BT 590 . T 5 G7 1914 Grif f ith- Jones , E. 1860- 1942 . The master and his method Christian study manuals Edited by the Rev. R. E. WELSH, M. A, E. GRIFF I T //-JONES’S THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON MCMXIV BY THE SAME AUTHOR. TENTH EDITION. Crown 8vo, 496 Pages, with Index. Cloth, 2s. net. THE ASCENT THROUGH CHRIST: A Study of the Doctrine of Redemption in the Light of the Theory of Evolution, “ A work of singular interest and importance, which, we trust, will find many readers. ... It has become sufficiently plain that evolution, in place of destroying the religious idea, is investing that fundamental idea of the human mind with new sanctions and for deeper powers. . . . A remarkable book.” — The Spectator. “ One of the most remarkable of the many books written to translate old ideas into the language of modern science. The present edition gives it in a single handy volume.” — The Scotsman. London: HODDER & STOUGHTON. THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD BY E. GRIFFITH-JONES, B.A. Author of “ The Ascent through Christ ” and “ Types of Christian Life 11 THIRD EDITION HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON MCMXIV THIS LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO MY BIBLE-CLASS IN MEMORY OF THE DELIGHTFUL HOURS SPENT TOGETHER IN THE STUDY OF THE MASTER’S METHOD AND IN THE HOPE THAT OTHERS ELSEWHERE MAY BE LED BY IT TO TRAVEL THROUGH THE BY-PATHS OF THE GOSPEL NARRATIVE ON THE SAME HAPPY QUEST, Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/masterhismethodOOgrif PREFACE. The perennial and inexhaustible interest of the teaching of Christ is evidenced by the number of books that continue to be written on the subject. It is a matter of surprise that so few writers have dealt with His Method. With the exception of Latham’s Pastor Pastorum, and Bruce’s Training of the Twelve, which treat of that Method with particu¬ lar reference to the Apostles, and of Blaikie’s Our Lord's Public Ministry and Pastoral Methods, written specially for the guidance of students for the Ministry, few recent English works have given the subject more than passing treatment. For¬ tunately the Gospels present us with an abundance of material for our study ; and many works on the Teaching are full of illuminating suggestions and helpful hints. In this little book, written for the guidance of students of the English New Testament, and more especially of leaders and members of Bible-classes, an attempt is made to give an outline of the subject in a popular rather than a scholarly manner. The writer has made a free use of such materials as have come in his way ; and as the plan and limitations of the work have made it undesirable to cumber its pages with a large number of references and footnotes, he is obliged to content himself with a general acknowledgment of his indebtedness. The viii PREFACE limits of the work have necessitated a strict com¬ pression of material; frequently a whole topic is summarised in a few sentences, and many a para¬ graph might well have been expanded into a chapter. Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy in the scriptural references, which have designedly been made as copious as possible ; and, since quotation was out of the question, the reader is strongly urged to study the little book with his open Testament beside him. In this way alone can the bearing of many of the allusions be realised and the great charm of the subject adequately felt. Preachers and teachers will find a rich reward in entering thus seriously for themselves into the study of the Method of the Master, who “spake as never man spake,’' and who adapted His message to His audience with a tact so unfailing, and a wisdom so wonderful, that its impressiveness is traceable almost as much to its perfect form as to its Divine and saving power. Thb Parsonage, Balham, S.W. E. GRIFFITH-JONES. Introduction . CONTENTS PAGE xi-xv PART I.— THE ENVIRONMENT. CHAPTER I. The Background . 3 CHAPTER II. The Foreground . 12 CHAPTER III. The Teacher and His Equipment .... 26 PART II.— THE METHOD. CHAPTER I. The Teacher's Aim . . . 37 CHAPTER II. The Oral Method . .47 CHAPTER III. The Picture-Gospel . 60 CHAPTER IV. On Teaching by Parables , 75 X CONTENTS PART III.— THE APPLICATION. CHAPTER I. Stages in the Teaching . . , . CHAPTER II. The Mission to the Classes .... CHAPTER III. The Mission to Individuals , , CHAPTER IV. The Teacher and the Kingdom , 4 page 91 , 101 . 118 . 130 CONCLUSION 186 INTRODUCTION 1. A Study of Method. — This little work deals with our Lord as the Great Teacher. We shall con¬ cern ourselves rather with the Method than with the substance of His Teaching. Our aim will be to present as bright and distinct a picture as we can of Jesus as He lived and moved among men, preaching, exhorting, conversing, warning, rebuking, encouraging those around Him, as they listened to His words, and toiled slowly and painfully after Him in the Way of Truth along which He moved with such consum¬ mate ease and grace. It is thus with the Teacher, rather than with the Teaching, that we shall concern ourselves : in what line of succession He came ; the classes of people with whom He associated; what attitude He took towards the revelations of the past, and towards the religious ideas, and parties, and institutions of His day ; how He dealt with in- INTRODUCTION • © Xll dividuals, with multitudes, with those who were His open or secret enemies, with those who were friendly, with those who were His chosen followers, with those who were without, or on the borders of, or within, His kingdom of grace. We shall consider the forms into which He threw His central and ruling ideas ; what were the means which He took to safeguard His teaching from corruption on the one hand, and from oblivion on the other. It will be interesting to inquire why He founded no school of thought, con¬ structed no system of philosophy, wrote no word of His revelation. And (still more interesting and important) we will try to show how the soil in which He sowed the seed of His truth reacted upon it, de¬ termining the form of the teaching, and yet leaving its vital essence so free that wherever it is sown we find it quickening into the same rich harvest, under all varieties of social and spiritual environment — and this throughout all ages, and among every race and tribe of people. 2. Difficulty of the Task. — This programme is full at once of difficulty and of promise. It is one of difficulty. The Gospel narratives are at best fragmentary, and contain only the barest outline of the Teaching and the Method of Jesus. They took shape under conditions that made minute detail out of the question, and rendered it essential that the greatest amount of matter should be packed into the briefest possible compass. The sentences themselves bear witness to a process of compression that results in great inpregnancy of meaning and meagreness of form. Many of the utterances of our INTRODUCTION xm Lord have been altogether dissociated from the occa¬ sions on which they were uttered, and from the persons to whom they were first addressed ; and possibly some have become inadvertently transposed in the various accounts. If a great number of the sayings of Jesus are like “erratic blocks,” which have been carried away from the bed of circum¬ stance to which they originally belonged, by the drift of tradition or accident, and deposited in an alien context, many of them still retain some hint or reminiscence of the occasion which gave them birth. And in a great number of cases, these golden words correspond so closely to the occasion with which they are linked in the narra¬ tive, that they shed a reciprocal light the one on the other. Geologists tell us that it is possible to read so clearly the meaning of the striae on certain fossil remains that they can tell the state of the weather, the direction of the wind, and the very attitude and mental condition of some prehistoric creature as he stooped to quench his thirst on some evening perhaps a million years ago. By methods less mechanical, but no less sure, it is possible to reconstruct many a scene when some of the priceless words of Jesus were spoken, and to note the very look of His eye, and the tone of His voice in uttering them. This, however, is a task requiring no little delicacy of judgment and detachment of mind in order to do it successfully. 3. Yalue of a Study of Method. — But the task, if it is difficult, is also full of reward. In this way many an abstract utterance becomes, as it were, XIV INTRODUCTION clothed in flesh and blood, and appeals to us with fresh and living power. We shall be helped through many a perplexity in attempting to interpret some of the “ hard ” sayings of the Master. Our interest in some forgotten or neglected passage will be revived. And more than all, we shall be brought into some of that vividness of human contact with Jesus Himself which those who lived in that distant age were privileged to enjoy, and which it is so difficult for us to recover. To realise not only what He spoke, but how He said it ; to catch faint sug¬ gestions of a characteristic gesture, a look, a cadence, a smile, a flash of human pity, or scorn, or indigna¬ tion, as waves of sympathetic feeling swept over Him, or the deeper currents of holy wrath were stirred within Him — these are discoveries full of interest and benefit to the student of the life and teaching of Him “who spake as never man spake,” and whose life was a fabric of “ perfect deeds, more strong than all poetic thought ”. Anything that brings home to us in this way the humanness of our Lord’s person, and impresses us with a sense of its reality, its scope, its tenderness, its beauty, its gentle and loving strength, also brings home to us His Divine Sonship, and enables us to realise more deeply the truth of that utterance which came out of the heart of His evangelist, “ And the word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth ” (John i. 14). 4. Presuppositions. — We thus approach our sub¬ ject with a deep sense of its interest and importance, INTRODUCTION xv a heartfelt trust in the substantial historicity of the Gospels in their present form, both as regards their narratives and their summaries of the teaching of our Lord, and a humble desire to come to a better and more sympathetic understanding of the saving message He came to deliver. PAET I. THE ENVIRONMENT. 1 CHAPTER I. THE BACKGROUND. 1. Jesus Came in a Great Religious Succession. — It is clear from the records that Jesus did not come into the world with alien or unrelated teaching. His revelation of Divine Truth was dovetailed into the past teachings of His race and people, and stood in vital relation to the current beliefs and ideas of the age in which He lived. He came “ in the fulness of the times,” gathering up in Himself all the sacred ideas of a lengthy past, separating them from the overgrowths and irrelevancies under which they had been half buried, cleansing the grain from the husk, and sowing it in the prepared soil of His times, with an eye to a world- wide harvest in the future. His contention was that He came not to destroy, but to “ fulfil ” (Matt. v. 17), i.e., to carry the ancient revelation forward to its true issue. There was no essential truth in the Jewish religion which was not preserved with jealous care, and its hidden content unfolded in His teaching. 2. But He was in Yital Touch with His Own Times. — None the less was He in close and living touch with the age in which He lived. He appeared as one of the people, born and bred in the land of His fathers, and was known to have spent the whole of His early life in the quiet seclusion of His native village. So far as can be ascertained, He never made any attempt to acquire a wider culture by travel or the study of the great classics of the heathen world, contenting Himself with the simple and elementary 4 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD education obtainable in a Jewish home and school (John vii. 5). In His youth He probably shared the current beliefs and ideas of His contemporaries. At least we may say that He was entirely conversant with their religious notions and ideals, and knew exactly what to take for granted, what would need special explanation in His own teaching, and how best to appeal to the intelligence and hearts of His hearers. It is thus desirable to know something more defin¬ itely of our Lord’s attitude towards the records of the faith as it came to Him ; something also of the social and religious condition of the people among whom He worked. His method was largely de¬ termined by His relation to these two factors. 3. His Attitude towards the Revelation of the Past. — As regards the former question, we may study, on the one hand, His bearing towards the Old Testament Scriptures, and, on the other, His attitude towards the mass of traditional belief which formed the other hemisphere of the popular religious creed of the day. i. How Jesus Regarded the Old Testament. — Christ’s sentiment towards the Hebrew Scriptures may be tersely described as one of mingled reverence and independence. In His personal life it is clear that the Old Testament held a high and sacred place. He knew it through and through ; not only its words, but its deep underlying principles were interwoven wfith the warp and woof of His own thought. He frequently quoted from it, His quotations being drawn from all portions, showing a complete mastery over its contents and a ready power of applying it to the situation and circumstance of the horn. He found the programme of His own work and mission foreshadowed in it (Matt. xxi. 42 ; xxiv. 37 ; xxvi. 31, 54). He used its sacred commands and promises for defence against His enemies (against the Tempter, ib. iv. 4, 7, 10 ; against THE BACKGROUND 5 the scribes and Pharisees, who came to confound Him with difficult questions, ib. xxii. 29-32, 35- 40, 43-45 ; and against the “last enemy” which He vanquished, “ even death,” Luke xxiii. 46). He used it for His own inspiration and help during the trials and pressure of His life-work — it is from this point of view that we must understand the appear¬ ance of Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Trans¬ figuration, whose spirits fully represented that long galaxy of teachers and worthies of whom we read in the Book, and with whom Jesus communed in spirit perpetually as His forerunners in the great work of salvation. We find that He often quoted Scripture in accounting for the reception of His message, in defending His methods, in explaining the mysteries of His own sufferings and death (cf. Matt. xiii. 13- 15 ; xxi. 16 ; Mark xiv. 49 ; Luke xxiv. 25-27, 44). It is clear from these passages that our Lord had the profoundest reverence for the Old Testament Scriptures ; and that He accepted as valid the spiritual revelation which they contain. More than this may be safely said. He built His own teach¬ ing on the basis of the fundamental spiritual truths revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures, taking for granted such current beliefs concerning the existence and the attributes of God, and of the nature of man, as He felt to be valid and enduring, and carrying on the historic revelation from the point at which it had been left by the inspired thinkers of the past. 5. What Jesus took for granted is therefore an important part of the study of His preaching and of its method. It is not till we consider the question carefully that we discover how large a field this phrase covers. Beyschlag, in the preface to the English Edition of his New Testament Theology, writes : “ How much of what belongs to the re¬ ligion of the New Covenant have we to gather from mere hints, or presuppositions of Jesus and His apostles ! If we were to leave these out of account 6 THE MASTER AtfD HIS METHOD we would, for example, have in the case of Paul no doctrine of God, in the case of Jesus no doctrine of man ; that is, in either we would be deprived of one of the two poles between which religion altogether moves.” 6. Reasons for this. — It is a matter of the utmost importance to both religious teachers and students to realise why Jesus took so much for granted. Three considerations throw light on this problem. First, He always appealed to His hearers as having an ethical and religious nature, which enabled them to come into possession of certain intuitive spiritual truths, such as the being and personality of God, the obligation of the soul to the demands of righteousness, its sinfulness, and its need of cleansing and renewal. These truths He always assumes, and He builds His teaching upon them without question or misgiving. The proof of these truths belongs to philosophy, and His purpose was not to expound a system of thought, but to reveal a method of salvation. Secondly, He spent His public ministry among a people who had re¬ ceived centuries of teaching in the knowledge of God, and whose spiritual sense had been trained by a manifold and severe discipline of events. It would have been a waste of time to go behind this long and strenuous education in the fundamental truths of religion ; and so we find that Jesus only touched on the Old Testament teaching in order to simplify its complications, or to correct its temporary and outworn ceremonialism. And thirdly, He had a definite and very practical purpose in His personal ministry, which made it necessary to limit His own revelation within certain somewhat restricted but essential channels. We shall deal more at large with this last feature in a later chapter. 7. Christ’s Doctrine of God. — Returning to the second point just alluded to, it explains why, evea in Jesus' doctrine of God, there is so much taken THE BACKGROUND 7 for granted. He does not begin with any proof of the Divine existence, nor yet of the goodness and holiness of the Divine nature. Jesus (1) enriched the Old Testament idea of God, filling the some¬ what bare and deistic outline of the current faith concerning Him with higher and warmer contents, emphasising the evangelic conceptions of the pro¬ phets, and de-legalising the prevalent ideas of God’s attributes with which the later Judaism had overlaid their simpler and profounder teaching. This was done through the doctrine of the Fatherhood, which is the central truth of the Master’s teaching, in the exposition of which He expended the treasures of His mind and heart. (2) He further bridged over by His teaching the chasm between the Divine and human natures. Jesus brought God from the far-away eternities, showed how deeply He is in¬ terested in the doings and welfare of all His children, and how His chief concern is to redeem them by the infusion of His holy life and love. The pro¬ clamation of this “good news” formed the chief burden of Christ’s message to the people. He “declared” the Father. 8. His Doctrine of Man. — On the other hand the Gosjpel doctrine of A lan is almost entirely a matter of inference ; we gather it from what Jesus takes for granted rather than from what He says. He assumes the ethical nature of humanity, and appeals to all as possessed of a true sense of right and wrong. The sinfulness of men is ever present with Him ; but His view is full of discrimination. He distinguishes between sins of frailty and ignor¬ ance from such as are the fruit of conscious alienation from God, and sins of obstinate refusal to follow the inner light. He appeals to men as the objects of Divine love rather than of wrath, except as they turn wilfully away from His offered grace. He represents Himself as having come to save the lost, to bring hope to the despairing, and liberty to the 8 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD victims of others’ and their own wrong-doing. His denunciations are reserved for those who reject the Divine light, and refuse His claims as the messenger of the Father’s goodwill and saving power. The root idea of the Jewish doctrine of atonement is also taken for granted, and He proclaims Himself as having come to offer His blood for the remission of sins. 9. Immortality. — Jesus further assumes, if not the essential immortality of the soul, its survival in a state of blessedness or woe after death, accord¬ ing to the character of the life on earth. As there is scarcely any doctrine of a future life in the Old Testament, the question arises as to the source of this current belief of the survival of the soul. The answer is to be found in the teachings of the non- canonical literature, Rabbinical and prophetic, which arose after the close of the Old Testament canon, and which was largely read and accepted in the time of Christ. This literature, while full of fanciful ex¬ travagances, embodied a vivid sense of the after-life which had become a part of the working creed of the later Judaism, involving an elaborate system of rewards and punishments beyond the grave. Jesus accepted the essential features of this belief, and used the current imagery in which it was clothed in pressing home His own vivid teachings concern¬ ing future retribution and blessedness — and this without clearly defining where He drew the line between faith and superstition on this mysterious question. We may legitimately infer from this that He did not consider it of any essential importance to a true life on earth that the precise conditions of the after-life should be revealed. What He empha¬ sises again and again is the moral and spiritual continuity of our life here and hereafter, and the certainty that what we sow we shall reap, in just measure and proportion. 10. The Messianic Idea. — Another class of ideas THE BACKGROUND 0 which Jesus absorbed into His teaching was that which embodied the Messianic hope of Judaism. The expectation of the Messiah, who should establish the Kingdom of God on earth, and revive the glories of the old Jewish state, was probably the most vivid and important element in Judaism. It was a belief held by rich and poor, cultured and ignorant, with equal tenacity and intensity. It took the most extravagant forms, but it had a truly religious con¬ ception at its root. Jesus clearly recognised in it the idea which lent itself most easily and vitally to His own uses, and on the stock of the popular con¬ ception He grafted His teaching of the kingdom, and His own claims to acceptance. From the begin¬ ning He knew Himself to be the true promised Messiah of God — the Messenger wTho would also be King, Priest and Redeemer of the chosen people, and, while He kept this fact in the background during the earlier period of His mission, He never refused the title of Messiah when applied to Him in simple sincerity and homage. Through the Mes¬ sianic conception He found His way as through an open door into the sympathies and affections of His followers; and, if He declined to accept their inter¬ pretation of its import, He waited till He could purify and ennoble that conception till it fitly represented His saving power and mission. 11. The Independence of Jesus. — But if Jesus showed a deep reverence for Scripture, and accepted its historic revelation of the nature of God and man, and certain of its working ideas as to the Divine leadership and purpose, He also took up a position of perfect independence towards such parts of its teaching as He deemed temporary and non-essen¬ tial. The same is true of His attitude towards the current beliefs and religious customs of His day. His method involved a process of selection and re¬ jection. Neither the Mosaic Law nor the tradition of the elders was acknowledged to be of permanent 10 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD or unmixed authority. He came to fulfil the law, but also to supersede it. Many even of its moral precepts were imperfect, as for instance the law of revenge (Matt v. 38-39) and of hatred ( ib . 43 ff.) ; others were in need of lifting to a higher plane of thought and sentiment, such as the precept con¬ cerning adultery (ib. 27 ff.) and concerning divorce (ib. 31, 32), the last mentioned being characterised as a temporary concession to the hardness of men’s hearts, i.e., their inability to rise to the highest conceptions of duty without a period of discipline (cf. ib. xix. 8). Speaking generally of our Lord’s relations to the Old Testament teaching we may say that He accepted its spirit, but rejected such of its laws as failed to embody that spirit in its highest form. He enriched and purified the sanctions of conduct, laid stress on motive instead of outward act, and shifted the centre of conduct from the region of obedience to an enactment, to that of faithfulness to an inner principle. He was indifferent to ques¬ tions of propriety such as the “ washing of cups and pots and brazen vessels,” but laid absolute stress on purity of heart (ib. v. 8) and cleanliness of thought (ib. v. 28 ; xv. 18) ; and He was specially severe on the oppressive ritualism which justified a man for neglecting the organic relationships of life in order to fulfil the religious observances of the day (Mark vii. 10-13), and which laid impossible burdens on the poor and needy (Matt, xxiii. 4, 13 ff.). 12. How this Determined Christ’s Methods. — This spirit of mingled reverence and independence towards the past records and current beliefs and customs of religion at once drew the hearts of the common people and of the spiritually disposed, and alienated those classes whose interests were too deeply involved in the upholding of the established religion to permit of any interference with its forms. The new wine of the Gospel could not be put into the old bottles of Judaism, the new piece of cloth THE BACKGROUND 11 could not be stitched on the decayed garments of the ancient religion. Therefore our Lord turned away from the official parties, preached to the multi¬ tudes at large, and gathered round Him such choice and teachable spirits as were open to His fresh and living ideas, and susceptible of the higher discipline of the Kingdom of God. He was in living touch with a deeper source of revelation than any records of past thought and inspiration, even the Father of Lights ; and so He proclaimed the Divine will with a calm authority, in striking contrast with the obsequi¬ ous spirit of the scribes, who were hidebound by their attitude towards the letter of Scripture and to the mass of traditional rite and precept which had long overlaid the sublime teaching of the Old Testa¬ ment. CHAPTER II. THE FOREGROUND. 1. Political Situation. — Palestine in the time of our Lord was politically within the dominions of Rome, being indeed a Roman province ruled by tetrarchs, who owed allegiance to Caesar as their liege lord. There were Roman garrisons in the chief towns ; taxes were collected in support of the Imperial Go¬ vernment ; the right of capital punishment was vested solely in the hands of the governors. The domination of the Roman power, while keenly re¬ sented by the people, was too strong to be resisted. And, apart from its occasional rigour and ruthlessness, this foreign rule does not seem to have been any great hardship, so far as concerned the general well¬ being of the community. Herod the Great, with all his cruelty, must be credited with being a strong ruler, who gave Israel forty years of peace, during which time the nation multiplied in numbers, and was allowed to follow its own customs, beliefs and worship without the interruption and disturbance occasioned by the murderous invasions, insurrec¬ tions and wholesale massacres that so often swept across the path of ancient races. Nor was there any serious breach of the peace for many years after the death of Herod. This Pax Bomana may have been the result of fear rather than the fruit of hearty loyalty, but it did its work in maintaining a settled feeling throughout the vast communities beneath the sway of the Caesars. Art flourished, literature put forth some of its fairest blossoms, the soul (12) THE FOREGROUND 13 had leisure to breathe and grow. This political situation was no small factor in the conditions that existed in Palestine when our Lord began His public ministry. 2. Public Order. — An excellent military police- system was another feature of the Roman rule. Any tendency to public disorder was instantly and sternly repressed, but there was no undue interference with the liberty of peaceably disposed citizens. Apart from occasional outrages by robber bands (cf. Luke i. 39 ; ii. 4, 41, 45 ; x. 30), an unarmed traveller could journey throughout the length and breadth of the land without fear of being molested. Travel was freely indulged in both for social (ib. i. 39), political (ib. ii. 4) and religious purposes (ib. h. 41) ; and the populace gathered into crowds, met for regular or informal religious purposes, and separated, with apparently the fullest cognisance of the authorities. There was probably no nation of ancient times in which the various elements in the community moved about and intermingled in such perpetual circulation as did the population of Palestine. The Jews were an eminently sociable, hospitable people. The annual feasts brought up to Jerusalem representatives from every town and village in the home-land, and from every great city of the wider empire. 3. \Yhy Jesus TraYelled. — We can thus under¬ stand the nature of the opportunity afforded to a public teacher in the time of Christ ; and how it was that He was followed by crowds, and “ went about doing good ” from town to town and village to village. This was the natural method of spread¬ ing a new teaching in those days, and He adapted His methods, as we shall presently see, to these social conditions in a way that fills the mind with amazement at its happy wisdom and effectiveness. Under other circumstances, He would doubtless have followed other courr s, and possibly taken a 14 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD permanent residence in some great centre of popu¬ lation ; as it was, the peripatetic method was eminently suited to His purpose, and afforded Him a grand opportunity of following it in a free and untrammelled fashion. 5. Intermixture of Races. — There is abundant evidence that the population of Palestine was pre¬ dominantly Jewish in most of its divisions and districts ; but there was a large intermixture of other races, due to two causes. One was the fact that the country was the great highway of intercourse be¬ tween the East and West ; and the second was the cosmopolitan character of Roman rule, which en¬ couraged as far as possible a free intercourse among all its subjects, with a view to weld the empire into a homogeneous whole. While each nation was left for the most part in the exercise of its own religious and social customs, there was thus a vast process of interfusion going on in manners, ideas and cus¬ toms. The Jews stood apart in their extraordinary capacity for secular intercourse with other peoples, while at the same time preserving the purity of their blood and the integrity of their religious life. They seldom intermarried with other races ; and while they had a system of proselytism, in virtue of which it was possible for a Gentile to become a naturalised Jew, the son or daughter of Israel who gave up the traditional religious observances of Judaism ceased to be a Jew in any distinctive sense, and was cast forth as an alien and a reprobate from the family and the synagogue. Amid the free intercourse of the times, therefore, we find that not only in Palestine, but in all the centres of population, the Jewish com¬ munity was clearly and definitely marked from the rest. They had their own habits, ideals and forms of worship. The synagogue was everywhere the nerve-centre of this distinctive Jewish life. 5. The Gentile Infusion. — The Gentile section in the population was composed of diverse elements. THE FOREGROUND 15 The conquests of Alexander had sent a wave of Hellenism over the Western portion of the Asiatic continent, and Greek merchants and travellers, philosophers and teachers were found in all centres of population in Eastern lands.1 The later Roman invasion had overlaid this influence with another, of a more political character. In all the towns and in many of the villages of Palestine the ruling power was represented by tax-gatherers, merchants, soldiers and local governors. The maritime towns were, indeed, predominantly Gentile as regards their residential elements, and here the special culture, social customs, and even worship of the Greeks and Romans were in the ascendant. Rut as soon as we get away from the sea we find the J ewish element asserting its superiority, and, in spite of centuries of rough and more or less constant contact with the outside world, the Jew retained his distinctive life and followed his traditional customs and faith, which were scarcely affected by the successive waves of conquest and culture which swept over him. He stood four-square to all storms and winds, and rose practically unaffected after each impact of invasion, like a rock in middle ocean, “ tempest-buffeted, citadel-crowned,” which resists the “ surging shock ” of the restless waves with scarcely a trace of weather¬ ing. In one sense the Jew is the most impressionable of all mankind, and has always shown a wonderful adaptability to circumstances. But at heart he is adamant against all outside influences, and maintains his identity with a persistence which is the wonder of the world. Cosmopolitan in his power of adjust- 1 This wave of foreign influence was triumphantly repulsed by the Maccabees as regards its religious effects, though it had a general civilising effect on the secular and intellectual life of the people of Israel (see Schiirer, History of Jews in Time of our Lord, ii., p. 30). In Palestine proper Hellenism found no real footing till after the war of Vespasian (see Sanday in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, ii., p. 605). 16 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD ing himself to environment, he is intensely conserva¬ tive in his inner life, and has retained his typical characteristics of race and religion amid all the welter and the change of history. 6. Jesus Restricted His Appeal to His Fellow- Countrymen. — It was to this distinctively Jewish community that our Lord limited His ministrations. The question often suggests itself why He thus re¬ stricted His appeal, and so largely ignored all the alien elements in His social environment. It was from no lack of sympathy with humanity as a whole, for the redemption of the whole race of men was clearly in His mind. He showed special pleasure when His message was sympathetically received by members of the foreign population (Matt. viii. 10, 11 ; xv. 28 ; John xii. 23), and on several occasions He gladly performed healing miracles on members of their families. But He concentrated His own energies on the chosen people, and especially on the poor and lost section of it (Matt. xv. 24), in order to lay the foundations of His kingdom on a deep and sure basis. The seed was planted deliberately in the sheltered garden of Judaism, in order that ulti¬ mately it might be more effectively sown in every land. 7. Intellectual and Religious Culture. — The vast proportion of the population was, in a cer¬ tain sense, illiterate ; but it would be a mistake to imagine, for that reason, that they were ignorant and unintelligent. Where social intercourse between classes and communities was so free and uncon¬ strained, and where constant travel brought the various elements so frequently together, a certain general culture would be widely diffused. The annual journeys of the male inhabitants to Jerusa¬ lem to the feasts would do much to quicken their minds and fill them with broader ideas. The com¬ mon religious training of poor and rich made for the same end. The synagogues were meeting-places THE FOREGROUND 17 not only for worship, but for the interchange of thought and sympathy ; the exposition of the ancient Scriptures by the Rabbis, and the frequent public dissertations and discussions held on points of law and ritual, while so often oppressive in tone and barren of spiritual results, were calculated to quicken the faculties and to awaken a vivid intellectual and emotional life. The village communities of Pales¬ tine were not sunk in the dense ignorance and indifference of the lower classes in many continental countries even in the present day ; they would be paralleled rather by the corresponding classes in Scotland and Wales of the last generation, where, amid much secular ignorance, there was great spiritual intelligence and alertness, owing to the discipline of the pulpit and Sunday school. It was religious prejudice, the clash and resistance of ob¬ stinate and old-fashioned ideas, rather than vacuity of mind, that our Lord had to encounter in the preach¬ ing of the Gospel and the teaching of the principles of the Kingdom of God. 8. Religious Parties : (1) The Sadducees. — There was no division of the classes and the masses cor¬ responding to the social cleavage of the present day. A great freedom of intercourse marked the relations of rich and poor, cultured and simple, owing to the religious bonds that held the nation together so com¬ pactly. The Sadducees were the most exclusive party, being mainly composed of the “aristocratic priestly families (Acts iv. 6), who held almost a monopoly of the high-priesthood, which, under the Roman Government, wielded considerable political power” (Sanday) ; this section of the community was possessed of considerable wealth, and had a proud and haughty temper. Socially, they would be analogous to our nobility, vividly conscious of their hereditary distinction. Doctrinally, they denied the resurrection of the body and all future rewards and punishments, and even maintained that the soul 2 18 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD perished with the body ; they also denied the existence of angels and spirits. They were the rationalists and materialists of the Jewish world, though (according to Josephus) they held strongly to the freedom of the will, and believed that man, and not “fate ” or the Divine will, determined human destiny. The attitude of this party towards Jesus passed through several phases. At first, so long as they imagined Him to be exclusively a re¬ former in religion, they ignored Him. Jesus, on His part, made few references to them during His earlier ministry, though He solemnly warned His disciples on one occasion against their secular spirit (Matt. xvi. 6, 11). When, however, our Lord drove the money-changers out of the temple courts, thus interfering with the prerogatives of the Sanhedrim, their show of superiority and indiffer¬ ence gave way to one of hostility. We find them then joining in a compact with the Pharisees in attempts at publicly confounding Him in His speech (Matt. xxi. 23 ff. ; xxii. 23 ff. ; Mark xi. 27 ff. ; xii. 18 ff. ; Luke xx. 1 ff., 19 ff., 27 ff. ; cf. John xi. 47 ff., 57). And finally they plotted to compass His destruction on the nominal charge of blasphemy, but really because they feared the political results of His revolutionary teaching. (2) The Pharisees . — The Sadducees had little religious influence among the people, and their machinations against Jesus were chiefly exercised through the instrumentalities of the temporal power. Not so the Pharisees, who were the essentially religious party. Their name corresponds with that of the Elizabethan Separatists, in that they drew a deep line of cleavage between themselves and the irreligious world, and constituted themselves into the repositories and the safeguards of the truth. They were pledged to a strict standard of personal life, and many of them were men of high character. Originally they had arisen as the party of protest THE FOREGROUND 19 against the liberalising tendencies of the Hellenisers in the time of the Maccabees ; they were the Puritans of that day, determined to make no truce with the influences that tended to broaden and emasculate Judaism of its distinctive doctrines and customs ; their principle was complete separation from everything non- Jewish, whether in politics, in belief, or in manners. As such they were opposed to the Sadducees, who were always more or less in league with the reigning secular power, and careless of the exclusive aspects of the national faith. The doctrines of the Pharisees were also in strong opposition to the materialistic tendencies of the Sadducees. They advocated a scrupulous adherence to the law, written and oral ; held the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and a system of future retribution, and were deeply im¬ bued with the Messianic hopes of the nation, looking “ for a literal reign of God upon earth, wThen the power, of which they were meanwhile deprived, would be in their hands ” ; for the Messianic kingdom was to be the kingdom of the saints, and they were the saints. The Messiah was to be the Son of David ; He would deliver Israel from the supremacy of the Gentiles who were to become subject to Him, and would thrust out the sinners ( i.e ., the Sad¬ ducees) from the inheritance of God. They strongly believed in angels and spirits and in Divine providence. Though they held the freedom of the will, they also believed in Divine influence and agency as co-operative with it in the doing of what was right and good. Thus prayer was a cardinal article of their belief and practice. Edersheim puts the con¬ trast between these two parties thus : “ Properly understood, the real difference between the Pharisees and Sadducees seems to have amounted to this : that the former accentuated God’s pre-ordination, the latter man’s free-will : and that while the Pharisees admitted only a partial influence of the human 20 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD element on what happened, or the co-operation of the human will with the Divine, the Sadducees denied all absolute pre-ordination, made man’s choice of evil and good, with its consequence of misery and happiness, to depend entirely on the exercise of free¬ will and self-determination ” (Life and Times of the Messiah , i., 316). The Pharisees were “ Separatists'* . — The Pharisees were, as we have seen, “ separatists ” from the common people, in that they professed to keep the Law in its strictness down to its last “ jot ” and “ tittle,” — a counsel of perfection beyond the power of the average man. This strictness was mainly a matter of formality, and concerned externals only ; and the contrast between their punctilious regard for trifles and their neglect of the deeper ethical principles underlying the Mosaic legislation is sternly satirised by Jesus in several of His discourses (see Matt. vi. 2, 5, 16 ; xii. 34, 39 ; xv. 7 ; xxi. 31 £f. ; xxiii. 13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29 ; Mark vii. 6, etc.). The Scribes. — This was not a third party with clearly marked differences of beliefs from those just described. They were the class professionally learned in the Law, and were drawn from both the others, though they naturally belonged chiefly to the Pharisees (Mark ii. 16 ; Luke v. 30) — a cross division which must be carefully borne in mind. These scribes, otherwise called “lawyers” (Luke vii. 30, etc.) and “ doctors in the Law ” ( ib . v. 17), were men who gave themselves to the mastery of the details of the Law, written and oral, and to its exposition in the synagogues (cf. Mark i. 22) and elsewhere. They did this without fee or material reward, except the high honour in which they were generally held, and of which they were very ambitious (Matt, xxiii. 5-11 ; Luke xi. 43, 45 ; xx. 46). The scribes were jurists rather than theologians, and spent their skill on the elaborate exposition of ceremonial trifles instead of the enforcement of true religion. Their THE FOREGROUND 21 great care was for ritual rather than conduct ; cor¬ rectness of behaviour, and not holiness of character, was the goal of their teaching (Matt, xxiii. 23 ; Luke xi. 44). This explains the uncompromising attitude taken by our Lord towards them during His ministry, especially the latter period. Other Parties— Two other classes must be men¬ tioned. The Zealots or Cananceans were the national party who gave practical expression to the Jewish hatred of the foreign yoke, and worked for the re¬ establishment of the temporal power of the Jews. The Sadducees were in alliance with the Roman Government ; the Pharisees, as the religious party, usually held aloof from all political movements. But the Zealots were always plotting against the authorities, without much success at this time ; later on, at the siege of Jerusalem (a.d. 70), they were the leaders in the terrible scenes which led to the destruction of the city. One of the apostles had been a member of this party (Luke vi. 15). Over against these we find another political party, the Herodians , the partisans of the Idumaaan dynasty, heathen in sympathies and yet conformists to the Jewish ritual for political reasons. In close alliance with the Roman power, they did what they could to leaven Judaism with foreign influences and a lax ethical tone. “ They vied with the Sadducees in scepticism, and with the Greeks in licentiousness, pandered to the vice and cruelty of the Herods, and truckled to the Romans.” It is significant of the immoral temper of all the national parties that not only the Pharisees as regards the Sadducees, but the Herodians as regards both parties, merged their mutual enmities in an unholy alliance in order to way¬ lay and destroy Jesus, joining in the common plot which led to His crucifixion (Mark iii. 6 ; cf. Matt, xxii. 16). Lastly, we come to the Essenes, the ascetics of the period, who made much of the disci¬ pline of the body, held to community of goods, and 22 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD were marked by a high ethical life, full of benevolence and kindliness of heart. There was much in their tenets in harmony with the teaching and practice of Jesus, but He was no ascetic, and the similarity of His teaching to theirs has been much exaggerated (by Renan and others). They were a small sect, numbering at this time about 4,000 persons in all ; their retired, non-aggressive mode of living kept them aloof from the main current of J ewish life ; the name indeed does not occur in the New Testament. 9. Classes and Parties among the Jews: Vil¬ lage Life. — When we direct our attention to the social condition of this Jewish community, we find that it was predominantly pastoral and agricultural in character, with the usual industrial element found in the simplest form of society. Abroad the Jew became a trader, artisan, or merchant, but at home he largely followed the traditional oc¬ cupation of farmer and shepherd. The population was chiefly distributed in small towns and villages which retained their distinctive life from generation to generation, and to which families were heredi¬ tarily attached (c/. Luke ii. 3). The town or “ city ” was usually a walled place, capable of defending itself from assault ; the village was not so protected, and was thus dependent on the nearest town for its government, and for defence in time of danger. In Galilee there were numerous “ towns ” and “ vil¬ lages ” in which Christ frequently preached (Mark i. 39 ; Matt. xi. 1), and into which He sent the Twelve (Mark iii. 14) ; many of these so-called villages are said by Josephus to have contained as many as 15,000 inhabitants — but this must be an exaggeration — and, in any case, to have included the outlying suburbs. Tor the most part the towns must have been much smaller, and many of the villages mere hamlets. They were, however, sufficiently numer¬ ous to be in close touch with one another, so that, when Jesus was in any place, the news speedily THE FOREGROUND 23 spread that He was there, and multitudes came to¬ gether from all directions to hear Him (Matt. iv. 23- 25 ; xv. 30 ; Mark v. 31 ; Luke xii. 1 ; John v. 13). The communal life of some of the older villages was marked by special characteristics : Nazareth had a very evil repute in the country around (John i. 46) ; Capernaum. Chorazin, Bethsaida, are stigmatised by our Lord Himself for their spiritual dulness and indifference (Matt. xi. 20-24) ; and He warns His disciples not to waste their efforts on such un¬ impressionable communities (Luke x. 10, 11). 10. The Spiritual Atmosphere. — When we turn from these rival or related parties in the State and the Church, and ask what was the general re¬ ligious temper of the people, we find it somewhat difficult to sum up the situation in a few words. Judaism was a very complicated system of thought and life. It was the growth of long centuries of spiritual travail and political turmoil. In it we find two essentially distinct ideals interwoven — a high and beautiful moral piety, and a mechanical cere¬ monialism. The “ Law” and the “ Prophets” were an amalgam of the noblest ethical teaching and of the crudest formalism. The long feud between the priest and the prophet had ended in a compromise, in which the prophetic element had been well-nigh stifled, and legalism reigned almost supreme. But in the Sacred Scriptures the original fountains of the prophetic revelation were still accessible, and they preserved the higher fife of the nation from being utterly extinguished. While Isaiah i. 10-20 and Micah vi. 6-8 and a hundred such passages were being read from week to week in the synagogues, not all the spiritual obtuseness and legal tyranny of priest, and scribe, and Pharisee could quite obscure the truth. And so we find that there were lights as well as shadows in the religious condition of the people, and that amid all the formalism of the day there was much simple piety and openness of heart. 24 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD 11. The Darker Side. — Professor Sanday (in his article on “ Jesns Christ ” in the Dictionary of the Bible) summarises the situation by balancing the darker and the brighter asrpects of Judaism. On the darker side the noteworthy element was the identification of morality with the precepts of the law, which led to serious evils. Since law could deal only with overt action, the importance of motive was obscured by it, and an external standard of conduct tended to become supreme. Salvation by works, these “works” being not acts of true righteousness, beneficence and love, but the keeping of purely artificial precepts, developed into an elaborate system of “ merit The pressure of these rules grew into an intolerable burden -through the perpetual addition of “ a mass of inferential law,” which was gradually raised to the same footing of authority. This further shifted the central element of religion from the ethical to the intellectual region. A peculiar form of religious pride gradually overlaid the typical Jewish piety, and finally narrowed into a religious exclusiveness of a very offensive kind. 12. The Brighter Side. — There was thus a crying need for an ethical and spiritual revival, and fortu¬ nately there were not lacking elements of promise on which to begin the good work. The evangelic spirit of the older Judaism was not dead but sleeping, and here and there it showed itself openly in the emer¬ gence of such characters as Zacharias and Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna, who no doubt represented a con¬ siderable class of simple and pious folk scattered throughout the community. Even in the Talmud and other current literature the true evangelic note is not wanting. There was at least a general serious¬ ness of tone among the people, a profound religious susceptibility, a yearning for spiritual revival and freedom, a passionate hope of the long -promised Messiah, who would be the spiritual as well as political emancipator of His people. The over- THE FOREGROUND 25 powering “sense of the Future,” which has ever been the distinguishing mark of the Israelite, was in¬ tensely developed in the time of our Lord. It was one of the doors by which He entered into the hearts of His followers, and made them His own. The special “ seedplot ” of Christianity was found among these devout and simple folk, who were for the most part far removed from the official parties of the day, and who fed their hopes by frequent reading of the prophetic writings and the psalms. These resided chiefly in the remote towns and villages of Galilee, where Jesus began His effective ministry, and where He found His readiest and warmest supporters. It was not among the cul¬ tured but the simple, not among the wealthy but the poor, not among the religious leaders but the humble, self-respecting pious populace that He dis¬ covered the souls who were to be His first followers and apostles, and who, after being trained by Him, were to turn the world upside down with their mighty influence. CHAPTER HI. THE TEACHER AND HIS EQUIPMENT. Every great personality has been endowed with a natural equipment of body and mind for his life- work. Organisation and faculty are closely wedded. We may be sure that it was not otherwise wuth the great Teacher. The Eternal Word was incarnated in a physical form and temperament perfectly fitted for its adequate expression. 1. Personal Appearance of Jesus. — Of the outward appearance of Jesus we have no reliable record. No authentic picture or representation of Him has survived, if indeed one was ever made. The pictorial and plastic arts were rigorously tabooed among the Jews. Any attempt to represent a living creature by sculpture or painting was looked upon as a violation of the second commandment. There would thus be no thought among the immediate followers of our Lord of delineating His face and form for the benefit of posterity. Such an idea, if it had occurred at all, would be immediately dis¬ missed as wrong. Thus, while we have portraits of almost all the great historical leaders of Greece and Rome, and the countenances of Alexander and Caesar, Plato and Aristotle, Demosthenes and Cicero are as familiar to us as the faces of our modern celebrities, of the face of Jesus, in which was reflected “ the knowledge of the glory of God ” (2 Cor. iv. 6), we have no sketch or image, bust or painting. The countenance that brought home to the beholders so splendid a sense of the nearness and (26) THE TEACHER AND HIS EQUIPMENT 27 love of God vanished, leaving no reliable trace behind. 2. The Legendary Portrait. — It is, however, a significant fact that all the legendary “faces” of Christ, from those which began to appear in the catacombs during the second century down to those painted in our own day, contain certain elements in common. If the Christ- countenance with which we are familiar reflects rather the sentiment of His worshippers than the features of His living person, it is still not impossible that it may contain a genuine reminiscence of His actual appearance. If that is so, we are quite within the mark when we say that in physique He was at once winning and dignified, gentle and strong, gracious and awe-inspir¬ ing ; and that His presence carried a message of nearness and love to all who beheld Him. We may further say that His was not a Jewish cast of countenance, but one that was broadly human in its expression, suggesting a type of manhood that was intensely individual and at the same time universal in its appeal. 3. Testimony of the Gospels. — There are many passages in the Gospels which bear out the state¬ ment that the presence of Jesus was deeply impressive, and that His countenance was capable of an infinite play of expression, from the tenderest pathos to the most awe-inspiring wrath: “Tears were in Him, and consuming fire, as the lightning lurks in the drops of the summer cloud”. The most expressive feature of the body is the eye . It is at once the special organ of the under¬ standing, the emotions and the will. And we find that many of the most characteristic utterances of Jesus were accompanied by a look which remained indelibly imprinted on the memory of the disciples. Even the gracious words He spoke were sometimes but the smallest part of His message ; what He looked into men was more eloquent than what He 28 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD said to them. Remonstrance (Matt. xvi. 23), re¬ assurance (ib. x. 3), anger ( ib . iii. 5), love ( ib . x. 21), benediction (Luke vi. 20), kindly appreciation (John i. 42), exaltation of spirit (ib. xi. 41 ; xvii. 1), for¬ giveness (Luke xxii. 61), pathos and pity (Mark vii. 34) — all these emotions expressed themselves in His looks, like sunshine and shadow chasing each other across the summer sky. His eye was often misty with unshed tears. And sometimes the tears brimmed over, and He wept (Luke xix. 41 ; John xi. 35). The presence of Jesus was at times full of a strange and commanding power, inspiring both awe and love. The disciples wrere admitted into the intimacies of His friendship, but there were limits of approach which they dared not cross. The Pharisees, bold at first in the insolence of their self-assertion, were gradually cowed by an over¬ mastering sense of His greatness and nobility, till at last they drew back, silent and baffled (Matt, xxii. 46 ; cf. John viii. 9). There was a moment in His intercourse with His disciples — it was during the last journey to Jerusalem — when they fell behind Him in wordless wonder and fear (Mark x. 32). There were other moments in His life when His silent presence completely dominated His enemies, so that, though bent on His destruction, they could do nothing to Him, and “ He passed through the midst of them, and went His way” (Luke iv. 30; cf. ib. xxii. 53 ; John viii. 59). While accessible to little children, who came fearlessly to His em¬ brace (Mark x. 13), and answered freely to His call (Matt, xviii. 2), He could subdue an armed multitude with a look. In the garden, when the emissaries of the Jewish rulers, led by Judas, came upon Him suddenly, He met them with a mien so majestic, and a voice so terrible, that they drew back in the very act of seizing Him, and fell back¬ ward “ to the ground ” (John xviii. 6). His presence THE TEACHER AND HIS EQUIPMENT 29 subdued the truculent Pilate at the trial, filling him with a vague fear of passing a false judgment, and causing him to cast the responsibility of condem¬ nation on the priestly party (Matt, xxvii. 24). Even on the cross His bearing was so impressive that the multitudes who had hounded Him to His death were sobered into a mood of strange disquietude, and those who a few hours before had cried : “Crucify Him, crucify Him ! ” went home “ smiting their breasts ” ; while the Roman centurion who directed the sickening operation of crucifixion, and had doubt¬ less been hardened into callousness of feeling by brutal custom, broke out at what he saw into the startled cry : “ Truly this was a Son of God ! ” {ib. xxvii. 54). In all this there is no hint of con¬ sciously exerted power ; the impression produced by the presence of Jesus was natural, and involun¬ tary, and inevitable. The grandeur of His nature simply and perfectly expressed itself in His look and manner. 4. Physique and Temperament. — Physique and temperament are closely related, perhaps mutually conditioned. From the Gospels we may infer certain safe conclusions concerning the psychic qualities which characterised our Lord’s humanity. They may be summed up in two words — fulness and balance. Many of the great personalities of the world have been marked by certain obtrusive qualities in marked contrast with the poverty of their natures in other directions. Their intensity has been to some extent neutralised by their limitations. In the Gospel picture of Jesus, on the other hand, we note a nature fully developed in every direction. Mind and heart and will are equally intense, equally vivid, and, at the same time, perfectly proportioned. By way of illustration, it is interesting to note how impossible it is to class our Lord among the “temperaments” into which men are sometimes 30 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD crudely classed — the sanguine, the phlegmatic, the choleric, the melancholic. And yet how easy it would be to point out features in His character which would suggest each and all in turn ! Like the sanguine man He naturally took bright views of life. He was not, however, oblivious of the deep mystery that surrounds the human soul with its shadow, and the vision of human sin at times wrapped His soul in a terrible darkness. There were times, as on the Mount of Transfiguration, when the exaltation of His spirit was indescribable, irra¬ diating His person as with a dazzling light ; there were times when He descended into depths of woeful feeling, and confessed that His soul was exceeding sorrowful even unto death. His nature had periods of overflow and subsidence ; joy and sadness chased each other within Him as He turned His gaze alter¬ nately on the glory and shame of life, and realised now the nearness of God to men, and again the distance of men from God. Withal, we note a remarkable union of energy and persistence, of manifold activity and patient endurance. He was a great traveller, and yet He was deeply contemplative ; He loved society, but He often fled into solitude. All these alternations of feeling and experience were knit to¬ gether into consistency and firmness by His unvary¬ ing purposefulness and perfect faithfulness to His great life-work. Impressionable as He was to His surroundings, He never lost firm hold of the deeper facts of life, and He was absolutely steadfast to the revealed will of God. It was easy to give His sen¬ sitive heart exquisite pain ; it was impossible to make Him swerve a hair’s-breadth from the rugged path of duty. 5. Mental Characteristics. — Books have been written about the mental characteristics of our Lord. The same comprehensiveness and delicacy of organ¬ isation meets us here. His intellectual qualities were rich and abundant, and it is clear that He used THE TEACHER AND HIS EQUIPMENT 31 all His human faculties with a perfect mastery over their resources. Very exquisite was His sympathy with Nature in all her varying moods ; equally ex¬ quisite is the use to which He put the results of His loving observation. The commonest facts of the external world and of human life were utilised to illustrate the laws of the spiritual kingdom. Mrs. Browning sings of the great Greek dramatist : — Our Euripides the human, With his droppings of warm tears, And his touches of things common, Till they rose to touch the spheres. But Jesus showed how the “ spheres ” lie hidden in miniature in the earth that blossomed at His feet, and in the trivial round of drudgery in the home : “ The Kingdom of Heaven is within [among] you”. He showed the poet’s insight, both in the happy choice which marked His illustrations, and in the exquisite drapery of language in which He clothed His thoughts. The parables of our Lord form an arabesque of imagery which has never been ap¬ proached for beauty of conception or delicacy of workmanship. The truths which they embody are like “ apples of gold in baskets of silver ”. 6. Two Supreme Qualities. — Finally, we may summarise this sketch of our Lord’s equipment as a Teacher by mentioning two supreme characteristics of His personality which pervaded His whole being, and governed His attitude both towards the truth which He taught and the people whom He in¬ structed. Viewed from an external stand-point, they are the chief secret of His charm and attractiveness ; viewed from within, they unite the human and Divine aspects of His nature in perfect harmony and counterpoise. The first is His extraordinary and unfailing sym¬ pathy with human nature in all its phases and its conditions. He not only lived among the people of His time as one of themselves, but He entered into 32 THE MASTEK AND HIS METHOD their ideas and emotions, felt for and with them in their varied experiences, divined their unspoken thoughts, anticipated their needs, grieved over their sins, and in a hundred subtle ways made them feel that He understood them through and through. We come frequently upon instances of the wonderful range and depth of the great Teacher’s sympathy, which, on its passive side, manifested itself in an exquisite sensibility of feeling and a susceptibility of mind to His surroundings, and, on its active side, poured forth in a continuous stream of comfort, stimulus and healing influence, both in word and deed. The second characteristic was still more remark¬ able. Our Lord possessed the spiritual “ tempera¬ ment ” in its fulness and power. His nature was open Godward at all times. The best of men have their periods of spiritual solitude and dulness ; their faith comes rather in flashes, in high tides of experience and insight, than in steady and unchanging vision. But while our Lord’s nature had its periods of ebb and flow, exaltation and subsidence, we have no evidence that there was any pause, any intermis¬ sion in the perfect fellowship between Him and the Father. It changed its colour, but not its con¬ stancy. This relation of Jesus to His Father was one of entire dependence and absolute confidence : “ Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do : for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things that Himself doeth ” (John v. 19, 20 ; cf. xi. 41, 42). It was this that made all men feel that Jesus brought God near to them, that He spoke God’s words to them and revealed the Divine mind and will with self-evidencing power and reality. The im¬ pression He made on the multitudes who heard Him was immediate. He struck a “personal note ” THE TEACHER AND HIS EQUIPMENT 33 so unique, and at the same time so appealing, that they listened with bated breath to this fresh and living voice which brought home to them the highest truths of their nature in simple dic¬ tion and clothed with the loveliest imagery, and whose presence carried with it everywhere the joy and spell of the Divine presence. It is the differentia of Jesus among all the great teachers of the world, that He “ revealed ” God to men, not only in what He said, but in what He was : “No man hath seen God at any time ; but the only begotten Son, wdiich dwelleth in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him ” (John i. 18). S PART II. THE METHOD. CHAPTER I. THE TEACHER’S AIM. 1. Method Determined by Aim. — All method is determined by the end in view ; and if we would rightly measure and value a great man’s wTork we must understand, first of all, the goal to which he directs his energies. We cannot wTell judge of the form and method of our Lord’s teaching, therefore, without obtaining, first, a clear idea of the purpose He had before Him in all His teaching. The primary function fulfilled in the life of Jesus was that of a public teacher. He had other func¬ tions to fill, but they came afterwards, and emerged out of this as time went on. Plis kingly and priestly work was initiated by His prophetic. What was the special and distinctive feature of the teaching of Jesus Christ? 2. A Definition. — Broadly speaking, Christ’s aim was the dissemination of spiritual truth. This statement, however, by itself is too inclusive. He did not come to reveal all truth, but only such por¬ tions of it as had not hitherto been made known con¬ cerning the vital relations between God and the human soul, and that which concerns human souls in their relations with one another, individually and collectively. His central purpose was to present God in His Fatherly attitude and will to the race ; to make known His undying love to men, irrespective of their moral condition ; to persuade them of His willingness to save them from the guilt and power of sin, and of His desire to enter into relations of (37) 38 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD perfect peace and friendship with all mankind. All the lines of His teaching converge on this point. A passionate desire to bring men into the attitude of filial love to God as their Father, so that they may share in the power and privileges of Divine life, was the master motive of the great Teacher. 3. Some Corollaries. — If we grasp this firmly, we shall find much further light thrown both on what is included in the teaching, and on what is omitted from it. What Jesus Excluded from His Teaching . — Our Lord, for instance, did not undertake to clear away all misconceptions regarding our knowledge of the world in which we live. He did not anticipate or forecast any of the discoveries of science. He did not correct men’s current notions of history. He freely used the events and legends of the past as illustrations for the explication and enforcing of spirit¬ ual lessons, but did not in so doing vouch for their accuracy. Whether He understood the narratives of the Old Testament to be purely historical, or as history intermingled with legend and myth, cannot be fairly inferred from His references to them. He did not settle for after ages the exact character of Old Testament inspiration. His profound re¬ verence for the ancient Scriptures does not imply any particular theory of their origin. All these questions were irrelevant to His purpose, and He left them to be settled on their merits, as the pro¬ gress of thought and the advancement of knowledge might determine. He took the stand-point of His contemporaries on these matters, appealed to His hearers on the basis of their actual knowledge or ignorance of literary, historical and scientific ques¬ tions, and used the current conceptions of His day as vehicles for the dissemination of the saving truths of His Gospel. It would be altogether foreign to His purpose to interfere with the human mind in its search for truth in any direction, much THE TEACHER'S AIM 39 less to hinder its free progress in knowledge by setting His imprimatur on imperfect conceptions whether of past history or of the laws and opera¬ tions of nature. i. Other Exclusions. — Again, men have dili¬ gently sought for indications of Christ’s political and social creed in the Gospels. These will be sought for in vain. He took the political situation of His day for granted, and, when the ruling party tried to force Him to an exposition of His views, He srave them an enigmatic answer which left them in greater perplexity than before (Matt. xxii. 22). His consistent attitude towards the externals of government is expressed in the words, “ My kingdom is not of [from] this world ” (John xviii. 36). Similarly, it is in vain that we look to the teaching of Jesus for a definite enunciation of the ideal social order. Christianity is compatible with perfect loyalty to any existing form of government, whether it be an absolute or a limited monarchy, a modified republic or a complete democracy ; and it is consistent with any form of economic order, whether it be predominantly individualistic or socialistic. This does not mean that there is no political or social message in the Gospel. In enunciating the laws of the Kingdom of God, i.e., the kingdom of souls living in obedience to the Divine law and love, Jesus brought a new spirit into the world which tends to elevate and purify all the outer ordinances of life, to inform every method of govern¬ ment with holier ideals, and to raise the social relations of men to a higher plane. Those, therefore, who attempt to justify their own pet scheme for reforming the external relations of men by an appeal to the words of Christ, as though these were in¬ consistent with anv alternative scheme, are as wide of the mark as those who turn altogether away from Christianity on the plea that it has no social message at all. Jesus aimed at the renewal of the soul ; 40 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD and in a community of renewed souls all external relations will in the end adjust themselves in ac¬ cordance with the law of love. “ The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life ” (John vi. 63), He once said, and it is a law of life that it both adapts itself to its environment, and gradually transforms that environment into har¬ mony with itself. 5. Unsettled Problems. — But there are other omissions in the Gospel message which are less easy to explain because they would seem to be a part of the soul’s proper life. Jesus left behind Him many unsettled questions. His references to the future life, for instance, are few and meagre. He planted deep in the hearts of His disciples the hope of His return to earth, to reign in glory over the nations, but He left the time and the manner of His return vague and uncertain. He instituted a society called the Church, whose function it is to bear witness to Him and to His truth in the world, and certain ordinances called sacraments (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper), but He nowhere defines their precise character and significance. These omissions have been the cause of endless con¬ troversies and divisions among His followers, which have apparently greatly hampered His work and influence among men. How are we to explain these gaps in the great Teacher’s message ? Two considerations help to throw light upon these puzzling facts. First, it seems to have been no part of His purpose to lift the veil of futurity either in this life or that which is to come. Beyond the calm but confident promise of a glorious future for His people in the unseen world, in which they will enjoy His perfect fellowship, and receive an ade¬ quate reward for faithful service on earth, He left the state of the blessed dead undefined, justifying, however, a reverent use of the sanctified imagination in picturing forth its conditions (Johnxiv. 2). Simi- THE TEACHER’S AIM 41 larly He left the doom of the lost undefined, though the fact of a sure punishment awaiting them here¬ after was stated in a series of terrible figures. The details of heaven and hell He did not reveal, the facts being fully adequate to inspire such hopes and dreads as are needful for health}7 encouragement in goodness, and for wholesome dissuasion from sin and worldliness. Secondly, as regards the ordinances and regula¬ tions of the Church in this world, all that was need¬ ful for His purpose was attained by their institution. It is a part of the conditions and of the well-being of life in Nature that it should realise itself through conflict and contradictions ; it attains to its possi¬ bilities through the law of struggle. This would seem to be true of the spiritual life also. Truth realises itself through form ; these forms are the result of struggle and adaptation ; and the contro¬ versies and divisions which to our eyes seem to have hampered the onward march of the Gospel in the Church and in the world may, from a higher point of view, have been necessary conditions for its final realisation and conquest. We are as yet in the thick of the struggle, and we cannot at present see the end. The leaven of the kingdom is still fermenting through the mass of humanity ; finally it will attain through multiplicity to unity, and by way of divisions of opinion and oppositions of will it will come to its final harmony. By realising this clearly defined purpose of our Lord, and the limitations involved in the plan of His teaching, we are saved from many difficulties and perplexities of faith as regards wffiat is included and what is omitted from it. Our minds are thus freed to deal with its actual contents without dis¬ traction. 6. How the Truth was to be Disseminated.— We have defined our Lord’s ideal purpose as the revela¬ tion of that portion of spiritual truth which concerns 42 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD the relations of the soul to God and of souls to one another. Actually it aimed at the redemption of the soul by the infusion of the Divine truth into it as a transforming and renewing power. His aim, that is, was not abstract, but concrete ; not theo¬ retical, but practical. Truth enshrined in character ; the establishment of the soul in goodness ; the de¬ velopment of the Christian temper and character ; the revelation of the Divine life as a saving power among men — these are different ways of expressing the same fundamental fact. Jesus came to rescue men from sin and spiritual death by revealing God, and binding them to Him in filial love. How was this saving truth to he disseminated ? 7. It was to be disseminated through per¬ sonality in a very definite and particular way. To understand the manner in which our Lord intended His Gospel to be spread abroad in the world furnishes us with the key to many mysteries in the form in which it has come down to us. It was clearly a part of His great purpose that His truth should be disseminated primarily through personality. Not through institutional methods ; not through a literature ; but through men must the message of salvation be first conveyed to the world. From lip to lip, and heart to heart, the truth must be passed on ; the Divine life in one soul was to be as a torch with which to kindle it in another. Jesus founded not a college, but a Church, which means not a hierarchical or sacerdotal institution, but a company of redeemed souls, bound to God the Father in sonship, and to each other in brotherhood, and to the outside world in boundless goodwill ; to this Church He entrusted the seed of His truth, and to it He looked for the preservation of the truth, and for its dissemination as spiritual knowledge and power in the world. 8. The Evidence for this. — Everything depends on a proper realisation of this fact, and it will be well to consider the evidence for it. THE TEACHER’S AIM 43 (1) In the first place we find that the Gospel was incarnated in our Lord Himself in a unique and unparalleled way. In the case of other great teachers of spiritual truth we can recognise a clear distinction between their personality and their message. They bear witness to it as something independent and separable from themselves. It does not depend for its validity on what they them¬ selves are ; it carries with it its own credentials, and is equally true whether they are fully obedient to it themselves or not. But it is universally felt that Jesus is Himself the Father’s gift to the world ; that He enshrines the Divine love in His own Person ; that His “ life ” is the “ light ” of men. He Him¬ self was fully conscious of this, and His claim is acknowledged to be valid by all who have studied the records. “ I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh to the Father but by Me ” are words which no one else could have uttered without being at once convicted of blasphemy ; as regards Jesus, they are a simple statement of fact. His life was the true revelation, of which His words were but the vocal expression; and in communicating Himself to His disciples in influence and love He was communicating the life which He came to reveal. We can never separate the truths of Christianity from the Person in whom they were first incarnated. (2) Now the influence of personality can never be adequately transmitted by any other means than through personality itself. Jesus could enunciate the laws of His kingdom and the principles of His character in words, which could be written down, and read in a book ; but He could not impart in this way the quality and impulse of His own life ; that must first be impressed on His messengers, and by them conveyed with His message to those whom they sought to reach. Thus He appointed a com¬ pany, not of scribes, but of apostles, and before He 44 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD sent them forth He subjected them to a careful and loving personal training, during which He not only communicated His truth to their intellect, but im¬ pressed His personality upon their life, and fitted them to convey the truth to others through the medium of their personal influence and teaching. 9. Dangers of this Method. — But there is a subtle danger inherent in this method of dissem¬ inating truth. It is that the truth should be con¬ taminated in the process of transmission from mind to mind, and from life to life. Preconceptions and prejudices, the selective and reactive influence which the mind automatically exercises on what it hears, together with its natural frailty and inaccuracy, all combine to make personality at once a perilous as well as a fascinating medium for propagandism. The most obvious method of guarding against this peril is the Written Word. An authoritative text¬ book is the surest check on the corruption and contamination of the teaching. It provides an ob¬ jective test and norm for the message as it per¬ colates through the personal work and influence of those who preach it. The Church thus needs the Book in order to maintain itself as an adequate medium for the dissemination of the Faith through the spaces of the world and the centuries of time. 10. No Written Gospel by Command of Jesus. — It is a startling fact, however, that whereas the rise of the Christian literature which we call the New Testament was clearly providentially ordained, our Lord Himself neither wrote a word of His own teaching, nor, so far as we know, commanded His apostles to do so. This is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that the ancient Jewish religion was enshrined in an authoritative text-book which Jesus, in common with His contemporaries, held in the deepest reverence. The commission which He gave His apostles was, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature ” (Markxvi. 15), THE TEACHER’S AIM 45 “ teaching all nations ... to observe all things whatsoever ” He had “ commanded ” them (Matt, xxviii. 19, 20), but in no case did He include an injunction to commit the Gospel to writing. He did not, however, leave them “comfortless” or un¬ helped ; but gave them the promise of His Holy Spirit (“ even the Spirit of truth ”), whose function it was to “ guide them into all the truth,” i.e., con¬ cerning Himself (John xvi. 13, R.Y.), and to “ bring all things to their remembrance, whatsoever” He had said unto them (ih. xiv. 26). It is a historical fact that the Written Gospel was the outcome of the providential necessities of the Early Church, and not the result of the command of the Founder of our Faith. His direct care was for its oral enuncia¬ tion and propagation. His was a spoken message, a gospel of words, and deeds, and personality. This was its primary characteristic ; and this it was that conditioned its form and determined the Master’s method more than anything else. How, we shall see in the following chapter. Note. — The subject dealt with in this chapter furnishes the explanation of two facts that otherwise are inexplicable — first, why the teaching of the Master was not committed to writing during His life or immediately after His death ; and, secondly, "why it was finally written in the fourfold form in which it has come down to us. (1) Our Lord’s teach¬ ing being oral was orally conveyed to others during the lifetime of the first witnesses. In the first instance it was popularly disseminated by conversation, debate and preach¬ ing, as is indicated in the Acts ; this with a view to the persuasion of the multitudes and the conversion of indi¬ viduals. There are indications that great care was taken to give the general outlines of the teaching accurately and without admixture, and that the utmost reverence was felt for the ipsissima verba of their Lord’s utterances by the apostles. Beyond this, converts were taught from the earliest times in a more detailed form in classes in the “ doctrine ” of Christ ( cf . 1 Cor. xv. 11 ; Col. ii. 6). The reverence for the written words of the earlier revelation, and the care for the details of religious instruction which marked the Jewish mind, would greatly help to govern the methods and ideals 46 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD of the first instructors in the Christian faith. While the actual witnesses of the life and teaching of Christ were alive there would be no desire and no need for the committal of the Gospel to writing among a people thoroughly disciplined in the art of oral instruction. Thus the teaching would not need to be written in any form for many years in order to escape contamination or substantial inaccuracy ; and the oral Gospel was probably the only form in which the mess¬ age existed. This, however, would naturally tend to increas¬ ing brevity, and only such portions of the teaching would be included as were essential to a firm grasp of its essential principles. The form in which our Gospels exist are the fruit of this process of condensation and exclusion. (2) But in course of time, the first witnesses would one by one be removed by death, or so scattered as to be outside the reach of appeal. There was thus a danger both of corruption and of oblivion for the message. For this reason typical versions of the Gospel would tend to become authoritative, and the imme¬ diate disciples of the apostles would endeavour to perpetuate the teaching of their favourite teachers by committing them to writing. Thus the Gospels of Matthew and Mark probably arose out of the “common tradition”. Again, as the pro¬ cess developed, many versions of the story of Jesus and His words would appear, some of which would be less accurate than others. This would be an opportunity for believers of a scholarly turn of mind (suoh as St. Luke) to collate as many of these versions as were accessible, sift their material, and formulate a comprehensive version which would combine their authentic features into an organic whole. Finally, before the last survivor of the original band passed away, his disciples would have a strong desire to rescue his reminis¬ cences from oblivion ere it was too late, and the Fourth Gospel would arise as a supplement to the others, in some cases filling in gaps in the history and the teaching as found in the Synoptics, but, on the whole, following its own course, and bearing strong marks of the individuality of the writer, especially in the discourses. We thus see how the Gospels as we have them arose and took their final form. CHAPTER II. THE ORAL METHOD. 1. Its Origin.— Oral instruction is as old as human society, being the only method of tuition before the invention of letters. Nor is it likely that books will ever supersede the spoken word as a means of conveying thought from one mind to another. The living voice has many advantages over the written message for the enforcement of truth, and as an instrument of rebuke, appeal and persua¬ sion. In all high teaching the personality of the teacher plays an essential part, and this cannot be transmitted except faintly and inadequately through the medium of writing. There will thus always be an important function for the speaker to fulfil. At the same time the widespread dissemination of literature has profoundly affected and to some extent restricted this function in modern times. We must go back to illiterate ages, and reconstruct a very different environment from our own, with its highly organised press, in order to realise the place which oral teaching has filled in the history of human thought and of religion. 2, Instruction in Palestine was Oral. — Among the Jews, in the time of our Lord, this method of instruction was developed into an elaborate insti¬ tution ; probably in no other land or age did it ever play so large a part in the national life. The education of the people was based on a system of tuition in which the voice of the speaker and the memory of the hearer were the exclusive organs. 48 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD Behind everything of course lay the “ Written Word,” — the Old Testament Scriptures, — in the knowledge of which every devout and patriotic Jew made it his aim to be proficient ; and to this end he was early taught to read. But copies of the Scrip¬ tures, being all hand-written, were comparatively rare, and so expensive that none but the com¬ paratively well-to-do could ever hope to possess one. Thus the people depended on the frequent public reading of the Book in the schools and synagogues for their mastery of its contents. But alongside of this written literature there was a highly organised system of oral instruction, embodying the “ Tradition of the Elders ” (Matt. xv. 2), a vast body of learned disquisition, commentary and rule, in which the precepts of the Law were interpreted and applied to daily ritual and life. It was as we have seen the function of the scribes — specialists whose function it was to make an expert study of the Law, written and oral — to instruct the common people in this accumulated lore of the elders. This they did with remarkable zest and zeal, and as a labour of love. It would be impossible to exaggerate the unique devotion of this body of learned men, wTho for three centuries gave themselves to a difficult and com¬ plicated task, and with scrupulous care and accuracy transmitted the teaching of the Rabbis to their fellow-countrymen. Whatever may have to be said in denunciation of the substance of their teaching, with its stifling of the soul in an elaborate network of trivial and unmeaning regulations, with its sub¬ stitution of ritual observances for ethical principles, and its crass substitution of custom for spiritual motives as the mainspring of the religious life ; this at least must be said, — they gave their services freely to the religious education (as they conceived it) of the people, and prepared them far the coming of the great oral Teacher in a way that was unique and providential. THE ORAL METHOD 49 3. Rabbinical Methods. — It was a fundamental precept of the Rabbis, ‘‘Commit nothing to writing”. The vast mass of erudition of which they were masters, and which they taught their pupils, had been handed down to them by word of mouth, and they took the utmost pains to transmit it to others in the same way without corruption, alteration or addition in the slightest degree. This repeated feat of memory was performed with slavish devotion from generation to generation ; it was, indeed, not till the end of the second century a.d. that the Rabbinical literature was committed to writing, though the Halacha and the Haggada had come into existence at least a hundred years before the birth of our Lord. 4. Two results followed, in the benefits of which the whole community shared. First, a special sanctity was associated with the art of repetition in the process of religious instruction. Where the least originality would have been fatal to accuracy, the qualifications for success in the study of the Law were a retentive memory and a scrupulous ad¬ herence to the letter of the tradition. The ideal disciple was the man who handed on everything he had received in the ipsissima verba of the teacher; and a curse was passed upon him if he let anything slip. Rabbi Eliezer boasted that he had never taught anything that he had not learned from his instructor. Just as the expert copyists of the day, in wilting copies of the written Scriptures, aimed at being so accurate that the “jots and tittles ” of the Law were all faithfully reproduced, so all oral disciples aimed at reproducing the minutest details of the instruction passed on to them without the slightest variation in matter or form. Thus, there would gradually arise a public sentiment re¬ garding accuracy in the promulgation of any form of religious teaching, such as in our own days is shown only by critical scholars, or by trained 4 50 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD experimentalists in the dissecting-room and labora¬ tory. If any new teacher arose, whose instruction was valued by the community at large, and more especially by a band of personal followers, his words would be carefully noted by all, and even though never written would have an excellent opportunity of being widely disseminated in the exact form in which they had first been spoken. Secondly, as the result of this widespread and elaborate system of oral teaching, the public memory would be trained to an instinctive habit of accuracy. People educated as the Jews were educated would naturally have prodigious verbal memories. This, indeed, is a striking feature of illiterate communi¬ ties. The art of reading has involved serious penalties as a set-off to its incalculable advantages. The need for memorising facts, dates, calculations, and rules of life disappears with the cyclopaedia and the ready-reckoner ; and in obedience to the “law of parsimony” which runs through the uni¬ verse, a faculty that is not exercised loses its keenness. The invention of letters and the spread of printed books have thus altogether changed the conditions of our mental life. No memory is cap¬ able of retaining the immense body of information necessary to the student nowadays, except in its substance, and so the verbal memory is giving place to the “reference memory” — that faculty which retains the general recollection of a subject, together with the power of readily turning up the required detail in dictionary or cyclopaedia or special text- book. With certain exceptions, the art of verbal memory is, as a consequence, gradually dying out of the civilised communities. Our simpler forefathers, who knew hundreds of hymns, and whole books of the Bible, have been succeeded by a generation of worshippers many of whom can scarcely repeat “ by heart ” a single hymn accu¬ rately, and who depend on the concordance for THE ORAL METHOD 81 readily turning up a favourite Scriptural passage, the gist of which they know well, but whose exact words they cannot repeat memoriter. The gain is by no means all on our side. A well-filled memory, teeming with accurate and detailed information on a great subject, dependent on no outside help for mastery of its resources, is in itself a “ breathing book,” a “ living library This was the position of the well-educated Jew as regards the tenets of his religion. With a deep sense of the sanctity of the very words of the ancient books of his race and of the oral teaching he had received from his youth up on the one side, and an exquisitely trained memory on the other, he was happily equipped, first, for realising the force and originality of any new teaching, and, secondly, for readily appropriat¬ ing and reproducing the form as well as contents of that teaching in after-days. 5. Jesus Accepted the Situation. — We are now in possession of the situation awaiting the new Prophet. Jesus spoke to people well trained in the oral method, and had the initial advantage of speak¬ ing to a community thoroughly prepared for what He had to say. There were no reporters by when He spoke on the lake side, on the mountain slope, on the public way, beneath the friendly roof ; nor was one needed. Every listener’s mind was a sensitive surface for the reception, and every memory an expert organ for the permanent retention, of His message. 6. How He Perfected the Art of Oral Instruc¬ tion. — On the other hand, our Lord adapted the precise form of His teaching to the conditions of His age. It is clear that He intended from the first to be an oral Teacher and nothing else, and had made a profound study of the method best calculated to achieve success in that direction. The “ Fair Deposit ” of truth (2 Tim. i. 14) which He had come to reveal was thrown into the forms in which we find it in the Gospels for special reasons, exactly adjusted to the 52 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD needs of His hearers. A comparison of His utter¬ ances with those of the Rabbinical school brings home to us the extraordinary skill with which He clothed His message, with a view of being under¬ stood at the moment and of being afterwards retained without undue effort or strain. Speaking to men and women who had been overburdened from their childhood with a vast mass of undigested and trivial information about religious matters, He threw out the sublimest thoughts about God, and the soul, and the way of duty, — the most lucid interpretations of the mysteries and difficulties of the spiritual life, — the tenderest expositions and appeals, into a form seemingly as unstudied as the wind that bloweth where it listeth, and yet as beautifully and perfectly expressed as a poet’s lyric ; at once spontaneous and finished ; simple, yet admirably adapted to its pur¬ pose. The people were, we are told, “ astonished at His teaching ” ; probably they did not know that its charm and beauty were due to its form as well as its substance. The burden which He laid on the memory was light, and His yoke of instruction was easy. Those who came and listened to His “ sweet inevitable words ” little realised that, while they made the heart happy as it listened, they had hooks of steel to cling to mind and memory, so that they could never, once heard, be forgotten. The artistic genius which Pheidias put into his sculpture, and Homer into his epic, and the great painters into their pictures, Jesus put into the words in which His teach¬ ing is enshrined. Let us see how and in what sense this was so. 7. Conditions of Successful Oral Teaching. — There are five conditions which must be fulfilled by the oral teacher if his instruction is to be easily mastered and retained. It must be simple, vivid, portable, concrete, and so presented that it shall not be readily corrupted either in transmission or in interpretation. THE ORAL METHOD 53 (1) Simplicity.^- The mind of the expert may be so trained as to delight in complication of form, but simple minds must have simple teaching, or they soon get beyond their depth. If Jesus had intended to train a body of specialists and theologians He would have given them a deep and elaborate ex¬ position of His truth. But His aim was to reach all , and therefore His teaching, while profound in suggestion, and vast in scope and outlook, must, in essentials, be capable of presentation in a form within the mental grasp of “ babes and sucklings And so we find that it is marked by wonderful simplicity. This simplicity is noticeable in His illustrations, which are drawn from common everyday facts and experiences, requiring no expert observation in order to identify them, and never con¬ taining recondite, scientific or literary allusions. It is noticeable in the diction, the words being taken from the vocabulary of the people, and not from the dictionary of the scholar, or the archaisms of the antiquarian. It is, more than all, noticeable in the occasional reduction of the complexities of duty into a simple formula of conduct, as when the “whole duty of man” is put into the words: “ Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself ” (Matt. xxii. 37, 39). The Gospels teem with instances of this simplification of the laws of life in a manner that must appeal to the intelligence of the least educated mind ; and the spiritual relief felt by His hearers, accustomed as they were to the endless complexities of Rabbinical teaching, must have been immeasurable. (2) Concreteness. — Abstract truths are difficult to fix in the memory. “Wise saws ” are greatly helped by “ modern instances,” especially if these are clear- cut and apposite to the case. Jesus followed this method to an extent that shows how deeply im¬ pressed He wras with its value as an instrument of 54 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD teaching. His discourses teem with examples em¬ bodying a principle of conduct. Instead of laying down a general rule, He gives a concrete instance of its application, and leaves His hearers to disentangle the rule from the particular case and apply it for themselves. This gave the hearers something to think of as well as to remember, and the one pro¬ cess helped the other, besides taking them more intimately into the partnership of thought and action. The Sermon on the Mount is throughout pitched in this key of concreteness. Our Lord is there dealing with the general principles of conduct among those who are members of His kingdom. But, instead of uttering abstractions, He passes a series of pictures before the eyes of His hearers. He bids them think, not of vague qualities, such as meek¬ ness, spiritual sensitiveness, long-suffering, patience, but of the people who embody these qualities. He throws up the lights of His teaching by means of a contrast with the older Mosaic precepts. He illustrates folly, anger, revengefulness, ostentation, by drawing in brief sharp lines the kind of people who are guilty of these sins. He passes in rapid review a panorama of despicable vices and noble virtues as seen in individual men and women, and in classes. At the close He summarises the effect of His teaching, or its neglect, in the remarkable picture of the two men, one of whom built his house on the rock, the other on the sand. There is thus a vast amount of teaching concentrated into the briefest compass, and yet how clear and sharp and concrete are its outlines, how unforgettable its details, how it haunts the memory and stings the conscience with its unmistakable appeal ! The same is true of all the discourses and conversations of the great Teacher. We move through a crowded gallery of ideal por¬ traits in which every one finds his own sins and follies and upward strivings drawn in lines that cannot be dismissed from the mind by any effort, THE ORAL METHOD 55 and which carry the moral assent of the soul at every step. (3) Vividness . — These two features of our Lord’s teaching make it vivid in the extreme. There is no vagueness of form or substance in these bright and picturesque discourses. We are kept moving among highlights and deep shadows, and even the twilight is full of gleams and flashes of thought. It is easy to for¬ get a rule, but who, for instance, can forget the lesson of neighbourliness embodied in the charming story of the Good Samaritan (Luke x. 25-37) ? The lawyer who stood up tempting Jesus wflth the conundrum, “Who is my neighbour ? ” might have been answered in brief by being told, “He who most needs thy help ”. Instead of this truism, we have a story in which that law of helpfulness which is of the essence of neighbourly feeling is thrown into splendid relief ; imagination and sympathetic feeling are enlisted on the side of the moral judgment to which the final appeal is made. We see the injured man, who is left helpless by the representatives of law and re¬ ligion, rescued by an alien of another race ; we follow the narrative with an interest which belongs to every incident of distress and rescue, and then the unexpected but unavoidable question (ver, 36) is put, which at once takes the tempter captive in his own snare, and which has planted deep in the heart of Christendom the principle of disinterested service for humanity. Thus we might travel through the vivid galleries of the Gospel, and show how perfectly it is adapted for its purpose of indelibly impressing the loftiest teaching on the mind, heart and memory of mankind. (4) Another feature of this imaginative and pictorial method of teaching was its portable char¬ acter. A long, elaborate train of thought is not easily carried in the mind, however vivid may be its impression at the time of its delivery. Some of its most precious elements may be let fall on the 56 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD way through the interstices of the memory. But these short, pithy, pregnant utterances of Jesus are so complete in themselves that they are easily carried away and retained. Doubtless, as we have them, they are still further condensed from what they were in their original form (sometimes to the point of obscurity) ; but that the discourses of our Lord were thus broken up, each fragment being complete in itself, is unquestionable, and many of them we have doubtless (in the Synoptics) in the precise form of their delivery at the time. The difference between this style of discourse and one more amplified is seen clearly in the contrast between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel, in which the evangelist has clearly “edited” the words of Jesus somewhat freely, their characteristic pregnancy and sparkle being largely lost in the process, though there are many cases in which the original form unmistakably survives ( cf . John iii. 6; iii. 17; iv. 24; iv. 37; ix. 39 ; xii. 25, etc.). In consequence of this peculiarity the content of the Fourth Gospel is notori¬ ously less easy to commit to memory than that of the other three. In the latter the material is so arranged in detached, easily recollected passages, that their substance, and generally their words, bury themselves ineffaceably in the mind, and reproduce themselves automatically as the call of duty and the events of experience suggest them in the memory. No effort is usually required either to memorise or to recollect them, when fitting occasions arrive to which they are applicable in the hurry and stress of life. They leap full armed into the mind at the touch of the appropriate suggestion. (5) There is one other feature of Christ’s oral method which must be noticed, and which is due to the peculiar circumstances in which He taught. He was often surrounded by a mixed multitude of people, some of whom were friendly, others indifferent but curious, others hostile to Him per- THE ORAL METHOD 57 sonally. In speaking to such crowds He was thus open to every kind of misunderstanding and mis¬ interpretation. Many attended on His ministrations, especially towards the close of His life, for the sole purpose of confounding Him in speech — a plan made more easy by His conversational method — and of afterwards twisting His words into an indictable offence before the authorities. A considerable pro¬ portion of His recorded utterances were addressed directly to this class, who were usually the emis¬ saries or representatives of the scribes and Phari¬ sees, and so in close league with His public enemies —the priestly party in the State. It was therefore necessary that He should adopt some method of instruction which would safeguard it both from misquotation and misinterpretation. The precious germ of His truth must be enclosed as in a husk or shell which would help to preserve it from ill treatment. Our Lord achieved this end in a way at once simple and effective. He spoke to the “ people ” in “ parables ”. It was a feature of these parables that they half-revealed and half-concealed the truth within them. To such as were in sympathy with His aim, these charming stories would present no insurmountable barrier to the realisation of His meaning. The lesson they contained was always within reach of the devout disciple. Puzzling and obscure as certain aspects of them undoubtedly were, they told their own spiritual story with force and directness to such as were open to their appeal. It was indeed an advantage that they demanded close attention, and stimulated curiosity, and called for careful study in order to master their full meaning ; the lesson sank deeper, and made a more sure place for itself in heart and memory. But to the unsympathetic hearer these parables presented an insuperable barrier. He could not fathom their meaning. The disciples, 58 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD struck with the contrast between their Master’s clear and lucid exposition of His truth to them in private, were puzzled by the change in His method when addressing the mixed multitude, and asked Him the reason (Matt. xiii. 10). Our Lord’s reply showed (1) that He had a deliberate purpose in adopting this method, and (2) that this purpose had reference to the hostile attitude of the audiences which He often addressed (vers. 13, 15). He put His truth into a form almost impossible to mutilate or traverse. His enemies would hear the stories, would indeed endeavour to fix then' form, and repeat them accurately, in their endeavour to fathom their veiled meaning, and would thus give a wider currency to His teaching ; but they could not penetrate to their core of meaning, and so could not pervert it. The plan was characterised by a deep wisdom and a sure effectiveness. The form of the parables was not only useful at the time in meeting the exigencies of His public ministry, but has been of incalculable service also in later times. The great Master has been hindered by His friends as well as His enemies in making known His Gospel. The truth has suffered from misinterpretation from the one side as well as the other. The parables, like all Christ’s discourses, have been put through the rack of an unending commentary, much of it profitless and futile in the extreme. But the parables themselves still stand in their original form, and vindicate the wisdom of the Teacher in their appeal to the devout soul. Brief, pregnant, picturesque and portable in form, their inner meaning emerges through all the accumula¬ tions of later thought, and finds its home in the teachable heart. They are an unending source of speculation and wonder to the scholar ; but they do not fail of their mark in presenting the truths of the kingdom to scholar and simple alike. 8. Summary. — All these characteristics of the THE OEAL METHOD 59 method of Christ’s teaching carry out that cen¬ tral principle of “impressive pregnancy,” to quote Wendt’s phrase, which aimed at “ the greatest clearness in the briefest compass It was an essentially oral style of instruction ; and it suc¬ ceeded in bringing that style to its highest pitch of perfection in form and substance. It was simple, concrete, vivid, portable, and so presented the truths that it could not be readily corrupted either in trans¬ mission or in interpretation. Of no other teaching can this be said as of the teaching of Jesus. The effectiveness of the form for the purpose shows clearly that He had studied the possibilities of the oral method with a view of realising its fullest possi¬ bilities ; and the result is a monument of Divine skill and wisdom in the presentation of the truth, so as to meet the exigencies of the moment, and overcome the imperfections of the human mind in its endeavours to preserve and disseminate it. CHAPTER III. THE PICTURE-GOSPEL. 1. Yariety of our Lord’s Methods. — We will now look a little more in detail at the particular forms into which Jesus threw His oral instruction. Keeping in mind the four characteristics pointed out in the preceding chapter, — simplicity, concreteness, vividness and portability, — these forms will be found to fulfil all the conditions in a way that fills the student with admiration and wonder at the skill and insight of the Master Teacher in handling His material, and in adapting it to the practical needs of His hearers. 2. Forms of Speech. — The external forms of speech used by our Lord included almost every possible method of the illustrative and pictorial handling of truth. Proverbs, pithy and pregnant sayings, paradoxes, apothegms, examples, imagery drawn from every department of life, incidents and historical events, object-lessons as well as parables, follow each other in rapid succession, and turn the pages of the Gospel into a picture-gallery in which the profoundest principles of conduct are bodied forth in unfading colours. Our Lord was keenly observant of the life around Him, and everything He saw became in turn a mirror of truth and duty. In the commonest facts and incidents of daily experience He saw something which reflected the eternal laws of the Kingdom of God. 3. Proverbs. — The proverb has always been a favourite means of storing up an important truth (60) THE PICTURE-GOSPEL 61 for the common use of mankind. The practical wisdom of all nations is to be found in their pro¬ verbial sayings. There was a great body of such sayings in current use among the Jews. Our Lord often adopted such as were in current use, and made them His own in virtue of the higher uses to which He put them. At other times He threw His own ideas into this crystalline form of speech. It is not always easy to distinguish these two classes, nor is it needful for our purpose. Whether original or adopted, they stand out in the Gospels as an embodiment of His own thought and teaching. To this class of pithy sayings belong such utterances as these : “ The whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick” (Matt. ix. 12); “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice : I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (ib. ver. 13) ; “ Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” (ib. vii. 16); “A city set on a hill can¬ not be hid” (ib. v. 14); “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also ” (ib. vi. 21) ; “ He that hath ears to hear, let him hear ” (ib. xi. 15, etc.); “By thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be condemned ” (ib. xii. 37); “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it” (ib. xvi. 25) ; “ How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God!” (Mark x. 23); “ With men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (ib. ver. 27); “The poor ye have with you always ” (Matt. xxvi. 11), etc.1 5. Paradox. — Closely related to the proverb is the paradox, which may be defined as a saying seem¬ ingly at variance with common sense, but which, with proper limitations, resolves itself into a profound 1 Other instances of proverbial sayings are the following : Matt. vii. 6, 15 ; ix. 16 ; xv. 14 ; xxiii. 16, 24 ; Mark vii. 27 ; ix. 50 ; Luke ix. 60, 62 ; xii. 32 ; xxiii. 31 ; John iii. 6 : xiv. 24, 27, 62 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD truth. The pragmatic and unimaginative manner in which our Lord’s teaching has too often been dealt with has stood greatly in the way of its practical influence ; and of nothing is this more true than of His use of this method of instruction. In every paradoxical saying there is a palpable element of exaggeration ; the thought is purposely thrown into perplexing and overburdened phraseology in order (1) to force an unwelcome truth on the atten¬ tion, (2) to make it live in the memory, and (3) to stimulate a thoughtful habit of mind on the part of the disciple whose business it is to disentangle its substance from its shell, and so apply it to the call of duty. Whenever therefore our Lord had a par¬ ticularly unwelcome but important law of life to enunciate He made a large use of paradox. For this reason His paradoxes should be carefully studied, for they contain many of His most distinctive laws of conduct. In their interpretation there is a call on the “ sanctified imagination ” in order to distinguish between the form and the substance of the teaching — a faculty lamentably deficient in many commentators. “ The letter ” of all paradoxical modes of expression “ killeth ; the spirit maketh alive.” Some of the most grotesque formulae of conduct have been laid down and followed for lack of an intelligent applica¬ tion of this principle of common sense in the inter¬ pretation of the teaching of Christ. 5. Some Illustrations. — This point is so important that a few illustrations are needful to enforce it. (1) In Matt. v. 38-42 our Lord gives utterance to no less than four paradoxical sayings in illustration of the law of patience under injury and benevolence in the face of aggression. We are told to turn the “ other cheek ” to the smiter, to permit the rapacious suitor to take more than he asks for, to go twain with the man who would compel us to go one mile, and to give freely to the man who would ask or borrow anything from us. A literal obedience to THE PICTURE-GOSPEL 63 these injunctions is clearly impossible under any conditions of life except those of unqualified martyr¬ dom ; and society would speedily perish if they were made into an absolute rule of conduct for all Chris¬ tians. And yet the spirit of kindliness and accom¬ modation which they enjoin is manifestly of the essence of the Christian religion. Revengefulness, litigiousness, a selfish sense of meum and tuum, stinginess of disposition, are all opposed to the Christ- like temper ; and, whereas the stability of society de¬ pends on a sane and reasonable defence of personal liberty and possession, its higher interests are best safeguarded by the voluntary surrender of our rights where the well-being of those opposed to us is con¬ cerned. Inside these hard sayings there is thus a sweet kernel of practical wisdom. The principle they advocate was in direct opposition to the dominant temper and worldly wisdom of the day ; our Lord therefore throws His teaching into this exaggerated paradoxical form in order to ensure that it should find its way into the intelligence of His auditors, and then into their hearts. (2) Another paradoxical remark made by our Lord is to be found in J ohn vi. 53 : ‘ ‘ Then said J esus unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you ’ ’ . This startling utterance perplexed and confounded even His disciples, who said concerning it: “ This is an hard saying ; who can hear it ? ” The sacerdotal school still quote it in proof of their theory of the transubstantiation (or consubstantiation) of the “ elements ” in the Lord’s Supper. A true exegesis repudiates all connection between this passage and the memorial feast instituted some time afterwards by Jesus, and finds its meaning in the mystical union of Christ and His people, which is so close and vital as to be fitly symbolised by this strong and vivid simile ; furthermore, He Himself gives the key to its interpretation in verse 63, where He shows 64 THE MASTEK AND HIS METHOD that He speaks not of His physical life, but of the spirit of His teaching and of the love which binds Him indissolubly with those who have faith in His name. The tyranny of the letter of Scripture has nowhere shown itself more obtrusively than in the degradation of this passage in the interests of a theory. (3) A third paradox that may be noted is in the reflection made by Jesus on the inability of the young ruler to obey the condition just laid down of entrance into the kingdom, when He turned His disappointed gaze round about, and, after a pause, said to His disciples : “ How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God ! ” (Mark x. 23). Here He Himself furnishes us with the comment which turns the paradox into a truth. Marking the perplexity which His words had caused, expressed in their startled countenances, He adds : “ Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the Kingdom of God ! ” At once light was let into the heart of the problem, though even then the disciples showed their inability to follow His meaning. In the same way other para¬ doxical sayings of Jesus must be considered ; we must get behind the exaggerated words, the preg¬ nant form of expression, and grasp the inner sense. The difficulty then vanishes at once, and the self- evidencing laws of the kingdom come home to us with a clearness and a cogency that are impossible to resist. 6iJllustratiYe Imagery. — We pass now to the consideration of our Lord’s illustrations. In these we have the very cream and poetry of imagery. They stand alone for the familiar character of the similes used and the loftiness of the teaching they suggest. The common threads of human life are turned into an embroidered garment, a veritable cloth of gold, in which the warp is of earth and the woof of heaven. THE PICTURE-GOSPEL 65 7. Sources of Imagery. — It is instructive to note the breadth and richness of the fields whence these illustrations are drawn. There is scarcely a depart¬ ment of contemporary life, scarcely a field of com¬ mon observation in nature, which is not in turn put under contribution. The following table shows this at a glance : — A. Nature and Natural Phenomena. (1) In¬ animate. — Light (Matt. v. 14 ; John viii. 2 ; xii. 35, 36, 46, etc.) ; the sun (Matt. v. 45; xiii. 6, 21, 43); lightning ( ib . xxiv. 27 ; Luke x. 18) ; earthquakes (Matt. xxiv. 7) ; fire (ib. xxv. 41 ; Mark ix. 43-48 ; Luke xii. 49 ; xvi. 23, 24) ; clouds (Matt. xvi. 2, 3 ; Luke xii. 54) ; rain (Matt. v. 45 ; vii. 25-7) ; stonn (Luke xxi. 25); mountains (Matt. v. 14; xvii. 20; xxi. 21, 22). (2) Animate. — The camel (Matt, xxiii. 24) ; ox (Luke xiv. 19) ; ass (ib. xiii. 15 ; xiv. 5) ; sheep (many places); wolf (Matt. vii. 15; x. 16; John x. 12); fox (Matt. viii. 20; Luke xiii. 32); dog (Matt. xv. 26 ; Luke xvi. 21) ; swine (Matt. vii. 6 ; Luke xv. 15, 16) ; birds (Matt. x. 16, 29, 31 ; xiii. 4, 19, 23, 32, 37 ; xvi. 26 ( cf . viii. 20) ; Luke xii. 6, etc.); serpents (Matt. x. 16; xii. 34; xxiii. 33, etc.). Of trees and plants, the sycamore (black mulberry) (Luke xvii. 6) ; the olive (ib. xvi. 6) ; the fig (Matt. xxi. 19 ; Luke xiii. 6-7) ; the mustard (Matt. xiii. 31, 32; xvii. 20); mint, anise and cum¬ min (ib. xxiii. 23) ; the lily (ib. vi. 28-30) ; thorns, etc. (ib. vii. 16 ; Luke vi. 44) ; the reed (Matt. xi. 17). B. Human Life, (1) The Body. — Flesh and blood (Matt. xvii. 17 ; John vi. 51, 53-54) ; the eye (Matt, vi. 22-23 ; xiii. 16 ; Mark vi. 22) ; the ear (Matt. xi. 15 ; xiii. 9, 42) ; hands and feet (ib. v. 29, 30 ; xviii. 8, 9, etc.) ; cheek (ib. v. 39). Hunger and thirst (ib. v. 6 ; John iv. 14 ; vii. 37) ; laughing , mourning and weeping (Matt. viii. 2 ; xiii. 42, 50, etc. ; Luke vi. 25) ; sleep (Matt. ix. 24 ; xxv. 5 ; John xi. 11-14). Sickness of various kinds (too numerous to detail) ; 66 THE MASTER AND HIS METHOD blindness (Matt. ix. 12 ; xv. 14) ; death (ib. viii. 22 ; xxiii. 27, etc.). (2) Home and Household Occupations. — Houses (Matt. vi. 6, 20 ; viii. 7 ; x. 27 ; xxiv. 17, 43 ; Luke xiii. 25, etc.) ; furnishings (lamp, Matt. v. 15, 16 ; Mark iv. 21 ; John v. 35 ; cf. Matt. xxv. 1-4 ; seats , Matt. viii. 11; xxiii. 6); food and cooking (Matt. xiii. 33; xv. 26; xvi. 6, 12; xviii. 6; xxiv. 41); bread (ib. vi. 11 ; xxvi. 26, etc. ; John vi. 33-35, 51). Birth (John iii. 3 ; xvi. 21-22). Natural relationships (Matt, x. 35-36 ; xii. 50 ; Luke xv. 13). Sleep (Luke xi. 7 ; xvii. 34). Service (Matt. xxiv. 45 ; Luke xii. 42 ; xxii. 27; John xii. 14-15; xv. 15). (3) Pastoral and Agricultural Life. — Shepherds, etc. (Matt, xviii. 12-14 ; xxv. 32-33 ; xxvi. 31 ; Luke xii. 32, etc. ; John x. 3, 7, 9, etc. ; xxi. 15-17) ; hus¬ bandmen (Matt. ix. 38 ; xx. 1, 8, 9 ; xxi. 28, 33 ; Luke xvii. 7-10; John xv. 1) ; the soil and its tillage (Matt. xiii. 4-8 ; Luke ix. 62) ; sowing (Matt. xiii. 3, 25-30, 38 ; Luke viii. 11) ; growth (Mark xii. 26-29; John xii. 24); harvest (Matt. xiii. 39; xxv. 24; Mark iv. 29; Luke xii. 17-18; John iv. 35, 38) ; vineyard (John xv. 1-5) ; wine (Matt. ix. 17). (4) Trade. — Fisherman (Matt. iv. 19 ; xiii. 47-49 ; Luke v. 4, 10 ; John xxi. 6) ; tailor (Matt. ix. 16) ; builder (ib. vii. 24-27 ; Luke xiv. 28-29) ; merchant (Matt. xiii. 45-46 ; cf. vii. 6) ; business (Matt. vii. 2 ; Luke xiv. 18, 19 ; xvi. 1-9 ; cf. Luke vii. 38) ; debts (Matt. vi. 12, 15 ; xviii. 35 ; Luke vii. 41-43 ; xix. 13). (5) Civil and National Affairs. — Bobbery (Luke x. 30, etc.) ; violence (Matt. xxi. 35-39) ; judgment (ib. v. 21, 22, 25, 39, 40; Luke xviii. 2-8; cf. xii. 14, 15) ; punishment (Matt. v. 26 ; xxv. 46 ; John v. 27). Taxes (Matt. xxi. 31 ; xxii. 21). (6) Social Customs. — Marriage (Matt. ix. 15 ; xxv. 1, etc.); hospitality (ib. x. 11; Mark ix. 50; Luke xix. 52-56) ; feasts (Matt. xxii. 3, 4 ; Luke vii. 44-46 ; xiv. 16, 17). Salutations (Luke x. 4). Journeying (Matt. x. 9, 10, 14). THE PICTURE-GOSPEL 67 (7) Religious Life. — Prayer (Matt. vi. 5 ; xxi. 22, 23, 25 ; Luke xi. 8, 9 ; xviii. 1-8) ; alms (Matt, vi. 2) ; tithes (Matt. xv. 5, 6) ; fasting ( ib . vi. 16-18) ; Sabbath (ib. xii. 5; John vii. 22, 23, etc.); temjple (John ii. 19, 21 ; xiv. 2) and many others.1 8. Human Interest of these Similes.— Glanc¬ ing back at this table, one of the first features that emerges is the human interest of the illustrations used by our Lord. He seldom used imagery of a purely natural kind, i.e., drawn from the impersonal operations of physical forces ; there is nearly always some human agent or sufferer in view whose action oT suffering invests the simile with a sympathetic as well as intellectual aspect. The springing of seed, for instance, the rising of leaven, the secret growing of corn, are associated with the sower, the housewife, the expectant husbandman. Nature is interesting to Him only as the handiwork of God and the mirror of His perfections or pro¬ vidential care for His creatures, or as the theatre of human joys and sorrows. The cold impersonal attitude of the modern scientist towards creation was impossible to the Lover of Souls. Nature is the vehicle of truth as applied to conduct ; she is a bundle of analogies in the sense of the poet Two worlds are ours, ’tis sin alone Forbids us to descry The mystic earth and heaven within, Plain as the sea and sky. In this way our view of nature is beautifully enriched and impregnated with higher meanings ; and her operations resolve themselves into a series of delightful reminders of human duty and of the Divine love. 9, Didactic Use. — A second feature lies in the didactic rather than the aesthetic use of analogy. 1 This list is compiled from Resker’s admirable little work on Our Lord's Illustrations (T.