tihvaxy of Che trheolojical ^tminaxy 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 The Estate of the 
 Rev. John B, Wiedinger 
 
 
CONCERNING THE CHRIST 
 
CONCERNING THE 
 CHRIST 
 
 
 BY 
 
 J. D. WEEMAN, M.A. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "LIFE ON THE UPLANDS" 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 
 
 3 & 5 WEST EIGHTEENTH ST 
 
 1908 
 
TO 
 
 THE MANY FEIENDS 
 
 ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC 
 
 WHO SO GENEROUSLY EXPEESSED APPEECIATION OF 
 
 MY EAELIER BOOK, "LIFE ON THE UPLANDS," 
 
 I GRATEFULLY DEDICATE 
 
 THIS VOLUME 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FAOa 
 CHRIST IN THE MANGER . . .1 
 
 "And this ig the sign unto you; ye shall 
 find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and 
 lying in a manger." — Luke ii. 12. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Christ's piRer eeoord-ed words . .15 
 
 " How is it that ye sought me ? Wist ye 
 not that I must be about my Father's 
 business ? " — Luke ii. 49. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 CHRIST AT THE JORDAN . , .33 
 
 " Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan 
 unto John, to be baptized of him. 
 
 But John would have hindered him, saying, 
 
 I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest 
 
 thou to me ? 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGK 
 
 But Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it 
 to be BO now : for thus it becometh us to fulfil 
 all righteousness. Then he suffered him. 
 
 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up 
 straightway from the water : and lo, the 
 heavens were opened imto him, and he saw 
 the Spirit of God descending as a d">ve, and 
 coming upon him : and, lo, a voice out of the 
 heavens, saying, This is my beloved Son, in 
 whom I am well pleased." — Matthew iii. 13-17. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS . . .47 
 
 " Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into 
 the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." — 
 Matthew iv. 1. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 CHRIST AT THE WEDDING FEAST IN OANA . 63 
 
 '♦ This beginning of his signs did Jesus in 
 Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory." — 
 John 11. 11. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 CHRIST IN THE SYNAGOGftFE OF NAZARETH . 77 
 
 "And he came to Nazareth, where he had 
 been brought up : and he entered, as his 
 custom was, into the synagogue on the sabbath 
 day, and stood up to read." — Luke iv. 16. 
 
CONTENTS IX 
 
 CHAPTER Vn 
 
 page: 
 CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE . , 95 
 
 " And the Passover of the Jews was at hand, 
 and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And he 
 found in the temple those that sold oxen and 
 sheep and doves, and the changers of money 
 sitting : and he made a scourge of cords, and 
 cast all out of the temple, both the sheep and 
 the oxen; and he poured out the changers' 
 money, and overthrew their tables; and to 
 them that sold doves he said, Take these things 
 hence; make not my Father's house a house 
 of merchandise. His disciples remembered 
 that it was written. The zeal of thine house 
 shall eat me up. The Jews therefore answered 
 and said unto him, What sign shewest thou 
 unto us, seeing that thou doest these things ? 
 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy 
 this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. 
 The Jews therefore said. Forty and six years 
 was tlis temple in building, and wilt thou raise 
 it up iu three days ? But he spake of the 
 temple of his body. When therefore he was 
 raised from the dead, his disciples remembered 
 that he spake this; and they believed the 
 scripture, aaad the word which Jesus had 
 said."— John ii. 13-22. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CHRIST AT Jacob's well . , . 109 
 
 "So he cometh to a city of Samaria, called 
 Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob 
 gave to his son Joseph : and Jacob's well was 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FA6B 
 
 there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his 
 journey, sat thus by the well. It was about 
 the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of 
 Samaria to draw water." — John iv. 5-1, 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 CHRIST ON THE MOUNT OP BEATITUDES . 123 
 
 "Every one therefore 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. And every one that heareth these 
 words of mine and doeth them not, shall be 
 likened unto a fooUsh man which built his 
 house upon the sand : and the rain descended, 
 and the floods came, and the winds blew, and 
 smote upon that house ; and it fell : and great 
 was the fall thereof." — Matthew vii. 24-27. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 CHRIST BY THE SEA OP GALILEE , . 139 
 
 " On that day went Jesus out of the house, 
 and sat by the seaside. And there were 
 gathered unto Him great multitudes, so that 
 he entered into a boat and sat ; and all the 
 multitude stood on the beach. And he spake 
 to them many things in parables, saying, 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 FAOB 
 
 Behold the sower went forth to sow." — 
 Matthew xiii. 1-3. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 CHRIST BY THE SEA OF GALILEE {continued) . 155 
 
 " The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure 
 hid in a field : the which when a man hath 
 found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and 
 selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. 
 
 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a 
 merchantman seeking goodly pearls : who, when 
 he hath found one pearl of great price, went 
 and sold all that he had, and bought it." — 
 Matthew xiii. 44-46. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 CHEIST CONCERNING THINGS LOST . . 173 
 
 " And he spake unto them this parable saying, 
 What man of you having an hundred sheep . . . 
 Or what woman having ten pieces of silver . . . 
 A certain man had two sons. . . ." 
 
 Luke xv. 3, 4, 8, 11. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 CHRIST AT THE FEAST OP TABERNACLES . 191 
 
 " Now on the last day, the great day of the 
 feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying. If any man 
 thirst, let him come unto me, and drink."— 
 John vii. 37. 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 FAOB 
 CHKIST IN THE HOME AT BETHANY '. . 207 
 
 " Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, 
 and Lazarus." — John xi. 5. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 CHRIST ON THE MOUNT OF TRANSFIGUEATION . 227 
 
 •' And he was transfigured before them : and 
 his face did shine as the sun, and his garments 
 became white as the light." — Matthew xvii. 2. 
 
CHRIST IN THE MANGER 
 
" And this is the sign unto you ; ye shall find a babe 
 wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger." 
 — Luke ii. 12. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 CHRIST IN THE MANGER 
 
 1. 
 
 The Babe in the Manger is the Sign of the 
 Spiritual Primacy of Childhood. 
 
 THE Old Testament opens with the 
 picture of a child-man in a garden ; 
 the New Testament opens with the picture 
 of a man-child in a manger. Around the 
 figure of the child-man Genesis weaves the 
 story of Paradise Lost ; about the person 
 of the man-child the Gospels weave the 
 story of Paradise Regained. The portrait 
 of the child-man is dim and indistinct, like 
 some faded old daguerreotype in which the 
 features seem to be obscured by a clinging 
 haze ; the portrait of the man-child is as 
 fresh and clear as if but yesterday put 
 upon the plate. It is done in fast colours. 
 Neither mist nor dust are permitted to rest 
 upon this precious triumph of an artless 
 
 3 
 
4 CHRIST IN THE MANGER 
 
 art. Every morning the keepers of this 
 treasure breathe upon it with their warm 
 desires and burnish it with the velvet touch 
 of love. Throughout the day they wear it 
 upon their hearts, and at night they find 
 their cleansing and their balm in con- 
 templation of its sweet and heavenly 
 grace. 
 
 There is a sense in which Christ remains 
 for ever the Holy Child. His spirit never 
 lost the freshness of life's morning hour. 
 To the close of His day on earth He was 
 a fragrant, dewy rose. He never lost the 
 sense of the recency of His exodus from 
 the bosom of the Father. He never lost 
 His childlike trust in God. He did not 
 outgrow — 
 
 "The hour 
 Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower." 
 
 Not one golden line ever faded out of His 
 early ideals. No cynicism soured Him, no 
 pessimism chilled Him. He carried the 
 child-spirit with Him to His cross. He 
 carried it with Him to the throne of 
 glory. It is by the child-spirit He rules 
 in the heavenly world. In the midst of 
 the throne stands a Lamb. The last words 
 recorded from the lips of the crowned 
 Redeemer contain the affirmation of His 
 
CHRIST IN THE MANGER 5 
 
 perpetual youth : " I, Jesus, am the bright 
 and morning star." 
 
 And the child-Christ is pre-eminently the 
 child's Christ. Nowhere is He more clearly 
 reflected than in the unspoiled eyes of the 
 hearts of little children. The child-spirit 
 is the seer-spirit. In life's cloudless morn- 
 ing some peaks stand out in clearness upon 
 the horizon of the soul which all too often 
 fade from view as day advances. When 
 the child-spirit dies a light goes out of the 
 soul which can only be re-kindled by a re- 
 birth. God became a little child that He 
 might come to men, and men must become 
 as little children if they would go to God. 
 The inner secret of the Christian life is the 
 carrying of the picture of Christ in the 
 heart. And the children are its best cus- 
 todians. The guarantee of the permanent 
 enthralment of the human heart to Christ 
 is the perpetual renewal of the child-life 
 of the world. There are times when our 
 babies teach us more of God than our 
 Bibles do. It is an open question whether 
 the pulpit or the cradle is the greater re- 
 ligious force. The cradle speaks upon a 
 narrower range of themes than the pulpit 
 does, but its testimony is more consistent, 
 more constant, and more convincing. To 
 reverent parents the birth of children into 
 
6 CHRIST IN THE MANGER 
 
 their homes is a sacramental experience, 
 bringing them into immediate relations 
 with the unseen. It is said that when 
 Origen was an infant in his cradle his 
 father would sometimes stoop to impress 
 a kiss upon his breast and to say, " This 
 is a temple of the Holy Ghost." There may 
 be something more than poetic fancy or a 
 reminiscence of Platonic philosophy even 
 in Mrs. Browning's quaint thought of — 
 
 " The murmur of that outer Infinite 
 Which unweaned babies smile at in their sleep 
 When wondered at for smiling." 
 
 Then, too, the love begotten by the birth 
 of children is one of the most powerful 
 instruments of soul culture. Parental love 
 is the most unselfish, the most sacrificial, 
 the most spiritual of all human affections. 
 Out of that, as we know it in ourselves and 
 in those who have fathered and mothered 
 us, we best know God. A world without 
 a child would be a world with its windows 
 closed and curtained against the light of 
 heaven. The graves of the children, too, 
 as well as their cradles, link us with the 
 spirit-world. 
 
 " There's a narrow ridge in the graveyard 
 Would scarce stay a child in its race ; 
 But to me and my thought it is wider 
 Thau the star-sown vagues of space." 
 
CHRIST IN THE MANGER 7 
 
 Most men are religious when they look 
 upon the faces of their own dead babes. 
 The materialism which at other times 
 clings so closely to their minds and in- 
 fects them with doubts of God and immor- 
 tality drops away from them in this hushed 
 hour. If we never buried any but the 
 aged, the pilgrims exhausted by the long 
 and weary road, we should be haunted by 
 a darker fear that death may be the end 
 of all. But that these fresh young spirits 
 should be quenched for ever seems impos- 
 sible of belief. 
 
 As men and women we are only at our 
 best when nearest to the simplicity of our 
 childhood. It was only yesterday that Sir 
 Henry Campbell-Bannerman was carried 
 to his burial amidst extraordinary demon- 
 strations of a nation's love. No former 
 premier of Great Britain had won the 
 affection of all political parties and all 
 classes of citizens to so great an extent. 
 Nor had any former leader of the British 
 House of Commons ruled it with such con- 
 summate ease. Yet he was not a brilliant 
 man. He was not an orator nor a master 
 of statecraft. While great men bowed to 
 him as " the Father of the House," in their 
 hearts they felt towards him somewhat as 
 one feels towards a winsome child. It was 
 
8 CHRIST IN THE MANGER 
 
 the boy in him that they loved so well. 
 It was the " little child " that led them. 
 They saw in him a simplicity which success 
 could not spoil, and a sympathy which 
 neither political reverses nor popular pre- 
 judices nor domestic griefs could chill. 
 
 We should make it a purpose of our life 
 to carry the child-spirit with us in its fresh- 
 ness through the years. It is only thus 
 that we can keep in touch with heaven. 
 We are all as little children when we pray, 
 if we really pray. And prayer is the tran- 
 scendent act of the soul through which we 
 come to our utmost spiritual stature. We 
 shall never do anything greater than to 
 keep the child in us alive to the end. If 
 we could choose the mood of our own 
 death-hour it would be to fall asleep in 
 Jesus as a child sinks into slumber in its 
 mother's arms. It is said that Daniel 
 Webster, in his last moments of conscious- 
 ness, folded his hands upon his breast and 
 prayed : — 
 
 ••Now I lay me down to sleep, 
 I pray the Lord my soul to keep ; 
 If I should die before I wake. 
 I pray the Lord my soul to cake. 
 And this I ask for Jesus' sake, 
 
 Amen." 
 
 When the great Guthrie lay dying, he 
 
CHRIST IN THE MANGER 9 
 
 asked the watchers about his bed to " si^ig 
 a bairn's hymn." Always the child in us is 
 our chief dependence for contact with the 
 Infinite. 
 
 2. 
 
 The Babe in the Manger is the Unmistakable 
 Sign of God's Sympathy with Men. 
 
 All our knowledge of God is obtained 
 through signs, of one sort or another. 
 The nature-world is a many-paged sign- 
 book, written through with symbols of 
 intelligence and power. But it cannot tell 
 us what we most need to know concern- 
 ing God's attitude to our individual lives. 
 This knowledge we can only attain through 
 the revelation of God in Christ. 
 
 It may with accuracy be said that all the 
 story of Christ's life on earth is a record of 
 the eloquent signs He gave to men in God's 
 behalf. Wherever we find Him in the 
 Gospel narratives, whether in home or 
 synagogue or temple, in wilderness or 
 city, on mountain or on lake ; whatever 
 form of activity we find Him engaged in, 
 whether teaching or healing, stilling storms 
 or subduing spirits, forgiving sins or raising 
 the dead or suffering on the cross ; this one 
 thing He is ever doing — flashing signal- 
 lights from God to men. He made signs 
 
10 CHRIST IN THE MANGER 
 
 to men, and they were the most impres- 
 sive and appealing that the world has 
 ever seen ; but he was able to make these 
 signs because He was in Himself the Sign 
 of Signs. 
 
 If we accept the New Testament account 
 of the origin of Bethlehem's Babe we can 
 no longer doubt God's perfect sympathy 
 with men. Christ in the manger means 
 that deity has cradled itself in the midst 
 of human poverty and sorrow and suffer- 
 ing and sin. When this child weeps we 
 behold our God in tears. When He dies 
 upon His cross we behold the blood drip 
 from the heart of the Eternal. The Babe 
 in the manger is the sign of God's desire 
 to come near to us, to share our sorrows, 
 to bear our sins, to deliver us from every 
 evil thing, and to save us unto His eternal 
 kingdom. 
 
 3. 
 
 The Babe in the Manger is the Conclusive 
 Sign of Mans Capacity for Receiving 
 God. 
 
 The creation story tells us of a man made 
 in the image of God. The incarnation story 
 tells us of a God made in the image of man. 
 The child-man in the garden and the man- 
 child in the manger are both impressive 
 
CHRIST IN THE MANGER 11 
 
 signs of the kinship between God and man ; 
 but the latter is by far the clearer and 
 more conclusive. In this child came to 
 dwell the fullness of the Godhead bodily. 
 The perfectness of the character of the 
 Son of Man is the proof that the moral 
 attributes of God may come to be the 
 personal possession of men. This capacity 
 for the indwelling of God raises humanity 
 to a new dignity. That the Son of God 
 should become the Son of Man is the 
 highest compliment that deity could pay 
 humanity. It has been conjectured that 
 the fall of Lucifer was due to the anger 
 of his wounded pride on learning of the 
 purpose of the Son to pass by the nature 
 of angels and take upon Himself the nature 
 of men. 
 
 4. 
 
 The Babe in the Manger is a Sign to Warn 
 us against the Danger of Neglecting to 
 Offer the Hospitalities of our Hea7'ts to 
 Christ. 
 
 The fact that in the hour of His birth 
 " The little Lord Jesus laid down His sweet 
 head " in a stall, will always serve as a 
 reminder of man's blindness to high privi- 
 lege. That inn at Bethlehem came near 
 to having greatness thrust upon it. It 
 
12 CHRIST IN THE MANGER 
 
 was within a hair's-breadth of being 
 immortalized by the patronage of the 
 King of Kings. But it knew not the 
 day of its visitation. The tide of travel 
 surging through the land in consequence 
 of the Emperor's edict that all the world 
 should be taxed and that each man should 
 go to his birthplace for registration, 
 had brought an unwonted crowd to 
 the little inn. Before Joseph and Mary 
 could secure accommodation the place was 
 full. The first to come was the first to be 
 served, so that there was " no room " for 
 the Holy Family in the hour of their 
 emergency. 
 
 It is a characteristic feature of our 
 modern life that the available space within 
 us is speedily taken and densely packed. 
 If a man has any capacity for thinking in 
 these days the chambers of his mind will be 
 quickly filled with intellectual interests. 
 Science is busy sending in new facts and 
 theories and demanding that they be 
 accommodated. It wires ahead for rooms, 
 offering big prices. It threatens with pains 
 and penalties should it be denied. Along 
 with Science come Art and Literature and 
 Philosophy and Politics, each clamouring 
 for room and entertainment. Business, too, 
 shoulders its way into the soul. It rides 
 
CHRIST IN THE MANGER 13 
 
 up to the gates booted and spurred and 
 splashed with mud. Sometimes there is 
 blood on the feet of the horses which it 
 rides. It comes with force and impatience. 
 Its riding-whip beats a loud challenge upon 
 the door. Pushing in, also, to book for 
 rooms, are the varied Pleasures which our 
 modern civilisation affords. Loudly they 
 knock for entrance. They promise song 
 and story and games and laughter and 
 forgetfulness. The danger is that amidst 
 all these claimants for our hospitahty 
 Christ may be crowded out. There are 
 some quaint, sweet lines in an old 
 Moravian hymn-book which may serve 
 to work in us a greater carefulness in 
 this regard. 
 
 " But art Thou come, dear Saviour ? Hath Thy love 
 Thus made Thee stoop, and leave Thy throne above 
 The lofty heavens, and thus Thyself to dress 
 In dust, to visit mortals ? Could no less 
 A condescension serve ? And after all 
 The mean reception of a cratch and stall ? 
 Dear Lord, I'll fetch Thee thence ! I have a room 
 ('Tis poor, but 'tis my best), if Thou wUt come 
 Within so small a cell, where I would fain 
 Mine and the world's Redeemer entertain ; 
 I mean, my heart; 'tis sluttish, I confess. 
 And will not mend Thy lodging, Lord, unless 
 Thou send before Thy harbinger ; I mean 
 Thy pure and purging Grace, to make it clean 
 And sweep its nasty corner ; then I'll try 
 To wash it also with a weeping eye. 
 
14 CHRIST IN THE MANGER 
 
 And when 'tis swept and wash'd, I then will go 
 And with Thy leave, I'll fetch some flowers that grow 
 In Thine own garden, Faith and Love to Thee ; 
 "With these I'll dress it up, and these shall be 
 My rosemary and bays. But when my best 
 Is done, the room's not fit for such a Guest. 
 But here's the cure ; Thy presence, Lord, alone 
 Will make a stall a Court, a cratch a Throne." 
 
 I have read that if one were to suspend 
 a bell weighing a hundred tons, and a little 
 child were to stand beneath it and play 
 upon a flute, the vibrations of the air 
 produced by the playing of the flute would 
 cause the bell to tremble like a living thing 
 and resound through all its mass. As bell 
 responds to flute so the heart of the 
 Christian responds to the music of the 
 message that issues from the manger-cradle 
 of the Babe of Bethlehem. The time will 
 come when the music from that manger 
 shall melt into itself all earth's Babel sounds 
 and fill the world with harmony. When 
 the heart of humanity has been everywhere 
 touched and tuned into accord with the 
 ground-note of Bethlehem, it will become a 
 golden bell whose rhythmic strokes in the 
 tower of Time shall — 
 
 '* "Ring out the want, the care, the sin. 
 The faithless coldness of the times." 
 
CHRIST'S FIRST RECORDED WORDS 
 
" How is it that ye sought me ? Wist ye not that I 
 must be about my Father's business ? " — Luke ii. 49. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CHEIST'S FIEST RECOEDED WOEDS 
 
 THESE were the first drops to fall into 
 the flask of history from the fountain 
 of Christ's speech. We taste in them all the 
 distinctive flavours of that Water of Life 
 which afterwards flowed so freely from 
 that exhaustless spring. The qualities of 
 spontaniety, originality and authority, 
 which characterise the later utterances of 
 the Great Teacher are all present in this 
 first crystal jet of speech which fell from 
 His fresh, young lips. Yet with all these 
 qualities in them, the words do not impress 
 us as being precocious words. There is 
 nothing weird about them. They do not 
 sound like the sententiously ambitious 
 sayings of a child-prodigy. They do not 
 make us think of Jesus as of one grown 
 old before His time — one too early with- 
 drawn from the natural interests and 
 simple joys of happy boyhood. Even 
 
 3 17 
 
18 CHRIST'S FIRST 
 
 with these great words upon His lips, 
 words destined for immortahty, He is still 
 to us the sweet, glad-hearted, unaffected 
 son of Mary. And this for the reason that 
 they are so obviously unstudied words. The 
 truth which they convey had not been 
 reached by strenuous processes of reasoning. 
 It was native to His mind. The utterance 
 was as effortless as the shedding of its 
 fragrance by a rose. 
 
 In this fact we find the secret of the 
 uniqueness and supremacy of Christ as a 
 religious teacher. He was born into the 
 world with a perfect faculty for knowing 
 and revealing God. No human being ever 
 approached Him in this respect. In the 
 realm of spiritual truth He moved as freely 
 and as buoyantly as a bird in air. His soul 
 was wondrously winged for flight into that 
 upper region. His thoughts towards God 
 were ever " blithesome and cumberless." 
 Though His heart had nest upon the 
 ground in the love of Mary and of Joseph, 
 His spirit made frequent, lark-like flights 
 into the heavens, stripping off a song at 
 every spiral of its ascending, until it 
 touched the bosom of the Eternal ; then 
 it would come singing back to earth again 
 to rest contentedly in the affection of those 
 humble human hearts. He knew God in- 
 
RECORDED WORDS 19 
 
 tiiiiively and infallibly. This is why Ho 
 knew Man and Nature so accurately and 
 profoundly. He approached these prob- 
 lems from the upper side. He came 
 through God to Nature and to Man. 
 Standing in the light of the knowledge of 
 God, He saw through Nature and through 
 Man, through Time and through Eternity. 
 
 This first recorded utterance of the Holy 
 Child makes a fi.tting "foreword" to the 
 gospel afterwards unfolded by the man 
 Christ Jesus. It stands as the "Beautiful 
 Gate" of the Temple of truth erected by 
 His potent words and works. The plan of 
 this massive doorway harmonises perfectly 
 with the architecture of the cathedral to 
 which it gives us entrance. As we linger 
 here we catch the prelude of the song with 
 which the building resounds from crypt to 
 dome. 
 
 The message of Jesus from first to last 
 was a message concerning the nature and 
 ways of God. And both these notes are 
 sounded here. 
 
 1. 
 
 Christ here declares the Fact of God's 
 Fatherhood. 
 
 Holman Hunt's conception of the Temple 
 scene as set forth in his picture is delight- 
 
20 CHRIST'S FIRST 
 
 fully suggestive. Jesus has evidently seen 
 His mother as she enters the Temple-court, 
 and hastens, with the love-light in His eyes, 
 to w^elcome her. As the artist paints the 
 group, they are standing apart from the 
 doctors of the law and the other youths 
 of the Temple school. Mary's arm is laid 
 caressingly around the shoulders of her 
 beautiful son, and her lips are very close 
 to His ear as she whispers to Him the 
 story of the parental anxiety. Joseph 
 stands behind, peering over Mary's 
 shoulder, with an expression of perplexity 
 and affection upon his noble face. They 
 make a charming group, and all their 
 bearing betokens the finest feeling. The 
 artist would have us believe that there 
 was no rushing in of a dishevelled woman, 
 frantic with fear and screaming out re- 
 proaches, but rather a tender and dignified 
 reunion of the family, accompanied by a 
 gentle reminder of the lad's filial obliga- 
 tions. But that word " Father " which 
 Mary utters proves to be a kindling word. 
 " Does my Father seek Me ? Do you not 
 understand that God is My Father? He 
 does not need to seek Me, for I am ever 
 with Him." There was no unfilialness 
 towards Mary or Joseph in the reply 
 which Jesus gave, but only a loving re- 
 
RECORDED WORDS 21 
 
 minder of the relation which He bore to 
 God and of the fact that the higher rela- 
 tion must rule His life. Flashing forth in 
 such sweet, spontaneous fashion from His 
 boyhood's consciousness of God, this word 
 "Father" entered the soul of Mary with 
 the light of a new revelation. It became 
 for her, henceforth, " the master-light " of 
 all her seeing. 
 
 And this word " Father " proved to be the 
 master-word of all Christ's teaching. By 
 this He made known the essence of God's 
 character as a God of love. Every great 
 doctrine which He expounded had its roots 
 in this fundamental conception. Not only 
 so, but they were all distinctly stated in 
 terms of the divine Fatherhood. 
 
 Consider His doctrine of Providence. 
 The kernel of it all lies in the words, 
 " Be ye not therefore anxious, saying, 
 What shall we eat? or. What shall we 
 drink? or. Wherewithal shall we be 
 clothed? For your heavenly Father 
 knoweth that ye have need of all these 
 things." 
 
 Take His doctrine of Prayer. Both the 
 obligation and the encouragement to pray 
 are grounded in the fact of the Fatherhood. 
 " After this manner therefore pray ye : Our 
 Father which art in heaven." *• If ye then, 
 
22 CHRIST'S FIRST 
 
 being evil, know how to give good gifts 
 unto your children, how much more shall 
 your Father which is in heaven give good 
 things to them that ask Him ? " 
 
 Study His doctrine of Repentance. The 
 call to repentance which He issued was in 
 behalf and in the name of God's paternal 
 relation. Sin He viewed as the reign of 
 unfilial feeling in the heart that was made 
 for filial love. To repent was to arise and 
 go to the Father. The great incentive 
 which Ho gave for turning away from 
 sin was the "joy in the presence of the 
 angels of God over one sinner that re- 
 penteth." 
 
 Also the clearest light in which we can 
 view the Atonement is the light which 
 He shed upon it from the Fatherhood. 
 It was in the fact of the divine Father- 
 hood that He found the supreme impulse 
 for His atoning work. The end aimed at 
 in the Atonement was the winning back 
 of alienated children to the fellowship of 
 the Father. The means employed were 
 those of sacrificial love. Both were of the 
 Father. "Therefore doth My Father love 
 Me, because I lay down My life. No one 
 taketh it away from Me, but I lay it 
 down of Myself. I have power to lay it 
 down, and I have power to take it again. 
 
RECORDED WORDS 23 
 
 This commandment received I from My 
 Father." 
 
 If we consider His doctrine of Salvation 
 we find the keystone of it all in the great 
 word of assuring promise, "My Father 
 which gave them Me is greater than all ; 
 and no one is able to snatch them out of 
 the Father's hand." 
 
 When we think of Heaven it is in terms 
 of the same great word which He gave 
 when He said, " In My Father's house are 
 many mansions : if it were not so, I would 
 have told you. I go to prepare a place for 
 you." 
 
 In unveiling to men the essential and 
 universal Fatherhood of God, Jesus gave 
 the world its most comprehensive and 
 redemptive revelation of the deity. It 
 was the golden key with which He un- 
 locked the heart of mankind for the in- 
 coming of God. He drew it from His 
 girdle that day in the Temple when He 
 was but twelve years old, and still, as the 
 warden of souls. He is using it to open 
 prison doors and give release to men 
 made captive by sin. There is no other 
 key that fits the human heart like this. 
 
 The doctrine of God's Fatherhood as 
 Christ proclaimed it was distinctly new 
 to the thought of men. Judaism had 
 
24 CHRIST'S FIRST 
 
 never attained to it. The prophets of 
 Israel regarded Jehovah as holding the 
 relation of father to the nation or to the 
 nation's king. He was even believed to 
 hold the relation to selected individuals 
 in the favoured nation. But there is no 
 record of any pre-Christian thinker ascrib- 
 ing universal Fatherhood to God. Until 
 Christ came the continent of the divine 
 Fatherhood remained, for the greater part, 
 an unknown land. It had been discovered, 
 but not explored. The coast-line had been 
 traced in part, but the interior was as yet 
 untraversed. Christ traversed it, surveyed 
 it, and mapped it. He threaded it with 
 highways, and opened it up for the en- 
 trance and habitation of mankind. He 
 told men of the wealth it held, and of 
 the homesteads for their hearts which 
 were waiting there. 
 
 2. 
 
 The Father's Business. 
 
 In this first word of Jesus He also 
 declares His thought of God as immanent 
 in the world, active and enterprising in 
 behalf of men. This, too, was a truth 
 needing fresh and authoritative statement. 
 For this was by no moans the prevailing 
 
RECORDED WORDS 25 
 
 idea of God. The priests of Judaism con- 
 ceived of Jehovah as one who dwelt apart 
 from men in secret, inaccessible shrines, 
 within closed doors and behind thick veils. 
 God was only to be approached through 
 the priesthood. He was normally a God 
 at rest. His august leisure must not be 
 disturbed. His majestic calm must not be 
 rudely ruffled by the invasion of trifling 
 human concerns. The priestly notion, so 
 far as it prevailed, made for religious 
 barrenness and deadness. It laid an icicle 
 on the breast of the worshipper which 
 smote his finer enthusiasms down with 
 deadly chill. It tended to paralyse both 
 the sensory and the motor nerves of faith. 
 With God remote, unapproachable, im- 
 passive, religion grew formal and passion- 
 less. Had not singers and seers arisen to 
 quicken the spiritual pulse of the nation 
 with the thought of God's perpetual pre- 
 sence, the faith of Israel would have 
 withered into a seedless and abortive 
 thing. But the poets and prophets, with 
 their mystic insight, were continually pro- 
 testing against the hard, cold, deistic creed 
 of the priesthood. They saw God in nature 
 and in history and in the events of their 
 own times. They found Him in the gales 
 of inspiration which smote upon their own 
 
26 CHRIST'S FIRST 
 
 souls. They summoned men to come forth 
 from sluggishness and slumber, and meet 
 God in the duties, the privileges, the perils, 
 and the changes of the days in which they 
 lived. It was their constant aim to bring 
 the sense of a divine presence " home to 
 men's business and bosoms." And it was 
 this idea of God which Christ revived and 
 clarified and accentuated. It stirred His 
 heart in childhood and fired His zeal in 
 manhood. The thought which was con- 
 tinually upon His heart found expression 
 in the words, " My Father worketh hitherto 
 and I work." 
 
 The business of the Father as repre- 
 sented by the Son is seen to be the most 
 Urgent Business in the world. The in- 
 terests which it involves are of super- 
 lative importance. It has primarily to do 
 with the relations of men to God upon 
 which their spiritual and eternal destinies 
 depend. Compared with this, all other 
 human interests shrivel into insignifi- 
 cance. He was continually teaching men 
 to put the claims of this business first. 
 He constantly yielded to the supremacy 
 of those claims over His own life. The 
 words which He spoke to Mary in the 
 Temj)le witness to the sense of compul- 
 sion which had thus early gripped His 
 
RECORDED WORDS 27 
 
 consciousness : " I must be about My 
 Father's business." That feeling burned 
 in His soul with hot intensity until the 
 heavens received Him. Every day of His 
 life gave evidence of His overmastering 
 conviction that He rnust work the works 
 of Him that sent Him. 
 
 The Father's business, as interpreted by 
 the Son, is the most Beneficent Business 
 in the world. It was initiated at the dic- 
 tates of pure love and grace. It is free 
 from taint of selfishness. It involves no 
 wreckage. It aims at nothing less than 
 the perfecting of humanity through re- 
 storation to God's fellowship and favour. 
 The first prospectus of the business, as 
 issued by the Son, in the synagogue at 
 Nazareth, proclaims its beneficent intent : 
 "To preach good tidings to the poor; to 
 heal the broken-hearted; to preach deliver- 
 ance to the captives, and recovering of 
 sight to the blind; to set at liberty them 
 that are bruised ; to proclaim the accept- 
 able year of the Lord." 
 
 It is the most Profitable Business in the 
 world. It is profitable for the life that 
 uow is, and for that which is to come. 
 It yields a hundredfold in dividends to 
 all its shareholders, now in this time, 
 and in the world to come eternal life. 
 
28 CHRIST'S FIRST 
 
 Its returns cannot be computed in terms 
 of earthly values. Whoever puts his life 
 into this business becomes heir of all 
 things that have real and lasting worth- 
 fulness. He becomes the heir of God 
 and a joint-heir with Jesus. In this busi- 
 ness he finds his higher self, he finds his 
 God, he finds the life abundant. To gather 
 earthly treasure at the neglect of this busi- 
 ness is to see it consumed by the moth and 
 the rust. To associate ourselves with the 
 Father's business is to lay up priceless 
 treasure in a permanent treasury. The 
 interest which this business pays upon 
 our investments goes on compounding for 
 evermore. The premium which Christ 
 paid, in humiliation and in sufferings, 
 that He might control this business, is 
 beyond all computation. It is still the 
 wonder of the world. Yet the business 
 has yielded Him a princely revenue upon 
 that unspeakably vast investment. He 
 sees of the travail of His soul and is 
 satisfied. 
 
 It is the most Highly Capitalised Busi- 
 ness in the world. Many a promising en- 
 terprise has been hindered in its expansion, 
 crippled in its operations, and compulsorily 
 abandoned through lack of resources. A 
 great deal of that sort of thing has been 
 
RECORDED WORDS 29 
 
 taking place of late, owing to the upheaval 
 in Wall Street. Capital has been chilled 
 and its outflow checked. Instead of flowing 
 into the channels of trade and commerce 
 and offering itself for works of develop- 
 ment, it has burrowed underground. Men 
 have been hiding their holdings as a dog 
 hides his bone. The result has been dis- 
 astrous. But the Father's business is never 
 cramped for lack of capital. The infinite 
 riches of divine wisdom and grace and 
 power are behind it. The wealth of the 
 Godhead is at our disposal whensoever we 
 wish to draw upon it. The grace of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and 
 the fellowship of the Holy Spirit wait 
 upon our call. We are not straightened 
 in God, we are only straightened in our 
 own unbelief and timidity. None of us 
 have yet drawn to the full extent of our 
 privilege upon the capital placed to our 
 account. Unclaimed balances await us ; 
 but they will not lie unused for ever. 
 What is left unclaimed will ultimately be 
 passed to another account. To him that 
 hath shall be given; but from him that 
 hath not (because he will not take) shall 
 be taken away even that which he seemeth 
 to have. 
 It is the most Comprehensive Business in 
 
30 CHRIST'S FIRST 
 
 the world. Whosoever will may become 
 a partner and profit-sharer in the enter- 
 prise which brought Christ to the manger 
 and the cross. The Father's business is 
 broad enough to embrace within its opera- 
 tions all the honest work of consecrated 
 hands. 
 
 The consecration of any work to God, 
 however humble it may be, raises it to the 
 status of a divine service, and incorporates 
 it into the business. We should always 
 remember that service is more than labour. 
 It has a superadded quality and dignity. 
 One may toil unceasingly yet render no 
 real service. The devil is industrious. 
 The whirlpool and the fountain are equally 
 active, but to far different ends. The one 
 sucks all things into itself to satiate its 
 own omniverous maw ; the other yields 
 up its contents for the refreshment of 
 the world. Service is labour baptized and 
 anointed and consecrated to high ends. 
 William Carey, cobbling shoes here in 
 Leicester, pegging away in that dingy little 
 room in Harvey Lane, cobbling them as 
 best he could — though they do say he was 
 never a skilful workman, and that he could 
 not make two shoes alike — yet putting in 
 honest leather, and sound pegs and strong 
 stitches, and consecrating the toil to the 
 
RECORDED WORDS 31 
 
 service of God's kingdom, was as truly in 
 the Father's business as was Dr. William. 
 Carey, the distinguished Oriental Scholar, 
 when translating languages, preaching the 
 gospel and baptizing converts in India. 
 That little workshop, with its lasts and 
 awls, and hammers and waxed-ends, and 
 scraps of leather, represented a department 
 of the heavenly Father's business. God 
 was in the cobbling trade here in Leices- 
 ter while William Carey worked in Harvey 
 Lane. And so He is in every trade here 
 and throughout the world where human 
 hands, however rough or hard, are work- 
 ing at the dictates of His will and for 
 the glory of His name. It is the privi- 
 lege of each disciple to find a service for 
 God in the service of man, and a service 
 for man in the service of God, and thus 
 to become a co-worker with Him whom 
 we call the God-man. 
 
 "God's work is one eternal sphere, 
 Our work a segment of His work. 
 And he whose spirit eye is clear, 
 Whose ready will no load would shirk, 
 May read his name divinely writ 
 Upon the work for him most fit, 
 Assigned to him for each new year. 
 And so no true work comes to naught, 
 But with God's endless work is wrought 
 And with eternal glory fraught." 
 
CHRIST AT THE JORDAN 
 
"Then comstli Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto 
 John, to be baptized of him. 
 
 But John would have hindered him, saying, I have 
 need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me ? 
 
 But Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so 
 now : for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. 
 Then he suffered him. 
 
 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway 
 from the water : and lo, the heavens were opened unto 
 him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove 
 and coming upon him : and, lo, a voice out of the heavens, 
 saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
 pleased." — Matthew iii. 13-17. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CHEIST AT THE JOKDAN 
 
 FOR thirty years Jesus remained in 
 obscurity. Through all that ardent 
 period of youth and early manhood, when 
 we dream of conquests and of crowns, He 
 plied his humble trade in little Nazareth. 
 Aside from the world's thronged high- 
 ways, away from teeming towns, with- 
 drawn from the political ferment of the 
 time, free from the wrangling of the 
 schools, He lived the sweet and simple 
 life of a poor working-man. But during 
 all this time " the Plant of Renown " 
 was coming to maturity. Jesus took 
 " leisure to grow wise and shelter to grow 
 strong." He would not give the world 
 the green fruit from His boughs. He let 
 the clusters grow to their full size and 
 ripen in the sunlight. By communing 
 deep with God, with nature, with the 
 sacred Scriptures, and with His own soul, 
 
 35 
 
36 CHRIST AT THE JORDAN 
 
 He learned to " see life steadily and to 
 see it whole." Through the indwelling of 
 the Holy Spirit vitalising in His soul, the 
 discipline of daily toil, the Spiritual nature 
 of Jesus came at length to perfect fruit- 
 age. And then He shed His fruit. Into 
 the winepress He cast Himself, and when 
 the vintage season ended the cup of the 
 world's need was filled with the cordial of 
 a healing grace. 
 
 One cannot imagine that the home- 
 leaving of Jesus would be marked by 
 any special excitement. Doubtless the 
 thought of leaving His mother wrenched 
 His heart. But the voice of duty was too 
 clearly calling Him to permit of any in- 
 ward conflict or confusion. Calmly He 
 would lay aside His hammer and His 
 plane, roll up His apron, put the car- 
 penter-shop in order, pass over the little 
 store of savings (if there was one) to His 
 mother, and turn His steps down into the 
 Jordan valley, where the ministry of His 
 cousin John was creating such unwonted 
 stir. 
 
 We may not conjecture about the 
 thoughts which were in His mind that 
 morning, but we may be sure that He 
 took the road with confident, though un- 
 hasting step, and that He went with 
 
CHRIST AT THE JORDAN 37 
 
 elation, tempered by serious concern, to 
 this, the first great crisis of His life. 
 
 Perhaps there is no other outstanding 
 event in Christ's life of which the signifi- 
 cance is so slightly appreciated as that of 
 His baptism. We may readily perceive 
 the meaning of the ordinance so far as 
 the multitude was concerned. Their bap- 
 tism was the sign of their repentance and 
 of their faith in a coming Messiah. John's 
 mission to the nation had this double pur- 
 pose to serve : it was meant to stir the 
 national conscience, grown sluggish and 
 feeble, to a keener sense of sin ; and it 
 was meant to revive the Messianic ex- 
 pectation, formerly the great, distinctive 
 national hope, but which had long been 
 blanching and for centuries had been 
 voiceless. But what purpose could be 
 served by the baptism of the Messiah 
 Himself? He was separate from sinners 
 and harmless and undefiled. And He 
 knew Himself to be the Messiah. What 
 meaning, then, could the rite of baptism 
 have for Him? The answer is a four-fold 
 one. 
 
38 CHRIST AT THE JORDAN 
 
 1. 
 
 The Baptism of Jesus served the Purpose of 
 His Messianic Manifestation. 
 
 We do not know that John and Jesus 
 had ever met before. It is almost cer- 
 tain that they had not seen each other 
 for a decade at least. Their paths had 
 run far apart. John had been in the 
 wilderness, living the life of an ascetic, 
 a hermit, and a rapt listener to mystic 
 voices. He had been expecting the early 
 appearance of Messiah, but had not 
 thought to find him in the person of 
 his quiet-mannered carpenter-cousin of 
 Nazareth. John was evidently looking 
 for a sterner and louder Messiah than 
 Jesus proved to be. He was looking for 
 one who should come with axe and fan 
 and fire ; but when Messiah appeared, lo ! 
 it was with the still, small voice. He 
 was expecting Messiah's Day to be a day 
 of terror, with hurricane and thunder- 
 bolts ; but when it dawned, lo ! it was a 
 lovely day in June, a day with balm in 
 the air and blue in the sky, and a light 
 shining clear after rain. But after the 
 baptism John had no further doubt. We 
 have his own clear testimony. " I knew 
 
CHRIST AT THE JORDAN 39 
 
 hiin not: but that He should be made 
 manifest to Israel, for this cause came I 
 baptizing with water." " And I saw and 
 bare witness that this was the Son of 
 God." 
 
 2. 
 
 The Baptism of Jesus served to Declare 
 His Identification ivith the Cause of 
 Humanity. 
 
 At the Jordan Christ made common 
 cause with mankind. That was a motley 
 crowd which gathered to the baptism of 
 John. Jerusalem and Judea had emptied 
 their myriads into the Jordan valley until 
 even John was amazed by the multitude 
 of types represented. There was an 
 omjiium gatherum of every sort of sinner 
 which the country contained. It repre- 
 sented the human world. When, there- 
 fore, Jesus stepped into the stream, it was 
 as though He said, " I am for men ; these 
 are My brethren ; whatsoever concerns 
 them concerns Me." 
 
 It is a noteworthy fact that Jesus 
 began His public ministry upon a full 
 flood of sympathetic feeling for sinful 
 humanity. It was not as a doctrinaire 
 with a pet theory to expound ; not as a 
 partizan espousing the cause of a class ; not 
 
40 CHRIST AT THE JORDAN 
 
 as a zealot with a little programme of 
 reforms to effect; it was as the Friend of 
 Sinners, the Champion of Humanity, the 
 Redeemer of the Race that He went forth 
 from Nazareth. Humble as His human 
 origin had been, there was in Him no 
 "dread and fear of kings," no inherited 
 prejudice or acquired antipathy against 
 men of wealth and rank. These all had 
 place, along with the common people from 
 whom He sprang, in His inclusive sym- 
 pathy. Sinless as He was, and exquisitely 
 sensitive to impurity, He did not fear to 
 come into contact with vice and crime. 
 He could handle pitch and not be defiled. 
 He could minister to any sort of moral 
 disease without risk of infection. Thus 
 He was able to include all men within 
 the compass of His ministrant love. 
 
 3. 
 
 The Baptism served for a Public Consecra- 
 tion to His Sacrificial Mission. 
 
 The waters of the Jordan represented 
 for Him the stream of Death, into whose 
 deep, dark tide He was soon to enter 
 that all its waves and its billows might 
 pass over Him. When He rose from the 
 Jordan, uplifted into the sweet air and 
 
CHRIST AT THE JORDAN 41 
 
 gracious light by the sturdy arm of the 
 baptizer, while pearly drops glistened 
 upon His sacred head, He was picturing 
 His coming triumph over the grave, His 
 resurrection from the tomb, His ascension 
 to the free air and light of heaven, 
 and His coronation at God's right hand. 
 The baptism was a complete, dramatic 
 portrayal of His sacrificial work. 
 
 From this we learn that the cross was 
 not an afterthought of Christ's public 
 career. He did not adopt it as a last 
 resource after exhausting other means. It 
 was not forced upon Him by the stress of 
 unforeseen circumstances. The cross was 
 carried in His heart consciously and con- 
 stantly from the beginning. "We do not 
 know how early in those years at Nazareth 
 the cross first swung into His line of 
 vision, but one thing is certain, before He 
 left His home He knew what the end 
 would be. Before He stepped across 
 the threshold of His public life He knew 
 Himself to be the Lamb of God sealed 
 for sacrifice. 
 
 In this view of the matter the baptism 
 of Jesus was a challenge and defiance 
 waved in the face of death. It was as 
 though He, by that act, planted Himself 
 in the very middle of the channel through 
 
42 CHRIST AT THE JORDAN 
 
 which the torrent of priestly hatred would 
 soon be foaming to whelm Him. He 
 knew that for a moment it would seem 
 to triumph, but for a moment only. Dis- 
 appearing beneath the death-flood that 
 would oversweep Him on the cross, He 
 would presently reappear, death's Con- 
 queror. Alive for evermore, He would 
 stand as Master of the Flood, with power 
 to draw all whelmed souls forth to the 
 banks of everlasting life. 
 
 4. 
 
 The Baptism of Jesus presented a Fitting 
 Occasion for God's Attestation to His 
 Divine Sonship. 
 
 The heavenly witness was given in a 
 three-fold manner. 
 
 "The heavens were opened unto Him." 
 We may not suppose that they were 
 opened to any other view than His. The 
 vision of the glory-land was for Him 
 alone. How unspeakably precious and 
 heartening that vision must have been 
 to Him ! On the earthward side the door 
 was opening to misunderstanding and 
 hatred, to suffering and shame. It must 
 have been infinitely comforting to His 
 spirit that at such a moment the door 
 
CHRIST AT THE JORDAN 43 
 
 of heaven opened with its revelation of 
 the sympathetic interest of the Father 
 and the holy angels. In that moment 
 He experienced a foretaste of the " joy 
 unspeakable and full of glory " awaiting 
 Him on the other side of the cross. I 
 believe that to His vision heaven at that 
 moment was in gala dress, with hosts of 
 seraphs crowding the bannered battle- 
 ments of glory and chanting hallelujah 
 choruses to cheer the Champion of 
 Humanity on to victory. 
 
 There was also the heavenly Messenger. 
 " The Spirit of God descending as a dove " 
 rested upon Him. The dove is the emblem 
 of Peace. As it rested that day upon the 
 Messiah it was a token of the peace of 
 God which should keep the heart of the 
 blessed Son through all the days of His 
 earthly pilgrimage. And we know that 
 God's peace abode with Him unto the 
 end : — 
 
 " Peace, 
 Deep as the sleep of the sea 
 When the stars their faces glass 
 In its blue tranquillity." 
 
 The dove is the emblem of Hope. Noah's 
 dove returned to the ark with one fresh- 
 plucked leaf in its beak. That was to him 
 the prophecy and pledge of a whole world of 
 
44 CHRIST AT THE JORDAN 
 
 verdure and beauty to emerge from beneath 
 the waters of the dehige. The dove of the 
 Jordan was a pledge to the Christ of a new 
 heaven and a new earth to follow upon His 
 deluge in suffering and death. 
 
 The dove is the emblem of Faithfulness. 
 There is a wonderful homing instinct in 
 the heart of the dove, of which men have 
 availed themselves since th© days of Noah. 
 May it not be that we have here a hint of 
 the faithfulness of the divine Spirit to 
 His home in the heart of Christ? The 
 soul of Jesus was the chosen nest of the 
 heavenly dove. Nor was it ever abandoned. 
 However far the Son might be tossed upon 
 the billows of temptation or of pain, the 
 Spirit abode with Him, His solace and His 
 strength. Even so will He abide in the 
 soul of every child of God. 
 
 The dove was the poor man's Altar-gift. 
 When the worshipper could present no 
 costlier offering, he might bring a dove 
 and be accepted. Does not the descend- 
 ing dove witness to the fact that the 
 poorest of men may avail themselves of 
 the sacrifice of Christ? When we turn 
 to the message with which Jesus a little 
 later opened His teaching ministry we can 
 almost hear the fluttering wings of the 
 heavenly dove in the gracious words, "The 
 
CHRIST AT THE JORDAN 45 
 
 Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because 
 He hath anointed Me to preach good tidings 
 to the poor." 
 
 Above all, there was the witness of the 
 Father's voice. Whether it was heard by 
 any other ear than that of Jesus we do not 
 know. But He heard it, the Father's word 
 of commendation and of cheer, " This is My 
 beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 
 The joy which that assurance brought to 
 Jesus is past all telling or imagining. It put 
 the stamp of the divine approval upon all 
 the years that He had lived in Nazareth. 
 It declared that He was fit for the work 
 God had given Him to do. 
 
CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
" Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the 
 wilderness to be tempted of the devil," — Matthew iv. 1. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CHRIST IN THE WILDEENESS 
 
 " r I 1HEN " — immediately after the opening 
 -L to Him of the windows of heaven — 
 the Son of God is led past the very mouth 
 of hell ! Before He wins a follower or 
 utters a parable or performs an act of 
 mercy, He is made to prove, by personal 
 contact, the feeling and attitude of both 
 these worlds. Assured of the Divine favour, 
 He must next experience the subtle enmity 
 of Satan. He must get clearly defined in 
 His consciousness the line of battle which 
 the foe has set in array against Him and 
 determine the plan of action by which it 
 shall be met. 
 
 The whole conflict in the wilderness was 
 waged around the question of the use that 
 Christ should make of His poiver. 
 
 It is always an epoch-making day in a 
 young man's life when he definitely decides 
 this question. If he can get this question 
 
 5 i9 
 
50 CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 settled early and settled right he will have 
 done a great thing for himself and for all 
 concerned in him. The door of destiny 
 turns on the hinge of that decision. It is 
 to the young manhood of the world, con- 
 scious of its power but undecided what to 
 do with it, that this event of our Lord's 
 life makes its first and most urgent appeal. 
 
 It was a matter of infinite moment how 
 Christ should answer this question because 
 He was so supremely endowed with power. 
 His was the most highly energised person- 
 ality the world has ever seen. He was the 
 consummate Man. His brain was alive 
 with the sense of penetrating insight, 
 and His whole being tingled with the 
 consciousness of power. To such an one as 
 He all careers lay open. He could grasp 
 any crown towards which He cared 
 to stretch forth His hand. He could 
 win any kingdom whose sceptre He cared 
 to wield. He could wear the purple of 
 any dignity which His ambition might 
 covet. Three worlds — the world of angels, 
 the world of demons, and the world of men — 
 were vitally concerned in the issue of the 
 conflict to which the Spirit led Him. 
 
 During the hidden years at Nazareth the 
 thoughts of Jesus had been cast into the 
 sacrificial mould. The rod of His will had 
 
CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS 51 
 
 budded into redemptive purposes. Is the 
 mould to be preserved, or will it be shattered 
 when it strikes against the hard facts of 
 experience and trial ? Shall these buds 
 unfold into flowers rich in the seeds of 
 everlasting life, or must they be nipped 
 and blasted in the frosty air of a sceptical 
 and materialistic age ? The wilderness 
 gives the answer. The sacrificial mould is 
 to remain intact. The buds of redemptive 
 purposes are to go on to golden fruitage. 
 The programme of service which the 
 Father had given Him is not to be super- 
 seded, but fulfilled to the very letter. The 
 experience of the temptation only served to 
 test and reveal and confirm His life-plan. 
 The tremendous pressure which was put 
 upon Him in the wilderness proved the 
 granitic quality, the adamantine firmness 
 of the basis of that bridge which He came 
 to construct across the gulf of human sin. 
 Three possible uses for His unrivalled 
 powers were suggested to Jesus by the 
 tempter. They are the same uses of power 
 to which all men of force and genius are 
 liable to be tempted. The first suggestion 
 was that He should use His power for the 
 acquisition of material goods ; the second, 
 that He should use it for the excitement of 
 popular applause ; and the third was, that 
 
52 CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 He should use it for the achievement of 
 high political position. Each of these ends 
 may have place on a strong man's pro- 
 gramme of life as a means to some higher 
 end. But none of them are worthy to be 
 made supreme. Secondary places they may 
 claim for themselves, in many instances, but 
 to assign first place to any one of them, 
 or all of them combined, results in the 
 degradation of life and the apostasy of 
 being. Whoever would live the life of a 
 son of God must indignantly reject the 
 suggestion of such baneful misdirection 
 of his powers. Christ's rejection of these 
 proposals was instantaneous, indignant 
 and irrevocable. As a fire brand flung 
 into the sea goes at once black, so each 
 suggestion that He should use His power 
 for other than the highest ends fell 
 harmless at His feet. 
 
 1. 
 
 As to Making Bread out of Stones. 
 
 The suggestion looks harmless enough on 
 the surface of it. Why should not Christ 
 use His power to feed Himself? He had 
 dire need of bread in that hour. The hunger 
 that was upon Him after the long fasting was 
 such a hunger as often turns men's brains, 
 
CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS 53 
 
 makes them fierce and wolfish, forgetful of 
 honour, and reckless of consequences if only- 
 it can be appeased. Surely there could be 
 no harm in one providing himself with 
 bread to feed a hunger like that if he could 
 do it honestly. There is no virtue in self- 
 starvation. We are accustomed rather to 
 think of bread-making as a good business. 
 Since bread is an inexorable necessity of 
 man's physical life, we regard the bread- 
 winners as the honourable of the earth. 
 
 Does the objection lie against the pro- 
 posed method of bread-making ? Can any 
 disgrace attach to the making of bread out 
 of stones ? By no means. We take honest 
 pride, to-day, in our ability to do that very 
 thing. When we take the coal and the 
 iron from the mine and devote them to a 
 thousand industrial uses, this is what we 
 are really doing — converting stones into 
 bread. It is not in England that one 
 would expect to hear that process adversely 
 criticised, for the bulk of our bread here 
 is derived from stones of one sort and 
 another, put through one process or 
 another. Multitudes of our people would 
 starve should our "captains of industry' 
 forget how to make bread out of stones. 
 Indeed, when we reflect upon it, we dis- 
 cover that the very wheaten bread upon 
 
54 CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 our tables is literally made out of stones. 
 It all came out of the earth, and the crust 
 of the earth is mostly powdered rock. 
 The farmer growing corn for bread upon 
 his fields, is but adopting a little longer 
 and less direct method of getting bread 
 from stones than that which was suggested 
 to Jesus in the wilderness. So it may look 
 as though Jesus was suffering needless 
 hunger, and that He might profitably 
 have used His power to prepare Himself 
 " a table " there in the presence of His 
 enemy. 
 
 Yet the suggestion made to Him was in 
 reality an insult. The point of the skilfully 
 bated hook is uncovered in our Lord's 
 reply, "Man shall not live by bread alone." 
 Satan would have the hungered Christ 
 believe that man could live by bread alone. 
 He was insinuating that bread was man's 
 first and chiefest necessity. It was the 
 rank materialism and implied atheism 
 of the suggestion against which Christ 
 revolted with such horror and detestation. 
 The creed that Satan sought to impose 
 upon Him was very much the creed of the 
 day. But it was no creed for Christ. He 
 would give the world a truer and a better 
 creed than that. He would teach men that 
 they have a higher life to live than that 
 
CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS 55 
 
 which is dependent upon bread. Man's 
 highest life is not dependent upon bread at 
 all, but upon truth, upon the "Word that 
 proceedeth out of the mouth of God." No 
 one ever lived who so deeply sympathised 
 with man's physical needs as Christ did. He 
 had compassion on the hungry multitudes 
 and fed them. He did take a hand at 
 bread-making for a time, and then he sud- 
 denly ceased and refused to make any more. 
 Through all these attitudes of the Master 
 towards the matter of bread-making, there 
 runs a beautiful consistency. He was 
 never indifferent to bodily hunger. When 
 Christ has had His way in the world, 
 there will be no more child-faces, hunger- 
 pinched, and no famishing men in any 
 city of the land. He does not grudge any 
 man the comforts of a home. The best fed 
 peoples of the world live in Christian lands. 
 But Christ is ever putting the soul above 
 the body. He reminds us that we aj^e 
 spirits and have bodies. He denies that we 
 are mere physical structures which have a 
 thing called soul. That was His position in 
 the wilderness. He took His stand upon 
 the fact of the spirituality of man's nature 
 The relation to God's will was the first 
 thing to be considered. Better starve the 
 body than the soul. And that was His 
 
56 CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 reason for ceasing to make bread for the 
 multitudes later on in His ministry. The 
 bread which He gave them for their bodies, 
 instead of inciting hunger for the bread 
 of the soul, produced in them an ignoble 
 satisfaction. He would not continue 
 making bread for their physical hunger 
 at the risk of failing to become the Bread 
 of Life in their souls. As for Himself, in 
 His hungering in the wilderness, He knew 
 that God would feed Him in His own good 
 time. He was not forsaken or forgotten. 
 
 2. 
 
 As to Dazzling the Populace by a Spectacular 
 Miracle. 
 
 The occasion for this suggestion was 
 found in the fact of Christ's isolation and 
 loneliness. The wilderness in which the 
 tempter found Him was a solitary place. 
 Christ had been there six weeks alone. 
 John the Baptist would not have felt the 
 loneliness as Jesus did. He loved the 
 desert life, and cared not for the com- 
 panionship of men. But for one so highly 
 socialised as Jesus was, this isolation must 
 have been a sore trial. Then, too. His 
 aloneness in the wilderness would accentu- 
 ate in His consciousness the fact that He 
 
CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS 57 
 
 stood alone in relation to His life-work. 
 As to disciples and a following from the 
 people, He had everything yet to win. He 
 knew that the winning of them would 
 be slow work. But now the suggestion is 
 made that this work need not be slow. 
 The thing can be done in a moment if 
 He will consent to use His power to 
 dazzle the multitude. The great crowd- 
 assembling centre of Palestine is Jeru- 
 salem ; thither the tribes go up. And 
 the centre of interest in Jerusalem is 
 the Temple ; the crowds flock there. At 
 times the Temple area is black with people. 
 "Why not show Himself some day at the 
 Temple top, when the throng is dense 
 below, and while they are gaping up in 
 wonder at Him, suddenly descend through 
 the air and stand in their midst? This 
 will give Him at once a powerful hold 
 upon the popular imagination. The people 
 love a spectacle, and will hail Him with 
 hosannas. It will mean a swift and 
 brilliant escape from this anomaly of 
 solitude and loneliness. Moreover, it is 
 lyingly suggested, this is quite the fitting 
 way for the Messiah to make His entrance 
 upon His priestly ministry. He is Lord of 
 the Temple, and this should be made clear 
 at once. It is not for Him to climb the 
 
58 CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Temple steps like an ordinary worshipper ; 
 He should descend from above with attend- 
 ant angels. He must know, from that look 
 which He so recently had into heaven, that 
 cohorts of angels are ready to lackey 
 Him. The dignity of His person as the 
 well-pleasing Son of God demands this 
 course. 
 
 It was really a diabolical plot to destroy 
 Christ's priestly service, by attempting to 
 kill in Him the true priestly spirit. In its 
 essence, the temptation of the Temple top 
 is one which has been practised upon suc- 
 cessive generations of the sons of God. 
 It is the Satanic trick of the ages. For, 
 whenever a son of God is tempted to 
 win popular applause for its own sake, he 
 is tempted to self-degradation. Power is 
 not given us of God that we may dazzle 
 people with it. It is not ours to play with. 
 A man had better play with a live electric 
 wire than with his power over the people, 
 or with the people under the spell of his 
 power. If he trades upon their weak- 
 nesses, their superstitions, their prejudices, 
 to win their allegiance, he delivers both 
 himself and them to the devil. Power is 
 for service. A man will get his following 
 if he deserves it, and is ready and capable 
 to lead ; but it is not for Christ's disciples 
 
CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS 59 
 
 to win it in any other than Christ's way — 
 the way of patient, loving ministry. 
 
 3. 
 
 Regarding the Achievement of Political 
 Distinction. 
 
 The suggestion was that Christ should 
 strike at once for Caesar's seat. The time 
 was ripe for revolt. The popular dis- 
 content was deep and widespread. The 
 land was seething . with rebellion. In the 
 political temper of the time it only needed 
 that a great leader should appear and raise 
 the standard of revolt for myriads to flock 
 to his banner. And who so competent to 
 lead as this picturesque and magnificent 
 personality? If He will head the move- 
 ment, the highways leading to Rome will 
 presently be thronged with tens of thou- 
 sands, ready to follow Him to death. This 
 was not the only time when such a sug- 
 gestion was made to Christ. The people of 
 Galilee afterwards begged Him to take this 
 step. They, too, saw the power of a Caesar 
 in Him. It cannot be doubted that had He 
 used His power in that direction. He could 
 have hurled the Tyrant of the Tiber from 
 his throne, and seated Himself in his place. 
 
 But the suggestion had no charms for 
 
60 CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Christ. To play the Csssar for a season 
 would mean nothing to Him who came to 
 be the King of all kingdoms for ever. The 
 retinue of followers who should march 
 beneath the banner of the saviourhood, to 
 be achieved by the way of the Cross, would 
 far outnumber the subjects of any earthly 
 sovereignty. The revenues which woulci 
 accrue to Him in the love-loyalty of His 
 redeemed, would far outweigh the tribute 
 to be exacted from any earthly empire. 
 But Christ's sovereignty must be won 
 through suffering. His mastery must come 
 through His ministry. His crown must be 
 gained by His cross. He is not seeking a 
 place for Himself, He is seeking a place 
 beside Himself for us, that we may dwell 
 with Him in the favour and fellowship of 
 the Father. 
 
 Is not the lesson from all this very clear ? 
 If God has entrusted us with any power, it 
 is that we may exercise it on the highest 
 possible level of helpfulness. To devote it 
 to lower ends is to abuse it and ultimately 
 to lose it. If you have power to make 
 bread, make it for others and eat your 
 share with them ! Make it for wife and 
 children, and for such others as have no 
 skill or power to make it for themselves I 
 The world is full of them, and God has sent 
 
CHRIST IN THE WILDERNESS 61 
 
 you to them. By feeding them, the eating 
 of your own portion will be a sweet and 
 wholesome experience. If you have power 
 to excite the admiration or win the allegi- 
 ance of men, have a care of that ! You 
 must not trifle with your fellows. If you 
 have any kingship or queenship in you, 
 make sure to use it for redemptive ends ! 
 Sing no song that is not fit for Christ to 
 hear ! Paint no picture which you would 
 not dare to hold up before His gaze ! 
 Write no book which you would not lay 
 upon His altar ! If you can hold a seat in 
 Parliament, hold it for your country's good ! 
 The moment you begin to use it for 
 "miserable aims that end with self," you 
 forfeit your right to it. "Follow the 
 Christ: else, wherefore born?" 
 
CHRIST AT THE WEDDING FEAST 
 IN CANA 
 
"This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana 
 of Galilee, and manifested his glory." — JoH^f ii. 11. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 CHRIST AT THE WEDDING FEAST IN CANA 
 
 1. 
 
 The Changing of the Water into Wine mani^ 
 fested the Glory of Christ's Power. 
 
 By that act He showed Himself to be 
 the Lord of Nature. As the immortal line 
 of Crashaw has it — 
 
 •'The conscious water saw its God, and blushed." 
 
 This act of power flings back a light upon 
 the opening words of John's Gospel : " In 
 the beginning was the Word, and the Word 
 was with God, and the Word was God. 
 The same was in the beginning with God. 
 All things were made by Him ; and without 
 Him was not anything made that hath been 
 made. In Him was life ; and the life was 
 the light of men." To John's mind the 
 miracle at Cana was a regal gesture de- 
 
 6 66 
 
66 CHRIST AT THE WEDDING 
 
 noting Christ's sovereignty as Nature's 
 Lord. By reflecting upon this deed and 
 other deeds of Christ's, John came to the 
 conclusion that the universe consisted in 
 Him, and that He was God. Not only did 
 he think of Jesus as able to intervene with 
 creative and energizing power at any point 
 in Nature's processes, but as present in them 
 all, the very spirit of their life. And he 
 regarded Him as holding the same relation 
 to men. From Christ flowed all the tides 
 of being. This is the conception of the 
 Fourth Gospel from beginning to end. It 
 gives colour to everything which John 
 writes concerning the Blessed One. It 
 determines his choice of material for his 
 narrative. Constantly he looks upon Christ 
 as the animating spirit of nature and the 
 Life and Light of men. Around these 
 conceptions he groups his subject-matter. 
 "Many other signs therefore did Jesus in 
 the presence of His disciples, which are not 
 written in this book ; but these are written 
 that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, 
 the Son of God ; and that believing ye may 
 have life in His name." 
 
 John's thought of Christ as the fountain- 
 head of all life for nature and for man, is 
 the great first-truth which the modern mind 
 most needs to grip. In this thought will 
 
FEAST IN CANA 67 
 
 be found the regulating and formative 
 principle of Christian theology, and the 
 heart of evangelical religion. It is when 
 we take this view of Jesus that the 
 need of personal union with Him, for the 
 nourishment of spiritual life, is borne in 
 most deeply upon our consciousness. Why 
 should it be thought strange that man 
 needs the impact of Christ's Spirit upon 
 him in order to come to fullness of life? 
 If we accept John's view of Christ, man 
 shares this necessity with every created 
 thing that lives. One power, and that a 
 divine power, sows life in sea, in soil, in 
 soul. The energy which sprouts the seed 
 in the sod, and forms the bud upon the 
 plant, and unfurls the emerald banners of 
 the leaves upon the boughs, is identical 
 with the energy which makes for beauty of 
 holiness in the human soul, and brings the 
 fruits of righteousness to perfection in the 
 moral life of man. The stir in the bulb of 
 the lily, by which it breaks its bed and 
 emerges into light, the stir in the brain 
 of the child, by which it comes to know- 
 ledge of itself and of the world around it, 
 the stir in the heart of the penitent, by 
 which he breaks from the bondage of sin 
 and rises into the fellowship of God, are all 
 due to the inworking of one divine spirit. 
 
68 CHRIST AT THE WEDDING 
 
 Wherever we find a manifestation of life, 
 we are to recognise a spiritual force at 
 work. This, indeed, is the great first-truth 
 set before us upon the opening pages of the 
 Bible. In the earliest chapters of Genesis, 
 world-beauty and soul-bloom are traced to 
 a single source. There is a notable parallel 
 between the stories told there of the begin- 
 ning of life in nature and in man. Before 
 the Spirit of God moved upon the face 
 of the waters, "the earth was waste and 
 void." No light shone, no flower bloomed, 
 no bird sang, until over the weltering chaos 
 the Spirit brooded. It was the sam^ in the 
 case of man. He, too, was waste and void 
 until the Spirit imparted the vital soul- 
 spark. It was when the Lord God 
 "breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
 life" that the light of reason and of con- 
 science leaped up within the hitherto dark 
 temple of his body, "and man became a 
 living soul." 
 
 This great first-truth of the Book of 
 Genesis and of the Gospel according to 
 John flashes forth in the words of Jesus 
 to Nicodemus : " Marvel not that I said 
 unto thee. Ye must be born again. The 
 wind bloweth where it listeth and thou 
 hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not 
 whence it cometh and whither it goeth : 
 
FEAST IN CANA 69 
 
 so is every one that is born of the Spirit." 
 It is no more strange that man should 
 need to be born from above in order to 
 see the kingdom of God, than that the 
 earth should need the miracle of the spring- 
 time in order to bring forth her fruits. 
 Man can make a hot-house, but only God 
 can make a spring. 
 
 This manifestation of the glory of Christ's 
 pov^er which the Cana miracle affords, not 
 only accentuates our need of personal, 
 spiritual union with Him, but also begets 
 a mighty Hope concerning the Fullness of 
 Life to follow upon that union. When we 
 think of the abundant life which is mani- 
 fested in the Nature-world around us — the 
 vast and luxuriant forest-growths, the 
 valleys filled with corn, the prairies billowy 
 with wheat, the mountains clothed with 
 pastures ; when we remember that over 
 all the earth the springtime comes, year 
 after year, for centuries and milleniums 
 without a failure, we get a tremendously 
 impressive reminder of the infinite fullness 
 of life in Him who is the source of all. In 
 the light of this recurrent miracle of the 
 springtime we behold new deeps of mean- 
 ing in the words of Jesus, "I came that 
 they may have life, and that they may have 
 it more abundantly." Shall the sparrow be 
 
70 CHRIST AT THE WEDDING 
 
 fed and the soul be famished? Will He 
 clothe the grass of the field in splendour 
 and leave the spirit of man in squalor? 
 To entertain the grim suspicion for a 
 moment is preposterous. In Him there 
 is a store of vital power, "Enough for 
 each, enough for all, enough for ever- 
 more." 
 
 This fullness of power resident in Christ 
 is also the ground of our hope for ultimate 
 Deliverance from the Blight of Sin. From 
 my study window in Toronto I used to look 
 each day, during a long Canadian winter, 
 upon a tree to which the dead leaves clung 
 with stubborn grip. Autumn gales could 
 not shake them off ; drenching rains could 
 not wash them off; pelting hailstorms 
 could not beat them off; winter blizzards 
 could not tear them off ; but when the 
 springtime came and the sap began to 
 flow within the tree, new buds formed 
 and pushed them off. They fell before the 
 conquering touch of life. The expulsive 
 power of an irresistible vitality stripped 
 the tatters from the tree and converted it 
 into a bower of bewitching greenery. As 
 old leaves cling to trees so do old habits 
 cling to the souls of men. Rags of a dead 
 past tatter them. Winds of emotion cannot 
 shake them off ; rains of repentance cannot 
 
FEAST IN CANA 71 
 
 wash them off; hailstorms of affliction 
 cannot pelt them off ; but " the spirit of 
 life in Christ Jesus" surging up within 
 the soul, can crowd them off. 
 
 Also from the fact of Christ's power 
 as the Lord of Life, our Hope of Immor- 
 tality springs winged and radiant. One 
 dark December day a little party of us 
 visited Westminster Abbey. It was such 
 a London day as puts a chill into the 
 marrow of your bones and a gloom into 
 your soul. An hour spent amid the royal 
 tombs left us dull and spiritless. We had 
 looked upon venerable and impressive 
 things, exquisite carvings in oak smd 
 marble, recumbent effigies of kings and 
 queens in alabaster. But it was all dark 
 and musty and depressing. It all smelt 
 of death. Leaving the tombs, we went 
 over to the Poets' Corner, and upon the 
 slab, beneath which rests the dust of 
 Robert Browning, we saw a wreath of 
 roses lying fresh and sweet. On the silken 
 ribbon which bound the wreath, we read 
 these words : " Never say of me that I am 
 dead." To us the most eloquent thing in the 
 Abbey at that moment was the wreath of 
 roses on the poet's tomb. It was the single 
 suggestion of life in that great gathering- 
 place of Britain's illustrious dead. But it 
 
72 CHRIST AT THE WEDDING 
 
 was enough to warm our hearts. It inter- 
 preted everything else. Presently we 
 walked out into the chill mist again, but 
 we carried a glow within our souls. He 
 who made the roses bloom would not deny, 
 we were assured, the gift of life to man. 
 The roses, though clipped from the plant 
 on which they grew, were still fresh and 
 Bweet. And the soul of Browning, we 
 believed, was fresher and sweeter still, 
 where in that other life he walked with 
 Christ. The life Christ gives is too potent 
 to be choked by the dust of the tomb. In 
 our experience that day, Christ's " life was 
 the light of men." 
 
 2. 
 
 The Miracle at Cana Manifested the Glory 
 of Christ's Sympathy. 
 
 It is noteworthy that Christ's first 
 miracle was wrought, not to save a life, or 
 redeem a soul, but to relieve a temporary 
 domestic embarrassment. The failure of 
 the wine was merely a social inconvenience 
 likely to somewhat mar the wedding 
 festivities and perhaps humiliate a sensi- 
 tive host in the eyes of his guests. The 
 kindness of Jesus in relieving the situation 
 associates Him for all time with the simple 
 
FEAST IN Cx'^.NA 73 
 
 joys and sorrows of humble domestic life. 
 We cannot forget that only a little while 
 before He had refused to use His creative 
 power to make bread for His own hunger. 
 Now He employs it to make wine for 
 others' joy. It is of a piece with His whole 
 career of wondrous unselfishness. He made 
 everything for others, nothing for Himself. 
 The same chapter in Matthew which re- 
 ports five miracles wrought for the relief 
 of other needy lives, records His saying, 
 *' The Son of man hath not where to lay 
 His head." 
 
 It is a marvellous interblending of the 
 glory of power and the glory of sympathy 
 which this first miracle displays. And each 
 glory enhances the other. The one thing 
 necessary to complete the glory of strength 
 is sympathy. The one thing necessary to 
 complete the glory of sympathy is strength. 
 Where power is pitiless you have a carnival 
 of destructiveness ; where pity is powerless 
 you have an agony of helplessness ; where 
 power and pity meet and blend you have a 
 triumph of beneficence. Strength without 
 sympathy brutalises men ; sympathy with- 
 out strength effeminates them ; but strength 
 controlled by sympathy and sympathy 
 enabled by strength makes men heroic. 
 Ruskin, in " Modern Painters," writes : 
 
74 CHRIST AT THE WEDDING 
 
 "Elephantine strength may drive its way 
 through a forest and feel no touch of the 
 boughs, but the white skin of Homer's 
 Atrides would have felt a bent rose leaf, 
 yet subdue its feeling in glow of battle, and 
 behave itself like iron. I do not mean to 
 call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you 
 think about him carefully you will find 
 that his non-vulgarity consists in such 
 gentleness as is possible to elephantine 
 nature ; not in his insensitive hide, nor in 
 his clumsy foot, but in the way, he will lift 
 his foot if a child lies in his way and in his 
 sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive 
 mind, and capability of pique on points of 
 honour. In fact, heroic strength is not 
 conceivable without such delicacy." 
 
 The spirit of sympathetic helpfulness 
 manifested in Christ's first miracle was 
 characteristic of all His after deeds of 
 power. All His miracles are remarkable 
 for their refining and transforming grace. 
 Whatever change they w^rought heightened 
 the value of the thing He touched. The 
 water in the stone pots at Cana was 
 intended to be used for washing. It was 
 there, according to the custom of the Jews, 
 for "purifying." What they meant for 
 outward cleansing He transformed into 
 a means of inward strengthening. The 
 
FEAST IN CANA 75 
 
 miracle was thus a " sign " of His spiritual 
 mission. It was a token of the enriching 
 and ennobling change which should pass, 
 at His touch, upon all the common things 
 of life, and the new relation He should give 
 them to the inner needs of man. 
 
 This first miracle of Jesus bears certain 
 deep and subtle affinities to His last par- 
 able — that of the Vine and the Branches. 
 Is it not, indeed, the function of the Vine 
 to change water into wine ? What the 
 grape-vine does with the water poured out 
 by the clouds, is it not essentially the same 
 thing that Jesus did with the water poured 
 from the jars at Cana ? The change which 
 Jesus wrought was instantaneous, and, 
 effected without the intervention of a 
 material vine-stalk. Jesus Himself took 
 the place of the vine-stalk that day, and, 
 by virtue of the energy resident in His own 
 spirit, abbreviated the processes of Nature 
 to produce the surprising result. What a 
 glory streams forth from the parable when 
 we interpret it in the light of the miracle ! 
 Christ, our Vine-stalk, is for us the alchemist 
 of life. If we abide in Him, whatever 
 flows into us must flow through Him. He 
 becomes the mediating and transforming 
 medium by which all things are made 
 sweet and wholesoine and nourishing for 
 
76 CPIRIST AT THE WEDDING FEAST 
 
 us. Snow and rain may fall upon a vine- 
 yard, bitter juices may permeate its soil, 
 dead things may be buried there, but the 
 vine-stalk sends nothing but sweet sap 
 into the branches. Out of afflictions, out 
 of disappointments, out of dead hopes and 
 decayed ambitions Christ can extract for 
 those who abide in Him the wine of joy. 
 
 One of the finest sights at Hampton 
 Court is the royal grape-vine when loaded 
 with its summer clusters. As a party of 
 Americans were admiring the vine, one of 
 their number called to the keeper and 
 asked, " Could you not give us a few of 
 those grapes ? " The answer was given 
 very gently and courteously, but it was 
 decisive and significant. "There is only 
 one man in the kingdom, sir, who could 
 give you grapes from this vine." " And 
 who is he ? " the visitor inquired. " His 
 Majesty the King." There is only one 
 Man in the universe who can give you the 
 ripe and perfect fruits of the Spirit, His 
 Imperial Majesty, the Christ. 
 
 " This beginning of His signs did Jesus in 
 Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory." 
 
CHRIST IN THE SYNAGOGUE OF 
 NAZARETH 
 
" And he came to Nazareth, where he had been 
 brought up : and he entered, as his custom was, into 
 the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up to 
 read." — Luke iv. 16. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 CHRIST IN THE SYNAGOGUE OF NAZARETH 
 
 A TENDER human interest attaches to 
 this visit of Jesus to Nazareth. 
 Doubtless, one influence which strongly 
 drew Him there was His yearning desire to 
 see His mother. The bond between Jesus 
 and Mary was of the closest and most 
 affectionate kind. She must have been a 
 woman of rare purity of mind and unusual 
 spiritual capacity to have been selected for 
 the honour of becoming the mother of the 
 Messiah. If our Roman Catholic friends go 
 to an unwarranted extreme in ascribing to 
 her an almost equal rank with Christ, and 
 in paying her divine honours, Protestants 
 swing to the other extreme in practically 
 setting her aside, in their thought, from all 
 relation to the redemptive mission of her 
 son. Yet there was no one, not excepting 
 the beloved disciple, John, who understood 
 Him better, or sympathised more fully with 
 His purpose. Mary was always laying up 
 
 79 
 
80 CHRIST IN THE SYNAGOGUE 
 
 His words and pondering them in her heart. 
 With her maternal intuitions, wrought upon 
 and disciplined by the Holy Spirit, she must 
 have seen deeply into the secret of the life 
 of her holy son. From her, in all pro- 
 bability, Luke got the information given in 
 his gospel concerning our Lord's infancy, 
 as he also got the story of this visit. We 
 may be very sure that Jesus loved her 
 more tenderly than any other son ever 
 loved a mother. She was never permitted 
 to bear any burdens from which He could 
 give relief. In filial respect and in affec- 
 tionate attention His relations to her were 
 ideal. 
 
 They tell us that the hill behind the 
 town of Nazareth is a wonderful place for 
 wild flowers. Often, as a child, must Jesus 
 have plucked them for His beautiful 
 mother; and now that He has grown to 
 manhood, now that He has entered upon 
 His public career, now that He has climbed 
 the mountain-tops of spiritual vision, shall 
 He not carry home to her some of the 
 fragrant thought-flowers which He has 
 plucked upon the heights ? Naturally there 
 would be much that He would want to say 
 to Mary, and we may be sure that He 
 would turn His steps towards Nazareth 
 with keen delight. After the thrilling 
 
OF NAZARETH 81 
 
 experiences at the Jordan and in the 
 wilderness, and after the brief tour in 
 GaUlee, where He had won quick fame, a 
 httle visit with His mother would be sur- 
 passing sweet to Him and to her. 
 
 The home itself would also appeal to 
 Him. It was the only home He could 
 remember, and He loved it. He would 
 sleep again in His own bed. He had 
 known none like it since He left it. Mary 
 herself would make it for Him, and see that 
 it was aired and comfortable. The simple 
 meals would be prepared by her own hands. 
 And there would be hours of close, earnest, 
 reverent conversation. He would want to 
 see His brothers, too, and tell them some- 
 thing of His experiences in the strange, 
 new life. 
 
 He would have a tender feeling also for 
 His fellow-townsmen. Though Nazareth 
 was a wicked little town (most little towns 
 are wicked), there must have been some 
 good men there. We do not know that 
 He had ever enjoyed an intimate friend- 
 ship among them, but we cannot doubt 
 His loving concern for their spiritual 
 enlightenment. 
 
 And now the Sabbath day has come, 
 a Sabbath in the sweet Palestinian spring- 
 time, when all the air is full of balm, and 
 7 
 
82 CHRIST IN THE SYNAGOGUE 
 
 all the land is bright with flowers. He 
 has taken His place amongst the wor- 
 shippers in the synagogue. At a signal 
 from the ruler, who would be quick to 
 notice the presence of an honoured member 
 whose face had been much missed of late, 
 He stands up in the appointed place to read 
 the Scripture lesson for the day. The roll 
 of the book of Isaiah having been delivered 
 unto Him, He unwinds it until He comes to 
 the sixty-first chapter, when He proceeds 
 to read the glowingly prophetic words of 
 the first two verses. According to the 
 custom of the time, He stood up to read, 
 but sat down to expound the portion He 
 had read. 
 
 The earlier portion of the address which 
 He delivered proved to be a spellbinder. 
 The opening sentences chained the atten- 
 tion of the congregation. They "fastened 
 their eyes " on Him in wonder. Their 
 enthusiasm was speedily aroused, so that 
 they hung with delight upon His gracious 
 words. By nod and smile and whispered 
 word they showed their appreciation of 
 His treatment of the beautiful Messianic 
 passage. It was one with which they 
 were all familiar, and it voiced their most 
 cherished hopes. It had often awakened 
 music in their hearts, but they had never 
 
OF NAZARETH 83 
 
 seen its beauty so clearly, or felt its force 
 so deeply, as in those moments when Jesus 
 gave it exposition. In this, the earlier 
 portion of His discourse, Jesus was evi- 
 dently dealing with the general scope of 
 the passage, and pointing out its large 
 promises of relief for the bound and 
 bruised and burdened life of Israel. 
 Whether He had ever before expounded 
 the Scriptures in that synagogue we do 
 not know ; but if He had done so, one 
 would suppose that previous tastes of His 
 quality as a teacher would have led them 
 to expect a treat from " Joseph's son." 
 
 But pleasure and approval were of short 
 duration. A sudden turn was given to 
 the address, and instantly the congregation 
 was aghast with consternation. Quietly, 
 but distinctly, He announces that He Him- 
 self is the Messiah pictured in the passage 
 just expounded. The statement was a 
 spark flung into a powder-magazine. 
 There was a moment's silence, followed 
 by a roar of angry and protesting voices. 
 Never had such a bomb been exploded 
 in that synagogue before. They could 
 scarcely believe the evidence of their 
 senses. Old patriarchs, accustomed to 
 yield themselves to quiet reverie in the 
 house of God, bristle up and choke with 
 
84 CHRIST IN THE SYNAGOGUE 
 
 rage. Younger men scowl and clinch their 
 fists. This carpenter neighbour of theirs, 
 who has hitherto lived so serenely in their 
 midst, must have had his brain turned 
 during his recent travels. But no, he has 
 not the ways of a madman ; he is rather 
 a shameless blasphemer, mocking at their 
 most sacred Scriptures. But they know 
 how to deal with this wolf in sheep's 
 clothing. They will make quick disposi- 
 tion of Him and of His claims. One simple 
 test will decide the question of His claims. 
 He must work a miracle at their dictation. 
 If He has the power ascribed to Messiah, 
 He must use it now to give them an 
 unmistakable sign. They have heard 
 rumours of miracles wrought by Him in 
 Capernaum ; but Capernaum is far away, 
 and rumour is unreliable. Let Him give 
 them an exhibition here and now of His 
 supernatural power. It is the wilderness 
 suggestion over again. Jesus, reading their 
 thoughts before they can find expression 
 in speech, gives His answer. It is an 
 emphatic refusal to make such use of His 
 power. He will not call upon it at the 
 bidding of angry unbelievers. He does 
 not cater to such a temper ; it would be 
 both useless and degrading. He may use 
 that power to encourage faith, but not to 
 
OF NAZARETH 85 
 
 batter down prejudice, or disarm hatred, 
 or satisfy a vulgar curiosity. He will save 
 His miracles for such timies and places and 
 purposes as befit His spiritual mission. 
 Nazareth, His own home-town is not good 
 ground for miracle working. The invete- 
 rate scepticism which neighbours enter- 
 tain concerning the high calling and destiny 
 of those whom they have known long and 
 familiarly is proverbial. A man must win 
 his recognition from the outside world 
 before his own townsmen will greatly 
 believe in Him. Elijah found it so, and 
 Elisha too. They did not work their 
 miracles at home. Jesus puts Himself in 
 the line of prophetic succession in refusing 
 to cast His pearls down there for those 
 swine to trample on. So they have their 
 answer, and it adds fuel to the fires 
 of their wrath. Enough of this ; the 
 impostor must be crushed. Nazareth is 
 already in sufficiently bad repute, without 
 breeding within its borders a monster of 
 blasphemy like this and turning Him loose 
 upon the nation. So they rise up in a 
 body, surround Him, and sweep Him along 
 with them to the brow of the hill over- 
 looking the town, intending to fling Him 
 headlong down the cliff. But lo ! their 
 hands are holden. With that strange 
 
86 CHRIST IN THE SYNAGOGUE 
 
 power which often enables a cahn, majestic 
 personality to quell the frenzy of a mob, 
 even by a gesture or a look, Jesus turns 
 to them, and for a moment awes them 
 by the regal dignity of His bearing. That 
 moment is sufficient to defeat them. While 
 one is waiting for another to rush upon 
 Him and cast Him from the cliff. He 
 passes through the midst of them and 
 goes His way. 
 
 Let us not blame them overmuch, those 
 mistaken men of Nazareth ! It was not 
 in human nature for them to do much 
 differently. Under similar circumstances 
 the same thing would have happened in 
 England. 
 
 That scene has long since passed into 
 history. Of the men who enacted it but 
 one name survives. That name shines in 
 splendour now above every name that is 
 named. We believe to-day that Jesus of 
 Nazareth was what He claimed to be — the 
 Messiah of Israel and the Saviour of the 
 world. The robe of prophecy which He 
 that day wrapped about Himself befits His 
 form. The centuries have proclaimed Him 
 Lord. Two milleniums have placed their 
 crowns upon His brow. And this because 
 He has proved in human experience His 
 power to carry out the programme of 
 
OF NAZARETH 87 
 
 service which He announced in the syna- 
 gogue at Nazareth. He has shown Him- 
 self to be the Comforter of the poor, the 
 Healer of the blind, the Deliverer of the 
 bound. 
 
 1. 
 
 Jesus is the Poor Man's Friend. 
 
 Born into a poor man's family, working 
 at a poor man's trade, living on a poor 
 man's fare. He has won His largest fol- 
 lowing from the poor man's ranks. No- 
 thing but a caricature of the " Good 
 Tidings " which He proclaimed and a 
 corruption of the Church which He 
 established can ever alienate the world's 
 poor people from the Christ. It is true 
 that in France and in Russia to-day tens 
 of thousands of the common people curse 
 the Church and openly avow their desire 
 to crush the Christian religion. But it is 
 not the real Christ with whom they have 
 broken, nor is it the true Church which 
 they have renounced. It is the ghastly 
 misrepresentation of Christ and His Church 
 given by a tyrannous and corrupt priest- 
 hood from which they have revolted. Let 
 them see the Christ of the Gospels and 
 they will fall at His feet. Let them see 
 the Church in her early simplicity and 
 
88 CHRIST IN THE SYNAGOGUE 
 
 faith and sympathy, and they will flock to 
 her shelter and communion like doves to 
 their windows. The coign of vantage for 
 preaching the gospel to the poor is the 
 carpenter-shop of Nazareth. It is not the 
 Christ with the invented nimbus about His 
 brow who can win the working-men of 
 the world, but the Christ with tools in 
 His hands and the sweat of toil upon His 
 face. 
 
 The gospel which Jesus proclaimed is a 
 gospel to ennoble the poor man's lot. It 
 teaches him a new self-respect; it pro- 
 claims the dignity of labour ; it puts a 
 premium upon manhood and discounts the 
 value of gold ; it reminds him that pro- 
 perty cannot be weighed in the scales 
 against character; it shows him that 
 character may find its motive and its dis- 
 cipline in a cottage as well as in a palace ; 
 it teaches him that heaven opens as wide 
 and free above the poor man's roof as over 
 the mansions of the rich. It puts a golden 
 ladder at the poor man's feet, on which he 
 may climb to the full height of his possi- 
 bilities as a son of God. So effective has 
 the gospel been in persuading men of these 
 realities that thousands of the sons and 
 daughters of wealth have voluntarily dis- 
 possessed themselves of riches to become 
 
OF NAZARETH 89 
 
 in fuller measure the children of the Lord 
 But even where poverty is of necessity 
 and not of choice ; where it presses and 
 pinches and cramps ; where it means lack 
 of food, and clothing, and medicine, and 
 sunshine, and fresh air, as it means so 
 often in the crowded cities of the world ; 
 where it is the dark shadow that follows 
 man's greed and cruelty and lust ; where 
 it is most pathetic, most tragic, most 
 sullen, most hopeless ; even there the gospel 
 taught by Him who " had not where to 
 lay His head" can bring cheer and hope. 
 Oomt^ instituted what he termed " Man's 
 Supper." He and his disciples would some- 
 times celebrate it by sitting down to a meal 
 of bread and water, in memory, they said, 
 of the many who could procure no more 
 than bread and water for their needs. It 
 was a noble sentiment, and one to be 
 applauded by every lover of humanity. 
 But in so far as it was intended to dis- 
 place the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, 
 it was, to say the least, a dismal mistake. 
 For it still remains true in Christian 
 experience that the real " Man's Supper " 
 is the Lord's Supper, which turns the 
 thought of the celebrant, however poor he 
 may be, to Him who gave Himself to be 
 the Bread of Life for all mankind. 
 
90 CHRIST IN THE SYNAGOGUE 
 
 2. 
 
 Jesus is the World's Great Healer. 
 
 The inaugural message at Nazareth 
 predicts a double work of healing. It 
 proclaims the Messiah as physician both to 
 heart and mind. His mission is equally 
 to " the broken-hearted " and to " the 
 blind." These ministries are intimately 
 related. Broken hearts are frequently the 
 result of blinded minds. Half our troubles 
 would disappear if we had better soul- 
 sight. Our hearts are often in panic 
 because our minds are in darkness. Amid 
 dark shadows, harmless and even friendly 
 things assume threatening and terrifying 
 shapes. There is a wonderfully close 
 relation between blindness and broken- 
 heartedness. 
 
 The men of Christ's day did not suspect 
 that they were blind. They considered 
 themselves open-eyed and clear-seeing men. 
 Yet they failed under each test which He 
 submitted. He took the mirror of the law, 
 wiped off the dust which commentators had 
 flung upon it, and held it up all brightly 
 polished, that men might see themselves in 
 it. Yet there was only here and there a soul 
 that had sight enough left to discover its 
 
OF NAZARETH 91 
 
 own spots and stains. He held before them 
 the mirror of His own pure life, and while 
 a few men like Simon Peter, and a number 
 of women like Mary Magdalene, caught 
 swift, clear vision of their inward pollution, 
 the rest remained unconcerned. When 
 He gave them the parable of the Good 
 Samaritan, it was as though He had put 
 a field-glass into their hands to test their 
 power of identifying the man who was 
 their neighbour. But they failed again. 
 And because the eyes of man's understand- 
 ing were thus weak and blurred, He re- 
 ceived commission from the Father to 
 correct the organ of vision. 
 
 If we inquire into the method by which 
 Christ gives recovery of sight to the blind, 
 one fact stands out in impressive clear- 
 ness, viz., that He opens the eyes of the 
 understanding by winning the obedience 
 of the will. His whole system of treat- 
 ment is based upon the principle " if any 
 man willeth to do His will, he shall know 
 of the teaching." The quickening of the 
 soul's optic nerve comes as a consequence 
 of the obedient action of the heart. Dis- 
 obedience closes the darkening shutters 
 upon the spiritual eye ; obedience unfolds 
 them and lets in the light of truth. Where 
 the will refuses to move at the impulse 
 
92 CHRIST IN THE SYNAGOGUE 
 
 of His command, the understanding 
 of spiritual things continues darkened. 
 Always the question of sight or blindness 
 relates itself in the last analysis to that of 
 obedience or disobedience. The objective 
 point upon which the divine oculist works 
 is the sinner's will. Coiled there lies the 
 spring that will open or close for him the 
 gates of day. 
 
 3. 
 
 Christ is Mankind's Redeemer. 
 
 In the Messianic manifesto there is 
 reference to the two-fold nature of our 
 Lord's redeeming work. He brings deliver- 
 ance to the " captives " and sets at liberty 
 " them that are bruised." The caj)tives 
 are those who have been taken in war. 
 The bruised are those who have been crushed 
 beneath the hand of the oppressor. And 
 is not the world of to-day full of men and 
 women who need this two-fold redemption ? 
 To the power of sin they are captive ; under 
 the weight of misfortune they are crushed. 
 We are not long in this world, if we are 
 living without Christ, before we become 
 both bound and bruised. Bad habit binds 
 us, and the wheel of judgment breaks 
 us. Only one hand can cut the cords of 
 
OF NAZARETH 93 
 
 our captivity and lift us from the cog- 
 wheels that grind men into dust. That 
 hand the Christ holds forth. To Him let 
 the prayer arise, "Come, Great Deliverer, 
 come ! " 
 
CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 
 
" And the Passover of the Tews was at hand, and Jesug 
 went up to Jerusalem. And he found in the temple those 
 that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of 
 money sitting : and he made a scourge of cords, and cast 
 all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen ; and 
 he poured out the changers' money, and overthrew their 
 tables ; and to them that sold doves he said, Take these 
 things hence ; make not my Father's house a house of 
 merchandise. His disciples remembered that it was 
 written, The zeal of thine house shall eat me up. The 
 Jews therefore answered and said unto him. What sign 
 shewestthou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things ? 
 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, 
 and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews therefore 
 said. Forty and six years was this temple in building, and 
 wilt thou raise it up in three days ? But he spake of the 
 temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from 
 the dead, his disciples remembered that he spake this ; 
 and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesua 
 had said." — John ii. 13-22. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CHEIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 
 
 THERE were two things which Jesus 
 was always concerned to do when- 
 ever He visited Jerusalem. One of these 
 was to boldly assert His Messianic claims, 
 and the other was to advance, in memory- 
 haunting phrase, some fresh, high doctrine 
 concerning God. We can readily under- 
 stand how it was that Jerusalem, more 
 than any other city, called forth these 
 claims and doctrines. Jerusalem was the 
 heart of the nation, the seat of ecclesias- 
 tical authority, and the centre of priestly 
 power. There the religious system of the 
 nation culminated. There the great feasts 
 were celebrated. There religious arrogance 
 and bigotry and intolerance came to a 
 head and showed their most threatening 
 front. Always, in Jerusalem, He would 
 have before Him in full view the evidence 
 of Israel's fossilized faith. On every hand 
 
 8 97 
 
98 CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 
 
 it was manifest that the law had been 
 mechanically interpreted and its spiritual 
 quality obscured. The ritual of worship, 
 intended to serve as a window to let in 
 the light of truth upon the soul, had been 
 converted into a shutter to keep it out. 
 Hence it was that in Jerusalem His Mes- 
 sianic consciousness came to its highest 
 sensitiveness, and His holy indignation 
 was raised to its whitest heat. Here at 
 the centre of national Hfe and feeling He 
 felt the compulsion to utter Himself in 
 boldest terms. Whatever He might do in 
 Capernaum along the lines of quiet, patient, 
 teaching ministries, in Jerusalem He felt 
 compelled to so speak and act as to 
 shake the seats of the mighty and wake 
 the slumbering priesthood from delusive 
 dreams. 
 
 The cleansing of the Temple was an act 
 of this sort. It was a startlingly bold 
 assertion of His Messianic authority. To 
 interfere with any of the established cus- 
 toms of the Temple was in itself a claim 
 to regal rights in Israel. It would be a 
 conspicuous supplanting of the authority 
 of the Sanhedrin and the Temple officials. 
 It would mean that he who dared to do 
 it held himself superior to priestly autho- 
 rity and unimpeachable by ecclesiastical 
 
CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 99 
 
 law. The act was thus interpreted, and 
 Jesus intended it to be so. 
 
 The circumstances which occasioned the 
 act constituted a flagrant abuse of Temple 
 privileges, and justify the extraordinary 
 procedure of Jesus to every thinking mind. 
 The abuse had grown up gradually and 
 stealthily. Worshippers coming from re- 
 mote parts of Palestine and regions beyond 
 found it necessary to purchase in Jerusalem 
 the materials required for Temple offerings. 
 These materials included bullocks, goats, 
 lambs, doves, meal, oil, salt, and frankin- 
 cense. Of course the nearer to the Temple 
 these could be procured, the more convenient 
 it would be for the worshipper. Dealers in 
 these commodities, competing with each 
 other for patronage, had crept nearer and 
 nearer to the sacred precincts until they 
 had actually established themselves in the 
 outer Temple court. There, too, were the 
 tables of the money-changers. " Every 
 Jew had to pay into the Temple treasury 
 an annual tax of half a shekel, and this tax 
 could only be paid in the sacred currency. 
 No foreign coin, with its emblem of sub- 
 mission to an alien king, was allowed to 
 pollute the Temple. Thus there came to be 
 need of money-changers, not only for the 
 Jew who came up to the feast from a 
 
100 CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 
 
 remote part of the Empire, but even for 
 the inhabitant of Palestine, as the Roman 
 coinage had displaced the shekel in ordinary- 
 use." These money-brokers had followed 
 the traders into the Temple court. One can 
 imagine the pandemonium which must 
 have reigned there when a great multitude 
 came up for a feast like the Passover. 
 The bleating of the lambs, the bellowing 
 of the bullocks, the shouting and pushing 
 and wrangling of the greedy traders and 
 their touts, the shuffling of coins and the 
 haggling about discounts on the strange 
 money exchanged, would all combine to 
 make the scene one of disgraceful uproar 
 and a lamentable profanation of the sacred 
 place. 
 
 Jesus, entering the Temple area, finds 
 Himself in the midst of this abominable 
 desecration. To the depths of His reverent 
 soul He is stirred with indignation. Is this 
 the House of God? Is this the place of 
 prayer ? With flashing eyes He views the 
 crowd of hucksters, whose unrestrained 
 commercial instincts have made it " a house 
 of merchandise," and whose insatiate greed 
 has degraded it into "a den of thieves." 
 The hateful scene makes swift, strong chal- 
 lenge to His Messianic consciousness. It 
 flings, as it were, the glove into His face, 
 
CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 101 
 
 as thovigh to defy His spiritual lordship. 
 Unhesitatingly, but with full appreciation 
 of all that His act involves, He accepts the 
 challenge. The zeal for the honour of His 
 Fat]ier's name, which was ever glowing in 
 His soul, bursts suddenly into consuming 
 flame. Gathering a handful of discarded 
 baggage-cords lying loosely amidst the 
 litter of the place. He braids them into a 
 whip, and then, with uplifted arm and com- 
 manding look, clears the court of traffickers 
 and merchandise. 
 
 The sternness of the act, the indignation 
 displayed, and the threat of physical force 
 make this an unparalleled incident in our 
 Lord's life. Some may feel that it mars 
 the story of His otherwise meek and patient 
 ways. I do not share that feeling in the 
 slightest degree. If I believe that Jesus 
 was the Messiah, the Lord of the Temple, 
 and the divine Son of God, I must believe 
 Him to be the head and source of all legis- 
 lative and administrative authority in the 
 kingdom of God. All other authority is 
 delegated from Him. When His underlings 
 default in duty there can be nothing un- 
 dignified or incongruous in His direct and 
 personal dealing with the situation. 
 
 No doubt the deed was freely discussed 
 and savagely criticised. It would be a chief 
 
102 CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 
 
 topic of conversation at every table in 
 Jerusalem that evening. The cattle-dealers 
 and the money-changers would be hot with 
 resentment over their loss of business. 
 Sanhedrists and priests would be aflame 
 with indignation because of the usurpation 
 of their functions. Conservative gentlemen 
 of the city would deprecate the excitement 
 aroused. A few, perhaps, would hail it 
 as a timely and necessary reform. Many 
 would be full of conjecture concerning the 
 dignity of demeanour and the compelling 
 power of a personality that was competent 
 to accomplish the deed. Some would be- 
 lieve on Him as the Messiah. From every 
 view-point it was one of the most important 
 acts of the Messiah's career. And it was 
 never forgotten while He lived. At every 
 great feast thereafter priests and people 
 alike looked for His face and wondered as 
 to what He might do next. From that day 
 onward it was well known to Jerusalem 
 that a new force had appeared in the 
 nation's life, and they watched Him. 
 
 The curiosity and confusion of opinion 
 regarding one who could do this thing 
 reflect themselves in the query put to Him, 
 "What sign shewest Thou unto us, seeing 
 that Thou doest these things?" It was a 
 foolish question, for the deed was its own 
 
CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 103 
 
 clear sign. It spoke for itself. It was its 
 own vindication and interpretation. It was 
 a token of Messiahship. Therefore, Jesus 
 gave them their answer in an enigma : 
 *' Destroy this temple, and in three days I 
 will raise it up." They did not understand 
 the saying, but they remembered it. It 
 stuck like a barbed arrow in the minds of 
 these Jerusalem Jews and festered there. 
 When on trial for His life, they raked up a 
 garbled form of the saying and put it in 
 as evidence against Him, to prove that He 
 was a mischief-maker, a peace-disturber, 
 and a blasphemer. But for us the answer 
 of our Lord is full of spiritual illuminations. 
 In the light of that reply the whole incident 
 glows with significance and splendour. If 
 we look steadily at this word, with an eye 
 to mark its suggestions and implications, 
 we shall discover the very heart of the 
 gospel in it. 
 
 1. 
 
 hi the first place, it re^ninds us that the 
 True and Eternal Shrine, at which Man 
 meets God and God meets Man, is the 
 Person of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The word which Jesus used in His reply 
 to the Jews is better rendered "Shrine" 
 than " Temple." The Temple was the entire 
 
104 CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 
 
 edifice, and included everything within the 
 sacred area ; the shrine was the sanctuary 
 which only the high priest might enter. 
 "Break up this shrine," He said, and in 
 three days I will rear it again. He made 
 good His claim to the possession of this 
 reconstructive power in the resurrection. 
 By that achievement, He opened to 
 humanity a new Holy of Holies, filled 
 with the true Shekinah glory. Into that 
 sacred shrine humanity is invited to enter. 
 Through the rent veil of Christ's flesh the 
 access is free. The shrine was for the 
 moment overthrown when Christ died on 
 the cross ; but it was rebuilded, never to 
 be disturbed again, when He rose from the 
 dead. The true sanctuary of souls is there, 
 in the heart of Christ. It is spacious 
 enough to serve as the gathering-place 
 for all mankind. There God dwells in 
 glory; there He meets man in grace. 
 
 2. 
 
 This Word of Jesus also reminds us that 
 every Life in touch tvith Him becomes a 
 Lesser Shrine, ^^for the Habitation of 
 God through the Spirit." 
 
 This thought is worked out into fulness 
 by the apostle Paul. "Know ye not that 
 
CHKIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 105 
 
 your body is a shrine of the Holy Spirit 
 that is in you ? " God is not content to 
 dwell in Christ alone, else He had not sent 
 Him into this world to be made flesh and 
 to tabernacle with us. He seeks a shrine 
 in the secret chambers of the human soul, 
 where He can commune with man. Not 
 in Jerusalem, nor in the mountain of 
 Samaria is His sanctuary to be found, but 
 in the humble, believing, contrite heart. 
 The supremest glory of a human life is 
 this, that it may come to be a shrine where 
 God appears and manifests His face. 
 
 3. 
 
 Christ the Central Shrine, icith His Believing 
 People as Associated Shrines, are to con- 
 stitute the grand, completed Temple 
 Eternity. 
 
 This was the golden dream of Christ and 
 His apostles. In their thought the indi- 
 vidual lives of believers are regarded as the 
 numerous lesser shrines, each opening into 
 the great central shrine, and accessible from 
 it, and all together builded into one glorious 
 temple of God. The idea is exemplified in 
 the great cathedrals of Christendom. One 
 of the chiefest charms of these imposing 
 edifices is found in the quiet chapels, the 
 
106 CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 
 
 sweet and simple prayer-places to which the 
 worshipper may retire from the distracting 
 presence of the multitude which throngs 
 nave and transepts and choir. But all 
 these lesser shrines are associated with the 
 grand, central shrine. They are all "builded 
 together" into one glorious house of God. 
 And this is the relation which we may bear 
 to Christ. Our lives, humble as they are, 
 may become sanctuaries opening into the 
 heart of Christ, and accessible to weary souls 
 who seek God at some lowly shrine. 
 
 4. 
 
 God's Shrines must he kept fit for Holy 
 
 Uses. 
 
 They must be clean. And if they are to 
 be clean they must be cleansed from within, 
 from the central shrine. Christ, who is High 
 Priest as well as shrine, must purify us with 
 the spirit of His own life. That is what it 
 means to have a heart sprinkled with the 
 blood of Jesus. This cleansing work is one 
 that needs repeating, Jesus cleansed the 
 Temple at Jerusalem twice ; once at the 
 beginning, again near the end of His 
 ministry. 
 
 There must be order and quietness at the 
 shrine. All the approaches must be made 
 
CHEIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE 107 
 
 attractive and harmonious with the purpose 
 for which the Temple is builded as a meeting- 
 place for God and men. In every Christian 
 life, and in every Christian church these 
 qualities should be found — a holy calm, 
 a brooding peace, a warmth of fellow- 
 ship, a glow of love, and a glorious light 
 of truth. Where there are traffic and 
 barter and competition and selfish shoulder- 
 ing in the courts of the Temple, the light at 
 its centre will be dimmed, and its oracles be 
 dumb. Where the courts are clean and a 
 cloistered stillness invites, men find their 
 way through men to God, and through God 
 to other men. 
 
CHRIST AT JACOB'S WELL 
 
" So he Cometh to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, 
 near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son 
 Joseph : and Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, 
 being wearied with his journey, sat thus by the well. It 
 was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of 
 Samaria to draw water." — John iv. 5-7. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CHRIST AT JACOB'S WELL 
 
 THE success of Christ's brief mission 
 to the Samaritan city of Sychar is 
 in striking contrast to the results which 
 attended His work in Jerusalem, and those 
 which followed in the Galilean city of 
 Capernaum. The atmosphere of Jerusalem 
 was too political, while that of Capernaum 
 was too commercial to favour a general 
 response to high spiritual appeals. In 
 Samaria, however, though there was much 
 vice and ignorance and prejudice, there still 
 remained something of simplicity, some- 
 thing of what we may term spiritual wist- 
 fulness, that opened the door for Him into 
 the hearts of the people. 
 
 It was a source of deep satisfaction to Jesus 
 to win this spiritual triumph so early in His 
 ministry. He came to Jacob's well, on the 
 outskirts of the city, weary and hungry 
 
 and thirsty, in spirit as well as in body. But 
 in 
 
112 CHRIST AT JACOB'S WELL 
 
 whilst the disciples were gathering pro- 
 visions for their bodily hunger, He gathered 
 a royal feast for His soul. When they re- 
 turned to the well they found Him refreshed, 
 elated, triumphant. And while they were 
 wondering who had brought Him food, a 
 crowd of eager people from the city appeared 
 in view. Jesus, pointing joyously to the 
 on-coming multitude of inquirers, turned 
 to His disciples and said, in effect, " I 
 have been feasting upon the first-fruits 
 of the harvest that is waving ripe for 
 your sickles in yonder approaching throng. 
 Thrust in and reap ! It is a time of special 
 opportunity. You have not expected such 
 a sudden development, I know. Dis- 
 couraged by the reception in Jerusalem, 
 you have been thinking that it must take 
 a long time to move any community into 
 sympathy with My Messianic mission. You 
 have been repeating the proverb of the 
 farmer, that long months must always in- 
 tervene between the seed -sowing and the 
 harvest. But here is a harvest ripened in a 
 day. I dropped a handful of seed into the 
 soul of that woman whom you saw here 
 a little while ago, and whom you were 
 inclined to scowl upon, and lo, from that 
 sowing, this quick harvest of interest has 
 ripened. This whole community is prepared 
 
CHETST AT JACOB'S WELL 113 
 
 to receive me now, in My Messianic capacity. 
 You have not laboured to produce this 
 harvest, but I have laboured, and the woman 
 has laboured, and it is for you to enter into 
 our labours." 
 
 Yes, it was a great joy for Jesus to win 
 this early triumph, and that without any 
 display of miracle, but only through the 
 revelation of His mind and heart. He had 
 come to that well a wayfarer, travel- 
 stained and weary, and he had won His 
 welcome solely by the manifestation of His 
 wisdom, sympathy, and grace. Nor was the 
 triumph short-lived. Samaria continued to 
 be good ground for the gospel. In after 
 years the disciples reaped splendid harvests 
 there. After Pentecost, when the storm of 
 persecution broke forth in Jerusalem, and 
 the scattered disciples went everywhere 
 preaching the word, " Philip went down to 
 the city of Samaria, and proclaimed unto 
 them the Christ, and the people gave heed 
 with one accord unto the things that were 
 spoken by Philip. . . . And there was much 
 joy in that city." 
 
 It is a significant fact that Samaria was 
 opened to evangelism through the medium 
 of a woman of low, social rank, and of ill- 
 repute. She was the latch of the door which 
 Christ found ready for His hand. It is one 
 9 
 
114 CHRIST AT JACOB'S WELL 
 
 of those instances in which the humblest 
 of means has been used to achieve the most 
 far-reaching results, and it warns us against 
 despising the possibilities of service which 
 may lie latent in the most unpromising 
 lives. 
 
 The whole story of our Lord's dealing 
 with this woman is full of pathetic interest, 
 and it makes one of the brightest pages 
 of the gospel. In this incident we see Him 
 engaged in doing the very sort of work for 
 which, in His manifesto at Nazareth, He 
 claimed to be appointed and anointed. 
 Here was one in whose life were all the 
 sorrowful conditions He had enumerated 
 there. Here we behold Him at the task of 
 preaching good tidings to one who was 
 poor, healing one who was broken-hearted, 
 proclaiming release to one who was bound, 
 recovering sight to one who was blind, and 
 setting at liberty one who was bruised. 
 Here we see the Master-workman at His 
 chosen work. 
 
 In reflecting upon the manifesto at 
 Nazareth, we noted that the root trouble of 
 all the sad list of troubles mentioned there 
 was that of blindness. Poverty, captivity, 
 broken-heartedness, and bruises are all the 
 consequences of darkness which has drifted 
 down upon the soul. Observe how that fact 
 
CHRIST AT JACOB'S WELL 115 
 
 is emphasized by the Master's treatment of 
 the woman at the well ! He traces all her 
 sins and sorrows back to her lack of spiritual 
 discernment. He finds the secret of all her 
 evil and wretched life in her ignorance of 
 spiritual realities. He puts His finger upon 
 the occasion of all her misdeeds and mis- 
 fortunes when He gently says, "if thou 
 knewest." It was the blind spot in her soul 
 which was ruining her life. It was not her 
 ignorance, mark you, of the wrappings of 
 spiritual things, which wrought the mischief, 
 but her blindness to the great spiritual 
 verities and realities. She was not alto- 
 gether illiterate. She had a knowledge of 
 the Scriptures. She was well versed in 
 her Samaritan creed. She understood the 
 points of difference between that and the 
 creed of the Jews. She was keen for con- 
 troversy upon these points. But she knew 
 not the substance and soul of truth. She 
 knew not " the gift of God." In these 
 particulars she represents multitudes of 
 men and women in our own time. There 
 are men who write books — books which 
 manifest great mental breadth and acute- 
 ness, books which deal with biblical and 
 theological subjects in a scholarly way, but 
 which reveal, all too clearly, a lack of experi- 
 mental knowledge of divine things. This is 
 
116 CHRIST AT JACOB'S WELL 
 
 the frequent difficulty which the Christian 
 worker meets : acquaintance with the husk, 
 but ignorance of the kernel of spiritual 
 things. There is, for instance, no lack of 
 intelligence among the English populace 
 to-day regarding creeds and rituals and 
 other trappings of that sort. The average 
 British workman is a rather clever contro- 
 versialist upon points like these. He is 
 ready for argument. He can pick holes in 
 speech or sermon with surprising facility. 
 But does he know the power of God in his 
 own soul? In many instances he does, we 
 are thankful to believe. And then he stands 
 out and lives a radiant life. But it is as 
 true of the multitude of the common people, 
 as it is of the lesser company of the scribes, 
 that they are largely lacking in a first-hand, 
 experimental knowledge of the things of 
 God. What we need, above all other things, 
 to know, are the things of which Jesus 
 spoke to the woman at the well : the Gift 
 of God, and the Bringer of the Gift. 
 
 1. 
 
 Concerning the Grift. 
 
 Christ's teaching upon this matter is all 
 compacted into one word — "Life." "The 
 gift of God is eternal life." The figure of 
 
CHRIST AT JACOB'S WELL 117 
 
 speech which Christ used to set forth His 
 thought was singularly impressive. " Thou 
 wouldest have asked of Him and He would 
 have given thee living water." Water is 
 essential to life. The thirst for it is the 
 most intense of all our physical cravings. 
 Jesus would have this Samaritan woman 
 realise that what she most needed was 
 something that would do for her soul what 
 the water of Jacob's well could do, in 
 partial measure, for her body. Every day 
 this unfortunate woman was compelled to 
 trudge out a mile and a half from the city 
 in all weathers to bring the water from 
 the well. Her own words show that it 
 was an added hardship in an otherwise 
 hard life. There is a plaintive note in her 
 phrase, " all the way hither to draw." And 
 yet she had trudged a long and weary 
 way during the journey of her life and had 
 sunk her pitcher into many a well without 
 getting so much as one life-giving draught 
 for her immortal soul. They were all poor 
 wells and badly polluted. At this period 
 of her life she was living in adultery. 
 Every day the poison of that sinful alliance 
 was doing its deadly work in her soul. 
 Jesus would teach her that the blessing 
 which God held in His gift was one that 
 would issue in an artesian well within her 
 
118 CHRIST AT JACOB'S WELL 
 
 soul. The contents of that well, replenished 
 continually from the fountain-head of life, 
 would be satisfying, curative, and unfailing. 
 She would no longer need to go hither and 
 thither to draw, but would have the springs 
 of life within. And this was the gift that 
 Jesus was constantly holding forth to men 
 — life for the soul, life in the soul. 
 
 But she needed to know also concerning the 
 Bringer of the Gift. 
 
 Where was He to be found? She did 
 not suspect that this wayworn traveller 
 could bestow the gift. It was not for such 
 as He to pour this blessing into her soul. 
 When He asserted His power to confer the 
 boon she met His claim with contemptuous 
 scepticism. "Sir, Thou hast nothing to 
 draw with and the well is deep. From 
 whence, then, hast Thou that living water ? " 
 She had yet to learn that Jesus was Him- 
 self both well and drawer of the living 
 water. The well was His own deep, divine 
 life ; the apparatus for drawing was His 
 own spirit of willing helpfulness. Truly 
 the well was deep — deep as the nature of 
 God, deep as the depths of human need. 
 But He had something to draw with. He 
 
CHRIST AT JACOB'S WELL 119 
 
 had sympathy and understanding. Under- 
 standing was the line and sympathy the 
 bucket which would bring up the crystal, 
 vitalising waters from the nether springs 
 of that deep well. He could lift the bless- 
 ing for her in a moment and pour it fresh 
 and cool into her parched and barren soul. 
 
 3. 
 
 Mark the Method which Christ employed to 
 open her Soul for the Reception of the 
 Gift! 
 
 First of all, He appealed to her Sympathies. 
 His request, "Give Me to drink," touched 
 her womanly instinct of mercy. There is 
 in every woman a potential angel of 
 ministration. It may be a sleeping angel ; 
 its wings may be folded or even broken. 
 But the angel may be waked and its 
 broken wings be mended if touched by a 
 skilful hand. It is the prerogative of 
 womanhood to relieve the distress and 
 refresh the weariness of mankind. The 
 appeal to woman's sympathy is one that 
 seldom fails. And sympathy is a faeulty 
 of spiritual knowledge. It is an organ of 
 vision. Get the sympathies aroused and 
 you have prepared the way for a revelation. 
 It was not a gracious response which the 
 
120 CHRIST AT JACOB'S WELL 
 
 woman first made to Christ's request, but 
 the request had touched her and set the 
 chords of her better nature in vibration. 
 
 Then He proceeded to aioake her Wonder. 
 Capacity to wonder is not a distinctively 
 feminine characteristic, but it is stronger 
 in women than in men. They have more 
 imagination than men, and imagination 
 impels to wonder. When, therefore, the 
 Master said, "If thou knewest," He awoke 
 within her a thirst to have the mystery 
 of His words explained. She will not rest 
 now until she gets the clue to this riddle. 
 So she plunges into the matter with ques- 
 tion and challenge concerning Himself. 
 "Art Thou greater than our father Jacob, 
 which gave us the well, and drank thereof 
 himself, and his sons, and his cattle?" 
 This is progress towards the end He has 
 in view. Presently she is saying, " Sir, give 
 me this water that I thirst not, neither 
 come all the way hither to draw." This is 
 further progress. He begins by making 
 request of her ; she is now making request 
 of Him. He is getting on with His work. 
 
 Next He stirs her Conscience. "Go call 
 thy husband." And now the tell-tale flush 
 mantles her cheek and her head is drooping 
 with shame as she replies, "I have no 
 husband." It was true, but it was only 
 
CHRIST AT JACOB'S WELL 121 
 
 part of the truth, and not the worst part. 
 She would fain leave the rest of it untold. 
 She would huddle it up and hide it from 
 this pure gaze. But that would be fatal to 
 any cleansing or healing work. It would 
 prevent the water of life from welling up 
 into her soul. That hidden sin must be 
 bored through and the love of it broken 
 in her heart. It is only through a spirit 
 opened up to God in repentance and con- 
 fession that the water of life can rise. So 
 the Master drives the steel drill of accusa- 
 tion clean down through her soul, unspar- 
 ingly pressing upon her the facts of her 
 shameful life. That is the only way to 
 bring a sinner to the experimental know- 
 ledge of the gift of God. It is the only 
 way to get the water of life into the soul. 
 If you seek to hide your sin under some 
 dishonest half-truth, or to dismiss it with 
 some easy phrase, you will dam back the 
 water of life. You must make a clean 
 breast of it. You must let Christ bore 
 down through all the rock formation of 
 your heart. He must drive the shaft of 
 His truth clear through your inmost, secret 
 soul. Where that shaft goes through the 
 water of life will presently come streaming 
 in. 
 
 Now He inspires her Hope. Already she 
 
122 CHRIST AT JACOB'S WELL 
 
 perceives that He is a prophet. The lofty 
 doctrine which He next communicates 
 concerning God and the convincing word 
 He speaks concerning worship set her 
 whole being quivering with the hope that 
 this may prove to be the promised One. 
 Will the Messiah when He comes have 
 sweeter or more vital truth to give ? The 
 half-formed hope trembles into timid ex- 
 pression : " I know that Messiah cometh, 
 which is called Christ; when He is come 
 He will declare unto us all things." It 
 was in reality a wistful question. "May 
 I dare to hope that Thou art He?" All 
 the passionate earnestness of her being 
 goes into the words and she is looking 
 steadfastly into His face. She stands upon 
 the very verge of a new life. 
 
 ChiHst's concluding word wins her Faith. 
 "I that speak unto thee am He." It was 
 enough. Her whole being responded to 
 the announcement which to her quickened 
 spirit was a glorious revelation. In an 
 instant she felt within her soul the up- 
 springing waters of everlasting life. Where 
 the shaft of conviction had been driven 
 through the stream of grace came pouring 
 in. In that moment she knew the gift of 
 God and the bringer of the gift. 
 
CHRIST ON THE MOUNT OF 
 BEATITUDES 
 
"Every one therefore 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. And every one that heareth these 
 words of mine and doeth them not, shall be likened 
 unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand : 
 and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
 winds blew, and smote upon that house ; and it fell : and 
 great was the fall thereof." — Matthew vii. 24-27. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 CHRIST ON THE MOUNT OF BEATITUDES 
 
 THESE words, forming the practical 
 conclusion to the Sermon on the 
 Mount, indicate the supreme place which 
 Jesus gave in His teaching to the import- 
 ance of character-building. Following out 
 the metaphor which the Master used, we 
 come upon three momentous facts. 
 
 1. 
 
 Characters, like Buildings, have a certain 
 Unity about Them. 
 
 In the construction of a building a 
 variety of materials may be used — stone, 
 brick, iron, wood, glass, mortar, putty. 
 But these materials are all, by the builder's 
 work, incorporated into a structural unity. 
 As component parts of the one building no 
 bit of stuff can disown its relations to any 
 other bit of stuff. They belong to each 
 
 133 
 
126 CHRIST ON THE 
 
 other. Through the instrumentality of 
 trowel, chisel, and hammer, they have been 
 joined together and made members one 
 of another. Diverse and unrelated as they 
 were when first assembled on the site, 
 these materials are now welded together 
 in one consolidated mass. 
 
 A building may also include a multitude 
 and variety of compartments. If you visit 
 the town hall of Leicester, for instance, 
 you will find a building of this sort. The 
 room in which the Mayor and Councillors 
 meet to deliberate upon civic affairs, is, 
 as it should be, a well-appointed room, 
 delightfully upholstered and beautifully 
 decorated. Fine paintings hang on the 
 walls. Light, mellowed by its passage 
 through stained-glass windows streams 
 in abundantly. It is an inviting place. 
 But all the rooms in the building are not 
 like that one. If you descend to the base- 
 ment you will find quite another sort. 
 Here the rooms are narrow and cheerless, 
 with bare walls, cold stone floors, plain 
 benches, and iron doors with padlocks on 
 them. These rooms serve a different 
 purpose from the one above. They are 
 occupied by a less orderly set of people. 
 Men and women are seen here in sorry 
 plight. But all these rooms belong to the 
 
MOUNT OF BEATITUDES 127 
 
 one building. They are all parts of one 
 inclusive scheme. The council-chamber 
 cannot disown the prisoner's cell. Diverse 
 as they are in the accommodation which 
 they afford and the standing which they 
 give their occupants before the community, 
 they belong to each other in the unity of 
 one scheme of civic administration. 
 
 The same principle holds true of your 
 life. That, too, is a unity. All the 
 materials which go into your life, all 
 thoughts, emotions, purposes, deeds, are 
 unified in character. You are, at this 
 moment, the sum total of all that you have 
 been. All the good in you is joined to all 
 the bad in you. The best that is in you 
 cannot disown the worst that is in you. 
 All your personal characteristics are builded 
 together in you, each to each. You cannot 
 dissever them. You cannot dismember 
 your soul. You are not a lumber-yard 
 where materials displace each other as 
 they are carted in and out; you are a 
 structure. From the stuff at hand you 
 select and build. No bit of mental or moral 
 stuff in you can disclaim its relations to 
 any other bit. 
 
 There are different compartments to 
 your being. You have your council- 
 chamber of the soul, where reason and 
 
128 CHRIST ON THE 
 
 conscience deliberate and legislate for the 
 general welfare of your life. But you have 
 also the dark cells where unholy desires 
 lurk and lawless passions rage. You may 
 not conduct visitors to these cells. You 
 may try to hide them. You may even 
 deny their existence. But they are there 
 and you know it. And they are part of 
 you. They are all incorporated into the 
 unity of your personality. Quality to 
 quality, strength to weakness, good to 
 evil, glory to shame, thus your life is inter- 
 linked and builded. Thought joins itself 
 to thought, deed to deed, day to day, youth 
 to manhood, manhood to age in the con- 
 solidated oneness of character. As De 
 Quincey wrote, "Man is doubtless one by 
 some subtle nexus extending from the 
 new-born infant to the superannuated 
 dotard." 
 
 Now this is a serious fact and one which 
 makes the problem of living critical at 
 every point. Especially does it emphasise 
 the necessity of carefully selecting the stuff 
 which is to be builded into character. 
 Cheap and poor materials will make your 
 life unsightly and unstable. Your moral 
 intelligence must act as the watchful in- 
 spector to condemn and reject whatever 
 falls below a high standard of quality. 
 
MOUNT OF BEATITUDES 129 
 
 Half-truths, however brilliant they may 
 be ; vulgar or selfish maxims, however 
 clever they may seem; compromises with 
 righteousness, however convenient they 
 may appear; none of these are good 
 enough to be builded into character. If 
 you are too trivial or too lazy to take 
 pains in this matter you will presently 
 find yourself with a rookery instead of 
 a substantial building on your hands. 
 
 The only perfect material for character- 
 building is that supplied by the Divine 
 architect in the Sermon on the Mount. 
 Here in the Beatitudes you will find a 
 pile of shining marble blocks, fresh-quarried 
 from the mine of infinite wisdom. In the 
 precepts of the sermon regarding your 
 relations to God, to your fellow-men, to 
 the moral law and to the events of Provi- 
 dence, you may find the plans and specifi- 
 cations for building these together into 
 symmetry. If you really want the best 
 of building stuff you must get it here. 
 
 You are to remember also tTiat bad 
 workmanship even upon good material will 
 mar your structure. Carrara marble calls 
 for careful treatment no less than sun- 
 baked bricks. The Benedictine monks who 
 built the Peterborough Cathedral used good 
 stone but poor mortar. They seemed to 
 10 
 
130 CHRIST ON THE 
 
 think that anything was good enough to 
 shovel in between the courses. It was 
 an expensive mistake. Many thousands of 
 pounds have been required of late years 
 to restore the fabric of that structure. If 
 on any side of your life you build badly, 
 whether it be on the side of your private 
 life or your public life, your business life 
 or your social life, to that extent your 
 character is disfigured. On whatever storey 
 you are at work, whether you are forming 
 physical habits or mental habits or moral 
 habits, you imperil the symmetry and 
 strength of your life if you treat the 
 materials in slip-shod fashion. We try to 
 excuse ourselves for the cracks which 
 appear in our characters, but the matter is 
 too serious to be lightly dismissed. Weak- 
 ness in one section may compromise the 
 solidity of the whole. Ugliness from one 
 point of view mars the entire artistic effect. 
 Unwholesomeness in one part may speedily 
 be communicated to every other part. If 
 the tower is to stand straight there must 
 be no sagging of the walls. If the council- 
 chamber is to be protected from contagion 
 the cells must be daily disinfected. 
 
 Of course, some parts of the building you 
 are erecting are of more importance than 
 some other parts. It is more necessary that 
 
MOUNT OF BEATITUDES 131 
 
 you have good morals than good manners. 
 But good manners are by no means to be 
 despised. To a certain extent, manners are 
 the expression of morals. And your wife 
 must marry both your manners and your 
 morals. She will have to live with them 
 both. If you are honest but ill-tempered 
 and boorish she will grow old before her 
 time. If you are corrupt in morals it will 
 be poor satisfaction to her that you have 
 a sunny temper and a taking way. It is 
 the man well-builded in every department 
 of his being who makes the sort of husband 
 that a good woman desires and the sort of 
 father that the children need. That is the 
 sort of man the world needs everywhere. 
 It is the sort of man Christ came to make. 
 
 2. 
 
 Characters, like Buildings, are Designed to 
 serve Definite Uses. 
 
 The use to which the building is to be 
 devoted will largely determine the plan of 
 the architect. If it is a barn or a shop or 
 a warehouse that one has in mind, he will 
 adapt his architecture to the end in view. 
 Men do not build spires on cattle-sheds or 
 put rose-windows in bake-shops. And so 
 it is in building character. The end to be 
 
132 CHRIST ON THE 
 
 served will determine the style of construc- 
 tion. If your chief aim is to gather wealth 
 you will govern yourself accordingly. Cha- 
 racter enough to do business with will be all 
 that you require. Accepting the doctrine 
 that a man's life consists in the abundance 
 of the things which he possesses, you will 
 build your life after the style of a ware- 
 house or a cold storage plant. You will 
 consider it a waste of time to cultivate 
 other than the commercial side of your 
 life. You will pay little heed to general 
 culture or to the claims of philanthropy 
 and religion. 
 
 If the chief end of your life is pleasure, 
 you will construct your character after the 
 fashion of a playhouse. You will want 
 plenty of colour and tinsel in it. You will 
 aim to follow all the latest fashions, indulge 
 in all the sports, participate in all amuse- 
 ments, and get in with the liveliest sets of 
 people. But you will not think it worth 
 while to work hard, or to interest yourself 
 in public affairs. You will not care about 
 meeting poor and unfortunate people. Per- 
 haps you will not care to marry. Wife and 
 children might stand in the way of your 
 pleasures. You will not burden yourself 
 with the support of aged parents. 
 
 If j^our chief aim in life is to acquire 
 
MOUNT OF BEATITUDES 133 
 
 knowledge, you will build after the library- 
 plan. All you will need is book-space in 
 your brain. Nothing more effectually iso- 
 lates a man, setting him apart in cob- 
 webbed uselessness, than the selfish pursuit 
 of knowledge. He gathers information, 
 stores it in the garret of his brain, and 
 the rats eat it. 
 
 If, again, your chief aim is the winning 
 of high place and fame, you will build 
 after the pattern of an Eiffel Tower. 
 Steps to climb by will be all you need. 
 Nor will you be over-careful concerning 
 the stuff for step-building which you use. 
 If you can make a step of your neighbour 
 and climb up over him, you will probably 
 be quite willing to utilise him in that 
 capacity. 
 
 But suppose, now, you make it your chief 
 care to do good in the world and help your 
 fellow-creatures. You will need, now, to 
 build your life after a far nobler plan than 
 any which I have named. You will need 
 to plan for a type of character that will 
 possess the essential features of a home. 
 If you are to help people in the 
 largest way, they must be able to live 
 in you. Little children must live in 
 your cheerful kindness ; your family must 
 live in your love; the poor, the ignorant, 
 
134 CHRIST ON THE 
 
 the unfortunate, the discouraged, must 
 live in your sympathy ; friends must live in 
 your appreciation and loyalty. Room must 
 be made for all of these. You should not 
 expect to be a great helper of humanity if 
 you build your life on a low and narrow 
 plan. There imust be spaciousness about 
 it to afford the required accommodation. 
 There must be a reception-room in your 
 sympathy, a banqueting-room in your 
 affection, a consulting-room in your under- 
 standing, a bathroom in your assoiling 
 moral earnestness. There must be rest- 
 rooms in you too, quiet chambers where 
 peace reigns and where the atmosphere is 
 fresh and sweet. You must be a man built 
 on a broad and high plan if others are to 
 find a home in you. You must be a man of 
 insight, of imagination, of generosity ; you 
 must be a man of tranquillity and heart- 
 purity. Possessing these qualities your life 
 will be for other lives an attractive, shelter- 
 ing, sustaining home. 
 
 But now suppose you have accepted the 
 highest of all ends as your aim in life, 
 namely, to do the will of God. This end 
 will include all other worthy ends. It will 
 not alienate you from the service of man, 
 but will complete and crown that service. 
 You must remember, however, that to reach 
 
MOUNT OF BEATITUDES 135 
 
 this end demands a still loftier plan of 
 building. You must build now after the 
 plan of a temple. You must make room for 
 God. You must have a sanctuary in you* 
 There must be a shrine in your heart. In 
 the deepest centre of your life you must 
 build an oratory. And it must be kept 
 inviolate. To reach this end you must be 
 a religious man. You must be a Christian. 
 You must take your plan from Jesus 
 Christ, the architect and exemplar of the 
 perfect life. 
 
 Do not forget that you are to live in the 
 spiritual structure you build, and continue 
 to live in it while immortality endures. 
 See that it is fit to be the enduring habi- 
 tation of your conscience ! 
 
 3. 
 
 Characters, like Buildings, are Subjected to 
 many and severe Testings. 
 
 Each day is a test-day for all the build- 
 ings of the town. The weather tests them, 
 the sunshine and the frost and the rain. 
 Use tests them. Strain and weight of 
 contents test them. The shock of traffic 
 tests them. Sometimes fire and flood test 
 them. The same is true of character. For 
 it every day is a judgment day. Joy tests 
 
136 CHRIST ON THE 
 
 it, and sorrow tests it. Some characters 
 crumble beneath the one, some beneath 
 the other. Work tests and leisure tests. 
 The joys and sorrows of others, their 
 successes and failures — these test it too. 
 The fire of temptation and the flood of 
 tribulation are the severer methods of 
 testing to which it is subjected in the 
 great crises of experience. 
 
 And because character is to be so severely 
 tested, it becomes a matter of supreme con- 
 cern that it be built upon the true founda- 
 tion. In setting forth this great necessity, 
 the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on 
 the Mount comes to its climax of warning 
 and of self-assertion. Character built on a 
 sandy foundation will ultimately collapse 
 into hideous ruin. And all character not 
 foundationed upon Jesus Christ is built 
 upon the sand. Such is the plain teach- 
 ing of the Christ. And what a tremendous 
 assertion it is ! Think of one individual 
 claiming to be the upholder of all human 
 security and the sustaining base of all 
 human well-being I Men in Christian pul- 
 pits are declaring to-day that Jesus never 
 claimed deity for Himself in any other sense 
 than that in which you and I may claim 
 it. If that were so, if Jesus did not regard 
 Himself as being divine in a sense abso- 
 
MOUNT OF BEATITUDES 137 
 
 lutely unique and unattainable by any 
 other human being, then in making such 
 a claim as this His arrogance was 
 outrageous. For, you will notice. He 
 pre-empts to Himself the whole founda- 
 tion area. He leaves no room for any 
 other teacher to share that office with 
 Him. Whatever men may say regarding 
 Him to-day, it is clear that He believed 
 Himself to be infinitely superior to any man 
 who had ever lived or ever should live» 
 in spiritual power and authority. The 
 distinction which He here draws between 
 Himself and all other men is wide enough 
 to stand for the distinction between man 
 and God. 
 
 The experience of the ages justifies 
 Christ's claim. A great host of people 
 who have tried many another foundation 
 are singing to-day : — 
 
 "On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand, 
 All other ground ia sinking sand." 
 
 Yes, the one solid foundation for human 
 character has been abundantly proven to 
 be the Lord Jesus Christ, His P'^rson, His 
 Word, His Work, His Grace. 
 
 They are anxious now about St. Paul's 
 Cathedral. Parts of the foundation have 
 
138 CHRIST ON THE MOUNT 
 
 shown signs of weakness, and grave con- 
 cern is felt for the safety of the structure. 
 It would be a national calamity if serious 
 harm should come to that noble pile which 
 lifts above the smoke of London " the finest 
 dome in Christendom." But it is an infi- 
 nitely greater calamity when a man created 
 in the image of God and redeemed by the 
 blood of Christ crumbles into everlasting 
 ruin. "Take heed, therefore, how ye 
 build." 
 
CHRIST BY THE SEA OF GALILEE 
 
" On that day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by 
 the seaside. And there were gathered unto Him great 
 multitudes, so that he entered into a boat and sat ; and 
 all the multitude stood on the beach. And he spake to 
 them many things in parables, saying, Behold the sower 
 went forth to sow." — Matthew xiii. 1-3. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 CHRIST BY THE SEA OF GALILEE 
 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER 
 
 WE shall best think of the sower in 
 this parable as being Christ Him- 
 self. From this viewpoint the parable is 
 a revelation of the spirit and method of 
 Christ's work for men. 
 
 1. 
 
 In the Sowers handling of the Seed toe have 
 a Picture of Christ's Cheerful Expendi- 
 ture of Efforts for the Enrichment of 
 the World. 
 
 The sower goes about his work in a 
 large and open-handed way. He deals 
 generously by the soil. He is not miserly 
 with his seed. He scatters it with a free 
 hand. He knows that to sow sparingly is 
 to reap slenderly. If he stints the soil of 
 
142 CHRIST BY THE 
 
 seed he will cheat himself out of a harvest. 
 He is moved to liberality by an optimistic 
 faith. Slinging the seed-bag over his 
 shoulder he strides across the fields and 
 empties it with a cheerful prodigality. 
 Foolish people, ignorant of the miracle 
 of harvest, might accuse him of waste- 
 fulness. Greedy and impatient men might 
 think that the seed had better be eaten 
 at once and not flung upon the land like 
 this. But the sower understands his busi- 
 ness. He knows full well that some of 
 his seeds will be wasted. They will fall 
 upon the roadway at the edge of the 
 field and the birds will pick them up. 
 But he deems it better that a bit of 
 beaten path be sown than that a margin 
 of ploughed soil be left unseeded. He 
 would rather overdo his sowing than 
 underdo it. That is why he flings some 
 seeds into the thorn-bushes. The edge of 
 the good soil runs right up to the thorn- 
 tangle, and in his eagerness to get the 
 last inch of productive land under crop 
 he is willing that a few seeds should 
 overshoot the mark. So he gives a wide, 
 strong swing to his arm, and grudges 
 not the drain upon his bag of seed. He 
 believes that the harvest will justify the 
 outlay. 
 
SEA OF GALILEE 143 
 
 And thus it was with our Lord. He 
 took His way through life scattering 
 energies, distributing efforts, and broad- 
 casting truths with a generous hand. 
 Broadly, even lavishly, He sowed the 
 precious seeds of wisdom and of love. 
 One day He noticed that a large propor- 
 tion of what He had done seemed to have 
 come to nothing. It looked as though 
 His energies had been wasted and His 
 efforts thrown away. The field which He 
 had sown so thickly still wore a bare and 
 unpromising look. Only one corner of 
 the field gave hope of harvest. But that 
 corner looked exceedingly well. It gave 
 promise of yielding an hundred-fold. And 
 it fulfilled the promise. That little com- 
 pany of disciples who remained with Him 
 when the multitude went away brought 
 in returns that filled the Sower's heart 
 with joy. Through them came seed for 
 other sowings and other harvests. This 
 is always the spirit in which Christ does 
 His work — the spirit of a boundless gene- 
 rosity, the spirit of a radiant optimism. 
 And this is the only spirit which becomes 
 His followers. We must believe in the 
 vitality and potency of goodness and the 
 certainty of the harvest from its sowing 
 in the lives of men. If we are more 
 
144 CHRIST BY THE 
 
 concerned to keep a full seed-bin than to 
 have growing crops we are not of His 
 spirit. It is for us to do the scattering 
 of the seed, trusting Him to give the in- 
 crease. Nothing is more absurd than a 
 grudging spirit in the sower of good seed. 
 AJl the harvests of reform which the world 
 has witnessed have been due to the cheer- 
 ful prodigality of hopeful sowers. They 
 could never have been produced by men 
 who stingily counted the seeds in their 
 hands. When Wendall Phillips was asked 
 what could arouse the country to the 
 emancipation of the slaves he answered, 
 " Sow the country knee-deep with abolition 
 literature I " The men of this world are 
 wise enough in their own generation to 
 know the relation between seed-sowing 
 and harvest. Every election-time the land 
 is sown thick with campaign literature. 
 The Suffragets of England are fairly bom- 
 barding the country with their publica- 
 tions to-day. The Socialists are at it too, 
 and the Prohibitionists. It is the policy 
 of wisdom. No man is true to his con- 
 viction, whatever it may be, who is not 
 willing to spend a good deal for seed 
 to make it grow in other lives. 
 
 , , \jt 
 
SEA OF GALILEE 145 
 
 The Sowers icaiting for the Harvest pictures 
 the Masters Patience in dealing with 
 Men. 
 
 No sower treading the furrows with his 
 seed-bag in the morning expects to be 
 binding sheaves before the sun goes down. 
 The time element must come in. The days 
 must bring their quivering heat and the 
 nights their cooling dews. God works 
 along the lines of an ordered progressive- 
 ness in gardens and in men. "As the 
 earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the 
 garden causeth the things that are sown 
 in it to spring forth ; so the Lord God will 
 cause righteousness and praise to spring 
 forth before all nations." But neither of 
 these growths is produced in a day. Each 
 must have its growing season. Nature 
 does not spring from snowbanks to rose- 
 beds at a single bound. Even in lands 
 where the succession of the seasons is 
 most clearly marked no one can tell pre- 
 cisely the hour when winter ends and 
 spring begins. More than once have I 
 seen spring at the front while winter 
 lingered still at the rear of my Canadian 
 home. The lawn with the southern ex- 
 11 
 
146 CHRIST BY THE 
 
 posure was already bright with greening 
 grass while the brown earth at the back 
 lay shivering under pools of snow-water. 
 And I have found a similar condition in 
 my soul. That, too, has Its southern ex- 
 posure where the light of God falls warm 
 and bright. There some little growths 
 appear to show that spring has come. 
 But it has also its shadowed places over 
 which "the winds from unsunned spaces 
 blow," and where the frosts still linger. 
 These inner areas of shadow and of chill 
 seem sometimes to mock my hope. And 
 yet, as surely as I know in later March, 
 that the whole Continent is moving towards 
 the springtime and the harvest, so surely 
 do I know that my whole being Is moving 
 towards a fairer and more fruitful time. 
 We need not be discouraged when the 
 spiritual growth is slow. Sin binds the 
 soul in stronger chains than ice-bands 
 bind the earth. But these bands are to 
 be broken one by one. From seed to 
 bud, from bud to flower and fruit ; that 
 is God's order. In the realm of spiritual 
 graces, righteousness is the bud, praise 
 the incense from the full-blown flower. 
 In God's good time it shall be perfected. 
 
 Jesus Avas a patient Avalter for the 
 harvest. It was a great joy to Him when 
 
SEA OF GALILEE 147 
 
 a wondrously quick growth gave Him tlic 
 early Samaritan ingathering. But it did 
 not spoil Him for patient waiting upon 
 other seed which He had sown and which 
 was long in coming to its harvest-time. 
 The disciples were often impatient. They 
 would have Him force the hands of the 
 clock around to make it strike the hour 
 of triumph-song. But He waited for the 
 seconds to tick out the minutes and the 
 minutes to make up the hours. In their 
 impatient moments He would tell them 
 of the " Afterwards " in which their own 
 understanding of spiritual things would 
 ripen and in which His kingdom should 
 come to manifestation in the world. 
 
 Prophets, patriots, and reformers still 
 find it tiresome waiting for the harvest. 
 Reforms come with exasperating slowness. 
 In England the power of the liquor traffic 
 has not yet been broken. The slum is 
 persistent. At one end of the social 
 system we have vast and ever-increasing 
 wealth, while at the other end we see 
 infinite poverty and wretchedness. Opium 
 still curses China, and a procrustean system 
 of caste still maims and tortures India. 
 Russia is choked black by the hand of politi- 
 cal tyranny, while Germany is hard-ridden 
 by militarism. America is led handcuffed by 
 
148 CHRIST BY THE 
 
 the trusts. The golden age long promised 
 seems far away. Not half the population 
 of the world is as yet even nominally 
 Christian. It is scarcely to be wondered 
 at that pessimists and unbelievers flout 
 the Church and pronounce Christianity 
 a failure. But Christ's disciples should 
 not lose heart. Measuring forward to 
 the ideal state of things, we have still a 
 long way to travel. But measuring back 
 to the conditions in ancient Rome and 
 Antioch and Babylon, we can see that we 
 have come a long way through the wilder- 
 ness. It is the principle of the harvest 
 that must steady us in our working and 
 our waiting. The very discontent with 
 imperfect conditions, so active in our time, 
 is a sign that the good seed is stirring in 
 the soil. If the soil were lying fallow, 
 we should not witness the reformatory 
 movements of the day. The seed is growing, 
 but we cannot force the growth over wide 
 areas. It has many difficulties of soil to 
 contend with. It has to deal with the 
 shallowness of human minds and the per- 
 versity of human wills. You cannot 
 cleanse East London as you would drain 
 a bog. In the one case you may dig 
 your trenches, put in your piping, and 
 have an end of it. But you must consult 
 
SEA OF GALILEE 149 
 
 the slums before you can abolish them. 
 You must grow in them new crops of 
 ideas, new attitudes towards life. It takes 
 generations to do that. " Behold, the 
 sower went forth to sow." 
 
 3. 
 
 The Groioth of the Seed in the Soil pictures 
 for us the Noiseless Working of ChiHsfs 
 Life in the Souls of Men. 
 
 Seeds do not explode in the soil. We 
 never hear a bud burst. We are not 
 wakened in the morning by any tumult 
 of blossoming roses. Yet the force which 
 unfolds the rose and opens the heart of 
 the lily is the same as that which split 
 Mont Pelee and burst Vesuvius and laid 
 the cities of San Francisco and Kingston 
 in ruins. Force may be boisterous when 
 it works destructively, but when it works 
 constructively it is mainly silent. Occa- 
 sionally in a forest one is startled by the 
 sudden crash of some gigantic tree that 
 falls shrieking to its death. But forest- 
 building is silent work. It proceeds with- 
 out disturbing the slumbers of the lightest 
 sleepers of the woods. It startles neither 
 bird in nest nor beast in lair. The mighty 
 work by which the royal oaks and lordly 
 
150 CHRIST BY THE 
 
 pines are lifted towards the skies is done 
 in stillness unbroken and profound. 
 
 The vital process is not different in the 
 realm of grace. It is true that religious 
 conversions are frequently attended by 
 violent emotional disturbances. In his 
 "Varieties of Religious Experiences," Pro- 
 fessor James has a chapter on conversion 
 which records remarkable instances of this 
 sort. One tells of his conversion in this 
 way : " Every time I would call on God, 
 something like a man's hand would 
 strangle me by choking. ... As often as 
 I would pray, that unseen hand was felt 
 on my throat, and my breath squeezed 
 off. Finally something said : " Venture 
 on the Atonement, for you will die anyway 
 if you don't." So I made one final struggle 
 to call on God for mercy, with the same 
 choking and strangling, determined to 
 finish the sentence of prayer for mercy, 
 if I did strangle and die, and the last I 
 remember that time was falling back on 
 the ground with the same unseen hand 
 on my throat. I don't know how long 
 I lay there or what was going on. When 
 I came to myself there was a crowd 
 around me praising God. The very 
 heavens seemed to open and pour down 
 rays of light and glory. Not for a moment 
 
SEA OF GALILEE 151 
 
 only, but all day and night, floods of light 
 and glory seemed to pour through my 
 soul, and oh, how I was changed ! and 
 everything became new." Instances like 
 this have interest for the psychologist, 
 but they have practically no evangelical 
 significance. The fact remains that the 
 seed of the kingdom works quietly in the 
 soul. In each of the cases recorded by 
 Professor James it is to be noted that 
 when the word of the gospel became 
 established in the soul it produced tran- 
 quillity. Preparatory influences create dis- 
 turbance. To clear the soil of " choking " 
 thorns requires vigorous hacking at the 
 bushes and mighty pulling at the roots. 
 It takes loud blasting to shatter the rock. 
 But these operations are for the opening 
 of the soil to the seed. Once the seed is 
 in it works in silence. Demons may tear 
 a man and come forth from him with 
 loud cries ; but the Holy Spirit enters 
 with calm, sweet peace. There may be 
 tumult raised by squawking birds of prey 
 that peck the soul and fight each other 
 in efforts to steal the seed ; but when 
 the seed is covered in the ground the 
 tumult ceases. The norm of spiritual 
 growth is to be found in the religious 
 experiences of children reared in Christian 
 
152 CHRIST BY THE 
 
 homes. In the child-soul the reign of the 
 Spirit announces itself as silently as the 
 dawn and as sweetly as the blushing of 
 a rose. Beyond the period of childhood 
 we have to deal with the clearing of the 
 soil before we can get to the sowing of 
 the seed. 
 
 4. 
 
 The Sower of the Seed is also the Tiller of 
 the Soil. 
 
 One charm of agriculture consists in 
 the transformations which may be wrought 
 upon the face of nature. A field is not 
 a fixity. It is susceptible of culture. 
 There is a field beneath the field to be 
 reached and reaped. Nor is a human life a 
 fixed thing, but something that can be made 
 over and over by the Master's hand into 
 ever-increasing richness and potency. The 
 unproductive soils of which Christ spoke 
 were not always to remain unproductive. 
 He has spades for the hard-trodden way- 
 side places in our hearts. He has sharp 
 and piercing instruments to break up the 
 crusts which form upon our souls. See 
 how He has broken through the prejudices 
 of men and nations ! The Roman Empire 
 was all encrusted with prejudices antago- 
 
SEA OF GALILEE 153 
 
 nistic to the gospel, but Christ worked 
 His way in. The crust of India and 
 of China is being broken up to-day. 
 Christ has also drills and dynamite for 
 the blasting of the ledges of rock which 
 oppose the progress of His kingdom. 
 This is not the devil's world ; it is Christ's 
 world. Convulsions which startle and 
 confuse one generation are seen by the 
 next to be the strange work of the Lord 
 and to result in open doors for the entrance 
 of the gospel. And Christ can uproot the 
 thorns however tenaciously they grip the 
 soul. The Cross, once it pierces the soul, 
 gets such leverage on the roots of care 
 and worldliness that it extracts them to 
 their finest tips. 
 
 Christ has vast harvests to reap from 
 the yet unproductive portions of the great 
 world-field. In every nation He is plough- 
 ing furrows from which the angels shall 
 bind bright sheaves. 
 
CHRIST BY THE SEA OF GALILEE 
 (^Continued) 
 
" The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasord frfd In a. 
 field : the which when a man hath found, he hldeth, and 
 for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and 
 buyeth that field. 
 
 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant- 
 man seeking goodly pearls : who, when he hath found 
 one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, 
 and bought it." — Matthew xiii. 44-46. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 CHBIST BY THE SEA OF GALILEE (continued) 
 
 THE PARABLE OP THE HIDDEN TREASURE 
 AND THE PEERLESS PEARL 
 
 1, 
 
 These Parables suggest that in Writing our 
 Invoice of Life toe should give due Heed 
 to the Matter of CoTuparative Values. 
 
 The treasure and the pearl both repre- 
 sent concentrated wealth. The hidden 
 treasure was worth more than the field 
 in which it was found. The pearl ex- 
 ceeded in value the entire collection of 
 jewels which the merchantman had pre- 
 viously made. If, as some have thought, 
 the active personality in these parables 
 is the Lord Jesus Christ, then the treasure 
 and the pearl is man. The estimate of 
 man's value set forth by the parables, in 
 this interpretation of them, harmonizes 
 
 357 
 
158 CHRIST BY THE 
 
 completely with the value which Christ, 
 elsewhere in His teachings, puts upon 
 him. He tells us that He laid aside the 
 glory which He had with the Father 
 before the world was, in order that He 
 might come to earth to seek and to save 
 that which was lost. He teaches us that 
 it is more profitable to save a human soul 
 than to gain the whole world. To win 
 this treasure He gave His life as a ransom. 
 We have been redeemed, not with corrup- 
 tible things, as silver or gold, but with 
 His own precious blood. The crown-jewels 
 of heaven, in all their massed magnificence, 
 would look poor and mean beside the 
 treasure which He poured out upon the 
 hard counter of Calvary for the purchase 
 of the pearl of mankind's love-loyalty. 
 Among all the broad fields of the universe 
 there was none which He so coveted as 
 the one in which the precious spiritual 
 possibilities of man lay buried. No world 
 held any pearl which so fascinated Him 
 as that pearl which He saw gleaming in 
 the hand of the black prince of this world. 
 Nowhere has man as man been estimated at 
 so high a value as in the gospel of Christ. 
 When Christ came into the world, scarcely 
 anything was held so cheaply as man. 
 When the slave-markets were glutted the 
 
SEA OF GALILEE 159 
 
 price of a man would often fall below that 
 of a sheep. Warriors and emperors, philo- 
 sophers and priests had entered into an 
 unholy conspiracy to write man's value 
 down. Christ wrote it up ; nor, since His 
 day, has it ever touched so low a point as 
 that at which He found it. 
 
 The other interpretation of these para- 
 bles, and the one which best accords with 
 their structure, makes man the quester 
 and Christ, in the richness of His grace, 
 the treasure and the pearl. Vast as man's 
 value to the kingdom of heaven may be, 
 the value of the kingdom to man must be 
 greater still. On Christ's head are " many 
 crowns." Had mankind been lost forever 
 from the fellowship of God, the loss to 
 deity, we must believe, would have been 
 enormous. Otherwise we cannot explain 
 the lavish expenditure which has been 
 made for our recovery. Yet heaven would 
 still have been a world of glory. God 
 and His Christ would have continued rich 
 beyond our imaginings in their fellowship 
 with each other and with unfallen, created 
 spirits. But man would have been beg- 
 gared to all eternity. The loss to him 
 would have been utterly ruinous. To add 
 the kingdom of heaven to the spiritual 
 possessions of man, which is done through 
 
160 CHRIST BY THE 
 
 union with Christ, is to redeem his soul 
 from destruction and to crown him with 
 glory and honour. The kingdom of heaven 
 means more for man's enrichment of life 
 than to endow him with all the worlds 
 in space. For it adds to him the world of 
 truth, the world of holiness, the world 
 of love, the world of beauty, and the world of 
 peace. He who seeks first the kingdom 
 of God and His righteousness, finds that 
 all other things of real and lasting value 
 are added unto him. The values of the 
 kingdom of grace constitute the superla- 
 tive dowry of the human soul. Possessing 
 these, the soul is " rich towards God." 
 Lacking the wealth which grace bestows, 
 we are victims of a pitiable impoverish- 
 ment : " Wretched, and miserable, and poor, 
 and blind, and naked." In the administra- 
 tion of our life we should give due heed 
 to the matter of comparative values. 
 
 2. 
 
 The Parables suggest that the Wealth of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven awaits us in Forms 
 immediately applicable to our Life-needs. 
 
 When Jesus spoke of " treasure hid in 
 a field," He was thinking of a secreted 
 pot of money. It was gold coin, probably, 
 
SEA OF GALILEE 161 
 
 that the ploughman found. It was a 
 common custom for men in the East to 
 convert their wealth into gold and bury 
 it. Opportunities for profitable investment 
 were comparatively rare in those days. 
 And wealth exposed to view attracted 
 the cupidity of rapacious rulers and ex- 
 tortionate tax-gatherers. Moreover, the 
 insecurity of property, due to frequent 
 wars and the roving of predatory bands, 
 added a further inducement for men of 
 wealth to secret their possessions. When, 
 therefore, the ploughman came upon a 
 box of buried treasure, he had at hand a 
 form of wealth upon which he could im- 
 mediately realise in the markets of the 
 world. 
 
 An equally convenient form in which 
 to concentrate values was to purchase 
 jewels. These, also, were easily negotiable. 
 To this day many Jews carry a large 
 proportion of their wealth in precious 
 stones. The memory of centuries of 
 persecution, spoliation, and banishments, 
 prompts them to hold their riches in 
 readily transportable forms. 
 
 Among all the jewels of the world the 
 
 most perfect emblem of Christ's grace is 
 
 the pearl. When it comes to the hand 
 
 of man the pearl is already a finished 
 
 12 
 
162 CHRIST BY THE 
 
 product. No work of man can enhance 
 its value. It is not like that with the 
 diamond. The value of the diamond is 
 vastly heightened by manipulation. It is 
 mined in a crude state and needs to be 
 cut and ground. Before its sleeping 
 splendours can be wakened, it must go 
 upon the lapidary's wheel. The facets 
 which break the sunlight into rippling 
 iridescence represent a superadded grace 
 of human handiwork. But upon the pearl 
 no man lifts up a graving-tool. Fresh- 
 plucked from its shell, it is already a perfect 
 thing. It has been antecedently wrought 
 into consummate worth and beauty, in dim, 
 green depths of ocean. Divine grace, like 
 the pearl, needs not to be manipulated 
 but appropriated. It is bestowed upon 
 us in a finished state. It was wrought 
 into superlative completeness in the oceanic 
 depths of God's holy love. The sinner who 
 accepts it by simple faith is instantaneously 
 possessed of the potentialities of the king- 
 dom of heaven. He kneels a pauper, he 
 stands up a prince. Or, reverting to the 
 former parable, we may say that the 
 gold wherewith Christ dowers the soul is 
 minted gold. Any attempt to raise the 
 value of this currency by mixing it with 
 merit of our own is an impertinence. It 
 
SEA OF GALILEE 163 
 
 degrades the coin of the heavenly realm. 
 The finished work of Christ is the perfect 
 medium for the procurement of every 
 spiritual blessing. " By grace are ye saved 
 through faith, and that not of yourselves, 
 it is the gift of God." 
 
 3. 
 
 These Parables suggest the Tmpartialness of 
 the Kingdom of Heaven and of that 
 Grace by which it is Attained. 
 
 The gifts of the kingdom are bestowed 
 without respect of persons. The pearl- 
 merchant of the parable may be taken 
 to represent the habitual and absorbed 
 truth-seeker. He stands for the students 
 and scholars of the world. The poet, the 
 philosopher, the scientist, the historian — 
 these are all devoted questers after pearls. 
 The ploughman represents the common 
 people, the great mass of men and women 
 who are tied to a monotonous round of 
 humdrum duties, and have little or no 
 leisure or inclination to investigate sub- 
 jects which lie apart from the problem 
 of daily bread. But the ploughman and 
 the merchant are equally fortunate in the 
 matter of the kingdom. The people who 
 occupy themselves with drudging, un- 
 
164 CHRIST BY THE 
 
 romantic tasks are as surely in the way 
 of salvation as poets and philosophers. 
 The whole history of Christianity goes to 
 prove that God puts this treasure in the 
 way of simple and lowly souls no less 
 frequently than in the path of the gifted 
 and the learned. Nicodemus has no 
 advantage over the woman of Samaria. 
 He was a pearl-seeker ; she a slave, tread- 
 ing the dry furrow of a hopeless life. A 
 blazing star in the heavens guided wise 
 men from the East to the house where 
 the young child, Jesus, lay ; but a choir 
 of angels announced the glad tidings to 
 the Judean shepherds, who took prece- 
 dence of the Magi in opportunity and 
 honour. At your very feet, and in the 
 line of dusty duty, you may find God's 
 all-enriching grace. 
 
 4. 
 
 These Parables unite in Accentuating the 
 Fact that the Kingdom of Heaven may 
 come to Men as the Result of a Sudden 
 and Joyful Discovery. 
 
 The ploughman was looking for some 
 enrichment from his toil, but not for the 
 great good fortune which so suddenly came 
 to him. He was working for wages, 
 
SEA OF GALILEE 165 
 
 expecting no more than the " penny " from 
 his employer when the day was done. 
 He was not seeking treasure-trove, he was 
 preparing the soil for a crop of beans. 
 When the point of the ploughshare struck 
 the hidden treasure chest an ugly jolt 
 passed through his frame. He was ready 
 to curse the obstruction which had 
 hindered his work and dulled the point 
 of his ploughshare. So do we often 
 revolt against the hard experiences of 
 life, not dreaming that they enclose a 
 golden treasure. But when the plough- 
 man stooped to lift the obstruction from 
 the furrow, lo, a fortune lay disclosed 
 before his astonished gaze. 
 
 The pearl-merchant, too, experienced a 
 genuine surprise when he first sighted 
 that queen of pearls. Perhaps he came 
 upon it, awaiting a purchaser in some 
 little bazaar ; or, he may have seen it 
 flashing in the hand of the diver, fresh 
 from the sea. In either case it was a 
 discovery. He had purchased many a 
 pearl, but never one so large and lustrous 
 as this. A very intoxication of gladness 
 accompanied the discovery. The parable, 
 in this suggestion, is not overdrawn. 
 Pliny tells us that Cleopatra possessed 
 two pearls, each of which was valued at 
 
166 CHRIST BY THE 
 
 what would represent a fortune in our 
 money. 
 
 And it is often thus that we become 
 aware of the treasure hid in Christ. There 
 IS a sudden enthralment of the soul by 
 the glory of the gospel. In many instances 
 the realising sense of infinite grace 
 breaks upon the consciousness in instanta- 
 neous illumination. There is a moment 
 of insight, a flash of intuition, and all the 
 life is transfigured. We should have no 
 scepticism concerning the genuineness of 
 sudden conversions. 
 
 For all the best things of life have a 
 surprise power in them. Great paintings 
 have it. The picture which has hung 
 before your eyes for years, if it be a 
 good picture, one day discloses a charm 
 and suggests a meaning which you had 
 not discerned before. The same thing is 
 true of friendship. All our best friends 
 astonish us with acts of devotion and 
 self-sacrifice. Love is always treating us 
 to glad surprises. The kingdom of love 
 is an endless wonderland. It is ever 
 bestowing some unexpected grace, flooding 
 us with some unimagined glory. Guinevere 
 had always recognised the splendid man- 
 hood of King Arthur. She knew him 
 as a "great and gentle lord, who was, 
 
SEA OF GALILEE 1G7 
 
 as is the conscience of a saint among 
 his warring senses, to his knights " ; but 
 she never suspected the depth and tender- 
 ness of his love, nor the boundlessness 
 of his mercy, until he came to her " there 
 in the holy house at Almesbury," to assure 
 her of his pardon and to bid her meet 
 him "before high God." 
 
 And what surprises meet us in the 
 gospel 1 We plough the fields of Scripture 
 in our daily readings and reap in varying 
 harvests a resultant moral culture. We 
 seek for intellectual enrichment amid its 
 profusion of literary gems and are re- 
 warded with many a precious pearl of 
 thought. But one day, in our reading 
 of the gospel, the cleaving-point of the 
 mental plough is suddenly arrested by 
 what proves to be a pot of buried gold. 
 Where many a time before the plough 
 had ridden lightly through the yielding 
 loam, there is now a strong arrestment. 
 Ploughing with a weight upon the soul, 
 we come upon some hidden meaning with 
 the shock and thrill of unexpected impact. 
 We stoop, and in the furrow at our feet 
 is disclosed a boundless treasure. In a 
 sentence, we find the gate of the kingdom 
 and all heaven lies within our grasp. 
 
 It was thus with St. Augustine. From 
 
168 CHRIST BY THE 
 
 his youth he was an eager seeker of 
 treasure. Yielding to the impulses of' 
 the flesh, he pursued delights that ap- 
 pealed to his artistic or sensuous nature, 
 sought distractions in objects pleasing to 
 the eye, in games, theatres, or music, or 
 the indulgence of animal passion. Yet, 
 tortured by the reproaches of conscience, 
 he reaped no harvest of repose ; he only 
 gleaned self-loathing. In his quest for 
 wisdom and truth he turned to the 
 Manichees. For nine years he wandered 
 amid the mazes of their speculations, his 
 intellect subdued by their subtleties, his 
 imagination charmed by their interpreta- 
 tions of nature. Here, again, he found 
 no abiding peace. But one September 
 day, in a retired corner of his garden in 
 Milan, a light from heaven shone upon 
 these words as he read them : " Not in 
 rioting and drunkenness, not in chamber- 
 ing and wantonness, not in strife and 
 envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and make not provision for the 
 flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof." In that 
 moment he gained the kingdom of heaven 
 and the kingdom of heaven won a dis- 
 tinguished citizen. 
 
SEA OF GALILEE 169 
 
 5. 
 
 These Parables illustrate for us the Nature 
 and Action of Evangelical Faith. 
 
 Faith has in it the quality of decisive- 
 ness. The ploughman and the pearl-seeker 
 both acted upon the discoveries which they 
 made. In each case there was prompt 
 and definite resolution. Desire and dis- 
 covery needed to be supplemented by 
 determination. And so it is with refer- 
 ence to spiritual treasure. The emotional 
 experience of desire, followed by the 
 intellectual experience of discovery, must 
 issue in the volitional act of choice before 
 the soul comes into actual possession of 
 the heavenly grace. Faith is the intent 
 of the heart plus the assent of the 
 understanding plus the consent of the 
 will. Not by dream or reverie, not by 
 long waiting at the wishing-gate does the 
 kingdom come. "The kingdom of heaven 
 suffereth violence and the violent take it 
 by force." Unless the discovery of oppor- 
 tunity beget in us the holy violence of a 
 noble intensity, it wiU presently become 
 to us but a tantalising memory of what 
 might have been. 
 
 Faith has in it the quality of venture- 
 
170 CHRIST BY THE 
 
 someness. It risks everything upon a 
 single act. The ship of time glides swiftly 
 past the treasure island which the soul 
 descries. Faith leaps overboard, resolved 
 to sink or swim to where the treasure 
 lies. Men who sneer at religious faith as 
 a weak and listless thing know not its 
 essential characteristics. Faith is heroic. 
 It is not "sicklied o'er with the pale cast 
 of thought " ; it is ruddy with resolution, 
 superb in noble daring. 
 
 Faith has in it the spirit of sacrificial- 
 ness. Ploughman and merchantman sold 
 all that they had in order to possess the 
 treasure and the pearl. There is always 
 an altar in Faith's path. Sometimes there 
 is a cross. All choosing involves refusing. 
 In some form or other there is a renounce- 
 ment coincident with welcoming. It may 
 be a prejudice, or a habit, or a cloying 
 companionship, or a besetting sin, that 
 must be surrendered ; but in any or all 
 of these it is the knifing of self-will that 
 marks the abandon of the soul to the 
 recompensing goodness of the Lord. 
 
 Faith has in it a wise and splendid 
 strategy. In every opportunity there is 
 a strategic element to be reckoned with. 
 Opportunity means, literally, " off a 
 harbour." There is latent poetry in the 
 
SEA OF GALILEE 171 
 
 word. Yonder comes the scudding ship 
 adown the rocky, stormswept coast, like 
 a frightened sea-bird seeking haven. The 
 wind is shrieking through the cordage ; 
 the waves are boiling white with yeasty 
 foam. The ship is creaking, straining, 
 groaning, climbing, trembling, as she 
 drives before the gale. The watch is 
 at the look-out. Somewhere in this 
 neighbourhood there is a gap in the 
 sea-wall, through which the ship may 
 thrust into safety. Presently the watch- 
 man descries the opening, where a ribbon 
 of blue water points the way to peaceful 
 anchorage in a land-locked bay. This is 
 the moment of opportunity. The signal 
 is given ; the helm is thrust hard down ; 
 quivering like a living thing the ship 
 comes up into the wind ; then with a 
 mighty plunge she takes the gap, threads 
 it, and glides to anchor in the calm 
 waters of the bay. To have missed the 
 gap would have meant the irretrievable 
 loss of opportunity. 
 
 The gospel of Christ sets before us an 
 open door. It rings the harbour-bell in- 
 viting us to anchorage. Faith sees the 
 opportunity and thrusts in to furl its 
 sails in the heart of Immanuel's land. 
 
CHRIST CONCERNING THINGS LOST 
 
" And he spake unto them this parable, saying, 
 What man of you having an hundred sheep . , . 
 Or what woman having ten pieces of silver . . . 
 A certain man had two sons. ..." 
 
 — Luke xv. 3, 4, 8, 11 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 CHRIST CONCERNING THINGS LOST 
 
 " r I THIS parable"; not these parables. 
 
 -L The window is one, though it has 
 three panes. The clover is one, though 
 it bears three leaves. God is one, though 
 manifested in three persons. The parable 
 is one, though divided into three parts. 
 
 From this great utterance of our Lord 
 we learn His thought and feeling con- 
 cerning that which is lost. 
 
 1. 
 
 The Parable suggests to us Three Ways of 
 Getting Lost. 
 
 The soul may get lost as a sheep gets 
 lost ; that is, through Heedlessness. The 
 sheep did not intend to go astray. It 
 had no quarrel with the shepherd or 
 
 175 
 
176 CHRIST CONCERNING 
 
 with the members of the flock. It was 
 not bored by the tameness of its sur- 
 roundings. It made no wild dash for 
 liberty. It was through unheeding stu- 
 pidity that it got lost. It did not give 
 attention to its ways. It went on 
 cropping the sweet grasses, tuft after 
 tuft, taking no note of either shepherd 
 or sheep. It was having a good time in 
 its own way, and where it saw another 
 mouthful of grass it went after that. 
 When the shepherd called the sheep 
 together to conduct them to the fold, this 
 one was too far off to hear. 
 
 And this is part of the story of the way 
 in which mankind has become lost in the 
 wilderness of sin. " We all, like sheep, 
 have gone astray." We find ourselves in 
 a world of beauty and of pleasure and we 
 give ourselves to the pursuit of happiness. 
 There, before us, gleams another joy and 
 we go after that. It seems quite natural 
 and it all looks very innocent. In the days 
 of our youth we feel that this is what Ufe 
 is for. And so we run with heedless step. 
 We have no quarrel with God ; we have no 
 spite against humanity ; we are not dis- 
 contented with our lot. We simply follow 
 our own will and way, careless of all else. 
 It is not that young life consciously sets 
 
THINGS LOST 177 
 
 its heart on wickedness or determines to 
 get away from sight and sound of God ; 
 it is that young life does not consider. 
 It acts from impulse and does not reflect 
 upon consequences. It is like the sheep 
 which unthinkingly nibbled the green 
 until it became separated from the 
 flock's companionship and the shepherd's 
 care. 
 
 The soul may get lost as the coin got 
 lost ; that is, through Sluggishness. 
 
 The coin had no power of resistance 
 in it. It was a lifeless thing ; an inert 
 mass. It was a victim of circumstances. 
 It was the plaything of surrounding forces. 
 While the woman had it she held it by 
 main force. It was kept in place among 
 other pieces of silver by means of a string. 
 When the string broke, gravitation laid 
 hold upon it and whirled it away. The 
 coin simply went where it was carried and 
 remained where it was left until some 
 new force came and lifted it again. 
 
 And this opens to us another chapter 
 in the story of lost souls. Multitudes of 
 lives are ruined through lack of moral 
 force. They seem to have no power of 
 resistance in them. They are the creatures 
 of circumstances, the sport of whatever 
 power lays hold upon them. Not infre- 
 13 
 
178 CHRIST CONCERNING 
 
 quently a flabby will accompanies a brilliant 
 intellect. Many a man with mind as bright 
 as polished silver is but a straw in power 
 of self-determination. Our great concern 
 for the youth of each generation is that 
 they shall have sufficient strength of will 
 to shape their course according to the 
 dictates of the understanding. Half the 
 trouble of the world is wrought because 
 young men permit themselves to be over- 
 borne by the influence of bad companions, 
 and young women yield to the blandish- 
 ments of worthless suitors. The most 
 precious things in life are lost through 
 listlessness. If we could only learn the 
 art of putting core and pith into the will 
 we should go far to redeem the world from 
 destruction. 
 
 The soul may get lost as the son got lost ; 
 that is through Willfulness. 
 
 In the case of the prodigal it was not 
 a matter of weakness but of depravity. 
 Foolishness and rascality were combined 
 in him. A vast amount of sympathy has 
 been expended upon him. Preachers have 
 lionised him and made a hero of him. But 
 the truth is, he was a bad son. He had 
 no proper reverence or affection for his 
 father. He had no regard for his brother. 
 However inconvenient it might be to 
 
THINGS LOST 179 
 
 convert his " portion of goods " into ready 
 money, it counted not with him so long 
 as he could finger the gold in his own 
 purse. He was supremely selfish in all 
 his movements ; and he did not have sense 
 enough to know when he was well off. 
 He chafed against the decent restraints 
 of home. He thought it would be a fine 
 thing to have a fling in the big, free world. 
 He was spoiling for a dash into Bohemia. 
 He wanted to lose himself, and he succeeded 
 too well. 
 
 No story of the world's lost state would 
 be complete without this chapter. We may 
 all wish to be apologists for humanity; 
 but every misfortune cannot be traced 
 either to thoughtlessness or weakness. 
 There is such a thing as innate, downright 
 lawlessness. Sin is something more than 
 error ; it is wilful rebellion against God. 
 Nothing is to be gained by white-washing 
 the ugly fact of human depravity. The 
 whitewash peels off when rubbed against 
 the facts of experience. When men tell 
 me that in all my evil-doing I have been 
 blindly groping after God and goodness, 
 I know that they have not probed to the 
 root of the matter. They are snap-diag- 
 nosticians. It may be very complimentary 
 to me, but I know it is not true. I know 
 
180 CHRIST CONCERNING 
 
 where and when I consciously turned my 
 back to God and walked away to follow 
 my own devices. Nor did I expect to find 
 my Father in " the far country " towards 
 which I set my steps. I was a fool, but 
 not that sort of a fool. When the appeal 
 is made to experience this doctrine of man 
 as an inveterate quester after God turns 
 out to be something less reliable than 
 moonshine. Men deliberately go to the 
 devil, knowing quite well where they are 
 going. At least, some men do. They see 
 the good and choose the evil. In many 
 an instance it is not a case of missing the 
 path but of rejecting it after it has been 
 discovered. It is this fact which makes 
 our sin so black. At the bottom of that 
 doctrine which represents every fall of 
 man as an upward stumbling into light, 
 there is a latent scepticism of the power 
 of grace to redeem a soul which has 
 deliberately turned away from God. It is 
 not only false to experience, but it robs 
 the gospel of its brightest glory. Even the 
 prodigal got home again and found his joy 
 in his father's fellowship. 
 
THINGS LOST 181 
 
 2. 
 
 This Parable reminds us of Three Conse- 
 quences of Being Lost. 
 
 There is the consequence of Helpless 
 Wretchedness. A lost sheep is a pitiable 
 object. It is a witless creature. It seems 
 well-nigh devoid of self-protecting instincts. 
 It has no scent to find the path and no 
 strength or skill to fight. It cannot swim 
 in swift waters. It is not cunning to 
 delude its enemies. It stumbles on rocky- 
 paths and is torn by arresting thorns. 
 In its helpless misery it can only bleat and 
 bleed. Its cries but add to its woes, in- 
 creasing the danger from the prowling wolf. 
 
 The soul that has wandered away from 
 God finds itself in similar plight. It was 
 this which filled the heart of the Good 
 Shepherd with compassion for the multi- 
 tudes. " He saw them distressed and 
 scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd." 
 The experience of each generation of men 
 goes to prove the helplessness of unshep- 
 herded souls. They have neither the 
 power to protect themselves in the wilder- 
 ness nor to find the way out. It is a 
 curious fact that lost men travel in a circle. 
 They seem to themselves to be going in 
 
182 CHRIST CONCERNING 
 
 a straight line, but all the while they are 
 veering round upon their own tracks. When 
 they come upon these again they are hope- 
 lessly bewildered. So it is with mind and 
 heart when life has lost its touch with God. 
 The movements of the soul are circular 
 then rather than onward. The author of 
 Ecclesiastes noted this strange, dark fact. 
 In his own estrangement from God he 
 found his mind moving in imprisoning 
 circles. He compared it to the sun that 
 "ariseth and goethdown, and hasteth again 
 to the place where he arose " ; to the wind 
 " that goeth toward the south, and turneth 
 about unto the north ; it turneth about 
 continually in its course, and returneth 
 again to its circuits"; to the rivers which are 
 taken from the sea and return to it again. 
 " All things are full of weariness ; man 
 cannot utter it : the eye is not satisfied with 
 seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 
 That which hath been is that which shall 
 be ; and that which hath been done is that 
 which shall be done ; and there is no new 
 thing under the sun." Is not that a perfect 
 picture of the fruitlessness of human effort 
 to find the path of life apart from the 
 direct leadership of God's Spirit? Every 
 student of comparative religions must 
 recognise the striking likeness. Through- 
 
THINGS LOST 183 
 
 out the ages the human mind has revolved 
 around the same old themes in much the 
 same old ways. Even that which calls 
 itself a "new" theology lacks in newness 
 no less than in trueness. It is but a new 
 masquerade of ideas which were old when 
 Paul was penning his epistles. The 
 essential principles of it were as clearly 
 expounded in the ancient cities of India 
 as they are in the London of to-day. 
 " Christian Science " claims to be a new 
 thing in the world, yet it is really nothing 
 more than the re-vamping of the old shoes 
 of Buddhism. "That which hath been 
 is that which shall be." It is only the 
 Good Shepherd who can extricate us from 
 the maze. He leadeth in straight tracks. 
 Nor is there any peace for the soul until 
 He comes. India with all its metaphysi- 
 cal subtleties and its elaborate religious 
 systems is pre-eminently the land of vast 
 unrest, deep sadness, and trembling fear. 
 But wherever a soul is lost from God, 
 whether it stand beneath the shadow of 
 a Christian cathedral or a pagan temple, 
 it must taste the bitterness of helpless 
 wretchedness. 
 
 The story of the piece of silver reminds 
 us of another consequence of being lost : 
 the Penalty of Uselessness. 
 
184 CHRIST CONCERNING 
 
 Even when lost to its owner, and whilst 
 lying in some dark and filthy corner, the 
 coin retained its original, intrinsic value. 
 It was still " a piece of silver." It still 
 bore the stamp of royalty. But it was 
 lost from its intended use. It has been 
 suggested that the coin belonged to a 
 necklace of silver, and that it may have 
 been a wedding gift from her husband. 
 This would invest it with a special sacred- 
 ness in her eyes. But whether the woman 
 valued it for its purchasing power or 
 cherished it as a love-gift and a thing of 
 beauty wherewith to adorn her person, 
 this fact remains : it no longer served its 
 purpose. 
 
 Valuable but useless ! That seems a 
 strange thing to affirm of a human life, 
 does it not? Yet it may frequently be 
 affirmed with truth. Value may remain 
 after use has ceased. The value which 
 Christ put upon lost souls is past all 
 reckoning ; yet He distinctly teaches that 
 the soul estranged from God has ceased 
 to perform the functions for which it was 
 created. There is spiritual substance in 
 it still; it yet retains something of the 
 image and superscription of the king. 
 The corroding influences of sin cannot eat 
 all values out of the human soul. In 
 
THINGS LOST 185 
 
 "the publicans and sinners," who "were 
 drawing near unto Him for to hear Him," 
 He saw the gleam of precious metal. 
 Recovered to their true place in the fel- 
 lowship of God, they might still circulate 
 and shine for Him. But when He spake 
 this parable unto them they were lost 
 alike to place and use in the spiritual king- 
 dom. This is one of the saddest conse- 
 quences of breaking away from God — that 
 a bright and highly-gifted life may roll 
 away into some dark and filthy corner of 
 sensuality or selfishness and there, " in- 
 wrapt tenfold in slothful shame," lie 
 exiled from the possibility of usefulness 
 for which it was designed. 
 
 A third consequence of being lost is sug- 
 gested by the story of the prodigal : Heart- 
 breaking Degradation. 
 
 I think the prodigal's plight is all ex- 
 pressed in this one word, degradation. 
 That he should find himself without friends 
 in that far country was a degradation to one 
 so well-born and reared as he. The smart 
 of the slight was even harder to bear than 
 the sense of loneliness. That he should be 
 sent to feed swine would be accounted a 
 black disgrace by one who had not con- 
 descended to eat with hired servants 
 before. That he should be reduced to 
 
186 CHRIST CONCERNING 
 
 starvation cried " shame " upon him. He 
 felt the indignity of it quite as much as 
 he did the pangs of hunger. That he, his 
 father's son, should "perish with hunger" 
 while the menials of his father's kitchen 
 had "bread enough and to spare," stung 
 him with an infinite sense of degradation. 
 The whole situation reminds us of the 
 description which another prodigal gave 
 of his sorry plight when he spoke of it 
 as a wallowing in "a horrible pit " and 
 in " miry clay." Yes, there came a day 
 when the shame of it all lay heavy upon 
 his soul. He thought not only of what 
 might have been, but also of what ought 
 to be and what used to be. He was 
 haunted by accusing voices out of the past. 
 " A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remem- 
 bering happier things." With a mighty 
 longing in his heart for redemption from 
 all this degradation he arose and went 
 unto his father. 
 
 This, it seems to me, is the worst of all 
 sin's consequences ; the utter degradation 
 of the soul. There is fearful debauchment 
 in the last stages of sin's work. It sets 
 the soul among the swine-troughs. It re- 
 duces the courtier to a slave. It strips 
 the purple from the king's son and makes 
 of him a slouching vagabond. 
 
THINGS LOST 187 
 
 There is no loss so great as that of 
 one's self-respect. There is no evil to be 
 compared with the deterioration of one's 
 spiritual quality. The sinner's greatest 
 penalty is being what he is and so far 
 from what he should have been. Nothing 
 wrings the soul with such remorseful 
 agony as the consciousness of self-corrup- 
 tion. All defeats may be endured with 
 equanimity while honour is retained. Men 
 have counted the world well lost when in 
 losing it they saved their own integrity. 
 But self-contempt steeps the soul in gall 
 and wormwood. The bitterest cry in all 
 the world is the cry of the conscience- 
 stricken prodigal, " I have sinned." 
 
 3. 
 
 The Parable suggests to us Heavens Three- 
 fold Quest for that ivhich is Lost. 
 
 The story of the shepherd who went into 
 the wilderness until he found the sheep 
 that was lost sets forth the quest of the 
 Christ for sinful men. He is the good 
 Shepherd who " came to seek and to save." 
 In bringing the lost soul back to safety 
 " He layeth it on His shoulders." He takes 
 the whole burden of the lost one's hopeless 
 wretchedness upon His own heart. It has 
 
ISS CHRIST CONCERNING 
 
 been said that there is no hint of a doc- 
 trine of Atonement in the story of the 
 prodigal son. But there is more than a 
 hint of atonement here in the shepherd's 
 redeeming work. And because it is here it 
 4oes not need to be there. When the great 
 Teacher put it here He established it in the 
 forefront of His doctrine of salvation. It 
 is loudly affirmed to-day that when we get 
 " back to Jesus " we get away from any 
 suggestion of atonement by blood. But 
 all the chemistry of criticism cannot ex- 
 tract the crimson from the footprints of 
 the good shepherd. " The good shepherd 
 layeth down his life for the sheep." "I 
 am the good Shepherd ; and I lay down 
 My life for the sheep . . . Therefore doth 
 the Father love Me, because I lay down 
 My life, that I may take it again. No 
 man taketh it away from Me, but I lay it 
 down of Myself. I have power to lay it 
 down, and I have power to take it again. 
 This commandment received I from My 
 Father." In these illuminating words we 
 find the red cord of the doctrine of Atone- 
 ment which runs through from the story 
 of the recovered sheep into that of the 
 re-born son. To get back to Jesus is to 
 find ourselves in the shadow of the aton- 
 ing cross. 
 
THINGS LOST 189 
 
 The story of the search for the lost 
 piece of silver associates itself with the 
 Holy Spirit's quest for men. The lighting 
 of the candle and the sweeping of the 
 house are both suggestive bits of imagery. 
 They correspond to the two-fold work of 
 the Holy Spirit in flashing light into the 
 soul and in striving with the human will. 
 Candle and broom are His chosen imple- 
 ments of work. Happy is the man who 
 does not " quench " the flaming candle 
 which the Spirit brings, but welcomes its 
 manifesting light. Happy is he who does 
 not " resist " His necessary disturbances in 
 clearing the dust away. Not always does 
 He stroke the soul with pads of plush. The 
 litter may lie too deep in the corners of 
 the house for that. Harsh and irritating 
 His sweeping must sometimes seem, but it 
 is well worth enduring for the recovery of 
 the jewel that was lost. 
 
 The story of the prodigal's home-com- 
 ing speaks to us of the Heavenly Father's 
 quest for His lost children. " While he 
 was yet a great way off his father saw 
 him, and was moved with compassion, and 
 ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." 
 This is the evangelical climax of the story, 
 this swift, far run of the father to meet 
 " his weary, wandering child." How far, 
 
190 CONCERNING THINGS LOST 
 
 may I believe, will love divine run to be- 
 stow its welcoming kiss? That will depend 
 upon my thought of how far such love can 
 see, and how swiftly it can move. That 
 human love is far-sighted we know full 
 well, and also that it can outrun the 
 winds. Could we read the secrets of the 
 telegrams which flash across the conti- 
 nents, and the cablegrams transmitted 
 under oceans, they would tell of many a 
 swift, world-wide run of parental love to 
 greet a home-sick son. And I must believe 
 that the love of God can see to the very 
 ends of the earth, to the utmost extremity 
 of sin's far country. It beholds the soul's 
 first movements from the swine-troughs, 
 and instantly is "present with its aid." 
 Love has the finest eyes in the universe, 
 and its feet are shod with lightning. 
 While the prodigal wastes his substance 
 with riotous living, joining other prodi- 
 gals in song and dance and laughter, love 
 weeps and bleeds in silence. But when the 
 famine comes, and the sounds of revelry 
 give place to choking sobs of penitential 
 grief, the welcoming love of God annihi- 
 lates all distances and folds us in its warm 
 embrace. 
 
CHRIST AT THE FEAST OF 
 TABERNACLES 
 
" Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, 
 Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him 
 come unto me, and drink." — John vii. 37. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 CHRIST AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 
 
 THE time, the place, and all the attendant 
 circumstances conspired to give mean- 
 ing and power to these extraordinary words. 
 For seven days the Feast of Tabernacles 
 had been celebrated. On the seventh night 
 scarcely any one in or about Jerusalem 
 thought of sleeping. Throughout the whole 
 of that night the Temple was a blaze of 
 illumination. The court was crowded with 
 men who danced with lighted torches in 
 their hands. An orchestra of Levites on 
 the broad stone steps of the Temple accom- 
 panied the dancers with various musical 
 instruments. A dense multitude of people 
 in front of the Temple, waving branches 
 of palm and myrtle, joined in the chorus, 
 which rolled over the city and was taken up 
 in the booths on the surrounding hillsides. 
 It was an all-night celebration which must 
 have left the people in the morning thirsty 
 
 14 193 
 
194 CHRIST AT THE 
 
 and exhausted. Joy itself had at last 
 become wearisome. Doubtless, too, the 
 water supply had been considerably reduced 
 by the presence of the unusual multitude 
 in the city. And it was in the morning 
 hours of the eighth day, when faintness was 
 beginning to overpower the people, that 
 Jesus, standing in the Temple court, lifted 
 up His clarion voice and cried, "If any 
 man thirst, let him come unto Me and 
 drink." 
 
 In these words Jesus presents Himself to 
 men as the Fountain of Life. Here, again. 
 He claims the fulfilment, in His own person, 
 of great Messianic prophecies. If Jerusalem 
 is not awakened to the fact that Messiah 
 has come, it will not be for lack of bold and 
 definite announcement. Each visit which 
 Jesus made to Jerusalem is signalised by 
 some impressive deed of power or some 
 startling, self-descriptive word, intended to 
 drill into the national consciousness the fact 
 that the prophecies are hastening to fulfil- 
 ment and that the hour of supreme 
 opportunity has arrived. Among all His 
 words there are none of deeper import or 
 loftier self-assertion than these in which He 
 claims the power, from His own resources, 
 to refresh the weariness and satisfy the 
 thirst of men. He who can prove Himself 
 
FEAST OF TABERNACLES 195 
 
 to be the Fountain of Life may well claim 
 to be the Lord and Master of mankind. 
 
 A fact or two regarding the nature of a 
 fountain will help U8 in our thinking here. 
 In its genesis, a fountain is a meeting-place 
 of waters, a point to which they gather, a 
 receptacle into which they flow. In its 
 action, a fountain is a distributing centre of 
 waters, a point from which they emerge, a 
 source from whidi they proceed. To pro- 
 duce a fountain there must be both inflow 
 and outflow. That bubbling spring in the 
 valley where you have so often bathed your 
 heated brow and quenched your burning 
 thirst is there because it is perpetually fed 
 from the heart of the hill. Day and night 
 unceasingly, through subterranean channels, 
 cool waters are trickling into that receptacle. 
 The fountain is literally the offspring of 
 the hill. 
 
 In order to get at the inmost meaning of 
 ,His words we must associate these ideas 
 with the person of Christ. Into Him has 
 been poured "the fullness of the Godhead 
 bodily." It is because He received such 
 fullness from on high that He is able to 
 bequeath His endless blessings unto men. 
 Towards God He is the brimmed receptacle, 
 towards men He is the distributing centre 
 of eternal life. 
 
196 CHRIST AT THE 
 
 It will be profitable to note how all the 
 characteristics of a fountain meet in Christ, 
 
 1. 
 
 In Christ tve ever find the Fullness of a 
 Fountain. 
 
 There is in Him the Fullness of Truth. — 
 This is continually manifested in His 
 speech. Every word of His that has been 
 preserved has in it the pulse of life and 
 the accent of originality. There is not one 
 dull line in all the teachings of Jesus. No 
 man can point to a platitude among His 
 utterances. His most casual word sparkles 
 with light. The matchless speech gushes 
 from His lips like jets from a fountain. In 
 His table-talk, in His street talk, in His swift 
 replies to sudden crafty questions shot at 
 Him by enemies, His language is, alike with 
 His deliberate and lengthened discourses, 
 quick to its finest filaments with spirit and 
 with life. In this quality He stands alone. 
 The most fontal mind that England ever 
 produced was that of our great Shake- 
 speare. Yet every student of Shakespeare 
 knows that his writings show disparity. 
 Spring-like as was his intellect, it occasion- 
 ally gives evidence of a diminished stock of 
 
FEAST OF TABERNACLES 197 
 
 vitalising ideas. Even in the writings of 
 St. Paul, the master-mind of his time and 
 one which we believe to have been specially- 
 inspired from on high, there are not lacking 
 traces of strain and weariness and per- 
 plexity. But the teaching of Jesus is the 
 play of an unwearied, undepleted fountain. 
 The wonder grows upon us when we 
 remember that the words of this un- 
 schooled Galilean carpenter deal with the 
 prof oundest problems that ever engaged the 
 human mind. He spoke of God, of man, of 
 sin, of salvation, of eternity. The greatest 
 philosophers of the ages grow lean and 
 haggard wrestling with these great themes, 
 and even then with but indifferent results. 
 Jesus speaks upon them with consummate 
 ease. His teaching is everywhere free from 
 the slightest hint of strain. And though 
 the fierce light of criticism has been beating 
 upon them for centuries they stand to-day 
 incapable of revision. High above all words 
 which have been uttered in this world they 
 shine, by common consent, the perfect ex- 
 pression of ultimate truth. 
 
 There is in Him the Fullness of Grace. — 
 Other springs of love become exhausted. 
 Other fountains of good- will run dry. The 
 most deeply affectionate natures are limited 
 in heart-power. Their love will languish 
 
198 CHRIST AT THE 
 
 under shock and cool in frigid atmospheres. 
 In Christ love's fullness dwells. His com- 
 passions fail not. The drain upon His 
 sympathies in the days of His flesh was 
 continuous and tremendous. The world to 
 Him was as the daughter of the horse-leech 
 crying " Give, give ! " Yet it was ever met 
 by a full response. Even that awful frost 
 which descended on Calvary, when the 
 treachery of one disciple and the desertion 
 of others, coupled with the mockings of 
 enemies, drove the temperature about Him 
 down to arctic depths ; when even the gates 
 of heaven seemed to close against Him 
 and He was left for one terrible space un- 
 comforted of God, the fountain of His grace 
 stood at the full. It still pulsed on, un- 
 diminished. No drain could lower it, no frost 
 could seal it. Whilst His enemies mocked 
 His agonies He could pray, " Father, forgive 
 them for they know not what they do." 
 With the heavens black and seemingly 
 pitiless above Him, He could cry with 
 loving confidence and filial submissiveness, 
 "Father, into Thy hands I commend My 
 spirit." Under every circumstance we 
 find Him a fountain "full of grace and 
 truth." 
 
FEAST OF. TABERNACLES 199 
 
 2. 
 
 In Christ we find the Flowing of a Fountain. 
 
 Rills from that fountain have been 
 flowing now for nearly two milleniums 
 through the souls of believers. The 
 ascended Christ is the fountain in the 
 throne which John beheld and from which 
 breaks forth "a river of water of life, 
 bright as crystal." The attractiveness of 
 the throne is the fountain at the heart 
 of it in the person of the Lamb. Every 
 throne ought to have a fountain in it. 
 It should represent the outflow of bene- 
 ficent influences. The fault of many a 
 human throne has been its lack of a 
 fountain. Too often the throne has been 
 but a gilded cistern for the inflow of 
 tributary gifts to be greedily consumed 
 by some purple-clad impertinence. Some- 
 times the case has been even worse than 
 that. The throne of Nero had a whirlpool 
 in it, sucking everything into itself. 
 Nothing was too fair, nothing too sacred, 
 to be sacrificed. Down into its insatiable 
 maw it swallowed the resources of the 
 Empire and left the world impoverished. 
 The throne of Louis XIV. had a geyser in 
 it. The same may be said of the throne of 
 
200 CHRIST AT THE 
 
 Charles Stuart. The controlling impulse in 
 these thrones was a passion for display. 
 They were fountainless thrones. And the 
 sober judgment of mankind has been that 
 when the fountain dies out of a throne it 
 is time for the throne to be pushed aside. 
 But the throne with the fountain in it 
 abides in strength. This has made the 
 throne of England so dear to British 
 hearts since the day when Queen Victoria 
 succeeded to the crown. She brought us 
 good, and only good, through all her days. 
 Her throne was a fountain of beneficence 
 from which pure streams flowed into the 
 nation's life. And the flow continues from 
 the throne of her wise and able and large- 
 hearted son. This is the secret of his 
 popularity and power within his own 
 realms and amid the nations of the 
 earth. 
 
 The flow of a fountain guarantees its 
 freshness. Its contents can never grow 
 stale. By virtue of its own movements, 
 by the constant beating of its unwearied 
 heart, the water is renewed moment by 
 moment. It is reborn each instant from 
 the womb of the earth. Even so the grace 
 and truth of Christ are renewed to men 
 moment by moment. The grace which 
 saves the world is reborn each instant 
 
FEAST OF TABERNACLES 201 
 
 from each heart-beat of the Redeemer's 
 life. 
 
 " Fresh from the throne of glory, 
 Bright in its crystal gleam, 
 Breaks forth the living fountain, 
 Flows on the living stream." 
 
 The love of Christ did not spend itself in 
 a single round of benevolences. It is the 
 mainspring of His endless activity. His 
 mighty heart fills up anew with loving 
 thoughts each day and hour. In Him 
 there is "grace for grace." That phrase 
 pictures for us the perennial upwelling of 
 grace within His heart to meet the needs 
 of each new day. This is our great en- 
 couragement to pray. It is not simply 
 the Christ of the dead past with whom we 
 have to do, but the Christ of the living 
 present. His grace is not to be regarded 
 as a vessel filled for us long ages ago and 
 set aside for us, but as a spring gushing 
 forth at the moment of our petition. In 
 this we find the possibility of fellowship 
 with Him. Christ is 
 
 " No fable old, nor mythic lore. 
 Nor dream of bards and seers. 
 No dead fact stranded on the shore 
 Of the oblivious years : 
 
202 CHRIST AT THE 
 
 But wsuma, sweet, tender, even yet 
 A present help is He ; 
 
 And faith has still its Olivet, 
 And love its Galilee." 
 
 3. 
 
 In Christ toe find the Functions of a 
 Fountain. 
 
 These are manifold. A gushing fountain 
 is a thing of beauty. The landscape gar- 
 dener prizes it as an ornamental feature. 
 Amidst the soft green of velvet lawns and 
 the brilliant hues of flowering plants it 
 stands as a crowning splendour. Vast 
 sums are expended for the erection of 
 fountains in the parks and squares of 
 cities that they may delight the eye with 
 their graceful spray and soothe the ear 
 with their rhythmic fall. And Christ is 
 precious unto men for His matchless moral 
 beauty. The highest artistic genius of the 
 ages has been consecrated to the depiction 
 of a face and form correspondent to the 
 splendours of His soul. To millions of men 
 and women Christ has ever been the crown- 
 ing glory of human history. They see in 
 Him " the altogether lovely " One. In Him 
 humanity came to exquisite and consum- 
 mate flower. 
 
FEAST OF TABERNACLES 203 
 
 " Majestic sweetness sits enthroned 
 Upon the Saviour's brow ; 
 His head with radiant glories crown'd, 
 His lips with grace o'erflow." 
 
 As the perfection of moral loveliness Christ 
 has been the inspirer of the noblest ideals 
 of character and the highest conceptions of 
 service. To remove that Figure from the 
 page of history would mean the blotting 
 out of the chiefest charm from the land- 
 scape of our life. 
 
 But the fountain discharges a nobler 
 function than that of ornamentation. The 
 fountain is for refreshment. To the tra- 
 veller parched with heat and ready to die 
 of thirst there would be poor satisfaction 
 in the sight of fontal spray, flashing into 
 iridescence in the sunlight, or the sound 
 of tinkling drops falling with lyric note 
 upon silvery pools, if he could not put his 
 lips to the waters and drink. The sight 
 and the sound of the fountain would be 
 maddening. Pictures and music can do 
 nothing for him that is perishing with 
 thirst. To such an one the fountain would 
 be a mockery if he could not plunge into 
 the waters and drink, bathing brow and 
 wrist in the cooling flood. 
 
 Even so the beauty of Christ would be 
 a mocking beauty if there came from Him 
 
204 CHRIST AT THE 
 
 no communications of life and power to the 
 soul. I can only exult in His perfections as 
 I experience His saving grace. It is to my 
 thirst He appeals more than to my sense of 
 beauty. If He holds a fascination over my 
 mind, it is because He has wrought a satis- 
 faction in my heart. He gives me to drink. 
 He allays the fever of my soul. He answers 
 my thirst for pardon, for peace, for purity, 
 for knowledge, for love. The human soul 
 is the thirstiest thing God ever created, and 
 nothing can satisfy it but God Himself. 
 The condition of the inhabitants of Jeru- 
 salem on the morning of that eighth day 
 of the feast accurately represents the con- 
 dition of mankind after each attempt to 
 slake soul-thirst by excitements, pleasures, 
 or activities. Though we give our days 
 and nights to religious ceremonies, if we 
 are not in vital touch with Christ, we are 
 nothing bettered. The soul still thirsts. 
 These experiments only leave us with a 
 sense of exhaustion and with the suspicion 
 that the waters have been lowered in the 
 pools. But to open the heart to Christ is 
 to drink in the water of life. One cannot 
 argue to advantage about this matter. He 
 can only assert the fact of his experience. 
 I know the difference between sea-water 
 and water from a mountain spring. It is 
 
FEAST OF TABERNACLES 205 
 
 not by chemical analysis that I come to the 
 knowledge ; nor is it by the sight of my 
 eyes. I detect the difference by my taste 
 and the effects produced by drinking. I 
 have filled my palm with water from a 
 river hundreds of miles from where it 
 entered the ocean, and found it salty to 
 the taste. By that token I knew that the 
 tide came up so far. But I have also found 
 springs of sweet water within a stone's 
 cast from where the Atlantic billows broke 
 upon the beach. For weeks together I 
 have drunk health from such a spring, 
 ^nd I knew that though so near the 
 ocean, it was untainted with its brine. 
 Even so do I know that Jesus Christ is 
 the fountain of life and "the deep, sweet 
 well of love." I came to Him with spiritual 
 pulse beating low and moral life relaxed, 
 and He poured new life into my being. 
 Nor have I ever tasted aught but sweet- 
 ness in my contact with Him from the 
 first day even until now. 
 
 One sweltering day in August I spent 
 an afternoon viewing pottery in the British 
 Museum. Thousands of rare and beauti- 
 ful vessels were there, specimens of the 
 ceramic art of ancient and modern peoples. 
 But long before I had reached the end of 
 the display my head grew dizzy with 
 
206 CHRIST AT THE FEAST 
 
 weariness, and my throat became parched 
 with thirst. A multitude of cups sur- 
 rounded me, cups which a king's ransom 
 could scarcely buy. But, unfortunately for 
 raie, they were all empty. Precious as they 
 were, they offered nothing that could meet 
 my need. On leaving the building, how- 
 ever, I discovered, in a niche by the outer 
 door, a plain metal cup immersed in the 
 cool waters of a drinking fount. That cup 
 would hardly be deemed worthy of a place 
 among the vessels I had viewed, but to me 
 it was worth them all. It was filled from 
 the fountain, and I drank and was re- 
 freshed. So do the souls of men, weary 
 and thirsty, turn from the empty cups of 
 worldly pleasure to find refreshment at 
 the fountain of Christ's love. It matters 
 not how plain the vessel from which we 
 drink, though it be some lowly task or 
 some undistinguished service, or some quiet 
 hour of reflection, if only it be filled from 
 the fountain, it becomes a cup of blessing, 
 a chalice of refreshing and sustaining 
 grace. 
 
CHRIST IN THE HOME AT BETHANY 
 
'•Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and 
 Lazarus." — John xi. 6. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CHRIST IN THE HOME AT BETHANY 
 
 IT was probably during the last year of 
 His life that Jesus formed the precious 
 friendship with this family and became a 
 somewhat frequent visitor in their home at 
 Bethany. They were apparently the lead- 
 ing family of the village. In the affection- 
 ate hospitality of their home the Master 
 tasted a deep, sweet joy. It w^as the only 
 bit of real home life which He was per- 
 mitted to enjoy during the years of His 
 public ministry. It must have been to Him 
 a veritable oasis in the desert of those 
 homeless years. There He could relax and 
 rest. In the society of these devoted 
 friends He could experience *' the best bliss 
 that earth imparts," the bliss of perfect 
 human friendship. 
 
 To appreciate how much the privileges 
 of this home must have meant to Him, 
 we need to remember that these were the 
 
 15 209 
 
210 CHRIST IN THE HOME 
 
 days when He was consciously drawing 
 near to His cross, entering day by day 
 more deeply into its shadow and its chill. 
 Dr. George Matheson, writing of Christ's 
 intimacy with the Bethany family during 
 the last, sad year of His life, terms it " The 
 Union of the Altar and the Hearth." " Is 
 it strange," he asks, " that on His path to 
 the altar He should have lingered awhile 
 by the hearth ? " No, it is not strange. 
 We know that the altar and the hearth 
 were inseparably associated in His heart. 
 It was in behalf of the homes of the world 
 that He endured the shame of the cross. 
 "Like the dew of Hermon, that cometh 
 down upon the mountains of Zion," the 
 grace of Calvary falls copiously on Bethany. 
 If in the home at Bethany He was warmed 
 and strengthened for the cold, dark road 
 He had to tread, richly has He requited the 
 kindness. From His altar-fires He has cast 
 into the homes of unnumbered multitudes 
 the seeds of a brighter flame than was ever 
 kindled on the hearthstones of mankind 
 before. By His cross He has for ever 
 sanctified and glorified the home. 
 
 The Evangelists record two instances in 
 which Christ joined in social festivity with 
 the Bethany family. Each of these brief 
 stories is an exquisite literary cameo. In 
 
AT BETHANY 211 
 
 the wealth of their suggestivencss touching 
 the culture and expression of friendship 
 they stand unrivalled among the narratives 
 of the New Testament. On the first of 
 these occasions Jesus is the guest of the 
 family in their own home. On the second 
 occasion He is guest with the family in the 
 home of Simon the leper. While these 
 scenes have much in common with each 
 other, they exhibit certain striking con- 
 trasts. On both occasions there was a 
 display of Love's prodigality. Martha 
 was responsible for the first, Mary for 
 the second. To the casual reader it may 
 seem as if the Master's attitude and 
 teaching in the one instance are contradic- 
 tory to what we find in the other. For 
 while in the first case He remonstrates 
 with Martha respecting the lavish enter- 
 tainment which she provides, in the second 
 case He approves and justifies the astonish- 
 ing profuseness of Mary's act in pouring 
 upon His person a whole flask of " very 
 costly" spikenard. But when we call to 
 mind what had taken place between these 
 two occasions, how He had brought back 
 from death the one whom they had " loved 
 long since and lost awhile," we shall see 
 that there was a beautiful consistency in 
 His treatment of the devoted women. We 
 
212 CHRIST IN THE HOME 
 
 shall learn some precious lessons, too, 
 regarding the works and ways-S)f love. 
 
 1. 
 
 Jesus Restraining Loves Prodigality. 
 
 The sisters have prepared a special 
 supper in His honour. Martha, the elder 
 and the recognised head of the family, is 
 an expert in matters pertaining to the 
 table. She has made elaborate prepara- 
 tions for the meal. Many courses have 
 been arranged. Other guests have been 
 invited to meet Jesus. She is anxious that 
 everything shall be well served and that 
 the supper shall be a success from the 
 culinary point of view. Mary has doubt- 
 less helped in the preliminary arrange- 
 ments. But now the meal is in progress ; 
 the guests are about the table ; the hum of 
 conversation fills the room. Presently, 
 however, the pleasant murmur of pro- 
 miscuous talk subsides and only one voice 
 breaks the silence of the room. It is the 
 voice of Jesus. His wonderful table-talk 
 has begun to flow. Like spray from a 
 perfumed fountain it gushes from His lips, 
 fragrant, musical, refreshing. It is a time 
 for rapt and reverent listening, for it is 
 known that in moments like this the jewel- 
 
AT BETHANY 213 
 
 case of the Master's mind will be unclasped 
 and precious pearls of truth will be exposed 
 to view. We have good reason for believ- 
 ing that Jesus was never so charming as in 
 these rare moments when, sitting at meat 
 amid a circle of intimate, trusted friends, 
 He unreservedly opened to them the 
 treasures of His mind and heart. 
 
 At this point of the entertainment, Mary, 
 whose quick ear and sensitive mind has 
 caught the thread of His remarks, glides 
 noiselessly to the couch whereon, according 
 to Oriental custom, Jesus is partially reclin- 
 ing, and sits behind Him at His feet that 
 she may better drink in the refreshment 
 of this elevating speech. The act was 
 perfectly modest, natural, and becoming. 
 Martha, too, would no doubt have gladly 
 listened had her conceptions of hospitality 
 permitted. For she loved Jesus and 
 honoured Him in her soul no less than 
 Mary did. But she was of another tem- 
 perament and cast of mind. Hers was a 
 more " cumbered " soul. She was more 
 conventional, more punctilious, more con- 
 cerned for perfection of practical detail, 
 and hence more anxious that her supper 
 should be recherche in every respect. She 
 has yet other courses to serve. They seem 
 to her essential as a smooth and satisfying 
 
214 CHRIST IN THE HOME 
 
 finish to the meal. And something has 
 gone wrong with her arrangements. She 
 needs her sister's help for a moment to 
 rectify the matter. This is a convenient 
 opportunity to put things right, now that 
 the guests are hanging with such breath- 
 less interest upon the Master's words. If 
 she can but attract Mary's attention with- 
 out the guests observing her, their united 
 efforts will speedily overtake the situation 
 and the meal will be concluded with ^clat. 
 But Mary is too deeply absorbed in the 
 conversation of Jesus to notice that there 
 is any hitch or to observe the signs that 
 Martha is making. At another time a 
 significant cough or the rattle of a dish 
 would have arrested her attention. But 
 she is fathoms deep now in spiritual 
 musing. It is a trying situation for 
 Martha, no doubt, and it has won for her 
 the sympathy of all good cooks and 
 enthusiastic housewives. But Martha's em- 
 barrassment and trouble has probably and 
 her remonstrance has certainly been exag- 
 gerated through failure to accurately re- 
 produce the situation in the imagination. 
 There was no " scene." What Martha said 
 to Jesus was said in a whisper, we may 
 be sure. She was too much of a lady to 
 break out in a criticism of her sister in the 
 
AT BETHANY 215 
 
 hearing of the other guests. It is distinctly 
 stated that " she came up to Him, and said, 
 Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister 
 hath left me to serve alone ? bid her there- 
 fore that she help me." There is something 
 of irritation, perhaps of petulance here, but 
 no flaming anger. It is as though she said, 
 " Have you not seen that I am not getting 
 on well ? I cannot get the ' things ' on the 
 table as I should like to do. I am anxious for 
 your sake to have everything go smoothly. 
 Tell Mary to come and help me." It was 
 simply the communication of the fact of 
 her embarrassment to Jesus, coupled with 
 a request that He would wake Mary from 
 her dreaming and convey to her the intelli- 
 gence that she was wanted. One loves to 
 remember that Jesus was the sort of friend 
 and guest who could be appealed to in such 
 familiar fashion. There is nothing in the 
 whole story which so fully assures us that 
 Jesus was regarded as " one of the family " 
 as these words which Martha spoke to 
 Him. May we not believe that Jesus, 
 instead of being vexed by them, was 
 profoundly grateful for them ? 
 
 The reply of Jesus comes like the cool 
 breath of morning air into a close and 
 stuffy room. " Martha, Martha," and His 
 voice is very gentle, " thou art anxious and 
 
216 CHRIST IN THE HOME 
 
 troubled about many things : only one 
 thing is needful : and Mary hath chosen 
 that good morsel, which shall not be taken 
 away from her." The words may be 
 paraphrased like this : " You are really 
 taking more trouble than is necessary. 
 You are anxious to serve us with many 
 courses. Do you think that hospitality 
 consists in so much serving ? In providing 
 many varieties of viands ? It is a mistake. 
 Hospitality does not demand so much in 
 that way. The best hospitality tends 
 towards simplicity. The essence of hospi- 
 tality is the personal relation. The soul of 
 it lies in sympathetic friendship. It is an 
 atmosphere created by intelligent affection. 
 It will care for the comfort of the guest 
 but will not concern itself for the lavish- 
 ment of luxury. I, least of all, require or 
 desire such elaborate attentions. Only one 
 thing is needed now to complete your 
 beautiful work, and that is the restful 
 spirit, a sense of harmony and repose in 
 each other's society. You think that Mary 
 has not been contributing her share to the 
 demands of hospitality. She has really 
 contributed the choicest bit of all, the 
 daintiest morsel of the meal. Her quiet 
 spirit, her absorbed and sympathetic 
 interest in My conversation has been 
 
AT BETHANY 217 
 
 creating an atmosphere of harmony and 
 restfulness. Her influence is like music, 
 sweet and low and subduing. So she has 
 really made her contribution, and it will 
 prove to be a lasting one. It shall not be 
 taken away. It has imparted a sweetness 
 and a strength to our hearts which will 
 long outlive the energy supplied by the 
 delicious food. Sit down, Martha, and rest 
 with us ! We are well served. If an extra 
 dish goes cold it will not matter so long as 
 our hearts are warm." 
 
 We may believe that the meal was 
 finished leisurely and in a spirit of delight- 
 ful fellowship. Martha, dear old motherly 
 soul that she was, would sit down beside 
 Mary, perhaps with her arm around her, 
 and share in the enjoyment of the Master's 
 wondrous speech. If anything further 
 should be needed before they rise from 
 table, it will be Mary who will hasten to 
 bring it in. 
 
 How much more enjoyable and profitable 
 the hospitalities of life would be if all the 
 world should lay to heart the lesson so 
 clearly taught in this sweet story ! It 
 would crown all our domestic feasts with 
 an exquisite grace. And what relief it 
 would bring to the overwrought and 
 anxious Marthas of the world ! Hosts and 
 
218 CHRIST IN THE HOME 
 
 hostesses would still delight to honour 
 their guests with the best of entertainment. 
 Good cooking and dainty serving would 
 still continue to be an appreciated art. 
 But we should have a greater care to give 
 ourselves in sympathetic and intelligent 
 friendship to our guests. We should study 
 to enter into their interests, to share their 
 joys and sorrows, and to refresh them with 
 a welcome into the banqueting-room of 
 our affections. 
 
 But the application of the lesson here 
 cannot be restricted to domestic hospitali- 
 ties. It has to do with the whole matter 
 of Christian service. The soul of the lesson 
 is religious. You can scarcely get a better 
 definition of the Christian religion than that 
 of Friendship with Jesus Christ. And this 
 friendship cannot flourish unto full fruition 
 if denied the quiet hour of reflective and 
 receptive sitting at His feet. That friend- 
 ship cannot fully utter itself in anxious 
 activities and manifold ministrations. It is 
 too personal and spiritual a relation for 
 that. It requires frequent seasons of deep 
 and silent and calm communings. There 
 must be moments of listening as well as 
 days of serving. There must be times of 
 gracious dew-fall or the flower of friend- 
 ship will droop upon its stem. If the 
 
AT BETHANY 219 
 
 currents of our activities are to be kept 
 keen and bright and strong the pools of 
 our hearts must be filled again and again 
 from the fountain of wisdom and of love. 
 
 2. 
 
 Jesus Justifying Love's Prodigality. 
 
 "Jesus, six days before the passover, 
 came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, 
 which had been dead, whom Jesus raised 
 from the dead. There they made him a 
 supper, and Martha served : but Lazarus 
 was one of them that sat at the table with 
 Him." 
 
 This supper in the house of Simon was 
 evidently given in the honour of Jesus 
 and in commemoratian of the raising of 
 Lazarus. Martha, true to her specialty, 
 is again serving. She seems to have had 
 a genius for catering which was recognised 
 in the village and utilised by her intimate 
 friends. No feast was thought to be quite 
 complete to which she had not given 
 suggestion or approval. She is taking 
 matters more calmly now than in the 
 former instance. She has learned her 
 lesson. Her face is full of light and her eyes 
 glow with thankfulness as she looks at 
 Jesus and at Lazarus. But her hands are 
 
220 CHRIST IN THE HOME 
 
 busy. She will not overdo the entertain- 
 ment now, but she will not permit any- 
 thing to be lacking. She is a woman with a 
 genius apid a passion for ministration. She 
 will never lose that. And she knows that 
 Jesus appreciates it. This world would be a 
 far less comfortable world to live in were 
 it not for the guild of Martha. But Mary, 
 also, has a genius and a passion for minis- 
 tration. Her specialty, as we have seen, 
 is for the creation of " atmosphere." This 
 was her contribution on the former 
 occasion. And now again she creates an 
 atmosphere and such an atmosphere as 
 has filled the world with its fragrance. 
 " Mary, therefore, took a pound of ointment 
 of spikenard, very costly, and anointed 
 the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with 
 her hair : and the house was filled with the 
 odour of the ointment." 
 
 We cannot think that either Martha 
 or Lazarus would grudge the gift. They 
 would view it with unqualified approval. 
 Was it not a thank-offering for the recon- 
 struction of the family circle that had 
 been broken by the hand of Death? 
 Lazarus would feel honoured by it more 
 than if it had been poured upon himself. 
 Martha's heart would leap with pride and 
 gratitude to Mary for having conceived 
 
AT BETHANY 221 
 
 such a happy thought. Had not the sisters 
 wept together in those dark days when 
 the death-tide was bearing their beloved 
 brother towards the gulf of darkness? 
 Did not their hearts break as one heart 
 when they saw the light go out of his 
 eyes and the pulse cease in his body ? Had 
 they not watched together, at first with 
 hopefulness and then with increasing 
 trepidition, for the coming of Jesus in 
 answer to their united petition ? Had they 
 not afterwards waited side by side in 
 stony despair for His belated appearance ? 
 We may be certain that Martha's heart 
 was blessing Mary for this beautiful deed. 
 But there were some in the company 
 who looked upon the act as one of "waste- 
 ful and ridiculous excess." To them it 
 appeared absurd in its lavishment, in- 
 excusable in its prodigality, " Why was 
 not this ointment sold for three hundred 
 pence, and given to the poor ? " We know 
 what was behind that ill-natured criticism. 
 We do not need to dwell upon the con- 
 suming avarice or the black treachery of 
 the sneak-thief who spat out that complaint. 
 But there may have been others in the 
 company, who, without any baseness in 
 their hearts, would regard the deed with 
 disfavour. They could scarcely think of 
 
222 CHRIST IN THE HOME 
 
 it as other than a vast and astonishing 
 extravagance. " Of course," so they might 
 say in their hearts, " the ointment belonged 
 to the woman and she had the right to 
 do as she pleased with it. But would it 
 not have been wiser to have used it more 
 sparingly? A few drops, a very few, of 
 nard so fragrant and refreshing would 
 have been amply sufficient for a single 
 application. Why did she not shed these 
 few drops upon Him and then, if she so 
 desired, present Him with the remainder 
 for future use ? But she has deluged Him 
 with it. She has poured out the last drop. 
 And upon His feet ! They are fairly 
 soaked with it. Has she not made a towel 
 of her hair and wiped His feet He would 
 have experienced actual discomfort from 
 the anointing." Thus might even friendly 
 guests have reasoned if they happened to 
 be lacking in imagination. 
 
 And the recipient of the lavishment, 
 what has He to say? He, who, a little 
 while before had restrained Love's prodi- 
 gality ? May we not expect that He will 
 break out now in protest ? The expendi- 
 ture on the former occasion, though lavish, 
 was much less than this. The value of 
 this box of ointment would represent the 
 cost of several suppers, each of them as 
 
AT BETHANY 223 
 
 elaborate as that which Martha had made. 
 Each drop of this spikenard was worth the 
 day's wage of a working man. Will He 
 not therefore strongly disapprove of this 
 extravagance? No, not on this occasion. 
 He will accept it, every drop of it ; accept 
 it unblushingly and thankfully. He has 
 need, now, of some special anointing at 
 Love's hand. For He is about to receive 
 the buffetings of hatred and of scorn. In 
 Jerusalem they are waiting for Him that 
 they may spit in His face, smite Him with 
 their fists, scourge Him with their thongs, 
 and nail His hands and feet to a tree. He 
 will be very glad to carry with Him the 
 fragrant memory of a love that lavished 
 upon Him its choicest possession. It will 
 be as a precious perfume to His thoughts, 
 a refreshing and sustaining balm for His 
 troubled spirit. Hence His justification of 
 Mary's act : " Why trouble ye the woman ? 
 for she hath wrought a good work upon 
 Me. For in that she hath poured this oint- 
 ment upon My body, she did it to prepare 
 Me for burial." 
 
 We are not to suppose that Mary had 
 such an intention in the act, but He ascribes 
 to the act that noble effect. Mary did not 
 know that He was about to die. Had she 
 known it her deed would have been a 
 
224 CHRIST IN THE HOME 
 
 sacrifice of sorrow. But it was a sacrifice 
 of joy. The act was retrospective, He 
 made it prospective. She broke the box 
 upon Him in gratitude for the fact that 
 He had broken the gates of death and 
 brought her brother back. He accepted 
 it as a strengthening for His own last 
 weariness and final strife. And so her 
 love wrought better than it knew. That is 
 Love's prerogative when love is pure and 
 selfless. Love like that can even "gild 
 refined gold " and " paint the lily " and 
 " add a hue unto the violet/' Love like 
 that can impart a sweetness which out- 
 perfumes the distillations from a thousand 
 flowers. Mary's love put something into 
 the box of ointment far more precious than 
 it contained when it was sealed by the 
 apothecary's hand. Love is the alchemist 
 of life. Love takes a book that you could 
 buy for half a crown, writes your name 
 and its own upon the fly-leaf, and instantly 
 that book assumes a value in your eyes 
 above the price of libraries bound in 
 morocco. Love gives a simple flower, and 
 long after it has crumbled into dust it 
 blossoms in the soul, while its charasteristic 
 odour, wafted to you on some passing 
 breeze, awakens a train of comforting 
 reflections. 
 
AT BETHANY 225 
 
 And love must sometimes be permitted 
 to act upon its impulse, even if that impulse 
 be towards prodigality. It must some- 
 times be allowed to consider the deeds 
 rather than the needs of the recipient. 
 When another life has touched and 
 crowned us with a distinguishing grace ; 
 when it has brought to us a fine and per- 
 manent enthusiasm ; when it has restored 
 to us a joy which we had lost beyond all 
 hope of recovery ; then love cannot find an 
 adequate expression in common and calcu- 
 lating ways. Thank-offerings for special 
 mercies belong to a class by themselves. 
 In giving these we seek for something that 
 can speak the language of the heart with 
 a distinctive accent. In such rare hours 
 we may give the sense of gratitude its way 
 without restraint. To fetter it with the 
 customary considerations of frugality, 
 economy, and utility would stifle it. Such 
 gratitude cannot calculate in cool, utili- 
 tarian fashion. It finds its fitting sphere 
 of action in realms which "the world's 
 coarse thumb and finger fail to plumb." 
 It longs for abandon. It is a lark that 
 can only carol on the wing. To cage 
 it up amid dry, mathematical estimates of 
 proportions and percentages is to quench 
 its song within its breast. Christ would 
 16 
 
226 CHRIST AT BETHANY 
 
 uncage it ; He would give it liberty and 
 range of wing. Deeds like Mary's are 
 essentially sacramental. The Master ap- 
 proves them as deeds of monumental 
 goodness. 
 
 Nor do we need to fear that deeds like 
 this will take anything away, either from 
 the desire or the ability to respond to the 
 pressing necessities of the world's un- 
 fortunates. No charitable institution will 
 suffer in its funds because grateful love 
 permits itself an occasional lavishment in 
 the form of a thank-offering. It is not the 
 hand which sheds the spikenard upon the 
 peerless friend that will deny a charity to 
 the friendless poor. The sudden swelling 
 of the tide of gratitude, sweeping like a 
 torrent through the soul, deepens and 
 clears the channel for charity's continuous 
 and normal flow. Mary gives her guineas 
 to the poor whilst Judas steals the pennies 
 which parsimony puts into the bag. 
 
CHRIST ON THE MOUNT OF 
 TRANSFIGURATION 
 
•' And he was transfigured before them : and his face 
 did shine as the sun, and his garments became white as 
 the light." — Matthew xvii. 2. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 CHEIST ON THE MOUNT OF TBANS- 
 FIGUEATION 
 
 1. 
 
 The Transfiguration manifested the Glory of 
 Christ's Inherent Godhood. 
 
 You are sitting in your room of a 
 winter evening with a lamp burning on 
 the table at your side. The wick of the 
 lamp is turned low ; but even thus it is 
 cheery and companionable. The flame, 
 though suppressed, glows steadily there in 
 its socket, suffusing the enveloping crystal 
 with its mild radiancy. Though shadows 
 lurk about you the general gloom is some- 
 what relieved by that point of mellow light. 
 Suddenly, now, by a movement of your 
 hand, you turn the wick up high. The 
 swift-mounting flame effects an instan- 
 taneous transfiguration. Your lamp shines 
 
230 CHRIST ON THE MOUNT 
 
 now with a new resplendency. The 
 potentialities of the brighter light were 
 present all the while, in wick and oil and 
 flame and crystal, but they had not been 
 evoked. Now, however, they are suddenly 
 brought to manifestation. Jesus Christ 
 during his life on earth was God's great 
 lamp shining here in this dark world, but 
 with the wick of His essential deity turned 
 low. Even thus His radiancy was unique. 
 The suffusing splendour of that inner light 
 marked Him out as Time's most lustrous 
 personality. The flame of Godhood, though 
 suppressed, glowed there within the white 
 crystal of His enveloping humanity and 
 steadily manifested a glory, "Glory as of 
 the only begotten from the Father, full 
 of grace and truth." But that night upon 
 the Holy Mount, His person was suddenly 
 charged with enhanced effulgence. There, 
 for one transcendent hour. His deity was, 
 so to speak, turned on full flame. It 
 flashed forth in radiancy unrestrained. 
 The temple of His body blazed with the 
 dazzling splendours of spiritual incandes- 
 cence. He was transfigured before them. 
 "His face did shine as the sun, and His 
 garments became white and glistering, 
 exceeding white, so as no fuller on earth 
 can whiten them." 
 
OF TRANSFIGURATION 231 
 
 The potentialities of transfiguring glory 
 were ever present to Christ's spirit. He had 
 that touch with God which needed but the 
 turn of the prayer-key to bring upon Him 
 the forces and splendours of the heavenly 
 world in full-flooding tide. His person was 
 like a building wired for electric power and 
 light. Into such a building you may bring 
 the desired voltage instantaneously. You 
 may flood it with light in the twinkling of 
 an eye. On many an occasion Jesus had 
 drawn upon Heaven for power — power 
 to heal disease, to subdue evil spirits, to 
 control the forces of nature, to raise the 
 dead. Never was a call of His denied. His 
 confidence in the certainty of Heaven's 
 response to any appeal which He might 
 make was the secret of His assurance in 
 fronting a burdened humanity with His 
 imperial " Come unto Me." Whatever load 
 He might desire to lift from the lives of 
 men, He knew that power would be 
 granted for the lifting. He had power on 
 earth to forgive sins. Had He desired to 
 fling His enemies aside from His path and 
 hurl the cross away. He could have done it. 
 " Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech My 
 Father, and He shall even now send Me 
 more than twelve legions of angels?" There 
 speaks a consciousness that feels about 
 
232 CHRIST ON THE MOUNT 
 
 it the pulse-beat of omnipotence. What 
 seventy-two thousand angel-power may- 
 mean in terms of conquering energy we 
 cannot tell ; but it is evident that to Jesus 
 it meant a force sufficient to overwhelm 
 the military force of Jerusalem, yea, and 
 of Rome, with swift and crushing defeat. 
 He had also drawn upon Heaven for light 
 — light to guide and light to warn. The 
 words He spake were from the Father, and 
 they glowed to their last syllable with 
 illuminating splendour. There were occa- 
 sions when the inner light shone through 
 His flesh and put an awe-inspiring radiancy 
 upon His brow. That day in Nazareth, 
 when He passed unscathed through the 
 angry crowd which had gathered to cast 
 Him from the cliff, was one of these. The 
 day when He drove the hucksters from 
 the Temple area was another. But this 
 night upon the mount he makes a special 
 call for radiancy. He sends in His prayer- 
 signal to the central station in glory for 
 one transcendent illumination, and lo, 
 whilst He prays, the transfiguring splen- 
 dour comes. 
 
 "In the old days on Sinai 
 
 Were tempests and dark cloud, 
 And God was there in lightning, 
 Thunder and trumpet loud; 
 
OF TRANSFIGURATION 233 
 
 Upon a fairer mountain, 
 
 Where pure snows lay congealed, 
 Stood Jesus in His Glory, 
 
 The very God revealed." 
 
 2. 
 
 The Transfiguration bore Witness to Christ's 
 Ideally Perfect Manhood. 
 
 Had there been the slightest flaw in the 
 human life of Jesus He could not have 
 endured the sudden voltage which sur- 
 charged Him there upon the mount. A 
 cracked crystal cannot bear the shock of 
 sudden, assaulting heat. It might stand 
 the lighter test of a low-burning wick, but 
 the full-forced flame would find the flaw 
 and shatter the glass. Had Christ been 
 less than God's perfect man He would have 
 died upon the mount. The shock of the 
 sudden glory would have slain Him. It 
 would have been to Him a consuming fire. 
 The fact that He could endure that terrific 
 test pronounces the ultimate verdict upon 
 the quality of His life. The transfiguration 
 means that deity, blazing up in Jesus, in 
 instantaneous, full effulgence, found His 
 manhood a flawless crystal. So perfectly 
 had His human life been moulded to the 
 Father's will that He was able to receive, 
 
234 CHRIST ON THE MOUNT 
 
 without strain, the full flame of Godhood. 
 So purely had He lived, so completely had 
 He obeyed the truth, that even the flash- 
 ing through Him of that light ineffable 
 before which the seraphim veil their faces, 
 disclosed in Him no speck or stain. 
 
 The witnessing splendour was accom- 
 panied by a witnessing voice : " This is 
 My beloved Son, in whom I am well 
 pleased ; hear ye Him." He had heard 
 that voice at the beginning of His 
 ministry, and it assured Him of His Mes- 
 sianic call. It was God's stamp of approval 
 affixed to the silent years of Nazareth. It 
 must have been an infinite encouragement 
 for Him to hear it again now that He was 
 drawing near the end. It was the sentinel 
 cry, " All's well," from Him who kept watch 
 above. It told Him that His life, which 
 had been tested again and again and found 
 to be in order, has now passed through the 
 final and most searching test triumphantly. 
 He knew Himself to be the Lamb of God, 
 designated for sacrificial offering ; now He 
 receives witness to the fact that, having 
 come within sight of the altar. He is 
 regarded as still clean, unblemished, fit 
 for offering. In the attesting word which 
 rang out on the midnight, the Father put 
 upon His Son the temple-brand which 
 
OF TRANSFIGURATION 235 
 
 declared Him qualified to make atonement 
 for the sin of the world. 
 
 Had it not been for the sacrificial mission 
 upon which Christ was bent, the trans- 
 figuration would have issued in transla- 
 tion. From the glory of the mountain He 
 would have ascended into heaven to resume 
 the glory that He had with the Father 
 before the world was ; for the experience 
 there marked the consummation of His 
 personal human perfectness. There and 
 then His manhood burst into brilliant 
 flower. Had He not been in the world 
 for redemptive purposes, God would have 
 plucked the flower then and laid it in His 
 bosom. 
 
 3. 
 
 The Transfiguration cheered Christ onward 
 in the Path of His Saviourhood. 
 
 It gave a heartening exhibition of 
 Heaven's interest in the goal which He 
 had set before Him, and in the means by 
 which it was to be attained. "Behold, 
 there talked with Him two men, which 
 were Moses and Elijah ; who appeared in 
 glory, and spake of His decease which He 
 was about to accomplish at Jerusalem." 
 The presence of these men, one repre- 
 sentative of the law, the other of 
 
236 CHRIST ON THE MOUNT 
 
 the prophets, was deeply significant. It 
 pointed to the fact that Christ was suc- 
 cessor to both the legislators and prophets 
 of Israel. It indicated that the work of 
 the past was waiting upon the sacrificial 
 work of Christ for its completion. It 
 showed that Moses and Elijah were in 
 full accord with the new economy about 
 to be established. The old order was 
 changing, "giving place to new," and the 
 foremost to hail the change and greet 
 Him who brought it in were the very 
 men under whom the old order had been 
 established. It is abundantly clear that 
 they viewed their own work as pre- 
 liminary. It was but the building of the 
 scaffolding for the abiding temple which 
 was afterwards to be erected. Now that 
 they behold the temple drawing near com- 
 pletion, they appear to cheer the builder to 
 His final task. The sympathetic interest 
 of these visitors must have been a gracious 
 anointing for the heart of Jesus. He had 
 been grieved by the dulness of the twelve, 
 pained by the fickleness of the multitude, 
 stung by the hostility of the rulers. There 
 was not a soul on the earth who was able 
 at that moment to grasp and appreciate 
 the ultimate purpose of His life. But 
 Moses and Elijah understood. In their 
 
OF TRANSFIGURATION 237 
 
 brief company He tasted the joy of in- 
 telligent sympathy. "They spake of His 
 exodus which He was about to accomplish " 
 at Jerusalem. They associated the work 
 of the cross, to which He was drawing 
 nigh, with the exodus from Egypt. That 
 exodus was the outstanding event of 
 Jewish history. No other event had ever 
 bulked so largely in the imagination and 
 memory of the nation. It marked the 
 birthday of Jewish national life. Until 
 the exodus the Israelites were political 
 nobodies. For generations they were but 
 a wandering tribe of herdmen, and after 
 that, for centuries, a race of slaves. But 
 the exodus gave them a new consciousness 
 and a new dignity before the world. It 
 generated in them the ennobling sense of 
 nationhood; it vitalised them with a new 
 and splendid hope. From the day of the 
 exodus they felt themselves to be a people 
 with a bright and beckoning future. The 
 spirit of prophecy was stirred. No sooner 
 had the waters of the Red Sea closed upon 
 their oppressors than Moses and the child- 
 ren of Israel sang a song unto the Lord, 
 a song that voiced their new-born aspira- 
 tions and convictions. Dreams of conquest 
 and of Empire find expression in that song. 
 "Thou in Thy mercy hast led forth the 
 
238 CHRIST ON THE MOUNT 
 
 people which Thou hast redeemed: Thou 
 hast guided them in Thy strength to Thy 
 holy habitation. The people shall hear, 
 and be afraid : sorrow shall take hold 
 upon the inhabitants of Palestine. Then 
 the Dukes of Edom shall be amazed ; the 
 mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take 
 hold upon them : all the inhabitants of 
 Canaan shall melt away. Fear and dread 
 shall fall upon them; by the greatness of 
 Thine arm they shall be still as a stone ; 
 till Thy people pass over, O Lord, till the 
 people pass over which Thou hast pur- 
 chased." And so it came to pass that 
 from generation to generation Jehovah 
 was proclaimed as " The Lord thy God 
 which brought thee up out of the land of 
 Egypt, out of the house of bondage." 
 
 Against this background, how magnifi- 
 cently the cross of Christ looms up ! It 
 was to be for Him and for all His 
 followers the way of exodus. For Him 
 the way of exodus from a state of humi- 
 liation to the glory of the mediatorial 
 throne. For them the way of exodus 
 from bondage into liberty, from sin into 
 holiness, from death into life. In the 
 judgment of Moses and Elijah, that issue 
 which seemed to the disciples an intoler- 
 able ignominy and a crushing defeat wa.« 
 
OF TRANSFIGURATION 239 
 
 a splendid triumph. Moses and Elijah 
 greeted the Christ upon the mount as the 
 leader of Time's supremely magnificent 
 movement, a movement which would es- 
 tablish the kingdom of God for ever in 
 the hearts of men. •' So the mount of 
 transfiguration looks toward the mount 
 of sacrifice, lights up Calvary, and lays 
 a wreath upon the cross." 
 
 4. 
 
 The Transfiguration provided Powerful 
 Incentives for Unwavering Discipleship. 
 
 At first the three disciples who were with 
 the Lord upon the mount were dazed by 
 the brilliancy of the scene. While the 
 Master was at prayer they slept. Awak- 
 ing, " they saw His glory, and the two 
 men that stood with Him." It would be 
 strange indeed if they had understood the 
 meaning of what was taking place. It is 
 evident that the mind of Peter was con- 
 fused, or he would not have made the 
 grotesque suggestion to build there three 
 booths for Jesus and His celestial visitors. 
 But even as he spoke the cloud over- 
 shadowed them, Moses and Elijah dis- 
 appeared, the Voice from heaven bade 
 them hearken unto Jesus, and they were 
 
240 CHRIST ON THE MOUNT 
 
 left with Him alone. Then they learned 
 the great truth that He was to be all in 
 all to them. They saw that He was their 
 one link with heaven. Henceforth He 
 would be to them, as He had never been 
 before, " the hope of glory." 
 
 And thus they were enabled to take 
 something of the mountain with them 
 down into the plain. It is ever the mis- 
 sion of the mountain to minister to the 
 plain ; it was not made to tower aloft in 
 cold, proud isolation. The Alps were not 
 uphfted merely to be gazed at and admired 
 by pleasure-seeking tourists, but to feed the 
 Rhine and to nourish the teeming cities 
 upon its banks. Heights of ecstasy and 
 peaks of rapture, to which we may ascend, 
 are intended to impart a finer spirit for 
 the tasks of the common day. We are to 
 make all things according to the pattern 
 shown us in the mount. The highest rule 
 of life is to endeavour to be true to the 
 visions and the voices vouchsafed us on 
 the heights. Our mountain-top experi- 
 ences are the grand rallying-points of life. 
 We are not to recline upon them and sip 
 their nectar "careless of mankind." We 
 touch them for power to heal the 
 demonised life below. The vision of the 
 mount is to be translated into energy for 
 
OF TRANSFIGURATION 241 
 
 service on the plain. Else we shall be 
 blasted by the very splendour that was 
 granted us for blessing. From the moun- 
 tain and the glory we may go with Jesus 
 through the valleys with their shadows to 
 the crown of life. 
 
 lY 
 
®b? Cdwsbam |!rcss, 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, LEUlTEn, 
 WOKINa &SD IiOKDON. 
 

 
BS2421 .F85 
 Concerning the Christ 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Libr, 
 
 1 1012 00033 5648