.G-75 HARD SAYINGS OF JESUS CHRIST BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE WORD AND THE WAY Crown 8vo. Price 6^. MACMILLAN AND CO. HARD SAYINGS OF JESUS CHRIST A STUDY IN THE MIND AND METHOD OF THE MASTER BV ^- WILLIAM LEIGHTON GRANE, M.A. PREBENDARY OF CHICHESTER AND RECTOR OF BEXHILL-ON-SEA AUTHOR OF "the WORD AND THE WAY" A Hard Saying, who can hear it ? The Words that I speak unto you. they are Spirit and they are Life Itontioit MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1899 The Right of Tratislation and Reproduction is Reserved *2> ^ Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, london and bungay. PREFACE In a former volume the present writer has endeavoured to define the principles upon which a reasonable faith in the Inspiration of Holy- Scripture may securely rest. As one of these principles it was recognised that a difference of weight and value attaches to different parts of the Library we call the Bible. Now one of these parts is plainly of para- mount importance. For few will fail to find the very heart and soul of the biblical body in the words of *' The Word of God " Himself. By this, the core of Christianity, its claim on the hearts and lives of men must finally be judged. And upon their acceptance or rejection of this, the future of the Faith must eventually depend. But right understanding vi .PREFACE must precede just judgment. What is the preliminary to such understanding? Before all things it seems necessary to set the Words of Jesus in their own proper historical light in order to arrive at the meaning they conveyed to those who first heard them, for this alone can safely be accounted the primary meaning of their Speaker. Such therefore, in short, is the method used in the following pages. Amid much unbridled controversy on matters intrinsically trivial, and despite an obvious tendency in some quarters to prefer the mediaeval before the primitive, it is at least a hopeful sign in the religious outlook of to-day that the thoughtful of every school seem more than ever disposed to turn for guidance and relief to a Study of the Mind of Christ. And surely the Master's Message is for all. To the disciples of Reason it is He Who cries, '' Which of you convicteth Me of sin ? If I say Truth, why do ye not believe Me ? " To the bewildered seekers after Authority it is He Who declares, " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.' PREFACE vii And this, the most astounding claim imaginable on the lips of an outcast Teacher, the Centuries have justified, — so justified one would have thought as clearly to indicate, even to bewildered seekers, the true seat of Authority in matters of Religion. Twenty years' experience in the Ministry is however scarcely needed to make one alive to the fact that among the authoritative and reason - compelling Words of Jesus Christ some un- doubtedly cause trouble in various minds. Appearing on a shallow acquaintance either impracticable or reasonless, they not only lose authority but sow the seeds of doubt. The object, therefore, of this book is the lessening of such perplexities — the removal of stumbling- blocks — by setting forth the principles which seem to elucidate the Teaching of the Master. It is an attempt to construe the meaning of some of the more striking of Christ's ''hard sayings." Others, here untouched, might no doubt easily be cited. But the aim of the writer has not been to exhaust the verbal difficulties in the recorded utterances of our viii PREFACE Lord. He has rather sought to examine the Master's method, and to illustrate its underlying principles by a number of examples perhaps sufficient to enable the reader to apply those principles in solving other problems for himself. W. L. G. The Rectory, Bexhill-on-Sea. September^ 1899. CONTENTS THE PROPHET'S GOAD St. John vii. 46 — " Never man spake like This ManJ^ Common distrust of the precepts of Jesus — Abuses of Criticism — The value of "hard sayings" and the futility of platitude — How only any speaker out of the past can be understood — How only distorted Truth can be restored to proportion — The method of advocate, artist, and poet — Great teachers do not avoid paradox — Tennyson and Browning — Carlyle as a prophet — St. Paul and St. James — Every prophet to be judged in the light of his surroundings — Even the One Master limited by the limitations of His hearers — To recall its occasion is often to remove the difficulty of an utterance of Christ — The verdict of Reason and the conviction of Faith. Pages I — 18 A TOUCHSTONE St. Mark iv. 11, 12 — " Unto them that are without all things are done in parables .... lest haply they should turn again^ and it should be forgiven them." The hardest of Christ's "hard sayings "—Considered in relation to the Speaker's character and doctrine— Why the surface meaning is not the true one — Clue supplied by parallel accounts — Isaiah and Christ — Voluntary hardening grows into involuntary hardness— " Our acts our angels are "—Unto him that hath shall be given — Opposite effects of Truth on different natures— The common expe- rience of the Prophet — Mazzini and others — Neither Seed nor Sower at fault but the Soil— " Take heed how ye hear." Pages 19 — 36 CONTENTS A COMPARISON St. Matthew xi. 1 1— " He that is but little in the Kins^dom of Heaven is greater than he." The moral grandeur of John the Baptist — The acme of his greatness — The vantage ground of the Kingdom of Heaven — Its meaning — The Church of Christ — Its visibility — Outward Society and Inward Spirit — Danger of forgetting either — Futility of wholesale schemes of regeneration — Christ as a Reformer — His care for the Unit — The heritage of the Kingdom's citizens — The responsibility of privilege — A fundamental obligation — The law of growth and progress. Pages 37—52 CHARACTER-READING St. Luke ix. 57-62— "Z^/ the dead bury their dead . ... No man looking back is fit for the Kingdom of God." Three candidates for discipleship and their greeting — M. Renan as a literalist — Christ's distrust of emotionalism — His insight into character — His method a specific for the individual case — Eastern customs of burial and of mourning — A probable solution of the verbal difficulty — Firmness, a virtue in any good physician, not to be accounted harshness Pages 53 — 68 THE WINNOWING FAN St. Luke xiv. 25, 26 — ^'' If atty man hate: not his father and mother . ... he cannot be My disciple." Strange words addressed to the multitude — The winnowing of the curious and the selfish — Are men required to hate those whom it is their prime duty to love ? — Does Jesus ' ' trample under foot everything that is human : blood and love and country ? " — The apparent not the real difficulty in this hard saying — The form and the substance — The absolutism of Christ — Its evidential value — Testimony of reason and experience Pages d^ — 76 CONTENTS xi THE MIGHT OF MEEKNESS St. Matthew v. 38-42 — ^^ Resist not him that is evil^^ &^c. Opposing hyperboles — The lesson of their contradiction — Christ deals in principles not rules — His words are as sown Seed capable of endless development — An instance in point — The necessity of such a method for the permanence of Christianity — Two equip- ments of the Twelve contrasted — Folly of confounding rules with principles — The speech of Jesus explained by His own conduct — The essence of the doctrine of non-resistance ... Pages y 7 — 86 AGAINST ANXIETY St. Matthew vi. 31-34 — "" Be not therefore anxious .... but seek ye first God's Kingdom and Righteousness P " Taking thought " — What it means — The standpoint of Jesus — His central doctrine of the Fatherhood of God — Why difficult of acceptance—" On the earth the broken arcs " — Christ's own Faith in the Father — His secret and method against Anxiety — Our neglect of both — Compatibility of Faith and Foresight— Example of birds and insects — Over-carefulness contemptible — The ideal of Jesus — The witness of St. Paul 7^^^87—100 THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON St. Luke xvi. 9-12 — ''^ I say unto you^ Make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousness.^^ Statement of the difficulty — Possible solutions — The true clue — He that is faithful in little (even mere worldly things) is faithful also in much — The secular and the religious joined by the law of Character — A Rabbinic parallel — The Midrash — Judas and St. Stephen — The lesson for the disciples and the lesson for the Pharisees — The least faithful often the most pitiless — Compounding for popular indulgence here with cruel judgments there — Responsi- bility of the Nation, the Church, the Man— " Will- worship " and Sacerdotalism — Stewardship universal Pages loi — 114 CONTENTS THE HUNDREDFOLD REWARD St. Mark x. 29-31 — " There is no man that hath left house or brethren .... for my sake and the GospeVs sake, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this present time" The previous question — The rich young ruler's refusal — St. Peter improves the occasion : " What then shall we have?" — Letter and spirit of Christ's reply — Effect on the disciples of current ideas — "Now in this present time" — Character necessarily determines nature of reward — A monstrous criticism — St. Peter's growth in grace — Loss and gain in the lives of the Twelve — St. Paul before Agrippa — The rules of abstinence and of temperance — Is the dis- interestedness of virtue compatible with the reward of the vir- tuous ? — " Profitable " godliness — The Christian's "crown." Pages 115— 132 SPIRITUAL SUICIDE St, Mark iii. 29 — " He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness.^' Popular misconceptions — The true reading — The circumstances of the utterance — A Satanic stratagem — Pharisees wilfully confound- ing Good and Evil — Consequence inevitable from the nature of the case — Therefore the clearest warning the most kind — A travesty of the truth — The real key of the position — Overt act distinguished from mental attitude— " Honest doubt" — The safety of the con- scientious and the peril of the self-complacent — Conscience the organ of the Holy Ghost—" Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me." Pages 133—150 GEHENNA St. Matthew v. 22—" Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be i?t danger of Hell yf?T." The great value of the Revised Version — Revisers inconsistent in treating certain words— Tartarus, Hades, and Gehenna — Popular meaning of Hell— Real meaning of Gehenna— Christ " fulfilling " CONTENTS xui the Law by insisting on obedience to its Spirit — His Law of Anger — Three grades of sin demand corresponding grades of punishment — An argument from the lack of proportion — The Jewish Courts, local and metropolitan — The intended lesson — " Without a parable spake He not unto them " Pages 151 — 162 FIGURE AND FACT St. Mark ix. 43, 47, 48 — " Where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched" The text of the passage — The questions raised — The Valley of Hinnom — Other imagery in the Gospels for the fate of the wicked — The inevitable inference from its variety — A ghastly misconcep- tion— How generally accepted — King Josiah's reformation of Tophet — Mediaeval mistakes call for similar treatment — Things shaken to be removed (Hebrews xii. 27) — The unshaken certainty of Retribution remains — The revelation of God confirmed by the reason and conscience of mankind Pages 163 — 178 FUTURE RETRIBUTION St. Matthew xxv. 46 — " These shall go away into eternal punishment." The meaning of oit^vtoj— Its use in the New Testament— Evangelists and Apostles deliberately rejected three other words which would have connoted "endless" — References to the Intermediate state — A gleam from St, Peter — Speculation discouraged by our Lord — The promised supremacy of Goodness implies the destruction or conversion of evil beings — These alternatives considered — Uni- versalism in relation to Free-will— Conscience reinstated is judg- ment passed — Hell is the Loss of Heaven realised — Reward and Punishment not an arbitrary arrangement, but an inevitable out- growth Pages 179—196 CONTENTS LIFE ETERNAL Sj. John vi. 54—" /fe that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood hath Eternal life." "A hard saying, who can hear it?" — Christ in the Synagogue at Capernaum — Sign-seeking — External religionism — ^^ How can this man give us His flesh to eat ? " — The Master's reply — Its legiti- mate application distinct from its interpretation — What it cannot mean and why — The truth of it — Faith and Superstition — The end to be distinguished from the means thereto — The communication of Christ the " life" of the Christian — A wonder-working Trio : Faith, Obedience, Love — The perennial blunder of Materialism — Cpnclusion Pages 197 — 212 EVERY ONE WHICH HEARETH THESE WORDS OF MINE, AND DOETH THEM, SHALL BE LIKENED UNTO A WISE MAN, WHICH BUILT HIS HOUSE UPON THE ROCK : AND THE RAIN DESCENDED, AND THE FLOODS CAME, AND THE WINDS BLEW, AND BEAT UPON THAT HOUSE, AND IT FELL NOT : FOR IT WAS FOUNDED UPON THE ROCK. fesus Christ. THIS (THE WORD OF THE FATHER) IS HE WHO WAS FROM THE BEGINNING, WHO APPEARED AS NEW, AND WAS FOUND TO BE OLD, AND IS BORN AT ALL TIMES IN THE HEARTS OF THE HOLY . . . THOU SHALT LEARN TO KNOW THOSE THINGS WHICH THE WORD DISCOURSES, BY WHAT MEANS HE CHOOSES, AT WHAT TIME HE WILLS. Greek Writer of the Second Century. HARD SAYINGS OF JESUS CHRIST THE PROPHET'S GOAD '■^ Never man spake like This Man^ — St. John vii. 46. It is one of the great evils which have come upon modern thought, partly induced and perhaps to some extent excused by the com- plex and multiform life of the time, that a kind of distrust has become felt, even where it is not exactly expressed in words, in the precepts left to us by Jesus Christ and in many of the principles of Christianity as commonly under- stood and commonly interpreted. Thus, while the Christian Religion professes to harmonise the diversity which exists among the excellent aims of men, and so to settle for us the standard of conduct ; on the other hand we are told that this claim is indefensible, and 2 THE PROPHET'S GOAD we hear the most glaring incongruity between Christian precept and Christian practice boldly- excused on the ground that Christian life is nowadays perfectly impracticable. The exi- gencies of modern life, it is said, are quite incompatible with regard for Christ's precepts, unless indeed for those who may be willing to withdraw out of the larger world of men and live in a little circle of their own, apart from the struggle for existence and the babel of the strife of tongues. Some press this view to further issues, and maintain that sundry commands which come to us with the sanction of our Lord would not, even if practised, tend to the formation of a noble character. It is asserted, for instance, that 'all the prominence given in Christianity to altruistic duty is not really elevating and fruitful, but rather ignoble and injurious. It is urged that to bear one another's burdens and exercise the Instinct of pity and benevolence is a practical mistake, that every one should rather live out his own life and look first after himself, and that such a course will in the long run best enable him to be useful to society, while it permits and provides those personal gratifica- tions which each Is fully entitled to claim if THE PROPHET'S GOAD 3 he can, and which God intended men to enjoy. Such arguments are perhaps backed by what are supposed to be illustrations in point. Christian precepts are rudely handled, Christian positions in fact mis-stated or only half stated, or else exaggerated, till the desired end appears in sight, which amounts to this, that Jesus Christ, instead of being the Revealer of God's Will and the Light of the world, was merely a narrow enthusiast belonging only to a remote age Who has no gospel for the nineteenth century. It is the aim of this book to show that this position is a false one, and that even as re- gards those words of Christ which may be called '' Hard Sayings " there is no justification in fact for the notion that His teaching has become outworn, or that the possession of His spirit has ceased to be the noblest attainment open to human ambition in the domain of morals. If, indeed, this were not so, if Christian doctrine be suitable only for the use of ages now bygone, if the moral standard of Jesus can no longer be regarded by reasonable men as an ideal even to be aimed at, then we Christians are in sorry plight. For as we pass the waves of this troublesome world, we are as men clinging to some derelict which is a B 2 4 THE PROPHET'S GOAD ship no more. Driven before every gale of passion, sucked along by each current which happens for the nonce to be strongest, we can but toss and drift, drift and toss, with neither helm to use nor haven to make, till storm or starvation make an end. Thus our fate is not merely to be inconsistent, which is bad ; but to be inconsistent on principle because in real doubt, which is infinitely worse. But as matter of fact, no one except through wilful blindness is shut up to this fate. The principles of Jesus only appear worn out, or impracticable, or useless, when they are misunderstood and misinterpreted. Hostile critics of Christianity would never dream of abusing any other book or playing fast and loose with any other author in the way they treat the gospels and the words of Christ. To take at random some highly figurative or in- tensely concentrated sentence, and proceed to apply it without a thought as to its original import or the special circumstances of its utter- ance ; to persist in forgetting the obvious truth that a principle of life is one thing, and the application of that principle In totally different times and surroundings is quite another ; this sort of thing is the most utterly unscientific THE PROPHET'S GOAD 5 misuse of letters that ever masqueraded in the name of literary criticism. Whether it be ignorance, or whether it be injustice, it is equally scandalous. Yet this is what they do who snatch away some phrase of Jesus from its proper setting, and then declare that, be- cause they cannot apply such and such precept literally, therefore the whole fabric of Chris- tianity is an effete superstition and its ethical conceptions utterly unadapted to the needs of modern life. Now there is not the least reason to deny that there are among the precepts of Jesus what may fairly be called "hard sayings." Were it not so, perhaps His teaching would not now be paramount, nineteen centuries after it was given. If Christ had been content with platitudes, no doubt He would not have been crucified ; but then He could never have claimed for His words that ''they are spirit and they are life," nor would the ages have agreed that '' never man spake like This Man." If Christ had been content with platitudes, perhaps the dry-as-dust dullard for whom no sin is mortal but the flash of genius, or the prosaic literalist who can forgive everything but the picturesque, might have been satisfied ; 6 THE PROPHET'S GOAD but no purifying flame of enthusiasm would then have kindled the Hght of Christendom in the world, and no Christian Church would have been alive to-day to justify that word, " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me," and to echo back over the centuries the old re- sponse, '' Lord, to Whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of Eternal Life." It is thus that '' Wisdom is justified by the works of her children." And, therefore, our wisdom seems clearly to lie in thankfully taking the sayings of Jesus, whether they look difficult or not, and In reverendy trying to understand and make our own their spirit. But there are two great qualifications In par- ticular without which no one who speaks to us moral and spiritual truth, especially if he speaks to us out of the past, can ever be understood. The first qualification is a certain degree of sympathy. Our thoughts must to some extent work In the same plane, our desires must in some degree be set upon the holy end for which the teacher speaks, even as Christ Himself im- plied when He said, " He that wills to do the righteous will shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." And the second condition springs from the fact that every great teacher primarily THE PROPHET'S GOAD 7 addresses the men of his own age. Therefore the modern disciple must add to his sympathy a certain deeree of historical imao-ination. He must be willing to make the best effort possible to set the teaching he would understand in its own proper historical light. Thus we can- not expect to interpret fairly the precepts of Christ without remembering that at the time He spoke there were many truths which had been sadly understated, and some which were entirely ignored. Hence it had become before all things necessary to restore the balance of truth, and the emphatic language alone suitable for this purpose might, under other conditions and if regarded apart from its specific intention, be very likely to look like exaggeration or one- sidedness. Indeed the recollection of this alone will very often suffice to explain what at first seerns difficult in some of the utterances of Jesus. Even your own experience in the art of per- suasion will probably be enough to make this clear. You can understand Christ's method by your own. You know how, in argument with one who holds a contrary opinion, in order to put the view you wish to emphasise in the most telling light, you try to state it so that it 8 THE PROPHET'S GOAD will Strike and stick. You instinctively feel that a view which has been underrated or dis- torted is to be restored to its right position by the accumulation of statement upon statement, until the underrated or distorted proposition at last stands out In bold relief and full proportion, and you speak accordingly. Every one again is familiar with this method in Art. The painter who desires forcibly to present some particular idea will Isolate the figure or face by which he would portray it. He will deliberately subordinate by light and unfinished treatment all that Is merely comple- mentary, in order to fix your eye and rivet your attention upon what he wants you particularly to notice. It is the best possible method for the end in view, and therefore it was freely used by Jesus Christ. The gospels teem with ex- amples. It was the way in which the Master constantly spoke, throwing His truths out in burning phrases, in parable and paradox which seize the imagination and score the tablets of the mind. Thus we frequently find the neg- lected side of human life taken up and clothed, decked out with bright colour, touched with poet's skill and prophet's fire ; and we note the insight of Him Who ** knew what was in man " THE PROPHET'S GOAD 9 leading Him deliberately to ignore other sides to a question, in order that His hearers might seize intensely upon the one side which they had forgotten or had trampled under foot. It has always been and always will be one of the notes of the great teacher, as distinguished from the small, that he is never afraid of appa- rent inconsistencies and contradictions. We see this constantly in the teaching of wise men of our own time. Every reader of Tennyson renfiembers how the tone and aim of the old and the new " Locksley Hall " are poles apart. Robert Browning again is full of hard sayings. But as some one said of a certain writer that he was better worth reading when he was wrong than most others when they are right, so it may be said of Browning that his obscurities are better worth studying than many another man's lucidity. No one takes less pains to avoid contradictions than that master of Eng- lish prose, John Ruskin, but none can charge his teaching with the slightest ambiguity. Or take, for further and fuller illustration, another of the prophets — Carlyle. There are still some who find in his message only sound and fury, signifying nothing. But this is not the verdict which has slathered the best consent lo THE PROPHET'S GOAD during the years which have passed since his death. In spite of many sayings that must be counted harsh or reckless, in spite of the almost total lack of that "sweet reasonableness" so invaluable to the teacher of every time and place, and notwithstanding other grave defects of temper and disposition, yet who can deny this man a place among the prophets ? Up to a certain point, and always as far as his own personal conviction justified, he boldly and faithfully spoke out his message. He was always on the side of God as against the world, the flesh, and the devil. He was always on the side of duty as against selfishness. Ever an Apostle of Work, with a killing contempt for idleness, he never lost himself in the barren desert of utilitarianism. Ever an Apostle of Thought, crying constantly to the thoughtless and the shallow '' Let us strive to think well," yet he never made a god of mere intellect, but continually affirmed the spiritual nature of man and the supernatural character of his destiny. Who can doubt that such an one, so convinced of the reality of a God-implanted conscience, so sure of the capacity of man to travel upwards if only he would keep the spiritual end in view, so superior to the vulgarities of luxury and wealth, THE PROPHET'S GOAD ii SO alive to the imperativeness of social duties and to the hollowness of all class distinctions not based on reason and justice, — who can doubt, I say, that such a man was truly en- trusted with a message for his time and was highly qualified to deliver it ? Why then — and here is the question which concerns our argument — why has so much that he has written been declared mere rhetoric and rhodomontade ? Was it not precisely because the reason for much of a oreat teacher's method and language is hidden until we grasp the nature and prevalence of the opposing forces aoainst which it was hurled, — until we set it in its own proper historical light. During Carlyle's life, wealth and manufac- tures were making the most gigantic and extraordinary strides. The seer saw men growing intoxicated with the triumphs of material success. He stood appalled. How could he deal out pretty speeches when the out- look was so black ? Revolutions are not made with rose-water. And Carlyle set himself to work the most dif^cult of revolutions, a revolu- tion of thouoht. He wrote to influence an aee which scoffed at things spiritual because it had lost sight of them, and which had lost sight of 12 THE PROPHET'S GOAD them because it had come to regard the world as nothing but '' a large cooking- range." It was necessary to talk strongly if such people were to be made to listen. And as the reformer saw the idolatry of money ever absorbing more and more of the thoughts and lives of men, what wonder if he poured the vials of his scorn upon the notion that society could be bound together by the slender nexus of '' cash payment." As he saw Mill and his utilitarian contempories growing more and more sceptical and starting many on the downward track, or at least chaining them to the material mundane round of measuring up the yarn without a thought for the mill hands who produced it, what wonder at the heat with which he thunders out ''the Everlasting No " of a deeper insight, and proclaims "the Everlasting Yea " of a higher faith. This much is surely clear, that it is only in proportion as we realise the moral atmosphere in which a prophet's lot is cast, and remember his own origin and place therein, that we shall become qualified to judge rightly of *' the why and the wherefore " of his scalding speech. Sometimes in our study of some great teacher it will not be so much the apparently THE PROPHET'S GOAD 13 * exaggerated strength of his language, but its seeming contradictoriness, which makes him, as St. Peter said of St. Paul, "hard to be understood." St. Paul indeed is a very good example of this particular cause of misunder- standing. The "antinomies," as I believe they are technically called, of the great apostle have served to fill heavy tomes with barren discussion. And immense ingenuity has been expended in laboured attempts to harmonise his words with what looks at first sight to be contrary teaching from the lips of St. James. Yet most of this toil might have been saved by the use of a single key to the whole set of difficulties. This master-key is simply the understanding and keeping in mind those errors or exaggerations of truth, which both apostles were equally engaged in correcting, and which in some of the Churches had assumed this form and in others that ; calling, therefore, here for strong statement on one side and there for plain speaking on another. The recollection of this common method of the world's teachers clears the way for a fair consideration of those utterances of our Blessed Lord which have presented difficulty to men's minds and provoked their hostile criticism. 14 THE PROPHET'S GOAD For it must be remembered that however incomparable the One Master may appear, yet no Teacher, however Divine, is free from Hmitations when he has to deal with humanity. He is obviously limited to those methods and forms of speech which are calculated to effect his purpose with the men whom he addresses. He has to arrest their attention ; he has to make his message understood, and suitable to its immediate hearers. The occasion and the circumstances of the address must therefore determine its form. It is these which will call here for the scathing of pachydermatous hypocrisy, '' O generation of vipers, how can ye escape the judgment of Gehenna ! " and there for such surpassing tenderness of Infinite Purity as could kindle afresh the dying embers of a soul's life, " Neither do I condemn thee ; go, and sin no more." The sayings of our Lord are continually being turned into stumbling-blocks because critics persist in ignoring the occasion and circumstances which explain and justify their utterance. It is hard to kick against the Prophet's goad. Why not try to understand it ? Why not recognise that the use of parable and paradox is part of the regular method of THE PROPHET'S GOAD 15 the wise, and that "hard sayings" may be spoken, not to confuse and confound, but to stimulate and guide ? *' Cast not your pearls before swine " is cited, for example, as an in- stance of purely harsh exclusiveness. But what of the wisdom of such reticence in face of invincible ignorance and prejudice ? And what of the exceeding rarity of the Master's use of it? How seldom it is said, *' He answered nothing," or ''He wrote upon the ground," or '' He went unto another city." On the other hand how frequent, how constantly recurring is the picture of the Good Shepherd seeking some wandering sheep ''until He find it," of the patient Husbandman producing flowers of surpassing beauty from soil of smallest promise. Some would have us believe it better to have refrained from withering a fig tree than to illustrate a nation's fate and quicken the faith which might avert the doom. To others again, the release of a human spirit from the bands of a living death counts for nothing in view of the loss of some swine. But to those who see with other eyes, who see a unique career filled with "greater things than these," — things which make the Life of Christ the i6 THE PROPHET'S GOAD most beautiful the world has seen — such laboured magnifying of the comparatively trivial argues only a striking want of moral perspective in the critic, and a singular lack of material for criticism. Such cavillers are fond of appealing to Reason. But reason Is precisely the faculty which revolts at such light attempts to dis- credit the beneficence which ''went about doing good," to discount the ''gracious words" which were the "wonder" of a multitude, and to decry the authoritative doctrine which drew from enemies the confession " never man spake like This Man." Reason it Is which looks to facts and weighs them. When the license of a Magdalene is exchanged for chaste devotion, when the cupidity of a Zaccheus proffers four- fold restitution, when even political antagonism and animosity sink out of sight, and Simon the Home Rule agitator, " Simon the Zealot," makes common cause with such an embodiment of alien oppression as Matthew the publican, — then it Is Reason which exclaims, " What strange doctrine Is this ! What manner of Man Is This ? " to which and to Whom such varied victory falls. Reason, again, looks on at the tragedy of the Cross, and watches whether, in so supreme THE PROPHET'S GOAD 17 a trial, wisdom will be justified by its works. Reason overhears the last words of the Crucified Christ, — the prayer for His torturers' pardon, the care for others' needs in the midst of per- sonal anguish, the royal welcome of the last poor prodigal who has "come to himself." Reason considers what sort of character it is which can face the uttermost depths of desola- tion and yet rise out of them to rest in the Everlasting arms ; she estimates the moral force which effects a dying brigand's penitence and inspires the matchless venture of his prayer ; she observes the absence of fanaticism which speaks out the human cry " I thirst" ; she marks the quenchless love which " hopeth all things " and despairs not, even then and even there, of finding in the human nature gathered at a public execution some redeeming ruth ; she feels the power which draws pity from hearts inured to pain, from men by pro- fession pitiless, and she notes the soldier s posca moistening lips sealed to every anodyne but that of sympathy. Reason, I say, remarks these things : and it is the voice of reason, not that of sentiment or superstition, which speaks in the Centurion's verdict, "Truly this man was a Son of God," and which urges the timid discipleship of c i8 THE PROPHET'S GOAD NIcodemus out of the stage of secret conviction into that of open confession. Then — since the influence of Jesus, instead of dying with Him, began thenceforth its wider, larger and im- mortal life — let us finally observe that the conversion of St. Paul is the sort of fact which appeals to reason more strongly than a score of captious or microscopic criticisms. Reason finds here a solid beam of more value than many chips. She watches the typical Jewish bigot setting out from Jerusalem determined to crush Christianity, the trusted emissary of Judaism armed with ''authority to bind all that called on Christ's name."^ And presently she overhears, from the mouth of this erstwhile persecutor transformed into a Christian apostle, the astounding confession, *' I am ready not to be bound only but to die, for the name of the Lord Jesus." ^ Is it not an eminently sane conclusion that He Whose influence wrought such marvels spoke with unique authority ? — amply justified the wisdom of His teaching, nay, even made good His own extraordinary claim, " The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life."'^ 1 Acts ix. 14. ^ Acts xxi. 13. ^ st. John vi. 6;^. A TOUCHSTONE " Unto you is gwefi the mystery of the Ki?igdom of God : but tifitothem that are without all things a?'e done i?i parables: that seeing they may see ^ and not pe7'ceive ; and heari?ig they may hear^ and ?iot ujiderstand ; lest haply they should turn agaiii^ and it should be forgiven thefn.^^ — St. Mark iv. ii, 12. Of all the hard sayings of the Prophet of Nazareth this one is at first sight the most incomprehensible. We are inclined to exclaim in amazement against the possibility of Jesus Christ having ever spoken thus. We are dis- posed to fancy that here at least the reporters of our Lord must be at fault, that possibly their own narrow and exclusive thoughts may have coloured the words they here attribute to the Master and produced a tone foreign to the Speaker's original intention. At all events we feel prepared to maintain that the intention must have been something quite distinct from the surface meaning of the text. c 2 20 A TOUCHSTONE We call up the vision of the Speaker's actual character. We remember the descrip- tion He Himself has given us of His Mission to mankind. We know that this is He Whose "gracious" speech was the constant wonder of His hearers, Who came not to destroy men's lives but to save them, Who would not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax. We know that this Is He In the accents of Whose voice, heard even now across the ages, sound evermore the chords of an Infinite compassion and of a love without limit and without rest. We know that this Is a Teacher Who lived on earth but to restore our wander- ing race into the way of Truth, revealing to mankind the nature of that God Who con- tinually showered the tokens of His Father- hood upon the evil and the good. We know that this Teacher is also the Redeemer, Who felt Himself ''straitened" till His saving work was done, and Who, amid the bitter disappoint- ments of His life, consoled Himself with a sublime confidence In the issue of His last resource, *' I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." But how, then, are we to understand the apparent total contradiction between such a A TOUCHSTONE 21 character, such words, and such a Hfe — all instinct with the spirit, '* Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out " — and this ^ passage which seems to state simply enough that *' to them that are without " the inner circle of Christ's followers His teaching was veiled in mystery and parable in order *' that seeing they may see, and not perceive ; and hearing they may hear, and not understand ; lest haply they should turn again, and it should be forgiven jjaem-"? Now th^^rst thing) we may be certain of is this : that if the surface meaning of a single , utterance is entirely at variance with the general trend and tenor of the same speaker's doctrine, and is evidently out of harmony with his habitual attitude of mind, then the apparent meaning at first sight is not the true one, and ^ we must patiently dig below the surface in order to reach the truth. The next thing we ought to recollect about any utterance of our Lord recorded in the Gospels is that fresh light on its significance may often be gathered from the parallel pas- sage in the record of one or more of the other evangelists. Let us, then, proceed to use these two con- 22 A TOUCHSTONE siderations in the case of our present difficulty. Turning first to the parallel accounts, we find that comparison with the words of St. Luke (ch. viii. lo) will not help us. It is true that he omits the last clause " lest haply they should turn again, and it should be forgiven them," but otherwise the words are practically identi- cal with our text. But the moment we turn to ^St Matthew (ch. xiii. 13-15) the result is very different. St. Matthew here evidently gives the full report, of which St. Mark and St. Luke give only the essence in a form so concentrated and condensed that the reader is much more liable to mistake the intention of the words. St. Matthew occupies more than three times the space used by the other two synoptists in reporting this particular part of our Lord's speech. His words run thus : — *' Therefore speak I to them in parables, because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And unto them is ful- filled the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith, '' By hearing ye shall hear, and shall in no wise understand ; and seeing ye shall see, and shall in no wise perceive : for this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull A TOUCHSTONE 23 of hearing, and their eyes have they closed ; lest haply they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should turn again, and I should heal them." Thus from comparison with St. Matthew, who is characteristically interested in every citation from the older Scriptures, we learn (i) that the words, which seem so impossible to understand as the direct expression of our Lords intention to mystify His hearers, were in fact a kind of short-hand report of the gist of a considerable quotation from the book of the prophet Isaiah. And we also learn (2) what indeed we might have guessed, that the true sense of the passage is not a statement by our Lord of His own purpose toward them "that are without" (as the curtailed report of St. Mark appears to suggest), but is rather the simple statement of a fact and of a law which the Speaker has been forced, however regret- fully, to recognise : '' Therefore speak I to them in parables, because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand." Thus the truth emerges, not that Jesus Christ ever in the least intended to veil Him- 24 A TOUCHSTONE self from any soul among the multitudes around Him, but that He had come to recognise how few of those who listened to his words them- selves intended ever to remove the veil of ^ unbielief or prejudice, of hypocrisy or selfish- ness, which, until they chose to tear it from their hearts, would turn His own most element- , ary lessons into enigmas hopelessly insoluble. It is not to Christ, but to those whom He addressed, that the difficulty of the passage must be charged. In their true sense the words carry nothing more than the sorrowful recognition by the Speaker of the inevitable result of human perversity and wilfulness. To ** them that are without," the truths of the Gospel must remain wrapt in mystery and paradox, not because Christ spoke in parables in order to hide His meaning, but because of such folk it is in every age so calamitously true that "seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they (wish to) under- stand." "This is the judgment, that the Light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light." It is an observation much in point that the method used by Jesus of teaching by parables ''automatically adapts itself to the spiritual A TOUCHSTONE 25 capacity of the hearers. Our Lord thus avoide3~~Eh^e^ (darrgier~~ of casting before swine the pearls of divine truth. The sacred mysteries were mercifully guarded from those who had no more sense than to trample them under their feet, whilst they were placed within the grasp of those who had the capacity to assimilate and apply them. Those who lacked j the moral and spiritual capacity to receive the ' the revelation of God heard only the earthly story of the parable. With this they stored their memory until perchance they arrived, at some future time, at the perception of a higher meaning in it. Those, on the other hand, who had the will and the capacity to know and act upon the truth, could not rest for an hour satisfied with the mere husk of the narrative, but demand without delay its inner meaning, asking of their Lord, ' Declare unto us this Parable.' Thus the Parables Implicitly pre- sented an automatic test of the capacity of those to whom they were addressed. The earthly-minded heard in them an earthly story ; the spiritually-minded found in it the revelation of spiritual light." ^ Those who do not will to obey can never 1 Unpublished sermon by Rev. W. Allen Whitworth. \ 26 A TOUCHSTONE comprehend the doctrine which remains mysterious always to the disobedient soul. While to the sympathy of the true disciple ''the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven" readily reveal themselves. *' Blessed are your eyes, for they see ; and your ears> for they hear." These are they who have the talisman to turn all further gifts to good account, there- fore unto them shall more be given, and they shall have abundance ; while from him that hath not, from him who is wilfully blind and refuses to receive and act upon the truth he knows, shall be taken away even that which he hath. In other words, there is an irrevocable law in the moral world that the disobedience and blindness that are wilful shall be followed . by the blindness and the incapacity which are i not an arbitrary penalty, but an inevitable / consequence. The classical example in the Bible of the outworking of this law is the case of the Pharaoh of the Exodus. The King of Egypt was forced, by signs which he could not gain- say, to beheve in the power of Jehovah, but no moral impression was produced upon his mind by the marvels of Moses ; his heart was never reached. The impenetrable armour of A TOUCHSTONE 27 his selfishness was proof against every appeal either to mercy or justice. This nation of slaves was uncommonly convenient for the work of the country. Why should he lose this advantag^e? He would not. " Pharaoh hard- ened his heart, and would not let the children of Israel go." And this hardening process has always these two stages. The earlier, in whrch the man's free will chooses the wrong course ; the later, in which the wrong course thus freely chosen becomes familiar and habitual, and the grieved Spirit of Goodness gradually withdraws. The voluntary harden- ing becomes involuntary hardness ; and the opposition to right, allowed and encouraged, issues in an obstinacy which is at once the natural fruit and the penal consequence of the sin. It can only be of a heart whose owner has chosen to shut and seal it against every softening touch or warning stroke that it can ever, in any sense, be said, ''God hardened" that heart ; and even then the phrase ought not to be understood to signify anything beyond the ratification of the law expressed by Fletcher in the lines '* Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." 28 A TOUCHSTONE For God Is against no man while the long ** day of his visitation " lasts ; He is ever '' more ready to hear than we to pray," full of grace as well as full of truth, yearning over us as Christ yearned over the Jerusalem He loved, — that City whose Inevitable doom even the tears of the Son of God could not avert, because the things men will not see, when they may, must at length become *' hidden from their eyes." Then all that is left even for Incarnate Love is this : *' How often would I have gathered thee, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, butjv^ would not ^ The opportunity neglected, the moral talent buried, pass entirely away from the stubborn and the slothful, by the very same law which blesses the facile and the industrious with an increase of the powers they have learnt to use aright. Evermore, not Christ only, but reiter- ated experience ring the warning in our ears, ''Take from him the pound," the precious chance that he has wasted. Take it away from him that will never do anything with it, and "give It to him that hath ten pounds," to the man who has proved his capacity to use what is entrusted to his keeping for his own and others' good. A TOUCHSTONE 29 Returning now to the passage before us, we find that it is this great truth — on one side so happy, and on the other so awful — which Isaiah announces as part of his own experience as a spiritual teacher. And the old prophet's words are quoted both by Jesus and by St. Paul as stating a principle, of which their ministry in a later ag^e affords still further illustration. Moreover, this principle has been similarly recognised by every great moral Teacher and Reformer in all time. Sooner or later, with whatever pain and grief, one and all have come to see that the effect produced upon large num- bers of people by the preaching to them of the truth has been not the quickening, but the deadening of the spiritual faculties. From tk^ days of Noah and Lot to those of Carlyle, Ruskin and Tolstoi, the preachers of righteous- ness have been mortified by this same issue of their mission. Some have been consumed by chagrin and disappointment ; others have re- fused to cast their pearls before swine, and taken refuge in silence and dismay. Some have persevered to the end, despite obloquy and opposition, daily turning evil into good. Enduring ''as seeing Him Who is invisible," they have gone on " sowing in tears," whether 30 A TOUCHSTONE they shall ever " reap in joy " or not. But the experience which has borne these various fruits has been a similar experience. Every prophet has had to drink of this same cup. He has had to see the truth for which he was content to (ive or die, not only received or rejected, but producing entirely opposite effects upon dif- erent natures, — here '' a savour of life, unto ife ; there a savour of death, unto death." It would perhaps be hard to find a more dramatic representation of this than is supplied by Mazzini's description of the first stage in his career. It appears that, while the leader's first efforts for the liberty of Italy materialised the greater number of those whom Mazzini had stirred to embark upon it, the failure and conse- quent defection only served to strip this heroic soul of the last rags of selfishness, and consecrate it more utterly to the will of God and the duty that lay before it. Says the Italian patriot, ''It was the tempest of doubt which I believe all who devote their lives to a great enterprise yet have retained a loving heart, are doomed, once at least, to battle through During these fatal months there darkened round me such a hurricane of sorrow, disillusion and deception, as to bring before my eyes, in all its ghastly A TOUCHSTONE 31 nakedness, a foreshadowing of the old age of my soul, solitary in a desert world. It was not only the overthrow for an indefinite period of every Italian hope, .... it was the falling to pieces of that moral edifice of faith and love from which alone I derived strength for the combat I drew back in terror at the void before me. Perhaps I was wrong after all, and the world right. Perhaps my idea was indeed a dream ? . . . . One mornino- I awoke to find my mind tranquil and my spirit calmed, as one who has passed through a great danger. .... I saw Duty as Life's highest Law. And I swore to myself that nothing in this world should again make me doubt or forsake it Whether the sun shine with the serene splen- dour of an Italian noon, or the leaden hue of the northern mist be above us, I cannot see that it changes our duty. God dwells above the earthly heaven, and the holy stars of faith and the future still shine within our souls, even though their light consume itself unreflected as the sepulchral lamp." ^ Now this glimpse into the heart of the Italian prophet may help us in some small degree to enter into the heart's experience of those great 1 Cited by Adam Smith : Com?nentary on Isaiah, vol. i. p. 85. 32 A TOUCHSTONE ones who have in every age borne their witness, and fulfilled their mission, whether men would hear or whether they would forbear, choosing evermore to obey God rather than men, reso- lute to serve their fellows regardless of them- selves. It is a tragic thought to recollect the/ terrible solitariness of these noble lives. Job and Elijah, John the Baptist and St Paul ^ in days of yore; Dante and Sa^narola,'^li Mazzini and Gordon in days less dim and distant ; and a goodly fellowship of prophets all alone the stream of time have had the same cross to bear : not one of them but felt the ''hurricane of sorrow, disillusion and „ decep- tion " darken round them : all knew the bitter- ness of that ''distrust detected even in those most dear to them," and whose unwavering confidence might have given them the very best support. And when we turn to Him Who was not only a Prophet of the Truth, but the very Truth Incarnate, and overhear the question asked even of the least faithless who were nearest to His heart, "Will ye alio^o away ? " or listen to the declaration, " Verily I say unto you, one of you shall betray Me," then we know that even this Prophet also shared the A TOUCHSTONE 33 terrible experience of the rest. The gall of misunderstanding, of suspicion, of rejection, we cannot fail to recognise welling up in the mind even of the Master, now in the pathetic lament, ''How often_would _I . ^. • • but ye would not ; ' or now in the regretful sentence, sealing the self-chosen doom of the Temple and the city that He loved, '' There shall not be left in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation ; " or yet again in the dictum of the passage before us, *' All these things are parables dark and para- doxical ; for the hearts of those to whom I speak are waxed gross, their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed, 4est haply they should turn again and I might heal them." In every case, the cause of this effect of the witness borne to Truth is to be found not in the Truth itself, nor in the sometimes stam- mering tongue of the speaker, but in the atti- tude of mind of those that hear. In the case of Jesus Christ, to represent Him Who was called the Friend of publicans and sinners as the piti- less enemy of bewildered seekers after truth would be a monstrous conclusion indeed. In the language of the particular parable to which 34 A TOUCHSTONE the text originally refers, not the seed nor the Sower is at fault, but the soil. If spiritual seed is to spring up and bear good fruit, the ground on which it falls must be ''good ground." St. Paul, in writing to the Corinthians (2 Cor. iii. 14 — 16), has nearly paralleled the statement here. Speaking sorrowfully enough of the blindness of his own countrymen, he says, n** Their minds were hardened ; for until this 'very day at the reading of the Old Covenant the veil remaineth unlifted ; which veil is done away in Christ. But whensoever Moses is read, a veil lieth upon their hearts. But whensoever lany shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken |Lway." This, then, is the great practical lesson from such warnings, for all hearers in every age : '' Take heed how ye hear." You are re- sponsible for this, as truly as the preacher is responsible for his message. Even the preach- ing of Christ Himself could have no other issue than the division between sheep and goats, between those that heard in order to learn and those that heard only to cavil or to scoff. The same ''gracious words" which, falling upon the willing heart as a savour of life, laid the foundation of the Christian Church A TOUCHSTONE 35 In lives devoted to the Kingdom of Heaven, falling at the same time on hearts trodden hard in the round of a lifeless religionism, or choked with the stones and briars of reckless- ness or sensuality, could do nothing but stir in such souls the spirit of enmity against the purer ideal. It was inevitable that even the words of '' the Word of God " Himself, " provoking some to love and to good works," should rouse in others only the bitter antagonism of '' hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness," which ended in the tragedy of the Cross. The main lesson of this passage then is the lesson of our responsibility. I f you would believe in God you must live so that you need God to exist. If you would know of the doctrine whether it be of God, you must will to do the will of God ; or the doctrine even as taught by JesusTTimself Writ^vermore be '' foolishness " or '* a stumbling-block," as it always has been to '' them that are without" and who determine to remain so. Take heed what ye hear is often a necessary caution, for there are teachers who are but blind leaders of the blind ; but '' Take heed how ye hear " is always necessary, for unless this caution be attended to, voices of angels, whispers of the very Spirit of God, pleadings of D 2 36 A TOUCHSTONE the Christ Himself, can have no other effect upon the careless or the callous than to harden further, till change and amendment grow day by day and year by year less likely because more difficult. On the whole perhaps it would be hard to find a better summary of the practical bearing of such passages as this which we have been con- sidering, than is supplied by the continual burden of the Epistle to the Hebrews : '' They to whom the good tidings were before preached failed to profit because of disobedience and be- cause of unbelief. We then ought to give the more earnest heed to the things that were heard, lest haply we drift away from them .... Let us fear therefore, lest haply a promise being left to us, any of you should seem to come short of it." A COMPARISON " Among them that are bom of woi?ie?i there hath fiot arisen a greater tha?i John the Baptist ; yet he that is but little in the Kitigdom of Heaven is greater than he.'' — St. Matthew xi. ii. After listening to Christ's panegyric upon the work and character of John the Baptist which occupies the preceding verses, the re- markable climax of the text strikes with tre- mendous force. In what respect, we are compelled to ask, is " he that is little " In the Klnsfdom of Heaven greater than the last and o o greatest of the prophets ? Plainly, if the comparison intended were one of individual character as between man and man, there is none, with the exception of the Speaker Him- self, who could be cited in Its justification. The personality of John the Baptist will in the matter of moral grandeur hold its own with that of any Christian hero, as completely as on the witness of Jesus it stands pre-eminent among 38 A COMPARISON the seers and prophets of the preceding dis- pensation. Our Lord's eulogy of the Baptist is evidently calculated and arrangfed to throw into relief the transcendent spiritual privilege of those — even the least of those — whose happy lot it is to live in the light of that Kingdom of Righteousness, Peace, and Joy in the Holy Ghost, for which so many kings and prophets of old time had waited with a watchful hope. The last of these watchers, the immediate Fore-runner of the King, the veritable Elijah of the Advent, had the joy of changing the note of longing and expectancy for that of introduc- tion and fulfilment. " There cometh He that is mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose." " He must increase, but I must decrease." That moment when the always self-effacing prophet '' looked upon Jesus as he walked " and declared Him the Saviour of the world, marked the summit of his career and the end of his mission. John indeed was never greater than when he realised the limits of the work assigned to him. Many men in almost every age have had the power to draw crowds to listen to their preach- ing, some men have had the far greater gift of A COMPARISON 39 arousing in their listeners the desire to obey. But the supreme honour of the Baptist and the hour he would have counted his greatest, was not when " Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region round about Jordan " hung upon his words, nor even when every class of that conscience-struck community plied him with the question, " What then must we do ? " The acme of his triumph was reached when he was able to point his disciples to the actual presence among them of the Desire of all nations, and cry, '' Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." When we think of the insight displayed in that triumphant proclamation, of the faith then required to make it, and of the way the words have since been verified, our hearts go out to- ward that pfreat seer who stands a moment on the brink of the river whose streams were destined to gladden the world, and leaves the world to drink thereof, while he himself is borne away to the dungeon and the martyr- dom so often the crown of those of whom the world is not worthy. We know well that we shall search in vain for a nobler record or for a grander man than this ; and yet the Master tells us that "he that is little in the 40 A COMPARISON Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he." What is the meaning of this verdict ? Clearly we are to seek the explanation in some new vantage ground of spiritual privilege which belongs to those described as being " in the Kingdom of Heaven," as compared with men, even good and great men, who could not be counted as its subjects. What then, pre- cisely, is this Kingdom of Heaven ? And what are the privileges of its members ? Now the Kingdom of Heaven was un- questionably the accepted Hebrew formula for the long-expected golden age in which a per- fected Society would rejoice over the triumph of truth, justice and peace, and the banish- ment of misery and wrong. The phrase was the popular symbol for a divine reign, which was to be recognised, permanent and uni- versal. Every Jew looked sadly back to the time when Jehovah was regarded as the King of Israel ; but in the time of Christ all true Jews were downcast, because this reign of God had become so largely a thing of the past. They felt that Greek and Roman princi- ples and modes of thought were now ascendant, and that the face of the Invisible King was turned away. A COMPARISON 41 Then it was that the Baptist's cry rang like a clarion throuoh the land, proclaiming, '' The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Moreover Christ Himself took up this message and had it so constantly upon His lips that nearly thirty times in a single Gospel the phrase, or its equivalent, occurs. What did Christ mean by the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God, or his Kingdom? — for He sometimes spoke of it as His own. First of all, it was clearly a present King- ' dom. Jesus spoke of something which could be recognised. No mere invisible fiction, no mere glorious ideal, but a visible body of » believers who had accepted Christ as Leader and Saviour and Lord. Though it was a Kingdom "not of this world," because in- stinct with a heavenly spirit, yet its aim and object were to promote the life of Heaven ^ upon earth, — to realise the reign of Righteous- ness and Peace, not in some far off Utopia, but there and then. Before that generation passed this Kingdom was * to be established in the world. And it was so. The narrow and exclusive policy of Judasa shrivelled at the touch of Imperial Rome. With the fall of Jerusalem 42 A COMPARISON came '* the end of the world, "the ''consummation of the age." And then a new age dawned which presently saw the Empire itself crumble under the disintegrating forces of its own corruption and of the secret leaven of the expanding Christian Church publicly proclaimed on the first Whitsun-day. The Kingdom of God was in fact the Church of Christ. And the Church of Christ to-day, so far as it is true to the in- tention of its Founder, is still a Society organ- ised for the glory of God, and therefore for the well-being of man, by the promotion of right doing and good living here and now. The importance of this fact of the Visibility of the Father's Kingdom is clear enough, inas- much as the very first necessity for one who will live for the Kingdom of Heaven is a solemn conviction that it is here, and therefore to be lived for. This is the conviction which will best prevent those mistakes which have laid some Christians open to the charge of " other- worldliness." This view of the Kingdom as a Society is the best preventive, too, of that tendency to over-individualise the truths of the Faith which has dwarfed and stunted so much of the religious thought of many truly pious men, and driven others in recoil from it — A COMPARISON 43 notably the saintly Faber — to break away from their natural fold and join a Church which seemed to them more Catholic because less individualist. But though the whole social aspect of Christianity has been too much neglected, we must never, in the natural reaction of our thoughts, allow ourselves to ignore the other view, upon which the Master laid at least equal stress: ''Behold," He says, "the Kingdom of God is within you." Jesus Christ never gave ground for the mistake into which some Reformers of to-day have fallen, — the mistake of imagining that you can regenerate mankind in the mass, or in any way otherwise than through the regeneration of individual character. Your modern philanthropist is too often impatient of this method. Moved at the sight of many evils, he hastens to construct a sort of parliamentary ''lift," whose planks are local government, village councils, shorter work hours, free education, allotments, teetotalism, appropriating and sharing out some one else's property, or some other panacea ; and he seems to think that all which remains to be done Is to invite or to compel the ignorant, the poor, the drunken, and the dissolute to stand on the 44 A COMPARISON ^ machine, and, with one turn of the legislative crank, they shall be lifted, if not into the Kingdom of Heaven, at least into a region where ignorance and poverty and vice are known no more. But, unfortunately, history and experience tell us that, however helpful they may be, all such wholesale schemes do not really go deep enough to satisfy the needs of the case, and that the mass can only be thoroughly and permanently raised by raising the individuals of which it is composed. Surely in this, as in all else, it is our wisdom to learn from the method of Jesus Christ. He, -the greatest Reformer this poor world will ever see, habitually regarded Society through the individual. He founds a Society ; He will establish a spiritual Commonwealth ; but He never loses sight of the fact that this Church of His will be an aggregate of individual hearts, and that it is there in the heart that the foundation must be laid. " Be not led astray," says the Master, '' one may say, Mt is here ' ; another, * It is there ' ; but let no such voices distract you from this certainty, Lo ! the Kingdom of God is within you." " Personal repentance, the kindling of pure and productive affections, must precede and usher in the reign A COMPARISON 45 of God on earth." The wider rule of the Kingdom over the race grows by the gradual and secret working of the leaven through the lump ; by the restoration here of a straying sheep, there of a missing coin, by the return here of a penitent prodigal and there of a mechanical externalist, over whose souls the glory of the Sun of Righteousness has risen with healing, purifying power. There, in the inward spirit of those who have '' come to themselves," so as to desire before all things the life which is Service, the service which is Life, — there, in the hearts of those who recognise the God within them, is the centre whence the peace of the Kingdom shall never cease to radiate till the world and the Church are one. And the privilege of those who are citizens of this Kingdom of Heaven upon earth — the vantage ground they occupy in comparison with the heritage of even the greatest of the sons of the past — What shall we say of this ? You remember how in the dawn of history there came a voice to Abram which said, " Get thee out from thy father's house into a land of which I shall tell thee ; and I will make of thee 46 A COMPARISON a great nation, and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." Ages after there was heard in Palestine a voice proclaiming, ''There is no man that hath given up father or mother or house or children or lands for My sake and the Gospel's but he shall receive an hundred- fold more in this, present life, and in the world to come life everlasting." It has been justly remarked that while the two calls resemble each other in sound, in substance and meaning they are exactly parallel. " The object of both was to create a new Society which would stand in a peculiar relation to God, and which should have a legislation different from and higher than that which springs up in secular States. And from both such a Society sprang : from the first, the ancient Jewish theocracy ; from the second, the Christian Church."^ The public inauguration of this Divine Society, the birthday of the Church, was the great day of Pentecost, when after a new fashion the Holy Spirit came into the world to be the Presence and Power and Life of God Himself in the hearts of the children of the Kingdom. But the twofold idea of the outward Society and the inward individual inspiration is to be traced ^ Ecce Homo, p. 41. A COMPARISON 47 in every coming of the Kingdom, Past, Present or Future. "All who desired enrolment were taught to understand that they began life anew, as truly as if they had been actually born again. And lest the Divine Society, in its contempt for material boundaries, should lose its distinctness altogether, and degenerate into a theory or a sentiment or a devout imagination, the initiatory rite of baptism, with its outward publicity and formality, was declared as indis- pensable to membership as that inward spiritual Life which is membership itself" The essential point of our Lord's comparison lies in this mystery of a new and heavenly Life which is the privilege of incorporation into the Divine Society of the Kingdom. John the Baptist — inferior to none born of women — is still less than the least of those born of that birth ** from above," which is the baptism of the Holy Ghost. John, near as he was to the King and the Kingdom, standing even on the very threshold, yet fell far short of the fortune of those who could say with St. Paul, "our citizenship is in Heaven." John truly was the friend of the Bridegroom ; but what was that to the lot even of some weak and unworthy soul who is so united to Christ as to become 48 A COMPARISON part of His Body, who is made '' a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven ? " It is this position which Christ extols so highly in the text. The comparison is between the position of the best and greatest under the old covenant and the position of the humblest disciple under the new covenant. As the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it, comparing the terrors of Sinai with the blessings of Zion, " Ye Christians are not come unto a Mount that might be touched, that burned with fire and with blackness and darkness and tempest . . . but ye are come unto Mount Zion, unto the City of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem ... to the general assem- bly and church of the first-born who are en- rolled In Heaven, to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of a new Covenant." Now privilege of whatever kind means always responsibility. No Christian will expect his charter to be exempt from such a rule. He will rather seek to know how he may hope to fulfil its obligations. Assured that closer to him here In this Christian land Christ's King- dom could not be ; conscious of the strength A COMPARISON 49 of its Righteousness, the calm of its Peace, the inspiration of its Joy, he will feel bound by these blessings to enlargfe the number of hearts o o that share them. Such a citizen will recall the King's own ^ method. He will repeat the old watchword, '* Repent — change the inner man — and believe the good news." He will seek the race as Christ did, through the individual. He will be suspicious of wholesale schemes. Such means as force or display he will entirely repudiate. For he knows that the Kingdom which " Cometh not with observation" is founded ever upon inward conviction and established in the enthusiasm of united affections and a common aim. Such a citizen, again, will acknowledge one Law only as supreme — the Law of Love. . Therefore he will refuse to accept those false and conventional standards of Society which ' are ready to rot the heart out of religion, and which make the " All ye are brethren " of the Master a mere meaningless mockery. Besides this rejection of social or religious exclusiveness and prejudice, there will follow, from this same supremacy of love which "hopeth all things, E 50 A COMPARISON believeth all things," the willingness to recog- nise the oood, however little, which lies in the hearts of all ; the faith that within every soul there must exist among the things it loves and venerates ''some rough idea of duty, some light mist of disinterested love — a broken fringe of holy light, whence a divine life may be begun and radiate." It was in this spirit that the ever spreading Kingdom of God on earth began its march, and won the sway it holds. Here a little and there a little it moved on, conquering single hearts, and leaving there a garrison of truth and love before advancing to newer victories. And precisely because of this slow but sure and thorough method, it came to pass that " before the word and work of Christ the craft of hierarchies, the force of governments, and the weight of a massive civilisation gave way. And while thousands of State projects on the vastest scale have been conceived, executed, and for- gotten, while on the field of history the repeated tramp of armies has been heard to approach, to pass by, to die away ; while the noise of shifting nations, and the shriek of revolutions, have gone up from earth to heaven and left silence A COMPARISON 51 once more behind — this meek power triumphs over all/' And those who live and work on the same quiet unobtrusive lines will succeed to-day in advancing that same Kingdom. Even the poorest and weakest and most obscure of its true citizens can help in this great endeavour. The Kingdom of Heaven is as a grain of mustard seed, and we can sow it ; it is as a foam-globe of leaven, and we can mingle it. But every citizen's success will be only in proportion as he is himself possessed by the life and spirit of the Kingdom. Often and often will he need to pray on behalf of that world within his own heart, " Put down in me, O Father, all that exalts and magnifies itself against Thy rule. Mortify and kill all vices in me, all corrupt desires, all rebel murmurings, all proud, malicious, or resentful thoughts ; and do Thou ever strengthen and confirm within the spiritual kingdom of Thy love." Without this — nothing. For though the Kingdom of God be an everlasting kingdom, destined to embrace the world ; though the traces of its wider sway already flush the hills with gathering light ; yet if any one is to share E 2 52 A COMPARISON the Splendour of its Triumph and enter into the joy of its Peace, lo ! the Hght of the King- dom must be within. In the conscience the voice of its Law, in the will the energy of its Righteousness, and in the heart the love of its Truth must reign supreme. CHARACTER READING " And it came to pass^ that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto Him, Lord, I zvill follow thee whither- soever Thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests ; but the Son of Man hath not whei'e to lay His head. A fid He said unto another. Follow Me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the Kingdo?n of God. And another also said. Lord, I will folloiv Thee ; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. And Jesus said imto him, No man, having put his hand to the ploicgh, and looking back, is ft for the kingdom of God.'^ — St. Luke ix. 57-62. We have already seen that in order to under- stand the language of any great and original teacher we must bring to the task certain qualifications for success. Thought is necessary, for essential truth does not always lie upon the surface. Sym- pathy is necessary, for the mind and will must work in harmony with the main object of our teacher. We must have moreover sufficient historical imagination to place ourselves at the 54 CHARACTER READING time and amid the circumstances of the teach- ing we desire to understand. Let us try to bring these qualifications to bear upon this passage, and see how they help us to its interpretation. We find here three different applicants for discipleship : each met with a chilling answer calculated to discourage and deter, while in one case apparently the harshness of the reply is unnatural if not posi- tively cruel. The sceptic of course has an easy method with such passages as these. M. Renan may serve as a type. ''In such fits of severity," he writes, '' Jesus went so far as to abolish all natural ties. Despising the healthy limits of man's nature. He demanded that he should exist only for Him, that he should love Him alone .... We should almost say that, in these moments of conflict with the most legit- imate cravings of the heart, Jesus had for- gotten the pleasure of living, of loving, of seeing, and of feeling .... He boldly preached war against nature ; and total severance from ties of blood." ^ Thus does M. Renan illustrate for us the saying that ''extremes meet." For here is a ^ Trubner's Trans. , p. 222. CHARACTER READING 55 man gifted, as plenty of his writing proves, with the poetical instinct, with artistic feeling and with an exuberant imagination, talking like the most mechanical literalist who ever murdered a metaphor or cudgelled a paradox. This is so far convenient that to answer the one will be at the same time to answer the other ; for the objection of the sceptic and the difficulty of the literalist are founded on the same mis- understanding. These utterances of our Lord unmistakably (one would have thought) belong to that class of sayings which are enigmatical in form, which, taking a proverbial turn, do not diffuse their meaning as a flower its scent ; but from which the truth, like the juice of certain kinds of fruit, can only be taken by breaking through the outer rind or shell which hides while it pre- serves it. In this light they should be ex- amined, for so only will they deliver up to us their treasures of wisdom and knowledge. First comes the eager volunteer : *' Lord, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest ; " and Jesus said to him, ''The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." The difficulty here is comparatively small. It 56 CHARACTER READING consists solely in the fact that a would-be dis- ciple who has expressed his aspiration in terms of enthusiasm, instead of being encouraged, is deliberately repelled. But there is nothing very strange in this. Those sudden transports and ebullitions of feeling, which with some modern religionists count for so much, counted with Jesus Christ for very litde. He never re- gards them as evidences of a character upon which He can depend. The characteristic of this scribe (for so St. Matthew calls him, ch. viii. 19) was impulsiveness. And in the answer he received we have but another ex- ample of that "mistrust of emotional fervour" which our Lord uniformly shows. The woman who cried, '' Blessed is the womb that bear Thee," the scribe in the case before us, and St. Peter when he said, '' I am ready to go with Thee to prison and to death," all are answered by our Lord in the same tone of repression.^ But perhaps you still feel that, after all, the reply has a tone " of harshness which is out of keeping with the graciousness of Jesus Christ towards the children of men ? Then I ask you to remember what those even who doubt the Divinity of Jesus have never denied, — His ^ Pastor Pasioruin, p. 376. CHARACTER READING 57 extraordinary insight into character. These ' are the words of One Who beyond all others • '' knew what was in man." What if Christ saw hidden in the heart of this wonderfully eager volunteer the ruling motive of self-interest ? * What if, when he came to Christ, his mind was full of the belief : this is the promised Messiah, I will throw in my lot with His, and then all the wealth and splendour of his Messianic days - I too shall share ? If now this be the key to the character of the man, then what utterance could be more necessary than this warning against any false assumption ? What more entirely kind than to state in picturesque sim-^ plicity the naked truth ? I who come indeed as the Messiah of the Jew come not in the joy of David, nor in the magnificence of Solomon, but as a '' Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." Indeed I have no home on earth which I can even call my own. "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." The next instance is more difficult. '' Jesus said unto another, Follow Me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him. Let the dead bury their dead : but go thou and preach the Kingdom 58 CHARACTER READING of God." On the face of it this sounds indeed **a hard saying." Has Christ, we ask, no reverence for the dead, that He thus tramples upon the common instinct of humanity ? Is the natural affection naught to Him which in the presence of death bids us lay aside for the time all other interests and duties till we have borne to their last resting-place the dear forms that we still love, though they have fallen asleep? But to argue so were surely inconsistent with all else we know of Jesus Christ. Is not this He who was moved even to tears over the fate of the city that He loved ? — who showed the tenderest compassion to the bereaved mother at the gate of Nain ; and who, at the grave of His own friend, '' groaned in spirit and was troubled," even though He was about to rifle the tomb and rescue its spoil ? Yet here is this same Christ apparently preventing a son from paying the last offices of filial duty, and for- bidding him to attend the funeral of his father ! Such is the conclusion of the literalist, for such must appear^ to be the surface meaning of the words. In the search for some deeper and truer meaning than that which appears at first sight according to the letter, we need not, however, fly to the opposite extreme, with CHARACTER READING 59 Theophylact and others, and understand that the father here being, perhaps, in extreme age, the son asked to be allowed to stay with him till he died. For this is not to explain what is written, but to explain it away. On the other hand we are bound to read the words in the light of the time when they were - spoken. Thus we ought to recall the fact that the Jews buried within twenty-four hours of a death, and that for a son to be seen in public during this short interval between the death and burial of his father would have been considered highly indecent, and is therefore highly improbable. Accustomed as we are to a considerably longer interval between death and burial, it has been commonly assumed that this man's father was lying dead at home when our Lord met him. But Eastern usage both pre- cludes this idea, and at the same time makes it very likely '* that the completion of the ten days of strict mourning was regarded as part of the obsequies, and that the word ' bury ' applies to this. The father might have been laid in the ground, but the ten days not having expired, the funeral solemnities were not considered to be past." ^ ^ Pastor Pastorum, p. 378. 6o CHARACTER READING These I take to have been the actual circum- stances, first because they best accord with the facts judged in their proper historical light, and next because they remove from our Lord's utterance an excessive severity which is foreign to all that elsewhere falls from His lips when dealing with similar cases. But allowing this view to be correct, and accepting the explana- tion that the request made related rather to the fulfilment of additional rites beyond the literal interment of the body ; though we have re- moved a needless exaggeration of the difficulty by ceasing to encumber ourselves with a false notion based on our own modern and Western usage, yet the harsh inflexibility of the tone and spirit of the answer still remains, and calls for further comment. But do we not all know the type of character to which this very tone administers the precise tonic that is needed? Have we not ourselves experienced the mood of mind and heart in which an imperative command calling us to immediate action is the only specific for our case ? There is an old tradition that the speaker here was afterwards the Apostle Thomas. Whether this be so or not, his gloomy and desponding temperament is very CHARACTER READING 6i common in the world. It is next to impossible for some people to look on the bright side of things. They are ingenious even to subtlety in shuttino- out the sunliofht. Now these are they whose mournful turn of mind exposes them to peril. Out of such material grows all too easily either the hard and miserable cynic, who is near to crying with the devil himself '' Evil, be thou my good ! " or else the maudlin sentimentalist to whom all life is one long funeral, and tombs and monu- ments the cherished tryst of morbid feelings and despairing thoughts. Now the best pos- sible medicine for a malady like this is an authoritative call to immediate, wholesome, bracing work. Sensitive, distrustful, sad, ''quail- ing under a nerve-storm," the morbid man who hesitates is lost, and yet by himself he is too weak to act. A foreign will must come to his help, and take the place of that which is failing. But such a will can hold no parley with excuses or delay, for every moment spent in lingering increases the hold of what is really a disease. Therefore, in the peremptory tone of the com- mand lies the hope of its effecting a cure. Now, this is exactly the treatment which is followed here. " Jesus saith unto another, Fol- 62 CHARACTER READING low Me." Your man of mournful and doubting temperament is no eager volunteer like the last. He needs the word of actual invitation. Even then his gloomy disposition rises into evidence. '' Yes, I will follow Thee," he seems to say ; '' but there are still those sad obsequies to be wound up. Life is not worth living, yet I will follow Thee : let me but bury all my old love, and then — what matters ? " And the Master of the lives and thoughts of men checks that unhealthy outlook upon life, chills that poor regretful barren sentimentalism, dashes it aside with a stronor dose of common sense. " The duties," He seems to say, " which are owed to the dead are sacred duties ; but think rather of the duties you owe to the living, think of the work that cries out to be done. Sentiment is ever easier than sacrifice ; yet to be and to do are more important than to feel." Do we not all of us, at times, need this lesson ? Is there not a sort of luxury of sorrow and disappointment and regret? Is it not posi- tively nice sometimes to be miserable ? These are dangerous times, which call for strong measures and strong words. The unfaltering hand of one who is stronger than we must lift us, even by force, out of the mire and clay of CHARACTER READING 63 our perverted imagination, and set our feet upon the rock of truth and fact. Our hope is in obeying the exhortation of the poet who echoes the words of the text : " Trust no Future howe'er pleasant, Let the dead Past bury its dead, Act, — act, in the living Present, Heart within, and God o'erhead." This then is the everlasting message : Be- ware lest any tender regrets of heart and life should veil from you more obvious duties. Take heed lest, in the remembrance of those duties toward the dead, you forget your higher duties toward the living. Better it is to eive bread to the hungry body, better far to satisfy the hungry soul, than to brood over the dead in any luxury of woe. " Go thou rather and publish abroad the Kingdom of God." The third case in this passage need not long detain us, because much of what has been just said is again applicable. " Another also said, Lord, I will follow Thee, but let me first go and bid them farewell which are at home at my house." What could be more reasonable .'^ For better for worse, the man will follow. One thing only he asks, one little favour : may he but go home first to take leave of those that he loves, ^ 64 CHARACTER READING and explain to them his intended absence ? But the Master, Who has insight into the nature and disposition of this man, sees where his weakness Hes, and takes the opportunity to warn him : " No man having put his hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God." Christ never forbade that farewell. But He does admonish the speaker and through him every one of us according to our need. Duty to God is a paramount duty, with which nothing else can be allowed to compete. In order to do it faithfully there will be times when even innocent pleasures must be forgone, when '' they that have wives must be as those that have none, and they that possess as though they possessed not." The Christ Who provided for His own Mother amid the torture of the Cross does not frown on this proposal, but He teaches ^ that even the most right and natural human tenderness for the claims of kindred and of home must never be allowed to interfere with obligations that are divine, or lower the standard of what men owe to God. Do you say that the call to waive such claims as these is a '' counsel of perfection," a summons to ''wind ourselves too high for mortal man CHARACTER READING 65 beneath the sky ? " A Httle thought will re- mind us that, in every walk of life, the path is barred against the man who has not the power to put aside the ties of affection when they cross the line of duty. I f the tradesman and mechanic, if the soldier and the statesman, the lawyer and the doctor, the artist and the philosopher, must learn to accept the spirit of the couplet, *' I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more," shall not this same truth be true in the sphere of religion ? It surely needs no argument to convince us that life would not be so difficult if our tempta- tions sprang only from what is plainly wrong. It is often in the crucifixion of self in regard to matters intrinsically harmless, that in the process of spiritual evolution Christ leads us from the lower to the higher. When He deals with those who aspire to fellowship with Him, He passes beyond any question of obvious sin into a rarer and loftier air, and we seem to hear Him say, ' What is wanted in the true fol- lower is a loyal determination to let go what- ever interferes with the demands of the highest right.' And is not the man of amiability and kindli- ness and warm affection, the man full of friend- F 66 CHARACTER READING liness and hospitable feeling, just the kind of man to be In danger of forgetting the necessity for this high and strenuous endeavour ? Surely It Is he above all who will be tempted to rest satisfied with the aroma of kindliness which pervades his home. Such an one, we may well think, was he to whom the Master, not In harsh- ness but In wisdom and In love, says, '' If you allow anything, however Innocent In Itself, to distract you from the duty which God has given you to do, you are forsaking the vocation wherewith you are called, forsaking the highest that you know, and you stand In danger of lowering not only your line of conduct, but the character which Is dally being formed by your actions." Remember, then, when the claims of " other things," even lawful and desirable things, clash with allegiance to Christ, remember that " no man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back. Is fit for the kingdom of God." Now the most striking thing about these three Instances, — the thing In fact which pro- bably led to their being placed together in the narrative — is the difference of treatment by our Lord of cases outwardly similar. One Is repelled who volunteers to follow forthwith, while two others who crave but a slight delay are impera- tively told to come at all costs at once. CHARACTER READING 67 Why is this ? A comparison of this passage with the nearly parallel one in St. Matthew viii. makes it probable that the occasion of the second and third colloquies was different from that of the first, and therefore the exigencies of the hour may partly have dictated the diversity of treatment. But, apart from this, is it not most reasonable to suppose that the sufficient explanation lies in the simple fact that He Who could say with a fulness no other Shep- herd ever could, " I know my sheep," adapted ^ His method to the real condition of each separate case ? How can we doubt that to our Lord's eye every human being had a moral and spiritual physiognomy of his own ? And if He, thus '' needing not that any should tell Him," held the key of each man's character, how could He do otherwise than vary His method with the differing needs of each ? What becomes, then, of the " hardness " of these sayings ? Must we not allow it to have disappeared ? In taking the wisest was not the Master also taking the kindest course with these three men ? The impulse of merely evanescent eagerness, or of calculating self- interest, whichever was the leading note of the first character, — was it not better stopped at once ? The tendency to brooding melancholy F 2 68 CHARACTER READING and to exaggerated sentiment, or the leaning toward the idols of home and an immoderate appreciation of domestic joys, what more wholesome medicine for such weaknesses than the positive, inflexible summons to immediate active service in the cause of God and of man- kind ? The passage we have been reviewing affords m short an example of that method which the great teachers of the world have always freely used in order to make their listeners reflect. Sometimes Christ spoke with transparent simplicity, with no other object than to convey His meaning as widely and as plainly as possible. But at other times, as in many of His parable^, the Master wrapt His lesson in some striking figure or phrase intended to arrest the attention, and to call out his hearers' own capacity for thought He uses the Hard Saying as a goad. It is thus that Christ speaks here. The object seems on the surface to be only to discourage and deter. ^ It is in fact to make men think ; to force them to look below ''the letter which killeth," till they find the spirit wherein alone and evermore is " life." THE WINNOWING FAN '■^ And there ivent great multitudes with Him: and He tur?ied^ and said unto them, If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, a?id brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple r — St. Luke xiv. 25, 26. These words were spoken, not like those we have been considering, to meet the case of certain individual characters, but to the multi- tude at large. Loosely attached crowds, moved chiefly by curiosity, often followed in the train of Christ. But for the purpose He had in view, this casual adherence was a hindrance rather than a help. It would excite the sus- picious hostility of the authorities, and give occasion to Christ's enemies, without in any way consolidating that spiritual kingdom "not of this world," which He came to inaugurate on earth. For this work they only who are '' called and chosen and faithful " will serve, and it was 70 THE WINNOWING FAN necessary to winnow these from the merely wonder-struck throng. Christ knew that this mere crowding after Him had Httle enough in common with true discipleship. We are not surprised, then, to find the Master '' turning to the multitude " with words evidently chosen to repress and repel. The difficulty is not to find the motive, but to justify the terms of Christ's address. '' Take them literally, and," as Arch- bishop Trench remarks, " they stand in direct contradiction to the whole teaching of the rest of Scripture, and of our Lord Himself else- where. They enjoin an immorality. They require of men to hate those whom it is their prime duty to love." Now in the first place, much that has been already said concerning the *' hard sayings " of the ninth chapter of this Gospel applies also to these words. Christ desires enthusiasm, but He desires also thoughtfulness. By an ex- pression so astonishingly harsh and stern, He would undoubtedly sift that miscellaneous crowd, but He would also arouse His hearers to thought. If they really intended disciple- ship, let them realise what it meant. As in all other affairs of life, the cost must be counted. As he who sets about to build must count his THE WINNOWING FAN 71 capital, or bring himself to bankruptcy ; as he who prepares a military expedition must care- fully reckon his resources, or else court defeat ; so must they, who, either without consideration or from unworthy motives, flock after Christ, count the cost of real discipleship. But besides the curious in that mixed multitude we may be sure there were the selfish also, people who calculated, indeed, but without knowledge. These would be cherishing the chance that it might be ''good business," as we say, for their *'own life," and also for their families and friends, if this Jesus of Nazareth turned out to be the true Messiah, and came into His rights of privilege and power. Now Christ would have no man follow Him on a misunderstanding. He would never, like some who would enlist recruits for earthly war, deny or minimise the trials and perils of fellow- ship with Him. He will rather go to the opposite extreme, and therefore He states His terms in the most uncompromising form : *' Whoso hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, cannot be My disciple." These multitudes had no idea of the ordeal 72 THE WINNOWING FAN of suffering involved in really following Christ. They naturally clung to their own life ; but, if they became His disciples, they might be called even to die for His sake. Are they prepared for this sacrifice ? Are they ready to regard as an enemy that natural love of life which at such a crisis would tempt them to forsake Him? Still further, are they ready to regard as an enemy that natural affection which might tempt them to violate their fidelity to Him ? which indeed would surely do so in those coming days, which Christ foresaw, when "a man's foes shall be they of his own household." Thus we see that our Lord would actually have been screening the truth, and deceiving the people, if He had not taught, as plainly as He did, the full measure of the claim He made on their allegiance : *' Whoso loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me." For in this quotation from St. Matthew we have in fact the essence of the teaching of our text. Here in St. Luke the lesson is conveyed in bolder paradox, in terms which provoke attention, and compel either admission or re- jection at the chambers of the mind. Yet no one, save the too learned M. Renan, or some dear, bungling literalist, need find in this word THE WINNOWING FAN 73 *' hate " any real difficulty. No one else will ever think of Jesus Christ as deliberately *' trampling under foot everything that is human — blood, and love, and country." What the common sense of most will and must see is rather what the Master intended : that no terms, however strange, however striking, can too vividly set forth the absolute supremacy of His claim upon the affections and the lives of men. The actual form of this oriental aphorism is not, after all, the really surprising thing. We may be sure that what made that listening crowd catch their breath in astonishment was not the *' hatred " called for by the letter of this phrase, but the absohitism of its tone and spirit. Though indeed Christ's hearers might not grasp exactly what He positively meant by so startling a paradox, they knew quite enough about the Speaker to understand what He did not mean. The common folk, who heard so gladly the prophet of Galilee, would have smiled at M. Renan and the mad conclusions of his learned doubt. They had Christ's whole life and teaching for a witness that He would never make light of the sacred ties of natural affection or despise the claims of kindred, or compound with that spirit of hatred which He taught men to regard as the essence of murder 74 THE WINNOWING FAN itself. I cannot believe for a moment that those who heard this saying actually fall from the lips of Jesus were ever troubled by mis- taking His intent. They would clearly realise that One whose whole teaching hinged upon the Divine Fatherhood, One who gathered up all human duty into Love for God and Love for Man, could never mean them to ''hate " those whom they were most bound to love on earth. It was not this sharp, strong word that staggered them. Not in this lay the "hardness" of the saying. They knew that suicide was no more enjoined in the clause about hating one's own life, than was literal hatred of near relations meant in the other clauses. But what undoubtedly did astound them, and was intended so to do, was the essence and spirit of the words. For, when all legitimate allowance is made for Eastern hyperbole, what an amazing claim remains ! What mere man — however great, however good — dare claim the like for an instant, without expecting and de- serving to be called insane? It is fashionable to-day to asperse the doctrine of Christ's Divinity. Books have great vogue which deny all miracles but one — the miracle of the sinless life of a flawless Teacher. Such writers des- cant on the beauty of the one and on the wisdom THE WINNOWING FAN 75 of the other. But after they have explained away the passages which directly declare the Oneness of Christ with God Himself, there still remains the very strongest evidence for the Divinity of Jesus in what is said quite incidentally, as for example in the claims made in the concluding part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Christ speaks of His own authority interchangeably with that of the Su- preme, or in such a passage as that now before us, where the absolute subordination of all other interests and affections, however desirable, however innocent, is unreservedly called for. On the part of any less than the greatest, lower than the highest, the demand would un- doubtedly involve an unanswerable charge either of consummate folly or of boundless pre- sumption. Yet here, as Archbishop Trench^ has aptly observed, the claim is made '' not in the name of Another, whose messenger the speaker is, but in His own, setting forth Him- self as the object to whom all this measureless devotion is justly due, and who, claiming it all, claims nothing but that which is His own by right." This extraordinary absolutism, then, I take to be the really staggering thing about this ^ Studies in the Gosiels, p. 254. *](> THE WINNOWING FAN passage. But it presents no difficulty in theory, whatever it may do in practice, to the humble believer in the Incarnation. Such an one hears the just demands of the One Master, with sorrow indeed at the heavy debt of unfulfilled allegiance which he is conscious of having accumulated, but without surprise and without recoil. Reason and experience, moreover, come to strengthen his wavering fidelity, for they remind a man how often natural affection, if it be gratified without regard to moral duty, becomes corrupted in the process and turns to loathing and to disappointment. Thus too he grows to realise how even pure family ties and duties, blessed as they usually are, must not be turned into idols or suffered to hamper the ''clear spirit" in its ascent to God. And finally he begins to understand how " the strongest and truest love is that which is capable of the courage and self-sacrifice in- volved in the infliction of necessary pain."^ And, therefore, just as he who "hateth his life in this world" really "keeps it unto life eternal," so he, who according to Christ's paradox "hates" his friends, really loves them with a deeper, more abiding, and more unselfish affection. ^ T. C. Finlayson, Expositor^ vol. ix., p. 430. THE MIGHT OF MEEKNESS " Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth : but I say unto you. Resist not him that is evil : but ivhosoever smiteth thee on thy 7'ight cheek, turn to hi?n the other also. And if any man would go to law ivith thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. Give to him that asketh thee, a7id from him that would bo7'7-ow of thee turn 7iot thou away'' — St. Matthew v. 38-42 {cf. St. Luke vi. 29, 30.) The difficulty here is precisely opposite in kind from that of the other instances we have been considering. Hitherto we have been con- fronted by an apparently excessive severity and harshness. Now Christ seems to recommend a tenderness indistinguishable from weakness, and to proclaim absolutely the duty of non- resistance to injuries. But the fact that the tenor of these hard sayings is antagonistic, that while some seem to overshoot the mark in one direction, others do so in a direction which is precisely opposite, —this fact should put us in the way of finding an invaluable clue not only to these particular yS THE MIGHT OF MEEKNESS problems, but to a score of other difficulties which have been used as arguments against the truth and wisdom of Christianity. If we found that the thrust and bearing of all that is difficult to understand in the speech of Christ went in one direction, then it might be otherwise ; but as it is, ordinary common sense suggests what further enquiry proves to demonstration, that, in these strikingly picturesque and forceful sayings, our Lord was not enunciating precise rules of conduct to be literally followed in detail ; but was rather declaringr broad pfeneral principles, which swept now this way and now that. Christ and Christianity deal in principles, not rules. His words are as sown seed capable of endless growth. Keep this in mind, and you have the clue to everything. The mistakes that people make in interpreting the doctrine of Jesus come, nearly all of them, from not realising that it was His invariable method to avoid laying down rules which time and circumstances would soon make obsolete, and to proclaim principles capable of eternal appli- cation. Suppose, for instance, that our Lord had adjudicated the question of inheritance which THE MIGHT OF MEEKNESS 79 two family disputants brought to Him for settlement, endless confusion would have re- sulted from the judgment. *' We should have had an isolated case of the law of inheritance, on which an irreversible decision had been pronounced. Every code framed for Christian lands would have had to accept and embody this. Endless guesses at the special circum- stances of the case would have been made, and every one who contested a distribution of property would have endeavoured to show that this ruling of Christ covered his own claims." ^ In refusing here to become '' a ruler and a divider," Jesus followed His invariable custom ; He constantly asserted the principles of love, unselfishness, order, which would decide all questions, but the questions themselves He would not decide. He would lay down a broad political principle, " Render unto Caesar the things that be Caesar's, and unto God the things which are God's." But He would not determine whether a particular tax was due to Caesar or not. So also Christ lays down a great social law : " Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal." But to say how much is just and equal, Christianity leaves to each ^ Pastor Pasiorum , p. 405. 8o THE MIGHT OF MEEKNESS master and to each age of society to determine. So again, Christianity binds up men in a holy brotherhood ; but what are the best institutions and surest means for arriving at this brother- hood it has not said. Whether, for instance, competition or co-operation will best conduce to its realisation in the community ; whether a merely national patriotism, or a transfigured form thereof embracing mankind, presents that pure ideal which may at last bring *' Peace on earth to men of goodwill " ; — such issues are left to the growing experience and the developing Conscience of Humanity to work out. The purview of the child Is not that of the full-grown man. And there is a childhood of the race as well as of the individual. What is condoned in one age is scouted by another. Within the covers of the Bible Itself the progressive growth of moral and spiritual perception Is plain to read. And the subse- quent history of social evolution tells the same tale. Even the conscience of Christendom is sensitised by slow degrees, and the great conscience of Humanity more slowly still. Hence we see the wisdom, the necessity, of Christ's method of enlightening the world. THE MIGHT OF MEEKNESS 8i Thus alone it comes to pass that Christianity is the Eternal Religion which can never become obsolete, just because it commits itself only to eternal principles. And the Founder of our Faith shows Himself so resolute on this point that it seems exceedingly probable that He cast so much of what He had to communicate into the startling and paradoxical forms which so puzzle the literalist, precisely in order to prevent His hearers making of them rules when He intended only to deliver principles, the application of which He purposely left to their own common sense. There is an instance in the Gospels which goes to show that even when a saying of Christ has all the appearance of a regular rule, it was not our Lord's purpose that it should be taken otherwise than as a principle. In St. Luke xxii. 35, Jesus refers back to the first missionary journey of the Twelve. They were, He had told them (St. Matthew x. 9, 10), to set out with practically nothing but a staff in their hands, — no money, no provisions, no change of clothes — casting themselves wholly on the kind- ness of men and the Providence of God. There was no doubt a wise object in this order : it was the best to effect the immediate purpose. G 82 THE MIGHT OF MEEKNESS Now suppose you take this as a literal rule to be followed by ministers for all time, you not only expose the words of Christ to ridicule and contempt, but you actually insist on retaining a rule which He Himself repealed. For at the close of Christ's Ministry, in view of dark and troublous days. He said to the Twelve again, '* But now, he that hath a purse let him take it, and likewise his scrip ; and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one." Now it is plainly quite impossible that we should render a literal obedience to both these rules. And what is almost equally clear is that even the Twelve never attempted literally to obey the latter. For example, common sense forbids us to suppose that Christ meant the Apostles to leave the table at which they had just eaten the Last Supper and go out and buy swords, or that He ever intended swords to be wielded in His service. Indeed, but a few hours after, St. Peter did strike at Malchus with his sword, and only received a rebuke for his pains. Is it not clear then that by these deliberate admonitions which look like rules, but are really statements embodying principles of set purpose so framed as to prevent their being THE MIGHT OF MEEKNESS 83 taken literally, — is it not clear that the great object of our Lord in this picturesque and para- doxical language was to drive us to look beneath the actual words until we find the principles those words enshrine ? If now we go back to our text with these considerations clearly in mind, how entirely plain it grows that this turning of the smitten to the smiter, this offering fresh opportunity to the would-be thief, this indiscriminate giving to every beggar and lending to every one who seeks a loan, were simply so many vivid pictures to enforce attention to a most fruitful and profitable, though generally neglected, principle. Pictures they are in fact purposely painted in glaring colours, figures indeed of a most valuable truth, but left almost grotesquely out of drawing precisely in order to cut off the possibility of their being taken as patterns for lite7^al obedience. The actual example of our Lord is quite sufficient proof in itself that He could never have intended His followers to turn these start- ling illustrations into maxims for literal imita- tion. For the practice of the Master Whose , whole Life incomparably exhibits the principle here taught, none the less plainly contradicts G 2 84 THE MIGHT OF MEEKNESS the letter He uses to convey its spirit to our minds. We know that from those who, from unworthy motives, asked of Jesus treasures more precious than silver or gold, He did *' turn away " ; and bade His disciples use dis- cretion lest they cast their pearls before swine. We remember how Christ deliberately did '' resist evil," when, whip in hand. He chased the traffickers from the Temple. And we recall how, when on the occasion of His trial an apparitor struck Him on the cheek, Jesus did 710^ " turn to him the other also," but rebuked the smiter for the cowardly blow. But such instances need not be multiplied, a single one of them is proof enough of the point I am urging, that this passage was never intended to supply a series of rules, but to claim attention and obedience to a great and glorious principle capable of innumerable applications. And though no single sentence could easily be framed to define it, this principle is surely comprehensible enough. Christ preaches not the non-resistance which involves being over- come of evil, but that which *' overcomes evil with good," which disarms hostility by the ex- hibition of a generous spirit, which by gentle- ness turns away wrath and retaliating only with THE MIGHT OF MEEKNESS 85 kindness heaps ''coals of fire" on the head of the malicious. The Christian is never bidden to open his door to the burglar, or his pocket to the thief. When he meets either the un- scrupulous speculator who swallows the living of the orphan and the widow, or the murderous landlord who refuses sanitary conditions to his tenants, he not only may but ought to "be angry and sin not." And his commission to the sturdy beggar who seeks to live upon the toil of others, is neither to give nor to lend, but to tell him, in the words of St. Paul, that " if a man will not work, neither should he eat." In short, Christianity calls no man to ineptitude and imbecility, but to exercise a "sound mind" in sober, righteous, and godly living. The principle of this particular passage is the principle of the power of good. Christ in- culcates a habit of life formed on the belief that " in the long run good is stronger than evil, kindness than cruelty, love than law." Thus the Christian is summoned to exhibit in all the affairs of life a spirit of consideration, of kind- liness, of generosity. In the cultivation and practice of this spirit the words of Christ will be obeyed. We really do His will, "not when we refuse to take a legal oath, but when we culti- 86 THE MIGHT OF MEEKNESS vate a truthful spirit : not when we turn the other cheek to the smiter, but when we conquer anger and violence with meekness and love : not when we give or lend to every one that asks of us, but when we cherish a charit- able spirit." Everywhere, and by all means the Christian disciple is called to be a servant not of the letter but of the spirit. He who so " learns Christ " alone will ever understand with what a breadth and depth of truth the Master spoke when He said, "It is the spirit which maketh alive. The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life." AGAINST ANXIETY " Be not therefore anxious^ sayings What shall we eat ? or, What shall we dri?ik 1 or, Wherewithal shall tve be clothed? for your heavenly Father kfioweth that ye have 7ieed of all these things. But seek ye first His Kingdom and His righteousness : and all these thi?igs shall be added unto you. Be not therefore anxious for the mor- rotv: for the morroiv will be anxious for itself Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof .'' — St. Matthew vi. 3 1-34. The difficulty here lies rather with ourselves than with the actual words of the Master. *' Take no thought " is the old English equi- valent for " Be not anxious," as the Revised Version reminds us. There is therefore nothing subtle or mysterious in the exhortation. It Is magnificently simple. Yet who is there among us who has not often found it a " hard say- ing" ? In an earlier age perhaps, when the speed and pressure of life were less, for the dwellers in some pastoral Eden of a bygone day, possibly even now for some exceptional people— the happy few endowed with perfect 88 AGAINST ANXIETY health and ample means — the doctrine might seem suitable. But for the mass of mankind at the end of the nineteenth century, hardly bestead in the battle for subsistence, for men immersed in bitter business competition, for tillers of the soil who can grow little to any profit ; in short, for the immense majority of the race, how can we regard this exhortation against anxiety except as unreasonable and extravagant ? First, however, we have to remember that no saying of any man's can be rightly inter- preted apart from the recognised standpoint of the speaker. We know that here that stand- point is not far to seek. For the fundamental principle of the doctrine of Jesus was the fact of the Fatherhood of God. The Boy of twelve must be about His Father's business. In that He found His meat and drink until the end, when we hear Him add to the ancient prayer of commendation from the Psalms He loved, this characteristic touch — "Father," ''Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit." And as at the beginning and the end, so it was throughout. When Jesus described the circle of religious thought, He stated it in AGAINST ANXIETY 89 terms of the Fatherhood. Repentance was a return to the Father ; " I will arise and go to my Father." When ye pray, say, ''Our Father, Which art in Heaven." The type of character was the Father ; ''Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." The principle of all life was the Will of the Father. Providence is the mindful over- sight of a Father : " Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." One of the few rays of light Jesus cast on the future showed the Father's dwelling-place : "In my Father's house are many mansions." It has been truly said that the effect of such passages — and they could be multiplied in- definitely— is cumulative and irresistible. They are no mere proof texts for a dogma ; they are an atmosphere in which religion lives and moves and has its being. Now it is this doctrine of the Fatherhood Divine which is the key of the problem now before us. Every questioning of doubt, every protest we may urge as to the importance of these physical necessities, every plausible ex- cuse we may contrive for worrying about them, is conclusively met with the simple statement, " Your heavenly Father knoweth, — knoweth 90 AGAINST ANXIETY that ye have need of all these things." And when Christ said, "Your Father knows," His whole argument implies also ''Your Father cares." And even more specifically He con- tinues, " All these things shall be added unto you," — these temporal needs shall be fulfilled, — if only ye seek first the Father's kingdom and His righteousness. If, that is, you put the needs of the spirit before those of the body, and concentrate your energies, first, not on amassing material gain, but on the attainment of spiritual character, — thinking more of what you may become than of anything you may be able to get — then your Father in Heaven will not fail you. Thus we see that the difficulty of Jesus' teaching on this subject of worldly anxiety re- solves itself, in fact, into the difficulty of firmly believing His foundation doctrine of God's paternal care. When we hear Jesus discoursing of repose on Providence, our temptation to explain the whole thing away as an idyll or a dream gathers force from the doubts we entertain as to whether God is after all soli- citous of His creatures' welfare. If we really believed that the Almighty does know and love and care, then these precepts against AGAINST ANXIETY 91 anxiety about our worldly concerns would seem to us no longer difficult. It is because we doubt that truth, which alone makes Christ's bidding a reasonable command, that we find ourselves so impotent to obey it. Moreover, there is considerable ground for hesitation. The Fatherly cares of God appear at times to admit of the very strangest mis- fortunes. Though Christ and Christ's Church declare that He "ordereth all things in heaven and earth ; " though the Psalmist asserts that " all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth " to the obedient; and an Apostle repeats that "all thinofs work tosfether for orood to them that love God ; " yet we have after all a feeling, irrepressibly recurrent, that experi- ence contradicts revelation in this matter. As we pass in review the horrors of war, the hideousness of slavery, the indescribable misery and squalor which disgrace the purlieus of the finest cities of the world, the terrible suffer- ings which by no means only dog the steps of sin, the triumphs of evil and the frequent ill-success of good ; as the daily press pours out its awful tale of shipwreck and accident, of famine and suicide, — we stand appalled at the lurid picture. These, we say, are facts. 92 AGAINST ANXIETY How are we to reconcile them with the beauti- ful dreams of the great Galilean Teacher ? Surely it is only left to us, as we look earth- ward, to exclaim with the ancient pessimist, " Behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit ; " or, looking heavenward, to cry with the prophet of old, '' Verily, Thou art a, God that hidest Thyself." '' We see not our signs," and so we practically disbelieve in the paternal government of God ; and, disbelieving, it be- comes utterly impossible to fulfil the word of Christ, which bids us cease from personal anxiety and care. Now Jesus, Who always discouraged specu- lative thought, never solved for us the mystery of evil in the world, and it is probable therefore that it will remain unsolved until the Day of God. But Jesus did give to the world both teaching and facts which enable us, despite that mystery, to believe in the power, wisdom, and love of the Eternal. By His teaching of Immortality He lifts the believer out of the untenable position in which he would otherwise find himself in face of the problems of life. To all these things we can now say, The end is not yet. It is not for this world only we have the heritage of Hope in Christ, AGAINST ANXIETY 93 " Traversed heart must tell its story uncommented on : no less, Mine results in ' Only grant a second life, I acquiesce In this present life as failure, count misfortune's worst assaults, Triumph not defeat ; assured that loss so much the more exalts Gain about to be.' " We know that God has not finished with any of us when we oo down to the orrave, least of all with those whose earthly opportunities have been the fewest, whose chances have been the worst, whose time here has been cut off pre- maturely. Our great difficulty always and necessarily is to see things in their proper proportion and perspective. We scale everything by this little earth-life, and our measure is the measure of a man. But the scale of God is infinite. His counsels are from all eternity, and require eternity for their completion. ** There shall never be one lost good ! What was shall live as before ; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound ; On the earth the broken arcs ; in Heaven the perfect round." Human wisdom, therefore, consists largely in recognising its limitations. But what is pos- sible to human wisdom does not end with this, or we might crown the Agnostic with the laurels of the wise. And this can never be, since the Great Father, '' Whom to know is everlasting life," has freely offered to man's 94 AGAINST ANXIETY reason all help necessary to peace of mind and freedom of faith, though it suffice not to the satisfaction of his curiosity. The teaching and the life of Jesus Christ crown the revelation of the Father. The only begotten Son, ''He hath declared Him." And as the spirit of Jesus rises in our hearts, — " the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father," — we are no longer given over to despair, or doubt of the eternal love. " I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ, Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it." In our moments of darkness, when we read Christ's teaching about the lilies and the birds and the Universal Father, and are tempted to contrast the beauteous idyll with some ugly and untoward fact, we have only to turn from the teaching to the Teacher, and faith and hope revive again. We may argue the teaching optimistic, but with the record of His life before us, it is not open to conclude that Jesus was wrong. "He drank the bitterest cup ; He suffered the shamefullest death ; and yet reconciled the incalculable tragedy of His life with the love of His Father." When upon the Cross Jesus said, ''Father," ''it may have AGAINST ANXIETY 95 been," as has been remarked, '* a pathetic de- lusion, but it was the delusion of Him Who of all the race knew God best." II. In this insistence on the Divine Father- hood Jesus Christ gives us the Secret which makes reasonable that entire trustfulness which otherwise would seem to us impossible. But there is a second great principle, upon which Jesus was constantly dwelling, which shows us the Method by means of which we are to over- come the temptation to anxiety. We learn that in the mind of Christ the physical and material were always subordinated to the spiritual. Your living is one thing, your life is another. '' A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of possessions." '' Man doth not live by bread alone." " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.'' This kind of speech was constantly on Jesus' lips. And the way in which strenuousness in spiritual endeavour is here coupled and con- trasted with uncarefulness in temporal matters goes to indicate that the way to avoid anxiety in the lower is by absorption in the higher. The Method, then, for the attainment of a quiet mind in temporal things is to estimate truly their unimportance compared with things 96 AGAINST ANXIETY eternal. " What is a man profited if he gain the whole world, only to be mulcted of his life?" And is it not just by neglect of this Method of Jesus that we fail so constantly in obedience to His word ? Do not many of us deliberately invert the Christian aim ? Are we not full of care because we strain first and mainly after physical good, and at best are only willing that the spiritual blessings of the Kingdom should be added thereto ? Yes : the animal and the earthly grasp us with the power of their near- ness and of their coarse reality. The spiritual and the divine sing to us with angel sweetness from the invisible world. But these voices sound so faint and seem to come so far, that , though we can distinguish their message of grace, contentment, trust and duty, it requires more of an effort than we are disposed to make, sometimes even to listen, much less to obey. f And so it comes to be that men are keener on the things that pass than on those that abide. Wealth, success, reputation, rank, — *' these be thy gods, O Israel." To make a coup of some sort — political, social, even com- mercial— this is worthy, of careful thought, of anxious scheming, of well laid preparation. AGAINST ANXIETY 97 The vagaries of fashion, the ampHtude of the wardrobe, even the pleasures of the table, — anything, everything, material and mundane will engross the thought, and assume far greater importance in our worldly view than, for ex- ample, the conquest of temper, the contempt of gossip, the forgiveness of injuries, the exercise of generosity and love, — in short, the attain- ment of character. Yet we can recognise the beauty of this call of Christ. And since, in the sphere of human duty, to discern an excellence is to receive a trust, it follows that by this which we morally admire we are practically bound. We know perfectly well that, rightly understood, the com- mand is reasonable and wise. We know that in Christ's thought, to live like the lilies or the birds never meant an idle standing still, to subsist on what the heavens might send. These fowls of the air, says Jesus, *' God feedeth them." Yet they are never found, regardless of the changing year, hanging always on a miracle. On the contrary, that which God giveth them ''they gather." Christ never con- demns foresight, for foresight is perfectly com- patible with Faith. He condemns the restless anxiety which is born of avarice and selfishness H 98 AGAINST ANXIETY While birds and insects continually provide for their needs, they do not worry about them. Perfectly guided by instinct they are excellent examples of that unconsciousness which is the mark of perfection in the exercise of the func- tions of life. Moreover, according to the method of Christ the fulfilment of each part of His command helps obedience to the rest. The more a man is engrossed about the higher, the less power over him will the lower have. And on the other hand the nearer any one approaches unconsciousness, "taking n© thought" for the lower things necessary alike to all animal crea- tion, the freer will he be for that strenuous " taking thought " for those higher things which are the proper and peculiar privilege of Mankind. In ordinary experience we are accustomed to connect plain living with high thinking, simple tastes with moral worth. This is so much evidence for the wisdom of Christ's teaching here. Determined striving after truth or good- ness leads inevitably to a certain carelessness, or rather unconsciousness, about the things that perish in the using. And this is the ideal con- dition of mental and moral welfare. It is thus AGAINST ANXIETY 99 the injunction is fulfilled, " Labour not for the meat which perishes, but for that which en- dureth unto life eternal." In flagrant instances, over- carefulness in material things is at once recognised as con- temptible. We suspect the health of a man who is for ever consulting his digestion. The valetudinarian stands confessed an invalid. The epicure spoils his appetite by " taking thought " for it. The dress of the dandy and the money of the miser illustrate the same truth. So far, therefore, from regarding this saying of Jesus as a piece of pious extravagance, we ought to recognise its entire accord with the dictates of reason and with our common experience of life. In listening to the Master's protest, we are not called to "wind ourselves too high for mortal man beneath the sky," but we are called to watch lest the material side of life engage and engross us too fully. It is only by the diligent use of this Method of Christ, at first perhaps with distinct and conscious effort, that we can hope gradually to learn and at length habitually to feel that the life is more than food, as the body is more than raiment. But as long as we persist in lending H 2 loo AGAINST ANXIETY the whole weight of divinely implanted powers to join in the selfish scramble of scheming competition, or to make provision for the grati- fication of the flesh, we shall surely miss the mark and degrade our human nature. For, however true it be that man lives by bread, it is at least equally true, and even more eternally important, that man cannot live by bread alone. The realisation of this ideal, the possession of this secret and the practice of this method have distinguished the Saints of God in every age and place, as their language and their lives abundantly show. Let the words of one bear witness for all. Hear a man who had as deep an experience of the labours, trials, and vicissi- tudes of life as it is possible to imagine falling to any human lot. Hear St. Paul, from his Roman prison, writing to his beloved Philip- pians, " Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say rejoice. Be careful for nothing — in nothing be anxious — but in everything let your requests be made known unto God. And (then) the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus," THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON ^^ I say unto you^ Make to yourselves friends by ineans of the inarmnon of unrighteousness : that, when it shall fail, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles. He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much : and he that is tmrighteotis in a very little is un- righteous also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the imrighteous majnmon, who will conwiit to your trust the true riches ? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another's, ivho will give you that which is your own ? " — St. Luke xvi. 9-12. The Kingdom of Heaven we are [accustomed to regard as a spiritual kingdom, a kingdom '' not of this world." We think of its great ones as the ''servants of all," an aristocracy neither of rank nor of wealth, but of goodness. We picture its honours bestowed on virtue, not lavished on success. We remember that much that is highly esteemed among men is mere abomination in the sight of God, and we rejoice that the judgments of the Kingdom of Heaven are not human but Divine. There is no room in fact for even a momentary confusion in our 102 THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON mind between the spiritual nature of the beati- tude which Christ passes upon the meek, the loving and the pure, the sons of light ; and the tangible satisfactions coveted by the children of the age, and which so often crown the efforts of those who are wise in their worldly generation. What then are we to understand by this enig- matic saying with which Christ concludes the story of the Steward, " I say unto you " — you. My disciples — '' make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness, that, when it shall fail, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles." Is the saying ironical ? — intended to point the absurdity of imagining that any mere worldly astuteness can commend itself to the Lord of the spirits of all flesh ? Is it a satire upon the notion that the gift of God can be purchased with money ? Are we to read it as a vial of scorn poured upon the thought that admission to ** the eternal taber- nacles " can be " arranged " by that politic paltering with truth or smart commercial double dealing, which is so often for a time successful in merely temporal affairs ? This would seem to be a perfectly possible explanation. But, on the other hand, our THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON 103 Lord seldom indulged in irony at all, and never, so far as I remember, except on one occasion, in addressing His own disciples. So that it will be safer here to take the words as a serious instruction. The right clue to their meaning seems to be given in the words that follow. "He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, he that is unrighteous in a very little is un- righteous also in much." That is, he that is faithful in mere Mammon matters, in that com- • mon intercourse of life which is material and I transitory, he alone will be faithful in the hidden things of the spirit which are deep and real and lasting, and to him only can therefore be en- trusted the " true riches " of the spiritual life. While on the other hand, he who is unfaithful in the stewardship of those outward and tangible things which are merely accidental — lent with the lease of life — such an one is bound to fail in dealing with that which is spiritual and essential and can alone be properly styled " his own," since character is the true soul and self whether of a man or of a nation. It is in fact in the unchanging and inviolable Law of Character that we find the key to the whole passage. It is this law which everywhere I04 THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON connects the " very little " and the '' much," the secular and the spiritual, the temporal and the eternal. Those little words and thoughts and acts of everyday may in themselves be trifles ; but the moral character each thought and word and deed is slowly and surely building up — that is no trifle. Not time only but eternity is involved. And therefore the attempt to separate between the secular and the religious in the affairs of life is a foolish and impossible attempt. Nothing may be accounted trivial on the ground of its being secular, because the secular and the spiritual, the little and the great, the transient and the abiding are indissolubly joined by the law of character. Therefore Christ teaches those disciples of His, some of whom as tax-collectors and business men were possibly inclined to chafe at the unspiritual nature of their work, that their faithfulness in the little would prove in reality to be faithfulness in much, for by means of their good stewardship in things mundane, they would be securing the rights of the most valuable of all proprietorships, — winning possession of themselves, — forming that Character which is the only " true riches," and to which alone "the eternal tabernacles" will afford an everlasting refuge. THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON 105 We can gather how forcibly and clearly all this would appeal to Christ's Jewish audience when we come across the following parable which is found in the Rabbinic writings of the time, and was no doubt current among the people. In this story a king is represented as having employed two administrators : one over the gold and silver, and the other over the straw. The latter official was suspected of malversation, and when he thereupon com- plained that he had not been set over the gold and silver, they said unto him, '' Thou fool, if thou hast rendered thyself suspected with re- gard to the straw, shall they commit to thee the treasure of gold and silver ? " ^ Again, it seems impossible to imagine an apter comment on the words of Christ " He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much," than this of the Jewish Midrash, " The Holy One, blessed be His Name, does not give great things to a man until he has been tried in a small matter ; " a principle which is thereupon illustrated by the history of Moses and of David, who were both called to rule the people after faithful apprenticeship as shep- herds. Moreover, in the Christian dispensation 1 Edersheim'sy<.^i-/^i- the Messiah^ p. 274. lo6 THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON instances abound. Judas Iscariot, chosen, no doubt, for a certain business capacity, to be the chancellor of the apostolic band, — we know how he handled the Mammon of unrighteous- ness, and we recall his miserable end. Stephen the deacon supplies an ideal contrast. Simi- larly chosen for secular work in order to relieve the clergy of the primitive Church, this man ''full of faith and of the Holy Ghost " is lifted from the scene of his fidelity in that which is least to the highest pinnacle of honour. As the Proto- Martyr of Christianity his name is immortal. As he lays down his stewardship, the gates of heaven open to his dying gaze, and the form of that Friend Who sticketh closer than a brother stands ready to admit him to everlasting habitations. We take it, then, that Christ here intends to teach that by the faithful use of " a very little," even by means of unrighteous Mammon — a deceitful thing, unworthy to be regarded as an end in itself — a character may be formed, and virtues and graces won, which will befriend us for ever. He would therefore have the sons of light, in their spiritual preparation for eternity, emulate the zeal and foresight displayed by the children of this world merely for their own THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON 107 immediate advantage or to meet the contingen- cies of time. The Master, in fact, is giving a lesson upon the most important of all matters to the Chris- tian pilgrim — how to pass through things tern- . poral so as not finally to lose the things eternal. And He shows how the two are interdependent. * If,' He seems to say, ' If your ordinary man of the world is always careful to look forward, if he surmounts the difficulties of life by shrewd- ness and tact, providing against misfortune by securing friends who may be ready to repay him in the evil day ; so may the ordinary transactions of his daily round furnish forth the means to the man of God of laying up treasure in heaven, of deepening and purifying that e spiritual nature, whose tenderest associations, whose deepest friendships, whose true home, are in the eternal tabernacles of the world to come.' Such would seem to have been the moral of the story of the steward, for those to whom it was immediately addressed — the disciples of Jesus. And for us Christians of to-day this application is of all others perhaps the most directly practical, warning us against regarding anything as common or unclean, reminding us « that nothing is really secular but what is sinful, io8 THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON and assuring us how the most insignificant duty ^ faithfully discharged — as unto the Lord — is fraught with issues of eternal and spiritual importance. There are, perhaps, few hard workers in the world who do not sometimes chafe against the tedious routine and drudgery of life. Then let .^ them remember that God's gauge of faithfulness is unaffected by the sphere in which their trust is exercised, but is sensitive simply to the care and conscientiousness displayed therein. The role of the humblest disciple is, in fact, transfigured by this teaching of the Master, which lends Divine authority to Keble's lines : — " The trivial round, the common task Will furnish all we need to ask, Room to deny ourselves — a road To bring us daily nearer God." But this moral does not exhaust the teaching of the story. Though seemingly addressed to His own disciples, it is impossible to exclude the conviction that the speaker had the by- standers also in His mind, and among these especially the Pharisees. To shame the selfish exclusiveness of the Pharisee, Christ had spoken the matchless parables of the preceding chapter. And im- mediately after this Story of the Steward, St. THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON 109 Luke reports how " the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they scoffed — turned up their noses — at Him." But Jesus answered, " Ye are they which justify yourselves in the sight of men," — just as the astute steward had commended himself to that man of the world who was his master in the story — nevertheless ** that which is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God." And then the Master shows what is working in His mind by continuing, " The Law and the Prophets were until John : from that time the Gospel of the Kingdom of God is preached, and every man presses into it. But it is easiei^ for heaven and earth to pass than for one tittle of the law to fail!' He puts His finger here on that playing fast and loose with the Law which, was a sin of the Pharisees precisely analogous to that of the steward in the story. In their doctrine of Corban elsewhere scathingly de- nounced, and in their notorious laxity in the matter of divorce which is the point here cited, the Pharisees by these devices, *' indulgences " in the truest sense of the word, had no doubt won friendship with the world, but they had done so by bidding men consider their full debt of a hundred measures of wheat or of oil discharged by writing down fifty or fourscore, no THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON It IS surely a noteworthy thing that this should have been a failing of those very men who were so shamefully relentless against the outcast classes. The immediate sequel drives this home. The very next parable shows up the exclusiveness of the Pharisee in the person of the Rich Man who having all the heart could wish in the way of religious privilege, yet refused to the heathen and the publican even the crumbs of his sumptuous fare. This however has always been the way of the world. " Men compound for sins they have a mind to, by damning those they're not inclined to." And it is precisely what one would expect of Pharisees, for they were emphatically children of the age, "the religious world " of their own day. Successfully justify- ing themselves before men, their word had greater weight with the Jewish public than that of king or priest. What they approved was, for the people, properly accredited : what they banned was disallowed. They might have used this immense influence for untold good. They might have drawn men by their faithful- ness in the small matters of external discipline and ritual to attend to great things upon which depended their eternal peace. But they did not. Like the steward in the story, they THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON in secured a continuance of their own personal prestige, but like him also they paltered with the trust committed to their keeping. And being thus found faithless in that which was least, in their administration of the letter of the Law, they showed themselves a fortiori unfit to deal with its deep and holy spirit. To the Pharisee there was no virtue but of a legal and external kind. The result at best could only be a poor, perfunctory, mechanical obedience, ever on the watch for some loop- hole of escape into paths perhaps not forbidden by the letter of any specific command, yet plainly contrary to the spirit of God's will. Therefore, says Jesus, this external Pharisaic righteousness is a hollow affair which may for a time ingratiate the children of this world, but which can never serve as a standard for the children of the kingdom of God. To sum up then, let us simply say, ''It is required of stewards that a man be found faithful." And rightly viewed, all life is steward- ; ship. This English nation is a steward with responsibilities perhaps vaster even than those of the Chosen People. Let her see to it that she does not lower the standard of the national conscience by putting fifty measures of oil and 112 THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON fourscore of wheat for the hundred, in the administration of justice, goodness and truth, whether at home or abroad. Not the Jewish Church only but the CathoHc Church is a steward ; let her see to it that she does not waste her strength in binding on men's con- sciences burdens either utterly intolerable or absolutely insignificant, while other matters of moment are disparaged or ignored. The attempt to change the always and alto- gether voluntary and medicinal use of Con- fession to a priest, into an habitual practice of binding obligation ; the attempt, whether overt or disguised, to fence the Altars of the English Church against all who resist this encroach- ment ; — these are instances of the intolerable, — acts of Unjust Stewardship. The infatuation which forecasts any general acceptance of this yoke is only equalled by the foolishness which prefers a piece of antiquated symbolism before the priceless pearls of Order and of Peace. Sacrifices on earth there are whose savour is sweet in Heaven, but the smoke of *' Will- worship " out of censers of Disobedience is not among them. Those who thus mistake are monumental examples of mis- guided zeal. Nominal stewards of a Reformed Church, they secretly despise and often openly THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON 113 contemn the whole genius of the Reformation. Inconsistent stewards, they conjure with the name of CathoHc while incontinently claiming an individual right divine to trarnple upon Order, the paramount note of Catholicity. Law- less stewards they seem ; for whom nor Church, nor State, can produce an Authority which their non-conforming consciences allow them to obey. Foolish stewards — must it not be said? — who ''waste the goods" of the Master by weakening the effective strength of His Body in this land, by making that Body a byword for confusion, amid the tears of friends and the laughter of foes. But the Church, like the Nation, of any and every age is but an aggregate of units. Not individual Jews only, or individual Christians of Christ's day alone, but you and I and every man are stewards of all that appertains to us, whether our place be high or low, whether our trust seem great or small. If we exploit our position, or abuse our privilege for selfish ends ; if we lower the standard of our conduct from that befitting sons of light to that which may commend us to the children of the world ; then, even though the shelter and the friendships we have planned for our convenience may possibly I 114 THE FRIENDSHIP OF MAMMON not fail us here, it is certain that no eternal home will offer us a welcome for the long here- after. Happy then the public man who at the end of his career can challenge the world in the words of the aged Samuel : " Behold, here I am : witness against me before the Lord : Whose ox, or whose ass, have I taken ? Whom have I defrauded ? Whom have I oppressed ? or of whose hand have I taken any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith ? and I will restore it you. " And equally happy the humblest and obscurest citizen of the kingdom of God, if only he can echo the psalmist's words, " I am small and of no reputation, yet do I not forget Thy precepts." Yes, these and such as these, are the truly blest, for they — the obedient and the true — are the salt of the earth and the light of the world in whatever age their lot is cast, and theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. Upon each, and each alike, whether stewards now of the little or the much, shall surely fall at last the Master's benison : '' Well done, good and faith- ful servant ; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things : Enter thou into the Joy of thy Lord." THE HUNDREDFOLD REWARD ^^ Peter began to say unto Bini, Lo, we have left all^ and have followed Thee. Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or lands, for My sake, and for the Gosper s sake, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions ; and in the world to come eternal life. But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.^^ — St. Mark x, 29, 3°. 31- Soon after our Lord had entered upon His last public journey to Jerusalem, teaching and preaching as He went, we are told that '' a certain ruler " threw himself at Jesus' feet with the question, "■ What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life ? " ^ The road to life, replies the Master, is obedience to the com- mandments. ''All these," returns the ques- tioner, "have I observed from my youth." It was no idle boast, the man was perfectly sincere, "And Jesus, looking upon him, loved 1 St. Mark x. 17. I 2 Ii6 THE HUNDREDFOLD REWARD him." Christ recognised a nobility of mind opening the loftiest possibilities to this young life, If only it could be rescued from the cloying circumstances which now oppressed the better soul within. Between the lines of the scant report we can read the gist of the colloquy : * There is indeed a Service which is * perfect freedom,' but the price of its liberty is greater than any mere punctilious keeping of the law's letter. There Is a Life which Is 'life indeed,' but It outruns the guidance of any mere code of rules. You seek to win that Liberty, you desire to live that Life. ' One thing thou lackest.' The letter killeth : it is the spirit that maketh alive. The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life. Now that you have learned the lesson of the letter, let us go on to counsels of perfection. Obedience, truly, is better than any sacrifice ceremonial, but there are sacrifices which are greater even than Obedience. They transcend because they more utterly fulfil. " Go, sell whatever thou hast . . . and come, follow Me." But ''his countenance fell at the say- ing, and he went away sorrowful : for he was one that had great possessions."^ ^ St. :\Iark X. 17-22. THE HUNDREDFOLD REWARD 117 Now it is to be observed that when the lawyer consulted Jesus as to the first and great commandment, and when Zaccheus, some of whose wealth had come by question- able means, applied to Jesus for spiritual direction, no rule of poverty was imposed : nor upon Christ's disciples generally was any such injunction laid. Why then in this par- ticular case of the young ruler? Because, it would seem, his case combined an exceptional spiritual capacity with an exceptional weight of material hindrance to its development. " He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown But that his heavy rider kept him down." If the spirit is to be set free to attain perfec- tion, the down-dragging weight, whatever it may happen to be, must be cast off. In this case it was a superfluity of worldly wealth. The young ruler was, in fact, an illustration of the quaint warning of old Sir Thomas Browne, '' As a man maketh his train longer, he maketh his wings shorter." For an immediate and total break, however, not merely with possessions, but with the position and power they conferred, this eager inquirer was not prepared. He made the great refusal. But he did so with a heavy ii8 THE HUNDREDFOLD REWARD heart : and though for the moment the yearn- ing love of Christ was disappointed, we can easily believe that by and by what was denied to impulse may have been yielded to consider- ation. As the Master presently took occasion to remind the ardent Peter, " Many that are first shall be last, and the last first." It would not therefore be surprising to find this young man, a little later, among the number of those who after Pentecost sold the lands or houses they possessed, and laid the prices at the Apostles' feet.^ But for the present the inci- dent is closed, and all we are told is that the failure of so promising a candidate to pass the appointed test caused Jesus to exclaim, ''How hardly shall they that trust in riches enter into the Kingdom of God ! " It was a cry not of denunciation, but rather of pity and regret, — of pity, as the Master thought of the Temptations created and multiplied by wealth, — of regret, as He remembered '' the deceitfulness of riches," and how easily they " become not only the care, but the torment, of those that possess them." On the departure of the young ruler, St. Peter is impelled to improve the occasion. Spokesman, as usual, for the rest, he cries, ^ Acts iv. 35, THE HUNDREDFOLD REWARD 119 *' Lo ! we have left all and followed Thee." It was a very crude remark, but the fathomless forbearance of the Master ignores the fatuity of the implied comparison between the fisher- men's sacrifice of scanty means and a preca- rious livelihood and the denied devotion of fortune and position. And He vouchsafes an answer couched in terms at once simple and profound. The spiritual neophyte might con- sole himself with its letter, while its spirit might minister to the aspirations of a deeper insight. ''Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, there is no man that hath left house or brethren or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for My sake and for the Gospel's sake, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecu- tions, and in the world to come eternal life." At first we may fancy that in this reply the sceptic finds some justification for the common cavil that the Christian motive is '' purely selfish." If, for all that is surrendered, " a hundredfold " is to be returned, the following of Christ appears to promise well from a com- mercial point of view, and the ancient taunt " Doth Job fear God for nought.'^ " seems still I20 THE HUNDREDFOLD REWARD to find a pretext. But when we observe those two fateful words recorded by St. Mark, '' with persecutions," any material advantages which the rest of the promise might be supposed to offer seem to be entirely discounted. This little clause is quite sufficient to dash with dis- appointment any worldly hopes which a too literal interpretation of enhanced family affec- tion, multiplied houses, or extended acres, might have raised. In days of persecution, the greater a man's property and the more abund- ant his kindred, by so many the more avenues could he be attacked, and so much the more easily victimised. It is probable that some such considerations, dimly realised, account for the silence with which Christ's double-edged forecast was received. There is a marked absence of eagerness to discuss in further detail this singular ''hundred-fold" reward. We know, indeed, that later on, to the early Christians there was given an exultation of soul which, despite persecution, preserved them in unspeakable and constant gladness, even as their Master before them had '' rejoiced in spirit " with Gethsemane and Calvary in view. But nothing of this kind could then have been understood even by the chosen few. THE HUNDREDFOLD REWARD 121 It may indeed be doubted whether at this period they would have found the least difficulty in accepting the most unqualified promise of mundane reward. The Rabbinic teachinof of the day revelled in what to us appear the most childish pictures of the good time coming when the Messiah should really arrive. The very walls of His capital were to be of *' silver, gold and gems, while all kinds of jewels would be strewed about the streets, of which every Israelite was at liberty to take The land would spontaneously produce the best dresses and the finest cakes." ^ And there is nothing in what fell from the lips of Christ's disciples at this time to lead us to suppose them in advance of the current ideas. Their pride and self-seeking, their indignant repudiation of every hint concerning the suffering and death of their Lord, their perpetual thought of pre- cedence and requests for posts of honour in the new kingdom, their frequent mistaking and materialising of the Master's metaphors, all point to a low stage of spiritual perception. Now even a Divine Teacher could lead such men but slowly, "as they were able to bear it." If then, during this process of education, Jesus 1 E dersheim, yvco9 are '' agelong " or ''aeonian," and '' real " in the sense of spiritual ; while the old equivalent ''everlasting" is no translation of the word at all, but only a most hazardous interpretation of it rightly repudiated by the Revisers. It would have been more consistent if, thus refusing to paraphrase the adjective, they had also refused to paraphrase the noun from which it is derived. But here they have allowed the definite "forever" to represent the indefinite " unto the ages," and have relegated the literal and only accurate translation to the margin. No doubt " for ever " is less cumbrous, but it is often less exact, as for instance in St. Luke i. 'Xf'h^ where it is said that our Lord shall ^ St. John xvii. 3. i82 FUTURE RETRIBUTION rule over the house of Jacob "for ever," when plainly the meaning can only be that He will thus rule, as the Greek says, '' unto the ages," — unto the ages, that is, during which distinc- tions of race and nationality last. It seems also very material to a right conclusion on this whole matter to remember that the sacred writers had at their disposal at least three Greek words — airepavros, dtSio?, drtXevTos — which would have unmistakably conveyed the meaning ** endless," had they wished to convey it. Two of these words are actually used in the Epistles,^ but never in connection either with the ''life" of the righteous or with the "punishment" of the wicked. Moreover, by using the adjective " all " to characterise " the ages," as is done in the last verse of the Epistle of St. Jude where glory is ascribed to God "before all time, and now, and unto ^// the ages," the idea of time without beginning and without end could have been strictly expressed. But as this combina- tion never occurs in the New Testament in the connection now under review, we seem bound to conclude that writers who deliberately chose a different phrase designed to express a ^ uTTipavTos, I Timothy i. 4. dihios, Romans i. 20_; Jude 6. FUTURE RETRIBUTION 183 different Idea. In using in the way they did the word alwv and its derivative, they must have meant to describe future retribution as ''agelong" or ''aeonian"if they are thinking simply of duration ; or, if their thought is rather of its character, it may perhaps be fairly paraphrased by " the punishment which is punishment indeed." Driven from one stronghold by the discovery that punishment is nowhere in the New Testament said to be ''endless," the upholders of this view have betaken themselves to a very sorry refuge. They argue that the fate of the impenitent is at death irrevocably and intermin- ably sealed, because forsooth Ecclesiastes ^ says, "If the tree fall toward the south or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth there shall it be." Such argument is almost as fool- ishly irrelevant as that which seeks to establish the exceeding fewness of the saved from the fact that one only was healed at the pool of Bethesda or from the supposition that out of sixty wives, eighty concubines, and numberless others, Solomon loved only one ! The truth is that the state between death and judgment receives in Holy Writ the very 1 Ch. xi. 3. i84 FUTURE RETRIBUTION scantiest notice. Not more than two or three passages, even in the New Testament, have any direct bearing upon the question. And one of these, the Parable of Lazarus and Nimeusis, is so filled with Jewish imagery that very little can be built upon it. We cannot however avoid remarking a distinct improvement in the moral state of the departed Rich Man, who begins at least to evince an interest in the welfare of his brothers, — a grace of which he showed no sign in this world. Then there are the well known sayings of St. Peter,^ the older English version of the first of which left it possible to interpret the words as meaning that Christ went to the Antediluvians now in prison when they lived on earth, and by His spirit, through the preaching of Noah, called them to repentance. But the Revised Version, by its more correct rendering, has made this interpretation impossible. Here flesh and spirit are so opposed that, as in the Greek, the word spirit must mean, not The Holy Spirit, but Our Saviour's human spirit, in which (not ^ Ch7-ist also sttffered fo7- sins .... being put to death in the flesh, Uit quickened in the spirit ; in which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which aforeti?ne were disobedietit. — I Peter iii. 19. Compare also ch. iv. 6, For unto this end was the gospel preached even to the dead, ^t'c. FUTURE RETRIBUTION 185 by which) He went and preached to the ante- diluvians in Hades. What conclusion is legitimate from this as- sertion ? First it seems to open the possibility of probation in the intermediate state between death and judgment. But secondly, the pas- sage only cites this extended probation with regard to a particular class of men, whose case can therefore serve only as an argument affect- ing analogous cases, and not to establish a rule applying universally. In other words, we may argue from this instance not the continued pro- bation of all men, but that only of those whose probation on earth, from whatever cause, has been incomplete. But this is all that right reason demands. We cannot doubt that any great natural catastrophe hurries thousands out of life, whose death cuts short and leaves in- complete their soul's moral trial. Any sudden accident must be liable to remove a man before his will has taken that decided action which fixes him " unto the ages " as either the friend or the enemy of God. And how can we believe that all the myriads of the heathen, or all the children of Christian lands who have been brought up by profligate parents, have come to an end of their moral probation when i86 FUTURE RETRIBUTION they suffer the natural accident of bodily death ? That God Who " was in Christ, re- conciling the world unto Himself," and Who ''declares His Almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity," will assuredly not leave any soul under a disadvantage in this thing. Indeed the actual words of Jesus Him- self, in warning the Capernaites, positively assert that distinctions founded upon the higher responsibility of greater privilege and the con- trary, will certainly be drawn : '' Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for you." It should suffice for all of us simply to say regarding this whole matter, '' Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " But the pas- sage in St. Peter, above cited, seems at least to give some light of revelation, be it only a gleam, to point out to us the means by which the uncovenanted mercy of God reaches its beneficent end. We cannot however too clearly keep in mind that our great concern is not with speculation, but with duty. There is no other answer now to be given to the question : '' Lord, are there few that be saved ? " than the one reply vouch- FUTURE RETRIBUTION 1S7 safed of old by Him Who knew : " See that, in your questioning about others, yoti do not miss the way of Hfe. Strive, agonise, yourselves to enter in. The path is narrow, and the gate is straight." In like manner, if you ask ''How long shall last the inevitable eating of the fruit of evil ? " We can but say, As long as the sin, so long the punishment thereof : as long as men love darkness rather than light and self more than God, so long must they eat of the fruit of their choice. Whether this will cease at last, " far off, at last, to all," God only knows. The most that we can do is to bound the lurid picture of a mis-spent life with the illimitable light of Divine Love. It is plain that the foretold days when death and hell shall be cast into the fiery lake, when evil shall be no more because God is all in all, can be reached in one of two ways only : either by the destruction, or by the conversion of evil beings. While any soul is capable of recovery to holiness we may be certain that that soul will be the object of God's merciful regard. But the words of Christ and His Apostles do seem undoubtedly to indicate that there may be some in whom the reign of evil has become so i88 FUTURE RETRIBUTION absolute and complete that they are irrecover- able ; and these warnings are supported by all we know of the Persistence of Force, evil as well as good. It seems impossible to conceive how after years, possibly ages, of wilfulness have made conversion more and more difficult, the human will can be brought back to right allegiance. But we must remember that our minds cannot now harmonise the seeming contradiction of human Free-will and divine Sovereignty. Yet we believe in both ; and we rest in the fact that what is impossible with man is nevertheless possible with God. The absolute final Supremacy of Holiness, which is clearly promised, can only be reached by way of one or other of two alternatives. And either alternative may be strongly sup- ported out of Holy Scripture. On the one hand, there are passages which indicate that in the Divine Counsel there is devised a way by which even God's disobedient and banished ones may not finally be expelled from Him. On the other hand, it appears to be asserted that there is a persistent perversity of will which must inevitably lead to ''destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power." FUTURE RETRIBUTION 189 Our wisdom surely is to leave the matter where revelation leaves It, and not to be wise beyond what has been written for our learning. This Is one of the secret things which belong unto the Lord our God. We are sure which alternative would seem to secure the most triumphant issue of Divine Grace. We may hope that this may be the dazzling truth, — one of the many things held back because we cannot bear them now. But we may not inter- pret Scripture except in accordance with Its general sense, and this cannot fairly be ascer- tained by fixing our attention solely upon one class of passages and Ignoring others which have an opposing sense. Our late Laureate at the end of his Vision of Sin, seems to have taken us as far as revelation warrants. " At last I heard a voice upon the slope, Cry to the summit, " Is there any hope ?" To which an answer pealed from that high land, But in a tongue no man could understand ; And on a glimmering limit, far withdrawn, God made Himself an awful rose of dawn." But we know Who this God is Who thus reveals Himself. Even He Who is declared by St. PauP to be *'the Saviour of all men, especially of them that believe." Is not the Christ His Incarnation.? — the Good Shepherd ^ I Timothy iv. 10. igo FUTURE RETRIBUTION Who seeks each wandering soul '' until He find it," — the great Apostle of those who have actually departed this life ignorant and out of the way, the mighty Herald of the evangel of Redemption to ''spirits in prison" in the life grave. We know how the purpose of that Saviour's Mission was by His life and work so to enlarge all minds and change all hearts, that, reflecting His image and being transformed into His likeness, they might all be "summed up in Him." (Ephes. i. lo.) We know how the largeness of His redeeming love is revealed in Romans v. 15, 19,^ where instead of ''many" which would imply the exclusion of some, the Revisers by translating " the many " have made it clear that St. Paul refers to all, — to the multitude and mass of mankind. And we feel that such passages open to us a Vision of Redemption so vast that it can scarcely be said to have limits on earth or in heaven, in time or in eternity. We seem to see the uplifted Christ actually drawing "all men" to Himself.^ We seem almost to hear ^ If by the trespass of the one the many died, much viore did the gift by the grace of the One Man Jesns Christ abound tmto the many. . . . For as through the one viands disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One shall the many be made righteous. 2 St. John xii. 32. FUTURE RETRIBUTION 191 " every tongue " willingly confessing true alle- pfiance.^ The "sin of the world" seems in- deed to have been ''taken away,"^ and the will of Him "Who willeth all men to be saved "^ to be veritably accomplished in the " reconciliation of all things " unto God.^ Pending further light let us at least thank God, Whose thoughts are deeper and higher than ours, that no inadequate human views, no hasty human speech, can ever hinder the fulfilment of the eternal purpose of His mind. Of that purpose He has revealed enough to stir our energies and banish our despair. The Unity, the Peace, the Holiness of the Universe He has created will be accomplished in the day His will is done on earth as it is now in heaven. Till the fulness of time is come, let that suffice. Meanwhile, it can scarcely be the duty of finite intelligence to set human limits to the quickening, transforming power of the Sun of Righteousness. Nor need we, judging merely by the poor dawn of our own age, forecast the shadow of our feeble faith across the noontide glory of that future day when '* God shall be all in all." 1 Phil. ii. 9-1 1. 2 St. John i. 29. 3 j Tim. iii. 3, 4. * Col. i. 19, 20. 192 FUTURE RETRIBUTION But these considerations, intensely interest- ing as they may be, belong to the domain of speculative theology rather than to that of practical religion. For those '' who do not will to be converted to God, for those who would but delay, for those who relapse after every conversion, and for those who believe they need no conversion at all," the warnings of the Bible are plain and clear. This present age is the " day of their visitation," " now Is the accepted time," now the day of grace. Every hour's procrastination, every postponement of the great decision, Increases the danger of that most moving of judicial sentences being spoken over the hesitating soul. '' O that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things that belong unto thy peace ! but now they are hid from thine eyes." Some men's sins go before to judgment ; but we know that this is not so always. Where con- science has been lulled to sleep, men may live oblivious of their plight and practically un- conscious of what should be giving them great pain. Thus, as has often been pointed out, there are multitudes of godless people who seem to succeed in avoiding for the present the fruit of their doings They are temperate, FUTURE RETRIBUTION 193 and are blessed with health. They are shrewd and economical, and amass wealth. They are prudent, and avoid disaster. They are worldly wise, and secure worldly prosperity. If there were nothing beyond, it is said, if there were no hereafter, these would seem to be the wisest. Now, in and for their own generation, judged simply by the world's standard, these children of the age are wise indeed. But judged by the law of Christ, their unwisdom is manifest even if this life were all. For what they enjoy bears no sort of comparison with what they lose, since no material gain can ever compensate for spiritual loss. '' A man's Life consisteth not in the abundance of his possessions." And " what shall a man give in exchange for his Life.>" But as a matter of fact this present existence is not all. The wide judgment of the world is safe. The religious belief of three-fourths of the human race is one with the Catholic Faith in declaring that there is a hereafter. ''It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this — judgment." Thus, for the successful man of the world, who does well for himself, and of whom all men speak well, quite as surely as o 194 FUTURE RETRIBUTION for the debauchee whom the feet of retribution have already overtaken, judgment awaits. The reinstatement of conscience, hitherto resisted, insulted, dethroned, means for the men who have deliberately starved their souls, self-judgment and self-condemnation. And this is certain ; for, though conscience may sleep, conscience will not die. Moreover it is the prerogative of this undying conscience always to see as God sees. And all that is needed for the utter misery of any who now find content in loving what God hates and hating what God loves is simply to see as God sees. Disguises and delusions and excuses then will disappear ; reality and fact alone remain. Neither the justice nor the fact of retribution can be any longer doubted. Conscience will open out the nature of that God of Love Whom the godless have chosen to ignore. They will ''see Him as He is," and the revelation of His loving kindness which ravishes the righteous, will consume them as with veritable "coals of fire." Memory will unfold its tale of mercies slighted and despised, of all the good which only "might have been," of unnumbered opportunities let slip. And this revelation of a wasted past, with all its side-issues of influence upon the FUTURE RETRIBUTION 195 lives of others, must become a thousandfold more poignant, viewed as it will then appear as the most perverse frustration of the purpose of Divine beneficence. To the man thus confronted with the gulf cleft by his own carelessness and sin, — to the man face to face with that most awful of all losses, the lost presence of the Holy Spirit, — what remains ? What but the exceeding bitter cry : " Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell, and in the lowest deep a lower deep, still threatening to devour me, opens wide, to which the hell I suffer seems a heaven." Future Retribution, then is as real and as certain as future Bliss. There is a hell as well as a heaven, though both the one and the other have been so grotesquely misrepresented that the terrors of the one and the joys of the other have come to be widely doubted. '' The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." To realise the loss of heaven is to be in hell. And in the nature of this Perdition — this Loss which is loss indeed — lies the secret of its awful certainty. For thus we see how different it is from any mere arbitrary or objective penalty which might possibly be escaped. It is inevitable. Men o 2 196 FUTURE RETRIBUTION are In eternal misery, and must be so, as long as they are sensual, covetous, proud and love- less. The worm of conscience awakened when the soul is delivered from the body of this death, the unquenchable fires of remorse, the hell of a man's own self cut off from the One Spirit of holiness which could save it from corruption, — this Gehenna is no revengeful infliction of an unnatural punishment ; it is the natural outgrowth and fruition of a godless life. This is the fate from which God in mercy and His Christ have been continually warning men to fly, by the voices of history, of revelation, of experience and of conscience all down the ages. And therefore we must every one acknowledge that we are without excuse, if at the close of our life-history the Redeemer of mankind can only sorrowfully say of us ''I would, but ye would not." LIFE ETERNAL " Verily^ verily, I say unto y cm, Except ye eat the flesh oj the Soti of Mail and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath Eternal Life'' — St. John vi. 53, 54. '' This is a Hard Saying, who can hear it? " Such was the comment originally passed upon the discourse of Christ which culminated in the words of the text. It expressed the view not only of the general public, but of the Master's own disciples. Our Lord had been trying all through this address to lift His hearers' minds out of the miserable mundane groove in which their thoughts were accustomed to run. These Jews had immensely appreciated the satisfaction of their bodily wants in the recent miracle of the loaves and fishes. Recollecting how Moses had fed their fathers in the desert, they seemed to think that if Jesus could but make His temporary provision continuous and regular, as the manna had been under Moses, then His 198 LIFE ETERNAL / claim to be a prophet sent from God might be I at least equally great. A multitude accordingly- had followed Christ from the other side of the Lake, and some of them had gathered before Him in the Capernaite synagogue. They press Christ for credentials. They were true repre- sentatives of *' an evil and adulterous generation which ever seeketh a sign." They would y believe after they had seen. As however the Sign of signs stood before them, not in the form of perishable Mosaic manna, but the very Bread of God in the highest sense — that Bread which could sustain not the mere bodily existence but '* the Life which is life indeed " of the eternal spirit — and yet their eyes were holden ; Jesus could but sorrowfully say, " Ye have even seen ME, and yet believe not." ( This sign-seeking betrays the low level of -rl these people's thought. It is always a poor affair when men cannot recognise Truth and accept it upon its own merits ; when the prophet is judged not by his message and his character but by his performance of miracle. " Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe " was a saying often on the lips of Jesus, and it was always said reproachfully. Even when in later days the faith of an Apostle was lowered LIFE ETERNAL 199 to depend upon external proofs, though the evidence was granted and St. Thomas was abundantly convinced, yet he won scant praise from the Master : " Because thou hast seen Me thou hast believed. Blessed are they which have not seen and yet have believed." To the men who look for " signs " in their prophet rather than for truth, it is natural that religion should appear chiefly a matter of externals. '' What must we do that we work the works of God ?'' But Christ bids them learn the inwardness of true religion, and the useless- ness of works without the vitalizing principle of faith. " This is the W07^k of God, that ye believe on Him Whom He hath sent." An answer, had it but been well weighed since by Christians as well as Jews, sufficient to have stilled waves which have often run mountains high on the troubled sea of theology. For here is faith declared to be the life of works, and works to be a necessity of faith. Again these men with an appetite for miracle and for whom religion was an entirely external thing, even though they say " Lord, evermore give us this bread," can penetrate no deeper into the nature of Christ's meaning than the hope of a physical boon. Christ stood waiting ^ 200 LIFE ETERNAL to relieve the hunger of the soul : their thoughts could rise no higher than the satisfaction of the claims of the body. The Living Bread which came down from Heaven stood before them in the person of the Son of Man Who would give His flesh for the life of the world. But they saw only the peasant Jesus, the Nazarene mechanic, '' whose father and mother we know." These men, whatever their orthodoxy, were really materialists^: their own spiritual nature was still undiscovered. Hence for spiritual Bread they felt no relish, knew no need. In vain before such men are spread the treasures of Him Whose words are ''spirit and life." Their whole mode of thought is carnal, and " the flesh profiteth nothing." There is a Bread of God the assimilation of which differentiates the truly living from those of the children of men who only seem to live. But the materialist can eet no further than such cavil as " How can this man give us His flesh to eat ?" But Christ vouchsafes no answer save the solemn re-asser- tion of the fact, " Verily, verily I say unto you. Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." This is the culminating statement of the doctrine which seemed to our Lord's hearers a LIFE ETERNAL 2ai saying impossible to understand. Nor can we be surprised when we consider that for nineteen centuries the flood of controversy thus opened has deluoed the Christian Church. When to-day we ask what precisely it was which Christ intended to convey in this startling figure, we are first met by those who find here little more than a strong assertion of the para- mount importance of participation in the Holy Eucharist. The Gift, say they, is the gift of Christ's Body and Blood there verily taken and received by the faithful, for the strengthening and refreshing of the soul. In the use of this divinely appointed sacrament, the terms of the text are completely satisfied and fulfilled. And the implication follows that no other fulfil- ment needs to be considered. But with these interpreters I am unable to agree. The interpretation of a passage is one thing : the application of it is another. There may, therefore, be a plainly justifiable applicatio7i of words, studied in the light of after events and later teaching, which would never- theless be quite inadmissible if put forward as their sole legitimate interpretation. That this present passage offers an instance in point, several considerations go to prove. 202 LIFE ETERNAL We find that while St. John often takes for granted the two great Sacraments, he nowhere directly refers to them as outward rites. Thus the view cited ill accords with the habit of the recorder of the words in question. Again, the statement made is unconditional and absolute, and this also is against the theory here opposed. For there is no sort of qualification, such as eating and drinking "worthily" or the like, which the purely sacramental interpretation would properly require. The actual phrase used is also against this idea. For, wherever else in Scripture the Holy Communion is spoken of, the terms used are '' Body and Blood," while here we have the word ''flesh,'' a term strictly proper to the doctrine of our Lord's humanity, and in that sense here peculiarly apt. But there is a final consideration which alone suffices to forbid this exclusive interpretation. For by its acceptance these words would be robbed of all signifi- cance at the time when they were uttered. And it is surely inconceivable that Christ could have spoken to His original audience in a sense which none of them, however spiritually minded, could possibly penetrate then and there. The truth is that the teaching here pierces LIFE ETERNAL 203 deeper, soars higher, and reaches wider than even the Sacrament itself. The doctrine reaches wider than any external act, for no external act can ever so include as to become a valid substitute for the spiritual verities which underlie it. The doctrine is also deeper and higher, inasmuch as the end transcends the means thereto however precious and sacred. This position there now seems special reason very clearly to maintain. For certain move- ments of ecclesiastical thought in the present day unmistakably tend to confuse the delicate border line between faith and superstition. Jnt^Uigent faith demands that a clear distinction^ be drawn between the spiritual end for which h Sacraments exist, and the outward means ordained for its attainment. To minimise this distinction is to voice superstition, not to glorify Faith. Yet, to judge by language frequently heard, much confusion on this point is prevalent. For do we not meet those who — not content with proclaiming the value of the Holy Com- munion as divinely appointed to be a wonderful channel of blessing to ''them that rightly, worthily, and with faith receive the same" — incessantly urge " making Communions," as though this special outward act of obedience 204 LIFE ETERNAL were itself to be regarded as the supreme end of the religious life ? The attitude of mind which accepts this mis- take without demur — unconscious of the radical importance of the distinction it obliterates — has its source elsewhere than in faith. And the prevalence of this mistaken attitude has no doubt given currency to the notion that our Lord's language in the chapter before us refers primarily to the then uninstituted Eucharist, or is simply to be regarded as prophetic of that Sacrament. But, in rejecting a view which makes havoc alike of history and of interpretation, we need never appear to disregard the unique dignity of this truly " Divine Service." For all of us may find there offered, to our great and endless comfort, in concrete form, the very truth which Christ here states absolutely. And we cannot hesitate to aver that the Holy Communion is the very means best suited for the personal realisation of that truth. Nor can the conclusion be reasonably avoided that we have in the language of this chapter the best of all possible commentaries upon this venerable institution, and one infinitely to be preferred before any modern ''Manual" whatsoever. Yet all this ^ LIFE ETERNAL 205 is entirely consistent with the truth, so important to keep clear, that in this discourse at Capernaum Jesus Christ is dealing /r^V/^^r//^ not with the outward rite, but with the spiritual fact which underlies it. [ Surely the point needs no labouring that these wonderful words are intended to describe, both for Christ's first hearers and for us, the profound spiritual truth that the calling of the Christian disciple is to nothing lower than to become '' partaker of the divine nature." The striking metaphor used is prepared for by the previous train of the discourse, and it sets forth with marvellous force that this is to be realised by means of the Christian's absolute identifica- JL tion with the '' Son of Man." As Bishop Westcottputs it, ''The Son of Man lived for us and died for us and communicates to us the effects of His life and death as perfect Man." Without this communication of Christ, men can have " no life in themselves." It is just this impartingpf Christ Himself, so as to become in the recipient a spring of life within, _which is the essential subject of this_ 1/ passage. It is a holy mystery which eludes prosaic definition. And even when it is described by Jesus Himself, it cannot but 2o6 LIFE ETERNAL appear a '* hard saying " to men who have not or rather will not use the faculty of faith, — to men who have not or rather will not use the will to understand and obey. There is a life- long school of God in which such a lesson as this may be learnt. But Faith and Obedience were ever in that school the twin conditions of knowledge, without which nothing. To the union of Faith and Obedience in any life is never denied the Gift of a wonder-work- ing child whose name is Love. To love is given the revelation of God. Love unseals the sight and wins the Truth which flesh and blood cannot reveal. Love may doubt about a method, like that of the Cross : " That be far from Thee, Lord." Love may doubt about a fact, like that of the Resurrection : but Love clings to the person of Christ, identifies itself with His character, and all else may be forgiven. The final decision is safe : " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life " ; the final devotion is sure, '* My Lord and My God ! " Into the Love thus born of Faith and of Obedience, Christ was ever leading His dis- ciples while He tabernacled among them in the flesh. It was to be the atmosphere in LIFE ETERNAL 207 which they lived and moved, it was to be the light in which all the mysteries of earth and heaven would grow clear. The story of the gospels shows how slow even good men may be in realising this ideal. And the theological history of the Church tells the same sad tale. The perfect Insight begotten of pure Love is still delayed ; even for those that profess and call themselves Christians the ideal of Christ remains a poet's dream : " I'm apt to think the man That could surround the sum of things and spy The heart of God, and secrets of His empire, Would speak but love ; with him the bright result Would change the hue of intermediate scenes, And make one thing of all theology." That happy hour has not struck yet. We have still to wait for the complete fulfilment of the prophecy here cited by our Lord, " They shall all be taught of God " ; so it becomes us not to be too hard upon those inappreciative hearers of a Master whom we ourselves follow so far off. Our wisdom will be to notice care- fully how much in their attitude of thought reminds us of our own position. Is not our lack of faith rebuked as well as theirs by the assurance, ''He that believeth on Me hath Life Eternal " ? May we not well tremble in 2o8 LIFE ETERNAL our disobedience at the restricted promise, "If a man keep My saying, he shall never see death " ? And what is it but our lovelessness that denies us the rich experience which dis- tinguishes the true disciple from the outside world? '' If a man love Me he will keep my Word, and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him." It is nothing less than this which Christ is per- petually offering to all of us, and which He set before the Capernaites as a gift so much greater than loaves and fishes and manna. ''/ am the Bread which cometh down from Heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die ! " He offers us Himself, His Spirit, His way of looking at life and all its concerns. His revelation of the Father, His power over evil. His tireless energy for good. He stands at the door of the human heart and knocks, and with those that have the grace to open He abides. And the characters of those who receive Him and " practise His Presence " gradually shape them- selves after His likeness. For them that miracle is wrought for which St. Paul travailed with his converts : the Christ is formed within them. They and He are One. They live, yet not they, but rather Christ Who liveth in them. LIFE ETERNAL 209 They engage In manifold pursuits : they look like other people. But whether they make tents like St. Paul, or doctor bodies like St. Luke, or collect taxes like St. Matthew ; whether they are soldiers like Cornelius, or servants like Rhoda — their Life is apart from all this, ''their Life is hid with Christ in God." And the source and sustenance of all is the Christ Who communicates Himself to the believer, — to the man who so believes as to Identify himself with the Son of Man, with an identification so complete as to justify the starding figure " eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of Man," — with a union so absolute as to bear comparison with the ineffable Unity between Christ and His Father. When Jesus says that He will give Himself to us so that His Life may become the life of our souls and His Death a veritable part of our spiritual experience, is it not plain that He is holding out to us that splendid possibility which the Saints of God in every age have all in their measure realised ? Up to the understanding of this truth, which is the very core of Christianity, the Master strove in this discourse gradually to lift the minds of those whom He addressed. For the majority then present He spoke in p ] 2IO LIFE ETERNAL vain. We have seen how this was. But we dare not forget how perpetually recurrent is the . hindrance which kept them unblest. As in the day of Christ, so now, physical comfort, mechanical religionism, outward and visible signs, are the material things which engross the thoughts of the world. Moreover this materialism is always per- petrating the same blunders as of old. Other- wise indeed it could not continue to survive. The commonest mistake of materialism lies in the persistent use of the wrong instrument for its investigation. It is for ever crying out for '' a sign," in order that it may '' see and believe." But this demand is so utterly unscientific as to be positively stupid. It is only in its own sphere that sight is the instrument of knowledge. The scalpel has its uses, but there are more things in heaven and earth than ever can be laid on the dissecting table or brought within the walls of the laboratory. It is with these that Jesus Christ is concerned, and He offers you the only means by which these things are to be tested, when He tells you that you must believe and love and obey if you would know. It has been quite truly said that '' Jesus insisted on Faith for the same reason that a mathema- LIFE ETERNAL 211 tician relies on the sense of numbers, or an artist on the sense of beauty : it was the one means of knowledge in His department. He was the Prophet of God, and must address the God faculty in man. Between Faith and God there was the same correspondence as between the eye and light. Faith proves God : God demands Faith." This, then, is the perennial blunder of the materialist. He persists in ignoring Faith and falling back on sight in the quest for God and His Truth. But God is a Spirit, and His Truth is Spiritual Truth. And you cannot see the spiritual, any more than you can see a sound or hear a lovely landscape. You must use the sense proper to the object in view, and not that suitable to a different object. It is of the Eternal things not seen that Jesus spoke, and to treat these as though they were things seen and temporal is to add perversity to dis- obedience. '' Faith is the instinct of the spiritual world : it is the sixth sense — the sense of the unseen." Apart from this power by which spiritual things are spiritually discerned, the teaching of Jesus could never be understood. To those of old who lacked this gift, the " Bread of Life " could mean nothing but a new 212 LIFE ETERNAL sort of manna, just as to their successors to-day it seems to present itself as almost a fit subject for chemical analysis. To those Jews who had it not the words of Christ provided nothing more than a fresh Rabbinic riddle, even as to- day men may be found to regard His Teaching mainly as an intellectual problem upon which they may exercise their ingenuity. But men of Faith, in whatever age they live, outgrow these thoughts. They come to understand how '' the flesh profiteth nothing," for theirs is the talisman which transforms the Words of Christ from mere food for the brain into " spirit and life " for the soul. And though for a time some speech may seem obscure, they come to understand that no Saying of Jesus was ever yet so ''hard" as to refuse its meaning to the Obedience of Faith and the In- sight of Love. And verily they have their reward, " now in this present time" and ever- more, for to these their Master's promise is day by day fulfilled : "He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light of Life" ; and "He that believeth on Me hath Life Eternal." RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY. BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE WORD AND THE WAY Crown 8vo. Price 6s. Macmillan and Co. THE SPECTATOR. — " The author sets forth in a series of sermons which constitutes an eminently logical and coherent whole the character of Revelation, the outlines of the Christian life in which this Revelation has its practical outcome, the difficulties and hindrances which are encountered in the effort to realise the ideals of this life, and the aids, individual or corporate, which the Christian may claim and appropriate. . . . Every one will recognise the value of these discourses, their earnestness, their spirituality, the vigour of their style, and the rich- ness of illustration which give them distinction." PALL MALL GAZETTE.— ''TX-i^ Rector of Bexhill is, if we mistake not, a new author. If he goes on as he has begun in this volume, we prophesy for him a career of great usefulness in the Church. . . . His able discourses are candid, erudite, and spiritual. .... We heartily welcome one who has the courage to follow truth. .... The style of these sermons is excellent : earnest, controlled, and forcible. GUARDIAN.—"- The plan of this book has been well thought out. .... the writer is both faithful to the old truth and also shrewd enough to read beneath the surface of the age in which he lives. His book is a valuable companion for those whose duty is to bring out of their treasures things new and old." CHURCH TIMES.— ''T\\\% volume sets forth excellently the in- herent testimony to itself of Holy Scripture .... ingenious, persuasive, and sound." CHURCH QUARTERLY RE VIE IV.—'' This is a book of very distinct ability .... the writer's object is to commend the old Faith of Christianity in ways that will appeal to the minds and consciences of the present day. The tone and aim of the book are excellent." Z OMB ON QUAR TERL V RE VIE JV. — */ A manly and pure ethical purpose is perhaps the chief characteristic of these wholesome sermons." MANCHESTER G UARDIAN—'' This volume is marked by a broad liberality of view, a sound common sense, and a transparent clearness which are truly refreshing .... the sobriety and manliness of the writer's teaching are in harmony with the best traditions of the Church of which he is a minister." SCOTSMAN. — " The author is evidently a well-equipped divine, as well as a man of culture and taste." PREEMAN. — " Fresh and striking ; rich in the application of old truths to new circumstances." LEEDS MERCURY.— ''The though tfulness, vigour, and freshness of these sermons, and their scholarly style, will make them very generally acceptable." SUSSEX DAILY NEWS.— "A nohXe exposition of the imperish- able power of the Bible." Date Due