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The Rev. Robert F. Hoiton

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THE CARTOONS OF
ST. MARK.

ROBERT F. HORTON,
( 1 \
M.A. (oXON), D.D. (tale U.S.A.),
Antlwr of " This Do," He, &c.

FLEMING H. RBVELL COMPANY,
New Tobk. Chicago. Tobonto.
Publishers oj Evangelical lAterature,
189<t.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. — The Cartoon of Heahng ...
II. — The Cartoon of Forgiveness 
III.—" The Old Law Yielding Place to the
New"
IV.— The First Church 
V. — The Cartoon of the Field and the Lake
VI. — The Cartoon of Demons and Death
vn. — The Cartoon of Rejection and Reception
VIII. — The Cartoon of Christ and the Pharisees
IX.— The Gentile, the Dumb, and the Blind
X.— The Crisis 
XI. — The Cartoon of the Transfiguration
XII.— The Ascent to the Altar ...
Xm. — The Cartoon of Jerusalem
XIV. — The Cartoon of the Vineyard
XV.— The Vision of Doom
XVI.— The Shadow of Death ...
XVII. — The Cartoon of the Crucifixion
XVIIl.— The Resurrection 

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TO THE EEADEE.

I WILL not attempt an apology for publishing
these unpolished pages — the extemporaneous utter
ances of the pulpit, reported by shorthand, and
afterwards corrected, but not re-written; because,
to the confusion of literary ambition, I have found
that my books produced in. this way seem to have
been no less serviceable than those which I have
carefully written. As my object is not literary
distinction, but the service of souls in the ministry
of the Gospel, I am weU content that the earthen
vessel should be employed, if only the treasure
may be the better apprehended, and the Master
more adequately praised.
An apology may, however, seem necessary for
publishing another book on the Gospels, and
especially on the easiest and plainest of them, St.
Mark. But I have no apology to offer. The more
portraits we can obtain of one we love, the better.
Sometimes a poor painter will fetch out a trait
which a great master has missed. Without putting
this book into any competition with distinguished
names, I am yet bound to say that there are some
things here which I had not found in any book or

vi To THE Reader.
commentary within my reach — things coming out of
the inexhaustible store, the Person of Jesus.
Uxerceatur servus tuus in vita tud, was the
prayer of a Kempis. And in that exercise is not
only our delight, but the practical profit which
avails up to the level of " each day's most quiet
need." Without presumption, I may assure my
reader that if he has read a hundred lives of
Christ, or even if he has read the Gospel of Mark
a hundred times, he will yet be the better for a
re-perusal of the theme.
Wlen we are speaking of a great person, the
humblest attendant may advance a modest boast
that, in introducing others to him, he has rendered
a service, though unrecognised and contemned.
Students will observe my obligation to Wendt's
Lehre Jesu, especially in the rather unusual group
ing of Chapter xu. 13 — 37 with ii. 1 — iii. 6. But
eager to produce a unity of impression, and to put
the whole book into so compact a form that one
serious sitting may suffice to read it, I have avoided
quoting authorities or giving references.
And now I can only express the prayerful hope
that some heavenly voice, such as that which fell on
Augustine in the Garden of Milan, may reach the
ear of a reader or two : Tolle et lege.

EGBERT F. HOETON.

Hampstead,
April, 1894.

PEOEM.

" No," thou sayest,
" My heart is all in ruins with pain, my feet
Tread a dry desert where there is no way
Nor water. I look back, and deep through Time
The old worlds come but faintly up the track,
Trod by the sons of men. The Man He sent.
The Prince of Life, methinks I could have loved.
If I had looked once in His deep man's eyes.
But long ago He died, and long ago
Is gone." He is not dead. He cannot go !
Men's faith at first was like a mastering stream.
Like Jordan " the descender," leaping down
Pure from his snow ; and warmed of tropic heat
Hiding himself in verdure ; — then at last
In a Dead Sea absorbed, — as faith of Doubt.
But yet the snow Hes thick on Hermon's breast,
And daily at his source the stream is born ! —
Go up 1 Go, mark the whiteness of the snow !
Thy faith is not thy Saviour, not thy God !
Though faith waste fruitless down a desert old.
The living God is new — and He is near !
Jean Ingelow.

I.
THE CARTOON OF HEALING.
(Mark i.)

THE CARTOON OF HEALING.
The famous Church of St. Mark at Venice
is singular amongst mediseval churches in two
respects. In the first place, the mosaics which
cover it, wholly within and largely without,
form, as it were, an illustrated Bible which
speaks rather to the eye than to the ear ; and,
secondly, in this church Christ and the Cross
take the place of pre-eminence, which elsewhere
is occupied by Mary and the saints. ''It is
the Cross," says Ruskin, ''that is first seen,
and always, burning in the centre of the
temple, and every dome and hoUow of its
roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost
height of it^ raised in power or returning in
judgment." Now, curiously enough, these two features
of the great Church of St. Mark at Venice
accurately reflect the two most striking cha
racteristics of the Gospel which is called by

The Cartoon op Healing.

the name of Mark. This Gospel stands out
among the four as the most picturesque — the
one in which everything passes, as it were,
before the eye. Its chapters are like the
mosaics in the great church, or like the
cartoons of a great painter, presenting the ap
pearance and the actions of Christ. Further,
this Gospel is so occupied with Christ alone,
that the other figures which appear in the
canvases of St. Matthew and St. Luke, Joseph
and Mary, John the Baptist, the disciples, the
groups of Jews — all sink into the background ;
they are mere suggestions ; their portraits are
not attempted. This Gospel is in literature the
earliest, the simplest, the most direct, likeness
of Jesus alone. The other Gospels have their
distinguishing merits — each is invaluable — ^but
for unity and completeness of impression, for
life-like contact with the subject of the narra
tive, for immediate perception of our Lord as
He would appear to the eyes of the men who
knew him — to such eyes as Peter's, for example
— during the brief period from the beginning
of His public ministry to His premature death
— for these purposes this second Gospel stands
unique among our New Testament treasures.

The Cartoon op Healing.

Now, it is the belief of most thoughtful
Christians that the religious need of to-day is
to apprehend the historic Jesus, and to appre
hend Him historically- — to bring our problems
to the resolution of His lips, and our troubles
to the compassion of His heart ; to correct our
ideas, religious, political, and social, by the
principles and forces which He exhibited ; and,
above all, to put again into His hands the
Church which is still called by His name.
It is in this conviction and for the reason
just suggested that I invite you to undertake
a consecutive study of the Gospel according
to St. Mark.
The first chapter is, very obviously, grouped
in the follovring way: there is (i.) the com
mencement of the ministry of Jesus ; then (ii.)
the record of a specimen day in that ministry ;
and (iii.) the immediate impression produced
by Him and His work.
I. First, as to the commencement of the mints-
try. In this Gospel the commencement is quite
abrupt, hke the beginning of the Hiad.* There
is a word or two, and at once the Person is be
fore us and the action begins. A few phrases
* Festinat in medias res, Horace says of Homer.

The Cartoon op Healing.

suffice to explain the appearance and the sig
nificance of John the Baptist, who is the com
municating link between Jesus and the past,
the last of the Old Testament prophets, as the
people all recognised. He comes before us as
one who has read the great prophecy of the
Exile, and ventured to take a passage out of it
as the keynote of his own life, declaring that
he is simply a voice preparatory, crying in the
wilderness. He comes living in the severe
simplicity of the first great prophet Elijah, and
preaching the great moral truths of the prophets
of the eighth century before Christ. He
commands at once the attention even of
Jerusalem and its environs ; and the fame of
his preaching reaches the remote province of
Galilee. The impression he makes is deep and
wide, and when the multitude, awed by his
enthusiasm, and conscience-struck by his faith
fulness, is prepared to listen to any utterance
which comes from his hps, he strenuously
declares that he is there to speak of One that
was coming, whose superiority to him was only
to be measured by the vast difference between
the Holy Spirit of God and the feeble element
of water. And then, quite simply, Jesus

The Cartoon op Healing.

appeared among the crowd that was listening
to the great preacher. Like the rest of them.
He wished to be baptized in these waters of
confession and repentance; but He was not like
the rest of them. Great thoughts were working
in His mind, and this scene at the River Jordan
was to be the testing of them. A great purpose
was in His heart, and this was to reveal it.
The question had come to Him, What was His
ovra nature, what was His mission in the world,
what was the work He must do? And here
was to be the answer. For, as in His complete
humility He steps into the waters, and is sub
merged beneath their waves, and then climbs
the bank and stands amongst the crowd
baptized, there come to Him a Vision and a
Voice which settle the question that was
working in His mind. The vision is of the
Holy Spirit coming down out of the rended
heavens, and the Voice is the Voice of God
speaking to Him, and telling Him that He is
His beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased.
Here was a stupendous revelation to the heart of
a simple peasant from remote Galilee. Here was
the implication, evidently, to His mind, that
He was the long-promised Messiah, of whom He

The Cartoon op Healing.

had read in the ancient Scriptures — the Anointed
One that was to be. The Spirit of the Lord
had come upon Him.* With this inward dis
covery to digest and to master He was not
unnaturally driven by the Spirit into solitude —
the solitude of the desert of Judsea, where He
might think and understand.
There, not unnaturally, nay, there necessarily.
He met the tempter — tempted, we may surmise,
first of all, to question the reality of the
mysterious call; or, when that temptation
was set aside, tempted to use the call for
some personal and lower ends — to use the
Divine powers which had broken in upon
Him to serve a worldly purpose, to create a
transient excitement, to make Him notable
in the eyes of men. And in the strange
society of wild beasts and angels, facing the
extremities of possibility. He fought through
the temptation. He recovered His balance, and
issued prepared for His life's work.
II. Now, passing to the second feature of
the chapter — the work He did was to proclaim
a message of good news — the good news that the
* This seems to be St. Mark's answer to the moot
question : When Jesus recognised first His Messiahship ?

The Cartoon op Healing. 9
Kingdom of God was absolutely pressing down
upon the world. He was surrendered to this
task spirit and soul and body, and our
Evangelist thinks it worth while at once to
give us a specimen day of the way in which He
would discharge Sis tasJc, tracing the day from
morning to morning. It is a Sabbath day at
the little town of Capernaum, upon the Lake
of Galilee. He goes into the synagogue with
the rest of the people, in order to teach. He
begins to teach, and what He said is not
reported — it is not necessary to report it, for it
was, as they all saw at once, a doctrine of deeds
rather than of words, a new teaching, for it
was "vyith power," that is to say, it was joined
with the practical work of healing the dis
traught, the deranged, the distressed. The
Scribes were accustomed, in that place and in
that pulpit, to conscientiously teach according
to their light. They would take the venerable
Scriptures and explain them, or comment on
them, very much after the fashion of modern
preaching. He took up the same Scriptures,
but He taught not as if they were His
authority, but as if He were theirs. He
touched the forces narrated in the Scriptures

10 The Cartoon op Healing.
not merely with a reverent antiquarian interest,
to explain to the people how, in the old time
before them, God was strong and great, and
vrrought wonders amongst men; but, rather,
with the living and practical purpose to loose
them and set them at work in the Galilee, the
Judsea of His ovtu day and generation. So
striking was this difference, that the sleepiest
listener immediately perceived it — the exclama
tion which was made even during the service
was in effect, " You observe He is not using
words, but spiritual forces ; He is not ad
dressing our intellects only, but He has got
God behind Him, and He will have to be
reckoned vn.th." This impression was imme
diately deepened by the effect produced upon a
person in the audience — an excited person who
appears to have been deranged. He, like many
deranged people, was curiously susceptible to
the occult powers that are working in the
world, and he exclaimed at once, " That is the
God speaking ! That is the God speaking ! "
And the Teacher immediately exercised His
authority, and with a word, with the command
of the Spirit that was in Him, He reduced the
excited person to reason and to peace.

The Cartoon op Healing. 11
When the service of the morning was over.
He passed into the house of a young man whom
He had selected to be among His immediate
followers, and it chanced that one of the
family was lying there grievously ill. The
doctrine — ^the new doctrine — that had just
been preached in the synagogue, must now be
preached in the privacy, the unexciting privacy,
of the home. The new doctrine works in the
home as well as in public. He approaches the
fevered woman and restores her to health. And
immediately through the town was spread the
strange tidings that He who had made such an
impression in public was the same in private;
and Peter's wife's mother, whom the people
had known, and who was sick, had been raised
to health again. Accordingly, as the heat
of the day passed into the cool of the evening,
the house was besieged by sufferers and
the friends of sufferers, and it was necessary
to go out into the street, and in the street
to present the new doctrine once more — the
new doctrine of practical help and healing
and blessing — to the distressed humanity
of Capernaum, which is but the type of
the distressed humanity of the world. And

12 The Cartoon op Healing.
in that gracious ministry the night fell and
the crowd dispersed, and aU men went to their
rest. But long before night was ended the Chief
Worker was up from His couch and out at the
door, through the city that was wrapped in
slumber, into the open country, to some solitary-
place, to pray. A day of such teaching, of
such healing, of such blessing, cannot be lived
without a close, continuous communion with
God ; and as He was the beloved Son of God,
well pleasing to the Father, it was the more
necessary that He should keep in contact with
the Father. Common men can do, it appears,
with very little prayer ; bad men can do with
out communion at all ; but the better we are
the more communion we want, and the Son of
God Himself reveals His Sonship first in this
necessity of constant prayer. Sleep and rest
are desirable, but much more necessary than
sleep or rest is this exercise which is the breath
of life, the impulse of all Divine and redemp
tive action in the world.
III. Finally, we wish to observe that the im
pression made on men by the Person so appear
ing, and so beginning to carry out His work.

The Cartoon op Healing. 13
was immediate and inevitable. First, you may
notice the effect on these four young fishermen
— young men, we may be sure, who had been
well brought up, trained in the piety of their
day, and sensitive, as young men are before
they are spoiled, to the spiritual issues of
life; anxious to make the most of the brief
opportunities that are given. The effect
upon them is very noticeable. There was
that in Him, in His appearance, in His
words, in His tone, which at once com
manded their confidence; and the figurative
promise, " I will make you to be fishers
of men," was fascinating to them. Better
than catching fish is this, a larger horizon
for our life, — ^we are to be fishers of men !
The attraction of this appeal was stronger
even than the love of father and home. Yes,
and there are young men to-day, ordinary
young men, who, when they become aware of
Jesus appealing to them, and saying to them,
" You, too, come and follow Me," obey in just
the same way, for the attraction is irresistible,
the authority is obvious and immediate.
Then, observe the impression on these diseased
and suffering people — leaving aside the vexed

14 The Cartoon op Healing.
question of demoniacal possession with simply
this one remark, that the story proceeds as if
such a phenomenon were quite a recognised and
commonplace thing at the time — look rather at
the leper described at the end of the chapter,
an outcast who is condemned, of course, to go
by the public ways, but forbidden to enter any
private house, and this under penalty of death ;
obliged at every tiu-n and at every meeting of a
fellow-creature to cry out, " Room for the
leper ! Unclean ! " and humanity shrinks away
from him that he may pass through the parting
walls alone. It had never occurred to him
to speak to any human being yet, except in
warning ; but the immediate impression that
Jesus makes upon him leads him to follow Him
and cry, " I am quite sure that if you will you
can make me clean. Do change the whole
nature of my life, and the sound of my bitter
cry, that I may go into the world saying Glean !
instead of Unclean ! " What I ask you to
observe is the immediate confidence which is
produced by His presence upon those who are
suffering and wretched. It is an easy thing to
cure those who believe, but it is the greatest
task in all the world to get any one to believe ;

The Cartoon op Healing. 15
and the peculiar feature about Him is that
where He goes faith springs up before Him,
and the effect of His presence is the opening of
the doors of God to the injured and diseased
bodies of men.
The fame of these things, as is natural, and
the influence of so remarkable a personality,
soon spread beyond the circle of immediate
disciples, and the little group of those who were
healed. It went all through the district, and
here we see Him trying to evade the excited
interest which had been aroused. He tells the
healed people to keep silence. " Do not speak
about Me," He says. When the multitude
finds Him out in the solitary place, and He
sees them coming, He hastens into another
district. The truth is. He is bent on deliver
ing His new doctrine, the doctrine of practical
healing and blessing to the world, because that
is the very essence of the Kingdom of God,
which He has come to proclaim; but He is
equally bent on avoiding the vulgar appeal to
the love of the marvellous, which is one of the
lowest elements in human nature. He wants
none of the stupid notoriety for miracle. He
wants no one to believe in Him because the

16 The Cartoon op Healing.
powers of God are healing men ; He wants to
heal men because they beheve in Him. And
therefore you have this singular fact, obvious
even in this first chapter, and more obvious as
we proceed, that He is trying, as it were, to
avoid popularity. Moved with compassion as
He is by every cry of personal need, reaching
out His hand to every helpless creature that is
presented to Him, eager to help, bent on curing.
He does not want to attract public attention.
What He prefers is obscurity, what he would
choose is the quiet of thought and of prayer.
He would see hf e steadily and see it whole ;
not in the wild phantasmagoria of public
excitement, vdth enthusiasm and adulation
on the one side, and detraction and scorn on
the other. He would be alone, and would seek
the desert places in order to be alone. He
does not want the praise of men. He does
not want the wonder of men. He does not
want the compulsory submission of men ; He
wants to save them, and He wants their heart
yielded to Him because He saves.
We see, then, this Divine Messenger, with all
His lofty convictions coming straight from
God, with all His wide sympathies reaching

The Cartoon op Healing. 17
out to men, with all the gracious powers
entrusted to Him for healing and blessing the
creatures around Him; yet simple, retiring,
unexcited, above all things bent on evading
popularity, and gathering about Him just
three or four young men whose ingenuous
minds and ready piety will prepare them to
receive His instruction, and to become the
pioneers of the Kingdom of God in the world.
This forms the first cartoon in the Gospel of
St. Mark.

II.
THE CARTOON OF FORGIVENESS.
(Maek u. 1—22.)

THE CARTOON OF FOEGIVENESS.
Ip the first chapter of St. Mark can ^be
described as The Cartoon of Sealing, the first
twenty-two verses of the next chapter may be
described as The Cartoon of Forgiveness, It
exhibits the Son of Man among men, declaring
in a very quiet and unostentatious way, as if it
were a matter of course to Him, that He has
"power on earth to forgive sins " — a function,
of course, which, the religious people very
properly observed, belongs to God alone. It
exhibits Him, then, entering into the society of
those who were held to be sinners in an excep
tional degree, apparently with the purpose of
conveying to them by personal contact the fact
of this forgiveness. And thus it shows how
conscious He was Himself that His word and
His message and His work were a new depar
ture in the world, involving a break with all

22 The Cartoon op Forgiveness.
the past religious ideas, and more especially
with all the religious forms, of men. The
originality of His work is illustrated by two
very striking, though very homely, similes.
The grouping of these incidents is very
simple, and if the reader will bear in miad
that the whole passage is the Cartoon of
Forgiveness, he can follow vrith close attention
the several details that are narrated.
I. First of all, we are told that Jesus comes
back from the wilds of the country, where He
had sought a little sohtude and quiet, into
the city of Capernaum. And immediately the
news is spread that He is once more at the
house of Simon. The house is besieged by
a great multitude of people, who crowd into
the courtyard and fill it — people who have
already seen the power of the new vitalising
doctrine on suffering, and are now to see its
power upon sin, for sin is the great reahty of
which suffering is simply the transitory shadow.
And as He speaks to the people in the court
yard, with a little breathing space left between
Him and His hearers, the roof of the verandah
under which He stands is opened, and a man
is let down upon a couch, a man so helpless

The Cartoon op Forgiveness. 23
that he could not move either hands or feet —
a paralytic ; he lies at the feet of the Teacher,
dumb and motionless. Nothing is said about
the man's character, or about his previous life,
the cause of his illness, and so on. But there
comes before my mind a fact to which my
attention was called some years ago of a young
man, barely twenty-one, lying in precisely the
condition that is here described, unable to move
a limb, the result simply of his youthful
debaucheries. And one would gather, from
the unexpected course which Jesus pursues
with this young man, that He suspected a
similar cause in this case of illness which was
before Him. He says nothing about healing ;
it seems as if He is peering through the out
ward to see the inward, and is putting His
finger upon the spring of the mischief. It is
as if He is arguing, " It is not God's purpose
that any young man should lie paralysed;
there is sin somewhere " ; and His sensitive
spirit surmises the cause. Now if that is the
true connection of this narrative, the words He
spoke are simply the most wonderful revelation
which was ever given to the world. If you or
I had seen a person in that condition we should

24 The Cartoon op Forgiveness.
have begun to morahse ; we should have said,
" Yes ! suffering of this kind is the natural and
just result of sin of that kind." We should
have expected the man to make a full confession
and express his penitence. Jesus — Jesus the
Lord — simply announces His recognition of the
fact that sin was the cause, by uttering this
marvellous assurance. " Child," He says, look
ing down at him — and from the word " child "
we may perhaps gather that the sufferer was
sfciU a young man — "child," He says, "thy
sins are forgiven thee." How wholly unex
pected that ! The religious persons present
were scandahsed. But, before we condemn
them, shall we not consider how scandalised we
ourselves, we religious people, should have
been ? Some of us would have vvdshed to impose
upon the man the penances of the Church, to
exact a formal confession, to adduce the waters
of baptism. Others of us, equally rehgious,
would have wished to make quite clear the
doctrine which we beheve to be the secret of the
Atonement; we should have dwelt upon the
substitutionary offering of Jesus, and then we
should have required the sufferer to accept this
" scheme of salvation " before we could speak

The Cartoon of Forgiveness. 25

to Him about pardon. For, as we should
perhaps mean, if we did not say, "It is not
faith in Jesus that saves men, but it is faith
in the Atonement that saves them." How
dangerous we should have called this doctrine.
The method of Jesus is simply to announce to
the man, before he speaks a word of confession,
of penitence, or of appeal, " Thy sins are for
given thee." It seems as if He meant to imply
that His purpose in the world was to declare
that a broad and sufficient rescript of pardon
underlies all human life, waits for every human
soul, so that each may take it immediately,
freely, unconditionally, directly he has the
courage to believe it, or, let us say, the common-
sense to accept it. It is an amazing revelation.
Of course the world fiatly disbelieves it, but
there it is. He stands there. His words are
recorded. His action is depicted, in order that
we may see that the luminous meaning of His
presence in the world is precisely this incredible,
this transcendental truth, that the forgiveness
of God underlies the whole of humanity.
I have referred to the difference between
religious people and Jesus, extenuating the
Jews, because it is the custom of the Christian

26 The Cartoon op Forgiveness.
Church to dwell upon the enormities of the
Jevdsh people without ever observing that each
enormity of Judaism is repeated and maintained
in the Church that is called by the name of
Jesus. And it is the very essence of life for us
that we should recognise the difference between
us and Jesus. There is no saving of the
Church while it beheves that it is what its
Lord meant. The day of salvation dawns when
we observe how far we are from understanding
what He meant and said and did. As it came
to a poet in our own day — a vision just for
a moment : —
There's a wideness in God's mercy
Like the wideness of the sea ;
There's a kindness in His justice
Which is more than liberty.
For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man's mind.
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
But we make His love too narrow
By false limits of our own,
And we magnify His strictness
With a zeal He will not own.
II. But, passing to the second panel in this
picture, you observe that Jesus is quite serious
in His view of the situation, and He shows it

The Cartoon op Forgiveness. 27
practically by going at once into the society
of certain vicious people, such people as may
always be found in large numbers among any
long-shore population. His intention in going
there is manifested by a very striking act. In
the fixst cartoon we saw Him calhng to be His
followers four pious and reputable young men ;
but, in this cartoon, we find Him deliberately
calling to be His follower a disreputable and,
presumably, an irreligious person, Levi, the son
of Alphseus, a publican. That act is the ex
planation of His presence amongst the people
of this kind. He sits down with many publi
cans and sinners to a meal. It is a curious
spectacle, and I do not quite see how we can
present a parallel in modern religion. We can
parallel the pubhcans, a class of men to whom
it has become the custom to attribute a great
deal more iniquity than probably was their
share. These fiscal agents of the Eoman
Government were, no doubt, people somewhat
insensible to national honour, and they were,
no doubt, people not over-scrupulous in the
accumulation of their wealth. But we can, I
think, find parallels to a rehgious teacher
sitting down to meat with people of that kind.

28 The Cartoon op Forgiveness.
We are not astonished if a clergyman dines
with someone who, on the Stock Exchange, has
accumulated a fortune by very questionable
methods. We are not at all astonished if such
a teacher visits the house of a man who has
become rich, and prosperous, and honoured, by
owning the public-houses which are working
the most deadly havoc upon the souls and
bodies of our fellow-men. The presence of
Jesus with these publicans, or fiscal agents of
the Roman Government, would not, perhaps,
cause us any great astonishment ; and the as
tonishment of the Jews might be attributed to
their national sentiment rather than to any
sense of outraged religion. But the mention
of " sinners " in a Jevdsh document is quite
another matter. The term in Jewish Uterature
means the people who had broken away from
the law of Moses, and had throvni off all reli
gious restraints ; and the New Testament leaves
us in no question as to the character of the
people described. They are the canaille of the
city ; they are the men who, like the paralytic
brought to Jesus in the house, are simply soul-
sick with vice. They are the women who are
earning their living by the shameful trade of

The Cartoon op Forgiveness. 29
lust. The New Testament is perfectly expHcit
as to the character of these people. I suppose
it would not have created a scandal if He had
gone amongst them in the same way that Isaiah
once went, to denounce the drunkards of his
day, and the gay daughters of Jerusalem.* Nor
should we ourselves be scandalised if the visit
were paid with tracts and a Bible to read to
them, to exhort them, and to improve them.
But what was so utterly scandalous to the Jews,
and what is so utterly scandalous to the Church
of to-day, is that He went among them with a
sense of social equality, without reproach,
vnthout rebuke, not to revile, but to sit at their
board. And, when some one had an objection to
bring against Him, He was prepared with an
answer altogether beyond their apprehension —
that he was there on the same principle that a
doctor must go amongst the sick, cannot pre
scribe for them sitting at home, must be
amongst them with a tender sympathy, with a
kind and genial insight, trying to penetrate to
the cause of the disease. He sat at the
table with them and conversed with them
that He might understand them. And the
* Is. xxviii. 7, &c., xxxii. 9, &c.

30 The Cartoon op Forgiveness.
Jewish world could not see, as the Cliristian
Church does not see, how He can save the
world by " becoming sin " for it. He had
come, as He said frankly, to call sinners.
Some months ago, in Camden Town, a city
missionary saw seated on a public-house door
step three young women, and his heart was
moved with pity for them. He went and spoke
to them, and they met him with impudent and
shameless derision. But undismayed, he said
to them, " I have four daughters of my own,
you see; and perhaps some missionary may
some day want to speak to them." And they
said, " Then are they bad girls like us ? " And
he answered, " Oh, they are by no means per
fect." And he turned to them and asked them
if they were not weary of the ways of sin.
That evening they were all penitent, weeping
for their dismal past, and to-day they are
rescued and saved. That man ""receiveth
sinners." III. Finally, glance at these remaining
verses which remind us that this new doctrine
of free and immediate pardon is necessarily a
break with the religious ideas of the ancient
Judaism. I think we may say that it is not

The Cartoon op Forgiveness. 31
altogether a break with the deeper teaching of
the Prophets and the Psalmists, for that deeper
teaching was indeed a constant prophecy of the
coming Christ. But the Torah, the Law,
which was the religious book of Judaism,
par excellence, certainly taught, and teaches,
that, while for sins of inadvertence, certain
sacrifices may be offered, according to the pre
scribed ritual, all deliberate sins, all wilful
sins, are unpardonable, and "the soul that
sinneth it shall die," and " shall be cut off
from amongst its people." This new theology
of the Kingdom of God, which the Lord had
come to exhibit, could by no possibility be
fitted into that ancient framework. As He
says, to attempt to do so will be like putting
a piece of strong, unfulled cloth upon an out
worn garment ; it will not mend the garment,
it will only tear it. This new doctrine is like
a strong ferment, freshening, gladdening where-
ever it goes, but you cannot possibly pour it
into the — what word can you use? — into the
churchiness of Judaism, that will not hold
it. It may possibly break up the churchiness
of Judaism, but it is possible that in the
breaking the new vrine will be spilled. "I,

32 The Cartoon op Forgiveness.
therefore," says He, " I will never put it in ;
I shall have new bottles for my new vdne.
The penance and the feasting of the - old
dispensation; the whole system of calculated
balance for sin — so much payment for so much
sin, and then a clean bill and the acquittal, I
have done with it for ever. Into that system
you cannot pour the new wine of the Kingdom.
I have come vrith the large pardon of God,
with the love of God towards sinful men and
women ; and into that old worn bottle this new
vdne cannot and shall not be poured ; or, if it
is, it vrill break the old bottle and the vnne
vdll be spilled." And that is precisely what
has happened. How true He is ! The out
worn system sprang up again, the old leathern
bottle demanded that the wine should be put
in it, and in another form the Judaism that
He denounced, vdth which He broke, became
Christianity; and all the old ideas and the
old methods were gradually foisted back upon
the Kingdom of God and the Church of
the Redeemer. And, in consequence, to this
day, we can hardly read this initial act
of the pardon of Jesus without a lurking
suspicion that He was not orthodox; that

The Cartoon op Forgiveness. 33
He was not doing what we should have
done; was not propounding the system that
we should have presented, because here He
was offering pardon to the sinner immediately,
fully and freely. And yet the world cannot be
saved until we understand Jesus. His method
is the only method that can move to penitence,
to confession, and to change. You vfill not
call this sinner here to repentance by telling
him what a sinner he is ; but meet him with
" Thy sins are forgiven thee," and his heart is
broken. " Oh ! my Lord and my God," he
cries, " that thou shouldst pardon me thus ! "
You say " Perhaps ! but there are some human
beings who will abuse such an offer, and be
cause grace abounds they will fall into fresh
sin, and they will treasure up wrath for them
selves by sinning in the expectation of pardon."
Yes ! I suppose there are some human beings of
that description; but, frankly, we have very
little reason to say so. So rare is it to even try
the method of Jesus. And I say it very sadly
that if there are such human beings, a person
who remains entirely unmoved and unchanged
by the free pardon, the abounding compassion
and love of God, is incorrigible. You cannot 3

34 The Cartoon op Forgiveness.
change him by some other method ; you will
not find a stronger appeal. Where that fails,
everything fails. When the pardoning love
does not change a man's heart, that heart can
not be changed.
There, then. He stands, God — the Son of
God — so simple, so natural, so human, but the
Son of God, remember ; He knew our sins and
forgave them, with a heart that breaks for
human misery, and a tenderness in touching
the needs of men such as few of us have ever
dreamt of ; with a pardon simple, free, uttered
at once for each of us ; believing. He alone
amongst those who have trodden the earth. He
alone believing that the pardon of God is as
wide as the world, and that directly a man
believes it he is saved.
And that is the second cartoon of the Gospel
according to St. Mark.

in.
"THE OLD LAW YIELDING PLACE
TO THE NEW."
(Maek ii. 23—28 ; xii. 13—37.)

"THE OLD LAW YIELDING PLACE
TO THE NEW."
Studying the Cartoon of Forgiveness we saw
that the new vrine of the kingdom could not
be poured into the old bottle of the Law.
Now, if we combine two passages — Mark ii. 23
— ^iii. 6 and Mark xii. 13 — 37 — ^passages which
are obviously connected in a close and necessary
relation, we get a very striking picture,
dravra vdth St. Mark's peculiar viTridness, of
the precise attitude of our Lord to the Jewish
system, and the representatives of it, in whose
midst He had to live. The portraits of the
Pharisees, the Herodians, and the Sadducees,
what they thought and what they taught, can
have, of course, for us only an antiquarian
interest, but they serve to show the personality
of our Saviour in a most remarkable Hght.
Their disputes with Him ehcit bright and burn
ing truths which are as valid and vital to-day

38 "The Old Law
as they were then. Just consider what this
means. In a passing controversy with these,
the narrowest, the most pedantic of rehgious
people. He utters rapidly three truths which
burn like stars of the first magnitude in the
dark vault of that distant time, and illumine
this age no less than that. These parties, con
tentious and divided, these religious dignitaries
of the ancient people, have met their Master
here. Their legality, their piety, their law,
their logic, serve only, much against their vfill,
as a foil to set Him off. They ring His person
with their dark and tortuous methods, but they
are like so many shades around the light, show
ing how the light shines in the darkness, and
the darkness comprehends it not.
We have here, as it were, a chiaroscuro after
the manner of Rembrandt. The sunshine of
grace and truth falls on the person of Jesus,
and these men — types of nlankind before, and
types of mankind since — sink into the circum
ambient gloom around Him. Nor could
Rembrandt vrith all his skill have shown us
the central figure more nobly than this simple
evangehst, St. Mark, has done, following his
own truthful and unpretentious plan.

Yielding Place to the New." 39
Now let us glance round at these parties
that encircle our Lord — Pharisees, Herodians,
and Sadducees — ^then let us linger for awhile
with that Scribe who spoke discreetly, while
we perceive the whole circle, answered with con
summate wisdom, growing silent and bitter,
resolving to ruin the One who discomfited
them with the quiet arrows of truth, the long
shafts of light from Heaven. It is a most
instructive and solemnising picture.
I. First of all, we look at the Pharisees.
The bulwark of Judaism — and by Judaism I
mean the reUgion which was established on the
return from captivity, as you may gather from
the Book of Nehemiah — was the observance of
the Sabbath. The law — the book of the Law —
said a good deal about it, but the doctors of
the Law said a good deal more. With that
curious f acihty that unspiritual minds have for
dwelhng on the ceremonial rather than on the
ethical side of religion, the custodians of the
Law had insisted upon defining more and more
stringently the obligations of the Sabbath day.
There are many examples of this in the Talmud.
In one of them we are told that it is breaking
the Sabbath if, when you have lumbago, you

40 "The Old Law
rub your limbs v\rith vinegar and oil ; it is
breaking the Sabbath if, when you have a
toothache, you rinse your mouth with vinegar,
or if vnth a sore throat you gargle vdth oil,
unless you swallow the lotions, in which case
they become food, and a breach of the Sabbath
is avoided. In this spirit the operation of
threshing corn by taking the ears in the hand
and pressing out the com would be a breach
of the Sabbath, or to take any steps to cui-e
an atrophied limb would be to break the
Sabbath. Now, will you observe that Jesus
Christ, in quietly ignoring all these regulations,
regulations which, remember, were popularly
explained as the very Word of God, showed
the highest form of courage, a courage which
you can only appreciate when you have appre
hended the character of Eastern fanaticism.
For a prophet or a rehgious teacher to denounce
irreligion is always easy, because of course
he enlists the religious people on his side, but
the difficulty is when he has to resist what is
generally held to be rehgion, for then the
religious people have only to bring against him
a charge of heresy, of infidelity, of blasphemy,
and the irreligious people wiU join the hue and

Yielding Place to the New." 41
cry, glad for once to be on the side of religion
in a case so congenial to their own tastes. It
is almost impossible to get an illustration to
day which sufficiently exhibits the sublime
courage of the Lord in breaking the regulations
of the Sabbath in His day. I know no closer
illustration than the shock which was produced
in the minds of a great many religious people,
a few years ago, when a certain notorious
Member of Parhament declined the oath in the
House of Commons. Depend upon it, the
Pharisees were as sincere in condemning the
Lord for breach of the Sabbath as these good
people were in the course they took. But
courage is not all. It is only a human virtue.
We may be courageous vrithout truth, and,
indeed, human courage is largely expended in
propping lies. Where Jesus shines out in un
approachable lustre is not simply in the courage
He shows, but in the brilliant assertion which,
at a stroke, revolutionised the whole conception
of that hoary institution of the Sabbath, and
revolutionises other religious institutions to
day as well : " The Sabbath is made for man,
and not man for the Sabbath." The appeal to
David and the shewbread is, of course, merely

42 "The Old Law
an argument adapted to the people to whom He
spoke ; it is answering fools according to their
folly. It is shutting the mouth of legalists
who could only thus be met. But the great
principle — "the Sabbath made for man, not
man for the Sabbath " — carries these men and
us, if we will only let it, to a height far above
Sinai; and most noticeable of all is the manner
and spirit in which Jesus Christ asserts the
principle and condemns the opposition. Lover
of men as He is. He is sternly angry vnth these
men. Oh ! sacred passion of anger ! Oh ! vrrathf ul
grief VTith those who — calling on the name of
God — ^would make religion an obstacle to
helping and blessing and heahng a fellow-
creature, which is what God means by
religion !
It is a solemn thought, indeed, that all re
ligions, their theories, and their practice, are to
be brought to this tribunal. The Sabbath, the
Church, the Creed, the Bible — they were all
made for man, and not man for them ; and
woe to the religion that bends man to them,
instead of bringing them to the succour of
man.

Yielding Place to the New." 43
n. But we must pass to the argument or the
question of the Serodians — the men who stood
about the Court of Herod, and supposed them
selves to represent the national patriotism of
their country. They were prepared to flatter
and to cajole the Son of Man because their
purpose was to exploit Christianity. They
meant to bring it to serve their own purposes
and to maintain their own petty kingships of
Herod and what not. There was great in
genuity, certainly, in the question which they
put ; nothing could well show a keener intellect.
Supposing they could get Jesus to declare
against the Roman suzerainty, then they could,
at their discretion, either use Him to foment
rebellion or use the Roman government to
crush Him. If, on the other hand, they could
get Him to approve of the tribute, they had a
fine charge to bring against Him in the ear of
the people : " A pretty leader and Messias for
you is this one who counsels submission to
the Roman government." Nothing could be
more ingenious than the question, nothing
more significant than the Master's answer to
it. He eludes the question. He eludes it not
in any diplomatic sense; He eludes it on

44 "The Old Law
principle. What is the principle on which
He eludes it? It is this. The Kingdom of
God sides vnth no form of government, with
no social class, with no party. It moves in
another sphere altogether. In vain vdll you
try to pin it to monarchy or repubhcanism ;
in vain will you try to use it as a sanction for
Conservatives or Liberals ; in vain vdll you seek
to fashion from it a weapon for Capital or for
Labour; it will be no man's badge, because
it is destined to be the banner of all men. The
burning question which He propounds, the
question of the Kingdom of God all along is
this : " What is due to God? What tribute,
annual, weekly, daily, is due to God ? " There
is the question from the lips of Jesus Christ.
And while we are bent on answering that
question, and settling our lives in conformity
to that principle, we are able to live in the
State as He Himself lived, accepting political
conditions loyally, and yet, with the true spirit
of the heavenly revolutionist, planting in the
midst of the society where we live those
eternal principles, those germinating thoughts
which are destined to revolutionise human
society. He, our Sovereign, has no sympathy

Yielding Place to the New." 45
vrith those who elect to promote the Kingdom
of God by red-handed change; He dis
countenances with His clear sight revolutions
which brandish the name of Liberty in order
to cover the ambition of their leaders. But at
the same time He brings into the world seeds
which germinate and grow; and in these quiet
seeds is contained the secret of all success
ful societies, the principle of all sound govern
ments, the one condition on which the evils
that we deplore to-day can be removed, or, at
least, greatly mitigated. " Render unto Csesar
that paltry drachma on which his head is
stamped, and render unto God the things that
are God's."
We are told that the men marvelled at His
answer, and we marvel much more, for here in
one brief sentence He has condemned before
hand all the crimes that have been perpetrated
in His name, and has throvm His searching
hght dovm all the pages of subsequent
history; has repudiated beforehand the action
of His nominal Church, and has uttered
His final condemnation of those who have
sought to identify the Kingdom of God
with some system of their own, and to

46 "The Old Law
invoke His authority to support their own per
sonal claims. "To God the things that are
God's." And what is not God's? Where is
Caesar's share when God's share has been paid ?
There is a deep and searching question vnth
which to face all the problems of human
life. m. But now we glance for a moment at the
question of the Sadducees, if you can read it
without a smile, for they make themselves
ridiculous in history by the. absurdity of
the case they posit. Some of us have been
disappointed with the answer which the Lord
gave to them, forgetting that the argumentum
ad hominem is often the only argument that
convinces. The best argument is not always
the best for the purpose, and when arguing
with the Sadducees you must argue vnth
Saddusaic logic. You have to remember that
the Sadducees took the Pentateuch as their sole
Scripture. And certainly we could so far agree
with them that if they could not see the in
spiration of the prophets and psalmists, and
confined themselves to the Law, they were
justified in denying the Eesurrection. There is
nothing in the Pentateuch to prove it. The

Yielding Place to the New." 47
Pharisees themselves were sorely perplexed with
that problem, and their attempts to prove the
Eesurrection from the Pentateuch have become
a by-word and a laughing-stock. For instance,
it says in Deuteronomy, "Moses sang this
song," and the verb is in the future tense in
stead of in the present or the past ; from which
they argued that he would sing it in another
world. Or, to take an even more absurd
instance, in the second chapter of Genesis, the
7th and 19th verses, one word is used for " God
formed man " and " God formed the beasts of
the field," but it chances, by an error of the
current Hebrew manuscripts, that in the 7th
verse the initial letter was repeated,* from
which they argued that God formed man twice
— once in creation and again in resurrection,
while He formed the beasts once only, because
the letter occurred but once. When you reahse
the network of absurdity, of verbal quibbling,
of legal chicanery, with which rehgion was
bound up in the day of our Lord, you vnll not
think so meanly of His answer. It was a
striking change from the petty literalism of the
day to a broad Uberalism ; in answer to their
* -IS'^'^inv. 7; nH'< in v. 19.

48 "The Old Law
subtle casuistry he gives them an argument
true for all time.
Has it occurred to us what it imphed, what a
reach of Divine thought it opens up? It
imphed that the relation between God and
those who are permitted to trust Him and to
love Him is so real, so vital, so tender, that
their immortality is guaranteed by His. To use
the argument of the beasts and the man from
the second chapter of Genesis, God is the
Creator of the beasts, the Creator also of the
man, so far as He is beast or animal; but He
is the God of those who trust Him, He is the
God of those who love Him. Never the God
of the beast ! Never the God of the animal !
Impossible that ! But the God of the man, and
when He becomes the God of the man, the man
shares His Divine nature, and can no longer
breathe the word annihilation. In God is im
mortality, and in man, too, as man is in God.
Now there was one Scribe in that company
that was wise enough to see the wisdom of
these Divine answers. And he put a question
— one of the wisest questions that was ever put
to a religious teacher. He wanted to know
which among the four hundred commandments

Yielding Place to the New." 49
of the Law must be taken as the salient one,
the principal one, the guide, as it were, to the
interpretation of the rest. The worst of the
Jewish method was that it put the whole of
the Law on precisely the same level of Divine
inspiration and authority. It attached to
every ceremonial trifle exactly the same weight
as to the most momentous matters of goodness,
of faith, and of worship. There is no better
way of destroying a truth than to fasten it up
vnth a number of half-truths, and then to
insist on an indiscriminating veneration for
the whole amalgam because the truth is there.
When your enemy cannot prevent your building
upon the rock, he vrill try to make you extend
the building to the adjacent sand, so that when
the sand shifts and the part of the building
upon it gives way, if possible the walls on the
rock may also be cracked by the ruin. Now,
that is the method of the Bibliolater. It is the
evil of every system of religion which exalts the
letter, so that discrimination vanishes. Every
detail, however worthless or trifling, is raised
to the dignity of the highest truths. And this
Scribe might well be singled out as on the very
threshold of the Kingdom of God, because he
4

60 "The Old Law
saw that you cannot make the four hundred
precepts of the Law equally binding, but you
want a principle, you want a truth which will
interpret, you want a commandment which is
authoritative, simple, and clear; and he says,
"Which, Master, is that commandment?"
And the Master's answer is the most wonderful
answer He ever gave to any question. " Deu
teronomy vi. 6, Leviticus xix. 18," He rephes
without hesitation. He has no doubt about it.
He never supposed that the Law was divine in
the sense that every part of it was equaUy
authoritative with its centre. No ! He takes
up the very core — this commandment, " Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul
and with all thy strength, and thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself." There is the Law
and the Prophets summed up for you. When
Jesus Christ gave that answer to the Scribe He
revolutionised the ancient Law, and He saved
it. This one Scribe who ehcited the great
answer and at once adopted it was immediately
proclaimed to be " not far from the Kingdom
of Heaven."
And now the picture is completed by a
question which He Himself put to His

Yielding Place to the New." 51
questioners — a searching question which they
could not answer, a question which reduced
them to silence, as well it might. It revealed
the inadequacy of their rehgious ideas and the
blindness of their heart. The Christ whom
they expected was another David — a king
sitting on a throne, with conquering arms to
subdue the world. The Christ whom God
intended was not David because he was greater
than David, and the point that is brought out
to these obstinate Scripture readers who never
understood what they read is this — " the very
Law on which you base your doctrine contains
the proof of my own high origin." I ask you
to reflect what was the consciousness of Jesus
of Nazareth when He used this argument?
What does it imply of His ovm sense of His
person. His origin. His authority. His mission ?
He stands there in the group of religious people
of His day, hemmed in by their subtle and
tortuous ways ; the hght shines upon Him ;
how simple He looks. He is a peasant from
despised Nazareth, uncultured, unrecognised;
and yet, in His Divine humility. He looks down
at the regal lineage of David far beneath His
feet. David is the greatest name in Israel,

52 "The Old Law," &c.
and, behold ! a greater than David is here. No
one can read the argument carefully vnthout
observing that it is the Lord's simple claim to
be the Divine being in human flesh and blood.
And in this Cartoon he stands before us
conscious of His own Divinity.

IV.
THE FIRST CHURCH.
(Maek hi. 7—35.)

THE FIRST CHURCH.
This Cartoon, you may observe, after the
manner of Raphael's famous picture of " The
Transflguration," in the Vatican Gallery at
Rome, combines two scenes in one — the scene
on the mountain-top, and the scene in the
house ; but the leading thought of it all is the
formation of the first Christian Society or Chwrch.
The picture presents us with a vast throng of
human figures. The fame of Jesus had spread,
and the people who crowded the seashore of
Capernaum had come not only from the tovm
but from all the district of Galilee, and even
from the borders of the Mediterranean, the
towns of Phoenicia, Tyre, and Sidon ; from the
south, too, they had come, out of Judea and
Jerusalem; especially the religious leaders of
the people, who felt it their duty to be present
and inspect so great a rehgious movement.

56 The First Church.
From further even than Jerusalem they had
come — from the great desert south of
Jerusalem, a distance of 130 miles, involving
a laborious journey of a week, the people had
come to see and to hear the great Prophet
whose fame had gone abroad.
We might have observed in the last Cartoon
that while the religious people, the religious
leaders, were seeking to entrap Him, the great
crowd — to use St. Mark's expression — ^the great
crowd listened to Him gladly (Mark xii. 37).
This extraordinary popularity was not at all to
the taste of Jesus. Bent on getting at men.
He was well aware that crowds are often the
great hindrance to individual work. It was
impossible for Him to explain the nature of the
Kingdom of God to vast masses of indiscrimi
nate hearers. Their presence rendered it neces
sary for Him to speak in parables. He there
fore seeks the mountain-top and the house as
a refuge from the multitude. He retreats that
He may select and consolidate. You will
observe at once that He is not vnthdravnng
from men, but, more strictly speaking, he is
vnthdrawing men to Himself.
I. First, let us follow Him to this hiU-top

The First Church. 57
behind the tovm of Capernaum. The time has
evidently come when He must organise at least
a small society — a society dedicated to the
reaUsation of the Kingdom of God. He calls
out and up to Himself a little company of men.
Whether His clear voice rang out from the
hill-top to the people on the beach, or He sent
a messenger to one after another as He chose,
we are not told ; but He summoned up the hill
to Himself a httle handful of men. Why are
they so few ? For evidently they are not chosen
to-day in order to be great Viziers or Satraps
of the Kingdom, according to the popular
impression of the first disciples or apostles
of Jesus ; they are chosen, as we are expressly
told, for quite another purpose — for companion
ship ; for attendance, to announce Him ; for
service, to cast out demons. Evidently they
are not an order in the Church, but they are at
this primitive stage the whole Church itself.
There are only twelve of them. Why are they
so few? Why is the number twelve? It is
not necessary to seek a fanciful explanation of
that number. The simple reason why they are
so few, and why the number is twelve, is that
they, in all that vast multitude, they alone had

68 The First Church.
even the semblance of a faith in Him which
would justify their selection. I look over this
first church-roll with curiosity and admiration.
Five of them we have already met — ^Andrew
and Simon, James and John and Matthew
were personally summoned at the beginning.
Half of them — six in number — begin and
end in complete obscurity: you cannot paint
their features on the canvas. Of some of
them even the garrulity of tradition has not
ventured to give a single deed or saying.
Bartholomew, James of Alphseus, Thaddseus,
and Simon the Canansean, are simply names,
and not even definite names, for the lists are
given differently in different Gospels. The
burning light of the Apostohc age falls upon
the first church that was formed, and shows
that half the number were mere ciphers.
Only three of the twelve attained any dis
tinction, or even distinctness — ^Peter, who is
forthwith named Rock ; James and John, who
are surnamed the Sons of Thunder — a Rock
apparently signally unstable, thunder apt to
be mere irrelevant noise or worse, proposing to
bring down vnathful hghtning for conviction
to lukewarm hearers. And the twelfth wins

The First Church. 69
aU his notoriety from the exceptional fact
of his being a traitor. These were the best —
not the best only, they were the sole foUowers
whom He could call to be vnth Him, to
announce Him, to cast out demons ; and of
them He makes His Church.
II. But, secondly, let us foUow Him into
the house, and, as you will observe, the margin
reads, " He cometh home," a very appropriate
expression. From the mountain-top of selection
He comes into the house of consolidation.
His Church is a new household, a new family,
a family which, as an incident that immediately
happened shows, was to take precedence of
even our beloved earthly kinships. There
came to Him, while He was in the house, and
thronged vnth the people. His own mother
and Bis brothers. They wished to see Him;
and He vnshed to see them, beyond a doubt,
but He took the opportunity to explain to the
people that there was for Him a new test of
relationship, a new basis of a family, which
will widen while it excludes. The new house
hold is to be based upon the desire to do the
vnU of God. Those who are doing the will
must be members of that household, and those

60 The First Church.
who are not doing the will can by no human or
heavenly device be brought into the family.
Those who have accepted His wiU, instead of
their own, discover that a subtle tie unites them
to one another. They are people of one will,
because it is God's will ; they are people of one
mind, because it is the mind of Christ; and He
is there, as it were, the brother in the house
hold. Mother and sister and brother come to
cluster round Him, and dravm by the magic
tie, held by the indissoluble bond — the vnU of
God — in this world and the next — His Church
is from the very first a family, a household. It
is from the very first based upon the sohd Rock
of the Will of God ; it is from the very iirst a
heavenly relationship between man and man,
close as brother or sister, to sister or brother ;
a dearness, a tenderness, suffuses the whole
society, they are all one with the Father
because they all will to do the Father's will.
III. But, thirdly, while the new spiritual re
lationships which we now call the Church were
being formed, and the new society was being
established on its basis, two little incidents
showed how entirely inadequate the old rela
tionships had been to form any society that was

The First Church. 61
trustworthy and eternal. For His friends,
those who came from home, those who had
formed His household hitherto, the people who
knew Him best, or would have said they knew
Him best, were entirely bewildered by all His
conduct. His teaching and the results. They
came from their own house to this other house
to lay hands on Him. They said to one another
as they came, " He appears to be in a kind of
ecstasy.* He is hardly responsible. For
decency's sake, we must get Him home; for His
ovm sake, we must put Him under control."
This opinion of theirs is valuable to us, and the
curious expression they used, which has been
reported in effect, is valuable to us, because it
gives us a glimpse of Him as He looked just at
that time — "He is in ecstasy," they say. There
was upon His face that exalted, that inspired
expression which comes from a very intimate
communion with God, and always seems to un
spiritual people to be a sign of madness. They
thought Him mad. Now, what one would say
in foUowing the words and deeds already re
corded in this Gospel concerning Him would be
that they show in Him a quite peculiar sanity,
* f\iyoy yap Sti eJeVrT). (Mark iii. 21.)

62 The First Church.
a balance which is perfect. So far as we have
seen Him hitherto, we should say, " He
is so strikingly, so singularly Himself !
Beside Himself? No ! There is no element
of distraction; no element of fanaticism, no
touch of frenzy in Him." But they judge
by themselves. After aU, the word "mad"
is easily defined. We caU anyone mad whom
we cannot understand, and, of course, we
cannot understand any one who is utterly
imlike ourselves. They were not yet born into
the spiritual world where He Uved; He was
strange to them, a maniac wandering from
other spheres, and they went out to arrest
Him. It is the trial of the children of the
kingdom — and here we learn that it was
often a trial of the King Himself — that
their absorption in God and in His aims,
their habit of setting their life, not by
reference to the transitory landmarks of the
world, but by sole reference to the Eternal
Light and Will of God, gives them the
appearance of being possessed. They are
not of the world or of its thought. They
are unworldly ; the world therefore ostra
cises them. To the world unworldhness and

The First Church. 63
madness are synonymous. It is a reproach
difficult to bear.
But the other event is this. The misunder
standing of the duU is trifling compared with
the daring libel of the wicked. The religious
leaders from Jerusalem, who speak with the
authority of Moses and the Prophets, possess
ing, presumably, the insight to perceive, and
the right to declare, the real nature of Him
and of His work, after deliberate examination
give, it would seem, a verdict for the guidance
of the people. They solemnly pronounce that
this ministry of His, which was healing and
saving men on every side, was the work of the
devil, and that He Himself was possessed
by the personality — the diabolic personahty
— called Beelzebub. Now, it is a mistake
and a misfortune for any man not to believe
in God. It is also a misfortune, and leads to
many mistakes, not to believe in and not to
recognise that mysterious evil genius — subtle,
because spiritual — working against the lives of
men, which is called in the Scripture by a very
general name — Satanas, or the Adversary. I
say it is a mistake and it is a misfortune not
to beUeve in God, and not to believe in the

64 The First Church.
evil force which is fighting against Him ; but
to confuse God and the devU, to take God for
the devil, that is more than a misfortune; it is
more than a mistake; it is in effect to take the
devil for God. Atheism is a withering negation ;
the soul af^cted with it shrinks and dies, but
Atheism is spiritual health by comparison vnth
the disease of which I am speaking now, when
you believe in God, and the God you believe in
is the devil; so that God, the one God, the
only God, is for you eternally denied and
rejected. Now, the way in which Jesus deals
with these men is amongst the most won
derful features of the Gospel. It sheds Ught
upon many things, but it sheds a pecuUar
Ught upon Him, and upon the Spirit that was
in Him. He sends for them — the same
word is employed as in the thirteenth verse,
where He summoned the disciples to Himself
— He sends for these men, and He quietly
argues with them. He shows them what
any one not bhnded by prejudice might
have seen at once, that the charge they
bring is inconsistent with itself. These
possessed and suffering creatures were healed ;
as might be seen, they became sane ;

The First Church. 65
what was called the devil was driven out of
them. Evidently this could only have been
done by someone entering into the house
stronger than the possessor, binding the
possessor, and rescuing from him the goods
that he had claimed. The charge they made
against Htm was equivalent to saying of the
thief, "He robs by the aid of the owner of
the house," which is an obvious absurdity. He
argues with them quietly, and shows them what
it means. But there is something else to be
said beyond this forceful logic of fact, and it
shaU be said to them, observe, not in wrath, but
in truth, yes, even in tenderness ; for, strictly
speaking, there is nothing more tender than to
take those who are in the path of ruin and to
teU them where they are walking. May I venture
to paraphrase what He said? It was in effect
this : "I, at the Jordan yonder, received the Holy
Ghost — ^not by measure — descending upon Me
and penetrating my very heart. The Holy
Spirit assured Me of My Sonship, My Messiah-
ship, My message to the world. Since then
that same Spirit has been speaking in My
doctrine, and has been working in My work.
That same Spirit has healed these diseased and
5

66 The First Church.
distraught souls, and driven out of them the
other spirit that was ruining them. This is to
Me a matter of direct and immediate conscious
ness. I know this as I know Myself. My
Father and I are One. My Father is working
in Me. I, here among men, am the mere
agent, the Son of the Eternal Father. Now,
when you abuse Me as a man, that is pardon
able — aU human judgments are hable to error —
but when you affirm vnth aU your authority as
the interpreters of the Law, as the students of
the inspired prophets, that this work and
vritness of the Holy Spirit of God emanates
from Satan, you enter upon a fatal path, which,
so far as this seon goes, presents no opportunity
of return. Is God the devil and the devil God to
you ? Then every act of worship you bring vriU
be devilry, and every deed you do, thinking it
good, will be denial of God ! In such a hopeless
mesh," He goes on, "the chain will tighten
upon you as you struggle ; you vrill be held by
it more firmly whichever way you move. In
such a helpless confusion of thought and spirit
the weU of living water will have been turned
into a cesspool for you, and as you confidently
draw the water it will be poison that you drink."

The First Church. 67
This is the first voice of Jesus from the iosom
of Sis Church, Let His Church strive vnth
T31s lucidity and vnth His gentleness to make it
plain to men; for if men do not know the
evidences of Christ, if they are not in their
minds convinced, and are waiting for conviction,
it is always possible that they may see and
believe. As truth shines upon them the blind
eyes may be opened. But men who have
examined Him and His work, have seen the
evidences, have knovm, or might know, that
He takes the sinful souls around us and trans
forms them, and puts the Light of God into the
dark places of the human spirit; men who have
seen it and know it and then solemnly and autho
ritatively declare that this is the work of the
devil, there is no remission to them, there cannot
be, God is the devil to them and the devU is
God. And charity requires that we should make
this plain to men, as our Lord Himself did.
The Cartoon of the Church presents us at
once vnth an image of Love, of Terror, of
Righteousness, of Judgment, of Truth that is
stem, stem that it may save.

V.
THE CARTOON OF THE FIELD AND
THE LAKE.
(Mark iv.)

THE CARTOON OF THE FIELD AND
THE LAKE.
The scene is on the beautiful hill-girt Lake
of Gennesaret. The foreshore is crowded with
a throng of people greater than ever — so great
that there is no standing-place for the Teacher,
until He gets into a httle fishing-boat and
pushes from the shore, and then the people
range themselves upon the shelving beach as
in an amphitheatre. To Him, looking at them
from the boat, with the narrow strip of sunlit
sea between, the crowd of people, the white
houses of Capernaum behind them, and to the
right and left the lower slopes of the mountains,
where it would seem the peasants were just
casting abroad the grain on their sterile and
rocky fields, to Him immediately this crowd
appears to be the field, and He is the sower
casting the seed of the Word. He begins to
speak what is in His mind, as if He were simply

72 The Cartoon op
describing the action of the sower which they
had often seen. There is no hint of any other
meaning, and they are kept in spell-bound atten
tion, as simple people usually are when they hear
only what is quite familiar to them. And here
is the explanation why He speaks in parables
to the people. It is not, as might be thought
from hastily reading the twelfth verse, to pre
vent the people from hearing and understanding
lest they should be converted and forgiven.
No ! As He says, a lamp is Ughted not to be
put under a bushel. That is no ideal position
for a lamp, though sometimes necessary. The
principle He has at heart is to speak just as
they were able to bear it. Thus v. 21 and
V. 33 explain the obscure words of v. 12. To
have spoken the mystery of the Kingdom of
God to that indiscrimmate crowd would have
been quite useless. Men not spirituaUy awake
are only bored by spiritual things. When
these things are spoken they yawn, they
fidget, they are impatient ; what is said seems
to them all up in the clouds ; to explain
the great realities to men in that state
of mind is labour thrown away, just as it
would be to discuss the higher mathematics

The Field and the Lake. 73
with persons who have not yet learned the first
rules of arithmetic. If such people are to hear
such things at aU the truth must be " embodied
in a tale " ; it must reach them in the very
commonest and simplest form, as if they were
touching earthly things and handling them,
not knovring that they were heavenly. It is
necessary that the glories of the spiritual should
be veiled for their own sake to dim eyes. Eyes
in that condition see a ray where they would not
see the blaze. Put the bushel on the light and
the few stragghng beams that appear in view
vriU awaken the desire for the rest; put the
blaze before them, and the poor weak eyes,
startled, will take refuge in the dim comers of
the caves vnth the bats and the owls. For it
is a weU-knovm fact that souls outside the
Kingdom dread nothing so much as coming
in ; their great fear is " lest they should be
converted and it should be forgiven them."
They have to be wooed vnth parables ; to
those who are within, the parables can be
explained. Now let us watch how the Word, the seed,
f aUs, not only on that crowd upon the shore of
GalUee, but upon every collection of men to

74 The Cartoon op
whom the Word of the Kingdom comes. It
runs in this way: — "Be converted and enter
the Kingdom of God," or, " Come unto Me and
I will give you rest." That is the seed that is
sovm broadcast. One out of four hears,
and yet does not hear ; before the Word even
gets into the heart — the preoccupied heart —
the enemy has carried it away. The plough
will have to go through that heart before it vrill
ever listen. A second out of the four hears it,
and thinks it good. You see the sparkle in his
eye, and the flush of resolution, " From to-day,
I mean to follow Christ." But it is mere emo
tion ; the sneer of the friend at home, the mere
dislike of confessing the Saviour, before the
message is fully delivered, will have mastered
him, and he will be as eager to puU the seed up
out of the soil as he seemed to be to let it
enter. A third hears the word and just
for Sunday receives it. If aU the week were
Sunday, he would receive it all the week; if
he could give undivided attention to it, it would
be an easy matter ; but what with the worries
of business, what with the interest of making
and keeping and increasing worldly goods, what
vnth the thousand and one desires that occupy

The Field and the Lake. 75
the heart and brain, he reaUy cannot pay
attention to this Word of the Kingdom. He
likes to have it put in at the service on Sunday,
and then he lets the thorns choke it the next
day. One out of four, only one out of four,
really hears and receives. And now what
happens ? The sower has dropped the seed ;
he does not know where it has fallen; he
leaves it ; he goes his way ; he sleeps and rises
night and day ; little enough can he have to do
with the growth. But there is a force at work
in the heart which is just hke the automatic
force of the soil and the sun and the air, and
the seed that has got into the heart begins to
germinate and to grow. You look at it after
a Uttle while, and what a joy ! A httle blade
has got above the surface. Some one wants
to confess Jesus Christ. You watch it, and
soon it is a tall stalk with an ear, and there
is com growing in the ear ; it is a fruit. This
one wants to live the life, wants to do the work
of the Son of God. It seems to be a great
result from what seemed a very little thing.
Yes ! it is Uke a grain of mustard-seed — a very
Uttle thing, it must be owned, but a Word, a
spoken Word, penetrates the soil of the heart.

76 The Cartoon op
and insensibly takes root and begins to grow ;
the Christ who is seen as a Saviour begins to
be the Master ; the Master who is recognised
as the Sovereign begins to be the Teacher ; the
Teacher, who is Sovereign and Saviour too,
begins to give the power, and what was told
vrith the lip is now done with the heart and
the life ; that which was sketched as a dream
is now realised as a fact, and this Uttle seed
which fell into a friendly soil will grow until
there will be a life Christ-filled — Christ in you,
not only the hope of glory, but the power of
salvation. Will you not receive the Word
into a good heart? WiU you not yourself
allow the seed to penetrate ? Jesus Christ,
who, coming in, makes you a true and
obedient child of God, cleanses you from sin,
strengthens the inner nature, sheds abroad the
love of God, gives you the power of an endless
life, vriU you not let Him come in, as it
were? For notice the responsibility of hearing.
According to your measure in hearing. He
says, it will be measured unto you. Yes ! and
more vrill be added. Receive the simple
message of Christ honestly, keep it dUigently,

The Field, and the Lake. 77
act on it fearlessly, and you wiU be able to
receive more.
The larger the bin
The more He puts in.
Be all ears when Christ is speaking. Why
should you be as a trodden ground, or as a
rocky soil, or as the thorn-choked ground?
Why should you not be the good ground and
receive the seed that it may grow?
It is very curious how the world to-day
iUustrates what Jesus said on that occasion.
Palestine, where He spoke the Word, was a
dovm-trodden path, and the Word was snatched
away from the beginning. Africa, eager and
ardent, from Alexandria and Cyrene to Carthage
and Hippo, received the Word with enthu
siasm, and then affiiction and persecution
came, and it was destroyed. Europe took it — it
was the salvation of Europe, and there is
here no persecution nor affliction, no danger
from vnthout; but in Europe worldliness,
riches, and ambitions, and the desires of this
present hfe, choke it, and it brings forth little
fruit. As yet there is no continent, no nation,
no land, as a whole, that has proved to be good
soU. Only the scattered children of God here

78 The Cartoon op
and there have received the seed into a good
heart, and have brought forth fruit, thirty,
sixty, or a hundred-fold.
That clear voice from the boat, ringing out
over the crowd and up the mountain-side, has
reached us too. It is coining to us whenever
we read or hear the Gospel, and in the strange
Hebrew phrase, which is vnongly translated in
the modem version. He is saying, "He that
hath ears, let him hear with all his might."
Let him listen, for it is in the hearing he wUl
receive. Open the ears ! Let it come in ! and
then, as it comes in. He adds, " See what you
are hearing. Do not let it come in unobserved.
There is at once warning and encouragement.
Let it (Jome in, but know what it is, for it shaU
then bring forth fruit."
And thus all the day long, vrith shaft after
shaft out of His abundant quiver. He spoke the
Word unto them as they were able to bear it,
fii'st addressing the great crowd, then pausing
for a whUe — whUe the crowd ate, possibly — and
explaining it to His disciples, sitting at His
side, and then resuming the speech to the crowd,
and then speaking to His disciples again. His
disciples, — who, as you gather from verse 10,

The Field and the Lake. 79
were more now than twelve — were becoming a
Uttle company of those who believed and
Ustened and understood.
Evening came at length, and he longed for
rest, " Shall we push over the quiet waters and
get rest ? " And directly the boat moved. He
feU asleep — so wearied, that a sudden squall
falling on the lake, dashing the waves over the
low gunwale, fiUing the boat as it seemed,
almost to sinking did not even awake Him.
There is no work so exhausting as teaching,
if anything is reaUy taught and received. You
may say that whatever is received has come
UteraUy out of the teacher, for the brain goes
vrith the heart in teaching, and the nervous
system is dravm pitUessly along by that im
petuous team. The work of healing made
demands on His physical strength, but the work
of teaching taxed soul and body aUke. The
popular fancy pictures Jesus as a strong Titan
that knew not fatigue ; the simple history shows
Him there in the stern of the fishing boat dead
heat ! Asleep, dreamless, unconscious, after the
long day of teaching, for " He bore our infir
mities," and was as one of us.
But now there is a wonder. The disciples.

80 The Cartoon op
some in His boat, the rest in the other boats, fell
into a panic because of the storm, and thought
that they were going to the bottom. They were
impatient because it seemed "to belong not
to His care" whether He saw them die or
live. And they wake Him up. You may see
Him there, the calm pilot of that little fleet.
Suddenly aroused from sleep. He is not at all
alarmed. He sees the agitated waters crisping
and curling, black in the night but for the
white crests of foam. The fierce wind from the
hill-top seems firmly pressing the boat under
the waves. The vrild rush and' whistle of the
elements are on His face and in His ears. But,
living vrith God as He does, with God, who
controls all the forces of Nature, He sees all
these things in His Father's hands. Nature
has never been to Him something distinct from
God, but always God's instrument. He has
seen it aU along, and treated it, as Goethe
would have said, as the mere veil or robe of
His Father; and just as the field and the sower
had aided Him in an illustration of the preach
ing of the Word, so the vrild storm and terror
are speaking from the same Father ; though
another lesson, the same to Him ; that the child

The Field and the Lake. 81
is to trust in the Father, that the moment of
alarm is the moment of faith, and that over
those very waves the Father's wiU is absolute,
and the chUd's trust is persuasive. It was the
loud peal of God whistling in His ear in the
storm, and the very waves and terror were
simply another voice of the Father. There can
be no fear vrith Him ! no hesitation ! With a
simpUcity which could never be forgotten by
the awe-struck men who heard it, a simplicity
which is preserved in the narrative in absolute
truth. He quietly rose in the stem of the boat,
and rebuked the wind, and He said to the
sea, " Silence ! Be muzzled ! " And the squaU
passed, and the calm came, and He turned to
those in the boat, and to those in the other
boats, and He said to them, " 0 cowards, have
you not yet faith ? " Because faith is courage,
and cowardice is always unbelief. If we be
lieved, we should never tremble. If we had
faith, we should never hesitate.
Now we ought to say honestly at the close
of this study that this is the kind of event
which is incredible to the Materialist. The
Materialist lives in the illusion of the senses.
He is unaware of the spiritual forces. This
6

82 The Cartoon op
world is to him not a spiritual centre at all.
He himself is part of the phenomena he sees,
KoUed round in earth's diurnal course
With rocks and stones and trees.
The idea that the sea or the earth, that human
life, body or soul, is controUed by forces which
lie outside phenomena is intolerable to him.
If he only thought, he would know it is true,
but he does not think, he wiU not think. It is
his philosophy not to think, but to go by the
senses, and therefore this is all incredible to
him. He is the only loser by his incredulity.
The fact is not altered by it. If you and I
have received this Gospel of Jesus, if we have
felt the Spirit of the Highest, we are able to
believe a simple and truthful narrative like
this, because we know that God holds in His
hand the wind and the sea, and controls, as
He has made, all the laws that we call the
laws of nature. If we are assured that the
elements obeyed the voice of Jesus, it is because
Jesus was one vrith God. For that reason we
know that He could have controUed the forces
of nature, and probably did. This is not to say
that we beUeve in miracles. It is not to say that

The Field and the Lake. 83
we are to expect miracles for ourselves. We
may rejoice that miracles are not. We may love
better the Supreme WiU of our Father than
any personal interference on our behalf. But
it is to say that we beUeve always in the
possibiUty of miracles, and utterly decline
the absurd and irrational dogma which asserts
beforehand that God cannot work as He wills.
It may be that you and I shall perish by
storm and sea. If it falls to my lot to be in
a storm when death comes, and I see the
waves raging and death inevitable, I vrill say
then as I say now, " If I die in the storm
it is not because the storm is not under the
control of my Father's hand ; it is not that He
could not if He would aUay the waves and bid
the sea be stiU, but it is because He has His
chariots of water, as before His chariots of fire,
in which the souls that trust Him can mount
up into His presence, and His own can, even
in such a chaos of the elements, be calm in, the
eternal and spiritual world." I do not ask you
to beUeve that narrative, but I ask you to
believe that it is absolutely possible, and if
the eridence is conclusive you are bound to
accept it. Believing that or not, do not fail

84 The Cartoon op Field and Lake.
to believe that the Lord in whom we trust,
the Christ who has saved us, controls and can
control every element in the world that He
has made, and our appeal of faith to Him
is the appeal from the trusting child to the
Omnipotent Father.

VI.
THE CARTOON OF DEMONS AND
DEATH. (Mark v.)

THE CARTOON OF DEMONS AND
DEATH.
I BEGIN by quoting a very curious passage
from a letter written by St. Jerome, in the
year 404 of our era, to a Roman lady
named Eustochium, describing to her the
journey of her mother Paula from Rome to
Bethlehem. In that journey Paula passed
through Samaria, or, according to its Greek
name, Sebaste, and there, says St. Jerome,
" she was filled with terror by the marvels she
beheld, for she saw demons screaming under
different tortures before the tombs of the saints,
and men howling Uke wolves, baying like dogs,
roaring Uke lions, hissing like serpents, and
beUovring like bulls. They tvristed their heads
and bent them backwards until they touched
the ground. Paula pitied them, shed tears
for them, and prayed Christ to have mercy on

The Cartoon op

them." * Similar phenomena are described by
other vniters of the fourth and fifth centuries,
such as Hilary, Sulpicius, and Paulinus.
Now, the scene which is presented to us on
the east shore of the lake in this fifth chapter
of St. Mark's Gospel is the one which a dis
tinguished man of science has in our ovm day
selected to iUustrate the fabulous character of
the Gospel narratives. His argument seems
briefly to be this : Here is a story which is
obviously incredible, and therefore the whole
story of the life of Jesus is untrustworthy.
Now, that argument, if we may be aUowed to
criticise it for a moment, is by no means con
clusive. Supposing there is in the narrative of
an historian something which is incredible,
that does not discredit the historian, for it
is a perfectly familiar fact in aU ancient
history that the most careful and the most
honest of vniters have been misinformed
upon certain points, and in good faith have
said what was not true. Historical narrative
is never to be tested, Uke a chain, by the
weakest link in it, but each point rests inde-
* Vid. Canon Premantle's recent translation of St.
Jerome. Page 201.

Demons and Death. 89
pendently upon its ovm evidence. If this story
were, as we are told, incredible, and therefore
we all agreed to leave it aside, and not to
beheve it, the person of Jesus Christ would stiU
stand as distinct, as authentic as the person of
any being that has ever lived upon the face of
the earth. But that is scarcely enough to say.
When a man of science brusquely declares that
a story like this is incredible, you must not
suppose that it is disproved. And, indeed,
there are enough facts quite verified to-day, facts
bearing on the mysterious region of existence
which is hinted at in this narrative, to make
even the most incredulous man of science cau
tious in dogmatising. I would suggest to you
that whUe it is possible to briefly dismiss this
narrative as incredible, it is quite as reasonable,
and a great deal more fruitful in practice, to
take the facts which are described here, the
phenomena which came into emphasis when
Jesus was present on the earth, as a possible
explanation of a great deal which remains —
and apart from such an explanation vrill remain
— ^unexplained in human life. The records of
crime, the dark ways of passion, and, perhaps,
above all, the appalling facts which all of us

90 The Cartoon op
meet in our daily hfe connected with the use
of intoxicating liquors, must suggest to every
careful inquirer that there are active agents of
evil which beset the human spirit in its earthly
pilgrimage ; press always at the weakest point
of our moral nature seeking to effect an en
trance ; and if in a moment of weak compliance
or slumbering inattention an entrance is
effected, obtain an irresistible mastery and
dominance over the spirit that is thus possessed.
I say it is just as reasonable and more fruitfid
to take such a fact as this to interpret the un
interpreted facts of human life, the tragedies
of human sin, which certainly are not explained
by simply referring to what we call the weak
ness of human nature, yes, far more fruitful
than with Professor Huxley to curtly dismiss
the whole story as a fable.
But, to be candid, there is in this narrative
one point which to my mind remains completely
unexplained and unexplainable — I mean the
account of the swine being possessed as the man
was cured. Let me point out that this rests sim
ply upon the authority of the narrative. As you
study this narrative its photographic veracity
makes you more and more unvrilhng to doubt a

Demons and Death. 91
single statement that it contains ; but when all
is said and done you can only say that here is
something stated by an historian whom we
trust, something which happened or seemed to
happen, and was recorded in perfect good faith.
From that part of the narrative I should per-
sonaUy hesitate to draw any inferences what
ever. But this is clear : the poor creature in
the condition of the sufferers wbom Paula saw
at Sebaste was healed, restored to decency and
to sanity ; and seeing, it would appear, in the
headlong ruin of the swine an- outward proof of
the terriflc force of evil which had possessed
him, he vrished to follow the Saviour, and the
Saviour would not let him. In that profane
Greek land beyond the lake, the country of the
amorous poet Meleager, and the Epicurean
PhUodemus, the presence of a saved man might
be the vritness of salvation. He was to remain
and publish it abroad, and in the gratitude of
his heart he did as the Saviour commanded
him. But passing vrith Jesus back from Decapolis
to Capernaum we are confronted vrith two
marvels — the lesser of them locked into the
bosom of the greater — the cure of long-stand-

92 The Cartoon of
ing disease, and the raising to life of one who
had just fallen into the sleep of death. Now,
it is not my intention to lessen the wonder
of these occurrences. I should not hke to
minimise the tax which they make upon our
faith. On the contrary, I would draw out
in the clearest form that the demand they
make is as great as any demand on faith could
ever be. I should like to say that He whom
we trust as a Saviour must be one out of whom
virtue proceeds to cure every disease, and must
be one who has power even over death. With
out attempting to prejudge the question, which
we must all settle for ourselves, concerning
this particular narrative, I do venture to declare
that He whose bearing and character, whose
word and work we are examining in these pic
tures of St. Mark, He whom we have received
as our Saviour from sin, as our Resurrection
and Life, our Lord and our Sovereign, unques
tionably could have done the things which are
here attributed to Him. When the science of
to-day wishes to close the whole discussion by
the a priori assertion that these stories could
not be believed, however strong the evidence
were, and therefore it is of no use to examine

Demons and Death. 93
the evidence ; after all science is simply declar
ing in its habitual way — dogmatically, I mean,
and confidently — that Jesus could not have
been what He said He was ; could not have
been what those who actually knew Him de
clared Him to be. Now, if Jesus was not
what these men saw, then, indeed, your hope
and mine is vain ; there has broken no light
upon this world from that dim, inscrutable
Beyond. And if He was not what He said He
was, let science recognise that it has the moral
responsibiUtj laid upon it of explaining the
indisputable effects of Christianity upon a
scientific basis, and not upon the flimsy sup
positions of a Strauss and a Renan. It is use
less to deny that Jesus was what He said He
was until you can explain, according to your
view of what He was, what He has done.
And observe that He cannot be disproved, as
eighteen centuries have shovm, by the scornful
sneers of Materialism, or the shallow judgments
of the philosophy of the day.
But now, I want to urge upon you that if we
are to judge of the events mentioned in the
close of this chapter, we are bound first to try
to see the scene as it might have been seen

94 The Cartoon op
through the eyes of Peter and James and John.
Every great fact in the world is susceptible of
satirical caricature, and men may caricature and
satirise with great good faith as long as they
are not, as it were, present at the fact. If
they are present at the fact they do not satirise,
unless they are dishonest. It is, therefore, of
the utmost importance, if you want to form a
judgment whether this woman was healed,
whether that little girl was raised from the
dead, that you should look at it vrith candid
eyes, and look long and closely before you give
your verdict. And it is precisely this close in
vestigation of the eye that we are enabled to
obtain from the narrative of St. Mark. This
is what we see : —
As Jesus lands again on the shore of
Capernaum, there is a man Jairus, one of the
religious officials of the tovm, that comes in the
crowd to meet Him. And he shows at once a
remarkable faith in Him, a trust which seems
to border upon worship, for he falls on the
beach at His feet. Prejudiced as we may
suppose him to be, as aU the rulers of the syna
gogues were, against Jesus, and unbelieving as
we may suppose him to be, grief brought him

Demons and Death. 95
to the feet of the Saviour. His httle girl was
at the last extremity, and no doctor could save
her. He was there to ask this noted wonder
worker whether He would come and touch
her and heal her. Immediately Jesus moves
towards the house, and the crowd, eager
to see the issue of this request, throngs
Him, so that, though it is presumably only a
few steps from the shore to the house, it
becomes difficult for Him to move along. And
in the crowd there is a woman who seems not
to know the matter in hand, though, poor soul,
her suffering might have excused her impor
tunity, even if she had known, for just as long
as the dying chUd had lived, viz., for twelve
years, she had been labouring under a distress
ing and apparently incurable disease. Of aU
the characters in the Gospel this nameless
woman is the most touching. So shrinking, so
modest, that she must not claim the Master's
attention ; and, indeed, she was perhaps
ashamed to speak aloud what was in her
heart, she yet says to herself, "If I could
just touch His garments I dare say He would
heal me." That was what clever people would
caU superstition, but the Father in heaven

96 The Cartoon op
takes accoimt of the faith that underlies even
the superstition in the hearts of His chUdren.
And one would scarcely have been able to call
Jesus a Saviour if He had been insensible to
the shy and timorous approach of this obscure
sufferer, if there had been no power to go out
from the Divine heart to save her, if He had
turned away unobservant and she had not
been healed. As it was He turned and said,
" Daughter, thy faith has saved thee ; go to
live in peace, and be well of this disease which
has been thy scourge."
But this brief delay has been too long,
and a messenger comes from the sick house,
and whispers to the anxious father, "She is
dead ; it is of no use for the Teacher to come
now." Jesus overhears the whispered word,
and, with an exquisite tenderness. He turns to
the man whose lips are a-quiver, whose face is
pale, and whose eyes are filUng vrith irrepres
sible tears, " Do not fear ; only believe." And
then, briefly forbidding the crowd to go vrith
Him any further. He approaches the house
with His three chosen friends and witnesses
alone. You can look into that house. That is
the commonest scene in the world, though we

Demons and Death. 97
keep a veil over it. When the anxious watch
and the arduous ministry of the sick-bed are
over, and the heavy air is burdened by the
sobs and agonised ejaculations of the sufferers ;
when some woman from the household or the
neighbourhood — there is always some such
ministrant at hand — tearless and sad with many
such experiences, is closing the eyes and adjust
ing the limbs of the dead, — that is of all other
situations in life the one where the Saviour is
most needed. Of any religion we may ask as
a test, what it has to say to us, not so much
when we are dying — for then we do not need
anything said, it is too late, as it were — but
when we are losing those whom we love? A young
literary man recently published to the world
his rehgious views,* and he declares, amongst
other things, that the hereafter is a matter of
no concern to us. Apparently he has not yet
loved and lost, he has not closed the eyes of a
mother or of a little daughter. If he had
he would know that what he dismisses so
lightly in literature, is of all things in the
world the most pressing, the most important.
* The Religion of a Literary Man, Richard Le Gallienne.
(Elkin Mathews and John Lane.) 7

98 The Cartoon of
It is in a sense the real pith and point of life
and of religion, whether love is barred by
death, whether this dark shadow which freezes
the blood at the heart, and apparently plucks
irrevocably our beloved from our hands, is a
reality or only an appearance. It is the ques
tion of life whether the dead can Uve, or
whether at the grave we leave them for ever.
And Jesus comes to the house of mourning,
and His words are memorable from the
beginning. " Why this tumult and weep
ing ? " He says ; " the child did not die, but
she is sleeping." Now grief is always in
credulous of joy, and the great truths of the
Spirit ring hollow in the chilly chambers of
death. Some, therefore, perhaps those who
felt it most, UteraUy laughed at Him, knovring
that she was dead. But He, with that strange
authority which appears in aU He does, clears
the room of those who laugh and those who
weep, and steps up to the curtained corner
where the dead body lies — father and mother
on either hand of Him, and behind, the three
who trusted Him and in whom He trusted.
As He steps forward it is well for us to
watch closely what He does, and to reflect

Demons and Death. 99
what it means. These three men, you re
member, are the men, the ignorant peasants,
who founded the Christian Church — that
Christian Church that has transformed, and
that is transforming, the world — these three
men, Peter and James and John, are re
sponsible for the faith we hold. On their
authority this narrative is preserved for us in
history. You have to ask. Is it possible that
they were deceived, as science tells us they
were ? Is it possible that they were deceivers,
as the ribaldry of secularism declares that they
were? And you, with science and truth and
reUgion and humanity in your heart have got
to determine. Are James and Peter and John
deceived or deceivers?
For this is what they saw, or this is
what they thought they saw, and told to us.
They saw Him go to the dead chUd and take
her by the hand ; they heard Him speak in the
famiUar language of the street — the language
that the common people at that time used. He
said, quite gently we may suppose, " Little girl,
get up ! " And the child got up and stood on
her feet and walked. The parents were trans
ported, as it says, vrith a great ecstasy, but He

100 The Cartoon op
was perfectly quiet, and only gave directions
that they should not talk about this matter to
anyone. It was not His purpose to reverse the
kindly law of death, or to say that little children
and elder people should not die. He who would
sanctify death, touched death reverently. He
woidd not let the world say, " He has come to
close the gates of the tomb." He wished the
world to know He had come to open them, that
the world might pass through. Let no one then
speak of this, except these chosen vritnesses,
who having seen it would in time be bound to
narrate it, and having narrated it, would meet
the future with their clear and calm assertion
that veritably on that day their Lord and Master
raised from the dead a Uttle child. As for
Him, like any ordinary doctor. He told them to
give the weak, emaciated chUd a little food to
eat, and passed out.
It was a work altogether of love and of
power ; a work not to make you marvel, but to
reassure you. It was not to be talked about,
but to be held in the heart, that He can vanquish
death, and that He understands the sorrows of
the bereaved.
Now the evidence for that work of love and

Demons and Death. 101
power is precisely as strong as God wished it
to be. That is to say, it is sufficiently strong
that every one who wills may, vrithout any in-
teUectual dishonesty, believe it for his inflnite
comfort; and every one who vriU not, may
remain, and shall remain, unconstrained and
unconvinced. That was the nature of the
evidence that God intended. Those who hug
death and shut their eyes against the miracle
of life, the unchecked power of the Lord
of Life, shall abide in the shadow of death.
When their Uttle ones die they shall be
hopeless as they deserve to be, since, when
the light comes, they will not open their eyes.
But you, who have learned to observe, and
know who He is that came, and what He is
that loves, you vriU understand the vast signifi
cance of this httle fact in history, that the Son
of Man is Lord of life and of death, and in His
hands are the very keys of Hades ; and you
vriU joyfuUy embrace the truth that no one
can take from you. When your dead are carried
out you vrill sorrow not as those who have no
hope ; and when death comes to you, you vrill
not loathe him as a foe, but welcome him as the
dear friend of Christ, who walked vrith Christ,

102 The Cartoon op Demons and Death.
and Christ with him. In the language of our
great Christian poet, you wUl understand that
the love of God touching the dead has given
you cause never to harbour a misgiving upon
the subject of the grave : —
No, at noonday in the bustle of man's worktime
Greet the unseen with a cheer !
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
" Strive and thrive ! " cry " Speed — fight on, fare ever
There as here ! "
Let it not be in vain that we, vrith reverence
and eager inquiry, have meditated upon Jesus
in the presence of Demons and Death !

VII.
THE CARTOON OF REJECTION AND
RECEPTION. (Maek vi.)

THE CARTOON OF REJECTION AND
RECEPTION.
The canvas of this sixth chapter of St. Mark
is unusually crowded ; and yet it forms a single
picture, for it is all concerned with this one sub
ject: Who received Jesus, and in what way,
and how opposition turned into rejection, and
rejection led to tragic consequences. This
last point is suggested by the scene which is
painted as it were in the background of the
picture, representing the brutal murder of John
the Baptist, the Forerunner — a hint given, no
doubt, as to the end which often awaits those
who are faithful ; for this man, according to
Herod's own showing, was a righteous man
and a holy. It is with the unconscious instinct
of the artist that the Evangelist introduces
this incident just at the point where the
disciples are charged with the task of pro
claiming the Kingdom of God, and sent to

106 The Cartoon of
carry out their Master's work. They are to
remember that the end of John the Baptist
may probably be their end too.
The picture, then, is grouped in this way :
First, in w. 1 — 6, He goes into His ovm
country, and His ovm receive him not. Second,
vv. 7 — 29, there are some of His ovm who do
receive Him, and He appoints them to do His
work — their eye fixed, as already suggested,
upon the possible end of fidelity in the fate
of John the Baptist. Third, w. 30 — 52, the
Master besieges the understanding of His
disciples with demonstrations of His power,
and of His readiness to help. And the fourth
panel of the picture, vv. 53 — 56, shows how the
world, which vrill not have Him as Teacher
and Saviour, crowds about Him for the physical
blessings of health.
But that which strikes us in the whole
picture is His bearing, the qualities of His
own character which are incidentaUy revealed,
the general effect of His person, and His
activity. The portrait is dravm only vrith a
few significant lines, and we have to pay very
careful attention to them if we would in any
sense see Him who is portrayed.

Rejection and Reception. 107
There is one other preliminary remark that
must be made. The spiritual meaning of
these miracles in the chapter is so obvious and
so impressive that we are tempted at first
to think that surely they must be aUegories ;
surely we are not to press them as literal facts.
But then, on second thoughts, as we notice the
curious dulness of the men vrith whom the
Master was in contact, how, according to their
confession — for it is no doubt Peter's report
which appears in this narrative — " They under
stood not concerning the loaves, but their heart
was hardened," it dawns upon us that possibly
it would have been beyond the power even of
Jesus to wake these torpid natures to the
understanding of spiritual truth except by
the exercise of such powers, exciting wonder,
admiration, and gratitude, as are here recorded.
I. In the first panel, then, we have to observe
Jesus among His ovm countrymen at Nazareth.
The situation there was so strange that He
Himself, we are told, was filled with astonish
ment. We shall do well to investigate it. The
people at Nazareth were perfectly amazed with
the powers manifested in Him. They were
amazed vrith the vrisdom of His teaching, and

108 The Cartoon op
they were amazed vrith the mighty works which
accompanied it. There was vrisdom to con
vince the inteUigent and the more reUgiously
inclined ; there was power to arrest the atten
tion of the less religious and the more stupid.
It was a combination which one might suppose
would carry conviction aU along the line, and
overbear aU opposition; just as in our ovm
day the very general recognition that the teach
ing of Jesus is the highest and the noblest
standard of human conduct ever manifested to
the world might, you would suppose, bring men
to His feet, especially when it is accompanied,
as it is, by proofs of His power in transforming
individuals and societies and nations. It ought
not to be difficult for any considering person
to recognise who He is. It is a question which
history , itself seems to be always asking,
" Whence hath this man these things ? " How
is it that the civilised world to-day is searching
vrith a more curious interest than ever the frag
mentary utterances of His lips which have been
recorded; and how is it that He is always
accomplishing transformations of life and
character amongst men which the utmost reach
of our knowledge and intelligence is unable to

Rejection and Eeception. 109
accomplish apart from Him ? Now, what
flUed even Him vrith astonishment at Nazareth
was that instead of faith the only result of
these very obvious facts was incredulity. It is
evident that into these human breasts entered
trifling passions and prejudices. They whis
pered among themselves, "He is only the
viUage carpenter, and His mother and His
brothers and sisters we all know very
weU." Or, as we put it to-day — I mean by
"we" those who, to-day, correspond to these
people of Nazareth — "He is only a man like
ourselves ; it is absurd to speak as if He were
Divine." And they of Nazareth were offended
in Him, as the Nazarenes of to-day are still
offended in Him. And yet what a strange
tendency that is ! How could He prevent an
offence which comes from so deep-rooted a per
versity ? If He were not a man Uke ourselves
He could bring us nothing. He could reveal to
us nothing. On the other hand, if He were
only a man like ourselves He would have
nothing to reveal and nothing to bring. It
must be an exceptional event, a supernatural
fact which is to restore the ruined world to
God. But what is to happen if that perverted

110 The Cartoon op
world will always reject the exceptional fact,
the supernatural event, on the ground that it is
exceptional? It was a cause of scandal to them,
and they rejected Him. " He came unto His
ovm and His ovm received Him not," just as
He comes to-day to numbers of the people who
have been brought up within the borders of the
Church, people who you might suppose would
be eager to receive Him, and it is they that
reject Him.
II. But passing to this second panel, there
are some of His own, the original twelve, that
receive Him. And from this point, you wiU
notice, in the Gospel the Lord sets Himself
dehberately and constantly to train these
twelve, to prepare them to apprehend the
things which the men of Nazareth regarded as
a scandal. The crowd could not yet be taught ;
possibly the twelve can be taught, and as a
method of preparation and teaching He sends
them out. The Greek work for to send is
airocTTiXXeiv ; they are therefore caUed in this
connection "The Apostles," or "The Sent."
He sees that they will best apprehend Him by
trying to do His work, and by seeking to
exercise His powers. They wiU best see what

Eejection and Eeception. Ill
rejection means by being themselves rejected,
and having to shake off the dust of their shoes
against the city that will not receive them.
They vriU best appreciate the nature of His
calling if they are, for a few days at least,
separated from Him, and sent, entirely un
provided, vrithout food, vrithout money, to
conquer disease, not by medical sMU, but vrith
symboUc oil, and to oust demons with the word
of His authority. Now that remains to this
day the very best way of understanding Jesus.
Stripped of aU material aids, like Pastor Von
Bodelschvringh, of Bethel, grapphng bare
handed with disease disappointment and death,
cast into prison, if you vriU, for faithfulness,
made a martyr, a sacrifice, a derision, a man
frequently comes to apprehend who his Master
is, and to rely absolutely upon His power and
His willingness to help. It is thus with the
deepest purpose that at this point He sends
His untried disciples, bo go out and preach
His word and to heal diseases in His name.
ITT- But we pass to the third panel of the
picture, where they have returned from their
first experience, and the Master has something
further to teach them. He teaches them by

Il2 The Cartoon op
two wonderful signs, as the Evangelist calls
them. These two signs — ^the feeding of the
five thousand and the walking upon the sea
— are, we observe, full of spiritual truth ; you
can hardly help reading their spiritual lessons.
But the first purpose of them was not to convey
spiritual truth, but to convince these twelve
men, the chosen few, that the Master whom
they served, the Carpenter of Nazareth, whose
mother and brothers and sisters were common
Nazarenes — that this Master was in such a re
lation vrith the Unseen and Eternal Father that
He could deal plastically vrith the very forces
of Nature, and could subject to His spiritual
rule the material things which defy the mani
pulation of man. Now, let us freely confess
that there is an extraordinary tendency to-day,
under the hectoring and the ridicule of what is
called Science, to explain away these facts.
Nothing should induce you to explain them
away. On the contrary, to an unbelieving age
emphasize their wonder, for the salvation of the
age Ues in the wonder of His power. But let
us be distinct. These are not the proofs of
Jesus, these are not the proofs that He was
Divine. It is not on the ground of miracles

Eejection and Eeception. 113
that we know who He was. Who He was we
know from what He was, from those moral and
spiritual truths which are presented upon the
canvas of St. Mark. But when we know
who He was and is, then it is of the greatest
importance that we should understand and
beUeve that He is Sovereign over the material
world. It is essential for us to know that all
power is given unto Him in Heaven and in
earth ; so that while we, as thoughtful students
of Nature, and believers in truth for truth's
sake, are eager to recognise what is caUed
Natural Law, we should be equally ready to
recognise that the boundary of Natural Law
is being constantly widened by growing know
ledge and that our Lord is not the product but
the maker of Natural Law. And it is in the
spirit of that revelation of His power that I
want you to look at these two signs that were
given to His disciples, as narrated in this
chapter. He needed rest, and so did His disciples.
The pressure of your fellow - creatures all
around you day and night has at last a
deadening, stifling effect. You want some
where to be alone with Nature, and so alone

114 The Cartoon op
vrith God ; where none are coming and going ;
where there is time at least so much as
to eat bread — the bread of heaven. And He
says to them, "Let us push out into^the Lake
and find a solitary place upon the shore, where
we can be quiet for a whUe." And it is just
here that one of the most beautiful traits of
Jesus is made manifest. Frustrated of rest,
confronted on that lonely spot by a crowd as
great as that on the shore of Capernaum, He
does not allow Himself any irritation or the
slightest trace of impatience. His great heart
is immediately moved with compassion. He is
to His own fancy a Shepherd who has found a
number of His hungering sheep in the wUder-
ness, and He is all at their disposal, to feed and
to tend, to teach and to help them. I venture
to think when you come to reflect what this
means you will see that from the human side
He could not have given to His disciples a more
perfect example of what is meant by self-
sacrifice. But there is something more. The
men are too dull to understand this at present.
When the day wanes therefore, in the fading
light. He must feed these rude disturbers of His
rest, these wearisome intruders upon His retire-

Rejection and Reception. 115
ment. He must feed them, and in such a way
that His disciples might, if they could, under
stand. The groups of hundreds and flfties had
no idea where the food came from, but the dis
ciples, you would suppose, might have known
if they had had eyes to see. The strange thing
was that they did not apprehend. Dazed and
bevrildered in the presence of so strange a
Master, they mechanically handed the bread
and the fish to group after group, not under
standing. As they saw afterwards, their heart
was, as it were, hardened.
And apparently because of this strange
hardening of their intelligence the further
sign must be given. He tells them to get
into the boat and to row back to the town,
while He sends the satisfied people away by
land. And then He Himself in the solitude
climbs up the cliff to pray. It is aheady, we
presume, well on into the first watch of the
night, but He has a great request to make, and
He needs much prayer. Through the second
watch of the night on the cliff He prays. Now it
is midnight, and through the third watch of the
night, the dreary and deadly hours between
twelve and three. He still prays. And as the

116 The Cartoon of
last watch of the night comes — in the grey
davm — from His tower of prayer He looks
dovm upon the lake and sees that the steady
head-wind all through the night has prevented
the disciples from making any progress. They
are toiling at the oar, just where they were on
the previous evening. And now, has the power
come to Him, has He entered into the place of
the Most High? Has He grasped the super
natural, so as to touch this base material
heart of the disciples ? He comes dovm from
the cliff and He walks upon the troubled
seas. The disciples see Him, and supposing,
naturally enough, that it is but a phantom, cry
out in dismay. He answers them, " Be of
good cheer; it is I," and steps into their boat.
Words which come to us now, and always
must, as the lofty assurance on which alone
the Christian life can be based ; for there is no
possibility of any sustained Christian life in a
world so difficult as this unless, however con
trary the wind, and however rough the waves,
our Master can step into the boat and say,
"Be of good cheer; it is I." The lesson was
taught them, and they were never likely to
forget it.

Rejection and Reception. 117
IV. And then, finally, there is the fourth
fanel of the picture. He comes to the land in the
ship, and they have no opportunity of touching
the shore ; they have to moor upon the beach,
because immediately there are crowds of
people about Him again ; and when at last
He gets through them, and enters into the
neighbouring viUages and tovms, it is the
same story — crowds everywhere; the market
place is always full of the sick in their beds.
Consider what this means. Burdened as He is
vrith the greatest truths of Ufe, bringing the
revelation of God, of heaven, of Eternity, He
is for ever detained in these endless tasks of
physical heahng ; ministering to bodies which
at the best vrill be in the grave in the course of
a few short years ; never turning aside from
any sick or sorrowing soul ; never saying what
we are aU at times tempted to say, " No ! that
is not My work ; mine is a spiritual mission ; it
is a theologic mission; I cannot be troubled
vrith these imperious and distracting needs
of suffering around Me." It is the constant
feature in the shifting scene. Always the
crowd of sufferers seeking a cure with the
gross and tiresome selfishness of disease.

118 The Cartoon op
People indifferent to God, people who sleep if
He speaks to them of heaven, people who have
no soul and no insight, dead logs of the earth
as they appear, but clamorous for health,
dragging upon Him physically untU He is worn
dovm, tired and disappointed with the impor
tunate demand, " Do not talk to us of God !
Do not talk to us of the soul ! Heal our
bodies and be done with it."
The selfish, diseased world dragging at
the body of the Lord, and He perfectly
patient, apparently willing to spend whole
days in healing, vrithout speaking, if it is
necessary ; so tender to the suffering world
that even in His ovm unbeUeving Nazareth
"He laid His hands on a few sick folk and
healed them " ! I do not know if you perceive
the point of this picture. It is to me one of
the most impressive in all the Gospels. Eager
for spiritual results as He must have been,
longing to establish the kingdom of God in the
hearts of men, to touch the conscience, to wake
the soul to the new life of God, and yet for ever
occupied with these materialistic details of
disease. Oh ! that is the wonder of Jesus,
the patience of Jesus ! The exigent demands

Rejection and Reception. 119
of a misunderstanding world do not irritate
Him. He bears all. He heals all, that He may
save all ; and He can wait and ever wait untU
the time is ripe. Rejected by you. He waits for
you. Spumed as a Saviour, He draws near to
graciously minister to your body, restores you to
health, raises you from the sick bed, extricates
you from your embarrassments, seeing whether
the touch of a brother's hand can ever wake the
soul vrithin you, seeing whether you are really
dead and cannot be awoke even by that. There
is Jesus — the portrait of the Saviour of the
world.

vm.
THE CARTOON OF CHRIST AND THE
PHARISEES.
(Maek vn. 1—23, and x. 1—12.)

THE CARTOON OF CHRIST AND THE
PHARISEES.
Ip you wUl put together the first twenty-
three verses of the seventh chapter and the
first twelve verses of the tenth chapter, you
vrill have a single and complete picture,
because in these passages the religious ideas
and the moral principles of our Lord are
brought out by contrast with those of the
Pharisees, i.e., by contrast with those of the
most religious representatives of the most
religious nation of antiquity. We have so
associated the idea of hypocrisy with the
Pharisees that we almost use the words
" Pharisee " and " hypocrite " as convertible
terms. But if we would see the bearing of our
Lord's teaching when He was upon earth,
it would be well for us, in place of the familiar
phrase, "Pharisees and Scribes," always to
read "the most pious of the Jews and the

124 The Cartoon op
most conscientious Biblical scholars of their
day." Judaism was the religion of a sacred book ;
the Scribes were diligent students, who pre
served and interpreted the sacred writings. The
Pharisees were the best examples that could be
produced of such a religion ; men who, as the
Lord said, searched the Scriptures, believing
that in them they had eternal life. It is true,
the tradition of the elders had somewhat over
laid the original Scriptures, but not, I think,
more than the traditions of Christianity have
overlaid the teachings of the New Testament.
It is true that some of the teachings of the
elders practicaUy reverse the teachings of the
Law, but that was not done deliberately, or with
any conscious insincerity. For example, the
section of the Mishna which is called Tohoroth
contains endless details about the purification
of vessels which is mentioned in this chapter
of St. Mark. But these endless detaUs, tedious
as they are to us, are the careful delimitations
of a conscientious spirit. It is true that the
decision referred to here, that a son instead
of giving his money to his parents who needed
it might bestow it upon a religious object, and

Christ and the Pharisees. 125
so avoid the fihal duty, might result in selfish
neglect ; but it is not to be supposed that that
was the intention of the regulation. It is diffi
cult for us to-day to realise the noble side of
that ancient Judaism, but noble it must have
been when a rabbi of the period could speak,
and beheve, a noble sentiment Uke this : " Be
bold as a leopard, hght as an eagle, swift as a
stag, and strong as a lion, to do the wiU of our
Father in Heaven." What we have to do is to
rid our minds of the idea that the Pharisees
were, as a body, conscious hypocrites. Their
regulations about purification were just of the
same kind as the endless details of modern
rituaUsm, which occupy time and thought and
money that would be better bestowed upon
strictly religious objects. And the evil of
their regulations was that these things,
which are so easUy done, hide from the eye
of the doer the inward things which are so
difficult to do. The Pharisees were quite as
sincere as the ordinary churchgoer of to-day
who gives his money generously to a religious
object, but is not so scrupulous about the way
in which the money was made — the man who
would be horrified to desecrate the Sabbath, but

126 The Cartoon of
in business will violate many of the principal
regulations of -his Lord and Master, Jesus
Christ. I ask you to dweU upon this, because
we miss the appUcation to ourselves if we
dismiss the Pharisees as hypocrites. They
were hypocrites, but not in the sense that
they were consciously insincere; only in the
sense that their religion was a conscientious
externalism. Their reUgion was a dutiful
discharge of rehgious offices, which, after all,
are trivial, excluding the inward things which
in God's sight are aU-important. In a word,
their hypocrisy consisted in their reUgion being
a Law instead of a spiritual and moral
principle. It was legalism which had ruined
them ; it was the spiritual rehgion which they
needed. We must not, then, suppose that our
Lord's quarrel was with the traditions of the
elders as distinct from the original Law; He
was not merely brushing aside the accretions
in order to re-assert the old Mosaic in
stitutions and to re-establish the Old Testa
ment religion. His criticism applied equaUy
to the whole Law; that is plain from the
passage that is before us, where He says,
according to the Evangelist, in a most earnest

Christ and the Pharisees. 127
and emphatic way, "There is nothing from
vrithout a man that, going into him, can
defile him." In saying that. He drew the pen,
as it were, right through the eleventh chapter
of Leviticus, which gives detailed regulations
about the very numerous things which might
not be eaten lest they should defile, mentions
objects which might not even be touched, and
exhorts the chUdren of the Covenant to abstain
from these prohibited articles of diet on the
high ground that they are to be holy, as God
is holy.
I confess that sometimes in considering this
daring repeal of that passage in Leviticus I am
tempted to beUeve that our Lord held the views
of the Pentateuch which modern scholarship
has made famiUar to us all. You may be aware
that these chapters in Leviticus, from xi. to
XXV., constitute a little book by themselves.
They are called by scholars " The Law of Holi
ness," and they are referred to the period after
the Exile. One might almost suppose that the
Lord drew a distinction between these chapters
and the ancient Law of Moses, and that
in setting aside the whole regulation of
chapter xi., " making all meats clean," He felt

128 The Cartoon op
Himself to be rejecting the traditions of men
rather than the Law itself. If that is not the
explanation — and I am bound to admit that it
sounds exceedingly rash — then we must suppose
that He dehberately repealed the Law of Moses
as such ; and that His quarrel with the Phari
sees of the day was not that they were bad
Jews, but that they were such good Jews, and
were trying so conscientiously to carry out the
endless details of a ceremonial Law.
When He enters into the house to explain to
His disciples what He has said, we begin to
realise how He stands in opposition to a cere
monial Law. In His ovm majestic way He
ascends a mountain higher than Sinai, and
issues a promulgation about things clean and
unclean, which in effect we must confess three-
fourths of Christendom to-day do not in the
least understand. Religious defilement. He
says, is entirely a matter of the heart, and of
the spirit, and of the mind — the thoughts that
are evil, the desires that are impure and dis
honest and vengeful, the love of money, shifti
ness of character, culpable stupidity — these are
the things that defile a man. He says. Coming
from within, they make the life unclean. We

Christ and the Pharisees. 129
need diligently to study this saying, and to be
sure that we understand every word that He
used. Without attempting to go through it
in detaU, mark that word which is translated
"stupidity." The Greek is a^pocrvvr], which
means the illogical, the obstinate, the preju
diced state of mind, the mother of all bigotry
and fanaticism. It is when we are incapable of
rightly judging others, unwUhng to understand
those who differ from us ; it is when we seize
upon unreasoning dogmas, and enforce them on
others with aU the cruel tyranny of unreason ;
it is when we are misled, and misjudge, from
sheer stupidity of mind, that there is, as the
Lord says, defilement aU through the life ; the
very fountains of charity are poisoned, and all
the life of man is defiled. When He included
stupidity amongst the defilements of the heart.
He was, beforehand, condemning the Pharisees
of Protestantism, just as in the previous verses
He condemned beforehand the Pharisaism of
Roman Catholics. It is not given to us all to
have great abilities or wide learning, but it is
possible for every humble mind to be open, to
be candid, to be fair, to be scrupulously just in
understanding the position of others ; and when,
9

130 The Cartoon of
through stupidity, we reverse all this, our life,
says the Lord, is defiled from within.
But this leads us to His conflict in the
tenth chapter vrith the Judaism of His day
upon an ethical question which lies at the
root of all genuine progress — the question
of marriage. If our Lord brushed aside the
ceremoniaUsm of ancient tradition. He was
very delicate in His treatment of every truly
moral element in the ancient law. He delighted
to take, as He has taken here some expression
from the Books, and to bring it out vrith
unexpected force as a confutation of what was
popularly held to be the teaching of the
Scriptures. Now the Law of Moses on the question of
divorce was an improvement, no doubt, upon
pre-existing institutions, but in Deuteronomy
xxiv. it certainly taught that if a man found
anything in the wife he had married that was
not pleasing in his eyes, he might dismiss her
with a bill of divorcement. The reform of
Moses consisted, probably, in requiring a biU
of divorcement — before, the man's bare word
was sufficient. But how dangerous a principle
that was, is only understood when you re-

Christ and the Pharisees. 131
member how the Rabbis applied it. The school
of Hillel explained that this "displeasing in
his eyes " covered the case of his wife spoiling
his food— for which he might divorce her ; and
Rabbi Akbar went so far as to say that if a
man had found another woman fairer than his
own wife he might divorce her. Once allow
the principle that man or vrife is to be judge
whether the arrangement is quite satisfactory,
and the casuistry of legalism will make it possi
ble to secure divorce on any terms you please.
In His divine power our Lord and Master takes
hold of the word in the second chapter of
Genesis, and flings it against the whole Mosaic
law, declaring that the regulation of Moses was
a mere compromise because of the hardness of
the hearts of the people. TLe importance of
this I want to emphasize, for this question is
one which is being freely and even licentiously
discussed in modern society. In all parts of
Christendom divorce is becoming commoner.
In England, it is true, there are not more than
300 or 400 cases in the year, but in our great
sister country, the United States, there are as
many as 25,000 cases in a year ; and while the
practice of Christendom is becoming careless.

132 The Cartoon op
there are teachers among us, like Ibsen, who
are discussing the question whether it is the
duty of a wife to remain with her husband, if,
after closer acquaintance, she becomes dissatis
fied with his appreciation of her, or finds that
certain things in his past life have been con
trary to her innocent expectation. These dis
cussions fiU the air ; many of them are quite
crude ; some of them are very definite and mis
chievous, and the ferment of opinion is Uable
to disturb the slow but sure evolution of society
and family life. And therefore I ask you to
let the absolute ethics of Jesus Christ rise up
as the standard by which all such questions are
to be tried.
Himself abstaining from marriage, for
reasons which do not need to be explained,
He declared that it was from no depreciation
of that sacred relation of Ufe; that He had
no sympathy with the ascetic principle which
appeared immediately in the Gnostic sects,
and obtained a firm foothold in the Catholic
Church. With one word He placed the whole
question upon its highest and holiest ground.
He taught us that a man and his wife are a
new single creation of God ; God joins them

Christ and the Pharisees. 133
together. If they come together without
God's wiU, following their chance desires
or their unhallowed impulses; seeking social
status, wealth, or dignity by that sacred
step ; if, in a word, they are married atheist-
icaUy, not bringing God into the relation, then
that is not marriage at all — it is only sin, and
cannot be hidden as sin by any institution that
the law chooses to create. But when they are
married — married in the true way, joined to
gether by God — then the tie that is formed is
indissoluble ; it is indeed for better or for worse
they take each other. It is possible that the life
they live together may be unclouded sunshine,
but that is not likely. It is much more prob
able that it will be the alternation of cloud and
sun ; it is much more probable that it wiU
demand self-restraint, self-sacrifice, deUcate
consideration on each side, and the humble
desire to please rather than to be pleased ; and
it is precisely that discipline which constitutes
the Divine significance of the relation ; and
that discipUne will be for ever impossible unless
the tie is perceived from the beginning to be
final, settled, and sacred — to dominate life, and
not to be dominated by it.

134 The Cartoon of
Now taking into account the whole of
this interview of our Lord with the Phari
sees, observe how the note of His Divinity
sounds out in His easy and natural supremacy
over the ancient Law. No man — no human
being merely, still less a Jew — could have
touched the hoary traditions of the Elders
with such a hand, with such ready sympathy
for all that was Divine in it, but such un-
compromised freedom to improve, to change,
to repeal. But if you observe the Divine note
in His way of touching the ancient law, surely
there is not one of us so spiritually dead as not
to perceive more distinctly still the very voice
of God in His treatment of the maniage
question. There is no action of life which so
needs to be brought up into the presence of
Eternity, and judged from the standpoint of
God, as this common action that we caU
marriage. I want to put before you a supposition this
morning. Suppose that England were a
Christian country — oh, happy and daring
imagination ! — and suppose that this one law
of the kingdom were dutifully obeyed, so that
our family and our social hfe were universally

Christ and the Pharisees. 135
based upon understanding and discernment;
suppose, in consequence of this, all marriages
were truly made in heaven, no one daring to
marry until God gave the word and kindled
the holy mutual love which is the necessary
condition of a true marriage, every one pre
paring for ever to remain unmarried rather
than leave Him out of the question ; suppose
that, in consequence of this, the married
people were to be made one flesh in God's
sight, a new creation of His Spirit ! Put the
case. Thanks be to God there are many
such marriages in England, and we may say
vrith confidence that they are the secret of
our country's greatness. Because these pious
marriages are not altogether rare, and homes
are founded on them, and children trained
within the sacred circle of the home, England
shines among the nations, and healing in-
fiuences go out from her even into the most
corrupt societies of the world. Suppose it
were not only occasional but common ; suppose
it were not only common but general ; if our
young men looked at marriage vrith Christ's
eyes, and if our young women entered
into it through the Spirit of Christ, under-

136 The Cartoon op
standing what He means by being present
at a marriage feast, so that there should
be no unhallowed espousals, none of the fatal
violation of the sanctities in the name of
marriage; one-half of the grinding misery of
English life would be immediately at an end ;
for we little dream how much of the misery of
life is due to unhaUowed, godless marriages.
But not only so ; this one law of Christ, under
stood and obeyed, would solve our large sad
social problems. We should have no redundant
population, for the children of such marriages,
however numerous, could never be redundant.
The children trained in such homes would be
trained in natural piety; the vice, which is,
more than anything else in us, the product of
heredity, and transmitted from unhaUowed
unions, would disappear from purified homes ;
and though criminals and incapables would not
vanish all at once, the strong nexus of the
purified society could deal with them, reclaim
them, or, at least, care for them tenderly until
death removed them from our midst. The laws
of Christ are so complete, so eternal, so Divine,
that each one of them seems to contain within
itself the potency of all good, and we see that

Christ and the Pharisees. 137
if only one of His laws could be generally
obeyed the Kingdom of God would come and
society would be regenerated. " Oh ! that we
had such a heart to hear Him, and to keep His
commandments, that it might be well vrith us
and vrith our children for ever." May He
teach us to sit at His feet and tmderstand the
words that faU from His lips, bringing our
lives and our homes into harmony vrith the
Divine Law, which is the very antithesis of
LegaUsm, whether the Legalism is Jewish or
Christian.

IX.
THE GENTILE, THE DUMB, AND THE
BLIND.
(Maek vii. 24— viii. 26.)

THE GENTILE, THE DUMB, AND THE
BLIND.
If you take from Mark vii. 24 to viii. 26 as
a single passage, there rises before you a
picture in the life of Jesus vrith a background
of unusual interest; we can only mark the
simple outlines as they are presented here. In
the first part of it — from the 24th verse to the
end of the 7th chapter — we find the Lord seek
ing retirement. As He could not gain it in the
desert, where the intruding multitudes always
found Him, He sought it in the great popu
lous, heathen towns that lay to the north of
the Jevrish territory. Among aUen and pagan
people He sought a few days of peace. That
country might be described as an arc of the
circle that sweeps round from Tyre and Sidon
on the west, through Damascus to Gadara on
the south-east of the Sea of Tiberias. At that
time the great cities of Phoenician civUisation

142 The Gentile, the Dumb,
were already decaying, but the great cities —
ten in number — of the Grseco-Eoman civilisa
tion were in their prime, cities which had been
restored and beautified and fiUed vrith a teem
ing Ufe by the Eoman occupation under
Pompeius the Great about a hundred years
before. In these busy and cultivated cities
Jevrish influence was but slightly felt ; the
language spoken was Greek. The traveUer in
the Holy Land to-day is confronted in that
district with the grandest natural scenery and
the most interesting fragments of a noble
architecture to be found in any part of
the East. Into this country Jesus goes, but
not, you observe, for a missionary purpose.
He goes to find rest. It is doubtful whether He
even knew their language. It is evident from
verse thirty-four, where He uses His native
tongue, that He did not attempt to speak
Greek. With the wise economy of the true
worker He sought rest, and He would not
attempt a work which He could not do.
His mission, you must remember, was to
Israel. , Some people have taken offence at the
words that He used to this Greek woman about
the dogs under the children's table ; but to

And the Blind. 143
take such offence is to misunderstand Jesus,
both as a man and as the Messiah. He had all
eternity to work in. From all eternity He had
been working ; He neither began nor ended vrith
those three busy years. But those three years
were dedicated to Israel. He meant to feed
the ChUdren of the House, to vrin them if it
were possible, and, as it proved to be impos
sible, to choose out of them such as would
respond for the work of the future. Of course.
He had come to seek the world, but He would
seek the world through them, training and pre
paring them for a world's task. So far from
taking offence at these words to the Syro-
Phoenician woman, I would learn from them
a most important lesson. As a great French
vniter says, "The first rule of the man dedi
cated to great things is to refuse to mediocre
men the power of turning him aside from his
course." It is not strength but weakness to
be at everyone's beck and call ; the certain
way of accomplishing nothing in this world is
to attempt everything which is suggested by
chance or the importunity of men. To save
the world requires sometimes detachment from
even the individuals that compose the world.

144 The Gentile, the Dumb,
And I learn from this that Jesus vrith a set
task to do wiU do it, and not attempt what lies
beyond it — the secret of aU success in work for
God or man.
But as we catch a glimpse of the Lord's great
mission, so patiently and so unwaveringly
carried out, and as again we catch a glimpse
of the pathetic necessity He felt for retirement
and for rest, so constantly sought, and so fre
quently sought in vain, we are able to appreciate
the graciousness, the heart of human pity,
manifested in these two incidents of the Greek
woman and the Greek man of Decapolis. He
could not be hid away in the desert or in the
crowded cities. Humanity was always finding
Him. No sooner had He crossed the borders of
Tyre than a woman, made resolute by love and
humble by suffering, approached Him vrith the
request that He would heal her Uttle girl.
There was no direct spiritual end to be gained
by healing the chUd — in those corrupt and licen
tious towns of the coast there was as yet no
foundation laid on which the Kingdom of God
could be built. Dismiss all idea that He wished
to preach to the woman. It is out of sheer love
and pity, — in recognition of the insight which

And the Blind. 145
made her caU Him Lord, and admit that the
chUdren of the Covenant had a right to be first
fed, in recognition of some spiritual quality in
her, but with no secondary end, — out of sheer
love and pity for the sorrovring mother. He who
had come there to rest and to escape from man
stirred Himself to lay hold of the abounding
power of God, and to draw down on the suffer
ing chUd the resources that were meant just
then for Israel alone.
And it is the same story vrith this deaf
man at Decapohs. In some unnamed tovm or
viUage, as He passed through the populous and
busy country, the fame of the Great Physician
brought to Him a Greek who was deaf and
could not speak properly. The scene is un-
usuaUy vivid, even for St. Mark. There is the
multitude of curious observers who were always
, ready for excitement ; and there is the poor
afflicted creature, who can hear nothing, and
if he tries to speak only babbles in inarticulate
speech ; and there is Jesus longing for rest, and
confronted here as everywhere by the great
tide of human woe. He takes the sufferer
apart, leads him away into a by-road, an open
place in the field, a cleft in the rock, you know
10

146 The Gentii-e, the Dumb,
not where ; but He must be alone with him.
He and the disciples who are privUeged to ac
company Him. When He has got the maimed
and useless creature to Himself He is all
hands, and mouth, and eyes, and ears to im
press and to save the ruined human body. Into
the deaf ears go His fingers, and with the saliva
from His own tongue He touches that falter
ing tongue, and then looks up to heaven, the
unfailing source of aU His miraculous power,
and He breathes a sigh — is it a sigh of pity for
the sufferings of men, or is it a sigh of reUef
that the Deliverer is so near at hand ? Then
in His own famihar Aramaic speech — for, of
course, it does not matter whether the man
understands Him or not as he is deaf, and the
word is only spoken as a sign and symbol to
the disciples who are near — He says to the deaf
man, " Ephphatha ! " and the man's mouth
speaks and his ears hear. In the former healing
in Decapolis, which was recorded in the fifth
chapter. He bade the patient go and teU in his
home what things God had done for him. On
this occasion the old motive for keeping silence
prevails afresh. The importunity of the sick,
the foolish stare of the curious, the press of the

And the Blind. 147
  * 
multitude — ^these are hindrances which quite
outweigh the advantages of such confession as
is contained in the closing verse of the chapter.
The eighth chapter begins vrith a passage
which is the replica of one that we have
already studied. In the desert on the east of
the lake He feeds a multitude of those who
have come to listen to Him. You may gather,
I suppose, that He frequently did such things,
and that the two chance stories that have come
to us in detail represent a constant activity of
His ministry. He was one of those who never
could see hungry people vrithout the heart
beating and the hand reached out. But this
incident is selected from among the rest evi
dently vrith a view of preparing us for the scene
in verse fourteen, where the constant disheart
ening misunderstanding of His disciples is
presented to us afresh.
You must realise now that He is back at the
lake. He has traversed Decapohs, and the
days of His rest, such as they were, are at an
end. Directly He is back at the lake He is
confronted by those wearisome representatives
of Jevrish orthodoxy and piety — the Pharisees.
Their catch-cry now is that they want a sign.

148 The Gentile, the Dumb,
and we may be thankful that they made that
request, for, foolish as it was, it teaches us a
lesson. Here were men living in the presence
of what you call the miraculous activities of
Jesus, seeing the wonders that were done, and
they wanted a sign ! We who vrill not believe,
let us learn, should be equally incredulous were
all the wonders of God displayed before our
eyes. No miracle can convert the heart that
is not converted by Jesus vrithout miracles.
You could not see, though all the heavens were
bared, if you do not see this Jesus whom you
are studying here. A sign ? No sign can be
given to men who do not see a sign in the
evident power of the Spirit, in the love and
compassion of God, in the purpose to save a
world that is lost, in the purity and truth of
this Man whose heart is open to His Father,
to whom and through whom the Father speaks
in everything that He says and does. I
believe that Jesus is saying to-day — I trust
He is saying it to this generation of Enghsh
people, " There shall no sign be given to this
generation. If it cannot understand Jesus by
Himself it must go vrithout understanding
Him."

And the Blind. 149
Now this spiritual denseness of the Pharisees,
combined, we may suppose, with some fresh on
set of the Herodians in one of those Greek cities
where Herod was the titular king, led Him to
speak, when He entered the boat again to cross
the water to Bethsaida, in His figurative way.
The gist of what He said, of course, must be
plain to you all. It was this : That the habit
of mind which does not notice goodness but is
aU for miracles, the habit of mind which sees
no proof of God in truth, but vriU test everything
by mouldy formulae ; the habit of mind which
thinks that the kingdom of God itself is a kind
of superior Herod's Court, where the courtiers
are flattered and flattering, and the dignitaries
sweep past in magniflcent robes ; the habit of
mind which conceives the kingdom as a Jewish
Empire dominating the world in place of
the Eoman empire; in a word, the habit of
mind which produces in every generation, on
the one hand, a dead orthodoxy, and, on the
other hand, an external Catholicism, that habit
of mind is, as He said, the leaven, the leaven of
evil, destroying the very inward thought of
Christ. I see Htm there in the boat sitting
apart, and making this reflection to Himself,

150 The Gentile, the Dumb,
rather than addressing the disciples : " The
leaven of the Pharisees and of the Herodians ! "
I see the fishermen huddled together in the
boat ; they have only a single loaf for the food
of them all, and they listen with closed ears,
and vrith a dense materialistic heart. " Beware
of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod !
He means, we suppose, that we have not
brought bread enough." Incredible misun
derstanding ! He had opened the deaf ears ;
presently he vrill open the blind eyes; but it
would seem that these souls, these chosen
friends, these upon whom the hope of aU the
world depends, could not be taught either to
hear or to see, but were intrinsicaUy blind
and deaf.
Now to those who reflect and are capable of
entering into the pathos of a great soul amongst
common souls, this passage will sound the most
moving and tragic in all the story that we have
yet encountered in this Gospel. Never to be
understood ! Never to have a friend inteUigent
enough to grasp the great ideas which were
seething in His mind ! Where by His grace and
goodness He had won love and reverence, still to
discover this crass insensibUity — an insensibility

And the Blind. 151
which systematically takes every parable He
frames as if it were Uteral, and turns every plain
statement He utters into a parable. This in
sensibUity of men who have no eyes, no ears,
and no souls as it seems, that was the daUy
crucifixion of Jesus, and it is the crucifixion
which He still suffers even in the house of His
friends. There is no word more constant upon
His lips to-day than " Is it possible ! Do you
not yet understand ? "
But the ship touches the beach at Bethsaida,
and it seems as if He turns from the spiritual
bhndness of His followers to the physical blind
ness of a man who is brought to Him vrith a
sense of intense relief, as if He were saying
under His breath all the time, " Impossible as
yet to open these fast-closed spiritual eyes ; let
Me at least heal someone ; let this weUing tide
of suffering love vrithin Me find some outlet,
however humble." I think He welcomes this
blind man. It is a comfort to do something
when the mind is shocked and disappointed.
And it was a beautiful thing to do.
I Uke to think what that blind man saw when
for the first time his eyes were open. From the
shore of Bethsaida on the western side of the

152 The Gentile, the Dumb,
lake, he would see, just before him, the glittering
waters bounded by the shore where the basaltic
hiUs opened to let the Jordan in, and beyond
and above, the great snowy dome of Hermon
in the blue heavens — a vision which might have
suggested to John the Theologian the description
of the sea of glass and the river of the waters
of life and the great white throne. It was a great
thing to open the eyes of a single bhnd man
to see such sights. He healed him readily
and tenderly. He healed him on the principle
— one of the most blessed principles of human
Ufe, illustrated constantly by our Lord — that
you should do in hours of disappointment the
duty that lies nearest to you, distasteful or not ;
and though it seem a common thing, it shaU
come out in the after-days as a mighty work
for God. For what is the meaning of that
deed that was done at Bethsaida ? It opened
the blind eyes of a man. Yes; but we,
reading it, think nothing of the miracle,
think nothing of the blind man. It all
seems burdened with a spiritual meaning for
us, a message which I trust none of us can miss.
The blind man caught no glimmer of it, be
sure. He was all-absorbed in the beauty of the

And the Blind. 153
landscape and the rapture of seeing. But
what a lesson it was ! Turn your eyes to the
description, and ask, " How does it stand with
us aU ? " When we are first brought to Jesus
we are blind ; we do not see His face, we
hardly beUeve that He exists, because blindness
shuts Him out. I have met with many young
people who do not believe that Jesus lives, and
have no idea that He is in the presence of His
people — suppose Him to be a strange myth of
a bygone day, a vision which fiitted before
the eyes of the past, and then faded, simply
leaving a sweet but ineffectual memory. We
come to Jesus blind, and then He takes
us by the hand and leads us apart out of
the village and the busy hum of men. The
seclusion of the soul with Jesus in the early
approaches before we understand or believe is so
sweet that some look back upon that first step
in religion as the very happiest period in their
life. Then comes His miraculous touch, and
a strange thriU goes through the soul, and
we cry, " Then He hves and is near ; that was
His breath I felt ; He is real ; not a distant
dream, but a present Saviour." And He is
asking, " Do you see ? " Yes, we at least see

154 The Gentile, the Dumb,
dimly that He is there. It is that blurred,
luminous tumult of sight when the things of
the Spirit are manifestly there, though not yet
manifest. " Yes ! we see a little. Lord ! " And
then comes another touch, and, vrith some of us,
another, and another, and another, week after
week, month after month, year after year, stiU
another, and another, and another. Day davms
slowly ; we do not tread securely in these dim
shadows of the spirit-world, and He, though
real, seems only in the Spirit ; we do not
know Him yet, though we know He is there.
Little by little the vision clears, and the man
gains strength, and the life forms on the basis
of a present Lord, and the soul is knit vrith
Him until His presence is as real as our ovm,
and much more real than anyone's else, and
you look up.
Lord, I was blind ; I could not see
In Thy marred visage any grace ;
But now the beauty of Thy face
In radiant vision dawns on me.
Little by little He leads us to the point where
we know Him and He knows us, and then He
tells us to go, not into the village, the booths
of Vanity Fair, where aU is hubbub and dis-

And the Blind. 155
turbance, and life is confused and dim, and
goes dovm to darkness ; but He bids us go to
the home — the home, the household of God,
the bosom of His Church. Go to the home. He
says, and in that home learn how you may
teach. " Neither go into the tovm, nor teU it
to any in the tovm, but go to the home."

X.
THE CRISIS.
(Mask viii. 27 — ix. 1.)

THE CRISIS.
In a Greek tragedy the point where the
action was fully developed and the catastrophe
came in sight was caUed the Peripeteia. At
that point the attention of the audience was
breathless as the burden of the piece slid into
their hearts. The passage of St. Mark's
Gospel which is now before us (viii. 27 —
ix. 1) might be called the Peripeteia of the
story. The solemn significance of it is only
hidden from our eyes because we always set
out to read it with the conclusion or the
discovery already in our minds. But let us
turn back for a moment and observe what
the action of the drama has been.
Jesus came from Nazareth to the Jordan,
and at the baptism He became distinctly
aware of the heavenly mission on which He
had been sent. He then proceeded to gather

160 The Crisis.

about Him a few friends who might, as it
were, see Him and judge for themselves. He
did not tell them who or what He was. No word
was breathed upon the subject. A few people
— chiefly demoniacs, persons in an abnormal
condition — ^had recognised Him and had called
out to Him, " Thou art the Son of God," but
He had quickly silenced them. He was
determined to have no vritness of that kind ;
and in aU His deeds of charity we have
repeatedly observed that His main purpose
seemed to be to silence the talk, to prevent
premature disclosure, to check the tendency
which existed on every side to make the
Messiahship depend upon miraculous powers.
"No sign should be given," He said. And
no one should caU Him Christ because of the
miracles that were done. And yet, all along,
by His teaching of the multitude, by His deeds
of mercy, by the hours of sohtary communion,
when He caUed His disciples apart for a
while. His one object evidently had been
to touch their conscience, to open their
eyes, that they might of their own accord
perceive who He was. His surprise was
sometimes expressed that they were so slow

The Crisis. 161

to perceive, that they " did not yet under
stand." Now, at last, the Crisis had come, where the
httle circle of " His own " obtained at last a
clear perception of one stupendous fact. Peter's
answer, "Thou art the Christ," should be
printed in larger type on the page of the Gospel.
It is the centre and the pivot of the whole story.
Everything has led up to this from the open
ing verse. This is the summit, the mountain
of transflguration, and from this point we
shaU observe that the whole tone of His
speech changes. He leads His disciples down
from the summit into the valley of shadows and
death. It appears as if He had waited until
they recognised Him and confessed Him, and
directly the confession was assured. He hastened
to disclose to them the fate, the terrible doom,
that awaited Him. For it is a tragedy, this
story of the Gospel, and its peripeteia cannot
but command our close attention, our breathless
interest. We are first of all tempted to paint the scene
in which the crisis is placed. He and the dis
ciples had again left the borders of Galilee, and
had come into the neighbourhood of Csesarea- 11

162 The Crisis.

Philippi, a town which lay in one of the lovely
and fertile valleys among the lower slopes of
Mount Hermon. It was at that time one of the
most brilliant in the land, a city of great
temples and basilicas and colonnades, after the
familiar patterns of Grseco-Roman architec
ture. Not far from the city rose a limestone
cliff, a hundred feet in height, from a cavern
in the face of which issued the waters of the
Jordan, the river the streams whereof should
make glad the city of God. The position was
in a sense the key of Palestine. In 198 b.c.
the Egyptian army, under Scopas, had there
been defeated by Antiochus the Great, and the
victory had thrown open the whole land to the
conqueror. These indications of locality may,
it is true, be accidental, but how curiously sig
nificant they are ! From this point was to
issue a river of ever-widening and ever-deepen
ing confession that would flow right onward to
the New Jerusalem, the city of God. And at
this point was to be achieved the begmning of a
conquest which would include not only Pales
tine, but all countries to the very ends of the
earth. A few words coming from one of
this little group of men who had crossed the

The Crisis. 163

border from GalUee into this alien land, a few
words spoken from the heart, were to form a
foundation of the Church — a Church which would
defy the ages, and against which the gates of
heU should not prevail. The words were spoken
by Peter, and Peter was the mouthpiece of the
rest. The words were spoken in this alien land
amongst a people of a non- Jewish race and
faith, as if to indicate, what proved to be the
fact, that Christ would reach His ovm people of
Israel through the conquest of the Gentile
world. Peter confesses the Messiah. They
could not have lived with Him as they had
vrithout ultimately making the discovery. They
had heard the astonishment of the multitude,
declaring that no one spoke as He did in that
teaching, which welled out fresh and perennial,
like the waters of the Jordan issuing from the
great cavern in the neighbouring cliff. They
had heard in Decapolis the alien people declar
ing vrith admiration, " Why, He has done all
things well ! " But they had seen Him more
intimately than the multitude. They had
marked Him when the waves grew cahn at His
word; their hands had distributed the mys
teriously multiplied loaves among the multi-

164 The Crisis.

tude ; they had watched Him in the presence of
disease and death; they had felt, as it were,
the throb of His heart ; they had noticed His
unfailing patience and pitj' ; they had dravm an
inference wliich even duller minds could have
drawn ; there could be no doubt about it. They
had pierced the veil of His humility, a dis
guise easily penetrated by faith and love ; they
had found out who He was. Yes, this was He
who was to come. The paradoxes of the pro
phets seemed as if they could refer to no single
man ; but here was one in whom they met and
were harmonised. The disciples were prepared
at last, when the occasion offered, to say
through their mouthpiece, " We have come to
the conclusion that you are the Messiah that
was to come. We think that you are the hope
of Israel, the Saviour of the world."
But we must pass to another point. In vain
should we try to estimate the emotions vrith
which these simple companions of Jesus made
and avowed that strange discovery; but they
have themselves in this record given a curious
illustration of their blindness, the hmitation
of their understanding which prevented them
from really perceiving the gist of the confession

The Crisis. 165

which they had made. For when He proceeded
to speak to them about death and suffering,
they blankly denied and discredited the very
Christ whom they had confessed. Possibly
they had a very imperfect knowledge of the
Scriptures that foretold the Messiah. Possibly,
with the traditional reverence of Jews for those
who sat in Moses' seat, they could not credit
that the leaders of the people would MU the
Messiah when He came. Whatever may have
been the reason, the fact of it, as here re
corded, is singularly instructive. The man who
has just confessed Christ proceeds to rebuke
Him, and receives from the Ups of Christ a
word of reproach and condemnation unexpec
tedly severe. He is called the great adversary,
Satan ; he is told to be gone, for his mind is
earth-bound and blind to the things of God.
It is a melancholy passage, but yet it throws
light upon the character of Jesus. It throws
light, also, upon the difficulties with which He
had to contend; and I think it brings us to-day
a Uttle gleam of consolation and hope.
It throws light upon His character, for how
amazingly frank He is ! He does not hesitate
to caU the one man who has confessed Him,

166 The Crisis.

Satan. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend."
Jesus, let us be thankful, is incapable of
flattery. Dear human heart, how you are
always thirsting for praise ! How eager you
are to be soothed and flattered, how you shrink
from the rough tongue of truth ! When you
have had a visitation of religion in your heart,
when you have done a deed that may possibly
be acceptable in God's sight, how you wait hke
a child for the applause and approval of God !
How little you know that approbation, and stiU
more adulation, is a sweet poison that vriU ruin
you ! Do not be offended at the pitUess severity
of Jesus ; be thankful that He never flatters.
It is His love which makes Him turn upon us
and call us Satan, and send the shattering
charge home to our heart until we tremble
before Him. It is His love which makes us
realise through His charge how truly we do not
savom- of the things of God, but of the things
of earth.
But the episode brings out also the difficulties
vrith which He had, and has, to contend in
dealing vrith such creatures as we are. How
slowly does He win from us the faintest con
fession of the heart ! Through what long years

The Crisis. 167

He had to strive with some of you before He
could ever get a single word of confession from
your lips ; and then, when after long years
He has got one simple, candid confession that
you believe in Him and call Him Christ your
Saviour, the next moment you say something,
you do something, which jars His righteous soul
to the very centre. He vrill perceive the con
traction of view, the opinionated judgment, the
coldness of heart, which makes the very con
fession appear to be a mockery, and makes
Him almost seem to reproach you for having
called Him Christ. He has to say, " Get you
behind me, Satan ; for you do not savour of
the things of God." I wonder, you must often
wonder, my brother, that our Lord has not
had enough of us long ago, and given us up
as hopeless and intractable !
But there is a comfort and a hope in the
episode. For this poor blundering fisherman,
having after aU an honest heart, became in
the end a true disciple. He cherished these
words against himself ; he got them recorded
in the Gospel of Mark, if it be true that Mark
is the penman of St. Peter. And he ultimately
died, if the tradition be correct, on the cross

168 The Crisis.

with his head dovmwards, for the Christ whom
he confessed and then denied. It is full of con
solation and hope for you and me. We are un
worthy disciples at present ; but courage, there
is yet time. If we can cleave to our confession,
and with brave, bold lips say, " Thou art the
Christ," and live in it and die for it, we may
yet be acceptable in His sight, as Peter was.
Not as if we had already attained or had done
anything at all ; let the past be forgotten, but
let us hope that we may grow to be His
disciples indeed. " Thou art the Christ."
But lastly, there is something worse even
than the offence that the Christ should suffer.
The Christian is to suffer too. Did ever a
religious teacher, anxious to obtain disciples,
speak like this before ? He called the multi
tude — a mixed company of Jews and Greeks,
we must suppose ; He had something to say to
them. He wished to explain to them that to
confess Him would involve shame and trouble,
to follow Him would be to take up a cross and
possibly to die upon it — life might be the price
of service. This was the nature of His explana
tion. There would be a future victory, true.
The Son of Man would come in the glory of

The Crisis. 169

His Father, vrith the holy angels. Then those
who had been ashamed of Him He would be
ashamed of. That glory should even in a few
days be so far anticipated that the chosen three
should behold it. AU that was true, but in the
main His call was a summons to the cross,
and in giving that call He uttered one thought,
the brilliance of which is so startling that on
the strength of this alone I would hail Him as
Lord and God. He pierced to the very secret
of human nature, which hardly any of us
understand. We think, we always think, that
what men want is ease and comfort and self-
indulgence, and we try to shape religion to suit
that ridiculous demand. We make it respect
able ; we make it profitable ; we offer through
it the means of preferment. I have heard
people say that the Church could never exist if
you took away its endovnnents. I have heard
others say that there must be some recognition
given to those who follow Christ ; let there be
social distinction attaching to it ; religion would
die out unless the upper classes countenanced
it and belonged to it ; and we try to shape and
vnest and eliminate, to meet this imaginary
demand of the world. Christ offers a cross.

170 The Crisis.

and the possible joy of laying down your life
for Him, surrender absolute, complete, and
final. Which knows men best, we or He ?
He, undoubtedly. We are always forgetting
that men are the stuff out of which heroes are
made. He never forgets it. We are always
forgetting that men in their hearts are eager
for noble deeds, longing for sacrifice, asking
for some leader, some teacher, who wiU show
them, not the inglorious paths of ease and self-
indulgence, but the aspiring path of suffering
and the cross and death. He never forgets it.
He knew what was in man ; He knew that
imderneath this coward nature of ' ours lies
material of another 'kind — the very Sonship of
God. He could appeal to it, knowing what
was in us. You say men are selfish. We
are selfish, but we do not want to be. What
we are longing for more than all other things
on earth is to get the self — the ugly self we
hate — crucified. We want a way by which
the self may die, and we may begin to Uve. We
want the cross ; He knew it, and He invited
us to take up the cross and find the way. The
Captain of our Salvation — Himself made per
fect through suffering — caUing us to a whole-

The Crisis. 171

hearted surrender to Him, a life of strenuous
battle, of climbing up the starry ways, a life
which gives rather than gets, and surrenders
rather than seeks — that is the life we want.
I dare to say that in the heart of you every
one of you wants such a life. You can respond
to that, your heart aglow.
There is the true Christian ! He takes his
staff in hand and binds his garment round his
thighs ; he meets foes hj the way ; the sword
flashes out and he deals deadly blows; he
falls but rises again ; and he presses towards
victory !
I ask you, do you want comfort, do you want
respectability, do you want self-indulgence?
Well, then, do not talk about Christ, do not
think you are His ; you have no part nor lot
vrith Him, for He says, " Whosoever will be My
disciple, let him take up his cross and follow
Me." He is speaking to .us in these days of
pleasure-seeking and self-indulgence, the Lord
whom we profess to serve. I hear His voice ;
I think you must hear it, too. It is not a
distant voice in a far past ; it is pressing and
urgent and loud in the heart of us all : " Deny
yourself, and come and follow Me." " Con-

172 The Crisis.

fess Me vrith your lips; avow your disciple-
ship." Oh, my brethren, if only you would,
if we as a Church would take up our cross
and follow Him! — if with a united voice
we would say, " Thou art the Christ, and
Thee we foUow for ever," even we might not
taste of death till we saw the Kingdom of
God coming with power. May He move upon
us and impel us to that surrender and con
fession and service !

XI.
THE CARTOON OF THE TRANS
FIGURATION. (Maek ix.)

THE CARTOON OF THE TRANS
FIGURATION.
It was no doubt with the instinct of inter
pretation which is often the gift of great
artists that Raphael, in the famous Vatican
picture, combined on one canvas the Trans
figuration on the mountain-top and at the
mountain's foot the group of disciples around
the suffering boy. For the world's troubles
and the world's transports are generally in
cluded in one picture, and the Saviour's trans
cendent glory is indissolubly bound up with
the pain and the passion and the despair of
man. But whether consciously or not, the
Evangelist St. Mark obtained a larger lesson
by including more in the canvas of this chapter.
The scene which is presented is only under
stood if you take it altogether, and study its
parts in relation to the whole.
Assuming that the Transfiguration occurred

176 The Cartoon op
on one of the spurs of Mount Hermon, in the
neighbourhood of Csesarea Philippi, the scene
includes the road which went between the
mountains for five-and-twenty miles from
Csesarea to Capernaum at the north-west
corner of the Sea of Galilee ; and each episode
that occurred along that route has its distinct
place in the whole picture.
Let us try for a moment to paint this picture
before our eyes, and then, I think, there wiU
be time to look at its main incident a Uttle
more closely.
Suppose that from some vantage-point of the
upper air we can see the whole landscape.
There is the snowy crown of Hermon in the
north, and the road vrinding southwards by
Lake Merom. First of all we fix our eyes on
this lower ridge or shoulder of Hermon. We
should remember that at Csesarea the disciples
had just made the first confession that Jesus
was the Christ, and, on the strength of that.
He had begun to explain to them for the first
time that as the Christ He would have to suffer ;
He had told them that death awaited Him, and
travail and persecution awaited them. Now,
when men confess Christ — and not before —

The Transfiguration. 177
they begin to see His glory ; they are admitted
up the mountain where the Transfiguration
takes place before their eyes. We see, there
fore, in this landscape the three men — Peter,
who had confessed, and James and John, who
seemed to be his spiritual brothers — taken up
the mountain to see their Lord transfigured.
It is a great thing to recognise who Jesus
is through the veil of His humility, to be
able not only to penetrate the peasant's
garb, but what Shakespeare would have called
"the muddy vesture of decay," and to dis
cover that He was indeed God manifested
in the fiesh. When men have come to that
point of insight where they can discern,
through His humanity, who He is, they are
then ready to go further, and discover some
thing of that nature which was for a little
while covered with the tabernacle of the
flesh. WhUe we watch these three go up to
understand the Lord whom they had con
fessed, we see at the foot of the mountain
the nine disciples who were behind the rest in
insight, apprehension, and courage. How far
they were behind we gather from their baffled
12

178 The Cartoon op
and puzzled expression. They are confronted
by a suffering boy, such as they had often seen
before, such as they had seen their Master cure
with one of His marvellous touches, or one of
His authoritative words. But they have learnt
nothing yet, thej have not discovered that
" this kind goeth out by prayer." In vain the
distracted father appeals to them. In their
Master's absence they are as powerless as the
distracted father himself. Until He, who is
up there unseen upon the mountain, comes
down, nothing can be done.
And we see Him descend from that lofty
point of preparation and revelation in order
that He may attend to the wants of a poor
sick child.
He heals the child. Then He enters on
the road to travel towards Capernaum with
His disciples, and we begin to observe how
little they have understood — even the three
who had been up the mountain with Him ;
for in the light of what had happened there
He begins to explain to them that not only
must He die and die shamefully, but He must
rise again. And they are bewildered, they
could not understand, and they were afraid

The Transfiguration. 179
to ask ; I suppose because having seen so
much they did not like to confess that they
understood so Uttle. Nor is that by any means
the extent of their perversity.
We watch them walking down that beautiful
road, a Uttle group of men busily talking ; and
apart, in silence, the Master going on before.
We come near to hear the nature of their talk.
They are engaged in a dispute as to which of
them is the greatest. The three, we presume,
who had gone up the mountain must be the
greatest, and which of them ? Peter, no doubt,
because, as he says, " I was the first to confess."
"But you were the man to whom He said,
'Get thee behind me, Satan.'" "And you
were the man," says the other, " who uttered
that inexpressibly foolish thing upon the
mountain about the three tents." And not
only the three are prepared to contest the
place; aU the nine have their claims. For
you vrill find the very poorest tramp along
the road has excellent reasons, if you wiU
listen to him, why he should be Lord Chan-
ceUor, but for the grudging hostility of fate ;
he makes no question that he is fit to sit
with the crowned heads of Europe. That is

180 The Cartoon op
their discussion, "Which of them should be
greatest ? "
Nor is even that the measure of their
perversity. For it seems, as they passed along
and the Master was ahead, they had in some
way encountered a man who was trying to do
work in the name of Jesus; and they had
promptly repressed him because he did not
foUow vrith them. Here is a lesson for us.
These vainglorious men, this faithless genera
tion, who could not for the life of them cure
the sick boy, if they can do no direct good
themselves, at least can stop someone else from
trying to do it. There is the radical disease
of an unregenerate Church, a disease which
appeared at the very beginning. Directly
apostles are called they are puffed up with
the importance of their office, and their idea
seems to be that if they cannot save the world
they can at any rate crush out dissent ; they
vrill at least forbid all those who do not
follow vrith them; and if they hear of a
man doing anything in the name of their
Master, it shall be a penal charge against
him that he has dared to work for Christ if
he worked not in their way. What a long

The Transfiguration. 181
descent it seems from that high mountain of
transfiguration down to this pettiness, this
bickering, this ludicrous vanity of the un-
teachable fishermen !
But the picture is not yet complete. For
they have now reached the town of Capernaum
and have entered the house, and when they are
in the house you wUl see Him who was just
now transfigured on the mountain-top, who
received the high witness of heaven that
He was the beloved Son of God, finding
out a Uttle child from the street or the
house, and putting him in the midst of His
disciples, to see if with such a text he can
teach these men, whom the Transfiguration
cannot teach, something of the inner meaning
of God. That is the true counterpart, the
companion picture, of the Lord transfigured
upon the mount — that plain and simple man
vrith His arms folded round a little chUd, the
child pressed to His heart, teaching His dis
ciples the lessons that follow. I should like
us to learn these lessons if it were possible.
WiU you glance over them as I try hurriedly to
expound them ? He beckons to them, caressing
the child in His arms ; and this is what He says

182 The Cartoon op
to them* : " That ambition of yours always to be
first, always to be greatest, it is your ruin. For
in order to receive the Kingdom of God you
must be like this little child, who thinks of
nothing less than being great or being first.
Unless you become like this little child you
cannot enter the Kingdom of God. This
egotism, this self-assertion, this restless de
sire to be something, and to be recognised by
men, swells you to such proportions that you
cannot push in at the narrow gate of the
Kingdom." I can imagine no lesson more impressive than
this, that He whom we just now saw shining
in the glory of heaven should fold to His heart
a child, and hasten to explain that this was the
nearest similitude He could find to the heaven
to which He belonged and the kingdom which
He had come to found.
Yes ! But there is something more that He
has to say to them. It is a rebuke which
they had brought oh by their own confession.
They had silenced the man who was working
* I have ventured to transpose ix. 37 and x. 15, because,
both being words of Jesus, it is evident that they fit in
better if their places are changed.

The Transfiguration. 183
in His name. He has got to say, with the
little chUd in His arms, what is the lasting
condemnation of the exclusiveness of the
Church that is called by His name, a con
demnation vnitten beforehand, that the Church
should be without excuse. "You forbad that
disciple, did you? You did wrong. He was
not foUowing with us, did you say? But
was he speaking in My name ? Then that
was foUowing with us; that was to be of
your company, if your company is My com
pany. For supposing it had been a far
humbler service than healing a demoniac — if it
had been simply giving a cup of cold water in
My name, I should count him as My disciple, and
he should in no wise lose his recompense in the
Xingdom of Heaven. Do you see what you
were doing when you silenced him ? He was
one of My Uttle ones — such an one as this
little chUd; he was precious to Me; he was
beginning to work in faith ; he would have
grown ; he would have become a servant whom
we could all recognise and love; and you
silenced him ! Traitors, do you throw a
stumbling-block in the way of one of My
Uttle ones ? It were better for you that a

184 The Cartoon of
mUlstone were hung about your neck and you
were cast into the lake yonder and drovmed in
the depths of the sea. Your prejudice, your
intolerance, your exclusiveness ! Though they
are your very eye, your very hand, your very
foot, it were better if you plucked out your
eye, and cut off your hand, your foot, and
entered into life blind and halt and maimed,
than, having aU these, to be plunged into the
Gehenna of fire ! You do not seem to under
stand," He goes on, "you do not notice that
these are the things which form that fire.
The bigot, the persecutor, the inquisitor, it is
he that is doomed to the worms and the fire 1
What? You and your successors, you wiU
light the fires to burn heretics ? You vrill
establish My kingdom by cruelty and persecu
tion ? Yes ! It will be your own fires you vrill
light, and the worm that consumes wiU consume
you and not the persecuted. Every one of that
kind shall be salted indeed ; but not vrith salt,
with fire ; and fire burns ! Yes ! You who are
chosen as the salt of the earth, whom I have
chosen, if this spirit of intolerance and perse
cution is to grow, you shall be salted with fire !
Learn," He says, " and learn in time, that the

The Transfiguration. 185
salt may be preserved. And be at peace with
one another. For the Church grown bitter,
exclusive, condemnatory, ambitious, and proud,
shaU be the first to suffer, and shall suffer
worst." This is how He speaks to them — ^He
who was transfigured before their eyes — His
arms thrown round a Uttle child.
The scene, the sweep of events, is so strik
ing that we were obliged to picture it as a
whole at the very beginning, without wait
ing to examine the details of this great
passage. But there is one point on which
it is necessary to say a single word. I want
you to observe the significance of what hap
pened on the Mount in the eyes of those
three who were chosen. I want you to escape
the danger presented by the peculiar tone of
scepticism current to-day which would have you
beUeve that the whole scene was an iUusion,
the hallucination of excited witnesses; would
have you suppose that no such Transfiguration
took place because no such Transfiguration
does take place amongst us to-day. Now,
we have indeed vainly studied the character
and the Ufe of Jesus in this, the first Evangehst,
unless we have come to perceive that He was

186 The Cartoon op
not such as we are. That He was man is
evident, but He was man so interpenetrated
with God that all His life was, as it
were. Divine. The human nature was but
a tabernacle in which the Divine nature dwelt.
It could afford no surprise to any one who had
observed him if at some point or other the
material of the tabernacle became transparent,
and the nature of the occupant were made
known. It was not His purpose that any one
should come to believe in Him by such
marvellous transformations, by that which
would stir the wonder or excite the curiosity of
vulgar minds. He wished no one to speak about
this until the end ; He would not have valued
a faith that rested simply upon this ; He was
determined that men should beheve upon Him
because of those moral and spiritual qualities in
Him which were all Divine. By no miracle
would He overpower the judgment of men, by
nothing extraordinary, as we call things
extraordinary, did He mean to convince the
world. He would stand before us in perfectness
of character indeed, and He would wait to see
whether we have eyes to perceive that He is
the Son of God. And when we perceive it —

The Transfiguration. 187
not till then — ^He can take us up the Mountain
of Transfiguration and show us, as it were, in
the secret, of the soul who He is.
But the meaning of it all ? Let us not pass
by the precise place that it holds in the story
of St. Mark. He has just been acknowledged
by a few men to be the Christ ; He has just told
them that as the Christ He is going to die. He
descends this mountain, as we shall soon see,
to start upon the final journey to Jerusalem,
where His death is to be accomplished; and
here on this mountain-top, this central place
in the history of His life. He wishes distinctly
to state His connection vrith those others who
were eternally associated with mountain-tops —
the prophets of the old regime, who had seen
His day and worked for its coming, and had
been in many essential senses the condition on
which His coming depended. Like beacon fires
flashing good news from neighbouring hiUs,
these sons of the mountain-tops connect the
vridely-scattered incidents of the Dirine plan —
Sinai and Nebo, Horeb and Carmel. With this
spur of Hermon, lordUer than aU, and this
transfigured Man greater than aU, are united,
Moses, who died on Nebo 1,500 years before.

188 The Cartoon of
and Elijah, who 850 years before had heard the
stUl small voice on Horeb. These are Unks
in the long chain of the redemptive purpose.
Now, it is only those of us who understand
what mountains are that will see the pecuUar
symbolism of this connection. I suppose it is
not every one who has had the opportunity of
making the discovery. When, after a toUsome
climb, you stand upon some high point and
command the whole country, and into the
tingling blood comes a sense of exultation
and of power, a thrill of rapture never knovm
to those who remain below, life and thought
gain something which is never obtained from
any other experience. These high places of
the earth, with their rarified air, seem as it
were contiguous to the very portals of heaven,
and on that elevation we are more pressed
into the spiritual and eternal than on the
flat ground below. There is a region of the
spirit which you may caU the mountain-tops
of human life; it is a point high up, it is
a place sometimes difficult to climb, but at
that point heaven and earth meet. It is hke
the seventh heaven, and when a man climbs
it he sees unutterable things which he could

The Transfiguration. 189
not speak of to those below. He finds there
the Transfigured Lord — Him whom men doubted
— grovm more real than men themselves. And
aU the mystery of His Divine nature and
His incarnation breaks in upon the mind as the
great explanation of life and of the world. In
that lofty communion He begins to gather
strength to grasp the strong Son of God, and,
understanding Him, he is able to come down
and follow Him to the Cross — knowing who He
is and what must be the meaning of the death
He is about to die. It is that symbolism of the
mountain-top which gives the inner feeling of
the Transfiguration, and it leaves us with the
question haunting our minds, "Do we know
anything of these upper regions of the spirit ?
Has our faith passed into experience and con
tact vrith the Divine ? Have we seen Jesus
transfigured before our eyes ? "
Lord, it is good for us to be
Here on the Holy Mount with Thee.
When darkling with the depths of night.
When dazzled with excess of light.
We bow before the heavenly voice
That bids bewildered souls rejoice :
Though love wax cold, and faith grow dim,
" This is My Son ! Oh, hear ye Him."

XII.
THE ASCENT TO THE ALTAR.
(Mark x. 13—31; 46—52; 32—45.)

THE ASCENT OF THE ALTAR.
Jesus vrith the Uttle band of followers, who,
notvrithstanding all their limitations and im
perfections, had at any rate confessed His
name and seen a glimpse of His glory, travels
through the familiar region of His early train
ing and beneficent ministry to the capital of
His nation. He goes by the route beyond
Jordan, and crosses the river by the fords near
Jericho, where the host of Israel had originally
entered the promised land. He then climbs up
the steep path from the City of Palms to Jeru
salem, which, Uke a High Altar, stands 3,000
feet above the level of the river. He approaches
the city as an Altar, with the full determina
tion to offer a sacrifice upon it, and with the
clear knowledge that the sacrifice will be Him
self. Ever since Peter's confession in the
eighth chapter (verses 27 — 29), this sacrifice had
been the frequent subject of His conversation,
and long before, we may be certain, it had
occupied His thoughts. 13

194 The Ascent op the Altar.
The six chapters that follow upon this cor
respond in a manner to the Phcedo of Plato.
As that dialogue presents Socrates serenely
and triumphantly confronting death, this
passage marks the aspect, the manner, the
deeds, the words, of Jesus under the shadow of
His own Cross. The present chapter might
almost be designed to present us vrith a por
trait of Him on the eve of His sufferings. The
portrait is produced by seven traits, which are
rendered in seven episodes. We must glance
at these episodes in succession, in order that
we may see the points of character contained
in them, and may understand how they com
bine in that matchless person.
1. The first of them is contained in the twelve
verses, which show us that as He entered
the ancient territory of Judea, His discourse
turned upon the marriage tie — the indissoluble
bond which binds together man and vrife. FUled
as He was with the vnitings of the ancient
prophets, we cannot doubt that His mind was
thinking of the prophet Hosea, and the constant
theme of that prophecy which represents God
as the husband of His people, and' His people
as the rebellious and unfaithful wife. For we

The Ascent op the Altar. 195
remember that everything on earth in the eyes
of Jesus rested upon the Eternal Being of God
— the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of the
family life, the sanctity of the individual life,
were all based upon God. After Him all families
in heaven and earth are named, the Father and
the Husband, the Creator, Inspirer of all His
creatures. The thought, then, in the mind of
Jesus was essentiaUy that which is expressed in
Shakespeare's familiar sonnet :
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediment. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come ;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom.
This Saviour of men was determined to '-' bear
it out even to the edge of doom."
2. But the second trait occurs in the episode
of the chUdren brought to Him by their parents
(verses 13 — 16). You vrill remember that in
the previous chapter the apostles had had
to listen to a very humiliating discourse, of
which the text had been a little child; and,
as if instinctively, they now try to keep little

196 The Ascent op the Altar.
children out of His reach; they do not want
to listen to another sermon of that descrip
tion. And this attempt to keep the chUdren
away from Him gives occasion to one of His
rare outbursts of anger. To receive chUdren,
He says — you must turn to chapter ix. 37,
rather than the passage in the text* — ^to receive
chUdren is to receive Him, and to receive Him
is to receive God ; to reject children is to thrust
from yourself the Kingdom of God. It has, I
beUeve, generaUy been recognised that the way
in which we regard children is an indication of
our character. One may be a good man, and
yet, from some fault of temperament may not
be attractive to little children, but it is very
doubtful whether you can be a good man if
Uttle children are not attractive to you. At
any rate, here remains the trait of our Master's
character, that He found something sacred in
them. " Of such," He said, " is the Kingdom
of God." The tone and the temper of a Uttle
child are the condition of our entering into the
Kingdom of God.
3. The third trait is given us in a very mar
vellous revelation of His humility (verses 17 —
* Vid. p. 181.

The Ascent op the Altar. 197
22) — a humUity combined vrith love; for love
always flows out of a lowly heart, as the waters
of the Jordan flow from the cave in the lime
stone cliff near Csesarea. One comes to Him
vrith a noble designation upon his lips, and
addresses Him as " Good Master." But He wiU
not accept the title "Good." Though He were
the Christ, though He were the Son of God,
though no language coidd exaggerate His
supreme excellence, yet here He was a man seK-
emptied for the death of the cross, a man among
men to suffer and to prevail; in His humiUation
He would by no means allow a title and address
which is appropriate only to the Eternal God
head. Now, it is very strange, and it serves to
reveal us to ourselves, that we have often found
a difficulty in Christ's repudiation of this
title, as if we did not understand that modesty
is a part of the perfect character, as if we coidd
not see that the humility of the seK-emptied
Lord is lovelier than the arrogance of one who
claims his titles to the full. And His modesty
stands in a curious contrast vrith the seK-confi-
dence of one who had "kept all the com
mandments from his youth." The opulence
of Christ's penury stands over against the

198 The Ascent op the Altar.
jejune poverty of the man who was so good
and had such great possessions.
4. But this brings us to another trait of His
character (verses 23 — 31). It led Him to give
His opinion about wealth — about what is true
and what is false wealth — it led Him to
magnificently recognise those who against aU
appearances choose the true in preference to
the false wealth. Now, here is again a fine
indication of character. You might almost
know what a man is if you know how he feels
to children and what he thinks of money. It
is a supreme indication of Christ's character ;
He has a holy horror of wealth. Now, when
we condemn it, our condemnation is often
conventional and unreal; most human beings
who condemn it are people who have not got
it, and there are few people who have got it
that can even bear to hear any one else
condemn it. Christ's condemnation is not
conventional, it is genuine. He looks on it as
one of the main dangers to the spiritual Ufe;
He sees in it a threat against the Kingdom of
God. It enables us to understand why He
often reduces His beloved to poverty, and it
shows us how strangely misguided are those

The Ascent op the Altar. 199
who complain, because when they become
foUowers of Christ He takes their wealth
from them. He does it in aU good faith,
because He loves them. He does it because
He desires our good, and vrith the gracious
encouragement of a sovereign who is sending
His subjects into an uncongenial place. He
assures us of the reaUties when He takes
away the semblances. What have they who
have lost aU? They have Him, and having
Him they possess aU things ; they possess life,
they hold eternal Ufe in fee. " Hath He
not always treasui'es, always friends," if I
may quote Coleridge with an alteration.
Hath he not always treasures, always friends.
The Ohrist-like* man ? Three treasures— love and light.
And calm thoughts regular as infant's breath ;
And three firm friends,more sure than day and night —
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death ?
5. There is a fifth trait of His character in
verses 45 — 52, which seem to be out of place,
because the passage which follows in verse 32
shows that the journey from Jericho to Jeru
salem had begun. As He left Jericho for the
* Coleridge says, " The good, great man," but he means
tbe same.

200 The Ascent op the Axtar.
ascent of the altar you may well suppose
that His mind was pre-occupied with the
great event which was coming. It was one
of those occasions, Uke the presence of death
in a house, or the imminence of some great
business crisis, which justify us in repelling
the intrusion of petty affairs. We are aU
obliged at times to say that we are engaged,
and to decline great things, because we have
in hand greater. We can, therefore, thor
oughly sympathise with the people about
Him just then, who thrust away this bhnd
beggar and said that the importunity was
out of place. It did seem an impertinence.
He was going to save the world ; and a
bhnd beggar demands aU His time and care.
Now, here is the finest trait of character. A
weaker man would have said vrith great civUity,
" I am busy about great things ; let me alone."
The weaker man goes on great occasions
wrapped in the mantle of great thoughts, but
He — He, the Saviour of men — is all at the
disposal of the blind beggar. As if He had
nothing else in hand. He is ready to listen to
his request, and to do what is possible for him.
He is going to save the world. He is to carry

The Ascent op the Altar. 201
out a purpose which affects the human race
from the beginning to the end ; the cross that
He has to mount is the cynosure of every eye
in the universe. There is the central point of
history, and He is approaching it, and His
great mind is filled vrith the thought of it ; and
therefore He can give His undivided attention
to heaUng the blindness of a beggar by the way,
and can vrin the man's perpetual affection by
the readiness of His offer and the completeness
of His gift.
6. But now, at verse 32, the ascent begins,
and it is strangely Uke that primitive story of
Isaac, ascending this same mountain with his
father Abraham, though from the southern
side of it. It is strangely like, but there is
this great difference, that Jesus is absolutely
aware of what is coming. He sees beforehand
the treachery, the judgment, the derision, the
scourge, and the cross. He treads as one who
is aware of it all, and his firm, strong step, the
workings of His face, and His whole aspect
as He walks are so striking that those who
are follovring are filled with amazement. A
kind of fear falls upon them, as if they were
saying, "What can it mean?" or "What

202 The Ascent op the Altar.
is in His mind? Look at His expression
as He walks." And here again is a lovely
trait in His character 1 It was impossible but
that He should feel the great event ; but for
Him it was equaUy impossible to keep His
beloved at a distance from Him. So He caUs
them to Him as He climbs the path, and teUs
them what is in His mind, shows them the
tragedy of the soul. His apprehension of what
is to be, the reason of His resolute approach to
the Altar. There is a trait of character, that
He takes into His confidence — such men 1
7. For here is the final trait of His character
in this chapter (verses 35 — 45) brought out dis
tinctly by the foil of His two best and chosen
disciples, James and John. He at this moment
is all thought of sacrifice, aU thought of laying
down a life, as He puts it here, " a ransom for
many " ; He is occupied vrith ministering. He
is revolving the baptism that He must be
baptized with, and tasting the cup that He
must drink. These two, after aU they have
seen — you recollect they were on the mount
and saw Him transfigured — after all they have
heard — you recollect He was talking to them in
rebuke of the contention, who should be

The Ascent of the Axtar. 203
greatest — these two find their sole interest in
the Kingdom of God in the possibiUty that they
themselves may mount a throne, and sit one on
either hand of the King. They are all occupied
vrith the thought of promotion and advance
ment for themselves. Impossible 1 I should
have said, but that I know myself so well.
We can step quite close to Jesus Christ, walk
even in His way, and yet be thinking of our
selves all the time. But mark His character —
the complete gentleness, the unreproachful
pensive forbearance of His answer. After aU,
it was ignorance. He seems to say ; these poor
youths did not know that His throne was reached
by suffering; they had not learned yet the
hoUowness of earthly lordships and dominions.
When the first Roman missionary Augustine
came into Britain, he thought to subdue the
minds of the ancient British Church by the
state and ceremonial of his ecclesiastical pomp ;
he Uttle thought that the British Christians
concluded from this very circumstance that he
was not a foUower of Christ. In the same way
these two first disciples seemed to suppose that
the victory of the kingdom would be obtained
by sovereigns and pontiffs, by prelates and,

204 The Ascent op the Altar.
dignitaries, and they wished to be among the
number from the very first. He alone under
stood — and He was about to reveal His secret to
them in Gethsemane and on Calvary — ^He alone
understood that to be a servant, even a bond
servant — ^for in verse 44 it is SovXo<;, a slave —
and to be a servant of all, is what is meant
by being the first in the Kingdom of Heaven.
As He speaks to these men, on the eve of
His own great sacrifice, ascending the altar
to die. He gives a perpetual warning to
His misguided Church, that the lordship over
His heritage, and the straining after authority
in His society, is a vast and worldly de
lusion, the tendency which more than any
thing else puts men out of harmony with
Him, and demonstrates that the society in
which it occurs is not His Church and
cannot be ; for " the Son of Man came to
be a minister, to give His life a ransom for
many." Now, this portrait of Jesus, drawn in the
seven traits, has a singular and undesigned
completeness. What a tender and healing
influence it sheds upon us, if these lineaments
have risen up before our eyes and we have seen

The Ascent of the Altar. 205
Him just as He was before He died ! Breathing
His blessing on the union of husband and wife ;
breathing His blessing on the Uttle children,
whom He takes in His arms, putting His hand
upon them ; sympathising with every one, loving
the very man who would not sacriflce his paltry
wealth in order to f oUow Him ; sympathising
vrith these people who had forsaken their poor
bits of property in order to walk in His steps
and be His companions ; quick to the cry of
distress, even though it be the cry from a blind
beggar by the way ; patient vrith the selflsh
egotism of His disciples ; the very picture of
aU-embracing pity and love and tenderness.
And yet do you caU Him effeminate ? And do
you say this is less the picture of a man than
of a woman ? Nay ! If ever there was manhood,
it is here ; strength and nerve and character,
such as the manhest of us might desire. He is
capable of this sacred indignation against a
heartless officiaUsm that drives the chUdren
from His feet. He is entirely undazzled by the
attractions of wealth — which I take to be the
finest trait of manhood, as the opposite is
the deepest degradation of character — entirely
undazzled by the attractions of wealth, so that

206 The Ascent of the Altar.
without a moment's hesitation He sent away a
rich young man, with all the possibilities of
service which were in him, because he was not
ready to give all he had to the poor. And if it is
not enough to trace these signs of moral coiu-age,
think of the physical courage which shines
through all this brave, deliberate, unflinching
affront of the terrible death, foreseen and
already tasted ! Whom shall we call manly
if not one who could walk in that serene
and settled way to a terrible end for an un
selfish cause ? Such abounding love, a pity so
tender for men, for the weak and the helpless,
that you think for a moment it is aU feminine I
Such a marvellous insight into the reahties of
things, such a courageous rejection of the false
for the true, such a nerve in facing suffering
that you think it is all manhood — heroism. The
clear vision, the sovereign calm, the unpreten
tious authority — like a king who proposes to
come and dwell among the outcasts of his
people, like a conqueror who has come to the
conquered, not to slay them, but to be
slain !
Let us meditate upon the picture, for that is
the picture of one who is Divine. And all our

The Ascent op the Altar. 207
hope of character and life, of victory and en
trance into the Kingdom of God depends upon
Him whose portrait is before us, and who has
cast the spell of His power upon the hearts
that believe.

XIII.
THE CARTOON OF JERUSALEM.
(Mask xi.)

14

THE CARTOON OF JERUSALEM.
You know the feelings with which one ap
proaches the metropolis of a great country.
The rapid and inglorious entrance of the express
train, rushing through a sightless tunnel, and
drawing up at the covered platform, has some
what taken the edge from that keen excitement
which the traveUer used to experience when,
on horseback or in the coach, he mounted the
intervening ridge and saw for the first time
the tangled city at his feet. He could ride
slowly through the spreading suburbs, and he
had time to marshal his feelings. It might
be he arrived in the early morning, and the
expression would break from his lips :
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep.
And all that mighty heart is lying stiU.
Or it might be he arrived at nightfall, when the
tvrinkUng lamps seemed to make the city an
earthly refiection of the spangled heavens. But
whether he arrived in the pressure of the day

212 ' The Cartoon op Jerusalem.
or in the quiet of the evening, the hum of life,
the long roll, as it seemed, of a human sea,
reminded him that he was approaching the
centre of the nation's existence. There he
would see the imperial tower which marked the
assembling place of the National Senate, or the
roofs of the palace where the king held his
Court. There he would see the chambers where
justice was administered, and the stiU nobler
basilicas and temples where worship was cele
brated. And there, he would know, in unpre
tentious buildings, were the heads, unseen and
silent, that determined the destinies of myriads
in the uttermost parts of the empire. Now, in
the approach to a great capital you forget the
units, and you can think only of the corporate
life. The individuals are secondary; the city
itself is an individual, a kind of queenly per
sonage, seated upon her hills, or planted beside
her waters, aware and conscious, answerable
for the deeds of her citizens, clothed in the
glory of their virtues, or humbled in the dust
of their shame.
But if that is the feeling that everyone must
experience in approaching a great city that is
the head of the Empire, let us remember that

The Cartoon op Jerusalem. 213
no capital of the nations — not Thebes or
Ctesiphon in antiquity, not Alexandria or Rome
in classical times, not London or Paris to-day —
was ever invested vrith such mysterious signifi
cance, was ever so vividly personified, was ever
so desired and execrated, so clothed with the
weeds of mourning, or exalted in the passion of
praise, so bedewed with tears, so anointed with
oil, so chanted in song, as that city, Jerusalem,
the city which was the capital of a nation, but
was also the city of the Most High, the city to
which the tribes of Israel went up, the city
which was fondly believed to be the joy of the
whole earth.
No person of Jewish blood could ever approach
these waUs vrithout emotion, no person of Jevrish
blood could ever enter any of these gates without
the strange thriU of being received and gathered
into the bosom of his mother. Imagine, then,
the emotion in the heart of Jesus Christ when
He, for the first time (according to the repre
sentations of this Evangelist), saw Jerusalem !
The chapter forms a cartoon drawn in very
simple outhne and in very temperate colour
of the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, and
though our Evangelist loves the picturesque.

214 The Cartoon op Jerusalem.
he does not permit our eye to rest upon those
majestic walls which even in the decay of
Jerusalem fascinate the traveller ; he does not
permit us even to see the stately pinnacles of
the Temple, and the historic buildings which
connected that generation with many genera
tions that had gone before. To this Evangelist,
vrith all his love of the picturesque, the city is
only a spiritual city. He could only think of
its inhabitants, not of its buildings. With the
true instinct of every seer amongst men, he
does not see the houses in the city, he only sees
the life and the spirit of those who live there.
Accordingly, his mind is occupied, and he
occupies us, all the time with the thought of
what these people were who lived in the city.
Jesus is coming "to His own." He seems the
counterpart of His ancestor David, who crossed
the river at the same place, and entered the city
doubtless by the same gate when he came back
from exile. The King is coming to His ovm,
and the question that is agitated in our minds
is, how will " His own " receive Him ? What
vrill they say to Him? What will they
do vrith Him? That, too, is the thought
in His own mind as He approaches the city.

The Cartoon op Jerusalem. 215
and accordingly He arranges for an entrance
into the city which vrill be as it were a
challenge and a test.
With His keen sense of the value of para
bles, and His understanding of the mean
ing of pageantry. He makes an appeal to
the eye of Jerusalem by a spectacle which is
consciously moulded upon the utterance of an
ancient prophet. Every reader of that prophecy,
and there would be no one in Jerusalem who
had not read it or heard it a hundred times,
would be immediately reminded that Jesus was
silently appealing to the judgment of the city
by making an entry of this kind. The words
would immediately occur to them, the familiar
passionate words, "Rejoice greatly, 0 daughter
of Zion ! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem !
Behold, thy King cometh unto thee. He is just
and having salvation, lowly and riding upon an
ass, even upon a colt the foal of an ass ! " Our
Western minds are entirely unaccustomed to
this symbolic mode of appeal. The modern
parallels seem very commonplace when put side
by side vrith this natural and instinctive poetry.
The modem parallels, I suppose, would be a
manifesto issued, placarded on the walls, or

216 The Cartoon of Jerusalem.
circulated from hand to hand ; a proclamation
from an aspirant to the throne, in sounding
terms, dictating the policy which was to be ;
or, in this day — our own prosaic day — it would
be some stirring letter in the Morning Papers,
to reach the intelligence of a city or a nation.
We must not miss the meaning because, the
ancient methods being so dissimUar to ours,
the form of appeal is so remote from our
experience. Let us try to distinctly see what the
whole thing would mean to the men who saw it !
The carefully arranged procession would
tell its own tale directly it began. When the
people from the waUs, or those who were
crowding about the gates according to the
wont of an Eastern city, observed the little
cortege coming down the slope of Ohvet,
through the olive yards and across the Brook
Kedron, then mounting the rock under the
very battlements of the Temple, and passing
in at the Sheep Gate, as if the Shepherd
were, indeed, entering His fold, there would
not be one that missed the significance of it.
No words could make it plainer; it would
at once explain itself. Every man who saw
it — and if there were a few who could not

The Cartoon op Jerusalem. 217
see, the words of the multitude would immedi
ately inform them of it — would understand.
" This man claims to be He that was to come ;
the Prophet from Nazareth, of whose deeds and
words our ears have been full all these months
past, has at last come up to the capital ; He is
coming in at the gate, and He is announcing
distinctly, so that none of us can miss the
meaning, that He regards Himself as the pro
mised Messiah, the one of whom the prophets
have spoken — approaching the city upon an ass,
the foal of an ass — the King at whose coming
the daughter of Zion was to rejoice." The
claim to he Messiah was conveyed to Jerusalem
in the form of the entry of Jesus.
The reception accorded to His claim is pre
sented in this chapter in no doubtful language.
Every word and every action during that
memorable week helps to interpret to us pre
cisely the position. Put briefly it is this :
Enthusiastic welcome from the populace, and
unhesitating condemnation from the religious
rulers of the people. The men of influence
who sit in Moses' seat, the men who were the
brain and regiUating will of the nation, at once
decide against Him. They are convinced, let

218 The Cartoon op Jerusalem.
us charitably suppose, that He is a mere pre
tender, and they set themselves against the
wiU of the populace. They do not do it openly,
for they fear the people ; they are only a hand
ful among a multitude ; but they proceed vrith
that subtlety which is the sole instrument of
government at the disposal of an oligarchy, and
they determine that the man who claims to
be the Christ shall die.
Now, there is subject for everlasting teaching
in this picture, and we must not confine our
selves to its historical significance. It means
just as much to-day as it did then.
I. Let us observe for a moment the enthusiasm
of the people. Our evangelist, St. Mark, has
taken pains from the first to show that the
common people of Galilee were attracted by
Jesus. He was such an one as the toilers
must necessarily welcome ; His whole method
of work was precisely adapted to them; the
sympathetic touch of His hand that always
sought to heal and to feed before He taught.
His mode of teaching, the picturesqueness,
the simplicity of it, fascinated these simple
hearers; He was one of themselves. He was
not, as it were, born in the purple ; He spoke

The Cartoon op Jerusalem. 219
their ovm language. His discourse was full of
their homely ways and of their intimate affairs.
He had nothing to say about great earthly
claims. He resisted their wish to make Him
a King. The first sign of any pomp, or any
regal pageantry, was this humble seat upon an
ass as He entered the city to die. He spoke to
them in a language which was always intelli
gible to the people, and always is. His was a
kingship which men can understand before they
have made false kingships for themselves. It
was the kingship of truth, the kingship of
compassion, the kingship of goodness. The
people had understood Him from the first, and
the people of Jerusalem understood Him at the
last. Now, it is one of the most hopeful things in
human nature, and, indeed, it is the one thing
which forbids us to despair of our race, that
though as individuals we are often selfish and
sordid, and commonplace and earthly enough,
when we are massed together in society, and
especiaUy in nations, we become idealists ; the
earth falls away from us, and the spirit appears.
We become susceptible to ideal appeals, we
permit our hearts to be moved by noble com-

220 The Cartoon op Jerusalem.
passion, we lift up our eyes readily to the "high
white star of Truth," and goodness becomes
attractive to us. Men in detail are very trivial
and paltry, but the corporate humanity is noble.
The individual of a nation — the average En-
ghshman, for example — is often a poor creature,
but this great England is a being that always
borders on nobility, and sometimes enters it.
We as individuals are nothing, but men in
aggregates are great. There is no falser thought
that ever enters a human heart than that base
notion of a declining civilisation — the tendency
to speak of men as " the masses " or " the
mob." Much nearer the truth is the old saying.
Vox populi est vox Dei— the voice of a nation is
often the sound of God in it, and the vriU of
God expressed by it.
You need not, therefore, be astonished, won
derful and beautiful as it is, at this attitude of
Jerusalem, this readiness of the people to accept
Jesus Christ. They liked what they had heard
of Him, His reputation was very pleasant in
their ears, they were captivated by His lowli
ness. His unpretentiousness — -so unlike the
people they had seen in authority before, the
sort of men who sat in the Temple and thanked

The Cartoon of Jerusalem. 221
God they were not as other men; here was
their Lord, thanking God that He was as other
men, a man, always calling Himself the Son of
Man! They were fascinated vrith Him, and
when on the follovring day coming back into
the city — this time quite simply, it being not
necessary again to make the symbolic entry, as
the ruler that was to come to the city — He
entered the Temple, and in the most practical
and simple way began to cleanse it, turning the
den of robbers that it had become into the
House of Prayer that it was meant to be, a wave
of religious enthusiasm and passionate appro
bation passed over the people. Jerusalem was
stirred, and it became quite plain to the rulers
of the people, the heads of the Jewish Church,
that unless they could make away vrith Him,
unless they could discredit and destroy Him,
all the hearts of the people wotdd go after
Him, for He was just such an one as they
needed. II. Now that brings us to look for a moment
at the attitude of these chief priests and scribes
and rulers. And I know not which is more
noticeable, their unanimous resolve to oppose
and to destroy Him, the rightful sovereign of

222 The Cartoon of Jerusalem.
the nation, or His clear-sighted recognition of
their purpose, and unresisting submission to
their decision. Certainly that first point is
very striking — these good worthy men, sitting
in Moses' seat, were the mainstay of the
rehgious system which in all its details was
a prophecy of Jesus Christ. Some of them
were the trained and professional interpreters
of the ancient writings, which could UteraUy
be said one and all to speak of Him. Others
of them were the leaders of that adminis
trative system which we sum up in the term
"synagogue" — the gatherings of worshippers
which were to be the model, the pattern,
on which Jesus Christ Himself was about to
found His own Societies or Churches. The
priests, the sacrifices, the elders, were the
authorised representatives of a system of re
ligion, which from first to last in all its detaUs
and in all its history was designed to be the
preparation for the coming of Jesus and the
interpretation of Him when He came. And
they would be, therefore, you might suppose,
the readiest way of preparing those who
believed in that religion to receive Him.
We stand absolutely dumbfounded before

The Cartoon of Jerusalem. 223
these men. I have no explanation of their
conduct, no one has ever given any explanation
of it. We can only say that whether it was
pride or prejudice, or that kind of moral insen
sibUity which is very often found side by side
vrith the straitest religious orthodoxy, whatever
it was, something prevented them from recog
nising Jesus as the Christ. What the people
had seen at a glance, they could not see even
with careful inquiry. What the people seemed
to feel by an instinct, these men seemed by
another instinct to reject unanimously. The
noble zeal which led Him to cleanse the
Temple, and vrin the admiration and astonish
ment of the people, appeared to these leaders
of the people simply a breach of order, simply
a fanatical usurpation, an occasion for censure
and condemnation.
It seems, sometimes, as if it is the fault of
aU hierarchies that they cease to judge by
spiritual or moral considerations, and come to
try everything by the interests of their ovm
order. Beyond that explanation there seems
to be none. And accordingly, though in the
presence of the people they were cautious, and
were so afraid to cross the popular convictions

224 The Cartoon of Jerusalem.
that they dared not even deny that John the
Baptist came from heaven, they made up their
minds by all means to get rid of the bom
leader of their race, and the Divine Saviour
of mankind.
It is full of significance, and it breaks upon us
with a horror of discovery, that there are multi
tudes of religious people who would do just the
same in the same circumstances.
But the other thing which startles us is that
the Lord never for a moment appealed from the
rulers to the people. It never, occurred to Him
to question the validity of their decision. He
accepted them at once as the spiritual authorities
of His nation, and on the strength of their
decision, though the people were in His favour.
He pronounced a verdict on the nation. This
verdict is contained in the image of a barren fig
tree, which puts out the presumptuous promise
of fruit when it has nothing but leaves. He de
clares that the time of fruit is past, that this
nation, vrith its rulers, is for ever set aside ;
" henceforth no man shall gather fruit of it for
ever." Then He proceeds in direct and simple
language to explain to His disciples if only they
could imderstand, by what methods the vast

The Cartoon op Jerusalem. 225
encumbrance of this obsolete Judaism, which
may weU be described as a mountain, may be
roUed out of the way and a straight path
made for the King to approach His ovm. The
method is a beautifiUly simple one; it is the
power of beUeving prayer, resting upon the
unconditional forgiveness of all our personal
foes. Let that prayer be at work and Jerusalem
shaU be destroyed, its Temple shaU be ruined ;
the whole obstinate race shaU be set aside, and
the times of the Gentiles shaU come, whUe the
Christ, rejected by the chosen people, shaU be
welcomed as the Saviour of the world.
What a strange new method of warfare this
is 1 Here is a weapon inconceivable to Judaism,
and stiU inconceivable to many Christians — the
weapon of prayer, which rests upon the absolute
freedom from personal resentment against any
human being. When zeal for reUgion is inter
twined vrith personal animosity, when our
advocacy for truth is a cloak for the hatred of
men who do not agree vrith us, we can accom-
pUsh nothing for God ; our prayers f aU idly from
the brazen skies, and our efforts to benefit the
world, or to save it, must for ever be in vain.
To forgive, to forgive absolutely; to look into
15

226 The Cartoon op Jerusalem.
the eyes of the enemies of God and say, whUe
you contend against them, " I love yon vrith all
my heart " ; to strive in prayer for truth and
God, always loving the very men who are
prepared to discredit us, to destroy us — that
is the only way of securing the great City that
is to be built upon the earth, it is the only way
of leveUing the mountain and casting it into
the sea. Have faith in God and forgive your
brother — such faith in God that you can forgive
your brother ; such forgiveness of men that you
can have faith in Q&d — and then all things are
possible. Prayer of that kind must prevail ;
the mountain shall be levelled to the plain;
and if we question whether we can live such a
life and wield such a weapon, every page of the
Gospel reminds us :
" It is the way the Master went.
Shall not the servant tread it still ? "

XIV.
THE CARTOON OF THE VINEYARD.
(Maek xii.)

THE CARTOON OF THE VINEYARD.
We saw in the last chapter that Jesus had
no intention of resisting the spiritual rulers of
His race. Indeed, He had come up to Jerusa
lem of His ovm accord on purpose to put Him
self into their hands, that they might do vrith
Him whatsoever they listed. The priests of the
priestly nation were to offer up their best victim
upon the immemorial altar, before it and its
rites were swept away for ever. He did not,
therefore, attempt to rouse a popular interest
in His cause, and so to set the masses against
the rulers. He had no vrish whatever to frus
trate the purpose which they had formed. StiU,
it was His design, and truth itself required it,
to make perfectly plain to these men what they
were, and what they were doing. He could not,
vrithout being untrue Himself, let them pass
scatheless. Accordingly, when they roUed upon
Him wave after wave of controversy. He ruth
lessly exposed their fallacious thought, and

230 The Cartoon op the Vineyard.
wave after wave was hurled back, broken, as it
were, by His impenetrable wisdom. In clear
and trenchant language he then warned the
people against the rulers and their practices.
But above all, in a parable which they could
never forget and which they could not mis
understand. He set out their whole course,
national and ecclesiastical, before their eyes.
And in showing them what they were about to
do and how they stood in relation to God, He
declared in unequivocal terms who He was, and
how He stood in relation to God.
There is an exquisite delicacy in this para
bolic mode of announcing His message and His
mission; but that will not prevent us from seiz
ing the announcement itself and observing how
absolutely indisputable it really is. We vriU
first look at the ground of His deep disagree
ment with the rulers of His people and His
solemn warning against them, and then we may
pass on to examine closely the picture in which
He described their fate and His.
1. In these vv., 38 — 40, He touches upon
two of the most constant tendencies of the
ministerial or clerical mind — self-assertion, and
avarice veiled by religiosity. It can be no

The Cartoon of the Vineyard. 231

question to anyone who knows the history of
the Church that these two vices have alienated
the people from Jesus Christ century after
century. It might, therefore, be well for the
people to understand that Christ denoimced
them more bitterly than the people have re
sented them. It would seem that these men,
like us aU, were incUned to stand upon the
dignity of their order and to claim the full
rights of their position. And if it is not too
bold to paraphrase the charges against them,
so that their applicabUity to us in the present
day may be clear, we may say that they desired
to wear a distinctive dress, to show that they
were separate from the rest of the community,
they desired to receive a distinctive title of
reverence when they moved among their fellow-
citizens in the market-place ; they demanded
places of pre-eminence in the Church when
they were worshipping on the equahty of
human nature before its God, and they sought
for a social precedence, too, even in private
Ufe. As the Lord puts it, " which love to go
in long clothing, and love salutations in the
market-place, and the chief seats in the syna
gogues and the uppermost rooms at the feasts."

232 The Cartoon op the Vineyard.
But this was not all. The constant round of
public prayers which men frequently confuse
vrith religion — ^though it may easily be the very
death of reUgion — in their case covered a grasp
ing and cruel rapacity. Whoever suffered they
would have their dues. Though it should be
the poorest and most helpless of vridows'
houses that was devoured, their property should
be secured : " which devour vridows' houses,
and for a pretence make long prayers." It is
not desirable for us to confine the words of our
Lord to the Scribes at Jerusalem, because the
Scribes have never ceased, and His words are
always appUcable. I say it to you, but much
more solemnly I say it to myself, as one caUed
on to preach the Gospel of Christ, " Ye shaU
receive greater damnation, ye who stand in the
high place of the synagogue, and lead the wor
ship of the people, if ye are not righteous and
just and true; your condemnation shaU be
greater than any."
2. But we may now pass to look at the
picture in which Jesus delineates the chosen
people, the Jewish Church ; sketching its
history, its relation to God and to Himself. Let
us get into the situation. There is an owner of

The Cartoon op the Vineyard. 233
a vineyard who has carefully tilled it, and pro
vided all the appliances that are necessary.
But having to be away, he puts it into the
charge of some cultivators on what are evidently
meant to be terms of mutual advantage. When
the harvest comes he sends a slave to receive
the produce of the year. But the men have
formed a felonious design ; they take the slave
and beat him, and send him back without any
of the produce, to indicate that they regard it
as their own. The ovmer sends another slave, but
the felonious purpose has grown more fixed, and
the hearts of the men are hardened; they not only
beat him and send him away empty, but they
wound him and put him to shame. The owner
sends a third, who finds that the progress in
crime has already ripened rapacity into murder,
and he perishes at their hands. And now it
appears that strong measures must be taken if
the property is to be saved. The ovmer seems
to say, " It is possible, of course, that these
men do not acknowledge slaves, but treat them
as their feUow-servants, and will not listen to
their demands. I vrill try them by sending the
ovmer himseU, my well-beloved son, who is
indeed dear to me as myself ; and when they see

234 The Cartoon op the Vineyard.
him, knovring that he is the owner, they wUl
return to their duty, they will yield the vintage
to him, and the outrages upon the slaves shall
be forgiven." But so rapid had been the
descent in crime that when they saw the son,
and knew that it was the son, they determined
to carry out a desperate purpose — they would
kiU him and steal the vineyard. They kill him
and cast him out.
And the inheritance is tlieu-s? Yes; but
that the owner is the ovmer stiU, and that he
has aU power behind his right ; but that it has
always been decreed that the stone which the
builders rejected should come to be the head
stone of the corner. Their crime is successful ?
Yes ; but that just as ib succeeds the arrows of
vengeance are hurtling in the air. Nothing
could be more distinct than that. And our
first thought is the fatuity and the foUy of the
men, who had heard it and understood it, pro
ceeding to carry out their murderous, their
suicidal purpose, restrained for a moment only,
not by the truth, but by the fear of the masses,
who counted this to be the Messiah.
Our thought turns to the men who came
before, the long line of messengers of God who

The Cartoon op the Vineyard. 235

had been sent to claim the possession and had
been ill-used, and in many cases slain, for their
faithfulness to their Master. But all this is
secondary. Presently our whole attention is
fixed upon the one central truth which makes
the Parable of the Vineyard the greatest reve
lation in this Gospel. Jesus Christ is perfectly
clear, and states it so that no one can mistake,
that He is the Son op God. He knows that
He has come to die at the hands of the people
who preside over the destinies of His race. He
sees His triumph beyond His death. Rejected,
persecuted, and slain. He sees Himself in their
hands. He knows them well, but He knows
His Father better still. He never doubts the
issue, and here, just on the verge of it all.
He explains to them exactly how the matter
stands. The greatest prophets who had come
before — Moses, and Elijah, and Isaiah, and
Daniel — they were all like slaves compared with
Him, for He was the Son Himself. The history
of the Chosen People since the call of Abraham
had aU been a trial and a test, an appeal to the
nation to see if it would serve the nation's God.
But now that the Son had come, the doom of
the people must be determined in one way or

236 The Cartoon of the Vineyard.
another. There can be no further vaciUation ;
the way in which they receive Him must settle
their national existence. How could it be
otherwise, when the supreme revelation of God
has come, when, as it were, the Godhead has
pressed into a human form that He might
show Himself to the human race ? Supposing,
then. He is met with murderous insolence,
with daring robbery, with rebellion sealed in
blood, there can be but one issue. From such
premises there is but one conclusion: What
vrill He do to these husbandmen ? They could
answer it themselves, any one could answer it ;
it was a foregone conclusion.
We must pause for a moment before this
tremendous assertion of Jesus, and I want to ask
you to face it and to make up your mind what
you think of it. Here we have the earliest and
the simplest of the records of the life of Jesus,
and in it Jesus unequivocally declares that He
is the Son of God, out of all comparison vrith
the very greatest that had gone before, though
it were Moses or Abraham himself. The
dogma, as we call it, of His Divinity is,
after aU, simply the expression of His self-
consciousness. It comes before us as a fact

The Cartoon op the Vineyard. 237
which must be faced, and it seems to be to-day
the most pressing of all strictly theological
questions. How common it is to hear from
troubled, and sometimes from untroubled, souls
this kind of saying, " Of course I believe that
Jesus was a good man, the best man that
ever lived; but I cannot accept His Divinity."
Sometimes that doubt is uttered with a sup
pressed cry of the heart, as if the doubter were
saying, " What reason have you to beUeve that
He was anything more than a man? I do not be
Ueve it; I am sure He was not. But oh! if you
could but prove that He was ! " But more fre
quently this doubt comes with a sense of final
superiority which seems to imply ,that if we do
beUeve in Him we are not only deluded but
almost imbecile. Now, if that is the principal
doubt of to-day we should face it with all our
might. We must avoid that pitiless kind of
dogmatism which bruises, without convincing,
the sceptical mind. The mystical argument
from personal experience is ineffectual for those
who do not know. It seems to them not only a
pitiful hallucination but also a further con
demnation, since they are strangers to it.
There is but one plain answer to this doubt.

238 The Cartoon op the Vineyard.
and it is before us now. We take this earliest
testimony to the historic Jesus, the Gospel of
St. Mark, The picture drawn here is so inimit
able that we are driven to the conclusion of its
veracity by this one question, " Who could have
invented it ? " When the picture is before us
as we have been trying to depict it in these
pages, distinctly and authoritatively before us,
so that we see it and hear it with the eyes and
the ears of the Spirit ; when this picture is
distinctly before us, there is something in its
perfect harmony, in its beauty, in its power,
that seems to bend us down before Him and to
elicit a suppressed cry of worship long before
we have determined who He is; and then
from the Ups of One so distinct historicaUy,
so lovely and authoritative spirituaUy and
morally, there comes a statement, dehcate and
exquisite like the subtle and stealing truths of
Nature, self-evidencing and conclusive — ^that
He is the One, the Beloved Son of God.
It therefore seems necessary to come to a
conclusion. The issue is quite clear. I do
not want to say there are not two alterna
tives; there obviously are, and it is possible
for you to take either, and to take either

The Cartoon of the Vineyard. 239
vrith a great deal of veracity, though vrith
incalculable spiritual results in one direction
or the other. The issue is perfectly clear — it
is one thing or the other. Either we must
dismiss this record; we must say about this
Gospel of Mark, " It is simply a lovely creation
of the fancy ; we rank it with the poems of all
ages. We know not how it came, but we put
it on the shelf with our poets and our dreamers,
and we walk for the rest with our hearts closed
against a beautiful fancy, preferring the hard
substance of fact though it bruise our feet and
torture our heart." That is one possible con
clusion ; and this is the other : The Person
here must be taken as He is. You cannot call
Him a good man but not God ; you cannot say
He is the best of the race ; you must admit
that He is above the race.
It is well to realise whither that first
alternative is leading those who have adopted
it. Take, for instance, that great scholar
and brilliant writer, Ernest Renan. He be
gan by shovring that the historical Jesus
was a sweet dream, idealised in the sim
ple imagination of His rustic followers,
and especiaUy in the fervid devotion of

240 The Cartoon of the Vineyard.
His female attendants. In the charm of the
book, the Vie de Jesus, one might not at once
perceive the logical issue to which it led. One
was inclined to say, " This brilhant vniter vrill
remain in the train of Jesus ; he will worship
though he may not fully believe what we
believe." Do not permit to yourselves these
delusions. We now have before us the con
cluding word of Renan's teaching. This is
what he says : " The future definitively vriU no
longer believe in the supernatural, for the
supernatural is not true. Be tranquil ; Judaism
and Christianity wiU disappear. The Jevrish
work vrill end, but the Greek work — that is,
science rational and experiinental, civUisation
without charlatanism, without revelation,
founded on reason and liberty — wUl, on the
contrary, go on for ever." That is logical, if
Renan's picture of Jesus is the true picture.
Of course Christianity wiU disappear. We
shall not be left with a dream, an iUusion, a
fancy, to feed the spirit of man on. This is
the result of trying to deal with the life of
Jesus from the a priori dogma that the super
natural is impossible. It may well make us
pause. For how arbitrary, how unproved is

The Cartoon op the Vineyard. 241
this assumption that the supernatural will
disappear because it is untrue ! It is nearer
the truth to say that the natural is unreal
and vriU disappear. For every ai;tempt to
explain the Natural, — whether matter or force,
law or life, not a human being only, but even
an indivisible atom — pushes us rapidly into
the region of the Supernatural, and reminds us
that God is necessary for the understanding
of even " the parts of His ways."
But if we cannot discredit the history of
Jesus by the dogma that the supernatural is im
possible, we are brought face to face with the
other alternative. Here is the Person, whose
picture coiUd hardly have been invented, whose
words authenticate themselves by the vast
improbabiUty of any Jevrish vniters conceiving
them or attributing them to one whom they
desired to honour. He claims to be the unique
Son of God. He wiU be murdered by His
people, and their punishment wiU be the decline
and ruin in which they remain to-day. He is
there vrith His distinct claim; He presses Him
self upon us in no debatable way : " I am the
Son of God. I am the Way, the Truth, the
Life." And if He is there, if He is what He
16

242 The Cartoon op the Vineyard.
says He is, it is obvious to us aU that we shaU
not understand Him untU we bow to Him, we
shall not see what He means until our heart is
surrendered to Him. We cannot stand before.
Him like an earthly king, with the conventional
bending of the knee in a decorous homage as if
He could not read the heart. The only atti
tude which we can assume before Him is that
of the inward and secret surrender of all our
heart and mind and soul to Him. We must
be bowed at His feet to learn and to obey.
Practically, essentially, we are aU bound in
this matter to occupy either the position of the
disciples or else the position of those spiritual
leaders of the nation. We either eject the Son
from His own, or welcome Him to it ; we either
reject the stone or we bring it out to be the
head of the corner with rejoicing. Thank God,
it is no business of ours to judge any man ; but
it is our own business to judge ourselves. We
stand before our own judgment-seat, and the
logic of the situation demands that we be quite
honest with ourselves, and act upon our con
viction. The question is : " Shall I take the
Heir, and with the delicate irony and the
polished sentimentaUsm of the modern scholar.

The Cartoon of the Vineyard. 243
kUl Him and cast Him out of His vineyard ; or
shall I, with the disciples, hail Him as my Lord,
as my Saviour, as my God ; bow to Him heart
and spirit, and tell Him, if He is mine, I also
would be His for ever, servant and friend?"
There is the alternative, and may God lead us
to see and to know that we cannot rest at
a point between the two ; and may He lead us
to decide for the alternative of frank accept
ance, that, acknowledging Him to be the Son,
we may give Him the only place that the Son
of God can consistently take !

XV.
THE VISION OF DOOM.
(Maek xir. 41 — xiii.)

THE VISION OF DOOM.
The announcement of the doom which im
pended over Jerusalem and over the Jewish people
is preceded immediately by a charming incident
which iUustrates how very different the vision
and the judgment of Jesus are from those of
ordinary people. He was in the precincts of
the Temple, watching the long stream of offerers
who were putting their money into the horns
provided to receive it. But in the stream of
people there was one face which arrested His
meditative eye, and He must at once summon
His disciples to Him that He may disclose to
them the beautiful thought which has flashed
into His mind. That woman there. He says,
that poor, pale woman, she has just made the
most bountiful gift of them all, because aU the
rest have many wants, and when they have
satisfied their wants they give of that which is
over to their God. That poor woman has no
wants at all, except the great want — her God.

248 The Vision op Doom.
And, therefore, without any embarrassment,
she has been able to give to Him aU that she
had, and to leave herself in the happy destitu
tion of a believer.
Now, it was by precisely the same unexpected
insight, piercing through the appearances to
the very core of reality, that He was able to
speak as He did about the noble buUding under
whose shadow He with His disciples was sitting.
Every Jewish heart felt about that building
very much what is expressed in this exclama
tion of the disciple. Its magnificence excited a
rapture of admiration, its tradition set vibrating
the deepest chords of feeling, for it had been
for a thousand years — a period as long as from
ourselves to Alfred the Great — it had been for
a thousand years the centre of a nation's life ;
ruined, rebuilt, restored, it was always the
same Temple, upon the same site ; and round it
clustered the associations of all those great and
poignant experiences. The Jew thought it was
the dwelling-place of God, and never questioned
that within the darkness of that shrine the
Supreme Being held His Court and manifested
Himself to the world. Jesus looked at it in
quite another light. Entirely undazzled by the

The Vision of Doom. 249
magnificence, quite unimpressed by the ritual
and the pageantry that were for ever proceeding
within its courts, He looked upon it as the
symbol of a petrified rehgion, the shrine of a
decaying faith. He seemed to know — what it
must have been hard indeed for any man to
know then — that sacred buildings are generally
not the conservers, but the tombs, of sanctity.
And He already saw, and saw with hope and
gladness as the prelude of the greater faith,
that within a generation these gorgeous
decorations would be consumed by fire, and
these stately walls would be levelled with
the dust.
There is not so much difference between a
bat's eyes and an eagle's as there is between
the insight, as we call it, of ordinary men, and
the insiffht of Jesus. The whole universe and
every detail of it becomes changed to our eyes
directly we catch a glimpse of any part from
the standpoint of Jesus Christ. How tawdry
are the pomps and the magnificences which
we admire, and how splendid are the lowly
eternities which we despise !
Follow Him through the precincts of the
doomed Temple, through the Sheep Gate, across

250 The Vision op Doom.

the River Kedron, to the slope of the Mount
of Olives, from which aU the pinnacles of
the Temple stand in clear view. Sit at His
feet while the disciples ask Him about the
catastrophe at which He hinted, and Usten to
His answer !
But here immediately we plunge into a
difficulty. Our records in this Gospel, which
hitherto have been so lucid and intelligible,
suggesting to us pictures drawn upon the spot,
here become blurred and confused. While each
paragraph of this chapter bears the stamp of
His thought and of His utterance, it is quite
plain that the paragraphs have been connected,
pieced, together, by another hand than His.
That would be evident even from this one
detail, that in two succeeding verses He says of
the event which seems to occupy His speech
that it is to happen within a generation, and
yet that the time of it is unknown to Himself
as well as to others. We must remember, of
course, that the oral tradition on which the
Church depended for the first generation might
be perfectly distinct as far as the words went,
and yet be confused as to the times of utterance
and the connection between piece and piece.

The Vision op Doom. 251
The confusion which occurs here is clearly
owing to the recoUection of two quite distinct
discourses, two quite distinct trains of thought;
and the confusion has only this to recommend
it to us and to make us thankful for it, that it
proves the extreme antiquity of the reminis
cences on which it depends. These words must
have been strung together in this form before
the year 70 — the date of the destruction of
Jerusalem — ^because the event which happened
then would have sufficed to disentangle the two
streams of thought, just as it suffices to-day to
disentangle them, as we study them in the
history of the past. If the Evangelist had
Uved after the destruction of Jerusalem the
confusion would not have occurred ; but if the
confusion had not occurred we should have been
wanting in this peculiarly valuable evidence of
the primitive character of the records. The
very confusion, therefore, is a mark of authen
ticity, and to the careful student suggests that
the records of St. Mark are previous to the
year 70 a.d.
That, of course, is one point, and an important
one, but if we would learn from the chapter
what it has to teach, we must make an attempt

252 The Vision op Doom.
to disentangle the two discourses and to follow
out the two lines of thought. There were two
prophecies. The first of them was one which
naturally arose out of the circumstances of that
day when Jesus explained that the people of
privilege and promise were unworthy husband
men from whom the vineyard must be taken.
It naturaUy followed upon that parable, that He
should describe the ruin of the building which
had been the shrine and the centre of the ancient
faith. Now, if you take w. 5, 6, 14 — 23,
28 — 31 together, you vrill have a distinct
and connected prophecy upon that particular
subject. He points out that the city and the
Temple are to perish in a terrible rout of siege
and plague and famine, and the national
existence of His own people is to cease vrithin
forty years — vrithin a generation — of the time
at which He was speaking.
We may ask, " Why should He be so par
ticular to explain this coming disaster to His
disciples ? " We remember that he was a Jew,
and they were Jews. He Himself was the
Jevrish Messiah, the Christ. He had tauo-ht
His disciples to show the profoundest respect
not only to the Temple, but to the Jewish

The Vision op Doom. 253
spiritual authorities. He well understood that
in their mind aU religion was absolutely bound
up with that sacred building and with the
perpetuity of its Divine ordinances. He could
see what would happen, what a shock would
come to their mind and to their faith, if this
centre of Divine revelation should be destroyed,
and if the Temple of God upon earth should
cease to be. His purpose, therefore, was to
disengage His ovm great faith from the ruins
of the Temple. He wished to teach His dis
ciples that this Temple and all its institutions
could perish vrithout even touching the faith
that He had come to preach. He and His
rehgion, they and their witness, must not be
confused vrith the dying institutions of an
exhausted creed. They would live and work
when the whole Jewish people were scattered as
a remnant over the face of the globe, and when
the Turk would rule over the land of Jehovah,
and a Mohammedan mosque would occupy the
place of the Temple itself. It was of supreme
importance that these simple men shoiUd under
stand from the beginning that the Founder
of their faith did not count upon the continu
ance of the Temple ; He regarded with perfect

264 The Vision op Doom.
equanimity the approaching catastrophe which
would sweep it for ever from the earth. There
is the one distinct line of thought and prophecy.
But if you take the remaining words of the
chapter you will see that another discourse,
perhaps given at the same time, certainly within
a few days, had been directed to a further and
even a more important object. Beyond the
ruin of Judaism stretched the history of the
coming Church, and it was the purpose of the
Founder to speak to His disciples some words
of warning, exhortation, and encouragement,
which would continue in force to the very end,
until the completed Church should pass to the
victory which He promised. Now these Apoca
lyptic sayings which cover the whole period of
the history of the Church can be distinguished
from the sayings which refer to the de
struction of Jerusalem. And how necessary
it is to distinguish them. What is the de
struction of Jerusalem to you? That great
catastrophe of the year 70, which seemed
literally to shake the world, has become to you
an incredible dream. Unless you take the
trouble to read the pages of Josephus, and to
realise the horror and torture of the siege.

The Vision op Doom.

the words, vv. 14 — 23, must seem to you
an exaggeration. You cannot imagine how
any earthly catastrophe could be described
in language so terrible. The destruction of
Jerusalem lies in a forgotten past. But what
He said about the future of His Church refers
still to an unknown future, and it is necessary
for us even now to weigh and to understand
the things which He foretold.
The keynote of this discourse is in verse 10,
where He declares that before the end should
come, the Gospel He was preaching would be
proclaimed to all the nations of the earth. The
temerity of that assertion is perfectly fas
cinating. Go back in the spirit of reahsm to
the situation on the day when He spoke the
words, and look at the position as it would
strike the eye. There is a Uttle group of
peasants who have come with all their country-
ways from the north of GaUlee. Already in
the secret conclave of His nation's rulers their
Leader has been condemned to death. They are
in the shadow of the great Temple of their
ancestors, they are the citizens of a State that
is great in their eyes, but a State which was
very smaU in the midst of the great nations of

256 The Vision op Doom.
the earth, a State already dying, reaching the
very limits of its existence. And vrith a simple
confidence which is indeed sublime He tells
them that the broken words He has spoken on
the hillsides, the message He has deUvered to
them, shaU circle the globe, and they shaU
forge the first links of the golden chain. It is
sublime, and if it had not been true, ridiculous.
It is only when we see it in the light of what
has happened, and when we understand to-day
how, after aU these centuries, the undying
purpose is working in the very heart of England,
— our great world-spreading Empire, a purpose
to carry out the prophecy, — it is only then we
realise that its sublimity is based upon truth,
and that the forecast was Divine. How hard
it was for these first disciples to beUeve and
how easy it is for us ! How incredible the
words to that little group, how obvious to us
who have understood the inward significance
of them.
But now what strange means of progress and
world-conquest does He mention. The men
are to be vritnesses, humble peasants as they
are, before governors and kings, and they are
to be persecuted. That is to be their lot aU

The Vision op Doom. 257
along. There wiU be unhappy divisions cleav
ing even the household asunder, because one
man in the household vriU hear the caU and
engage in the enterprise, and the rest vrill
decline it and oppose. And, most mysterious
of aU, they shaU be hated of all men for His
sake. Why? we ask. The Son of God, the
Saviour dying for the world, vrith no thought
but to heal, and to save, and to bless — ^when
the world sees a man coming in His name,
surely it wUl hail him with gratitude and joy !
So it would seem. How well He knew, how
vrise His foresight, how prudent to tell them
all beforehand. It was quite correct ; experience
has confirmed it. Why does the England of
the East, the great island of Japan, to-day rise
up and in bitter hatred seek to expel the
missionaries from their shores? Why is it
that these missionaries have to
Stand alone
While the men they agonise for hurl the contumelious
stone?
Simply because they bear the name of Jesus,
and the world hates them for His sake. And
not only so, but here in England, where we put
His sacred name upon the forefront of our
17

258 The Vision op Doom.
national life, and profess to serve and follow
Him, I neVer yet knew a man or woman that
really believed in Him who did not gather into
the heart of him or her a meed of human hate.
It has ever been so, and He teUs us it ever vrill
be so. We must face it, we must reckon vrith
it, and God grant that we may not be
Unworthy of the grand adversity,
or unvrilling to accept the reproach of Christ.
But this is not to dismay either them or us
even for a moment. For always like a steadfast
star shining through the night rack, or Uke a
voice that is clear and calm above the tumult
of the tempest, there is this promise that He
gave — no one can take it from us. Beyond the
wars and the tumults, beyond the sufferings,
the declensions, the treasons, the ruin and the
shame, it is always there, the promise of " the
Son of Man coming in the clouds vrith great
power and glory," and all His angels speeding
from end to end of the world and of the
heavens, — because part of the host wiU be
dead and part will be alive, but gathering
together all the elect of God — the defini
tion of election being " those that have en-

The Vision op Doom. 259
dured to the end " — no one can take that
promise away.
Men would rob the Church of her hope be
cause the hope is deferred. And a stUl more
serious difficulty occurs : men would discredit
the promise because the idle and impertinent
speculations of Christians, who ought to know
better, have always been settling the day and
the hour as if we could know when the Advent
should be. These try to pluck from us the
hope on which we build, but the heart of true
faith cannot be disturbed by this, the perversion
and, the discrediting of the Lord's own words,
for He took pains to assure us that we could
not know the day and the hour, that He did
not know it Himself, so that the standing order
of His Church should be to expect His advent,
but never to forecast it. " The last day," said
St. Augustine, " is concealed that all days may
be observed."
And thus we reach the supreme end, the
outcome of His forecast and prophecy — that
we are to watch. AU the accidents of that
moment faU away. We are not detained by
the thought of Jerusalem, which is about to
perish; but rising plain and commanding

260 The Vision op Doom.
enough before our eyes and our hearts is the
person of our Lord on this Olivet of faith
which is still given to believing feet; we
hear Him telling us, what He teUs to aU, that
we are to watch. We know not the day of
His coming. We are in His house, a house
which reminds us on every side that the
absence of the Master must be confessed, and
yet reminds us on every side that His mystical
presence is felt. We are in His house, expecting
His return. We have set our porter at the
gate, and told him to keep his eyes fix:ed on
the long line of the glimmering road, and his
ears attentive to the first approach of the
wheels. We have told our watchers to teU us,
and to remind us from day to day, and from
week to week, that we are to watch ourselves,
lest He come and find us sleeping. It may be
the morning, when the business of the day
begins, and we are issuing to face the crowd of
anxious duties, but we must watch ; for it may
be He wiU prevent the first of these pressing
cares and be here before the business that we
either desire or dread. Or it may be the
evening, when the " dewy fingers are dravring
the gradual veil " about our head and we sink

The Vision op Doom. 261
into the brief oblivion of sleep ; but let our
hearts be vigUant and prayerful even while we
sleep, for it may be His voice that vrill wake
us before the morning comes. How strange it
is that there are those who faU into the death
caUed sleep, obUvious that there is a sleep
which knows no waking ! It may be at mid
night, when the sUent land Ues in the semblance
of death ; but let us be careful how we spend
our midnights, and where we are at the turn
ing of the day, in what company, in what
action, with what cherished thoughts, what
passions, what desires, because from the starry
spaces may come the murmur of His approach
at midnight, and in the stUlness we may find He
is there. Or it may be when the cock crows
and the first streak of davm is in the sky.
That may be the warning that He has come ;
and He must not find us sleeping, forgetful
what we are, and why He put us here — unfaith
ful stewards, rebeUious husbandmen, eating
and drinking, and amusing ourselves, when He
comes to ask us for some account of our brief
probation, and the yielding of the terms on
which we Uved. What He says unto aU He
says to you : " Watch ! " for you know not at

262 The Vision op Doom.
what hour or on what day your Lord shaU
come, lest coming suddenly He find you
sleeping, and the awakening be such as you
can imagine for an unfaithful servant who had
forgotten his Lord.

XVI.
THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
(Mark xiv.)

THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
The fourteenth chapter can only be treated
as a single cartoon if, after the manner of some
old Italian painters — you will find several
examples of what I refer to in the National
GaUery — ^we may place the several episodes in
separate groups upon the canvas, repeating the
figures in the different situations. For the
chapter is a drama rather than a picture — a
tragedy in five acts, with a prelude and two in
terludes and an epilogue which show us what
is proceeding behind the scenes. The great,
the beautiful, the pathetic central figure is
Jesus Himself, moving with the calm strength
of a hero to his doom, and yet quivering with
human sensibUity in the multiplied sufferings
of the occasion. He shrinks, as a deUcate
woman vrill shrink from exposure and shame,
from coarseness and ruffianism ; but He pro
ceeds to the end witli undaunted intrepidity, as
if He were one invulnerable to pain. Nowhere

266 The Shadow op Death.
in the whole story does He appear so com
pletely, so touchingly, a man. It is the human
interest which stirs and shakes us as we trace
the events one by one. Yet nowhere does He
more explicitly declare, and more manifestly
show, that He is more than man. This twofold
fact appears at every point of the story. The
other persons of the drama are two groups of
men rather than individuals — the priests and
the disciples — the priests devising their ini
quitous plan of murder under judicial forms,
the disciples drawn by avarice or by fear into
every degree of treachery and desertion, from
the betrayal of Judas to the denial of Peter.
This is the plot. In the first verse or two
there is the prelude, which gives the key to the
whole action. The priests at the Passover
mean to kill the Paschal Lamb — they uncon
scious. Him conscious. Then comes Act I. —
the anointing unto the burial in the house at
Bethany. Then follows an interlude — the
treacherous disciple, gangrened vrith covetous-
ness, is seen rejoicing the hearts of the priests
with the offer to sell his Master to them.
Then comes Act II. — the preparation for the
Passover, and at the sitting dovm the tragic

The Shadow op Death. 267
announcement that the traitor is there in the
group of disciples. Then Act III. — the Last
Supper and the Paschal hymn. Act IV. —
Gethsemane, the agony and the arrest. Then
another interlude ; a young man in a linen
cloth who appears and flies, leaving his garment
behind, naked. Surely this must be Mark
the Evangelist. There is no other reason for
the passage. He wishes in this way to hint
that he saw what was done that day. It is
like the initials of the painter woven dexter
ously into the subject of the picture. Then
Act V. — ^the judgment, and the verdict of the
nation's priests upon the nation's King. And
the curtain falls upon the drama vrith a scene,
an epilogue, inexpressibly sad. There in the
courtyard is the chief disciple vehemently
declaring he never knew his Master, and then,
appropriate end for a tragedy, drovmed on
recollection in conscious tears.
It vriU not do for us to touch this theme
except vrith the reverent hands of imagination
and of love. Ask that you may understand it,
and that you may read its eternal lessons. If
you are simply bent on looking at it as one
picture in a gallery, to gaze and to pass on, I

268 The Shadow op Death.
beg you not to look at it at all. Only if you
can give an undivided attention, if you vrill
gaze and meditate and pray, if you vriU sum
mon all your powers to bring the scene before
you just as it happened, and to bring to the
scene the sober criticism of one who desires
the truth, combined with the passionate love
and submission of those who know the truth
when they see it — only so come and look at
this picture, and let the records pass into your
soul. I omit the prelude and the interludes and
the epilogue ; they proceed there in the back
ground, the dark workings of maUce and
treachery, of fear and remorse. We shaU not
forget them ; but we may pass to the five acts
and fix our thought on Him who is the centre
of them all, and see what is in His mind as
well as what happens to His person.
Act I. The first act sets us in the house of
Simon at Bethany, and Jesus is there. He is
going to die in two days' time. He knows it,'
He feels it in every fibre of His sensitive frame.
Death is always terrible. But sinful bodies
are akin to it ; He alone could know its real
terrors whose sinless body was out of all

The Shadow op Death. 269

necessary touch with death. That we should
die is nature, and the shock is softened by the
sad congruity of all natural processes. But for
Him to die was a strange and outrageous in
congruity. It was as if some dark jet of
oozing water from an earthly swamp spurted
up and quenched the sun. He has no relation
to death. He is united with it only by a tour de
force, and it is this terrific and jarring discord
that sobs and quivers through the chapter- — •
that He should die ! And there is this woman
at the house. Does this woman know ? Women
have strange intuitions, especially in the
shadow of death. She takes her alabaster
vase and snaps the neck, so that the precious
spikenard flows over His head. He says it is
done for His burial. She means it as a token
of a love that spares nothing. So we always
pour our spikenard on our loved ones when
they are sUpping away from us.
We bless that woman. She relieves, by ex
pressing, our own yearning affection and tearful
reverence. When all were betraying and
deserting Him, when He was to be left alone,
to be mocked and mauled and murdered, this
dear creature silently and tenderly poured the

270 The Shadow of Death.
consecrating gratitude of humanity over the
Saviour of Men. God bless her ! She shaU be
remembered for all time. And He was grate
ful. With a sweet hunulity which breaks
our hearts. He claimed, against the grudging
niggardliness of some spectators who thought
it waste, that He might have the attention just
for this once which we purse-proud human
beings affect to give, rather than give, to the
poor. Act II. The second act takes us into Jerusa
lem again. It is the day on which the Paschal
Lamb wUl be slain at nightfall, and Jesus is
walking in a shadow, for He knows that He is
the Lamb for this yearj and for aU years to
come. He makes that evident in all He says
and does in these two acts. But there is a kind
of mystery which attends the proceedings of
that day. " Go up to the city," He said to
two of them, " go into the street and you
will see there a strange spectacle, a man —
not a woman — carrying a pitcher of water
upon his head. Go into the house where
he enters, and there you vrill find My guest-
chamber. You did not know I had a room
in Jerusalem? Yes, but I have. It is aU,

The Shadow op Death. 271
as it were, pre-arranged — nothing is happen
ing by chance to-day. It is My guest-chamber.
To-night for the first time it wiU be opened,
and it vrill never be shut again, nor vrill the
guests cease to arrive untU we have the great
upper chamber ready, and we gather them in
from the north and the south, and the east and
the west." They do what He teUs them and
make ready for the evening. Now the evening
comes, and they aU enter the city again. They
find the house, and mount to the upper room,
and stretch themselves upon the couches round
about the table. And the first course of that
memorable feast is served. It is that course
of bitter herbs, the word from His hps, " One
of you sitting here vrith Me, one of you
will betray Me." Is it you, is it I ? I know
what is coming from His lips. It is just, it is
necessary. If I betray Him it were indeed
better, far betber, that I had never been born,
or had perished as an untimely fruit of the
womb. Is it you? Is it I? " One of you
vriU betray Me."
Act III. And we pass to the third act. The
scene remains the same, but it is all mysteri
ously and wonderfully changed. No words can

272 The Shadow op Death.
describe the touching solemnity of that which
is now to take place. They are all agitated
with that searching question, " Is it I that shall
betray Him?" And He, too, is thinking of
the death which approaches, though He looks
far beyond it to another feast of a different
kind in the Kingdom of God. But this is the
last meal He will ever eat with them on earth.
He is to part from them, the men who have
companied with Him for these few months.
You can see what is in His mind — vrill they
forget Him, these who to-night wiU forsake
Him and flee? This protesting disciple who
early to-morrow morning vriU thrice declare
that he does not know Him ? WiU they forget
Him altogether ? Or if they remember Him,
vrill they understand what He is doing for
them? Perhaps they will only remember that
He was a kind teacher, a benevolent healer,
a brave leader, who tragicaUy perished. Per
haps they will come to think that His death,
deliberately faced, was only an accident in His
life. Perhaps they vriU miss the connection
between it and their salvation, their re-birth,
their forgiveness. All this passes through
His thoughts. He will, therefore, make a

The Shadow op Death. 273
covenant with them at this table, a covenant
which they wiU never be a,ble to forget, which
vriU last just as long as the world lasts, a
covenant which, remembered, wiU never cease
to teU them the meaning of what He is doing.
He wUl turn the supper into a new testament
for them. So He takes the bread and breaks
it ; that is His body. He takes the wine and
pours it out ; that is His blood. " You shall
take and eat and drink, and you wiU never
forget. I die to-morrow. You will remember
why I died, and how My dying shaU be your
meat and your drink unto Ufe everlasting, until
I drink the new wine in the Kingdom of God,
vrith you ransomed, at My table." Well might
they now sing together the Great Hallel. This
is the new Passover celebrated once, but now
to be celebrated for ever — the Master is dying
for His disciples.
Act IV. — The fourth act takes us over the
Kedron again to the slope of Olivet. Now, I
ask you, do you see Him in Gethsemane, or are
your eyes heavy, too? And do you sleep as
they slept ? Oh, watch and pray ! The spirit
is willing enough to understand what happened
in the garden, but the flesh is weak. Is there
18

274 The Shadow op Death.
any one who tracks Him in the garden to betray
Him vrith a kiss ? The foes of Jesus ' would
never find Him, perhaps would never seek Him,
but for the traitor in His own circle. Every
betrayal comes from one who has knovm Him,
and knovm Him intimately. I coiUd have
vrished at times that the three had been able to
share that brief vigil with Him; that they could
have supported just for one hour that sacred
companionship. And yet in my own guilty
failures, my own want of vigilance, my ovm
weariness in prayer, I gain a faint consolation
from their apathy, though I feel a fresh self-
condemnation in my ovm indignant censtu'e of
them. "You could not watch with Him an hour,"
I say to them, reproachfuUy, and they to me,
"Nor you, either." But look at Him. He is
calm in manner, but in His eyes there is a dazed
horror of suffering. His soul seems bowed down;
it is pushed to the very brink of the River of
Death. It is
That utter grief which sees no further pass.
But from the verge looks on vacuity.
Now we shall know what is meant by
calling Him a man, and insisting on His
humanity ; for He is pleading in a passion, in

The Shadow op Death. 275
an agony of prayer, that this may pass' away,
that He may be spared this intolerable hour.
He cannot drink the cup ; it is a cup that no
man can drink ; it is an unspeakable cup.
But now we shaU understand why we never
cease to say, " Though He is Man, He is God."
He is Di'rine indeed, for in that mortal agony
of shrinking humanity the whole Spirit rises
up in Him, and He says, " Not My will, but
Thine be done."
Act V. — The final scene is before the judges
of His people. It shakes one vrith a nameless
terror. It is no common miscarriage of justice
this ; it is not a deed done once and for ever.
There we mistake and forget. That court sits
stUl. Li-ring men are on that bench. All is
done just as it was done. I could name those
men on the judgment-seat; they are familiar
to me. I could point out those who spit upon
Him, who, throvring a veil over Him, buffet
Him and cry scornfully, " Prophesy ! " It is
terrible, when you think Who He is, to see
what men are saying and doing ! What is
their charge against Him ? They have got a
garbled version of a great word He once
uttered. He said He would rise again, and

276 The Shadow op Death.
they wiU have none of it; He shall not rise
again — ^they vrill put Him in a tomb and set a
seal upon it ; He shall not rise. He shaU not
break our natural law, for we are men of
science. And they have twisted it into a
charge against Him ; they have read it as a
threat against their antiquated pieties, their
confident atheisms, their petty and purbUnd
sciences. It is the one thing they wUl not
have of Him — ^that He should be supernatural,
and that the God who made them shoiUd press
through their human flesh to meet them and to
save them. And so they will sit in judgment
on Him, and with all the forms of justice they
vrill ask Him candidly, " Now tell us — we are
vrishful to be quite fair — teU us, are You the
Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" And He,
with perfect simplicity, says, " I am." In a
necessary truthfulness He teUs them. He warns
them, that He will come in the clouds of
heaven and judge them who judge Him. He
must tell them. He coiUd not help being
the Son of God. He could not forego His
mighty and triumphant reign because of these
malicious denials and obstinate assaults. He
is bound to tell them, and He does. " Art

The Shadow of Death. 277
Thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?"
" I am, and ye shaU see me coming in the
clouds of heaven." And they turn on Him,
and say, " You lie ! you lie ! " They condemn
Him as worthy of death, and the verdict rever
berates along the roof of the world's judgment
hall. It has come from human lips ever
since. Always the same from the kinglets
and the princeUngs, the scientists and the
sophists of earth. They say He hes because
He tells them the truth, and avows what He
came to tell them — that He is the Son of
God, Who died for their sins, and wUl rise
again because of their justification. They
oondemn Him.
Now, we have seen what He is ; we have traced
Him hitherto in these simple records of His life.
Have you found a word unworthy on His lips ?
Have you found a deed un-GodUke at His
hands ? He has marched before you in all the
manifest Divinity of His profound, self -humbled
meekness, in your flesh, amongst you, that He
may teach you. And you have been permitted
to look into His eyes ; you know a little of what
He is from word and deed. And these men
think He is worthy of death; they pass

278 The Shadow op Death.
sentence upon Him that He shall die as a
felon. Oh, God grant that you and I may
not be found sitting in the seat of the scorn
ful, and taking part in the condemnation of
the Son of God !

xvn.
THE CARTOON OF THE CRUCIFIXION.
(Mark xv)

toE CARTOON OF THE CRUCIFIXION.
When you are reading the story of an
ordinary human life, supposing you have
entered sympathetically into it, and have
reaUsed at aU the character and the aims of the
person described, it will go hard with you if
the closing scene, however curtly it is presented,
does not stir you with some emotion. For there
is an undying pathos in death. To look at the
motionless form, the aggressive stillness of the
pose, and to reflect, "This morning he was
aUve Uke me," will bring a sharp pain through
the heart and fetch into sight that shape
of awe which always lurks behind the arras of
hfe. And supposing the person of whom you
have been reading is in any way great or bene-
flcent, has achieved something, or at least has
striven to achieve ; if he has borne and dared
before he died, the death, especially if it be
sudden, vriU affect you with an indescribable
perturbation. There are people, I know, who

282 The Cartoon op the Crucifixion.
disdain to be moved, but they are in no natural
condition, they have taken narcotics at the
hand of pride, or selfishness, or lust. Most
of us need have no such disdain.
To approach the death of Jesus, if you have
sympathetically studied His life, is more affect
ing than any other experience of the kind, just
in proportion as His life is more beautiful and
His death is more outrageous, more cruel, the
darkest blot upon that humanity which is
stained with so many deeds of guilt.
If we were to gather to a head aU the
elements of suffering in that event which veiled
the heavens in gloom, we should be detained
from studying the event itself. But there is
one consideration seldom noticed, and very
unfamiliar to most of us, which, if it stood
quite alone, might suffice to enlist our tenderest
sympathies with the sufferer. It is usuaUy
only the least of pains — the physical — which
the imagination avails to depict. There is no
pain merely physical so keen as this — to be
conscious in your self of great powers, to be
impelled by the noblest motives, to burn with
a great message for the world, and yet to find
in life no scope, no recognition, no opportunity.

The Cartoon of the Crucifixion. 283
What MUton suffered when he had rolled out
the majestic music of Paradise Lost to the
deaf ears of the England of the Restoration,
what Sir John Eliot suffered when his patriotic
protest was quenched in the dismal and in
terminable sohtude of the Tower, only high-
strung natures can adequately conceive. Pos-
' terity discounts these pains because Eliot and
MUton are among the immortals. Yes ! but
they reached their immortaUty through their
pains. And in the same way, when we are
studying the death of our Lord, we are so
occupied vrith the joy that was set before
Him, and we are so impressed by experience
with His soaring and victorious power, that
we see the cross through the nimbus of the
resurrection, and seldom attain even a glimpse
of its actuality to Him. We speak about it
theologically or conventionaUy ; we cast over it
the golden glamour of Perugino, or we reUeve
the spiritual tension by the magnificent natur-
aUsm of Michael Angelo.
Let us look at it with unflinching reahsm ;
leave aside for a moment what it meant,
and think only of what it was. Do not
bring a tacit theory of His miraculous power.

284 The Cartoon op the Crucifixion.
of His superhuman nature, of His Divine
origin, to depreciate and lessen the horror.
It is evidently the purpose of this Evangelist
that you should look straight at the drear
and ghastly fact. We must not even use
the word Cross — That is glorified ; it is the
symbol of the world's civihsation, it is the
recognised interpretation of noble human life.
You must not call it a cross ; you read into it
then a thousand things you have learned since.
Approaching it through history we carry the
glory of the fruitage into the dark and
tortuous root. You must approach it from
the further side, from the side on which Jesus
Himself approached it. And how does it look
then ? It is a sordid, shamefiU gallows, such
as is reserved for the very vilest of criminals.
The sentence is executed by an alien and
usurping Government, through the hands of
brutal soldiers. But that is not the sting of
it. The sting of it is that the sentence was
extorted from this alien Government un
willingly by the mahcious outcry of His
friends. His nation. His countrymen. The
sufferer dies there deserted. He has seen a
murderer chosen by preference at the election

The Cartoon op the Crucifixion. 285
of His own people. The work He had tried
to do seems scattered to the winds. He had
chosen a few men to be with Him, but they
have all deserted Him. Even the women — the
brave hearts of women — only watch Him afar
off. But that is not the worst. His people
taunt and deride Him, and there are no barbs
so poisoned as the barbs of scorn. There is, as
far as we can see, no grain of alleviation on the
human side, and if there should be added the
sense of God Himself having forsaken Him,
no aUe-riation on the Divine side, no relief,
no possible relief — the sense of suppression,
of faUure, of rejection, aggravated by every
conceivable suffering — physical, mental, and
spiritual. The story is told quite artlessly ;
there in no attempt to exaggerate, or even to
paint the details, but it appeals to us in its
simpUcity. " Was there ever sorrow like unto
His sorrow ? "
There are three scenes.
1. We vrill suppose we are among the crowd
that throngs the Pretorium, and peers in at the
gate, trying to catch the fragmentary reports
of what goes on in the court, or to obtain a
glimpse of what is done by the soldiery.

286 The Cartoon op the Crucifixion.
The word passes among the people that the
Prisoner is being cross - questioned by the
magistrate. The charges against Him are
discussed, as one after another is reported,
by tongues of doubtful sympathy. There is
a momentary impression made by the report
that He has in so many words declared Himself
to be the King of the Jews. But when it is
understood that He has no answer to make to
the several points of the indictment, more than
one of the thoughtless multitude conclude that
silence is a confession of guilt. Presently
Pilate comes out to the front of the HaU, and
a murmur runs through the throng that he is
asking, according to his custom, which of his
prisoners should be released. The men of the
priests' party are busy in suggestion. "Ask
for Barabbas," they say, "our true national
hero, who led a revolt against the alien govern
ment and even killed one of the legionaries."
And, led as a crowd vrill be by the mere impact
of a resolute purpose, where all purposes are
vague, they raise the flerce cry, which swells
gradually into unanimity, " Release Barabbas,
and gibbet Jesus."
Then eager eyes strain to see the rough

The Cartoon op the Crucifixion. 287
horseplay wliich goes on in the guard-room,
where the soldiers in mockery are dressing
their victim in the counterfeit insignia of a
king. A coarse laugh breaks from the fortun
ate few who can see all that goes on, as the
careless soldiers pay Him a pretended homage,
as one in the act of bowing fetches Him a
smart blow vrith his soldier's cane, and another,
approaching as if to kiss, spits into His face.
Meanwhile the bitter zealots of Judaism con
vince themselves that this is the due meed of
an impostor. " Messiah, indeed, a feUow who
never carried a sword in His life, and who told
us to love our enemies ! How does He love the
soldiers yonder, I wonder ? "
2. But let us get away for a moment
from this rabble of the street, and let us stand
with these trembhng women who have taken
up their post at a point where they can com
mand the Gate and also the Hill of the SkuU,
for that is where the execution will take place,
and they can see all the distance between.
They watch eagerly as the rabble pours
through the Gate, and mark with trembling
indignation each development of the drama.
They are thankful when a passer-by is forcibly

288 The Cartoon op the Crucifixion.
enlisted to carry the Cross, and mark the
man for grateful recognition by-and-by. Their
eyes follow the slow ascent of the little, skull-
shaped hill, the preparations for execution, the
stripping of the prisoners, the proffer of a
stupefying draught, which by their Lord is
refused. Above the tumult and the surging of
the crowd comes the sharp ring of the hammer
as the nails are driven in. They venture a
little nearer, where they can see the inscription
over the Cross — to them so true, to those who
placed it there so contemptuous — ^the King of
the Jews. They are within earshot of the
scornful words addressed to Him by the circle
of His persecutors, and every word pierces their
hearts like a sword. But as they would -with
draw to their coign of vantage, they are pre
vented by the sudden fall of night. It is the
hour of noon, but for three hours darkness
reigns supreme. A terrible stillness invades
the frightened crowd ; and a voice rises distinct
out of the horrid gloom. One of these women
knows it at once. " It is my Son's voice ; He
is speaking in the old famiUar language we
used to speak at Nazara, long ago." What
are the words which thus, on the lips of death.

The Cartoon op the Crucifixion. 289
revert to the days of boyhood? They are "My
God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? "
Few present understood the words. His mother
did ; yet even she does not draw more surely
the inference from the whole scene than the
Centurion who had commanded the soldiers
at the execution. It came upon him vrith an
irresistible conviction — a conviction the fuU
grounds of which are implied rather than
stated — that this was the Son of God.
3. The long hours have passed and it is six
o'clock, and the news has reached the governor
in the Pretorium that the criminal is dead.
And a councillor of the Sanhedrim comes to
the door vrith a strange request : May he bury
this criminal ? He wants permission, for a
strange impression has come over him that a
great mistake has been made. Criminals do
not behave like that at the bar, nor do they die
like that on the gibbet. And he would like to
bury Him. It is a poor and inadequate repar
ation. The corpse of one wb have vnonged is
a cold recipient of our penitence and tears.
But there is some discharge of conscience
even in this : May we bury Him ? The
permission is granted. And he has come
19

290 The Cartoon op the Crucifixion.
to the cross, and taken dovm the body.
What a majestic form it is 1 He died vrith
that avrful cry upon His lips, but He does not
look now as if God had forsaken Him. Far
otherwise 1 It is a look of victory upon the
dead face, and we will put Him now into this
rocky grave — it is the primeval undeflled rock
— and we will roll the stone before the
entrance. And who are those two shadows gliding
through the dusk and leaning forward with
a kind of peering intensity, as if they vrished
to see through the gloom the solitary deed of
reverence and love ? They are the two Marys.
They wish to know precisely where He was
put, and the day after to-morrow, when they
have rested for the Sabbath, they vrill bring
the things to embalm and anoint His body.
He has gone, but His body is stUl vrith them,
and they will do reverence to it.

XVIII.
THE RESURRECTION. (Mark xvi.)

THE RESURRECTION.
You will notice in the Revised Version that
there is a Uttle gap between verse 8 and
verse 9 of this closing chapter, and you vrill
see in the margin at verse 9 that these
concluding verses are not found in two of the
oldest manuscripts, and that in some manu
scripts a different ending is attached to this
Gospel. But even apart from this statement
of the R.V., any careful reader would easUy
observe that these closing words are not an
integral part of St. Mark's Gospel. The mere
way in which Mary Magdalene is mentioned
in verse 9 shows that it is a different source.
St. Mark's Gospel breaks off abruptly at
the end of verse 8, and all this appendix,
w. 9 — 20, was added afterwards — added very
early, we cannot say by whom. It is a resume
of the things which are told us in the other
Gospels, and if we had no other Gospel we
should be devoutly thankful even for this

294 The Resurrection.
fragment. As it is, we wiU not divert our
attention from the closing verses of the true
Mark in order to study that resume.
St. Mark's way of ending his narrative is
characteristic and very striking. It is evidently
his purpose to present in graphic simpUcity
the amazement of the Resurrection. He states
the fact not directly, but by shovring the
impression produced upon the first observers
of it. And then he leaves us with some of the
fresh wonder and, let us add, some of the awe
and fear, resting for ever on our hearts in
recognition of the greatest event that has ever
happened upon earth.
There are, of course, amongst us a great
number of persons who frankly teU us they
do not beUeve the event ever did happen, and
in our day they proceed to say that they would
not believe it on any evidence whatever, not even
on the evidence of their ovm senses, for if they
had seen it they would have concluded that they
were under some hallucination or other. With
people in that frame of mind we cannot stop
to argue ; but if the event happened, and if it
was to be recorded in any historical form, we
may well ask whether it would be possible to

The Resurrection. 295
have a record more simple, more artless, more
self-evidential than the little story which is
contained in the first eight verses of this
chapter. I suppose the consummate art of
Daniel Defoe might produce the same effect of
reality in fiction, but of such art there can be
no question in the present instance; and if
any narrative ever could upon its face carry
its own authenticity, we may venture to affirm
that such a narrative is here. You could not
read these verses quietly without the con-riction
that the writer is perfectly sincere in telling
you what, according to the best of his belief,
actually happened, and you cannot reflect on
what he tells you without a growing conviction
that what he states is so coherent, so natural,
so taken from the life, that if jou are to avoid
the conviction of its truth, really the best way
is to side with those extreme sceptics and take
the strong ground : " The thing did not happen
because it could not have happened ; I -will
not believe it on any evidence, for it is a priori
incredible." How curious it is that men should
be so rapid in foreclosing this momentous
question and thrusting from them the greatest '
fact in the world because from its very nature

296 The Resurrection.
it is an exceptional fact ! How curious that
men should be so anxious to hug the rags
of their mortality and refuse the garment of
immortal life, to keep down among the mists
of the valley when the very voice of God is
summoning them to the mountain-top 1
But we shall better estimate the value of the
plain appeal to our own sense of truth and
reahty if we dwell for a few moments on the
scene which is presented to us. It is, of
course, an exceptional and a surprising scene,
and when we come to deal vrith such a scene it
is best to get it distinctly before us, and then
to appreciate the surprise that is in it.
I. No other evangelist of the four leaves on
the mind so terrible a sense of unreUeved gloom
in describing the Crucifixion as St. Mark. The
last word of Jesus that he records is that
terrible word translated "forsaken," and the
last sound is that great inarticulate cry, the
words of which St. Mark did not know. Other
Evangelists soften the description by recording
other events and other words at the Crucifixion;
but we are looking only at this one authority ;
we are living, as it were, in the spirit of his
description. Accordingly, we feel at once that

The Resurrection. 297
when these women, mourning and desolate,
came to -risit the sepulchre at sunrise on the
first day of the week, there was in their minds
no thought of a resurrection ; their sole idea
was to complete the burial which had been
hastily performed at nightfall, when the
Sabbath began the day before yesterday. And
vrith that curious alertness to practical detail
which good women usually show in the midst
of trouble, when men's minds are bevrildered
and disorganised, these women are talking,
not, as you would imagine, about their great loss
or about their dead Lord, but simply about a
practical -question : However will they be able
to roll away that great stone which they saw
Joseph and his servants put before the tomb on
that sad evening? How consolatory are the
Uttle offices of reverence to the dead ; and how
heart-soothing to be doing something about the
lifeless form, when to sit stUl vrith folded hands
thinking about the loss would be intolerable !
It has come to this vrith the women — it comes
to this vrith all people in grief — ^that their sole
concem is about that stone ! Their pale faces
would flush vrith joy, and their eyes would
sparkle, if only they could see some way by

298 The Resurrection.
which they could get into the tomb. How
natural that is, and how simple ! It is just
what happens, it is just what no one ever
thinks of inventing. And what a beautiful
irony of fact it is that we are detained
with this tender feminine solicitude just as
we are approaching the stupendous event. We
pause and think about these three women ;
there is something homely about their action.
It is like a little domestic relief in the midst
of great affairs. We come close to them. The
first of them, the leader in all these deeds of
love, is Mary of Magdala. We cannot tell what
is implied in that strange assertion that out
of her the Lord had cast seven devUs. That
is a language of which we have lost the key.
But she represents those who love much
because they have been much forgiven. He
had — ^this Lord of hers — He had been UteraUy
everything to her, the making^ of her life.
You could understand how you would love Him
if He had been as much to you. Fortunate
woman ! Happy in her womanhood, and in
her woman's faculty of cleaving with unques
tioning devotion to a person — a faculty that
has ranked so many women among the truest

Tee Ees-urrection. 299
Christians and the most eminent saints. The
others — Mary, and Salome the wife of Zebedee
— are matrons, and might have been His
mother, for their o-wn sons were among His
disciples. They are the older womanhood, and
Mary of Magdala the younger. But all three
had been accustomed to follow Him about
during His -work in Galilee, and to render to
Him those gentle and gracious services by
which women are able to transform, and to
beautify, and to console, and to strengthen the
lives of those whom they love. Strange to say,
we learn nothing of their character ; our atten
tion is entirely fixed upon their womanhood.
And weU it may be ! Well might they be the
first at that open tomb, for it was the davm of
a new day for woman.
II. But the stone, great as it was, had been
rolled away, and they could walk straight into
the rocky chamber without let or hindrance. It
was morning, and sunrise is not favourable for
ghostly visitations or vapoury imaginings. But
as they stepped out of the clear, intense sun
light into the gloom of the rocky chamber,
they were fairly taken aback. For sitting on
the right-hand side as they entered was a young

300 The Resurrection.
man clothed in white, who, a mysterious in
stinct told them, was not a man of flesh and
blood. All who have seen similar apparitions
bear their testimony to the unique effect pro
duced upon the mind by them. The appari
tion seems to be an ordinary human being,
is indeed very often one weU kno-wn and loved,
the nearest and dearest friend; but a subtle
in-tuition corrects the impression of the senses,
and explains at once that there is something
strange in this appearance. As Job put it :
" A spirit passed before my face ; a form was
before my eyes ; silence, and I heard a noise."
There is, of course, a sense of fear, of awe, an
agitation of the spirit; but it is not that
agonising terror which you would have ex
pected if it had been told you beforehand. The
recipient of these strange communications is
immediately attempered to the conditions,
passes at once into the unfamiUar atmosphere,
and while everything he sees and hears is
certain to him as anything that has ever
happened in his life, he becomes incredible to
other people. Say what he wiU, they wiU dis
believe him, and speak about him as if what he
states were proof of a mild msanity. It would

The Resurrection. 301
be a mistake, therefore, to suppose that this
young man arrayed in white was intended to
be an e-ridence of the resurrection for all the
world. His testimony was applicable only to
those who saw him ; and, indeed, we are ex
pressly told in the appendix that even the
disciples themselves, who were waiting in tears
and sorrow, remembering He had said that
He would rise, even the disciples themselves
blankly disbelieved the statement of the women
(v. 11). You should not be so angry with the
sceptic of to-day who does not believe these
women ; the disciples did not. The evidence
of the resurrection is as immediate, as indi-
-ridual, as convincing to you and to me as it
was to these women, but their evidence is not
what convinces us. This record in its calm,
translucent simplicity is simply meant to show
how the women were con-rinced that He had
risen. It is true that the Lord comes and reproaches
you and me with our unbelief ; He upbraids us
as He upbraided these disciples with their
hardness of heart, because we never wiU beUeve
those who have seen the risen Lord, and in
our fatuity and stupidity, when a person comes

302 The Resurrection.
and assures us on his word of honour he knows
that Christ is risen, we call him a fool, and
shut ourselves against the evidence. That is
why our Lord upbraids us. But He does
not blame any one for not believing Mary of
Magdala ; He blames us because we do not
believe the living vritnesses, and will not receive
their testimony. And as He upbraids us He is
Himself so near, so real, so pressing, chiding,
rebuking, and con-v-incing, that it is, after all.
His Presence which reminds us of our gmlt.
Yes ! I do not ask you to look at what
Mary of Magdala saw, I ask you to turn
inward for a moment — inward, away from
all these outward evidences. Do you ever
go. inward ? Do you ever look into those
vast chambers of the inner life? Go in
ward, and shut the door, and let Conscience
light her lamp to illumine the sombre vault,
and let the silent voices of your nature
speak — the instinct for God, the instinct for
immortality, the instinct for righteousness.
They are all there in you, though so silent and
forgotten; let them speak. Then ask your
selves. Can you seriously doubt that He is risen
from the dead and is alive for evermore ? It

The Resurrection. 303
is the fragmentariness of the record that is
always reminding us that we must go inward
if we would prove an event like this.
Do I address one who after all stands
doubting ? Do not, dear, troubled soul, think
that I am speaking reproachfully to you.
Do not I feel your doubt? You are seeking
"Jesus the Nazarene which hath been cruci-
fled," and you want with all your heart
some assurance of the eternal world. It may
be the reason why you want it is that one
you loved is just dead, and you -wish for the
first time to know the way thither. You
are seeking, you are turning over books of
evidence, and you are looking here and there,
expecting to find some material footprints of
the Son of Man, hoping to arrest the dead body
at least upon the threshold of the tomb. He is
not here. He is risen ! Go to His disciples ;
nay, go and be a disciple. Live as a disciple,
and you shall see Him as He has promised.
No apparition, no voice in the ear, no catena of
evidence could ever be so conclusive or so
distinct as the witness which the risen Lord
gives to the heart of those who are humble and
penitent and sincere, and eager to pour the

304 The Resurrection.
spices of love and devotion upon Him directly
they find Him. You are doubting, and the
key of your doubt lies in the chamber of your
heart. *****
III. And now these Cartoons of St. Mark
close with this memorable little picture. There
are three women hastily lea-ring the dark cave
in the rock. They are seized vrith tremor and
ecstasy. They could not say a word to any
one, the emotion is too -riolent, too trans
porting. You can see there is a fear upon
their faces and in their eyes. Afraid, not of
the apparition they saw; afraid, not of the
strange and perturbing occurrence ; but afraid
for this reason, that the great fact has just
crashed into their soul like a missUe which
breaks a rock and opens fountains of unex
pected waters. They want to be alone. Do
you not know anything of that fear when
beings and truths unrealised break in upon you,
and you find yourself in the world of yesterday
transformed, and the Being you never knew,
realised ? Do you not know that fear ? Then
you cannot understand this verse. You cannot
expect to understand things you do not know.

The Resurrection. 305
But when that fear comes you are like these
women, you want to be alone for awhile, you
want to recoUect, to realise, to grasp this
transforming truth : He is not lost, then,
though we said " Good-bye." He is not dead,
though we buried Him. He is risen. He
is passing before us into Galilee, to that
familiar GalUee. He is coming back to us in
the common daily ways of life. It is not to be -
a way vrithout Him, but a way -with Him,
walking by His side, listening to a voice,
though not always audible ; our eyes fixed on a
face, though not always seen.
As that truth — ^the truth of this Gospel —
enters into our hearts we, too, are overwhelmed
vrith the magnitude of the whole matter. We,
too, put dovm the book vrith fear and trem
bling. We have studied this marvellous Person
from the moment of His first appearance,
through all His kindly activity and spiritual
teaching, up to that final, that awful cross.
Our love and admiration have gone out to Him
ine-ritably. At each point in the narrative we
have not been able to resist the feeling that
"never did man speak like this man," and
never did a Ufe get lived like this life. But if
20

306 The Resurrection.
He were only a tale, a legend, a dream, if the
Gospel were only a play of iridescent colours
over a decaying past ? It has come to this, as
we have considered, that the very key to it all
is that He should be risen — alive for evermore ;
that our hearing of His words be attention to a
Voice that speaks, and our walking in His steps
be a companionship -with One that lives. That
is the key to it all. And when through a -rital
experience of the heart, through faith in Him,
and the quickening of the Holy Ghost, this
scene is given and you know that it is true,
what a tremor seizes your heart ! You can
see, on the faces of those who have knovm,
the solemn awe with which Ufe is lived thence
forth : He is risen and we are risen -with Him,
for it is all natural and inevitable; "they
trembled and were amazed, for they were
afraid."

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