orimi iliiirrv5it|i Xibrarn i;i II < .11 r wi in Till'; iwi imi-. IktOI Till' sAf^h: i-:nd(,:)Wment fund Till- ' ,11 T I H Hs?nri| %B, Sags? A I" f'-J'-i''' 'nhioi' Date Due ^-APfi^- r^'— "t-^ -..►* ^....^..^ •;!£ * ^ - 1" - "- - ^^^ -*?" "~ - - — >- - -—zr '— "' '" <;S£^i nco^^n D°n'i'"' University Library BS2440 .B88 1898 olin 3 1924 029 328 907 ^5 ''iv^ Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029328907 THE TRAINING OF THE TWELVE. }^ '^ % X ) n Luke xv. CHAP. III.] APOLOGIES FOR LOVING StNNEES. 21 directed against the sanctimonious fault-finders. The first may be distinguished as the professional argument, and is to this effect: "I frequent the haunts of sinners, because I am a physician, and they are sick and need healing. Where should a physician be but among his patients ? where oftenest, but among those most grievously afflicted ? " The second may be described as the political argument, its drift being this: "It is good policy to be the friend of sinners who have much to be forgiven; for when they are restored to the paths of virtue and piety, how great is their love ! See that penitent woman, weeping for sorrow and also for joy, and bathing her Saviour's feet with her tears. Those tears are refreshing to My heart, as a spring of water in the arid desert of pharisaic frigidity and formalism." The third may be denominated the argument from natural instinct, and runs thus : " I receive sinners and eat with them, and seek by these means their moral restoration, for the same reason which moves the shepherd to go after a lost sheep, leaving his unstrayed flock in the wilderness, viz. because it is natural to seek the lost, and to have more joy in finding things lost than in possessing things which never have been lost. Men who understand not this feeling are solitary in the universe ; for angels in heaven, fathers, house- wives, shepherds, all who have human hearts on earth, understand it well, and act on it every day." In all these reasonings Jesus argued with His accusers on their own premises, accepting their estimate of themselves, and of the class with whom they deemed it discreditable to associate, as righteous and sinful respectively. But He took care, at the same time, to let it appear that His judgment concerning the two parties did not coincide with that of His interrogators. This . he did on the occasion of Matthew's feast, by bidding them go study the text, " I will have mercy and not sacrifice " ; meaning by the quotation to insinuate, that while, very religious, the Pharisees were also very inhuman, full of pride, prejudice, harshness, and hatred ; and to proclaim the truth, that this character was in God's sight far more detestable than that of those who were addicted to the coarse vices of the multitude, not to speak of those who 23 MATTHEW THE PUBLICAN. [CHAP. III. were " sinners " mainly in the pharisaic imagination, and within inverted commas. Our Lord's last words to the persons who called His conduct in question at this time were not merely apologetic, but judicial. " I came not," he said, " to call the righteous, but sinners ; " ' intimating a purpose to let the self-righteous alone, and to call to repentance and to the joys of the kingdom those who were not too self-satisfied to care for the benefits offered, and to whom the gospel feast would be a real entertainment. The word, in truth, contained a signifi- cant hint of an approaching religious revolution, in which the last should become first and the first last ; Jewish outcasts. Gentile dogs, made partakers, of the joys of the kingdom and the " righteous " shut out. It was one of the pregnant sayings by which Jesus made known to those who could understand, that His religion was an universal one, a religion for humanity, a gospel for mankind, because a gospel for sinners. And what this saying declared in word, the con- duct it apologised for proclaimed yet more expressively by deed. It was an ominous thing that loving sympathy for " publicans and sinners " — the pharisaic instinct discerned it to be so, and rightly took the alarm. It meant death to privileged monopolies of grace and to Jewish pride and exclusivism — all men equal in God's sight, and welcome to salvation on the same terms. In fact, it was a virtual announcement of the Pauline programme of an universalistic gospel, which the twelve are supposed by a certain school of theologians to have opposed as determinedly as the Pharisees themselves. Strange that the men who had been with Jesus were so obtuse as not to understand, even at the last, what was involved in their Master's fellowship with the low and the lost ! Was Buddha more fortunate in his disciples than Jesus in His ? Buddha said, " My law is a law of grace for all," directing the sayingimmediately against Brahminical caste prejudice; and his followers understood that it meant. Buddhism a missionary re- ligion, a religion even for Sudras, and therefore for all mankind ! ^ e?s fierdvoiav seems to be gomiine only in Luke, and the words express only a part of Christ's meaning. He called men not merely to repentance, but to participation in all the blessedness of the kingdom. CHAPTEE IV. THE TWELVE. Matt. x. 1-4 ; Makk iii. 13-19 ; Luke vi. 12-16 ; Acts i. 13. THE selection by Jesus of the twelve from the band of disciples who had gradually gathered around His person, is an important landmark in the Gospel history. It divides the ministry of our Lord into two portions, nearly equal, probably, as to duration, but unequal as to the extent and importance of the work done in each respectively. In the earlier period Jesus laboured single-handed ; His miraculous deeds were confined for the most part to a limited area, and His teaching was in the main of an elementary character. But by the time when the twelve were chosen, the work of the kingdom had assumed such dimensions as to require organi- zation and division of labour ; and the teaching of Jesus was beginning to be of a deeper and more elaborate nature, and His gracious activities were taking an ever-widening range. It is probable that the selection of a limited number to be His close and constant companions had become a necessity to Christ, in consequence of His very success in gaining disciples. His followers, we imagine, had grown so numerous as to he an incumbrance and an impediment to His movements, especially in the long journeys which mark the later part of His ministry. It was impossible that all who believed could continue hence- forth to follow Him, in the literal sense, whithersoever He might go : the greater number could now only be occasional followers. But it was His wish that certain selected men should be with Him at all times and in all places, — His travelling companions in all His wanderings, witnessing all His work, and ministering to His daily needs. And so, in the quaint words of Mark, 29 30 THE TWELVE. [CHAP. IV. " Jesus calleth unto Him whom He would, and they came unto Him. And He made twelve, that they should be with Him." ^ These twelve, however, as we know, were to be something more than travelling companions or menial servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were to be, in the meantime, students of Christian doctrine, and occasional fellow-labourers in the work of the kingdom, and eventually Christ's chosen trained agents for propagating the faith after He Himself had left the earth. From the time of their being chosen, indeed, the twelve entered on a regular apprenticeship for the great office of apostleship, in the course of which they were to learn, in the privacy of an intimate daily fellowship with their Master, what they should be, do, believe, and teach, as His witnesses and ambassadors to the world. Henceforth the training of these men was to be a constant and prominent part of Christ's personal work. He was to make it His business to tell them in darkness what they should afterwards speak in the daylight, and to whisper in their ear what in after years they should preach upon the housetops.^ The time when this election was made, though not absolutely determined, is fixed in relation to certain leading events in the Gospel history. John speaks of the twelve as an organized company at the period of the feeding of the five thousand, and of the discourse on the bread of life in the synagogue of Caper- naum, delivered shortly after that miracle. From this fact we learn that the twelve were chosen at least one year before the crucifixion ; for the miracle of the feeding took place, according to the fourth evangelist, shortly before a Passover season.^ From the words spoken by Jesus to the men whom He had chosen, in justification of His seeming doubt of their fidelity after the multitude had deserted Him, " Did I not choose you the twelve, and one of you is a devil ? " * we conclude that the choice was then not quite a recent event. The twelve had been long enough together to give the false disciple opportunity to show his real character. ^Markiii. 13. The verb iirol-nae, "made," is used here in the same sense as in Heb. iii. 2, "who are faithful to Him that made Him" (jQ ■n-oi.iiaavn airiv). There it is rendered ' ' appointed, " which the K. V. introduces here also. = Matt. X. 27. s joiin ^^^ 4_ 4 joj(n ^i_ yg, as in R.V. CHAP. IV.] TIME OF THEIE ELECTION. 31 Turning now to the synoptical evangelists, we find them fixing the position of the election with reference to two other most important events. Matthew speaks for the first time of the twelve as a distinct body in connection with their mission in Galilee. He does not, however, say that they were chosen immediately before, and with direct reference to, that mission. He speaks rather as if the apostolic fraternity had been pre- viously in existence, his words being, " When He had called unto Him His twelve disciples." Luke, on the other hand, gives a formal record of the election, as a preface to his account of the Sermon on the Mount, so speaking as to create the im- pression that the one event immediately preceded the other .^ Finally, Mark's narrative confirms the view suggested by these observations on Matthew and Luke, viz. that the twelve were called just before the Sermon on the Mount was delivered, and some considerable time before they were sent forth on their preaching and healing mission. There we read : " Jesus goeth up into the mountain (to opm)^ and calleth unto Him whom He would " — the ascent referred to evidently being that which Jesus made just before preaching His great discourse. Mark continues : " And He ordained twelve, that they should be with Him, and that He might send them forth to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out devils." Here allusion is made to an intention on Christ's part to send forth His disciples on a mission, but the intention is not represented as immediately realized. Nor can it be said that immediate realization is implied, though not expressed ; for the evangelist gives an account of the mission as actually carried out several chapters further on in his Gospel, commencing with the words, " And He calleth unto Him the twelve, and began to send them forth." ^ It may be regarded, then, as tolerably certain, that the calling of the twelve was a prelude to the preaching of the great sermon on the kingdom, in the founding of which they were afterwards ^ Luke vi. 13 compared with 17, where note that Luke represents the name "apostle" as originating with Christ: "Whom also He named apostles" (ver. 13). = This expression is used by all the Synoptics. It seems to signify a mountain district rather than a particular hill, ' Mark vi. 7, 32 THE TWELVE. [CHAP. IV to take so distinguished a part. At what precise period in the ministry of our Lord the sermon itself is to be placed, we cannot so confidently determine. Our opinion, however, is, that the Sermon on the Mount was delivered towards the close of Christ's first lengthened ministry in Galilee, during the time which inter- vened between the two visits to Jerusalem on festive occasions mentioned in the second and fifth chapters of John's Gospel.^ The number of the apostolic company is significant, and was doubtless a matter of choice, not less than was the composition of the selected band. A larger number of eligible men could easily have been found in a circle of disciples which afterwards supplied not fewer than seventy auxiliaries for evangelistic work ; ^ and a smaller number might have served all the present or prospective purposes of the apostleship. The number twelve was recommended by obvious symbolic reasons. It happily expressed in figures what Jesus claimed to be, and what He had come to do, and thus furnished a support to the faith and a stimulus to the devotion of His followers. It significantly hinted that Jesus was the divine Messianic King of Israel, come to set up the kingdom whose advent was foretold by prophets in glowing language, suggested by the palmy days of Israel's history, when the theocratic community existed in its integrity, and all the tribes of the chosen nation were united under the royal house of David. That the number twelve was designed to bear such a mystic meaning, we know from Christ's own words to the apostles on a later occasion, when, describing to them the rewards awaiting them in the kingdom for past services and sacrifices, He said, " Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed Me, in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the, twelve tribes of Israel."^ ' So Ebrard, Gosp. Hist. Ewald places the election after the feast of John v. ^ This mission of the seventy is regarded by Baur, and others of the same school,, as a pure invention of the third evangelist's, meant to throw the twelve into the shade, and to serve the cause of Pauline universalism. This opinion is entirely arbitrary ; but even supposing we were to concede the point, it would still remain true, as stated in the text, that Christ could have had more than twelve apostles had He desired. ' Matt. xix. 28. Keim recognises the number twelve as bearing a symbolic meaning, as stated in the text, against Schleiermacher, who regarded it as purely accidental. — Geschichte Jcsu von Nazara, ii. 304. CHAP. IV.] THE NUMBER TWELVE SIGNIFICANT. 33 It is possible that the apostles were only too well aware of the mystic significance of their number, and found in it an en- couragement to the fond delusive hope that the coming kingdom should be not only a spiritual realization of the promises, but a literal restoration of Israel to political integrity and inde- pendence. The risk of such misapprehension was one of the drawbacks connected with the particular number twelve, but it was not deemed by Jesus a sufficient reason for fixing on another. His method of procedure in this as in all things, was to abide by that which in itself was true and right, and theii to correct misapprehensions as they arose. From the number of the apostolic band, we pass to the persons composing it. Seven of the twelve — the first seven in the catalogues of Mark and Luke, assuming the identity of Bartholomew and Nathanael — are persons already known to us. With two of the remaining five — the first and the last — we shall become well acquainted as we proceed in the history. Thomas called Didymus, or the Twin, will come before us as a man of warm heart but melancholy temperament, ready to die with his Lord, but slow to believe in His resurrection. Judas Iscariot is known to all the world as the Traitor. He appears for the first time, in these catalogues of the apostles, with the infamous title branded on his brow, " Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him." The presence of a man capable of treachery among the elect disciples is a mystery which we shall net now attempt to penetrate. We merely make this historical remark about Judas here, that he seems to have been the only one among the twelve who was not a Galilean. He is surnamed, from his native place apparently, the man of Kerioth ; and from the Book of Joshua we learn that there was a town of that name in the southern border of the tribe of Judah.^ The three names which remain are exceedingly obscure. On grounds familiar to Bible scholars, it has often been attempted to identify James of Alph^us with James the brother or kins- man of the Lord. The next on the lists of Matthew and Mark 1 Josh. XV. 24. See Renan, Vie de Jisus, p. 160 (13th ed.). Ewald {Ohrisius, p. 398) thinks Kerioth is Kartah, in the tribe of Zebulun (Josh. xxi. 34). If Judas was a Judaean, he may have become a disciple at the time of Christ's visit to the Jordan, mentioned in John iii. 22. 34 THE TWELVE. [CHAP. IV. has been supposed by many to have been a brother of this James, and therefore another brother of Jesus. This opinion is based on the fact, that in place of the Lebbseus or Thaddeeus of the first two Gospels, we find in Luke's catalogues the name Judas " of James." The ellipsis in this designation has been filled up with the word brother, and it is assumed that the James alluded to is James the son of Alphseus. However tempting these results may be, we can scarcely regard them as ascer- tained, and must content ourselves with stating that among the twelve was a second James, besides the brother of John and son of Zebedee, and also a second Judas, who appears again as an interlocutor in the farewell conversation between Jesus and His disciples on the night before His crucifixion, carefully dis- tinguished by the evangelist from the traitor by the paren- thetical remark "not Iscariot."^ This Judas,being the same with Lebbseus Thaddaeus, has been called the three-named disciple.^ The disciple whom we have reserved to the last place, like the one who stands at the head of all the lists, was a Simon. This second Simon is as obscure as the first is celebrated, for he is nowhere mentioned in the Gospel history, except in the catalogues ; yet, little known as he is, the epithet attached to his name conveys a piece of curious and interesting information. He is called the Kananite (not Canaanite), which is a political, not a geographical designation, as appears from the Greek word substituted in the place of this Hebrew one by Luke, who calls the disciple we now speak of Simon Zelotes ; that is, in English, Simon the Zealot. This epithet Zelotes connects Simon un- mistakably with the famous party which rose in rebellion under Judas in the days of the taxing,^ some twenty years before Christ's ministry began, when Judaea and Samaria were brought under the direct government of Eome, and a census of the population was taken with a view to subsequent taxation. How singular a phenomenon is this ex-zealot among the dis- ciples of Jesus ! No two men could differ more widely in their spirit, ends, and means, than Judas of Galilee and Jesus of ' John xiv. 22. 2 Ewald {Ghristws, p. 399) thinks Lebbseus and Judas different persons, and supposes that the former had died in Christ's lifetime, and that Judas had been chosen in his place. 3 Acts V. 37. CHAP. IV.] SIMON THE ZEALOT. 35 Nazareth. The one was a political malcontent; the other would have the conquered bow to the yoke, and give to Ceesar Csesar's due. The former aimed at restoring the kingdom to Israel, adopting for his watchword, "We have no Lord or Master but God " ; the latter aimed at founding a kingdom not national, but universal, not " of the world," but purely spiritual. The means employed by the two actors were as diverse as their ends. One had recourse to the carnal weapons of war, the sword and the dagger ; the other relied solely on the gentle but omnipotent force of truth. What led Simon to leave Judas for Jesus we know not ; but he made a happy exchange for himself, as the party he forsook were destined in after years to bring ruin on themselves and on their country by their fanatical, reckless, and unavailing patriot- ism. Though the insurrection of Judas was crushed, the fire of discontent still smouldered in the breasts of his adherents ; and at length it burst out into the blaze of a new rebellion, which brought on a death-struggle with the gigantic power of Eome, and ended in the destruction of the Jewish capital, and the dispersion of the Jewish people. The choice of this disciple to be an apostle supplies another illustration of Christ's disregard of prudential wisdom. An ex-zealot was not a safe man to make an apostle of, for he might be the means of rendering Jesus and His followers objects of political suspicion. But the Author of our faith was willing to take the risk. He expected to gain many disciples from the dangerous classes as well as from the despised, and He would have them, too, represented among the twelve. It gives one a pleasant surprise to think of Simon the zealot and Matthew the publican, men coming from so opposite quarters, meeting together in close fellowship in the little band of twelve. In the persons of these two disciples extremes meet — the tax-gatherer and the tax-hater : the unpatriotic Jew who degraded himself by becoming a servant of the alien ruler ; and the Jewish patriot, who chafed under the foreign yoke, and sighed for emancipation. This union of opposites was not accidental, but was designed by Jesus as a prophecy of the future. He wished the twelve to be the church in miniature or germ ; and therefore He chose them so as to intimate that 36 THE TWELVE. [OHAP. IV. as among them distinctions of publican and zealot were un- known, so in the church of the future there should be neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, bond nor free, but only Christ — all to each, and in each of the all. These were the names of the twelve as given in the cata- logues. As to the order in which they are arranged, on closely inspecting the lists we observe that they contain three groups of four, in each of which the same names are always found, though the order of arrangement varies. The first group in- cludes those best known, the second the next best, and the third those least known of all, or, in the case of the traitor, known only too well. Peter, the most prominent character among the twelve, stands at the head of all the lists, and Judas Iscariot at the foot, carefully designated, as already observed, the traitor. The apostolic roll, taking the order given in Matthew, and borrowing characteristic epithets from the Gospel history at large, is as follows : — FIRST GEOUP. Simon Peter, . . . The man of rook. Andrew, . ... Peter's brother. James and | /Sons of Zebedee, and sons of John J \ thunder. SECOND GROUP. Philip, .... . The earnest inquirer. Bartholomew, or Nathanael, . . The guileless Israelite. Thomas, The Melancholy. Matthew, The publican (so called by himself only). THIRD GEOUP. James (the son) of Alphseus, . . (James the Less ? Mark xv. 40.) LabbjBUS, ThaddiEUs, Judas of James, The three-named disciple. Simon The Zealot. Judas, the man of Kerioth, . . The Traitor. Such were the men whom Jesus chose to be with Him while He was on this earth, and to carry on His work after He left it. Such were the men whom the church celebrates as the " glorious company of the apostles." The praise is merited ; but the glory of the twelve was not of this world. In a worldly point of view they were a very insignificant company indeed, — a band of poor illiterate Galilean provincials, utterly devoid of social conse- quence, not likely to be chosen by one having supreme regard CHAP. IV.] THE CHOICE MADE IN WISDOM. 37 to prudential considerations. Why did Jesus choose such men ? Was He guided by feelings of antagonism to those possessing social advantages, or of partiality for men of His own class ? No; His choice was made in true wisdom. If He chose Galileans mainly, it was not from provincial prejudice against those of the south ; if, as some think, He chose two or even four 1 of His own kindred, it was not from nepotism ; if He chose rude, unlearned, humble men, it was not because He was animated by any petty jealousy of knowledge, culture, or good birth. If any rabbi, rich man, or ruler had been willing to yield himself unreservedly to the service of the kingdom, no objection would have been taken to him on account of his acquirements, possessions, or titles. The case of Saul of Tarsus, the pupil of Gamaliel, proves the truth of this statement. Even Gamaliel himself would not have been objected to, could he have stooped to become a disciple of the unlearned Nazarene. But, alas ! neither he nor any of his order would condescend so far, and therefore the despised One did not get an opportunity of showing His willingness to accept as disciples and choose for apostles such as they were. The truth is, that Jesus was obliged to be content with fisher- men, and publicans, and quondam zealots, for apostles. They were the best that could be had. Those who deemed themselves better were too proud to become disciples, and thereby they excluded themselves from what all the world now sees to be the high honour of being the chosen princes of the kingdom. The civil and religious aristocracy boasted of their unbelief.^ The citizens of Jerusalem did feel for a moment interested in the zealous youth who had purged the temple with a whip of small cords; but their faith was superficial, and their attitude patronizing, and therefore Jesus did not commit Himself unto them, because He knew what was in them.^ A few of good position were sincere sympathizers, but they were not so decided in their attachment as to be eligible for apostles. Nicodemus was barely able to speak a timid apologetic word in Christ's behalf, and Joseph of Arimathea was a disciple ' Matthew or Levi, being a son of Alphseus, has been supposed to be a brother of James, and Simon the Zealot to be the Simon mentioned in Matt. xiii. 55. = John vii. 48. ' John "• 23-25. 38 THE TWELVE. [CHAP. IV, ■' secretly," for fear of the Jews. These were hardly the persons to send forth as missionaries of the cross — men so fettered by social ties and party connections, and so enslaved by the fear of man. The apostles of Christianity must be made of sterner stuff. And so Jesus was obliged to fall back on the rustic, but simple, sincere, and energetic men of Galilee. And He was quite content with His choice, and devoutly thanked His Father for giving Him even such as they. Learning, rank, wealth, refinement, freely given up to His service, He would not have despised; but He preferred devoted men who had none of these advantages to undevoted men who had them all. And with good reason ; for it mattered little, except in the eyes of contemporary prejudice, what the social position or even the previous history of the twelve had been, provided they were spiritually qualified for the work to which they were called. What tells ultimately is, not what is without a man, but what is within. John Bunyan was a man of low birth, low occupation, and, up till his conversion, of low habits ; but he was by nature a man of genius, and by grace a man of God, and he would have made — he was, in fact — a most effective apostle. But it may be objected that all the twelve were by no means gifted like Bunyan ; some of them, if one may judge from the obscurity which envelopes their names, and the silence of history regarding them, having been undistinguished either by high endowment or by a great career, and in fact, to speak plainly, all but useless. As this objection virtually impugns the wisdom of Christ's choice, it is necessary to examine how far it is according to truth.^ We submit the following con- siderations with this view : — 1. That some of the apostles were comparatively obscure, inferior men, cannot be denied ; but even the obscurest of them may have been most useful as witnesses for Him with whom they had companied from the beginning. It does not take a great man to make a good witness, and to be witnesses of Christian facts was the main business of the apostles. That ' Keim says that Jesus was in a, genuinely tuman way {acht menschlich) deceived in His disciples to a certain extent. They turned out not the men He had hoped. The remark occurs in connection with the Galilean mission.— Geschichte Jesu von, Ncmwra, ii. 332. CHAP. IV.] OBSCURE BUT NOT USELESS. 39 even the humblest of them rendered important service in that capacity we need not doubt, though nothing is said of them in the apostolic annals. It was not to be expected that a history so fragmentary and so brief as that given by Luke should mention any but the principal actors, especially when we re- flect how few of the characters that appear on the stage at any particular crisis in human affairs are prominently noticed even in histories which go elaborately into detail. The purpose of history is served by recording the words and deeds of the representative men, and many are allowed to drop into oblivion who did nobly in their day. The less distinguished members of the apostolic band are entitled to the benefit of this reflection. 2. Three eminent men, or even two (Peter and John), out of twelve, is a good proportion ; there being few societies in which superior excellence bears such a high ratio to respectable mediocrity. Perhaps the number of " Pillars " ^ was as great as was desirable. Far from regretting that all were not Peters and Johns, it is rather a matter to be thankful for, that there were diversities of gifts among the first preachers of the gospel. As a general rule, it is not good when all are leaders. Little men are needed as well as great men ; for human nature is one- sided, and little men have their peculiar virtues and gifts, and can do some things better than their more celebrated brethren. 3. We must remember how little we know concerning any of the apostles. It is the fashion of biographers in our day, writing for a morbidly or idly curious public, to enter into the minutest particulars of outward event or personal peculiarity regarding their heroes. Of this fond idolatrous minuteness there is no trace in the evangelic histories. The writers of the Gospels were not afflicted with the biographic mania. More- over, the apostles were not their theme. Christ was their hero ; and their sole desire was to tell what they knew of Him. They gazed stedfastly at the Sun of Eighteousness, and in His efful- gence they lost sight of the attendant stars. Whether they were stars of the first magnitude, or of the second, or of the third, made little difference. 1 This title is given to Peter, James, and John by Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians (11. 9). Hence In the Tubingen literature devoted to the mainten- ance of the conflict-theory, these three are called the " Pillar Apostles." CHAPTER V. HEARING AND SEEING. LuKB i. 1-4 ; Matt. xiii. 16, 17 ; Luke x. 23, 24 ; Matt, v.-vii. ; Luke vi. 17-49 ; Matt. xiii. 1-52 et parall. ; Matt. viii. 16, 17 ; Mark iv. 33, 34. IN" the training of the twelve for the work of the apostleship, hearing and seeing the words and works of Christ neces- sarily occupied an important place. Eye and ear witnessing of the facts of an unparalleled life was an indispensable pre- paration for future witness-bearing. The apostles could secure credence for their wondrous tale only by being able to preface it with the protestation : " That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you." N'one would believe their report, save those who, at the very least, were satisfied that it emanated from men who had been with Jesus. Hence the third evan- gelist, himself not an apostle, but only a companion of apostles, presents his Gospel with all confidence to his friend Theophilus as a genuine history, and no mere collection of fables, because its contents were attested by men who " from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word." In the early period of their discipleship hearing and seeing seem to have been the main occupation of the twelve. They were then like children born into a new world, whose first and by no means least important course of lessons consists in the use of their senses in observing the wonderful objects by which they are surrounded. The things which the twelve saw and heard were wonderful enough. The great Actor in the stupendous drama was careful to impress on His followers the magnitude of their privilege. " Blessed," said He to them on one occasion, " are the eyes which see the things that ye see : for I tell you, that many prophets and kings desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them not ; and to hear the things which ye hear, CHAP, v.] THE DOOTEIifE OF THE KINGDOM. 41 and heard them not." ^ Yet certain generations of Israel had seen very remarkable things : one had seen the wonders of the ExoduSj and the sublimities connected with the lawgiving at Sinai ; another, the miracles wrought by Elijah and Elisha ; and successive generations had been p^vileged to listen to the not less wonderful oracles of God, spoken by David, Solomon, Isaiah, and the rest of the prophets. But the things witnessed by the twelve eclipsed the wonders of all bygone ages ; for a greater than Moses or Elijah, or David, or Solomon, or Isaiah, was here, and the promise to Nathanael was being fulfilled. Heaven had been opened, and the angels of God — the spirits of wisdom, and power, and love — were ascending and descending on the Son of Man. We may here take a rapid survey of the mirabilia which it was the peculiar privilege of the twelve to see and hear, more or less during the whole period of their discipleship, and especially just after their election. These may be com- prehended under two heads : the Doctrine of the Kingdom, and the Philanthropic Work of the Kingdom. 1. Before the ministry of Jesus commenced, His forerunner had appeared in the wilderness of Judjea, preaching, and saying, " Eepent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand " ; and some time after their election the twelve disciples were sent forth among the towns and villages of Galilee to repeat the Baptist's message. But Jesus Himself did something more than proclaim the advent of the kingdom. He expounded the nature of the divine kingdom, described the character of its citizens, and discriminated between genuine and spurious members of the holy commonwealth. This He did partly in what is familiarly called the Sermon on the Mount, preached shortly after the election of the apostles ; and partly in certain parables uttered about the same period.^ > Luke X. 23, 24. The authors of the Revised Version have introduced many- changes in the A.T. by stricter rendering of tenses, and espeoiaUy of the aorists, which in the old version are frequently treated as perfects. They may have carried this too far, but on the whole they have rendered good service in this department. vi ■ 2 That the election of the twelve preceded the utterance of the parables as plain from Mark iv. 10 : "They that were about Him with the twelve, asked of Him the parable." ' i^ HEARING AND SEEING. [CHAP. V. In the great discourse delivered on the mountain-top, the qualifications for citizenship in the kingdom of heaven were set forth, first positively, and then comparatively. The positive truth was summed up in seven golden sentences called the Beatitudes, in which the felicity of the kingdom was represented as altogether independent of the outward conditions with which worldly happiness is associated. The blessed, according to the preacher, were the poor, the hungry, the mournful, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peaceable, the sufferers for righteousness' sake. Such were blessed themselves, and a source of blessing to the human race : the salt of the earth, the light of the world, raised above others in spirit and character, to draw them upwards, and lead them to glorify God. Next, with more detail, Jesus exhibited the righteousness of the kingdom, and of its true citizens, in contrast to that which prevailed. " Except your righteousness," He went on to say with solemn emphasis, " shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the king- dom of heaven ; " and then He illustrated and enforced the general proposition by a detailed description of the counterfeit in its moral and religious aspects : in its mode of interpreting the moral law, and its manner of performing the duties of piety, such as prayer, alms, and fasting. In the one aspect He characterized pharisaic righteousness as superficial and technical; in the other as ostentatious, self-complacent, and censorious. In contrast thereto, He described the ethics of the kingdom as a pure stream of life, having charity for its fountainhead ; a morality of the heart, not merely of outward conduct; a morality also broad and catholic, overleaping all arbitrary barriers erected by legal pedantry and natural selfish- ness. The religion of the kingdom He set forth as humble, retiring, devoted in singleness of heart to God and things supernal ; having faith in God as a benignant gracious Father for its root, and contentment, cheerfulness, and freedom from secular cares for its fruits ; and, finally, as reserved in its bear- ing towards the profane, yet averse to severity in judging, yea, to judging at all, leaving men to be judged by God. The discourse, of which we have given a hasty outline, made CHAP, v.] PARABLES OP THE KINGDOM. 43 a powerful impression on the audience. "The people," we read, " were astonished at His doctrine ; for He taught them as one having authority (the authority of wisdom and truth), and not as the scribes," who had merely the authority of ofBce. It is not probable that either the multitude or the twelve understood the sermon ; for it was both deep and lofty, and their minds were preoccupied with very different ideas of the coming kingdom. Yet the drift of all that had been said was clear and simple. The kingdom whereof Jesus was both King and Lawgiver was not to be a kingdom of this world : it was not to be here or there in space, but within the heart of man ; it was not to be the monopoly of any class or nation, but open to all possessed of the requisite spiritual endowments on equal terms. It is nowhere said, indeed, in the sermon, that ritual qualifications, such as circumcision, were not indispens- able for admission into the kingdom. But circumcision is ignored here, as it was ignored throughout the teaching of Jesus. It is treated as something simply out of place which cannot be dovetailed into the scheme of doctrine set forth ; an incon- gruity the very mention of which would create a sense of the grotesque. How truly it was so anyone can satisfy himself by just imagining for a moment that among the Beatitudes had been found one running thus : Blessed are the circum- cised, for no uncircumcised ones shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. This significant silence concerning the seal of the national covenant could not fail to have its efi'ect on the minds of the disciples, as a hint at eventual antiquation. The weighty truths thus taught first in the didactic form of an ethical discourse, Jesus sought at other times to popularize by means of parables. In the course of His ministry He uttered many parabolic sayings, the parable being with Him a favourite form of instruction. Of the thirty ^ parables preserved in the Gospels, the larger number were of an occasional character, and are best understood when viewed in connection with the circumstances which called them forth. But there is a special group of eight which appear to ' This number is only an approximate estimate. The number of the parables is estimated differently by different writers, according to their definition of a parable and method of treating the collection. 44 HEARING ANt) SEEING. [OHAP. V. have been spoken about the same period, and to have been designed to serve one object, viz. to exhibit in simple pictures the outstanding features of the kingdom of heaven in its nature and progress, and in its relations to diverse classes of men. One of these, the parable of the sower, apparently the first spoken, shows the different reception given to the word of the kingdom by various classes of hearers, and the varied issues in their life. Two — the parables of the tares and of the net cast into the sea — describe the mixture of good and evil that should exist in the kingdom till the end, when the grand final separation would take place. Another pair of short parables — those of the treasure hid in a field and of the precious pearl — set forth the incomparable importance of the kingdom, and of citizenship therein. Other two — the grain of mustard seed, and the leaven hid in three measures of meal — explain how the kingdom advances from small begin- nings to a great ending. An eighth parable, found in Mark's Gospel only, teaches that growth in the divine kingdom proceeds by stages, analogous to the blade, the ear, and the full com in the ear, in the growth of grain.^ These parables, or the greater number of them, were spoken in the hearing of a miscellaneous audience ; and from a reply of Jesus to a question put by the disciples, it might appear that they were intended mainly for the ignorant populace. The question was, " Why speakest thou unto them in parables ? " and the reply, " Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given ; " which seems to imply, that in the case of the twelve such elementary views of truth — such children's sermons, so to speak — might be dispensed with. Jesus meant no more, however, than that for them the parables were not so important as for common hearers, being only one of several means of grace through which they were to become eventually scribes instructed in the kingdom, acquainted with all its mysteries, and able, like a wise householder, to bring out of their treasures things new and old ; ^ while for the multitude the parables were indispensable, as affording their only chance of getting a little glimpse into the mysteries of the kingdom. > Mark iv. 26. " Matt. xiii. 52. CHAP, v.] APOSTOLIC ESTIMATE OF PARABLES. 45 That the twelve were not above parables yet appears from the fact that theyasked and received explanations of them in private from their Master : of all, probably, though the interpretations of two only, the parables of the sower and the tares, are pre- served in the Gospels.^ They were still only children ; the parables were pretty pictures to them, but of what they could not tell. Even after they had received private expositions of their meaning, they were probably not much wiser than before, though they professed to be satisfied.^ Their profession was doubtless sincere : they spake as they felt ; but they spake as children, they understood as children, they thought as children, and they had much to learn yet of these divine mysteries. When the children had grown to spiritual manhood, and fully understood these mysteries, they highly valued the happiness they had enjoyed in former years, in being privi- leged to hear the parables of Jesus. We have an interesting memorial of the deep impression produced on their minds by these simple pictures of the kingdom, in the reflection with which the first evangelist closes his account of Christ's parabolic teaching. " All these things," he remarks, " spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables, . . . that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables, I wUl utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world." ^ The quotation (from the seventy - eighth Psalm) significantly diverges both from the Hebrew original and from the Septua- gint version.* Matthew has consciously adapted the words so as to express the absolute originality of the teaching in which he found their fulfilment. While the Psalmist uttered dark sayings from the ancient times of Israel's history, Jesus in the parables had spoken things that had been hidden from the creation. Nor was this an exaggeration on the part of the evangelist. Even the use of the parable as a vehicle of instruction was all but new, and the truths expressed in the parables were altogether new. They were indeed the eternal verities of the divine kingdom, but till the days of Jesus they 1 Mark iv. 34. " Matt. xiii. 51. = Matt. xiii. 34, 35. ' ipei^o/Mi Ke/tpu/t/ifca ivi (caTOjSoX^s xdfffiov (Matt.) ; Dni7"''3p DIT'n ilJCilK (Hebrew) ; ipeiyioiMi. irpoP\.iimTa dTr' i.pxns (Sept.). 46 HEARING AND SEEING. [CHAP. V. had remained unannounced. Earthly things had always been fit to emblem forth heavenly things ; but, till the great Teacher appeared, no one had ever thought of linking them together, so that the one should become a mirror of the other, revealing the deep things of God to the common eye : even as no one before Isaac Newton had thought of connecting the fall of an apple with the revolution of the heavenly bodies, though apples had fallen to the ground from the creation of the world. 2. The things which the disciples had the happiness to see in connection with the philanthropic work of the kingdom were, if possible, still more marvellous than those which they heard in Christ's company. They were eye-witnesses of the events which Jesus bade the messengers of John report to their master in prison as unquestionable evidence that He was the Christ who should come.^ In their presence, as spectators, blind men received their sight, lame men walked, lepers were cleansed, the deaf recovered hearing, dead persons were raised to life again. The performance of such wonder- ful works was for a time Christ's daily occupation. He went about in Galilee and other districts, " doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil." ^ The " miracles " recorded in detail in the Gospels give no idea whatever of the extent to which these wondrous operations were carried on. The leper cleansed on the descent from the mountain, when the great sermon was preached, the palsied servant of the Eoman centurion restored to health and strength, Peter's mother-in-law cured of a fever, the demoniac dispossessed in the synagogue of Capernaum, the widow's son brought back to life while he was being carried out to burial, — these, and the like, are but a few samples selected out of an innumer- able multitude of deeds not less remarkable, whether regarded as mere miracles or as acts of kindness. The truth of this statement appears from paragraphs of frequent occurrence in the Gospels, which relate not individual miracles, but an indefinite number of them taken en masse. Of such para- graphs take as an example the following, cursorily rehearsing the works done by Jesus at the close of a busy day : " And at even, when the sun did set, they brought unto Him all that ^ Matt. xi. 2. 2 ^ots xi. 38. CHAP, v.] IMPRESSIONS MADE BY THE MIRACLES. 47 were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils ; and all the city was gathered together at the door. And He healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils." ^ This was what happened on a single Sabbath even in Capernaum, shortly after the Sermon on the Mount was preached ; and such scenes appear to have been common at this time : for we read a little further on in the same Gospel, that " Jesus spake unto His disciples, that a small ship should wait on Him because of the multitude, lest they should throng Him : for He had healed many ; insomuch that they pressed upon Him for to touch Him, as many as had plagues." 2 And yet again Mark tells us how " they went into an -house, and the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread." ^ The inference suggested by such passages as to the vast extent of Christ's labours among the suffering, is borne out by the impressions these made on the minds both of friends and foes. The ill-aSected were so struck by what they saw, that they found it necessary to get up a theory to account for the mighty influence exerted by Jesus in curing physical, and especially psychical maladies. " This fellow," they said, " doth not cast out devils but by Beelzebub the prince of devils." It was a lame theory, as Jesus showed ; but it was at least conclusive evidence that devils were cast out, and in great numbers. The thoughts of the well-affected concerning the works of Jesus were various, but all which have been recorded involve a testimony to His vast activity and extraordinary zeal. Some, apparently relatives, deemed Him mad, fancying that enthusiasm had disturbed His mind, and compassionately sought to save Him from doing Himself harm through excessive solicitude to do good to others.* The sentiments of the people who received benefit were more devout. " They marvelled and gloriiied God, which had given such power unto men ; " ^ and they were naturally not inclined to criticise an " enthusiasm of humanity " whereof they were themselves the objects. The contemporaneous impressions of the twelve concerning their Master's deeds are not recorded ; but of their subsequent reflections as apostles we have an interesting sample in the 1 Mark i. 32-34. ^ Mark iii. 9. ' Mark iii. 19, 20. * Mark iii. 21. ^ Matt. ix. 8. 48 HEARING AND SEEING. [OHAP. V. observations appended by the first evangelist to his account of the transactions of that Sabbath evening in Capernaum already alluded to. The devout Matthew, according to his custom, saw in these wondrous works Old Testament Scripture fulfilled ; and the passage whose fulfilment he found therein was that touching oracle of Isaiah, " Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows " ; which, departing from the Septuagint, he made apt to his purpose by rendering, " Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses." ^ The Greek translators interpreted the text as referring to men's spiritual maladies — their sins; ^ but Matthew deemed it neither a misapplication nor a degrada- tion of the words to find in them a prophecy of Messiah's deep sympathy with such as suffered from any disease, whether spiritual or mental, or merely physical. He knew not how better to express the intense compassion of his Lord towards all sufferers, than by representing Him in prophetic language as taking their sicknesses on Himself. Nor did he wrong the prophet's thought by this application of it. He but laid the foundation of an d, fortiori inference to a still more intense sympathy on the Saviour's part with the spiritually diseased. For surely He who so cared for men's bodies would care yet more for their souls. Surely it might safely be anticipated, that He who was so conspicuous as a healer of bodily disease would become yet more famous as a Saviour from sin. The works which the twelve were privileged to see were verily worth seeing, and .altogether worthy of the Messianic King. They served to demonstrate that the King and the kingdom were not only coming, but come ; for what could more certainly betoken their presence, than mercy dropping like the " gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath " ? John, indeed, seems to have thought otherwise, when he sent to in- quire at Jesus if He were the Christ who was to come. He desiderated, we imagine, a work of judgment on the impenitent as a more reliable proof of Messiah's advent than these miracles of mercy. The prophetic infirmity of querulousness and the prison air had got the better of his judgment and his heart, and he was in the truculent humour of Jonah, who was displeased with God, not because He was too stern, but rather because He was too gracious, too ready to forgive. ' Matt. viii. 17. ^ oBros ris afMaprlas riiiup ^4pei. CHAP, v.] NO LOVE OF MARVELLOUS IN NEW TESTAMENT. 49 The least in the kingdom of heaven is incapable now of being offended with these works of our Lord on account of their merci- fulness. The offence in our day lies in a different direction. Men stumble at the miraculousness of the things seen by the disciples and recorded by the evangelists. Mercy, say they, is God-like, but miracles are impossible ; and they think they do well to be sceptical. An exception is made, indeed, in favour of some of the healing miracles, because it is not deemed impos- sible that they might fall within the course of nature, and so cease to belong to the category of the miraculous. " Moral thera- peutics " might account for them — a department of medical science which Mr. Matthew Arnold thinks has not been at all sufficiently studied yet.^ All other miracles besides those wrought by moral therapeutics are pronounced fabulous. But why not extend the dominion of the moral over the physical, and say without qualification : Mercy is God-like, therefore such works as those wrought by Jesus were matters of course ? So they appeared to the writers of the Gospels. What they wondered at was not the supernaturalness of Christ's healing operations, but the unfathomable depth of divine compassion which they revealed. There is no trace of the love of the mar- vellous either in the Gospels or in the Epistles. The disciples may have experienced such a feeling when the era of wonders first burst on their astonished view, but they had lost it entirely by the time the New Testament books began to be written .^ Throughout the NewTestament miracles are spoken of in a sober, almost matter-of-fact, tone. How is this to be explained? The explanation is that the apostles had seen too many miracles while with Jesus to be excited about them. Their sense of wonder had been deadened by being sated. But though they ceased to marvel at the power of their Lord, they never ceased to wonder at His grace. The love of Christ remained for them throughout life a thing passing knowledge ; and the longer they lived, the more cordially did they acknowledge the truth of their Master's words : " Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see." ^ Literature amd Dogma, p. 143, ed. 4. 2 Isaac Taylor, in The Restoration of Belief , founds on this fact an argument for the reality of miracles, contending that the calm, matter-of-fact tone in which miracles are spoken of in the Epistles can be accounted for only by their being a great outstanding fact of that age (vide pp. 128-211). 4 CHAPTEE VI. LESSONS ON PEAYEE. Matt. vi. 5-13, vii. 7-11 ; Luke xi. 1-13, xviii. 1-5. IT would have been matter for surprise if, among the mani- fold subjects on which Jesus gave instruction to His disciples, prayer had not occupied a prominent place. Prayer is a necessity of spiritual life, and all who earnestly try to pray soon feel the need of teaching how to do it. And what theme more likely to engage the thoughts of a Master who was Himself emphatically a man of prayer, spending occa- sionally whole nights in prayerful communion with His Heavenly Father ? ' We find, accordingly, that prayer was a subject on which Jesus often spoke in the hearing of His disciples. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example. He devoted a paragraph to that topic, in which He cautioned His hearers against pharisaic ostentation and heathenish repetition, and recited a form of devotion as a model of simplicity, comprehensiveness, and brevity.^ At other times He directed attention to the necessity, in order to acceptable and prevailing prayer, of perseverance,^ concord,* strong faith,^ and large expectation.^ The passage cited from the eleventh chapter of Luke's Gospel gives an account of what may be regarded as the most complete and comprehensive of all the lessons communicated by Jesus to His disciples on the important subject to which it relates. The circumstances in which this lesson was given arc interesting. The lesson on prayer was itself an answer to ' Mark i. 35 ; Luke vi. 12 ; Matt. xiv. 23. 2 Matt. vi. 5-13. ' Luke xi. 1-13, xviii. 1-5. * Matt, xviii. 19. ^ Matt. xxi. 22. ' John xvi. 23, 24. 60 CHAP. VI.] NEED FOE S0CH LESSONS. 51 prayer. A disciple, in all probability one of the twelve,^ after hearing Jesus pray, made the request: "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." The request and its occasion taken together convey to us incidentally two pieces of information. From the latter we learn that Jesus, besides praying much alone, also prayed in company with His dis- ciples, practising family prayer as the head of a household, as well as secret prayer in personal fellowship with God His Father. From the former we learn that the social prayers of Jesus were most impressive. Disciples hearing them were made painfully conscious of their own incapacity, and after the Amen were ready instinctively to proffer the request, " Lord, teach us to pray," as if ashamed any more to attempt the exercise in their own feeble, vague, stammering words. When this lesson was given we know not, for Luke intro- duces his narrative of it in the most indefinite manner, without noting either time or place. The reference to John in the past tense might seem to indicate a date subsequent to his death; but the mode of expression would be sufficiently explained by the supposition that the disciple who made the request had previously been a disciple of the Baptist.^ Ifor can any certain inference be drawn from the contents of the lesson. It is a lesson which might have been given to the twelve at any time during their disciplehood, so far as their spiritual necessities were concerned. It is a lesson for chil- dren, for spiritual minors, for Christians in the crude stage of the divine life, afflicted with confusion of mind, dumbness, de- jection, unable to pray for want of clear thought, apt words, and, above all, of faith that knows how to wait in hope ; and it meets the wants of such by suggesting topics, supplying forms of language, and furnishing their weak faith with the props of cogent arguments for perseverance. 'Now, such was the state of the twelve during all the time they were with Jesus ; till He ascended to heaven, and power descended from heaven on them, bringing with it a loosed tongue and an en- ' The twelve are not named ; but the lesson must, from its nature, have teen given to a close circle of disciples. ' The request, in that case, might be paraphrased : " Lord, teach (Thou also'> U3 to pray, as John taught us when we were his disciples." 52 LESSONS ON PKAYEE. [CHAP. VI. larged heart. During the whole period of their discipleship, they needed prompting in prayer such as a mother gives her child, and exhortations to perseverance in the habit of praying, even as do the humblest followers of Christ. Far from being exempt from such iniirmities, the twelve may even have ex- perienced them in a superlative degree. The heights correspond to the depths in religious experience. Men who are destined to he apostles must, as disciples, know more than most of the chaotic, speechless condition, and of the great, irksome, but most salutary business of Waiting on God for light, and truth, and grace, earnestly desired but long withheld. It was well for the church that her first ministers needed this lesson on prayer ; for the time comes in the case of most, if not all, who are spiritually earnest, when its teaching is very seasonable. In the spring of the divine life, the beautiful blossom-time of piety. Christians may be able to pray with fluency and fervour, unembarrassed by want of words, thoughts, and feelings of a certain kind. But that happy stage soon passes, and is succeeded by one in which prayer often becomes a helpless struggle, an inarticulate groan, a silent, distressed, despondent waiting on God, on the part of men who are tempted to doubt whether God be indeed the hearer of prayer, whether prayer be not altogether idle and useless. The three wants contemplated and provided for in this lesson — the want of ideas, of words, and of faith — are as common as they are grievous. How long it takes most to fill even the simple petitions of the Lord's Prayer with definite meanings ! the second petition, e.g., " Thy kingdom come," which can be pre- sented with perfect intelligence only by such as have formed for themselves a clear conception of the ideal spiritual republic or commonwealth. How difficult, and therefore how rare, to find out acceptable words for precious thoughts slowly reached ! How many, who have never got anything on which their hearts were set without needing to ask for it often, and to wait for it long (no uncommon experience), have been tempted by the delay to give up asking in despair ! And no wonder ; for delay is hard to bear in all cases, especially in connection with spiritual blessings, which are in fact, and are by Christ here assumed to be, the principal object of a Christian man's desires. Devout CHAP. VI.] THE LOKD'S PRAYER. 53 souls would not be utterly confounded by delay, or even re- fusal, in connection with mere temporal goods ; for they know that such things as health, wealth, wife, children, home, position, are not unconditionally good, and that it may be well sometimes not to obtain them, or not easily and too soon. But it is most confounding to desire with all one's heart the Holy Ghost, and yet seem to be denied the priceless boon ; to pray for light, and to get instead deeper darkness ; for faith, and to be tormented with doubts which shake cherished convictions to their founda- tions ; for sanctity, and to have the mud of corruption stirred up by temptation from the bottom of the well of eternal life in the heart. Yet all this, as every experienced Christian knows,is part of the discipline through which scholars in Christ's school have to pass ere the desire of their heart be fulfilled.^ The lesson on prayer taught by Christ, in answer to request, consists of two parts, in one of which thoughts and words are put into the mouths of immature disciples, while the other provides aids to faith in God as the answerer of prayer. There is first a form of prayer, and then an argument enforcing perseverance in prayer. The form of prayer commonly called the Lord's Prayer, which appears in the Sermon on the Mount as a sample of the right kind of prayer, is given here as a summary of the general heads under which all special petitions may be comprehended. We may call this form the alphabet of all possible prayer. It embraces the elements of all spiritual desire, summed up in a few choice sentences, for the benefit of those who may not be able to bring their struggling aspirations to birth in articulate language. It contains in all six petitions, of which three — the first three, as was meet — refer to God's glory, and the remaining three to man's good. We are taught to pray, first for the advent of the divine kingdom, in the form of universal reverence for the divine name, and universal obedience to the divine will ; and then, in the second place, for daily bread, pardon, and protection from evil for ourselves. The whole is 1 Readers may be reminded here of the well-known hymn of Newton, beginning — " I asked the Lord that I might grow In faith, and love, and every, grace."— (No. 25, F. 0. Hymn-Book.) 54 LESSONS ON PKAYEE. [CHAP. VI. addressed to God as Father, and is supposed to proceed from such as realize their fellowship one with another as members of a divine family, and therefore say, " Our Father." The prayer does not end, as our prayers now commonly do, with the formula, " for Christ's sake " ; nor could it, consistently with the supposition that it proceeded from Jesus. No prayer given by Him for the present use of His disciples, before His death, could have such an ending, because the plea it contains was not intelligible to them previous to that event. The twelve did not yet know what Christ's sake (sache) meant, nor would they till after their Lord had ascended, and the Spirit had descended and revealed to them the true meaning of the facts of Christ's earthly history. Hence we find Jesus, on the eve of His passion, telling His disciples that up to that time they had asked nothing in His name, and representing the use of His name as a plea to be heard, as one of the privileges awaiting them in the future. " Hitherto," He said, " have ye asked nothing in My name ; ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full." ^ And in another part of His discourse : " Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son." ^ To what extent the disciples afterwards made use of this beautifully simple yet profoundly significant form, we do not know ; but it may be assumed that they were in the habit of repeating it as the disciples of the Baptist might repeat the forms taught them by their master. There is, however, no reason to think that the " Lord's Prayer," though of permanent value as a part of Christ's teaching, was designed to be a stereotyped, binding method of addressing the Father in heaven. It was meant to be an aid to inexperienced disciples, not a rule imposed upon apostles.* Even after they had attained to spiritual maturity, the twelve might use this form if they pleased, and possibly they did occasionally use it ; but Jesus expected that by the time they came to be teachers in the church they should have outgrown the need of it as an aid to ' .Tohn xvi. 24. 2 j^j^^ ^^y j3_ ^ Jeremy Taylor, in his Apology for Authorized and Set Forms of Liturgy, makes no distinction between disciples and apostles. When the distinction is at|:ended to, much of his argumejit falls to the ground, Vid, §§ 86-112, CHAP. VI.] USB OF LITURGICAL FOEMS, 55 devotion. Filled with the Spirit, enlarged in heart, mature in spiritual understanding, they should then be able to pray as their Lord had prayed when He was with them ; and while the six petitions of the model prayer would still enter into all their supplications at the throne of grace, they would do so only as the alphabet of a language enters into the most extended and eloquent utterances of a speaker, who never thinks of the letters of which the words he utters are composed.^ In maintaining the provisional, fro tempore character of the Lord's Prayer, so far as the twelve were concerned, we lay no stress on the fact already adverted to, that it does not end with the phrase, " for Christ's sake." That defect could easUy be supplied afterwards mentally or orally, and therefore was no valid reason for disuse. The same remark applies to our use of the prayer in question. To allow this form to fall into desuetude merely because the customary concluding plea is wanting, is as weak on one side as the too frequent repetition of it is on the other. The Lord's Prayer is neither a piece of Deism unworthy of a Christian, nor a magic charm like the " Pater noster " of Eoman Catholic devotion. The most advanced believer will often find relief and rest to his spirit in falling back on its simple, sublime sentences, while mentally realizing the manifold particulars which each of them includes ; and he is but a tyro in the art of praying, and in the divine life generally, whose devotions consist exclusively, or even mainly, in repeating the words which Jesus put into the mouths of immature disciples. The view now advocated regarding the purpose of the Lord's Prayer is in harmony with the spirit of Christ's whole teaching. Liturgical forms and religious methodism in general were much more congenial to the strict ascetic school of the Baptist than to the free school of Jesus. Our Lord evidently attached little importance to forms of prayer, any more than to fixed periodic fasts, else He would not have waited till He was asked for a form, but would have made systematic provision for ' Keim takes the same view : he thinks the Mustergehet was not meant to be an AUtagsgebet, and in proof addnces the facts that no trace of its use appears in the history of Christ's own life, in the times of the Jerusalem Church, in the recollections of the Apostle Paul, and that only in the second century it began to be the object of a regular " ja meohanisoh-katholischen " use. — Jesu von ITazara, ii, 280. 66 LESSONS ON PEAYEE. [OHAP. VI. the wants of His followers, even as the Baptist did, by, so to speak, compiling a book of devotion or composing a liturgy. It is evident, even from the present instructions on the subject of praying, that Jesus considered the form He supplied of quite subordinate importance ; a mere temporary remedy for a minor evil, the want of utterance, till the greater evil, the want of faith, should be cured ; for the larger portion of the lesson is devoted to the purpose of supplying an antidote to unbelief.^ The second part of this lesson on prayer is intended to convey the same moral as that which is prefixed to the parable of the unjust judge — " that men ought always to pray, and not to faint." The supposed cause of fainting is also the same, even ' From the design of the Lord's Prayer as now explained we may determine the proper place and use of all fixed forms of devotion. Liturgical forms are for private rather than for public use ; for those who are in the dumb, arid stage of the spiritual life, rather than for those who have attained the power and utterance of spiritual maturity. To the private use of such forms by persons who desire to pray, yet cannot doit, no reasonable objection can be taken. Advantage justifies use. The less experienced Christian may ask the more experienced to teach him to pray, and the more experienced may reply, " After this manner pray ye." If we may read and repeat the sacred songs of Christian poets to find expression for emotions which are common to us and them, but which we cannot, like them, adequately express, why may we not read and repeat the prayers of the saints for a, similar purpose ? The superficial, who have not earnestness and sincerity enough to know what it is to stammer, may despise such aids as suited only for children ; and those who are yet in the first flush of religious fervour may turn away from written forms as cold and dead, however classical. Well, let all do without such aids who can ; only the time may come, even for the fervent, when, forsaken of emotion, deficient in experience, discouraged by failure, disappointed in ardent youthful hopes, tormented by speculative doubts concerning the utility and the reasonableness of prayer coming over the soul like chill east winds in the winter of its religious history, they may be very glad to read over forms of devotion, which, by their simplicity and dignity, serve to inspire a sense of reality, and to produce a soothing; sedative effect on their diseased, restless spirits. For all in such a plight, we, having respect to the example of Christ, are entitled to plead that they shall not be required to remain prayerless because they cannot for the time pray without book. But when we pass from the closet to the church, the case is altered. There we ought to find pastors capable of doing, each one for his fellow- worshippers, what Christ did for His disciples, and of praying with the freedom and force to which the disciples themselves afterwards attained. It may be asserted, indeed, that this, though the desirable, is not the actual state of matters. A recent writer, in advocating the introduction of written forms of prayer into the Presbyterian Church, says : "I feel persuaded that a veriatim report of all the public prayers uttered in Scotland any one Sunday in the year would settle the question for ever in the mind of every person who was capable of forming a rational judgment on CHAP. VI.] PARABLES INCULCATING PEESEVEEANCE. 57 delay on the part of God in answering our prayers. This is not, indeed, made so obvious in the earlier lesson as in the later. The parable of the ungenerous neighbour is not adapted to convey the idea of long delay ! for the favour asked, if granted at all, must be granted in a very few minutes. But the lapse of time between the presenting and the granting of our requests is implied and presupposed as a matter of course. It is by delay that God seems to say to us what the ungenerous neigh- bour said to his friend, and that we are tempted to think that we pray to no purpose. Both the parables spoken by Christ to inculcate perseverance suoh a matter." ^ It is to be hoped that this is an exaggerated view of existing ministerial incapacity ; hut even granting its accuracy, it is a fair question whether the remedy proposed would not he worse than the evil, and the gain in propriety more than oounterhalanced by a loss in the more important quality of fervour. This much we may say, even if not disposed to take up high ground of principle in opposition to liturgical forms, but rather to concur in the moderate sentiments of Richard Baxter, when he says : "I cannot be of their opinion who think God will not accept him that prayeth by the common Prayer-Book, and that such forms are a self-invented worship which God rejecteth ; nor yet can I be of their mind that say the like of extemporary prayers. " ^ In Baxter's time religious controversy ran very high, and opposed views were stated in extreme form. The Churchman derided the extempore effusions of the Puritan ; the Puritan went so far in his opposition to liturgical prayer as even to maintain that the Lord's Prayer itself should never be repeated. Baxter, not being a partisan, but a lover of truth, sympathized with neither party, but regarded the question at issue as one of policy rather than of principle, to be settled not by abstract reasoning, but by a calm consideration of what on the whole was most conducive to edification ; in which point of view his judgment and his practice were both on the side of extempore prayer. Looking at the question, with Baxter, as one of policy, we are fully persuaded that the existing practice of Presbyterian and other churches can be justified on such good grounds as should make them contented, to say the least, with their own way, and indisposed to imitate those whose way is different in this matter. The ministers of religion, like the apostles, ought to be able to dispense with liturgical forms ; and the best way to secure that they shall possess such ability, is to throw them on their own resources, and on God, and so convert the ideal into a requirement applicable to all, making no provision for exceptions. The full benefit of a system cannot be obtained unless it be rigidly enforced ; and while such enforcement may involve occasional disadvantages, the relaxation of the rnle would probably produce greater damage to the church. Allowance made for timidity, inexperience, or extraordinary incapacity, would be abused by the indolent and the careless ; and many would remain permanently in a state similar to that of the disciples, who, if compelled to stir up the gift of God which is in 1 The Beform of the Church of Scotland, by Bobert Lee, D.D., p. 76. i Ssxter's UCe, frgm bis original MS., lib, i. part i. § 213, 58 LESSONS ON PKAYEE. [CHAP. VI. in prayer seek to effect their purpose by showing the power of importunity in the most unpromising circumstances. The characters appealed to are both bad — one is ungenerous, and the other unjust ; and from neither is anything to be gained except by working on his selfishness. And the point of the parable in either ease is, that importunity has a power of annoyance which enables it to gain its object. It is important again to observe what is supposed to be the leading subject of prayer in connection with the argument now to be considered. The thing upon which Christ assumes His disciples to have set their hearts is personal sanctification.^ This appears from the concluding sentence of the discourse : them, or to seek earnestly gifts and graces not possessed, might ere long attain to apostolic freedom and power. The same remarks might be applied to preaching. In individual instances congregations might benefit by the preacher being allowed to use foreign materials of instruction; but under such a permission, how many would content themselves with reading sermons out of books, or from manuscripts purchased at so much per dozen, who, under a system aiming at turning to the utmost account individual talent, and therefore requiring all teachers of truth to give their hearers the benefit of their own thoughts, would through practice attain to a fair measure of preaching power. On the whole, therefore, the Presbyterian Church has reason to be satisfied with its existing system of public worship, whatever reason there may be for dis- satisfaction with the existing state of worship in particular instances. The ideal is good, however far short the reality may come of it. The aim and effect of the liturgical system is to make the mass of worshippers as independent as possible of the individual minister ; the aim. If not the eflfect of our system, is to make individual ministers as valuable as possible to the worshippers, for their instruc- tion and edification. The one system may secure a uniform solemnity and decency, but the other system tends to secure the more important qualities of fervour, energy, and life ; and we believe, whatever fastidious critics may allege, it does to a considerable extent secure them. At lowest, the non-liturgical method secures that the worship of the church shall be a true reflection of her life, and therefore, however beggarly, at least sincere. Men who preach their own sermons and pray their own prayers are more likely to preach and pray as they believe and live, than those who merely read compositions provided to their hand. It only remains to add, that while having no objection on principle to an attempt at amalgamating the two methods so as to reap the advantages of both — a scheme favoured by some respected brethren in all the churches — we confess to grave doubts, for the reasons above explained, as to the utility of such an attempt. [We leave the above as in the second edition. Our present impression, however, is that a mixture of the liturgical system, with iixed forms, with the free extempore method, is not impracticable, and might yield better results than either separately. — Note to third edition.] ^ The supposed subject of prayer in Luke xviii. is the general interest of the divine kingdom on the earth. CHAP. VI.] CHAEACTERISTICS OF CHRIST'S ARGUMENT. 59 " How much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him ! " Jesus takes for granted that the persons to whom He addresses Himself here seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Therefore, though He inserted a petition for daily bread in the form of prayer, He drops that object out of view in the latter part of His dis- course ; both because it is by hypothesis not the chief object of desire, and also because, for all who truly give God's kingdom the first place in their regards, food and raiment are thrown into the bargain.^ To such as do not desire the Holy Spirit above all things, Jesus has nothing to say. He does not encourage them to hope that they shall receive anything of the Lord ; least of all, the righteousness of the kingdom, personal sanctification. He regards the prayers of a double-minded man, who has two chief ends in view, as a hollow mockery — mere words, which never reach Heaven's ear. The supposed cause of fainting being delay, and the sup- posed object of desire being the Holy Spirit, the spiritual situation contemplated in the argument is definitely deter- mined. The Teacher's aim is to succour and encourage those who feel that the work of grace goes slowly on within them, and wonder why it does so, and sadly sigh because it does so. Such we conceive to have been the state of the twelve when this lesson was given them. They had been made painfully conscious of incapacity to perform aright their devotional duties, and they took that incapacity to be an index of their general spiritual condition, and were much depressed in con- sequence. The argument by which Jesus sought to inspire His dis- couraged disciples with hope and confidence as to the ultimate fulfilment of their desires, is characterized by boldness, geni- ality, wisdom, and logical force. Its boldness is evinced in the choice of illustrations. Jesus has such confidence in the 1 In Matt. vii. 11, which answers to Luke xi. 13, the phrase expressive of the ohjeot of desire is &ya66,, " good things," instead of irvev/j.a Hyiov. The Pauline character of the latter expression has been remarked on, as one of many traces of the apostle's influence on the third evangelist. The doctrine that the Holy Spirit is the immanent ground of Christian sanctity is emphatically Pauline. But the doctrine of gradual sanctification is not prominent in Paulinism, 60 , LESSONS ON PRA.YBB. [OHAP. VI. goodness of His cause, that He states the case as disadvan- tageously for Himself as possible, by selecting for illustration not good samples of men, but persons rather below than above the ordinary standard of human virtue. A man who, on being applied to at any hour of the night by a neighbour for help in a real emergency, such as that supposed in the parable, or in a case of sudden sickness, should put him off with such an answer as this, " Trouble me not, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed : I cannot rise and give thee," would justly incur the contempt of his acquaintances, and become a byword among them for all that is ungenerous and heartless. The same readiness to take an extreme case is observable in the second argument, drawn from the conduct of fathers towards their children. " If a son shall ask bread of any of you " — so it begins.^ Jesus does not care what father may be selected ; He is willing to take any one they please ; He will take the very worst as readily as the best ; nay, more readily, for the argument turns not on the goodness of the parent, but rather on his want of goodness, as it aims to show that no special goodness is required to keep all parents from doing what would be an outrage on natural affection, and revolting to the feelings of all mankind. The genial, kindly character of the argument is manifest from the insight and sympathy displayed therein. Jesus divines what hard thoughts men think of God under the burden of unfulfilled desire ; how they doubt His goodness, and deem Him indifferent, heartless, unjust. He shows His intimate knowledge of their secret imaginations by the cases He puts ; for the unkind friend and unnatural father, and we may add, the unjust judge, are pictures not indeed of what God is, or of what He would have us believe God to be, but certainly of what even pious men sometimes think Him to be.^ And He can not only divine, but sympathize. He does not, like Job's friends, find fault with those who harbour doubting and apparently profane thoughts, nor chide them for impatience, distrust, and despondency. He deals with them as men ^ Or "of which of you that is a father shall his son ask a loaf," as in R.V, The sense is the same. ' See the Book of Job, passim, and Ps, Ixxiii., Uxvii., etc. CHAP. VI.] THE METHOD OF ARGUMENT WISE. 61 compassed with infirmity, and needing sympathy, counsel, and help. And in supplying these, .He comes down- to their level of feeling, and tries to show that, even if things were as they seem, there is no cause for despair. He argues from their own thoughts of God, that they should still hope in Him. " Sup- pose," He says in effect, " God to be what you fancy, indifferent and heartless, still pray on; see, in the case I put, what perseverance can effect. Ask as the man who wanted loaves asked, and ye also shall receive from Him who seems at present deaf to your petitions. Appearances, I grant, may be very unfavourable, but they cannot be more so in your case than in that of the petitioner in the parable ; and yet you observe how he fared through not being too easily disheartened." Jesus displays His wisdom in dealing with the doubts of His disciples, by avoiding all elaborate explanations of the causes or reasons of delay in the answering of prayer, and using only arguments adapted to the capacity of persons weak in faith and in spiritual understanding. He does not attempt to show why sanctification is a slow, tedious work, not a momentary act : why the Spirit is given gradually and in limited measure, not at once and without measure. He simply urges His hearers to persevere in seeking the Holy Spirit, assuring them that, in spite of trying delay, their desires will be fulfilled in the end. He teaches them no philosophy of waiting on God, but only tells them that they shall not wait in vain. This method the Teacher followed not from necessity, but from choice. For though no attempt was made at explaining divine delays in providence and grace, it was not because ex- planation was impossible. There were many things which Christ might have said to His disciples at this time if they could have borne them ; some of which they afterwards said themselves, when the Spirit of Truth had come, and guided them into all truth, and made them acquainted with the secret of God's way. He might have pointed out to them, e.g., that the delays of which they complained were according to the analogy of nature, in which gradual growth is the universal law ; that time was needed for the production of the ripe fruits of the Spirit, just in the same way as for the production of the ripe fruits of the field or of the orchard ; that it was not to 62 LESSONS ON PEAYBE. [CHAK VI. be wondered at if the spiritual fruits were peculiarly slow in ripening, as it was a law of growth that the higher the product in the scale of being, the slower the process by which it is pro- duced ; ^ that a momentary sanctification, though not impossible, would be as much a miracle in the sense of a departure from law, as was the immediate transformation of water into wine at the marriage in Cana ; that if instantaneous sanctification were the rule instead of the rare exception, the kingdom of grace would become too like the imaginary worlds of children's dreams, in which trees, fruits, and palaces spring into being full-grown, ripe, and furnished, in a moment as by enchant- ment, and too unlike the real, actual world with which men are conversant, in which delay, growth, and fixed law are invariable characteristics. Jesus might further have sought to reconcile His disciples to delay by descanting on the virtue of patience. Much could be said on that topic. It could be shown that a character cannot, be perfect in which the virtue of patience has no place, and that the gradual method of sanctification is best adapted for its development, as affording abundant scope for its exercise. It might be pointed out how much the ultimate enjoyment of any good thing is enhanced by its having to be waited for ; how in proportion to the trial is the triumph of faith ; how, in the quaint words of one who was taught wisdom in this matter by his own experience, and by the times in which he lived, " It is fit we see and feel the shaping and sewing of every piece of the wedding garment, and the framing and moulding and fit- ting of the crown of glory for the head of the citizen of heaven " ; how " the repeated sense and frequent experience of grace in the ups and downs in the way, the falls and risings again of the traveller, the revolutions and changes of the spiritual con- dition, the new moon, the darkened moon, the full moon in the Spirit's ebbing and flowing, raiseth in the heart of saints on their way to the country a sweet smell of the fairest rose and lily of Sharon " ; how, " as travellers at night talk of their foul ways, and of the praises of their guide, and battle being ended, soldiers number their wounds, extol the valour, skill, ' This idea is well worked out in a sermon by H. W. Beeoher on "'Waiting for the Lovd," — Sermons, vol. i. CHAP. VI.] THE ARGUMENT COGENT. 63 and courage of their leader and captain," so " it is meet that the glorified soldiers may take loads of experience of free grace to heaven with them, and there speak of their way and their country and the praises of Him that hath redeemed them out of all nations, tongues, and languages." ^ Such considerations, however just, would have been wasted on men in the spiritual condition of the disciples. Children have no sympathy with growth in any world, whether of nature or of grace. Nothing pleases them but that an acorn should become an oak at once, and that immediately after the blossom should come the ripe fruit. Then it is idle to speak of the uses of patience to the inexperienced ; for the moral value of the discipline of trial cannot be appreciated till the trial is past. Therefore, as before stated, Jesus abstained entirely from reflections of the kind suggested, and adopted a simple, popular style of reasoning which even a child could understand. The reasoning of Jesus, while very simple, is very cogent and conclusive. The first argument — that contained in the parable of the ungenerous neighbour — is fitted to inspire hope in God even in the darkest hour, when He appears indifferent to our cry, or positively unwilling to help, and so to induce us to persevere in asking. " As the man who wanted the loaves knocked on louder and louder, with an importunity that knew no shame,^ and would take no refusal, and thereby gained his object, the selfish friend being glad at last to get up and serve him out of sheer regard to his own comfort, it being simply impossible to sleep with such a noise ; so (such is the drift of the argument), so continue thou knocking at the door of heaven, and thou shalt obtain thy desire if it were only to be rid of thee. See in this parable what a power importunity has, even at a most unpromising time — midnight — and with a most unpromising person, who prefers his own comfort to a neighbour's good ; ask, therefore, persistently, and it shall be given unto you also ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." At one point, indeed, this most pathetic and sympathetic argument seems to be weak. The petitioner in the parable had ' Samuel Rutherford, Trial and Triumph of Faith, Sertuon xviii. ' The Greek word is (lj'a{5eiai'=shamelessness. 64 LESSONS ON PRAYER. [OHAP. VI. the selfish friend in his power by being able to annoy him and keep him from sleeping. Now, the tried desponding disciple whom Jesus would comfort may rejoin : " What power have I to annoy God, who dwelleth on high, far beyond my reach, in imperturbable felicity ? ' Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to His seat ! But, behold, I go forward, but He is not there ; and backward, but I cannot per- ceive Him : on the left hand, where He doth work, but I can- not behold Him : He hideth Himself on the right hand, that I cannot see Him.' " ^ The objection is one which can hardly fail to occur to the subtle spirit of despondency, and it must be admitted that it is not frivolous. There is really a failure of the analogy at this point. We can annoy a man, like the un- generous neighbour in bed, or the unjust judge, but we cannot annoy God. The parable does not suggest the true explana- tion of divine delay, or of the ultimate success of importunity. It merely proves by a homely instance, that delay, apparent refusal, from whatever cause it may arise, is not necessarily final, and therefore can be no good reason for giving up asking. This is a real if not a great service rendered. But the doubt- ing disciple, besides discovering with characteristic acuteness what the parable fails to prove, may not be able to extract any comfort from what it does prove. What is he to do then ? Fall back on the strong asservation with which Jesus follows up the parable : " And I say unto you." Here, doubter, is an oracular dictum from One who can speak with authority ; One who has been in the bosom of the eternal God, and has come forth to reveal His inmost heart to men groping in the darkness of nature after Him, if haply they might find Him. When He addresses you in such emphatic, solemn terms as these, " I say unto you. Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you," you may take the matter on His word, at least pro tempore. Even those who doubt the reasonableness of prayer, because of the constancy of nature's laws and the unchangeableness of divine purposes, might take Christ's word for it that prayer is not vain even in relation to daily bread, not to speak of higher matters, until they arrive at greater certainty on the subject than they can at ^ Job xxiii. 3, 8, 9. CHAP. VI.] A FOKTIOKI AEGUMENT. 65 present pretend to. Such may, if they choose, despise the parable as childish, or as conveying crude anthropopathic ideas of the Divine Being, but they cannot despise the deliberate declarations of One whom even they regard as the wisest and best of men. The second argument employed by Jesus to urge perseverance in prayer is of the nature of a reductio ad absurdum, ending with a conclusion a fortiori. " If," it is reasoned, " God refused to hear His children's prayers, or, worse still, if He mocked them by giving them something bearing a superficial resem- blance to the things asked, only to cause bitter disappointment when the deception was discovered, then were He not only as bad as, but far worse than, even the most depraved of mankind. For, take fathers at random, which of them, if a son were to ask bread, would give him a stone ? or if he asked a fish, would give him a serpent ? or if he asked an egg, would offer him a scorpion ? The very supposition is monstrous. Human nature is largely vitiated by moral evil ; there is, in particular, an evil spirit of selfishness in the heart which comes into conflict with the generous afi'ections, and leads men ofttimes to do base and unnatural things. But men, taken at the average, are not diabolic ; and nothing short of a diabolical spirit of mischief could prompt a father to mock a child's misery, or deliberately to give him things fraught with deadly harm. If, then, earthly parents, though evil in many of their dispositions, give good, and, so far as they know, only good gifts to their children, and would shrink with horror from any other mode of treatment, is it to be credited that the Divine Being, that Providence, can do what only devils would think of doing ? On the contrary, what is only barely possible for man is for God altogether impossible, and what all but monsters of iniquity will not fail to do God will do much more. He will most surely give good gifts, and only good gifts, to His asking children ; most especially will He give His best gift, which His true children desire above all things, even the Holy Spirit, the enlightener and the sanctifier. Therefore again I say unto you : Ask, and ye shall receive ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened." Yet it is implied in the very fact that Christ put such cases as a stone given for bread, a serpent for a fish, or a scorpion 5 66 LESSONS ON PKAYEK. [CHAP. VI. for an egg, that God seems at least sometimes so to treat His children. The time came when the twelve thought they had been so treated in reference to the very subject in which they were most deeply interested, after their own personal sanctifi- cation, viz. the restoration of the kingdom to Israel. But their experience illustrates the general truth, that when the Hearer of prayer seems to deal unnaturally with His servants, it is because they have made a mistake about the nature of good, and have not known what they asked. They have asked for a stone, thinking it bread, and hence the true bread seems a stone ; for a shadow, thinking it a substance, and hence the substance seems a shadow. The kingdom for which the twelve prayed was a shadow, hence their- disappointment and despair when Jesus was put to death : the egg of hope, which their fond imagination had been hatching, brought forth the scorpion of the cross, and they fancied that God had mocked and deceived them. But they lived to see that God was true and good, and that they had deceived themselves, and that all which Christ had told them had been fulfilled. And all who wait on God ultimately make a similar discovery, and unite in testifying that " the Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him." ^ For these reasons should all men pray, and not faint. Prayer is rational, even if the Divine Being were like men in the average, not indisposed to do good when self-interest does not stand in the way — the creed of heathenism. It is still more manifestly rational if, as Christ taught and Christians believe, God be better than the best of men — the one supremely good Being — the Father in heaven. Only in either of two cases would prayer really be irrational : if God were no living being at all, — the creed of atheists, with whom Christ holds no argument ; or if He were a being capable of doing things from which even bad men would start back in horror, i.e. a being of diabolic nature, — the creed, it is to be hoped, of no human being. ^ Lam. iii. 25, CHAPTEE VII. LESSONS m EELIGIOUS LIBEKTT. Section I. — Fasting. Matt. ix. 14-17 ; Mabk ii. 16-22 ; Luke v. 33-39. ¥E have learnt in the last chapter how Jesus taught His disciples to pray, and we are now to learn in the present chapter how He taught them to live. Christ's ratio vivendi was characteristically simple ; its main features being a disregard of minute mechanical rules, and a habit of falling back in all things on the great principles of morality and piety. The practical carrying out of this rule of life led to considerable divergence from prevailing custom. In three respects especially, according to the Gospel records, were our Lord and His disciplse chargeable, and actually charged, with the offence of noncon- formity. They departed from existing practice in the matters of fasting, ceremonial purifications as prescribed by the elders, and Sabbath sanctification. The first they neglected for the most part, the second altogether : the third they did not neglect, but their mode of observing the weekly rest was in spirit totally, and in detail widely, diverse from that which was in vogue. These divergences from established custom are historically in- teresting as the small beginnings of a great moral and religious revolution. For in teaching His disciples these new habits, Jesus was inaugurating a process of spiritual emancipation which was to issue in the complete deliverance of the apostles, and through them of the Christian Church, from the burdensome yoke of Mosaic ordinances, and from the still more galling bondage of a " vain conversation received by tradition from the fathers." The divergences in question have much biographical interest 67 68 LESSONS IN EELIGIOUS LIBERTY: FASTING. [CHAP. VIL also in connection with the religious experience of the twelve. For it is a solemn crisis in any man's life when he first departs in the most minute particulars from the religious opinions and practices of his age. The first steps in the process of change are generally the most difficult, the most perilous, and the most decisive. In these respects, learning spiritual freedom is like learning to swim. Every expert in the aquatic art remembers the troubles he experienced in connection with his first attempts: how hard he found it to make arms and legs keep stroke; how he floundered and plunged ; how fearful he was lest he should go beyond his depth and sink to the bottom. At these early fears he may now smile, yet_ were they not altogether groundless; for the tyro does run some risk of drowning, though the bathing- place be but a small pool or dam built by schoolboys on a burn flowing through an inland dell, remote from broad rivers and the great sea. It is well both for young swimmers and for apprentices in religious freedom when they make their first essays in the company of an experienced friend, who can rescue them should they be in danger. Such a friend the twelve had in Christ, whose presence was not only a safeguard against all inward spiritual risks, but a shield from all assaults which might come upon them from without. Such assaults were to be expected Nonconformity invariably gives offence to many, and exposes the offending party to interrogation at least, and often to some- thing more serious. Custom is a god to the multitude, and no one can withhold homage from the idol with impunity. The twelve accordingly did in fact incur the usual penalties connected with singularity. Their conduct was called in question, and censured, in every instance of departure from use and wont. Had they been left to themselves, they would have made a poor defence of the actions impugned ; for they did not understand the principles on which the new practice was based, but simply did as they were directed. But in Jesus they had a friend who did understand those principles, and who was ever ready to assign good reasons for all He did Himself, and for all He taught His followers to do. The reasons with which He defended the twelve against the upholders of prevailing usage were specially good and telling ; and they constitute, taken together, an apology for CHAP, vii.] John's disciples find "pault. 69 nonconformity not less remarkable than that which He made for graciously receiving publicans and sinners/ consisting, like it, of three lines of defence corresponding to the charges which had to be met. That apology we propose to consider in the present chapter under three divisions, in the first of which we take up the subject ol fasting. From Matthew's account we learn that the conduct of Christ's disciples in neglecting fasting was animadverted on by the disciples of John the Baptist. " Then," we read, " came to Him the disciples of John" — those, that is, who happened to be in the neighbourhood — " saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but Thy disciples fast not ? " ^ From this question we learn incidentally that in the matter of fasting the school of the Baptist and the sect of the Pharisees were agreed in their general practice. As Jesus told the Pharisees at a later date, John came in their own " way " of legal righteousness.^ But it was a case of extremes meeting ; for no two religious parties could be more remote in some respects than the two just named. But the difference lay rather in the motives than in the external acts of their religious life. Both did the same things — fasted, practised ceremonial ablutions^ made many prayers — only they did them with a different mind. John and his disciples performed their religious duties in simplicity, godly sincerity, and moral earnestness ; the Phari- sees, as a class, did all their works ostentatiously, hypocritic- ally, and as matters of mechanical routine. From the same question we further learn that the disciples of John, as well as the Pharisees, were very zealous in the practice of fasting. They fasted oft, much {irvKva, Luke ; iroWa, Matthew). This statement we otherwise know to be strictly true of such Pharisees as made great pretensions to piety. Besides the annual fast on the great day of atonement appointed by the law of Moses, and the four fasts which had become customary in the time of the prophet Zechariah, in the fourth, fifth, seventh, and tenth months of the Jewish 1 Vide pp. 26, 27. ' Matt. ix. U. From Mark and Luke it might be inferred that some Phari- sees were joint-interrogators ; but it is not asserted, neither is it likely. = Matt. xxi. 32. 70 LESSONS IN RELIGIOUS LIBERTY: FASTING. [CHAP. VII. year, the stricter sort of Jews fasted twice every week, viz. on Mondays and Thursdays.^ This hi-weekly fast is alluded to in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican.^ It is not to be assumed, of course, that the practice of the Baptist's disciples coincided in this respect with that of the strictest sect of the pharisaic party. Their system of fasting may have been organized on an independent plan, involving different arrangements as to times and occasions. The one fact known, which rests on the certain basis of their own testimony, is that, like the Pharisees, John's disciples fasted often, if not on precisely the same days and for the same reasons. It does not clearly appear what feelings prompted the question put by John's disciples to Jesus. It is not impos- sible that party spirit was at work, for rivalry and jealousy were not unknown even in the environment of the forerunner.' In that case, the reference to pharisaic practice might be ex- plained by a desire to overwhelm the disciples of Jesus by numbers, and put them, as it were, in a hopeless minority on the question. It is more likely, however, that the uppermost feeling in the mind of the interrogators was one of surprise, that in respect of fasting they should approach nearer to a sect whose adherents were stigmatized by their own master as a " generation of vipers," than to the followers of One for whom that master cherished and expressed the deepest venera- tion. In that case, the object of the question was to obtain information and instruction. It accords with this view that the query was addressed to Jesus. Had disputation been aimed at, the questioners would more naturally have applied to the disciples. If John's followers came seeking instruction, they were not disappointed. Jesus made a reply to their question, remark- able at once for originality, point, and pathos, setting forth in lively parabolic style the great principles by which the con- duct of His disciples could be vindicated, and by which He desired the conduct of all who bore His name to be regulated. Of this reply it is to be observed, in the first place, that it is of a purely defensive character. Jesus does not blame John's ' See Buxtorf, De Synagoga Judaica,, c. xxx. ; also Zeoh. viii. 19. ^ Luke xviii. 12. ' John iii. 26. CHAP. VII.] DEFENCE OF JESUS. 71 disciples for fasting, but contents Himself with defending His own disciples for abstaining from fasting. He does not feel called on to disparage the one party in order to justify the other, but takes up the position of one who virtually says : " To fast may be right for you, the followers of John : not to fast is equally right for my followers." How grateful to Christ's feelings it must have been that He could assume this tolerant attitude on a question in which the name of John was mixed up ! For He had a deep respect for the forerunner and his work, and ever spoke of him in most generous terms of appre- ciation ; now calling him a burning and a shining lamp,^ and at another time declaring him not only a prophet but some- thing more.^ And we may remark in passing, that John reciprocated these kindly feelings, and had no sympathy with the petty jealousies in which his disciples sometimes indulged. The two great ones, both of them censured for different reasons by their degenerate contemporaries, ever spoke of each other to their disciples and to the public in terms of affection- ate respect; the lesser light magnanimously confessing his inferiority, the greater magnifying the worth of His humble fellow-servant. What a refreshing contrast was thus pre- sented to the mean passions of envy, prejudice, and detraction so prevalent in other quarters, under whose malign influence men of whom better things mi^ht have been expected spoke of John as a madman, and of Jesus as immoral and profane ! * Passing from the manner to the matter of the reply, we notice that, for the purpose of vindicating His disciples, Jesus availed Himself of a metaphor suggested by a memorable word uttered concerning Himself at an earlier period by the master of those who now examined Him. To certain disciples who complained that men were leaving him and going to Jesus, John had said in effect : " Jesus is the Bridegroom, I am but the Bridegroom's friend ; therefore it is right that men should leave me and join Jesus." * Jesus now takes up the Baptist's words, and turns them to account for the purpose of defending the way of life pursued by His disciples. His reply, freely paraphrased, is to this effect : "I am the Bride- I John V. 35. ' Matt. xi. 7-15. ' Matt. xi. 16, 19. * John iii. 29. 72 LESSONS IN RELIGIOUS LIBERTY: FASTING. [OHAP. Vll, groom, as your master said ; it is right that the children of the bride-chamber come to Me ; and it is also right that, when they have come, they should adapt their mode of life to their altered circumstances. Therefore they do well not to fast, for fasting is the expression of sadness, and how should they be sad in My company ! As well might men be sad at a marriage festival. The days will come when the children of the bride- chamber shall be sad, for the Bridegroom will not always be with them ; and at the dark hour of His departure it will be natural and seasonable for them to fast, for then they shall be in a fasting mood — weeping, lamenting, sorrowful, and disconsolate." The principle underlying this graphic representation is, that fasting should not be a matter of fixed mechanical rule, but should have reference to the state of mind ; or, more definitely, that men should fast when they are sad, or in a state of mind akin to sadness — absorbed, preoccupied — as at some great solemn crisis in the life of an individual or a community, such as that in the history of Peter, when he was exercised on the great question of the admission of the Gentiles to the church, or such as that in the history of the Christian community at Antioch, when they were about to ordain the first missionaries to the heathen world. Christ's doctrine, clearly and distinctly indicated here, is that fasting in any other circumstances is forced, unnatural, unreal ; a thing which men may be made to do as a matter of form, but which they do not with their heart and soul. " Can ye make the children of the bride- chamber fast while the Bridegroom is with them ? " ^ He asked, virtually asserting that it was impossible. By this rule the disciples of our Lord were justified, and yet John's were not condemned. It was admitted to be natural for them to fast, as they were mournful, melancholy, unsatisfied. They had not found Him who was the Desire of all nations, the Hope of the future, the Bridegroom of the soul. They only knew that all was wrong ; and in their querulous, despairing mood they took pleasure in fasting, and wearing coarse raiment, and frequenting lonely, desolate regions, living as hermits, a practical protest against an ungodly age. The message that the kingdom was at hand had indeed been preached ' Luke V. 34, /iij SivaaBe . . , iroi^croi vrj^TeisiV. CHAP. VII.] NEW l'Al?CH AND NEW WlNE. ?3 to them also ; but as proclaimed by John the announcement was awful news, i^ot good news, and made them anxious and dispirited, not glad. Men in such a mood could not do otherwise than fast ; though whether they did well to continue in that mood after the Bridegroom had come, and had been announced to them as such by their own master, is another matter. Their grief was wilful, idle, causeless, when He had appeared who was to take away the sin of the world. Jesus had yet more to say in reply to the questions addressed to Him. Things new and unusual need manifold apology, and therefore to the beautiful similitude of the children of the bride-chamber He added two other equally suggestive parables : those, viz., of the new patch on the old garment, and the new wine in old skins. The design of these parables is much the same as that of the first part of His reply, viz. to enforce the law of congruity in relation to fasting and similar matters ; that is, to show that in all voluntary religious service, where we are free to regulate our own conduct, the outward act should be made to correspond with the inward condition of mind, and that no attempt should be made to force particular acts or habits. on men without reference to that correspondence. " In natural things," He meant to say, " we observe this law of congruity. No man putteth a piece of unfuUed cloth ^ on an old garment. Neither do men put new wine into old skins, and that not merely out of regard to propriety, but to avoid bad consequences. For if the rule of congruity be neglected, the patched garment will be torn by the contraction of the new cloth ;^ and the old skin bottles will burst under the fermenting force of the new liquor, and the wine will be spilled and lost." The old cloth and old bottles in these metaphors represent old ascetic fashions in religion ; the new cloth and the new wine represent the new joyful life in Christ, not possessed by those who tenaciously adhered to the old fashions. The parables were applied primarily to Christ's own age, but they ^ Matt. ix. 16, fidKovs iyi/dcpov. ' Luke V. 36 gives the thought a different turn. The cloth is merely new {xuviv), and two objections to patching are hinted at. First, good cloth is wasted in patching, which would have heen better employed in making a new garment. Second, the patchwork is unseemly and unsatisfactory. The old and the new do not agree (o4 ffvix John vi. 35. « John vi. 51, 55, 50. ' John vi. 39, 40, 44, 54. • John vi. 49, 50. CHAP. IX.] THE RESURRECTION OF TSE BODY. ISV But the prominence given to the resurrection of the body is due mainly to its intrinsic importance. For if the dead rise not, then is our faith vain, and the bread of life degenerates into a mere quack nostrum, pretending to virtues which it does not possess. True, it may still give spiritual life to those who eat thereof, but what is that without the hope of a life hereafter? Not much, according to Paul, who says, " If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." ^ Many, indeed, in our day do not concur in the apostle's judgment. They think that the doctrine of the life everlasting may be left out of the creed without loss — nay, even with positive advan- tage, to the Christian faith. The life of a Christian seems to them so much nobler when all thought of future reward or punishment is dismissed from the mind. How grand, to pass through the wilderness of this world feeding on the manna supplied in the high, pure teaching of Jesus, without caring whether there be a land of Canaan on the other side of Jordan ! Very sublime indeed ! but why, in that case, come into the wilderness at all ? why not remain in Egypt, feeding on more substantial and palatable viands ? The children of Israel would not have left the house of bondage unless they had hoped to reach the promised land. An immortal hope is equally neces- sary to the Christian. He must believe in a world to come in order to live above the present evil world. If Christ cannot redeem the body from the power of the grave, then it is in vain that He promises to redeem us from guilt and sin. The bread of life is unworthy of the name, unless it hath power to cope with physical as well as with moral corruption. Hence the prominence given by Jesus in this discourse to the resurrection of the body. He knew that here lay the crucial experiment by which the value and virtue of the bread He offered to His hearers must be tested. " You call this bread the bread of life, in contrast to the manna of ancient times : — do you mean to say that, like the tree of life in the garden of Eden, it will confer on those who eat thereof the gift of a blessed immortality?" "Yes, I do," replied the Preacher in effect to this imaginary question : " this bread I offer you will not merely quicken the soul to a higher, purer life ; it will 1 1 Cor. XV. 19. l38 THE GALILEAN CRISIS: THE SERMON. [CHAP. IX. even revivify your bodies, and make the corruptible put on incorruption, and the mortal put on immortality." 3. And how, then, is this wondrous bread to be appropriated that one may experience its vitalizing influences ? Bread, of course, is eaten ; but what does eating in this case mean ? It means, in one yi or A, faith. " He that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that helieveth in Me shall never thirst."^ Eating Christ's flesh and drinking His blood, and, we may add, drinking the water of which He spake to the woman by the well, all signify believing in Him as He is offered to men in the gospel: the Son of God manifested in the flesh, crucified, raised from the dead, ascended into glory ; the Prophet, the Priest, the King, and the Mediator between God and man. Throughout the Capernaum discourse eating and believing are used inter- changeably as equivalents. Thus, in one sentence, we find Jesus saying, " Verily, verily, I say unto you. He that helieveth on Me hath everlasting life : I am that bread of life ; " ^ and shortly after remarking, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven : if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever." ^ If any further argument were necessary to justify the identifying of eating with believing, it might be found in the instruction given by the Preacher to His hearers before He began to speak of the bread of life: "This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent." * That sentence furnishes the key to the interpretation of the whole subsequent discourse. "Believe," said Jesus, with reference to the foregoing inquiry. What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? — "Believe, and thou hast done God's work." "Believe," we may understand Him as saying with reference to an inquiry. How shall we eat this bread of life? — "Believe, and thou hast eaten." Believe, and thou hast eaten: such was the formula in which Augustine expressed his view of Christ's meaning in the Caper- naum discourse.^ The saying is not only terse, but true, in our judgment ; but it has not been accepted by all interpreters. Many hold that eating and faith are something distinct, and would express the relation between them thus : Believe, and ' John vi. 35. ^ Vers. 47, 48. = Ver. 51. , * Ver. 29. ^ Crede et manducasti.— In Joaimis EYangelium Tract, xxv. § 12. CHAP. IX.] SACEAMENtAEIAN CONTEOVESSIES. 139 thou shalt eat. Even Calvin objected to the Augustinian formula. Distinguishing his own views from those held by the followers of Zwingli, he says : " To them to eat is simply to believe. I say that Christ's flesh is eaten in believing, because it is made ours by faith, and that that eating is the fruit and effect of faith. Or more clearly : To them eating is faith, to me it seems rather to follow from faith." ^ The distinction taken by Calvin between eating and believing seems to have been verbal rather than real. With many other theologians, however, it is far otherwise. All upholders of the magical doctrines of transubstantiation and consubstantiation contend for the literal interpretation of the Capernaum discourse even in its strongest statements. Eating Christ's flesh and drinking His blood are, for such, acts of the mouth, accompanied perhaps with acts of faith, but not merely acts of faith. It is assumed for the most part as a matter of course, that the discourse recorded in the sixth chapter of John's Gospel has reference to the sacrament of the Supper, and that only on the hypothesis of such a reference can the peculiar phraseology of the discourse be explained. Christ spoke then of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, so we are given to understand, because He had in His mind that mystic rite ere long to be instituted, in which bread and wine should not merely re- present, but become, the constituent elements of His crucified body. While the sermon on the bread of life continues to be mixed up with sacramentarian controversies, agreement in its inter- pretation is altogether hopeless. Meantime, till a better day dawn on a divided and distracted church, every man must endeavour to be fully persuaded in his own mind. Three things are clear to our mind. First, it is incorrect to say that the sermon delivered in the Capernaum synagogue refers to the sacra- ment of the Supper. The true state of the case is, that both refer to a third thing, viz. the death of Christ, and both declare, in different ways, the same thing concerning it. The sermon says in symbolic words what the Supper says in a symbolic act : that Christ crucified is the life of men, the world's hope of salvation. The sermon says more than this, for it speaks of Christ's ' Calv. InstituUo IV. xvii. 5. 14(3 THE GALILEAN CRISIS: THE SIFTING. [cHAP. IX. ascension as well as of His death ; but it says this for one thing. A second point on which we are clear is, that it is quite unnecessary to assume a mental reference by anticipation to the Holy Supper, in order to account for the peculiarity of Christ's language in this famous discourse. As we saw at the beginning, the whole discourse rose naturally out of the present situation. The mention by the people of the manna naturally led Jesus to speak of the bread of life ; and from the bread He passed on as naturally to speak of the flesh and the blood, because He could not fully be bread until He had become flesh and blood dis- severed, i.e. until He had endured death. All that we find here might have been said, in fact, although the sacrament of the Supper had never existed. The Supper is of use not so much for interpreting the sermon as for establishing its credibility as an authentic utterance of Jesus. There is no reason to doubt that He who instituted the mystic feast, could also have preached this mystic sermon. The third truth which shines clear as a star to our eye is, — that through faith alone we may attain all the blessings of salvation. Sacraments are very useful, but they are not neces- sary. If it had pleased Christ not to institute them, we could have got to heaven notwithstanding. Because He has instituted them, it is our duty to celebrate them, and we may expect benefit from their celebration. But the benefit we receive is simply an aid to faith, and nothing which cannot be received by faith. Christians eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man at all times, not merely at communion times, simply by believing in Him. They eat His flesh and drink His blood at His table in the same sense as at other times ; only perchance in a livelier manner, their hearts being stirred up to devotion by remembrance of His dying love, and their faith aided by seeing, handling, and tasting the bread and the wine. Section IV. — The Sifting. John vi. 66-71. The sermon on the bread of life produced decisive effects. It converted popular enthusiam for Jesus into disgust ; like a CHAP. IX.] THE MULTITUDE APOSTATIZE. 141 fan, it separated true from false disciples ; and like a winnow- ing breeze, it blew the chaff away, leaving a small residuum of wheat behind. " From that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him.'' This result did not take Jesus by surprise. He expected it ; in a sense He wished it, though He was deeply grieved by it. For while His large, loving human heart yearned for the salva- tion of all, and desired that all should come and get life, He wanted none to come to Him under misapprehension, or to follow Him from by-ends. He sought disciples God-given,^ God-drawn,^ God-taught,* knowing that such alone would con- tinue in His word.* He was aware that in the large mass of people who had recently followed Him were many disciples of quite another description ; and He was not unwilling that the mixed multitude should be sifted. Therefore He preached that mystic discourse, fitted to be a savour of life or of death accord- ing to the spiritual state of the hearer. Therefore, also, when oifence was taken at the doctrine taught, He plainly declared the true cause,® and expressed His assurance that only those whom His Father taught and drew would or could really come unto Him.^ These things He said not with a view to irritate, but He deemed it right to say them though they should give rise to irritation, reckoning that true believers would take all in good part, and that those who took umbrage would thereby reveal their true character. The apostatizing disciples doubtless thought themselves fully justified in withdrawing from the society of Jesus. They turned their back on Him, we fancy, in most virtuous indignation, saying in their hearts — nay, probably saying aloud to one another : " Who ever heard the like of that ? how absurd ! how revolting ! The man who can speak thus is either a fool, or is trying to make fools of his hearers." And yet the hardness of His doctrine was not the real reason which led so many to forsake Him ; it was simply the pretext, the most plausible and respectable reason that they could assign for conduct springing from other motives. The grand offence of Jesus was this : He was not the man they had taken Him for ; He was not going ' John vi. 37. ^ John vi. 44. ^ John vi. 45. * John viii. 31. ^ John vi. 36, 37. ' John vi. 44. 142 THE GALILEAN CRISIS: THE SIFTING. [OHAP. IX. to be at their service to promote the ends they had in view. Whatever He meant by the bread of life, or by eating His flesh, it was plain that He was not going to be a bread-king, making it His business to furnish supplies for their physical appetites, ushering in a golden age of idleness and plenty. That ascer- tained, it was all over with Him so far as they were concerned : He might offer His heavenly food to whom He pleased; they wanted none of it. Deeply affected by the melancholy sight of so many human beings deliberately preferring material good to eternal life, Jesus turned to the twelve, and said, " Will ye also go away ? " or more exactly, " You do not wish to go away too, do you ? " ^ The question may be understood as a virtual expression of confidence in the persons to whom it was addressed, and as an appeal to them for sympathy at a discouraging crisis. And yet, while a negative answer was expected to the question, it was not expected as a matter of course. Jesus was not without solicitude concerning the fidelity even of the twelve. He inter- rogated them, as conscious that they were placed in trying circumstances, and that if they did not actually forsake Him now, as at the great final crisis, they were at least tempted to be offended in Him. A little reflection suffices to satisfy us that the twelve were indeed placed in a position at this time calculated to try their faith most severely. For one thing, the mere fact of their Master being deserted wholesale by the crowd of quondam admirers and followers involved for the chosen band a tempta- tion to apostasy. How mighty is the power of sympathy ! how ready are we all to follow the multitude, regardless of the way they are going ! and how much moral courage it requires to stand alone ! How difficult to witness the spectacle of thousands, or even hundreds, going off in sullen disaffection, without feeling an impulse to imitate their bad example ! how hard to keep one's self from being carried along with the powerful tide of ad- verse popular opinion ! Especially hard it must have been for the twelve to resist the tendency to apostatize if, as is more than probable, they sympathized with the project entertained by ' John vi. 67. The participle /i-Zi implies that a negative answer is looked for. See Winer. Neviest. Grammatilc, § 57, Moulton's translation, p. 641. CHAP. IX.] THE TWELVE CONTINUE FAITHFUL. 143 the multitude when their enthusiasm for Jesus was at full-tide. If it would have gratified them to have seen their beloved Master made king by popular acclamation, how their spirits must have sunk when the bubble burst, and the would-be sub- jects of the Messianic Prince were dispersed like an idle mob, and the kingdom which had seemed so near vanished like a cloudland ! Another circumstance trying to the faith of the twelve was the strange, mysterious character of their Master's discourse in the synagogue of Capernaum. That discourse contained hard, repulsive, unintelligible sayings for them quite as much as for the rest of the audience. Of this we can have no doubt when we consider the repugnance with which some time afterward they received the anouncement that Jesus was destined to be put to death.^ If they objected even to the fact of His death, how could they understand its meaning, especially when both fact and meaning were spoken of in such a veiled and mystic style as that which pervades the sermon on the bread of life ? While, therefore, they believed that their Master had the words of eternal life, and perceived that His late discourse bore on that high theme, it may be regarded as certain that the twelve did not understand the words spoken any more than the multitude, however much they might try to do so. They knew not what connection existed between Christ's flesh and eternal life, how eating that flesh could confer any benefit, or even what eating it might mean. They had quite lost sight of the Speaker in His eagle flight of thought ; and they must have looked on in distress as the people melted away, painfully conscious that they could not altogether blame them. Yet, however greatly tempted to forsake their Master, the twelve did abide faithfully by His side. They did come safely through the spiritual storm. What was the secret of their stedfastness ? what were the anchors that preserved them from shipwreck ? These questions are of practical interest to all who, like the apostles at this crisis, are tempted to apostasy by evil example or by religious doubt ; by the fashion of the world they live in, whether scientific or illiterate, refined or rustic ; or by the deep things of God, whether these be the mysteries of provi- 1 Matt. xvi. 22. 144 THE GALILEAN CRISIS : THE SIFTING. [CHAP. IX. dence, the mysteries of revelation, or the mysteries of religious experience : we may say, indeed, to all genuine Christians, for what Christian has not been tempted in one or other of these ways at some period in his history ? Sufficient materials for answering these questions are supplied in the words of Simon Peter's response to Jesus. As spokes- man for the whole company, that disciple promptly said : " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and know that Thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God," ^ or, according to the reading preferred by most critics, " that Thou art the Holy One of God." ^ Three anchors, we infer from these words, helped the twelve to ride out the storm : Beligious earnestness or sincerity ; a clear perception of the alternatives lefore them ; and implicit confidence in the character and attachment to the person of their Master. 1. The twelve, as a body, were sincere and thoroughly in earnest in religion. Their supreme desire was to know " the words of eternal life," and actually to gain possession of that life. Their concern was not about the meat that perisheth, but about the higher heavenly food of the soul which Christ had in vain exhorted the majority of Kis hearers to labour for. As yet they knew not clearly wherein that food consisted, but according to their light they sincerely prayed, " Lord, ever- more give us this bread." Hence it was no disappointment to them that Jesus declined to become a purveyor of mere material food : they had never expected or wished Him to do so ; they had joined His company with entirely different expectations. A certain element of error might be mingled with truth in their conceptions of His mission, but the gross, carnal hopes of the multitude had no place in their breasts. They became hot disciples to better their worldly circumstances, but to obtain a portion which the world could neither give them nor take from them. What we have now stated was true of all the twelve save one ; and the crisis we are at present considering is memorable for 1 John vi. 68, 69. ^ See Alford in loe. The confession of Christ's holiness was appropriate, as meeting an implied charge of having uttered language shocking to the moral CHAP. IX.] EVEN THE FXJTUEE TRAITOE. 145 this, among other things, that it was the first occasion on which Jesus gave a hint that there was a false disciple among the men whom He had chosen. To justify Himself for asking a question which seemed to cast a doubt upon their fidelity. He replied to Peter's protestation by the startling remark : " Did not I choose you the twelve, and one of you is a devil ? " ^ as if to say : " It is painful to Me to have to use this language of suspicion, but I have good cause : there is one among you who has had thoughts of desertion, and who is capable even of treachery." With what sadness of spirit must He have made such an intimation at this crisis ! To be forsaken by the fickle crowd of shallow, thoughtless followers had been a small matter, could He have reckoned all the members of the select band good men and true friends. But to have an enemy in one's own house, a diabolus capable of playing Satan's part in one's small circle of intimate companions : — it was hard indeed ! But how could a man destined to be a traitor, and deserving to be stigmatized as a devil, manage to pass creditably through the present crisis ? Does not the fact seem to imply that, after all, it is possible to be stedfast without being single-minded ? Not so ; the only legitimate inference is, that the crisis was not searching enough to bring out the true character of Judas. Wait till you see the end. A little religion will carry a man through many trials, but there is an experimentum crucis which nothing but sincerity can stand. If the mind be double, or the heart divided, a time comes that compels men to act according to the motives that are deepest and strongest in them. This remark applies especially to creative, revolutionary, or transi- tion epochs. In quiet times a hypocrite may pass respectably through this world, and never be detected till he gets to the next, whither his sins follow him to judgment. But in critical eras the sins of the double-minded find them out in this life. True, even then some double-minded men can stand more temptation than others, and are not to be bought so cheaply as the common herd. But all of them have their price, and those who fall less easily than others fall in the end most deeply and tragically. Of the character and fall of Judas we shall have another opportunity to speak. Our present object is simply to point > JohB vi. 70. lO 146 THE GALILEAN CRISIS : THE SIFTING. [CHAP. IX. out that from such as he Jesus did not expect constancy. By referring to that disciple as He did, He intimated His convic- tion that no one in whom the love of God and truth was not the deepest principle of his being would continue faithful to the end. In effect He inculcated the necessity, in order to sted- fastness in faith, of moral integrity, or godly sincerity. 2. The second anchor by which the disciples were kept from shipwreck at this season was a clear perception of the alterna- tives. " To whom shall we go ? " asked Peter, as one who saw that, for men having in view the aim pursued by himself and his brethren, there was no course open but to remain where they were. He had gone over rapidly in his mind all the possible alternatives, and this was the conclusion at which he had arrived. " To whom shall we go — we who seek eternal life ? John, our former master, is dead ; and even were he alive, he would send us back to Thee. Or shall we go to the scribes and Pharisees ? "We have been too long with Thee for that ; for Thou hast taught us the superficiality, the hypocrisy, the ostentatiousness, the essential ungodliness of their religious system. Or shall we follow the fickle multitude there, and relapse into stupidity and indifference ? It is not to be thought of. Or, finally, shall we go to the Sadducees, the idolaters of the material and the temporal, who say there is no resurrection, neither any angels nor spirits ? God forbid ! That were to renounce a hope dearer than life, without which life to an earnest mind were a riddle, a contradiction, and an intolerable burden." We may understand what a help this clear perception of the alternatives was to Peter and his brethren, by reflecting on the help we ourselves might derive from the same source when tempted by dogmatic difficulties to renounce Christianity. It would make one pause if he understood that the alternatives open to him were to abide with Christ, or to become an atheist, ignoring God and the world to come ; that when he leaves Christ, he must go to school to some of the great masters of thoroughgoing unbelief. In the works of a well-known German author is a dream, which portrays with appalling vividness the consequences that would ensue throughout the universe should the Creator cease to exist. The dream was invented. CHAP. IX. J EICHTEe's CURE FOE ATHEISM. 147 SO the gifted writer tells us, for the purpose of frightening those who discussed the being of God as coolly as if the question respected the existence of the Kraken or the unicorn, and also to check all atheistic thoughts which might arise in his own bosom. " If ever," he says, " my heart should be so unhappy and deadened as to have all those feelings which affirm the being of a God destroyed, I would use this dream to frighten myself, and so heal my heart, and restore its lost feelings." ^ Such benefit as Eichter expected from the perusal of his own dream, would anyone, tempted to renounce Christianity, derive from a clear perception that in ceasing to be a Christian he must make up his mind to accept a creed which acknowledges no God, no soul, no hereafter. Unfortunately it is not so easy for us now as it was for Peter to see clearly what the alternatives before us are. Few are so clear-sighted, so recklessly logical, or so frank as the late Dr. Strauss, who in his latest publication. The Old and the Neiu Faith, plainly says that he is no longer a Christian. Hence many in our day call themselves Christians whose theory of the universe (or Weltanschauung, as the Germans call it) does not allow them to believe in the miraculous in any shape or in any sphere ; with whom it is an axiom that the continuity of nature's course cannot be broken, and who therefore cannot even go the length of Socinians in their view of Christ, and declare Him to be, without qualification, the Holy One of God, the morally sinless One. Even men like Eenan claim to be Christians, and, like Balaam, bless Him whom their philosophy compels them to blame. Our modern Balaams all confess that Jesus is at least the holiest of men, if not the absolutely Holy One. They are constrained to bless the Man of Nazareth. They are spell- bound by the Star of Bethlehem, as was the Eastern soothsayer by the Star of Jacob, and are forced to say in efiect : " How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed ? or how shall I defy, whom the Lord hath not defied ? Behold, I have received command- ment to bless : and He hath blessed ; and I cannot reverse it." ^ Others not going so far as Eenan, shrinking from thoroughgoing naturalism, believing in a perfect Christ, a moral miracle, yet affect a Christianity independent of dogma, and as little as ' J. P. Richter, SielenMs, viii. ^ Num. xxiii. 8, 20. 148 THE GALILEAN CRISIS: THE SIFTING. [OHAP. IX. possible encumbered by miracle, a Christianity purely ethical, consisting mainly in admiration of Christ's character and moral teaching ; and, as the professors of such a Christianity, regard themselves as exemplary disciples of Christ. Such are the men of whom the author of Supernatural Religion speaks as cha- racterized by " a tendency to eliminate from Christianity, with thoughtless dexterity, every supernatural element which does not quite accord with current opinions," and as endeavouring " to arrest for a moment the pursuing wolves of doubt and unbelief by practically throwing to them scrap by scrap the very doctrines which constitute the claims of Christianity to be regarded as A divine revelation at all." ^ Such men can hardly be said to have a consistent theory of the universe, for they hold opinions based on incompatible theories, are naturalistic in tendency, yet will not carry out naturalism to all its consequences. They are either not able, or are disinclined, to realize the alternatives and to obey the voice of logic, which like a stern policeman bids them " Move on " ; but would rather hold views which unite the alternatives in one compound eclectic creed, like Schleiermacher, — himself an excellent example of the class, — of whom Strauss remarks that he ground down Christianity and Pantheism to powder, and so mixed them that it is hard to say where Pantheism ends and Christianity begins. In presence of such a spirit of compromise, so widespread, and recommended by the example of many men of ability and influence, it requires some courage to have and hold a definite position, or to resist the temptation to yield to the current and adopt the watchword: Christianity without dogma and miracle. But perhaps it will be easier by and by to realize the alternatives, when time has more clearly shown whither present tendencies lead. Meantime it is the evening twilight, and for the moment it seems as if we could do without the sun, for though he is below the horizon, the air is still full of light. But wait awhile ; and the deepen- ing of the twilight into the darkness of night will show how far Christ the Holy One of the church's confession can be dispensed with as the Sun of the spiritual world. 3. The third anchor whereby the twelve were enabled to ride out the storm, was confidence in the character of their Master. ^ S'upernoctural Religion, i. 92 (6th ed.). CHAP. IX.] POWER OF CONFIDENCE. 149 They believed, yea, they knew, that He was the Holy One of God. They had been with Jesus long enough to have come to very decided conclusions respecting Him. They had seen Him work many miracles ; they had heard Him discourse with marvellous wisdom, in parable and sermon, on the divine king- dom ; they had observed His wondrously tender, gracious con- cern for the low and the lost ; they had been present at His various encounters with Pharisees, and had noted His holy ab- horrence of their falsehood, pride, vanity, and tyranny. All this blessed fellowship had begotten a confidence in, and reverence for, their beloved Master, too strong to be shaken by a single address containing some statements of an incomprehensible character, couched in questionable or even offensive language. Their intellect might be perplexed, but their heart remained true ; and hence, while others who knew not Jesus well went off in disgust, they continued by His side, feeling that such a friend and guide was not to be parted with for a trifle. " We believe and know," said Peter. He believed because he knew. Such implicit confidence as the twelve had in Jesus is possible only through intimate knowledge ; for one cannot thus trust a stranger. All, therefore, who desire to get the benefit of this trust, must be willing to spend time and take trouble to get into the heart of the Gospel story, and of its great subject. The sure anchorage is not attainable by a listless, random reading of the evangelic narratives, but by a close, careful, prayerful study, pursued it may be for years. Those who grudge the trouble are in imminent danger of the fate which befell the ignorant multitude, being liable to be thrown into panic by every new infidel book, or to be scan- dalized by every strange utterance of the Object of faith. Those, on the other hand, who do take the trouble, will be rewarded for their pains. Storm-tossed for a time, they shall at length reach the harbour of a creed which is no nondescript compromise between infidelity and scriptural Christianity, but embraces all the cardinal facts and truths of the faith, as taught by Jesus in the Capernaum discourse, and as afterwards taught by the men who passed through the Capernaum crisis. May God in His mercy guide all souls now out in the tempestuous sea of doubt into that haven of rest ! CHAPTER X. THE LEAVEN OF THE PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES. Matt. xvi. 1-12 ; Makk viii. 10-21. THIS new collision between Jesus and His opponents took place shortly after a second miracle of feeding similar to that performed in the neighbourhood of Bethsaida Julias. What interval of time elapsed between the two miracles cannot be ascertained ; ^ but it was long enough to admit of an extended journey on the part of our Lord and His disciples to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, the scene of the pathetic meet- ing with the Syrophenician woman, and round from thence through the region of the ten cities, on the eastern border of the Galilean lake. It was long enough also to allow the cause and the fame of Jesus to recover from the low state to which they sank after the sifting sermon in the synagogue of Caper- naum. The unpopular One had again become popular, so that on arriving at the south-eastern shore of the lake He found Himself attended by thousands, so intent on hearing Him preach, and on experiencing His healing power, that they remained with Him three days, almost, if not entirely, without food, thus creating a necessity for the second miraculous repast. After the miracle on the south-eastern shore, Jesus, we read, sent away the multitude ; and taking ship, came into the coasts of Magdala, on the western side of the sea.^ It ' The chronological relation of the events recorded in Matt. xv. and xvi. to the feast of tabernacles spoken of in John vii. is an important question. It is one, however, on which the learned differ, and certainty is unattainable, = Matt. XV. 39. 160 CHAP. X.] CHAEACTER OF THE SIGN-SEEKERS. 151 was on His arrival there that He encountered the party who came seeking of Him a sign from heaven. These persons had probably heard of the recent miracle, as of many others wrought by Him ; but unwilling to accept the conclusion to which these wondrous works plainly led, they affected to regard them as insufficient evidence of His Messiahship, and demanded still more unequivocal proof before giving in their adherence to His claim. " Show us a sign from heaven," said they; meaning thereby, something like the manna brought down from heaven by Moses, or the fire called down by Elijah, or the thunder and rain called down by Samuel ; ^ it being assumed that such signs could be wrought only by the power of God, whilst the signs on earth, such as Jesus supplied in His miracles of healing, might be wrought by the power of the devil ! ^ It was a demand of a sort often addressed to Jesus in good faith or in bad ; ^ for the Jews sought after such signs — miracles of a singular and startling character, fitted to gratify a superstitious curiosity, and astonish a wonder-loving mind — miracles that were merely signs, serving no other purpose than to display divine power ; like the rod of Moses, converted into a serpent, and reconverted into its original form. These demands of the sign-seekers Jesus uniformly met with a direct refusal. He would not condescend to work miracles of any description merely as certificates of His own Messiahship, or to furnish food for a superstitious appetite, or materials of amusement to sceptics. He knew that such as remained unbelievers in presence of His ordinary miracles, which were not naked signs, but also works of beneficence, could not be brought to faith by any means ; nay, that the more evidence they got, the more hardened they should become in unbelief. He regarded the very demand for these signs as the indication of a fixed determination on the part of those who made it not to believe in Him even if, in order to rid themselves of the disagreeable obligation, it should be necessary to put Him to death. Therefore, in refusing the signs sought after. He was wont to accompany the refusal with a word of rebuke or of sad ^ See Alford. Stier refers to the apocryphal books to explain the nature of the signs demanded. 2 Matt, xii, 24 et par. ^ John ii. 18, vi. 30 ; Matt. xii. 38. 152 THE LEAVEN OF THE PHAKISEES AND SAEDUCEES. [OHAP. X. foreboding; as when He said, at a very early period of His ministry, on His first visit to Jerusalem, after His baptism : " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." ^ On the present occasion the soul of Jesus was much per- turbed by the renewed demands of the sign-seekers. " He sighed deeply in His spirit," knowing full well what these demands meant, with respect both to those who made them and to Himself; and He addressed the parties who came tempting Him, in excessively severe and bitter terms, — re- proaching them with spiritual blindness, calling them a wicked and adulterous generation, and ironically referring them now, as He had once done before,^ to the sign of the prophet Jonas. He told them, that while they knew the weather signs, and understood what a red sky in the morning or evening meant, they were blind to the manifest signs of the times, which showed at once that the Sun of Kighteousness had arisen, and that a dreadful storm of judgment was coming like a dark night on apostate Israel for her iniquity. He applied to them, and the whole generation they represented, the epithet " wicked," to characterize their false-hearted, malevolent, and spiteful behaviour towards Himself; and He employed the term " adulterous," to describe them, in relation to God, as guilty of breaking their marriage covenant, pretending great love and zeal with their lip, but in their heart and life turning away from the living God to idols — forms, ceremonies, signs. He gave them the story of Jonah the prophet for a sign, in mystic allusion to His death ; meaning to say that one of the most reliable evidences that He was God's servant indeed, was just the fact that He was rejected, and ignominiously and bar- barously treated by such as those to whom He spake; that there could be no worse sign of a man than to be well re- ceived by them — that he could be no true Christ who was so received.* ' Jolin ii. 19. 2 jiatt. xii. 40. ^ Pfleiderer (Die Religion, ii. 447) recognises so fully the importance of this encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees, that he fixes on it as the historical germ of the Temptation-history. He looks on the demand as made in earnest by persons ready to receive Jesus as the Christ, if He gave the necessary miracle- sign, and to form a friendly alliance with Him. Jesus, on the other hand, ho represents as unwilling to take the Messiah sceptre out of hands siij-stained, and CHAP. X.] WAENING TO THE DISCIPLES. 153 Having thus freely uttered His mind, Jesus left the sign- seekers ; and, entering into the ship in which He had just crossed from the other side, departed again to the same eastern shore, anxious to be rid of their unwelcome presence. On arriving at the land, He made the encounter which had just taken place the subject of instruction to the twelve. " Take heed," He said as they walked along the way, " and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." The word was spoken abruptly, as the utterance of one waking out of a reverie. Jesus, we imagine, while His disciples rowed Him across the lake, had been brooding over what had occurred, sadly musing on prevailing unbelief, and the dark, lowering weather-signs, portentous of evil to Him and to the whole Jewish people. And now, recollecting the presence of the disciples. He communicates His thoughts to them in the form of a warning, and cautions them against the deadly influence of an evil time, as a parent might bid his child beware of a poisonous plant whose garish flowers attracted its eye. In this warning, it will be observed, pharisaic and sadducaic tendencies are identified. Jesus speaks not of two leavens, but of one common to both sects, as if they were two species of one genus, two branches from one stem.-'- And such indeed they were. Superficially, the two parties were very diverse. The one was excessively zealous, the other was " moderate " in re- ligion ; the one was strict, the other easy in morals ; the one was exclusively and intensely Jewish in feeling, the other was open to the influence of pagan civilisation. Each party had a leaven peculiar to itself : that of the Pharisees being, as Christ was wont to declare, hypocrisy ; ^ that of the Sad- ducees, an engrossing interest in merely material and temporal concerns, assuming in some a political form, as in the case of the partisans of the Herod family, called in the Gospels Herodians, in others wearing the guise of a philosophy which denied the existence of spirit and the reality of the future life, preferring to reach by another path His throne. That He was not, however, insensible to the temptation, Pfleiderer thinks was shown by the word of warn- ing He afterwards uttered about the leaven of the Pharisees. ' In this connection, the omission of the article before ZaSSomaloiv is sig- nificant. ^ JJlike xii. 1, 154 THE LEAVEN OF THE PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES. [CHAP. X. and made that denial an excuse for exclusive devotion to the interests of time. But here, as elsewhere, extremes met. Phariseeism, Sadduceeism, Herodianism, though distinguished by minor differences, were radically one. The religionists, the philosophers, the politicians, were all members of one great party, which was inveterately hostile to the divine kingdom. All alike were worldly-minded (of the Pharisees it is expressly remarked that they were covetous^); all were opposed to Christ for fundamentally the same reason, viz. because He was not of this world ; all united fraternally at this time in the attempt to vex Him by unbelieving, unreasonable de- mands ; ^ and they all had a hand in His death at the last. It was thus made apparent, once for all, that a Christian is not one who merely differs superficially either from Pharisees or from Sadducees separately, but one who diifers radically from both. A weighty truth, not yet well understood ; for it is fancied by many that right believing and right living consist in going to the opposite extreme from any tendency whose evil influence is apparent. To avoid pharisaic strict- ness and superstition, grown odious, men run into sadducaic scepticism and licence; or, frightened by the excesses of infidelity and secularity, they seek salvation in ritualism, infallible churches, and the revival of mediaeval monkery. Thus the two tendencies continue ever propagating each other on the principle of action and reaction ; one generation or school going all lengths in one direction, and another making a point of being as unlike its predecessor or its neighbour as possible, and both being equally far from the truth. What the common leaven of Phariseeism and Sadduceeism was, Jesus did not deem it necessary to state. He had already indicated its nature with sufficient plainness in His severe reply to the sign-seekers. The radical vice of both sects was just ungodliness : blindness, and deadness of heart to the Divine. They did not know the true and the good when they saw it ; and when they knew it, they did not love it. All around them were the evidences that the King and the kingdom of grace were among them ; yet here were they asking for arbi- ^ Luke xvi. 14. 2 In Mark (viii. 15) the "kaveu of Herod" is mentioned* CHAP. X.] MISAPPREHENDED BY THEM. 155 trary outward signs, " external evidences " in the worst sense, that He who spake as never man spake, and worked wonders of mercy such as had never before been witnessed, was no impostor, but a man wise and good, a prophet, and the Son of God. Verily the natural man, religious or irreligious, is blind and dead ! What these seekers after a sign needed was not a new sign, but a new heart ; not mere evidence, but a spirit willing to obey the truth. The spirit of unbelief which ruled in Jewish society Jesus described as a leaven, with special reference to its diffusiveness ; and most fitly, for it passes from sire to son, from rich to poor, from learned to unlearned, till a whole generation has been vitiated by its malign influence. Such was the state of things in Israel as it came under His eye. Spiritual blindness and deadness, with the outward symptom of the inward malady, — a constant craving for evidence, — met Him on every side. The common people, the leaders of society, the religious, the sceptics, the courtiers, and the rustics, were all blind, and yet apparently all most anxious to see ; ever renewing the demand, "What sign showest Thou, that we may see and believe Thee ? What dost Thou work ? " Vexed an hour ago by the sinister movements of foes, Jesus next found new matter for annoyance in the stupidity of friends. The disciples utterly, even ludicrously, misunderstood the warning word addressed to them. In conversation by them- selves, while their Master walked apart, they discussed the question, what the strange words, so abruptly and earnestly spoken, might mean ; and they came to the sapient conclusion that they were intended to caution them against buying bread from parties belonging to either of the offensive sects. It was an absurd mistake, and yet, all things considered, it was not so very unnatural : for, in the first place, as already remarked, Jesus had introduced the subject very abruptly ; and secondly, some time had elapsed since the meeting with the seekers of a sign, during which no allusion seems to have been made to that matter. How were they to know that during all that time their Master's thoughts had been occupied with what took place on the western shore of the lake ? In any case, such a supposition was not likely to occur to their mind ; for the demand for a 156 THE LEAVEN OF THE PHAEISBES AND SADDUCEES. [CHAP. X. sign had, doubtless, not appeared to them an event of much consequence, and it was probably forgotten as soon as their backs were turned upon the men who made it. And then, finally, it so happened that, just before Jesus began to speak, they remembered that in the hurry of a sudden departure they had forgotten to provide themselves with a stock of provisions for the journey. That was what they were thinking about when He began to say, " Take heed, and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees." The momentous circum- stance that they had with them but one loaf was causing them so much concern, that when they heard the caution against a particular kind of leaven, they jumped at once to the conclu- sion, " It is because we have no bread." Yet the misunderstanding of the disciples, though simple and natural in its origin, was blameworthy. They could not have fallen into the mistake had the interest they took in spiritual and temporal things respectively been proportional to their relative importance. They had treated the incident on the other side of the lake too lightly, and they had treated their neglect to provide bread too gravely. They should have taken more to heart the ominous demand for a sign, and the solemn words spoken by their Master in reference thereto ; and they should not have been troubled about the want of loaves in the company of Him who had twice miraculously fed the hungry multitude in the desert. Their thoughtlessness in one direction, and their over-thoughtfulness in another, showed that food and raiment occupied a larger place in their minds than the kingdom of God and its interests. Had they possessed more faith and more spirituality, they would not have exposed themselves to the reproachful question of their Master : " How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees ? " ^ And yet, Jesus can hardly have expected these crude disciples to appreciate as He did the significance of what had occurred on the other side of the lake. It needed no common insight to discern the import of that demand for a sign ; and the faculty of reading the signs of the times possessed by the disciples, as 1 Matt. xvi. 11. CHAP. X.] THEIE THOUGHTS NOT CHEIST'S. 157 we shall soon see, and as all we have learnt concerning them already might lead us to expect, was very small indeed. One of the principal lessons to be learnt from the subject of this chapter, indeed, is just this : how different were the thoughts of Christ in reference to the future from the thoughts of His companions. We shall often have occasion to remark on this hereafter, as we advance towards the final crisis. At this point we are called on to signalize the fact prominently for the first time. CHAPTER XL petee's confession; oe, cueeent opinion and eternal truth. Matt. xvi. 13-20 ; Mask viii. 27-30 ; Luke ix. 18-21. FEOM the eastern shore of the lake Jesus directed His course northwards along the banks of the Upper Jordan, passing Bethsaida Julias, where, as Mark informs us. He restored eyesight to a blind man. Pursuing His journey, He arrived at length in the neighbourhood of a town of some importance, beautifully situated near the springs of the Jordan, at the southern base of Mount Hermon. This was Caesarea Philippi, formerly called Paneas, from the heathen god Pan, who was worshipped by the Syrian Greeks in the limestone cavern near by, in which Jordan's fountains bubble forth to light. Its present name was given to it by Philip, tetrarch of Trachonitis, in honour of Csesar Augustus ; his own name being appended (Csesarea Philippi, or Philip's Csesarea) to distinguish it from the other town of the same name on the Mediterranean coast. The town so named could boast of a temple of white marble, built by Herod the Great to the iirst Eoman Emperor, besides villas and palaces, built by Philip, Herod's son, in whose territories it lay, and who, as we have just stated, gave it its new name. Away in that remote secluded region, Jesus occupied Himself for a season in secret prayer, and in confidential conversations with His disciples on topics of deepest interest. One of these conversations had reference to His own Person. He introduced the subject by asking the twelve the question, " Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am ? " This question He asked, not as one needing to be informed, still less from any morbid sensitiveness, such as vain men feel CHAP. XI.] CURRENT OPINIONS ABOUT JESUS. 159 respecting the opinions entertained of them by their fellow- creatures. He desired of His disciples a recital of current opinions, merely by way of preface to a profession of their own faith in the eternal truth concerning Himself. He deemed it good to draw forth from them such a profession at this time, because He was about to make communications to them on another subject, viz. His sufferings, which He knew would sorely try their faith. He wished them to be fairly committed to the doctrine of His Messiahship before proceeding to speak in plain terms on the unwelcome theme of His death. From the reply of the disciples, it appears that their Master had been the subject of much talk among the people. This is only what we should have expected. Jesus was a very public and a very extraordinary person, and to be much talked about is one of the inevitable penalties of prominence. The merits and the claims of the Son of Man were accordingly freely and widely canvassed in those days, with gravity or with levity, with prejudice or with candour, with decision or with indecision, in- telligently or ignorantly, as is the way of men in all ages. As they mingled with the people, it was the lot of the twelve to hear many opinions concerning their Lord which never reached His ear: sometimes kind and favourable, making them glad; at other times unkind and unfavourable, making them sad. The opinions prevalent among the masses concerning Jesus — for it was with reference to these that He interrogated His dis- ciples ^ — seem to have been mainly favourable. All agreed in regarding Him as a prophet of the highest rank, differing only as to which of the great prophets of Israel He most nearly resembled or personated. Some said He was John the Baptist revived, other Elias, while others again identified Him with one or other of the great prophets, as Jeremiah. These opinions are explained in part by an expectation then commonly enter- tained, that the advent of the Messiah would be preceded by the return of one of the prophets by whom God had spoken to the fathers, partly by the perception of real or supposed resem- blances between Jesus and this or that prophet : His tender- ness reminding one hearer of the author of the Lamentations, His sternness in denouncing hypocrisy and tyranny reminding ' Luke ix. 18, oi 6x^01. 160 PETER'S CONFESSION. [CHAP. XI. another of the prophet of fire, while perhaps His parabolic discourses led a third to think of Ezekiel or of Daniel. When we reflect on the high veneration in which the ancient prophets were held, we cannot fail to see that these diverse opinions current among the Jewish people concerning Jesus imply a very high sense of His greatness and excellence. To as, who regard Him as the Sun, while the prophets were at best but lamps of greater or less brightness, such comparisons may well seem not only inadequate, but dishonouring. Yet we must not despise them, as the testimonies of open-minded but imperfectly-informed contemporaries to the worth of Him whom we worship as the Lord. Taken separately, they show that in the judgment of candid observers Jesus was a man of surpass- ing greatness ; taken together, they show the many-sidedness of His character, and its superiority to that of any one of the prophets; for He could not have reminded those who witnessed His works, and heard Him preach, of all the prophets in turn, unless He had comprehended them all in His one person. The very diversity of opinion respecting Him, therefore, showed that a greater than Ellas, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, or Daniel, had appeared. These opinions, valuable still as testimonials to the excel- lence of Christ, must be admitted further to be indicative, so far, of good dispositions on the part of those who cherished and expressed them. At a time when those who deemed themselves in every respect immeasurably superior to the multitude could find no better names for the Son of Man than Samaritan, devil, blasphemer, glutton and drunkard, companion of publicans and sinners, it was something considerable to believe that the calum- niated One was a prophet as worthy of honour as any of those whose sepulchres the professors of piety carefully varnished, while depreciating, and even putting to death, their living successors. The multitude who held this opinion might come short of true discipleship ; but they were at least far in advance of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who came in tempting mood to ask a sign from heaven, and whom no sign, whether in heaven or in earth, would conciliate or convince. How,then,did Jesus receive the report of His disciples? Was He satisfied with these favourable, and in the circumstances really CHAP. XI.J PETER'S EEPLY. 161 gratifying, opinions current among the people ? He, was not. He was not content to be put on a level with even the greatest of the prophets. Hedidnotindeed express any displeasure against those who assigned Him such a rank, and He may even have been pleased to hear that public opinion had advanced so far on the way to the true faith. Nevertheless He declined to accept the position accorded. The meek and lowly Son of Man claimed to be something more than a great prophet. Therefore He turned to His chosen disciples, as to men from whom He expected a more satisfactory statement of the truth, and pointedly asked whatthey thoughtof Him. "Butyou — whdm say ye that I am ? " In this case, as in many others, Simon son of Jonas answered for the company. His prompt, definite, memorable reply to his Master's question was this : " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." ^ With this view of His person Jesus was satisfied. He did not charge Peter with extravagance in going so far beyond the opinion of the populace. On the contrary. He entirely approved of what the ardent disciple had said, and expressed His satis- faction in no cold or measured terms. Never, perhaps, did He speak in more animated language, or with greater appearance of deep emotion. He solemnly pronounced Peter " blessed " on account of his faith ; He spake for the first time of a church which should be founded, professing Peter's faith as its creed ; He promised that disciple great power in that church, as if grateful to him for being the first to put the momentous truth into words, and for uttering it so boldly amid prevailing un- belief, and crude, defective belief ; and He expressed, in the strongest possible terms. His confidence that the church yet to be founded would stand to all ages proof against all the assaults of the powers of darkness. Simon's confession, fairly interpreted, seems to contain these two propositions, — that Jesus was the Messiah, and that He was divine. " Thou art the Christ," said he in the first place, with conscious reference to the reported opinions of the people, — ^ So in Matthew ; in the other Gospels the reply is abbreviated, and the confes- sion of Messiahship alone mentioned. Matthew's account of this memorable incident is throughout the fullest, a fact of importance when it is considered that Matthew's, according even to Dr. Baur, is the oldest and most historical Gospel. 162 petek's confession. [chap. XI. " Thou art the Christ," and not merely a prophet come to prepare Christ's way. Then he added : " the Son of God," to explain what he meant by the term Christ. The Messiah looked for by the Jews in general was merely a man, though a very superior one, the ideal man endowed with extraordinary gifts. The Christ of Peter's creed was more than man — a superhuman, a divine being. This truth he sought to express in the second part of his confession. He called Jesus Son of God, with obvious reference to the name his Master had just given Himself — Son of Man. " Thou," he meant to say, " art not only what Thou hast now called Thyself, and what, in lowli- ness of mind. Thou art wont to call Thyself — the Son of Man ; ^ Thou art also Son of God, partaking of the divine nature not less really than of the human." Finally, he prefixed the epithet " living " to the divine name, to express his conscious- ness that he was making a very momentous declaration, and to give that declaration a solemn, deliberate character. It was as if he said : " I know it is no light matter to call any one, even Thee, Son of God, of the One living eternal Jehovah. But I shrink not from the assertion, however bold, startling, or even blasphemous it may seem. I cannot by any other expression do justice to all I know and feel concerning Thee, or convey the impression left on my mind by what I have witnessed during the time I have followed Thee as a disciple." In this way was the disciple urged on, in spite of his Jewish monotheism, to the recognition of His Lord's divinity.^ That the famous confession, uttered in the neighbourhood of Caesarea Philippi, really contains in germ * the doctrine of Christ's divinity, might be inferred from the simple fact that Jesus was satisfied with it ; for He certainly claimed to be Son of God in a sense predicable of no mere man, even according to synoptical accounts of His teaching.* But when we consider the peculiar terms in which He expressed Him self respecting Peter's ' For a fuUer exposition of the view we take of this title, which has oooasioned so much discussion, we may refer our readers to The Summation of Christ, note, p. 225 {Cunningham Lectures, sixth series, 2nd ed.). ^ On this topic consult Waoe, Christianity and Morality, the Boyle Zedwes for 1874-75, Lecture V., second course. ^ Of course aU that was implied was not yet present to Peter's mind. * E.g. in Matt. xi. 27, though we cannot go into the discussion here. CHAP. XI.] THE TRUTH CONFESSED FUNDAMENTAL. 163 faith, we are still further confirmed in this conclusion. '' Flesh and blood," said He to the disciple, " hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven." These words evidently imply that the person addressed had said something very extraordinary ; something he could not have learned from the traditional established belief of his generation respecting Mes- siah ; something new even for himself and his fellow-disciples, if not in word, at least in meaning,^ to which he could not have attained by the unaided effort of his own mind. The confession is virtually represented as an inspiration, a revelation, a flash of light from heaven, — the utterance not of the rude fisherman, but of the Divine Spirit speaking, through his mouth, a truth hitherto hidden, and yet but dimly comprehended by him to whom it had been revealed. All this agrees well with the supposition that the confession contains not merely an acknow- ledgment of the Messiahship of Jesus in the ordinary sense, but a proclamation of the true doctrine concerning Messiah's person — viz. that He was a divine being manifest in the flesh. The remaining portion of our Lord's address to Simon shows that He assigned to the doctrine confessed by that disciple the place of fundamental importance in the Christian faith. The object of these remarkable statements^ is not to assert the supremacy of Peter, as Eomanists contend, but to declare the supremely important nature of the truth he has confessed. In spite of all difficulties of interpretation, this remains clear and certain to us. Who or what the " rock " is we deem doubtful ; it may be Peter, or it may be his confession : it is a point on which scholars equally sound in the faith, and equally innocent of all sympathy with Popish dogmas, are divided in opinion, and on which it would ill become us to dogmatize. Of this only we are sure, that not Peter's person, but Peter's faith, is the funda- mental matter in Christ's mind. When He says to that disciple, " Thou art Petros," He means, " Thou art a man of rock, worthy of the name I gave thee by anticipation the first time I met thee, because thou hast at length got thy foot planted on the rock of the eternal truth." He speaks of the church that is to be, for the first time, in connection with Simon's confession, 1 The words, with exception of the epithet ' ' living, " are fonnd in John i, 49. 2 Matt. xvi. 18, 19. 164 PETEE'S confession. [chap. XI. because that church is to consist of men adopting that confession as their own, and acknowledging Hiin to be the Christ, the Son of God.^ He alludes to the keys of the kingdom of heaven in the same connection, because none but those who homologate the doctrine first solemnly enunciated by Simon, shall be admitted within its gates. He promises Peter the power of the keys, not because it is to belong to him alone, or to him more than others, but by way of honourable mention, in recompense for the joy he has given his Lord by the superior energy and decision of his faith. He is grateful to Peter, because he has believed most emphatically that He came out from God;^ and He shows His gratitude by promising first to him individually a power which He afterwards conferred on all His chosen disciples.* Finally, if it be true that Peter is here called the rock on which the church shall be built, this is to be under- stood in the same way as the promise of the keys. Peter is called the foundation of the church only in the same sense as all the apostles are called the foundation by the Apostle Paul,* viz. as the first preachers of the true faith concerning Jesus as the Christ and Son of God ; and if the man who first pro- fessed that faith be honoured by being called individually the rock, that only shows that the faith, and not the man, is after all the true foundation. That which makes Simon a Petros, a rock-like man, fit to build on, is the real Petra on which the Ecclesia is to be built. After these remarks we deem it superfluous to enter minutely into the question to what the term "rock" refers in the sentence, " Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build My church." At the same time, we must say that it is by no means so clear to us that the rock must be Peter, and can be nothing else, as it is the fashion of modern commentators to assert. To the render- ing, " Thou art Petros, a man of rock ; and on thee, as on a rock, I will build My church," it is possible, as already admitted, to assign an intelligible scriptural meaning. But we confess our preference for the old Protestant interpretation, according to which our Lord's words to His disciple should be thus para- 1 This was the usual formula by which converts confessed their faith in the apostolic age. 2 John xvi. 27. ^ Matt, xviii. 18 ; John xx. 23. * Eph. ii. 20. CHAP, XI.] CHRIST'S WOECS PERVERTED. 165 phrased : " Thou, Simon Barjonas, art Petros, a man of rock, worthy of thy name Peter, because thou hast made that bold, good confession ; and on the truth thou hast now confessed, as on a rock, will I build My church ; and so long as it abides on that foundation it will stand firm and unassailable against all the powers of hell." So rendering, we make Jesus say not only what He really thought, but what was most worthy to be said. For divine truth is the sure foundation. Believers, even Peters, may fail, and prove anything but stable ; but truth is eternal, and faileth never. This we say not unmindful of the counter- part truth, that " the truth," unless confessed by living souls, is dead, and no source of stability. Sincere personal conviction, with a life corresponding, is needed to make the faith in the objective sense of any virtue. We cannot pass from these memorable words of Christ with- out adverting, with a certain solemn awe, to the strange fate which has befallen them in the history of the church. This text, in which the church's Lord declares that the powers of darkness shall not prevail against her, has been used by these powers as an instrument of assault, and with only too much success. What a gigantic system of spiritual despotism and blasphemous assumption has been built on these two sentences concerning the rock and the keys ! How nearly, by their aid, has the kingdom of God been turned into a kingdom of Satan ! One is tempted to wish that Jesus, knowing beforehand what was to happen, had so framed His words as to obviate the mischief. But the wish were vain. No forms of expression, however carefully selected, could prevent human ignorance from falling into misconception, or hinder men who had a purpose to serve, from finding in Scripture what suited that purpose. Nor can any Christian, on reflection, think it desirable that the Author of our faith had adopted a studied prudential style of speech, intended not so much to give faithful expression to the actual thoughts of His mind and feelings of His heart, as to avoid giving occasion of stumbling to honest stupidity, or an excuse for perversion to dishonest knavery. The spoken word in that case had been no longer a true reflection of the Word Incarnate. All the poetry and passion and genuine human feeling which form the charm of Christ's sayings would have been lost, and 166 Peter's confession. [chap. xi. nothing would have remained but prosaic platitudes, like those of the scribes and of theological pedants. No ; let us have the precious words of our Master in all their characteristic intensity and vehemence of unqualified assertion; and if prosaic or disingenuous men will manufacture out of them incredible dogmas, let them answer for it. Why should the children be deprived of their bread, and only the dogs be cared for ? One remark more ere we pass from the subject of this chapter. The part we find Peter playing in this incident at Csesarea Philippi prepares us for regarding as historically credible the part assigned to him in the Acts of the Apostles in some momentous scenes, as, e.g., in that brought before us in the tenth chapter. The Tiibingen school of critics tell us that the Acts is a composition full of invented situations adapted to an apologetic design ; and that the plan on which the book proceeds is to make Peter act as like Paul as possible in the first part, and Paul, on the other hand, as much like Peter as possible in the second. The conversion of the Eoman centurion by Peter's agency they regard as a capital instance of Peter being made to pose as Paul, i.e. as a universalist in his views of Chris- tianity. Now, all we have to say on the subject here is this. The conduct ascribed to Peter the apostle in the tenth chapter of the Acts is credible in the light of the narrative we have been studying. In both we find the same man the recipient of a revelation ; in both we find him the first to receive, utter, and act on a great Christian truth. Is it incredible that the man who received one revelation as a disciple should receive another as an apostle ? Is it not psychologically probable that the man who now appears so original and audacious in con- nection with one great truth, will again show the same attri- butes of originality and audacity in connection with some other truth ? For our part, far from feeling sceptical as to the historic truth of the narrative in the Acts, we should have been very much surprised if in the history of the nascent church Peter had been found playing a part altogether devoid of originalities and audacities. He would in that case have been very unlike his former self. CHAPTER Xli. FIRST LESSON ON THE CROSS. Section I. — First Announcement of Christ's Death. Matt. xvi. 21-28 ; Maek viii. 31-38 ; Lttkb ix. 22-27. "VrOT till an advanced period in His public ministry — not, in ■*~^ fact, till it was drawing to a close — did Jesus speak in plain unmistakable terms of His death. The solemn event was foreknown by Him from the first; and He betrayed His consciousness of what was awaiting Him by a variety of occasional allusions. These earlier utterances, however, were all couched in mystic language. They were of the nature of riddles, whose meaning became clear after the event, but which before, none could, or at least did, read. Jesus spake now of a temple, which, if destroyed, He should raise again in three days; ^ at another time of a lifting up of the Son of Man, like unto that of the brazen serpent in the wilderness;^ and on yet other occasions, of a sad separation of the bridegroom from the children of the bridechamber,* of the giving of His flesh for the life of the world,* and of a sign like that of the prophet Jonas, which should be given in His own person to an evil and adulterous generation.^ At length, after the conversation in Csesarea Philippi, Jesus changed His style of speaking on the subject of His sufferings, substituting for dark, hidden allusions, plain, literal, matter-of- fact statements.^ This change was naturally adapted to the altered circumstances in which He was placed. The signs of the times were growing ominous ; storm-clouds were gathering in the air ; all things were beginning to point towards Calvary. 1 John ii. 19. ^ John. iii. 14. ' Matt. ix. 15. * John vi. ^ Matt. xvi. 4. ^ "He spake that saying openly" {■!ra^f>Ti(rl(}), Mark viii. 3'2. 167 168 HEST LESSON ON THl! CEOSS. [CHAP. XU. His work in Galilee and the provinces was nearly done ; it remained for Him to bear witness to the truth in and around the holy city ; and from the present mood of the ecclesiastical authorities and the leaders of religious society as manifested by captious question and unreasonable demand,^ and a constant espionage on His movements, it was not difficult to foresee that it would not require many more offences, or much longer time, to ripen dislike and jealousy into murderous hatred. Such plain speaking, therefore, concerning what was soon to happen, was natural and seasonable. Jesus was now entering the valley of the shadow of death, and in so speaking He was but adapting His talk to the situation. Plain speaking regarding His death was now not only natural on Christ's part, but at once necessary and safe in reference to His disciples. It was necessary, in order that they might be prepared for the approaching event, as far as that was possible in the case of men who, to the last, persisted in hoping that the issue would be different from what their Master anticipated. It was safe ; for now the subject might be spoken of plainly without serious risk to their faith. Before the disciples were established in the doctrine of Christ's person, the doctrine of the cross might have scared them away altogether^ Premature preaching of a Christ to be crucified might have made them unbelievers in the fundamental truth that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ. Therefore, in consideration of their weakness, Jesus maintained a certain reserve respecting His sufferings, till their faith in Him as the Christ should have become sufficiently rooted to stand the strain of the storm soon to be raised by a most unexpected, unwelcome, and incomprehensible announcement. Only after hearing Peter's confession was He satisfied that the strength necessary for enduring the trial had been attained. Wherefore, " from that time forth began Jesus to show unto His disciples how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day." Every clause in this solemn announcement demands our reverent scrutiny. • Matt. XT. 1 sqq., xvi. 1 sqq. Chap, xii.] announcement ANALtsEb. l6d Jesus showed unto His disciples — 1. " That He must go unto Jerusalem." Yes ! there the tragedy must be enacted : that was the fitting scene for the stupendous events that were about to take place. It was dramatically proper that the Son of Man should die in that "holy," unholy city, which had earned a most unenviable notoriety as the murderess of the prophets, the stoner of them whom God sent unto her. " It cannot be " — it were incon- gruous — " that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." ^ It was due also to the dignity of Jesus, and to the design of His death, that He should suffer there. Not in an obscure corner or in an obscure way must He die, but in the most public place, and in a formal, judicial manner. He must be lifted up in view of the whole Jewish nation, so that all might see Him whom they had pierced, and by whose stripes also they might yet be healed. The " Lamb of God " must be slain in the place where all the legal sacrifices were offered. 2. " And suffer many things." Too many to enumerate, too painful to speak of in detail, and better passed over in silence for the present. The bare fact that their beloved Master was to be put to death, without any accompanying indignities, would be sufficiently dreadful to the disciples ; and Jesus mercifully drew a veil over much that was present to His own thoughts. In a subsequent conversation on the same sad theme, when His passion was near at hand. He drew aside the veil a little, and showed them some of the "many things." But even then He was very sparing in His allusions, hinting only by a passing word that He should be mocked, and scourged, and spit upon.^ He took no delight in expatiating on such harrowing scenes. He was willing to bear those indignities, but He eared not to speak of them more than was absolutely necessary, 3. " Of the elders and chief priests and scribes." Not of them alone, for Gentile rulers and the people of Israel were to have a hand in evil-entreating the Son of Man as well as Jewish ecclesiastics. But the parties named were to be the prime movers and most guilty agents in the nefarious transaction. The men who ought to have taught the people to recognise in > Luke xiii. 33. ^ Mark x. 34 ; Luke xviii. 32. 1'70 FIRST Lesson om the ceoss. [chap, xii, Jesus the Lord's Anointed, would hound them on to cry, " Crucify Him, crucify Him," and by importunities and threats urge heathen authorities to perpetrate a crime for which they had no heart. Grey-haired elders sitting in council would solemnly decide that He was worthy of death ; high priests would utter oracles, that one man must die for the people, that the whole nation perish not ; scribes learned in the law would use their legal knowledge to invent plausible grounds for an accusation involving capital punishment. Jesus had suffered many petty annoyances from such persons already ; but the time was approaching when nothing would satisfy them but getting the object of their dislike cast forth out of the world. Alas for Israel, when her wise men, and her holy men, and her learned men, knew of no better use to make of the stone chosen of God, and precious, than thus contemptuously and wantonly to fling it away ! 4. " And be killed." Yes, and for blessed ends preordained of God. But of these Jesus speaks not now. He simply states, in general terms, the fact, in this first lesson on the doctrine of the cross.^ Anything more at this stage had been wasted words. To what purpose speak of the theology of the cross, of God's great design in the death which was to be brought about by man's guilty instrumentality, to disciples unwilling to receive even the matter of fact ? The rude shock of an unwel- come announcement must first be over before anything can be profitably said on these higher themes. Therefore not a syllable here of salvation by the death of the Son of Man ; of Christ crucified /or man's guilt as well as hy man's guilt. The hard bare fact alone is stated, theology being reserved for another season, when the hearers should be in a fitter frame of mind for receiving instruction. 5. Finally, Jesus told His disciples that He should "be raised again the third day." To some so explicit a reference to the resurrection at this early date has appeared improbable.^ ' The cross is not even named here ; but it was in Christ's thoughts, as the following address to the disciples plainly shows. The /csci without the Tnode, of death was enough for the first lesson. ^ The three synoptical evangelists agree in adding this reference to the resur- rection to the first announcement of Christ's death. Their agreement in the CHAP. XII.] THE ANNOUNCEMENT UNWELCOME. iVl To US, on the contrary, it appears eminently seasonable. When was Jesus more likely to tell His disciples that He would rise again shortly after His death, than just on the occasion when He first told them plainly that He should die ? He knew how harsh the one announcement would be to the feelings of His faithful ones, and it was natural that He should add the other, in the hope that when it was understood that His death was to be succeeded, after a brief interval of three days, by resurrection, the news would be much less hard to bear. Accordingly, after uttering the dismal words " be killed," He, with characteristic tenderness, hastened to say, " and be raised again the third day " ; that, having torn, He might heal, and having smitten, He might bind up.^ The grave communications made by Jesus were far from welcome to His disciples. Neither now nor at any subsequent time did they listen to the forebodings of their Lord with resig- nation even, not to speak of cheerful acquiescence or spiritual joy. They never heard Him speak of His death without pain ; and their only comfort, in connection with such announcements as the present, seems to have been the hope that He had taken too gloomy a view of the situation, and that His apprehensions would turn out groundless. They, for their part, could see no grounds for such dark anticipations, and their Messianic ideas did not dispose them to be on the outlook for these. They had not the slightest conception that it behoved the Christ to suffer. On the contrary, a crucified Christ was a scandal and a contra- diction to them, quite as much as it continued to be to the majority of the Jewish people after the Lord had ascended to glory. Hence the more firmly they believed that Jesus was the Christ, the more confounding it was to be told that He must be put to death. " How," they asked themselves, " can these things be ? How can the Son of God be subject to such indignities ? How can our Master be the Christ, as we firmly believe, come whole of this announcement is very striking, yet only what was to he expected, considering its contents. ' Pfleiderer regards the pre-intimations by Jesus of a supernatural restitution of His person as the Messiah of the kingdom of God, as not less historical than any of the words ascribed to Him in the synoptical Gospel. He only thinks the definite fixation of the interval between death and resurrestion idue to later redaction. — Die Religion, ii. 433. 17^ FIRST LESSON d)N THE CEOSS. [cHAP. Xll. to set up the divine kingdom, and to be crowned its King with glory and honour, and yet at the same time be doomed to undergo the ignominious fate of a criminal execution ? " These questions the twelve could not now, nor until after the resurrection, answer ; nor is this wonderful, for if flesh and blood could not reveal the doctrine of Christ's person, still less could it reveal the doctrine of His cross. Not without a very special illumination from heaven could they understand the merest elements of that doctrine, and see, e.g., that nothing was more worthy of the Son of God than to humble Himself and become subject unto death, even the death of the cross ; that the glory of God consists not merely in being the highest, but in this, that being high He stoops in lowly love to bear the burden of His own sinful creatures ; that nothing could more directly and certainly conduce to the establishment of the divine king- dom than the gracious self-humiliation of the King ; that only by ascending the cross could Messiah ascend the throne of His mediatorial glory ; that only so could He subdue human hearts, and become Lord of men's affections as well as of their destinies. Many in the church do not understand these blessed truths even at this late era ; what wonder, then, if they were hid for a season from the eyes of the first disciples ? Let us not reproach them for the veil that was on their faces ; let us rather make sure that the same veil is not on our own. On this occasion, as at Csesarea PhUippi, the twelve found a most eloquent and energetic interpreter of their sentiments in Simon Peter. The action and speech of that disciple at this time were characteristic in the highest degree. He took Jesus, we are told (laid hold of Him, we suppose, by His hand or His garment), and began to rebuke Him, saying, " Be it far from Thee, Lord "; or more literally, " God be merciful to Thee: God forbid! this shall not be unto Thee." What a strange compound of good and evil is this man ! His language is dictated by the most in- tense affection: he cannotbear the thought of anyharm befalling his Lord ; yet how irreverent and disrespectful he is towards Him whom he has just acknowledged to be the Christ, the Son of the living God ! How he overbears, and contradicts, and domineers, and, as it were, tries to bully his Master into putting away from His thoughts those gloomy forebodings of coming evil! CHAP. XII.] petee's fokwaedness eebukbd. 173 Verily he has need of chastisement to teach him his own place, and to scourge out of his character the bad elements of forward- ness, and undue familiarity, and presumptuous self-will. Happily for Peter, he had a Master who, in His faithful love, spared not the rod when it was needful. Jesus judged that it was needed now, and therefore He administered a rebuke not less remarkable for severity than was the encomium at Csesarea Philippi for warm, unqualified approbation, and curiously con- trasting with that encomium in the terms in which it was expressed. He turned round on His offending disciple, and sternly said : " Get thee behind Me, Satan ; thou art an offence unto Me : for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men." The same disciple who on the former occasion had spoken by inspiration of Heaven is here repre- sented as speaking by inspiration of mere flesh and blood — of mere natural affection for his Lord, and of the animal instinct of self-preservation, thinking of self-interest merely, not of duty. He whom Christ had pronounced a man of rock, strong in faith, and fit to be a foundation-stone in the spiritual edifice, is here called an offence, a stumbling - stone lying in his Master's path. Peter, the noble confessor of that fundamental truth, by the faith of which the church would be able to defy the gates of hell, appears here in league with the powers of darkness, the unconscious mouthpiece of Satan the tempter. " Get thee behind Me, Satan ! " What a downcome for him who but yesterday got that promise of the power of the keys ! How suddenly has the novice church dignitary, too probably lifted up with pride or vanity, fallen into the condemnation of the devil ! This memorable rebuke seems mercilessly severe, and yet on consideration we feel it was nothing more than what was called for. Christ's language on this occasion needs no apology such as might be drawn from supposed excitement of feeling, or from a consciousness on the speaker's part that the infirmity of His own sentient nature was whispering the same suggestion as that which came from Peter's lips. Even the hard word Satan, which is the sting of the speech, is in its proper place. It describes exactly the character of the advice given by Simon. That advice was substantially this : " Save thyself at anyrate ; 174 FIRST LESSON ON THE CROSS. [CHAP. XII, sacrifice duty to self-interest, the cause of God to personal convenience." An advice truly Satanic in principle and tendency ! For the whole aim of Satanic policy is to get self- interest recognised as the chief end of man. Satan's tempta- tions aim at nothing worse than this. Satan is called the Prince of this world, because self-interest rules the world ; he is called the accuser of the brethren, because he does not believe that even the sons of God have any higher motive. He is a sceptic, and his scepticism consists in determined, scornful unbelief in the reality of any chief end other than that of personal advantage. "Doth Job, or even Jesus, serve God for nought? Self-sacrifice, suffering for righteousness' sake, fidelity to truth even unto death: it is all romance and youthful sentimentalism, or hypocrisy and hollow cant. There is absolutely no such thing as a surrender of the lower life for the higher ; all men are selfish at heart, and have their price : some may hold out longer than others, but in the last extremity every man will prefer his own things to the things of God. All that a man hath will he give for his life, his moral integrity and his piety not excepted." Such is Satan's creed. The suggestion made by Peter, as the unconscious tool of the spirit of evil, is identical in principle with that made by Satan himself to Jesus in the temptation in the wilderness. The tempter said then in effect : " If Thou be the Son of God, use Thy power for Thine own behoof : Thou art hungry, e.g., make bread for Thyself out of the stones. If Thou be the Son of God, presume on Thy privilege as the favourite of Heaven : cast Thy- self down from this elevation, securely counting on protection from harm, even where other men would be allowed to suffer the consequences of their foolhardiness. What better use canst Thou make of Thy divine powers and privileges than to promote Thine own advantage and glory ? " Peter's feeling at the present time seems to have been much the same : " If Thou be the Son of God, why shouldst Thou suffer an ignominious, violent death ? Thou hast power to save Thyself from such a fate ; surely Thou wilt not hesitate to use it!" The attached disciple, in fact, was an unconscious instrument employed by Satan to subject Jesus to a second temptation, analogous to the earlier one in the desert of Judea. It was the god of this world that was at work in CHAP. XII.] CKOSS-BEAEING THE LAW, OF DISCIPLESHIP. 175 both eases ; who, being accustomed to find men only too ready to prefer safety to righteousness, could not believe that he should find nothing of this spirit in the Son of God, and therefore came again and again seeking an open point in His armour through which he might shoot his fiery darts ; not renouncing hope till his intended victim hung on the cross, apparently conquered by the world, but in reality a conqueror both of the world and of its lord. The severe language uttered by Jesus on this occasion, when regarded as addressed to a dearly beloved disciple, shows in a striking manner His holy abhorrence of everything savouring of self-seeking. "Save Thyself, "counsels Simon: "Get thee behind Me, Satan," replies Simon's Lord. Truly Christ was not one who pleased Himself. Though he were a Son, yet would He learn obedience by the things which He had to suffer. And by this mind He proved Himself to be the Son, and won from His Father the approving voice : " Thou art my beloved Son, in Thee I am pleased," — Heaven's reply to the voice from hell counsellingHimto pursue a course of self -pleasing. Persevering in this mind, Jesus was at length lifted up on the cross, and so became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him. Blessed now and for evermore be His name, who so humbled Himself, and became obedient as far as death \ Section II. — Gross-tearing the Law of Biscipleship. Matt. xvi. 24-28'; Mabk viii. 34-38 ; Luke ix. 23-27. After one hard announcement comes another not less hard. The Lord Jesus has told His disciples that He must one day be put to death ; He now tells them, that as it fares with Him, so it must fare with them also. The second announcement was naturally occasioned by the way in which the first had been received. Peter had said, and all had felt, " This shall not be unto Thee." Jesus replies in effect, " Say you so ? I tell you that not only shall I, your Master, be crucified, — for such will be the manner of My death,^ — but ye too, faithfully following Me, shall most certainly have your crosses to bear. ' If any ' The cross, though not mentioned, was evidently in Christ's thoughts when He spake of His death at this time. Vide last section, note, p. 170. 176 FIKST LESSON ON THE CEOSS. [CHAP. XII. man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.'" The second announcement was not, like the first, made to the twelve only. This we might infer from the terms of the announcement, which are general, even if we had not been informed, as we are by Mark and Luke, that before making it Jesus called the people unto Him, with His disciples, and spake in the hearing of them all.^ The doctrine here taught, therefore, is for all Christians in all ages : not for apostles only, but for the humblest disciples ; not for priests or preachers, but for the laity as well ; not for monks living in cloisters, but for men living and working in the outside world. The King and Head of the church here proclaims a universal law binding on all His subjects, requiring all to bear a cross in fellowship with Himself. We are not told how the second announcement was received by those who heard it, and particularly by the twelve. We c^n believe, however, that to Peter and his brethren it sounded less harsh than the first, and seemed, at least theoretically, more acceptable. Common experience might teach them that crosses, however unpleasant to flesh and blood, were neverthe- less things that might be looked for in the lot of mere men. But what had Christ the Son of God to do with crosses? Ought He not to be exempt from the sufferings and indignities of ordinary mortals ? If not, of what avail was His divine Sonship ? In short, the difficulty for the twelve was probably, not that the servant should be no better than the Master, but that the Master should be no better than the servant. Our perplexity, on the other hand, is apt to be just the reverse of this. Familiar with the doctrine that Jesus died on the cross in our room, we are apt to wonder what occasion there can be for our bearing a cross. If He suffered for us vicariously, what need, we are ready to inquire, for suffering on our part likewise ? We need to be reminded that Christ's sufferings, while in some respects peculiar, are in other respects common to Him with all in whom His Spirit abides ; that while, as redemptive. His death stands alone, as suffering for righteousness' sake it is but the highest instance of a universal ^ Mark viii. 34, irpoaKoKeffi/ievos rbv 6x>^ov ; Luke ix. 23, Iheye Si irpbs irivrau CHAP. XII.] FIRST LESSON ON DOCTRINE OF CROSS. l77 law, according to which all who live a truly godly life must suffer hardship in a false evil world.^ And it is very observ- able that Jesus took a most effectual method of keeping this truth prominently before the mind of His followers in all ages, by proclaiming it with great emphasis on the first occasion on which He plainly announced that He Himself was to die, giving it, in fact, as the first lesson on the doctrine of His death : the first of four to he found in the Gospels? Thereby He in effect declared that only such as were willing to be crucified with Him should be saved by His death; nay, that willingness to bear a cross was indispensable to the right understanding of the doctrine of salvation through Him. It is as if above the door of the school in which the mystery of redemption was to be taught, He had inscribed the legend : Let no man who is unwilling to deny himself, and take up his cross, enter here. In this great law of discipleship the cross signifies not merely the external penalty of death, but all troubles that come on those who earnestly endeavour to live as Jesus lived in this world, and in consequence of that endeavour. Many and various are the afflictions of the righteous, differing in kind and degree, according to times and circumstances, and the callings and stations of individuals. For the righteous One who died not only by the unjust, but for them, the appointed cup was filled with all possible ingredients of shame and pain, mingled to- gether in the highest degree of bitterness. Not a few of His most honoured servants have come very near their Master in the manner and measure of their afflictions for His sake, and have indeed drunk of His cup, and been baptized with His bloody baptism. But for the rank and file of the Christian host the hardships to be endured are ordinarily less severe, the cross to be borne less heavy. For one the cross may be the calumnies of lying lips, " which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous " ; for another, failure to attain the much-worshipped idol success in life, so often ' Plato had a glimpse of this law. " The just," he writes, " will be scourged, racked, bound, will have his eyes put out, and after suffering many ills will be crucified" {Avacxi-vSiKevBiffeTat.). — De Eepuhlica, lib. ii. » Vide Chapters XVII., XVIII., XXII. 178 FIEST LESSON ON THE CROSS. [CHAP. Xll. reached by rmholy means not available for a man who has a conscience ; for a third, mere isolation and solitariness of spirit amid uncongenial, unsympathetic neighbours, not minded to live soberly, righteously, and godly, and not loving those who do so live. The cross, therefore, is not the same for all. But that there is a cross of some shape for all true disciples, is clearly implied in the words : " If any one, will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross." The plain meaning of these words is, that there is no following Jesus on any other terms — a doctrine which, however clearly taught in the Gospel, spurious Christians are unwilling to believe and resolute to deny. They take the edge off their Lord's statement by explaining that it applies only to certain critical times, happily very different from their own ; or that if it has some reference to all times, it is only applicable to such as are called to play a prominent part in public affairs as leaders of opinion, pioneers of progress, prophets denouncing the vices of the age, and uttering unwel- come oracles, — a proverbially dangerous occupation, as the Greek poet testified who said : " Apollo alone should prophesy, for he fears nobody." ^ To maintain that all who would live devoutly in Christ Jesus must suffer somehow, is, they think, to take too gloomy and morose a view of the wickedness of the world, or too high and exacting a view of the Christian life. The righteousness which in ordinary times involves a cross, is in their view folly and fanaticism. It is speaking when one should be silent, meddling in matters with which one has no concern ; in a word, it is being righteous overmuch. Such thoughts as these, expressed or unexpressed, are sure to prevail extensively when religious profession is common. The fact that fidelity involves a cross, as also the fact that Christ was crucified just because He was righteous, are well understood by Christians when they are a suffering minority, as in primitive ages. But these truths are much lost sight of in peaceful, prosperous times. Then you shall find many holding most sound views of the cross Christ bore for them, but sadly ignorant concerning the cross they themselves have to bear in fellowship with Christ. Of ^ ^oi^OV &v6piOT0LS fiSvov Xoriv SeffTTiiiiSetv Ss SidoiKep oiSiva. — EuBlP. Phcenissce, 958, 959. CHAP. Xn.] EEASONS FOE OROSS-B BARING. 179 this cross they are determined to know nothing. What it can mean, or whence it can come, they cannot comprehend ; though, had they the true spirit of self-denial required of disciples by Christ, they might find it for themselves in their daily life, in their business, in their home, nay, in their own heart, and have no need to seek for it in the ends of the earth, or to manufac- ture artificial crosses out of ascetic austerities. To the law of the cross Jesus annexed three reasons designed to make the obeying of it easier, by showing disciples that, in rendering obedience to the stern requirement, they attend to their own true interest. Each reason is introduced by a "For." The first reason is : " For whosoever will save his life shall lose it ; but whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it." In this startling paradox the word "life " is used in a double sense. In the first clause of each member of the sentence it signifies natural life, with all the adjuncts that make it pleasant and enjoyable ; in the second, it means the spiritual life of a renewed soul. The deep, pregnant saying may therefore be thus expanded and paraphrased : Whosoever will save, i.e. make it his first business to save or preserve, his natural life and worldly wellbeing, shall lose the higher life, the life indeed ; and who- soever is willing to lose his natural life for My sake shall find the true eternal life. According to this maxim we must lose something, it is not possible to live without sacrifice of some kind; the only question being what shall be sacrificed — the lower or the higher life, animal happiness or spiritual blessed- ness. If we choose the higher, we must be prepared to deny ourselves and take up our cross, though the actual amount of the loss we are called on to bear may be small ; for godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come.^ If, on the other hand, we choose the lower, and resolve to have it at all hazards, we must inevitably lose the higher. The soul's life, and all the imperishable goods of the soul, — righteousness, godhness, faith, love, patience, meekness,^ — are the price we pay for worldly enjoyment. This price is too great : and that is what Jesus next told His hearers as the second persuasive to cross-bearing. "For what," 1 1 Tim. iv. 8. ' 1 Tim. vi. 11. 180 MRST LESSON ON THE CROSS. [CHAP. XII. He went on to ask, " is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul ? " The two questions set forth the in- comparable value of the soul on both sides of a commercial transaction. The soul, or life, in the true sense of the word,^ is too dear a price to pay even for the whole world, not to say for that small portion of it which falls to the lot of any one in- dividual. He who gains the world at such a cost is a loser by the bargain. On the other hand, the whole world is too small, yea, an utterly inadequate price, to pay for the ransom of the soul once lost. What shall a man give in exchange for the priceless thing he has foolishly bartered away ? " Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God ? shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old ? will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? " ^ No ! man ; not any of these things, nor anything else thou hast to give; not the fruit of thy merchandise, not ten thousands of pounds sterling. Thou canst not buy back thy soul, which thou hast bartered for the world, with all that thou hast of the world. The redemption of the soul is indeed precious ; it cannot be delivered from the bondage of sin by corruptible things, such as silver and gold : the attempt to pur- chase pardon and peace and life that way can only make thy case more hopeless, and add to thy condemnation. The appeal contained in these solemn questions comes home with irresistible force to all who are in their right mind. Such feel that no outward good can be compared in value to having a " saved soul," i.e. being a right-minded Christian man. All, however, are not so minded. Multitudes account their souls of very small value indeed. Judas sold his soul for thirty pieces of silver ; and not a few, who probably deem themselves better than he, would part with theirs for the most paltry worldly advantage. The great ambition of the million is to be happy as animals, not to be blessed as " saved," noble-spirited, sanctified ^ The word rendered " soul" in ver. 26 is the same which is rendered "life" in ver. 25 (i'vxn). The two meanings are blended here. = Micah vi. 6. CHAP. XII.] MODEEN OPINION ON FUTUEE LIFE. 181 men. " Who will show us any good ? " is that which the many say. " Give ns health, wealth, houses, lands, honours, and we care not for righteousness, either imputed or personal, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost These may be good also in their way, and if one could have them along with the other, without trouble or sacrifice, it were perhaps well ; but we cannot consent, for their sakes, to deny ourselves any pleasure or voluntarily endure any hardship." The third argument in favour of cross-bearing is drawn from the second advent. " For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father, with His angels; and then shall He reward every man according to his works." -^ These words sug- gest a contrast between the present and the future state of the speaker, and imply a promise of a corresponding contrast be- tween the present and the future of His faithful followers. Now Jesus is the Son of Man, destined ere many weeks pass to be crucified at Jerusalem. At the end of the days He will appear invested with the manifest glory of Messiah, attended with a mighty host of ministering spirits ; His reward for er.during the cross, despising the shame. Then will He reward every man according to the tenor of his present life. To the cross-bearers He will grant a crown of righteousness ; to the cross-spurners He will assign, as their due, shame and everlasting contempt. Stern doctrine, distasteful to the modern mind on various grounds, specially on these two : because it sets before us alter- natives in the life beyond, and because it seeks to propagate heroic virtue by hope of reward, instead of exhibiting virtue as its own reward. As to the former, the alternative of the promised reward is certainly a great mystery and burden to the spirit ; but it is to be feared that an alternative is involved in any earnest doctrine of moral distinctions or of human freedom and responsibility. As to the other, Christians need not be afraid of degenerating into moral vulgarity in Christ's company. There is no vulgarity or impurity in the virtue which is sus- tained by the hope of eternal life. That hope is not selfishness, but simply self-consistency. It is simply believing in the reality of the kingdom for which you labour and suffer ; involv- ing, of course, the reality of each individual Christian's interest ' Matt. xvi. 17, Ver. 28 presents a difSculty on which we cannot enter here, 182 FIRST LESSON ON THE CROSS. [CHAP. XII. therein, your own not excepted. And such faith is necessary to heroism. For who would fight and suffer for a dream ? What patriot would risk his life for his country's cause who did not hope for the restoration of her independence ? And who but a pedant would say that the purity of his patriotism was sullied, because his hope for the whole nation did not exclude all refer- ence to himself as an individual citizen ? Equally necessary is it that a Christian should believe in the kingdom of glory, and equally natural and proper that he should cherish the hope of a personal share in its honours and felicities. Where such faith and hope are not, little Christian heroism will be found. For, as an ancient Church Father said, " There is no certain work where there is an uncertain reward."'- Men cannot be heroes in doubt or despair. They cannot struggle after perfection and a divine kingdom, sceptical the while whether these things be more than devout imaginations, unrealizable ideals. In such a mood they will take things easy, and make secular happiness their chief concern.^ ^ Nullum opus certum est mercedis inoertae. Tertulliani Be Sesurrectione Oarnis, cap. xxi. See also Clark's Ante-Nicene Library : TertuUian, ii. 251. " Pfleiderer, who occupies the standpoint of a speculative theism which recog- nises no miraculous breach of the world's continuity, and who maintains the doctrine of universal restitution, the ultimate unconditional victory of good over evil, in his work, Die Religion, advocates the views above expressed in reference to the moral quality of virtue stimulated by the Eternal Hope. He bases the doctrine of immortality on this, that a belief in the realizableness of the kingdom of God is a necessary condition of heroism, and he resolves the hope of the indi- vidual Christian, as we have done, into that belief. With reference to the value of this hope to the heroes of the race, he remarks : " Look at the real heroes of good in the world, as distinct from the vain prattlers about virtue : is not in all these the ground-tone a deep elegiac rather than a cheerful one? do not they all speak more of the bitterness than of the happiness oflife?" Having pointed out the cause of this in the frustration of noble aims in the present life, he asks whether a fight begun and carried on viifh the consciousness of its hopelessness has a rational sense. The whole argument is very well worth perusal. Vide Die Beligion, ii. 238, 239. In his more recent work, Seligionsphilosophie, published in 1878, this author expresses himself in a more unfavourable manner respect- ing the life to come, treating the fact as doubtful, and faith in it as not indis- pensable. CHAPTEE XIII. THE TRANSFIGURATION. Matt. xvii. 1-13 ; Mabk iz. 2-1-3 ; Lttkb ix. 28-36. THE transfiguration is one of those passages in the Saviour's earthly history which an expositor would rather pass over in reverent silence. For such silence the same apology might be pled which is so kindly made in the Gospel narrative for Peter's foolish speech concerning the three tabernacles : " He wist not what to say." Who does know what to say any more than he ? Who is able fully to speak of that wondrous night- scene among the mountains,^ during which heaven was for a few brief moments let down to earth, and the mortal body of Jesus being transfigured shone with celestial brightness, and the spirits of just men made perfect appeared and held converse with Him respecting His approaching passion, and a voice came forth from the excellent glory, pronouncing Him to be God's well-beloved Son ? It is too high for us, this august spectacle, we cannot attain unto it ; its grandeur oppresses and stupefies ; its mystery surpasses our comprehension ; its glory is ineffable. Therefore, avoiding all speculation, curious questioning, theo- logical disquisition, and ambitious word-picturing in connection with the remarkable occurrence here recorded, we confine our- selves in this chapter to the humble task of explaining briefly its significance for Jesus Himself, and its lesson for His disciples. The " transfiguration," to be understood, must be viewed in connection with the announcement made by Jesus shortly before it happened, concerning His death. This is evident from the simple fact, that the three evangelists who relate the event so 'Of Hermon ? The traditional scene of tlie transfiguration was Mount Tabor. 183 184 THE TRANSFIGURATION. [OHAP. XIII. carefully note the time of its occurrence with reference to that announcement, and the conversation which accompanied it. All tell how, within six or eight days thereafter,^ Jesus took three of His disciples, Peter, James, and John, and brought them into an high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them. The Gospel historians are not wont to be so careful in their indications of time, and their minute accuracy here signifies in effect : " While the foregoing communications and discourses concerning the cross were fresh in the thoughts of all the parties, the wondrous events we are now to relate took place." The relative date, in fact, is a finger-post pointing back to the conversation on the passion, and saying : " If you desire to understand what foUows, remember what went before." This inference from the note of time given by all the evan- gelists is fully borne out by a statement made by Luke alone, respecting the subject of the conversation on the holy mount between Jesus and His celestial visitants. " And," we read, "behold, there talked with Him two men, which were Moses and Elias ; who appeared in glory, and spake of His decease (or exodus) which He should accomplish at Jerusalem." ^ That exit, so different from their own in its circumstances and conse- quences, was the theme of their talk. They had appeared to Jesus to converse with Him thereon ; and when they ceased speaking concerning it, they took their departure for the abodes of the blessed. How long the conference lasted we know not, but the subject was sufficiently suggestive of interesting topics of conversation. There was, e.g., the surprising contrast between the death of Moses, immediate and painless, while his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated, and the painful and ignominious death to be endured by Jesus. Then there was the not less remarkable contrast between the manner of Elijah's departure from the earth — translated to heaven without tasting death at all, making a triumphant exit out of the world in a chariot of fire, and the way by which Jesus should enter into glory — the ma dolorosa of the cross. Whence this privilege of exemption from death, or from its bitterness, granted to the ^ HeB' iififpas S^, Matthew and Mark ; iia-el Tj/M^pai, i/cTi!), Luke. The two expressions may easily mean the same period of time. * Luke ix. 31, Sie-yoc tV l^oSov airoO, CHAP. XIII.] MEANING OF TEANSFIGTJEATION FOR JESUS. 185 representatives of the law and the prophets, and wherefore denied to Him who was the end both of law and of prophecy ? On these points, and others of kindred nature, the two celestial messengers, enlightened by the clear light of heaven, may have held intelligent and sympathetic converse with the Son of Man, to the refreshment of His weary, saddened, solitary soul. The same evangelist who specifies the subject of conversation on the holy mount further records that, previous to His trans- figuration, Jesus had been engaged in prayer. We may there- fore see, in the honour and glory conferred on Him there, the Father's answer to His Son's supplications ; and from the nature of the answer we may infer the subject of prayer. It was the same as afterwards in the garden of Gethsemane. The cup of death was present to the mind of Jesus now, as then; the cross was visible to His spiritual eye ; and He prayed for nerve to drink, for courage to endure. The attendance of the three confidential disciples, Peter, James, and John, significantly hints at the similarity of the two occasions. The Master took these disciples with Him into the mount, as He afterwards took them into the garden, that He might not be altogether destitute of company and kindly sympathy as He walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and felt the horror and the loneliness of the situation. It is now clear how we must view the transfiguration scene in relation to Jesus. It was an aid to faith and patience, specially vouchsafed to the meek and lowly Son of Man in answer to His prayers, to cheer Him on His sorrowful path towards Jerusalem and Calvary. Three distinct aids to His faith were supplied in the experiences of that wondrous night. The first was a foretaste of the glory with which He should be rewarded after His passion, for His voluntary humiliation and obedience unto death. For the moment He was, as it were, rapt up into heaven, where He had been before He came into the world ; for His face shone like the sun, and His raiment was white as the pure untrodden snow on the high alpine summits of Hermon. " Be of good cheer," said that sudden flood of celestial light: "the suffering will soon be past, and Thou shalt enter into Thine eternal joy ! " A second source of comfort to Jesus in the experiences on 186 THE TRANSFIGURATION. [OHAP. XIII. the mount, was the assurance that the mystery of the cross was understood and appreciated by saints in heaven, if not by the darkened minds of sinful men on earth. He greatly needed such comfort, for among the men then living, not excepting His chosen disciples, there was not one to whom He could speak on that theme with any hope of eliciting an intelligent and sympathetic response. Only a few days ago. He had ascertained by painful experience the utter incapacity of the twelve, even of the most quick-witted and warm-hearted among them, to comprehend the mystery of His passion, or even to believe in it as a certain fact. Verily the Son of Man was most lonely as He passed through the dark valley ! the very presence of stupid, unsympathetic companions serving only to enhance the sense of solitariness. When He wanted company that could understand His passion thoughts, He was obliged to hold converse with spirits of just men made perfect ; for, as far as mortal men were concerned, He had to be content to finish His great work without the comfort of being under- stood until it was accomplished. The talk of the great lawgiver and of the great prophet of Israel on the subject of His death was doubtless a real solace to the spirit of Jesus. We know how He comforted Himself at other times with the thought of being understood in heaven if not on earth. When heartless Pharisees called in question His conduct in receiving sinners, He sought at once His defence and His consolation in the blessed fact that there was joy in heaven at least, whatever there might be among them, over one peni- tent sinner, more than over ninety and nine just persons that needed no repentance. When He thought how "little ones," the weak and helpless, were despised and trampled under foot in this proud inhuman world. He reflected with unspeakable satisfaction that in heaven their angels did always behold the face of His father ; yea, that in heaven there were angels who made the care of little ones their special business, and were therefore fully able to appreciate the doctrine of humility and kindness which He strove to inculcate on ambitious and quarrelsome disciples. Surely, then, we may believe that when He looked forward to His own decease — the crowning evidence of His love for sinners — it was a comfort to His heart to think : CHAP. XIII.] THE VOICES FROM HEAVEN. 187 " Up yonder they know that I am to suffer, and comprehend the reason why, and watch with eager interest to see how I move on with unfaltering step, with my face stedfastly set to go to Jerusalem." And would it not be specially comforting to have sensible evidence of this, in an actual visit from two denizens of the upper world, deputed as it were and commissioned to express the general mind of the whole community of glorified saints, who understood that their presence in heaven was due to the merits of that sacrifice which He was about to offer up in His own person on the hill of Calvary ? A third, and the chief solace to the heart of Jesus, was the approving voice of His heavenly Father : " This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." That voice, uttered then, meant : " Go on Thy present way, self-devoted to death, and shrinking not from the cross. I am pleased with Thee, because Thou pleasest not Thyself. Pleased with Thee at all times, I am most emphatically delighted with Thee when, in a signal manner, as lately in the announcement made to Thy disciples, Thou dost show it to be Thy fixed purpose to save others, and not to save Thyself." This voice from the excellent glory was one of three uttered by the divine Father in the hearing of His Son during His life on earth. The first was uttered by the Jordan, after the baptism of Jesus, and was the same as the present, save that it was spoken to Him, not concerning Him, to others. The last was uttered at Jerusalem shortly before the crucifixion, and was of similar import with the two preceding, but different in form. The soul of Jesus being troubled with the near prospect of death, He prayed : " Father, save Me from this hour ; but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name." Then, we read, came there a voice from heaven, saying : " I have both glorified it (by Thy life), and will glorify it again " (more signally by Thy death). All three voices served one end. Elicited at crises in Christ's history, when He manifested in peculiar intensity His devotion to the work for which He had come into the world, and His determination to finish it, however irksome the task might be to flesh and blood, these voices expressed, for His encouragement and strengthening, the com- placency with which His Father regarded His self-humiliation 188 THE TEANSFIGUEATION. [CHAP. XIII. and obedience unto death. At His baptism, He, so to speak, confessed the sins of the whole world ; and by submitting to the rite, expressed His purpose to fulfil all righteousness as the Eedeemer from sin. Therefore the Father then, for the first time, pronounced Him His beloved Son. Shortly before the transfiguration He had energetically repelled the suggestion of an affectionate disciple, that He should save Himself from His anticipated doom, as a temptation of the devil; therefore the Father renewed the declaration, changing the second person into the third, for the sake of those disciples who were present, and specially of Peter, who had listened to the voice of his own heart, rather than to his Master's words. Finally, a few days before His death. He overcame a temptation of the same nature as that to which Peter had subjected Him, springing this time out of the sinless infirmity of His own human nature. Begin- ning His prayer with the expression of a wish to be saved from the dark hour. He ended it with the petition, " Glorify Thy name." Therefore the Father once more repeated the expression of His approval, declaring in effect His satisfaction with the way in which His Son had glorified His name hitherto, and His confidence that He would not fail to crown His career of obedience by a God-glorifying death. Such being the meaning of the vision on the mount for Jesus, we have now to consider what lesson it taught the disciples who were present, and through them their brethren and all Christians. The main point in this connection is the injunction appended to the heavenly voice : " Hear Him." This command refers specially to the doctrine of the cross preached by Jesus to the twelve, and so ill received by them. It was meant to be a solemn, deliberate endorsement of all that He had said then concerning His own sufferings, and concerning the obligation to bear their cross lying on all His followers. Peter, James, and John were, as it were, invited to recall all that had fallen from their Master's lips on the unwelcome topic, and assured that it was wholly true and in accordance with the divine mind. Nay, as these disciples had received the doctrine with murmurs of disapprobation, the voice from heaven addressed to them was a stern word of rebuke, which said ; " Murmur not, but devoutly and obediently hear," CHAP. Xin.j MEANING OF TEANSFIGUEATION FOE DISCIPLES. 189 This rebuke was all the more needful, that the disciples had just shown that they were still of the same mind as they had been six days ago. Peter at least was as yet in no cross-bearing humour. When, on wakening up to clear consciousness from the drowsy fit which had fallen on him, that disciple observed the two strangers in the act of departing, he exclaimed: " Master, it is good for us to be here, and let us make three tabernacles ; one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias." He was minded, we perceive, to enjoy the felicities of heaven without any preliminary process of cross-bearing. He thought to himself : " How much better to abide up here with the saints than down below amidst unbelieving captious Pharisees and miserable human beings, enduring the contradiction of sinners, and battling with the manifold ills wherewith the earth is cursed ! Stay here, my Master, and you may bid good-bye to all those dark forebodings of coming sufferings, and will be beyond the reach of malevolent priests, elders, and scribes. Stay here, on this sun-lit, heaven-kissing hill ; go no more down into the depressing, sombre valley of humiliation. Farewell, earth and the cross : welcome, heaven and the crown ! " We do not forget, while thus paraphrasing Peter's foolish speech, that when he uttered it he was dazed with sleep and the splendours of the midnight scene. Yet, when due allow- ance has been made for this, it remains true that the idle suggestion was an index of the disciple's present mind. Peter was drunken, though not with wine ; but what men say, even when drunken, is characteristic. There was a sober meaning in his senseless speech about the tabernacle. He really meant that the celestial visitants should remain, and not go away, as they were in the act of doing when he spoke.^ This appears from the conversation which took place between Jesus and the three disciples while descending the mountain.^ Peter and his two companions asked their Master : " Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come ? " The question referred, we think, not to the injunction laid on the disciples by Jesus just before, " Tell the vision to no man until the Son of Man be risen again from the dead," but rather to the fugitive, fleeting character of the whole scene on the mountain. The three brethren were not ' Luke ix. 33, iv tQ Siaxi^pl-'Ceaeai. ^ Matt. xvii. 9-13 ; Mark ix. 9-13. 190 THE TEANSFIGUKATION. [CHAP. XIll. only disappointed, but perplexed, that the two celestials had been so like angels in the shortness of their stay and the suddenness of their departure. They had accepted the current notion about the advent of Elias before, and in order to, the restoration of the kingdom ; and they fondly hoped that this was he come at last in company with Moses, heralding the approaching glory as the advent of swallows from tropical climes is a sign that summer is nigh, and that winter with its storms and rigours is over and gone. In truth, while their Master was preaching the cross they had been dreaming of crowns. We shall find them continuing so to dream till the very end. " Hear ye Him : " — this voice was not meant for the three disciples alone, or even for the twelve, but for all professed followers of Christ as well as for them. It says to every Christian : " Hear Jesus, and strive to understand Him while He speaks of the mystery of His sufferings and the glory that should follow — those themes which even angels desire to look into. Hear Him when He proclaims cross-bearing as a duty incumbent on all disciples, and listen not to self-indulgent suggestions of flesh and blood, or the temptations of Satan counselling thee to make self-interest or self-preservation thy chief end. Hear him, yet again, and weary not of the world, nor seek to lay down thy burden before the time. Dream not of tabernacles where ttou mayest dwell secure, like a hermit in the wild, having no share in all that is done beneath the circuit of the sun. Do thy part manfully, and in due season thou shalt have, not a tent, but a temple to dwell in : an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." It is true, indeed, that we who are in this tabernacle of the body, in this world of sorrow, cannot but groan now and then, being burdened. This is our infirmity, and in itself it is not sinful ; neither is it wrong to heave an occasional sigh, and utter a passing wish that the time of cross-bearing were over. Even the holy Jesus felt at times this weariness of life, ikn expres- sion of something like impatience escaped His lips at this very season. When He came down from the mount and learned what was going on at its base. He exclaimed, with reference at once to the unbelief of the scribes who were present, to the weak faith of the disciples, and to the miseries of mankind suffering the CHAP. XIII.] WEARINESS OF THE WOELD. 191 consequences of the curse : " faithless and perverse- generation, how long shall I be with you ? how long shall I suffer you ? " Even the loving Eedeemer of man felt tempted to be weary in well-doing — weary of encountering the contradiction of sinners and of bearing with the spiritual weakness of disciples. Such weariness, therefore, as a momentary feeling, is not necessarily sinful : it may rather be a part of our cross. But it must not be indulged in or yielded to. Jesus did not give Himself up to the feeling. Though He complained of the generation amidst which He lived. He did not cease from His labours of love for its bene- fit. Having relieved His heart by this utterance of a reproachful exclamation. He gave orders that the poor lunatic should be brought to Him that he might be healed. Then, when He had wrought this new miracle of mercy, He patiently explained to His own disciples the cause of their impotence to cope success- fully with the maladies of men, and taught them how they might attain the power of casting out all sorts of devils, even those whose hold of their victims was most obstinate, viz. by faith and prayer.^ So He continued labouring in helping the miser- able and instructing the ignorant, till the hour came when He could truly say, " It is finished." 1 Matt. xvii. 19-21 ; Mark ix. 28, 29. Ver. 21 in Matthew is not genuine, being borrowed by copyists from Mark. In Mark ix. 29 the true text is, "This kind can come forthby nothing but by prayer." Theaddition, Kal vrja-Telf, "and fasting," is a gloss due to the ascetic spirit which early crept into the church. CHAPTER XIV. TRAINING IN TEMPEE; OK, DISCOURSE ON HUMIUTY. Section I. — As this little Child ! Matt, xviii. 1-14 ; Makk ix. 33-37, 42-50 ; Luke ix. 46-48. FEOM the Mount of Transfiguration Jesus and the twelve returned through Galilee to Capernaum. On this home- ward journey the Master and His disciples were in very different moods of mind. He sadly mused on His cross ; they vainly dreamed of places of distinction in the approaching kingdom. The diversity of spirit revealed itself in a corresponding diversity of conduct. Jesus for the second time began to speak on the way of His coming sufferings, telling His followers how the Son of Man should be betrayed into the hands of men, and how they should kill Him, and how the third day He should be raised again.i The twelve, on the other hand, began as they journeyed to dispute among themselves who should be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.^ Strange, humiliating con- trast exhibited again and again in the evangelic history ; jealous, angry altercations respecting rank and precedence, on the part of the disciples, following new communications respecting His passion on the part of their Lord, as comic follow tragic scenes in a dramatic representation. This unseemly and unseasonable dispute shows clearly what need there was for that injunction appended to the voice from heaven, " Hear Him"; and how far the disciples were as yet from complying therewith. They heard Jesus only when He spake things agreeable. They listened with pleasure when He assured 1 Matt. xvii. 22, 23 ; Mark ix. 30-32 ; Luke ix. 44, 45. 2 Mark ix. 33. 192 CHAP. XIV.] DISCIPLINE OF TEMPER AND WILL. 193 them that ere long they should see the Son of Man come in His kingdom ; they were deaf to all He said concerning the suffering which must precede the glory. They forgot the cross, after a momentary fit of sorrow when their Lord referred to it, and be- took themselves to dreaming of the crown ; as a child forgets the death of a parent, and returns to its play. " How great," thought they, " shall we all be when the kingdom comes ! " Then by an easy transition they passed from idle dreams of the common glory to idle disputes as to who should have the largest share therein; for vanity and jealousy lie very near each other. " Shall we all be equally distinguished in the kingdom, or shall one be higher than another ? Does the favour shown to Peter, James, and John in selecting them to be eye-witnesses of the prefigure- ment of the coming glory, imply a corresponding precedence in the kingdom itself ? " ^ The three disciples probably hoped it did ; the other disciples hoped not, and so the dispute began. It was nothing that they should all be great together ; the question of questions was, who should be the greatest — a question hard to settle when vanity and presumption contend on one side, and jealousy and envy on the other. Arrived at Capernaum, Jesus took an early opportunity of adverting to the dispute in which His disciples had been engaged, and made it the occasion of delivering a memorable discourse on humility and kindred topics designed to serve the purpose of disciplining their temper and will. The task to which He now addressed Himself was at once the most formidable and the most needful He had as yet undertaken in connection with the training of the twelve. Most formidable, for nothing is harder than to train the human will into loyal subjection to universal principles, to bring men to recognise the claims of the law of love in their mutual relations, to expel pride, ambition, vainglory, and jealousy and envy from the hearts even of the good. Men may have made great progress in the art of prayer, in religious liberty, in Christian activity, may have shown themselves faithful in times of temptation, and apt scholars in ' The three disoiplea were forbidden to tell any man what they had seen on the holy mount. The prohibition was probably not meant to refer to their brethren. Even if it did, they must have found it very hard to keep silent about such a wondrous scene. 13 194 TRAINING IN TEMPER: AS THIS CHILD! [CHAP. XIV. Christian doctrine, and yet prove signally defective in temper : self-willed, self-seeking, having an eye to their own glory, even when seeking to glorify God. Most needful, for what good could these disciples do as ministers of the kingdom so long as their main concern was about their own place therein ? Men full of ambitious passions and jealous of each other could only quarrel among themselves, bring the cause they sought to promote into contempt, and breed all around them confusion and every evil work. No wonder then that Jesus from this time forth devoted Himself with peculiar earnestness to the work of casting out from His disciples the devil of self-will, and imparting to them as a salt His own spirit of meekness, humility, and charity. He knew how much depended on His success in this effort to salt the future apostles, to use His own strong figure,^ and the whole tone and substance of the discourse before us reveals the depth of His anxiety. Specially significant in this respect is the opening part, in which He makes use of a child present in the chamber as the vehicle of instruction ; so, out of the mouth of a babe and suckling, perfecting the praise of a lowly mind. Sitting in the midst of ambitious disciples, with the little one in His arms for a text. He who is the greatest in the kingdom proceeds to set forth truths mortifying to the spirit of pride, but sweeter than honey to the taste of all renewed souls. The first lesson taught is this : To be great in the kingdom, yea, to gain admission into it at all, it is necessary to become like a little child. " Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever, therefore, shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." The feature of child-nature which forms the special point of comparison is its unpretentiousness. Early childhood knows nothing of those distinctions of rank which are the ofi'spring of human pride, and the prizes coveted by human ambition. A king's child will play without scruple with a beggar's, thereby unconsciously asserting the insignificance of the things in which men differ, ' Mark ix. 49. The words " and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt," are a gloss from Lev. ii. 13, introduced to explain the saying. For remarks on this passage see note at close of Section III. of the present chapter. CHAP. XIV.] JESUS THE HUMBLEST. 195 compared with the things that are common to all. What children are unconsciously, that Jesus requires His disciples to be voluntarily and deliberately. They are not to be pretentious and ambitious, like the grown children of the world, but meek and lowly of heart ; disregarding rank and distinctions, thinking not of their place in the kingdom, but giving themselves up in simplicity of spirit to the service of the King. In this sense, the greatest one in the kingdom, the King Himself, was the humblest of men. Of humility in the form of self-depreciation or self-humiliation on account of sin Jesus could know nothing, for there was no defect or fault in His character. But of the humility which consists in self-forgetfulness He was the perfect pattern. We cannot say that He thought little of Himself, but we may say that He thought not of Himself at all : He thought only of the Father's glory and of man's good. Considerations of personal aggrandizement had no place among His motives. He shrank with holy abhorrence from all who were influenced by such considerations, no character appearing so utterly detestable in His eye as that of the Pharisee, whose religion was a theatrical exhibition, always presupposing the presence of spectators, and who loved the uppermost rooms at feasts and the chief seats in the synagogues, and to be called of men Eabbi, Eabbi. For Himself He neither desired nor received honour from men. He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister : He, the greatest, humbled Himself to be the least — to be a child born in a stable and laid in a manger ; to be a man of sorrow, lightly esteemed by the world ; yea, to be nailed to a cross. By such wondrous self-humiliation He showed His divine greatness. The higher we rise in the kingdom the more we shall be like Jesus in this humbling of Himself. Childlikeness such as He exhibited is an invariable characteristic of spiritual advance- ment, even as its absence is the mark of moral littleness. The little man, even when well-intentioned, is ever consequential and scheming : ever thinking of himself, his honour, dignity, reputation, even when professedly doing good. He always studies to glorify God in a way that shall at the same time glorify himself. Frequently above the love of gain, he is never above the feeling of self-importance. The great ones in the 196 TEAINING IN TEMPER: AS THIS CHILD! [CHAP. XIV. kingdom, on the other hand, throw themselves with such unreservedness into the vfork to which they are called, that they have neither time nor inclination to inquire what place they shall obtain in this world or the next. Leaving con- sequences to the great Governor and Lord, and forgetful of self-interest, they give their whole soul to their appointed task ; content to fill a little space or a large one, as God shall appoint, if only He be glorified. This is the true road to a high place in the eternal kingdom. For be it observed, Jesus did not summarily dismiss the question, Who is greatest in the kingdom ? by negativing the existence of distinctions therein. He said not on this occasion, He said not on any other, " It is needless to ask who is the greatest in the kingdom : there is no such thing as a distinction of greater and less there." On the contrary, it is implied here, and it is asserted elsewhere, that there is such a thing. According to the doctrine of Christ, the supernal commonwealth has no affinity with jealous radicalism, which demands that all shall be equal. There are grades of distinction there as well as in the kingdoms of this world. The difference between the divine kingdom and all others lies in the principle on which promotion proceeds. Here, the proud and the ambitious gain the post of honour ; there, honours are conferred on the humble and the self -forgetful. He that on earth was willing to be the least in lowly love, will be the great one in the kingdom of heaven. The next lesson Jesus taught His disciples was the duty of receiving little ones ; that is, not merely children in the literal sense,but all that a child represents — the weak, the insignificant, the helpless. The child which He held in His arms having served as a type of the humble in spirit, next became a type of the humble in station, influence, and importance; and having been presented to the disciples in the former capacity as an object of imitation, was commended to them in the latter as an object of kind treatment. They were to receive the little ones graciously and lovingly, careful not to offend them by harsh, heartless, contemptuous conduct. All such kindness He, Jesus, would receive as done to Himself. This transition of thought from heivig like a child to receiving all that of which childhood in its weakness is the emblem, was CHAP. XIV.] WOE BECAUSE OF OFFENCES, 197 perfectly natural ; for there is a close connection between the selfish struggle to be great and an offensive mode of acting towards the little. Harshness and contemptuousness are vices inseparable from an ambitious spirit. An ambitious man is not, indeed, necessarily cruel in his disposition, and capable of cherishing heartless designs in cold blood. At times, when the demon that possesses him is quiescent, the idea of hurting a child, or anything that a child represents, may appear to him revolting ; and he might resent the imputation of any such design, or even a hint at the possibility of his harl)ouring it, as a wanton insult. " Is thy servant a dog ? " asked Hazacl indignantly at Elisha, when the prophet described to him his own future self, setting the strongholds of Israel on fire, slaying their young men with the sword, dashing their children to the earth, and ripping up their women with child. At the moment his horror of these crimes was quite sincere, and yet he was guilty of them all. The prophet rightly divined his character, and read his future career of splendid wickedness in the light of it. He saw that he was ambitious, and all the rest followed as a matter of course. The king of Syria, his master, about whose recovery he affected solicitude, he should first put to death ; and once on the throne, the same ambition that made him a murderer would goad him on to schemes of conquest, in the prosecution of which he should perpetrate all the barbarous cruelties in which Oriental tyrants seemed to take fiendish delight. The crimes of ambition, and the lamentations with which it has filled the earth, are a moral commonplace. Full well aware of the fact, Jesus exclaimed, as the havoc already wrought and yet to be wrought by the lust for place and power rose in vision before His eye : " Woe to the world because of offences ! " Woe indeed, but not merely to the wrong-sufferer ; the greater woe is reserved for the wrong-doer. So Jesus taught His disciples, when He added : " But woe to that man by whom the offence Cometh ! " Nor did He leave His hearers in the dark as to the nature of the offender's doom. " Whoso," He declared, in language which came forth from His lips like a flame of right- eous indignation at thought of the wrongs inflicted on the weak and helpless, — " Whoso shall offend one of these little ones 198 TEAINING IN TEMPER: AS THIS CHILD! [CHAP. XIV. which believe in Me, it were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." " It were better for him " — or, it suits him, it is what he deserves ; and it is implied, though not expressed, that it is what he gets when divine vengeance at length over- takes him. The mill-stone is no idle figure of speech, but an appropriate emblem of the ultimate doom of the proud. He who will mount to the highest place, regardless of the injuries he may iniiict on little ones, shall be cast down, not to earth merely, but to the very lowest depths of the ocean, to the very abyss of hell, with a heavy weight of curses suspended on his neck to sink him down, and keep him down, so that he shall rise no more.'^ " They sank as lead in the mighty waters ! " Such being the awful doom of selfish ambition, it were wise in the high-minded to fear, and to anticipate God's judgment by judging themselves. This Jesus counselled His disciples to do by repeating a stern saying uttered once before in the Sermon on the Mount, concerning the cutting off offending members of the body.^ At first view that saying appears irrelevant here, because the subject of discourse is offences against others, not offences against one's self. But its relevancy becomes evident when we consider that all offences against a brother are offences against ourselves. That is the very point Christ wishes to impress on His disciples. He would have them understand that self-interest dictates scrupulous care in avoiding offences to the little ones. " Eather than harm one of these," says the great Teacher in effect, " by hand, foot, eye, or tongue, have recourse to self-mutilation; for he that sinneth against even the least in the kingdom, sinneth also against his own soul." One thing more Jesus taught His disciples while He held the child in His arms, viz. that those who injured or despised little ones were entirely out of harmony with the mind of Heaven. " Take heed," said He, " that ye despise not one of these little ones " and then He proceeded to enforce the warning by draw- ' liiXoi 6vik6s, stone of a mill turned by an ass, larger than one belonging to a handmill, selected to make sure that the wicked shall sink to rise no more. How Christ's words fulfil themselves from age to age ! Think of the "Bulgarian atrocities " of 1876, the execrations they awakened in Britain, and the all too probable fate which awaits Turkey in the near future ! " Matt, xviii. 8, 9 ; compare v. 29, 30. CHAP. XIV.] PAEABLE Of THE GOOD SHEPHEED. 199 ing aside the veil, and showing them a momentary glimpse of that very celestial kingdom in which they were all so desirous to have prominence. " Lo, there ! see those angels standing before the throne of God — these be ministering spirits to the little ones ! And lo ! here am I, the Son of God, come all the way from heaven to save them ! And behold how the face of the Father in heaven smiles on the angels and on Me because we take such loving interest in them ! " ^ How eloquent the argu- ment: how powerful the appeal ! " The inhabitants of heaven," such is its drift, " are loving and humble ; ye are selfish and proud. What hope can ye cherish of admission into a kingdom, the spirit of which is so utterly diverse from that by which ye are animated ? Nay, are ye not ashamed of yourselves when ye witness this glaring contrast between the lowliness of the celes- tials and the pride and pretensions of puny men ? Put away, henceforth and for ever, vain, ambitious thoughts, and let the meek and gentle spirit of Heaven get possession of your hearts." In the beautiful picture of the upper world one thing is specially noteworthy, viz. the introduction by Jesus of a reference to His work as the Saviour of the lost, into an argu- ment designed to enforce care for the little ones.^ The reference is not an irrelevance ; it is of the nature of an argument ii for- tiori. If the Son of Man cared for the lost, the low, the morally degraded, how much more will He care for those who are merely little ! It is a far greater effort of love to seek the sal- vation of the wicked than to interest one's self in the weak ; and He who did the one will certainly not fail to do the other. In 1 Matt, xviii. 10-14. ' Matt, xviii. 11 is not found in the best critical authorities, and is regarded by scholars as interpolated from Luke xix. 10 ; and the parable of the good shepherd is also regarded by many as foreign to the connection of thought. As to the former point, we agree with Alford in thinking that ver. 11 cannot be interpolated from Luke, "1st, from the absence of any suiEcient reason (apparent on the surface) for insertion; 2nd, from the nearly unanimous omission of Luke's fi7T^