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 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 m y7v CK* 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 the widow of George Dugan, '96 
 
 .^74 
 
 e* »7 
 
THE GOSPEL 
 
 ACCORDING TO 
 
 ST. LUKE. 
 
 j 
 
 
 Br the nrv. 
 
 HENRY BURTON, M. A. 
 
 Eim petit 
 A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 
 
 51 East 10th Street, near Broadway 
 
 1807 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 PAG I 
 1HE GENESIS OF THE GOSPEL .••••.! 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE MUTE PRIEST. ....•••• 15 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE GOSPEL PSALMS ..••••• 29 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE VIRGIN MOTHER ..... # .47 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS . . * . 67 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS ...... 80 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE TEMPTATION •••..•••• I05 
 
 CHAPTER VI IL 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE JUBILEE •••••« 128 
 
ri CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PAGX 
 A SABBATH IN GALILEE ...«•• 148 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE CALLING OF THE FOUR . • • « • • • 1 62 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 CONCERNING PRAYER # .177 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 THF FAITH OF THE CENTURION .»•».. 195 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 THE ANOINTING OF THE FEET .••••• 2O0. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER . . . # « .225 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD . . . . « . 24 1 
 
 CHATTER XVI. 
 THE MIRACLES OF HEALING . ..•••• 255 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES .«•••• 269 
 
 CHAPTER XVIIL 
 THE TRANSFIGURATION . . . . # # # *28l 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE GOOD SAMARITAN ....••*. «<U 
 
CONTENTS. vii 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 PAGE 
 THE TWO SISTERS ......... 306 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 LOST AND FOUND «... 317 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 THE ETHICS OF THE GOSrEL . ...... 336 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL 352 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE W4TCH IN GETHSERIANE ...... 364 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 THE PASSION . • • • 377 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 THE FIRST LOUD* 5 DAY . . , . . » , <00 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE GENESIS OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 THE four walls and the twelve gates of the Seer 
 looked in different directions, but together they 
 guarded, and opened into, one City of God. So the 
 four Gospels look in different directions; each has its own 
 peculiar aspect and inscription ; but together they lead 
 towards, and unveil, one Christ, " which is, and which 
 was, and which is to come, the Almighty." They are the 
 successive quarterings of the one Light. We call them 
 "four" Gospels, though in reality they form but one, 
 just as the seven arches of colour weave one bow ; and 
 that there should be four, and not three or five, was 
 the purpose and design of the Mind which is above all 
 minds. There are " diversities of operations " even in 
 making Testaments, New or Old ; but it is one Spirit 
 who is "over all, and in all ;" and back of all diversity 
 is a heavenly unity — a unity that is not broken, but 
 rather beautified, by the variety of its component parts. 
 Turning to the third Gospel, its opening sentences 
 strike a key-note unlike the tone of the other three. 
 Matthew, the Levite Apostle, schooled in the receipt 
 of custom — where parleying and preambling were not 
 allowed — goes to his subject w ? ith sharp abruptness, 
 beginning his story with a "genesis," "the book of the 
 generation of Jesus Christ." Mark, too, and John, 
 without staying for any prelude, proceed at once to 
 
 i 
 
THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 their portrayals of the Divine Life, each starting 
 with the same word " beginning " — though between the 
 u beginning " of St. Mark and that of St. John there is 
 room for an eternity. St. Luke, on the other hand, 
 stays to give to his Gospel a somewhat lengthy preface, 
 a kind of vestibule, where w r e become acquainted 
 with the presence and personality of the verger, before 
 passing within the temple proper. 
 
 It is true the Evangelist dees not here inscribe his 
 name ; it is true that after inserting these lines of 
 explanation, he loses sight of himself completely, with 
 a "sublime repressing of himself" such as John did 
 not know ; but that he here throws the shadow of him- 
 self upon the page of Scripture, calling the attention of 
 all people and ages to the "me also," shows clearly 
 that the personal element cannot be eliminated from the 
 question of inspiration. Light is the same in its nature; 
 it moves only in straight lines ; it is governed by fixed 
 laws ; but in its reflections it is infinitely varied, turn- 
 ing to purple, blue, or gold, according to the nature of 
 the medium and reflecting substance. And what, indeed, 
 is beauty, what the harmony of colours, but the visible 
 music as the same light plays upon the diverse keys? 
 Exactly the same law rule*, in inspiration. As the 
 Divine Love needed an incarnation, an inshrining in 
 human flesh, that the Divine Word might be vocal, so 
 the Divine Light needs its incarnation too. Indeed, we 
 can scarcely conceive of any revelation of the Divine 
 Mind but as coming through a human irind. It needs 
 the human element to analyze and to throw it forward, 
 just as the electric spark needs the dull carbon-point to 
 make it visible. Heaven and earth are here, as else- 
 where, " threads of the same loom," and if we take out 
 one, even the earthly woof of the humanities, we leave 
 
THE GENESIS OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 only a tangle ; and if it is true of works of art that " to 
 know them we must know the man who produced them/' 
 it is equally important, if we would know the Scripture, 
 that we have some knowledge of the scribe. And 
 especially important is it here, for there are few books 
 of Scripture on which the writer's own personality is 
 more deeply impressed than on the Gospel of St. Luke. 
 The "me also" is only legible in the third verse, but 
 we may read it, between the lines, through the whole 
 Gospel. 
 
 Concerning the life of St. Luke the facts are few. 
 It has been thought by some that he was one of the 
 " certain Greeks " who came to Jerusalem to worship ; 
 while others, again, suppose him to be the nameless one 
 of the two Eramaus travellers. But both these sup- 
 positions are set aside by the fact that the Evangelist 
 carefully separates himself from those who were " eye- 
 witnesses," which he could not well have done had he 
 taken part in those closing scenes of the Lord's life, or 
 had he been honoured with that "infallible proof" of the 
 Lord's resurrection. That he was a Gentile is evident ; 
 his speech bewrayeth him ; for he speaks with a Grecian 
 accent, while Greek idioms are sprinkled over his pages. 
 Indeed, St. Paul speaks of him as not being of the 
 "circumcision" (Col. iv. II, 14), and he himself, in 
 Acts i. 19, speaks of the dwellers at Jerusalem, and 
 the Aceldama of " their " proper tongue. Tradition, 
 with unanimous voice, represents him as a native of 
 Antioch, in Syria. 
 
 Responding to the Divine Voice that bids him 
 " write," St. Luke brings to the task new and special 
 qualifications. Familiar with the Old Testament 
 Scriptures — at least in their Septuagint form, as his 
 many quotations show- intimately acquainted with the 
 
THE COS PEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Hebrew faith and ritual, he yet brings to his work a 
 mind unwarped by its traditions. He knows nothing 
 of that narrowness of spirit that Hebraism uncon- 
 sciously engendered, with its insulation from the great 
 outer world. His mount of vision was not Mount Zion, 
 but a new Pisgah, lying outside the sacred borders, 
 and showing him " all the kingdoms of the world," as 
 the Divine thought of humanity took possession of him. 
 And not only so, we must remember that his connection 
 with Christianity has been mainly through St. Paul, 
 who was the Apoitle of the " uncircumcision." For 
 months, if not for years, he has been his close com- 
 panion, reading his innermost thoughts ; and so long 
 and so close together have they been, their two hearts 
 have learned to beat in a perfect synchronism. Besides, 
 we must not forget that the Gentile question — their 
 status in the new kingdom, and the conditions demanded 
 of them — had been the burning question of the early 
 Church, and that it was at this same Antioch it had 
 reached its height. It was at Antioch the Apostle Peter 
 had " dissembled," so soon forgetting the lessons of 
 the Csesarean Pentecost, holding himself aloof from the 
 Gentile converts until Paul felt constrained to rebuke 
 him publicly ; and it was to Antioch came the decree 
 of the Jerusalem Council, that Magna Charta which 
 recognized and enfranchised manhood, giving the 
 privileges of the new kingdom to Gentiles, without 
 imposing upon them the Judaic anachronism of cir- 
 cumcision. We can therefore well understand the bent 
 of St. Luke's mind and the drift of his sympathies ; 
 and we may expect that his pen — though it is a reed 
 shaken with the breath of a higher inspiration — will 
 at the same time move in the direction of these 
 sympathies. 
 
THE GENESIS OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 And it is exactly this — its " gentility," if we may be 
 allowed to give a new accent and a new meaning to an 
 old word — that is a prominent feature of the third 
 Gospel. Not, however, that St. Luke decries Judaism, 
 or that he denies the "advantage" the Jews have; he 
 cannot do this without erasing Scripture and silencing 
 history ; but what he does is to lift up the Son of Man 
 in front of their tabernacle of witness. He does not 
 level down Judaism ; he levels up Christianity, letting 
 humanity absorb nationality. And so the Gospel of 
 St. Luke is the Gospel of the world, greeting "all 
 nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues " with 
 its " peace on earth." St. Matthew traces the genealogy 
 of Christ back to Abraham ; St. Luke goes farther back, 
 to the fountain-head, where all the divergent streams 
 meet and mingle, as he traces the descent to Adam, the 
 Son of God. Matthew shows us the " wise men," lost 
 in Jerusalem, and inquiring, " Where is He that is born 
 King of the Jews ? " But St. Luke gives, instead, the 
 " good tidings " to " all people ; " and then he repeats 
 the angel song, which is the key-note of his Gospel, 
 "Glory to God in the highest, . . . goodwill toward 
 men." It is St. Luke only who records the first 
 discourse at Nazareth, showing how in ancient times, 
 even, the mercy of God flowed out towards a Gentile 
 widow and a Gentile leper. St. Luke alone mentions 
 the mission of the Seventy, whose very number was a 
 prophecy of a world-wide Gospel, seventy being the 
 recognized symbol of the Gentile world, as twelve 
 stood for the Hebrew people. St. Luke alone gives 
 us the parable of the Good Samaritan, showing that 
 all the virtues did not reside in Israel, but that there 
 was more of humanity, and so more of Divinity, in the 
 compassionate Samaritan than in their priest and 
 
THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Levite. St. Luke alone records the call of Zacchaeus, 
 the Gentile publican, telling how Jesus cancelled theii 
 laws of heredity, passing him up among the sons of 
 Abraham. St. Luke alone gives us the twin parables 
 of the lost coin and the lost man, showing how Jesus 
 had come to seek and to save that which was lost, 
 which was humanity, here, and there, and everywhere. 
 And so there brcat' es all through this Gospel a 
 catholic spirit, more pronounced than in the rest, a 
 spirit whose rhythm and deep meaning have been 
 caught in the lines — 
 
 " There's a wideness in God's mercy, 
 Like the wideness of the sea." 
 
 The only other fact of the Evangelist's life we will 
 here notice is that of his profession ; and we notice 
 this simply because it enters as a factor into his work, 
 reappearing there frequently. He was a physician ; 
 and from this fact some have supposed that he was a 
 freedman, since many of the Roman physicians were 
 of that class. But this by no means follows. All phy- 
 sicians were not freedmen ; while the language and style 
 of St. Luke show him to be an educated man, one, too, 
 who walked in the upper classes of society. Where he 
 speaks natively, as here in the introduction, he uses 
 a pure Greek, somewhat rounded and ornate, in which 
 there is a total absence of those rusticisms common 
 in St. Mark. That he followed his calling at Troas, 
 where he first joined St. Paul, is probable ; but that he 
 practised it on board one of the large corn-ships of the 
 Mediterranean is a pure conjecture, for which even his 
 nautical language affords no presumption ; for one 
 cannot be at sea for a few weeks — especially with an 
 observant eye and attentive ear, as St. Luke's were — 
 
THE GENESIS OF THE GOSPEL, 
 
 without falling naturally into nautical language. One's 
 speech soon tastes of salt. 
 
 The calling of a physician naturally develops cer- 
 tain powers of analysis and synthesis. It is the art of 
 putting things together. From the seen or felt sym- 
 toms he traces out the unseen cause. Setting down 
 the known quantities, by processes of comparison or of 
 elimination he finds the unknown quantity, which is 
 the disease, its nature and its seat. And so on the 
 the pages of the third Gospel we frequently find the 
 shadow of the physician. It appears even in his brief 
 preface ; for as he sits down with ample materials 
 before him — on one side the first-hand testimony of 
 11 eye-witnesses," and on the other the many and some- 
 what garbled narratives of anonymous scribes — we see 
 the physician-Evangelist exercising a judicious selec- 
 tion, and thus compounding or distilling his pure 
 elixir. Then, too, a skilled and educated physician 
 would find easy access into the higher circles of 
 society, his very calling furnishing him with letters 
 of introduction. And so, indeed, we find it. Our 
 physician dedicates his Gospel, and also the "Acts," 
 to, not the " most excellent," but the u most noble " 
 Theophilus, giving to him the same title that he after- 
 wards gave to Felix and to Festus. Perhaps its English 
 equivalent would be "the honourable." At any rate 
 it shows that this Theophilus was no mere myth, a 
 locution for any " friend of God," but that he w T as a 
 person of rank and influence, possibly a Roman go- 
 vernor. Then, too, St. Luke's mention of certain names 
 omitted by the other Evangelists, such as Chuza and 
 Manaen, would suggest that probably he had some 
 personal acquaintance with the members of Herod's 
 household. Be this as it may, we recognize the 
 
THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 "physician" in St. Luke's habits of observation, his 
 attention to detail, his fondness for grouping together 
 resemblances and contrasts, his fuller reference to 
 miracles of healing, and his psychological observations. 
 We find in him a student of the humanities. Even in 
 his portrayal of the Christ it is the human side of the 
 Divine nature that he emphasizes ; while all through his 
 Gospel, his thought of humanity, like a wide-reaching 
 sky, overlooks and embraces all such earthly distinc- 
 tions as position, sex, or race. 
 
 With a somewhat high-sounding word "Forasmuch," 
 which here makes its solitary appearance in the pages 
 of Scripture — a word, too, which, like its English 
 equivalent, is a treble compound— the Evangelist calls 
 our attention to his work, and states his reasons for 
 undertaking it. It is impossible for us to fix either 
 the date or the place where this Gospel was written, 
 but probably it was some time between a.d. 58-60. 
 Now, what was the position of the Church at that 
 date, thirty-five years after the Crucifixion ? The fiery 
 tongues of Pentecost had flashed far and wide, and 
 from their heliogram even distant nations had read the 
 message of peace and love. Philip had witnessed the 
 wonderful revival in "the (a) city of Samaria." Antioch, 
 Csesarea, Damascus, Lystra, Philippi, Athens, Rome — 
 these names indicate, but do not attempt to measure, 
 the wide and ever-widening circle of light. In nearly 
 every town of any size there is the nucleus of a Church ; 
 while Apostles, Evangelists, and Christian merchants 
 are proclaiming the new kingdom and the new laws 
 everywhere. And since the visits of the Apostles would 
 be necessarily brief, it would only be a natural and 
 general wish that some permanent record should be 
 made of their narratives and teaching. In other places, 
 
THE GENESIS OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 which lay back of the line of Apostles' travel, the story 
 would reach them, passed from mouth to mouth, with 
 all the additions of rumour, and exaggerations of Eastern 
 loquacity. It is to these ephemeral Gospels the Evan- 
 gelist now refers ; and distinguishing, as he does, the 
 "many" from the "eye-witnesses" and "ministers of 
 the word," he shows that he does not refer to the 
 Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark — which probably 
 he has not seen — for one was an Apostle, and both 
 were " eye- witnesses." There is no censure implied 
 in these words, nor does the expression "taken in 
 hand" in itself imply failure; but evidently, to St. 
 Luke's mind, these manifold narratives were incomplete 
 and unsatisfactory. They contain some of the truth, 
 but not all that the w r orld should know. Some are put 
 together by unskilled hands, and some have more or 
 less of fable blended with them. They need sifting, 
 winnowing, that the chaff may be blown away, and the 
 seed tares separated from the wheat. Such is the 
 physician's reason for now assuming the role of an 
 Evangelist. The "forasmuch," before being entered 
 on the pages of his Scriptures, had struck upon the 
 Evangelist's soul, setting it vibrating like a bell, and 
 moving mind and hand alike in sympathy. 
 
 And so we see how, in w 7 ays simple and purely 
 natural, Scripture grows. St. Luke was not conscious 
 of any special influence resting upon him. He did not 
 pose as an oracle or as the mouthpiece of an oracle, 
 though he was all that, and vastly more. He does not 
 even know that he is doing any great work; and who 
 ever does ? A generous, unselfish thought takes pos- 
 session of him. He will sacrifice leisure and ease, that 
 he may throw forward to others the light that has 
 fallen upon his own heart and life. He will be a truth- 
 
io THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 seeker, and a light-bearer for others. Here, then, we 
 see how a human mind falls into gear with the Divine 
 mind, and human thought gets into the rhythm and 
 swing of the higher thought. Simply natural, purely 
 human are all his processes of reasoning, comparing, 
 and planning, and the whole Gospel is but the perfect 
 bloom of this seed-thought. But whence came this 
 thought ? That is the question. Did it not grow out 
 of these manifold narratives ? and did not the narra- 
 tives themselves grow out of the wonderful Life, the 
 Life which was itself but a Divine Thought and Word 
 incarnate ? And so we cannot separate heaven from 
 earth, we cannot eliminate the Divine from even our 
 little lives; and though St. Luke did not recognize it 
 as such — he was an ordinary man, doing an ordinary 
 thing — yet we, standing a few centuries back, and 
 seeing how the Church has hidden in her ark the omer 
 of manna that he gathered, to be carried on and down 
 till time itself shall be no more, we see another 
 Apocalyptic vision, and we hear a Voice Divine that 
 commands him (t write." When St. Luke wrote, " It 
 seemed good to me also," he doubtless wrote the pro- 
 noun small ; for it was the " me " of his obscure, retiring 
 self; but high above the human thought we see the 
 Divine purpose, and as we watch, the smaller "me" 
 grows into the ME, which is a shadow of the great 
 I AM. And so while the "many" treatises, those 
 which were purely human, have passed out of sight, 
 buried deep in their unknown sepulchres, this Gospel 
 has survived and become immortal — immortal because 
 God was back of it, and God was in it. 
 
 So in the mind of St. Luke the thought ripens into 
 a purpose. Since others " have taken in hand " to 
 draw up a narrative concerning those matters which 
 
THE GENESIS OF THE GOSPEL. u 
 
 have been " fulfilled among us/' he himself will do the 
 same ; for has he not a special fitness for the task, and 
 peculiar advantages ? He has long been intimately 
 associated with those who from the very first were 
 " eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word," the chosen 
 companion of one Apostle, and doubtless, owing to his 
 visit to Jerusalem and to his prolonged residence at 
 Coesarea, personally acquainted with the rest. His 
 shall not be a Gospel of surmise or of rumour ; it shall 
 only contain the record of facts — facts which he himself 
 has investigated, and for the truth of which he gives 
 his guarantee. The clause "having traced the course 
 of all things accurately from the first" — which is a 
 more exact rendering than that of the Authorized 
 Version, "having had perfect understanding of all things 
 from the very first" — shows us the keen, searching 
 eye of the physician. He looks into things. He 
 distinguishes between the To seem and the To be, the 
 actual and the apparent. He takes nothing for granted, 
 but proves all things. He investigates his facts before 
 he endorses them, sounding them, as it were, and 
 reading not only their outer voice, which may be as- 
 sumed, and so untrue, but with his stethoscope of 
 patient research listening for the unconscious voices 
 that speak within, and so finding out the reality. He 
 himself is committed to nothing. He is not anxious 
 to make up a story. Himself a searcher after truth, 
 his one concern is to know, and then to tell, the truth, 
 naturally, simply, with no fictitious adornment or 
 dressing up of his own. And having submitted the 
 facts cf the Divine Life to a close scrutiny, and satis- 
 fied himself of their absolute truth, and having thrown 
 aside the many guesses and fables which somehow 
 have woven themselves around the wonderful Name, 
 
12 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 he will write down, in historical order as far as may be, 
 the story ; so that his friend Theophilus may know 
 the "certainty of the things" in which he has been 
 "instructed," or orally catechized, as the word would 
 mean. 
 
 Where, then, it may be asked, is there room for 
 inspiration ? If the genesis of the Gospel is so purely 
 human, where is there room for the touch of the 
 Divine ? Why should the Gospel of St. Luke be 
 canonized, incorporated into Holy Scripture, while the 
 writings of others are thrown back into an Apocrypha, 
 or still farther back into oblivion ? The very questions 
 will suggest an answer. That touch of the Divine 
 which we call inspiration is not always an equal 
 touch. Now it is a pressure from above that is over- 
 whelming. The writer is carried out of himself, 
 borne up into regions where Sight and Reason in 
 their loftiest flights cannot come, as the prophet fore- 
 tells events no human mind could foresee, much less 
 describe. In the case of St, Luke there was no need 
 for this abnormal pressure, or for these prophetic 
 ecstasies. He was to record, for the most part, facts 
 of recent occurrence, facts that had been witnessed, 
 and could now be attested, by persons still living ; 
 and a fact is a fact, whether it is inspired or no. 
 Inspiration may record a fact, while others are omitted, 
 showing that this fact has a certain value above others; 
 but if it is true, inspiration itself cannot make it more 
 true. Nevertheless, there is the touch of the Divine 
 even here. What is the meaning of this new depar- 
 ture ? for it is a new and a wide departure. Why 
 does not Thomas write a Gospel ? or Philip, or Paul ? 
 Why should the Evangelist-mantle be carried outside 
 the bounds of the sacred land, to be thrown around 
 
THE GENESIS OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 a Gentile, who cannot speak the sacred tongue except 
 with a foreign Shibboleth ? Ah, we see here the 
 movings of the Holy Ghost ! selecting the separate 
 agents for the separate tasks, and dividing to " every 
 man severally as He will." And not only does the 
 Holy Spirit summon him to the work, He qualifies 
 him for it, furnishing him with materials, and guiding 
 his mind as to what shall be omitted and what retained. 
 It is the same Spirit, who moved "holy men of old" 
 to speak and write the things of God, who now touches 
 the mind and heart of the four Evangelists, enabling 
 them to give the four versions of the one Story, in 
 different language, and with sundry differences of 
 detail, but with no contradiction of thought, each 
 being, in a sense, the complement of the rest, the four 
 quarters making one rounded and perfect whole. 
 . Perhaps at first sight our subject may not seem to 
 have any reference to our smaller lives ; for who of 
 us can be Evangelists or Apostles, in the highest 
 meaning of the words ? And yet it has, if we look 
 into it, a very practical bearing upon our lives, even 
 the commonplace, every-day life. Whence come our 
 gifts ? Who makes these gifts to differ ? Who gives 
 us" the differing taste and nature ? for we are not 
 consulted as to our nature any more than as to our 
 nativities. The fact is, our "human" is touched by 
 the Divine at every point. What are the chequered 
 scer.es of our lives but the black or the white squares 
 to w hich the Unseen Hand moves us at will ? Earth's 
 problem is but Heaven's purpose. And are not we, 
 too, writing scriptures? putting God's thoughts into 
 words and deeds, so that men may read them and 
 know them? Verily we are; and our writing is for 
 eternity. In the volume of our book are no omissions 
 
14 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 or erasures. Listen, then, to the heavenly call. Be 
 obedient to your heavenly vision. Leave mind and 
 heart open to the play of the Divine Spirit. Keep 
 self out of sight. Delight in God's will, and do it. 
 So will you make your lowlier life another Testament, 
 written over with Gospels and Epistles, and closing at 
 last with an Apocalypse. 
 
CHAPTER \U 
 
 THE MUTE PRIEST. 
 Luke i. 5-25, 57-80. 
 
 AFTER his personal prelude, our Evangelist goes 
 on to give in detail the pre-Advent revelations, 
 so connecting the thread of his narrative with the 
 broken-off thread of the Old Testament. His language, 
 however, suddenly changes its character and accent; 
 and its frequent Hebraisms show plainly that he is no 
 longer giving his own words, but that he is simply 
 recording the narratives as they were told him, pos- 
 sibly by some member of the Holy Family. 
 
 "There was in the days of Herod, king of Judaea." 
 Even the surface-reader of Scripture will observe how 
 little is made in its pages of the time-element. There 
 is a purposed vagueness in its chronology, which 
 scarcely accords with our Western ideas of accuracy 
 and precision. We observe times and seasons. We 
 strike off the years with the clang of bells or the 
 hush of solemn services. Each day with us is lifted 
 up into prominence, having a personality and history 
 all its own, and as we write its history, we keep it 
 clear of all its to-morrows and its yesterdays. And 
 so the day grows naturally into a date, and dates com- 
 bine into chronologies, where everything is sharp, exact. 
 Not so, however, was it, or indeed is it, in the Eastern 
 
16 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 world. Time there, if we may speak temporally, was 
 of little moment. To that slow-moving and slow- 
 thinking world one day was a trifle, something atomic ; 
 it took a number of them to make an appreciable 
 quantity. And so they divided their time, in ordinary 
 speech, not minutely as we do, but into larger periods, 
 measuring its distances by the shadows of their striking 
 events. Why is it that we have four Gospels, and 
 in fact a whole New Testament, without a date ? for 
 it cannot possibly be a chance omission. Is the time- 
 element so subdued and set back, lest the "things 
 temporal " should lead oft our minds from the " things 
 spiritual and eternal"? For what is time, after all, 
 but a negative quantity? an empty space, in itself 
 all silent and dead, until our thoughts and deeds strike 
 against it and make it vocal? Nay, even in the 
 heavenly life we see the same losing of the time- 
 element, for we read, " There should be time no 
 longer." Not that it will then disappear, swallowed 
 up in that infinite duration we call eternity. That 
 would make heaven a confusion ; for to finite minds 
 eternity itself must come in measured beats, striking, 
 like the waves along the shore, in rhythmic intervals. 
 But our time will be no longer. It must needs be 
 transfigured, ceasing to be earthly, that it may become 
 heavenly in its measurement and in its speech. And 
 so in the Bible, which is a Divine-human book, 
 written for the ages, God has purposely veiled the 
 times, at any rate the " days " of earthly reckoning. 
 Even the day of our Lord's birth, and the day of His 
 death, our chronologies cannot determine : we measure, 
 we guess, but it is randomly, like the blinded men 
 of Sodom, who wearied themselves to find the door. 
 In Heaven's reckoning deeds are more than days. 
 
i. 5-25, 57-S0.] THE MUTE PRIEST. 17 
 
 Time-beats by themselves are only broken silences, 
 but put a soul among them, and you make songs, 
 anthems, and all kinds of music. " In those days " may 
 be a common Hebraism, but may it not be something 
 more ? may it not be an idiom of celestial speech, 
 the heavenly way of referring to earthly things? At 
 any rate we know this, that while Heaven is careful 
 to give us the purpose, the promise, and the fulfilment, 
 the Divine Spirit does not care to give us the exact 
 moment when the promise became a realization. 
 And that it is so shows that it is best it should be 
 so. Silence sometimes may be better than speech. 
 
 But in saying all this we do not say that Heaven 
 is unobservant of earthly times and seasons. They 
 are a part of the Divine order, stamped on all lives, 
 on all worlds. Our days and nights keep their alter- 
 nate step ; our seasons observe their processional order, 
 singing in antiphonal responses ; while our world, 
 geared in with other worlds, strikes off our earthly 
 years and days with an absolute precision. So, now 
 the time of the Advent has been Divinely chosen 
 for whole millenniums unalterably fixed ; nor have the 
 cries of Israel's impatient hopes been allowed to hurry 
 forward the Divine purpose, so making it premature. 
 But why should the Advent be so long delayed ? In 
 our off-handed way of thinking we might have sup- 
 posed the Redeemer would have come directly after 
 the Fall ; and as far as Heaven was concerned, there 
 was no reason why the Incarnation and the Redemption 
 should not be effected immediately. The Divine Son 
 was even then prepared to lay aside His glories, and 
 to become incarnate. He might have been born of the 
 Virgin of Eden, as well as of the Virgin of Galilee ; 
 and even then He might have offered unto God that 
 
 2 
 
18 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 perfect obedience by which the "many are made 
 righteous." Why, then, this strange delay, as the 
 months lengthen into years, and the years into cen- 
 turies ? The Patriarchs come and go, and only see the 
 promise "afar off." Then come centuries of oppres- 
 sion, as Canaan is completely eclipsed by the dark 
 shadow of Egypt; then the Exodus, the wanderings, 
 the conquest. The Judges administer a rough-handed 
 justice ; Kings play with their little crowns ; Prophets 
 rebuke and prophesy, telling of the " Wonderful " who 
 shall be; but still the Messiah delays His coming. 
 W 7 hy this strange postponement of the world's hopes, 
 as if prophecy dealt in illusions only ? We find the 
 answer in St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians (chap, 
 iv. 4). The " fulness of the time " was not yet come. 
 The time was maturing, but was not yet ripe. Heaven 
 was long ago prepared for an Incarnation, but Earth 
 was not ; and had the Advent occurred at an earlier 
 stage of the world's history, it would have been an 
 anachronism the age would have misunderstood. There 
 must be a leading up to God's gifts, or His blessings 
 cease to be blessings. The world must be prepared 
 for the Christ, or virtually He is no Christ, no Saviour 
 to them. The Christ must come into the world's mind 
 as a familiar thought, He must come into the world's 
 heart as a deep-felt need, before He can come as the 
 Word Incarnate. 
 
 And when is this " fulness of the time " ? " In the 
 days of Herod, king of Judaea." Such is the phrase 
 that now strikes the Divine hour, and leads in the 
 dawn of a new dispensation. And what dark days 
 were those to the Hebrew people, when on the throne 
 of their David sat that Idumean shadow of the dread 
 Caesar I Their land swarms with Gentile hordes, and 
 
»• 5-25, 57-So.] THE MUTE PRIEST. 19 
 
 on the soil devoted to Jehovah rise stately, splendid 
 temples, dedicated to strange gods. It is one irruption 
 of Paganism, as if the Roman Pantheon had emptied 
 itself upon the Holy Land. Nay, it seemed as if the 
 Hebrew faith itself would become extinct, strangled 
 by heathen fables, or at any rate that she would 
 survive, only the ghost of her other self, walking like 
 an apparition, with veiled face and sealed lips, amid the 
 scenes of her former glories. " The days of Herod " 
 were the Hebrew midnight, but they give us the Bright 
 and Morning Star. And so upon this dial-plate of 
 Scripture the great Herod, with all his royalties, is 
 nothing more than the dark, empty shadow which 
 marks a Divine hour, " the fulness of the time." 
 
 Israel's corporate life began with four centuries of 
 silence and oppression, when Egypt gave them the 
 doubled task, and Heaven grew strangely still, giving 
 them neither voice nor vision. Is it but one of the 
 chance repetitions of history that Israel's national life 
 should end, too, with four hundred years of silence ? 
 for such is the coincidence, if, indeed, we may not call 
 it something more. It is, however, just such a coin- 
 cidence as the Hebrew mind, quick to trace resemblances 
 and to discern signs, would grasp firmly and eagerly. 
 It would revive their long-deferred and dying hopes, 
 overlaying the near future with its gold. Possibly it 
 was this very coincidence that now transformed their 
 hope into expectation, and set their hearts listening 
 for the advent of the Messiah. Did not Moses come 
 when the task was doubled ? And was not the four 
 hundred years' silence broken by the thunders of the 
 Exodus, as the I AM, once again asserting Himself, 
 " sent redemption to His people " ? And so, counting 
 back their silent years since Heaven's last voice came 
 
20 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 to them through their prophet Malachi, they caught 
 in its very silences a sound of hope, the footfall of 
 the forerunner, and the voice of the coming Lord. 
 But where, and how, shall the long silence be broken ? 
 We must go for our answer — and here, again, we see 
 a correspondence between the new Exodus and the 
 old— to the tribe of Levi, and to the house of Amram 
 and Jochebed. 
 
 Residing in one of the priestly cities of the Hill- 
 country-of Judaea — though not in Hebron, as is commonly 
 supposed, for it is most unlikely that a name so familiar 
 and sacred in the Old Testament would here be omitted 
 in the New — was " a certain priest named Zacharias." 
 Himself a descendant of Aaron, his wife, too, was of 
 the same lineage ; and besides being " of the daughters 
 of Aaron," she bore the name of their ancestral mother, 
 " Elisabeth." Like Abraham and Sarah, they were both 
 well advanced in years, and childless. But if they were 
 not allowed to have any lien upon posterity, throwing 
 themselves forward into future generations, they made 
 up the lack of earthly relationships by cultivating the 
 heavenly. Forbidden, as they thought, to look forward 
 down the lines of earthly hopes, they could and did look 
 heavenward ; for we read that they w T ere both " right- 
 eous" — a word implying a Mosaic perfection — "walking 
 ill all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord 
 blameless." We may not be able, perhaps, to give 
 the precise distinction between " commandments " and 
 " ordinances," for they were sometimes used inter- 
 changeably; but if, as the general use of the words 
 allows us, we refer the " commandments " to the moral, 
 and the "ordinances" to the ceremonial law, we see 
 how wide is the ground they cover, embracing, as they 
 do, the (then) " whole duty of man." Rarely, if ever, 
 
*. 5-25, 57-8o.] THE MUTE PRIEST. 21 
 
 do the Scriptures speak in such eulogistic terms ; and 
 that they should here be applied to Zacharias and 
 Elisabeth shows that they were advanced in saint- 
 liness, as well as in years. Possibly St. Luke had 
 another object in view in giving us the portraits of 
 these two pre-Advent Christians, completing in the 
 next chapter the quarternion, by his mention of Simeon 
 and Anna. It is somewhat strange, to say the least, 
 that the Gentile Evangelist should be the one to give 
 us this remarkable group — the four aged Templars, who, 
 11 when " it was yet dark, rose to chant their matins and 
 to anticipate the dawn. Whether the Evangelist in- 
 tended it or not, his narrative salutes the Old, whi!e 
 it heralds the New dispensation, paying to that Old 
 a high though unconscious tribute. It shows us that 
 Hebraism was not } r et dead ; for if on its central stem, 
 within the limited area of its Temple courts, such a 
 cluster of beautiful lives could be found, who will tell 
 the harvest of its outlying branches ? Judaism was not 
 altogether a piece of mechanism, elaborate and exact, 
 with a soulless, metallic click of rites and ceremonies. 
 It was an organism, living and sentient. It had nerves 
 and blood. Possessed of a heart itself, it touched the 
 hearts of its children. It gave them aspirations and 
 inspirations without number; and even its shadows 
 were the interpreters, as they were the creations, of the 
 heavenly light. And if now it is doomed to pass away, 
 outdated and superseded, it is not because it is bad, 
 worthless; for it was a Divine conception, the "good" 
 thing, preparing for and proclaiming God's "better 
 thing." Judaism was the " glorious angel, keeping 
 the gates of light ; " and now, behold, she swings back 
 the gates, welcomes the Morning, and herself then 
 disappears. 
 
22 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 It is the autumn service for the course of Abia — 
 which is the eighth of the twenty-four courses into 
 which the priesthood was divided — and Zacharias pro- 
 ceeds to Jerusalem, to perform whatever part of the 
 service the lot may assign to him. It is probably the 
 evening of the Sabbath — the presence of the multitude 
 would almost imply that — and this evening the lot gives 
 to Zacharias the coveted distinction — which could only 
 come once in a lifetime — of burning incense in the Holy 
 Place. At a given signal, between the slaying and the 
 offering of the lamb, Zacharias, barefooted and robed in 
 white, passes up the steps, accompanied by two assist- 
 ants, one bearing a golden censer containing half a 
 pound of the sweet-smelling incense, the other bearing 
 a golden vessel of burning coals taken from the altar. 
 Slowly and reverently they pass within the Holy Place, 
 which none but Levites are permitted to enter ; and 
 having arranged the incense, and spread the live coals 
 upon the altar, the assistants retire, leaving Zacharias 
 a l one — alone in the dim light of the seven-branched 
 candlestick, alone beside that veil he may not uplift, 
 and which hides from his sight the Holy of Holies, 
 where God dwells " in the thick darkness." Such is 
 the place, and such the supreme moment, when Heaven 
 breaks the silence of four hundred years. 
 
 It is no concern of ours to explain the phenomenon that 
 followed, or to tone down its supernatural elements. 
 Given an Incarnation, and then the supernatural be- 
 comes not only probable, but necessary. Indeed, we 
 could not well conceive of any new revelation without 
 it ; and instead of its being a weakness, a blemish on 
 the page of Scripture, it is rather a proof of its heaven- 
 liness, a hall-mark that stamps its Divinity. Nor is 
 there any need, believing as we do in the existence of 
 
>• 5-25. 57-So.] THE MUTE PRIEST. 23 
 
 intelligences other and higher than ourselves, that we 
 apologize for the appearance of angels, here and else- 
 where, in the story; such deference to Sadducean doubts 
 is not required. 
 
 Suddenly, as Zacharias stands with uplifted hands, 
 joining in the prayers offered by the silent " multitude'' 
 without, an angel appears. Pie stands "on the right 
 side of the altar of incense," half- veiled by the fragrant 
 smoke, which curling upwards, filled the place. No 
 wonder that the lone priest is filled with " fear," and 
 that he is "troubled" — a word implying an outward 
 tremor, as if the very body shook with the unwonted 
 agitation of the soul. The angel does not at first 
 announce his name, but seeks rather to calm the heart 
 of the priest, stilling its tumult with a " Fear not," as 
 Jesus stilled the waters with His " Peace." Then he 
 makes known his message, speaking in language most 
 homely and most human : " Thy prayer is heard." 
 Perhaps a more exact rendering would be, " Thy 
 request was granted," for the substantive implies a 
 specific prayer, while the verb indicates a "hearing" 
 that becomes an "assenting." What the prayer was 
 we may gather from the angel's words ; for the whole 
 message, both in its promise and its prophecy, is but 
 an amplification of its first clause. To the Jew, child- 
 lessness was the worst of all bereavements. It implied, 
 at least they thought so, the Divine displeasure ; while 
 it effectually cut them off from any personal share in 
 those cherished Messianic hopes. To the Hebrew 
 heart the message, " Unto you a son is born," was 
 the music of a lower Gospel. It marked an epoch in 
 their life-history ; it brought the fulfilment of their 
 desires, and a wealth of added dignities. And Zacharias 
 had prayed, earnestly and long, that a son might be 
 
24 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 born to them ; but the bright hope, with the years, had 
 grown distant and dim, until at last it had dropped 
 down beyond the horizon of their thoughts, and become 
 an impossibility. But those prayers were heard, yea, 
 and granted, too, in the Divine purpose; and if the 
 answer has been delayed, it was that it might come 
 freighted with a larger blessing. 
 
 But in saying that this was the specific prayer of 
 Zacharias we do not wish to disparage his motives, 
 confining his thoughts and aspirations within a circle 
 so narrow and selfish. This lesser hope of offspring, 
 like a satellite, revolved around the larger hope of a 
 Messiah, and indeed grew out of it. It drew all its 
 brightness and all its beauty from that larger hope, the 
 hope that lighted up the dark Hebrew sky with the 
 auroras of a new and fadeless dawn. When mariners 
 " take the sun," as they call it, reading from its disc 
 their longitudes, they bring it down to their horizon- 
 level. They get the higher in the lower vision, and 
 the real direction of their looks is not the apparent 
 direction. And if Zacharias' thoughts and prayers 
 seem to have an earthward drift, his soul looks higher 
 than his speech ; and if he looks along the horizon- 
 level of earthly hopes, it is that he may read the 
 heavenly promise. It is not a son that he is looking 
 for, but the Son, the "Seed" in whom "all the families 
 of the earth shall be blessed." And so, when the 
 silent tongue regains its powers of speech, it gives its 
 first and highest doxologies for that other Child, who 
 is Himself the promised "redemption" and a "horn 
 of salvation ; " his own child he sets back, far back in 
 the shadow (or rather the light) of Him whom he calls 
 the " Lord." It is the near realization of both these 
 hopes that the angel now announces. 
 
-.5-25, 57-8o.] THE MUTE PRIEST 25 
 
 A son shall be born to them, even in their advanced 
 years, and they shall call his name " John," which 
 means "The Lord is gracious." "Many will rejoice 
 with them at his birth," for that birth will be the 
 awakening of new hopes, the first hour of a new day. 
 "Great in the sight of the Lord," he must be a Nazarite, 
 abstaining wholly from " wine and strong drink " — the 
 two Greek words including all intoxicants, however 
 made. " Filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's 
 womb " — that original bias or propensity to evil, if not 
 obliterated, yet more than neutralized — he shall be the 
 Elijah (in spirit and in power) of Malachi's prophecy, 
 turning many of Israel's children " to the Lord their 
 God." " Going before^ Him " — and the antecedent of 
 " Him" must be "the Lord their God" of the preceding 
 verse, so early is the purple of Divinity thrown around 
 the Christ — he " shall turn the hearts of fathers to their 
 children/' restoring peace and order to domestic life ; 
 and the "disobedient" he shall incline "to walk in the 
 wisdom of the just " (R. V.), bringing back the feet that 
 have erred and slipped to "the paths of uprightness," 
 which are the " ways of wisdom." In short, he shall 
 be the herald, making ready a people prepared for the 
 Lord, running before the Royal chariot, proclaiming the 
 coming One, and preparing His way, then leaving his 
 own little footprints to disappear, thrown up in the 
 chariot-dust of Him who was greater and mightier 
 than he. 
 
 We can easily understand, even if we may not 
 apologize for, the incredulity of Zacharias. There are 
 crises in our life when, under profound emotion, 
 Reason herself seems bewildered, and Faith loses her 
 steadiness of vision. The storm of feeling throws the 
 reflective powers into confusion, and thought becomes 
 
26 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 blurred and indistinct, and speech incoherent and wild. 
 And such a crisis was it now, but intensified to the 
 mind of Zacharias by all these additions of the super- 
 natural. The vision, with its accessories of place and 
 time, the message, so startling, even though so welcome, 
 must necessarily produce a strange perturbation of soul ; 
 and what surprise need there be that when the priest 
 does speak it is in the lisping accents of unbelief? 
 Could it well have been otherwise ? Peter " wist not 
 that it was true which was done by the angel, but thought 
 he saw a vision ; " and though Zacharias has none of 
 these doubts of unreality — it is to him no dream of the 
 moment's ecstasy — still he is not yet aware of the rank 
 and dignity of his angel-visitant, while he is perplexed 
 at the message, which so directly contravenes both 
 reason and experience. He does not doubt the Divine 
 power, let it be observed, but he does seek for a sign 
 that the angel speaks with Divine authority. " Where- 
 by shall I know this ? " he asks, reminding us by his 
 question of Jacob's " Tell me thy name." The angel 
 replies, in substance, " You ask w T hereby you may know 
 this; that is, you wish to know by whose authority 
 I declare this message to you. Well, I am Gabriel, 
 that stand in the presence of God ; and I was sent to 
 speak unto you, and to bring }'ou these good tidings. 
 And since you ask for a sign, an endorsement of my 
 message, you shall have one. I put the seal of silence 
 upon your lips, and you shall not be able to speak 
 until the day when these things shall come to pass, 
 because you believed not my words." Then the vision 
 ends ; Gabriel returns to the songs and anthems of the 
 skies, leaving Zacharias to carry, in awful stillness of 
 soul, this new " secret of the Lord." 
 
 This infliction of dumbness upon Zacharias has 
 
i. 5-25, 57-80.] THE MUTE PRIEST. 27 
 
 generally been regarded as a rebuke and punishment 
 for bis unbelief; but if we refer to the parallel cases of 
 Abraham and of Gideon, such is not Heaven's wonted 
 answer to the request for a sign. We must understand 
 it rather as the proof Zacharias sought, something at 
 once supernatural and significant, that should help his 
 stumbling faith. Such a sign, and a most effective one, 
 it was. Unlike Gideon's dew, that would soon eva- 
 porate, leaving nothing but a memory, this was ever 
 present, ever felt, at least until faith was exchanged 
 for sight. Nor was it dumbness simply, for the word 
 (ver. 22) rendered "speechless" implies inability to 
 hear as well as inability to speak; and this, coupled 
 with the fact mentioned in ver. 62, that "they made 
 signs to him " — which they would scarcely have done 
 could he have heard their voices — compels us to sup- 
 pose that Zacharias had suddenly become deaf as well 
 as dumb. Heaven put the seal of silence upon his lips 
 and ears, that so its own voice might be more clear and 
 loud ; and so the profound silences of Zacharias' soul 
 were but the blank spaces on which Heaven's sweet 
 music was written. 
 
 How long the interview with the angel lasted we 
 cannot tell. It must, however, have been brief; for at 
 a given signal, the stroke of the Magrephah, the atten- 
 dant priest would re-enter the Holy Place, to light the 
 two lamps that had been left unlighted. And here we 
 must look for the " tarrying " that so perplexed the 
 multitude, who were waiting outside, in silence, for the 
 benediction of the incensing priest. Re-entering the 
 Holy Place, the attendant finds Zacharias smitten as by 
 a sudden paralysis — speechless, deaf, and overcome by 
 emotion. What wonder that the strange excitement 
 makes them oblivious of time, and, for the moment. 
 
28 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 all-forgetful of their Temple duties ! The priests are 
 in their places, grouped together on the steps leading 
 up to the Holy Place ; the sacrificing priest has ascended 
 the great brazen altar, ready to cast the pieces of the 
 slain lamb upon the sacred fire; the Levites stand 
 ready with their trumpets and their psalms — all waiting 
 for the priests who linger so long in the Holy Place. 
 At length they appear, taking up their position on the 
 top of the steps, above the rows of priests, and above 
 the silent multitude. But Zacharias cannot pronounce 
 the usual benediction to-day. The "Jehovah bless 
 thee and keep thee" is unsaid; the priest can only 
 " beckon" to them, perhaps laying his finger on the 
 silent lips, and then pointing to the silent heavens — to 
 them indeed silent, but to himself all vocal now. 
 
 And so the mute priest, after the days of his minis- 
 tration are completed, returns to his home in the hill- 
 country, to wait the fulfilment of the promises, and out 
 of his deep silences to weave a song that should be 
 immortal; for the Benedictus, whose music girdles the 
 world to-day, before it struck upon the world's ear and 
 heart, had, through those quiet months, filled the hushed 
 temple of his soul, lifting up the priest and the prophet 
 among the poets, and passing down the name of 
 Zacharias as one of the first sweet singers of the new 
 Israel. 
 
 And so the Old meets, and merges into the New 
 and at the marriage it is the speaking hands of the 
 mute priest that join together the two Dispensations, as 
 each gives itself to the other, never more to be put 
 asunder, but to be "no longer twain, but one," one 
 Purpose, one Plan, one Divine Thought, one Divine 
 Word. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE GOSPEL PSALMS. 
 
 UNLIKE modern church builders, St. Luke sets his 
 chancel by the porch. No sooner have we 
 passed through the vestibule of his Gospel than we 
 find ourselves within a circle of harmonies. On the 
 one side are Zacharias and Simeon, the one chanting 
 his Bcncdichts, and the other his Nunc Dimittis. 
 Facing them, as if in antiphon, are Elisabeth and 
 Mary, the one singing her Beatitude, and the other her 
 Magnificat ; while overhead, in the frescoed and star- 
 lighted sky, are vast multitudes of the heavenly host, 
 enriching the Advent music with their Glorias. What 
 means this grand irruption of song ? and why is 
 St. Luke, the Gentile Evangelist, the only one who re- 
 peats to us these Hebrew psalms ? At first it would 
 seem as if their natural place would be as a prelude 
 to St. Matthew's Gospel, which is the Gospel of the He- 
 brews. But strangely enough, St. Matthew passes them 
 by in silence, just as he omits the two angelic visions. 
 St. Matthew is evidently intent on one thing. Beginning 
 a New Testament, as he is, he seems especially anxious 
 that there shall be no rent or even seam between the 
 Old and the New ; and so, in his first pages, after giving 
 us the genealogy, running the line of descent up to 
 Abraham, he laces up the threads of his narrative with 
 
30 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 the broken-off threads of the old prophecies, so that the 
 written Word may be a vestment of the Incarnate 
 Word, which shall be "without seam, woven from the 
 top throughout." And so really the Advent hymns 
 would not have suited St. Matthew's purpose. Their 
 ring would not have been in accord with the tone of 
 his story ; and had we found them in his first chapters 
 we should instinctively have felt that they were out 
 of place, as if we saw a rose blossoming on a wide- 
 spread oak. 
 
 St. Luke, however, is portraying the Son of Man, 
 Coming to redeem humanity, he shows how He was 
 first born into that humanit}', making His advent in a 
 purely human fashion. And so the two conceptions 
 form a fit beginning for his Gospel; while over the 
 Divine Birth and Childhood he lingers reverently and 
 long, paying it, however, only the homage Heaven had 
 paid it before. Then, too, was there not a touch of 
 poetry about our Evangelist ? Tradition has been 
 almost unanimous in saying that he was a painter ; and 
 certainly in the grouping of his figures, and his careful 
 play upon the lights and shadows, we can discover 
 traces of his artistic skill, in word-painting at any rate. 
 His was evidently a soul attuned to harmonies, quick 
 to discern any accordant or discordant strains. Nor 
 must we forget that St. Luke's mind is open to certain 
 occult influences, whose presence we may indeed detect, 
 but whose power we are not able to gauge. As we 
 have already seen, it was the manifold narratives of 
 anonymous writers that first moved him to take up the 
 pen of the historian ; and to those narratives we doubt- 
 less owe something of the peculiar cast and colouring of 
 St. Luke's story. It is with the Nativity that tradition 
 would be most likely to take liberties. The facts of 
 
THE GOSPEL PSALMS. 31 
 
 the Advent, strange enough in themselves, would at 
 the hands of rumour undergo a process of developing, 
 like the magnified and somewhat grotesque shadows of 
 himself the traveller casts on Alpine mists. It was 
 doubtless owing to these enlargements and distortions 
 of tradition that St. Luke was led to speak of the 
 Advent so full}'-, going into the minutiae of detail, and 
 inserting, as is probable, from the Hebrew tone of 
 these first two chapters, the account as given orally, 
 or written, by some members of the Holy Family. 
 
 It must be admitted that to some inquiring and 
 honest minds these Advent psalms have been a diffi- 
 culty, an enigma, if not a stumbling-block. As the 
 bells that summon to worship half-deafen the ear of 
 the worshipper on a too near approach, or they become 
 merely a confused and unmeaning noise if he climbs 
 up into the belfry and watches the swing of their 
 brazen lips, so this burst of music in our third 
 Gospel has been too loud for certain sensitive ears. 
 It has shaken somewhat the foundations of their faith. 
 They think it gives an unreality, a certain mythical 
 flavour, to the story, that these four pious people, who 
 have always led a quiet, prosaic kind of life, should 
 now suddenly break out into impromptu songs, and 
 when these are ended lapse again into complete silence, 
 like the century plant, which throws out a solitary 
 blossom in the course of a hundred years. And so 
 they come to regard these Hebrew psalms as an inter- 
 polation, an afterthought, thrown into the story for 
 effect. But let us not forget that we are dealing now 
 with Eastern mind, which is naturally vivacious, 
 imaginative, and highly poetical. Even our colder 
 tongue, in this glacial period of nineteenth-century 
 civilization, is full of poetry. The language of common 
 
3* THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 every-day life — to those who have ears to hear — is full 
 of tropes, metaphors, and parables. Take up the 
 commonest words of daily speech, and put them to 
 your ear, and they will sing like shells from the sea. 
 There are whole poems in them — epics, idylls, of every 
 sort ; and let our colder speech get among the sweet 
 influences of religion, and like the iceberg adrift in the 
 Gulf Stream, it loses its rigidity and frigidity at once, 
 melting in liquid, rhythmic measures, throwing itself 
 away in hymns and jubilates. The fact is, the world is 
 full of music. As the Sage of Chelsea said, " See deep 
 enough, and you see musically, the heart of Nature 
 being everywhere music if you can only reach it." 
 And it is so. You can touch nothing but there are 
 harmonies slumbering within it, or itself is a stray note 
 of some grander song. Dead wood from the forest, 
 dead ere from the mine, dead tusks of the beast — these 
 are the " base things " that strike our music ; and only 
 put a mind within them, and a living soul with a living 
 touch before them, and you have songs and anthems 
 without number. 
 
 But to Eastern minds poetry was a sort of native 
 language. Its inspiration was in the air. Their ordi- 
 nary speech was ornate and efflorescent, throwing 
 itself out in simile and hyperbole. It only needed 
 some small excitement, and they fell naturally into the 
 couplet form of utterance. Even to-day the children 
 swing under the mulberry-trees to songs and choruses ; 
 hucksters extol their wares in measured verse ; and the 
 Eethany fruit-girl sings in the market, " O lady, take 
 of our fruit, without money and without price : it is 
 yours ; take all that you will " 1 And so it need not 
 surprise us, much less trouble us, that Simeon and 
 Elisabeth, Zacharias and Mary, should each speak in 
 
THE GOSPEL PSALMS. 33 
 
 measured cadences. Their speech blossomed with 
 flowers of rhetoric, just as naturally as their hills were 
 ablaze with daisies and anemones. Besides, they were 
 now under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. 
 We read, " Elisabeth was rilled with the Holy Ghost ; " 
 and again, Zacharias was " filled with the Holy Ghost ; " 
 Simeon "came in the Spirit into the Temple;" while 
 Mary now seemed to live in one conscious, constant 
 inspiration. It is said that a a poet is born, not made ; " 
 and if he be not thus " free-born " no " great sum," 
 either of gold or toil, will ever pass him up within the 
 favoured circle. And the same is true of the poet's 
 creations. Sacred hymns are not the product of the 
 unaided intellect. They do not come at the bidding of 
 any human will. They are inspirations. There is the 
 overshadowing of the Holy Spirit in their conception. 
 The human mind, heart, and lips are but the instru- 
 ment, a kind of iEolian lyre, played upon by the Higher 
 Breath, which comes and goes — how, the singer himself 
 can never tell ; for 
 
 "In the song 
 The singer has been lost." 
 
 It was when "filled with the Spirit" that Bezaleel put 
 into his gold and silver the thoughts of God ; it was when 
 the Spirit of God came upon him that Balaam took up 
 his parable, putting into stately numbers Israel's for- 
 ward march and endless victories. And so the sacred 
 psalm is the highest type of inspiration ; it is a voice 
 from no earthly Parnassus, but from the Mount of God 
 itself — the nearest approach to the celestial harmo- 
 nies, the harmonies of that city whose very walls are 
 poetry, and whose gates are praise. 
 
 And so, after all, it was but fitting and perfectly 
 natural that the Gospel that Heaven had been so long time 
 
 3 
 
34 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 preparing should break upon the world amid the har- 
 monies of music. Instead of apologizing for its presence, 
 as if it were but an interlude improvised for the occa- 
 sion, we should have noted and mourned its absence, 
 as when one mourns for " the sound of a voice that is 
 still." When the ark of God was brought up from 
 Baale Judah it was encircled with one wide wreath of 
 music, a travelling orchestra of harps and psalteries, 
 castanets and cymbals ; and as now that Ark of all the 
 promises is borne across from the Old to the New Dis- 
 pensation, as the promise becomes a fulfilment, and 
 the hope a realization, shall there not be the voice of 
 song and gladness ? Our sense of the fitness of things 
 expects it ; Heaven's law of the harmonies demands 
 it ; and had there not been this burst of praise and 
 song, we should have listened for the very stones to 
 cry out, rebuking the strange silence. But the voice 
 was not silent. The singers were there, in their places ; 
 and they sang, not because they would, but because 
 they must. A heavenly pressure, a sweet constraint, 
 was upon them. If Wealth lays down her tribute of 
 gold, with frankincense and myrrh, Poetry weaves for 
 the Holy Child her beautiful songs, and crowns Him 
 with her fadeless amaranth ; and so around the earthly 
 cradle of the Lord, as around His heavenly throne, 
 we have angelic songs, and " the voices of harpers, 
 harping with their harps." 
 
 Turning now to the four Gospel-psalmists — not, 
 however, to analyze, but to listen to their song — we 
 meet first with Elisabeth. This aged daughter of 
 Aaron, and wife of Zacharias, as we have seen, resided 
 somewhere in the hill-country of Judaea, in their quiet, 
 childless home. Righteous, blameless, and devout, 
 religion to her was no mere form; it was her life. 
 
THE GOSPEL PSALMS. 
 
 The Temple services, with which she was closely 
 associated, were to her no cold clatter of dead rites , 
 they were realities, full of life and full of music, as 
 her heart had caught their deeper meaning. But the 
 Temple, while it attracted her thoughts and hopes, did 
 not enclose them ; its songs and services were to her 
 but so many needles, swinging round on their marble 
 pivot, and pointing beyond to the Living God, the Gcd 
 who dwelt not in temples made with hands, but who, 
 then as now, inhabits the purified temple of the heart. 
 Long past the time when motherly hopes were possible, 
 the fretting had subsided, and her spirit had become, 
 first acquiescent, then quiescent. But these hopes had 
 been miraculously rekindled, as she slowly read the 
 vision of the Temple from the writing-table of her 
 dumb husband. The shadow of her dial had gone 
 backward ; and instead of its being evening, with 
 gathering shadows and ever-lessening light, she found 
 herself back in the glow of the morning, her whole life 
 lifted to a higher level. She was to be the mother, if 
 not of the Christ, yet of His forerunner. And so the 
 Christ was near at hand, this was certain, and she had 
 the secret prophecy and promise of His advent. And 
 Elisabeth finds herself exalted — borne up, as it were, 
 into Paradise, among visions and such swells of 
 hosannas that she cannot utter them; they are too 
 sweet and too deep for her shallow words. Was it not 
 this, the storm of inward commotion, that drove her to 
 hide herself for the five months ? Heaven has come so 
 near to her, such thoughts and visions fill her mind, 
 that she cannot bear the intrusions and jars of earthly 
 speech ; and Elisabeth passes into a voluntary seclusion 
 and silence, keeping strange company with the dumb and 
 deaf Zacharias. 
 
36 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 At length the silence is broken by the unexpected 
 appearance of her Nazareth relative. Mary, fresh from 
 her hasty journey, " entered into the house of Zacharias 
 and saluted Elisabeth." It is a singular expression, and 
 evidently denotes that the visit of the Virgin was alto- 
 gether unlooked for. There is no going out to meet 
 the expected guest, as was common in Eastern hospi- 
 talities ; there was even no welcome by the gate ; but 
 like an apparition, Mary passes within, and salutes the 
 surprised Elisabeth, who returns the salutation, not, 
 however, in any of the prescribed forms, but in a 
 benediction of measured verse : — 
 
 "Blessed art thou among women, 
 And blessed is the fruit of thy womb ! 
 And whence is this to me, 
 That the mother of my Lord should come unto me ? 
 For, behold, when the voice of thy salutation came into mine ears 
 The babe leaped in my womb for joy. 
 And blessed is she that believed, 
 For there shall be a fulfilment of the things which have been spoken 
 to her from the Lord." 
 
 The whole canticle — and it is Hebrew poetry, as its 
 parallelisms and strophes plainly show — is one apos- 
 trophe to the Virgin. Striking the key-note in its 
 " Blessed art thou," the "thou" moves on, distinct 
 and clear, amid all variations, to the end, reaching its 
 climax in its central phrase, " The mother of my Lord." 
 As one hails the morning star, not so much for its own 
 light as for its promise of the greater light, the day- 
 spring that is behind it, so Elisabeth salutes the morning 
 star of the new dawn, at the same time paying homage 
 to the Sun, whose near approach the star heralds. And 
 why is Mary so blessed among women ? Why should 
 Elisabeth, forgetting the dignity of years, bow so defer- 
 entially before her youthful relative, crowning her 
 
THE GOSPEL PSALMS. 37 
 
 with a song? Who has informed her of the later 
 revelation at Nazareth? It is not necessary to sup- 
 pose that Elisabeth, in her seclusion, had received any 
 corroborative vision, or even that she had been super- 
 naturally enlightened. Had she not the message the 
 angel delivered to Zacharias ? and was not that enough ? 
 Her son was to be the Christ's forerunner, going, as the 
 angel said, before the face of " the Lord." Three times 
 had the angel designated the Coming One as "the 
 Lord," and this was the word she had carried with her 
 into her seclusion. What it meant she did not fully 
 understand ; but she knew this, that it was He of whom 
 Moses and the prophets had written, the Shiloh, the 
 Wonderful; and as she put together the detached 
 Scriptures, adding, doubtless, some guesses of her own, 
 the Christ grew as a conception of her mind and the 
 desire of her heart into such colossal proportions that 
 even her own offspring was dwarfed in comparison, 
 and the thoughts of her own maternity became, in the 
 rush of greater thoughts, only as the stray eddies of the 
 stream. That such was the drift of her thoughts during 
 the five quiet months is evident ; for now, taught of the 
 Holy Ghost that her kinswoman is to be the mother of 
 the expected One, she greets the unborn Christ with her 
 lesser Benedict™. Like the old painters, she puts her 
 aureole of song around the mother's head, but it is easy 
 to see that the mother's honours are but the far-off 
 reflections from the Child. Is Mary blessed among 
 women? it is not because of any wealth of native 
 grace, but because of the fruit of her womb. Does 
 Elisabeth throw herself right back in the shade, asking 
 almost abjectly, " Whence is this to me ? " it is because, 
 like the centurion, she feels herself unworthy that even 
 the unborn " Lord " should come under her roof. And 
 
38 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 so, while this song is really an ode to the Virgin, it is 
 virtually Elisabeth's salute of the Christ who is to be, 
 a salute in which her own offspring takes part, for she 
 speaks of his " leaping " in her womb, as if he were a 
 participant in her joy, interpreting its movements as 
 a sort of M Hail, Master ! " The canticle thus becomes 
 invested with a higher significance. Its words say 
 much, but suggest more. It carries our thought out 
 from the seen to the unseen, from the mother to the 
 Holy Child, and Elisabeth's song thus becomes the 
 earliest " Hosannah to the Son of David," the first 
 prelude to the unceasing anthems that are to follow. 
 
 It will be observed that in the last line the song 
 drops out of the first and the second personals into 
 the third. It is no longer the frequent " thy," " thou," 
 "my," but "she:" " Happy is she that believed." 
 Why is this change ? Why does she not end as she 
 began— " Happy art thou who hast believed " ? Simply 
 because she is no longer speaking of Mary alone. She 
 puts herself as well within this beatitude, and at the 
 same time states a general law, how faith ripens into a 
 harvest of bles;edness. The last line thus becomes 
 the " Amen " of the song. It reaches up among the 
 eternal " Verilies," and sets them ringing. It speaks 
 of the Divine faithfulness, out of which and within 
 which human faith grows as an acorn within its cup. 
 And who could have better right to sing of the blessed- 
 ness of faith, and to introduce this New Testament 
 grace — not unknown in the Old Testament, but un- 
 named — as she who was herself such an exemplification 
 of her theme ? How calmly her own heart reposed on 
 the Divine word ! How before her far-seeing and 
 foreseeing vision valleys were exalted, mountains and 
 hills made low, that the way of the Lord might appear ! 
 
THE GOSPEL PSALMS. 39 
 
 Elisabeth sees the unseen Christ, lays before Him the 
 tribute of her song, the treasures of her affection and 
 devotion ; even before the Magi had saluted the Child- 
 King, Elisabeth's heart had gone out to meet Him with 
 her hosannas, and her lips had greeted Him "My 
 Lord." Elisabeth is thus the first singer of the New 
 Dispensation; and though her song is more a bud of 
 poetry than the ripe, blossomed flower, enfolding rather 
 than unfolding its hidden beauties, it pours out a 
 fragrance sweeter than spikenard on the feet of the 
 Coming One, while it throws around Him the purple of 
 new royalties. 
 
 Turning now to the song of Mary, our Magnificat, 
 we come to poetry of a higher order. Elisabeth's 
 introit was evidently spoken under intense feeling ; it 
 was the music of the storm ; for " she lifted up her 
 voice with a loud cry." Mary's song, on the other 
 hand, is calm, the hymn of the " quiet resting-place." 
 There is no unnatural excitement now, no inward 
 perturbation, half mental and half physical. Mary was 
 perfectly self-possessed, as if the spell of some Divine 
 "peace" were upon her soul ; and as Elisabeth's "loud 
 cry" ceased, Mary "said"— so it reads— her response. 
 But if the voice was lower, the thought was higher, 
 more majestic in its sweep. Elisabeth's song was on 
 the lower heights. "The mother of my Lord," this 
 was its starting-place, and the centre around which its 
 circles were described ; and though its wings beat now 
 and again against the infinities, it does not attempt to 
 explore them, but returns timidly to its nest. But 
 Elisabeth's loftiest reach is Mary's starting-point; her 
 song begins where the song of Elisabeth ends. Strik- 
 ing her key-note in the first line, "The Lord," this is 
 her one thought, the Alpha and Omega of her psalm. 
 
40 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 We call it the Magnificat ; it is a Te Deum, full of sug- 
 gested doxologies. Beginning with the personal as she 
 is almost compelled to do by the intense personality of 
 Elizabeth's song, Mary hastes to gather up the eulogies 
 bestowed upon herself, and to bear them forward to 
 Him who merits all praise, as He is the Source of all 
 blessing. Her soul " magnifies the Lord," not that she, 
 by any weak words of hers, can add to His greatness, 
 which is infinite, but even she may give the Lord a 
 wider place within her thoughts and heart ; and who- 
 ever is silent, her song shall make ° the voice of His 
 praise to be heard." Her spirit " hath rejoiced in God 
 her Saviour," and why ? Has He not looked down on 
 her low estate, and done great things for her ? u The 
 bondmaid of the Lord," as she a second time calls 
 herself, glorying in her bonds, such is her promotion 
 and exaltation that all generations shall call her blessed. 
 Then, with a beautiful effacement of self, which hence- 
 forth is not even to be a mote playing in the sunshine, 
 she sings of Jehovah — His holiness, His might, His 
 mercy, His faithfulness. 
 
 Mary's song, both in its tone and language, belongs 
 to the Old Dispensation. Thoroughly Hebraic, and all 
 inlaid with Old Testament quotations, it is the swan- 
 song of Hebraism. There is not a single phrase, 
 perhaps not a single word, that bears a distinctive 
 Christian stamp ; for the " Saviour " of the first strophe 
 is the " Saviour " of the Old Testament, and not of the 
 New, with a national rather than an evangelical mean- 
 ing. The heart of the singer is turned to the past 
 rather than to the future. Indeed, with the solitary 
 exception, how all generations shall call her blessed, 
 there is no passing glimpse into the future. Instead of 
 speaking of the Expected One, and blessing " the fruit 
 
THE GOSPEL PSALMS. 
 
 of her womb/' her song does not even mention Him. 
 She tells how the Lord hath done great things for her, 
 but what those " great things" are she does not say; 
 she might, as far as her own song tells us, be simply 
 a later Miriam, singing of some family or personal 
 deliverance, a salvation which was one of a thousand. 
 A true daughter of Israel, she dwells among her own 
 people, and her very broadest vision sees in her off- 
 spring no world-wide blessing, only a Deliverer for 
 Israel, His servant. Does she speak of mercy ? it is 
 not that wider mercy that like a sea laves every shore, 
 bearing on its still bosom a redeemed humanity ; it is 
 the narrower mercy " toward Abraham and his seed for 
 ever." Mary recognizes the unity of the Godhead, but 
 she does not recognize the unity, the brotherhood of 
 man. Her thought gees back to "our fathers," but 
 there it halts; the shrunken sinew of Hebrew thought 
 could not cross the prior centuries, to find the world's 
 common father in Paradise. But in saying this we do 
 not depreciate Mary's song. It is, and ever will be, the 
 Magnificat, great in its theme, and great in its concep- 
 tion. Following the flight of Hannah's song, and mak- 
 ing use of its wings at times, it soars far above, and 
 sweeps far beyond its original. Not even David sings 
 of Jehovah in more exalted strains. The holiness of 
 God, the might supreme above all powers, the faithful- 
 ness that cannot forget, and that never fails to fulfil, 
 the Divine choice and exaltation of the lowly — these 
 four chief chords of the Hebrew Psalter Mary strikes 
 with a touch that is sweet as it is clear. 
 
 Mary sang of God ; she did not sing of the Christ. 
 Indeed, how could she ? The Christ to be was part of 
 her own life, part of herself; how could she sing His 
 praise without an appearance of egotism and self-gratu- 
 
42 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 lation ? There are times when silence is more eloquent 
 than speech ; and Mary's silence about the Christ was 
 but the silence of the winged cherubim, as they bend 
 over the ark, beholding and feeling a mystery they can 
 neither know nor tell. It was the hush inspired by 
 a near and glorious presence. And so the Magnificat, 
 while it tells us nothing of the Christ, swings our 
 thoughts around towards Him, sets us listening for 
 His advent ; and Mary's silence is but the setting for 
 the Incarnate WORD. 
 
 The scng of Zacharias follows that of Mary, not 
 only in the order of time, but also in its sequence of 
 thought. It forms a natural postiude to the Magnificat, 
 while both are but different parts of one song, this 
 earliest " Messiah." It is something remarkable that 
 our first three Christian hymns should have their birth 
 in the same nameless city of Judah, in the same house, 
 and probably in the same chamber ; for the room, 
 which now is filled with the priest's relatives, and 
 where Zacharias breaks the long silence with his pro- 
 phetic Benedichts, is doubtless the same room where 
 Elisabeth chanted her greeting, and Mary sang her 
 Magnificat. The song of Mary circled about the 
 throne of Jehovah, nor could she leave that throne, 
 even to tell the great things the Lord had done for 
 her. Zacharias, coming down from his mount of vision 
 and of silence, gives us a wider outlook into the 
 Divine purpose. He sings of the " salvation " of the 
 Lord ; and salvation, as it is the key-note of the heavenly 
 song, is the key-note of the Benedictus. Does he bless 
 the Lord, the God of Israel ? it is because He has 
 "visited" (or looked upon) " His people, and wrought 
 redemption for" them; it is because He has provided 
 an abundant salvation, or a "horn of salvation/' as 
 
THE GOSPEL PSALMS. 43 
 
 he calls it. Has God remembered His covenant, " the 
 oath He sware unto Abraham"? has He "shown 
 mercy towards their fathers " ? that mercy and faithful- 
 ness are seen in this wonderful salvation — a salvation 
 "from their enemies," and "from the hand of all that 
 hate " them. Is his child to be " the prophet of the 
 Most High," going " before the face of the Lord," and 
 making " ready His ways " ? it is that he may " give 
 knowledge of" this "salvation," in "the remission of 
 sins." Then the psalm ends, falling back on its key- 
 note ; for who are they who " sit in darkness and the 
 shadow of death," but a people lost ? And who is the 
 Day-spring who visits them from on high, who shines 
 upon their darkness, turning it into day, and guiding 
 their lost feet into the way of peace, but the Redeemer, 
 the Saviour, whose name is " Wonderful " ? And so 
 the Benedictus, while retaining the form and the very 
 language of the Old, breathes the spirit of the New 
 Dispensation. It is a fragrant breeze, blowing off from 
 the shores of a new, and now near world, a world 
 already seen and possessed by Zacharias in the anti- 
 cipations of faith. The Saviour whose advent the 
 inspired priest proclaims is no mere national deliverer, 
 driving back those eagles of Rome, and rebuilding the 
 
 throne of his father David. He might be all that 
 
 for even prophetic vision had not sweep of the whole 
 horizon; it only saw the little segment of the circle 
 that was Divinely illumined — but to Zacharias He was 
 more, a great deal more. He was a Redeemer as well 
 as Deliverer ; and a " redemption " — for it was a 
 Temple word— meant a price laid down, something 
 given. The salvation of which Zacharias speaks is not 
 simply a deliverance from our political enemies, and 
 from the hand of all that hate us. It was a salvation 
 
44 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 higher, broader, deeper than that, a " salvation " that 
 reached to the profound depths of the human soul, and 
 that sounded its jubilee there, in the remission of sin 
 and deliverance from sin. Sin was the enemy to be 
 vanquished and dest^ed, and the shadow of death 
 was but the shadow of sin. And Zacharias sings 
 of this great redemption that leads to salvation, while 
 the salvation leads into the Divine peace, to " holiness 
 and righteousness," and a service that is " without 
 fear." 
 
 The ark of Israel was borne by four of the sons of 
 Kohath; and here this ark of song and prophecy is 
 borne of four sweet singers, the sexes dividing the 
 honours equally. We have listened to the songs of 
 three, and have seen how they follow each other in 
 a regular, rhythmic succession, the thought moving 
 forward and outward in ever-widening circles. Where 
 is the fourth ? and what is the burden of his song ? 
 It is heard within the precincts of the Temple, as the 
 parents bring the Child Jesus, to introduce Him to 
 the visible sanctities of religion, and to consecrate Him 
 to the Lord. It is the Nunc Dimittis of the aged 
 Simeon. He too sings of " salvation," u Thy salvation " 
 as he calls it It is the " consolation of Israel " he 
 has looked for so ardently and so long, and which the 
 Holy Ghost had assured him he should behold before 
 his promotion to the higher temple. But the vision 
 of Simeon was wider than that of Zacharias, as that 
 in turn was wider and clearer than the vision of Mary. 
 Zacharias saw the spiritual nature of this near salvation, 
 and he described it in words singularly deep and 
 accurate ; but its breadth he did not seem to realize. 
 The theocracy was the atmosphere in which he lived 
 and moved; and even his vision was theocratic, and 
 
THE GOSPEL PSALMS. 45 
 
 so somewhat narrow. His Benedictus was for the "God 
 of Israel/' and the " redemption " he sang was " for 
 His people." The "horn of salvation" is "for us;" 
 and all through his psalm these first personal pronouns 
 are frequent and emphatic, as if he would still insulate 
 this favoured people, and give them a monopoly even 
 of "redemption." The aged Simeon, however, stands 
 on a higher Pisgah. His is the nearer and the clearer 
 vision. Standing as he does in the Court of the 
 Gentiles, and holding in his arms the Infant Christ, 
 "the Lord's Christ," h? sees in Him a Saviour for 
 humanity, " the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin 
 of the world." Still, as ever, " the glory of God's 
 people Israel," but likewise " a light for the unveiling 
 of the Gentiles." Like the sentry who keeps watch 
 through the night till the sunrise, Simeon has been 
 watching and longing for the Day-spring from on high, 
 reading from the stars of promise the wearing of the 
 night, and with the music of fond hopes " keeping 
 his heart awake till dawn of morn." Now at length 
 the consummation, which is the consolation, comes. 
 Simeon sees in the Child Jesus the world's hope and 
 Light, a salvation " prepared before the face of all 
 people." And seeing this, he sees all he desires. 
 Earth can give no brighter vision, no deeper joy, and 
 all his request is — 
 
 " Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart, O Lord, 
 According to Thy word, in peace; 
 For mine e3 7 es have seen Thy salvation." 
 
 And so the four psalms of the Gospels form in 
 reality but one song, the notes rising higher and still 
 higher, until they reach the very pinnacle of the new 
 temple — God's purpose and plan of redemption ; that 
 
46 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 temple whose altar is a cross, and whose Victim is " the 
 Lamb slain from the foundation of the world ; " that 
 temple where courts and dividing-lines all disappear; 
 where the Holiest of all lies open to a redeemed 
 humanity, and Jews and Gentiles, bond and free, old 
 and young, are alike " kings and priests unto God." 
 And so the Gospel psalms throw back, as it were, in a 
 thousand echoes, the Glorias of the Advent angels, as 
 they sing — 
 
 "Glory to God in the highest, 
 And on earth peace." 
 
 And what is this but earth's prelude or rehearsal for 
 the heavenly song, as all nations, and kindreds, and 
 peoples, and tongues, falling down before the Lamb in 
 the midst of the throne, sing, " Salvation unto our 
 God, which sitteth upon the throne t and unto the 
 Lamb"? 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE VIRGIN MOTHER. 
 
 THE Beautiful Gate of the Jewish Temple opened 
 into the " Court of the Women " — so named from 
 the fact that they were not allowed any nearer approach 
 towards the Holy Place. And as we open the gate of 
 the third Gospel we enter the Court of the Women ; 
 for more than any other Evangelist, St. Luke records 
 their loving and varied ministries. Perhaps this is 
 owing to his profession, which naturally would bring 
 him into more frequent contact with feminine life. Or 
 perhaps it is a little Philippian colour thrown into his 
 Gospel ; for we must not forget that St. Luke had been 
 left by the Apostle Paul at Philippi, to superintend the 
 Church that had been cradled in the prayers of the 
 "river-side" women. It may be a tinge of Lydia's 
 purple; or to speak more broadly and more literally, 
 it may be the subtle, unconscious influences of that 
 Philippian circle that have given a certain feminity to 
 cur third Gospel. St. Luke alone gives us the psalms 
 of the three women, Anna, Elisabeth, and Mary; he 
 alone gives us the names of Susanna and Joanna, who 
 ministered to Christ of their substance; he alone gives 
 us that Galilean idyll, where the nameless " woman " 
 bathes His feet with tears, and at the same time rains 
 a hot rebuke on the cold civilities of the Pharisee, 
 
4 8 THE CCSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Simon ; he alone tells of the widow of Zarephath, who 
 welcomed and saved a prophet men were seeking to 
 slay; he alone tells us of the widow of Nain, of the 
 woman bent with infirmity, and of the woman grieving 
 over her lost piece of silvei. And as St. Luke opens 
 his Gospel with woman's tribute of song, so in his last 
 chapter he paints for us that group of women, constant 
 amid man's inconstancies, coming ere the break of day, 
 to wrap around the bod}'- of the dead Christ the precious 
 and fragrant offering of devotion. So, in this Paradise 
 Restored, do Eve's daughters roll back the reproach of 
 their mother. But ever first and foremost among the 
 women of the Gospels we must place the Virgin 
 Mother, whose character and position in the Gospel 
 story we are now to consider. 
 
 We need not stay to discuss the question — perhaps 
 we ought not to stay even to give it a passing notice — 
 whether there might have been an Incarnation even 
 had there been no sin. It is not an impossible, it is 
 not an improbable supposition, that the Christ would 
 have come into the world even had man kept his first 
 estate of innocence and bliss. But then it would have 
 been the " Christ" simply, and not Jesus Christ. He 
 would have come into the world, not as its Redeemer, 
 but as the Son and Heir, laying tribute on all its 
 harvests ; He would have come as the flower and 
 crown of a perfected humanity, to show the possibilities 
 of that humanity, its absolute perfections. But leaving 
 the " might-have-beens," in whose tenuous spaces there 
 is room for the nebulas of fancies and of guesses with- 
 out number, let us narrow our vision within the horizon 
 of the real, the actual. 
 
 Given the necessity for an Incarnation, there are two 
 modes in which that Incarnation may be brought about 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER. 49 
 
 — by creation, or by birth. The first Adam came into 
 the world by the creative act of God. Without the 
 intervention of second causes, or any waiting for the 
 slow lapse of time, God spake, and it was done. Will 
 Scripture repeat itself here, in the new Genesis? and 
 will the second Adam, coming into the world to repair 
 the ruin wrought by the first, come as did the first ? 
 We can easily conceive such an advent to be possible ; 
 and if we regarded simply the analogies of the case, 
 we might even suppose it to be probable. But how 
 different a Christ it would have been ! He might still 
 have been bone of our bone, Mesh of our flesh; lie 
 might have spoken the same truths, in the same speech 
 and tone ; but He must have lived apart from the world. 
 It would not be our humanity that tie wore ; it would 
 only be its shadow, its semblance, pla}'ing before our 
 minds like an illusion. No, the Messiah must not be 
 simply a second Adam ; He must be the Son of Man, 
 and He cannot become Humanity's Son except by a 
 human birth. Any other advent, even though it had 
 satisfied the claims of reason, would have failed to 
 satisfy those deeper voices of the heart. And so, on 
 the first pages of Scripture, before Eden's gate is shut 
 and locked by bolts of flame, Heaven signifies its 
 intention and decision. The coming One, who shall 
 bruise the serpent's head, shall be the woman's "Seed" 
 — the Son of woman, that so He may become more 
 truly the Son of Man; while later a strange expres- 
 sion finds its way into the sacred prophecy, how u a 
 Virgin shall conceive, and bear a son." It is true 
 these words primarily might have a local meaning and 
 fulfilment — though what that narrower meaning was 
 no one can tell with any approach to certainty; but 
 looking at the singularity of the expression, and coupling 
 
 4 
 
50 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 it with the story of the Advent, we can but see in it 
 a deeper meaning and a wider purpose. Evidently it 
 was that the virgin-conception might strike upon the 
 world's ear and become a familiar thought, and that 
 it might throw backwards across the pages of the Old 
 Testament the shadow of the Virgin Mother. We have 
 already seen how the thought of a Messianic mother- 
 hood had dropped deep within the heart of the Hebrew 
 people, awaking hopes, and prayers, and all sorts of 
 beautiful dreams — dreams, alas ! that vanished with the 
 years, and hopes that blossomed but to fade. But now 
 the hour is coming, that supreme hour for which the 
 centuries have all been waiting. The forerunner is 
 already announced, and in twelve short weeks he who 
 loved to call himself a Voice will break the strange 
 silence of that Judsean home. Whence will come his 
 Lord, who shall be " greater than he " ? Where shall 
 we find the Mother-elect, for whom such honours have 
 been reserved — honours such as no mortal has ever 
 yet borne, and as none will ever bear again ? St. 
 Luke tells us, " Now in the sixth month the angel 
 Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, 
 named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose 
 name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the 
 virgin's name was Mary" (R.V.). And so the Mother- 
 designate takes her place in this firmament of Scrip- 
 ture, silently and serenely as a morning star, which 
 indeed she is ; for she shines in a borrowed splendour, 
 taking her glories all from Him around whom she 
 revolves, from Him who was both her Son and her 
 Sun. 
 
 It will be seen in the above verse how particular the 
 Evangelist is in his topographical reference, putting a 
 kind of emphasis upon the name which now appears 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER. 51 
 
 for the first time upon the pages of Scripture. When 
 we remember how Nazareth was honoured by the 
 angel visit ; how it was, not the chance, but the chosen 
 home of the Christ for thirty years ; how it watched and 
 guarded the Divine Infancy, throwing into that life its 
 powerful though unconscious influences, even as the 
 dead soil throws itself forward and upward into each 
 separate flower and farthest leaf; when we remember 
 how it linked its own name with the Name of Jesus, 
 becoming almost a part of it ; how it wrote its name 
 upon the cross, then handing it down to the ages as 
 the name and watchword of a sect that should conquer 
 the world, we must admit that Nazareth is by no means 
 "the least among the cities" of Israel. And yet we 
 search in vain through the Old Testament for the name 
 of Nazareth. History, poetry, and prophecy alike pass 
 it by in silence. And so the Hebrew mind, while 
 rightly linking the expected One with Bethlehem, never 
 associated the Christ with Nazareth. Indeed, its mo- 
 ralities had become so questionable and proverbial 
 that while the whole of Galilee was too dry a ground 
 to grow a prophet, Nazareth was thought incapable of 
 producing "any good thing." Was, then, the Nazareth 
 chapter of the Christ-life an afterthought of the Divine 
 Mind, like the marginal reading of an author's proof, 
 put in to fill up a blank or to be a substitute for some 
 erasure? Not so. It had been in the Divine Mind 
 from the beginning; yea, it had been in the autho- 
 rized text, though men had not read it plainly. It is 
 St. Matthew who first calls our attention to it. Writing, 
 as he dees, mainly for Hebrew readers, he is constantly 
 looping up his story with the Old Testament prophecies; 
 and speaking of the return from Egypt, he says they 
 " came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth : that it 
 
52 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, 
 that He should be called a Nazarene." We said just 
 now that the name of Nazareth was not found in the 
 Old Testament. But if we do not find the proper 
 name, we find the word which is identical with the 
 name. It is now regarded by competent authorities as 
 proved that the Hebrew name for Nazareth was Netser. 
 Taking now this word in our mind, and turning to 
 Isaiah xi. I, we read, "And there shall come forth a 
 shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch [Netser] 
 out of his roots shall bear fruit : and the Spirit of the 
 Lord shall rest upon Him." Here, then, evidently, 
 is the prophetic voice to which St. Matthew refers; 
 and one little word — the name of Nazareth — becomes 
 the golden link binding in one the Prophecies and the 
 Gospels. 
 
 Returning to our main subject, it is to this secluded, 
 and somewhat despised city of Nazareth the angel 
 Gabriel is now sent, to announce the approaching birth 
 of Christ. St. Luke, in his nominative way of speaking, 
 says he came " to a Virgin betrothed to a man whose 
 name was Joseph, of the house of David ; and the 
 Virgin's name was Mary." It is difficult for us to form 
 an unbiassed estimate of the character before us, as 
 our minds are feeling the inevitable recoil from Roman 
 assumptions. We are confused with the childish prattle 
 of their Ave Marias; we are amused at their dogmas of 
 Immaculate Conceptions and Ever Virginities ; we are 
 surprised and shocked at their apotheosis of the Virgin, 
 as they lift her to a throne practically higher than that 
 of her Son, worshipped in devouter homage, suppli- 
 cated with more earnest and more frequent prayers, 
 and at the blasphemies of their Mariolatry, which 
 make her supreme on earth and supreme in heaven. 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER. 53 
 
 This undue exaltation of the Virgin Mother, which 
 becomes an adoration pure and simple, sends our Protes- 
 tant thought with a violent swing to the extreme of the 
 other side, considerably over the line of the " golden 
 mean." And so we find it hard to dissociate in our 
 minds the Virgin Mother from these Marian assumptions 
 and divinations; for which, however, she herself is in 
 no way responsible, and against which she would be 
 the first to protest. Seen only through these Romish 
 haloes, and atmospheres highly incensed, her very name 
 has been distorted, and her features, spoiled of all grace 
 and sweet serenity, have ceased to be attractive. But 
 this is not just. If Rome weights one scale with crowns, 
 and sceptres, and piles of imperial purple, we need not 
 load down the other with our prejudices, satires, and 
 negations. Two wrongs will not make a right. It is 
 neither on the crest of the wave, nor yet in the deep 
 trough of the billows, that we shall find the mean sea- 
 level, from which we can measure all heights, running 
 out our lines even among the stars. Can we not find 
 that mean sea-level now, hushing alike the voices of 
 adulation and of depreciation ? Laying aside the tradi- 
 tions of antiquity and the legends of scribulous monks, 
 laying aside, too, the coloured glasses of our prejudice, 
 with which we have been wont to protect our eyes from 
 the glare of Roman suns, may we not get a true por- 
 traiture of the Virgin Mother, in all the native natural- 
 ness of Scripture ? We think we can. 
 
 She comes upon us silently and suddenly, emerging 
 from an obscurity whose secrets we cannot read. No 
 mention is made of her parents ; tradition only has 
 supplied us with their names — Joachim and Anna. But 
 whether Joachim or not, it is certain that her father 
 was of the tribe of Judah, and of the house of David. 
 
54 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Having this fact to guide us, and also another fact, 
 that Mary was closely related to Elisabeth — though not 
 necessarily her cousin — who was of the tribe of Levi 
 and a daughter of Aaron, then it becomes probable, at 
 least, that the unnamed mother of the Virgin was of 
 the tribe of Levi, and so the connecting-link between 
 the houses of Levi and Judah — a probability which 
 receives an indirect but strong confirmation in the fact 
 that Nazareth was intimately connected with Jerusalem 
 and the Temple, one of the cities selected as a residence 
 of the priests. May we not, then, suppose that this 
 unnamed mother of the Virgin was a daughter of one 
 of the priests then residing at Nazareth, and that Mary's 
 relatives on the mother's side — some of them — were 
 also priests, going up at stated times to Jerusalem, to 
 perform their " course " of Temple services ? It is cer- 
 tainly a most natural supposition, and one, too, that 
 will help to remove some subsequent difficulties in the 
 story ; as, for instance, the journey of Mary to Judaea. 
 Some honest minds have stumbled at that long journey 
 of a hundred miles, while others have grown pathetic 
 in their descriptions of that lonely pilgrimage of the 
 Galilean Virgin. But it is neither necessary nor likely 
 that Mary should take the journey alone. Her connec- 
 tion with the priesthood, if our supposition be correct, 
 would find her an escort, even among her own relatives, 
 as least as far as Jerusalem ; and since the priestly 
 courses were half-yearly in their service, it would be 
 just the time the " course of Abijah," in which Zacharias 
 served, would be returning once again to their Judaean 
 homes. It is only a supposition, it is true, but it is a 
 supposition that is extremely natural and more than 
 probable ; and if we look through it, taking " Levi " 
 and "Judah" as our binocular lenses, it carries a 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER. 55 
 
 thread of light through otherwise dark places; while 
 throwing our sight forward, it brings distant Nazareth 
 in line with Jerusalem and the " hill-country of Judaea." 
 Betrothed to Joseph, who was of the royal line, and 
 as some think, the legal heir to David's throne, Mary 
 was probably not more than twenty years of age. 
 Whether an orphan or not we cannot tell, though the 
 silence of Scripture would almost lead us to suppose 
 that she was. Papias, however, who was a disciple 
 of St. John, states that she had two sisters — Mary the 
 wife of Cleophas, and Mary Salome the wife of Zebedee. 
 If this be so — and there is no reason why we should 
 discredit the statement — then Mary the Virgin Mother 
 would probably be the eldest of the three sisters, the 
 house-mother in the Nazareth home. Where it was 
 that the angel appeared to her we cannot tell. Tradi- 
 tion, with one of its random guesses, has fixed the spot 
 in the suburbs, beside the fountain. But there is some- 
 thing incongruous and absurd in the selection of such 
 a place for an angelic appearance — the public resort and 
 lounge, where the clatter of feminine gossip was about 
 as constant as the flow and sparkle of its waters. In- 
 deed, the very form of the participle disposes of that 
 tradition, for we read, '* He came in unto her," implying 
 that it was within her holy place of home the angel 
 found her. Nor is there any need to suppose, as some 
 do, that it was in her quiet chamber of devotion, where 
 she was observing the stated hours of prayer. Celes- 
 tials do not draw that broad line of distinction between 
 so-called secular and sacred duties. To them " work " 
 is but another form of " worship," and all duties to them 
 are sacred, even when they lie among life's temporal, 
 and so-called secular things. Indeed, Heaven reserves 
 its highest visions, not for those quiet moments of still 
 
56 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 devotion, but for the hours of busy toil, when mind and 
 body are given to the "trivial rounds" and the "com- 
 mon tasks" of every-day life. Moses is at his shepherding 
 when the bush calls him aside, with its tongues of fire ; 
 Gideon is threshing out his wheat when God's angel 
 greets him and summons him to the higher task ; and 
 Zacharias is performing the routine service of his 
 priestly office when Gabriel salutes him with the first 
 voice of a New Dispensation. And so all the analogies 
 would lead us to suppose that the Virgin was quietly 
 engaged in her domestic duties, offering the sacrifice of 
 her daily task, as Zacharias offered his incense of stacte 
 and onycha, when Gabriel addressed her, " Hail, thou 
 that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee " (R.V.). 
 The Romanists, eager to^accord Divine honours to the 
 Virgin Mother as the dispenser of blessing and of grace, 
 interpret the phrase, " Thou that art full of grace." It 
 is, perhaps, not an inapt rendering of the word, and is 
 certainly more euphonious than our marginal reading 
 " much graced ; " but when they make the "grace " an 
 inherent, and not a derived grace, their doctrine slants 
 off from all Scripture, and is opposed to all reason. 
 That the word itself gives no countenance to such an 
 enthronement of Mary, is evident, for St. Paul makes 
 use of the same word when speaking of himself and 
 the Ephesian Christians (Eph. i. 6), where we render it 
 " His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the 
 Beloved." But criticism apart, never before had an 
 angel so addressed a mortal, for even Daniel's "greatly 
 beloved " falls below this Nazareth greeting. When 
 Gabriel came to Zacharias there was not even a " Hail ; " 
 it was simply a " Fear not," and then the message; but 
 now he gives to Mary a " Hail " and two beatitudes 
 besides: " Thou art highly favoured;" " the Lord is with 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER. 57 
 
 thee." And do these words mean nothing ? Are they 
 but a few heavenly courtesies whose only meaning is 
 in their sound ? Heaven does not speak thus with 
 random, unmeaning words. Its voices are true, and 
 deep as they are true, never meaning less, but often 
 more than they say. That the angel should so address 
 her is certain proof that the Virgin possessed a peculiar 
 fitness for the Divine honours she was now to receive — 
 honours which had been so long held back, as if in 
 reserve for herself alone. It is only they who look 
 heavenward who see heavenly things. There must be a 
 heart aflame before the bush burns ; and when the bush 
 is alight it is only a he who sees takes off his shoes." 
 
 The glimpses we get of the Virgin are few and 
 brief ; she is soon eclipsed — if we may be allowed that 
 shadowy word — by the greater glories of her Son ; 
 but why should she be selected as the mother of the 
 human Christ ? why should her life nourish His ? why 
 should the thirty years be spent in her daily presence, 
 her face being the first vision of awaking consciousness, 
 as it was in the last earthward look from the cross ? — 
 why all this, except that there was a wealth of beauty 
 and of grace sbout her nature, a certain tinge of 
 heavenliness that made it fitting the Messiah should 
 be born of her rather than of any woman else ? As 
 we have seen, the royal and the priestly lines meet in 
 her, and Mary unites in herself all the dignity of the 
 one with the sanctity of the other. With what delicacy 
 and grace she receives the angel's message ! "Greatly 
 troubled " at first — not, however, like Zacharias, at the 
 sight of the messenger, but at his message — she soon 
 recovers herself, and " casts in her mind what manner 
 of salutation this might be." This sentence just de- 
 scribes one prominent feature of her character, her 
 
58 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 reflective, reasoning mind. Sparing of words, except 
 when under the inspiration of some Magnificat, she 
 lived much within herself. She loved the companion- 
 ship of her own thoughts, finding a certain music in 
 their still monologue. When the shepherds made known 
 the saying of the angel about this child, repeating the 
 angelic song, perhaps, with sundry variations of their 
 own, Mary is neither elated nor astonished. Whatever 
 her feelings — and they must have been profoundly 
 moved — she carefully conceals them. Instead of telling 
 out her own deep secrets, letting herself drift out on the 
 ecstasies of the moment, Mary is silent, serenely quiet, 
 unwilling that even a shadow of herself should dim the 
 brightness of His rising. "She kept," so we read, "all 
 these sayings, pondering them in her heart ; " or putting 
 them together, as the Greek word means, and so forming, 
 as in a mental mosaic, her picture of the Christ who was 
 to be. And so, in later years, we read (ii. 51) how " His 
 mother kept all these saying in her heart," gathering 
 up the fragmentary sentences of the Divine Childhood 
 and Youth, and hiding them, as a treasure peculiarly 
 her own, in the deep, still chambers of her soul. And 
 what those still chambers of her soul were, how heavenly 
 the atmosphere that enswathed them, how hallowed by 
 the Divine Presence, her Magnificat will show ; for that 
 inspired psalm is but an opened window, letting the 
 music pass without, as it throws the light within, 
 showing us the temple of a quiet, devout, and thoughtful 
 soul. 
 
 With what complacency and with what little surprise 
 she received the angel's message I The Incarnation 
 does not come upon her as a new thought, a thought 
 for which her mind cannot possibly find room, and 
 human speech can weave no fitting dress. It disturbs 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER. 59 
 
 neither her reason nor her faith. Versed in Scripture 
 as she is, it comes rather as a familiar thought — a 
 heavenly dove, it is true, but gliding down within her 
 mind in a perfect, because a heavenly naturalness. 
 And when the angel announces that the " Son of the 
 Most High," whose name shall be called Jesus, and 
 who shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, 
 shall be born of herself, there is no exclamation of 
 astonishment, no word of incredulity as to whether 
 this can be, but simply a question as to the manner 
 of its accomplishment : " How shall this be, seeing that 
 I know not a man ? " The Christ had evidently been 
 conceived in her mind, and cradled in her heart, even 
 before He became a conception of her womb. 
 
 And what an absolute self-surrender to the Divine 
 purpose ! No sooner has the angel told her that the 
 Holy Ghost shall come upon her, and the power of 
 the Most High overshadow her, than she bows to the 
 Supreme Will in a lowly, reverential acquiescence: 
 " Behold, the handmaid [bondmaid] of the Lord ; be 
 it unto me according to thy word." So do the human 
 and the Divine wills meet and mingle. Heaven 
 touches earth, comes down into it, that earth may 
 evermore touch heaven, and indeed form part of it 
 
 The angel departs, leaving her alone with her great 
 secret ; and little by little it dawns upon her, as it 
 could not have done at first, what this secret means 
 for her. A great honour it is, a great joy it will be ; 
 but Mary finds, as we all find, the path to heaven's 
 glories lies through suffering ; the way into the wealthy 
 place is " through the fire." How can she carry this 
 great secret herself? and yet how can she tell it? 
 Who will believe her report? Will not these Naza- 
 renes laugh at her story of the vision, except that 
 
6o THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 the matter would be too grave for a smile ? It is her 
 own secret yet, but it cannot be a secret long ; and 
 then — who can defend her, and ward off the inevitable 
 shame ? Where can she find shelter from the venomed 
 shafts that will be hurled from every side — where, save 
 in her consciousness of unsullied purity, and in the 
 "shadow of the Highest"? Was it thoughts like 
 these that now agitated her mind, deciding her to 
 make the hasty visit to Elisabeth ? or was it that 
 she might find sympathy and counsel in communion 
 with a kindred soul, one that age had made w T ise, and 
 grace made beautiful ? Probably it was both ; but in 
 this journey we will not follow her now, except to see 
 how her faith in God never once wavered. We have 
 already listened to her sweet song ; but what a sublime 
 faith it shows, that she can sing in face of this gather- 
 ing storm, a storm of suspicion and of shame, when 
 Joseph himself will seek to put her away, lest his 
 character should suffer too ! But Mary believed, even 
 though she felt and smarted. She endured " as seeing 
 Him who is invisible." Could she not safely leave 
 her character to Him ? Would not the Lord avenge 
 His own elect? Would not Divine Wisdom justify 
 her child? Faith and hope said "Yes;" and Mary's 
 soul, like a nightingale, trilled out her Magnificat when 
 earth's light was disappearing, and the shadows were 
 falling thick and fast on every side. 
 
 It is on her return to Nazareth, after her three 
 months' absence, that the episode occurs narrated by 
 St. Matthew. It is thrown into the story almost by 
 way of parenthesis, but it casts a vivid light on the 
 painful experience through which she was now called 
 to pass. Her prolonged absence, most unusual for 
 one betrothed, was in itself puzzling ; but she returns 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER. 61 
 
 to find only a scant welcome. She finds herself 
 suspected of shame and sin, "the white flower of 
 her blameless life" dashed and stained with black 
 aspersions. Even Joseph's confidence in her is shaken, 
 so shaken that he must put her away and have the 
 betrothal cancelled. And so the clouds darken about 
 the Virgin; she is left almost alone in the sharp 
 travail of her soul, charged with sin, even when she 
 is preparing for the world a Saviour, and likely, un- 
 less Heaven speedily interpose, to become an outcast, 
 if not a martyr, thrown outside the circle of human 
 courtesies and sympathies as a social leper. Like 
 another heir of all the promises, she too is led as 
 a lamb to the slaughter, a victim bound, and all but 
 sacrificed, upon the altar of the public conscience. But 
 Heaven did intervene, even as it stayed the knife of 
 Abraham. An angel appears to Joseph, throwing 
 around the suspected one the mantle of unsullied 
 innocence, and assuring him that her explanation, 
 though passing strange, was truth itself. And so the 
 Lord did avenge His own elect, stilling the babble 
 of unfriendly tongues, restoring to her all the lost 
 confidences, together with a wealth of added hopes 
 and prospective honours. 
 
 Not, however, out of Galilee must the Shiloh come, 
 but out of Judah ; and not Nazareth, but Bethlehem 
 Ephratah is the designated place of His coming forth 
 who shall be the Governor and Shepherd of " My people 
 Israel." What means, then, this apparent divergence 
 of the Providence from the Prophecy, the whole drift 
 of the one being northward, while the other points 
 steadily to the south? It is only a seeming diver- 
 gence, the backward flash of the wheel that all the time 
 is moving steadily, swiftly forward. The Prophecy 
 
62 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 and the Providence are but the two staves of the ark, 
 moving in different but parallel lines, and bearing 
 between them the Divine purpose. Already the line 
 is laid that links Nazareth with Bethlehem, the line of 
 descent we call lineage; and now we see Providence 
 setting in motion another force, the Imperial Will, which, 
 moving along this line, makes the purpose a realization. 
 Nor was it the Imperial Will only ; it was the Imperial 
 Will acting through Jewish prejudices. These two 
 forces, antagonistic, if not opposite, were the centrifugal 
 and centripetal forces that kept the Divine Purpose 
 moving in its appointed round and keeping Divine 
 hours. Had the registration decreed by Caesar been 
 conducted after the Roman manner, Joseph and Mary 
 would not have been required to go up to Bethlehem ; 
 but when, out of deference to Jewish prejudice, the 
 registration was made in the Hebrew mode, this com- 
 pelled them, both being descendants of David, to go 
 up to their ancestral city. It has been thought by 
 some that Mary possessed some inherited property in 
 Bethlehem ; and the narrative would suggest that there 
 were other links that bound them to the city; for 
 evidently they intended to make Bethlehem henceforth 
 their place of residence, and they would have done so 
 had not a Divine monition broken in upon their purpose 
 (Matt. ii. 23). 
 
 And so they move southward, obeying the mandate 
 of Caesar, who now is simply the executor of the 
 higher Will, the Will that moves silently but surely, 
 back of all thrones, principalities, and powers. We 
 will not attempt to gild the gold, by enlarging upon 
 the story of the Nativity, and so robbing it of its sweet 
 simplicity. The toilsome journey ; its inhospitable 
 ending ; the stable and the manger ; the angelic sym- 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER. 63 
 
 phonies in the distance ; the adoration of the shepherds 
 — all form one sweet idyll, no word of which we can 
 spare; and as the Church chants her Te Deum 
 all down the ages this will not be one of its lowest 
 strains : — 
 
 " When Thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man 
 Thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb." 
 
 And so the Virgin becomes the Virgin Mother, 
 graduating into motherhood amid the acclamations of 
 the sky, and borne on to her exalted honours in the 
 sweep of Imperial decrees. 
 
 After the Nativity she sinks back into a second — 
 a far-off second — place, for " the greater glory doth 
 dim the less ; " and twice only does her voice break 
 the silence of the thirty years. We hear it first in the 
 Temple, as, in tones tremulous with anxiety and sorrow, 
 she asks, "Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us? 
 Behold, Thy father and I sought Thee sorrowing." 
 The whole incident is perplexing, and if we read it 
 superficially, not staying to read between the lines, it 
 certainly places the mother in anything but a favourable 
 light. Let us observe, however, that there was no neces- 
 sity that the mother should have made this pilgrimage, 
 and evidently she had made it so that she might be near 
 her precious charge. But now she strangely loses 
 sight of Him, and goes even a day's journey without 
 discovering her loss. How is this ? Has she suddenly 
 grown careless ? or does she lose both herself and her 
 charge in the excitements of the return journey ? 
 Thoughtfulness, as we have seen, was a characteristic 
 feature of her life. Hers was u the harvest of the 
 quiet eye," and her thoughts centred not on herself, 
 but on her Divine Son ; He was her Alpha and Omega, 
 
64 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 her first, her last, her only thought. It is altogether 
 outside the range of possibilities that she now could 
 be so negligent of her maternal duties, and so we are 
 compelled to seek for our explanation elsewhere. May 
 we not find it in this ? The parents had left Jerusalem 
 earlier in the day, arranging for the child Jesus to 
 follow with another part of the same company, which, 
 leaving later, would overtake them at their first camp. 
 But Jesus not appearing when the second company 
 starts, they imagine that He has gone on with the 
 first company, and so proceed without Him. This 
 seems the only probable solution of the difficulty ; at 
 any rate it makes plain and perfectly natural what 
 else is most obscure and perplexing. Mary's mistake, 
 however — and it was not her fault — opens to us a page 
 in the sealed volume of the Divine Boyhood, letting us 
 hear its solitary voice — u Wist ye not that I must be 
 in My Father's house ? " 
 
 We see the mother again at Cana, where she is an 
 invited and honoured guest at the marriage, moving 
 about among the servants with a certain quiet authority, 
 and telling her Divine Son of the breakdown in the 
 hospitalities : u They have no wine." We cannot now 
 go into details, but evidently there was no distancing 
 reserve between the mother and her Son. She goes 
 to Him naturally ; she speaks to Him freely and 
 frankly, as any widow would speak to the son on 
 whom she leaned. Nay, she seems to know, as by a 
 sort of intuition, of the superhuman powers that ars 
 lying dormant in that quiet Son of hers, and she so 
 correctly reads the horoscope of Heaven as to expect 
 this will be the hour and the place of their manifesta- 
 tion. Perhaps her mind did not grasp the true Divinity 
 of her Son — indeed, it could not have done so before 
 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER. 
 
 the Resurrection — but that He is the Messiah she has 
 no doubt, and so, strong in her confidence, she says to 
 the servants, " Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." 
 And her faith must have been great indeed, when it 
 required a " whatsoever " to measure it. Some have 
 thought they could detect a tinge of impatience and a 
 tone of rebuke in the reply of Jesus; and doubtless 
 there is a little sharpness in our English rendering of 
 it. It does sound to our ears somewhat unMlial and 
 harsh. But to the Greeks the address " Woman " was 
 both courteous and respectful, and Jesus Himself uses 
 it in that last tender salute from the cross. Certainly, 
 she did not take it as a rebuke, for one harsh word, 
 like the touch on the sensitive plant, would have thrown 
 her back into silence; whereas she goes of! directly to 
 the servants with her "whatsoever." 
 
 We get one more brief glimpse of her at Capernaum, 
 as she and her other sons come out to Jesus to urge 
 Him to desist from His long speaking. It is but a 
 simple narrative, but it serves to throw a side-light on 
 that home-life now removed to Capernaum. It shows 
 us the thoughtful, loving mother, as, forgetful of herself 
 and full of solicitude for Him, who, she fears, will tax 
 Himself beyond His strength, she comes out to per- 
 suade Him home. But what is the meaning of that 
 strange answer, and the significant gesture ? " Mother," 
 " brethren" ? It is as if Jesus did not understand the 
 words. They are something He has now outgrown, 
 something He must now lay aside, as He gives Himself 
 to the world at large. As there comes a time in the 
 life of each when the mother is forsaken — left, that he 
 may follow a higher call, and be himself a man — so 
 Jesus now steps cut into a world where Marv's heart, 
 indeed, may still follow, but a wcrld her mind may not 
 
 5 
 
66 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 enter. The earthly relation is henceforth to be over- 
 shadowed by the heavenly. The Son of Mary grows 
 into the Son of man, belonging now to no special cne, 
 but to humanity at large, finding in all, even in us, 
 who do the will of the Father in heaven, a brother, a 
 sister, a mother. Not that Jesus forgets her. Oh, no ! 
 Even amid the agonies of the cross He thinks of her ; 
 He singles her out among the crowd, bespeaking for 
 her a place — the place He Himself has filled — in the 
 heart of His nearest earthly friend ; and amid the 
 prayer for His murderers, and the " Eloi, Eloi " of a 
 terrible forsaking, He says to the Apostle of love, 
 " Behold thy mother/' and to her, " Behold thy son." 
 
 And so the Virgin Mother takes her place in the 
 focal point of all the histories. Through no choice, 
 no conceit or forwardness of her own, but by the grace 
 qf God and by an inherent fitness, she becomes 
 the connecting-link between earth and heaven. And 
 throwing, as she does, her unconscious shadow back 
 within the Paradise Lost, and forward through the 
 Gospels to the Paradise Regained, shall we not " mag- 
 nify the Lord " with her ? shall we not " magnify the 
 Lord" for her, as, with all the generations, w T e "call 
 her blessed"? 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS. 
 Luke ii. 8-21. 
 
 THE Gospel of St. Mark omits entirely the Nativity, 
 passing at once to the words and miracles of His 
 public ministry. St. John, too, dismisses the Advent 
 and the earlier years of the Divine Life with one 
 solitary phrase, how the Word, which in the beginning 
 was with God and was God, " became flesh and dwelt 
 among us " (i. 14). St. Luke, however, whose Gospel 
 is the Gospel of the Humanity, lingers reverently over 
 the Nativity, throwing a variety of side-lights upon the 
 cradle of the Holy Child. Already has he shown how 
 the Roman State prepared the cradle of the Infancy, 
 and how Caesar Augustus unconsciously wrought out 
 the purpose of God, the breath of his imperial decree 
 being but part of a higher inspiration; and now he 
 proceeds to show how the shepherds of Judaea bring the 
 greetings of the Hebrew world, the wave-sheaf of the 
 ripening harvests of homage which yet will be laid, by 
 Jew and Gentile alike, at the feet of Him who was Son 
 of David and Son of man. 
 
 It is generally supposed that these anonymous 
 shepherds were residents of Bethlehem, and tradition 
 has fixed the exact spot where they were favoured with 
 this Advent Apocalypse, about a thousand paces from 
 
68 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 the modern village. It is a historic fact that there was 
 a tower near that site, called Eder, or " the Tower of 
 the Flock/' around which were pastured the flocks 
 destined for the Temple sacrifice ; but the topography 
 of ver. 8 is purposely vague. The expression " in that 
 same country," written by one who both in years and 
 in distance was far removed from the events recorded, 
 would describe any circle within the radius of a few 
 miles from Bethlehem as its centre, and the very 
 vagueness of the expression seems to push back the 
 scene of the Advent music to a farther distance than 
 a thousand paces. And this view is confirmed by the 
 language of the shepherds themselves, who, when the 
 vision has faded, say one to another, " Let us now go 
 even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing that is come to 
 pass ; " for they scarcely would have needed, or used, 
 the adverbial u even " were they keeping their flocks so 
 close up to the walls of the city. We may therefore 
 infer, with some amount of probability, that whether 
 the shepherds were residents of Bethlehem or not, 
 when they kept watch over their flocks, it was not on 
 the traditional site, but farther away over the hills. 
 Indeed, it is difficult, and very often impossible, for us 
 to fix the precise locality of these sacred scenes, these 
 bright points of intersection, where Heaven's glories 
 flash out against the dull carbon-points of earth ; and 
 the voices of tradition are at best but doubtful guesses. 
 It would almost seem as if God Himself had wiped out 
 these memories, hiding them away, as He hid the 
 sepulchre of Moses, lest the world should pay them too 
 great a homage, and lest we might think that one 
 place lay nearer to heaven than another, when all 
 places are equally distant, or rather equally near. It 
 is enough to know that somewhere on these lonely hills 
 
a. 8-21.] THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS. 69 
 
 came the vision of the angels, perhaps on the very 
 spot where David was minding his sheep when 
 Heaven summoned him to a higher task, passing him 
 up among the kings. 
 
 While the shepherds were " watching the watches of 
 the night over their flock," as the Evangelist expresses 
 it, referring to the pastoral custom of dividing the night 
 into watches, and keeping watch by turns, suddenly 
 " an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the glory of 
 the Lord shone round about them." When the angel 
 appeared to Zacharias, and when Gabriel brought to 
 Mary her evangel, we do not read of any supernatural 
 portent, any celestial glory, attending them. Possibly 
 because their appearances were in the broad daylight, 
 when the glory would be masked, invisible ; but now, 
 in the dead of night, the angelic form is bright and 
 luminous, throwing all around them a sort of heavenly 
 halo, in which even the lustrous Syrian stars grow 
 dim. Dazzled by the sudden burst of glory, the 
 shepherds were awed by the vision, and stricken with 
 a great fear, until the angel, borrowing the tones and 
 accents of their own speech, addressed to them his 
 message, the message he had been commissioned to 
 bring : " Be not afraid ; for behold, I bring you good 
 tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people : for 
 there is born to you this day in the city of David a 
 Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." And then he gave 
 them a sign by which they might recognize the Saviour 
 Lord : u Ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling 
 clothes, and lying in a manger." 
 
 From the indefinite wording of the narrative we 
 should infer that the angel who brought the message to 
 the shepherds was not Gabriel, who had before brought 
 the good tidings to Mary. But whether or not the 
 
70 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 messenger was the same, the two messages are almost 
 identical in structure and in thought, the only difference 
 being the personal element of the equation, and the 
 shifting of the time from the future to the present tense. 
 Both strike the same key-note, the " Fear not " with 
 which they seek to still the vibrations of the heart, that 
 the Virgin and the shepherds may not have their vision 
 blurred and tremulous through the agitation of the mind. 
 Both make ment : on of the name of David, which name 
 was the key-word which unlocked all Messianic hopes. 
 Both speak of the Child as a Saviour— though Gabriel 
 wraps up the title within the name, "Thou shalt call 
 His name Jesus;" for, as St Matthew explains it, "it 
 is He that shall save His people from their sins." Both, 
 too, speak of Him as the Messiah ; for when the angel 
 now calls Him the " Christ " it was the same " Anointed" 
 one who, as Gabriel had said, " should reign over the 
 house of Jacob for ever ; " while in the last august title 
 now given by the angel, " Lord," we may recognize the 
 higher Divinity — that He is, in some unique, and to us 
 incomprehensible sense, " the Son of the Most High " 
 (i. 32). Such, then, is the triple crown the angel now 
 bears to the cradle of the Holy Child. What He will 
 be to the world is still but a prophecy ; but as He, the 
 Firstborn, is now brought into the world, God commands 
 all the angels to worship Him (Heb. i. 6) ; and with 
 united voice — though the antiphon sings back over a 
 nine months' silence — they salute the Child of Bethlehem 
 as Saviour, Messiah, Lord. The one title sets up His 
 throne facing the lower world, commanding the powers 
 of darkness, and looking at the moral conditions of men; 
 the second throws the shadow' of His throne over the 
 political relations of men, making it dominate all thrones ; 
 while the third title sets up His throne facing the 
 
ii.S-2i.] THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS. 71 
 
 heavens themselves, vesting Him with a supreme, a 
 Divine authority. 
 
 No sooner was the message ended than suddenly 
 there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly 
 host, praising God and saying — 
 
 "Glory to God in the highest, 
 And on earth peace among men in whom He is well pleased." 
 
 The Revised Version lacks the rhythmic qualities of 
 the Authorized Version ; and the wordy clause " among 
 men in whom He is well pleased" seems but a poor 
 substitute for the terse and clear "good-will toward 
 men," which is an expression easy of utterance, and 
 which seemed to have earned a prescriptive right to a 
 place in our Advent music. The revised rendering, 
 however, is certainly more in accord with the gram- 
 matical construction of the original, whose idiomatic 
 form can scarcely be put into English, except in a way 
 somewhat circuitous and involved. In both expressions 
 the underlying thought is the same, representing man 
 as the object of the Divine good-pleasure, that Divine 
 "benevolence" — using the word in its etymological 
 sense — which enfolds, in the germ, the Divine favour, 
 compassion, mere}', and love. There is thus a triple 
 parallelism running through the song, the "Glory to 
 God in the highest" finding its corresponding terms in 
 the "peace among (or to) men in whom He is well 
 pleased on earth ; " while altogether it forms one com- 
 plete circle of praise, the " good-pleasure to man," the 
 "peace on earth," the "glory to God" marking off its 
 three segments. And so the song harmonizes with the 
 message ; indeed, it is that message in an altered shape ; 
 no longer walking in common prosaic ways, but winged 
 now, it moves in its higher circles with measured beat, 
 
7* THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 leaving a path from the cradle of the Infancy to the 
 highest heavens all strewn with Glorias. And what is 
 the triplicity of the song but another rendering of the 
 three august titles of the message — Saviour, Messiah, 
 Lord ? the " Saviour" being the expression of the Divine 
 good-pleasure ; the " Messiah " telling of His reign upon 
 earth who is Himself the Prince of peace; while the 
 "Lord," which, as we have seen, corresponds with 
 " the Son of the Most High," leads us up directly to 
 the "heavenlies," to Him who commands and who 
 deserves all doxologies. 
 
 But is this song only a song in some far-distant sky — 
 a sweet memory indeed, but no experience ? Is it not 
 rather the original from which copies may be struck for 
 our individual lives ? There is for each of us an advent, 
 if we will accept it ; for what is regeneration but the 
 beginning of the Divine life within our life, the advent 
 of the Christ Himself? And let but that supreme hour 
 come to us when place and room are made for Him 
 who is at once the expression of the Divine favour and 
 the incarnation of the Divine love, and the new era 
 dawns, the reign of peace, the " peace of God," because 
 the "peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.'' 
 Then will the heart throw off its Glorias, not in one 
 burst of song, which subsides quickly into silence, but 
 in one perpetual anthem, which ever becomes more loud 
 and sweet as the day of its perfected redemption draweth 
 nigh ; for when the Divine displeasure is turned away, 
 and a Divine peace or comfort takes its place, who can 
 but say, " O Lord, I will praise Thee " ? 
 
 Directly the angel-song had ceased, and the singers 
 had disappeared in the deep silence whence they came, 
 the shepherds, gathering up their scattered thought?, 
 said one to another (as if their hearts were speaking all 
 
ii. 8-21.] THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS. 73 
 
 at once and all in unison), "Let us now go even unto 
 Bethlehem, and see this thing that is come to pass 
 which the Lord hath made known unto us." The 
 response was immediate. They do not shut out this 
 heavenly truth by doubt and vain questioning; they 
 do not keep it at a distance from them, as if it only 
 indirectly and distantly concerned themselves, but yield 
 themselves up to it entirely; and as they go hastily to 
 Bethlehem, in the quick step and in the rapid beating 
 of their heart, we can trace the vibrations of the angel- 
 song. And why is this ? Why is it that the message 
 does not come upon them as a surprise? Why are 
 these men ready with such a perfect acquiescence, 
 their hearts leaping forward to meet and embrace this 
 Gospel of the angels ? We shall probably find our 
 answer in the character of the men themselves. They 
 pass into history unnamed ; and after playing their 
 brief part, they disappear, lost in the incense-cloud of 
 their own praises. But evidently these shepherds were 
 no mean, no common men. They were Hebrews, pos- 
 sibly of the royal line ; at any rate they were Davids 
 in their loftiness of thought, of hope and aspiration. 
 They were devout, God-fearing men. Like their father 
 Jacob, they too were citizens of two worlds ; they 
 could lead their flocks into green pastures, and mend 
 the fold ; or they could turn aside from flock and fold 
 to wrestle with God's angels, and prevail. Heaven's 
 revelations come to noble minds, as the loftiest peaks 
 are always the first to hail the dawn. And can we 
 suppose that Heaven would so honour them, lighting 
 up the sky with an aureole of glory for their sole 
 benefit, sending this multitude to sing to them a sweet 
 chorale, if the men themselves had nothing heavenly 
 about them, if their selfish, sordid mind could soar no 
 
74 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 higher than their flocks, and have no wider range than 
 the markets for their wool ? 
 
 " Let but a flute 
 Play 'neath the fine-mixed metal ; 
 Then shall the huge bell tremble, then the mass 
 With myriad waves concurrent shall respond 
 In low, soft unison." 
 
 But there must be the music hidden within, or there 
 is no unison. And we may be sure of this, that the 
 angel-song had passed by them as a cold night-wind, 
 had not their hearts been tuned up by intense desire, 
 until they struck responsive to the angel-voice. Though 
 they knew it not, they had led their flock to the mount 
 of God ; and up the steps of sacred hopes and lofty 
 aspirations they had climbed, until their lives had got 
 within the circle of heavenly harmonies, and they were 
 worthy to be the first apostles of the New Dispensa- 
 tion. 
 
 In our earthly modes of thinking we push the sacred 
 and the secular far apart, as if they were two different 
 worlds, or, at any rate, as opposite hemispheres of the 
 same world, with but few points of contact between 
 them. It is not so. The secular is the sacred on its 
 under, its earthward side. It is a part of that great 
 whole we call duty, and in our earthly callings, if they 
 are but pure and honest, we may hear the echoes of a 
 heavenly call. The temple of Worship and the temple 
 of Work are not separated by indefinable spaces ; they 
 are contiguous, leaning upon each other, while they 
 both front the same Divine purpose. Nor can it be 
 simply a coincidence that Heaven's revelations should 
 nearly always come to man in the moments of earthly 
 toil, rather than in the hours of leisure or of so-called 
 worship. It was from his shepherding the burning 
 
ii. 8-21.] THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS. 75 
 
 bush beckoned Moses aside ; while Heaven's messenger 
 found Gideon on the threshing-floor, and Elisha in the 
 furrow. In the New Testament, too, in all the cases 
 whose circumstances are recorded, the Divine call 
 reached the disciples when engaged in their every-day 
 task, sitting at the receipt of custom, and casting or 
 mending their nets. The fact is significant. In the 
 estimate of Heaven, instead of a discount being put upon 
 the common tasks of life, those tasks are dignified and 
 ennobled. They look towards heaven, and if the heart 
 be only set in that direction they lead too up towards 
 heaven. Our weeks are not unlike the sheet of Peter's 
 vision ; we take care to tie up the two ends, attaching 
 them to heaven, and then we leave what we call the 
 " week-days " bulging down earthward in purely secular 
 fashion. But would not our weeks, and our whole life, 
 swing on a higher and holier level, could we but recog- 
 nize the fact that all days are the Lord's days, and 
 did we but attach each day and each deed to heaven? 
 Such is the truest, noblest life, that takes the " trivial 
 rounds " as a part of its sacred duties, doing them all 
 as unto the Lord. So, as we sanctify life's common 
 things, they cease to be common, and the earthly 
 becomes less earthly as we learn to see more of heaven 
 in it. In the weaving of our life some of its inreads 
 stretch earthward, and some heavenward ; but they 
 cross and interlace, and together they form the warp 
 and woof of one fabric, which should be, like the gar- 
 ment of the Master, without seam, woven from the top 
 throughout. Happy is that life which, keeping an open 
 eye over the flock, keeps too a heart open towards 
 heaven, ready to listen to the angelic music, and ready 
 to transfer its rhythm to their own hastening feet or 
 their praising lips. 
 
76 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Our Evangelist tells us that they "came in haste" 
 in search of the young Child, and we may almost detect 
 that haste in the very accents of their speech. It is, 
 " Let us now go across even to Bethlehem/' allowing 
 the prefix its proper meaning ; as if their eager hearts 
 could not stay to go round by the ordinary road, but 
 like bees scenting a field of clover, they too must make 
 their cross-country way to Bethlehem. Though the 
 angel had not given explicit directions, the city of 
 David was not so large but that they could easily dis- 
 cover the object of their search — the Child, as had been 
 told them, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in 
 a manager. It has been thought by some that the 
 " inn " is a mistranslation, and that it really was the 
 " guest-chamber" of some friend. It is true the word 
 is rendered " guest-chamber " on the other two occasions 
 of its use (Mark xiv. 14; Luke xxii. 11), but it also 
 signified a public guest-house, as well as a private 
 guest-chamber; and such evidently is its meaning here, 
 for private hospitality, even had its " guest-chamber " 
 been preoccupied, would certainly, under the circum- 
 stances, have offered something more human than a 
 stable. That would not have been its only alternative. 
 
 It is an interesting coincidence, and one serving to 
 link together the Old and the New Testament, that 
 Jeremiah speaks of a certain geruth, or inn, as it may 
 read, " which is by Beth-lehem " (Jer. xli. 17). How 
 it came into the possession of Chimham, who was a 
 Gileadite, we are not told ; but we are told that be- 
 cause of the kindness shown to David in his exile by 
 Barzillai, his son Chimham received special marks of 
 the royal favour, and was, in fact, treated almost as an 
 adopted son (1 Kings ii. 7). What is certain is that 
 the khan of Bethlehem bore, for successive genera- 
 
ii.8-21.] THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS. 77 
 
 tions, the name of Chimham ; which fact is in itself 
 evidence that Chimham was its builder, as the well of 
 Jacob retained, through all the changes of inheritance, 
 the name of the patriarch whose thought and gift it 
 was. In all probability, therefore, the " inn " was built 
 by Chimham, on that part of the paternal estate which 
 David inherited ; and as the khans of the East cling 
 with remarkable tenacity to their original sites, it is 
 probable, to say the least, that the u inn of Chimham " 
 and the inn of Bethlehem, in which there was no room 
 for the two late-comers from Nazareth, were, if not 
 identical, at any rate related structures — so strangely 
 does the cycle of history complete itself, and the Old 
 merge into the New. And so, while Prophecy sings 
 audibly and sweetly of the place which yet shall give 
 birth to the Governor who shall rule over Israel, 
 History puts up her silent hand, and salutes Beth-lehem 
 Ephratah as by no means the least among the cities of 
 Judah. 
 
 But not in the inn do the shepherds find the happy 
 parents — the spring-tide of the unusual immigration 
 had completely flooded that, leaving no standing-place 
 for the son and daughter of David — but they find 
 them in a stable, probably in some adjoining cave, 
 the swaddled Child, as the angels had foretold, lying 
 in the manger. Art has lingered reverently and long 
 over this stable scene, hiding with exquisite draperies 
 its baldness and meanness, and lighting up its darkness 
 with wreaths of golden glory; but these splendours 
 are apocryphal, existing only in the mind of the be- 
 holder; they are the luminous mist of an adoring 
 love. What the shepherds do find is an extemporized 
 apartment, mean in the extreme ; two strangers fresh 
 from Nazareth, both young and both poor; and a 
 
78 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 new-born infant asleep in the manger, with a group 
 of sympathizing spectators, who have brought, in the 
 emergency, all kinds of proffered helps. It seems a 
 strange ending for an angel-song, a far drop from the 
 superhuman to the subhuman. Will it shake the faith 
 of these apostle-shepherds ? Will it shatter their 
 bright hope ? And chagrined that their auroral dream 
 should have so poor a realization, will they return to 
 their flocks with heavy hearts and sad ? Not they. 
 They prostrate themselves before the Infant Presence, 
 repeating over and over the heavenly words the angels 
 had spoken unto them concerning the Child, and while 
 Mary announces the name as "Jesus," they salute 
 Him, as the angels had greeted Him before, as Saviour, 
 Messiah, Lord ; thus putting on the head of the Child 
 Jesus that triple crown, symbol of a supremacy which 
 knows no limit either in space or time. It was the 
 Te Deum of a redeemed humanity, which succeeding 
 years have only made more deep, more full, and which 
 in ever-rising tones will yet grow into the Alleluias 
 of the heavens. Saviour, Messiah, Lord ! these titles 
 struck upon Mary's ear not with surprise, for she has 
 grown accustomed to surprises now, but with a thrill 
 of wonder. She could not yet spell out ah 1 their 
 deep meaning, and so she pondered "them in her 
 heart," hiding them away in her maternal soul, that 
 their deep secrets might ripen and blossom in the 
 summer of the after-years. 
 
 The shepherds appear no more in the Gospel story. 
 We see them returning to their task "glorifying and 
 praising God for all the things that they had heard 
 and seen," and then the mantle of a deep silence falls 
 upon them. As a lark, rising heavenward, loses itself 
 from our sight, becoming a sweet song in the sky, so 
 
ii 8-21.] THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS. 79 
 
 these anonymous shepherds, these first disciples of 
 the Lord, having laid their tribute at His feet — in the 
 name of humanity saluting the Christ who was to 
 be — now pass out of our sight, leaving for us the 
 example of their heavenward look and their simple 
 faith, and leaving, too, their Glorias, which in multi- 
 plied reverberations fill all lands and all times, the 
 earthly prelude of tne New, the eternal Song. 
 
CHAPTER VL 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 WHEN the Old Testament closed, prophecy had 
 thrown upon the screen of the future the 
 shadows of two persons, cast in heavenly light. 
 Sketched in outline rather than in detail, still their 
 personalities were sufficiently distinct as to attract the 
 gaze and hopes of the intervening centuries ; while 
 their differing, though related missions were clearly 
 recognized. One was the Coming One, who should 
 bring the "consolation" of Israel, and who should 
 Himself be that Consolation ; and gathering into one 
 august title all such glittering epithets as Star, Shiloh, 
 and Emmanuel, prophecy reverently saluted Him as 
 " the Lord," paying Him prospective homage and 
 adoration. The other was to be the herald of another 
 Dispensation, proclaiming the new kingdom and the 
 new King, running before the royal chariot, even as 
 Elijah ran before Ahab to the ivory palace at Jezreel, 
 his voice then dying away in silence, as he himself 
 passes cut of sight behind the throne. Such were 
 the two figures that prophecy, in a series of dissolving 
 views, had thrown forward from the Old into the New 
 Testament ; and such was the signal honour accorded 
 to the Baptist, that while many of the Old Testament 
 characters appear as reflections in the New, his is 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 81 
 
 the only human shadow thrown back from the New 
 into the Old. 
 
 The forerunner thus had a virtual existence long 
 before the time of the Advent. Known by his 
 synonym of Elias, the prophesied, he became as a real 
 presence, moving here and there among their thoughts 
 and dreams, and lighting up their long night with 
 the beacon-fires of new and bright hopes. His voice 
 seemed familiar, even though it came to them in far- 
 distant echoes, and the listening centuries had caught 
 exactly both its accent and its message. And so the 
 preparer of the way found his own path prepared; 
 for John's path and u the way of the Lord " were the 
 same; it was the way of obedience and of sacrifice. 
 The two lives were thus thrown into conjunction from 
 the first, the lesser light revolving around the Greater, 
 as they fulfil their separate courses — separate indeed, 
 as far as the human must ever be separated from the 
 Divine, yet most closely related. 
 
 Living thus through the pre-Advent centuries, both 
 in the Divine purpose and in the thoughts and hopes 
 of men, so early designated to his heraldic office, 
 " My messenger," in a singular sense, as no other of 
 mortals could ever be, it is no matter of apology, or 
 even of surprise, that his birth should be attended by 
 so much of the supernatural. The Divine designation 
 seems to imply, almost to demand, a Divine declaration ; 
 and in the birth-story of the Baptist the flashes of the 
 supernatural, such as the angelic announcement and 
 the miraculous conception, come with a simple natural- 
 ness. The prelude is in perfect symphony with the 
 song. St. Luke is the only Evangelist who gives us 
 the birth-story. The other three speak only of his 
 mission, introducing him to us abruptly, as, like 
 
 6 
 
82 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 another Moses, he comes down from his new Sinai 
 with the tables of the law in his hands and the strange 
 light upon his face. St. Luke takes us back to the 
 infancy, that we may see the beginnings of things, 
 the Divine purpose enwrapped in swaddling clothes, 
 as it once was set adrift in a rush-plaited ark. Back 
 of the message he puts the man, and back of the man 
 he puts the child — for is not the child a prophecy or 
 invoice of the man ? — while all around the child he puts 
 the environment of home, showing us the subtle, power- 
 ful influences that touched and shaped the young 
 prophet-life. As a plant carries up into its outmost 
 leaves the ingredients of the rock around which its 
 fibres cling, so each upspringing life — even the life of 
 a prophet — carries into its farthest reaches the un- 
 conscious influence of its home associations. And so 
 St. Luke sketches for us that quiet home in the hill- 
 country, whose windows opened and whose doors 
 turned toward Jerusalem, the " city of the great " and 
 invisible " King." He shows us Zacharias and Elisa- 
 beth, true saints of God, devout of heart and blameless 
 of life, down into whose placid lives an angel came, 
 rippling them with the excitements of new promises 
 and hopes. Where could the first meridian of the New 
 Dispensation run better than through the home of 
 these seers of things unseen, these watchers for the 
 dawn ? Where could be so fitting a receptacle for the 
 Divine purpose, where it could so soon and so well 
 ripen ? Had not God elected them to this high honour, 
 and Himself prepared them for it? Had He not 
 purposely kept back all earlier, lower shoots, that their 
 whole growth should be upward, one reaching out 
 towards heaven, like the palm, its fruit clustering 
 around its outmost branches ? We can easily imagine 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 83 
 
 what intense emotion the message of the angel would 
 produce, and that Zacharias would not so much miss 
 the intercourse of human speech now that God's 
 thoughts were audible in his soul. What loving pre- 
 paration would Elisabeth make for this child of hers, 
 who was to be " great in the sight of the Lord"! 
 what music she would strike out from its name, 
 " John " (the Grace of Jehovah), the name which was 
 both the sesame and symbol of the New Dispensation 1 
 How her eager heart would outrun the slow months, 
 as she threw herself forward in anticipation among the 
 joys of maternity, a motherhood so exalted ! And why 
 did she hide herself for the five months, but that she 
 might prepare herself for her great mission ? that in 
 her seclusion she might hear more distinctly the voices 
 that spake to her from above, or that in the silence 
 she might hear her own heart sing? 
 
 But neither the eagerness of Elisabeth nor the dumb- 
 ness of Zacharias is allowed to hasten the Divine 
 purpose. That purpose, like the cloud of old, accommo- 
 dates itself to human conditions, the slow processions 
 of the humanities; and not until the time is "full" 
 does the hope become a realization, and the infant 
 voice utter its first cry. And now is gathered the rst 
 congregation of the new era. It is but a family gather- 
 ing, as the neighbours and relatives come together for 
 the circumcising of the child — which rite was always 
 performed on the corresponding day of the week after 
 its birth ; but it is significant as being the first of those 
 ever-widening circles that moving outwards from its 
 central impulse, spread rapidly over the land, as they 
 are now rapidly spreading over all lands. Zacharias, 
 of course, was present ; but mute and deaf, he could 
 only sit apart, a 6ilent spectator. Elisabeth, as we may 
 
THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 gather from various references and hints, was of modest 
 and retiring disposition, fond of putting herself in the 
 shade, of standing behind ; and so now the conduct of 
 the ceremony seems to have fallen into the hands of 
 some of the relatives. Presuming that the general 
 custom will be observed, that the first-born child will 
 take the name of the father, they proceed to name it 
 "Zacharias." This, however, Elisabeth cannot allow, 
 and with an emphatic negative, she says, " Not so ; but 
 he shall be called John." Persistent still in their own 
 course, and not satisfied with the mother's affirmation, 
 the friends turn to the aged and mute priest, and by 
 signs ask how they shall name the child (and had 
 Zacharias heard the conversation, he certainly would 
 not have waited for their question, but would have 
 spoken or written at once) ; and Zacharias, calling for 
 the writing-table, which doubtless had been his close 
 companion, giving him his only touch of the outer 
 world for the still nine months, wrote, " His name is 
 John." Ah, they are too late ! the child was named even 
 long before its birth, named, too, within the Holy Place 
 of the Temple, and by an angel of God. "John " and 
 " Jesus," those two names, since the visit of the Virgin, 
 have been like two bells of gold, throwing waves of 
 music across heart and home, ringing their welcome to 
 " the Christ who is to be," the Christ who is now so 
 near. " His name is John ; " and with that brief stroke 
 of his pen Zacharias half rebukes these intrusions and 
 interferences of the relatives, and at the same time 
 makes avowal of his own faith. And as he wrote the 
 name " John," his present obedience making atonement 
 for a past unbelief, instantly the paralyzed tongue was 
 loosed, and he spake, blessing God, throwing the name 
 of his child into a psalm ; for what is the Benedictus of 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS, 85 
 
 Zacharias but " John " written large and full, one sweet 
 and loud magnifying of "the Grace and Favour of 
 Jehovah " ? 
 
 It is only a natural supposition that when the inspi- 
 ration of the song had passed away, Zacharias' speech 
 would begin just where it was broken off, and that he 
 would narrate to the guests the strange vision of the 
 Temple, with the angel's prophecy concerning the child. 
 And as the guests depart to their own homes, each one 
 carries the story of this new Apocalypse, as he goes to 
 spread the evangel, and to wake among the neighbour- 
 ing hills the echoes of Zacharias' song. No wonder that 
 fear came upon all that dwelt round about, and that 
 they who pondered these things in their hearts should 
 ask, "What then shall this child be?" 
 
 And here the narrative of the childhood suddenly 
 ends, for with two brief sentences our Evangelist dis- 
 misses the thirty succeeding years. He tells us that 
 " the hand of the Lord was with the child," doubtless 
 arranging its circumstances, giving it opportunities, 
 preparing it for the rugged manhood and the rugged 
 mission which should follow in due course; and that 
 " the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit," the very 
 same expression he afterwards uses in reference to the 
 Holy Child, an expression we can best interpret by the 
 angel's prophecy, "He shall be filled with the Holy 
 Ghost even from his mother's womb." His native 
 strength of spirit was made doubly strong by the touch 
 of the Divine Spirit, as the iron, coming from its 
 baptism of fire, is hardened and tempered into steel. 
 And so we see that in the Divine economy even a con- 
 secrated childhood is a possible experience ; and that it is 
 comparatively infrequent is owing rather to our warped 
 vievs which possibly may need some readjustment, 
 
86 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 than to the Divine purpose and provision. Is the child 
 born into the Divine displeasure, branded from its birth 
 with the mark of Cain ? Is it not rather born into 
 the Divine mercy, and all enswathed in the abundance 
 of Divine love ? True, it is born of a sinful race, with 
 tendencies to self-will which may lead it astray ; but it 
 is just as true that it is born within the covenant of 
 grace ; that around its earliest and most helpless years is 
 thrown the aegis of Christ's atonement ; and that these 
 innate tendencies are held in check and neutralized by 
 what is called " prevenient grace." In the struggle for 
 that child-life are the powers of darkness the first in 
 the field, outmarching and out-manceuvring the powers 
 of light ? Why, the very thought is half-libellous. 
 Heaven's touch is upon the child from the first. Ignore 
 it as we may, deny it as some will, yet back in life's 
 earliest dawn the Divine Spirit is brooding over the 
 unformed world, parting its firmaments of right and 
 wrong, and fashioning a new Paradise. Is evil the 
 inevitable ? Must each life taste the forbidden fruit 
 before it can attain to a knowledge of the good ? In 
 other words, is sin a great though dire necessity? If 
 a necessity, then it is no longer sin, and we must seek 
 for another and more appropriate name. No ; childhood 
 is Christ's purchased and peculiar possession ; and the 
 best type of religious experience is that which is marked 
 by no rapid transitions, which breaks upon the soul 
 softly and sweetly as a dawn, its beginnings impercep- 
 tible, and so unremembered. So not without meaning 
 is it that right at the gate of the New Dispensation we 
 find the cradle of a consecrated childhood. Placed 
 there by the gate, so that all may see it, and placed in 
 the light, so that all may read it, the childhood of the 
 Baptist tells us what our childhood might oftener be, 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 87 
 
 if only its earthly guardians— whose hands are so 
 powerful to impress and mould the plastic soul — were, 
 like Zacharias and Elisabeth, themselves prayerful, 
 blameless, and devout. 
 
 Now the scene shifts ; for we read he " was in the 
 deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel." From 
 the fact that this clause is intimately connected with 
 the preceding, " and the child grew and waxed strong 
 in spirit" — -the two clauses having but one subject—- 
 some have supposed that John was but a child when he 
 turned away from the parental roof and sought the 
 wilderness. But this does not follow. The two parts 
 of the sentence are only separated by a comma, but 
 that pause may bridge over a chasm wide enough for 
 the flow of numerous }'ears, and between the child- 
 hood and the wilderness the narrative would almost 
 compel us to put a considerable space. As his physical 
 development was, in mode and proportion, purely 
 human, with no hint of anything unnatural or even 
 supernatural, so we may suppose was his mental 
 and spiritual development. The voice must become 
 articulate; it must play upon the alphabet, and turn 
 sound into speech. It must learn, that it may think ; 
 it must study, that it may know. And so the human 
 teacher is indispensable. Children reared of wolves 
 may learn to bark, but, in spite of mythology, they will 
 not build cities and found empires. And where could 
 the child find better instructors than in his own parents, 
 whose quiet lives had been passed in an atmosphere of 
 prayer, and to whom the very jots and tittles of the law 
 were familiar and dear ? Indeed, we can scarcely sup- 
 pose that after having prepared Zacharias and Elisabeth 
 for their great mission, working what is something like 
 a miracle, that she and no one else shall be the mother 
 
88 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 of the forerunner, the child should then be torn away 
 from its natural guardians before the processes of its 
 education are complete. It is true they were both 
 " well stricken in years," but that phrase would cover 
 any period from threescore years and upwards, and to 
 that threescore the usual longevity of the Temple minis- 
 trants would easily allow another twenty years to be 
 added. May we not, then, suppose that the child-Baptist 
 studied and played under the parental roof, the bright 
 focus to which their hopes, and thoughts, and prayers 
 converged ; that here, too, he spent his boyhood and 
 youth, preparing for that priestly office to which his 
 lineage entitled and designated him ? for why should 
 not the " messenger of the Lord " be priest as well ? 
 We have no further mention of Zacharias and Elisa- 
 beth, but it is not improbable that their death was the 
 occasion of John's retirement to the deserts, now a 
 young man, perhaps, of twenty years. 
 
 According to custom, John now should have beeft 
 introduced and consecrated to the priesthood, twenty 
 years being the general age of the initiates; but in 
 obedience to a higher call, John renounces the priest- 
 hood, and breaks with the Temple at once and for 
 ever. Retiring to the deserts, which, wild and gloomy, 
 stretch westward from the Dead Sea, and assuming the 
 old prophet garb — a loose dress of camel's hair, bound 
 with a thong of leather — the student becomes the recluse. 
 Inhabiting some mountain cave, tasting only the coarse 
 fare that nature offered — locusts and wild honey — the 
 new Elias has come and has found his Cherith ; and 
 here, withdrawn far from " the madding crowd" and 
 the incessant babble of human talk, with no companions 
 save the wild beasts and the bright constellations of 
 that Syrian sky, as they wheel round in their nightly 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 89 
 
 dance, the lonely man opens his heart to God's great 
 thoughts and purposes, and by constant prayer keeps 
 his clear, trumpet voice in drill. Evidently, John had 
 seen enough of so-called " society," with its cold con- 
 ventionalities and hypocrisies ; his keen eye had seen 
 only too easily the hollowness and corruption that lay 
 beneath the outer gloss and varnish — the thin veneer 
 that but half concealed the worminess and rottenness 
 that lay beneath. John goes out into the desert like 
 another scapegoat, bearing deep within his heart the 
 sins of his nation — sins, alas, which are yet unrepented 
 of and unforgiven ! It was doubtless thoughts like these, 
 and the constant brooding upon them, which gave to 
 the Baptist that touch of melancholy that we can detect 
 both in his features and his speech. Austere in 
 person, with a wail in his voice like the sighing of 
 the wind, or charged at times with suppressed thunders, 
 the Baptist reminds us of the Peri, who 
 
 " At the gate 
 Of Eden stood disconsolate." 
 
 Sin had become to John an awful fact. He could see 
 nothing else. The fragments of the law's broken 
 tables strewed the land, even the courts of the Temple 
 itself, and men were everywhere tripping against them 
 and falling. But John did see something else ; it was 
 the day of the Lord, now very near, the day that 
 should come scathing and burning "as a furnace," 
 unless, meanwhile, Israel should repent. So the pro- 
 phet mused, and as he mused the fire burned within 
 his soul, even the fire of the Refiner, the fire of God. 
 
 Our Evangelist characterizes the opening of John's 
 ministry with an official word. He calls it a " show- 
 ing," a "manifestation," putting upon the very word 
 
9© THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 the stamp and sanction of a Divine appointment. He 
 is careful, too, to mark the time, so giving the Gospel 
 story its place among the chronologies of the world ; 
 \Ahich he does in a most elaborate way. He first reads 
 the time on the horoscope of the Empire, whose 
 swinging pendulum was a rising or a falling throne ; 
 and he states that it was u the fifteenth year of the 
 reign of Tiberius Caesar," counting the two years of 
 his joint rule with Augustus. Then, as if that were 
 not enough, he notes the hour as indicated on the four 
 quarters of the Hebrew commonwealth, the hour when 
 Pilate, Herod, Philip, and Lysanias were in conjunc- 
 tion, ruling in their divided heavens. Then, as if that 
 even were not enough, he marks the ecclesiastical hour 
 as indicated by the marble time-piece of the Temple ; 
 it was when Annas and Caiaphas held jointly the high 
 priesthood. What is the meaning of this elaborate 
 mechanism, wheels within wheels ? Is it because the 
 hour is so important, that it needs the hands of an 
 emperor, a governor, three tetrarchs, and two high 
 priests to point it ? Ewald is doubtless right in saying 
 that St. Luke, as the historian, wished " to frame the 
 Gospel history into the great history of the world " by 
 giving precise dates ; but if that were the Evangelist's 
 main reason, such an accumulation of time-evidence 
 were scarcely necessary ; for what do the subsequent 
 statements add to the precision of the first — " In the 
 fifteenth year of Tiberius " ? We must, then, seek for 
 the Evangelist's meaning elsewhere. Among the oldest 
 of the Hebrew prophecies concerning the Messiah was 
 that of Jacob. Closing his life, as Moses did after- 
 wards, with a wonderful vision, he looked down on the 
 far-off years, and speaking of the coming " Seed," he 
 said, u The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS, 9> 
 
 lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come" 
 (Gen. xlix. io). Might not this prophecy have been in 
 the thought of the Evangelist when he stayed so much 
 longer than his w r ont to note times and seasons ? 
 Why does he mention Herod and Pilate, Philip and 
 Lysanias, but to show how the sceptre has, alas, 
 departed from Judah, and the lawgiver from between 
 his feet, and how the chosen land is torn to pieces by 
 the Roman eagles ? And why does he name Annas 
 and Caiaphas, but to show how the same disintegrating 
 forces are at work even within the Temple, when the 
 rightful high priest can be set aside and superseded by 
 the nominee of a foreign and a Pagan power ? Verily 
 11 the glory has departed from Israel ; " and if St. Luke 
 introduces foreign emperors, tetrarchs, and governors, 
 it is that they may ring a muffled peal over the grave 
 of a dead nation, a funeral knell, which, however, shall 
 be the signal for the coming of the Shiloh, and the 
 gathering of the people unto Him. 
 
 Such were the times — times of disorganization, dis- 
 order, and almost despair — when the w r ord of God came 
 unto John in the wilderness. It came " upon " him, 
 as it literally reads, probably in one of those wonderful 
 theophanies, as when God spake to Moses from the 
 flaming bush, or as when He appeared to Elijah upon 
 Horeb, sending him back to an unfinished task. John 
 obeyed. Emerging from his wilderness retreat, clad 
 in his strange attire, spare in build, his features sharp 
 and worn with fasting, his long, dishevelled hair telling 
 of his Nazarite vow, he moves down to the Jordan 
 like an apparition. His appearance is everywhere 
 hailed with mingled curiosity and delight. Crowds, 
 come in ever-increasing numbers, not one class only, 
 but all classes — priests, soldiers, officials, people — until 
 
92 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 it seemed as if the cities had emptied themselves into 
 the Jordan valley. And what went they "out for to 
 see " ? "A reed shaken with the wind " ? A prophe- 
 sier of smooth things ? A preacher of revolt against 
 tyranny ? Nay ; John was no wind-shaken reed ; 
 he was rather the heavenly wind itself, swaying the 
 multitudes at will, and bending hearts and consciences 
 into penitence and prayer. John was no preacher of 
 revolt against the powers that be ; in his mind, Israel 
 had revolted more and more, and he must bring them 
 back to their allegiance, or himself die in the attempt. 
 John was no preacher of smooth things ; there was 
 not even the charm of variety about his speech. The 
 one burden of his message was, " Repent : for the 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand." But the effect was 
 marvellous. The lone voice from the wilderness swept 
 over the land like the breath of God. Borne forwards 
 on a thousand lips, it echoed through the cities and 
 penetrated into remotest places. Judaea, Samaria, and 
 even distant Galilee felt the quiver of the strange 
 voice, and even from the shore of the Northern Sea 
 men came to sit at the feet of the new teacher, and 
 to call themselves John's disciples. So widespread 
 and so deep was the movement, it sent its ripples even 
 within the royal palace, awaking the curiosity, and 
 perhaps the conscience, of Herod himself. It was a 
 genuine revival of religion, such as Judaea had not 
 witnessed since the days of Ezra, the awaking of the 
 national conscience and of the national hope. 
 
 Perhaps it would be difficult, by any analysis of 
 ours, to discover or to define the secret of John's 
 success. It was the resultant, not of one force, but 
 of many. For instance, the hour was favourable. It 
 was the Sabbatic year, when field-work was in the 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 93 
 
 main suspended, and men everywhere had leisure, 
 mind and hand lying, as it were, fallow. Then, too, 
 the very dress of the Baptist would not be without its 
 influence, especially on a mind so sensitive to form 
 and colour as the Hebrew mind was. Dress to them 
 was a form of duty. They were accustomed to weave 
 into their tassels sacred symbols, so making die external 
 speak of the eternal. Their hands played on the parti- 
 coloured threads most faithfully and sacredly; for 
 were not these the chords of Divine harmonies ? But 
 here is one who discards both the priestly and the 
 civilian dress, and who wears, instead, the rough camel's 
 hair robe of the old prophets. The very dress would 
 thus appeal most powerfully to their imagination, 
 carrying back their thoughts to the time of the Theo- 
 cracy, when Jehovah was not silent as now, and when 
 Heaven was so near, speaking by some Samuel or 
 Elijah. Are those days returning ? they would ask. Is 
 this the Elias who was to come and restore all things ? 
 Surely it must be. And in the rustle of the Baptist's 
 robe they heard the rustle of Elijah's mantle, dropping 
 a second time by these Jordan banks. Then, too, 
 there was the personal charm of the man. John was 
 young, if 3'ears are our reckoning, for he counted but 
 thirty ; but in his case the verve and energy of youth 
 were blended with the discretion and saintliness of age. 
 What was the world to him, its fame, its luxury and 
 wealth ? They were only the dust he shook from his 
 feet, as his spirit sighed for and soared after Heaven's 
 better things. He asks nothing of earth but her 
 plainest fare, a couch of grass, and by-and-by a grave. 
 Then, too, there was a positiveness about the man, 
 that would naturally attract, in a drifting, shifting, 
 vacillating age. The strong will is magnetic ; the 
 
94 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 weaker wills follow and cluster round it, as swarm- 
 ing bees cluster around their queen. And John was 
 intensely positive. His speech was clear-cut and 
 incisive, with a tremendous earnestness in it, as if 
 a "Thus saith the Lord" were at his heart. John's 
 mood was not the subjunctive, where his words could 
 eddy among the u mays " and " mights ; " it was plainly 
 the indicative, or better still, the imperative. He spoke 
 as one who believed, and who intensely felt what he 
 believed. Then, too, there was a certain nobleness 
 about his courage. He knew no rank, no party ; he 
 was superior to all. lie feared God too much to have 
 any fear of man. He spake no word for the sake of 
 pleasing, and he kept back no word — even the hot 
 rebuke — for fear of offending. Truth to him was 
 more than titles, and right was the only royalty. How 
 he painted the Pharisees — those shiny, slimy men, 
 with creeping, sinuous ways — w T ith that dark epithet 
 " brood of vipers " ! With what a fearless courage he 
 denounced the incest of Herod ! He will not level 
 down Sinai, accommodating it to royal passions ! Not 
 he. "It is not lawful for thee to have her" — such 
 were his words, that rolled in upon Herod's conscience 
 like a peal of Sinai's thunder, telling him that law was 
 law, that right was more than might, and purity more 
 than power. Then, too, there was something about 
 his message that was attractive. That word " the 
 kingdom of heaven " struck upon the national heart 
 like a bell, and set it vibrating with new hopes, and 
 awaking all kinds of beautiful dreams of recovered 
 pre-eminence and power. 
 
 But while all these were auxiliaries, factors, anc 
 co-efficients in the problem of the Baptist's success, 
 they are not sufficient in themselves to account for 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 95 
 
 that success. It is not difficult for a man of superior 
 mental attainment, and of strong individuality, to attract 
 a following, especially if that following be in the direc- 
 tion of self-interest. The emotions and passions of 
 humanity lie near the surface ; they can be easily 
 swept into a storm by the strong or by the pathetic 
 voice. But to reach the conscience, to lift up the veil, 
 and to pass within to that Most Holy of the human 
 soul is what man, unaided, cannot do. Only the 
 Divine Voice can break those deep silences of the heart ; 
 or if the human voice is used the power is not in the 
 words of human speech — those words, even the best, 
 are but the dead wires along which the Divine Voice 
 moves — it is the power of God. 
 
 " Some men live near to God, as my right arm 
 Is near to me; and then they walk about 
 Mailed in full proof of faith, and bear a charm 
 That mocks at fear, and bars the door on doubt, 
 And dares the impossible." 
 
 Just such a man was the Baptist. He was a u man 
 of God." He lived, and moved, and had his being in 
 God. Self to him was an extinct passion. Envy, 
 pride, ambition, jealousy, these were unknown tongues; 
 his pure soul understood not their meaning. Like his 
 great prototype, " the Spirit of the Lord God " was 
 upon him. His life was one conscious inspiration ; 
 and John himself had been baptized with the baptism 
 of which he spoke, but which he himself could not 
 give, the baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire. This 
 only will account for the wonderful effects produced 
 by his preaching. John, in his own experience, had 
 antedated Pentecost, receiving the " power from on 
 high," and as he spoke it was with a tongue of fire, 
 
THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 a voice in whose accent and tone the people could 
 detect the deeper Voice of God. 
 
 But if John could not baptize with the higher bap- 
 tism, usurping the functions of the One coming after, 
 he could, and he did, institute a lower, symbolic baptism 
 of water, that thus the visible might lead up to the 
 invisible. In what mode John's baptism was adminis- 
 tered we cannot tell, nor is it material that we should 
 know. We do know, however, that the baptism of the 
 Spirit — and in John's mind the two were closely related 
 — was constantly referred to in Scripture as an effusion, 
 a u pouring out," a sprinkling, and never once as an 
 immersion. And what was the " baptism of fire " to 
 the mind of John ? Was it not that which the prophet 
 Isaiah had experienced, when the angel touched his 
 lips with the live coal taken from the altar, pronounc- 
 ing over him the great absolution, "Lo, this hath 
 touched thy lips ; and thine iniquity is taken away, and 
 thy sin purged " (Isa. vi. 7) ? At best, the baptism of 
 water is but a shadow of the better thing, the outward 
 symbol of an inward grace. We need not quarrel 
 about modes and forms. Scripture has purposely left 
 them indeterminate, so that we need not wrangle about 
 them. There is no need that we exalt the shadow, 
 levelling it up to the substance ; and still less should 
 we level it down, turning it into a playground for the 
 schools. 
 
 Thus far the lives of Jesus and John have lain apart. 
 One growing up in the hill-country of Galilee, the 
 other in the hill-country of Judaea, and then in the 
 isolation of the wilderness, they have never looked 
 in each other's face, though they have doubtless heard 
 often of each other's mission. They meet at last. 
 John had been constantly telling of One who was 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 97 
 
 coming after — "after/' indeed, in order of time, but "be- 
 fore/' infinitely before, in pre-eminence and authority. 
 Mightier than he, He was the Lord. John would deem 
 it an honour to kneel down before so august a Master, 
 to untie and bear away His shoes ; for in such a 
 Presence servility was both becoming and ennobling. 
 With such words as these the crier in the wilderness 
 had been transferring the people's thought from him- 
 self, and setting their hearts listening for the Coming 
 One, so preparing and broadening His way. Suddenly, 
 in one of the pauses of his ministrations, a Stranger 
 presents Himself, and asks that the rite of baptism may 
 be administered to Him. There is nothing peculiar 
 about His dress; He is younger than the Baptist — 
 much younger, apparently, for the rough, ascetic life 
 has prematurely aged him — but such is the grace and 
 dignity of His person, such the mingled " strength and 
 beauty " of His manhood, that even John, who never 
 quailed in the presence of mortal before, is awed and 
 abashed now. Discerning the innate Royalty of the 
 Stranger, and receiving a monition from the Higher 
 World, with which he kept up close correspondence, 
 the Baptist is assured that it is He, the Lord and 
 Christ. Immediately his whole manner changes. The 
 voice that has swept over the land like a whirlwind, 
 now is hushed, subdued, speaking softly, deferentially, 
 reverentially. Here is a Presence in which his im- 
 peratives all melt away and disappear, a Will that is 
 infinitely higher than his own, a Person for whom 
 his baptism is out of place. John is perplexed ; he 
 hesitates, he demurs. " I have need to be baptized of 
 Thee, and comest Thou to me ? " and John, Elias-like, 
 would fain have wrapped his mantle around his face, 
 burying out of sight his little u me," in the presence of 
 
 7 
 
THE GOSPEL OF ST LUKE. 
 
 the Lord. But Jesus said, " Suffer it now : for thus 
 it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness " (Matt. iii. 15). 
 
 The baptism of Jesus was evidently a new kind of 
 baptism, one in which the usual formulas were 
 strangely out of place; and the question naturally 
 arises, Why should Jesus submit to, and even ask 
 for, a baptism that was so associated with repentance 
 and sin ? Could there be any place for repentance, 
 any room for confession, in the Sinless One ? John 
 felt the anomaly, and so shrank from administering the 
 rite, till the reply of Jesus put His baptism on different 
 ground— ground altogether clear of any personal 
 demerit. Jesus asked for baptism, not for the wash- 
 ing away of sin, but that He might " fulfil all righteous- 
 ness." He was baptized, not for His own sake, but 
 for the world's sake. Coming to redeem humanity, 
 He would identify Himself with that humanity, even 
 the sinful humanity that it was. Son of God, He 
 would become a true Son of man, that through His 
 redemption all other sons of men might become; true 
 sons of God. Bearing the sins of many, taking away 
 the sin of the world, that heavy burden lay at His 
 heart from the first; He could not lay it down until 
 He left it nailed to His cross. Himself knowing no 
 sin, He yet becomes the Sin-offering, and is " numbered 
 among the transgressors." And as Jesus went to the 
 cross and into the grave mediatorially, as Humanity's 
 Son, so Jesus now passes into the baptismal waters 
 mediatorially, repenting for that world whose heart is 
 still hard, and whose eyes are dry of godly tears, and 
 confessing the sin which He in love has made His own, 
 the " sin of the world," the sin He has come to make 
 atonement for and to bear away. 
 
 Such is the meaning of the Jordan baptism, in 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WIIDERNESS. 99 
 
 which Jesus puts the stamp of Divinity upon John's 
 mission, while John bears witness to the sinlessness of 
 Jesus. But a Higher Witness came than even that of 
 John ; for no sooner was the rite administered, and the 
 river-bank regained, than the heavens were opened, 
 and the Spirit of God, in the form of a fiery dove 
 descended and alighted on the head of Jesus; while 
 a Voice out of the Unseen proclaimed, " This is My 
 beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." And so the 
 Son of man receives the heaventy, as well as the 
 earthly baptism. Baptized with water, He is now 
 baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire, anointed 
 with the unction of the Holy One. But why should 
 the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus in the form of a 
 dove, and afterwards upon the disciples in the form of 
 cloven tongues of fire ? We can understand the 
 symbolism of the cloven tongues ; for was not their 
 mission to preach and teach, spreading and establishing 
 the kingdom by a consecrated speech — the Divine 
 word carried forward by the human voice? What, 
 then, is the meaning of the dove-form ? Does it refer 
 to the dove of the Old Dispensation, which bearing the 
 olive-leaf in its mouth, preached its Gospel to the 
 dwellers in the ark, telling of the abatement of the 
 angry waters, and of a salvation that was near ? And 
 w r as not Jesus a heavenly Dove, bearing to the world 
 the olive-branch of reconciliation and of peace, pro- 
 claiming the fuller, wider Gospel of mercy and of love ? 
 The supposition, at any rate, is a possible one, while the 
 words of Jesus would almost make it a probable one ; 
 for speaking of this same baptism of the Spirit, He 
 says — and in His words we can hear the beat and 
 whir of dove-wings — "He anointed me to preach 
 good tidings to the poor : He hath sent me to proclaim 
 
ioo THE GOSPEL OF ST LUKE. 
 
 release to the captives, ... to set at liberty them that 
 are bruised " (iv. 1 8). 
 
 The interview between Jesus and John was but 
 brief, and in all probability final. They spend the 
 following night near to each other, but apart. The day 
 after, Jchn sees Jesus walking, but the narrative would 
 imply that they did not meet. John only points to Him 
 and says, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away 
 the sin of the world ; " and they part, each to follow his 
 separate path, and to accomplish his separate mission. 
 
 11 The Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
 world." Such was John's testimony to Jesus, in the 
 moment of his clearest illumination. He saw in Jesus, 
 not as one learned writer would have us suppose, 
 the sheep of David's pastoral, its life encircled with 
 green pastures and still waters — not this, but a lamb, 
 44 the Lamb of God," the Paschal Lamb, led all uncom- 
 plaining to the slaughter, and by its death bearing 
 away sin — not either the sin of a year or the sin of a 
 race, but " the sin of the world." Never had prophet 
 so prophesied before; never had mortal eye seen so 
 clearly and so deeply into God's great mystery of 
 mercy. How, then, can we explain that mood of dis- 
 appointment and of doubt which afterwards fell upon 
 John ? What does it mean that from his prison he 
 should send two of his disciples to Jesus with the 
 strange question, " Art Thou He that cometh, or look 
 we for another?" (vii. 19). John is evidently dis- 
 appointed — yes, and dejected too ; and the Elias still, 
 Herod's prison is to him the juniper of the desert. He 
 thought the Christ would be one like unto himself, 
 crying in the wilderness, but with a louder voice and 
 more penetrating accent. He would be some ardent 
 Reformer, with axe in hand, or fan, and with baptism 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 101 
 
 of fire. But lo, Jesus comes so different from his thought 
 — with no axe in hand that he can see, with no baptism 
 of fire that he can hear of, a Sower rather than a 
 Winnower, scattering thoughts, principles, beatitudes, 
 and parables, telling not so much of '■' the wrath to 
 come " as of the love that is already come, if men will 
 but repent and receive it — that John is fairly perplexed 
 and actually sends to Jesus for some word that shall be 
 a solvent for his doubts. It only shows how this Elias, 
 too, was a man of like passions with ourselves, and 
 that even prophets' eyes were sometimes dim, reading 
 God's purposes with a blurred vision. Jesus returns 
 a singular answer. He says neither Yes nor No ; but 
 He goes out and works His accustomed miracles, and 
 then dismisses the two disciples with the message, "Go 
 your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and 
 heard ; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the 
 lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, 
 to the poor the Gospel is preached. And blessed is 
 he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me." These 
 words are in part a quotation from John's favourite 
 prophet, Isaiah, who emphasized as no other prophet 
 did the evangelistic character of Christ's mission — 
 which characteristic John seems to have overlooked. 
 In his thought the Christ was Judge, the great Refiner, 
 sifting the base from the pure, and casting it into some 
 Gehenna of burnings. But Jesus reminds John that 
 mercy is before and above judgment ; that He has 
 come, " not to condemn the world," but to save it, and 
 to save it, not by reiterations of the law, but by a 
 manifestation of love. Ebal and Sinai have had their 
 word ; now Gerizim and Calvary must speak. 
 
 And so this greatest of the prophets was but human, 
 and therefore fallible. He saw the Christ, no longer 
 
102 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 afar off, but near — yea, present ; but he saw in part, and 
 he prophesied in part. He did not see the who'e 
 Christ, or grasp the full purport of His mission. He 
 stood on the threshold of the kingdom ; but the least 
 of those who should pass within that kingdom should 
 stand on a higher vantage-ground, and so be greater 
 than he. Indeed, it seems scarcely possible that John 
 could have fully understood Jesus ; the two were so 
 entirely different. In dress, in address, in mode of 
 life, in thought the two were exact opposites. John 
 occupies the border-region between the Old and the 
 New ; and though his life appears in the New, he 
 himself belongs rather to the Old Dispensation. His 
 accent is Mosaic, his message a tritonomy, a third 
 giving of the law. When asked the all-important 
 question, u What shall we do ? " John laid stress on 
 works of charity, and by his metaphor of the two coats 
 he showed that men should endeavour to equalize their 
 mercies. And when publicans and soldiers ask the 
 same question John gives a sort of transcript of the 
 old tables, striking the negatives of duty : " Extort no 
 more than that which is appointed you ; " " Do violence 
 to no man." Jesus would have answered in the simple 
 positive that covered all classes and all cases alike : 
 " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." But such 
 was the difference between the Old and the New : the 
 one said, " Do, and thou shalt live ; " the other said, 
 " Live, and thou shalt do." The voice of John awoke 
 the conscience, but he could not give it rest. He was 
 the preparer of the way ; Jesus was the Way, as He 
 was the Truth and the Life. John was the Voice; 
 Jesus was the Word. John must " decrease" and 
 disappear ; Jesus must " increase," filling all times and 
 all climes with His glorious, abiding presence. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 103 
 
 But the mission of John is drawing to a close, and 
 dark clouds are gathering in the west. The popular 
 idol still, a hostile current has set against him. The 
 Pharisees, unforgetting and unforgiving, are deadly 
 bitter, creeping across his path, and hissing out their 
 " Devil ; " while Herod, who in his better moods had 
 invited the Baptist to his palace, now casts him into 
 prison. He will silence the voice he has failed to 
 bribe, the voice that beat against the chambers of his 
 revelry, like a strange midnight gust, and that set him 
 trembling like an aspen. We need not linger over 
 the last sad tragedy — how the royal birthday was 
 kept, with a banquet to the State officials; how the 
 courtesan daughter of Herodias came in and danced 
 before the guests; and how the half-drunken Herod 
 swore a rash oath, that he would give her anything she 
 might ask, up to the half of his kingdom. Herodias 
 knew well what wine and passion would do for Herod. 
 She even guessed his promise beforehand, and had given 
 full directions to her daughter ; and soon as the rash 
 oath had fallen from his lips — before he could recall or 
 change his words — sharp and quick the request is made, 
 11 Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger." There 
 is a momentary conflict, and Herod gives the fearful 
 word. The head of John is brought into the banquet- 
 hall before the assembled guests — the long flowing locks, 
 the eyes that even in death seemed to sparkle with the 
 fire of God ; the lips sacred to purity and truth, the lips 
 that could not gloss a sin, even the sin of a Herod. Yes ; 
 it is there, the head of John the Baptist. The courtiers 
 see it, and smile ; Herod sees it, but does not smile. 
 That face haunts him ; he never forgets it. The dead 
 prophet lives still, and becomes to Herod another 
 conscience. 
 
i04 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE, 
 
 " And she brought it to her mother. And his disciples 
 came, and took up the corpse, and buried him ; and they 
 went and told Jesus" (Matt. xiv. 1 1, 12). Such is the 
 finis to a consecrated life, and such the work achieved by 
 one man, in a ministry that was only counted by months. 
 Shall not this be his epitaph, recording his faithfulness 
 and zeal, and at the same time rebuking our aimlessness 
 and sloth ? — 
 
 41 He liveth long who liveth well ; 
 All other life is short and vain : 
 He liveth longest who can tell 
 Of living most for heavenly gain," 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE TEMPTATION. 
 
 THE waters of the Jordan do not more effectually 
 divide the Holy Land than they bisect the Holy 
 Life. The thirty years of Nazareth were quiet enough, 
 amid the seclusions of nature and the attractions of 
 home; but the double baptism by the Jordan now 
 remits that sweet idyll to the past. The I AM of the 
 New Testament moves forward from the passive to 
 the active voice; the long peace is exchanged for 
 the conflict whose consummation will be the Divine 
 Passion. 
 
 The subject of our Lord's temptation is mysterious, 
 and therefore difficult. Lying in part within the domain 
 of human consciousness and experience, it stretches far 
 beyond our sight, throwing its dark projections into the 
 realm of spirit, that realm, " dusk with horrid shade," 
 which Reason may not traverse, and which Revelation 
 itself has not illumined, save by occasional lines of light, 
 thrown into, rather than across it. We cannot, perhaps, 
 hope to have a perfect understanding of it, for in a 
 subject so wide and deep there is room for the play 
 of many hypotheses ; but inspiration would not have 
 recorded the event so minutely had it not a direct 
 bearing upon the whole of the Divine Life, and were it 
 not full of pregnant lessons for all times. To Him who 
 suffered within it, it was a wilderness indeed ; but to us 
 
ic6 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 " the wilderness and the solitary place " have become 
 " glad, and the desert . . . blossoms as the rose." Let us, 
 then, seek the wilderness reverently yet hopefully, and 
 in doing so let us carry in our minds these two guiding 
 thoughts — they will prove a silken thread for the laby- 
 rinth — first, that Jesus was tempted as man; and 
 second, that Jesus was tempted as the Son of man. 
 
 Jesus was tempted as man. It is true that in His 
 Person the human and the Divine natures were in some 
 mysterious way united ; that in His flesh was the great 
 mystery, the manifestation of God ; but now we must 
 regard Him as divested of these dignities and Divinities. 
 They are laid aside, with all other pre-mundane glories ; 
 and whatever His miraculous power, for the present it is 
 as if it Were not. Jesus takes with Him into the wilder- 
 ness our manhood, a perfect humanity of flesh and blood, 
 of bone and nerve ; no Docetic shadow, but a real body, 
 "made in all things like unto His brethren;" and He 
 goes into the wilderness, to be tempted, not in some 
 unearthly way, as one spirit might be tempted of 
 another, but to be " tempted in all points like as we 
 are," in a fashion perfectly human. Then, too, Jesus 
 was tempted as the Son of man, not only as the perfect 
 Man, but as the representative Man. As the first Adam, 
 by disobedience, fell, and fallen, was driven forth into the 
 wilderness, so the second Adam comes to take the place 
 of the first. Tracking the steps of the first Adam, He 
 too gees out into the wilderness, that He may spoil the 
 spoiler, and that by His perfect obedience He may lead 
 a fallen but redeemed humanity back again to Paradise, 
 reversing the whole drift of the Fall, and turning it into 
 a " rising again for many." And so Jesus gees, as the 
 Representative Man, to do battle for humanity, and to 
 receive in His own Person, not one form of temptation, 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 107 
 
 as the first Adam did, but every form that malignant 
 Evil can devise, or that humanity can know. Bearing 
 these two facts in mind, we will consider — (1) the 
 circumstances of the Temptation, and (2) the nature of 
 the Temptation. 
 
 I. The circumstances of the Temptation. "And 
 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, 
 and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness." The 
 Temptation, then, occurred immediately after the twofold 
 baptism ; or, as St. Mark expresses it, using his charac- 
 teristic word, "And straightway the Spirit driveth Him 
 forth into the wilderness" (Mark i. 12). Evidently 
 there is some connection between the Jordan and the 
 wilderness, and there were Divine reasons why the 
 test should be placed directly after the baptism. Those 
 Jordan waters were the inauguration for His mission — a 
 kind of Beautiful Gate, leading up to the different courts 
 and courses of His public ministry, and then up to the 
 altar of sacrifice. The baptism of the Spirit was His 
 anointing for that ministry, and borrowing our light 
 from the after Pentecostal days, His enduement of 
 power for that ministry. The Divine purpose, which 
 had been gradually shaping itself to His mind, now 
 opens in one vivid revelation. The veil of mist in 
 which that purpose had been enwrapped is swept away 
 by the Spirit's breath, disclosing to His view the path 
 redeeming Love must take, even the way of the cross. 
 It is probable, too, that He received at the same time, 
 if not the enduement, at least the consciousness of 
 miraculous power ; for St. John, with one stroke of his 
 pen, brushes away those glossy webs that later tradi- 
 tion has spun, the miracles of the Childhood. The 
 Scriptures do not represent Jesus as any prodigy. His 
 childhood, youth, and manhood were like the corre- 
 
io8 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 sponding phases of other lives ; and the Gospels cer- 
 tainly put no aureole about His head — that was the 
 afterglow of traditional fancy. Now, however, as He 
 leaves the wilderness, He goes to open His mission at 
 Cana, where He works His first miracle, turning, by a 
 look, the water into wine. The whole Temptation, as 
 we shall see, was one prolonged attack upon His 
 miraculous power, seeking to divert it into unlawful 
 channels ; which makes it more than probable that this 
 power was first consciously received at the baptism — 
 the second baptism of fire ; it was a part of the anoint- 
 ing of the Lord He then experienced. 
 
 We read that Jesus now was "full of the Holy 
 Spirit." It is an expression not infrequent in the 
 pages of the New Testament, for we have already met 
 with it in connection with Zacharias and Elisabeth ; 
 and St. Luke makes use of it several times in his later 
 treatise on the "Acts." In these cases, however, it 
 generally marked some special and sudden illumination 
 or inspiration, which was more or less temporary, the 
 inspiration passing away when its purpose was served. 
 But whether this u filling of the Spirit " was temporary, 
 or permanent, as in the case of Stephen and Barnabas, 
 the expression always marked the highest elevation of 
 human life, when the human spirit was in entire subor- 
 dination to the Divine. To Jesus, now, the Holy 
 Spirit is given without measure ; and we, who in our 
 far-off experiences can recall moments of Divine bap- 
 tisms, when our spirits seemed for the time to be 
 caught up into Paradise, hearing voices and beholding 
 visions we might not utter, even we may understand in 
 part — though but in part — what must have been the 
 emotions and ecstasies of that memorable hour by the 
 Jordan. How much the opened neavens would mean 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 109 
 
 to Him, to whom they had been so long and strangely 
 closed ! How the Voice that declared His heavenly 
 Sonship, "This is My beloved Son," must have sent 
 its vibrations quivering through soul and spirit, almost 
 causing the tabernacle of His flesh to tremble with the 
 new excitements ! Mysterious though it may seem to 
 us, who ask impotently, How can these things be ? yet 
 unless we strip the heavenly baptism of all reality, 
 reducing it to a mere play of words, we must suppose 
 that Jesus, who now becomes Jesus Christ, was hence- 
 forth more directly and completely than before under 
 the conscious inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What 
 was an atmosphere enswathing the young life, bringing 
 to that life its treasures of grace, beauty, and strength, 
 now becomes a breath, or rather a rushing wind, of 
 God, carrying that life forward upon its mission and 
 upward to its goal. And so we read, He "was led 
 by the Spirit in the wilderness." The verb generally 
 implies pressure, constraint ; it is the enforced leading 
 of the weaker by the stronger. In this case, however, 
 the pressure was not upon a resisting, but a yielding 
 medium. The will of Jesus swung round instantly 
 and easily, moving like a vane only in the direction of 
 the Higher Will. The narrative would imply that His 
 own thought and purpose had been to return to Galilee ; 
 but the Divine Spirit moves upon Him with such 
 clearness and force— " driveth " is St. Mark's expres- 
 sive word — that He yields Himself up to the higher 
 impulse, and allows Himself to be carried, not exactly 
 as the heath is swept before the wind, but in a passive- 
 active w T ay, into the wilderness. The wilderness was 
 thus a Divine interjection, thrown across the path of 
 the Son of God and Son of man. 
 
 Where it was is a point of no great moment. That 
 
no THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 it was in the Desert of Sinai, as some suppose, is most 
 unlikely. Jesus did not so venerate places ; nor was 
 it like Him to make distant excursions to put Himself 
 in the track of Moses or Elijah. He beckons them to 
 Him. He does not go to them, not even to make 
 historical repetitions. There is.no reason why we may 
 not accept the traditional site of the Quarantania, the 
 wild, mountainous region, intersected by deep, dark 
 gorges, that sweeps westward from Jericho. It is 
 enough to know that it was a wilderness indeed, a 
 wildness, unsoftened by the touch of human strength 
 or skill ; a still, vacant solitude, where only the " wild 
 beasts," preying upon each other, or prowling outward 
 to the fringe of civilization, could survive. 
 
 In the narrative of the Transfiguration we read that 
 Moses and Elias appeared on the holy mount " talking 
 with Jesus ; " and that these two only, of all departed 
 saints, should be allowed that privilege — the one repre- 
 senting the Law, and the other the Prophets — shows 
 that there was some intimate connection between their 
 several missions. At any rate, we know that the 
 emancipator and the regenerator of Israel were speci- 
 ally commissioned to bear Heaven's salutation to the 
 Redeemer. It would be an interesting study, did it 
 lie within the scope of our subject, to trace out the 
 many resemblances between the three. We may, how- 
 ever, notice how in the three lives the same prolonged 
 fast occurs, in each case covering the same period of 
 forty days ; for though the expression of St. Matthew 
 would not of necessity imply a total abstention from 
 food, the more concise statement of St. Luke removes 
 all doubt, for we read, " He did eat nothing in those 
 days." Why there should be this fast is more difficult 
 to answer, and our so-called reasons can be only 
 
THE TEMPTATION. in 
 
 guesses. We know, however, that the flesh and the 
 spirit, though closely associated, have but few things 
 in common. Like the centripetal and the centrifugal 
 forces in nature, their tendencies and propulsions are 
 in different and opposite directions. The one looks 
 earthward, the other heavenward. Let the flesh prevail, 
 and the life gravitates downwards, the sensual takes 
 the place of the spiritual. Let the flesh be placed 
 under restraint and control, taught its subordinate 
 position, and there is a general uplift to the life, the 
 untrammelled spirit moving upwards toward heaven 
 and God. And so in the Scriptures we find the duty 
 of fasting prescribed; and though the Rabbis have 
 treated it in an ad absiirdum fashion, bringing it into 
 disrepute, still the duty has not ceased, though the 
 practice may be well-nigh obsolete. And so we find 
 in Apostolic days that prayer was often joined to fast- 
 ing, especially when a question of importance was under 
 consideration. The hours of fasting, too, as we may 
 learn from the cases of the centurion and of Peter, 
 were the perihelion of the Christian life, when it swung 
 up in its nearest approaches to heaven, getting amid 
 the circles of the angels and of celestial visions. 
 Possibly in the case before us there was such an 
 absorption of spirit, such rapture (using the word in its 
 etymological, rather than in its derived meaning), that 
 the claims of the body were utterly forgotten, and its 
 ordinary functions were temporarily suspended; for 
 to the spirit caught up into Paradise it matters little 
 whether in the body or out of it. 
 
 Then, too, the fast was closely related to the tempta- 
 tion ; it was the preparation for it. If Jesus is tempted 
 as the Son of man, it must be our humanity, not at 
 its strongest, but at its weakest. It must be under 
 
iia THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE, 
 
 conditions so hard, no other man could have them 
 harder. As an athlete, before the contest, trains up his 
 body, bringing each muscle and nerve to its very best, 
 so Jesus, before meeting the great adversary in single 
 combat, trains down His body, reducing its physical 
 strength, until it touches the lowest point of human 
 weakness. And so, fighting the battle of humanity, 
 He gives the adversary every advantage. He allows 
 him choice of place, of time, of weapons and conditions, 
 so that His victory may be more complete. Alone in 
 the wild, dreary solitude, cut off from all human 
 sympathies, weak and emaciated with the long fast, 
 the Second Adam waits the attack of the tempter, who 
 found the first Adam too easy a prey. 
 
 2. The nature of the Temptation. In what form the 
 tempter came to Him, or whether he came in any form 
 at all, we cannot tell. Scripture observes a prudent 
 silence, a silence which has been made the occasion of 
 much speculative and random speech on the part of 
 its would-be interpreters. It will serve no good purpose 
 even to enumerate the different forms the tempter is 
 said to have assumed ; for what need can there be for 
 any incarnation of the evil spirit? and why clamour 
 for the supernatural when the natural will suffice ? If 
 Jesus was tempted " as we are," will not our experiences 
 throw the truest light on His? We see no shape. 
 The evil one confronts us; he presents thoughts to 
 our minds ; he injects some proud or evil imagination ; 
 but he himself is masked, unseen, even when we are 
 distinctly conscious of his presence. Just so we may 
 suppose the tempter came to Him. Recalling the 
 declaration made at the baptism, the announcement of 
 His Divine Sonship, the devil says, "If" (or rather 
 "Since," for the tempter is too wary to suggest a 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 113 
 
 doubt as to His relationship with God) "Thou art the 
 Son of God, command this stone that it become bread.' 
 It is as if he said, "You are a-hungered, exhausted, 
 Your strength worn away by Your long fast. This 
 desert, as You see, is wild and sterile ; it can offer You 
 nothing with which to supply Your physical wants ; 
 but You have the remedy in Your own hands. The 
 heavenly Voice proclaimed You as God's Son — nay, His 
 beloved Son. You were invested, too, not simply with 
 Divine dignities, but with Divine powers, with authority, 
 supreme and absolute, over all creatures. Make use 
 now of this newly given power. Speak in these newly 
 learned tones of Divine authority, and command this 
 stone that it become bread." Such was the thought 
 suddenly suggested to the mind of Jesus, and which 
 would have found a ready response from the shrinking 
 flesh, had it been allowed to speak. And was not the 
 thought fair and reasonable, to our thinking, all innocent 
 of wrong ? Suppose Jesus should command the stone 
 into bread, is it any more marvellous than commanding 
 the water into wine? Is not all bread stone, dead 
 earth transformed by the touch of life ? If Jesus can 
 make use of His miraculous power for the benefit of 
 others, why should He not use it in the emergencies 
 of His own life ? The thought seemed reasonable and 
 specious enough ; and at first glance we do not see 
 how the wings of this dove are tipped, not with silver, 
 but with soot from the " pots." But stop. What does 
 this thought of Satan mean? Is it as guileless and 
 guiltless as it seems? Not quite; for it means that 
 Jesus shall be no longer the Son of man. Hitherto 
 His life has been a purely human life. " Made in all 
 things like unto His brethren," from His helpless 
 infancy, through the gleefulness of childhood, the dis- 
 
 8 
 
114 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 cipline of youth, and the toil of manhood, His life 
 has been nourished from purely human sources. His 
 "brocks in the way" have been no secret springs, 
 flowing for Himself alone ; they have been the common 
 brooks, open and free to all, and where any other child 
 of man might drink. But now Satan tempts Him to 
 break with the past, to throw up His Son-of-manhood, 
 and to fall back upon His miraculous power in this, 
 and so in every other emergency of life. Had Satan 
 succeeded, and had Jesus wrought this miracle for 
 Himself, putting around His human nature the shield 
 of His Divinity, then Jesus would have ceased to be 
 man. He would have forsaken the plane of human 
 life for celestial altitudes, with a wide gulf — and oh, how 
 wide !— between Himself and those He had come to 
 redeem. And let the perfect humanity go, and the 
 redemption goes with it; for if Jesus, just by an appeal 
 to His miraculous power, can surmount every difficulty, 
 escape any danger, then you leave no room for the 
 Passion, and no ground on which the cross may rest. 
 Again, the suggestion of Satan was a temptation to 
 distrust. The emphasis lay upon the title, " Son of 
 God." "The Voice proclaimed You, in a peculiar 
 sense, the beloved Son of God ; but where have been 
 the marks of that special love ? Where are the honours, 
 the heritage of joy, the Son should have ? Instead of 
 that, He gives You a wilderness of solitude and priva- 
 tion ; and He who rained manna upon Israel, and who 
 sent an angel to prepare a cake for Eiias, leaves You to 
 pine and hunger. Why wait longer for help which 
 has already tarried too long ? Act now for Yourself. 
 Your resources are ample ; use them in commanding 
 this stone into bread." Such was the drift of the 
 tempter's words ; it was to make Jesus doubt the 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 115 
 
 Father's love and care, to lead Him to act, not in 
 opposition to, but independently of, the Father's will. 
 It was an artful endeavour to throw the will of Jesus 
 out of gear with the Higher Will, and to set it revolving 
 around its own self-centre. It was, in reality, the same 
 temptation, in a slightly altered form, which had been 
 only too successful with the first Adam. 
 
 The thought, however, was no sooner suggested than 
 it was rejected ; for Jesus had a wonderful power of 
 reading thought, of looking into its very heart; and 
 He meets the evil suggestion, not with an answer of 
 His own, but with a singularly apt quotation from the 
 Old Testament : " It is written, Man shall not live by 
 bread alone." The reference is to a parallel experience 
 in the history of Israel, a narrative from which doubt- 
 less Jesus had drawn both strength and solace during 
 His prolonged desert fast. Had not the Divine Voice 
 adopted Israel to a special relationship and privilege, 
 announcing within the palace of Pharaoh, " Israel is My 
 Son, My firstborn " ? (Exod. iv. 22). And yet had not 
 God led Israel for forty years through the desert, 
 suffering him to hunger, that He might humble and 
 prove him, and show him that men are 
 
 "Better than sheep and goats, 
 That nourish a blind life within the brain ;* 
 
 that man has a nature, a life, that cannot live on bread, 
 but — as St. Matthew completes the quotation — "by 
 every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God " ? 
 Seme have supposed that by u bread alone " Jesus 
 refers to the manifold provision God has made for man's 
 physical sustenance ; that He is not limited to one 
 course, but that He can just as easily supply flesh, or 
 manna, or a thousand things besides. But evidently 
 
n6 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 such is not the meaning of Jesus. It was not His 
 wont to speak in such literal, commonplace ways. His 
 thought moved in higher circles than His speech, and 
 we must look upward through the letter to find the 
 higher spirit. M I have meat to eat that ye know not 
 of," said Jesus to His disciples ; and when He caught 
 the undertone of their literalistic questions He explained 
 His meaning in words that will interpret His answer to 
 the tempter : " My meat is to do the will of Him that 
 sent Me." So now it is as if He said, " The Will of 
 God is My meat. That Will brought Me hither ; that 
 Will detains Me here. Nay, that Will commands Me to 
 fast and hunger, and so abstinence from food is itself 
 My food. I do not fear. This wilderness is but the 
 stone-paved court of My Father's house, whose many 
 chambers are filled with treasures, ' bread enough and 
 to spare/ and can I perish with hunger ? I wait His 
 time ; I accept His will ; nor will I taste of bread that is 
 not of His sending." 
 
 The tempter was foiled. The specious temptation 
 fell upon the mind of Jesus like a spark in the sea, to 
 be quenched, instantly and utterly; and though Satan 
 found a powerful lever in the pinch of the terrible 
 hunger — one of the sorest pains our human nature can 
 feel — yet even then he could not wrench the will of 
 Jesus from the will of God. The first Adam doubted, 
 and then disobeyed ; the Second Adam rests in God's 
 will and word ; and like the limpet on the rocks, washed 
 by angry waves, the pressure of the outward storm only 
 unites His will more firmly to the Father's ; nor does it 
 for one moment break in upon that rest of soul. And 
 Jesus never did make use of His miraculous power 
 solely for His own benefit. He would live as a man 
 among men, feeling — probably more intensely than we 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 1 17 
 
 do — all the weaknesses and pains of humanity, that He 
 might be more truly the Son of man, the sympathizing 
 High Priest, the perfect Saviour. He became in all 
 points — sin excepted — one with us, so that we might 
 become one with Him, sharing with Him the Father's 
 love on earth, and then sharing His heavenly joys. 
 
 Baffled, but not confessing himself beaten, the temp- 
 ter returns to the charge. St. Luke here inverts the 
 order of St. Matthew, giving as the second tempta- 
 tion what St. Matthew places last. We prefer the 
 order of St. Luke, not only because in general he is 
 more observant of chronology, but because there is in 
 the three temptations what we might call a certain 
 seriality, which demands the second place for the 
 mountain temptation. It is not necessary that we put 
 a literal stress upon the narrative, supposing that Jesus 
 was transported bodily to the " exceeding high moun- 
 tain." Not only has such a supposition an air of the 
 incredulous about it, but it is set aside by the terms of 
 the narrative itself; for the expression he "showed 
 Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of 
 time " cannot be forced into a literalistic mould. It 
 is easier and more natural to suppose that this and 
 the succeeding temptation were presented only to the 
 spirit of Jesus, without any physical accessories; for 
 after all, it is not the eye that sees, but the soul. The 
 bodily eye had not seen the " great sheet let down from 
 heaven," but it was a real vision, nevertheless, leading 
 to very practical results — the readjustment of Peter's 
 views of duty, and the opening of the door of grace and 
 privilege to the Gentiles. It was but a mental picture, 
 as the "man of Macedonia" appeared to Paul, but 
 the vision was intensely real — more real, if that were 
 possible, than the leagues of intervening sea; and 
 
n8 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 louder to him than all the voices of the deep — of winds, 
 and waves, and storm — was the voice, u Come over and 
 help us," the cry which only the ear of the soul had 
 heard. It was in a similar manner, probably, that the 
 second temptation was presented to Jesus. 
 
 He finds Himself upon a lofty eminence, when 
 suddenly, " in a moment of time," as St. Luke ex- 
 presses it, the world lies unveiled at His feet. Here 
 are fields white with ripened harvests, vineyards red 
 with clustering grapes, groves of olives shimmering in 
 the sunlight like frosted silver, rivers threading their 
 w 7 ay through a sea of green ; here are cities on cities 
 innumerable, quivering with the tread of uncounted 
 millions, streets set with statues, and adorned with 
 temples, palaces, and parks ; here are the flagged Roman 
 roads, all pointing to the woild's great centre, thronged 
 with chariots and horsemen, the legions of war, and 
 the caravans of trade. Beyond are seas where a thou- 
 sand ships are skimming over the blue; while still 
 beyond, all environed with temples, is the palace of 
 the Caesars, the marble pivot around which the world 
 revolves. 
 
 Such was the splendid scene set beiore the mind of 
 Jesus. "All this is mine," said Satan, speaking a half- 
 truth which is often but a whole lie ; for he was indeed 
 the " prince of the power of the air," ruling, however, 
 not in absolute kingship, but as a pretender, a usurper ; 
 "and I give it to whom I will. Only worship me (or 
 rather, 'do homage to me as Your superior'), and all 
 shall be thine." Amplified, the temptation was this : 
 "You are the Son of God, the Messiah- King, but a 
 King without a retinue, without a throne. I know well 
 all the devious, somewhat slippery ways to royalty ; and 
 if You will but assent to my plan, and work on my lines, 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 119 
 
 I can assure You of a throne that is higher, and of a 
 realm that is vaster, than that of Caesar. To begin 
 with : You have powers not given to other mortals, 
 miraculous powers. You can command nature as easily 
 as You can obey her. Trade with these at first, freely. 
 Startle men with prodigies, and so create a name and 
 gain a following. Then when that is sufficiently large 
 set up the standard of revolt. The priesthood and the 
 people will flock to it ; Pharisees and Sadducees, giving 
 up their paper-chases after phantoms, shadows, will 
 forget their strife in the peace of a common war, and 
 before a united people Rome's legions must retire. 
 Then, pushing out Your borders, and avoiding reverse 
 and disaster by a continual appeal to Your miraculous 
 powers, one after another You will make the neigh- 
 bouring nations dependent and tributary. So, little by 
 little, You will hem in the might of Rome, until by one 
 desperate struggle You will vanquish the Empire. The 
 lines of history will then be all reversed. Jerusalem 
 will become the mistress, the capital of the world ; 
 along all these roads swift messengers shall carry Your 
 decrees ; Your word shall be law, and Your will over 
 all human wills shall be supreme." 
 
 Such was the meaning of the second temptation. 
 It was the chord of ambition Satan sought to strike, 
 a chord whose vibrations are so powerful in the human 
 heart, often drowning or deafening other and sweeter 
 voices. He put before Jesus the highest possible goal, 
 that of universal empire, and showed how that goal 
 was comparatively easy of attainment, if Jesus would 
 only follow his directions and work on his plans. The 
 objective point at which the tempter aimed was, as 
 in the first temptation, to shift Jesus from the Divine 
 purpose, to detach His will from the Father's will, 
 
120 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 and to induce Him to set up a sort of independence. 
 The life of Jesus, instead of moving on steadily around 
 its Divine centre, striking in with absolute precision 
 to the beat of the Divine purpose, should revolve only 
 around the centre of its narrower self, exchanging 
 its grander, heavenlier sweep for certain intermittent, 
 eccentric motions of its own. If Satan could not pre- 
 vent the founding of "the kingdom," he would, if it 
 were possible, change its character. It should not be 
 the kingdom of heaven, but a kingdom of earth, pure 
 and simple, under earthly conditions and earthly laws. 
 Might should take the place of right, and force the 
 place of love. He would set Jesus after gaining the 
 whole world, that so He might forget that His mission 
 was to save it. Instead of a Saviour, they should 
 have a Sovereign, decked with this world's glory and 
 the pomps of earthly empire. 
 
 It is easy to see that if Jesus had been merely man 
 the temptation would have been most subtle and most 
 powerful ; for how many of the sons of men, alas, 
 have been led astray from the Divine purpose with a 
 far less bait than a whole world ! A momentary 
 pleasure, a handful of glittering dust the more, some 
 dream of place or fame — these are more than enough 
 to tempt men to break with God. But while Jesus was 
 man, the Perfect Man, He was more. The Holy Spirit 
 was now given to Him without measure. From the 
 beginning His will had been subordinate to the Father's, 
 growing up within it and configuring itself to it, even 
 as the ductile metal receives the shape of the mould. 
 The Divine purpose, too, had now been revealed to 
 Him in the vivid enlightenment of the Baptism ; for the 
 shadow of the crosi was thrown back over His life, 
 at any rate as far as the Jordan. And so the second 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 12 1 
 
 temptation fell harmless as the first. The chord of 
 ambition Satan sought to strike was not found in 
 the pure soul of Jesus, and all these visions of victory 
 and empire awoke no response in His heart, any more 
 than the flower-wreaths laid upon the breast of the 
 dead can quicken the beat of the now silent heart. 
 
 The answer of Jesus was prompt and decisive. Not 
 deigning to use any words of His own, or to hold any 
 parley, even the shortest, He meets the word of the 
 tempter with a Divine word : " It is written, Thou 
 shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt 
 thou serve." The tempting thought is something 
 foreign to the mind of Jesus, something unwelcome, 
 repulsive, and it is rejected instantly. Instead of 
 allowing Himself to be diverted from the Divine 
 purpose, His will detached from the Father's will, He 
 turns to that will and word at once. It is His refuge, 
 His home. The thought of Jesus cannot pass beyond 
 the circle of that will, any more than a dove can pass 
 beyond the over-arching sky. He sees the Throne 
 that is above all thrones, and gazing upon that, worship- 
 ping only the Great King, who is over all and in all, 
 the thrones and crowns of earthly dominion are but as 
 motes of the air. The victory was complete. Quickly 
 as it came, the splendid vision conjured up by the 
 tempter disappeared, and Jesus turned away from the 
 path of earthly glory, where power without measure 
 and honours without number awaited Him, to tread 
 the solitary, lowly path of submission and of sacrifice, 
 the path that had a crucifixion, and not a coronation 
 as its goal. 
 
 Twice baffled, the enemy comes once again to the 
 charge, completing the series with the pinnacle temp- 
 tation, to which St. Luke naturally, and as we think 
 
122 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 rightly, gives the third place. It follows the other 
 two in orderly sequence, and it cannot well be placed 
 second, as in St. Matthew, without a certain over- 
 lapping of thought. If we must adhere to the litera- 
 listic interpretation, and suppose Jesus led up to 
 Jerusalem bodily, then, perhaps, St. Matthew's order 
 would be more natural, as that would not necessitate 
 a return to the wilderness. But that is an interpreta- 
 tion to which we are not bound. Neither the words 
 of the narrative nor the conditions of the temptation 
 require it ; an d when art represents Jesus as flying 
 with the tempter through the air it is a representation 
 both grotesque and gratuitous. Thus far, in his ttmpta- 
 tions, Satan has been foiled by the faith of Jesus, the 
 implicit trust He reposed in the Father ; but if he 
 cannot break in upon that trust, causing it to doubt 
 or disobey, may he not push the virtue too far, goading 
 Him " to sin in loving virtue " ? If the mind and 
 heart of Jesus are so grooved in with the lines of the 
 Divine will that he cannot throw them off the metals, 
 or make them reverse their wheels, perhaps he may 
 push them forward so fast and so far as to bring about 
 the collision he seeks — the clash of the two wills. It 
 is the only chance left him, a forlorn hope, it is true, 
 but still a hope, and Satan moves forward, if per- 
 chance he may realize it. 
 
 As in the second temptation, the wilderness fades 
 out of sight. Suddenly Jesus finds Himself standing 
 on the pinnacle of the Temple, probably the eastern 
 corner of the royal portico. On the one side, deep 
 below, were the Temple courts, crowded with throngs 
 of worshippers; on the other lay the gorge of the 
 Kedron, a giddy depth, which made the eye of the 
 down looker to swim, and the brain to reel. a If (or 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 123 
 
 rather ' Since ') said Satan, Thou art the Son of God, 
 cast Thyself down from hence ; for it is written, Ke 
 shall give His angels charge concerning Thee, to guard 
 Thee ; on their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest 
 haply Thou dash Thy foot against a stone." It is as 
 if he said, "You are the Son of God, in a special, 
 favoured sense. You are set in title and authority 
 above the angels ; they are Your ministering servants ; 
 and You reciprocate the trust Heaven reposes in You. 
 The will of God is more to You than life itself ; the 
 word of God outweighs with You thrones and empires. 
 And Ycu do well. Continue thus, and no harm can 
 overtake You. And just to show how absolute is Your 
 faith in God, cast Yourself down from this height. You 
 need not fear, for You will but throw Yourself upon 
 the word of God ; and You have only to speak, and 
 unseen angels will crowd the air, bearing You up in 
 their hands. Cast Yourself down, and so test and 
 attest Your faith in God ; and doing so You will give 
 to these multitudes indubitable proof of Your Sonship 
 and Messiahship." Such was the argument, specious, 
 but fallacious, of the tempter. Misquoting Scripture by 
 omitting its qualifying clause, distorting the truth into 
 a dangerous error, he sought to impale his Victim on 
 the horn of a dilemma. But Jesus was on the alert. 
 He recognized at once the seductive thought, though, 
 Jacob-like, it had come robed in the assumed dress of 
 Scripture. Is not obedience as sacred as trust? Is 
 not obedience the life, the soul of trust, without which 
 the trust itself is but a semblance, a decaying, corrupt 
 thing ? But Satan asks Him to disobey, to set Him- 
 self above the laws by which the world is governed. 
 Instead of His will being entirely subordinate, conform- 
 ing itself in all things to the Divine will, if He should 
 
124 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 cast Himself down from this pinnacle it would be 
 putting pressure upon thai Divine will, forcing it to 
 repeal its own physical laws, or al any rate to suspend 
 their action for a time. And what would that be but 
 insubordination, no longer faith, but presumption, a 
 tempting, and not a trusting God ? The Divine 
 promises are not cheques made payable to " bearer," 
 regardless of character, place, or time, and to be realized 
 by any one who may happen to possess himself of them, 
 anywhere. They are cheques drawn out to " order," 
 crossed cheques, too, negotiated only as the conditions 
 of character and time are fulfilled. The Divine protec- 
 tion and guardianship are indeed assured to every child 
 of God, but only as he " dwelleth in the secret place 
 of the Most High, as he abides under the shadow of 
 the Almighty ; " in other words, so long as " thy ways " 
 are " His ways." Step out from that pavilion of the 
 Most High, and you step from under the bright bow 
 cf promise. Put yourself above, or put yourself out 
 of, the Divine order of things, and the very promise 
 becomes a threatening, and the cloud that else would 
 protect and guide becomes a cloud full of suppressed 
 thunders, and flashing in vivid lightnings its thousand 
 swords of flame. Faith and fidelity are thus insepa- 
 rable. The one is the calyx, the other the involved 
 corolla; and as they open outwards into the perfect 
 flower they turn towards the Divine will, configuring 
 themselves in all things to that will. 
 
 A third time Jesus replied to the tempter in 
 words of Old Testament Scripture, and a third time, 
 too, from the same book of Deuteronomy. It will be 
 observed, however, that the terms of His reply are 
 slightly altered. He no longer uses the " It is written," 
 since Satan himself has borrowed that word, but sub- 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 125 
 
 stitutes another : " It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the 
 Lord thy God." It has been thought by some that 
 Jesus used the quotation in an accommodated sense, 
 referring the "Thou" to the tempter himself, and so 
 making "the Lord thy God" an attestation of His own 
 Divinity. But such an interpretation is forced and 
 unnatural. Jesus would not be likely to hide the deep 
 secret from His own disciples, and announce it for the 
 first time to the ears of the seducer. It is an impos- 
 sible supposition. Besides, too, it was as man that 
 Jesus was tempted. Only on the side of His humanity 
 could the enemy approach Him, and for Jesus now to 
 take refuge in His Divinity would strip the temptation 
 of all its meaning, making it a mere acting. But Jesus 
 does not so throw up humanity, or which is the same 
 thing, take Himself out of it, and when He says, 
 " Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God " He includes 
 Himself in the " thou." Son though He is, He must 
 put Himself under the law that prescribes the relations 
 of man towards God. He must learn obedience as 
 other sons of men. He must submit, that He may 
 serve, not seeking to impose His will upon the Father's 
 will, even by way of suggestion, much less by way of 
 demand, but waiting upon that will in an absolute 
 self-surrender and instant acquiescence. Moses must 
 not command the cloud ; all that he is permitted to 
 do is to observe it and follow. To go before God is 
 to go without God, and to go without Him is to go 
 against Him; and as to the angels bearing Him up in 
 their hands, that depends altogether upon the path and 
 the errand. Let it be the Divinely ordered path, and 
 the unseen convoys of heaven will attend, a sleepless, 
 invincible guard ; but let it be some self-chosen path, 
 some forbidden way, and the angel's sword will flash 
 
126 THE GQSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 its warning, and send the foot of the unfaithful servant 
 crushing against the wall. 
 
 And so the third temptation failed, as did the other 
 Lwo. With but a little tension, Satan had made the will 
 }f the first Adam to strike a discordant note, throwing 
 it out of all harmony with the Higher Will ; but by no 
 pressure, no enticements, can he influence the Second 
 Adam. His will vibrates in a perfect consonance with 
 the Father's, even under the terrible pressure of 
 hunger, and the more terrible pressure, the fearful 
 impact of evil. 
 
 So Satan completed, and so Jesus resisted, " every 
 temptation " — that is, every form of temptation. In 
 the first, Jesus was tempted on the side of His physical 
 nature; in the second the attack was on the side of 
 His intellectual nature, looking out on His political 
 life ; while in the third the assault was on the side of 
 His spiritual life. In the first He is tempted as the 
 Man, in the second as the Messiah, and in the third as 
 the Divine Son. In the first temptation He is asked 
 to make use of His newly received miraculous power 
 over nature — passive, unthinking nature; in the second 
 He is asked to throw it over the "world," which in 
 this case is a synonym for humankind ; while in the 
 third He is asked to widen the realm of His authority, 
 and to command the angels, nay, God Himself. So 
 the three temptations are really one, though the fields 
 of battle lie in three several planes. And the aim was 
 one. It was to create a divergence between the two 
 wills, and to set the Son in a sort of antagonism to the 
 Father, which would have been another Absalom revolt, 
 a Divine mutiny it is impossible for us even to 
 conceive. 
 
 St. Luke omits in his narrative the ministry of 
 
THE TEMPTATION. 127 
 
 angels mentioned by the other two S}moptists, a sweet 
 postlude we should have missed much, had it been 
 wanting; but he gives us instead the retreat of the 
 adversary : u He departed from Him for a season.'*' 
 How long a season it was we do not know, but a 
 brief one it must have been, for again and again in 
 the story of the Gospels we see the dark shadow of 
 the evil one ; while in Gethsemane the " prince of 
 this world" cometh, but to find nothing in "Me." 
 And what was the horror of great darkness, that 
 strange eclipse of soul Jesus suffered upon Calvary, 
 but the same fearful presence, intercepting for a time 
 even the Father's smile, and throwing upon the pure 
 and patient Sufferer a strip of the outer darkness itself? 
 The test was over. Tried in the fires of a persistent 
 assault, the faith and obedience of Jesus were found 
 perfect. The shafts of the tempter had recoiled upon 
 himself, leaving all stainless and scatheless the pure 
 soul of Jesus. The Son of man had conquered, that 
 all other sons of men may learn the secret of constant 
 and complete victory; how faith overcomes, putting to 
 flight " the armies of the aliens," and making even the 
 weakest child of God " more than conqueror." And 
 from the wilderness, where innocence has ripened into 
 virtue, Jesus passes up, like another Moses, ° in the 
 power of the Spirit," to challenge the world's magi- 
 cians, to baffle their sleight of hand and skill of speech, 
 and to proclaim to redeemed humanity a new Exodus 
 a life-long Jubilee. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE JUBILEE. 
 
 IMMEDIATELY after the Temptation Jesus returned, 
 "in the power of the Spirit," and with all the 
 added strength of His recent victories, to Galilee. Into 
 what parts of Galilee He came, our Evangelist does 
 not say; but omitting the visit to Cana, and dismissing 
 the first Galilean tour with a sentence — how " He 
 taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all " — 
 St. Luke goes on to record in detail the visit of Jesus 
 to Nazareth, and His rejection by His townsmen. In 
 putting this narrative in the forefront of his Gospel is 
 St. Luke committing a chronological error ? or is he, 
 as some suppose, purposely antedating the Nazareth 
 story, that it may stand as a frontispiece to his Gospel, 
 or that it may serve as a key for the after-music? 
 This is the view held by most of our expositors and 
 harmonists, but, as it appears to us, on insufficient 
 grounds ; the balance of probability is against it. It 
 is true that St. Matthew and St. Mark record a visit o 
 Nazareth which evidently occurred at a later period cf 
 His ministry. It is true also that between their narra- 
 tives and this of St. Luke there are some striking 
 resemblances, such as the teaching in the synagogue 
 the astonishment of His hearers, their reference to His 
 parentage, and then the reply of Jesus as to a prophet 
 receiving scant honour in his own country — resem- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE JUBILEE. 129 
 
 blances which would seem to indicate that the two 
 narratives were in reality one. But still it is possible 
 to push these resemblances too far, reading out from 
 them what we have first read into them. Let us for 
 the moment suppose that Jesus made two visits to 
 Nazareth ; and is not such a supposition both reasonable 
 and natural ? It is not necessary that the first rejection 
 should be a final rejection, for did not the Jews seek 
 again and again to kill Him, before the cross saw their 
 dire purpose realised ? Remaining for so long in 
 Galilee, would it not be a most natural wish on the 
 part of Jesus to see the home of His boyhood once 
 again, and to give to His townspeople one parting word 
 before taking His farewell of Galilee ? And suppose 
 He did, what then ? Would He not naturally go to 
 the synagogue — as was His custom in every place — 
 and speak ? And would they not listen with the same 
 astonishment, and then harp on the very same questions 
 as to His parentage and brotherhood — questions that 
 would have their readiest and fittest answer in the 
 same familiar proverb ? Instead, then, of these resem- 
 blances identifying the two narratives, and proving that 
 St. Luke's story is but an amplification of the narratives 
 of the other Synoptists, the resemblances themselves 
 are what we might naturally expect in our supposition 
 of a second visit. But if there are certain coincidences 
 between the two narratives, there are marked differ- 
 ences, which make it extremely improbable that the 
 Synoptists are recording one event. In the visit re- 
 corded by St. Luke there were no miracles wrought; 
 while St. Matthew and St. Mark tell us that He could 
 not do many mighty works there, because of their 
 unbelief, but that He " laid His hands on a few sick 
 folk, and healed them." In tfie narrative by St. Mark 
 
 9 
 
no THE GOSPEL GF ST. LUKE. 
 
 we read that His disciples were with Kim while St. 
 Luke makes no mention of His disciples ; but St. Luke 
 does mention the tragic ending of the visit, the attempt 
 of the men of Nazareth to hurl Him down from a lofty 
 cliff, an incident St. Matthew and St. Mark omit alto- 
 gether. But can we suppose the men of Nazareth 
 would have attempted this, had the strong body-guard 
 of disciples been with Jesus ? Would they be likely 
 to stand by, timidly acquiescent ? Would not Peter's 
 sw r ord have flashed instantly from its scabbard, in 
 defence of Him whom he served and dearly loved ? 
 That St. Matthew and St. Mark should make no refer- 
 ence to this scene of violence, had it occurred at the 
 visit they record, is strange and unaccountable; and 
 the omission is certainly an indication, if not a proof, 
 that the Synoptists are describing two separate visits 
 to Nazareth — the one, as narrated by St. Luke, at the 
 commencement of His ministry; and the other at a later 
 date, probably towards its close. And with this view 
 the substance of the Nazareth address perfectly accords. 
 The whole address has the ring of an inaugural mes- 
 sage ; it is the voice of an opening spring, and not of a 
 waning summer. " This day is this Scripture fulfilled 
 in your ears " is the blast of the silver trumpet 
 announcing the beginning of the Messianic year, the 
 year of a truer, wider Jubilee. 
 
 It seems to us, therefore, that the chronology of St. 
 Luke is perfectly correct, as he places in the forefront 
 of his Gospel the earlier visit to Nazareth, and the 
 violent treatment Jesus there received. At the second 
 visit there was still a widespread unbelief, which caused 
 Jesus to marvel ; but there was no attempt at violence, 
 for His disciples were with Him now, while the report 
 of His Judaean ministry, which had gone before Him, 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE JUBILEE. 131 
 
 and the miracles He wrought in their presence, had 
 softened down even Nazareth prejudices and asperities. 
 The events of the first Galilean tour were probably in 
 the following order. Jesus, with His five disciples, 
 goes to Cana, invited guests at the marriage, and here 
 He opens His miraculous commission, by turning the 
 water into wine. From Cana they proceed to Caper- 
 naum, where they remain for a short time, Jesus 
 preaching in their synagogue, and probably continuing 
 His miraculous works. Leaving His disciples behind 
 at Capernaum — for between the preliminary call by 
 the Jordan and the final call by the lake the fisher- 
 disciples get back to their old occupations for a while 
 — Jesus goes up to Nazareth, with His mother and 
 His brethren. Thence, after His violent rejection, He 
 returns to Capernaum, where He calls His disciples 
 from their boats and receipt of custom, probably com- 
 pleting the sacred number before setting out on His 
 journey southward to Jerusalem. If this harmony be 
 correct— and the weight of probability seems to be in 
 its favour — then the address at Nazareth, which is the 
 subject for our consideration now, would be the first 
 lecorded utterance of Jesus; for thus far Cana gives 
 us one startling miracle, while in Capernaum we find 
 the report of His acts, rather than the echoes of His 
 words. And that St. Luke alone should give us this 
 incident, recording it in such a graphic manner, would 
 almost imply that he had received the account from an 
 eye-witness, probably — if we may gather anything from 
 the Nazarene tone of St. Luke's earlier pages — from 
 some member of the Holy Family. 
 
 Jesus has now fairly embarked upon His Messianic 
 mission, and He begins that mission, as prophecy had 
 long foretold He should, in Galilee of the Gentiles. 
 
132 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 The rumour of His wonderful deeds at Cana and 
 Capernaum had already preceded Him thither, when 
 Jesus came once again to the home of His childhood 
 and youth. Going, as had been His custom from 
 boyhood, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day 
 (St. Luke is writing for Gentiles who are unversed 
 in Jewish customs), Jesus stood up to read. "The 
 Megilloth," or Book of the Prophets, having been 
 handed to Him, He unrolled the book, and read the 
 passage in Isaiah (lxi. i) to which His mind had been 
 Divinely directed, or which He had purposely chosen : — 
 
 " The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, 
 Because He anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor, 
 He hath sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, 
 And recovering of sight to the blind, 
 To set at liberty them that are bruised, 
 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.* 
 
 Then closing, or rolling up, the book, and handing 
 it back to the attendant, Jesus sat down, and began 
 His discourse. The Evangelist does not record any of 
 the former part of the discourse, but simply gives us 
 the effect produced, in the riveted gaze and the rising 
 astonishment of His auditors, as they caught up eagerly 
 His sweet and gracious words. Doubtless, He would 
 explain the words of the prophet, first in their literal, 
 and then in their prophetic sense; and so far He 
 carried the hearts of His hearers with Him, for who 
 could speak of their Messianic hopes without awaking 
 sweet music in the Hebrew heart ? But directly Jesus 
 applies the passage to Himself, and says, " This day 
 is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears," the fashion 
 of their countenance alters; the Divine emphasis He 
 puts upon the Me curdles in their heart, turning their 
 pleasure and wonder into incredulity, envy, and a 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE JUBILEE. 133 
 
 perfect frenzy of rage. The primary reference of the 
 prophecy seems to have been to the return of Israel 
 from captivity. It was a political Jubilee he pro- 
 claimed, when Zion should have a " garland for ashes," 
 when the captive should be free, and aliens should be 
 their servants. But the flowers of Scripture are mostly 
 double ; its pictures and parables have often a nearer 
 meaning, and another more remote, or a spiritual, 
 involved in the literal sense. That it was so here is 
 evident, for Jesus takes this Scripture — which we 
 might call a Babylonish garment, woven out of the Exile 
 — and wraps it around Himself, as if it belonged to 
 Himself alone, and were so intended from the very first. 
 His touch thus invests it with a new significance ; and 
 making this Scripture a vestment for Himself, Jesus, 
 so to speak, shakes out its narrower folds, and gives it 
 a wider, an eternal meaning. But why should Jesus 
 select this passage above all others? Were not the 
 Old Testament Scriptures full of types, and shadows, 
 and prophecies which testified of Him, any one of 
 which He might have appropriated now? Yes, but 
 no other passage so completely answered His design, 
 no other was so clearly and fully declarative of His 
 earthly mission. And so Jesus selected this picture of 
 Isaiah, which was at once a prophecy and an epitome 
 of His own Gospel, as His inaugural message, His 
 manifesto. 
 
 The Mosaic Code, in its play upon the temporal 
 octaves, had made provision, not only for a weekly 
 Sabbath, and for a Sabbath year, but it completed its 
 cycle of festivals by setting apart each fiftieth year as 
 a year of special grace and gladness. It was the year 
 of redemption and restoration, when all debts were 
 remitted, when the family inheritance, which by the 
 
134 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 pressure of the times had been alienated, reverted to its 
 original owner, and when those who had mortgaged 
 their personal liberty regained their freedom. The 
 u Jubilee " year, as they called it — putting into its name 
 the play of the priestly trumpets which ushered it in — 
 was thus the Divine safeguard against monopolies, a 
 Divine provision for a periodic redistribution of the 
 wealth and privileges of the theocracy; while at the same 
 time it served to keep intact the separate threads of 
 family life, running its lines of lineage down through the 
 centuries, and across into the New Testament. Seizing 
 upon this, the gladdest festival of Hebrew life, Jesus 
 likens Himself to one of the priests, who with trumpet 
 of silver proclaims "the acceptable year of the Lord." 
 He finds in that Jubilee a type of His Messianic year, 
 a year that shall bring, not to one chosen race alone, 
 but to a world of debtors and captives, remissions and 
 manumissions without number, ushering in an era of 
 liberty and gladness. And so in these words, adapted 
 and adopted from Isaiah, Jesus announces Himself as 
 the world's Evangelist, and Healer, and Emancipator; 
 or separating the general message into its prismatic 
 colours, we have the three characteristics of Christ's 
 Gospel — (i) as the Gospel of Love; (2) the Gospel of 
 Light ; and (3) the Gospel of Liberty. 
 
 I. The Gospel of Jesus was the Gospel of Love. 
 11 He anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor." 
 That there is a Gospel even in the Old Testament no 
 one will attempt to deny, and able writers have delighted 
 in tracing out the evangelism that, like hidden veins 
 of gold, runs here and there, now embedded deep in his- 
 torical strata, and now cropping out in the current of 
 prophetical speech. Still, an ear but little trained to har- 
 monies can detect a marvellous difference between the 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE JUBILEE. 13S 
 
 tone of the Old and the tone of the New Dispensation. 
 " Evangelists " is scarcely the name we should give 
 to the prophets and preachers of the Old Testament, 
 if we except that prophet of the dawn, Isaiah. They 
 came, not as the bearers of glad tidings, but with the 
 pressure, the burden of a terrible " woe " upon them. 
 With a voice of threat and doom they recall Israel 
 back to the ways erf fidelity and purity, and with the 
 caustic of biting words they seek to burn out the 
 cancer of national corruption. They were no doves, 
 those old-time prophets, building their nests in the 
 blossoming olives, in soft accents telling of a winter 
 past and a summer near ; they were storm-birds rather, 
 beating with swift, sad wings on the crest of sullen 
 waves, or whirling about among the torn shrouds. 
 Even the eremite Baptist brought no evangel. He was 
 a sad man, with a sad message, telling, not of the right 
 which men should do, but of the wrong they should 
 not do, his ministry, like that of the law, being a 
 ministry of condemnation. Jesus, however, announces 
 Himself as the world's Evangelist. He declares that 
 He is anointed and commissioned to be the bearer of 
 good, glad tidings to man. At once the Morning Star 
 and Sun, He comes to herald a new day; nay, He 
 comes to make that day. And so it was. We cannot 
 listen to the words of Jesus without noticing the high 
 and heavenly pitch to which their music is set. Be- 
 ginning with the Beatitudes, they move on in the higher 
 spaces, striking the notes of courage, hope, and faith, 
 and at last, in the guest-chamber, dropping down to 
 their key-note, as they close with an eirenicon and a 
 benediction. How little Jesus played upon men's 
 fears! how, instead, He sought to inspire them with 
 new hopes, telling of the possibilities of goodness, :he 
 
t36 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 perfections which were within reach of even the human 
 endeavour ! How seldom you catch the tone of de- 
 spondency in His words ! As He summons men to 
 a life of purity, unselfishness, and faith, His are not the 
 voice and mien of one who commands to a forlorn hope. 
 There is the ring of courage, conviction, certainty about 
 His tone, a hopefulness that was itself half a victory. 
 Jesus was no Pessimist, reading over the grave of 
 departed glories His " ashes to ashes;" He who knew 
 our human nature best had most hopes of it, for He 
 saw the Deity that was back of it and within it. 
 
 And just here we touch what we may call the funda- 
 mental chord in the Gospel of Jesus, the Fatherhood 
 cf God ; for though we can detect other strains running 
 through the music of the Gospel, such as the Love of 
 God, the Grace of God, and the Kingdom of God, yet 
 these are but the consonant notes completing the har- 
 monic scale, or the variations that play about the Divine 
 Fatherhood. To the Hebrew conception of God this 
 was an element altogether new. To their mind Jehovah 
 is the Lord of hosts, an invisible, absolute Power, 
 inhabiting the thick darkness, and speaking in the fire. 
 Sinai thus throws its shadow across the Old Testa- 
 ment Scriptures, and men inhale an atmosphere of law 
 rather than of love. 
 
 But what a transformation was wrought in the world's 
 thought and life as Jesus unfolded the Divine Father- 
 hood ! It altered the whole aspect of man's relation to 
 God, with a change as marked and glorious as when 
 our earth turns its face more directly to the sun, to find 
 its summer. The Great King, whose will commanded 
 all forces, became the Great Father, in whose compas- 
 sionate heart the toiling children of men might find 
 refuge and rest. The " Everlasting Arms " were none 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE JUBILEE. 137 
 
 the less strong and omnipotent ; but as Jesus uncovered 
 them they seemed less distant, less rigid ; they became 
 so near and so gentle, the weakest child of earth might 
 not fear to lay its tired heart upon them. Law was 
 none the less mighty, none the less majestic, but it was 
 now a transfigured law, all lighted up and suffused with 
 love. No longer was life one round of servile tasks, 
 demanded by an inexorable, invisible Pharaoh ; no 
 longer was it a trampled playground, where all the 
 flowers are crushed, as Fate and Chance take their 
 alternate innings. No ; life was ennobled, adorned with 
 new and rare beauties ; and when Jesus opened the 
 gate of the Divine Fatherhood the light that was 
 beyond, and that " never was on sea or land," shone 
 through, putting a heavenliness upon the earthly, and 
 a Divineness upon the human life. What better, gladder 
 tidings could the poor (whether in spirit or in life) hear 
 than this — that heaven was no longer a distant dream, 
 but a present and most precious reality, touching at 
 every point, and enfolding their little lives ; that God 
 was no longer hostile, or even indifferent to them, but 
 that He cared for them with an infinite care, and loved 
 them with an infinite love ? Thus did Jesus proclaim 
 the u good tidings ; " for love, grace, redemption, and 
 heaven itself are all found within the compass of the 
 Fatherhood. And He who gave to His disciples, in 
 the Paternoster, a golden key for heaven's audience- 
 chamber, speaks that sacred name " Father " even amid 
 the agonies of the cross, putting the silver trumpet to 
 His parched and quivering lips, so that earth may hear 
 once again the music of its new and more glorious 
 Jubilee. 
 
 2. The Gospel of Jesus was a Gospel of Light 
 " And recovering of sight to the blind," which is the 
 
138 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Septuagh-t rendering of the Hebrew passage in Isaiah, 
 "the opening of the prison to them that are bound." 
 At first sight this appears to be a break in the Jubilee 
 idea; for ph}'sical cures, such as the healing of the 
 blind, did not come within the scope of Jubilatic mercies. 
 The original expression, however, contains a blending 
 of figures, which together preserve the unity of the 
 prophetic picture. Literally it reads, "The opening of 
 the eyes to them that are bound ; " the figure being 
 that of a captive, whose long captivity in the darkness 
 has filmed his vision, and who now passes through the 
 opened door of his prison into the light of day. 
 
 In what way shall we interpret these words ? Are 
 they to be taken literally, or spiritually ? or are both 
 methods equally legitimate ? Evidently they are both 
 intended, for Jesus was the Light-bringer in more senses 
 than one. That the Messiah should signalize His 
 advent by performing wonders and signs, and by work- 
 ing physical cures, w r as certainly the teaching of pro- 
 phecy, as it was a fixed and prominent hope in the 
 expectation of the Jews. And so, when the despondent 
 Baptist sent two of his disciples to ask " Art Thou He 
 that should come?" Jesus gave no direct answer, but 
 turning from His questioners to the multitude of sick 
 who pressed around Him, He healed their sick, and 
 gave sight to many that w T ere blind. Then returning 
 to the surprised strangers, He bids them carry back to 
 their master these visible proofs of His Messiahship — 
 how that "lepers are cleansed, and the blind receive 
 their sight." Jesus Himself had a wonderful power of 
 vision. His e} r es were Divinely bright, for they carried 
 their own light. Not only had He the gift of pre- 
 science, the forward-looking eye; He had what for 
 want of a word we may call the gift of prescience, the 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE JUBILEE. 139 
 
 eye that looked within, that saw the heart and soul of 
 things. What a strange fascination there was in His 
 very look ! how it flashed like a subtle lightning, 
 striking and scathing with its holy indignation the half- 
 veiled meanness and hypocrisy ! and how again, like 
 a beam of light, it fell upon Peter's soul, thawing the 
 chilled heart, and opening the closed fountain of his 
 tears, as an Alpine summer falls on the rigid glacier, 
 and sends it rippling and singing through the lower 
 vales. And had not Jesus an especial sympathy for 
 cases of ophthalmic distress, paying to the blind a 
 peculiar attention ? How quickly He responded to 
 Bartimaeus— " What is it that I shall do for thee ? " — 
 as if Bartimaeus were conferring the benefit by making 
 his request. Where on the pages of the four Gospels 
 do we find a picture more full of beauty and sublimity 
 than when we read of Jesus taking the blind man by 
 the hand, and leading him out of the town ? What 
 moral grandeur and what touching pathos are there ! 
 and how that stoop of gentleness makes Him great ! 
 No other case is there of such prolonged and tender 
 sympathy, where He not only opens the gates of day 
 for the benighted, but leads the benighted one up to 
 the gates. And why does Jesus make this difference 
 in His miracles, that while other cures are w T rought 
 instantly, even the raising of the dead, with nothing 
 more than a look, a word, or a touch, in healing the 
 blind He should work the cure, as it were, in parts, or 
 by using such intermediaries as clay, saliva, or the 
 water of Siloam's pool ? Must it not have been inten- 
 tional ? It would seem so, though what the purpose 
 might be we can only guess. Was it so gradual an 
 inletting of the light, because a glare too bright and 
 sudden would only conftise and blind? or did Jesus 
 
140 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 linger over the cure with the pleasure of one who loves 
 to watch the dawn, as it paints the east with vermilion 
 and gold ? or did Jesus make use of the saliva and 
 clay, that like crystal lenses, they might magnify His 
 power, and show how His will was supreme, that 
 He had a thousand ways of restoring sight, and that 
 He had only to command even unlikely things, and 
 light, or rather sight, should be? We do not know 
 the purpose, but we do know that physical sight was 
 somehow a favourite gift of the Lord Jesus, one that 
 He handed to men carefully and tenderly. Nay, He 
 Himself said that the man of Jerusalem had been born 
 blind " that the works of God should be manifest in 
 him ; " that is, his firmament had been for forty years 
 darkened that his age, and all coming ages, might see 
 shining within it the constellations of Divine Pity and 
 Divine Power. 
 
 But while Jesus knew well the anatomy of the 
 natural eye, and could and did heal it of its disorders, 
 putting within the sunken socket the rounded ball, or 
 restoring to the optic nerve its lost powers, this was 
 not the only sight He brought. To the companion 
 clauses of this prophecy, where Jesus proclaims deliver- 
 ance to the captives, and sets at liberty them that are 
 bruised, we are compelled to give a spiritual interpre- 
 tation ; and so "the recovering of sight to the blind" 
 demands a far wider horizon than the literalistic sense 
 offers. It speaks of the true Light which lighteth 
 every man, that spiritual photosphere that environs 
 and enswathes the soul, and of the opening and adjust- 
 ing of the spiritual sense ; for as sight without light is 
 darkness, so light without sight is darkness still. The 
 two facts are thus related, each useless apart from the 
 other, but together producing what we call vision 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE JUBILEE. 141 
 
 The recovering of sight to the blind is thus the uni- 
 versal miracle. It is the "Let light be" of the new 
 Genesis, or, as we prefer to call it, the " regeneration." 
 It is the dawn, which, breaking over the soul, broadens 
 unto the perfect day, the heavenly, the eternal neon. 
 Jesus Himself recognized this binoculism, this double 
 vision. He says (John xvi. 16), "A little while, and 
 ye behold Me no more ; and again a little while, and ye 
 shall see Me," using two altogether different words— 
 the one speaking of the vision of the sense, the other 
 of the deeper vision of the soul. And it was so. The 
 disciples' vision of the Christ, at least so long as 
 the bodily presence was with them, was the earthly, 
 physical vision. The spiritual Christ was, in a sense, 
 lost, masked in the corporeal. The veil of His flesh 
 hung dense and heavy before their eyes, and not until 
 it was uplifted on the cross, not until it was rent in 
 twain, did they see the mysterious Holy Presence that 
 dwelt within the veil. Nor was the clearer vision given 
 them even now. The dust of the sepulchre was in 
 their eyes, blurring, and for a time half-blinding them 
 —the anointing with the clay. The emptied grave, 
 the Resurrection, was their " pool of Siloam," washing 
 away the blinding clay, the dust of their gross, materi- 
 alistic thoughts. Henceforth they saw Christ, not, as 
 before, ever coming and going, but as the ever-present, 
 the abiding One. In the fuller light of the Pentecostal 
 flames the unseen Christ became more near and more 
 real than the seen Christ ever was. Seeing Him as visible, 
 their minds were holden, somewhat perplexed; they 
 could neither accomplish much nor endure much ; but 
 seeing Him who had become invisible, they were a com- 
 pany of invincibles. They could do and they could en- 
 dure anything; for was not the I AM with them always? 
 
142 THE GGSrEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Now, even in the physical vision there is a wonderful 
 correspondence between the sight and the soul, the 
 prospect and introspect. As men read the outward 
 world they see pretty much the shadow of themselves, 
 their thoughts, feelings, and ideas. In the German 
 fable the travelled stork had nothing to say about the 
 beauty of the fields and wonders of the cities over 
 which it passed, but it could discourse at length about 
 the delicious frogs it had found in a certain ditch. 
 Exactly the same law rules up in the higher vision. 
 Men see what they themselves love and are ; the sight 
 is but a sort of projection of the soul. As St. Paul 
 says, "The natural man receiyeth not the things of 
 God;" the things which God hath prepared for them 
 that love Him are " things which eye saw not, and ear 
 heard not." And so Jesus gives sight by renewing the 
 soul ; He creates around us a new heaven and a new 
 earth, by creating a new, a clean heart within us. 
 Within every soul there are the possibilities of a 
 Paradise, but these possibilities are dormant. The 
 natural heart is a chaos of confusion and darkness, 
 until it turns towards Jesus as its Saviour and its 
 Sun, and henceforth revolves around Him in its ever- 
 narrowing circles. 
 
 3. The Gospel of Jesus was a Gospel of Liberty. 
 u He hath sent Me to proclaim release to the cap- 
 tives," " to set at liberty them that are bruised." The 
 latter clause is not in the original prophecy, but is a 
 rough adaptation of another passage in Isaiah (lviii. 6). 
 Probably it was quoted by Jesus in His address, and so 
 w r as inserted by the Evangelist with the passages read ; 
 for in the New Testament the quotations from the Old 
 are grouped together by affinities of spirit, rather than 
 by the law of textual continuity. The two passages 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE JUBILEE. 143 
 
 are one in their proclamation and promise of liberty, 
 but they by no means cover the same ground. The 
 former speaks of the liberation of captives, those whom 
 the exigencies of war or some change of fortune have 
 thrown into prison ; the latter speaks of deliverance to 
 the oppressed, those whose personal liberties may not 
 be impawned, but whose lives are made hard and bitter 
 under severe exactions, and whose spirits are broken, 
 crushed beneath a weight of accumulated ills. Speak- 
 ing generally, we should call the one an amnesty, and 
 the other an enfranchisement; for one is the offer of 
 freedom to the captive, the other of freedom to the 
 slave ; while together they form an act of emancipation 
 for humanity, enfranchising and ennobling each indivi- 
 dual son of man, and giving to him, even the poorest, 
 the freedom of God's world. 
 
 In what sense, then, is Jesus the great Emancipator ? 
 It would be easy to show that Jesus, personally, was a 
 lover of freedom. He could not brook restraints. 
 Antiquity, conventionalism, had no charms for Him. 
 Keenly in touch with the present, He did not care to 
 take the cold, clammy hand of a dead Past, or allow it to 
 prescribe His actions. Between the right and the wrong, 
 the good and the evil, He put a wall of adamant, God's 
 eternal " No ; " but within the sphere of the right, the 
 goed, He left room for largest liberties. He observed 
 forms— occasionally, at least— but formalism He could 
 not endure. And so Jesus was constantly coming into 
 collision with the Pharisaic school of thought, the 
 school of routinists, casuists, whose religion was a 
 glossary of terms, a volume of formulas and negations. 
 To the Pharisee religion was a cold, dead thing, a 
 mummy, all enswathed in the cerecloths of tradition ; 
 to Jesus it was a living soul within a living form, an 
 
144 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 angel of grace and beauty, whose wings would bear 
 her aloft to higher, heavenlier spheres, and whose feet 
 and hands fitted her just as well for the common walks 
 of life, in a beautiful, every-day ministry of blessing. 
 And how Jesus loved to give personal liberty to man — 
 to remove the restrictions disease had put around 
 their activities, and to leave them physically, mentally 
 free ! And what were His miracles of healing but pro- 
 clamations of liberty, in the lowest sense of that word ? 
 He found the human body enfeebled, enslaved ; here it 
 was an arm, there an eye, so held in the grip of disease 
 that it was as if dead. But Jesus said to Disease, 
 "Loose that half-strangled life and let it go," and in an 
 instant it was free to act and feel, finding its lesser 
 jubilee. Jesus saw the human mind led into captivity. 
 Reason was dethroned and immured in the dungeon, 
 while the feet of lawless passions were trampling over- 
 head. But when Jesus healed the demoniac, the im- 
 becile, the lunatic, what was it but a mental jubilee, 
 as He gives peace to a distracted soul, and leads 
 banished Reason back to her Jerusalem ? 
 
 But these deliverances and liberties, glorious as they 
 are, are but figures of the true, which is the en- 
 franchisement of the soul. The disciples were per- 
 plexed and sorely disappointed that Jesus should die 
 without having wrought any " redemption " for Israel. 
 This was their one dream, that the Messiah should 
 break in pieces the hated Roman yoke, and effect a 
 political deliverance. But they see Him moving 
 steadily to His goal, taking no note of their aspirations, 
 or noticing them only to rebuke them, and scarce 
 giving a passing glance to these Roman eagles, which 
 darken the sky, and cast their ominous shadows over 
 the homes and fields of Israel. But Jesus had not 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE JUBILEE. 145 
 
 come into the world to effect any local, political redemp- 
 tion ; another Moses could have done that. He had 
 come to lead captive the captivity of Sin, as Zacharias 
 had foretold, " that being delivered out of the hand of 
 our (spiritual) en. ,nies, we might serve Him without 
 fear, in holiness and righteousness all the days of our 
 life." The sphere of His mission was where His 
 kingdom should be, in the great interior of the heart. 
 A Prophet like unto Moses, but infinitely greater 
 than he, He too leaves the palace, of the Eternal, lay- 
 ing aside, r*ot the robes of a prospective 1:03 "an., , u ut 
 the glories He possessed with the Father; He too 
 assumes the dress, the speech, nay, the very nature, 
 of the race He has come to redeem. And when no 
 other ransom was sufficient He "offered Himself with- 
 out spot to God," " our Passover, sacrified for uc," so 
 sprinkling the doorway of the new Exodus with His 
 own blood. But here we «.*and on the f hreshoH of 
 a great mystery ; for if angels bend over the mercy- 
 seat, desiring, but in vain, to read the secret of redemp- 
 tion, how can our finite minds grasp the great thought 
 and purpose of God ? We do know this, however, for 
 it is the oft-repeated truth of Scripture, that the life, 
 or, as St. Peter puts it, " the precious blood of Christ," 
 was, in a certain sense, our ransom, the price of our 
 redemption. We say "in a certain sense," for the 
 figure breaks down if we press it unduly, as if Heaven 
 had held a parley with the power that had enslaved 
 man, and, at a stipulated price, had bought him off. 
 That certainly was no part of the Divine purpose and 
 fact of redemption. But an atonement was needed in 
 order to make salvation possible ; for how could God, 
 infinitely holy and just, remit the penalty due to sin 
 with no expression of His abhorrence of sin, without 
 
 10 
 
146 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 destroying the dignity of law, and reducing justice to 
 a mere name ? But the obedience and death of Christ 
 were a satisfaction of infinite worth. They upheld the 
 majesty of law, and at the same time made way for the 
 interventions of Divine Love. The cross of Jesus 
 was thus the place where Mercy and Truth met to- 
 gether, and Righteousness and Peace kissed each 
 other. It was at once the visible expression of God's 
 deep hatred of sin, and of His deep love to the sinner. 
 And so, not virtually simply, in some far-off sense, but 
 in truest reality, Jesus "died for our sins," Himself 
 tasting death that we might have life, even the life" 
 "more abundant," the life everlasting; suffering Him- 
 self to be led captive by the powers of sin, bound to 
 the cross and imprisoned in a grave, that men might 
 be free in all the glorious liberty of the children of 
 God. 
 
 But this deliverance from sin, the pardon for past 
 offences, is but one part of the salvation Jesus provides 
 and proclaims. Heaven's angel may light up the 
 dungeon of the imprisoned soul ; he may strike off its 
 fetters, and lead it forth into light and liberty ; but if 
 Satan can reverse all this, and fling back the soul into 
 captivity, what is that but a partial, intermittent salva- 
 tion, so unlike Him whose name is Wonderful ? The 
 angel said, " He shall save His people," not from the 
 effects of their sir, from its guilt and condemnation 
 alone, but " from their sins." That is, He shall give 
 to the pardoned soul power over sin ; it shall no longer 
 have dominion over him ; captivity itself shall be led 
 captive ; for 
 
 «' His grace, Kis love, Kis care 
 Are wider than our utmost need, 
 And higher than our prayer." 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE JUBILEE. 147 
 
 Yes, verily ; and the life that is hid with Christ in 
 God, that, with no side-glances at self, is set apart 
 utterly to do the Divine will, that abandons itself to 
 the perfect keeping of the perfect Saviour, will find on 
 earth the " acceptable year of the Lord," its years, 
 henceforth, years of liberty and victory, a prolonged 
 Jubilee. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 A SABBATH IN GALILEE, 
 
 WE should naturally expect that our physician- 
 Evangelist would have a peculiar interest in 
 Christ's connection with human suffering and disease, 
 and in this we are not mistaken. 
 
 It is almost a superfluous task to consider what our 
 Gospels would have been had there been no miracles 
 of healing to record ; but we may safely say that such 
 a blank would be inexplicable, if not impossible. Even 
 had prophecy been utterly silent on the subject, should 
 we not lovk for the Christ to signaiize His advent and 
 reign upon earth by manifestations of His Divine 
 power ? A Man amongst men, human yet superhuman, 
 how can He manifesc the Divinity that is within, except 
 by the flashings forth of His supernatural power? 
 Speech, however eloquent, however true, could not do 
 this. There must be a background of deeds, visible 
 credentials of authority and power, or else the words 
 are weak and vain — but the play of a borealis in the 
 sky, beautiful and bright indeed, but distant, inopera- 
 tive, and cold. If the prophets of old, who were but 
 acolytes swinging their lamps and singing their songs 
 before the coming Christ, were allowed to attest their 
 commission by occasional enduements of miraculous 
 power, must not the Christ Himself prove His super- 
 
A SABBATH IN GALILEE. 149 
 
 humanity by fuller measures and exhibitions of the 
 same power ? And where can He manifest this so 
 well as in connection with the world's suffering, need, 
 and pain? Here is a background prepared, and all 
 dark enough in sooth ; where can He write so well 
 that men may read His messages of good-will, love, and 
 peace? Where can He put His sign manual, His 
 Divine autograph, better than on this firmament of 
 human sorrow, disease, and woe? And so the miracles 
 of healing fall naturally into the story ; they are the 
 natural and necessary accompaniments of the Divine 
 life upon earth. 
 
 The first miracle that Jesus wrought was in the 
 home at Cana ; His first miracle of healing was in the 
 synagogue. He thus placed Himself in the two pivotal 
 centres of our earthly life; for that life, with its 
 heavenward and earthward aspects, revolves about the 
 synagogue and the home. He touches our human life 
 alike on its temporal and its spiritual side. To a 
 nature like that of Jesus, which had an intense love 
 for what was real and true, and as intense a scorn for 
 what was superficial and unreal, it would seem as if 
 a Hebrew synagogue would offer but few attractions. 
 True, it served as the visible symbol of religion ; it was 
 the shrine where the Law and the Prophets spoke ; 
 what spiritual life there was circled and eddied around 
 its door; while its walls, pointing to Jerusalem, kept 
 the scattered populations in touch with the Temple, 
 that marbled dream of Hebraism ; but in saying this 
 we say nearly all. The tides of worldliness and 
 formality, which, sweeping through the Temple gates, 
 had left a scum of mire even upon the sacred courts, 
 chilling devotion and almost extinguishing faith, had 
 swept over the threshold of the synagogue. There the 
 
150 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 scribes had usurped Moses' seat, exalting Tradition 
 as a sort of essence of Scripture, and deadening the 
 majestic voices of the law in the jargon of their vain 
 repetitions. But Jesus does not absent Himself from 
 the service of the synagogue because the fires upon its 
 altars are dulled and quenched by the down-draught of 
 the times. To Him it is the house of God, and if 
 others see it not, He sees a ladder of light, with as- 
 cending and descending angels. If others hear but the 
 voices of man, all broken and confused, He hears the 
 Diviner voice, still and small; He hears the music 
 of the heavenly host, throwing down their Glorias upon 
 earth. The pure in heart can find and see God any- 
 where. He who worships truly carries his Holy of 
 holies within him. He who takes his own fire need 
 never complain of the cold, and with wood and fire all 
 prepared, he can find or he can build an altar upon 
 any mount. Happy is the soul that has learned to 
 lean upon God, who can say, amid all the distractions 
 and interventions of man, " My soul, wait thou only 
 upon God." To such a one, whose soul is athirst for 
 God, the Valley of Baca becomes a well, while the hot 
 rock pours out its streams of blessing. The art of 
 worship avails nothing if the heart of worship is gone ; 
 but if that remain, subtle attractions will ever draw it 
 to the place where " His name is recorded, and where 
 His honour dwelleth." 
 
 In his earlier chapters St. Luke is careful to light 
 his Sabbath lamp, telling that such and such miracles 
 were wrought on that day, because the Sabbath ques- 
 tion was one on which Jesus soon came into collision 
 with the Pharisees. By their traditions, and the withs 
 of dry and sharp legalities, they had strangled the 
 Sabbath, until life was well-nigh extinct. They had 
 
A SABBATH IN GALILEE. 151 
 
 made rigorous and exacting what God had made 
 bright and restful, fencing it around with negations, 
 and burdening it with penalties. Jesus broke the withs 
 that bound her, let the freer air play upon her face, 
 and then led her back to the sweet liberties of her 
 earlier years. How He does it the sequel will show. 
 
 The Sabbath morning finds Jesus repairing to the 
 synagogue at Capernaum, a sanctuary built by a 
 Gentile centurion, and presided over by Jairus, both of 
 whom are yet to be brought into close personal rela- 
 tionship with Christ. From the silence of the narrative 
 we should infer that the courtesy offered at Nazareth 
 was not repeated at Capernaum — that of being invited 
 to read the lesson from the Book of the Prophets. But 
 whether so or not, He was allowed to address the con- 
 gregation, a privilege which was often accorded to any 
 eminent stranger who might be present. Of the subject 
 of the discourse we know nothing. Possibly it was 
 suggested by some passing scene or incident, as the 
 sculptured pot of manna, in this same synagogue, called 
 forth the remarkable address about the earthly and the 
 heavenly bread (John vi. 31). But if the substance of 
 the discourse is lost to us, its effect is not. It awoke 
 the same feeling of surprise at Capernaum as it had 
 done before among the more rustic minds of Nazareth. 
 There, however, it was the graciousness of His words, 
 their mingled " sweetness and light," which so caused 
 them to wonder ; here at Capernaum it was the "au- 
 thority " with which He spoke that so astonished them, 
 so different from the speech of the scribes, which, for the 
 most part, was but an iteration of quibbles and triviali- 
 ties, with just as much of originality as the " old clo' " 
 cries of our modern streets. The speech of Jesus came 
 as a breath from the upper air ; it was the intense 
 
152 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 language of One who possessed the truth, and who 
 was Himself possessed by the truth. He dealt in 
 principles, not platitudes ; in eternal facts, and not in the 
 fancies of gossamer that tradition so delighted to spin. 
 Others might speak with the hesitancy of doubt ; Jesus 
 spoke in " verilys " and verities, the very essences of 
 truth. And so His word fell upon the ears of men with 
 the tones of an oracle ; they felt themselves addressed 
 by the unseen Deity who was behind ; they had not 
 learned, as we have, that the Deity of their oracle was 
 within. No wonder that they are astonished at His 
 authority — an authority so perfectly free from any 
 assumptions ; they will wonder still more when they 
 find that demons, too, recognize this authority, and 
 obey it. 
 
 While Jesus was still speaking — the tense of the 
 verb implies an unfinished discourse — suddenly He was 
 interrupted by a loud, wild shout : "Ah, what have we 
 to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth ? Art Thou 
 come to destroy us ? I know Thee, who Thou art, the 
 Holy One of God." It was the cry of a man who, as 
 our Evangelist expresses it, " had a spirit of an unclean 
 devil." The phrase is a singular one, in fact unique, 
 and savours a little of tautology ; for St. Luke uses 
 the words " spirit " and " devil " as synonyms (ix. 39). 
 Later in his Gospel he would simply have said "he 
 had an unclean devil ; " why, then, does he here amplify 
 the phrase, and say he had "a spirit of an unclean 
 devil " ? We can, of course, only conjecture, but might 
 it not be because to the Gentile mind — to which he is 
 writing — the powers of evil were represented as per- 
 sonifications, having a corporeal existence ? And so 
 in his first reference to demoniacal possession he pauses 
 to explain that these demons are evil " spirits," with 
 
A SABBATH IN GALILEE, 153 
 
 existences altogether separate from the diseased hu- 
 manity which temporarily they were allowed to inhabit 
 and to rule. Neither can we determine with certainty 
 the meaning of the phrase " an unclean devil/' though 
 probably it was so called because it drove its victim to 
 haunt unclean places, like the Gadarene, who had his 
 dwelling among the tombs. 
 
 The whole subject of demonology has been called in 
 question by certain modern critics. They aver that it 
 is simply an after-growth of Paganism, the seeds of 
 worn-out mythologies which had been blown over into 
 the Christian mind ; and eliminating from them all that 
 is supernatural, they reduce the so-called "posses- 
 sions " to the natural effects of purely natural causes, 
 physical and mental. It is confessedly a subject diffi- 
 cult as it is mysterious ; but we are not inclined, at 
 the bidding of rationalistic clamour, so to strike out 
 the supernatural. Indeed, we cannot, without impaling 
 ourselves upon this dilemma, that Jesus, knowingly or 
 unknowingly, taught as the truth what was not true. 
 That Jesus lent the weight of His testimony to the 
 popular belief is evident ; never once, in all His allu- 
 sions, does He call it in question, nor hint that He is 
 speaking now only in an accommodated sense, borrowing 
 the accents of current speech. To Him the existence 
 and presence of evil spirits was just as patent and as 
 solemn a fact as was the existence of the arch-spirit, 
 even Satan himself. And granting the existence of 
 evil spirits, who will show us the line of limitation, the 
 " Hitherto, but no farther," where their influence is 
 stayed? Have we not seen, in mesmerism, cases of 
 real possession, where the weaker human will has been 
 completely overpowered by the stronger will ? when 
 the subject was no longer himself, but his thoughts, 
 
154 THE CQSFEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 words, and acts were those of another ? And are there 
 not, in the experiences of all medical men, and of 
 ministers of religion, cases of depravity so utterly foul 
 and loathsome that they cannot be explained except 
 by the Jewish taunt, " I'le hath a devil " ? According 
 to the teaching of Scripture, the evil spirit possessed 
 the man in the entirety of his being, commanding his 
 own spirit, ruling both body and mind. Now it touched 
 the tongue with a certain glibness of speech, becoming 
 a " spirit of divination," and now it touched it with 
 dumbness, putting upon the life the spell of an awful 
 silence. Not that the obscurity of the eclipse was 
 always the same. There were more lucid moments, 
 the penumbras of brightness, when, for a brief interval, 
 the consciousness seemed to awake, and the human 
 will seemed struggling to assert itself; as is seen in the 
 occasional dualism of its speech, when the " I " emerges 
 from the " we," only, however, to be drawn back again, 
 to have its identity swallowed up as before. 
 
 Such is the character who, leaving the graves of the 
 dead for the abodes of the living, now breaks through 
 the ceremonial ban, and enters the synagogue. Rush- 
 ing wildly within — for we can scarcely suppose him 
 to be a quiet worshipper ; the rules of the synagogue 
 would not have allowed that — and approaching Jesus, 
 he abruptly breaks in upon the discourse of Jesus with 
 his cry of mingled fear and passion. Of the cry itself 
 we need not speak, except to notice its question and 
 its confession. " Art Thou come to destroy us ? " he 
 asks, as if, somehow, the secret of the Redeemer's 
 mission had been told to these powers of darkness. 
 Did they know that He had come to u destroy " the 
 works of the devil, and ultimately to destroy, with an 
 everlasting destruction, him who had the power of 
 
A SABBATH IN GALILEE. 155 
 
 death, that is, the devil ? Possibly they did, for, citizens 
 of two worlds, the visible and the invisible, should not 
 their horizon be wider than our own ? At any rate, 
 their knowledge, in some points, was in advance of the 
 nascent faith of the disciples. They knew and con- 
 fessed the Divinity of Christ's mission, and the Divinity 
 of His Person, crying, " I know Thee, who Thou art, 
 the Holy One of God; " " Thou art the Son of God " 
 (iv. 41), when as yet the faith of the disciples was only 
 a nebula of mist, made up in part of unreal hopes and 
 random guesses. Indeed, we seldom find the demons 
 yielding to the power of Christ, or to the delegated 
 power of His disciples, but they make their confession 
 of superior knowledge as if they possessed a more 
 intimate acquaintance with Christ. " Jesus I know, 
 and Paul I know," said the demon, which the sons of 
 Sceva could not exorcise (Acts xix. 15), while now the 
 demon of Capernaum boasts, " I know Thee, who Thou 
 art, the Holy One of God." Nor was it a vain boast 
 either, for our Evangelist asserts that Jesus did not 
 suffer the demons to speak, " because they knew that 
 He was the Christ" (ver. 41). They knew Jesus, but 
 they feared and hated Him. In a certain sense they 
 believed, but their belief only caused them to tremble, 
 while it left them demons still. Just so is it now : — 
 
 "There are, too, who believe in hell and lie ; 
 There are who waste their souls in working out 
 Life's problem, on these sands betwixt two tides, 
 And end, 'Nov/ give us the beasts' part, in death.'" 
 
 Saving faith is thus more than a bare assent of the 
 mind, more than some cold belief, or vain repetition 
 of a creed. A creed may be complete and beautiful, 
 but it is not the Christ; it is only the vesture the 
 Christ wears ; and alas, there are many still who will 
 
*56 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 chaffer about, and cast lots for, a creed, who will go 
 directly and crucify the Christ Himself! The faith 
 that saves, besides the assent of the mind, must have 
 the consent of the will and the surrender of the life. 
 It is " with the heart," and not only with the mind, 
 man " believe th unto righteousness." 
 
 The interruption brought the discourse of Jesus to 
 an abrupt end, but it served to point the discourse 
 with further exclamations of surprise, while it offered 
 space for a new manifestation of Divine authority and 
 power. It did not in the least disconcert the Master, 
 though it had doubtless sent a thrill of excitement 
 through the whole congregation. He did not even rise 
 from His seat (ver. 38), but retaining the teaching pos- 
 ture, and not deigning a reply to the questions of the 
 demon, He rebuked the evil spirit, saying, " Hold thy 
 peace, and come out of him," thus recognizing the dual 
 will, and distinguishing between the possessor and the 
 possessed. The command was obeyed instantly and 
 utterly ; though, as if to make one last supreme effort, 
 he throws his victim down upon the floor of the syna- 
 gogue, like Samson Agonistes, pulling to the ground 
 the temple of his imprisonment. It was, however, a 
 vain attempt, for he did him "no hurt." The roaring 
 lion had indeed been u muzzled " — which is the primi- 
 tive meaning of the verb rendered " Hold thy peace " — 
 by the omnipotent word of Jesus. 
 
 They were " astonished at His teaching " before, but 
 how much more so now ! Then it was a convincing 
 word ; now it is a commanding word. They hear the 
 voice of Jesus, sweeping like suppressed thunder over 
 the boundaries of the invisible world, and commanding 
 even devils, driving them forth, just with one rebuke, 
 from the temple of the human soul, as afterwards He 
 
A SABBATH IN GALILEE. 157 
 
 drove the traders from His Father's house with His 
 whip of small cords. No wonder that "amazement 
 came upon all," or that they asked, "What is this 
 word ? for with authority and power He commandeth 
 the unclean spirits, and they come out." 
 
 And so Jesus began His miracles of healing at the 
 outmost marge of human misery. With the finger of 
 His love, with the touch of His omnipotence, He swept 
 the uttermost circle of our human need, writing on 
 that far and low horizon His wonderful name, " Mighty 
 to Save." And since none are outcasts from His mercy 
 save those who outcast themselves, why should we 
 limit "the Holy One of Israel"? why should we 
 despair of any? Life and hope should be coeval. 
 
 Immediately on retiring from the synagogue, Jesus 
 passes out of Capernaum, and along the shore to Beth- 
 saida, and enters, together with James and John, the 
 house of Peter and Andrew (John i. 44). It is a 
 singular coincidence that the Apostle Peter, with whose 
 name the Romish Church takes such liberties, and 
 who is himself the " Rock " on which they rear their 
 huge fabric of priestly assumptions, should be the only 
 Apostle of whose married life we read ; for though John 
 afterwards possesses a " home," its only inmate besides, 
 as far as the records show, is the new " mother " he 
 leads away from the cross. It is true we have not the 
 name of Peter's wife, but we find her shadow, as well 
 as that of her husband, thrown across the pages of the 
 New Testament; cleaving to her mother even while 
 she follows another; ministering to Jesus, and for a 
 time finding Him a home; while later we see her 
 sharing the privations and the perils of her husband's 
 wandering life (1 Cor. ix. 5). Verily, Rome has drifted 
 far from the " Roc'x " of her anchorage, the example of 
 
158 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 her patron saint ; and between the Vatican of the 
 modern Pontiff and the sweet domesticities of Eef.h- 
 saida is a gulf of divergence which only a powerful 
 imagination can cross. 
 
 No sooner, however, has Jesus entered the house 
 than He is told how Peter's mother-in-law has been 
 suddenly stricken down by a violent fever, probably a 
 local fever for which that lake-shore was notorious, and 
 which was bred from the malaria of the marsh. Our 
 physician-Evangelist does not stay to diagnose the 
 malady, but he speaks of it as "a great fever," thus 
 giving us an idea of its virulence and consequent 
 danger. "And they besought Him for her;" not that 
 He was at all reluctant to grant their request, for the 
 tense of the verb implies that once asking was suffi- 
 cient; but evidently there was the " beseeching" look 
 and tone of a mingled love and fear. Jesus responds 
 instantly ; for can He come fresh from the healing of 
 a stranger, to allow a dread shadow to darken the 
 home and the hearts of His own ? Seeking the sick 
 chamber, He bends over the fever-stricken one, and 
 taking her hand in His (Mark i. 31), He speaks some 
 word of command, u rebuking the fever," as St. Luke 
 expresses it. In a moment the fatal fire is quenched, 
 the throbbing heart regains its normal beat, a delicious 
 coolness takes the place of the burning heat, while 
 the fever-flush steals away to make place for the bloom 
 of health. The cure was perfect and instant. The 
 lost strength returned, and " immediately she arose 
 and ministered unto them," preparing, doubtless, the 
 evening meal. 
 
 May we not throw the light of this narrative upon 
 one of the questions of the day ? Men speak of the 
 reign of law, and the drift of modern scientific thought 
 
A SABBATH IN GALILEE. 159 
 
 is against any interference — even Divine — with the 
 ordinary operations of physical law. As the visible 
 universe is opened up and explored the heavens are 
 crowded back and back, until they seem nothing but 
 a golden mist, some distant dream. Nature's laws are 
 seen to be so uniform, so ruthlessly exact, that certain 
 of those who should be teachers of a higher faith are 
 suggesting the impossibility of any interference with 
 their ordinary operations. " You do but waste your 
 breath," they say, " in asking for any immunities from 
 Nature's penalties, or for any deviation from her fixed 
 rules. They are invariable, inviolate. Be content 
 rather to be conformed, mentally and morally, to God's 
 will." But is prayer to have so restricted an area? 
 is the physical world to be buried so deep in "law" 
 that it shall give no rest to prayer, not even for the 
 sole of her foot ? Entire conformity to God's will is, 
 indeed, the highest aim and privilege of life, and he 
 who prays the most seeks most for this ; but has God 
 no will in the world of physics, in the realm of matter ? 
 Shall we push Him back to the narrow ledge of a 
 primal Genesis? or shall we leave Him chained to 
 that frontier coast, another Prometheus bound? It is 
 well to respect and to honour law, but Nature's laws 
 are complex, manifold. They can form combinations 
 numberless, working different or opposite results. He 
 who searches for " the springs of life " will 
 
 "Reach the law within the law ;** 
 
 and who can tell whether there is not a law of prayer 
 and faith, thrown by the Unseen Hand across all the 
 warp of created things, binding "the whole round 
 earth " about " the feet of God " ? Reason says, " It 
 might be so," and Scripture says, " It is so." Was 
 
160 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Jesus angry when they told Him of the fever-stricken, 
 and they implored His intervention ? Did He say, 
 "You mistake My mission. I must not interfere with 
 the course of the fever; it must have its range. It 
 she lives, she lives ; and if she dies, she dies ; and 
 whether the one or the other, you must be patient, 
 you must be content" ? But such were not the words 
 of Jesus, with their latent fatalism. He heard the 
 prayer, and at once granted it, not by annulling 
 Nature's laws, nor even suspending them, but by intro- 
 ducing a higher law. Even though the fever was the 
 result of natural causes, and though it probably might 
 have been prevented, had they but drained the marsh 
 or planted it with the eucalyptus, yet this does not 
 shut out all interventions of Divine mercy. The Divine 
 compassion makes some allowance for our human 
 ignorance, when it is not wilful, and for our human 
 impotence. 
 
 The fever "left her, and immediately she rose up 
 and ministered unto them." Yes, and there are fevers 
 of the spirit as well as of the flesh, when the heart 
 is quick and flurried, the brain hot with anxious 
 thought, when the fret and jar of life seem eating our 
 strength away, and our disquiet spirit finds its rest 
 broken by the pressure of some fearful nightmare. And 
 how soon does this soul-fever strike us down ! how 
 it unfits us for our ministry of blessing, robbing us of 
 the "heart at leisure from itself," and filling the soul 
 with sad, distressing fears, until our life seems like 
 the helpless, withered leaf, whirled and tossed hither 
 and thither by the wind ! For the fever of the body 
 there may not always be relief, but for the fever of 
 the spirit there is a possible and a perfect cure. It is 
 the touch of Jesus. A close personal contact with the 
 
A SABBATH IN GALILEE. 161 
 
 living and loving Christ will rebuke the fever of your 
 heart ; it will give to your soul a quietness and rest- 
 fulness that are Divine ; and with the touch of His 
 omnipotence upon you, and with all the elation of con- 
 scious strength, you too will arise into a nobler life, 
 a life which will find its supremest joy in ministering 
 unto others, and so ministering unto Him. 
 
 Such was the Sabbath in Galilee in which Jesus 
 began His miracles of healing. But if it saw the 
 beginning of His miracles, it did not see their end ; 
 for soon as the sun had set, and the Sabbath restraint 
 was over, "all that had any sick with divers diseases 
 brought them unto Him, and He laid His hands on 
 every one of them, and healed them." A marvellous 
 ending of a marvellous day ! Jesus throws out by 
 handfuls His largesse of blessing, health, which is the 
 highest wealth, showing that there is no end to His 
 power, as there is no limit to His love ; that His will 
 is supreme over all forces and all laws; that He is, 
 and ever will be, the perfect Saviour, binding up the 
 broken in heart, assuaging all griefs, and healing all 
 wounds 1 
 
 II 
 
CHAP'iER X. 
 THE CALLING OF THE FOUR. 
 
 WHEN Peter and his companions had the interview 
 with Jesus by the Jordan, and were summoned 
 to follow Him, it was the designation, rather than the 
 appointment, to the Apostleship. They did accompany 
 Him to Cana, and thence to Capernaum ; but here their 
 paths diverged for a time, Jesus passing on alone to 
 Nazareth, while the novitiate disciples fall back again 
 into the routine of secular life. Now, however, His 
 mission is fairly inaugurated, and He must attach them 
 permanently to His person. He must lay His hand, 
 where His thoughts have long been, upon the future, 
 making provision for the stability and permanence of 
 His work, that so the kingdom may survive and 
 flourish when the Ascension clouds have made the 
 King Himself invisible. 
 
 St. Matthew and St. Mark insert their abridged 
 narrative of the call before the healing of the demoniac 
 and the cure of Peter's mother-in-law ; and most expo- 
 sitors think that St. Luke's setting " in order," in this 
 case at least, is wrong ; that he has preferred to have a 
 chronological inaccuracy, so that His miracles may be 
 gathered into related groups. But that our Evangelist 
 is in error is by no means certain; indeed, we are 
 inclined to think that the balance of probability is on 
 the side of his arrangement. How else shall we account 
 
THE CALLING OF THE FOUR. 163 
 
 for the crowds who now press upon Jesus so importu- 
 nately and with such Galilean ardour ? It was not the 
 rumour of His Judsean miracles which had awoke this 
 tempest of excitement, for the journey to Jerusalem was 
 not yet taken. And what else could it be, if the miracu- 
 lous draught of fishes was the first of the Capernaum 
 miracles ? But suppose that we retain the order of 
 St. Luke, that the call followed closely upon that 
 memorable Sabbath, then the crowds fall into the story 
 naturally; it is the multitude which had gathered about 
 the door when the Sabbath sun had set, putting an 
 after-glow upon the hills, and on whose sick He 
 wrought His miracles of healing. Nor does the fact 
 that Jesus went to be a guest in Peter's house require 
 us to invert the order of St. Luke; for the casual 
 acquaintance by the Jordan had since ripened into 
 intimacy, so that Peter would naturally offer hospitality 
 to his Master on His coming to Capernaum. Again, too, 
 going back to the Sabbath in the synagogue, we read 
 how they were astonished at His doctrine ; " for His 
 word was with authority ; " and when that astonishment 
 was heightened into amazement, as they saw the demon 
 cowed and silenced, this was their exclamation, u What 
 a v/crd is this ! " And does not Peter refer to this, when 
 the same voice that commanded the demon now com- 
 mands them to " Let down the nets," and he answers, 
 "At Thy word I will"? It certainly seems as if the 
 " word " of the sea-shore were an echo from the 
 synagogue, and so a " word " that justifies the order of 
 our Evangelist. 
 
 It was probably still early in the morning — for the 
 days of Jesus began back at the dawn, and very often 
 before — when He sought the quiet of the sea-shore, 
 possibly to find a still hour for devotion, or perhaps to 
 
164 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 see how His friends had fared with their all-night 
 fishing. Little quiet, however, could He find, for from 
 Capernaum and Bethsaida comes a hurrying and intru- 
 sive crowd, surging around Him with the swirl and 
 roar of confused voices, and pressing inconveniently 
 near. Not that the crowd was hostile ; it was a friendly 
 but inquisitive multitude, eager, not so much to see a 
 repetition of His miracles, as to hear Him speak, in 
 those rare, sweet accents, "the word of God." The 
 expression characterizes the whole teaching of Jesus. 
 Though His words were meant for earth, for human 
 ears and for human hearts, there was no earthiiness 
 about them. On the topics in which man is most 
 exercised and garrulous, such as local or national 
 events, Jesus is strangely silent. He scarcely gives 
 them a passing thought ; for what were the events of 
 the day to Him who was " before Abraham," and who 
 saw the two eternities ? what to Him was the gossip 
 of the hour, how Rome's armies marched and fought, or 
 how " the dogs of faction " bayed ? To His mind these 
 were but as dust caught in the eddies of the wind. The 
 thoughts of Jesus were high. Like the figures of the 
 prophet's vision, they had feet indeed, so that they 
 could alight and rest awhile on earthly things — though 
 even here they only touched earth at points which 
 were common to humanity, and they were winged, too, 
 having the sweep of the lower spaces and of the highest 
 heavens. And so there was a heavenliness upon the 
 words of Jesus, and a sweetness, as if celestial har- 
 monies were imprisoned within them. They set men 
 looking upwards, and listening ; for the heavens seemed 
 nearer as He spoke, and they were no longer dumb. 
 And not only did the words of Jesus bring to men a clearer 
 revelation of God, correcting the hard views which man, 
 
THE CALLING OF THE FOUR, 165 
 
 in his fears and his sins, had formed of Him, but men 
 felt the Divineness of His speech ; that Jesus was the 
 Bearer of a new evangel, God's latest message of hope 
 and love. And He was the Bearer of such a message , 
 He was Himself that Evangel, the Word of God 
 incarnate, that men might hear of heavenly things in 
 the common accents of earthly speech. 
 
 Nor was Jesus loth to deliver His message; He 
 needed no constraining to speak of the things pertaining 
 to the kingdom of God. Only let Him see the listening 
 heart, the void of a sincere longing, and His speech 
 distilled as the dew. And so no time was to Him 
 inopportune; the break of day, the noon, the night 
 were all alike to Him. No place was out of harmony 
 with His message — the Temple-court, the synagogue, 
 the domestic hearth, the mountain, the lake-shore ; He 
 consecrated all alike with the music of His speech. 
 Nay, even upon the cross, amid its agonies, He opens 
 His lips once more, though parched with terrible thirst, 
 to speak peace within a penitent soul, and to open for it 
 the gate of Paradise. 
 
 Drawn up on the shore, close by the water's edge, 
 are two boats, empty now, for Simon and his partners 
 are busy washing their nets, after their night of fruitless 
 toil. Seeking for freer space than the pushing crowd 
 will allow Him, and also wanting a point of vantage, 
 where His voice will command a wider range of 
 listeners, Jesus gets into Simon's boat, and requests 
 him to put out a little from the land. " And He sat 
 down, and taught the multitudes out of the boat," 
 assuming the posture of the teacher, even though the 
 occasion partook so largely of the impromptu character. 
 When He dispensed the material bread He made the 
 multitudes " sit down ; " but when He dispensed the 
 
166 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 living bread, the heavenly manna, He left the multitudes 
 standing, while He Himself sat down, so claiming the 
 authority of a Master, as His posture emphasized His 
 words. It is somewhat singular that when our Evan- 
 gelist has been so careful and minute in his description 
 of the scene, giving us a sort of photograph of that lake- 
 side group, with bits of artistic colouring thrown in, 
 that then he should omit entirely the subject-matter of 
 the discourse. But so he does, and we try in vain to 
 fill up the blank. Did He, as at Nazareth, turn the 
 lamps of prophecy full upon Himself, and tell them 
 how the " great Light " had at last risen upon Galilee 
 of the nations ? or did He let His speech reflect the 
 shimmer of the lake, as He told in parable how the 
 kingdom of heaven was " like unto a net that was cast 
 into the sea, and gathered of every kind " ? Possibly 
 He did, but His words, whatever they were, " like the 
 pipes of Pan, died with the ears and hearts of those 
 who heard them." 
 
 " When He had left speaking," having dismissed the 
 multitude with His benediction, He turns to give to His 
 future disciples, Peter and Andrew, a private lesson. 
 "Put out into the deep," He said, including Andrew 
 now in His plural imperative, "and let down your nets 
 for a draught." It was a commanding voice, altogether 
 different in its tone from the last words He addressed 
 to Peter, when He "requested " him to put out a little 
 from the land. Then He spoke as the Friend, possibly 
 the Guest, with a certain amount of deference ; now He 
 steps up to a very throne of power, a throne which in 
 Peter's life He never more abdicates. Simon recognizes 
 the altered conditions, that a Higher Will is now in the 
 boat, where hitherto his own will has been supreme ; 
 and saluting Him as " Master," he says, " We toiled all 
 
THE CALLING OF THE FOUR. 167 
 
 night, and took nothing ; but at Thy word I will let 
 down the nets." He does not demur; he does not 
 hesitate one moment. Though himself weary with his 
 night-long labours, and though the command of the 
 Master went directly against his nautical experiences, 
 he sinks his thoughts and his doubts in the word of 
 his Lord. It is true he speaks of the failure of the 
 night, how they have taken nothing; but instead of 
 making that a plea for hesitancy and doubt, it is the 
 foil to make his unquestioning faith stand out in bolder 
 relief. Peter was the man of impulse, the man of 
 action, with a swift-beating heart and an ever-ready 
 hand. To his forward-stepping mind decision was 
 easy and immediate ; and so, almost before the com- 
 mand was completed, his swift lips had made answer, 
 M I will let down the nets." It was the language of a 
 prompt and full obedience. It showed that Simon's 
 nature was responsive and genuine, that when a 
 Christly word struck upon his soul it set his whole 
 being vibrating, and drove out all meaner thoughts. 
 He had learned to obey, which was the first lesson of 
 discipleship ; and having learned to obey, he was there- 
 fore fit to rule, qualified for leadership, and worthy of 
 being entrusted with the keys of the kingdom. 
 
 And how much is missed in life through feebleness 
 of resolve, a lack of decision ! How many are the 
 invertebrate souls, lacking in will and void of purpose, 
 who, instead of piercing waves and conquering the 
 flow of adverse tides, like the medusae, can only drift, 
 all limp and languid, in the current of circumstance ! 
 Such men do not make apostles ; they are but ciphers 
 of flesh and blood, of no value by themselves, and only 
 of any worth as they are attached to the unit of some 
 stronger will. A poor broken thing is a life spent 
 
168 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 in the subjunctive mood, among the "mights" and 
 " shoulds," where the " I will " waits upon " I would " ! 
 That is the truest, worthiest life that is divided be- 
 tween the indicative and the imperative. As in shak- 
 ing pebbles the smaller ones drop down to the bottom, 
 their place determined by their size, so in the shaking 
 together of human lives, in the rub and jostle of the 
 world, the strong wills invariably come to the top. 
 
 And how much do even Christians lose, through 
 their partial or their slow obedience ! How we hesitate 
 and question, when our duty is simply to obey ! How 
 we cling to our own ways, modes, and wills, when the 
 Christ is commanding us forward to some higher 
 service ! How strangely we forget that in the grammar 
 of life the " Thou wiliest " should be the first person, 
 and the " I will " a far-off second 1 When the soldier 
 hears the word of command he becomes deaf to all 
 other voices, even the voice of danger, or the voice of 
 death itself; and when Christ speaks to us His word 
 should completely fill the soul, leaving no room for 
 hesitancy, no place for doubt. Said the mother to the 
 servants of Cana, " Whatsoever He saith unto you, do 
 it." That " whatsoever " is the line of duty, and the 
 line of beauty too. He who makes Christ's will his 
 will, who does implicitly " whatsoever He saith," will 
 find a Cana anywhere, where life's water turns to 
 wine, and where life's common things are exalted into 
 sacraments. He who walks up to the light will surely 
 walk in the light. 
 
 We can imagine with what alacrity Simon obeys 
 the Master's word, and how the disappointment of the 
 night and all sense of fatigue are lost in the exhilaration 
 of the new hopes. Seconded by the more quiet Andrew, 
 who catches the enthusiasm of his brother's faith, he 
 
THE CALLING OF THE FOUR. 169 
 
 pulls out into deep water, where they let down the 
 nets. Immediately they enclosed " a great multitude " 
 of fishes, a weight altogether beyond their power to 
 lift ; and as they saw the nets beginning to give way 
 with the strain, Peter "beckoned" to his partners, 
 James and John, whose boat, probably, was still drawn 
 up on the shore. Coming to their assistance, together 
 they secured the spoil, completely filling the two boats, 
 until they were in danger of sinking with the over- 
 weight. 
 
 Here, then, we find a miracle of a new order. Hitherto, 
 in the narrative of our Evangelist, Jesus has shown His 
 supernatural power only in connection with humanity, 
 driving away the ills and diseases which preyed upon 
 the human body and the human soul. And not even 
 here did Jesus make use of that power randomly, 
 making it common and cheap ; it was called forth by 
 the constraint of a great need and a great desire. 
 Now, however, there is neither the desire nor the need. 
 It was not the first time, nor was it to be the last, that 
 Peter and Andrew had spent a night in fruitless toil. 
 That was a lesson they had early to learn, and which 
 they were never allowed long to forget. They had 
 been quite content to leave their boat, as indeed they 
 had intended, on the sands, until the evening should 
 recall them to their task. But Jesus volunteers His 
 help, and works a miracle — whether of omnipotence, or 
 omniscience, or of both, it matters not, and not either 
 to relieve some present distress, or to still some pain, 
 but that He might fill the empty boats with fishes. 
 We must not, however, assess the value of the miracle 
 at the market-price of the take, for evidently Jesus 
 had some ulterior motive and design. As the leaden 
 types, lying detached and meaningless in the " case," can 
 
170 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 be arranged into words and be made to voice the very 
 highest thought, so these boats and oars, nets and fish 
 are but so many characters, the Divine " code " as we 
 may call it, spelling out, first to these fishermen, and 
 then to mankind in general, the deep thought and 
 purpose of Christ. Can we discover that meaning? 
 We think we may. 
 
 In the first place, the miracle shows us the supremacy 
 of Christ. We may almost read the Divineness of 
 Christ's mission in the manner of its manifestation. 
 Had Jesus been man only, His thoughts running on 
 human lines, and His plans built after human models, 
 He would have arranged for another Epiphany at the 
 beginning of His ministry, showing His credentials at 
 the first, and announcing in full the purpose of His 
 mission. That would have been the way of man, fond 
 as he is of surprises and sudden transitions ; but such 
 is not the way of God. The forces of heaven do not 
 move forward in leaps and somersaults ; their ad- 
 vances are gradual and rhythmic. Evolution, and not 
 revolution, is the Divine law, in the realm of matter 
 and of mind alike. The dawn must precede the day. 
 And just so the life of the Divine Son is manifested. 
 He who is the " Light of the world " comes into that 
 world softly as a sunrise, lighting up little by little 
 the horizon of His disciples' thought, lest a revelation 
 which was too full and too sudden should only dazzle 
 and blind them. So far they have seen Him exercise 
 His power over diseases and demons, or, as at Cana, 
 over inorganic matter ; now they see that power moving 
 cut in new directions. Jesus sets up His throne to 
 face the sea, the sea with which they were so familiar, 
 and over which they claimed some sort of lordship. 
 But even here, upon their own element, Jesus is su- 
 
THE CALLING OF THE FOUR. 171 
 
 preme. He sees what they do not ; He knows these 
 deeps, filling up with His omniscience the blanks they 
 seek to fill with their random guesses. Here, hitherto, 
 their wills have been all-powerful ; they could take 
 their boats and cast their nets just when and where 
 they would ; but now they feel the touch of a Higher 
 Will, and Christ's word fills their hearts, impelling them 
 onward, even as their boats were driven of the wind. 
 Jesus now assumes the command. His Will, like a 
 magnet, attracts to itself and controls their lesser wills; 
 and as His word now launches out the boat and casts 
 the nets, so shortly, at that same " word," will boats 
 and nets, and the sea itself, be left behind. 
 
 And did not that Divine Will move beneath tjie 
 water as well as above it, controlling the movements 
 of the shoal of fishes, as on the surface it was con- 
 trolling the thoughts and moving the hands of the 
 fishermen ? It is true that in Gennesaret, as in our 
 modern seas, the fish sometimes moved in such dense 
 shoals that an enormous u take " would be an event 
 purely natural, a wonder indeed, but no miracle. 
 Possibly it was so here, in which case the narrative 
 would resolve itself into a miracle of omniscience, as 
 Jesus saw, what even the trained eyes of the fishermen 
 had not seen, the movements of the shoal, then regulating 
 His commands, so making the oars above and the fins 
 below strike the water in unison. But was this all ? 
 Evidently not, to Peters mind, at any rate. Had it 
 been all to him, a purely natural phenomenon, or had 
 he seen in it only the prescience of Christ, a vision 
 somewhat clearer and farther than his own, it would 
 not have created such feelings of surprise and awe. 
 He might still have wondered, but he scarcely would 
 have worshipped. But Peter feels himself in the pre- 
 
172 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 sence of a Power that knows no limit, One who has 
 supreme authority over diseases and demons, and who 
 now commands even the fishes of the sea. In this 
 sudden wealth of spoil he reads the majesty and glory 
 of the new-found Christ, whose word, spoken or 
 unspoken, is omnipotent, alike in the heights above 
 and in the depths beneath. And so the moment his 
 thoughts are disengaged from the pressing task he 
 prostrates himself at the feet of Jesus, crying with 
 awe-stricken speech, " Depart from me ; for I am a 
 sinful man, O Lord ! " We are not, perhaps, to inter- 
 pret this literally, for Peter's lips were apt to become 
 tremulous with the excitement of the moment, and to 
 say words which in a cooler mood he would recall, or 
 at least modify. So here, it surely was not his mean- 
 ing that " the Lord," as he now calls Jesus, should 
 leave him ; for how indeed should He depart, now that 
 they are afloat upon the deep, far from land ? But 
 such had been the revelation of the power and holiness 
 of Jesus, borne in by the miracle upon Peter's soul, 
 that he felt himself thrown back, morally and in every 
 way, to an infinite distance from Christ. His boat was 
 unworthy to carry, as the house of the centurion was 
 unworthy to receive, such infinite perfections as now he 
 saw in Jesus. It was an apocalypse indeed, revealing, 
 together with the purity and power of Christ, the 
 littleness, the nothingness of his sinful self; that, as 
 Elijah covered his face when the Lord passed by, so 
 Peter feels as if he ought to draw the veil of an infinite 
 distance around himself — the distance which would 
 ever be between him and the Lord, were not His 
 mercy and His love just as infinite as His power. 
 
 The fuller meaning of the miracle, however, becomes 
 apparent when we interpret it in the light of the call 
 
THE CALLING OF THE FOUR. 173 
 
 which immediately followed. Reading the sudden fear 
 which has come over Peter's soul, and which has 
 thrown his speech somewhat into confusion, Jesus first 
 stills the agitation of his heart by a word of assur- 
 ance and of cheer. " Fear not," He says, for " from 
 henceforth thou shalt catch men." It will be observed 
 that St. Luke puts the commission of Christ in the 
 singular number, as addressed to Peter alone, while 
 St. Matthew and St. Mark put it in the plural, as in- 
 cluding Andrew as well : " I will make you to become 
 fishers of men." The difference, however, is but im- 
 material, and possibly the reason why St. Luke intro- 
 duces the Apostle Peter with such a frequent nomina- 
 tion — for " Simon " is a familiar name in these early 
 chapters — making his call so emphatic and prominent, 
 was because in the partisan times which came but too 
 early in the Church the Gentile Christians, for whom 
 our Evangelist is writing, might think unworthily and 
 speak disparagingly of him who was the Apostle of 
 the Circumcision. Be this as it may, Simon and 
 Andrew are now summoned to, and commissioned for, 
 a higher service. That " henceforth " strikes across 
 their life like a high watershed, severing the old from 
 the new, their future from their past, and throwing all 
 the currents of their thoughts and plans into different 
 and opposite directions. They are to be "fishers of 
 men," and Jesus, who so delights in giving object- 
 lessens to His disciples, uses the miracle as a sort of 
 background, on which He may write their commission 
 in large and lasting characters; it is the Divine seal 
 upon their credentials. 
 
 Not that they understood the full purport of His 
 words at once. The phrase " fishers of men " was one 
 of those seed-thoughts which needed pondering in the 
 
174 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 heart ; it would gradually unfold itself in the after- 
 months of discipleship, ripening at last in the summer 
 heat and summer light of the Pentecost. They were 
 now to be fishers of the higher art, their quest the souls 
 of men. This must now be the one object, the supreme 
 aim of their life, a life now ennobled by a higher call. 
 Plans, journe}'s, thoughts, and words, all must bear the 
 stamp of their great commission, which is to " catch 
 men," not unto death, however, as the fish expire when 
 taken from their native element, but unto life — for such 
 is the meaning of the word. And to "take them alive" 
 is to save them ; it is to take them out of an element 
 which stifles and destroys, and to draw them, by the 
 constraints of truth and love, within the kingdom of 
 heaven, which kingdom is righteousness and life, even 
 eternal life. 
 
 But if the full meaning of the Master's words grows 
 upon them — an aftermath to be harvested in later 
 months — enough is understood to make the line of 
 present duty plain. That '•' henceforth " is clear, sharp, 
 and imperative. It leaves room neither for excuse nor 
 postponement. And so immediately, " when they had 
 brought their boats to land, they left all and followed 
 Him," to learn by following how they too might be 
 winners of souls, and in a lesser, lower sense, saviours 
 of men. 
 
 The story of St. Luke closes somewhat abruptly, 
 with no further reference to Simon's partners; and 
 having " beckoned " them into his central scene, and 
 filled their boat, then, as in a dissolving-view, the pen 
 of our Evangelist draw T s around them the haze of 
 silence, and they disappear. The other Synoptists, 
 how r ever, fill up the blank, telling how Jesus came to 
 them, probably later in the day, for they were mending 
 
THE CALLING OF THE FOUR. 175 
 
 the nets, which had been tangled and somewhat torn 
 with the weight of spoil they had just taken. Speaking 
 no word of explanation, and giving no word of promise, 
 Ke simply says, with that commanding voice of His, 
 '* Follow Me," thus putting Himself above ail associa- 
 tions and all relationships, as Leader and Lord. James 
 and John recognize the call, for which doubtless they 
 had been prepared, as being for themselves alone, and 
 instantly leaving the father, the " hired servants/' and 
 the half-mended nets, and breaking utterly with their 
 past, they follow Jesus, giving to Him, with the excep- 
 tion of one dark, hesitating hour, a life-long devotion. 
 And forsaking all, the four disciples found all. They 
 exchanged a dead self for a living Christ, earth for 
 heaven. Following the Lord fully, with no side- 
 glances at self or selfish gain — at any rate after the 
 enduement and the enlightenment of Pentecost — they 
 found in the presence and friendship of the Lord the 
 " hundredfold " in the present life. Allying themselves 
 with Christ, they too rose with the rising Sun. Ob- 
 scure fishermen, they wrote their names among the 
 immortals as the first Apostles of the new faith, bearers 
 of the " keys " of the kingdom. Following Christ, 
 they led the world ; and as the Light that rose over 
 Galilee of the nations becomes ever more intense and 
 bright, so it makes ever more intense and vivid the 
 shadows of these Galilean fishermen, as it throws them 
 across all lands and times. 
 
 And such even now is the truest and noblest life. 
 The life which is " hid with Christ " is the life that 
 shines the farthest and that tells the most. Whether 
 in the more quiet paths and scenes of discipleship or 
 in the more responsible and public duties of the apos- 
 tolate, Jesus demands of us a true, whole-souled, and 
 
176 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 life-long devotion. And, here indeed, the paradox is 
 true, for by losing life we find it, even the life more 
 abundant; for 
 
 11 Men may rise on stepping-stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things." 
 
 Nay, they may attain to the highest things, even to the 
 highest heavens. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CONCERNING PRAYER. 
 
 WHEN the Greeks called man 6 avOpoarro^, or the 
 " uplooking one," they did but crystallize in a 
 word what is a universal fact, the religious instinct of 
 humanity. Everywhere, and through all times, man 
 has felt, as by a sort of intuition, that earth was no 
 Ultima Thule, with nothing beyond but oceans of 
 vacancy and silence, but that it lay in the over-shadow 
 of other worlds, between which and their own were 
 subtle modes of correspondence. They felt themselves 
 to be in the presence of Powers other and higher than 
 human, who somehow influenced their destiny, whose 
 favour they must win, and whose displeasure they must 
 avert. And so Paganism reared her altars, almost 
 numberless, dedicating them even to the " Unknown 
 God," lest some anonymous deity should be grieved at 
 being omitted from the enumeration. The prevalence 
 of false religions in the world, the garrulous babble of 
 mythology, does but voice the religious instinct of 
 man ; it is but another Tower of Babel, by which men 
 hope to find and to scale the heavens which must be 
 somewhere overhead. 
 
 In the Old Testament, however, we find the clearer 
 revelation. What to the unaided eye of reason and of 
 nature seemed but a wave of golden mist athwart the 
 
 12 
 
178 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 sky — " a meeting of gentle lights without a name " — now 
 becomes a wide-reaching and shining realm, peopled 
 with intelligences of divers ranks and orders ; while in 
 the centre of all is the city and the throne of the Invi- 
 sible King, Jehovah, Lord of Sabaoth. In the breath 
 of the new morning the gossamer threads Polytheism 
 had been spinning through the night were swept away, 
 and on the pillars of the New Jerusalem, that celestial 
 city of which their own Salem was a far-off and broken 
 type, they read the inscription, " Hear, O Israel : the 
 Lord our God is one Lord." But while the Old Testa- 
 ment revealed the unity of the Godhead, it emphasized 
 especially His sovereignty, the glories of His holiness, 
 and the thunders of His power. He is the great 
 Creator, arranging His universe, commanding evolu- 
 tions and revolutions, and giving to each molecule of 
 matter its secret affinities and repulsions. And again 
 He is the Lawgiver, the great Judge, speaking out of 
 the cloudy pillar and the windy tempest, dividing the 
 firmaments of Right and Wrong, whose holiness hates 
 sin with an infinite hatred, and whose justice, with 
 sword of flame, pursues the wrong-doer like an unfor- 
 getting Nemesis. It is only natural, therefore, that with 
 such conceptions of God, the heavens should appear 
 distant and somewhat cold. The quiet that was upon 
 the world was the hush of awe, of fear, rather than of 
 love ; for while the goodness of God was a familiar and 
 favourite theme, and while the mercy of God, which 
 11 endureth for ever," was the refrain, oft repeated, of 
 their loftiest songs, the love of God was a height the 
 Old Dispensation had not explored, and the Father- 
 hood of God, that new world of perpetual summer, lay 
 all undiscovered, or but dimly apprehended through the 
 mist. The Divine love and the Divine Fatherhood 
 
CONCERNING PRAYER. 179 
 
 were truths which seemed to be held in reserve for the 
 New Dispensation ; and as the light needs the subtle 
 and sympathetic ether before it can reach our outlying 
 world, so the love and the Fatherhood of God are 
 borne in upon us by Him who was Himself the Divine 
 Son and the incarnation of the Divine love. 
 
 It is just here where the teaching of Jesus concerning 
 prayer begins. He does not seek to explain its philo- 
 sophy ; He does not give hints as to any observance 
 of time or place ; but leaving these questions to adjust 
 themselves, He seeks to bring heaven into closer touch 
 with earth. And how can He do this so well as by 
 revealing the Fatherhood of God ? When the electric 
 wire linked the New with the Old World the distances 
 were annihilated, the thousand leagues of sea were as 
 if they were not ; and when Jesus threw across, between 
 earth and heaven, that word " Father," the wide dis- 
 tances vanished, and even the silences became vocal. 
 In the Psalms, those loftiest utterances of devotion, 
 Religion only once ventured to call God "Father;" 
 and then, as if frightened at her own temerity, she 
 lapses into silence, and never speaks the familiar word 
 again. But how different the language of the Gospels ! 
 It is a name that Jesus is never weary of repeating, 
 striking its music upwards of seventy times, as if by 
 the frequent iteration He would lodge the heavenly 
 word deep within the world's heart. This is His first 
 lesson in the science of prayer : He drills them on the 
 Divine Fatherhood, setting them on that word, as it 
 were, to practise the scales ; for as he who has practised 
 well the scales has acquired the key to all harmonies, 
 so he who has learned well the "Father" has learned 
 the secret of heaven, the sesame that opens all its doors 
 and unlocks all its treasures. 
 
i8o THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 "When ye pray," said Jesus, replying to a disciple 
 who sought instruction in the heavenly language, " say, 
 Father," thus giving us what was His own pass-word 
 to the courts of heaven. It is as if He said, " If you 
 would pray acceptably put yourself in the right position. 
 Seek to realize, and then to claim, your true relationship. 
 Do not look upon God as a distant and cold abstraction, 
 (or as some blind force ; do not regard Him as being 
 hostile to you or as careless about you. Else your 
 prayer will be some wail of bitterness, a cry coming out 
 of the dark, and losing itself in the dark again. But 
 look upon God as your Father, your living, loving, hea- 
 venly Father; and then step up with a holy boldness into 
 the child-place, and all heaven opens before you there." 
 And not only does Jesus thus u show us the Father," 
 , but He takes pains to show us that it is a real, and not 
 / some fictitious Fatherhood. He tells us that the word 
 1 means far more in its heavenly than in its earthly use ; 
 that the earthly meaning, in fact, is but a shadow of the 
 heavenly. For "if ye then," He says, " being evil, 
 know how to give good gifts unto your children : how 
 much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy 
 Spirit to them that ask Him?" He thus sets us a 
 problem in Divine proportion. He gives us the human 
 fatherhood, with all it implies, as our known quantities, 
 and from these He leaves us to work out the unknown 
 quantity, which is the Divine ability and willingness 
 to give good gifts to men ; for the Holy Spirit includes 
 in Himself all spiritual gifts. It is a problem, however, 
 which our earthly figures cannot solve. The nearest 
 that we can approach to the answer is that the Divine 
 Fatherhood is the human fatherhood multiplied by that 
 " how much more " — a factor which gives us an infinite 
 series. 
 
CONCERNING PRAYER. 181 
 
 Again, Jesus teaches that character is an important 
 condition of prayer, and that in this realm heart is 
 more than any art. Words alone do not constitute 
 prayer, for they may be only like the bubbles of the 
 children's play, iridescent but hollow, never climbing 
 the sky, but returning to the earth whence they came. 
 And so when the scribes and Pharisees make "long 
 prayers," striking devotional attitudes, and putting on 
 airs of sanctity, Jesus could not endure them. They 
 were a weariness and abomination to Him ; for He 
 read their secret heart, and found it vain and proud. 
 In His parable (xviii. n) He puts the genuine and the 
 counterfeit prayer side by side, drawing the sharp 
 contrast between them. He gives us that of the Pha- 
 risee, wordy, inflated, full of the self-eulogizing " I." 
 It is the prayerless prayer, that had no need, and 
 which was simply an incense burned before the clayey 
 image of himself. Then He gives us the few brief 
 words of the publican, the cry of a broken heart, " God 
 be merciful to me, a sinner," a prayer which reached 
 directly the highest heaven, and which came back 
 freighted with the peace of God. " If I regard iniquity 
 in my heart," the Psalmist said, "the Lord will not 
 hear me." And it is true. If there be the least un- 
 forgiven sin within the soul we spread forth our hands, 
 we make many prayers, in vain ; we do but utter u wild, 
 delirious cries " that Heaven will not hear, or at any 
 rate regard. The first cry of true prayer is the cry for 
 mercy, pardon ; and until this is spoken, until we step 
 up by faith into the child-position, we do but offer vain 
 oblations. Nay, even in the regenerate heart, if there 
 be a temporary lapse, and unholy tempers brood within, 
 the lips of prayer become paralyzed at once, or they 
 only stammer in incoherent speech. We may with 
 
182 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 filled hands compass the altar of God, but neither gifts 
 nor prayers can be accepted if there be bitterness and 
 jealousy within, or if our "brother has aught against" 
 us. The wrong must be righted with our brother, or 
 we cannot be right with God. How can we ask for 
 forgiveness if we ourselves cannot forgive ? How can 
 we ask for mercy if we are hard and merciless, grip- 
 ping the throat of each offender, as we demand the 
 uttermost farthing ? He who can pray for them who 
 despitefully use him is in the way of the Divine com- 
 mandment ; he has climbed to the dome of the temple, 
 where the whispers of prayer, and even its inarticulate 
 aspirations, are heard in heaven. And so the connec- 
 tion is most close and constant between praying and 
 living, and they pray most and best who at the same 
 time " make their life a prayer." 
 
 Again, Jesus maps out for us the realm of prayer, 
 showing the wide areas it should cover. St. Luke 
 gives us an abbreviated form of the prayer recorded 
 by St. Matthew, and which we call the " Lord's Prayer." 
 It is a disputed point, though not a material one, 
 whether the two prayers are but varied renderings of 
 one and the same utterance, or whether Jesus gave, 
 on a later occasion, an epitomized form of the prayer 
 He had prescribed before, though from the circum- 
 stantial evidence of St. Luke we incline to the latter 
 view. The two forms, however, are identical in sub- 
 stance. It is scarcely likely that Jesus intended it to 
 be a rigid formula, to which we should be slavishly 
 bound ; for the varied renderings of the two Evangelists 
 show plainly that Heaven does not lay stress upon 
 the ipsissima verba. We must take it rather as a 
 Divine model, laying down the lines on which our 
 prayers should move. It is, in fact, a sort of prayer- 
 
CONCERNING PRAYER. 183 
 
 microcosm, giving a miniature reflection of the whole 
 world of prayer, as a drop of dew will give a reflection 
 of the encircling sky. It gives us what we may call 
 the species of prayer, whose genera branch off into 
 infinite varieties ; nor can we readily conceive of any 
 petition, however particular or private, whose root-stem 
 is not found in the few but comprehensive words of 
 the Lord's Prayer. It covers every want of man, just 
 as it befits every place and time. 
 
 Running through the prayer are two marked divi- 
 sions, the one general, the other particular and 
 personal; and in the Divine order, contrary to our 
 Viman wont, the general stands first, and the personal 
 second. Our prayers often move in narrow circles, 
 like the homing birds coming back to this " centred 
 self" of ours, and sometimes we forget to give them 
 the wider sweeps over a redeemed humanity. But 
 Jesus says, "When ye pray, say, Father, hallowed be 
 Thy name. Thy kingdom come." It is a temporary 
 erasure of self, as the soul of the worshipper is absorbed 
 in God. In its nearness to the throne it forgets for 
 awhile its own little needs; its low-flying thoughts 
 are caught up into the higher currents of the Divine 
 thought and purpose, moving outwards with them. 
 And this is the first petition, that the name of God- 
 may be hallowed throughout the world; that is, that 
 men's conceptions of the Deity may become just and 
 holy, until earth gives back in echo the Trisagion of the 
 seraphim. The second petition is a continuation of 
 the first ; for just in proportion as men's conceptions 
 of God are corrected and hallowed will the kingdom 
 of God be set up on earth. The first petition, like th^fc 
 of the Psalmist, is for the sending out of " Thy light 
 and Thy truth ; " the second is that humanity may 
 
1 84 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 be led to the " holy hill," praising God upon the harp, 
 and finding in God their " exceeding joy." To find 
 God as the Father-King is to step up within the 
 kingdom. 
 
 The prayer now descends into the lower plane of 
 personal wants, covering (i) our physical, and (2) our 
 spiritual needs. The former are met with one petition, 
 " Give us day by day our daily bread," a sentence 
 confessedly obscure, and which has given rise to much 
 dispute. Some interpret it in a spiritual sense alone, 
 since, as they say, any other interpretation would 
 break in upon the uniformity of the prayer, whose 
 other terms are all spiritual. But if, as we have sug- 
 gested, the whole prayer must be regarded as an 
 epitome of prayer in general, then it must include some- 
 where our physical needs, or a large and important 
 domain of our life is left uncovered. As to the meaning 
 of the singular adjective liviovaiov we need not say 
 much. That it can scarcely mean " to-morrow's " 
 bread is evident from the warning Jesus gives against 
 "taking thought" for the morrow, and we must not 
 allow the prayer to traverse the command. The most 
 natural and likely interpretation is that which the heart 
 of mankind has always given it, as our " daily " bread, 
 or bread sufficient for the day. Jesus thus selects 
 what is the most common of our physical wants, the 
 bread which comes to us in such purely natural, 
 matter-of-course ways, as the specimen need of our 
 physical life. But when He thus lifts up this common, 
 ever-recurring mercy into the region of prayer He puts 
 a halo of Divineness about it, and by including this 
 He teaches us that there is no want of even our 
 physical life which is excluded from the realm of prayer. 
 If we are invited to speak with God concerning our 
 
CONCERNING PRAYER. 185 
 
 daily bread, then certainly we need not be silent as to 
 aught else. 
 
 Our spiritual needs are included in the two petitions, 
 u And forgive us our sins ; for we ourselves also forgive 
 every one that is indebted to us. And bring us not into 
 temptation." The parenthesis does not imply that all 
 debts should be remitted, for payment of these is en- 
 joined as one of the duties of life. The indebtedness 
 spoken of is rather the New Testament indebtedness, 
 the failure of duty or courtesy, the omission of some 
 "ought" of life or some injury or offence. It is that 
 human forgiveness, the opposite of resentment, which 
 grows up under the shadow of the Divine forgiveness. 
 The former of these petitions, then, is for the forgive- 
 ness of all past sin, while the latter is for deliverance 
 from present sinning ; for when we pray, " Bring us 
 not into temptation," it is a prayer that we may not 
 be tempted " above that we are able," which, amplified, 
 means that in all our temptations we may be victorious, 
 "kept by the power of God." 
 
 Such, then, is the wide realm of prayer, as indicated 
 by Jesus. He assures us that there is no department 
 of our being, no circumstance of our life, which does 
 not lie within its range ; that 
 
 " The whole round world is every way 
 Bound with gold chains about the feet of God," 
 
 and that on these golden chains, as on a harp, the 
 touch of prayer may wake sweet music, far-off or near 
 alike. And how much we miss through restraining 
 prayer, reserving it for special occasions, or for the 
 greater crises of life 1 But if we would only loop up 
 with heaven each successive hour, if we would only 
 run the thread of prayer through the common events 
 
i86 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 and the common tasks, we should find the whole day 
 and the whole life swinging on a higher, calmer level. 
 The common task would cease to be common, and the 
 earthly would be less earthly, if we only threw a bit 
 of heaven upon it, or we opened it out to heaven. If 
 in everything we could but make our requests known 
 unto God — that is, if prayer became the habitual act 
 of life — we should find that heaven was no longer the 
 land " afar off/' but that it was close upon us, with all 
 its proffered ministries. 
 
 Again, Jesus teaches the importance of earnestness 
 and importunity in prayer. He sketches the picture — 
 for it is scarcely a parable — of the man whose hospitality 
 is claimed, late at night, by a passing friend, but who 
 has no provision made for the emergency. He goes 
 over to another friend, and rousing him up at midnight, 
 he asks for the loan of three loaves. And with what 
 result ? Does the man answer from within, u Trouble 
 me not : the door is now shut, and my children are 
 with me in bed ; I cannot rise and give thee " ? No, 
 that v/ould be an impossible answer ; for " though he 
 will not rise and give him because he is his friend, 
 yet because of his importunity he will rise and give 
 him as many as he needeth " (xi. 8). It is the un- 
 reasonableness, or at any rate the untimeliness of the 
 request Jesus seems to emphasize. The man himself 
 is thoughtless, improvident in his household manage- 
 ment. He disturbs his neighbour, waking up his 
 whole family at midnight for such a trivial matter 
 as the loan of three loaves. But he gains his request, 
 not, either, on the ground of friendship, but through 
 sheer audacity, impudence ; for such is the meaning 
 of the word, rather than importunity. The lesson is 
 easily learned, for the suppressed comparison would 
 
CONCERNING PRAYER. 187 
 
 be, " If man, being evil, will put himself out of the 
 way to serve a friend, even at this untimely hour, 
 filling up by his thoughtfulness his friend's lack of 
 thought, how much more will the heavenly Father give 
 to His child such things as are needful ? " 
 
 We have the same lesson taught in the parable of 
 the Unjust Judge (xviii. i), that " men ought always 
 to pray, and not to faint." Here, however, the charac- 
 ters are reversed. The suppliant is a poor and a 
 wronged widow, while the person addressed is a hard, 
 selfish, godless man, who boasts of his atheism. She 
 asks, not for a favour, but for her rights — that she may 
 have due protection from some extortionate adversary, 
 who somehow has got her in his power ; for justice 
 rather than vengeance is her demand. But " he would 
 not for awhile," and all her cries for pity and for help 
 beat upon that callous heart only as the surf upon a 
 rocky shore, to be thrown back upon itself. But after- 
 wards he said within himself, "Though I fear not God, 
 nor regard man, yet because this widow troubleth me, 
 I will avenge her, lest she wear me out by her continual 
 coming." And so he is moved to take her part against 
 her adversary, not for any motive of compassion or 
 sense of justice, but through mere selfishness, that he 
 may escape the annoyance of her frequent visits — lest 
 her continual coming "worry" me, as the colloquial 
 expression might be rendered. Here the comparison, or 
 contrast rather, is expressed, at any rate in part. Jt is, 
 " If an unjust and abandoned judge grants a just peti- 
 tion at last, out of base motives, when it is often urged, 
 to a defenceless person for whom he cares nothing, how 
 much more shall a just and merciful God hear the cry 
 and avenge the cause of those whom He loves ? " * 
 
 • Farrar. 
 
188 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 It is a resolute persistence in prayer the parable 
 urges, the continued asking, and seeking, and knocking 
 that Jesus both commended and commanded (xi. 9), 
 and which has the promise of such certain answers, 
 and not the tantalizing mockeries of stones for bread, 
 or scorpions for fish. Some blessings lie near at hand ; 
 we have only to ask, and we receive — receive even while 
 we ask. But other blessings lie farther off, and they 
 can only be ours by a continuance in prayer, by a 
 persistent importunity. Not that our heavenly Father 
 needs any wearying into mercy ; but the blessing may 
 not be ripe, or we ourselves may not be fully prepared 
 to receive it. A blessing for which we are unprepared 
 would only be an untimely blessing, and like a December 
 swallow, it would soon die, without nest or brood. And 
 sometimes the long delay is but a test of faith, whetting 
 and sharpening the desire, until our very life seems to 
 depend upon the granting of our prayer. So long as 
 our prayers are among the "may-be's" and "mights" 
 there are fears and doubts alternating with our hope 
 and faith. But when the desires are intensified, and 
 our prayers rise into the " must-be's," then the answers 
 are near at hand ; for that " must be " is the soul's 
 Mahanaim, where the angels meet us, and God Himself 
 says " I will." Delays in our prayers are by no means 
 denials ; they are often but the lengthened summer 
 for the ripening of our blessings, making them largei 
 and more sweet. 
 
 And now we have only to consider, which we must 
 do briefly, the practice of Jesus, the place of prayer in 
 His own life ; and we shall find that in every point it 
 coincides exactly with His teaching. To us of the 
 clouded vision heaven is sometimes a hope more than 
 a reality. It is an unseen goal, luring us across the 
 
CONCERNING PRAYER. 189 
 
 wilderness, and which one of these days we may pos- 
 sess ; but it is not to us as the wide-reaching, encircling 
 sky, throwing its sunshine into each day, and lighting 
 up our nights with its thousand lamps. To Jesus, 
 heaven was more and nearer than it is to us. He had 
 left it behind ; and yet He had not left it, for He speaks 
 of Himself, the Son of man, as being now in heaven. 
 And so He was. His feet were upon earth, at home 
 amid its dust; but His heart, His truer life, were all 
 above. And how constant His correspondence, or 
 rather communion, with heaven I At first sight it 
 appears strange to us that Jesus should need the 
 sustenance of prayer, or that He could even adopt 
 its language. But when He became the Son of man 
 He voluntarily assumed the needs of humanity; He 
 u emptied Himself," as the Apostle expresses a great 
 mystery, as if for the time divesting Himself of all 
 Divine prerogatives, choosing to live as man amongst 
 men. And so Jesus prayed. He was wont, even as 
 we are, to refresh a wasted strength by draughts from 
 the celestial springs ; and as Antseus, in his wrestling, 
 recovered himself as he touched the ground, so we find 
 Jesus, in the great crises of His life, falling back upon 
 Heaven. 
 
 St. Luke, in his narrative of the Baptism, inserts one 
 fact the other Synoptists omit — that Jesus was in the act 
 of prayer when the heavens were opened, and the Holy 
 Ghost descended, in the semblance of a dove, upon Him. 
 It is as if the opened heavens, the descending dove, and 
 the audible voice were but the answer to His prayer. 
 And why not? Standing on the threshold of His 
 mission, would He not naturally ask that a double 
 portion of the Spirit might be His— that Heaven might 
 put its manifest seal upon that mission, if not for the 
 
190 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 confirmation of His own faith, yet for that of His fore- 
 runner ? At any rate, the fact is plain that it was while 
 He was in the act of prayer that He received that 
 second and higher baptism, even the baptism of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 A second epoch in that Divine life was when Jesus 
 formally instituted the Apostleship, calling and initiat- 
 ing the Twelve into the closer brotherhood. It was, so 
 to speak, the appointment of a regency, who should 
 exercise authority and rule in the new kingdom, 
 sitting,as Jesus figuratively expresses it (xxii. 30), "on 
 thrones, judging the twelve tiibes of Israel." It is easy 
 to see what tremendous issues were involved in this 
 appointment ; for were these foundation-stones untrue, 
 warped by jealousies and vain ambitions, the whole 
 superstructure would have been weakened, thrown out 
 of the square. And so before the selection is made, a 
 selection demanding such insight and foresight, such 
 a balancing of complementary gifts, Jesus devotes the 
 whole night to prayer, seeking the solitude of the 
 mountain-height, and in the early dawn coming down, 
 w 7 ith the dews of night upon His garment and with the 
 dews of heaven upon His soul, which, like crystals 01 
 lenses of light, made the invisible visible and the distant 
 near. 
 
 A third crisis in that Divine life was at the Trans- 
 figuration, when the summit was reached, the border- 
 line between earth and heaven, where, amid celestial 
 greetings and overshadowing clouds of glory, that 
 sinless life would have had its natural transition into 
 heaven. And here again w T e find the same coincidence 
 of prayer. Both St. Mark and St. Luke state that the 
 u high mountain " was climbed for the express purpose 
 of communion with Heaven ; they " went up into the 
 
CONCERNING PRAYER. 191 
 
 mountain to pray." It is only St. Luke, however, who 
 states that it was "as He was praying" the fashion of 
 His countenance was altered, thus making the vision 
 an answer, or at least a corollary, to the pra}'er. He is 
 at a point where two ways meet : the one passes into 
 heaven at once, from that high level to which by a 
 sinless life He has attained ; the other path sweeps 
 suddenly downward to a valley of agony, a cross of 
 shame, a tomb of death ; and after this wide detour the 
 heavenly heights are reached again. Which path will 
 He choose? If He takes the one He passes solitary 
 into heaven ; if He takes the other He brings with Him 
 a redeemed humanity. And does not this give us, in a 
 sort of echo, the burden of His prayer? He finds the 
 shadow of the cross thrown over this heaven-lighted 
 summit — for when Moses and Elias appear they would 
 not introduce a subject altogether new ; they would in 
 their conversation strike in with the theme with which 
 His mind is already preoccupied, that is the decease He 
 should accomplish at Jerusalem — and as thechiilof that 
 shadow settles upon Him, causing the flesh to shrink 
 2nd quiver for a while, would He not seek for the 
 strength He needs ? Would He not ask, as later, in 
 the garden, that the cup might pass from Him ; or if 
 that should not be possible, that His will might not 
 conflict with the Father's will, even for a passing 
 moment ? At any rate we may suppose that the vision 
 was, in some way, Heaven's answer to His prayer, 
 giving Him the solace and strengthening that He 
 sought, as the Father's voice attested His Sonship, and 
 celestials came forth to salute the Well-beloved, and to 
 hearten Him on towards His dark goal. 
 
 Just so was it when Jesus kept His fourth watch 
 in Gethsemane. What Gethsemane was, and what 
 
192 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 its fearful agony meant, we shall consider in a later 
 chapter. It is enough for our present purpose to see 
 how Jesus consecrated that deep valley, as before He 
 had consecrated the Transfiguration height, to prayer. 
 Leaving the three outside the veil of the darkness, He 
 passes into Gethsemane, as into another Holy of holies, 
 there to offer up for His own and for Himself the 
 sacrifice of prayer; while as our High Priest He 
 sprinkles with His own blood, that blood of the ever- 
 lasting covenant, the sacred ground. And what prayer 
 was that ! how intensely fervent ! That if it were 
 possible the dread cup might pass from Him, but that 
 either way the Father's will might be done ! And that 
 prayer was the prelude to victory; for as the first 
 Adam fell by the assertion of self, the clashing of his 
 will with God's, the second Adam conquers by the total 
 surrender of His will to the will of the Father. The 
 agony was lost in the acquiescence. 
 
 But it was not alcne in the great crises of His life 
 that Jesus fell back upon Heaven. Prayer with Him 
 was habitual, the fragrant atmosphere in which He 
 lived, and moved, and spoke. His words glide as by 
 a natural transition into its language, as a bird whose 
 feet have lightly touched the ground suddenly takes to 
 its wings ; and again and again we find Him pausing 
 in the weaving of His speech, to throw across the 
 earthward warp the heavenward woof of prayer. It 
 was a necessity of His life ; and if the intrusive crowds 
 allowed Him no time for its exercise, He was wont to 
 elude them, to find upon the mountain or in the desert 
 His prayer-chamber beneath the stars. And how 
 frequently we read of His " looking up to heaven " 
 amid the pauses of His daily task ! stopping before He 
 breaks the bread, and on the mirror of His upturned 
 
CONCERNING PRAYER. 193 
 
 glance leading the thoughts and thanks of the multi- 
 tude to the All-Father, who giveth to all His creatures 
 their meat in due season ; or pausing as He works 
 some impromptu miracle, before speaking the omnipo- 
 tent " Ephphatha," that on His upward look He may 
 signal to the skies ! And what a light is turned upon 
 His life and His relation to His disciples by a simple 
 incident that occurs on the night of the betrayal ! 
 Reading the sign of the times, in His forecast of the 
 dark to-morrow, He sees the terrible strain that will 
 be put upon Peter's faith, and which He likens to a 
 Satanic sifting. With prescient eye He sees the 
 temporary collapse ; how, in the fierce heat of the 
 trial, the " rock " will be thrown into a state of flux ; so 
 weak and pliant, it will be all rippled by agitation and 
 unrest, or driven back at the mere breath of a servant- 
 girl. He says mournfully, " Simon, Simon, behold, 
 Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as 
 wheat : but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith 
 fail not" (xxii. 31). So completely does Jesus identify 
 Himself with His own, making their separate needs 
 His care (for this doubtless was no solitary case) ; but 
 just as the High Priest carried on his breastplate the 
 twelve tribal names, thus bringing all Israel within the 
 light of Urim and Thummim, so Jesus carries within 
 His heart both the name and the need of each separate 
 disciple, asking for them in prayer what, perhaps, they 
 have failed to ask for themselves. Nor are the prayers 
 of Jesus limited by any such narrow circle ; they com- 
 passed the world, lighting up all horizons; and even 
 upon the cross, amid the jeers and laughter of the 
 crowd, He forgets His own agonies, as with parched 
 lips He prays for His murderers, " Father, forgive 
 them ; for they know not what they do." 
 
 13 
 
194 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Thus, more than any son of man, did Jesus " pray 
 without ceasing," "in everything by prayer and sup- 
 plication with thanksgiving " making request unto God. 
 Shall we not copy His bright example ? shall we not, 
 too, live, labour, and endure, as " seeing Him who is 
 invisible " ? He who lives a life of prayer will never 
 question its reality. He who sees God in everything, 
 and everything in God, will turn his life into a south 
 land, with upper and nether springs of blessing in 
 ceaseless flow; for the life that lies full heavenward 
 lies in perpetual summer, in the eternal noon. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE FAITH OF THE CENTURION. 
 Luke vii. i-io. 
 
 OUR Evangelist prefaces the narrative of the heal- 
 ing of the centurion's servant with one of his 
 characteristic time-marks, the shadow upon his dial- 
 plate being the shadow of the new mount of God : 
 "After He had ended all His sayings in the ears of 
 the people, He entered into Capernaum." The language 
 is unusually weighty, almost solemn, as if the Sermon 
 on the Mount were not so much a sermon as a mani- 
 festo, the formal proclamation of the kingdom of heaven. 
 Our word "ended," too, is scarcely an equivalent of 
 the original word, whose underlying idea is that of 
 fulness, completion. It is more than a full-stop to 
 point a sentence; it is a word that characterizes the 
 sentence itself, suggesting, if not implying, that these 
 "sayings" of His formed a complete and rounded 
 whole, a body of moral and ethical truth which was 
 perfect in itself. The Mount of Beatitudes thus stands 
 before us as the Sinai of the New Testament, giving 
 its laws to all peoples and to all times. But how 
 different the aspect of the two mounts ! Then the 
 people dare not touch the mountain ; now they press 
 close up to the " Prophet like unto Moses " to hear the 
 word of God. Then the Law came in a cluster of 
 restrictions and negations ; it now speaks in commands 
 
196 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 most positive, in principles permanent as time itself; 
 while from this new Sinai the clouds have disappeared, 
 the thunders ceased, leaving a sky serene and bright, 
 and a heaven which is strangely near. 
 
 Returning to Capernaum — which city, after the ejec- 
 tion from Nazareth, became the home of Jesus, and 
 the centre of His Galilean ministry — He was met by 
 a deputation of Jewish elders, who came to intercede 
 with Him on behalf of a centurion whose servant was 
 lying dangerously ill and apparently at the point of 
 death. The narrative thus gives us, as its dramatis 
 persona?, the Sufferer, the Intercessor, and the Healer. 
 
 As we read the story our thought is arrested, and 
 naturally so, by the central figure. The imposing 
 shadow of the centurion so completely fills our range 
 of vision that it throws into the background the name- 
 less one who in his secret chamber is struggling vainly 
 in the tightening grip of death. But who is he who 
 can command such a service ? around whose couch is 
 such a multitude of ministering feet ? who is he 
 whose panting breath can throw over the heart of his 
 master, and over his face, the ripple-marks of a great 
 sorrow, which sends hither and thither, as the wind 
 tosses the dry leaves, soldiers of the army, elders of 
 the Jews, friends of the master, and which makes 
 even the feet of the Lord hasten with His succour ? 
 
 "And a certain centurion's servant, who was dear 
 unto him, was sick and at the point of death." Such 
 is the brief sentence which describes a character, and 
 sums up the whole of an obscure life. We are not 
 able to define precisely his position, for the word leaves 
 us in doubt whether he were a slave or a servant of the 
 centurion. Probably — if we may throw the light of 
 the whole narrative upon the word — he was a confiden- 
 
vii.i-io.] THE FAITH OF THE CENTURION 197 
 
 tial servant, living in the house of his master, on terms 
 of more than usual intimacy. What those terms were 
 we may easily discover by opening out the word a dear/' 
 reading its depths as well as its surface-meaning. In 
 its lower sense it means " valuable," " worth-y " (putting 
 its ancient accent upon the modern word). It sets the 
 man, not over against the tables of the Law, but against 
 the law of the tables, weighing him in the balances of 
 trade, and estimating him by the scale of commercial 
 values. But in this meaner, worldly mode of reckoning 
 he is not found wanting. He is a servant proved and 
 approved. Like Eliezer of old, he has identified himself 
 with his master's interests, listening for his voice, and 
 learning to read even the wishes which were unexpressed 
 in words. Adjusting his will to the higher will, like 
 a vane answering the currents of the wind, his hands, 
 his feet, and his whole self have swung round to fall 
 into the drift of his master's purpose. Faithful in his 
 service, whether that service were under the master's 
 eye or not, and faithful alike in the great and the little 
 things, he has entered into his master's confidence, and 
 so into his joy. Losing his own personality, he is con- 
 tent to be something between a cipher and a unit, only 
 a "hand." But he is the master's right hand, strong 
 and ever ready, so useful as to be almost an integral 
 part of the master's self, without which the master's life 
 would be incomplete and strangely bereaved. All this 
 we may learn from the lower meaning of the phrase 
 11 was dear unto him." 
 
 But the word has a higher meaning, one that is 
 properly rendered by our "dear." It implies esteem, 
 affection, transferring our thought from the subject to 
 the object, from the character of the servant to the 
 influence it has exerted upon the master. The word is 
 
198 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 thus an index, a barometrical reading, measuring for us 
 the pressure of that influence, and recording for us the 
 high sentiments of regard and affection it has evoked. 
 As the trees around the pond lean towards the water 
 which laves their roots, so the strong soul of the cen- 
 turion, drawn by the attractions of a lowly but a noble 
 life, leans toward, until it leans upon, his servant, giving 
 him its confidence, its esteem and love, that golden 
 fruitage of the heart. That such was the mutual 
 relation of the master and the servant is evident, for 
 Jesus, who read motives and heard thoughts, would not 
 so freely and promptly have placed His miraculous 
 power at the disposal of the centurion had his sorrow 
 been only the seifish sorrow of losing what was com- 
 mercially valuable. To an appeal of selfishness, though 
 thrown forward and magnified by the sounding-boards 
 of all the synagogues, the ears of Jesus would have 
 been perfectly deaf; but when it was the cry of a 
 genuine sorrow, the moan of a vicarious pain, an 
 unselfish, disinterested grief, then the ears of Jesus 
 were quick to hear, and His ket swift to respond. 
 
 It is impossible for us to define exactly what the 
 sickness was, though the statement of St. Matthew 
 that it was a palsy," and that he was " grievously tor- 
 mented," would suggest that it might be an acute case 
 of inflammatory rheumatism. But whatever it might 
 be, it was a most painful, and as every one thought a 
 mortal sickness, one that left no room for hope, save 
 this last hope in the Divine mercy. But what a lesson 
 is here for our times, as indeed for all times, the lesson 
 of humanity ! How little does Heaven make of rank 
 and station ! Jesus does not even see them ; He 
 ignores them utterly. To His mind Humanity is one, 
 and the broad lines of distinction, the impassable 
 
vii. i-io.] THE FAITH OF THE CENTURION. 199 
 
 barriers Society is fond of drawing or setting up, to 
 Him are but imaginary meridians of the sea, a name, 
 but nothing more. It is but a nameless servant of a 
 nameless master, one, too, of many, for a hundred 
 others are ready, with military precision, to do that 
 same master's will ; but Jesus does not hesitate. He 
 who voluntarily took upon Himself the form of a ser- 
 vant, as He came into the world " not to be ministered 
 unto, but to minister," now becomes the Servant of a 
 servant, saying to him who knew only how to obey, 
 how to serve, " Here am I ; command Me ; use Me 
 as thou wilt." All service is honourable, if we serve 
 not ourselves, but our fellows, and it is doubly so if, 
 serving man, we serve God too. As the sunshine looks 
 down into, and strews with flowers, the lowest vales, 
 so the Divine compassion falls on the lowliest lives, and 
 the Divine grace makes them sweet and beautiful. 
 Christianity is the great leveller, but it levels upwards, 
 and if we possess the mind of Christ, His Spirit dwell- 
 ing and ruling within, we too, like the great Apostle, 
 shall know no man after the flesh ; the accidents of 
 birth, and rank, and fortune will sink back into the 
 trifles that they are ; for however these may vary, it is 
 an eternal truth, though spoken by a son of the soil 
 and the heather — 
 
 " A man's a man for a' that" 
 
 It is not easy to tell how the seed-thought is borne 
 into a heart, there to germinate and ripen ; for influences 
 are subtle, invisible things. Like the pollen of a 
 flower, which may be carried on the antennae of some 
 unconscious insect, or borne into the future by the 
 passing breeze, so influences which will yet ripen into 
 character and make destinies are thrown oil uncon- 
 
200 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 sciously from our common deeds, or they are borne on 
 the wings of the chance, casual word. The case of 
 the centurion is no exception. By what steps he has 
 been brought into the clearer light we cannot tell, but 
 evidently this Pagan officer is now a proselyte to the 
 Hebrew faith and worship, the window of his soul 
 open towards Jerusalem, while his professional life 
 still looks towards Rome, as he renders to Caesar the 
 allegiance and service which are Caesar's due. And 
 what a testimony it is to the vitality and reproductive 
 power of the Hebrew faith, that it should boast of at 
 least three centurions, in the imperial ranks, of whom 
 Scripture makes honourable mention — one at Caper- 
 naum ; another, Cornelius, at Caesarea, whose prayers 
 and alms w r ere had in remembrance of Heaven ; and the 
 third in Jerusalem, witnessing a good confession upon 
 Calvary, and proclaiming within the shadow of the 
 cross the Divinity of the Crucified. It shows how the 
 Paganism of Rome failed to satisfy the aspirations of 
 the soul, and how Mars, red and lurid through the 
 night, paled and disappeared at the rising of the Sun. 
 
 Although identifying himself with the religious life 
 of the city, the centurion had not yet had any personal 
 interview with Jesus. Possibly his military duties 
 prevented his attendance at the synagogue, so that he 
 had not seen the cures Jesus there wrought upon the 
 demoniac and the man with the withered hand. The 
 report of them, however, must soon have reached him, 
 intimate as he was with the officials of the synagogue ; 
 while the nobleman, the cure of whose sick son is 
 narrated by St. John (iv. 46), would probably be 
 amongst his personal friends, an acquaintance at any 
 rate. The centurion " heard " of Jesus, but he could 
 not have heard had not some one spoken of Him. The 
 
vii. i -io.] THE FAITH OF THE CENTURION. 201 
 
 Christ was borne into his mind and heart on the breath 
 of common speech; that is, the little human word grew 
 into the Divine Word. It was the verbal testimony 
 as to what Jesus had done that now led to the still 
 greater things He was prepared to do. And such is 
 the place and power of testimony to-day. It is the 
 most persuasive, the most effective form of speech. 
 Testimony will often win where argument has failed, 
 and gold itself is all-powerless to extend the frontiers 
 of the heavenly kingdom until it is melted down and 
 exchanged for the higher currency of speech. It is 
 first the human voice crying in the wilderness, and 
 then the incarnate Word, whose coming makes the 
 wilderness to be glad, and the desert places of life to 
 sing. And so, while a sword of flame guards the 
 Paradise Lost, it is a "tongue" of flame, that symbol 
 of a perpetual Pentecost, which calls man back, re- 
 deemed now, to the Paradise Restored. If Christians 
 would only speak more for Christ ; if, shaking off that 
 foolish reserve, they would in simple language testify 
 to what they themselves have seen, and known, and 
 experienced, how rapidly would the kingdom come, 
 the kingdom for which we pray, indeed, but for which, 
 alas, we are afraid to speak ! Nations then would be 
 born in a day, and the millennium, instead of being the 
 distant or the forlorn hope it is, would be a speedy 
 realization. We should be in the fringe of it directly. 
 It is said that on one of the Alpine glaciers the guides 
 forbid travellers to speak, lest the mere tremor of the 
 human voice should loosen and bring down the deadly 
 avalanche. Whether this be so or not, it was some 
 unnamed voice that now sent the centurion to Christ, 
 and brought the Christ to him. 
 
 It was probably a sudden relapse, with increased 
 
THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 paroxysms of pain, on the part of the sufferer, which 
 now decided the centurion to make his appeal to 
 Jesus, sending a deputation of Jewish elders, as the 
 day was on the wane, to the house to which Jesus had 
 now returned. They make their request that " He 
 would come and save the servant of the centurion, 
 who was now lying at the point of death." True 
 advocates, and skilful, were these elders. They made 
 the centurion's cause their own, as if their hearts had 
 caught the rhythmic beat of his great sorrow, and 
 when Jesus held back a little — as Ke often did, to test 
 the intensity of the desire and the sincerity of the 
 suppliant — "they besought Him earnestly," or "kept 
 on beseeching," as the tense of the verb would imply, 
 crowning their entreaty with the plea, " He is worthy 
 that Thou shouldest do this, for he loveth our nation, 
 and himself built us our synagogue." Possibly they 
 feared — putting a Hebrew construction upon His sym- 
 pathies—that Jesus would demur, and perhaps refuse, 
 because their client was a foreigner. They did not 
 know, what we know so well, that the mercy of Jesus 
 was as broad as it was deep, knowing no bounds 
 where its waves of blessing are stayed. But how 
 forceful and prevalent was their plea ! Though they 
 knew it not, these elders do but ask Jesus to illustrate 
 the words He has just spoken, " Give, and it shall be 
 given unto you." And had not Jesus laid this down as 
 one of the laws of mercy, that action and reaction are 
 equal ? Had He not been describing the orbit in 
 which blessings travel, showing that though its orbit 
 be apparently eccentric at times, like the boomerang, 
 that wheels round and comes back to the hand that 
 threw it forward, the mercy shown will eventually 
 come back to him who showed it, with a wealth of 
 
vii. i-io.] THE FAITH OF THE CENTURION. 203 
 
 heavenly usury ? And so their plea was the one of all 
 others to be availing. It was the precept of the mount 
 evolved into practice. It was, " Bless him, for he has 
 richly blessed us. He has opened his hand, showering 
 his favours upon us,; do Thou open Thine hand now, 
 and show him that the God of the Hebrews is a God 
 who hears, and heeds, and helps." 
 
 It has been thought, from the language of the elders, 
 that the synagogue built by the centurion was the 
 only one that Capernaum possessed; for they speak 
 of it as " the " synagogue. But this does not follow, 
 and indeed it is most improbable. They might still 
 call it " the " synagogue, not because it was the only 
 one, but because it was the one foremost and upper- 
 most in their thought, the one in which they were 
 particularly interested. The definite article no more 
 proves this to be the only synagogue in Capernaum 
 than the phrase " the house " (ver. 10) proves the house 
 of the centurion to be the only house of the city. The 
 fact is that in the Gospel age Capernaum was a busy 
 and important place, as shown by its possessing a 
 garrison of soldiers, and by its being the place of 
 custom, situated as it was on the great highway of 
 trade. And if Jerusalem could boast of four hundred 
 synagogues, and Tiberias — a city not even named by 
 the Synoptists — fourteen, Capernaum certainly would 
 possess more than one. Indeed, had Capernaum been 
 the insignificant village that one synagogue would 
 imply, then, instead of deserving the bitter woes Jesus 
 pronounced upon it, it would have deserved the highest 
 commendation, as the most fruitful field in all His 
 ministry, giving Him, besides other disciples, a ruler 
 of the Jews and the commandant of the garrison. That 
 it deserved such bitter " woes " proves that Capernaum 
 
204 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 had a population both dense and, in the general, hostile 
 to Jesus, compared with which His friends and 
 adherents were a feeble few. 
 
 In spite of the negative manner Jesus purposely 
 showed at the first, He fully intended to grant all the 
 elders had asked, and allowing them now to guide 
 Him, He "went with them." When, however, they 
 were come near the house, the centurion sent other 
 "friends" to intercept Jesus, and to urge Him not to 
 take any further trouble. The message, which they 
 deliver in the exact form in which it was given to them, 
 is so characteristic and exquisitely beautiful that it is 
 best to give it entire : " Lord, trouble not Thyself: for 
 I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my 
 roof: wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to 
 come unto Thee : but say the word, and my servant shall 
 be healed. For I also am a man set under authority, 
 having under myself soldiers : and I say to this one, Go, 
 and he goeth ; and to another, Come, and he cometh ; 
 and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it." 
 
 The narrative of St. Matthew differs slightly from 
 that of St. Luke, in that he omits all reference to the 
 two deputations, speaking of the interview as being 
 personal with the centurion. But St. Matthew's is 
 evidently an abbreviated narrative, and he passes over 
 the intermediaries, in accordance with the maxim that 
 he who acts through another does it per se. But both 
 agree as to the terms of the message, a message which 
 is at once a marvel and a rebuke to us, and one which 
 was indeed deserving of being twice recorded and 
 eulogized in the pages of the Gospels. 
 
 And how the message reveals the man, disclosing 
 as in a transparency the character of this nameless 
 foreigner ! We have already seen how broad were his 
 
vii. i-io.] THE FAITH OF THE CENTURION. 205 
 
 sympathies, and how generous his deeds, as he makes 
 room in his large heart for a conquered and despised 
 people, at his own cost building a temple for the 
 exercises of their faith. We have seen, too, what a 
 wealth of tenderness and benevolence was hiding be- 
 neath a somewhat stern exterior, in his affection for a 
 servant, and his anxious solicitude for that servant's 
 health. But now we see in the centurion other graces 
 of character, that set him high amongst those " outside 
 saints " who worshipped in the outer courts, until such 
 time as the veil of the Temple was rent in twain, and 
 the way into the Holiest was opened for all. And what 
 a beautiful humility is here ! what an absence of as- 
 sumption or of pride ! Occupying an honoured posi- 
 tion, representing in his own person an empire which 
 was world-wide, surrounded by troops of friends, and 
 by all the comforts wealth could buy, accustomed to 
 speak in imperative, if not in imperious ways, yet as 
 he turns towards Jesus it is with a respectful, yea, a 
 reverential demeanour. He feels himself in the presence 
 of some Higher Being, an unseen but august Caesar. 
 Nay, not in His presence either, for into that audience- 
 chamber he feels that he has neither the fitness nor the 
 right to intrude. All that he can do is to send forward 
 his petition by the hands of worthier advocates, who 
 have access to Him, while he himself keeps back out 
 of sight, with bared feet standing by the outer gate. 
 Others can speak well and highly of him, recounting 
 his noble deeds, but of himself he has nothing good to 
 say ; he can only speak of self in terms of disparage- 
 ment, as he emphasizes his littleness, his unworthiness. 
 Nor was it with him the conventional hyperbole of 
 Eastern manners ; it was the language of deepest, 
 sincerest truth, when he said that he was not worthy 
 
206 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 even to speak with Christ, or to receive such a Guest 
 beneath his roof. Between himself and the One he reve- 
 rently addressed as " Lord " there was an infinite dis 
 tance ; for one was human, while the Other was Divine. 
 
 And what a rare and remarkable faith ! In his 
 thought Jesus is an Imperator, commanding all forces, 
 as He rules the invisible realms. His will is supreme 
 over all substances, across all distances. M Thou has! 
 no need, Lord, to take any trouble about my poor 
 request. There is no necessity that Thou shouldest 
 take one step, or even lift up a finger ; Thou hast only 
 to speak the word, and it is done ; " and then he gives 
 that wonderfully graphic illustration borrowed from his 
 own military life. 
 
 The passage " For I also am a man set undei 
 authority " is generally rendered as referring to his 
 own subordinate position under the Chiliarch. But 
 such a rendering, as it seems to us, breaks the con- 
 tinuity of thought, and grammatically is scarcely 
 accurate. The whole passage is an amplification and 
 description of the " word " of ver. 7, and the " also " 
 introduces something the centurion and Jesus possess 
 in common, i.e., the power to command ; for the " I 
 also " certainly corresponds with the " Thou " which is 
 implied, but not expressed. But the centurion did not 
 mean to imply that Jesus possessed only limited, dele- 
 gated powers ; this was farthest from his thought, and 
 formed no part of the comparison. But let the clause 
 "I also am a man set under authority" be rendered, 
 not as referring to the authority which is above him, 
 but to that which is upon him — " I also am vested with 
 authority," or " Authority is put upon me * — and the 
 meaning becomes clear. The " also " is no longer 
 warped into an ungrammatical meaning, introducing a 
 
vii. i-io.] THE FAITH OF THE CENTURION. 207 
 
 contrast rather than a likeness ; while the clause which 
 follows, "having under myself soldiers," takes its proper 
 place as an enlargement and explanation of the "autho- 
 rity" with which the centurion is invested. 
 
 The centurion speaks in a soldierly way. There is 
 a crispness and sharpness about his tones — that Shib- 
 boleth of militaryism. He says, u My word is all- 
 powerful in the ranks which I command. I have but 
 to say 'Come/ or 'Go/ and my word is instantly 
 obeyed. The soldier upon whose ear it falls dare not 
 hesitate, any more than he dare refuse. He 'goes' at 
 my word, any whither, on some forlorn hope it may be, 
 or to his grave." And such is the obedience, instant 
 and absolute, that military service demands. The 
 soldier must not question, he must obey ; he must not 
 reason, he must act ; for when the word of command — 
 that leaded word of authority — falls upon his ear, it 
 completely fills his soul, and makes him deaf to all 
 other, meaner voices. 
 
 Such was the thought in the centurion's mind, and 
 from the "go" and "come" of military authority to 
 the higher "word" of Jesus the transition is easy. 
 But how strong the faith that could give to Jesus such 
 an enthronement, that could clothe His word with such 
 superhuman power ! Yonder, in his secluded chamber, 
 lies the sufferer, his nerves quivering in their pain, 
 while the mortal sickness physicians and remedies 
 have all failed to touch, much less to remove, has 
 dragged him close up to the gate of death. But this 
 " word " of Jesus shall be all-sufficient. Spoken here 
 and now, it shall pass over the intervening streets and 
 through the interposing walls and doors ; it shall say 
 to these demons of evil, " Loose hirn, and let him go," 
 and in a moment the torturing pain shall cease, the 
 
208 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 fluttering heart shall resume its healthy, steady beat, 
 the rigid muscles shall become pliant as before, while 
 through arteries and veins the life-blood — its poison 
 all extracted now — shall regain its healthful, quiet flow. 
 The centurion believed all this of the " word " of Jesus, 
 and even more. In his heart it was a word all-potent, 
 if not omnipotent, like to the word of Him who " spake, 
 and it was done," who " commanded, and it stood fast." 
 And if the word of Jesus in these realms of life and 
 death was so imperative and all-commanding, could 
 the Christ Himself be less than Divine? 
 
 To find such confidence reposed in Himself was to 
 Jesus something new and to find this rarest plant of 
 faith growing up on Gentile soil was a still greater 
 marvel and turning to the multitude which clustered 
 thick and eager around, He said to them, " I have 
 not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." And 
 commending the centurion's faith, He honours it too, 
 doing all he requested, and even more, though without 
 the " word." Jesus does not even say " I will," or 
 " Be it so," but He works the instant and perfect 
 cure by a mere volition. He wills it, and it is done, 
 so that when the friends returned to the house they 
 found the servant u whole." 
 
 Of the sequel we know nothing. We do not even 
 read that Jesus saw the man at whose faith He had so 
 marvelled. But doubtless He did, for His heart was 
 drawn strangely to him, and doubtless He gave to 
 him many of those " words " for which his soul had 
 longed and listened, words in which were held, as in 
 solution, all authority and all truth. And doubtless, 
 too, in the after-years, Jesus crowned that life of 
 faithful but unnoted service with the higher "word," 
 the heavenly " Well done." 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE ANOINTING OF THE FEET. 
 Luke vii. 36-50. 
 
 WHETHER the narrative of the Anointing is 
 inserted in its chronological order we cannot 
 say, for the Evangelist gives us no word by which we 
 may recognize either its time or its place-relation ; but 
 we can easily see that it falls into the story artistically, 
 with a singular fitness. Going back to the context, we 
 find Jesus pronouncing a high eulogium upon John 
 the Baptist Hereupon the Evangelist adds a statement 
 of his own, calling attention to the fact that even 
 John's ministry failed to reach and influence the 
 Pharisees and lawyers, who rejected the counsel of 
 God, and declined the baptism of His messenger. 
 Then Jesus, in one of His brief but exquisite parables, 
 sketches the character of the Pharisees. Recalling a 
 scene of the market-place, where the children were 
 accustomed to play at " weddings " and " funerals "— 
 which, by the way, are the only games at which the 
 children of the land play to-day — and where sometimes 
 the play was spoiled and stopped by some of the 
 children getting into a pet, and lapsing into a sullen 
 silence, Jesus says that is just a picture of the childish 
 perversity of the Pharisees. They respond neither 
 to the mourning of the one nor to the music of the 
 
 14 
 
210 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 other, but because John came neither eating bread nor 
 drinking wine, the}' call him a maniac, and say, " He 
 hath a devil;" while of Jesus, who has no ascetic 
 ways, but mingles in the gatherings of social life, a 
 Man amongst men, they say, " Behold a gluttonous 
 man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and 
 sinners." And having recorded this, our Evangelist 
 inserts, as an appropriate sequel, the account of the 
 supper in the Pharisee's house, with its idyllic interlude, 
 played by a woman's hand, a narrative which shows 
 how Wisdom is justified of all her children, and how 
 these condescensions of Jesus, His intercourse with 
 even those who were ceremonially or morally unclean, 
 were both proper and beautiful. 
 
 It was in one of the Galilean towns, perhaps at Nain, 
 where Jesus was surprised at receiving an invitation 
 to the house of a Pharisee. Such courtesies on the 
 part of a class who prided themselves on their exclu- 
 siveness, and who were bitterly intolerant of ail who 
 were outside their narrow circle, were exceptional and 
 rare. Besides, the teaching of Jesus was diametrically 
 opposed to the leaven of the Pharisees. Between the 
 caste of the one and the Catholicism of the other was 
 a wide gulf of divergence. To Jesus the heart was 
 everything, and the outflowing issues were coloured 
 by its hues ; to the Pharisees the hand, the outward 
 touch, was more than heart, and contact more than 
 conduct. Jesus laid a Divine emphasis upon character; 
 the cleanness He demanded was moral cleanness, 
 purity of heart ; that of the Pharisees was a ceremonial 
 cleanness, the avoidance of things which were under 
 a ceremonial ban. And so they magnified the jots and 
 tittles, scrupulously tithing their mint and anise, while 
 they overlooked completely the moralities of the heart, 
 
vii. 36-50.] THE ANOINTING OF THE FEET. 211 
 
 and reduced to a mere nothing those grander virtues 
 of mercy and of justice. Between the Separatists and 
 Jesus there was therefore constant friction, which 
 afterwards developed into open hostility ; and while 
 they ever sought to damage Him with opprobrious 
 epithets, and to bring His teaching into disrepute, He 
 did not fail to expose their hollowness and insincerity, 
 tearing off the veneer with which they sought to hide 
 the brood of viperous things their cueed had gendered, 
 and to hurl against their whited sepulchres His indig- 
 nant "woes." 
 
 It would almost seem as if Jesus hesitated in accept- 
 ing the invitation, for the tense of the verb " desired n 
 implies that the request was repeated. Possibly 
 other arrangements had been made, or perhaps Jesus 
 sought to draw out and test the sincerity of the 
 Pharisee, who in kind and courteous words offered his 
 hospitality. The hesitation would certainly not arise 
 from any reluctance on His part, for Jesus refused no 
 open door ; he welcomed any opportunity of influenc- 
 ing a soul. As the shepherd of His own parable went 
 over the mountainous paths in quest of his lone, lost 
 sheep, so Jesus was glad to risk unkind aspersions, 
 and to bear the " fierce light " of hostile, questioning 
 eyes, if He might but rescue a soul, and win some 
 erring one back to virtue and to truth. 
 
 The character of the host we cannot exactly deter- 
 mine. The narrative lights up his features but indis- 
 tinctly, for the nameless "sinner " is the central object 
 of the picture, while Simon stands in the background, 
 out of focus, and so somewhat veiled in obscurity. To 
 man}' he appears as the cold and heartless censor, 
 distant and haughty, seeking by the guile of hospitality 
 to entrap Jesus, hiding behind the mask of friendship 
 
2\% THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 some dark and sinister motive. But such deep shadows 
 are cast by our own thoughts rather than by the 
 narrative ; they are the random " guesses after truth/' 
 instead of the truth itself. It will be noticed that 
 Jesus does not impugn in the least his motive in 
 proffering his hospitality ; and this, though but a 
 negative evidence, is not without its weight, when on 
 a similar occasion the evil motive was brought to light. 
 The only charge laid against him — if charge it be — 
 was the omission of certain points of etiquette that 
 Eastern hospitality was accustomed to observe, and 
 even here there is nothing to show that Jesus was 
 treated differently from the other invited guests. The 
 omission, while it failed to single out Jesus for special 
 honour, might still mean no disrespect; and at the 
 most it was a breach of manners, deportment, rather 
 than of morals, just one of those lapses Jesus was most 
 ready to overlook and forgive. We shall form a juster 
 estimate of the man's character if we regard him as a 
 seeker after truth. Evidently he has felt a drawing 
 towards Jesus ; indeed, ver. 47 w 7 ould almost imply that 
 he had received some personal benefit at His hands. 
 Be this as it may, he is desirous of a closer and a freer 
 intercourse. His mind is perplexed, the balances of 
 his judgment swinging in alternate and opposite ways. 
 A new problem has presented itself to him, and in that 
 problem is one factor he cannot yet value. It is the 
 unknown quantity, Jesus of Nazareth. Who is He? 
 what is He? A prophet — the Prophet— the Christ? 
 Such are the questions running through his mind — 
 questions which must be answered soon, as his thoughts 
 and opinions have ripened into convictions. And so 
 he invites Jesus to his house and board, that in 
 the nearer vision and the unfettered freedom of social 
 
ii. 36-50.] THE ANOINTING OF THE FEET 213 
 
 intercourse he may solve the great enigma. Nay, he 
 invites Jesus with a degree of earnestness, putting 
 upon Him the constraint of a great desire; and 
 leaving his heart open to conviction, ready to embrace 
 the truth as soon as he recognizes it to be truth, he 
 flings open the door of his hospitalities, though in so 
 doing he shakes the whole fabric of Pharisaic exclusive- 
 ness and sanctity. Seeking after truth, the truth finds 
 
 him. . . . 
 
 There was a simplicity and freeness m the social 
 life of the East which our Western civilization can 
 scarcely understand. The door of the guest-chamber 
 was left open, and the uninvited, even comparative 
 strangers, were allowed to pass in and out during the 
 entertainment; or they might take their seats by the 
 wall, as spectators and listeners. It was so here. No 
 sooner have the guests taken their places, reclining 
 around the table, their bared feet projecting behind 
 them, than the usual drift of the uninvited set 111, 
 amongst whom, almost unnoticed in the excitements of 
 the hour, was "a woman of the city." Simon in his 
 soliloquy speaks of her as « a sinner ; " but had we his 
 testimony only, we should hesitate in giving to the 
 word its usually received meaning ; for " sinner " was 
 a pet term of the Pharisees, applied to all who were 
 outside their circle, and even to Jesus Himself. But 
 when our Evangelist, in describing her character, makes 
 use of the same word, we can only interpret the " sin- 
 ner" in one way, in its sensual, depraved meaning. 
 And with this agrees the phrase " a woman which was 
 in the city," which seems to indicate the loose rela- 
 tions of her too-public life. 
 
 Bearing in her hand "an alabaster cruse of oint- 
 ment," for a purpose which scon became apparent, she 
 
214 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 passed over to the place where Jesus sat, and stood 
 directly behind Him. Accustomed as she had been to 
 hide her deeds in the veil of darkness, nothing but the 
 current of a deep emotion could have carried her thus 
 through the door of the guest-chamber, setting her, 
 alone of her sex, full in the glare of the lamps and the 
 light of scornful eyes ; and no sooner has she reached 
 her goal than the storm of the heart breaks in a rain 
 of tears, which fall hot and fast upon the feet of the 
 Master. This, however, is no part of her plan ; they 
 were impromptu tears she could not restrain ; and 
 instantly she stoops down, and with the loosened 
 •tresses of her hair she wipes His feet, kissing them 
 passionately as she did so. There is a delicate mean- 
 ing in the construction of the Greek verb, " she began 
 to wet His feet with her tears ; " it implies that the 
 action was not continued, as when afterwards she 
 " anointed" His feet. It was momentary, instanta- 
 neous, checked soon as it was discovered. Then pour- 
 ing from her flask the fragrant nard, she proceeded with 
 loving, leisurely haste to anoint His feet, until the whole 
 chamber was redolent of the sweet perfume. 
 
 But what is the meaning of this strange episode, 
 this "song without words," struck by the woman's 
 hands as from a lyre of alabaster ? It was evidently 
 something determined, prearranged. The phrase u when 
 she knew that He was sitting at meat " means some- 
 thing more than she "heard." Her knowledge as to 
 where Jesus was had not come to her in a casual way, 
 in the vagrant gossip of the town; it had come by 
 search and inquiry on her part, as if the plan were 
 already determined, and she were eager to carry it out. 
 The cruse of ointment that she brings also reveals the 
 settled resolve that she came on purpose, and she 
 
vii. 36-50.J THE ANOINTING OF THE FEET. 215 
 
 came only, to anoint the feet of Jesus. The word, too, 
 rendered "she brought" has a deeper meaning than 
 our translation conveys. It is a word that is used in 
 ten other passages of the New Testament, where it 
 is invariably rendered "receive," or "received," refer- 
 ring to something received as a wage, or as a gift, or 
 as a prize. Used here in the narrative, it implies that 
 the cruse of ointment had not been bought; it was 
 something she had received as a gift, or possibly as 
 the wages of her sin. And not only was it prearranged, 
 part of a deliberate intention, but evidently it was not 
 displeasing to Jesus. He did not resent it. He gives 
 Himself up passively to the woman's will. He allows 
 her to touch, and even to kiss His feet, though He 
 knows that to society she is a moral leper, and that 
 her fragrant ointment is possibly the reward of her 
 shame. We must, then, look behind the deed to the 
 motive. To Jesus the ointment and the tears were 
 full of meaning, eloquent beyond any power of words. 
 Can we discover that meaning, and read why they 
 were so welcome ? We think we may. 
 
 And here let us say that Simon's thoughts were 
 perfectly natural and correct, with no word or tone 
 that we can censure. Canon Farrar, it is true, detects 
 in the " This man " with which he speaks of Jesus a 
 " supercilious scorn ; " but we fail to see the least 
 scorn, or even disrespect, for the pronoun Simon uses 
 is the identical word used by St. Matthew (Matt. iii. 3), 
 of John the Baptist, when he says, " This is he that was 
 spoken of by the prophet Esaias," and the word of the 
 " voice from heaven " which said, " This is My beloved 
 Son " (Matt. iii. 17). That the woman was a sinner 
 Simon knew well ; and would not Jesus know it too, if 
 He were a prophet? Doubtless He would; but as 
 
2i5 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Simon marks no sign of disapproval upon the face of 
 Jesus, the enigmatical "if" grows larger in his mind, 
 and he begins to think that Jesus has scarcely the pre- 
 science — the power of seeing through things — that a 
 true prophet would have. Simon's reasoning was right, 
 but his facts were wrong. He imagined that Jesus did 
 not know " who and what manner of woman " this was ; 
 whereas Jesus knew more than he, for He knew not only 
 the past of shame, but a present of forgiveness and hope. 
 And what did the tears and the ointment mean, that 
 Jesus should receive them so readily, and that He should 
 speak of them so approvingly ? The parable Jesus 
 spoke to Simon will explain it. " Simon, I have some- 
 what to say unto thee," said Jesus, answering his 
 thoughts — for He had heard them — by words. And 
 falling naturally into the parabolic form of speech — as 
 He did when He wanted to make His meaning more 
 startling and impressive — He said, " A certain money- 
 lender had two debtors : the one owed five hundred 
 pence, and the other fifty. When they had not where- 
 with to pay, he forgave them both. Which of them 
 therefore will love him most ? " A question to which 
 Simon could promptly answer, u He, I suppose, to 
 whom he forgave the most." It is clear, then, what- 
 ever others might see in the woman's deed, that Jesus 
 read in it the expression of her love, and that He 
 accepted it as such ; the tears and outpoured ointment 
 were the broken utterances of an affection which was 
 too deep for words. But if her offering — as it certainly 
 was — was the gift of love, how shall we explain her 
 tears ? for love, in the presence of the beloved, does 
 not weep so passionately, indeed does not weep at all, 
 except, it may be, tears of joy, or tears of a mutual 
 sorrow. In this way: As the wind blows landward 
 
rii. 36-50.] THE ANOINTING OF THE FEET. 217 
 
 from the sea, the mountain ranges cool the clouds, and 
 cause them to unlock their treasures, in the fertile and 
 refreshing rains; so in the heart of this "sinner" a 
 cloud of recollections is blown up suddenly from her 
 dark past ; the memories of her shame — even though 
 that shame be now forgiven — sweep across her soul 
 with resistless force, for penitence does not end when 
 forgiveness is assured; and as she finds herself in 
 the presence of Infinite Purity, what wonder that the 
 heart's great deeps are broken up, and that the wild 
 storm of conflicting emotions within should find relief 
 in a rain of tears ? Tears of penitence they doubtless 
 were, bitter with the sorrow and the shame of years 
 of guilt ; but they were tears of gratitude and holy love 
 as well, all suffused and brightened by the touch of 
 mercy and the light of hope. And >o the passionate 
 weeping was no acted grief, no hysterical tempest ; it 
 was the perfectly natural accompaniment of profound 
 emotion, that storm of mingled but diverse elements 
 which now swept through her soul. Her tears, like 
 the dew-drops that hang upon leaf and flower, were 
 wrought in the darkness, fashioned by the Night, and 
 at the same time they were the jewels that graced the 
 robe of a new dawn, the dawn of a better, a purer 
 life. 
 
 But how came this new affection within her heart, 
 an affection so deep that it must have tears and anoint- 
 ings for its expression — this new affection, which has 
 become a pure and holy passion, and which breaks 
 through conventional bonds, as it has broken through 
 the old habits, the ill usages of a life ? Jesus Himself 
 traces for us this affection to its source. He tells us — 
 for the parable is all meaningless unless we recognize 
 in the five-hundred-pence debtor the sinning woman — 
 
2i8 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 that her great love grows out of her great forgiveness, 
 a past forgiveness too, for Jesus speaks of the change 
 as already accomplished : " Her sins, which were many, 
 are (have been) forgiven." And here we touch an un- 
 written chapter of the Divine life; for as the woman's 
 love flows up around Jesus, casting its treasures at 
 His feet, so the forgiveness must first have come 
 from Jesus. His voice it must have been which said, 
 41 Let there be light," and which turned the chaos of 
 her dark soul into another Paradise. At any rate, she 
 thinks she owes to Him her all. Her new creation, 
 with its deliverance from the t}Tannous past ; her new 
 joys and hopes, the spring-blossom of a new and 
 heavenly existence; the conscious purity which has 
 now taken the place of lust — she owes all to the word 
 and power of Jesus. But when this change took place, 
 or when, in the great transit, this Venus of the moral 
 firmament passed across the disc of the Sun, we do not 
 know. St. John inserts in his story one little incident, 
 which is like a piece of mosaic dropped out from the 
 Gospels of the Synoptists, of a woman who was taken 
 in her sin and brought to Jesus. And when the hands 
 of her accusers were not clean enough to cast the first 
 stone, but they shrank one by one out of sight, self- 
 condemned, Jesus bade the penitent one to " go in 
 peace, and sin no more." * Are the two characters 
 identical ? and does the forgiven one, dismissed into 
 peace, now return to bring to her Saviour her offer- 
 ing of gratitude and love ? We can only say that such 
 an identification is at least possible, and more so far 
 than the improbable identification of tradition, which 
 
 * The narrative is of doubtful authenticity ; but even should it be 
 proved to be a postscript by some later scribe, it would still point 
 to a tradition, which, as Stier says, was " well founded and genuine." 
 
vii. 36-50.] THE ANOINTING OF THE FEET. 219 
 
 confounds this nameless "sinner" with Mary Mag- 
 dalene, which is an assumption perfectly baseless and 
 most unlikely. 
 
 And so in this erring one, who now puts her crown 
 of fragrance upon the feet of Jesus, since she is un- 
 worthy to put it upon His head, we see a penitent 
 and forgiven soul. Somewhere Jesus found her, out 
 on the forbidden paths, the paths of sin, which, steep 
 and slippery, lead down to death ; His look arrested her, 
 for it cast within her heart the light of a new hope ; 
 His presence, which was the embodiment of a purity 
 infinite and absolute, shot through her soul the deep 
 consciousness and conviction of her guilt ; and doubt- 
 less upon her ears had fallen the words of the great 
 absolution and the Divine benediction, " Thy sins are 
 all forgiven ; go in peace," words which to her made 
 all things new — a new heart within, and a new earth 
 around. And now, regenerate and restored, the sad 
 past forgiven, all the currents of her thought and life- 
 reversed, the love of sin turned into a perfect loathing, 
 her language, spoken in tears, kisses, and fragrant 
 nard, is the language of the Psalmist, " O Lord, I will 
 praise Thee ; for though Thou wast angry with me, 
 Thine anger is turned away, and Thou comfortedst 
 me." It was the Magnificat of a forgiven and a loving 
 soul. 
 
 Simon had watched the woman's actions in silence, 
 though in evident displeasure. He would have resented 
 her touch, and have forbade even her presence ; but 
 found under his roof, she became in a certain sense 
 a guest, shielded by the hospitable courtesies of Eastern 
 life. But if he said nothing, he thought much, and his 
 thoughts were hard and bitter. I ie looked upon the 
 woman as a moral leper, an outcast. There was defile- 
 
220 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 ment in her touch, and he would have shaken it off 
 from him as if it were a viper, fit. only to be cast into 
 the fire of a burning indignation. Now Jesus must 
 teach him a lesson, and throw his thoughts back upon 
 himself. And first He teaches him that there is for- 
 giveness for sin, even the sin of uncleanness; and 
 in this we see the bringing in of a better hope. The 
 Law said, "The soul that sinneth, it shall surely die;" 
 it shall be cut off from the people of Israel. The Law 
 had but one voice- for the adulterer and adulteress, 
 the voice which was the knell of a sharp and fearful 
 doom, without reprieve or mercy of any kind. It cast 
 upon them the deadly rain of stones, as if it would 
 hurl a whole Sinai upon them. But Jesus comes to 
 man with a message of mercy and of hope. He pro- 
 claims a deliverance from the sin, and a pardon for the 
 sinner; nay, He offers Himself, as at once the Forgiver 
 of sin and the Saviour from sin. Let Him but see 
 it repented of; let Him but see the tears of penitence, 
 or hear the sighs of a broken and contrite heart, and 
 He steps forward at once to deliver and to save. The 
 Valley of Achor, where the Law sets up its memorial of 
 shame, Jesus turns into a door of hope. He speaks 
 life where the Law spoke death ; He offers hope where 
 the Lav/ gave but despair ; and where exacting Law 
 gave pains and fearful punishment only, the Mediator 
 of the New Covenant, to the penitent though erring 
 ones, spoke pardon and peace, even the perfect peace, 
 the eternal peace. 
 
 And Jesus teaches Simon another lesson. He teaches 
 him to judge himself, and not either by his own fictitious 
 standard, by the Pharisaic table of excellence, but by 
 the Divine standard. Holding up as a mirror the 
 example of the woman, Jesus gives to Simon a portrait 
 
vii. 36-50.] THE ANOINTING OF THE FEET, 221 
 
 of his own self, as seen in the heavenly light, all 
 shrunken and dwarfed, the large " I " of Pharisaic 
 complacency becoming, in comparison, small indeed. 
 Turning to the woman, He said unto Simon, "Seest 
 thou this woman ? " (And Simon had not seen her ; 
 he had only seen her shadow, the shadow of her sinful 
 past). " I entered into thine house ; thou gavest Me no 
 water for My feet : but she hath wetted My feet with 
 her tears, and wiped them with her hair. Thou gavest 
 Me no kiss : but she, since the time I came in, hath 
 not ceased to kiss My feet. My head with oil thou 
 didst not anoint : but she hath anointed My feet with 
 ointment." It is a problem of the pronouns, in which 
 the " I " being given, it is desired to find the relative 
 values of " thou " and " she." And how beautifully 
 dees Jesus work it out, according to the rules of Divine 
 proportions ! With what antithetical skill does He 
 make His comparison, or rather His contrast 1 " Thou 
 gavest me no water for My feet ; she hath wetted My 
 feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair. 
 Thou gavest me no kiss : she hath not ceased to kiss my 
 feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint : she hath 
 anointed My feet with ointment." 
 
 And so Jesus sets over against the omissions of 
 Simon the loving and lavish attentions of the woman ; 
 and while reproving him, not for a lack of civility, but 
 for a want of heartiness in his reception of Himself, 
 He shows how deep and full run the cunents of her 
 affection, breaking through the banks and bounds of 
 conventionality in their sweet overflow, while as yet 
 the currents of his love were intermittent, shallow, and 
 somewhat cold. He does not denounce this Simon as 
 having no part or lot in this matter. No ; He even 
 credits him with a little love, as He speaks of him as a 
 
222 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 pardoned, justified soul. And it was true. The heart 
 of Simon had been drawn toward Jesus, and in the 
 urgent invitation and these proffered hospitalities we 
 can discern a nascent affection. His love is yet but in 
 the bud. It is there, a thing of life ; but it is confined, 
 constrained, and lacking the sweetness of the ripened 
 and opened flower. Jesus does not cut off the budding 
 affection, and cast it out amongst the withered and dead 
 things, but sprinkling it with the dew of His speech, 
 and throwing upon it the sunshine of His approving 
 look, He leaves it to develop, ripening into an after- 
 harvest of fragrance and of beauty. And why was 
 Simon's love more feeble and immature than that of the 
 woman ? First, because he did not see so much in 
 Jesus as she did. He was } r et stumbling over the " if," 
 with some lingering doubts as to whether He were 
 " the prophet ; " to her He is more than a " prophet," 
 even her Lord and her Saviour, covering her past 
 with a mantle of mercy, and opening within her heart 
 a heaven. Then, too, Simon's forgiveness was not so 
 great as hers. Not that any forgiveness can be less 
 than entire ; for when Heaven saves it is not a salva- 
 tion by instalments — certain sins remitted, while others 
 are held back uncancelled. But Simon's views of sin 
 were not so sharp and vivid as were those of the 
 woman. The atmosphere of Phariseeism in its moral 
 aspects was hazy ; it magnified human virtues, and 
 created all sorts of illusive mirages of self-righteousness 
 and reputed holiness, and doubtless Simon's vision 
 had been impaired by the refracting atmosphere of his 
 creed. The greatness of our salvation is ever measured 
 by the greatness of our danger and our guilt. The 
 heavier the burden and weight of condemnation, the 
 deeper is the peace and the higher are the ecstasies of 
 
vii. 36-50.] THE ANOINTING OF THE FEET. 223 
 
 joy when that condemnation is removed. Shall we say, 
 then, "We must sin more, that love may more abound " ? 
 Nay, we need not, we must not ; for as Godet says, 
 " What is wanting to the best of us, in order to love 
 much, is not sin, but the knowledge of it." And this 
 deeper knowledge of sin, the more vivid realization of 
 its guilt, its virulence, its all-pervasiveness, comes 
 just in proportion as we approach Christ. Standing 
 close up to the cross, feeling the mortal agonies of 
 Him whose death was necessary as sin's atonement, 
 in that vivid light of redeeming love even the strict 
 moralist, the Pharisee of the Pharisees, could speak of 
 himself as the "chief" of sinners. 
 
 The lesson was over, and Jesus dismissed the woman 
 — who, with her empty alabaster flask, had lingered at 
 the feast, and who had heard all the conversation — 
 with the double assurance of pardon : " Thy sins are 
 forgiven ; thy faith hath saved thee ; go in peace." 
 And such is the Divine order everywhere and always — 
 Faith, Love, Peace. Faith is the procuring cause, or 
 the condition of salvation ; love and peace are its after- 
 fruits ; for without faith, love would be only fear, and 
 peace itself would be unrest. 
 
 She went in peace, li the peace of God, which passeth 
 all understanding;" but she left behind her the music 
 of her tears and the sweet fragrance of her deed, a 
 fragrance and a music which have filled the whole 
 world, and which, floating across the valley of death, 
 will pass up into heaven itself ! 
 
 There was still one little whisper of murmuring, or 
 questioning rather ; for the guests were startled by the 
 boldness of His words, and asked among themselves, 
 " Who is this that even forgiveth sins ? " But it will 
 be noticed that Simon himself is no longer among the 
 
224 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 questioners, the doubters. Jesus is to him " the Pro- 
 phet," and more than a prophet, for who can forgive 
 sins but God alone ? And though we hear no more 
 of him or of his deeds, we may rest assured that 
 his conquered heart was given without reserve to 
 Jesus, and that he too learned to love with a true 
 affection, even with the " perfect love," which " casteth 
 out fear." 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE PARABLE OF THE SOIVER. 
 Luke viii. 1-18. 
 
 IN a single parenthetical sentence our Evangelist 
 indicates a marked change in the mode of the 
 Divine ministry. Hitherto "His own city/' Capernaum, 
 has been a sort of centre, from which the lines of light 
 and blessing have radiated. Now, however, He leaves 
 Capernaum, and makes a circuit through the province 
 of Galilee, going through its cities and villages in a 
 systematic, and as the verb would imply, a leisurely 
 way, preaching the "good tidings of the kingdom of 
 God." Though no mention is made of them, we are 
 not to suppose that miracles were suspended; but 
 evidently they were set in the background, as secondary 
 things, the by-plays or " asides " of the Divine Teacher, 
 who now is intent upon delivering His message, the 
 last message, too, that they would hear from Him. 
 Accompanying Him, and forming an imposing demon- 
 stration, were His twelve disciples, together with 
 "many" women, who ministered unto them of their 
 substance, among whom were three prominent ones, 
 probably persons of position and influence — Mary of 
 Magdala, Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, 
 and Susanna, who had been healed by Jesus of 
 " evil spirits and infirmities " — which last word, in New 
 TVctnmOTit lanrua^e. is a svnonvra for nhysical weak- 
 
 IS 
 
226 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 ness and disorder. Of the particulars and results of 
 this mission we know nothing, unless we may see, 
 in the " great multitude " which followed and thronged 
 Jesus on His return, the harvest reaped from the 
 Galilean hills. Our Evangelist, at any rate, links them 
 together, as if the "great multitude" which now lines 
 the shore was, in part at least, the cloud of eager souls 
 which had been caught up and borne along on His 
 fervid speech, as the echoes of the kingdom went 
 resounding among the hills and vales of Galilee. 
 
 Returning to Capernaum, whither the crowds follow 
 Him, every city sending its contingent of curious or 
 conquered souls, Jesus, as St. Matthew and St. Mark 
 inform us, leaves the house, and seeks the open stretch 
 of shore, where from a boat — probably the familiar boat 
 of Simon — He addresses the multitudes, adopting now, 
 as His favourite mode of speech, the amplified parable. 
 It is probable that He had observed on the part of 
 His disciples an undue elation of spirit. Reading the 
 crowds numerically, and not discerning the different 
 motives which had brought them together, their eyes 
 deceived them. They imagined that these eager multi- 
 tudes were but a wave-sheaf of the harvest already 
 ripe, which only waited their gathering-in. But it is 
 not so ; and Jesus sifts and winnows His audience, 
 to show His disciples that the apparent is not always 
 the real, and that between the hearers of the word 
 and the doers there will ever be a wide margin ot 
 disappointment and comparative failure. The harvest, 
 in God's husbandry, as in man's, does not depend 
 altogether upon the quality of the seed or the faithful- 
 ness of the sower, but upon the nature of the soil on 
 which it falls. 
 
 As the sow 7 er went forth to sow his seed, "some fell 
 
viii. 1-18.] THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 227 
 
 by the way-side, and it was trodden under-foot, and the 
 birds of the heaven devoured it." In his carefulness 
 to cover all his ground, the sower had gone close up 
 to the boundary, and some of the seed had fallen on 
 the edge of the bare and trampled path, where it lay 
 homeless and exposed. It was in contact with the 
 earth, but it was a mechanical, and not a vital touch. 
 There was no correspondence, no communion between 
 them. Instead of welcoming and nourishing the seed, 
 it held it aloof, in a cold, repelling way. Had the soil 
 been sympathetic and receptive, it held within itself 
 all the elements of growth. Touched by the subtle 
 life that was hidden within the seed, the dead earth 
 itself had lived, growing up into blades of promise, 
 and from the full ear throwing itself forward into the 
 future years. But the earth was hard and unreceptive ; 
 its possibilities of blessing were locked up and buried 
 beneath a crust of trampled soil that was callous and 
 unresponsive as the rock itself. And so the seed lay 
 unwelcomed and alone, and the life which the warm 
 touch of earth would have loosened and set free 
 remained within its husk as a dead thing, without voice 
 or hearing. There was nothing else for it but to be 
 ground into dust by the passing foot or to be picked 
 up by the foraging birds. 
 
 The parable was at once a prophecy and an experi- 
 ence. Forming a part of the crowd which surrounded 
 Jesus was an outer ring of hearers who came but to 
 criticize and to cavil. They had no desire to be 
 taught — at any rate by such a teacher. They were 
 themselves the " knowing ones," the learned, and they 
 looked with suspicion and ill-concealed scorn upon 
 the youthful Nazarene. Turning upon the Speaker 
 a cold, questioning glance, or exchanging signals with 
 
228 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 one another, they were evidently hostile to Jesus, 
 listening, it is true, but with a feline alertness, hoping 
 to entrap the sweet Singer in His speech. Upon 
 these, and such as these, the word of God, even when 
 spoken by the Divine Son, made no impression. It 
 was a speaking to the rocks, with no other result than 
 the awaking of a few echoes of mockery and banter. 
 
 The experience is still true. Among those who 
 frequent the house of God are many whose worship is 
 a cold, conventional thing. Drawn thither by custom, 
 by the social instinct, or by the love of change, they 
 pass within the gates of the Lord's house, ostensibly 
 to worship. But they are insincere, indifferent ; they 
 bring their body, and deposit it in the accustomed pew, 
 but they might as well have put there a bag of ashes 
 or an automaton of brass. Their mind is not here, 
 and the cold, stolid features, unlighted by any passing 
 gleam, tell too surely of a vacancy or vagrancy of 
 thought. And even while the lips are throwing off 
 mechanically Jubilates and Te Deutns their heart is 
 "far from Me," chasing some phantom "will o* the 
 wisp," or dreaming their dreams of pleasure, gain, and 
 ease. The worship of God they themselves would 
 call it, but God does not recognize it. He calls their 
 prayers a weariness, their incense an abomination. 
 Theirs is but a worship of Self, as, setting up their 
 image of clay, they summon earth's musicians to play 
 their sweet airs about it. God, with them, is set back, 
 ignored, proscribed. The personal "I" is writ so 
 large, and is so all-pervasive, that there is no room 
 for the I AM. Living for earth, all the fibres of their 
 being growing downwards towards it, heaven is not 
 even a cloud drifting across their distant vision ; it is 
 an empty space, a vacancy. To the voices of earth 
 
Tiii. i-iS.] THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 229 
 
 their ears are keenly sensitive ; its very whispers thrill 
 them with new excitements ; but to the voices of 
 Heaven they are deaf; the still, small voice is all 
 unheard, and even the thunders of God are so muffled 
 as to be unrecognized and scarcely audible. And so 
 the word of God falls upon their ears in vain. It drops 
 upon a soil that is impervious and antipathetic, a 
 heart which knows no penitence, and a life whose 
 fancied goodness has no room for mercy, or which finds 
 such complete satisfaction in the gains of unrighteous- 
 ness or the pleasures of sin that it is purposely and 
 persistently deaf to all higher, holier voices. Ulysses 
 filled his ears with wax, lest he should yield himself 
 up to the enchantments of the sirens. The fable is 
 true, even when read in reversed lines ; for when 
 Virtue, Purity, and Faith invite men to their resting- 
 place, calling them to the Islands of the Blessed, and to 
 the Paradise of God, they charm in vain. Deafening 
 their ears, and not deigning to give a passing thought 
 to the higher call, men drift past the heaven which 
 might have been theirs, until these holier voices are 
 silenced by the awful distance. 
 
 That the word of God is inoperative here is through 
 no fault, either of the seed or of the sower. That 
 word is still " quick and powerful," but it is sterile, 
 because it finds nothing on which it may grow. It is 
 not " understood," as Jesus Himself explains. It falls 
 upon the outward ear alone, and there only as unmean- 
 ing sound, like the accents of some unknown tongue. 
 And so the wicked one easily takes away the word from 
 their heart ; for, as the preposition itself implies, that 
 word had not fallen into the heart; it was lying on it in a 
 superficial way, like the seed cast upon the trampled path. 
 
 Is there, then, no hope for these way-side hearers ? 
 
230 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 and sparing our strength and toil, shall we leave them 
 for soils more promising ? By no means. The fallow 
 ground may be broken up; the ploughshare can loosen 
 the hardened, unproductive earth. Pulverized by the 
 teeth of the harrow or the teeth of the frost, the barren 
 track itself disappears ; it passes up into the advanced 
 classes, giving back the seed with which it is now 
 entrusted, with a thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold increase. 
 And this is true in the higher husbandry, in which 
 we are permitted to be " God's fellow-workers." The 
 heart which to-day is indifferent or repellent, to- 
 morrow, chastened by sickness or torn by the plough- 
 share of some keen grief, may hail with eagerness the 
 message it rejected and even scorned before. Amid 
 the penury and shame of the far country, the father's 
 house, from which he had wantonly turned, now comes 
 to the prodigal like a sweet dream, and even its bread 
 has all the aroma and sweetness of ambrosial food. 
 No matter how disappointing the soil, we are to do 
 our duty, which is to " sow beside all waters ; n nor 
 should any calculations of imaginary productiveness 
 make us slack our hand or cast away our hope. When 
 the Spirit is poured out from on high, even " the 
 wilderness becomes as a fruitful field," and death itself 
 becomes instinct with life. 
 
 " And other fell on the rock ; and as soon as it grew 
 it withered away, because it had no moisture." Here 
 is a second quality of soil. It is not, however, a soil 
 that is weakened by an intermixture of gravel or of 
 stones, but rather a soil that is thinly spread upon the 
 rock. It is good soil as far as it goes, but it is shallow. 
 It receives the seed gladly, as if that were its one 
 mission, as indeed it is; it gives the seed a hiding- 
 place, throwing over it a mantle of earth, so that the 
 
viii. i-iS.] THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 23! 
 
 birds shall not devour it. It lays its warm touch upon 
 the enveloping husk, as the Master once laid His 
 finger upon the bier, and to the imprisoned life which 
 was within it said, " Arise and multiply. Pass up 
 into the sunlight, and give God's children bread." And 
 the seed responds, obeys. The emerging life throws 
 out its two wings — one downwards, as its roots clasp 
 the soil; one upwards, as the blade, pushing the clods 
 aside, makes for the light and the heavens that are 
 above it. "Surely," we should say, if we read the 
 future from the present merely, " the hundredfold is 
 here. Pull down your barns and build greater, for 
 never was seed received more kindly, never were the be- 
 ginnings of life more auspicious, and never was promise 
 so great." Ah that the promise should so soon be a 
 disappointment, and the forecast be so soon belied ! The 
 soil has no depth. It is simply a thin covering spread 
 over the rock. It offers no room for growth. The 
 life it nourishes can be nothing more than an ephemeral 
 life, which owns but a to-day, whose " to-morrow " will 
 be in the oven of a burning heat. The growth is entirely 
 superficial, for its roots come directly to the hard, 
 impenetrable rock, which, yielding no support, but cut- 
 ting off all supplies from the unseen reservoirs beneath, 
 turns back the incipient life all starved and shrunken. 
 The result is a sudden withering and decay. A found- 
 ling, left, not by some iron gate which the touch of 
 mercy might open, but by a dead wall of cold, unrespon- 
 sive stone, the plant throws up its arms into the air, 
 in its vain struggle for life, and then wilts and droops, 
 lying at last, a dead and shrivelled thing, on the dry 
 bosom of the earth which had given it its untimely birth. 
 Such, says Jesus, are many who hear the word. 
 Unlike those by the way-side, these do not reject it. 
 
232 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 They listen, bending toward that word with attentive 
 ears and eager hearts. Nay, they receive it with joy ; 
 it strikes upon their soul with the music of a new 
 evangel. But the work is not thorough ; it is super- 
 ficial, external. They "have no root" in a deep and 
 settled conviction, only a green blade of profession 
 and of mock promise, and when the testing-time comes, 
 as it comes to all, " the time of temptation/' they fall 
 away, or they " stand off," as the verb might be literally 
 rendered. 
 
 In this second class we must place a large proportion 
 of those who heard and who followed Jesus. There 
 was something attractive about His manner and about 
 His message. Again and again we read how they 
 "pressed upon Him " to hear His words, the multitude 
 hanging on His lips as the bees will cluster upon a 
 honeyed leaf. Thousands upon thousands thus came 
 within the spell of His voice, now wondering at His 
 gracious words, and now stunned with astonishment, 
 as they marked the authority with which He spoke, 
 the compressed thunder that was in His tones. But 
 in how many cases are we forced to admit the interest 
 to be but momentary ! It was with many — shall we 
 say with most ? — merely a passing excitement, the 
 effervescence of personal contact. The words of Jesus 
 came " as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant 
 voice," and for the moment the hearts of the multitudes 
 were set vibrating in responsive harmonies. But the 
 music ceased when the Singer was absent. The impres- 
 sions were not permanent, and even the emotions 
 had soon passed away, almost from memory. St. John 
 speaks of one sifting in Galilee when "many of His 
 disciples went back, and walked no more with Him " 
 (vi. 66), showing that with them at least it was an 
 
viii. i-i8.] THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 233 
 
 attach-ment rather than an attachment that bound them 
 to Himself. The bond of union was the hope of some 
 personal gain, rather than the bond of a pure and deep 
 affection. And so directly He speaks of His approach- 
 ing death, of His " flesh and blood " which He shall 
 give them to eat and to drink, like an icy breath from 
 the north, those words chill their devotion, turning their 
 zeal and ardour into a cold indifference, if not into an 
 open hostility. And this same winnowing of Galilee 
 is repeated in Judcea. We read of multitudes who 
 escorted Jesus down the Mount of Olives, strewing His 
 path with garments, giving Him a royal welcome to the 
 "city of the Great King." But how soon a change 
 11 came o'er the spirit of their dream " ! how soon 
 the hosannahs died away ! As a hawk in the sky will 
 still in a moment the warbling of the birds, i.? the 
 uplifted cross threw its cold shadow upon their hearts, 
 drowning the brief hosannahs in a strange silence. 
 The cross was the fan in the Master's hand, with 
 which He " throughly purged His floor," separating the 
 true from the false. It blew away into the deep Valley 
 of Oblivion the chaff, the dead superficialities, the barren 
 yawns, leaving as the residuum of the sifted multitudes 
 a mere handful of a hundred and twenty names. 
 
 These pro tern, believers are indigenous to every soil. 
 There never is a great movement afloat — philanthropic, 
 political or spiritual — but numberless smaller craft are 
 lifted up on its swell. For a moment they seem instinct 
 with life, but having no propelling power in themselves, 
 they drop behind, soon to be embedded in the mire. 
 And especially is this true in the region of spiritual 
 dynamics. In all so-called " revivals " of religion, when 
 the Church rejoices in a deepened and quickened life, 
 when a cooling zeal has been rewarmed at the heavenly 
 
234 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 fires, and converts are multiplied, in the accessions 
 which follow almost invariably will be found a propor- 
 tion of what we may call " casuals." We cannot say 
 they are counterfeits, for the work, as far as it goes, 
 seems real, and the change, both in their thought and 
 life, is clearly marked. But they are unstable souls, 
 prone to drifting, their direction given in the main by 
 the set of the current in which they happen to be. And 
 so when they reach the point — which all must reach 
 sooner or later — where two seas meet, the cross current 
 of enticement and temptation bears hard upon them, and 
 they make shipwreck of faith. Others, again, are led 
 by impulse. Religion with them is mainly a matter of 
 feeling. Overlooking the fact that the emotions are 
 easily stirred, that they respond to the passing breath 
 just as the sea ripples to the breeze, they substitute 
 emotion for conviction, feeling for faith. But these have 
 no foundation, no root, no independent life, and when 
 the excitements on which they feed are withdrawn, 
 when the emotion subsides, the high tide of fervour 
 falling back to its mean sea-level, they lose heart and 
 hope. They are even ready to pity themselves as the 
 objects of an illusion. But the illusion was one of their 
 own making. They set the pleasant before the right, 
 delight before duty, comfort before Christ, and instead 
 of finding their heaven in doing the w 7 ill of God, no 
 matter what the emotions, they sought their heaven in 
 their own personal happiness, and so they missed both. 
 11 They endure for a while." And of how many are 
 these words true ! Verily we must not count our fruits 
 from the blossoms of spring, nor must we reckon our 
 harvest in that easy, hopeful way of multiplying each 
 seed, or even each blade, by the hundredfold, for the 
 blade may be only a short-lived blade and nothing more. 
 
viii. 1-18.] THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 235 
 
 "And other fell amidst the thorns ; and the thorns 
 grew with it, and choked it." Here is a third quality 
 of soil in the ascending series. In the first, the trampled 
 path, life was not possible ; the seed could find not the 
 least response. In the second there was life. The 
 thinly sprinkled soil gave the seed a home, a rooting ; 
 but lacking depth of earth and the necessary moisture, 
 the life was precarious, ephemeral. It died away in the 
 blade, and never reached its fruitage. Now, however, 
 we have a deeper, richer soil, with an abundance of 
 vitality, one capable of sustaining an exuberant life. 
 But it is not clean ; it is already thickly sown with 
 thorns, and the two growths running up side by side, 
 the hardier gets the master}'. And though the corn- 
 life struggles up into the ear, bearing a sort of fruit, it 
 is a grain that is dwarfed and shrivelled, a mere husk 
 and shell, which no leaven can transmute into bread. 
 It brings forth fruit, as the exposition of the parable 
 indicates, but it has not strength to complete its task ; 
 it dees not ripen it, bringing the fruit "to perfection." 
 
 Such, says Jesus, is another and a large class of 
 hearers. They are naturally capable of doing great 
 things. Possessing strong wills, and a large amount 
 of energy, they are just the lives to be fruitful, impres- 
 sing themselves upon others, and so throwing their 
 manifold influence down into the future. But they do 
 not, and for the simple reason that they do not give to 
 the word a whole heart. Their attentions and energies 
 are divided. Instead of seeking " first the kingdom of 
 God," making that the supreme quest of life, it is with 
 them but one of many things to be desired and sought. 
 Chief among the hindrances to a perfected growth and 
 fruitfulness, Jesus mentions three; namely, cares, riches, 
 and pleasures. By the " cares of life " we must under- 
 
236 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 stand — interpreting the word by its related word in 
 Matthew vi. 34 — the anxieties of life. It is the anxious 
 thought, mainly about the " to-morrow," which presses 
 upon the heart as a sore and constant burden. It is 
 the fearfulness and unrest of soul which gloom the 
 spirit and shroud the life, making the Divine peace 
 itself a fret and worry. And how many Christians find 
 this to be the normal experience ! They love God, they 
 seek to serve Him ; but they are weighted and weary. 
 Instead of having the hopeful, buoyant spirit which 
 rises to the crest of passing waves, it is a heart de- 
 pressed and sad, living in the deeps. And so the 
 brightness of their life is dimmed ; they walk not " in 
 the light, as He is in the light," but beneath a sky fre- 
 quently overcast, their days bringing only "a little 
 glooming light, much like a shade." And so their 
 spiritual life is stunted, their usefulness impaired. In- 
 stead of having a heart " at leisure from itself," they 
 are engrossed with their own unsatisfactory experiences. 
 Instead of looking upwards to the heavens which are 
 their own, or outwards upon the crying needs of earth, 
 they look inward with frequent and morbid introspec- 
 tion ; and instead of lending a hand to the fallen, thai 
 a brotherly touch might help them to rise, their hands 
 find full employment in steadying the world, or worlds, 
 of care which, Atlas-like, they are doomed to carry. 
 Self-doomed, we should have said ; for the Divine Voice 
 invites us to cast " all our anxiety upon Him," assuring 
 us that He careth for us, an assurance and an invitation 
 which make our anxieties, the fret and fever of life, 
 altogether superfluous. 
 
 Exactly the same effect of making the spiritual life 
 incomplete, and so unproductive, is caused by riches 
 and pleasures, or, as we might render the expression, 
 
viii. i-iS] THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 737 
 
 by the pursuit after riches or after pleasure. Not that 
 the Scriptures condemn wealth in itself. It is, perse, of 
 a neutral character, whether a blessing or a bane de- 
 pends on how it is earned and how it is held. Nor do 
 the Scriptures condemn legitimate modes and measures 
 of business ; they condemn waste and indolence, but 
 they commend industry, diligence, thrift. But the evil 
 is in making wealth the chief aim of life. It is decep- 
 tive, promising satisfaction which it never gives, creating 
 a thirst which it is powerless to slake, until the desire, 
 ever more greedy and clamorous, grows into a " love 
 of money," a pure worship of Mammon. Religion and 
 business may well go together, for God has joined them 
 in one. Each keeping its proper place, religion first 
 and most, and business a far-off second, together they 
 are the centrifugal and centripetal forces that keep the 
 life revolving steadily around its Divine centre. But 
 let the positions be reversed ; let business be the first, 
 chief thought, let religion sink down to some second 
 or third place, and the life swings farther and farther 
 from its pivotal centre, into wildernesses of dearth 
 and cold. To give due thought to earthly things 
 is right ; nay, we may give all diligence to make our 
 earthly, as well as our heavenly calling sure; but when 
 business gets imperious in its demands, swallowing up 
 all our thought and energy, leaving no time for spiritual 
 exercises or for personal service for Christ, then the 
 religious life declines. Crowded back into the chance 
 corners, with nothing left it but the brief interstices of 
 a busy life, religion can do little more than maintain 
 a profession ; its helpfulness is, in the main, remitted 
 to the past, and its fruitfulness is postponed to that 
 uncertain nowhere of the Greek calends. 
 
 The same is true with regard to the pleasures of life. 
 
238 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 The word u pleasure " is a somewhat infrequent word 
 in the New Testament, and generally it is used of the 
 lower, sensual pleasures. We are not obliged, how- 
 ever, to give the word its lowest meaning ; indeed, the 
 analog} 7 of the parable would scarcely allow such an 
 interpretation. Sinful pleasure would net check growth ; 
 it would simply prevent it, making a spiritual life 
 impossible. We must therefore interpret the " plea- 
 sures" which retard the upward growth, and render it 
 infertile, as the lawful pleasures of life, such as the 
 delights of the eye and ear, the gratification of the 
 tastes, the enjoyments of domestic or social life. Per- 
 fectly innocent and pure in themselves, purposely 
 designed for our enjoyment, as St. Paul plainly inti- 
 mates (1 Tim. vi. 17), they are pleasures which w r e have 
 no right to treat with the stoic's disdain, nor with the 
 ascetic's aversion. But the snare is in permitting these 
 desires to step out of their proper place, in allowing 
 them to have a controlling influence. As servants their 
 ministry is helpful and benign ; but if we make them 
 "lords," then, like "the ill uses of a life," we find it 
 difficult to put them down ; they rather put us down, 
 making us their thrall. To please God should be the 
 one absorbing pursuit and passion of life, and wholly 
 bent on this, if other pure enjoyments come in our way 
 we may receive them thankfully. But if we make our 
 personal gratification the aim, if our thoughts and plans 
 are set on this rather than upon the pleasing of God, 
 then our spiritual life is enfeebled and stifled, and the 
 fruit we should bear shrivels up into chaff. Then we 
 become selfish and self-willed, and the pure pleasures 
 of life, which like Vestal Virgins minister within the 
 temple of God, leading us ever to Him, turn round 
 to burn perpetual incense before our enlarged and 
 
viii. 1-18.] THE PARABLE OF THE SOIVER. 239 
 
 exalted Self. He who stops to confer with flesh 
 and blood, who is ever consulting his own likes and 
 leanings, can never be an apost'e to others. 
 
 "And other fell into the good ground, and grew, 
 and brought forth fruit a hundredfold." Here is the 
 highest quality of soil. Not hard, like the trampled 
 path, nor shallow, like the covering of the rock, not 
 preoccupied with the roots of other growths, this is 
 mellow, deep, clean, and rich. The seed falls, not " by," 
 or "in," or "among," but "into" it, while seed and 
 soil together grow up in an affluence of life, and passing 
 through the blade-age and the earing, it ripens into a 
 harvest of a hundredfold. Such, says Jesus, are they 
 who, in an honest and good heart, having heard the 
 word, hold it fast, and bring forth fruit with patience. 
 Here, then, we reach the germ of the parable, the secret 
 of fruitfulness, The one difference between the saint 
 and the sinner, between the hundredfold hearer and 
 him whose life is spent in throwing out promises ot 
 a harvest which never ripens, is their different attitude 
 towards the word of God. In the one case that word 
 is rejected altogether, or it is a concept of the mind 
 alone, an aurora of the Arctic night, distant and cold, 
 which some mistake for the dawn of a new day. In 
 the other the word passes through the mind into the 
 deepest heart ; it conquers and rules the whole being ; 
 it becomes a part of one's very self, the soul of the soul. 
 " Thy word have I hid in my heart," said the Psalmist, 
 and he who puts the Divine word there, back of all 
 earthly and selfish voices, letting that Divine Voice fill 
 up that most sacred temple of the heart, will make his 
 outer life both beautiful and fruitful. He will walk the 
 earth as one of God's seers, ever beholding Him who 
 is invisible, speaking by life or lips in heavenly tones, 
 
240 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 and by his own steadfast, upward gaze lifting the 
 hearts and thoughts of men " above the world's uncer- 
 tain haze." Such is the Divine law of life ; the measure 
 of our faith is the measure of our fruitfulness. If we 
 but half believe in the promises of God or in the 
 eternal realities, then the sinews of our soul are 
 houghed, and there comes over us the sad paralysis 
 of doubt. How can we bring forth fruit except we 
 abide in Him ? and how can we abide in Him but by 
 letting His words abide in us ? But having His words 
 abiding in us, then His peace, His joy, His life are ours, 
 and we, who without Him are poor, dead things, now 
 become strong in His infinite strength, and fruitful 
 with a Divine fruitfulness ; and to our lives, which 
 were all barren and dead, will men come for the words 
 that lt help and heal," while the Master Himself gathers 
 from them His thirty, sixty, or hundredfold, the fruitage 
 of a whole-hearted, patient faith. 
 
 Let us take heed, therefore, how we hear, for on the 
 character of the hearing depends the character of the 
 life. Nor is the truth given us for ourselves alone ; it 
 is given that it may become incarnate in us, so that 
 others may see and feel the truth that is in us, even as 
 men cannot help seeing the light which is manifest. 
 
 And so the parable closes with the account of the 
 visit of His mother and brethren, who came, as St. 
 Matthew informs us, " to take Him home ; " and when 
 the message was passed on to Him that His mother 
 and His brethren wished to see Him, this was His 
 remarkable answer, claiming relationship with all 
 whose hearts vibrate to the same " word : " " My 
 mother and My brethren are those which hear the 
 word of God, and do it." It is the secret of the 
 Divine life on earth ; they hear, and they do. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 IN considering the words of Jesus, if we may not be 
 able to measure their depth or to scale their height, 
 we can with absolute certainty discover their drift, and 
 see in what direction they move, and we shall find 
 that their orbit is an ellipse. Moving around the two 
 centres, sin and salvation, they describe what is not a 
 geometric figure, but a glorious reality, u the kingdom 
 of God." It is not unlikely that the expression was one 
 of the current phrases of the times, a golden casket, 
 holding within it the dream of a restored Hebraism ; 
 for we find, without any collusion or rehearsal of parts, 
 the Baptist making use of the identical words in his 
 inaugural address, while it is certain the disciples 
 themselves so misunderstood the thought of their 
 Master as to refer His "kingdom" to that narrow 
 realm of Hebrew sympathies and hopes. Nor did they 
 see their error until, in the light of Pentecostal flames, 
 their own dream disappeared, and the new kingdom, 
 opening out like a receding sky, embraced a world 
 within its folds. That Jesus adopted the phrase, liable 
 to misconstruction as it was, and that He used it so 
 repeatedly, making it the centre of so many parables 
 and discourses, shows how completely the kingdom 
 of God possessed both His mind and heart. Indeea, 
 
 16 
 
24a THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 so accustomed were His thoughts and words to flow 
 in this direction that even the Valley of Death, " lying 
 darkly between " His two lives, could not alter their 
 course, or turn His thoughts out of their familiar 
 channel ; and as we find the Christ back of the cross 
 and tomb, amid the resurrection glories, we hear Him 
 speaking still of " the things pertaining to the kingdom 
 of God." 
 
 It will be observed that Jesus uses the two expres- 
 sions " the kingdom of God " and " the kingdom of 
 heaven" interchangeably. But in what sense is it 
 the " kingdom of heaven " ? Does it mean that the 
 celestial realm will so far extend its bounds as to 
 embrace our outlying and low-lying world ? Not exactly* 
 for the conditions of the two realms are so diverse. 
 The one is the perfected, the visible kingdom, where 
 the throne is set, and the King Himself is manifest, 
 its citizens, angels, heavenly intelligences, and saints 
 now freed from the cumbering clay of mortality, and 
 for ever safe from the solicitations of evil. This New 
 Jerusalem does not come down to earth, except in the 
 vision of the seer, as it were in a shadow. And yet 
 the two kingdoms are in close correspondence, after all ; 
 for what is the kingdom of God in heaven but His 
 eternal rule over the spirits of the redeemed and of 
 the unredeemed ? what are the harmonies of heaven 
 but the harmonies of surrendered wills, as, without 
 any hesitation or discord, they strike in with the Divine 
 Will in absolute precision ? To this extent, then, at 
 least, heaven may project itself upon earth ; the spirits 
 of men not yet made perfect may be in subjection to 
 the Supreme Spirit ; the separate wills of a redeemed 
 humanity, striking in with the Divine Will, may swell 
 the heavenly harmonies with their earthly music. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 243 
 
 And so Jesus speaks of this kingdom as being 
 " within you." As if He said, u You are looking in 
 the wrong direction. You expect the kingdom of God 
 to be set up around you, with its visible symbols of flags 
 and coins, on which is the image of some new Csesar. 
 You are mistaken. The kingdom, like its King, is 
 unseen ; it seeks, not countries, but consciences ; its 
 realm is in the heart, in the great interior of the soul." 
 And is not this the reason why it is called, with such 
 emphatic repetition, "the kingdom," as if it were, if 
 not the only, at any rate the highest kingdom of God 
 on earth ? We speak of a kingdom of Nature, and 
 who will know its secrets as He who was both Nature's 
 child and Nature's Lord ? And how far-reaching a 
 realm is that ! from the motes that swim in the air to 
 the most distant stars, which themselves are but the 
 gateway to the unseen Beyond ! What forces are 
 here, forces of chemical affinities and repulsions, of 
 gravitation and of life ! What successions and trans- 
 formations can Nature show ! what infinite varieties 
 of substance, form, and colour ! what a realm of 
 harmony and peace, with no irruptions of discordant 
 elements 1 Surely one would think, if God has a 
 kingdom upon earth, this kingdom of Nature is it. 
 But no ; Jesus does not often refer to that, except as 
 He makes Nature speak in His parables, or as He 
 uses the sparrows, the grass, and the lilies as so many 
 lenses through which our weak human vision may see 
 God. The kingdom of God on earth is as much 
 higher than the kingdom of Nature as spirit is above 
 matter, as love is more and greater than power. 
 
 We said just now how completely the thought of 
 u the kingdom " possessed the mind and heart of Jesus. 
 We might go one step farther, and say how completely 
 
244 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE, 
 
 Jesus identified Himself with that kingdom. He puts 
 Himself in its pivotal centre, with all possible natural- 
 ness, and with an ease that assumption cannot feign 
 He gathers up its royalties and draws them around 
 His own Person. He speaks of it as "My kingdom;" 
 and this, not alone in familiar discourse with His 
 disciples, but when face to face with the representative 
 of earth's greatest power. Nor is the personal pronoun 
 some chance word, used in a far-off, accommodated 
 sense ; it is the crucial word of the sentence, under- 
 scored and emphasized by a threefold repetition ; it is 
 the word He will not strike out, nor recall, even to 
 save Himself from the cross. He never speaks of the 
 kingdom but even His enemies acknowledge the 
 " authority " that rings in His tones, the authority 
 of conscious power, as well as of perfect knowledge. 
 When His ministry is drawing to a close He says to 
 Peter, " I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom 
 of heaven;" which language may be understood as 
 the official designation of the Apostle Peter to a position 
 of pre-eminence in the Church, as its first leader. But 
 whatever it may mean, it shows that the keys of the 
 kingdom are His ; He can bestow them on whom He 
 will. The kingdom of heaven is not a realm in which 
 authority and honours move upwards from below, the 
 blossoming of " the people's will ; " it is an absolute 
 monarchy, an autocracy, and Jesus Himself is here 
 King supreme, His will swaying the lesser wills of 
 men, and rearranging their positions, as the angel had 
 foretold : " He shall reign over the house of David 
 for ever, and of His kingdom there shall be no end." 
 Given Him of the Father it is (xxii. 29 ; i. 32), but the 
 kingdom is His, not either as a metaphor, but really, 
 absolutely, inalienably; nor is there admittance within 
 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 245 
 
 that kingdom but by Him who is the Way, as He is 
 the Life. We enter into the kingdom, or the king- 
 dom enters into us, as we find, and then crown the 
 King, as we sanctify in our hearts " Christ as Lord " 
 (1 Pet. iii. 15). 
 
 This brings us to the question of citizenship, the 
 conditions and demands of the kingdom ; and here we 
 see how far this new dynasty is removed from the 
 kingdoms of this world. They deal with mankind in 
 groups; they look at birth, not character; and their 
 bounds are well defined by rivers, mountains, seas, or 
 by accurately surveyed lines. The kingdom of heaven, 
 on the other hand, dispenses with all space-limits, all 
 physical configurations, and regards mankind as one 
 group, a unity, a lapsed but a redeemed world. But 
 while opening its gates and offering its privileges to all 
 alike, irrespective of class or circumstance, it is most 
 eclective in its requirements, and most rigid in the 
 application of its test, its one test of character. Indeed, 
 the laws of the heavenly kingdom are a complete 
 reversal of the lines of worldly policy. Take, for 
 instance, the two estimates of wealth, and see how 
 different the position it occupies in the two societies. 
 The world makes wealth its summiim bonum; or if not 
 exactly in itself the highest good, in commercial values 
 it is equivalent to the highest good, which is position. 
 Gold is all-powerful, the goal of man's vain ambitions, 
 the panacea of earthly ill. Men chase it in hot, feverish 
 haste, trampling upon each other in the mad scramble, 
 and worshipping it in a blind idolatry. But where is 
 wealth in the new kingdom ? The world's first be- 
 comes the last. It has no purchasing-power here ; its 
 golden key cannot open the least of these heavenly 
 gates. Jesus sets it back, far back, in His estimate of 
 
246 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 the good. He speaks of it as if it were an encumbrance, 
 a dead weight, that must be lifted, and that handicaps 
 the heavenly athlete. " How hardly," said Jesus, when 
 the rich ruler turned away "very sorrowful," "shall 
 they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God !" 
 (xviii. 24) ; and then, by way of illustration, He shows 
 us the picture of the camel passing through the so- 
 called "needle's eye" of an Eastern door. He does 
 not say that such a thing is impossible, for the camel 
 could pass through the " needle's eye," but it must first 
 kneel down and be stripped of all its baggage, before it 
 can pass the narrow door, within the larger, but now 
 closed gate. Wealth may have its uses, and noble uses 
 too, within the kingdom — for it is somewhat remark- 
 able how the faith of the two rich disciples shone out 
 the brightest, when the faith of the rest suffered a 
 temporary eclipse from the passing cross — but he who 
 possesses it must be as if he possessed it not. He 
 must not regard it as his own, but as talents given him 
 in trust by his Lord, their image and superscription 
 being that of the Invisible King. 
 
 Again, Jesus sets down vacillation, hesitancy, as a 
 disqualification for citizenship in His kingdom. At 
 the close of His Galilean ministry our Evangelist intro- 
 duces us to a group of embryo disciples. The first of 
 the three says, " Lord, I will follow Thee whithersoever 
 Thou goest" (ix. 57). Bold words they were, and 
 doubtless well meant, but it was the language of a 
 passing impulse, rather than of a settled conviction; 
 it was the coruscation of a glowing, ardent tempera- 
 ment. He had not counted the cost. The large word 
 "whithersoever" might, indeed, easily be spoken, but it 
 held within it a Gethsemane and a Calvary, paths of 
 sorrow, shame, and death he was not prepared to face. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF COD. 247 
 
 And so Jesus neither welcomed nor dismissed him, 
 but opening out one part of his "whithersoever," He 
 gave it back to him in the words, "The foxes have 
 holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests ; but the 
 Son of man hath not where to lay His head." The 
 second responds to the " Follow Me " of Christ with the 
 request that he might be allowed first to go and bury 
 his father. It was a most natural request, but parti- 
 cipation in these funeral rites would entail a ceremonial 
 unclean ness of seven days, by which time Jesus would 
 be far away. Besides, Jesus must teach him, and the 
 ages after him, that His claims were paramount; that 
 when He commands obedience must be instant and 
 absolute, with no interventions, no postponement. 
 Jesus replies to him in that enigmatical way of His, 
 "Leave the dead to bury their own dead: but go thou 
 and publish abroad the kingdom of God ; " indicating 
 that this supreme crisis of his life is virtually a passing 
 from death to life, a " resurrection from earth to things 
 above." The last in this group of three volunteers his 
 pledge, " I will follow Thee, Lord ; but first suffer me 
 to bid farewell to them that are at my house" (ix. 61) ; 
 but to him Jesus replies, mournfully and sorrowfully, 
 " No man, having put his hand to the plough, and look- 
 ing back, is fit for the kingdom of God" (ix. 62). 
 Why does Jesus treat these two candidates so differ- 
 ently ? They both say, " I will follow Thee," the one 
 in word, the other by implication ; they both request a 
 little time for what they regard a filial duty ; why, then, 
 be treated so differently, the one thrust forward to a 
 still higher service, commissioned to preach the king- 
 dom, and afterwards, if we may accept the tradition 
 that he was Philip the Evangelist, passing up into the 
 diaconate ; the other, unwelcomed and uncommissioned, 
 
248 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 but disapproved as " not fit for the kingdom n ? Why 
 there should be this wide divergence between the two 
 lives we cannot see, either from their manner or their 
 words. It must have been a difference in the moral 
 attitude of the two men, and which He who heard 
 thoughts and read motives detected at once. In the 
 case of the former there was the fixed, determined 
 resolve, which the bier of a dead father might hold 
 back a little, but which it could not break or bend. 
 Put Jesus saw in the other a double-minded soul, whose 
 feet and heart moved in diverse, opposite ways, who 
 gave, not his whole, but a very partial, self to his work ; 
 and this halting, wavering one He dismissed with the 
 words of forecasted doom, " Not fit for the kingdom 
 of God." 
 
 It is a hard saying, with a seeming severity about it ; 
 but is it not a truth universal and eternal ? Are any 
 kingdoms, either of knowledge or power, won and held 
 by the irresolute and wavering? Like the stricken 
 men of Sodom, they weary themselves to find the door 
 of the kingdom ; or if they do see the Beautiful Gates 
 of a better life, they sit with the lame man, outside, or 
 they linger on the steps, hearing the music indeed, but 
 hearing it from afar. It is a truth of both dispensations, 
 written in all the books; the Reubens who are "un- 
 stable as water " can never excel ; the elder born, in 
 the accident of years, they may be, but the birthright 
 passes by them, to be inherited and enjoyed by others. 
 
 But if the gates of the kingdom are irrevocably 
 closed against the half-hearted, the self-indulgent, and 
 the proud, there is a sesame to which they open gladly. 
 u Blessed are ye poor," so reads the first and great 
 Beatitude : " for yours is the kingdom of God " (vi. 20) ; 
 and beginning with this present realization, Jesus goes 
 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 249 
 
 on to speak of the strange contrasts and inversions the 
 perfected kingdom will show, when the weepers will 
 laugh, the hungry be full, and those who are despised 
 and persecuted uill rejoice in their exceeding great 
 reward. But who are the " poor " to whom the gates 
 of the kingdom are open so soon and so wide ? At 
 first sight it would appear as if we must give a literal 
 interpretation to the word, reading it in a worldly, 
 temporal sense ; but this is not necessary. Jesus was 
 now directly addressing His disciples (vi. 20), though, 
 doubtless, His words were intended to pass beyond 
 them, to those ever-enlarging circles of humanity who 
 in the after-years should press forward to hear Him. 
 But evidently the disciples were in no weeping mood 
 to-day ; they would be elated and joyful over the recent 
 miracles. Neither should we call them " poor," in the 
 worldly sense of that word, for most of them had been 
 called from honourable positions in society, while some 
 had even "hired servants" to wait upon and assist 
 them. Indeed, it was not the wont of Jesus to recognize 
 the class distinctions Society was so fond of drawing 
 and defining. He appraised men, not by their means, 
 but by the manhood which was in them ; and when He 
 found a nobility of soul — whether in the higher or the 
 lower walks of life it made no difference — He stepped 
 forward to recognize and to salute it. We must there- 
 fore give to these words of Jesus, as to so many others, 
 the deeper meaning, making the " blessed " of this 
 Beatitude, who are now welcomed to the opened gate 
 of the kingdom, the " poor in spirit," as, indeed, 
 St. Matthew writes it. 
 
 What this spirit-poverty is, Jesus Himself explains, 
 in a brief but wonderfully realistic parable. He draws 
 for us the picture of two men at their Temple devotions. 
 
250 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 The one, a Pharisee, stands erect, with head uplifted, 
 as if it were quite on a level with the heaven he was 
 addressing, and with supercilious pride he counts his 
 beads of rounded egotisms. He calls it a worship of 
 God, when it is but a worship of self. He inflates the 
 great " I," and then plays upon it, making it strike 
 sharp and loud, like the tom-tom of a heathen fetish. 
 Such is the man who fancies that he is rich toward 
 God, that he has need of nothing, not even of mercy, 
 when all the time he is utterly blind and miserably 
 poor. The other is a publican, and so presumably 
 rich. But how different his posture ! With heart 
 broken and contrite, self with him is a nothing, a 
 zero ; nay, in his lowly estimate it had become a minus 
 quantity, less than nothing, deserving only rebuke and 
 chastisement. Disclaiming any good, either inherent 
 or acquired, he puts the deep need and hunger of his 
 soul into one broken cry, " God be merciful to me a 
 sinner " (xviii. 13). Such are the two characters Jesus 
 portrays as standing by the gate of the kingdom, the 
 one proud in spirit, the other " poor in spirit ; " the 
 one throwing upon the heavens the shadow of his 
 magnified self, the other shrinking up into the pauper, 
 the nothing that he was. But Jesus tells us that he 
 was "justified," accepted, rather than the other. With 
 nought he could call his own, save his deep need and 
 his great sin, he finds an opened gate and a welcome 
 within the kingdom ; while the proud in spirit is sent 
 empty away, or carrying back only the tithed mint and 
 anise, and all the vain oblations Heaven could not 
 accept. 
 
 " Blessed " indeed are such " poor ; n for He giveth 
 grace unto the lowly, w T hile the proud He knoweth afar 
 off. The humble, the meek, these shall inherit the 
 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 251 
 
 earth, ay, and the heavens too, and they shall know 
 how true is the paradox, having nothing, yet possess- 
 ing all things. The fruit of the tree of life hangs low, 
 and he must stoop who would gather it. He who 
 would enter God's kingdom must first become "as a 
 little child," knowing nothing as yet, but longing to 
 know even the mysteries of the kingdom, and having 
 nothing but the plea of a great mercy and a great need. 
 And are they not "blessed" who are citizens of the 
 kingdom — with righteousness, peace, and joy all their 
 own, a peace which is perfect and Divine, and a joy 
 which no man taketh from them ? Are they not 
 blessed, thrice blessed, when the bright shadow of the 
 Throne covers all their earthly life, making its dark 
 places light, and weaving rainbows out of their very 
 tears? He who through the strait gate of repent- 
 ance passes within the kingdom finds it " the kingdom 
 of heaven " indeed, his earthly years the beginnings 
 of the heavenly life. 
 
 And now we touch a point Jesus ever loved to 
 illustrate and emphasize, the manner of the kingdom's 
 growth, as with ever-widening frontiers it sweeps out- 
 ward in its conquest of a world. It was a beautiful 
 dream of Hebrew prophecy that in the latter days the 
 kingdom of God, or the kingdom of the Messiah, 
 should overlap the bounds of human empires, and 
 ultimately cover the whole earth. Looking through her 
 kaleidoscope of ever-shifting but harmonious figures, 
 Prophecy was never weary of telling of the Golden 
 Age she saw in the far future, when the shadows 
 would lift, and a new Dawn, breaking out of Jerusalem, 
 would steal over the world. Even the Gentiles should 
 be drawn to its light, and kings to the brightness of 
 its rising; the seas should offer their abundance as 
 
252 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 a willing tribute, and the isles should wait for and 
 welcome its laws. Taking up into itself the petty 
 strifes and jealousies of men, the discords of earth 
 should cease; humanity should again become a unit, 
 restored and regenerate fellow-citizens of the new 
 kingdom, the kingdom which should have no end, no 
 boundaries either of space or time. 
 
 Such was the dream of Prophecy, the kingdom Jesus 
 sets Himself to found and realize upon earth. But 
 how? Disclaiming any rivalry with Pilate, or with 
 his imperial master, Jesus said, "My kingdom is not 
 of this world," so lifting it altogether out of the mould 
 in which earthly dynasties are cast. "This world" 
 uses force ; its kingdoms are won and held by metallic 
 processes, tinctures of iron and steel. In the kingdom 
 of God carnal weapons are cut of place; its only 
 forces are truth and love, and he who takes the sword 
 to advance this cause wounds but himself, after the 
 vain manner of Baal's priests. " This world " counts 
 heads or hands; the kingdom of God numbers its 
 citizens by hearts alone. " This world w believes in 
 pomp and show, in outward visibilities and symbols; 
 the kingdom of God ccmeth not " with observation ; " 
 its voices are gentle as a zephyr, its footsteps noiseless 
 as the coming of spring. If man had had the ordering 
 cf the kingdom he would have summoned to his aid 
 all kinds of portents and surprises; he would have 
 arranged processions of imposing events; but Jesus 
 likens the coming of the kingdom to a grain of mustard- 
 reed cast into a garden, or to a handful of leaven hid 
 in three saia of meal. The two parables, with minor 
 distinctions, are one in their import, the leading thought 
 common to both being the contrast between its ultimate 
 growth and the smallness and obscurity of its begin- 
 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 253 
 
 nings. In both the recreative force is a hidden force, 
 buried out of sight, in the soil or in the meal. In 
 both the force works outward from its centre, the 
 invisible becoming visible, the inner life assuming an 
 outer, external form. In both we see the touch of life 
 upon death ; for left to itself, the soil never would be 
 anything more than dead earth, as the meal would be 
 nothing more than dust, the broken ashes of a life 
 that was departed. In both there is extension by 
 assimilation, the leaven throwing itself out among the 
 particles of kindred meal, while the tree attracts to 
 itself the kindred elements of the soil. In both there 
 is the mediation of the human hand; but as if to show 
 that the kingdom offers equal privilege to male and 
 female, with like possibilities of service, the one parable 
 shows us the hand of a man, the other the hand of a 
 woman. In both there is a perfect work, a consum- 
 mation, the one parable showing us the whole mass 
 leavened, the other showing us the wide-spreading 
 tree, with the birds nesting in its branches. 
 
 Such, in outline, is the rise and progress of the 
 kingdom of God in the heart of the individual man, 
 and in the world ; for the human soul is the protoplasm, 
 the germ-cell, out of which this world-wide kingdom is 
 evolved. The mass is leavened only by the leavening 
 of the separate units. And how comes the kingdom 
 of God within the soul and life of man ? Not with 
 observation or supernatural portents, but silently as 
 the flashing forth of light. Thought, desire, purpose, 
 prayer — these are the wheels of the chariot in which 
 the Lord comes to His temple, the King into His 
 kingdom. And when the kingdom of God is set up 
 11 within you " the outer life shapes itself to the new 
 purpose and aim, the writ and will of the King running 
 
254 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE, 
 
 unhindered through every department, even to its out- 
 most frontier, while thoughts, feelings, desires, and all 
 the golden coinage of the heart bear, not, as before, 
 the image of Self, but the image and superscription 
 of the Invisible King— the " Not I, but Christ." 
 
 And so the honour of the kingdom is in our keep- 
 ing, as the growths of the kingdom are in our hands. 
 The Divine Cloud adjusts its pace to our human steps, 
 alas, often far too slow ! Shall the leaven stop with 
 us, as we make religion a kind of sanctified selfish- 
 ness, doing nothing but gauging the emotions and 
 singing its little doxologies ? Do we forget that the 
 weak human hand carries the Ark of God, and pushes 
 forward the boundaries of the kingdom ? Do we 
 forget that hearts are only won by hearts ? The 
 kingdom of God on earth is the kingdom of surrendered 
 wills and of consecrated lives. Shall we not, then, 
 pray, " Thy kingdom come," and living " more nearly 
 as we pray," seek a redeemed humanity as subjects of 
 our King? So will the Divine purpose become a 
 realization, and the " morning" which now is always 
 " somewhere in the world " will be everywhere, the 
 promise and the dawn of a heavenly day, the eternal 
 Sabbath ! 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE MIRACLES OF HEALING. 
 
 IT is only natural that our Evangelist should linger 
 with a professional as well as a personal interest 
 over Christ's connection with human suffering and 
 disease, and that in recounting the miracles of healing 
 he should be peculiarly at home; the theme would 
 be in such thorough accord with his studies and tastes. 
 It is true he does not refer to these miracles as being 
 a fulfilment of prophecy; it is left for St. Matthew, 
 who weaves his Gospel on the unfinished warp of the 
 Old Testament, to recall the words of Isaiah, how 
 "Himself took our infirmities and bare our diseases;" 
 yet our physician-Evangelist evidently lingers over the 
 pathological side of his Gospel with an intense interest. 
 St. John passes by the miracles of healing in compara- 
 tive silence, though he stays to give us two cases which 
 are omitted by the Synoptists — that of the nobleman's 
 son at Capernaum, and that of the impotent man at 
 Bethesda. But St. John's Gospel moves in more 
 etherial spheres, and the touches he chronicles are 
 rather the touches of mind with mind, spirit with spirit, 
 than the physical touches through the coarser medium 
 of the flesh. The Synoptists, however, especially in 
 their earlier chapters, bring the works of Christ into 
 prominence, travelling, too very much over the same 
 
256 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 ground, though each introduces some special facts 
 omitted by the rest, while in their record of the same 
 fact each Evangelist throws some additional colouring. 
 
 Grouping together the miracles of healing — for our 
 space will not allow a separate treatment of each — our 
 thought is first arrested by the variety of forms in 
 which suffering and disease presented themselves to 
 Jesus, the wideness of the ground, physical and 
 psychical, the miracles of healing cover. Our Evan- 
 gelist mentions fourteen different cases, not, however, 
 as including the whole, or even the greater part, but 
 rather as being typical, representative cases. They 
 are, as it were, the nearer constellations, localized and 
 named ; but again and again in his narrative we find 
 whole groups and clusters lying farther back, making 
 a sort of Milky Way of light, whose thickly clustered 
 worlds baffle all our attempts at enumeration. Such are 
 the " women " of chap. viii. ver. 2, who had been healed 
 of their infirmities, but whose record is omitted in the 
 Gospel story ; and such, too, are those groups of cures 
 mentioned in chapters iv. 40, v. 15, vi. 19, and vii. 21, 
 when the Divine power seemed to culminate, throwing 
 itself out in a largesse of blessing, fairly raining down 
 its bright gifts of healing like meteoric showers. 
 
 Turning now to the typical cases mentioned by 
 St. Luke, they are as follows : the man possessed 
 of an unclean demon; Peter's wife's mother, who 
 was sick of a fever ; a leper, a paralytic, the man 
 with the withered hand, the servant of the centurion, 
 the demoniac, the woman with an issue, the boy 
 possessed with a demon, the man with a dumb 
 demon, the woman with an infirmity, the man with 
 the dropsy, the ten lepers, and blind Bartimseus. 
 The list, like so many lines of dark meridians, measures 
 
THE MIRACLES OF HEALING. 257 
 
 off the entire circumference of the world of suffering, 
 beginning with the withered hand, and going on and 
 down to that "sacrament of death/' leprosy, and to 
 that yet further deep, demoniacal possession. Some 
 diseases were of more recent origin, as the case of 
 fever ; others were chronic, of twelve or eighteen years' 
 standing, or lifelong, as in the case of the possessed 
 boy. In some a solitary organ was affected, as when 
 the hand had withered, or the tongue was tied by some 
 power of evil, or the eyes had lost their gift of vision. 
 In others the whole person was diseased, as when the 
 fires of the fever shot through the heated veins, or 
 the lepro'.y was covering the flesh with the white 
 scales of o^ath. But whatever its nature or its stage, 
 the disease was acute, as far as human probabilities 
 went, past aL hope of healing. It was no slight attack, 
 but a " great fever " which had stricken down the 
 mother-in-law of Peter, the intensive adjective show- 
 ing that it had reached its danger-point. And where 
 among human n eans was there hope for a restored 
 vision, v\hen for years the last glimmer of light had 
 faded away, when even the optic nerve was atrophied 
 by the long disuse ? and where, among the limited 
 pharmacopoeias of ancient times, or even among the 
 vastly extended lists of modern times, was there a cure 
 for the leper, who carried, burned into his very flesh, 
 his sentence of death ? No, it was not the trivial, 
 temporary cases of sickness Jesus took in hand ; but 
 He passed into that innermost shrine of the temple of 
 suffering, the shrine that lay in perpetual night, and 
 over whose doorway was the inscription of Dante's 
 "Jnferno," "All hope abandon, ye who enter here!" 
 But when Jesus entered this grim abode He turned its 
 darkness to light, its sighs to scngs, bringing hope 
 
258 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 to despairing ones, and leading back into the light of 
 day these captives of Death, as Orpheus is fabled to 
 have brought back to earth the lost Eurydice. 
 
 And not only are the cases so varied in their cha- 
 racter, and humanly speaking, hopeless in their nature, 
 but they were presented to Jesus in such a diversity 
 of ways. They are none of them arranged for, studied. 
 They could not have formed any plan or routine of 
 mercy, nor were they timed for the purpose of pro- 
 ducing spectacular effects. They were nearly all of 
 them impromptu, extemporary events, coming without 
 His seeking, and coming often as interruptions to His 
 own plans. Now it is in the synagogue, in the pauses 
 of public worship, that Jesus rebukes an unclean devil, 
 or He bids the cripple stretch out his withered hand. 
 Nov/ it is in the city, amid the crowd, or out upon the 
 plain ; now it is within the house of a chief Pharisee, 
 in the very midst of an entertainment ; while at other 
 times He is walking on the road, when, without even 
 stopping in His journey, He wills the leper clean, or 
 He throws the gift of life and health forward to the 
 centurion's servant, whom He has not seen. No times 
 were inopportune to Him, and no places were foreign 
 to the Son of man, where men suffered and pain abode. 
 Jesus refused no request on the ground that the time 
 was not well chosen, and though He did again and 
 again refuse the request of selfish interest or vain 
 ambition, He never once turned a deaf ear to the cry 
 of sorrow or of pain, no matter when or whence it 
 came. 
 
 And if we consider His methods of healing we find 
 the same diversity. Perhaps we ought not to use that 
 word, for there was a singular absence of method. 
 There was nothing set, artificial in His way, but an 
 
THE MIRACLES OF HEALING. 259 
 
 easy freedom, a beautiful naturalness. In one respect, 
 and perhaps in one only, are all similar, and that is in 
 the absence of intermediaries. There was no use of 
 means, no prescription of remedies ; for in the seeming 
 exception, the clay with which He anointed the eyes of 
 the blind, and the waters of Siloam which He pre- 
 scribed, were not remedial in themselves ; the washing 
 was rather the test of the man's faith, while the anoint- 
 ing was a sort of " aside," spoken, not to the man 
 himself, but to the group of onlookers, preparing them 
 for the fresh manifestation of His power. Generally a 
 word was enough, though we read of His healing 
 "touch," and twice of the symbolic laying on of hands. 
 And by-the-way, it is somewhat singular that Jesus 
 made use of the touch at the healing of the leper, 
 when the touch meant ceremonial uncleanness. Why 
 does He not speak the word only, as He did afterwards 
 at the healing of the u ten " ? And why does He, as 
 it were, go out of His way to put Himself in personal 
 contact with a leper, who was under a ceremonial ban ? 
 Was it not to show that a new era had dawned, an era 
 in which uncleanness should be that of the heart, the 
 life, and no longer the outward uncleanness, which any 
 accident of contact might induce ? Did not the touch- 
 ing of the leper mean the abrogation of the multiplied 
 bans of the Old Dispensation, just as afterwards a 
 heavenly vision coming to Peter wiped out the dividing- 
 line between clean and unclean meats ? And why did 
 not the touch of the leper make Jesus ceremonially 
 unclean ? for we do not read that it did, or that He 
 altered His plans one whit because 01 it. Perhaps we 
 find our answer in the Levitical regulations respecting 
 the leprosy. We read (Lev. xiv. 28) that at the 
 cleansing of the leper the priest was to dip his right 
 
26o THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 finger in the blood and in the oil, and put it on the ear, 
 and hand, and foct of the person cleansed. The finger 
 of the priest was thus the index or sign of purity, the 
 lifting up of the ban which his leprosy had put around 
 and over him. And when Jesus touched the leper it 
 was the priestly touch ; it carried its own cleansing 
 with it, imparting power and purity, instead of con- 
 tracting the defilement of another. 
 
 But if Jesus touched the leper, and permitted the 
 woman of Capernaum to touch Him, or at any rate 
 His garment, He studiously avoided any personal con- 
 tact with these possessed of devils. He recognized 
 here the presence of evil spirits, the powers of dark- 
 ness, which have enthralled the weaker human spirit, 
 and for these a word is enough. But how different a 
 word to His other words of healing, when He said to 
 the leper, " I will ; be thou clean," and to Bartimseus, 
 " Receive thy sight " ! Now it is a word sharp, im- 
 perative, not spoken to the poor helpless victim, but 
 thrown over and beyond him, to the dark personality, 
 which held a human soul in a vile, degrading bondage. 
 And so while the possessed boy lay writhing and foam- 
 ing on the ground, Jesus laid no hand upon him ; it 
 was not till after He had spoken the mighty word, and 
 the demon had departed from him, that Jesus took him 
 by the hand and lifted him up. 
 
 But whether by word or by touch, the miracles were 
 wrought with consummate ease; there were none of 
 those artistic flourishes which mere performers use as 
 a blind to cover their sleight of hand. There was no 
 straining for effect, no apparent effort. Jesus Himself 
 seemed perfectly unconscious that He was doing any- 
 thing marvellous or even unusual. The words of power 
 fell naturally from His lips, like the falling of leaves 
 
THE MIRACLES OF HEALING. 261 
 
 from the tree of life, carrying, wheresoever they might 
 go, healing for the nations. 
 
 But if the method of the cures is wonderful, the 
 unstudied ease and simple naturalness of the Healer, 
 the completeness of the cures is even more so. In all 
 the multitudes of cases there was no failure. We find 
 the disciples baffled and chagrined, attempting what 
 they cannot perform, as with the possessed boy ; but 
 with Jesus failure was an impossible word. Nor did 
 Jesus simply make them better, bringing them into a 
 state of convalescence, and so putting them in the way 
 of getting well. The cure was instant and complete ; 
 u immediately " is St. Luke's frequent and favourite 
 word ; so much so that she who half an hour ago was 
 stricken down with malignant fever, and apparently 
 at the point of death, now is going about her ordinary 
 duties as if nothing had happened, "ministering" to 
 Peter's many guests. Though Nature possesses a great 
 deal of resilient force, her periods of convalescence, 
 when the disease itself is checked, are more or less 
 prolonged, and weeks, or sometimes months, must 
 elapse before the spring-tides of health return, bringing 
 with them a sweet overflow, an exuberance of life. 
 Not so, however, when Jesus was the Healer. At His 
 word, or at the mere beckoning of His finger, the tides 
 of health, which had gone far out in the ebb, suddenly 
 returned in all their spring fulness, lifting high on their 
 wave the bark which through hopeless years had been 
 settling down into its miry grave. Eighteen years of 
 disease had made the woman quite deformed ; the con- 
 tracting muscles had bent the form God made to stand 
 erect, so that she could " in no wise lift herself up ; " 
 but when Jesus said, " Woman, thou art loosed from 
 thine infirmity," and laid His hands upon her, in an 
 
262 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 instant the tightened muscles relaxed, the bent form 
 regained its earlier grace, for " she was made straight, 
 and glorified God." One moment, with the Christ in 
 it, was more than eighteen years of disease, and with 
 the most perfect ease it could undo all the eighteen 
 years had done. And this is but a specimen case, for 
 the same completeness characterizes all the cures that 
 Jesus wrought. " They were made whole," as it reads, 
 no matter what the malady might be ; and though 
 disease had loosened all the thousand strings, so that 
 the wonderful harp was reduced to silence, or at best 
 could but strike discordant notes, the hand of Jesus has 
 but to touch it, and in an instant each string recovers 
 its pristine tone, the jarring sounds vanish, and body, 
 ". mind, and soul according well, awake sweet music as 
 before." 
 
 But though Jesus wrought these many and complete 
 cures, making the healing of the sick a sort of pastime, 
 the interludes in that Divine " Messiah," still He 
 did not work these miracles indiscriminately, without 
 method or conditions. He freely placed His service 
 at the disposal of others, giving Himself up to one tire- 
 less round of mercy ; but it is evident there was some 
 selection for these gifts of healing. The healing power 
 was not thrown out randomly, falling on any one it 
 might chance to strike ; it flowed out in certain direc- 
 tions only, in ordered channels ; it followed certain 
 lines and laws. For instance, these circles of healing 
 were geographically narrow. They followed the per- 
 sonal presence of Jesus, and with one or two excep- 
 tions, were never found apart from that presence ; so 
 that, many as they were, they would form but a small 
 part of suffering humanity. And even within these 
 circles of His visible presence we are not to suppose 
 
THE MIRACLES OF HEALING. 263 
 
 that all were healed. Some were taken, and others 
 were left, to a suffering from which only death would 
 release them. Can we discover the law of this election 
 of mercy ? We think we may. 
 
 (1) In the first place, there must be the need for the 
 Divine intervention. This perhaps goes without saying, 
 and dees not seem to mean much, since among those 
 who were left unhealed there were needs just as great 
 as those of the more favoured ones. But while the 
 " need " in some cases was not enough to secure the 
 Divine mercy, in other cases it was all that was asked. 
 If the disease was mental or psychical, with reason 
 all bewildered, and the firmaments of Right and Wrong 
 mixed confusedly together, making a chaos of the soul, 
 that was all Jesus required. At other times He waited 
 for the desire to be evoked and the request to be made ; 
 but for these cases of lunacy, epilepsy, and demoniacal 
 possession He waived the other conditions, and 
 without waiting for the request, as in the synagogue 
 (iv. 34) or on the Gadarene coast, He spoke the word, 
 which brought order to a distracted soul, and which 
 led Reason back to her Jerusalem, to the long-vacant 
 throne. 
 
 For others the need itself was not sufficient ; there 
 must be the request. Our desire for any blessing is 
 cur appraisement of its value, and Jesus dispensed His 
 gifts of healing on the Divine conditions, " Ask, and 
 ye shall receive ; seek, and ye shall find." How the 
 request came, whether from the sufferer himself or 
 through some intercessor, it did not matter; for no 
 request for healing came to Jesus to be disregarded or 
 denied. Nor was it always needful to put the request 
 into words. Prayer is too grand and great a thing 
 for the lips to have a monopoly of it, and the deepest 
 
264 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 prayers may be put into acts as well as into words, 
 as they are sometimes uttered in inarticulate sighs, and 
 in groans which are too deep for words. And was it 
 not truest prayer, as the multitudes carried their sick 
 and laid them down at the feet of Jesus, even had 
 their voice spoken no solitary word ? and was it not 
 truest prayer, as they put themselves, with their bent 
 forms and withered hands right in His way, not able 
 to speak one single word, but throwing across to Him 
 the piteous but hopeful look ? The request was thus 
 the expression of their desire, and at the same time 
 the expression of their faith, telling of the trust they 
 reposed in His pity and His power, a trust He was 
 always delighted to see, and to which He always 
 responded, as He Himself said again and again, " Thy 
 faith hath saved thee." Faith then, as now, was the 
 sesame to which all Heaven's gates fly open ; and 
 as in the case of the paralytic who was borne of four, 
 and let down through the roof, even a vicarious faith 
 prevails with Jesus, as it brings to their friend a double 
 and complete salvation. And so they who sought 
 Jesus as their Healer found Him, and they who 
 believed entered into His rest, this lower rest of a per- 
 fect health and perfect life ; while they who were 
 indifferent and they who doubted were left behind, 
 crushed by the sorrow that He would have removed, 
 and tortured by pains that His touch would have com- 
 pletely stilled. 
 
 And now it remains for us to gather up the light of 
 these miracles, and to focus it on Him who was the 
 central Figure, Jesus, the Divine Healer. And (i) 
 the miracles of healing speak of the knowledge of 
 Jesus. The question, " What is man ? " has been the 
 standing question of the ages, but it is still unanswered, 
 
THE MIRACLES OF HEALING. 265 
 
 or answered but in part. His complex nature is still 
 a mystery, the eternal riddle of the Sphinx, and CEdipus 
 comes not. Physiology can number and name the bones 
 and muscles, can tell the forms and functions of the 
 different organs ; chemistry can resolve the body into 
 its constituent elements, and weigh out their exact pro- 
 portions ; philosophy can map out the departments of 
 the mind ; but man remains the great enigma. Biology 
 carries her silken clue right up to the primordial cell ; 
 but here she finds a Gordian knot, which her keenest 
 instruments cannot cut, or her keenest wit unravel. 
 Within that complex nature of ours are oceans of 
 mystery which Thought may indeed explore, but which 
 she cannot fathom, paths which the vulture eye of 
 Reason hath not seen, whose voices are the voices of 
 unknown tongues, answering each other through the 
 mist. But how familiar did Jesus seem with all these 
 life-secrets ! how intimate with all the life-forces I 
 Kow versed He was in etiology, knowing without 
 possibility of mistake whence diseases came, and just 
 where they looked ! It was no mystery to Him 
 how the hand had shrunk, shrivelling into a mass of 
 bones, with no skill in its fingers, and no life in its 
 cloyed-up veins, or how the eyes had lost their power 
 of vision. His knowledge of the human frame was 
 an exact and perfect knowledge, reading its innermost 
 secrets, as in a transparency, knowing to a certainty 
 what links had dropped out of the subtle mechan- 
 ism, and what had been warped out of place, and 
 knowing well just at what point and to what an 
 extent to apply the healing remedy, which was His 
 own volition. All earth and all heaven were with- 
 out a covering to His gaze; and what was this but 
 Omniscience ? 
 
266 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 (2) Again, the miracles of healing speak of the 
 compassion of Jesus. It was with no reluctsnce that 
 He wrought these works of mercy; it was His delight. 
 His heart was drawn towards suffering and pain by the 
 magnetism of a Divine sympathy, or rather, we ought 
 to say, towards the sufferers themselves ; for suffering 
 and pain, like sin and woe, were exotics in His Father's 
 garden, the deadly nightshade an enemy had sown. 
 And so we mark a great tenderness in all His dealings 
 with the afflicted. He does not apply the caustic of 
 bitter and biting words. Even when, as we may sup- 
 pose, the suffering is the harvest of earlier sin, as in the 
 case of the paralytic, Jesus speaks no harsh reproaches ; 
 He says simply and kindly, u Go in peace, and sin no 
 more." And do we not find here a reason why these 
 miracles of healing were so frequent in His ministry ? 
 Was it not because in His mind Sickness was some- 
 how related to Sin ? If miracles were needed to attest 
 the Divineness of His mission, there was no need of the 
 constant succession of them, no need that they should 
 form a part, and a large part, of the daily task. Sick- 
 ness is, so to speak, something unnaturally natural. 
 It results from the transgression of some physical law, 
 as Sin is the transgression of some moral law ; and He 
 who is man's Saviour brings a complete salvation, 
 a redemption for the body as well as a redemption for 
 the soul. Indeed, the diseases of the body are but the 
 shadows, seen and felt, of the deeper diseases of the 
 soul, and with Jesus the physical healing was but a 
 step to the higher truth and higher experience, that 
 spiritual cleansing, that inner creation of a right spirit, 
 a perfect heart. And so Jesus carried on the two works 
 side by side ; they were the two parts of His one and 
 great salvation ; and as He loved and pitied the sinner, 
 
THE MIRACLES OF HEALING. 267 
 
 so He pitied and loved the sufferer ; His sympathies all 
 went out to meet him, preparing the way for His healing 
 virtues to follow. 
 
 (3) Again, the miracles of healing speak of the power 
 of Jesus. This was seen indirectly when we considered 
 the completeness of the cures, and the wide field they 
 covered, and we need not enlarge upon it now. But 
 what a consciousness of might there was in Jesus ! 
 Others, prophets and apostles, have healed the sick, 
 but their power was delegated. It came as in waves 
 of Divine impulse, intermittent and temporary. The 
 power that Jesus wielded was inherent and absolute, 
 deeps which knew neither cessation nor diminution. 
 His will was supreme over all forces. Nature's potencies 
 are diffused and isolated, slumbering in herb or metal, 
 flower or leaf, in mountain or sea. But all are inert and 
 useless until man distils them with his subtle alchemies, 
 and then applies them by his slow processes, dissolving 
 the tinctures in the blood, sending on its warm currents 
 the healing virtue, if haply it may reach its goal and 
 accomplish its mission. But all these potencies lay 
 in the hand or in the will of Christ. The forces of 
 life all were marshalled under His bidding. He had 
 but to say to one " Go," and it went, here or there, 
 or any whither ; nor does it go for nought ; it accom- 
 plishes its high behest, the great Master's will. Nay, 
 the power of Jesus is supreme even in that outlying 
 and dark world of evil spirits. The demons fly at 
 His rebuke ; and let Him throw but one healing word 
 across the dark, chaotic soul of one possessed, and 
 in an instant Reason dawns; bright thoughts play 
 on the horizon ; the firmaments of Right and Wrong 
 separate to infinite distances ; and out of the darkness 
 a Paradise emerges, of beauty and light, where the new 
 
268 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 son of God resides, and God Himself comes down in 
 the cool and the heat of the days alike. What power 
 is this? Is it not the power of God? is it not 
 Omnipotence ? 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES, 
 Luke ix. 1-17. 
 
 THE Galilean ministry was drawing to a close, 
 for the " great Light " which had risen over the 
 northern province must now move southward, to set 
 behind a cross and a grave. Jesus, however, is reluc- 
 tant to leave these borders, amid whose hills the greater 
 part of His life has been spent, and among whose com- 
 posite population His greatest successes have been won, 
 without one last effort. Calling together the Twelve, 
 who hitherto have been Apostles in promise and in 
 name rather than in fact, He lays His plans before 
 them. Dividing the district into sections, so as to 
 equalize their labours and prevent any overlapping, He 
 sends them out in pairs ; for in the Divine arithmetic 
 two are more than twice one, more than the sum of the 
 separate units by all the added force and strength of 
 fellowship. They are to be the heralds of the new 
 kingdom, to "preach the kingdom of God," their in- 
 signia no outward, visible badge, but the investiture of 
 authority over all demons, and power over all diseases. 
 Apostles of the Unseen, servants of the Invisible King, 
 they must dismiss all worldly cares; they must not 
 even make provision for their journey, weighting them- 
 selves with such impedimenta as wallets stored with 
 
270 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 bread or changes of raiment. They must go forth in an 
 absolute trust in God, thus proving themselves citizens 
 of the heavenly kingdom, whose gates they open to all 
 who will repent and step up into them. They may take 
 a staff, for that will help rather than hinder on the steep 
 mountain paths ; but since the King's business requireth 
 haste, they must not spend their time in the interminable 
 salutations of the age, nor in going about from house to 
 house ; such changes would only distract, diverting to 
 themselves the thought which should be centred upon 
 their mission. Should any city not receive them, they 
 must retire at once, shaking off, as they depart, the very 
 dust from their feet, as a testimony against them. 
 
 Such were the directions, as Jesus dismissed the 
 Twelve, sending them to reap the Galilean harvest, and 
 at the same time to prepare them for the wider fields 
 which after the Pentecost would open to them on every 
 side. It is only by incidental allusions that we learn 
 anything as to the success of the mission, but when 
 our Evangelist says " they went throughout the villages, 
 preaching the Gospel and healing everywhere," these 
 frequent miracles of healing would imply that they 
 found a sympathetic and receptive people. Nor were 
 the impulses of the new movement confined to the 
 lower reaches of society ; for even the palace felt its 
 vibrations, and St. Luke, who seems to have had private 
 means of information within the Court, possibly through 
 Chuza and Manaen,, pauses to give us a kind of silhouette 
 of the Tetrarch. Herod himself is perplexed. Like a 
 vane, "that fox" swings round to the varying gusts of 
 public opinion that come eddying within the palace 
 from the excited world outside ; and as some say that 
 Jesus is Elias, and others "one of the old prophets/ 
 while others aver that He is John himself, risen from 
 
ix.i-17.] THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES. 271 
 
 the dead, this last rumour falls upon the ears of Herod 
 like alarming thunders, making him quiver like an aspen. 
 "And he sought to see Jesus." The " conscience 
 that makes cowards of us all " had unnerved him, and 
 he longed by a personal acquaintance with Jesus to 
 waive back out of his sight the apparition of the 
 murdered prophet. Who Jesus might be did not 
 much concern Herod. He might be Elias, or one of 
 the old prophets, anything but John ; and so when 
 Herod did see Jesus afterwards, and saw that He was 
 not the risen Baptist, but the Man of Galilee, his 
 courage revived, and he gave Jesus into the hands of 
 his cohorts, that they might mock Him with the faded 
 purple. 
 
 What steps Herod took to secure an interview we 
 do not know ; but the verb indicates more than a wish 
 on his part ; it implies some plan or attempt to gratify 
 the wish ; and probably it was these advances of 
 Herod, together with the Apostles' need of rest after 
 the strain and excitements of their mission, which 
 prompted Jesus to seek a place of retirement outside 
 the bounds of Antipas. On the northern shore of the 
 Sea of Galilee, and on the eastern bank of the Jordan, 
 was a second Bethsaida, or " House of Fish " as the 
 name means, built by Philip, and to which, in honour 
 of Caesar's daughter, he gave the surname of "Julias." 
 The city itself stood on the hills, some three or four 
 miles back from the shore ; while between the city and 
 the lake swept a wide and silent plain, all unfilled, as 
 the New Testament " desert" means, but rich in 
 pasturage, as the "much grass" of John vi. 10 would 
 show. This still shore offered, as it seemed, a safe 
 refuge from the exacting and intrusive crowds of 
 Capernaum, whose constant coming and going left 
 
272 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 them no leisure so much as to eat ; and bidding them 
 launch the familiar boat, Jesus and the twelve sail 
 away to the other side. The excited crowds, however, 
 which followed them to the water's edge, are not so 
 easily to be shaken off; but guessing the direction of 
 the boat, they seek to head her off by a quick detour 
 round the shore. And some of them do ; for when 
 the boat grates on the northern shingle some of the 
 swift-footed ones are already there ; while stretching 
 back for miles is a stream of humanity, of both sexes 
 and of all ages, but all fired with one purpose. The 
 desert has suddenly grown populous. 
 
 And how dees Jesus bear this interruption to His 
 plans ? Does He chafe at this intrusion of the people 
 upon His quiet hours ? Does He resent their impor- 
 tunity, calling it impertinence, then driving them from 
 Him with a whip of sharp words ? Not so. Jesus 
 was accustomed to interruptions ; they formed almost 
 the staple of His life. Nor did He repulse one solitary 
 soul which sought sincerely His mercy, no matter how 
 unseasonable the hour, as men would read the hours. 
 So now Jesus " received " them, or " welcomed " them, 
 as it is in the R.V. It is a favourite word with 
 St. Luke, found in his Gospel more frequently than in 
 the other three Gospels together. Applied to persons, 
 it means nearly always to receive as guests, to welcome 
 to hospitality and home. And such is its meaning 
 here. Jesus takes the place of the host. True, it is 
 a desert place, but it is a part of the All- Father's world, 
 a room of the Father's house, carpeted with grass 
 and ablaze with flowers ; and Jesus, by His welcome, 
 transforms the desert into a guest-chamber, where in 
 a new way He keeps the Passover with His disciples, 
 at the same time entertaining His thousands of self- 
 
fc.i-17.] THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES. 273 
 
 bidden guests, giving to them truth, speaking of the 
 kingdom of God, and giving health, healing "those 
 that had need of healing." 
 
 It was toward evening, "when the day began to 
 wear away," that Jesus gave to a bright and busy day 
 its crowning benediction. The thought had already 
 ripened into purpose, in His mind, to spread a table 
 for them in the wilderness; for how could He, the 
 compassionate One, send them to their homes famish- 
 ing and faint ? These poor, shepherdless sheep have 
 put themselves into His care. Their simple, unpro- 
 viding confidence has made Him in a sense responsible, 
 and can He disappoint that confidence? It is true 
 they have been thoughtless and improvident. They 
 have let the enthusiasm of the hour carry them aw T ay, 
 without making any provision of the necessary food ; 
 but even this does not check the flow of the Divine 
 compassion, for Jesus proceeds to fill up their lack of 
 thought by His Divine thoughtfulness, and their scarcity 
 with His Divine affluence. 
 
 According to St. John, it was Jesus who took the 
 initiative, as He put the test-question to Philip, 
 " Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat ? " 
 Philip does not reply to the "whence;" that may stand 
 aside awhile, as in mathematical language he speaks 
 to the previous question, which is their ability to buy. 
 "Two hundred pennyworth of bread," he said, "is not 
 sufficient for them, that every one may take a little." 
 He does not say how much would be required to 
 satisfy the hunger of the multitude ; his reckoning is 
 not for a feast, but for a taste, to every one " a little." 
 Nor does he calculate the full cost of even this, but 
 says simply, " Two hundred pennyworth would not be 
 sufficient." Evidently, in Philip's mind the two hundred 
 
 18 
 
274 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 pence is the known quantity of the equation, and he 
 works out his calculation from that, as he proves the 
 impossibility of buying bread for this vast company 
 anywhere. We may therefore conclude that the two 
 hundred pence represented the value of the common 
 purse, the purchasing power of the Apostolic com- 
 munity; and this was a sum altogether inadequate to 
 meet the cost of providing bread for the multitude. 
 The only alternative, as far as the disciples see, is to 
 dismiss them, and let them requisition for themselves ; 
 and in a peremptory manner they ask Jesus to "send 
 the multitude away," reminding Him of what certainly 
 they had no need to remind Him, that they were here 
 " in a desert place." 
 
 The disciples had spoken in their subjunctive, non 
 possumus, way ; it is now time for Jesus to speak, 
 which He does, not in interrogatives longer, but in His 
 imperative, commanding tone : " Give ye them to eat," 
 a word which throws the disciples back upon them- 
 selves in astonishment and utter helplessness. What 
 can they do ? The whole available supply, as Andrew 
 reports it, is but five barley loaves and two small fishes, 
 which a lad has brought, possibly for their own refresh- 
 ment. Five flat loaves of barley, which was the food 
 of the poorest of the poor, and " two small fishes," as 
 St. John calls them, throwing a bit of local colouring into 
 the narrative by his diminutive word — these are the 
 foundation repast, which Jesus asks to be brought to 
 Himself, that from Himself it may go, broken and 
 enlarged, to the multitude of guests. Meantime the 
 crowd is just as large, and perhaps more excited and 
 impatient than before; for they would not understand 
 these " asides " between the disciples and the Master, 
 nor could they read as yet His compassionate and 
 
Ix. 1-17.] THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES. 275 
 
 benevolent thought. It would be a pushing, jostling 
 crowd, as these thousands were massed on the hill-side. 
 Some are gathered in little groups, discussing the 
 Messiahship ; others are clustered round seme relative 
 or friend, who to-day has been wonderfully healed ; 
 while others, of the forward sort, are selfishly elbowing 
 their way to the front. The whole scene is a kaleido- 
 scope of changing form and colour, a perfect chaos of 
 confusion. But Jesus speaks again : " Make them sit 
 down in companies ; " and those words, thrown across 
 the seething mass, reduce it to order, crystallizing 
 it, as it were, into measured and numbered lines. 
 St. Mark, half-playfully, likens it to a garden, with its 
 parterres of flowers ; and such indeed it was, but it was 
 a garden of the higher cult, with its variegated beds of 
 humanity, a hundred men broad, and fifty deep. 
 
 When order was secured, and all were in their places, 
 Jesus takes His place as the host at the head of the 
 extemporized table, and though it is most frugal fare, 
 He holds the barley loaves heavenward, and lifting up 
 His eyes, He blesses God, probably in the words of 
 the usual formula, "Blessed art Thou, Jehovah our 
 God, King of the world, Who causeth to come forth 
 bread from the earth." Then breaking the bread, He 
 distributes it among the disciples, bidding them bear 
 it to the people. It is not a matter of moment as to 
 the exact point where the supernatural came in, whether 
 it was in the breaking or the distributing. Somewhere 
 a power which must have been Divine touched the 
 bread, for the broken pieces strangely grew, enlarging 
 rapidly as they were minished. It is just possible that 
 we have a clue to the mystery in the tense of the verb, 
 for the imperfect, which denotes continued action, would 
 read. " He brake," or " He kept on breaking," from 
 
276 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 which we might almost infer that the miracle was 
 coincident with the touch. But whether so or not, the 
 power was equal to the occasion, and the supply over 
 and above the largest need, completely satisfying the 
 hunger of the five thousand men, besides the off-group 
 of women and children, who, though left out of the 
 enumeration, were within the circle of the miracle, the 
 remembered and satisfied guests of the Master. 
 
 It now remains for us to gather up the meaning 
 and the practical lessons of the miracle. And first, 
 it reveals to us the Divine pity. When Jesus called 
 Himself the Son of man it was a title full of deep 
 meaning, and most appropriate. He was the true, the 
 ideal Humanity, humanity as it would have been with- 
 out the warps and discolourations that Sin has made, 
 and within His heart were untold depths of sympathy, 
 the ft fellow-feeling that makes man wondrous kind." 
 To the haughty and the proud He was stern, lowering 
 upon them with a withering scorn ; to the unreal, the 
 false, the unclean He was severity itself, with light- 
 nings in His looks and terrible thunders in His 
 "woes;" but for troubled and tired souls He had 
 nothing but tenderness and gentleness, and a compas- 
 sion that was infinite. Even had He not called the 
 weary and heavy-laden to Himself, they would have 
 sought Him; they would have read the "Come" in 
 the sunlight of His face. Jesus felt for others a 
 vicarious pain, a vicarious sorrow, His heart respond- 
 ing to it at once, as the delicately poised needle 
 responds to the subtle sparks that flash in upon it 
 from without. So here; He receives the multitude 
 kindly, even though they are strangers, and though 
 they have thwarted His purpose and broken in upon 
 His rest, and as this stream of human life flows out 
 
ix. 1-17.] THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES. 277 
 
 to Him His compassion flows out to them. He com- 
 miserates their forlorn condition, wandering like stray- 
 ing sheep upon the mountains ; He gives Himself up 
 to them, healing all that were sick, assuaging the pain 
 or restoring the lost sense ; while at the same time He 
 ministers to a higher nature, telling them of the king- 
 dom of God, which had come nigh to them, and which 
 was theirs if they would surrender themselves to it and 
 obey. Nor was even this enough to satisfy the prompt- 
 ings of His deep pity, but all-forgetful of His own 
 weariness, He lengthens out this day of mercy, stay- 
 ing to minister to their lower, physical wants, as He 
 spreads for them a table in the wilderness. Verily He 
 was, incarnate, as He is in His glory, " touched with 
 the feeling of our infirmities." 
 
 Again, we see the Divine love of order and arrange- 
 ment. Nothing was done until the crowding and con- 
 fusion had ceased, and even the Divine beneficence 
 waits until the turbulent mass has become quiet, settled 
 down into serried lines, the five thousand making two 
 perfect squares. " Order," it is said, " is Heaven's 
 first law ; " but whether the first or the second, certain 
 it is that Heaven gives us the perfection of order. It 
 is only in the lawless wills of man that " time is broke, 
 and no proportion kept." In the heavenly state nothing 
 is out of place or out of time. All wills there play into 
 each other with such absolute precision that life itself 
 is a song, a Gloria in Excelsis. And how this is seen 
 in all the works of God I What rhythmic motions are 
 in the marches of the stars and the processions of the 
 seasons ! To everything a place, to everything a time; 
 such is the unwritten law of the realm of physics, where 
 Law is supreme, and anarchy is unknown. So in our 
 earthly lives, on their secular and on their spiritual 
 
278 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 side alike, order is time, order is strength, and he who 
 is deficient in this grace should practise on it the more. 
 Avoid Slovenliness; it is a distant relation of Sin itself. 
 Arrange your duties, and do not let them crowd one 
 upon the other. Set the greater duties, not abreast, 
 but one behind the other, filling up the spaces with the 
 smaller ones. Do not let things drift, or your life, 
 built for carrying precious argosies, and accomplishing 
 something, will break up into pieces, the flotsam and 
 jetsam of a barren shore. In prayer be orderly. 
 Arrange your desires. Let some come first, while 
 others stand back in the second or the third row, wait- 
 ing their turn. If your relations with your fellows have 
 got a little disarranged, atwist, seek to readjust the 
 disturbed relation. Oppose what is evil and mean with 
 all your might ; but if no principle is involved, even at 
 the cost of a little feeling, seek to have things put 
 square. To get things into a tangle requires no great 
 skill ; but he who would be a true artist, keeping the 
 Divine pattern before him, and ever working towards 
 it, if not up to it, may reduce the tangled skein to 
 harmony, and like the Gobelin tapestry-makers, weave 
 a life that is noble and beautiful, a life on which men 
 will love to gaze. 
 
 Again, we see the Divine concern for little things. 
 Abundance always tempts to extravagance and waste. 
 And so here ; the broken remnants of the repast might 
 have been thrown away as of no account ; but Jesus 
 bade them, " Gather up the fragments, that nothing be 
 lost ; " and we read they filled with the broken bread, 
 which remained over and above to them that had eaten, 
 twelve baskets full — and, by the way, the word rendered 
 " basket " here corresponds with the frugal fare, for, 
 made of willow or of wicker, it was of the coarsest 
 
ix. 1-17 ] THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES. 279 
 
 kind, used only by the poor. What became of the 
 fragments, which outweighed the original supply, we 
 do not read ; but though they were only the crumbs of 
 the Divine bounty, and though there was no present 
 use for them, Jesus would not allow them to be wasted. 
 But the true meaning of the narrative lies deeper than 
 this. It is a miracle of a new order, this multiplying 
 of the loaves. In His other miracles Jesus has wrought 
 on the line of Nature, accelerating her slower processes, 
 and accomplishing in an instant, by His mere volition, 
 what by natural causes must have been the work of 
 time, but which in the specific cases would have been 
 purely impossible, owing to the enfeeblement of nature 
 by disease. Sight, hearing, even life itself, come to 
 man through channels purely natural; but Nature 
 never yet has made bread. She grows the corn, but 
 there her part ends, while Science must do the rest, 
 first reducing the corn to flour, then kneading it into 
 dough, and by the burning fires of the oven transmuting 
 the dough to bread. Why does Jesus here depart 
 from His usual order, creating what neither nature nor 
 science can produce alone, but which requires their con- 
 current forces ? Let us see. To Jesus these visible, 
 tangible things were but the dead keys His hand 
 touched, as He called forth some deeper, farther-off 
 music, some spiritual truth that by any other method 
 men would be slow to learn. Of what, then, is this 
 bread of the desert the emblem ? St. John tells us 
 that when the miracle occurred " the Passover was 
 nigh at hand," and this time-mark helps to explain 
 the overcrowding into the desert, for probably many 
 of the five thousand were men who were now on their 
 way to Jerusalem, and who had stayed at Capernaum 
 and the neighbouring cities for the night. This sup- 
 
28o THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 position, too, is considerably strengthened by th~ words 
 of the disciples, as they suggest that they should go 
 and "lodge" in the neighbouring cities and villages, 
 which word implies that they were not residents of that 
 locality, but passing strangers. And as Jesus cannot 
 now go up to Jerusalem to the feast, He gathers the 
 shepherdless thousands about Him, and keeps a sort of 
 Passover in the open guest-chamber of the mountain- 
 side. That such was the thought of the Master, making 
 it an anterior sacrament, is evident from the address 
 Jesus gave the following day at Capernaum, in which 
 He passes, by a natural transition, from the broken 
 bread with which He satisfied their physical hunger 
 to Himself as the Bread come down from heaven, the 
 " living Bread " as He called it, which was His flesh. 
 There is thus a Eucharistic meaning in the miracle of 
 the loaves, and this northern hill signals in its subtle 
 correspondences on to Jerusalem, to another hill, where 
 His body was bruised and broken " for our iniquities," 
 and His blood was poured out, a precious oblation for 
 sin. And as that Blood was typified by the wine of 
 the first miracle at Cana, so now Jesus completes the 
 prophetic sacrament by the miraculous creation of 
 bread from the five seminal loaves, bread which He 
 Himself has consecrated to the holier use, as the visible 
 emblem of that Body which was given for us, men, 
 women, and children alike, even for a redeemed 
 humanity. Cana and the desert-place tnus draw near 
 together, while both look across to Calvary; and as 
 the Church keeps now her Eucharistic feast, taking 
 from the one the consecrated bread, and from the other 
 the consecrated wine, she shows forth the Lord's death 
 « till He come." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE TRANSFIGURATION. 
 
 THE Transfiguration of Christ marks the culmina- 
 ting point in the Divine life ; the few remaining 
 months are a rapid descent into the Valley of Sacrifice 
 and Death. The story is told by each of the three 
 Synoptists, with an almost equal amount of detail, and 
 all agree as to the time when it occurred ; for though 
 St. Matthew and St. Mark make the interval six days, 
 while St. Luke speaks of it as "about eight," there is 
 no real disagreement ; St. Luke's reckoning is inclusive. 
 As to the locality, too, they all agree, though in a 
 certain indefinite way. St. Matthew and St. Mark 
 leave it indeterminate, simply saying that it was " a 
 high mountain," while St. Luke calls it " the mountain." 
 Tradition has long localised the scene upon Mount 
 Tabor, but evidently she has read off her bearings 
 from her own fancies, rather than from the facts of the 
 narrative. To say nothing of the distance of Mount 
 Tabor from Csesarea Philippi — which, though a diffi- 
 culty, is not an insuperable one, since it might easily 
 be covered in less than the six intervening days — 
 Tabor is but one of the group of heights which fringe 
 the Plain of Esdraelon, and so one to which the 
 definite article would not, and could not, be applied. 
 Besides, Tabor now was crowned by a Roman fortress, 
 
282 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 and so could scarcely be said to be " apart " from the 
 strifes and ways of men, while it stood within the 
 borders of Galilee, whereas St. Mark, by implication, 
 sets his " high mountain " outside the Galilean bounds 
 (ix. 30). But if Tabor fails to meet the requirements 
 of the narrative, Mount Hermon answers them exactly, 
 throwing its spurs close up to Caesarea Philippi, while 
 its snow-crowned peak shone out pure and white above 
 the lesser heights of Galilee. 
 
 It is not an unmeaning coincidence that each of the 
 Evangelists should introduce his narrative with the same 
 temporal word, " after." That word is something more 
 than a connecting-link, a bridge thrown over a blank 
 space of days ; it is rather, when taken in connection 
 with the preceding narrative, the key which unlocks 
 the whole meaning and mystery of the Transfiguration. 
 " After these sayings," writes St. Luke. What sayings ? 
 Let us go back a little, and see. Jesus had asked His 
 disciples as to the drift of popular opinion about 
 Himself, and had drawn from Peter the memorable 
 confession — that first Apostle's Creed — " Thou art the 
 Christ of God." Immediately, however, Jesus leads 
 down their minds from these celestial heights to the 
 lowest depths of degradation, dishonour, and death, as 
 He says, " The Son of man must suffer many things, 
 and be rejected of the elders, chief priests, and scribes, 
 and be killed, and the third day be raised up." Those 
 words shattered their bright dream at once. Like 
 some fearful nightmare, the foreshadow of the cross 
 fell upon their hearts, filling them with fear, and gloom, 
 and striking down hope, and courage, yea, even faith 
 itself. It would almost seem as if the disciples were 
 unnerved, paralyzed by the blow, and as if an atrophy 
 had stolen over their hearts and lips alike ; for the 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION. 283 
 
 next six days are one void of silence, without word or 
 deed, as far as the records show. How shall their 
 lost hope be recalled, or courage be revived ? How 
 shall they be taught that death does not end all — 
 that the enigma was true of Himself, as well as of 
 them, that He shall find His life by losing it ? The 
 Transfiguration is the answer. 
 
 Taking with Him Peter, John, and James — the three 
 who shall yet be witnesses of His agony — Jesus retires 
 to the mountain height, probably intending, as our 
 Evangelist indicates, to spend the night in prayer. 
 Keeping the midnight watch was nothing new to these 
 disciples; it was their frequent experience upon the 
 Galilean lake ; but now, left to the quiet of their own 
 thoughts, and with none of the excitements of the 
 spoil about them, they yield to the cravings of nature 
 and fall asleep. Awaking, they find their Master still 
 engaged in prayer, all oblivious of earthly hours, and 
 as they watch He is transfigured before them. The 
 fashion, or appearance, of His countenance, as St. Luke 
 tersely puts it, " became another," all suffused with a 
 heavenly radiance, while His very garments became 
 lustrous with a whiteness which was beyond the 
 fuller's art and beyond the whiteness of the snow, and 
 all iridescent, flashing and sparkling as if set with 
 stars. Suddenly, ere their eyes have grown accustomed 
 to the new splendours, two celestial visitants appear, 
 wearing the glorious body of the heavenly life and 
 conversing with Jesus. 
 
 Such was the scene upon the " holy mount," which 
 the Apostles could never forget, and which St. Peter 
 recalls with a lingering wonder and delight in the far- 
 off after-years (2 Pet. i. 18). Can we push aside the 
 outward draperies, and read the Divine thought and 
 
284 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 purpose that are hidden within ? We think we may. 
 And— 
 
 I. We see the place and meaning of the Transfigura- 
 tion in the life of Jesus. Hitherto the humanity of jesus 
 had been naturally and perfectly human; for though 
 heavenly signs have, as at the Advent and the Baptism, 
 borne witness to its super-humanity, these signs have 
 been temporary and external, shining or alighting upon 
 it from without. Now, however, the sign is from within. 
 The brightness of the outer flesh is but the outshining 
 of the inner glory. And what was that glory but the 
 " glory of the Lord," a manifestation of the Deity, 
 that fulness of the Godhead which dwelt within ? The 
 faces of other sons of men have shone, as when Moses 
 stepped downwards from the mount, or as Stephen 
 looked upwards to the opened heavens ; but it was the 
 shining of a reflected glory, like the sunlight upon the 
 moon. But w 7 hen the humanity of Jesus was thus 
 transfigured it was a native glory, the inward radiance 
 of the soul stealing through, and lighting up, the en- 
 veloping globe of human flesh. It is easy to see why 
 this celestial appearance should not be the normal 
 manifestation of the Christ ; for had it been, He would 
 no longer have been the "Son of man." Between 
 Himself and the humanity He had come to redeem 
 would have been a gulf wide and profound, while 
 the Fatherhood of God would have been a truth lying 
 back in the vistas of the unknown, a truth unfelt ; for 
 men only reach up to that Fatherhood through the 
 Brotherhood of Christ. But if we ask why now, just 
 for once, there should be this transfiguring of the Person 
 of Jesus, the answer is not so evident. Gcdet has a 
 suggestion which is as natural as it is beautiful. He 
 represents the Transfiguration as the natural issue of 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION, 283 
 
 a perfect, a sinless life, a life in which death should 
 have no place, as it would have had no place in the 
 life of unfallen man. Innocence, holiness, glory — 
 these would have been the successive steps connecting 
 earth with heaven, an ever-upward path, across which 
 death would not even have cast a shadow. Such 
 would have been the path opened to the first Adam, 
 had not Sin intervened, bringing Death as its wage 
 and penalty. And now, as the Second Adam takes 
 the place of the first, moving steadily along the path 
 of obedience from which the first Adam swerved, 
 should we not naturally look for that life to end in some 
 translation or transfiguration, the body of the earthly 
 life blossoming into the body of the heavenly ? and 
 where else so appropriately as here, upon the "holy 
 mount," when the spirits of the perfected come forth 
 to meet Him, and the chariot of cloud is ready to convey 
 Him to the heavens which are so near? It is thus 
 something more than conjecture — it is a probability — that 
 had the life of Jesus been by itself, detached from man- 
 kind in general, the Transfiguration had been the mode 
 and the beginning of the glorification. The way to the 
 heavens, from which He was self-exiled, was open to 
 Him from the mount of glory, but He preferred to pass 
 up by the mount of passion and of sacrifice. The 
 burden of the world's redemption is upon Him, and 
 that eternal purpose leads Him down from the Trans- 
 figuration glories, and onwards to a cross and grave. 
 He chooses to die, with and for man, rather than to live 
 and reign without man. 
 
 But not only does the " holy mount " throw its light 
 on what would have been the path of unfallen man, it 
 gives us in prophecy a vision of the resurrection life. 
 Compare the picture of the transfigured Christ, as 
 
286 THE GOSPEL OF ST LUKE. 
 
 drawn by the Synoptists, with the picture, drawn by 
 John himself, of the Christ of the Exaltation, and how 
 strikingly similar they are! (Rev. i. 13-17). In both 
 descriptions we have an affluence of metaphor and 
 simile, which affluence was itself but the stammering 
 of cur weak human speech, as it seeks to tell the 
 unutterable. In both we have a whiteness like the 
 snow, while to portray the countenance St. John re- 
 peats almost verbatim St. Matthew's words, " His face 
 did shine as the sun." Evidently the Christ of the 
 Transfiguration and the Christ of the Exaltation are 
 one and the same Person ; and why do we blame Peter 
 for speaking in such random, delirious words upon the 
 mount, when John, by the glory of that same vision, in 
 Patmos, is stricken to the ground as if dead, not able 
 to speak at all ? When Peter spoke, somewhat inco- 
 herently, about the " three tabernacles," it was not, as 
 some aver, the random speech of one who was but half 
 awake, but of one whose reason was dazzled and con- 
 fused with the blinding glory. And so the Transfigura- 
 tion anticipates the Glorification, investing the sacred 
 Person with those same robes of light and royalty He 
 had laid aside for a time, but which He will shortly 
 assume again — the habiliments of an eternal re- 
 enthronement 
 
 2. Again, the holy mount shows us the place of 
 death in the life of man. We read, " There talked with 
 Him two men, which were Moses and Elijah ; " and as 
 if the Evangelist would emphasize the fact that it was 
 no apparition, existing only in their heated imagination, 
 he repeats the statement (ver. 35) that they were "two 
 men." Strange gathering — Moses, Elias, and Christ ! — 
 the Law in the person of Moses, the Prophets in the 
 person of Elias, both doing homage to the Christ, who 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION. 287 
 
 was Himself the fulfilment of prophecy and law. But 
 what the Evangelist seems to note particularly is the 
 humanness of the two celestials. Though the earthly 
 life of each ended in an abrupt, unearthly way, the one 
 having a translation, the other a Divine interment 
 (whatever that may mean), they have both been resi- 
 dents of the heavenly world for centuries. But as they 
 appear to-day " in glory," that is, with the glorified 
 body of the heavenly life, outwardly, visibly, their 
 bodies are still human. There is nothing about their 
 form and build that is grotesque, or even unearthly. 
 They have not even the traditional but fictitious wings 
 with which poetry is wont to set off the inhabitants of 
 the sky. They are still " men," with bodies resembling, 
 both in size and form, the old body of earth. But if the 
 appearance of these " men " reminds us of earth, if we 
 wait awhile, we see that their natures are very unearthly, 
 not unnatural so much as supernatural. They glide 
 down through the air with the ease of a bird and the 
 swiftness of light, and when the interview ends, and 
 they go their separate ways, these heavenly "men" 
 gather up their robes and vanish, strangely and sud- 
 denly as they came. And yet they can make use of 
 earthly supports, even the grosser forms of matter, 
 planting their feet upon the grass as naturally as 
 when Moses climbed up Pisgah or as Elijah stood in 
 Horeb's cave. 
 
 And not only do the bodies of these celestials retain 
 still the image of the earthly life, but the bent of their 
 minds is the same, the set and drift of their thoughts 
 following the old directions. The earthly lives of Moses 
 and Elias had been spent in different lands, in different 
 times; five hundred eventful years pushed them far 
 apart; but their mission had been one. Both were 
 
288 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 prophets of the Highest, the one bringing God's law 
 down to the people, the other leading a lapsed people 
 back and up to Gcd's law. Yes, and they are prophets 
 still, but with a nearer vision now. No longer do they 
 gaze through the crimson lenses of the sacrificial 
 blood, beholding the Promised One afar off. They 
 have read the Divine thought and purpose of redemp- 
 tion ; they are initiated into its mysteries ; and now 
 that the cross is close at hand, they come to bring 
 to the world's Saviour their heavenly greetings, and to 
 invest Him, by anticipation, with robes of glory, soon 
 to be His for evermore. 
 
 Such is the apocalypse of the holy mount. The 
 veil which hides from our dull eye of sense the here- 
 after was lifted up. The heavens were opened to them, 
 no longer far away beyond the cold stars, but near 
 them, touching them on every side. They saw the 
 saints of other days interesting themselves in earthly 
 events — in one event at least, and speaking of that 
 death which they mourned and feared, calmly, as a 
 thing expected and desired, but calling it by its new 
 and softened name, a "departure," an "exodus." And 
 as they see the past centuries saluting Him whom they 
 have learned to call the Christ, " the Son of God," as 
 the truth of immortality is borne in upon them, not as 
 a vague conception of the mind, but by oral and ocular 
 demonstration, would they not see the shadow of the 
 coming death in a different light ? would not the painful 
 pressure upon their spirits be eased somewhat, if not, 
 indeed, entirely removed ? and— 
 
 * The Apostles' heart of rock 
 Be nerved against temptation's shock " ? 
 
 Would they not more patiently endure, now that they 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION. 289 
 
 had become apostles of the Invisible, seers of the 
 Unseen ? 
 
 But if the glory of the holy mount sets in a fairer 
 light the cross and grave of Christ, may we not throw 
 from the mirror of our thought some of its light upon 
 our lowlier graves ? What is death, after all, but the 
 transition into life ? Retaining its earthly accent, we 
 call it a " decease ; " but that is true only of the corporeal 
 nature, that body of " flesh and blood " which cannot 
 inherit the higher kingdom of glory to which we pass. 
 There is no break in the continuity of the soul's exis- 
 tence, not even one parenthetic hour. When He who 
 was the Resurrection and t^e Life said, " To-day shalt 
 thou be with Me in paradise,'' that word passed on a 
 forgiven soul directly to a state of conscious blessed- 
 ness. From " the azure deep of air " does the eagle 
 look regretfully upon the eyrie of its crag, where it lay 
 in its unfledged weakness ? or does it mourn the broken 
 shell from which its young life emerged ? And why 
 should we mourn, or weep with unrestrained tears, 
 when the shell is broken that the freed spirit may soar 
 up to the regions of the blessed, and range the eterni- 
 ties of God ? Paganism closed the story of human 
 life with an interrogation-point, and sought to fill up 
 with guesses the blank she did not know. Christianity 
 speaks with clearer voice ; hers is " a sure and certain 
 hope," for He who u hath abolished death" hath 
 " brought life and immortality to light." Earth's exodus 
 is heaven's genesis, and what we call the end celestials 
 call the beginning. 
 
 And not only does the mount speak of the certainties 
 of the after-life, it gives, in a binocular vision, the 
 likeness of the resurrection body, answering, in part, 
 the standing question, " How are the dead raised up ?" 
 
 19 
 
290 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 The body of the heavenly life must have some corre- 
 spondence with, and resemblance to, the body of our 
 earthly life. It will, in a sense, grow out of it. It 
 will not be something entirely new, but the old refined, 
 spiritualized, the dross and earthliness all removed, 
 the marks of care, and pain, and sin all wiped out. And 
 more, the Transfiguration mount gives us indubitable 
 proof that heaven and earth lie, virtually, close together, 
 and that the so-called " departed " are not entirely 
 severed from earthly things ; they can still read the 
 shadows upon earthly dials, and hear the strike of 
 earthly hours. They are not so absorbed and lost in 
 the new glories as to take no note of earthly events ; 
 nor are they restrained from visiting, at permitted 
 times, the earth they have not wholly left ; for as heaven 
 was theirs, when on earth, in hope and anticipation, 
 so now, in heaven, earth is theirs in thought and 
 memory. They have still interests here, associations 
 they cannot forget, friends who are still beloved, and 
 harvests of influence they still may reap. With the 
 absurdities and follies of so-called Spiritualism we have 
 no sort of sympathy ; they are the vagaries of weak 
 minds ; but even their eccentricities and excesses shall 
 not be allowed to rob us of what is a truly Christian 
 hope, that they who cared for us on earth care for us 
 still, and that they who loved and prayed for us below 
 love us none the less, and pray for us none the less 
 frequently, now that the conflict with them is over, 
 and the eternal rest begun. And why may not their 
 spirits touch ours, influencing our mind and heart, even 
 when we are not conscious whence those influences 
 come ? for are they not, with the angels, " ministering 
 spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them 
 that shall inherit salvation " ? The Mount of Trans- 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION. 291 
 
 figuration does indeed stand " apart/' for on its summit 
 the paths of the celestials and of the terrestrials meet 
 and merge ; and it is " high " indeed, for it touches 
 heaven. 
 
 3. Again, the holy mount shows us the place of 
 death in the life of Jesus. How long the vision lasted 
 we cannot tell, but in all probability the interview was 
 but brief. What supreme moments they were ! and 
 what a rush of tumultuous thoughts, we may suppose, 
 would fill the minds of the two saints, as they stand 
 again on the familiar earth ! But listen ! They speak 
 no word to revive the old-time memories ; they bring 
 no tidings of the heavenly world ; they do not even 
 ask, as they well might, the thousand questions con- 
 cerning His life and ministry. They think, they speak, 
 of one thing only, the " decease which He was about 
 to accomplish at Jerusalem." Here, then, we see the 
 drift of heavenly minds, and here we learn a truth 
 which is wonderfully true, that the death of Jesus, the 
 cross of Jesus, was the one central thought of heaven, 
 as it is the one central hope of earth. But how can it 
 be such if the life of Jesus is all we need, and if the 
 death is but an ordinary death, an appendix, necessary 
 indeed, but unimportant ? Such is the belief of some, 
 but such certainly is not the teaching of this narrative, 
 nor of the other Scriptures. Heaven sets the cross of 
 Jesus "in the midst," the one central fact of history. 
 He was born that He might die ; He lived that He 
 might die. All the lines of His human life converge 
 upon Calvary, as He Himself said, "For unto this 
 hour came I into the world." And why is that death 
 so all-important, bending towards its cross all the lines 
 of Scripture, as it now monopolizes the speech of these 
 two celestials ? Why ? There is but one answer 
 
292 THE GOSPEL OF ST LUKE. 
 
 which is satisfactory, the answer St. Peter himself 
 gives : " His own Self bare our sins in His body upon 
 the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto 
 righteousness " (i Pet. ii. 24). And so the Mount of 
 Transfiguration looks towards the Mount of Sacrifice. 
 It lights up Calvary, and lays a wreath of glory upon 
 the cross. 
 
 We need not speak again of Peter's random words, 
 as he seeks to detain the celestial visitants. He would 
 fain prolong what to him is a Feast of Tabernacles, 
 and he suggests the building of three booths upon 
 the mountain slope — u one for Thee," putting his Lord 
 first, "and one for Moses, and one for Elias." He 
 makes no mention of himself or of his companions. 
 He is content to remain outside, so that he may only 
 be near, as it were on the fringe of the transfiguring 
 glories. But what a strange request ! what wander- 
 ing, delirious words, almost enough to make celestials 
 smile ! Well might the Evangelist excuse Peter's 
 random words by saying, " Not knowing what he said." 
 But if Peter gets no answer to his request, and if he is 
 not permitted to build the tabernacles, Heaven spreads 
 over the group its canopy of cloud, that Shekinah- 
 cloud whose very shadow was brightness ; while once 
 again, as at the Baptism, a Voice speaks out of the 
 cloud, the voice of the Father : " This is My Son, My 
 Chosen ; hear ye Him." And so the mountain pageant 
 fades ; for when the cloud has passed away Moses and 
 Elias have disappeared, "Jesus only" is left with the 
 three disciples. Then they retrace their steps down 
 the mountain side, the three carrying in their heart a 
 precious memory, the strains of a lingering music, 
 which they only put into words when the Son of man 
 is risen from the dead; while Jesus turns, not reluc- 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION. 
 
 293 
 
 tantly, from the opened door and the welcome of 
 Heaven, to make an atonement upon Calvary, and 
 through the veil of His rent flesh to make a way for 
 sinful man even into the Holiest. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 
 Luke x. 25-37. 
 
 IT would scarcely have accorded with the traditions 
 of human nature had the teachers of religion looked 
 favourably upon Jesus. Stepping, as He did, within 
 their domain, without any human ordination or scho- 
 lastic authority, they naturally resented the intrusion, 
 and when the teaching of the new Rabbi so distinctly 
 contravened their own interpretation of the law their 
 curiosity deepened into jealousy, and curdled at last 
 into a virulent hate. The ecclesiastical atmosphere 
 was charged with electricity, but it only manifested 
 itself at first in the harmless play of summer lightning, 
 the cross-fire of half-earnest and half-captious ques- 
 tions; later it was the forked lightning that struck 
 him down into a grave. 
 
 We have no means of localizing, either in point of 
 time or place, the incident here recorded by our Evan- 
 gelist, and which, by the way, only St. Luke mentions. 
 It stands by itself, bearing in its dependent parable of 
 the Good Samaritan an exquisite and perfect flower, 
 from whose deep cup has dropped the very nectar of 
 the gods. 
 
 It was probably during one of His public discourses 
 that a " certain lawyer," or scribe — for the two titles 
 
x. 25-37-] THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 295 
 
 are used interchangeably — "stood up and tempted 
 Him." He sought to prove Him by questions, as the 
 word means here, hoping to entrap Jesus amid the 
 vagaries of Rabbinical tradition. " Teacher/' said he, 
 hiding his sinister motive behind a veil of courtesy and 
 apparent candour, "what shall I do to inherit eternal 
 life ? " Had the question been sincere, Jesus would 
 probably have given a direct answer; but reading the 
 under-current of his thought, which moved transversely to 
 the surface-current of his speech, Jesus simply answered 
 his question b}' asking another : " What is written in the 
 Law? How readest thou?" With a readiness which 
 implied a perfect familiarity with the Law, he replied, 
 "Thou shait love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
 and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with 
 all thy mind; and thy neighbour as tlryself." Some 
 expositors have thought that the Evangelist here gives 
 the summary of what was a lengthened conversation, 
 and that Jesus Himself led the mind of the lawyer to 
 join together these detached portions of Scripture — one 
 from Deuteronomy vi. 5, and the other from Leviticus 
 xix. 1 8. It is true there is a striking resemblance between 
 the answer of the lawyer and the answer Jesus Himself 
 gave subsequently to a similar question (Mark xii. 30, 
 31); but there is no necessity for us to apologize for 
 the resemblance, as if it were improbable and unnatural. 
 The fact is, as the narrative of Mark xii. plainly indi- 
 cates, that these two sentences were held in general 
 consent as the epitome of the Law, its first and its 
 second commandment. Even the scribe assents to this 
 as an axiomatic truth he has no wish to challenge. It 
 will be observed that a fourth term is added to the three 
 of the original, possibly on account of the Septuagint 
 rendering, which translated the Hebrew "heart" by 
 
296 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 "mind." Godet suggests that since the term "heart" 
 is the most general term, denoting "in Scripture the 
 central focus from which all the rays of the moral life 
 go forth," that it stands in apposition to the other three, 
 the one in its three particulars. This, which is the most 
 natural interpretation, would refer the " mind " to the 
 intellectual faculties, the " soul " to the emotional facul- 
 ties, the sensibilities, and the " might " to the will, which 
 rules all force ; while by the " heart " is meant the unit, 
 the " centred self," into which the others merge, and of 
 which they form a part. 
 
 Jesus commended him for his answer : " Thou hast 
 answered right : this do, and thou shalt live " — words 
 which brushed away completely the Hebraic figment of 
 inherited life. That life was not something that should 
 be reached by processes of loving. The life should 
 precede the love, and should give birth to it : the love 
 should grow out of the life, its blossoming flower. 
 
 Having the tables so turned upom himself, and 
 wishing to "justify," or to put himself right, the 
 stranger asks still another question : "And who is my 
 neighbour?" doubtless hoping to cover his retreat in 
 the smoke of a burning question. To our minds, made 
 familiar with the thought of humanity, it seems as if a 
 question so simple scarcely deserved such an elaborate 
 answer as Jesus gave to it. But the thought of humanity 
 had not yet possessed the world ; indeed, it had only 
 just come to earth, to be spoken by, and incarnate 
 in, Him who was the Son of man. To the Jew the 
 question of the lawyer was a most important one. The 
 word "neighbour" could be spoken in a breath; but 
 unwind that word, and it measures off the whole of our 
 earthly life, it covers all our practical, every-day duties. 
 It ran through the pages of the Law, the ark in which 
 
* 25-37-] THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 297 
 
 the Golden Rule was hidden ; or like a silent angel, it 
 flashed its sword across life's forbidden paths. But if 
 the Jew could not erase this broad word from the pages 
 of the Law, he could narrow and emasculate its meaning 
 by an interpretation of his own. And this they had 
 done, making this Divine word almost of none effect by 
 their tradition. To the Jewish mind " neighbour " was 
 simply "Jew" spelt large. The only neighbourhood 
 they recognized was the narrow neighbourhood of 
 Hebrew speech and Hebrew sympathies. The Hebrew 
 mind was isolated as their land, and all who could not 
 frame their Shibboleths were barbarians, Gentiles, whom 
 they were at perfect liberty to spoil, as with anathe- 
 mas and swords they chased them over their Jordans. 
 Jesus, however, is on the alert; and how wisely He 
 answers ! He does not declaim against the narrowness 
 of Hebrew thought ; He utters no denunciatory word 
 against their proud and false exclusiveness. He quietly 
 unfolds the word, spreading it out into an exquisite 
 parable, that all coming times may see how beautiful, 
 how Divine the word " neighbour " is. 
 
 He said, "A certain man was going down from 
 Jerusalem to Jericho; and he fell among robbers, 
 which both stripped him, and beat him, and departed, 
 leaving him half dead." The parables of Jesus, though 
 drawn from real life, had no local colouring. They 
 grouped themselves around some well-known fact of 
 nature, or some general custom of social life ; and so 
 their spirit was national or cosmopolitan, rather than 
 local. Here, however, Jesus departs from His usual 
 manner, giving to His parable a local habitation. It is 
 the road which led steeply down from Jerusalem to 
 Jericho, and which for centuries has been so infested 
 with robbers or bandits as to earn for itself the darkly 
 
298 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 ominous name of "the Bloody Way." Possibly that 
 name itself is an outgrowth from the parable; but whether 
 so or not, it is scarcely to be supposed that it had so 
 evil a character in the days of Christ. As Jericho then 
 was a populous city, and intimately connected with 
 Jerusalem in its social and business life, the road would 
 be much frequented. Indeed, the parable indicates as 
 much; for Jesus, whose words were never untrue to 
 nature or to history, represents His three travellers as 
 all journeying singly ; while the khan or " inn " shows, 
 in its reflection, a constant stream of travel. Our 
 anonymous traveller, however, does not find it so safe 
 as he had anticipated. Attacked, in one of its dusky 
 ravines, by a band of brigands, they strip him of his 
 clothing, with whatever the girdle-purse might contain, 
 and beating him out of sheer devilry, they leave him by 
 the road-side, unable to walk, unable even to rise, a 
 living-dying man. 
 
 "And by chance, a certain priest was going down 
 that way ; and when he saw him he passed by on the 
 other side. And in like manner a Levite also, when 
 he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the 
 other side." As in a tableaux vivants, Jesus shows us 
 the two ecclesiastics, who come in sight in the happy, 
 coincidental way that Romance so delights in. They 
 had probably just completed their "course" of Temple 
 service, and were now going down to Jericho, which 
 was a favourite residence of the priests, for the somewhat 
 long interval their sacred duties allowed them. They 
 had, therefore, no pressure of business upon them ; 
 indeed, the verb w r ould almost imply that the priest 
 was walking leisurely along. But they bring no help 
 to the wounded man. Directly they see him, instead 
 of being drawn to him by the attractions of sympathy, 
 
x. 25-37-3 THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 299 
 
 something, either the shock or the fright, acts upon 
 them as a centrifugal force, and sends them describing 
 an arc of a circle around that centre of groans and 
 blood. At any rate the}' " passed by on the other 
 side," leaving behind them neither deed nor word of 
 mercy, but leaving behind them a shadow of them- 
 selves which, while time itself lasts, will be vivid, cold, 
 and repelling. It is just possible, however, that they 
 do not deserve all the unmeasured censure which the 
 critics and the centuries have given, and are still likely 
 to give. It is very easy for us to condemn their action 
 as selfish, heartless ; but let us put ourselves in their 
 place, alone in the lonely pass, with this proof of an 
 imminent danger sprung suddenly upon us, and it is 
 possible that we ourselves should not have been quite 
 so brave as by our safe firesides we imagine ourselves 
 to be. The fact is it needed something more than 
 sympathy to make them turn aside and befriend the 
 wounded man ; it needed physical courage, and that 
 of the highest kind, and this wanting, sjanpathy itself 
 would not be sufficient. The heart might long to help, 
 even when the feet were hastening away. A sudden 
 inrush of fear, even of vague alarm, will sometimes 
 drive us contrary to the drift of our sympathies, just 
 as our feet are lifted and we ourselves carried onwards 
 by a surging crowd. 
 
 Whether this be a correct interpretation of their con- 
 duct or not, it certainly harmonizes with the general 
 attitude of Jesus towards the priesthood. The chief 
 priests were always and bitterly hostile, but we have 
 reasonable ground for supposing that the priests, as 
 a body, looked favouringly upon Jesus. The bolts of 
 terrible ° woes " are hurled against Pharisees and 
 scribes, yet Jesus does not condemn the priests in a 
 
300 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 single word ; while in that aftermath of the Pentecost 
 the Temple courts yielded the richest harvests, as "a 
 great company of the priests were obedient to the 
 faith." If, then, Jesus now holds up the priesthood to 
 execration, setting these ecclesiastics in the pillory of 
 His parable, that the coming centuries may throw sharp 
 words at them, it is certainly an exceptional mood. 
 The sweet silence has curdled into acrid speech. But 
 even here Jesus does not condemn, except, as it would 
 seem, by implication, the conduct of the priest and 
 Levite. They come into the parable rather as acces- 
 sories, and Jesus makes use of them as a foil, to 
 throw out into bolder relief the central figure, which 
 is the Samaritan, and so to emphasize His central truth, 
 which is the real answer to the lawyer's question, that 
 " neighbour " is too broad, and too human, a word to 
 be cut off and deliminated by any boundaries of race. 
 
 But in thus casting a mantle of charity around 
 our priest and Levite, we must admit that the cha- 
 racter is sometimes true even down to recent days. 
 Ecclesiasticism and religion, alas ! are not always 
 synonyms. Revolted Israel sins and sacrifices by 
 turns, and seeking to keep the balance in equal poise, 
 she puts over against her multitude of sins her multi- 
 tude of sacrifices. Religiousness may be at times but 
 a cloak for moral laxity, and to some rite is more than 
 right. There are those, alas ! to-day, who wear the 
 livery of the Temple, to whom religion is a routine 
 mechanism of dead things, rather than the commerce 
 of living hearts, who open with hireling hand the 
 Temple gates, who chant with hireling lips how " His 
 mercy endureth for ever," and then step down from 
 their sacred Jerusalem, to toss justice and mercy to the 
 winds, as they defraud the widow and oppress the poor. 
 
*• 25-37-3 THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 301 
 
 11 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came 
 where he was : and when he saw him, he was moved 
 with compassion, and came to him, and bound up his 
 wounds, pouring on them oil and wine ; and he set him 
 on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took 
 care of him." At first sight it would appear as if Jesus 
 had weakened the narrative by a topographical in- 
 accuracy, as if He had gone out of His way to place a 
 Samaritan on the road to Jericho, which was altogether 
 out of the line of Samaritan travel. But it is a deliber- 
 ate purpose on the part of Jesus, and not a lapsus 
 linguae, that introduces this Samaritan ; for this is the 
 gist of the whole parable. The man who had fallen 
 among the robbers was doubtless a Jew ; for had it 
 been otherwise, the fact would have been stated. Now, 
 there was no question as to whether the word "neigh- 
 bour " embraced their fellow-countrymen ; the question 
 was whether it passed be}'ond their national bounds, 
 opening up lines of duty across the outlying world. 
 It is therefore almost a necessity that the one who 
 teaches this lesson should be himself an alien, a 
 foreigner, and Jesus chooses the Samaritan as being ot 
 a race against which Jewish antipathies were especially 
 strong, but for which He Himself had a special regard 
 and warmest sympathy. Though occupying adjacent 
 territory, the Jews and the Samaritans practically were 
 far apart, antipodal races we might almost call them. 
 Between them lay a wide and deep chasm that trade 
 even could not bridge, and across which the courtesies 
 and sympathies of life never passed. "The Jews have 
 no dealings with the Samaritans," said the flippant 
 woman of Samaria, as she voiced a jealousy and hatred 
 which were as mutual as they were deep. But here, 
 in this ideal Samaritan, is a noble exception. Though 
 
302 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 belonging to a lowly and obscure race, his thoughts are 
 high. The ear of his soul has so caught the rhythm of 
 Divine harmonies that it does not hear longer the little 
 lisping Shibboleths of earthly speech; and while the sym- 
 pathies of smaller hearts flow like a stream down in their 
 well-defined and accustomed channel, seldom knowing 
 any overflow, save in some rare freshet of impulse and 
 of feeling, the sympathies of the Samaritan moved out- 
 ward like the currents of the wind, sweeping across all 
 chasms and over all mountain heights of division, bear- 
 ing their clouds of blessing anywhither as the need 
 required. It makes no difference to him that the fallen 
 man is of an alien race. He is a man, and that is 
 enough ; and he is down, and must be raised ; he is 
 in need, and must be helped. The priest and Levite 
 thought first and most of themselves, and giving to 
 the man but a brief and scared look, they passed on 
 with a quickened pace. Not so with the Samaritan; 
 he loses all thought of himself, and is perfectly oblivious 
 to the danger he himself may be running. Upon his 
 great soul he feels the pressure of this " must ; " it runs 
 along the tightened muscles of his arm, as he checks 
 his steed. He himself comes down, dismounting, that 
 he may help the man to rise. He opens his flask and 
 puts his wine to the lips, that their groans may cease, 
 or that they may be soothed down into inarticulate 
 speech. The oil he has brought for his own food he 
 pours upon the wounds, and when the man has suf- 
 ficiently recovered he lifts him upon his own beast and 
 takes him to the inn. Nor is this enough for his great 
 heart, but continuing his journey on the morrow, he 
 first arranges with his host that the man shall [be well 
 cared for, giving him two pence, which was the two 
 days' wages of a labouring man, at the same time 
 
x- 25-37-3 THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 303 
 
 telling him that he must not limit his attentions to the 
 sum he pays in advance, but that if anything more 
 should be needed he would pay the balance on his 
 return. We do not read whether it was needed or not, 
 for the Samaritan, mounting his steed, passes out of 
 our hearing and out of our sight. Not quite out of 
 our hearing, however, for Heaven has caught his gentle, 
 loving words, and hidden them within this parable, that 
 all coming times may listen to their music ; nor out of 
 our sight either, for his photograph was caught in the 
 sunlight of the Master's speech ; and as we turn over 
 the pages of Inspiration there is no picture more beauti- 
 ful than that of the nameless Samaritan, whom all the 
 world calls " the Good," the man who knew so much 
 better than his age what humanity and mercy meant. 
 
 In the new light the lawyer can answer his own ques- 
 tion now, and he does ; for when Jesus asks, " Which 
 of these three, thinkest thou, proved neighbour unto 
 him that fell among the robbers ? " he replies, with no 
 hesitation, but with a lingering prejudice that does not 
 care to pronounce the, to him, outlandish name, " He 
 that showed mercy on him." The lesson is learned, 
 the lesson of humanity, for the whole parable is but 
 an amplification of the Golden Rule, and Jesus dis- 
 misses the subject and the scholar with the personal 
 application, which is but a corollary of the proposition 
 He has demonstrated, "Go thou and do likewise." Go 
 and do to others as 3'ou would have them do to 
 you, v» T ere the circumstances reversed and your places 
 changed. Read off your duty, not from your own low 
 standpoint merely, but in a binocular vision, as you put 
 yourself in his place ; so will you find that the line of 
 duty and the line of beauty are one. 
 
 The practical lessons of the parable are easy to 
 
304 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 trace, as they are of universal application. The first 
 lesson it teaches is the lesson of humanity, the neigh- 
 bourhood and brotherhood of man. It is a convenience, 
 and perhaps a necessity, of human life, that the great 
 mass of humanity should be broken up into fragments, 
 sections, with differing customs, languages, and names. 
 It gives to the world the stimulus of competition and 
 helpful rivalries. But these distinctions are superficial, 
 temporary, and beneath this diversity of speech and 
 thought there is the deeper unity of soul. We empha- 
 size our differences ; we pride ourselves upon them; 
 but how little does Heaven make of them ! Heaven 
 does not even see them. Our national boundaries may 
 climb up over the Alps, but they cannot touch the sky. 
 Those skies look down and smile on all alike, Divinely 
 impartial in their gifts of beauty and of light. And 
 how little of the provincial, or even national, there was 
 about Jesus ! Though He kept Himself almost entirely 
 within the borders of the Holy Land, never going far 
 from His central pivot, which was Jerusalem, and its 
 cross, yet He belonged to the world, as the world 
 belonged to Him. He called Himself the Son of man, 
 at once humanity's flower, and humanity's Son and 
 Saviour. And as over the cradle of the Son of man the 
 far East and the far West together leaned, so around 
 His cross was the meeting-place of the races. The 
 three chief languages inscribed upon it proclaimed His 
 royalty, while the cross itself, on which the Sacrifice 
 for humanity was to be offered, was itself the gift of 
 humanity at large, as Asia provided it, and Europe 
 prepared it, and Africa, in the person of the Cyrenean, 
 tore it. In the mind of Jesus, as in the purpose of 
 God, humanity was not a group of fractions, but a 
 unit one and indivisible, made of one b*Dod, and by 
 
* 25-37-] THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 305 
 
 one Blood redeemed. In the heart of Jesus there was 
 the " enthusiasm of humanity/' all-absorbing and com- 
 plete, and that enthusiasm takes possession of us, a 
 new force generated in our lives, as we approach in 
 spirit the great Ideal Man. 
 
 The second lesson of the parable is the lesson of 
 mere}', the beauty of self-sacrifice. It was because the 
 Samaritan forgot himself that all the world has remem- 
 bered and applauded him. It is because of his stoop of 
 self-renouncing love that his character is so exalted, his 
 memory so dear, and that his very name, which is a 
 title without a name, floats down the ages like a sweet 
 song. "Go and do thou likewise" is the Master's 
 word to us. Discipline your heart that you may see 
 in man everywhere a brother, whose keeper you are. 
 Let fraternity be, not a theory only, but a realized fact, 
 and then a factor of your life. Train your eye to 
 watch for others' needs, to read another's woe. Train 
 your soul to sympathy, and your hand to helpfulness; 
 for in our world there is room enough for both. Beth- 
 esda's porches stretch far as our eye can roach, all 
 crowded, too, with the sorrowing, the sick, and the sad, 
 thick enough indeed, but not so close as that an angel's 
 foot may not step between them, and not so sad but 
 an angel's voice may soothe and cheer. He who lifts 
 another's load, who soothes another's smart, who 
 brightens a life that else would be dark, who puts a 
 music within a brother's soul, though it be only for a 
 passing moment, wakes even a sweeter music within 
 his own, for he enters on earth into his Master's joy, 
 the joy of a redeeming, self-sacrificing love. 
 
 20 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE TWO SISTERS. 
 Luke x. 38-42. 
 
 AT first sight it appears as if our Evangelist had 
 departed from the orderly arrangement of which 
 he speaks in his prelude, in thus linking this domestic 
 scene of Judaea with His northern Galilean journey, 
 and to the casual glance this home-flower does certainly 
 seem an exotic in this garden of the Lord. The 
 strangeness, the out-of-placeness, however, vanishes 
 entirely upon a nearer, closer view. If, as is probable, 
 the parable of the Good Samaritan was spoken during 
 that northward journey, its scene lies away in Judaea, 
 in the dangerous road that sweeps down from Jerusalem 
 to Jericho. Now, this road to Jericho lay through the 
 village of Bethany, and in the Evangelist's mind the 
 two places are intimately connected, as we see (chap, 
 xix. vv. I, 29) ; so that the idyll of Bethany would follow 
 the parable of the Good Samaritan with a certain 
 naturalness, the one recalling the other by the simple 
 association of ideas. Then, too, it harmonizes so 
 thoroughly with its context, as it comes between a 
 parable on works and a chapter on prayer. In the one, 
 man is the doer, heart and hand going out in the 
 beautiful ministries of love ; in the other, man is the 
 receiver, waiting upon God, opening hand and heart 
 for the inflow of Divine grace. In one it is Love in 
 
x. 38-42.] THE TWO SISTERS. 307 
 
 action that we see ; in the other it is Love at rest, at 
 rest from activities of her own, in quest of further good. 
 This is exactly the picture our Evangelist draws of 
 the two sisters, and which might have served as a 
 parable had it not been so plainly taken from real 
 life. Perhaps, too, another consideration influenced 
 the Evangelist, and one that is suggested by the studied 
 vagueness of the narrative. He gives no clue as to 
 where the little incident occurred, for the M certain 
 village " might be equally appropriate in Samaria 
 or Judaea ; while the two names, Martha and Mary, 
 apart from the corroboration of St. John's Gospel, 
 would not enable us to localize the scene. It is evident 
 that St. Luke wished to throw around them a sort of 
 incognito, probably because they were still living when 
 he wrote, and too great publicity might subject them 
 to inconvenience, or even to something more. And 
 so St. Luke considerately masks the picture, shutting 
 off the background of locality, while St. John, who 
 writes at a later date, when Jerusalem has fallen, and 
 who is under no such obligation of reserve, fks the 
 scene precisely; for there can be no doubt that the 
 Mary and Martha of his Gospel, of Bethany, are the 
 Martha and Mary of St. Luke ; their very characters, 
 as well as names, are identical. 
 
 It was in one of His journeys to the south, though 
 we have no means of telling which, that He came to 
 Bethany, a small village on the eastern slope of Olivet, 
 and about three-quarters of an hour from Jerusalem. 
 There are several indications in the Gospels that this 
 was a favourite resort of Jesus during His Jxidcean 
 ministry (Matt. xxi. 1 ; John viii. 1) ; and it is some- 
 what singular that the only nights that we read He 
 spent in Jerusalem were the night in the garden and 
 
308 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 the two nights He slept in its grave. He preferred 
 the quiet haven of Bethany ; and though we cannot 
 with absolute certainty recognize the village home 
 where Jesus had such frequent welcome, yet throwing 
 the side-light of John xi. 5 upon the haze, it seems 
 in part to lift ; for the deep affection Jesus had for the 
 three implies a close and ripened intimacy. 
 
 St. John, in his allusions to the family, makes Mary 
 prominent, giving precedence to her name, as he calls 
 Bethany "the village of Mary and her sister Martha" 
 (John xi. 1). St. Luke, however, makes Martha the 
 central figure of his picture, while Mary is set back in 
 the shade, or rather in the sunshine of that Presence 
 which was and is the Light of the world. It was, 
 " Martha received Him into her house." She was the 
 recognized head of the family, " the lady " in fact, 
 as well as by the implication of her name, which was 
 the native equivalent of " lady." It was she who gave 
 the invitation to the Master, and on her devolved all 
 the care of the entertainment, the preparation of the 
 feast, and the reception of the guests ; for though the 
 change of pronoun in ver. 38 from "they" to "Him" 
 would lead us to suppose that the disciples had gone 
 another way, and were not with Him now, still the 
 " much serving " would show that it was a special 
 occasion, and that others had been invited to meet 
 Jesus. 
 
 It is a significant coincidence that St. John, speaking 
 (xii. 2) of another supper at Bethany, in the house of 
 Simon, states that Martha "served," using the same 
 word that Jesus addressed to her in the narrative of 
 St. Luke. Evidently Martha was a " server." This 
 was her forte, so much so that her services were in 
 requisition outside her own house. Hers was a cuMnary 
 
x. 38-42.] THE TWO SISTERS. 309 
 
 skill, and she delighted with her sleight of hand to 
 effect all sorts of transformations, as, conjuring with 
 her fire, she called forth the pleasures and harmonies 
 of taste. In this case, however, she overdid it ; she 
 went beyond her strength. Perhaps her guests out- 
 numbered her invitations, or something unforeseen had 
 upset her plans, so that some of the viands were 
 belated. At any rate, she was cumbered, distracted, 
 " put about " as our modern colloquialism would have 
 it. Perhaps we might say she was " put out " as well, 
 for we can certainly detect a trace of irritability both 
 in her manner and in her speech. She breaks in 
 suddenly among the guests (the aorist participle gives 
 the rustle of a quick movement), and in the hearing of 
 them all she says to Jesus, " Lord, dost Thou not care 
 that my sister did leave me to serve alone ? bid her 
 therefore that she help me." Her tone is sharp, 
 querulous, and her words send a deep chill across the 
 table, as when a sea- fret drifts coldly inland. If Mary 
 was in the wrong thus to sit at the feet of Jesus, Martha 
 certainly was not in the right. There was no occasion 
 to give this public reprimand, this round-hand rebuke. 
 She might have come and secretly called her, as she 
 did afterwards, on the day of their sorrow, and probably 
 Mary would have risen as quickly now as then. But 
 Martha is overweighted, ruffled ; her feelings get the 
 better of her judgment, and she speaks, out of the impati- 
 ence of her heart, words she never would have spoken had 
 she but known that Inspiration would keep their echoes 
 reverberating down all the years of time. And besides, 
 her words were somewhat lacking in respect to the 
 Master. True, she addresses Him as " Lord ; " but 
 having done this, she goes off into an interrogative 
 with an implied censure in it, and closes with an im- 
 
310 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 perative, which, to say the least, was not becoming, 
 while all through an undue emphasis is laid upon the 
 first personal pronoun, the "me" of her aggrieved self. 
 Turning to the other sister, we find a striking con- 
 trast, for Mary, as our Evangelist puts it, " also sat 
 at the Lord's feet, and heard His w T ord." This does 
 not imply any forwardness on her part, or any desire 
 to make herself conspicuous; the whole drift of her 
 nature was in the opposite direction. Sitting " at His 
 feet " now that they were reclining at the table, meant 
 sitting behind Him, alone amid the company, and 
 screened from their too-curious gaze by Him who drew 
 all eyes to Himself. Nor does she break through her 
 womanly reserve to take part in the conversation; she 
 simply " heard His word ; " or " she kept listening," 
 as the imperfect tense denotes. She put herself in the 
 listening attitude, content to be in the shadow, outside 
 the charmed circle, if she only might hear Him speak, 
 whose words fell like a rain of music upon her soul. 
 Her sister chided her for this, and the large family of 
 modern Marthas — for feminine sentiment is almost 
 entirely on Martha's side — blame her severely, for 
 what they call the selfishness of her conduct, seeking 
 her own enjoyment, even though others must pay the 
 price of it. But was Mary so utterly selfish ? and did 
 she sacrifice duty to gratify her inclination ? Not at 
 all, and certainly not to the extent our Marthas would 
 have us believe. Mary had assisted in the preparations 
 and the reception, as £he " also " of ver. 39 shows ; 
 while Martha's own words, "My sister did leave me 
 to serve alone," themselves imply that Mary had shared 
 the labours of the entertainment before taking her 
 place at the feet of Jesus. The probability is that she 
 had completed her task , and now that He who spake 
 
x. 3S-42.] THE TWO SISTERS. 311 
 
 as never man spake before was conversing with the 
 guests, she could not forego the privilege of listening 
 to the voice she might not hear again. 
 
 It is to Jesus, however, that we must go with our 
 rivalry of claims. He is our Court of Equity. His 
 estimate of character was never at fault. He looked 
 at the essences of things, the soul of things, and not 
 to the outward wrappings of circumstance, and He 
 read that palimpsest of motive, the underlying thought, 
 more easily than others could read the outward act. 
 And certainly Jesus had no apology for selfishness ; His 
 whole life was one war against it, and against sin, 
 which is but selfishness ripened. But how does Jesus 
 adjust this sisterly difference ? Does He dismiss the 
 listener, and send her back to an unfinished task ? 
 Does He pass on to her Martha's warm reproof? Not 
 at all ; but He gently reproves the elder sister. 
 " Martha, Martha," He said, as if her mind had 
 wandered, and the iteration was necessary to call her 
 to herself, "thou art anxious and troubled about many 
 things : but one thing is needful : for Mary hath chosen 
 the good part, which shall not be taken away from her." 
 
 It is easy to see from this where Jesus thought the 
 blame should rest. It was Martha who had taken too 
 much upon herself. Her generous heart had gone 
 beyond her strength, and far beyond the need. Wish- 
 ing to do honour to her Guest, studying to please Him, 
 she had been over-lavish in her entertainment, until 
 she had become worried — anxious, troubled, as Jesus 
 said, the former word referring to the inner disquiet, 
 the unrest of soul, and the latter to the outward per- 
 turbation, the tremor of the nerves, and the cloudiness 
 that looked from her eyes. The fact was that Martha 
 had misread the tastes of her Guest. She thought to 
 
3 ia THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 please Him by the abundance of her provision, the 
 largeness of her hospitality; but for these lower pleasures 
 of sense and of taste Jesus cared little. He had meat 
 to eat that others knew not of, and to do the will of 
 Him that sent Him was to Jesus more than any 
 ambrosia or nectar of the gods. The more simple the 
 repast, the more it pleased Him, whose thoughts were 
 high in the heavenly places, even while His feet and 
 the mortal body He wore touched lightly the earth. 
 And so while Martha's motive was pure, her judgment 
 was mistaken, and her eager heart tempted her to 
 works of supererogation, to an excess of care which 
 was anxiety, the fret and fever of the soul. Had she 
 been content with a modest service, such as would have 
 pleased her Guest, she too might have found time to 
 sit at His feet, and to have found there an Elim of rest 
 and a Mount of Beatitudes. 
 
 But while Jesus has a kind rebuke for Martha, He 
 has only words of commendation for her sister, whom 
 she has been so openly and sharply upbraiding. 
 " Mary," He said, speaking the name Martha had not 
 uttered, u hath chosen the good part, w r hich shall not 
 be taken away from her." He answers Martha in 
 her own language, her native tongue ; for in speaking 
 of Mary's choice as the " good part," it is a culinary 
 phrase, the parlance of the kitchen or the table, mean- 
 ing the choice bit. The phrase is in apposition with 
 the one thing which is needful, which itself is the 
 antithesis to the "many things" of Martha's care. 
 What the " one thing " is of which Jesus speaks we 
 cannot say with certainty, and almost numberless have 
 been the interpretations given to it. But without going 
 into them, can we not find the truest interpretation in 
 the Lord's own words? We think w r e may, for in 
 
X.3S-42.] THE TWO SISTERS. 313 
 
 the Sermon on the Mount we have an exact parallel 
 to the narrative. He finds people burdened, anxious 
 about the things of this life, wearying themselves 
 with the interminable questions, " What shall we eat ? 
 or What shall we drink ? " as if life had no quest higher 
 and vaster than these. And Jesus rebukes this spirit 
 of anxiety, exorcising it by an appeal to the lilies and 
 the grass of the field ; and summing up His condemna- 
 tion of anxiety, He adds the injunction, " Seek ye His 
 kingdom, and these things shall be added unto you" 
 (xii. 31). Here, again, we have the " many things " of 
 human care and strife contrasted with the " one thing " 
 which is of supremest moment. First, the kingdom ; 
 this in the mind of Jesus was the summum bonum, the 
 highest good of man, compared with which the " many 
 things " for which men strive and toil are but the dust 
 of the balances. And this was the choice of Mary. 
 She sought the kingdom of God, sitting at the feet 
 of Him who proclaimed it, and who was, though she 
 knew it not as yet, Himself the King. Martha too 
 sought the kingdom, but her distracted mind showed 
 that that was not her only, perhaps not her chief 
 quest. Earthly things weighed too heavily upon her 
 mind and heart, and through their dust the heavenly 
 things became somewhat obscured. Mary's heart was 
 set heavenward. She was the listener, eager to know 
 the will of God, that she might do it. Martha was so 
 busied with her own activities that she could not give 
 her thoughts to Christ ; Mary ceased from her works, 
 that so she might enter into His rest, setting the 
 world behind her, that her undivided gaze might be 
 upon Him who was truly her Lord. And so Jesus 
 loved Martha, yet pitied and chided her, while He 
 loved and commended Mary. 
 
314 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Nor was the " good part " ever taken from her, for 
 again and again we find her returning to the feet of 
 Jesus. In the day of their great sorrow, as soon as 
 she heard that the Master had come and called her, she 
 arose quickly, and coming to Jesus, though it was the 
 bare, dusty ground, she fell at His feet, seeking strength 
 and help where she before had sought light and truth. 
 And once more : when the shadow of the cross came 
 vividly near, when Simon gave the feast which Martha 
 served, Mary sought those feet again, to pour upon 
 them the precious and fragrant nard, the sweet odours 
 of which filled all the house, as they have since filled 
 all the world. Yes, Mary did not sit at the feet of 
 Jesus in vain ; she had learned to know Christ as few 
 of the disciples did ; for when Jesus said, " She has 
 done it for My burying," He intends us to infer that 
 Mary feels, stealing over her retiring but loving soul, 
 the cold and awful shadow of the cross. Her broken 
 alabaster and its poured-out spikenard are her unspoken 
 ode to the Redeemer, her pre-dated homage to the 
 Crucified. 
 
 And so we find in Mary the truest type of service. 
 Hers was not always the passive attitude, receiving 
 and never giving, absorbing and not diffusing. There 
 was the service before the session ; her hands had 
 prepared and wrought for Christ before she placed 
 herself at His feet, and the sacrifice followed, as she 
 brought her costly gift, to the astonishment of all the 
 rest, her sweet and healing balm for the wounds which 
 were soon to follow. 
 
 The life that is all receptive, that has no active 
 ministries of love, no waiting upon Christ in the person 
 of His followers, is an unnatural, an unhealthy life, a 
 piece of morbid selfishness which neither pleases God 
 
x. 38-42.] THE TWO SISTERS. 315 
 
 nor blesses man. On the other hand, the life that is 
 always busy, that is in a constant swirl of outward duties, 
 flying here and there like the stormy petrel over the 
 unresting waves, will soon weary or wear itself out, or 
 it will grow into an automaton, a mechanism without a 
 soul. Receiving, giving, praying, working — these are 
 the alternate chords on which the music of our lives 
 should be struck. Heavenward, earthward, should be 
 the alternate looks — heavenward in our waiting upon 
 God, and earthward in our service for man. That life 
 shines the most and is seen the farthest which reflects 
 most of the heavenly light ; and he serves Christ the 
 best who now sits humbly and prayerfully at His feet, 
 and then goes forth to be a "living echo of His voice," 
 breaking for Him the alabaster of a self-sacrificing 
 love. As one has beautifully expressed it, " The 
 effective life and the receptive life are one. No sweep 
 of arm that does some work for God but harvests also 
 some more of the truth of God and sweeps it into the 
 treasury of the life." * 
 
 But if Mary gives us a type of the truest and best 
 service, Martha shows us a kind of service which is 
 only too common. She gave to Jesus a right loving 
 welcome, and was delighted with the privilege of minis- 
 tering to His wants ; but the coming of Jesus brought 
 her, not peace, but distraction — not rest, but worry. 
 Her very service ruffled and irritated her, until mind 
 and heart were like the tempestuous lake ere the spell 
 of the Divine u Peace " fell upon it. And all the time 
 the Christ was near, who could bear each burden, and 
 still all the disquiet of the soul I But Martha was all 
 absorbed in the thought of what she could do for Him, 
 
 * Phillips Brooks. 
 
316 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 and she forgot how much more He could do for her, 
 giving to her chafed spirit quietness and rest, even 
 amid her toil. The Divine Peace was near her, within 
 her home, but the hurryings of her restless will and 
 her manifold activities effectually excluded that peace 
 from her heart. 
 
 And how many who call themselves Christians are 
 true Marthas, serving Christ, but feeling the yoke to 
 chafe, and the burden to weight them 1 perhaps preach- 
 ing to others the Gospel of rest and peace, and them- 
 selves knowing little of its experience and blessedness — 
 like the camels of the desert, which carry their treasures 
 of corn and sweet spices to others, and themselves 
 feed n the bitter and prickly herbs. Ah, you are 
 too much upon your feet 1 Cease for awhile from your 
 own works, and let God work in you. Wait in His 
 presence. Let His words take hold of you, and His 
 love enthuse you ; so will you find rest amid your 
 toil, calmness amid the strife, and you will prove that 
 the fret and the fever of life will all disappear at the 
 touch of the living Christ. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 LOST AND FOUND. 
 Luke xv. 
 
 IN this chapter we see how the waves of influence, 
 moving outward from their Divine centre, touch 
 the outermost fringe of humanity, sending the pulsations 
 of new excitements and new hopes through classes 
 Religion and Society both had banned. " Now all the 
 publicans and sinners were drawing near unto Him, 
 for to hear Him." It was evidently a movement 
 widespread and deep. The hostility of Pharisees and 
 scribes would naturally give to these outcasts a certain 
 bias in His favour, causing their hearts to lean towards 
 him, while His words of hope fell upon their lives like 
 the breaking of a new dawn. Nor did Jesus forbid 
 their approach. Instead of looking upon it as an 
 intrusion, an impertinence, the attraction was mutual. 
 Instead of receiving them with a cold and scant courtesy, 
 He welcomed them, receiving them gladly, as the verb 
 of the Pharisees' murmur implies. He even mingled 
 with them in social intercourse, with an acceptance, 
 if not an interchange, of hospitality. To the Pharisaic 
 mind, however, this was a flagrant lapse, a breach of 
 the proprieties which was unpardonable and half 
 criminal, and they gave vent to their disapprobation 
 and disgust in the loud and scornful murmur, " This 
 
318 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." It is 
 from this hard sentence of withering contempt, as from 
 a prickly and bitter calyx, we have the trifoliate 
 parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost 
 Man, the last of which is perhaps the crown and 
 flower of all the parables. With minor differences, the 
 three parables are really one, emphasizing, as they 
 reiterate, the one truth how Heaven seeks after the 
 lost of earth, and how it rejoices when the lost is 
 found. 
 
 The first parable is pastoral : " What man of you," 
 asks Jesus, using the Tu quoque retort, "having a 
 hundred sheep, and having lost one of them, doth not 
 leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go 
 after that which is lost, until he find it ? " It is one 
 of those questions which only need to be asked to 
 be answered, an interrogative which is axiomatic and 
 self-evident. Jesus tries to set his detractors in His 
 place, that they may think His thoughts, feel His 
 feelings, as they look out on the world from His stand- 
 point ; but since they cannot follow Him to these 
 redemptive heights, He comes down to the lower level 
 of their vision. " Suppose you have a hundred sheep, 
 and one of them, getting separated from the rest, 
 goes astray, what do you do ? Dismissing it from 
 your thought, do you leave it to its fate, the certain 
 slaughter that awaits it from the wild beasts? or do 
 3 r ou seek to minimize your loss, working it out by the 
 rule of proportion as you ask, ' What is one to ninety- 
 nine ? ' then writing off the lost one, not as a unit, but 
 as a common fraction ? No ; such a supposition is 
 incredible and impossible. You would go in search 
 of the lost directly. Turning your back upon the 
 ninety and nine, and turning your thoughts from them 
 
xv.] LOST AND FOUND. 3 »9 
 
 too, you would leave them in their mountain pasture,* 
 as you sought the lost one. Calling it by its name, 
 you would climb the terraced hills, and awake the 
 echoes of the wadies, until the flinty heart of the 
 mountain had felt the sympathy of your sorrow, 
 repeating with you the lost wanderer's name. And 
 when at last you found it you would not chide or 
 punish it ; you would not even force it to retrace its 
 steps across the weary distance, but taking compassion 
 on its weakness, you would lift it upon your shoulders 
 and bear it rejoicing home. Then forgetful of your 
 own weariness, fatigue and anxiety swallowed up in 
 the new-found joy, you would go round to your 
 neighbours, to break the good news to them, and so 
 all would rejoice together." 
 
 Such is the picture, warm in colour and instinct 
 with life, Jesus sketches in a few well-chosen words. 
 He delicately conceals all reference to Himself; but 
 even the chromatic vision of the Pharisees would 
 plainly perceive how complete was its justification of 
 His own conduct, in mingling thus with the erring and 
 the lost ; while to us the parable is but a veil of words, 
 through which we discern the form and features of the 
 11 Good Shepherd," who gave even His life for the 
 sheep, seeking that He might save that which was lost. 
 
 The second, which is a twin parable, is from domestic 
 life. As in the parables of the kingdom, Jesus sets 
 beside the man with the mustard-seed the woman with 
 her leaven, so here He makes the same distinction, 
 clothing the Truth both in a masculine and a feminine 
 dress. He asks again, " Or what woman " (He does 
 not say " of you," for if women were present amongst 
 
 * fhe word rendered "wilderness" means any and unenclosed. 
 
320 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. ^ 
 
 His hearers they would be in the background) " having 
 ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light 
 a lamp, and sweep the house, and seek diligently until 
 she find it ? And w T hen she hath found it, she calleth 
 together her friends and neighbours, saying, Rejoice 
 with me, for I have found the piece which I had lost." 
 Much objection has been taken to this parable for its 
 supposed want of naturalness and reality. "Is it 
 likely," our objectors say, " that the loss of a small coin 
 like a drachma, whose value was about sevenpence- 
 halfpenny, could be the occasion of so much concern, 
 and that its recovery should be enough to call forth the 
 congratulations of all the village matrons ? Surely that 
 is not parable, but hyperbole." But things have a real 
 as well as an intrinsic value, and what to others would 
 be common and cheap, to its possessor might be a 
 treasure beyond reckoning, with all the added values 
 of association and sentiment. So the ten drachmas of 
 the woman might have a history; they might have 
 been a family heirloom, moving quietly down the 
 generations, with whole poems, ay, and even tragedies, 
 hidden within them. Or we can conceive of a poverty 
 so dire and strait that even one small coin in the 
 emergent circumstance might grow into a value far 
 beyond its intrinsic worth. But the parable does not 
 need all these suppositions to steady it and keep it 
 from falling to the ground. When rightly understood 
 it becomes singularly natural, the truth of truth, if such 
 an essence can be distilled in human speech. The pro- 
 bable interpretation is that the ten drachmas were the 
 ten coins worn as a frontlet by the women of the East. 
 This frontlet was given by the bridegroom to the bride 
 at the time of marriage, and like the ring of Western 
 life, it was invested with a kind of sanctity. It must 
 
xv.j LOST AND FOUND. 321 
 
 be worn on all public occasions, and guarded with a 
 jealous, sacred care ; for should one of its pieces be 
 lost, it would be regarded as an indication that the 
 possessor had not only been careless, but also that she 
 had been unfaithful to her marriage vow. Throwing, 
 then, this light of Eastern custom upon the parable, 
 how vivid and lifelike it becomes 1 With what intense 
 eagerness would she seek for the missing coin 1 Light- 
 ing her lamp — for the house would be but dimly lighted 
 with its open door and its small unglazed window — how 
 carefully and almost tremblingly she would peer along 
 its shelves, and sweep out the corners of her few 
 rooms ! and how great would be her joy as she saw 
 it glistening in the dust ! Her whole soul would go 
 out after it, as if it were a living, sentient thing. She 
 would clasp it in her hand, and even press it to her 
 lips ; for has it not taken a heavy care and sorrow from 
 her heart ? That one coin rising from the dust has 
 been to her like the rising of another sun, filling her 
 home with light and her life with melody ; and what 
 wonder that she hastens to communicate her joy, as, 
 standing by her door, after the Eastern wont, she holds 
 up the missing treasure, and calls on her neighbours 
 and friends (the substantives are feminine now) to 
 rejoice with her. 
 
 The third parable carries the thought still higher, 
 forming the crown of the ascending series. Not only 
 is there a mathematical progression, as the lost fraction 
 increases from one-hundredth to one-tenth, and then 
 to one-half of the whole, but the intrinsic value of the 
 loss rises in a corresponding series. In the first it 
 was a lost sheep, a loss which might soon be replaced, 
 and which would soon be forgotten ; in the second it 
 was a lost coin, which, as we have seen, meant the loss 
 
 21 
 
32a THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 of what was more valuable than gold, even honour and 
 character; while in the third it is a lost child. We 
 call it the parable of the Prodigal Son ; it might with 
 equal propriety be called the Parable of the Bereaved 
 Father, for the whole story crystallizes about that 
 name, repeating it, in one form or another, no less than 
 twelve times. 
 
 " A certain man," so begins this parabolic Paternoster, 
 "had two sons." Tired of the restraints of home and 
 the surveillance of the father's eye, the younger of 
 them determined to see the world for himself, in order, 
 as the sequel shows, that he might have a free hand, 
 and give loose reins to his passions. With a cold, 
 impertinent bluntness, he says to the father, whose 
 death he thus anticipates, " Father, give me the portion 
 of thy substance that falleth to me," a command 
 whose sharp, imperative tone shows but too plainly 
 the proud, masterful spirit of the youth. He respects 
 neither age nor law; for though the paternal estate 
 could be divided during the father's life, no son, much 
 less the younger, had any right to demand it. The 
 father grants the request, dividing M unto them," as it 
 reads, " his living ; " for the same line which marks off 
 the portion of the younger marks out too that of the 
 elder son, though he holds his portion as yet only in 
 promise. Not many days after — for having found its 
 wings, the foolish bird is in haste to fly — the youth 
 gathers all together, and then takes his journey into 
 a far country. The down grades of life are generally 
 steep and short, and so one sentence is enough to 
 describe this descensus Averni, down which the youth 
 plunges so insanely : " He wasted his substance with 
 riotous living," scattering it, as the verb means, throw- 
 ing it away after low, illicit pleasures. " And when he 
 
xv.J LOST AND FOUND. 323 
 
 had spent all" — the "all" he had scrambled for and 
 gathered a short while before — " there arose a mighty 
 famine in that country ; and he began to be in want ; " 
 and so great were his straits, so remorseless the pangs 
 of hunger, that he was glad to attach himself to a 
 citizen of that country as swineherd, living out in the 
 fields with his drove, like the swineherds of Gadara. 
 But such was the pressure of the famine that his mere 
 pittance could not cope with famine prices, and again 
 and again he hungered to have his fill of the carob- 
 pods, which were dealt out statedly and sparingly to the 
 swine. But no man gave even these to him ; he was 
 forgotten, as one already dead. 
 
 Such is the picture Jesus draws of the lost man, a 
 picture of abject misery and degradation. When the 
 sheep wandered it strayed unwittingly, blindly, get- 
 ting farther from its fellows and its fold even when 
 bleating vainly for them. When the drachma was lost 
 it did not lose itself, nor had it any consciousness that 
 it had dropped out of its proper environment. But in 
 the case of the lost man it was altogether different. 
 Here it is a wilful perversity, which breaks through the 
 restraints of home, tramples upon its endearments, and 
 throws up a blighted life, scarred and pealed amid the 
 husks and swine of a far country. And it is this 
 element of perversity, self-will, which explains, as 
 indeed it necessitates, another marked difference in 
 the parables. When the sheep and the drachma were 
 lost there was an eager search, as the shepherd fol- 
 lowed the wanderer over the mountain gullies, and the 
 woman with broom and lamp went after the lost coin. 
 But when the youth is lost, flinging himself away, the 
 father does not follow him, except in thought, and love, 
 and prayer. He sits " still in the house," nursing a 
 
324 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 bitter grief, and the work on the farm goes on just 
 as usual, for the service of the younger brother would 
 probably be not much missed. And why does not the 
 father summon his servants, bidding them go after the 
 lost child, bringing him home, if necessary, by force ? 
 Simply because such a finding would be no finding. 
 They might indeed carry the wanderer home, setting 
 down his feet by the familiar door; but of what use 
 is that if his heart is still wayward and his will rebel- 
 lious ? Home would not be home to him; and with 
 his heart in the far country, he would walk even in 
 his father's fields and in his father's house as an alien, 
 a foreigner. And so all embassies, all messages would 
 be in vain ; and even a father's love can do no more 
 than wait, patiently and prayerfully, in hopes that a 
 better spirit may yet come over him, and that some 
 rebound of feeling may bring him home, a humbled 
 penitent. The change comes at length, and the slow 
 morning dawns. 
 
 When the photographer wishes to develop the picture 
 that is hidden in the film of the sensitive plate he 
 carries it to a darkened room, and bathed in the de- 
 veloping solution the latent image gradually appears, 
 even to the minutest details. It was so here; for 
 when in his extremest need, with the pinch of a fearful 
 hunger upon him, and the felt darkness of a painful 
 isolation surrounding him, there came into the prodigal's 
 soul a sweet picture of the far-away home, the home 
 which might still have been his but for his wantonness, 
 but which is his now only in memory. It is true his 
 first thoughts of that home were not very lofty ; they 
 only crouched with the dogs under the father's table, 
 or hovered around the plentiful board of the servants, 
 attracted by the " bread enough and to spare." But such 
 
xv.] LOST AND FOUND. 3*5 
 
 is the natural association of ideas ; the carob-pods of 
 the swine naturally suggest the bread of the servants, 
 while this in turn opens up all the chambers of the 
 father's house, reviving its half-faded images of happi- 
 ness and love, and awaking all the sweet memories 
 that sin had stifled and silenced. That it was so here, 
 the lower leading up to the higher thought, is evident 
 from the young man's soliloquy : " I will arise and go 
 to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have 
 sinned against Heaven and in thy sight : I am no more 
 worthy to be called thy son : make me as one of thy 
 hired servants." The hunger for the servants' bread 
 is all forgotten now, swallowed up in the hunger of 
 the soul, as it pines for the father's presence and for 
 the father's smile, longing for the lost Eden. The 
 very name " father" strikes with a strange music upon 
 his awakened and penitent soul, making him for the 
 time half-oblivious to his present wretchedness; and 
 as Memory recalls a bright but vanished past, Hope 
 peoples the dark sky with a heavenly host, who sing 
 a new Advent, the dawn of a heavenly day. An 
 Advent? Perhaps it was an Easter rather, with a 
 "resurrection from earth to things above," an Easter 
 whose anthem, in songs without end, was, " I will 
 arise and go to my father," that Resurgam of a new 
 and holier life. 
 
 No sooner is the " I will " spoken than there is a 
 reversing of all the wheels. The hands follow whither 
 the heart has gone ; the feet shake off the dust of the 
 far country, retracing the steps they measured so 
 foolishly and lightly before; while the eyes, washed 
 by their bitter tears — 
 
 " Not backward are their glances bent, 
 But onward to the Father's house." 
 
326 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 "And he arose and came to his father." He came 
 to himself first ; and having found that better self, he 
 became conscious of the void he had not felt before. 
 For the first time he realizes how much the father 
 is to him, and how terrible the bereavement and loss 
 he inflicted upon himself when he put between that 
 father and himself the desert of an awful distance. 
 And as the bright memories of other days flash 
 up within his soul, like the converging rays of a 
 borealis, they all turn towards and centre in the father. 
 Servants, home, and loaves of bread alike speak of 
 him whose very shadow is brightness to the self- 
 orphaned child. He yearns for the father's presence 
 with a strange and intense yearning ; and could that 
 presence be his again, even if he were nothing more 
 than a servant, with but casual interviews, hearing 
 his voice but in its commanding tones, he would be 
 content and happy. 
 
 And so he comes and seeks the father; will the 
 father relent and receive him ? Can he overlook and 
 forgive the waywardness and wantonness which have 
 embittered his old age ? Can he receive him back even 
 as a servant, a child who has scorned his authority, 
 slighted his love, and squandered his substance in 
 riotous living? Does the father say, " He has made his 
 own bed, and he must lie upon it ; he has had his portion, 
 even to the swept-up crumbs, and there is nothing left 
 for him now " ? No, for there is something left, a trea- 
 sure which he might scorn, indeed, but which he could 
 not throw away, even a heritage of love. And what a 
 picture the parable draws of the love that hopeth and 
 endureth all things 1 " But while he was yet afar off, 
 his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, 
 and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." As the 
 
xv.] LOST AND FOUND. 327 
 
 moon in her revolutions lifts up the tides, drawing the 
 deep oceans to herself, so do the unsounded depths of 
 the father's heart turn towards the prodigal whose life 
 has set, dropping out of sight behind wildernesses of 
 darkness. Thought, prayer, pity, compassion, love flow 
 out towards the attraction they can no longer see. 
 Nay, it seems as if the father's vision were transfixed 
 riveted to the spot where the form of his erring lad 
 vanished out of sight ; for no sooner has the youth 
 come within sight of the home, than the father's eyes, 
 made telescopic with love, discern him, and as if by 
 intuition, recognize him, even though his attire be mean 
 and tattered, and his step has no longer the lightness 
 of innocence nor the firmness of integrity. It is, it is 
 his child, the erring but now repenting child, and the 
 pent-up emotions of the father's soul rush out as in a 
 tumultuous freshet to meet him. He even "ran" to 
 meet him, all forgetful of the dignity of years, and 
 throwing himself upon his neck, he kissed him, not 
 either with the cold kiss of courtesy, but with the 
 warm, fervent kiss of love, as the intensive prefix of 
 the verb implies. 
 
 So far this scene of reconciliation has been as a dumb 
 show. The storm of emotion so interrupted the electric 
 flow of quiet thought and speech that no word was 
 spoken in the mutual embrace. When, however, the 
 power of speech returns the youth is the first to break 
 the silence. " Father," he said, repeating the words of 
 his mental resolve when in the far country, "I have 
 sinned against Heaven, and in thy sight : I am no more 
 worthy to be called thy son." It is no longer the sense 
 of physical need, but the deeper sense of guilt, that 
 now presses upon his soul. The moral nature, which 
 by the anodynes of sin had been thrown into a state of 
 
328 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 coma, awakes to a vivid consciousness, and in the new 
 awakening, in the broadening light of the new dawn, 
 he sees one thing only, and that is his sin, a sin which 
 has thrown its blackness over the wasted years, which 
 has embittered a father's heart, and which cast its 
 shadow even into heaven itself. Nor is it the convic- 
 tion of sin only ; there is a full and frank confession of 
 it, with no attempt at palliation or excuse. He does 
 not seek to gloss it over, but smiting his breast with 
 bitter reproaches, he confesses his sin with " a humble, 
 lowly, penitent, and obedient heart," hoping for the 
 mercy and forgiveness he is conscious he does not 
 deserve. Nor does he hope in vain. Even before the 
 confession is completed, the absolution is spoken, 
 virtually at least ; for without allowing the youth to 
 finish his sentence, in which he offers to renounce his 
 sonship and to accept a menial position, the father calls 
 to the servants, "Bring forth quickly the best robe, 
 and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and 
 shoes on his feet : and bring the fatted calf, and kill it, 
 and let us eat and make merry." In this peal of im- 
 peratives we detect the rapid beating of the father's 
 heart, the loving, eager haste to wipe out all the sad 
 marks that sin has left. In the luminous atmosphere 
 of the father's love the youth is no more the prodigal ; 
 he is as one transfigured ; and now that the chrysalis 
 has left the mire, and crept up into the sunlight, it must 
 have a dress befitting its new summer life, wings of 
 gauze, and robes of rainbow hues. The best, or " the 
 first robe " as it is in the Greek, must be brought out 
 for him ; a signet-ring, the pledge of authority, must 
 be put upon his hand ; shoes, the badge of freedom, 
 must be found for the tired and bared feet; while for 
 the merry-making which is extemporized, the domestic 
 
xv. LOST AND FOUND. 329 
 
 festa which is the crown of these rejoicings, the fatted 
 calf, which was in reserve for some high festival, must 
 be killed. And all this is spoken in a breath, in a sort 
 of bewilderment, the ecstasy of an excessive joy ; and 
 forgetting that the simple command is enough for 
 servants, the master must needs tell out his joy to 
 them : " For this my son was dead, and is alive again ; 
 he was lost, and is found." 
 
 If the three parables were all through coincident, the 
 Parable of the Prodigal Son should close at this point, 
 the curtain dropping over the festive scene, w 7 here songs, 
 and music, and the rhythm of the dance are the outward 
 and weak expressions of the father's joy over the son 
 who comes back from the far country, as one alive from 
 the dead. But Jesus has another purpose; He must 
 not only plead the cause of the outcast and the low, 
 setting open for them the door of mercy and of hope ; 
 He must also rebuke and silence the unreasoning 
 murmur of the Pharisees and scribes — w r hich He does 
 in the picture of the Elder Brother. Coming from the 
 field, the heir is surprised to find the whole house given 
 up to an impromptu feast. He hears the sounds of 
 merriment and music, but its strains fall strange and 
 harsh upon his ear. What can it mean ? Why w r as 
 he not consulted ? Why should his father thus take 
 occasion of his absence in the fields to invite his friends 
 and neighbours ? The proud spirit chafes under the 
 slight, and calling one of the servants, he asks what 
 it all means. The answer is not reassuring, for it only 
 perplexes and pains him the more : " Thy brother is 
 come ; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because 
 he hath received him safe and sound " — an answer 
 which does but deepen his displeasure, turning his 
 sullenness to anger. " And would not go in." They 
 
33Q THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 may end the feast, as they began it, without him. The 
 festive joy is something foreign to his nature ; it awakes 
 but feelings of repulsion, and all its music is to him a 
 grating discord, a Miserere. 
 
 But let us not be too severe upon the elder brother. 
 He was not perfect, by any means, but in any appraise- 
 ment of his character there are certain veinings of 
 worth and nobleness that must not be omitted. We 
 have already seen how, in the division of the father's 
 goods, when he divided unto them his living, while the 
 younger took away his portion, and swiftly scattered it 
 in riotous living, the elder brother took no advantage 
 of the deed of gift. He did not dispossess the father, 
 securing for himself the paternal estate. He put it back 
 into his father's hands, content with the filial relation 
 of dependence and obedience. The father's word was 
 still his law. He was the dutiful son ; and when he 
 said, u These many years do I serve thee, and I never 
 transgressed a commandment of thine," the boast was 
 no exaggeration, but the statement of a simple truth. 
 Compared with the life of the prodigal, the life of the 
 elder brother had been consistent, conscientious, and 
 moral. Where, then, was his failure, his lack ? It was 
 just here, in the lack of heart, the absence of affection. 
 He bore the name of a son, but he carried the heart of 
 a servant. His nature was servile, rather than filial ; 
 and while his hands offered a service unremitting and 
 precise, it was the cold service of an impassive mechan- 
 ism. Instead of love passing out in living heart-throbs, 
 suffusing all the life with its warmth, and clothing it in 
 its own iridescent colouring, it was only a metallic 
 mainspring called " duty." The father's presence is 
 not the delight to him ; he does not once mention that 
 tender name in which the repenting one finds such a 
 
xv.] LOST AND FOUND. 331 
 
 heaven ; and when he draws the picture of his highest 
 happiness, the feast of his earthly Walhalla, " my 
 friends " are there, though the father is excluded. 
 And so between the father and the elder brother, 
 with all this seeming nearness, there was a distance 
 of reserve, and where the voices of affection and of 
 constant communion should have been heard there was 
 too often a vacancy of silence. It takes a heart to read 
 a heart ; and since this was wanting in the elder 
 brother, he could not know the heart of the father; 
 he could not understand his wild joy. He had no 
 patience with his } r ounger brother ; and had he re- 
 ceived him back at all, it would have been with a 
 haughty stiffness, and with a lowering in his looks, 
 which should have been at once a rebuke for the past 
 and a warning for the future. The father looked on 
 his son's repentance ; the elder brother did not regard 
 the repentance at all ; perhaps he had not heard of it, 
 or perhaps he could not understand it ; it was some- 
 thing that lay out of the plane of his consciousness. 
 He saw the sin only, how the younger son had devoured 
 his living with harlots ; and so he was severe, exacting, 
 bitter. He would have brought out the sackcloth, but 
 nothing more ; while as to the music and the fatted 
 calf, they would appear to his loveless soul as an absurd 
 anachronism. 
 
 But far removed as he is from the father's spirit, he 
 is still his son ; and though the father rejoices more 
 over the younger than over the elder, as was but 
 natural, he loves them both with an equal love. He 
 cannot bear that there should be any estrangement 
 now ; and he even leaves the festive throng, and the 
 son he has welcomed and robed, and going out, he begs, 
 he entreats the elder brother to pass in, and to throw 
 
33* THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 himself into the general joy. And when the elder son 
 complains that, with all his years of obedient, dutiful 
 service, he has never had even a kid, much less a fatted 
 calf, on which to feast his friends, the father says, 
 lovingly, but chidingly, "Son " — or " Child," rather, for 
 it is a term of greater endearment than the " son " he 
 had just used before — "thou art ever with me, and all 
 that is mine is thine. But it was meet to make merry 
 and be glad : for this thy brother was dead, and is alive 
 again ; and w r as lost, and is found." He plays upon the 
 "child" as upon a harp, that he may drive away the 
 evil spirits of jealousy and anger, and that even within 
 the servant-heart he may awake some chords, if only 
 the far-off echoes of a lost childhood. He reminds him 
 how vastly different their two positions are. For him 
 there has been no break in their intercourse ; the 
 father's house has been his home ; he has had the free 
 range of all : to the } r ounger that home has been no- 
 thing but a distant memory, with a waste of dreary years 
 between. He has been heir and lord of all ; and so 
 completely have father and son been identified, their 
 separate personalities merged the one in the other, that 
 the possessive pronouns, the " mine " and the " thine," 
 are used interchangeably. The younger returns penni- 
 less, disinherited by his own misdeed. Nay, he has 
 been as one dead ; for what was the far country but a 
 vault of slimy things, the sepulchre of a dead soul ? 
 " And should we not make merry and be glad, when 
 thy brother " (it is the antithesis to " thy son " of 
 ver. 30, a mutual " thy ") " comes back to us as one 
 raised from the dead ? " 
 
 Whether the father's pleading prevailed, or not, we 
 are not told. We can but hope it did, and that the 
 elder brother, with his asperities all dissolved, and his 
 
xv.] LOST AND FOUND. 333 
 
 jealousies removed, did pass within to share the general 
 joy, and to embrace a lost brother. Then he too would 
 know the sweetness of forgiveness, and taught by the 
 erring but now forgiven one, he too would learn to 
 spell out more correctly that deep word " father," the 
 word he had stammered at, and perhaps misspelt 
 before, as the fatherhood and the brotherhood became 
 to him not ideas merely, but bright realities. 
 
 Gathering up now the lessons of the parables, they 
 show us (i) the Divine grief over sin. In the first 
 two this is the prominent thought, the sorrow of the 
 loser. God is represented as losing that which is of 
 worth to Him, something serviceable, and therefore 
 valuable. In the third parable the same idea is sug- 
 gested rather than stated ; but the thought is carried 
 farther, for now it is more than a loss, it is a bereave- 
 ment the father suffers. The retreating form of the 
 wanderer throws back its shadow across the father's 
 home and heart, a shadow that congeals and stays, and 
 that is darker than the shadow of Death itself. It is 
 the Divine Grief, whose depths we cannot sound, and 
 from whose mystery we must stand back, not one 
 stone's cast, but many. 
 
 The parables show (2) the sad state of the sinner. 
 In the case of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin we 
 see his perfect helplessness to recover himself, and 
 that he must remain lost, unless One higher than him- 
 self undertakes his cause, and " help is laid upon One 
 that is mighty." It is the third parable, however, 
 which especially emphasizes the downward course of 
 sin and the deepening wretchedness of the sinner. 
 The flowery path leads on to a valley of desolation. 
 The way of transgressors is ever a downward path ; 
 and let an evil spirit possess a soul, it hurries him 
 
334 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 directly down the steep place, where, unless the flight 
 be checked, a certain destruction awaits him. Sin 
 degrades and isolates. Want, sorrow, penury, and 
 pain are but a part of its viperous brood, and he who 
 plays with sin, calling it freedom, will find his rod 
 blossom with bitter fruit, or he will see it grow into 
 a serpent with poison in its fangs. 
 
 The parables show (3) God's willingness and eager- 
 ness to save. The long and eager search after the 
 lost sheep and the lost coin show, though but im- 
 perfectly, the supreme efforts God makes for man's 
 salvation. He is not left to wander unrebuked and 
 unsought. There is no forbidden path along which 
 men insanely rush, but some bright angel stands beside 
 it, warning back the sinner, it may be with a drawn 
 sword, some " terror of the Lord," or it may be with 
 a cross, the sacrifice of an infinite love. Though He 
 could send His armies to destroy, He sends His mes- 
 sengers to win us back to obedience and to love^ 
 Conscience, Memory, Reason, the Word, the Spirit, and 
 even the well-beloved Son. Nor is the great search 
 discontinued, until it has proved to be in vain. 
 
 The parables show (4) the eager interest Heaven 
 takes in man's salvation, and the deep joy there is 
 among the angels over his repentance and recovery. 
 And so the three parables close with a. Jubilate. The 
 shepherd rejoices over his recovered sheep more than 
 over the ninety and nine which went not astray; the 
 woman rejoices over the one coin found more than 
 over the nine which were not lost. And this is per- 
 fectly ratural. The joy of acquisition is more than 
 the joy of possession ; and as the crest of the waves 
 is thrown up above the mean sea-level by the alternate 
 depths of depression, so the very sorrow and grief 
 
xv.] LOST AND FOUND. 335 
 
 over the loss and bereavement, now that the lost is 
 found and the dead is alive, throw up the emotions 
 beyond their mean level, up to the summits of an 
 exuberant joy. And whether Jesus meant, by the 
 ninety and nine just persons who needed no repentance, 
 the unfallen intelligences of heaven, or whether, as 
 Godet thinks, He referred to those who under the 
 Old Covenant were sincere doers of the Law, and 
 who found their righteousness therein (Deut. vi. 25), 
 it is still true, and a truth stamped with a Divine 
 a Verily," that more than the joy of Heaven over these 
 is its joy over the sinner that repented, the dead who 
 now was alive, and the lost who now was found ! 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 THE ETHICS OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 WHATEVER of truth there may be in the charge 
 of " other-worldliness," as brought against the 
 modern exponents of Christianity, such a charge could 
 not even be whispered against its Divine Founder. It 
 is just possible that the Church had been gazing too 
 steadfastly up into heaven, and that she had not been 
 studying the science of the u Humanities " as zealously 
 as she ought, and as she has done since; but Jesus did 
 not allow even heavenly things to obliterate or to blur 
 the lines of earthly duty. We might have supposed 
 that coming down from heaven, and familiar with its 
 secrets, He would have much to say about the New 
 World, its position in space, its society and manner of 
 life. But no ; Jesus says little about the life which is 
 to come ; it is the life which now is that engrosses His 
 attention, and almost monopolizes His speech. Life 
 with Him was not in the future tense; it was one 
 living present, real, earnest, but fugitive. Indeed, that 
 future was but the present projected over into eternity. 
 And so Jesus, founding the kingdom of God on earth, 
 and summoning all men into it, if he did not bring 
 commandments written and lithographed, like Moses, 
 yet He did lay down principles and rules of conduct, 
 marking out, in all departments of human life, the 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE GOSPEL. 337 
 
 straigr!.. and white lines of duty, the eternal "ought." 
 it is true that Jesus Himself did not originate much in 
 this department of Christian ethics, and probably for 
 most of His sayings we can find a symphony struck 
 from the pages of earlier, and perhaps heathen moralists; 
 but in the wide realm of Right there can be no new law. 
 Principles may be evolved, interpreted ; they cannot be 
 created. Right, like Truth, holds the "eternal years;" 
 and through the millenniums before Christ, as through 
 the millenniums after, Conscience, that " ethical intellect" 
 which speaks to all men if they will but draw near to 
 her Sinai and listen, spoke to some in clear, authorita- 
 tive tones. But if Jesus did no more, He gathered up 
 the " broken lights " of earth, the intermittent flashes 
 which had played on the horizon before, into one 
 steady electric beam, which lights up our human life 
 outward to its farthest reach, and onward to its farthest 
 goal. 
 
 In the mind of Jesus conduct was the outward and 
 visible expression of some inner invisible force. As 
 our earth moves round its elliptic in obedience to the 
 subtle attractions of ether outlying worlds, so the orbits 
 of human lives, whether symmetrical or eccentric, are 
 determined mainly by the two forces' Character and 
 Circumstance. Conduct is character in motion ; for 
 men do what they themselves are, i.e. as far as cir- 
 cumstances will allow. And it is just at this point the 
 ethical teaching of Jesus begins. He recognizes the 
 imperium in imperio, that hidden world of thought, 
 feeling, sentiment, and desire which, itself invisible, is 
 the mould in which things visible are cast. And so 
 Jesus, in His influence upon men, worked outward from 
 within. He sought, not reform, but regeneration, 
 moulding the life by changing the character; for, to 
 
 22 
 
338 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 use His own figure, how could the thorn produce 
 grapes, or the thistle figs? 
 
 And so when Jesus was asked, "What shall I do 
 that I may inherit eternal life ? " He gave an answer 
 which at first sight seemed to ignore the question 
 entirely. He said no word about " doing," but threw 
 the questioner back upon " being," asking what was 
 written in the law: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with 
 all thy strength, and with all thy mind ; and thy neigh- 
 bour as thyself" (x. 27). And as Jesus here makes 
 Love the condition of eternal life, its sine qua non, so 
 He makes it the one all-embracing duty, the fulfilling 
 of the law. If a man love God supremely, and his 
 neighbour as himself, he cannot do more ; for all other 
 commandments are included in these, the sub-sections 
 of the greater law. Jesus thus sought to create a new 
 force, hiding it within the heart, as the mainspring of 
 duty, providing for that duty both aim and inspiration. 
 We call it a " new " force, and such it was practically ; 
 for though it was, in a way, embedded in their law, it 
 was mainly as a dead letter, so much so that when 
 Jesus bade His disciples to "love one another" He 
 called it a "new commandment." Here, then, we find 
 what is at once the rule of conduct and its motive. In 
 the new system of ethics, as taught and enforced by 
 Jesus, and illustrated by His life, the Law of Love was 
 to be supreme. It was to be to the moral world what 
 gravitation is to the natural, a silent but mighty and 
 all-pervasive force, throwing its spell upon the isolated 
 actions of the common day, giving impulse and direc- 
 tion to the whole current of life, ruling alike the little 
 eddies of thought and the wider sweeps of benevolent 
 activities. To Jesus " the soul of improvement was the 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE GOSPEL. 339 
 
 improvement of the soul." He laid His hand upon the 
 heart's innermost shrine, building up that unseen temple 
 four-square, like the city of the Apocalypse, and light- 
 ing up all its windows with the warm, iridescent light 
 of love. 
 
 With this, then, as the foundation-tone, running 
 through all the spaces and along all the lines of life, the 
 thoughts, desires, words, and acts must all harmonize 
 with love ; and if they do not, if they strike a note that 
 is foreign to its key-tone, it breaks the harmony at 
 once, throwing jars and discords into the music. Such 
 a breach of the harmonic law would be called a mistake, 
 but when it is a breach of Christ's moral law it is 
 more than a mistake, it is a wrong. 
 
 Before passing to the outer life Jesus pauses, in this 
 Gospel, to correct certain dissonances of mind and soul, 
 of thought and feeling, which put us in a wrong attitude 
 towards our fellows. First of all, He forbids us to sit 
 in judgment upon others. He says, "Judge not, and 
 ye shall not be judged : and condemn not, and ye shall 
 not be condemned " (vi. 37). This does not mean that 
 we close our eyes with a voluntary blindness, working 
 our way through life like moles ; nor does it mean that 
 we keep our opinions in a state of flux, not allowing 
 them to crystallize into thought, or to harden into the 
 leaden alphabets of human speech. There is within us 
 all a moral sense, a miniature Sinai, and we can no 
 more suppress its thunders or sheath its lightnings than 
 we can hush the breakers of the shore into silence, or 
 suppress the play of the Northern Lights. But in that 
 unconscious judgment we pass upon the actions of 
 others, with our condemnation of the wrong, we pass 
 our sentence upon the wrong-doer, mentally ejecting 
 him from the courtesies and sympathies of life, and 
 
340 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 if we allow him to live at all, compelling him to live 
 apart, as a moral incurable. And so, with our hatred 
 of the sin, we learn to hate the sinner, and calling 
 from him both our charities and our hopes, we hurl 
 him down into some little Gehenna of our own. But 
 it is exactly this feeling, this kind of judgment, the 
 Law of Love condemns. We may " hate the sin, and 
 yet the sinner love," keeping him still within the circle 
 of our sympathies and our hopes. It is not meet that 
 we should be merciless who have ourselves experienced 
 so much of mercy ; nor is it for us to hale others off 
 to prison, or ruthlessly to exact the uttermost farthing, 
 when we ourselves at the very best are erring and 
 unfaithful servants, standing so much and so often in 
 need of forgiveness. 
 
 But there is another "judging" that the command of 
 Christ condemns, and that is the hasty and the false 
 judgments we pass on the motives and lives of others. 
 How apt we are to depreciate the worth of others who 
 do not happen to belong to our circle ! We look so 
 intently for their faults and foibles that we become blind 
 to their excellences. We forget that there is some 
 good in every person, some that we can see if we only 
 look, and we may be always sure that there is some we 
 cannot see. We should not prejudge. We should not 
 form our opinion upon an ex parte statement. We 
 should not leave the heart too open to the flying 
 germs of rumour, and we should discount heavily 
 any damaging, disparaging statement. We should not 
 allow ourselves to draw too many inferences, for he 
 who is given to drawing inferences draws largely on his 
 imagination. We should think slowly in our judgment 
 of others, for he who leaps to conclusions generally 
 takes his leap in the dark. We should learn to wait for 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE GOSPEL. 341 
 
 the second thoughts, for they are often truer than the 
 first. Nor is it wise to use too much " the spur of the 
 moment;" it is a sharp weapon, and is apt to cut both 
 ways. We should not interpret others' motives by 
 our own feelings, nor should we " suppose " too much. 
 Above all, we should be charitable, judging of others 
 as we judge ourselves. Perhaps the beam that is in a 
 brother's eye is but the magnified mote that is in our 
 own. It is better to learn the art of appreciating than 
 that of depreciating ; for though the one is easy, and the 
 other difficult, yet he who looks for the good, and exalts 
 the good, will make the very wilderness to blossom and 
 be glad ; while he who depreciates everything outside 
 his own little self impoverishes life, and makes the very 
 garden of the Lord one arid, barren desert. 
 
 Again, Jesus condemns pride, as being a direct con- 
 travention of His Law of Love. Love rejoices in the 
 possessions and gifts of others, nor would she care 
 to add to her own if it must be at the cost of theirs. 
 Love is an equalizer, levelling up the inequalities the 
 accidents of life have made, and preferring to stand on 
 some lower level with her fellows than to sit solitary 
 on some lofty and cold Olympus. Pride, on the other 
 hand, is a repelling, separating force. Scorning those 
 who occupy the lower places, she is contented only on 
 her Olympian summit, where she keeps herself warm 
 with the fires of her self-adulation. The proud heart 
 is the loveless heart, one huge inflation ; if she carries 
 others at all, it is only as a steadying ballast ; she will 
 not hesitate to throw them over and throw them down, 
 as mere dust or sand, if their fall will help her to rise. 
 Pride, like the eagle, builds her nest on high, bringing 
 forth whole broods of loveless, preying passions, hatreds, 
 jealousies, and hypocrisies. Pride sees no brotherhood 
 
342 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 in man ; humanity to her means no more than so many 
 serfs to wait upon her pleasure, or so many victims for 
 her sacrifice ! And how Jesus loved to prick these 
 bubbles of airy nothings, showing up these vanities as 
 the very essence of selfishness ! He did not spare His 
 words, even though they stung, when "He marked how 
 they chose out the chief seats " at the friendly supper 
 (xiv. 7); and one of His bitter "woes" He hurled at 
 the Pharisees just because " they loved the chief seats 
 in the synagogues," worshipping Self, when they pre- 
 tended to worship God, so making the house of God 
 itself an arena for the sport and play of their proud 
 ambitions. " He that is least among you all," He said, 
 when rebuking the disciples' lust for pre-eminence, 
 "the same is great." And such is Heaven's law: 
 humility is the cardinal virtue, the " strait " and low 
 gate which opens into the very heart of the kingdom. 
 Humility is the one and the only way of heavenly 
 preferments and eternal promotions ; for in the life to 
 come there will be strange contrasts and inversions, 
 as he that exalted himself is now humbled, and he that 
 humbled himself is now exalted (xiv. 11). 
 
 Tracing now the lines of duty as they run across the 
 outer life, we find them following the same directions. 
 As the golden milestone of the Forum marked the centre 
 of the empire, towards which its roads converged, and 
 from which all distances were measured, so in the 
 Christian commonwealth Jesus makes Love the capital, 
 the central, controlling power ; while at the focal point 
 of all the duties He sets up His Golden Rule, which 
 gives direction to all the paths of human conduct : 
 " And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye 
 also to them likewise" (vi. 31). In this general law 
 we have what we might call the ethical compass, for it 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE GOSPEL. 343 
 
 embraces within its circle the " whole duty of man" 
 towards his fellow; and it only needs an adjusted 
 conscience, like the delicately poised needle, and the 
 line of the " ought " can be read off at once, even in 
 those uncertain latitudes where no specific law is found. 
 Are we in doubt as to what course of conduct to pursue, 
 as to the kind of treatment we should accord to our 
 fellow? we can always find the via recta by a short 
 mental transposition. We have only to put ourselves 
 in his place, and to imagine our relative positions 
 reversed, and from the "would" of our supposed 
 desires and hopes we read the "ought" of present 
 duty. The Golden Rule is thus a practical exposition 
 of the Second Commandment, investing our neighbour 
 with the same luminous atmosphere we throw about 
 ourselves, the atmosphere of a benevolent, beneficent 
 love. 
 
 But beyond this general law Jesus gives us a prescript 
 as to the treatment of enemies. He says, "Love your 
 enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that 
 curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you. To 
 him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the 
 other: and from him that taketh away thy cloak withhold 
 not thy coat also " (vi. 27-29). In considering these in- 
 junctions we must bear in mind that the word "enemy" in 
 its New Testament meaning had not the wide and general 
 signification it has to-day. It then stood in antithesis 
 to the word " neighbour," as in Matt. v. 43 ; and as the 
 word "neighbour" to the Jew included those, and those 
 only, who were of the Hebrew race and faith, the word 
 " enemy " referred to those outside, who were aliens 
 from the commonwealth of Israel. To the Hebrew 
 mind it stood as a synonym for u Gentile." In these 
 words, then, we find, not a general and universal law, 
 
344 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 but the special instructions as to their course of con- 
 duct in dealing with the Gentiles, to whom they would 
 shortly be sent. No matter what their treatment, they 
 must bear it with an uncomplaining patience. Stripped, 
 beaten, they must not resist, much less retaliate ; they 
 must not allow any vindictive feelings to possess them, 
 nor must they take in their own hot hand the sword of 
 a " sweet revenge." Nay, they must even bear a good- 
 will towards their enemies, repaying their hate with 
 love, their spite and enmity with prayers, and their 
 curses with sincerest benedictions. 
 
 It will be observed that no mention is made of re- 
 pentance or of restitution : without waiting for these, 
 or even expecting them, they must be prepared to for- 
 give and prepared to love their enemies, even while 
 they are shamefully treating them. And what else, 
 under the circumstances, could they have done ? If 
 they appealed to the secular power it would simply 
 have been an appeal to a heathen court, from enemies 
 to enemies. And as to waiting for repentance, their 
 "enemies" are only treating them as enemies, aliens 
 and foreigners, wronging them, it is true, but ignorantly, 
 and not through any personal malice. They must for- 
 give just for the same reason that Jesus forgave His 
 Roman murderers, " for they know not what they do." 
 
 We cannot, therefore, take these injunctions, which 
 evidently had a special and temporary application, as 
 the literal rule of conduct towards those who are un- 
 friendly or hostile to us. This, however, is plain, that 
 even our enemies, whose enmity is directly personal 
 rather than sectional or racial, are not to be excluded 
 from the Law of Love. We must bear them neither 
 hatred nor resentment ; we must guard our hearts 
 cacredly from all malevolent, vindictive feelings. We 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE GOSPEL. 345 
 
 must not be our own avenger, taking vengeance upon 
 our adversaries, as we let loose the barking Cerberus 
 to track and run them down. All such feelings are 
 contrary to the Law of Love, and so are contraband, 
 entirely foreign to the heart that calls itself Christian. 
 But with all this we are not to meet all sorts of injuries 
 and wrongs without protest or resistance. We cannot 
 condone a wrong without being accomplices in the 
 wrong. To defend our property and life is just as 
 much our duty as it was the wisdom and the duty of 
 those to whom Jesus spoke to offer an uncomplaining 
 cheek to the Gentile smiter. Not to do this is to en- 
 courage crime, and to put a premium upon evil. Nor 
 is it inconsistent with a true love to seek to punish, 
 by lawful means, the wrong-doer. Justice here is the 
 highest type of mercy, and pains and penalties have 
 a remedial virtue, taming the passions which had grown 
 too wild, or straightening the conscience that had 
 become warped. 
 
 And so Jesus, speaking of the " offences," the occa- 
 sions of stumbling that would come, said, "If thy 
 brother sin, rebuke him ; and if he repent, forgive him " 
 (xvii. 3). It is not the patient, silent acquiescence now. 
 No, we must rebuke the brother who has sinned against 
 us and wronged us. And if this is vain, we must tell 
 it to the Church, as St. Matthew completes the injunc- 
 tion (xviii. 17); and if the offender will not hear thi 
 Church, he must be cast out, ejected from their fellow- 
 ship, and becoming to their thought as a heathen or b 
 publican. The wrong, though it is a brother who does 
 it, must not be glossed over with the enamel of a 
 euphemism ; nor must it be hushed up, veiled by a 
 guilty silence. It must be brought to the light of day , 
 it must be rebuked and punished ; nor must it be 
 
346 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 forgiven until it is repented of. Let there be, however, 
 a genuine repentance, and there must be on our part 
 the prompt and complete forgiveness of the wrong. 
 We must set it back out of our sight, amongst the for- 
 gotten things. And if the wrong be repeated, if the 
 repentance be repeated, the forgiveness must be re- 
 peated too, not only for seven times seven offences, 
 but for seventy times seven. Nor is it left to our option 
 whether we forgive or no ; it is a duty, absolute and 
 imperative ; we must forgive, as we ourselves hope to 
 be forgiven. 
 
 Again, Jesus treats of the true use of wealth. He 
 Himself assumed a voluntary poverty. Silver and 
 gold had He none ; indeed, the only coin that we read 
 He handled was the borrowed Roman penny, with 
 Caesar's inscription upon it. But while Jesus Himself 
 preferred poverty, choosing to live on the outflowing 
 charities of those who felt it both a privilege and an 
 honour to minister to Him of their substance, yet He 
 did not condemn wealth. It was not a wrong per se. 
 In the Old Testament it had been regarded as a sign 
 of Heaven's special favour, and amongst the rich Jesus 
 Himself found some of His warmest, truest friends — 
 friends who came nobly to the front when some who 
 had made louder professions had ignominiously fled. 
 Nor did Jesus require the renunciation of wealth as the 
 condition of discipleship. He did not advocate that 
 fictitious egalite of the Commune. He sought rather to 
 level up than to level down. It is true He did say to 
 the ruler, " Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto 
 the poor;" but this was an exceptional case, 1 and 
 probably it was put before him as a test command, like 
 
 * This demand was made from the Apostles (xii. 33), but not from 
 others beyond the Apostolic circle. 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE GOSPEL. 347 
 
 the command to Abraham that he should sacrifice his 
 son — which was not intended to be carried out literally, 
 but only as far as the intention, the will. There was 
 no such demand made from Nicodemus, and when 
 Zacchaeus testified that it had been his practice (the 
 present tense would indicate a retrospective rather than 
 a prospective rule) to give one-half of his income to the 
 poor, Jesus does not find fault with his division, and 
 demand the other half; He commends him, and passes 
 him up, right over the excommunication of the rabbis, 
 among the true sons of Abraham. Jesus did not pose 
 as an assessor ; He left men to divide their own inherit- 
 ance. It was enough for Him if He could put within 
 the soul this new force, the " moral dynamic " of love 
 to God and man; then the outward relations would 
 shape themselves, regulated as by some automatic 
 action. 
 
 Bat with all this, Jesus recognized the peculiar temp- 
 tations and dangers of wealth. He saw how riches 
 tend to engross and monopolize the thought, diverting 
 it from higher things, and so He classed riches with 
 cares, pleasures, which choke the Word of life, and make 
 it unfruitful. He saw how wealth tended to selfish- 
 ness; that it acted as an astringent, closing up the 
 valves of the heart, and thus shutting down the outflow 
 of its sympathies. And so Jesus, whenever He spoke 
 of wealth, spoke in words of warning : " How hardly 
 shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of 
 God ! " He said, when He saw how the rich ruler set 
 wealth before faith and hope. And singularly enough, 
 the only times Jesus, in His parables, lifts up the curtain 
 of doom it is to tell of " certain rich " men — the one, 
 whose soul swung selfishly between his banquets and 
 his barns, and who, alas ! had laid up no treasures in 
 
348 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 heaven ; and the other, who exchanged his purple and 
 fine linen for the folds of enveloping flames, and the 
 sumptuous fare of earth for eternal want, the eternal 
 hunger and thirst of the after-retribution ! 
 
 What, then, is the true use of wealth ? and how 
 may we so hold it that it shall prove a blessing, and 
 not a bane ? In the first place, we must hold it in our 
 hand, and not lay it up in the heart. We must possess 
 it ; it must not possess us. We may give our thought, 
 moderately, to it, but our affections must not be allowed 
 to centre upon it. We read that the Pharisees "were 
 lovers of money" (xvi. 14), and that argentic passion 
 was the root of all their evils. The love of money, like 
 an opiate, little by little, steals over the whole frame, 
 deadening the sensibility, perverting the judgment, and 
 weakening the will, producing a kind of intoxication, 
 in which the better reason is lost, and the confused 
 speech can only articulate, with Shylock, " My ducats, 
 my ducats ! " The true way of holding wealth is to 
 hold it in trust, recognizing God's ownership and our 
 stewardship. Bank it up, give it no outlet, and your 
 wealth becomes a stagnant pool, breeding malaria and 
 burning fevers ; but open the channel, give it an outlet, 
 and it will bring life and music to a thousand lowei 
 vales, increasing the happiness of others, and increas- 
 ing your own the more. And so Jesus strikes in with 
 His frequent imperative, " Give " — " Give, and it shall be 
 given unto you ; good measure, pressed down, shaken 
 together, running over, shall they give into your 
 bosom " (vi. 38). And this is the true use of wealth, 
 its consecration to the needs of humanity. And may 
 we not say that here is its truest pleasure ? He who 
 has learned the art of generous giving, who makes his 
 life one large-hearted benevolence, living for others and 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE GOSPEL. 349 
 
 not for himself, has acquired an art that is beautiful 
 and Divine, an art that turns the deserts into gardens 
 of the Lord, and that peoples the sky overhead with 
 unseen singing Ariels. Giving and living are heavenly 
 synonyms, and he who giveth most liveth best. 
 
 But not from the words of Jesus alone do we read 
 off the lines of our duty. He is in His own Person 
 a Polar Star, to whom all the meridians of our round 
 life turn, and from whom they emanate. His life is 
 thus our law, His example our pattern. Do we wish 
 to learn what are the duties of children to their parents ? 
 the thirty silent years of Nazareth speak in answer. 
 They show us how the Boy Jesus is in subjection to 
 His parents, giving to them a perfect obedience, a 
 perfect trust, and a perfect love. They show us the 
 Divine Youth, still shut in within that narrow circle, 
 ministering to that circle, by hard manual toil becoming 
 the stay of that fatherless home. Do we wish to learn 
 our duties to the State ? See how Jesus walked in 
 a land across which the Roman eagle had cast its 
 shadow 1 He did not preach a crusade against the 
 barbarian invaders. He recognized in their presence 
 and power the ordination of God — that they had been 
 sent to chastise a lapsed Israel. And so Jesus spoke 
 no word of denunciation, no fiery word, which might 
 have proved the spark of a revolution. He took 
 Himself away from the multitudes when they would 
 by force make Him King. He spoke in respectful terms 
 of the powers that were ; He even justified the payment 
 of tribute to Csesar, acknowledging his lordship, while 
 at the same time He spoke of the higher tribute to 
 the great Over-Lord, even God. When upon His trial 
 for life or death, before a Roman tribunal, He even 
 stayed to apologize for Pilate's weakness, casting the 
 
350 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 heavier sin back on the hierarchy that had bought 
 Him and delivered Him up; while upon the cross, 
 amid its untold agonies, though His lips were glued 
 by a fearful thirst, He opened them to breathe a last 
 prayer for His Roman executioners : " Father, forgive 
 them ; for they know not what they do." 
 
 But was Jesus, then, an alien from His kinsmen 
 according to the flesh? Was patriotism to Him an 
 unknown force ? Did He know nothing of love of 
 country, that inspiration which has turned common 
 men into heroes and martyrs, that love which oceans 
 cannot quench, nor distance weaken, which throws 
 an auroral brightness around the most sterile shores, 
 and which makes the emigrant sick with a strange 
 Heimweh ? Did the Son of man, the ideal Man, know 
 nothing at all of this ? He did know it, and know it 
 well. He identified Himself thoroughly with His 
 people ; He placed Himself under the law, observing 
 its rites and ceremonies. After the Childhood-exile in 
 Egypt, He scarcely passed out of the sacred bounds ; 
 no storms of rough persecution could dislodge the 
 heavenly Dove, or send Him wheeling off from His 
 native hills. And if He did not preach rebellion, He 
 did preach that righteousness which gives to a nation 
 its truest wealth and widest liberty. He did denounce 
 the Pharisaic shams, the hollow hypocrisies, which had 
 eaten away the nation's heart and strength. And how 
 He loved Jerusalem, forgetting His own triumph in 
 the vision of her humiliation, and weeping for the 
 desolations which were coming sure and fast 1 This, 
 the Holy City, was the centre to which He ever 
 returned, and to which He gave His last bequest — His 
 cross and His grave. Nay, when the cross is taken 
 down, and the grave is vacant, He lingers to give His 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE GOSPEL. 351 
 
 Apostles their commission ; and when He bids them, 
 "Go ye out into all the world," He adds, "beginning 
 at Jerusalem." The Son of man is the Son of David 
 still, and within His deep love for humanity at large 
 was a peculiar love for His "own," as the ark itself 
 was enshrined within the Holy of holies. 
 
 And so we might traverse the whole ethical domain, 
 and we should find no duty which is not enforced or 
 suggested by the words or the life of the great Teacher. 
 As Dr. Dorner says, " There is only one morality ; 
 the original of it is in God ; the copy of it is in the 
 Man of God." Happy is He who sees this Polar Star, 
 whose light shines clear and calm above the rush of 
 human years and the ebbs and flows of human life ! 
 Happier still is he who shapes his course by it, who 
 reads off all his bearings from its light ! He who 
 builds his life after the Divine model, reading the 
 Christ-life into his own, will build up another city of 
 God on earth, four-square and compact together, a 
 city of peace, because a city of righteousness and a 
 city of love. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL, 
 
 COIFI, in his parable to the thanes and nobles of 
 the North Humber country, likened the present 
 life of man to the flight of a sparrow through one of 
 their lighted halls, coming out of the night, and then 
 disappearing in the dark winter whence it came ; and 
 he asked for Christianity a candid hearing, if perhaps 
 she might tell the secrets of the beyond. And so 
 indeed she does, lighting up the "dark winter" with 
 a bright, though a partial apocalypse. It is not our 
 purpose to enter into a general discussion of the 
 subject; our task is simply to arrest the beams of 
 inspired light hiding within this Gospel, and by a sort 
 of spectrum analysis to read from them what they are 
 permitted to reveal. And — 
 
 I. The Gospel teaches that the grave is not the end 
 of life. It may seem as if we were stating but a 
 truism in saying this ; yet if a truism, it perhaps has 
 not been allowed its due place in our thought, and its 
 restatement may not be altogether a superfluous word. 
 We cannot study the life of Jesus without noticing that 
 His views of earth were not the views of men in 
 general. To them this world was everything; to 
 possess it, even in some infinitesimal quantity, was their 
 supreme ambition ; and though in their better, clearer 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 353 
 
 moments they caught glimpses of worlds other than 
 their own, yet to their distant vision they were as the 
 twinkling stars of the azure, far off and cold, soon 
 losing themselves in the haze of unreality, or setting in 
 the shadows of the imposing earth. To Jesus earth 
 was but a fragment of a vaster whole, a fragment 
 whose substances were but the shadows of higher, 
 heavenlier realities. Nor were these outlying spaces 
 to His mind voids of silence, a " dark inane," without 
 life or thought; they were peopled with intelligences 
 whose personalities were as distinctly marked as is this 
 human Ego, and whose movements, unweighted by the 
 gyves of flesh, seemed subtle and swift as thought 
 itself. With one of these worlds Jesus was perfectly 
 familiar. With heaven, which was the abode of His 
 Father and innumerable hosts of angels, He was in 
 close and constant correspondence, and the frequent 
 prayer, the frequent upward looks tell us how near and 
 how intensely real the heavenly places were to Him. 
 But in the mind of Jesus this empyrean of happiness 
 and light had its antipodes of woe and darkness, a 
 penal realm of fearful shadow, and which, borrowing the 
 language of the city, He called the Gehenna of burning. 
 Such were the two invisible realms, lying away from 
 earth, yet closely touching it from opposite directions, 
 and to one or other of which all the paths of human 
 life turned, to find their goal and their self-chosen 
 destiny. 
 
 And not only so, but the transition from the Seen 
 to the Unseen was not to Jesus the abrupt and total 
 change that it seems to man. To us the dividing-line 
 is both dark and broad. It seems to us a transmigration 
 to some new and strange world, where we must bee in 
 life de novo. To Jesus the line was narrow, like one of 
 
 23 
 
354 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 the imaginary meridians of earth, the "here" shading off 
 into the "hereafter/' while both were but the hemispheres 
 of one round life. And so Jesus did not often speak of 
 " death ; n that was too human a word. He preferred 
 the softer names of "sleep" or "exodus," thus mak- 
 ing death the quickener of life, or likening it to a 
 triumphal march from bondage to liberty. Nor was " the 
 Valley of the Shadow " to Jesus a strange, unfamiliar 
 place. He knew all its secrets, all its windings. It 
 was His own territory, where His will was supreme. 
 Again and again He throws a commanding voice across 
 the valley, a voice which goes reverberating among 
 the heights beyond, and instantly the departed spirit 
 retraces its steps, to animate again the cold clay it had 
 forsaken. " He is not the God of the dead, but of the 
 living," said Jesus, as He claimed for Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob an existence altogether apart from the 
 crumbling dust of Hebron ; and as we see Moses and 
 Elias coming to the Mount of Transfiguration, we see 
 that the departed have not so far departed as to take 
 no interest in earthly things, and as not to hear the 
 strike of earthly hours. And how clearly this is seen 
 in the resurrection life of Jesus, with which this 
 Gospel closes ! Death and the Grave have done their 
 worst to Him, but how little is that worst! how 
 insignificant the blank it makes in the Divine Life I 
 The few hours in the grave were but a semibreve 
 rest in the music of that Life; the Easter morning 
 struck a fresh bar, and the music went on, in the higher 
 spaces, it is true, but in the same key and in the same 
 sweet strain. And just so is it with all human life; 
 " the grave is not our goal." Conditions and circum- 
 stances will of necessity change, as the mortal puts on 
 immortality, but the life itself will be one and the same 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 355 
 
 life, here amid things visible and temporal, and there 
 amid the invisible and eternal. 
 
 2. The Gospel shows in what respects the conditions 
 of the after-life will be changed. In chapter xx. 27 we 
 read how that the Sadducees came to Jesus, tempting 
 Him. They were the cold materialists of the age, 
 denying the existence of spirits, and so denying the 
 resurrection. They put before Him an extreme, though 
 not impossible case, of a woman who had been the wife, 
 successively, of seven brethren ; and they ask, with the 
 ripple of an inward laugh in their question, "In the 
 resurrection therefore whose wife of them shall she 
 be ?" Jesus answered, " The sons of this world marry, 
 and are given in marriage : but they that are accounted 
 worthy to attain to that world, and the resurrection 
 from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage : 
 for neither can they die any more : for they are equal 
 unto the angels ; and are sons of God, being sons of the 
 resurrection." It will be observed how Jesus plays 
 with the word around which the Sadducean mind 
 revolves. To them marriage was a key-word which 
 locked up the gates of an after-life, and threw back the 
 resurrection among the impossibilities and absurdities. 
 But Jesus takes up their key-word, and turning it 
 round and round in His speech, He makes it unlock 
 and open the inner soul of these men, showing how, 
 in spite of their intellectuality, the drift of their thoughts 
 was but low and sensual. At the same time Jesus 
 shows that their test-word is altogether mundane. It 
 is made for earth alone ; for having a nature of flesh 
 and blood, it cannot enter into the higher kingdom of 
 glory. Marriage has its place in the life whose termini 
 are birth and death. It exists mainly for the perpetua- 
 tion and increase of the human race. It has thus to 
 
356 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 do with the lower nature of man, the physical, the 
 earthly; but in the world to come birth, marriage, 
 death will be outdated, obsolete terms. Man then will 
 be "equal unto the angels," the coarser nature which 
 fitted him for earth being shaken off and left behind, 
 amongst other mortalities. 
 
 And exactly the same truth is taught by the three 
 posthumous appearances recorded in this Gospel. When 
 they appeared upon the Mount of Transfiguration, 
 Moses and Elias had been residents of the other 
 world, the one for nine, the other for fourteen centuries. 
 But while possessing the form, and perhaps the features 
 of the old body of earth, the glorious body they wear 
 now is under conditions and laws altogether different. 
 How easy and aerial are its movements ! Though it 
 possesses no wings, it has the lightness and buoyancy 
 of a bird, moving through space swiftly and silently as 
 the light pulses through the ether. Or take the body 
 of Christ's resurrection life. It has not yet become the 
 glorified body of the heavenly life ; it is in its transition 
 state, between the two ; yet how changed it is ! Lifted 
 above the needs and laws of our earth-bound nature, 
 the risen Christ no longer lives among His own ; He 
 dwells apart, where we cannot tell. When He does 
 appear He comes in upon them suddenly, giving no 
 warning of His approach ; and then, after the bright 
 though brief apocalypse, He vanishes as mysteriously 
 as He came, passing at the last on the clouds to heaven. 
 There is thus some correspondence between the body 
 of the old and that of the new life, though how far the 
 resemblance extends we cannot tell; we can only fall 
 back upon the Apostle's words, which to our human 
 ear sound like a paradox, but which give us our only 
 solution of the enigma, "It is raised a spiritual body" 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL, 357 
 
 (1 Cor. xv. 44). It is no longer the "natural body/' 
 but a supernatural one, with a spiritual instead of a 
 material form, and under spiritual laws. 
 
 But taking the Apostle's words as our base-line, and 
 measuring from them, we may throw our lines of sight 
 across the hereafter, reading at least as much as this, 
 that whatever may be the pleasures or the pains of the 
 after-life, they will be of a spiritual, and not of a physical 
 kind. It is just here that our vision sometimes gets 
 blurred and indistinct, as all the descriptions of that 
 after-life, even in Scripture, are given in earthly figures. 
 And so we have built up before us a material heaven, 
 with jasper walls, and gates of pearl, and gardens of 
 perennial fruits, with crowns and other palace delights. 
 But it is evident that these are but the earthly shadows 
 of the heavenly realities, the darkened glasses of our 
 earthly speech, which help our dull vision to gaze upon 
 glories which the eye of our mortality hath not seen, 
 and which its heart cannot conceive, except dimly, as a 
 few " broken lights" pass through the dark lenses of 
 these earthly figures. What new senses may be created 
 we do not know, but if the body of the after-life is "a 
 spiritual body," then its whole environment must be 
 changed. Material substances can no longer affect it, 
 either to cause pleasure or pain ; and though we may 
 not yet tell in what the delights of the one state, or 
 the pains of the other will consist, we do know that 
 they must be something other than literal palms and 
 crowns, and other than material fires. These figures 
 are but the stammerings of our earthly speech, as it 
 tries to tell the unutterable. 
 
 3. Our Gospel teaches that character determines des- 
 tiny. "A man's life," said Jesus, when rebuking covet- 
 ousness (xii. 15), "consisteth not in the abundance of 
 
358 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 the things which he possesseth." These are not life's 
 noblest aim, nor its truest wealth. They are but the 
 accidents of life, the particles of floating dust, caught 
 up by the stream ; they will be left behind soon as 
 the sediment, if not before, when they reach the barrier 
 of the grave. A man's possessions do not constitute 
 the true life , they do not make the real self, the 
 man. Here it is not what a man has, but what a 
 man is. And a man is just what his heart makes him. 
 The outer life is but the blossoming of the inner soul, 
 and what we call character, in its objective meaning, 
 is but the subtle and silent influence, the odour, as we 
 might call it, fragrant or otherwise, which the soul 
 unconsciously throws out. And even in this world 
 character is more than circumstance, for it gives aim 
 and direction to the whole life. Men do not always 
 reach their goal in earthly things, but in the moral 
 world each man goes to his "own place," the place 
 he himself has chosen and sought ; he is the arbiter of 
 his own destiny. 
 
 And what we find to be a law of earth is the law of 
 the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus was constantly affirm- 
 ing. The future life would simply be the present life, 
 with eternity as its coefficient. Destiny itself would be 
 but the harvest of earthly deeds, the hereafter being 
 only the after-here. Jesus shows us how while on 
 earth we may lay up " treasures in the heavens," 
 making for ourselves " purses which wax not old," and 
 thus becoming " rich toward God." He draws a vivid 
 picture of " a certain rich man," whose one estimate of 
 life was " the abundance of the things which he pos- 
 sessed," the size and affluence of his barns, and whose 
 soul was required of him just when he was congratulat- 
 ing it on the years oi guaranteed plenty, bidding it, 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL, 359 
 
 11 Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry (xii. 1 6-1 2)." 
 He does not here trace for us the destiny of such a soul 
 — He does this in another parable — but He pictures it 
 as suddenly torn away, and eternally separated, from 
 aH it had possessed before, leaving it, perhaps, to be 
 squandered thriftlessly, or consumed by the fires of 
 Just ; while, starved and shrivelled, the pauper soul is 
 driven out from its earthly stewardship, to find, alas ! 
 no welcome in the " eternal tabernacles." In the 
 appraisement of this world such a man would be 
 deemed wise and happy, but to Heaven he is the 
 " foolish one," committing the great, the eternal folly. 
 
 The same lesson is taught in the parables of the 
 Housebuilders (vi. 47) and of the Talents (xix. 12). In 
 each there comes the inevitable test, the down-rush of 
 the flood and the reckoning of the lord, a test which 
 leaves the obedient secure and happy, the faithful pro- 
 moted to honour and rewards, passed up among the 
 kings ; but the disobedient, if not entombed in the ruins 
 of their false hopes, yet all shelterless from the pitiless 
 storm, and the unfaithful and slothful servant stripped 
 of even the little he had, passed downwards into dis- 
 honour and shame. 
 
 In another parable, that of the Rich Man and Lazarus 
 (xvi. 19-31), we have a light thrown upon our subject 
 which is at once vivid and lurid. In a few graphic words 
 He draws for us the picture of strange contrasts. The 
 one is rich, dwelling in a palatial residence, whose impos- 
 ing gateway looked down upon the vulgar crowd ; clothed 
 in garments of Tyrian purple and of Egyptian byssus, 
 which only great wealth could purchase, and faring 
 sumptuously every day. So, with perpetual banquets, 
 the rich man lived his selfish, sensual life. With 
 thought all centred upon himself, and that his lowest 
 
360 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 self, he has no thoughts or sympathies to spare for 
 the outlying world. They do not even travel so far as 
 to the poor beggar who is cast daily a.\ his gate, in 
 hopes that some of the shaken-out crumbs of the banquet 
 may fall within his reach. Such is the contrast — the 
 extreme of wealth, and the extreme of poverty ; the one 
 with troops of friends, the other friendless — for the 
 verb shows that the hands which laid him down by the 
 rich man's gate were not the gentle hands of affection, 
 but the rough hands of duty or of a cold charity ; the 
 one clothed in splendid attire, the other not possessing 
 enough even to cover his sores; the one gorged to 
 repletion, the other shrunken and starved ; the one the 
 anonymous Epicurean, the other possessing a name 
 indeed, but nought beside, but a name that had a 
 Divinity hidden within it,* and which was an index to 
 the soul that bore it. Such were the two characters 
 Jesus portrayed; and then, lifting up the veil of shadows, 
 He shows how the marked contrast reappears in the 
 after-life, but with a strange inverting. Now the poor 
 man is blessed, the rich in distress ; the one is enfolded 
 in Abraham's bosom, the other enveloped in flames; 
 the one has all the delights of Paradise, the other begs 
 for just a drop of water with which to cool the parched 
 tongue. 
 
 It may be said that this is simply parable, set forth 
 in language which must not be taken literally. So it 
 is; but the parables of Jesus were not mere word- 
 pictures ; they held in solution essential truth. And 
 when we have eliminated all this figurative colouring 
 there is still left this residuary, elementary truth, that 
 character determines destiny : that we cast into our 
 
 • The name "Lazarus " is derived from El-ezer, or "God helps." 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 361 
 
 future the shadow of our present selves ; that the good 
 will be blessed, and the evil unblessed, which means 
 accursed ; and that heaven and hell are tremendous 
 realities, whose pleasures and whose pains lie alike 
 deep beyond the sounding of our weak speech. When 
 the rich man forgot his duties to humanity ; when he 
 banished God from his mansion, and proscribed mercy 
 from his thoughts ; when he left Heaven's foundling to 
 the dogs, he was writing out his book of doom, passing 
 sentence upon himself. The tree lies as it falls, and 
 it falls as it leans; and where is there place for the 
 unforgiven, the unregenerate, for the sensual and the 
 selfish, the unjust and the unclean, but somewhere in 
 the outer darkness they themselves have helped to 
 make ? To the sensual and the vile heaven itself 
 would be a hell, its very joys curdling into pain, its 
 streets, thronged with the multitudes of the redeemed, 
 offering to the guilty and unrenewed soul but a solitude 
 of silence and anguish ; and even were there no final 
 judgment, no solemn pronouncement of destiny, the 
 evil could never blend with the good, the pure with 
 the vile ; they would gravitate, even as they do now, 
 in opposite directions, each seeking its "own place." 
 Wherever and whatever our final heaven may be, no 
 one is an outcast but who casts himself out, a self- 
 immolation, a suicide. 
 
 But is it destiny ? it may be asked. May there not 
 be an after-probation, so that character itself may be 
 transformed ? may not the " great gulf " itself disap- 
 pear, or at last be bridged over, so that the repentant 
 may pass out of its penal but purifying fires ? Such, 
 indeed, is the belief, or rather the hope, of some; but 
 u the larger hope " as they are pleased to call it, as far 
 as this Gospel is concerned, is a beautiful but illusive 
 
3 6a THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 dream. He who was Himself the " Resurrection and 
 the Life/' and who holds in His own hands the keys 
 of death and of Hades, gives no hint of such a post- 
 humous palingenesis. He speaks again and again of 
 a day of test and scrutiny, when actions will be weighed 
 and characters assayed, and when men will be judged 
 according to their works. Now it is at the " coming " 
 of the Son of man, in the glory of His Father, and 
 with a retinue of " holy angels ; " now it is the return- 
 ing of the lord, and the reckoning with his servants ; 
 while again it is at the end of the world, as the angel- 
 reapers separate the wheat from the tares ; or as He 
 Himself, the great Judge, with His " Come ye/' passes 
 on the faithful to the heavenly kingdom, and at the 
 same time, with His "Depart ye," drives from His 
 presence the unfaithful and unforgiven into the outer 
 darkness. Nor does Jesus say one word to suggest 
 that the judgment is not final. The blasphemy against 
 the Holy Ghost, whatever that may mean, shall not 
 be forgiven (xii. 10), or, as St. Matthew expresses it, 
 " neither in this world, nor in that which is to come." 
 The unfaithful servant is " cut asunder " (xii. 46) ; the 
 enemies who would not have their Lord to reign over 
 them are slain (xix. 27) ; and when once the door is 
 shut it is all in vain that those outside cry, " Lord, 
 open to us ! " They had an open door, but they 
 slighted and scorned it, and now they must abide by 
 their choice, outside the door, outside the kingdom, 
 with the " workers of iniquity," where u there is weep- 
 ing and gnashing of teeth " (xiii. 28). 
 
 Or if we turn again to the parable of the Rich Man, 
 where is there room for " the larger hope " ? where 
 is the suggestion that these " pains of hell " may be 
 lessened, and ultimately escaped altogether ? We listen 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL, 363 
 
 in vain for one syllable of hope. In vain he makes 
 his appeal to " father Abraham ; " in vain he entreats 
 the good offices of Lazarus; in vain he asks for a 
 momentary alleviation of his pain, in the boon of one 
 drop of water : between him and help, yea, between 
 him and hope, is a " great gulf fixed, . . . that none 
 may cross " (xvi. 26). 
 
 " That none may cross." Such are the words of 
 Jesus, though here put in the mouth of Abraham ; and 
 if finality is not here, where can we find it ? What 
 may be the judgment passed upon those who, though 
 erring, are ignorant, we cannot tell, though Jesus 
 plainly indicates that the number of the stripes will 
 vary, as they knew, or they did not know, the Lord's 
 will ; but for those who had the light, and turned from 
 it, who saw the right, but did it not, who heard the 
 Gospel of love, with its great salvation, and only rejected 
 it — for these there is only an "outer darkness" of 
 eternal hopelessness. And what is the outer darkness 
 itself but the darkness of their own inner blindness, 
 a blindness which was wilful and persistent ? 
 
 Our Gospel thus teaches that death does not alter 
 character, that character makes destiny, and that 
 destiny once determined is unalterable and eternal. 
 Or, to put it in the words of the angel to the seer, " He 
 that is unrighteous, let him do unrighteousness still : 
 and he that is filthy, let him be made filthy still : and 
 he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still : 
 and he that is holy, let him be made holy still " (Rev 
 xxii. 11). 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 THE WATCH IN GETHSEMANE. 
 
 HITHERTO the life of Jesus has been com- 
 paratively free from sorrow and from pain. 
 With the exception of the narrow strip of wilderness 
 which fell between the Baptism and His inaugural 
 miracle, the Divine Life has lain for the most part in 
 the sunshine, above the fret and fever of anxious 
 thought and care. True, He had enemies, whose hatred 
 was persistent and virulent ; the shafts of calumny fell 
 around Him in one steady rain ; His motives were 
 constantly misconstrued, His words misunderstood ; but 
 with all this His life was peace. How could He 
 have spoken of " rest " of soul, and have promised it 
 to the weary and heavy-laden, if He Himself were a 
 stranger to its experience? How could He have awoke 
 such songs and shouts of gladness, or have strewn the 
 lives of men with such unusual brightness, without 
 having that brightness and music coming back in 
 reflections and echoes within His own heart — that 
 heart which was the fontal source of their new-found 
 joys ? And if many doubted, or even hated Him, 
 there were many who admired and feared, and not a 
 few who loved and adored Him, and who were glad to 
 place at His disposal their entire substance, nay, their 
 entire selves. But if His anointing thus far has been the 
 anointing of gladness, there is a baptism of sorrow and 
 
THE WATCH IN GETHSEMANE. 365 
 
 anguish prepared for Him, and to that ordeal He now 
 proceeds, first girding up His soul with the music of 
 a thanksgiving psalm. Let us, too, arise and follow 
 Him ; but taking off our shoes, let us step softly and 
 reverently into the mystery of the Divine sorrow ; for 
 though we must ever stand back from that mystery 
 more than a "stone's cast," perhaps, if we keep mind 
 and heart awake and alert, we may read something of 
 its deep meaning. 
 
 The whole scene of Gethsemane is unique. Like 
 the Mount of Transfiguration, the Garden of the Agony 
 stands "apart" from all other paths, in a profound 
 isolation. And in more senses than this these two 
 august scenes are related and coincident. Indeed, we 
 cannot fully understand the mystery of the Garden 
 but as we allow the mystery of the Mount to explain 
 it, in part at least, so threading the light of the one 
 into the darkness of the other. On the Mount of 
 Transfiguration the Divine Life, as we have seen, 
 reached its culminating point, its perihelion as we 
 may call it, where it touched the very heavens for one 
 brief night, passing through its out-streaming glories 
 and crossing the paths of celestials. In Gethsemane 
 we have the antipodal fact ; we see the Divine Life in 
 its far aphelion, where it touches hell itself, moving 
 round in an awful gloom, and crossing the paths of the 
 " powers of darkness." And so our best outlook into 
 Gethsemane is not from the Mount of Olives — though 
 the two names are related, as the two places are 
 adjacent, Gethsemane lying at the foot of Olivet — but 
 from that more distant Mount of Transfiguration. 
 
 Leaving the "guest-chamber," where a Passover of 
 a new order has been instituted, and the cup, with its 
 fruit of the vine, has received a higher consecration, 
 
366 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Jesus leads the broken band down the stairs, which 
 still vibrate with the heavy tread of the traitor, and 
 in the still, full moonlight they pass out of the city, 
 the gates being open because of the Passover. De- 
 scending the steep ravine, and crossing the brook 
 Kedron, they enter the enclosure of Gethsemane. Both 
 St. Luke and St. John tell us that He was accustomed 
 to resort thither — for, strangely enough, we do not read 
 of Jesus spending so much as one night within the 
 city walls — and so probably the garden belonged to 
 one of His adherents, possibly to St. Mark. Bidding 
 the eight remain near the entrance, and exhorting 
 them to pray that they enter not into, or, as it means 
 here, that they "yield not to," the temptation which 
 is shortly to come upon them, Jesus takes Peter, James, 
 and John farther into the garden. They were witnesses 
 of His Transfiguration, when His face shone like the 
 sun, and the spirits of the perfected came to do Him 
 homage ; they must now see a transfiguration of 
 sorrow, as that face is furrowed by the sharp lines of 
 pain, and half-masked by a veil of blood. From the 
 narratives of St. Matthew and St. Mark it would 
 appear as if Jesus now experienced a sudden change 
 of feeling. In the guest-chamber He was calmly con- 
 fident; and though we may detect in His words and 
 symbolic acts a certain undertone of sadness, the 
 salutation of one " about to die," yet there was no 
 tremor, no fear. He spoke of His own death, which 
 now was near at hand, as calmly as if the Mount of 
 Sacrifice were but another mountain of spices ; while 
 to His disciples He spoke words of cheer and hope, 
 putting around their hearts a soothing, healing balm, 
 even before the dreadful wound is made. But now all 
 this is changed : u He began to be greatly amazed and 
 
THE WATCH IN GETHSEMANE. 3^7 
 
 sore troubled " (St. Mark xiv. 33). The word we here 
 render " amazed," as St. Mark uses it, has sometimes 
 the element of fear within it, as when the women were 
 "amazed," or "affrighted," by the vision of the angels 
 (xvi. 5); and such, we are inclined to think, is its 
 meaning here. It was not so much wonder as it was 
 trepidation, and a certain dread, which now fell of a 
 sudden upon the Master. Over that pure soul, which 
 ever lay calm and serene as the bright heaven which 
 stooped to embrace it, has broken a storm of conflicting 
 winds, and dense, murky clouds, and all is disquiet and 
 distress, where before was nothing but peace. " My 
 soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death ; " such is 
 the strange confession of tremulous lips, as for once 
 He opens the infinite depths of His heart, and shows 
 the mortal grief which has suddenly fallen there. It 
 is the first contact of the eclipse, as between Himself 
 and the Father's smile another world is passing, the 
 world of the "outer darkness," even hell, throwing 
 down upon His soul a chilling, awful shadow. 
 
 Jesus understands its meaning. It is the signal for 
 the final battle, the shadow of "the prince of this 
 world," who, rallying all his forces, cometh to find 
 "nothing in Me." Jesus accepts the challenge, and 
 that He may meet the enemy single-handed, with no 
 earthly supports, He bids the three, " Abide ye here, 
 and watch with Me." " With Me," and not " for Me ; " 
 for what could avail to Him the vigilance of human 
 eyes amid this felt darkness of the soul ? It was not 
 for Himself He bade them " watch," but for themselves, 
 that waking and praying they might gain a strength 
 which would be proof against temptation, the test which 
 would be keenly severe, and which now was close at 
 hand. 
 
368 THE GOSPEL Oh ST. LUKE. 
 
 "And He was parted from them about a stone's 
 cast." The verb implies a measure of constraint, as 
 if, in the conflict of emotion, the longing for some 
 human presence and human sympathy held Him back. 
 And why not ? Is not the very presence of a friend 
 a solace in grief, even if no words are spoken? and 
 does not the u aloneness " of a sorrow make the sorrow 
 tenfold more bitter ? Not like the " stricken deer that 
 left the herd," the human heart, when wounded or sore 
 pressed, yearns for sympathy, finding in the silent 
 look or in the touch of a hand a grateful anodyne. 
 But this wine-press He must tread alone, and of the 
 people there must be none with Him ; and so the 
 three who are most favoured and most beloved are 
 left back at a stone's cast from the physical suffering 
 of Christ, while from His heart-agony they must stand 
 back at an infinite distance. 
 
 It was while Jesus was praying upon the holy 
 mount that the heavens were opened unto Him; and 
 now, as another cloud envelopes Him, not of glory, but 
 of a thick darkness, it finds Him in the same attitude 
 of prayer. He at whose feet sinful man had knelt, all 
 un rebuked, Himself now kneels, as He sends to heaven 
 the earnest and almost bitter cry, " O My Father, if 
 it be possible, let this cup pass from Me ! " The three 
 Evangelists differ in their wording of the Saviour's 
 petition, showing that the spirit is more than the 
 letter of prayer ; that Heaven thinks more of the inner 
 thought than of the outward drapery of words; but 
 the thought of the three is identical, while all make 
 prominent the central figure of the "cup." 
 
 The cups of Scripture are of divers patterns and of 
 varied meanings. There was the cup of blessing, like 
 that of the Psalmist (Psalm xxiii. 5), filled to the brim 
 
THE WATCH IN GETHSEMANE. 369 
 
 and running over with mercy. There was "the cup of 
 salvation, "that sacrament of the Old Testament which 
 kept in memory one deliverance, that of Israel, while it 
 prophesied of another, the " great salvation " which was 
 to come. What, then, was the cup Jesus so feared to 
 drink, and which He asked, so earnestly and repeatedly, 
 that it might pass from Him ? Was it the fear of 
 death ? Certainly not ; for how could He be afraid 
 of death, who had so triumphed over it, and who had 
 proclaimed Himself the Resurrection and the Life ? 
 How could He fear death, when He knew so well u the 
 seraph face that smiled beneath the frowning mask," 
 and knew that it would end for ever all His sufferings 
 and His pain ? Death to Him was a familiar thought. 
 He spoke of it freely, not either with the hard in- 
 difference of the Stoic, or with the palsied speech of 
 one whose lips shake with an inward fear, but in calm, 
 sweet accents, as any child of earth might speak of 
 going home. Was this " cup," then, the death itself? 
 and when He asked that it might pass away, was He 
 suggesting that possibly some mode of atonement might 
 be found other than the cross ? We think not. Jesus 
 knew full well that His earthly life would have, and 
 could have, but one issue. Death would be its goal, 
 as it was its object. Whether, as Holman Hunt 
 represents, the cross threw its shadow back as far as 
 the shop at Nazareth, we do not know, for the record 
 is silent. But we do know that the shadow of death 
 lay across the whole of His public life, for we find it 
 appearing in His words. The cross was a dark and 
 vivid certainty that He wished neither to forget nor 
 to evade, for must not the Son of man be " lifted up," 
 that He may draw all men to Himself? Must not the 
 corn of wheat be hidden in its grave before it can 
 
 24 
 
370 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 become fruitful, throwing itself forward down the years 
 in hundredfold multiplications ? Yes ; death to Jesus 
 is the inevitable, and long before the Roman soldiers 
 have pieced together the transverse beams Jesus had 
 made His cross, fashioning it in His thought, and 
 hiding it in His words. Nay, He has this very night 
 instituted a new sacrament, in which, for all genera- 
 tions, the broken bread shall be the emblem of His 
 bruised and broken body, and the wine, of His blood, 
 the blood of the New Testament, which is shed for 
 man. And does Jesus now seek, by reiterated prayers, 
 to shift that cross from the Divine purpose, substi- 
 tuting in its place something less painful, less cruel ? 
 does He seek now to annul His own predictions, and 
 to make His own sacrament void and meaningless? 
 This cannot be; and so, whatever the "cup" may 
 mean, we cannot take it as a synonym for His 
 death. 
 
 What, then, is its meaning ? The Psalmist had long 
 before sung — 
 
 "For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine foameth; 
 It is full of mixture, and He poureth out of the same : 
 Surely the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring 
 them out, and drink them " (Psalm lxxv. 8); 
 
 while St. John, speaking of the last woes (Rev. xiv. io), 
 tells how they who have the mark of the beast upon 
 their foreheads " shall drink of the wine of the wrath 
 of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of His 
 anger." Here, then, is the "cup" which now is set 
 before the Son of man, the very touch of which fills 
 His soul with unutterable dread. It is the cup of God's 
 anger, filled to the brim with its strange red wine, the 
 wine of His wrath. Jesus comes to earth as the Re- 
 
THE WATCH IN GET11SEMANE. 371 
 
 preservative Man, the Second Adam, in whom all shall 
 be made alive. He voluntarily assumes the place of 
 the transgressor, as St. Paul writes (2 Cor. v. 21), " Him 
 who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf; that 
 we might become the righteousness of God in Him," 
 a passage which corresponds exactly with the prophetic 
 idea of substitution, as given by Isaiah (liii. 5), "He 
 was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for 
 our iniquities : the chastisement of our peace was upon 
 Him ; and with His stripes we are healed." And so 
 " the iniquity of us all " was laid on Him, the Holy One. 
 In His own Person He must feel, in its concentrated 
 forms, the smart and consequence of sin ; and as His 
 physical sufferings are the extremest pain even sin can 
 produce, so Jesus must suffer, too, all the mental anguish, 
 the agony of a soul bereft of God. And as Jesus, on 
 the Transfiguration Mount, passed up to the very gate 
 of heaven, so lighting up with splendour and glory the 
 lost path of unfallen man, so now, in the Garden, Jesus 
 tracks the path of fallen man, right on to its fearful 
 consummation, which is the " outer darkness " of hell 
 itself. This vivid consciousness has been graciously 
 withheld from Him hitherto ; for the terrible pressure 
 would simply have unfitted Him for His ministry of 
 blessing ; for how could He have been the " kindly 
 Light," leading humanity homeward, heavenward, if 
 that Light Himself were hidden in "encircling gloom," 
 and lost in a felt darkness ? But ere His mission is 
 complete this is an experience that He must know. 
 Identifying Himself with sin, He must feel its very 
 farthest consequence, the awful solitude, and the un- 
 utterable anguish, of a soul now bereft of hope and 
 forsaken of God. In the heathen fable Orpheus goes 
 down, lyre in hand, to the Plutonic realm, to bring 
 
372 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 back again to life and love the lost Eurydice ; but 
 Jesus, in His vicarious sufferings, goes down to hell 
 itself, that He may win back from their sins, and bear 
 in triumph to the upper heavens, a lost humanity. 
 
 Rising from the ground, and going back to His three 
 disciples, He finds them asleep. The Synoptists all 
 seek to explain, and to apologize for, their unnatural 
 slumber, St. Matthew and St. Mark telling us that 
 their "eyes were heavy," while St. Luke states that 
 their sleep was the result of their grief; for, happily, 
 in the wonderful compensations of nature, intense grief 
 does tend to induce somnolence. But while the Evan- 
 gelists refer their slumber to natural causes, might there 
 not be something more in it, some supernatural ele- 
 ment ? Sleep can be caused by natural means, and yet 
 be an unnatural sleep, as when narcotics benumb the 
 senses, or some mesmeric spell muffles the speech, and 
 makes the soul for a time unconscious. And might it 
 not have been some invisible touch which made their 
 eyes so heavy ? for it is an exact repetition of their 
 attitude when on the holy mount, and in that sleep 
 sorrow certainly had no part. When St. John saw 
 the vision upon Patmos, he "fell at His feet as one 
 dead;" and when Saul beheld the light, near Damascus, 
 he fell to the ground. And how often we find the celes- 
 tial vision connected with a trance-like state ! and why 
 may not the " trance " be an effect of the vision, just as 
 well as its cause, or rather its circumstance ? At any 
 rate, the fact is plain, that supernatural visions tend to 
 lock up the natural senses, the veil which is uplifted 
 before the unseen world being wrapped around the eyes 
 and tne soul of the seer. And this, we are inclined to 
 think, was a possible, partial cause for the slumber upon 
 the mount and in the garden, a sleep which, under 
 
THE WATCH IN GETHSEMANE. 373 
 
 the circumstances, was strangely unnatural and almost 
 unpardonable. 
 
 Addressing Himself directly to Peter, who had 
 promised to follow His Lord unto death, but whose 
 heart now strangely lagged behind, and calling him by 
 his earlier name — for Jesus only once made use of the 
 name He Himself had chosen ; the " Rock " was at 
 present in a state of flux, and had not yet settled down 
 to its petrine character — He said, " What, Simon, could 
 ye not watch with Me one hour ? Watch and pray, that 
 ye enter not into temptation." Then, for a moment 
 forgetting His own sorrow, and putting Himself in 
 their place, He makes the apology for them which 
 their lips are afraid to utter : u The spirit indeed is 
 willing, but the flesh is weak ; " so compassionate is He 
 over human weakness and infirmity, even while He is 
 severity itself towards falsity and sin. 
 
 St. Luke records the narrative only in a condensed 
 form, giving us the salient points, but not entering so 
 fully into detail. It is from St. Matthew and St. Mark that 
 we learn how Jesus went back a second time, and falling 
 prostrate on the ground, prayed still in the self-same 
 words, and how He returned to His disciples to find 
 them again asleep ; even the reproof of the Master has 
 not been able to counterbalance the pressure of the 
 supernatural heaviness. No word is spoken this time — 
 at any rate the Evangelists have not repeated them for 
 us — but how eloquent would be that look of disappoint- 
 ment and of grief! and how that rebuke would fall 
 burning hot upon their heart, focussed in the lenses of 
 His sad and tearful eyes ! But the three are dazed, 
 bewildered, and for once the ready tongue of Peter is 
 speechless ; " they wist not what to answer Him " 
 (Mark xiv. 40). 
 
374 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Not yet, however, is the conflict ended. Three times 
 did the tempter come to Him in the wilderness, and 
 three times is the fierce battle to be waged in the 
 garden, the last the sorest. It would almost seem as 
 if the three assaults were descending steps of sorrow, 
 each marking some lower deep in the dark mystery ; 
 for now the death-sorrow becomes an " agony " of 
 spirit, a pressure from within so fearful as to arrest 
 the flow of blood, forcing it through the opened pores 
 in an awful sweat, until great drops, or " clots," of 
 blood gathered upon His face, and then fell to the 
 ground. Could there be possibly, even for the lost, 
 an anguish more intense ? and was not Jesus then, 
 as man's Surety, wringing out and drinking the very 
 last dregs of that cup of His anger which " the wicked 
 of the earth," if unredeemed, had been doomed to 
 drink ? Verily He was, and the bloody sweat was a 
 part, an earnest, of our atonement, sprinkling with its 
 redemptive virtues the very ground which was " cursed" 
 for man's sake (Gen. iii. 17). It was the pledge and 
 the foregathered fruit of a death already virtually accom- 
 plished, in the absolute surrender of the Divine Son 
 as man's Sacrifice. 
 
 And so the thrice-uttered prayer of Jesus, even 
 though He prayed the " more earnestly," was not 
 granted. It was heard, and it was answered, but not 
 in the specific way of the request. Like Paul's prayer 
 for the removal of the thorn, and which, though not 
 granted, was yet answered in the promise of the 
 " sufficient" grace, so now the thrice-uttered prayer 
 of Jesus does not remove the cup. It is there, and it 
 is there for Him to drink, as He tastes for man both of 
 the earthly death and of the bitterness of the after, the 
 second death. But the answer came in the strength- 
 
THE WATCH IN GETHSEMANE. 375 
 
 ening of His soul, and in the heavenly greetings the 
 angel brought down to Him when the conflict was over. 
 But in this reiterated prayer for the removal of the cup 
 there was no conflict between Himself and the Father. 
 The request itself was enveloped in submission, the 
 contingent "if" which preceded it, and the u not My 
 will, but Thine," which followed, completely enclosing 
 it. The will of Jesus was ever adjusted to the will of 
 the Father, working within it in an absolute precision, 
 with no momentary breaks. But here the " if" implies 
 uncertainty, doubt. Even Jesus is not quite sure as 
 to what, in the special case, the Father's will may 
 involve, and so, while He asks for the removal of the 
 cup, this is the smaller request, inlaid within the 
 larger, deeper prayer, that " not My will, but Thine, 
 be done." Jesus did not seek to bend the Father's will, 
 and make it conform to His desires, but He sought, 
 whatever might be the cost, to configure His desires 
 to that all-wise and all-loving Will. 
 
 So in our smaller lives there may be hours of distress 
 and uncertainty. We may see, mingled for us, cups of 
 sorrow, loss, or pain, which we fear to drink, and the 
 shrinking flesh may seek to be exempted from the 
 ordeal ; but let us not too hastily ask that they may 
 be put away, for fear we may dismiss some cup of 
 blessing from our life. Let us seek rather for a perfect 
 submission to the will of God, conforming all our 
 desires and all our prayers to that will. So in that 
 " perfect acquiescence " there will be for us a " perfect 
 rest." Gethsemane itself will become bright and all 
 musical with songs, and where the powers of darkness 
 mocked us Heaven's angels will come, with their sweet 
 ministry. Nay, the cup of sorrow and of pain, at which 
 we trembled before, if we see how God's will has 
 
376 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 wrought and filled it, and we embrace that will, the 
 cup of sorrow will be a transfigured cup, a golden 
 chalice of the King, all filled to the brim, and running 
 over, with the new wine of the kingdom. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE PASSION. 
 Luke xxii. 47 — xxiiL 
 
 WHILE Jesus kept His sad watch in Gethsemane, 
 treading the winepress alone, His enemies kept 
 theirs in the city. The step of Judas, as he passed 
 out into the night, went verberating within the house 
 of the high priest, and onwards into the palace of Pilate 
 himself, awaking a thousand echoes, as swift mes- 
 sengers flew hither and thither, bearing the hurried 
 summons, calling the rulers and elders from their 
 repose, and marshalling the Roman cohort. Hitherto 
 the powers of darkness have been restrained, and 
 though they have, again and again, attempted the life 
 of Jesus, as if some occult spell were upon them, they 
 could not accomplish their purpose. Far back in the 
 Infancy Herod had sought to kill Him ; but though his 
 cold steel reaped a bloody swath in Ramah, it could 
 not touch the Divine Child. The men of Nazareth had 
 sought to hurl Him down the sheer precipice, but He 
 escaped ; Jesus had not come into the world to die at 
 Nazareth, thrown off, as by an accident, from a Galilean 
 cliff. He had come to " accomplish His decease," as 
 the celestials put it upon the mount, "at Jerusalem,' 
 and that too, as He indicated plainly and frequently in 
 
378 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 His speech, upon a cross. Now, however, the hour of 
 darkness has struck, and the fulness of the time has 
 come. The cross and the Victim both are ready, and 
 Heaven itself consents to the great sacrifice. 
 
 Strangely enough, the first overture of the " Passion 
 music" is by one of the twelve — as our Evangelist 
 names him, " Judas who was called Iscariot, being of 
 the number of the twelve " (xxii. 3). It will be 
 observed that St. Luke puts a parenthesis of forty 
 verses between the actual betrayal and its preliminary 
 stages, so throwing the conception of the plot back to 
 an earlier date than the eve of the Last Supper, and 
 the subsequent narrative is best read in the light of its 
 programme. At first sight it would appear as if the 
 part of the betrayer were superfluous, seeing that Jesus 
 came almost daily into the Temple, where He spoke 
 openly, without either reserve or fear. What need 
 could there be for any intermediary to come between 
 the chief priests and the Victim of their hate ? Was 
 not His Person familiar to all the Temple officials ? and 
 could they not apprehend Him almost at any hour ? 
 Yes, but one thing stood in the way, and that was 
 11 the fear of the people." Jesus evidently had an 
 influential following ; the popular sympathies were on 
 His side; and had the attack been made upon Him 
 during the day, in the thronged streets of the city or 
 in the Temple courts, there would have been, almost to 
 a certainty, a popular rising on His behalf. The arrest 
 must be made " in the absence of the multitude " (xxii. 
 6), which means that they must fall upon Him in one 
 of His quiet hours, and in one of His quiet retreats ; 
 it must be a night attack, when the multitudes are 
 asleep. Here, then, is room for the betrayer, who comes 
 at the opportune moment, and offers himself for the 
 
xxii. 47— xxiii.] THE PASSION. 379 
 
 despicable task, a task which has made the name of 
 " Judas " a synonym for all that is treacherous and vile. 
 How the base thought could ever have come into the 
 mind of Judas it were hard to tell, but it certainly was 
 not sprung upon him as a surprise. But men lean in 
 the direction of their weakness, and when they fall it 
 is generally on their weakest side, the side on which 
 temptation is the strongest. It was so here. St. John 
 writes him down in a single sentence : u He was a thief, 
 and having the bag, took away what was put therein " 
 (John xii. 6). His ruling passion was the love of 
 money, and in the delirium of this fever his hot hands 
 dashed to the ground and broke in pieces the tables of 
 law and equity alike, striking at all the moralities. And 
 between robbing his Master and betraying Him there 
 was no great distance to traverse, especially when 
 conscience lay in a numb stupor, drugged by opiates, 
 these tinctures of silver. 
 
 Here, then, is a betrayer ready to their hand. He 
 knows what hour is best, and how to conduct them to 
 His secret retreats. And so Judas "communed" with 
 the chief priests and captains, or he " talked it over 
 with them " as the word means, the secret conference 
 ending in a bargain, as they " covenanted " to give him 
 money (xxii. 5). It was a hard and fast bargain ; for 
 the word "covenanted" has about it a metallic ring, 
 and opening it out, it lets us see the wordy chaffering, 
 as Judas abates his price to the offer of the high priests, 
 the thirty pieces of silver, which was the market price 
 of an ordinary slave. Not that Judas intended to be a 
 participator in His death, as the sequel of his remorse 
 shows. He probably thought and hoped that his 
 Master would escape, slipping through the meshes they 
 so cunningly had thrown about Him ; but having done 
 
380 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 his part of the covenant, his reward would be sure, for 
 the thirty pieces were already in his possession. Ah, 
 he little dreamed how far-reaching his action would be ! 
 That silver key of his would set in motion the pon- 
 derous wheel which would not stop until his Master 
 was its Victim, lying all crushed and bleeding beneath 
 it ! He only discovered his mistake when, alas ! it 
 was too late for remedy. Gladly would he have given 
 back his thirty pieces, ay, and thirty times thirty, to 
 have called back his treacherous " Hail," but he could 
 not. That " Hail, Master," had gone beyond his recall, 
 reverberating down the ages and up among the stars, 
 while even its echoes, as they came back to him in 
 painful memories, threw him out of the world an 
 unloved and guilty suicide ! 
 
 What with the cunning of the high priests and the 
 cold calculations of Judas, whose mind was practised 
 in weighing chances and providing for contingences, 
 the plot is laid deeply and well. No detail is omitted : 
 the band of soldiers, who shall put the stamp of official- 
 ism upon the procedure, while at the same time they 
 cower the populace and repress any attempt at rescue ; 
 the swords and staves, should they have to resort to 
 force ; the lanterns and torches, with which to light up 
 the dark hiding-places of the garden ; the cords or 
 chains, with which to bind their Prisoner; the kiss, 
 which should be at once the sign of recognition and 
 the signal for the arrest, all are prearranged and 
 provided ; while back of these the high priests are keep- 
 ing their midnight watch, ready for the mock trial, for 
 which the suborned witnesses are even now rehearsing 
 their parts. Could worldly prudence or malicious skill 
 go farther ? 
 
 Stealthily as the leopard approaches its victim, the 
 
xxii. 4 7-xxiii.] THE PASSION. 
 
 motley crowd enter the garden, coming with muffled 
 steps to take and lead away the Lamb of God. Only 
 the glimmer of their torches gave notice of their ap- 
 proach, and even these burned dull in the intense 
 moonlight. But Jesus needed no audible or visible 
 warning, for He Himself knew just how events were 
 drifting, reading the near future as plainly as the near 
 past; and before they have come in sight He has 
 awoke the three sleeping sentinels with a word which 
 will effectually drive slumber from their eyelids : " Arise, 
 let us be going: behold, he is at hand that betrayeth 
 Me" (Matt. xxvi. 46). 
 
 It will be seen from this that Jesus could easily have 
 eluded His pursuers had He cared to do so. Even 
 without any appeal to His supernatural powers, He 
 could have withdrawn Himself under cover of the 
 night, and have left the human sleuth-hounds foiled of 
 their prey and vainly baying at the moon. But instead 
 of this, He makes no attempt at flight. He even seeks 
 the glades of Gethsemane, when by simply going 
 elsewhere He might have disconcerted their plot and 
 brought their counsel to nought. And now He yields 
 Himself up to His death, not passively merely, but 
 with the entire and active concurrence of His will. He 
 « offered Himself," as the writer of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews expresses it (Heb. ix. 14), a free-will Offering, 
 a voluntary Sacrifice. He could, as He Himself said 
 have called legions of angels to His help ; but He would 
 not give the signal, though it were no more than one 
 uplifted look. And so He does not refuse even the 
 kiss of treachery ; He suffers the hot lips of the traitor 
 to burn His cheeks; and when others would have 
 shaken off the viper into the fire, or have crushed it 
 with the heel of a righteous indignation, Jesus receives 
 
382 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 patiently the stamp of infamy, His only word being a 
 question of surprise, not at the treachery itself, but at 
 its mode : " Betrayest thou the Son of man with a 
 kiss ? " And when for the moment, as St. John tells 
 us, a strange awe fell upon the multitude, and they 
 "went backward and fell to the ground," Jesus, as it 
 were, called in the outshining glories, masking them 
 with the tired and blood-stained humanity that He 
 wore, so stilling the tremor that w 7 as upon His enemies, 
 as He nerved the very hands that should take Him. 
 And again, when they do bind Him, He offers no resist- 
 ance ; but when Peter's quick sword flashes from its 
 scabbard, and takes off the right ear of Malchus, the 
 servant of the high priest, and so one of the leaders 
 in the arrest, Jesus asks for the use of His manacled 
 hand — for so we read the " Suffer ye thus far " — and 
 touching the ear, heals it at once. He Himself is 
 willing to be wounded even unto death, but His 
 alone must be the wounds. His enemies must not 
 share His pain, nor must His disciples pass with 
 Him into this temple of His sufferings ; and He even 
 stays to ask for them a free parole : " Let these go 
 their way." 
 
 But while for the disciples Jesus has but words of 
 tender rebuke or of prayer, while for Malchus He has 
 a word and a touch of mercy, and while even for Judas 
 He has an endearing epithet, " friend," for the chief 
 priests, captains, and elders He has severer words. 
 They are the ringleaders, the plotters. All this com- 
 motion, this needless parade of hostile strength, these 
 superfluous insults are but the foaming of their rabid 
 frenzy, the blossoming of their malicious hate; and 
 turning to them as they stand gloating in their super- 
 cilious scorn, He asks, " Are ye come out, as against a 
 
xxii. 47— xxiii.] THE PASSION. 383 
 
 robber, with swords and staves ? When I was daily 
 with you ill the Temple, ye stretched not forth your 
 hands against Me : but this is your hour, and the power 
 of darkness." True words, for they who should have 
 been priests of Heaven are in league with hell, willing 
 ministers of the powers of darkness. And this was 
 indeed their hour, but the hour of their victory would 
 prove the hour of their doom. 
 
 St. Luke, as do the other Synoptists, omits the 
 preliminary trial before Annas, the ex-high priest 
 (John xviii. 13), and leads us direct to the palace of 
 Caiaphas, whither they conduct Jesus bound. Instead, 
 however, of pursuing the main narrative, he lingers to 
 gather up the side-lights of the palace-yard, as they 
 cast a lurid light upon the character of Simon. Some 
 time before, Jesus had forewarned him of a coming 
 ordeal, and which He called a Satanic sifting ; while 
 only a few hours ago He had prophesied that this 
 night, before the cock should crow twice, Peter would 
 thrice deny Him — a singular prediction, and one which 
 at the time seemed most unlikely, but which proved 
 true to the very letter. After the encounter in the 
 garden, Peter retires from our sight for awhile ; but 
 his flight was neither far nor long, for as the proces- 
 sion moves up towards the city Peter and John follow 
 it as a rear-guard, on to the house of Annas, and now 
 to the house of Caiaphas. We need not repeat the 
 details of the story — how John passed him through the 
 door into the inner court, and how he sat, or " stood," 
 as St. John puts it, by the charcoal fire, warming him- 
 self with the officers and servants. The differing verbs 
 only show the restlessness of the man, which was a 
 life-long characteristic of Peter, but which would be 
 doubly accentuated here, with suspecting eyes focussed 
 
384 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 upon him. Indeed, in the whole scene of the court- 
 yard, as sketched for us in the varying but not dis- 
 cordant narratives of the Evangelists, we may detect 
 the vibrations of constant movement and the ripple- 
 marks of intense excitement. 
 
 When challenged the first time, by the maid who 
 kept the door, Peter answered with a sharp, blunt 
 negative: he was not a disciple; he did not even 
 know Him. At the second challenge, by another 
 maid, he replied with an absolute denial, but added to 
 his denial the confirmation of an oath. At the third 
 challenge, by one of the men standing near, he denied 
 as before, but added to his denial both an oath and an 
 anathema. It is rather unfortunate that our version 
 renders it (Matt. xxvi. 74; Mark xiv. 71), "He began to 
 curse and to swear ; " for these words have a peculiarly 
 ill savour, a taste of Billingsgate, which the original 
 words have not. To our ear, " to curse and to swear " 
 are the accomplishments of a loose and a foul tongue, 
 which throws out its fires of passion in profanity, or in 
 coarse obscenities, as it revels in immoralities of speech. 
 The words in the New Testament, however, have a 
 meaning altogether different. Here "to swear" means 
 to take an oath, as in our courts of law, or rather to 
 make an affirmation. Even God Himself is spoken of as 
 swearing, as in the song of Zacharias (i. 73), where 
 He is said to have remembered His holy covenant, 
 "the oath which He sware unto Abraham our father." 
 Indeed, this form of speech, the oath or affirmation, 
 had come into too general use, as we may see from the 
 paragraph upon oaths in the Sermon on the Mount 
 (Matt. v. 33-37). Jesus here condemned it, it is true, 
 for to Him who was Truth itself our word should be as 
 our bond; but His reference to it shows how prevalent 
 
xxii.47— xxiii.] THE PASSION. 385 
 
 the custom was, even amongst strict legalists and 
 moralists. When, then, Peter "swore," it does not mean 
 that he suddenly became profane, but simply that he 
 backed up his denial with a solemn affirmation. So, 
 too, with the word "curse;" it has not our modern 
 meaning. Literally rendered, it would be, "He put 
 himself under an anathema," which "anathema" was 
 the bond or penalty he was willing to pay if his words 
 should not be true. In Acts xxiii. 12 we have the 
 cognate word, where the "anathema" was, "They would 
 neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul." The 
 " curse " thus was nothing immoral in itself; it was a 
 form of speech even the purest might use, a sort of 
 underlined affirmation. 
 
 But though the language of Peter was neither profane 
 nor foul, though in his "oath" and in his "curse" 
 there is nothing for which the purest taste need 
 apologize, yet here was his sin, his grievous sin : he 
 made use of the oath and the curse to back up a 
 deliberate and cowardly lie, even as men to-day will 
 kiss the book to make God's Word of truth a cover 
 for perjury. How shall we explain the sad fall of 
 this captain-disciple, who was first and foremost of 
 the Twelve ? Were these denials but the " wild and 
 wandering cries " of some delirium ? We find that 
 Peter's lips did sometimes throw off unreasoning and 
 untimely words, speaking like one in a dream, as he 
 proposed the three tabernacles on the mount, "not 
 knowing what he said." But this is no delirium, no 
 ecstasy; his mind is clear as the sky overhead, his 
 thought bright and sharp as was his sword just now. 
 No, it was not a failure in the reason ; it was a sadder 
 failure in the heart. Of physical courage Simon had 
 an abundance, but he was somewhat deficient in moral 
 
 25 
 
386 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 courage. His surname " Peter " was as yet but a fore- 
 name, a prophecy; for the " rock "-granite was yet in 
 a state of flux, pliant, somewhat wavering, and too 
 easily impressed. It must " be dipped in baths of hiss- 
 ing tears " ere it hardens into the foundation-rock for 
 the new temple. In the garden he was too ready, too 
 brave. "Shall we smite with the sword?" he asked, 
 matching the "we," which numbered two swords, 
 against a whole Roman cohort; but that was in the 
 presence of his Master, and in the consciousness of 
 strength which that Presence gave. It is different 
 now. His Master is Himself a bound and helpless 
 Prisoner. His own sword is taken from him, or, which 
 is the same thing, it is ordered to its sheath. The 
 bright dream of temporal sovereignty, which like a 
 beautiful mirage had played on the horizon of his 
 thought, had suddenly faded, withdrawing itself into 
 the darkness. Simon is disappointed, perplexed, be- 
 wildered, and with hopes shattered, faith stunned, and 
 love itself in a momentary conflict with self-love, he 
 loses heart and becomes demoralized, his better nature 
 falling to pieces like a routed army. 
 
 Such were the conditions of Peter's denial, the strain 
 and pressure under which his courage and his faith 
 gave way, and almost before he knew it he had thrice 
 denied his Lord, tossing away the Christ he would die 
 for on his cold, impetuous words, as, with a tinge of 
 disrespect in his tone and word, he called Him " the 
 Man." But hardly had the denial been made and the 
 anathema been said when suddenly the cock crew. It 
 was but the familiar call of an unwitting bird, but it 
 smote upon Peters ear like a near clap of thunder ; it 
 brought to his mind those words of his Master, which 
 he had thought were uncertain parable, but which he 
 
xxii. 47— xxiii.] THE PASSION. 387 
 
 finds now were certain prophecy, and thus let in a 
 rush of sweet, old-time memories. Conscience-stricken, 
 and with a load of terrible guilt pressing upon his soul, 
 he looks up timidly towards the Lord he has forsworn. 
 Will He deny him, on one of His bitter "woes" cast- 
 ing him down to the Gehenna he deserves? No; 
 Jesus looks upon Peter; nay, He even "turns" round 
 toward him, that He may look ; and as Peter saw that 
 look, the face all streaked with blood and lined with an 
 unutterable anguish, when he felt that glance fixed 
 upon him of an upbraiding but a pitying and forgiving 
 love, that look of Jesus pierced the inmost soul of the 
 denying, agnostic disciple, breaking up the fountains of 
 his heart, and sending him out to weep "bitterly." 
 That look was the supreme moment in Peter's life. It 
 forgave, while it rebuked him; it passed through his 
 nature like refining fire, burning out what was weak, 
 and selfish and sordid, and transforming Simon, the 
 boaster, the man of words, into Peter, the man of 
 deeds, the man of "rock." 
 
 But if in the outer court truth is thrown to the winds, 
 within the palace justice herself is parodied. It would 
 seem as if the first interview of Caiaphas with Jesus 
 were private, or in the presence at most of a few 
 personal attendants. But at this meeting, as the High 
 Priest of the New was arraigned before the high priest 
 of the Old Dispensation, nothing was elicited. Ques- 
 tioned as to His disciples and as to His doctrine, Jesus 
 maintained a dignified silence, only speaking to remind 
 His pseudo-judge that there were certain rules of pro- 
 cedure with which he himself was bound to comply. 
 He would not enlighten him; what He had said He 
 had said openly, in the Temple; and if he wished to 
 know he must appeal to those who heard Him, he must 
 
388 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 call his witnesses; an answer which brought Him a 
 sharp and cruel blow from one of the officers, the first 
 of a sad rain of blows which bruised His flesh and 
 made His visage marred more than any man's. 
 
 The private interview ended, the doors were thrown 
 open to the mixed company of chief priests, elders, and 
 scribes, probably the same as had witnessed the arrest, 
 with others of the council who had been hastily sum- 
 moned, and who were known to be avowedly hostile 
 to Jesus. It certainly was not a properly constituted 
 tribunal, a council of the Sanhedrim, which alone had 
 the power to adjudicate on questions purely religious. 
 It was rather a packed jury, a Star Chamber of self- 
 appointed assessors. With the exception that witnesses 
 were called (and even these were "false," with dis- 
 crepant stories which neutralized their testimony and 
 made it valueless), the whole proceedings were a hurried 
 travesty of justice, unconstitutional, and so illegal. But 
 such was the virulent hate of the hierarchy of the 
 Temple, they were prepared to break through all 
 legalities to gain their end ; yea, they would even 
 have broken the tables of the law themselves, if they 
 might only have stoned the Nazarene with the frag- 
 ments, and then have buried Him under the rude cairn. 
 The only testimony they could find was that He had 
 said He would destroy the temple made with hands, 
 and in three days build another made without hands 
 (Mark xiv. 58) ; and even in this the statements of 
 the two witnesses did not agree, while both were 
 garbled misrepresentations of the truth. 
 
 Hitherto Jesus had remained silent, and when 
 Caiaphas sprang from his seat, asking, "Answerest 
 Thou nothing ? " seeking to extract some broken speech 
 by the pressure of an imperious mien and browbeating 
 
xxii. 47— xxiii.J THE PASSION. 389 
 
 words, Jesus answered by a majestic silence. Why 
 should He cast His pearls before these swine, who 
 were even now turning upon Him to rend Him ? But 
 when the high priest asked, " Art Thou the Christ ? " 
 Jesus replied, " If I tell you, ye will not believe: and 
 if I ask you, ye will not answer. But from henceforth 
 shall the Son of man be seated at the right hand of the 
 power of God;" thus anticipating His enthronement 
 far above all principalities and powers, in His eternal 
 reign. The words " Son of man " struck with loud 
 vibrations upon the ears of His enraged jurors, sug- 
 gesting the antithesis, and immediately all speak at once, 
 as they clamour, " Art Thou, then, the Son of God ? " 
 a question which Caiaphas repeats as an adjuration, and 
 which Jesus answers with a brief, calm, ° Ye say that 
 I am." It was a Divine confession, at once the con- 
 fession of His Messiahship and a confession of His 
 Divinity. It was all that His enemies w T anted ; there 
 was no need of further witnesses, and Caiaphas rent 
 his clothes and asked his echoes of what the blasphemer 
 was worthy ? And opening their clenched teeth, his 
 echoes shouted, " Death ! " 
 
 The lingering dawn had not broken when the high 
 priest and his barking hounds had run their Prey down 
 to death — that is, as far as they were allowed to go ; 
 and as the meeting of the full council could not be 
 held till the broad daylight, the men who have Jesus 
 in charge extemporize a little interlude of their own. 
 Setting Jesus in the midst, they mock Him, and make 
 sport of Him, heaping upon that Face, still streaked 
 with its sweat of blood, all the indignities a malign 
 ingenuity can suggest Now they u cover His face " 
 (Mark xiv. 65), throwing around it one of their loose 
 robes; now they "blindfold" Him, and then strike 
 
390 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 "Him on the face" (xxii. 64), as they derisively ask 
 that He will prophecy who smote Him ; while, again, 
 they " spit in His face " (Matt. xxvi. 67), besmearing 
 it with the venom of unclean, hissing lips ! And amid 
 it all the patient Sufferer answers not a word ; He is 
 silent, dumb, the Lamb before His shearers. 
 
 Soon as the day had fairly broke, the Sanhedrists, 
 with the chief priests, meet in full council, to give effect 
 to the decision of the earlier conclave ; and since it 
 is net in their power to do more, they determine to 
 hand Jesus over to the secular power, going to Pilate 
 in a body, thus giving their informal endorsement to 
 the demand for His death. So now the scene shifts 
 from the palace of Caiaphas to the Praetorium, a short 
 distance as measured by the linear scale, but a far 
 remove if we gauge thought or if we consider climatic 
 influences. The palace of Caiaphas lay toward the 
 Orient ; the Praetorium was a growth of the Occident, 
 a bit of Western life transplanted to the once fruitful, 
 but now sterile East. Within the palace the air was 
 close and mouldy ; thought could not breathe, and 
 religion was little more than a mummy, tightly bound 
 by the grave-clothes of tradition, and all scented with 
 old-time cosmetics. Within the Praetorium the atmo- 
 sphere was at least freer; there was more room to 
 breathe ; for Rome was a sort of libertine in religion, 
 finding room within her Pantheon for all the deities 
 of this and almost any other world. In matters of 
 religion the Roman power was perfectly indifferent, 
 her only policy the policy of laissez faire; and when 
 Pilate first saw Jesus and His crowd of accusers he 
 sought to dismiss them at once, remitting Him to be 
 judged " according to your law," putting, doubtless, an 
 inflection of contempt upon the "your." It was not 
 
xxii. 47— xxiii.] THE PASSION. 391 
 
 until they had shifted the charge altogether, making 
 it one of sedition instead of blasphemy, as they accuse 
 Jesus of " perverting our nation, and forbidding to 
 give tribute to Caesar," that Pilate took the case 
 seriously in hand. But from the first his sympathies 
 evidently were with the strange and lonely Prophet. 
 
 Left comparatively alone with Pilate — for the crowd 
 would not risk the defilement of the Praetorium — Jesus 
 still maintained a dignified reserve and silence, not even 
 speaking to Pilate's question of surprise, "Answerest 
 Thou nothing ? " Jesus would speak no word in self- 
 defence, not even to take out the twist His accusers 
 had put into His words, as they distorted their meaning. 
 When, however, He was questioned as to His mission 
 and Realty He spoke directfy, as He had spoken before 
 to Caiaphas, not, however, claiming to be King of the 
 Jews, as His enemies asserted, but Lord of a kingdom 
 which was not of this world ; that is, not like earthly 
 empires, whose bounds are mountains and seas, and 
 whose thrones rest upon pillars of steel, the carnal 
 weapons which first upbuild, and then support them. 
 He was a King indeed ; but His realm was the wide 
 realm of mind and heart ; His was a kingdom in which 
 love was law, and love was force, a kingdom which 
 had no limitations of speech, and no bounds, either of 
 time or space. 
 
 Pilate was perplexed and awed. Governor though 
 he was, he mentally did homage before the strange 
 Imperator whose nature was imperial, whatever His 
 realm might be. "I find no fault in this Man," he 
 said, attesting the innocence he had discovered in the 
 mien and tones of his Prisoner; but his attestation 
 only awoke a fiercer cry from the chief priests, " that He 
 was a seditious person, stirring up the people, and 
 
392 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 preparing insurrection even from Galilee to Jerusalem." 
 The word Galilee caught Pilate's ear, and at once 
 suggested a plan that would shift the responsibility 
 from himself. He would change the venue from Judaea 
 to Galilee ; and since the Prisoner was a Galilean, he 
 would send Him to the Tetrarch of Galilee, Herod, 
 who happened to be in Jerusalem at the time. It was 
 the stratagem of a wavering mind, of a man whose 
 courage was not equal to his convictions, of a man 
 with a double purpose. He would like to save his 
 Prisoner, but he must save himself ; and when the two 
 purposes came into collision, as they did soon, the 
 "might" of a timid desire had to give way to the 
 " must n of a prudential necessity ; the Christ was 
 pushed aside and nailed to a cross, that Self might 
 survive and reign. And so " Pilate sent Him to 
 Herod." 
 
 Herod was proud to have this deference shown him 
 in Jerusalem, and by his rival, too, and "exceeding 
 glad " that, by a caprice of fortune, his long-cherished 
 desire, which had been baffled hitherto, of seeing the 
 Prophet of Galilee, should be realized. He found it, 
 however, a disappointing and barren interview; for 
 Jesus would work no miracle, as he had hoped ; He 
 would not even speak. To all the questions and threats 
 of Herod, Jesus maintained a rigid and almost scornful 
 silence ; and though to Pilate He had spoken at some 
 length, Jesus would have no intercourse with the mur- 
 derer of the Baptist. Herod had silenced the Voice 
 of the wilderness ; he should not hear the Incarnate 
 Word. Jesus thus set Herod at nought, counting him 
 as a nothing, ignoring him purposely and utterly ; and 
 stung with rage that his authority should be thus con- 
 temned before the chief priests and scribes, Herod set 
 
xxii. 47— xxiii.] THE PASSION. 393 
 
 his Victim w at nought," mocking Him in coarse banter ; 
 and as if the whole proceeding were but a farce, a bit 
 of comedy, he invests Him with one of his glittering 
 robes, and sends the Prophet-King back to Pilate. 
 
 For a brief space Jesus finds shelter by the judgment- 
 seat, removed from the presence of His accusers, though 
 still within hearing of their cries, as Pilate himself 
 keeps the wolves at bay. Intensely desirous of acquit- 
 ting his Prisoner, he leaves the seat of judgment to 
 become His advocate. He appeals to their sense of 
 justice ; that Jesus is entirely innocent of any crime or 
 fault. They reply that according to their law He ought 
 to die, because He called Himself the "Son of God." 
 He appeals to their custom of having some prisoner 
 released at this feast, and he suggests that it would be 
 a personal favour if they would permit him to release 
 Jesus. They answer, " Not this man, but Barabbas." 
 He offers to meet them half-way, in a sort of com- 
 promise, and out of deference to their wishes he will 
 chastise Jesus if they will consent to let Him go ; but 
 it is not chastisement they want — they themselves could 
 have done that — but death. He appeals to their pity, 
 leading Jesus forth, wearing the purple robe, as if to 
 ask, u Is it not enough already ? " but they cry even 
 more fiercely for His death. Then he yields so far to 
 their clamour as to deliver up Jesus to be mocked and 
 scourged, as the soldiers play at " royalty," arraying 
 Him in the purple robe, putting a reed in His hand as 
 a mock sceptre, and a crown of thorns upon His head, 
 then turning to smite Him on the head, to spit in His 
 face, and to kneel before Him in mock homage, saluting 
 Him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" And Pilate allows 
 all this, himself leading Jesus forth in this mock array, 
 as he bids the crowd, "Behold your King!" And why? 
 
394 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 has He experienced such a revulsion of feeling towards 
 his Prisoner that he can now vie with the chief priests 
 in his coarse insult of Jesus ? Not so ; but it is Pilate's 
 last appeal. It is a sop thrown out to the mob, in hopes 
 that it may slake their terrible blood-thirst, a sacrifice 
 of pain and shame which may perhaps prevent the 
 greater sacrifice of life ; while at the same time it is an 
 ocular demonstration of the incongruity of their charge ; 
 for His Kingship, whatever it might be, was nothing 
 the Roman power had to fear ; it was not even to be 
 taken in a serious way ; it was a matter for ridicule, 
 and not for revenge, something they could easily afford 
 to play with. But this last appeal was futile as the 
 others had been, and the crowd only became more 
 fierce as they saw in Pilate traces of weakening and 
 wavering. At last the courage of Pilate breaks down 
 utterly before the threat that he will not be Caesar's 
 friend if he let this man go, and he delivers up Jesus 
 to their will, not, however, before he has called for 
 water, and by a symbolic washing of his hands has 
 thrown back, or tried to throw back, upon his accusers, 
 the crime of shedding innocent blood. Weak, wavering 
 Pilate— 
 
 " Making his high place the lawless perch 
 Of winged ambitions ; " 
 
 overridden by his fears ; governor, but governed by his 
 subjects ; sitting on the judgment-seat, and then abdi- 
 cating his position of judge; the personification of 
 law, and condemning the Innocent contrary to the law ; 
 giving up to the extremest penalty and punishment One 
 whom he has thrice proclaimed as guiltless, without 
 fault, and that, too, in the face of a Heaven-sent warn- 
 ing dream ! In the wild inrush of his fears, which 
 swept over him like an inbreaking sea, his own weak 
 
«ii. 47— xxiii.] THE PASSION. 395 
 
 will was borne down, and reason, right, conscience, all 
 were drowned. Verily Pilate washes his hands in 
 vain ; he cannot wipe off his responsibility or wipe out 
 the deep stains of blood. 
 
 And now we come to the last act of the strange 
 drama, which the four Evangelists give from their 
 different stand-points, and so with varying but not 
 differing details. We will read it mainly from the 
 narrative of St. Luke. The shadow of the cross has 
 long been a vivid conception of His mind, and again 
 and again we can see its reflection in the current of 
 His clear speech; now, however, it is present to His 
 sight, close at hand, a grim and terrible reality. It is 
 laid upon the shoulder of the Sufferer, and the Victim 
 carries His altar through the streets of the city and 
 up towards the Mount of Sacrifice, until He faints 
 beneath the burden, when the precious load is laid 
 upon Simon the Cyrenian, who, coming out of the 
 country, met the procession as it issued from the gate. 
 It was probably during this halt by the way that the 
 incident occurred, related only by our Evangelist, when 
 the women who followed with the multitude broke out 
 into loud lamentation and weeping, the first expression 
 of human sympathy Jesus has received through all the 
 agonies of the long morning. And even this sympathy 
 He gave back to those who proffered it, bidding these 
 "daughters of Jerusalem" weep not for Him, but for 
 themselves and for their children, because of the day 
 of doom which was fast coming upon their city and on 
 them. Thus Jesus pushes from Him the cup of human 
 sympathy, as afterwards He refused the cup of mingled 
 wine and myrrh : He would drink the bitter draught 
 unsweetened ; alone and all unaided He would wrestle 
 with death, and conquer. 
 
jq6 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 It is somewhat singular that none of the Evangelists 
 have left us a clue by which we can recognize, with 
 any certainty, the scene of the Crucifixion. In our 
 thoughts and in our songs Calvary is a mount, towering 
 high among the mounts of God, higher than Sinai 
 itself. And such it is, potentially ; for it has the sweep 
 of all the earth, and touches heaven. But the Scrip- 
 tures do not call it a "mount," but only a " place." 
 Indeed, the name of "Calvary" does not appear in 
 Scripture, except as the Latin translation of the Greek 
 Kranion, or the Hebrew Golgotha, both of which mean 
 " the place of the skull." All that we can safely say 
 is that it was probably some rounded eminence, as 
 the name would indicate, and as modern explorations 
 would suggest, on the north of the city, near the tomb 
 of Jeremiah. 
 
 But if the site of the cross is only given us in a 
 casual way, its position is noted by all the Evangelists 
 with exactness. It was between the crosses of two 
 malefactors or bandits; as St. John puts it, in an 
 emphatic, Divine tautology, "On either side one, and 
 Jesus in the midst." Possibly they intended it as 
 their last insult, heaping shame upon shame; but 
 unwittingly they only fulfilled the Scripture, which had 
 prophesied that He would be "numbered among the 
 transgressors," and that He would make His grave 
 " with the wicked " in His death. 
 
 St. Luke omits several details, which St. John, who 
 was an eye-witness, could give more fully; but he 
 stays to speak of the parting of His raiment, and he 
 adds, what the ethers omit, the prayer for His execu- 
 tioners, " Father, forgive them ; for they know not what 
 they do," an incident he probably had heard from one 
 of the band of crucifiers, perhaps the centurion himself. 
 
xxii.47— xxiii.] THE PASSION. 397 
 
 With a true artistic skill, however, and with brief 
 touches, he draws for us the scene on which all ages 
 will reverently gaze. In the foreground is the cross 
 of Jesus, with its trilingual superscription, "This is 
 the King of the Jews ; " while close beside it are the 
 crosses of the thieves, whose very faces St. Luke 
 lights up with life and character. Standing near are 
 the soldiers, relieving the ennui with cruel sport, as 
 they rail at the Christ, offering Him vinegar, and 
 bidding Him come down. Then we have the rulers, 
 crowding up near the cross, scoffing, and pelting their 
 Victim with ribald jests, the " people " standing back, 
 beholding; while "afar off," in the distance, are His 
 acquaintance and the women from Galilee. But if our 
 Evangelist touches these incidents lightly, he lingers 
 to give us one scene of the cross in full, which the 
 other Evangelists omit. Has Jesus found an advocate 
 in Pilate? has He found a cross-bearer in the Cyre- 
 nian, and sympathisers in the lamenting women ? 
 He finds now upon His cross a testimony to His 
 Messiahship more clear and more eloquent than the 
 hieroglyphs of Pilate; for when one of the thieves 
 railed upon Him, shouting out u Christ " in mockery, 
 Jesus made no reply. The other answered for Him, 
 rebuking his fellow, while attesting the innocence of 
 Jesus. Then, with a prayer in which penitence and 
 faith were strangely blended, he turned to the Divine 
 Victim and said, "Jesus, remember me when Thou 
 comest in Thy kingdom." Rare faith ! Through the 
 tears of his penitence, as through lenses of light, he 
 sees the new Dawn to which this fearful night will 
 give birth, the kingdom which is sure to come, and 
 which, coming, will abide, and he salutes the dying 
 One as Christ, the King ! Jesus did not reply to the 
 
398 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 railer; He received in silence his barbed taunts; but 
 to this cry for mercy Jesus had a quick response — 
 "To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise/' so 
 admitting the penitent into His kingdom at once, and, 
 ere the day is spent, passing him up to the abodes of 
 the Blessed, even to Paradise itself. 
 
 And now there comes the hush of a great silence 
 and the awe of a strange darkness. From the sixth 
 to the ninth hour, over the cross, and the city, and 
 the land, hung the shadow of an untimely night, when 
 the " sun's light failed," as our Evangelist puts it ; 
 while in the Temple was another portent, the veil, which 
 was suspended between the Holy Place and the Most 
 Holy, being rent in the midst ! The mysterious dark- 
 ness was but the pall for a mysterious death ; for Jesus 
 cried with a loud voice into the gUom, " Father, into 
 Thy hands I commend My spirit," and then, as it reads 
 in language which is not applied to mortal man, " He 
 gave up the ghost." He dismissed His spirit, a perfectly 
 voluntary Sacrifice, laying down the life which no man 
 was able to take from Him. 
 
 And why ? What meant this death, which was at 
 once the end and the crown of His life ? What meant 
 the cross, which thus draws to itself all the lines of 
 His earthly life, while it throws its shadow back into 
 the Old Dispensation, over all its altars and its pass- 
 overs ? To other mortals death is but an appendix 
 to the life, a negation, a something we cculd dispense 
 with, were it possible thus to be exempt from the bond 
 we all must pay to Nature. But not so was it with 
 Jesus. He was born that He might die; He lived 
 that He might die; it was for this hour on Calvary 
 that He came into the world, the Word being made 
 flesh, that the sacred flesh might be transfixed to a 
 
xxii. 47-xxiii.] THE PASSION. 399 
 
 cross, and buried in an earthly grave. Surely, then, it 
 was not as man that Jesus died ; He died for man ; He 
 died as the Son of God 1 And when upon the cross 
 the horror of a great darkness fell upon His soul, and 
 He who had borne every torture that earth could 
 inflict without one murmur of impatience or cry of 
 pain, cried, with a terrible anguish in His voice, " My 
 God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? " we 
 can interpret the great horror and the strange cry but 
 in one way : the Lamb of God was bearing away the 
 sin of the world; He was tasting for man the bitter 
 pains of the second death ; and as He drinks the cup 
 of the wrath of God against sin He feels passing over 
 Him the awful loneliness of a soul bereft of God, the 
 chill of the " outer darkness " itself. Jesus lived as our 
 Example ; He died as our Atonement, opening by His 
 blood the Holiest of all, even His highest heaven. 
 
 And so the cross of Jesus must ever remain "in the 
 midst," the one bright centre of all our hopes and all 
 our songs ; it must be " in the midst " of our toil, at 
 once our pattern of service and our inspiration. Nay, 
 the cross of Jesus will be " in the midst " of heaven 
 itself, the centre towards which the circles of redeemed 
 saints will bow, and round which the ceaseless "Alleluia " 
 will roll ; for what is " the Lamb in the midst of the 
 throne" (Rev. vii. 17) but the cross transfigured, and 
 the Lamb eternally enthroned ? 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 
 St. Luke xxiv. 
 
 THE Sabbath came and went over the grave of its 
 Lord, and silence reigned in Joseph's garden, 
 broken only by the mailed sentinels, who laughed and 
 chatted by the sealed sepulchre. As to the disciples, 
 this "high day" is a dies non to them, for the curtain 
 of a deep silence hides them from our view. Did they 
 go up to the Temple to join in the Psalm, how " His 
 mercy endureth for ever " ? Scarcely : their thoughts 
 were transfixed to the cross, which haunted them like 
 a horrid dream ; its rude dark wood had stunned them 
 for awhile, as it broke down their faith and shattered 
 all their hopes. But if the constellation of the Apostles 
 passes into temporary eclipse, with no beam of inspired 
 light falling upon them, " the women " are not thus 
 hidden, for we read "And on the Sabbath day they 
 rested, according to the commandment." It is true it 
 is but a negative attitude that is portrayed, but it is 
 an exceedingly beautiful one. It is Love waiting upon 
 Duty. The voices of their grief are not allowed to 
 become so excessive and clamorous as to drown the 
 Divine voice, speaking through the ages, " Remember 
 that thou keep holy the Sabbath day ; " and even the 
 fragrant offerings of their devotion are set aside, that 
 they may keep inviolate the Sabbath rest. 
 
xxiv.] THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 401 
 
 But if the spices of the women are the spikenard 
 and myrrh of a mingled love and grief, they are at the 
 same time a tacit admission of their error. They prove 
 conclusively that the women, at any rate, had no thought 
 of a resurrection. It appears strange to us that such 
 should be the case, after the frequent references Jesus 
 made to His death and rising again. But evidently 
 the disciples attached to these sayings of 'Jesus one 
 of those deeper, farther-off meanings which were so 
 characteristic of His speech, interpreting in some 
 mysterious spiritual sense what was intended to be 
 read in a strict literalness. At present nothing could 
 be farther from their thoughts than a resurrection ; it 
 had not even occurred to them as a possible thing; 
 and instead of being something to which they were 
 ready to give a credulous assent, or a myth which 
 came all shaped and winged out of their own heated 
 imaginings, it was something altogether foreign to their 
 thoughts, and which, when it did occur, only by many 
 infallible proofs was recognized and admitted into their 
 hearts as truth. And so the very spices the women 
 prepare for the embalming are a silent but a fragrant 
 testimony to the reality of the Resurrection. They 
 show the drift of the disciples' thought, that when the 
 stone was rolled to the door of the sepulchre it shut 
 in to the darkness, and buried, all their hopes. The 
 only Easter they knew, or even dreamed of, v/as that 
 first and final Easter of the last day. 
 
 As soon as the restraint of the Sabbath was over, the 
 women turned again to their labour of love, preparing 
 the ointment and spices for the embalming, and coming 
 with the early dawn to the sepulchre. Though it was 
 'yet dark/' as St. John tells us, they did not anticipate 
 any difficulty from the city gates, for these were left 
 
 26 
 
402 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 open both by night and day during the Passover feast ; 
 but the thought did occur to them on the way as to 
 how they should roll back the stone, a task for which 
 they had not prepared, and which was evidently beyond 
 their unaided strength. Their question, however, had 
 been answered in anticipation, for when they reached 
 the garden the stone was rolled away, and the sepul- 
 chre all exposed. Surprised and startled by the dis- 
 covery, their surprise deepened into consternation as 
 passing within the sepulchre, they found that the body 
 of Jesus, on which they had come to perform the last 
 kind offices of affection, had disappeared. And how ? 
 could there be more than one solution of the enigma? 
 The enemies of Jesus had surely laid violent hands 
 upon the tomb, rifling it of the precious dust they 
 sorrowfully had committed to its keeping, reserving it 
 for fresh indignities. St. John supplements the nar- 
 rative of our Evangelist, telling how the Magdalene, 
 slipping out from the rest, "ran" back to the city to 
 announce, in half-hysterical speech, "They have taken 
 away the Lord out of the tomb, and we know not where 
 they have laid Him ; " for though St. John names but 
 the Magdalene, the " we " implies that she was but one 
 of a group of ministering women, a group that she had 
 abruptly left. The rest lingered by the tomb perplexed, 
 with reason blinded by the whirling clouds of doubt, 
 when suddenly — the " behold " indicates a swift surprise 
 — "two men stood by them in dazzling apparel." 
 
 In speaking of them as "two men" probably our Evan- 
 gelist only intended to call attention to the humanness 
 of their form, as in verse 23 he speaks of the appearance 
 as "a vision of angels." It will be observed, however, 
 that in the New Testament the two words " men " and 
 u angels " are used interchangeably ; as in St. Luke vil 
 
xxiv.] THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 403 
 
 24, Rev. xxii. 8, where the "angels" are evidently 
 men, while in Mark xvi. 5, and again in the verse before 
 us, the so-called "men" are angels. But does not this 
 interchangeable use of the words imply a close relation 
 between the two orders of being ? and is it not possible 
 that in the eternal ripenings and evolutions of heaven 
 a perfected humanity may pass up into the angelic 
 ranks? At any rate, we do know that when angels 
 have appeared on earth there has been a strange 
 humanness about them. They have not even had the 
 fictitious wings which poetry has woven for them ; they 
 have nearly always appeared wearing the human face 
 Divine, and speaking with the tones and in the tongues 
 of men, as if it were their native speech. 
 
 But if their form is earthly, their dress is heavenly. 
 Their garments flash and glitter like the robes of the 
 transfigured Christ; and awed by the supernatural 
 portent, the women bow down their faces to the earth. 
 "Why," asked the angels, "seek ye the living among 
 the dead ? He is not here, but is risen : remember how 
 He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee, saying 
 that the Son of man must be delivered up into the 
 hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day 
 rise again." Even the angels are not allowed to dis- 
 close the secret of His resurrection life, or to tell where 
 He may be found, but they announce the fact that they 
 are not at liberty to explain. "He is not here; He is 
 risen," is the Gospel of the angels, a Gospel whose 
 prelude they themselves have heard, but, alas! forgotten; 
 and since Heaven does not reveal what by searching 
 we ourselves may find out, the angels throw them 
 back upon their own recollections, recalling the words 
 Jesus Himself had spoken, and which, had they been 
 understood and remembered, would have lighted up the 
 
4 04 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 empty sepulchre and have solved the great mystery. 
 And how much we lose because we do not remember, 
 or if remembering, we do not believe ! Divine words 
 have been spoken, and spoken to us, but to our ear, 
 dulled by unbelief, they have come as empty sound, all 
 inarticulate, and we have said it was some thunder in 
 the sky or the voices of a passing wind. How many 
 promises, which, like the harps of God, would have 
 made even our wildernesses vocal, have we hung up, sad 
 and silent, on the willows of the "strange lands" ! If 
 we only " remembered " the words of the Lord Jesus, 
 if they became to us real and eternally true, instead of 
 being the unreal voices of a dream, those words would 
 be, not "the distant lamps" of Heaven, but near at 
 hand, lighting up all dark places, because throwing 
 their light within, turning even the graves of our buried 
 hopes into sanctuaries of joy and praise! 
 
 And so the women, instead of embalming their Lord, 
 carried their spices back unused. Not unused, however, 
 for in the spices and ointments the Living One did 
 not need their own names were embalmed, a fragrant 
 memory. Coming to the tomb, as they thought, to do 
 homage to a dead Christ, the Magdalene, and Mary, 
 and Johanna, and Salome found a Christ who had 
 conquered death, and at the same time found an 
 immortality for themselves ; for the fragrance of their 
 thought, which was not permitted to ripen into deeds, 
 has filled the whole world. 
 
 Returning to the city, whither the Magdalene had 
 outrun them, they announced to the rest, as she had 
 done to Peter and John, the fact of the empty grave ; 
 but they completed the story with the narrative of the 
 angelic vision and the statement that Jesus had risen. 
 So little, however, were the disciples predisposed to 
 
xxiv.] THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 403 
 
 receive the tidings of a resurrection, they would not 
 admit the fact even when attested by at least four 
 witnesses, but set it down as idle, silly talk, something 
 which was not only void of truth, but void of sense. 
 Only Peter and John of the Apostles, as far as we 
 know, visited the sepulchre, and even they doubted, 
 though they found the tomb empty and the linen clothes 
 carefully wrapped up. They " believed " that the body 
 had disappeared, but, as St. John tells us, "as yet they 
 knew not the Scripture, that He must rise again from 
 the dead " (St. John xx. 9) ; and as they leave the empty 
 grave to return to their own home, they only " wondered 
 at that which was come to pass." It was an enigma 
 they could not solve; and though the Easter morning 
 had now fully broke, the day which should light all 
 days, as it drew to itself the honours and songs of the 
 Sabbath, yet to the minds and hearts of the Apostles it 
 was "yet dark;" the glory of the Lord had not yet 
 risen upon them. 
 
 And now comes one of those beautiful pictures, 
 peculiar to St. Luke, as he lights up the Judoean hills 
 with a soft afterglow, an afterglow which at the same time 
 is the aurora of a new dawn. It was in the afternoon 
 of that first Lord's day, when two disciples set out from 
 Jerusalem for Emmaus, a village, probably th e modern 
 K hamasa ^sixty furlongs from the city. Who the two 
 disciples were we cannot say, for one is unnamed, 
 while the other bears a name, Cleopas, we do not meet 
 with elsewhere, though its Greek origin would lead us 
 to infer that he was some Gentile proselyte who had 
 attached himself to Jesus. As to the second, we have 
 not even the clue of an obscure name with which to 
 identify him, and in this somewhat strange anonymity 
 some expositors have thought they detected the shadow 
 
t 
 
 406 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 of the Evangelist, Luke, himself. The supposition is 
 not an impossible one ; for though St. Luke was not an 
 eye-witness from the beginning, he might have witnessed 
 some of the closing scenes of the Divine life ; while the 
 very minuteness of detail which characterizes his story 
 would almost show that if not himself a participant, he 
 was closely related to those who were ; but had St. Luke 
 himself been the favoured one, it is scarcely likely 
 that he would have omitted this personal testimony 
 when speaking of the "many infallible proofs" of His 
 resurrection. 
 
 Whoever the two might be, it is certain that they 
 enjoyed the esteem and confidence of the disciples, 
 having free access, even at untimely hours, to the 
 Apostolic circle, while the fact that Jesus Himself 
 sought their company, and selected them to such 
 honours, shows the high place which was accorded to 
 them in the Divine regard. 
 
 We are not apprised of the object of their journey ; 
 indeed, they themselves seem to have lost sight of that 
 in the gleams of glory which, all unexpected, fell across 
 their path. It is not unlikely that it was connected 
 with recent events; for now that the central Sun, 
 around whom their lives revolved, has disappeared, 
 will not those lives necessarily take new directions, 
 or drift back into the old orbits ? But whatever their 
 purposes might be, their thoughts are retrosp ective 
 ra ther th , an prospective ; for while their faces are set 
 towards Emmaus, and their feet are steadily measuring 
 ( ff the furlongs of the journey, their thoughts are 
 lingering behind, clinging to the dark crest of Calvary, 
 as the cloud-pennon clings to the Alpine peak. They 
 can speak but of one theme, "these things which have 
 happened : " the One whom they took to be the Christy 
 
txiv.] THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 407 
 
 to whom their hearts had been so strangely drawn; 
 His character, miracles, and words; the ignominious 
 Death, in which that Life, with all their hopes, was 
 quenched; and then the strange tidings which had 
 been brought by the women, as to how they had found 
 the grave empty, and how they had seen a vision of 
 angels. The word "questioned together" generally/ 
 implies a difference of opinion, and refers to the cross- ] 
 questioning of disputants ; but in this case it probably /W 
 referred only to the innumerable questions the report of ? 
 the Resurrection would raise in their minds, the honest / 
 doubts and difficulties with which they felt themselves 
 compelled to grapple. 
 
 It was while they were discussing these new prob- 
 lems, walking leisurely along the road — for men walk 
 heavily when weighted at the heart — a Stranger over- 
 took and joined them, asking, after the usual salutation, 
 which would not be omitted, "What communications 
 are these that ye have one with another, as ye 
 walk ? " The very form of the question would help 
 to disguise the familiar voice, while the changed 
 " form " of which St. Mark speaks would somewhat 
 mask the familiar features ; but at the same time it 
 would appear that there was a supernatural holding of 
 their eyes, as if a dusky veil were wrapped about the f 
 Stranger. His question startled them, even as a voice/ 
 from another world, as, indeed, it seemed ; and stopping/ 
 suddenly, they turned their " sad " faces to the Stranger 
 in a momentary and silent astonishment, a silence 
 which Cleopas broke by asking, "Dost thou alone 
 sojourn in Jerusalem, and not know the things which 
 aie come to pass there in these days?" a double 
 question, to which the stranger replied with the brief 
 interrogative, " What things ?" It needed no more than 
 
408 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 that solitary word to unseal the fountain of their lips 
 for the clouds which had broken so wildly and darkly 
 over Calvary had filled their hearts with an intense and 
 bitter grief, which longed for expression, even for the 
 poor relief of words. And so they break in together 
 with their answer (the pronoun is changed now), 
 " Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a Prophet 
 mighty in deed and word before God and all the people : 
 and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him 
 up to be condemned to death, and crucified Him. But 
 we hoped that it was He which should redeem Israel. 
 Yea, and beside all this, it is now the third day since 
 these things came to pass. Moreover certain women 
 of our company amazed us, having been early at the 
 tomb ; and when they found not His body, they came, 
 saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which 
 said that He was alive. And certain of them that were 
 with us went to the tomb, and found it even so as the 
 women had said : but Him they saw not." 
 
 It is the impetuous language of intense feeling, in 
 which hope and despair strike alternate chords. In 
 the first strain Jesus of Nazareth is lifted high ; He is 
 a Prophet mighty in word and deed ; then He is stricken 
 down, condemned to death, and crucified. Again, hope 
 speaks, recalling the bright dream of a redemption for 
 Israel ; but having spoken that word, Hope herself 
 goes aside to weep by the grave where her Redeemer 
 was hurriedly buried. Still again is the glimmer of a 
 new light, as the women bring home the message of 
 the angels ; but still again the light sets in darkness, 
 a gloom which neither the eyes of Reason nor of Faith 
 could as yet pierce ; for " Him they saw not " marks 
 the totality of the eclipse, pointing to a void of darkness, 
 a firmament without a sun or star. 
 
xxiv.] THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 409 
 
 But incidentally, in the swift current of their speech, 
 we catch a reflection of the Christ as He appeared to 
 their minds. He was indeed a Prophet, second to 
 none, and in their hope He was more, for He was the 
 Redeemer of Israel. It is evident the disciples had 
 not yet grasped the full purport of the Messianic 
 mission. Their thought was hazy, obscure, like the 
 visibrToF men walking in a mist. The Hebrew dream* 
 oi^tejjQp^rjJ sovereignty seems to have been a pre-] 
 vailing, perhaps the prevailing force in their minds, the 
 attraction which drew and cheered them on. But their 
 Redeemer was but a local, temporal one, who will 
 restore the kingdom to Israel ; He was not yet the 
 Redeemer of the world, who should save His people 
 from their sins. The " regeneration," as they fondly 
 called it, the " new creation," was purely national, when 
 out of the chaos of Roman irruptions their Hebrew 
 paradise will come. For one thing, the disciples were 
 too near the Divine life to see its just and large pro- 
 portions. They must stand back from it the distance 
 of a Pentecost ; they must look on it through their 
 lenses of flame, before they can take in the profound 
 meaning of that Life, or the awful mystery of that 
 Death. At present their vision is out of focus, and all 
 they can see is the blurred and shadowy outline of 
 the reality, the temporal rather than the spiritual, a 
 redeemed nationality rather than a redeemed and re- 
 generated humanity. 
 
 The risen Jesus, for such the Stranger w T as, though 
 they knew it not, listened to their requiem patiently 
 and wonderingly, glad to find within their hearts such 
 deep and genuine love, which even the cross and the 
 grave had not been able to extinguish. The men 
 themselves were true, even though their views were 
 
4io THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 somewhat warped — the refractions of their Hebrew 
 atmosphere. And Jesus leads them in thought to 
 those " shining uplands " of truth ; as it were, spurring 
 them on, by a sharp though kind rebuke, to the heights 
 where Divine thoughts and purposes move on to their 
 fulfilment. " O foolish men," He said, u and slow of 
 heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken ! 
 Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to 
 enter into His glory ? " They thought He was some 
 stranger in Jerusalem, yet He knows their prophets 
 better than themselves ; and hark, He puts in a word 
 they had feared to use. They only called Him "Jesus 
 of Nazareth ; " they did not give Him that higher title 
 of "the Christ" which they had freely used before. 
 No; for the cross had rudely shattered and broken 
 ^hat golden censer, in which the}' had been wont to 
 burn a royal incense. But here the Stranger recasts 
 their broken, golden word, burning its sweet, Divine 
 incense even in presence of the cross, calling the 
 Crucified the " Christ " ! Verily, this Stranger has 
 more faith than they ; and they still their garrulous 
 lips, which speak so randomly, to hear the new and 
 august Teacher, whose voice was an echo of the Truth, 
 if not the Truth itself ! 
 I "And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, 
 7/He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things 
 l\ concerning Himself." It will be observed that our 
 Evangelist uses a peculiar word in speaking of this 
 Divine exposition. He calls it an "interpretation," 
 a word used in the New Testament only in the sense 
 of translating from one language to another, from the 
 unknown to the known tongue. And such, indeed, it 
 was; for they had read the Scriptures but in part, 
 and so misread them. They had thrown upon those 
 
xxiv.) THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 411 
 
 Scriptures the projections of their own hopes and j 
 illusions; while other Scriptures, those relating to the ' 
 sufferings of Christ, were set back, out of sight, or if 
 heard at all, they were only the voice of an unknown 
 tongue, a vox et prcterea nihil. So Jesus interprets to 
 them the voices of this unknown tongue. Beginning 
 at Moses, He shows, from the types, the prophecies, 
 and the Psalms, how that the Christ must suffer and 
 die, ere the glories of His kingdom can begin ; that 
 the cross and the grave both lay in the path of 
 the Redeemer, as the bitter and prickly calyx out of 
 which the " glories " should unfold themselves. And 
 thus, opening their Scriptures, putting in the crimson 
 lens of the blood, as well as the chromatic lens of the 
 Messianic glory, the disciples find the cross all trans- 
 figured, inwoven in God's eternal purpose of redemption; 
 while the sufferings of Christ, at which they had 
 stumbled before, they now see w r ere part of the eternal 
 plan of mercy, a Divine " ought," a great necessity. 
 
 They had now reached Emmaus, the limit of their 
 journey, but the two disciples cannot lose the company I 
 of One whose words have opened to them a new and / 
 a bright world ; and though He was evidently going 
 on farther, they constrained Him to abide with them, 
 as it was towards evening and the day was far spent. 
 And He went in to tarry with them, though not for 
 long. Sitting down to meat, the Slranger Guest, 
 without any apology, takes the place of the host, and 
 blessing the bread, He breaks and gives to them. 
 Was it the uplifted face threw them back on the old, 
 familiar days ? or did they read the nail-mark in 
 His hand? We do not know; but in an instant the 
 veil in which He had enfolded Himself was withdrawn, 
 snd they knew Him : it was the Lord Himself, the 
 
4 ! 2 THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 risen Jesus ! In a moment the hush of a great awe 
 fell upon them, and before they had time to embrace 
 Him whom they had loved so passionately, indeed 
 before their lips could frame an exclamation of surprise, 
 He had vanished; He " became invisible" to them, as 
 it reads, passing out of their sight like a dissolving 
 cloud. And when they did recover themselves it was 
 not to speak His name — there was no need of that— 
 but to say one to another, "Was not our heart burning 
 within, us while He spake to us in the way, while He 
 opened to us the Scriptures?" It was to them a 
 bright Apocalypse, "the Revelation of Jesus Christ," 
 who was dead, and is alive for evermore ; and all- 
 forgetful of their errand, and though it is evening, they 
 leave Emmaus at once, their winged feet not heeding 
 the sixty furlongs now, as they haste to Jerusalem to 
 i announce to the eleven, and to the rest, that Jesus has 
 I indeed arisen, and has appeared unto them. 
 
 Returning to Jerusalem, they go direct to the well- 
 known trysting-place, where they find the Apostles 
 (" the eleven " as the band was now called, though, 
 as St. John informs us, Thomas was not present) and 
 others gathered for their evening meal, and speaking 
 of another and later appearance of Jesus to Simon, 
 which must have occurred during their absence from 
 the city ; and they add to the growing wonder by 
 telling of their evening adventure, and how Jesus was 
 known of them in breaking of bread. But while they 
 discussed the subject — for the majority were yet in 
 doubt as to the reality of the appearances — Jesus Him- 
 self stood before them, passing through the fastened 
 door; for the same fear that shut the door would 
 securly lock it. Though giving to them the old-time 
 salutation, " Peace be to you," it did not calm the 
 
xx iv.] THE FIRST LORDS DAY. 413 
 
 unrest and agitation of their soul ; the chill of a great 
 fear fell upon them, as the spectral Shadow, as they 
 thought it, stood before them. " Why are ye troubled ? " 
 asks Jesus, "and wherefore do reasonings arise in 
 your hearts ? " for they fairly trembled with fear, as 
 the word would imply. "See My hands and My feet, 
 that it is I Myself: handle Me, and see; for a spirit 
 hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold Me having." He 
 then extended I lis hands, drew back His robe from His 
 feet, and, as St. John says, uncovered His side, that 
 they might see the wounds of the nails and the spear, 
 and that by these visible, tangible proofs they might 
 be convinced of the reality of His Resurrection body. 
 It was enough; their hearts in an instant swung round 
 from an extreme of fear to an extreme of joy, a sort 
 of wild joy, in which Reason for the moment became 
 confused, and Faith bewildered. But while the heavenly 
 trance is yet upon them Jesus recalls them to earthly 
 things, asking if they have any meat; and when they 
 give Him a piece of a broiled fioh, some of the remnants 
 of their own repast, He takes and eats before them all ; 
 not that now He needed the sustenance of earthly food, 
 in His resurrection life, but that by this simple act He 
 might put another seal upon His true humanity. It 
 was a kind of sacrament, showing forth His oneness 
 with His own ; that on the farther side of the grave, 
 in His exaltation, as on this, in His humiliation, He was 
 still the "Son of man," interested in all things, even 
 the commonplaces, of humanity. 
 
 The interview was not for long, for the risen Christ 
 dwelt apart from His disciples, coming to them at 
 uncertain times and only for brief spaces. He lingers, 
 however, now, to explain to the eleven, as before to 
 the two, the great mystery of the Redemption. He 
 
414 TFE GOSPEL OF 57 HIKE. 
 
 opens their minds, that the truth may pass within. 
 Gathering up the lamps of prophecy suspended through 
 the Scriptures, He turns their varying lights upon 
 Himself, the Me of whom they testify. He shows 
 them how it is written in their law that the Christ 
 must suffer, the Christ must die, the Christ must 
 rise again the third day, and " that repentance and 
 remission of sins should be preached in His name unto 
 all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem." And then 
 He gave to these preachers of repentance and remission 
 the promise of which the Book of the Acts is a fulfil- 
 ment and enlargement, the "promise of the Father," 
 which is the gift of the Holy Ghost. It was the 
 prophecy of the Pentecost, the first rustle of the 
 mighty rushing wind, that Divine breath which comes 
 to all who will receive it. 
 
 Our Evangelist passes in silence other appearances 
 of the Resurrection Life, those forty days in which, by 
 His frequent manifestations, He was training His dis- 
 ciples to trust in His unseen Presence. He only in a 
 few closing words tells of the Ascension ; how, near 
 Bethany, He was parted from them, and taken up into 
 heaven, throwing down benedictions from His uplifted 
 hands even as He went ; and how the disciples returned 
 to Jerusalem, not sorrowing, as men bereaved, but with 
 great joy, having learned now to endure and rejoice 
 as seeing Him who is invisible, the unseen but ever- 
 present Christ. That St. Luke omits the other Resur- 
 rection appearances is probably because he intended 
 to insert them in his prelude to the Acts of the Apostles, 
 which he does, as he joins his second treatise to the 
 first. Nor is it altogether an incidental coincidence 
 that as he writes his later story he begins at Jeru- 
 salem, ingering in the upper room which was the 
 
xxiv.] THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 4*5 
 
 wind-rocked cradle of the Church, and inserting as 
 key-words of the new story these four words from 
 the old : Repentance, Remission, Promise, Power. The 
 two books are thus one, a seamless robe, woven for 
 the living Christ, the one giving us the Christ of the 
 Humiliation, the other the Christ of the Exaltation, 
 who speaks now from the upper heavens, and whose 
 power is the power of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 And was it altogether undesigned that our Evan- 
 gelist, omitting other appearances of the forty days, 
 yet throws such a wealth of interest and of colouring 
 into that first Easter day, filling it up from its early 
 dawn to its late evening? We think not. He is 
 writing to and for the Gentiles, whose Sabbaths are 
 not on the last but on the first day of the week, and 
 he stays to picture for us that first Lord's day, the 
 day chosen by the Lord of the Sabbath for this high 
 consecration. And as the Holy Church throughout 
 all the world keeps her Sabbaths now, her anthems 
 and songs are a sweet incense burned by the door of 
 the empty sepulchre ; for, " The light which threw the 
 glory of the Sabbath into the shade was the glory of 
 the Risen Lord." 
 
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 PRINTED IN US A. 
 
BS2595 .B974 1897 
 
 The Gospel according to St. Luke ... 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00059 4574 
 
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