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J. PRESENTED BY Mrs. 8. H. Smith Morristown, N.J. - ‘aus = ἴ — pw Division 20 ὙΦ BY Bade Ἴδα 2179 Section... CQ. 6 SS CRS συσινυσυσυσυνυ ανυνενυνυνυνυνενυνυυυ νυν... ὉὉὉὉὉὃὉὃὉ Θὁὃο28ὸᾶῳηνἪ,͵ὃ ΦΎΣΙΣ ΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΣΦΣΣΣ see: sarees Φ ΣΎ ΣΕΤ' ἜΣ ΕΣ σα τ 245... τὶ ΣΕΕΣΣΊΣ Στ) Σ: ΕΙΣ ay ) sy Pe: Li ΠῚ STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS. STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS. BY FA RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D. ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER & COMPANY. 1867. (Published by arrangement with the Author.) i ον Ἢ δ 4 ἡ Ὗ ᾿ Ἷ ἐς Ridin: ΚΣ, τ « ἍΝ» PREFACE. Some Studies on the Gospels are here offered to the reader. 1 have never been able to consent with that which so often is asserted—namely, that the Gospels are in the main plain and easy, and that all the chief diffi- culties of the New Testament are to be found in the Epistles. There are, indeed, by the gracious provision of God, abundance of plain things—so plain that no way- farer, who seeks his waymarks, need err for lack of such, —alike in these and in those. But when we begin to set the hard things of one portion of Scripture against the hard things of another, I cannot admit that they have right who assume it as lifted above all doubt that those of the Epistles infinitely surpass those of the Gospels. How often the difficulties of the Epistles are merely diffi- culties of form; not of the thought, but of the setting forth of the thought; of the logical sequence, which only requires a patient disentangling, and all is comparatively clear. But in the Gospels it is not the form of the thought, for that for the most part presents little or nothing perplexing, but the thought itself, the divine fact vi PREFACE. or statement, which itself constitutes the difficulty. Nor, if I am right in affirming it to be so, is this in any way strange. For while there must be deep things everywhere in Scripture, things past man’s finding out, else it were no revelation, surely it is nothing surprising that the Son of God, who moved in all worlds as in regions familiar to Him, who was not the illuminated, but the Illuminator of all others, not inspired, but the Inspirer, should utter the words of widest range and mightiest reach, those which should most task even the enlightened spirit of man to understand. Believing that it 7s thus with his words, that they must be at once the highest and the deepest of all, that in his life there must be mysteries which find only their remote resemblances in the lives of any other, I have often regretted that those who in our time and Church have brought the choicest gifts to the interpretation of the New Testament, have either restricted themselves to the elucidation of the Epistles, as if these alone would offer snfficient resistance to them; or where their work has embraced both, have wrought out this latter portion of it with far more of thought and toil than the earlier. Surely there are hard questions enough sug- gested by the Sermon on the Mount, if only we would learn to look at it a little less superficially than now is our wont, questions which have never yet received an entirely satisfactory solution. So, too, inthe great Prophecy from the Mount there are knots, which, to my mind at least, have never been perfectly untied. Neither is the solemn judgment scene with which the twenty-fifth chapter PREFACE. vil of St. Matthew closes altogether so easy as it seems. The limpid clearness of St. John’s style conceals from us often the profundity of the thought, as the perfect clearness of waters may altogether deceive us about their depth; and we may thus be too lightly tempted to conclude that while St. Paul may be hard, St. John at all events is easy. I believe this to be very far from the case. These Studies, written for the most part some years ago, are the fruit of this conviction; not that in them I have gone out of my way to seek the hard passages in the Gospels, although I have not shunned such. They are the fragments of a much larger scheme, in which I had not advanced far before I saw plainly that I could never hope to complete it; and which I thereupon laid aside. Gathering up lately a portion of what I had written, for publication, I have given it as careful a revision as my leisure would allow, have indeed in many parts rewritten it, seeking to profit by the results of the latest criticism, as far as I have been able to acquaint myself with them. For my labours I shall be abundantly repaid, if now, when so many controversies are drawing away the Christian student from the rich and quiet pastures of Scripture to other fields, not per- haps barren, but which can yield no such nourishment as these do, I shall have contributed aught to detain any among them. PaLaAck, DUBLIN: March 8, 1867. ven Oh ὶ ee Ἢ aes. ive, ve) sal rn’ ν᾿ Ms 2 mt Io. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. CONTENTS. THE TEMPTATION . THE CALLING OF PHILIP AND NATHANAEL . CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN THE SONS OF THUNDER : . . WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN THE THRHE ASPIRANTS . THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT, AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS THE TRANSFIGURATION . JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL FIRE FROM HEAVEN ON THE SAMARITAN VILLAGE THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY THE PHARISEES SEEKING TO SCARE THE LORD FROM GALILEE . THE UNFINISHED TOWER AND THE DEPRECATED WAR ZACCHAUS . THE TRUE VINE THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES ON THE way TO EMMAUS . 147 "168 184 215 313 STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS. 1. THE TEMPTATION. Matt. iv. r—11; Mark i. 12, 13; Luke iv. 1—13. Or the Temptation of our Lord we possess three records : two more full, in the first and third Gospels, one more summary, in the second. St. John has no report of it, and indeed no allusion to it, except indeed we are to find one in the words of Christ, ‘The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me’ (xiv. 30); though, of course, even then the reference could not be exclusively to it; but only to it as the supreme moment in which ‘the prince of this world’ wrought his worst, that so he might have ‘something’ in Him, as through sin he has something in every other child of Adam. Origen (on Matt. xxvii. 32) calls attention to the fact that, with all the significance which the Temptation possesses, occupying as it does a place in the foreground of two Gospels and, although more briefly, of a third, no place has been found for it, any more than for the Transfiguration, in the fourth. He suggests as a reason for this omission that it did not belong to the theology, using this term in its strictest sense; not, thatis, to the divine, but rather to the B 2 THE TEMPTATION. human, aspect of Christ’s person and work; He being tempted not as He was God, who cannot be tempted with evil (Jam. i. 13), but as He was man. It cohered therefore intimately with the predominant purpose and aim of the three earlier Gospels that the Temptation should find a place in them, with the intention of the fourth that it should be absent there. Assuredly Origen is right in starting with the assump- tion that some explanation is to be looked for; that there is nothing of haphazard in the admissions and exclusions of the several Evangelists ; that a prevailing idea in each Gospel accounts for what it has, and whatit has not; and why it has, or has not, this or the other incident or discourse. Indeed I am persuaded that, notwithstanding all which has been already accomplished, devout students of Scripture may for a long time to come find an ample, almost inexhaustible, field of study in the tracing out in each the operation of this ever active law of exclusion and inclusion. At the same time we need not look so far as he has looked for an explanation of the important fact which he has thus noted; and which, indeed, almost all must have observed. The record of the Temptation in the previous Gospels does not to me make strange the omission of it in St. John’s, but rather accounts for it; seeing that his Gospel was certainly, intended to be supplementary to those which went before; not to go over ground which they had sufficiently gone over already ; but to treasure up precious aspects of the life of Christ, of his words and works, which they had passed by. Such was the spiritual opulence of that life that only so, only through a‘ four-sided Gospel, as Origen him- self has called it, could that life be adequately presented THE TEMPTATION. 3 to the Church. This supplementary character of St. John’s Gospel, when once admitted, at once explains why he did not relate what those who went before him had so fully related. This history of our Lord’s Temptation in the wilder- ness ought never to be contemplated apart from that of his Baptism. It is certain, at least, that we shall miss much of its significance, if we dissociate it even in thought from the solemn recognition of the Son by the Father, and salutation of Him from heaven, with which the Evangelical History in all its three narratives has knit it so closely (Matt. iti. 16, 17; Mark i. 9-11; Luke iii. 21, 22). The Church of old did not shrink from calling her Lord’s Baptism his second nativity.t It is true, indeed, that when some of the early sects made it his first divine nativity (and Ebionites and Gnostics,’ op- posed in so much else, had a common interest in this), she then fell back upon the mightier fact, the Incarnation, in the assertion of which alone she felt herself to possess a Son of God in any but a deceptive and merely illusory sense. The Baptism may thus have fallen somewhat out of sight, and not come to its full honours, or to all the prominence which, except for these disturbing causes, it would have obtained. It is not however here my part to consider the Baptism more than under a single aspect, namely, in its con-, 1 See a sermon to this effect which used to be ascribed to Augustine, but which the Benedictine Editors have rightly adjudged to the Appendix (Serm. 135), in which this is strongly set forth, pushed almost to a perilous ©. The followers of Basilides, as Olemens of Alexandria tells us (Strom. i. 21), kept a feast of the Baptism, which they ushered in with a night, spent in the reading of the Scriptures. B2 4 THE TEMPTATION. nection with the Temptation. The Son in that Baptism had received his heavenly armour, and now He goes forth to prove it, and try of what temper it is. Having been baptized with water and the Holy Ghost, He shall now be baptized with the fire of temptation; even as there is another baptism, the baptism of blood (Matt. Xx. 22), in store for Him: for the gifts of God are not for the Captain of our salvation any more than for his followers the pledge of exemption from a conflict, but rather powers with which He is furnished, and, as it were, inaugurated thereunto ;' and thus that word with which the Temptation is introduced, ‘Then was Jesus led into the wilderness, ἃ word which links this event so closely with the Baptism, is much more than a mere ‘then, designating succession of time; for indeed it denotes rather the divine order in which the events of the Saviour’s life followed one another, and is intended to call our attention to this. And as with the Baptism, so also with the Temptation. We cannot estimate too highly the importance of the victory which was then gained by the second Adam, or the bearing which it had, and still has, on the work of our redemption. Milton showed that he had a true feeling of this, when he wrote a poem which contained nothing more than a history of this victoriously surmounted temptation, and called it Paradise Regained; setting it, as the story of the second Adam’s victory, over against Paradise Lost, or the story of the first Adam’s defeat. It is not too much to say, as Augustine said often, that the entire history, moral and spiritual, of the world revolves ‘ As Chrysostom (Hom, 13 in Matt.) well says here: καὶ γὰρ διὰ τοῦτο ἔλαβες ὅπλα, οὐχ iva ἀργῇς, ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα πολεμῆῇς. THE TEMPTATION. 5 around two persons, Adam and Christ... To Adam was given a position to maintain; he did not maintain it, and the lot of the world for ages was decided. And now with the second Adam the second trial of our race has arrived. All is again at issue. Again we are represented by a Champion, by One who is in the place of ad/,—whose standing shall be the standing of many, and whose fall, if that fall had been conceivable, would have been the fall of many, yea of all. Once already Satan had thought to nip the kingdom of heaven in the bud, and had nearly succeeded. If it had not been for a new and unlooked-for interposition of God, for the promise of the Seed of the woman, he would have done it. He will now prove if he cannot more effectually crush it, and for ever. Then, on that first occasion, there was still a reserve, the pattern according to whom Adam was formed; who should come forth in due time to make what Adam had marred ;—but He failing, there was none behind; the last stake would have been played,—and lost. ‘Then was Jesus led of the Spirit into the wilderness.’ If it be asked, of what Spirit He was thus led, un- doubtedly of the Spirit of God—in the words of Jeremy Taylor, ‘ He was led by the good Spirit to be tempted of the evil. Some few have understood it otherwise, and . that it was the same evil Spirit who afterwards en- countered Him in the wilderness, who first led Him thither.?. But this is certainly a mistake. We havé here 1 Op. Imp. Con. Jul. ii. 163: Unde fit ut totum genus humanum quodam- modo sint homines duo, primus et secundus. Serm. 90: Venit unus contra unum; contra unum qui sparsit unus qui collegit . . . . Homo et homo; homo ad mortem, et homo ad vitam. ? See Spanheim, Dub. Loan., L. They have often found an argument in 6 THE TEMPTATION. one, and of course the most signal and transcendant, of those stirrings from the Spirit of God to some heroic achievement whereof we have many anticipations in lower forms of the spiritual life in the Old Testament, as in Moses (Acts vii. 23), in Gideon (Judg. vi. 34), in Samson (Judg. xili. 25; xiv. 19). The Captain of our salvation went into the wilderness, drawn by another, but at the same time freely ; in the words of one of the Schoolmen, as an athlete going of his own accord,! or, to cite Jeremy Taylor once more, ‘not by an unnatural violence, but by the efficacies of inspiration, and a supernatural inclination and activity of resolution.’ The scene of the Temptation was the ‘ wilderness.’ What wilderness we are not told;? and all which it imports us to note is that it was a wilderness, in which this encounter of the good and the evil, each in its highest representative, found place. There could have been no fitter scene, nor so fit. The waste and desert places of the earth are, so to speak, the characters which sin has visibly impressed on the outward creation; its signs and its the αὐτὸν ἐκβάλλει of Mark i. 12, as though no such violent driving or thrusting forth as this word implies could have been ascribed to the Holy Spirit. There is no force in the argument. ᾿Ἐκβάλλειν in Hellenistic use continually signifies not a violent thrusting out, but an orderly putting forth. Thus, ‘ Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will send orth (iva ἐκβάλῃ) labourers into his harvest’ (Matt. ix. 38); the householder bringeth forth (ἐκβάλλει) out of his treasure new and old (Matt. xiii. 52; cf. John x. 4; Jam. ii. 25); and with this milder use of the word agree the ἀνήχθη and the ἤγετο by which St. Matthew and St. Luke severally de- scribe the bringing of the Lord upon the scene of his temptation. ' Quasi athleta sponte procedens (Aquinas). * Tradition places the scene of the Temptation in ‘the wilderness that goeth up from Jericho’ (Josh. xvi. 1; ef. Josephus, Antt. x. 8. 2), which ex- tended a great part of the way to Jerusalem (Josh. xviii. 12), and fixes it more immediately on a steep and rugged mountain rising like a wall of rock from the plain, and subsequently called Quarantana, from the quarantain, or forty days of fasting, which the Lord had there observed. THE TEMPTATION. 7 symbols there; the echoes in the outward world of the desolation and wasteness which sin has wrought in the inner life of men. Out of a true feeling of this men have ever conceived of the wilderness as the haunt of evil spirits. In the old Persian religion Ahriman and his evil spirits inhabit the steppes and wastes of Turan, to the north of the happy Ivan, which stands under the dominion of Ormuzd; exactly as with the Egyptians, the evil Typhon is the lord of the Libyan sand-wastes, and Osiris of the fertile Egypt.’ This sense of the wilderness as the haunt of evil spirits, one which the Scripture more or less allows (Matt. xii. 43; Isai. xiii. 21, xxxiv. 14; Rev. xviii. 2), would of itself give a certain fitness to that as the place of the Lord’s encounter with Satan; but only in its antagonism to Paradise or the Garden, do we see yet higher fitness in the appointment of the place. The garden and the desert are the two most opposite poles of natural life; in them we have the highest harmonies and the deepest discords of nature. It was just that the first Adam, so long as he stood*in his original uprightness, should be a dweller in the Garden; that his outward surroundings should correspond to his inner life, that there should be no disagreement between them; and it was there, in the garden df Eden, that Ais temptation went forward. Being worsted in the conflict, he was expelled therefrom ; and he and that race whose destinies were linked with his, should henceforth inhabit an earth which was cursed for his sake.” It is true, indeed, that in this as * Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. i. p. 223. * Ambrose (Hap. in Luc. iv. 7): Convenit recordari quemadmodum de paradiso in desertum Adam primus ejectus sit; ut advertas quemadmodum de deserto ad paradisum Adam secundus reverterit . . . . In deserto Adam, in deserto Christus ; sciebat enim ubi posset invenire damnatum, quem ad paradisum, resoluto errore, revocaret. 8 THE TEMPTATION. in so much else the curse was in part mercifully lightened, and the earth was not all desert; yet for all this its desert places do evermore represent to us what the whole of it might justly have been; the curse concentrates itself upon them. The second Adam therefore, taking up the conflict exactly where the first had left it, and imheriting all the consequences of his defeat, in the desert does battle with the foe; and conquering him there, wins back the garden for that whole race, whose champion and representative in this conflict He had been. And this is not the less true, however as yet that garden blooms not again; or blooms only in part; for in the higher culture and more complete subduing to the needs and delights of men, of those regions where the faith of Christ is owned, we may see already pledges and promises of that complete restora- tion of the earth to all its original fertility and beauty, which Christ’s victory over Satan in the wilderness shall one day have brought about. While we are upon this point, it is worthy of note that St. Mark, briefly as he records the Temptation (and two verses are all that he affords to it, i. 12, 13), yet gives us an intimation which we should look for in vain in the fuller accounts of the other Evangelists, and one which we should not slightly or carelessly pass over. His record of this event, in its summary brevity as compared with theirs, is very like his record of the Lord’s appearance to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus (xvi. 12, 13) as compared with that of St. Luke (xxiv. 13-34). Not indeed that this is always his manner; for brief as his Gospel is on the whole, he can relate events with far greater breadth than either St. Matthew or St. Luke; as witness his account of the healing of the Gadarene demoniac THE TEMPTATION. 9 (v. 1-20), and of the lunatic boy (ix. 14-29), compared with theirs. On the present occasion he tells us of the Lord that, being in the wilderness, ‘ He was with the wild beasts’ (ver. 13). Now this notice is certainly not intro- duced, as many interpreters would have us to believe, merely to enhance the waste desolation and savage solitude of that scene, but at once throws us back, as it was intended to throw us back, on the Paradisiacal state which in the second Adam had bloomed anew. ‘ He was with the wild beasts’—which owned Him for their rightful Lord; He was with them, as Adam had been before he sinned. In Him, the second Adam, the ideal man of the eighth Psalm, the Adamic prerogatives, lost and suspended so long, after the Deluge only partially recovered (Gen. ix. 2) fully reappeared (cf. Gen. i. 26, 28 with Ps. viii.).? The Apocryphal Gospels, whose marvellous is in general merely the monstrous, and which so seldom pourtray the divine Child with any traits which are really divine, are not here so remote at once from ideal and from historic truth, as is commonly their case. One of these tells of the Child Jesus that in his flight to Egypt the lions and the leopards played harmlessly about Him, and accompanied Him upon his way.’ This resumption of dominion by the second Adam over the revolted animal world should be more or less continued in his saints. They too should ‘take up serpents’ (Mark xvi. 18); should tread on serpents and scorpions (Luke x. 19), so reversing the threat of Jeremiah viii. 17; Paul * Giles Fletcher, in his too much neglected poem, Christ’s Triumph on Earth (ver. 1-40), has seized the meaning of these words better than any that I know. * Thilo, Codex Apocryphus, p. 394. 10 THE TEMPTATION. should shake the venomous beast from his hand and feel no harm (Acts xxviii. 5; cf. Job v. 22,23; Ezek. xxxiv.25; Hos. ii. 18). Anda true sense of this, as an ultimate prero- gative destined for redeemed man, appears, though often in extreme caricature, in the innumerable legends of saints, to whose word and will the wildest creatures are obedient, who summon the fishes to their preaching, who cross rivers on the backs of crocodiles, and accomplish a thou- sand other feats of a like kind. Nor can we say that this dominion has wholly departed even from man in his natu- ral estate; the fragments of his sceptre still remain in his hands ; ‘Every kind of beasts is tamed, and hath been tamed, of mankind’ (Jam. iil. 7; cf. Sophocles, Antigone, 343-351, a lyrical echo from heathendom of the same truth); but this sceptre which he only wields with diffi- culty, and with frequent uprisings of his rebellious vassals against him, Christ, as was manifest during these forty days, wielded with an absolute authority. So much we may read in those words, ‘He was with the wild beasts.’ To that wilderness He, ‘the glorious Eremite’ was led, ‘to be tempted of the devil. Very remarkable is the prominence which Satan assumes in the New Testa- ment, compared with the manner in which he and the whole doctrine concerning him are kept in the background in the Old. There, after the first appearance of the adversary in Paradise, which even itself is a veiled ap- pearance, he is withdrawn for a long while altogether from the scene; nay, there is but a glimpse of him, a passing indication here and there of such a spiritual head of the kingdom of evil, through the whole earlier economy —as in the first and second chapters of Job, Zech. iii. 1, 2, THE TEMPTATION. : 11 and 1 Chron. xxi.1; he is only referred to twice in the Apocrypha (Wisd. ii. 24; Ecclus. xxi. 27). This may partly be explained by an analogy drawn from things natural, namely that where the lights are brightest, the shadows also are darkest. Height and depth are correla- tives of one another. It is right which first reveals wrong; and hate only can be read as hate in the light of love; and unholiness in the light of purity. But this does not explain the reticence of Scripture altogether. No doubt in that childhood of the human race men were not yet ripe for this knowledge. For as many as took it in earnest, and as it deserves to be taken, for them it would have been too dreadful thus to know of a prince of the powers of darkness, until they had known first of a Prince of Light. Those, therefore, whom God is educa- ting are not allowed to understand anything very distinctly of Satan, till with the spiritual eye it is given to them to behold him as lightning fall from heaven; then indeed, but not till then, the Scripture speaks of him plainly and without reserve. We may perhaps take a hint from this in the teaching of children. The order which was observed of God in the teaching of our race, the reticence, almost entire, but not perfectly so, which was observed in the childhood of our race, may be profitably observed also with children; as also with those whose faculties are as yet spiritually undeveloped. ‘I write unto you little children,’ says the apostle St. John, ‘because ye have known the Father’ (1 John ii. 13); this was what they had learned from him, even a heavenly Father's love ; but he proceeds: ‘I have written unto you, young men, be- cause ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one’ (ver. 14). To them, 12 THE TEMPTATION. to the strong, it was given to know that they wrestled not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places (Ephes. vi. 12). ‘And when He had fasted forty days He was afterward an hungred. Wow are we intended to understand a fast of this length, manifestly impossible to man under ordinary conditions? Not by bringing in, as some have done, Christ’s divine power as the explanation of all; which would indeed rob this fact of its significance for us. We must seek the explanation elsewhere. We are far too much accustomed, in a stiff dualism, to conceive of the spiritual and material as of two worlds altogether apart, with a rigid line of demarcation between them, so that the powers and influences of the higher cannot pass over effectually to operate in the sphere of the lower. Yet all the experience of our daily life contradicts this, and we note the higher continually making itself felt in the region of the lower. The wayworn regiment, which could scarcely drag itself along, but which revives at the well- known air, and forgets all its weariness, what does it but declare that the spirit is lord not merely in its own domain, but is meant to be, and even now in no incon- siderable degree is, the lord of the provinces of man’s life that lie beneathit? Matter, instead of offering a stub- born resistance to spirit, proves in many and marvellous ways to be plastic to it. Sensuality debases and degrades the countenance; purity and love ennoble it, casting a beam even upon the outward shape. What is the resur- rection of the body, or the ultimate glorification of nature, or the larger number of those miracles wrought by the Lord in the days of his flesh, but the workings of spirit THE TEMPTATION. 13 upon matter? So too it fared with his forty days’ fast. To bring in here his divine power, or to suppose that He then fasted otherwise than as a man, is, as has been urged already, to rob the whole transaction of its meaning. Upborne and upholden above the common needs of the animal life by the great tides of spiritual gladness, in the strength of that recent Baptism, in the solemn joy of that salutation and recognition from his Father, He found and felt no need for all these forty days. As a slighter incident of the same kind He forgets hunger and thirst, or rather feels them no more, by the well of Samaria, in the joy of winning a lost soul (John iv. 31-34). In the lives of other men there are quite enough of analogies, which, however removed from this, do yet witness in their lower measure for this same predominance of the spirit, for the dominion which it is able to exercise over the workings of the natural life. All intenser passions, a mighty joy, an overwhelming sorrow, an ecstatic devotion, all these have continually been found to bring a temporary release with them from the necessities of the animal life, and though not for so long a time, still to suspend its claims for a season. Thus Paul at the crisis of his conversion was three days without eating or drinking (Acts ix. 9). For forty days this fast of the Lord’s endured. But wherefore for exactly this number, for forty, and neither more nor less? We are the more tempted to ask this question from the frequent recurrence of this same number under circumstances notaltogether dissimilar. Of precisely this same length were the fasts of Moses (Deut. ix. g) and Elijah (1 Kin. xix. 8); He the Head of the New Covenant in nothing coming short of those who stood as the Chiefs and Representatives of the Old, of the Law, and of the 14 THE TEMPTATION. Prophets (Matt. xvii. 3). And yet his fast of forty days is not determined by theirs; but rather theirs and his are alike determined by the significance which this number, forty, in Holy Scripture everywhere obtains. Ona close examination we note it to be everywhere there the number or signature of penalty, of affliction, of the confession, or the punishment, of sin.’ Thus it is the signature of the punishment of sin in the forty days and forty nights during which God announces that He will’ cause the waters of the deluge to prevail (Gen. vii. 4, 12) ;” in the forty years of ‘the Israelites’ wanderings in the desert) (Num. Xiv.-33; xxxii. 13, 14; Ps? xev. ΤΠ the forty stripes with which the offender should be beaten (Deut. xxv. 3; 2 Cor. xi. 24); in the desolation of Egypt which should endure forty years (Ezek. xxix. 11). So also is it the signature of the confession of sin; Moses intercedes forty days for his people (Deut. ix. 25); the Ninevites proclaim a fast of forty days (Jon. iil. 4); Ezekiel must bear for forty days the transgression of * Jerome (Jn Amos. ii. 10): Ipse Dominus fecit nos exire de seculo, et per annos quadraginta, qui numerus semper afflictionis et jejunii, luctfis est et doloris, per tribulationes et angustias pervenire in terram sanctam. And again (Jn Jon. iii. 4): Porro quadragenarius numerus convenit peccatoribus, et jejunio et orationi, et sacco et lacrimis et perseverantizw deprecandi: ob quod et Moyses quadraginta diebus jejunavit in monte Sina; et Elias fugiens Jezebel, indicta fame terre Israél, et Dei desuper ira pendente, quadraginta dies jejundsse describitur. Ipse quoque Dominus, verus Jona missus ad pre- dicationem mundi, jejunavit quadraginta dies. Cf. Zn Hzek. xxix.11. Thus too Origen (Jn Deut. xxv. 3): Semper observavimus numerum .quadraginta malisobnoxinm esse. Unde Moses quadraginta diebus jejunavit, et post eum Elias. Quin et Salvator noster a diabolo tentatus non manducavit quadra- ginta diebus et quadraginta noctibus ; et magnum diluvium in terra contigit, cum Deus imbrem fecisset quadraginta diebus et quadraginta noctibus. Compare Augustine, Quest. in Gen. qu. 169; Serm. 125,§9; De Cons. Evang. ii. δὲ 8, 9. In both these latter places he attempts, not very suc- cessfully as it seems to me, to give the rationale of forty as this number of penitence. 3. Ambrose, De Noé et Arcd, xiii. § 44. THE TEMPTATION. 15 Judah (Ezek. iv. 6); forty days, or twice forty in the case of a maid child, are the period of a woman’s purify- ing after child-birth (Lev. xii. 2-5; cf. Ps. li. 5: ‘in sin hath my mother conceived me’). And in agreement with all this, resting on the forty days’ fast of her Lord, is the Quadragesimal Lent fast of the Church; with the selection of this Scripture of the Temptation to supply the Gospel for the first Sunday in that season, as being the Scripture which, duly laid to heart, will more than any other help us rightly to observe that time.’ On one of these forties Tertullian dwells with peculiar emphasis ; often bringing out the relation between the forty days of our Lord’s Temptation and the forty years of Israel’s trial in the wilderness. His fast as the true Israel, as the fulfiller of all which Israel after the flesh had left unfulfilled, the victor in all where it had been the vanquished, was as much a witness against thew carnal appetites (for it was in the indulgence of these that they sinned continually, Exod. xv. 23, 24 xvi. 2, 3; Xvi. 2, 3; Num. xi. 4, 33)? as a witness against Adam’s.* It was by this abstinence of his declared that man was ordained to be, and that the true man would be, lord over his lower nature. In this way Christ’s forty days’ fast is the * Augustine, Serm. 210. * De Bapt.20: Dominus quantum existimo, de figuré Israélis exprobra- tionem in ipsum retorsit. Namque populus mare transgressus, in solitudine translatus per quadraginta annos, illic cum divinis copiis aleretur, nihilo- minus ventris et gula meminerat, quam Dei. Deinde Dominus post aquam segregatus in deserto, quadraginta dierum jejunia cmensus, ostendit non pane vivere hominem Dei, sed Dei verbo; tentationesque plenitudini et immoderan- tive ventris adpositas, abstinentia elidi. * De Jejun. 6: Immo noyum hominem in veteris sugillationem virtute fastidiendi cibum initiabat, ut eum, diabolo rursus per escam tentare quierenti, fortiorem fame tot ostentaret; and again, c. 5: Nam et primus populus primi hominis resculpserat crimen. 16 THE TEMPTATION. great counter-fact in the work of redemption, at once to Adam’s and to Israel's compliances with the suggestions of the fleshly appetite ; exactly in the same manner as the unity of tongues at Pentecost is the counter-fact to the confusion of tongues at Babel (Gen. xi. 7, 8; Acts ii. 6-11), to which the Church would draw our attention in the selection of the latter as one of our Whitsuntide lessons. For forty days that arrest of the sense of bodily need had continued ; but at the expiration of these the need, suspended so long, made itself felt in its strength; ‘He was afterward an hungred. The Tempter sees, and thinks to use his opportunity ; and the Temptation proper, dividing itself into three successive acts, begins. But before we enter upon these, a few words may fitly find place on more than one subject of the deepest practical interest. And first, the assertion of the existence of a Tempter at all, of a personal Wicked One, of the devil, this, as is well known, is a stumblingblock to many. Not urging here the extent to which the veracity of Christ Himself is pledged to the fact, I will content myself with observing that it is not by Scriptural arguments alone that it is sup- ported. ‘There is a dark mysterious element in man’s life and history, which nothing else can explain. We can only too easily understand the too strong attractions of the objects of sense on a being who is sensuous as well as spiritual ; the allowing of that lower nature, which should have been the ruled, to reverse the true relation, and to become the ruler. We can understand only too easily man’s yielding, even his losing, of himself in this region of sense. But there is a mystery far more terrible than this, a phenomenon unintelligible except upon one assumption. “ ἧς THE TEMPTATION. 17 Those to whom the doctrine of an Evil Spirit is peculiarly unwelcome have been at infinite pains to exorcise theology ; and from that domain at least to cast Satan out, even though they should be impotent to cast him out from any other. All who shrink from looking down into the abysmal depths of man’s fall, because they have no eye for the heavenly heights of his restoration, seem to count that much will have been gained thereby; although it may be very pertinently asked, as indeed one has asked, What is the profit of getting rid of the devil, so long as the devilish remains? of explaining away an Evil One, so long as the evil ones who remain are so many?’ What profit indeed? Assuredly this doctrine of an Evil Spirit, tempting, seducing, deceiving, prompting to rebellion and revolt, so far from casting a deeper gloom on the destinies of humanity, is full of consolation, and lights up with a gleam and glimpse of hope spots which seem utterly dark without it. One might well despair of oneself, having no choice but to believe that all the strange suggestions of evil which have risen up before one’s own heart had been born there; one might’well despair of one’s kind, having no choice but to believe that all its hideous sins and all its monstrous crimes had been self-conceived and bred within its own bosom. But there is hope, if ‘an enemy have done this ;’ if, however the soil zz which these wicked thoughts and wicked works have sprung up has been the heart of man, yet the seed from which they sprung had been there sown by the hand of another. And who will venture to deny the existence of this * Goethe, in the spirit of finest irony, puts these words into the mouth of Mephistopheles: ‘ Den Bosen sind sie los, die bésen sind geblieben.’ C 18 THE TEMPTATION. devilish, as distinguished from the animal, in man? None certainly, who knows aught of the dread possi- bilities of sin lurking in his own bosom, who has studied with any true insight the moral history of the world. In what way else explain that men not merely depart from God, but that they defy Him; that, instead of the un- godly merely forgetting God and letting Him go, His name is as often or oftener on their lips than on those of them that love and serve Him? How else explain the casting of fierce words against Him, the actual and active hatred of God which it is impossible not to recognize in some wicked men? What else will account for delight in the contemplation or in the infliction of pain, for strange inventions of wickedness, above all, of cruelty and lust— ‘lust hard by hate’? What else for evil chosen for its own sake, and for that fierce joy which men so often find in the violation of law, this violation being itself the attraction; with all those other wicked joys, ‘ mala gaudia mentis,’ as the poet in a single phrase has charac- terized them so well? The mystery is as inexplicable as it is dreadful so long as man will know nothing of a spiritual world beneath him, as well as one above him; but it is only too easy to understand, so soon as we recognize man’s evil as not altogether his own, but detect behind his transgression an earlier transgression and an earlier transgressor—one who fell, not as man fell, for man’s fall was mercifully broken by that very flesh which invited it; but who fell as only Spirits can fall, from the height of heaven to the depth of hell; fell never to rise again; for he was not deceived, was not tempted, as was Adam; but himself chose the evil with the clearest intuition that it was the evil, for- THE TEMPTATION. 19 sook the good with the clearest intuition that it was the good; whose sin therefore in its essence was the sin against the Holy Ghost, and as such, not to be forgiven in this world nor in the world to come. All is explicable when we recognize the existence of such a Spirit; who, being lost without hope of redemption himself, seeks to work the same loss in other of God’s creatures, and counts it a small triumph to have made man bestial, unless he can make him devilish as well. Such a per- sonal Tempter innumerable moral and spiritual phenomena of this fallen world at once demand and attest; and such a Tempter or devil existing, it lay in the necessity of things that he should come into direct and immediate collision with Him who had one mission in the world, and that, to destroy the works of the devil. But freely admitting the existence of such a Tempter, the Temptation of Christ, that He should have been tempted at all, or having been tempted, that such im- measurable worth should be attached to his victory over temptation, this has a difficulty of its own, which has more or less clearly presented itself to many, I sup- pose to every one who has sought at all to enter into the deeper significance of this mysterious transaction. The difficulty and dilemma may be stated thus: Hither there was that in Christ which more or less responded to the temptation—how then was He without sin, seeing that sin moves in the region of desires quite as really as in that of external acts? or there was nothing in Him that responded to the suggestions of the Tempter—where then was the reality of the temptation, or what was the signi- ficance of the victory which in the wilderness He won ? The secret of the difficulty which these alternatives 02 20 THE TEMPTATION. present to our minds, so that sometimes it appears to us impossible that Christ’s Temptation should have been real, leaving Him as it did wholly unscathed, lies in the mourn- ful experience which we in our own spiritual life have made, namely, that almost all of our temptations involve more or less of sin, that the serpent leaves something of his trail even there where he is not allowed to nestle and make his home. Conquerors though we may be, yet we seldom issue from the conflict without a scratch,— a hurt it may be which soon heals, but which has left its cicatrice behind it. Very seldom indeed we come forth from these fires, as the Three Children, without even so much as the smell of fire having passed upon us (Dan. iii. 27). The saint, if he shine asa diamond at last, yet it is still as a diamond which has been polished in its own dust. For we may take up arms against the evil thought, we may rally the higher powers of our souls, and call in the might of a Mightier to put the evil and its author to flight, yet this we seldom do till it has already found some place within us.’ The fiery darts may have been quenched almost as soon as they alighted; they may not therefore have set on fire in us the whole ‘ course of nature’ (Jam. iii. 6); but they should have been warded off and extinguished, before they alighted, by that shield of faith, which the apostle bids us to assume against them (Ephes. vi. 16). Ours may have been but a moment’s ‘ There is in respect of the sin, to adopt a fine distinction of Peter Lom- bard and some others of the Schoolmen, the propassio or inception, even where there is not the passio. Few have exercised a keener moral oversight of their own hearts than Thomas 4 Kempis, and he traces thus the genesis of evil in the heart of man (De Jmit. Christ. i. 13. 5): Primo occurrit menti simplex cogitatio ; deinde fortis imaginatio ; postea delectatio et motus pravus et assensio. Itaque paulatim ingreditur hostis malignus ex toto, dum illi non resistitur in principio. ? See Origen, De Prine. iii. 2. 4. THE TEMPTATION. 21 acquiescence in the temptation. But thus momentary and seemingly involuntary as it was, and graciously and surely as it will be included in the daily forgiveness, yet even this moment during which the evil was not abhorred and loathed is irreconcilable with the idea of a perfect holiness ; for this is as a mirror whose perfect bright- ness no lightest breath has ever troubled or tarnished for an instant. Of course the reconciliation of an absolute sinlessness in Christ with the reality of the temptations to which He was exposed lies in this, that there was never in Him this momentary delectation ; even as there need not be in us; and would not be, if we always were, and had always in time past been, upon our highest guard. It is not of the necessity of a temptation that it should in the least defile. The fact that it does so, is only the sad accident and adjunct of too many of ours, even of those against which sooner or later we take up arms, and by God’s grace do not suffer them to embody themselves in sinful acts, or even in sinful desires deliberately enter- tained. So naturally in the estimate which we form of the matter does sin follow on temptation, that when the apostle had affirmed of Christ that He was ‘in all points tempted like as we are,’ he counts it needful at once to add, ‘yet without sin’ (Heb. iv. 15), without the sinful results which in men almost inevitably follow.* It is quite true that even from these temptations them- selves we may derive good; that they, even with issues * Bengel has some good words here on the promptness of our Lord’s resistance to each proffered temptation: Quomodo autem sine peccato ten- tatus, compati potest tentatis cwm peccato? In intellectu, multo acrius anima Salvatoris percepit imagines tentantes, quam nos infirmi; in voluntate tam celeriter incursum earum retudit, quam ignis aque guttulam sibi objectam. 22 THE TEMPTATION. sorrowful for the time as these, may yet be to us sources of ultimate strength; that thus it may prove with us as with the oyster, which stops with a precious pearl the hole in its shell which was originally a disease; as with the broken limb, which, having been set, may be stronger than if it never had been broken. It may fare with us as islanders of the Southern Ocean fancy that it fares with them; counting, as they do, that the strength and valour of the warrior whom they have slain in battle passes into themselves, as their rightful inheritance ; for so it proves indeed with the Christian man and the temptations which he conquers and slays; and this, even though the victory may have been won not without hurts to himself, gotten in the conflict. The strength which lay in the temptation — has shifted its seat, and passed over into the man who has overcome the temptation." The great Church writers of all times, all to whom any largeness of utterance has been granted, who have bravely looked man’s true condition in the face, have not feared to speak bold words on this matter ; words indeed, like all other words on the subject of grace, capable of being wrested and abused by the licentious and falsehearted, of being therefore held up by * Our theologians of the seventeenth century were fond of illustrating this truth by aid of the legend that the viper’s flesh (θηριακή, from θηρίον, see Acts xxviii. 5), ‘ theriac,’ ‘ triacle,’ and last of all ‘ treacle,’ was the most potent antidote for the viper’s bite. Thus Jeremy Taylor: ‘There is a ὑπερνικῶμεν in St. Paul. We are more than conquerors. Non solum viperam terimus, sed ex δὰ antidotum conficimus. We kill the viper and make treacle of him ; ὁ. 6. not only escape from, but get advantage from temptations.’ And Hales: ‘ Wonderful, therefore, is the power οἵ ἃ Christian; who not only overcomes and conquers and kills the viper, but, like the skilful apothecary, makes antidote and treacle of him.’ So too Gurnall: ‘The saints’ ex- periences help them to a sovereign treacle made of the scorpion’s own flesh (which they through Christ have slain), and that hath a virtue above all others to expel the venom of Satan’s temptations from the heart.’ THE TEMPTATION. 23 the timid as antinomian provocations ; but words which for all this ought not the less to be spoken. Such Augus- tine abounds in, as often as he treats of St. Paul’s thorn in the flesh, or of St. Peter’s fall; yet always keeping within just limits ; which limits another overpasses when, treating of the last and of all the spiritual gains which in the end the apostle obtained through it, he exclaims, O feliz culpa! A fault or sin is never ‘happy,’ is always unhappy ; it is ever ‘infelx culpa, whatever good by the grace of God and by that wondrous alchemy of heaven which draws gold from dross, may be educed from it; and those who employ any other language or think any other thought about sin, are perilously near, however little they may guess it, to them whom the apostle Paul has denounced (Rom. iii. 5-8). But this, the absolute rejection and repudiation of every suggestion in any way contrary to the perfect will of God, a repudiation in every case reaching to the earliest mo- ment of its presentation to Him whereunto it is possible in imagination to travel back, this is not all. There is another point of difference between Christ’s temptations and ours; namely, that all our Lord’s temptations were addressed to Him from without, were distinct suggestions of the Evil Spirit." Those who, in their anxiety todo away with an external Tempter, or from any other motive, resolve the Temptation into an internal conflict with thoughts of self-indulgence, vain-glory, ambition, disturb, 1 Gregory the Great (Moral. xxiv. 11): Hostis noster quanto magis nos sibi rebellare conspicit, tanto amplius expugnare contendit. Eos enim pulsare negligit, quos quieto jure possidere se sentit. Hoc enim in seipso Dominus sub quidam dispensatione figuravit, qui diabolum non nisi post baptisma se tentare permisit, ut signum nobis quoddam future conversionis innueret, quod membra ejus postquam ad Deum proficerent, tunc acriores tentationum insidias tolerarent. 24 THE TEMPTATION. whether they are aware of it or no, that image of a perfect holiness which is essential to the character and office of a Redeemer ; who only as He was Himself without sin could save others from their sins; but who would not, if this were admitted, have been without it. We cannot con- ceive of the temptation of the first Adam reaching him except from without. That he should have been his own tempter is irreconcilable even with the more negative holiness which we ascribe to him. It would have been infinitely more inconsistent with the more positive holiness of the second Adam.’ One of Schleiermacher’s most gifted pupils, who finished his brief career while as yet it was uncertain in what camp he would ultimately be found,’ * Gregory the Great (Hom. 16 in Hvang.): Sciendum nobis est, quia tribus modis tentatio agitur, suggestione, delectatione, et consensu. Et nos cum tentamur plerumque in delectationem, aut etiam in consensum labimur, quia de carnis peccato propagati, in nobis ipsis etiam gerimus unde certa- mina toleremus. Deus vero, qui in utero Virginis incarnatus, in mundum sine peccato venerat, nihil contradictionis in semetipso tolerabat. Tentari ergo per suggestionem potuit, sed ejus mentem peccati delectatio non mo- mordit. Atque ideo omnis diabolica illa tentatio foris non intus fuit. Compare F. Spanheim (Dud. Hvang. li.): Distinguendum inter tentationem admotam et admissam, inter suggestionem mali externam et internam, inter suggestionem insinuatam et receptam. Tentatio illa ratione tentatoris mala erat, non ratione tentati, admota quippe Christo duntaxat, non admissa, externa non interna, insinuata tantum non recepta. Camero (Myrothec. Lvang. on Heb. iv. 13, p. 315) has a lively illustration: Tentatus fuit igitur Christus in omnibus, et quidem quod ad sensum doloris attinet, eidem ratione qué nos; sine peccato tamen, quod nobis non contingit. Nam (utamur enim hoc exemplo) quantumvis aquam puram et limpidam exagites, non fit tur- bida; sed si aquam puram quidem, ut videtur, sed incujus ima parte cenum est vel limus, agitaveris, continuo qua visa est pura aqua, videtur lutulenta aut certe turbidula. 2 Usteri. He has two articles on the Temptation in the Theol. Stud. und Krit. 1829, p. 449; 1832, p. 768; from the former of which my citation is taken. Nothing can be more masterly than the manner in which he deals not with this only, but with all the attempts toexplain away the Temptation, which at different times have been proposed; showing the inner contradictions which they involve; though, having effectually done this, he cannot be content without adding another attempt of his own. THE TEMPTATION. 25 has on this point some admirable remarks: ‘ It is not dif- ficult to draw a very attractive picture of the inner temptation of Jesus, such as shall not be unlike the Choice of Hercules, standing, as Prodicus has described him, at the point where the two ways separated before him. One may find it also comforting and elevating that Christ was in all points tempted like as are we. Only how stands it then with what follows, “ yet without sin,” if we examine that statement psychologically and dogmatically? For first of all it must be remembered that if such an inner struggle and conflict of thoughts existed in the mind of. Jesus, and if He remained for an instant undecided and doubtful in regard of them, then both trains of thought must be regarded as his own, and the possibility of a decision upon one side as well as upon the other be admitted. Hereby Jesus will be coordinated with all other men, in whom the conflict of the good with the evil finds place; and we must conceive of this conflict not merely in the beginning of his public career; but where once a struggle has found place, it can revive again, needs nothing more than the suitable conditions to reproduce it; and only through patience and perseverance can a skill in the vanquishing of temptation be attained. This psychological consequence excludes the hypothesis of such an inward | struggle as was limited to one certain moment of time ᾿ and there would be nothing else but to say, “Jesus had ] within Him besides the good also an evil principle, against which He needed to be ever on his guard, though it is only in the history of the Temptation that this struggle is symbolically attached to a definite moment in his life.” But were Jesus constituted so, then were He not the Christ, but a man as others are, submitted to the same conditions, with 26 THE TEMPTATION. a flesh and spirit contrary to one another; consequently not a Redeemer, but Himself needing a redemption ; and not only the words in St. John on his oneness with the Father, but those in the other Gospels on his dignity as Messiah, are either not authentic; or, if He actually spoke them, He either deluded Himself or deceived mankind.’* In the scholastic theology of the Middle Ages the dis- 1 H. de 5. Victore, the Augustine of the Middle Ages, has an interesting passage on this matter (De Sacram. 11, pars 1, ὁ. 7): Sunt alii qui de affectibus humanis in Christo (quos secundum veritatem natures cum humani- tate et in humanitate suscepit) quedam non solum falsa sed horrenda etiam affrmare non timuerunt. Quia enim apostolus ait, Non habemus Pontificem qui non possit compati infirmitatibus nostris, tentatum autem per omnia: asserunt humanum affectum in Christo motus etiam vitiorum sensisse, absque consensu tamen rationis : secundum eam concupiscendi rationem qué nos qui peccatores sumus ex illd originali corruptione quam portamus illicitos ap- petitus, et motus concupiscentia surgentis et vitii tentantis delectationem etiam inviti sentire solemus. Hos autem motus idcirco Christum in carne sud voluntarie sustinuisse, ut quasi illis tentantibus resistendo victor existeret, quatenus et sibi tentationem vitiorum superando premium justitie acquireret, et nobis in tentatione positis resistendi et vincendi in semetipso exemplum formaret. Sed absit a sensu Christiano ut ullam in illé carne sacrosancté Agni immaculati inordinatw delectationis et concupiscentia illicite titilla- tionem aliquo modo fuisse, aut dicat, aut credat; qui si vel aliquam prave delectationis radicem aut motum concupiscendi inordinatum in illé fuisse diceremus, profecto ab omni vitio liberam negaremus. Quomodo autem vitium mundaret, si vitium portaret? motus quippe inordinatus ex infirmi- tate concupiscendi surgens cum ips’ tantum corruptione de qua oritur, non solum pcena est, sed culpa: qua tamen in baptizatis ad damnationem non imputatur, quia per gratiam nove regenerationis excusatur. Hac tamen corruptio per gratiam Sacramenti non quidem accipit ut culpa non sit, sed ut damnabilis non sit.... Quapropter illam infirmitatem humane natures que peena est, solum cum susceptione carnis Christum assumsisse veraciter dicimus: illam vero, qui sic poana est ut etiam culpa sit, nullatenus admisisse indubitanter affirmamus. Neque enim sic victorem vitiorum dicere volumus, ut eum ipsa que vinceret vitia portisse aliquando ac sensisse dicamus. Propterea enim per solam pcenam infirmari consensit, ut eos qui et in culpa et in pend wgrotabant, primum a culpa justificaret, postea a pcend liberaret. Compare the careful words of Augustine himself (Op. Jmperf. con. Jul. iv. 48): Non dicimus nos Christum, felicitate carnis a nostris sensibus se- questrate, cupiditatem vitiorum sentire non potuisse; sed dicimus, eum perfectione virtutis, et non per carnis concupiscentiam procreaté carne, cupiditatem non habuisse vitiorum. THE TEMPTATION. 27 cussion was carried on with considerable animation whether a possibility of not sinning (a posse non peccare) or an impossibility of sinning (a non posse peccare) should be ascribed to the Lord. The first had been, in the patristic period, the position of Theodore of Mopsuestia and of as many as, without being actually Nestorians, had yet theo- logical tendencies which inclined them to advance as far as might be in that direction; while the second had been maintained by Augustine. It was with this, as with so many of the earlier discussions, which were resumed and carried out yet further in the period of the medieval revival of theology; Abelard, as was naturally to be expected, taking up the position of Theodore of Mop- suestia, Anselm and others upholding the Augustinian teaching.’ This question could never have been so much as started, except ina Nestorian severance of the Lord into two persons, and thus in the contemplation of a human person in Him as at some moment existent apart from the divine. When we ascribe to Him two natures, but these at no time other than united in the one person of the Son of God, the whole question at once falls to the ground. And such is the Church’s faith. Christ was perfect man in the sense of having every thing belonging to the completeness of the human nature; but the person is the Son of God; his human body and soul at the very moment of their union with one another were also united with the Eternal Word, so that there is not, nor ever has been, any human person to contemplate, or in regard of whom to put this question ; while in respect of the Christ, and in the manhood after it was taken up into the God- * Neander, Kirch. Gesch. vol. v. p. 968. 28 THE TEMPTATION. head, even Abelard himself does not ascribe to Him the possibility of sinning.’ When it is asked, as it continually has been, Where is the worth of an obedience which could not have not been rendered? where is-the glory of not sinning on the part of One who could not sin? the question has its rise in the confusion of a moral and a physical necessity. God cannot lie, God cannot do evil; but shall we therefore cease to praise and glorify Him for his holiness and truth? He cannot, because He will not. The angels now cannot sin; they have so drunk in the glory of God, that, as we believe, they are lifted above the possibility of falling. But does it therefore follow that their obedience, then when they might have followed those ‘who kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation’ (Jude 6), had a worth; which now that they cannot, it has ceased to possess? There is something better and higher, as Augustine and Anselm have taught, than the Uberum arbitrium, even though that should on each separate occa- sion of choice choose the good; and that better is the libertas, the beata necessitas boni; which so soon as the creature has attained, it would certainly be strange to affirm of it that this highest has reduced it to the state of the lowest, to the condition of stocks and stones, which indeed cannot do wrong, but for the same causes that hinder them from this, can as little do right. When two antagonists enter the lists, our moral certainty * Ad Rom. p. §39: Cum hominem qui Deo unitus est, possibile sit peccare, non tamen postquam unitus est vel dum unitus est. Christum vero, i. e. Deum simul ef hominem modis omnibus impossibile est peccare, cum vide- licet ipsum Christi nomen Dei et hominis exprimat unionem. * See on this matter a very interesting discussion by Anselm, Cur Deus Homo ? ii, το. THE TEMPTATION. 29 that one will overcome, may take away the breathless expectation and interest with which we might otherwise mark the several stages of the conflict, but cannot affect the real excellence and merit of the victor. But all this, namely that the temptations were thus pre- sented from without and not born from within, and, again, that they found not even a moment’s acquiescence, con- sent and entertainment in that holy soul, does not hinder in the least that what was offered may have presented itself as infinitely desirable. In the reality of the tempta- tions we are bound to believe, nor will it be very hard to understand, in part at least, where that reality consisted when we a little consider them one by one, which now it is time to do. Τὸ these considerations some words of Pro- fessor Mill on this very matter may prove a fitting introduc- tion. ‘If,’ he says, ‘the highest virtue does not exclude that instinct inseparable from humanity, to which pain is an object of dread and pleasure of desire; which prefers ease and quiet to tumult and vexation, the regard and esteem of others to their scorn and aversion; to which ill- requited toil or experienced unkindness are sources of corroding anguish and depression ;—this very conjuncture which presents but one of these objects of dread as the concomitant of doing God’s will, or associates one of their desirable opposites with neglect or disobedience—every such conjuncture must produce a conflict between duty and these necessary instincts of humanity, sufficient to constitute temptation in the strictest sense.’ ? ‘And when the Tempter came unto Him, he said, If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be + Five Sermons on the Temptation, 1844, p. 37. 20 THE TEMPTATION. made bread. A certain external likeness which might exist between stones and bread (cf. Matt. vii. 9) explains why on those more than on anything else Christ should have been challenged to display his power. It has been often asked, Putting his suggestion thus, did the Tempter indeed know Him whom he assailed to be the Son of God? or was the suggestion merely tentative, to make Him re- veal Himself, and show by his reply what manner of person, and clothed with what power, He was? The question has been variously answered. The ancients -probably are right, who for the most part reply, that the Evil Spirit was thus taking the measure of Him whom by a true instinct he recognized for his mortal foe;’ fearing the worst; but at the same time still uncertain with whom he had to do. The first words which he utters, ‘Jf Thou be the Son of God, Christ was destined to hear again in the hour of a keener suffering even than this. He should be again taunted and provoked, and in exactly the same language (Matt. xxvii. 40), to prove his Messiahship, and in this very act of proving to render void the whole work which as Messiah He came to accomplish; but then as now He is able to leave the vindication of his Sonship in his Father’s hands. That to which Satan here challenges the Lord, to ‘ com- mand that these stones be made bread, was not sinful in it- self, but would have been sinful for Him. To have complied, would have been a defeat of his whole mediatorial work. If on each sharper pressure of the world’s suffering and pain upon Himself, He had fallen back on the power which as * So Hilary: Erat in diabolo de metu suspicio, non de suspicione cognitio. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xi. 21): Dubitavit de illo damonum princeps, eumque tentavit, an Christus esset explorans, quantum se tentari ipse permisit, ut hominem quem gerebat ad nostra imitationis temperaret exemplum. ΄ THE TEMPTATION. 31 Son of God He possessed, and so exempted Himself from the common lot of humanity, where would have been the fellow-man, the overcomer of the world by his human faith, and not by his divine power?’ The whole life of faith would have disappeared. At his Incarnation the Lord had merged his lot with the lot of the race; the temptation is, that He should separate Himself from them — anew: ‘Son of God, put forth thy power.’ When in some besieged and famine-stricken city, when in hard straits during the march through some waterless desert, a captain or commander refuses special exemptions from the lot of his suffering fellow-soldiers, when a Cato pours upon the sands the single draught of water which has been procured in the African desert and brought for his drinking,’ such a one in his lower sphere acts out what the Lord in the highest sphere of all acted now. His miracles shall be all for the needs of others, never for his own.® He who made the water wine, could have made * Aquinas: Diabolus justitia Dei, non potentid, superandus fuit. Com- pare Augustine, De Trin. xiii. 14. 3 Lucan, Pharsal. ix. 510: Excussit galeam, suffecitque omnibus unda. Compare Plutarch, Alex. 42. * All this I ventured long ago to embody in a brief poem: ‘He might have reared a palace at a word, Who sometimes had not where to lay his head ; Time was, and He who nourished crowds with bread, Would not one meal unto Himself afford. Twelve legions girded with angelic sword Were at his beck, the scorned and buffeted ; He healed another’s scratch ; his own side bled, Side, feet, and hands, with cruel piercings gored. Oh wonderful the wonders left undone! And scarce less wonderful than those He wrought; Oh self-restraint, passing all human thought, To have all power, and be as having none! Oh self-denying love, which felt alone For needs of others, never for its own!’ 32 THE TEMPTATION. the stones bread ; but to that He was solicited by the need of others, to this only by his own. And this abstinence of self-help was the law of his whole life, a life as won- derful in the miracles which it left undone as in those which it wrought. The stress of this, as of each other of the subsequent temptations, consisted in the fact that what Satan proposed did lie in the final purposes of the ministry of the Son of God; and that it was only in its premature anticipa- tions that the sin consisted. Thus it did lie in final issues of his ministry for man that the desert should blossom as a rose (Isai. xxxv. 1; lxv. 29), that all strait- ness, hunger, poverty, want, all sweat of the brow, hardly ‘ wringing from the soil the pittance of the day, and leaving little or no opportunity for higher mental or moral culture, that all these consequences of the primeval curse upon the earth (Gen. iii. 17, 18) should cease and come to an end —that, so to speak, the stones should become bread. But the temptation was, to begin instead of ending with this, to bring about an outer world of abundance otherwise than as the expression and the result of an inner kingdom of righteousness. And in the Lord’s refusal to do this is involved the condemnation of every plan for redressing the hard lot. of humanity which does not begin from the root, which thinks to make men happier without making them holier, all communist schemes, all the profane mil- lenarianism of an Owen or a Fourrier. It is no heavenly root, but quite another, out of which these grow. They ‘are not of good, and cannot come to good. Yet who will dare measure the strength of this temptation, as it may have presented itself to Him who beheld with a compas- sion at once human and divine the infinite toil and want THE TEMPTATION. 33 of the children of men; for I believe we mistake alto- gether when we find in his own immediate hunger that which gave the whole, or even the chief, stress and force to this temptation. Standing as He did at the centre of humanity, and commanding all the diverging lines to their extreme circumference, that hunger was to Him but as the key and interpreter to all the hunger, all the need, all the distress which the children of Adam had ever felt, or should ever feel, until the great and glorious day when the primeval curse should be lightened from off the earth, and it should again yield its foison with the free bounty of Paradise. His own hunger was included; but this did not exclude, rather took in that of every one besides. And to be able to stay all this, to speak the word and bring it all to an end, who, with a sinful and therefore a selfish heart, is at all in a position to estimate what this temptation was to the great Lover of the bodies and the souls of men? But now for the answer. The Tempter had said, ‘Jf Thou be the Son of God? Christ does not reply, ‘I am;’ nor find here, as He easily might, a reason for not complying with the challenge ; since answering so, He would indeed have overcome the adversary, but He would have overcome him only for Him- self, and not also for us. No other, being only a man, and not in that peculiar sense ‘the Son of God, could have silenced him in the same way. The answer would have stood apart, and would have fitted no other lips but his own.’ But the answer which He gives is one which every other may employ as freely as He did: ‘Man shall not live * Ambrose (Δ. in Luc. v. 20): Non enim quasi Deus utitur potestate (quid enim mihi proderat?) sed quasi homo, commune sibi arcessit auxilium. Of. Augustine, Hnarr. 2* in Ps. cx. το, 11. D 34 THE TEMPTATION. by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’ He throws his broad shield not,merely over Himself, but over all those whom He has called his brethren, and with whom in his Incarnation He has made common part and lot; and saying, ‘Man shall not live’ He declares that He will not separate Himself from his race. These words are drawn, as indeed are both the other passages which He cites, not merely from the Old Testament, but from the history of Israel’s forty years’ temptation in the wilderness, and from that as it is re- sumed in the Book of Deuteronomy. And this certainly is not for nothing, nor without its significance; but finds its explanation in the fact that Israel was the figure of the Son of man, was ‘the servant of God,’ that should have fulfilled all righteousness, but did not; in which fact we must seek the justification of St. Matthew’s use of Hosea’s words, ‘Out of Egypt have I called my Son’ (Matt ii. 13; cf. Hos. xi. 1). Christ, as there has been already occasion to urge, is not merely the second Adam, but the true Israel, and the true servant of God (Isai. xlii. 1), who as such should testify by his obe- dience that man truly lives only in and by the everlasting word. The words were originally spoken by Moses in reference to the manna: ‘He fed thee with manna which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only; but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live’ (Deut. vii. 3). But this being so, what, it may be asked, was their special appropriateness at a moment like the present? They had this fitness. In the giving of the manna, and in the THE TEMPTATION. 35 feeding of the people thereby, lay a signal proof that God was not limited to ordinary means; but, as then He created ‘a new thing’ with which to sustain his people, so now He could feed one who trusted in Him, altogether without any external helps and appliances whatever. God is Himself the nourisher, and not the bread or anything else. The manna was but the help to a weak faith; for that did not really nourish any, but only God’s might which worked in and through the manna. And thus the Lord does not mean by this quotation that man wants something besides bread, has a soul which must be sus- tained by heavenly food, as his body is by earthly; and that if that be fed, it imports little how this may fare. His words are still more to the point. The creative word, the ῥῆμα Θεοῦ, which alone imparts to the bread its sus- taining power, can sustain, even as He is confident that in the present need it will sustain, apart from the bread.! The answer is in fact a keener way of saying, ‘I have meat to eat that ye know not of (John iv. 31). I am not pressed, as thou suggestest, and as thou wouldst fain have Me to believe; I live upon God.’? ‘God, as Jeremy Taylor has said, applying these words, ‘will certainly give us bread, and till He does we can live by the breath of 1 Cocceius : Potest Deus vivificare absque pane, et sine verbo Dei ne panis quidem ad yitam est. Spanheim (Dub. Hoang. 58): Tentator objiciebat, vel fame ipsi esse pereundum, vel lapides convertendos in panem, alioquin nullum dari medium ipsius conservandi. Immo, inquit Dominus, media in- numera alia dari possunt preter panem: quamcunque enim rem placet Deo adhibere ad sustentationem hominis ea suflicere potest, vel verbum solum promissionis egrediens ex ore Domini. * It isa beautiful Jewish legend to which Philo (De Soman. i. 6) refers, that Moses during his forty days’ fast on Mount Horeb was fed by the melo- dies of heaven, the music of the spheres—by which he goes on to say, if our ears were now purged to drink them in, we too might equally be sus- tained. Not unlike this in spirit is the saying quoted by Schoetgen (Hor. Heb. vol. i. p. 87): Justi perfecti ex splendore Schechinw comedunt. D2 36 THE TEMPTATION. his mouth, by the word of God, by the light of his coun- tenance,*by the refreshment of his promises. If the fleshpots be removed He can alter the appetite; and when our stock is spent, He can also lessen the necessity ; or if that continues, He can drown the sense of it na deluge of patience and resignation.’ * ‘Then the devil taketh Him up into the holy city, and setteth Him on a pinnacle of the temple. Characteristically enough it is St. Matthew who thus calls Jerusalem ‘ the holy city” To him, the Jew, it was eminently such (cf. BAVil.y 593 ideal. ,xlviil., 2.3, la. 1,3 Dan. ἀπ 24s ere R24. Rxi.@ 3, eel. xxxvi.,.19;,1 Macc, Ὁ. Ὁ city of the Great King’ (Matt. v. 35). In the parallel record of St. Luke, it is simply ‘Jerusalem.’ I should be unwilling to interpret this ‘taketh’ with Hammond, as though it were, ‘carried Him through the air;’ for such a rapture and flight, a yielding of Himself so far to the will of the adversary, seems inconsistent with the dignity which in the midst of all his humiliation the Son evermore preserved. They who will have it so, observe that it is nothing strange if He who allowed Himself to be buffeted, scourged, crucified by the servants of the devil, should yield Himself thus far to the violence of their master ; and that all which concerns us is to keep in mind that it was a violence which could not have been exercised upon Him, unless He had willingly submitted Himself to 1." But certainly the language which St. Matthew uses does not require, hardly justifies, such a meaning as this. The Life of Christ, i, 9. ? Deyling: Noliin hic re diaboli potentiam sed potius Servatoris pati- entiam mirari. THE TEMPTATION. 37 word we have translated ‘taketh’ (παραλαμβάνει) is the same which all three Evangelists employ when they would describe the Lord’s leading up with Him his chosen apostles to the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. xvii. 1; Mark ix. 2; Luke ix. 28; and often elsewhere). That which may have in part induced this interpretation, namely, the supposition that the ‘pinnacle’ of the temple’ was some giddy point, unattamable except by such aérial flight, is a mistake. Whatever it may have been, it cer- tainly was not this; for in the history of the martyrdom of James the Just, given by Hegesippus and preserved for us by Eusebius,’ the martyr is set on this same ‘ pinnacle, which he could only have reached by ordinary means, that from thence he may harangue the people below, and when he disappoints the expectation of the Jews who had set him there, is by them cast headlong down. ‘And saith unto Him, If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down; for i is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning Thee, and in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash thy foot against a stone. The temple was plainly the fitting place for this, the peculiarly theocratic temptation, as the wilderness had been for that addressed to the fleshly appetite, and as the high mountain should be for the temptation yet in store from the world; even as it has been fancifully sug- gested that the Tempter assumed different shapes in suc- cession, an eremite in the wilderness, an angel of light on ? IIreptyiov, which the grammarians explain by ἀκρωτήριον, the diminu- tive of πτέρυξ, a wing, pinna or penna in Latin; the latter being the form in which the word, literally employed, assumes; while pinna, with its diminu- tive pinnaculum, is the winglike lappet of a building. For the different views of what this πτερύγιον of the temple actually was, see Deyling, Odss. Sac., vol. ii. p. 371 Shin, fee tl. 23. 28 THE TEMPTATION. this pinnacle of the temple, a king when he offered on the mountain the world-kingdoms to the Lord. Ex- panding this temptation a little, we may better realize to ourselves wherein consisted its enticing power. What the Tempter suggested may have been very nearly as follows: ‘ Be acknowledged the Christ at once. Give of thy own free accord that which those in whose hands it will lie to accept or reject Thee will so often demand, namely, “a sign from heaven” (Matt. xii. 38; xvi. 1; Luke xii. 54, 56). Descend with a pomp of angels up- holding and upbearing Thee, in the midst of an admiring people. Thou art appointed to be the Christ. Why take the way of a long and tedious recognition? Why con- sent to be despised and rejected—bringing all which thus Thou wilt bring of evil on Thyself and on them that reject Thee, when by one noble venture of faith, having moreover a Scripture warrant for this, thou mightest at a single bound leap to that remote consummation which is indeed in the intentions and purposes of God ?’ With what marvellous skill has the Tempter shifted in an instant the whole line of his assault. In that first “temptation he urged the Lord to a distrust of his Father’s love, so that He must help Himself, if He is indeed to be helped at all; but now he urges not indeed to trust that love overmuch, for this is impossible, but to put it to the proof in a way of his own choosing, and not of God’s appointing. If he cannot entangle Him in the sin of difidentia, perhaps then in that of prefidentia,—if such a word may be allowed. Satan too has learned some- thing else in that first encounter ; he has learnt that the Scripture is the law of Christ’s life; the sphere in which He lives and moves. On a word of that Scripture the “ THE TEMPTATION. 39 Lord had grounded his refusal to make the stones bread. Here then is a word of that same Scripture, which should induce Him to consent to that which is now put before Him. ‘Makest Thou so much of that word? Hopest Thou on its assurance for such a miracle in thy behalf? Then see in that which I now set before Thee, how Thou mayest show yet more gloriously thy con- fidence in the favour of God toward Thee.’ That ninety-first Psalm which the adversary quotes, is written not concerning the Son of God in particular, but concerning the faithful generally. Yet for all this it can- not be said that there was any abusing or mis-quoting of it in applying the promise which it contains, as Satan now does, to Christ; since whatever was written concerning the faithful in general, must be eminently true concerning Him who is the Head of the faithful. Origen then,’ it must be admitted, has not right here, when he accuses Satan of a fraudful transfer to Christ of what was written about others, and in this respect of perverting Scripture ; an accusation which Chrysostom and Jerome repeat. That there is and must be somewhere a lie in the appli- cation even of words of truth on the part of him who is a liar and only a liar is certain. He lies, as St. Bernard has very well shown, leaving out, as he does, one little clause, which would have altered the whole character of the quotation. ‘He shall give his angels charge con- cerning Thee, this much Satan cites; but the words following ‘to keep Thee in all thy ways,’ these he omits altogether.” But that to which he now challenged the 1 Hom. 31. in Lue. 3. Mendacium abscondens per Scripturam sicut omnes heretici, as Irengeus: observes (vy. 31); and none had greater experience of their devices, 40 THE TEMPTATION. Lord was not ‘a way’ appointed by his heavenly Father for his treading, and in which as such He might be sure that he would not stumble (John xi. 9, 10), but a preci- pice from which He would have wantonly chosen to fling Himself down; and the promise of being kept in all his ways no one has a right to take to himself, who has exchanged his appointed ways for any such headlong precipices as that now suggested to the Lord." ‘ Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God ;’ written, indeed, in almost every page of Scripture, but the special reference is to Deut. vi. 16. But first, in that ‘ J¢ is written again’ of Christ, lies a great lesson, quite independent of that particular Scrip- ture which on this occasion He quotes, or of the use to which He turns it. There lies in it the secret of our safety and defence against all distorted use of isolated ‘ passages in Holy Scripture. Only as we enter into the unity of Scripture, as it balances, completes, and explains itself, are we armed against error and delusion, excess or defect on this side or the other. Thus the retort, ‘/¢ zs written again, wust be of continual application ; for, indeed, what very often are heresies but onesided exag- gerated truths, truths rent away indeed from the body 1 Bernard (Jn Ps. Quis Latitat, Serm. 15): Scriptum est, inquit, Quoniam angelis suis mandavit de te, et in manibus tollent te. Quid scriptum est, maligne, quid scriptum est? Angelis suis mandavit de te. Quid man- davit? Animadvertite et videte quoniam subticuit malignus et fraudulentus quod malignitatis sua commenta dissolveret. Quid enim mandavit? Nempe quod in psalmo sequitur: Ut custodiant te in omnibus viis tuis. Numguid in precipitiis? Qualis via hee de pinnaculo templi mittere se deorsum? Non est via hie, sed ruina; et si via, tua est, non illius. Frustra in tentationem capitis intorsisti, quod scriptum est ad corporis consolatio- nem. Delitzsch: Es ist nicht die Rede von Gefahren, die man aussucht, sondern von solchen, die den Gerechten ungesucht auf den Lebenswegen .begegnen. THE TEMPTATION. 41 and complex of the Truth, without the balance of the counter-truth, which should have kept them in their due place, coordinated with other truths or subordinated to them; and so, because all such checks are wanting, not truth any more but error Ὁ It is a weapon at once offensive and defensive, a sun at once and a shield, which the Lord on this occasion draws from the armoury of God: ‘ Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” The same apparent difficulty which lies in St. James’ declaration that ‘God tempteth not any man’ (i. 13), when set over against so many other passages in which a tempting of man is ascribed to Him (Gen. xxii. 1; John vi. 6), lies also in St. James’ statement made at the same place that ‘God cannot be tempted’ as compared with so many other, in which men are charged with the sin, or warned against the sin, of tempting God; such as Exod. xvii. 2; Num. xiv. 22; Ps. Ixxviii. 18, 56; Acts v.9; xv. 10; and the present. But here, as there, the contradiction lies only on the surface, and as soon as we descend a little below this, it quite disappears. There is a sense in which men ‘ tempt’ God, as no doubt there is also a sense in which they cannot ‘tempt’ Him. They ‘tempt’ God, when they mistrust the resources of his wisdom, his power, his goodness; when they will not believe Him on his simple word, but challenge Him to make present and immediate experiment of these before, they will give Him credit for possessing them. Thus when the children of Israel exclaimed, ‘Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?’ (Ps. Ixxviii. 19) this question > Tertullian (De Pudic. 16): Est hoe solenne perversis et idiotis et hereticis, alicujus capituli ancipitis occasione adversus exercitum senntiate- rum Instrumenti totius armari. 42 THE TEMPTATION. of theirs was in the strictest sense of the word a ‘ tempting’ of God; as the Psalmist expressly declares ‘ They tempted God in their heart’—‘ they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel’ (ver. 41). In like manner Ahaz refuses to ask a sign from God, sheltering himself behind the precept of Deut. vi. 16; and pretending to believe that to ask of God that sign which God bade him ask, would be such a ‘ tempting’ of Him as is there forbidden ; “1 will not ¢empt the Lord’ (Isai. vi. 12). Not otherwise we are told that the adversaries of the Lard ‘ came, and tempting desired that He would show them a sign from heaven’ (Matt. xvi. 1), that is, putting Him to the proof, refusing to accept, without this proof given, his claims to be the Messiah. And when Satan would have the Saviour to cast Himself down headlong from the pinnacle of the temple, this would have been in the strictest sense, as He Himself declares, a ‘tempting’ of the Lord his God, that is, a putting of Him to the proof, as being doubtful, until that proof was made, whether He would indeed help and save. God may ‘tempt’ manas often as He will; for there is always an element of weakness in every man, justifying the temptation, which shall either reveal this weakness to him through a fall, and thus send him to the source of all true strength, or through a victorious struggle with it, leave him in fuller possession of God’s strength than before. But men may never lawfully ‘tempt’ God, in whom there are no such discoveries to be made, and whom then they honour most, when they believe the highest, noblest, great- est things about Him to which their hearts can attain. It was for Christ to believe in the loving-kindness and faith- fulness of God, that He would uphold Him in all his ways, THE TEMPTATION. 43 without ‘tempting’ or putting Him to proof, as the ad- versary had suggested. _ Such a tempting could only have sprung from a secret unbelief; and would have been for Him an abandonment at the outset, of that life of faith which He came to live on earth, and by which to over- come the Wicked One. In this refusal of Christ’s are implicitly condemned all who run before they are sent, who thrust themselves into perils to which they are not called ; all who would fain be reformers, but whom God has not raised up and equipped for the work of reformation; and who therefore for the most part bring themselves and their cause to- gether to shame, dishonour, and defeat; with all those who presumptuously draw drafts on the faithfulness of God, which they have no scriptural warrant to justify them in believing that He will honour. It is well known that in the different Gospels this second temptation and the third follow in different order. In St. Matthew the temptation to vainglory (‘ Cast Thyself down’) comes first, and that to worldliness (‘ Ad these things will I give Thee’) follows after; while in St. Luke first the kingdoms and their glory are offered, and only when these are rejected, the temptation to spiritual pride is suggested. Which, it may be asked, was the true, or rather the actual, succession? for both orders may in a deeper ideal, though not in an historic sense, be true. In favour of St. Luke’s it may be urged that spiritual wicked- nesses seem the latest and subtlest temptations of the Evil One; those who have overcome all other, are ex- posed to, and sometimes overcome by, these; the white devil, as one has said, being more to be feared than the black; and temptations arranged to follow in such a 44 THE TEMPTATION. sequence and method as shall be most effectual (μεθοδεῖαι σλάνης) are especially attributed to Satan (Ephes. iv. 14; vi. 11). But on the other hand, in favour of St. Matthew’s succession it may be said that the words, ‘ Get thee behind Me, Satan, would scarcely occur in the middle of the Temptation, being rather the final and authorita- tive dismissal of the Tempter, after which he would no longer presume, for the present at least, to molest the Lord. And altogether this fact seems to outweigh the arguments which support the other succession ; not to say that St. Matthew's ‘then’ (ver. 5) and ‘again’ (ver. 8) mark a closer knitting together of the incidents in the order of time than aught in the more loosely connected scenes in St. Luke.’ ‘Again 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, ΑἸ these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me. The inner connexion between this third temptation and that which went before may be as follows: ‘ Well, if Thou art not the Son of God, as is plain from thy in- ability to make bread, thy refusal to cast thyself boldly forth on the riches of his grace, worship me, and receive what I will give Thee, the kingdoms of the world and * In Greswell’s Dissertations there is one On the Order of the Temptations, vol. ii. p. 192. Von Meyer (Blatt. fir hihere Wahrheit, vol. v. p. 262) thinks the succession to have been differently given by the different Evangelists, of a purpose and for our instruction, because the order of these temptations is different in different men, and in the same man at different times. Aquinas, who has anticipated so much, has anticipated also this (Summ. Theol. pars 3", qu. 41, art. 4): Videntur Evangelista diversum ordinem tenuisse; quia quandoque ex inani glorié venitur ad cupiditatem, quandoque e converso. Augustine (De Cons. Evang. ii. 16) does not absolutely decide in favour of one order or the other. THE TEMPTATION. 45 the glory of them. By these last words I understand all which the kingdoms possessed of fairest, richest, best, the flower and crown of all their splendours gathered to a head (Isai. xxxix. 2; Matt. vi. 29; Rev. xxi. 25, 26). But before we proceed further it is worth while to enquire how we are to understand the ‘ shewing’ to Him of all these. An optical illusion is entirely inadmissible ; such is not reconcilable with the Church’s idea of her divine Head. It is quite impossible that in anything, great or small, He can have been played upon or deceived, least of all by the Spirit of 1165... That Satan pointed out the quarters in which the several kingdoms of the world lay, does not seem to me altogether to satisfy and exhaust the force of this ‘sheweth ; least of all when we bring in St. Luke’s ‘in a moment of time : although many interpreters have been satisfied with such an explanation.’ Jeremy Taylor reaches out after something more : ‘ By an angelical power he draws into one centre species and ideas from all the kingdoms and glories of the world, and makes an ad- mirable map of beauties, and represents it to the eye of Jesus. But whatever the manner of the shewing * Grotius strangely enough, while he allows this (neque oculos neque vim imaginatricem Christi illusam puto), suggests notwithstanding a mere phan- tasmagoria of this kind: Nimirum quasi in picturé ponens [diabolus] ompem qui unquam esset regi fortune apparatum. The suggestion of Milton (Par. Reg. iv. 40) is different; and is not attended by the same objections : ‘By what strange parallax or optic skill Of vision, multiplied through air, or glass Of telescope, were fruitless to enquire.’ 2 Ἔν στιγμῇ xpsvou=év ἀτόμῳ͵ ἐν ῥιπῇ ὀφθαλμοῦ (x Cor. xv. 52). 3 Origen: Διέγραψε τῷ λόγῳ τὴν οἰκουμένην,... πῶς γὰρ ἠδύνατο αὐτοὺς τοὺς τόπους εἰς ἕνα τόπον πρὸς θεωρίαν σωματικὴν ἀγαγεῖν; Maldonatus: Reipsd ostendisse, non ita ut viderit, sed ita ut cujusque regni plagam digito desig- naverit. Bengel: Per enumerationem et indigitationem fortasse. So Aquinas, Summ. Theol. pars 35, qu. 41, art. 4. 46 THE TEMPTATION. was, a shewing rather than a telling is skilfully imagined, as might have been expected from the great artificer of falsehood. The eye is the inlet of desire; there is nothing so soon enticed and led away. ‘It is,’ as Bishop Andrews has said, ‘the broker between the heart and all wicked lusts that be in the world’ (Job xiao, 1,7). T have quoted the words in which this proffer of the king- doms of the world is made, as more briefly recorded by St. Matthew. At the same time the qualifying addition which appears in the report of St. Luke is very significant: ‘ Ad/ 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. Liar as he is from the beginning, the Tempter does not venture to claim the kingdoms of the world and their glory as of absolute right his own. Manichzeans enough there are in the world, who believe that the devil is really its lord and king; but he in whose favour the Manichean explanation of the world’s riddle has been started, does not himself venture to assert it. The world is not Satan’s own; nor his at all except in so far as it has been ‘delivered’ to him; that through it and the countless seductions which it offers he may on the one hand exercise and prove the faith of God’s elect, to their greater final reward, on the other seduce those who are waiting and willing to be seduced from their allegiance to their liege Lord and rightful king; or that in other ways he may work out the higher ends of God’s providence and grace. So far indeed it had been suffered to come into his hands ; he is now, in Christ’s own words, ‘ the prince of this world’ (John xii. 31), in the words of his apostle, ‘the prince of the power of the air’ (Ephes. ii. 2), ‘the THE TEMPTATION. 47 god of this world’ (2 Cor. iv. 4); able to give to those who serve him, ‘his power, and his seat, and great autho- rity’ (Rey. xii. 2). But whatever dominion he possesses in it, he possesses not of right, but by usurpation on his part, by permission upon God’s, even as he himself must acknowledge here. To him it might be said, as to one of his servants it was said, ‘ Thou couldest have no power at all, except it were given thee from above’ (John xix. 11). This was originally no wicked world (Gen. i. 31); a ‘mundus’ indeed, but no ‘mundus immundus, as Au- gustine so often loves to declare. Satan is playing for a high stake, and does not grudge therefore to make a great offer. It is not often that Bishop Andrews allows himself in irony so fine and so effective as he does in one of his Sermons on the Tempta- tion; contrasting this offer, the kingdoms offered to Christ and rejected by Him, with the unutterably paltry bribes, the mess of pottage (Gen. xxv. 34), the Babylonish garment (Josh. vii. 21), the two changes of garments (2 Kin. v. 23), the thirty pieces of silver (Matt. xxvi. 15), for which we are so often contented to barter all. I cannot refuse to quote a part: ‘ There be some that will say, They were never tempted with kingdoms. It may well be; for it needs not, when less will serve. It was Christ only who was thus tempted; in Him lay a heroical mind that could not be allured with small matters. But with us it is nothing so, for we esteem far more basely of ourselves. We set our wares at a very easy price; he may buy us even dagger-cheap, as we say. He need never carry us so high as the mount. The pinnacle is high enough; yea, the lowest steeple in all the town would serve the turn. Or let him but carry us to the leads and 48 THE TEMPTATION. gutters of our own houses, nay, let us but stand in our windows or our doors, if he will give us but so much as we can there see, he will tempt us throughly; we will accept it and thank him too. He shall not need to come to us with kingdoms. If he would come to us with thirty pieces, I am afraid many of us would play Judas. Nay, less than so much would buy a great sort, even ‘“ handfuls of barley and pieces of bread” (Ezek. xiii. 19). Yea some will not stick to buy and sell the poor for a pair of shoes, as Amos speaketh. . . . A matter of half a crown, or ten groats, a pair of shoes, or some such trifle will bring us on our knees to the devil.’ But this temptation, how mighty an attraction it must have had—not indeed that attraction for Him on whom it was now brought to bear, which it would possess for mean and vulgar souls; but one which the very love and pity and yearning sympathy for all the children of men that dwelt in Him, must have lent it. Nothing was more righteous than that all the kingdoms of the world should be Christ’s, nothing more certain than that He, as Messiah, should one day be heir of all. Feeling then and knowing Himself to be the rightful king of men, and to have the power of infinitely blessing them as their king, with such prophecies going before of his kingdom and what his kingdom should be, as Isai. xxxii. 1-8, Ps. lxxii., He must have unutterably desired, and it belonged to the perfection of his nature that He should so desire, that the kingdoms of the world should be his. How many bleeding hearts were waiting to be bound up by Him; how many who now sat in darkness were waiting for light from Him; what truths were waiting for Him to utter; what wrongs were waiting for «Him to THE TEMPTATION. 49 redress, what strongholds of oppression for Him to cast down. The power of accomplishing all this, of redressing all the oppressions of the earth, of stanching all those fountains of tears, of imparting all that knowledge of his Father’s love, this was ‘the glory, the δόξα, which the royalty of the world wore in his sight; here was the allective force which this temptation possessed. We note ever, even among the sinful children of men, that the nobler the character of a man, the nobler also the sem- blance which a temptation, that is indeed to exercise any power upon him, must assume. Sordid sins, sins of a manifest selfishness, will have little or no seductive power, nay, will rather repel than attract him. The temptation may be a messenger of Satan’s, but it must in some sort know how to transform itself into an angel of light, before it can obtain a hearing from him, or at all events before it can mightily allure. And if this be true of men in whom is any nobleness of nature, how much more must it have been true in respect of Him who was the noblest of all. At the same time, when we are seeking to measure what was the dynamic force of this third temptation, we must not leave out of account, as an element herein, that in this offer lay the prospect of evading and overleaping all the toil and pain and suffering, to which otherwise a Saviour of the world was bound in. The kingdoms of the world should be his, as an easy gift; instead of being, as otherwise they must be, a painful prey wrung at the cost of his own life’s blood from the usurper. It is from this point of view, and from vividly realizing to ourselves the mighty temptation which the prospect of thus escaping the cross, and not drinking the cup, must have had for E ξο THE TEMPTATION. Him who knew all which that cross and that cup meant, that we must explain that ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’ (Matt. xvi. 23), with which at a later day Christ rebukes the chief of his apostles, when he too must needs play the Hinderer, and with his ‘That be far from Thee’ (ver. 22), would fain persuade his Lord that the suffering of many things was not, and need not be, his portion; that there was another way besides that by the steps of his cross whereby He might ascend to his throne. The saying has perplexed many. Could He who spoke no random word, for whom Satan was the personal em- bodiment of all evil, have called by this name a servant of his own, visited a passing fault of his with so terrible a rebuke? They have recoiled from admitting this; and yet how escape the admission? In this way, I believe. Christ saw with the lightning glance of his spirit in the words of St. Peter a suggestion not so much of his as of Satan’s; who was using the servant, and making him the organ and unconscious instrument by which he brought to bear his engines of temptation against the Master. Christ beheld Satan, so to speak, lurking behind Peter, suggesting by him, as he had in the wilderness suggested more directly, that there was a shorter way to the kingdom of his glory than by the cross of his shame; and to him the words are properly and primarily addressed ; although in reaching him enough glances off from them to constitute a wholesome and most real rebuke for Peter. The words of rebuke which are spoken then are precisely the same as those spoken now, to mark that the Lord recog- nized in the remonstrance of Peter the recurrence of a temp- tation, whose strength He had known before, and no doubt still knew; but which He had already met and overcome. THE TEMPTATION. 51 But the price to be paid for that, power of prodigally blessing others, in which after all lay the main stress of this temptation, what was that to be? It was no more than an act of homage to him from whom He should receive the investiture of the kingdom. This price before now men not altogether mean or base, men not altogether without noble aspirations for the good of their fellow men, have consented to pay; having persuaded them- selves that a righteous end justified the unrighteous means, that the power ill-gotten might yet be so well used as to cause the fraud, or violence, or other wrong by which it was obtained to be forgotten altogether. Some among those who ended with being the very worst and wickedest in the French Revolution, saw, no doubt, an ideal kingdom floating before their eyes, which they were striving to realize, and which they linked with good for many, and not merely with some selfish good for themselves. But while no other way of bringing about that which they desired seemed open to them, they were willing, that so they might hasten and make sure the coming of this kingdom, to fall down and worship Satan; and what hideous service they rendered him at the last is written in such characters of blood as will leave their names a hissing and an execration for ever. And that act of homage which the Tempter now asked of Christ, what did itimply? Simply that of Christ He should become Antichrist—nothing short of this. Height and depth are but two aspects of the same fact ; and just as Lucifer, ‘ son of the morning,’ could only fall as he did fall, the height to which he was exalted being the measure of the depth to which he fell, and, fallen, could not be any other than the prince of darkness, so for Him who was tempted now E 2 52 THE TEMPTATION. there was no alternative but to be the Christ, or if not this, to be Antichrist. No wonder that such a proposal should call forth such an answer as it does. Hitherto the suggestions of the Wicked One, however fraudful, have been capable of a favourable interpretation ; the first might have been called forth by sympathy, how- ever ill-timed, with the Lord’s hunger ; the second by the desire, however premature, that He should openly assert the dignity of his person and office, and make manifest to all the world his dearness to God. But this is capable of no such favourable interpretation. The Tempter has shown himself now in his true colours, one who can no more be so much as mistaken for an angel of light, but manifestly the leader of the great apostasy from the worship and service of the true God. Therefore the altered tone of the reply: ‘ Get thee behind me, Satan.” The divine patience gives room now to the ἴθ indig- nation, such as the character of this suggestion required. He who simply declines an infamous proposal inade- quately satisfies the claims which virtue and honour, outraged and insulted in his person, make upon him. Indignation in such a case is not merely justifiable, but is required, is of the essence of a true righteousness. Such an indignation speaks out in this reply of Christ. And now He proceeds to justify the word of defiance to the outrance with which He has replied, even as with 1 Ὕπαγε ὀπίσω μου (cf. 2 Kin, ix. 18, ἐπίστρεφε πρὸς τὸ ὀπίσω pov), rendered by Tyndale ‘ Avoid, Satan,’ by the Rhemish, * Avaunt, Satan,’ is strangely enough rendtred in our Version in two different ways, ‘Get thee hence, Satan,’ in Matthew ; ‘Get thee behind Me, Satan,’ in Luke. The words belong properly only to the earlier, having been brought by transcribers to the later, Gospel, from the text of which they are now omitted in the best critical editions. THE TEMPTATION. 53 such only He could reply, to the last proposal of the Tempter ; to justify to the fearful name of ‘Satan,’ adver- sary, opposer of all good, which He has given him. This He does from a word from the Scripture, to act in direct disobedience to which that adversary would fain have induced Him: ‘for τέ ¢s written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve’— ‘written’ at Deut. vi. 13, and again at x. 20; cf. Rev. xix. 10. Out of the mouth of the Son of God there might have proceeded a two-edged sword of his own (Rey. i. 16); but ‘the sword of the Spirit’ which he prefers to wield is again the written word ; even as armed with this He comes victoriously forth from his third and last encounter with the foe. ‘Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name’ (Ps. cxxxvili. 2). ‘ Blessed is he,’ exclaims Bishop Andrews here, ‘that has his quiver full of such arrows.’ ‘Then the devil leaveth Him, or, in the far more noticeable words of St. Luke, marking two important points which St. Matthew had passed over, ‘And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from fim for a season. We observe first the words, ‘ αἱ the temptation, which we shall scarcely press too far, if we infer from them that the three temptations just recorded, with which our great Forerunner was assailed, embrace the whole circle of human temptation, so that we have here the evidence, to use Jackson’s words, of ‘ Christ’s mastery over Satan at his three principal weapons.’ These ‘three principal weapons’ we are wont to express under the three terms, the world, the flesh, and the devil; answering, as has often been observed, to the three 54 THE TEMPTATION. enumerated by St. John, ‘the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life’ (1 John ii. 16). In the suggested gratification of the appetite, contrary to the will of God, was the temptation of the flesh; in the proffered kingdoms with their glory, the temptation of the world ; while, although all the. temptations were from the devil, yet that was especially the devilish temptation which said to Him that in vain-glory and spiritual pride He should cast Himself headlong from the pinnacle of the temple ; another ‘son of the morning’ (cf. Isai. xiv. 12), but falling from a far higher height than any from which ever his Tempter fell. Nor should we fail further to observe the very note- worthy parallelism between this Temptation which Christ surmounted in the desert and that other under which our first parents succumbed inthe garden. ‘ When the woman saw’ (‘through false spectacles of Satan’s making,’ as Jackson adds) ‘that the tree was good for food’ (the solicitation of the flesh), ‘and that it was pleasant to the eyes (the solicitation of the world),‘and a tree to be desired to make one wise’ (the solicitation of the devil), ‘she took of the fruit thereof and did eat’ (Gen. iii. 6). In that first sin were the lineaments of every other sin, as in this victory over temptation the lineaments, and very much more than the lineaments, of every other victory.” * Augustine (in loc.): Tria sunt ista, et nihil invenies unde tentatur cupiditas humana nisi aut desiderio carnis, aut desiderio oculorum, aut ambitione swculi. Per ista tria tentatus est Dominus a diabolo. Of. De Verd Relig. 38. ? See on this matter Gregory the Great, Hom. xvi. 2, 3; Aquinas (Swm. Theol. 3%, qu. 41, art. 4): Non dixisset Scriptura quod consummaté omni tentatione diabolus recessit ab illo, nisi in tribus premissis esset omnium materia delictorum ; quia cause tentationum cause sunt cupiditatum, scilicet carnis oblectatio, spes gloria, et aviditas potenti. Oompare Jackson, Zrea- tise of the Divine Essence and Attributes, vu. ii, 10 _ THE TEMPTATION. 55 Having thus ‘ ended all the temptation,” launched every one of his fiery darts, and seen them every one fall quenched and blunted to the ground, ‘the devil leaveth Him; for that word shall first be shewn true on the Prince of the faithful, to which each one of his people shall set afterwards his seal, ‘ Resist the devil, and he will sflee from you’ (Jam. iv. 7). He ‘leaveth Him, but as St. Luke is careful to add, ‘for a season.’ Room is left in these words for a later assault, and it is in fact implied in them that such a later assault was in reserve and should in due time arrive. Nor can we be in any doubt in re- gard of the period to which the sacred historian looks on ; that, as one great Temptation signalized the opening of the Saviour’s ministry, so another should signalize its close, the Temptation in the wilderness being followed in due time and completed by the Temptation in the garden ; even as the Lord Himself, whether looking backward or not, yet certainly looking forward to that second Tempta- tion, when now it was close at hand, exclaimed, ‘ The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me’ (John xiv. 30); nothing, that is, on which he could lay his finger, and claim it for his own. The two wrestlings with the Evil One differed indeed from one another, and so may be contrasted with one another. Their difference consisted mainly in this, that whereas in the first he brought to bear against the Lord all things pleasant and flattering, if so he might by aid of these entice or seduce Him from his obedience, in the second he thought with other engines to overcome his constancy, tried Him with all painful things, as before with * Completé omni tentatione ilecebrosd, is Augustine’s significant limitation of these words (De Trin. iv. 13). 56 THE TEMPTATION. © all pleasurable, hoping to terrify, if it might be, from his allegiance to the truth, Him whom manifestly he could not allure. In Augustine’s words, having tried the door of desire, and found that closed, he tried after- wards, and with the same unsuccessful issues, the door of fear ; the second Temptation of the garden dividing itself, like that of the wilderness, into three acts following close# on one another (Matt. xxvi. 44). And the same illustrious teacher goes on to urge that as it was with the Captain of our salvation, so also it must be with every one of those who fight under his banner. They too shall need to tread under foot both the lion and the adder, to resist, that is, now a threatening, now a flattering, world. In- deed, it was with the very purpose of teaching them how they should do all this, that He Himself also suffered being tempted.t| Jeremy Taylor adds another reason why for our sakes our blessed Lord should have accom- plished all the temptation; namely, that keeping this in remembrance, none hereafter, because they were greatly tempted, should therefore misdoubt of the divine love. ‘The holy Spirit did drive Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And though we are bound to pray instantly that we fall into no temptation, yet if, by divine permission, or by an inspiration of the holy Spirit, we be engaged in an action or course of life that is full of temptation and empty of comfort; let us apprehend it as an issue of divine providence, as an occasion of the rewards of diligence and patience, as an instrument of virtue, as a designation “οὐ that way in which we must glorify God; but no argument of disfavour, since our * Augustine (Serm. cxxii. 2): Ad hoc enim pugnat Imperator, ut milites discant, THE TEMPTATION. 57 dearest Lord, the most holy Jesus, who could have driven the devil away by the breath of his mouth, yet was by the Spirit of his Father permitted to a trial and molesta- tion by the spirit of darkness.” ‘And behold, angels came and ministered unto Him’— that is, to the Son of man, to the second Adam; even as in Jewish legend they are said to have danced before the first Adam on the day of his creation.” It could not indeed be said that they were here fulfilling that office which in the Epistle to the Hebrews is ascribed to them, as ‘ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation’ (i. 14); for here was not one of these ‘ heirs of salvation,’ but the very Author of this salvation to all others. We have in like manner an angel appearing to Him and strengthening Him in another great hour of his temptation (Luke xxii. 43). It is pro- bable that on this occasion they brought food (cf. 1 Kin. xix. 5); the word of the original (διγχκονοῦν.) may imply as much; and that word, ‘ Man did eat angels’ food’ (Ps. Ixxviil. 25), may have thus received its highest fulfilment; nor less may they have celebrated with songs of triumph this transcendant victory of the kingdom of light over the kingdom of darkness. So much the Christian poet of our age has suggested : ‘Nor less your lay of triumph greeted fair Our Champion and your King, In that first strife whence Satan in despair Sank down on scathéd wing ; 1 Life of Christ, part 1, sect. 9, ὃ 7. * See Eisenmenger, Hntdeckt. Judenth., vol. ii. p. 17. The Mahometans have borrowed this legend from the Jews. 58 THE TEMPTATION. Alone He fasted, and alone He fought; But when his toils were o’er, Ye to the sacred Hermit duteous brought Banquet and hymn, your Eden’s festal store.’ A few words in conclusion. It is nothing wonderful that the endeavours should have been many, to explain away the Temptation, to exhaust it of its supernatural element, and so to reduce it to the level of an occurrence explicable by the laws habitually at work around us and within us. Now, if our Lord’s life had been itself such an occurrence, it would be certainly perplexing to find a fragment of wonder such as this is, intruding into the midst of that life; nor would the instinct be unnatural, which, as it every where desires moral harmony and keeping, should endeavour in some way or another to get rid of an event, out of all such harmony and keeping with the other events of that life. But if the manifestation of the Son of God in the flesh be itself the wonder of all wonders, then that this should be surrounded by a group of secondary wonders, that there should be nothing common in his life, or, to speak more accurately, very much altogether uncommon, this might have been ex- pected beforehand. What would indeed be startling and perplexing would be the absence of every thing super- natural from such a life—the fact that He whose name is Wonderful (Isai. ix. 6) should have fallen at once into the common course and order of things, and never either by what He did, or what was done in respect of Him, have testified that there was any difference between Him- self and the other children of men. Those, however, who will not be satisfied until the light which falls upon the earthly path of our Lord, and lights it up with a glory not THE TEMPTATION. 59 of earth, has for them faded into the light of common day, have been very busy with this history; and that for a long time past; for it is quite a mistake to suppose that the attempts to explain away the Temptation into a dream, or a vision, or a parable, or an inner conflict, or an encounter with a tempter of flesh and blood, into any thing in short but that which on its face it announces itself to be, are of very recent origin, and belong exclu- sively to the neology of later years. It is abundantly evident that the Scriptural theologians of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century had earnestly to resist attempts which in their time also were rife, to reduce the Temptation to an every day occurrence.” Thus for some the Temptation is a vision. The explanation is untenable. It is manifest that the sacred historians did not mean to relate this event as a vision. When they have to tell of such, they make quite clear what they intend (Acts ix. 12; xX. 3, 10; Xl. §; XVill.Q; Xxii. 17) ; and, which goes still more directly to the root of the matter, no one can accept this explanation without implicitly renouncing the Church’s faith concerning her Saviour and her Head. Christ had no visions; it lay in the necessity of his divine nature that He should have none. There was never a door opened in heaven (Rev. iv. 1) for Him, before whom the heavenly world lay always manifest and bare (John v. 19, 20). He could not be at one time or another ‘in the Spirit’ (Rev. i. 10), who was always in the Spirit; the higher spiritual world being no strange element, into which He was rapt at * It needs only to refer in proof to Wolf, Cure Philol. vol. i. p. 66, and the many treatises which he enumerates there, from whose titles it is plain that in his time the matter was in eager debate. 60 THE TEMPTATION. intervals (2 Cor. xii. 21), but his permanent abiding place. He had no special communications or revelations from his Father, inasmuch as his whole life was one of entire and unbroken intercommunion with Him (John v. 17, 19). Even those which might appear such special com- munications directed to Himself, are carefully explained to have another motive and reason: ‘ This voice came not because of Me, but for your sakes’ (John xii. 30; cf. xi. 41, 42). Massillon speaks very grandly in words quoted below (they are found in a sermon On the Divinity of our Lord), on this absence of all rapture on the part of the Son of God; shows that it was a necessary conse- quence of his Divinity that He should never at any moment of his life be borne out of Himself, as were the prophets of the Old, and, though more rarely, the apostles and others of the New, Dispensation (Acts x. 10; xi. 5; Kxil. 17; 2 Cor. xii.2,4; Rev.i.10).’ The idea alike of the vision and of the trance or ecstasy is that of a depres- sion or partial suspension of the actings of the lower life, so to prepare for a better reception of impressions or communications from a higher world; the setting of the garish sun of this world, that the pure stars of a heavenly ? Nos prophétes eux-mémes annongant les choses futures, sans perdre lusage de la raison, ni sortir dela gravité et de la décence de leur ministére, entraient dans un enthousiasme divin; il fallait souvent que le son d’une lyre reveillit en eux l’esprit prophétique : on sentait bien qu’une impulsion étrangére les animait, et que ce n’était pas de leur propre fonds qu’ils tiraient la science de l’avenir, et les mystéres cachés qu’ils annoncaient aux hommes. Jésus-Christ prophétise comme il parle; la science de l’avenir n’a rien qui le frappe, qui le trouble, qui le surprenne, parcequ’il renferme tous les temps dans son esprit; les mystéres futurs qu’il annonce, ne sont point dans son Ame des lumieres soudaines et infuses qui l’eblouissent; ce sont des objets familiers qu’il ne perd jamais de vue, et dont il trouve les images au-dedans de lui; et tous les siécles ἃ venir sont sous l’immensité de ses regards comme le jour présent qui nous éclaire. THE TEMPTATION. 61 firmament may appear.’ But in Christ this could have been never needed; in whom existed at all times a per- fect balance and harmony of all faculties and powers; in whom there was no predominance of the lower, which could at any instant obscure or stand in the way of the perfect actings of the higher. The same objection, only in a greater degree, forbids an explaining of the Temptation as a dream, which, in- deed, is only a subordinate kind of vision ; namely that it is impossible to reconcile it with the idea of the Son of God. Even servants of God, who have made any con- siderable advances in the spiritual life, are seldom com- municated with in this manner. Rather the dream is the channel of communication with the heathen, with an Abimelech (Gen. xx. 3), a Laban (Gen. xxxi. 24), a Nebu- chadnezzar (Dan. ii. 1; iv. 5),a Pilate’s wife (Matt. xxvii. 19), with the wise men from the East (Matt. ii. 12) ; or with others who, standing higher than these, yet in the measure of their spiritual attainments fall very far below the more eminent saints of God, a Solomon for instance Gi Kin. iii. 5) ; and it is expressly brought out as part of the dignity of Moses, that while God spoke, and made Himself known, to other and inferior prophets by visions or dreams, He spoke mouth to mouth with him (Num. xil. 5-8; Deut. xxxiv. 10). How much more then would there belong to the Son of God at every moment the perfect clearness of waking vision. Indeed all mental * Augustine (De Div. Quest. ii. qu. 1) defines an ecstasy, Mentis alienatio a sensibus corporis, ut spiritus hominis divino Spiritu assumptus capiendis atque intuendis imaginibus vacet. * See J. Smith, Select Discourses, pp. 169, 254, for an interesting account, bearing on this very matter, of what the Jewish Doctors called the gradus Mosaicus of prophecy, and its superiority over all other. 62 THE TEMPTATION. illusions of every kind were so far from Him that I must needs esteem it a mistake when in Paradise Regained Milton makes Him to dream of feasts in his hunger in the wilderness. Another attempt to empty the Temptation of its mys- terious element was made in the seventeenth century, and taken up in the beginning of our own by Paulus and by others. They saw in the Tempter here a mortal man, an emissary from the Sanhedrim, or pos- sibly the High Priest himself, who would fain try of what metal this youthful prophet from Galilee, to whom the Baptist had just borne such glorious witness, was made, and whether he might not be seduced and bribed into the service of the old corrupt theocracy ; instead of witnessing against it and its ministers, as the examples of the earlier prophets and many perilous indications in the Baptist’s career, made too probable would be the course He would take. This cannot need more than to be stated and left. Unbelief has its cast-off garments, of which even itself is now ashamed, and this is of them. The suggestion of others that the Temptation was a conflict on our Lord’s part with no outward but an in- ward foe, with the solicitations of appetite, of ambition, of worldliness, which, born in his own mind, sought to draw Him away from the narrow and painful path appointed for his treading, is equally untenable, and this for reasons which have been stated already ; namely that it is directly contrary to the idea of a Saviour, who as such must be a Holy One, and this absolutely and completely, that thoughts soliciting to evil should have thus spontaneously See Spanheim, Dud. Lvang. 51. THE TEMPTATION. 63 risen up within Him. Christ could be tempted only from without; not from within.’ Coming as He did, not in this sinful flesh of ours, to which evil is native, and in which it inevitably rises up, but coming, as the apostle expressly tells us, ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ (Rom. viii. 3), where the ‘likeness’ is plainly introduced to qualify the ‘sinful,’ for with the flesh itself He had not likeness, but identity (1 John iv. 2; John i. 14), evil could in no other way be present to Him.’ One more proposed explanation will complete the list. All the foregoing ones, if they are not really reconcil- able with the sacred narrative, are yet presented by their advocates as being so. They have none of them avowedly cast off allegiance to the Word of God, as that within the limits of which they must move, and by which they must submit to be tried. But there are who withdraw from this narrative all real historic foundation whatever, who see only a mythus here ; that is, who see in this victorious encounter of the Prince of Light with the prince of dark- ness a portion of that fabulous halo of glory with which the infant Church encircled the head of its Founder; not thereby meaning to deceive; but unconsciously giving an outward shape and subsistance to the hopes, yearnings, expectations, and desires, which filled its heart as to what 1 There is an essay by Gelbricht (I have never seen it), An male de animo Jesu sentiendum sit si ὁ πειράζων ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ Christus ipse, i. 6. mentis ipsius cogitata fuerint ? Alteb.1815. How the writer answers the question which he thus puts I do not know. How he ought to have answered it, there can be no doubt. Ullmann (Siindlosigheit Jesu, 5th edit., p. 116 sqq.) answers it in the negative, does his best to show that the absolute sinlessness of the Saviour is not brought into question by the admitting of such an explana- tion of the Temptation, but in this fails altogether. 2 Augustine (Serm. clxxxiii. 8) Misit Deus Filium suum non in simili- tudinem carnis, quasi caro non esset caro, sed in similitudinem carnis peccati, quia caro erat, sed peccati caro non erat. 64 THE TEMPTATION. the Messiah ought to be, and therefore what He must have actually been. Strauss' ingeniously gathers up the Old Testament preparations for the growth of such a mythus as this, the rudiments of it which we may trace there; as that Moses and Elijah had both fasted their forty days ; that Israel, the collective son of God, as Christ was the personal Son, had been tempted forty years in the wilder- ness, with much more of the same kind.” This must stand or fall with the whole mythical scheme of the Gospel; and it would be lost labour to undertake its refutation here. Only I will observe that the nearest real parallel to our Lord’s Temptation which the Old Testament actually offers, he has not referred to. It is furnished by the history of Solomon (1 Kin. iii. 5-15). The resem- blance, indeed, is only a remote one; yet assuredly it was a temptation, when the Lord, appearing to the youthful king, and offering to him what he would, gave him the opportunity of choosing riches or long life in place of the heavenly wisdom, if so he had been inclined, At the same time in his case, as one comparatively weak in all the actings of the spiritual life, the temptation came from God and not from Satan, and did not therefore concen- trate in itself the whole power of temptation. The mythic parallel which meets us in heathendom, although wanting an historic basis, and thus only painted as upon a cloud, is much nearer—that, I mean, of Hercules, when at the beginning of his course he beheld before him the two ways, of pleasure, and of toil, and was severally solicited to walk in the one and in the other. And the parallel will be felt to be closer, if only we will 1 Leben Jesu, 1837, vol. i. p. 471 864. 5 Compare Gfrérer, Das Jahrhundert des Heils, vol. ii. p. 379-387. THE TEMPTATION. 65 keep in mind that heroic character of his life and work, which many of the later legends about him have done so much to obscure, substituting mere strength and animal good-nature in its room. It was not thus that he was conceived at the first; but rather as the man who in a noble devotedness to his fellows girded himself up to undergo all labours and to affront all dangers for their sakes. Buttmann in his interesting essay upon Herakles' seeks to prove that this ‘ Temptation of Hercules’ is not a later addition to the legend, which we owe to the sophist Prodicus, but lay in the heart, and belonged to the original stuff, of the mythus. And since it is certain that any man who has ever wrought, or who is conceived as having wrought, anything deserving of memory for his fellow- men, could only have effected this by such a noble post- ponement of pleasure to duty, and that this postponement, which acted itself perfectly out in the Son of God, must, though in weaker forms, act itself out anew in every champion of the truth, and can scarcely help coming to a head at some turning point of his life, there is nothing improbable in this supposition. *In the Mythologus, vol. i. p. 246; compare Pauly, Real-Encyclopddie, vol, 111. p. 1180, 66 THE CALLING OF 2. THE CALLING OF PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. John i. 43-51. We are told of Saul, that when ‘he saw any strong man, he took him unto him’ (1 Sam. xiv. 22); and as we read the catalogue of David’s worthies (2 Sam. xxiii. 8-39), we may well believe that he in no other manner filled the ranks of his host. And as these the ancient kings, as Saul and as David, so too the Son of David, the true King of Israel, wherever He saw any man ‘fit for the kingdom of God,’ He claimed him for his own, ‘ took him unto Him.’ This He did not by any exercise of out- ward power, but by those secret attractions which draw the brave to a braver, the noble to one noblest of all. In this first burst of his ministry, his triumphs in this kind rapidly succeed one another. ‘ The day following,’ following, that is, the day on which He enlisted three of the foremost among his future disciples, He makes two more his own; these also great ones, even though they may not attain to the first three. On this day ‘ He would go forth into Galilee; the words imply that He was about to undertake the journey thither, but had not actually begun it; ‘and jindeth Philip. The fact that Philip, though born a Jew, for he should be one of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, thus bears a Greek name, and he is not the only apostle who does so, is a remark- PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. 67 able illustration of the extent to which Galilee (‘ Galilee of the Gentiles’), had been hellenized, penetrated through and through with the customs and language of Greece. It is well worthy of note how often this finding recurs in this chapter; Christ finding disciples as here; disciples jinding each his friend, as at ver. 41, 45; and reporting how they have at once been found by, and have them- selves found, the Messiah (ibid.). It is the chapter οὖ. the Eurekas. Thus finding Philip, He ‘sath unto him, Follow Me.’ This ‘ Follow Me’ might seem at first sight no more than an invitation to accompany Him on that journey from the banks of Jordan to Galilee, on which He was just setting forward. It meant this (thus compare Matt. ix. 9; Luke v. 27); but at the same time how much more. It was an invitation to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life (Matt. xvi. 24; John viii. 12; xii. 26; xxi. 19; Rey. xiv. 4), to be a partaker at once of his cross and his crown. How much of this Philip may have understood at the moment it is impossible to say ; but whether much or little, he is not disobedient to the heavenly calling. No doubt he had been more or less prepared for it by some accounts which he had obtained from his fellow- townsmen Andrew and Peter, of what had passed between them and the Lord on the day preceding. As much is intimated by the Evangelist in his mention exactly at this point of his narrative, that ‘Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter, a fact which at once ac- counted for the acquaintance into which he had been brought with all which had passed between them and the Lord. But Philip, being himself thus ‘masterfast —if it be F 2 68 THE CALLING OF permitted to revive a word which with others of a similar termination, as ‘rootfast,’ ‘shamefast,’ ‘bedfast,’ did useful service in the language once'—cannot be content till he has introduced his friend into the glorious liberty of the same service with himself, until he has done what in him lies to make his friend a sharer of his treasure and his joy. It could not be otherwise; for if in one sense this treasure of the kingdom of heaven is one, ‘ which when a man hath found, he hideth’ (Matt. xiii. 44), in another sense it is one which will not let him rest till he has made others partakers of the same. ‘Philip findeth Nathanael,’ and saith unto him, We have found Hin of whom Moses in the Law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. There is error and imperfection still cleaving to his own knowledge. In all likelihood Naza- reth was at this time for him the birthplace of the Lord —not an unimportant error, though slight as compared to that which ‘son of Joseph’ would have involved, had he held fast to it after better teaching, had it belonged to any other than the rudimentary period of his faith. Strangely enough De Wette and others have argued from these words, thus faithfully recording the first im- pressions of Philip, his imperfect theology, and the extent to which partial error was mingling still with the truth which he had learned, not that he at this time, but that St. John when he composed his Gospel, either knew nothing of the birth at Bethlehem and the miraculous Conception, or gave no credit to them. The fact is that 1 It appears in Skelton, The Paston Letters, and elsewhere. * The name, which corresponds to our Theodore (Gift of God), occurs in the Old Testament. A Nethaneel is prince of the tribe of Issachar (Num. i. 8); one too of David’s elder brothers bears this name (a1 Chron. il. 14); and eight other Nethaneels are mentioned there. PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. 69 St. John, as a truthful narrator, records not what Philip, if at that time he had been better instructed, ought to have said, but what in that twilight of his knowledge he actually did say ; even as it is not in the least wonderful that in one brief interview he had not become acquainted with the most secret and mysterious events in the life of his future Lord ; events of which even apostles themselves only obtained gradual glimpses, as they were able to bear them. The partial error which clave to Philip’s faith did not hinder him from grasping that central truth which in good time would detach from itself whatever, not of its own nature, was cleaving to it. He is sure that this whom they have found is He ‘ of whom Moses in the Law’ (see Gen. ili. 15; xlix. 10; Num. xxiv. 17, 19; Deut. XVill. 15-19) ‘and the prophets’ (see 2 Sam. vii. 12-16; 2 Sam. xxiii. 1-7; Isai. vii. 14; ix.6; liii.; Ezek. xxxiv. 23-31) ‘did write.’ One weak point in Philip’s statement, one apparent flaw in the credentials of the Messiah whom he announces, Nathanael detects at once; for indeed his objection, ‘ Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ contains more than a reference to the general low esteem arid disrepute in which Nazareth was held (Matt. 11. 23), the unlikelihood therefore that aught preeminently good would come forth from it. The difficulty which he feels, and which in consistency with his guileless character he at once expresses, is the same as theirs who somewhat later objected, ‘Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the Scripture said that Christ cometh out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?’ (John vii. 41, 42; cf. ver. 52); the difference between him and those other gainsayers being, that he gladly dismisses his difficulty 70 THE CALLING OF yearning as he does to believe ; while they gladly cling and hold fast to theirs, exempting them, as it seems to do, from the unwelcome necessity of believing. This ‘ good thing, which Nathanael is persuaded that Nazareth cannot yield, must be understood as that one ‘ good thing,’ that ‘ oift of God’ (John iv. 10), in which all other good things are included; and is a distinct reference on the part of one not probably unversed in the prophecies which went before of Christ, to the clear fore-announcing in them that Messiah’s going forth in time should not be from Galilee, therefore not from Nazareth, but from Bethlehem in Judzea (Mic. v. 2). Philip’s ‘ Come and see, which is all the reply he makes to the objection of his friend, is manifestly an echo of Christ’s ‘Come and see’ of the day preceding (ver. 39). That immediate personal intercourse which had proved so effectual in the case of Andrew and another (Philip, as has been noted already, had no doubt heard from his fellow-townsmen how they had been won for the truth), shall not prove less effectual in the case of Nathanael. It was a Wise answer then, and is often a wise one now. The highest heavenly things are in their nature incapable of being uttered in words, and ‘ Come and see, come and make proof of them,’ is sometimes the only true reply to difficulties about them, an indication of the only effectual way by which those difficulties shall be removed. There are truths in the heavenly world which, like the sun in the natural world, can only be seen by their own light ; which in no other way will be seen at all. Philip has a confidence which the result abundantly justified, that in that holy presence, if only he could bring his friend within the range of its influence, all preconceived objec- PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. γι tions would dissolve and disappear. Perplexities might still remain, but he would be content to adjourn the solution of them to a later day, which indeed is what faith is summoned to do evermore. He who ‘knoweth the proud afar off, his eyes are also on the faithful of the land that they may dwell with Him’ (Ps. ci. 6); and in Nathanael He recognizes at once one of these. Him therefore He prevents with that word of highest praise, saying, not ¢o him, but yet of him, and intending that he should hear, ‘ Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile’ ‘An Israelite indeed, Nathanael pertained not only to that Israel after the flesh of which St. Paul speaks (1 Cor. x. 18), but to the ‘ Israel of God’ (Gal. vi. 16), which the apostle is so careful to distinguish from it ; a Jew not outwardly, but inwardly (Rom. ii. 28, 29; ix. 6; Phil. iii. 3); in whom this name of highest honour was not merely a name, or worse than this, a contradic- tion of all which he truly was (Rev. ili. 9); but who ful- filled in his innermost life all whereof that name was the promise and the pledge. ‘ Israelite’ was the title which on many accounts the Jew was best pleased to bear. There were others who were Abraham’s seed as well as he; the Ishmaelite and the Edomite; but ‘ Zsraelite’ was a title exclusively his own. And then too it was the theo- cratic title (Acts ii. 22; 11.12; v.34; xiii.16; Rom. ix. 4; Xi. 1; 2 Cor. xi. 22); a record of the glorious achievements of their forefather Jacob; a name which he had won from God Himself, when by faith and prayer he had prevailed even with Him (Gen. xxxii. 28). He who knew what was in man declares of Nathanael that he is a true descendant of this Israel; not of Jacob merely ; for in Jacob, the supplanter, there was guile: it was indeed the 72 THE CALLING OF most marked fault and failing of his character (Gen. xxvii.; XXX. 37-43; Xxxi. 20), until that character had been ennobled and elevated by a divine discipline, till he had struggled out of Jacob into Israel (Gen. xxxii. 24-32; Hos. xii. 4). At the same time this absence of guile which Christ imputes to Nathanael must not be pressed too far. This guileless nature is as the kindly soil in which all excellent graces will flourish (Luke iii. 21; vill.15; x.6); but does not do away with the necessity of the divine seed, out of which alone they can spring. He who is ‘ without guile’ is not therefore without sin; this, at least, could only be asserted of One (1 Pet. ii. 2); but rather he is one who seeks no cloke for his sin; does not excuse, palliate, hide, diminish, or deny it. Being a sinner, he confesses it, and thus finds pardon for the sin which he confesses. So David had declared long ago (Ps. xxxii. 1, 2); to whose words Christ is probably here distinctly referring.’ Some have enquired, How did the Lord know of Na- thanael that he was this true Israelite which He here avouches him to be? Was it from any previous familiar- ity? It may have been so in part. He who knew what instruments He would need for the work which He was meditating, may before this have seenin Nathanael, or heard about him, what gave Him assurance that there were fitnesses in him for a future disciple, perhaps for a future 1 Augustine (in loc.) has excellent observations: Quid est, in quo dolus non est? Forte non habebat peccatum? forte non erat «ger? forte illi medicus non erat necessarius? Absit. Nemo hic sic natus est ut illo medico nonegeret. . . . Sidolus in isto non erat, sanabilem illum medicus judicavit, non sanum;.. . videt istum sanabilem quia dolus in isto non erat. Quo- modo dolus in illo non erat? Si peccator est, fatetur se peccatorem esse. Si enim peccator est, et justum se dicit, dolus est in ore ipsius. Ἁ PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. fim: apostle, even for one of the twelve foundation stones of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Yet there is not the slightest necessity for assuming such a previous acquaintance. Christ read, as often as He needed to read, not merely the present thoughts, but also so much as He desired of the past histories, of those who came in contact with Him ; and this He did not merely by that natural divination, that art of looking through countenances into souls, interpreting the inner life from the outward bearing, which all men in a greater or less degree possess, and He doubtless in the largest measure of all (Isai. xi. 3); but ‘in his spirit’ (Mark ii. 8), by the exercise of that divine power, which was always mm Him, though not always active in Him. It was thus, for example, that He read the life-story of that Samaritan woman (John iv. 17, 18; cf. v.14); where it is impossible’ to presume a previous acquaintance; it was thus far most probably in the instance before us. This simplicity or absence of folds, this guilelessness or absence of deceit, which the Lord imputes to Nathanael, reveals itself in his reply, ‘ Whence knowest Thou me? There is no affectation here of declining the praise; no seeming to consider it as a compliment which he does not rightly deserve ; but only a question of admiration how the Lord should have known him so exactly, and declared | him so truly. And then in proof that this was no happy guess, no random*arrow which, shot at a venture, had yet hit the mark, the Lord refers him to some circumstance which we do not exactly know, but which Nathanael entirely understood: ‘ Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the figtree, I saw thee’ The mere sitting of an Israelite under his figtree was of itself too common an occurrence (1 Kin. iv. 25; Mic. iv. 4; Zech. iii. 10) 74 THE CALLING OF to yield such a sign. It is plain that our Lord must here refer to some passage, outward or inward, in Nathanael’s life, most probably inward and spiritual, some earnest prayer, some great mental struggle, the overcoming, it may be, of some strong temptation, which under that fig- tree had lately found place; immediately, as it would seem, before Philip had found him, and invited him to Jesus; for that call too the Lord declares to be known to Him; known therefore as well, though not imputed, the slighting words with which Nathanael at first received the invitation. Now however he makes altogether good that hasty speech which he uttered then. This word of Christ is enough; he feels as the Psalmist, ‘O Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me; Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways’ (Ps. cxxxix. 1, 3); feels that He before whom he stands is a searcher of hearts; and at once that full and free confession of faith, which only the confessions of Peter (Matt. xvi. 16), of Martha (John xi. 27), and of Thomas (John xx. 28), all those too at much later periods of Christ’s ministry, matched or surpassed, ‘ Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God, Thou art the King of Israel, breaks forth from his lips. A word or two upon each of these ascriptions, being as they are, the first an acknowledgment of the dignity of @hrist’s person, the second of the greattess of his office." And first, ‘ Zhou art the Son of God. We do not here suppose for an instant that Nathanael, giving this title to the Lord, intended by it all which the Nicene Fathers intended, and which we intend, by the same; and yet * Bengel: Confessio de persona et officio Christi. PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. ης nothing less was wrapped up in that title, to be unfolded from it in due time. And it meant much, even on Natha- nael’s lips, and was no mere language of honour uttered at random. How much it meant we may clearly perceive from the active opposition, the earnest hostility, which this title awoke on the part of the Scribes and Pharisees, as often as the Lord implicitly or explicitly claimed it as his own (John v. 18; x. 30-39). But however these may have denied the superhuman character of Messiah, there were enough glimpses of this in the Old Testament to explain how as many as had searched more deeply into it, or whose vision was less obscured and distorted by pre- conceived prejudices, should have recognized in Him one who was partaker of the divine nature, and therefore ‘ the Son of God.’ It is sufficient to refer to Ps. il. 7, 12; Isai. ix. 6. We are then justified in ascribing nothing short of such a recognition to Nathanael. And the words which follow, ‘ Zhou art the King of Israel, words in which the ‘ Israelite’ accepts, owns, and does homage to Israel’s king, avouches himself a subject of his, amount very nearly to the same thing. He who said in that second Psalm, ‘ Kiss the Son lest He be angry’ (ver. 12), said also of the same, ‘Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion’ (ver. 6; cf. Zeph. iii. 15; Isai. ix. 7; Jer. xxiil. 5,6). In all these passages the identity of Israel’s King and Israel’s God is plainly involved; and the same looks plainly out from many other prophecies concerning the Messiah, as eminently from the 72nd Psalm. 1 Lampe: Et quia testimonium quod Jesus ei tanquam vero Israélite exhibuerat, conscientidé bond fretus admiserat, hine sigillatim suum nomen inter subditos hujus regni profitetur, ac Jesu tanquam suo legitimo Regi in obsequium se addicit. 76 THE CALLING OF But to him that hath shall be given. He who hears and believes shall one day walk not by faith, but by sight. Thus shall it fare with Nathanael. ‘Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the figtree, believest thou? Thow shalt see greater things than these. And He saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.* This ‘ Verily, verily, this double amen, which here occurs for the first time, is peculiar to St. John; he only records our Lord’s use of it, but he on very many occasions. It comes most fitly from the lips of Him, who is Himself the 1 This is the first occasion in the recorded Evangelical history upon which our Lord used and applied to Himself the name of ‘Son of man.’ Bengel’s note on this phrase is a wonderful specimen of the close packing of matter the most interesting and the most important in his Gnomon. There are materials in this note which it would not be very difficult to expand into a volume. I quote a part: Frequens apud Evangelistas et diligentissime observanda est hac nomenclatura, qua nemo nisi solus Christus, a nemine dum Ipse in terris ambularet nisi a semetipso, appellitatus est Filius hominis. Primum Joh. i. 52, ut primum reperti fuere qui Eum Messiam et Filiam Dei (ibid. ver. 50) agnoscerent; et deinceps swpissime, ante praedictionem passionis et post. Nam ab iis qui fidem in Ipsum suscipiebant, dictus est Filius David. Recte suspicati sunt Judi, eA designari Messiam (Joh. xii. 34). Nam ut Adamus primus cum το progenie dicitur Homa, sic Adamus secundus (1 Cor. xv. 45) dicitur Filius hominis; non ef notione qui filii hominis, id est tenues, opponuntur jiliis viri, id est potentibus (Ps. xlix. 3), quive homines communiter dicuntur filii hominum (Mare. iii, 28; Ephes. iii. 5; Ezek. ii. 1, et passim), sed cum articulo ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. Videtur articulus respicere prophetiam, Dan. vii. 13. Unus hie nempe homo est, quem Adamus, post lapsum, ex promissione expectavit pro toté sud progenie; ὁ δεύτερος, secundus (1 Oor. xv. 47), quem omnis prophetia Veteris Testamenti indigitavit, qui totius generis humani jura et primogeni- turam sustinet (Lue. iii. 23, 38) et cui uni, quod humani nominis nos non peniteat (Ps. xlix. 21), debemus (Rom. v. 15). Porro hac appellatione Christus, inter homines ambulans, et expressit et pro ceconomia illius temporis occultavit (cf. Matt. xxii. 45) inter homines, et Satanam celavit, se esse τὸν Ὑἱὸν, Filium absolute dictum, id est Filium Dei, promissum datumque homini (Gen. iii. 15; Isai. ix. 6), ortumque ex homine (Heb. ii. 11), perinde uti uno evaltationis vocabulo et crucem et glorificationem suam insignivit (Joh. xii. 32). j PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. 77 Amen (Rey. iii. 14), the God of truth (Isai. lxv. 16), in whom all the promises of God are Yea and in whom Amen (2 Cor. i. 19; cf. Num. v. 22; Neh. viii. 6). How different too the majestic, ‘J say unto you, of Christ from that, ‘ Thus saith the Lord, of all the prophets preceding— they bearers of the word of another, He the utterer of his own. In the promise itself with which the Lord rewards the commencing faith of Nathanael (cf. Ezek. i.1; Matt. iii. 6; Acts vii. 55; X. 11) we are at once, as by almost all ex- positors ancient and modern is admitted, thrown back upon that wondrous ladder which Jacob saw, reaching from earth to heaven, with the Lord at the summit, and angels of God ascending and descending upon it (Gen. XXvil. 12)... What Israel saw, the true ‘ Jsraelite’ shall behold the same;” yea what one saw but in dream, the other shall behold in waking reality; and more and better even than this; for then God was a God afar off; the Lord stood above the ladder and spake from heaven; 1 Witsius indeed (Melet. Leid. p. 296) suggests that the reference here may after all not be to this passage, as we all take for granted, but to another: Non diffiteor interim fieri potuisse ut et alio respexerit Dominus. Magnam affinitatem cum hoc dicto habet Dan. vii. 13, 14, ubi Messias vocatur Filius hominis, et repreesentatur ut Filius Dei, veniens in nubibus celi ad Antiquum Dierum, additurque datwm ei esse dominatum et regnum. Quum itaque professus esset Nathanaél Jesum esse Filium Dei et Regem Israélis, utrumque admittit Jesus, protestaturque se revera esse filium hominis, de quo prophetaverit Daniel, quod manifestum futurum ipse pre- nunciat ex insigni illo ministerio sibi ab angelis exhibendo. Nam sicut ad majestatis divine gloriam facit quod thronus Antiqui Diernm myriadibus angelorum cinctus sit, ita et argumentum celestis regni in filio hominis est, quod iidem angeli ad ipsius nutum quaquaversum volent, adscendentes et descendentes prout jusserit. This is’ certainly ingenious; but does not shake one’s conviction that the other and generally received allusion is the true one. * Augustine (Serm, cxxii. 5) Quasi diceret, Cujus nomine te appellavi, ipsius somnium in te apparebit. Of. Con. Faust. xii. 26. Grotius: Quod ibi in somnio vidit Israél idem vigilans visurus dicitur verus Israélita. Β΄ THE CALLING OF but now standing at its foot, He speaks as the Son of man from earth, for now the Word has been made flesh; and the tabernacle of God is with men (Rev. xxi. 3). At the same time there is that in this promise of Christ which has at all times perplexed interpreters not a little. This is plain from the omission of ‘hereafter, or ‘from henceforth,* in many Greek copies ; the absence of which, however, while it might lighten, would not remove the difficulty ; as again from various gratuitous suppositions, as of some special, though unrecorded, vision of angels vouchsafed to Philip and Nathanael. It appears not less in the fact that several expositors, Augustine for instance uniformly,’ explain away these ‘ angels’ into messengers of the New Covenant, apostles and others, who should find in Christ the middle point of all their spiritual activity— going forth from Him, and returning to Him (Luke x. 1, 17). These all can only be regarded at the best as devices for escaping such difficulties as this passage may offer, not as methods of solving them. Equally unprofitable, and leading as little to a true solution, are all those enquiries as to whether this word of Christ's might not have been fulfilled at the Baptism, when we are told that the heavens were divided (Mark i. 10; ef. Ezek. i. 1), or at the Temptation, when angels ministered to Him (Matt. iv. 1), or at the time of the Agony, when an angel strengthened Him (Luke xx. 43), or at some other moment when we may presume angels in especially near communion with the Lord. He who thus asks when this promise was fulfilled, declares by the fact of making such an enquiry that he Ὁ Απ’ ἄρτι, which some suppose to have found its way here from Matt. XXvi. 64. * Con. Faust. xii. 26; παν». in Ps. xliv. 8; In Ev. Joh. Tract. 7. PHILIP AND NATHANAEL, 79 has failed to enter into the meaning of the promise. We can select no single moment as that in which it found its fulfilment, because it was being fulfilled evermore. Assuredly the Lord would indicate by these wondrous words that He should henceforward be the middle point of a free intercourse, yea, of an uninterrupted communion, between God and men; that in Him should be the meeting place of heaven and of earth (Ephes. i. 10; Col. 1. 19); which should be no longer two, as sin had made them, separated and estranged from one another, but one, now that righteousness had looked down from heaven, and truth had flourished out of the earth.! And this the glory of Christ they, his disciples, should behold, and should understand that they too, children of men, were by Him, the Son of man, made citizens of a kingdom which, not excluding earth, embraced also heaven. From earth there should go up evermore supplications, aspira- tions, prayers,—and these by the ministration of angels (Rev. vii. 3, 4), if some still want a certain literal fulfil- ment ;—from heaven there should evermore come down graces, blessings, gifts, aid to the faithful and punishment * Calvin on this point says well: Multum autem errant meo judicio qui anxie querunt tempus et locum, ubi et quando Nathanaél et reliqui ccelum apertum viderint. Potius enim quiddam continuum designat, quod semper extare debebat in ejus regno. Fateor quidem aliquoties discipulis visos fuisse angelos, qui hodie non apparent; . . . sed si probe reputemus quod tunc factum est, perpetuo viget. Nam quum prius clausum esset regnum Dei, vere in Christo apertum fuit. Ohemnitz (Harm. Hoang. c. 25): Docet igitur Christus, officium suum esse cwlum aperire, et celestia rursus con- jungere cum genere humano, quod per peccatum et a Deo et a sanctis angelis avulsum fuerat. It is very noticeable that the only occasion on which that phrase of depth and meaning inexhaustible, namely, ‘ the king- dom of God’ (βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ), oceurs either in the Old Testament or the Apocrypha, it is with a manifest allusion to Jacob’s dream, in which dream, vouchsafed to the patriarch, it is said, ‘Wisdom shewed him the kingdom of God’ (Wisd. x. 10). 8ο THE CALLING OF for them that would hurt them (Rev. viii. 5; Acts xii. 7, 23). Heaven and earth should henceforward be in continual interchange of these blessed angels, ‘And earth be changed to heaven, and heaven to earth; One kingdom, joy and union without end :’ the Son of man, Jesus of Nazareth, being the central point in which these two kingdoms met,’ the golden clasp which bound them indissolubly together. And so it is only according to the right order that these angels should be described as first ascending, and only then descending ; when we might rather have anticipated that they would have descended first, and ascended afterwards. The order of priority here can only be rightly understood, when we lift ourselves above all notions of space or room or of a local heaven. The angels needed not to come down on the Son of man, before they went up from Him; but where He was, there were they. The person of the Son of man was, so to speak, the point of starting for them; and because the Lord here contemplates Himself not as in heaven but on earth, they therefore ascend first, and only afterwards descend.’ 1 Calvin: Ideo super ipsum ascendere et descendere dicuntur: non quod illi soli ministrent, sed quod ejus respectu atque in ejus honorem complect- antur sud cura totum Ecclesia corpus. * The heathen parallel to this of Jacob’s ladder, thus binding heaven and earth together,—that which is, as it were, a feeling after this glorious union which Christ here at once proclaims and constitutes,—is the golden chain by which poets feigned that this earth of ours was linked to the throne of Zeus. * Plato in a beautiful passage (Symp. 23) describes the middle powers which maintain the commerce between heaven and earth, gods and men, in language that forcibly reminds us of this of our Lord. I will quote his words, for though sufficiently familiar, I have never seen them brought into relation with the Scripture before us: καὶ γὰρ πᾶν τὸ δαιμόνιον μεταξύ ἐστι θεοῦ τε καὶ θνητοῦ, ἑρμηνεῦον καὶ διαπορθμεῦον θεοῖς τὰ παρ᾽ ἀνθρώπων, καὶ ἀν- θρώποις τὰ παρὰ θεῶν͵ τῶν μὲν τὰς δεήσεις καὶ θυσίας, τῶν δὲ τὰς ἐπιτάξεις τε καὶ ἀμοιβὰς τῶν θυσιῶν: ἐν μέσῳ δὲ ὃν ἀμφοτέρων συμπληροῖ, ὥστε τὸ πᾶν αὐτὸ αὐτῶ συνδεδέσθαι. PHILIP ‘AND NATHANAEL. oe A few words in conclusion on the question whether this Nathanael of St. John is one and the same with the Bartholomew of the synoptic Gospels. The identifying of the two, which, when once suggested, carries so much probability with it, and which in modern times has found favour with so many, was quite unknown to the early Church. Indeed Augustine more than once enters at large into the question, why Nathanael, to whom his Lord bore such honourable testimony, whom He welcomed so gladly, was not elected into the number of the Twelve. The reason he gives is curious. He sees evidence in Nathanael’s question, ‘ Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ that this disciple was a Rabbi, learned in the wisdom of the Jewish schools (that he should be numbered among fishermen, John xxi. 2, makes this unlikely, yet not impossible); but such the Lord would in no case choose to lay the foundations of his Church (cf. 1 Cor. i. 26); lest that Church might even seem to stand in the wisdom of man rather than in the power of God.* The arguments for the identity of the two, which identity was first suggested, I believe, by Rupert of Deutz in the twelfth century, are very strong. They are mainly these ; that Nathanael’s vocation here is coordinated with that of apostles, as of equal significance ; that on a later occasion we meet him in the midst of apostles, some named before him, some after (chap. xxi. 1, 2); that the three earlier Evangelists never mention Nathanael, the fourth never Bartholomew ; that Philip and Bartholomew 1 Enarr. in Ps. \xv. 2; In Ho. Joh. tract. vii. ὃ 17. Of. Gregory the Great (Moral. xxxiii. 16): Preedicatores infirmos abjectosque habere studuit Dominus; unde in Evangelio Nathanaélem laudat, nec tamen in sorte pradicantium numerat; quia ad preedicandum eum tales venire debuerant, qui de laude propria nihil habebant. G 82 THE CALLING OF PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. in the catalogue of the apostles are grouped together, as a pair of friends, but with Philip first, even as he is here the first in Christ (Matt. x. 30; Mark iii. 18) ; that the cus- tom of double names seems to have been almost universal at that time in Judza, so that all or well nigh all the apostles bore more than one; to all which may be added that Bartholomew is no proper name, signifying only son of Tolmai. All these arguments in favour of the identity, with nothing against it, bring it very nearly to a certainty, that he to whom the promise of the vision of an opened heaven, with angels ascending and descending on the Son of man, was vouchsafed, was no other than Bartholomew the apostle. 3. CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. John iv. 1—42. Iv is very characteristic of the Eastern colouring of Scrip- ture, that so many of its most interesting events should find place in the neighbourhood of wells, and in one way or other stand in some direct connexion with them. Bya well of water the loveliest idyllic scene in Genesis, rich as it is in such, I mean the first meeting of Abraham’s servant with the future wife of Isaac, is laid (Gen. xxiv. 1-28) ; there Jacob’s first greeting of Rachel (Gen. xxix. 1-10) ; with a well too is closely linked an important passage in the life of Moses (Exod. ii. 17). But deeper, more attractive, laying a mightier hold on the Church in all aftertimes than any or all of these, is the discourse which found place by Jacob’s well, of which we have a record in the fourth chapter of St. John. The Evangelist explains to us first what the circum- stances were which brought it about: ‘When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, . . . He left Judea and departed again into Galilee’ This quitting of Judzea and retiring to the safer Galilee as here recorded, I identify with Matt. iv. 12, Mark i. 14, Luke iv. 14, in the synoptic Gospels. As Christ had taught his disciples that there were occasions when they might withdraw from the malice G2 84 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. of their foes (Matt. x. 23), so He was Himself withdrawing here. That malice, as He knew, would be roused to the uttermost by the manifest successes of his ministry, by the multitude of disciples whom He had baptized—more even than the Baptist himself (iii. 26-30) ; although the mere ministerial act of baptism, as the Evangelist is careful to note, He accomplished by other hands than his own; ‘though Jesus Himself baptized not, but his disciples’ (cf. Acts x. 48; 1 Cor. i. 14-16), He reserving the baptism with the Holy Ghost for Himself. He had left Judea, the head-quarters of all the bitterest opposition to Himself and to his work; and as, in retiring to Galilee, He did not choose to take the circuit of Persea, which was the manner with some of the stricter sort of Jews, who would come into no contact whatever with the heretical Samaritans, ‘He must needs go through Samaria. * St. John is thus careful to note that this was no mission to the Samaritans which the Lord undertook. On the contrary, the law which He imposed on his disciples, ‘and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not’ (Matt. x. 5), this, during the days of his flesh, He imposed also on Himself. He was not sent ‘put to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. xv. 24 ; Acts xiii. 46); and if any grace reached Samaritan or heathen, it was, so to speak, but by accident, a crumb falling from the children’s table. ‘ Then cometh He to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar.’ The unusual form in which the name of this city here appears, must not hinder us from recognizing in it the Sichem where Abraham built an altar (Gen. xii. 6); under the oak in whose neighbourhood Jacob buried the idols of his household (Gen. xxxv. 4); the city which » See Josephus, Vita, ὃ 52. CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 85 Simeon and Levi so cruelly and treacherously wasted, forfeiting their birthright thereby (Gen. xxxiv.; xlix. 5-7); not far from which Joseph was sold (Gen. xxxvii. 12); the last resting place of his bones (Josh. xxiv. 32) ; a city thus of ancient fame in Scripture, as of great political importance at some periods of Jewish history ; so much so that in all likelihood, had the tribe of Ephraim attained to the leadership of the nation instead of Judah, had this tribe not forfeited and let go the preeminence which it possessed for a time (Ps. Ixxviil. 67), Shechem instead of Jerusalem would have been the metropolis of the kingdom. It was in Joshua’s time the centre to which the tribes were gathered (Josh. xxiv. 1); the seat of the abortive kingdom of Abimelech (παρ. ix.) ; a city twice mentioned by the Psalmist (Ps. lx. 6 ; eviii. 6) for no other reason than its dignity and strength; the place whither the ten tribes were gathered on that fatal day when the great schism of the nation actually began, and for a while the chief city of the revolted ten (1 Kin. xii. 1, 25), that is until the capital was transferred first by Jeroboam to Tirzah, and finally by Omri to Samaria (1 Kin. xvi. 14). With the building by the Samaritans of the temple on Mount Garizim, of which more presently, Shechem, standing immediately at the foot of the mountain on the ridge or saddle that joins it to Mount Ebal, became the ecclesiastical metropolis of the Samaritans, the middle point of their worship, and continues such to this day for the feeble remnant of them which survives.’ * It is now known as Nabulus, a corruption of Neapolis, which name was given to the city by the Herodians, who in the Roman times adorned and in part rebuilt it. On all which concerns Nabulus, Garizim, the Samaritans of the past and of the present, see Robinson’s Researches in Palestine, vol. iii. pp. 92-139. There is much too of original information in the article 86 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. But if “‘Sychar’ be thus identified with Sichem, or Sychem (Acts vii. 16), and only a few, as Ewald for example, refuse to identify them, how are we to account for the form which the word has here assumed? We must for this keep in mind the enigmatic character of St. John’s Gospel, the mystical significance which he loves to trace in names, either to find or to suggest (see ix. 7; xi. 16). His Gospel, apparently less, is indeed far more, thoroughly steeped in the Old Testament, connected with it by finer and subtler links, than any one of the other three. A change in the form of the word, if only it were significant, would be quite in the spirit of the Old Testament, and in agreement with the importance which names everywhere there assume; being continually modified, now for the better, as Abram into Abraham (Gen. xvii. 5), Sarai into Sarah (Gen. xvii. 15),Oshea into Jehoshuah(Num. xiii. 16); now for the worse, thus Bethel into Bethaven (Hos. x.5), Achan, because he troubled Israel (Josh. vii. 25), reappearing as Achar (1 Chron. ii. 7); or it may be that a new name is superadded to the old (Gen. xxxii. 28; XXxv. 10; Judg. vi. 32), sometimes puts the old quite out of use; this new also being sometimes for honour, or more rareiy for dishonour. How deeply seated in our nature this tendency to the changing or modifying of names is, the curious ways in which it is evermore at work, springing as it does out of a sense that the name connotes, or if it does not connote, should be made to connote, the thing which is named, there need no examples to prove.’ Nor has the kingdom Samaria, in Herzog’s Encyclopddie, vol. xiii. pp. 359-391; and also in Heidenheim’s Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift, No. i. pp. 1-433; 78-128, who, p. 14, gives further notices of the literature on the subject. * Various illustrations of this tendency to bring the name and the thing CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 87 of grace refused to avail itself of this instinct, as the many instances just cited in proof abundantly testify. St. John by this turn of the word, which has brought it into closest connexion with the Hebrew for a lie, declares at what rate he esteemed the whole Samaritan worship, declares by anticipation at what rate it was esteemed by his Lord (see ver. 22). If religion be anything higher than the — expression of man’s spiritual needs and desires, if it rest not on what man has thought and felt about God, but on that which God has revealed about Himself, and only has worth as it is the true revelation by God of Himself to his creatures, then that whole worship was a hollow thing, a husk with no kernel within; and, professing as it did to be much more than this, was a lie. If it sound severe on the part of the beloved apostle to say thus, and if some urge, as against this explanation of ‘ Sychar’ put here for Sichem, that he never could have said it, one can only reply that the truth zs severe, that in very faithfulness it must declare darkness to be dark, and bitterness to be bitter ; cannot affirm that the one is light, or the other sweet; or, when men have left God’s truth, and are worshipping instead of this some invention of their own, that their worship is any other thana lie. This city was ‘ near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph’ (Gen. xxxiii. 19; xlviii. 22 ; Josh. xxiv. 32). ‘Now Jacob's well* was there” Of Jacob’s into a real relation with one another I have given in The Study of Words, 12th edit. pp. 24-30. * It would certainly have been preferable to render πηγή here by ‘ foun- tain’ or ‘spring’ than ‘wel/;’ for we can better understand ‘a springing fountain’ than a ‘springing well’ (ver. 14). Πηγή and φρέαρ, it may be ob- served, are used now the one, and now the other, throughout this chapter: but there is always sufficient reason to account for the use of one or of the other: thus πηγή twice in this verse, and at verse 14, φρέαρ at verses 11,12. 88 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. well there is no mention in the Old Testament; though we learn there that it was the custom of the patriarchs to dig wells (Gen. xxi. 30; xxvi.18). There seems no reason whatever to call in question its identity with the well which the Samaritans of the neighbourhood designate by this name to the present day. The digging of it must have been a work of enormous labour. Maundrell, who visited it in 1697, gives this account : ‘It is dug in a firm rock, and contains about three yards in diameter, and thirty five in depth, five of which we found full of water. The rock has since crumbled, or in other ways the well has been in part filled in, and a recent measure- ment gives a depth of seventy five feet only, the spring at the bottom being choked. ‘ Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus’ on the well ; and it was about the sixth hour’ The weariness of Christ, so soon to be the refreshment of one, should in due time be the refresh- ment of all. St. John perhaps may name the exact hour, in this way to bring more vividly to our consciousness the oppression and burden of the time; it was ‘the siath hour, exactly the heat of the middle noon. Yet we must not leave out of sight that elsewhere he notes the hour, Our Translators, who have rendered both by ‘ well’ have failed to mark the alternation of words; which the Vulgate has noted, rendering the first by ‘fons,’ the second by ‘puteus.’ And indeed ‘ all the Old Versions except the Anglo-Saxon render the Greek literally, giving a different term for πηγῇ and for ¢péap’ (Malan, Notes on the Gospel according to St. John, p. 49). The two Augustine here discriminates well (In Joh. Evang. Tract. 15): Omnis puteus fons, non omnis fons puteus. Ubi enim aqua de terr4 manat et usui prebetur haurientibus, fons dicitur: sed si in promtu et superficie sit, fons tantum dicitur ; si autem in alto et profundo sit, ita puteus vocatur ut fontis nomen non amittat. We have φρεάτων πηγή, Prov. v. 15. ‘ Οὕτως, which may be explained with Chrysostom, ἁπλῶς καὶ ὡς ἔτυχε. Bengel: Sic, uti qualiscumque loci opportunitas ferebat, sine pompé, solus, ut qui non pr se ferret expectationem Samaritidis, sed mera lassitudinis causé quietem vellet capere. Admiranda popularitas vite Jesu! CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 89 where it is difficult to say what of emphasis the story gains thereby, as 1. 39; xix. 14. Perhaps here, as there, it is the significance of the event, which makes its every detail of interest to himself, and as he judges to his readers. ‘There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water ;’ a woman,’ not of the city of Samaria, for that was some six miles distant, but of the country (so Acts viii. 5), still called by the name of that city which had been once its capital. To that same well she oftentimes may have come already ; day by day, perhaps, during many a weary year in the past. And now she came once more, little guessing how different was to be the issue of this day’s coming from that of all the days which had gone before.’ The benefit and blessing which here lay, as it were, in ambush for her, was not indeed, as she was fain at the first to imagine, that she should never need to come and draw water from that well again (ver. 15) ; but, far better than this, that in the midst of that and all other the weary toil, outward and inward, of this earthly life, she should have within herself a fountain of joy, springing up unto life eternal, should draw water with joy from un- failing wells of salvation. She had probably already filled her pitcher, when the stranger at the well, whom she may have seen only to avoid, for she recognized in him those unmistakeable features of Jewish physiognomy with which the Samaritans had nothing in common, to her surprise addressed her, and to her greater surprise addressed her with a request ; ? The Roman martyrology knows her name, Photina, the names also of her children. " Augustine: Venit mulier ad puteum, et fontem quem non speravit, invenit. go CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. ‘Give me to drink’ (cf. Gen. xxiv. 16,17). A real thirst, witnessing against all docetic notions concerning the person of the Lord (cf. John xix. 28; Matt. xxi. 18), was one motive of his request; though that which He most truly thirsted after was her faith, the salvation of her soul;' for we see hunger and thirst not so much for- gotten as disappearing (ver. 31, 32) in the joy of winning such a lost soul for the kingdom of his Father. In this request of his, and in the discourse to which it was the prelude, there was a threefold testimony against the narrow-heartedness of his age and people—against that of the Jew who hated the Samaritan, of the Rabbi who would have thought scorn to hold this familiar intercourse with a woman (see ver. 27), of the Pharisee who would have shrunk from this near contact with a sinner (Luke Vii. 39). The-notice which follows, ‘for his disciples were gone away into the city to buy meat, is commonly interpreted, as explaining the constraint under which He lay of asking this favour of the woman. The disciples were gone, and had left Him ‘nothing to draw with’ (ver. 11), such as, had they been present, would have been at his command. But how very unlikely that such should have been part of their travelling gear; or if so, that they should have carried it with them into the town. The notice inter- posed here has no such superficial meaning. The Lord, allowing the disciples all to leave Him, had of intention made this solitude for Himself, that He might the easier win to repentance and confession of sin the poor sinner for whom He had appointed this meeting, though she 1 Augustine: Ile autem qui bibere querebat, fidem ipsius mulieris queere bat. CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. οι knew it not ;' for while there is none who may not take to himself that beautiful line of the Dies Tre, Querens me sedisti lassus, to her of first and best right it belongs. This absence of theirs was designed, was part of his counsel of love in her behalf. The freedom from interruption which it afforded He now improves to the uttermost; for, Himself the great ‘Fisher of men’ (cf. Luke v. 10), He is as watchful and eager to take a single soul by the angle as a vast multitude of souls at once by the casting net or the sean; giving here a lesson to those whom He sends into the world to ‘ catch men, which they will do well never to forget. Heng- stenberg, indeed, thinks that αὐ had not left, that St. John was a witness of the interview which he describes ; but for this there is no shadow of ground. He who asks a favour places himself, in the estimate of a common mind, though often it is exactly the contrary, in a position of inferiority to the person from whom the favour is asked, and with whom it les to grant or to withhold it. And thus there was a certain satisfac- tion which she could not conceal, a gratifying of her national vanity, wounded so often by Jewish taunts, in thus having a Jew a petitioner for a favour from her, a Samaritan. The humiliation, for such she esteemed it, was much greater than if she, a Samaritan, had been a suitor for an equal favour from a Jew; inasmuch as the holding aloof and the refusing to be on terms of com- munion, either social or ecclesiastical, had been at the first, and still was, mainly on the side of the Jews; who, * Corn. ἃ Lapide: Factum id est tacit’ Dei providentid, ut, discipulis omnibus in urbem dimissis, solus ipse, liberius cum muliere impudicd ejus pudori consulens ageret. 92 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. denied, rightly as regarded the fact, though wrongly in respect of the temper in which they did it, that the Samaritans had any claims to be considered as heirs with themselves of the promises made to Abraham and his seed. It was, as St. John expresses it, for the words are not the woman’s, but his, the Jews that would ‘ have no dealings with the Samaritans, no familiar intercourse, that is, and indeed none of any kind which they could avoid; and only as a consequence necessarily involved in this, that the Samaritans had no dealings with the Jews; and so it had been from the beginning (Hzra iv. 1-3). The woman therefore, not certainly a daughter of Rebekah in this (see Gen. xxiv. 17-20), instead of complying with his request, asks, with a feeling that for the present the tables are turned, and with the intention that He shall feel this also, ‘How is it that Thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria?’ An Israelite she would have called herself, for such the Samaritans claimed to be, as descending from the tribe of Ephraim. Godet (Commentaire sur l’ Evangile de S. Jean): Quelle contraste entre la notion du Messie telle que l’exprime cette femme [ver. 25], et les notions charnelles et de nature toute politique que Jésus rencontrait sans cesse en Israél sur ce sujet! Sans doute l’élément royal manque 4 la notion samari- taine du Messie. Mais combien l’absence de cet élément n’est-elle pas préférable ἃ Valtération profonde qu’il avait subie chez les Juifs! L’idée est incompléte, mais non pas fausse; et voila pourquoi Jésus peut se Pappliquer, et se dire ici le Christ, ce qu’il n’a fait en Israél qu’au dernier moment (xvii. 3; Matt. xxvi. 64). 3 Let it be permitted to adapt to this poor bondwoman of sin, at this blessed crisis of her life, words written long before concerning another bondwoman, when grace, though far lower grace than this, was vouchsafed also to her: καὶ ἀνέῳξεν ὁ Θεὸς τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτῆς, καὶ εἶδε φρέαρ ὕδατος ζῶντος (Gen. XX, 19): 3 There are some beautiful remarks on Christ’s relations to women, and the influence He exerted on them, in Guizot’s Meditations on the Essence of Christianity, Highth Meditation, p. 281, English translation. CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 127 themselves unlearned it. Yet while they marvelled, they were at the same time hindered by respect and awe from expressing their surprise: ‘Yet no man said, What seekest Thou? or, Why talkest Thou with her?’ None ventured to ask the reason of this unusual conversation (John xxi. 12). Evidently it never entered into their thoughts that what He was asking from her was fer faith; that what He was talking about with her was the worship of the Father in spirit and in truth. Meanwhile the woman, availing herself of their arrival, which naturally caused a pause and break in the conversation, quits the spot—but this in the hope that she may presently return again, and not return alone. As a sort of pledge of this her return, or perhaps rather in the forgetfulness of a great joy, ‘ she left her water-pot, as apostles before her had left their nets (Matt. iv. 20); so soon has she learned to prefer the water which Christ gives to the fountain which Jacob gave; ‘and went her way into the city, and saith unto the men, Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did” Little as she could have desired at other times to direct attention to the events of a life which could ill bear any very close inspection, all shame of this kind is for the present over- borne and swallowed up in feelings of wonder and of joy. This ‘all things that ever I did’ must, of course, be taken as the exaggeration of one still lost in amazement at that marvellous revelation of the leading outlines and so many of the mournful secrets of her past history. It is with her now as with him whom St. Paul contemplates as coming into the Christian assembly, who is there ‘ con- vinced of all, and judged of all; and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest, and so falling down on his 128 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. face, he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth’ (1 Cor. xiv. 24, 25). Such a judgment, and one still higher, she has formed of Him who had thus made manifest the.secrets of her heart and life: ‘ Js not this the Christ?’ A more accurate rendering of her question, ‘ Whether is this the Christ?, would not really alter the meaning; only instead of seeking to force her own conviction on those whom she addresses, she will be rather putting it to them to judge, and to draw con- clusions of their own. The character of this woman, the scandals of whose life must have been sufficiently notorious, can have added no particular weight to the announce- ment which she now made, or to the invitations to her fellow-townsmen which she gave; yet her evident earnest- ness, with the strength of her own convictions lending force to her words, overbears all other considerations. They do not hesitate, but at her invitation ‘they went out of the city, and came unto Him.’ In the interval between her departure and their arrival a short but deeply interesting discourse between the Lord and his disciples has found place. We know from ver. 8 that ‘his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat. They have prepared the food which they had bought, and now they ‘prayed Him, saying, Master, eat.’ But since then a higher spiritual joy has suspended all sense of a lower bodily necessity : ‘ I have meat to eat that ye know not of. Let them eat; but for Himself He needs not this earthly sustenance.’ As his thirst had been not so much after the water of Jacob’s well as after her conversion who had come to draw water thence, so now 1 This is no doubt the force of that ἐγὼ βρῶσιν ἔχω, in which He tacitly distinguishes Himself who needed not, from them who needed, this food. OHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 129g his hunger is not for the food which they have prepared, but for those whom He beholds already hastening from the neighbouring city, that they may hear and receive his word. The disciples, perplexed, can only suppose that supplies have been brought Him from some quarter of which they are ignorant: ‘ They say one to another, Hath any man brought Him aught to eat ?? He explains his meaning, and of what meat He is speaking : ‘ My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me’' (cf. Ps. xl. 8); this was the ‘hidden manna’ that He spake of, ‘sweeter,’ as the Psalmist long before had said, ‘than honey and the honeycomb’ (Ps. xix. 10; exix. 103); ‘and to finish” his work.’ With such zeal did He set Himself to the carrying through of this, which his Father had set Him to accom- plish, that a little later He could say, ‘I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do’ (John xvii. 4). In these words there is involved an answer to that question of theirs, which they longed, but did not venture, to put to Him, namely, why ‘He talked with the woman. They could not now fail to understand that his conversation with her had no trivial motive, that it was for the winning of her into that kingdom of grace which his Father had sent Him into this world, and anointed Him with the Spirit, at once to declare and to found (Isai. 1Χ]. 1-3). If any doubt ex- isted on this point, the words which follow (ver. 35-38), 1 One of the Apocryphal Gospels, the Protevangelium Jacobi Minoris, c. i. _ supplies an interesting parallel. Joachim, the father of the Blessed Virgin, retiring to tbe wilderness, declares his resolve to fast there till God shall grant him his heart’s desire; καὶ ἔσται μοι ἡ εὐχὴ βρῶμα καὶ πόμα. 5 Lampe: Vox τελειόω, a τέλος, designat non solum opus ad finem ducere, sed etiam ita, ut actu omnes illas partes et qualitates habeat, que ad opus illud requirebantur, atque adeo ut respondeat secundum omnes partes su@ delineationi, suoque scopo, cui est destinatum (Act. xx. 24; Jac. ii. 22; 1 Joh. ii. 5; iv. 12, 17, 18). K 130 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. difficult though in some details they are to us, would have removed it. The passage, I have just said, is difficult—more so, as it seems to me, thanis generally recognized, and almost every explanation of it is encumbered with its own embarrass- ments. However satisfactory an explanation may prove in one part, it is almost sure to be forced and artificial in another. There is always something unreal in the going off into general observations on the relations between the spiritual sower and the spiritual reaper. What we almost always seem to want is some explanation which shall more closely attach these verses to the events which at the moment are actually going forward, and on which these words are a commentary. The interpretation which follows appears to me to possess this recommendation. And first, the Lord reminds his disciples of some words which, no doubt, had lately fallen from their lips, as they looked out on that broad expanse of corn-land, which, as modern travellers assure us, stretches out before the eyes of one who stands, as they stood, beside Jacob’s well: ‘Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest ?’? So it may be in the harvest of nature; but in the harvest of grace there is a quicker ripening than this: ‘ Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes (cf. Gen. xiii. 14, 15), and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest’ (cf. Isai. xlix. 18; Ix. 4). That they may understand of what harvest He is speaking, He directs their attention to the multitude already covering the space that lays between the city and the place where they stood, and who were only waiting, so to speak, to be gathered into the heavenly garners. He proceeds to encourage his disciples to a work thus CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 131 made ready to their hands, addresses to them an exhorta- tion, the same which the prophet Joel had addressed to others long before: ‘ Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe’ (iii. 13); but he bidding to a harvest of death, Christ to a harvest of life: ‘and he that reapeth receweth wages,—or better, receiveth a reward,'—‘ and gathereth Fruit unto life eternal” Here is a twofold magnifying of the spiritual reaper’s office; he has his own reward, by anti- cipation and in part upon earth; he has it in full fruition in heaven; and, in addition to this, he ministers salvation to others; for this ‘gathereth fruit unto life eternal’ I cannot understand, with Hengstenberg and others, layeth up a further and heavenly reward for himself; for the ‘fruit’ (καρπός) is identical with the ‘ harvest’ (θερισμός), and any interpretation which separates them brings con- fusion into the whole passage; cf. Matt. xiii. 30; ili. 12. His work, then, having these two promises, is neither an ill-requited nor a mean one; not ill-requited, for he receives a reward; nor mean, for his harvest is of souls, which shall be saved through Christ for ever.? But why has the Lord of the harvest thus graciously brought to this early ripeness that harvest now spread forth before their eyes? The answer follows: ‘that both he that * Μισθός͵ a word not seldom used for that ‘reward’ which of free grace God reserves for His servants here and hereafter, Matt. v. 12; x. 41, 42; 1 Oor. iii. 8, 14; 2 John viii. * Juvencus in the following lines, which are a favourable specimen of his poetry, gives, as it seems to me, the right explanation (Hvang. Hist. ii. 313): Quatuor hinc menses lat# ad primordia messis Frugiferss «statis certe superesse putatis. Erigite ergo oculos, albentes cernite campos, Cunctaque maturam jam rura exposcere messem. Nunc quicunque metet, pulchri mercede laboris, Vitalique dehine gaudebit fruge redundans, Et sator accipiet messorum gaudia letus. K 2 12 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. soweth, and he that reapeth, may rejoice together. Here the emphasis must lie on the concluding word, ‘ together’ Seldom indeed can this be the case. There is too often an interval, not seldom a long and dreary one, between a sowing and a reaping time. Often before the reaping time has arrived, the sower is in his grave. If both of them rejoice, yet seldom is it one and the same jubilee which they celebrate together, such as that which Christ announced that He is now about to celebrate in common with His disciples. ‘And herein, —in that which has just happened and is happening,—‘ zs that saying true, the proverb approves itself to be a genuine one, finding its fulfilment, as a pro- verb worthy of the name will do, in the actual events of life, ‘ One soweth and another reapeth.’ There is no exception in the present instance to the general law, that men enter on the labours of their predecessors. ‘ You,’ the Lord would say, ‘are about to enter upon mine.’ This monition shall keep them humble, whatever suc- cesses may await them. ‘ You desired just now to know why I talked with the woman, what I could have been seeking from her. I was a sower then, you shall be reapers in the harvest which from that sowing has so quickly sprung up. J sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour.’ We best understand this past, “7 sent you’ (ἀπέστειλα), by supposing our Lord to travel 1 The words in the Ajax of Sophocles, 645, ἀλλ᾽ ἔστ᾽ ἀληθὴς ἡ βροτῶν παροιμία, ἐχθρῶν ἄδωρα δῶρα, κοὐκ ὀνήσιμα, are not exactly parallel. Ajax there affirms the proverb which he cites to contain a maxim, not false, but true, therefore ἀληθής : our Lord affirms this saying which He has cited to be a genwine one, to be ἀληθινός, such as deserves to pass muster, and to take its place among the recognized sayings of men. CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 133 back in thought, and to plant Himself, as He speaks, at the moment when He first gave them their commission, sent them forth as ambassadors of his grace, labourers in his harvest field.* ‘Other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours. This plural, ‘other men,’ or ‘others, as it would be better rendered, must not lead us astray, as it has led so many, and induce us to refer this to the prophets and other principal labourers in the older Covenant, who underwent their hard apprenticeship under the Law (Gal. iv. 3; Acts xv. 10); as though the anti- thesis were between them and the apostles of the New. It is rather between Christ Himself and his apostles; between the Master and the servants, not between two different companies of the servants. He is the sower, they are the reapers; and as compared with his labours, theirs might be esteemed as none at all. What a glimpse have we here of the travail of his soul in the redemption of mankind—when He who certainly would not underrate what his servants wrought for Him, nor forget any labour of their love (Rev. il. 2, 3), could yet speak in such a language as this ; all this labour and all this toil of theirs quite disappearing from his sight, when brought side to side with his own.” Truly He trod the winepress alone; and of this He counts it good to remind them at the present moment, who were about to share with Him in the triumphs of the time. ‘So when the Samaritans were come unto Him, they * Lampe: Utitur tempore praterito, Ego misi vos, quia missio eorum a vocatione Christi incipiebat, licet deinceps complementum suum acceperit. * We may profitably bring together, we were probably meant to bring together, the κεκοπιάκασιν of this ver. 38, and the ὁ οὖν ᾿Ιησοῦς κεκοπιακώς of ver. 6. 134 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. besought Him that He would tarry with them. While orthodox Jews besought Him that He would depart out of their coasts (Matt. viii. 34), drove Him with violence (Luke iv. 29), or plotted to scare Him by fraud (Luke ΧΙ]. 31, 32), from among them, poor heretical Samaritans make it their petition that He would tarry with them; so have the first become last, and the last first. Nor did they make this petition in vain. Although during his earthly ministry sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, so that his personal contact with any other was exceptional, and in one way or other was noted as such, ‘ He abode there two days. Assuredly these days were in- finitely precious to many—He during them preparing their hearts for that glad and free acceptance of the message of the Gospel, which after his resurrection it is recorded that Philip found in ‘a city of Samaria’ (Acts viii. §), it is difficult not to think in this city, the headquarters of the Samaritan worship—and, as it would seem, ‘in many vil- lages of the Samaritans’ as well (ver. 25). Nor were these days of preparation only. This, as He has intimated already, was a sowing time and a reaping time all in one —the two drawn into marvellous nearness with one another. The Evangelist gives us assurance of this, in- forming us as He does, that ‘ many more believed because of his word ; and these, having believed, ‘ said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying; for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world’ St. John loves to mark the advancing steps of faith, and how those who believe come to believe more strongly, pass on from faith to faith, from a weaker to a firmer, from a lower to a higher; compare ii. 11; xvi. 30; xx. 8. This speech of CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 135 her fellow-townsmen to the woman has nothing rude or offensive’ about it, rather, indeed, the contrary : ‘ We set our own seals to the truth of thy report. We have heard Him ourselves, the gracious words which He speaks, the authority with which He speaks them; He has so com- mended Himself to us, with such demonstration of the truth, that we bow to his claims, and, quite irrespective of any witness of thine, take Him for what He avouches Himself to be, the Christ, the Saviour of the world. The fact that the Scripture allows and accepts this confession of theirs, sees in it not an act of credulity but of faith, and this, notwithstanding the very slight external proofs which to them He could have produced, attesting and making good his pretensions to be the Messiah, is very in- structive. It is an evidence that the Scripture ascribes to man a spiritual organ for the recognition of the highest truth, when this is presented to him; that it regards the truth,—and Christ is the Truth (John xiv. 6), motos, visible by its own light, and carrying its own con- Saye as αὐτὸ- viction with it. In all this matter the woman may be said to have fulfilled for her fellow-countrymen the office which the Church fulfils for her children. She too wit- nesses of Christ; and then those brought to Him through this witness find in Him such fulness of grace and truth, that they set to their own seals that He is the Christ, and have another and a better witness of this in themselves.’ 1 Some indeed have urged that λαλιά, by which the Samaritans describe the report of the woman, is properly garrulous talk; thus Calvin: Videntur jactare Samaritani sibi solidius jam esse fulerum quam in lingué mulieris, que ut plurimum futilis esse solet. But λαλιά has no such slighting usage in Scripture ; at John viii. 43 it is ascribed to Christ. 3 Grotius: Notdrunt veteres in hic Samaritidi Ecclesiw esse figuram,, que nos adducit ad verbum divinum; nos verbo, maxime propter ipsius. majestatem et sanctitatem, credimus. Confer 1 Reg. x. 6, 7. 136 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. This is the only occasion on which the phrase, ‘Saviour of the world, appears in the Gospels, as only once else- where in the New Testament, namely, in the First Epistle of St. John (iv. 14; cf. 1 Tim. iv. 10). Remarkably enough, though when we look a little closer most naturally, it occurs first on the lips of these Samaritan converts. Such language, with the mighty truth which was bound up with it, was still a long way off from Jewish thought, had not as yet risen above the horizon in the minds of apostles themselves; for these, even after the Resurrec- tion itself, demanded, ‘ Wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?’ (Acts i. 6; cf. Luke i. 68-- 79; xxiv. 21) by their question testifying that their horizon reached no further than this, that this restoration was the ultimate limit of their hopes; even as the first half of the Book of Acts gives evidence how slowly, with how many reluctancies on the part of some, it broke upon their minds that theirs was a commission as wide as the world, that their risen Lord was not King of Israel only, but ‘ Saviour of the world’ as well. Many circumstances made the reception of this truth easier to Samaritans. When they had once accepted Jesus as the Messiah, there was every inducement at work in their minds to contemplate Him not so much this King of Israel, as the Saviour of the world. From his lips they no doubt had learned, as the woman who first brought them to Him had learned, that their pretensions as the seed of Abraham were utterly baseless, that only as He was this Saviour of all men could they have any part or lot in Him.’ The Jew might cling to his exclusive ‘Calvin: Colligimus Evangelii summam intra biduum familiarius illis fuisse a Christo traditum, quam hactenus Hierosolyme fuisset. Et Christus CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 137 prerogatives, and passionately refuse to forego them. These Samaritans were under no such temptation. Such exclusive prerogatives were not, and never had _ been, theirs. In their acknowledgment of a Jewish Messiah they have passed a judgment on the whole past religious history of their nation, have confessed that, which up to this moment they had so obstinately denied, that ‘ salva- tion is of the Jews ;’ and it only remained for them to accept that place which in the economy of this ‘ salvation’ was assigned to them, to rejoice that, although ‘of the Jews, it was not for them alone; to welcome Him who, being first King of Israel, was also Saviour of the world.1 salutem quam attulerat, toti mundo communem esse testatus est, quo melius intelligerent ad se quoque pertinere. Neque enim tanquam legitimos heredes ad participandam salutis gratiam eos vocavit, sed docuit se venisse ut in Dei familiam extraneos admitteret, ac pacem afferret iis qui procul erant. : * Some preparations they may have found for this in the prophecy of the Shiloh, ‘Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be’ (Gen. xlix. 10). It is true that the Samaritans of the present day refer this to Solomon; but of old they referred it, and rightly, to the Messiah (Hengstenberg, Christologie, vol. i. p. 76. Compare three instructive sermons by Bishop Horsley, Sermons, 1829, vol. i. pp. 364-415). 4. THE SONS OF THUNDER. Mark iii. 17. ΤῊΝ mention of the new name given by the Lord to the two sons of Zebedee is one of the innumerable precious notices which we owe exclusively to St. Mark. From him alone we learn that the three foremost apostles, equal in so much else, were also equal in this, that they all obtained a new name, and that name imposed on them by the Lord Himself. Yet this new and magnificent title of ‘ Boanerges, or ‘sons of thunder, with which the two sons of Zebedee were adorned, is not without its difficulties and obscurities. For, leaving out of sight those of the formation of the word, which are not in- considerable, it must strike every thoughtful reader as remarkable, that while the name Peter, or its Aramaic equivalent Cephas, just before recorded as added by the Lord to Simon, recurs continually in the sacred narrative, is so stamped upon him as in the end almost entirely to displace the name which he bore while yet a fisher not of men but of fishes, this name, the imposition of which is related in exactly the same language and with the same emphasis, never once reappears in Scripture; ‘ you never find James called Boanerges, or John so called, either by themselves or by others’ (Lightfoot). THE SONS OF THUNDER. 139 Various explanations of this fact have been offered. Thus it has been ingeniously suggested that the name was, so to speak, a dual name, and belonged to the two apostles, not severally and independently one of the other. but only as a brother-pair, and in their connexion one with the other, in the same way that Dioscuri belonged to Castor and Pollux, or to Zethus and Amphion; which being so, the occasions of its use must have been of rarest occurrence, and with the early death of James (Acts xii. 2) must have ceased altogether, the name itself be- coming, as one might say, extinct with him." And yet, ingenious as this explanation must be owned to be, it is doubly at fault. Even granting that this was such a dual name, and only proper as applied to the pair, yet of such opportunities for its use quite sufficient occur in the Gospel history to prove the inadequacy of this explana- tion. The two make together their petition that they may have the first and foremost places in Christ’s king- dom (Mark x. 37). Together they propose to call down fire on the inhospitable village of the Samaritans (Luke ix. 54). They are named together as accompanying Peter on that night made memorable by the second miraculous draught of fishes (John xxi. 2). But besides all this, the assumption on which the explanation rests is erroneous. There may be some ambiguity in our Version. ‘ He surnamed them Boanerges ;’? but there is none in the original. Anyone turning to it will at once perceive that St. Mark distinctly implies that each’ of the twain, by himself and apart from the other, was by the Lord called a ‘son of thunder ;’ that, while the Evangelist records the ‘name’ Peter as given to Simon, when he tells of James 1 50 Theodoret: υἱοὺς βροντῆς τὴν ξυνωρίδα τῶν ἀποστόλων ἐκαλέσε. 140 THE SONS OF THUNDER. and John it is no longer the ‘name’ (ὄνομα) but the ‘names’ (ὀνόματα), “ sons of thunder, which they receive ; and thus no room is left for such a solution of the diffi- culty. But may not this difficulty be of a much simpler solution? Of no other than this, that the surname ‘Boanerges, being common to both apostles, would not have sufficiently designated which of them was intended ; and that this inconvenience may have hindered it from ever growing into an appellation ; which, indeed, there was no need that it should do, having been given with quite another object and intention. A more important question lies behind this—What was the meaning and purpose of this name? That it was in- tended as a name of honour was never for an instant doubted by Christian antiquity; and indeed, since all acknowledge the title given to Simon, which immediately precedes it, to have been such an honourable super- addition, it seems wholly inconceivable that there should have been another name imposed on two other of the Elect Twelve in quite a different intention and spirit. In- deed there are few interpretations of Holy Scripture more monstrous in their kind than that other supposition, namely, that the two sons of Zebedee acquired this addition, ‘sons of thunder, from the untimely and passionate request of theirs, that they might be allowed to call down fire from heaven on the inhabitants of that churlish Samaritan village (Luke ix. 54). Calmet was, I believe, the first who started this explanation,’ at least I have not seen it traced to an earlier source, but it has found much acceptance since. Thus Tholuck, as quoted *In his Dictionnaire, 1730 “ THE SONS OF THUNDER. 141 below,’ assumes it as certain, and affirms that the name was imposed upon them ‘to remind them evermore of that inner foe with whom they needed to contend.’ But not to urge that there is nothing about thunder in that passage, nor yet at 2 Kin. i. g-11, to the pre- cedent of which the two apostles avowedly refer (‘as Elias did’), the deriving of their name from this fault of theirs goes counter to the whole tenour and analogy of Scripture. The new name there is evermore the expressing and fixing of the new nature; it is the record of some notable achievement, some glorious confession by word or deed, through which the servant of God, who thus wins this name, has been permanently lifted up into a higher region of being than that which he moved in before (Gen. xxxii. 26; Judg. vi. 32; Acts iv. 36, 37; Matt. xvi. 18). It marks some signal epoch or crisis of his spiritual life, which with its results by aid of this new title is stamped upon him for ever (Num. xiii. 16; Gen. Xvil. 5, 15). The essence then of the new name being throughout all the rest of Scripture at once the expressing and the fixing of the new nature, it is quite impossible that here it should be exactly the reverse; namely, the seizing of a transient and momentary outcoming of the old nature, and the imparting of a fixity and permanence to that. Simon’s habitual firmness, not his momentary weakness, his confession, not his denial, of his Lord, was in- corporated in his name, Cephas, or Peter, or the Rock ; nor can we doubt that in like manner the Lord expresséd at ’ Wir finden ein blindes natirliches Feuer bei ihm [Johannes] in jenem Zuge, der Lue. ix. 54 erzihlt wird. Die hierbei bewiesene Gesinnung scheint tief aus seinem Character hervorgegangen zu sein, denn Christus legte wegen dieses Unfalls ihm und seinem Bruder den Namen βοανεργές, υἱοὶ βροντῆς bei, um sie immer an ihren innern Feind zu erinnern. 142 THE SONS OF THUNDER. once the noblest and most characteristic features of these two apostles in this designation which he gave them. Even in the kingdoms of this world a king does not fasten on one of his noblest and most honourable captains a title which shall remind of his single defeat, but rather one which shall be the abiding record of the most glorious victories which he has won. Not Teneriffe, but the Nile, is bound up with Nelson’s title. And if thus in this lower world of ours, how much more certainly in the kingdom of grace. . It is not easy to see what the motive was for abandon- ing the earlier exposition. It is true that we cannot link the giving of this name with any particular incident in the lives of these two, as we can the new name which Abram (Gen. xvii. 5), which Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 28), which Gideon (Jud. vi. 32), which Simon (Matt. xvi. 16- 18), which Joses (Acts iv. 36), and perhaps also which Saul (Acts xiii. 7-9) acquired, with incidents in their lives. It must be allowed also that the usual conception of St. John, and of the character of his ministry, is some- what different from that of a ‘son of thunder” And yet a little deeper insight into the matter will, I am persuaded, afford us much which will help to explain and justify the bearing of this name by his brother and by himself. _ There can, of course, be no difficulty in regard to St. James. We have not, indeed, very much in his history accounting for and illustrating this name; but then we * Tillemont: Jésus-Christ en les appellant ἃ l’apostolat, leur donna le surnom de Boanerges pour marquer la fermeté et la grandeur de leur foy, et parcequ’ils étoient destinés ἃ faire éclater la majesté de Dieu dans tout lunivers, ἃ ne pas aimer la terre, mais ἃ la faire trembler pour la soumettre ἃ Jésus-Christ, ἃ ne point craindre toute la puissance des hommes, mais ἃ se tenir toujours élevés au-dessus d’eux. THE SONS OF THUNDER. 143 have not much in any shape about him; and in what we have there is nothing which does not perfectly agree with, or even confirm, we may say, its fitness. And here, indeed, when we are gathering notices which should account for their being so called, that fiery zeal of his and of his brother, who would have burnt up the village that refused the shelter of a night to their Lord, may be fitly adduced as illustrating this title, though utterly mis- leading when cited as explaining and justifying it. It illustrates this title, because it shews us what in these two apostles was the natural groundwork of their character ; a groundwork which Christ certainly did not dissolve; but rather, calling them these ‘sons of thunder,’ recog- nized; even while by the same act He pledged Himself to purify it from whatever of earthly and carnal mingled with it, and threatened to spoil it. The very failings which on that memorable occasion the brother apostles displayed were failings of no common souls; were as luxuriant weeds, which, weeds as they were, testified for the richness of the soil out of which they sprang and its capacity for bearing the very noblest fruits. In their sense of righteousness and judgment, in their indignation against sin,—all this, indeed, displaying itself in an im- patient and untimely severity, which would have consumed the sinners and the sin together, rather than the sin alone, with a saving alive of the sinners,—we see the ‘sons of thunder’ on their natural side, and as they would have been but for that grace, which, retaining and exalting all the good of the natural character, did at the same time transform it from human to divine, separate all the drossy elements of earth, and retain only the pure gold of heaven. 144 THE SONS OF THUNDER. And the early martyrdom of James, the fact that he, first of the apostles, stained with his blood the perse- cutor’s sword (Acts xil. 2), we may accept this as a further attestation that he indeed was all that his name implied. A ‘son of thunder, and as such, arousing, startling, terrifying, he may have caused the thunders of the divine displeasure against sin to be heard with a clearness and an energy which drew on him the peculiar and early hatred of the ungodly world’—the holiness of his life lending additional weight and terror to his words —for in him, no doubt, that saying will have found its fullest application, ‘ Cujus vita fulgor, ejus verba tonitrua.’ And then, in respect of John, much of the embarrass- ment which some feel, when they would make an estimate of what in him there is to justify this title, arises from. their leaving the Apocalypse out of consideration (it is singular how often this is done), and regarding St. John as if he were the author of the Gospel and Epistles alone. Certainly those who forget the Apocalypse, or adjudge its authorship to some other than St. John, must find this word of the Lord’s only inadequately fulfilled in the writings which will then remain to him. For without denying that much in his Gospel too is like thunder out of a clear heaven,—the Fathers were especially fond of quoting in proof the very opening words of the Gospel,’ —yet in the Apocalypse those which eminently may be called the thunder-voices make themselves to be heard, and do so with a greater loudness and distinctness than *So Chrysostom (Hom. 56 in Matt.): οὕτω yap ἣν σφοδρὸς καὶ βαρὺς "Tovdatow, ὡς καὶ τὸν Ἣ ρώδην ταύτην δωρεὰν μεγίστην νομίσαι χαρίσασθαι τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις, εἰ ἐκεῖνον ἀνέλοι. 3. See Suicer, 7168. 8. v. βροντή. ; THE SONS OF THUNDER. 145 in any other book of the New Testament.t It need not be observed that the thunder in Scripture is no mere natural phenomenon. We do not read there that τ thunders, but that God thunders.? It is there evermore regarded as the voice of God (Ps. xviii. 13; xxix. 3; Ixviii. 33; Ixxvii. 18; civ. 7; Job xxvi. 14; xxxvii. 4, 5; xl.g; 1 Sam. vil. 10, LX X.), and especially as the voice of his displeasure against the sins of men (1 Sam. xii. 17, 18). The terror which it inspires springs from the interpreta- tion of it which everyone unconsciously makes, from the sense which everyone has, that it is such a voice in nature, with which God is speaking, and speaking in anger, to a sinful world. And what book is there in Scripture so full of these voices of God as that with which the Canon is sealed? Nor certainly can it be regarded as a mere accident that, with the exception of this passage about St. John, only in his own writings is there any mention of thunder in the New Testament at all. In his Gospel, * Βροντόφωνος is an epithet given in the Greek Church to St. John. The brothers received the name of ‘sons of thunder,’ in Theophylact’s words ὡς μεγαλοκήρυκας καὶ θεολογικωτάτους. Epiphanius says of St. John: υἱὸς ὄντως βροντῆς τῇ οἰκεία peyadodwvia ὥστερ ἐκ τινῶν νεφελῶν τὼν τῆς σοφίας αἰνιγμάτων τὴν εὐσεβῆ ἡμῖν ἔννοιαν τοῦ Ὑἱοῦ ἀνῆκε. See the valuable collec- tion of passages from the Greek Fathers in Suicer, 7268. 5.0. βροντή. Bengel among moderns has well expressed the same : Magnifica appellatio. Tonitru in Scriptura et terribile et festivum quiddam est. Evangelium item mundum terret, piis letitiam et fructum affert. That there is a natural fitness in such an application of βροντή, the parallel use of βροντᾶν in pro- fane Greek attests. Pericles had the name of Ὀλύμπιος, as, like Zeus himself, lightning and thundering (ἤστραπτ᾽, ἐβρόντα, Aristophanes, Acharn. 531; cf. Vesp. 624) over Greece. In the ‘geminos, duo fulmina belli Scipiadas,’ of Virgil we have not the identical, but a closely cognate, image. * J. Grimm, in an article, Ueber die Namen des Donners, in his Klein. Schrift. vol. ii. p. 421, has some interesting proofs of the many nations among whom the same language prevails. * Gregory the Great (Moral. xxix. 24): Quid enim per tonitruum nisi preedicatio superni terroris accipitur ? L 146 THE SONS OF THUNDER. it is but a passing notice (xii. 29); in the Apocalypse, however, the thunders constitute a prominent part of the divine machinery and symbolism (Rev. iv. 5; vi. 1; vill. 5; ἘΠ) ἡ; Xi. 195 Xiv. 2; xvi. 183 xix. 6). ΡΣ whose ear was opened, first himself to catch, and then to give back to the Church and to the world, these thunder voices, must be allowed to have approved himself that “son of thunder, even to our understanding, which the Lord has named hin.’ 1 There is an able and interesting article by Gurlitt in the Theol. Stud. und Krit. 1829, pp. 715-738, on the word Boanerges, and the intention with which this name was given to the sons of Zebedee. It is more valuable, however, as containing a history of the past exegesis, than as itself arriving at any satisfactory results. 5. WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN. Matt. xi, 16, 19; Luke vii. 31-35. As nothing which was wrought among the children of men escaped the notice of the Lord, so nothing was so far beneath Him but that He was willing to use it for the setting forth the truths of his kingdom. Those truths had in themselves such inherent dignity and grandeur that they needed not to fear anything from being brought into this contact. We have a striking example of this, his fearless use of the-common and the familiar, in that com- parison with which He closes his testimony to the character and work of the Baptist : ‘ But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced ; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented. Here the Lord finds in the sports and altercations of boys playing in the streets that which shall serve his turn, shall set forth and illustrate the truth which He hasin hand. One group of these children, in that spirit of imitation so characteristic of their age, has been acting now a marriage, and now a funeral; has been piping now, and mourning then; but in the end complains that another band, whose help they needed, and whom they would fain have drawn into their L 2 148 WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN. sports, as mourners at their mock funeral, if they would not be revellers at their mock marriage, have stood peevishly aloof, and refused altogether to take a share in their games: ‘ We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced ; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.’ * Christ proceeds to explain why and wherein that gene- ration were like to these to whom He has just compared them: ‘For John came neither eating nor drinking’ (cf. Luke i. 80 ; Matt. iii. 4; ix. 14); ‘and they say, He hath a devil. We should not have learned except from these words that such a taunt was addressed to the Baptist ; that they said of the servant what we know that more than once they said of the Master (John vii. 20; viii. 48) ; at the same time it is exactly the manner of taunt which his manner of life, exaggerated, and ‘extravagant as it must have seemed to many, was likely to provoke. ‘The Son of man came eating and drinking’ (cf. Matt. ix. 14; Luke xiv.1; John 1]. 1-11 ; ΧΙ. 2), ‘and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners’ (Luke vil. 39; xv. 2; xix. 7; Matt. ix. 10, 11). Few, I think, who at all reflect on the matter, will deny that the ordinary explanation of this similitude is encumbered with not inconsiderable difficulties. This, as needs hardly to be observed, makes the children, who complain of the wayward humour of their fellows, and that they cannot draw them into any games which they suggest, to be Jesus and John; and the meaning will then 1 Vorstius (De Adag. N. T. c. xi.): Ea verba Salvator tribuit pueris sedentibus in foro, qui ludendo imitari solent qua a majoribus natu serio agi viderunt, et nunc nuptias celebrant, nunc funera deducunt ; neque tamen quosdam qui morosiores sunt, movere possunt, ut et ipsi talibus operam navent. WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN. 149 be, This is a generation which it is impossible to please. No ways of God are right in its eyes. If He send a pro- phet, stern, severe, calling to repentance, holding aloof from sinners, a wilderness preacher, a man himself of fasts and austerities, as was John, they say he is melancholy mad; ‘He hath a devil. If He send One gracious and condescending, who mingles with all the common works, and walks in all the common ways of men, eating and drinking with them, they say, ‘ Behold a man gluttonous, and a wine-bibber, with no eminent sanctity about Him. John took up a sadder strain, but the men of this genera- tion would not fall in with it; he mourned to them, but they would not lament. Jesus took up a more joyful note; He piped to them; but neither would they consent with Him; they would not dance; but found fault with the graciousness and condescension of the One as much as with the strictness and severity of the other. All this is well put by Henry More: ‘Such was the perverse and wicked ignorance of those crooked super- stitionists, that true goodness in no kind of dress would please them. In John the Baptist there was that eminent severity and austerity of life accompanying an unre- provable integrity and purity of heart, that he might, one would think, have commanded them to that which was good; but he must have a melancholy devil in him. Our Saviour came in a more pleasant and careless garb, laying aside that awful and rough severity that was in the other, intermingling Himself with all companies, taking not at all upon Him, being as other men are in every- thing, sin only excepted; (which manner of life as it is of more perfection than the other, as supposing more be- nignity of nature, and more firm radication in goodness, 150 WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN. so fewer men are capable of it, much less unsteady and unresolved youth, who are to fly from suspected com- pany as from the devouring plague;) yet, I say, these wretched Pharisees, as true detesters of real holiness and godliness, whatever they pretend in the shadow there- of, cannot give our Saviour a good word, but interpret his goodnature good-fellowship, or debauched company- keeping; and his serviceable intermingling Himself with all sorts of men (publicans and sinners not excepted) for their good, friendship and countenance to what is evil.’? Such is the common explanation ; and the sense which the passage, so interpreted, renders up is a perfectly satis- factory one. The only question is, whether our Lord’s words yield themselves to it, whether there be not serious difficulties in this allotment of the several portions of the dramatic action here brought before our eyes. In the first place, Christ says, ‘ This generation ts like unto children ; but, according to the received explanation as given above, it would be Jesus and John who were like the children complaining that it was impossible to chime in with the shifting moods of their fellows, and not that generation at all. Maldonatus, as is usual with him, manfully acknowledges this difficulty; but seeks to get rid of it by urging that not part must be compared with part, but the whole with the whole; and adduces as a parallel case Matt. xiii. 24: ‘The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field ;’ not being, indeed, likened to him alone, but to all which follows. But the case is not exactly in point, for at any rate he, the sower, was included in that whereto the king- dom was compared; while here the perverse generation ? On Godliness, viii. 13. WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN. 151 has no resemblance to the children who complain, and to whom they are likened, but only to the children that are complained of. We cannot then accept this solution. And then, further, since John’s ministry preceded the Lord’s, and in the interpretation (ver. 18) is the first named, we should expect to find ‘ We have mourned unto you, which was St. John’s work, adduced the first, and not, as both in St. Matthew and St. Luke it is, the last. Would it not then be better to shift altogether the dramatis persone, and, reallotting the parts, to make, as EKuthymius, Stier,’ and Alford have done, the children sitting in the markets, and now mourning and now piping, to be the Jews, the generation of which the Lord just before had spoken; and the companions of whom they complain, to be Jesus and John? ‘The fundamental thought will still be nearly the same, although expressed in a somewhat different manner, although it will not be now any more Jesus and John who are introduced finding fault with that generation, but that generation finding fault with them. The Jews, as according to this explana- tion the Lord will declare, wanted John to be laxer; they would fain have had him give up his strict ascetic ways, his rigid separation from sinners, his stern summonses to repentance ; and complained that he would not do so, that he would not dance to their piping (John v. 25). Christ Himself was equally, as they accounted, at fault, though in an opposite extreme. They could as little understand a prophet such as He was (Matt. ix. 11; Luke xv. 2). They mourned to Him, and He would not lament. The bridegroom and the bringer of joy, He would not change for any sadder note, that note of joy * Reden Jesu, in loco. 1.2. WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN, to which the Gospel that He preached was set (Luke ν. 30-35), any more than John to please them would change and renounce the note of a sterner sadness to which his preaching of the law was attuned. Each messenger and prophet of God the men of that generation desired to be something other than what he was —their distaste and disaffection extending really far deeper than to the particular manner and fashion of the one or of the other, to the severity of the one, or to the laxity, as they chose to call it, of the other—their objection being indeed to any messenger of God, in whatever guise he came. As it was then, so is it at all times. Some ex- claim, ‘The Gospel is too strict, too severe; it demands too much:’ these are the finders of fault in John; while others say, ‘It is too lax, too free; it encourages sin;’ these finding fault with the Lord; the two forms of murmuring and opposition being, strange to say, found sometimes united in the same persons. The ambassadors of Christ, who have to call men alternately to fasts and festivals of the spirit, must expect from the world such a captious and hostile criticism as this; it is part of that which they have to bear. They must look for a similar indignation, that they will not at the world’s bidding be exactly the contrary of that which they were sent to be; this indignation being indeed the covert under which men escape from the summons, now to a spiritual joy, and now to a spiritual sorrow. But while it was thus with that generation, ‘ Wisdom is justified of her children.” All did not so evade the law by pleading the Gospel, nor the Gospel by pleading the law. Some recognized in these two, and in the harmony of these two, the law being good no less than the Go§8pel, WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN. 153 if only used lawfully, ‘the manifold wisdom of God;’ out of which He sent not a John only, nor a Christ only, but one and the other, the severe and the mild, the stern and the gracious, the preacher of the law and the preacher of grace, that so He might win men by the one or by the other, or else by handing them over from the one to the other (Gal. iii. 42; John i. 35-40). Such seems to me the general drift and tenour of these latest words; which yet may claim to be more closely examined, presenting as they do, by the acknowledge- ment of all, more difficulties than one. And first, seeing that the Lord is clearing the dealings of God with men, in other words, clearing his own, why, it might be asked, does He let his own personality fall into the back ground, and affirm, not of Himself, but of Wisdom, that she ‘7s Justified of her children?’ We may seem, but He does not really do this. ‘Wisdom’ here is no abstract quality, no attribute of God, any more than at Luke xi. 49; but a person; even the same of whom such glorious. things are spoken in the Book of Proverbs, who appears there as building her mystical house, sending forth her maidens, gathering to herself all those who are willing to hear her voice; being, indeed, no other than the Word as yet not made flesh, or rather that divine Word in ad his dealings, both before the Incarnation and after, with the children of men ;' who, being this absolute Wisdom, must have * Hilary (in looc.): Ipsum se Sapientiam vocavit. Bengel: Non enim jam dicitur Filias hominis, ut versu precedente, sed Sapientia; quarum appellationum altera convenit statui Christi conspicuo, altera omnibus temporibus (Luc. xi. 49). Porro Sapientia hoe loco dicitur, quod Ipse optime sciat quid faciendum sit, et actiones Ipsius, purissim’ accommoda- tione ad peccatores plenw, non debuerunt sub censuram vocari (Prov. vili. 1, 32). Grotius too much lets go that the Σοφία is herself a person, when he adduces βουλὴ τοῦ Θεοῦ (Luke vii. 30) as an absolute equivalent; though, ι4 WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN. chosen wisest ways in which to deal with them, and who therefore should not have been lightly charged with way- wardness and folly. This word ‘ Wisdom’ which Christ uses here has the advantage that by aid of it He is able to include in a common justification both his own dealings and those of John, which last he would fain vindicate not less than his own. But ‘justified of her children’—what may be the exact force of this phrase? ‘To justify, in the uniform lan- guage of the New Testament, is to recognize and declare as righteous—falsely, it may be; that not being righteous, which thus declares itself, or is declared by others, to be so (Luke x. 29; xvi. 27); or, and this is far the commoner usage, truly—the realities in the moral world correspond- ing with the declaration thus made about them. Thus of course is it here, where Wisdom is contemplated as on her trial, perversely accused by some, and needing there- fore to be ‘justified’ by others.’ When it is said that she is justified ‘of her children, these last can be no other than as many as have accepted her teaching, and now walk in her ways. It is not that we are to contemplate these as pleading her cause before the world, and so acquitting her of these unjust imputations. She needed not their advocacy, and ‘babes’ (Matt. xi. 25) as they were, they this excepted, he has perfectly seized the intention of these words: ἡ σοφία hic nihil aliud est quam quod apud Lucam vii. 30, βουλὴ τοῦ Θεοῦ, sapientissimum nimirum Dei consilium Judwos et Johannis severitate et Christi comitate ad peenitentiam revocantis, ne quid inexpertum relinqueret, atque etiam ne quid illi causari possent ... Johannes, ut peenitentia praco, ad severitatem compositus, Christus comis ut venia largitor. 1 Bengel: Sapientia justificata est; hoc est, criminatores illam ream fecere, scandalizati sunt in ed (ver. 23), eoque rem adduxere, ut demum justificari debuerit ipsa, et justa asseri ostendique, omnes ejus actiones ad absorbendam injustitiam, justitiamque implendam comparatas esse, cum tamen sine excep- tione fuisset amplectenda. WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN. 155 could thus have done little to serve her. But yet in another sense it was out of the mouths of these babes and sucklings that her praise was perfected. In the fact that there were these children of Wisdom, that she had gathered so many round her, who owned her for their spiritual mother, hereby and herein she was justified, acquitted of all those frivolous charges and all that unrighteous blame which had been heaped upon her.’ As Jesus spake these words, He may have looked round at the little company of his disciples. These were his justification and John’s ; these did themselves constitute a vindication of Wisdom’s ways in the face of a gainsaying world.’ 1 So Jerome rightly, with only the fault that he limits the ‘children’ too exclusively to the apostles; they properly include ald the converts whom either John or the Lord had made: Ego, qui sum Dei virtus et Sapientia Dei, justifecisse ab apostolis, filiis meis, comprobatus sum. * Meyer (in loc.), as it seems to me, has seized the meaning exactly: Und gerechtfertiget worden (das heisst, als die wahre Weisheit dargestellt worden) ist die Weisheit (die in Johannes und mir zur Offenbarung ge- kommen ist) von Seiten ihrer Kinder, das heisst, von Seiten ihrer Verehrer und Anhinger, welche eben dadurch, dass sie sich ihr angeschlossen haben und sich von ihr leiten lassen, jene Urtheile des profanum vulgus als unrichtig dargestellt und die Weisheit factisch gerechtfertiget haben. Die (factische) Bewdhrung ist der Weisheit von ihren Verehrern gekommen (ἀπό, nicht ὑπό). There is more than one other explanation of these certainly difficult words, which I have not cared to deal with in the text, as they certainly appear to me wholly untenable. That which has found most favour I will give in Gerhard’s words (Harm. Fvang. 56): Divina Sapientia a filiis suis justificatur, hoc est quasi in judicium pertrahitur, disceptatur cum ef, de jure accusatur, taxatur, reprehenditur, ut in qua nune hoc nune illud desideretur. Et qui debebant esse filii sapientia divine, hoc est obedientes discipuli, illi sumunt sibi, quasi pro tribunali sedentes, jus vocis decisive, ut pro libitu suo vel pro vel contra divinam sapientiam possint pronunciare. Not to speak of other objections, this explanation rests on the ascription to the verb δικαιοῦν of a meaning which in Biblical Greek it never possesses. It is never there to judge and declare guilty, but always, to judge and declare righteous. The only exception to this which I know is Ps. lxxiii. 13, where it means neither one nor the other, but is used as= dyvifew, Gerhard seeks to sustain his interpretation by aid of Isai. xliii. 9; 2 Kin. xy. 4; but neither passage helps him in the least. 6. THE THREE ASPIRANTS. Matt. viii. 18-23; Luke ix. 57-62. ‘Tue manifold wisdom’ of Christ, which shewed itself in his drawing and attaching of souls to Himself, and of which there has just been occasion to speak, must often fill us with devout admiration; but it never does this more than when there are brought before us in quick succession moral and spiritual conditions, which have much apparent similarity, and which yet are most diversely treated by Him." Such we have here. There are two, or adding one of whom St. Luke alone keeps record, three, who either in their own intention or in the Lord’s, are candidates for admission into the inner circle of disciples, into the circle, that is, of those who should not merely themselves receive the truth, but, as Christ’s witnesses, should be actively employed in imparting the knowledge of that truth to others. The occasion which gave room for such a dealing with these souls was as follows: ‘ Vow when Jesus saw great multitudes about Him, He gave com- mandment to depart unto the other side’ One of what we may call the lesser crises in his ministry here arrived. There * Augustine (Serm. 100): Obtulit se unus, ut eum sequeretur, et repro- batus est; alius non audebat, et excitatus est; tertius differebat, ut culpatus THE THREE ASPIRANTS. 157 is growing up around Him that tumult and excitement, in- cident on the gathering of enormous crowds, with expecta- tions raised to the highest, which more than anything else threatened to defeat his plans, to alter, against his will, the whole character of the work which He was working ; which, therefore, by all means He sought to avert or to repress (Luke xiv. 25-33; xix. 11-27); or, where this was beyond his power, to withdraw Himself from it (John vi. 15). The retirement which at such seasons served Him best He found upon the other side of the lake of Galilee; until, indeed, the eagerness of the multitude had learned to follow Him even thither (John vi. 2). Such a retreat to that other side He is about now to undertake. Who will go with Him, and thus give more explicit announcement than he may yet have had the opportunity of giving, that he casts in his lot with Christ ? First there offers himself a Scribe— one “Scribe, as St. Matthew says, with, perhaps, an emphasis on the ‘ one,’ to mark how unfrequent such offers were. And his words sound fairly, ‘ Master, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest. They almost remind one of the great- hearted words of Ittai to David: ‘Surely in what place my lord the king shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will thy servant be’ (2 Sam. xv. 21). Nor is there any reason to suppose that this aspirant to disciple- ship means at the time otherwise than he speaks. Yet is there not indeed in him that true devotedness to Christ, which shall lead him so to follow that Lord in this world, that in the world to come he shall follow Him whither- soever He goeth (Rev. xiv. 4).'_ These words have more * Calvin: Vult quidem hic Christum sequi, sed mollem et amcenam viam, 158 THE THREE ASPIRANTS. in them of Peter’s confident asseveration, ‘Lord, I am ready to o with Thee, both unto prison and to death’ (Luke aoe 33). At all events, they inspire Him, who knowing all things (John xxi. 17), ‘knew what was in man’ with no greater confidence than those other words here- after should do; for with no welcome for this volunteer, but rather a repulse, He answers, ‘ Zhe foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests ;* but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” In other words, ‘ Lookest thou for worldly commodities through the following of Me? In this thou must needs be disappointed. These cannot be my follower’s portion, since they are not mine. Beasts have dens, and birds have shelters, which they may call their own; but the Son of man is homeless and et hospitia bonis omnibus reperta somniat, quum per spinas ambulandum sit Christi discipulis, et per continuas erumnas ad crucem pergendum. Ergo quo magis festinat, eo minus paratus est. Perinde enim facit ac si in umbré et deliciis, sine sudore et pulvere, extra telorum jactum militare vellet. 1 Κατασκηνώσεις ig so rendered in the Versions preceding, as well as in the Authorized Version. The Vulgate in like manner has ‘nidos;’ but an earlier Latin version ‘diversoria,’ while Augustine has ‘nidos’ (Serm. ec. 1) and ‘diver- soria’ (Con. Faust. xxii. 48) and ‘ tabernacula’ (Quest. xvii. in Matt. qu. 5); these latter, with the equivalent English “shelters,’ (Chrysostom substitutes karaywyia), are on all accounts preferable renderings. For, in the first place, birds do not retire to their nests except at one brief period of the year; and then, secondly, κατασκηνώσεις has so much more naturally the more general meaning of shelters, habitations, latibula, cubilia, or, more strictly, umbracula ex ramis et frondibus arborum contexta (Corn. a Lapide), Wohnungen (de Wette), that one must needs agree with Grotius: Quin vox hee ad arborum ramos pertineat dubitaturum non puto qui loca infra, xiii.,32; Mare. iv. 32, et Luc. xiii. 9, inspexerit. He might have added Ps. civ. 12; Dan. iv. 18, LXX. See Fischer, De Vitiis Lex. N. T. pp. 285-290; and on φωλεός (-- τόπος, οὗ τὰ θηρία κοιμᾶται, Hesychius) see p. 287, note. * Very curious is the turn which Augustine (Znarr. in Ps. χο., Serm. 2) gives to these words: Vulpes in te foveas habent; volucres czli nidos in te habent; vulpes dolus est, volucres czeli superbia est . . . Potest in te habitare superbia et dolus; Christus non habet ubi in te habitet, ubi reclinet caput suum. Quia inclinatio capitis, humilitas Ohristi est. Of. Serm. c. 1. THE THREE ASPIRANTS. 159 houseless upon earth; He has not where to lay his head. Itis with Hin®as with Jacob at his poorest estate, when, fleeing from his brother’s wrath, he tarried all night at Haran, and took of the stones of that place, and. put them for his pillow’ (Gen. xxviii. 11). Nor does this answer of Christ our Lord come out to us in all its depth of meaning, till we realize that hour when upon his cross He bowed his head, not having where to lay it, and having bowed it thus, gave up the ghost (John mix: 30). Whether the issue was here as in the case of that rich young man (Matt. xix. 22), whether this one also with- drew, we are not informed ;' it is most probable that he did so. But whatever was the issue, this reply of Christ was not meant any more than his reply to that other, merely and only to repel; but rather to throw back this candidate for the honours of discipleship on deeper heart- searchings; that, having made these, he might either fall off altogether, not beginning to build a tower which he could not finish, or that he might join himself to the Lord in quite another spirit from that in which he made his present offer of service (Luke xiv. 25-33). But checking this one, the Lord incites another; for He knew there was more truth in the backwardness of him to whom He addresses Himself now than in the forwardness of that other who had just addressed Him. It was, as we learn from St. Luke, in reply to a ‘ Follow Me, from the lips of Christ that this one answered, ‘ Lord, . * Corn. a Lapide: Quod audiens siluit, ac spe sud frustratus, ab oculis Christi se subduxit, ut tacite hic innuit Mattheus. Tertullian (Ads. Marcion. iv. 23), besides taking this for granted, assumes further that we are to read in these words an absolute rejection of him on the Lord’s part, which seems to me a mistake, 160 THE THREE ASPIRANTS. suffer me first to go and bury my father.” In the early Church this was oftenest, if not always, understood, ‘My father now lies dead; suffer me, before I attach myself to Thee, to render the last offices of piety to him.’ Nota few in later times, I know none earlier than Theophylact,* but with him agree Grotius, Calvin, Bengel, and others, have understood it otherwise—as though his father was now in extreme old age, with one foot, as we say, in the grave; and that the request of this son was, that he might be permitted to tend and cherish his few days that remained; being ready, when these offices of filial observance were no more required of him, to obey this bidding. But there is every reason for adhering to the earlier interpretation. It is little likely that a disciple, or one ripe for being a disciple, would at such a crisis have asked respite from service for a period so utterly un- certain as this would have been.? Moreover, a son would scarcely speak in such language of attendance on a father that yet lived. The point too of Christ’s rejoinder would thus be missed: ‘Let the dead bury their dead; let the spiritually dead bury the naturally dead—which naturally dead He, designating as ‘ their dead, implies to belong, and to have belonged, to the same sphere of death as those who shall now perform the last offices for them. At the same time by the former ‘dead’ we must rather understand those in whom the spiritual life is as yet unawakened, than urge with any emphasis their death in trespasses and sins ; that must of necessity be implied, yet rather on its nega- tive than its positive side. ‘The spiritually dead, those 1 Theophylact: τὸ γὰρ θάψαι ἐνταῦθα, τοῦτο σημαίνει: τὸ ἐπιμελείας ἀξιῶσαι, ἄχρι καὶ τῆς ταφῆὴ * Maldonatus : Verisimile non est eum quem Christus cognoscens vocabat, tam longi tamque incerti temporis inducias petivisse. THE THREE ASPIRANTS. 161 who are not quickened as thou art with the spirit of a new life, are yet sufficient for the fulfilling of this office which would now call thee away from Me, namely, the burying of the naturally dead; they can perform it as well as thou, and, under present circumstances, thou must be contented to leave it to them.’ When duties come into collision, sacred duties such as_ that which this man pleaded (and how sacred for a pious Jew they were we see from Tob. iv. 3; xiv. 10, 11; not to mention the frequent notice in the early history of the due performance of these offices by children to their parents, Gen. xxv. 9; xxxv. 29; 1. 13), even these must give way to more sacred yet. Christ had said to this man, ‘ Follow Me; so that now that word held good, ‘ Whoso loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me.’ And then, in words which we owe to St. Luke alone, Christ justifies this his withdrawing of him from attend- ance on the dead. He had fitness for a work which, if not directly with the living, was yet with those who were capable of being made alive: ‘Go thou, and preach the kingdom of God, spread far and wide (διάγγελλε) the glad tidings of life, which as many as hear shall live.? One of my royal priesthood (Lev. xxi. 1-12), a Nazarite * Hilary: Admonetur ut meminerit quod Pater sibi vivus in celis est . mortuos autem eos esse, quiextra Deum vivant. Et idcireco mutua mortuis officia relinquenda, ut mortui sepeliantur a mortuis; quia’per Dei fidem vivos vivo oporteat adherere. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xx. 6): Habent enim et anima mortem suam in impietate et peccatis ... ut scilicet in anima mortui, in corpore mortuos sepelirent. Cf. De Trin. iv. 3; Serm.c. 1. Corn. a Lapide: Ludit Christus in voce mortuos. Prius enim mortuos spiritualiter, fide gratiique Dei destitutos significat. Posterius mortuos corporaliter intelligit. * That the antithesis is between death and life Augustine well brings out (Serm. lxii.): Docuit magister quid deberet preponere. Volebat enim eum esse Vivi verbi preedicatorem ad faciendos victuros. M 162 THE THREE ASPIRANTS. of mine (Num. vi. 7), having fellowship with Me who am the Life, thy occupation is henceforth with the living, and not with the dead.” A third, of whom only St. Luke makes report, offers himself for discipleship, ‘ Lord, I will follow Thee ;)—yet this with a condition, and craving time for farewells which he fain would interpose ; ‘but let me first go bid them farewell who are at home at my house’—this rendering of our English Version being preferable to that which some would substitute, but let me first set in order the things in my house.” But he too must learn that there is no dallying with a heavenly vocation, that when this has reached a man, no room is left him for conferring with flesh and blood (Gal. i. 16); to him too, as to the king’s daughter of old, the word of that precept has come, ‘Forget also thine own people and thy father’s house’ (Ps. xlv. 10); while his worst foes, those who will most effectually keep him back from God, may be those of his own household (Matt. x. 36, 37). The Lord therefore will give no allowance to his request, shuts out at once all dangerous delays and interludes between the offer of service and the actual undertaking of it: ‘And Jesus said unto him, No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God’ He who ‘ Tertullian, with allusion to these two passages, one (Ley. xxi 12) for- bidding the High Priest to go in to any dead body, or to defile himself for his father, the other (Num. vi. 7) extending the same prohibition to the Nazarite, goes on to say (Adv. Marc. iv. 23): Puto autem et devotioni [that is, to the Nazarite vow] et sacerdotio destinabat, quem predicando regno Dei imbuerat. 2 "Αποτάξασθαι τοῖς εἰς τὸν οἶκόν μου, which the Vulgate translates, renunciare his que [8]. qui] domi sunt; but Beza better, ut valedicam iis qui sunt domfis mew; so Tertullian, suis valedicere parantem. There is required of him an ἀποτάσσεσθαι (see Luke xiv. 33) in quite another sense from that which he contemplates. THE THREE ASPIRANTS. 163 holds the plough must not look behind him; if he does, he spoils the furrow, and mars the work which he has undertaken. Remarkably enough this careless marring of the furrow has lent a word to the Latin, and through the Latin to our own language; ‘ delirare,’ originally to deviate from the ‘lira,’ which is strictly the little ridge of earth thrown up by the share between the two furrows, and then the furrow itself. The discipleship of Christ is such a putting of the hand to the plough, for the breaking up of the hard soil of our own hearts, for the breaking up of the hard soil of the hearts of others. We have the same image, Luke xvii. 7; 1 Cor. ix. 10. It sets forth the /abortousness of the work better than the more usual image of sowing (Matt. xiii. 3), and, so to speak, carries us a step further back in the spiritual husbandry. But he who having put his hand to the plough, and thus begun well, shall afterwards, Christ does not say turn back, but who shall even so much as look back, in token that his heart is otherwhere than in the task before him (Gen. xix. 26; Luke xvii. 392; 2 Tim. ii. 4; Phil. #i. 14), he may still have his hand on the plough; but having fallen away in heart and affection from his work, he makes no straight furrows, he breaks not up aright any fallow ground; he ‘zs not fit, or rather, is of no service and profit, ‘for the kingdom of God. Indeed, unless kept to his work as an hireling, it is likely that he will presently leave his plough in the half-drawn furrow, and be found to have exchanged toil and exposure abroad for the com- forts and ease of his own hearth (Acts xiii. 13; xv. 38). The reference to 1 Kin. xix. 19, which is generally here made, is not much to the point, except as an illus- tration by way of contrast. This bidding farewell to them M2 164 THE THREE ASPIRANTS. of his house was permitted to Elisha; being included in the feast which he makes ver. 21; it is refused to this disciple. The comparison of that passage with this is in- structive thus far, as shewing how much more urgent is the call of the Master than of the servant ; how much less it will brook question or delay. What if those other two, and this third whose call St. Luke has associated with theirs, were, as one has suggested, Judas Iscariot, Thomas, and Matthew?! In the second and third instances the summons is so plainly to a high work in the kingdom of God (that ‘ Hollow Me’ of Christ ever implying as much, Matt. iv. 19; 1x. 9; Xix. 21; John i. 43), and there is altogether so marked an emphasis about these calls, that it is difficult to suppose them calls merely to discipleship. These were aspirants and can- didates in their own eyes, or in their Lord’s, to a higher grade, to the apostolate itself. Indeed one of the three was a disciple already (Matt. viii. 21), whom the Lord here draws into a closer circle of service; and if another had already set his hand to the plough (Luke ix. 62), the same might be affirmed of him. Moreover, it is very noticeable that in immediate sequence to the words thus exchanged by Christ with these three, St. Luke proceeds, ‘ After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, seeming thereby very distinctly to mark that what had just passed had relation to the Twelve; at all events to exclude one and all of these now mentioned from the Seventy. Butif — not disciples, what else but apostles could any of them have been? nor does the fact that St. Matthew’s chrono- * The Gnostics, as Irenmus (1. 8.3) tells us, found in them severally the representatives of the man ὑλικός, πνευματικός͵ and ψυχικός. THE THREE ASPIRANTS. 165 logical order is here preferable to St. Luke’s take from the significancy of this hint. In St. Matthew also we note that it is very shortly after the incidents which have just been recorded, that the Twelve are definitively set apart, that the number of those whom the Lord had been gathering one by one, appears complete (x. 1). Some in the early Church were moved by these or like probabilities to suppose that in one at least of these instances we had to do with the calling of an apostle, with that namely of Philip. This Clement of Alexandria‘ takes for granted ; which, however, could not be; for he was already called (John i. 43); as were Andrew and Peter (John i. 4o, 41), James and John (Luke v. 1-11), and Bartholomew (=Nathanael, Johni. 46-52). Three more of the apostles, the other James, Lebbzeus (—Jude), and Simon the Ca- naanite may have been ‘ brethren of the Lord ;’ who could not then have been identical with any of these three. If such they were, and if we have the calling of apostles here, it can be of no other than those whom I have named. At all events the conjecture has enough of psychological and other likelihood about it to be worth following up a little further. Thus the first who offered himself was one whom the Lord evidently welcomed with no pleasure, whom He would fain have put back from Him, whose large pro- fessions inspired Him with no confidence. And how remarkable is the Lord’s reply to these professions. He to whom all hearts were open, sees as with a glance in the heart of this offerer what perhaps at the moment was altogether concealed from himself. There is nothing to be gotten, He tells him, no worldly advantage to be gained, 1 Strom. iii. 4. 166 THE THREE ASPIRANTS. through a following of that Son of man, who is poorer even than the poorest '—as though He already beheld in spirit the unhappy disciple, who, disappointed of his large worldly expectations, should seek to redress a little the wrong which he counted he had suffered by purloining from the common stock (John xii. 6), and should end with making merchandize of the Lord of Glory Himself. But while he, making this offer of himself, is rather repelled than welcomed, the other two have, as we have seen, summonses and invitations more or less direct to attach themselves ever closer to their Lord; and if they be the two who have just been suggested, there is ad- dressed to each the exact encouragement and reproof which he probably would have needed. ‘Suffer me first to go, and bury my father” Wow characteristic of the melancholic Thomas is the excuse and the hindrance which are pleaded here—of him, who at a later day, in the very presence of the Lord and Prince of life, could only express his affection to Him by those words, ‘ Let us also go that we may die with Him’ (John xi. 16); who even after the empty tomb, and the testimony of the women and of his fellow apostles, could not disengage himself from thoughts of death and the grave, nor be persuaded to believe that the Lord had risen indeed (John xx. 24, 25). How characteristic was it of him in whose mind death was thus uppermost, that on the present occasion also the duties to the dead should seem to him to overbear those to the living. And Christ’s answer and reproof exactly meets the disease and infirmity of his soul; ‘Thou belongest to the new creation; not to the old ᾿ Cajetan: Spem lucri tollit hee responsio. THE THREE ASPIRANTS. 167 world of death, but to the new world of life. Go thou and preach the kingdom of God. Disperse to others the words of that life with which thou thyself hast been quickened.’ And the third, who cannot obey the calling till he has bade a solemn farewell to allin his house, might very well be St. Matthew ; who, being refused this, did not therefore at this time accompany the Lord; but to whom that Lord a little later so spake that he obeyed; and whose farewell feast, after he had thrown in his lot with Christ, so that then there was no indecision in his asking to be permitted to make it, the Lord allowed, and Himself sanctioned and adorned with his own presence (Matt. ix. 9,10; Luke v. 27, 29); and that, although He had disallowed it, so long as it was made the condition of obedience. 168 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT, 7. THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT, AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. . Matt. ix. 14-17; Mark ii. 18-22; Luke v. 33-39. Tue feast which Levi made, probably as a sort of leave- taking to the other publicans, now that he had found for himself a better service than that of the Roman Emperor, was very fruitful in rich and precious instruction. There was first the Saviour’s answer to those who complained, not to Him, but concerning Him, that he ate with pub- licans and sinners (ver. 12, 13); and there was then his answer to a second remonstrance, on the part not now of the Pharisees alone, as we might conclude from St. Luke (v. 33), nor yet of John’s disciples alone, as we might gather from St. Matthew (ix. 14), but a remonstrance coming from these and those, as St. Mark (ii. 18), recon- ciling the other two narratives, informs us. That remon- strance couched itself in these words, ‘ Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?’ It is with this, and the answer which this called out, that I occupy myself here. There is something strange at first sight in finding the disciples of John associated with the disciples of the Pha- risees ; and making common cause with them, rather than with Him to whom their Master had borne such signal witness (John 1. 29, 36; iii. 26-36) ; for it needs not to observe that the fault which was thus imputed to Christ’s AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 169 disciples, if indeed a fault, would have redounded upon Him, under whose eye and with whose encouragement they bore themselves thus. But one or two considera- tions will help to account for a momentary coalition of this kind. In the first place, while there was no jealousy on the Baptist’s part, but the noblest absence of jealousy, at the larger successes and the transcendant dignity of the Lord, there was by no means the same entire freedom from such a passion on the part of some of his disciples ;' and the after-history of too many of his scholars, who degenerated, as is well known, into an heretical sect which never admitted Christ as the highest, too surely testified of this. It is plain ¢hey did not look with a wholly unenvious eye at Him increasing, aud John decreasing (John iii. 26-- 31; iv. 1). Moreover, while each true disciple of John would have held with the Lord and found himself on his side on almost every other point of difference beween Him and the Pharisees, and of course in every essential, here in this external matter would be his one point of contact with them, and of a greater apparent nearness to them than to Him. And thus, without any serious forget- fulness of the instructions of their master, now probably withdrawn from them, and lying in Herod’s dungeon, with- out any deliberate purpose of strengthening the hands of Christ’s enemies,” they may have found themselves for this once, and on this single point, upon their side; and incau- tiously, though not meaning to embarrass Him in the least, * Chrysostom however puts this somewhat too strongly: ζηλοτύπως aed πρὸς αὐτὸν εἶχον οἱ ᾿Τωάννου μαθηταί. * Jerome (in loc.) makes a severer estimate of their fault in this question : Nec poterant discipuli Johannis non esse sub vitio, qui calumniabantur eum, quem sciebant magistri vocibus praedicatum ; et jungebantur Pharissis, quos a Johanne noverant condemnatos [Matt. iii. 7]. 170 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT, they may have put this question at once in the Pharisees’ name, and in their own: ‘ Why do we and the Pharisees Sast oft, but thy disciples fast not ?’ He answers their question with another, and with one which could hardly help causing them to remember the latest testimony which their master had borne to Him (see John iii. 29); which implied that He was well aware of the exact form which that testimony had taken: ‘ Can the children of the bridechamber* mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?’ The disciples are of course ‘ the children of the bridechamber ;’ not to be confounded with ‘the friend of the bridegroom’”’ (John iii. 29), who is one, while they are many (Judg. xiv. 11}; just as the office of the Baptist was filled by him singly and alone, being not indeed higher than the Apostolate, but distinct from it. Christ here presents Himself as ‘ the Bridegroom ;’ intend- ing, as we may very well suppose, to remind the disciples of John that under this very aspect their own master had so recently hailed Him.* How large an amount of the Old Testament in this single phrase does He claim for 1 *Ohildren of the bridechamber’ is a phrase which has been sometimes wrongly understood, but abundant parallels in the New Testament make its meaning sufliciently clear. ‘ The children,’—or better, ‘ the sons,’-—where the term is used in a figurative sense, are those who stand in near and intimate relation, but at the same time, a relation of subordination to that of which they are set forth as the children. The following, I believe, are all the passages in which υἱός or υἱοί occur in this figurative sense: βασιλείας (Matt. viii. 12; xiii. 38); πονηροῦ (Matt. xiii. 38); γεέννης (Matt. xxiii. 15); βροντῆς (Mark iii. 17); εἰρήνης (Luke x. 6); αἰῶνος (Luke xvi, 8; xx. 34); φωτός (Luke xvi. 8; John xii. 36); ἀναστάσεως (Luke xx. 36); ἀπωλείας (John xvii. 12; 2 Thess. ii. 3); παρακλήσεως (Acts iv. 36); διαβόλου (Acts xiii. 10); ἀπειθείας (Eph. li. 2; v. 6; Col. iii. 6). The idiom is rarer in the Septuagint than one would expect, but we have there υἱὸς δυνάμεως (1 Kin. i. 52); ἀνομίας (Ps. 1xxxviii. 23); θανάτου (2 Sam. xii. 5); ἐτῶν (Gen. xi. 10); with perhaps one or two others, 3 The paranymph or ‘best man’=vuyudaywyde (Gen. xxvi. 26; Judg. xiv. 20), * Chrysostom: ἀναμιμνήσκων αὐτοὺς τῶν τοῦ ᾿Ιωάννου ῥημάτων. AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 171 Himself, and as finding its fulfilment in Him; as the whole of the Song of Songs; the 45th Psalm; Hosea ii. 19, 20. How many marriages, more or less mystical there, does He claim as pointing to this, the crowning mystery of all; as of Adam with Eve, of Isaac with Rebecca, of Joseph with the daughter of Potipherah, of Moses with the Ethiopian woman, of Boaz with Ruth, of Solomon with the princess of Egypt, of Hosea with Gomer. How much in the New Testament, only hereafter to be uttered, does He already anticipate in this significant word (Matt. xxi. 1; Xxv. 1; 2 Cor.-xi: 2; Eph. v: 23-325 Rev...xix. 7,.Q5; xxi. 2). He, ‘the Bridegroom, was now with them; it was not indeed that the marriage of the Lamb was yet arrived; that should not be till long after; but these were his espousals ; for as such espousals the brief period of his first sojourn upon earth might be fitly regarded; during which indeed He did but as it were salute the bride, whom hereafter, but only after a long intervening period of absence, He should lead home. He would not trouble with untimely mourning the brief gladness, so soon to disappear, of the present hour. The bridegroom was yet to ‘be taken from them, —in that phrase ‘taken from them’ there lies already the hint that his absence should be no voluntary withdrawing upon his part—a removal rather by violence,—and then they who were so jocund now should have both reason enough and time enough to mourn. Our Lord contemplates the whole time between his death and his second coming as a time suitable for mourning, being the time of his absence from his Church. It might be objected to this interpretation of the words, it has been objected by Olshausen, that He was given back to his Church at the Resurrection. This is so far 172 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT, true, that the mourning is now a mourning of hope and not of despair; the Church mourns not for a dead, but only for an absent Lord; but still she mourns; and the measure of her love to Him will be the measure of her yearning for Tim and for his return. At the same time it is true that within this period,of her mourning there will be alterna- tions of joy and sorrow; the Church will have festivals as well as fasts; she will have, that is, some periods when her sense of her Lord as taken away will be the fore- most thought and most vivid feeling in her mind; she will have other periods, when she will put off for a while her garments of heaviness, and anoint herself with the oil of gladness ; although only for a while, and as well know- ing that she shall not put them off for ever, that ever- lasting joy shall not be upon her head, till her Lord has come back to her again. The note of sorrow is the key- note of the Church during all the time that her Lord is taken from her; ‘ then shall they fast. There is something of an infinite | compassion, of a pitying consideration, in this the Lord’s determination not. to trouble, nor yet suffer to be troubled by others, this present joy—seeing as He did into the depths of time, and all the weary and painful way which was yet to be travelled over before the final and triumphant goal was won. And as this question was put to Him at a feast, and at one which He would not see troubled, so we may trace something festal and festive in the whole cha- racter of his reply; for that too has to do with a bridal feast, with garments and with wine. In festal images He clothes the justification of his disciples and of Himself." ‘ Bengel: Magna cum sobrietate et festivitate respondet Dominus; a vestibus et vino (quorum usus erat in convivio) parabolas desumit jucundas ad confutandam querentium tristitiam. AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 173 The images are two, and this is the first: ‘Vo man put- teth a piece of new cloth upon an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. In St. Luke’s report of these words of Christ, some points are more distinctly made than in St. Matthew’s, and indeed the whole image, or ‘ parable, as by him, and by him only, it is called, appears to a certain degree in a modified form. It there stands thus: ‘No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old ; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece which was taken out of the old agreeth not with the new, The absurdity of such a course is here more strongly marked than in St. Matthew. There it is mainly, if not entirely, the destruction of the old which so unwise a mending would entail, that is urged; but here that the new is also sacrificed, without any benefit thereby accruing to the old; a truth to be brought out yet more vividly in the perishing of the wine and the wine-skins together. In St. Matthew it is but a piece of new cloth, new, as not having yet passed under the fuller’s hands, which is lost; while here a new garment is totally sacrificed, a patch cut out from it, that so this profitless experiment may be tried. The emphasis which the Lord lays on this reckless destruction of the serviceable for the sake of the unservice- able will come more plainly out when instead of, ‘ ¢f other- wise, then the new maketh a rent; we render the words as we ought, ‘7¢f otherwise, he will also tear the new ;’* destroy it, and that for the sake of the old, which after * In the Greek, εἰ δὲ μή ye, kai τὸ καινὸν σχίζει (or better σχίσει), which Tyndale had rightly given; ‘for if he do, then breaketh he the new ;’ but which was rendered by Beza, who has not seldom exercised an injurious influence on our Version, Alioqui et illud novum findit vetus; making τὸ καινόν a nomi- native, and supplying τὸ παλαιόν as an accusative governed by σλίσει. oa 174 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT, all is not profited thereby ; seeing that, after the patch is made, the two have no agreement together. The glaring contrast, the discord between old and new, rendering the garment such as no one would willingly put on, and there- fore useless, is the point in the parable here; not as in the earlier Evangelists, the energy with which the stronger new will inevitably tear itself clear of the weaker and worn-out old. I return to the words as recorded by St. Matthew. As making room for their true exposition and that of those other which follow, it may be needful just to notice and set aside one strange misconception of their whole mean- ing and intention. I refer to their’s who understand by the ‘piece of new cloth’ which no man ‘ putteth upon an old garment, as by the ‘new wine’ which ‘no man putteth into old bottles, the fasts and austerities of John’s disciples and of the Pharisees; which Christ would not venture as yet to impose on his own disciples, however John and the Pharisees might safely impose .them upon theirs ; who were more inured and thus better able to bear them. It is marvellous to find an interpreter like Hammond content thus to explain Christ’s words: ‘ Young novice disciples that were not yet renewed by the coming of the Spirit upon them, and so were not strong enough for such, must not presently be overwhelmed with severe precepts such as fasting, &c., lest they fall off and be discouraged.’ One is tempted to ask, Were the disciples of John and of the Pharisees ‘renewed by the coming of the Spirit upon them,’ that they could bear what Christ’s disciples could not bear. Maldonatus, an interpreter of greater exe- getical talent than Hammond—indeed of the very highest, where the necessity of maintaining at all costs Roman AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 175 doctrine does not warp his interpretation—is here in the same hopeless confusion. It is not to be denied that there were some in old time who had shewn them the way in this the perversest of all interpretations. Yet these, some are cited below,’ were the exception ; for the most part the early interpreters grasped rightly the meaning of Christ’s words. Thus in the Greek Church very distinctly Origen, Basil the Great,? Isidore, and Cyril;*® and in the Latin Hilary,* and Augustine.’ The last sees the highest fulfil- * Thus Tertullian of course (Adv. Mare. iv. 11): Humiliter reddens rationem quod non possent jejunare filii Sponsi, quamdiu cum eis esset Sponsus, postea vero jejunaturos promittens; nec discipulos defendit, sed potius excusavit; and yet he too has implicitly given the right explana- tion elsewhere, when speaking of the Lord’s Prayer he says (De Orat. 1): Discipulis Novi Testamenti novam orationis formam determinavit ; oportebat enim in hac quoque specie noyum vinum hovis utribus recondi, et novam plagulam novo adsui vestimento. So too Theophylact has missed the meaning: ῥάκος οὖν ayvagov ἡ νηστεία καὶ οἶνος νέος ἱμάτιον παλαιὸν καὶ ἀσκὸς, ἡ ἀσθένεια τῶν μαθητῶν. It is curious to find Beza consenting to this explanation: Ista vero utrique similitudine significat Christus haberi hu- mane infirmatatis rationem a Deo, qui non sinat nos supra vires tentari, ideoque paulatim militie laboribus suos assuefaciat, quod in ipsis etiam apostolis preestitit. ? The regeneration, as he rightly implies, with the daily renewal which the regeneration alone renders possible, constitutes the new vessel, capable of receiving the new wine (Hom. in Ps. xxxii.): οἱ μὲν οὖν ἀνακαινούμενοι ἡμέρᾳ καὶ ἡμέρᾳ καὶ τὸν καινὸν οἶνον ἀπὸ τῆς ἀμπέλου τῆς ἀληθινῆς χωροῦντες ἀσκοὶ εἶναι λέγονται ἐν τῷ Ἐὐαγγελίῳ καινοί. 5. See Cramer’s Catena, in loc. * Phariswos et discipulos Johannis nova non accepturos [dicit] nisi novi fierent. ° Thus Serm. celxvii. 2: Isti ebrii sunt; musto pleni sunt. P debant, et aliquid verum dicebant. Impleti enim erant utres novo vino. Audistis cum Evangelium legeretur, Nemo mittit vinum novum in utres veteres; spi- ritalia non capit carnalis. Oarnalitas vetustas est, gratia novitas est. Quan- tocumque homo in melius fuerit innovatus, tanto amplius capit quod verum sapit. Elsewhere (Quest. Hoang. ii. 18) Augustine seems to me less firmly to grasp Christ’s meaning; while Jerome strangely enough in the very same passage (in loc.) gives the two explanations, the wrong and the right, which indeed mutually exclude one another ; first the wrong : Quod dicit [Dominus], hoc est: Donec renatus quis fuerit, et veteri homine deposito per passionem meam, novum hominem induerit, non potest severiora jejunii et continentia sustinere precepta. Presently, without any consciousness that he is alto- 176 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT, ment of that word concerning the new wine in the new vessels in the gifts of Pentecost ; and loves to put this saying of the Lord in relation with that which was spoken by the mockers then, and yet was deepest truth. ‘These men are full of new wine’ (Acts ii. 13).’ The meaning, as these are all agreed, is this; No man, that is, no man of prudence (for the very consequence which He indicates as sometimes following, shews that some men do make and have made this mistake), seeks to piece out an old garment with a new patch; but when the garment is indeed worn-out (for ‘o/d’ here can mean no- thing short of this), he perceives that it would be no true economy to endeavour with a new piece which would not match with the faded and threadbare old, and which moreover that worn-out texture would not have strength to retain, to fit it for use again. On the contrary, if poverty do not hinder (for this is tacitly understood), he puts on a garment new altogether, and in this presents himself at the bridal feast. They proceed to explain, that as such an ancient garment, the great Author of all the economies in the Church of God would here characterize that elder economy, given by the hand of Moses; whereof these obligatory fasts, which men were gether changing his ground, he passes on to the right: Veteres utres debe- mus intelligere Scribas et Phariswos. Plagula vestimenti novi et vinum novum, precepta Evangelica sentienda, qua non possunt sustinere Judai, ne major scissura fiat. Tale quid et Galate facere cupiebant, ut cum Evangelio Legis pracepta miscerent, et in utribus veteribus mitterent vinum novum. 1 Serm. xxvi.: Utres novos utres veteres mirabantur ; et calumniando non innovabantur, nec implebantur. Serm. cclxvii.: Utres novi erant; vinum novum de celo expectabatur, et venit ; jam enim fuerat magnus ille Botrus calcatus et glorificatus. So too in one of Adam of St. Victor’s magnificent Pentecostal hymns (see my Sacred Latin Poetry, p. 192): Utres novi, non vetusti, Sunt capaces novi musti. AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 177 now seeking to thrust on his disciples, formed an integral part, and of the entire of which they stand as the sign and the symbol here. This likening of that elder dispensation to such a worn-out garment may seem harshly spoken; yet the language is not stronger than that which St. Paul uses, Gal. iv. 3,9; nor than that employed in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. vii. 18), where the apostle speaks of the disannulling of the commandment which went before ‘for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof.’ ‘It would profit nothing,’ Christ would here say, ‘ to seek to attach my new as a supplementary patch to that old of yours. They would not hold together. My doctrine is something different from that which you would have it; something more than a mere supplement to yours, to make that good, where it is defective ; to repair that, where it is out-worn. Itis something which is all of a piece, not a righteousness of works, eked out and patched here and there with the righteousness of faith, but from head to foot a new garment for souls.’ It was exactly such a piece of patchwork as this, which the Galatians actually attempted, and for which St. Paul chides them so earnestly (Gal. iii. 2, and throughout). And then, as that first comparison had chiefly to do with things, the other which follows, namely of the wine and the bottles, has chiefly to do with persons; as that with doctrine, something therefore more external, even as a garment is worn on the outside of the body, this with life, that which is more inward, as wine is inwardly received.’ For we must not regard this as a mere saying over again what Christ had said already. Our Lord often * Bede: Vino siquidem intus reficimur, veste autem foris tegimur. N 178 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT, repeats Himself (thus Matt. xiii. 31, 32 compared with ver. 33; and again ver. 44 with ver. 45, 46; or Luke xiv. 28-30 compared with ver. 31, 32; or xv. 4-7 with ver. 8-10), but never merely repeats Himself; it is the same, but in some novel point of view, in some deeper aspect. Still keeping close to the bridal feast, and to the images which it suggests, He goes on to say, ‘ Neither do men put new wine into old bottles, else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish (cf. Job Xxxii. 19); but they put new wine into new bottles," and both are preserved. No prudent man, who means to keep his wine for the feast, pours it new, and not as yet having worked off its fermenting strength, into skins old, and therefore weak and stiff, and possessing no power to expand. If the new piece of cloth was the new doctrine, which Christ refused to make merely supplementary to the old, the new wine, as was just remarked, will be the new life, which they only can contain, who are willing to become new vessels—‘ willing to become,’ I have said ; for spiritual things in this differ from things natural, that αὐ are old vessels at the first,a Paul as muchas ἃ Caiaphas; only among these old vessels, some are willing to be made new, and thus continent of the new life; while others not only are old, but are determined to remain in their oldness, even after the renewing powers have been brought nigh them, and offered to them for their acceptance; Osheas that ἘΝ ἔον οἶνον and καινοὺς ἀσκούς: but both of necessity translated ‘ne’ in our Version. Yet the variation in the original is instructive, as helping us to seize the distinction between the words. The wine is véoc,—what our ancestors called stum, or wine of the present year,—in which the process of fermentation has not yet taken place; the bottles or skins (see the Dict. of the Bible, art. Bottle), are καινοὶ, ‘ new’ in the sense of unused, such as have not through wear and tear lost at once their strength and power of expan- sion. See my Synonyms of the New Testament, § 60. AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 179 will not be Joshuas, Jacobs that will not be Israels, and Simons that will not become Peters. In the words, ‘ new bottles, we have in fact a hint at the mystery of regenera- tion; and this language He only had a right to use who had power to say also, ‘ Behold, I make all things new’ (Rev. xxi. 5). There was a restricted sense, indeed, in which Christ’s apostles were ‘new vessels, ‘new cloth, even when He took them. They were far newer, at least, than those who had grown old in their frauds and hypo- crisies, the Pharisees and their adherents. There is another point in which this second comparison is in advance of the first. In that, namely, of the piece of cloth, the new holds itself passive in regard of the old ; we can hardly, that is, attribute to it the power of itself actually tearing out from the old, however such a rent might and would follow on the attempt to combine the one with the other. But in this second comparison the new wine puts forth an active power for the bursting of the old vessels.” Here a new aspect of the truth is presented to us, namely, the perilous power which mighty truths of God exert, when they are received by men who are not thoroughly renewed and transformed by them, who remain old men still;—the imminent danger of the truth, so far as these men are concerned, being utterly lost, like wine spilt on the ground; and the men themselves, like the bursten vessels, perishing with it. What a key have we here to Peasants’ Wars, Anabaptist and other anti- 1 A hint of this may lie in the ἄγαφνος of St. Matthew and St. Mark; which our Translators have rendered ‘nev,’ but have suggested‘ raw or unwrought’ —‘ undressed’ would be still better—in the margin. Bengel gives the true intention of the word: Discipulos rudes, novos et integros, nulla peculiari discipliné imbutos, sumsit Jesus. * Gregory the Great (Mor. xxiii. 11): Quia sancti Spiritfis fervor non solum veteri sed etiam nova vité vix capitur. N 2 180 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT, nomian excesses in old times and in new! On how many a saddest page in the history of the Church, in the history too of innumerable lives that have made utter shipwreck of themselves, do these words throw light.’ Keeping in mind the mournful comment upon these words which the Church’s history has thus so abundantly 2 An article in the Zeitschrift fiir Lutherische Theologie und Kirche, 1866, pp. 240-251, with the title, Hine religidse Bewegung in Finnland, sup- plies as mournful a commentary on these words as could well be found. It is the miserable record of a religious awakening among the poor neglected Lapps and Finns some twenty years ago—which, for want of wise guidance being allowed to become merely subjective, and to divorce itself altogether from the Word of God as its rule, and from the order of the Church as explaining that rule, ended in blasphemous excesses which remind one of nothing so much as the frightful extravagancies of the Brethren of the Free Spirit in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (see Gieseler, Hirch. Gesch. vol. τι. pt. ii. p. 629). It is indeed startling, and at the same time wonderfully instructive as shewing the fixed and narrow limits within which error moves, to meet not merely the speculations, but not seldom the yery phrases of those licentious pantheists, reproducing themselves among the rude and ignorant children of the North. A faithful Swedish pastor who sought, but when matters were beyond remedy, to bring back these unhappy people to the Word and the Testimony, sets down in his Diary their retorts of a single day to his godly warnings. I omit a part, and the rest I prefer to leave in his own language: Um Gott firchten zu miissen, muss man siindigen; wir sin- digen nicht, denn wer den Geist hat, braucht nicht zu sindigen; wir fiirchten daher auch Gott nicht. Wir sind die Glieder Gottes, welche Gott nicht strafen kann; denn Er kann seine eigenen Glieder weder strafen noch verdammen. Wir sind gestorben, und kénnen nicht sterben. Wir haben nicht leibliche, sondern geistliche Glieder. Wir sind auf der neuen Erde wohnhaft; wir sind geistlich, heilig, gerecht. Wir sind die Bibel, das neue Testament, der Sinai. Unser Leib ist das Gesetz; daher haben wir auch das Recht zu urtheilen und zu verdammen. Wir sind Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn, und Gott der heilige Geist. Der Sohn hat seine Macht, die jetzt bei uns wohnt, verloren. Der Geist in uns hat die Macht zu tédten. Der Pfarrer, der nicht liéugnet dass er Fleisch hat, ist sterblich und gehért dem Teufel. Wir kénnen das Innere aller Menschen durchschauen, nnd wie Christus sagte, Hebe dich weg von mir, Satan, so haben wir auch das Recht euch Teufel zu nennen, und mit euch als solehen zu verkehren. Thr ligt, wenn ihr sagt, ‘ Vater Unser, der du bist im Himmel!’ Ihr solltet sagen, ‘Vater Unser, der du bist in der Holle,’ denn so lange ihr unbekehrt seid, so ist der Teufel euer Vater. Die Kinder sollen ihren Eltern fluchen, damit der Fluch auf diese Weise sich riick wiirtz zu unseren Stammeltern verpflanzen kénne—with not a little more to the same effect AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 181 supplied, we may more fully understand that gracious unwillingness on the Lord’s part to put the old vessels to | this trial, lest they should burst and perish in the process of the new wine’s fermentation. His words involve, as I cannot but believe, a recognition that even those whose service is not the highest, may yet be allowed by Him, that many lower forms of service besides the service in the freedom of the Spirit will yet find merciful acceptance with God. Many an earnest Pharisee, many a rigid dis- ciple of John, many an elder brother of the parable, if only he has been true to the light which he had, and has not had the more excellent way offered to him, and deli- berately refused that, shall not be rejected nor cast out. I will only observe, before leaving these words, that in them are condemned as hopeless, declared to be bound over to inevitable failure, not this attempt only, but all attempts to combine into one scheme and system hetero- geneous materials, having no true affinity with one an- other. They refuse to coalesce; one proves too strong for the other. It has been often tried. There is such evident power and vitality in the great Christian ideas, that even those who have refused to accept Chris- tianity as a whole have continually sought to borrow from it in part; to deck their own, which they will not renounce, with shreds and patches derived from it; to quicken with sparks from a higher source systems from which all proper life, if ever they had such, has long since departed. When the Neo-Platonists of the second and third centuries sought to give a new currency to the myths of an effete heathenism, by making them the vehicles of Christian ideas, of truths which would never have stirred in the thoughts of men, if Christ had not lived and taught 182 THH NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT, 9 and died, this was at once a sewing of the new patch upon the old garment with which it did not agree, and a pouring of the new wine into the old vessels which were quite incapable of containing it. The same results have in every case followed. As in the material world only substances which have affinity to one another will chemi- cally unite, so the truth has ever attested itself to be the truth by refusing to combine with anything except itself. But having thus justified Himself, and in Himself his disciples also, the Lord concludes in words which only St. Luke has preserved for us, ‘ Vo man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old zs better. He graciously proceeds, that is, to make excuse for the disciples of John (He would scarcely have thought it necessary to make one, if the Pharisees had been the only ones offended) ; explains how it came to pass that these took the offence that they did, could not at once find themselves in his doctrine and life. He throws his shield over them, lest his disciples, being delivered from the assault, should themselves be tempted to become assailants in their turn, and to manifest impatience with all who failed to recognize and accept at once and without hesitation their Lord’s word and doctrine as the highest and the best. He will check any such intolerance and impatience on their parts. Was it to be expected that their own, to which these had been accustomed so long, should grow out of favour with them on the instant, even though He offered to them something better in its room? If the new wine did taste somewhat harsh and rough to their palates at the beginning, this was only in the natural and necessary order of things; no man used to the old AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 183 straightway desireth the new, even though it be of a much higher quality. But let them have time and op- portunity little by little to wean themselves from that old, and doubtless there would be found among them those who would grow into liking of this new, which indeed in a higher sense is the oldest of all (Gal. πὶ. 17; 1 John ii. 7, 8).’ Wonderful, and rare as it is wonderful, is the spirit of mildness and of toleration for all which is not absolutely sinful, so that it shall be allowed to endure till it drop away of itself, which speaks out in these words. St. Paul entered into his Master’s spirit, and acted in practical con- formity with it, when he would do nothing to force the Jewish converts to forsake their ceremonial law, earnestly as he must have desired to see this serious obstacle to an entire fusion of the Jewish and Gentile Churches, this perilous thing, liable to so mnch abuse, removed out of the way ; but was content to wait patiently till it should fall off of itself—as a husk falls off, when the fruit which it has protected so long, is at length fully formed. Reverence for that which has been consecrated by time, with an acknowledgement of the mighty force which custom and habit exercise on the spirits of men, and at the same time a warning to the disciples not to over- look this in their impatient expectation that all men, whatever their past training and discipline may have been, should accept and embrace a more excellent way on the very first moment that it is presented to them, all this utters itself in these gracious words. 1 Bengel: Paulatim mutantur habitus animorum. 8. THE TRANSFIGURATION. Matt . xvii. 1-13; Mark ix. 2-13; Luke ix. 28-36. THERE has been no little debate and difference of opinion on the relation in which the Transfiguration stands to the words of Christ which went immediately before, ‘ Verily, I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom, or, ‘till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power’ (Mark) ; or ‘ tall they see the kingdom of God’ (Luke). The point in debate has been this— namely, how far the Transfiguration is to be itself regarded as a fulfilment of these words ; whether that was a coming of the Son of man in his kingdom, a coming of the king- dom of God with power; and, if accepted as such, in what sense it was such a coming. That the coming of which Christ here speaks is not the coming of the Son of man to judge the world, of which a little while before He spoke (ver. 27), is evident; for He has said that there are those present who shall live to see it; that it shall fall within the lifetime of some of that generation who are the Lord’s immediate hearers. ΤῸ this coming, then, at the end of the world to judge the world He cannot refer. But are we therefore compelled to find in the Trans- figuration the fulfilment of his statement, that some stand- ing there should not taste of death till they had seen Him THE TRANSFIGURATION. 185 coming 1n his kingdom? [I cannot believe that we are. There seem to me, indeed, two most serious objections to our doing so. The first is this. Mighty event as the Transfiguration doubtless was, and it stands between the Temptation in the wilderness, and the Agony in the garden, as the culminating point in our Lord’s ministry upon earth, still the transient glory of it, even grant- ing its unutterable significance for Himself and for the Church of all times, fails to satisfy and exhaust language so vast as this, ‘the Son of man coming in his kingdom, ‘the kingdom of God coming with power.” Great as is the ‘Transfiguration, it is hardly great enough for such . words as these. But, further than this, it seems im- possible to think that our Lord can have used such lan- guage of an event removed from the moment at which He utters it by no more than the interval of a week. This is excellently put by Bishop Horsley,’ little favour as his own explanation of the passage deserves to obtain : ‘If the time described as that when the Son of man should be seen coming in his kingdom be understood to have been the time of the Transfiguration, what will be the amount of the solemn asseveration in the text? Nothing more than this—that in the numerous assembly to which our Lord was speaking, composed, perhaps, of persons of all ages, there were some,—the expressions certainly intimate no great number,—but some few of this great multitude there were, who were not to die within a week; for so much was the utmost interval of time between this discourse and the Transfiguration. Our Lord and Master was not accustomed to amuse his followers with any such nugatory predictions. The like 1 Sermons, voli. p. 39. 186 THE TRANSFIGURATION. argument sets aside another interpretation, in which our Lord’s ascension and the mission of the Holy Ghost are considered as the “coming in his kingdom” intended in the text. Of what importance was it to tell a numerous assembly (for it was not to the disciples in particular, but to the whole multitude, as we learn from St. Mark, that this discourse was addressed )—to what purpose, I say, could it be, to tell them that there were some among them who were destined to live half a year?’ For myself, I can find no satisfactory explanation of this prediction except such a one as shall recognize its fulfil- ment in that mightiest judgment act of the Son of man, which the world has yet seen, which, so far as we can understand, it will ever see, until his final coming as the Judge of quick anddead. Irefer to that tremendous catas- trophe, the destruction of Jerusalem,——when, indeed, that old Jewish economy passed away witha great noise; and, extricated from that wreck and ruin, there emerged what it is not too much to call a new earth and a new heaven; when the things shaken were removed to the end that Christ’s saints might receive a kingdom which could not be moved. This event, when the Lord spake, was some forty years distant, or more. To men of full age it was not then a mere nugatory prediction, that they should live to see this event, at once so terrible and so magnificent, the close of one son, and the commencement of another ; divided from them, as it was, by so many years; even as these words of Christ compel us to believe that, if only for one apostle, yet for more than one of the disciples then standing there, it was fulfilled. The passage will thus be brought into instructive relation to other Scriptures, on which it will throw, and from which it will receive, THE TRANSFIGURATION. 187 light. For example, what other explanation can that announcement, ‘ Verily, I say unto you, This generation shall not pass till all be fulfilled’ (Matt. xxiv. 34), obtain ? A consummation of all things, not, indeed, the final and exhaustive one, in some sort only a rehearsal of that, it is here declared should find place before that whole genera- tion in whose hearing the Lord spake, should have died. Again, when speaking concerning John, the Lord says to Peter, ‘If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?’ (John xxi. 22), this ‘ till I come’ cannot be in- terpreted of the final coming; for an ‘If I will,’ spoken by those lips, is very much more than a mere expression of power, that He could keep John in life if He chose. The words must be accepted as expressing not merely what He could do, but what He intended to do. It is clear, however, that He did not intend this disciple whom He loved, to tarry till his final coming; for, not to say that there would have been something monstrous in a life protracted so, we know the place and date of his death. It follows that his ‘ till I come’ must receive another interpretation, and that can be no other than one which will put that statement into closest connexion with this wherewith we are dealing now. Let me observe, before leaving this subject, that, accepting the judgment on the Jewish Church as a coming of the Lord,‘ all difficulty in respect of such passages as Jam. v. 8,9, will at once be removed. Yet a little while, St. James reminds them to whom he writes, and the tyrannous oppression which they endure from Jewish adversaries will have for ever passed away; yet a little while, and Christ will have sent his * Hammond has more than one able note upholding this interpretation, thus here, and on Matt. xxiv. 3. 188 THE TRANSFIGURATION. armies, Himself their invisible Captain, and destroyed the city of those murderers, and delivered his own from their tyranny for ever.’ But is there then, it may be asked, no real connexion whatever between these words of Christ, and the Trans- figuration, which in all three of the synoptic Gospels is brought into such close and significant juxtaposition with it, which all three are so careful to declare to have followed on the seventh day succeeding? A most real connexion—the Transfiguration was a prelude and a pledge of that which should be hereafter. In that it was clearly shown that He spoke not at random, who spoke of his kingdom. It was shown that He had a kingdom to come in; a glory ready at any moment to burst forth, however for the moment it might be covered and con- ? It must be freely owned that nearly all the early expositors, the Fathers and medieval interpreters, findin the glory of the Transfiguration that which for them satisfies and fulfils the prediction that has just gone before, ‘ There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom,’ At the same time, when their statements are closely examined, it will be found that in almost every instance they have felt themselves obliged to moderate and temper these, so that the Trans- figuration shall in fact be rather a prelude and prophecy of the coming in glory than the very coming itself. I quote a few passages in proof. And first one or two from the Greek Fathers. Thus Basil the Great (Hom. in Ps. 44): εἶδον dé αὐτοῦ τὸ κάλλος Πέτρος καὶ οἱ υἱοὶ τῆς βροντῆς ἐν TO ὄρει, Kar τὰ προοίμια τῆς ἐνδόξου αὐτοῦ παρουσίας ὀφθαλμοῖς λαβεῖν κατηξιώθησαν. Theodoret (Zp. 145), having spoken of the glories of our Lord’s person and vestment, goes on: ἐδίδαξε διὰ τούτων τῆς δευτέρας ἐπιφανείας τὸν τρόπον, So too the Latin Fathers. Thus Augustine (1. Zp. ad Gal. c. ii.): Ipsis tribus se in monte Dominus ostendit in significatione regni sui, cum ante sex dies dixisset, Sunt hic quidam, &e. And Leo the Great (Serm. 94): In regno suo, id est, in regid claritate. Anselm (Hom. 4): Venientem in regno suo viderunt eum discipuli sui, qui in ed claritate viderunt fulgen- tem in monte, in qué peracto judicio ab omnibus sanctis in regno suo vide- bitur. And in the modern Roman Catholic Church, Maldonatus: Christus Ὁ Transfigurationem regnum suum vocat, non quia proprie regnum, sed quia Suturi regni imago erat. . . lllad ipsum regnum tres illi apostoli non in ipso sed in figuré, non preesens, sed per transennam ostensum viderunt. THE TRANSFIGURATION. 189 cealed from the eyes of men, from the eyes even of those who were in closest communion with Him. The Transfiguration is an earnest in hand of a _ glory hereafter to be revealed. But while the relation in which the Transfiguration stands, and on which the Evangelists lay so marked an emphasis, to that memorable prediction of the Lord’s, is worthy of our exactest study, it is not less important to observe another connexion in which it stands, and in which they are all careful to place it, namely, with the first distinct announcement which the Saviour has made to his disciples, of his sufferings, rejection, and death (Matt. xvi. 21; Mark ix. 31; Luke ix. 22), an announce- ment which had so greatly startled, surprized, and dejected them. For indeed this connexion supplies us with a very weighty hint for the right understanding of this solemn scene, and of the ends which it was meant to serve, as a confirmation of their faith, and as helping them to confirm the faith of others. How deep and lasting an impression it had made on them we best gather from the fact that more than thirty years after, St. Peter refers to it as an evidence to himself, an evidence therefore to all who received his word, that in declaring to them ‘the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ,’ he had not followed cunningly devised fables (2 Pet. i. 15-19). To them who had just heard of the sufferings of Christ there was here vouchsafed a prophetic glimpse into the glory which should follow, that in the strength of this they might not be troubled nor offended at the prospect of these suffer- ings now, nor at the sufferings themselves which pre- sently should arrive. Nor may we regard it merely as an act of condescension to their weakness. This would »»....- 190 THE TRANSFIGURATION. be to rob the Transfiguration of very much of its meaning. For the Lord Himself also this prelibation of glory had doubtless its highest significance. It was a mighty strengthening and refreshing of Himself, no less than of his disciples, against that comirig day of humiliation and agony. He did not merely manifest to others that glory which should one day be his, but became more fully con- scious of it Himself, and that He already possessed it ; however He might voluntarily defer its full manifestation ; —not to say that in this momentary breaking forth of that inward splendour, for the most part hindered and restrained by the sackcloth covering of the flesh, there was a step in the progressive glorifying of that humanity which He had assumed. But it will be better not to anticipate what‘will presently find its fitter place. ‘ After six days Jesus taketh with Him Peter and James and John. Not without a meaning is it so carefully noted by all the Evangelists that it was ‘ after six days’ (Mat- thew, Mark)—the ‘eight days after” of St. Luke being no contradiction, but only a different way of counting, leaving as it does the six complete days between—that the Trans- figuration found place. There are six days of the world’s work, which the seventh day’s glory, of which we have _ here a foretaste, is to follow. Three of his disciples the: Lord takes with Him, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established (Deut. xix. 15) ; these three, the flower and crown of the apostolic band, the * Gerhard (Loci Theoll, xxxii. 2): Post dies sex Christus coram discipulis transfiguratur; sic exacto hnjus vita sextiduo succedet #ternum sabbatum, in quo piorum corpora clarificabuntur. Quid tota hee vita aliud est quam sex dies laboris? illos sequetur quies sabbati, et piorum gloria wterna. THE TRANSFIGURATION. 191 ‘ corypheei,’ as Chrysostom calls them, and not now alone favoured above the rest (Matt. xxvi. 37; Luke viii. 51) ; they are Peter, who loved Him so much (John xxi. 17), and John, whom He loved so much (John xxy. 20), and James, who should first attest that death could as little as life separate from his love (Acts xii. 1); being the same three who should hereafter be witnesses of the deepest depth of his humiliation in the Agony of the garden, and who therefore were thus fitly forearmed by what they now beheld against what they should then behold. Having taken these, He ‘leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves. The tradition which makes Mount Tabor to have been this ‘high mountain, though for many ages not so much as called in question, does not date farther back than the fourth century, Cyril of Jeru- salem’ being the first to mention it. Indeed there is an earlier tradition still, which places the scene of the Trans- figuration on the Mount of Olives, near Jerusalem,’ but one which seems to have obtained little acceptance. Tabor having been once fixed on (it probably was so, as the highest and goodliest mountain in Galilee, rising in an almost perfect cone from the plain,’ and, though unnamed in the New, of frequent commemoration in the Old Testa- ment; thus see Judg. iv. 6, 14; viii. 18; Ps. lxxxix. 12; Jer. xlvi. 18), there were built churches, and presently monasteries, on its summit—three of the former to corre- spond to the three tabernacles which Peter was not permitted to build! But while evidence in favour of 1 Catech. xii. 16. In the Greek Church the festival of the Transfiguration (Aug. 6) has derived its name, Td Θαβώριον, from this tradition. * Ritter gives in proof a reference, Itin. Anton. Aug. et Hierosolytanum, ed. Parthey, 1848, which I have not verified. * Adgog μαστοειδής Polybius (v. 70. 6) calls it. 192 THE TRANSFIGURATION. Tabor there is absolutely none, that against it is strong, is indeed decisive. ‘The historical data which we possess, shew that the summit of the mountain was employed without any intermission between the times of Antiochus the Great, 218 B.c., and the destruction of Jerusalem under Vespasian, as a stronghold, and was by no means the scene of peace and solitude whither one would flee, anxious to escape the turmoil of the world. The con- secration which quiet and seclusion give was only reached after the fortresses which once crowned its summit had been laid low.’ It is impossible therefore that Tabor can have been that ‘holy mountain,’ to which the Lord retired that He with his three disciples might be there, ‘apart by themselves. It may perhaps have been Hermon, or one of the spurs of the Antilebanon. But, whatever mountain it was, it certainly is not for nothing that this and so many other of the most memorable events in Holy Scripture find place upon mountains; as the offering of Isaac (Gen. xxii. 14), the giving of the old Law (Exod. xix.; Deut. xxxiii. 2), and of the new (Matt. v. 1), the last decisive conflict between Jehovah and Baal (1 Kin. Xviii.), the apparition of the risen Lord (Matt. xxviii. 16) ; from ‘a very high mountain’ the vision of the New Jeru- salem is vouchsafed to Ezekiel (xl. 2), and to St John (Rev. xxi. 10). It was not by accident that in the days of his flesh the Lord was wont to withdraw to a mountain for prayer (Matt. xiv. 23; Luke xxi. 37; John vi. 15), even as, according to St. Luke, it was for prayer that He retired to this the mount of his Transfiguration. Towering above ' Ritter, Comparative Geography of Palestine, English translation, vol. ii. Ῥ. 313; compare Robinson, Bibl. Researches, vol. iii. pp. 220-225 ; Herzog, Encyclopadie, art. Thabor. THE TRANSFIGURATION. 193 the smoke and stir of this dim and lower earth, advancing their heads into a purer atmosphere and one nearer to heaven, they have in them a sort of natural ‘ Sursum corda,’ which constitutes them fittest spots for such nearer com- merce with God, or special communications from Him.! Being there, ‘He was transjfigured before them, St. Luke, writing primarily for Greek readers, avoids this word, ‘ transfigured, or transformed ; (‘ metamorphosed’ would be a still closer rendering), which St. Matthew and St. Mark do not shrink from employing. He avoids it, probably, because of the associations of the heathen mythology, which would so easily, and almost inevitably, attach them- selves to it in the imagination of a Greek.” He is satis- fied with telling us ‘that the fashion of his countenance was altered ;’ adding to this that it was ‘as He prayed’ that this marvellous change came over Him (cf. Isai. lxv. 24; Dan. ix. 21; 2 Cor. iii. 18, where the significant word μεταμορφούμεθα occurs). It was a change not without its weaker analogies, and prophetic anticipations in other personages of Scripture, in Moses for example, when the skin of his face shone after he had come from talking with God upon the mount (Exod. xxxiv. 29-35) ; which circumstance therefore Hilary rightly calls a figure of the Transfiguration.’ Another such figure, though * Witsius (De Glorif. Jesu in Monte, 7): Sed et ipsa Transfiguratio vide- batur montem poscere, eumque sublimem; ut loci ratio responderet con- ditioni gloria in qué tune Christus conspiciebatur. * Jerome warns against such an abuse of μετεμορφώθη here: Nemo putet pristinam eum formam amisisse; non substantia tollitur, sed gloria com- mutatur. Anselm: Non formam humani corporis amisit, sed suam suorumque glorificationem premonstravit. In naming this great event, the German theology, calling it ‘die Verklirung,’ or ‘the Glorification * (it is frequently ‘Clarificatio’ in the early Lutheran divines), has seized this point, not exactly the same as our ‘Transfiguration.’ * Figura transfigurationis. 0 194 THE TRANSFIGURATION. not now an anticipation, but a reminiscence of it, the martyrdom of St. Stephen affords, when those who looked at him ‘saw his face as it had been the face of an angel’ (Acts xvi. 15); and how often at the departure of holy saints and servants of, God has some such gleam of the coming glory been observed to light up their countenances even here. But in the Lord of glory it was not the countenance only, which thus wore a splendour different from the common; in addition to this, ‘Ais raiment was white and glistering ;’* or, as St. Mark has it, ‘ became shining, ex- ceeding white as snow’ (cf. Rev. i. 14), 480 as no fuller on earth can white them. Tt was probably night, when this marvellous spectacle was vouchsafed to the disciples. Such an assumption best explains ‘the next day’ of Luke ix. 37. This, if it was so, must have infinitely enhanced the grandeur of the vision; although the brightness doubt- less was such as would have paled even the noonday sun (Acts xxii. 10). Indeed all words seem weak to the Evangelists, all images to fail them here. St. Mark, whose words I have quoted, borrows one image from the world of ’ Bengel: ἐξαστράπτων, ab intra, glori4 corporis translucente, et poros vestimenti .permeante; compare the ἐκλάμψουσι, which the Lord ascribes and promises to his saints, Matt. xiii, 43. ΔΛευκὸς ἐξαστράπτων is not ‘ white and glistering’ (E. V.); but ἐξαστράπτων (cf. Ezek. i. 4, 7; Nah. iii. 3) is the modal explanation of λευκός, ‘ white,’ and so white that it was ‘glistering’ as well. This last word is a happy one; ‘effulgent,’ which hardly existed in the language when our Version was made, would not express it as well, while ‘fulgurant,’ and ‘effulgurant,’ are too merely Latin words. As ‘glistering’ in like manner we are to understand the ‘ raiment white as snow’ of the angel at the empty tomb (Matt. xxviii. 3); not the garment of inno- cence, but of glory; the same angel being described in St. Luke as clothed ‘in shining garments’ (aotparroicac); so too ‘the great white throne’ of Rey. xx. 11 is equivalent to ‘the throne of glory’ of Matt. xxv. 31, for light at the utmost intensity is white; from this, too, we may further explain Dan. vii. 9; Rev. i. 14. THE TRANSFIGURATION. 195 nature, another from that of man’s art and device; by these he struggles to set forth and reproduce for his readers the transcendant brightness of that light which now arrayed, and from head.to foot, the person of the Lord, breaking forth from within, and overflowing the very garments which He wore; until in their eyes who beheld, He seemed to clothe Himself with light as with a garment, light being indeed the proper and peculiar garment of Deity (Ps. civ. 2; Hab. iii. 4). In the cir- cumstance that his glory was not one which was lent Him, but his own, bursting forth as from an inner fountain of light, not merely gilding Him from without; not play- ing, like that of Moses, on the skin and surface of his countenance, perhaps also in its being a glory which arrayed not his face alone, but his entire person, we have those tokens of superiority, those prerogatives of the Master above the servants, which we are evermore able to trace even in matters wherein one or another of these may seem to have anticipated, and thus to have come into some sort of competition with Him.’ I have lightly touched already, and shall have occasion 1 Witsius (Melet. Leid. p. 306): Quorsum ea omnia? Et Christi caus, et nostri. Christi intererat ut hec ipsi evenirent, quippe quem Pater hac quidam celestis gloriw anticipatione ad instans certamen animare constituit. Quum difficultates prophetici muneris suscipiends essent, apertura ceeli, descensu Spiritts, et compellatione Patris gratissima, mirabiliter animatus est (Matt. iii. 16). Nunc quum instaret tempus quo se ut Pontifex Patri oblaturus erat sequum fuit ut splendidis vestibus exornatus, ex earum ac faciei suze fulgore experiundo disceret, que post sui oblationem gloria ipsum maneret in calis. Instabat hora, qué controversia ipsi de regno contu- meliosissimum in modum movenda, et regni professio in crimen morte piandum imput&nda, regiaque ipsius dignitas infami ludibrio exponenda erat. Sed insolité hic plus quam regii splendoris exhibitione clarius demon- stravit Rex c#lorum quanto ipsum in honore haberet, quam Assuerus olim Mardochwo, in omni isto invidiosa. pompw apparatu, quem ei per Hamanem preestari jussit. 02 196 THE TRANSFIGURATION. to dwell further on some aspects, in which the Trans- figuration may be regarded as designed to strengthen and encourage the hearts first of those who witnessed it, and then of all those to whom their witness came. But in addition to these it has ever been contemplated in the Church as a prophecy of the glory which the saints shall have in the resurrection.’ As was the body of Christ on the Mount, so hereafter shall their bodies be. It is diffi- cult not to recognize a direct reference to the Transfigura- tion in the words of St. Paul, where he speaks of Christ’s body of glory to which hereafter the body of our humilia- tion shall be conformed (Phil. iii. 21); while in passages out of number we have hints of the luminous character of the future glorified bodies of the redeemed (Dan. xii. 3; Matt. xiii. 43; 1 Cor. xv. 43; Col. ii. 45 1 Pet. vo1)3; Rey. iii. 4, 5; Wisd. v. 7); all these Scriptures pointing to the glorious conformity of their bodies then, with all which his body at this time was, who now shewed in Himself, as the first fruits of the new creation, what here- after He should shew in all them that were his. ‘ And behold’ (wonder within wonder), ‘ there appeared unto them Moses and Elias, talking with Him’? The * Leo the Great (Serm. xciv.): In transfiguratione illud principaliter agebatur, ut de cordibus discipulorum scandalum crucis tolleretur; sed non minore providenti& spes Sancte Ecclesie fundabatur, ut totum corpus Christi agnosceret quali esset commutatione donandum, ut ejus sibi honoris consortium membra promitterent, qui in capite prefulsisset. Gregory the Great (Moral. xxxii. 6): In transfiguratione quid aliud quam resurrectionis ultima gloria nunciatur? So in the Greek service-books: δεέξαι βουλόμενος τῆς ἀναστάσεως τὴν λαμπρότητα. * One of the best and soundest of the Mystics, Richatd of St. Victor, warning against visions, and urging the necessity of trying all such by the Word of God, of making that the standard by which all subjective revela- tions should be tried, whether they were indeed of God, or only delusions of the enemy, has some striking admonitions drawn from this presence of THE TRANSFIGURATION. 197 question, How the disciples knew these two to be Moses and Elias, is surely an idle one ; and the suggestion that they gathered their knowledge from the conversation which they overheard, or that they recognized the horns of Moses, or the ascetic garments of Elias, merely super- fluous. That elevation of their whole spiritual life, that ecstatic state of a divine clairvoyance, if we may use this word without offence, in which alone they could have seen these sights at all, will have left them in no doubt concerning those whom they now saw, holding this con- verse with their Lord. Their recognition of them we must regard as immediate and intuitive.’ It is the same question as is sometimes asked about Paul, namely, how he should have seen in a vision a man whose name he knew to be Ananias (Acts. ix. 12). It can only be replied that the vision which shewed him the man, imparted to him also the name of the man. But while this question may thus be dismissed, we cannot so dismiss another, namely, why the two who appear should be exactly Moses and Elias? It was not merely that among all the prophets and saints of the Moses and Elias with the Lord in the Mount (Benjamin Minor, |xxxi.): Sed si jam te existimas ascendisse ad cor altum, et apprehendisse montem illum excelsum et magnum, si jam te credis Christum videre transfiguratum, quidquid in illo videas, quidquid ab illo audias, non ei facile credas, nisi ocurrant ei Moyses et Elias. Suspecta est mihi omnis veritas quam non confirmat Scripturarum auctoritas, nec Christum in sua clarificatione recipio, si non assistant ei Moyses et Elias. Compare Thauler, Homilie, 1553, - P- 540. * As Sedulius (Carm. Pasch. 286) puts it well: Ignotos oculis viderunt lumine cordis. He proceeds with verses which are worth quoting, on the purpose of their appearing : Ut major sit nostra fides, hune esse per orbem Principium et finem, hune Alpha viderier, hune Q, Quem medium tales circumfulsere prophets. 198 THE TRANSFIGURATION. Old Testament these were the two, of whom the one had not died (2 Kin. ii. 2; ef. Ecclus. 48), and the other had no sooner tasted of death than probably his body was withdrawn from under the dominion of death and of him that had the power of death (Deut. xxxiv. 6; Jude 9); the two, therefore, whose apparition in glorified bodies before the day of resurrection had less in it perplexing than that of any others would have had. This was something ; but much more that these two were the acknowledged heads and representatives, the one of the Law, the other of the prophets; in which Law and prophets the whole Old Testament is commonly summed up (Matt. vii. 12)." ‘ And they were talking with Jesus. What the matter of this august conference was only St. Luke tells us, namely, that ‘ they spake of his decease,” which He should accom- 1 It behoved the Lord, in Tertullian’s words (Adv. Mare. iv. 22), cum illis videri, quibus in revelationibus erat visus; cum illis loqui, qui eum fuerant locuti; cum eis gloriam suam communicare, a quibus Dominus glori# nuncupabatur ; oum principalibus suis, quorum alter populi informator aliquando, alter reformator quandoque, alter initiator Veteris Testamenti, alter consummator Novi. Augustine (Serm. 232): Evangelium testimonium habet a Lege et prophetis. Ideo et in monte quando voluit ostendere Dominus noster Jesus gloriam suam, inter Moysen et Eliam stetit. Medius in honore ipse fulgebat; Lex et prophete a lateribus adtestabantur. Cf. Serm. 78: Hie Dominus, hic Lex et Prophet; sed Dominus tanquam Dominus; Lex in Moyse, Prophetia in Elia; sed ipsi tanquam servi, tan- quam ministri. Ipsi tanquam vasa, ipse tanquam fons. Moyses et Pro- phete dicebant, et scribebant; sed de illo implebantur, quando fundebant. cf. De Doctr. Christ. ii. 25; Leo the Great (Serm. 94): Quid hoe stabilius, quid firmius verbo, in cujus pradicatione Veteris et Novi Testamenti con- cinit tuba, et cum Evangelicé doctriné antiquarum protestationum mmstru- menta concurrunt? Adstipulantur enim sibi invicem utriusque foederis paging, et quem sub velamine mysteriorum precedentia signa promiserant manifestum atque perspicuum prasentis gloria splendor ostendit. 2 Ty ἔξοδον, The word is not without its special solemnity. He who has an εἴσοδος (Acts xiii. 24) into the world, has also an ἔξοδος out of the world. St. Peter employs the same word of his own ‘decease,’ 2 Pet. i. 15 ; ef. Wisd. vii. 6; for a similar use of ἔκβασις, see Heb. xiii. 7; of ἀφιξις, Acts xx. 29, Bengel: Vocabulum valde grave, quo continetur Passio, Crux, THE TRANSFIGURATION. 199 plish at Jerusalem ;’ of that ‘decease’ prefigured by the types of the law (Num. xxi. g; Exod. xii. 46) fore-an- nounced by the oracles of the prophets (Zech. xii. 10; Isai. lili. 9).} ‘ Decease’ has now become so mere a synonym for death, it has so much lost its proper sense of departure, i. e. out of this life (decessus), that, as we read in the English, we are in danger of missing, indeed we can hardly help missing, an allusion which must at once suggest itself to every reader of the Greek. We fail to mark the relation, which the sacred historian could scarcely not have intended us to recognize, between this ‘exodus’ and an earlier; to recognize in this an ‘ accom- plishing’ or fulfilling, as he is careful to note, by the Saviour at Jerusalem of an ‘exodus’ (Heb. xi. 22) which Moses and Joshua had begun in Egypt and in the wilderness, but had not accomplished (Heb. iv.); the ‘exodus, that is, or going out of God’s people, their Captain and Commander leading the way, from this present evil world. The unity of the Old and New Covenant is wonderfully attested in this apparition of the princes of the Old in solemn yet familiar intercourse with the Lord of the New; and not the unity only, but with this unity the subordina- tion of the Old to the New, that ‘ Christ is the end of the law’ (Rom. x. 4), and the object to which all prophecy Mors, Resurrectio, Adscensio. The Latin excessus, which is an exact parallel, has precisely the same more solemn use; thus Cicero (Rep. ii. 30) : Post obitum, vel potius excessum Romuli. It is noticeable that Chrysostom twice reads δόξαν here; which is not a mere inadvertence, for he comments on the word which he thus reads. There is no vestige of any such reading having ever existed. ‘Gerhard (Harm. 87): Institutum itaque fuit colloquium de illo ipso articulo, quo apostoli paulo ante offensi fuerant; nimirum de passione et morte Servatoris nostri, Jesu Christi. 200 THE TRANSFIGURATION. pointed (Acts x. 43; xxviii. 23; Rom. iii. 21), that there- fore the great purpose of these had now been fulfilled ; all which was declared in the fact that, after their testimony thus given, Moses and Elias disappear, while Christ only remains. It need hardly be observed what strength there was here, and in the remembrance of this scene, for the disciples, when they should afterwards behold their Lord put to death as a breaker of the law of Moses, as a false snatcher to Himself of the words of the prophets. ‘But Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep ; and when they were awake, they saw his glory, and the two men that stood with Him. These words are too often misunderstood, indeed, until the translation is corrected, they can hardly fail to be misunderstood. It is usual to take the disciples to task for this sleep of theirs at such a moment,' and to find a parallel to it in the sleep of the same three in the garden of Gethsemane (Matt. xxXvi. 40-45). The parallelis altogether misleading. That was a somnolence not without its guilt; while they were sleeping that untimely sleep, they should have been watching and praying, seeking strength for themselves and help for their Lord. But that the eyes of the diseiples here ‘were heavy with sleep, this might be, and was, an evidence of human infirmity—of the inability of this frail nature of ours to bear a weight of glory, when it is laid upon it, but this was all.” The true parallels to the words * Thus Gerhard (Loci Theoll. xxxii. 2): Discipuli somno erant gravati, per quem denotatur nostra somnolentia, quod gloriam vite eterne non satis estimamus ac meditamur. * Chrysostom has a right insight into the matter: imvov ἐνταῦθα καλῶν [ὁ Λουκᾶς) τὸν πολὺν Kdpov τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς ὄψεως ἐκείνης αὐτοῖς ἐγγινόμενον And Ambrose: Somno gravati erant. Premit enim incomprehensibilis splendor divinitatis nostri corporis sensus, THE TRANSFIGURATION. 201 before us are Gen. xv. 12; Dan. Χ. 9; Zech. iv. 1; and we may add, as materially helping to illustrate what the condition of the three apostles was, Num. xxiv. 4. Theirs in fact was an ecstatic state, one of a divine clairvoyance ; even as in such only would they have been capable of beholding what they then beheld; their eyes burdened with sleep, but they not asleep ; for having resisted all the temptations of this frail nature to succumb under the burden of this glory—and what a burden it is to be the immediate recipient of any divine revelation Daniel has often told us (vii. 28; viii. 27; x. 8, 11, 16)—‘ having kept themselves awake throughout’ (for this, and not ‘ when they were awake, is the right rendering),' ‘ they saw his glory, and the two men that stood with Him. The disciples saw this vision, as indeed it only could have been seen, “in spirit’-(Acts x.-105* Ki. τ MAM ρον Cor. xiv. 15; Rey. i. 10); whether in the body or out of the body they. could not, any more than St. Paul in a later ecstasy (2 Cor. xii. 3), have told.’ It is from this point of view, and keeping this in mind, that we must explain another notice which also we owe exclusively to St. Luke—his comment, namely, on St. Peter’s proposal which presently follows—to wit, that he made it ‘not knowing what he said. Tertullian long ago gave the right explanation of this ‘not knowing what he said,*® which many have 1 Avaypyyophoavrec, not vigilantes (Vulg.), nor cum evigildssent (Beza), nor postquam experrecti sunt (Castalio), which all are in error. Διαγρηγο- péo Rost and Palm rightly render durchwachen, and refer to Herodian, 111. 4. 8: πασῆς τῆς νυκτὸς διαγρηγορήσαντες. 3 Compare Philo, Quis Rer. Div. Heres, § 53, who there and elsewhere has much to say on the true character of the Scriptural ἔκστασις, which word he found in his Septuagint at Gen. ii. 21; xv. 12. * Adv. Mare. iv. 22: In spiritu enim homo constitutus, prasertim cum gloriam Dei conspicit, vel cum per ipsum Deus loquitur, necesse est excidat 4 202 THE TRANSFIGURATION. subsequently missed.’ It is no apology upon the part of the Evangelist for St. Peter’s untimely proposal, still less a judgment upon it. Shortsighted, inopportune it may have been; and, while testifying for his zeal and for his delight in that heavenly communion, in some sense it was. This, however, is not what St. Luke would affirm; but that he so spake, being out of himself, not indeed demens but wmens, rapt into another world, a world of fear and wonder, into conditions altogether remote from the com- mon; as appears still more plainly in the parallel state- ment of St. Mark; ‘for he wist not what to say, for they were sore afraid. To return, however, to his actual words : ‘Zhen answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here ; uf Thow wilt, let us make here three tabernacles, one 70» Thee, and one for Moses, and one for ELlias. This - proposal, as St. Luke, again significantly completing the other Evangelists, informs us, he made, ‘as they departed from Him.” It is too brief a converse, too transient a glimpse and foretaste of the heavenly glory. He will fain detain these august visitors. Wherefore should all these marvels of the higher world be shewn to them, only to be withdrawn again in an instant. ‘ Zt ἐδ good for us to be here’—better, as no doubt he felt, than to be rejected of the Jews, better than to suffer many things of the Elders and Chief Priests and Scribes, and be killed (Matt. xvi. 21). But that holy retirement in which they were was sensu, obumbratus scilicet virtute divind.... Interim facile est amentiam [=txoraow] Petri probare. Quomodo enim Moysem et Eliam cognovisset nisi in spiritu ? * Gerhard for example: Hane vocem ex carnali inscitid profectum esse Lucas testatur, Non enim noverat quid loqueretur. , * A somewhat feeble rendering of ἐν τῷ διαχωρίζεσθαι αὐτοὺς ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ, on which Beza rightly comments, e conspectu abrepti. ‘ THE TRANSFIGURATION. 203 ‘good, as he esteemed it, not merely as a safe withdrawal from all this evil, but also for the sweetness which he found in the communion and fellowship which it offered. ‘But what,’ exclaims Anselm in a sermon of extraordinary richness and beauty, from which I have already quoted one or two fragments, ‘if the contemplation of Christ’s glorified manhood so filled the apostle with joy that he was un- willing to be sundered from it, how shall it fare with them who attain to the contemplation of his glorious Godhead ? and if it was so good a thing to dwell with two of his saints, how then to come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn that are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to these, not seen through a glass and darkly, but face to face ?’ But tarrying on the summit of that mountain they will need, as the apostle conceives, that some kind of shelter be provided for them; so are things earthly confused with things heavenly in his mind. He, ever prompt for action, as ready with the labour of his hands as with the love of his heart, aided by the other two, will quickly prepare some slight booths of the branches of trees, or of whatever else may come to hand, in which they may tarry: ‘let us make here three tabernacles, one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.”' That there is any allusion here to the Feast of Tabernacles, that St. Peter is measuring here the heavenly felicity by that poor earthly copy, I cannot for an instant believe ; and altogether it seems to me that he is very needlessly schooled and found fault with by modern commentators, and, indeed, by some ancient interpreters as well, for * Ambrose: Impiger operarius communis obsequii ministerium pollicetur. 204 THE TRANSFIGURATION. these words of his. At the same time, that there is a certain fault in them is unquestionable. In this proposal he did not maintain himself at the height of that great confession which he had so lately made (Matt. xvi. 16). He who could thus speak, even though he meant it honourably for his Master, yet plainly declared, thus putting those other two on the same level with Him, that he did not yet perceive how far that Master transcended all other, even the princes of the elder dis- pensation, how far higher a dispensation had begun with Him ;' herein revealed his own need of the teaching of that vision and that voice, which was presently to be vouchsafed to him and to his fellows; for we have a right to see in what immediately succeeds the answer from heaven to that word of his:* ‘while he yet spake, behold a bright cloud overshadowed them, not the disciples, but the legislator and the prophet, and perhaps also Him that was the Lord alike of them both. A cloud is the constant symbol, or if not always this, the accompaniment, of the divine presence (Exod. xiv. 19 ; xix. 10; xxxili.g; xl. 34; 1 Kin. viii. 10; Ps. civ. 3; * Jerome: Erras, Petre, sicut et alius Evangelista testatur, Nescis quid dicas. Noli tria tabernacula querere, cum unum sit tabernaculum Evangelii, in quo Lex et Prophets recapitulanda sunt. Nequaquam servos cum Domino conferas. * Augustine (Serm. 78.): Videt hoe Petrus, et humana sapiens tanquam homo: Domine, bonum est, inquit, nos hic esse. Tedium patiebatur a turbé, invenerat solitudinem montis; ibi habebat Christum panem mentis. Ut- quid inde discederet ad labores et dolores, habens in Deum sanctos amores, et ideo bonos mores? Bene sibi volebat esse; unde et adjunxit, Si vis, JSaciamus hic tria tabernacula: Tibi unum, Moysi unum, et Elie unum. Ad hae Dominus nihil respondit: sed tamen Petro responsum est. Hac enim eo loquente, nubes lucida venit, et obumbravit eos. Ille quewrebat tria tabernacula: nobis unum esse, quod humanus sensus dividere cupiebat, responsum cwleste monstravit. Verbum Dei Christus, Verbum Dei in Lege, Verbum in Prophetis. Quid, Petre, queris dividere? Magis te oportet adjungere. Tria queris; intellige et unum. THE TRANSFIGURATION. 205 Isai. xix. 1; Dan. vii. 13). There is a manifest fitness in the symbol. The clouds of our lower world veil, sheath, render tolerable to mortal eyes the splendour of the heavens, the brightness of the sun, which otherwise we could not endure to behold. But in the Old Testament, a ministration of condemnation (2 Cor. ili. 9), the cloud is a dark cloud, a thick cloud (1 Kin. viii. 12); for God, though in part revealing, is also in part a God that hideth, Himself (Isai. xlv. 15); it is often a cloud charged with thunder and lightning, and all the dread artillery of heaven (Exod. xix. 16; Ps. evii.2; xvili. 12); for there was in that dispensation the utterance of God’s displeasure against the sins of men. But the cloud which now over- shadows these is ‘ a bright cloud,’ yet, bright as it is, still serving the purpose of veiling the more intolerable bright- ness within, even that of God’s very presence in this the Schechina or place of his dwelling; and making possible for mortal and sinful men to stand in that presence and live, which would else have been impossible for them (Exod. xxxiii. 20; Judg. xiii. 22)." It may seem strange at first that even to this cloud a power of thus overshadowing and concealing should be ascribed ; yet it is not really strange; for light in its utmost intensity performs the effect of darkness, hides as effectually as the darkness would do. Thus see 1 Tim. vi. 16,? and compare the words of Milton, ‘dark with * Ambrose: Ut apostoli Dei loquentis majestatem interpositd nube ferre possent. * Anselm, quoting these words of St. Paul, ‘Who dwelleth in light un- approachable,’ and then the words of Moses, ‘ And Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was’ (Exod. xx. 21), and bringing both passages into connexion with this present, says profoundly, Illa caligo et ista nubes atque illa lux idem sunt, 206 THE TRANSFIGURATION. excess of light;’ and of Wordsworth, ‘a glorious privacy of light;’ in like manner Philo affirms of the highest light that itis identical with darkness (γνόφος), even as it is the character of extremes evermore to meet. They were hidden in that blaze of intolerable light from the eyes of the disciples, who ‘feared as they entered into the cloud’ (luke ix. 34), feared with that fear which ever- more falls on sinful men when brought suddenly into im- mediate nearness with the pure and awful presences of heaven. They may have feared too that their Lord was now about to be taken from them, to anticipate the day of his Ascension, and to mount already the cloud-chariot which was one day to bear Him from their sight (Acts 1. 9); for the Transfiguration must have made plain to them as to Himself that He needed not the painful passage of death by which to enter into glory; that if He still laid down his life, it was not of necessity, but of freest love. And then it must have been fear upon fear, when ‘behold, a voice out of the cloud, the same voice which had once before been heard at the Baptism (Matt. iii. 17), and which should salute Him again as He stood on the threshold of his Passion (John xii. 28); and thus at the beginning, at the middle, and at the close of his ministry, ‘This is my beloved’ Son, in whom I am well pleased ; hear ye Him. This voice is said by St. Peter to have come ‘from the excellent glory’ (2 Pet. i. 17); from Him, that is, who dwelt in the cloud, which was the symbol and the vehicle of the divine presence.? In respect of + ᾿Αγαπητός in St. Matthew and St. Mark; but ἐκλελεγμένος (of. ἐκλεκτός, Luke xxiii. 35) seems now recognized as the true reading in St. Luke. * St. Peter in this same passage, looking back at the privilege vouchsafed to him and to the ‘sons of thunder,’ speaks of himself and them as ‘eye- witnesses of the majesty’ (ἐπόπται γενηθέντες τῆς μεγαλειότητος). ᾿Επόπτης, THE TRANSFIGURATION. 207 the heavenly salutation itself, the emphasis should not be so much laid on ‘ This’ as on ‘ Son; for the true parallel to the present salutation of the Son by the Father, with the installation of the Son in the highest place of the kingdom, is to be found at Heb. 1. 1: “ God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.’ He is to be heard above all others, because He is not a servant in the house of another, as were Moses and Elias, but a Son in his own (Heb. iii. 5). In the words themselves of this majestic installation there is a remarkable honouring of the Old Testament, and of it in all its parts, which can scarcely be regarded as acci- dental; for the three several clauses of that salutation are drawn severally from the Psalms (Ps. ii. 7), the Prophets (Isai. xlii. 1), and the Law (Deut. xviii. 5); and, as we shall see, they do together proclaim Him concerning whom they are spoken to be the King, the Priest, and the Prophet of the New Covenant. St. Peter therefore might very fitly declare that in this voice from heaven ‘ He received from God the Father honour and glory’ (2 Pet. 1.17). And first, ‘ This is my beloved Son ;’ but the King’s Son is Ilimself the King; ‘yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Sion’ (Ps. ii. 6). And then, “ἐμ whom I am well pleased ;’ holy, therefore, harmless and undefiled, fairer than the children of men (Ps. xlv. 2), the a technical word, too weakly rendered ‘ eye-witness,’ though it would not be easy to suggest a better rendering, sets well before us the light in which the apostle regarded his and their relation to the things which they were permitted to behold. The ἐπόπτης is properly one admitted and initiated into secret and holy mysteries, the Eleusinian for example, or any other reserved from the common gaze. Such an initiation, he would imply, into the secretest and holiest mysteries of all, had been theirs. 208 THE TRANSFIGURATION. sceptre of whose kingdom is a sceptre of righteousness (Heb. i. 8), for in no other could God take a perfect pleasure; and thus the Priest who could and should offer Himself without spot to God (Heb. ix.14; 1 John iii. 5). But then, further, He is the One whom all are commanded to obey: ‘Hear ye Him;’ therefore hence- forth the sole Prophet of his Church ; Moses, or the Law, has passed away, for that was the shadow and outline of good things to come (Col. 11. 17; Heb. vill. §; x.1), while in Him is the substance of good things actually present ; Elias, or the prophets, has passed away, for in Him all prophecy is fulfilled (Luke xvi. 16; 1 Cor. xiii. 8). They, belonging as they did to a merely preparatory dispensa- tion, vanish ; but Christ, whois the Head of an everlasting dispensation, after whom we do nof look for another, remains ; and this will explain how it came to pass that ‘when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only.’* But before accompanying the Lord and his three dis- ciples, as they descend again from that Mount of Vision to this common workday world of ours, with all its labour * I have made more than one citation from a long and interesting passage on the Transfiguration in Tertullian (Adv. Mare. iv. 22). Marcion, in his assault upon the Old Testament and the old Economy, as proceeding from another God than the author of the New, had found in this transaction not Christ preferred to Moses and Elias, but Christ honoured and Moses and Elias dishonoured. Tertullian’s reply is admirable throughout. Strange, he says, if this were intended, that they should appear talking with Him, which is an evidence of familiarity ; sharing in the same glory, which is an evidence of favour and acceptance. These are some of the concluding words: Itaque etsi facta translatio sit auditionis a Moyse et Helid in Christo, sed non ut ab alio Deo, nee ad alium Christum, sed a Creatore in Christum ejus, secundum decessionem Veteris, et successionem Novi Testamenti. Tradidit igitur Pater Filio discipulos novos, ostensis prius cum illo Moyse et Helid in claritatis prerogativa, atque ita dimissis, quasi jam et officio et honore dispunctis. THE TRANSFIGURATION. 209 and suffering and sin, we may pause for a word or two on a subject common to all the Evangelists, but on which St. Matthew dwells most in detail. ΑἹ] have told us of the fear which overcame the three, even while they felt it most good and blessed to be there. But amazing as had been the sights which they saw, it would appear that it was not these so much as the voice from heaven, the awfulness of that direct speaking of God with man, which man is so little able to endure (cf. Hab. iii. 2, 16; Exod. xx. 19; Heb. xii. 19), that brought them to the extremity of their fear: ‘And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid’—this fear of theirs uttering itself, as is so constantly its manner (Gen. xvii. 1; Josh. v.14; Judg. xiii. 20; Ezek. i. 28; Dan. πε lake °xxiv.: 9; “Acts ix.94;5, Nev. 1:5 17); "in: an attitude, suggested by those moral instincts of awe, by that sense of his own utter unfitness to stand face to face with the holiness of God, which any near revelation of that holiness must inevitably awaken in the heart of man." To hide the face is the first impulse and instinct of such a moment (Exod. iii. 6; 1 Kin. xix. 17); to fall on the face is the most effectual way of so doing, and at the same time of outwardly expressing the inner conviction that for man there is no standing in his own right before God. + Witsius (De Glorif. Jesu in Monte, 39): Quoties enim cunque Deus suam animis notris majestatem illustribus documentis ingerit, toties nostra non vilitatis solum sed et impuritatis et omnigenw indignitatis conscientia vivide expergiscitur; unde fit ut ad tam sublimis puritatis et magnifi- centissinaw gloris presentiam trepidemus. Neque id solis contingit im- probis, quibus formidolosa semper vindicis Dei cogitatio est, sed et piis, imo et amicis Dei ac familiaribus, quibus eo venerabilior semper summi Numinis majestas est, quo clarius conspicitur ejus bonitas; et qui nunquam sibi ipsis magis sordent, quam cum in liquidissim4 se divinw Gloria luce contuentur. MS 210 THE TRANSFIGURATION. ‘ And Jesus came and touched them ;’ as He, now the Incarnate Word, and once the Angel of the Covenant, had touched Daniel (Dan. x. 10), and Jeremiah (Jer. i. 9), and Ezekiel (Ezek. ii. 2); as by the hand of a ministering spirit He had touched the lips of Isaiah (Isai. vi. 7); as here- after, the glorified Son of man, walking among the golden candlesticks, He should, under circumstances not unlike, touch or lay his right hand once more upon one of these same three (Rev. i. 17). And with that touch there goes also the reassuring word, that ‘ Fear not, which even the holiest need so much, when God has shewn them their unholiness, the depths of their corruption, the abundant cause which as sinful men they have to fear, cause so abundant that no other but He can enable them to lay this fear aside (Judg. vi. 23; Dan. x. 12; Matt. xxvii. 5 ; Luke v. 10).’ An important discourse follows, which the Lord held with his three favoured disciples, as they were descending from the mount, and leaving all its mysterious marvels behind them. And first the charge to silence, the seal which was set upon their lips, not to be removed till after the Resurrection: ‘And as they came down from the 1 Witsius: Non caruit successu ea Christi compellatio, quippe qué ex- pergefacti velut a veterno aliquo apostoli, accurate omnia circumspexerunt. Sed quocunque oculos verterent, nihil eorum deprehenderunt que nuper tam admiranda ipsis videbantur. eminem viderunt, nisi solum Jesum, sueté forma, solito amictu. Non decebat diutius in terra conmorari Mosem et Eliam, quorum ministerium neque cum Jesu magisterio, neque cum apostoloruin functione miscendum aut confundendum erat. Discessit igitur Moses, discessit Elias; imo siluit vox ipsa calestis Patris, qua semel locuta est, ut semper audiatur Filius. Christus ipse deposit’ nupere Trans- figurationis gloria ad pristinum servi statum habitumque rediit ; tempora- riam enim eam gloriam esse decuit, que non njsi preludium awterne fuit ; multaque adhuc perpetienda restabant Obrleto, antequam tern’ illé potiretur. THE TRANSFIGURATION. 211 mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision’ to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead. The three Evangelists here remarkably complete one another. St. Matthew, thus mentioning the injunc- tion to silence, does not mention how well the disciples obeyed it; while St. Luke, mentioning the fact of silence —‘they kept τέ close, and told no man in those days any of those things which they had seen,—does not state that this was in obedience to an express command; only St. Mark, with his own characteristic fulness of detail, records both the express command given by the Lord, and the observation of it by the disciples (ix. 9; 10). That ‘ Zed/ the vision to no man, implies that they were forbidden to reveal what they had seen even to their fellow-apostles themselves—a hard precept, yet one which was obeyed by them. At the same time, however strict the silence which they kept, we cannot imagine that even so the vision was only for themselves, and altogether lost upon the others. There must have pierced through the whole demeanour of these three, as they returned to fellowship with the others, evident tokens that they had not been for nothing on that holy mount. The others, in one way or another, must have been convinced that they had seen sights and heard words which had strengthened and * "Opava, not in use distinguishable from ὀπτασία (Luke i. 22 ; Acts xxvi. το ; 2 Cor. xii. 1), or from ὅρασις (Acts ii. 17; Rev. ix. 17), is exactly ‘a vision ;’ what a man most truly sees, but sees because God enables him to see it, be- cause it is shewn to him; which he sees, as the three disciples saw this vision, ἐν πνεύματι, as contrasted with ἐν νοΐ (1 Cor. xiv. 15, 16). So ὅραμα is invaria- bly used in the Acts, where alane, with the exception of this one passage, it occurs in the New Testament; but there no less than eleven times Gil, 31; 1X: 10, 125 X..5, 17; 19,5 Σὶν §5 Xl. 9; Xvi. 9, lo; xviii. 9; of. Gen. xv. 1; Dan. ii. 19 ; Exod. iii. 3). P2 212 THE TRANSFIGURATION. reassured their faith, and must have found in this a strengthening and reassuring of their own. But out of what motive shall we explain this charge to silence, not to be broken until the Resurrection had found place (cf. Matt. xvi. 20,21)? Best, perhaps, out of this. The mystery of Christ’s sonship should not be revealed to the world, till it was attested beyond all doubt, till He was ‘declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead’ (Rom. i. 4), and by that Ascension, which was, so to speak, the necessary com- plement of his Resurrection. It could only be a matter of dispute, and, resting as it did on his miraculous con- ception, of profane discussion, till then. A little more light upon this point might have increased the guilt of those who rejected and crucified Him; but would not have served to bring them to the obedience of faith. St. Mark does not merely connect, and bind into one, the two statements of his fellow Evangelists; he also adds what they have wholly passed over, namely, the perplexity which this language of their Lord occasioned them: ‘ They kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean’ (cf. John xx. g). Not the rising from the dead, but the death which must have gone before, and which could alone render a rising from the dead necessary or possible, it was that which, running counter to all their prejudices and preconceptions, perplexed them so much (Luke xxiv. 22-24; John xii. 24). Yet on this they do not venture to ask any explanation; but on something else closely connected with all which they had just beheld. ‘And his disciples asked Him, saying, Why then say the Scribes that Elias must first come?’ That momentary THE TRANSFIGURATION. 213 glimpse which had been vouchsafed to them of Elias reminded them of the place which he occupied in the economy of salvation (Mal. iv. 5, 6). They had seen him, but only for an instant. That transient glimpse could not satisfy the largeness of prophetic announce- ments about him. How are they to understand his disappearance, that they are returning with their Master alone? How was this to be reconciled with a cardinal point in the Jewish theology, namely, that Elias should go before the Messiah? nay, how was it reconcilable with their Master’s claims to be the Messiah? The reference to what the Scribes said on this matter, leads us to gather that these urged, as a capital and decisive objection against his Messiahship, that no Elias went before Him; while yet the prophecies of the Old Testament had solemnly closed with a pledge that Elias, going before, should prepare the way of the Lord. This stumbling-block to their faith the Scribes may have laid in the way of the disciples. Will their Lord graciously remove it out of their path ? The great Interpreter of prophecy gives right to that interpretation of the prophetic word which the Scribes maintained: ‘ Hhas truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elas is come already, and they knew him not, and have done unto him whatso- ever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. Then the disciples understood that He spake unto them of John the Baptist. Elias had first come. Whether he had so come in the person of John the Baptist, as that he should not hereafter come in his own, whether the prophecy of Malachi found in ‘him its eav- haustive fulfilment, and not a partial and initial one only, 214 THE TRANSFIGURATION. is a question than which few in modern times have more divided interpreters ; but one upon which it is unnecessary here to enter, as not 1 mediately belonging to the matter in hand. Enough t in John the Baptist that word YY AK en had found @ fulfilment; whether auluent awaits it, this still remains to be seen. 9. JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL FIRE FROM HEAVEN ON THE SAMA- RITAN VILLAGE. Luke ix. 51-56. We have here one of the memorable incidents of our Lord’s last journey to Jerusalem: ‘ And it came to pass, when the time was come that He should be received up, He stedfastly set lus face to go to Jerusalem. Ishould prefer to render the second clause of this sentence, ‘ when the days of his Assumption’ were fulfilled’ Such a rendering would not lose nor dissolve, as does our present, that word at once so solemn and so sweet, with which the Evangelist mitigates, even as imagination in these things is so potent to mitigate, the bitterness of his Lord’s passion and death; *Some understand by our Lord’s ἀνάληψις, which is spoken of herg, his ready acceptance among men; and make the Evangelist to say that the days of this his acceptance were completed, had now come to an end; which he proceeds to illustrate and to prove by the churlish refusal on the part of the Samaritans to receive Him now, as contrasted with the glad acceptance which He found from them at an earlier date (John iv. 39-42). But this is certainly a mistake. It is true that ἀνάληψις occurs only here in the New Testament, so that its meaning in Scriptural Greek cannot be fixed by a com- parison of other passages where it appears; but ἀναλαμβάνεσθαι is the solemn ‘word everywhere employed to express our Lord’s taking up into heaven (Mark xvi. 19; Acts i. 2, 11, 22; 1 Tim. iii. 16), and in like manner to express that which was, so to speak, the rehearsal of this, namely, the rap- ture of Elias in the Old (2 Kin. ii. 10; 1 Mace. ii. 58; Ecclus. xlviii. 9); and in the same sense an apocryphal Jewish book bears the title, ᾿Ανάληψις Μωσέως. See Suicer, Thes., 8. v. ἀνάληψις. 216 JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL FIRE looking on as he thus does to the issue and the end, to the taking up of Christ into heaven, to his reception in his heavenly home and into his Father’s glory. In that ‘ stedfastly set his face’' is implied that He addressed Himself to this work, as One whom no threatenings of his adversaries should arrest, no difficulties nor dangers turn away from the accomplishment of his purpose. The disciples at first followed trembling, as we plainly gather from Mark x. 22. He Himself, as there described, ‘went before them,’ after the manner of some leader who heartens his soldiers by choosing the place of danger for himself.’ ‘And sent messengers before his face, probably ‘two and two, as He afterwards sent the Seventy ‘into every city and place, whither He Himself would come’ (Luke x. 1); and yet, seeing that He was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, not now to prepare his spiritual way, but simply as harbingers, to use that word in its most proper sense. ‘And they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready® for Him; and they did not receive Him, because his face was as though He would go to Jerusalem. This refusal of theirs was no piece of ordinary inhospitality, such as the Samaritans ‘were wont to shew to Galilean pilgrims on their way to the feasts at Jerusalem.* It was not merely as such a 1 Ἑστήριξε τὸ πρόσωπον: cf. Jer. xxi. 10; Ezek. vi. 1; xxviii. 21. So τάσσειν τὸ πρόσωπον (2 Kin. xii. 17); ἑτοιμάζειν τὸ πρόσωπον (Ezek. iv. 3); ἐφιστάναι πρόσωπον (Lev. xvii. 10). But St. Luke makes probably here especial allusion to Isai. 1. 7: ἔθηκα τὸ πρόσωπόν μου ὡς στερεὰν πέτραν. ? More intrepidi ducis, as Grotius puts it well. 5 “Ἑτοιμάσαι to which we may supply ξενίαν, this phrase ἑτοιμάζειν ξενίαν, to prepare a lodging, occurring Philem. 22. ‘ The enmity even to these ordinary pilgrims reached often much further than to a mere refusal of these common rights of hospitality. Josephus (B. J. FROM HEAVEN ON THE SAMARITAN VILLAGE, 217 pilgrim, that they shut their doors against Him; but this, we must remember, was Christ’s solemn progress from Galilee to Judzea as Messiah, with these messengers every- where announcing Him as such. But, as they esteemed it,a Messiah going to Jerusalem to observe the feasts there, did by this very act proclaim that He was no Messiah ; for oa Garizim, as they believed, the old Patriarchs had worshipped! (John iv. 20), consecrating it to be the holy mountain of God—which therefore, and not Jerusalem, the Christ, when He came, would recognize and honour as the central point of all true religion. There is no need to suppose John and James to have been themselves the ‘messengers, or harbingers, who endured this repulse. The two sons of Zebedee were more probably with their Lord, formed part of his imme- diate retinue, at the time when some others brought back the tidings of the village which, refusing to receive Him, had missed the opportunity of entertaining, not angels ii. 12. 3-7) relates at full the bloody retaliations with which, during the governorship of Quadratus, some of the fiercer sort of the Jews avenged the murder of a Galilwan pilgrim, or of several Galilean pilgrims, as he states it in another account (Antt. xx. 6.1), wasting a whole district with a slaughter which spared none, and, as the sons of Zebedee would fain have here done, destroying with fire the villages of these hateful schismatics. The treacherous lyings in wait on the part of the dwellers in Samaria which called forth these bloody reyenges will have begun very early, if, as St. Jerome’s Hebrew teacher assured him, they were already denounced by the prophet Hosea (vi. 8, 9): Quorum quum intelligentiam querebam ab Hebrao, ita nobis expositum est. Sacerdotes Bethel, imo fanatici Bethaven, temporibus Paschw et Pentecostes et Scenopegiw, quando per Sichem eun- ἄστη erat ad Hierosolymam, ponebant in itinere latrones, qui insidiarentur pergentibus, ut magis vitulos aureos in Dan et Bethaven quam in Hieroso- lymis et in templo adorarent Deum. Wetstein (on John iv. 20) gives some specimens from Jewish books of the courtesies by word of mouth which were wont to be exchanged between the Samaritans and the Jewish pilgrims who passed through the land on their way to Jerusalem. * See p. 107. 218 JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL FIRE but the Lord of angels, unawares. Upon this provocation all their suppressed and smouldering indignation againss the schismatics in whose territory they were journeying, breaks forth. At this instance of contempt shewn to their Lord and to themselves (for no doubt a feeling of personal slight mingled with their indignation, however little they may have been themselves aware of this), the ‘sons of thunder,—sons of thunder indeed, as Jerome exclaims,'—will fain play Old Testament parts. They feel that a greater than Elias is here; for they are fresh from the Mount of Transfiguration, where they had seen how the glory of the great prophet of the Old Covenant paled and waned before the brighter glory of Him whom they served, the Lord of the New (ver. 28-36); an outrage therefore against Him, and a rejecting of Him, should therefore be not less terribly avenged. Out of their sense of this, ‘they said, Lord, wilt Thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and con- sume them, even as Elias did?’ Their allusion is, of course, to the destruction of the two scornful captains with their fifties by the fire which Elijah called down upon them (2 Kin. i. 10,12). If he spared not those of his own people, should they shrink from executing judgment on heretical S°~.uritans ?? With all of carnal and sinful which mingled with this proposal of theirs, yet what in- sight into the dignity of their Lord, and the greatness of the outrage which was an outrage against Him, does it reveal; what faith in the mighty powers witb ‘which He Α wats * And Ambri 1 enim mirun, fili- 4 fulgurare yoluisse ? ? Jerome ye. 5): Κ51 juriam ignis descendit de clo, οὗ Ὁ \aritas incendium, quanto magis ad contemp iy iii Dei in. .ebet flamma venire ? FROM HEAVEN ON THE SAMARITAN VILLAGE. 219 . was able to equip his servants ! How mighty a power this was in the eyes of one of these two is evidenced from the fact that, when in the Apocalypse he records the great wonders and lying signs of the false prophet, the only sign which he specially names is, that ‘he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men’ (Rev. xiii. 13). And yet it might almost seem as though, with all this confidence of theirs, there was a latent and lurking sense upon their part of a certain unfitness in this their proposal; and thus, out of no desire to intrude into their Lord’s office, but only out of a feeling that this avenging act might not exactly become Him, they proffer themselves as the executors of the judgment. It will become the servants, though it would not perfectly become the Lord. Already, as would seem, He who was the pattern of a perfect patience had turned to go, that He might seek in another village the hospitality denied Him in this. They meanwhile had lingered behind, loath to leave the guilty village altogether unpunished. But now on this word of theirs, ‘He turned, and turning ‘rebuked them: Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of-* We must beware here of extenuating these words of our Lord, as though ‘what manner of spirit’ did but signify ‘what temper; so that they might be paraphrased ‘The emphasis in the English sentence should be on the second ‘ye.’ The emphatic position of the ὑμεῖς at the end of the sentence, which it would have been hard to reproduce in English, which our Version has not attempted to reproduce, and, indeed, its introduction at all, sufficiently in- dicates this. Bishop Andrews well: ‘Vos is no idle word. It makes a plain separation between them and Elias. You, why you are of my spirit. The disciple and the Master are of one spirit. But if ye be of my spirit, ely spirit is in specie columba, not aguile; not of the eagle that carrieth Jupiter’s thunderbolt, but of the dove that brings the olive-branch in her bill.’ 220 JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL FIRE. thus—‘ Ye know not that ye are speaking out of your own hasty passionate temper, being hurt as much by the slight upon yourselves as that put upon Me,’ even while ye suppose ye are zealous for my glory and for nothing else.’ But ‘spirit’ here means not the spirit of aman; not his own spirit, but rather the spirit of God; and the saying is a far weightier one than such an extenuation of its sense would leave it. ‘ You are missing,’ Christ would say, ‘your true position; which is, having been born of the spirit of forgiving love, to be ruled by that spirit, and not by the spirit of avenging righteousness. You are losing sight of the distinction between the Old Covenant and the New, missing the greater glory of the latter, and that it is the higher blessedness to belong to it.” Thus Hammond rightly: ‘Christ tells them they know not of what spirit they are, that is, they considered not under what dispensation they were.” * Thus O. a Lapide: Nescitis quis spiritus vos impellat; putatis enim vos a Spiritu Dei agi, cum agamini spiritu humano impatientia et vindicte. * The εἶναί τίνος of the original, expressing as it does a relation of de- pendence of one upon the other, Augustine (Con. Adimant. 17) gives rightly, cujus spiritds jilii estis. This whole clause, οὐκ οἴδατε οἵου πνεύματός ἐστε ὑμεῖς, is wanting, as is well known, in many, indeed in most, of the primary authorities, in A, B, and ©, being therefore omitted by Lachmann and Tischendorf. I cannot for all this believe it to have no right to a place in the text. It is found in D, in several early Versions and Fathers; and not to urge, Who could have ventured,—we may confidently ask—Who would have been able, to invent words so exactly touching the central point of the whole matter as these do? This marvellous fitness of theirs seems of itself to preclude the notion of an unauthorized insertion; while, on the other hand, the temptations were many to an unauthorized omission of them. Hastily and superficially regarded, they might seem to favour a Manichwan antagonism between the Old Testament and the New, to involve a slight on Elias, as though his spirit was contrary to the spirit of Christ and to that which Ohrist’s disciples ought to entertain. We know that out of some such feeling as this, the words of the verse preceding, ὡς καὶ ᾿Ηλίας éxoins, the genuineness of which nobody calls in question, are omitted in some MSS., in the Codex Vaticanus itself? Add to all this that FROM HEAVEN ON THE SAMARITAN VILLAGE. 221 It behoves us to see clearly that there is no slight cast here on the spirit of Elias. Both spirits, that which breathed through and informed the prophets and saints of the Old Covenant, as well as that which should inform the disciples of the New, are divine." The difference be- tween them is not of opposition, but only of time and of degree. The spirit of the Old Testament was a spirit of avenging righteousness; God was teaching men by terrible things in righteousness his holiness. But the spirit of the New Covenant, not contrary but higher, is that of forgiving love; in it He is overcoming man’s evil with his good. There was, indeed, pardoning grace in the Old (Mice. vii. 18; 2 Kin. vi. 21, 22), even as there is avenging justice in the New; fire does come down from God out of heaven and consume his enemies (Rev. xx. 9; ef. xi. 5); in it too ‘God is a consuming fire’ (Heb. xii. 29); and that same Lord who spake these words shall be Himself revealed in flaming fire to take vengeance on such an abrupt termination as στραφεὶς dé ἐπετίμησεν αὐτοῖς is nearly, if not quite, inconceivable. Christ cannot but have put his disciples in a right point of view for understanding the error into which they had fallen. Yet, if we omit this clause, we must then conclude with these words, ‘ And He turned and rebuked them ;’ seeing that those which follow, ‘for the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them,’ do certainly possess no right to a place in the text, having been brought in from Matt. xviii. 11; Luke xix. 20. ’ The severity of the God of the Old Testament on that occasion, and the lenity of Christ on this, with his distinct refusal to do, or to suffer his servants to do, ‘as Elias did,’ was one of Marcion’s favourite autitheses, or contradictions between the Old Testament and the New, by the aid of which he sought to prove that they could not have come from the same Author. Tertullian (Adv. Mare. iv. 23) replies: Agnosco Judicis severitatem » 6 con- trario Christi lenitatem increpantis eandem animadversionem destinantes discipulos super istum viculum Samaritarum. Agnoscat et hereticus ab eodem severissimo Judice promitti hance Christi lenitatem: Harundinem quassatam non comminuet, et linum fumigans non extinguet. Talis utique multo magis hormines non erat crematurus. Nam et tunc ad Heliam, Non in igni (inquit Dominus), sed in spiritu miti. 22 JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL FIRE them that know not God (2 Thess. i. 8); even now severity and goodness go hand in hand.’ At the same time each economy has one predominating tone, from which it takes its character.’ The two apostles, however, were for the moment failing to recognize this. In a confusion of the Old and the New, in a not knowing of ‘what manner of spirit’ they were, ‘they had fallen back on the rudiments οἵ - God’s education of his people, when it was their privilege to go on unto perfection, and to teach the world the far greater might of meekness and of love; even as it is deeply in- teresting to remember that it was one of these very two who brought somewhat later to the inhabitants of Samaria the perfect gifts of the Holy Ghost (Acts viii. 14; ef. 2 Cor. xiii. 10). They did not understand that there was blood which should speak better things than that of Abel (Heb. xii. 24). The blood of Abel cried well, when it cried for vengeance (Gen. iv. 10), since vengeance, or in other words, the violent restoration of the disturbed balances of justice, is the Lord’s (Rom. xii. 19); but the blood of Christ spake even better things, for it spake of pardon and forgiveness, the pardon and forgiveness even of those by whom that blood had been shed. In their missing of all this there was a fault and matter of * Grotius: Habet quidem et Evangelium sua ultime necessitatis tela, que in Ananiam Petrus, in Elymam Paulus exercuit; sed usi iis sunt apostoli, ubi nulla gsse suspicio poterat iracundisw semet sub Dei obtentu vindicantis; usi sunt in prefracte τη 8} 1019 homines, quibus nulla species ignorantiw patro- cinabatur. * Augustine (Con. Adim. 17): Nam hee est brevissima et apertissima differentia duorum Testamentorum, timor et amor. Illud ad veterem, hoe ad noyum hominem pertinet; utrumque tamen unius Dei misericordissima dispensatione prolatum atque conjunctum. FROM HEAVEN ON THE SAMARITAN VILLAGE: 223 blame, yet blame by no means so severe as some are disposed to ἅμα. They were rebuked for choosing that which, perfectly good in its own time, was only not good now, because a better had come in, for returning to the lower level of the Old Covenant, when Christ had lifted them up to the higher level of the New. I quote from a sermon of Bishop Andrews—it is one of those referred to in the last note: ‘ Elias’ spirit, I hope, was no evil spirit. No; but every good spirit, as good as Elias’, is not for every person, place, or time. Spirits are given by God, and men inspired with them, after several manners, upon several occasions, as the several times require. The times sometimes require one spirit, sometimes another. Elias’ time, Elias’ Spirit. As his act good, done by his spirit, so his spirit good in his own time. The time changed ; the spirit, then good, now not good. But why is it out of time? For “the Son” of man is come. As if He should say, Indeed, there is a time to destroy (Hecles. 111. 3) ; that was under the law, cgnea lex, the fiery law, as Moses calls it; then a fiery spirit would not be amiss. The spirit of Elias was good till the Son of man came, but now He is come, the date of that spirit is expired. When the Son of man is come, the spirit of Elias must be gone; now specially, for Moses and he resigned lately in the Mount. Now no lawgiver, no prophet, but Christ.’ * This incident furnished a favourite text to the English divines of the seventeenth century for sermons on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Treason. Andrews, Jeremy Taylor, Allestree, Tillotson, and many more, have found here their argument. Yet, faulty as the two disciples were, their fire from above resembled so little the fire from beneath which the incendiaries of the Gunpowder Plot would have kindled, that one must needs think they are used somewhat hardly in being brought, with whatever explanations, into any comparison with them. 224 JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL FIRE, ETC. ‘And they went to another village ; probably not this time a Samaritan one,’ and found, as we gather from the narrative, the hospitality there which had been refused them in the first. 5 It is ἑτέραν, not ἄλλην, 10. THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. Luke x. 17-20. Some have supposed that for the convenience of his narra- tive St. Luke omits, or rather defers, various intermediate events, and links the return of the Seventy directly with their sending forth. Others, who will not allow that there is any such overpassing of intervening incidents, assume that the return of some at least of their number may have followed closely on their sending forth—so closely that nothing which the sacred historian desired to record happened in the interval. The question is not a very important one, nor is it easy to come to any decision about it. But whether sooner or later, those whom Christ had sent forth, ‘returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name. It will be observed that in his charge to the Seventy (ver. 2-16) our Lord had given them no distinct commission to cast out devils, as He had to the Twelve (Matt. x. 8; Luke ix. 1) ; but some tentative efforts of theirs, some ventures of faith in this direction, even without distinct authority, had been crowned with success. An acknowledgment that this at once surpassed their commission and their hopes seems to lie in that utterance of theirs, ‘ Lord, even the devils are subject unto us; not diseases only, over which Thou gavest us power (ver. 9), but the devils as well. Q 226 THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. The work, in which a little while ago apostles themselves were foiled (ix. 40), has not lain beyond the limits of our powers, has not baffled us.’ Such exultation was most natural; yet was there in it something of peril for those who entertained it, and for their own spiritual life. One need not exactly affirm that ‘through thy name’ comes in only as a formal and a saving clause at the end, and that the entire emphasis of the passage lay really on what preceded— are subject unto us ;’* still there may have been something of this; it could scarcely have been otherwise. There is, indeed, nothing more perilous for a man than the first discovery that spiritual powers wait upon his beck, that he too can wield the powers of the world to come; lest he should find in this a motive to self-elation, instead of giving all the glory to God. The disciples at the present moment were exposed to this temptation, as we might conjecture even if we had only these words of theirs; but as is certain, when we put together with these the words of earnest warning which the Lord presently addresses to them (ver. 20), suggesting to them a safer and a truer joy than that which they were now too incautiously entertaining. } Yet while we must needs recognize a certain self- satisfaction and self-elation, which mingles with, and makes itself felt in, this report which they bring back of the successes of their ministry, this will not warrant the interpretation made by some, of Christ's words which * Augustine (Znarr. in Ps. xci.): Redeuntes dixerunt, Domine, ecce da- monia nobis subjecta sunt. Dixerunt quidem, in nomine tuo; sed ille videt in eis quia in ipsa glorificatione gaudebant et extollebant se, et ibant inde in superbiam, et ait illis, conservans nomina illorum apud se, Nolite gaudere in hoc; gaudete autem quod nomina vestra sunt scripta in calis. THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. 227 follow; ‘ And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as light- ning fall from heaven. Here, they urge, is a warning to the disciples against that sin of pride which their Lord detected in them; as though He had said, ‘ Be not lifted up; beware of the first beginnings of a sin, which may end in so fearful a catastrophe as that which I once beheld ’—beheld, that is, in his preexistent glory and before the world was—the fall, namely, of one through pride even from the height of heaven itself. ‘Swift and sudden as the descent of the lightning was that fall, from the highest to the lowest, from a throne of light even to the blackness of darkness for ever. And even such a casting down may be yours, if you forget your humility, and are lifted up in heart.’' I cannot so take the words. The warning I believe to be reserved for ver. 20, and that for the present the Lord freely shares in their joy, even as his own presently breaks forth, at these tidings of the great things that they had wrought (ver. 21, 22). Any interpretation of this passage seems to me altogether at fault, which makes it say other than what the Saviour on another occasion said, ‘ Vow is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this world be cast out’ (John xii. 31), or, ‘cast down,’ as some read, which would bring that passage into yet closer verbal connexion with this.” * So Gregory the Great (Moral. xxiii..6) : Mire Dominus, ut in discipulorum cordibus elationem premeret, mox judicium ruing retulit, quod ipse magister elationis accepit; ut in auctore superbie discerent, quid de elationis vitio formidarent. Compare Ambrose, De Fugd Sec.7; Bernard, Jn Ded. Eccles. Serm. v. 6; Stella: Quare Dominus Jesus, ut optimus medicus animarum, ut roboraret suorum discipulorum animos adversus pestiferum morbum inanis gloriz, proponit exemplum Luciferi, qui ob superbiam a tant4 et tam suprema felicitate dejectus est, quia de donis a Deo acceptis insolenter gloriatus est. 2 Κάτω βληθήσεται,. instead of ἐκβληθήσεται : but there is no suflicient reason for disturbing the received: reading. Q 2 228 THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. Those who understand the Lord to allude to that great original fall of the ‘son of the morning,’ anterior to the fall of man, yet do not all accept the words in the same sense. Some make them to contain that warning against pride which has just been mentioned. Others find in them equally a check to the undue elation of the dis- ciples, but from another point of view: ‘ Think not so much of these petty exorcisms which you have been per- mitted to achieve.' I have seen another sight; the very prince of the whole kingdom of wickedness, and him in whose defeat the defeat of each one of his subordinate ministers was involved, cast out from heaven itself,y— with, of course, the underthought of having been Himself the victorious author of his defeat. The supporters of these expositions commonly urge that no other satisfies the words ‘ from heaven ; Satan, they say, may at a later moment have fallen into a deeper depth than before, but how fallen ‘from heaven’ in the days of Christ’s flesh? how could He speak in this language of any fall of Satan which He was only now beholding, seeing that long since, at the instant of his first sin, he had been cast out from his first habitation (Jude 6), from his place among the ‘sons of God’ (Job xxxviii. 7), in the heavenly places? But this difficulty arises from giving an em- phasis to the word ‘ heaven, which it was not intended to bear, and which in this very chapter there is plain evidence that it need not have; for see ver. 15: ‘And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down unto hell.’ For the right understanding * So Theophylact : μὴ θαυμάζετε εἰ δαίμονες ὑμῖν ὑποτάσσονται: ὁ yap ἄρχων αὐτῶν πάλαι κατέπεσεν ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ" εἰ γὰρ δὲ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις οὐχ ἑωρᾶτο τοῦτο, ἀλλ᾽ οὖν ἐμοὶ ἐθεωρεῖτο τῷ τῶν ἀοράτων θεωρᾳφ. Ὥς ἀστραπὴ δὲ κατέπεσεν, ἐπεὶ φῶς ἦν, καὶ ἀρχάγγελος, καὶ ἑωσφόρος, εἰ καὶ σκότος γέγονε. THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. 229 either of that passage or of this we must dismiss the more solemn use of ‘ heaven,’ in which it signifies the holy place, the more immediate seat and habitation of God and of the blessed spirits, and only associate with the word the notion of elevation and preeminence—so that in fact Christ would be saying here, ‘I beheld Satan fall from the high places of his pride and power.’! What this fall of his might mean, and what the sub- jection of the devils to the Seventy had to do with it, may presently be considered; but it will be desirable first to confirm this interpretation of ‘heaven’ here by one or two further quotations. We have then in Isai. xiv., the description of the fall of the king of Babylon, typifying as he does a mightier enemy of the Church of God; and there the prophet exclaims, ‘ How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!’ (ver. 12); and if it be urged that ‘from heaven’ is a figure there, justified and explained by the comparison of the king to the morning star, it may be rejoined that thére is quite as much justification in the comparison of Satan here to the lightning. Then, too, at Ephes. vi. 12, the warfare of the faithful is declared at this present time to be with ‘spiritual wickedness in high places,’ or, as it might be still more accurately translated, ‘in heavenly places’ (ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις), Which can only mean, as our Translators have rightly understood it, in high seats of authority. And then further, the passage in Rev. xii. 7-11, ‘ There was war im heaven, is referred by all good expositors to that destroying of the works of the devil which was the consequence of the triumphant life and death and * Compare Cicero (Phil. ii. 42): Collegam de celo detraxisti,—robbed him, that is, of the splendour and honour which before were his. 230 THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. ascension of the Son of God. There is described in its full consummation that which the Lord here with pro- phetic eye has already beheld. But if Christ be not here speaking of that original fall of Satan, in which he left his first habitation, but rather, as I am persuaded, of some fall within the fall, some pre- sent dejection of Satan from those seats of his power and his pride, which during the four thousand years of his domination he had reared and constructed anew, and from which he was now being thrust out again—what reason, it may be asked, had the Lord for in spirit be- holding this at the present moment? These few and petty exorcisms, were they not far too slight and insignifi- cant a matter to justify so magnificent a saying? As- suredly, if contemplated as the efficient cause of that fall; but not, if seen as its evidences and accompaniments. As Christ drew proofs of a victory over Satan, which must have been accomplished by Himself, from his own ex- pelling of devils (Matt. xii. 28, 29), so He found proofs of the same victory in like works done by his disciples. The power of the strong man could not but indeed be broken, when not merely the Stronger Himself could spoil his goods at his pleasure, but the very weaklings among his servants could go in and out of his domain, and do there at their will." The Lord in no way links the headlong and shameful fall of Satan from on high with what they had wrought, as if that had anything to do with effecting it. That fall, that new stripping him of so large a part of the power and strength which he still * Corn. a Lapide: Non novam mihi rem narratis, nam cum vos nuper mitterem ad evangelizandum videbam demonem sua potestate a me privatum quasi de clo cadere, ac per vos magis casurum. THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. 231 retained, was the fruit of the Incarnation, of the life and death and exaltation of the Son of man. But this new triumph of the kingdom of good over the kingdom of evil in their respective heads, which Christ evermore in the spirit saw, at certain moments of his life He realized with intenser vividness than at others. And this moment of the return of the Seventy was one of these solemn and festal moments of his life. He employs the imperfect tense (éeapodv), to make clear that He had foreseen the glorious issue even when He sent them forth. This which they now announce to Him is even as He had surely expected: ‘I saw, as I sent you forth, Satan fall like lightning from heaven.’ Already He beheld the whole idol-worship of the heathen world, whereof Satan was the soul and informing principle (1 Cor. x. 20), giving way, its splendour departing, its oracles dumb, its temples forsaken—till, instead of riding on the high places of the earth, and claiming the homage of the great and noble and learned of the world, it should creep into obscure corners, and after surviving awhile as the despised superstition of ‘pagans’ or villagers, expire altogether. This and much more of the same kind, the putting down of how many of the enormous wickednesses of the world, the casting down of how many strongholds of evil, was implied in the power which his disciples put forth. -See- ing the greatest in the least, He saw a pledge of the great exorcism of the heathen world in these slighter cures which his disciples had been strong to effect. He proceeds: ‘ Behold, I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. The reading, ‘ J have given you, arose from a misunderstanding 232 THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. of the passage. Hitherto He had not given them this power; they indeed, as we have seen, had in faith antici- pated some portion of it; and He, finding they were the men to make the right use of it, now imparts it to them in all its fulness, according to that law of his kingdom, ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ In the form of the promise there is manifest allusion to Ps. xci. 13; perhaps also to Isai. xi. 8;' and, whether directly so intended or not, we may certainly recognize here a very gracious reading backward and reversing of a threatening made under the elder Covenant, ‘ Behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord’ (Jer. vill. 17). The physical consequences of man’s sin, which may be traced through all regions of lower life, do in the animal world concentrate themselves with an especial malignity in the poisonous adder, in the stinging scorpion; which there- fore are fitly used as the symbols and representatives of all that has most power and most will to hurt and to harm; of all forms of deadliest malice exercised by Satan and his servants against the faithful (Ezek. ii. 6). Amid all this deadliest malice of the enemy they should go, themselves unharmed ; and, shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace, should tread it all under their feet : ‘and nothing shall by any means hurt you. And yet, while we thus transfer, and rightly, the serpent and scorpion into the region of spiritual wickedness, and see here a pledge and promise that the faithful should be kept from the powers of evil, we must not so exclusively do this as to leave out a literal fulfilment as 1 Compare the παιόδίον νήπιον (LXX.) there with the νήπιοι of ver. 21. THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. 233 well; such as found place when St. Paul shook the viper . from his hand (Acts xxviii. 5), when St. John, if that indeed was so, drank of the poison-cup; and in this respect the passage contains the promise of the same character as that made by the Lord after his resurrection (Mark xvi. 18). But with the enlarged commission, for it is ‘all the power of the enemy’ which it is now given them to pre- vail against, comes also, and as I believe comes for the first time in this discourse, ‘the word of warning: ‘ Wot- withstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven. They were not forbidden altogether to rejoice in these mighty powers as exercised by them, forbidden only to make them the chiefest matter of their joy. The reasoy is obvious. These a man might possess, and yet remain unsanctified still (Matt. vil. 22, 22; 1 Cor. xill. 2); these at best were only the privilege of a few, not therefore of the essence of a Christian’s joy. There was that in which they might rejoice with a joy which should not separate them from any, the least of their brethren, a joy which they had in common with all. There was that in which they might rejoice without fear, namely, in the eternal love of God, who had so loved as to ordain them unto everlasting life. This 1 Augustine (Hnarr. in Ps. cxxx.): Redierunt apostoli, et dixerunt Domino, cum missi essent a Domino, Ecce, Domine, in nomine tuo etiam dsmonia nobis subjecta sunt. Vidit Dominus quod tentaret eossuperbia ex potentia miraculorum ; et ille, qui medicus venerat sanare tumores nostros, continuo ait, Nolite in hoc gaudere, quia dwmonia vobis subjecta sunt, sed gaudete quia nomina vestra scripta sunt in clo. Non omnes Christiani boni damonia ejiciunt; omnium tamen nomina scripta sunt in cwlo. Non eos voluit gaudere ex eo quod proprium habebant, sed ex eo quod cum ceteris salutem tenebant. Inde voluit gaudere apostolos, unde gaudes et tu. 234 THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. mention of ‘names written in heaven’ (cf. Isai. iv. 3; Heb. xii, 23, ‘the Church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven’) is the nearest allusion to ‘the book of life,’ ‘the Lamb’s book of life,’ the book of God,’ “ the book of the living,’ or simply ‘ the book, which anywhere occurs in the Gospels; but the image is one which else- where runs through all Scripture (Exod. xxxii. 32, 33; Ps. Ixix. 29; Dan: xii. 1; Phil.iv.35 Rev. τς το KX. 12; xxi. 27). It expresses under an image what St. Paul expresses without one, where he speaks of God’s eternal purposes of love toward his saints (Ephes.1. 4, 5). The Lord has admifiistered, where He saw this was needed, a wholesome rebuke to that pride, of which He detected the germs in his disciples; but this does not hinder Him from rejoicing in this new victory of the kingdom of light over the kingdom of darkness,—a matter of the greater joy, that it was these ‘ babes’ by whose hands this victory had been won: they of the household were dividing the spoil. ‘Jn that hour Jesus rejoiced’ in spirit, and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise * The forms ἀγαλλιάω (for ἀγάλλω), and ἀγαλλίασις, belong to sacred Greek exclusively, being found only in the New Testament, the Septuagint, and in writings dependent upon these; ἀγαλλίαμα, which is also found in the Septuagint, does not occur in the New Testament. ᾿Αγαλλιᾶσθαι is often in the New Testament joined with χαίρειν, as at Matt. v. 12; Rev. xix. 7; cf. Tob. xiii. 13; in the Septuagint oftener with εὐφραίνεσθαι. It is stronger than χαίρειν, for this last may be in spirit and with no external manifesta- tions ; but ἀγαλλιᾶσθαι, is to exult, so to rejoice as with outward tokens to testify the inward joy, as an old expositor, Stella, here puts it well: Non est intelligendum quod antea in gaudio interiori non fuerit, sed interioris gaudii queedam signa nune exterius demonstravit ; ideo convenientissime dixit, Exultavit. Exultatio namque dicitur quasi extra se saltatio, quando videlicet ex abundantia gaudii interioris signa letitie foras erumpuut. THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. τῆς and prudent, and revealed them unto babes: even 80, Father ; for so it seemed good in thy sight. Precisely the same words with a slightly different introduction occur at Matt. xi. 25,26; where they cannot possibly be the record of the same discourse;-for they have the same perfect fitness there as here; they are embedded in one narrative quite as deeply as in the other. A careful comparison of the two passages can, I think, leave no doubt on our minds that Christ did from time to time repeat Himself in nearly or quite the same words ; which, after all, is not at all so wonderful in Him, each of whose utterances being perfect, could never be changed for the better. . The all-important character of that which He is utter- ing here may well explain its repetition; setting, as He does, his seal to that word of the prophet, ‘Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight’ (Isai. v. 21; cf. Prov. iii. 5, 7), and, be it observed, not merely thanking God for what He has revealed, but for what He has hidden, that the same things, revealed by Him to some, were by Him hidden from others. There is then, if these words mean aught, such a thing as a punitive hiding and a penal blindness. The hand of the Lord may be upon those who withstand the truth, so that they shall not be able to see the sun of righteousness (Acts xiii. 11). That there are those from whom God hides his truth in displeasure may be a very terrible fact ; but a fact may be very terrible, and yet true notwithstanding ; and here is one of which we can only get rid by dealings the most violent with this and with other plainest statements of Scripture (Isai. vi. 10; Matt. ΧΙ, 11-15; Luke xix. 42; John ix. 39). Christ here 236 THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. thanks his Father for two things, first, that He has hidden from the wise and prudent; and, secondly, that what He has hidden from them He has revealed to babes; the hiding and revealing being recognized by Him as alike his Father’s work, and the judgment and the grace-alike matters for which He renders, thanks. The words of St. Paul, 1 Cor. 1. 26-29, supply a remarkable parallel to this whole saying; while the early history of the Church, ‘from which Scribes and Pharisees, the Gamaliels, and all or nearly all of the disputers of this world, stood aloof, fishermen meanwhile and publicans, and men ignorant and unlearned, finding their place therein, furnishes the best commentary. 11. THE PHARISEES SEEKING TO SCARE THE LORD FROM GALILEE. Luke xiii. 31-33. Tue Lord lingers too long in Galilee; so, at least, to his adversaries it seems. He is there comparatively secure among his friends and adherents; every day adding to the number of these; confirming his word by signs fol- lowing (Matt. xv. 28; John iv. 46); his reputation grow- ing; all men holding Him for a prophet (Matt. vin. 27 ; ix. 8, 33); so that He will hardly be reached by the extremest malice of his foes. Gladly would these scare Him from the shelter of that safe retreat into the toils which have been set for Himeat Jerusalem (Mark xi. 18; Matt. xxi. 46). And even if they do not quite succeed in this, it will be something if they can deliver themselves from’ his unwelcome presence in Galilee, at the same time involving Him in the discredit of an ignoble flight. It was that if possible, this at any rate, which they proposed to themselves, when they made to Him the communication which follows. ‘The same day there came certain of the Pharisees’— came, no doubt with a friendly and confidential mien, and as men to whom, whatever secondary differences might exist between them, his safety was dear,—‘ saying unto Him, Get Thee out, and depart hence, for Herod will 238 THE PHARISEES SEEKING TO SCARE kill Thee’ The words curiously remind us of another similar plot and intrigue, by which it was sought, and equally in vain, to terrify a prophet of the Old Covenant from the appointed sphere of his labours; Jeroboam playing there the part of Herod here ; Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, of the Pharisees ; and the prophet Amos sustain- ing there the part which our Lord sustains here. There too Amaziah, with apparently no unfriendly meaning, although he had just before denounced the overbold prophet to the king (had the Pharisees done the same in the present instance 3), came to Amos, saying, ‘O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there; but prophesy not again any more at Bethel, for it is the king’s chapel, and it is the king’s court (Amos vil. 10-17; ef. Isai. xxx. 10, 11). As the Pharisees here, so the priest of the Calves there takes nothing by his move, but goes utterly baffled and defeated away. We may affirm, with tolerable certainty, that Herod Antipas entertained no such design of killing Jesus as by these Pharisees is ascribed to him here. He had enough of prophet’s blood on his hands in the murder of John the Baptist, and can scarcely have wished to have more. A weak, frivolous, unworthy prince, yet he is nowhere charged in Scripture with seeking to compass the Lord’s death. Even the crime of the Baptist’s death, who came into far more direct collision with him, he had been entangled in unawares. When he heard of the fame of the Lord, he satisfied himself with saying to his servants, ‘This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do show forth themselves in him’ (Matt. xiv. 2); he devises no plots of open or secret THE LORD FROM GALILEE, 239 violence against Him. The report of Christ’s miracles appears to have excited his curiosity (for his doctrine he cared nothing), so that when Pilate sent Jesus to him, ‘he was exceeding glad, for he was desirous to see Him of a long season, and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by Him’ (Luke xxiii. 8); but it is plain, both from ‘this account and from his conduct in sending the Lord back unharmed to Pilate, with nothing worthy of death done to Him (Luke xxiii. 15), that he had no enmity against Him for the past, nor fear of Him for the future. We may say, further, that had he cherished that murderous thought in his heart which the Pharisees impute to him, ‘that fox’ is not the style with which he would have been characterized by the lips of ‘truth ; but if the Lord had been pleased to designate him with any title of the kind, He would have styled him ‘that wolf, or ‘that leopard,’ by the name of some animal, of which bloodthirstiness, and not cunning, is the prevailing feature. Add to all this, that if Herod had been known really to entertain such designs, the Pharisees, who were now in deadliest conflict with the Lord, would have been the last to warn Him of his danger, or in any way to assist Him in escaping from the snares which were being laid for his life. The only point upon which it is possible to raise a question seems to me to be this, namely, whether this was a gratuitous invention on the part of the Pharisees, sug- gested possibly by some flying rumours, to which, how- ever, they gave no credit themselves, of Herod’s ill-will to Christ—such rumours as the Baptist’s murder might easily have occasioned; whether the tale they bring was thus a mere invention of their own, devised with the purpose of terrifying the Lord from those quarters; or 240 THE PHARISEES SEEKING TO SCARE whether they and Herod understood one another, and he, possibly disquieted at this period by the growing number of Christ's adherents, may have been willing to use their assistance, and to allow them to use the terror of his name, so to induce the Lord quietly to withdraw to some other part of the land. Those who are disposed to see an understanding here between Herod and the Pharisees, urge that in the words of Christ’s reply, ‘Go ye, and tell that fox, there is an intimation that such a collusion existed, and that it had not escaped Him. They professed to be his friends, and to bring Him this warning out of goodwill, and meaning to defeat the purpose of Herod; but sending them to him with that message, the Lord will imply that He perfectly apprehends the relation in which they and Herod stand to one another—how that Herod was wait- ing to learn from their lips the success of their stratagem, and the spirit in which He Himself had received that announcement which they brought: ‘This is my answer to him that sent you, whose emissaries you have con- descended to become—to that fox, who thinks with his paltry wiles and transparent devices to scare the lion from his own domain.’ , Yet I cannot but believe that their view is a truer one, the many interpreters, ancient and modern, who have seen in this report which the Pharisees bring to Jesus a pure invention of their own, a fiction wholly of their own devising. They did but pretend the malice of Herod, who, if he had desired to rid himself of the Lord’s pre- sence, had other means at his command ; and who certainly was on no such friendly terms with the Pharisees as to make very probable any understanding between them. Ui THE LORD FROM GALILEE. 241 Nor need the words, ‘Go ye, and tell that fox, cause any difficulty here. The Lord, in that spirit of finest irony which is not alien from the spirit of deepest love and loftiest truth, so far fell in with, or seemed to fall in with, the aspect of the matter which they presented to Him, and to be deceived by it, that He used its language—not at the same time failing to let them perceive that their wretched covert intrigues were open and manifest to Him. The ‘fox’ was really in their own hearts, and to this ‘fox’ He indeed addresses Himself.’ Some of the early interpreters ingeniously urge in this sense the words ‘this fox, as one actually present, rather than ‘that 702, one ata distance,” which might have beforehand been expected. If there be anything in this, our Version has not preserved it, and the Vulgate as little. It was they, the Pharisees, who were themselves offended at his con- tinued presence in the land ; it was to their own selves they should indeed carry the message back. This explanation has the further advantage, that so the decorum which our Lord ever preserved in regard of the powers that be, however unworthy were those who might actually represent them at the time, will be perfectly maintained ; which decorum might seem violated, if the message were really intended for Herod, and not rather to stop short with these intriguing Pharisees themselves. But the reply which they were to carry back to ‘that fox, in other words, to accept themselves, is not without * Maldonatus: Christus non Herodem, sed Pharisxos ipsos qui Herodem sibi minabantur, vulpem appellavit. Non quod hxc verba de Herode non dixerit, sed quod in personié Herodis, quam illi sibi induebant ut ipsum deterrerent, eos notaverit atque refellerit. * Thus Theophylact: οὐ yap εἶπε, τῇ ἀλώπεκι ἐκείνῃ, ἀλλὰ ταύτῃ. * We have ‘ that fox ;’ the Vulgate, ‘ vulpi ili.’ R 242 THE PHARISEES SEEKING TO SCARE a certain amount of obscurity: ‘ Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to-day and to-morrow,’ and the third day T shall be perfected. The general meaning of the answer is not hard to catch: ‘So far from being interrupted in my ministry by any tidings of the kind you bring, be they false or true, by your wish, or by Herod’s wish, to be rid of my presence at once, I shall proceed on my way, I shall do as before I have done, I shall put forth my beneficent powers, casting out devils, healing the sick for the present (‘to-day’), for the future (‘to-morrow’), and only at a remoter period (‘the third day’) will my life and course reach their appointed term.” The words are exactly parallel to others spoken on not a very dis- similar occasion, when his timid disciples would have dissuaded Him from affronting the dangers of Judea ; to whom He replied : ‘Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world’ (John xi. 9; ef. ix. 4). ‘To-day and to-morrow and the third day’ will here exactly correspond to the ‘twelve hours’ there, signifying as they do a certain fixed appointed time. Not of necessity a very brief time, but rather the contrary ; for an intention upon his part to make his further sojourn in Galilee a brief one was exactly that which the Pharisees would have been best pleased to hear, while it was very 1 Σήμερον καὶ αὔριον : ef. Josh. xx. 18,28; and for a similar method of counting backward to the third day, Susan. 15. Ν * Cajetan: Per hodie et cras et tertiam diem universi temporis requisiti ad opus suum perfectio significatur. Calvin: Hodie et cras defungar munere mihi divinitus injuncto ; ubiad finem stadii ventum fuerit, tune in sacrificium offerar. There is frequently a certain solemnity about this indication of the third day ; such as is scarcely wanting here ; thus see Gen. xxii. 4; XXXi. 22; XxXiv. 25; XL 26: xii. 18; Exod xix. rz, τό: αὶ Kin: xii. 1332 ΚΊΗ ἘΠῚ δὴ THE LORD FROM GALILEE. 243 far from his purpose at all to gratify them by the announce- ment which He made.' Least of all do these words signify —which would be a meaning utterly trivial—that the time of his actual tarrying in Galilee should extend over two literal days, and that on the third He should quit it, even as the verse following can as little mean that He would occupy three such actual days in the journey from that spot to Jerusalem. What He says is this: ‘ There is for Me a predetermined time, during which I shall labour unhindered. No malice nor intrigues of my enemies shall prevail to abridge that time.? Instead of fleeing, as you suggest, I will leisurely accomplish my work this day and to-morrow ; and then when the third day comes I shall be perfected, 1 shall finish my course: the things concerning Me will have an end; which, however’ (for all this‘is implied in the word), ‘shall be no abrupt nor pre- mature one, cutting off my life in the midst of my days, with my work unfinished, in an obscure corner of a re- mote province; but a death which shall be the solemn and fit conclusion of my life, the completion and consummation of all which I came into the world to accomplish.’ * Maldonatus: Non id agebat Christus, ut Pharissos consolaretur; quod profecto fecisset, si illis significésset brevi se post tempore moriturum. Quid enim erat quod illi magis optarent? sed volebat potius augere materiam invidie atque doloris. * Stella: Fallimini, si creditis vos aut Herodes quod versutia humana possit aliquid contra potentiam Dei et ejus voluntatem. Vos dicitis quod Herodes mortem mihi molitur, et vos non moleste fertis; sed inanis est deliberatio ejus, quia non est in manu ejus mors mea, quia nemo tollet animam meam ame. Potestatem enim habeo ponendi animam meam, et sic cum voluero ponam eam et moriar. ® To make τελειοῦμαι a middle verb, completing it with τὰ ἔργα, and find- ing as the meaning, ‘ on the third day I finish,’ i.e. ‘ my works,’ sadly mars the force of this passage. It is not for nothing that the two active verbs which go before are exchanged for this passive. Our English, ‘Z shall be per- Jected,’ is very good; a vast improvement on ‘J make an end,’ of the earlier R2 244 THE PHARISEES SEEKING TO SCARE There may seem a slight contradiction between the statement of the verse which has just been considered, and of that which now follows: ‘ WVevertheless," I must walk to-day, and to-morrow, and the day following ;’ for here the Lord speaks of ‘the third day’ as one of the days of his walking, while there He contemplated it as the day on which He should be perfected and finish his course. But there is no real contradiction. He contem- plates his death as being, in fact, the crowning work of his life. As little does this verse 33 contain a mere repetition of the statement of that which went before. Hitherto He has but stated the fact that his ministry should continue; now He is giving the grounds in the divine order and fitness of things why it should continue, why He should walk and work unlet and unhindered. ‘This my death here in this remote Galilee, with which you threaten Me, is impossible; for a can not be that a prophet, and therefore least of all He who is the chief of the prophets, perish out of Jerusalem. That city which Versions, as is also the Vulgate, Consummor. Compare, for similar uses of τελειοῦσθαι, Phil. 111. 12; Acts xx. 24; Heb. v. 9; xii. 23. More than once Augustine transfers this word from Christ to Christ’s Church, and finds in it a prophecy of the three stages of the spiritual life through which He causes it in each of its members to pass, namely, the forgiveness of sins, the restoration to health, the consummation in glory; thus Con. Jul. Pelag. vi. 19: Ecce, inquit, ejicio deemonia, et sanitates perficio hodie et cras, et tertid die consummor. Expulsio quippe est demoniorum remissio peccatorum ; perfectio sanitatum, que fit proficiendo post baptismum ; tertia consummatio est, quam sus quoque carnis immortalitate monstravit, in- corruptibilium beatitudo gaudiorum. Cf. Enarr. in Ps. ex. 46. - * What the exact force of this ‘ Nevertheless’ (πλήν) is, expositors have often not troubled themselves to consider; it seems to me best given by Maldonatus, whese commentary on the whole of this difficult passage is masterly: Refertur non ad omnia precedentia, sed ad illud tantum ultimum, et tertid die consummor, quasi dicat quamvis tertid die moriturus sim, tamen interim nemo me impedire poterit, quominus hoc intermedio tempore miracula faciam. THE LORD FROM GALILEE. 245 has been the murderess of all the prophets from the beginning (Isai. i. 21), which has ever claimed this dread- ful prerogative to herself, as she is chief in favours, to be also chief in guilt, she shall not forego it now; she shall continue to the end the seat of all the deadliest enmity to the kingdom of God.’ But the words reach much further than this, much further than to the stating merely of such a general fact as this. They have a direct refer- ence to those with whom the Lord is speaking now, and contain the finest irony on their affected interest in his welfare. ‘You have come, expressing your alarm for my safety, should I tarry longer here. You may lay aside your apprehensions. My danger is not in Galilee, nor yet from Herod. I shall not perish here, but in Jeru- salem, your seat, your head-quarters, where you reign supreme. When the day of my death, or of my con- summation, arrives, you, and not Herod, will be the authors of the murderous deed.’* 1 Calvin: Vosne ut ab Herode mihi caveam monetis, quos video meos fore carnifices ¢ 246 THE UNFINISHED TOWER 12. THE UNFINISHED TOWER AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. Luke xiv. 25-33. Our Lord on more than one occasion during his earthly ministry found a multitude in his train; loosely attached to Him; but who at the same time would inevitably have detached themselves from Him and fallen away, so soon as ever a day of temptation had arrived. Nothing could be further from his desire than such a following as this. ‘They that are with Him are called and faithful and true’ (Rev. xvii. 14); and such will abide with Him unto the end. But not so these; to whom therefore He turned, and spake words repelling rather than inviting. They who in this world would enlist recruits keep out of sight what is hard, painful, and dangerous in the work to which they invite them; but not so He, who desired that none should join themselves to Him without a clear knowledge beforehand of all to which they were engaging themselves. ΤῸ a Paul, on the very threshold of his con- version, He will shew what great things he must suffer for his name’s sake (Acts ix. 16). Ezekiel at his first commission is told plainly to what manner of men, such ᾿ as could be likened only to thorns, briars, scorpions, he is sent (Ezek. 11. 6). And to this multitude Christ ad- dressed one of his hard sayings—one after the hearing of which we can hardly doubt that many went back and AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 247 walked no more with Him (cf. John vi. 66). A sad con- summation, yet better far than that they should throw in their lot with Him, afterwards to be offended, and to fall from Him, in that day of trial which was sure before long to arrive (Matt. xiii. 21). We read then that ‘there went great multitudes with Him ; and he turned, and said unto them, If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Let us here notice, by the way, the profound confidence in a guiding, inter- preting Spirit who should be ever at work in his Church, which these words of Christ reveal. Take them literally, and they stand in direct contradiction to the whole teaching of the rest of Scripture, in contradiction to the teaching of Moses, of the prophets, of the apostles, of Christ Himself; they enjoin an immorality; require of men to hate those whom it is their prime duty to love. And yet Christ spake the words notwithstanding, satisfied to leave to that interpreting Spirit to put them in harmony with all which elsewhere is commanded in the Scripture, or written by the finger of God on the heart of man. But in other ways also the unparalleled boldness of Christ’s teaching, the tremendous claims which He makes on those who offer to join themselves to Him, may well fill us with marvel and with awe. How intolerable the pride and presumption of any less than the greatest, lower than the highest, to impose the conditions of discipleship which He here imposes, to demand of men the sacrifices which He here demands; and this, be it observed, not in the name of One whose messenger He is ; but in his own; standing forth as Himself the object, to 248 THE UNFINISHED TOWER whom all this measureless devotion of all men is justly due, who, claiming it all, claims nothing but his own. When I ask myself what are the proofs of Christ's divinity which the Scripture affords, when I enquire whether He did Himself there claim to be God, I find evidence of this not so much in a certain number of texts where this in as many words is asserted—though these are most needful—but far more in the position toward every other man which He uniformly, and as a matter of course, assumes. What man, that was not man’s Maker as well as his fellow, could have required that father and mother, wife and children, should all be post- poned to him; that, where any competition between his claims and theirs arose, He should be everything and they nothing ? that not merely these, which, though very close to a man are yet external to him, but that his very self, his own life, should be hated, when on no other conditions Christ could be loved. It is nothing strange or unreasonable that man’s Creator, the author of his being, the supreme and absolute Good, should demand all this of his creatures (Exod. xxxii.27; Deut. xxxiii. 9); but that Jesus of Nazareth should challenge the same unreserved devotedness on the part of all men, should require that every other duty of every other man should yield to the duty to Him, that every other love should subordinate itself to the love of Him; how could this be, except as He also stood in the place of God, and was God? But these are thoughts which, followed out as they deserve, would lead us too far from the subject imme- diately in hand. Christ has spoken of the absolute re- nunciation of all, even of a man’s own life, that last AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 249 citadel of selfishness, as he who ought best to know, had long since proclaimed (Job 11. 4), that citadel, where it may still make itself strong when every outwork has been abandoned '—He has spoken of this as the condition without which no man could be his disciple. But this self which needs to be renounced is oftentimes a very subtle one, the self of him who proposes to serve God, but to serve Him in his own strength, and not in God’s ; who may have renounced much, but has not renounced a vain confidence in his own powers, and that these will enable him to carry to a successful end a service thus undertaken. Christ uses two similitudes, borrowed from two enterprizes, the one grave to a private man, the other even to a king; by aid of the first He warns us of the shameful close which may attend a service in this spirit begun; while in the second He points out to all the only wise course for the avoiding of such perils as would thus lie before them. This is the first: ‘ For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish wt ? Lest haply, after he hath lad the foundation, and is not able to finsh wt, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to jinish. And this the second: ‘Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace. ” ‘ As Gregory the Great here says well (Hom. xxxii.): Nec tamen sufficit nostra relinquere, nisi relinquamus et nos. 2 "Ev δέκα χιλιάσιν. See for the same idiom, indeed for exactly the same words, 1 Macc. iv. 29; and with the συμβαλεῖν εἰς πόλεμον compare συμ- βαλεῖν εἰς μαχῆν, Josephus, Antt. vi. 5. 2. 250 THE UNFINISHED TOWER - The comparison of the Christian life, sometimes that of the individual, sometimes that of the collective Church, to the carrying up of a building is frequent in Scripture (Matt. vii. 24-27; Ephes. ii. 20-22; 1 Cor. iii. g; 1 Pet. ii. 4, 5); and not less frequent the likening of it to the waging of a war (1 Cor. xvi. 13; 1 Thess. v. 8; Ephes. vi. 11-17; 2 Tim. ii. 3,4; iv. 7). But the fitting in of these words to their place here, the making them to illustrate the matter directly in hand, is not so easy as is often carelessly taken for granted. Indeed the current interpretation of this passage is far from satisfactory ; and we have only to look a little closely at it to perceive the very serious difficulties with which it is encumbered. I believe, indeed, that by that interpretation words among the most profound and far reaching which our Lord spake upon earth, are made to take comparatively a slight and trivial meaning. That interpretation may be stated as follows. Christ would have the candidates for admission within the circle of his disciples to consider diligently with themselves, and accurately to weigh, whether they have strength and means to carry them triumphantly through the arduous enterprize which, they meditate; and if, as the result of this calculation, they discover that they have not, then to renounce the enter- prize altogether; and not, as some foolish builder, to begin the tower of the ‘Christian life, which they will prove unable to carry to the end; like some rash king to challenge to the conflict powers, the powers, that is, of the kingdom of darkness, which are twice as strong as they are, with which therefore they cannot hope to wage a successful war. AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 251 This explanation labours under a double defect. In the first place, according to all the other teaching of Scripture, the disciple who indeed builds and completes the tower, is not one who has counted the cost, and found that he has sufficient; he whose warfare is crowned with victory is not he who has calculated the opposing forces, and found that those at his command are more and mightier than any which can be brought against him ; but he rather who, having counted the cost, has found that he has not enough, that the outlay far exceeds any resources at his command, that he begins and must continue a bankrupt to the end; having nothing in himself, that so he may possess all things in God; who, having taken the measure of his own forces and of those of the adversary, has understood that this war- fare is one not to be waged at his own charges, has learned to cry, ‘ Who is sufficient for these things?’ and sought to a mightier for aid. All other Scripture teaches us, in the glorious words of Charles Wesley’s hymn, to be ‘strong in self-despair, and not in self-confidence ; that emptiness is indeed the one condition of fulness; that, however sad a thing it may be in this world to end with being a bankrupt, in the spiritual world it is the best thing which can happen to begin with being such; a man’s poverty being there his riches, and his weakness his strength; for such are the strange paradoxes of the kingdom of heaven. This is-one blemish—a most serious one; but there is another behind. Granting that this objection could be set aside, is it conceivable that Christ should counsel in such a ¢ase, and having made such a discovery, not so 252 THE UNFINISHED TOWER much as to begin the too costly tower ;* or, more mar- vellous still, not so much as to provoke the too potent foe, but on the contrary, to make terms with him, to engage not to molest Aim, if he will not molest us, whom to defy to the uttermost is our first duty and only safety (1 Pet. v. 9; Ephes. vi. 11-16), whose works to destroy was once the work of Christ in his own person, will be his work through his Church to the end? What sort of peace would that be? Can we imagine that the Lord would give the allowance of his word to such abject resolves as these? for what, after all, are they who leave off to build, who, in place of challenging, make conditions with the enemy, but the Demases who forsake not Paul only, but Paul's Lord, having loved the present world; who, when tribulation comes or even threatens, straight- way are offended and fall away; who see the wolf coming and flee? ‘The fearful’ of Rev. xxi. 8, the tradi- tores, the thurificati, of early Church history, all these did in that sense count the cost, and gave over to build; having challenged the king of the dark kingdom, shrunk from meeting him in battle. But can we suppose that Christ had a word of allowance for these? that they could plead that they were acting on his advice? and yet, adopt- ing the common interpretation, how could we avoid so doing ? But it is not so. These sayings of our Lord contain a far other lesson than this, one in far closer harmony with the other teaching of Scripture. What that teaching is, the words with which Christ follows up and applies all which He has here said, sufficiently declare: ‘ So like- "As Maldonatus asks well, who sees the difficulty, but not the way out of it, Deinde quomodo nos Christus dehortaretur ne Christiani efficeremur ὃ AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 253 wise, whosotver he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple’ In that ‘forsaketh’ (ἀποτάσσεται), or ‘renounces,’ ‘bids good by to,’ ‘ takes farewell of,’ lies the key to the whole passage. Christ sees the multitudes addressing themselves to his discipleship with one kind of furniture and apparatus for it; such as He knows will utterly fail them, when the stress of the trial comes; He warns them of their need of quite an- other. It is the poor, those who, counting up their means, discover that they have πού enough to carry through the work, and that of their own they never will have enough, and who therefore renounce all that they have, it is these, and not the rich, not, that is, they who walk in a vain conceit of their own riches (Rev. iii. 17), who are able to finish this tower.’ How it fares with the others, what a swift and shameful coming to the end of all their fancied resources inevitably awaits them, this Christ puts vividly before our eyes in the words which follow (ver. 29, 30). He gathers up in these the world’s judgment upon them who, professing to forsake it, were yet of it all the while, and who sooner or later reveal that they were so. The world cannot pardon that they should ever have affected any higher service than its own; and even while it receives back its prodigals, receives them with taunt and with scorn; the salt which has lost its savour is trodden under foot, not of God, but, doom more ignominious far, is trodden under foot of men (Matt. v.13). Nor are worldly and wicked men the only mockers. The scorners here include, as more ‘Gregory the Great (Hom. 37): Hoc enim inter terrenum et celeste edificium distat, quod terrenum edificium expensas colligendo construitur, cxleste vero edificium expensas dispergendo. Ad illud sumtus facimus, si non habita colligamus; ad istud sumtus facimus, si et habita relinquamus. 254 THE UNFINISHED TOWER than one in olden time has urged, not these men only, well pleased when any scheme of higher service, which threatened to put them and their lives to rebuke, has come to nought; but fallen spirits as well, the angels to whom men are a spectacle (1 Cor. iv. 8); who, so far as they can rejoice in aught, rejoice in dishonour done to God; and who, being first our tempters, are afterwards, when we have yielded to their temptations, our mockers and scorners as well:' ‘ This man’ (the con- tempt makes itself still more felt in the original), ‘ began to build, and was not able to finish.’ Such uncompleted buildings, open to all the winds and rains of heaven, with their naked walls, and with all which has been spent upon them utterly wasted, are called in the language of the world, which has often so true a word, This man’s, or that man’s, Folly; arguing as they do so utter a lack of wisdom and prevision on their parts who, began them. Such, for example, is Charles the Fifth’s palace at Granada, the Kattenburg at Cassel. They that would be Christ’s disciples shall see to it that they present no such Babels to the ready scorn of the scornful; beginning, as though they intended to take heaven by storm, to build up a tower which should reach even thither, and anon coming to an end of all their resources, of all their zeal, all their patience, and leaving nothing but an utterly baffled purpose, the mocking-stock of the world, even as those builders of old left nothing but a shapeless heap of bricks to tell of the entire miscal- culation which they had made. Making mention of ‘a tower, I cannot but think that the Lord intended an ‘ Gregory the Great (Hom. 37): Ipsos irrisores patimur quos ad malum persuasores habemus. AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 255 allusion to that great historic tower, the mightiest failure and defeat which the world has seen, that tower of Babel, which, despite of its vainglorious and vaunting beginning, ended in the shame and confusion of all who undertook it (Gen. xi. 1-9).’ It is well worthy of remark, and indeed I have briefly remarked already (p. 177), how greatly our Lord loves to bring out some truth which He would very earnestly enforce and commend to men, by two successive images ; like, and yet unlike ; approaching it from different quarters ; the second oftentimes going deeper into the heart of the matter than did the first, at all events presenting it in some aspect under which the first did not, perhaps in the nature of things could not, present it; the two in this manner mutually completing one another. It is thus for example with the parables of the mustard-seed and the 1A characteristic passage in Jeremy Taylor’s Sermons, Of Lukewarm- ness and Zeal, contains no direct reference to these words of our Lord, yet such can scarcely have not been intended: ‘So have I seen a fair struc- ture begun with art and care, and raised to half its stature ; and then it stood still by the misfortune or negligence of the owner, and the rain descended, and dwelt in its joints, and supplanted the contexture of its pillars; and having stood awhile like the antiquated temple of a deceased oracle, it fell into a hasty age, and sunk upon its own knees, and so descended into ruin: so is the imperfect, unfinished spirit of a man; it lays the foudation of a holy resolution, and strengthens it with vows and arts of prosecution, it raises up the walls, sacraments and prayers, reading and holy ordinances ; and holy actions begin with a slow motion, and the building stays, and the spirit is weary, and the soul is naked, and exposed to temptation, and in the days of storm take in every thing that can do it mischief; and it is faint and sick, listless and tired, and it stands till its own weight wearies the foundation, and then declines to death and sad disorder, being so much the worse because it hath not only returned to its first follies, but hath super- added unthankfulness and carelessness, a positive neglect, and a despite of holy things, a setting a low price to the things of God, laziness and wretched- ness: all which are evils superadded to the first state of coldness, whither he is with all these loads and circumstances of death easily revolved.’ 256 : THE UNFINISHED TOWER leaven (Matt. xiii. 31-33); the former setting forth the outward development, the second the inward operation, of the truth; it is thus again with the Hid Treasure and the Pearl (Matt. xiii. 44-46), the first putting before us one who has found, the second one who has sought as well as found, the kingdom of heaven. So too, as we have seen, the new wine in the old vessels is something more, and contains a profounder lesson, than the new patch upon the old garment (Matt. ix. 16,17). Another ex- ample we have here, where the king, measuring before- hand his own forces and the forces of the adversary whom he is tempted to challenge to the conflict, tells us some- thing which the builder, sitting down to count the cost of the tower which he is planning to erect, would not have told. There is sometimes a further gain in a duplicate illustration such as this; and such gain is here. Any misgiving as to the correctness of the interpretation which has been here put upon the first similitude must, I am persuaded, disappear, with a careful study of the second. That in the sphere of things natural the course which Christ here recommends is the only wise one, this is self- evident. Any other would be fraught with uttermost hazard, with almost inevitable ruin, to him who pursued it. War indeed is sweet, as the ancient proverb assures us, to those who have never tried it;' and examples out of number of kings who, committing themselves to an unequal struggle, have drawn down ruin on themselves and on their kingdom, history sacred and profane will alike supply. Croesus in profane history, Amaziah (2 Kin. xiv. 8-12) and Josiah (2 Kin. xxiii. 29, 30) in sacred, will suggest themselves at once. Hezekiah, on the con- ? Τλυκὺς ἀπείρῳ πόλεμος. AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 257 trary, wise betimes, and knowing how much _ over- matched he would prove in conflict with the great king of Assyria, sends an ambassage, while the other is yet at a distance, desiring conditions of peace : ‘I have offended ; return from me; that which thou puttest on me will I bear’ (2 Kin. xviii. 14). But it is with the spiritual counterpart of this wisdom that we have here to do. The exposition which I have felt bound to reject, that, I mean, which makes the king who might come with his twenty thousand against him who with ten thousand should imprudently provoke a war, to be the devil, altogether paralyses ver. 32; for what can be the meaning of sending an ambassage to him, and desiring of him conditions of peace? How can we conceive, as has been urged already, counsel such as this issuing from the lips of the Lord? Lange, who clings to the common interpretation, can only evade the difficulty which it offers in this way: ‘ peace here accord- ing to the sense of the image can only mean a truce, and the request for peace only the avoiding of a premature conflict, to which the Christian as yet is unequal.’ It is a still poorer escape to urge, as does Calvin, that all parts of such a parabolic saying as this must not be pressed, that some in the interpretation may be very well allowed to fall away. This in itself is most true; yet what part could be pressed, if this, in which the whole teach- ing evidently culminates, might not be so?’ But how * Gerhard (Harm. Hoang. 120) in like manner owns that not merely we must not press this part of the similitude, but in the application go quite counter to it, which it is difficult to think was the Lord’s intention: Tan- tum hoe observemus in hac militid, quo a proposité parabola discedimus: ut quandoquidem hic hostis nunquam nobis honestas pacis conditiones pro- ponit, nos etiam nunquam cum ipso paciscamur, nec ullam pacem vel otium ab ipso expectemus, quamdiu mortalem hanc vitam in his terris degimus. 8 258 THE UNFINISHED TOWER profound is the lesson here, when we recognize in this king who might come against us with his twenty thousand, with a might altogether overpowering ours, no other than God Himself. He is a true fighter against God, a θεομάχος quite as truly, though in another way, as the openly ungodly, who would fain de anything in his sight, who, face to face with God, would assert himself at all; who does not renounce all that he hath, and, as that which is the dearest to him, and cleaves closest to the natural man, his own righteousness the first of all. The book of Job will supply the amplest and richest materials for the illustration of these words. The patri- arch himself was sorely tempted to be such a fighter against God, with his ten thousand to challenge Him with his twenty thousand. Early indeed in the great and terrible struggle of his life he has glimpses more than one of the madness of provoking to the conflict of righteousness such an adversary; as, for instance, when he exclaims, ‘How should man be just with God? If he will contend with Him, he cannot answer Him one of a thousand’ (ix. 2, 3); and again, ‘If I wash myself with snow-water, and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt * Bengel: Hee igitur rogatio pacis exprimit odinm anime propris [ver. 26], quo quis, omni suitate abnegatd, mera se gratiw committit. Aldificator pecunias, belligerator copias, discipulus parentes et caritates omnes abnegat et impendit. Illi habent apparatum positivum, hic negativum. Ma‘donatus, who has almost always something valuable on the harder passages in Serip- tures, sees clearly that the king coming with his twenty thousand cannot be Satan, with whom we never must have peace, nay rather a πόλεμος ἄσπονδος: but only doubtfully suggests that by him God Himself may be intended: Mittere vero legationem et rogare que pacis sunt non est a diabolo, hoste capitali nostro, pacem petere, quocum perpetuum nobis bellum gerendum est, nec pacem unquam licet pangere. Nam et in pace vincimur ; hoc enim pejus et turpius; quod in bello quidem, ut milites decet, repug- nantes atque resistehtes, in pace volentes, sine vulnere, sine sanguine, superamur. AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 259 Thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me’ (ix. 30, 31); but at other times he is very far from having renounced all that he has; thus see xxiii. 3-5, and indeed that chapter throughout. It is only at the last that he altogether does so, lays his hand upon his mouth, confesses that he has nothing with which to answer God (xl. 4), and abhors himself in dust and ashes (xlii. 5,6); demands, that is, conditions of peace, and, having demanded, obtains them (xlii. 7-17). St. Paul would have been another such fighter against God, if those things which he once counted gain he had resolved to count gain to the end; if, refusing to submit himself to the righteousness of God, he had stood out upon a righteousness of his own (Phil. iii. 3-9). But he also on the way to Damascus learned better; and when, with his face to the ground, he asked, ‘ What wilt Thou have me to do?’ he, too, was exactly falling in with that which Christ here declares to be the only wisdom for every man, demanding conditions of peace from that far mighter King, with whom it is impossible for flesh and blood, for sinful man, to contend." * I know none in the ancient Church, and only Bengel and Stier among modern interpreters, who have grasped the meaning of this portion of Scripture with at all so firm a hand as Gregory the Great has done. I have already quoted words of his on the only way in which the necessary cost for the building of the tower is to be got together. He too has apprehended rightly what so few have apprehended, namely, that the king who might come against us with his twenty thousand, with whom therefore it is prudent to make terms betimes, is not Satan, but God; thus Hom. 37 in Hoang.: Rex contra regem ex #quo venit ad pralium, et tamen si se per- pendit non posse sufficere, legationem mittit, et ea que pacis sunt postulat. Quibus ergo non lacrymis veniam sperare debemus, qui in illo tremendo examine cum Rege nostro ex «quo ad judicium non venimus? quos nimirum conditio, infirmitas, et causa inferiores exhibet... . Quid ergo agendum est, fratres, nisi ut dum nos cum simplo exercitu contra duplum illius sufficere non posse conspicimus, dum adhuc longe est, legationem mittamus, et rogemus ea que pacis sunt? Longe enim esse dicitur, qui adhuc presens 8 2 260 THE UNFINISHED TOWER We may take an example from the opposite side. The Pharisee in the parable (Luke xviii. g-14), when he enumerated the long catalogue of his virtues, was pre- cisely one who was refusing to forsake all that he had, rather was hugging this all as closely as he could. He was calculating his means, and finding that he had enough to finish the tower; he was mustering his forces, and so disastrously overrating their strength, that he did not fear to set himself in battle-array against Him who resisteth the proud, and giveth grace only unto the humble. The publican, on the contrary, in the same parable, was avowing that for the carrying up of the tower he had not enough, he had nothing; that the war was one in which he could not so much as look his mightier Adversary in the face; and exclaiming, ‘God be merciful to mea sinner, he threw down his arms, and sought, while there was yet time, conditions of peace. Let me observe, before quitting this matter, that there is a certain fine irony in our Lord’s falling in so far with man’s dream of being something and being able to hold his own even in the face of God, as to speak of him as a king over against another king, king against king— in his so far falling in with man’s dream of self-righteous- ness, and estimate of his own. powers, as to speak of the ten thousand which he could bring against the twenty thousand of God, as though he were only over- matched in the proportion of two to one; while, indeed, a day will arrive, when he who in Christ’s school has per judicium non videtur. Mittamus ad hunc legationem, lacrymas nostras, mittamus misericordis opera, cognoscamus nos cum eo in judicio non posse consistere, pensemus virtutem ejus fortitudinis, rogemus ea que pacis sunt. Hae est nostra legatio, qua Regem venientem placat. AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 261 learned anything which he ought to learn, will be ready to cry, ‘I cannot answer Thee one thing in a thousand.’ I ought not to leave unnoticed that some modern Roman Catholic expositors have sought to escape the difficulties which I have stated to cleave to the common interpretation of Christ’s words here in this way. They plead that they are not addressed to the whole body of disciples or candidates for discipleship, but only to as many as might be meditating whether they should under- take or not the so-called ‘ counsels of perfection.’ These are warned that they should accurately consider before- hand whether they have strength sufiicient for the fulfill- ing of these; and, if they discover that they have not, should not so much as attempt them. All this, as may be seen in the words,of one quoted below, is ingenious enough ;' and undoubtedly some difficulties would so be evaded ; but such an explanation contains no help for us, who believe that a// Christians are invited to be perfect, as their Father in heaven is perfect (Matt. v. 48), and who further can trace no intimation that these words were addressed to a select few, an inner circle, but on the contrary a statement the most distinct that they were spoken to ‘ great multitudes’ (ver. 25). * Cajetan: Significatur regis nomine professurus statum perfectioris vite. Bellum adversus alium regem est perfectior vita ad superandum mundum, quantum ad licita communiter aliis, puta, habere agros, vacare humanis negotiis, et reliqua hujusmodi, hominibus quidem licita, apostolic autem perfectioni interdicta. Et describitur mundus duplicatad potentid adversus profitentem vitam perfectiorem, quia et pugnat communi impugnatione, trahendo ad illicita communiter omnibus, et pugnat speciali mmpugnatione, trahendo ad interdicta apostolic vite. Si enim, consideraté proprii animi dispositione, imparem se videt tanto preelio, sapienter prwevenit, rogans ea qué pacis sunt, non aggreditur statum perfectioris vite, contentus statu communi, 13. ZACCHAUS. Luke xix. 1-10. Tue Lord is on his way to Jerusalem, on that last journey thither, which was so rich in incidents, and whereof St. Luke has preserved for us so full and faithful a record. ‘And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. And behold there was a man named Zaccheeus, which was the chief among the publicans.* It was only natural that Jericho, from its position close to the fords of Jordan (Josh. ii. 1), and as the frontier city on entering the land from Perza, set, too, as it was in the richest plain of Palestine, and that which abounded most in the choicest productions of that favoured land, in the rare and costly balsam above all,’ should be the seat of an officer of a somewhat superior rank, who should there preside over the collection of the revenues of the state. * His superior dignity probably suggests ἀνήρ, not ἄνθρωπος, twice used in regard of him (ver. 1, 7). Whether he was one of the publicani, the farmers of the revenue, or held some intermediate rank between these and the portitores, the actual collectors of the customs and taxes, is uncertain; but the latter is the more probable supposition. The fact that the publicani were generally Romans, and Roman knights, would not indeed of itself be decisive on the matter; for Josephus tells us that Jews sometimes attained to this dignity. Yet is it more probable that the ἀρχιτελώνης belonged himself to the τελῶναι, although, as the name implies, having many sub- ordinate officers under him, * Pliny, Hist. Nat. xii. 54. ZACCH 4 US. 263 Such an officer was Zacchzeus; one too who had not failed to win that wealth, for the sake of which he had been content to brave the contempt of his fellow-country- men, and, as a traitor to the national cause, to come under their uttermost scorn. And yet, rich as he was, he had not, as the sequel shews, incurred the woe of those rich who are full, and who have so received their consolation here, that all longings for a higher consolation are extinct in them (Luke vi. 24). We may take, as an evidence of this, the fact that ‘he sought to see Jesus,—who fe was ;’ not ‘who He was’ in the sense of ‘what manner of person ;’ but, ‘ which He was’ of that confused multitude, to distinguish Him from his company. And he sought this, as the issue proves, out of no mere curiosity, such as Herod’s (Luke xxiii. 8) ; but much more nearly in the temper of those Greeks who at the feast desired to see Jesus (John xii. 21). He may not have known, or given any account to himself, out of what motives this anxiety to see the Lord had its rise; yet assuredly there were yearnings here, unconscious they may have been, of the sick man toward his Healer, of the sinner toward his Saviour. Outward circumstances are unfavourable to the accom- plishment of his wish. ‘ He could not’ see Him ‘for the press, because he was little of stature.? So earnest, how- ever, is he in the matter, that, rather than be defeated of his longing, he devises a way for the satisfying of it, which * Maldonatus: Quis esset eorum quos in conferté et confusi videbat turba. * Augustine (Serm. 174): Noli te extollere; pusillus esto, Zacchus esto. Sed dicturus es, Si Zacchzeus fuero, prea turbi non potero videre Jesum. Noli esse tristis; adscende lignum, ubi pro te pependit Jesus, et videbis Jesum; with much other profitable adaptation of the words. 264 ZACCH EUS. will involve, indeed, a certain compromise of his dignity, but from which he does not on this account shrink. Many, no doubt, will wonder that he, a rich man, and of some official position in the city, should climb up, like one of the populace, into a tree, the better to see a spectacle passing below. But there is that in him which will not allow such respects as these to have any weight at the present. He has not, or he overcomes, that false pride, out of which so many precious opportunities, and often- times in the highest things of all, are lost. Jericho and the neighbourhood was famous for its palms (‘the city of palm-trees, Deut. xxxiv. 3; Judg. ili. 13). No stately palm-tree, however, but a tree of much humbler name, plays its part in this story. There are no sycomores now in the plain of Jericho, although found elsewhere in the Holy Land (Robinson) ; but a sycomore on this occasion bore fruit of the noblest kind; so that Fuller with good right exclaims, ‘Who dares say sycomores are always barren? See one here loaden with good fruit.? For into one of these Zacchzeus climbs, hoping, it may be, for he has run before the multitude, effectually to conceal himself in its leafy screen, before the throng of the crowd * Calvin: Signum enim vehementis desiderii fuit, arborem conscendere, quum divites ut plurimum sint fastuosi, seque specie gravitatis venditent. Neque enim Christi conspectum sine cwlesti instinctu tantopere expeteret. Sic Dominus sepe priusquam se hominibus manifestet, cecum illis affectum inspirat, quo feruntur ad ipsum adhuc latentem et incognitum. * A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, ii. 12. From these words it is obvious that Fuller took for correct the old derivation of συκομωραία, finding μωρός foolish, and not μῶρον the mulberry tree, in the latter half of the word: porro sicomorus ficus fatwa dicitur, eo quod inanes ficus generat (Stella; and so Augustine, Serm. 174, ὃ 3). This, it need hardly be said, is an error, the sycomore deriving its name from aresemblance to the fig in its fruit, to the mulberry in its leaves. Ambrose (Zxp. in Lue. ix. ὃ 90): Zaccheus in sycomoro, noyum novi temporis pomum, ZACCH AUS. ὅς come by; these will be the less likely to remark him, as their attention will be turned in quite another direction. If this was at all his expectation, he is disappointed in it; for ‘when Jesus came to the place He looked up ;’ and He, who knows how to find his own in the most unlikely places, who had seen Nathanael under the fig- tree, with sure and unerring glance discerned Zacchzeus in the sycomore, and at once laid bare his hiding-place ; addressing him by his name, for ‘ He calleth his own sheep by name’ (John x. 3); and drawing him forth from his concealment with that word, ‘ Zaccheus, make haste and come down. ‘This dealing of the Lord with Zaccheeus is not unlike his compelling of the woman with an issue of blood to come out of the crowd, and to confess before all that she had touched Him, and why (Luke viii. 47). Like that, it is meant for the overcoming of a false shame ; and the words are not without a certain delicate rebuke that he should have chosen that method of seeing the Lord, instead of coming boldly forward, and joining himself to his disciples. Yet that faint rebuke was made good at once by the very gracious words that follow: ‘for to-day I must abide at thy house ;1 words of an extraordinary grace, for while the Lord accepted many invitations into the houses of men (Luke vii. 36; xiv.), yet we do not read that He honoured any but this one by thus offering Himself to his hospitality. ‘Adopting the royal style, as the author of Hece Homo puts it well, ‘which was familiar to Him, and which commends the ‘loyalty of a vassal in the most delicate manner, by freely exacting his services, He informed Zacchzeus of his * Augustine (Serm. 113): Volebas videre transeuntem; hodie hic apud te invenies habitantem. 266 ZACCH 4 US. intention to visit him, and signified his pleasure that a banquet should be instantly prepared.’ The word of gracious command was not spoken in vain. Zaccheus was as ripe fruit, which dropped into the Saviour’s lap at his first and lightest touch: ‘ He made haste and came down, and received Him joyfully, Each had found what he was looking for, the Saviour - and the sinner; the Shepherd had found his sheep, and the sheep its Shepherd. Some, as usual, were displeased —as many as conceived of the Christ as a prince of Pharisees, rather than a Saviour of sinners. These, ‘ when they saw it, all murmured, saying, That He was gone to be a guest with a man that ts a sinner.* Could He not have chosen some other for his host? Jericho was a city of priests, as well as a city of publicans. The Talmudists tell us that there were almost as many priests there as at Jerusalem itself; so that it is a stroke from the life to introduce in the parable of the Good Samaritan the priest and the Levite, as passing exactly along that road which led from one of these cities where they dwelt to the other where their duties lay (Luke x. 31, 32).. With such a choice of hosts from whom to select, would it not have better become a preacher of righteousness to select some other than this sinner, whose house to honour with his presence? Surely it was ill done by a favour so signal to reverse that just sentence of social excom- munication under which the publicans, and Zacchzeus among the number, lay (Luke xv. 2). Probably the murmurers, with these words of discon- tent on their lips, with these thoughts of displeasure in * Augustine (Serm. 184): Hoe erat, reprehendere quod in domum groti intravit medicus. ZACCH AUS. 267 their hearts, followed to the house of Zaccheeus. But they meet there with a practical refutation of their dis- content ; there it is plainly shewn that the Lord had chosen well, when He chose this man for his host and entertainer. He was one who was as smoking flax, which they would have quenched outright, but which the Lord with only a breath of his mouth fanned into a light flame. Christ’s presence in Ais house forms a parallel by way of contrast to his presence in the house of the Pharisee (Luke vii. 36; cf. xiv. 1). There he could bring no blessing, for there was there no sense of need ; there the Pharisee esteemed that he was honouring the Lord, not that he was being honoured by Him. Some place what follows on the next day, assuming the Lord to have tarried a night under the roof of Zaccheus, and that on the following morning, perhaps as his divine guest was about to depart, Zaccheus stood forth and made this profession of a new life, with a making good, so far as this might be, of the faults of his old. Yet I cannot but esteem the ‘to-day’ of ver. 5 to be too clearly taken up by ‘this day’ of ver. 9, to allow of such a supposition.’ Rather the meal was ended at which he had been permitted to entertain his Lord ; and he then stood forth, making that practical answer to these murmurers, which ought to have silenced, and perhaps did silence some of them; for it shewed that he had not received the grace of God in vain; it shewed what the condescending love of the Saviour could effect, how it could separate a man for ever from his old conversation, * Nothing can be built on κιταλῦσα!, as though, which some urge, this must imply the tarrying foranight. We have in Xenophon (Anabd, τ. το. 19), καταλῦσαι τὸ στράτευμα πρὸς ἄριστον. 268 ZACCH AUS. to walk henceforward in newness of life. In the presence then of them all (see ver. 11), ‘ Zaccheeus,’ who had so long, like another Levi, sat at the receipt of custom, ‘stood,’ or stood forth, ‘and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor ; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation,’ I restore him fourfold. The present, ‘Z give,’ expresses the fixedness of his resolve. Although this distribution of his goods is still future, yet that future to him is as if actually present. To make it stand for a past, and to accept this ‘ Z give,’ and ‘ 7 restore, as an expression of his past conduct in the stewardship of this worldly mammon, as though Zacchzeus had been another Cornelius, ‘a devout man, which gave much alms to the people’ (Acts x. 2), isa curious missing and marring of the whole point of this incident, in fact a most notable piece of Pharisaic ex- egesis.” Zaccheeus might, and would even then, have * The verb συκοφαντεῖν occurs in the New Testament only here and at Luke iii. 144. It is rendered there, ‘to accuse falsely ;’ here ‘to take any- thing by false accusation ;’? andin the Geneva, ‘to take by forged cavillation.’ The use of the word as to defraud or to wring out by chicane is not un- common in the Greek orators. Rettig (Theoll. Stud. und Krit. 1838, p. 775) observes that, while the story of the forbidden export of figs from Attica, and of the συκοφάντης as one who denounced this, is, as all now admit, a later invention to explain the word, still it is so manifestly connected with σῦκον and φαίνειν, that in them the key to unlock its meaning must be looked for. He suggests that the συκοφάντης was originally one who informed against him who made to the State too small returns of his property for the purposes of taxation; and the figtree being a chief source of wealth in Attica, informed against him who returned the number of these, or the crop derived from them, below the mark. He observes that συκόβιος, an informer, and συκάζειν--- συκοφαντεῖν, both point in the same direction. *Maldonatus: Aliqui interpretantur quasi antequam ad ipsum Christus venisset, solitus fuisset dimidiam bonorum suorum partem pauperibus dare, et si quid quem defraudasset, quadruplum reddere. Cyprian (De Op. et Eleem.) is one of these; but many more adhere to the true interpretation, as Irensus (Con. Her. iv. 12), who sees in this to which Zaccheus adjudges himself, solutionem preterite cupiditatis; and Tertullian, Adv. Ma-cion. LV. 395 ZACCH AUS. 269 needed the higher righteousness of Christ, but he would scarcely have been until this day one of the ‘lost. Salvation would not on that day have first come to his house. But itis not thus. All this which he now an- nounces of a giving of his own, and a restoring of that which is another’s, is rather to be taken as the first-fruits of Christ’s visit, the outward utterance of the mighty in- ward change that had passed upon him. Now is he a righteous man according to that rule of the prophet (Ezek. xviii. 21, 22 ; xxxili. 15), and his name and he are agreed.’ Yet while the words, ‘/f 7 have taken anything from any man, must not be regarded as expressing only a possible case, which the speaker regards as very impro- bably an actual, neither must they be pressed too far in the other direction. It is not,indeed, such a confident clearing of himself as Samuel’s (1 Sam. xii. 3); yet neither, on the other hand, is it to be accepted as the confession and admission of an habitual unrighteousness, a free allowing _ of himself hitherto in chicane and wrong. Zacchzeus had been hitherto no extortioner. Had he been so, had he been conscious that his were in the main treasures of wickedness, gotten together by fraud and wrong, it would have been ridiculous to offer as a gift half of them to the poor, before it was seen whether the whole would satisfy the demands of justice, might not be swallowed up in acts of restitution, with such addition as the law re- quired. Without, however, having been this extortioner, he yet feels that, according to that higher standard of right which he recognizes now, some of his gains may prove to * "NDT=justus. Without restitution, as Augustine (Zp. liv. ad Maced.) says well, posnitentia non agitur, sed fingitur. 270 ZACCH AUS. have been unfairly acquired ; for,as the Italian proverb has it, there is seldom a great stream into which some turbid water has not entered. Any such injustice he will make largely good, even to a fourfold restitution, calmly adjudging against himself that which David in his ex- treme indignation adjudged against him that had taken his neighbour’s lamb (2 Sam. xii. 6), imposing a maximum of penalty on himself; much more than the law save in some exceptional cases required (Exod. xxi. 9). The words that follow are spoken ¢o Zaccheeus, but in the hearing of the multitude, and for them no less than for him. This appears in the third person, under which he is addressed. As meant for him, they are an acceptance, on the Lord’s part, of this offering of his goods as the true expression of a higher offering, even of a dedication of himself to God: * This day is salvation come to this house.’ As addressed to the multitude, they contain a further justification of the grace shewn to this man that was a sinner. Sinner as he is, salvation has yet come to his house, ‘forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham’ (cf. xiii. 16); one therefore to whom this mercy was due ; for their view, as may here be fitly observed, is worthy of no acceptance who assume Zacchzeus to have been a heathen, and the Lord therefore to style him ‘a son of Abraham’ only in an ethical sense, a follower, that is, of the faith of Abraham (Matt. iii.g; Rom. iv. 12). It is well known that some, both in ancient and modern times, * On the words ‘to this house,’ rather than ‘to this man,’ Grotius deli- cately remarks, ut ostendat relatam hospitii gratiam. Yet hardly so; the parallel is to be rather found in such passages as Acts xvi. 33, 34. It is doubtless for the sake of this verse that this Scripture supplies in the Roman Catholic Church the Gospel for the service on the occasion of the dedication of churches. ZACCH ΖΚ US. 271 have so understood it, or at least have suggested this as possible, but in the face of all evidence alike external and internal. Zaccheeus (Zaccai) is a Jewish name, oc- curring Ezra ii.g; Nehem. vii. 14; 2 Macc. x. 19, and in the Talmud. Had he been not merely ‘a sinner,’ but ‘a sinner of the Gentiles, the murmuring multitudes would assuredly have urged as the head and front of Christ’s offending, not ‘that He was gone to be a guest with a sinner, but with ‘a@ Gentile’-—which, indeed, would have been in their sight so enormous an ageravation of the offence, that it would have been impossible they should pass it over without notice. Neither did it belong to the fitness of the Lord’s earthly life, ‘a minister’ as He was ‘of the circumcision, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers’ (Rom. xv. 8), that He should violate the ordinances and customs of the Jews, which, so acting, He would have done (Acts x. 28; xi. 2, 3; Gal. ii. 12). As little can any argument be founded on that word ‘dost, as applied to Zacchzeus; for elsewhere the Lord speaks of ‘the dost sheep of the house of Israel; and if, as surely is the case, the gulf between what a man is, and what he was intended to be, is the truly tragic thing in his destinies, is that which alone furnishes the proper measure of his loss and of his fall, who, then, so ‘Jost’ as a son of Abraham, that, not being a heathen, was yet sunk down to a level with the heathen? Such was Zacchzeus; and such ‘lost’ as he was the Son of man declares that He was come ‘fo seek and to save. This said, He seems to have moved forward without *Thus Tertullian (Adv. Mare. iv. 37: Zaccheus, allophylus fortasse), Oyprian, Chrysostom, Maldonatus, Stella, and others. Some, on the other hand, have identified him with Matthias, the future apostle; Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iv. 6) for example. 272 ZACCH EUS. further delay on his journey toward Jerusalem, leaving that ‘house’ poorer in this world’s riches, certainly by one half, and probably by more than one half, than if He had never entered into it; and yet, as He Himself de- clares, how immeasurably richer too; for One bringing salvation had lodged within it; and, though He was now quitting it for ever, the salvation which He had brought with Him remained behind. 14. THE TRUE VINE. John xy. 1-6. Many interpreters have thought it necessary to look in the external world for some object which will have sug- gested this similitude to the mind of the Lord. Some, for example, who suppose that his ‘ Arise, let us go hence,’ with which the preceding chapter concluded, was not acted on at once, but that He lingered still, have imagined to themselves a spreading vine, whose branches found their way into the chamber in which He and his disciples had just celebrated their last'supper together (Ps. exxvill. 3). But surely those words of his, ‘ Arise, let us go hence,’ leave no room for this supposition. On the part of the disciples there could have been no tarrying, after they had received such a summons; and when the Lord used these words, He must have intended what He said. When others suggest that passing, as He may very well have done, through a vineyard on his way to the brook Kedron, He found his motive there, one can only reply that this and every other suggestion of like kind appear merely and altogether superfluous ; that it becomes us far better to believe that, as all worlds, natural and spiritual, lay ever open before Him, and the innermost essences of things, so he drew freely from this inexhaus- tible storehouse whatever was most adapted to his present T 274 THE TRUE VINE. need. There was quite enough to suggest this image of closest union between Him and his people in that sacra- ment of union, which had just been instituted by Him, and in which He had declared of the fruit of the vine, of the ‘ pure blood of the grape’ (Gen. xlix. 11 ; Deut. xxxii. 14), blessed and consecrated by Him, ‘This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed, for many for the remission of sins.’ We may dismiss then, as unnecessary, all speculations on the external motive which He found for this discourse. At the same time when our Lord affirms of Himself, ‘Iam the true vine, with what, it may be very fitly asked, does He liken Himself, over what claim a superiority ; for in that ‘true’ He manifestly claims actually to be what some other persons or things falsely pretended to be, or else to be fully and perfectly what they only par- tially, adequately, and most imperfectly were? The word which He employs is decisive that it is the latter which He intends ;' to keep which in mind will help us much to understand what follows. And first, He certainly does not liken Himself, which is Lampe’s suggestion, to that golden vine of exquisite workmanship, a symbol no doubt of the theocracy, which was one of the chief orna- ments of Herod’s temple, nor avouch Himself as ‘ the true vine, by comparison with it. And if not to that dead work of man’s art and device, as little does He name Himself ‘the true vine, as contradistinguished from the ‘ For the distinction between ἀληθής and ἀληθινός see my Synonyms of the New Testament, § 8. ᾿Αληθῆς (=verax) is the true as set over against the false (Rom. iii. 4); ἀληθινός (=verus) is the true as set over against the imperfect, the inadequate, that which has at best but types, shadows, and outlines of the truth; as Origen puts it well, πρὸς ἀντιδιαστολὴν σκιᾶς καὶ τύπου καὶ εἰκόνος (cf. Johni. 9; vi. 32; Heb. viii. 2). THE TRUE VINE. 275 natural plant. Not a few have understood Him thus. Tholuck, for example, has done so: ‘The Saviour would intimate here that the relation which finds place between the vine and its branches is one which reveals itself in its highest potency in the spiritual relation between the Saviour and them that believe on Him; the kingdom of nature being a prophecy of the kingdom of grace, so that in this last are found continually the fulfilments of the pro- phecies of the kingdom of nature.’’ This last, being most true, and earth the shadow of heaven, and the things on earth the copies of things in the heavens, is yet not the truth of this passage. An antagonism far deeper, and moving far more distinctly in the region of moral and spiritual things, the Lord would indicate here. The key to the right understanding of this statement lies, as was long ago noted by Grotius,’ in some words of Jeremiah, ‘ Yet I had planted thee a noble vine; wholly a right seed; how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto Me?’ (ii. 21) and Christ, claiming to be ‘the true vine’ claims perfectly to realize in Himself that divine idea which Israel after the flesh had altogether failed to fulfil. Set as this ‘right seed, it had become ‘an empty vine, which brought forth fruit to itself (Hos. x. 1), and none to God; and should end in becoming that ‘vine of the earth,’ the clusters of whose grapes should be cast into the winepress of the wrath of God (Rev. xiv. 18-20). In confirmation of this view it is hardly * So Maldonatus: Quia melius et perfectius homines in se per fidem natos nutrit, quam sarmenta sua naturalis vitis. * Ergo cum se illam veram vitem vocat, intelligit sibi demum excellenter competere ista epitheta, Jer. ii. 21. Genuina, non fera vitis. 3 Ἐγὼ δὲ ἐφύτευσά σε ἄμπελον καρποφόρον, πᾶσαν ἀληθινήν: πῶς ἐστράφης εἰς πικρίαν, ἡ ἄμπελος ἡ ἀλλοτρία; (LXX.) τ2 276 THE TRUE VINE. necessary to observe that not in these passages only, but continually in the Old Testament the Jewish Church is set forth as a vine or vineyard (Ps. Ixxx. 8-16; Isai. v. 15, Cant. νὴ]. 11; Ezek. xix. 10-14), is rebuked for not being a true vine, for bearing grapes of Gomorrah, bitter fruit or none (Isai. v. 4; Deut. xxxii. 32; cf. 2 Kin. iv. 39), our Lord taking up the same language in the New (Luke xiii. 6; Matt. xxi. 33). But what Israel should have been, and was not, this Christ, the true Israel, was. ‘And my Kather is the husbandman.* This passage was a very favorite one with the Arians ; as many slight allusions or longer discussions on the part of those who took share in the Church’s great conflict with these gain- sayers, abundantly attest. The reason is obvious. The doctrinal statement of this verse, not qualified by other statements, was capable of being made to imply an entire subordination on the part of the Son to the Father, the relations in fact of a creature to a Creator. Augustine and other theologians before him are careful to reply that it is in his humanity that Christ is ‘the true vine. It was of the very essence of his mediatorial work, of the days- man who should lay his hands upon both, that as on the * The word which our Lord uses here is γεωργός, not ἀμπελουργός. It is true that ἀμπελουργός would more directly designate the actual cultivator of the vine, whose own hands dress and prune it; yet at the same time his office is altogether a subordinate one (see Luke xiii. 7); while γεωργός, by Philo distinguished from γεωπόνος or the actual labourer, in no way marks out a humble social status, as is sufficiently shown by such a passage as 2 Chron. xxvi. 10, where of King Uzziah it is said that he was a ‘husband- man’ (γεωργὸς 7”). Noah in like manner is called ἄνθρωπος γεωργὸς γῆς (Gen. ix. 20). So too by the γεωργοί of Matt. xxi. 33-41 are intended the chiefs and leaders of the Jewish theocracy. Not that the γεωργός need in the least be assumed to ‘pwrge’ or prune only by the hand of others. The labour of the vineyard is exactly of that lighter kind, in which the pro- prietor might be well pleased himself to take a share. THE TRUE VINE. 277 one side He could say, ‘I and my Father are one, so upon the other, ‘I and my brethren are one; and He is here asserting the latter relation, not excluding the former.’ But while the vine and the vine-branches must thus both be partakers of the same nature, for He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified must both be of one (Heb. ii. 11), He will presently challenge for Him- self, as Augustine does not fail to notice,’ a share in the work of the husbandman, an office, which, only as He is one with the husbandman of this allegory, He could have any right to challenge for his own. He too has power to purge or cleanse through his word (ver. 3). Neither, when we affirm that in his humanity He was ‘ the true vine, may we leave out of sight for a moment, that it was a divine humanity in which he was this, in a humanity united to his divinity, ennobled, deified, through this union; for only so could it have become a life-giving humanity to the world.’ Affirming his Father to be ‘the husbandman, He excludes none from his Father’s husbandry—not even, as * Ambrose (De Fide, iv. 12): Illud quoque ad separandam Patris et Filii divinitatem objicere consueverunt, quia Dominus dixit in Evangelio, Ego sum vitis vera, et Pater meus agricola est ; agricolam et vitem diverse esse nature dicentes, et vitem in agricole esse potestate. Ambrose answers rightly: Dominus vitem se esse dixit, incarnationis sus significans sacra- mentum. Basil the Great (Con. Hunom. iv. 3) puts the argument of the Arians: εἰ ἄμπελος, φασὶν, ὁ Σωτὴρ, κλήματα δὲ ἡμεῖς, γεωργὸς δὲ ὁ Πατήρ' τὰ δὲ κλήματα ὁμοφυῆ μὲν τῇ. ἀμπέλῳ, ἡ δὲ ἄμπελος οὐχ ὁμοφυὴς τῷ γεωργῷ, ὁμο- φυὴς μὲν ἡμῖν ὁ Ὑἱὸς, καὶ μέρος ἡμεῖς αὐτοῦ, οὐχ ὁμοφυὴς δὲ ὁ Ὑἱὸς τῷ Πατρὶ, ἀλλὰ κατὰ πάντα ἀλλότριος. Basil replies as Ambrose. ? Augustine: Denique cum de Patre tanquam de agricola dixisset, quod infructuosos palmites tollat, fructuosos autem purget, ut plus afferant fruc- tum; continuo etiam seipsum mundatorem palmitum ostendens, Jam vos, inquit, mundi estis propter sermonem quem locutus sum vobis. Ecce et ipse mundator est palmituin, quod est agricole, non vitis, officium. * Augustine: Quamvis autem Christus vitis non esset, nisi homo esset, tamen istam gratiam palmitibus non preberet, nisi etiam Deus esset. 278 THE TRUE VINE. Chrysostom will have it, Himself, the vine, any more than his disciples, the vine-branches. He too learned obedi- ence by the things which He suffered. All the trial and temptation of his walk upon earth, all ‘the contradiction of sinners’ which was allowed to come upon Hin, all in which it pleased the Father to bruise Him and put Him to grief (Isai. 111. 10), all the awaking of the sword against Him, Jehovah’s fellow (Zech. xiii. 7), this was throughout the discipline of his Father’s love; to which He was submitted the first, that He might so become a pattern to all those who came after. ‘ Wonder not,’ He would implicitly say to his disciples, ‘at the sufferings which are coming upon Me; they are part of my Father’s husbandry ; still less: wonder at your own; for “if these things be done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry ?” ’—all being ‘ dry trees’ when brought into com- parison with Him. That suffering which to flesh and blood is always so unwelcome He sets here in how com- forting a light. It is a mark of the watchful care with which the heavenly husbandman is tending the vine, and the branches of the vine. ‘ Hvery branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away. There are then branches 7x Him, which are unfruitful, and which therefore are removed. Christ here anticipates the future condition of his Church; He contemplates a Church in which men shall find them- selves im Him; as all infants baptized into Christ are in Him; planted together in the likeness of his death; but for whom it remains themselves to determine whether by believing and obeying, they shall make the potential blessings of this position actually their own; whether that fellowship with Christ, which has been so freely given to THE TRUE VINE. 279 them, shall unfold itself into the-new creation, into the whole Christian life; whether faith shall keep open the channels through which the power and grace and strength of Christ may flow into the soul, or unbelief shall stop them. The branches which shall have thus doomed themselves to unfruitfulness ‘ He taketh away. In the natural world branches of the vine, which are not good for that to which they were specially ordained, namely for the bearing of fruit, are good for nothing. There are trees which may be turned to secondary uses, if they fail to fulfil their primary. Not so the vine. As timber it is utterly valueless (Ezek. xv. 3,4). Itis with it exactly as with the saltless salt, which, having lost its savour, is fit only to be cast out of doors; both of them being meet emblems of the spiritual man who is not spiritual, who is good neither for the work of this world nor of a higher. But on this ‘ He taketh away’ what further might be fitly said may be better reserved for _ ver. 6, where the doom of the barren branches is more in detail set forth. ‘And every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth* it, that ait may bring forth more fruit.” They assuredly are right who recognize in this ‘ He purgeth’ no direct, but only a secondary, allusion to temptations and afflictions, as the 1 Alper, καθαίρει: suavis rhythmus, as Bengel observes; but it is nothing more, for the words are not related to one another. 3 Pliny (Hist. Nat. xiv. 14): [Numa] ex imputata vite libari vina diis, nefas statuit; ratione excogitaté ut putare cogerentur, alias aratores, et pigri circa pericula arbusti; cf. c. xxii. From whomsoever this remarkable prohibition came, it had, we may be quite sure, a much deeper meaning than that merely economical which the Roman naturalist (naturalist in both senses of this word), ascribes to it here; has its points of contact with Heb. xii. 5-11, its dim reachings-out after a symbolic setting forth of the truth which there is declared. 280 THE TRUE VINE. means by which this purging is effected. It is the whole process of sanctification, the circumcision of the Spirit, by whatever discipline brought about, of which Christ is speaking, and to which He pledges his Father here. At the same time, seeing that afflictions play so large, so necessary a part in this process of sanctification, it is in a secondary sense most true that there is here a reference to these. Regarded as a means of this purifying, as an evidence of the intention of the heavenly husband- man that the fruit-bearing branches shall be more fruitful still, these may be welcomed, may be contemplated in some sort as rewards of obedience. St. James bids the faithful to welcome them, for the blessing they bring with them (i. 2-4, 12), and compare Heb. ΧΙ]. 11; Rom. v. 3-5. To how many dealings of God with his own, mysterious, inscrutable, inexplicable otherwise, will this, kept properly in mind, furnish us with a key. Oftentimes the fine gold of some saint appears to us as if cleansed from all its dross; but the inexorable refiner, who sees with other eyes than ours, and detects remains of dross where we see only gold, flings it again into the furnace, that so it may be purer yet. Augustine has a striking image in illustration. Many a time, he observes, a por- trait seems perfect in the judgment of all eyes save those of the artist who drew it. Others would fain see him now to hold his hand; they count that he cannot improve it, perhaps may mar it; but he returns it to the easel, touches and retouches still. And why? Because, being this artist, there floats before his mind’s eye an ideal per- fection, to which hitherto his work has not attained; but to which he would fain see it approach more nearly yet. ‘Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken THE TRUE VINE. 281 unto you’—‘ clean’ and yet needing to be ‘ cleansed.’1 We have a hint here of the mystery of that double relation in which every believing man stands to God, of that double relation which is more fully and dogmatically stated in some of the Pauline Epistles; but which is yet distinctly anticipated here, and at John xili.10. The faithful in Christ Jesus are ‘ clean, being by faith justified from all things, and having thus a standing-ground before God; which yet is in some sort an ideal one,—their actual state, although ever approximating to this, yet still failing to correspond to it,—they therefore needing by the same faith to appropriate ever more and more of that sanctifying grace, those purifying influences, which continually stream forth from Him on all them that are his; and by aid of which He is bringing them ¢o de all that, which for his sake his Father has been already willing to regard them.’ 1 Καθαροί, and yet of those whom the husbandman καθαίρει (ver. 2). Here there is a real connexion between the words, which we would gladly have seen reproduced in our Version. Augustine: Mundi atque mundandi. Neque enim, nisi mundi essent, fructum ferre potuissent; et tamen omnem, qui fert fructum, purgat agricola, ut fructum plus afferat. Fert fructum, quia mundus est; atque ut plus afferat, purgatur adhue. Quis enim in hac vita sic mundus, ut non sit magis magisque mundandus? * Gerhard (Harm. Evang. 177): Quia dixerat Patrem purgare palmites fructuosos Christo insitos, ideo docet duplicem esse purgationem, videlicet purgationem primam, que est ipsa justificativ in remissione peccatorum consistens, atque insitionem in Christum, veram illam vitem, indivulso nexu conjunctam habens; et purgationem secundam, que consistit in quotidiand renovatione ac veteris Adami mortificatione, ques non semel tantum fit, sicut regeneratio et in vitem insitio, sed singulis diebus repetitur, et per totam vitam continuatur. . . . Quia mundatio fit per verbum, ergo non immediate, sed per ministros Ecclesies verbum predicantes et sacramenta administrantes, qui in hoc mundationis opere sunt Dei συνεργοί (1 Cor. iii. 9). . . . Christus non dicit, Mundi estis propter sermonem, quem inspiravi vobis, sed, quem locutus sum vobis. Ergo verbo pradicato et audito vim mundandi tribuit, quam ipso actu exserit, si fide recipitur. 282 THE TRUE VINE. ‘ Abide in Me, and Tin you. As the branch cannot bear Srut of itself, except τέ abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in Me. Our Lord in his first words here does not say, as He is so often taken to say, ‘ If you abide in Me, I will also abide in you.’ The second clause in this sentence is not promise, any more than the first ; they are precept both: ‘ Take heed that ye abide in Me, and that I abide in you.’ The next verse, where the same words recur, and still more ver. 7, are decisive on this matter; see also vi. 56. It is of course only in a very restricted sense that the relations between Him and them are mutual. There is no correlation of forces. He is throughout and only a giver, they are throughout and only receivers.” The mystical use of this word ‘ to abide,’ representing as it does the innermost fellowship and com- munion of the faithful with their Lord, and of their Lord with them, and occasionally representing a higher mystery still (John xiv. 10; xv. 10), is peculiar to St. John, but is very frequent both in his Gospel and in his Epistles, in the language of his Lord, and in his own which he has learned from that Lord.’ * We must not therefore complete κἀγὼ ἐν ὑμῖν with μενῶ, but with μείνω. Bengel gives it well: Facite ut maneatis in me, δύ ut ego maneam in vobis. Godet’s words are worth quoting here (Comm. sur U Bvang. de S. Jean): En moi exprime Vétat dans lequel le chrétien fait abstraction de tout ce qui est sa sagesse, sa force, son mérite propre, pour puiser tout en Christ, sous ces différents rapports, par Vintime aspiration de la foi. Et e’est ld unique condition de Vactivité de Christ en nous. Jésus le fait sentir en supprimant ἃ dessein le verbe dans la proposition suivante. Z¢ moi en vous. Par cette ellipse il enveloppe le second de ces deux faits dans Je premier de telle sorte que Ἰὰ ot le premier s’accomplit, le second ne peut manquer d’arriver. De cette maniére l’action de Christ est mise hardiment sous l’empire de notre liberté, aussi bien que la nétre propre. ? Augustine: Ita in vite palmites sunt, ut viti non conferant, sed inde accipiant, unde vivant ; ita vero vitis est in palmitibus, ut vitale alimentum subministret eis, non sumat ab eis. * Besides the μένειν ἐν ἐμοί here, or ἐν αὐτῶ (1 Ep. ii. 6) we have also ‘ THE TRUE VINE. 283 ‘I am the vine, ye are the branches. Our Lord willingly repeats great truths which He would deeply imprint on the minds of his disciples ; thus see John ili. 3, 5; vi. 48, 51; but in those places, as in this, with a variation, with a greater fulness on the second occasion than on the first, or with some other modification, which sufficiently justi- fies the repetition. In the present instance He now for the first time explicitly calls the disciples ‘the branches, however there may have been as much involved in words which He had uttered already. So, too, while He had already declared the abiding in Him to be the one con- dition of all fruit-bearing, He adds a promise now, that he who abides in Him shall not only bear fruit, but shall bear it abundantly : ‘He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit ; for without Me ye can do nothing.’ It is a poor and inadequate interpretation of these last words to make them to mean, ‘Ye can do nothing until ye are in Me, and have my grace.’ It is rather, ‘ After ye are in Me, ye can even then accomplish nothing except as ye draav life and strength from Me; only through a putting forth of my power which is in you can ye com- mence, carry forward, or bring any work to a good effect. From first to last it is I that must work in and through you. We have a warning here to the regenerate man that he never seek to do aught of himself; not a declara- tion that the unregenerate is unable to do aught. Christ does not mean, ‘Out of and apart from Me ye are power- μένειν ἐν τῇ ἀγάπῃ (XV. 9); ἐν τῷ λόγῳ (Vili. 31); ἐν τῷ φωτί (1 Ep. ii. 10); ἐν τῇ διδαχῇ (2 Ep. ix.) ; ἐν τῷ Πατρί (1 Ep. ii. 24); ἐν τῷ Θεῳ (1 Ep. iv. 16); all expressing, though from slightly different points of view, the same blessed and transcendant truth; and then, as the fearful contrast to all these, there is the μένειν ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ (xii. 46); ἐν τῷ θανάτῳ (x Ep. iii. 14). 284 THE TRUE VINE. less for good ;’ but, ‘ Being in Me, only through putting forth of my power, suffering Me effectually to work in and through you, can you accomplish anything ’— a truth which needs to be evermore repeated, for it is evermore in danger of being forgotten by us. The words are frequently appealed to by Augustine and others engaged in controversy with the Pelagians of old;* even as in the formularies and symbolic books of the Reformed Churches they constantly appear as a dictum probans against all open or covert Pelagianism. ‘If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and 15 withered’ (cf. Ezek. xvii. 24; Matt. xxi.19; Mark xi. 20, 21; Luke xxiii. 31). Some will fain have it that in giving these words their spiritual significance we must reverse their order, urging that the branch, because withered, is therefore cast forth, and not, .because cast forth, therefore withered. But it is not so, either in the natural world or the spiritual; and there is no sufficient reason for deserting the actual sequence. of Christ’s words, which only the strongest necessity should compel us to abandon. But, so far from such necessitye existing, the declaration, as it now stands, yields a lesson the most solemn, one which, changing the order of the words, we should in good part miss. An unfruitful branch is not ‘withered, when broken off from its parent stock and stem ; on the contrary, it retains a deceitful greenness and * Thus Augustine (δ. duas Ep. Pelag. ii. 8): Dominus autem ut respon- deret futuro Pelagio, non ait, Sine me difficilé potestis aliquid facere, sed ait, Sine me nihil potestis facere. Et ut responderet futuris etiam istis in eidem ipsi EvangelicA sententid, non ait, Sine me nihil potestis perficere, sed, facere. Nam si perficere dixisset, possent isti respondere, non ad incipi- ἡ endum bonum, quod a nobis est, sed ad perficiendum, esse Dei adjutorium necessarium. Dominus cum ait, Sine me nihil potestis facere, hoc uno verbo initium finemque comprehendit. THE TRUE VINE. 285 freshness fora little while ; deceitful, because upon all this the sentence of death has irrevocably passed. Churches, which, through abandonment of the Catholic faith, indi- viduals who, by unbelief and by the sins which spring from unbelief, have separated themselves off, and in the awful but secret judgments of God have been separated off, from Christ their Head, may keep for a while the show and semblance of life, may deceive others, may deceive even themselves—so long, that is, as any residue of that good thing which they have gotten from Christ remains. But little by little, sooner or later, they come to an end of all which they took with them. It fails and dies out, and, once wasted and gone, there is nothing to replace it; and thus death, moral and spiritual, steals over all; they are ‘withered, this withering of theirs being not seldom evi- dent to the eyes of all. “And men gather them; or, better, ‘and they gather them, bring them together into one bundle of death,’ leaving who the gatherers are in the awful obscurity which rests upon it in the original. Some words of Isaiah, ‘ When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off; the women come, and set them on fire’ (xxvii. 11), constitute an interesting parallel. The ga- therers are the angels, the ministers of the divine anger, to whom the final execution of the divine judgments is everywhere committed (Matt. xiii. 41, 49; xxiv. 31; Luke xix. 24; Rev. xix. 24). ‘And cast them into the fire, and they are burned ;’ or, in its simplicity more terrible still, and they burn’ cf. Ezek. xv. 4). But all which is here expressed or implied, of ‘ the fire’ (Matt. iii. 10), ‘ the flame’ (Luke 1 Συνάγουσι: of. συλ λέξουσι, Matt. xiii. 41; and Isai. xxiv. 2. 286 THE TRUE VINE. Xvi. 24), ‘the flaming fire’ (2 Thess. i. 8), ‘the furnace of fire’ (Matt. xiii. 42, 50), ‘the gehenna of fire’ (Matt. v. 22; Mark ix. 43), ‘the lake of fire’ (Rev. xx. 15; xxi. 8), ‘the everlasting fire’ (Matt. xxv. 41; Jude 7), with all the secrets of anguish which words like these, if there be any truth in words, must involve, demands rather to be trembled at than needs to be expounded. We pause here. It is true that echoes and remi- niscences of this allegory still recur through the chapter, very distinctly in the next three or four verses, where exhortations are clothed in imagery which it offers, pro- mises linked with a fulfilling by disciples, of all which the fact of being branches in Him implies, means by which these shall abide in his love declared; but these reminiscences are ever growing weaker and weaker; the vine and the vine-branches more and more fade out of sight ; so that after this verse there is nothing which of necessity links itself on to this allegory, or which would not be perfectly intelligible without any reference to it, and supposing that Christ had never uttered it. Here, therefore, is the fittest place to pause. 15. THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. Luke xxiii. 39-43. We might beforehand have anticipated that, were the history of the penitent malefactor recorded in one Gospel only, it would be in the Gospel of St. Luke; which is above all the Gospel of pardon and grace, and among the Gospels the correlative of the Pauline Epistles among the Epistles. St. Luke, the companion of St. Paul, lays, more than any other Evangelist, the groundwork upon which the latter builds ; teaching historically that which St. Paul teaches dogmatically, namely, that where sin abounded, grace did much more abound (vii. 47; Xv.; xix. 10). We have in the history before us an example, and a very notable one, of that wondrous law of selection, according to which, out of the inexhaustible treasure-house of our Lord’s sayings and doings upon earth, each Evangelist severally appropriates that which agrees best with his special purpose and aim. Such a law we may continually recognize, so soon as the eye is once opened to look for and expect it. We read in the verses which immediately precede this wondrous story, of the wild flood of blasphemy and scorn which foamed and raged so fiercely round the foot of the 288 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. cross ; how his soul that hung on that cross was pierced and stabbed with taunts and reproaches, with words of malignity and hate, sharper and keener far than the nails which had torn his hands and his feet, or the spear which should penetrate his side. We read how heathen and Jew, as in a dreadful rivalry, vied with one another, which should heap most of outrage upon the Christ of God; the very chiefs of the Jewish nation, throwing off not merely all dignity, but all decency and decorum, and in the fierce delight of gratified hatred not caring to main- tain even the religious hypocrisies which should have hindered them from openly rejoicing in the sufferings of another, being the first and foremost of all in this crucifying afresh, this moral crucifixion superinduced upon the phy- sical, of the Son of God (Heb. vi. 6). And then, as though to crown all, St. Matthew (xxvii. 38) and St. Mark (xv. 32) relate that two fellow-sufferers with our Lord, two who, fulfilling the prophecy made long before (Isai. liii. g, 12), were crucified with Him, fell in with and took up the taunts of the crowd, railed upon Him, mocked his pre- tensions, bade Him, if He were the Christ, to save Himself and them—a fearful example, whether one only, or, for a while at least, both acted thus, that the Greek proverb which ascribes to sufferings such a teaching power,’ comes not always true, that there are whom their own suffer- ings and the just punishments of God do not soften, but only harden and exasperate the more; so that they may howl upon their bed, nay, writhe upon their cross, and yet not repent them of the evil which has provoked these plagues, but only go forward, adding new sin to their ? Παθήματα, μαθήματα, or in Latin, Nocumenta, documenta. THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 289 old, fierce, impenitent, and defiant to the last (Rev. xvi. 9, 11 2; 2 Chron, xx vl, 22). St. Luke, indeed, tells us that not both, but that ‘one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on Him, saying, If Thou be Christ, save Thyself and us” A question presents itself here, Does the statement of the earlier Evangelists, and the necessity of harmonizing the several relations, require us to assume that he, who later in the day became a penitent, joined at first in these blasphemous ravings of his fellow-malefactor and of the multitude, and only after a while separated his lot from theirs, being convinced and converted by all the wondrous evidences of a divine grace and love which shone out in the suffering Lord? ΤῸ this, which of course enhances the marvel of his conversion, making it still more sudden and mira- culous, many interpreters in all ages have considered themselves bound by the statements of the preceding Evangelists; as counting that only by such an assump- tion was it possible to reconcile St. Luke’s account with theirs. Thus Chrysostom,’ Theophylact, Leo the Great.’ Ambrose is more doubtful.* Augustine, on the contrary, is strong that one only blasphemed,’ urging as a parallel ’ The effects of crucifixion were very various on those who endured it. While the Christian martyrs would praise God from their cross, or exhort the beholders to embrace that faith for the sake of which they were willing to endure even that worst, some would spit on the bystanders (Seneca, De Vitd Beatd, 19), or reveal hidden iniquities of their former life, or blaspheme their judge, to render which last impossible it was not unfrequent to gag them ; Cicero mentions a slave whose tongue was cut out before crucifixion for fear of inconvenient revelations which he might make from his cross (Pre Cluent. 66; cf. Justin, Hist. xxii. 7). * See Suicer, Thes. 5. v. λῃστής. * Usque ad crucem reus, fit Christi repente confessor. 4 Fortasse et iste prius conviciatus est. ° De Cons. Evang. iii. 16. U 200)" THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. case the words of Heb. xi. 33, ‘they stopped the mouths of lions,’ when, in fact, it was but one, namely Daniel, who did so; ‘they were sawn asunder ;’ when, in all like- lihood, the allusion is but to one, namely to Isaiah. His parallel cases do not seem to me very convincing, yet, on the whole, I must decidedly incline to the conclusion at which he has arrived. The internal evidence in its favourisstrong. The rebuke with which the penitent malefactor rebukes his fellow is very little like that of one, who has just been partaker in the sin which he condemns. His deliberate remonstrance, with no word of reference to himself, ‘ Dost not thou fear God, being in the same condemnation? sounds not at all like the re- monstrance of one,—would have fitted ill, in that shape at least, to the lips of one,—who had just before been joining in the blasphemies, which all of a sudden he condemns.’ Up to the moment when his fellow-malefactor joined in the railings of the multitude, he, we may suppose, had listened in silence ; the work of grace which had begun in him sometime since, in his prison perhaps, going rapidly forward; for all around him and about him was such as would rapidly ripen a man for heaven, or for hell. The other it ripened for hell, him for heaven. He had heard all—in silence, though with deep horror of soul; but now he can keep silence no longer. There is a time to speak (Kccles. iii. 7), as well as a time to keep silence, and now for him that time has arrived. ᾿ In that ‘Save Thyself and us, in that plural ‘us,’ the other is seeking to draw him into the same blasphemy with * Cajetan : Προ namque verba sonant non peenitentem convicii proprii, sed increpantem alterius, quod simul cum aliis insultet Jesu. THE PHENITENT MALEFACTOR. 291 himself, is presenting this as the common taunt of them both. Need is therefore that he should speak, that he should separate himself off by a clear and distinct avowal from the other’s sin, and not, by any longer holding his peace, become partaker of it. ‘The English Version here, ‘Dost not thou fear God?’ is doubly at fault, missing the emphasis twice. Read rather, ‘Nether dost thou fear God?’ ‘It is nothing so strange,’ he would say, ‘ that these secure sinners, whom justice has not yet overtaken, for whom God’s judgments are as yet far out of sight, should dare thus to open their mouths against the Holy One of God; but thou, upon thy cross, with such teaching as that might give thee, with such evidence as that affords that God is not mocked, that men eat the fruit of their doings, dost thou venture upon the same? nevther dost thou fear God?’* He goes on, ‘ being in the same condemnation. Two reasons are here alleged why he should have refused to become partaker of the sin of those mockers ; the first, which already lay in that ques- tion we have just dealt with, that he was in condemna- tion, that judgment had overtaken him ; the second, that Jesus was a fellow-sufferer ; community of suffering might have well inspired forbearance and pity of the one for the other. And then, lest this word should seem to imply that they all shared in a common cross because they had *Maldonatus: Non dubito quin bonus 1116 et fidelis latro perversum illum latronem cum Judeis voluerit comparare, que comparatio in illa dic- tione nec obscure delitescit; quasi dicat, Non solum illi qui pend carent, sed nec tu, qui in eAdem pond es, Deum times? Oorn. ἃ Lapide: Esto, Scribe et Judei liberi et validi non timeant Deum, ideoque subsannent Christum; tu tamen, qui in cruce torqueris et ad mortem tendis, deberes timere Deum. U2 292 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. shared in a common or like crime, he separates and distinguishes between Christ’s cross and theirs. The condemnation indeed is common to all; but not so the guilt ; ‘and we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds ; but this man hath done nothing amiss ; so far from having committed enormous crimes, as we have, there is no smallest fault or error in Him;’—another reason why he should be spared these outrages and insults. If these are for any, they are for the wicked, not for the holy.’ Let us, before proceeding further, endeavour to realize to ourselves what manner of persons these ‘ malefactors’ probably were, how they had deserved this name, and by the course of what crimes they had reached a Roman cross, as the end of their conversation, as the due reward of their deeds. To understand this will, I am persuaded, help us not a little to understand how one of those crucified with Jesus should, even in the hour of his own worst suffering, have turned to the Lord with scorn and defiance, the other with penitence and prayer. Both these facts may, through such an enquiry, become more intel- ligible to us. ‘ Malefactors’ is the name by which St. Luke calls them; ‘7¢hieves’ (according to our Version) the two earlier Evangelists; from whom, and from the blend- ing of whose record with his, we have learned to speak of ‘the penitent thief. Our Translators would have done * Maldonatus: οὐδὲν ἄτοπον, nihil quod virum bonum non deceat; quibus verbis indicare voluit non solum nullum magnun scelus, sed nullum etiam vel levissimum peccatum in Christo esse. Yet ἄτοπος is too often used in Hellenistic Greek as a mere equivalent of πονηρός (it is joined with it, 2 Thess. iii. 2), to allow us very confidently to press this. * Maldonatus: Cum in eAdem qué Christus peend verseris, et, quod plus est, tu quidem merito, ille vero immerito, tamen neque pene societas, nec ejus te movet innocentia, ut ejus misereare. THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 293 much better to maintain the distinction which the Scripture maintains between him, the ‘robber, or vio- lent spoiler (see Matt. xxi. 13; ΧΧΥΙ. 35; Luke xxii. 52; John xviii. 40; 2 Cor. xi. 26), and the ‘thief, or secret y purloiner (Matt. vi. 19; John xii. 6; 1 Thess. v. 2; Rev. ‘iii. 3; xvi. 15). Many passages have suffered in our Version from the neglect of this distinction, but none so seriously as that with which we now have to do.’ These two were not ‘thieves,’ as we have called them, but robbers. Having vindicated this title for them, we may further enquire what at this time the name probably implied, and whether more than lies on the surface of the word. Toanswer this question aright, we must put side by side the application of the title of ‘robber’ to Barabbas (John xviii. 40), and the other notices of him which the Gospels supply, and read all in the light which contem- porary history affords. Barabbas, this ‘robber’ accord- ing to St. John, was, we are told, ‘a notable prisoner’ (Matt. xxvii. 16) ; ‘which lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection’ (Mark xv. 7); ‘who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison’ (Luke xxiii. 19) ; plainly a ringleader in one of those fierce and fanatic outbreaks against the Roman domination, which on a large scale or a small so fast succeeded one another in the latter days of the Jewish commonwealth. This at once explains how it was pos- sible for the Chief Priests with their religious pretensions to shew the interest on his behalf which they did (Matt. xxvii. 20; Mark xv. 11), explains no less the enthusiasm 1 On the distinction between λῃστής and κλέπτης see my Synonyms of the New Testament, § 44. 294 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. with which the Jewish populace demanded his liberation (Luke xxiii. 18). He was the popular hero, who had sought to realize his own and their idea of the kingdom of God by violence and blood. He had actually been that which they wanted*the Lord to be, and which’ because He would not be, they were now so eager to destroy Him. He had wrought, we may well believe, in that false Messias spirit, which was filling with wild and insane hopes the whole nation, and rapidly hurrying it to that final conflict with the Roman power, in which as a nation it should be for ever broken in pieces. There is every likelihood that the two malefactors crucified with Jesus belonged to the band of Barabbas. For good or for evil they knew something about the Christ, and that He was One who could deliver his own; the taunt uttered by the one expresses this, no less than the prayer of the other. There is much to make this probable. Barabbas, as we have seen, had been cast into prison ‘with them that had made insurrection with him. Two of the chief of these Pilate may have been very well pleased to send to execution on this occasion. It is abundantly plain from John xix. 15, 19-21, that he was willing in any way to retort on those who had driven him to what his conscience told him was a hideous injustice, to the condemnation (for this much he could see), of a perfectly innocent man. As he evidently sought in that title over the cross to do an extreme displeasure to the Jews, so he may have sought the same in this: ‘If you compel me against my better mind to send this man to the cross, I will send, to keep him company, two of the servants of your Messiah.’ Such seems to me a more probable explanation—I THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 295 speak but of the human explanation—of these malefactors * sharing in the cross of Christ, than to suppose that the additional indignity of being thus ‘numbered with the transgressors’ was devised for Him by the Pharisees. Doubtless they were quite capable of such a malignity, and insults of exactly this character have not seldom been heaped on high-souled sufferers in the concluding scene | of their lives. Thus in the French Revolution, when some noble royalist was sent to the guillotine, it was con- stantly managed to mix up his execution with that of forgers, highwaymen, murderers, or the like; that their | shame and disgrace might, if possible, redound upon him ; and this last drop of bitterness might not be wanting in his cup of pain. It is not that the Pharisees would have - been behind the worst in modern times in any such subtle inventions of hate; but the ordering of malefactors to execution lay in other hands than theirs; and there is nothing to make us think that Pilate would have devised any additional insult for Him whom he would have certainly set free, if his consciousness of innumerable acts of violence and rapine and wrong, whereof the Jews might accuse him to Cesar, had not made him the miserable coward that he was. It was the Pharisees whom he desired, so far as he dared, to wound. Whether, indeed, Barabbas had actually played the part of a false Christ, setting himself up as the true, we have no means of knowing. It is certainly far from unlikely. Keeping in mind the significance of names in Scripture, we can hardly fail to recognize a fearful mockery in his name, Barabbas, or ‘Son of the Father ;’ as though in the very name which he bore, not to speak of the work which he wrought, he should be the devil’s 296 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR, counterfeit and caricature of the true Holy One of God. This suggestion would acquire increased probability, if it could certainly be affirmed that he was not merely named Barabbas, but Jesus Barabbas, the lying counterpart, even to his human name, of the true Saviour of men. So, as is well known, three manuscripts, at Matt. xxvii. 17, even to this day read, and two of the older Versions, the Armenian and the Syriac; and that this was the prevailing reading in the time of Origen is sufficiently clear from some words which he uses; for, speaking of many copies in which Barabbas was not called also Jesus, he implies that, many as they were, they were still in the minority.’ In support of this remarkable reading, which Tischendorf, Fritzsche, Meyer, Rinck’ approve, but Lachmann, Alford, Tregelles’ reject, it may be wrged, that while we can scarcely conceive anyone daring to introduce the sacred name of Jesus, to give it to Barabbas, while it is difficult, almost impossible, to imagine such a thought suggesting itself to the mind of any, we can very well understand that many transcribers should have been shocked to find it there; and marring the text, which they impertinently sought to mend, have ventured to omit it. Certainly too, it must be allowed that there appear vestiges of the existence of such a reading in the text as it now stands; the words, ‘which is called Christ, twice introduced after the human name of our blessed Lord on the occasions when Barabbas is brought into opposition to Him (Matt. xxvii. 17, 22), and nowhere else, seem to be employed by Pilate out of a necessity to distinguish between Him and another who ‘In multis exemplaribus non continetur quod Barabbas etiam Jesus dicebatur, et forsitan recte, ut ne nomen Jesus conveniat alicui iniquorum. 5 Lucub. Crit. p. 285. * On tie Printed Text of the Greek Testament, p. 194. THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 297 bore the name of Jesus as well. It is at first strangely startling to think that this identity of name could possibly have existed; and yet He who bore every other scorn and shame, why should He not have also borne this? All which has just been said being kept in remem- brance, it will surprise us less, that so many elements of nobleness should display themselves in strength in one of these malefactors, than if we regarded him merely as a criminal of that meaner stamp whom we designate as a thief, or even as a robber, in our ordinary use of that word. His had been no petty larcenies; as little in all likelihood had he meant at the beginning to have his living by violence and wrong. Those whom the Romans. with a certain amount of truth called ‘robbers, were often- times wild and stormy zealots; maintaining in arms a last and hopeless protest against that yoke of the stranger, which God had imposed on his people for the chastise- ment of their sins, and which therefore it behoved them meekly to accept. This may have been one of these, seeking at the outset of his career to work by the wrath of man what he counted the righteousness of God.' Presently a fugitive from Roman justice, compelled to take to the mountains, and to live there by rapine, he may have gradually learned less and less to discriminate between friend and foe, may have earned only too well the title under which he was at last to expiate his offences on a Roman cross. His own confession implies as much (ver. 41). How easily, under such conditions, those who'have begun with * In theyrecord by Josephus of the final agony of Jerusalem the ζηλωτής and the λῃστής become nearly, or indeed altogether, convertible terms ; thus see B. J. iv. passim, 298 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. quite another aim degenerate into banditti, how imper- ceptibly and yet how surely the outlaw melts into the brigand, the story of Dolcino’s Apostolicals, as of the Ca- misards in the Cevennes, abundantly teaches us ; while in the history of Jephthah we see how under more favour- able circumstances this freebooter may rise into the chief and champion of his people (Judg. xi. 3, 11). He would do this the more easily, inasmuch as he would never by his lawless occupation have wholly forfeited his own respect or the respect of his fellow-countrymen; David, indeed, him- self for a while was little better than such a freebooter as this (1 Sam. xxii. 2). Least of all would he forfeit this ata time when the whole framework of social life was dislo- cated and disjointed as it was at this period in Judea; and when the disorganization of society seemed half to justify acts which would have been wholly unjustifiable at another time. It is easy to perceive how a class like this, while it would enlist some among the worst, would also gather some into its ranks who, though miserably perverted now, might under more favourable circum- stances have stood forth among the noblest of their age and nation. It is not altogether unlikely that an apostle of the Lord, Simon Zelotes, had been, as his name would indicate, on the very verge of becoming one of these; until in Christ he had found a more excellent way, had discovered that the truth, and the truth only, could make him free, or help him to make others free. But these worst and best, however they might accidentally be yoked together, and called by a common name, would yet only be waiting for some contact with the truth, to reveal them- selves in the essential differences of their character, dif- ferences which up to that decisive moment may have been THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 299 concealed alike from others and from themselves. So it fared with this malefactor and the other. The decisive moment had nowarrived. Heaven and hell claimed each its own. Of these two, so long yokefellows in evil, it was manifest at length that one had in him that which was akin to and was drawn to the light ; the other, that which hated the light, repelled the light, and was in return repelled by it into a yet deeper darkness of its own.’ Few as are the words which this penitent utters in his brief address to his fellow-sinner, and then in his still briefer to his Saviour, they yet are sufficient to reveal to us a most authentic work of grace going forward within him. He is, in the first place, deeply convinced of his sin. There is no more certain sign of an effectual work of — the Holy Spirit of God than a readiness on the sinner’s part to accept and acquiesce in his punishment, whatever that punishment may be, to put his mouth in the dust, and to say, ‘Thou art righteous, O God, that doest this;’ ‘Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sin? (Lam. il. 19; cf. Ezra ix. 6,7; Luke xv. 18, 19) while, on the other hand, there can be no surer token of an impenitent and obdurate heart than the refusal of the sinner to receive correction, to humble himself under the mighty hand of God (Isai. i. ho tee iG ον On ubermey ee 1A, τῷ; Rev. ix. 21; xvi. 21). And this man even in that bitter cross saw * There are many apocryphal legends about these two robbers; which may be found in Thilo, Codex Apoeryphus, pp. 93, 143, 580. Their very names are there given, but variously, Dimas, or Dysmas, and Gestas, Titus and Dumachus; this last possibly a corruption of Θεομάχος. In one of these legends it is told how the converted robber more than thirty years before had allowed the blessed Virgin and her Child to pass unharmed on their flight to Egypt, against the desire of the other, who would have despoiled the fugitives. - 300 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. nothing more than he had earned, ‘the due reward of his deeds.’ How profound the conviction, how unreserved upon his part is the confession, of sin! And then how many other principal graces show them- selves actively working in him'—all compressed, it is true, and this by the very necessities of the case, within the narrowest limits of time; but in their intension making up for what in extension they have not and can- not have. Ignorant he may very well have been of that special precept in Moses’ law, ‘Thou shalt in any case rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him’ (Lev. XIX. 17); but love is the fulfilling of the law, and love will not suffer him to keep silence now. They two may in times past have been frequent partners in guilt, associates in many a deed of violence and wrong, strengthening one another in wickedness; but now, himself a penitent, he would fain lead his fellow-sinner by the same blessed path of contrition, repentance, and faith, which he him- self is treading. And then, too, what courage, what boldness speaks out in his confession of Christ, in his declaration, ‘ 7 15 man hath done nothing amiss ; and still more in his open turning to Him as the one Helper and Saviour. Some *Thus Gregory the Great (Moral. xviii. 40): Libet mentis oculos ad illum latronem reducere, qui de fauce diaboli ascendit crucem, de cruce paradisum. Intueamur qualis ad patibulum venerit, et a patibulo qualis abscessit.... In corde fidelium tres summopere manere virtutes testatur Apostolus, dicens, Nune autem manent fides, spes, caritas. Quas cunctas subitaé repletus gratia et accepit latro, et servavit in cruce. Fidem namque habuit, qui regnaturum Dominum credidit, quem secum pariter morientem vidit. Spem habuit, qui regni ejus aditum postulavit, dicens, Memento mei, Domine, dum veneris in regnum tuum. Caritatem quoque in morte sua viva- citer tenuit, qui fratrem et collatronem pro simili scclere morientem, et de iniquitate sui arguit, et ei vitam quam cognoverat, predicavit, dicens, Neque tu times Deum, ete. THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 301 perhaps might be tempted to rejoin, that at such a moment this did not cost him much, that for him, hanging on that cross, and doomed before many hours there to expire, the motives which would operate on others, the fear of men’s reproach, the desire of their applause, must all have alike passed away. But this is a great mistake, as will be evident if only we call to mind how often men, above all those who know no higher support, have in such a dreadful hour sustained themselves to the last on the sympathies of the beholders, when they have known these to be theirs ; how bold bad men, mainly upheld by these, have gone down with no sign of weakness, but as with flying colours, to hell. So far from costing him nothing, it must have required a mighty effort upon his part to separate himself, as now no doubt he did, from all the sympathies of all who surrounded his cross, and thus openly to cast in his lot with the crucified Galilean. Hitherto, as a victim of Roman justice, as one of the ‘ robbers’ described just now, that is, as one of the latest champions of Jewish freedom, a member probably of the band of Barabbas, and sharing in the popular interest which he excited, this man had been an object of sym- pathy and admiration to all the scorners and blasphemers of Calvary. He would have become so still more, openly joining, as his companion did, in their insults and outrages against the Holy One of God. But to all this he prefers the reproach of Christ, which surely he did not escape, when he made that bold confession of his faith, ‘ Lord, remember me, when Thou comest into Thy kingdom. And if other graces manifest themselves in him, yet more than all other what a wondrous faith proclaims itself in these words of his. To believe that He, whose only 302 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. token of royalty was the crown of thorns that still clung to his bleeding brows, was a king, and had a kingdom,’ to believe that He, on whose own eyes the mists of death were already hanging, was indeed the Prince of life, wielding in those pierced hands, nailed so helplessly to the cross, the keys of death and of hell, that He could shut and none could open, could open and none could shut; that it could profit something in that mysterious world whither they both were hastening to be remem- bered by this crucified man—that was a faith indeed. What was the faith of any other to his faith? Everything seemed to give the lie to Christ’s pretensions. Disciples and apostles themselves had fallen away and fled. They had trusted once, but they trusted no more, ‘ that it was He which should have redeemed Israel’ (Luke xxiy: 21). They had now renounced that hope; and, indeed, every other hope; and then, in the midst of this universal unbelief, one, all whose anterior life might seem to have unfitted him for this heroic act of faith, does homage, not indeed in outward act, for his limbs are nailed to the tree, but in heart and word, to Jesus as the King of Israel, as the Lord of the spirits of all flesh. Truly we may say of his faith that it was itself one of the miracles of the cruci- fixion;? that in his conversion we have one of those * Bengel: Regem profitetur, talem, qui mortuus mortuo benefacere DEERE often magnifies the faith which breaks forth thus unexpect- edly in this man, as a bright sun from behind thickest clouds. Thus (Serm. 232): Magna fides; huic fidei quid addi possit, ignoro. Titubaverunt ipsi qui viderunt Christum mortuos suscitantem; credidit ille qui videbat secum in ligno pendentem. Quando illi titubaverunt, tune ille credidit. Qualem fructum Christus de arido ligno percepit?...Non solum credebat resurrecturum, sed etiam regnaturum. Pendenti, crucifixo, cruento, herenti, Cum veneris, inquit, in regnum tuum. Et illi, Nos sperabamus [Lue. xxiv. 21]. Ubi spem latro invenit, discipulus perdidit. Compare Serm. 285. THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 303 glimpses of glory with which the Father is ever careful to light up the deepest depths of the humiliation of the Son. But it will be well worth while to look a little closer and more in detail at his words. ‘Zord’ need not in itself be more than a general term of respectful address ; it is oftentimes this, and nothing further ; thus Matt. xxv. 20, 24; John iv. 11; xi. 21; xx. 15, and elsewhere. But it may have a much deeper, and ἃ theological meaning; and such no doubt it possesses here. For without assuming, which would indeed be absurd, that this untaught man meant by his ‘Zord’ all which we mean by Jehovah or Lord, yet was there on his part the recognition of a divine character in Christ. His ‘ Zord’ of itself would not be sufficient to prove this, but only as it is read in the light of what follows, ‘Rengember me, when Thou comest into thy kingdom. For that ‘ Remember me’ is no mere counterpart of Joseph’s petition to the chief butler of Pharaoh (Gen. xl. 14; ef. Eeclus. xxxvii. 6), but is itself a prayer, even as the prayers of the Jews constantly clothed themselves in this same form (Nehem. xiii. 14, 22, 31, and often in the Psalms; for another kind of remem- brance see Rev. xvi. 19). But seeing that it was now at length abundantly evident that Christ’s kingdom was not here, nor on this side of the grave, it must have been plainly in the glory of some kingdom to be revealed hereafter that he desired, through Christ’s remembrance of him, a part. The words themselves of his prayer should not stand exactly as in the English Version they do. Our Trans- Leo the Great (Serm. 51: Qu istam fidem exhortatio persuasit? que doctrina imbuit? quis preedicator accendit? Non viderat prius acta mira- cula; cessaverat tunc languentium curatio, cecorum illuminatio, vivificatio mortuorum; ea ipsa que mox erant gerenda non aderant; et tamen Dominum confitetur et Regem, quem videt supplicii sui esse consortem. 304 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. lators have on various occasions failed to mark the distinction between the prepositions equivalent in the Greek to our ‘into’ and ‘in;”! thereby so grave a loss as here. It is not, ‘when Thou comest into thy kingdom, as though Christ’s kingdom seldom however incurring could even in thought be contemplated as apart from Himself; but, ‘when Thou comest in thy kingdom, —the words are correctly rendered at Matt. xvi. 28—‘ when Thou shalt appear as a king with all thy royalties around Thee and about thee, the angels ten thousand times ten thousand with Thee, and Thyself the centre of all’ (Dan. vii. 15; Matt. xxv. 31;'2 Thess. 1.7; Judesmay Christ does not and cannot come ἑπέο his kingdom ; He comes τη it and with it, brings his kingdom with Him, and where He is, there is his kingdom too.” He who could ask this had taken in what Pilate could not take in, that this man was a king, and that He would one day return to establish his kingdom upon earth.’ The reply of our Lord is a glorious example of what * Thus εἰς has not its proper meaning, Rom. v. 5; nor ἐν, Rom. ii. 5; v. 21. On this, which is a fault common to many Versions of the New Testa- ment, see Winer, Gramm. § liv. 4, 5, 6. * Maldonatus forsakes his Vulgate, which, sharing the error of our Version and of so many other, has here, in regnum tuum; but he: ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ cov, in regno tuo. Itaque non est sensus, Cum veneris ad regnandum, sed, Oum veneris, jam regnans; cum veneris, non ad acquirendum regnum, sed regno jam acquisito, quemadmodum venturus ad judicium est. * In the Hoangelium Nicodemi (pars 2%, c, 10) the petition put into the mouth of this penitent, though substantially the same, is formally different. It is as follows: Κύριε, dre [ὁτὰν Ὁ] βασιλεύσεις, μή μου ἐπιλάθῃς. As that apocryphal gospel dates probably as early as the second century, it is just possible that the difference here may, as Tischendorf (Lvangelia Apocrypha, p. lxix.) suggests, represent another tradition of the words (verba latronis ita discedunt a Luce textu, ut ex alid veterrim4 traditione fluxisse vide- antur); but to me it seems far more probable that we have here no more than a not perfectly accurate recollection of the words as they stand in St. Luke. THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. γος we may not unfitly call the prodigalities of the kingdom of heaven, of the answers to prayer, infinitely larger and more liberal than the suppliant in the boldest ventures of faith had dared to suggest. In two points the grant-) ing of this suppliant’s petition immeasurably transcends the petition itself. ΑἸ] which he had been bold to ask, was that he might be remembered of the Lord. But one may remember the absent, may do them good at a dis- tance, and keeping them at distance still. This to have done would have fulfilled the measure of all which he had desired. But for him, the first-fruits of the cross, the first who should set his seal to that word of the prophecy, ‘T, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me,’ for him Christ has better than remembrance in store; far better than this—‘ thow shalt be with Me, And not this only; he shall be with Him on that very day.’ Christ’s ‘ to-day, besides containing an announce- ment of his own departure out of this world within the limits of that day, contains also a pledge and promise for this poor pardoned sinner, that he too should find speedy release from all his agonies—a release indeed far speedier than according to common probabilities he might have looked for. Crucifixion, with all its suffer- ings, was so little mortal, that persons taken down from their cross, and duly cared for, have been known to recover. In the lingering torture of this punishment the * This is often urged by Augustine; thus Serm. 232: Quid ei dixerit Dominus audiamus: Amen, dico tibi, hodie mecum eris in Paradiso. Tu differs te; ego agnosco te; . . . invasisti in regnum celorum ; vim fecisti, credidisti, rapuisti. Non te differo; tants fidei hodie reddo quod debeo., Compare Serm. 327. 2. Instead of the rich and pregnant brevity of that prayer and this answer to that prayer, the Narratio Josephi (Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha, p. 442) puts a speech of twenty lines into the mouth of the penitent, and one somewhat longer into that of our Lord. x 406 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. seats of life were so little assailed, that it was by no means an uncommon case for criminals to expire at length of mere hunger on their cross; while, besides the breaking of the legs, by which the death of these two was hastened, various other methods were occasionally employed for ac- celerating, when this was thought desirable, the fatal close. , They were sometimes suffocated by the smoke of fires lighted below, or were torn in pieces by wild beasts. But for him within a few brief hours, before that day had closed, it should be well. He should be at rest, and more than this—in Paradise and joy. The coming of Christ in his kingdom might very well be a remote con- tingency. In all likelihood this petitioner more or less looked onward to it as such. But it is no remote boon which the Lord will bestow upon him; that very day he shall taste the sweetness of it: ‘To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.” We must not, however, dismiss without further notice a word on which so much has been written, a promise the form of which in times past has perplexed not a few. As many, indeed, as assume ‘ Paradise’ to be equivalent to heaven, and, in fact, identical with the kingdom of glory, cannot fail to find a difficulty here, inasmuch as Christ Himself was not on that day in heaven, but in Hades; and these suggest various ways of escaping from this perplexity ; which, however, is one of their own creating. A not unfrequent one is the separation of ‘to-day’ from the words which follow, with the joining of it to those which precede: ‘ Verily, I say unto thee to-day, thou * The promise of these words can hardly fail to remind us of another ‘Thou shalt be with me,’ Samuel’s to Saul (1 Sam. xxviii. 19); that also in Sheol, in the world of spirits ; but that announcement how unlike to this; as full of fear and terror.as this is of hope and joy. THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 307 shalt be with Me in Paradise." Theophylact says of those who offer this explanation, that they ‘do violence to the words ;” a judgment, I think, in which most will concur.’ By others, who in like manner make Paradise equivalent to heaven, or at least fail to see its identity with Hades, or rather with the happier half of Hades, it is said that however his human soul was that day in this latter place, yet, according to his divine nature everywhere present, He was in -Paradise,—that is, as they understand it, in heaven. This is the usual interpretation in the early Church,* and in the medieval,’ and generally in the modern Roman ‘In the Hvangelium Nicodemi, 26, the words are actually transposed, and stand thus, σήμερον λέγω σοι, μετ᾽ ἐμοῦ K.T.A. 2 Εκβιάζονται τὸ ῥῆμα. ὅ The first I know who makes mention of this way of Bscape from an imaginary difficulty is Hesychius, a presbyter of.Jerusalem, who probably wrote in the fifth century (Quest. 47): πῶς ἡ ὑπόσχεσις τοῦ Κυρίου πρὸς τὸν λῃστὴν πεπλήρωται, ὅτι σήμερον μετ’ ἐμοῦ ἔσῃ ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ: Μετὰ yap τὸν σταυρὸν ὁ Χριστὸς εἰς “Αἰδου ἐπὶ τῇ ἐλευθερίᾳ τῶν νεκρῶν παραγίνεται. ἔδει δὲ καὶ τὸν λῃστὴν (scil. παραγίνεσθαι εἰς “Αἰδου), ὑπεύθυνον ὄντα τῷ νόμῳ τῆς φύσεως. He goes on to state, but does not approve of, this solution: τινὲς μὲν οὕτως avaywackovor, ᾿Αμὴν λέγω σοι σήμερον" εἶτα ἐπιφέρουσιν, ὅτι μετ’ ἐμοῦ ἔσῃ ἐν TO παραδείσῳ. *Thns Augustine (Zp. ad Dardanum, 187); and this, although he has excellently well prepared the way for the right explanation by the distinction which he draws between Paradise, the waiting place of happy spirits, and heaven, or the kingdom of glory (restat igitur ut in inferno intelligatur esse paradisus, ubi erat illo die futurus esse secundum humanam animam Christus). This, however, he suggests only to abandon it again, and to take refuge in the omnipresence of Christ, who according to his divine nature was everywhere, and therefore that day in heaven. For similar explanations of the Greek Fathers see Suicer, Thes. s. v. λῃστής. * Anselm in one of his deeply pathetic Orationes (the 42nd) expresses himself thus: Et quid hoc est, o rex desiderabilis? Tu clavis affligeris, et paradisum promittis. Tu pendes in ligno, et latroni dicis, Hodie mecum eris in paradiso! Et, o desiderium animarum, ubi est paradisus, quia dicis latroni, Hodie mecum eris in paradiso? An paradisus tecum est, et ubi tu vis, paradisus est? An tu indubitanter paradisus es, quia tam confidenter promittis, Hodie mecum eris in paradiso? Credo, Domine, credo certe quod ubi tu vis, et ubi tu es, ibi paradisus est; et esse tecum, hoc est esse in paradiso. Compare Aquinas, Sum. Theol. 3%, 52. 4. x2 308 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. Catholic. But it is not universal. Severus, the great leader of the Monophysites, has seen his way perfectly here ;? the only drawback to his exposition of this passage being that he makes Paradise here absolutely, and, so to speak, locally, identical with the Garden of innocence of our first parents; the truth being that in the evolution of theology in the later Jewish schools that Garden had lent a name to the happy place where the souls of the faithful, released from the burden of the flesh, are waiting their perfect consummation and bliss; and that it is of this Paradise our blessed Lord is speaking. Jeremy Taylor’ has traced excellently well the history of the word, and what upon his lips it signified now: ‘Our blessed Saviour told the converted thief that he should “ that day be with Him in Paradise.” Now without peradventure He spake so as He was to be understood, meaning by “Paradise” that which the schools and pulpits of the Rabbies did usually speak of it. By “ Paradise” till the * Corn. a Lapide: Certum enim est Christum cum latrone die illo quo obiit non ascendisse in cwlum, sed descendisse ad limbum patrum; ibique eis visionem su divinitatis impertivisse, itaque eos bedsse; quare tune Christus eorum sortes mutavit; fecit enim ut limbus esset paradisus, ut inferi essent superi, ut infernus esset celum. Ubi enim est Christus, ibi est paradisus; ubi est visio Dei et beatitudo, ibi est calum. * Valuable fragments of his Commentary on St. Luke are preserved in Cramer’s Catena. A few words of his on this matter I will quote: τὸ δὲ ἀληθὲς τῆς ἐξηγήσεως, τοῦτό ἐστι' τὰ ἐπηγγελμένα ἡμῖν ἀγαθὰ βασιλεία ἐστὶν οὐρανῶν, οὐχὶ ἡ εἰς τὸν παράδεισον εἴσοδος, ἢ ἡ ἐπάνοδος. ἄλλ᾽ ἴσως ἐρεῖ τις ὡς ταὐτόν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν καὶ ὁ παράδεισος, δύο προσηγοριῶν οὐσῶν περὶ ἕν πρᾶγμᾶᾷ τὸ ὑποκείμενον. ἀλλ᾽ ἡ τῶν ἱερῶν γραμμάτων διδασκαλία. δείκνυ- ow ὡς ov ταὐτόν ἐστιν͵ ἀλλ᾽ ἑκατέρου πολὺ τὸ διάφορον. Having vindicated the higher dignity of the βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν, he proceeds: ἡ δὲ ἐργασία τοῦ παραδείσου βαναυσός τις οὐκ ἦν, ἀλλ᾽ εἶχε λογικὴν εὐφροσύνην ἀναμεμιγμένην καὶ ἐννοιῶν θείων ἀπόλαυσιν. Ὥστε ὁ λῃστὴς τοῦ μὲν παραδείσου τετύ χηκεν" τὰ δὲ ἐν ἐλπίσι τῆς βασιλείας τῶν οὐρανῶν μετὰ τῶν ἀπ’ αἰῶνος δικαίων οὐκ ἐκο- μίσατο͵ τοῦ Θεοῦ περὶ ἡμῶν κρεῖττόν τι προβλεψαμένου͵ ἵνα μὴ χωρὶς ἡμῶν τελειω- θῶσι. "".Α Funeral Sermon on Sir George Dalstone. THE PENITENT MALEFAOCTOR. 309 time of Esdras it is certain the Jews only meant that* blessed garden in which God once placed Adam and - Eve; but in the time of Esdras, and so downward, when they spake distinctly of things to happen after this life, and began to signify their new discoveries and modern philosophy by names, they called the state of souls ex- pecting the resurrection of their bodies by the name of Gan Eden, the garden of Eden. . . . It is therefore more than probable that when the converted thief heard our blessed Saviour speak of Paradise, or Gan Eden, he who was a Jew and heard that on that day he should be there, understood the meaning to be that he should be there where all the good Jews did believe the souls of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to be placed.’ This is the only occasion during the days of his flesh on which (so far at least as we know), Paradise was made mention of by our Lord. Once too He mentions it in his glory (Rev. 11. 7), and once it is on the lips of his chief * apostle (2 Cor. xii. 4). These are the only times that it occurs in the New Testament. Hanging on the accursed tree his thoughts may well have travelled back to another tree, even the tree of life, standing in the Paradise of. God : in that Paradise, which by all this travail and sore agony He was at this instant winning back for the chil- dren of men, quenching in his own blood that fiery flaming sword which, since the sin and sentence of Adam, had kept it against them; even as he was opening for them the gates of another Paradise, and, as a Stronger, wresting from the strong one the keys of death and of hell (Rev. i. 18). * Bengel: Jn paradiso: in quo feliciores arbores quam in Golgatha; cum immortalitate, Rev. ii. 7. 210 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. * As I cannot but hope that materials for sermons may sometimes be sought in these Studves, I will not bring this one to a close without one or two practical observa- tions. There is sometimes a tendency to regard the grace vouchsafed to this penitent as exceptional, as not to be brought within the ordinary laws of God’s dealings with the children of men. We may sometimes hear it said, that as that moment when the Son of God hung upon the cross was a moment unlike every other in the moral and spi- ritual history of the world, so there were graces youch- safed then, unlike those of any other moment, larger, freer, more marvellous; such as were proper to that time and no other; the gates of mercy being, so to speak, thrown open more widely than at other times; and that therefore no conclusions can be drawn from what then found place as to what will find place when events have returned to their more ordinary course. This is sometimes urged, and chiefly out of a desire to withdraw the temptation to a deferred and late repentance, which the acceptance of this penitent at the closing moment of his life might else seem to hold out to others. I confess that even the desire to avert such an abuse, cannot persuade me to accept this explanation of the grace which he obtained. The laws of God’s kingdom, the conditions under which grace may be obtained, are unchangeable. This man was accepted and forgiven exactly on the same grounds as those on which any other will find pardon and accept- ance, because he repented, and believed, and obeyed. Time does not exist for God; and if only this repentance, faith, and obedience of his were genuine, whether they were spread over the forty or fifty years to which his life in the natural course of things might have been pro- THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 311 longed, or concentrated into the few hours upon the cross which he actually did survive, this made and could make no difference in God’s sight. I have said, ‘if only these were genuine, which in the present instance we know that certainly they were; for this is the fatal danger of all repentance postponed to the last, and thus withdrawn from all trial and proof, that the man, little as he may guess this, may be deceiving himself; that in all likeli- hood his repentance is πού genuine, is not sincere; that almost certainly it is not so, when it has been deferred on so mean a speculation as this, of giving to God the least and obtaining from Him the most, grinding the corn of life, and, according to the old proverb, giving the flour to the devil, and only the bran to God. It is by the pressing of this, the almost universal self-delusion of death-bed repentances, that we must rescue this Scripture from dan- gerous abuse, from proving a temptation and a snare, not by excepting the dealing of God with this man from the category of his usual dealings in the kingdom of his grace and power. One word more. We have admired, and with abun- dant reason, the faith of the poor penitent, who could believe, even in such an hour as that was, in the royalties of Christ, that the title set in bitter mockery over his head, spake nothing more than the truth, that He was a king, and would yet come in his kingdom, and that it would be well with them who should be then remembered of Him. But let us not finally take leave of this history without reverently admiring also hs faith to whom this prayer was addressed, his confidence, not to be shaken by all which was happening round Him, which was finding 212 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. place within Him, in his divine Sonship; his, who could believe that, crucified through weakness, He was yet Lord over all, that all things had been delivered into his hands by his Father, that He could grant to this suppliant for his favour all which he asked, and much more than he asked; who dispensed as confidently his favours from that cross of shame as the kings of the earth dispense theirs from their thrones of glory; who in this promise claimed and avouched all worlds as his own. Not when the victory had been already won, and He had been declared to be the Son of God with power by the Resur- rection from the dead (Rom. i. 4), did He say to the beloved apostle, ‘I am He that liveth and was dead ; and behold I am alive for evermore ; and have the keys of death and of hell’ (Rev. i. 18), with a calmer and more majestic confidence than to this poor suppliant man He declares in the hour of his own agony, ‘ 7o-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise. Truly this is the Lord of life;' and then, when He thus spake, was gloriously fulfilled that which so many of the early Fathers thought they found written as a prophecy of the triumphs of the cross in the g6th Psalm, and which is equally true whether there fore-announced or not, Regnavit a ligno Deus. 16. CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS. Mark xvi. 12,13; Luke xxiv. 13—35. We have a slight hint of this beautiful little history, and indeed the history itself, but in barest outline, at Mark xvi. 12. He has there very much such a summary abridgement of it as he has of the Temptation elsewhere (i. 12,13). At the same time, for the breadth and ful- ness of detail, which render it one of the most interesting records of the Great Forty Days, we are altogether in- debted to St. Luke. The Resurrection had taken place already; but the disciples had refused to credit it. The Sun of Righteous- ness, which seemed to have set forever, had again risen with healing on his wings; but the disciples, not without grave fault of their own, are walking on in darkness still, in a darkness which in some sort they have made for themselves. Soit fares with these two, of whom we here read: ‘And behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. The name of one of these favoured wayfarers we learn a little further on. It was Cleopas (ver. 18), who must not be identified with the Cleopas of John xix. 25." Who the other might be we are not told. 1 This Κλεόπ ¢ is short for KAedrarpoc, while that (KAw7ac) is an Aramaic name. 314 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES Apostle he certainly was not; and those who suggest Bartholomew or James cannot reconcile this with the fact that the two report the mysterious interview to the Eleven (ver. 23), could not therefore themselves belong to the Eleven. Neither is it at all likely that the unnamed disciple was St. Luke himself; for this. again, seems scarcely reconcilable with the announcement of the Evan- gelist that the account which he gives in his Gospel was delivered to him by those who were ‘eyewitnesses,’ as well as ‘ministers of the word’ (1. 2); herein implicitly affirming that such ‘eyewitness’ he had not himself been, that he had not himself beheld, as these two beheld, the risen Lord. Jerome and others suppose that they may both have been of the Seventy; which is probable enough ; but we cannot affirm it with any certainty. The village of Emmaus, north of Jerusalem, and mentioned by Jose- phus,' to which they were journeying, ought not to be confounded, as it has often been, with another Emmaus in the plain of Judzea, and not ‘threescore furlongs, or something more than seven miles, from Jerusalem, but not less than twenty from the capital city. All modern attempts to discover the site of this village have: been unsuccessful. ‘And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus Himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden, that they should not know Him’ (cf. John xx. 14; xxi. 4). While St. Mark seems to lay the cause of the non-recognition of the Lord on the part of his disciples to his changed ap- pearance (‘ after that He appeared in another form unto two 2B. ὧς Will, δὲ δὲ ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS. 315 of them’), St. Luke finds it rather in their ‘holden eyes.” ‘And He said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?” From more than one word here, we may take it for granted that the two disciples were in earnest debate; not unduly striving nor contending; but still re- garding from different points of view, and each urging upon the other his own interpretation of, that stupendous event, of which they had just been the witnesses. To them thus earnestly debating, and allowing this earnest- ness to shew itself in their outward mien, the Lord joined Himself, in guise the most unpretending, as a fellow- traveller on the same road with themselves ; but at the same time as one hithself interested in the matter which could interest them so strongly, and moved no less by the settled sadness of their countenances ; and who, out of no idle curiosity, would fain learn, if this might be permitted, what it was that stirred and saddened them so much. The two disciples, as I think we may gather from their reply, were not perfectly pleased to be atcosted, and in- terrupted in their confidential discourse with one another, by one who seemed to have no right to meddle with the sacredness of their sorrow. They cannot forbear ex- * The two statements are excellently reconciled by St. Augustine (Serm. 239. 2): Alia enim effigies visa est, retentis oculis non apertis. ** And are sad’ is hardly an adequate rendering of καί ἐστε σκυθρωποί, though it might be difficult to improve it. Σκυθρωπός, occurring in the, New Testament only here and at Matt. vi. 16 (where Basil the Great ex- changes it well with στυγνάζων), and in the Old at Gen. xl. 7: Dan. i. 10; Sirac. xxv. 23, from σκυθρός (and that from oxifouar) and oy, is better ex- pressed by the German ‘traurig,’ as it would be by our own ‘dreary,’ if ‘dreary’ still kept the exact force which it had at the beginning; see for this in Richardson’s Hnglish Dictionary the quotation from Gower ; another in Richard of Hampole’s Pricke of Conscience: ‘ Now es a man light, now es he hevy, Now es he blithe, now es he drery.’ It expresses the downcast look of a settled grief, pain, or displeasure. 416 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES pressing their surprise that such a question should have been put to them: ‘ And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto Him, Art thou only a stranger at Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? The English Version is not here perfectly satisfactory. It seems to attribute the questioner’s ignorance of what must be the cause of their grief to his being ‘a stranger’ or sojourner at Jerusalem. But, not to say that such an event as the rejection and crucifixion of one who claimed to be the Messiah must have been just as well known to the pilgrims at the feast as to the actual dwellers at Jerusalem, the words will not bear this meaning. They are not without a certain difficulty; but on the whole it will be best and simplest to render the first clause in the sentence thus, ‘Dost thou lodge alone at Jerusalem? ‘ Dwellest thou,’ that is, ‘in solitude there, apart from the busy con- course of men, and thus so withdrawn from acquaintance with all which is passing in the city, that no tidings have reached thee of the mighty and marvellous events which within the last few days have befallen?’ The disciples, in the all-absorbing interest which those events have for them, take for granted that, if only known, they must have the same for every other; and they have, more- over, been so blown abroad, that nothing but an absolute isolation from all company with his fellow-men can have hindered their questioner from having knowledge of them.’ 1 Beza: Tu solus commoraris Hierosolymis? with a shifting of the emphasis from παροικεῖς to μόνος. All which could be urged against this rendering is that παροικεῖς thus fails to obtain its full force, and is too much rendered as though it were κατοικεῖς : but the other explanations, such as are offered by Theophylact, Castalio (quoted by Beza), Meyer, and others, seem to me either absolutely untenable, or encumbered with far more serious difficulties than is this. ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS. — 317 The Lord’s answer, ‘What things ? is exactly adapted to draw from the disciples a further communication. Had He replied that He knew, this would naturally have prevented Cleopas from entering further into a matter already familiar to his interrogator; and, of course, He could not answer that He did not know. His question serves the purpose for which it was intended: ‘And they said unto Him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people’ (cf. Acts vil. 22). From this answer of theirs it is evident that the mystery of Christ’s divine nature was hidden from them as yet; or if at any time they had caught glimpses of it, these now were completely obscured by the thick shadows which during the last days had closed around their Lord. Jesus was to them ‘ a prophet,’ and, as we presently see, the prophet, He that ‘ should have redeemed Israel, the Messiah therefore ; but the Jewish anticipations of a Messiah (and they had not lifted them- selves above these), did not involve more than glorious human prerogatives. That Messiah should come, and that God should come, they expected both; but that both promises should be fulfilled in one and the same person, that these two stars of hope, which had lighted Israel through long ages of gloom, should in the actual fulfil- ment blend and become one star, this was a mystery hidden, we may say, or almost hidden, from prophets and kings, from those who most waited for the consolation of Israel. They go onto complain of the reception which, notwith- standing all these glorious manifestations of his power both in word and work, He had found from the spiritual chiefs of the people : ‘ and how the Chief Priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified 318 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES Him. But we trusted’ (they speak of it as a trust which they must now renounce, which indeed they have re- nounced), ‘that ithad been He which should have redeemed Israel.’ To say, as some do, that this redemption which they looked for at the hands of the Messiah was merely a deliverance from the yoke of their worldly oppressors, is certainly a mistake. It may have been thus with many ; but there were always those who understood that the deliverance must reach much deeper than this; that to be a redemption worth the name, it must be a redemption from sin, from the bondage of unruly appetites and in- ordinate desires. It was indeed true that this deliverance would necessarily, in God’s good providence, have drawn after it that other deliverance; that if Israel had turned to God, and welcomed his Anointed, the yoke of its Roman lords would, in one way or another, have soon been broken from its neck; for this bondage was but an echo of the other; and thus the faithful in Israel may very possibly have blended, in all likelihood did blend, the two deliverances into one; but still this outward re- demption was not in their thoughts the beginning, still less was it the whole, of the redemption. In the prophecy of the father of the Baptist the two redemptions, from the yoke of evil and from the yoke of their foreign oppressors, are wonderfully blended together. He whom God shall raise up, a horn of salvation for his people, shall deliver them from their enemies ; but this, that they may * Augustine (Serm. 235. ὃ 2): Quando enim cum illis fuerat ante passionem, omnia preedixerat, passurum se fuisse, moriturum, tertio die re- surrecturum; omnia pradixerat; sed mors illius, illorum oblivio fuit. Sic perturbati sunt, quando eum viderunt in ligno pendentem, ut obliviscerentur docentem, non exspectarent resurgentem, nec tenerent promittentem. Nos, inquiunt, sperabamus quia ipse erat redemturus Israél. OQ discipuli, sperabatis? ergo jam non speratis. a ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS. 319 serve Him in righteousness and true holiness all the days of their life (Luke i. 68-79; cf. John viii. 31-36). They go on: ‘ And besides all this, in addition to that cruel death inflicted on Him by our rulers, and sufficiently explaining the sadness which Thou hast noted in us, ¢ fo- day is the third day since these things were done. We might have had some glimpses of hope up to this present — time, seeing that while He was alive, He more than once uttered mysterious words not merely about his own death, words which we have found only too true, but also about a triumphant reversal of that doom of death, mysterious words about what should happen on the third day after his death; but this day has arrived, and is unmarked by any change.’ How much unbelief is there here. The third day has come, but it has not gone; and how could they be sure that He had not already made good his words? indeed, there was much to render it likely that He had. Their own words which follow imply as much: ‘Yea, and certain women of our company made us aston- ished, which were early at the sepulchre. And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that He was alive’ (ver. 1-10; John xx. 1, 2). The hesitating, doubting disciples will not confidently affirm of this that it was a mere subjective imagination of these women; as little pledge themselves to its objective reality. They speak of it therefore as ‘a vision of angels, leaving this matter un- decided. They go on to tell of the visit of Peter and John to the sepulchre; ‘and certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said.’ But, having thus stated all which gave them warrant for hope, they yet leave off with the 320 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES mournful, desponding words—‘ but Him they saw not’ (cf. ver. 12; John xx. 3-10). They have poured out all their hearts before Him. It is now his turn to speak. He still, indeed, preserves his incognito; their eyes are holden as at the first, so that they still see in Him no more than the sympathizing stranger, who has joined himself to them in the way. Much, no doubt, they must have wondered when they found in Him a scribe instructed to the kingdom; one who took the part of their former hopes against their present fears; one whose very rebukes, earnest as they were, must have been welcome; for it was their despair which He rebuked; and just so far as they acknowledged those rebukes to be just, their despair must have given place to hope, their sorrow have been turned into joy. ‘And He said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Some of the Scripture they had believed, as much as fell in with their preconceived notions, prejudices, and opinions; which is so often the way with us all; but not ‘ all that the prophets had spoken. Man’s word, and woman’s word, and angels’ words, they had paid more or less heed to all these; but God’s word, that word which liveth and abideth for ever, they had not built and established themselves on it. Of that word they had not enquired, nor sought to learn from it how it should fare with the Christ of God; else they would have found that the very things over which they were mourning, as the defeat and discomfiture of all their high-raised expectations, had long ago, even from the beginning, been fore-announced and declared needful preliminaries to his entrance into his glory. They would there have learned that these sufferings and this ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS. 321 death, so far from giving the lie to their Lord’s pretensions as the Christ, were actually laid down in Scripture as things without the endurance of which the true signs of the Messiah would have been wanting in Him; that through the vestibule of death it was appointed for Him to pass into the palace of life: ‘ Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? They hitherto had not spoken of Christ but in a roundabout manner, as ‘ He that should have redeemed Israel’ (ver. 21); but the Lord at once employs this word which stood at the centre of all Jewish hopes. They err who conclude from hence that Christ had entered into his glory already; He did not do this till his Ascension, and this which He is speaking now is not history, but doctrine. Did not the Scripture announce a suffering Messiah before a reigning and glorious One? ‘And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He ex- pounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concern- ing Himself’ (cf. ver. 44; John i. 45; Acts xxvi. 22, 2: 1 Pet.i.11). What, we may reverently enquire, were the passages to which the great Prophet of the New Covenant mainly referred, as having in Himself been fulfilled? And first, what prophecies of a suffermg Messiah did He recog- nize and allow, claim in the books of Moses for his own? He began, as we can hardly doubt, with the prot- evangelium ; the Seed of the woman, who should bruise the serpent’s head, or, in other words, inflict on him a wound which should be deadly, was not Himself to escape unscathed altogether; this same serpent should bruise his heel (Gen. iii. 15). And then there were the types, claimed by the Lord in the days of his flesh, or by those who wrote concerning Him, as fulfilled in Him; the ¥ 1122 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES brazen serpent (Num. xxi. g; John iii. 14); the paschal | Lamb (Exod. xii. 46; John xix. 36); and as the types, so also the typical persons; Joseph, who from the lowest humiliation of the pit and the dungeon passed to the highest place of dignity and honour, even to the right hand of the throng; David, who suffered so much and so long from the persecutions of Saul—these, with many more. And when the august Interpreter of the things in Scripture concerning Himself reached the prophets, it can be little doubtful that the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah was the central prophecy which He expounded. Around this there would be grouped the great prophetical Psalms of the Crucifixion—the Psalms are specially referred to, not here, but ver. 44—as eminently the twenty-sacond, claimed by the Lord upon his cross (Matt. xxvii. 46; Mark xv. 24), and the fortieth, claimed in like manner for Him by his apostle (Heb. x. 5) ; then further Daniel ix. 26; and the book of the prophet Jonah; while Zechariah would prove rich in prophetic glimpses of all which had just on Calvary been fulfilled, as xii. 10; xiii. 7. These disciples had assumed that Jesus of Nazareth could not be the Christ, because He had suffered these things; the Lord shews them from all Scripture that He could not be the Christ, wa/ess He had suffered these things. And now, while He was still engaged in opening to them the Scriptures, ‘they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went ; and He made as though He would have gone further ; not, that is, pretended, but actually would have gone further, unless they had detained Him; by thus offering to proceed, proving them, whether his words had taken any mighty hold upon them or not; and whether there was any desire upon their part for further — » ΟΝ THE WAY TO EMMAUS. 323 communion with Him (cf. Mark vi. 48). It was seen that there was so. Much they had heard, yet they evi- dently desired to hear still more. ‘ But they constrained Him, saying, Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And He went in to tarry with them’ —to be their guest now, as two of their number at the outset of his ministry had been his (John i. 39). ‘And it came to pass, as He sat at meat with them, He took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. He, in some sort the guest, assumes at once the place of the host, and, as at other times (Matt. xiv. 19; xv. 36; XXvi. 26), the prerogatives of the householder or goodman of the house, to whom this blessing and giving of thanks. of right belonged. ‘And their eyes. were opened, and they knew Him ; and He vanished out of their sight. He was known to them, as they themselves report to the Eleven, ‘in breaking of bread’ (ver. 35). This might seem to imply that there was something in the act of breaking of bread by which they recognized at last with whom they had to do. At the same time the words, ‘their eyes were opened, going before ‘they knew Him,’ and put evidently as the condition of their knowing, imply that it was not a mere natural conclusion which they drew from something which they. saw Him do, but a supernatural enlightenment, a ceasing of the condition indicated at ver. 16, where it is said, ‘ther eyes were holden.’ But what was there, it may be asked, in this ‘breaking of bread’ by which they knew Him? Some answer that this was a celebration of the Holy Eucharist," and that they recognized the form of consecrating words. * Thus Augustine (Serm. 239): In panis fractione cognoscitur, quia ibi percipitur, ubi vita eterna percipitur. Υ2 224 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES But, in the first place, certainly these two were not pre- sent at the institution of the Holy Eucharist, for only apostles, which these are not, were there. And then, in the second place, it is an entirely gratuitous assumption that this was an Eucharistic celebration. Roman Catholics are fond of asserting that it was so, thus to find warrant and authority for reception under one kind, only bread being mentioned here. The blessing of the bread can of itself prove nothing. It is quite true that this is mentioned, and that it constituted an essential part of the Eucharistic celebration (Mark xiv. 22); but as at other times also He blessed the bread (Mark vi. 41), no argument can be drawn from hence; and for us the absence of one of the constituent elements of this sacrament may well be de- cisive that no such sacrament was here. The words can scarcely mean more than that at that solemn moment their Lord revealed to them who He was. The manner of his disappearance, like that of all his comings and goings after the Resurrection, is mysterious (John xx. 19, 26), and quite unlike anything which had found place before. His body, it is evident, was not any longer sub- mitted to the same laws as those to which ours are submitted now, and to which his own had been hitherto submitted. ‘And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures 2? They wonder that this had not enabled them long since to guess who it was that had thus been speaking with them. The nearest parallel to this of the heart burning within them may be found in the words of the Psalmist, ‘ While I was musing, the fire - burned; then spake I with my tongue’ (Ps. xxxix. 3). ΨΥ ON THE WAY ΤῸ EMMAUS. 325 With such tidings to tell, they do not tarry any longer at Emmaus. ‘ They rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them. Yet if they imagined that they were the first to bring the glad tidings, in this they were dis- appointed—if disappointment it could be called ; they did but contribute another stream to swell the great floodtide of joy, which every moment was rising higher and higher. They found the Eleven, and them that were with them, able to answer good tidings with good; nay, as it would seem, preventing their good tidings with those which they had themselves to tell, with evidence coming in from one quarter and another, and now from the very chief among themselves, that the barriers of the grave had indeed been broken, that their Lord was in truth that Conqueror of death, that Prince of life, which in their unbelieving ears He had proclaimed Himself to be: ‘ The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon’ (ef. 1 Cor. xv. 5). And yet, anticipated though their tidings had been, every confirmation of a fact so marvellous, so far transcending all experience and all hope, must have been welcome ; welcome therefore their confirmation of it, as they threw their symbol into the common stock of hope ripening now into glorious certainty, as ‘they told what things were done in the way, and how He was known of them in breaking of bread.’ * This Scripture, besides its literal and historic meaning, may possibly have a symbolic meaning as well. Such Hugh of St. Victor has traced in it (Miscel. i. 100): Jesus in vid ambulantibus faciem suam abscondit, osten- surus eam in patrid. Propterea in fine view cum discumbere ceepissent, fregit Jesus panem ut interiora ejus patescerent, et ibi eum agnoverunt, quia post vites hujus cursum in regno cw#lorum cum Abraham et Isaac et Jacob dis- cumbentes, et super mensam ejus edentes et bibentes in eterno convivio, Jesu 16 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES, ETC. claritatem videbunt. Nunc autem interim in vid peregrinus apparet, ut exilium nostrum agnoscamus, et quod alia est patria nostra. Et colloquendo corda ad amorem inflammat, sed oculos ad contemplationem adhuec non revelat. Qui ergo in vid ex sermonibus Jesu ignem amoris corde concipiunt, in fine vie claritatem ejus videbunt. Sunt itaque lingue ignes que veniunt ad nos; et verba flammantia quotidie Christum nobis loquentem audimus; quia spiritum Christi non habet, qui verba Christi audiendo non ardet. I will fill this page with one quotation more from the same illus- trious theologian, its right to a place here consisting in the commentary which it supplies to those words of the disciples, ‘Did not our heart burn within us?’ though indeed I am more tempted to quote it as a magni- ficent specimen of what mediwval Latin in the hands of a great master, who had some great truth to set forth, could accomplish (Jn Hecles. Hom. 1): In meditatione quasi quedam lucta est ignorantiz cum scientid, et lumen veritatis quodammodo in media caligine erroris emicat; velut ignis in ligno viridi, primo quidem difficile apprehendit, sed cum flatu vehementer excitatus fuerit, et acrius in subjectam materiam exardescere cceperit, tune magnos quosdam fumose caliginis globos exurgere, et ipsam adhuc modice scintil- lationis flammam rarius interlucentem obvolvere videmus: donec tandem, paulatim crescente incendio, vapore omni exhausto et caligine disjecta, splendor serenus appareat. Tune victrix flamma in omnem crepitantis rogi congeriem discurrens, libere dominatur; subjectamque materiam circum- volitans, ac molli attactu perstringens lambendo exurit ac penetrat : nec prius quiescit, quam interna penetrando succedens totum quodammodo traxerit in se, quod invenit preter se. Postquam autem incendio id quod exurendum est concrematum a sni quodammodo naturé totum in ignis similitudinem proprietatemque transierit, tunc omnis fragor decidit et strepitus sopitur, atque illa flammarum spicula 6 medio sublata tolluntur, seevusque ille et vorax ignis, cunctis sibi subjectis et amici quédam similitudine concorporatis, in alti se pace silentioque componit ; quia jam non invenit nec diversum aliquid preter se, nec adversum contra se. . . . Sic nimirum carnale cor, quasi lignum viride, et necdum ab humore carnalis concupiscentia exsiccatum, si quando aliquam divini timoris seu dilectionis scintillam conceperit, primum quidem pravis desideriis reluctantibus passionum et perturbationum fumus exoritur ; deinde, roboraté mente, cum flamma amoris et validius ardere et clarius splendere cceperit, mox omnis perturbationum caligo evanescit ; et jam pura mente animus ad contemplationem veritatis se diffundit. Novissime autem, postquam assidua veritatis contemplatione cor penetratum fuerit, et ad ipsum summ veritatis fontem medullitus toto anime affectu intraverit, tunc in idipsum dulcedinis quasi totum ignitum, et in ignem amoris con- versum, ab omni strepitu et perturbatione pacatissimum requiescit. > ΠῚ . ve wun ἢ am At a Wx a i" ΤᾺ ΠΝ ᾿ sa) a tie oe " ἐν MOS ἐν a oe ἐν ὃ ἘΠ Ι! Td