JL- k. THE CONDITIONS OUR LORD'S LIFE ON EARTH ' WORKS B Y THE SAME A UTHOR. Crown Svo. "js. 6d. Cheap Edition. Crown %vo. 3^. 6d. THE FAITH OF THE GOSPEL. A Manual of Christian Doctrine. Crown &vo. Js. 6J. THE RELATION OF CONFIRMATION TO BAPTISM. As taught in Holy Scripture and the Fathers. Crown Sz>o. %s. (yd. THE PRINCIPLES OF ECCLESIASTICAL UNITY : Four Lectures delivered in St. Asaph Cathedral. LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY. THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES, 1896 THE CONDITIONS OF OUR LORD'S LIFE ON EARTH Being Five Lectures delivered on the Bishop Paddock Foundation, in the General Seminary at New York, 1896 TO WHICH IS PREFIXED PART OF A FIRST PROFESSORIAL LECTURE AT CAMBRIDGE ARTHUR JAMES MASON, D.D. LADY MARGARET PROFESSOR OF LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY 1896 All rights reserved TO THE VERY REVEREND FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR, D D. DEAN OF CANTERBURY, WHOSE NAME IS EVERYWHERE ASSOCIATED WITH THE LIFE OF CHRIST, THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS DEDICATED BY ONE WHO HAS HAD FOR A YEAR THE PRIVILEGE OF WORKING UNDER HIM, AND HAS RECEIVED GREAT KINDNESSES AT HIS HANDS. 2317208 THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES. IN the summer of the year 1880, George A. Jarvis of Brooklyn, New York, moved by his sense of the great good which might thereby accrue to the cause of Christ, and to the Church of which he was an ever-grateful member, gave to the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church certain securities, exceeding in value eleven thousand dollars, for the foundation and maintenance of a Lectureship in said seminary. Out of love to a former pastor and enduring friend, the Right Reverend Benjamin Henry Paddock, D.D., Bishop of Massachusetts, he named the foundation " The Bishop Paddock Lectureship." The deed of trust declares that " the subjects of the lectures shall be such as appertain to the viii. THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES. defence of the religion of Jesus Christ, as revealed in the Holy Bible, and illustrated in the Book of Common Prayer, against the varying errors of the day, whether materialistic, rationalistic, or professedly religious, and also to its defence and confirmation in respect of such central truths as the Trinity, the Atonement, Justification, and the Inspiration of the Word of God ; and of such central facts as the ChurcJis Divine Order and Sacraments, her historical Reformation, and her rights and powers as a pure 'and national Church. A Mother subjects may be chosen if unanimously approved by the Board of Appointment as being both timely and also within the true intent of this Lectureship." Under the appointment of the Board created by the trust, the Rev. Arthur James Mason, D.D., Canon of Canterbury, and Lady Margaret Pro- fessor of Divinity in the University o.f Cambridge, delivered the Lectures for the year 1896, con- tained in this volume. PREFACE THE last three of these Lectures were in sub- stance delivered to the clergy of Worcester and the neighbourhood, in the chapter-house of that Cathedral, in 1892 and 1895, an< ^ to the summer gathering of clergy at Cambridge in 1894. When the Trustees of the Paddock Lecture Fund did me the honour to invite me to lecture on that foundation, I thought I could do no better than take the same subject, feeling that a reverent treatment of it would tend more than anything else to draw out the personal devotion of the students of the General Seminary towards our Blessed Saviour, whose ministers they were about to become, and that a full examination of the Scriptural data might tend to modify impressions which recent criticism upon our Lord's use of the Old Testament was tending to create. I wish, however, to make it plain b PREFACE. that the authorities of the Seminary were in no way responsible for my manner of dealing with the subject. Amidst the utmost kindness and courtesy, which I shall remember as long as I live, it became apparent to me, before the Lec- tures were at an end, that what I had been led to say did not meet with unmixed approval. I cannot but hope that some of the misgivings which the Lectures aroused may be removed by the perusal of them in print. It is one thing to listen to spoken words, perhaps under con- ditions not very favourable to accurate hearing, and another thing to look at them quietly in the study. One American newspaper which has been forwarded to me, speaks as if there were some uncertainty as to whether I believed in the Godhead of Christ or not. Such an insinua- tion would have been totally impossible on the part of any one who had heard me. The God- head of Christ is not only explicitly and in set terms asserted in many passages of the New Testament ; it forms the substratum of the entire Bible, and of all history. Without the Godhead of Christ the Bible would be a self- PREFACE. contradictory chaos, and the history of man and of the world would be meaningless. A more acute and serious criticism was directed against my third lecture, so I am informed, by a respected English priest, who has given him- self to the service of a parish in the American Church. He considered that my treatment of our Lord's miracles (of which he was only able to judge by report) came under the ninth Anathema of Cyril, which, along with the other eleven Anathemas, was adopted by the Ecumeni- cal Council of Ephesus, and reaffirmed by later Councils. That Anathema runs thus : " If any man saith that the one Lord Jesus Christ was glorified by the Spirit, and used the power that came by Him as a power that was not His own, and received from Him the ability to work miracles against unclean spirits and to perform Divine signs among men, instead of saying that the Spirit through whom He wrought the signs was His own Spirit, let him be Anathema." l 1 I translate the text as given in P. E. Pusey's Cyril vol. vi. pp. 36 and 254 : E? ris Tjffl rbv eva. Kvpiov 'lyffovv Xptffrbv PREFACE. It must be remembered, however, what was the special heresy against which the Anathemas of Cyril were directed. The word "one," near the beginning of the ninth, strikes the note. They are directed against Nestorianism, not against Arianism, or any form of thought which might seem to lower the eternal Person of the Word as such. The Nestorian heresy made the Lord Jesus Christ two persons, not one ; and it would seem (we know little of Nestorius's teach- ing except through Cyril's polemic against it) that Nestorius had used the text, " He shall glorify Me " (St. John xvi. 14), as an indication that there was in Christ a human person who could speak of being glorified by the Spirit, dis- tinct from that Divine Person of the Word who, df5od(rOai irapa rov irvev/j.a,TOS, ws oAAorpia 5u!/auei rrj Si' ainov Xptefitvov, KO! trap' avrov \af36i>ra. rb tvepyelv SvvatrBai Kara irvfVfidTcav axaddpruv, Kal rb tr\i)povv fls avOpuirovs ras BfoffrjfjLias, Kal ovx^ 5J /J.a\\ov ttiiov avrov rb iri/fVfid 153 (ed. 1 8 44). 54 THE DEVELOPMENT OF him. And if sin could be supposed to lie in a nature, or in certain conditions of a nature, apart from the personal will of those who belong to that nature, then for any one willingly to enter into that nature so conditioned must needs be a sinful act, whatever might be the ultimate purpose of the act. Incarnation into sinful flesh would be, not a condescension, but a fall. The Son of God could not begin His work of redemption by an act of sin. He could only take into conjunction with His holy person such elements and in such conditions as were capable of the conjunction, and could serve for the manifestation of a holy will. Christ never had our primary difficulty of overcoming a hereditary disposition to go wrong. He was as unimpeded in the formation of His moral character as was the first Adam, who was created with all his faculties perfect, and with every impulse wholesome. To this pure and beautiful new beginning of the human race in Christ the appropriate avenue was His conception by a Virgin Mother. I do not know whether the strife which is still OUR LORD'S MORAL CHARACTER. 55 vehemently surging among the German Pro- testants upon this subject has aroused much attention in America. It cannot, at any rate, cause any division of opinion within our own Catholic communion, which day by day repeats its affirmation that Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary. If the narratives at the beginning of St. Matthew and St. Luke are legends which sprang up some- where in the early Church after the days of the Apostles, we cannot but marvel at the incom- parable moderation and the delicacy, beyond that of the highest of poets, which existed among those first Christians, to invent, and to leave so chastely unadorned, the story of the Manger, and the Shepherds, and the Wise Men, and the Presentation, and the Finding in the Temple. It is a strange kind of historical or literary criticism which finds it easier to suppose that these 'narratives are the creation of fancy than the recollections respectively of St. Joseph and of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Signs are not want- ing that already a more critical spirit than that which is so often vaunted is bringing men round, 56 THE DEVELOPMENT OF even in Germany, to a more reasonable view. Professor Loofs of Halle, the most respected of the disciples of Professor Harnack, is able, so I am told, to set himself so far free from his master's influence as to say that, in a life where miracles cannot be denied, one miracle more or less makes little difficulty, and that therefore the virgin Conception may be admitted. 1 But such grounds for the admission so welcome in itself are most inadequate. They might, perhaps, have sufficed to secure acquiescence for that which is really a legend, the legend of the virgin Birth, as distinguished from the virgin Conception, if it had found its way into the sacred text ; but it has not. From a very early period, and with a strange unanimity, Church teachers inculcated the belief that, not only was the Lord conceived without earthly fatherhood, but that at birth He came to the light by a process unknown to ordinary nature, which they supposed to be necessary to the preservation of 1 In his three Sermons on the Aposloiictim, preached before the University of Halle, Professor Loofs treats the matter as not of " fundamental " importance (p. 21, footnote). OUR LOAD'S MORAL CHARACTER. 57 His Mother's virgin estate. It is a good instance of the difference between the miracles of Scripture and the clumsy fancies of men. If Scripture had taught us that our Lord came forth from His mother's womb in the same manner as He came into the Upper Chamber where the doors were shut, we should, I dare say, have bowed to authority ; but we should have felt our faith to be tried by the imposition of a miracle which would be not only gratuitous and unimpressive, but also actually misleading, because it would have obscured the difference between the Lord's natural body and His resurrection body. The miracle of His con- ception, on the other hand, can scarcely be said to be a miracle at all, so completely does it seem to be demanded though assuredly it was not invented afterwards to meet the demand by the fact that His birth was not, like ours, the first inception of a new personality, but the advent of an already existent and Divine person upon a new mode of being. The Incarnate Lord begins, then, without our disadvantage of original sin. But to start 58 THE DEVELOPMENT OF in human life with untainted springs of desire and thought, is not the same thing as to have attained the perfection of moral character. Perfection is not, in our changeful existence, a stationary thing. The human being who begins with the perfection of a babe, must go on to the more conscious and voluntary perfection of the grown man ; and this can only be attained, so far as we can. see, through tempta- tions fully felt and persistently overcome. Christ, therefore, became the subject of temptation. We might, perhaps, never have imagined that Christ was tempted, if He had not Himself disclosed the fact to His disciples. Probably in their reverent admiration for His even, unwavering career of goodness, they would not have allowed themselves to suppose that it ever cost Him an effort to be good. They would have thought that it came to Him as we have seen that, in part, it did by nature, and would have shrunk from thinking of Him as under- going any hard hand-to-hand conflict with the solicitations of evil. Few parts of the Gospel narrative are so little likely to be the result OUR LORD'S MORAL CHARACTER. 59 of the legend-making process as the descrip- tion of the Temptation of our Saviour after His Baptism. It wears, indeed, a symbolic form, like that of the temptation of our first parents. In no other form could we rightly apprehend the temptations which presented themselves to the mind of God made man. ,But that the disciples should themselves have invented such a beginning for their Master's public ministry is as impossible as that they should have invented its closing with the Agony in the Garden and the cry of dereliction on the Cross. It must have been to them a moment of shock and of terror when our Lord first confided to them what He had passed through. But when once told that our Lord was tempted, it is not difficult for us to suppose that He was often, that He was constantly tempted. Such a special crisis, perhaps, never occurred again, but it would be unnatural to suppose that no temptations had ever occurred to Him before, in boyhood and in youth ; and we are permitted to know of occasions when they distinctly occurred to Him afterwards. Indeed, 6O THE DEVELOPMENT OF the Evangelist significantly says, at the close of his account of the great Temptation, that " the devil departed from Him " only " for a season." 1 Sometimes temptations came to Him through the voice of friends. I do not know what else can account for the sudden severity of tone with which He repels His Mother's appeal the instant before working His first miracle. 2 Nothing else accounts for the terrific severity with which He displayed the character of St. Peter's argument, when once the Apostle under- took to cheer as he must have thought the failing spirits of his Master, and to stop Him from taking so gloomy a view of the situation. " Get thee behind Me, Satan," was the reply, identifying the well-meaning but misguided friend with the dreadful agency which made use of him ; and then followed the confession which showed how sharp the temptation to our Saviour Himself had been " For thou art an offence, a cause of stumbling, unto Me." 8 He felt in that hour what martyrs have felt, when fathers and brothers and friends have 1 St. Luke iv. 13. 2 St. John ii. 4. 3 St. Matt. xvi. 23. OUR LOKD'S MORAL CHARACTER. 6 1 offered a means of escape, and urged, "Spare thy youth," or " Spare thy old age," and was not too proud when it was wholesome for His disciple to be warned to show how acutely the suggestion had been felt. At other times, and, we may well believe, less dangerously, the temptation came through the lips of enemies, repeating, as they did during the Crucifixion, the very words which expressed once more His temptation in the wilderness, "If Thou be the Son of God, if Thou be the Christ, save Thyself." And that which found distinct utterance at such moments must have been discerned by our Lord's keen perceptions on a thousand unrecorded occasions as well. As He looks back upon the years of His ministry from the Upper Chamber the night before His death, He says to the faithful eleven, "Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations," 1 as if these had been the main feature of His life during the three years and a half of the Apostles' association with Him. The great unknown interpreter of the life 1 St. Luke xxii. 28. 62 THE DEVELOPMENT OF of Christ, the writer of the Epistle to the, Hebrews, to whom it was given, more than to any other of the inspired writers, to draw out for us the significance of the human nature of our Lord, generalises the typical temptation after our Lord's Baptism by saying that He "was in all points tempted like as we are, without sin." l It is a bold generalisation, but not unwarranted indeed, St. Luke himself made or accepted it, when, at the close of his account of the forty days in the wilderness, he says that the devil only left our Lord, " when he had brought to a conclusion all temptation." z However temptations may be sorted and classified, they are all represented there, temptations of the component parts of man, body, soul, and spirit ; temptations through the main foes with which we are confronted, the world, the flesh, and the devil ; temptations to sin against God, and self, and the world, through omission of duty, and through doing, in thought, word, and deed, 1 Heb. iv. 15. 2 St. Luke iv. 13: ffvvrf\fffas vdvra OUR LORD'S MORAL CHARACTER. 63 what should not be done. " In all points," He was tempted. He had all our faculties, and all our attractions and repulsions. Sweet was sweet to Him, and bitter was bitter. Labour and repose were to Him what they are to us. Nay, His capacities for enjoyment and for pain, in mind and in body, were immeasurably beyond ours ; and, in all this vast range, there was no spot where temptation did not assail Him, with a subtlety, a pertinacity, an intensity, of which we have little notion. Some measure of the strength of His temptation in the wilder- ness may be gathered from the words of St. Matthew and St. Luke, when they tell us that, "when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterward an hungred;" "when the days were accomplished, He hungered." 1 Read these words in conjunction with St. Mark's brief statement that He was "forty days .tempted of the devil," 2 and the meaning of that "afterwards" will appear. It would seem that under the stress of the temptation He had no leisure during those forty days to 1 St. Matt. iv. 2 ; St. Luke iv. 2. z St. Mark i. 13. 64 THE DEVELOPMENT OF pay attention to His bodily wants even as, upon the Cross, it was only after the horror of His great darkness began to pass away that He gave utterance to His consciousness of thirst. Truly temptation was a fearful reality to our Blessed Saviour. The language of the Epistle to the Hebrews carries us a step further, when it says that not only was He in all points tempted, but was tempted "like as we are (ica0' d^otorrjra)." Temptation did not come to Him in a fashion that made it different from what we know ; it was the same. We are not indeed com- pelled to suppose that temptations presented themselves to Him in the same forms in which they come to us. If they had done so, they would, in many cases, have lost all their tempting power. Sensuality or worldli- ness in the coarse forms in which they make havoc of the souls of men could never have been anything but an object of hatred and disgust to His pure soul. It was necessary that temptation should come to Him in the most refined and insidious form if there was to be the OUR LORD'S MORAL CffARACTER. 65 least ground for supposing that it might succeed. But when it came in an appropriate form, it came to Him as it comes to us. It needed the exercise of vigilance and a sensitive con- science to discern its character; it cost effort, strength of will, pain and hardship to resist. And the fact that He was " without sin," while it freed Him, doubtless, from many of our worst temptations, only added to the acuteness of others. He never knew by experience of His own, what we know too well, the force with which temptation comes to us again on the score of having been yielded to before, nor the difficulty of going back from a position once wrongly taken up. But on the other hand, our dulled and hardened consciences can ill imagine the poignancy of the torture which it must have been to one who was wholly right and good, to be besieged and assaulted with every manner of solicitation to fall away from His lofty standard of duty. We can see that, being what He was, it was inconceivable that He should really fall ; but none the less perhaps we should say, all the more He F 66 THE DEVELOPMENT OF was permitted to experience to the full all the hardship of doing right. This brings us to the question, which is of profound interest for us, how " the Man Christ Jesus " held His ground, and not only remained sinless amidst temptation, but also formed by the conflict that holiness of human character which makes Him the pattern for all other men to follow. Did He- bear down the temp- tation by summoning up the forces of His own Divine nature, that Godhead which "cannot be tempted of evil," 1 or did He meet it as a creature may, by loyal dependence upon God His Father ? I dare say that many of us in childhood supposed that when our Lord replied to the temptation to cast Himself from the pinnacle in the words, " Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God," He was rebuking Satan for his wickedness in tempting Him, and asserting His Divine superiority to the temptation. In point of fact, the words seem to indicate clearly the opposite thought, that He had taken upon Himself the estate of a subject and a servant, 1 St. James i. 13. OUR LOAD'S MORAL CHARACTER, 6/ and was bound to do nothing, and would do nothing, that might "tempt the Lord." The Lord was His God. To cast Himself down from the pinnacle would have been to claim the aid of His God for an action not dictated by Him ; and so would have provoked the Lord His God to withdraw that aid upon which He relied. In like manner, the replies to the other temptations set plainly before us how entirely our Saviour had thrown Himself into the posi- tion of human dependence. " Man shall not live by bread alone," and Christ was man. He lived, as other men may and ought to live, by " every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." He would not pay an act of homage to the Tempter, because He was under the law for man, and that law laid it upon Him to worship the Lord His God, and to serve no other instead of Him, or in conjunction with Him. This language is not like that of one who draws upon forces within Himself, whether human or superhuman, for the conflict with temptation. It is the language of one who occupies a crea- turely place, and trusts in the aid of the Creator. 68 THE DEVELOPMENT OF We must see whether this view is borne out by other indications given to us in Holy Scripture. The rigour of the mediaeval theology, which is still held binding by Roman divines, denies that our Blessed Lord, when He was upon earth, was capable of faith. He had, they say, at all times the Beatific Vision ; and where vision is, there faith cannot be. I confess that it seems to me a shallow conception of faith, thus absolutely to contrast it with sight, and to think that it comes to an end when sight is vouchsafed. Although St. Paul in one place speaks of faith as opposed to sight, 1 in another place he speaks (and it is surely his habitual view of the matter) of faith as " abiding," even when we shall know as we were known. 2 It is a virtue of the soul which is specially tested by the absence of sight, as of other forms of demonstration ; but the virtue does not cease when its trials are over. But even if this were otherwise, the correctness of the mediaeval reasoning might be doubted. The Bible does not tell us, in so many words, that our Lord in 1 2 Cor, V. 7. - I Cor. xiii. 13. OUR LOKD'S MORAL CHARACTER. 69 His life on earth enjoyed the Beatific Vision, and we are not bound, therefore, either to affirm or to deny it. The Bible does assure us that He lived, in the largest sense, a life of faith. He was, says the Epistle to the Hebrews, " faithful unto Him that made Him (what He was) in all His house," 1 even as Moses had been. If the predominant thought here is that of fidelity in the discharge of duty, it yet em- phasizes a relationship from which faith, in the full acceptation, cannot be excluded. Jesus is again described as " the Captain and Perfecter of faith" not "of our faith," 2 as the Old Version wrongly glosses. He first showed what faith really was, and set a complete and faultless example of it, the contemplation of which may animate us to endure trials which have some resemblance to His own. And when the great writer, whose words we have been quoting, would furnish a text of the Old Testament which should fully express the moral and spiritual position adopted by the Eternal Son on coming into 1 Heb. iii. z. * Heb. xii. 2, T/)s iriVrewj apwybs /cal TeAeiwr^s. 70 THE DEVELOPMENT OF the world, the text is, " And I will put My trust in Him." 1 He had all the Old Testament to choose from, and it may seem strange that he chose this text ; but the force of the passage is unquestionable. The attitude of the typical prophet, or of the theocratic king (for it is not certain whose words they are in the first in- stance), is that of a trust absolutely fixed once for all upon God ; and such was the attitude which Christ would assume. Renouncing all trust in Himself, or in any creaturely aid, or in earthly modes of attaining to success, this was to be His one motto through life, un- swerving reliance upon God, whatever God might call upon Him to suffer or to do. The fall of man in the beginning had come about through distrust of God's ordering of things, and the assertion of human independence ; and He who came to undo the fall would undo it through the opposite course unflinchingly adhered to, abnegation of self, and confident dependence upon God. Thus, when a young man full of religious 1 Heb. ii. 13, 'Eyw V fft\^itav. 2 St. John ii. II, 3 St. John i. 14. 86 OUR LORD'S POWER UPON EARTH. glory. It was not a glory which lighted upon Him at times from without. The glory was there before, but it had not been manifested to us. The mighty work which He did at Cana brought it within our observation, gave it a visible expression, forced it upon our eyes. The making of the water wine showed us what was in Him. It burst upon us as a revelation of what lay beneath that quiet and simple exterior. He manifested His glory." But it will be noticed that St. John does not say, " He manifested His Divine nature," or the like. The glory which Christ then displayed as He had never displayed it before, was not merely the possession of marvellous powers of His own. There was about that first miracle, as well as in the whole life which it illustrated, a more subtle and remarkable character than that of mere power, however great. It revealed a relationship. " We beheld His glory," says the Evangelist, in the earlier passage to which I have referred, and adds not, as in our Old Version, "the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father" but, "glory as of an only-begotten OUR LOAD'S POWER UPON EARTH. 87 come to represent a Father." 1 While the glory was indeed our Saviour's own, which He could not fail to bear about with Him, inseparable from His person, whether perceived by men or not, it was a glory which carried the thoughts of a spiritual observer back to another than the Saviour Himself. The more it was exhibited, the more the disciples felt that it told them of an unique connexion between their Master and God. That was the special feature which struck them in Christ's career alike in its mighty deeds and in its ordinary tenor. It did not exactly strike them that He was Himself possessed of the Divine attributes, for this they did not recognise at first, and only came to believe it distinctly after His resurrection, but that the Father was manifested through Him in a sense in which no one else could manifest Him. They saw in Him " an only begotten from a Father." That which the Evangelist propounds in this pregnant statement of the impression left upon him and his fellow-disciples by the life of our Lord, is brought out again and again by our vs irapa ira.rp6s. 88 OUR LORD'S POWER UPON EARTH. Lord Himself when speaking of His own actions. Although He does not treat His miracles as the highest of His credentials, but lays stress rather upon the convincing force of His teaching, yet He appeals often to the witness of His works ; and it is always to establish the same truth not His personal Godhead, although He leaves us in no doubt about His personal Godhead but, more than that, it is to establish His unique relationship to God, to the Father. He says to Philip : " Believest thou that I am in the Father and the Father in Me ? The words that I speak unto you, I speak not from Myself; but the Father, abiding in Me, doeth His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me ; but if not, because of the works themselves believe." * To the Jews who were ready to stone Him, He says, " Many works did I show you beautiful works from the Father. ... If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not ; but if I do, even if ye believe not Me, believe the works : that ye may know and go on knowing that the Father is in Me, 1 St. John xiv. 10 foil. OUR LORD'S POWER UPON EARTH. 89 and I in the Father." l It is always the same, " If I had not done among them the works that none other did, they had not had sin, but now they have both seen and hated both Me and My Father." 2 " The witness that I have is greater than John ; for the works which the Father hath given Me that I should accomplish them, the very works that I do, bear witness concerning Me that the Father hath sent Me." 3 " The works which I do in the name of My Father, these bear witness concerning Me." 4 It is "the works of God " which are to be " manifested " in the man who was born blind. 5 The miracles are never appealed to in Scripture, unless I am greatly mistaken, as a proof of Christ's Divinity unless, perhaps, you except St. Paul's ' refer- ence to the great miracle of the Resurrection ; 6 they are appealed to as a proof of that which is at once less and more than His Divinity that is, of Christ's profound and unvarying corre- spondence with the Father. It was the one thing 1 St. John x. 32, 37 foil. 2 St. John xv. 24. 3 St. John v. 36. 4 St. John x. 25. 5 St. John ix. 3. 6 Rom. i. 4. 90 OUR LOAD'S POWER UPON EARTH. which Christ would not suffer to allow men to suppose that His miracles had no source beyond Himself. " I am come in the name of My Father, and ye receive Me not ; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." l He did not say, " If I had come in My own name," because the thing was so inconceivable ; but it is nevertheless true, that our Lord's claims would have met with less opposition amongst the Jews if He had said nothing about His Father, and had allowed them to see in His miracles only a proof of His own personal greatness. But we may go further, and say that this rule applies not only to what we call the miraculous acts of Christ, but to His whole incarnate life. Many of the sentences which I have already quoted refer not only to miraculous acts, but to other works as well. Our Lord does not single out a particular class of His actions as proving His intimate union with the Father. He gives us to understand that every movement which He makes in life is the outcome of that union, and that there is no movement in the 1 St. John v. 43. OUR LORD'S POWER UPON EARTH. 9! Father's life which His own does not faith- fully reflect, in historic succession, upon earth. " Verily, verily, I say unto you, it is impossible for the Son to do of Himself anything at all, unless he behold the Father doing aught ; for whatsoever He doeth, these things also the Son doeth in like manner. For the .Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things which He Himself doeth ; and greater works than these will He show Him, that ye may marvel." l " I cannot do anything of Myself." 2 " When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am, and that I do nothing of My- self, but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things." 3 In such words our Lord is not saying that it would have been impossible for Him to perform His miracles without the Father. He is teaching men that His most ordinary actions correspond with the will of His Father. The Incarnation has made no breach in that funda- mental law of the being of God, that the Father and the Son do not and cannot act irrespective of each other. Although the conditions of the 1 St. John v. 19 foil. * St. John v. 30. 3 St. John viii. 28. 92 OUR LOR&S POWER UPON EARTH. Son's life are so altered by His coming down from Heaven, yet it is still the necessity of His very existence a necessity which is His highest joy and glory to be at all times and in every circumstance the supreme and only perfect ex- ponent of Another. Thus we see that, while all the actions of Christ even the lowliest are treated as revelations of the character and mind of the Father, and (naturally) the miraculous actions among others, none of the actions, not even the miraculous, are treated as showing that our Lord Himself was using Divine omnipotence as inherent in His own Person. He was using Divine omnipotence, indeed, but Holy Scripture represents Him as using it inherent in the person of Another with whom He was in the most perfect and indissoluble union. 1 1 See Westcott Hebrews p. 66 : "It is unscriptural, though the practice is supported by strong patristic authority, to regard the Lord during His historic life as acting now by His human and now by His Divine Nature only. The two natures were inseparably combined in the unity of His Person. In all things He acts personally ; and, as far as it is revealed to us, His greatest works during His earthly life are wrought by the help of the Father, through the energy of a humanity enabled to do all things in fellowship with God (comp. St. John xi. 41 foil.)." OUR LOAD'S POWER UPON EARTH. 93 The language of our Saviour in this respect is reiterated by His Apostles. The speeches of St. Peter in the Acts are especially bold and plain in their presentment of the case. " Jesus the Nazarene," he cries on the day of Pentecost, "a Man displayed on the part of God towards you (aVS/oa aTroSeSery/itvov OTTO TOU 0eoC t u/iae)> by mighty deeds and wonders and signs which God did through Him in the midst of you." l And lest any one should suppose that this way of looking at the miracles of Christ belonged only to the very earliest days of our dispensa- tion, when men might still be supposed in a sense to know Christ only "after the flesh," we find St. Peter saying precisely the same thing at a later date, in his catechetical in- struction of Cornelius; "Jesus which was of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with Holy Ghost and power ; who went about doing good and healing all those who were oppressed by the devil, because God was with Him." 2 It would be hard to make such language fit in with the common theory that the miracles 1 Acts ii. 22, 2 Acts x. 38. 94 OUR LORD'S POWER UPON EARTH. were the exercise of Christ's Divine nature, as the sufferings were of His humanity. We should in that case have read something more like this : " Jesus of Nazareth, a Man who displayed Himself to you as more than man, by mighty deeds and wonders and signs which He did among you;" "Jesus of Nazareth, how from His birth He possessed the fulness of the Holy Spirit and power; who \vent about doing good and healing all that were op- pressed by the devil, because He was Himself God." No Christian can suppose for an instant that St. Peter thought of our Lord as a mere man, or that the author of the Acts intended to represent him as thinking so ; yet, so far as those particular words go, they would require less violence to accommodate them to such a supposition than to the supposition that our Lord in His miracles was drawing upon His own personal resources. It is of great interest in this connexion to endeavour to work out in the Bible, the use of the word "power" and similar words in reference to our Lord's life upon earth. He OUR LORD'S POWER UPON EARTH. 95 is, indeed, spoken of as exercising vast power. "We were not following cunningly devised fables," says St. Peter, " when we made known to you the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, but had been eye-witnesses of His majesty." l " Power went forth from Him," says St. Luke, and healed all." 2 Our Lord was con- scious of "power having gone forth "from Him. 3 Men came to Him saying, " If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean ; " 4 and He did not repudiate the suggestion, but, on the contrary, healed the leper as of His own bounty and power : " I will ; be thou clean." In keeping with this expression, He is said to have " bestowed on many that were blind the gift of sight." 5 To others, before healing them, He Himself put the question, "Do ye believe that I can do this ? " G When a poor man, sickened by failures, cried to Him in despair, "If Thou canst do anything, have mercy upon 1 2 Peter i. 16. Doubts concerning the authorship of the Epistle do not invalidate its canonical authority. 2 St. Luke vi. 19. 3 St. Luke viii. 46. 4 St. Matt. viii. 2. 5 St. Luke vii. 21 : lx a P iffaro &*-**w- " - St - Matt - 28 g6 OUR LORD'S POWER UPON EARTH. us and help us," l Jesus, according to the true reading, replied with a stern rebuke, To fl Suvy ; (" If Thou canst ? "), as if indignant at the suggestion that power might be wanting. And yet there are not many passages in the Gospels which speak directly of our Lord's "power." The word "power" does not occur, for instance, in St. John. I believe I have mentioned all the passages which speak of His "power" upon earth, except one or two which offer food for serious reflexion, as seeming to indicate limitations within which He was pleased to exercise this power : " He could do no mighty work there, save that He laid His hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them : and He marvelled because of their unbelief." 2 In the very passage where He resents the imputation of the possi- bility of His power failing, He does not pursue simply, " All things are possible to Me ; " He conditions the exercise of His power (on the common interpretation) by the faith of those on whose behalf He is to work : " If Thou canst ? All things are possible to him that believeth." 3 1 St, Mark ix.*22. 2 St. Mark vi. 5. 3 St. Mark ix. 23. OUR LORD'S POWER UPON EARTH. 97 And there is one hard phrase in St. Luke's Gospel which might appear to suggest that our Lord's exercise of miraculous power was not conditioned only by the presence or absence of faith on the part of the recipients of His bounty ; nor even exclusively by the will of our Blessed Lord Himself. "It came to pass on one of those days, that He was teaching, and there were sitting by Pharisees and doctors of the law who were come out of every village of Galilee and Judaea and Jerusalem ; and there was a power of the Lord that He should heal." l It looks as if in this passage we were to take " the Lord " in the Old Testament sense, not referring, as it usually does in the New Testament, to the person of Christ Himself, but more generally to the covenant God of Israel. But whether it is to be referred to Christ or to the Father, the special mention of the existence of a power for healing on that occasion seems to indicate that the very power was not always present, or not always present to an equal 1 St. Luke v. 17 : Kal Svvafjus Kvpiov 3\v tls rb laffOcu avrtv. It seems unnatural to make avrdv refer to the same subject as Kvptov. H C)8 OUR LOA'H'S POWER UPON EA~RTH. degree. Sometimes, if the power was present, its exercise was hindered by men's want of faith ; sometimes, if we rightly understand St. Luke, the power itself, according to " the Lord's " good pleasure, was withdrawn, or less freely extended. There is another word, which, to the English reader's great loss, has been too often con- founded with the word Suva^u/e, or "power," which is frequently used of our Blessed Lord on earth, and which throws light upon the source and nature of the power which He exercised. It is the word fou Trvtv/jLari CWTOV) that they were thus reasoning 1 St. John v. 6. - St. Mark viii. 17. 3 St. John xvi. 19. APPEARANCES OF LIMITATION. 133 among themselves, and said, Why reason ye these things in your hearts ? " l About the tribute question, " Jesus, coming to know, or perceiving (yvou'e), their wickedness, said, Why tempt ye Me, ye hypocrites ? " : The disciples murmur at Mary's waste of ointment : "Jesus, coming to know it, said to them, Why trouble ye the woman ? " J Such passages seem to show that our Saviour's knowledge of things around Him was, like ours, discursive, coming to Him at successive moments, and not exhaustive from the outset and therefore stationary ; in other words, that He was aware of a thing at one instant, of which He was not aware the instant before. Sometimes these moments at which our Lord became aware, or more vividly aware, of a thing are recorded to have occasioned in Him a rising of holy passion. All passion implies -a kind of access of knowledge or, at any rate, of realisation ; and a being to whom everything is fully and unincreasably known and felt, would seem to be thereby precluded 1 St. Mark ii. 8. 2 St. Matt. xxii. 18. J St. Matt. xxvi. 10. 134 OUR LOR&S KNO WLEDGE UPON EA R TH from passion. Thus, on the disciples trying to keep back the children from Him, " When Jesus saw it, He was indignant." 1 When the people in the synagogue maintained an obsti- nate silence, and would not answer His question about good works on the sabbath, " having glanced round about on them with wrath, being altogether grieved at the hardening of their heart, He saith to the man, Stretch out thy hand." 2 Sights and sounds often affected Him thus. More than once we are told that " coming forth and seeing a great multitude, He was moved with compassion." 3 It is as if He had hardly been prepared for such a spec- tacle. At sight of the widow at Nain, He was moved with compassion. 4 " When Jesus saw [Mary] weeping, and the Jews which came to- gether with her weeping, He groaned in spirit" (with indignant emotion), " and troubled Him- self." 5 When the rich young ruler professed that he had kept all the commandments, "Jesus looked upon him and loved him." 6 When " the 1 St. Mark x. 14. z St. Mark iii. 5. 3 St. Matt. xiv. 14. 4 St. Luke vii. 13. 5 St. John xi. 33. 6 St. Mark x. 21. APPEARANCES OF LIMITATION. 135 seventy returned again with joy," " in that very hour He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth." 1 In the triumphal Entry, "as He drew near, seeing the city, He wept over it." 2 Emotions evidently break forth in a similar manner on other occasions, though without the same explicit mention. As I have said, all movements of passion imply the rushing into the mind of new thoughts. They contain an element of surprise. But it is highly significant that surprise itself, in the form of wonder, is several times pre- dicated of our Saviour. Wonder is the shock, whether agreeable or otherwise, of the strange and unexpected. Wonder is the result of a new and significant truth being forced upon the consciousness, which cannot all at once be co-ordinated with what was known or thought before. And so we find in the life of Christ that He wondered at some men's faith, and at some men's unbelief. The people of His own country, Nazareth, among whom He had 1 St. Luke x. 21. 2 St. Luke xix. 41. 136 OUR LORD'S KNOWLEDGE UPON EARTH increased in favour with God and men, might reasonably have been expected to welcome Him ; and " He marvelled at their unbelief." l When the Jews on every side were looking askance at Him, a Gentile officer entreats Him for a word of healing, not doubting that the powers of nature will obey His command as promptly as soldiers in the ranks obey their centurion ; "and when Jesus heard these things, He marvelled at him, and turning to the multitude that followed Him, He said, I tell you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." 2 And there was one terrible occasion in His life when wonder became astonishment and anguish. "H|oaro I K0a/u/3ao-0at Kai aSityiovetv " He began to be sore amazed and very heavy." 3 6^uj3oc' differs from Bavfjia both in excess of volume, being an overwhelming degree of astonishment, and also as containing a suggestion of alarm : and \QanfitiaQai is to go the whole length of such astonishment, and to be transported out of one's self by it. 'ASr^ovav denotes a kind of stupefaction and bewilderment, the intellectual 1 St. Mark vi. 6. 2 St. Luke vii. 9. 3 St. Mark xiv. 33. APPEARANCES OF LIMITATION. 137 powers reeling and staggering under the pres- sure of the ideas presented to them. This is what the Lord vouchsafed to undergo. The transition from imagination beforehand to actual experience was more than He could well bear, and He felt that it was killing Him. "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto .death." It took away His spiritual breath, so that His very prayers in those long hours in the Garden were but broken ejaculations, again and again repeated, " saying the same words." Although He had come into the world for the very purpose of bearing sin ; although He had long lived on earth among sinners, and feeling the hatefulness of their sins ; although He had had foretastes and anticipations of Gethsemane itself, as when He cried, " Now is My soul troubled, and what shall I say ? " * yet, when the hour came, it exceeded all His expecta- tions. The sensation of having sin all sin laid upon Him as His own burden now dis- mayed and appalled Him, and made Him entreat, as we may well believe that He had 1 St. John xii. 27. I 38 OUR LORD'S KNOWLEDGE UPON EARTH never before entreated, that, if it were possible, the cup might pass from Him. And as that most awful prayer indicates that He had not fully realised beforehand what He was then experiencing, so also it seems to imply that even then He was not absolutely certain of the future. He could hardly have prayed, " If it be possible," with that reiteration and at such length, and with so heart-piercing an appeal, if it had been clear to Him all the time that there was positively no other way. Our Blessed Lord appears, then, to have gone on acquiring knowledge during His life upon earth. And we may reverently ask, by what means that knowledge was gained. To this question different answers will naturally have to be given, according to the different departments of knowledge. We will only touch at present upon those incidents in His life where He appears to gather know- ledge by the same methods which are open to all men. Many things He knew by personal observa- tion. "Jesus, seeing their faith, said unto the APPEARANCES OF LIMITATION. 139 sick of the palsy." 1 "Seeing the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were agitated and tossed about, like sheep that have no shepherd." 2 " Seeing them grievously distressed in rowing (for the wind was against them), about the fourth watch of the night, He cometh unto them." 3 " Peter took Him unto him, and began to rebuke Him ; but He, turning and seeing His disciples, rebuked Peter." 4 " Jesus, seeing him that he answered discreetly, said to him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." 5 " While He was yet speaking, there came some from the ruler of the synagogue's house saying, Thy daughter is dead ; why troublest thou the Rabbi any further ? But Jesus, overhearing the word as it was uttered (irapaKoixrag rov \6jov \a\ov fj.tvov), saith, Fear not." 6 Examples of such observation might be multiplied. But 'there were other things which our Lord learned by the information of others. " Hearing that John was delivered up, He retired into 1 St. Matt. ix. 2. 2 St. Matt. ix. 36. 3 St. Mark vi. 48. St. Mark viii. 32. 5 St. Mark xii. 34. 6 St. Mark v. 36. 140 OUR LORD'S KNOWLEDGE UPON EARTH Galilee." l " His disciples took up the body and buried him, and went and informed Jesus. And when Jesus heard it, He retired thence." 2 "Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and found him, and said, Dost thou believe in the Son of Man?" 3 "They sent unto Him, saying, Lord, he whom Thou lovest is sick. . . . When, therefore, He heard that he was sick, He then abode two days in the place where He was." 4 These occasions on which our Lord is said to have learned facts by being told them, lead us on to inquire whether He ever sought to ascertain facts by such means. The questions of Christ afford a singularly instructive field for study. As was natural in a life of full and busy inter- course with men, our Lord asked many ques- tions ; and those which are recorded are asked in various tones, and for various reasons. The greater number of our Lord's questions in the Gospels are plainly dialectical. Like other great teachers, He was wont to draw 1 St. Matt. iv. 12. 2 St. Matt. xiv. 12 foil. 3 St. John ix. 35. 4 St. John xi. 3, 6. APPEARANCES OF LIMITATION. 141 men out, and to lead them on, from what they acknowledged, to the rightful deductions. Examples of such dialectical questions, where plainly the Lord had no need to learn, but only wished to test, are the following : " Whose is this image and superscription?" 1 "Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am ? . . . but whom say ye that I am ? " 2! " Of whom do the kings of the earth take tribute? of their own children, or of strangers ? " 3 " The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men ? " 4 " What think ye concerning the Christ ? whose son is he ? ... How, then, doth David in the Spirit call him Lord ? " 5 <( When I sent you forth without purse and scrip and shoes, lacked ye anything ? " 6 Some of this class of questions are even more rhetorical than dialectical, and indicate some degree of suprise or indignation ; such as, " Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things ? " 7 " Did ye never read what David 1 St. Matt. xxii. 20. - St. Matt. xvi. 13 foil. 3 St. Matt. xvii. 25. 4 St. Matt. xxi. 25. 5 St. Matt. xxii. 42 foil. G St. Luke xxii. 35. 7 St. John iii. 10. 142 OUR LOAD'S KNOWLEDGE UPON EARTH did, when he was an hungred ? " i " He looked upon them, and said, What, then, is this which is written, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the headstone in the corner ? " 2 " Were there not ten cleansed ? and where are the nine?" 3 "Simon, sleepest thou ? couldest thou not watch with Me one hour ? " 4 In these places our Lord is evidently asking without any purpose of seeking information ; but there is a class of questions occupying de- batable ground, where it would be natural, in the case of any other than our Lord, to suppose the question to be asked for information's sake, but where, in His case, we may legitimately seek some other interpretation, and may find one without much difficulty. St. Athanasius instances one or two of these as a sign that our Lord had adopted all the sinless infirmities of our limited nature. The Arians, he says, are like the Jews, and keep saying, " How can He be the Word, or God, who, like a man, sleeps, 1 St. Matt. xii. 3. 2 St. Luke xx. 17. 3 St. Luke xvii. 17. 4 St. Mark xiv. 37. APPEARANCES OF LIMITATION. 143 and weeps, and asks questions ? " l " Both [Jews and Arians]," he continues, " arguing from the human conditions to which the Saviour submitted because of the flesh which He had, deny the eternity and Godhead of the Word." One of the questions which St. Athanasius thus regards as asked by the Saviour for His human information is the question to the friends of Lazarus, "Where have ye laid him?" 2 The eleventh chapter of St. John is indeed a marvel- lous weaving together of that which is natural and that which is above nature. Jesus learns from others that Lazarus is sick, but knows without any further message that Lazarus is dead. He weeps and groans at the sight of the sorrow which surrounds Him, yet calmly gives thanks for the accomplishment of the miracle before it has been accomplished. In these circumstances, although there would be nothing derogatory to the Lord's dignity in ascertaining by inquiry the simple matter of fact, as St. Athanasius supposed that He did, 1 Ath. c. Arian. Or. iii. 457. 2 St. John xi. 34. 144 OUR LORDS KNOWLEDGE UPON EARTH yet perhaps He was but using a natural form of speech equivalent to an invitation to go with Him to the grave. The same kind of doubt hangs around such questions as that addressed to the blind men who asked for healing, " Believe ye that I am able to do this ? " l as though He were not fully satisfied that the righMul conditions for healing were present ; or to that other blind man who was healed by successive stages ; " He asked him if he saw aught," 2 as though in a case where faith was apparently so imperfect, our Lord proceeded tentatively, and wished to make sure of one step before He took another. So, in a course of instruction to the disciples, he tentatively asks, " Have ye under- stood all these things ? " 3 before closing the lesson. The questions, however, may have been asked only for the sake of the blind men, or of the disciples themselves. Take, again, the ques- tions to the father of the demoniac child, and to the crowd assembled under the mountain of Transfiguration. " What reason ye with them 1 St. Matt. ix. 28. 2 St. Markviii. 23. s St. Matt. xiii. 51. APPEARANCES OF LIMITATION. 145 (i.e. with the disciples) ? " * " How long a time is it since this hath been the case with him ? " 2 The first* question may be but an obvious way of opening communications, the second of ex- pressing sympathy ; though they look as if they might mean more. Jesus says to the raving man near Gerasa, " What is thy name ? " 3 pos- sibly, in part, because it was an obvious way of finding out ; but, doubtless, much more because it brought the poor man back to his true self, and was a first step to ridding him of the con- fusion of his distracted personality. "How many loaves have ye ? " 4 The exact number was practically unimportant to Him ; and the addition, " Go and see," seems to make it clear that the main object of the interrogation was to impress the disciples' minds ; but Christ may have been interested to learn, and this is another of the questions adduced by St. Atha- nasius as exemplifying His human method of gaining knowledge. " Woman, where are those thine accusers ? hath no man condemned 1 St. Mark ix. 16. 2 St. Mark ix. 21. 3 St. Mark v. 9. 4 St. Mark vi. 38. L 146 OUR LORD'S KNOWLEDGE UPON EARTH thee ? " l appears in like manner intended to impress the woman's mind ; but it at least suggests some measure of surprise on- the part of our Lord. " What was it that ye disputed by the way ? " 2 is designed to elicit a confession ; but there is additional point in it, if we might suppose that He who one day (as we have seen) "overheard " a remark in the crowd, had, on this journey, observed an eager dispute, and had surmised that there'was evil in it, but had not applied Himself at the moment to appre- hend the precise point of it. When He says to the mother of Zebedee's children, " What wilt thou ? " 3 it is an invitation to make known her request ; but if it be ever allowable to suppose that Jesus was not aware of the answer before He asked a question, it would be allow- able here. His emotion at her reply, and His statement that the granting of her request did not lie in His personal option, tend rather to that view than to the opposite. It is doubtful whether in the questions which we have just considered, our Lord is, at any rate 1 St. John viii. 10. - St. Mark ix. 33. 3 St. Matt. xx. 20. APPEARANCES OP LIMITATION. itf in part, acquiring a knowledge of the state of the ease in the same kind of way as we do, making Himself beholden to others for telling Him. But there remain a few instances in which I cannot doubt that the question, spoken or implied, denotes that the Divine questioner was not beforehand in full possession of the facts. The earliest recorded words of Jesus form a question, and a question of ' surprise and per- plexity. How is it that ye sought Me? Wist ye not that I must be in My Father's house ? " l The whole incident is one which reveals to us our Saviour's perfect accommodation of Himself to the conditions of true and simple childhood. It is well-nigh impossible to believe that He knew that Joseph and Mary were leaving Jerusalem, that He knew them to be unaware of His tarry- ing behind, that He knew the sorrow which they were experiencing in searching for Him, and that He .deliberately did what He did, for the express purpose of teaching them a lesson. Such a notion would seem to turn the exquisite narra- tive of St. Luke into an unedifying and almost a 1 St. Luke ii. 49. 148 OUR LORD'S KNOWLEDGE UPON EARTH repulsive incident. St. Luke's language is as far from suggesting such a view as it is from suggest- ing that the Holy Child sat among the doctors consciously to instruct and not to learn. It can hardly be doubted that one who read these verses without a theological prepossession, would say that by some blameless accident, arranged in the providence of God, the parents had reason to suppose that the Holy Child knew of the time for the starting of the caravan, and to suppose that He was actually in it when He was not ; and that He for His part we may not say thought them to be still in Jerusalem, for that would imply a definite error, which would be altogether unnecessary, and which nothing in the Bible would justify but was as unconscious of their starting as if they had started while He was asleep. How soon He became aware of the fact we are not told, but doubtless very soon ; and His astonished question seems, not to mean that He had expected them to know that it was His duty to stay at Jerusalem, but rather that He had expected them, on discovering their loss, to come APPEARANCES OF LIMITATION. 149 straight for Him to the Temple to the natural spot, from which, in His thoughtfulness, He had not stirred under any influence of fear. " How is it that ye sought Me? Wist ye not that I was bound to be in My Father's house ? " He was as yet a stranger upon earth, and its ways, even in the actions of the saints, were a per- plexity to Him. He could not make them out. Another instance is that of the extraordinary miracle of the woman with an issue of blood. She came with the intention of obtaining, if possible, a cure by stealth. She had no desire, as it seems, to enter into any personal relations with our Lord, but to draw off a healing virtue from Him as by a magical process. And she gained her wish. There seems, from the account, to have been no exertion of will on our Lord's part to effect the cure. If we are to understand the words of the Gospel literally, He only per- ceived that some one had been healed by an inward sensation of having given off virtue. St. Mark's language is very remarkable : " And Jesus immediately becoming well aware in Him- self (tiriyvovs Iv lavry) of the virtue in Him 150 OUR LORD'S KNO IVLEDGE UPON EARTH having gone out (rfiv t%, ai/roO Svvafuv not rrjv t%t\8ovaav i%, avrov ^vva/miv)." Who it was that had been healed He did not know, although He felt that it had been done by a touch according to St. Mark's graphic account* that it had been done by a touch of His clothes. " He turned in the crowd and said," perhaps said more than once (t Aeyev), " Who touched My clothes ? " l In spite of the denials and the wondering expostulations of Peter and the disciples, He persisted. " Somebody touched Me," He said, according to St. Luke ;. 2 " I felt virtue gone out of Me (tyvw ^vva/nn> t,t\ii\v0viav) ;" and "He kept looking round about (TTE/oisjSAfVfro) to see the woman that had done this." It is almost impossible to suppose that all this animated and prolonged investi- gation was only a piece of instructive acting, in order to compel the woman to declare herself. There were indeed occasions when our Saviour used a holy pretence. " He meant to pass by them (}}0f Ati' iraptXQuv aurouc)," 3 when He walked on the sea ; "He feigned to be travelling 1 viii. 46. 2 St. Mark v. 30. 3 St. Mark vi. 48. APPEARANCES OF LIMITATION. 151 further (trpoatTrmhaaro)" l when He came with His fellow-travellers to Emmaus. But in the case before us, not only is there nothing to indicate that our Lord was feigning ignorance, what is said of the means by which He per- ceived the cure to have been effected points to the conclusion that the ignorance (such as it was) was real. Another case where it is hard to suppose our Lord to have been feigning, is the incident of the Barren Fig-tree. Our Lord was really hungry. From a distance He saw "one fig tree " covered with leaves amidst the bare, pale stems of the rest. From its forward condition it seemed to offer a promise of fruit. Our Lord asked no question ; there would have been no one to answer it ; but His conduct contained a question. He moved towards the tree with an inquiring gaze possibly with a touch of surprise that any fig tree should, so early in the season, be so advanced *" He went to it, d apa ri tvpfoti iv our/) to see if He should indeed find any- thing upon it." 2 That every point in the 1 St. Luke xxiv. 28. St. Mark xi. 13. 152 OUR LOAD'S KNOWLEDGE UPON EARTH incident was Divinely purposed, in order to bring out a great spiritual lesson, cannot be doubted ; but the reality of our Lord's hunger appears to show that His uncertainty as to the means of satisfying it was real also. If He only pretended not to know that the tree was barren, we should expect the hunger also to have been pretended ; but an actual hunger does not match so well with a symbolical quest of nutriment. There is only one other question of the Blessed Lord's on which I will now speak. It was the last question of His earthly life, and it was the most tremendous. His first recorded question denoted perplexity at the ways of men ; His last denotes a more dreadful per- plexity at the ways of God. Into the whole mystery of that cry a the strangest that ever passed the lips of man we need not now enter. How our sins were laid upon Him, and made His own, and felt by Him in such a way that He was not able to look up ; how it was possible for the Son of God to feel Himself forsaken by His Father that Father of whom 1 St. Matt, xxvii. 46: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ? " APPEARANCES OF LIMITATION. 153 He had said so confidently, a short while before, to His disciples, "Ye shall be scattered every one to his own, and shall leave Me alone ; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me " l this may devoutly be studied at another time. But what concerns us to-day is to see that the question is a real question, not a rhetorical question. It expresses who can doubt it? a longing on Christ's part for some light of under- standing to illuminate the dreadful bewilderment in which He finds Himself. It shows that He knew by experience, as we do, what it is to challenge the dealings of God, and to expostulate with them, to feel that He is in "a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness." His " why " is as real a " why " as ours. Even if He, as is often the case with us, could give a verbal answer to His own question, yet the answer seems to leave the heart of the difficulty untouched. In view of this piercing " why," it seems unnecessary to imagine some solitary items here and there, 1 St. John xvi. 32, 154 OUR LORD'S KNOWLEDGE UPON EARTH. designedly excluded from an otherwise absolute and exhaustive understanding of all things. It shows us that there was one hour, one three hours, in the life of the Incarnate God when everything seemed to go from Him except trust in " His God ; " and there is no other hour in His life of which the record so bows us in adoration at the feet of " Jesus, Divinest when He most is Man." l 1 Myers' Saint Paul. LECTURE V. OUR LORD'S KNOWLEDGE UPON EARTH- ITS TRANSCENDENCE. IN my last lecture we considered the appear- ances of limitation in our Redeemer's knowledge while He was upon earth, as indicated in the Gospels. We saw some reasons for concluding that it was not, from His conception to the Cross, an unvarying, exhaustive, all-comprising acquaint- ance with all facts, great and small, in all their bearings ; but that it was a progressive know- ledge, as ours is, beginning with less, and ad- vancing to more, by observation and reflexion, and by information received from others, as well as by other means ; and that there were things which He perceived for the first time, and things which caused Him surprise and perplexity, sometimes even an anguish of perplexity. 156 OUR LOR&S KNOWLEDGE UPON EARTH But we have, to-day, to enter upon the larger subject, not of the limitations, but of the ex- tent of Christ's knowledge ; and, where that knowledge exceeds the usual bounds of human knowledge, we may endeavour to see whether Holy Scripture gives us any information as to its sources. The Bible, which was written for our learning, but not to satisfy our curiosity, does not tell us how far our Blessed Lord was acquainted with facts such as those of natural science or of secular history ; and we could only guess one way or the other, if we cared to do so. His language about the lilies and the sparrows, His parables of the Sower, the Mustard-seed, and others, show Him, as was to be expected, to have had a thoughtful and devout eye for the visible creation ; and the more scientifically nature is studied, the more richly suggestive does our Lord's parabolic teaching appear : but there is no proof that He had applied His human mind to the examination of the laws of science. The absence of evidence leaves it open for us to think either way. The reference to the fall ITS TRANSCENDENCE. 757 of'the tower in Siloam is, so far as I remember, His only recorded mention of a public event in the past, outside of His own circle of observation on the one hand, or of Scripture history on the other. That there were in that perfect human nature capacities and tastes for scientific study and learned research cannot be questioned, as well as for music and art, and every other wholesome pursuit in which men delight ; but to give time and attention to these would have interfered with the main purpose of His life, and it would seem that He sacrificed them. 1 But while we are not informed on the points which I have named, we have plentiful proof that Christ had knowledge of facts which no ordinary study could have ascertained ; and first, in the present, external order. The miracle of the fish with the stater in his mouth was such a miracle of knowledge, rather than a miracle . of power. It was curious, but not necessarily miraculous, that a fish in the lake should have swallowed a stater. It was a strik- ing instance of the Divine Providence, though 1 St. John v. 30; cp. Godet Etudes Bibliqucs ii. p. IOO. I 58 OUR LOAD'S KNOWLEDGE UPON EAKTH- not perhaps the direct act of Christ Himself, that that particular fish should take St. Peter's hook, and at that juncture. The miraculous thing was, that our Lord should know the very fishes walking in the paths of the sea, and should be able to say that that fish would be the first on St. Peter's line. And in immediate contact with that miracle of knowledge was another. The conversation between the tribute- collectors and St. Peter took place when Jesus was not present. It was somewhat rash of St. Peter to pledge his Master to the payment. " And when he " (that is, St. Peter) " came into the house" (where Jesus was), "Jesus anticipated him (Trpoi^Oaatv avrov) ; " He did not wait for St. Peter to explain what he had done ; He knew it already. After showing that He and His disciples were under no obligations of ransom to the house of His Father, He pointed him to this means of acquitting the supposed obligation for the sake of giving no scandal ; "That take and give them instead of Me and thee." l So loftily did He reassure His disciples 1 St. Matt. xvii. 24 foil. JTS TRANSCENDENCE. 159 again, after His second announcement of the approaching Passion. In the same supernatural way, if I rightly understand, and not by previous arrangement, our Lord tells His two disciples of the tied ass and her unridden colt at Bethphage, and of the man bearing the pitcher of water in the city. The owner of the asses and the good-man of the house were, I doubt not, known to the Lord, if not to the Apostles, as believers ; but there is no sign of anything having been preconcerted with them rather the contrary with regard to the use of the animals and of the chamber. And yet, in either case, the supernatural knowledge displayed by our Lord is accompanied by phenomena which carry us back to what we were reviewing in my last lecture. Our Lord has no doubt that the owners of the asses will acquiesce, if the disciples have need to make their imperious demand ; He speaks as though it were not certain whether it would be necessary to make it, " If any man say unto you, Why do ye this ? say ye that the Lord hath need of him ; and l6o OUR LORD'S KNOWLEDGE UPON EARTH straightway he will send him hither." l In the other case, our Lord's expression of relief and of delight on entering the Upper Chamber " With desire I desired to eat this passover with you before I suffered " 2 may perhaps be taken as a sign that He had not been wholly free from anxiety lest the preparations made secretly should be interrupted by the treachery of Judas. There are many instances also of His super- natural knowledge of facts in the lives of men. He sees a poor widow casting two mites into the treasury ; and with admiration and pleasure He summons His disciples to look at the woman more worthy of attention than all those magnificent structures at which, a moment after, they in their turn ask Him to look. He tells them that her gift is more than that of all the rich men, for that she had "cast in everything that she had, even all her living." 3 Though occupied with His own trial before the High Priest, and probably out of earshot of what was taking place among the servants 1 St. Matt. xxi. 3. - St. Luke xxii. 15. 3 St. Mark xii. 44. 77S TRANSCENDENCE. l6l at the fire, the Lord's turn and the Lord's look showed that He was aware of St. Peter's fall, and understood his feelings. 1 St. John's Gospel adds four or five such examples. Christ sees Nathanael under the fig tree not with the bodily eye and discerns and discloses the subject of his meditations, and reads his character from them. 2 He unveils certain passages in the history of the Samaritan woman, in one pointed sentence, so accurately, that she says with little exaggeration, " He told me all things that ever I did." 3 He perceived, probably by a super- natural insight, that the impotent man at Bethesda had lain a long time in that case. 4 Far removed from the respective scenes, He announced to the disciples, " Lazarus is dead," 5 and to the anxious courtier, " Thy son liveth." 6 Several of the incidents already mentioned disclose a knowledge of things not only past and present, but also in the near future. Accord- ingly, we find our Lord not unfrequently else- where declaring particular events, external to 1 St. Luke xxii. 61. 2 St. John i. 48. 3 St. John iv. 29. 4 St. John v. 6. s St. John xi. 14. * St. John iv. 50. M 162 OUR LORE'S KNOWLEDGE UPON EARTH His own life, before they occur. He foretells in detail the denial of St. Peter ; He foretells, and has long foreseen, the treachery of Judas ; He foresees every horror of the siege and of the destruction of Jerusalem. I do not class among these phenomena His utterance about Mary's anointing Him at Bethany x (which is often treated as an example of a prediction verified) because that was of the nature of a promise rather than a prophecy, and it was His saying that her action should be told which caused it to be told. Before we go further, however, it is necessary to say in view of criticisms that may be offered that up to this point we have seen no supernatural knowledge in our Lord to which analogies may not be found in the lives of other men. Samuel tells Saul of the finding of his father's asses while at a distance, and predicts to him in detail the incidents of his journey home. Elisha, whose miraculous career in so many points resembles our Lord's, can tell, in the hyperbolical language of the Syrian 1 St. Matt. xxvi. 13. ITS TRANSCENDENCE. 163 courtiers, the words which the king speaks in his bedchamber. His heart goes with Gehazi on his stealthy errand, and detects every movement in the transaction with Naaman. He announces beforehand the raising of the siege of Samaria, and the victories of Israel in the valley of Edom, and in Aphek. The blind Ahijah discerns the wife of Jeroboam before she knocks at his door. The secret sin of David is known to the prophet Nathan. There is no indication that I am aware of, that our Lord's supernatural knowledge in things of this nature differed in kind from that of the prophets ; or from that of St. Peter, when he detected the sin of Ananias and Sapphira, or of St. Paul when he foretold the fortunes of the vessel on which he sailed, or of Agabus when he foretold the famine of Jerusalem and the binding of St. Paul's hands and feet. That our Lord's know- ledge in such matters greatly exceeded that of others is evident ; but we cannot say with certainty from the phenomena themselves that it came to Him in a different way from theirs, or that while they knew by spiritual revelation, 1 64 OUR L ORD'S KNO WLED GE UPON EA R 777 He knew by virtue of His own Divine omni- science. If there was such a difference, Holy Scripture does not make it, at any rate, salient. We come upon somewhat different ground when we turn to our Lord's knowledge of facts in the moral order. It appears to be one thing to have a supernatural intimation (for instance) that Lazarus was dead, and another thing to discern the depths of character. It. is hardly necessary to adduce examples, when the Gospels are full of them, of our Saviour's perfect insight into the moral state of those with whom He came in contact. It underlies the unwavering firmness of His direction of souls. " One thing thou lackest : go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor." 1 Unbelievers imagined that they had convicted Him of failure in this respect ; and by so doing, gave occasion for displaying His insight in all its breadth and delicacy. " If this man were a prophet," they say for they regarded such insight as part of the en- dowment of a prophet " He would have known what manner of woman this is that toucheth 1 St. Mark x. 21. ITS TRANSCENDENCE. 165 Him ;" l and then follows the marvellous vindi- cation of His discernment, both with regard to the woman and with regard to Simon the Pharisee himself. And such discernment in the Lord Jesus is not the result of long personal intercourse and observation. It manifests itself at first meetings. It requires but a glance, and perhaps does not require even that. "Jesus looked upon him, and said, Thou art Simon the son of John ; thou shalt be called Cephas, which is interpreted Peter." 2 " Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and saith concerning him, Behold indeed an Israelite, in whom there is no guile." 3 Well might a man reply in surprise, " Whence knowest Thou me ? " Everywhere there is the same unerring perception of character and of moral conditions. " I know you," 4 He says to His enemies though this is partly the knowledge of experience. " I know My sheep," 5 He says of His friends. Quite at the outset of His work, St. John lays it down as a generalisation, 1 St. Luke vii. 39. 2 St. John i. 42. 3 St. John i. 47. 4 St. John v. 42 : tyvaiKa. 5 St. John x. 14: ytvtixrKw, 1 66 OUR LORD'S KNO WLEDGE UPON EAR TH to account for His reserve towards persons who gathered promisingly round Him. "Jesus did not entrust Himself to them, because He, for His part, knew all men, and inasmuch as He had no need that any one should give testimony concerning the man (that is, any given man with whom He was dealing) for He Himself always knew what was in the man," or possibly, " in man." l He read -men's thoughts, moods, tendencies, inward conflicts, before they were expressed, before the men themselves were fully conscious of them ; and on every page of the Gospels, His questions and His actions laid bare the secret things of other men's souls. It was not strange that those who lived con- secutively with Him came to the conclusion that He knew, not only all men, but all things. " Now we know that Thou knowest all things, and needest not that any should question Thee." 2 " Lord, Thou knowest all things ; Thou art aware that I love Thee." 3 And, at any rate, 1 St. John ii. 24 foil. : Starb airr'bv yiviaffKtiv iravras . . . av-ros yap fyivwffKtv ri $v tv rf avOpccircf). 2 St. John xvi. 30: ofSa/jLfv Srt olSay vavra. 3 St. John xxi. 17 : itivTa.