom must have become apparent to even the dullest intellect, the bitter disappointment of his Messianic thoughts and hopes must have gone on, increasing in proportion as, side by side with it, the process of moral alienation, unavoidably connected with his resistance to such spiritual manifestations, continued and increased. And so the mental and the moral alienation went on together, affected by and affecting each other. And if we were pressed to name a definite moment when the process of disintegration, at least sensibly, began, we would point to that Sabbath-morning at Capernaum, when Christ had preached about His Flesh as the Food of the World, and so many of His adherents ceased to follow after Him; nay, when the leaven so worked even in His disciples, that He turned to them with the searching question\u2014intended to show them the full import of the crisis\u2014whether they also would leave Him? Peter conquered by grasping the moral element, because it was germane to him and to the other true disciples: \u2018To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.\u2019 But this moral element was the very cliff on which Judas made shipwreck. After this, all was wrong, and increasingly so. We see disappointment in his face when not climbing the Mount of Transfiguration, and disappointment in the failure to heal the lunatick child. In the disputes by the way, in the quarrels who was greatest among them, in all the pettiness of misunderstandings and realistic folly of their questions or answers, we seem to hear the echo of his voice, to see the result of his influence, the leaven of his presence. And in it all we mark the downward hastening of his course, even to the moment when, in contrast to the deep love of a Mary, he first stands before us unmasked, as heartless, hypocritical, full of hatred\u2014disappointed ambition having broken down into selfishness, and selfishness slid into covetousness, even to the crime of stealing that which was destined for the poor.
\nFor, when an ambition which rests only on selfishness gives way, there lies close by it the coarse lust of covetousness, as the kindred passion and lower expression of that other form of selfishness. When the Messianic faith of Judas gave place to utter disappointment, the moral and spiritual character of Christ\u2019s Teaching would affect him, not sympathetically but antipathetically. Thus, that which should have opened the door of his heart, only closed and double-barred it. His attachment to the Person of Jesus would give place to actual hatred, though only of a temporary character; and the wild intenseness of his Eastern nature would set it all in flame. Thus, when Judas had lost his slender foothold, or, rather, when it had slipped from under him, he fell down, down the eternal abyss. The only hold to which he could cling was the passion of his soul. As he laid hands on it, it gave way, and fell with him into fathomless depths. We, each of us, have also some master-passion; and if, which God forbid! we should lose our foothold, we also would grasp this master-passion, and it would give way, and carry us with it into the eternal dark and deep.
\nOn that spring day, in the restfulness of Bethany, when the Master was taking His sad and solemn Farewell of sky and earth, of friends and disciples, and told them what was to happen only two days later at the Passover, it was all settled in the soul of Judas. \u2018Satan entered\u2019 it. Christ would be crucified; this was quite certain. In the general cataclysm let Judas have at least something. And so, on that sunny afternoon, he left them out there, to seek speech of them that were gathered, not in their ordinary meeting-place, but in the High-Priest\u2019s Palace. Even this indicates that it was an informal meeting, consultative rather than judicial. For, it was one of the principles of Jewish Law that, in criminal cases, sentence must be spoken in the regular meeting-place of the Sanhedrin. The same inference is conveyed by the circumstance, that the captain of the Temple-guard and his immediate subordinates seem to have been taken into the council, no doubt to concert the measures for the actual arrest of Jesus. There had previously been a similar gathering and consultation, when the report of the raising of Lazarus reached the authorities of Jerusalem. The practical resolution adopted at that meeting had apparently been, that a strict watch should hence-forth be kept on Christ\u2019s movements, and that every one of them, as well as the names of His friends, and the places of His secret retirement, should be communicated to the authorities, with the view to His arrest at the proper moment.
\nIt was probably in professed obedience to this direction, that the traitor presented himself that afternoon in the Palace of the High-Priest Caiaphas. Those assembled there were the \u2018chiefs\u2019 of the Priesthood\u2014no doubt, the Temple-officials, heads of the courses of Priests, and connections of the High-Priestly family, who constituted what both Josephus and the Talmud designate as the Priestly Council. All connected with the Temple, its ritual, administration, order, and laws, would be in their hands. Moreover, it was but natural, that the High-Priest and his council should be the regular official medium between the Roman authorities and the people. In matters which concerned, not ordinary misdemeanours, but political crimes (such as it was wished to represent the movement of Jesus), or which affected the status of the established religion, the official chiefs of the Priest-hood would, of course, be the persons to appeal, in conjunction with the Sanhedrists, to the secular authorities. This, irrespective of the question\u2014to which reference will be made in the sequel\u2014what place the Chief Priests held in the Sanhedrin. But in that meeting in the Palace of Caiaphas, besides these Priestly Chiefs, the leading Sanhedrists (\u2018Scribes and Elders\u2019) were also gathered. They were deliberating how Jesus might be taken by subtilty and killed. Probably they had not yet fixed on any definite plan. Only at this conclusion had they arrived\u2014probably in consequence of the popular acclamations at His Entry into Jerusalem, and of what had since happened\u2014that nothing must be done during the Feast, for fear of some popular tumult. They knew only too well the character of Pilate, and how in any such tumult all parties\u2014the leaders as well as the led\u2014might experience terrible vengeance.
\nIt must have been intense relief when, in their perplexity, the traitor now presented himself before them with his proposals. Yet his reception was not such as he may have looked for. He probably expected to be hailed and treated as a most important ally. They were, indeed, \u2018glad, and covenanted to give him money,\u2019 even as he promised to dog His steps, and watch for the opportunity which they sought. In truth, the offer of the betrayer changed the whole aspect of matters. What formerly they dreaded to attempt seemed now both safe and easy. They could not allow such an opportunity to slip; it was one that might never occur again. Nay, might it not even seem, from the defection of Judas, as if dissatisfaction and disbelief had begun to spread in the innermost circle of Christ\u2019s disciples?
\nYet, withal, they treated Judas not as an honoured associate, but as a common informer, and a contemptible betrayer. This was not only natural but, in the circumstances, the wisest policy, alike in order to save their own dignity, and to keep most secure hold on the betrayer. And, after all, it might be said, so as to minimise his services, that Judas could really not do much for them\u2014only show them how they might seize Him at unawares in the absence of the multitude, to avoid the possible tumult of an open arrest. So little did they understand Christ! And Judas had at last to speak it out barefacedly\u2014so selling himself as well as the Master: \u2018What will ye give me?\u2019 It was in literal fulfilment of prophecy, that they \u2018weighed out\u2019 to him from the very Temple-treasury those thirty pieces of silver (about 3l. 15s.). And here we mark, that there is always terrible literality about the prophecies of judgment, while those of blessing far exceed the words of prediction. And yet it was surely as much in contempt of the seller as of Him Whom he sold, that they paid the legal price of a slave. Or did they mean some kind of legal fiction, such as to buy the Person of Jesus at the legal price of a slave, so as to hand it afterwards over to the secular authorities? Such fictions, to save the conscience by a logical quibble, are not so uncommon\u2014and the case of the Inquisitors handing over the condemned heretic to the secular authorities will recur to the mind. But, in truth, Judas could not now have escaped their toils. They might have offered him ten or five pieces of silver, and he must still have stuck to his bargain. Yet none the less do we mark the deep symbolic significance of it all, in that the Lord was, so to speak, paid for out of the Temple-money which was destined for the purchase of sacrifices, and that He, Who took on Him the form of a servant, was sold and bought at the legal price of a slave.
\nAnd yet Satan must once more enter the heart of Judas at that Supper, before he can finally do the deed. But, even so, we believe it was only temporarily, not for always\u2014for, he was still a human being, such as on this side eternity we all are\u2014and he had still a conscience working in him. With this element he had not reckoned in his bargain in the High Priest\u2019s Palace. On the morrow of His condemnation would it exact a terrible account. That night in Gethsemane never more passed from his soul. In the thickening and encircling gloom all around, he must have ever seen only the torchlight glare as it fell on the pallid Face of the Divine Sufferer. In the terrible stillness before the storm, he must have ever heard only these words: \u2018Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?\u2019 He did not hate Jesus then\u2014he hated nothing; he hated everything. He was utterly desolate, as the storm of despair swept over his disenchanted soul, and swept him before it. No one in heaven or on earth to appeal to; no one, Angel or man, to stand by him. Not the priests, who had paid him the price of blood, would have aught of him, not even the thirty pieces of silver, the blood-money of his Master and of his own soul\u2014even as the modern Synagogue, which approves of what has been done, but not of the deed, will have none of him! With their \u2018See thou to it!\u2019 they sent him reeling back into his darkness. Not so could conscience be stilled. And, louder than the ring of the thirty silver pieces as they fell on the marble pavement of the Temple, rang it ever in his soul: \u2018I have betrayed innocent blood!\u2019 Even if Judas possessed that which on earth cleaves closest and longest to us\u2014a woman\u2019s love\u2014it could not have abode by him. It would have turned into madness and fled; or it would have withered, struck by the lightning-flash of that night of terrors.
\nDeeper\u2014farther out into the night! to its farthest bounds\u2014where rises and falls the dark flood of death. The wild howl of the storm has lashed the dark waters into fury: they toss and break in wild billows at his feet. One narrow rift in the cloud-curtain overhead, and, in the pale, deathlike light lies the Figure of the Christ, so calm and placid, untouched and unharmed, on the storm-tossed waters, as it had been that night lying on the Lake of Galilee, when Judas had seen Him come to them over the surging billows, and then bid them be peace. Peace! What peace to him now\u2014in earth or heaven? It was the same Christ, but thorn-crowned, with nail-prints in His Hands and Feet. And this Judas had done to the Master! Only for one moment did it seem to lie there; then it was sucked up by the dark waters beneath. And again the cloud-curtain is drawn, only more closely; the darkness is thicker, and the storm wilder than before. Out into that darkness, with one wild plunge\u2014there, where the Figure of the Dead Christ had lain on the waters! And the dark waters have closed around him in eternal silence.
\nIn the lurid morn that broke on the other shore where the flood cast him up, did he meet those searching, loving Eyes of Jesus, Whose gaze he knew so well when he came to answer for the deeds done in the flesh?
\nAnd\u2014can there be a store in the Eternal Compassion for the Betrayer of Christ?<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 9<\/p>\n
THE FIFTH DAY IN PASSION-WEEK\u2014\u2018MAKE READY THE PASSOVER!\u2019<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 26:17\u201319; St. Mark 14:12\u201316; St. Luke 22:7\u201313; St. John 13:1.)<\/p>\n
WHEN the traitor returned from Jerusalem on the Wednesday afternoon, the Passover, in the popular and canonical, though not in the Biblical sense, was close at hand. It began on the 14th Nisan, that is, from the appearance of the first three stars on Wednesday evening [the evening of what had been the 13th], and ended with the first three stars on Thursday evening [the evening of what had been the 14th day of Nisan]. As this is an exceedingly important point, it is well here to quote the precise language of the Jerusalem Talmud: \u2018What means: On the Pesach? On the 14th [Nisan].\u2019 And so Josephus describes the Feast as one of eight days, evidently reckoning its beginning on the 14th, and its close at the end of the 21st Nisan. The absence of the traitor so close upon the Feast would therefore, be the less noticed by the others. Necessary preparations might have to be made, even though they were to be guests in some house\u2014they knew not which. These would, of course, devolve on Judas. Besides, from previous conversations, they may also have judged that \u2018the man of Kerioth\u2019 would fain escape what the Lord had all that day been telling them about, and which was now filling their minds and hearts.
\nEveryone in Israel was thinking about the Feast. For the previous month it had been the subject of discussion in the Academies, and, for the last two Sabbaths at least, that of discourse in the Synagogues. Everyone was going to Jerusalem, or had those near and dear to them there, or at least watched the festive processions to the Metropolis of Judaism. It was a gathering of universal Israel, that of the memorial of the birth-night of the nation, and of its Exodus, when friends from afar would meet, and new friends be made; when offerings long due would be brought, and purification long needed be obtained\u2014and all worship in that grand and glorious Temple, with its gorgeous ritual. National and religious feelings were alike stirred in what reached far back to the first, and pointed far forward to the final Deliverance. On that day a Jew might well glory in being a Jew. But we must not dwell on such thoughts, nor attempt a general description of the Feast. Rather shall we try to follow closely the footsteps of Christ and His disciples, and see or know only what on that day they saw and did.
\nFor ecclesiastical purposes Bethphage and Bethany seem to have been included in Jerusalem. But Jesus must keep the Feast in the City itself, although, if His purpose had not been interrupted, He would have spent the night outside its walls. The first preparations for the Feast would commence shortly after the return of the traitor. For, on the evening [of the 13th] commenced the 14th of Nisan, when a solemn search was made with lighted candle throughout each house for any leaven that might be hidden, or have fallen aside by accident. Such was put by in a safe place, and afterwards destroyed with the rest. In Galilee it was the usage to abstain wholly from work; in Jud\u00e6a the day was divided, and actual work ceased only at noon, though nothing new was taken in hand even in the morning. This division of the day for festive purposes was a Rabbinic addition; and, by way of a hedge around it, an hour before midday was fixed after which nothing leavened might be eaten. The more strict abstained from it even an hour earlier (at ten o\u2019clock), lest the eleventh hour might insensibly run into the forbidden midday. But there could be little real danger of this, since, by way of public notification, two desecrated thankoffering cakes were laid on a bench in the Temple, the removal of one of which indicated that the time for eating what was leavened had passed; the removal of the other, that the time for destroying all leaven had come.
\nIt was probably after the early meal, and when the eating of leaven had ceased, that Jesus began preparations for the Paschal Supper. St. John, who, in view of the details in the other Gospels, summarises, and, in some sense, almost passes over, the outward events, so that their narration may not divert attention from those all-important teachings which he alone records, simply tells by way of preface and explanation\u2014alike of the \u2018Last Supper\u2019 and of what followed\u2014that Jesus, \u2018knowing that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father \u2026 having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.\u2019 But St. Luke\u2019s account of what actually happened, being in some points the most explicit, requires to be carefully studied, and that without thought of any possible consequences in regard to the harmony of the Gospels. It is almost impossible to imagine anything more evident, than that he wishes us to understand that Jesus was about to celebrate the ordinary Jewish Paschal Supper. \u2018And the Day of Unleavened Bread came, on which the Passover must be sacrificed.\u2019 The designation is exactly that of the commencement of the Pascha, which, as we have seen, was the 14th Nisan, and the description that of the slaying of the Paschal Lamb. What follows is in exact accordance with it: \u2018And He sent Peter and John, saying, Go and make ready for us the Pascha, that we may eat it.\u2019 Then occur these three notices in the same account: \u2018And \u2026 they made ready the Pascha;\u2019 \u2018and when the hour was come, He reclined [as usual at the Paschal Supper], and the Apostles with Him;\u2019 and, finally, these words of His: \u2018With desire I have desired to eat this Pascha with you.\u2019 And with this fully agrees the language of the other two Synoptists, St. Matt. 26:17\u201320, and St. Mark 14:12\u201317. No ingenuity can explain away these facts. The suggestion, that in that year the Sanhedrin had postponed the Paschal Supper from Thursday evening (the 14th\u201315th Nisan) to Friday evening (15\u201316th Nisan), so as to avoid the Sabbath following on the first day of the feast\u2014and that the Paschal Lamb was therefore in that year eaten on Friday, the evening of the day on which Jesus was crucified, is an assumption void of all support in history or Jewish tradition. Equally untenable is it, that Christ had held the Paschal Supper a day in advance of that observed by the rest of the Jewish world\u2014a supposition not only inconsistent with the plain language of the Synoptists, but impossible, since the Paschal Lamb could not have been offered in the Temple, and, therefore, no Paschal Supper held, out of the regular time. But, perhaps, the strangest attempt to reconcile the statement of the Synoptists with what is supposed inconsistent with it in the narration of St. John is, that while the rest of Jerusalem, including Christ and His Apostles, partook of the Paschal Supper, the chief priests had been interrupted in, or rather prevented from it by their proceedings against Jesus\u2014that, in fact, they had not touched it when they feared to enter Pilate\u2019s Judgment-Hall; and that, after that, they went back to eat it, \u2018turning the Supper into a breakfast.\u2019 Among the various objections to this extraordinary hypothesis, this one will be sufficient, that such would have been absolutely contrary to one of the plainest rubrical directions, which has it: \u2018The Pascha is not eaten but during the night, nor yet later than the middle of the night.\u2019
\nIt was, therefore, with the view of preparing the ordinary Paschal Supper that the Lord now sent Peter and John. For the first time we see them here joined together by the Lord, these two, who henceforth were to be so closely connected: he of deepest feeling with him of quickest action. And their question, where He would have the Paschal Meal prepared, gives us a momentary glimpse of the mutual relation between the Master and His Disciples; how He was still the Master, even in their most intimate converse, and would only tell them what to do just when it needed to be done; and how they presumed not to ask beforehand (far less to propose, or to interfere), but had simple confidence and absolute submission as regarded all things. The direction which the Lord gave, while once more evidencing to them, as it does to us, the Divine foreknowledge of Christ, had also its deep human meaning. Evidently, neither the house where the Passover was to be kept, nor its owner, was to be named beforehand within hearing of Judas. That last Meal, with its Institution of the Holy Supper, was not to be interrupted, nor their last retreat betrayed, till all had been said and done, even to the last prayer of Agony in Gethsemane. We can scarcely err in seeing in this combination of foreknowledge with prudence the expression of the Divine and the Human: the \u2018two Natures in One Person.\u2019 The sign which Jesus gave the two Apostles reminds us of that by which Samuel of old had conveyed assurance and direction to Saul. On their entrance into Jerusalem they would meet a man\u2014manifestly a servant\u2014carrying a pitcher of water. Without accosting, they were to follow him, and, when they reached the house, to deliver to its owner this message: \u2018The Master saith, My time is at hand\u2014with thee [i.e. in thy house: the emphasis is on this] I hold the Passover with My disciples. Where is My hostelry [or \u2018hall\u2019], where I shall eat the Passover with My disciples?\u2019
\nTwo things here deserve marked attention. The disciples were not bidden ask for the chief or \u2018Upper Chamber,\u2019 but for what we have rendered, for want of better, by \u2018hostelry,\u2019 or \u2018hall\u2019\u2014\u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03ac\u03bb\u03c5\u03bc\u03b1\u2014the place in the house where, as in an open Kh\u00e2n, the beasts of burden were unloaded, shoes and staff, or dusty garment and burdens put down\u2014if an apartment, at least a common one, certainly not the best. Except in this place, the word only occurs as the designation of the \u2018inn\u2019 or \u2018hostelry\u2019 (\u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03ac\u03bb\u03c5\u03bc\u03b1) in Bethlehem, where the Virgin-Mother brought forth her first-born Son, and laid Him in a manger. He Who was born in a \u2018hostelry\u2019\u2014Katalyma\u2014was content to ask for His last Meal in a Katalyma. Only, and this we mark secondly, it must be His own: \u2018My Katalyma.\u2019 It was a common practice, that more than one company partook of the Paschal Supper in the same apartment. In the multitude of those who would sit down to the Paschal Supper this was unavoidable, for all partook of it, including women and children, only excepting those who were Levitically unclean. And, though each company might not consist of less than ten, it was not to be larger than that each should be able to partake of at least a small portion of the Paschal Lamb\u2014and we know how small lambs are in the East. But, while He only asked for His last Meal in the Katalyma, some hall opening on the open court, Christ would have it His own\u2014to Himself, to eat the Passover alone with His Apostles. Not even a company of disciples\u2014such as the owner of the house unquestionably was\u2014nor yet, be it marked, even the Virgin-Mother, might be present; witness what passed, hear what He said, or be at the first Institution of His Holy Supper. To us at least this also recalls the words of St. Paul: \u2018I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you.\u2019
\nThere can be no reasonable doubt that, as already hinted, the owner of the house was a disciple, although at festive seasons unbounded hospitality was extended to strangers generally, and no man in Jerusalem considered his house as strictly his own, far less would let it out for hire. But no mere stranger would, in answer to so mysterious a message, have given up, without further questioning, his best room. Had he known Peter and John; or recognised Him Who sent the message by the announcement that it was \u2018The Master;\u2019 or by the words to which His Teaching had attached such meaning: that His time had come; or even by the peculiar emphasis of His command: \u2018With thee I hold the Pascha with My disciples?\u2019 It matters little which it was\u2014and, in fact, the impression on the mind almost is, that the owner of the house had not, indeed, expected, but held himself ready for such a call. It was the last request of the dying Master\u2014and could he have refused it? But he would do more than immediately and unquestioningly comply. The Master would only ask for \u2018the hall\u2019: as He was born in a Katalyma, so He would have been content to eat there His last Meal\u2014at the same time meal, feast, sacrifice, and institution. But the unnamed disciple would assign to Him, not the Hall, but the best and chiefest, \u2018the upper chamber,\u2019 or Aliyah, at the same time the most honourable and the most retired place, where from the outside stairs entrance and departure might be had without passing through the house. And \u2018the upper room\u2019 was \u2018large,\u2019 \u2018furnished and ready.\u2019 From Jewish authorities we know, that the average dining-apartment was computed at fifteen feet square; the expression \u2018furnished,\u2019 no doubt, refers to the arrangement of couches all round the Table, except at its end, since it was a canon, that the very poorest must partake of that Supper in a reclining attitude, to indicate rest, safety, and liberty; while the term \u2018ready\u2019 seems to point to the ready provision of all that was required for the Feast. In that case, all that the disciples would have to \u2018make ready\u2019 would be \u2018the Paschal Lamb,\u2019 and perhaps that first Chagigah, or festive Sacrifice, which, if the Paschal Lamb itself would not suffice for Supper, was added to it. And here it must be remembered, that it was of religion to fast till the Paschal Supper\u2014as the Jerusalem Talmud explains, in order the better to relish the Supper.
\nPerhaps it is not wise to attempt lifting the veil which rests on the unnamed \u2018such an one,\u2019 whose was the privilege of being the last Host of the Lord and the first Host of His Church, gathered within the new bond of the fellowship of His Body and Blood. And yet we can scarcely abstain from speculating. To us at least it seems most likely, that it was the house of Mark\u2019s father (then still alive)\u2014a large one, as we gather from Acts 12:13. For, the most obvious explanation of the introduction by St. Mark alone of such an incident as that about the young man who was accompanying Christ as He was led away captive, and who, on fleeing from those that would have laid hold on him, left in their hands the inner garment which he had loosely cast about him, as, roused from sleep, he had rushed into Gethsemane, is, that he was none other than St. Mark himself. If so, we can understand it all: how the traitor may have first brought the Temple-guards, who had come to seize Christ, to the house of Mark\u2019s father, where the Supper had been held, and that, finding Him gone, they had followed to Gethsemane, for \u2018Judas knew the place, for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with His disciples\u2019\u2014and how Mark, startled from his sleep by the appearance of the armed men, would hastily cast about him his loose tunic and run after them; then, after the flight of the disciples, accompany Christ, but escape intended arrest by leaving his tunic in the hands of his would-be captors.
\nIf the view formerly expressed is correct, that the owner of the house had provided all that was needed for the Supper, Peter and John would find there the Wine for the four Cups, the cakes of unleavened Bread, and probably also \u2018the bitter herbs.\u2019 Of the latter five kinds are mentioned, which were to be dipped once in salt water, or vinegar, and another time in a mixture called Charoseth (a compound made of nuts, raisins, apples, almonds, &c.)\u2014although this Charoseth was not obligatory. The wine was the ordinary one of the country, only red; it was mixed with water, generally in the proportion of one part to two of water. The quantity for each of the four Cups is stated by one authority as five-sixteenths of a log, which may be roughly computed at half a tumbler\u2014of course mixed with water. The Paschal Cup is described (according to the rubrical measure, which of course would not always be observed) as two fingers long by two fingers broad, and its height as a finger, half a finger, and one-third of a finger. All things being, as we presume, ready in the furnished upper room, it would only remain for Peter and John to see to the Paschal Lamb, and anything else required for the Supper, possibly also to what was to be offered as Chagigah, or festive sacrifice, and afterwards eaten at the Supper. If the latter were to be brought, the disciples would, of course, have to attend earlier in the Temple. The cost of the Lamb, which had to be provided, was very small. So low a sum as about threepence of our money is mentioned for such a sacrifice. But this must refer to a hypothetical case rather than to the ordinary cost, and we prefer the more reasonable computation, from one Sela to three Selaim, i.e. from 2s. 6d. to 7s. 6d. of our money.
\nIf we mistake not, these purchases had, however, already been made on the previous afternoon by Judas. It is not likely that they would have been left to the last; nor that He Who had so lately condemned the traffic in the Courts of the Temple would have sent His two disciples thither to purchase the Paschal Lamb, which would have been necessary to secure an animal that had passed Levitical inspection since on the Passover-day there would have been no time to subject it to such scrutiny. On the other hand, if Judas had made this purchase, we perceive not only on what pretext he may have gone to Jerusalem on the previous afternoon, but also how, on his way from the Sheep-market to the Temple, to have his lamb inspected, he may have learned that the Chief-Priests and Sanhedrists were just then in session in the Palace of the High-Priest close by.
\nOn the supposition just made, the task of Peter and John would, indeed, have been simple. They left the house of Mark with wondering but saddened hearts. Once more had they had evidence, how the Master\u2019s Divine glance searched the future in all its details. They had met the servant with the pitcher of water; they had delivered their message to the master of the house; and they had seen the large Upper Room furnished and ready. But this prescience of Christ afforded only further evidence, that what He had told of His impending Crucifixion would also come true. And now it would be time for the ordinary Evening-Service and Sacrifice. Ordinarily this began about 2.30 P.M.\u2014the daily Evening-Sacrifice being actually offered up about an hour later; but on this occasion, on account of the Feast, the Service was an hour earlier. As at about half-past one of our time the two Apostles ascended the Temple-Mount, following a dense, motley crowd of joyous, chatting pilgrims, they must have felt terribly lonely among them. Already the shadows of death were gathering around them. In all that crowd how few to sympathise with them; how many enemies! The Temple-Courts were thronged to the utmost by worshippers from all countries and from all parts of the land. The Priests\u2019 Court was filled with white-robed Priests and Levites\u2014for on that day all the twenty-four Courses were on duty, and all their services would be called for, although only the Course for that week would that afternoon engage in the ordinary service, which preceded that of the Feast. Almost mechanically would they witness the various parts of the well-remembered ceremonial. There must have been a peculiar meaning to them, a mournful significance, in the language of Ps. 81, as the Levites chanted it that afternoon in three sections, broken three times by the threefold blast from the silver trumpets of the Priests.
\nBefore the incense was burnt for the Evening Sacrifice, or yet the lamps in the Golden Candlestick were trimmed for the night, the Paschal-Lambs were slain. The worshippers were admitted in three divisions within the Court of the Priests. When the first company had entered, the massive Nicanor Gates\u2014which led from the Court of the Women to that of Israel\u2014and the other side-gates into the Court of the Priests, were closed. A threefold blast from the Priests\u2019 trumpets intimated that the Lambs were being slain. This each Israelite did for himself. We can scarcely be mistaken in supposing that Peter and John would be in the first of the three companies into which the offerers were divided; for they must have been anxious to be gone, and to meet the Master and their brethren in that \u2018Upper Room.\u2019 Peter and John had slain the Lamb. In two rows the officiating Priests stood, up to the great Altar of Burnt-offering. As one caught up the blood from the dying Lamb in a golden bowl, he handed it to his colleague, receiving in return an empty bowl; and so the blood was passed on to the Great Altar, where it was jerked in one jet at the base of the Altar. While this was going on, the Hallel was being chanted by the Levites. We remember that only the first line of every Psalm was repeated by the worshippers; while to every other line they responded by a Halleluyah, till Ps. 118 was reached, when, besides the first, these three lines were also repeated:\u2014<\/p>\n
Save now, I beseech Thee, LORD;
\nO LORD, I beseech Thee, send now prosperity.
\nBlessed be He that cometh in the Name of the LORD.<\/p>\n
As Peter and John repeated them on that afternoon, the words must have sounded most deeply significant. But their minds must have also reverted to that triumphal Entry into the City a few days before, when Israel had greeted with these words the Advent of their King. And now\u2014was it not, as if it had only been an anticipation of the Hymn, when the blood of the Paschal Lamb was being shed?
\nLittle more remained to be done. The sacrifice was laid on staves which rested on the shoulders of Peter and John, flayed, cleansed, and the parts which were to be burnt on the Altar removed and prepared for burning. The second company of offerers could not have proceeded far in the service, when the Apostles, bearing their Lamb, were wending their way back to the home of Mark, there to make final preparations for the \u2018Supper.\u2019 The Lamb would be roasted on a pomegranate spit that passed right through it from mouth to vent, special care being taken that, in roasting, the Lamb did not touch the oven. Everything else, also, would be made ready: the Chagigah for supper (if such was used); the unleavened cakes, the bitter herbs, the dish with vinegar, and that with Charoseth would be placed on a table which could be carried in and moved at will; finally, the festive lamps would be prepared.
\n\u2018It was probably as the sun was beginning to decline in the horizon that Jesus and the other ten disciples descended once more over the Mount of Olives into the Holy City. Before them lay Jerusalem in her festive attire. All around, pilgrims were hastening towards it. White tents dotted the sward, gay with the bright flowers of early spring, or peered out from the gardens or the darker foliage of the olive plantations. From the gorgeous Temple buildings, dazzling in their snow-white marble and gold, on which the slanting rays of the sun were reflected, rose the smoke of the Altar of Burnt-offering. These courts were now crowded with eager worshippers, offering for the last time, in the real sense, their Paschal Lambs. The streets must have been thronged with strangers, and the flat roofs covered with eager gazers, who either feasted their eyes with a first sight of the sacred City for which they had so often longed, or else once more rejoiced in view of the well-known localities. It was the last day-view which the Lord could take, free and unhindered, of the Holy City till His Resurrection. Once more, in the approaching night of His betrayal, would He look upon it in the pale light of the full moon. He was going forward to accomplish His Death in Jerusalem; to fulfil type and prophecy, and to offer Himself up as the true Passover Lamb\u2014\u201cthe Lamb of God, Which taketh away the sin of the world.\u201d They who followed Him were busy with many thoughts. They knew that terrible events awaited them, and they had only shortly before been told that these glorious Temple-buildings, to which, with a national pride not unnatural, they had directed the attention of their Master, were to become desolate, not one stone being left upon the other. Among them, revolving his dark plans, and goaded on by the great Enemy, moved the betrayer. And now they were within the City. Its Temple, its royal bridge, its splendid palaces, its busy marts, its streets filled with festive pilgrims, were well known to them, as they made their way to the house where the guest-chamber had been prepared. Meanwhile, the crowd came down from the Temple-Mount, each bearing on his shoulders the sacrificial Lamb, to make ready for the Paschal Supper.\u2019<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 10<\/p>\n
THE PASCHAL SUPPER\u2014THE INSTITUTION OF THE LORD\u2019S SUPPER<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 26:17\u201319; St. Mark 14:12\u201316; St. Luke 22:7\u201313; St. John 13:1; St. Matt. 26:20; St. Mark 14:17; St. Luke 22:14\u201316; St. Luke 22:24\u201330; St. Luke 22:17, 18; St. John 13:2\u201320; St. Matt. 26:21\u201324; St. Mark 14:18\u201321; St. Luke 22:21\u201323; St. John 13:21\u201326; St. Matt. 26:25; St. John 13:26\u201338; St. Matt. 26:26\u201329; St. Mark 14:22\u201325; St. Luke 22:19, 20.)<\/p>\n
THE period designated as \u2018between the two evenings,\u2019 when the Paschal Lamb was to be slain, was past. There can be no question that, in the time of Christ, it was understood to refer to the interval between the commencement of the sun\u2019s decline and what was reckoned as the hour of his final disappearance (about 6 P.M.). The first three stars had become visible, and the threefold blast of the Silver Trumpets from the Temple-Mount rang it out to Jerusalem and far away, that the Pascha had once more commenced. In the festively-lit \u2018Upper Chamber\u2019 of St. Mark\u2019s house the Master and the Twelve were now gathered. Was this place of Christ\u2019s last, also that of the Church\u2019s first, entertainment; that, where the Holy Supper was instituted with the Apostles, also that, where it was afterwards first partaken of by the Church; the Chamber where He last tarried with them before His Death, that in which He first appeared to them after His Resurrection; that, also, in which the Holy Ghost was poured out, even as (if the Last Supper was in the house of Mark) it undoubtedly was that in which the Church was at first wont to gather for common prayer? We know not, and can only venture to suggest, deeply soul-stirring as such thoughts and associations are.
\nSo far as appears, or we have reason to infer, this Passover was the only sacrifice ever offered by Jesus Himself. We remember, indeed, the first sacrifice of the Virgin-Mother at her Purification. But that was hers. If Christ was in Jerusalem at any Passover before His Public Ministry began, He would, of course, have been a guest at some table, not the Head of a Company (which must consist of at least ten persons). Hence, He would not have been the offerer of the Paschal Lamb. And of the three Passovers since His Public Ministry had begun, at the first His Twelve Apostles had not been gathered, so that He could not have appeared as the Head of a Company; while at the second He was not in Jerusalem but in the utmost parts of Galilee, in the borderland of Tyre and Sidon, where, of course, no sacrifice could be brought. Thus, the first, the last, the only sacrifice which Jesus offered was that in which, symbolically, He offered Himself. Again, the only sacrifice which He brought is that connected with the Institution of His Holy Supper; even as the only purification to which He submitted was when, in His Baptism, He \u2018sanctified water to the mystical washing away of sin.\u2019 But what additional meaning does this give to the words which He spake to the Twelve as He sat down with them to the Supper: \u2018With desire have I desired to eat this Pascha with you before I suffer.\u2019
\nAnd, in truth, as we think of it, we can understand not only why the Lord could not have offered any other Sacrifice, but that it was most fitting He should have offered this one Pascha, partaken of its commemorative Supper, and connected His own New Institution with that to which this Supper pointed. This joining of the Old with the New, the one symbolic Sacrifice which He offered with the One Real Sacrifice, the feast on the sacrifice with that other Feast upon the One Sacrifice, seems to cast light on the words with which He followed the expression of His longing to eat that one Pascha with them: \u2018I say unto you, I will not eat any more thereof, until it be fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.\u2019 And has it not been so, that this His last Pascha is connected with that other Feast in which He is ever present with His Church, not only as its Food but as its Host, as both the Pascha and He Who dispenses it? With a Sacrament did Jesus begin His Ministry: it was that of separation and consecration in Baptism. With a second Sacrament did He close His Ministry: it was that of gathering together and fellowship in the Lord\u2019s Supper. Both were into His Death: yet not as something that had power over Him, but as a Death that has been followed by the Resurrection. For, if in Baptism we are buried with Him, we also rise with Him; and if in the Holy Supper we remember His Death, it is as that of Him Who is risen again\u2014and if we show forth that Death, it is until He come again. And so this Supper, also, points forward to the Great Supper at the final consummation of His Kingdom.
\nOnly one Sacrifice did the Lord offer. We are not thinking now of the significant Jewish legend, which connected almost every great event and deliverance in Israel with the Night of the Passover. But the Pascha was, indeed, a Sacrifice, yet one distinct from all others. It was not of the Law, for it was instituted before the Law had been given or the Covenant ratified by blood; nay, in a sense it was the cause and the foundation of all the Levitical Sacrifices and of the Covenant itself. And it could not be classed with either one or the other of the various kinds of sacrifices, but rather combined them all, and yet differed from them all. Just as the Priesthood of Christ was real, yet not after the order of Aaron, so was the Sacrifice of Christ real, yet not after the order of Levitical sacrifices, but after that of the Passover. And as in the Paschal Supper all Israel were gathered around the Paschal Lamb in commemoration of the past, in celebration of the present, in anticipation of the future, and in fellowship in the Lamb, so has the Church been ever since gathered together around its better fulfilment in the Kingdom of God.
\nIt is difficult to decide how much, not only of the present ceremonial, but even of the Rubric for the Paschal Supper, as contained in the oldest Jewish documents, may have been obligatory at the time of Christ. Ceremonialism rapidly develops, too often in proportion to the absence of spiritual life. Probably in the earlier days, even as the ceremonies were simpler, so more latitude may have been left in their observance, provided that the main points in the ritual were kept in view. We may take it, that, as prescribed, all would appear at the Paschal Supper in festive array. We also know, that, as the Jewish Law directed, they reclined on pillows around a low table, each resting on his left hand, so as to leave the right free. But ancient Jewish usage casts a strange light on the painful scene with which the Supper opened. Sadly humiliating as it reads, and almost incredible as it seems, the Supper began with \u2018a contention among them, which of them should be accounted to be greatest.\u2019 We can have no doubt that its occasion was the order in which they should occupy places at the table. We know that this was subject of contention among the Pharisees, and that they claimed to be seated according to their rank. A similar feeling now appeared, alas! in the circle of the disciples and at the Last Supper of the Lord. Even if we had not further indications of it, we should instinctively associate such a strife with the presence of Judas. St. John seems to refer to it, at least indirectly, when he opens his narrative with this notice: \u2018And during supper, the devil having already cast it into his heart, that Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, shall betray Him.\u2019 For, although the words form a general introduction to what follows, and refer to the entrance of Satan into the heart of Judas on the previous afternoon, when he sold his Master to the Sanhedrists, they are not without special significance as placed in connection with the Supper. But we are not left to general conjecture in regard to the influence of Judas in this strife. There is, we believe, ample evidence that he not only claimed, but actually obtained, the chief seat at the table next to the Lord. This, as previously explained, was not, as is generally believed, at the right, but at the left of Christ, not below, but above Him, on the couches or pillows on which they reclined.
\nFrom the Gospel-narratives we infer, that St. John must have reclined next to Jesus, on His Right Hand, since otherwise he could not have leaned back on His Bosom. This, as we shall presently show, would be at one end\u2014the head of the table, or, to be more precise, at one end of the couches. For, dismissing all conventional ideas, we must think of it as a low Eastern table. In the Talmud, the table of the disciples of the sages is described as two parts covered with a cloth, the other third being left bare for the dishes to stand on. There is evidence that this part of the table was outside the circle of those who were ranged around it. Occasionally a ring was fixed in it, by which the table was suspended above the ground, so as to preserve it from any possible Levitical defilement. During the Paschal Supper, it was the custom to remove the table at one part of the service; or, if this be deemed a later arrangement, the dishes at least would be taken off and put on again. This would render it necessary that the end of the table should protrude beyond the line of guests who reclined around it. For, as already repeatedly stated, it was the custom to recline at table, lying on the left side and leaning on the left hand, the feet stretching back towards the ground, and each guest occupying a separate divan or pillow. It would, therefore, have been impossible to place or remove anything from the table from behind the guests. Hence, as a matter of necessity, the free end of the table, which was not covered with a cloth, would protrude beyond the line of those who reclined around it. We can now form a picture of the arrangement. Around a low Eastern table, oval or rather elongated, two parts covered with a cloth, and standing or else suspended, the single divans or pillows are ranged in the form of an elongated horseshoe, leaving free one end of the table, somewhat as in the accompanying woodcut. Here A represents the table, B B respectively the ends of the two rows of single divans on which each guest reclines on his left side, with his head (C) nearest the table, and his feet (D) stretching back towards the ground.<\/p>\n
So far for the arrangement of the table. Jewish documents are equally explicit as to that of the guests. It seems to have been quite an established rule that, in a company of more than two, say of three, the chief personage or Head\u2014in this instance, of course, Christ\u2014reclined on the middle divan. We know from the Gospel-narrative that John occupied the place on His right, at that end of the divans\u2014as we may call it\u2014at the head of the table. But the chief place next to the Master would be that to His left, or above Him. In the strife of the disciples, which should be accounted the greatest, this had been claimed, and we believe it to have been actually occupied, by Judas. This explains how, when Christ whispered to John by what sign to recognise the traitor, none of the other disciples heard it. It also explains, how Christ would first hand to Judas the sop, which formed part of the Paschal ritual, beginning with him as the chief guest at the table, without thereby exciting special notice. Lastly, it accounts for the circumstance that, when Judas, desirous of ascertaining whether his treachery was known, dared to ask whether it was he, and received the affirmative answer, no one at table knew what had passed. But this could not have been the case, unless Judas had occupied the place next to Christ; in this case, necessarily that at His left, or the post of chief honour. As regards Peter, we can quite understand how, when the Lord with such loving words rebuked their self-seeking and taught them of the greatness of Christian humility, he should, in his impetuosity of shame, have rushed to take the lowest place at the other end of the table. Finally, we can now understand how Peter could beckon to John, who sat at the opposite end of the table, over against him, and ask him across the table, who the traitor was. The rest of the disciples would occupy such places as were most convenient, or suited their fellowship with one another.
\nThe words which the Master spoke as He appeased their unseemly strife must, indeed, have touched them to the quick. First, He showed them, not so much in the language of even gentlest reproof as in that of teaching, the difference between worldly honour and distinction in the Church of Christ. In the world kingship lay in supremacy and lordship, and the title of Benefactor accompanied the sway of power. But in the Church the \u2018greater\u2019 would not exercise lordship, but become as the less and the younger [the latter referring to the circumstance, that age next to learning was regarded among the Jews as a claim to distinction and the chief seats]; while, instead of him that had authority being called Benefactor, the relationship would be reversed, and he that served would be chief. Self-forgetful humility instead of worldly glory, service instead of rule: such was to be the title to greatness and to authority in the Church. Having thus shown them the character and title to that greatness in the Kingdom, which was in prospect for them, He pointed them in this respect also to Himself as their example. The reference here is, of course, not to the act of symbolic foot-washing, which St. Luke does not relate\u2014although, as immediately following on the words of Christ, it would illustrate them\u2014but to the tenor of His whole Life and the object of His Mission, as of One Who served, not was served. Lastly, He woke them to the higher consciousness of their own calling. Assuredly, they would not lose their reward; but not here, nor yet now. They had shared, and would share His \u2018trials\u2019\u2014His being set at nought, despised, persecuted; but they would also share His glory. As the Father had \u2018covenanted\u2019 to Him, so He \u2018covenanted\u2019 and bequeathed to them a Kingdom, \u2018in order,\u2019 or \u2018so that,\u2019 in it they might have festive fellowship of rest and of joy with Him. What to them must have been \u2018temptations,\u2019 and in that respect also to Christ, they had endured: instead of Messianic glory, such as they may at first have thought of, they had witnessed only contradiction, denial, and shame\u2014and they had \u2018continued\u2019 with Him. But the Kingdom was also coming. When His glory was manifested, their acknowledgment would also come. Here Israel had rejected the King and His Messengers, but then would that same Israel be judged by their word. A Royal dignity this, indeed, but one of service; a full Royal acknowledgment, but one of work. In that sense were Israel\u2019s Messianic hopes to be understood by them. Whether or not something beyond this may also be implied, and, in that day when He again gathers the outcasts of Israel, some special Rule and Judgment may be given to His faithful Apostles, we venture not to determine. Sufficient for us the words of Christ in their primary meaning.
\nSo speaking, the Lord commenced that Supper, which in itself was symbol and pledge of what He had just said and promised. The Paschal Supper began, as always, by the Head of the Company taking the first cup, and speaking over it \u2018the thanksgiving.\u2019 The form presently in use consists really of two benedictions\u2014the first over the wine, the second for the return of this Feastday with all that it implies, and for being preserved once more to witness it. Turning to the Gospels, the words which follow the record of the benediction on the part of Christ seem to imply, that Jesus had, at any rate, so far made use of the ordinary thanksgiving as to speak both these benedictions. We know, indeed, that they were in use before His time, since it was in dispute between the Schools of Hillel and Shammai, whether that over the wine or that over the day should take precedence. That over the wine was quite simple: Blessed art Thou, Jehovah our God, Who hast created the fruit of the Vine!\u2019 The formula was so often used in blessing the cup, and is so simple, that we need not doubt that these were the very words spoken by our Lord. It is otherwise as regards the benediction \u2018over the day,\u2019 which is not only more composite, but contains words expressive of Israel\u2019s national pride and self-righteousness, such as we cannot think would have been uttered by our Lord. With this exception, however, they were no doubt identical in contents with the present formula. This we infer from what the Lord added, as He passed the cup round the circle of the disciples. No more, so He told them, would He speak the benediction over the fruit of the vine\u2014not again utter the thanks \u2018over the day,\u2019 that they had been \u2018preserved alive, sustained, and brought to this season.\u2019 Another Wine, and at another Feast, now awaited Him\u2014that in the future, when the Kingdom would come. It was to be the last of the old Paschas; the first, or rather the symbol and promise, of the new. And so, for the first and last time, did He speak the twofold benediction at the beginning of the Supper.
\nThe cup, in which, according to express Rabbinic testimony, the wine had been mixed with water before it was \u2018blessed,\u2019 had passed round. The next part of the ceremonial was for the Head of the Company to rise and \u2018wash hands.\u2019 It is this part of the ritual of which St. John records the adaptation and transformation on the part of Christ. The washing of the disciples\u2019 feet is evidently connected with the ritual of \u2018handwashing.\u2019 Now this was done twice during the Paschal Supper: the first time by the Head of the Company alone, immediately after the first cup; the second time by all present, at a much later part of the service, immediately before the actual meal (on the Lamb, &c.). If the footwashing had taken place on the latter occasion, it is natural to suppose that, when the Lord rose, all the disciples would have followed His example, and so the washing of their feet would have been impossible. Again, the foot-washing, which was intended both as a lesson and as an example of humility and service, was evidently connected with the dispute \u2018which of them should be accounted to be greatest.\u2019 If so, the symbolical act of our Lord must have followed close on the strife of the disciples, and on our Lord\u2019s teaching what in the Church constituted rule and greatness. Hence the act must have been connected with the first handwashing\u2014that by the Head of the Company\u2014immediately after the first cup, and not with that at a later period, when much else had intervened.
\nAll else fits in with this. For clearness\u2019 sake, the account given by St. John may here be recapitulated. The opening words concerning the love of Christ to His own unto the end form the general introduction. Then follows the account of what happened \u2018during Supper\u2019\u2014the Supper itself being left undescribed\u2014beginning, by way of explanation of what is to be told about Judas, with this: \u2018The Devil having already cast into his (Judas\u2019) heart, that Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, shall betray Him.\u2019 General as this notice is, it contains much that requires special attention. Thankfully we feel, that the heart of man was not capable of originating the Betrayal of Christ; humanity had fallen, but not so low. It was the Devil who had \u2018cast\u2019 it into Judas\u2019 heart\u2014with force and overwhelming power. Next, we mark the full description of the name and parentage of the traitor. It reads like the wording of a formal indictment. And, although it seems only an introductory explanation, it also points to the contrast with the love of Christ which persevered to the end, even when hell itself opened its mouth to swallow Him up; the contrast, also, between what Jesus and what Judas were about to do, and between the wild storm of evil that raged in the heart of the traitor and the calm majesty of love and peace which reigned in that of the Saviour.
\nIf what Satan had cast into the heart of Judas explains his conduct, so does the knowledge which Jesus possessed account for that He was about to do. Many as are the thoughts suggested by the words, \u2018Knowing that the Father had given all things into His Hands, and that He came forth from God, and goeth unto God\u2019\u2014yet, from their evident connection, they must in the first instance be applied to the Footwashing, of which they are, so to speak, the logical antecedent. It was His greatest act of humiliation and service, and yet He never lost in it for one moment aught of the majesty or consciousness of His Divine dignity; for He did it with the full knowledge and assertion that all things were in His Hands, and that He came forth from and was going unto God\u2014and He could do it, because He knew this. Here, not side by side, but in combination, are the Humiliation and Exaltation of the God-Man. And so, \u2018during Supper,\u2019 which had begun with the first cup, \u2018He riseth from Supper.\u2019 The disciples would scarcely marvel, except that He should conform to that practice of handwashing, which, as He had often explained, was, as a ceremonial observance, unavailing for those who were not inwardly clean, and needless and unmeaning in them whose heart and life had been purified. But they must have wondered as they saw Him put off His upper garment, gird Himself with a towel, and pour water into a basin, like a slave who was about to perform the meanest service.
\nFrom the position which, as we have shown, Peter occupied at the end of the table, it was natural that the Lord should begin with him the act of footwashing. Besides, had He first turned to others, Peter must either have remonstrated before, or else his later expostulation would have been tardy, and an act either of self-righteousness or of needless voluntary humility. As it was, the surprise with which he and the others had witnessed the preparation of the Lord burst into characteristic language when Jesus approached him to wash his feet. \u2018Lord\u2014Thou\u2014of me washest the feet!\u2019 It was the utterance of deepest reverence for the Master, and yet of utter misunderstanding of the meaning of His action, perhaps even of His Work. Jesus was now doing what before He had spoken. The act of externalism and self-righteousness represented by the washing of hands, and by which the Head of the Company was to be distinguished from all others and consecrated, He changed into a footwashing, in which the Lord and Master was to be distinguished, indeed, from the others\u2014but by the humblest service of love, and in which He showed by His example what characterised greatness in the Kingdom, and that service was evidence of rule. And, as mostly in every symbol, there was the real also in this act of the Lord. For, by sympathetically sharing in this act of love and service on the part of the Lord, they who had been bathed\u2014who had previously become clean in heart and spirit\u2014now received also that cleansing of the \u2018feet,\u2019 of active and daily walk, which cometh from true heart-humility, in opposition to pride, and consisteth in the service which love is willing to render even to the uttermost.
\nBut Peter had understood none of these things. He only felt the incongruousness of their relative positions. And so the Lord, partly also wishing thereby to lead his impetuosity to the absolute submission of faith, and partly to indicate the deeper truth he was to learn in the future, only told him, that though he knew it not now, he would understand hereafter what the Lord was doing. Yes, hereafter\u2014when, after that night of terrible fall, he would learn by the Lake of Galilee what it really meant to feed the lambs and to tend the sheep of Christ; yes, hereafter\u2014when no longer, as when he had been young, he would gird himself and walk whither he would. But, even so, Peter could not content himself with the prediction that in the future he would understand and enter into what Christ was doing in washing their feet. Never, he declared, could he allow it. The same feelings, which had prompted him to attempt withdrawing the Lord from the path of humiliation and suffering, now asserted themselves again. It was personal affection, indeed, but it was also unwillingness to submit to the humiliation of the Cross. And so the Lord told him, that if He washed him not, he had no part with Him. Not that the bare act of washing gave him part in Christ, but that the refusal to submit to it would have deprived him of it; and that, to share in this washing, was, as it were, the way to have part in Christ\u2019s service of love, to enter into it, and to share it.
\nStill, Peter did not understand. But as, on that morning by the Lake of Galilee, it appeared that, when he had lost all else, he had retained love, so did love to the Christ now give him the victory\u2014and, once more with characteristic impetuosity, he would have tendered not only his feet to be washed, but his hands and head. Yet here, also, was there misunderstanding. There was deep symbolical meaning, not only in that Christ did it, but also in what He did. Submission to His doing it meant symbolically share and part with Him\u2014part in His Work. What He did, meant His work and service of love; the constant cleansing of one\u2019s walk and life in the love of Christ, and in the service of that love. It was not a meaningless ceremony of humiliation on the part of Christ, nor yet one where submission to the utmost was required; but the action was symbolic, and meant that the disciple, who was already bathed and made clean in heart and spirit, required only this\u2014to wash his feet in spiritual consecration to the service of love which Christ had here shown forth in symbolic act. And so His Words referred not, as is so often supposed, to the forgiveness of our daily sins\u2014the introduction of which would have been wholly abrupt and unconnected with the context\u2014but, in contrast to all self-seeking, to the daily consecration of our life to the service of love after the example of Christ.
\nAnd still do all these words come to us in manifold and ever-varied application. In the misunderstanding of our love to Him, we too often imagine that Christ cannot will or do what seems to us incongruous on His part, or rather, incongruous with what we think about Him. We know it not now, but we shall understand it hereafter. And still we persist in our resistance, till it comes to us that so we would even lose our part in and with Him. Yet not much, not very much, does He ask, Who giveth so much. He that has washed us wholly would only have us cleanse our feet for the service of love, as He gave us the example.
\nThey were clean, these disciples, but not all. For He knew that there was among them he \u2018that was betraying Him.\u2019 He knew it, but not with the knowledge of an inevitable fate impending, far less of an absolute decree, but with that knowledge which would again and again speak out the warning, if by any means he might be saved. What would have come, if Judas had repented, is as idle a question as this: What would have come if Israel, as a nation, had repented and accepted Christ? For, from our human standpoint, we can only view the human aspect of things\u2014that earthwards; and here every action is not isolated, but ever the outcome of a previous development and history, so that a man always freely acts, yet always in consequence of an inward necessity.
\nThe solemn service of Christ now went on in the silence of reverent awe. None dared ask Him nor resist. It was ended, and He had resumed His upper garment, and again taken His place at the Table. It was His now to follow the symbolic deed by illustrative words, and to explain the practical application of what had just been done. Let it not be misunderstood. They were wont to call Him by the two highest names of Teacher and Lord, and these designations were rightly His. For the first time He fully accepted and owned the highest homage. How much more, then, must His Service of love, Who was their Teacher and Lord, serve as example of what was due by each to his fellow-disciple and fellow-servant! He, Who really was Lord and Master, had rendered this lowest service to them as an example that, as He had done, so should they do. No principle better known, almost proverbial in Israel, than that a servant was not to claim greater honour than his master, nor yet he that was sent than he who had sent him. They knew this, and now also the meaning of the symbolic act of footwashing; and if they acted it out, then theirs would be the promised \u2018Beatitude.\u2019
\nThis reference to what were familiar expressions among the Jews, specially noteworthy in St. John\u2019s Gospel, leads us to supplement a few illustrative notes from the same source. The Greek word for \u2018the towel,\u2019 with which our Lord girded Himself, occurs also in Rabbinic writings, to denote the towel used in washing and at baths (Luntith and Aluntith). Such girding was the common mark of a slave, by whom the service of footwashing was ordinarily performed. And, in a very interesting passage, the Midrash contrasts what, in this respect, is the way of man with what God had done for Israel. For, He had been described by the prophet as performing for them the service of washing, and others usually rendered by slaves. Again, the combination of these two designations, \u2018Rabbi and Lord,\u2019 or \u2018Rabbi, Father, and Lord,\u2019 was among those most common on the part of disciples. The idea, that if a man knows (for example, the Law) and does not do it, it were better for him not to have been created, is not unfrequently expressed. But the most interesting reference is in regard to the relation between the sender and the sent, and a servant and his master. In regard to the former, it is proverbially said, that while he that is sent stands on the same footing as he who sent him, yet he must expect less honour. And as regards Christ\u2019s statement that \u2018the servant is not greater than his Master,\u2019 there is a passage in which we read this, in connection with the sufferings of the Messiah: \u2018It is enough for the servant that he be like his Master.\u2019
\nBut to return. The footwashing on the part of Christ, in which Judas had shared, together with the explanatory words that followed, almost required, in truthfulness, this limitation: \u2018I speak not of you all.\u2019 For it would be a night of terrible moral sifting to them all. A solemn warning was needed by all the disciples. But, besides, the treachery of one of their own number might have led them to doubt whether Christ had really Divine knowledge. On the other hand, this clear prediction of it would not only confirm their faith in Him, but show that there was some deeper meaning in the presence of a Judas among them. We come here upon these words of deepest mysteriousness: \u2018I know those I chose; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth My Bread lifteth up his heel against Me.\u2019 It were almost impossible to believe, even if not forbidden by the context, that this knowledge of which Christ spoke, referred to an eternal foreknowledge; still more, that it meant Judas had been chosen with such foreknowledge in order that this terrible Scripture might be fulfilled in him. Such foreknowledge and foreordination would be to sin, and it would involve thoughts such as only the harshness of our human logic in its fatal system-making could induce anyone to entertain. Rather must we understand it as meaning that Jesus had, from the first, known the inmost thoughts of those He had chosen to be His Apostles; but that by this treachery of one of their number, the terrible prediction of the worst enmity, that of ingratitude, true in all ages of the Church, would receive its complete fulfilment. The word \u2018that\u2019\u2014\u2018that the Scripture may be fulfilled,\u2019 does not mean \u2018in order that,\u2019 or \u2018for the purpose of;\u2019 it never means this in that connection; and it would be altogether irrational to suppose that an event happened in order that a special prediction might be fulfilled. Rather does it indicate the higher internal connection in the succession of events, when an event had taken place in the free determination of its agents, by which, all unknown to them and unthought of by others, that unexpectedly came to pass which had been Divinely foretold. And herein appears the Divine character of prophecy, which is always at the same time announcement and forewarning, that is, has besides its predictive a moral element: that, while man is left to act freely, each development tends to the goal Divinely foreseen and foreordained. Thus the word \u2018that\u2019 marks not the connection between causation and effect, but between the Divine antecedent and the human subsequent.
\nThere is, indeed, behind this a much deeper question, to which brief reference has already formerly been made. Did Christ know from the beginning that Judas would betray Him, and yet, so knowing, did He choose him to be one of the Twelve? Here we can only answer by indicating this as a canon in studying the Life on earth of the God-Man, that it was part of His Self-exinanition\u2014of that emptying Himself, and taking upon Him the form of a Servant\u2014voluntarily to forego His Divine knowledge in the choice of His Human actions. So only could He, as perfect Man, have perfectly obeyed the Divine Law. For, if the Divine had determined Him in the choice of His Actions, there could have been no merit attaching to His Obedience, nor could He be said to have, as perfect Man, taken our place, and to have obeyed the Law in our stead and as our Representative, nor yet be our Ensample. But if His Divine knowledge did not guide Him in the choice of His actions, we can see, and have already indicated, reasons why the discipleship and service of Judas should have been accepted, if it had been only as that of a Jud\u00e6an, a man in many respects well fitted for such an office, and the representative of one of the various directions which tended towards the reception of the Messiah.
\nWe are not in circumstances to judge whether or not Christ spoke all these things continuously, after He had sat down, having washed the disciples\u2019 feet. More probably it was at different parts of the meal. This would also account for the seeming abruptness of this concluding sentence: \u2018He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth Me.\u2019 And yet the internal connection of thought seems clear. The apostasy and loss of one of the Apostles was known to Christ. Would it finally dissolve the bond that bound together the College of Apostles, and so invalidate their Divine Mission (the Apostolate) and its authority? The words of Christ conveyed an assurance which would be most comforting in the future, that any such break would not be lasting, only transitory, and that in this respect also \u2018the foundation of God standeth.\u2019
\nIn the meantime the Paschal Supper was proceeding. We mark this important note of time in the words of St. Matthew: \u2018as they were eating,\u2019 or, as St. Mark expresses it, \u2018as they reclined and were eating.\u2019 According to the Rubric, after the \u2018washing\u2019 the dishes were immediately to be brought on the table. Then the Head of the Company would dip some of the bitter herbs into the salt-water or vinegar, speak a blessing, and partake of them, then hand them to each in the company. Next, he would break one of the unleavened cakes (according to the present ritual the middle of the three), of which half was put aside for after supper. This is called the Aphiqomon, or after-dish, and as we believe that \u2018the bread\u2019 of the Holy Eucharist was the Aphiqomon, some particulars may here be of interest. The dish in which the broken cake lies (not the Aphiqomon), is elevated, and these words are spoken: \u2018This is the bread of misery which our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. All that are hungry, come and eat; all that are needy, come, keep the Pascha.\u2019 In the more modern ritual the words are added: \u2018This year here, next year in the land of Israel; this year bondsmen, next year free!\u2019 On this the second cup is filled, and the youngest in the company is instructed to make formal inquiry as to the meaning of all the observances of that night, when the Liturgy proceeds to give full answers as regards the festival, its occasion, and ritual. The Talmud adds that the table is to be previously removed, so as to excite the greater curiosity. We do not suppose that even the earlier ritual represents the exact observances at the time of Christ, or that, even if it does so, they were exactly followed at that Paschal Table of the Lord. But so much stress is laid in Jewish writings on the duty of fully rehearsing at the Paschal Supper the circumstances of the first Passover and the deliverance connected with it, that we can scarcely doubt that what the Mishnah declares as so essential formed part of the services of that night. And as we think of our Lord\u2019s comment on the Passover and Israel\u2019s deliverance, the words spoken when the unleavened cake was broken come back to us, and with deeper meaning attaching to them.
\nAfter this the cup is elevated, and then the service proceeds somewhat lengthily, the cup being raised a second time and certain prayers spoken. This part of the service concludes with the two first Psalms in the series called \u2018The Hallel,\u2019 when the cup is raised a third time, a prayer spoken, and the cup drunk. This ends the first part of the service. And now the Paschal meal begins by all washing their hands\u2014a part of the ritual which we scarcely think Christ observed. It was, we believe, during this lengthened exposition and service that the \u2018trouble in spirit\u2019 of which St. John speaks passed over the soul of the God-Man. Almost presumptuous as it seems to inquire into its immediate cause, we can scarcely doubt that it concerned not so much Himself as them. His Soul could not, indeed, but have been troubled, as, with full consciousness of all that it would be to Him\u2014infinitely more than merely human suffering\u2014He looked down into the abyss which was about to open at His Feet. But He saw more than even this. He saw Judas about to take the last fatal step, and His Soul yearned in pity over him. The very sop which He would so soon hand to him, although a sign of recognition to John, was a last appeal to all that was human in Judas. And, besides all this, Jesus also saw, how, all unknown to them, the terrible tempest of fierce temptation would that night sweep over them; how it would lay low and almost uproot one of them, and scatter all. It was the beginning of the hour of Christ\u2019s utmost loneliness, of which the climax was reached in Gethsemane. And in the trouble of His Spirit did He solemnly \u2018testify\u2019 to them of the near Betrayal. We wonder not, that they all became exceeding sorrowful, and each asked, \u2018Lord, is it I?\u2019 This question on the part of the eleven disciples, who were conscious of innocence of any purpose of betrayal, and conscious also of deep love to the Master, affords one of the clearest glimpses into the inner history of that Night of Terror, in which, so to speak, Israel became Egypt. We can now better understand their heavy sleep in Gethsemane, their forsaking Him and fleeing, even Peter\u2019s denial. Everything must have seemed to these men to give way; all to be enveloped in outer darkness, when each man could ask whether he was to be the Betrayer.
\nThe answer of Christ left the special person undetermined, while it again repeated the awful prediction\u2014shall we not add, the most solemn warning\u2014that it was one of those who took part in the Supper. It is at this point that St. John resumes the thread of the narrative. As he describes it, the disciples were looking one on another, doubting of whom He spake. In this agonising suspense Peter beckoned from across the table to John, whose head, instead of leaning on his hand, rested, in the absolute surrender of love and intimacy born of sorrow, on the bosom of the Master. Peter would have John ask of whom Jesus spake. And to the whispered question of John, \u2018leaning back as he was on Jesus\u2019 breast,\u2019 the Lord gave the sign, that it was he to whom He would give \u2018the sop\u2019 when He had dipped it. Even this perhaps was not clear to John, since each one in turn received \u2018the sop.\u2019
\nAt present, the Supper itself begins by eating, first, a piece of the unleavened cake, then of the bitter herbs dipped in Charoseth, and lastly two small pieces of the unleavened cake, between which a piece of bitter radish has been placed. But we have direct testimony, that, about the time of Christ, \u2018the sop\u2019 which was handed round consisted of these things wrapped together: flesh of the Paschal Lamb, a piece of unleavened bread, and bitter herbs. This, we believe, was \u2018the sop,\u2019 which Jesus, having dipped it for him in the dish, handed first to Judas, as occupying the first and chief place at Table. But before He did so, probably while He dipped it in the dish, Judas, who could not but fear that his purpose might be known, reclining at Christ\u2019s left hand, whispered into the Master\u2019s ear, \u2018Is it I, Rabbi?\u2019 It must have been whispered, for no one at the Table could have heard either the question of Judas or the affirmative answer of Christ. It was the last outgoing of the pitying love of Christ after the traitor. Coming after the terrible warning and woe on the Betrayer, it must be regarded as the final warning and also the final attempt at rescue on the part of the Saviour. It was with full knowledge of all, even of this that his treachery was known, though he may have attributed the information not to Divine insight but to some secret human communication, that Judas went on his way to destruction. We are too apt to attribute crimes to madness; but surely there is moral, as well as mental mania; and it must have been in a paroxysm of that, when all feeling was turned to stone, and mental self-delusion was combined with moral perversion, that Judas \u2018took\u2019 from the Hand of Jesus \u2018the sop.\u2019 It was to descend alive into the grave\u2014and with a heavy sound the gravestone fell and closed over the mouth of the pit. That moment Satan entered again into his heart. But the deed was virtually done; and Jesus, longing for the quiet fellowship of His own with all that was to follow, bade him do quickly that he did.
\nBut even so there are questions connected with the human motives that actuated Judas, to which, however, we can only give the answer of some suggestions. Did Judas regard Christ\u2019s denunciation of \u2018woe\u2019 on the Betrayer not as a prediction, but as intended to be deterrent\u2014perhaps in language Orientally exaggerated\u2014or if he regarded it as a prediction, did he not believe in it? Again, when after the plain intimation of Christ and His Words to do quickly what he was about to do, Judas still went to the betrayal, could he have had an idea\u2014rather, sought to deceive himself, that Jesus felt that He could not escape His enemies, and that He rather wished it to be all over? Or had all his former feelings towards Jesus turned, although temporarily, into actual hatred which every Word and Warning of Christ only intensified? But above all and in all we have, first and foremost, to think of the peculiarly Judaic character of his first adherence to Christ; of the gradual and at last final and fatal disenchantment of his hopes; of his utter moral, consequent upon his spiritual, failure; of the change of all that had in it the possibility of good into the actuality of evil; and, on the other hand, of the direct agency of Satan in the heart of Judas, which his moral and spiritual ship-wreck rendered possible.
\nFrom the meal scarcely begun Judas rushed into the dark night. Even this has its symbolic significance. None there knew why this strange haste, unless from obedience to something that the Master had bidden him. Even John could scarcely have understood the sign which Christ had given of the traitor. Some of them thought, he had been directed by the words of Christ to purchase what was needful for the feast; others, that he was bidden go and give something to the poor. Gratuitous objection has been raised, as if this indicated that, according to the Fourth Gospel, this meal had not taken place on the Paschal night, since, after the commencement of the Feast (on the 15th Nisan), it would be unlawful to make purchases. But this certainly was not the case. Sufficient here to state, that the provision and preparation of the needful food, and indeed of all that was needful for the Feast, was allowed on the 15th Nisan. And this must have been specially necessary when, as in this instance, the first festive day, or 15th Nisan, was to be followed by a Sabbath, on which no such work was permitted. On the other hand, the mention of these two suggestions by the disciples seems almost necessarily to involve, that the writer of the Fourth Gospel had placed this meal in the Paschal Night. Had it been on the evening before, no one could have imagined that Judas had gone out during the night to buy provisions, when there was the whole next day for it, nor would it have been likely that a man should on any ordinary day go at such an hour to seek out the poor. But in the Paschal Night, when the great Temple-gates were opened at midnight to begin early preparations for the offering of the Chagigah, or festive sacrifice, which was not voluntary but of due, and the remainder of which was afterwards eaten at a festive meal, such preparations would be quite natural. And equally so, that the poor, who gathered around the Temple, might then seek to obtain the help of the charitable.
\nThe departure of the betrayer seemed to clear the atmosphere. He was gone to do his work; but let it not be thought that it was the necessity of that betrayal which was the cause of Christ\u2019s suffering of soul. He offered Himself willingly\u2014and though it was brought about through the treachery of Judas, yet it was Jesus Himself Who freely brought Himself a Sacrifice, in fulfilment of the work which the Father had given Him. And all the more did He realise and express this on the departure of Judas. So long as he was there, pitying love still sought to keep him from the fatal step. But when the traitor was at last gone, the other side of His own work clearly emerged into Christ\u2019s view. And this voluntary sacrificial aspect is further clearly indicated by His selection of the terms \u2018Son of Man\u2019 and \u2018God\u2019 instead of \u2018Son\u2019 and \u2018Father.\u2019 \u2018Now is glorified the Son of Man, and God is glorified in Him. And God shall glorify Him in Himself, and straightway shall He glorify Him.\u2019 If the first of these sentences expressed the meaning of what was about to take place, as exhibiting the utmost glory of the Son of Man in the triumph of the obedience of His Voluntary Sacrifice, the second sentence pointed out its acknowledgment by God: the exaltation which followed the humiliation, the reward as the necessary sequel of the work, the Crown after the Cross.
\nThus far for one aspect of what was about to be enacted. As for the other\u2014that which concerned the disciples: only a little while would He still be with them. Then would come the time of sad and sore perplexity\u2014when they would seek Him, but could not come whither He had gone\u2014during the terrible hours between His Crucifixion and His manifested Resurrection. With reference to that period especially, but in general to the whole time of His Separation from the Church on earth, the great commandment, the bond which alone would hold them together, was that of love one to another, and such love as that which He had shown towards them. And this\u2014shame on us, as we write it!\u2014was to be the mark to all men of their discipleship. As recorded by St. John, the words of the Lord were succeeded by a question of Peter, indicating perplexity as to the primary and direct meaning of Christ\u2019s going away. On this followed Christ\u2019s reply about the impossibility of Peter\u2019s now sharing his Lord\u2019s way of Passion, and, in answer to the disciple\u2019s impetuous assurance of his readiness to follow the Master not only into peril, but to lay down his life for Him, the Lord\u2019s indication of Peter\u2019s present unpreparedness and the prediction of his impending denial. It may have been, that all this occurred in the Supper-Chamber and at the time indicated by St. John. But it is also recorded by the Synoptists as on the way to Gethsemane, and in, what we may term, a more natural connection. Its consideration will therefore be best reserved till we reach that stage of the history.
\nWe now approach the most solemn part of that night: The Institution of the Lord\u2019s Supper. It would manifestly be beyond the object, as assuredly it would necessarily stretch beyond the limits, of the present work, to discuss the many questions and controversies which, alas! have gathered around the Words of the Institution. On the other hand, it would not be truthful wholly to pass them by On certain points, indeed, we need have no hesitation. The Institution of the Lord\u2019s Supper is recorded by the Synoptists, although without reference to those parts of the Paschal Supper and its Services with which one or another of its acts must be connected. In fact, while the historical nexus with the Paschal Supper is evident, it almost seems as if the Evangelists had intended, by their studied silence in regard to the Jewish Feast, to indicate that with this Celebration and the new Institution the Jewish Passover had for ever ceased. On the other hand, the Fourth Gospel does not record the new Institution\u2014it may have been, because it was so fully recorded by the others; or for reasons connected with the structure of that Gospel; or it may be accounted for on other grounds. But whatever way we may account for it, the silence of the Fourth Gospel must be a sore difficulty to those who regard it as an Ephesian product of symbolico-sacramentarian tendency, dating from the second century.
\nThe absence of a record by St. John is compensated by the narrative of St. Paul in 1 Cor. 11:23\u201326, to which must be added as supplementary the reference in 1 Cor. 10:16 to \u2018the Cup of Blessing which we bless\u2019 as \u2018fellowship of the Blood of Christ, and the Bread which we break\u2019 as \u2018fellowship of the Body of Christ.\u2019 We have thus four accounts, which may be divided into two groups: St. Matthew and St. Mark, and St. Luke and St. Paul. None of these gives us the very words of Christ, since these were spoken in Aram\u00e6an. In the renderings which we have of them one series may be described as the more rugged and literal, the other as the more free and paraphrastic. The differences between them are, of course, exceedingly minute; but they exist. As regards the text which underlies the rendering in our A.V., the differences suggested are not of any practical importance, with the exception of two points. First, the copula \u2018is\u2019 [\u2018This is My Body,\u2019 \u2018This is My Blood\u2019] was certainly not spoken by the Lord in the Aramaic, just as it does not occur in the Jewish formula in the breaking of bread at the beginning of the Paschal Supper. Secondly, the words: \u2018Body which is given,\u2019 or, in 1 Cor. 11:24, \u2018broken,\u2019 and \u2018Blood which is shed,\u2019 should be more correctly rendered: \u2018is being given,\u2019 \u2018broken,\u2019 \u2018shed.\u2019
\nIf we now ask ourselves at what part of the Paschal Supper the new Institution was made, we cannot doubt that it was before the Supper was completely ended. We have seen, that Judas had left the Table at the beginning of the Supper. The meal continued to its end, amidst such conversation as has already been noted. According to the Jewish ritual, the third Cup was filled at the close of the Supper. This was called, as by St. Paul, \u2018the Cup of Blessing,\u2019 partly, because a special \u2018blessing\u2019 was pronounced over it. It is described as one of the ten essential rites in the Paschal Supper. Next, \u2018grace after meat\u2019 was spoken. But on this we need not dwell, nor yet on \u2018the washing of hands\u2019 that followed. The latter would not be observed by Jesus as a religious ceremony; while, in regard to the former, the composite character of this part of the Paschal Liturgy affords internal evidence that it could not have been in use at the time of Christ. But we can have little doubt, that the Institution of the Cup was in connection with this third \u2018Cup of Blessing.\u2019 If we are asked, what part of the Paschal Service corresponds to the \u2018Breaking of Bread,\u2019 we answer, that this being really the last Pascha, and the cessation of it, our Lord anticipated the later rite, introduced when, with the destruction of the Temple, the Paschal as all other Sacrifices ceased. While the Paschal Lamb was still offered, it was the Law that, after partaking of its flesh, nothing else should be eaten. But since the Paschal Lamb has ceased, it is the custom after the meal to break and partake as Aphikomon, or after-dish, of that half of the unleavened cake, which, as will be remembered, had been broken and put aside at the beginning of the Supper. The Paschal Sacrifice having now really ceased, and consciously so to all the disciples of Christ, He anticipated this, and connected with the breaking of the Unleavened Cake at the close of the Meal the Institution of the breaking of Bread in the Holy Eucharist.
\nWhat did the Institution really mean, and what does it mean to us? We cannot believe that it was intended as merely a sign for remembrance of His Death. Such remembrance is often equally vivid in ordinary acts of faith or prayer; and it seems difficult, if no more than this had been intended, to account for the Institution of a special Sacrament, and that with such solemnity, and as the second great rite of the Church\u2014that for its nourishment. Again, if it were a mere token of remembrance, why the Cup as well as the Bread? Nor can we believe, that the copula \u2018is\u2019\u2014which, indeed, did not occur in the words spoken by Christ Himself\u2014can be equivalent to \u2018signifies.\u2019 As little can it refer to any change of substance, be it in what is called Transubstantiation or Consubstantiation. If we may venture an explanation, it would be that \u2018this,\u2019 received in the Holy Eucharist, conveys to the soul as regards the Body and Blood of the Lord, the same effect as the Bread and the Wine to the body\u2014receiving of the Bread and the Cup in the Holy Communion is, really, though spiritually, to the Soul what the outward elements are to the Body: that they are both the symbol and the vehicle of true, inward, spiritual feeding on the Very Body and Blood of Christ. So is this Cup which we bless fellowship of His Blood, and the Bread we break of His Body\u2014fellowship with Him Who died for us, and in His dying; fellowship also in Him with one another, who are joined together in this, that for us this Body was given, and for the remission of our sins this precious Blood was shed.
\nMost mysterious words these, yet most blessed mystery this of feeding on Christ spiritually and in faith. Most mysterious\u2014yet \u2018he who takes from us our mystery takes from us our Sacrament.\u2019 And ever since has this blessed Institution lain as the golden morning-light far out even in the Church\u2019s darkest night\u2014not only the seal of His Presence and its pledge, but also the promise of the bright Day at His Coming. \u2018For as often as we eat this Bread and drink this Cup, we do show forth the Death of the Lord\u2019\u2014for the life of the world, to be assuredly yet manifested\u2014\u2018till He come.\u2019 \u2018Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly!\u2019<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 11<\/p>\n
THE LAST DISCOURSES OF CHRIST\u2014THE PRAYER OF CONSECRATION<\/p>\n
(St. John 14; 15; 16; 17.)<\/p>\n
THE new Institution of the Lord\u2019s Supper did not finally close what passed at that Paschal Table. According to the Jewish Ritual, the Cup is filled a fourth time, and the remaining part of the Hallel repeated. Then follow, besides Ps. 136, a number of prayers and hymns, of which the comparatively late origin is not doubtful. The same remark applies even more strongly to what follows after the fourth Cup. But, so far as we can judge, the Institution of the Holy Supper was followed by the Discourse recorded in St. John 14. Then the concluding Psalms of the Hallel were sung, after which the Master left the \u2018Upper Chamber.\u2019 The Discourse of Christ recorded in St. John 16, and His prayer, were certainly uttered after they had risen from the Supper, and before they crossed the brook Kidron. In all probability they were, however, spoken before the Saviour left the house. We can scarcely imagine such a Discourse, and still less such a Prayer, to have been uttered while traversing the narrow streets of Jerusalem on the way to Kidron.
\n1. In any case there cannot be doubt, that the first Discourse was spoken while still at the Supper-Table. It connects itself closely with that statement which had caused them so much sorrow and perplexity, that, whither He was going, they could not come. If so, the Discourse itself may be arranged under these four particulars: explanatory and corrective; explanatory and teaching; hortatory and promissory; promissory and consolatory. Thus there is constant and connected progress, the two great elements in the Discourse being: teaching and comfort.
\nAt the outset we ought, perhaps, to remember the very common Jewish idea, that those in glory occupied different abodes, corresponding to their ranks. If the words of Christ, about the place whither they could not follow Him, had awakened any such thoughts, the explanation which He now gave must effectually have dispelled them. Let not their hearts, then, be troubled at the prospect. As they believed in God, so let them also have trust in Him. It was His Father\u2019s House of which they were thinking, and although there were \u2018many mansions,\u2019 or rather \u2018stations,\u2019 in it\u2014and the choice of this word may teach us something\u2014yet they were all in that one House. Could they not trust Him in this? Surely, if it had been otherwise, He would have told them, and not left them to be bitterly disappointed in the end. Indeed, the object of His going was the opposite of what they feared: it was to prepare by His Death and Resurrection a place for them. Nor let them think that His going away would imply permanent separation, because He had said they could not follow Him thither. Rather did His going, not away, but to prepare a place for them, imply His Coming again, primarily as regarded individuals at death, and secondarily as regarded the Church\u2014that He might receive them unto Himself, there to be with Him. Not final separation, then, but ultimate gathering to Himself, did His present going away mean. \u2018And whither I go, ye know the way.\u2019
\nJesus had referred to His going to the Father\u2019s House, and implied that they knew the way which would bring them thither also. But His Words had only the more perplexed, at least some of them. If, when speaking of their not being able to go whither He went, He had not referred to a separation between them in that land far away, whither was He going? And, in their ignorance of this, how could they find their way thither? If any Jewish ideas of the disappearance and the final manifestation of the Messiah lurked beneath the question of Thomas, the answer of the Lord placed the matter in the clearest light. He had spoken of the Father\u2019s House of many \u2018stations,\u2019 but only one road led thither. They must all know it: it was that of personal apprehension of Christ in the life, the mind, and the heart. The way to the Father was Christ; the full manifestation of all spiritual truth, and the spring of the true inner life were equally in Him. Except through Him, no man could consciously come to the Father. Thomas had put his twofold question thus: What was the goal? and, what was the way to it? In His answer Christ significantly reversed this order, and told them first what was the way\u2014Himself; and then what was the goal. If they had spiritually known Him as the way, they would also have known the goal, the Father; and now, by having the way clearly pointed out, they must also know the goal, God; nay, He was, so to speak, visibly before them\u2014and, gazing on Him, they saw the shining track up to heaven, the Jacob\u2019s ladder at the top of which was the Father.
\nBut once more appeared in the words of Philip that carnal literalising, which would take the words of Christ in only an external sense. Sayings like these help us to perceive the absolute need of another Teacher, the Holy Spirit. Philip understood the words of Christ as if He held out the possibility of an actual sight of the Father; and this, as they imagined, would for ever have put an end to all their doubts and fears. We also, too often, would fain have such solution of our doubts, if not by actual vision, yet by direct communication from on high. In His reply Jesus once more and emphatically returned to this truth, that the vision, which was that of faith alone, was spiritual, and in no way external; and that this manifestation had been, and was fully, though spiritually and to faith, in Him. Or did Philip not believe that the Father was really manifested in Christ, because he did not actually behold Him? Those words which had drawn them and made them feel that heaven was so near, they were not His own, but the message which He had brought them from the Father; those works which He had done, they were the manifestation of the Father\u2019s \u2018dwelling\u2019 in Him. Let them then believe this vital union between the Father and Him\u2014and, if their faith could not absolutely rise to that height, let it at least rest on the lower level of the evidence of His works. And so would He still lead us upwards, from the experience of what He does to the knowledge of what He is. Yea, and if they were ever tempted to doubt His works, faith might have evidence of them in personal experience. Primarily, no doubt, the words about the greater works which they who believed in Him would do, because He went to the Father, refer to the Apostolic preaching and working in its greater results after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. To this also must primarily refer the promise of unlimited answer to prayer in His Name. But in a secondary, yet most true and blessed, sense, both these promises have, ever since the Ascension of Christ, also applied both to the Church and to all individual Christians.
\nA twofold promise, so wide as this, required, it must be felt, not indeed limitation, but qualification\u2014let us say, definition\u2014so far as concerns the indication of its necessary conditions. Unlimited power of working by faith and of praying in faith is qualified by obedience to His Commandments, such as is the outcome of personal love to Him. And for such faith, which compasseth all things in the obedience of love to Christ, and can attain all by the prayer of faith in His Name, there will be a need of Divine Presence ever with them. While He had been with them, they had had one Paraclete, or \u2018Advocate,\u2019 Who had pleaded with them the cause of God, explained and advocated the truth, and guarded and guided them. Now that His outward Presence was to be withdrawn from earth, and He was to be their Paraclete or Advocate in Heaven with the Father, He would, as His first act of advocacy, pray the Father, Who would send them another Paraclete, or Advocate, who would continue with them for ever. To the guidance and pleadings of that Advocate they could implicitly trust themselves, for He was \u2018the Spirit of Truth.\u2019 The world, indeed, would not listen to His pleadings, nor accept Him as their Guide, for the only evidence by which they judged was that of outward sight and material results. But theirs would be other Empirics: an experience not outward, but inward and spiritual. They would know the reality of His Existence and the truth of His pleadings by the continual Presence with them as a body of this Paraclete, and by His dwelling in them individually.
\nHere (as Bengel justly remarks) begins the essential difference between believers and the world. The Son was sent into the world; not so the Holy Spirit. Again, the world receives not the Holy Spirit, because it knows Him not; the disciples know Him, because they possess Him. Hence \u2018to have known\u2019 and \u2018to have\u2019 are so conjoined, that not to have known is the cause of not having, and to have is the cause of knowing. In view of this promised Advent of the other Advocate, Christ could tell the disciples that He would not leave them \u2018orphans\u2019 in this world. Nay, in this Advocate Christ Himself came to them. True, the world, which only saw and knew what fell within the range of its sensuous and outward vision (ver. 17), would not behold Him, but they would behold Him, because He lived, and they also would live\u2014and hence there was fellowship of spiritual life between them. On that day of the Advent of His Holy Spirit would they have full knowledge, because experience, of the Christ\u2019s Return to the Father, and of their own being in Christ, and of His being in them. And, as regarded this threefold relationship, this must be ever kept in view: to be in Christ meant to love Him, and this was: to have and to keep His commandments; Christ\u2019s being in the Father implied, that they who were in Christ or loved Him would be loved also of His Father; and, lastly, Christ\u2019s being in them implied, that He would love them and manifest Himself to them.
\nOne outstanding novel fact here arrested the attention of the disciples. It was contrary to all their Jewish ideas about the future manifestation of the Messiah, and it led to the question of one of their number, Judas\u2014not Iscariot: \u2018Lord, what has happened, that to us Thou wilt manifest Thyself, and not to the world?\u2019 Again they thought of an outward, while He spoke of a spiritual and inward manifestation. It was of this coming of the Son and the Father for the purpose of making \u2018station\u2019 with them that He spoke, of which the condition was love to Christ, manifested in the keeping of His Word, and which secured the love of the Father also. On the other hand, not to keep His Word was not to love Him, with all that it involved, not only as regarded the Son, but also the Father, since the Word which they heard was the Father\u2019s.
\nThus far then for this inward manifestation, springing from life-fellowship with Christ, rich in the unbounded spiritual power of faith, and fragrant with the obedience of love. All this He could say to them now in the Father\u2019s Name\u2014as the first Representative, Pleader, and \u2018Advocate,\u2019 or Paraclete. But what, when He was no longer present with them? For that He had provided \u2018another Paraclete,\u2019 Advocate, or Pleader. This \u2018Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My Name, that same will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.\u2019 It is quite evident, that the interpretation of the term Paraclete as \u2018the Comforter\u2019 will not meet the description here given of His twofold function as teaching all, and recalling all, that Christ Himself had said. Nor will the other interpretation of \u2018Advocate\u2019 meet the requirements, if we regard the Advocate as one who pleads for us. But if we regard the Paraclete or Advocate as the Representative of Christ, and pleading, as it were, for Him, the cause of Christ, all seems harmonious. Christ came in the Name of the Father, as the first Paraclete, as His Representative; the Holy Spirit comes in the Name of Christ, as the second Paraclete, the Representative of Christ, Who is in the Father. As such the second Paraclete is sent by the Father in Name of the first Paraclete, and He would both complete in them, and recall to them, His Cause.
\nAnd so at the end of this Discourse the Lord returned again, and now with fuller meaning, to its beginning. Then He had said: \u2018Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in Me.\u2019 Now, after the fuller communication of His purpose, and of their relation to Him, He could convey to them the assurance of peace, even His Own peace, as His gift in the present, and His legacy for the future. In their hearing, the fact of His going away, which had filled them with such sorrow and fear, had now been conjoined with that of His Coming to them. Yes, as He had explained it, His departure to the Father was the necessary antecedent and condition of His Coming to them in the permanent Presence of the other Paraclete, the Holy Ghost. That Paraclete, however, would, in the economy of grace, be sent by the Father alone. In the dispensation of grace, the final source from whence all cometh, Who sendeth both the Son and the Holy Ghost, is God the Father. The Son is sent by the Father, and the Holy Ghost also, though proceeding from the Father and the Son, is sent by the Father in Christ\u2019s Name. In the economy of grace, then, the Father is greater than the Son. And the return of the Son to the Father marks alike the completion of Christ\u2019s work, and its perfection, in the Mission of the Holy Ghost, with all that His Advent implies. Therefore, if, discarding thoughts of themselves, they had only given room to feelings of true love to Him, instead of mourning they would have rejoiced because He went to the Father, with all that this implied, not only of rest and triumph to Him, but of the perfecting of His Work\u2014since this was the condition of that Mission of the Holy Ghost by the Father, Who sent both the Son and the Holy Spirit. And in this sense also should they have rejoiced, because, through the presence of the Holy Ghost in them, as sent by the Father in His \u2018greater\u2019 work, they would, instead of the present selfish enjoyment of Christ\u2019s Personal Presence, have the more power of showing their love to Him in apprehending His Truth, obeying His Commandments, doing His Works, and participating in His Life. Not that Christ expected them to understand the full meaning of all these words. But afterwards, when it had all come to pass, they would believe.
\nWith the meaning and the issue of the great contest on which He was about to enter thus clearly before Him, did He now go forth to meet the last assault of the \u2018Prince of this World.\u2019 But why that fierce struggle, since in Christ \u2018he hath nothing\u2019? To exhibit to \u2018the world\u2019 the perfect love which He had to the Father; how even to the utmost of self-exinanition, obedience, submission, and suffering He was doing as the Father had given Him commandment, when He sent Him for the redemption of the world. In the execution of this Mission He would endure the last sifting assault and contest on the part of the Enemy, and, enduring, conquer for us. And so might the world be won from its Prince by the full manifestation of Christ, in His infinite obedience and righteousness, doing the Will of the Father and the Work which He had given Him, and in His infinite love doing the work of our salvation.
\n2. The work of our salvation! To this aspect of the subject Christ now addressed Himself, as He rose from the Supper-Table. If in the Discourse recorded in the fourteenth chapter of St. John\u2019s Gospel the Godward aspect of Christ\u2019s impending departure was explained, in that of the fifteenth chapter the new relation is set forth which was to subsist between Him and His Church. And this\u2014although epigrammatic sayings are so often fallacious\u2014may be summarised in these three words: Union, Communion, Disunion. The Union between Christ and His Church is corporate, vital, and effective, alike as regards results and blessings. This Union issues in Communion\u2014of Christ with His disciples, of His disciples with Him, and of His disciples among themselves. The principle of all these is love: the love of Christ to the disciples, the love of the disciples to Christ, and the love in Christ of the disciples to one another. Lastly, this Union and Communion has for its necessary counterpart Disunion, separation from the world. The world repudiates them for their union with Christ and their communion. But, for all that, there is something that must keep them from going out of the world. They have a Mission in it, initiated by, and carried on in the power of, the Holy Ghost\u2014that of uplifting the testimony of Christ.
\nAs regards the relation of the Church to the Christ Who is about to depart to the Father, and to come to them in the Holy Ghost as His Representative, it is to be one of Union\u2014corporate, vital, and effective. In the nature of it, such a truth could only be set forth by illustration. When Christ said: \u2018I am the Vine, the true one, and My Father is the Husbandman;\u2019 or again, \u2018Ye are the branches\u2019\u2014bearing in mind that, as He spake it in Aramaic, the copulas \u2018am,\u2019 \u2018is,\u2019 and \u2018are,\u2019 would be omitted\u2014He did not mean that He signified the Vine or was its sign, nor the Father that of the Husbandman, nor yet the disciples that of the branches. What He meant was, that He, the Father, and the disciples, stood in exactly the same relationship as the Vine, the Husbandman, and the branches. That relationship was of corporate union of the branches with the Vine for the production of fruit to the Husbandman, Who for that purpose pruned the branches. Nor can we forget in this connection, that, in the old Testament, and partially in Jewish thought, the Vine was the symbol of Israel, not in their national but in their Church-capacity. Christ, with His disciples as the branches, is \u2018the Vine, the true One\u2019\u2014the reality of all types, the fulfilment of all promises. They are many branches, yet a grand unity in that Vine; there is one Church of which He is the Head, the Root, the Sustenance, the Life. And in that Vine will the object of its planting of old be realised: to bring forth fruit unto God.
\nYet, though it be one Vine, the Church must bear fruit not only in her corporate capacity, but individually in each of the branches. It seems remarkable that we read of branches in Him that bear not fruit. This must apparently refer to those who have by Baptism been inserted into the Vine, but remain fruitless\u2014since a merely outward profession of Christ could scarcely be described as \u2018a branch in\u2019 Him. On the other hand, every fruit-bearing branch the Husbandman \u2018cleanseth\u2019\u2014not necessarily nor exclusively by pruning, but in whatever manner may be requisite\u2014so that it may produce the largest possible amount of fruit. As for them, the process of cleansing had \u2018already\u2019 been accomplished through, or because of [the meaning is much the same], the Word which He had spoken unto them. If that condition of fruit-bearing now existed in them in consequence of the impression of His Word, it followed as a cognate condition that they must abide in Him, and He would abide in them. Nay, this was a vital condition of fruit-bearing, arising from the fundamental fact that He was the Vine and they the branches. The proper, normal condition of every branch in that Vine was to bear much fruit, of course, in proportion to its size and vigour. But, both figuratively and really, the condition of this was to abide in Him, since \u2018apart\u2019 from Him they could do nothing. It was not like a force once set in motion that would afterwards continue of itself. It was a life, and the condition of its permanence was continued union with Christ, from Whom alone it could spring.
\nAnd now as regarded the two alternatives: he that abode not in Him was the branch \u2018cast outside\u2019 and withering, which, when ready for it, men would cast into the fire\u2014with all of symbolic meaning as regards the gatherers and the burning that the illustration implies. On the other hand, if the corporate and vital union was effective, if they abode in Him, and, in consequence, His Words abode in them, then: \u2018Whatsoever ye will ye shall ask, and it shall be done to you.\u2019 It is very noteworthy that the unlimitedness of prayer is limited, or, rather, conditioned, by our abiding in Christ and His Words in us, just as in St. John 14:12\u201314 it is conditioned by fellowship with Him, and in St John 15:16 by permanent fruitfulness. For, it were the most dangerous fanaticism, and entirely opposed to the teaching of Christ, to imagine that the promise of Christ implies such absolute power\u2014as if prayer were magic\u2014that a person might ask for anything, no matter what it was, in the assurance of obtaining his request. In all moral relations, duties and privileges are correlative ideas, and in our relation to Christ conscious immanence in Him and of His Word in us, union and communion with Him, and the obedience of love, are the indispensable conditions of our privileges. The believer may, indeed, ask for anything, because he may always and absolutely go to God; but the certainty of special answers to prayer is proportionate to the degree of union and communion with Christ. And such unlimited liberty of prayer is connected with our bearing much fruit, because thereby the Father is glorified and our discipleship evidenced.
\nThis union, being inward and moral, necessarily unfolds into communion, of which the principle is love. \u2018Like as the Father loved Me, even so loved I you. Abide in My love. If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in the love that is Mine (\u1f10\u03bd \u03c4\u1fc7 \u1f00\u03b3\u03ac\u03c0\u1fc3 \u03c4\u1fc7 \u1f10\u03bc\u1fc7).\u2019 We mark the continuity in the scale of love: the Father towards the Son, and the Son towards us; and its kindredness of forthgoing. And now all that the disciples had to do was to abide in it. This is connected, not with sentiment nor even with faith, but with obedience. Fresh supplies are drawn by faith, but continuance in the love of Christ is the manifestation and the result of obedience. It was so even with the Master Himself in His relation to the Father. And the Lord immediately explained what His object was in saying this. In this, also, were they to have communion with Him: communion in that joy which was His in consequence of His perfect obedience. \u2018These things have I spoken to you, in order that the joy that is Mine (\u1f21 \u03c7\u03b1\u03c1\u1f70 \u1f21 \u1f10\u03bc\u03ae) may be in you, and your joy may be fulfilled [completed].\u2019
\nBut what of those commandments to which such importance attached? Clean as they now were through the Words which He had spoken, one great commandment stood forth as specially His Own, consecrated by His Example and to be measured by His observance of it. From whatever point we view it, whether as specially demanded by the pressing necessities of the Church; or as, from its contrast to what Heathenism exhibited, affording such striking evidence of the power of Christianity; or, on the other hand, as so congruous to all the fundamental thoughts of the Kingdom: the love of the Father in sending His Son for man, the work of the Son in seeking and saving the lost at the price of His Own Life, and the new bond which in Christ bound them all in the fellowship of a common calling, common mission, and common interests and hopes\u2014love of the brethren was the one outstanding Farewell-Command of Christ. And to keep His commandments was to be His friend. And they were His friends. \u2018No longer\u2019 did He call them servants, for the servant knew not what his lord did. He had now given them a new name, and with good reason: \u2018You have I called friends, because all things which I heard of My Father I made known to you.\u2019 And yet deeper did He descend, in pointing them to the example and measure of His love as the standard of theirs towards one another. And with this teaching He combined what He had said before, of bearing fruit and of the privilege of fellowship with Himself. They were His friends; He had proved it by treating them as such in now opening up before them the whole counsel of God. And that friendship: \u2018Not you did choose Me, but I did choose you\u2019\u2014the object of His \u2018choosing\u2019 [that to which they were \u2018appointed\u2019] being, that, as they went forth into the world, they should bear fruit, that their fruit should be permanent, and that they should possess the full privilege of that unlimited power to pray of which He had previously spoken. All these things were bound up with obedience to His commands, of which the outstanding one was to \u2018love one another.\u2019
\nBut this very choice on His part, and their union of love in Him and to one another, also implied not only separation from, but repudiation by, the world. For this they must be prepared. It had come to Him, and it would be evidence of their choice to discipleship. The hatred of the world showed the essential difference and antagonism between the life-principle of the world and theirs. For evil or for good, they must expect the same treatment as their Master. Nay, was it not their privilege to realise, that all this came upon them for His sake? and should they not also remember, that the ultimate ground of the world\u2019s hatred was ignorance of Him Who had sent Christ? And yet, though this should banish all thoughts of personal resentment, their guilt who rejected Him was truly terrible. Speaking to, and in, Israel, there was no excuse for their sin\u2014the most awful that could be conceived; since, most truly: \u2018He that hateth Me, hateth My Father also.\u2019 For, Christ was the Sent of God, and God manifest. It was a terrible charge this to bring against God\u2019s ancient people Israel. And yet there was, besides the evidence of His Words, that of His Works. If they could not apprehend the former, yet, in regard to the latter, they could see by comparison with the works of other men that they were unique. They saw it, but only hated Him and His Father, ascribing it all to the power and agency of Beelzebul. And so the ancient prophecy had now been fulfilled: \u2018They hated Me gratuitously.\u2019 But all was not yet at an end: neither His Work through the other Advocate, nor yet theirs in the world. \u2018When the Advocate is come, Whom I will send to you from the Father\u2014the Spirit of the Truth\u2014Who proceedeth from the Father [goeth forth on His Mission as sent by the Father], this Same will bear witness about Me. And ye also bear witness, because ye are with Me from the beginning.\u2019
\n3. The last of the parting Discourses of Christ, in the sixteenth chapter of St. John, was, indeed, interrupted by questions from the disciples. But these, being germane to the subject, carry it only forward. In general, the subjects treated in it are: the new relations arising from the departure of Christ and the coming of the other Advocate. Thus the last point needed would be supplied\u2014chap. 14 giving the comfort and teaching in view of His departure; chap. 15 describing the personal relations of the disciples towards Christ, one another, and the world; and chap. 16 fixing the new relations to be established.
\nThe chapter appropriately opens by reflecting on the predicted enmity of the world. Christ had so clearly foretold it, lest this should prove a stumbling-block to them. Best, to know distinctly that they would not only be put out of the Synagogue, but that everyone who killed them would deem it \u2018to offer a religious service to God.\u2019 So, no doubt, Saul of Tarsus once felt, and so did many others who, alas! never became Christians. Indeed, according to Jewish Law, \u2018a zealot\u2019 might have slain without formal trial those caught in flagrant rebellion against God\u2014or in what might be regarded as such, and the Synagogue would have deemed the deed as meritorious as that of Phinehas. It was a sorrow, and yet also a comfort, to know that this spirit of enmity arose from ignorance of the Father and of Christ. Although they had in a general way been prepared for it before, yet He had not told it all so definitely and connectedly from the beginning, because He was still there. But now that He was going away, it was absolutely necessary to do so. For even the mention of it had thrown them into such confusion of personal sorrow, that the main point, whither Christ was going, had not even emerged into their view. Personal feelings had quite engrossed them, to the forgetfulness of their own higher interests. He was going to the Father, and this was the condition, as well as the antecedent of His sending the Paraclete.
\nBut the Advent of the \u2018Advocate\u2019 would mark a new era, as regarded the Church and the world. It was their Mission to go forth into the world and to preach Christ. That other Advocate, as the Representative of Christ, would go into the world and convict on the three cardinal points on which their preaching turned. These three points on which all Missioning proceeds, are\u2014Sin, Righteousness, and Judgment. And on these would the New Advocate convict the world. Bearing in mind that the term \u2018convict\u2019 is uniformly used in the Gospels for clearly establishing or carrying home guilt, we have here three separate facts presented to us. As the Representative of Christ, the Holy Ghost will carry home to the world, establish the fact of its guilt in regard to sin\u2014on the ground that the world believes not in Christ. Again, as the Representative of Christ, He will carry home to the world the fact of its guilt in regard to righteousness\u2014on the ground that Christ has ascended to the Father, and hence is removed from the sight of man. Lastly, as the Representative of Christ, He will establish the fact of the world\u2019s guilt, because of this: that its Prince, Satan, has already been judged by Christ\u2014a judgment established in His sitting at the Right Hand of God, and which will be vindicated at His Second Coming. Taking, then, the three great facts in the History of the Christ: His First Coming to salvation, His Resurrection and Ascension, and His Sitting at the Right Hand of God, of which His Second Coming to Judgment is the final issue, this Advocate of Christ will in each case convict the world of guilt; in regard to the first\u2014concerning sin, because it believes not on Him Whom God has sent; in regard to the second\u2014concerning righteousness, because Christ is at the Father\u2019s Right Hand; and, in regard to the third\u2014concerning judgment, because that Prince whom the world still owns has already been judged by Christ\u2019s Session at the Right Hand of God, and by His Reign, which is to be completed in His Second Coming to Earth.
\nSuch was the cause of Christ which the Holy Spirit as the Advocate would plead to the world, working conviction as in a hostile guilty party. Quite other was that cause of Christ which, as His Advocate, He would plead with the disciples, and quite other in their case the effect of His advocacy. We have, even on the present occasion, marked how often the Lord was hindered, as well as grieved, by the misunderstanding and unbelief of man. Now it was the self-imposed law of His Mission, the outcome of His Victory in the Temptation in the Wilderness, that He would not achieve His Mission in the exercise of Divine Power, but by treading the ordinary path of humanity. This was the limitation which He set to Himself\u2014one aspect of His Self-exinanition. But from this His constant sorrow must also have flowed, in view of the unbelief of even those nearest to Him. It was, therefore, not only expedient, but even necessary for them, since at present they could not bear more, that Christ\u2019s Presence should be withdrawn, and His Representative take His place, and open up His Cause to them. And this was to be His special work to the Church. As Advocate, not speaking from Himself, but speaking whatsoever He shall hear\u2014as it were, according to His heavenly \u2018brief\u2019\u2014He would guide them into all truth. And here His first \u2018declaration\u2019 would be of \u2018the things that are coming.\u2019 A whole new order of things was before the Apostles\u2014the abolition of the Jewish, the establishment of the Christian Dispensation, and the relation of the New to the Old, together with many kindred questions. As Christ\u2019s Representative, and speaking not from Himself, the Holy Spirit would be with them, not suffer them to go astray into error or wrong, but be their \u2018way-leader\u2019 into all truth. Further, as the Son glorified the Father, so would the Spirit glorify the Son, and in analogous manner\u2014because He shall take of His and \u2018declare\u2019 it unto them. This would be the second line, as it were, in the \u2018declarations\u2019 of the Advocate, Representative of Christ. And this work of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father, in His declaration about Christ, was explained by the circumstance of the union and communication between the Father and Christ. And so\u2014to sum up, in one brief Farewell, all that He had said to them\u2014there would be \u2018a little while\u2019 in which they would not \u2018behold\u2019 Him (\u03bf\u1f50\u03ba\u03ad\u03c4\u03b9 \u03b8\u03b5\u03c9\u03c1\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c4\u03ad \u03bc\u03b5), and again a little while and they would \u2018see\u2019 Him (\u1f44\u03c8\u03b5\u03c3\u03b8\u03ad \u03bc\u03b5), though in quite different manner, as even the wording shows.
\nIf we had entertained any doubt of the truth of the Lord\u2019s previous words, that in their absorbedness in the present the disciples had not thought of the \u2018whither\u2019 to which Christ was going, and that it was needful for them that He should depart and the other Advocate come, this conviction would be forced upon us by their perplexed questioning among themselves as to the meaning of the twofold \u2018little while,\u2019 and of all that He had said about, and connected with, His going to the Father. They would fain have asked, yet dared not. But He knew their thoughts, and answered them. That first \u2018little while\u2019 comprised those terrible days of His Death and Entombment, when they would weep and lament, but the world rejoice. Yet their brief sorrow would be turned into joy. It was like the short sorrow of childbearing\u2014afterwards no more remembered in the joy that a human being had been born into the world. Thus would it be when their present sorrow would be changed into the Resurrection-joy\u2014a joy which no man could ever afterwards take from them. On that day of joy would He have them dwell in thought during their present night of sorrow. That would be, indeed, a day of brightness, in which there would be no need of their making further inquiry of Him (\u1f10\u03bc\u1f72 \u03bf\u1f50\u03ba \u1f10\u03c1\u03c9\u03c4\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03c4\u03b5). All would then be clear in the new light of the Resurrection. A day this, when the promise would become true, and whatsoever they asked the Father (\u03b1\u1f30\u03c4\u03ae\u03c3\u03b7\u03c4\u03b5), He would give it them in Christ\u2019s Name. Hitherto they had not yet asked in His Name; let them ask: they would receive, and so their joy be completed. Ah! that day of brightness. Hitherto He had only been able to speak to them, as it were, in parables and allegory, but then would He \u2018declare\u2019 to them in all plainness about the Father. And, as He would be able to speak to them directly and plainly about the Father, so would they then be able to speak directly to the Father\u2014as the Epistle to the Hebrews expresses it, come with \u2018plainness\u2019 or \u2018directness\u2019 to the throne of grace. They would ask directly in the Name of Christ; and no longer would it be needful, as at present, first to come to Him that He may \u2018inquire\u2019 of the Father \u2018about\u2019 them (\u1f10\u03c1\u03c9\u03c4\u03ae\u03c3\u03c9 \u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u1f51\u03bc\u1ff6\u03bd). For, God loved them as lovers of Christ, and as recognising that He had come forth from God. And so it was\u2014He had come forth from out the Father when He came into the world, and, now that He was leaving it, He was going to the Father.
\nThe disciples imagined that they understood this at least. Christ had read their thoughts, and there was no need for anyone to put express questions. He knew all things, and by this they believed\u2014it afforded them evidence\u2014that He came forth from God. But how little did they know their own hearts! The hour had even come when they would be scattered, every man to his own home, and leave Him alone\u2014yet, truly, He would not be alone, because the Father would be with Him. Yet, even so, His latest as His first thought was of them; and through the night of scattering and of sorrow did He bid them look to the morning of joy. For, the battle was not theirs, nor yet the victory doubtful. \u2018I [emphatically] have overcome [it is accomplished] the world.\u2019
\nWe now enter most reverently what may be called the innermost Sanctuary For the first time we are allowed to listen to what was really \u2018the Lord\u2019s Prayer,\u2019 and, as we hear, we humbly worship. That Prayer was the great preparation for His Agony, Cross, and Passion; and, also, the outlook on the Crown beyond. In its three parts it seems almost to look back on the teaching of the three previous chapters, and convert them into prayer. We see the great High-Priest first solemnly offering up Himself, and then consecrating and interceding for His Church and for her work.
\nThe first part of that Prayer is the consecration of Himself by the Great High-Priest. The final hour had come. In praying that the Father would glorify the Son, He was really not asking anything for Himself, but that \u2018the Son\u2019 might \u2018glorify\u2019 the Father. For, the glorifying of the Son\u2014His support, and then His Resurrection, was really the completion of the work which the Father had given Him to do, as well as its evidence. It was really in accordance (\u2018even as\u2019) with the power or authority which the Father gave Him over \u2018all flesh,\u2019 when He put all things under His Feet as the Messiah\u2014the object of this Messianic Rule being, \u2018that the totality\u2019 (the all, \u03c0\u1fb6\u03bd) \u2018that Thou hast given Him, He should give to them eternal life.\u2019 The climax in His Messianic appointment, the object of His Rule over all flesh, was the Father\u2019s gift to Christ of the Church as a totality and a unity; and in that Church Christ gives to each individually eternal life. What follows seems an intercalated sentence, as shown even by the use of the particle \u2018and,\u2019 with which the all-important definition of what is \u2018eternal life\u2019 is introduced, and by the last words in the verse. But although embodying, so to speak, as regards the form, the record which St. John had made of Christ\u2019s Words, we must remember that, as regards the substance, we have here Christ\u2019s own Prayer for that eternal life to each of His own people. And what constitutes \u2018the eternal life\u2019? Not what we so often think, who confound with the thing its effects or else its results. It refers not to the future, but to the present. It is the realisation of what Christ had told them in these words: \u2018Ye believe in God, believe also in Me.\u2019 It is the pure sunlight on the soul, resulting in, or reflecting the knowledge of Jehovah, the Personal, Living, True God, and of Him Whom He did send, Jesus Christ. These two branches of knowledge must not so much be considered as co-ordinate, but rather as inseparable. Returning from this explanation of \u2018the eternal life\u2019 which they who are bathed in the Light possess even now and here, the Great High-Priest first offered up to the Father that part of His Work which was on earth and which He had completed. And then, both as the consummation and the sequel of it, He claimed what was at the end of His Mission: His return to that fellowship of essential glory, which He possessed together with the Father before the world was.
\nThe gift of His consecration could not have been laid on more glorious Altar. Such Cross must have been followed by such Crown. And now again His first thought was of them for whose sake He had consecrated Himself. These He now solemnly presented to the Father. He introduced them as those (the individuals) whom the Father had specially given to Him out of the world. As such they were really the Father\u2019s, and given over to Christ\u2014and He now presented them as having kept the Word of the Father. Now they knew that all things whatsoever the Father had given the Son were of the Father. This was the outcome, then, of all His teaching, and the sum of all their learning\u2014perfect confidence in the Person of Christ, as in His Life, Teaching, and Work sent not only of God, but of the Father. Neither less nor yet more did their \u2018knowledge\u2019 represent. All else that sprang out of it they had yet to learn. But it was enough, for it implied everything; chiefly these three things\u2014that they received the words which He gave them as from the Father; that they knew truly that Christ had come out from the Father; and that they believed that the Father had sent Him. And, indeed, reception of Christ\u2019s Word, knowledge of His Essential Nature, and faith in His Mission: such seem the three essential characteristics of those who are Christ\u2019s.
\nAnd now He brought them in prayer before the Father. He was interceding, not for the \u2018world\u2019 that was His by right of His Messiahship, but for them whom the Father had specially given Him. They were the Father\u2019s in the special sense of covenant-mercy, and all that in that sense was the Father\u2019s was the Son\u2019s, and all that was the Son\u2019s was the Father\u2019s. Therefore, although all the world was the Son\u2019s, He prayed not now for it; and although all in earth and heaven were in the Father\u2019s Hand, He sought not now His blessing on them, but on those whom, while He was in the world, He had shielded and guided. They were to be left behind in a world of sin, evil, temptation, and sorrow, and He was going to the Father. And this was His Prayer: \u2018Holy Father, keep them in Thy Name which Thou hast given Me, that so (in order that) they may be one (a unity, \u1f15\u03bd), as We are.\u2019 The peculiar address, \u2018Holy Father,\u2019 shows that the Saviour once more referred to the keeping in holiness, and, what is of equal importance, that \u2018the unity\u2019 of the Church sought for was to be primarily one of spiritual character, and not a merely outward combination. Unity in holiness and of nature, as was that of the Father and Son, such was the great object sought, although such union would, if properly carried out, also issue in outward unity. But while moral union rather than outward unity was in His view, our present \u2018unhappy divisions,\u2019 arising so often from wilfulness and unreadiness to bear slight differences among ourselves\u2014each other\u2019s burdens\u2014are so entirely contrary not only to the Christian, but even to the Jewish, spirit, that we can only trace them to the heathen element in the Church.
\nWhile He was \u2018with them,\u2019 He \u2018kept\u2019 them in the Father\u2019s Name. Them whom the Father had given Him, by the effective drawing of His grace within them, He guarded (\u1f10\u03c6\u03cd\u03bb\u03b1\u03be\u03b1), and none from among them was lost, except the son of perdition\u2014and this, according to prophecy. But ere He went to the Father, He prayed thus for them, that in this realised unity of holiness the joy that was His (\u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u03c7\u03b1\u03c1\u1f70\u03bd \u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u1f10\u03bc\u03ae\u03bd), might be \u2018completed\u2019 in them. And there was the more need of this, since they were left behind with nought but His Word in a world that hated them, because, as Christ, so they also were not of it [\u2018from\u2019 it, \u1f10\u03ba]. Nor yet did Christ ask with a view to their being taken out of the world, but with this, \u2018that\u2019 [in order that] the Father should \u2018keep them [preserve, \u03c4\u03b7\u03c1\u03ae\u03c3\u1fc3\u03c2] from the Evil One.\u2019 And this the more emphatically, because, even as He was not, so were they not \u2018out of the world,\u2019 which lay in the Evil One. And the preservative which He sought for them was not outward but inward, the same in kind as while He had been with them, only coming now directly from the Father. It was sanctification \u2018in the truth,\u2019 with this significant addition: \u2018The word that is Thine (\u1f41 \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f41 \u03c3\u03cc\u03c2) is truth.\u2019
\nIn its last part this intercessory Prayer of the Great High-Priest bore on the work of the disciples and its fruits. As the Father had sent the Son, so did the Son send the disciples into the world\u2014in the same manner, and on the same Mission. And for their sakes He now solemnly offered Himself, \u2018consecrated\u2019 or \u2018sanctified\u2019 Himself, that they might \u2018in truth\u2019\u2014truly\u2014be consecrated. And in view of this their work, to which they were consecrated, did Christ pray not for them alone, but also for those who, through their word, would believe in Him, \u2018in order,\u2019 or \u2018that so,\u2019 \u2018all may be one\u2019\u2014form a unity. Christ, as sent by the Father, gathered out the original \u2018unity;\u2019 they, as sent by Him, and consecrated by His consecration, were to gather others, but all were to form one great unity, through the common spiritual communication. \u2018As Thou in Me, and I also in Thee, so that [in order that] they also may be in Us, so that [in order that] the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.\u2019 \u2018And the glory that Thou hast given Me\u2019\u2014referring to His Mission in the world, and His setting apart and authorisation for it\u2014\u2018I have given to them, so that [in order that] [in this respect also] they may be one, even as We are One [a unity]. I in them, and Thou in Me, so that they may be perfected into One\u2019\u2014the ideal unity and real character of the Church, this\u2014\u2018so that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them as Thou lovedst Me.\u2019
\nAfter this unspeakably sublime consecration of His Church, and communication to her of His glory as well as of His Work, we cannot marvel at what follows and concludes \u2018the Lord\u2019s Prayer.\u2019 We remember the unity of the Church\u2014a unity in Him, and as that between the Father and the Son\u2014as we listen to this: \u2018That which Thou hast given Me, I will that, where I am, they also may be with Me\u2014so that they may gaze [behold] on the glory that is Mine, which Thou hast given Me [be sharers in the Messianic glory]: because Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.\u2019
\nAnd we all would fain place ourselves in the shadow of this final consecration of Himself and of His Church by the Great High-Priest, which is alike final appeal, claim, and prayer: \u2018O Righteous Father, the world knew Thee not, but I know Thee, and these know that Thou sentest Me. And I made known unto them Thy Name, and will make it known, so that [in order that] the love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be in them, and I in them.\u2019 This is the charter of the Church: her possession and her joy; her faith, her hope also, and love; and in this she standeth, prayeth, and worketh.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 12<\/p>\n
GETHSEMANE<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 26:30\u201356; St. Mark 14:26\u201352; St. Luke 22:31\u201353; St. John 18:1\u201311.)<\/p>\n
WE turn once more to follow the steps of Christ, now among the last He trod upon earth. The \u2018hymn,\u2019 with which the Paschal Supper ended, had been sung. Probably we are to understand this of the second portion of the Hallel, sung some time after the third Cup, or else of Psalm 136, which, in the present Ritual, stands near the end of the service. The last Discourses had been spoken, the last Prayer, that of Consecration, had been offered, and Jesus prepared to go forth out of the City, to the Mount of Olives. The streets could scarcely be said to be deserted, for, from many a house shone the festive lamp, and many a company may still have been gathered; and everywhere was the bustle of preparation for going up to the Temple, the gates of which were thrown open at midnight.
\nPassing out by the gate north of the Temple, we descend into a lonely part of the valley of black Kidron, at that season swelled into a winter torrent. Crossing it, we turn somewhat to the left, where the road leads towards Olivet. Not many steps farther (beyond, and on the other side of the present Church of the Sepulchre of the Virgin) we turn aside from the road to the right, and reach what tradition has since earliest times\u2014and probably correctly\u2014pointed out as \u2018Gethsemane,\u2019 the \u2018Oil-press.\u2019 It was a small property enclosed (\u03c7\u03c9\u03c1\u03af\u03bf\u03bd), \u2018a garden\u2019 in the Eastern sense, where probably, amidst a variety of fruit trees and flowering shrubs, was a lowly, quiet summer-retreat, connected with, or near by, the \u2018Olive-press.\u2019 The present Gethsemane is only some seventy steps square, and though its old gnarled olives cannot be those (if such there were) of the time of Jesus, since all trees in that valley\u2014those also which stretched their shadows over Jesus\u2014were hewn down in the Roman siege, they may have sprung from the old roots, or from the old kernels. But we love to think of this \u2018Garden\u2019 as the place where Jesus \u2018often\u2019\u2014not merely on this occasion, but perhaps on previous visits to Jerusalem\u2014gathered with His disciples. It was a quiet resting-place, for retirement, prayer, perhaps sleep, and a trysting-place also where not only the Twelve, but others also, may have been wont to meet the Master. And as such it was known to Judas, and thither he led the armed band, when they found the Upper Chamber no longer occupied by Jesus and His disciples. Whether it had been intended that He should spend part of the night there, before returning to the Temple, and whose that enclosed garden was\u2014the other Eden, in which the Second Adam, the Lord from heaven, bore the penalty of the first, and in obeying gained life\u2014we know not, and perhaps ought not to inquire. It may have belonged to Mark\u2019s father. But if otherwise, Jesus had loving disciples even in Jerusalem, and, we rejoice to think, not only a home at Bethany, and an Upper Chamber furnished in the City, but a quiet retreat and trysting-place for His own under the bosom of Olivet, in the shadow of the garden of \u2018the Oil-press.\u2019
\nThe sickly light of the moon was falling full on them as they were crossing Kidron. It was here, we imagine, after they had left the City behind them, that the Lord addressed Himself first to the disciples generally. We can scarcely call it either prediction or warning. Rather, as we think of that last Supper, of Christ passing through the streets of the City for the last time into that Garden, and especially of what was now immediately before Him, does what He spake seem natural, even necessary. To them\u2014yes, to them all\u2014He would that night be even a stumbling-block. And so had it been foretold of old, that the Shepherd would be smitten, and the sheep scattered. Did this prophecy of His suffering, in its grand outlines, fill the mind of the Saviour as He went forth on His Passion? Such Old Testament thoughts were at any rate present with Him, when, not unconsciously nor of necessity, but as the Lamb of God, He went to the slaughter. A peculiar significance also attaches to His prediction that, after He was risen, He would go before them into Galilee. For, with their scattering upon His Death, it seems to us, the Apostolic circle or College, as such, was for a time broken up. They continued, indeed, to meet together as individual disciples, but the Apostolic bond was temporarily dissolved. This explains many things: the absence of Thomas on the first, and his peculiar position on the second Sunday; the uncertainty of the disciples, as evidenced by the words of those on the way to Emmaus; as well as the seemingly strange movements of the Apostles\u2014all which are quite changed when the Apostolic bond is restored. Similarly, we mark, that only seven of them seem to have been together by the Lake of Galilee, and that only afterwards the Eleven met Him on the mountain to which He had directed them. It was here that the Apostolic circle or College was once more re-formed, and the Apostolic commission renewed, and thence they returned to Jerusalem, once more sent forth from Galilee, to await the final events of His Ascension, and the Coming of the Holy Ghost.
\nBut in that night they understood none of these things. While all were staggering under the blow of their predicted scattering, the Lord seems to have turned to Peter individually. What He said, and how He put it, equally demand our attention: \u2018Simon, Simon\u2019\u2014using his old name when referring to the old man in him\u2014\u2018Satan has obtained [out-asked, \u1f10\u03be\u1fc3\u03c4\u03ae\u03c3\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf] you, for the purpose of sifting like as wheat. But I have made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not.\u2019 The words admit us into two mysteries of heaven. This night seems to have been \u2018the power of darkness,\u2019 when, left of God, Christ had to meet by Himself the whole assault of hell, and to conquer in His own strength as Man\u2019s Substitute and Representative. It is a great mystery: but quite consistent with itself. We do not, as others, here see any analogy to the permission given to Satan in the opening chapters of the Book of Job, always supposing that this embodies a real, not an allegorical story. But in that night the fierce wind of hell was allowed to sweep unbroken over the Saviour, and even to expend its fury upon those that stood behind in His Shelter. Satan had \u2018out-asked, obtained it\u2014yet not to destroy, nor to cast down, but \u2018to sift,\u2019 like as wheat is shaken in a sieve to cast out of it what is not grain. Hitherto, and no farther, had Satan obtained it. In that night of Christ\u2019s Agony and loneliness, of the utmost conflict between Christ and Satan, this seems almost a necessary element.
\nThis, then, was the first mystery that had passed. And this sifting would affect Peter more than the others. Judas, who loved not Jesus at all, had already fallen; Peter, who loved Him\u2014perhaps not most intensely, but, if the expression be allowed, most extensely\u2014stood next to Judas in danger. In truth, though most widely apart in their directions, the springs of their inner life rose in close proximity. There was the same readiness to kindle into enthusiasm, the same desire to have public opinion with him, the same shrinking from the Cross, the same moral inability or unwillingness to stand alone, in the one as in the other. Peter had abundant courage to sally out, but not to stand out. Viewed in its primal elements (not in its development), Peter\u2019s character was, among the disciples, the likest to that of Judas. If this shows what Judas might have become, it also explains how Peter was most in danger that night; and, indeed, the husks of him were cast out of the sieve in his denial of the Christ. But what distinguished Peter from Judas was his \u2018faith\u2019 of spirit, soul, and heart\u2014of spirit, when he apprehended the spiritual element in Christ; of soul, when he confessed Him as the Christ; and of heart, when he could ask Him to sound the depths of his inner being, to find there real, personal love to Jesus.
\nThe second mystery of that night was Christ\u2019s supplication for Peter. We dare not say, as the High-Priest\u2014and we know not when and where it was offered. But the expression is very strong, as of one who has need of a thing. And that for which He made such supplication was, that Peter\u2019s faith should not fail. This, and not that something new might be given him, or the trial removed from Peter. We mark, how Divine grace presupposes, not supersedes, human liberty. And this also explains why Jesus had so prayed for Peter, not for Judas. In the former case there was faith, which only required to be strengthened against failure\u2014an eventuality which, without the intercession of Christ, was possible. To these words of His, Christ added this significant commission: \u2018And thou, when thou hast turned again, confirm thy brethren.\u2019 And how fully he did this, both in the Apostolic circle and in the Church, history has chronicled. Thus, although such may come in the regular moral order of things, Satan has not even power to \u2018sift\u2019 without leave of God; and thus does the Father watch in such terrible sifting over them for whom Christ has prayed. This is the first fulfilment of Christ\u2019s Prayer, that the Father would \u2018keep them from the Evil One.\u2019 Not by any process from without, but by the preservation of their faith. And thus also may we learn, to our great and unspeakable comfort, that not every sin\u2014not even conscious and wilful sin\u2014implies the failure of our faith, very closely though it lead to it; still less, our final rejection. On the contrary, as the fall of Simon was the outcome of the natural elements in him, so would it lead to their being brought to light and removed, thus fitting him the better for confirming his brethren. And so would light come out of darkness. From our human standpoint we might call such teaching needful: in the Divine arrangement it is only the Divine sequent upon the human antecedent.
\nWe can understand the vehement earnestness and sincerity with which Peter protested against the possibility of any failure on his part. We mostly deem those sins farthest which are nearest to us; else, much of the power of their temptation would be gone, and temptation changed into conflict. The things which we least anticipate are our falls. In all honesty\u2014and not necessarily with self-elevation over the others\u2014he said, that even if all should be offended in Christ, he never could be, but was ready to go with Him into prison and death. And when, to enforce the warning, Christ predicted that before the repeated crowing of the cock ushered in the morning, Peter would thrice deny that he knew Him, Peter not only persisted in his asseverations, but was joined in them by the rest. Yet\u2014and this seems the meaning and object of the words of Christ which follow\u2014they were not aware how terribly changed the former relations had become, and what they would have to suffer in consequence. When formerly He had sent them forth, both without provision and defence, had they lacked anything? No! But now no helping hand would be extended to them; nay, what seemingly they would need even more than anything else would be \u2018a sword\u2019\u2014defence against attacks, for at the close of His history He was reckoned with transgressors. The Master a crucified Malefactor\u2014what could His followers expect? But once more they only understood Him in a grossly realistic manner. These Galileans, after the custom of their countrymen, had provided themselves with short swords, which they concealed under their upper garment. It was natural for men of their disposition, so imperfectly understanding their Master\u2019s teaching, to have taken what might seem to them only a needful precaution in coming to Jerusalem. At least two of them\u2014among them Peter\u2014now produced swords. But this was not the time to reason with them, and our Lord simply put it aside. Events would only too soon teach them.
\nThey had now reached the entrance to Gethsemane. It may have been that it led through the building with the \u2018oil-press,\u2019 and that the eight Apostles, who were not to come nearer to the \u2018Bush burning, but not consumed,\u2019 were left there. Or they may have been taken within the entrance of the Garden, and left there, while, pointing forward with a gesture of the Hand, He went \u2018yonder\u2019 and prayed. According to St. Luke, He added the parting warning to pray that they might not enter into temptation.
\nEight did He leave there. The other three\u2014Peter, James, and John\u2014companions before of His glory, both when He raised the daughter of Jairus and on the Mount of Transfiguration\u2014He took with Him farther. If in that last contest His Human Soul craved for the presence of those who stood nearest Him and loved Him best, or if He would have them baptised with His Baptism, and drink of His Cup, these were the three of all others to be chosen. And now of a sudden the cold flood broke over Him. Within these few moments He had passed from the calm of assured victory into the anguish of the contest. Increasingly, with every step forward, He became \u2018sorrowful,\u2019 full of sorrow, \u2018sore amazed,\u2019 and \u2018desolate.\u2019 He told them of the deep sorrow of His Soul (\u03c8\u03c5\u03c7\u03ae) even unto death, and bade them tarry there to watch with Him. Himself went forward to enter the contest with prayer. Only the first attitude of the wrestling Saviour saw they, only the first words in that Hour of Agony did they hear. For, as in our present state not uncommonly in the deepest emotions of the soul, and as had been the case on the Mount of Transfiguration, irresistible sleep crept over their frame. But what, we may reverently ask, was the cause of this sorrow unto death of the Lord Jesus Christ? Not fear, either of bodily or mental suffering: but Death. Man\u2019s nature, created of God immortal, shrinks (by the law of its nature) from the dissolution of the bond that binds body to soul. Yet to fallen man Death is not by any means fully Death, for he is born with the taste of it in his soul. Not so Christ. It was the Unfallen Man dying; it was He, Who had no experience of it, tasting Death, and that not for Himself but for every man, emptying the cup to its bitter dregs. It was the Christ undergoing Death by man and for man; the Incarnate God, the God-Man, submitting Himself vicariously to the deepest humiliation, and paying the utmost penalty: Death\u2014all Death. No one as He could know what Death was (not dying, which men dread, but Christ dreaded not); no one could taste its bitterness as He. His going into Death was His final conflict with Satan for man, and on his behalf. By submitting to it He took away the power of Death; He disarmed Death by burying his shaft in His own Heart. And beyond this lies the deep, unutterable mystery of Christ bearing the penalty due to our sin, bearing our death, bearing the penalty of the broken Law, the accumulated guilt of humanity, and the holy wrath of the Righteous Judge upon them. And in view of this mystery the heaviness of sleep seems to steal over our apprehension.
\nAlone, as in His first conflict with the Evil One in the Temptation in the wilderness, must the Saviour enter on the last contest. With what agony of soul He took upon Him now and there the sins of the world, and in taking expiated them, we may learn from this account of what passed, when, \u2018with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death,\u2019 He \u2018offered up prayers and supplications.\u2019 And\u2014we anticipate it already\u2014with these results: that He was heard; that He learned obedience by the things which He suffered; that He was made perfect; and that He became: to us the Author of Eternal Salvation, and before God, a High-Priest after the order of Melchizedek. Alone\u2014and yet even this being \u2018parted from them\u2019 (\u1f00\u03c0\u03b5\u03c3\u03c0\u03ac\u03c3\u03b8\u03b7), implied sorrow. And now, \u2018on His knees,\u2019 prostrate on the ground, prostrate on His Face, began His Agony. His very address bears witness to it. It is the only time, so far as recorded in the Gospels, when He addressed God with the personal pronoun: \u2018My Father.\u2019 The object of the prayer was, that, \u2018if it were possible, the hour might pass away from Him.\u2019 The subject of the prayer (as recorded by the three Gospels) was, that the Cup itself might pass away, yet always with the limitation, that not His Will but the Father\u2019s might be done. The petition of Christ, therefore, was subject not only to the Will of the Father, but to His own Will that the Father\u2018s Will might be done. We are here in full view of the deepest mystery of our faith: the two Natures in One Person. Both Natures spake here, and the \u2018if it be possible\u2019 of St. Matthew and St. Mark is in St. Luke \u2018if Thou be willing.\u2019 In any case, the \u2018possibility\u2019 is not physical\u2014for with God all things are possible\u2014but moral: that of inward fitness. Was there, then, any thought or view of \u2018a possibility,\u2019 that Christ\u2019s work could be accomplished without that hour and Cup? Or did it only mark the utmost limit of His endurance and submission? We dare not answer; we only reverently follow what is recorded.
\nIt was in this extreme Agony of Soul almost unto death, that the Angel appeared (as in the Temptation in the wilderness) to \u2018strengthen\u2019 and support His Body and Soul. And so the conflict went on, with increasing earnestness of prayer, all that terrible hour. For, the appearance of the Angel must have intimated to Him, that the Cup could not pass away. And at the close of that hour\u2014as we infer from the fact that the disciples must still have seen on His Brow the marks of the Bloody Sweat\u2014His Sweat, mingled with Blood, fell in great drops on the ground. And when the Saviour with this mark of His Agony on His Brow returned to the three, He found that deep sleep held them. While He lay in prayer, they lay in sleep; and yet where soul-agony leads not to the one, it often induces the other. His words, primarily addressed to \u2018Simon,\u2019 roused them, yet not sufficiently to fully carry to their hearts either the loving reproach, the admonition to \u2018Watch and pray\u2019 in view of the coming temptation, or the most seasonable warning about the weakness of the flesh, even where the spirit was willing, ready, and ardent (\u03c0\u03c1\u03cc\u03b8\u03c5\u03bc\u03bf\u03bd).
\nThe conflict had been virtually, though not finally, decided, when the Saviour went back to the three sleeping disciples. He now returned to complete it, though both the attitude in which He prayed (no longer prostrate) and the wording of His Prayer\u2014only slightly altered as it was\u2014indicate how near it was to perfect victory. And once more, on His return to them, He found that sleep had weighted their eyes, and they scarce knew what answer to make to Him. Yet a third time He left them to pray as before. And now He returned victorious. After three assaults had the Tempter left Him in the wilderness; after the threefold conflict in the Garden he was vanquished. Christ came forth triumphant. No longer did He bid His disciples watch. They might, nay they should, sleep and take rest, ere the near terrible events of His Betrayal\u2014for, the hour had come when the Son of Man was to be betrayed into the hands of sinners.
\nA very brief period of rest this, soon broken by the call of Jesus to rise and go to where the other eight had been left, at the entrance of the Garden\u2014to go forward and meet the band which was coming under the guidance of the Betrayer. And while He was speaking, the heavy tramp of many men and the light of lanterns and torches indicated the approach of Judas and his band. During the hours that had passed all had been prepared. When, according to arrangement, he appeared at the High-Priestly Palace, or more probably at that of Annas, who seems to have had the direction of affairs, the Jewish leaders first communicated with the Roman garrison. By their own admission they possessed no longer (for forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem) the power of pronouncing capital sentence. It is difficult to understand how, in view of this fact (so fully confirmed in the New Testament), it could have been imagined (as so generally) that the Sanhedrin had, in regular session, sought formally to pronounce on Jesus what, admittedly, they had not the power to execute. Nor, indeed, did they, when appealing to Pilate, plead that they had pronounced sentence of death, but only that they had a law by which Jesus should die. It was otherwise as regarded civil causes, or even minor offences. The Sanhedrin, not possessing the power of the sword, had, of course, neither soldiery, nor regularly armed band at command. The \u2018Temple-guard\u2019 under their officers served merely for purposes of police, and, indeed, were neither regularly armed nor trained. Nor would the Romans have tolerated a regular armed Jewish force in Jerusalem.
\nWe can now understand the progress of events. In the fortress of Antonia, close to the Temple and connected with it by two stairs, lay the Roman garrison. But during the Feast the Temple itself was guarded by an armed Cohort, consisting of from 400 to 600 men, so as to prevent or quell any tumult among the numerous pilgrims. It would be to the captain of this \u2018Cohort\u2019 that the Chief Priests and leaders of the Pharisees would, in the first place, apply for an armed guard to effect the arrest of Jesus, on the ground that it might lead to some popular tumult. This, without necessarily having to state the charge that was to be brought against Him, which might have led to other complications. Although St. John speaks of \u2018the band\u2019 by a word (\u03c3\u03c0\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c1\u03b1) which always designates a \u2018Cohort\u2019\u2014in this case \u2018the Cohort,\u2019 the definite article marking it as that of the Temple\u2014yet there is no reason for believing that the whole Cohort was sent. Still, its commander would scarcely have sent a strong detachment out of the Temple, and on what might lead to a riot, without having first referred to the Procurator, Pontius Pilate. And if further evidence were required, it would be in the fact that the band was led not by a Centurion, but by a Chiliarch, which, as there were no intermediate grades in the Roman army, must represent one of the six tribunes attached to each legion. This also explains not only the apparent preparedness of Pilate to sit in judgment early next morning, but also how Pilate\u2019s wife may have been disposed for those dreams about Jesus which so affrighted her.
\nThis Roman detachment, armed with swords and \u2018staves\u2019\u2014with the latter of which Pilate on other occasions also directed his soldiers to attack them who raised a tumult\u2014was accompanied by servants from the High-Priest\u2019s Palace, and other Jewish officers, to direct the arrest of Jesus. They bore torches and lamps placed on the top of poles, so as to prevent any possible concealment.
\nWhether or not this was the \u2018great multitude\u2019 mentioned by St. Matthew and St. Mark, or the band was swelled by volunteers or curious onlookers, is a matter of no importance. Having received this band, Judas proceeded on his errand. As we believe, their first move was to the house where the Supper had been celebrated. Learning that Jesus had left it with His disciples, perhaps two or three hours before, Judas next directed the band to the spot he knew so well: to Gethsemane. A signal by which to recognise Jesus seemed almost necessary with so large a band, and where escape or resistance might be apprehended. It was\u2014terrible to say\u2014none other than a kiss. As soon as he had so marked Him, the guard were to seize, and lead Him safely away.
\nCombining the notices in the four Gospels, we thus picture to ourselves the succession of events. As the band reached the Garden, Judas went somewhat in advance of them, and reached Jesus just as He had roused the three and was preparing to go and meet His captors. He saluted Him, \u2018Hail, Rabbi,\u2019 so as to be heard by the rest, and not only kissed but covered Him with kisses, kissed Him repeatedly, loudly, effusively (\u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b5\u03c6\u03af\u03bb\u03b7\u03c3\u03b5\u03bd). The Saviour submitted to the indignity, not stopping, but only saying as He passed on: \u2018Friend, that for which thou art here;\u2019 and then, perhaps in answer to his questioning gesture: \u2018Judas, with a kiss deliverest thou up the Son of Man?\u2019 If Judas had wished, by thus going in advance of the band and saluting the Master with a kiss, even now to act the hypocrite and deceive Jesus and the disciples, as if he had not come with the armed men, perhaps only to warn Him of their approach, what the Lord said must have reached his inmost being. Indeed, it was the first mortal shaft in the soul of Judas. The only time we again see him, till he goes on what ends in his self-destruction, is as he stands, as it were sheltering himself, with the armed men.
\nIt is at this point, as we suppose, that the notices from St. John\u2019s Gospel come in. Leaving the traitor, and ignoring the signal which he had given them, Jesus advanced to the band, and asked them: \u2018Whom seek ye?\u2019 To the brief spoken, perhaps somewhat contemptuous, \u2018Jesus the Nazarene,\u2019 He replied with infinite calmness and majesty: \u2018I am He.\u2019 The immediate effect of these words was, we shall not say magical, but Divine. They had no doubt been prepared for quite other: either compromise, fear, or resistance. But the appearance and majesty of that calm Christ\u2014heaven in His look and peace on His lips\u2014was too overpowering in its effects on that untutored heathen soldiery, who perhaps cherished in their hearts secret misgivings of the work they had in hand. The foremost of them went backward, and they fell to the ground. But Christ\u2019s hour had come. And once more He now asked them the same question as before, and, on repeating their former answer, He said: \u2018I told you that I am He; if therefore ye seek Me, let these go their way,\u2019\u2014the Evangelist seeing in this watchful care over His own the initial fulfilment of the words which the Lord had previously spoken concerning their safe preservation, not only in the sense of their outward preservation, but in that of their being guarded from such temptations as, in their then state, they could not have endured.
\nThe words of Christ about those that were with Him seem to have recalled the leaders of the guard to full consciousness\u2014perhaps awakened in them fears of a possible rising at the incitement of His adherents. Accordingly, it is here that we insert the notice of St. Matthew, and of St. Mark, that they laid hands on Jesus and took Him. Then it was that Peter, seeing what was coming, drew the sword which he carried, and putting the question to Jesus, but without awaiting His answer, struck at Malchus, the servant of the High-Priest\u2014perhaps the Jewish leader of the band\u2014cutting off his ear. But Jesus immediately restrained all such violence, and rebuked all self-vindication by outward violence (the taking of the sword that had not been received)\u2014nay, with it all merely outward zeal, pointing to the fact how easily He might, as against this \u2018cohort,\u2019 have commanded Angelic legions. He had in wrestling Agony received from His Father that Cup to drink, and the Scriptures must in that wise be fulfilled. And so saying, He touched the ear of Malchus, and healed him.
\nBut this faint appearance of resistance was enough for the guard. Their leaders now bound Jesus. It was to this last, most undeserved and uncalled-for indignity that Jesus replied by asking them, why they had come against Him as against a robber\u2014one of those wild, murderous Sicarii. Had He not been all that week daily in the Temple, teaching? Why not then seize Him? But this \u2018hour\u2019 of theirs that had come, and \u2018the power of darkness\u2019\u2014this also had been foretold in Scripture!
\nAnd as the ranks of the armed men now closed around the bound Christ, none dared to stay with Him, lest they also should be bound as resisting authority. So they all forsook Him and fled. But there was one there who joined not in the flight, but remained, a deeply interested onlooker. When the soldiers had come to seek Jesus in the Upper Chamber of his home, Mark, roused from sleep, had hastily cast about him the loose linen garment or wrapper that lay by his bedside, and followed the armed band to see what would come of it. He now lingered in the rear, and followed as they led away Jesus, never imagining that they would attempt to lay hold on him, since he had not been with the disciples nor yet in the Garden. But they, perhaps the Jewish servants of the High-Priest, had noticed him. They attempted to lay hold on him, when, disengaging himself from their grasp, he left his upper garment in their hands, and fled.
\nSo ended the first scene in the terrible drama of that night.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 13<\/p>\n
THURSDAY NIGHT\u2014BEFORE ANNAS AND CAIAPHAS\u2014PETER AND JESUS<\/p>\n
(St. John 18:12\u201314; St. Matt. 26:57, 58 St. Mark 14:53, 54; St. Luke 22:54, 55: St. John 18:24, 15\u201318; St. John 18:19\u201323; St. Matt. 26:69, 70; St. Mark 14:66\u201368; St. Luke 22:56, 57; St. John 18:17, 18; St. Matt. 26:71, 72; St. Mark 14:69, 70; St. Luke 22:58; St. John 18:25; St. Matt. 26:59\u201368; St. Mark 14:55\u201365; St. Luke 22:67\u201371, 63\u201365; St. Matt. 26:73\u201375 St. Mark 14:70\u201372; St. Luke 22:59\u201362; St. John 18:26, 27.)<\/p>\n
IT was not a long way that they led the bound Christ. Probably through the same gate by which He had gone forth with His disciples after the Paschal Supper, up to where, on the slope between the Upper City and the Tyrop\u0153on, stood the well-known Palace of Annas. There were no idle saunterers in the streets of Jerusalem at that late hour, and the tramp of the Roman guard must have been too often heard to startle sleepers, or to lead to the inquiry why that glare of lamps and torches, and Who was the Prisoner, guarded on that holy night by both Roman soldiers and servants of the High-Priest.
\nIf every incident in that night were not of such supreme interest, we might dismiss the question as almost idle, why they brought Jesus to the house of Annas, since he was not at that time the actual High-Priest. That office now devolved on Caiaphas, his son-in-law, who, as the Evangelist significantly reminds us, had been the first to enunciate in plain words what seemed to him the political necessity for the judicial murder of Christ. There had been no pretence on his part of religious motives or zeal for God; he had cynically put it in a way to override the scruples of those old Sanhedrists by raising their fears. What was the use of discussing about forms of Law or about that Man? it must in any case be done; even the friends of Jesus in the Council, as well as the punctilious observers of Law, must regard His Death as the less of two evils. He spoke as the bold, unscrupulous, determined man that he was; Sadducee in heart rather than by conviction; a worthy son-in-law of Annas.
\nNo figure is better known in contemporary Jewish history than that of Annas; no person deemed more fortunate or successful, but none also more generally execrated than the late High-Priest. He had held the Pontificate for only six or seven years; but it was filled by not fewer than five of his sons, by his son-in-law Caiaphas, and by a grandson. And in those days it was, at least for one of Annas\u2019 disposition, much better to have been than to be High-Priest. He enjoyed all the dignity of the office, and all its influence also, since he was able to promote to it those most closely connected with him. And, while they acted publicly, he really directed affairs, without either the responsibility or the restraints which the office imposed. His influence with the Romans he owed to the religious views which he professed, to his open partisanship of the foreigner, and to his enormous wealth. The Sadducean Annas was an eminently safe Churchman, not troubled with any special convictions nor with Jewish fanaticism, a pleasant and a useful man also, who was able to furnish his friends in the Pr\u00e6torium with large sums of money. We have seen what immense revenues the family of Annas must have derived from the Temple-booths, and how nefarious and unpopular was the traffic. The names of those bold, licentious, unscrupulous, degenerate sons of Aaron were spoken with whispered curses. Without referring to Christ\u2019s interference with that Temple-traffic, which, if His authority had prevailed, would, of course, have been fatal to it, we can understand how antithetic in every respect a Messiah, and such a Messiah as Jesus, must have been to Annas. He was as resolutely bent on His Death as his son-in-law, though with his characteristic cunning and coolness, not in the hasty, bluff manner of Caiaphas. It was probably from a desire that Annas might have the conduct of the business, or from the active, leading part which Annas took in the matter; perhaps for even more prosaic and practical reasons, such as that the Palace of Annas was nearer to the place of Jesus\u2019 capture, and that it was desirable to dismiss the Roman soldiery as quickly as possible\u2014that Christ was first brought to Annas, and not to the actual High-Priest.
\nIn any case, the arrangement was most congruous, whether as regards the character of Annas, or the official position of Caiaphas. The Roman soldiers had evidently orders to bring Jesus to the late High-Priest. This appears from their proceeding directly to him, and from this, that apparently they returned to quarters immediately on delivering up their prisoner. And we cannot ascribe this to any official position of Annas in the Sanhedrin, first, because the text implies that it had not been due to this cause, and, secondly, because, as will presently appear, the proceedings against Christ were not those of the ordinary and regular meetings of the Sanhedrin.
\nNo account is given of what passed before Annas. Even the fact of Christ\u2019s being first brought to him is only mentioned in the Fourth Gospel. As the disciples had all forsaken Him and fled, we can understand that they were in ignorance of what actually passed, till they had again rallied, at least so far, that Peter and \u2018another disciple,\u2019 evidently John, \u2018followed Him into the Palace of the High-Priest\u2019\u2014that is, into the Palace of Caiaphas, not of Annas. For as, according to the three Synoptic Gospels, the Palace of the High-Priest Caiaphas was the scene of Peter\u2019s denial, the account of it in the Fourth Gospel must refer to the same locality, and not to the Palace of Annas; while the suggestion that Annas and Caiaphas occupied the same dwelling is not only very unlikely in itself, but seems incompatible with the obvious meaning of the notice, \u2018Now Annas sent Him bound unto Caiaphas the High-Priest.\u2019 But if Peter\u2019s denial, as recorded by St. John, is the same as that described by the Synoptists, and took place in the house of Caiaphas, then the account of the examination by the High-Priest, which follows the notice about Peter, must also refer to that by Caiaphas, not Annas. We thus know absolutely nothing of what passed in the house of Annas\u2014if, indeed, anything passed\u2014except that Annas sent Jesus bound to Caiaphas.
\nOf what occurred in the Palace of Caiaphas we have two accounts. That of St. John seems to refer to a more private interview between the High-Priest and Christ, at which, apparently, only some personal attendants of Caiaphas were present, from one of whom the Apostle may have derived his information. The second account is that of the Synoptists, and refers to the examination of Jesus at dawn of day by the leading Sanhedrists, who had been hastily summoned for the purpose.
\nIt sounds almost like presumption to say, that in His first interview with Caiaphas Jesus bore Himself with the majesty of the Son of God, Who knew all that was before Him, and passed through it as on the way to the accomplishment of His Mission. The questions of Caiaphas bore on two points: the disciples of Jesus, and His teaching\u2014the former to incriminate Christ\u2019s followers, the latter to incriminate the Master. To the first inquiry it was only natural that He should not have condescended to return an answer. The reply to the second was characterised by that \u2018openness\u2019 which He claimed for all that He had said. If there was to be not unprejudiced, but even fair inquiry, let Caiaphas not try to extort confessions to which he had no legal right, nor to ensnare Him when the purpose was evidently murderous. If he really wanted information, there could be no difficulty in procuring witnesses to speak to His doctrine: all Jewry knew it. His was no secret doctrine (\u2018in secret I spake nothing\u2019). He always spoke \u2018in Synagogue and in the Temple, whither all the Jews gather together.\u2019 If the inquiry were a fair one, let the judge act judicially, and ask not Him, but those who had heard Him.
\nIt must be admitted, that the answer sounds not like that of one accused, who seeks either to make apology, or even greatly cares to defend himself. And there was in it that tone of superiority which even injured human innocence would have a right to assume before a nefarious judge, who sought to ensnare a victim, not to elicit the truth. It was this which emboldened one of those servile attendants, with the brutality of an Eastern in such circumstances, to inflict on the Lord that terrible blow. Let us hope that it was a heathen, not a Jew, who so lifted his hand. We are almost thankful that the text leaves it in doubt, whether it was with the palm of the hand, or the lesser indignity\u2014with a rod. Humanity itself seems to reel and stagger under this blow. In pursuance of His Human submission, the Divine Sufferer, without murmuring or complaining, or without asserting His Divine Power, only answered in such tone of patient expostulation as must have convicted the man of his wrong, or at least have left him speechless. May it have been that these words and the look of Christ had gone to his heart, and that the now strangely-silenced malefactor became the confessing narrator of this scene to the Apostle John?
\n2. That Apostle was, at any rate, no stranger in the Palace of Caiaphas. We have already seen that, after the first panic of Christ\u2019s sudden capture and their own flight, two of them at least, Peter and John, seem speedily to have rallied. Combining the notices of the Synoptists with the fuller details, in this respect, of the Fourth Gospel, we derive the impression that Peter, so far true to his word, had been the first to stop in his flight, and to follow \u2018afar off.\u2019 If he reached the Palace of Annas in time, he certainly did not enter it, but probably waited outside during the brief space which preceded the transference of Jesus to Caiaphas. He had now been joined by John, and the two followed the melancholy procession which escorted Jesus to the High-Priest. John seems to have entered \u2018the court\u2019 along with the guard, while Peter remained outside till his fellow-Apostle, who apparently was well known in the High-Priest\u2019s house, had spoken to the maid who kept the door\u2014the male servants being probably all gathered in the court\u2014and so procured his admission.
\nRemembering that the High-Priest\u2019s Palace was built on the slope of the hill, and that there was an outer court, from which a door led into the inner court, we can, in some measure, realise the scene. As previously stated, Peter had followed as far as that inner door, while John had entered with the guard. When he missed his fellow-disciple, who was left outside this inner door, John \u2018went out,\u2019 and, having probably told the waiting-maid that this was a friend of his, procured his admission. While John now hurried up to be in the Palace, and as near Christ as he might, Peter advanced into the middle of the court, where, in the chill spring night, a coal fire had been lighted. The glow of the charcoal, around which occasionally a blue flame played, threw a peculiar sheen on the bearded faces of the men as they crowded around it, and talked of the events of that night, describing, with Eastern volubility, to those who had not been there what had passed in the Garden, and exchanging, as is the manner of such serving-men and officials, opinions and exaggerated denunciations concerning Him Who had been captured with such unexpected ease, and was now their master\u2019s safe Prisoner. As the red light glowed and flickered, it threw the long shadows of these men across the inner court, up the walls towards the gallery that ran round, up there, where the lamps and lights within, or as they moved along apartments and corridors, revealed other faces: there, where, in an inner audience-chamber, the Prisoner was confronted by His enemy, accuser, and judge.
\nWhat a contrast it all seemed between the Purification of the Temple only a few days before, when the same Jesus had overturned the trafficking tables of the High-Priest, and as He now stood, a bound Prisoner before him, at the mercy of every menial who might curry favour by wantonly insulting Him! It was a chill night when Peter, down \u2018beneath,\u2019 looked up to the lighted windows. There, among the serving-men in the court, he was in every sense \u2018without.\u2019 He approached the group around the fire. He would hear what they had to say; besides, it was not safe to stand apart; he might be recognised as one of those who had only escaped capture in the Garden by hasty flight. And then it was chill\u2014and not only to the body, the chill had struck to his soul. Was he right in having come there at all? Commentators have discussed it as involving neglect of Christ\u2019s warning. As if the love of any one who was, and felt, as Peter, could have credited the possibility of what he had been warned of; and, if he had credited it, would, in the first moments of returning flood after the panic of his flight, have remembered that warning, or with cool calculation acted up to the full measure of it! To have fled to his home and shut the door behind him, by way of rendering it impossible to deny that he knew Christ, would not have been Peter nor any true disciple. Nay, it would itself have been a worse and more cowardly denial than that of which he was actually guilty. Peter followed afar off, thinking of nothing else but his imprisoned Master, and that he would see the end, whatever it might be. But now it was chill, very chill, to body and soul, and Peter remembered it all; not, indeed, the warning, but that of which he had been warned. What good could his confession do? perhaps much possible harm; and why was he there?
\nPeter was very restless, and yet he must seem very quiet. He \u2018sat down\u2019 among the servants, then he stood up among them. It was this restlessness of attempted indifference which attracted the attention of the maid who had at the first admitted him. As in the uncertain light she scanned the features of the mysterious stranger, she boldly charged him, though still in a questioning tone, with being one of the disciples of the Man Who stood incriminated up there before the High-Priest. And in the chattering of his soul\u2019s fever, into which the chill had struck, Peter vehemently denied all knowledge of Him to Whom the woman referred, nay, of the very meaning of what she said. He had said too much not to bring soon another charge upon himself. We need not inquire which of the slightly varying reports in the Gospels represents the actual words of the woman or the actual answer of Peter. Perhaps neither; perhaps all\u2014certainly, she said all this, and, certainly, he answered all that, though neither of them would confine their words to the short sentences reported by each of the Evangelists.
\nWhat had he to do there? And why should he incriminate himself, or perhaps Christ, by a needless confession to those who had neither the moral nor the legal right to exact it? That was all he now remembered and thought; nothing about any denial of Christ. And so, as they were still chatting together, perhaps bandying words, Peter withdrew. We cannot judge how long time had passed, but this we gather, that the words of the woman had either not made any impression on those around the fire, or that the bold denial of Peter had satisfied them. Presently, we find Peter walking away down \u2018the porch,\u2019 which ran round and opened into \u2018the outer court.\u2019 He was not thinking of anything else now than how chilly it felt, and how right he had been in not being entrapped by that woman. And so he heeded it not, while his footfall sounded along the marblepaved porch, that just at this moment \u2018a cock crew.\u2019 But there was no sleep that night in the High-Priest\u2019s Palace. As he walked down the porch towards the outer court, first one maid met him; and then, as he returned from the outer court, he once more encountered his old accuser, the door-portress; and as he crossed the inner court to mingle again with the group around the fire, where he had formerly found safety, he was first accosted by one man, and then they all around the fire turned upon him\u2014and each and all had the same thing to say, the same charge, that he was also one of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. But Peter\u2019s resolve was taken; he was quite sure it was right; and to each separately, and to all together, he gave the same denial, more brief now, for he was collected and determined, but more emphatic\u2014even with an oath. And once more he silenced suspicion for a time. Or, perhaps, attention was now otherwise directed.
\n3. For, already, hasty footsteps were heard along the porches and corridors, and the maid who that night opened the gate at the High-Priest\u2019s Palace was busy at her post. They were the leading Priests, Elders, and Sanhedrists, who had been hastily summoned to the High-Priest\u2019s Palace, and who were hurrying up just as the first faint streaks of grey light were lying on the sky. The private examination by Caiaphas we place (as in the Gospel of St. John) between the first and second denial of Peter; the first arrival of Sanhedrists immediately after his second denial. The private inquiry of Caiaphas had elicited nothing; and, indeed, it was only preliminary. The leading Sanhedrists must have been warned that the capture of Jesus would be attempted that night, and to hold themselves in readiness when summoned to the High-Priest. This is not only quite in accordance with all the previous and after circumstances in the narrative, but nothing short of a procedure of such supreme importance would have warranted the presence for such a purpose of these religious leaders on that holy Passover-night.
\nBut whatever view be taken, thus much at least is certain, that it was no formal, regular meeting of the Sanhedrin. We put aside, as \u00e0 priori reasoning, such considerations as that protesting voices would have been raised, not only from among the friends of Jesus, but from others whom (with all their Jewish hatred of Christ) we cannot but regard as incapable of such gross violation of justice and law. But all Jewish order and law would have been grossly infringed in almost every particular, if this had been a formal meeting of the Sanhedrin. We know what their forms were, although many of them (as so much in Rabbinic accounts) may represent rather the ideal than the real\u2014what the Rabbis imagined should be, rather than what was; or else what may date from later times. According to Rabbinic testimony, there were three tribunals. In towns numbering less than 120 (or, according to one authority, 230) male inhabitants, there was only the lowest tribunal, that consisting of three Judges. Their jurisdiction was limited, and notably did not extend to capital causes. The authority of the tribunal of next instance\u2014that of twenty-three\u2014was also limited, although capital causes lay within its competence. The highest tribunal was that of seventy-one, or the Great Sanhedrin, which met first in one of the Temple-Chambers, the so-called Lishkath haGazith\u2014or Chamber of Hewn Stones\u2014and at the time of which we write in \u2018the booths of the sons of Annas.\u2019 The Judges of all these Courts were equally set apart by ordination (Semikhah), originally that of the laying on of hands. Ordination was conferred by three, of whom one at least must have been himself ordained, and able to trace UP his ordination through Joshua to Moses. This, of course, on the theory that there had been a regular succession of ordained Teachers, not only up to Ezra, but beyond him to Joshua and Moses. The members of the tribunals of twenty-three were appointed by the Great Sanhedrin. The members of the tribunals of three were likewise appointed by the Great Sanhedrin, which entrusted to men, specially accredited and worthy, the duty of travelling through the towns of Palestine and appointing and ordaining in them the men best fitted for the office. The qualifications mentioned for the office remind us of those which St. Paul indicates as requisite for the Christian eldership.
\nSome inferences seem here of importance, as throwing light on early Apostolic arrangements\u2014believing, as we do, that the outward form of the Church was in great measure derived from the Synagogue. First, we notice that there was regular ordination, and, at first at least, by the laying on of hands. Further, this ordination was not requisite either for delivering addresses or conducting the liturgy in the Synagogue, but for authoritative teaching, and especially for judicial functions, to which would correspond in the Christian Church the power of the Keys\u2014the administration of discipline and of the Sacraments as admitting into, and continuing in the fellowship of the Church. Next, ordination could only be conferred by those who had themselves been rightly ordained, and who could, therefore, through those previously ordained, trace their ordination upwards. Again, each of these \u2018Colleges of Presbyters\u2019 had its Chief or President. Lastly, men entrusted with supreme (Apostolic) authority were sent to the various towns \u2018to appoint elders in every city.\u2019
\nThe appointment to the highest tribunal, or Great Sanhedrin, was made by that tribunal itself, either by promoting a member of the inferior tribunals or one from the foremost of the three rows, in which \u2018the disciples\u2019 or students sat facing the Judges. The latter sat in a semicircle, under the presidency of the Nasi (\u2018prince\u2019) and the vice-presidency of the Ab-beth-din (\u2018father of the Court of Law\u2019). At least twenty-three members were required to form a quorum. We have such minute details of the whole arrangements and proceedings of this Court as greatly confirms our impression of the chiefly ideal character of some of the Rabbinic notices. Facing the semicircle of Judges, we are told, there were two shorthand writers, to note down, respectively, the speeches in favour and against the accused. Each of the students knew, and sat in his own place. In capital causes the arguments in defence of, and afterwards those incriminating the accused, were stated. If one had spoken in favour, he might not again speak against the panel. Students might speak for, not against him. He might be pronounced \u2018not guilty\u2019 on the same day on which the case was tried; but a sentence of \u2018guilty\u2019 might only be pronounced on the day following that of the trial. It seems, however, at least doubtful, whether in case of profanation of the Divine Name (Chillul haShem), judgment was not immediately executed. Lastly, the voting began with the youngest, so that juniors might not be influenced by the seniors; and a bare majority was not sufficient for condemnation.
\nThese are only some of the regulations laid down in Rabbinic writings. It is of greater importance to enquire, how far they were carried out under the iron rule of Herod and that of the Roman Procurators. Here we are in great measure left to conjecture. We can well believe that neither Herod nor the Procurators would wish to abolish the Sanhedrin, but would leave to them the administration of justice, especially in all that might in any way be connected with purely religious questions. Equally we can understand, that both would deprive them of the power of the sword and of decision on all matters of political or supreme importance. Herod would reserve to himself the final disposal in all cases, if he saw fit to interfere, and so would the Procurators, who especially would not have tolerated any attempt at jurisdiction over a Roman citizen. In short, the Sanhedrin would be accorded full jurisdiction in inferior and in religious matters, with the greatest show, but with the least amount, of real rule or of supreme authority. Lastly, as both Herod and the Procurators treated the High-Priest, who was their own creature, as the real head and representative of the Jews; and as it would be their policy to curtail the power of the independent and fanatical Rabbis, we can understand how, in great criminal causes or in important investigations, the High-Priest would always preside\u2014the presidency of the Nasi being reserved for legal and ritual questions and discussions. And with this the notices alike in the New Testament and in Josephus accord.
\nEven this brief summary about the Sanhedrin would be needless, if it were a question of applying its rules of procedure to the arraignment of Jesus. For, alike Jewish and Christian evidence establish the fact, that Jesus was not formally tried and condemned by the Sanhedrin. It is admitted on all hands, that forty years before the destruction of the Temple the Sanhedrin ceased to pronounce capital sentences. This alone would be sufficient. But, besides, the trial and sentence of Jesus in the Palace of Caiaphas would (as already stated) have outraged every principle of Jewish criminal law and procedure. Such causes could only be tried, and capital sentence pronounced, in the regular meeting-place of the Sanhedrin, not, as here, in the High-Priest\u2019s Palace; no process, least of all such an one, might be begun in the night, not even in the afternoon, although if the discussion had gone on all day, sentence might be pronounced at night. Again, no process could take place on Sabbaths or Feast-days, or even on the eves of them, although this would not have nullified proceedings, and it might be argued on the other side, that a process against one who had seduced the people should preferably be carried on, and sentence executed, on public Feast-days, for the warning of all. Lastly, in capital causes there was a very elaborate system of warning and cautioning witnesses, while it may safely be affirmed, that at a regular trial Jewish Judges, however prejudiced, would not have acted as the Sanhedrists and Caiaphas did on this occasion.
\nBut as we examine it more closely, we perceive that the Gospel-narratives do not speak of a formal trial and sentence by the Sanhedrin. Such references as to \u2018the Sanhedrin\u2019 (\u2018council\u2019), or to \u2018all the Sanhedrin,\u2019 must be taken in the wider sense, which will presently be explained. On the other hand, the four Gospels equally indicate that the whole proceedings of that night were carried on in the Palace of Caiaphas, and that during that night no formal sentence of death was pronounced. St. John, indeed, does not report the proceedings at all; St. Matthew only records the question of Caiaphas and the answer of the Sanhedrists; and even the language of St. Mark does not convey the idea of a formal sentence. And when in the morning, in consequence of a fresh consultation, also in the Palace of Caiaphas, they led Jesus to the Pr\u00e6torium, it was not as a prisoner condemned to death of whom they asked the execution, but as one against whom they laid certain accusations worthy of death, while, when Pilate bade them judge Jesus according to Jewish Law, they replied, not: that they had done so already, but, that they had no competence to try capital causes.
\n4. But although Christ was not tried and sentenced in a formal meeting of the Sanhedrin, there can, alas! be no question that His Condemnation and Death were the work, if not of the Sanhedrin, yet of the Sanhedrists\u2014of the whole body of them (\u2018all the council\u2019), in the sense of expressing what was the judgment and purpose of all the Supreme Council and Leaders of Israel, with only very few exceptions. We bear in mind, that the resolution to sacrifice Christ had for some time been taken. Terrible as the proceedings of that night were, they even seem a sort of concession\u2014as if the Sanhedrists would fain have found some legal and moral justification for what they had determined to do. They first sought \u2018witness,\u2019 or as St. Matthew rightly designates it, \u2018false witness\u2019 against Christ. Since this was throughout a private investigation, this witness could only have been sought from their own creatures. Hatred, fanaticism, and unscrupulous Eastern exaggeration would readily misrepresent and distort certain sayings of Christ, or falsely impute others to Him. But it was altogether too hasty and excited an assemblage, and the witnesses contradicted themselves so grossly, or their testimony so notoriously broke down, that for very shame such trumped-up charges had to be abandoned. And to this result the majestic calm of Christ\u2019s silence must have greatly contributed. On directly false and contradictory testimony it must be best not to cross-examine at all, not to interpose, but to leave the false witness to destroy itself.
\nAbandoning this line of testimony, the Priests next brought forward probably some of their own order, who on the first Purgation of the Temple had been present when Jesus, in answer to the challenge for \u2018a sign\u2019 in evidence of His authority, had given them that mysterious \u2018sign\u2019 of the destruction and upraising of the Temple of His Body. They had quite misunderstood it at the time, and its reproduction now as the ground of a criminal charge against Jesus must have been directly due to Caiaphas and Annas. We remember, that this had been the first time that Jesus had come into collision, not only with the Temple authorities, but with the avarice of \u2018the family of Annas.\u2019 We can imagine how the incensed High-Priest would have challenged the conduct of the Temple-officials, and how, in reply, he would have been told what they had attempted, and how Jesus had met them. Perhaps it was the only real inquiry which a man like Caiaphas would care to institute about what Jesus said. And here, in its grossly distorted form, and with more than Eastern exaggeration of partisanship it was actually brought forward as a criminal charge!
\nDexterously manipulated, the testimony of these witnesses might lead up to two charges. It would show that Christ was a dangerous seducer of the people, Whose claims might have led those who believed them to lay violent hands on the Temple, while the supposed assertion, that He would or was able to build the Temple again within three days, might be made to imply Divine or magical pretensions. A certain class of writers have ridiculed this part of the Sanhedrist plot against Jesus. It is, indeed, true that, viewed as a Jewish charge, it might have been difficult, if not impossible, to construe a capital crime out of such charges, although, to say the least, a strong popular prejudice might thus have been raised against Jesus\u2014and this, no doubt, was one of the objects which Caiaphas had in view. But it has been strangely forgotten that the purpose of the High-Priest was not to formulate a capital charge in Jewish Law, since the assembled Sanhedrists had no intention so to try Jesus, but to formulate a charge which would tell before the Roman Procurator. And here none other could be so effective as that of being a fanatical seducer of the ignorant populace, who might lead them on to wild tumultuous acts. Two similar instances, in which the Romans quenched Jewish fanaticism in the blood of the pretenders and their deluded followers, will readily recur to the mind. In any case, Caiaphas would naturally seek to ground his accusation of Jesus before Pilate on anything rather than His claims to Messiahship and the inheritance of David. It would be a cruel irony if a Jewish High-Priest had to expose the loftiest and holiest hope of Israel to the mockery of a Pilate; and it might prove a dangerous proceeding, whether as regarded the Roman Governor or the feelings of the Jewish people.
\nBut this charge of being a seducer of the people also broke down, through the disagreement of the two witnesses whom the Mosaic Law required, and who, according to Rabbinic ordinance, had to be separately questioned. But the divergence of their testimony does not exactly appear in the differences in the accounts of St. Matthew and of St. Mark. If it be deemed necessary to harmonise these two narratives, it would be better to regard both as relating the testimony of these two witnesses. What St. Mark reported may have been followed by what St. Matthew records, or vice vers\u00e2, the one being, so to speak, the basis of the other. But all this time Jesus preserved the same majestic silence as before, nor could the impatience of Caiaphas, who sprang from his seat to confront, and, if possible, browbeat his Prisoner, extract from Him any reply.
\nOnly one thing now remained. Jesus knew it well, and so did Caiaphas. It was to put the question, which Jesus could not refuse to answer, and which, once answered, must lead either to His acknowledgment or to His condemnation. In the brief historical summary which St. Luke furnishes, there is an inversion of the sequence of events, by which it might seem as if what he records had taken place at the meeting of the Sanhedrists on the next morning. But a careful consideration of what passed there obliges us to regard the report of St. Luke as referring to the night-meeting described by St. Matthew and St. Mark. The motive for St. Luke\u2019s inversion of the Sequence of events may have been, that he wished to group in a continuous narrative Peter\u2019s threefold denial, the third of which occurred after the night-sitting of the Sanhedrin, at which the final adjuration of Caiaphas elicited the reply which St. Luke records, as well as the other two Evangelists. Be this as it may, we owe to St. Luke another trait in the drama of that night. As we suppose, the simple question was first addressed to Jesus, whether He was the Messiah? to which He replied by referring to the needlessness of such an enquiry, since they had predetermined not to credit His claims, nay, had only a few days before in the Temple refused to discuss them. It was upon this that the High-Priest, in the most solemn manner, adjured the True One by the Living God, Whose Son He was, to say it, whether He were the Messiah and Divine\u2014the two being so joined together, not in Jewish belief, but to express the claims of Jesus. No doubt or hesitation could here exist. Solemn, emphatic, calm, majestic, as before had been His silence, was now His speech. And His assertion of what He was, was conjoined with that of what God would show Him to be, in His Resurrection and Sitting at the Right Hand of the Father, and of what they also would see, when He would come in those clouds of heaven that would break over their city and polity in the final storm of judgment.
\nThey all heard it\u2014and, as the Law directed when blasphemy was spoken, the High Priest rent both his outer and inner garment, with a rent that might never be repaired. But the object was attained. Christ would neither explain, modify, nor retract His claims. They had all heard it; what use was there of witnesses, He had spoken Giddupha, \u2018blaspheming.\u2019 Then, turning to those assembled, he put to them the usual question which preceded the formal sentence of death. As given in the Rabbinic original, it is: \u2018What think ye, gentlemen? And they answered, if for life, \u201cFor life!\u201d and if for death, \u201cFor death.\u201d \u2019 But the formal sentence of death, which, if it had been a regular meeting of the Sanhedrin, must now have been spoken by the President, was not pronounced.
\nThere is a curious Jewish conceit, that on the Day of Atonement the golden band on the High Priest\u2019s mitre, with the graven words, \u2018Holiness unto Jehovah,\u2019 atoned for those who had blasphemed. It stands out in terrible contrast to the figure of Caiaphas on that awful night. Or did the unseen mitre on the True and Eternal High-Priest\u2019s Brow, marking the consecration of His Humiliation to Jehovah, plead for them who in that night were gathered there, the blind leaders of the blind? Yet amidst so many most solemn thoughts, some press prominently forward. On that night of terror, when all the enmity of man and the power of hell were unchained, even the falsehood of malevolence could not lay any crime to His charge, nor yet any accusation be brought against Him other than the misrepresentation of His symbolic Words. What testimony to Him this solitary false and ill-according witness! Again: \u2018They all condemned Him to be worthy of death.\u2019 Judaism itself would not now re-echo this sentence of the Sanhedrists. And yet is it not after all true\u2014that He was either the Christ, the Son of God, or a blasphemer? This Man, alone so calm and majestic among those impassioned false judges and false witnesses; majestic in His silence, majestic in His speech; unmoved by threats to speak, undaunted by threats when He spoke; Who saw it all\u2014the end from the beginning; the Judge among His judges, the Witness before His witnesses: which was He\u2014the Christ or a blaspheming impostor? Let history decide; let the heart and conscience of mankind give answer. If He had been what Israel said, He deserved the death of the Cross; if He is what the Christmas-bells of the Church, and the chimes of the Resurrection-morning ring out, then do we rightly worship Him as the Son of the Living God, the Christ, the Saviour of men.
\n5. It was after this meeting of the Sanhedrists had broken up, that, as we learn from the Gospel of St. Luke, the revolting insults and injuries were perpetrated on Him by the guards and servants of Caiaphas. All now rose in combined rebellion against the Perfect Man: the abject servility of the East, which delighted in insults on One Whom it could never have vanquished, and had not even dared to attack; that innate vulgarity, which loves to trample on fallen greatness, and to deck out in its own manner a triumph where no victory has been won; the brutality of the worse than animal in man (since in him it is not under the guidance of Divine instinct), and which, when unchained, seems to intensify in coarseness and ferocity; and the profanity and devilry which are wont to apply the wretched witticisms of what is misnomered common sense and the blows of tyrannical usurpation of power to all that is higher and better, to what these men cannot grasp and dare not look up to, and before the shadows of which, when cast by superstition, they cower and tremble in abject fear! And yet these insults, taunts, and blows which fell upon that lonely Sufferer, not defenceless, but undefending, not vanquished, but uncontending, not helpless, but majestic in voluntary self-submission for the highest purpose of love\u2014have not only exhibited the curse of humanity, but also removed it by letting it descend on Him, the Perfect Man, the Christ, the Son of God. And ever since has every noble-hearted sufferer been able on the strangely clouded day to look up, and follow what, as it touches earth, is the black misty shadow, to where, illumined by light from behind, it passes into the golden light\u2014a mantle of darkness as it enwraps us, merging in light up there where its folds seem held together by the Hand from heaven.
\nThis is our Sufferer\u2014the Christ or a blasphemer; and in that alternative which of us would not choose the part of the Accused rather than of His judges? So far as recorded, not a word escaped His Lips; not a complaint, nor murmur; nor utterance of indignant rebuke, nor sharp cry of deeply sensitive, pained nature. He was drinking, slowly, with the consciousness of willing self-surrender, the Cup which His Father had given Him. And still His Father\u2014and this also specially in His Messianic relationship to man.
\nWe have seen that, when Caiaphas and the Sanhedrists quitted the audience-chamber, Jesus was left to the unrestrained licence of the attendants. Even the Jewish Law had it, that no \u2018prolonged death\u2019 (Mithah Arikhta) might be inflicted, and that he who was condemned to death was not to be previously scourged. At last they were weary of insult and smiting, and the Sufferer was left alone, perhaps in the covered gallery, or at one of the windows that overlooked the court below. About one hour had passed since Peter\u2019s second denial had, so to speak, been interrupted by the arrival of the Sanhedrists. Since then the excitement of the mock-trial, with witnesses coming and going, and, no doubt, in Eastern fashion repeating what had passed to those gathered in the court around the fire; then the departure of the Sanhedrists, and again the insults and blows inflicted on the Sufferer, had diverted attention from Peter. Now it turned once more upon him; and, in the circumstances, naturally more intensely than before. The chattering of Peter, whom conscience and consciousness made nervously garrulous, betrayed him. This one also was with Jesus the Nazarene; truly, he was of them\u2014for he was also a Galilean! So spake the bystanders; while, according to St. John, a fellow-servant and kinsman of that Malthus, whose ear Peter, in his zeal, had cut off in Gethsemane, asserted that he actually recognised him. To one and all these declarations Peter returned only a more vehement denial, accompanying it this time with oaths to God and imprecations on himself.
\nThe echo of his words had scarcely died out\u2014their diastole had scarcely returned them with gurgling noise upon his conscience\u2014when loud and shrill the second cock-crowing was heard. There was that in its harsh persistence of sound that also wakened his memory. He now remembered the words of warning prediction which the Lord had spoken. He looked up; and as he looked, he saw, how up there, just at that moment, the Lord turned round and looked upon him\u2014yes, in all that assembly, upon Peter! His eyes spake His Words; nay, much more; they searched down to the innermost depths of Peter\u2019s heart, and broke them open. They had pierced through all self-delusion, false shame, and fear: they had reached the man, the disciple, the lover of Jesus. Forth they burst, the waters of conviction, of true shame, of heart-sorrow, of the agonies of self-condemnation; and, bitterly weeping, he rushed from under those suns that had melted the ice of death and burnt into his heart\u2014out from that cursed place of betrayal by Israel, by its High Priest\u2014and even by the representative Disciple.
\nOut he rushed into the night. Yet a night lit up by the stars of promise\u2014chiefest among them this, that the Christ up there-the conquering Sufferer\u2014had prayed for him. God grant us in the night of our conscious self-condemnation the same star-light of His Promises, the same assurance of the intercession of the Christ, that so, as Luther puts it, the particularness of the account of Peter\u2019s denial, as compared with the briefness of that of Christ\u2019s Passion, may carry to our hearts this lesson: \u2018The fruit and use of the sufferings of Christ is this, that in them we have the forgiveness of our sins.\u2019<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 14<\/p>\n
THE MORNING OF GOOD FRIDAY<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 27:1, 2, 11\u201314; St. Mark 15:1\u20135; St. Luke 23:1\u20135; St. John 18:28\u201338; St. Luke 23:6\u201312; St. Matt. 27:3\u201310; St. Matt. 27:15\u201318; St. Mark 15:6\u201310; St. Luke 23:13\u201317; St. John 18:39, 40; St. Matt. 27:19; St. Matt. 27:20\u201331; St. Mark 15:11\u201320; St. Luke 23:18\u201325; St. John 19:1\u201316.)<\/p>\n
THE pale grey light had passed into that of early morning, when the Sanhedrists once more assembled in the Palace of Caiaphas. A comparison with the terms in which they who had formed the gathering of the previous night are described will convey the impression, that the number of those present was now increased, and that they who now came belonged to the wisest and most influential of the Council. It is not unreasonable to suppose, that some who would not take part in deliberations which were virtually a judicial murder might, once the resolution was taken, feel in Jewish casuistry absolved from guilt in advising how the informal sentence might best be carried into effect. It was this, and not the question of Christ\u2019s guilt, which formed the subject of deliberation on that early morning. The result of it was to \u2018bind\u2019 Jesus and hand Him over as a malefactor to Pilate, with the resolve, if possible, not to frame any definite charge; but, if this became necessary, to lay all the emphasis on the purely political, not the religious aspect of the claims of Jesus.
\nTo us it may seem strange, that they who, in the lowest view of it, had committed so grossly unrighteous, and were now coming on so cruel and bloody a deed, should have been prevented by religious scruples from entering the \u2018Pr\u00e6torium.\u2019 And yet the student of Jewish casuistry will understand it; nay, alas, history and even common observation furnish only too many parallel instances of unscrupulous scrupulosity and unrighteous conscientiousness. Alike conscience and religiousness are only moral tendencies natural to man; whither they tend, must be decided by considerations outside of them: by enlightenment and truth. The \u2018Pr\u00e6torium,\u2019 to which the Jewish leaders, or at least those of them who represented the leaders\u2014for neither Annas nor Caiaphas seems to have been personally present\u2014brought the bound Christ, was (as always in the provinces) the quarters occupied by the Roman Governor. In C\u00e6sarea this was the Palace of Herod, and there St. Paul was afterwards a prisoner. But in Jerusalem there were two such quarters: the fortress Antonia, and the magnificent Palace of Herod at the north-western angle of the Upper City. Although it is impossible to speak with certainty, the balance of probability is entirely in favour of the view that, when Pilate was in Jerusalem with his wife, he occupied the truly royal abode of Herod, and not the fortified barracks of Antonia. From the slope at the eastern angle, opposite the Temple-Mount, where the Palace of Caiaphas stood, up the narrow streets of the Upper City, the melancholy procession wound to the portals of the grand Palace of Herod. It is recorded, that they who brought Him would not themselves enter the portals of the Palace, \u2018that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.\u2019
\nFew expressions have given rise to more earnest controversy than this. On two things at least we can speak with certainty. Entrance into a heathen house did Levitically render impure for that day\u2014that is, till the evening. The fact of such defilement is clearly attested both in the New Testament and in the Mishnah, though its reasons might be various. A person who had so become Levitically unclean was technically called Tebhul Yom (\u2018bathed of the day\u2019). The other point is, that, to have so become \u2018impure\u2019 for the day, would not have disqualified for eating the Paschal Lamb, since that meal was partaken of after the evening, and when a new day had begun. In fact, it is distinctly laid down that the \u2018bathed of the day,\u2019 that is, he who had been impure for the day and had bathed in the evening, did partake of the Paschal Supper, and an instance is related, when some soldiers who had guarded the gates of Jerusalem \u2018immersed,\u2019 and ate the Paschal Lamb. It follows, that these Sanhedrists could not have abstained from entering the Palace of Pilate because by so doing they would have been disqualified for the Paschal Supper.
\nThe point is of importance, because many writers have interpreted the expression \u2018the Passover\u2019 as referring to the Paschal Supper, and have argued that, according to the Fourth Gospel, our Lord did not on the previous evening partake of the Paschal Lamb, or else that in this respect the account of the Fourth Gospel does not accord with that of the Synoptists. But as, for the reason just stated, it is impossible to refer the expression \u2018Passover\u2019 to the Paschal Supper, we have only to inquire whether the term is not also applied to other offerings. And here both the Old Testament and Jewish writings show, that the term Pesach, or \u2018Passover,\u2019 was applied not only to the Paschal Lamb, but to all the Passover sacrifices, especially to what was called the Chagigah, or festive offering (from Chag., or Chagag, to bring the festive sacrifice usual at each of the three Great Feasts).\u2019 According to the express rule (Chag. 1. 3) the Chagigah was brought on the first festive Paschal Day. It was offered immediately after the morning-service, and eaten on that day\u2014probably some time before the evening, when, as we shall by-and-by see, another ceremony claimed public attention. We can therefore quite understand that, not on the eve of the Passover, but on the first Paschal day, the Sanhedrists would avoid incurring a defilement which, lasting till the evening, would not only have involved them in the inconvenience of Levitical defilement on the first festive day, but have actually prevented their offering on that day the Passover, festive sacrifice, or Chagigah. For, we have these two express rules: that a person could not in Levitical defilement offer the Chagigah; and that the Chagigah could not be offered for a person by some one else who took his place (Jer. Chag. 76 a, lines 16 to 14 from bottom). These considerations and canons seem decisive as regards the views above expressed. There would have been no reason to fear \u2018defilement\u2019 on the morning of the Paschal Sacrifice; but entrance into the Pr\u0153torium on the morning of the first Passover-day would have rendered it impossible for them to offer the Chagigah, which is also designated by the term Pesach.
\nIt may have been about seven in the morning, probably even earlier, when Pilate went out to those who summoned him to dispense justice. The question which he addressed to them seems to have startled and disconcerted them. Their procedure had been private; it was of the very essence of proceedings at Roman Law that they were in public. Again, the procedure before the Sanhedrists had been in the form of a criminal investigation, while it was of the essence of Roman procedure to enter only on definite accusations. Accordingly, the first question of Pilate was, what accusation they brought against Jesus. The question would come upon them the more unexpectedly, that Pilate must, on the previous evening, have given his consent to the employment of the Roman guard which effected the arrest of Jesus. Their answer displays humiliation, ill-humour, and an attempt at evasion. If He had not been \u2018a malefactor,\u2019 they would not have \u2018delivered\u2019 Him up! On this vague charge Pilate, in whom we mark throughout a strange reluctance to proceed\u2014perhaps from unwillingness to please the Jews, perhaps from a desire to wound their feelings on the tenderest point, perhaps because restrained by a Higher Hand\u2014refused to proceed. He proposed that the Sanhedrists should try Jesus according to Jewish Law. This is another important trait, as apparently implying that Pilate had been previously aware both of the peculiar claims of Jesus, and that the action of the Jewish authorities had been determined by \u2018envy.\u2019 But, under ordinary circumstances, Pilate would not have wished to hand over a person accused of so grave a charge as that of setting up Messianic claims to the Jewish authorities, to try the case as a merely religious question. Taking this in connection with the other fact, apparently inconsistent with it, that on the previous evening the Governor had given a Roman guard for the arrest of the prisoner, and with this other fact of the dream and warning of Pilate\u2019s wife, a peculiar impression is conveyed to us. We can understand it all, if, on the previous evening, after the Roman guard had been granted, Pilate had spoken of it to his wife, whether because he knew her to be, or because she might be interested in the matter. Tradition has given her the name Procula; an Apocryphal Gospel describes her as a convert to Judaism; while the Greek Church has actually placed her in the Catalogue of Saints. What if the truth lay between these statements, and Procula had not only been a proselyte, like the wife of a previous Roman Governor, but known about Jesus and spoken of Him to Pilate on that evening? This would best explain his reluctance to condemn Jesus, as well as her dream of Him.
\nAs the Jewish authorities had to decline the Governor\u2019s offer to proceed against Jesus before their own tribunal, on the avowed ground that they had not power to pronounce capital sentence, it now behoved them to formulate a capital charge. This is recorded by St. Luke alone. It was, that Jesus had said, He Himself was Christ a King. It will be noted, that in so saying they falsely imputed to Jesus their own political expectations concerning the Messiah. But even this is not all. They prefaced it by this, that He perverted the nation and forbade to give tribute to C\u00e6sar. The latter charge was so grossly unfounded, that we can only regard it as in their mind a necessary inference from the premiss that He claimed to be King. And, as telling most against Him, they put this first and foremost, treating the inference as if it were a fact\u2014a practice this only too common in controversies, political, religious, or private.
\nThis charge of the Sanhedrists explains what, according to all the Evangelists, passed within the Pr\u00e6torium. We presume that Christ was within, probably in charge of some guards. The words of the Sanhedrists brought peculiar thoughts to Pilate. He now called Jesus and asked Him: \u2018Thou art the King of the Jews?\u2019 There is that mixture of contempt, cynicism, and awe in this question which we mark throughout in the bearing and words of Pilate. It was, as if two powers were contending for the mastery in his heart. By the side of uniform contempt for all that was Jewish, and of that general cynicism which could not believe in the existence of anything higher, we mark a feeling of awe in regard to Christ, even though the feeling may partly have been of superstition. Out of all that the Sanhedrists had said, Pilate took only this, that Jesus claimed to be a King. Christ, Who had not heard the charge of His accusers, now ignored it, in His desire to stretch out salvation even to a Pilate. Not heeding the implied irony, He first put it to Pilate, whether the question\u2014be it criminal charge or inquiry\u2014was his own, or merely the repetition of what His Jewish accusers had told Pilate of Him. The Governor quickly disowned any personal inquiry. How could he raise any such question? He was not a Jew, and the subject had no general interest. Jesus\u2019 own nation and its leaders had handed Him over as a criminal: what had He done?
\nThe answer of Pilate left nothing else for Him Who, even in that supreme hour, thought only of others, not of Himself, but to bring before the Roman directly that truth for which his words had given the opening. It was not, as Pilate had implied, a Jewish question: it was one of absolute truth; it concerned all men. The Kingdom of Christ was not of this world at all, either Jewish or Gentile. Had it been otherwise, He would have led His followers to a contest for His claims and aims, and not have become a prisoner of the Jews. One word only in all this struck Pilate. \u2018So then a King art Thou!\u2019 He was incapable of apprehending the higher thought and truth. We mark in his words the same mixture of scoffing and misgiving. Pilate was now in no doubt as to the nature of the Kingdom; his exclamation and question applied to the Kingship. That fact Christ would now emphasise in the glory of His Humiliation. He accepted what Pilate said; He adopted his words. But He added to them an appeal, or rather an explanation of His claims, such as a heathen, and a Pilate, could understand. His Kingdom was not of this world, but of that other world which He had come to reveal, and to open to all believers. Here was the truth! His Birth or Incarnation, as the Sent of the Father, and His own voluntary Coming into this world\u2014for both are referred to in His words\u2014had it for their object to testify of the truth concerning that other world, of which was His Kingdom. This was no Jewish-Messianic Kingdom, but one that appealed to all men. And all who had moral affinity to \u2018the truth\u2019 would listen to His testimony, and so come to own Him as \u2018King.\u2019
\nBut these words struck only a hollow void, as they fell on Pilate. It was not merely cynicism, but utter despair of all that is higher\u2014a moral suicide\u2014which appears in his question: \u2018What is truth?\u2019 He had understood Christ, but it was not in him to respond to His appeal. He, whose heart and life had so little kinship to \u2018the truth,\u2019 could not sympathise with, though he dimly perceived, the grand aim of Jesus\u2019 Life and Work. But even the question of Pilate seems an admission, an implied homage to Christ. Assuredly, he would not have so opened his inner being to one of the priestly accusers of Jesus.
\nThat man was no rebel, no criminal! They who brought Him were moved by the lowest passions. And so he told them, as he went out, that he found no fault in Him. Then came from the assembled Sanhedrists a perfect hailstorm of accusations. As we picture it to ourselves, all this while the Christ stood near, perhaps behind Pilate, just within the portals of the Pr\u00e6torium. And to all this clamour of charges He made no reply. It was as if the staging of the wild waves broke far beneath against the base of the rock, which, untouched, reared its head far aloft to the heavens. But as He stood in the calm silence of Majesty, Pilate greatly wondered. Did this Man not even fear death; was He so conscious of innocence, so infinitely superior to those around and against Him; or had He so far conquered Death, that He would not condescend to their words? And why then had He spoken to him of His Kingdom and of that truth?
\nFain would he have withdrawn from it all; not that he was moved for absolute truth or by the personal innocence of the Sufferer, but that there was that in the Christ which, perhaps for the first time in his life, had made him reluctant to be unrighteous and unjust. And so, when, amidst these confused cries, he caught the name Galilee as the scene of Jesus\u2019 labours, he gladly seized on what offered the prospect of devolving the responsibility on another. Jesus was a Galilean, and therefore belonged to the jurisdiction of King Herod. To Herod, therefore, who had come for the Feast to Jerusalem and there occupied the old Maccabean Palace, close to that of the High-Priest, Jesus was now sent.
\nTo St. Luke alone we owe the account of what passed there, as, indeed, of so many traits in this last scene of the terrible drama. The opportunity now offered was welcome to Herod. It was a mark of reconciliation (or might be viewed as such) between himself and the Roman, and in a manner flattering to himself, since the first step had been taken by the Governor, and that, by an almost ostentatious acknowledgment of the rights of the Tetrarch, on which possibly their former feud may have turned. Besides, Herod had long wished to see Jesus, of Whom he had heard so many things. In that hour coarse curiosity, a hope of seeing some magic performances, was the only feeling that moved the Tetrarch. But in vain did he ply Christ with questions. He was as silent to him as formerly against the virulent charges of the Sanhedrists. But a Christ Who would or could do no signs, nor even kindle into the same denunciations as the Baptist, was, to the coarse realism of Antipas, only a helpless figure that might be insulted and scoffed at, as did the Tetrarch and his men of war. And so Jesus was once more sent back to the Pr\u00e6torium.
\nIt is in the interval during which Jesus was before Herod, or probably soon afterwards, that we place the last weird scene in the life of Judas, recorded by St. Matthew. We infer this from the circumstance, that, on the return of Jesus from Herod, the Sanhedrists do not seem to have been present, since Pilate had to call them together, presumably from the Temple. And here we recall that the Temple was close to the Maccabean Palace. Lastly, the impression left on our minds is, that henceforth the principal part before Pilate was sustained by \u2018the people,\u2019 the Priests and Scribes rather instigating them than conducting the case against Jesus. It may therefore well have been, that, when the Sanhedrists went from the Maccabean Palace into the Temple, as might be expected on that day, only a part of them returned to the Pr\u00e6torium on the summons of Pilate.
\nBut, however that may have been, sufficient had already passed to convince Judas what the end would be. Indeed, it is difficult to believe that he could have deceived himself on this point from the first, however he had failed to realise the fact in its terrible import till after his deed. The words which Jesus had spoken to him in the Garden must have burnt into his soul. He was among the soldiery that fell back at His look. Since then Jesus had been led bound to Annas, to Caiaphas, to the Pr\u00e6torium, to Herod. Even if Judas had not been present at any of these occasions, and we do not suppose that his conscience had allowed this, all Jerusalem must by that time have been full of the report, probably in even exaggerated form. One thing he saw: that Jesus was condemned. Judas did not \u2018repent\u2019 in the Scriptural sense; but \u2018a change of mind and feeling\u2019 came over him. Even had Jesus been an ordinary man, and the relation to Him of Judas been the ordinary one, we could understand his feelings, especially considering his ardent temperament. The instant before and after sin represents the difference of feeling as portrayed in the history of the Fall of our first parents. With the commission of sin, all the bewitching, intoxicating influence, which incited to it, has passed away, and only the naked fact remains. All the glamour has been dispelled; all the reality abideth. If we knew it, probably scarcely one out of many criminals but would give all he has, nay, life itself, if he could recall the deed done, or awake from it to find it only an evil dream. But it cannot be; and the increasingly terrible is, that it is done, and done for ever. Yet this is not \u2018repentance,\u2019 or, at least, God alone knows whether it is such; it may be, and in the case of Judas it only was, \u2018change of mind and feeling\u2019 towards Jesus. Whether this might have passed into repentance, whether, if he had cast himself at the Feet of Jesus, as undoubtedly he might have done, this would have been so, we need not here ask. The mind and feelings of Judas, as regarded the deed he had done, and as regarded Jesus, were now quite other; they became increasingly so with ever-growing intensity. The road, the streets, the people\u2019s faces\u2014all seemed now to bear witness against him and for Jesus. He read it everywhere; he felt it always; he imagined it, till his whole being was on flame. What had been; what was; what would be! Heaven and earth receded from him; there were voices in the air, and pangs in the soul\u2014and no escape, help, counsel, or hope anywhere.
\nIt was despair, and his a desperate resolve. He must get rid of these thirty pieces of silver, which, like thirty serpents, coiled round his soul with terrible hissing of death. Then at least his deed would have nothing of the selfish in it: only a terrible error, a mistake, to which he had been incited by these Sanhedrists. Back to them with the money, and let them have it again! And so forward he pressed amidst the wondering crowd, which would give way before that haggard face with the wild eyes, that crime had made old in those few hours, till he came upon that knot of priests and Sanhedrists, perhaps at that very moment speaking of it all. A most unwelcome sight and intrusion on them, this necessary but odious figure in the drama\u2014belonging to its past, and who should rest in its obscurity. But he would be heard; nay, his words would cast the burden on them to share it with him, as with hoarse cry he broke into this: \u2018I have sinned\u2014in that I have betrayed\u2014innocent blood!\u2019 They turned from him with impatience, in contempt, as so often the seducer turns from the seduced\u2014and, God help such, with the same fiendish guilt of hell: \u2018What is that to us? See thou to it!\u2019 And presently they were again deep in conversation or consultation. For a moment he stared wildly before him, the very thirty pieces of silver that had been weighed to him, and which he had now brought back, and would fain have given them, still clutched in his hand. For a moment only, and then he wildly rushed forward, towards the Sanctuary itself, probably to where the Court of Israel bounded on that of the Priests, where, generally the penitents stood in waiting, while in the Priests\u2019 Court the sacrifice was offered for them. He bent forward, and with all his might hurled from him those thirty pieces of silver, so that each resounded as it fell on the marble pavement.
\nOut he rushed from the Temple, out of Jerusalem, \u2018into solitude.\u2019 Whither shall it be? Down into the horrible solitude of the Valley of Hinnom, the \u2018Tophet\u2019 of old, with its ghastly memories, the Gehenna of the future, with its ghostly associations. But it was not solitude, for it seemed now peopled with figures, faces, sounds. Across the Valley, and up the steep sides of the mountain! We are now on \u2018the potter\u2019s field\u2019 of Jeremiah\u2014somewhat to the west above where the Kidron and Hinnom valleys merge. It is cold, soft clayey soil, where the footsteps slip, or are held in clammy bonds. Here jagged rocks rise perpendicularly: perhaps there was some gnarled, bent, stunted tree. Up there he climbed to the top of that rock. Now slowly and deliberately he unwound the long girdle that held his garment. It was the girdle in which he had carried those thirty pieces of silver. He was now quite calm and collected. With that girdle he will hang himself on that tree close by, and when he has fastened it, he will throw himself off from that jagged rock.
\nIt is done; but as, unconscious, not yet dead perhaps, he swung heavily on that branch, under the unwonted burden the girdle gave way, or perhaps the knot, which his trembling hands had made, unloosed, and he fell heavily forward among the jagged rocks beneath, and perished in the manner of which St. Peter reminded his fellow-disciples in the days before Pentecost. But in the Temple the priests knew not what to do with these thirty pieces of money. Their unscrupulous scrupulosity came again upon them. It was not lawful to take into the Temple-treasury, for the purchase of sacred things, money that had been unlawfully gained. In such cases the Jewish Law provided that the money was to be restored to the donor, and, if he insisted on giving it, that he should be induced to spend it for something for the public weal. This explains the apparent discrepancy between the accounts in the Book of Acts and by St. Matthew. By a fiction of law the money was still considered to be Judas\u2019, and to have been applied by him in the purchase of the well-known \u2018potter\u2019s field,\u2019 for the charitable purpose of burying in it strangers. But from henceforth the old name of \u2018potter\u2019s field\u2019 became popularly changed into that of \u2018field of blood\u2019 (Haqal Dema). And yet it was the act of Israel through its leaders: \u2018they took the thirty pieces of silver\u2014the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value, and gave them for the potter\u2019s field!\u2019 It was all theirs, though they would have fain made it all Judas\u2019: the valuing, the selling, and the purchasing. And \u2018the potter\u2019s field\u2019\u2014the very spot on which Jeremiah had been Divinely directed to prophesy against Jerusalem and against Israel: how was it now all fulfilled in the light of the completed sin and apostasy of the people, as prophetically described by Zechariah! This Tophet of Jeremiah, now that they had valued and sold at thirty shekel Israel\u2019s Messiah-Shepherd\u2014truly a Tophet, and become a field of blood! Surely, not an accidental coincidence this, that it should be the place of Jeremy\u2019s announcement of judgment: not accidental, but veritably a fulfilment of his prophecy! And so St. Matthew, targuming this prophecy in form as in its spirit, and in true Jewish manner stringing to it the prophetic description furnished by Zechariah, sets the event before us as the fulfilment of Jeremy\u2019s prophecy.
\nWe are once more outside the Pr\u00e6torium, to which Pilate had summoned from the Temple Sanhedrists and people. The crowd was momentarily increasing from the town. It was not only to see what was about to happen, but to witness another spectacle, that of the release of a prisoner. For it seems to have been the custom, that at the Passover the Roman Governor released to the Jewish populace some notorious prisoner who lay condemned to death. A very significant custom of release this, for which they now began to clamour. It may have been, that to this also they were incited by the Sanhedrists who mingled among them. For if the stream of popular sympathy might be diverted to Bar-Abbas, the doom of Jesus would be the more securely fixed. On the present occasion it might be the more easy to influence the people, since Bar-Abbas belonged to that class, not uncommon at the time, which, under the colourable pretence of political aspirations, committed robbery and other crimes. But these movements had deeply struck root in popular sympathy. A strange name and figure, Bar-Abbas. That could scarcely have been his real name. It means \u2018Son of the Father.\u2019 Was he a political Anti-Christ? And why, if there had not been some conjunction between them, should Pilate have proposed the alternative of Jesus or Bar-Abbas, and not rather that of one of the two malefactors who were actually crucified with Jesus?
\nBut when the Governor, hoping to enlist some popular sympathy, put this alternative to them\u2014nay, urged it, on the ground that neither he nor yet Herod had found any crime in Him, and would even have appeased their thirst for vengeance by offering to submit Jesus to the cruel punishment of scourging, it was in vain. It was now that Pilate sat down on \u2018the judgment seat.\u2019 But ere he could proceed, came that message from his wife about her dream, and the warning entreaty to have nothing to do \u2018with that righteous man.\u2019 An omen such as a dream, and an appeal connected with it, especially in the circumstances of that trial, would powerfully impress a Roman. And for a few moments it seemed as if the appeal to popular feeling on behalf of Jesus might have been successful. But once more the Sanhedrists prevailed. Apparently, all who had been followers of Jesus had been scattered. None of them seem to have been there; and if one or another feeble voice might have been raised for Him, it was hushed in fear of the Sanhedrists. It was Bar-Abbas for whom, incited by the priesthood, the populace now clamoured with increasing vehemence. To the question\u2014half bitter, half mocking\u2014what they wished him to do with Him Whom their own leaders had in their accusation called \u2018King of the Jews,\u2019 surged back, louder and louder, the terrible cry: \u2018Crucify him!\u2019 That such a cry should have been raised, and raised by Jews, and before the Roman, and against Jesus, are in themselves almost inconceivable facts, to which the history of these eighteen centuries has made terrible echo. In vain Pilate expostulated, reasoned, appealed. Popular frenzy only grew as it was opposed.
\nAll reasoning having failed, Pilate had recourse to one more expedient, which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been effective. When a Judge, after having declared the innocence of the accused, actually rises from the judgment-seat, and by a symbolic act pronounces the execution of the accused a judicial murder, from all participation in which he wishes solemnly to clear himself, surely no jury would persist in demanding sentence of death. But in the present instance there was even more. Although we find allusions to some such custom among the heathen, that which here took place was an essentially Jewish rite, which must have appealed the more forcibly to the Jews that it was done by Pilate. And, not only the rite, but the very words were Jewish. They recall not merely the rite prescribed in Deut. 21:6, &c., to mark the freedom from guilt of the elders of a city where untracked murder had been committed, but the very words of such Old Testament expressions as in 2 Sam. 3:28, and Ps. 26:6, 73:13, and, in later times, in Sus. ver. 46. The Mishnah bears witness that this rite was continued. As administering justice in Israel, Pilate must have been aware of this rite. It does not affect the question, whether or not a judge could, especially in the circumstances recorded, free himself from guilt. Certainly, he could not; but such conduct on the part of a Pilate appears so utterly unusual, as, indeed, his whole bearing towards Christ, that we can only account for it by the deep impression which Jesus had made upon him. All the more terrible would be the guilt of Jewish resistance. There is something overawing in Pilate\u2019s, \u2018See ye to it\u2019\u2014a reply to the Sanhedrists\u2019 \u2018See thou to it,\u2019 to Judas, and in the same words. It almost seems, as if the scene of mutual imputation of guilt in the Garden of Eden were being reenacted. The Mishnah tells us, that, after the solemn washing of hands of the elders and their disclaimer of guilt, priests responded with this prayer: \u2018Forgive it to Thy people Israel, whom Thou hast redeemed, O Lord, and lay not innocent blood upon Thy people Israel!\u2019 But here, in answer to Pilate\u2019s words, came back that deep, hoarse cry: \u2018His Blood be upon us,\u2019 and\u2014God help us!\u2014\u2018on our children!\u2019 Some thirty years later, and on that very spot, was judgment pronounced against some of the best in Jerusalem; and among the 3,600 victims of the Governor\u2019s fury, of whom not a few were scourged and crucified right over against the Pr\u00e6torium, were many of the noblest of the citizens of Jerusalem. A few years more, and hundreds of crosses bore Jewish mangled bodies within sight of Jerusalem. And still have these wanderers seemed to bear, from century to century, and from land to land, that burden of blood; and still does it seem to weigh \u2018on us and our children.\u2019
\nThe Evangelists have passed as rapidly as possible over the last scenes of indignity and horror, and we are too thankful to follow their example. Bar-Abbas was at once released. Jesus was handed over to the soldiery to be scourged and crucified, although final and formal judgment had not yet been pronounced. Indeed, Pilate seems to have hoped that the horrors of the scourging might still move the people to desist from the ferocious cry for the Cross. For the same reason we may also hope, that the scourging was not inflicted with the same ferocity as in the case of Christian martyrs, when, with the object of eliciting the incrimination of others, or else recantation, the scourge of leather thongs was loaded with lead, or armed with spikes and bones, which lacerated back, and chest, and face, till the victim sometimes fell down before the judge a bleeding mass of torn flesh. But, however modified, and without repeating the harrowing realism of a Cicero, scourging was the terrible introduction to crucifixion\u2014\u2018the intermediate death.\u2019 Stripped of His clothes, His hands tied and back bent, the Victim would be bound to a column or stake, in front of the Pr\u00e6torium. The scourging ended, the soldiery would hastily cast upon Him His upper garments, and lead Him back into the Pr\u00e6torium. Here they called the whole cohort together, and the silent, faint Sufferer became the object of their ribald jesting. From His bleeding Body they tore the clothes, and in mockery arrayed Him in scarlet or purple. For crown they wound together thorns, and for sceptre they placed in His Hand a reed. Then alternately, in mock proclamation they hailed Him King, or worshipped Him as God, and smote Him or heaped on Him other indignities.
\nSuch a spectacle might well have disarmed enmity, and for ever allayed worldly fears. And so Pilate had hoped, when, at his bidding, Jesus came forth from the Pr\u00e6torium, arrayed as a mock-king, and the Governor presented Him to the populace in words which the Church has ever since treasured: \u2018Behold the Man!\u2019 But, so far from appeasing, the sight only incited to fury the \u2018chief priests\u2019 and their subordinates. This Man before them was the occasion, that on this Paschal Day a heathen dared in Jerusalem itself insult their deepest feelings, mock their most cherished Messianic hopes! \u2018Crucify!\u2019 \u2018Crucify!\u2019 resounded from all sides. Once more Pilate appealed to them, when, unwittingly and unwillingly, it elicited this from the people, that Jesus had claimed to be the Son of God.
\nIf nothing else, what light it casts on the mode in which Jesus had borne Himself amidst those tortures and insults, that this statement of the Jews filled Pilate with fear, and led him to seek again converse with Jesus within the Pr\u00e6torium. The impression which had been made at the first, and been deepened all along, had now passed into the terror of superstition. His first question to Jesus was, whence He was? And when, as was most fitting\u2014since he could not have understood it\u2014Jesus returned no answer, the feelings of the Roman became only the more intense. Would He not speak; did He not know that he had absolute power \u2018to release or to crucify\u2019 Him? Nay, not absolute power\u2014all power came from above; but the guilt in the abuse of power was far greater on the part of apostate Israel and its leaders, who knew whence power came, and to Whom they were responsible for its exercise.
\nSo spake not an impostor; so spake not an ordinary man\u2014after such sufferings and in such circumstances\u2014to one who, whencesoever derived, had the power of life or death over Him. And Pilate felt it\u2014the more keenly, for his cynicism and disbelief of all that was higher. And the more earnestly did he now seek to release Him. But, proportionately, the louder and fiercer was the cry of the Jews for His Blood, till they threatened to implicate in the charge of rebellion against C\u00e6sar the Governor himself, if he persisted in unwonted mercy.
\nSuch danger a Pilate would never encounter. He sat down once more in the judgment-seat, outside the Pr\u00e6torium, in the place called \u2018Pavement,\u2019 and, from its outlook over the City, \u2018Gabbatha,\u2019 \u2018the rounded height.\u2019 So solemn is the transaction that the Evangelist pauses to note once more the day\u2014nay, the very hour, when the process had commenced. It had been the Friday in Passover-week, and between six and seven of the morning. And at the close Pilate once more in mockery presented to them Jesus: \u2018Behold your King!\u2019 Once more they called for His Crucifixion\u2014and, when again challenged, the chief priests burst into the cry, which preceded Pilate\u2019s final sentence, to be presently executed: \u2018We have no king but C\u00e6sar!\u2019
\nWith this cry Judaism was, in the person of its representatives, guilty of denial of God, of blasphemy, of apostasy. It committed suicide; and, ever since, has its dead body been carried in show from land to land, and from century to century: to be dead, and to remain dead, till He come a second time, Who is the Resurrection and the Life!<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 15<\/p>\n
\u2018CRUCIFIED, DEAD, AND BURIED.\u2019<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 27:31\u201343; St. Mark 15:20\u201332a; St. Luke 23:26\u201338; St. John 19:16\u201324; St. Matt. 27:44; St. Mark 15:32b; St. Luke 23:39\u201343; St. John 19:25\u201327; St. Matt. 27:45\u201356; St. Mark 15:33\u201341; St. Luke 23:44\u201349; St. John 19:28\u201330; St. John 19:31\u201337; St. Matt. 27:57\u201361; St. Mark 15:42\u201347; St. Luke 23:50\u201356; St. John 19:38\u201342; St. Matt. 27:62\u201366.)<\/p>\n
IT matters little as regards their guilt, whether, pressing the language of St. John, we are to understand that Pilate delivered Jesus to the Jews to be crucified, or, as we rather infer, to his own soldiers. This was the common practice, and it accords both with the Governor\u2019s former taunt to the Jews, and with the after-notice of the Synoptists. They, to whom He was \u2018delivered,\u2019 \u2018led Him away to be crucified;\u2019 and they who so led Him forth \u2018compelled\u2019 the Cyrenian Simon to bear the Cross. We can scarcely imagine, that the Jews, still less the Sanhedrists, would have done this. But whether formally or not, the terrible crime of slaying, with wicked hands, their Messiah-King rests, alas, on Israel.
\nOnce more was He unrobed and robed. The purple robe was torn from His Wounded Body, the crown of thorns from His Bleeding Brow. Arrayed again in His own, now blood-stained, garments, He was led forth to execution. Only about two hours and a half had passed since the time that He had first stood before Pilate (about half-past six), when the melancholy procession reached Golgotha (at nine o\u2019clock A.M.). In Rome an interval, ordinarily of two days, intervened between a sentence and its execution; but the rule does not seem to have applied to the provinces, if, indeed, in this case the formal rules of Roman procedure were at all observed.
\nThe terrible preparations were soon made: the hammer, the nails, the Cross, the very food for the soldiers who were to watch under each Cross. Four soldiers would be detailed for each Cross, the whole being under the command of a centurion. As always, the Cross was borne to the execution by Him Who was to suffer on it\u2014perhaps His Arms bound to it with cords. But there is happily no evidence\u2014rather, every indication to the contrary\u2014that, according to ancient custom, the neck of the Sufferer was fastened within the patibulum, two horizontal pieces of wood, fastened at the end, to which the hands were bound. Ordinarily, the procession was headed by the centurion, or rather, preceded by one who proclaimed the nature of the crime, and carried a white, wooden board, on which it was written. Commonly, also, it took the longest road to the place of execution, and through the most crowded streets, so as to attract most public attention. But we would suggest, that alike this long circuit and the proclamation of the herald were, in the present instance, dispensed with. They are not hinted at in the text, and seem incongruous to the festive season, and the other circumstances of the history.
\nDiscarding all later legendary embellishments, as only disturbing, we shall try to realise the scene as described in the Gospels. Under the leadership of the centurion, whether or not attended by one who bore the board with the inscription, or only surrounded by the four soldiers, of whom one might carry this tablet, Jesus came forth bearing His Cross. He was followed by two malefactors\u2014\u2018robbers\u2019\u2014probably of the class then so numerous, that covered its crimes by pretensions of political motives. These two, also, would bear each his cross, and probably be attended each by four soldiers. Crucifixion was not a Jewish mode of punishment, although the Maccabee King Jann\u00e6us had so far forgotten the claims of both humanity and religion as on one occasion to crucify not less than 800 persons in Jerusalem itself. But even Herod, with all his cruelty, did not resort to this mode of execution. Nor was it employed by the Romans till after the time of C\u00e6sar, when, with the fast increasing cruelty of punishments, it became fearfully common in the provinces. Especially does it seem to characterise the domination of Rome in Jud\u00e6a under every Governor. During the last siege of Jerusalem hundreds of crosses daily arose, till there seemed not sufficient room nor wood for them, and the soldiery diversified their horrible amusement by new modes of crucifixion. So did the Jewish appeal to Rome for the Crucifixion of Israel\u2019s King come back in hundredfold echoes. But, better than such retribution, the Cross of the God-Man hath put an end to the punishment of the cross, and instead, made the Cross the symbol of humanity, civilisation, progress, peace, and love.
\nAs mostly all abominations of the ancient world, whether in religion or life, crucifixion was of Ph\u0153nician origin, although Rome adopted, and improved on it. The modes of execution among the Jews were: strangulation, beheading, burning, and stoning. In all ordinary circumstances the Rabbis were most reluctant to pronounce sentence of death. This appears even from the injunction that the Judges were to fast on the day of such a sentence. Indeed, two of the leading Rabbis record it, that no such sentence would ever have been pronounced in a Sanhedrin of which they had been members. The indignity of hanging\u2014and this only after the criminal had been otherwise executed\u2014was reserved for the crimes of idolatry and blasphemy. The place where criminals were stoned (Beth haSeqilah) was on an elevation about eleven feet high, from whence the criminal was thrown down by the first witness. If he had not died by the fall, the second witness would throw a large stone on his heart as he lay. If not yet lifeless, the whole people would stone him. At a distance of six feet from the place of execution the criminal was undressed, only the covering absolutely necessary for decency being left. In the case of Jesus we have reason to think that, while the mode of punishment to which He was subjected was un-Jewish, every concession would be made to Jewish custom, and hence we thankfully believe that on the Cross He was spared the indignity of exposure. Such would have been truly un-Jewish.
\nThree kinds of Cross were in use: the so-called St. Andrew\u2019s Cross (\u00d7, the Crux decussata), the Cross in the form of a T (Crux commissa), and the ordinary Latin Cross (+, Crux immissa). We believe that Jesus bore the last of these. This would also most readily admit of affixing the board with the threefold inscription, which we know His Cross bore. Besides, the universal testimony of those who lived nearest the time (Justin Martyr, Iren\u0153us, and others), and who, alas! had only too much occasion to learn what crucifixion meant, is in favour of this view. This Cross, as St. John expressly states, Jesus Himself bore at the outset. And so the procession moved on towards Golgotha. Not only the location, but even the name of that which appeals so strongly to every Christian heart, is matter of controversy. The name cannot have been derived from the skulls which lay about, since such exposure would have been unlawful, and hence must have been due to the skull-like shape and appearance of the place. Accordingly, the name is commonly explained as the Greek form of the Aram\u00e6an Gulgalta, or the Hebrew Gulgoleth, which means a skull.
\nSuch a description would fully correspond, not only to the requirements of the narrative, but to the appearance of the place which, so far as we can judge, represents Golgotha. We cannot here explain the various reasons for which the traditional site must be abandoned. Certain it is, that Golgotha was \u2018outside the gate,\u2019 and \u2018near the City.\u2019 In all likelihood it was the usual place of execution. Lastly, we know that it was situated near gardens, where there were tombs, and close to the highway. The three last conditions point to the north of Jerusalem. It must be remembered that the third wall, which afterwards surrounded Jerusalem, was not built till several years after the Crucifixion. The new suburb of Bezetha extended at that time outside the second wall. Here the great highway passed northwards; close by, were villas and gardens; and here also rockhewn sepulchres have been discovered, which date from that period. But this is not all. The present Damascus Gate in the north of the city seems, in most ancient tradition, to have borne the name of St. Stephen\u2019s Gate, because the Proto-Martyr was believed to have passed through it to his stoning. Close by, then, must have been the place of execution. And at least one Jewish tradition fixes upon this very spot, close by what is known as the Grotto of Jeremiah, as the ancient \u2018place of stoning\u2019 (Beth haSeqilah). And the description of the locality answers all requirements. It is a weird, dreary place, two or three minutes aside from the high road, with a high, rounded, skull-like rocky plateau, and a sudden depression or hollow beneath, as if the jaws of that skull had opened. Whether or not the \u2018tomb of the Herodian period in the rocky knoll to the west of Jeremiah\u2019s Grotto\u2019 was the most sacred spot upon earth\u2014the \u2018Sepulchre in the Garden,\u2019 we dare not positively assert, though every probability attaches to it.
\nThither, then, did that melancholy procession wind, between eight and nine o\u2019clock on that Friday in Passover week. From the ancient Palace of Herod it descended, and probably passed through the gate in the first wall, and so into the busy quarter of Acra. As it proceeded, the numbers who followed from the Temple, from the dense business-quarter through which it moved, increased. Shops, bazaars, and markets were, indeed, closed on the holy feast-day. But quite a crowd of people would come out to line the streets and to follow; and, especially, women, leaving their festive preparations, raised loud laments, not in spiritual recognition of Christ\u2019s claims, but in pity and sympathy. And who could have looked unmoved on such a spectacle, unless fanatical hatred had burnt out of his bosom all that was human? Since the Paschal Supper Jesus had not tasted either food or drink. After the deep emotion of that Feast, with all of holiest institution which it included; after the anticipated betrayal of Judas, and after the farewell to His disciples, He had passed into Gethsemane. There for hours, alone\u2014since His nearest disciples could not watch with Him even one hour\u2014the deep waters had rolled up to His soul. He had drunk of them, immersed, almost perished in them. There had He agonised in mortal conflict, till the great drops of blood forced themselves on His Brow. There had He been delivered up, while they all had fled. To Annas, to Caiaphas, to Pilate, to Herod, and again to Pilate; from indignity to indignity, from torture to torture, had He been hurried all that livelong night, all that morning. All throughout He had borne Himself with a Divine Majesty, which had awakened alike the deeper feelings of Pilate and the infuriated hatred of the Jews. But if His Divinity gave its true meaning to His Humanity, that Humanity gave its true meaning to His voluntary Sacrifice. So far, then, from seeking to hide its manifestations, the Evangelists, not indeed needlessly but unhesitatingly, put them forward. Unrefreshed by food or sleep, after the terrible events of that night and morning, while His pallid Face bore the blood-marks from the crown of thorns, His mangled Body was unable to bear the weight of the Cross. No wonder the pity of the women of Jerusalem was stirred. But ours is not pity, it is worship at the sight. For, underlying His Human Weakness was the Divine Strength which led Him to this voluntary self-surrender and self-exinanition. It was the Divine strength of His pity and love which issued in His Human weakness.
\nUp to that last Gate which led from the \u2018Suburb\u2019 towards the place of execution did Jesus bear His Cross. Then, as we infer, His strength gave way under it. A man was coming from the opposite direction, one from that large colony of Jews which, as we know, had settled in Cyrene. He would be specially noticed; for, few would at that hour, on the festive day, come \u2018out of the country,\u2019 although such was not contrary to the Law. So much has been made of this, that it ought to be distinctly known that travelling, which was forbidden on Sabbaths, was not prohibited on feast-days. Besides, the place whence he came\u2014perhaps his home\u2014might have been within the ecclesiastical boundary of Jerusalem. At any rate, he seems to have been well known, at least afterwards, in the Church\u2014and his sons Alexander and Rufus even better than he. Thus much only can we say with certainty; to identify them with persons of the same name mentioned in other parts of the New Testament can only be matter of speculation. But we can scarcely repress the thought that Simon the Cyrenian had not before that day been a disciple; had only learned to follow Christ, when, on that day, as he came in by the Gate, the soldiery laid hold on him, and against his will forced him to bear the Cross after Christ. Yet another indication of the need of such help comes to us from St. Mark, who uses an expression which conveys, though not necessarily that the Saviour had to be borne, yet that He had to be supported to Golgotha from the place where they met Simon.
\nHere, where, if the Saviour did not actually sink under His burden, it yet required to be transferred to the Cyrenian, while Himself henceforth needed bodily support, we place the next incident in this history. While the Cross was laid on the unwilling Simon, the women who had followed with the populace closed around the Sufferer, raising their lamentations. At His Entrance into Jerusalem, Jesus had wept over the daughters of Jerusalem; as He left it for the last time, they wept over Him. But far different were the reasons for His tears from theirs of mere pity. And, if proof were required of His Divine strength, even in the utmost depth of His Human weakness\u2014how, conquered, He was Conqueror\u2014it would surely be found in the words in which He bade them turn their thoughts of pity where pity would be called for, even to themselves and their children in the near judgment upon Jerusalem. The time would come, when the Old Testament curse of barrenness would be coveted as a blessing. To show the fulfilment of this prophetic lament of Jesus, it is not necessary to recall the harrowing details recorded-by Josephus, when a frenzied mother roasted her own child, and in the mockery of desperateness reserved the half of the horrible meal for those murderers who daily broke in upon her to rob her of what scanty food had been left her; nor yet other of those incidents, too revolting for needless repetition, which the historian of the last siege of Jerusalem chronicles. But how often, these many centuries, must Israel\u2019s women have felt that terrible longing for childlessness, and how often must the prayer of despair for the quick death of falling mountains and burying hills rather than prolonged torture have risen to the lips of Israel\u2019s sufferers! And yet, even so, these words were also prophetic of a still more terrible future! For, if Israel had put such flame to its \u2018green tree,\u2019 how terribly would the Divine judgment burn among the dry wood of an apostate and rebellious people, that had so delivered up its Divine King, and pronounced sentence upon itself by pronouncing it upon Him!
\nAnd yet natural, and, in some respects, genuine, as were the tears of \u2018the daughters of Jerusalem,\u2019 mere sympathy with Christ almost involves guilt, since it implies a view of Him which is essentially the opposite of that which His claims demand. These tears were the emblem of that modern sentiment about the Christ which, in its effusiveness, offers insult rather than homage, and implies rejection rather than acknowledgment of Him. We shrink with horror from the assumption of a higher standpoint, implied in so much of the modern so-called criticism about the Christ. But even beyond this, all mere sentimentalism is here the outcome of unconsciousness of our real condition. When a sense of sin has been awakened in us, we shall mourn, not for what Christ has suffered, but for what He suffered for us. The effusiveness of mere sentiment is impertinence or folly: impertinence, if He was the Son of God; folly, if He was merely Man. And, even from quite another point of view, there is here a lesson to learn. It is the peculiarity of Romanism ever to present the Christ in His Human weakness. It is that of an extreme section on the opposite side, to view Him only in His Divinity. Be it ours ever to keep before us, and to worship as we remember it, that the Christ is the Saviour God-Man.
\nIt was nine of the clock when the melancholy procession reached Golgotha, and the yet more melancholy preparations for the Crucifixion commenced. Avowedly, the punishment was invented to make death as painful and as lingering as the power of human endurance. First, the upright wood was planted in the ground. It was not high, and probably the Feet of the Sufferer were not above one or two feet from the ground. Thus could the communication described in the Gospels take place between Him and others; thus, also, might His Sacred Lips be moistened with the sponge attached to a short stalk of hyssop. Next, the transverse wood (antenna) was placed on the ground, and the Sufferer laid on it, when His Arms were extended, drawn up, and bound to it. Then (this not in Egypt, but in Carthage and in Rome) a strong, sharp nail was driven, first into the Right, then into the Left Hand (the clavi trabales). Next, the Sufferer was drawn up by means of ropes, perhaps ladders; the transverse either bound or nailed to the upright, and a rest or support for the Body (the cornu or sedile) fastened on it. Lastly, the Feet were extended, and either one nail hammered into each, or a larger piece of iron through the two. We have already expressed our belief that the indignity of exposure was not offered at such a Jewish execution. And so might the crucified hang for hours, even days, in the unutterable anguish of suffering, till consciousness at last failed.
\nIt was a merciful Jewish practice to give to those led to execution a draught of strong wine mixed with myrrh, so as to deaden consciousness. This charitable office was performed at the cost of, if not by, an association of women in Jerusalem. That draught was offered to Jesus when He reached Golgotha. But having tasted it, and ascertained its character and object, He would not drink it. It was like His former refusal of the pity of the \u2018daughters of Jerusalem.\u2019 No man could take His Life from Him; He had power to lay it down, and to take it up again. Nor would He here yield to the ordinary weakness of our human nature; nor suffer and die as if it had been a necessity, not a voluntary self-surrender. He would meet Death, even in his sternest and fiercest mood, and conquer by submitting to the full. A lesson this also, though one difficult, to the Christian sufferer.
\nAnd so was He nailed to His Cross, which was placed between, probably somewhat higher than, those of the two malefactors crucified with Him. One thing only still remained: to affix to His Cross the so-called \u2018title\u2019 (titulus), on which was inscribed the charge on which He had been condemned. As already stated, it was customary to carry this board before the prisoner, and there is no reason for supposing any exception in this respect. Indeed, it seems implied in the circumstance, that the \u2018title\u2019 had evidently been drawn up under the direction of Pilate. It was\u2014as might have been expected, and yet most significantly\u2014trilingual: in Latin, Greek, and Aram\u00e6an. We imagine, that it was written in that order, and that the words were those recorded by the Evangelists (excepting St. Luke, who seems to give a modification of the original, or Aram\u00e6an, text). The inscription given by St. Matthew exactly corresponds with that which Eusebius records as the Latin titulus on the cross of one of the early martyrs. We therefore conclude, that it represents the Latin words. Again, it seems only natural, that the fullest, and to the Jews most offensive, description should have been in Aram\u00e6an, which all could read. Very significantly this is given by St. John. It follows, that the inscription given by St. Mark must represent that in Greek. Although much less comprehensive, it had the same number of words, and precisely the same number of letters, as that in Aram\u00e6an, given by St. John.
\nIt seems probable, that the Sanhedrists had heard from some one, who had watched the procession on its way to Golgotha, of the inscription which Pilate had written on the \u2018titulus\u2019\u2014partly to avenge himself on, and partly to deride, the Jews. It is not likely that they would have asked Pilate to take it down after it had been affixed to the Cross; and it seems scarcely credible, that they would have waited outside the Pr\u00e6torium till the melancholy procession commenced its march. We suppose that, after the condemnation of Jesus, the Sanhedrists had gone from the Pr\u00e6torium into the Temple, to take part in its services. When informed of the offensive tablet, they hastened once more to the Pr\u00e6torium, to induce Pilate not to allow it to be put up. This explains the inversion in the order of the account in the Gospel of St. John, or rather, its location in that narrative in immediate connection with the notice, that the Sanhedrists were afraid the Jews who passed by might be influenced by the inscription. We imagine, that the Sanhedrists had originally no intention of doing anything so un-Jewish as not only to gaze at the sufferings of the Crucified, but to even deride Him in His Agony\u2014that, in fact, they had not intended going to Golgotha at all. But when they found that Pilate would not yield to their remonstrances, some of them hastened to the place of Crucifixion, and, mingling with the crowd, sought to incite their jeers, so as to prevent any deeper impression which the significant words of the inscription might have produced.
\nBefore nailing Him to the Cross, the soldiers parted among them the poor worldly inheritance of His raiment. On this point there are slight seeming differences between the notices of the Synoptists and the more detailed account of the Fourth Gospel. Such differences, if real, would afford only fresh evidence of the general trustworthiness of the narrative. For, we bear in mind that, of all the disciples, only St. John witnessed the last scenes, and that therefore the other accounts of it circulating in the early Church must have been derived, so to speak, from second sources. This explains, why perhaps the largest number of seeming discrepancies in the Gospels occurs in the narrative of the closing hours in the Life of Christ, and how, contrary to what otherwise we might have expected, the most detailed as well as precise account of them comes to us from St. John. In the present instance these slight seeming differences may be explained in the following manner. There was, as St. John states, first a division into four parts\u2014one to each of the soldiers\u2014of such garments of the Lord as were of nearly the same value. The head-gear, the outer cloak-like garment, the girdle, and the sandals, would differ little in cost. But the question, which of them was to belong to each of the soldiers, would naturally be decided, as the Synoptists inform us, by lot.
\nBut, besides these four articles of dress, there was the seamless woven inner garment, by far the most valuable of all, and for which, as it could not be partitioned without being destroyed, they would specially cast lots (as St. John reports). Nothing in this world can be accidental, since God is not far from any of us. But in the History of the Christ the Divine purpose, which forms the subject of all prophecy, must have been constantly realised; nay, this must have forced itself on the mind of the observer, and the more irresistibly when, as in the present instance, the outward circumstances were in such sharp contrast to the higher reality. To St. John, the loving and loved disciple, greater contrast could scarcely exist than between this rough partition by lot among the soldiery, and the character and claims of Him Whose garments they were thus apportioning, as if He had been a helpless Victim in their hands. Only one explanation could here suggest itself: that there was a special Divine meaning in the permission of such an event\u2014that it was in fulfilment of ancient prophecy. As he gazed on the terrible scene, the words of the Psalm which portrayed the desertion, the sufferings, and the contempt even unto death of the Servant of the Lord, stood out in the red light of the Sun setting in Blood. They flashed upon his mind\u2014for the first time he understood them; and the flames which played around the Sufferer were seen to be the sacrificial fire that consumed the Sacrifice which He offered. That this quotation is made in the Fourth Gospel alone, proves that its writer was an eyewitness; that it was made in the Fourth Gospel at all, that he was a Jew, deeply imbued with Jewish modes of religious thinking. And the evidence of both is the stronger, as we recall the comparative rareness, and the peculiarly Judaic character of the Old Testament quotations in the Fourth Gospel.
\nIt was when they thus nailed Him to the Cross, and parted His raiment, that He spake the first of the so-called \u2018Seven Words\u2019: \u2018Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.\u2019 Even the reference in this prayer to \u2018what they do\u2019 (not in the past, nor future) points to the soldiers as the primary, though certainly not the sole object of the Saviour\u2019s prayer. But higher thoughts also come to us. In the moment of the deepest abasement of Christ\u2019s Human Nature, the Divine bursts forth most brightly. It is, as if the Saviour would discard all that is merely human in His Sufferings, just as before He had discarded the Cup of stupefying wine. These soldiers were but the unconscious instruments: the form was nothing; the contest was between the Kingdom of God and that of darkness, between the Christ and Satan, and these sufferings were but the necessary path of obedience, and to victory and glory. When He is most human (in the moment of His being nailed to the Cross), then is He most Divine, in the utter discarding of the human elements of human instrumentality and of human suffering. Then also in the utter self-forgetfulness of the God-Man\u2014which is one of the aspects of the Incarnation\u2014does He only remember Divine mercy, and pray for them who crucify Him; and thus also does the Conquered truly conquer His conquerors by asking for them what their deed had forfeited. And lastly, in this, that alike the first and the last of His Utterances begins with \u2018Father,\u2019 does He show by the unbrokenness of His faith and fellowship the real spiritual victory which He has won. And He has won it, not only for the martyrs, who have learned from Him to pray as He did, but for everyone who, in the midst of all that seems most opposed to it, can rise, beyond mere forgetfulness of what is around, to realising faith and fellowship with God as \u2018the Father,\u2019\u2014who through the dark curtain of cloud can discern the bright sky, and can feel the unshaken confidence, if not the unbroken joy, of absolute trust.
\nThis was His first Utterance on the Cross\u2014as regarded them; as regarded Himself; and as regarded God. So, surely, suffered not Man. Has this prayer of Christ been answered? We dare not doubt it; nay, we perceive it in some measure in those drops of blessing which have fallen upon heathen men, and have left to Israel also, even in its ignorance, a remnant according to the election of grace.
\nAnd now began the real agonies of the Cross\u2014physical, mental, and spiritual. It was the weary, unrelieved waiting, as thickening darkness gradually gathered around. Before sitting down to their melancholy watch over the Crucified, the soldiers would refresh themselves, after their exertion in nailing Jesus to the Cross, lifting it up, and fixing it, by draughts of the cheap wine of the country. As they quaffed it, they drank to Him in their coarse brutality, and mockingly came to Him, asking Him to pledge them in response. Their jests were, indeed, chiefly directed not against Jesus personally, but in His Representative Capacity, and so against the hated, despised Jews, whose King they now derisively challenged to save Himself. Yet even so, it seems to us of deepest significance, that He was so treated and derided in His Representative Capacity and as the King of the Jews. It is the undesigned testimony of history, alike as regarded the character of Jesus and the future of Israel. But what from almost any point of view we find so difficult to understand is, the unutterable abasement of the Leaders of Israel\u2014their moral suicide as regarded Israel\u2019s hope and spiritual existence. There, on that Cross, hung He, Who at least embodied that grand hope of the nation; Who, even on their own showing, suffered to the extreme for that idea, and yet renounced it not, but clung fast to it in unshaken confidence; One, to Whose Life or even Teaching no objection could be offered, save that of this grand idea. And yet, when it came to them in the ribald mockery of this heathen soldiery, it evoked no other or higher thoughts in them; and they had the indescribable baseness of joining in the jeer at Israel\u2019s great hope, and of leading the popular chorus in it!
\nFor, we cannot doubt, that\u2014perhaps also by way of turning aside the point of the jeer from Israel\u2014they took it up, and tried to direct it against Jesus; and that they led the ignorant mob in the piteous attempts at derision. And did none of those who so reviled Him in all the chief aspects of His Work feel, that, as Judas had sold the Master for nought and committed suicide, so they were doing in regard to their Messianic hope? For, their jeers cast contempt on the four great facts in the Life and Work of Jesus, which were also the underlying ideas of the Messianic Kingdom: the new relationship to Israel\u2019s religion and the Temple (\u2018Thou that destroyest the Temple, and buildest it in three days\u2019); the new relationship to the Father through the Messiah, the Son of God (\u2018if Thou be the Son of God\u2019); the new all-sufficient help brought to body and soul in salvation (\u2018He saved others\u2019); and, finally, the new relationship to Israel in the fulfilment and perfecting of its Mission through its King (\u2018if He be the King of Israel\u2019). On all these, the taunting challenge of the Sanhedrists, to come down from the Cross, and save Himself, if He would claim the allegiance of their faith, cast what St. Matthew and St. Mark characterise as the \u2018blaspheming\u2019 of doubt. We compare with theirs the account of St. Luke and of St. John. That of St. Luke reads like the report of what had passed, given by one who throughout had been quite close by, perhaps taken part in the Crucifixion\u2014one might almost venture to suggest, that it had been furnished by the Centurion. The narrative of St. John reads markedly like that of an eyewitness, and he a Jud\u00e6an. And as we compare both the general Jud\u00e6an cast and Old Testament quotations in this with the other parts of the Fourth Gospel, we feel as if (as so often), under the influence of the strongest emotions, the later development and peculiar thinking of so many years afterwards had for the time been effaced from the mind of St. John, or rather given place to the Jewish modes of conception and speech, familiar to him in earlier days. Lastly, the account of St. Matthew seems as if written from the priestly point of view, as if it had been furnished by one of the Priests or Sanhedrist-party, present at the time.
\nYet other inferences come to us. First, there is a remarkable relationship between what St. Luke quotes as spoken by the soldiers: \u2018If Thou art the King of the Jews, save Thyself,\u2019 and the report of the words in St. Matthew: \u2018He saved others\u2014Himself He cannot save. He is the King of Israel! Let Him now come down from the Cross, and we will believe on Him!\u2019 These are the words of the Sanhedrists, and they seem to respond to those of the soldiers, as reported by St. Luke, and to carry them further. The \u2018if\u2019 of the soldiers: \u2018If Thou art the King of the Jews,\u2019 now becomes a direct blasphemous challenge. As we think of it, they seem to re-echo, and now with the laughter of hellish triumph, the former Jewish challenge for an outward, infallible sign to demonstrate His Messiahship. But they also take up, and re-echo, what Satan had set before Jesus in the Temptation of the wilderness. At the beginning of His Work, the Tempter had suggested that the Christ should achieve absolute victory by an act of presumptuous self-assertion, utterly opposed to the spirit of the Christ, but which Satan represented as an act of trust in God, such as He would assuredly own. And now, at the close of His Messianic Work, the Tempter suggested, in the challenge of the Sanhedrists, that Jesus had suffered absolute defeat, and that God had publicly disowned the trust which the Christ had put in Him \u2018He trusteth in God: let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him.\u2019 Here, as in the Temptation of the Wilderness, the words misapplied were those of Holy Scripture\u2014in the present instance those of Ps. 22:8. And the quotation, as made by the Sanhedrists, is the more remarkable, that, contrary to what is generally asserted by writers, this Psalm was Messianically applied by the ancient Synagogue. More especially was this verse, which precedes the mocking quotation of the Sanhedrists, expressly applied to the sufferings and the derision which Messiah was to undergo from His enemies: \u2018All they that see Me laugh Me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head.\u2019
\nThe derision of the Sanhedrists under the Cross was, as previously stated, not entirely spontaneous, but had a special motive. The place of Crucifixion was close to the great road which led from the North to Jerusalem. On that Feast-day, when, as there was no law to limit, as on the weekly day of rest, locomotion to a \u2018Sabbath day\u2019s journey,\u2019 many would pass in and out of the City, and the crowd would naturally be arrested by the spectacle of the three Crosses. Equally naturally would they have been impressed by the titulus over the Cross of Christ. The words, describing the Sufferer as \u2018the King of the Jews,\u2019 might, when taken in connection with what was known of Jesus, have raised most dangerous questions. And this the presence of the Sanhedrists was intended to prevent, by turning the popular mind in a totally different direction. It was just such a taunt and argumentation as would appeal to that coarse realism of the common people, which is too often misnamed \u2018common sense.\u2019 St. Luke significantly ascribes the derision of Jesus only to the Rulers, and we repeat, that that of the passers by, recorded by St. Matthew and St. Mark, was excited by them. Thus here also the main guilt rested on the leaders of the people.
\nOne other trait comes to us from St. Luke, confirming our impression that his account was derived from one who had stood quite close to the Cross, probably taken official part in the Crucifixion. St. Matthew and St. Mark merely remark in general, that the derision of the Sanhedrists and people was joined in by the thieves on the Cross. A trait this, which we feel to be not only psychologically true, but the more likely of occurrence, that any sympathy or possible alleviation of their sufferings might best be secured by joining in the scorn of the leaders, and concentrating popular indignation upon Jesus. But St. Luke also records a vital difference between the two \u2018robbers\u2019 on the Cross. The impenitent thief takes up the jeer of the Sanhedrists: \u2018Art Thou not the Christ? Save Thyself and us!\u2019 The words are the more significant, alike in their bearing on the majestic calm and pitying love of the Saviour on the Cross, and on the utterance of the \u2018penitent thief,\u2019 that\u2014strange as it may sound\u2014it seems to have been a terrible phenomenon, noted by historians, that those on the cross were wont to utter insults and imprecations on the onlookers, goaded nature perhaps seeking relief in such outbursts. Not so when the heart was touched in true repentance.
\nIf a more close study of the words of the \u2018penitent thief\u2019 may seem to diminish the fulness of meaning which the traditional view attaches to them, they gain all the more as we perceive their historic reality. His first words were of reproof to his comrade. In that terrible hour, amidst the tortures of a slow death, did not the fear of God creep over him\u2014at least so far as to prevent his joining in the vile jeers of those who insulted the dying agonies of the Sufferer? And this all the more, in the peculiar circumstances. They were all three sufferers; but they two justly, while He Whom he insulted had done nothing amiss. From this basis of fact, the penitent rapidly rose to the height of faith. This is not uncommon, when a mind is learning the lessons of truth in the school of grace. Only, it stands out here the more sharply, because of the dark background against which it is traced in such broad and brightly shining outlines. The hour of the deepest abasement of the Christ was, as all the moments of His greatest Humiliation, to be marked by a manifestation of His Glory and Divine Character\u2014as it were, by God\u2019s testimony to Him in history, if not by the Voice of God from heaven. And, as regarded the \u2018penitent\u2019 himself, we notice the progression in his soul. No one could have been ignorant\u2014least of all those who were led forth with Him to crucifixion, that Jesus did not suffer for any crime, nor for any political movement, but because He professed to embody the great hope of Israel, and was rejected by its leaders. And, if any had been ignorant, the \u2018title\u2019 over the Cross and the bitter enmity of the Sanhedrists, which followed Him with jeers and jibes, where even ordinary humanity, and still more Jewish feeling, would have enjoined silence, if not pity, must have shown what had been the motives of \u2018the condemnation\u2019 of Jesus. But, once the mind was opened to perceive all these facts, the progress would be rapid. In hours of extremity a man may deceive himself and fatally mistake fear for the fear of God, and the remembrance of certain external knowledge for spiritual experience. But, if a man really learns in such seasons, the teaching of years may be compressed into moments, and the dying thief on the Cross might outdistance the knowledge gained by Apostles in their years of following Christ.
\nOne thing stood out before the mind of the \u2018penitent thief,\u2019 who in that hour did fear God. Jesus had done nothing amiss. And this surrounded with a halo of moral glory the inscription on the Cross, long before its words acquired a new meaning. But how did this Innocent One bear Himself in suffering? Right royally\u2014not in an earthly sense, but in that in which alone He claimed the Kingdom. He had so spoken to the women who had lamented Him, as His faint form could no longer bear the burden of the Cross; and He had so refused the draught that would have deadened consciousness and sensibility. Then, as they three were stretched on the transverse beam, and, in the first and sharpest agony of pain, the nails were driven with cruel stroke of hammer through the quivering flesh, and, in the nameless agony that followed the first moments of the Crucifixion, only a prayer for those who, in ignorance, were the instruments of His torture, had passed His Lips. And yet He was innocent, Who so cruelly suffered! All that followed must have only deepened the impression. With what calm of endurance and majesty of silence He had borne the insult and jeers of those who, even to the spiritually unenlightened eye, must have seemed so infinitely far beneath Him! This man did feel the \u2018fear\u2019 of God, who now learned the new lesson in which the fear of God was truly the beginning of wisdom. And, once he gave place to the moral element, when under the fear of God he reproved his comrade, this new moral decision became to him, as so often, the beginning of spiritual life. Rapidly he now passed into the light, and onwards and upwards: \u2018Lord, remember me, when Thou comest in Thy Kingdom!\u2019
\nThe familiar words of our Authorised Version\u2014\u2018When Thou comest into Thy Kingdom\u2019\u2014convey the idea of what we might call a more spiritual meaning of the petition. But we can scarcely believe, that at that moment it implied either that Christ was then going into His Kingdom, or that the \u2018penitent thief\u2019 looked to Christ for admission into the Heavenly Kingdom. The words are true to the Jewish point of vision of the man. He recognised and owned Jesus as the Messiah, and he did so, by a wonderful forthgoing of faith, even in the utmost Humiliation of Christ. And this immediately passed beyond the Jewish standpoint, for he expected Jesus soon to come back in His Kingly might and power, when he asked to be remembered by Him in mercy. And here we have again to bear in mind that, during the Life of Christ upon earth, and, indeed, before the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, men always first learned to believe in the Person of the Christ, and then to know His teaching and His Mission in the forgiveness of sins. It was so in this case also. If the \u2018penitent thief\u2019 had learned to know the Christ, and to ask for gracious recognition in His coming Kingdom, the answering assurance of the Lord conveyed not only the comfort that his prayer was answered, but the teaching of spiritual things which he knew not yet, and so much needed to know. The \u2018penitent\u2019 had spoken of the future, Christ spoke of \u2018to-day\u2019; the penitent had prayed about that Messianic Kingdom which was to come, Christ assured him in regard to the state of the disembodied spirits, and conveyed to him the promise that he would be there in the abode of the blessed\u2014\u2018Paradise\u2019\u2014and that through means of Himself as the Messiah: \u2018men, I say unto thee\u2014To-day with Me shalt thou be in the Paradise.\u2019 Thus did Christ give him that spiritual knowledge which he did not yet possess\u2014the teaching concerning the \u2018to-day,\u2019 the need of gracious admission into Paradise, and that with and through Himself\u2014in other words, concerning the forgiveness of sins and the opening of the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers. This, as the first and foundation-creed of the soul, was the first and foundation-fact concerning the Messiah.
\nThis was the Second Utterance from the Cross. The first had been of utter self-forgetfulness; the second of deepest, wisest, most gracious spiritual teaching. And, had He spoken none other than these, He would have been proved to be the Son of God.
\nNothing more would require to be said to the \u2018penitent\u2019 on the Cross. The events which followed, and the words which Jesus would still speak, would teach him more fully than could otherwise have been done. Some hours\u2014probably two\u2014had passed since Jesus had been nailed to the Cross. We wonder how it came that St. John, who tells us some of the incidents with such exceeding particularity, and relates all with the vivid realisation of a most deeply interested eyewitness, should have been silent as to others\u2014especially as to those hours of derision, as well as to the conversion of the penitent thief. His silence seems to us to have been due to absence from the scene. We part company with him after his detailed account of the last scene before Pilate. The final sentence pronounced, we suppose him to have hurried into the City, and to have acquainted such of the disciples as he might find\u2014but especially those faithful women and the Virgin-Mother\u2014with the terrible scenes that had passed since the previous evening. Thence he returned to Golgotha, just in time to witness the Crucifixion, which he again describes with peculiar fulness of details. When the Saviour was nailed to the Cross, St. John seems once more to have returned to the City\u2014this time, to bring back with him those women, in company of whom we now find him standing close to the Cross. A more delicate, tender, loving service could not have been rendered than this. Alone, of all the disciples, he is there\u2014not afraid to be near Christ, in the Palace of the High-Priest, before Pilate, and now under the Cross. And alone he renders to Christ this tender service of bringing the women and Mary to the Cross, and to them the protection of his guidance and company. He loved Jesus best; and it was fitting that to his manliness and affection should be entrusted the unspeakable privilege of Christ\u2019s dangerous inheritance.
\nThe narrative leaves the impression that with the beloved disciple these four women were standing close to the Cross: the Mother of Jesus, the Sister of His Mother, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. A comparison with what is related by St. Matthew and St. Mark supplies further important particulars. We read there of only three women, the name of the Mother of our Lord being omitted. But then it must be remembered that this refers to a later period in the history of the Crucifixion. It seems as if John had fulfilled to the letter the Lord\u2019s command: \u2018Behold thy mother,\u2019 and literally \u2018from that very hour\u2019 taken her to his own home. If we are right in this supposition, then, in the absence of St. John\u2014who led away the Virgin-Mother from that scene of horror\u2014the other three women would withdraw to a distance, where we find them at the end, not \u2018by the Cross,\u2019 as in St. John 19:25, but \u2018beholding from afar,\u2019 and now joined by others also, who had loved and followed Christ.
\nWe further notice that, the name of the Virgin-Mother being omitted, the other three are the same as mentioned by St. John; only, Mary of Clopas is now described as \u2018the mother of James and Joses,\u2019 and Christ\u2019s \u2018Mother\u2019s Sister\u2019 as \u2018Salome\u2019 and \u2018the mother of Zebedee\u2019s children.\u2019 Thus Salome, the wife of Zebedee and St. John\u2019s mother, was the sister of the Virgin, and the beloved disciple the cousin (on the mother\u2019s side) of Jesus, and the nephew of the Virgin. This also helps to explain why the care of the Mother had been entrusted to him. Nor was Mary the wife of Clopas unconnected with Jesus. What we have every reason to regard as a trustworthy account describes Clopas as the brother of Joseph, the husband of the Virgin. Thus, not only Salome as the sister of the Virgin, but Mary also as the wife of Clopas, would, in a certain sense, have been His aunt, and her sons His cousins. And so we notice among the twelve Apostles five cousins of the Lord: the two sons of Salome and Zebedee, and the three sons of Alph\u00e6us or Clopas and Mary: James, Judas surnamed Lebb\u00e6us and Thadd\u00e6us, and Simon surnamed Zelotes or Canan\u00e6an.
\nWe can now in some measure realise events. When St. John had seen the Saviour nailed to the Cross, he had gone to the City and brought with him for a last mournful farewell the Virgin, accompanied by those who, as most nearly connected with her, would naturally be with her: her own sister Salome, the sister-in-law of Joseph and wife (or more probably widow) of Clopas, and her who of all others had experienced most of His blessed power to save\u2014Mary of Magdala. Once more we reverently mark His Divine calm of utter self-forgetfulness and His human thoughtfulness for others. As they stood under the Cross, He committed His Mother to the disciple whom He loved, and established a new human relationship between him and her who was nearest to Himself. And calmly, earnestly, and immediately did that disciple undertake the sacred charge, and bring her\u2014whose soul the sword had pierced\u2014away from the scene of unutterable woe to the shelter of his home. And this temporary absence of John from the Cross may account for the want of all detail in his narrative till quite the closing scene.
\nNow at last all that concerned the earthward aspect of His Mission\u2014so far as it had to be done on the Cross\u2014was ended. He had prayed for those who had nailed Him to it, in ignorance of what they did; He had given the comfort of assurance to the penitent, who had owned His Glory in His Humiliation; and He had made the last provision of love in regard to those nearest to Him. So to speak, the relations of His Humanity\u2014that which touched His Human Nature in any direction\u2014had been fully met. He had done with the Human aspect of His Work and with earth. And, appropriately, Nature seemed now to take sad farewell of Him, and mourned its departing Lord, Who, by His Personal connection with it, had once more lifted it from the abasement of the Fall into the region of the Divine, making it the dwelling-place, the vehicle for the manifestation, and the obedient messenger of the Divine.
\nFor three hours had the Saviour hung on the Cross. It was midday. And now the Sun was craped in darkness from the sixth to the ninth hour. No purpose can be served by attempting to trace the source of this darkness. It could not have been an eclipse, since it was the time of full moon; nor can we place reliance on the later reports on this subject of ecclesiastical writers. It seems only in accordance with the Evangelic narrative to regard the occurrence of the event as supernatural, while the event itself might have been brought about by natural causes; and among these we must call special attention to the earthquake in which this darkness terminated. For, it is a well-known phenomenon that such darkness not unfrequently precedes earthquakes. On the other hand, it must be freely admitted, that the language of the Evangelists seems to imply that this darkness extended, not only over the land of Israel, but over the inhabited earth. The expression must, of course, not be pressed to its full literality, but explained as meaning that it extended far beyond Jud\u00e6a and to other lands. No reasonable objection can be raised from the circumstance, that neither the earthquake nor the preceding darkness are mentioned by any profane writer whose works have been preserved, since it would surely not be maintained that an historical record must have been preserved of every earthquake that occurred, and of every darkness that may have preceded it. But the most unfair argument is that, which tries to establish the unhistorical character of this narrative by an appeal to what are described as Jewish sayings expressive of similar expectancy. It is quite true that in Old Testament prophecy\u2014whether figuratively or really\u2014the darkening, though not only of the sun, but also of the moon and stars, is sometimes connected, not with the Coming of Messiah, still less with His Death, but with the final Judgment. But Jewish tradition never speaks of such an event in connection with Messiah, or even with the Messianic judgments, and the quotations from Rabbinic writings made by negative critics must be characterised as not only inapplicable but even unfair.
\nBut to return from this painful digression. The three hours\u2019 darkness was such not only to Nature; Jesus, also, entered into darkness: Body, Soul, and Spirit. It was now, not as before, a contest\u2014but suffering. Into this, to us, fathomless depth of the mystery of His Sufferings, we dare not, as indeed we cannot, enter. It was of the Body; yet not of the Body only, but of physical life. And it was of the Soul and Spirit; yet not of them alone, but in their conscious relation to man and to God. And it was not of the Human only in Christ, but in its indissoluble connection with the Divine: of the Human, where it reached the utmost verge of humiliation to body, soul, and spirit\u2014and in it of the Divine, to utmost self-exinanition. The increasing, nameless agonies of the Crucifixion were deepening into the bitterness of death. All nature shrinks from death, and there is a physical horror of the separation between body and soul which, as a purely natural phenomenon, is in every instance only overcome, and that only by a higher principle. And we conceive that the purer the being the greater the violence of the tearing asunder of the bond with which God Almighty originally bound together body and soul. In the Perfect Man this must have reached the highest degree. So, also, had in those dark hours the sense of man-forsakenness and of His own isolation from man; so, also, had the intense silence of God, the withdrawal of God, the sense of His God-forsakenness and absolute loneliness. We dare not here speak of punitive suffering, but of forsakenness and loneliness. And yet, as we ask ourselves how this forsakenness can be thought of as so complete in view of His Divine consciousness, which at least could not have been wholly extinguished by His Self-exinanition, we feel that yet another element must be taken into account. Christ on the Cross suffered for man; He offered Himself a sacrifice; He died for our sins, that, as death was the wages of sin, so He died as the Representative of man\u2014for man and in room of man; He obtained for man \u2018eternal redemption,\u2019 having given His Life \u2018a ransom\u2019 for many. For, men were \u2018redeemed\u2019 with the \u2018precious Blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot;\u2019 and Christ \u2018gave Himself for us, that He might \u201credeem\u201d us from all iniquity;\u2019 He \u2018gave Himself \u201ca ransom\u201d for all;\u2019 Christ \u2018died for all;\u2019 Him, Who knew no sin, God \u2018made sin for us;\u2019 \u2018Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us\u2019\u2014and this, with express reference to the Crucifixion. This sacrificial, vicarious, expiatory, and redemptive character of His Death, if it does not explain to us, yet helps us to understand, Christ\u2019s sense of God-forsakenness in the supreme moment of the Cross; if one might so word it\u2014the passive character of His activeness through the active character of His passiveness.
\nIt was this combination of the Old Testament idea of sacrifice, and of the Old Testament ideal of willing suffering as the Servant of Jehovah, now fulfilled in Christ, which found its fullest expression in the language of the twenty-second Psalm. it was fitting\u2014rather, it was true\u2014that the willing suffering of the true Sacrifice should now find vent in its opening words: \u2018My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?\u2019\u2014Eli, Eli, lema sabachthanei? These words, cried with a loud voice at the close of the period of extreme agony, marked the climax and the end of this suffering of Christ, of which the utmost compass was the withdrawal of God and the felt loneliness of the Sufferer. But they that stood by the Cross, misinterpreting the meaning, and mistaking the opening words for the name Elias, imagined that the Sufferer had called for Elias. We can scarcely doubt, that these were the soldiers who stood by the Cross. They were not necessarily Romans; on the contrary, as we have seen, these Legions were generally recruited from Provincials. On the other hand, no Jew would have mistaken Eli for the name of Elijah, nor yet misinterpreted a quotation of Psalm 22:1 as a call for that prophet. And it must be remembered, that the words were not whispered, but cried with a loud voice. But all entirely accords with the misunderstanding of non-Jewish soldiers, who, as the whole history shows, had learned from His accusers and the infuriated mob snatches of a distorted story of the Christ.
\nAnd presently the Sufferer emerged on the other side. It can scarcely have been a minute or two from the time that the cry from the twenty-second Psalm marked the high-point of His Agony, when the words \u2018I thirst\u2019 seem to indicate, by the prevalence of the merely human aspect of the suffering, that the other and more terrible aspect of sin-bearing and God-forsakenness was past. To us, therefore, this seems the beginning, if not of Victory, yet of Rest, of the End. St. John alone records this Utterance, prefacing it with this distinctive statement, that Jesus so surrendered Himself to the human feeling, seeking the bodily relief by expressing His thirst: \u2018knowing that all things were now finished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.\u2019 In other words, the climax of Theanthropic Suffering in His feeling of God-forsakenness, which had led to the utterance of Psalm 22:1, was now, to His consciousness, the end of all which in accordance with Scripture-prediction He had to bear. He now could and did yield Himself to the mere physical wants of His Body.
\nIt seems as if St. John, having perhaps just returned to the scene, and standing with the women \u2018afar off,\u2019 beholding these things, had hastened forward on the cry from Psalm 22, and heard Him express the feeling of thirst, which immediately followed. And so St. John alone supplies the link between that cry and the movement on the part of the soldiers, which St. Matthew and St. Mark, as well as St. John, report. For, it would be impossible to understand why, on what the soldiers regarded as a call for Elijah, one of them should have hastened to relieve His thirst, but for the Utterance recorded in the Fourth Gospel. But we can quite understand it, if the Utterance, \u2018I thirst,\u2019 followed immediately on the previous cry.
\nOne of the soldiers\u2014may we not be allowed to believe, one who either had already learned from that Cross, or was about to learn, to own Him Lord\u2014moved by sympathy, now ran to offer some slight refreshment to the Sufferer by filling a sponge with the rough wine of the soldiers and putting it to His Lips, having first fastened it to the stem (\u2018reed\u2019) of the caper (\u2018hyssop\u2019), which is said to grow to the height of even two or three feet. But, even so, this act of humanity was not allowed to pass unchallenged by the coarse jibes of the others, who would bid him leave the relief of the Sufferer to the agency of Elijah, which in their opinion He had invoked. Nor should we perhaps wonder at the weakness of that soldier himself, who, though he would not be hindered in his good deed, yet averted the opposition of the others by apparently joining in their mockery.
\nBy accepting the physical refreshment offered Him, the Lord once more indicated the completion of the work of His Passion. For, as He would not enter on it with His senses and physical consciousness lulled by narcotised wine, so He would not pass out of it with senses and physical consciousness dulled by the absolute failure of life-power. Hence He took what for the moment restored the physical balance, needful for thought and word. And so He immediately passed on to \u2018taste death for every man.\u2019 For, the two last \u2018sayings\u2019 of the Saviour now followed in rapid succession: first, that with a loud voice, which expressed it, that the work given Him to do, as far as concerned His Passion, was \u2018finished;\u2019 and then, that in the words of Psalm 31:5, in which He commended His Spirit into the Hands of the Father. Attempts at comment could only weaken the solemn thoughts which the words awaken. Yet some points should be noted for our teaching. His last cry \u2018with a loud voice\u2019 was not like that of one dying. St. Mark notes, that this made such deep impression on the Centurion. In the language of the early Christian hymn, it was not Death which approached Christ, but Christ Death: He died without death. Christ encountered Death, not as conquered, but as the Conqueror. And this also was part of His work, and for us: now the beginning of His Triumph. And with this agrees the peculiar language of St. John, that He \u2018bowed the Head, and gave up the Spirit\u2019 (\u03c4\u1f78 \u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u1fe6\u03bc\u03b1).
\nNor should we fail to mark the peculiarities of His last Utterance. The \u2018My God\u2019 of the fourth Utterance had again passed into the \u2018Father\u2019 of conscious fellowship. And yet neither in the Hebrew original of this Psalm, nor in its Greek rendering by the LXX., does the word \u2018Father\u2019 occur. Again, in the LXX. translation of the Hebrew text this word expressive of entrustment\u2014the commending\u2014is in the future tense; on the lips of our Lord it is in the present tense. And the word, in its New Testament sense, means not merely commending: it is to deposit, to commit for safe keeping. That in dying\u2014or rather meeting and overcoming Death\u2014He chose and adapted these words, is matter for deepest thankfulness to the Church. He spoke them for His people in a twofold sense: on their behalf, that they might be able to speak them; and \u2018for them,\u2019 that henceforth they might speak them after Him. How many thousands have pillowed their heads on them when going to rest! They were the last words of a Polycarp, a Bernard, Huss, Luther, and Melanchthon. And to us also they may be the fittest and the softest lullaby. And in \u2018the Spirit\u2019 which He had committed to God did He now descend into Hades, \u2018and preached unto the spirits in prison.\u2019 But behind this great mystery have closed the two-leaved gates of brass, which only the Hand of the Conqueror could burst open.
\nAnd now a shudder ran through Nature, as its Sun had set. We dare not do more than follow the rapid outlines of the Evangelic narrative. As the first token, it records the rending of the Temple-Veil in two from the top downward to the bottom; as the second, the quaking of the earth, the rending of the rocks and the opening of the graves. Although most writers have regarded this as indicating the strictly chronological succession, there is nothing in the text to bind us to such a conclusion. Thus, while the rending of the Veil is recorded first, as being the most significant token to Israel, it may have been connected with the earthquake, although this alone might scarcely account for the tearing of so heavy a Veil from the top to the bottom. Even the latter circumstance has its significance. That some great catastrophe, betokening the impending destruction of the Temple, had occurred in the Sanctuary about this very time, is confirmed by not less than four mutually independent testimonies: those of Tacitus, of Josephus, of the Talmud, and of earliest Christian tradition. The most important of these are, of course, the Talmud and Josephus. The latter speaks of the mysterious extinction of the middle and chief light in the Golden Candlestick, forty years before the destruction of the Temple; and both he and the Talmud refer to a supernatural opening by themselves of the great Temple-gates that had been previously closed, which was regarded as a portent of the coming destruction of the Temple. We can scarcely doubt, that some historical fact must underlie so peculiar and widespread a tradition, and we cannot help feeling that it may be a distorted version of the occurrence of the rending of the Temple-Veil (or of its report) at the Crucifixion of Christ.
\nBut even if the rending of the Temple-Veil had commenced with the earthquake, and, according to the Gospel to the Hebrews, with the breaking of the great lintel over the entrance, it could not be wholly accounted for in this manner. According to Jewish tradition, there were, indeed, two Veils before the entrance to the Most Holy Place. The Talmud explains this on the ground that it was not known, whether in the former Temple the Veil had hung inside or outside the entrance, and whether the partition-wall had stood in the Holy or Most Holy Place. Hence (according to Maimonides) there was not any wall between the Holy and Most Holy Place, but the space of one cubit, assigned to it in the former Temple, was left unoccupied, and one Veil hung on the side of the Holy, the other on that of the Most Holy Place. According to an account dating from Temple-times, there were altogether thirteen Veils used in various parts of the Temple\u2014two new ones being made every year. The Veils before the Most Holy Place were 40 cubits (60 feet) long, and 20 (30 feet) wide, of the thickness of the palm of the hand, and wrought in 72 squares, which were joined together; and these Veils were so heavy, that, in the exaggerated language of the time, it needed 300 priests to manipulate each. If the Veil was at all such as is described in the Talmud, it could not have been rent in twain by a mere earthquake or the fall of the lintel, although its composition in squares fastened together might explain, how the rent might be as described in the Gospel.
\nIndeed, everything seems to indicate that, although the earthquake might furnish the physical basis, the rent of the Temple-Veil was\u2014with reverence be it said\u2014really made by the Hand of God. As we compute, it may just have been the time when, at the Evening-Sacrifice, the officiating Priesthood entered the Holy Place, either to burn the incense or to do other sacred service there. To see before them, not as the aged Zacharias at the beginning of this history the Angel Gabriel, but the Veil of the Holy Place rent from top to bottom\u2014that beyond it they could scarcely have seen\u2014and hanging in two parts from its fastenings above and at the side, was, indeed, a terrible portent, which would soon become generally known, and must, in some form or other, have been preserved in tradition. And they all must have understood, that it meant that God\u2019s Own Hand had rent the Veil, and for ever deserted and thrown open that Most Holy Place where He had so long dwelt in the mysterious gloom, only lit up once a year by the glow of the censer of him, who made atonement for the sins of the people.
\nOther tokens were not wanting. In the earthquake the rocks were rent, and their tombs opened. This, as Christ descended into Hades. And when He ascended on the third day, it was with victorious saints who had left those open graves. To many in the Holy City on that ever-memorable first day, and in the week that followed, appeared the bodies of many of those saints who had fallen on sleep in the sweet hope of that which had now become reality.
\nBut on those who stood under the Cross, and near it, did all that was witnessed make the deepest and most lasting impression. Among them we specially mark the Centurion under whose command the soldiers had been. Many a scene of horror must he have witnessed in those sad times of the Crucifixion, but none like this. Only one conclusion could force itself on his mind. It was that which, we cannot doubt, had made its impression on his heart and conscience. Jesus was not what the Jews, His infuriated enemies, had described Him. He was what He professed to be, what His bearing on the Cross and His Death attested Him to be: \u2018righteous,\u2019 and hence, \u2018the Son of God.\u2019 From this there was only a step to personal allegiance to Him, and, as previously suggested, we may possibly owe to him some of those details which St. Luke alone has preserved.
\nThe brief spring-day was verging towards the \u2018evening of the Sabbath.\u2019 In general, the Law ordered that the body of a criminal should not be left hanging unburied over night. Perhaps in ordinary circumstances the Jews might not have appealed so confidently to Pilate as actually to ask him to shorten the sufferings of those on the Cross, since the punishment of crucifixion often lasted not only for hours but days, ere death ensued. But here was a special occasion. The Sabbath about to open was a \u2018high-day\u2019\u2014it was both a Sabbath and the second Paschal Day, which was regarded as in every respect equally sacred with the first\u2014nay, more so, since the so-called Wavesheaf was then offered to the Lord. And what the Jews now proposed to Pilate was, indeed, a shortening, but not in any sense a mitigation, of the punishment. Sometimes there was added to the punishment of crucifixion that of breaking the bones (crurifragium, \u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03bb\u03bf\u03ba\u03bf\u03c0\u03af\u03b1) by means of a club or hammer. This would not itself bring death, but the breaking of the bones was always followed by a coup de gr\u00e2ce, by sword, lance, or stroke (the perforatio or percussio sub alas), which immediately put an end to what remained of life. Thus the \u2018breaking of the bones\u2019 was a sort of increase of punishment, by way of compensation for its shortening by the final stroke that followed.
\nIt were unjust to suppose, that in their anxiety to fulfil the letter of the Law as to burial on the eve of that high Sabbath, the Jews had sought to intensify the sufferings of Jesus. The text gives no indication of this; and they could not have asked for the final stroke to be inflicted without the \u2018breaking of the bones,\u2019 which always preceded it. The irony of this punctilious care for the letter of the Law about burial and the high Sabbath by those who had betrayed and crucified their Messiah on the first Passover-day is sufficiently great, and, let us add, terrible, without importing fictitious elements. St. John, who, perhaps, immediately on the death of Christ, left the Cross, alone reports the circumstance. Perhaps it was when he concerted with Joseph of Arimath\u00e6a, with Nicodemus, or the two Marys, measures for the burying of Christ, that he learned of the Jewish deputation to Pilate, followed it to the Pr\u00e6torium, and then watched how it was all carried out on Golgotha. He records, how Pilate acceded to the Jewish demand, and gave directions for the crurifragium, and permission for the after-removal of the dead bodies, which otherwise might have been left to hang, till putrescence or birds of prey had destroyed them. But St. John also tells us what he evidently regards as so great a prodigy that he specially vouches for it, pledging his own veracity as an eyewitness, and grounding on it an appeal to the faith of those to whom his Gospel is addressed. It is, that certain \u2018things came to pass [not as in our A.V., \u2018were done\u2019] that the Scripture should be fulfilled,\u2019 or, to put it otherwise, by which the Scripture was fulfilled. These things were two, to which a third phenomenon, not less remarkable, must be added. For, first, when, in the crurifragium, the soldiers had broken the bones of the two malefactors, and then came to the Cross of Jesus, they found that He was dead already, and so \u2018a bone of Him\u2019 was \u2018not broken.\u2019 Had it been otherwise, the Scripture concerning the Paschal Lamb, as well as that concerning the Righteous Suffering Servant of Jehovah, would have been broken. In Christ alone these two ideas of the Paschal Lamb and the Righteous Suffering Servant of Jehovah are combined into a unity, and fulfilled in their highest meaning. And when, by a strange concurrence of circumstances, it \u2018came to pass\u2019 that, contrary to what might have been expected, \u2018a bone of Him\u2019 was \u2018not broken,\u2019 this outward fact served as the finger to point to the predictions which were fulfilled in Him.
\nNot less remarkable is the second fact. If, on the Cross of Christ, these two fundamental ideas in the prophetic description of the work of the Messiah had been set forth: the fulfilment of the Paschal Sacrifice, which, as that of the Covenant, underlay all sacrifices, and the fulfilment of the ideal of the Righteous Servant of God, suffering in a world that hated God, and yet proclaiming and realising His Kingdom, a third truth remained to be exhibited. It was not in regard to the character, but the effects, of the Work of Christ\u2014its reception, alike in the present and in the future. This had been indicated in the prophecies of Zechariah, which foretold how, in the day of Israel\u2019s final deliverance and national conversion, God would pour out the spirit of grace and of supplication, and as \u2018they shall look on Him Whom they pierced,\u2019 the spirit of true repentance would be granted them, alike nationally and individually. The application of this to Christ is the more striking, that even the Talmud refers the prophecy to the Messiah. And as these two things really applied to Christ, alike in His rejection and in His future return, so did the strange historical occurrence at His Crucifixion once more point to it as the fulfilment of Scripture prophecy. For, although the soldiers, on finding Jesus dead, broke not one of His Bones, yet, as it was necessary to make sure of His Death, one of them, with a lance, \u2018pierced His Side,\u2019 with a wound so deep, that Thomas might afterwards have thrust his hand into His Side.
\nAnd with these two, as fulfilling Holy Scripture, yet a third phenomenon was associated, symbolic of both. As the soldier pierced the Side of the Dead Christ, \u2018forthwith came thereout Blood and Water.\u2019 It has been thought by some, that there was physical cause for this\u2014that Christ had literally died of a broken heart, and that, when the lance pierced first the lung filled with blood and then the pericardium filled with serous fluid, there flowed from the wound this double stream. In such cases, the lesson would be that reproach had literally broken His Heart. But we can scarcely believe that St. John could have wished to convey this without clearly setting it forth\u2014thus assuming on the part of his readers knowledge of an obscure, and, it must be added, a scientifically doubtful phenomenon. Accordingly, we rather believe that to St. John, as to most of us, the significance of the fact lay in this, that out of the Body of One dead had flowed Blood and Water\u2014that corruption had not fastened on Him. Then, there would be the symbolic meaning conveyed by the Water (from the pericardium) and the Blood (from the heart)\u2014a symbolism most true, if corruption had no power nor hold on Him\u2014if in Death He was not dead, if He vanquished Death and Corruption, and in this respect also fulfilled the prophetic ideal of not seeing corruption. To this symbolic bearing of the flowing of Water and Blood from His pierced side, on which the Evangelist dwells in his Epistle, and to its eternal expression in the symbolism of the two Sacraments, we can only point the thoughtful Christian. For, the two Sacraments mean that Christ had come; that over Him, Who was crucified for us and loved us unto death with His broken heart, Death and Corruption had no power; and that He liveth for us with the pardoning and cleansing power of His offered Sacrifice.
\nYet one other scene remains to be recorded. Whether before, or, more probably, after the Jewish deputation to the Roman Governor, another and a strange application came to Pilate. It was from one apparently well known, a man not only of wealth and standing, but whose noble bearing corresponded to his social condition, and who was known as a just and a good man. Joseph of Arimath\u00e6a was a Sanhedrist, but he had not consented either to the counsel or the deed of his colleagues. It must have been generally known, that he was one of those \u2018which waited for the Kingdom of God.\u2019 But he had advanced beyond what that expression implies. Although secretly, for fear of the Jews: he was a disciple of Jesus. It is in strange contrast to this \u2018fear,\u2019 that St. Mark tells us, that, \u2018having dared,\u2019 \u2018he went in unto Pilate and asked for the Body of Jesus.\u2019 Thus, under circumstances the most unlikely and unfavourable, were his fears converted into boldness, and he, whom fear of the Jews had restrained from making open avowal of discipleship during the life-time of Jesus, not only professed such of the Crucified Christ, but took the most bold and decided step before Jews and Gentiles in connection with it. So does trial elicit faith, and the wind, which quenches the feeble flame that plays around the outside, fan into brightness the fire that burns deep within, though for a time unseen. Joseph of Arimath\u00e6a, now no longer a secret disciple, but bold in the avowal of his reverent love, would show to the Dead Body of his Master all veneration. And the Divinely ordered concurrence of circumstances not only helped his pious purpose, but invested all with deepest symbolic significance. It was Friday afternoon, and the Sabbath was drawing near. No time therefore was to be lost, if due honour were to be paid to the Sacred Body. Pilate gave It to Joseph of Arimath\u00e6a. Such was within his power, and a favour not unfrequently accorded in like circumstances. But two things must have powerfully impressed the Roman Governor, and deepened his former thoughts about Jesus: first, that the death on the Cross had taken place so rapidly, a circumstance on which he personally questioned the Centurion, and then the bold appearance and request of such a man as Joseph of Arimath\u00e6a. Or did the Centurion express to the Governor also some such feeling as that which had found utterance under the Cross in the words: \u2018Truly this Man was the Son of God\u2019?
\nThe proximity of the holy Sabbath, and the consequent need of haste, may have suggested or determined the proposal of Joseph to lay the Body of Jesus in his own rock-hewn new tomb, wherein no one had yet been laid. The symbolic significance of this is the more marked, that the symbolism was undesigned. These rockhewn sepulchres, and the mode of laying the dead in them, have been very fully described in connection with the burying of Lazarus. We may therefore wholly surrender ourselves to the sacred thoughts that gather around us. The Cross was lowered and laid on the ground; the cruel nails drawn out, and the ropes unloosed. Joseph, with those who attended him, \u2018wrapped\u2019 the Sacred Body \u2018in a clean linen cloth,\u2019 and rapidly carried It to the rock-hewn tomb in the garden close by. Such a rock-hewn tomb or cave (Meartha) had niches (Kukhin), where the dead were laid. It will be remembered, that at the entrance to \u2018the tomb\u2019\u2014and within \u2018the rock\u2019\u2014there was \u2018a court,\u2019 nine feet square, where ordinarily the bier was deposited, and its bearers gathered to do the last offices for the Dead. Thither we suppose Joseph to have carried the Sacred Body, and then the last scene to have taken place. For now another, kindred to Joseph in spirit, history, and position, had come. The same spiritual Law, which had brought Joseph to open confession, also constrained the profession of that other Sanhedrist, Nicodemus. We remember, how at the first he had, from fear of detection, come to Jesus by night, and with what bated breath he had pleaded with his colleagues not so much the cause of Christ, as on His behalf that of law and justice. He now came, bringing \u2018a roll\u2019 of myrrh and aloes, in the fragrant mixture well known to the Jews for purposes of anointing or burying.
\nIt was in \u2018the court\u2019 of the tomb that the hasty embalmment\u2014if such it may be called\u2014took place. None of Christ\u2019s former disciples seem to have taken part in the burying. John may have withdrawn to bring tidings to, and to comfort the Virgin-Mother; the others also, that had \u2018stood afar off, beholding,\u2019 appear to have left. Only a few faithful ones, notably among them Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, the mother of Joses, stood over against the tomb, watching at some distance where and how the Body of Jesus was laid. It would scarcely have been in accordance with Jewish manners, if these women had mingled more closely with the two Sanhedrists and their attendants. From where they stood they could only have had a dim view of what passed within the court, and this may explain how, on their return, they \u2018prepared spices and ointments\u2019 for the more full honours which they hoped to pay the Dead after the Sabbath was past. For, it is of the greatest importance to remember, that haste characterised all that was done. It seems as if the \u2018clean linen cloth\u2019 in which the Body had been wrapped, was now torn into \u2018cloths\u2019 or swathes, into which the Body, limb by limb, was now \u2018bound,\u2019 no doubt, between layers of myrrh and aloes, the Head being wrapped in a napkin. And so they laid Him to rest in the niche of the rock-hewn new tomb. And as they went out, they rolled, as was the custom, a \u2018great stone\u2019\u2014the Golel\u2014to close the entrance to the tomb, probably leaning against it for support, as was the practice, a smaller stone\u2014the so-called Dopheq. It would be where the one stone was laid against the other, that on the next day, Sabbath though it was, the Jewish authorities would have affixed the seal, so that the slightest disturbance might become apparent.<\/p>\n
\u2018It was probably about the same time, that a noisy throng prepared to follow delegates from the Sanhedrin to the ceremony of cutting the Passover-sheaf. The Law had it, \u201che shall bring a sheaf [literally, the Omer] with the first-fruits of your harvest, unto the priest; and he shall wave the Omer before Jehovah, to be accepted for you.\u201d This Passover-sheaf was reaped in public the evening before it was offered, and it was to witness this ceremony that the crowd had gathered around the elders. Already on the 14th Nisan the spot whence the first sheaf was to be reaped had been marked out, by tying together in bundles, while still standing, the barley that was to be cut down, according to custom, in the sheltered Ashes-Valley across Kidron. When the time for cutting the sheaf had arrived\u2014that is, on the evening of the 15th Nisan, even though it were a Sabbath, just as the sun went down, three men, each with a sickle and basket, set to work. Clearly to bring out what was distinctive in the ceremony, they first asked of the bystanders three times each of these questions: \u201cHas the sun gone down?\u201d \u201cWith this sickle?\u201d \u201cInto this basket?\u201d \u201cOn this Sabbath? (or first Passover-day)\u201d\u2014and, lastly, \u201cShall I reap?\u201d Having each time been answered in the affirmative, they cut down barley to the amount of one ephah, or about three pecks and three pints of our English measure. This is not the place to follow the ceremony farther\u2014how the corn was threshed out, parched, ground, and one omer of the flour, mixed with oil and frankincense, waved before the Lord in the Temple on the second Paschal day (or 16th of Nisan). But, as this festive procession started, amidst loud demonstrations, a small band of mourners turned from having laid their dead Master in His resting-place. The contrast is as sad as it is suggestive. And yet, not in the Temple, nor by the priest, but in the silence of that gardentomb, was the first Omer of the new Paschal flour to be waved before the Lord.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Now on the morrow, which is after the preparation [the Friday], the chief priests and the Pharisees were gathered together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while He was yet alive, After three days I rise again. Command, therefore, that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest haply His disciples come and steal Him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first. Pilate said unto them, Take a guard, go your way, make it as sure as ye can. So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, the guard being with them.\u2019<\/p>\n
But was there really need for it? Did they, who had spent what remained of daylight to prepare spices wherewith to anoint the Dead Christ, expect His Body to be removed, or did they expect\u2014perhaps in their sorrow even think of His word: \u2018I rise again\u2019? But on that holy Sabbath, when the Sanhedrists were thinking of how to make sure of the Dead Christ, what were the thoughts of Joseph of Arimath\u00e6a and Nicodemus, of Peter and John, of the other disciples, and especially of the loving women who only waited for the first streak of Easter-light to do their last service of love? What were their thoughts of God\u2014what of Christ\u2014what of the Words He had spoken, the Deeds He had wrought, the salvation He had come to bring, and the Kingdom of Heaven which He was to open to all believers?
\nBehind Him had closed the gates of Hades; but upon them rather than upon Him had fallen the shadows of death. Yet they still loved Him\u2014and stronger than death was love.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 16<\/p>\n
ON THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD<\/p>\n
THE history of the Life of Christ upon earth closes with a Miracle as great as that of its inception. It may be said that the one casts light upon the other. If He was what the Gospels represent Him, He must have been born of a pure Virgin, without sin, and He must have risen from the Dead. If the story of His Birth be true, we can believe that of His Resurrection; if that of His Resurrection be true, we can believe that of His Birth. In the nature of things, the latter was incapable of strict historical proof; and, in the nature of things, His Resurrection demanded and was capable of the fullest historical evidence. If such exists, the keystone is given to the arch; the miraculous Birth becomes almost a necessary postulate, and Jesus is the Christ in the full sense of the Gospels. And yet we mark, as another parallel point between the account of the miraculous Birth and that of the Resurrection, the utter absence of details as regards these events themselves. If this circumstance may be taken as indirect evidence that they were not legendary, it also imposes on us the duty of observing the reverent silence so well-befitting the case, and not intruding beyond the path which the Evangelic narrative has opened to us.
\nThat path is sufficiently narrow, and in some respects difficult; not, indeed, as to the great event itself, nor as to its leading features, but as to the more minute details. And here, again, our difficulties arise, not so much from any actual disagreement, as from the absence of actual identity. Much of this is owing to the great compression in the various narratives, due partly to the character of the event narrated, partly to the incomplete information possessed by the narrators\u2014of whom only one was strictly an eyewitness, but chiefly to this, that to the different narrators the central point of interest lay in one or the other aspect of the circumstances connected with the Resurrection. Not only St. Matthew, but also St. Luke, so compresses the narrative that \u2018the distinction of points of time\u2019 is almost effaced. St. Luke seems to crowd into the Easter Evening what himself tells us occupied forty days. His is, so to speak, the pre-eminently Jerusalem account of the evidence of the Resurrection; that of St. Matthew the pre-eminently Galilean account of it. Yet each implies and corroborates the facts of the other. In general we ought to remember, that the Evangelists, and afterwards St. Paul, are not so much concerned to narrate the whole history of the Resurrection as to furnish the evidence for it. And here what is distinctive in each is also characteristic of his special view-point. St. Matthew describes the impression of the full evidence of that Easter morning on friend and foe, and then hurries us from the Jerusalem stained with Christ\u2019s Blood back to the sweet Lake and the blessed Mount where first He spake. It is, as if he longed to realise the Risen Christ in the scenes where he had learned to know Him. St. Mark, who is much more brief, gives not only a mere summary, but, if one might use the expression, tells it as from the bosom of the Jerusalem family, from the house of his mother Mary. St. Luke seems to have made most full inquiry as to all the facts of the Resurrection, and his narrative might almost be inscribed: \u2018Easter Day in Jerusalem.\u2019 St. John paints such scenes\u2014during the whole forty days, whether in Jerusalem or Galilee\u2014as were most significant and teachful of this threefold lesson of his Gospel: that Jesus was the Christ, that He was the Son of God, and that, believing, we have life in His Name. Lastly, St. Paul\u2014as one born out of due time\u2014produces the testimony of the principal witnesses to the fact, in a kind of ascending climax. And this the more effectively, that he is evidently aware of the difficulties and the import of the question, and has taken pains to make himself acquainted with all the facts of the case.
\nThe question is of such importance, alike in itself and as regards this whole history, that a discussion, however brief and even imperfect, preliminary to the consideration of the Evangelic narrations, seems necessary.
\nWhat thoughts concerning the Dead Christ filled the minds of Joseph of Arimath\u00e6a, of Nicodemus, and of the other disciples of Jesus, as well as of the Apostles and of the pious women? They believed Him to be dead, and they did not expect Him to rise again from the dead\u2014at least, in our accepted sense of it. Of this there is abundant evidence from the moment of His Death, in the burialspices brought by Nicodemus, in those prepared by the women (both of which were intended as against corruption), in the sorrow of the women at the empty tomb, in their supposition that the Body had been removed, in the perplexity and bearing of the Apostles, in the doubts of so many, and indeed in the express statement: \u2018For as yet they knew not the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead.\u2019 And the notice in St. Matthew\u2019s Gospel, that the Sanhedrists had taken precautions against His Body being stolen, so as to give the appearance of fulfilment to His prediction that He would rise again after three days\u2014that, therefore, they knew of such a prediction, and took it in the literal sense\u2014would give only more emphasis to the opposite bearing of the disciples and their manifest non-expectancy of a literal Resurrection. What the disciples expected, perhaps wished, was not Christ\u2019s return in glorified corporeity, but His Second Coming in glory into His Kingdom.
\nBut if they regarded Him as really dead and not to rise again in the literal sense, this had evidently no practical effect, not only on their former feelings towards Him, but even on their faith in Him as the promised Messiah. This appears from the conduct of Joseph and Nicodemus, from the language of the women, and from the whole bearing of the Apostles and disciples. All this must have been very different, if they had regarded the Death of Christ, even on the Cross, as having given the lie to His Messianic Claims. On the contrary, the impression left on our minds is, that, although they deeply grieved over the loss of their Master, and the seeming triumph of His foes, yet His Death came to them not unexpectedly, but rather as of internal necessity and as the fulfilment of His often repeated prediction. Nor can we wonder at this, since He had, ever since the Transfiguration, laboured, against all their resistance and reluctance, to impress on them the fact of His Betrayal and Death. He had, indeed\u2014although by no means so frequently or clearly\u2014also referred to His Resurrection. But of this they might, according to their Jewish ideas, form a very different conception from that of a literal Resurrection of that Crucified Body in a glorified state, and yet capable of such terrestrial intercourse as the Risen Christ held with them. And if it be objected that, in such case, Christ must have clearly taught them all this, it is sufficient to answer, that there was no need for such clear teaching on the point at that time; that the event itself would soon and best teach them; that it would have been impossible really to teach it, except by the event; and that any attempt at it would have involved a far fuller communication on this mysterious subject than, to judge from what is told us in Scripture, it was the purpose of Christ to impart in our present state of faith and expectancy. Accordingly, from their point of view, the prediction of Christ might have referred to the continuance of His Work, to His Vindication, or to some apparition of Him, whether from heaven or on earth\u2014such as that of the saints in Jerusalem after the Resurrection, or that of Elijah in Jewish belief\u2014but especially to His return in glory; certainly, not to the Resurrection as it actually took place. The fact itself would be quite foreign to Jewish ideas, which embraced the continuance of the soul after death and the final resurrection of the body, but not a state of spiritual corporeity, far less, under conditions such as those described in the Gospels. Elijah, who is so constantly introduced in Jewish tradition, is never represented as sharing in meals or offering his body for touch; nay, the Angels who visited Abraham are represented as only making show of, not really, eating. Clearly, the Apostles had not learned the Resurrection of Christ either from the Scriptures\u2014and this proves that the narrative of it was not intended as a fulfilment of previous expectancy\u2014nor yet from the predictions of Christ to that effect; although without the one, and especially without the other, the empty grave would scarcely have wrought in them the assured conviction of the Resurrection of Christ.
\nThis brings us to the real question in hand. Since the Apostles and others evidently believed Him to be dead, and expected not His Resurrection, and since the fact of His Death was not to them a formidable, if any, objection to His Messianic Character\u2014such as might have induced them to invent or imagine a Resurrection\u2014how are we to account for the history of the Resurrection with all its details in all the four Gospels and by St. Paul? The details, or \u2018signs,\u2019 are clearly intended as evidences to all of the reality of the Resurrection, without which it would not have been believed; and their multiplication and variety must, therefore, be considered as indicating what otherwise would have been not only numerous but insuperable difficulties. Similarly, the language of St. Paul implies a careful and searching inquiry on his part; the more rational, that, besides intrinsic difficulties and Jewish preconceptions against it, the objections to the fact must have been so often and coarsely obtruded on him, whether in disputation or by the jibes of the Greek scholars and students who derided his preaching.
\nHence, the question to be faced is this: Considering their previous state of mind and the absence of any motive, how are we to account for the change of mind on the part of the disciples in regard to the Resurrection? There can at least be no question, that they came to believe, and with the most absolute certitude, in the Resurrection as an historical fact; nor yet, that it formed the basis and substance of all their preaching of the Kingdom; nor yet, that St. Paul, up to his conversion a bitter enemy of Christ, was fully persuaded of it; nor\u2014to go a step back\u2014that Jesus Himself expected it. Indeed, the world would not have been converted to a dead Jewish Christ, however His intimate disciples might have continued to love His memory. But they preached everywhere, first and foremost, the Resurrection from the dead! In the language of St. Paul: \u2018If Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God \u2026 ye are yet in your sins.\u2019 We must here dismiss what probably underlies the chief objection to the Resurrection: its miraculous character. The objection to Miracles, as such, proceeds on that false Supra-naturalism, which traces a Miracle to the immediate fiat of the Almighty without any intervening links; and, as already shown, it involves a vicious petitio principii. But, after all, the Miraculous is only to us unprecedented and uncognisable\u2014a very narrow basis on which to refuse historical investigation. And the historian has to account for the undoubted fact, that the Resurrection was the fundamental personal conviction of the Apostles and disciples, the basis of their preaching, and the final support of their martyrdom. What explanation then can be offered of it?
\n1. We may here put aside two hypotheses, now universally discarded even in Germany, and which probably have never been seriously entertained in this country. They are that of gross fraud on the part of the disciples, who had stolen the Body of Jesus\u2014as to which even Strauss remarks, that such a falsehood is wholly incompatible with their after-life, heroism, and martyrdom;\u2014and again this, that Christ had not been really dead when taken from the Cross, and that He gradually revived again. Not to speak of the many absurdities which this theory involves, it really shifts\u2014if we acquit the disciples of complicity\u2014the fraud upon Christ Himself.
\n2. The only other explanation, worthy of attention, is the so-called \u2018Vision-hypothesis:\u2019 that the Apostles really believed in the Resurrection, but that mere visions of Christ had wrought in them this belief. The hypothesis has been variously modified. According to some, these visions were the outcome of an excited imagination, of a morbid state of the nervous system. To this there is, of course, the preliminary objection, that such visions presuppose a previous expectancy of the event, which, as we know, is the opposite of the fact. Again, such a \u2018Vision-hypothesis\u2019 in no way agrees with the many details and circumstances narrated in connection with the Risen One, Who is described as having appeared not only to one or another in the retirement of the chamber, but to many, and in a manner and circumstances which render the idea of a mere vision impossible. Besides, the visions of an excited imagination would not have endured and led to such results; most probably they would soon have given place to corresponding depression.
\nThe \u2018Vision-hypothesis\u2019 is not much improved, if we regard the supposed vision as the result of reflection\u2014that the disciples, convinced that the Messiah could not remain dead (and this again is contrary to fact) had wrought themselves first into a persuasion that He must rise, and then into visions of the Risen One. Nor yet would, it commend itself more to our mind, if we were to assume that these visions had been directly sent from God Himself, to attest the fact that Christ lived. For, we have here to deal with a series of facts that cannot be so explained, such as the showing them His Sacred Wounds; the offer to touch them; the command to handle Him, so as to convince themselves of His real corporeity; the eating with the disciples; the appearance by the Lake of Galilee, and others. Besides, the \u2018Vision-hypothesis\u2019 has to account for the events of the Easter-morning, and especially for the empty tomb from which the great stone had been rolled, and in which the very cerements of death were seen by those who entered it. In fact, such a narrative as that recorded by St. Luke seems almost designed to render the \u2018Vision-hypothesis\u2019 impossible. We are expressly told, that the appearance of the Risen Christ, so far from meeting their anticipations, had affrighted them, and that they had thought it spectral, on which Christ had reassured them, and bidden them handle Him, for \u2018a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold Me having.\u2019 Lastly, who removed the Body of Christ from the tomb? Six weeks afterwards, Peter preached the Resurrection of Christ in Jerusalem. If Christ\u2019s enemies had removed the Body, they could easily have silenced Peter; if His friends, they would have been guilty of such fraud, as not even Strauss deems possible in the circumstances. The theories of deception, delusion, and vision being thus impossible, and the \u00e0 priori objection to the fact, as involving a Miracle, being a petitio principii, the historical student is shut up to the simple acceptance of the narrative. To this conclusion the unpreparedness of the disciples, their previous opinions, their new testimony unto martyrdom, the foundation of the Christian Church, the testimony of so many, singly and in company, and the series of recorded manifestations during forty days, and in such different circumstances, where mistake was impossible, had already pointed with unerring certainty. And even if slight discrepancies, nay, some not strictly historical details, which might have been the outcome of earliest tradition in the Apostolic Church, could be shown in those accounts which were not of eyewitnesses, it would assuredly not invalidate the great fact itself, which may unhesitatingly be pronounced that best established in history. At the same time we would carefully guard ourselves against the admission that those hypothetical flaws really exist in the narratives. On the contrary, we believe them capable of the most satisfactory arrangement, unless under the strain of hypercriticism.
\nThe importance of all this cannot be adequately expressed in words. A dead Christ might have been a Teacher and a Wonder-worker, and remembered and loved as such. But only a Risen and Living Christ could be the Saviour, the Life, and the Life-Giver\u2014and as such preached to all men. And of this most blessed truth we have the fullest and most unquestionable evidence. We can, therefore, implicitly yield ourselves to the impression of these narratives, and, still more, to the realisation of that most sacred and blessed fact. This is the foundation of the Church, the inscription on the banner of her armies, the strength and comfort of every Christian heart, and the grand hope of humanity:
\n\u2018The Lord is risen indeed.\u2019<\/p>\n
CHAPTER 17<\/p>\n
\u2018ON THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE AGAIN FROM THE DEAD; HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN.\u2019<\/p>\n
(St. Matt. 28:1\u201310; St. Mark 16:1\u201311; St. Luke 24:1\u201312; St. John 20:1\u201318; St. Matt. 28:11\u201315; St. Mark 16:12, 13; St. Luke 24:13\u201335; 1 Cor. 15:5; St. Mark 16:14; St. Luke 24:36\u201343; St. John 20:19\u201325; St. John 20:26\u201329; St. Matt. 28:16; St. John 21:1\u201324; St. Matt. 28:17\u201320; St. Mark 16:15\u201318; 1 Cor. 15:6; St. Luke 24:44\u201353; St. Mark 16:19, 20; Acts 1:3\u201312.)<\/p>\n
GREY dawn was streaking the sky, when they who had so lovingly watched Him to His Burying were making their lonely way to the rock-hewn Tomb in the Garden. Considerable as are the difficulties of exactly harmonising the details in the various narratives\u2014if, indeed, importance attaches to such attempts\u2014we are thankful to know that any hesitation only attaches to the arrangement of minute particulars, and not to the great facts of the case. And even these minute details would, as we shall have occasion to show, be harmonious, if only we knew all the circumstances.
\nThe difference, if such it may be called, in the names of the women, who at early morn went to the Tomb, scarcely requires elaborate discussion. It may have been, that there were two parties, starting from different places to meet at the Tomb, and that this also accounts for the slight difference in the details of what they saw and heard at the Grave. At any rate, the mention of the two Marys and Joanna is supplemented in St. Luke by that of \u2018the other women with them,\u2019 while, if St. John speaks only of Mary Magdalene, her report to Peter and John: \u2018We know not where they have laid Him,\u2019 implies, that she had not gone alone to the Tomb. It was the first day of the week\u2014according to Jewish reckoning the third day from His Death. The narrative leaves the impression that the Sabbath\u2019s rest had delayed their visit to the Tomb; but it is at least a curious coincidence that the relatives and friends of the deceased were in the habit of going to the grave up to the third day (when presumably corruption was supposed to begin), so as to make sure that those laid there were really dead. Commenting on this, that Abraham descried Mount Moriah on the third day, the Rabbis insist on the importance of \u2018the third day\u2019 in various events connected with Israel, and specially speak of it in connection with the resurrection of the dead, referring in proof to Hos. 6:2. In another place, appealing to the same prophetic saying, they infer from Gen. 42:17, that God never leaves the just more than three days in anguish. In mourning also the third day formed a sort of period, because it was thought that the soul hovered round the body till the third day, when it finally parted from its earthly tabernacle.
\nAlthough these things are here mentioned, we need scarcely say that no such thoughts were present with the holy mourners who, in the grey of that Sunday-morning, went to the Tomb. Whether or not there were two groups of women who started from different places to meet at the Tomb, the most prominent figure among them was Mary Magdalene\u2014as prominent among the pious women as Peter was among the Apostles. She seems to have first reached the Grave, and, seeing the great stone that had covered its entrance rolled away, hastily judged that the Body of the Lord had been removed. Without waiting for further inquiry, she ran back to inform Peter and John of the fact. The Evangelist here explains, that there had been a great earthquake, and that the Angel of the Lord, to human sight as lightning and in brilliant white garment, had rolled back the stone, and sat upon it, when the guard, affrighted by what they heard and saw, and especially by the look and attitude of heavenly power in the Angel, had been seized with mortal faintness. Remembering the events connected with the Crucifixion, which had no doubt been talked about among the soldiery, and bearing in mind the impression of such a sight on such minds, we could readily understand the effect on the two sentries who that long night had kept guard over the solitary Tomb. The event itself (we mean: as regards the rolling away of the stone), we suppose to have taken place after the Resurrection of Christ, in the early dawn, while the holy women were on their way to the Tomb. The earthquake cannot have been one in the ordinary sense, but a shaking of the place, when the Lord of Life burst the gates of Hades to re-tenant His Glorified Body, and the lightning-like Angel descended from heaven to roll away the stone. To have left it there, when the Tomb was empty, would have implied what was no longer true. But there is a sublime irony in the contrast between man\u2019s elaborate precautions and the ease with which the Divine Hand can sweep them aside, and which, as throughout the history of the Christ and of His Church, recalls the prophetic declaration: \u2018He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh at them.\u2019
\nWhile the Magdalene hastened, probably by another road, to the abode of Peter and John, the other women also had reached the Tomb, either in one party, or, it may be, in two companies. They had wondered and feared how they could accomplish their pious purpose\u2014for, who would roll away the stone for them? But, as so often, the difficulty apprehended no longer existed. Perhaps they thought that the now absent Mary Magdalene had obtained help for this. At any rate, they now entered the vestibule of the Sepulchre. Here the appearance of the Angel filled them with fear. But the heavenly Messenger bade them dismiss apprehension; he told them that Christ was not there, nor yet any longer dead, but risen, as, indeed, He had foretold in Galilee to His disciples; finally, he bade them hasten with the announcement to the disciples, and with this message, that, as Christ had directed them before, they were to meet Him in Galilee. It was not only that this connected, so to speak, the wondrous present with the familiar past, and helped them to realise that it was their very Master; nor yet that in the retirement, quiet, and security of Galilee, there would be best opportunity for fullest manifestation, as to the five hundred, and for final conversation and instruction. But the main reason, and that which explains the otherwise strange, almost exclusive, prominence given at such a moment to the direction to meet Him in Galilee, has already been indicated in a previous chapter. With the scattering of the Eleven in Gethsemane on the night of Christ\u2019s betrayal, the Apostolic College was temporarily broken up. They continued, indeed, still to meet together as individual disciples, but the bond of the Apostolate was, for the moment, dissolved. And the Apostolic circle was to be re-formed, and the Apostolic Commission renewed and enlarged, in Galilee; not, indeed, by its Lake, where only seven of the Eleven seem to have been present, but on the mountain where He had directed them to meet Him. Thus was the end to be like the beginning. Where He had first called, and directed them for their work, there would He again call them, give fullest directions, and bestow new and amplest powers. His appearances in Jerusalem were intended to prepare them for all this, to assure them completely and joyously of the fact of His Resurrection\u2014the full teaching of which would be given in Galilee. And when the women, perplexed and scarcely conscious, obeyed the command to go in and examine for themselves the now empty niche in the Tomb, they saw two Angels\u2014probably as the Magdalene afterwards saw them\u2014one at the head, the other at the feet, where the Body of Jesus had lain. They waited no longer, but hastened, without speaking to any one, to carry to the disciples the tidings of which they could not even yet grasp the full import.
\n2. But whatever unclearness of detail may rest on the narratives of the Synoptists, owing to their great compression, all is distinct when we follow the steps of the Magdalene, as these are traced in the Fourth Gospel. Hastening from the Tomb, she ran to the lodging of Peter and to that of John\u2014the repetition of the preposition \u2018to\u2019 probably marking, that the two occupied different, although perhaps closely adjoining, quarters. Her startling tidings induced them to go at once\u2014\u2018and they went towards the sepulchre.\u2019 \u2018But they began to run, the two together\u2019\u2014probably so soon as they were outside the town and near \u2018the Garden.\u2019 John, as the younger, outran Peter. Reaching the Sepulchre first, and stooping down, \u2018he seeth\u2019 (\u03b2\u03bb\u03ad\u03c0\u03b5\u03b9) the linen clothes, but, from his position, not the napkin which lay apart by itself. If reverence and awe prevented John from entering the Sepulchre, his impulsive companion, who arrived immediately after him, thought of nothing else than the immediate and full clearing up of the mystery. As he entered the sepulchre, he \u2018steadfastly (intently) beholds\u2019 (\u03b8\u03b5\u03c9\u03c1\u03b5\u1fd6) in one place the linen swathes that had bound the Sacred Limbs, and in another the napkin that had been about His Head. There was no sign of haste, but all was orderly, leaving the impression of One Who had leisurely divested Himself of what no longer befitted Him. Soon \u2018the other disciple\u2019 followed Peter. The effect of what he saw was, that he now believed in his heart that the Master was risen\u2014for till then they had not yet derived from Holy Scripture the knowledge that He must rise again. And this also is most instructive. It was not the belief previously derived from Scripture, that the Christ was to rise from the Dead, which led to expectancy of it, but the evidence that He had risen which led them to the knowledge of what Scripture taught on the subject.
\n3. Yet whatever light had risen in the inmost sanctuary of John\u2019s heart, he spake not his thoughts to the Magdalene, whether she had reached the Sepulchre ere the two left it, or met them by the way. The two Apostles returned to their home, either feeling that nothing more could be learned at the Tomb, or to wait for further teaching and guidance. Or it might even have been partly due to a desire not to draw needless attention to the empty Tomb. But the love of the Magdalene could not rest satisfied, while doubt hung over the fate of His Sacred Body. It must be remembered that she knew only of the empty Tomb. For a time she gave way to the agony of her sorrow; then, as she wiped away her tears, she stooped to take one more look into the Tomb, which she thought empty, when, as she \u2018intently gazed\u2019 (\u03b8\u03b5\u03c9\u03c1\u03b5\u1fd6), the Tomb seemed no longer empty. At the head and feet, where the Sacred Body had lain, were seated two Angels in white. Their question, so deeply true from their knowledge that Christ had risen: \u2018Woman, why weepest thou?\u2019 seems to have come upon the Magdalene with such overpowering suddenness, that, without being able to realise\u2014perhaps in the semi-gloom\u2014who it was that had asked it, she spake, bent only on obtaining the information she sought: \u2018Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.\u2019 So is it often with us, that, weeping, we ask the question of doubt or fear, which, if we only knew, would never have risen to our lips; nay, that heaven\u2019s own \u2018Why?\u2019 fails to impress us, even when the Voice of its Messengers would gently recall us from the error of our impatience.
\nBut already another answer was to be given to the Magdalene. As she spake, she became conscious of another Presence close to her. Quickly turning round, \u2018she gazed\u2019 (\u03b8\u03b5\u03c9\u03c1\u03b5\u1fd6) on One Whom she recognised not, but regarded as the gardener, from His presence there and from His question: \u2018Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?\u2019 The hope, that she might now learn what she sought, gave wings to her words\u2014intensity and pathos. If the supposed gardener had borne to another place the Sacred Body, she would take It away, if she only knew where It was laid. This depth and agony of love, which made the Magdalene forget even the restraints of a Jewish woman\u2019s intercourse with a stranger, was the key that opened the Lips of Jesus. A moment\u2019s pause, and He spake her name in those well-remembered accents, that had first unbound her from sevenfold demoniac power and called her into a new life. It was as another unbinding, another call into a new life. She had not known His appearance, just as the others did not know Him at first, so unlike, and yet so like, was the glorified Body to that which they had known. But she could not mistake the Voice, especially when It spake to her, and spake her name. So do we also often fail to recognise the Lord when He comes to us \u2018in another form\u2019 than we had known. But we cannot fail to recognise Him when He speaks to us and speaks our name.
\nPerhaps we may here be allowed to pause, and, from the nonrecognition of the Risen Lord till He spoke, ask this question: With what body shall we rise? Like or unlike the past? Assuredly, most like. Our bodies will then be true; for the soul will body itself forth according to its past history\u2014not only impress itself, as now on the features, but express itself\u2014so that a man may be known by what he is, and as what he is. Thus, in this respect also, has the Resurrection a moral aspect, and is the completion of the history of mankind and of each man. And the Christ also must have borne in His glorified Body all that He was, all that even His most intimate disciples had not known nor understood while He was with them, which they now failed to recognise, but knew at once when He spake to them.
\nIt was precisely this which now prompted the action of the Magdalene\u2014prompted also, and explains, the answer of the Lord. As in her name she recognised His Name, the rush of old feeling came over her, and with the familiar \u2018Rabboni!\u2019\u2014my Master\u2014she would fain have grasped Him. Was it the unconscious impulse to take hold on the precious treasure which she had thought for ever lost; the unconscious attempt to make sure that it was not merely an apparition of Jesus from heaven, but the real Christ in His corporeity on earth; or a gesture of veneration, the beginning of such acts of worship as her heart prompted? Probably all these; and yet probably she was not at the moment distinctly conscious of either or of any of these feelings. But to them all there was one answer, and in it a higher direction, given by the words of the Lord: \u2018Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to the Father.\u2019 Not the Jesus appearing from heaven\u2014for He had not yet ascended to the Father; not the former intercourse, not the former homage and worship. There was yet a future of completion before Him in the Ascension, of which Mary knew not. Between that future of completion and the past of work, the present was a gap\u2014belonging partly to the past and partly to the future. The past could not be recalled, the future could not be anticipated. The present was of reassurance, of consolation, of preparation, of teaching. Let the Magdalene go and tell His \u2018brethren\u2019 of the Ascension. So would she best and most truly tell them that she had seen Him; so also would they best learn how the Resurrection linked the past of His Work of love for them to the future: \u2018I ascend unto My Father, and your Father, and to My God, and your God.\u2019 Thus, the fullest teaching of the past, the clearest manifestation of the present, and the brightest teaching of the future\u2014all as gathered up in the Resurrection\u2014came to the Apostles through the mouth of love of her out of whom He had cast seven devils.
\n4. Yet another scene on that Easter morning does St. Matthew relate, in explanation of how the well-known Jewish calumny had arisen that the disciples had stolen away the Body of Jesus. He tells, how the guard had reported to the chief priests what had happened, and how they in turn had bribed the guard to spread this rumour, at the same time promising that if the fictitious account of their having slept while the disciples robbed the Sepulchre should reach Pilate, they would intercede on their behalf. Whatever else may be said, we know that from the time of Justin Martyr this has been the Jewish explanation. Of late, however, it has, among thoughtful Jewish writers, given place to the so-called \u2018Vision-hypothesis,\u2019 to which full reference has already been made.
\n5. It was the early afternoon of that spring-day, perhaps soon after the early meal, when two men from that circle of disciples left the City. Their narrative affords deeply interesting glimpses into the Circle of the Church in those first days. The impression conveyed to us is of utter bewilderment, in which only some things stood out unshaken and firm: love to the Person of Jesus; love among the brethren; mutual confidence and fellowship; together with a dim hope of something yet to come\u2014if not Christ in His Kingdom, yet some manifestation of, or approach to it. The Apostolic College seems broken up into units; even the two chief Apostles, Peter and John, are only \u2018certain of them that were with us.\u2019 And no wonder; for they are no longer \u2018Apostles\u2019\u2014sent out. Who is to send them forth? Not a dead Christ! And what would be their commission, and to whom, and whither? And over all rested a cloud of utter uncertainty and perplexity. Jesus was a Prophet mighty in word and deed before God and all the people. But their rulers had crucified Him. What was to be their new relation to Jesus; what to their rulers? And what of the great hope of the Kingdom, which they had connected with Him?
\nThus they were unclear on that very Easter Day even as to His Mission and Work: unclear as to the past, the present, and the future. What need for the Resurrection, and for the teaching which the Risen One alone could bring! These two men had on that very day been in communication with Peter and John. And it leaves on us the impression, that, amidst the general confusion, all had brought such tidings as they had, or had come to hear them, and had tried, but failed, to put it all into order or to see light around it. \u2018The women\u2019 had come to tell of the empty Tomb and of their vision of Angels, who said that He was alive. But as yet the Apostles had no explanation to offer. Peter and John had gone to see for themselves. They had brought back confirmation of the report that the Tomb was empty, but they had seen neither Angels nor Him Whom they were said to have declared alive. And, although the two had evidently left the circle of the disciples, if not Jerusalem, before the Magdalene came, yet we know that even her account did not carry conviction to the minds of those that heard it.
\nOf the two, who on that early spring afternoon left the City in company, we know that one bore the name of Cleopas. The other, unnamed, has for that very reason, and because the narrative of that work bears in its vividness the character of personal recollection, been identified with St. Luke himself. If so, then, as has been finely remarked, each of the Gospels would, like a picture, bear in some dim corner the indication of its author: the first, that of \u2018the publican;\u2019 that by St. Mark, that of the young man who, in the night of the Betrayal, had fled from his captors; that of St. Luke, in the companion of Cleopas; and that of St. John, in the disciple whom Jesus loved. Uncertainty, almost equal to that about the second traveller to Emmaus, rests on the identification of that place. But such great probability attaches, if not to the exact spot, yet to the locality, or rather the valley, that we may in imagination follow the two companions on their road.
\nWe leave the City by the Western Gate. A rapid progress for about twenty-five minutes, and we have reached the edge of the plateau. The blood-stained City, and the cloud- and gloom-capped trysting-place of the followers of Jesus, are behind us; and with every step forward and upward the air seems fresher and freer, as if we felt in it the scent of mountain, or even the far-off breezes of the sea. Other twenty-five or thirty minutes\u2014perhaps a little more, passing here and there country-houses\u2014and we pause to look back, now on the wide prospect far as Bethlehem. Again we pursue our way. We are now getting beyond the dreary, rocky region, and are entering on a valley. To our right is the pleasant spot that marks the ancient Nephtoah, on the border of Judah, now occupied by the village of Lifta. A short quarter of an hour more, and we have left the well-paved Roman road and are heading up a lovely valley. The path gently climbs in a north-westerly direction, with the height on which Emmaus stands prominently before us. About equidistant are, on the right Lifta, on the left Kolonieh. The roads from these two, describing almost a semicircle (the one to the north-west, the other to the north-east), meet about a quarter of a mile to the south of Emmaus (Hammoza, Belt Mizza). What an oasis this in a region of hills! Along the course of the stream, which babbles down, and low in the valley is crossed by a bridge, are scented orange- and lemon-gardens, olive-groves, luscious fruit trees, pleasant enclosures, shady nooks, bright dwellings, and on the height lovely Emmaus. A sweet spot to which to wander on that spring afternoon; a most suitable place where to meet such companionship, and to find such teaching, as on that Easter Day.
\nIt may have been where the two roads from Lifta and Kolonieh meet, that the mysterious Stranger, Whom they knew not, their eyes being \u2018holden,\u2019 joined the two friends. Yet all these six or seven miles their converse had been of Him, and even now their flushed faces bore the marks of sadness on account of those events of which they had been speaking\u2014disappointed hopes, all the more bitter for the perplexing tidings about the empty Tomb and the absent Body of the Christ. So is Christ often near to us when our eyes are holden, and we know Him not; and so do ignorance and unbelief often fill our hearts with sadness, even when truest joy would most become us. To the question of the Stranger about the topics of a conversation which had so visibly affected them, they replied in language which shows that they were so absorbed by it themselves, as scarcely to understand how even a festive pilgrim and stranger in Jerusalem could have failed to know it, or perceive its supreme importance. Yet, strangely unsympathetic as from His question He might seem, there was that in His Appearance which unlocked their inmost hearts. They told Him their thoughts about this Jesus; how He had showed Himself a Prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people; then, how their rulers had crucified Him; and, lastly, how fresh perplexity had come to them from the tidings which the women had brought, and which Peter and John had so far confirmed, but were unable to explain. Their words were almost childlike in their simplicity, deeply truthful, and with a pathos and earnest craving for guidance and comfort that goes straight to the heart. To such souls it was, that the Risen Saviour would give His first teaching. The very rebuke with which He opened it must have brought its comfort. We also, in our weakness, are sometimes sore distrest when we hear what, at the moment, seem to us insuperable difficulties raised to any of the great truths of our holy faith; and, in perhaps equal weakness, feel comforted and strengthened, when some \u2018great one\u2019 turns them aside, or avows himself in face of them a believing disciple of Christ. As if man\u2019s puny height could reach up to heaven\u2019s mysteries, or any big infant\u2019s strength were needed to steady the building which God has reared on that great Cornerstone! But Christ\u2019s rebuke was not of such kind. Their sorrow arose from their folly in looking only at the things seen, and this, from their slowness to believe what the prophets had spoken. Had they attended to this, instead of allowing themselves to be swallowed up by the outward, they would have understood it all. Did not the Scriptures with one voice teach this twofold truth about the Messiah, that He was to suffer and to enter into His glory? Then why wonder\u2014why not rather expect, that He had suffered, and that Angels had proclaimed Him alive again?
\nHe spake it, and fresh hope sprang up in their hearts, new thoughts rose in their minds. Their eager gaze was fastened on Him as He now opened up, one by one, the Scriptures, from Moses and all the prophets, and in each well-remembered passage interpreted to them the things concerning Himself. Oh, that we had been there to hear\u2014though in the silence of our hearts also, if only we crave for it, and if we walk with Him, He sometimes so opens from the Scriptures\u2014nay, from all the Scriptures, that which comes not to us by critical study: \u2018the things concerning Himself.\u2019 All too quickly fled the moments. The brief space was traversed, and the Stranger seemed about to pass on from Emmaus\u2014not feigning it, but really: for, the Christ will only abide with us if our longing and loving constrain Him. But they could not part with Him. \u2018They constrained Him.\u2019 Love made them ingenious. It was toward evening; the day was far spent; He must even abide with them. What a rush of thought and feeling comes to us, as we think of it all, and try to realise times, scenes, circumstances in our experience, that are blessedly akin to it.
\nThe Master allowed Himself to be constrained. He went in to be their guest, as they thought, for the night. The simple evening-meal was spread. He sat down with them to the frugal board. And now He was no longer the Stranger; He Was the Master. No one asked, or questioned, as He took the bread and spake the words of blessing, then, breaking, gave it to them. But that moment it was, as if an unfelt Hand had been taken from their eyelids, as if suddenly the film had been cleared from their sight. And as they knew Him, He vanished from their view\u2014for, that which He had come to do had been done. They were unspeakably rich and happy now. But, amidst it all, one thing forced itself ever anew upon them, that, even while their eyes had yet been holden, their hearts had burned within them, while He spake to them and opened to them the Scriptures. So, then, they had learned to the full the Resurrection-lesson\u2014not only that He was risen indeed, but that it needed not His seen Bodily Presence, if only He opened up to the heart and mind all the Scriptures concerning Himself. And this, concerning those other words about \u2018holding\u2019 and \u2018touching\u2019 Him\u2014about having converse and fellowship with Him as the Risen One, had been also the lesson taught the Magdalene, when He would not suffer her loving, worshipful touch, pointing her to the Ascension before Him. This is the great lesson concerning the Risen One, which the Church fully learned in the Day of Pentecost.
\n6. That same afternoon, in circumstances and manner to us unknown, the Lord had appeared to Peter. We may perhaps suggest, that it was after His manifestation at Emmaus. This would complete the cycle of mercy: first, to the loving sorrow of the woman; next, to the loving perplexity of the disciples; then, to the anxious heart of the stricken Peter\u2014last, in the circle of the Apostles, which was again drawing together around the assured fact of His Resurrection.
\n7. These two in Emmaus could not have kept the good tidings to themselves. Even if they had not remembered the sorrow and perplexity in which they had left their fellow-disciples in Jerusalem that forenoon, they could not have kept it to themselves, could not have remained in Emmaus, but must have gone to their brethren in the City. So they left the uneaten meal, and hastened back the road they had travelled with the now well-known Stranger\u2014but, ah, with what lighter hearts and steps!
\nThey knew well the trysting-place where to find \u2018the Twelve\u2019\u2014nay, not the Twelve now, but \u2018the Eleven\u2019\u2014and even thus their circle was not complete, for, as already stated, it was broken up, and at least Thomas was not with the others on that Easter-Evening of the first \u2018Lord\u2019s Day.\u2019 But, as St. Luke is careful to inform us, with them were the others who then associated with them. This is of extreme importance, as marking that the words which the Risen Christ spake on that occasion were addressed not to the Apostles as such\u2014a thought forbidden also by the absence of Thomas\u2014but to the Church, although it may be as personified and represented by such of the \u2018Twelve,\u2019 or rather \u2018Eleven,\u2019 as were present on the occasion.
\nWhen the two from Emmaus arrived, they found the little band as sheep sheltering within the fold from the storm. Whether they apprehended persecution simply as disciples, or because the tidings of the empty Tomb, which had reached the authorities, would stir the fears of the Sanhedrists, special precautions had been taken. The outer and inner doors were shut, alike to conceal their gathering and to prevent surprise. But those assembled were now sure of at least one thing. Christ was risen. And when they from Emmaus told their wondrous story, the others could antiphonally reply by relating how He had appeared, not only to the Magdalene, but also to Peter. And still they seem not yet to have understood His Resurrection; to have regarded it as rather an Ascension to Heaven, from which He had made manifestation, than as the reappearance of His real, though glorified Corporeity.
\nThey were sitting at meat\u2014if we may infer from the notice of St. Mark, and from what happened immediately afterwards, discussing, not without considerable doubt and misgiving, the real import of these appearances of Christ. That to the Magdalene seems to have been put aside\u2014at least, it is not mentioned, and, even in regard to the others, they seem to have been considered, at any rate by some, rather as what we might call spectral appearances. But all at once He stood in the midst of them. The common salutation\u2014on His Lips not common, but a reality\u2014fell on their hearts at first with terror rather than joy. They had spoken of spectral appearances, and now they believed they were \u2018gazing\u2019 (\u03b8\u03b5\u03c9\u03c1\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd) on \u2018a spirit.\u2019 This the Saviour first, and once for all, corrected, by the exhibition of the glorified marks of His Sacred Wounds, and by bidding them handle Him to convince themselves, that His was a real Body, and what they saw not a disembodied spirit. The unbelief of doubt now gave place to the not daring to believe all that it meant, for very gladness, and for wondering whether there could now be any longer fellowship or bond between this Risen Christ and them in their bodies. It was to remove this also, which, though from another aspect, was equally unbelief, that the Saviour now partook before them of their supper of broiled fish, thus holding with them true human fellowship as of old.
\nIt was this lesson of His continuity\u2014in the strictest sense\u2014with the past, which was required in order that the Church might be, so to speak, reconstituted now in the Name, Power, and Spirit of the Risen One Who had lived and died. Once more He spake the \u2018Peace be unto you!\u2019 and now it was to them not occasion of doubt or fear, but the well-known salutation of their old Lord and Master. It was followed by the re-gathering and constituting of the Church as that of Jesus Christ, the Risen One. The Church of the Risen One was to be the Ambassador of Christ, as He had been the Delegate of the Father. \u2018The Apostles were [say rather, \u2018the Church was\u2019] commissioned to carry on Christ\u2019s work, and not to begin a new one.\u2019 \u2018As the Father has sent Me [in the past, for His Mission was completed], even so send I you [in the constant present, till His Coming again].\u2019 This marks the threefold relation of the Church to the Son, to the Father, and to the world, and her position in it. In the same manner, for the same purpose, nay, so far as possible, with the same qualification and the same authority as the Father had sent Christ, does He commission His Church. And so it was that He made it a very real commission when He breathed on them, not individually but as an assembly, and said: \u2018Take ye the Holy Ghost;\u2019 and this, manifestly not in the absolute sense, since the Holy Ghost was not yet given, but as the connecting link with, and the qualification for, the authority bestowed on the Church. Or, to set forth another aspect of it by somewhat inverting the order of the words: Alike the Mission of the Church and her authority to forgive or retain sins are connected with a personal qualification: \u2018Take ye the Holy Ghost;\u2019\u2014in which the word \u2018take\u2019 should also be marked. This is the authority which the Church possesses, not ex opere operato, but as connected with the taking and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the Church.
\nIt still remains to explain, so far as we can, these two points: in what this power of forgiving and retaining sins consists, and in what manner it resides in the Church. In regard to the former we must first inquire what idea it would convey to those to whom Christ spake the words. It has already been explained, that the power of \u2018loosing\u2019 and \u2018binding\u2019 referred to the legislative authority claimed by, and conceded to, the Rabbinic College. Similarly, as previously stated, that here referred to applied to their juridical or judicial power, according to which they pronounced a person either \u2018Zakkai,\u2019 innocent or \u2018free\u2019; \u2018absolved,\u2019 \u2018Patur\u2019; or else \u2018liable,\u2019 \u2018guilty,\u2019 \u2018Chayyabh\u2019 (whether liable to punishment or sacrifice). In the true sense, therefore, this is rather administrative, disciplinary power, \u2018the power of the keys\u2019\u2014such as St. Paul would have had the Corinthian Church put in force\u2014the power of admission and exclusion, of the authoritative declaration of the forgiveness of sins, in the exercise of which power (as it seems to the present writer) the authority for the administration of the Holy Sacraments is also involved. And yet it is not, as is sometimes represented, \u2018absolution from sin,\u2019 which belongs only to God and to Christ as Head of the Church, but absolution of the sinner, which He has delegated to His Church: \u2018Whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven.\u2019 These words also teach us, that what the Rabbis claimed in virtue of their office, that the Lord bestowed on His Church in virtue of her receiving, and of the indwelling of, the Holy Ghost.
\nIn answering the second question proposed, we must bear in mind one important point. The power of \u2018binding\u2019 and \u2018loosing\u2019 had been primarily committed to the Apostles, and exercised by them in connection with the Church. On the other hand, that of forgiving and retaining sins, in the sense explained, was primarily bestowed on the Church, and exercised by her through her representatives, the Apostles, and those to whom they committed rule. Although, therefore, the Lord on that night committed this power to His Church, it was in the person of her representatives and rulers. The Apostles alone could exercise legislative functions, but the Church has to the end of time \u2018the power of the keys.\u2019
\n8. There had been absent from the circle of disciples on that Easter-Evening one of the Apostles, Thomas. Even when told of the marvellous events at that gathering, he refused to believe, unless he had personal and sensuous evidence of the truth of the report. It can scarcely have been, that Thomas did not believe in the fact that Christ\u2019s Body had quitted the Tomb, or that He had really appeared. But he held fast by what we may term the Vision-hypothesis, or, in this case, rather the spectral theory. But until this Apostle also had come to conviction of the Resurrection in the only real sense\u2014of the identical though glorified Corporeity of the Lord, and hence of the continuity of the past with the present and future, it was impossible to re-form the Apostolic Circle, or to renew the Apostolic commission, since its primal message was testimony concerning the Risen One. This, if we may so suggest, seems the reason why the Apostles still remained in Jerusalem, instead of hastening, as directed, to meet the Master in Galilee.
\nA quiet week had passed, during which\u2014and this also may be for our twofold learning\u2014the Apostles excluded not Thomas, nor yet Thomas withdrew from the Apostles. Once more the day of days had come\u2014the Octave of the Feast. From that Easter-Day onwards the Church must, even without special institution, have celebrated the weekly-recurring memorial of His Resurrection, as that when He breathed on the Church the breath of a new life, and consecrated it to be His Representative. Thus, it was not only the memorial of His Resurrection, but the birthday of the Church, even as Pentecost was her baptismal day. On that Octave, then, the disciples were again gathered, under circumstances precisely similar to those of Easter, but now Thomas was also with them. Once more\u2014and it is again specially marked: \u2018the doors being shut\u2019\u2014the Risen Saviour appeared in the midst of the disciples with the well-known salutation. He now offered to Thomas the demanded evidence; but it was no longer either needed or sought. With a full rush of feeling he yielded himself to the blessed conviction, which, once formed, must immediately have passed into act of adoration: \u2018My Lord and my God!\u2019 The fullest confession this hitherto made, and which truly embraced the whole outcome of the new conviction concerning the reality of Christ\u2019s Resurrection. We remember how, under similar circumstances, Nathanael had been the first to utter fullest confession. We also remember the analogous reply of the Saviour. As then, so now, He pointed to the higher: to a faith which was not the outcome of sight, and therefore limited and bounded by sight, whether of the senses or of perception by the intellect. As one has finely remarked: \u2018This last and greatest of the Beatitudes is the peculiar heritage of the later Church\u2019\u2014and thus most aptly comes as the consecration gift of that Church.
\n9. The next scene presented to us is once again by the Lake of Galilee. The manifestation to Thomas, and, with it, the restoration of unity in the Apostolic Circle, had originally concluded the Gospel of St. John. But the report which had spread in the early Church, that the Disciple whom Jesus loved was not to die, led him to add to his Gospel, by way of Appendix, an account of the events with which this expectancy had connected itself. It is most instructive to the critic, when challenged at every step to explain why one or another fact is not mentioned or mentioned only in one Gospel, to find that, but for the correction of a possible misapprehension in regard to the aged Apostle, the Fourth Gospel would have contained no reference to the manifestation of Christ in Galilee, nay, to the presence of the disciples there before the Ascension. Yet, for all that, St. John had it in his mind. And should we not learn from this, that what appear to us strange omissions, which, when held by the side of the other Gospel-narratives, seem to involve discrepancies, may be capable of the most satisfactory explanation, if we only knew all the circumstances?
\nThe history itself sparkles like a gem in its own peculiar setting. It is of green Galilee, and of the blue Lake, and recalls the early days and scenes of this history. As St. Matthew has it, \u2018the eleven disciples went away into Galilee\u2019\u2014probably immediately after that Octave of the Easter. It can scarcely be doubted, that they made known not only the fact of the Resurrection, but the trysting which the Risen One had given them\u2014perhaps at that Mountain where He had spoken His first \u2018Sermon.\u2019 And so it was, that \u2018some doubted,\u2019 and that He afterwards appeared to the five hundred at once. But on that morning there were by the Lake of Tiberias only seven of the disciples. Five of them only are named. They are those who most closely kept in company with Him\u2014perhaps also they who lived nearest the Lake.
\nThe scene is introduced by Peter\u2019s proposal to go a-fishing. It seems as if the old habits had come back to them with the old associations. Peter\u2019s companions naturally proposed to join him. All that still, clear night they were on the Lake, but caught nothing. Did not this recall to them the former event, when James and John, and Peter and Andrew were called to be Apostles, and did it not specially recall to Peter the searching and sounding of his heart on the morning that followed? But so utterly self-unconscious were they, and, let us add, so far is this history from any trace of legendary design, that not the slightest indication of this appears. Early morning was breaking, and under the rosy glow above the cool shadows were still lying on the pebbly \u2018beach.\u2019 There stood the Figure of One Whom they recognised not\u2014nay, not even when He spake. Yet His Words were intended to bring them this knowledge. The direction to cast the net to the right side of the ship brought them, as He had said, the haul for which they had toiled all night in vain. And more than this: such a multitude of fishes, that they were not able to draw up the net into the ship. This was enough for \u2018the disciple whom Jesus loved,\u2019 and whose heart may previously have misgiven him. He whispered it to Peter: \u2018It is the Lord,\u2019 and Simon, only reverently gathering about him his fisher\u2019s upper garment, cast himself into the sea. Yet even so, except to be sooner by the side of Christ, Peter seems to have gained nothing by his haste. The others, leaving the ship, and transferring themselves to a small boat, which must have been attached to it, followed, rowing the short distance of about one hundred yards, and dragging after them the net, weighted with the fishes.
\nThey stepped on the beach, hallowed by His Presence, in silence, as if they had entered Church or Temple. They dared not even dispose of the netful of fishes which they had dragged on shore, until He directed them what to do. This only they noticed, that some unseen hand had prepared the morning meal, which, when asked by the Master, they had admitted they had not of their own. And now Jesus directed them to bring the fish they had caught. When Peter dragged up the weighted net, it was found full of great fishes, not less than a hundred and fifty-three in number. There is no need to attach any symbolic import to that number, as the Fathers and later writers have done. We can quite understand\u2014nay, it seems almost natural, that, in the peculiar circumstances, they should have counted the large fishes in that miraculous draught that still left the net unbroken. It may have been, that they were told to count the fishes\u2014partly, also, to show the reality of what had taken place. But on the fire of coals there seems to have been only one fish, and beside it only one bread. To this meal He now bade them, for they seem still to have hung back in reverent awe, nor durst they ask Him, Who He was, well knowing it was the Lord. This, as St. John notes, was the third appearance of Christ to the disciples as a body.
\n10. And still this morning of blessing was not ended. The frugal meal was past, with all its significant teaching of just sufficient provision for His Servants, and abundant supply in the unbroken net beside them. But some special teaching was needed, more even than that to Thomas, for him whose work was to be so prominent among the Apostles, whose love was so ardent, and yet in its very ardour so full of danger to himself. For, our dangers spring not only from deficiency, but it may be from excess of feeling, when that feeling is not commensurate with inward strength. Had Peter not confessed, quite honestly, yet, as the event proved, mistakingly, that his love to Christ would endure even an ordeal that would disperse all the others? And had he not, almost immediately afterwards, and though prophetically warned of it, thrice denied his Lord? Jesus had, indeed, since then appeared specially to Peter as the Risen One. But this threefold denial still stood, as it were, uncancelled before the other disciples, nay, before Peter himself. It was to this that the threefold question of the Risen Lord now referred. Turning to Peter, with pointed though most gentle allusion to the danger of self-confidence\u2014a confidence springing from only a sense of personal affection, even though genuine\u2014He asked: \u2018Simon, son of Jena\u2019\u2014as it were with fullest reference to what he was naturally\u2014\u2018lovest thou Me more than these?\u2019 Peter understood it all. No longer with confidence in self, avoiding the former reference to the others, and even with marked choice of a different word to express his affection from that which the Saviour had used, he replied, appealing rather to his Lord\u2019s, than to his own consciousness: \u2018Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee.\u2019 And even here the answer of Christ is characteristic. It was to set him first the humblest work, that which needed most tender care and patience: \u2018Feed [provide with food] My Lambs.\u2019
\nYet a second time came the same question, although now without the reference to the others, and, with the same answer by Peter, the now varied and enlarged commission: \u2018Feed [shepherd, \u03c0\u03bf\u03af\u03bc\u03b1\u03b9\u03bd\u03b5] My Sheep.\u2019 Yet a third time did Jesus repeat the same question, now adopting in it the very word which Peter had used to express his affection. Peter was grieved at this threefold repetition. It recalled only too bitterly his threefold denial. And yet the Lord was not doubtful of Peter\u2019s love, for each time He followed up His question with a fresh Apostolic commission; but now that He put it for the third time, Peter would have the Lord send down the sounding-line quite into the lowest deep of his heart: \u2018Lord, Thou knowest all things\u2014Thou perceivest that I love Thee!\u2019 And now the Saviour spake it: \u2018Feed [provide food for] My Sheep.\u2019 His Lambs, His Sheep, to be provided for, to be tended as such! And only love can do such service.
\nYes, and Peter did love the Lord Jesus. He had loved Him when he said it, only too confident in the strength of his feelings, that he would follow the Master even unto death. And Jesus saw it all\u2014yea, and how this love of the ardent temperament which had once made him rove at wild liberty, would give place to patient work of love, and be crowned with that martyrdom which, when the beloved disciple wrote, was already matter of the past. And the very manner of death by which he was to glorify God was indicated in the words of Jesus.
\nAs He spake them, He joined the symbolic action to His \u2018Follow Me.\u2019 This command, and the encouragement of being in death literally made like Him\u2014following Him\u2014were Peter\u2019s best strength. He obeyed; but as he turned to do so, he saw another following. As St. John himself puts it, it seems almost to convey that he had longed to share Peter\u2019s call, with all that it implied. For, St. John speaks of himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved, and he reminds us that in that night of betrayal he had been specially a sharer with Peter, nay, had spoken what the other had silently asked of him. Was it impatience, was it a touch of the old Peter, or was it a simple inquiry of brotherly interest which prompted the question, as he pointed to John: \u2018Lord\u2014and this man, what?\u2019 Whatever had been the motive, to him, as to us all, when, perplexed about those who seem to follow Christ, we ask it\u2014sometimes in bigoted narrowness, sometimes in ignorance, folly, or jealousy\u2014is this the answer: \u2018What is that to thee? follow thou Me.\u2019 For John also had his life-work for Christ. It was to \u2018tarry\u2019 while He was coming\u2014to tarry those many years in patient labour, while Christ was coming.
\nBut what did it mean? The saying went abroad among the brethren that John was not to die, but to tarry till Jesus came again to reign, when death would be swallowed up in victory. But Jesus had not so said, only: \u2018If I will that he tarry while I am coming.\u2019 What that \u2018Coming\u2019 was, Jesus had not said, and John knew not. So, then, there are things, and connected with His Coming, on which Jesus has left the veil, only to be lifted by His Own Hand\u2014which He means us not to know at present, and which we should be content to leave as He has left them.
\n11. Beyond this narrative we have only briefest notices: by St. Paul, of Christ manifesting Himself to James, which probably finally decided him for Christ, and of His manifestation to the five hundred at once; by St. Matthew, of the Eleven meeting Him at the mountain, where He had appointed them; by St. Luke, of the teaching in the Scriptures during the forty days of communication between the Risen Christ and the disciples.
\nBut this twofold testimony comes to us from St. Matthew and St. Mark, that then the worshipping disciples were once more formed into the Apostolic Circle\u2014Apostles, now, of the Risen Christ. And this was the warrant of their new commission: \u2018All power (authority) has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.\u2019 And this was their new commission: \u2018Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.\u2019 And this was their work: \u2018Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you.\u2019 And this is His final and sure promise: \u2018And lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.\u2019
\n12. We are once more in Jerusalem, whither He had bidden them go to tarry for the fulfilment of the great promise. The Pentecost was drawing nigh. And on that last day\u2014the day of His Ascension\u2014He led them forth to the well-remembered Bethany. From where He had made His last triumphal Entry into Jerusalem before His Crucifixion, would He make His triumphant Entry visibly into Heaven. Once more would they have asked Him about that which seemed to them the final consummation\u2014the restoration of the Kingdom to Israel. But such questions became them not. Theirs was to be work, not rest; suffering, not triumph. The great promise before them was of spiritual, not outward, power: of the Holy Ghost\u2014and their call not yet to reign with Him, but to bear witness for Him. And, as He so spake, He lifted His Hands in blessing upon them, and, as He was visibly taken up, a cloud received Him. And still they gazed, with upturned faces, on that luminous cloud which had received Him, and two Angels spake to them this last message from Him, that He should so come in like manner\u2014as they had beheld Him going into heaven.
\nAnd so their last question to Him, ere He had parted from them, was also answered, and with blessed assurance. Reverently they worshipped Him; then, with great joy, returned to Jerusalem. So it was all true, all real\u2014and Christ \u2018sat down at the Right Hand of God!\u2019 Henceforth, neither doubting, ashamed, nor yet afraid, they \u2018were continually in the Temple, blessing God.\u2019 \u2018And they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed. Amen.\u2019
\nAmen! It is so. Ring out the bells of heaven; sing forth the Angelic welcome of worship; carry it to the utmost bounds of earth! Shine forth from Bethany, Thou Sun of Righteousness, and chase away earth\u2019s mist and darkness, for Heaven\u2019s golden day has broken!<\/p>\n
* * * * * * * *<\/p>\n
Easter Morning, 1883.\u2014Our task is ended\u2014and we also worship and look up. And we go back from this sight into a hostile world, to love, and to live, and to work for the Risen Christ. But as earth\u2019s day is growing dim, and, with earth\u2019s gathering darkness, breaks over it heaven\u2019s storm, we ring out\u2014as of old they were wont, from church-tower, to the mariners that hugged a rock-bound coast\u2014our Easter-bells to guide them who are belated, over the storm-tossed sea, beyond the breakers, into the desired haven. Ring out, earth, all thy Easter-chimes; bring your offerings, all ye people; worship in faith, for\u2014
\n\u2018This Jesus, Which was received up from you into heaven, shall so come, in like manner as ye beheld Him going into heaven.\u2019 \u2018Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly!\u2019<\/p>\n
title The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BOOK 4 THE DESCENT: FROM THE MOUNT OF TRANSFIGURATION INTO THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION AND DEATH. \u2018But god forbede but men shulde leve Wel more thing then men han seen with eye Men shal not wenen euery thing a lye But yf him-selfe yt seeth or elles dooth For god wot thing is neuer the … <\/p>\n