^^,,<,.t*»*,i„,^^l^-v. PRINCETON, N. J. Division 'X^S^fr-TA ^^r\ Section j,\hl\\ Shelf Number :Mi('^ SOME CENTRAL POINTS OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. SOME CENTRAL POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY: HENRY 'WAGE, D.D., PREBENDARY OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL ; PRINCIPAL OF KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON ; PREACHER OF LINCOLN'S INN ; CHAPLAIN-IN-ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN ; AND CHAPLAIN TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY ; Author of ^^ Christianity and Morality" " TJie Foundations of Faiths " The Gospel and its Witnesses" etc. SECOND EDITION. HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. Prinled by.Uazell, VVataon, & Fuuy, LU., London and Aylesbury. PREFACE. TV /r OST of these expositions, or expository -^^ ■*- meditations, upon some passages in our Lord's life and ministry, were originally printed in the Clergyman's Magazine at the request of a colleague who was the editor, and they are now reprinted with additions in deference to other requests. Their publi- cation has been much delayed, partly by the author's occupations, and partly by his hesitation in dealing with subjects of such gravity except in the place and time prescribed to him by his duties. After they had been once printed, however, under a sense of obliga- tion to a friend, there were some reasons for publishing them with more completeness ; and the author hopes they may be found to afford some useful suggestions on a subject which vi PREFACE. is always of supreme importance, and which commands especial interest at the present day. They were originally written for the pulpit of Lincoln's Inn Chapel, and were accordingly intended to combine practical usefulliess with a simple statement of the results of some careful thought and medi- tation. The author has not considered it necessary in such a volume to refer to au- thorities; but the reader will, he trusts, feel assured that the best information and criticism have been diligently consulted and considered. The purpose which has throughout been kept in mind is, in the first instance, to realize the actual circumstances of the various sayings and doings of our Lord which are under considera- tion, to appreciate their original and native significance, and thus to apprehend their genuine and permanent bearings on religious life and spiritual problems. The author's motive was not the application of our Lord's teaching to any special purpose, however legitimate ; but simply the attempt to under- stand what He said and did, and to discern PREFACE. vii what light is thus naturally thrown upon His character, His mission, and our own spiritual and moral condition. To enter into the actual meaning of the Saviour's words and deeds must, in one respect, be a matter of the pro- foundest difficulty, as they must ever, in their full significance, remain beyond the reach of any imperfect and sinful, not to say finite, mind ; but, on the other hand, as they were intended to help us in our sinfulness and weak- ness, any sincere and earnest soul, however unworthy, may apprehend some aspect of them, and may thus contribute something of value to their due comprehension. Next to this spirit of humble docility, required alike by our moral and our intellectual imperfection, that which seems most important in such meditations is that we should beware of approaching the apprehension of our Lord's acts and words under the undue influence of any prepossessions, whether traditional or modern, by which they might be coloured, and that we should endea- vour to see them in their original and living character. The Gospels are throughout in- viii PREFACE. stinct with life and action. Our Lord is dealing with living men and women, whose circumstances we can in great measure understand, whose characters, whose tempt- ations, whose sufferings, and whose sins we can appreciate; and in proportion as we realize, antecedent to any dogmatic conclu- sions, the living spirit in which He dealt with them, shall we be able to apprehend His living relation to ourselves. There is an incidental use in such medita- tions to which it may be worth while to call attention. So far as they enable us to per- ceive that our Lord in the Gospels is touching, with superhuman power and insight, the very sources of our moral and spiritual being, they may furnish the most practical answer to those critical speculations which would undermine our reliance on the authenticity and trust- worthiness of the sacred narratives in the New Testament. If those narratives are found at every turn, and almost at every touch, to reveal to us the very foundations of our religious and moral life, it becomes absurd to attribute them PREFACE. ix to the chances or the arts of second-hand compilation, amidst the legendary reminiscences of a second-rate age. It becoipes as absurd as it would seem to attribute the hills and rocks of Dartmoor, amidst which this preface is written, to the artificial ingenuity of the novelists or geologists who have based romances or scientific theories upon them. The more the Gospels are simply considered in the spirit already indicated, the more do we find our- selves face to face with the original facts, the primary and stern realities of human nature, and at the same time with a living Lord, who knows them all, who is superior to them all, and who can deal with all the difiiculties and problems they present. As the Psalmist sings that "The foundations of the round world were discovered at Thy chiding, O Lord, at the blasting of the breath of Thy displeasure," so the foundations of the spiritual and moral world • are discovered at the breath and at the touch of Him whose voice is heard, and whose figure is seen, in the four Gospels. The questions raised by 3C PREFACE. literary criticism in this century have of course to be met, and they have their interest. But after all, to tell the plain truth, they are mere child's play compared with the real problems presented to the heart and mind by the Gospels and the rest of the Scriptures. They may be the "higher criticism," but they are very far indeed from being the highest ; for they do not touch the ultimate realities with which the Scriptures deal, and they arise in too great a degree from mere insensibility to such realities, or from failure to appreciate them. But this consideration is only incidental, and it is not from this point of view that the pre- sent discourses were written. They are the result of sincere endeavours to gain a more real apprehension of the meaning of the Gospels, and above all a better knowledge of the Lord and Saviour whom those Gospels reveal ; and they are published in the hope that they may be of some assistance to others in increasing in the same knowledge, and through that knowledge in trust and love. August 14///, 1890. CONTENTS. I. The Saviour. ^St. ^ukc ii. II. PAGET " Unto yoH is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour" l II. Our Lord's Motive. cSt. i^ttkc ii. 49, 50. " And He said unto thew, How is it that ye sought Me ? wist ye not that I must be about My Tathers business ? A nd they understood not the saying which He spake unto them''^ . . . . . . ,19 III. Our Lord's Education. . cSt. i:ttkc ii. 46. ^^ And it came to pass, that after three days they found Him in the Temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking titein questions '' . -37 xii CONTENTS. IV. The Temptation in the Wilderness. cSt. JtatthctD iv. I. PAGE " Then zvas Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilder- ticss to be tempted of the devil" 59 V. The First Temptation. z into loaves of bread, was, we are expressly told, addressed to our Lord's sense of physical necessity and suffering, combined with His consciousness of the possession of miraculous powers by which He might have relieved it. " When He had fasted forty da3's and forty nights. He was after- ward an hungered. And when the tempter came to Him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." This prolonged last, accordingly, had reduced our Lord's bodily nature to a condition of weakness and suffering in which He was naturally craving for some relief. Whatever else may have been the effect or the purpose of this long fast, His physical endurance was put to a severe strain, and the tempter suggests to Him, what He well knew Himself, that it was in His power at once to relieve it. He who subsequently fed five thousand men with a few loaves and fishes must have had at His command miraculous resources which would at once have supplied His wants. 84 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. To this sense the tempter appeals ; and in what did the evil of the suggestion consist ? There were, it has been ob- served, other times in our Lord's life and ministry in which He did not hesitate to have recourse to His miraculous powers for His own preservation, as when He passed through the midst of the hostile crowd at Nazareth ; and there would seem nothing essentially wrong in the exercise of such powers. But our Lord's answer, ^' It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," points to the fact that His use of His miraculous power on this occa- sion would have been inconsistent with the express will and word of His Father. It * is to be explained, in short, by the fact that, as the Evangelist says, " He was led," or as one of them speaks, "He was driven," into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. This endurance had, in other words, for reasons beyond our full compre- THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 85 hension, been imposed on Him by the Spirit of God, and He would therefore have been acting in disobedience to an express direction of His Father if He had used the power with which He was endowed to escape from the trial. We have a memorable instance of the manner in which the same temptation was met and overcome at the hour when the evil one last assailed Him. He expressly declared, at the moment when He was seized by the Jews, that it was in His power to have delivered Himself, had He so chosen. '' Thinkest thou," He said to His disciples, '' that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels ? But how then shall the Scriptures be ful- filled, that thus it must be ? " The case seems precisely parallel ; and the temptation we are now considering would thus appear to have been, as it were, a rehearsal of that final conflict. But as this was the first, and one of the last trials which assailed our Lord, so must S6 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. it have been continually at hand, as it were, throughout His whole life. That life was a submission to circumstances of the utmost suffering, weakness, and misery by One who, as His miracles continually showed, and as His words expressly stated, had the power at any moment to emancipate Himself from them. His whole life was one prolonged humiliation, until He finally '' humbled Him- self, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." This humiliation was throughout animated by the spirit ex- pressed in this answer to the evil one, that *'man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." It was the will of God that He should thus submit, that He should be made perfect through suffering, and so become the Author of eternal salvation to all them that should follow Him ; and He subdued all the cravings and inclinations of His bodily and mental nature to the will of His Father. His final prayer, " Not My will, but Thine be done," received its first exertiplification in THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 87 this temptation to relieve the cravings of prolonged hunger, and was put to a similar strain throughout His whole ministry. Alike in the simplest wants of human nature, and in its intensest desires. He showed the example of absolutely submitting His human will to His Father's will, and to His own higher will. It would seem obvious that this is an ex- ample of the earliest and simplest, and yet in some respects the most persistent, temp- tation by which ordinary human beings are beset. The commonest temptations of life are aroused by physical cravings, together with the opportunity for gratifying those cravings in a manner which is contrary to the declared will and ordinance of God. Some of the ten commandments, such as those which protect property and preserve the sanctity of marriage, and the last, which forbids coveting, are directed against this elementary temptation. The tempter is per- petually saying to men. You can gratify this passion, or relieve this necessity, by disre- 88 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY, garding the arbitrary rules which have been imposed on you. It is natural you should do so, and you would be but calling into play capacities which are inherent in your nature. How often do not men lay this unction to their, consciences, if not for offences condemned by human law, yet for private and secret sins, known to God alone ? But they know, at the same time, that they are acting against the higher law of their nature, against a rule and order expressly laid down by God Himself for their guid- ance. Their only safety is in grasping the principle which our Lord here asserted in answer to the tempter, that ^^man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." In excuse for some offences of this kind, it was oncfe pleaded, *'A man must live;" and it was replied, " I don't see the neces- sity." That was the Stoic form of the principle which our Lord here asserted in the gracious tones of the Gospel. It is true, in the highest sense, that a man must THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 89 live. But his life does not consist in the mere gratification of his bodily cravings, or even the natural desires of his mind and heart. The essential life of his nature con- sists in his living and acting in harmony with the will of God. ** Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." So far as it is necessary for man to live here, all natural provision that is essential for him will be made by his Father in heaven. It is unnecessary for him to take any thought, saying, ''What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink ? or. Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? " for our Heavenly Father knoweth that we have need of all these things. But let a man seek first the king- dom of God, and all these things shall be added unto him. It adds infinite weight to that exhortation that it was spoken by One who, as this temptation shows, knew full well that it was consistent with the infliction of severe endurance and grievous want. It does not 90 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. involve a promise that God will spare men all suffering and evil; and supply every wish and craving of their bodily nature. It asserts that He will do so, as far as is consisten'f with their own best welfare, and with His general purposes for themselves and others. No man or woman can expect to have our Saviour's promises fulfilled to themselves in a higher degree than that in which they were fulfilled to Him. He felt assured that He was in the hands of His Father ; He knew, as none else knew, the depth of that Father's love, and His unwillingness to impose more sacrifices or sufferings upon His children than are necessary for the vindication and establishment of righteousness on the earth. Knowing this, He felt it no inconsistency with these ample declarations that His own Hfe should present the most striking contrast, in external appearances, to the assurances He proclaimed. His life was surrounded by none of the glory of Solomon ; and though He says in the same exhortation, *' Behold the fowls of the air : for they sow not, neither THE FIRST TEMPTATION. ' gv do they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them," He said on another occasion, "The birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head." But if His experience illustrated the apparent contrasts of life to the exhortations of His Sermon on the Mount, it illustrates not less forcibly the higher and final meaning of those promises, and the principle on which He relied in His temptation — that man should live, but not by bread alone. For after His humiliation, even to the last extremity, in which He refused to save Himself, He rose in a power and glory which fully answered to the true necessities of His bodily, no less than of His spiritual nature. His body was sown in corruption, it was raised in incor- ruption ; it was sown in weakness, it was raised in power ; it was sown a natural body, it was raised a spiritual body. The life of man, He proved by His experience, is not to be measured by his wants and cravings in his present existence. It has an eternal- g2*S0ME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. character, and is destined for an everlasting sphere. There, for whatever a man may have foregone here in obedience to the Word of God and to His will, he will be abun- dantly rewarded, and it will be seen that a man's true life consists in " every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." There is surely too much evidence around us that the lesson of this temptation is one which needs to be deeply impressed on man- kind, and that it is the only principle which can preserve society in general, as well as our individual lives, from confusion and ruin. It is, after all, too much to expect human nature, as a rule, to act on the stern prin- ciple that life and blessing are not necessary. The desire for them, the craving for their enjoyment, is deeply stamped in ineradic- able characterife on the soul of man ; and if the hope of them be utterly baffled, human nature rises in desperation. It is true that violations of the elementary laws of human society revenge themselves, even in this world, and that no class, and few individuals, can THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 93 acquire even apparent happiness by attempting to satisfy their needs in wild and revolutionary disregard of the principles of mutual honesty and of the elementary laws of all society. But it is - none the less true, that if you exclude from the view of mankind the only assurances which offer them adequate compensation for suffering and self-denial here, you expose them to a temptation, which you have no right to expect they will have the power to resist, to relieve their wants and miseries by some swift and violent method. The one supreme and controlling power, alike in the life of nations and in individual hves, is afforded by the principle our Lord here asserted, as the ground of His own patient endurance, that " man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Go to the most suffering, the most poverty-stricken, and most humble of mankind, and bring home to their hearts the Saviour's assurance that they are endued with a spiritual life which is independent of their external circumstances, which may be brought to higher 94 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. perfection by suffering than by enjoyment, which depends solely on the will of God, and will assuredly be realized in proportion to their faithfulness to that will ; — make them feel, in a word, by the Saviour's teaching, that they have in their hands the words of their Father in heaven, words by which their souls can live here and hereafter, and which will bring forth the fruit of an eternal and perfect hfe ; — convince them that the true remedy for their own miseries and those of their fellows lies in the faithful and unselfish performance ol all the ordinary duties of their lot, and you will not only give them a comfort which will be infinitely superior to any physical blessing they could otherwise obtain, but you will have sustained them in the only course by which the condition of the world can be permanently atneliorated. This temptation of the devil is, in short, perhaps the most elementary and most common temptation with which the whole world is tried. From the heroic sacrifices sometimes required of duty, through the ordinary self- THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 95 control imposed by common moral obligations and honour, to the patient endurance of hunger and want — all alike bring men and women face to face with the question whether they will gratify a craving — it may be the intense craving of the famine of the body, or that of the famine of the heart — by some means not consistent with the obligations under which they know themselves to be placed by the will of God, and by His ex- press law. Strong natures may resist such temptations by Stoic fortitude. But they need not be driven to so severe a resource ; and the Saviour's answer to the tempter implies a gracious assurance in which every human soul may rest in such moments of conflict. The life of men, their eternal life, the life of aU blessing and peace, is enshrined in those words of God which are given to be their daily food ; and ir, like the Saviour, they are content to live^ipon them, to trust them, and to cling to them amidst all the struggles and dangers of this present existence, they will not be left unsupported even here; angels 96 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. will come from time to time to minister to them, as they ministered to the Saviour at the close of His first series of temptations; and above all, His Beatitudes are their in- heritance, as when He declared, " Blessed be ye poor : for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now : for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now : for ye shall laugh." THE SECOND TEMPTATION, "Jesus said ttnto liiuj, It is zvritleu agaiu. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God" — St. Matt, iv. 7. VI. THE SECOND TEMPTATION. \T /"E have considered the first temptation ^ ^ suggested by the devil to our Lord, and it was seen to be addressed in the first instance to His sense of physical weakness, and to be an attempt to induce Him to relieve His necessities by means within His power, but inconsistent with the commands which had for the time been laid upon Him. It was over- come by the principle of faith and obedience, illustrated by the example of God's provision for the people of Israel during their stay in the wilderness. Their experience was an instance that, whatever endurance God may require of His people, He will give them sufficient sup- port for their own good and for His purposes. The second and third temptations are addressed to cravings of a higher, and therefore, at least loo SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY, in a lofty nature, of a severer character. In en- deavouring to understand them, we need more especially to bear in mind that, from the brevity with which they are narrated, the central and characteristic point only of the temptation can be mentioned, and that we must reflect how this bears upon the whole experience of our Lord, and is illustrated by similar examples in purely human experience. It is difficult to suppose, for instance, that the second tempta- tion, that our Lord should cast Himself from a pinnacle of the Temple, is sufficiently explained by the brief description given of it by Milton, who makes it consist in little more than an indifference to a position of physical danger. As the passage runs in Paradise Regained (IV. 551):- " There stand, if Thou wilt stand ; to stand upright Will ask Thefe skill ; I to Thy Father's house Have brought Thee, and highest placed ; highest is best: Now show thy progeny ; if not to stand, Cast Thyself down ; safely, if Son of God ; For it is written, — ' He will give command Concerning Thee to His angels : in their hands THE SECOND TEMPTATION. loi They shall uplift Thee, lest at any time Thou chance to dash Thy foot against a stone.' To whom thus Jesus : Also it is written, ' Tempt not the Lord thy God.' He said, and stood ; ~T But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell." Such an interpretation offers a strange con- trast to the magnificent imagery with which Milton has drawn out the force of the other temptations ; and it seems unworthy of the occasion, and of the deadly spiritual conflir* which must have been involved in *-\^ tempta- tion of our Lord. It will probably be felt to be a safe rule in interpreting the significance of these tempta- tions, that the principles and examples to which our Lord appealed in meeting them must be taken to indicate their central character, and the nature of their moral and spiritual stress. In quoting Scripture, He always appeals to its living and historical sense, and never quotes a saying wdthout direct reference to the circum- stances which determine its meaning. So His answer to the first temptation is not a mere quotation of a text, but an appeal to the great 102 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. historical example of faith in the case of the Israelites. Let us consider, then, what is the example to which He appeals for support in the present instance. It is the record of the murmuring of the children of Israel because there was no water for them to drink. " Wherefore/' we read, " the people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us water that we may .-^rink. And Moses said unto them. Why chide ye "'Uh me ? wherefore do ye tempt the Lord ? . . . Anu l'^^^(^.s cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people ? they be almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb ; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 103 place Massah, and Meribah, because of the chiding of the children of Israel, and be- cause they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us, or not ? " This, then, is the meaning of that tempting of the Lord which our Saviour resisted, and it is therefore to be supposed that the evil suggestion of the devil was founded upon a similar experience in principle to that to which the Israelites yielded. The manner in which they tempted the Lord was by doubting whether He were among them or not. What was there in our Lord's experi- ence to bring a similar question before His mind ?^ This inquiry we find answered by numerous illustrations throughout the Gospel history. The characteristic demand of the Jews was for a sign. ^* What sign," they said to Him, more than once, "showest Thou unto us, seeing Thou doest these things ? " In other words, they repeated the question of their ancestors, " Is the Lord among us, or not ? " They craved for some visible, overwhelming proof that our Lord's I04 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. mission was from Heaven. The ordinary miracles of mercy which He wrought were not sufficient for them. Something was needed which should overwhelm them by its magnificent and, so to speak, prodigious character. ~ ' It seems remarkable, moreover, that the temptation is one which was not altogether confined to the perverted desires and expec- tations of the ruling classes. Some kind of anxiety of the same character seems to have possessed for a while even the mind of the Baptist, when, in the depression of his im- prisonment and the apparent defeat of his mission, he sent disciples to our Lord, saying, " Art Thou He that should come, or do we look for another ? " To this faithful servant our Lord replied by appeaHng to the charac- teristic signs of His mission, to the miracles of grace and mercy which He wrought, and finally to the preaching of the Gospel to the poor ; but added, " Blessed is he, who- soever shall not be offended in Me;" Blessed is he, that is, who shall not find a stumbling- THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 105 block in the comparative simplicity and lowliness of My work and position. But the demands of the Pharisees He constantly refused, vouchsafing only mysterious refer- ences to the great and cardinal evidence of His mission, His subsequent resurrection. So when He purged the Temple, at the outset of His ministry, and they demanded a sign to justify such an act of authority — a demand they would not have made had they recog- nized, as they ought, the inherent moral authority to which our Lord appealed when He said, " Make not My Father's house an house of merchandise " — He answered enigmatically, " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." They had no right to a sign at that time, while they were insensible to their obvious moral and spiritual obligations, and a sign would here- after be given, full of the profoundest significance respecting the destiny of the holy Temple itself. So again, He once exclaimed, " An evil and adulterous genera- tion seeketh after a sign, and there shall io6 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonas ; for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Such was the natural attitude of the leaders of the Jews, and, in the end, of the multitude as a whole; and it may possibly be that the evil spirit himself, who cannot be supposed to have been cognisant of the whole Divine economy embodied in our Lord's person, may have exhibited with intenser malignity the same craving to have the reality of our Lord's mysterious power demonstrated to him by some overwhelming manifestation. It has been the belief, at least, of some of the Fathers, that he was ignorant of the full significance of the great drama which was being worked out in our Saviour's life and death. But however this may be, it would seem evident that we have here an exhibition of the craving which is natural to the human heart in circumstances of such supreme THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 107 Struggle as that in which our Lord was engaged. The human heart has not the patience and the faith which are necessary to enable it to wait for the slow development of God's purposes, and craves for some over- mastering exhibition of Divine authority to induce it to believe.- '. Every one is familiar with the saying of the unbeliever, a century ago, that if God had given a revelation it would have been written with letters of fire in the firmament. That is precisely the character of the old temptation of the Israel- ites, when they tempted the Lord, saying, '' Is the Lord among us, or not ? " All the previous exhibitions of Ilis hand and arm, and of His interposition in their affairs, were forgotten, and in the strain which thirst brought upon them they at once began to chide, complaining that they had not evi- dence enough of His presence. All around us now the same question is asked, the old experience being alleged to be insufficient, and some more startling and compelling evidence being required. This being a io8 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. temptation so deeply rooted in human na- ture, we may in some measure understand its being presented to the mind of our Lord. Although He overcame it decisively by refer- ence to this principle, that "thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God," may He not well have experienced — with a similar intensity to that with which He shrank in the garden from the cup of suffering which was offered to Him — the craving of the Baptist, and of Elijah, the Baptist's prototype, for some means of at once putting an end to the doubt, the hesitation, the disbelief, which prevailed around Him ? When surrounded by defiant and angry Pharisees, striving to stand between Him and the sinning and suffering souls who came to Him for com- fort, obstinately refusing His appeals, deaf to His penetrating spiritual teaching, hardening their hearts to His words of mercy and gen- tleness, and finally impervious even to His denunciations, would it not have been a severe temptation to the greatest of the sons of men to bring into action such power as THE SECOND TEMPT A TION. 109 was at His disposal, and thus to overbear at one stroke these hard and malignant objectors, and to carry their convictions captive by some sign of portentous significance ? Perhaps it was to this temptation that Moses, the meekest of men, yielded when he exclaimed, '' Hear now, ye rebels, must we fetch you water out of this rock ? " If so, the consideration will help to explain the gravity with which that outbreak of Moses' anger was punished. But what was the temptation to the great leader of the Jewish people in the wilderness com- pared with the temptation to the Messiah to work some similar sign, in His righteous anger, for the purpose of vindicating His authority, and overbearing the opposition to His just claims ? From this point of view we may well understand that this was a trial which was perpetually at hand in the crises of our Lord's ministry, and how it may have been realized, in one characteristic temptation, at the outset of His ministerial work. Some of the best commentators are accordingly no SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S^ IN ISTRY. inclined to believe that there was a peculiar appropriateness in the scene of the tempta- tion being placed in the holy city, on a pinnacle of the Temple. To quote a recent and very instructive writer, Dr. Edersheim, on this point, " In this temptation Jesus stands on the watch-post which the white- robed priest has just quitted. ... In the priests' court below Him the morning sacrifice has been offered. . . . Now let Him descend, Heaven-borne, into the midst of priests and people. What shouts of ac- clamation would greet His appearance ! what homage of worship would be His ! The goal can at once be reached, and that at the head of believing Israel." Some such vision, at least, would seem to be embodied in this temptation. Just as in the third temptation, to be considered subsequently, an immense vista of worldly power and magnificence is unrolled before our Lord's eyes, so in this crisis the whole course of His painful ministry may well have been present to His thoughts. The rejection at the outset in the THE SECOND TEMPTATION. iii holy city, the scorn for the Nazarene and the GfiHlean, the doubt, the contempt, the blasphemy — all has to be faced, all doubtless were foreseen. He was looking forward, in this critical hour, to the bitter ^ experiences of those three years, and to their ultimate failure ; and the suggestion is made to Him, by the tempter, that by one display of supernatural force in the heart of the holy city, by casting Himself from a pinnacle of the Temple, all may be avoided ; that He may demonstrate that He is the Son of v God, and take the priesthood itself by storm. One other experience of the same kind is recorded, although it represents the tempta- tion from a more bitter and terrible side. He is tempted now by the prospect of asserting His claims in triumph, without the conflict designed for Him. But at the last hour of His work He was tempted to a similar display, in order to save Himself in the hour of bitter misery. The rulers ex- claimed, as He hung upon the cross, " Let Christ the King of Israel descend now from 112 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. the cross, that we may see and believe." In His first trial, when standing on the pinnacle of the Temple, He overcame the same temptation as that which was thus hurled at Him when He hung on the cross. But from first to last He was resolved to endure the whole bitterness of His rejection, and to work out the mission imposed on Him by His Father with no other means than those which His Father had pre- scribed. When he exclaims, " My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? " the very temptation seems to be near Him of doubting whether God was with Him of a truth ; but it is again overcome, and He finally exclaims, " Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." The bearing which this temptation has on the grounds of our belief has been already suggested. Now, as in our Lord's days, no sign is vouchsafed which will suffice to over- bear the convictions of men who are not open to the recognition of our Lord's moral and spiritual claims ; and if they hear not THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 113 Moses and the prophets, neither are they persuaded though One has risen from the dead. But the temptation apphes more closely to ourselves in those hours of dark- ness and despair which resemble the experi- ence of the Israelites in the wilderness when it seems hard to believe that the sufferings and difficulties we have to en- counter can have been imposed on us by a God of perfect goodness, and we doubt whether God is among us or not, and crave for some special manifestation of His pre- sence. It is part, however, of our moral and spiritual education to have no such sign, but to be content to follow the example of the Saviour in placing perfect trust in God's love and God's providence, and not to tempt Him by entertaining any doubt of His good- ness, or craving for exceptional assurance or assistance. In a word, " let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator." 8 THE THIRD TEMPTATION. " Then said Jesus unto htm, Get thee hence, Satan : for it ts written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.'' — St. Matt. iv. lo. VII. THE THIRD TEMPTATION, T T remains for us to consider our Lord s -^ third temptation, when " the devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them ; and saith unto Him, All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me ; " or as the narrative stands in St. Luke, ''All this power will I give Thee, and the glory of them : for that is delivered unto me ; and to whomso- ever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be Thine." That this was the last and deadliest of the three temp- tations would seem to be indicated by the indignation with which it is spurned by our Lord. " Then saith Jesus unto him, Get ii8 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. thee hence, Satan : for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." As with the previous temptations, it will assist us to understand this the better if we endeavour to apprehend how it affects human nature under ordinary circumstances, as exhibited in historical examples. A difficulty has been felt, in the first place, in understanding how the tempter could sup- pose that so monstrous a condition could for a moment be entertained by one like the Son of God, as that He should worship the evil one. But if we bear in mind that it is an essential part of the art of the tempter to disguise the real character of his suggestions, and that he is content, at least in this world, with a practical homage, while its real nature is veiled from' those by whom it is rendered, it will probably appear too plainly that this brief and summary description of our Lord's final struggle exhibits the true description of the most deadly temptation to which human nature has succumbed. Let us con- THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 119 sider, in the first instance, what is the extent of the truth contained in the assertion, "All this power will I give Thee, and the glory of them : for that is delivered unto me ; and to whomsoever I will I give it." Like all the tempter's suggestions, it contains a truth so perverted as to become a falsehood. It is not true, in the literal sense of the words, that all the power of the world is delivered into the hands of the evil one; for God has not abdicated His government of the world, and all is being directed, under His pro- vidence, to that ultimate end when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. But it is at the same time true that the world is to a large extent under the power ot evil and of the evil one. The mere fact that it is part of the Divine discipline and probation of mankind that they are left to work out, to a certain extent, the conse- quences of their original crimes and of their continual sins, implies and involves this result. So far as God and God's will do not I20 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. assert their supremacy in every heart, so far evil and the spirit of evil are predominant. Much of the language which seems strange to us in the teaching of the early Fathers on the subject of the Atonement may become intelligible from this point of view. They speak, for instance, of our Lord having paid a ransom to the evil one ; and the conception has sometimes been exaggerated into gro- tesque forms. But it is generally recognized that, in some sense, our Lord's sufferings were the fulfilment of the natural power of evil to which men had surrendered them- selves. They were the result of the enforce- ment of that law which attaches ruin and misery to the violation of God's will ; they may in this sense be regarded as exhibiting in great measure the effectual sanction of that law ; they are thus spoken of with justice as a satisfaction to it and its claims ; and so far as the evil one is the agent in maintain- ing and enforcing the power and the con- sequences of evil, so far might this sanction and satisfaction be regarded as rendered to THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 121 him. The power of evil is as distinctly re- garded in the Scriptures as embodied in a personal agency as is the principle of good ; and consequently all that men recognize respecting the prevalent power and influence of evil is concentrated in this statement of the tempter, that to him is delivered the glory and the power of this world. In this sense our Lord distinctly recognizes him as the prince of this world, and the Apostle speaks of him as " the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." But in reference to this interpretation, what fact is more generally recognized by those who have the best knowledge of the world, than that evil in some form, and es- pecially that vice of falsehood which is the chief characteristic of the evil one, is bound up to a terrible extent with worldly power and influence ? " That," says Lord Bacon, " which doth bring lies in favour, is a natural, though corrupt, love of the lie itself. This same truth is a naked and open daylight, 122 5071/^ POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. that doth not show the masques, and mum- meries, and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily - as candle-lights. ... A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. . . . Mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it." If one of the wisest of Englishmen could acknow- ledge, in the forefront of his meditations, that falsehood is a constant element in the pleasure and the power of life, was the tempter indulging in more than this same "mixture of a lie" when he alleged that all the glory of the world was delivered into his false hands ? It may be observed, more- over, as illustrating the specific character of the temptation, that this mixture or preva- lence of falsehood is, in common human opinion, peAiliarly associated with the arts of government and of conquest. Machia- vellism and Jesuitry are essentially political arts, and it is in the government of man- kind, in the assertion and maintenance of power, that those false lights of which Lord THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 123 Bacon speaks are most visibly and generally effectual in conciliating or cajoling men's acquiescence. Bare and absolute truth, its naked and open daylight, is, to say the least, too rarely practised or reckoned among the arts of government. Now, with this melancholy truth in view, history will be found to throw a terrible light upon the intensity of this temptation of the evil one. The temptation, it will be observed, though involving a gross and revolting surrender to evil in its result, is nevertheless one which appeals in its full force only to the noblest and most powerful minds. It is only to those who are capable of the loftiest dominion that a suggestion can be made, with any effect, which offers them all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of tjiem. A man must be conscious of the highest powers, and perhaps also of the highest intentions, before such a vision can acquire sufficient reality to be an element in his temptation. Accordingly, if we seek for examples of such sins, we can only 124 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. find them among the leaders of men. But when we look there, we see, in instance after instance, that this deadly temptation has led to the most fatal perversions of truth, and has inflicted the most disastrous results upon mankind. Take, as perhaps the most conspicuous of all examples, the case of Mahomet. Few will deny that, at the outset of his career, he was imbued with a deep conviction of the most vital truth of religion, and was animated by a sincere enthusiasm to reassert it among his countrymen. His career began, accordingly, in self-devotion and simple assertion of truth. But the hour soon came when the sugges- tion arose in his mind that he might accelerate the triumph of his own principles by some compromise with truth and justice, by acts of policy involving deceit and violence. His own power became identified in his mind with that of the cause he originally asserted, and he began to think that some alloy in the gold and silver with which he was entrusted might make the THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 125 metal work the better, and so he consented to embase it. Increasing visions of power in the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them, rose before his mind ; he consented to pay to the principle of evil the homage which was suggested to him ; and whereas he might, within the range of truth entrusted to him, have been a true prophet, he became, what he has ever since been justly called, a false one. The bargain of the evil one was strictly kept. To an extent unprecedented in the case of one man, the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them were delivered over to the dominion of himself and his successors ; but the curse of falsehood has remained attached to the Mahometan empire, and is daily involv- ing it in deeper ruin and degradation. But there is another instance, more memor- able still, and coming home more nearly to Christian minds. It is that of the Papacy. No thoughtful mind can fail to pay honour to the noble conception which animated the first great Popes, in their endeavours to 126 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. • establish the authority of our Lord and of His Gospel over the world which was gradually rising out of the old Roman empire and the Germanic races. It was a conception equally magnificent in its moral and political grandeur, and its partial realization has conferred, in many respects, incalculable blessings on man- kind. Being, in great measure, based on truth, it has never been entirely frustrated ; and it was the means of laying the foundation of Christian civilization, and of establishing the Gospel as the fundamental law of modern Hfe. But, at the same time, there is no more melancholy instance of the force of the tempter's suggestion. The hour came, again too soon, when the great Popes felt that the object they had in view might be promoted, or accelerated, by some compromise with the powers of e\'il, with convenient frauds and forgeries, with opportune acts of violence, and forcing of consciences. To them, perhaps, it was a greater temptation than human nature has ever succumbed to, for they were sur- rounded by the traditions of the greatest THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 127 Statecraft the world has ever seen. But how- ever this may be, they yielded to it ; and the evil one again fulfilled his bargain, so far as was allowed him by the providence of God ; and the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them were to a vast extent delivered into papal hands. But the ultimate result of the employment of this alloy of falsehood was to embase even the Church of Christ itself, and to lead to an ever-increasing corruption, so intense that it could only be removed by the most disastrous convulsions. The result, in both the cases we have considered, has been to entail on long generations a terrible curse, to delay tor centuries the full recognition of the truth, and thus to fulfil the very object of the evil one. How often, we may well ask, has not the same temptation marred the career of indi- viduals capable of appreciating the highest truths, and conferring the greatest blessings on mankind ? How near to every ruler of men, to every great statesman, is not the temptation to identify his own power, his own 128 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. possession of the kingdom of the world and its glory, with the triumph of the truth itself, to which he was, at the outset, and in his heart, maybe, he is still, attached, and to purchase power and applause by some com- promise with strict truth, by some half-un- conscious consent to yield to popular passion and prejudice ? It is not a vulgar temptation, but it is none the less perhaps the deadliest of all, and certainly the most disastrous in its results to the vast numbers whose destiny it affects. It is this, then, which in this brief narra- tive appears to be described as suggested by the tempter to the mind of One whom he knew to be more capable than all the sons of men of exercising a dominion, and a bene- ficent dominion, over mankind, but whom he did not know to be superior to the least breath of falsehood. To obtain power, not by openly and avowedly vicious means, but by some compromise with the influences of evil ; to consent that the people should make Him King, as they were once on the point THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 129 of doing, on their own terms ; to obtain the support of the ruHng classes by abstaining from a full denunciation and repudiation of the falsehood which was engrained in them — how often might not this temptation have presented itself to Him in the course of His career, up to the last moment, when Pilate said, "Art Thou a King, then?" A King He was. " Thou sayest," He replied, " that I am a King. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." That was W'hat our Lord had been doing through- out His ministry — bearing witness to the truth in every man's conscience, relentlessly insisting on the recognition of that truth, tearing away all moral subterfuges, and making every soul tremble at the revelation of its own evil. He bore that witness to the last, and permitted human nature to bring to Hght all its corrupt antagnoism to moral and spiritual truth by putting to death the King of truth. By submitting to that death, He finally revealed and impressed 9 130 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. • upon the convictions of mankind, the ter- rible untruthfulness and corruption of human nature, more vividly than by all His preaching. By His death the nature of sin v^^as finally manifested, and its fearful penalties exhibited to the world. But at how bitter a cost that witness was borne is painfully impressed on us by the narrative of the Passion. He knew what this absolute adherence to truth, this resolve to pay no homage, even for a moment, to any will or influence save that of the God of truth, would entail; and it seems remarkable that the only occasion on which He uses again the expression in the text, '' Get thee behind Me," was when Peter would have had Him refuse so terrible a sacrifice in obedience to His Father's will. " Get thee behind Me, Satan : ... for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men." He had not come to establish a kingdom of this world, but to set up an eternal kingdom over men's hearts in heaven. In this world, therefore. He has never ruled in the sense which the evil one suggested ; THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 131 but His kingdom has been gradually growing over men's souls ; and when it shall here- after be revealed, then shall the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ In one sense this temptation is far removed from ordinary lives ; in another aspect it comes perhaps more closely home to us than either of the others. Few men are tempted to pay homage to the spirit of untruthful- ness for the sake of dominion over the king- doms of the world, and for their glory. But it is a question we all have to decide whether we will seek, by some compromise with truth \ in our words and actions, for success, honour, and applause among men, or whether, by absolute obedience to the God of truth, we will seek a home in His heavenly kingdom, as subjects of the King of Truth. The temptation of our Lord illustrates the real character of our conduct if we are ever false to truth. We are really, however we may disguise it from ourselves, paying homage to the Power of Evil. The principle, on the 132 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. Other hand, which our Saviour's example sets before us, is that of offering homage to no other will or influence than that of the God of all truth and righteousness, to worship and fear the Lord God only, and Him only to serve. It is the principle of obedience to that which we believe to be the will of God, whatever the sacrifices, the self-denials, the pain it may involve. It is an obedience which will consist, as a rule, in very or- dinary and humble observances, in patient submission to the circumstances of our lot, in the firm and gentle discharge of every-day duties, and in the sensitive faithfulness of a conscience which remembers at what a price the spirit by which it is quickened was bought. Any such consistent, faithful, and patient life will cost some sacrifices to any one who steadily practises it. But it can never cost any of us what it cost the Saviour, and whenever we are tempted to falter in this path, what more ought we to need than to remember the words, "Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin " ? OUR LORD'S MANIFESTATION OF HIMSELF. " This beginning of nnracUs did Jcstis in Cana of Galilee. and mani/esied forth His glory ; and His disciples believed on Him." John ii. 1 1 . VIII. OUR LORD'S MANIFESTATION OF HIMSELF. '' I ^HIS manifestation of our Lord's glory is -*- the conclusion of a series of incidents, recorded only by St. John, of a very peculiar interest, and it must be considered in connec- tion with them if its due significance is to be appreciated. In few and simple touches, like the strokes of a great artist, the narrative sketches for us the very beginnings of the Christian society, the germs of that vast body of disciples of whom our Lord is the centre ; and we are thus enabled to see, in their ele- mentary action, the influences by which that society is mainly formed. The narrative of the miracle is connected with the incident which had preceded it by the words, "And 136 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there; and both Jesus was called, and His disciples, to the marriage." The effect of the miracle, therefore, on our Lord's disciples is intimately associated with the events of the previous three days ; and it is within this period that the influences just mentioned were operating. Im- mediately after our Lord's baptism He was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness ; after His temptation there. He appears to have returned immediately to the neighbourhood of Jordan, where John was baptizing; and John was then the means of directing to our Lord the disciples who first attached themselves to Him. The narrative of the incidents which followed is admitted by writers who are the least bound to traditional views to bear striking marks of proceeding from an eye-witness, or rather from one of the actors in the scene, the Apostle John himself. We read that "the next day after " — the first of several little marks of time — "John stood, and two of his disciples; and OUR LORD'S MANIFESTA TION OF HIMSELF. 137 looking upon Jesus as He walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God ! and the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned " — the narrative being equally particular as to gesture as in respect of time — '^and saw them following, and saith unto them. What seek ye ? They said unto Him, Rabbi, where dwellest Thou ? He saith unto them, Come and see. They came and saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him that day : for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two which heard John speak, and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother." Dr. Karl Hase, one of the writers to whom I just referred, asks whether the writer who has such a knowledge of minute particulars must not have known also the name of the other disciple. And what is the meaning of this minute par- ticularity? This is either, says Dr. Hase, an unskilful and careless narrative, or else it is prompted by personal interest and recollection. The character, he says, of this Gospel, the most marked by profound thought, leaves us no choice. The other, the anonymous, 138 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. disciple is "that veiled form which moves through the fourth Gospel," St. John himself, who here reveals his first meeting with his Master, and has preserved the remembrance of that momentous hour. To him, while he writes, everything is still present : the first words his Master uttered, slight as they were, His turning Himself, the hour of the day. Just so it is, observes Dr. Hase, even with ourselves in minor matters; the moments never fade away when some beloved voice has for the first time greeted us. The Apostle is thus narrating his own ex- periences of that first interview, and of its results. Those results are indicated in the next verses. " One of the two which heard John speak, and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias." That day's interview, after the tenth hour, had been sufficient to produce this conviction on the minds of both Andrew and John. It was an immense con- clusion to come to in so brief an intercourse, O UR L ORUS MA NIFES TA 7 ION OF HIMSELF. 1 39 and it is doubtless in great measure to be explained by the previous influence of John the Baptist. He had been preparing the way of the Lord, not only by his exhortations to the people, but by his teaching to his own disciples; and it is evident, from illustrations of that teaching preserved in St. John's Gospel, with what earnestness he had impressed on their minds both the fact that the Messiah was at hand, and had been baptized by him, and the spiritual character which He would exhibit. It has even been found difficult, in the third chapter of St. John, recording the sequel of the interview with Nicodemus, to distinguish the point at which the language of the Baptist, describing our Lord's office, ceases, and that of the Evangelist, writing with the full knowledge of the Christian revelation, begins. So pro- found was the Baptist's penetration into the character and office of the Messiah. With this penetration, he cannot but have dwelt earnestly with his disciples upon the foreshadowing of the Messiah's office in the Old Testament Scriptures, and have thus brought their minds I40 SOME POINTS OF OUR LOR US MINISTRY. and hearts into precisely the right condition for recognizing that character and that office when it came before them. To understand the narrative, therefore, we must regard these disciples as having been "brought by John's teaching into a state of the highest expectation, with their hearts softened and their eyes opened, prepared to recognize the Lord, for whom their whole nation had been waiting for so many centuries. When, then, according to the narrative, the Baptist, looking upon Jesus as He walked, said to them, ^* Behold the Lamb of God ! " we may form some conception of the intense eagerness and expectation with which they followed Him. Their question, however, being per- fectly neutral, indicates that they waited for our Lord to assert His own claims : " Rabbi, where dwellest Thou ? " and our Lord's answer, "Come and* see," seems to bid them come with true hearts to judge for themselves. One day's intercourse with our Lord, to minds thus prepared, suffices to convince them of the truth of John's declaration, and to O UR L ORHS MA NIFES TA TION OF HIMSELF. 1 4 1 make them invite Peter to follow their example with the confident statement, ^* We have found the Messias." Then our Lord's immediate address to Peter, "Thou art Simon, the son of Jona; thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone," illustrates one of the means by which His influence was established over the minds of these disciples. It is an intimation of Peter's character and future work, and shows how men who ap- proached our Lord felt, as it were, a master hand laid on them, their character penetrated, and their duty at once opened to them. The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and found Philip, and said unto him, " Follow Me." Nothing else is recorded of His words to Philip, but it is added that Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter, and, therefore, under the same influences as they ; but the effect is the same. ^* Phihp findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found Him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph." 142 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. Nathanael's answer shows that he was not disposed to accept such an intimation without inquiry. '* Can there/' he asks, " any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " PhiHp repUes, as our Lord had done, '^ Come and see." Then follows another instance of the method by which our Lord established His influence. "Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile ! " Nathanael, startled by this authoritative recognition of his character, said unto Him, "Whence knowest Thou me?" "Jesus answered and said unto him. Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee." There seems a general consent of commentators that, in ac- cordance with the habits of the Jews, our Lord here refers to some moment when Nathanael had been meditating upon what Moses in fhe law and the prophets did write — exercised, doubtless under John's in- fluence, by the prevalent expectation of the Messiah, and marvelling when the Consolation of Israel was to come. The incident indicates OUR LORDS MANIFEST A TION OF HIMSELF. 143 that our Lord read his inmost thoughts ; and accordingly, as though touched in the deepest springs of his Hfe, he at once exclaims, " Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God ; Thou art the King of Israel." On this acceptance of Him, our Lord rejoins at once, in words which may well open to us something of the secret of His conversation with the other disciples whom He had previously attached to Himself, "Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig-tree, believest thou ? thou shalt see greater things than these. And He saith unto him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." He asserted, that is, that He was the Son of man who had come from heaven, and on whom the mightiest of all heavenly influences would rest ; and the authority with which He spoke, and the whole tenor of His words, brought home to these disciples the conviction of the truth of His claims. Slight, therefore, as is this sketch, and 144 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORUS MINISTRY. surprising as may at first sight seem the suddenness of the conviction produced in the minds of the disciples, there are sufficient indications of the method by which the con- viction was produced, and enough to iustify its production. Taught by John to reahze that they are at that crisis of the Jewish history when the Messiah is about to appear, pointed by the Baptist to Jesus Himself as that Messiah, they follow Him to judge for themselves ; and they are immediately ad- dressed, in a tone of authority, by words which penetrate to their inmost consciences, which unveil a knowledge of their secret thoughts, which lay bare their characters, which seem to tell them what they were m^eant for, and what their work may be in the world; and this is combined with the loftiest of claims, uttered by lips which are full of grape and truth. What wonder that they immediately succumb, as it were, to this Divine spiritual influence, and at once exclaim, " Thou art the Son of God ; Thou art the King of Israel " 1 The scene may OUR LORD'S MANIFEST A TION OF HIMSELF. 145 remind us of an incident in the patriarchal history, when Jacob wrestles with an angel until the break of day, but the angel suddenly touches a sinew, and the patriarch is instantly overcome. Our Lord's words seem to touch the secret sinews of spiritual and moral life in these disciples, and they instantly yield before Him. There seems no argument, and there is as yet no miracle. Our Lord's presence, and the grace and truth, combined with the authority, which breathe from His lips, are sufficient to convince them, and they become His disciples. But this influence, overpowering as it was, is not deemed by our Lord Himself suffi- cient. The miracle of Cana in Galilee immediately follows, as if to confirm and clench the conviction previously wrought. The third day, immediately after our Lord had returned to Galilee, He vouchsafes a further manifestation of His glory, of a miraculous kind. As with all our Lord's miracles, there is nothing ostentatious about it ; and it may be that the check which He 10 146 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORDS MINISTRY. gives to His mother's earnestness is connected with this intention to work the miracle quietly, for the conviction of His followers, and not in a manner to produce a startling effect on the whole company. But He avails Himself, as usual, of an opportunity which occurs in the natural course of events, just as the great miracle of the multiplying of loaves and fishes was wrought, not for the sole purpose of a great display of power, but from the simple benevolent motive of relieving the hunger and faintness of the multitude. An occasion arises when He can do a gracious and bounteous act, and at the same time give a pledge to His newly attached disciples that He possesses the power which He has claimed in His private intercourse with them. They are in the spirit of devout belief which we have been considering. They are convinced by His moral and spiritual claims, and by the evi- dence He had given of power over their hearts, that He is the Son of God, the Son of man, the King of Israel, But if He really OUR LORD'S MANIFESTA TION OF HIMSELF. 147 held these offices, if He had thus descended from heaven, and was endued with that Divine power which He claimed, it was to be expected that He would give some evi- dence of such power by exhibiting His command over nature, and His supernatural gifts. Our Lord, therefore, allows His super- natural power to flash forth, as it were, for a moment, not for His own sake, nor as the sole and sufficient evidence of His mission, but as its natural and necessary confirmation. He loses no time, so to say, in giving these true hearts a visible pledge of the claims which they had already recognized, and in strengthening their belief by a sign from heaven. It will thus be seen, if we consider this miracle in the light of all that had gone before, that its force of conviction depends on its connection with the evidence which had preceded it. The moral and spiritual basis for the belief of the disciples had been already laid ; they were in the attitude of faith ; the elements of full con- viction were at work in their minds, ready 148 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. to be fused, so to speak, into one harmonious belief by a flash from heaven. That flash is vouchsafed. " This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His glory ; and His disciples believed on Him." In the further consideration of the events of our Lord's ministry, this opening narra- tive of His self-revelation to His disciples, and the effect which it produced, will be found to be of deep significance ; but I will at present conclude by indicating briefly the light which it throws on the true basis of our own faith, and the manner in which that faith must be maintained. It will have been seen that the order of oun Lord's revelation of Himself to His disciples begins from the moral and spiritual side. As it was necessary for the Baptist to prepare His way by leading the people to repentance, so it was requisite to lay the foundation of full belief in our Lord as the Messiah in an apprehension of His spiritual claim over men's hearts. When the hearts of men are in a true condition. OUR LORD'S MANIFESTA TION OF HIMSELF. 149 when they are opened to a sense of their need, of the necessity for themselves and their fellows of a Prophet, a Priest, and a King, of One who in all those capacities can be their Saviour, then they are prepared to listen to that Divine voice which is heard in the Gospels, speaking to them as quietly and gently, though with the same tone of authority, as our Lord addressed in this instance His first disciples. It is natural that they should accept that claim. It needs no elaborate argument. " As the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib," so the heart of man, when not perverted, when sensible of its true needs, knows at once the voice of its Lord and Saviour ; and it is right that it should instantly yield to Him. Yet it cannot but crave, in the midst of its dangers and necessities, amidst the signs all around it of the feebleness of mere mortal flesh, for some evidence that the voice which has thus laid so firm a hold on its conscience is the voice of One with more than mortal, with Divine, power, able I50 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. to stretch forth a right hand to help and defend it, to support it not only in life, but in death — the voice, in short, of the Lord of life and death, and of all things to them pertain- ing. It is this complementary evidence which is afforded by the miracles; and they are wrought accordingly for that purpose, some- times with the most generous profusion. It was not the method of our Lord in the Gospels to extort allegiance by manifestation of super- human force. He would give no signs to an evil and adulterous generation ; but when the heart was open to Him, and the elements of faith were there. He vouchsafed that evidence of Divine power which was neces- sary to the completeness of His revelation. By that method, through the silent influence of the Gospels, has He commanded the faith of all subsequent generations of Christians, and does He command it still. Not by mere argument in the first instance, nor by miracles in the first instance, but by that spiritual authority which is manifested throughout the Gospels, does He penetrate into true and OUR LORD'S MANIFEST A TION OF HIMSELF. 1 5 1 honest hearts ; and by the miracles, which are recorded side by side with those Divine words, does He quicken and strengthen their faith, until, in the full sense of the expres- sion, they believe on Him. Let us, then, if we would realise the full blessing of such a faith, live with Him day by day in the Gospels, reading them not merely for the particular instruction which they convey, but as a means of enabling us to live in com- munion with that Divine Lord whose voice, and words, and acts drew to Him, in the manner we have been contemplating. His first disciples, compelling them to exclaim, "Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." OUR LORD'S CREDENTIALS. " Then til OS" men, zvhen they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that PropJiet that should come into the world." — St. John vi. 14. IX. OUR LORD'S CREDENTIALS. TIJ^ROM the fact that this is the only ^ miracle recorded by all four Evan- gelists, we cannot but conclude that it is one of the most important passages in our Lord's ministry, and our especial attention is due to the effect which it produced on those who witnessed it, as recorded in the text. It evidently points us to one of the features of our Lord's ministry which made the deepest impression on simple and un- prejudiced hearts, and which brought home to them with peculiar force and clearness the conviction of His Divine mission. Such a conviction was the natural result of the miracle, or rather, to keep to the meaning of the original word in this instance, of the 156 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. " sign " which had been witnessed ; and our Lord, in the discourse which follows, treats it as a sign, and founds on it some of His most lofty teaching. We shall do well, there- fore, to endeavour to realize with distinct- ness what there was in this particular miracle or sign which was fitted, as it would seem in a peculiar degree, to evoke the faith expressed in the text. With this view, it is important to bear in mind the evidence which was afforded, not merely by the miracle itself, but by the whole incident of which it forms a part, of the character as well as the powder of our Lord. It is not a mere isolated marvel, wrought for the purpose of exhibiting His power and impressing His claims on the people. It is the conclusion of a series of characteristic transactions, and is wrought for an immediate purpose of the most natural and simple kind. Our Lord had attracted a great multitude to follow Him, because they saw His miracles which He did on them that were diseased. We learn from the other ' OUR LORD'S CREDENTIALS. 157 Evangelists that He yielded at once to their appeal, and devoted Himself the whole day to works and words of mercy among them. '' He received them," says St. Luke, " and spake unto them of the kingdom of God, and healed them that had need of healing ; " and it was not until the day began to wear away, or, as St. Matthew and St. Mark say, when it was evening, and the day now far spent, that the twelve began to be perplexed how such a mass of people were to be fed in such a desert place, and suggested that they should be sent away to buy themselves victuals. Then it was that our Lord's com- passion was aroused, lest perchance, as He said on another similar occasion, they might faint by the way, for divers of them came from afar. On that consideration, and with this simple purpose of mercy in view, He works the wonderful miracle which has received, in so significant a manner, the attestation of all four Evangelists. By His mere will, He multiplies five loaves and two small fishes into sufficient and to spare for 158 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. the whole multitude. It was when those men saw this sign that they exclaimed, "This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world." But bearing in mind the circumstances just mentioned, it will be seen that the miracle was fitted to produce this effect, not merely in itself, and by virtue of its own marvel, but as the culminating point in our Lord's gracious re- velation of His will and power to the crowds who w^ere then gathered round Him. He had been working miracles of mercy upon them, in body and soul, the whole day long; He had been proclaiming to them the gra- cious message of the kingdom of God, and had been relieving their physical sufferings ; and now, at the last. He exerts His Divine power in order to relieve the simplest and commonest of their wants. There appears a singular touch of Divine compassion in the very fact that so great a miracle is wrought for so ordinary, ajid, as the disciples them- selves seem to have thought, so unnecessary a result. " Send them away," they had said. OUR LORD'S CREDENTIALS. 159 " that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves food." But at this point, if we may presume to say so, the gracious heart of the Saviour seemed to yield without hesitation to its compassionate impulses, and He would permit no physical imperfection — no physical laws, if you will — to stand in the way of His mercy and bounty. He would show not merely that He wields all the powers of nature at His will, but that His wish is to wield them for the relief of all human suffering and necessity, and that if He could give full play to His inclination He would satisfy at a word all human wants, from the highest spiritual need to the com- monest ph^^sical hunger. That the multitude were justified in draw- ing the conclusion stated in the text from this display of our Lord's power and will, is plain from the fact that, on another occa- sion, in reply to John the Baptist, our Lord adduces a precisely similar evidence of His being the Messiah, the " Prophet that should come into the world." In answer to the i6o SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. Baptist's question, " Art Thou He that should come, or do we look for another?" Jesus answered and said unto them, ''Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see : the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them." These unbounded manifestations of combined benevolence and power belonged to our Lord's primary credentials — not the mere power in itself, but unlimited power employed for merciful ends, to extirpate human evils and to relieve human sufferings. Our Lord comes forward in the midst of a suffering and sin- ful world, and proclaims Himself its Saviour; and He gives the only evidence that could be adequate to such a proclamation — the evidence of fact. He not merely illumines men's minds and softens their hearts, but bestows upon them, in body and soul, the powers they need. It was a revelation, to the very eyes of mankind, of unbounded benevolence and love, unrestricted in its OUR LORD'S CREDENTIALS. l6i exercise by any of the ordinary limitations of nature. That is the character in which He wishes men to apprehend Him, and in which he claims their obedience and their love. He brings them a Gospel, a message of unqualified good news; He reveals a kingdom of heaven, a kingdom infinitely superior, in its treasures, its powers, and its beauty, to the natural realms in which their lot has hitherto been cast; He offers them a Divine Spirit, who is able to regenerate their inmost natures; and what He asks them to do is to accept these infinite blessings. There is, indeed, one limitation on which He uniformly insists, alike by teaching and by example. He warns them that the physical and material blessings He offers cannot permanently be bestowed on them independently of the moral and spiritual blessings w^hich He calls upon them to seek, and that it is only through the latter that they can rely on attaining the former. For example, in applying the miracle of the text in His subsequent discourse, while He urges II i62 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORDS MINISTRY. it as an illustration of the essential character of His mission, He insists with not less urgency on the truth that the blessings to be sought chiefly, and in the first instance, are spiritual, and not physical. The miracle was intended. He says, to teach them that He could give them the true Bread from heaven. He said unto them, *'I am the bread of Hfe : he that cometh to Me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst." That infinite bounty and infinite power which the miracle had exhibited did abide in Him, and should be exercised for the benefit of all who trusted in Him. But at the same time He said, " Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which enduVeth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you." In accordance with this principle, no sooner has our Lord's mercy and power been evoked by such a scene as we have been OUR LORD'S CREDENTIALS. 163 considering, no sooner have the springs of His Divine bounty been induced to overflow into some overwhelming marvel of Divine grace, than He seems to feel the necessity of closing them again, lest men should mis- understand His mission and His method, and should follow Him simply for the meat that perisheth. These physical miracles were chiefly to serve the purpose of awakening in their souls the feeling of unbounded trust in Him for their spiritual necessities ; and their physical wants were afterwards to be supplied by the natural operation of spiritual, moral, and physical laws. They were to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all other things should be added unto them ; the physical miracles were chiefly wrought as a pledge of this promise, and to induce them to seek that spiritual kingdom. That Divine economy, therefore, by which miraculous manifestations, such as miraculous cures, have been removed from the Church since the time of the Apostles, is in perfect harmony with our i64 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. Lord's own conduct in the matter, when He was upon earth. He Himself withdrew them, in the course of His own ministry, when they had been wrought sufficiently for their general moral purpose, lest the minds of men should be misdirected to seek for the relief of their miseries in physical, rather than in moral, regeneration. He permitted, as it were, flashes of light to gleam from heaven, revealing the hand and arm of the Lord, and giving assurance of their power, and of the gracious purpose He had in view, and then He threw the veil over them again, lest men should seek for the real powers of the kingdom of God elsewhere than in their own souls. But while it is essential for us thus to bear in mind the complete subordination of physical to moral influences in our Lord's teaching and method, it remains none the less true that the main characteristic of our Lord's revelation of Himself was justly apprehended by the multitude, whose excla- mation is recorded in the text; and that OUR LORD'S CREDENTIALS. 165 this characteristic is that of infinite bounty, supported by infinite power. He does not come to men solely or mainly as a legis- lator, calling on them simply by arduous exertions to qualify themselves for His favour and His kingdom; but He comes offering to bestow on them everything they need ; everything, however, in its right and due order. Not everything at once. Not the immediate removal of all their diffi- culties, sufferings, weaknesses, and sorrows. Those He expects them to endure patiently, in the course of His government and dis- cipline ; just as He did not shrink from enduring them Himself, but submitted to them in a more bitter and intense degree than can ever fall to the lot of His servants. But in due order ; first, all spiritual and moral blessings, and then the gradual removal of human suffering and sorrow here, and perfect happiness hereafter. But those spiritual blessings He offers at once, without reserve, to every soul that will accept them from Him, The first step i66 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. in His message, and in that of His Apostles, is absolute forgiveness for past sins, and re- ception into the complete favour and love of God. He makes no stipulation in the first instance ; He simply says, ^' Go, and sin no more." Like the father in the parable. He receives the prodigal son with open arms, the moment he is inipelled by the sense of his necessities to return to his home. All He asks is trust and love in the future, and He is prepared to open all the treasures of His spiritual store, to render that trust and love ever deeper and surer. When He reveals, as in the Sermon on the Mount, vast heights of spiritual and moral graces at which the scul of man is designed to aim, He does not do it as one who is exacting some hard task from us. He proclaims, indeed, that without them a man cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. He declares that except men transcended the highest conceptions of righteousness which were current at their time, they could in no case enter into that kingdom. He tells them OUR LORD'S CREDENTIALS. 167 that the gate is strait and the way is narrow which leadeth unto Hfe. But at the same time He assures them of Divine aid to produce these graces in their souls, and to give them the righteousness which they need. " Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth ; and he that seeketh findeth ; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. . . . If 3'e, 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?" It is that promise, and that only, which renders the Sermon on the Mount part of the message of the Gospel, and not a message of despair. If it were set before us as the standard we must attain, by our own exer- tions, before we could enter the kingdom of heaven, who could be otherwise than dis- mayed ? But regard it as throughout a revelation of the Divine graces which are promised to our faithful and loving efforts, i68 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. and then the weaker and the more sinful the soul, the greater is the blessing which those descriptions of spiritual beauty reveal. It is striking that at a season like Advent, which speaks to us of judgment, and warns us of the inexorable character of the Divine righteousness, the Church should at the same time urge so prominently on our attention, on more than one occasion, this gracious character of the Gospel message. It is as though, at the same time as she was remind- ing us of our Lord's character as a Judge, she desired to make us remember, as the only truth which can support us under that revelation, that He is also a Saviour. It is probably in this latter capacity that we chiefly fail to realize Him. Influences have never been wanting, and are least of all wanting now, to impress upon us the absolute necessity of conformity' to God's laws for our happiness and welfare in body and soul ; but the other revelation, which alone makes this tolerable, is too often sadly wanting. Strange to say, men sometimes shrink from the full realization OUR LORD'S CREDENTIALS. 169 of the blessedness of the Gospel in this respect, as though it weakened the force of its pro- clamation of judgment. Free forgiveness, antecedent to any merits on our own part, the unbounded offer of grace and power — these seem sometimes too much to be be- lieved ; and it is even urged, as it was in St. Paul's day, that it is giving men a dangerous licence to dwell too much on the free offers of the Gospel. No doubt there is a danger in any such proclamation. Any great truth may be abused, and the greatest truths most of all. But, on the whole, it has been proved by experience that in these unrestricted and unbounded assurances the Gospel is better adapted to the real character of the human heart than more cautious and more reserved teaching. It has, after all, appealed to that which is the strongest force of human nature — that of trust and love. As a rule, which method of education would be judged by those who best know the world to be the most likely to be effectual — one of jealousy, and distrust, and strict requirement, 170 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. or one of generosity and trust ? There are no doubt some natures who will abuse the latter system ; but, on the whole, those who exert the best influence over their fellows, whether young or old, are those who trust them the most, who give them the most, and who appeal to their generosity rather than to their fears. Such accordingly has been, as a rule, the method of the Divine dispensation through- out. The law itself, stern as it was, was based on promises, and God never exacted anything from mankind for which He did not give them adequate power, and assure them of an abundant reward. But in the Gospel, if we may so say. He has thrown off all reserve, and approaches men in an attitude of unbounded generosity. He offers them everything; He gives them His Son, His Spirit, arid all the treasures of His grace, and instead of merely calling on them to obey under peril of punishment, invites them to come to Him by the assurance of infinite blessings. Can it really be due to anything OUR LORD'S CREDENTIALS. 171 but a failure to realize the nature of this message that men hesitate to accept it ? At least, if we examine our own hearts, we shall probably find that the weakness and hesitation in our moral life have in great measure arisen from the sense of the self-denying aspect of duty being for the moment paramount over the sense of the blessedness to which it in- vites us, and of the power at our disposal for the performance of it ; and if we would attain full energy in our Christian course it behoves us to grasp the gracious conception which this miracle exhibits, and to realize that our Lord comes before us, not to exact from us, but to bestow upon us, all the grace, all the truth, all the righteousness for which our souls are fitted. Let us realize Him m this character ; let us live with Him in conscious trust and prayer; let us ask Him, with honest and earnest hearts, to give us the aid we need ; and we shall certainly find that He is as near to us now in the spirit as He was then in the flesh to the multitudes whom He relieved. Physical miracles we may not now expect, but 172 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. works of supernatural grace, the regeneration of lost souls, and the invigoration of feeble ones — these have been exhibited in all ages of the Church, and are daily witnessed among us ; and they should elicit from our hearts the grateful and trustful exclamation ''This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world." THE GOSPEL OF MIRACLES, *' And there foUoivcd Him great multitudes of people frotn Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and front Judaa, and from beyond Jordan. And seeing the multitudes, He went up into a mountain : and when He was set, His disciples came unto Him : and He opened His mouth, and taught them, saying. Blessed are the poor in spirit," — St. Matt. iv. 25; V. 1-3. X. THE GOSPEL OF MIRACLES, '' I ^HESE verses are the connecting-link of -*- a passage in which St. Matthew affords us a summary view of the character of our Lord's ministry in Gah'lee. Immediately after the miracle of Cana in Galilee, and the m.ani- festation of His glory in word and deed to His immediate disciples, He proceeded to open His mission in Jerusalem by cleansing the Temple, and displaying His power to the people by various signs. But this appears to have provoked at once such a display of hostility from the ruling classes, that not- withstanding many believed on His name when they saw the miracles which He did, yet, as St. John says, He did not commit Himself unto them. He could not as yet 176 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. trust their allegiance, and He was reluctant to provoke further resistance. The crisis of His ministry, the great tragedy in which it culminated, might, to all appearance, have been precipitated unduly, had He continued to confront the full force of Jewish prejudice in the Holy City, where that prejudice was concentrated. It was partly in mercy that He for a while withdrew, thus affording time to the ruling classes to understand His message, if they would, and to repent and accept it. He was also able in Galilee, among a simpler people, and where He was less directly in conflict with those whom St. John designates emphatically as "the Jews," to develop the full character of His mission. It is in Galilee, accordingly, that we may best study the character of that ministry in its most general aspect ; and thus the first three Gospels mainly confine themselves to an account of His work there, reserving the description of His work in Jud£Ea to the time of His final conflict. St. John supplements their accounts by describing the Judaean THE GOSPEL OF MIRACLES. 177 ministry, and in this circumstance is to be found the sufficient explanation of such differences as have been observed between the two records, and particularly between the characteristics of the discourses of our Lord in St. John and in the other Evangelists. The discourses were for the most part de- livered to different classes, for different pur- poses, and it is only appropriate and necessary that there should be a difference between them. In our consideration, then, in these medita- tions, of some central points of our Lord's ministry we now turn to His ministry in Galilee, and we find its general characteristics summarized in the last three verses of the fourth chapter of St. Matthew. " Jesus," we are told, "went about all GaHlee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought unto Him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed 12 1 78 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORDS MINISTRY. with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy ; and He healed them. And there followed Him great multi- tudes ot people . from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan. And seeing the multitudes. He went up into a mountain," and there delivered the Sermon on the Mount. This brief description indicates two essen- tial points in our Lord's ministry, and at the same time connects them intimately together. It is a description, first, of His acts, and, secondly, of His words. With respect, in the first place, to His acts, it is to be observed that they are depicted as consist- ing in an overwhelming exhibition of miracu- lous powers for the relief of all the suffering that was brought before Him. He went about heahng all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. They brought unto Him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and He healed them, and, as a consequence, great multitudes followed Him from all parts of the THE GOSPEL OF MIRACLES, 179 country. Now, this description exhibits our Lord's miracles in a very striking h'ght, and one which has of late been too often ob- scured. It exhibits them, during considerable periods of His Ministry, not as an occa- sional or rare exercise of power, but as one which was habitual and unrestrained. There are various other passages in the Gospels which explicitly state, and many which inti- mate, the same characteristic. Thus, in the tenth verse of the third chapter of St. Mark we read that '' He had healed many, inso- much that they pressed upon Him for to touch Him, as many as had plagues." At the end of the sixth chapter of the same Gospel we are told that "whithersoever He entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought Him that they might touch if it were but the border of His garment ; and as many as touched Him were made whole." St. John's brief reference to the signs which He did in Jerusalem at His first visit there, and the expression of Nicodemus, " No man can do iSo SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him," point to the same fact ; and it is perhaps still more strikingly stated in the thirtieth verse of the fifteenth chapter of St. Matthew. " Great multitudes/^ we are told; " came unto Him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet ; and He healed them : insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see : and they glorified the God of Israel." That which is exhibited in such descrip- tions is an unlimited and, it would sometimes seem, irrepressible exercise of supernatural powers of mercy in the relief of all human suffering. In this respect alone the miracu- lous action of our Lord is essentially dis- tinguished from all previous manifestations in the persons of the prophets, and is only paralleled by that which was at first exer- cised by the Apostles in His name after the descent of the Holy Spirit. From the latter THE GOSPEL OF MIRACLES. i8i it is distinguished by the fact that it is exercised by His own power and authority, whereas the Apostles expressly declare that the powers exercised through them were His. But in other cases, even in the Scrip- tures, what is exhibited is some particular miracle, wTought for some special purpose; here it is an unbounded display of omnipo- tence, wrought for the general purpose of relieving the plagues of humanity. Some miracles, indeed, which appear to have a particular purpose and significance, are re- lated by the Evangelists in detail, but these form a mere specimen, an infinitesimal part we might almost say, of the whole. We may even say that from the moment when He assumes His ministry, such miraculous works were often His natural and normal action. As St. Luke expresses it, in the sixth chapter, at the nineteenth verse, *'the whole multitude sought to touch Him : for there went virtue out of Him, and healed them all." This miraculous and healing virtue was inherent in Him, and was effectual for i82 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. the relief of every misery that came in contact with it. Even such a miracle as the multiplying of the loaves and fishes appears to arise easily and naturally, as it were, from this superabundant power of relieving all human necessities. Whatever its moral purpose, the immediate motive of the feeding of the four thousand, as described by the Evangelist, was the simple relief of the people when they were hungering and fainting after being with Him three days. " I have com- passion," He said, '^ on the multitude, because they continue with Me now three days, and have nothing to eat ; and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way." So long as the appointed period of His ministry lasted, the characteristic in question is not that He works occasional miracles, however numer- ous, lor special objects beyond the immediate necessities of the moment, to prove His doc- trines, or simply to convey some striking lesson ; but that His Divine compassion is continually acting with Divine power, to bring relief to all the miseries around Him. THE GOSPEL OF MIRACLES. 183 This aspect of our Lord's miracles would seem of the highest importance, first in respect of the evidence for the miracles themselves, and secondly in the illustration they afford of His character and mission. As to the miracles themselves, it will be seen that that which has to be accounted for is not a limited number of miraculous occurrences, but an innumerable series of them, exercised on every form of human evil. This* is the testimony of eye-witnesses, repeated explicitly, and not less clearly implied in the whole tone of the narrative. It is well known that persistent attempts have been made to minimize the miraculous manifestations recorded in the Gospels, and particularly to show that certain miracles might be explained by the supposition of some natural causes acting with unusual force, or in a manner beyond the ordinary comprehension of the observers; and one famous rationalistic scheme, that of Paulus, which marks, indeed, the commencement of the main rationalistic movement of this i84 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. century, endeavoured by this minimizing pro- cess to bring the whole Gospel narrative within the limits of ordinary experience. Though the attempt was soon seen to be hopeless by German critics, who consequently resorted to bolder negative hypotheses, it still lingers in some forms of speculation around us ; and it is supposed that the veracity of the Evangelists can be maintained consistently with an attempt to explain away the miracles, or at least to explain them down to the lowest possible point. But such efforts fail to deal with the most charac- teristic element of these miraculous narratives. The essential point of the story is not that particular miracles were wrought, but that an innumerable multitude of them were wrought, and that the most striking feature in our Lord's action was the continual exercise of t^is miraculous power. This consideration renders it, moreover, far more difficult to contest the trustworthiness of the Evangelists' reports. Had they only narrated a few miracles, it might have been THE GOSPEL OF MIRACLES. 185 argued in detail that they were misin- formed, and were not corrected at the time because the evidence on such details could not be sifted. But what they narrate is a broad fact, open to general observation, and constituting the most prominent feature of our Lord's action. It is difficult to con- ceive that any writers, at all within the range of contemporary evidence, would presume to state as the most open and public feature of our Lord's ministry a characteristic by which in reality it was never marked, and which would have been inconsistent, not merely with the evidence of particular witnesses, but with the total im- pression subsisting in the Jewish nation respecting our Lord's work. There is, how- ever, no attempt, in any writer near the time, to deny that that ministry had this general character. It was a feature fully recognized in it ; and whether He were rejected or not, whatever explanation was given of His nature and office, the general impression stated by Nicodemus was in i86 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. practice universally admitted, *'We know that Thou art a Teacher come from God : for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him." But the most important conclusion to be drawn from this aspect of our Lord's minis- terial work is that which relates to His own character. This manifestation affords a simple and broad foundation for our belief in His Divine nature. It harmonizes with every other manifestation of Him in word and deed, whether to His disciples when He first called them, or to the world at large. It exhibits Him as displaying an unprecedented and unapproached command over all the forces of nature, and manifesting all around Him a supernatural glory. In spite of His inherit- ance of our mortal frame, and His submission in His own person to the various weaknesses and sufferings of our lot, He nevertheless, at certain periods of His ministry, mani- fests, wherever He goes, and on whatever occasion He appears, a light, a glory, and a power which transcend the utmost conception THE GOSPEL OF MIRACLES. 187 of human capacity, and naturally produce that conviction which St. John expresses in the words, " We beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." If we would realize His work, and depict Him to our minds and hearts as He moved among men, we must not confine our attention to His teaching, nor be content only to be astonished, like those who heard the Sermon on the Mount, by the authority with which He spoke. We should miss the main facts of His manifestation if we contemplated Him mainly as a Teacher. What we have to realize is the appearance of an infinitely gracious Being, full indeed of words and looks of infinite truth and pene- tration, but at the same time clothed about, as it were, with a supernatural radiance, who had a virtue of benevolent omnipotence continually streaming from Him, and who seemed sometimes unable, if we may use such an expression for the purpose of illustration, to restrain the action of this ineffable grace. To touch the hem of His garment is enough l88 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. to restore the sick to health, and He diffuses around Him, like the sun in his strength, an atmosphere of , light and splendour. From this point of view it would appear that the evidence of our Lord's Divine nature was not at the time, and is not now, so much dependent on argument as on direct percep- tion. Men have in their minds an inherent conception of what the character of God must be. As, in the words of the prophet, " the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib," so the heart of man, if it be not self-hardened, knows the God who is its Father and its Lord, when manifested to it. When One appeared, therefore, among men, who knew all things and could do all things, and who did them for ends of mercy and grace, their hearts bowed before Him in- stinctively; and they bow still before the records of the same manifestation. The Psalmist, for instance, describes one aspect of the Divine nature where he ex- claims, " Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me ; Thou knowest my downsitting THE GOSPEL OF MIRACLES 189 and mine uprising ; Thou understandest my thought afar off ... , for there is not a word in my tongue but, lo, O Lord, Thou, knowest it altogether;" and it was the exhibition of this power of reading those inmost secrets of the conscience, which no human being can read, and which a man scarcely knows himself, which induced Nathanael to exclaim, *' Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God ; Thou art the King of Israel," and which extorted from the Samaritan woman the confession, " Come, see a Man, which told me all things that ever I did : is not this the Christ ? " But another aspect of the Divine nature was described by the Psalmist in the words, '' Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God : which made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that therein is : . . . which executeth judgment for the oppressed : which giveth food to the hungry. . . . The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind : the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down : the Lord loveth the righteous." This was the 190 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. character in which our Saviour manifested Himself by the miraculous action we have been contemplating ; and this accordingly, by its correspondence with the loftiest concep- tions of the Divine character, similarly reveals to men their Lord and their God. It is necessary, indeed, to bear in mind the relation of this miraculous manifestation to our Lord's teaching. It is interpreted by that teaching, and its direct and indirect instruction cannot be fully understood except in the light thus cast upon it. Great problems, moreover, are raised at once by its exhibition and by its subsequent reserve and withdrawal, of which that teaching offers the only explanation. But meanwhile, one of the most blessed aspects of our faith as Christians is brought before us by the reflection that in surrendering ourselves to Christ as our Lord and Master, we surrender ourselves to One who showed in His most characteristic acts, when He was upon earth, that He is our Saviour; that He came to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach recovering of sight THE GOSPEL OF MIRACLES. 191 to the blind, and to set at liberty them that are bruised ; that " He is the Lord of life and death, and of all things to them pertaining ; " and that His power is prompted in its exercise by infinite compassion and love. Though withdrawn from our sight, and for the present veiling His miraculous influence, He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever ; and He asks us to submit to Him, not only as our Master, our Teacher, and our Judge, but as One who, now by one means and now by another, sometimes by supernatural action, always by the gradual and gracious influence of His Spirit, is able and willing to help all that are oppressed with the devil. Let us not doubt that if we lay before Him the plagues of our own hearts, whatever they may be. His gracious power will be present with us; and that, in proportion as we trust Him, He will grant us such strength and protection as may support us in all dangers and carry us through all temptations. THE GOSPEL OF SUFFERING. n *' Aud seeing the nmltitiides, He went tip into a motinfain .* and ivhen He zvas set, His disciples came unto Him : and He opened His month, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'' — Matt. v. i-^. XI. THE GOSPEL OF SUFFERING. 'T^HESE words, as is evident, are intimately -*" connected with the verses which pre- cede them. There followed Him, we are told in the last verse of the fourth chapter, great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan ; ^' and seeing the multitudes. He went up into a mountain : and when He was set. His dis- ciples came unto Him : and He opened His mouth, and taught them." It is, moreover, plain that the sermon which follows was not delivered only to a select circle of disciples, but to the multitudes in question ; for it is added at the end, "And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the 196 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. people" — or, in the original, "the multitudes" — " were astonished at His doctrine : for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." It was therefore to the multitudes who had followed Him, and with reference to their circumstances, that He de- livered the Sermon on the Mount. The first aspect of that sermon, accordingly, must be sought in reference to those circumstances. We must recall, then, the wonderful mani- festation which had brought together this concourse around our Lord. He had gone " about all Galilee, teaching in their syna- gogues, and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sick- ness and all manner of disease among the people," until His fame had spread through- out all Syria; "and they brought unto Him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy ; and He healed them ; " and so it was that there followed Him great multitudes of THE GOSPEL OF SUFFERING. 197 people from all parts of the country. It was not merely that a certain number of striking and characteristic miracles were wrought, such as are afterwards mentioned in detail, but that an unbounded virtue went forth from our Lord to relieve every form of misery that was brought before Him. It extended from the most deadly diseases of men to their simplest wants, until He condescended on one occasion to work one of His greatest miracles for the simple purpose, so far as the immediate occasion was concerned, of relieving the hunger and faintness of those who had been listening to Him. The fame of Him which went abroad throughout all Syria was the fame of a power which has never been seen before or since — an abso- lutely unrestricted 'command of all the forces of nature, for the purpose of driving away the evils by which men were overwhelmed. No wonder that great multitudes followed Him, and that suffering men and women flocked to Him from all parts of the country to be healed of their plagues I 198 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. If we bear these circumstances in mind, the first word of the Sermon on the Mount seems at once to raise before us the central feature of the scene, and to illustrate, with the utmost vividness, the expectations with which our Lord was followed. He opened His mouth, and the first word He uttered was of blessing. "Blessed," He said, "are the poor in spirit ; " and the same word is nine times reiterated. Must it not have fallen on the eager ears of that multitude like rain upon the thirsty ground ? Before our Lord were multitudes of struggling and suffering men and women, taken with divers diseases and torments, craving for deliver- ance from their plagues ; many of them, as appears from the sequel, still waiting to ap- proach and to obtain immediate relief; all of them, it must needs be, sensible that that immediate relief did not remove from them all the dangers and sorrows to which they were liable, and most assuredly not relieved by such physical miracles from the plagues of their own hearts. If we would appreciate THE GOSPEL OF SUFFERING. 199 the scene, we may well imagine a crowd of eager faces, hungering and thirsting for fur- ther manifestations of the marvellous mercy and benevolence which they had already experienced. An immense expectation had been aroused in their souls — an expectation of unlimited deliverance and unstinted bounty. The gates of the kingdom of heaven had, as it were, been thrown open, and the King had appeared, scattering His largesses among the crowds which awaited His approach. The first word He uttered, therefore, in this sermon answered to the very expectation which had been awakened. They came in multitudes, looking for blessing; and when He opened His mouth, the word Blessed was the first they heard. With what re- doubled eagerness may we not imagine them awaiting the words which followed ! The King of the kingdom of heaven, who had just shown, by His astonishing miracles, that He was able to give blessing, proclaimed that they were to be blessed, and that their hearts* desire was to be fulfilled. How was 200 SOME rOLYTS OF OTR LORD'S MLXISTRY. the blessing to be conferred, and upon whom ? With what force do not these circum- stances invest the declarations which follow ! Our Lord, indeed, proceeds with reiterated assurances of blessing; but He declares at the same time that these blessings, the blessings of His kingdom, are only to be obtained through endurance of the very sorrows and sufterings from which the multitudes may have hoped that they were to be delivered. *' Blessed are the poor in spirit. . , . Blessed are they that mourn. . . . Blessed are the meek. . . . Blessed are they that are perse- cuted for righteousness' sake." They must be content with poverty of spirit, with con- tinued mourning, with meek endurance of suffering, wnth reviling, and persecution, and all manner of slander, with the same kind of cruel lot as had befallen the prophets of old time. Vast as were the powers of the king- dom of heaven, and the blessings of that kingdom. He did not come to relieve them of the burden which the best men had boine THE GOSPEL OF SUFFERING. 201 in past times; but lie called upon them, on the contrary, for a continued and patient en- durance of similar persecutions. The whole tone of the sermon, in respect of its demand upon His disciples, is of precisely the same character. Throughout, from first to last. He enforces the severest conditions on His followers — conditions far more severe than those of the old Law, and far more than were fulfilled by its strictest teachers and observers at that day. " I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Phari- sees," the highest representatives of strict legal observance, "ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." They are called upon to treat their inclinations with a severity which can only be com- pared to plucking out the right eye and cutting off the right hand. They must abandon all assertion of the.r rights for their own interests. They must seek for, and they must expect, no reward from men. They must not be concerned to lay up 202 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. treasure upon earth, but must be content to lay up treasure in heaven. In a word, they must enter in at the strait gate, remembering that "strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto Hfe, and few there be that find it." It might have seemed to them, as has just been said, that a King of such unbounded powers as His miracles had exhibited might have flung the gates of heaven open, for all that multitude to enter without effort; it might have seemed as though wide was the gate and broad was the way that led to its glories. But the fact, as declared at every point of the dis- course, is precisely the reverse. ^'For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction;" but "strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life." Perhaps, moreover, this teaching receives a peculiar emphasis from the manner in which, at the outset, our Lord warns the people of the consequences of following Him. At least, they might naturally have thought, they were safe, and sure of nothing but THE GOSPEL OF SUFFERING. 203 happiness, if they followed a Teacher and a King who had just exhibited such unbounded mercy and power in His miraculous relief of their diseases and torments. But against any such expectation He expressly warns them. He does not merely say, ''Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteous- ness' sake," but adds, " Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake;" as much as to say, *'Be warned beforehand that, in following Me, you must expect something very different from those gifts of bounty and of healing which I have just bestowed on you : you must expect reviUng, and persecution, and all manner of evil." What an amazing contrast between the expectation and the reality ! All this, moreover, receives a deeper and more touching significance if we bear in mind the spirit which had animated our Lord in His works of mercy. As has been re- cently observed by the Bishop of Durham, we fail to appreciate the nature of our Lord's 204 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. miraculous action if we regard Him as simply dispensing, from His bounty, the gifts of a kind of superfluous power. His miracles are de- picted throughout the Gospels as flowing from an overwhelming sympathy with the sufferings which He encountered, and as sometimes almost extorted from Him, against an original intention, by the intensity with which such suffering is pressed upon His heart. The woman of Tyre and Sidon, for instance, almost wrests from Him the cure of her daughter, at a time when He had deter- mined, for general reasons, to withdraw from public action ; and in a similar manner His heart overflows to the hungry multitudes, and for their relief He works a miracle which His disciples seemed to think unneces- sary. The spirit of His miracles is expressed by St. Matthew in the chapter which follows the Sermon on the Mount, when he says that " when the even was come, they brought unto Him many that were possessed with devils : and He cast out the spirits with His word, and healed all that were sick : that it THE GOSPEL OF SUFFERING. 205 might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our in- firmities, and bare our sicknesses." He took them all upon His heart, and in His love ^ and in His pity He relieved them. It is not the voice, therefore, of a stern moralist merely which bids the disciples, at the moment they are expecting some vast out- pouring of graciousness, to be prepared for suffering and persecution, to be content with poverty and sorrow, to brace themselves to sacrifice their right eyes and right hands, and to struggle through the strait and narrow gate. These are the utterances of One who has all their infirmities at heart, and has taken all their weaknesses on Himself, and who would relieve them all if He could, or rather if it were consistent with their real welfare. Even in those warnings there is the voice of true sympathy, knowing what the difficulties and struggles of human life must needs be, and " warning men in mercy to be prepared for them. It was thus out of the profoundest sympathy with human weakness and sorrow 2c6 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. that, at the very moment when He had raised among the multitude who followed Him the highest expectations of the gifts He could bestow, He tells them that the bestowal of those gifts cannot be continued, and that they must be content to follow Him in humiliation, in weakness, and, it may be, in suffering. This was the grand paradox of our Lord's teaching, which the men of His day could not understand, and which led in great measure to His ultimate rejection. So it was at Nazareth that, when He could not consent to work the miracles of which they had heard elsewhere, they rose in indignation, and would have murdered Him in their disappointment. Such, in all probability, was the great dis- illusion which led to His betrayal, and to His rejection by the people at large. Instant relief by miraculous power they could under- stand ; that was what they expected from a Divine King and Saviour, from One whose mission it was to proclaim and to bring bless- ing; and it seemed to them a mockery that, with these words on His lips, and these THE GOSPEL OF SUFFERING. 207 manifestations of His power in acts of healing, He should hold His hand, and call on them for humiliation and suffering, to drink His bitter cup, and to be baptized with His bap- tism. The mystery of His ministry, and its great stumbling-block, consisted in this com- bination of unbounded power to reheve the miseries of mankind with the refusal to exercise it as a matter of course, and with the con- tinued requirement that they should endure the circumstances of their lot. In this, I say, consisted its mystery and its stumbling-block then. But it has not less been its chief difficulty since, as it is one of the chief diffi- culties which men feel with respect to the whole Divine dispensation of the world. Men still ask why the Gospel has not fulfilled all its apparent promises of blessing to mankind ; and we are tempted to believe that there is no such Divine power at work around us as that of which the Saviour and His Apostles spoke. In the same way men point to the miseries and sufferings of the world at large, and ask whether they are consistent with the 2o8 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. belief in a God of all power and mercy. Our Saviour, standing in the midst of that eager crowd, with acts of supernatural power exer- cised by Him on the one hand, words of blessing proceeding from His Hps, and at the same time, and in the same breath, bidding men prepare for humiliation, mourning, and persecution, affords in one vivid scene a miniature of the enduring condition of the world. The message of the Gospel essentially combines these two elements. It is a Gospel. Blessing, salvation, are the first sounds it utters ; but it proceeds, in tones of uncom- promising severity, to tell men that this blessing is ordinarily obtained through patient suffering, through the various forms of what men consider humiliation. The eager craving of mankind for instant dehverance from their troubles may be met in human schemes by promises of relief through some political legis- lation or social revolution. Our Lord's mes- sage is one of perfect blessing, but only to be reached by painful moral endurance, and not necessarily, in any individual case, to be THE GOSPEL OF SUFFERING. 209 ^reached here at all. His ultimate and final promise is, *' Rejoice, and be exceeding glad ; for great is your reward in heaven." -^ When we bear in mind what has been said of the intense compassion and sympathy which prompted our Saviour's acts and words, we cannot but be assured that the law which He thus laid down is only enforced because it is essential to the full development of our nature, and to the complete realization of the blessings He desires to bestow on us. We may, indeed, imagine that it might have been possible to create the world anew, to abolish its dark past, and to establish a state of things into which no evil should ever enter. But, as Bishop Butler is perpetually reminding us, we know not the possibilities of things; and the fact before us, revealed in the whole method of the Gospel and the economy of the world, is that it would be inconsistent with its constitution that the evils we have brought upon ourselves should be removed, and the blessings God designs for us be wrought out, by any other than that gradual process which H 210 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. prevails in all other spheres of His govern- ment. Blessing He desires for us, infinite and eternal; but it is His settled will to train us into the enjoyment of it, and to prepare our faculties gradually for its full realization. He will not abolish that primary constitution of human nature, that all its happiness depends on obedience to the moral and spiritual laws ordained for it, and that physical blessings can only be granted to moral and spiritual righteousness. It was not a theologian, but a president of the Royal Society, who said not long ago, with reference to the improve- ment of the condition of the poor, that ''it would be of no avail to improve them from the outside alone, unless you could improve them from the inside also." This primary law of our nature is reasserted by our Lord ; but the Gospel He brings involves, first, the assurance — ^he assurance of One who evidently has the gift of all grace in His hands — that full and abundant blessing shall certainly be conferred upon those who patiently submit to the discipline ordained for them by their THE GOSPEL OF SUFFERING. 211 Father in heaven, and who seek, through whatever sufferings, to carry out His will ; and, secondly, that He will give them the supernatural aid of His Holy Spirit to support them in their arduous struggle. They are not, and will never be, left to themselves; but if they, evil though they be, give good gifts to their children, their Father in heaven will assuredly give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. Blessings infinitely beyond the physical bounty which He displayed are reserved in heaven for them, and He is with them now, to give them His peace and His strength in their present trials. Such, as illustrated in this passage, is the central message of our Saviour's teaching. How it has penetrated into human hearts from those lips of truth we well know. But is it too much to say, that • even from Him such words might have been insufficient to persuade men to trust Him in a course so contrary to their natural inclinations, if He had not given them the further assurance of His own ex- ample, alike in His patient submission to the 212 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. same humiliation for which He called on them, and in His entrance on the joy which was set before Him as the reward of His Cross ? Such at least seems the suggestion of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who does not hesitate to say that ''it became Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." At least, by setting us this example. He has rendered it our privilege to sum up the message we have been con- sidering in the touching words of our Visita- tion Service : that " there should be no greater comfort to Christian persons, than to be made like unto Christ, by suffering patiently adver- sities, troubles, and sicknesses. For He Him- self went not up to joy, but first He suffered pain ; He entered not into His glory before He was crucified. So truly our way to eternal joy is to suffer here with Christ ; and our door to enter into eternal life is gladly to die with Christ ; that we may rise again from death, and dwell with Him in everlasting life." THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL. " Let your light so shine before men, that ihey may see your good works, and glorify your Fallicr which is in heaven^' — St. Matt. v. i6. XII. THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL, '^ I ^HE characteristic of the Sermon on the ^ Mount which is perhaps most gene- rally recognized is the loftiness of the ideal which it sets before us. It urges in various forms the pursuit of a standard of excel- lence beyond any that was recognized by those whom our Lord addressed, and em- bodying the highest possible conceptions. He takes the leading commandments in turn, and intensifies the meaning of each of them so as to penetrate to the most secret re- cesses of the heart. Whosoever, He says, shall break one of the least of these com- mandments, and shall teach men so, shall be one of the least in the kingdom of heaven. His disciples are to attain an 2i6 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. excellence beyond that of all other men. He tells them that they are intended to be the salt of the earth, and the light of the world. They are like a city set on a hill, that cannot be hid ; and their light is to shine before all men, that they may see their good works, and glorify their Father which is in heaven. But the highest ex- pression of this standard of excellence is afforded by the exhortations to imitate our Father which is in heaven. We are to love our enemies, that we may be the children of our Father in heaven ; and finally we are to be perfect, even as our Father which is in heaven is perfect — perfect, even as He is perfect, who, we are told, is light, and in Whom is no darkness at all. To the inculcation of this standard and this aim the whole sermon seems devoted; and at its close our Lord warns us that its due attainment affords a prac- tical test of our being His true disciples, and is the condition of our being acknow- ledged by Him in the day of judgment. THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL. 217 " By their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the will of My Father wi(ch is in heaven." It must be felt, the more we reflect on the character of these exhortations, and compare them with our experience, that this is an amazing demand. The Sermon on the Mount, regarded simply as the proclamation of this standard as the goal of human efforts, and as the sole condition of blessed- ness, cannot but carry with it something bewildering, if not distressing, to those who are sensible of their inherent weakness ; and to those who are not so sensible, the proclamation of such a standard is not without its dangers. They may flatter them- selves they approach it, when they are a very long way off; and to tell people that they are the salt of the earth, and the light of the world, is a message which cer- tainly has its perils for them. But we find such difficulties disappear if we observe the 2i8 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. motives which are set before men for the attainment of these excellences, and the conditions on which such exhortations are founded. They are all substantially con- tained in the text, which is one of- the key-notes to the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. "Let your light/' says our Saviour, " so shine before men, that they may see your good works." Had the exhor- tation stopped there, it might have presented the difficulties just alluded to. But our Lord adds, " that they may glorify your Father which is in heaven." Let us notice the flood of light which is poured over our moral position by this addition. Why are men to be led, by the sight of Christians' good works, to glorify their Father in heaven ? Obviously for one reason only; that those good works are, and are known to be, not their own good works, but the works of their Father in heaven. They are to be the light of the world, but not by virtue of their own light. They are lamps by which light is diffused ; but the light itself is independent THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL. 219 of them, and is the sole source of their illumination. Their own good works are only mentioned in order to lead the thoughts of men, and their own thoughts, beyond them, and their own glory is thus absorbed in that of another, at the moment when it attains its highest point of excellence. Now this consideration explains the order of the sermon, and enables us to apply all its lofty exhortations to ourselves. It com- mences by proclaiming blessedness to certain character^, and stating the particular kinds of blessedness for which they are qualified ; and all of these are practically involved in the first, — '' Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The words "poor in spirit" imply in the first place a sense of spiritual need, and a craving for its relief They imply a conscious destitution of moral and spiritual excellence, and a con- scious absence of power to attain it by one's own exertions. The Greek word, in fact, implies more than poverty; it indicates the condition of one who has to beg for the 220 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. very necessaries of life. Such as these, says our Lord, are admitted to the kingdom of heaven. That is the blessing which He came to give them. It is not that this character, by itself, constitutes blessedness, but that they are in the right attitude of mind for receiving blessedness, and that He will confer it on them. He is explaining the blessedness of that kingdom of heaven which He came to establish, and He de- clares that all its powers and privileges are bestowed on those who are sensible of their need, and who look to Him for its relief. This is the general character, which is exem- plified in detail in the subsequent Beatitudes. " Blessed are they that mourn : for they shall be comforted." Blessed, that is, are they who are sensible of their evil, above all of their spiritual evil, for I am come to bring them comfopt, and to heal them from their diseases and sufferings. " Blessed are the meek" — not so much, in Scripture language, merely the gentle, but above all things those who, like Moses — in this sense called the THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL. 221 meekest man on earth — are sensible of their dependence on God ; whose humlHty is due to their apprehension of their own weakness on the one side and of His strength on the other, and who are never striving to assert themselves, but simply to carry out His will, under His guidance, with the aid of His Spirit. " Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness," feeling it to be the very food of their souls, and conscious, at the same time, how destitute they are of it, and how unable to procure it. Blessed are they, says our Lord, for they shall be filled. I am come, that is, to supply their hunger and thirst, for ^* He that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst." ''Blessed," again, ''are the merciful," those who are sensible of the need of others no less than of their own, and do what little in them lies to relieve it. They shall obtain mercy. They shall have done to themselves as they do to others ; their sins shall be forgiven, and their 222 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. necessities supplied. " Blessed are the pure in heart" — those whose souls are not pos- sessed by passion, but who are still craving for the only vision by which they can be truly satisfied. Their souls are, as it were, empty, and incapable of being filled by any- thing of their own or of this world ; and these shall see God. I am come to reveal Him to them, and to make them one with Him. The knowledge of God, and the love of God, shall be their portion here and here- after. " Blessed are the peacemakers," those who are labouring to establish mutual kind- ness, love, and help, not to assert the dominion of the strong over the weak ; " they shall be called the children of God ; " for the work which they are doing is the same as that in which God and our Saviour love to be engaged, establishing peace on earth and good will towards men. " Blessed," again, '* are those who are persecuted for righ- teousness' sake," and who do not defend themselves, but are content simply to do v»hat is right, and to submit themselves to THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL. 223 Him that judgcth righteously, trusting, not in their own power to assert righteousness, but in His power and His will to do so in His own way. Such is the general character of the Beatitudes. They may be said to be blessings on the receptive character. They declare, in the first place, that the true attitude of the human soul is to be sensible of its poverty, its blindness, its nakedness, its liability to yield to temptation, its need of help on all sides ; and then they proclaim blessedness to those who are thus disposed, as being the great privilege of that king- dom of heaven which our Lord established. To poverty He brings riches, to sorrow He brings comfort, to meekness He brings strength, to hunger and thirst He brings an eternal spiritual food, to the blindness of nature He brings everlasting light. The Beatitudes are thus an explanation ot the , words of Isaiah, " Arise, shine ; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." It would have been a mockery 224 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. to tell the poor, the mourning, the meek, and the persecuted to arise and shine by their own power and in their own light. But in the coming of our Saviour the glory of the Lord had risen upon them. The people who sat in darkness had seen a great light, and to them which sat in the region and gate of death, light had sprung up. This, accordingly, is the foundation of the exhortation in the text, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." We have, therefore, revealed to us in this verse, and in the general order of our Lord's exhortation, at once the means by which we can approach the standard He sets before us, and an effectual guarantee against any of the dangers which the setting up of such a standard might seem to involve. This sense of our absolute moral and spiritual dependence upon God ensures, in the first place, that aiming at absolute perfection in thought, as well as in w^ord and deed, which THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL. 225 our Lord proceeds to inculcate. If we are to live as in the sight of an Almighty and all-knowing God, if the aim He proposes to us is to be perfect, we are forced to feel our imperfection at every moment and in every thought. Let a man's eyes be mainly fixed on the judgment of his fellows or of the world, let his standard be that which is determined by his own observation and his own conceptions, and he is, to say the least, under a grievous temptation to congratulate himself on imperfect acquirements, and to fail to realize the full perfection for which he was designed. But let him hve as in God's presence, conscious, above all things, of his Father who seeth in secret, having before his soul continually the infinite perfections of Him to whom all hearts are open and from whom no secrets are hid, and he can never fail to remain poor in spirit, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, meek and pure in heart. It must surely be evident how supremely potent an instrument is thus provided for 15 226 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. the purification of the heart. It brings our finite acquirements, our little virtues, ever side by side with infinite and supreme excel- lence. It tells us that that excellence, and that perfection, exist, and were intended for us to imitate and to attain ; and in pro- portion as this is realized must we be for ever mourning that we are so far off from it. Accordingly our Lord particularly points out how His teaching guards against the danger of self-righteousness. ''Judge not," He says, "that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged : and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye ? " A man cannot fail to be sensible of the beam in his own eye if he remembers the Divine, Eye which is ever upon him, and he will then have no heart for judging his brother. He will be sensible that every censure he passes on another justifies a similar censure being passed on himself. To THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL. 227 judge others, moreover, implies that we are sensible, first of all, of the blame which they deserve ; whereas he who considers his own heart, and the hearts of his fellows, from the point ot view we have been contemplat- ing, will be sensible, in the first place, of their weakness and his own, and of their common need of Divine help and illumina- tion. In a word, an unlimited aim, combined with unlimited humility, the sense of the possession of the kingdom of heaven, com- bined with permanent and ever-growing poorness of spirit, — this is the character, and this the possibility, which our Lord's exhortations enable us to pursue, and ever more and more to realize. Let us further notice briefly two other results of this disposition of heart. Perhaps one of its most blessed consequences is that it merges the pursuit of the highest excel- lence for ourselves in the most generous emotion of which the soul is capable. Let a man be his own end, in any respect, and then, however high his standard, the pursuit i 228 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. of righteousness can hardly fail to bring about some form of self-righteousness, or, in other words, of selfishness. Nor do men escape from this danger, as is supposed by one current form of philosophy in the present day, by making the happiness of their fellows their great aim, and by living for others. For it still remains true that the highest form of self-sacrifice, thus realized, is a virtue of the man's own ; it is nobody else's virtue. It may redound to the benefit of others, but the credit of it is mainly his own. Let him attribute as much as he pleases to humanity and other influences, still he remains the centre of his own actions, the immediate source of the virtues he ex- hibits. But when we are told to let our light so shine before men, that they may see our good works, and glorify our Father which is In heaven, all is changed. We sink, in all our actions, into insignificance; if we work out our own salvation or that of others, we are ever sensible that it is God that worketh in us, both to will and THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL. 229 to do of His good pleasure, and to Him all the glory is referred. What can be a grander and more blessed conception than thus to merge all virtue into love — the eternal love of an eternal God — not living for ourselves, or through ourselves, or in ourselves, but in, and for, and through Him ? We do not lose our self-consciousness ; we retain the happiness of conscious relation to Him ; but we lose every selfish and private con- sideration, and our life is a continual return of His infinite and eternal love. Lastly, it will be seen that, from this point of view, there is no one so weak, or so imperfect, or so sinful, as not to be able to take to himself the promises of the Beati- tudes. In our sin and evil, we might well shrink from such lofty aims as our Lord sets before us ; and, if standing by our- selves, such shrinking might even be the dictate of a proper modesty. But when we are assured that all these blessings and perfections are opened to us, not by virtue of our own strength, but by the grace of 230 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. God, by His gracious will and power, that is, to bestow them on us, all difficulty of this kind disappears. We are mercifully debarred from pleading any excuse for faint-heartedness in our moral and spiritual life, and are summoned by the strongest of all obligations to struggle through that strait gate, and to enter on that narrow way, from which we had turned aside. For our Lord concludes His sermon, as He began it, by assurances of infinite blessing. "Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find." However a man may have fallen, however he may have impaired his spiritual strength, however great his temp- tations, however little worthy he may be of such hopes as this sermon holds out to him, all is remedied by this proclamation of Divine strength and Divine light. To all alike the exhortation applies, " Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE. After this manner therefore pray ye : Our Father^ ivJiich art in heaven, halloivcd be Thy Name.''' — St. Matt, vi, 9. Xlll. THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE. THERE are few points relating to religion on which there is so general an assent as prevails respecting the prayer of which this is the first petition. It is all but uni- versally recognized, wherever the teaching of our Lord is known, as the standard, not merely of Christian thought, but of all earnest religious feeling. Amidst the controversies with which the Christian world is distracted, none but a few obscure sectarian voices refuse to render unqualified submission to the au- thority of the Lord's Prayer. In moments of supreme struggle, or in the hour of death, it springs to the lips of men who feel that they know not how to pray as they ought; and many who shrink from an acceptance of the 234 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. dogmatic truths of the Christian reHgion are content to adopt this prayer, and seem to find a refuge for their spirits in its calm and comprehensive utterances. Except on the principles of the Christian faith, it is indeed impracticable, as will be seen in the sequel, to utter the prayer, and especially its first petition, with an adequate consciousness of its meaning and of our own position. But it is none the less remarkable that the natural voice of the human heart recognizes in this prayer the true expression of what its im- pulses ought to be, and thus bears an in- voluntary testimony to the truth of this central point in our Lord's teaching. In reasoning and meditating, therefore, on the Lord's Prayer we are appealing to prin- ciples which command almost indisputable authority among us ; and some reflections on the petition , in the text may consequently serve to bring home to us, with greater force than any appeal to more abstract argument, the vital character of the obligation which it implies. It is an obligation, and at the THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE. 235 same time a privilege, which strong influ- ences around us tend grievously to obscure. The petition clearly implies that the supreme desire of our hearts, and therefore the primary object of our lives, should be the hallowing of God's name, or the manifestation of His glory. By virtue of its being the first petition, it governs all the others, and they must be regarded as subordinated to it, and as subserving its main principles. The object of the establishment of God's kingdom, and the doing of His will, of our physical main- tenance, of the forgiveness of our sins, and of our preservation from evil, is ultimately that God's true name, character, and glory may be displayed through the works of His hands, and especially by the words and deeds of men. The petition establishes, therefore, a definite order in the various impulses and desires of mankind. It does not supersede those secondary desires, or require them to be suppressed. The principle has been some- times exaggerated by ardent Christian spirits into this extreme form, but such an exaggeration 236 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. appears plainly inconsistent with the sequel of the prayer. The fact that the first three petitions are all directed to the fulfilment of God's will and pur- poses is, indeed, sufficient to show that those purposes should take precedence of all others in our minds ; but the utterance of the simplest and most urgent human needs has never re- ceived so touching a sanction as in the last three petitions, in which we are permitted to pray for our daily bread, for forgiveness, and for de- liverance from evil. Our Lord, indeed, in the context, bids us dismiss anxiety for our personal needs, especially for those of this life ; but He does so, not on the ground that those wants are in themselves to be despised, but, on the contrary, on the ground that God is so generous and gracious a Father that we may be sure He will bestow upon us, not only all that is re- quisite for the necessities of life, but all that is desirable for its comfort, its grace, and even its splendour. "Consider," He says, ''the lilies of the field .... I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE. 237 like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith ? " In that sentence He not only sanctions, but actually promises, the bestowal on human nature of all the noblest developments of civilization — all the science, art, and glory of which Solomon was the embodiment. But the whole excellence of any constitution such as that of human nature depends less on the character of its several parts and elements than on their relation to each other, and their maintenance in due order and subordination ; and what our Lord teaches is that all these personal and social cravings should be in- dulged in harmony with one supreme motive and desire, and in strict subordination to it. " Seek first," He says, " the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." In this description of the true constitution of a Christian mind there is no maiming of human nature, no denial of any one of its ordinary innate 238 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. instincts, but simply the establishment of a true balance and order among them, and the declaration that there is one impulse which should be the master of all, the supreme governing authority of mind and heart. Now this is one of those truths which in a general sense are very familiar to us, but if we are to give it its due force in our hearts and lives, we have need to reflect very constantly and earnestly on the gracious form in which it is presented to us in this petition. Most thoughtful minds recognize the obligation ot duty, and of obedience to con- science, as taking precedence of all other impulses and motives ; and the acknowledg- ment of this principle is the starting-point of any sound or effectual moral teaching. But it is only the starting-point ; and if human nature, and our own characters, are to receive the full moral* and spiritual energy of which they are capable, and at the same time obtain the strength and consolation which they need in the struggles and trials of life, we must rise above this general and abstract view of THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE. 239 our position, and realize the vivid light which is thrown over our whole existence by the teaching of our Lord in this passage. What He would have us realize is not merely that we have a duty to perform, but that we have a Father in heaven, whom we can absolutely trust here and hereafter, and who invites us to make it the one supreme object of our lives to hallow His Name, to accept the good- ness and grace He is ready to bestow on us, and to make it manifest to the world by our lives in word and deed. He reveals, in the very terms of the petition, not merely a duty towards God, but a relation of the deepest affection and confidence. It would be one thing to be taught to say, " O God, hallowed be Thy Name." It is another thing to be privileged to say, *' Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name." In this form, it will be seen, God does not come before us merely as the Supreme Being, whose will we are unable to resist, who has created all things for Himself, and for whose plea- sure they are and were created. All this is 240 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. involved in the conception. But it is trans- formed into one of infinite grace, tenderness, and affection, by this appeal to our Father, who knows all we need, who is sure to supply it in proportion to our trust in Him, and for whom and with whom we may work in perfect confidence and peace. He is revealed to us in the context of this passage as a God of perfect goodness, holiness, love, and truth, in whom, and in whose kingdom, are all the treasures that our souls can desire. Our Lord brings Him before us as graciously consenting to associate us with Himself, coming into the midst of us, adding the presence of His infinite love and grace to our hearts and lives, and asking us, through His only Son, to accept all this grace, and to make it our supreme happiness, as well as our supreme duty, to live with Him and for Him. This involves a transformation of human existence ; and it constitutes the grand revela- tion contained in the Sermon on the Mount. Almost all men pay homage to the exquisite moral teaching which that sermon contains; on THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE. 241 some points, with justice, they have dwelt on its harmony with the deepest instincts, and the best teaching, of the prophets and other great masters of our race. But we miss its main force unless we realize its animating principle, and appreciate the way in which all morality and all duty are transformed and transfigured under the heavenly light thrown on it by this central revelation of our Father in heaven. To modify the fine image of a great English poet, human life and its moral obligations were discernible, in their main outlines, before our Lord's time, to thoughtful and honest ob* servers ; but while illumined solely by reason, the vast and intricate scene lay under a glim- mering light, '^ dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars, to lonely, weary, wandering travellers." This revelation, however, not merely of the God who is the Creator of all, but of a Father in heaven, and not merely of a Father in heaven, but of our Father in heaven — this, in these three chapters of the Sermon on the Mount, casts over the whole scene the warmth and light of a heavenly day, 16 242 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. and reanimates all human hopes and energies. Henceforth the travellers over the difficult paths of life are no more lonely, for their Father is with them, and need never be wandering, if they do but look to His guidance. It is the theology, rather than the morality, of the Sermon on the Mount which constitutes its main characteristic and its supreme motive power. " Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. . . . Love your enemies, . . . that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. . . . When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth : that thine alms may be in secret : and thy Father which seeth in secret Himself shall reward thee openly. . . . When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and . . . pray to thy Father which is in secret ; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. . . . Ask, and it shall be given you. . . . If ye, 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 THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE. 243 them that ask Him." The introduction into our world of this Heavenly Father, in this personal relation to us, reorganizes all other relations, transforms and illuminates them. That which our Lord does in this prayer, and in the Ser- mon on the Mount, is to give us all one common Father, in a sense in which men had never enjoyed that blessing before, and in which it is nowhere enjoyed apart from His revelation ; and our happiness, our main duty and privilege, as Christians, is to realize that Father's presence, to live as in that Father's sight, to desire above all things His glory, to be thankful to make it the one object of our lives to work for His name and His will. Probably if we interrogate our consciences honestly, we shall most of us, if not all, feel that our tendency is to live far short of this inspiring motive and revelation. The danger and the weakness of even Christian lives is to make themselves the centre of their thoughts and hopes, and to -look to God chiefly for aid and support in their own personal needs, and for their own objects. Those wants and objects 244 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. may be in themselves laudable or innocent, and yet we may fall short of the true purpose and order of our lives, by the mere fact of making them our first object, and the hallowing of God's name and the doing of His will the second. It will be seen, however, that the effect of our living in the spirit of this petition would be the complete subordination of our own wants and desires — in a word, of ourselves — to the will, the honour, and the interest of our Father in heaven. It would induce, not an artificial and unnatural self-denial and asceti- cism, but a complete self- surrender, self- forgetfulness, and contentment. It may be observed, also, that the cardinal doctrine of the Gospel, and that which it is our special privilege, as members of a reformed and Protestant Church, to grasp, meets the greatest difficulty which can be presented to such a spirit of sdlf-forgetfulness. There is one want which, as soon as the depths of the soul are stirred, is so imperious that men cannot rest until it is satisfied; I mean the need of pardon and peace, forgiveness for their sins, and of THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE. 245 personal salvation from the evil and misery that our consciences tell us we have incurred. This is a craving so terrible as to have at times distorted the fair proportions of Christi- anity, and to have induced men to withdraw themselves from all natural obligations in the pursuit of their own personal salvation. Though a terrible perversion, it is but the exaggeration of a true and inevitable instinct under which men have thus withdrawn from their fellows, and from all the duties of life, in order to assure themselves, by a long course of prayer and austerities, of ultimate salvation. But the great truth, vindicated by the Reformers, of complete justification and forgiveness for Christ's sake alone, removes this burden and oppression, and gives us the assurance that, in the concerns of our souls, no less than in those of our bodies, our Father knows what we have need of before we ask Him. We are invited to trust ourselves, with all our sins and our weaknesses, to His Fatherly hands, assured that for Christ's sake He forgives us, and that He will accept us, unworthy as we 246 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. are, to be His children, and to live for Him, — in a word, to serve Him with a quiet mind, to do His will, and to hallow His name for the future. If this anxiety can be removed and this barrier broken down, the way is open for that complete forgetfulness of ourselves, that concentration of our whole thoughts and energies on the glory of God, to which our Lord invites us, and which alone can raise us out of our natural weakness, and give us at once the power and the dignity of children of God. It is this assurance of perfect forgiveness and grace, with all the calm confidence it brings with it, which is peculiarly the cha- racteristic of the Sermon on the Mount. Its teaching, and its spirit, transcend in this re- spect, as we might anticipate, any other part of the inspired writings. Elsewhere, as par- ticularly in .the Epistles of St. Paul, we seem to follow the struggles of wounded and erring human souls, striving to realize the forgiveness, the redemption, and the grace which have been bestowed on them. But as we listen to our Lord on the mount, we seem to hear the calm THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE. 247 and assured accents of One who has the gift of forgiveness in His hands, who sees and knows the love of His Father with a clearness vouchsafed to no one else, not even to His Apostles, and who asks us, with the certainty which that knowledge alone justifies, to trust our Father in heaven, to love Him, and to live for Him. If we realize our Lord as thus speaking to us from His Father, giving us His personal assurance, and taking us by the hand, it will be strange if we do not gain more and more of the love and trust He would inspire in us, more and more make God, and not our- selves or anything else, the centre and main- spring of our life, and live, and work, and pray, that God's name may be hallowed. There are grievous influences at work at the present day which tend to obscure this gracious truth ; and it well deserves our thoughtful reflection how far we are doing our duty in respect to the efforts, which are now so prominent and persistent, to put aside, or at least to put into a secondary place this principle of living above all things 248 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. for God's sake, and desiring above all things the hallowing of His Name. Questions of belief in the existence of God, questions relating to our personal relations and our duty towards Him, are discussed all around us as open matters of opinion. By all means let honest objections and heartfelt struggles be met with patience and answered with care. No one who has had much experience of the difficulties of thought and life in the present day will fail to meet individuals who may entertain such doubts in a sympathetic spirit. But it becomes us, at the same time, to recognize that questions relating to our belief in God, and to our relations towards Him, are not mere matters of opinion. They are matters of practice, and they affect our deepest obligations. Whatever allowance may be made for the errors of individuals, it becomes us to recognize that errors of this kind, instead of being merely speculative, have in them the character of nothing less than unfaithfulness to a natural relation — a kind of treason, not merely against the Lord of all, but against our Father THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE. 249 in heaven, and involving flat rejection of that Saviour who not only lived, but died, to give us assurance of this truth. It becomes us ever to remember that we are the repre- sentatives, not of an hypothesis, not of a principle, not of a mere power, but of our Father which is in heaven ; and we should regard words spoken, and thoughts indulged, in derogation of Him, with a similar — though surely with a far greater — pain, and in some cases indignation, to that with which we should hear the existence or the goodness of a father or friend denied among ourselves. Let it be added, moreover, that this perhaps would be one of the strongest influences we could exercise in combating such errors. Let men see, by our words, our looks, and our conduct, that we live as men who know and love our Father in heaven, and they may begin to believe what they never would have been argued into acknowledging. But, at all events, let this be our main inspiring impulse. Let us be assured that we have all had our tasks set us by our 250 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. Father in heaven ; that He is ever with us, to guide, support, and reward us ; that He graciously gives us His Holy Spirit, at once to think those things that be good, and to perform the same. There can be no such security against temptation, as to reahze that we are ever in the presence of our Father in heaven, and that every violation of duty is a personal wrong done to His loving will, and to the love of His Son, who gave His life for us ; there can be no such source of energy, as to be assured of the constant assistance of His Spirit ; and, finally, there can be no such support in the trials and difficulties that may meet us, as to be wiUing, "patiently and with thanksgiving, to bear our Heavenly Father's corrections, when- soever, by any manner of adversity, it. shall please His gracious goodness to visit us." Let it therefore be our constant prayer that He will pour into our hearts such love towards Him, that we, loving him above all things, may obtain His promises, which exceed all that we can desire ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. OUR LORD'S MERCY, " T]ie)i Jcsiis ansivcrcd and said itnto her, O woman, great is ihy faith: be it unto thee even as thou ivi/t/' —St. Matt, xv. 28. XIV. OUR LORD'S MERCY, THE story of the woman of Canaan pos- sesses a peculiar interest for us, as we are taught to apply its lesson to ourselves at the most solemn moment of our chief act of worship. That which is called the "prayer of humble access " in the Communion Service, immediately before the prayer of consecration, is based on this woman's act of faith, and on our Lord's commendation of it. *' We do not presume," we are taught to say, ''to come to this Thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in Thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under Thy table. But Thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy." The story must 254 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. thus be regarded as embodying one of the most essential principles in our relations to God, and one which should be specially prominent in our minds in our deepest spiritual experiences. It is one of those simple incidents in the Gospel history which exhibit the types of all spiritual life, and enable us to realize, far better than by mere instruction, our true spiritual relations. The circumstances of the case are at first sight surprising, and exhibit our Saviour in an unwonted character. He seems to show the greatest reluctance to perform one of those works of mercy by which His ministry was marked. The woman appeals to Him again and again, with the most patient earnestness, as the Son of David, to relieve her daughter's misery, and He treats her with persistent coldness. To her first appeal for mercy He answers not a word. Then His disciples, disturbed by' her continued importunity, beg Him to send her away — obviously with her request granted — because she cried after them. But He silences them with the statement that He was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the OUR LORD'S MERCY. 255 house of Israel. Then the woman presses close to Him, falls at His feet, and implores Him again to help her; and then He repels her with a severe answer : " Let the children first be filled : for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs." This was putting His reply to the disciples in its harshest and, it might almost seem, most cruel form; and not until the woman breaks through even this defence, by pleading that the very dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table, does our Lord yield. "Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith : be it unto thee even as thou wilt." This unusual conduct of our Lord has been often attributed to an intention of calling into full consciousness the faith which He knew to exist in the woman's heart, and thus at once to deepen it in herself, and to elicit an example which should serve, as it has served, for the instruction and support of all Christian souls. But without excluding this consideration, there are some circumstances in the case which seem 256 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. to give a more obvious explanation of the first motive of our Lord's conduct, and may give the story a still closer application to ourselves. It would appear that the incident occurred immediately after those remarkable scenes in which our Lord had at once raised to the highest point of enthusiasm some of His followers, and had evoked the indignation of the scribes. After the feeding of the five thousand, the people had exclaimed, " This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world ; " and Jesus, we are told, perceived that they would take Him by force, to make Him a king, and He had to depart into a moun- tain alone, and crossed the Sea of Galilee to Bethsaida. There the people ran to Him from the whole region round about, and began to " carry about in beds those that were sick, where they heard He was. And whithersoever He entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought Him that they might touch if it were but the border of His garment : and as many as touched Him were made whole." Then followed His OUR LORD'S MERCY. 257 discourse respecting the bread of life, which gave deep offence to the Jews, and even to many of His disciples ; and then various discussions with the Sadducees and Pharisees respecting ceremonial observances, in which He deeply wounded their prejudices, implying, as He told His disciples, that they were blind leaders of the bhnd. It would seem that, in consequence of this twofold excitement, on the part of His disciples on the one side, and of the Pharisaic party on the other, our Lord deemed it prudent to retire to some district where He could for a time escape observation. St. Matthew says that He withdrew into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, and St. Mark adds that " He entered into an house, and would have no man know it." He was therefore especially concerned, for an important purpose, to abstain from any such exercise of His miraculous powers as would lead to His again arousing that attention from which He was for a time endeavouring to escape ; and if He had at once healed the heathen woman who came from the neighbouring country, He might well 17 258 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. have been again besieged, and tlie purpose of his retirement frustrated. It was not the time for Him to exercise His powers of mercy ; and this alone would explain some exhibition of unwillingness to respond to the woman's appeal. But there is a further consideration to be borne in mind, which shows that His repel- lent answers were more than formal excuses. ''I am not sent," He told His disciples, "but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Now this was a definite principle of His ministry, to which, as another instance shows, great importance is to be attached. Not long before this. He had sent out His twelve dis- ciples on a special mission, and He had expressly charged them, " Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans, enter ye not; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." His answer to the disciples in this instance, there- fore, was but an assertion of the principle which He had inculcated on themselves. It is not necessary for our present purpose to OUR LORD'S MERCY. 259 discuss at length the reason of this principle. It may be only an example of the principle afterwards enunciated by St. Paul — that it was necessary, in accordance with the Divine purposes, that the Gospel should first be preached to the Jews, and that they were intended to enjoy special privileges if they had availed themselves of the offers made to them ; that they were intended, perhaps, to be the prime agents, as a nation, and not merely in the persons of the Apostles, in the kingdom of God. At all events, it was a merciful concession to their prejudices that they should not, in the first instance, be deprived of all the prominence they had en- joyed as God's chosen people, but should be admitted to the first honours and blessings of the Messiah's kingdom. But whatever the reason, such was the fact. It was contrary to the settled plan of our Lord's ministry that its blessings should, at this stage, be extended to any others than to the Jews ; and consequently when this woman appealed to Him, she was asking Him to depart from 26o SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. an important principle of His ordinary con- duct. His ministry was governed by certain laws, which had been determined for pur- poses of the highest import, and it was no easy matter for Him to depart from them. Looking at the matter from this point of view, it may be that the apparent harshness of our Lord is really an indication of a precisely opposite feeling. It may be that, in the first instance, He answered her not a word, be- cause, so far as we may attribute human emotions to His conduct, her appeal raised in Him a conflict of feelings, and He knew not how to answer her. On the one hand, His merciful heart would be touched to its depths by the spectacle of her misery and her patient love for her daughter ; on the other hand. He was restrained from yielding to His first im- pulse by the principles of His ministry. We may be permitted to apply to Him the lan- guage of the Evangelist on another occasion, and say that He feared He "could not do" the work of mercy which He nevertheless longed to perform. He cannot explain it to OUR LORD'S MERCY. 261 the woman, and so He answers her not a word. When His disciples appeal to Him, He gives them at once the real reason of His hesitation, — He was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel, — and they, with His commission to them still fresh in their memories, feel that the argument cannot be answered. But when the woman refuses to be repulsed, and falls at His feet. He is compelled to tell her the reason also; and if we may conceive that conflict of feelings of which I have spoken, it may, perhaps, be felt to be a mark, not of harshness, but of the deepest sympathy, that our Lord should couch the reason in still severer terms. Deep feeling struggling to conceal itself is wont to seek protection in such severe expressions, which derive their very harshness from the depth of the emotion which they are endeavouring to conceal and to repress. All this appears per- fectly natural, perfectly in harmony with the effect which would be produced in a mind of intense pity, checked by some law in the indulgence of its impulse of mercy. And so 262 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. when at length, as Luther says, the woman, by a master-stroke, ensnares our Lord in His own words, and turns His reason — His real reason — for refusing her into an argument for His help, we may well regard Him as really, and not apparently, overpowered by her faith and trust, and the deepest emotions of His heart break forth in His words, ''O woman, great is thy faith : be it unto thee even as thou wilt." The woman had actually succeeded, by her earnest importunity and trust, in inducing our Lord, at a time in some respects most inopportune, to infringe a settled principle of His ministry. She had wrestled with Him, against His own fixed determination, and had compelled Him, as it were, to give free play to His love, independently of the restraint of the laws under which He was for a time acting. It will, I think, be seen that this aspect of the narrative adds a great attraction and force to the bearing of the story upon ourselves. The position it illustrates is that of men who are living under a fixed dispensation of God's OUR LORD'S MERCY. 263 government, under which His conduct towards them is, as a rule, determined by definite laws and conditions, under which they must, for instance, expect certain consequences to follow from their conduct, and can only look for His assistance and blessing in ways and at times which He has determined. This was in a peculiar degree the position of the Jews, and of the Gentiles also, under the Old Dispensa- tion ; and it still remains to a large extent the condition of Christians. We, too, are under a covenant ; a new covenant, indeed, but no less definite than the old ; and we and God alike are bound by its conditions. If we violate our baptismal pledges, if we fail to use those ordinances which are its appointed means of grace, if we forfeit our rights by yielding to known sin, then under all ordinary circumstances we must expect the consequences, and we make agrievous mistake in appealing lightly to the mercy of God. Doubtless His mercy is infinite ; but so is His truth and justice, and His determination to uphold the laws He has 264 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. laid down. Our Lord, in the instance before us, was moved to the depths of His heart by this woman's appeal. We cannot doubt that He longed to help her. But it was not easy for Him, it was very hard, to infringe the rule which He had definitely laid down for His own guidance, with important objects in view. It would destroy all the purposes of God's government, considered as a means of educa- tion, if the laws He has laid down could be departed from whenever their maintenance should seem to conflict with the impulses of mercy. It is not only a shallow and feeble conception of God's character to imagine it easy for Him to dispense with the conse- quences of the violation of His laws, but it involves a practical denial of His exercising any moral government at all. Our Lord's conduct towards this woman must therefore be taken, in the first instance, as one of the deepest warning. It shows that it was hard, cruelly hard, even for the Saviour Himself, to yield to an impulse of mercy when it mihtated against the settled principles of OUR LORD'S MERCY. 265 His action. The laws and rules of His moral government must be maintained conspicuously in force, if the weak and wavering wills of men are to be trained to steadfastness, and if the principles on which He has constituted our nature are to be revealed and vindicated. The Saviour, answering not a word to a poor heart-broken woman, refusing the appeal of His followers in her favour, and repelling her with a harsh answer, must, for our warning, be taken to illustrate what must be often the feeling of God towards us when we have violated our covenant with Him, and expect Him to have pity on us simply because of the misery we have brought upon ourselves. Doubtless He longs to have mercy on us, but He cannot be more relenting than the Saviour Himself was. Something more than a mere appeal, something more than a confession of misery, is needed, if the fixed rules of His government are to be modified in our favour. But that which is needed is shown, for our infinite encouragement, in the example of this woman. By the side of these rules of His 266 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. ordinary government, there is ever present a higher principle, or a higher law — that of the response of perfect love to genuine and entire faith. There is an appeal which the Saviour knows not how to resist, even from those who have the least claim to the ordinary exercise of His mercy, and that is the appeal of a heart which throws itself absolutely upon Him, which is sensible how completely it is destitute of all claim on His mercy, how by all the laws and rules of ordinary moral government it has forfeited any right to love and forgive- ness, but which casts itself unreservedly upon His love and power. If one of His creatures comes to Him in this spirit, recognizing his true condition, not appealing for His grace on false grounds, but doing homage to His laws and His justice, and trusting solely to His love, the appeal is irresistible. It is to 'be observed that such an appeal answers, for the most part, the very purpose for which the laws established by God are ordinarily maintained. Though it would be inadequate without the perfect atonement OUR LORD'S MERCY. 267 offered by our Lord, yet, so far as it goes, it constitutes a distinct acknowledgment of God's laws and vindication of them ; and so far as this is ensured, the main purpose of the Divine government is answered. In the case of this woman, for instance, it will be noticed that, by acknowledging the inferior position which our Saviour's answer assigned to her, by accepting it in the fullest degree, and not shrinking from even the most disparaging appellation, she vindicated in the eyes of the disciples, and of all those of her own countrymen who might hear of the miracle, the principle of our Saviour's ministry which He was concerned to assert. The request was granted as an excep- tion, and no one who was not prepared to accept the same position could expect the same mercy. So it is with ourselves. God cannot resist the cries of an honest and contrite heart; but it must be honest and contrite in the deepest and most genuine sense, it must be duly sensible of its evil, and that for its evil deeds it worthily deserves to be punished ; and just in proportion to its recognition of its true 268 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. position in this respect, and to the earnestness and truth with which it surrenders itself absolutely to God, to His judgment as well as to His mercy, to His whole will for this world and for the next, may it confidently hope that its bitter prayers will be answered, and that its faith will save it. There are no limits to the Saviour's love and forgiveness, but His mercy can only be exercised so far as His ordinary laws are fully vindicated by confession, and perfect submission for the future. If only this be done, no sin need finally debar us from Him. If not in one character, yet in another ; if we have forfeited the position of children, yet even as " dogs," we can appeal to Him as ''hating nothing that He has made, and as forgiving the sins of all them that are penitent." OUR LORD SAVING SINNERS, " Then circiv near unto Htm all the publicans ami sinners for to hear Him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them^ — St. Luke xv. i, 2. XV. OUR LORD SAVING SINNERS, T F we realize the circumstances of this ■^ scene, there will appear something very extraordinary in the revelation it gives us of human nature on the one side, and of our Lord's graciousness on the other. " Then drew near unto Him," we are told, " all the publicans and sinners for to hear Him." The phrase seems to imply that they were con- stantly around Him, as does the complaint of the Pharisees which immediately follows. They came to Him, as in the instances of Zacchseus and the woman that was a sinner, for grace and deliverance. They were the morally sick of divers diseases and torments, and He healed them. But, we are told, *' the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This 272 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." Now consider who, and of what character, were the men who raised this objection. They were, in their own opinion, and to a great extent in the general popular opinion, the most righteous class among the Jews. They observed all the external ordinances of the Law with minute and conscientious accuracy ; and they held themselves apart, as a peculiarly holy class, from men and women such as the publicans and sinners. Such was their character in their own belief, and in that of most of their fellows. But, as a matter of fact, they were, if not the worst class among the Jews of the day, at least as bad as those whom they thus spurned, and whom they would have kept from our Saviour. We have our Lord's own denunciation of them afterwards : ^' Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites : for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all unclcanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto OUR LORD SAVING SINNERS. 273 men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." Their real character, in fact, was too soon to stand revealed by the most awful and damning evidence. Within a few months of the time at which they were thus asserting their supe- riority and separation from sinners, they per- petrated the most terrible crime the world has ever seen, becoming the deliberate betrayers and murderers of the Just One. They "denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto them, and killed the Prince of life." That crime can only have been the result of an intense depth of malignity, and hatred of the highest truth and righteousness. It betrayed a state of mind far worse than that of the publicans and sinners ; for it showed that, as our Lord said, they had so hardened themselves against righteousness as to be incapable of repent- ance. "Verily I say unto you," He exclaims, " that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, 18 274 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. and ye believed him not : but the pubHcans and the harlots believed him : and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him." The spectacle exhibited to us, therefore, is that of a body of men who, individually and as a class, were in the deepest need of that saving power which our Lord was extending to the publicans and sinners, yet totally unconscious of their condition, and incapable of even apprehending the character and motives of such salvation. As they would have supposed, they might have associated with our Lord on terms of mutual equality, needing nothing at His hands ; and yet they were really in that state of utter separation from all truth and goodness which their conduct soon revealed. There has been no such revelation of the fearful capacities 6i the human heart to blind itself to its own real condition. But now let us consider the attitude of our Saviour towards these men. In order to explain His conduct towards the publicans and sinners, He pro- OUR LORD SAVING SINNERS. 275 ceeds, in a succession of parables, to exhibit and vindicate what might be called the saving instinct in true human nature : intimating what He expressed more explicitly elsewhere, that the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost. If it be but a single sheep out of a hundred, what man is there. He asks, *'who doth not leave the ninety-and-nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it ? " or what woman, if she lose one piece of money out of ten, ^' doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it ? " Or, as in the parable of the Prodigal Son, which imme- diately follows, what father, if one of his sons have been lost and dead to him, does not welcome him back with an outburst of joy, more marked, even if not absolutely greater, than that with which he delighted in a son who had never left him ? If these ' instances show the true instinct of the . human heart, they exhibit to us also the heart of the Son of man, and of the God 276 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. of whom He is the express image and like- ness ; and even, therefore, if the pubUcans and sinners had been as comparatively degraded as the Pharisees supposed, it v^ould have been impossible for Him not to have gone after them, to vv^in them back, and to welcome them to His society and fellowship. But it will be evident that such parables, and the principles they illustrate, are not applicable only to the case of the publicans and sinners. If they display our Lord's feelings towards one class of the lost, they/ must express His feelings towards all. It ' matters not which is the sheep, or whither it has wandered. The shepherd will equally go after it, until he finds it. But in view of what has just been said of the character and condition of the Pharisees, we must re- cognize that they belonged to the class of the lost, even more than the publicans and sinners. They had *' erred and strayed like lost sheep " in even more perilous directions, and were in even more imminent danger of utter destruction. When they revealed their OUR LORD SAVING SINNERS. 277 blindness and hardness of heart by murmur- ing at our Lord receiving sinners and eating with them, is it conceivable that He did not feel the same impulse to save them, and to / bring them back to Him, as He had felt / towards the more visibly degraded classes of His countrymen ? Any such supposition, it would seem, would do great injustice to the comprehensiveness and intensity of the * saving impulse in the Saviour's heart. These Pharisees and Scribes were, in an eminent degree, the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand, the most eminent mem- bers of the race whom he had chosen to Himself to be His inheritance, and at least in their capacities, mental and moral, not unworthy of being chosen for such a high destiny. We are somewhat apt, perhaps, to contemplate our Lord's love and saving power too exclusively in relation to the lower and weaker classes, towards whom it was more conspicuously successful. Perhaps some- thing of the Pharisee clings about us all, and we associate the idea of the lost, as the ' 278 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. Pharisees and scribes did, most naturally with those who are lost in the eye of the world. But our Lord can have made no such distinction, and can have been liable to no such disproportion of moral vision ; and we must conceive Him yearning over the Pharisees and scribes, in their hardness and bitterness, not less than over the classes who were more visibly suffering. After all, the worst diseases are those which are internal, and the Saviour, who knew the hearts of all men, must have had His deepest sympathy called out for those who, though unconscious of it, were the most deeply ruined. What else, in fact, is the meaning of that supreme and most touching lamentation, when He exclaimed, at the close of His ministry, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, §ind stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often w^ould I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not " ? As those w^ords imply, it is the Jeru- salem of these very Scribes and Pharisees, OUR LORD SAVING SINNERS. 279 the Jerusalem which killed the prophets, and stoned them which were sent unto her, and which, as He knew, was about to crucify Himself, whose children He would fain have gathered together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings. These were the feelings with which He must have contem- plated the very men who addressed to Him that murmur — a murmur which, though they knew it not, applied even more to themselves than to others, " This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." Such, as expressed elsewhere by our Lord Himself, was His feeling towards these self-righteous and perverse classes; and if we peruse the Gospels with this considera- tion in view, we shall discern throughout further evidence of it, and obtain a striking illustration of our Lord's method as a Saviour. His mission, as declared by the angels at His birth, was to save His people from their sins. That involves everything else. If He could have restored to them their moral and spiritual health, all other blessings would 28o SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. have followed. The kingdom of heaven was at hand ; He was soon to establish all its new powders and privileges ; and the Jews had only to repent, in order to enter into the full enjoyment of them. Accordingly w^e find His work of salvation consisting, throughout, of efforts to arouse men's con- v^ sciences, to awaken their sense of their moral evil and spiritual misery, and to induce them to come to Him for life and deliverance. He commences, therefore, by exposing, as in the Sermon on the Mount, the fallacies and corruptions into which the Jewish conscience had been betrayed, casting the vivid and piercing light of a perfect moral discern- ment upon all the dark and sepulchral corners of the religious life of the day, and at the same time proclaiming, in Himself and in His Father, a grace and goodness sufficient to support men under all dangers, and carry them through all temptations. If He pro- claimed, on the one hand, '' Enter ye in at the strait gate, . . . because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth OUR LORD SAVING SINNERS. 281 unto life, and few there be that find it," He proclaimed at the same time, and almost in the same breath, "Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you : for every one that asketh receiveth ; and he that seeketh findeth ; and to him that knocketh " — even at that strait gate — '' it shall be opened." * This proclamation and this promise were to__all alike, to Scribes and Pharisees no less than to His disciples and to the people at large ; but the different manner in which it was received by various classes necessitated different methods in His further preaching. By the Scribes and Pharisees it was resented and rejected, and that so fiercely, that from a very early period of His ministry we find Him sensible that He was not safe in Judaea and Jerusalem. But the message, ahke of repentance and of grace, was welcomed by simpler and less instructed people, who, in the districts at a distance from Jerusalem, were less under the influence of the ruling classes. Accordingly, in mercy alike to the 282 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. scribes and Pharisees and to these simpler people, our Lord left Judaea and departed into Galilee, and the greater part of His ministry, as recorded in the first three Gospels, was passed there, and was specially directed to the needs and the convictions of the Galilean population. The manner in which He was received and treated by the ruling classes at Jerusalem is chiefly recorded in the Gospel of St. John, and, as has been observed already, the difference, on which so much objection has sometimes been based, between the character of our Lord's teaching in the fourth Gospel from that which is represented in the other three, is abundantly explained by the fact that it was addressed to a wholly different class, ' and was directed to meet other difficulties. In Jerusalem, He was surrounded by a learned community, deeply impregnated with lofty theological speculations. In Galilee He was dealing with a simpler population, with whom it was more important to insist on the simpler elements in His message. OUR LORD SAVING SINNERS. 283 But what we are concerned to observe, in order to illustrate our Lord's method and motives, is that, in withdrawing from Jeru- salem for a while, and thus avoiding the fierce opposition which He from the outset encountered there. He afforded to the Pharisees and their allies a time, as it were, of grace, an opportunity for reconsidering/ the attitude they had taken towards Him, as they heard, or occasionally saw. His / words of truth or deeds of mercy else- where. While He preached the Gospel to the poor in Galilee, He was affording the Pharisees an opportunity of understand- ' ing it better. During this period, therefore. He appears to avoid, as far as possible, placing Himself in vehement antagonism with them. There is a wonderful patience in His method of dealing with them when- ever they come across His path. The parables, as has often been observed, are a conspicuous illustration of this accommoda- tion to their weakness, of this desire, so to speak, to give them time. He embodies; 2S4 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. the truth in stories more calculated than any others to come home to men's hearts, by appealing to their natural feelings; but He abstains as long as He can from giving those narratives any direct personal applica- tion. The Pharisees perceive at the last that He begins to speak parables against them ; but the early parables, and the greater number, like those in this passage, simply express, in the most touching form, essential elements of His message, and reveal His true character, without any direct rebuke or personal denunciation. From this point of view, we cannot fail to observe the supreme gentleness and patience of the manner in which He met the observation, " This man receiveth sinners, f and eateth with them." With what justice 1 might He not have turned indignantly upon them ! How naturally a human teacher would have so turned upon them, asking them what right they had to denounce others ' as sinners, when they were sinners of an even deeper dye themselves, needing even OUR LORD SAVING SINNERS. 285 a mightier salvation ! We can, in fact, hardly conceive an occasion in itself more fitting for some such severe rebuke, than one on which the intense hypocrisy and selfishness of the Pharisees vi^ere thus dis- played. Rut our Lord was to them, as to others, a Saviour; and with supreme patience, He makes an appeal to their better nature in these simple stories, as though He would fain find His way, if possible, into some kindly human corner of their hearts, and thus win their sympathy and trust. Picture to yourselves these fierce and stern hypocrites, endeavouring to stand / between our Lord and the sinning and - suffering souls He was saving; imagine the / indignation you would probably have felt, if you had been present at such an exhibi- tion of hard-heartedness, and had understood it, and you will then appreciate in some measure the supreme gentleness which only replies by that simple parable of the Lost Sheep — ^just that one tender image, held up before those hard faces, to see if it would 286 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. not soften them, and lead them to trust that gentle hand themselves. But at length, when all these patient efforts and these merciful appeals have failed, when it becomes evident that their hearts were hardened, and that graciousness had no effect upon them — then, but not till then, and doubt- less still with the same merciful intention, our Lord resorted to the last weapon at His com-// mand, the most terrible arrow in His quiver. In Scriptural language, He ''made a way to His indignation," and denounced them with a sternness, and almost bitterness, to which there is no parallel elsewhere. In that chapter of St. Matthew where He reiterates, "Woe unto/ you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," where He finally exclaims, " Ye serpents, ye genera- tion of vipers, how can ye escape the damna- tion of hell ?" He seems to be casting upon them " the furiousness of His wrath, anger, displeasure, and trouble." But that, even in the midst of this final tumult and tempest of Divine wrath, the feelings and impulses of a Saviour are still present and still supreme/ OUR LORD SA VING SINNERS. 287 is shown by the striking fact that it is at the end of this awful denunciation, as its last word and the very essence of its spirit, that He uttered the touching lamentation already quoted, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not." It is a Saviour's voice to the last, now in gentleness and now in wrath, but ever yearning after the lost, and sparing Himself nothing, either of patience, or indignation, or suffering, or prayer, that He might win them back. Do not these considerations illustrate the unity of our Lord's ministry, and cast a pecu- liarly gracious light upon all His teaching? From first to last He^ is saving His people from their sins — the weak and corrupt by arousing in them at once a recognition of their corruption, and a conviction of His will and power to save them ; and the hard-hearted and self-willed by endeavouring, if possible, to 288 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. soften them, but if not, to break them down — anything, rather than leave them under the miserable delusion that they do not need His help for their salvation. He offered salvation — that is, deliverance from sin — to all, and every one who thus submitted to Him and trusted in Him was deHvered. Often, as in the case of the Apostles themselves, old weak- nesses, temptations, and errors Hngered in them, and were but gradually eradicated ; but while He was with them He led them onward in the strait and narrow way towards ever- lasting life ; and when He was taken from them He sent them His Spirit, to continue His guidance, and even to give it them in greater measure. It is a fearful reflection that there were those who to the last set their hearts against Him, and whom He could only leave to destruction. « But if there be such combined gracious- ness and awfulness in this vision of our Lord's work and ministry on earth, it is our privilege and our warning to take to heart tlie truth that He is carrying forward pre- OUR LORD SAVING SINNERS. 289 cisely the same ministry now. By means of His Spirit, He deals with all of us just as He dealt of old with the publicans and sinners on the one side and with the Pharisees on the other. His voice is ever speaking within us, now in tones of mercy, now of gentxc suggestion, now of severe rebuke. This is the true meaning and interpretation of that voice of the conscience, of which every soul is sensible. It is our privilege, as Christians, to know that it is no mere social influence, no mere utterance of the social sense, developed and accumulated through long ages. How- ever such influences may coexist with a higher one, and be used by it, they are but sub- ordinate instruments and agencies in our moral and spiritual education ; and they are all in the hands of the gracious Lord whom we have been contemplating in His saving work. Just as He addressed Himself in a different manner to different people at different times, warning them against their special dangers, and giving them grace for their special needs, so does He address Himself now to every 19 290 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. one of us in the secrets of our hearts, ever endeavouring to save us from our sins. Did we realize that personal presence, did we give this living and loving interpretation to the guidance of the Divine Spirit, we could hardly fail to surrender ourselves to it with greater earnestness, thankfulness, and submission ; and it is hard to conceive how we could ever suffer ourselves to be over- taken by anything like Pharisaic hardness. At all events, we shall do well to remember that the one error which is irremediable is for a human being, born imperfect, and inevitably more or less corrupted by sin, to imagine, like the Pharisees, even uncon- sciously or partially, that he does not need a Saviour — a Saviour not merely to deliver him from the consequences of his sins, but to deliver hinj from the sins themselves in the present. We all need that gracious love to seek us when we go astray, and to keep us in the right fold ; and the Saviour's constant assurance was that His love is ever at our side, up to the last, and even in our worst OUR LORD SAVING SINNERS. 291 moments, longing to gather us under its wings, and if we yield to it, ever saving us and helping us to save others. For His name was called Jesus, because " He shall save His people from their sins." THE FATHER AND THE PRODIGAL SON. "And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." — St. Luke XV. 20. XVI. THE FATHER AND THE PRODIGAL SON. nr^HESE are the central words of the -*- parable of the Prodigal Son, so fami- liar to every one, and so dear to all Chris- tian souls. It is one of the parts of our Lord's teaching which commends itself imme- diately to our hearts ; and it has been called the gospel within the gospel, containing, as it were, the very essence of the good news which our Lord came to deliver. Without following all its details, let us reconsider the central truths which it enforces. In respect to all our Lord's parables, our first and chief endeavour should be to fix our minds on the main principle which they were intended to illustrate. Their particular incidents are of great interest and beauty ; but they are all 296 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. designed to bring out more clearly the main purpose for which the parable was spoken. With this view, let us bear in m.ind that this parable is the last of three — those of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Piece of Silver, and the Prodigal Son — which were spoken at the same time, in order to silence some murmurs which the Pharisees and Scribes had raised against our Lord's conduct. We are told that there " drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners for to hear Him. And the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." They could understand His preach- ing to them, denouncing their sins, and call- ing them to a better life, but not His associating with them as one who cared for them, and felt a personal interest in their welfare. In* the view of the Pharisees, God had declared certain laws, and established a fixed order in the world ; and men were left thenceforth to bear the consequences of obedience or disobedience to those laws and that order. The Jewish people had been THE FATHER AND THE PRODIGAL SON. 297 given a privileged position in this Divinely constituted system ; and in proportion as they conformed to the rules laid down for the daily guidance of their lives, v\^ould they be admitted to its full blessings. Content with the enjoyment of these advantages them- selves, they felt no concern that the Gentiles, or even the outcasts of their own nation, were destitute of them, or had forfeited them. But all they appeared to contemplate was a world of certain visible and tangible blessings, earned by obedience to certain definite duties and cere- monies, and in which those who had failed in such duties, or did not enjoy the advan- tages of a privileged position, must bear the natural consequence of their misfortune or their fault. Now let us observe the manner in which our Lord meets this state of mind. The hardness of heart, and the selfish disregard of others which it displays, are painfully evident, and on other occasions our Lord expressly denounces this characteristic of the 298 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. Pharisaic mind. But on this occasion He adopts a more generous and winning method. Instead of denouncing the cruel hard-hearted- ness of the Pharisees and scribes, He recalls to their minds the gracious realities which they were leaving out of sight. They were contemplating, as has been said, a world of laws and rules, and of a fixed order, per- manently and unalterably established by God; but they were practically leaving out of sight that God Himself, His character and His heart. Our Lord tells them the parable of the Man with a Hundred Sheep, who, if he loses one of them, leaves the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and goes after that which is lost, until he find it. As though He would say to them, ''You are thinking of the world as if it were simply a sheepfold surrounded* by deserts, some of the sheep, like yourselves, being safe within the fold, others w^andering from it, or never brought within it, and ever in peril of destruction. But you have forgotten the Shepherd. There is a Shepherd, to whom all those sheep are THE FATHER AND THE PRODIGAL SON. 299 precious, and He cannot leave them to perish, without Himself endeavouring to go after them and bring them back." Similarly, in the parable of the Lost Piece of Money, He may be regarded as saying, *' You contem- plate all these publicans and sinners as lost coins, scattered treasures ; but do you sup- pose there is no one to whom they belong, and who is as much concerned to recover them as a woman to find a piece of money which she had lost ? " In those two parables our Lord appeals to the simplest and commonest instincts of human nature, and asks the Pharisees whether it is reasonable to sup- pose that, if sheep are precious to a shep- herd, and money to a housewife, human souls, however lost and erring, are not precious in the sight of Him who made them, and to whom they belong. But in this parable of the Prodigal Son our Lord presents the same argument in a deeper and still more touching form. He reminds the Pharisees that these lost and wandering souls have not merely a Creator 300 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. to whom they belong, but a Father whose children they are, and who feels towards them with a Father's heart. He draws back, as it were, the veil which hides heaven from our view, and bids us contemplate that Father's love, yearning for the recovery of His lost children. The publicans and sinners were like the prodigal son in the far country, and the Pharisees could only see him there, in his exile, and had forgotten entirely that he had a home, and that there was a Father in that home who still loved him, and longed for his return. Thus the essential teaching of the parable, as of the two which precede it, is to be seen in the contrast between the two aspects of life as presented by the Pharisees on the one side, and by our Lord on the other. To them there is no one personally toncerned with the welfare of the lost and wandering. If they are ruined, it is by their own sin, and there are none but their own friends to help them or to be the worse for their loss. Our Lord, on the other hand, reveals a spiritual world, in THE FATHER AND THE PRODIGAL SON. 301 which there is infinite love for every one of these wandering sheep and prodigal children. There is a heaven, in which there is joy over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance ; there are angels, in whose pre- sence there is similar joy; above all, there is a Father, who never loses His remem- brance of erring sons, who sees them when they are yet a great way off, and has com- passion, and is eager to receive them with the tenderest affection and the deepest joy. The Pharisees had forgotten all this divine and spiritual world. Our Lord recalls it. He proclaims Himself the Shepherd of these lost sheep, the Owner of these lost treasures, the Son of the Father, whose love to His prodigal children He reveals ; and He thus explains and justifies His own conduct, and declares the most gracious of all messages to those whom He was striving to save. It must surely appear the strangest of all the perversities of human nature that the reality thus revealed by our Lord should 302 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. ever be allowed to assume a secondary place in men's thoughts. There can be no reality so momentous in its influence over our lives as that of our being the children of our Father in heaven, and standing to Him in the conscious relation of love and trust. Amongst ourselves, personal relations are those which have the deepest and most blessed influence on our lives, and no external advantages, of whatever kind, can compensate for unhappiness in our relations to one another. Yet, after all, as our Lord illus- trates in this parable, the sad secret of human life consists, to a large extent, in the fact that men are perpetually sacrificing the blessings of love and trust, and all the gracious influences of affection, for mere external plea- sure. They do it in their personal relations to each other. The prodigal son in the parable sacrifices his father's home, and his father's heart, for the sake of pleasures which have no element of affection in them, lie said to his father, in characteristic phrase, " Give me the portion of goods that falleth THE FATHER AND THE PRODIGAL SON. 303 to me." Those material external goods were more to him than his father's affection. It is remarkable that the case is practically the same with the elder son. His complaint, at the end of the parable, when he found that his brother had been received with such rejoicing, indicates a similar coldness of feeling. ** Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment; and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends." As though the chief advantage of remaining in his father's house was that he might have an occasional feast with his friends ! His father, accordingly, rebukes him by recalling to him the blessings of his per- sonal relation with himself. *'Son," he says, *' thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." Had the prodigal son cared more for his father's affection than for any other worldly blessing, he would never have left his home for the mere excitements of pleasure. Had the elder son appreciated the depth of his father's love, and the supreme delight 304 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. of the recovery of a lost affection, he never - could have been jealous of his brother's re- ception. Similarly, had the Pharisees retained any due remembrance of that loving God and Father of whom their own Scriptures spoke, they could never have looked with such cold- ness of heart on the ruin of that Father's children, or failed to appreciate our Lord's love for them. The principal thing accord- ingly which our Lord is revealing, alike in these parables and throughout His ministry, is this personal, living, and loving Father, the whole yearnings of whose heart are to win His children back to Himself, and to restore them to His image. The first words of His prayer, ** Our Father, which art in heaven," are the key to the whole of His teaching; and He meets every error, every hardness, and every sin in human nature, by recalling, as in this parable, the character of the Father of whom we are children. It cannot be sufficiently borne in mind that this is what is at stake in the dis- cussions we hear around us respecting the THE FATHER AND THE PRODIGAL SON. 305 personal character of God. We must, of course, be incapable of forming any adequate idea of the nature and personality of the Supreme Being, and any words we use respecting Him must fall infinitely short of the reality. But what we are practically concerned with, when maintaining the per- sonal character of God, is to uphold the truth which is enforced by our Lord with such vividness in this parable. We are concerned to believe that we have a Father in heaven, who feels towards each one of us with that unbounded and generous, and in the light of this parable we may venture to say, that human affection, which our Lord depicts so graciously in the relation of the father to the prodigal son. What we are concerned to believe is that in all our wan- derings from Him, God has us still in His heart, and that it is our privilege at any moment to turn our faces towards our heavenly home with the certainty that, when we are yet a great way off, He will come forward to welcome us, to receive us back, 20 ' 3o6 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. to forgive all our past evil, and to call for the best robe in which to clothe our naked- ness. Nothing is so lamentably short of the urgency of the case, nothing can so entirely miss the point, as the purely abstract arguments which are sometimes urged on this subject. The question at issue is this : Have we, as moral beings, moral relations, not only with our fellows, but with a living God of all righteousness, grace and love, and may we look up to Him, at all moments of our lives, with sure confidence that He will hear us and guide us ? Our Lord, in revealing His Father to us in this character, touched anew the springs of the deepest feelings in the human heart. He taught men to care for each other, as well as to care for themselves. He awoke in the most lost soul the sense that it had yet a life worth living, and that a home of the most blessed affections was still open to it. He aroused in hard hearts the sense that, if all were thus precious to the God of heaven and earth, all ought to be similarly precious THE FATHER AND THE PRODIGAL SON. 307 to themselves. It would be unjust to human nature to say that such feelings have not existed apart from the revelation of Christ — or rather it v^ould be unjust to the God who created that human nature in His own image. But the history of the world certainly shows that you cannot maintain these feelings of affection, you cannot keep human hearts really tender, whether in respect to their own consciences or in their relations to others, except so far as you maintain them in conscious relation to a Father in heaven in whom they live, and move, and have their being. Our Lord relied in all His teaching on that revelation. He avoids, as long as He can, dealing with men in wrath and just indignation. He abstains, as long as He can, from denouncing even the Phari- sees themselves. He prefers, as in this parable, to endeavour to touch their hearts by reveahng the love and grace which they are forgetting, and thus strives to soften their souls by these touches of divine and hum.an nature. If this fails, nothing remains 3o8 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. but that furiousness of indignation and wrath, displeasure and trouble, which in the end He poured on the heads of the scribes and Pharisees; but He strives, to the very last, to move them by these exquisite pictures of Divine Love and Fatherhood. It is for us to endeavour to bear in mind more constantly these gracious pictures, as the revelation to ourselves of the deepest realities in our own lives. Our temptations are precisely similar to those with which our Lord was dealing in this instance, and our salvation is to be found in believing and acting on the simple truths of the parable. One peculiar danger of our day, as has been already implied, is to obscure this personal relation. Abstract philosophical difficulties on the one side, scientific difficulties on the other, are .pressed upon us, with the view, or at least with the tendency, of making us acquiesce in a conception of life practically identical with that of the Pharisees — a life governed entirely by fixed laws, in which certain classes and races have special THE FATHER AND THE PRODIGAL SON 309 privileges, and in which the others must be left to suffer the consequences of their failures or their weaknesses. Let us not hesitate to acknowledge that there are diffi- culties and perplexities in the world around us which it is beyond our finite intelligence to disentangle. Let us not fail to recognize also, and to remember for our guidance and for our warning, that to a large extent, in the course of His divine education of our souls, God does leave us to bear the natural consequences of our conduct, and that in the general course of His moral government He maintains His ordinary laws in full operation. His method of education is Hke that of the father in the parable. If a man says to Him, in practice, "Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me," He may see fit to yield to the request, and to allow the man to learn, by his own experi- ence, the vanity of the worldly pleasures which he has chosen. To a great extent we all have to bear the natural punishment of our sins, and we can never expect to be 310 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. fully relieved from it until we are finally received into the eternal home of our Father. But the maintenance of this discipline is perfectly compatible, as this parable shows, with absolute forgiveness and love on our Father's part, as well as with His gracious help to temper the difficulties and trials we have brought upon ourselves and others, and to lead us, by His Spirit, more and more in the right path. In short, amidst all our perplexities, it is our privilege to accept our Lord's assurance in faith ; and, in reliance on it, to turn our hearts to our Father in heaven, to believe that He is at every moment at our side, bound to us by the love and sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, and welcoming us in proportion to the sin- cerity and ^ faith with which we turn to Him and rely upon Him. This is the only adequate encouragement we can have when sensible of our evil, and desiring to escape from it. He who once realizes the extent to which he has wandered from his heavenly home, and the corruption THE FATHER AND THE PRODIGAL SON. 311 which his soul has suffered, will be sensible that it is impossible for him adequately to repent, and still more to recover himself, by his own efforts. But when a man can return to a Divine and Almighty Father, who offers him complete forgiveness, and is able by His Spirit to regenerate and renew him, everything becomes possible. He may be assured that the past will be more and more blotted out, and that henceforth he will be able to live, not merely as the servant, but as the son of God. We must, as has been said, rely on our Lord's own word for this gracious assurance, for the temptations and difficulties of life are far too great to be met by the light of our own reason, or in our own strength. But at the same time, in proportion as we act on this assurance in faith shall we be convinced of its truth by our daily experience. There is nothing to which Christian experience bears more cer- tain witness than that in proportion as a man lifts up his heart in daily prayer to his Father in heaven, trusting to His mercy and 312 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. forgiveness for Jesus Christ's sake, seeking the guidance of His Spirit, and honestly striving to follow it, is he sensible of the presence of that Divine Hand, to lead him aright, and to purify him from his evil. The chains of old sins grow daily weaker, the love and appreciation of all goodness grow daily stronger, the soul is sensible that its Heavenly Father has come forth, as in the parable, to meet it, and the apprehension of His love daily increases from faith to sight. If we are sensible, as we all must be, that in one way or another, in greater or less degree, we have acted like the prodigal son, let us be assured, by our Lord's gracious teaching, that our Father is ever longing for us to return, and let us yield Him that answer of love, and trust, and sincere repentance* for which alone He craves at our hands. THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN, "/ tell yon, this man zvcnt down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased ; and he that huinbldh himself shall be exalted." — St. Luke xviii. 14. XVII. THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. '" I ^HIS parable affords a striking instance •^ of our Lord's power to produce the most momentous impression by the simplest and fewest words. It has stamped upon men's hearts an ineradicable perception of the essential vice of the Pharisee, and has created a deep sympathy with the feeling of the Publican, and has thus completely reversed, in the thoughts of Christians, the relation in which the two classes stood towards each other at the time the parable was spoken. If we consider the nature of the effect which has thus been produced, bearing in mind the circumstances and the state of feeling with which our Lord had to deal, we must needs be astonished alike at the result and the method. 3i6 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. We are familiar with the fact that the Pharisee and the PubHcan represented at that day, in the general estimation of the world, the best and the worst types of character respectively. Our Lord puts this popular estimate in the strongest light when He says, in the Sermon on the Mount, " Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven ; " as though the righteousness of the Pharisees were the highest standard recognized among most of those whom He addressed. He Himself, again, recognized not less clearly the general estimate of the Publicans, by His use of the phrase *' publicans and sinners." The admiration, if not the sympathy, of society went with the Pharisee, while the Publicans were the objects of contempt, if not of abhorrence. Those are the two aspects in which, so to say, they appear on the stage, for the purpose of the moral drama which is to be enacted. Yet our Lord, within the space of this short parable, succeeds in entirely reversing these aspects ; THE PHARISEE AMJ THE PUBLICAN. 317 His hearers are left in sympathy with the Publican and with aversion from the Pharisee ; and when He says, " I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other," He does but confirm a judgment which has already been evoked from the hearts and consciences of those who listened to the parable. It is the very function of a parable to produce conviction of the truth it is designed to urge by the inherent force of the story. Accordingly, in this instance the effect is pro- duced not merely by the authoritative state- ment with which our Lord closes the parable, but by the narrative itself. Our Lord has simply placed the Pharisee and the Publican before us in a special relation; He has revealed to us, by a single incident in their lives, the real secrets of their hearts ; and we at once see them in their true character, and realize, with all the force of a vivid experience, the vital principle on which He is insisting. Now we shall best appreciate the lesson the parable conveys if we inquire what are the means by which, so to say, this wonderful 3i8 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. transformation of ordinary social judgment is produced. It is not done, we may observe, by any such detailed examination of the cha- racters of the two men as our Lord might have made. Nothing is said to disparage the Pharisee's claim to the virtues on which he prided himself; on the other hand, nothing is said to vindicate the Publican from the vices with which the Pharisee charges him. Each man is left in the character commonly attributed to him, so far as his ordinary actions are concerned, and is, so to say, taken as he stands. It would doubtless have been possible, in any particular case, to have exposed the hollowness of the Pharisee's claim to many of the very virtues of which he boasted, and on the other hand, to have exhibited features of excellence in the character of the Publican, which had .been obscured and overlaid by his vices. That is a common method among writers who wish to awaken our sympathy for classes who are degraded, and to show how much good there may be in the vicious, and how much vice in the apparently good. THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 319 But our Lord produces an infinitely deeper impression by a far simpler method. Instead of comparing these men with one another, or examining minutely their special character- istics, He brings them both before one supreme standard. The moment He takes for placing them before us is when they went up into the Temple to pray. By that simple expedient — if the expression may be allowed in speaking of the divine art of these parables — He brings the Pharisee and the PubHcan into a relation in which men were not wont to consider them, brings a new light to bear on their characters, and thus compels us to recognize the really central facts of their moral position. As long as the two men were contemplated in their positions in the world around them — the Pharisee in his conspicuous, even if ostenta- tious, justness and strictness of conduct; the Publican in his extortionate occupation, and perhaps in his actual avarice and deceit — the one man surrounded with social respect, the other delivered over to social contempt — so long it might have been difficult to regard them with a judgment very different from that of the society of the day. The one was com- paratively elevated in character, the other at least comparatively degraded, and it might be difficult to see by what means they could be brought together on any terms of equality. Our Lord, therefore, removes them, by this parable, from this purely human and social sphere. He takes them completel}' away from their fellows, into another and a higher world. He depicts them going up into the Temple to pray ; He thus places them in the presence of God, and bids us see how that presence alters altogether the relations in which they stand. The immediate effect is precisely that which our Lord expresses in the maxim with which He concludes the parable, and which he endorses in a similar connection on other occasions. He that exalteth himself is abased, he that humbleth himself is exalted. We at once perceive that a sub- stantial equality is established between the two men. As long as the Pharisee was priding himself on his high qualities and THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 321 virtues in the presence of his fellow-men, it might be difficult to perceive, or at least to make conspicuous, the unreasonableness of his pride. But the moment he begins to boast of such excellences in the presence of God, we are sensible of the hollowness and enormity of the sentiment. Allowing that he were not as other men are, or even as this Publican, what was that in the presence of Him who charges even His angels with folly, and in whose sight the heavens are not pure ? In the very pride thus exhibited in such a presence we feel at once the Pharisee's utterly inadequate conception of the righteousness which was required of him, the miserable imperfection of his own ideas of truth, and purity, and self-denial : while in his contempt of others, and his heartless disregard of them, in the absence of any prayer or wish for their salvation, he reveals the presence in his heart of one of the worst vices of human nature. The Pharisee is thus self-condemned the moment he comes into that Presence, and opens the secrets of 21 322 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. his heart before it. There is no need to enter into a detailed judgment of the weak- nesses and imperfections of his conduct, such as is given in the Sermon on the Mount. All is revealed in a moment by the sense of the Divine presence, and by the av^^ful contrast, at once suggested to our minds, between the Pharisee's presumptuous imper- fection and the perfect holiness and mercy of the God before whom he presented "himself. On the other hand, an equally sudden light breaks on the position of the Publican, and gives him a new dignity and a new hope. Sensible that he can make no claim to any excellence which would justify him in appealing for God's approval, conscious only of his sin, his weakness, and his need, he thro^vs himself on the mercy of God, and in that very act obtains a new position and a new prospect. We are sensible that the prayer, that God would be merciful to him a sinner, is an appeal which, if uttered in sincerity of heart, could . not fail to be THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 323 heard ; and that the hope was thus opened to the Pubhcan, not merely of forgiveness, but of amendment and purification. The only hope for the Pharisee was that he might be abased, be made sensible of his inherent evil, and thus compelled to place himself on the level of the Publican before God, smiting his breast, and exclaiming, in his turn, ''God be merciful to me a sinner." The hope is obviously open to the Pubhcan that he may, in all sincerity, have reason to thank God that he is delivered from his extortion, his injustice, or his lust, and thus be able to say, " By the grace of God I am what I am : and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain." The abasement of the Pharisee, the exaltation of the Publican, are conspicuous even as they stand in the Temple ; for they are in the presence of One who ''resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble." It w^ould be difficult to find a more forcible illustration of the momentous necessity for maintaining a true faith in God, if the 324 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORDS MINISTRY. principles and practice of morality are to be maintained among us, and in our own hearts, in full vigour and reality. There are two aspects in which this question ought to be considered, each of vital importance, but very distinct in character. The first is whether the principle of duty in general, and the particular obligations of a lofty morality, have any ultimate foundation except in the revealed will of God. That is a fundamental question of the most vital im- portance ; but it is not that which is illustrated by this parable. The former may be said to concern morality in the abstract; but the point on which this parable throws such light is the importance of a true know- ledge of God, and of a true faith in Him, to morality in the concrete ; that is to say, to the moral character and life of individual men. That which the character of the Pharisee illustrates is that, even when men admit a high standard of morality in the abstract, they are so imperfect, so liable to self-deception, and so prone to deceive and THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 325 flatter each other, that in the midst of the loftiest professions, they are capable of the most grievous corruptions, and the most dangerous and subtle vices. Measuring them- selves by themselves, and comparing them- selves among themselves, men cannot be truly wise, or maintain a just conception of the excellence required of them. Once sup- pose, if that be possible, the conception of a divine judgment and a divine standard to be lost sight of, or suppose rather, to put the matter more simply and truly, the apprehension of a living God to whom we are accountable being lost, and the tempta- tion which is illustrated in the case of the Pharisee would be irresistible — for men to compare themselves with one another, and for those who were superior in the excel- lences of^mind, and will, and character, which make their way in society, to be content with this false standard of social admiration, and in greater or less degree to trust in themselves that they were righteous, and to despise others. There is no temptation more conspicuously illustrated by all history, whether in that of the East or West, in the ancient world or in modern society. The tendency of human nature, apart from the perception of its rela- tion to a living God and Judge and Saviour, is to establish castes of one kind or another, to pride itself on the excellences which are admired in the world of such castes, and to stand aloof from those who are without them. Standards become hardened, ideas narrowed, and men's hearts become selfish and self-satisfied. On the other hand, without this sense of a living God and Saviour, those classes which, like the Publican, too often from the pressure of circumstances, become degraded, have no hope, or none sufficient to inspire in them generally any strenuous efforts after recovery and purification. The tendency of society, if contemplated by itself, is, no doubt, to depress the weak and to increase the dominion of the strong. Those who have yielded to temptation in the struggle of life, and who have forfeited their position or THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 327 character, or those who have inherited conditions of existence which depress, and it may be degrade, them, have compara- tively Httle hope in the mere circumstances of social life ; and there must thus be a constant tendency, in a society which stands by itself, to separate more and more into classes like the Pharisee and the Publican. Of course, on the other hand, the parable contains a not less conspicuous warning of the powerlessness of a mere intellectual belief in God to remedy these evils. Never was the name of God held formally in higher reverence than among the Jew^s in our Lord's day. They believed that there was one God, and they did well ; but because it was a mere formal belief, it was, for practical purposes, worse than no belief at all. The distinguished historian Ewald has vividly described the formalism which the belief in God's existence had at this time assumed among the Jews. He says : — *' The whole of the internal weakness and perverseness of the ha^iocracy betrays itself 328 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. in the one small but significant circumstance of its treatment of the name of God. Desiring to maintain the infinite sanctity of the venerable name of Jahveh, and fearful of degrading it, they ordained that it should never be pronounced at all, and so allowed this glorious ancient name to lie in absolute obscurity behind a perpetual vail. . . . The name of the true God was now suspended at an infinite distance, high above all the present scene of existence. Consequently, this God of the ancient community, though men feared His name above all things, and desired utterly to surrender themselves to Him in deepest awe, was in reality ever retiring further and further from them into a mysterious distance; and while they were restrained , by their scruples from looking into His face, or calling on Him by His true name, they were really losing Him more and more ; so undesigned was this most significant of all the signs of Israel's last era." To the Pharisee in the parable the name of God had thus become a mere THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 329 name and form of the intellect ; God had ceased to be a Hving reaUty to him, and thus exerted no longer a quickening force on his conscience. Doubtless, we have need to take deeply to heart the fearful warning conveyed by the fact that the most intense Pharisaism ever seen was developed under a system in which the primary truths of our own religion were fully recognized, and were acknowledged as a Divine revelation. A Christian Pharisee is as possible as a Jewish. But at the same time those truths — this belief in a living God and Saviour — when received into the heart, and not merely into the intellect, are the only means of deliverance from these terrible perversions of morality, the only effectual means of abasing those who are unduly exalted, and of exalting those who have fallen. It is when we realize in our hearts that the essential element, in which v/c live and move and have our spiritual being, is not the society of our fellows alone, but that of a God of all 330 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. holiness, purity, truth, and love — then it is that we can be duly sensible of our miser- able weakness and evil, and that we can be stirred to ever more strenuous efforts after the utmost purification of heart and soul, of thought and will. In that Presence, in proportion as we realize it, none of us can look with satisfaction on our feeble and imperfect attainments, none of us can dare thank God, in a Pharisaic spirit, that we are not as other men are. On the other hand, realizing that Presence, not merely as the presence of a Judge, but of a living and loving Saviour, who is ever striving to bring us into harmony with Himself, who is able, by His Spirit, to purge out of us, more and more, whatever sins we may be conscious of, it is equally impossible for any of us to despair. Whenever the cry of the Publican is forced from our con- sciences, *' God be merciful to me a sinner," we have uttered a prayer which contains a justification for infinite possibilities of hope, we have the witness of' God's own THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 331 Spirit in our hearts that deliverance and salvation, and ever-increasing growth in goodness are possible for us. '' We know not what we should pray for as we ought;" but the Spirit which forced such a prayer from the heart of the Publican, and which breathes similar utterances from our own lips, is, in that very assistance, making intercession for us. If, in a word, we would keep our own moral life true and vigorous, free from Pharisaism on the one hand, and from the desperation natural to the Publican and the sinner on the other, we have but to follow the guidance afforded by our Lord's method in this parable — we need but ^'go up into the Temple to pray," or enter into our own closets in true sincerity of heart, and with a real apprehension at once of the holiness and of the mercy of the God whom we are approaching. Then will insincerity and self-satisfaction be burned out or our hearts, and we shall learn at the same time to look to that God who declares His almighty 332 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity, for such a measure of His grace that we may run the way of His commandments more perfectly. Above all is this influence brought to bear on us in attending that holy Sacrament in which our Lord has established the most potent of all influences for delivering us from Pharisaism on the one side, and from despair on the other. In the remembrance, which at that holy table is so vividly forced on us, not only of the holiness of our Saviour, but of His love, of His death and of His suffering on our behalf, who can fail to have all other thoughts of himself dismissed from his mind but those of sorrow, and repentance, and humiliation, and yet who can fail to derive consolation and hope from the "comfortable words " which are there addressed to him ? What words, in short, could better sum up the lesson of this parable than those in which we are invited to approach that holy Table ? — '* We do not presume to come to this Thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. 333 own righteousness, but in Thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under Thy Table. But Thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy." THE SAVIOUR'S INVITA2I0N. " Come iiuto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I ivill give yon rest." — Matt. xi. 28. XVIII. THE SAVIOURS INVITATION. T T may be assumed that every one is ^ sensible of the attractiveness and grace of these famihar words. They address them- selves to the greatest and most universal need of mankind, and they speak in a tone of tenderness and assurance which touches, even when it does not always win, every thoughtful heart. Those that labour and are heavy laden are the great majority of mankind — nay, if we take into account the various vicissitudes of human life, they may be said to include all mankind. There come to every soul some hours at least, it may be days or even years, of sickness, weakness, and sorrow, when these comfortable words speak to it with the only voice that meets its needs. To every soul, 22 338 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. in youth as well as in age, in health as well as in weakness, there come also moments or periods of struggle with some sharp tempta- tion, sometimes of the flesh, sometimes of the spirit, when it longs, with an intense craving, for some comforter and guide, who can give it rest. There are hours and years of life, indeed, when this feeling may be absent, when youth, and strength, and excite- ment may leave little room for a sense of tra- vail and burden, and when life is a continual feast. But to all, it may be safely said, the moment arrives when these comfortable words are craved for, as water by a thirsty soul; and to all, at all times, these words of comfort are spoken. " Come unto Me," says the Saviour, '' all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." No one practically doubts that the words were uttered. This invitation, at least, is no invention of later days. We know, as the words are read to us, that we are listening to a strong and tender voice, inviting us, as it invited those who first heard it, to come to the gracious THE SAVIOUR'S INVITATION. 339 Person who utters it, and be at rest, or be refreshed. But in what capacity does our Lord utter this invitation, and what is its practical mean- ing? That inquiry is, perhaps, the most characteristic and the most important of our time. In some of the most interesting h'tera- ture of the day, and in some sincere efforts after virtue and truth, there is an interpreta- tion put upon these and similar words which is very different from the old Christian in- terpretation of them, but which seems to be attractive to much earnest thought. Such minds cannot willingly separate themselves from the Author of this invitation ; but an aversion from the supernatural elements of the Gospel narrative induces them to seek for a purely natural interpretation of the words. They would represent them, accordingly, as the voice of a teacher, inviting men simply to find rest for their souls in following the path of life which he has laid down for their feet. ^' Do I believe," exclaims the chief character in a recent popular novel — ''do I believe in Christ? 340 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY, Yes, in the teacher, the martyr, the symbol to us Westerns of all things heavenly and abiding, the image and pledge of the invisible life of the spirit — with all my soul and with all my mind. But in the Man-God, the Word from eternity, in a wonder-working Christ, in a risen and ascended Jesus, in the living intercessor and mediator for the lives of His tempted brethren " — to that the answer is a negative one. " Every human soul," he says, " in which the voice of God makes itself felt, enjoys, equally with Jesus of Nazareth, the Divine Sonship ; and miracles do not happen." If that answer were to be adopted, the touching words of the text would have to be interpreted in a purely figurative meaning. " Come unto Me," would then imply only, '' Come unto my teaching," apd they would be only a stronger personification of the voice in the book of Proverbs : " Now therefore hearken unto Me, O ye children ; for blessed are they that keep My ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that hcareth Me, watching daily at My gates, THE SAVIOUR'S INVITATION. 341 waiting at the posts of My doors ; for whoso findeth Me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord." The revelation in the Gospels would be only a further revelation of wisdom, and the voice which sounds so attractive to suffering human hearts would simply be that of a gentler and deeper teacher. It will be instructive, therefore, to consider in what connection, and in what character, our Lord uttered these words. They occur at the close of one of the most remarkable incidents in His ministry, in which He had been specially challenged to declare His nature and office. John, hearing in the prison the works of Christ, sent unto Him two of his disciples, saying unto Him, "Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another ? " and our Lord's answer had been a direct appeal to His miracles. " Go and show John again," He said, " those things which ye do hear and see : the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to 342 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me." The question whether He was the One that should come, the One who should satisfy all the hopes and cravings of His people, was answered by the fact that He had exhibited, and was daily exhibit- ing, a supernatural power to heal the sick, to make the maimed whole, and to bring a message of peace and forgiveness to the poor. He goes on to take special occasion to rebuke those who witnessed these mighty w^orks of His, and had not yielded to their witness and repented. **Then began He," we are told, ^' to upbraid the cities wherein most of His mighty works were done, because they repented not : Woe unto thee, Chorazin ! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida ! for if the mighty works, which were, done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you. It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you." These mighty works of mercy, these evidences of His powei over al) human evils, THE SAVIOUR'S INVITATION. 343 ought to have led men to trust Him, and to have made the invitation, " Come unto Me," almost unnecessary. Such works were an invi- tation by deed, as well as word, to come unto Him. The power was not put forth to coerce men's consciences and force them to come to Him, as might be done by an earthly ruler. They were manifestations of grace and mercy which ought to have drawn men's hearts towards Him, and should have led to Him all who felt themselves heavy laden. That was their purpose. His message to these cities had been a continuous rehearsal in act of the message He sent to John ; His miracles were a perpetual declaration that " blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me ; " and if men had not the heart to hear that message, neither would they be persuaded though one rose from the dead. But it is further very observable that our Lord proceeds to intimate the reasons which had prevented their acceptance of Him. "At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank :.44 SOME POINTS OF OCR LORD'S MLXISTRY. Tlioo, O Father, l.oixl oi' lioavon aiul earth, because Thou hast hid these thiugs from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed tlieni unto babes. Even so, Father : for so it seemed good in Thy siglit." It was the wise and prudent, the learned and authoritative class'of tlie Jews, by whom tlie evidence of thesi^ miiaeles, wroiiglU with such lovc^ and truth, was re- sisted. Even when the occurrence of miracles had no general presumption against it, there was then, as much as now, the possibility of explaining them away. There always re- mained, at the worst, tlie facile explanation, " He casteth out devils through the prince of the devils." Some conspiracy with evil spirits, some jugglery such as modern critics have suggested, coukl etjually be suggested then ; and in this^ way the plain and natural witness of our EcM'd's mighty works was continually evaded during His lifetime. Ilis position before the world then was, in fact, not really very diOerent from what it is now. If men now doubt the occurrence of miracles, they doubted then whether the mighty works tlu^y THE SAVIOUR S INVITATION. 345 saw, and heard reported, were genuine acts of iJivine Omnipotence, or were capable of some explanation compatible with the purely human character of the person who wrought them. If men will not believe testimony now, neither would they believe their own eyes then ; and they blinded themselves, by some sophistical reasoning or other, to the plain and natural import of our Lord's words and works. It needed simple and unprejudiced hearts to appreciate even the direct personal testimony of our Lord Himself. The wise and prudent could close their eyes and ears by learned arguments, and the truth was only apparent to babes. Let it not be said that such an observa- tion places religious truth, or the claims of our Lord, on a basis different from that of other truths. This very observation is bor- rowed by Lord Bacon to express the indis- pensable condition for apprehending the truths of natural science. After his exposure of the idols by which the human mind is obstructed in its apprehension of natural truth, he con- 346 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. cludeS; that all such idols, all such prejudices, of the intellect "must be abandoned and re- nounced by a firm and solemn decree, and the mind must be absolutely liberated and purged from them ; so that there is practically no other mode of approach to the kingdom of man, which is founded on the sciences, than to the kingdom of heaven, 'into which no one can enter except in the character of a little child.' " Accordingly, our Lord proceeds to affirm, most solemnly, in a passage which reveals His most lofty claims, and which is in perfect harmony with His teaching in the Gospel of St. John, that the truths on which men's peace and salvation depend can only be learned by those who submit themselves to Him, as the sole revelation of His Father. " All things," He says, *'are delivered unto Me of My Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father : neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." What a contrast to the presumptuous conclusion quoted just now from the popular author of our day ! " Every soul," so the THE SAVIOURS INVITATION. 347 sceptic concludes, ^'in which the voice of God makes itself felt, enjoys, equally with Jesus of Nazareth, the Divine Sonship." "No man," says Jesus of Nazareth Himself, "knoweth the Son, but the Father ; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." There is an absolutely unique relation. He declares, between the Father and Himself, and no one can go to the Father but by Him. For these reasons it is, in the light ot these miracles, which did happen then — no Chris- tian says they happen now; it is the very ground of our belief that they happened when our Lord wrought them, and do not happen except at His command — in the light of these miracles which then happened with such gracious profusion, in the profound assurance that our Lord knows the Father as no other human soul has ever known Him, that no one comes to the Father but by Him, that no one knows the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him — in the light of these mighty works and these mighty 348 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. assurances it is, that He exclaims, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." Such is the Saviour, the Lord of all power and might, the Author and Giver of all good things, who utters the gracious invitation in the text. What else, in fact, could give the words the weight and force of their natural meaning ? Were there not this Divine power in the speaker, this ability to bring the soul into union and harmony with the Father of all, what would be practically the meaning of that assurance, to all travailing souls, that *' My yoke is easy, and My burden is light " ? Take the case of a soul, more common than seems supposed, struggling with some passion, the victim of some life-long temptation, with powers marred by having long yielded to evil, with a burdened conscience for the past, and a sense of powerlessness for the future; THE SAVIOUR'S INVITATION. 349 is it an easy matter for such a soul to take upon itself the yoke-of all meekness, and purity, and faithfulness, and self-denial ? "Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state, How often must it love, how often hate ! How often hope, despair, resent, regret. Conceal, disdain— do all things but forget ! " When the conscience is awakened, and a corrupt soul realizes the distance between itself and the Father of all truth whom our Lord reveals, the natural impulse is one of despair— the exclamation of St. Peter, " Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." That which justifies the assertion, " My yoke is easy, and My burden is Hght," is the assurance of a Saviour's voice, ever near to the conscience, bespeaking at once His fellowship with human weakness and tempta- tion, and His oneness with the Father of all ; and the consequent assurance that we can place our hands in His strong and tender grasp, and that if we cling to Him He will guide us in the right way, which leadeth unto 350 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY, everlasting life, through this world and the next. When that voice is realized as the voice of a living Saviour, with all power in heaven and earth, the soul can then take up the words of the Psalmist, " Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil : for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me." Or take even the commoner, if not more general, burdens of life, of sickness and poverty ; it is true men may face them bravely without the Gospel, as millions of human beings do to this day, under other religions. It is an ill argument for our faith to disparage the strength and courage which God has implanted in the hearts of His creatures, and which doubt- less He sustains by His invisible influences. But because brave souls can struggle through darkness and storm by the twilight of reason, is that any ground for disparaging or neglect- ing the gracious voice which speaks to them, and the gracious hand which is held out to THE SAVIOUR'S INVITATION. 351 them, to lighten their burdens and to illumine their path ? It does make even the yoke of sickness and poverty comparatively light to realize that One in the form of the Son of man is standing by the sufferer, whispering the words, *' Heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together." Such is the practical comfort of those great truths respecting our Lord's supernatural power and Divine nature, which some would put aside as speculative dogmas. The Church has clung to the dogmas because of their profound and intense practical import. Unless Christ were more than man, these words, " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden," lose the power and the grace which have won so many souls, and sustained them in their struggles. As God as well as man, we can not only obey Him, but come to Him. We can speak to Him in prayer, we can appeal to Him in our temptations and our sufferings, and in the hour of death, and can trust ourselves to Him as our gracious 352 SOME POINTS OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY. Creator and most merciful Saviour. No one has ever accepted this assurance in faith and found it fail. The Saviour cannot, indeed, bestow on us this rest and salvation without our own co-operation. But if we take His yoke upon us and learn of Him, striving in our daily lives to live in His true faith and obedience, He will guide and support us here, and will give us perfect rest at last in that place which He has gone to prepare for us, and in those mansions in which He has assured His followers of an eternal home. THE END. Pnnied by Hazell, Watson, &* Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury, .& ':.m m Some «n*ilVoints of our Lord's Theological Seminary-Speer Librar, 1012 00060 6576