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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

STUDIES OF THE PORTRAIT
OF CHRIST

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Lady Ecclesia. An Autobiography.
Second Edition, Crown 8vo, gilt top, 6s.
Sidelights from Patmos. Second Edition,
Crown 8vo, gilt top, 6s.
LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27 Paternoster Row

STUDIES OF THE
PORTRAIT OF CHRIST
BY THE REV. GEORGE MATHESON
M.A., D.D., F.R.S.E., FORMERLY MINISTER
OF THE PARISH OF ST. BERNARD'S
EDINBURGH

*

FIFTH EDITION
Completing 10,000

LONDON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27 PATERNOSTER ROW
1900

Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

PREFACE
In these pages I have endeavoured to trace
the spiritual development, not of the life,
but of the work, of Jesus exhibited in the
Gospel narrative. Necessarily, therefore, I
have fixed my attention not on the Divine
or miraculous, but on the human, side of
Christ. There can be no development in
miracles ; it is as wonderful to be an inch
above nature as to be a mile. Being a study
of development, the chapters, though very
short, are rigidly connected and cannot be
read in isolation. The book is not an
abstract essay with footnotes and references ;
it is semi-devotional ; each chapter ends either
with an invocation or a prayer. Having
completed the first part of the studies I offer
it by way of instalment and by way of
experiment. Should it meet with general
sympathy I should like to pursue the nar
rative to its close.
G. M.
Edinburgh, 1899.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGE
IN THE GALLERY, ... . . I

CHAPTER II
THE ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTMAS, . . . 1 5
CHAPTER III
THE MISSION OF JESUS, . . 27
CHAPTER IV
HOW WAS JESUS TO REALISE HIS MISSION? . 40
CHAPTER V
THE FORERUNNER, . . ... 52
CHAPTER VI
THE PLAN OF THE LIFE OF JESUS, ... 65

viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER VII PAGE
THE COUNTERPARTS OF THE THREE TEMPTA
TIONS,  76
CHAPTER VIII
THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL, , 89
CHAPTER IX
THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA, IOI
CHAPTER X
THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA, . . . 114
CHAPTER XI '
THE LEAGUE OF PITY, ..... 126
CHAPTER XII
PECULIARITIES OF THE LEAGUE OF PITY, . 138
CHAPTER XIII
THE FIRST CIRCLE OF THE LEAGUE OF PITY, . 149

CONTENTS ix

CHAPTER XIV PAGE
IHE EXTENSION OF THE RING, . . . 160

CHAPTER XV
THE EDUCATIONAL RETICENCE OF JESUS, . 173
CHAPTER XVI
THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE, 185
CHAPTER XVII
PREPARATION FOR A MISSIONARY CRUSADE, . 198
CHAPTER XVIII
PREPARATION FOR A MISSIONARY CRUSADE—
Continued,  210
CHAPTER XIX
THE SIMULTANEOUS SUPPLIANTS, . . . 222

" CHAPTER XX
THE LIMITATIONS OF THE FIRST MINISTRY, . 234

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXI
PAGE
THE LIBERALITY OF THE FIRST MINISTRY, . 247

CHAPTER XXII
THE FIRST COMMUNION,  259
CHAPTER XXIII
THE JOY OF JESUS,  272
CHAPTER XXIV
THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT, .... 284
CHAPTER XXV
THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE, . . . 298
CHAPTER XXVI
THE LINE OF TRANSITION, . . . . 31 T

CHAPTER I
IN THE GALLERY
In the gallery of human souls there is one
pre-eminent figure. It has been the study of
all artists, of all thinkers. From the most
opposite sides of the building men have seen
it, approached it, centred round it. It has been
studied by the lover of beauty ; it has been
lauded by the lover of the commonplace. It
has been examined in the interest of philo
sophy; it has been scrutinised in the interest
of childlike simplicity. It has been admired
as the embodiment of a creed ; it has been
eulogised as the negation of all creeds. It
has drawn the eyes of the mystic who wants
to soar above the world ; it has attracted the
gaze of the practical who find the world a
home. Wise men have sought it in the pur
suit of science; shepherds have sought it in
A

2 IN THE GALLERY
the guiding of their flocks ; Herod has sought
it in the policy of self-interest. Every avenue
of the mind has been at some time a road to
the Portrait of Jesus.
I wish as a humble spectator to take my
stand with the great crowd in front of the
great Portrait. I wish to approach it with
the eye of the heart — not to write an essay,
but to sing a song. It does not follow that
the perception must be less artistic. I have
read that on one occasipn of the Gospel story
a child was lifted up to see the Portrait of
Jesus. That youngest student in the art-
gallery had probably the view clearest of all.
His sight was antecedent to all theory, to all
argument. I should like to be that child;
I shall try. I would approach the Pic
ture as the child approaches it — without pre
possession, without a cause to plead, without
a brief to advocate. I would describe the
Picture as the child describes it — rather by
exclamation than by rounded speech. I would
forget the language of the schools, the names
of the theologians, the abstractions of the

IN THE GALLERY 3
logical and the learned. I would stand in
the presence, not of a scene recorded, but of
a scene passing. I would make the notes of
a reporter rather than draw the inferences of
a compiler. The Portrait before me is a pre
sent reality. The History may be a thing of
the past ; the Gospels may have their origin
in obscurity; but the Portrait is a fact of
to-day. It wants, not the annalist, but the
spectator. It wants the eye of the child — the
eye that has no yesterday, no preconception,
no image of the past to read into the Picture.
The youngest and humblest student of the
gallery had advantages over the Twelve.
In this gallery there are many portraits
of the religious life. Wherein lies the pre
eminence of Jesus? As I scan the various
faces I become impressed with a fact. The
difference between them and Jesus is not a
difference of feature; it is a difference of ex
pression — of motive. The moral features of a
man's life are his acts; his expression is the
motive for his acts. I have heard it said again
and again, ' The portrait of Christ is not

4 IN THE GALLERY
original.' You tell me that you can point out
the same features in Confucius, in Buddha, in
Zoroaster. Of course you can. It is just here
that the mystery lies. Nowhere is the differ
ence of the portraits so marked as where the
sameness of feature appears. It is from the
ground common to all flowers that the flower
of Jesus has sprung. Why do I wonder at
the difference between the animal and the
man? Precisely because I have established
the likeness of their mechanisms ; if they had
opposite mechanisms, I should not wonder. So
is it with Jesus. It is the ground common to
Him and me that makes the mystery to me.
It is precisely in the sphere of unity that the
point of diversity rises. I marvel most where
the fields meet.
Come, and let us see the truth of this. Let
us look round the gallery of great portraits;
let us measure Christ's with those of other
masters. Let us place Him side by side with
the sage of China — the strong, the solid Con
fucius. Is there a similarity between them?
Yes ; there is a marked likeness of feature.

IN THE GALLERY 5
Both have come to found a kingdom. Both
have come to found an earthly kingdom. Both
have proclaimed the value of homely and com
monplace duties. Both have turned the eyes
•of their disciples to the trivial things at their
feet. Confucius tells them to avoid flights
into the air, to keep their thoughts on the
soil of mother earth. The first public word
of Jesus is almost on the same lines, ' Blessed
are the poor in spirit.'
Yet, strange to say, it is here and nowhere
else that the difference appears. The origin
ality of Jesus lies not in the 'what,' but in
the 'why.' Why does Confucius value com
monplace duties ? Because he wants men to
be worldly. Why does Jesus value common
place duties? Because he wants men to be
««worldly. To the sage of China the power
to do little things is the proof of an earthly
intelligence ; to the Son of Man the power
to do little things is the proof of a heavenly
intelligence. To Confucius the blessedness
of the poor in spirit is the sense that they
are born from below; to Jesus the blessed-

6 IN THE GALLERY
ness of the poor in spirit is the sense that
they are born from above — 'theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.' And is not Jesus right ?
Do you think any man can pass through the
ordeal of commonplace duty unless he sees
something out of the common ? I do not. I
have never known Chinese work to be done
successfully without a vision beyond the work.
The boy does not learn his lesson by the light
of the lamp, but by the light of the coming
holiday. I do not think it is purely by pre
sent attention that work is best done. Rather
should I say that the attention to the present
comes from hope in the future. Yon poor
clerk who bends over his ledger is not sus
tained, by his ledger. His work would be
badly done if he did not see beyond it, hope
beyond it, dream beyond it. He could not
bear his poverty of spirit if he had not glimpses
of the kingdom of heaven. Very likely this
kingdom takes to him a human form — the
hope of promotion, the prospect of wealth,
the anticipation of domestic love. None the
less is it the vindication, not of Confucius,

IN THE GALLERY y
but of Jesus. It tells me that I cannot con
quer the hour by the hour. I must look
beyond if I would get through it — on to the
golden sands that are not yet upon the shore,
on to the cloudless skies that still are far
away. Let us pass to another side of the gallery
— from the sage of China to the sage of India.
Buddha and Christ — the names are often linked
together. And there is good ground for the
union. There is here again a similarity — nay,
an identity, of feature. They are both in the
attitude of sacrifice. Both cry, 'Give, give!'
Both have emptied themselves of a former
glory. Both have selected poverty, privation,
toil. Both call upon men to take up the
cross. Both are seen ascending the steps of
a Calvary. Yet here again it is the similarity of feature
that reveals the difference. Nowhere are these
figures so unlike as in their point of union.
The value of the cross to Buddha is the oppo
site of its value to Jesus. To Buddha the
cross is a submission to human misery; to

8 IN THE GALLERY
Jesus it is a protest against human misery.
Buddha calls upon men to realise their nothing
ness, to accept their nothingness, to bow the
knee to their nothingness ; Jesus calls upon
them to resent the imputation, to deny the
impeachment, to lift the burdens that humi
liate mankind. To Buddha the bearing of the
cross is a resignation to the state of humanity ;
to Jesus the bearing of the cross is a resist
ance to the state of humanity. Jesus calls on
me to lift the burden of my brother, not
because it is our common destiny, but because
it ought not to be there. His own endurance
of the cross is 'for the joy set before Him.'
If, like Buddha, He feels that all flesh is grass,
unlike Buddha, He would not have it so. He
calls upon His brethren to remove the grass,
to lift it up in bundles, to carry it away. This
carrying away is the burden of Jesus. It is
not the submission to pain ; it is the resist
ance to pain. It is the bearing of a present
load for the sake of a future freedom. It is
no surrender to calamity ; it is a bid for joy.
It is the payment of a price for human

IN THE GALLERY -9
"emancipation ; it is the acceptance oT ^a sore
1 operation for the permanent cure of suffering.
Look at another figure — the sage of Persia,
Zoroaster. Does he resemble Jesus in feature ?
Yes, very much. He comes to the world with
a war-cry. He says, 'Things are all wrong;
there is an evil Power fighting against God ;
arise and prepare for the battle.' Jesus, too,
has the sense of a coming struggle. He, too,
refuses to take an optimistic view of life. He,
too, bids his followers prepare for a scene of
conflict — for wars and rumours of wars. To
the sage of Persia, to the Prophet of Judah,
this world presents one and the same aspect
— the aspect of a great battlefield on which
the powers of earth war with the powers of
heaven. Are these portraits, then, identical ? No ; the
difference comes out just in their common
features. Zoroaster says in effect, 'You are
living in a fighting world ; therefore put on the
warlike spirit.' Jesus says, ' You are living in
a fighting world ; therefore put on the spirit of
peace' To Jesus it is not the warlike spirit

to IN THE GALLERY
that fts for war; it is the rest within. The
power that overcomes the world, with Him, is
peace. His preparation for conflict is mental
calm. It is by the lone hill-side that He braces
Himself for the sea. The mind that enters
into the struggles of His kingdom is the mind
at leisure from itself — undisturbed even by the
thought of its own foes. It is by the still small
voice that the Elijahs of His army conquer the
thunder, the earthquake, and the fire. Other
founders of religions promise peace at the end
of war ; the promise of Jesus is peace before
the battle.
Let us take one more figure of the great
gallery. This time let it be not from the East
but from the West. Let us select the man
who beyond all others in the sphere of thought
has caught the spirit of the Roman Empire —
the Stoic, Epictetus. What is that spirit of
the Roman Empire which he has incarnated ?
It is fortitude amid life's dangers, calmness
amid life's tempests, fearlessness amid life's
spectres. Jesus, too, has these Roman features.
His attitude is ever that of the man who walks

IN THE GALLERY „
upon the wave — who on the very crest of the
wave has said to his own soul, ' Peace, be still.'
Are, then, these two figures one? Has the
deformed slave on the banks of the Tiber re
produced the courage of the Man of Sorrows
on the banks of the Jordan ? Is the spirit of
the Roman Empire identical with the spirit of
the Kingdom of God ?
Nay, it is only their features that are alike.
Put again the question, Why ? and you will see
the difference. I do not say that Jesus walks
upon the wave more firmly than Epictetus. I
do not say that the man of the Tiber is less
free from fear than the Man of the Jordan.
But they are fearless for opposite reasons ;
nay, is not their fortitude valued for opposite
reasons? Epictetus stands upon the sea
because he has conquered his passions ; Jesus
stands upon the sea by reason of a great pas
sion of love — what we call the Lord's passion.
Epictetus has reached fortitude by restraining
the vital stream ; Jesus has reached fortitude
by enlarging the vital stream. Epictetus has
won by suppressing emotion ; Jesus has won

i a IN THE GALLERY
by the emotion of a wider interest. Epictetus
has seen the mountains of danger dwindle
because he has seen the world itself dwindle ;
to Jesus the mountains of danger have been
dwarfed, not by the contraction, but by the
extension, of the world. There are two ways
in which I may lose my fears — by a diminu
tion of interest, or by an increase of interest.
I may pass through the furnace because I have
ceased to feel pain, or I may pass through the
furnace to save another from pain. The one
is the courage of passionlessness ; the other is
the courage of pathos. The one has crucified
the sense of danger ; the other has eclipsed it
by the sense of a greater danger. The one has
conquered by the contraction, the other by the
expansion, of the heart.
And this latter is the movement of Jesus.
When He goes out into the storm, it is not
because the storm to Him has ceased to seem
violent. He does not deem it one whit less
destructive or the least more desirable than it
was yesterday. He does not estimate the
personal danger less, but the impersonal

IN THE GALLERY 13
danger more. He has treasures of the heart
in the storm ; those whom He loves are in the
wrecked ship. It is passion, not passionless
ness, that drives Him forth into the blast. He,
like the Stoic, can be dumb in the presence of
calamity ; but it is because He is absorbed in
listening to the complaints of another voice
whose loss in the calamity outweighs His own.

O ON of Man, before whose Portrait I stand
**-* to-day, Thou art still unique, alone. Thou
art never so unique, Thou art never so alone,
as where others touch Thee. Thou hast in Thy
possession treasures that once belonged to wise
men of the East and wise men of the West; but
in the sunlight where Thou standest they have
become new. I used to say, ' I have seen this
gold, this frankincense, and this myrrh, before.'
So I have ; but in Thy presence the gold is
more glittering, the myrrh more precious, the
frankincense more fragrant. Others have stood
on the same Mount with Thee ; but Thou
alone hast caught the glory. To me Thou

14 IN THE GALLERY
speakest ever, not on the Mount, but from the
Mount. Thy voice is from aloft ; I am always
below it. Even where it says old things I am
always below it. I may have seen the painted
rainbow before I saw the rainbow in the sky ;
yet the rainbow in the sky remains original.
So is it with my sight of Thee. Thy face gives
new meaning to the instincts of my soul. Old
words on Thy lips become winged. Plain
chords on Thy harp become melody. Truths
spoken long ago become discoveries in Thee.
The trite terms of endearment that man utters
to man thrill with the surprise of pathos when
they are uttered by Thee. The language is
from Bethlehem, but the accent is from
Heaven.

CHAPTER II
THE ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTMAS
Of the spectators of the Portrait of Jesus there
are some who have been in the gallery since
the morning. They were there before the
Portrait was brought in ; they expected it.
In one sense, all admiration of art is the
result of anticipation. I can only admire
what is already in my soul. If I shed tears
over a picture of love, it is because it appeals
to an old experience. Love cannot be painted ;
only its manifestation can be painted. If the
feeling is not previously within, the mani
festation will not put it there. The Portrait
of Jesus is no exception. There are some in
that gallery who have appreciated it from
the very outset. They could only do so on
the principle that Christmas light is older
than Christmas Day. Had the Portrait of
16

1 6 THE ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTMAS
Jesus been foreign to the world, the world
would never have accepted it. When Peter
recognised its beauty he was declared to be
blessed ; but why ? Was it because he had
received a revelation from the portrait ? Exactly
the reverse. It was because he had received
a revelation which the mere portrait could
never have given him — ' Flesh and blood hath
not revealed it unto thee, but my Father
which is in heaven.'
To my mind the great miracle of the land
of Palestine is its anticipation of Christianity.
And let me say that this miracle remains
when the scissors of criticism have clipped
away everything else. Though Moses should
be sent back to Egypt, though Daniel should
be devoured by the lions, though Isaiah
should again be sawn asunder, though David
should be robbed of his harp, though Solomon
should be deprived of his song, though Job
should receive severer buffetings than ever he
got from his friends, the miracle remains. It
is independent of the authorship of books ; it
would be undimmed by the proof that the

THE ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTMAS 17
books were forgeries. What is this miracle
of Jewish history ? The Portrait hangs in an
enchanted gallery; where lies the secret of
the enchantment? Let us look round, and
see. At first we see nothing. Everything in the
building seems made to disenchant. Never
have I seen so great a portrait in so con
temptible a frame, in so mean a room. What
is this land of Palestine which is the back
ground of the Picture? A narrow strip of
almost imprisoned soil. About a hundred
and forty miles measure its length; an average
of forty constitutes its breadth. It is small
room for walking in. Yet, within these limits
nature seems determined to enclose it ; she
has shut it in, and turned the key. On every
side there is a wall, an impeding of free in
tercourse. On the north rise the Lebanon
ranges. On the south yawns the desert of
Sinai. On the east stretches the valley of
Jordan. On the west lave the blue waters
of the Mediterranean. One would say that
in this land God had specially fulfilled His
B

1 8 THE ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTMAS
purpose of barring man from the gates of
Eden ; for here the cherubim and the flaming
sword turn in every direction to keep the way
of the tree of life.
Perhaps you will tell me that, like Noah in
the ark, Palestine has escaped the flood by
being shut in. It has not. No nation has
had so little time on Mount Ararat, such
brief snatches of rest. Its peculiarity does
not come from its changelessness. It has
never worn a permanent garb. It has shifted
its governments continually. It has been suc
cessively a wandering tribe, an assemblage of
clans under a chief, a people under a law
giver, a race ruled by military leaders, a state
subject to a king, a province swayed by foreign
governors, a community dominated by its own
priesthood. Truly there is nothing in the
history of this land which could have suggested
to itself the pride of permanence !
Nor is there aught in the secular attain
ments of this land which could have suggested
this pride. Take away its God, and nothing
remains. It might well say, ' The Lord is my

THE ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTMAS 19
sun and my shield.' I see within its treasury
few temporal gifts. The land which gave
the great Portrait to the gallery is itself
without art. It likes neither pictures nor
statues. It has no theories of philosophy,
no schools for the wisdom of man. I doubt
if it has even an eye for nature. Its poets
are all psalmists ; they sing no beauty but
the beauty of God. If they praise the sun,
it is because He ' has set a tabernacle ' there.
If they laud the genial breezes, it is because
He 'rides upon the wings of the wind.' If
they feel the grandeur of the storm, it is
because His voice 'breaketh the cedars.' If
they sing of the river, it is not to tell of its
majestic sweep, but to indicate how it ' makes
glad the city of God' If they rejoice in the
harvest fields, it is because they see in the
mellow autumn His 'crowning of the year.'
This land is secularly weak all round; God
alone is its refuge and its strength. It has no
deep thought like India, no genius for stability
like China, no sense of beauty like Greece, no
high culture like Egypt, no powerful armies

20 THE ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTMAS
like Rome. In itself it is a bundle of nega
tions. Its very law is less a command to do
right than a prohibition to do wrong. It seems
a poor soil for a great planting.
Yet the planting has been tremendous. This
small patch of naturally unproductive ground
has made a claim which takes the breath away.
It has professed to give a king to the whole
world ! This, and nothing less than this, is the
consistent and persistent claim of the Jewish
race. It is never so persistent as when the
natural barrenness is most pronounced. Rome
may have cherished such a hope in the days of
her splendour. But Judah's boast of empire
is loudest in the days of her dilapidation.
Nowhere is her music so triumphant as when
the string of her harp is broken. In the time
of prosperity she is almost silent; but when
the clouds come, she sings. It is from the
chains of captivity that her voice sounds most
imperious ; her songs of jubilee are songs in
the night. Her King is coming — her conquer
ing King. His dominion shall be boundless,
endless. He shall establish through all lands

THE ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTMAS 21
a reign of righteousness. I do not think it is
physical conquest that is ever contemplated.
'The Gentiles shall come to His light, and
kings to the brightness of His rising.' They
are to be drawn by the beauty of a spectacle —
not driven by the force of a blow. The enemies
of this King are to be pierced ; but they are to
be pierced with arrows of light. They are to
fall down before Him, not from dread, but
from love, of Him. He is to gather all
nations because He is to be ' the desire of all
nations.' His kingdom is to be imperishable
because it is to be humanitarian — for man as
man. That is the claim of a nation which
itself, physically and mentally, has always
been but a fragment of humanity — impressed
with its own monopoly, and unsympathetic
with the world at large.
But now, to me standing in the gallery
to-day, there comes a second wonder. This
bold dream has been realised ; this Portrait
has dominated the world. It has dominated
even those parts of the world which have not
taken the Christian name. The nations in

22 THE ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTMAS
front of the Portrait have become the leading
nations, the light-bearing nations ; like the sun
and moon of the third morning they have been
set to rule both the day and the night. The
Christian creed is limited ; the Christian air is
#«limited. It has set in motion currents of
which it may literally be said 'their line is
gone out through all the earth, and their words
unto the end of the world.' 'Thou hast re
ceived tribute even among the rebellious,' sings
one of the poets of Jirael. Christianity is not
confined to Christendom. Mohammedanism
is confined to Mohammedans, and Buddhism
to Buddhists, and Parseeism to Parsees ; but
Christ radiates beyond Christians. As on
the Resurrection morning, so ever, He comes
through shut doors. Think you that a
Pagan born to-day would be in the same
position as a Pagan born before the first
Christmas ? Not though through all his life he
should never hear of Jesus. Imagine that you
and I were standing, strangers to each other,
on the opposite shores of a silent sea — a sea
that had never known a ripple on its bosom.

THE ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTMAS 23
Imagine that into that silent sea I were to cast
a pebble. You would not see the pebble ; you
would not detect the hand; you would not
recognise the agent ; but you would be influ
enced all the same. The ripple would reach
you. It would go all over the water — the
length of it, the breadth of it. It would be as
when the Spirit of God moved on the face of
the great deep ; the silence would speak.
So is it with what one of our poets calls the
' dead seas of man.' Christianity has thrown a
pebble into them, and they have rippled all
over. They have caught the influence of deeds
they have never known. The ships upon their
bosom have begun to move, stirred by an
atmosphere that belongs to other lands. The
movement of the Christian West has accele
rated the un-Christian East. India marches
quicker; China steps more lightly; Japan be
comes almost European. Lands that have not
caught the light of the Portrait have received
the glow of those who have seen it ; for good
as well as evil is contagious, and the cup of
blessing can be transmitted where the out-

24 THE ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTMAS
pouring hand is hid from view. I presume this
is what Paul means when he says of the Son of
Man, ' He is the saviour of all men, especially
of those who believe.'
A wonder yet remains, and it completes the
miracle of Palestine. The nation has rejected
the fulfilment of her own dream. She has
given a king to the world, and she has refused
to crown him. I have read in one of George
Macdonald's novels of a born-blind lamplighter.
He illuminated the city at night ; but he had
no sense of what he was doing. So has it
been with this land. She has presented the
Portrait to the gallery ; she has heard the
plaudits of the spectators ; and she has refused
to join in them. In all history there is nothing
so unique. It is the enemies of this land that
have crowned her world-king ; it is the Gentiles
that have come to His light. The lamplighter
has been blind to the beauty of that throne
which she has illuminated. Palestine has lit
up the scene; she has listened to the crowd
shouting their applause ; and she has wondered
why. She has been like a deaf-mute in a

THE ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTMAS 25
concert-room. She has struck by accident the
notes of a harp, and by accident they have
burst into music. The audience has cheered
the performance to the echo; but the performer
knows not her triumph.

f~\ LAND of wonder! we bring thee a Christ-
^-^ mas wreath to-day — a wreath composed
of thine own rejected flowers. Thou hast cast
them out upon the highway, and we have found
them there ; we gather them and bring them
back to thee. We offer them to thee as gifts
of the world's new year. Thou hast made the
world's new year. Thou hast illuminated our
cities without seeing the glory. Thou art
standing blind amid the blaze which thou hast
kindled ; thou art seated deaf amid the music
which thou hast created. Thou art waiting
through all the winters for the fulfilment of
thy dream ; and we are already basking in its
fulfilment. Thou hast opened our paradise,
and shut the door upon thyself. Wilt thou not
.enter into our rest — the rest thou hast given .to

26 THE ANTICIPATION OF CHRISTMAS
us ? Wilt thou not share the beauty of thine
own illumination, the vibrations of thine own
music ? Wilt thou not participate with us in
the glory of that gift which thou hast presented
to the great gallery? Our pleasure is not
complete till it is shared by thee.

CHAPTER III
THE MISSION OF JESUS
What is the meaning of this Face in the great
gallery ? There are some countenances which
bear on every feature the stamp of a purpose.
This is one. No man can look at it without
being impressed with the fact that it is meant
to depict a soul with a mission. What is that
mission? It is a question on which there is
no agreement. Men have come to study the
Portrait from all parts ; but each has given it
a meaning peculiar to his own country. Renan
has come all the way from Paris to see it, but
he has seen in it only the atmosphere of Paris.
He has beheld an aesthetic soul inspired by the
enthusiasm of beauty, and inspiring by his
own beauty — a fair Galilean drawing all hearts
by his Parisian charm. Schenkel has come
from Berlin, and he has brought the air of

28 THE MISSION OF JESUS
Berlin. He looks into the face of Jesus and
reads there what he feels in himself. He sees
a German heretic struggling with orthodoxy —
a mind impressed with new speculative ideas,
and obstructed by the narrowness of the priest
hood. Seeley has come from London, and he
has brought to the Portrait the eye of London.
To him it is the countenance of an English
man. It breathes, above all things, practical
common sense. It is not the face of an
aesthetic ; it is not the countenance of a
heretic ; it is the portrait of a reformer. It is
the delineation of a man imbued with the
enthusiasm of humanity, indignant at social
abuses, and eager to right the wrong.
In these voices from Paris, Berlin, and
London, I recognise one common note. They
all assume that the Portrait is a revolutionary
portrait. They take for granted that it
expresses Paris, Berlin, and London, rather
than Jerusalem. But I see a critic standing
more directly in front of the Portrait than
any of these ; it is a man called Paul.
He has been first in the gallery, and has

THE MISSION OF JESUS 29
obtained a very near view. At the outset he
shared the national antipathy to the Portrait.
He did so because he held the belief of these
other critics that the Picture was not Jewish,
but revolutionary to the Jew. He has changed
his mind ; he has come to an opposite con
clusion. From the front seat of the gallery he
looks back to the critics of Paris, of Berlin, of
London. He says : ' You are all in a mistake.
This Picture is not revolutionary. I am not
surprised you should think it so ; I thought so
once myself. But a veil has been lifted from
my eyes, and I have reversed my judgment.
I tell you that this is the portrait of a
Conservative — a man who wants above all
things to keep the traditions of His country.
So far from being an innovator, it is the
innovation that He objects to. He is opposed
to the foreign elements that have corrupted
the faith of His land. He wants to go back —
back to the primitive times, back to the first
sources, back to the beginnings of the stream.
He would restore the foundations. He would
revive the first spirit of the nation. He would

30 THE MISSION OF JESUS
go further back than Moses. He would sweep
away the elements of so-called progress. He
would restore the earliest times, the primal
faith— the faith of that father Abraham whose
religion of joyous hope was an anticipation
of His own day.'
So says Paul. And as in the great gallery
he is nearest to the Portrait, we shall let him
interpret for us to-day. What, then, is this
golden era which he says Christ wished to
restore? What to the eye of Jesus made the
age of Abraham so much more inspiring than
the age of Moses ? It was that in the age of
Abraham the object of human interest was
not a holy law, but a holy man. The living
patriarch took the place of the written book.
Instead of bending over an inscribed page,
the clan raised its eyes to the form of a mighty
chief in whom it beheld God's representative
of all that was good and true. Instead of
becoming an audience, men were made spec
tators. Instead of listening to the reading of
abstract rules, they were told to centre their
attention on a living man — to study him, to

THE MISSION OF JESUS 31
take their time from him, to imitate him. They
were to make him their standard of comparison,
to measure their actions by his light, to ask
if their deed was such as the God of Abraham
would approve. It was a life rather of example
than of precept ; nay, shall we not prefer to
say, it was a life in which the influence of an
individual spirit was more powerful than the
maxims of a copy-book morality.
Such, according to Paul, was the life to
which Jesus would fain lead back His people —
the life which lay, not in obedience to a law,
but in sympathy with a man. But where was
the man to be found ? Abraham was dead ;
and if he were alive, he would be no longer
available. He had been the representative
of holiness only to a primitive race; he
could not pass through the fiery furnace of
modern criticism. Who could pass through
that furnace ? Was not the whole world lying
in wickedness, dead in trespasses and in sin ?
Where from that corrupt mass could there rise
a life worthy to draw the eyes of all the tribes
of Israel ? Could a bitter fountain bring forth

32 THE MISSION OF JESUS
sweet waters ? could death generate life ?
Where was the man whom the developed
conscience of the nation could pronounce
holy? Must not the verdict of the united
land be, with ever-accumulating conviction,
the verdict given by one of her minstrel bards,
' There is none righteous, no, not one ' ?
It was true ; therefore the nation's hope must
lie, not in the dead masses, but in the living God.
There was no place for her Hero in the ordinary
course of the stream ; therefore God must
somewhere turn the stream. The coming man
of holiness must be a man sent, a man anointed ;
he must be a ' Messiah.' A long heredity of
physical strength might produce a great
warrior ; but a long heredity of sin could only
bring a great sinner. God must somewhere
intervene in the heredity. He must add to
the river of time a breath from the ocean of
eternity — a breath which should accelerate the
movement of the waters, and send a current of
purity through their turbid flow.
What was to be the test of the coming of
this man ? What was to be the evidence that

THE MISSION OF JESUS 33
the Messiah had appeared? There could be
no absolute evidence till His life had closed.
The Holy One of God could only prove His
holiness by living pure from morn to eve. No
man could stand upon the hill of youth and
say with certainty, ' I am the Messiah.' What
did the ' Messiah ' mean ? It was one who
should serve God from sunrise to sunset. It
was one who should give up his will from
dawn to twilight, from birth to death. He
could not say ' I am the Messiah,' till he could
say ' It is finished.' He might get through the
morning ; he might conquer the meridian sun ;
he might even prevail over the afternoon —
and yet he might sink beneath the shadows of
twilight. The last hour alone could seal his
mission, could justify his claim. He must be
content to begin with a trial, with a hope, with
a prayer. He must be content to feel the
aspiration to serve his Father, to atone to
his Father for the long dearth of human
love. The starting-point of any such life
must be the desire to make up, to recom
pense, to restore, to offer the Father a com-
C

34 THE MISSION OF JESUS
pensation which all the Jewish sacrifices had
failed to give — the surrender of a life of
spotless obedience.
From the human point of view, was it open
for any one to try ? I think it was. ' What ! '
you say, 'have you forgotten that the choice
of the Messiah was limited to the family of
David ? ' No, I have not forgotten that. But
I think if I had been a native of Palestine in
its later age, I should have been quite unable
to tell whether I had or had not any link with
the family of David. That family had become
blended with the masses ; no man could cer
tainly say that he had no kinship with it.
Nay, had not that family, according to Jewish
tradition itself, originally sprung from the
masses — from the sons of daily toil ? Was
not David taken from the flock and from the
fold? It was not without reason that to the
mind of Israel the first appearance of the Son
of David was associated with shepherds keep
ing watch in the nightly fields. The branches
of the Davidic tree were of all branches the
most wide-spreading and the most hard to

THE MISSION OF JESUS 35
trace.1 The family had risen from the people,
and to the people it had returned. One might
apply to it the words which a poet of Israel
spoke of another subject, 'Who shall declare
its generation ? ' Who could say, ' I am pre
cluded from trying the Messianic life by the
knowledge that the Messiah must be of the
seed of David ' ? The seed of David was
thrown broadcast over every field, and no man
could be sure that he had not a share in its
possession. Jesus said, ' / will try to be this Holy Child
of God.' 2 I do not think He said, ' I belong
to the family of David ; therefore I have a
call.' Others around Him might claim, might
really possess, the same distinction. I believe

1 You will observe that in Isaiah xi. 1 and 10, collateral
branches seem to be allowed a claim, for the descent was to be
reckoned, not from David, but from his father, Jesse. Accord
ing to this reckoning, all descendants of Jesse might aspire to
a Messianic birthright.
2 It may seem that the portentous circumstances of Christ's
birth necessitate His definite knowledge of Messiahship from
the beginning. But I understand St. Luke ii. 19 to mean
that Mary, for the sake of the human development of Jesus,
concealed the portentous circumstances of His birth; she
'kept all these things in her heart.'

36 THE MISSION OF JESUS
His impulse came purely from within. I think
He began by saying to Himself something
like this: 'How little return the Father has
got from His creation during all these years !
Men have been offering Him the lives of
victims that were unconscious of being offered.
Surely that can be no atonement for the
voluntary separation of the soul ! How is it
that in all these ages no man has tried to
give Him the surrender of his own will? It
has been open, at least, to every man to try.
Yet I have looked round on every side, and
have not found one effort towards voluntary
sacrifice. If the Father could get one single
soul to serve Him from dawn to dark, I believe
that sOul would be His Messiah. I believe this
one 'life, offered without spot to the Father,
offered from childhood to death in unbroken
obedience, would be to Him the justification
of all the treasures lavished on humanity. He
would feel that it was worth while to have
said, "Let us make man"; the whiteness of
the one pure soul would atone for the loveless-
ness of the past, and light the world with

THE MISSION OF JESUS 37
prospective glory, /will make this trial — for
the sake of the Father, for the love of the
Father. I will try by the devotion of one
child to make up for the disobedience of all
the other children. I will begin to-day — as
myself a child in years. I will stand in the
temple of His universe, and inquire reverently
His will. I will have no plan ; I will follow
where He leads me. I will go where He
points the way — to life or to death; my life
shall itself be a dying in Him.'
You will observe that this was a far more
aspiring aim on the part of Jesus than if He
had founded a claim on His descent from
David. Indeed, I think this is a point on
which Christians of every age have been apt
to err. We divide the life of Jesus into two
states — a state of humiliation and a state of
exaltation ; and we apply the former term to
His mission of sacrifice. Now, if I were asked
to put my hand on the most aspiring effort of
the life of Jesus, I should point to that moment
in which He attempted the valley of sacrifice.
Christians habitually refer to His miracles as

38 THE MISSION OF JESUS
the sign of His divinity, to His cross as the
sign of His humanity. To me, the attempt to
bear the cross is quite the most regal feature,
the most ambitious feature, in the Portrait of
Jesus. No claim to Davidic descent, no claim
to physical power, no claim to wonder-working,
no claim even to personal resurrection, can for
a moment touch the magnitude of conscious
greatness implied in offering Himself as a
compensation for the sins of the world. The
writer to the Hebrews says He offered Himself
as one ' without spot.' He could only do so on
the ground of that spotlessness, or in the hope
that He might attain it. The man who should
serve God from dawn to dark would indeed
be a spotless soul. To try such a service was
an aim before which the dreams of a Napoleon
grow pale. No son of the Roman Empire in
its proudest moments had ever attempted
anything so high. Amid a nation which, of
all others, had the deepest sense of human sin,
amid a people which, through its consciousness
of guilt, feared to take the Divine name into
its lips, a man arose and said, '/ will try to

THE MISSION OF JESUS 39
live the perfect life' — it is the most dramatic
incident on the stage of time !

QON of Man, Thou art never so kingly to
**-* me as in Thy priesthood, never so regal
as in Thy sacrifice. Thy deepest miracle is Thy
mission. Thou hast aspired to be the Lamb
of God — the spotless soul. In a world where
not one thought is absolutely pure, Thou hast
essayed to live, from morn to eve, a life with
out a stain. Thou hast offered to the Father
one cloudless day, one sky of unbroken blue.
There is no aspiration so bold in all the ages
as this effort of Thine. We tremble to see
Thee go forth. We hold our breath at the
marvel of the spectacle. We watch Thy pro
gress with palpitating hearts. The desire of
our souls will go with Thee. Our interest will
accompany Thee. Our sympathies will follow
Thee. We shall long to meet Thee victorious
at the setting of the sun.

CHAPTER IV
HOW WAS JESUS TO REALISE HIS MISSION ?
The aspect of Jesus in the great gallery is one
of deep thought. We are apt to figure it as
one of pure pathos or of tragic sentiment. It
is a mistake so to fancy it. The Portrait of
Jesus has for its deepest expression a weight
of thoughtful care. It could not be otherwise.
He has arrived at a momentous resolve. He
has determined to make the Messianic experi
ment. Does the word ' experiment ' offend
you? Do you remind me that His life was
all along decreed by Heaven ? Doubtless ; but
Heaven allowed Him to grow into the know
ledge of that decree. He was the chosen One
of God ; but He was chosen within the veil; no
whisper of the choice transpired. The thought
broke upon Him from within His own heart —
broke upon Him as a problem, as a possibility,

HOW REALISE HIS MISSION? 41
as a thing to be tried. And therefore it broke
upon Him as a care. His human conscious
ness was not behind the scenes to read the
counsels of the Eternal. If Job had known
the prologue to his own book, it would have
spoiled tbe drama ; for it would have removed
the sense of personal responsibility to tell him
that the result was decreed in heaven. Even
so with Jesus. His life was doubtless arranged
in a prologue, but the prologue was concealed.
He was left to work out the problem for Him
self — to think of it, to dream of it. Therefore
it came to Him as a care, an anxiety. He was
to follow where God led ; but that involved the
search for an open door. Where was He to
begin ? What was the nearest way ? Was it
His duty to select the nearest way ? He was
not seeking His own glory, but God's glory ;
what was the shortest path to the glory of
God? And now, as Jesus stands upon the threshold
of His mission, let us stand beside Him. Let
us try to look at the scene with His eyes — to
see it as it floated before Him in that old world.

42 HOW WAS JESUS TO
Three possible roads are before Him — three
possible ways in which He may try to realise
His mission. Looking back in an after-time,
He called them ways of temptation ; but they
did not present themselves in that light then.
Indeed, the main attraction of each of them is
just its seeming Godwardness — its conformity to
the Jewish Scriptures. What are these roads ?
If I were allowed to express myself in a single
phrase I should call them respectively, the
Democratic Way, the Imperial Way, and the
Ecclesiastical Way ; and, with the third Evan
gelist, I see them presented in this order. Let
us look at each in turn.
First there comes to Him a cry from the
people, ' If thou be the Son of God, command
that these stones be made bread.' He says to
His inner self: ' What better proof of Messiah-
ship could there be than to offer myself as a
physical reformer! Are not the multitude
crying for bread in the wilderness and finding
nothing but stones! Why not try to trans
form the wilderness — to make the stones bread !
Would not this be a service to my Father!

REALISE HIS MISSION? 43
Does not my Father love to be called the
helper of the poor ! Is not this path of social
amelioration a direct, a very near avenue to
the Messianic goal ! '
But then from within the soul of Jesus there
comes another voice, and it speaks in contra
diction to the first. It says : ' Would this be
an adequate service to your Father? Is the
relation of your Father to the world simply
that of breadgiver ? Does man live by bread
alone ? does man live by bread mainly ? Is it
not the wish of your Father to be loved for
Himself, to be reverenced for His holiness?
There are deeper needs in the heart of humanity
than the want of bread ; there are deeper joys
in the heart of the Father than the satisfaction
of the want of bread. You cannot give the
Father a partial offering. The shortness of the
avenue may be tempting, but it falls short in
perfection also. It is too meagre, too inade
quate a goal. Not by this road can you
establish the kingdom of God.'
And so, this first vision fades from the sight
of Jesus. Presently there rises another. A

44 HOW WAS JESUS TO
second road opens before Him ; a new possi
bility appears. The dream of democracy has
given place to the dream of imperialism. Before
Him floats in fancy the kingdoms of the world
and the glory of them ; and a voice says, ' If
you are the Messiah, they are yours.' Would
it not be possible to serve the Father by estab
lishing a kingdom of outward force? Would
it not be a shorter way to the goal than the
purely inward path? Why not begin as a
literal king ? Why not approach the people as
Moses approached them — from the mount —
enacting a law of righteousness, and enforcing
obedience to the Divine commands ?
Was there ground for such a hope on the
part of Jesus ? He Himself declares that there
was. Looking back to this moment from an
after-day, and in the light of calm reflection,
He says, ' Think ye that I cannot now pray
to my Father, and He shall presently give me
more than twelve legions of angels ? ' I think
He had in His mind the Roman legions. Nor
am I sure that the throne of the Caesars would
have been unfriendly to the establishment in

REALISE HIS MISSION? 45
Judea of a reign of Messianic righteousness.
Judea had given such trouble to the Empire
that Rome might well have hailed the appoint
ment of a peaceful king. But she would have
hailed it only on one condition — that the
Messianic king should in temporal things be
the vassal of Caesar.
Will Jesus accept that condition ? Looking
at the suggestion afterwards, it seemed to Him
nothing less than a solicitation of Satan to
worship him. But for the present the import
of that suggestion appears divine. Was it not
a quick way to holiness ? — are not men swayed
from the mountains rather than from the
valleys ! Were not the Gentiles to come to the
Messiah's light, and kings to the brightness of
His rising ? Why not throw Himself into the
political arena? Why not utilise Caesar for
the glory of God ?
And then another voice speaks within Him :
'Would this be using Caesar for the glory of
God ? Would it not be subordinating God to
Caesar? Why speak of being a vassal in
temporal things ? Is there anything temporal ?

46 HOW WAS JESUS TO
Is not the earth the Lord's, and the fulness
thereof? Shall the kingdom of God on earth
pay tribute to a power which is not the kingdom
of God ? Should not Rome be a vassal of the
Messiah rather than the Messiah a vassal of
Rome ? Is not the man of the spirit entitled to
rule all things? You cannot give Caesar the
reverence of the body, and God the reverence
of the soul ; for the mandate to all ages is this,
"Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and
Him only shalt thou serve."'
And so the second vision fades from the eyes
of Jesus. The political road cannot, any more
than the social road, be the way to the glory of
the Father. By and by there opens a third
vision, distinct from either of these. It is a
road neither through the people nor through
the empire, but through the priesthood. Could
the favour of the Father not be won by a great
sacrifice} Jesus stands in imagination on the
pinnacle of the temple, and feels Himself to be
the Priest of the Most High. He sees in fancy
the crowds below, eager for a divine manifesta
tion. He says to Himself: 'If I could really

REALISE HIS MISSION? 47
place myself in this position, might I not at a
bound achieve the Messianic goal ? If 1 were
to stand as the High Priest of the Father on
the pinnacle of the temple, might I not say
to the crowd below, " I am about to make a
sacrifice for you all. I am about to cast myself
down from this pinacle, to throw myself unre
servedly into the arms of the Father. If He
will, He can save me. Let my fate this day be
the sign whether He does or does not accept
me as His Messiah. I peril my case upon the
issue. Be ye the judges of my election to be
the Expiation for the sins of the world " ? '
Then to the soul of Jesus there comes another,
an inner voice ; and it speaks in answer to the
first. It says : ' This act of devotion will not
do. It would be an attempt to test your own
power of sacrifice. True sacrifice must be
unconscious of itself, must deny its own exist
ence. Love never measures the height from
which it leaps ; it undervalues that height. It
does not feel that it has done a great thing, a
test thing. This that you would offer is but a
priestly offering after all — a sacrifice conscious

48 HOW WAS JESUS TO
of its costliness, a gift presented as a proof of
being holy.'
So, from the eyes of Jesus the three visions
fade one by one. What has been the defect of
them all ? It has been one and the same — the
starting from a design to prove Messiahship.
' If thou be the Son of God ' is the initial note
of these temptations. To project any course of
holiness with a view to establish a Messianic
mission would be itself to defeat that mission.
Holiness, to be holiness, must be spontaneous.
The Messiah was to be the Perfect Life offered
up to the Father ; but He must not offer that
life in order to be the Messiah. Imagine Jesus,
walking along the shores of Galilee and seeing
a paralytic by the wayside, saying to Himself,
' The Messiah was to be one who should heal
distress ; I will heal this man.' Would not the
healing be robbed of half its glory ? It would
not be an act of spontaneous love — love that
could not help it. It would be an act of calcu
lation — calculation doubtless for the glory of
God, but still calculation. A young girl once
said to me, ' I intend to make an effort to live

REALISE HIS MISSION? 49
for others.' I thought it was a laudable, but
not a very hopeful beginning ; the intention and
the effort were both against its success. Perfect
love must be a passion-flower. It must spring
spontaneously. It must operate unconsciously.
It must be a compulsion of the spirit.
And so, if Jesus would be the Messiah, He
must begin by forgetting His Messiahship.
His first act must be an act of self-emptying.
He must forget everything but the love of God
and man. He must remember only the long
years of unrequitedness which the Father has
experienced from His creatures, and the long
years of pain which the creatures have reaped
apart from the Father. He must lay aside for
a time the thought of His Messiahship ; He
must substitute in His heart the name ' Son of
Man ' for the name ' Son of God.' There must
be nothing official in His sympathy. When
He sees distress in any form, He must heal it
because it is distress — not because the Messiah
was predicted to heal it. The leper must touch
Him by his leprosy, the pauper by his poverty,
the invalid by his sickness. The virtue that
D

50 HOW WAS JESUS TO
goes out of Him must go out of Him — I use
His own simile — as the water goes out of a
well-spring. It must be gushing, spontaneous.
It must be dictated by no outside motive. It
must be an immediate response to the call of
His heart. Therefore, for a time, the Messianic
mission must take the background in His con
sciousness. The human, not the divine, must
be the dominating power ; a man must be ' a
hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from
the tempest.'

A'

ND so, O Christ, Thy keynote was self-
forgetfulness. I understand now what
Paul meant by the saying, ' He emptied Him
self; Thou couldst only become 'Messiah' by
spontaneous virtue. Thy first work was to lay
aside Thy crown — the thought of Thy crown.
The thought of Thy crown would have spoiled
Thy purity. It would have made Thee say in
the presence of the paralytic, ' I must heal this
man to keep up my dignity.' Not from Thy
conscious dignity must Thy hand of healing

REALISE HIS MISSION? 51
come. It must come from Thine own pain,
from the bleeding of Thy wounded heart. The
robe of official duty would have impeded the
road to Thy heart. Therefore, early in the
morning, that robe was removed. Thy vesture
was concealed ; Thy crown was covered. ' To
be the Messiah ' was not Thy primal motive ;
it was ' to compensate the Father,' ' to succour
the creature.' It was love that disrobed Thee.
It was pity that uncrowned Thee. It was the
pathos of human pain that made Thee forget
the wreath upon Thy brow. Thy power of
self-forgetting is the opening ray of all Thy
glory.

CHAPTER V
THE FORERUNNER
SIDE by side with Jesus in the great gallery
there stands another portrait called ' The Fore
runner.' It is a most suggestive picture. It
has always seemed to me a representation of
the dawn as distinguished from either the
night or the day. John the Baptist is de
picted as the forerunner of the Messiah — not
necessarily of Jesus, but of the Messiah who
ever he may be. As such, he is described in
a mediating attitude between the old and the
new. He has his hands upon two worlds —
the world that has passed and the world
that is to come. One arm is stretched back
to yesterday; the other is stretched forward
to grasp the approaching morrow. And in
his face there is something of the old and
something of the new. It is partly the face
of Elijah, and partly the face of Jesus. On
51

THE FORERUNNER 53
the threshold of a revolution there are
always attempts at compromise. The night
is admitted to be too dark; yet the daylight
is dreaded. As a middle course between
them electric light is proposed. So is it in
this portrait of the Forerunner. It is the
picture of a man of compromise — a man
hovering between the old faith and the new.
I say 'hovering,' not 'wavering.' There is
no vacillation in the countenance ; it is the
face of a man who has made up his mind.
None the less it is a man who has made up
his mind on a course of mediation. He has
refused to rest in the past ; he has refused to
break with the past ; he has insisted on finding
a common ground between. He stands in the
midst of the desert, and declares that he has
found it. Not inappropriately is a desert his
home. He is like Israel in its transition age.
Egypt is past ; Canaan is not yet come. The
old is faded ; the new has not been assimilated.
He has left the land of bondage ; he has not
reached the Promised Land.
Let us examine these two opposite attitudes

54 THE FORERUNNER
of the portrait before us. As we have said,
one arm is stretched towards the new, the
other backward towards the old. Let us
begin with the former — the progressive attitude
of the man. He is not altogether a son of
the past. He is said to have come in the
spirit and power of Elijah. Yes ; but it is
the fourth power of Elijah. You remember
how over that prophet there swept four
successive influences — the thunder, the earth
quake, the fire, and the still small voice. In
the spirit of the Baptist it is the last of them
that lingers. To him as to Elijah the heavens
are opened ; but it is not to let in a chariot of
fire, but to let out a dove upon the earth. The
symbol of war has been supplanted by the
symbol of peace. There is a strong touch
of resemblance between the Messianic ideal
of the Baptist and the Messianic ideal of
Jesus. There is one point of resemblance so
remarkable, so different from what we should
have expected, and yet so conformable to
what we should desire, that I should like here
to give it special emphasis.

THE FORERUNNER 55
I allude to the test proposed by the Baptist
for the recognition of the Messiah. You re
member I expressed my opinion in a previous
chapter that the mission of Jesus was not
originally suggested by His connection with
the House of David — that it was suggested
by the desire to be 'the Holy One of God.'
Did you ever think how singularly the Baptist's
test of the Messiah corresponds to this view ?
We should have expected him to say, ' If you
want to know which of you is most likely to
be the Christ, search the genealogies.' Does
he say that ? On the contrary, he proposes a
test of righteousness. He declares that he
himself was guided in his search for the
Messiah by one consideration alone — the
evidence of holiness. I knew him not : but
He that sent me to .baptize with water, He
said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt
see the Spirit descending, and abiding upon
him, the same is he that baptizeth with the
Holy Spirit.'
Now, is not this strikingly suggestive?
Here is a man living at the time when the

S6 THE FORERUNNEk
Messiah was expected in a scion of the House
of David. He himself shares the common
expectation. Yet to him it is a subordinate
question whether that descent can be proved.
He is willing to accept the descent from
David as a matter of faith, provided he
can see something else as a matter of fact.
What is that other thing for which he
demands a direct, an immediate scrutiny?
It is the standard of Messianic holiness.
The testimony of the genealogies is nothing
to the testimony of the Spirit. ' Do you
see,' asks the Baptist, 'a man who claims
the Messianic office ? Test his claim by his
goodness. Leave in abeyance any external
test — whether miracle or pedigree. Consider
only the extent, the intensity, the abiding-
ness of his virtue. Weigh his pretensions
to be the Holy One. Mark his claim to be
the Lamb of God. Estimate his moral right
to be the Atonement for the sins of the
world. Inquire whether his garment is with
out blemish and without spot. Examine
whether the light of the Father can detect

THE FORERUNNER 57
a stain in him. Thus alone shall you find
an answer to the question, " Art thou he that
should come, or do we look for another ? " '
And I take this to be the reason why the
Baptist's first message to the world is, ' Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.' In
the light of the foregoing view it is a highly
logical message. If the credentials of the
Messiah were to be the proof of the genea
logies, I see no ground for repentance ; a
bad man can examine documents as carefully
as a good man. But if the credentials of the
Messiah are to be his virtues, I can under
stand very well the preliminary call to purity.
Who can test holiness but the good? Who
can see God but the pure in heart? If the
claims of the Messiah are to be tried, it
must surely be by an intelligent jury. Where
shall we find an intelligence fitted to give its
verdict upon the possession of holiness ? In
tellect will not give a right to sit at such a
trial. Artistic culture will not give a right
to sit at such a trial. Nothing will confer
such a right but the possession of a kindred

58 THE FORERUNNER
spirit — the spirit of that harmless dove which
was to be the sign of the Son of Man.
To this extent, then, the Baptist is a new
man — a man of the future. But let us pass
to the second attitude of the picture. If one
arm is stretched toward the world to come,
the other is encircling the world of yesterday.
This man is not really emancipated from the
past. His ideal of the Christ is not identical
with the Portrait in our gallery. It is sufficiently
different to show that he was not the artist
of that Portrait. The same dove-like purity
is on the face of Jesus as shone on the face
conceived by the desert preacher ; but there
are two features in the latter which are absent
from the former — an impatience of all delay,
and an intolerance of all imperfection. Let
us glance at each of these.
The face depicted by the Baptist has an
element of impatience in it. He describes the
Messiah with his winnowing fan ' in his hand '
— ready to be used. There is to be no dally
ing, no delay. The process of renovation is
to be immediate. No man is to be allowed

THE FORERUNNER 59
a season of pondering. Whosoever will, may
enter into the kingdom ; but he must enter
now or never. Heaven is to be taken by
violence — by an instantaneous rush. The
decision is to be like the decision on Mount
Carmel — rapid, unhesitating, fearless. There
is to be no time for waiting, no place for
doubt. Every cloud of the human heart is
commanded to vanish at the rising of the
sun. Do we find this feature in the Portrait of
Jesus} No, but the opposite. We have no
need to reason on this matter. We have His
own express opinion on the subject. What
is His parable of the barren fig-tree but a
direct statement of the contrary view? He
hears borne upon the air the cry of that
drastic crowd who have been impregnated
with the spirit of the Baptist, ' Cut it down ;
why cumbereth it the ground ? ' It is assumed
by this crowd that to be sterile now is to be
sterile for ever. Jesus says : ' No ; you do
not know the possibilities of environment.
Improve its surroundings, and you will in-

60 THE FORERUNNER
crease its chances. Do not lay the axe yet
to the root of the tree. Give it time; give
me time. Wait till I have digged round
about it ; wait till I have tried its suscepti
bilities. It may be that its barrenness is an
accident. It may be that wider room and
brighter exposure will fertilise the germ. The
tree which yields nothing in the wilderness
may become the Tree of Life when "in the
midst of the Paradise of God." '
The second feature in which the face con
ceived by the Baptist differs from the actual
Portrait of our gallery is the intolerance of
imperfection. He expects from his Messiah a
drastic separation of the wheat from the tares :
' He shall thoroughly purge His floor, and
gather His wheat into the garner; but He
will burn up the chaff with unquenchable
fire.' No wonder at an after-day the Baptist
doubted if Jesus had actually fulfilled his
ideal ! For this is not a feature of that Por
trait of the Messiah which hangs in our
gallery. It is a distinctive element of the
teaching of Jesus that in the formation of

THE FORERUNNER 61
His field the wheat is to be accepted along
with the tares: 'Let both grow together until
the harvest.' Can any one fail to detect the
profound wisdom of such advice ? How much
of our badness is the exaggeration of some
thing which in itself is useful ! You may cure
a bad temper by plucking out the temper
altogether. Many a boy has been rescued
from wayward impulses by a cure worse than
the disease — has been reduced by stern train
ing to the attitude of a lifelong weakling, to
the position of a poor, timid, vacillating crea
ture, incapable of self-decision and unfit for
independent action. Unskilful reaping has in
the moral sphere done more harm than
injudicious planting. Therefore we greatly
esteem the method of Jesus. He prepares
a table for the soul in the presence of its
enemies. He does not insist upon purity as
a preliminary condition. He demands nothing
but aspiration. He invites men to come in
their sins. Other masters demand cleansing
before we enter their temple. The Brahman
demands it ; the Parsee demands it ; the Jew

62 THE FORERUNNER
himself demands it. But Jesus demands it
not. He bids us come in with our stains,
with our burdens, with our impure garments.
He invites the blind, the deaf, the lame, the
leper, the spiritually poor who are conscious
of their rags, to enter, just as they are, into
the presence of the King of kings.
Is not this the meaning of the answer which
Jesus Himself makes to the disciples of the
doubting Baptist, 'Go and show John again
those things which ye do hear and see : The
blind receive their sight, and the lame walk,
the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the
dead are raised up, and the poor have the
gospel preached to them'? It is as if He
had said : ' Your method is different from
mine. You wish to gather into the kingdom
the sighted, the nimble-footed, the cleansed.
/ wish to gather those who need these qualities.
The temple I construct is a temple for the
consciously unholy. The table I spread is a
table in the desert. The feast I prepare
is a feast for the famished. Tell John that
the vision of the tares is essential to my

THE FORERUNNER 63
kingdom. They who enter the holy pre
cincts must beat upon their breasts and say
"Unclean!"'

npHOU Man of Nazareth, be Thou my
-*- forerunner. The Baptist is no longer
in advance of me ; I am now in advance of
him. Thy light has made his light grow pale.
I cannot accept his terms of salvation ; they
are too severe. Sinful man is ever too severe
upon his brother. All that ever came before
Thee demanded from me more than I could
give ; they bade me robe in white ere I entered
the audience-chamber. But Thou hast bid me
come unrobed. Thou hast offered me admit
tance in my dusty garb, in my raiment stained
with the burdens of the day. Thou hast in
vited me without the ring on the hand, without
the shoes on the feet. Thou hast left the
beautifying for an after-hour; Thou hast let
me in without one plea. The greatest in the
kingdom of heaven has been the most acces
sible of all. None but Thee had the words

64 THE FORERUNNER
of Eternal Life for a heart uncleansed. They
all kept their diamonds for the pure ; Thou
alone hadst a ring for the prodigal child. Be
Thou my forerunner; I can follow none but
Thee.

CHAPTER VI
THE PLAN OF THE LIFE OF JESUS
You will remember that I said Jesus had no
plan. Nor had He ; but His life had, that is
to say, His Father had. There is no individual
life without a plan of development. This is
true on any interpretation of nature which we
choose to adopt ; it is true of the system of
theism ; it is true of the system of evolution.
It is a very different question whether the
individual life is conscious of its plan. I should
say, never. I should think such a consciousness
would destroy development itself on the part of
the individual ; it would make the life complete
from the beginning. I believe that the indi
vidual man has in many cases a prophecy of his
mission. The poet may have a presentiment
of poetic greatness ; the reformer may have
the sense of an incumbent duty. But the very

66 THE PLAN OF THE LIFE OF JESUS
glory of such presentiments is the absence
of detail. Their brightness originates in the
fact that they shine in the dark. They have
to keep their light through difficulty, through
obstacle, through seeming denial. They do
not create their circumstances ; they are often
counteracted by their circumstances. They
reach their highest triumph when they can
preserve their conviction through suffering.
Jesus had the sense of a mission — an ever
growing sense. At first, as I have said, I
think it was tentative. It broke upon Him in
a voice which whispered ' Try.' Whether that
voice came in the unrecorded years, whether it
first spoke to Him as a child musing in the
temple, whether it flashed out its message
through the hammers in the workshop of
Nazareth, I cannot tell. But I am told that
He * grew in knowledge,' and I think it must
have been Messianic knowledge. If so, then
His sense of a Messianic mission must have
been revealed, as one of His disciples says,
' from faith to faith.' It must have ascended
from peak to peak in certainty. It must have

THE PLAN OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 67
been a veritable Pilgrim's Progress in which
the conviction climbed from dawn to day —
rose from an aspiration to a hope, from a hope
to a faith, from a faith to a forecast, until it
culminated in a height of full realisation.
The mission of Jesus, then, began with an
aspiration — a yearning to be the Holy One of
God. It was essential to that yearning that,
so far as Jesus was concerned, it should have
no plan. His very proposal was the negation
of a plan ; it was the effort to yield His own
life to the life of the Father. Such a surrender
demanded the relinquishing of personal fore
sight. It necessitated the abandonment of
any individual scheme. It was the determina
tion to follow exclusively the will of the
Father — whatever it might be, wherever it
might lead. He felt that if He were the
Messiah He had 'a baptism to be baptized
with.' But the essence of this baptism was its
original indefiniteness. It was the command
to wait upon the Divine Will, to follow that
Will without inquiring what it would bring.
It prescribed the attitude, not of the far-seeing

68 THE PLAN OF THE LIFE OF JESUS
politician, but of the common soldier — of the
man who refuses to map out the course of his
own march, who waits upon the orders of
another, and obeys these orders on the
judgment of another. The Messianic mission
was essentially a surrender of the will ; and a
surrender of the will implies the giving up of
any personal plan.
But it is a very different matter when we
look at the life of Jesus retrospectively.
There we stand at the top of the hill, and
gaze downward from a luminous exposure.
We see the end before the beginning.
We see that this life of Jesus was not an
accidental life — that the way by which it
travelled was an ordered way. That is a
highly significant scene which is depicted on
the road to Emmaus. Jesus is then at the
top of the hill. He is looking down upon
His life from a vantage-ground. He sees
the six days of incompleteness from the
height of the seventh morning. While He
was passing through these six days there
were many things which straitened Him,

THE PLAN OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 69
some things at which He marvelled ; there
were even times in which He had felt as if
His mission had been a failure. But from the
top of the hill the whole landscape of the past
was changed. The path so obscure in its
prospect, so tortuous in its experience, became
luminous and straight in its retrospective
view; and the suffering from which He had
momentarily recoiled appeared a thing
essential to the entrance into His glory.
We, then, of later times can see something
in Jesus which was not revealed to His first
disciples — not originally revealed to Himself.
What is that? It is the plan of the Father.
We who stand on the road to Emmaus have
the privilege of looking back to the lower and
surmounted ground, and of seeing that the
lower was the avenue to the higher. What,
then, is this plan of the life of Jesus ? Volumes
have been written on what is called 'the
plan of salvation ' ; but it is not this we are
here in search of. It is something more simple
and more within the range of history — the
plan of a life. We want to know what is that

70 THE PLAN OF THE LIFE OF JESUS
order of development revealed in the earthly
path of Jesus. Let us ask what view was
taken by the age immediately succeeding His
own — that age in which to the eyes of men the
Original was replaced by the Portrait. Let
us take the man whom we have already
introduced as the figure standing nearest to the
Picture — the man Paul. He has never seen
the Original ; his eyes have only rested on the
Portrait. But of that Portrait he has had a
front view — the foremost view. I do not think
even the first disciples had such a view. You
may read more in a man's portrait than your
neighbour does in the man. Paul read in the
Picture of Jesus what neither Matthew nor
Mark detected in the Original. To Matthew
He is the fulfilment of a prophecy; to Mark
He is the Man who spake and it was done ;
to Paul He is from dawn to dark the Man of
sacrifice. Paul is the first who attempts a spiritual
philosophy of the life of Jesus, the first who
draws a plan of His human development.
Very striking, very original Is that plan.

THE PLAN OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 71
You will find it in a passage to which I have
already incidentally alluded. The words are
familiar — too familiar. We lose in their
repeated sound the sight of their deep mean
ing, of their abiding freshness. I quote them
in full : ' Let this mind be in you which was
also in Christ Jesus, who, though in the form
of God, thought equality with God a thing
not to be snatched at, but emptied Himself,
and took upon Himself the form of a servant,
and was made in the likeness of men ; and
being recognised in the fashion of a man, He
humbled Himself, and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross.'
This is Paul's philosophy of the life of Jesus.
What is it ? It is the description of a ladder
of descent. You observe that it goes systema
tically from the top to the bottom. It begins
by delineating the height, and it ends by
depicting the vale. Every step of the ladder
of Jesus is described as a step downwards.
We see Him first ' in the form of God ' — in the
enjoyment of the Divine communion. Then
comes the first interruption to the communion.

72 THE PLAN OF THE LIFE OF JESUS
It is a thought — the thought of those who
share not the privilege. This thought will not
let Him rest satisfied with a personal com
munion ; He will not snatch it for Himself
alone. He puts Himself in the place of those
outside ; He begins by doing so in thought.
He empties Himself, in imagination, of His
own beatific vision — tries to conceive what life
would be without it. Then He passes from
imagination into act. Step by step He comes
down. He takes the servant's form — lofty yet
subordinate. He comes down lower — to the
likeness of ordinary men ; He participates in
common experience. He descends farther
still ; He loses His first fame ; He is recog
nised only 'in the fashion of a man.' He
stoops still lower; He 'humbles Himself —
gives up His first ideal of an immediate king
dom. Then comes the schooling of His mind
to a more dismal ideal ; He becomes ' obedient
unto death.' At last the foot of the ladder
is reached in the most repulsive form of death
— the form which separated the ordinary man
from the despised man — the death of the cross.

THE PLAN OF THE~LIFE OF JESUS 73
Of course I do not mean in my studies of
the Portrait of Jesus to follow these steps of
Paul's ladder explicitly. That would reduce
the work to a piece of mechanism. I want to
look at the experience of Jesus, not as I see
it now, but as He felt it then. I shall therefore
abstain from formal or explicit insertion of the
life into a completed framework. I should
like its sequence to be arranged, not by me,
nor even by Paul, but by itself. None the less
am I convinced that this sequence will be
found to follow, if not the steps, at least the
principle, described by the man nearest to
the Portrait. I cannot withhold my admira
tion for his philosophy of the life of Jesus —
the earliest ever attempted by the mind of
man ; and I feel that, whatever be said of the
details, to all time the principle will stand. I
feel that the life of Jesus has actually described
this course. I feel that its progress has been
a descending progress — .from the hill to the
plain, from the plain to the valley. Each step
has been a step in sacrifice. Each circle has
been a lower circle. I would add that on this

74 THE PLAN OF THE LIFE OF JESUS
very ground it has been a wider circle. Not
without reason is it said that Jesus won His
empire by stooping. Humanity is like a
mathematical triangle ; it is widest at its base.
We all meet in the valley. We do not all
meet on the height ; we do not all meet on
the plain ; but in the valley we are made one.
Had Jesus stopped on the high eminence of
a merely angelic mission He would have had
merely an angel's audience. But when He
stood in the valley of death, He touched that
chord of nature which makes the world akin.
Apparently in His descent of Paul's ladder
He was doing everything to bury Himself;
but I can understand the logic of the apostle's
bold paradox, 'Wherefore God hath highly
exalted Him, and given Him a name that is
above every name.'

/^\ THOU who art painted, not only in the
^S gallery of the world, but in the gallery
of my heart, help me to follow Thee. Inspire
me with Thy power to descend the ladder of

THE PLAN OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 75
human experience. Let me come after Thee
in the downward steps of sacrifice. Deeper
and deeper let me wend my way toward the
valley where the millions meet. Help me, not
only to believe in Thy name, but to believe
in the way by which Thou hast made Thy
name. Reveal to me the power of self-forget-
fulness. Teach me that the burial of self is
the road to resurrection. Let me learn that
only in sympathy with the lowest can I have
sympathy with all mankind. Give me com
munion with the vale that I may have fellow
ship with the mountain and the plain. I shall
only attain Thy crown when I have reached
Thy cross.

CHAPTER VII
THE COUNTERPARTS OF THE THREE
TEMPTATIONS
JESUS began His mission in the hill-country.
He did so not only in a geographical, but in a
metaphorical sense. We have seen what are
called His three temptations. They all origin
ated in a state of mental elevation. They were
suggestions to become Messiah by a stroke of
power. Three courses, as we have seen, pre
sented themselves to the soul of Jesus. He
might take the platform of the social reformer
— make the stones bread. He might assume
the crown of a potentate — receive the kingdoms
and the glory of them. He might invest Him
self with the sacrificial prerogative of the
priest — cast Himself down from the pinnacle
of the temple. The people, the throne, or the
altar — these had been His alternatives. But
76

THE THREE TEMPTATIONS 77
to these three there had been one thing in
common. They all indicated on the part of
Jesus a condition of spiritual exaltation. He
had taken the form of a servant, but as yet
He was only sweeping the upper rooms. The
depth of the descent was still veiled from Him.
His first vision had been, like all the visions
of youth, a sight of the glory without the per
spective. The roads presented to Him were all
short roads. They were such roads as Elijah
would have contemplated, as the Baptist would
have contemplated. They promised to usher
in the kingdom in a moment of time. They
were attractive from their seeming directness.
They appeared to lead right to the Metropolis,
to the City of God, to the establishment of
that great Theocracy for which men had been
waiting so longingly and so long.
And we have seen how Jesus Himself put
His hand upon the weak point in these temp
tations. We have seen how there came to
Him the conviction that each of the three
courses was vitiated by having for its motive
the proof of His Messiahship. The goals were

78 THE COUNTERPARTS OF
all good. To help the people was good ; to
purify the state was good ; to sacrifice at the
altar was good. But to do these things be
cause the Messiah when He came was expected
to do them, this was to make virtue a
mechanical thing. Jesus felt that the welfare
of the people must be sought for the sake of
the people, that the purity of the state must be
desired for the sake of the state, that the act
of priestly sacrifice must be deemed precious
for the sake of Divine and human love. The
three courses were all legitimate to Jesus.
He might play the part either of the generous
bread-winner, the just king, or the holy priest.
But He must play any or all of these parts,
not on the ground of being the Messiah, but
on the ground of being a man. He must be
drawn to them by human sympathy, by human
equity, by human piety; and the Messianic
glory must be reached, not as a voluntary
motive, but only as an unconscious result.
And now I come to a point which has always
struck me as very remarkable. As we emerge
from the scene of the temptation into the

THE THREE TEMPTATIONS 79
earliest active scenes of the life of Jesus, I am
arrested by a striking fact. The first three of
these active scenes are repetitions, in a sancti
fied form, of the three visions described in the
temptation. Remember these three visions —
the generous bread-winner, the king at the
head of the legions, the priest sacrificing him
self at the altar. Keeping these in view, take
the narrative which in point of time immedi
ately follows — that embraced in the second
and third chapters of St. John's Gospel. You
will, I think, be struck by the similarity be
tween the three scenes of the temptation and
the three first episodes of the public ministry
of Jesus. Let us stand again in the great
gallery, and consider the Portrait before us.
We have contemplated the meditative aspect
of the features ; but there is energy beneath
the calm. We have seen His spirit in deep
thought, pondering how His mission was to be
realised. We are now about to cross the line
which divides His hour of meditation from
His hour of resolution. He has rejected in
spirit the solicitations of the tempter. He has

80 THE COUNTERPARTS OF
refused on the tempter's terms to be the bread
winner, the king, or the priest. But He is
ready to be each and all of them on His own.
As He emerges from the desert into the light
of day, the first acts of the day are refrains of
the desert. Jesus treads again the scenes of
the temptation. He enters the three spheres
which the tempter had indicated. He claims
them ; He appropriates them ; He makes
them His own — but not in the tempter's
way. He finds a new way, a better way of
becoming the bread-winner, the king, and the
priest. Let us see how each of the first three scenes
of the public ministry of Jesus is a counterpart
of one of those which flitted before Him in the
solitudes of the desert. In these solitudes the
first solicitation to His heart had been, ' Prove
your mission by making the stones bread.'
When He comes out from the solitude He is
met on the very threshold by the counterpart
of that solicitation — 'Make the water wine.'
It is the same kind of work He is asked to do
— a work of transubstantiation — the change

THE THREE TEMPTATIONS &i
of common into precious material. But what
He had refused to try as a proof of His
Messiahship He attempts for the sake of
humanity ; He does at the marriage feast what
He would not do in the desert. This is what
I understand by the words of the fourth
Evangelist, ' This beginning of miracles did
Jesus in Cana of Galilee! The tempter had
wanted this beginning of miracles to be made
in Judea — in the depths of the wilderness.
Jesus claims another scene for the work of
transubstantiation. He selects, not the solitude
but the crowd, not the lonely desert but the
place of human concourse. Why ? Because to
take His suggestion from the desert would not
have been to take it from the actual contact
with human want. It would have been a
purely official act, a Messianic act. But at the
marriage feast it is far otherwise. Here, he
stands on human sympathy alone. Here,
there is nothing official, nothing Messianic. It
is apparently a trivial occasion. That is the
beauty of it. It brings out an accidental play
of the essential unselfishness of Jesus. Its
F

82 THE COUNTERPARTS OF
importance grows out of its insignificance.
Let us ponder how.
When Jesus comes to that marriage feast
He is full of Messianic thoughts. He is
fresh from the wilderness — fresh from the
inward struggle regarding the way to His
mission. On that mission He is intent. It
is the subject of all His meditations ; it stirs
His waking hours, it colours His dreams.
Suddenly there arises one of those family
incidents which are supposed to be at the
opposite remove from solemnity — the festive
celebration of a wedding. Jesus is there as a
guest — doubtless for reasons of consanguinity.
We cannot think that He went without a
sacrifice ; His original desires must have been
elsewhere. But these desires are surprised and
taken captive. Something occurs to retard the
family joy ; a deficiency arises in the physical
provision for the feast. At first His mind is
somewhat far away ; He is thinking of the
greater salvation ; He says, ' Mine hour is not
yet come.' But at last the little hour eclipses
for a time the great one. A trivial human

THE THREE TEMPTATIONS 83
need diverts Him for a moment from the main
road — surprises Him, so to speak, out of His
Messianic consciousness. Human sympathy
rules supreme, rules alone. It is sympathy
with a secular want, with a physical want, with
a transient want. Everything in the picture
is grouped and fashioned so as to emphasise
and intensify the fact that the first public work
of Jesus was prompted by humanity alone.
It was something out of His previous line, on
the junction of a new line. It was the be
ginning of that divesting of His own conscious
ness which was to be the star of all His future
progress, and the goal of all His future glory.
I come now to the second counterpart of the
temptations in the wilderness. The second
of these temptations was that of empire. It
practically amounted to this, ' All these king
doms of the world will I give thee if thou wilt
rule as men rule — by physical force.' This He
had refused to do. Yet the temptation was
the travesty of a real empire — an empire to
which He was heir. As He emerges into the
world there meets Him that reality of which

84 THE COUNTERPARTS OF
the temptation was a semblance. It meets
Him, not in Galilee, but in Judea. We are no
longer at the marriage feast. We are under
the dome of night, in the City of David. Jesus
for the first time stands before us in the attitude
of a lawgiver. A ruler of the synagogue has
bent his knee to Him, nay, has bent the knee
to Him on the ground of something likephysical
power : ' Master, we know that Thou art a
teacher come from God, for no man can do
these miracles that Thou doest, except God be
with him.'
Here is something very near the suggestion
of the wilderness. Nicodemus presents to Jesus
an image of His power very similar to that
which the tempter had presented. Jesus can
not receive the latter any more than He could
receive the earlier suggestion. But now along
with the travesty there bursts upon Him the
reality. He sees that there is an empire for
Him. He sees that there is a force of which
He may be the centre — a force more potent
than the physical, more abiding than the
material — a force which when once communi-

THE THREE TEMPTATIONS 85
cated must be all-compelling. To Nicodemus
He proclaims the condition on which He can
be a king, asserts the only principle of His
possible sovereignty — the suasion of the spirit.
He tells him that a man cannot see His
kingdom by seeing any wonders He may do,
that to feel the force of His sceptre he must
be born of His Spirit. Those who follow the
banner of the Messiah must not be driven.
They must be like 'the wind blowing where
it listeth.' They must have a sense of perfect
freedom. They must do His will, not merely
because it is His will, but because it has
become their own. Their obedience to Him
must be the obedience of a kindred nature, of
a faith resulting from similitude, of a love
arising from common sympathies. Such is
the empire that floats before the vision of
Jesus ; such is the kingdom which replaces in
His mind the throne He had refused in the
temptations of the wilderness.
But there is a third counterpart. The desert
temptation had made its last assault upon the
side nearest to His heart — His spirit of sacrifice.

86 THE COUNTERPARTS OF
It had assailed him in the capacity of the priest.
It had called upon Him to prove His devotion
to the Father by a public surrender of His life
into the hands of the Almighty : ' Cast thyself
down from the pinnacle of the temple.' Jesus
had refused on the ground that sacrifice was
not good unless it brought good. But when
He has come out from the solitude He is met
by the real demand for sacrifice. As He treads
in reality those temple courts which He had
paced in imagination, there rise before Him the
impurities to which the house of God was sub
jected. He sees men buying and selling within
the sacred precincts, and His soul is stirred
with indignation. He feels Himself to be
indeed on the pinnacle of the temple — to be the
High Priest of the Father. Will He suffer this
desecration ? Is it not His province to interfere,
to confront this unholy merchandise, to over
throw the tables of the money-changers, to drive
out the oxen with a scourge of cords ? To do
so will be practically to follow the advice of the
desert — to cast Himself down from the pinnacle.
It will be exposure to obloquy, danger, violence,

THE THREE TEMPTATIONS 87
perhaps death. But it is no longer the same
death as the desert proposed. That was for
the sake of pain ; this is for the sake of purity.
That was to prove His piety ; this is to make
others pious. That was for a test of fortitude ;
this is for the benefit of mankind. There
breaks upon the human soul of Jesus the true
goal of sacrifice. The desert ideal vanishes, to
appear no more ; and in its room there rises
a new ideal in which the thorn is only accepted
for the sake of the flower. Henceforth, if called
to endure the cross, He can only endure it ' for
the joy that is set before Him.'

O ON of Man, let my goal, like Thine, be not
*~* the night but the star. Let me reject
with Thee the desert ideal. Let me learn with
Thee that pain for its own sake is not the will
of my Father. Teach me Thine own experi
ence that, where the will of the Father points
to the thorny way, it is only because flowers lie
farther on. If I am called to sacrifice, let it be
to cleanse Thy temple. Let me feel that my

88 THE THREE TEMPTATIONS
sorrow is helping somebody, smoothing the
path of somebody. If I take the road to the
poverty of the manger, let me see the treasures
which thither I bear. If I keep watch in the
dark night, let me hear with the shepherds the
angels' song. If I have to bathe in the waters
of Jordan, let me behold overhead the opened
heavens. All sacrifice will be possible for me
if I know it to be a ministry of love. I shall
bear Thy cross when I have the joy that was
set before Thee. A

CHAPTER VIII
THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL
Hitherto Jesus has been on the heights.
Alike in vision and in action His experience
has been that of the mountains. His mission
has at first presented only the aspect of a
ruler. He has stood on the top of the hfll
and surveyed the kingdoms ; He has stood
on the pinnacle of the temple and surveyed
the multitude. He has manifested His power
at Cana ; He has given the law to Nicodemus ;
He has cleansed the courts of the Father's
House. Doubtless he has taken the form of
a servant, but as yet it is that of a higher
servant; the deeper steps of His humiliation
are still to come.
But these steps are now to be taken.
Hitherto He has entered mainly into sym
pathy with the Father ; He has now to descend 89

90 THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL
into sympathy with man. Is there any bio
graphical link between the stage on which
He is standing and the stage to which He
is going ? I say ' any biographical link.' I
am not speaking of philosophy or theology.
What we want to know is whether in the
records of the actual life of Jesus there can
be traced any point of transition between the
period of His Divine, and the period of His
distinctively human service. There is a great
difference between girding one's self to serve
the Father and girding one's self to serve the
creature. The very sense of sonship in the
soul of Jesus made the service of the Father
an easy thing; there was a sympathetic rela
tion already existing here. But between the
human soul of Jesus and the creature the
relation of sympathy had yet to be made.
The very height of His purity was in the first
instance adverse to His sympathy with man.
To attempt the salvation of man for the glory
of the Father was a natural, a spontaneous
act ; but to seek the salvation of man through
a kindred feeling for the creature was a thing

THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL 91
which required time. The kindred feeling had
first to be established. Where in the record
shall we seek the beginning of its develop
ment? Where shall we find the narrow line
of junction which connects the ministration
on the mountain with the ministration on the
plain and in the valley ?
Now, it is my opinion that in the chrono
logical sequence of the narrative such a point
is to be found. I shall place it at Samaria
— in the course of that journey which Jesus
took from Judea into Galilee. The historian
quaintly says that to make the journey ' He
must needs go through Samaria' — meaning
that it was a geographical necessity.1 Yet
there is a deep spiritual sense in which the
words are equally true. The name of Galilee
has become proverbial as the place of human
weakness and spiritual destitution. Jesus was
going to Galilee — no longer as a mere home
of earthly relatives, but as a sphere to be
conquered for His Father. Was it not well
1 The route through Samaria was the shortest way from
Judea into Galilee,

92 THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL
that ere He touched this sphere of human
waywardness there should intervene some
thing to bind Him to the soul of man ? Was
it not well that He whose lot it was to grow
into human experience should, before entering
the scene of deepest degeneracy, acquire a
touch of the feeling of our infirmities ?
But why is the scene in Samaria this pre
paratory moment? Where within this narra
tive lies the transition -point between Judea
and Galilee — between the contact with the
higher ten and the contact with the lower
thousand? At first sight it seems as if the
journey to Samaria contributed less to Christ's
mission than any other incident of the Gospel.
There is no record of a miracle — beyond a
penetration into the secrets of a life. There
is no record of a large conversion, of an exten
sive movement of religious revival. There is
certainly a full presentiment of Jesus that He
was the destined One ; but, as we have seen,
He never wished this presentiment to be the
basis of His action. Where, then, lies the
significance of Samaria as a preparation for

THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL 93
human sympathy? Is it that He came into
contact with a people even more despised by
Judea than the men of Galilee ? But He came
into that contact by a geographical necessity,
not yet by a deliberate choice. All along the
line of the narrative there would seem to be
no place for the human development of Jesus.
But the place lies just where we should
never have looked for it— in a little corner
to which the expositor is often blind. In our
inquiries about the significance of this narra
tive our eyes are on the wrong track. We
are ever asking what Jesus gave to Samaria ;
has it ever occurred to us to ask what Samaria
gave to Jesus ? There is one incident in this
narrative which is unique, and which, being
unique, must be significant. Hitherto, Jesus
has appeared before us in the attitude of a
king ; here He comes before us in the attitude
of a suppliant. For the first time in the record
He asks for something. At the marriage feast
of Cana He had been the distributor ; at the
well of Samaria He is the one in want. He
has come to that well footsore and weary.

94 THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL
Physical fatigue has overmastered Him. Un
able to proceed farther, He has sent His dis
ciples to procure bread in the neighbouring
village. Solitary and exhausted, He awaits
their return. A woman of the district comes
to draw water ; Jesus says, ' Give me to drink.'
His first approach to Samaria is in the attitude
not of a ruler, but of a dependant. Instead
of saying, as He could have said, 'You have
need of me' He introduces Himself with the
bold assertion, ' I have need of you.' It is
indeed pre-eminently bold — the very audacity
of humbleness. Even an ordinary Jew would
have died ere he had made such a request of
a Samaritan ; how could it be made by one
who had pretensions to be the Messiah !
There are some who would answer the
question thus : Jesus was thinking of the water
of life. He wanted to lead up to the subject.
How could He better lead up to it than by a
metaphor — the metaphor actually supplied by
the scene before Him ! The woman had come
to draw the literal water ; He was able to give
her living water. How better introduce His

THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL 95
power than by manifesting an interest in her
work, and how better manifest such an interest
than by expressing a desire to be recipient of
her labours !
Now, all this is too dramatic for me. It is
conceived no doubt in a spirit of deep rever
ence ; it is meant to exalt our perception of
the Portrait. But to my mind it fails in its
intention. To me the exaltation of Jesus must
ever lie in His spontaneity. To make Him
express a physical want with the object of
suggesting a spiritual subject is in my view
mechanical and therefore ««spiritual. I hold
that Jesus asked water because He wanted it.
Any other solution of the problem is weak and
misleading. Nor does it to me enhance the
reverence for Jesus to say that in every little
act of His earthly pilgrimage He is working
out the plan of a mosaic. A plan there cer
tainly is, but it is as yet in the hands of the
Father alone. Jesus is following the stream
of events, in other words, the prompting of the
hour. There is to my mind a ring of auto
biography in His saying, "' Take no thought

96 THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL
for to-morrow.' It was an echo of the time
when He walked by the day. His journey
to Samaria is a walking by the day. It is
constrained by geographical necessity ; it is
impeded by physical weariness; it is pursued
in bodily want ; it culminated by asking a
favour at the hands of one who had need to
be redeemed, ' Give me to drink.
It will be more reverent, then, to inquire,
What was the plan of the Father} Let us
leave Jesus in the possession of His spontaneity.
Let us say that the want is a real want. Let
us admit the change of attitude between the
Man who turned the water into wine at Cana
and the Man who asked water at the well of
Jacob. Let us concede that the prayer came
from really suppliant lips and is to be ex
plained as the cry of any other suppliant. It
will still remain to ask if this moment of want
has any place in the plan of the Father. Jesus
is walking by the day ; but the Father is not.
Jesus is moving spontaneously; but the Father
is not. To the Father belongs the real mosaic,
the true development of the life of Jesus. Is

THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL 97
there a place in that mosaic for a moment so
humiliating ? We see a place for the wilder
ness, a place for Cana, a place for Nicodemus,
a place for the cleansing of the temple ; in all
these attitudes Christ stands before us as a king.
But at the well of Jacob He is a man — a weary,
lonely, wayfaring man — not the benefactor but
the benefited, not the donor but the suppliant,
not the pitying but the pitied. He has reversed
the promise of His opening mission. At Cana
He gives ; at Samaria He gets. Has the
Father a place for the weariness at the well ?
He has ; nowhere is the chain of develop
ment more thoroughly riveted than here.
Without this episode of humiliation we should
lose the key to all that is to follow. Re
member what is to follow. It is Galilee — the
meeting with man as man. It is no longer
with man on the heights that Jesus is about to
deal. It is with human nature itself — human
nature on the plain. The wilderness had not
revealed that ; Cana had not revealed that ;
the night-meeting with Nicodemus had not
revealed that. His experiences, Judean and
G

98 THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL
Galilean alike, had been experiences of the
mountain ; He is now on His road to the
plain. Now, could there be a better preparation for
this distinctively human sympathy than the
experience of human want ? Remember that
all the future miracles of Jesus are miracles of
sympathy. They are not dramatic scenes
planned for a purpose. They are spontaneous
outpourings of His heart coming forth because
He cannot help it ; this is the feature about
them with which the Father is well pleased.
But if these miracles are to be the product of
His sympathy, they must be the product of
His sense of want. There can be no helpful
sympathy where the want is not common to
the benefactor and the beneficiary. If you tell
me a sad story about the fairies, I shall pro
bably shed no tears. The reason of the dry
eyes will not be that the story is untrue ; we
shed most tears over untrue stories. The
cause will lie in the fact that Fairyland is
foreign land, that the wants supposed to be
there experienced are not the wants felt by me.
Every sympathy is a memory. I feel for you

THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL 99
what at one time I felt for myself. The re
membrance of my personal want is the measure
of my sympathetic power. If I feed a destitute
crowd in Galilee, it is because I have myself
experienced destitution at the well of Jacob.
Jesus is no exception. He too must have
His human sympathy lighted at the fire of
personal pain. A very old writer, a writer
contemporaneous with our oldest Gospel, says,
' He learned obedience by the things which He
suffered.' Obedience to what ? To the law of
human sympathy. It is no peculiar case in
Jesus. What the writer wants to emphasise is
that He became subject to the law of our being ;
he says in effect, ' Read Him in this instance by
yourselves' It is not possible that sympathy
for my brother man can precede my personal
experience. All my compassions are echoes
— echoes of the strains of sorrow I have heard
in my own ear ; omit the strain, and you
remove the echo. That is the law of humanity ;
and the Son of Man became obedient to that
law. To Him as to me a personal link was
inevitable on the road to human sympathy.
To Him as to me the passage from Judea to

ioo THE WEARINESS AT THE WELL
Galilee could only be made by a transition
through Samaria — a transition in which the
individual, personal life was called to experience
a wellspring which was dry, and had to rest its
weariness upon another human soul.

/"~^\ THOU, who hast become partaker of my
^^ experience, make me partaker of Thine.
Thou couldst not sympathise with me without
living my life ; I cannot sympathise with Thee
without living Thine. There are sorrows of
Thine which are mysteries to me, because I
have not lived them. I marvel still before the
gates of Thy Gethsemane. It is because sin
has not pained me as it pained Thee. If I had
Thy horror of sin I would watch with Thee in
the garden ; it is want of personal memory that
makes me sleep. I cannot come into Thy
Galilee until I have passed through Thy
Samaria. I have not felt Thy Divine hunger,
Thy Divine thirst, Thy Divine weariness. I
shall blend my griefs with Thine when I have
experienced Thy waiting at the well.

CHAPTER IX
THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA
And now Jesus is back in Nazareth — the
home of His youth. He gives a curious reason
for going back — ' a prophet has no honour in
his own country.' One would have thought
this a reason for keeping away. But consider
where He had been in the interval — in the
metropolis. He had stood in the centre of
Jewish life, in the place where the ways met.
His presence had made a mark ; His influence
had been felt in high quarters ; He had
received the imprimatur of the capital. Look
ing at the matter in this light, do you not see
the force of His reason for going to Nazareth ?
We might put it into words like these : ' I
may go back now to my own city, for I have
no longer the atmosphere of my own city. As
long as I had no recognition elsewhere I had
101

102 THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA
no recognition there. But now I have been
recognised by the metropolis. Jerusalem has
seen me, listened to me. Little Nazareth will
not refuse after that. It will not any more
look upon me merely as the home prophet.
It will receive me, not on the ground of being
a countryman, but on the ground that I have
transcended my country, that I have been
impregnated with another air, that I have
obtained my credentials from a higher city —
the City of David.'
It is this feeling which prompts Jesus at
last, though late, to preach in Nazareth. We
should have expected it would have received
His first sermon. Yet His human heart knew
right well that those in whose vicinity a man
has lived and grown are not the most receptive
of his teaching. ' He came unto His own, and
His own received Him not,' are words which
bear, to my mind, the echo of unappreciated
years. They tell of an influence rendered
powerless by the familiarity of home, of a
beauty shrouded by nearness, of a greatness
hid by the constancy of daily contact. The

THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA 103
men of Nazareth could not believe in the
coming distinction of the name of Jesus. Did
they not live in the same environment? Did
they not walk the same streets with Him?
Did they not pass Him in the market-place ?
Did they not know His mother and sisters
perfectly? What should make Him so far
above them ? Was it possible that two should
be grinding at the same mill, and that the one
should be lifted up while the other was left
behind? If Jesus would speak to the men
of Nazareth, the proximity must first be
broken ; it was expedient for them that He
should go away. But, having gone away,
having made the beginnings of a name, having
caught the air of the metropolis, having washed
out the reproach of living next door to His
pupils, it was equally expedient that He
should return. The postponed sermon to His
own kindred could be preached by a voice
from the capital. He felt, and rightly felt,
that the Galilean multitude could only be
addressed from a mountain ; in the recognition
by Judea that mountain was found.

104 THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA
But whatever Judea had done for the coming
sermon, Samaria had done more. Judea had
removed a prejudice ; but Samaria had lifted
a barrier. If Judea placed Him socially on
the mountain, Samaria put Him spiritually on
the plain. The weariness at the well was a
deeper preparation for His sermon than the
prestige acquired at the cleansing of the
temple. The prestige gave Him an audience ;
the weariness gave Him a contact with the
heart. Indeed, I think the coming sermon at
Nazareth is the true sequel of Samaria. I
should not like to have seen it placed earlier
in the picture; it would have destroyed the
fitness of things ; it would have jarred on our
sense of harmony. Standing where it does,
it stands in the right place, the only place
suited to it. It marks a stage in the human
development of Jesus. It is not itself a
development ; it is the record that a de
velopment has taken place elsewhere. It
reveals that something has occurred to
unseal a well in the heart of Jesus, and it
points back to that other well in Samaria

THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA 105
where He first vividly experienced 'the days
of His flesh.'
The keynote of the sermon of Nazareth is
human sympathy ; it is struck at the beginning,
it is maintained to the close. The discourse
has at once a retrospective and a prospective
value ; it points back to Samaria, and it points
forward to His coming ministry. It is there
fore a distinctive landmark between His past
and His future. It vindicates the well of
Samaria; it indicates the lines on which He
is to move through Galilee. Such a milestone
in the march well merits a moment's pause.
Let us glance at one or two features of this
remarkable sermon. There are no original
heads in it; they are professedly borrowed
from a Jewish prophet. The originality lies in
the application of the words by Jesus to Him
self; that is the real subject of discourse ; that
is the light in which it demands our attention.
I believe the Messianic convictions of Jesus
came at first in intermittent flashes, such as
those by which the sky often re-establishes
itself after cloud and storm, and which still

106 THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA
enclose cloud and storm between them. This
sermon is one of these flashes — clear, piercing,
illuminative ; it shows the road behind ; it
reveals the way before : ' To-day is this scripture
fulfilled in your ears : " The Spirit of the Lord
is upon me, because He hath anointed me to
preach the gospel to the poor ; He hath sent
me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach
deliverance to the captives, and recovering of
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that
are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of
the Lord." '
Now, I should not have expected Jesus at
this early stage to have selected these as the
signs of His coming kingdom. I say ' at this
early stage.' I can understand very well how
the deepening shadows should have brought
out these special colours ; I can understand
how the death on Calvary should have given
them a permanent glow. But to the eyes of
them who trusted Him there was as yet no
trace of shadow ; to the Messianic hope of the
age there was no place for death. It was to
the heavens that men were looking for a sign

THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA 107
of the Son of Man. They expected the first
coming to have all the attributes which
Christians now attach to the second ; they
looked for it ' as the lightning cometh out of
the east and shineth even unto the west.'
Over against this lurid picture, what a homely
scene breaks upon their view 1 Jesus sketches
the ideal He had formed of His own glory,
of His Father's glory. Everything about the
sketch is simple, unadorned, even rustic. The
Prophet might well have appropriated it as
descriptive of his own humble mission ; but it
must have seemed beneath Jesus. To preach
the Gospel to the poor, to proclaim deliverance
to the captive, to wish the world a good
New Year, to comfort the broken-hearted, to
heal such insignificant things as bruises of the
spirit — this seemed an unpretentious pro
gramme. What had prompted Jesus to adopt
it as His own ? The cleansing of the temple
appeared worthy of Him ; what had intervened
to make Him stoop from His sphere ?
It was Samaria; it was the waiting at the
well. Nazareth is the sequel of those hours of

108 THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA
weariness. In stepping from the well of Jacob
He had stepped deeper into humanity — had
become more 'manifest in the flesh.' Incar
nation is not an act; it is a process; it goes
from less to more. Samaria was a step of the
incarnation of Jesus ; it sent Him deeper down
into that which was universal in human nature.
The empire which was the converse of that scene
in the wilderness began to glimmer before Him.
It was a field harder to be conquered than any
which Csesar had won — a field sown with tares,
strewn with ruins, thick with unsightly swamps.
He had learned its want by His own hunger,
its weakness by His own need.
And what is that programme which Jesus
here prescribes for His future ? It is something
altogether new — something which the Jewish
Prophet had, indeed, recognised as God's will,
but which no nation and no faith had yet
decreed as man's practice. It is a series of
rules for the survival of the wwfittest. It has
been said that Christianity is a progressive
religion; to me its distinctive feature is its
regressiveness. It is the only religion which

THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA 109
goes back to gather up the lost things — the
things which have fallen by the way and have
been left behind. Jesus claims as His own
prerogative that He came ' to seek and to save
that which was lost' His distinctive glory is
regressiveness. He alone goes back to the
forest of humanity to seek the children that
had lost their way. China goes back ; but it is
not to seek wandered children : it is to prove a
primaeval glory. Judea sometimes goes back;
but it is to seek, not the Garden of Gethsemane,
but the Garden of Eden. All the rest are pro
fessedly pressing forward — Brahman, Buddhist,
Parsee, Greek, Roman. All their messages are
for strong souls — souls already on the road to
Elysium, already on the road to Nirvana. Jesus
alone has a message for the weak. Jesus alone
retraces His steps into the already traversed
forest. He treads a winepress in which He is
unaccompanied by any professing saviour — the
way of those who are ready to perish.
There is another feature in the programme
which is well worth considering. The first
desire of Jesus in relation to man must always

no THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA
have been his spiritual emancipation — 'to
preach deliverance to the captive and recovery
of sight to the blind.' And yet, the first in
order of importance is not to Him the first in
order of time. I do not know that the Prophet
attached any significance to the order of the
clauses ; I am quite sure Jesus did, for He
followed it in His ministrations. To Him the
earliest of all missions is the healing of the
broken heart. One would have thought the
spiritual teaching would have taken the pre
cedence in point of time. Jesus knew better.
He knew that no spiritual teaching has any
effect at a shut door. He knew that if the
heart is depressed by its own bitterness the
most precious thought will fail to move. How
often has the finest sermon fallen flat on the
ear because the spirit was broken ! What is a
broken spirit ? It is what a broken limb is,
what a broken wing is — a thing deprived of the
power of motion. If the mind cannot move,
the chief workman is wanting. In vain you
' preach deliverance to the captive and recovery
of sight to the blind'; the broken heart could

THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA in
not lift itself into a level with the message.
You must begin, not with a message, but with
a fact. You must seek to bind the wound of
the spirit, to heal the breakage of the heart.
You must roll the stone from the door of the
sepulchre if you would bring the Christ from
within. Accordingly, the method of Jesus is to start
with the cure. He adopts it here in theory ;
He maintains it throughout in practice. Chris
tianity is before all things a medical movement.
It aims to reach the soul — but its first inquiries
are about the health. Nowhere is it more
modern than here. The systems of the past,
as a rule, have been of the East Eastern.
They have counselled the mutilating of the
flesh; they have proclaimed the redemptive
to be the opposite of the medical. Christianity
is of the East but not Eastern. It has been
transplanted into the West because it has the
spirit of the West. It has recognised from the
outset the doctrine which we claim as distinc
tively modern — the physical basis of life. It
has recognised the connection between soul and

i iz THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA
body. It has recognised that he who would
bear a message to the soul must not ignore
a preliminary condition — an inquiry into the
physical constitution of the man. It has pointed
to the fact that the evangelist has often failed
simply because the physician has failed. It
has anticipated the modern verdict that the
schoolmaster is not enough, that the preacher
is not enough, that the reformer is not enough
— that a healing hand must first be laid on life's
bruises, and a healing voice must say, ' Arise
and walk.' Christianity has claimed as man's
method what the Psalmist accepted as God's
— that the first step in the restoring of the soul
is to make it lie down in green pastures, to
lead it beside quiet waters.

' I ""HOU who knowest what is in man, guide
-*- me into the path of human charity. I
often begin at the wrong end. I bring the
tract to the hungry, the sermon to the thirsty,
the creed to the weary. I forget that the
broken heart is a motionless heart, an irrespon-

THE FIRST RESULT OF SAMARIA 113
sive heart. Teach me the meaning of these
words, ' Thou hast set my feet in a large room.'
Teach me the power of the environment.
Teach me that the grapes of Eshcol have
something to do with the march through the
desert. Help me to remember the elevating
power of fair surroundings. Enable me, before
all things, to say, ' Be of good cheer.' Let me
bring my message, Thy message, upon the
wings of mercy. Let me learn the spiritual
force of secular comfort. Reveal to me that
the resurrection of the body has a part in the
redemption of the soul. So shall I practise
Thy gift of healing.

M

CHAPTER X
THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA
I HAVE said in the previous chapter that the
end contemplated in the sermon of Nazareth
is the survival of the unfittest. As yet, how
ever, it is bnly the burden of a sermon ; it
has all to be translated into the life. Here,
as elsewhere, the step of the Son of Man
into the lower humanity begins not in act
but in thought. As the meditation of the
wilderness preceded the miracle of Cana and
the cleansing of the temple courts, so is the
meditation at Nazareth the prelude to a
deeper and darker descent into the life of
the human soul. For the first time as a
missionary enterprise, there has flashed before
the eyes of Jesus a vision of the conquest of
Galilee. Men had often spoken of its conquest
from the power of Rome. Jesus dreamed of
IH

THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA 115
a mightier deliverance — of what one of His
followers called a deliverance ' from the bond
age of corruption into the glorious liberty of
the children of God.' The voice which He
heard in Samaria had summoned Him into
Galilee. But remember, in becoming an idea, Galilee
had become a type. It had ceased to be a
mere geographical province ; you have only
to read the conclusion of the sermon of
Nazareth to see how completely Jesus had
emancipated Himself from the limits of
geography. Galilee had become to Him
what Bohemia is to us — a name to mark
the reckless section of humanity. It had
become to Him a synonym for all in the
world who needed help, for the whole family
of the labouring and the heavy-laden, for those
whom despair of recognition had rendered
lawless. The higher life of different cities
may vary; but the lower life of all is very
much alike. My sympathy with the upper
ranks in one place does not imply my
sympathy with the upper ranks in another;

n6 THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA
but my pity for the lower ranks in one place
does imply my pity for the lower ranks in
another. When Jesus took up Galilee into
His heart He took up all Galilees. He
entered into sympathy with all distress in
every locality. He became pledged and bound
to regard the soil of all poverty as His own
native soil.
And, singularly enough, the first public
manifestation of the plan conceived at Nazareth
occurred, not in the literal province of Galilee,
but in the course of another visit to the capital.
The time of the Passover had come, and the
tribes of God went up to the sacred city,
Jesus joined the multitude. He never dreamed
of founding a new religion — neither then nor
afterwards. To Him the faith of the Jewish
race was the bud which enclosed all possible
flowers. Therefore He joined the multitude
on the road to the great religious festival of
His nation. When next the curtain rises
He is beside a second well. At the well
of Samaria He was alone; at the well of
Bethesda He is surrounded by a crowd of

THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA 117
sufferers in search of health from the mineral
waters. From out that crowd His eye rests
on one. Why does the one engross His
interest? All are suffering from the same
kind of ailment; why does His attention
centre on a unit in the thousand ? Surely
there must have been some element in the
fate of this one man which made him a
special object of interest in the eyes of
Jesus! Is there anything peculiar in his
case, anything in which he differs from the
crowd? If we find this peculiarity we shall
reach at the same time the secret of Christ's
attraction. The peculiarity of this one man is not the
fact that he is lame; others around him are
in the same condition. It is not the fact
that he is personally impotent ; many at his
side are in like case. It is the fact that he
is impotent all round — personally and im
personally. He has neither limbs nor friends.
Others are equally impotent in body, but
they have some one to help them down into
the pool. This man is at all points disarmed

118 THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA
for the struggle of life. He has not one
single weapon with which to defend himself.
He has neither self-support nor brotherly
support. He is in the arena, not only with
out weapons, but without hands. Numerous
as is the crowd of sufferers, there is one class
of the unfortunate which has no other type
but him, which without him would be un
represented — the men who are unfit for the
battle. Now, remember where Jesus has come from.
He is fresh from the sermon of Nazareth.
Remember what was the burden of that
sermon. It was the survival of the unfittest.
Put the two facts together and see if they
do not harmonise. Is not the impotent man
at the pool of Bethesda the very embodiment
of that idea which dominated the sermon of
Nazareth? It is the first practical effect of
that sermon, and therefore the second result
of Samaria's well. It is the inauguration of
a principle new in the world's development.
That development had always proceeded on
the lines of the survival of the strongest and

THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA 119
the sending of the weakest to the wall. At
the pool of Bethesda the waters of human
sympathy were stirred, and the spirit of man
became troubled by the claims of the weakest.
It was the advent of a new force into humanity
— a force which entered into collision with the
old, and never paused until it had transformed
the world.
In these studies I am only selecting the
facts that bear on the human development
of Jesus. This is one of these. It is the
first healing act He performed on the lines
of the sermon of Nazareth. He had found
that His special work for man was to promote
the survival of the unfittest — to set at liberty
them that are bound. Here is a repre
sentative of the class — one whose case may
stand as a specimen of all. He attracts
Jesus mainly by his unfitness for life's
struggle — his unfitness even for the ordinary
modes of cure. He presents disqualifications
which were as yet unique in the human ex
perience of Jesus. Neither the men of Cana's
feast nor the inmates of the cleansed temple

120 THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA
nor the nobleman's son whose cure is recorded
in Luke iv. revealed this element of unfitness.
The man is not only bruised in body but
bruised in heart. The impotent limb is
almost the least of it. Byron tells us that
the prisoner of Chillon had been so long in
bondage that when at last deliverance to the
captive was proclaimed he left his dungeon
with regret. This man's position would have
been similar. I have said that the broken
heart is the motionless heart. It is not
enough to put the watch to the right hour
if the spring has snapped ; you must first
restore the spring. The spring of the watch
is the heart ; the broken heart is not neces
sarily restored by the restoration of an
impotent limb.
Accordingly, Jesus employs here the method
prescribed at Nazareth. He begins by asking
a seemingly useless question, 'Wilt thou be
made whole?' What makes it seem useless
is the fact that we attribute to this impotent
man our own healthy condition. Jesus knows
better. He sees him listless, apathetic, taking

THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA 121
it as a matter of course that he is unfit to
survive. He desires to awaken the dormant
wish for something better. Before all things,
He would move the heart of the man.
Previous to creating for him the heavens
and the earth He would have the spirit to
move on the face of the waters. Therefore
He begins by asking, 'Would you not like
to be as other people — active, unimpeded,
able to enjoy the delights of life ? ' It is
a question which no man would like to put
who believed cure to be hopeless, but which
every man is entitled to put who aspires to
effect a cure.
For this leads me to a principle which is
deeply imbedded in the healing acts of Jesus.
I allude to the fact that in the cure of human
distress He habitually asks the co-operation
of the patient. Sometimes He appeals to the
faith ; here He appeals to the desire : in either
case the principle is the same. And what is
the reason of the principle? It is because
Jesus wants the survival of the unfittest to be
the transformation of the unfittest. He does

122 THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA
not want unfitness itself to survive ; that would
be to Him the least desirable of all evolutions.
The aim of Christianity is to have the deformed
transformed. It is not simply to preserve the
weak ; it is to annihilate their weakness, to
make them dominant forces in the kingdom of
God. Accordingly, the first appeal of Jesus
is to the secret of all human force — the will.
' Wilt thou be healed ? ' — it is a declaration on
the part of Jesus that in His system of salva
tion man is not to be passive. The salvations
of the past had been commonly of another
kind. The human soul had been a mere
instrument played on by a foreign hand ; its
will had been absorbed, its affections sup
pressed. But the kingdom of God was to be
opposed to asceticism. It was to seek, not the
contraction, but the expansion of the soul.
Its keynote was to be reciprocity — man work
ing together with God. It was to desire an
increase, not a diminution, of human person
ality. It was to demand as a preliminary
condition the co-operation of the heart of
man.

THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA 123
One of the finest illustrations of this principle
is to be found, I think, in words used by Jesus
Himself, ' If ye abide in me and my words
abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and
it shall be done unto you.' You will observe
the demand for a reciprocal relation ; we must
abide in Him and He must abide in us.
Brahmanism would have been content with
the former; it was satisfied that the human
should be lost in the Divine. Jesus would
have deemed this no victory. To Him the
highest power of salvation is what Ezekiel
calls the saving of a soul 'alive.' A soul
might be saved by death — taken away from
the evil to come. A soul might be saved by
sleep — have its passions deadened by narcotics.
These are not a conquest, but an annihilation,
of the will. But to be saved alive is to pre
serve my personality in the process. It is to
come forth from the baptism not deadened
but quickened, not mutilated but enlarged,
not circumscribed but glorified. It is to reveal
the truth that surrender to God is not ab
sorption in the Divine, and that the human

124 THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA
will is never so strong as when it has yielded
to the power of love.

'T^HOU Divine Man, I thank thee that Thou
¦*¦ hast desired the response of my heart.
I thank Thee that there is something in me
which is not quite impotent — something which
Thou hast deemed worthy to work along with
Thee. I have no strength with which to serve
Thee ; but Thou hast accepted a service less
than strength — the will to be strong. While
yet I am impotent of limb Thou hast asked
the movement of my heart, 'Wilt thou be
made whole?' Let me yield Thee this one
gift in my power — the willingness to be. I
cannot yet toil with Thee; let me wish with
Thee. Let me figure in fancy what I would
do for Thee if I were free. Let me imagine
how I would serve Thee if I were lifted
from the porch of Bethesda. Let me plan
the race I would have run if I had been
strong in limb. Let me picture with longing
that road of beneficence which weakness has

THE SECOND RESULT OF SAMARIA 125
forbidden me to follow. Let me paint in my
heart those labours of love which the body
could not bear. And Thou shalt accept the
heart. Thou shalt receive the desire in place
of the deed. Thou shalt pluck the flower in
the absence of the fruit. Thou shalt write
in the book of Thy remembrance that I wish
to be made whole.

CHAPTER XI
THE LEAGUE OF PITY
When Jesus healed the lame man of Bethesda
the saddest part of the spectacle remained to
Him uncleansed. The saddest part of the
spectacle was the fact that in a world of human
hearts a man of physical impotence should be
deemed unfit to survive. The cure was but
the lifting of one pebble from a sea of troubles.
At all Bethesdas and in all Galilees the same
weird story was being repeated. The man
who did not happen to move in the direction
of the stream was left behind to die. To Jesus
this current of the stream was the real calamity.
The thing above all others to be deplored was
man's inhumanity to man. [The cure of the
cripple was a satisfaction ; but it did not by one
iota remove the fact that he had been left to lie
in the porch for want of a friend's strong arm.
120

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 127
Accordingly, the eye and mind of Jesus were
occupied with a deeper problem than the
world's pain — the world's sin. The conviction
of the world's sin did not come to Him as
an abstraction ; it was wakened by concrete
experiences. If you believe in His human
development — and the evangelical history bids
you — you will believe there must have been
a time in which the conviction of the world's
sin broke upon Him as a personal experience,
a time when it became not merely a lesson
learned from the Jewish law, but a fact realised
in the individual life. I think one of its
deepest revelations must have been the scene
at Bethesda. It was not a scene of absolute
inhumanity ; men were engaged in helpfulness.
But each helped only his own. The spectacle
was in one sense sadder than one of complete
savagery; it was savagery in the sphere of
civilisation. It showed how little the develop
ment of the world had done to root out that
primitive instinct which makes self-preservation
predominant. It revealed the limits of human
love even in its own sphere and under the most

128 THE LEAGUE OF PITY
favourable conditions. Jesus felt that what
the world wanted was moral renovation. To
clear away calamity would be simply to
remove the need of unselfishness. His aim
was to preserve that need ; what He deplored
was that men were not conscious of it. To
abolish the cross would be moral suicide ; men
must be taught to take up the cross, to
reproduce His experience, to follow Him.
Here is something unique in human history.
An individual life, burning with the desire to
right the wrong, stands in the centre of the
world's market-place and cries, 'Follow me.'
Observe where the uniqueness lies. It is not
in the fact that Jesus seeks to attach Him
self to the company of others ; all youth does
that ; it is the period when we like least to be
alone. But the motto of ordinary youth is,
'Let me follow you! Its leading feature is
imitation. It sets before itself the examples
of the past and tries to tread in their footsteps.
Jesus is an inversion of the order. Standing
on the threshold of active life, with all the
kingdoms of the world in front of Him and all

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 129
the examples of the past behind Him, He
proposes Himself as the object of imitation.
Like all lives on the threshold, He too desires
to associate Himself with others ; but He
claims to be the leader, not the follower.
Instead of constructing a guild on the basis
of some ideal of admiration, He proposes to
construct a guild which shall have for its basis
the imitation of Himself. Humanly speaking,
and speaking with all reverence, I should say
that Jesus presents the aspect of a man without
an ideal. His only ideal is His Father. To
be perfect as His Father in heaven is perfect
and for the sake of His Father in heaven is
the sole end and aim of His being ; His meat
and His drink is to do the will of His Father.
This human life without a human ideal is the
most extraordinary spectacle in history. But
that this human life should offer itself as an
ideal to all other lives, that this man who fol
lowed none should invite all to follow Him,
is an element that adds to the wonder. Such
is the manifestation of Jesus which we are
next to see. 1

130 THE LEAGUE OF PITY
Shortly after the scene of Bethesda, and
with a view to the moral renovation of the
world, He begins to form a league of pity.
It is to be the nucleus of a great humanitarian
guild — a guild which through the years is to
grow and ramify — which is to become first
the Ecclesia, then the Church, then the
Christian State, and eventually the United
World. But the point I here wish to emphasise
is the condition required for enrolment in this
guild. The condition prescribed by Jesus is
the consent of the members to take Himself
as their model ; ' Follow me.' This new league,
like other leagues, receives a secret watchword ;
but by the consent, nay, by the command of
its Founder, the watchword is neither ' frater
nity' nor 'liberty' nor 'equality'; it is 'the
imitation oifesus.'
And this is not the less but all the more
remarkable from the fact that the members of
that little band which inaugurated the league
of pity were not new to Jesus. I gather from
the opening chapter of St. John that they had
known Him in the days directly preceding

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 131
His public ministry, that they had listened to
His private teaching, that they had been so
impressed with that teaching as to say among
themselves, ' Is not this the Christ ? ' He
founded His claim to their confidence upon
something earlier than His miracles — upon
impressions derived from the domestic life,
from the family altar, from the scenes of
home. He rested it upon that in Him which
was least transcendental, most familiar to the
average eye. He neither appealed to Cana nor
to Bethesda ; He reverted to the memories
of a time when as yet the cottage of Nazareth
was in the ascendant and the household fires
had not been left behind. There is no better
proof of the absorbing power of His personality
than the fact that the league of pity had its
nucleus in men who were drawn to Him ere
He had manifested His glory.
The most remarkable feature of this league
of pity is the meagre terms required for its
first subscription. These fishermen of Galilee
were originally united not by a creed but by
an ideal — a standard of imitation. What they

i32 THE LEAGUE OF PITY
subscribed to was not an assent to certain
doctrines ; it was a promise of certain actions.
They began, as they ended, with faith; but
the beginning of their faith was not the signing
of a confession ; it was the expression of a
desire to follow Jesus. There is no preliminary
command even for the confession of sin. They
are not told to begin by interrogating their
past — by asking whether they are worthy to
follow ; they are to come without introspection
— as St. Mark puts it, ' straightway.' In
nothing is the human wisdom of Jesus more
transparent than in this postponing of repent
ance. Self-introspection requires a light ; and
the light must come before the searching.
How shall a man judge of his want of charity
except by first joining the league of pity ! It
is by pity and by pity alone that I learn the
want of it. Before all things the light must
come. It is this light which must kindle the
fire of my remorse. It is by the burning bush
in my desert that I find it to have been a
desert ; previous to that illumination it was
my city, my native air. It was only by the

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 133
entrance into a ministrant life that such men
as Peter and Andrew and James and John
could learn their past inadequacy for the
kingdom of God.
There is one question which may suggest
itself here: Why did Jesus form a human
league of pity at all ? Why not appeal to that
heavenly host which was so prominent a
feature of the old dispensation? Was not
such a union a league sufficient? With the
confidence in His mind that such an alliance
existed, why seek so frail a support as the
co-operation of a human guild? Now, in all
questions of this sort I try, wherever I can, to
get the answer from Jesus Himself. I regard
all the sayings of Jesus as autobiographical.
Every utterance must have been a voice of
personal experience, and there must have been
a period in His life when that experience
began. There is one of these future utterances
which seems to me to have originated at this
period in the heart of Jesus. It is the remark
able saying, 'The Father loveth the Son and
hath given all things into His hand.' What is

134 THE LEAGUE OF PITY
the idea of these words ? It is the conception
of a transference of the reins of Divine govern
ment. I conceive that at this time Jesus said
to Himself: 'Hitherto, in the faith of Israel,
the Father has given the charge of man to the
angels. The time has come for a change of
thought in this matter. Henceforth, man shall
have the charge of man. The government of
my Father has always been a vicarious govern
ment ; but hitherto it has devolved upon the
angelic throng. Let it now devolve on the
human. Why should an angel be the best
help for an earth-born soul ! Has he taken
the seed of Abraham ? Does he know the
frailty of man's frame? Has his training in
the school of sorrow been such as to make
him a fitting guardian of the weak? Is not
man the fitting guardian of man ? My Father
desires to transfer the government. He calls
upon the sons of men to lift those burdens of
humanity which to the eyes of the past
generation were laid upon the arms of the
cherubim.' Such I understand to be the real bearing of

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 135
the apostolic call. It is the formation of a
human brotherhood to take, in relation to
man, the place of the angels. Up to this time
the beings outside humanity had been looked
upon as the sole ministers to man. To be
fed by mysterious agencies was to be fed
providentially. It seemed more reverent to
believe that Elijah was ministered to by the
ravens than that he was ministered to by the
Arabians — either translation being admissible.
It was really less reverent. Intelligent ministra
tion is the most providential ministration. The
ravens and the angels are both removed from
man. They are so from opposite reasons ; the
ravens are too far below, the angels too far
above. Perfect ministration is ministration
founded upon a kindred experience. Such can
only be found within the circle of the human.
Jesus woke the world into that consciousness.
He proclaimed that if ministration was to be
complete, man must be the angel to man.
That is the thought at the root of what is
called the Christian ministry. It is the idea
that sympathy with human weakness demands

136 THE LEAGUE OF PITY
participation in that weakness. In the strength
of that conviction Jesus formed the league of
pity — a human league, a brotherhood of man
with man for the support of man. He initiated
a movement in the heart of humanity which,
though in its origin no bigger than the eddies
of the pool of Bethesda, was destined in the
fulness of time to become a very ocean of
love.

O ON of Man, let me join Thy league of pity.
**-* Let me take the place of the angels in the
ministry to human souls. Angels cannot meet
the wants of my brother. They could minister
to Thee, for Thou hadst their nature as well
as mine. But my brother has not their nature.
He needs some one who knows him ; he needs
me. Send me, O Lord. Let me be the apostle
to the weak and weary. Send not the cherubim
and the seraphim ; send not the angel and the
archangel. These have no drooping of the
wing; they are never tired with their flight;
they cannot sympathise with faintness. But /

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 137
have borne the burden of the day, I have been
tried in the furnace of pain. I have trod
the dusty plain, I have descended the deep
valley, I have climbed the arduous steep. I
know the path of the weary, I can guide where
the celestials never go ; make me a helper in
Thy ministrant band

CHAPTER XII
PECULIARITIES OF THE LEAGUE OF PITY
If one had been asked to predict beforehand
what would be the constitution of the league of
pity, I think he would have said three things :
' It will have a very large membership'; 'It will
select men of tried experience ' ; ' 1 1 will em
brace minds of kindred qualities.' Every one
of these natural anticipations has been falsified
by the fact. The league of pity constituted by
Jesus is a conspicuous reversal of these three
principles ; and as in this respect it partakes of
the originality of its Founder, it demands a
place in a study of the Portrait of Jesus.
And first. There is apparently a startling
disproportion between the aim and the efforts
of Jesus. The aim is gigantic ; it is nothing
less than the moral conquest of the world : ' Ye
are the light of the world ; a city that is set on
188

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 139
a hill cannot be hid.' But where is the hill}
The eye looks around and sees none. There
is nothing elevated in the spectacle before us.
There is nothing in the city to excite wonder
—except the seeming presumption of its pre
tensions. It has a population of twelve souls
capable of action ; the rest are as yet impotent.
This insignificant company is to Jesus the
beginning of the kingdom of God. It is to
this insignificant company that He utters His
largest and loudest promises. It is on the
work of these twelve that He professedly builds
His empire. It is these that He sends forth — I
do not say merely into the parliament of earth,
but into the parliament of heaven — to represent
the cause of humanity before the throne of the
Father. We start back, appalled at the bold
ness of the representation. It is a boldness
unparalleled in all religion, unexampled even
in literary imagination. We have often been
startled to hear the Jewish nation claim to
represent all the kingdoms of the earth ; but
to hear twelve men make that claim surpasses
the bounds of wonder.

Ho PECULIARITIES OF
And yet, in the very heart of this paradox
the wisdom of Jesus shines. There is a familiar
expression, ' The world is small.' We frequently
quote it ; but have we considered the truth of
it ? We popularly understand it to mean that
people whom we have once known are likely
to meet us again in far-off lands and after many
years. In truth it means much more than that.
The individual meetings are only symptoms ;
the real proof of the world's smallness lies below.
It lies in the fact that, wherever we go, the
types of humanity repeat themselves. Perhaps
to a thoroughly travelled man or woman the
most abiding experience will be a sense of the
essential likeness of human nature everywhere.
I believe that the number ' twelve ' is not too
small to represent before any throne, Divine or
human, all the phases of humanity. It is a
great mistake to imagine that the village life
of Galilee differs in essence from the metro
politan life of Jerusalem. Those who have
lived in a village after knowing the town will
tell you how struck they have been with the
parallel between them. We speak of the

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 141
temptations of city life as if they were some
thing distinctive. They are not. The life of
the rustic reveals precisely the same tempta
tions as the life of the man of fashion — the
lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and
especially, what we should least expect, the
pride of life. I have never seen such exhibi
tions of caste as I have witnessed in the routine
of a country village none of whose inhabitants
rose above the level of a working man.
When Jesus lit twelve representative moral
torches He contributed all the original lights
required for the illumination of the world. I
say 'all the original lights'; other torches had
to be kindled from these. But what I mean is
that in these twelve He had already provided
for all possible phases of humanity. If I want
to light a million candles there are two ways
in which I may do so. I may strike a million
matches and put one to each of them ; in this
case they are all original lights. Or I may
light with one match only twelve candles, bring
these into illuminative contact with others,
bring these others into contact with a third

142 PECULIARITIES OF
class, and so on throughout the series. In this
case only the twelve lights are original ; the rest
are really derived from them. Now, this latter
is the method of Jesus. It appears again and
again in word and work — in the parable of the
mustard seed, in the simile of the leaven, in the
distribution of the desert loaves. Nay, is not
this multiplying of little things the root idea
of that otherwise obscure sentiment, ' A few are
chosen, but the many are called ' ? The chosen
lights are the original lights — those who are
kindled by the immediate contact with the
match. But the rest have to place themselves
in proximity to the original lights. Unlike
the chosen, they have a choice. They are not
illuminated previous to willing it ; they must
come into contact with the first light and catch
the glow. The kingdom of grace is an econo
mical kingdom ; it has provision for all, but
provision without waste. There is no expen
diture of superfluous radiance ; the twelve first
candles are the light of the world.
I come now to the second peculiarity of the
league of pity. We should have expected that

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 143
Jesus would have made choice of the most
experienced men. A league of pity seems to
demand experience ; we go instinctively to the
aged for comfort. Yet the first league of pity
is a guild of young men. Why is this ? Of
course we all understand and approve the
platitude, ' Just as the twig is bent the tree 's
inclined.' That is an argument for early
tuition. But what we want to know is why
the stage of early tuition should be deemed a
standard for all time. The mystery is not that
Jesus haa young men among His disciples ; it
is that these young men became His prime-
ministers. We want to know why Jesus
selected for His league of pity men whose
experience was yet to make, men who were
standing only on the threshold of existence,
and who had still to enter that world of which
they were declared to be the light.
And the answer is, because the measure
of a man is not his experience but his hope.
Experience is memory. Earthly memory pre
sents, as a whole, a record of failures. No man
guided by that alone will preach the gospel of

144 PECULIARITIES OF
moral renovation. The work of moral renova
tion is proportionate to the amount of hope, and
in some measure to the discounting of memory.
Hope is apt to predominate in youth ; memory,
in age. Let us imagine a case in which youth
was all hope, and age all memory. A young
man, let us say, goes to an old man, and paints
the ideal he has conceived of a good time
coming. The old man asks, 'What ground
have you for this roseate vision ? ' ' Nothing
but hope,' answers the youth. The grave senior
shakes his head. ' My lad,' he says, ' when you
are as old as I am you will know how all such
ideals override experience.' Which is right?
The young man — and he is so for the very
reason stated by the old. Is not the very over
riding of experience a proof that experience is
not the measure of us ? Is not the fact that
man's ideal transcends his reality a suggestion
that there awaits him a larger reality ? That
is what Jesus felt. That is why in forming a
league for the moral renovation of humanity
He drew its first disciples from the young.
Nay, that is why in the centre of these disciples

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 145
themselves He placed a little child. It was a
symbol of the truth that what He wanted
first and foremost was hope — the power that
could precede experience, the power that could
survive experience, the power that could pre
dict the advent of a new experience. To
receive the kingdom of God was to revive the
hopefulness of youth.
There is one other peculiarity in this league
of pity. The men who compose it do not
seem at first sight to have a common basis. As
the little company files out before us there
appears to be no bond between them. We
are disposed to ask on what principle Jesus can
have made the selection. First there steps
forth Peter Bar-Jona — a man of quick fire and
flashing impulse ; we say, ' I see the kind of
man Jesus wants.' Suddenly there comes up
another in every sense his contrast — a man
characteristically meditative and slow, pro
verbially spoken of as tarrying till the Lord
comes ; it is John son of Zebedee : we feel
that we have limited the desire of Jesus. By
and by there emerges a second pair. There
K

146 PECULIARITIES OF
stands forth a man from rural life, bearing the
simplicity of rural life, wondering if good can
come out of a gay town ; it is Nathanael —
certainly, I think, one of the twelve. But he
is followed presently by a man of the city — a
man with all the shrewdness of the exchange
and all the keenness of the counting-house ; it
is Matthew, the publican. A third pair comes
into the arena. We see a red-hot believer
eager for martyrdom ; it is James the brother
of John. And by his side there stands one
who through his love is equally ready for
martyrdom, but who intellectually believes
little ; it is Thomas — the man who, when he
despaired of the cause of Jesus, was still able
to say, ' Let us go that we may die with Him.'
Whence the admission of such diversities?
It is to show how varied are the possible forms
of love — how many different songs love may
sing and still be true. We can verify this for
ourselves. There is a love like Peter's whose
essence is impulse ; there is a love like John's
whose power is waiting. There is a love like
Nathanael's which lives in sentiment, which

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 147
speaks the language of flowers ; there is a love
like Matthew's which deals in practical service.
There is a love like that of James which must
have an object to lean on — it is more reve
rential than protective; and there is a love like
that of Thomas which has protectiveness for
its brightest glory, which can support its object
in the dark hour. All these and a hundred
phases more can exist in the kingdom of love.
' The wedding is furnished with guests, and yet
there is room.'

T THANK Thee, O Lord, that Thou hast
-*- placed so many lights in the upper cham
ber — so many and so varied. I thank Thee
that I do not need to take my rule from one,
that each can see his own star in Thy sky.
And yet, I thank Thee still more that I do not
need to rest in my own star. Thou hast or
dained many lights, not only to prepare a place
for me, but to prepare for me many places.
Thou wouldst have me, not merely to keep my
own glow, but to get from others the colour

148 THE LEAGUE OF PITY
which in me is dim. Thou hast put Peter
beside John that the impulsiveness of Peter
may be moderated ; Thou hast put John beside
Peter that the slowness of John may be quick
ened. Illuminate me by my brother's light.
Give to my love the quality in which it is not
strong. Let me catch the impress of the
opposite star. Let me press toward the gate
by which / have not found Thee, by which
my brother has found Thee. Help me to
sympathise with those who have entered by
another door of Thy temple. Reveal to me
that my song of praise is not complete till it
blends with a counterpart in the great sym
phony. I shall know the meaning of the many
voices when I learn the need of Thy manifold
grace.

CHAPTER XIII
THE FIRST CIRCLE OF THE LEAGUE OF PITY
The history of civilisation has been the his
tory of expanding circles. It begins with the
individual ; it widens into the family ; it ex
pands into the tribe ; it unites several tribes
to form a nation ; it joins many nations to
make a brotherhood of Man.
The history of the healing work of Jesus is,
I believe, an epitome of that progress. This,
too, as we have seen, begins with the in
dividual. It works its first miracle in the
impulse of a personal courtesy at the marriage
feast of Cana. In the opening days of His
ministry Jesus goes forth alone. I do not
say He is unaccompanied as a traveller, but
He is unaccompanied as a missionary. There
is as yet no organised band of workers, none
to participate in the ministry to man. But
149

150 THE FIRST CIRCLE OF
we have seen the first eddy of the pool — we
have seen the formation of a league of pity.
Jesus has officially associated Himself with
other lives. His work has entered on a new
beginning. Christianity has become a cor
poration, a membership. It is as yet a very
insignificant membership, but it has vast pre
tensions — as vast as civilisation itself. It pro
poses to work them out on the plan of
civilisation. I believe you will find, when you
reach the real order of the events, that the
ministry of Jesus follows this plan. You will
see it ever widening its circles till it embraces
the representation of the world. The league
of pity has been started ; what will be its
first manifestation, its earliest sphere? If it
is to follow the plan of civilisation, its first
corporative movement will be round the family
altar. Is this expectation realised ?
It is. In chronological order the first definite
event after the formation of the league of pity
is the healing of an illness in the family of
one of its members; we read that 'Simon's
wife's mother lay sick of a fever,' and that

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 151
Jesus was called to minister. I remember in
the days of youth what a peculiar impression
I had in reading this narrative. It was like
the sensation of seeing a balloon drop into a
hay-field. There was a savour of anti-climax
about it. Here was a league of pity for the
help of the world ; and at its first manifesta
tion we were confronted with the recital of an
act of favour shown to one of its members.
It seemed like a bringing down of the bird in
the moment of its upward flight. One looked
at the outset for a cosmopolitan act from a
movement with such a cosmopolitan aim. We
expected, perhaps, a mission to Rome, at the
least an immediate journey to Jerusalem. It
came somewhat like a shock to be told that
this ministry found its inauguration when
' Simon's wife's mother lay sick of a fever.'
But a little reflection, like a little knowledge,
is a dangerous thing. A deeper reflection
dispels the illusion. As we study the -Portrait
of Jesus it becomes more and more clear that
this seeming anti-climax is on the lines of a
plan — not the plan of Jesus, but that plan of

152 THE FIRST CIRCLE OF
the life of Jesus which has been evolved by
the Father. When the earthly life of Jesus
was complete, men woke to this plan. They
saw that the course of Christianity was to be
a movement from the home centre to the out
lying circumference. Why did they see that ?
Because the life of Jesus was before them,
and the life of Jesus had revealed it. Why
does He say in His very last charge to His
disciples, 'Teach all nations, beginning at
Jerusalem'} Is it a patriotism or is it a
principle? It is a principle. What is that
principle? It is this, that the primal need
of man is the extension of the family instinct.
The point is so important and so distinctive
of the new religion that I shall offer no
apology for devoting to it a moment's con
sideration. In the life of the pre-Christian world it
may be said generally and epigrammatically
that progress was sought by leaving home.
The domestic hearth blazed chiefly for the
young and for the female. When the youth
went forth into the world, he went forth from

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 153
home; he left the hearth and the females
behind. Woman had no share in the govern
ment of the state; the qualities of woman
hood were deemed disqualifications for public
life. The progress from youth into manhood
was essentially a losing sight of the old home.
The man conquered the world by forgetting
his childhood, by ignoring, if not suppress
ing, the domestic feelings, by allowing the
memories of the household to fade in the
far distance. The world was defined by him
as the region which lay beyond the family
circle. But the conception which Jesus formed of
human progress was not only very different,
but in radical contrast. To Him the pro
gress from youth to manhood was not the
abandonment of an old field, but the exten
sion of an old field. In His view there should
be no going out from the family circle into
the world ; there should be a bringing of the
world into the family circle. Let us say you
are a member of a typical household — a
Nazareth household. You have a circle of

154 THE FIRST CIRCLE OF
brothers and sisters for whom you have a
devoted affection. There are two possible
ways in which a new religion might come to
you. It might say, ' I want you to enter
upon a new kind of love — a love which now
you know nothing about, but which will be
revealed to you when you consent to receive
it.' Or it might say, ' I am quite content
with your present form of affection, and I
am quite content that you should continue
it towards those brothers and sisters. But
without changing the form of your love, with
out diminishing the amount of your love, with
out leaving the present objects of your love,
I should like you to extend the privilege to
a wider circle. I should like you to ask your
self, not whether you are right in loving your
present brothers and sisters, but how many
more brothers and sisters you could love in
the same way. I should like you, sitting by
your own ingle, to consider whether the warmth
of your home interest might not be diffused
beyond its original limits.' This latter voice
is the voice of Christianity.

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 155
On its human side the religion of Jesus is
the effort to construct a cosmopolitan home;
on its Divine side it is the effort to glorify a
universal Father. On both sides it is essen
tially the religion of the family. I have heard
it said that Christianity was narrow at the
beginning because it exhorted only to 'love
the brethren! But I say that this exhorta
tion expresses, not the beginning, but the final
goal of Christianity. What the religion of
Jesus contemplates is a brotherhood of Man.
What Jesus seeks from beginning to end is
an extension of the family relation from sphere
to sphere until it shall include the united
world. His first recorded utterance is, ' Wist
ye not that I should be in my Father's
premises ? ' one of His latest is, ' In my
Father's house are many mansions.' The
world to Him is ideally a colossal home —
the potential scene of a united family group
whose union is not the less complete
because it exists along with individual
varieties. The house has many mansions ;
but in spite of that, its brotherhood is un-

156 THE FIRST CIRCLE OF
broken, for all its inmates are the children
of one Father.
But if this be the Christian ideal of the
world's final goal, where shall we look for
the starting-point? Can there be any spot
but one — the home? If the consummation is
to be the affection of a Father's house, must
not the beginning be the consecration of my
own house? The idea of Divine fatherhood
derives its beauty from the impression of
human fatherhood. If the impression of human
fatherhood has been bad, the Divine relation
ship will convey a repellent association. Many
a Sabbath-School child when told that God
is its Father and Jesus its elder brother says
in its heart, 'I hope not!' It has seen only
a father's dissipation and felt only an elder
brother's blow. That is just the reason why
every Sabbath-School teacher worthy of the
name makes it his or her earliest care to visit
the pupils in their own houses. If you want
to teach a child that heaven is his home, that
God is his Father, that Christ is his brother,
that the ties which bind the world are family

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 157
ties, you must begin by purifying the original
ideas. You must make the thought of home
endearing, the name of father sacred, the sense
of brotherhood protective, the relationship of
the family divine.
And now perhaps we can understand the
local beginning of the league of pity. We
can see how it is that Jesus in teaching His
disciples to light the world began by teaching
them to light their own dwellings. We can
mark the significance and the appropriateness
of that method which made the innermost and
the narrowest circle the origin of all. I said
in the previous chapter that when Jesus put
the child in the centre of the ring He meant
to symbolise the advantage of the hopefulness
of youth. I must add here that He meant
to symbolise something more. He designed
to emphasise the truth that the home sphere
was to be the germ-cell of the new develop
ment, and that, however wide the ring might
be, this ring was ever to circle round it. It
was the revelation of a doctrine which con
tradicted all former doctrines — that in a deeply

158 THE FIRST CIRCLE OF
significant sense the first was to be the last
and the last first. The final stage of man
was to be the consummation of his begin
ning ; he was to return at last to the brother
hood of home. Long as seemed the interval
between the domestic hearth of Nazareth and
the many mansions of the Father's house, the
house with many mansions was to be built
upon the model of the home of Nazareth.
Indeed, there is to my mind something auto
biographical in the ring of this late voice of
Jesus. Why should He invest His heaven
with the attributes of a home? Is not the
word ' homely ' synonymous with ' plain ' ? why
make it descriptive of a glorified world ? The
answer must be, because to Jesus it is not
synonymous with plainness. If to Him the
most endearing name for Paradise was the
house of a father, we receive a flood of light
upon His childhood's days. The curtain which
the historian has not lifted has been lifted by
Himself, and we have been permitted to get
a glimpse of the truth that His earliest im
pressions were those- of earthly peace.

THE LEAGUE OF PITY 159
S~\ THOU, who hast planted the family
^-^ tree, let me rest under its branches.
Help me to sanctify my home, to light it
with the lamp of cheer, to warm it with the
fire of love. Often have I thought of these
words of Israel's Psalmist, ' I shall walk within
my house with a perfect heart' It seemed
a very small sphere for perfection to walk in.
But I understand its importance now. My
home is not to be my primitive state ; it is
to be my final state. In my own house Thou
art training me for my Father's house. My
family virtues are to be the ripest fruit of
Thy tree of life. Shine on them, O Lord,
that they may grow. Teach me that my
home duties are my most religious duties.
Teach me that Nazareth is not the begin
ning but the end. Teach me that the place
prepared for man in the many mansions is a
place prepared for the household fires. Reveal
to me that my hope for brightness lies in the
return of the morning star — that star of domes
tic love which preceded the jealous struggles
of the day. Thy call to me is a calling home.

CHAPTER XIV
THE EXTENSION OF THE RING
I HAVE said that the course of human sym
pathy is from within outwards. The first step
of the league of pity has been on the lines of
this development. Jesus has begun His co
operative ministry within the circle of the
smallest ring. He has allowed the little band
to receive the earliest benefit from the work
it has inaugurated. We are now to witness
a wider movement. Let us ask, as a pre
liminary question, what we should expect to
witness. Before we take our stand in the
great gallery to survey the Portrait of Jesus
let us consider the picture of human life fur
nished by our own experience. I do not wish
to create any theory; I propose to take my
impressions from the Portrait alone. But
surely it is legitimate to ask whether the
160

THE EXTENSION OF THE RING 161
aspect of this Countenance is or is not familiar
to us, whether there be anything in it to which
our experience says ' Amen ' ! We are quite
able to mark the next step in the sympathetic
march of Jesus ; the evangelic narratives are
agreed about it. But is it also the step of our
hearts ? Do we recognise its truth to nature —
to our nature ? Do we feel that the experience
which it expresses is a universal experience —
an experience natural to man? If so, our
study of the Portrait of Jesus will be immensely
increased in interest and enormously quickened
in penetration.
Let us go back, then, to our own home
circle — to the days of our youth. Our first
sympathies, as I have said, are family sym
pathies ; the league of pity is a home league.
How is it to pass into foreign relations ? How
is it to get outside the family circle to enclose
other circles ? That is a question which each
may answer by an appeal to his own ex
perience, and which cannot be answered in
any other way. Let me appeal to my ex
perience — my personal memory; I feel sure
L

162 THE EXTENSION OF THE RING
it will not be found abnormal. My recollec
tion, then, is that my outside sympathies were
first excited by the things which I did not
understand — the forms of darkness which had
something mysterious about them. I remember
distinctly my earliest sensations in looking at
a funeral. They were those of deep sympathy ;
but the sympathy was all for the dead. The
sorrow for the bereaved did not enter into it
at all. My compassion was for the still form
which was being mysteriously whirled away
into some underground quarter, and which I
believed would experience in that quarter a
sense of imprisonment and loneliness. Look
ing back at this early form of compassion,
I feel that the mystery was the main source
of its existence, and that the removal of the
mystery would have taken the compassion
away. I have said I do not believe this experience
to be abnormal. I think the forms of sorrow
which impress not only the child but the
youth are generally those which throw a mist
over the imagination. I have seen a boy

THE EXTENSION OF THE RING 163
manifest his earliest trace of feeling by shed
ding tears over the fate of those who, he was
told, had gone to the place prepared for the
wicked. In this case the power of the
calamity lay in the fact that it was not a
calamity of the common street. Martin Luther
was first awakened to the serious aspect of
life through seeing a man struck by lightning.
Now, measured by anything that is merely
physical, death by lightning is by no means
the saddest form of dissolution. It is rapid,
painless, unheralded by any bodily decay;
from the purely physical side many would
choose it in preference to other forms. But
then, to Martin Luther the physical side of
such a death was precisely that which had
least importance. It seemed to be separated
from other deaths by a special act of Divine
Will. The man appeared to have been marked
out to die, individually aimed at from out the
mass of humanity. It looked as if he could
not be waited for in the ordinary course of
Adam's race, as if an extra thunderbolt had
to be improvised to accelerate his doom. The

1 64 THE EXTENSION OF THE RING
experience of Martin Luther is the characteristic
experience of every mind which is still in the
stage of unscientific simplicity.
Now, throw yourself into the position of
this initial league of pity. It has begun by
the exercise of a merely family sympathy;
it is about to cross the line. Where shall it
cross ? At the point where human sympathy
in general makes a transition from the home
into the world — the point where the cloud
takes the form of the mystery. Is there such
a point in its present view? Yes. As the
league of pity emerges from the house of
Simon a whole world of sufferers is before
it ; but its eye rests pre-eminently on one
band. A single individual of the company
had been healed by Jesus before entering the
house of Simon. But he had been healed out
of his line and, as it were, by accident ; he had
interrupted the service of the synagogue. But
now this man's class is systematically sought
for, selected from other classes. It is a mys
terious band. It is a company of men
grievously afflicted, yet with no visible sign

THE EXTENSION OF THE RING 165
of the source of their affliction. Like Jacob
at Peniel they cannot give a name to the
presence which has made them halt and
maimed. Unlike Jacob, they are sure it is
not an angel. They call their complaint
demoniacal possession, to indicate their in
ability to assign to it a human cause. Their
prevailing impression is a feeling that there
are two lives within them, that their soul has
become the servant of another soul. They
have a sense of double consciousness — the
experience of an inward dialogue in which
their natural life is talked down by the
vehemence of another speaker. Each man
feels himself divided into two men — the lower
a conqueror, the higher a slave — the lower
ruling the house of the spirit, the higher
trembling beneath his rod.
Of course they were what iii modern times
would be called the victims of insanity. Yet
I am not sure that they had not discovered
something which sane people do not discover.
A great writer has said of the mind that
there are colours which the cloudy day alone

1 66 THE EXTENSION OF THE RING
reveals. It may be that the abnormal mind
has glimpses of what the normal mind cannot
see. It is no new doctrine that there are two
natures in every developed man — a higher and
a lower. Does not Paul speak of a law in his
members warring against the law of his mind
and bringing the latter into captivity ? What
is that but a philosophic statement of the same
experience which we call a mental aberration
in these men of Galilee ! Very striking to my
view is a study of these eccentric victims of
suffering. We think of them as poor creatures ;
yet they seem to me to have been originally
the most intellectual men of their community
Indeed, their intellectual power appears to
have gone in advance of their moral character.
In their state of aberration they were the
first who recognised without suggestion the
Messianic dignity of Jesus. One part of their
nature cried out, 'Thou art the Holy One of
God ' ; if they had felt themselves free they
would have come to the new Light. But the
other life, the lower life, held them back. It
said, 'Do not go; this Holy One of God is

THE EXTENSION OF THE RING 167
come to torment you, to curtail you, to deprive
you of your freedom.' And the product of
the two voices was unrest — fierce, tumultuous,
maddening unrest. Intellectually these men
were the legitimate children of their century,
and therefore they were the children of
storm. It has always seemed to me that the writer
of the Epistle to the Hebrews, a writer of the
same century, has their case in view in words
which he applies to all Christians. He says
that when a man comes into contact with the
Portrait of Jesus his life is separated into two
lives : ' The Word of the Lord is living and
powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword,
piercing even to the dividing asunder of the
animal and the spiritual nature.' Here is
almost an exact description of the symptoms
of the possessed. If that be a correct diagnosis
of the incipient life of the soul, then was the
state of these unfortunate individuals simply
the exaggerated perception of a universal
fact, the over-clear discernment of an inward
struggle which belongs to the mental develop-

1 68 THE EXTENSION OF THE RING
ment of man. They were mistaken in believ
ing that the impeding foe was a foreigner;
he was one of their own household. None the
less must he be expelled, lifted from the
threshold, driven from the consciousness. The
possession was one of thought ; but it was not
on that account less intense or less real. There
is no grasp so iron as the grasp with which
an idea holds.
How, then, is Jesus to deal with this pos
session ? Shall He tell the man that the hand
which holds him is not a foreign hand ? Shall
He tell him that it is his own higher self
striving against the life that is restraining it ?
Not so. The Son of Man knows what is in
man ; He will not wreck the cure by ruffling
the patient. I have heard the question asked
by Christian apologists, ' Did Jesus believe in
the possession, or did He accommodate Himself
to an existing belief?' Oi course He believed
in the possession. So far as the fact is con
cerned, there was no accommodation necessary
for Him, there is none necessary for you. It
is beyond all question that one life within the

THE EXTENSION OF THE RING 169
man was impeded by another life, was re
strained by the force of his lower being. It
was no misconception of a primitive age. The
foe to be expelled was a real antagonist, a real
hindrance, all the more real because it was
earth-born. But that was no reason why Jesus
should contradict the patient's cherished belief
that it was born elsewhere; that was to en
danger the validity of the healing. The vital
point was that the hindrance should be removed,
not that its human origin should be vindicated.
To the physician of a mental ailment, the first
thing requisite is that he should put himself
in the place of the sufferer. Other maladies
merely require a sympathy with pain ; this
needs a sympathy with limitation. If I have
to deal with the mentally afflicted I must
contract my own nature so as to meet theirs.
I must learn to think with their thoughts, to
see with their eyes, to palpitate with their
delusions. I must divest myself of my
experience. I must meet them on their own
ground, not on mine. I must reason with
them on their own assumptions, not on mine.

170 THE EXTENSION OF THE RING
I must study to imagine things as I have not
felt them, to deal with things as I have not
known them. There is no such self-abnegation
as is involved in the contact with mental
disease. It is to this period of the human life of
Jesus that I refer the beginning of that stage
in St. Paul's ladder which is described in the
words, ' He was made in the likeness of men.'
It is not the incarnation of Christ in humanity
that is spoken of; that came when He took
the 'servant's form.' But this is an incarna
tion of the human life of Jesus itself. It was
one step of humiliation to assume the likeness
of Man ; but it was another and a deeper step
to assume the likeness of men. The plural
form implies more than the singular. It says
that Jesus clothed Himself not only in the
attributes of the race but in the peculiarities
of the individual. If ever such a process found
its beginning in the soul of Jesus, it was here.
To heal the possessed He had to put Himself
in the place of the possessed. He had to bend
in sympathy below normal humanity. No act

THE EXTENSION OF THE RING 171
of bodily healing could for Him have involved
such a strain. Physical pain is the common
heritage of man; it was the heritage of the
human soul of Jesus. But mental aberration
is not the common heritage of man ; least of
all was it the heritage of Jesus. To put Him
self in the place of the demoniac implied more
to Him than it would have done to you ;
should I be misunderstood if I said it involved
more difficulty? We meet most readily that
grief in another which we ourselves can picture
in experience. We can pity the blind, because
we can shut our eyes ; we can sympathise with
the deaf, because we can close our ears ; we
can even compassionate the mentally deranged,
because we have moments of folly. But Jesus
had a perfectly balanced mind — a mind which,
to the view of His earthly contemporaries,
suggested the thought of 'fulness.' For Him
to enter into the spirit of the demoniac was
a meeting of extremes. It was wisdom trying
to picture the path of folly ; it was the calm
ness of implicit trust seeking to figure the
terrors of a shattered brain.

172 THE EXTENSION OF THE RING
"DOSSESS my soul, O Christ! I feel that
-*- something must possess me. My heart
cannot be its own master ; it must be ruled
either from above or from below. I have no
life within me strong enough to rule me from
above ; if Thou leavest me alone the lower
life will conquer. Come into my soul, O
Christ ! Come, and take the place from which
my higher self has fled. Come, and restrain
the advance of the lower man. Come, and
possess the gates of my enemies — the gates
by which they issue forth on me. Come, and
make me Thy captive evermore. Put Thy
fetters on me — Thy golden fetters which make
free. Put Thy mark on me — Thy mark of
ownership which ennobles. Put Thy fear in
me — that fear of meanness which makes the
coward brave. Put Thy yoke upon me — that
yoke of love which makes the burden light.
I shall own no other master when I am
possessed by Thee.

CHAPTER XV
THE EDUCATIONAL RETICENCE OF JESUS
I HAVE said that the sympathy of Jesus was
spontaneous; it was not suggested by the
thought that it befitted the Messiah. But
when He became the head of a league of pity
it was not enough that His own sympathy
should be spontaneous; He had to train into
spontaneity the sympathy of others. We have
seen that He began by following the law of
human experience. We have seen that accord
ing to that law human sympathy begins in the
innermost circle — the family circle, and spreads
itself outward to the circumference. We have
seen that its first outward movement is towards
cases which are fraught with wonder, suggestive
of mystery, out of the common round. And
we have seen Jesus guiding the league accord
ing to this instinct of nature, bending His steps
173 ¦

174 THE EDUCATIONAL
in the direction where its incipient sympathy
should best be stimulated. From the house of
Simon's family sorrow He has led His disciples
into the fields at eventide, and allowed their
eyes to rest on that class of sufferers of all
others the most mysterious — the men who seem
to occupy the borderland between two worlds.
It is His object to descend from the rare to
the commonplace, from the sufferings on the
mountain to the sufferings on the plain where
all men meet. That descent is to be gradual.
Step by step the league of pity, like its
Divine Leader, is to come down the hill — to
proceed from the solitude to the intercourse
with a few, from the intercourse with a few
to a meeting with the many, from a meeting
with the many to a contact with the world.
Accordingly, we are not surprised that after
the demoniac comes the leper ; this is Luke's
order — what is more to the purpose, it is
Mark's. In proceeding from the demoniac to
the leper, Jesus in a sense came down the hill.
The leper was nearer to the common day
than the demoniac ; his complaint was purely

RETICENCE OF JESUS 175
physical ; it was essentially a suffering of the
flesh. Yet, strange as it may seem, it was not
the complaint itself that excited attention.
Physical as was the disease, loathsome as were
its signs, conspicuous as were its peculiarities,
the mind of the son of Israel fastened on none
of these things. To him the horror of leprosy
lay precisely in the thing which was not seen
— which really was not there. If from one
point of view the disease stood at the opposite
pole to demoniacal possession, from another
and a clearer point of view it was more allied
to demoniacal possession than to any other
ailment. The misery of the leper in the eyes
of the Jew was not the real uncleanness of his
skin but the supposed uncleanness of his heart.
He was believed to be the victim of a visitation
from God. The plague from which he suffered
was associated in the public mind with the hand
of Providence. The uppermost idea concern
ing it was the thought of mystery — the sense
of an unseen touch, the presence of a voice that
was still. The leper, like the demoniac, stood
out to the eyes of the league of pity, not as one

176 THE EDUCATIONAL
who bore the ills which flesh is heir to, but as
one who carried in his flesh a mystic spiritual
element from which humanity at large was
free. So far, then, we have a continuation of the
educational process of Jesus. But now I wish
to direct attention to a point which first occurs
in the healing of the leper and which seems at
the outset to be at variance with the idea of
any educational process at all. It is a distinc
tively new feature in our study of the Portrait
of Jesus. Hitherto it has not caught our eye.
When it does catch our eye the impression
is not at first altogether pleasant, because it
appears to suggest an irregularity in the pro
file. The front view is all that could be
desired. We see the leper displaying a faith
which as yet is rare, ' Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou
canst make me clean.' We see Jesus joyfully
accepting his approach, greeting him with a
friendly touch, and cheering him with the
rapid words, ' I will, be thou clean.' We see
the cure complete, the leper cleansed. Then
we have a sidelight, and it seems an anti-

RETICENCE OF JESUS 177
climax. We expect to hear Jesus say, 'Go
and proclaim to all your brethren the glad
tidings of redeeming love ' ; instead of that
He dismisses him with the words, 'See thou
say nothing to any man ! ' 1
Now, there are circumstances in which such
a reticence would command our instant appro
val. In the case of one not confident of his
powers we should commend the modesty that
withheld his name ; we should commend it
even after a successful effort. But at no time
can we attribute such a spirit to Jesus. Not
even in the days preceding the gospel narrative,
when, as I hold, He took His mission on trial,
can we attribute to Him the shrinking of diffi
dence. The very thought of making an effort
to satisfy the holiness of the Father was, as I
have said, the boldest idea that ever entered
into the heart of man. Every healing act of
Jesus was on the lines of this boldness ; it was
the attempt to glorify the Father by beautify
ing the creature. Every act confirmed to Jesus
1 The prohibition to the demoniac (Luke iv. 41) is not a case
of the same kind ; that was a wish to prevent blasphemy.
M

178 THE EDUCATIONAL
the validity of His mission. Was it any part
of His policy to appear less confident than He
was? Was it not an advantage that men
should see how fearless He was, how convinced
He was ? Nay, was it not desirable that men
should share His conviction, should participate
in His confidence ? The modesty which would
be commended in an incipient litterateur must
be denied a place in the Portrait of Jesus.
Moreover, from the testimony of Jesus Him
self we have the best proof that a shrinking
spirit was not the cause of His reticence.
On an after occasion He says in so many
words that it was only a temporary expedient,
'Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of
Man be risen from the dead.' He wished con
cealment to be broken after He had passed
away. He felt that His absence would render
beneficial that publicity which His presence
made undesirable. And here at last we begin
to see light — light from the direct words of
Jesus. The question narrows itself into a very
small compass. Why did Jesus deem that
His presence on earth rendered publicity un-

RETICENCE OF JESUS 179
desirable ? If we can find the answer to that,
we shall have solved the whole problem. At
first the answer appears difficult. His presence
seemed to facilitate, to accelerate, the course
of charity ; it was sweetness and light ; it was
fulness of joy. The fame of that presence
would have quickened the drying of human
tears. It would have made benevolence easy.
It would have congregated the world of Jewish
sufferers round a common centre. It would
have dispensed with the need of private enter
prise. It would have relieved many hearts of
anxious responsibilities. It would have sent
each inquirer to the fountainhead. One is
still disposed to say, ' Why hide the leper's
cure ? '
And the answer is, ' Just because of all these
benefits ; just because the visible presence of
Jesus would have made charity an easy thing.'
Remember what it is that Jesus desires. It is
not simply the healing of humanity ; it is man's
education to be the healer of humanity. From
the moment in which He became head of the
league of pity His primary object became, not

180 THE EDUCATIONAL
the abolition of the hospital, but the training
for the hospital. If the Father had empowered
Him by one sweeping fiat to make the world in -
stantaneously whole, He would not have used
that power. He would have preferred the
old alternative, the slow alternative. If He had
been looking simply to the cure of the world,
the quickest mode would have been the best.
But He was looking to the curing of the world
— the human sympathy by which the healing
was to come. To Him the most precious part
of that sympathy was the seeking out of
disease; 'The Son of Man,' He says, 'is
come to seek that which was lost.' These
words express a real fact of His experience;
they express the conviction that for Him all
sympathy must begin in seeking. Therefore
He desired that His followers should also
seek. He did not wish His league of pity
to be saved trouble. He did not wish all
cases of distress to be brought to its very
door so that it could not help aiding. Such
would have happened if His power had been
proclaimed. There would have been a visible

RETICENCE OF JESUS 181
earthly centre round which would have circled
the victims of human sorrow. The league of
pity would have been spared the pain of loco
motion, spared the pain of investigation. There
would cease to be any need for 'considering
the poor.' The function of sympathy would be
limited to the hand. It would no more require
deliberation, judgment, discernment. It would
lose its character as an intellectual power. It
would become an attribute rather of the body
than of the soul.
Therefore Jesus said, ' Let the veil fall.' He
felt it expedient to cloud the brightness of the
prospect. The exercise of human sympathy
demanded a certain amount of darkness. All
education requires some reticence on the part
of the teacher ; if the mind of the pupil is to
be drawn out he must in some things be left to
himself. The school of Jesus was no exception.
He felt that for the league of pity absolute
light would be destructive, too much help
ruinous. Therefore in the days of His earthly
presence He forbade its members to make Him
known — forbade them to render easy that path

182 THE EDUCATIONAL
of benevolence which ought to be a path of
anxious inquiry.
We hear a great deal about what is called
the silence of God — the veil of mystery which
besets the world. Christian apologists have
not scrupled to say that the silence began when
the world rejected Jesus. But here is a silence
of God which originated in the very presence
of Jesus — which by His own admission would
have had no existence if He had been absent.
Here is a silence of God which comes in the
very heart of the gospel history, which is pro
claimed to be an integral part of the plan of
that history. It comes, not from the anger, but
from the favour of heaven. It is sent, not to
retard but to accelerate, not to destroy but to
fulfil. Standing in the gallery before the great
Portrait, I am glad that, where so many phases
of man's experience have been recorded, this
phase has not been neglected. We have all
our unrevealing moments — our moments when
the spring of life seems dry. The follower of
Christ has felt these a special difficulty, and
he has sought to explain them by the imper-

RETICENCE OF JESUS 183
fection of his following. It is well that from
the great gallery itself there should come a
suggestion of another kind — the suggestion
that the silence of God may be one of the
privileges of the follower of Jesus. It is well
that among its other revelations the gospel
should reveal an hour of silence — an hour
whose silence is found to have been part of the
mighty drama, and whose stillness has been a
stage in the progress of mankind.

ORD, in the hour when I feel Thy silence,
-*— ' remind me of this command to the
leper. Remind me that Thy education of my
soul demands hours of silence. Remind me
that if I would grow to the perfect stature the
help must not be all on Thy side — that there
must be moments in which I shall feel myself
alone. Reveal to me that I grow, not only by
my sight of Thee, but by my want of Thee.
Let me learn the blessing of individual effort
— the blessing of being left to choose my
own way. I thank Thee that Thou hast not

184 EDUCATIONAL RETICENCE OF JESUS
sent too much light — light that would make
my will impossible. I thank Thee that Thou
hast left a margin for my free choice. It is
only those in the highways and the hedges
that thou compellest to come in. The creatures
of the field are more guided than I. The
instinct of the bee is more unerring than my
reason ; but I prefer my reason ; it participates
in the hour of Thy silence.

CHAPTER XVI
THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE
There are some incidents of life which are
simply milestones ; there are others which are
the turning of a corner. The first indicate
merely an advance on the old road ; the second
usher us into something new. I am now come
to an incident in the life of Jesus which I have
always regarded as marking a distinct trans
ition in His history. So far as we have yet
gone there has been no dispute as to His power;
everything has conspired to re-echo that call
which He heard within His soul. A league
has gathered round Him drawn from those
who had seen the lowly environment of His
early years. The metropolis has given Him
audience ; the provinces have followed the
metropolis. He has been more anxious to
have His words proclaimed than His wonders ;
186

1 86 THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE
but He has not succeeded in concealing His
wonders. No one has questioned the genuine
ness of His cures. There has been a dispute
as to whether He was right to heal on the
Sabbath ; but the reality of His healing power
has hitherto been unassailed. We are about
to mark the first instance in which it was
assailed. First instances are very suggestive ;
they reveal the incipient germ. We shall look
therefore with great interest to this beginning.
We shall feel as if a key were put into our
hands by which to open all the coming doors.
Why did the Jews reject Jesus ? is a question
which can only be answered by looking to the
dawn. To the dawn, then, let us go. Let us
take the first case of scepticism which the
gospel narrative reveals. We shall find it to
be the germ-cell out of which has been woven
the whole fabric of future opposition.
But first let us see what the incident is that
marks the turning of the corner. The curtain
which falls upon the leper on the highway rises
within the private room of a house in Caper
naum. It is an upper room and it is crowded.

THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE 187
There are representatives from all classes,
drawn by the fame of Jesus — even from the
scribes. Not only is the room full, but the
approaches to it ; the stairs are crowded ; the
street door is blocked. Four men make their
way through the street bearing a litter on
which is stretched a helpless paralytic. They
direct their steps towards the house where Jesus
is expounding, to His principles. They cannot
get near the door. They try another approach.
They mount on the roof, break open the light
covering, and let down their burden with cords.
Jesus looks upon the paralytic ; but the thing
which attracts Him is not the paralysis ; it is
precisely what the paralysis does not reveal.
He sees that the outward impotence has been
really the result of a mental distress preying
on the nerves — the distress of a soul wrestling
with the angel of conscience. Instead of put
ting His hand upon the body Jesus lays His
touch upon the mind, ' Son, be of good cheer,
thy sins are forgiven thee ! '
And here the storm breaks — the first storm
that ever arose over the reality of a miracle of

188 THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE
Jesus. What was the cause of this storm ? It
was not the sense of wonder; Jesus Himself
declares that it would have been deemed more
wonderful if He had said, ' Take up your bed
and walk.' Human wonder is excited by that
which meets the eye, and this did not meet the
eye ; it was a command uttered to the soul,
and whose effect could only be known by the
soul. More conspicuous things had been done
by Jesus, and the storm had not come. It
woke not over the feast of Cana ; it broke not
over the pool of Bethesda ; it rose not over the
calm that followed the expulsion of the demons.
Here was a work more silent than these, more
hidden from the public view. The excitement
it created cannot be explained by the power of
the marvellous.
Nor can it be accounted for by the Messianic
claims of Jesus. Put the question to a pro
miscuous assembly, ' Why did the Jews reject
the Son of Man ? ' the general answer will be,
' Because He claimed to be the Christ.' And
yet nothing is more certain than that this is
not the explanation. About ten years ago, in a

THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE 189
book on the spiritual development of St. Paul,
I stated my conviction that Christianity never
separated from Judaism on the ground of the
Messianic claim of Jesus ; and the same state
ment has with much more force and ability
been recently made by Mr. Robert Anderson
in his book, The Silence of God. How could
the Jewish nation deem any man a heretic for
aspiring to be the Messiah ! If a scion of the
modern race of Israel were to put forth to-day
pretensions to be the long-promised hope of
the nation, that would not make him a heretic
to the Jew. If the Jew is to have a Messiah
at all, that Messiah must begin as a mere
claimant. Before he can be recognised he
must aspire. It will be for the nation to
examine his credentials. If the credentials
are found inadequate, and if the man persists
in his claim, he will then be a heretic, for that
would be to falsify the prophetic ideal. But it
is no falsification of the prophetic ideal simply
to aspire to the Messianic office. Hundreds of
Jews have done that ; and in doing that, from
the national point of view they have done

190 THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE
no wrong. The announcement by a son of
Israel that he had a personal call to be the
guide of the nation was itself a perfectly legiti
mate act and one which did not involve the
slightest suggestion of schism or rebellion.
When Jesus claimed to be the Christ He
offended nobody. He broke no national tradi
tion ; He traversed no Jewish law. He put
before His countrymen a legitimate subject
for investigation. If His pretensions were
inadequately supported it was for them to say
so ; but the pretensions themselves were no
treason. When Jesus said to the Samaritans,
' I am the Christ,' He uttered no voice unfaith
ful to the creed of His fathers. When He
wrought healing works in support of that
claim He did nothing but what the religion
demanded He should do. How came it that
in this upper room of Capernaum there rose
the first mutterings of that mighty storm which
swelled ever louder and more loud until it
culminated at last in the tempest roar, ' Crucify
Him, crucify Him ' ?
And the answer to that question comes clear

THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE 191
and ringing. It was because within that room
Jesus first claimed a power which never had
been conceded to the Christ — the forgiveness
of sin. It was not His aspiration to Messiah-
ship that inflamed His hearers ; it was what He
attributed to Messiahship. He had stepped
over the lines of the Old Testament. He had
asked for the Messiah what the sacred writings
of His country had never dared to assign to
him. He had asked for him a prerogative
which the sons of Israel had attributed to God
only — the power to pardon sin. No lawgiver,
no prophet, no priest had assigned such a
power to the coming Christ. The later Isaiah
had come nearest to it. He had seen in the
Messiah the expiation for human sin — the Holy
One of God whose sacrificial life was to atone
for the iniquities of the world, and whose
revelation of human possibilities was to make
intercession for the transgressors. But even at
this nearest point there was a great gulf fixed
between the claim of the later Isaiah and the
claim put forth by Jesus. It was one thing to
compensate the Father for the guilt of man ; it

192 THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE
was another thing to pardon that guilt. The
former could only be efficacious if accomplished
by the human ; the latter was always held to
be an act emanating from power Divine. It has
been often said that Jesus proclaimed Himself
to be more than the Messiah. I would rather
say, He demanded for the Messiah more than
seer or prophet had ever conceded to his office
— a power which from the depth of ages had
been recognised by the Jewish race as not only
superhuman but super-angelic, and as marking
the distinctive boundary line between the crea
ture and the Creator — the forgiveness of sin.
This shows that the Portrait .of Jesus did
not, as some have thought, get its superhuman
touches from the hand of Paul — not even from
the hand of John. These touches are earlier.
They belong to the most primitive records, the
records most near to Judaism. Nothing in
Paul's Epistles, nothing in John's Gospel could
to the men of that day have implied more
assertion on the part of Jesus than His claim
in the house of Capernaum. No Englishman,
no European can have any conception of what

THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE 193
was involved to the Jew in a man's professing
to cancel the moral debts of the past. It was to
him equivalent to what the aspiration to omni
potence would be to us. To the Jew the greatest
attribute of God was His moral attribute ; his
idea of eternity itself centred round the thought
of holiness. To cancel moral debt was the
greatest power in the universe because it was
the power of holiness. When Jesus offered to
cancel moral debt He professed to be in pos
session of an attribute which to the Jew had
always been the one attribute that God had
not shared with man. Man had a ray of God's
physical power, a beam of God's wisdom, a
flash of God's will, an imitation of God's
providence ; but he had not in himself one
spark of God's holiness. The man who said,
'I am holy,' must at once be convicted of
blasphemy. He might say with impunity, ' I
am powerful,' ' I am wise,' ' I am resolute,' ' I
am far-seeing.' But should he say, ' I am holy,'
he had laid his hand upon the sceptre of the
Eternal and aspired to sit on a mightier throne
than David's. N

194 THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE
I hold, then, that this incident is the begin
ning of distinctive Christianity — of Christianity
as distinct from Judaism. Often have we heard
the question asked, When did Christianity part
from the parent stream ? Men have fixed on
various spots as marking the point of divergence
between the Old Testament and the New.
Some have seen it in the fall of Jerusalem.
Some have found it in the protest against
circumcision. Some have recognised it in the
conversion of Saul of Tarsus. Some have
detected it in the outpouring of Pentecost.
The writer of the Acts declares ' the disciples
were called Christians first at Antioch.' But
all these things are mere manifestations ; they
lie on the surface ; they themselves demand an
origin. Men might be called Christians first at
Antioch; but peculiarities are a long time in
existence before they receive a name. The
difference between the old and the new, when
soever it began, began in the heart of the old.
The germs of the man begin while the age is
still called boyhood ; the germs of the Christian
began while he was yet recognised as a Jew.

THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE 195
We want to know, not when the name of Chris
tian was given, but when the distinctive fact of
Christianity appeared. And I find the moment
here — in Capernaum's upper room. Not in
the claim of Jesus to be the Christ do I hear
the distinctive note of the new evangel. That
was really a note of Judaism. It was a clarion
blast of the Old Testament. It was a voice in
no sense at variance with the voice of Moses
and the Prophets. But the claim in the upper
room of Capernaum was one which Moses had
never heard, one which the Prophets had never
known. It was the claim that the Messiah,
whensoever he should come and whosoever he
should be, should wear in a human heart the
mightiest prerogative of the Almighty God —
the power to cancel the moral debts of man.
It was the assertion that the authority to pardon
sin should be vested, not in an angel, not in an
archangel, not in a cherub or seraph, but in a
man, and should be vested there on the express
ground of his perfect humanity — because he
was to be the Son of Man.

196 THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE
T THANK Thee, O Christ, for this beginning
-*- of Thy stream. I thank Thee that its
issuing from the hills of God has been into the
field of pardon. I thank Thee that its first
ripple has been on the banks of mercy. I
thank Thee that it has borne to man the one
gift from the Father which other streams have
denied him — the power to forgive. Men used
to see that power only in the Father ; Thou
hast claimed it for man. I thank Thee that
Thou hast claimed it for man. May / in some
sense be a sharer in that power! It is the
hardest thing in the world for my nature to
share in. The power of pardon is the power
of love ; and love comes only from Thee — it is
the stream that makes glad Thy city. It is
not because I am so human that I find it hard
to forgive ; it is because I am not human
enough. There was none human enough but
Thee ; Thou alone hadst power to pardon,
because Thou alone wert the Son of Man. It
is not angelic power I need to make me like
unto Thee ; it is human power. To learn Thy
pity I must come nearer to the heart of

THE FIRST CONTESTED MIRACLE 197
humanity, which is Thy heart. Make me more
human, O Christ, that I may receive more
power to pardon. I pray often to be forgiven
by Thy grace ; teach me to forgive by Thy
grace. Inspire me with a breath of Thy
pardoning power. Draw me nearer to the
fountains of human sympathy — Thy fountains.
Bring me to the living waters where those who
are cleansed become the cleansers. Guide me
to the steps of that altar where those that have
made their peace become the peacemakers.
Lead me to that throne of judgment where
those that have overcome the world arrive at
human tenderness. I shall understand Thy
power to pardon when I shall complete the
experience of a man.

CHAPTER XVII
PREPARATION FOR A MISSIONARY CRUSADE
The revelation in the upper room of Capernaum
was essential as a preliminary training to the
league of pity. Before its members could preach
Christ they must know what Christ was
distinctively. They must know, not merely
what He held in common with other masters,
but what He professed in separation from
other masters. So far, they had made a step
in advance ; but other steps were to come.
Indeed, I am quite convinced that the true
secret of the development of the gospel
narrative is to be found in the education of
this humanitarian band. Jesus was ere long
to send them forth upon their journey of
beneficence. Every previous stage therefore
must be an educational stage, something
preparatory to the coming way. We have
198

A MISSIONARY CRUSADE 199
seen that the sympathy of the band began
where all sympathy begins — in the home
circle, that where they emerged from the home
circle was in cases of mystery and wonder.
The aim of Jesus was to universalise these
sympathies — to extend them by degrees from
the circle of the family into the circle of the
world. The greater part of the process could
only be completed in the actual course of
missionary work ; but something must be done
before starting — something to widen the
natural narrowness of the heart. It must be
done both by word and by deed, both by
exhortation and by experience. The word
comes first. There is little to arrest us between
the upper room at Capernaum and the sermon
on the hill — that hill which witnessed His
address to the world. As the scene changes
from the one to the other we feel as if Jesus had
at last cleared His path, and were ready to
begin His march as the captain of that great
army which was to be made perfect, through
suffering, for bringing many sons unto glory.
I have said that the sermon on the mount

200 PREPARATION FOR
was an address to the world. And so it was ;
it was ' the multitude' that Jesus had before
Him. But it is stated with great significance
that He only began to address the multitude
when the disciples came. We often speak at
people when we are not specially speaking to
them. We make a statement which applies
to all ; but we wish it to be overheard by some.
Jesus on this memorable hill was speaking
to the world ; but He was speaking at the
disciples. He wished His sermon to be an
instruction to all, but a model to them. The
sermon on the mount is beyond all things a
missionary address. It is the inaugural charge
to the league of pity. As yet the members of
that league have had no charge; they have
been waiting for their commission, waiting
under the Master's eye. But now the solemn
crisis is coming. The hour dawns when they
are to go forth alone, to represent to the world
and in the world the presence of the Christ.
They cannot go unfurnished ; they must
receive some guidance for the way. They
have had a glimpse of the claims of Jesus;

A MISSIONARY CRUSADE 201
they must get a glimpse of the claims of
humanity. Therefore it is that this sermon
is beyond all others a humanitarian sermon.
The disciples have heard Christ's ideal of the
Father; they are to hear His ideal of the
brother — His sense of what man ought to be,
of what he was made to be, of what he will be
when the converting power has been perfected.
Is there any keynote to this sermon on the
mount? Is it a mere collection of fragments
culled from the various fields where the voice^
of Jesus dropped them ? No. Fragmentary
as it seems, I am convinced that from beginning
to end there runs one air through the countless
variations. What is this air, this thought
which remains changeless amid the manifold ?
It can be expressed in one word — self-forget-
fulness. This is the burden of all the song,
the moral of all the music. However the tune
may seem to deviate, it comes back to this
refrain. Let us listen to it for a moment.
Standing in the great gallery and keeping our
eye on the Portrait, let us direct our ear
toward the mount of revelation. Let us see

202 PREPARATION FOR
whether the Countenance blends with the
music, whether the thought expressed in the
face of Jesus is harmonious with the echoes
which are descending from the hill.
The opening word of Jesus is the opening
word of Israel's Psalms — 'blessed.' The goal
of the New Testament is, like that of the Old,
the beatific glory of Man. Very striking and
startling are the heights of glory which Jesus
claims for human possibility. The kingdom
of heaven, the inheritance of the earth, the satis
faction of the spirit, the vision of God, the
reputation of being called the children of God,
the privilege of illuminating the world — these
are among the summits at which the human
soul is permitted to aim. But how is it to gain
them ? In the same way as, according to
Paul, the Son of Man reaches His own glory —
by the act of self-burial. Familiarity with the
Christian faith has made the thought a
truism ; to the empire of the first century it
was a wild paradox. The Roman said, ' The
lofty mind shall receive the kingdom ' ; Jesus
said, ' No ; it is the poor in spirit.' The Roman

A MISSIONARY CRUSADE 203
said, ' The men of force shall inherit the earth';
Jesus said, ' No ; it is the meek.' The Roman
said, ' It is the war-makers who shall be called
the sons of God ' ; Jesus said, ' No ; it is the
peace-makers.' On the hill where Jesus stood
the palm of victory is reserved for the self-
forgetting. But Jesus proceeds: 'Do not identify self-
forgetfulness with self-restraint. You cannot
shine by merely repressing your own darkness ;
you must catch another's light. If you want
to stand beautiful upon the hill of God, it is
not enough that you suppress your self-love ;
you must love another. Holiness is not merely
the restraint of old passions ; it is the advent
of a new passion — what you will learn to call
the Lord's Passion. It will not make you
lovely if you simply abstain from self-glory ;
you must seek the glory of another object, of
a higher object. You will only forget your
self -when you "glorify your Father."'
Then Jesus shows the weak points of the
old restraint — of the ancient law. Its weakness
was the fact that it was restraint. It was not

204 PREPARATION FOR
self-forgetfulness ; it was self-imprisonment;
it kept from doing wrong by shutting the
door. Jesus says : ' I am come to open the
door, to set the prisoner free. But do not
think I am therefore come to abolish the work
of the law. I am come to make that work
more complete. Fear can check the infliction
of pain; love can do that and more — it can
strew the path of pain with flowers. Fear can
tie the hands from evil ; love can wing the
heart to good. Fear can say, " Thou shalt not ";
love can soar beyond the prohibition and
exclaim, " Thou shalt." '
Jesus proceeds : ' There are two ways in
which a man may be outwardly good — by
remembering himself, and by forgetting himself.
He may draw his treasures from the bank of
earth, or he may draw his treasures from the
bank of heaven. On the one hand, his good
ness may be the result of self-consciousness.
He may do high things for a low. motive — the
wish to be seen. He may use the means of
grace for a selfish end — cast his pearls to the
swine, give that which is holy to the dogs.

A MISSIONARY CRUSADE 205
He may give alms to be thought charitable.
He may fast to be deemed pious. He may
pray in order that he may prosper. Such a
man will value his. almsgiving because it is a
penance, his fast because it is a misery, his
prayer because it is long and full of repetitions.
But / show you an opposite way to the same
goal. I show you an almsgiving which is a
privilege and not a pain — the self-forgetfulness
of love. I show you a fast which forgets its
own hunger — the preoccupation of love. I
show you a prayer which postpones its own
wants through the want of others pressing on
its heart — the unselfishness of love. ¦ And the
value of this almsgiving, of this fasting, of this
prayer will be not its penance but its joy, not
its hardness but its ease, not its gloom but its
glory.' Upon the subject of prayer Jesus lingers
longest. No wonder ! The root of a man is
not his deed but his wish. That which makes
his wish is not the what but the why — not the
thing he asks, but his motive for asking it.
Jesus prescribes no form of prayer; He

206 PREPARATION FOR
prescribes a manner of prayer. He says:
' The glory of your wish is not its length but
its limit — its submission to self-sacrifice. Ask
nothing that shall unhallow God's name,
nothing that shall retard God's kingdom,
nothing that shall run counter to God's will.
Let all your prayers be for three — yourself,
your world, and your Father. Never forget to
limit your own desire by the desire of the
other two. Remember your Father's glory;
remember your brother's need. When you
pray, say " Our Father." When you come to
the altar to offer your petition, and when you
there remember that your brother has a wish
counter to your own, leave your petition un-
offered until you have found a place for him.
When you ask the sustenance of life, say " Give
us our daily bread." Do not pray unqualifiedly
for rain because your own district has been
dry ; perhaps your brother's district has had
too much rain. Ask your Father so to regu
late the world that in due season bread shall
come to all.'
I have said that Jesus prescribes no form of

A MISSIONARY CRUSADE 207
prayer. Indirectly, He tells us the reason for
this. He says that the same form of prayer or
fast or almsgiving might come either from love
or selfishness. The same spiritual house may
be built either on the rock or on the sand.
To Him the foundation is everything, the
superstructure quite subordinate. Two men
may present an edifice made from the same
materials ; Jesus will examine neither building.
He will ask, not 'Of what is this made?' but
' On what does this repose ? ' He fears nothing
so much as ' false prophets ' — outward virtues
springing from selfish motives. He fears such
virtues not only because they deceive the
world but because they deceive their possessor ;
they keep him from seeing the beam that is in
his own eye. His words are in effect : ' You
may say " Hallowed be Thy name " when you
want only the temporal blessing which God in
the Old Testament promised to the pious;
then are you seeking merely what the Gentiles
seek — what you shall eat and what you shall
drink and wherewithal you shall be clothed ;
your prayer is a secular prayer. Or, you may

208 PREPARATION FOR
say, ' Feed me and clothe me that I may live to
hallow Thy name, that I may be able to help
others to win their daily bread ' ; then are you
seeking God in His kingdom, His power, and
His glory ; your prayer is a voice of the
Spirit.'

TV IT ARVELLOUS to me are these words of
•*¦ ' -*- Thine, O Jesus — marvellous even at the
end of so many days. Even yet they come to
me from the height, from the mountain summit.
I seem to understand the meaning of the
words, ' When He was set His disciples came
unto Him.' When I hear Thee speak I think
of Thee as seated, not standing. I am im
pressed above all things with Thy calm repose.
Thou wert on the summit of a second Sinai.
Around Thee were greater smoke and flame,
greater thunderings and lightnings than assailed
the first law-giver. Men's hearts were in a
ferment ; human faith was shattered ; earthly
hopes were dead. But there was no ferment
in Thee, no tossing of the spirit, no trace of

A MISSIONARY CRUSADE 209
the storm. Thy vision of glory was without
perspective. It was not foresight but sight,
not a glimpse of the future but a revelation
of the hour. ' Blessed are the poor in spirit ;
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' It was not
a world to come ; it was here now — behind the
smoke and flame, behind the thunderings and
lightnings. There have been those who have
conquered by faith ; not such wert Thou.
Thou hadst no need of faith. Thine was a
mountain view, a Pisgah view. Others believed
in Thee ; but Thou wert not a believer ; Thou
wert a seer. There was no messenger between
Thee and Thy Father. Thine was not trust
but experience. Thou wert breathing the
perfumes of Paradise. Thou wert hearing the
songs of the choir invisible. Thou wert
beholding the unveiled face of the Father.
Thou wert receiving the tidings fresh from the
Promised Land. No wonder Thy words have
never grown old !

CHAPTER XVIII
PREPARATION FOR A MISSIONARY CRUSADE —
Continued
THE preparation of the league of pity for its
approaching journey was, as I have said, to
be twofold — a training, first of exhortation,
and secondly, of experience. The sermon on
the mount had discharged the former office;
the latter was still unfulfilled. Hitherto the
sympathy of the band had moved within
narrow lines. It had been essentially a home
sympathy. They had begun in their native
Galilee ; their work had been bounded by their
interest. It was not the design of Jesus that
it should be thus bound. He meant this little
band to be the light of the world. It was
a far cry from Galilee to the world — from
sympathy with men as comrades to sympathy
with man as man. Hitherto also, as we have
£10

A MISSIONARY CRUSADE 211
seen, the specimens of suffering had been
abnormal. They had been cases of speciality
— the contact with disorganised minds and
mysteriously afflicted bodies. It was essential
that the sympathy of the band should not
remain there. The taste of a thing specially
pungent is apt to deaden the taste of every
thing else. So with man's sympathy with
things abnormal ; it is apt to draw away the
mind from needs universal. This was a thing
to be counteracted, prevented ; and He who
had studied so deeply the nature of the human
soul was of. all others best qualified to do this.
From our present point of view the interest
ing feature in this training by Jesus is not
the cures but the diseases ; it is in these we
mark the transit from the particular to the
universal, from men to Man. The first trace
of the league's contact with universal calamity
occurred in a little village of Galilee called
Nain. It was the contact with nothing ab
normal, nothing exceptional. It was a meet
ing with the old old story — the tale of human
bereavement. We feel that Jesus Himself

212 PREPARATION FOR
was arrested by the spectacle. We feel that
this is one of the cases in which He did not
work a cure for the sake of teaching a lesson
— not even for the sake of teaching a lesson
to the league of pity ; He healed the wound
because He Himself was wounded by it. Yet
it is possible that those of the band who were
present might have received from this incident
some touch of humanitarian impulse. What
hindered such an impulse from completeness
was perhaps just the intensity of the case. A
funeral cortege on the way to the sepulchre ;
its burden, one cut down in the flower of
youth ; that youth the only son of one who
was herself a widow ; the signs of distress
manifest in every countenance and audible in
the sobs and tears of a multitude — these were
the elements that lent tragedy to the scene.
Probably some member of the league had
friends among the mourners ; the proximity of
Nain to Nazareth makes this likely. In any
case there were circumstances which made the
incident seem an aggravation of the common
lot of humanity, and which thus might tend to

A MISSIONARY CRUSADE 213
deaden the sense of universal participation.
That sense of universal participation was re
served for the lesson of another bereavement
which was to meet them as Christ's earthly
ministry drew near its close.
Meantime, something must be done to
widen the circle of Christian sympathy. The
disciples are about to step out beyond the
threshold of their own environment. They
are not at first to step out very far ; yet they
are to make a transition ; and the transition
step is the most difficult of all. Can anything
be done to stimulate them? The sermon on
the mount has been delivered, and its power
has been educational ; are there no educational
deeds to follow and endorse the precepts of
unselfishness ?
Yes. Very close upon the sermon there
come two singular episodes in the ministry
of Jesus. There is no connection between
them beyond a moral connection; the one
occurs on the sea, the other on the land. If
geography be the only link in the formation
of the gospel narratives, then is the unity

214 PREPARATION FOR
of the gospel simply that of a string. But
if Jesus has set before Himself the education
of a league of pity, geography falls into the
background. Sea and land become alike in
different to us except as educational mediums ;
and the bond which connects the narratives
is found to be a bond of the heart. It is in
this latter light that I view the evangelical
history. I follow the most approved order
of time ; but the change of place has for me
little significance; and I seek to weave the
events together rather by a mental than by a
physical chain.
We will take up, then, the educational aspects
of these two incidents. We will begin with
the earlier — the storm on the Sea of Galilee.
At first sight it seems a useless episode. It
appears to contribute nothing to the mission
of Jesus. Even the stilling of the storm is
in itself no contribution. It is something out
side of humanity. It touches no disease of
man's body ; it heals no moral unrest of the
soul. We see a moment of danger followed
by a moment of readjustment — a sensation

A MISSIONARY CRUSADE 215
of panic succeeded by an experience of calm.
At the close of the process things are physic
ally exactly where they were before, and we
feel disposed to say, what on another occasion
was said by the spectators of another scene,
' To what purpose is this waste ? '
But we are looking in a wrong direction
for the effect of the storm. I believe that this
storm occupies a distinct place in the educa
tional system of the gospel, that it occupies
this place not by accident, but by design.
Its force was spent upon the sea ; but, more
than any other episode of the sacred narrative,
it influenced the land. It formed a turning-
point in the daily life of these disciples.
Originating on the waters, it cleared a path
for them on the dusty plain, and swept from
their way many of those objects which had
been a real barrier to their missionary pro
gress. It is my opinion that, of all the events of
the gospel narrative, the one most analogous
to the storm on the Sea of Galilee is that
incident which looks most ««like it — Jesus

216 PREPARATION FOR
waiting by the well. I should say that what
Samaria was to the human soul of Jesus the
Sea of Galilee was to the league of pity. You
will remember the place we claimed for the
well of Samaria in relation to the personal
work of Christ. We saw that on His road
to Galilee He was met by an experience of
a peculiar kind ; He was put in the attitude
of a suppliant. The human part of Him, the
part of Him which grew and developed, was
made to begin at the ordinary foundation.
We saw that human sympathy invariably
originates in a sense of want, that we learn
to give by having, ourselves, received. We
found that Jesus in His passage to Galilee —
the great sphere of human need, was made
to drink at the ordinary source of the foun
tain. He passed through an experience of
extreme prostration, and was content to accept
human aid. Samaria was thus in more than
a geographical sense His road to Galilee.
But now Jesus is called to repeat His ex
perience — not in Himself but in His followers.
The members of the league of pity are to

A MISSIONARY CRUSADE 217
follow not only His example, but His life-
stages. Hitherto they had encountered no
personal experience analogous to that at the
well of Samaria. They had not an adequate
sense of human need, nor, so far as we know,
had they as yet found anything to interrupt
the optimistic vision of youth. Such was no
fit condition for a missionary journey— for a
journey in which they were to be all alone.
They must be made to feel the sense of soli
tude which is involved in responsibility, and
the sense of need which is born from it. The
optimistic vision of life must be broken; the
false enthusiasm must be damped that a new
enthusiasm may arise.
And the needed crisis came in the crossing
of the lake. The crossing of the lake was no
new occurrence. The water was their natural
element ; they had been born to it, they had
been bred to it. It was but a five- miles'
passage, and it was as familiar to them as
crossing the street. But it is in familiar things,
not in strange things, that the crisis of life
generally appears. These men had witnessed

218 PREPARATION FOR
things out of their element, beyond their
understanding. They had come into contact
with demoniacs, lepers, sin-stricken paralytics ;
yet their crisis had not come. It was to
meet them in the most unlikely spot of all,
in their own field — the field of waters.
The waters were not the object of their
voyage ; they were seeking the land — the
other side. As so often happens, they were
going for one purpose, God was letting them
go for another. Jesus accompanies them.
Very significant are the words in which this
is indicated, 'They took Him, even as He
was, into the ship.' I take this to mean that
He was not in a condition for physical exer
tion — for rendering nautical help. One of
His human hours was upon Him ; He was
weary with the burden of the day. Almost
immediately after starting, nature asserted
itself, and He slept. Suddenly, from the
opposing hills a blast swept over the sea —
a storm of unwonted violence; and the tiny
craft began to show signs of yielding. It is
not often that fishermen are afraid ; but these

A MISSIONARY CRUSADE 219
men were. Perhaps their recent contact with
the physical presence of the Master had
been prejudicial to their natural boldness.
They may have learned to lean too much,
to act for themselves too little. Be this as
it may, their fear was abject, pitiable. For
the first time since they had joined the league
they felt themselves weak in the very sphere
where they used to be strong. It was not
weakness in preaching, weakness in healing,
weakness in converting. It was weakness in
managing their native element — those waters
from which they had derived their daily bread.
With Jesus asleep in the ship, the ship of
their common life had become itself rudder
less, and there remained to them nothing but
the cry of helplessness, ' Lord, save us, we
perish ! '
Now, this cry was the real object of the
voyage. It is the storm itself, not the still
ing of the storm, that constitutes the signifi
cance of this narrative. The stilling of the
storm, as we have said, left physical nature
just where it was before. But the storm woke

220 PREPARATION FOR
in the hearts of these men echoes that never
died. It taught them their need — not as Gali
leans, not as Jews, not even as Christians, but
as human creatures ; and in so doing it gave
them their earliest lesson in the earthly side
of the Messiah's mission — the sympathy of
man with man. It was a sense of this gain
that in a later hour prompted one of the
leaders of the band to pray that none might
receive the call to a post of glory until after
he had ' suffered a while.' Said Jacob to the
angel, ' I will not let thee go except thou
bless me ' ; and the blessing was the shrunk
sinew. It is ever the first blessing of the
missionary. Before I go forth to heal my
brother-man, I must learn from my own heart
the weakness at the heart of humanity.

THEREFORE, O Christ, I bless Thee
-*- for the storm. I thank Thee for the
moment of loneliness which I called the sleep
of Thy power. It seemed to me as if I had
the waters all to myself, as if there were none

A MISSIONARY CRUSADE 22 1
to help me. In that hour my pride died, to
rise no more; I felt how poor a thing I was
without Thee. That was my shrunk sinew,
that was my ministrant glory. My fetter
became my wing. It is my conscious weak
ness that makes me Thy messenger to man.
The hour which the sailors rejected has become
the hour of blessing. I said, 'Let us take
ship and go to the other side ' ; midway I
was met by a tempest ; the voyage was never
completed. Yet the incomplete voyage has
been my farthest travel. No journey has
given me so wide an experience. The wings
of that storm have borne me into the heart
of humanity. I have learned more from the
tempest than from the haven. The shelter
of the haven could bring me into contact
with the few ; but the waves of my troubled
heart have laid me on the bosom of Man.

CHAPTER XIX
THE SIMULTANEOUS SUPPLIANTS
I STATED that between the sermon on the
mount and the first missionary journey of the
league of pity there are two episodes which
have, to my mind, a very distinct bearing on
the development of the new movement. The
first of these has already been considered. We
pass now from the significant incident on the
sea to the significant incident on the land.
The storm on the Sea of Galilee was a great
preparation for sympathy with man ; yet it was
rather a preparation for it than a lesson in it.
It taught the league of pity the intrinsic weak
ness of human nature and its inability to
battle unaided with the storm ; and to this
extent it bound the little band to the brother
hood of all souls. Yet this result was, after
all, only negative. It was a common levelling

THE SIMULTANEOUS SUPPLIANTS 223
down ; it was a work of depression. Sympathy,
to be perfect, needs more than depression ; it
requires the power of selection. The sense of
a common want may lead us to pity ; but some
thing more is essential to enable us either to
seek or to save. The movement wanted from
the league of pity was not one of mere emotion ;
it was a drastic movement. The members of
that league were to make the transition from
their own circle into other circles, from their
own circumstances into other circumstances.
They were to set forth upon a pilgrimage of
ever-expanding benevolence, from the narrow
limits of the home in Galilee to the many
mansions in the house of the Father. Such a
goal demanded not only a community but a
versatility of human sympathy — a power to
pass rapidly from the interests of one to the
interests of another. A more stimulating in
fluence was required than the levelling effect
of the storm.
And that stimulating influence was forth
coming. It came in an episode which, so far
as I know, is unique even in a unique history.

224 THE SIMULTANEOUS SUPPLIANTS
Let us briefly recall the circumstances. Jesus
has been visited by one of the leading office
bearers of the synagogue of Capernaum. He
is evidently a man of great repute ; and it is
equally evident that he does not imagine he is
endangering that repute by the mere acknow
ledgment of the Messianic power of Jesus. He
is driven to Jesus by an exigency. He has a
little girl lying at the point of death. It does
not occur to him that the power claimed by
Jesus could extend beyond actual contact;
doubtless he too would have objected to the
height of Christ's aspiration in the upper room.
He does not ask Jesus to heal his daughter by
a word spoken through the distance ; he asks
Him to come. Jesus accepts him at his own
level ; He accompanies the afflicted father to
his house of mourning. An immense crowd
follows them. The high position of the
suppliant and the boldness of his demand give
dramatic interest to the situation. With the
solitary exception of a family connected with
the league, others had brought their sick to
Jesus ; this man proposes to bring Jesus to his

THE SIMULTANEOUS SUPPLIANTS 225
sick. It is boldness originating in depth of
feeling, and it evokes a corresponding effect on
the part of the multitude. They are eager that
the suppliant should be successful, that the girl
should not die before the arrival of Jesus. The
members of the league are specially so. This is
to them a golden opportunity for recognition by
the higher powers — for the acceptance of their
Leader as the national Messiah. They fear to
be too late ; they are disposed to hurry on.
Suddenly, there is an interruption — an inter
ruption the cause of which is not at once
apparent. Jesus halts in the march of mercy,
turns round and asks, ' Who touched me ? '
There is a general disclaimer. The disciples
are ruffled by the delay. I think I can detect
a certain flavour of impatience in their words,
The multitude throng Thee and press Thee ;
and sayest Thou, Who touched me ? ' It is as
if they felt themselves to be losing time, as if
they were eager to resume their journey. The
object in advance of them seems so advantageous
that anything in the rear is deemed unworthy
of their attention. P

226 THE SIMULTANEOUS SUPPLIANTS
Not so thinks Jesus. He insists on prolong
ing the delay ; He demands investigation :
' Some one did touch me, for I perceive that
virtue has gone out of me.' Then, in answer to
His importunity, there comes trembling through
the crowd a woman who for years had been the
victim of a disease which, like leprosy, had
always been associated with ceremonial un
cleanness. She had felt herself too vile to ask
openly for healing. Hoping to get the benefit
without the publicity, she had come behind in
the throng and laid her hand upon the hem
of Jesus' garment. She now stands forth, to
confess what she believed to be a crime, to
hear this supposed crime declared to be a
glory. Now, the crucial point of this narrative lies
in the declaration of Jesus, ' I perceive that
virtue has gone out of me.' The point is that
before the appearing of the woman the cure
was already completed, and that Jesus knew
it to be so. So far as the healing was con
cerned, there was no ground whatever for
interrupting the mission to the relief of the

THE SIMULTANEOUS SUPPLIANTS 227
dying girl. It was not a case in which two
people demand the simultaneous attendance
of the same physician to the exclusion of one
another. The woman did not interrupt the
mission to the girl — not by a moment of time.
A halt in the march there was ; but it was not
caused by her, nor had it anything to do with
her cure. The interruption came from Jesus
and from Jesus alone. Why? It cannot be
supposed that, in the view of the gospel
narrator, He was seeking personal information.
It cannot be supposed that, in the view of this
narrator, a Being gifted with Divine power
could be destitute of Divine clairvoyance.
What, then, is the meaning of this feature in
the Portrait of Jesus ? A girl is dying — nay,
she is already dead. The Master will arrive
too late to fulfil the purpose for which He was
summoned. Why has He delayed ? Is it that
He may manifest a greater glory ? Is it that,
instead of merely reviving a dying spark, He
may require to kindle a new one ? You may
quote the case of Lazarus in support of such a
view. But whaawe come to the case of Lazarus

228 THE SIMULTANEOUS SUPPLIANTS
we shall find ourselves in a new era. We
shall find that the work of Jesus has assumed
another attitude, an attitude which is quite
inapplicable to the circumstances of the
Galilean days. To my mind it would mar
the beauty, it would destroy the simplicity, of
this narrative if you suffer yourself for a
moment to believe that Jesus delayed in order
to effect a greater miracle. It would place the
elaborateness of art in a scene of rustic nature ;
it would substitute electric light for sunlight ; it
would spread a carpet of painted flowers over
the natural flowers of the field. The glory of
Galilee is its simple-heartedness; the glory
of the Christ of Galilee is His adaptation to
the scene. We dare not mar the picture by
exhibiting a hot-house growth in the place
where tropical plants luxuriate in the sun.
The question recurs, Whence this accepted
interruption of the mission of Jesus ? If it was
not needed for the cure of the woman, if it
was not desired as a means of turning the heal
ing of disease into the vanquishing of death,
is there any other ground on which it can be

THE SIMULTANEOUS SUPPLIANTS 229
explained ? There is — an educational ground.
Remember that at this period Jesus was more
than a healer ; He was beyond all things a
teacher of how to heal. He had become the
head of a little band to whom His cures were
object-lessons. Every work He performed had
a double value ; it had a value to the sufferer,
and it had a value to the league of pity. The
members of that league were the pupils in a
sick-nursing establishment; they looked on.
Jesus knew they were looking on. He had
them ever in His mind as hospital students.
He said and did many things in their presence
which He would not have said and done in
their absence. As on the mount He spoke to
the multitude but at the disciples, so in the
hospital He spoke to the patient but at the
students. These Galilean days were days of
clinical instruction. As Jesus paced the wards
of that great infirmary His eye was as intent
on the symptoms of the pupil as on the
symptoms of the sufferer. Wherever He saw
a defect in the student's sympathy, wherever
He witnessed a slackness, or onesidedness, of

230 THE SIMULTANEOUS SUPPLIANTS
interest, wherever He beheld a tendency to
centre the attention on one point to the
neglect of another, there He perceived that
there was need for development, there He felt
that there was work to do.
Now, this I think was one of these cases.
It was an instance of what I might call the
clashing of gospel interests. Two claimants
had appeared for the sympathy of Jesus. They
were vastly different in status. One was high ;
the other was lowly. One was confident ; the
other was shrinking. One was basking in the
favour of the religious public ; the other was
under a cloud of religious reproach. One,
from a worldly point of view, could bring much
good to Jesus ; the other could give nothing
in recompense. Only one of these suppliants
was visible to the members of the league ; they
had neither eyes nor ears for any other. From
their point of view, I do not wonder. This
ruler of the synagogue seemed the very chance
for them. Here was a golden opportunity that
might never return — one of the tides which, if
taken at the flood, might lead on to fortune.

THE SIMULTANEOUS SUPPLIANTS 231
What better fortune could await the Christ
than that He should be recognised by a leader
of the Jewish theocracy ! Would it not at once
put an imprimatur on the new movement?
would it not save much climbing of the hill ?
I do not wonder that to men who felt so in
tensely the offence of the cross the call from
Jairus came like a blast of triumph. I do not
marvel that for the moment they saw only one
goal and were absorbed in a single eagerness
— the desire to press on.
But this was the very thing which Jesus
wished to counteract. Had He not told them
in the sermon on the mount that they should
consider cases of conflicting interest? Had
He not told them that a man should not offer
his gift without taking into account his relation
to his brother? Was not this exactly a case
of the kind ? Should He veil from them what
He knew to have happened? Should He
conceal from them that His had been a divided
sympathy? Should He hide from them the
fact that, without disparagement to the
daughter of Jairus, virtue had first gone out

232 THE SIMULTANEOUS SUPPLIANTS
from Him towards a humbler suppliant ? No ;
He must not hide it. They too must be made
sharers in the counter-interests of His heart.
They too must be made to participate,
meanwhile in the wideness, ultimately in the
universalness, of His sympathy. They too
must be rendered capable of taking up into
the chariot of pity one whose case was not
the direct object of that chariot's journey.
Therefore it is that Jesus halts in the march,
even though it is a march of mercy. Therefore
it is that He bids the procession stand still,
and recalls the eyes of the disciples from the
van to the rear. He felt that their interest was
naturally more identified with the case of the
suppliant Jairus than with the case of the sup
pliant woman ; and therefore He desired both
them and Jairus to understand that there is a
point in which every man's wish is interrupted
and traversed by the wish of another.

T T ELP me ever, O Christ, to see this point
¦"¦•¦¦ of interruption. When my interest is
in the van, help me to remember that the

THE SIMULTANEOUS SUPPLIANTS 233
interest of another is in the rear. Never let me
forget Thy rule for golden wishes — Thy lesson
how to pray. I shall never be on Thy mount
in prayer until I have a mountain view — Thy
view. I must be able to look on every side —
to consider how my wish will affect the wish of
another. Give me this all-round view, O Lord ;
set my feet in this large room. Sometimes a
voice says to me, 'Pray Christ to press on ; your
interest is in the house of Jairus.' Let me look
back before doing so, and see whether there be
not a suppliant in the rear, some one whose
prayer is, ' Let Christ linger on the way.' Ever
let there be present to my mind the multitude
that are pressing on Thee. Let me remember
the many souls that are touching Thee, with
wishes varied, conflicting. Let me remember
that my gain may be my brother's loss. Let
me pause solemnly, with uncovered head,
before the temple of prayer. Let me stand in
the cross-way where the temple is approached
from many sides. So shall my wish be golden,
so shall I ask what shall be pleasing to Thee.

CHAPTER XX
THE LIMITATIONS OF THE FIRST MINISTRY
JESUS has been preparing the league of
pity for a great missionary journey. That
missionary journey, although not the origin
of Christianity, is the real beginning of the
Christian ministry. It is the first aggressive
movement on the part of the Church visible.
Hitherto Jesus has acted alone ; the Church
has been merely a spectator. Now Jesus,
for a time, is to be the spectator, and the
Church is to act alone.
Very interesting, therefore, promises to be
the contemplation of this first ministerial
movement. We are standing at the fountain
of all Church life. We watch the play of
the waters with more than average attention.
We expect to find in the action of this
primitive ministry something which will stand
231

THE FIRST MINISTRY 235
as a guide for all future ministries. We look
for great things from the fountain. However
impeded the stream may be in its course,
whatever obstructions may accumulate as the
waters pursue their way, we feel sure that
the source, at least, will be free. We expect
that the opening scene will be a scene of
refreshingness, of bounding liberty, of gushing
spontaneity. To drop the metaphor, we are
convinced that this little band of disciples,
issuing as they do from the primal seat of
all Christian knowledge, will exhibit that
superiority to later Churches which such a
direct origin seems to imply.
Now, in this expectation it appears at first
sight as if we were to be disappointed. As
we listen to Jesus prescribing the boundaries
of the first diocese our immediate impression
is one of incongruity. There seems a dis
proportion between the means and the end.
Indeed, in studying the constitution of this
first Christian ministry I am impressed beyond
everything else by the number of limitations
imposed on it. Its restrictions seem greatly

236 THE LIMITATIONS OF
to predominate over its liberties. One feels
at times as if a drag were being put on the
wheels of sympathy lest it should run too
quickly down the hill of human needs. That
this conclusion is the reverse of the truth I
know; but the fact remains that there is a
suggestion of limit where we expected free
dom. We shall best overcome the obstacle by
facing it.
There seem to me to be four ministerial
limits here laid down by Jesus — a limit to
sphere, a limit to foresight, a limit to message,
and a limit to courage. I shall look at each
in turn. And first, there is at this stage a
distinct limit to the apostolic sphere of action :
'Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and
into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not ;
but go rather to the lost sheep of the house
of Israel.' This is the last thing we should
expect. Is not Jesus conscious that His field
is the world ? Yes ; He never from the be
ginning had any dubiety about that. Nothing
in the whole gospel is to me more certain than
that the interest of Jesus was from the very

THE FIRST MINISTRY 237
outset a universal interest. He may have
grown in some experiences ; He never grew
in this. So early as His passage through
Samaria He saw and declared that there was
a worship which should survive both Jerusalem
and Gerizim. So early as the sermon on .the
mount He calls His disciples, not 'the light
of Galilee,' not 'the light of Israel,' not even
' the light of Asia,' but ' the light of the world.'
And can we forget that it was precisely when
announcing the downfall of Judaism that His
own claim to universal empire became the
loudest and the most unqualified, as if to
prove that He had never built His hopes
upon the perpetuity of the Jewish nation :
'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my
words shall not pass away.'
Why, then, this fencing of the new diocese,
' Go not into the way of the Gentiles ' ? Is
this the Being whom the fourth evangelist
describes as ' lighting every man that cometh
into the world'? Is this the Man who thus
describes Himself, ' Other sheep I have which
are not of this fold ' ? Is this the Personality

238 THE LIMITATIONS OF
who declares in the very face of the Mosaic
ritual, ' Many shall come from the east and
from the west and shall sit down with Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God ' ?
How shall we account for the inconsistency?
Hqw shall we explain the fact that a soul
so wide as that of Jesus should have been
content to contract its range from the sweep
of a boundless plain into the circuit of a tiny
garden ?
I answer, in the interest of the plain. He
refused to send these men to the foreign field
because He had a great sense of the claim of
that field. The foreign mission required more
training than the home mission. Remember
the insular position of the Jew. It was the
most insular of all positions — a solitude of
mind. If it had been merely a separation
of languages, interpreters might have spanned
the gulf. But it was a separation of thought,
of culture, of the very mode of conceiving
things. No interpreter can pass such a chasm
as that ; not even a gift of tongues could pass
it To be a missionary to the Gentiles, to be

THE FIRST MINISTRY 239
a missionary even to Gentilised Samaria, a
man had to live abroad, to get acclimatised
to forms of thought called heathen. The third
evangelist declares that if there were any other
way of becoming a foreign missionary it must
be a supernatural way ; he attributes this
charge to Jesus : ' Tarry ye in the city of
Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power
from on high.' Even with his light from
heaven, even with his culture from earth, Saul
of Tarsus is not sent at once into his destined
Gentile field ; had it been a Jewish field, I
am convinced his mission would have been
immediate. I can see nothing but breadth
and liberality in the limited diocese of the
first league of pity.
The second limit is on the power of fore
sight : ' Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor
brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey,
neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves ;
for the workman is worthy of his meat But
when they deliver you up, take no thought
how or what ye shall speak; for it shall be
given you in that same hour what ye shall

240 THE LIMITATIONS OF
speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the
Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.'
Should we not have expected something
different here also? Is there not a great
danger in a minister failing to measure his
difficulties ? Yes ; but what Jesus wishes to
guard against is, not the measuring of diffi
culties, but the measuring of difficulties in
advance. Jesus wishes to limit excessive
tendencies to look forward. And is He not
right? Is there anything more hampering to
a mind, especially to a clerical mind, than the
perpetual presence of the future? Is this not
itself the greatest limit to the powers of life ?
Is it not also an intellectual mistake? I am
told of a task which I shall have to perform
a year hence. I measure my own capacities
and find that if the task were now before me
I could not do it. Is that a fair measure
ment? Because I cannot do it now, does it
follow that I shall be unfit for it a year hence ?
Can I forget that, while the task will remain sta
tionary, / shall always be growing ? The force
with which I meet it in a year will not be the

THE FIRST MINISTRY 2-41
same force with which I should meet it to-day.
I am tormenting myself by a false estimate.
Where did Jesus learn this principle ? From
the experience of His own life. I remarked
in a previous chapter that I considered Christ's
words, ' Take no thought for to-morrow,' to be
autobiographical. I think there is also a ring
of autobiography in the words, 'The morrow
shall take thought for the things of itself
Such a lesson could only have been learned
from the struggles of a human soul. It is
a lesson in the human, not in the Divine.
He must have got it from experience. That
soul which grew in human strength must
have learned by the teaching of life that the
morrow takes thought for the things of itself,
that as a man's day is, so his strength shall
be. Doubtless there were times in which,
seen from afar, the difficulties on His path
seemed insurmountable ; but ever as He drew
near there was revealed a hidden door. That
was the truth which His life had taught
Him ; that was the truth which He wished
inscribed on all other lives. Is it strange
Q

242 THE LIMITATIONS OF
that He should desire it to be written on the
portals of the house of God ?
The third limit is that of message : ' Preach,
saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.'
Is not this a bald message for a Church to
give to the world? Is it one stage beyond
that of the Baptist? Is not the Baptist's
fuller ; did not he say, ' Repent, for the kingdom
of heaven is at hand ' ? Yes ; but Christ's
omission of the word 'repent' makes a new
gospel. I have pointed out this in a previous
chapter and in another connection, and I need
not repeat it here. It is one thing to say,
' The door is open ; gather in all things that
are beautiful ' ; it is another thing to say, ' The
door is open ; gather in the vile things and
make them beautiful.' The Baptist said the
former; Jesus said the latter. To Jesus the
sequel to the coming of the kingdom was
expressed in the words, ' Heal the sick, cleanse
the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils ;
freely ye have received, freely give.' Ap
parently a mere reiteration of the Baptist's
gospel, this gospel of the primitive Church

THE FIRST MINISTRY 243
excels it by the whole height of the heavens.
As far as east is distant from the west does the
kingdom of Jesus outrun the kingdom of John.
With John acceptance is conditioned on the
amendment of life ; with Jesus the amendment
of life is conditioned on acceptance. The
one says, 'Let God arise and His enemies be
scattered ' ; the other says, ' Let God arise and
His enemies be redeemed.'
The fourth limit is the apparent limit to
human courage, or, which is more remarkable,
to the courage of the Church militant. There
is prescribed a strange mixture of bravery and
caution. On the one hand Jesus exhorts His
disciples to fearlessness. He bids them re
member the protective care of the Father
over all creation. He bids them remember
the special place of man in the scale of
creation. He tells them that the greatest
place in man is the place which they are
defending — the region of the soul. He says
the sense of their value ought to dispel their
fear. But on the other hand there is some
thing which sounds like a warning against

244 THE LIMITATIONS OF
this exuberance of courage. Amid such a
display of confidence on the part of the
Master one experiences somewhat of a shock
to hear such words as these : ' When they shall
persecute you in this city, flee into another.'
It is like water poured upon fire. No portrait
but the Portrait of Christ could without detri
ment have withstood an incongruity like this.
How, in spite of it, has this Portrait preserved
its glory? We should have expected One
who took up so courageous an attitude to
have bidden His followers court martyrdom ;
He tells them to flee from death ! Yet His
renown for sacrificial heroism has suffered no
decline. Why ?
It is because Jesus Himself has taught the
world a lesson which the world has elsewhere
never learned — that in the sphere of religion
it is more difficult to live than to die. ' Who
soever shall confess me before men, him will
I confess also before my Father ' ; to Jesus
the sacrifice which involved most courage
was not the surrender of the body, but the
surrender of the will — the confession of His

THE FIRST MINISTRY 245
name in the land of the living. His ideal of
martyrdom was to take up the cross and
follow. It never occurred to Him that in
telling His disciples to flee from death He was
granting them any relaxation. It never entered
His mind that in bidding them live as long as
they could He was lowering His standard of
bravery. To Him the bravest thing, because
the hardest thing, was to carry the cross.
One of His disciples says of Him that ' He
bare our sins in His own body on to the
tree ' — not merely ' on the tree ' as our version
has it; he means that the life was, with Him,
itself the martyrdom. What else does Paul
mean when he speaks of ' bearing about in
the body the dying of the Lord Jesus ' ? He
proclaims the truth that the annals of Christian
martyrdom are not confined to the hour of
death, that there have been souls which have
been courageous enough not to die, nay,
courageous enough not to reveal their tears.
There have been martyrs who have anointed
the head and washed the face that they might
appear unto men not to fast — who have covered

246 THE FIRST MINISTRY
their weeds with flowers and hid their sorrow
under a smile ; and these are the bravest of all.
' I "EACH me, O Lord, to value my free
¦"* cities — my unpersecuted cities. Teach
me when one gate is shut to remember that
another is open. Teach me the secret of not
being crushed by calamity. I am too apt to
sink in despair when a door is closed ; help
me to flee to the mercy that remaineth. I
can only bear my losses by remembering
unstolen joys. If I keep my gaze on the
flower that is withered I shall only have
courage to die. I want courage to live. Help
me to look at the wwwithered flower. Lead
me to the pastures that still are green, to the
waters that still are quiet. Let me remember
the things unfaded that might have been
faded, the lights undimmed that might have
been dim. Let me think of the treasures
unspent, the hopes unbroken, the fountains
unfailing. So shall I have courage to live,
courage to bear. I shall survive every pain
when I remember the ' rest that remaineth.'

CHAPTER XXI
THE LIBERALITY OF THE FIRST MINISTRY
I HAVE said that when Jesus told His disciples
not to go into the way of the Gentiles, He was
influenced by no feeling of narrowness. I come
now to the crowning proof of this ; it occurs
at the close of the very chapter where the
seeming restrictions are tabulated. Jesus lays
down His terms of admission into the first
Christian Church. These terms are, to my
mind, the most remarkable ever uttered to any
guild, Christian or secular. Their remarkable-
ness lies in their liberality. I do not mean
that they prescribe no creed. How could they
do otherwise than prescribe no creed ? There
was as yet no Christian creed to prescribe.
The life of the Master had not been fully un
folded ; His death was still unrevealed. Any
terms of subscription must necessarily be

248 THE LIBERALITY OF
practical. But it is the practical terms that
astonish us — they are so wide, so fearless.
Religions are apt to be narrow at their source,
and to broaden as they flow. Christianity is
nowhere so broad as at the fountain, nowhere
so intensely liberal as in the very place where
it seems to exclude the Gentiles. There are
three rules for admission to Church-member
ship here laid down by the Master Himself.
They are the earliest ever inscribed on the
portals of a Christian temple ; yet they ought
to be the marvel of all the centuries. No
religion has ever approached their liberality;
no later Church has thrown the gates so widely
open. Let us stand for a moment in the
dawn. Let us read in its light these three
inscriptions. We shall see how broad they
are, how free, how fearless ; and we shall not
forget that they are written by the very hand
of Jesus.
They run thus : First, if any one appreciates
an inspired man, let him be counted himself
inspired ; ' He that receiveth a prophet in the
name of a prophet ' — on the ground of his being

THE FIRST MINISTRY 249
a prophet — 'shall receive a prophet's reward.'
Second, if any one desires to be good, let him
get the credit of being good even though his
deeds lag behind ; ' He that receiveth a righteous
man in the name of a righteous man ' — on the
ground of his being a righteous man — 'shall
receive a righteous man's reward.' Third, if
any one performs a genuine act of charity, even
though it may not be done directly in the
name of Christ, it shall be esteemed a Christian
act ; ' Whosoever will give a cup of cold water
only in the name of a disciple ' — only on the
ground that he is a fellow-sufferer in God's
school of discipline — ' verily I say unto you, he
shall in no wise lose his reward.'
These are the three golden rules for the
earliest Christian fellowship. Let us look at
them one by one. First, ' He that receiveth a
prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive
a prophet's reward.' Mark the qualifying
clause ' in the name of a prophet' It means
' because he is a prophet.' It is quite possible
to receive a prophet on other grounds than
that. It is possible, for example, to buy a

250 THE LIBERALITY OF
picture, and yet not to buy it in the name of
art. There are four grounds on which a man
may buy a picture. He may buy it from
covetousness ; he may say, ' A time is coming
when this will sell at far more.' He may buy
it from pity ; he may say, ' I know this artist
has a hard struggle.' He may buy it from
pride ; he may say, ' I should like to have the
reputation of having a real Turner.' Or he
may buy it from admiration ; he may say, ' This
is beautiful ! ' Only the last of these motives
is a purchase ' in the name of art! Jesus says
that no motive but the last would prove the-
possession of a spirit kindred to the artist.
All other reasons for buying are reasons outside
the work ; admiration is itself participation.
Let us apply this to the great Picture we
are studying — the Portrait of Christ. I find
in the gospel narrative the same four motives
for purchase. I see the mother of the sons
of Zebedee forecasting the future price it will
bring — the ' right hand in the kingdom.' I see
the Roman governor, Pilate, ready to give a
helping patronage from sheer pity, mixed

THE FIRST MINISTRY 251
with contempt for the artist's power. I see
Nicodemus coming into the gallery when the
Picture is in its first and popular days, and, as
he observes how low it is hung, eager to be its
possessor. And then I see a bidder of another
kind ; it is Peter Bar-Jona. He comes into
the gallery when, in the eyes of men, the glory
of the Picture has departed, and it is hung very
high. Yet, spite of its obscurity, the eye of
Peter sees it, and, singling it out from all
beside, he cries, ' Thou art the Christ, the Son
of the living God ! '
Now, this last was the only artist of the
group. Jesus says to him, 'Blessed art thou,
Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee.' He had received the
Portrait on its merits as a portrait. All the
others before and after were influenced by
considerations of flesh and blood ; they were
swayed by outside motives. Peter was at
tracted by the Portrait alone — not by what it
would bring, not by the pride of having it, but
by the intrinsic beauty of the Picture; he
received the prophet in the name of the

252 THE LIBERALITY OF
prophet Therefore, Jesus says, he is himself
worthy to be enrolled among the members of
the Royal Academy. Appreciation was the
proof of inspiration. He might never paint a
stroke of his own, never acquire even a smat
tering of the art ; but he had seen the King
in His beauty, and therefore he had proved
himself to be partaker of that beauty. 'We
shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He
is ' is the grand reasoning of an early Christian
writer. It is incontrovertible reasoning. Like
natures alone can recognise each other, and if
we have seen the spiritual beauty we must our
selves be spiritually fair.
Second, ' He that receiveth a righteous man
in the name of a righteous man shall receive
a righteous man's reward.' Jesus says that if
we love righteousness in another while yet our
own life has given no outward sign of reforma
tion, we shall be regarded as having already
begun the life of righteousness. This is the
germ of the doctrine afterwards called justi
fication by faith. It says: 'When you are
looking for the reform of a bad man, the first

THE FIRST MINISTRY 253
thing you should look for is not a change of
action but a change of ideal. The measure of
the man is not what he does but what he
thinks, not what he is but what he would like
to be. The first-fruits of his Promised Land
are sent in advance as they were to the
Israelites ; but they come not in deeds but
in aspirings. Take his estimate, not by the
movement of his hand, but by the direction of
his eye. That is the measure of him ; that is
the prophecy of him ; that is the hope for
him.' This is no religious dogma. We can feel
the influence of the principle on our daily
lives ; we reason upon it, we act upon it. You
are, let us say, a district visitor in a very
depraved locality. You go into one of its
dens of iniquity and meet a company of ill-
looking men. You begin to address them ;
you tell the story of Jesus. As you proceed,
there are various interruptions. Some laugh;
some hoot ; some cavil ; some say, ' It is easy
for royal heads to bear suffering.' But there
is one man who arrests you. He is as • miser-

254 THE LIBERALITY OF
able in appearance as the rest. His life has
evidently been quite as bad ; the signs of
waste are equally apparent. But the effect of
your story is on him very different. As you
begin to unfold the picture of moral heroism
he utters exclamations of wonder. As you pro
ceed, there come flashes of the eye — perhaps a
furtive tear. As the tale of voluntary humilia
tion deepens, his mutterings become audible:
'That is a manl 'That is a man I believe in,'
' That is a man I could trust ' ; ' If I had my
life to live over again, I should wish to be like
that! What is your feeling under these cir
cumstances ? Is it not that this poor creature
has already crossed the line that divides sin
from glory, that he has already touched the
confines of the kingdom of God ? With hand
and foot still on the earthly soil, with the
grave-clothes still hanging about him, with
the elements of corruption yet adhering to his
garments, we feel that the man has even now
made the transition from death into life. The
dress of Lazarus may be indistinguishable from
the dress of the dead ; none the less the grave

THE FIRST MINISTRY 255
has been opened and Lazarus has come forth.
Jesus offers to such a man a passport into the
Holy City.
Third, ' Whosoever shall give a cup of cold
water only in the name of a disciple ' — only on
the ground that the sufferer is a fellow-pupil
in the school of God — ' his act of charity shall
be deemed a Christian deed ; he shall in no
wise lose his reward.' I have paraphrased the
passage thus to express its spirit The whole
stress lies in the phrase ' only in the name of
a disciple ' ; and the key will be found in the
foregoing words, 'he that receiveth you re
ceiveth me.' Jesus has so identified His
interest with the cause of suffering humanity
that He regards the humanitarian as equivalent
to the evangelical. There is a class of men
in this world who do not feel themselves quali
fied for the communion of Christ's upper room.
They are good men, true men, men ready at
all times to express their love and loyalty to
Jesus ; but they do not see their way to climb
so high. To such Jesus offers in the meantime
a lower room. He offers a communion which

256 THE LIBERALITY OF
requires no climbing — rather, stooping. He
offers to spread a table for which one quality
alone shall be required — the power of charity.
He promises to let each man pass the cup
to his brother on the simple ground that his
brother is in need. There will be no inquiry
as to whether he is Jew or Gentile, Pharisee
or Sadducee, apostle or layman. The only
question will be, is he hungry, is he thirsty,
is he cold, is he weary — is he bearing the wants
of man ?
That is Christ's promise. We shall see in
the next chapter how He kept it. It is highly
significant that the first ministrant incident
which follows the promulgation of this third
golden rule is the breaking of bread in the
desert. I do not think Jesus designed the
sequence ; His sympathy moved on no
mechanical lines. The promise involved in
the third golden rule was not so much for any
special time as for the groping Christians of
all time. Yet this table in the wilderness rests
in no accidental spot ; it is spread in the design
of the Father, and it is spread precisely at the

THE FIRST MINISTRY 257
hour when its comfort would be most apparent.
It breaks upon the eye just when there fade
from the ear the last echoes of these words of
Jesus which proclaimed to the missionary band
His recognition of human charity as a Christian
grace.

TV T EANTIME, my brother, the words, ere
-*-*-*- they fade, have a message for you.
Mayhap you call yourself an agnostic. You
are afraid of the sacrament of the upper room ;
it is too high for you ; you cannot attain unto it.
Be it so. God has spread for you a prelimi
nary table — a table not in the upper room but
in the earthly valley. The Master comes down
from the mountain to meet you, to be on a
level with you. He surrounds you with human
needs — with children whose lips are parched
with the thirst of the desert. He puts a cup
of cold water into your hand and says, ' Pass
it round.' Will you be the bearer of this
sacrament for Him to-day ? Leave the upper
room till to-morrow; to-morrow will take
R

258 THE FIRST MINISTRY
thought for the things of itself. But will you
bear this special cup to-day — this cup of human
charity? There is nothing mystical about it,
nothing superhuman. It is made of earthen
ware ; it is fashioned to meet the wants of the
common hour. But if you will bear this cup,
Jesus says it will, meantime, be counted to
you for a sacrament. For you, the upper room
is not yet furnished ; but the desert is. See !
the multitude is gathering ; the heat is oppres
sive ; the day is wearing on. The presence of
the Master is unseen, but the famished crowd
is visible. Will you, while the Master is
behind the veil, put the famished crowd in
His place ? Then shall the voice of Jesus say
' He hath done it unto me!

CHAPTER XXII
THE FIRST COMMUNION
Let me recall your mind to the course ob
served by that sympathetic wave which Christ
stirred on the bosom of humanity. It rose in
the breast of a single individual — the Man
Christ Jesus. It passed from Him to a little
band of disciples which I have called the first
league of pity. With that league of pity it
kept moving outwards — from a narrow into
a wider sea. It broke at first upon the shore
of family life ; gradually the scope of its action
grew more ample. At last we have seen it
inaugurate a movement which carried the
league of pity beyond sight of the original
land. To drop all figure, the first independent
mission of the league was a step quite in
advance of home. When Jesus sent His
disciples forth alone He sent them beyond
269

260 THE FIRST COMMUNION
Galilee. True, their district was still a cir
cumscribed one, because their sympathy was
still circumscribed. Yet it was larger than
any hitherto assigned to them. They were
instructed to pass out of merely local asso
ciations. The bread of life which had been
transmitted from the hands of Jesus to His
disciples was to be transferred from the hands
of the disciples to the multitude. In other
words, the multitude themselves were to be
made partakers of that revelation which had
hitherto been imparted to the disciples
alone. Now, let me remind you of the process by
which the previous stages had been inaugurated.
We have seen how in the case of Jesus the
initial stage of active sympathy was preceded
by an act of receiving; the immediate pre
paration for His ministry was the weariness
at the well. We have seen how in the case of
the disciples the activity was also preceded by
an act of receiving ; the immediate prepara
tion for their mission was the storm on the
Sea of Galilee. In both cases the passive ex-

THE FIRST COMMUNION 261
perience of want was made the prelude to the
active service of man. We are now to see a
repetition of the process in the third stage.
Jesus has gathered a band of His disciples ;
the disciples have gathered a band of their dis
ciples — a company who, while they remained
outside, were called the multitude. This mul
titude is itself to be made a converting force
in the world. To become such a force it must
be stimulated by world-sympathy. How shall
it reach that sympathy? What shall be its
moment of transition ? This shall be like the
two foregoing stages — a moment of need. The
multitude must, like Jesus, like the disciples,
begin by receiving. It must before all things
be wakened into a sense of its own privation.
It must be set in front of its mirror, must see
itself in the place of humanity. As Jesus
passed into His mission from the well of
Sychar, as the disciples passed into their
mission from the Sea of Galilee, so the multi
tude is to pass into its mission from the Desert
of Bethsaida. Sychar, Gennesaret, Bethsaida
— the well, the sea, the wilderness — these are

262 THE FIRST COMMUNION
the three stages in the development of the
primitive gospel.
The beautiful feature about the third stage,
as of all the others, is that it comes quite
naturally. It seems to be the product of a
series of accidents. The disciples have re
turned from their first missionary journey.
Their success has evidently been great ; none
the less are they weary and jaded. It will
be found that the collapse which follows the
excitement of success is quite equal to the
collapse which follows the experience of failure.
The eye of Jesus sees the signs of physical
fatigue. With His all-round compassion, He
does not wish the inner man to make ravages
on the outer man ; ' Come ye yourselves,' He
says, 'into a desert place and rest a while.'
It is a very beautiful feature in the Portrait of
Jesus. It is one where His humanity shines
out with undivided charm. The interests of
the mission are for a moment in abeyance, and
secular love reigns supreme. I do not think
the significance of this has been fully appreci
ated. Jesus wants for an hour to tempt His

THE FIRST COMMUNION 263
followers from His own public service. He
subordinates the evangelical to the personal.
He bids the gospel chariot stop for the sake
of those who drive it. He asks a suspension
of the cause dearest to His heart. There are
times in which the wheels of the world's pro
gress have been thus suspended. At such
times we speak of the failure of Providence.
Has it ever occurred to any other portrait
painter than those who have painted Jesus to
make the seeming failure a part of the glory?
These gospel delineators have not been afraid
to express upon the canvas the idea that public
success may be arrested for the sake of a
private and individual interest of the heart.
Stimulated by the Master's loving solicitude,
the disciples follow Him into the wilderness of
Bethsaida. But public interest refuses to give
way to private feeling. A vast multitude are
now surrounding them, partly drawn by the
presence of Jesus, and partly by the success
of the first mission. This crowd pursues the
steps of the little band. It follows them into
their retreat ; it breaks the hour of their

264 THE FIRST COMMUNION
solitude. Jesus had not calculated on the
interruption, had not desired it. He had con
templated a breathing-space, a rest by the way.
But the moment the interruption came, it was
accepted as the will of the Father — that was
the method of Jesus, always, everywhere.
What was He to do with this crowd ? Here,
by the stream of events, were gathered toge
ther the three forces of the future kingdom —
the Master, the disciples, and the multitude.
Why had they met in the desert ? Must they
not have been gathered by the hand of the
Father? If so, had they not been drawn to
gether for the purpose of fellowship? Had
not the time come for an interchange of
sympathy? Was not this the place, was not
this the hour in which to seek the basis for a
first communion ? Why not make this desert
the first vocal spot, the scene for the welding
together of classes, the locality where man
should meet with man ? Was there to be
found in the precincts of this wilderness any
thing that could furnish a ground for the
brotherhood of human souls ?

THE FIRST COMMUNION 265
At first sight it would seem as if there were
not The disciples were in a high state of
exaltation ; they had been lifted farther from
the earth ; they had left the multitude spiritu
ally miles behind. How could that multitude
reach up to them ? They had no hand that
could stretch so high. Their thoughts were
still mundane, their hopes still secular, their
aims still material. The desert represented this
sense of separation on the part of the disciples.
What was to be the bond of fellowship between
this ungainly rabble and a little band of human
souls soaring into regions of transcendent
glory? They had come to enjoy their hour
of special communion — that hour with which a
stranger intermeddleth not How could they
admit such rough feet into the garden ? Was
it possible that in a moment, in the twinkling
of an eye, the sympathies of that worldly
crowd should rise into union with the denizens
of the hill?
It was not possible ; Jesus felt it, the
disciples felt it. But all at once, out of the
sphere of seeming accident, there came the

266 THE FIRST COMMUNION
revelation of another, a more excellent, way.
The disciples suddenly made it appear that
though the multitude were not in need of
them, they were in need of the multitude. They
made it appear that the thing wanted was not
a chain to reach up but a chain to reach down.
They showed by the display of a defect in their
nature that the ladder required on this occasion
was not one set up on the earth to reach the
heavens, but one whose summit should be first
fixed in heaven and which should then stretch
down to touch the earth.
I have said that the door to this other mode
of communion was opened by the revelation
of a defect in the disciples. They betrayed a
weakness in secular sympathy — in sympathy
with the multitude as a multitude. I have no
doubt they were eager for the Messianic welfare
of the crowd. I doubt not they desired them
to be among the number of God's elect, among
those who should rend the air with the cry,
' Hosanna to the Son of David ! ' That was
missionary sympathy ; and I give them credit for
it But that was not human sympathy. It was

THE FIRST COMMUNION 267
not sympathy with the field outside the mission
field. It was not a recognition of the fact that
there is such a thing as earthly joy and that
the absence of earthly joy is pain. There is
as much narrowness in the inability to contract
as in the inability to expand. It is not enough
that a follower of Jesus should have universal
love. I may have universal love and be with
out universal sympathy. I may wish with all
my heart that the outside world should come
to think as I think; this is universal love.
And yet, all the time, between me and that
outside world, there may be not one thought
in common ; I may depreciate its causes of joy,
I may sneer at its grounds of pain. At the
very moment when my benevolence for it is at
its zenith, at the very instant when I am most
eager for its future, I may be utterly divorced in
sympathy from the interests of its passing day.
So was it with the members of the league
of pity. They were panting to get rid of the
crowd on any pretext. 'Send the multitude
away, that they may go into the villages and
buy food.' It was surely an unnecessary kind-

268 THE FIRST COMMUNION
ness ! The multitude were the best judges of
their own hunger and the means of assuaging
it ; they could go away when they liked. We
miss the whole point of the narrative if we
imagine there was any danger of starvation.
There were villages near, and the multitude
knew it quite as well as the disciples. I gather
from Matthew ix. 36 that the ground of Christ's
compassion was not that they were in want of
a cup, but that they were in want of a minis-
trant hand. The smallest part of a deed of
charity is the gift ; the main part is the giving.
The complaint of the prodigal in Christ's
parable is that ' no man gave unto him.' That
has ever been the complaint of the masses.
They have been able to get bread in the
villages, but they have desiderated a helping
hand from the upper ranks of their fellow-men.
This helping hand is the real communion.
Not the bread but the distribution of the bread
is the thing desiderated. What the multitude
in the desert wanted was a touch from above —
not simply a touch from heaven but a touch
from earth. They sought the sound of a voice

THE FIRST COMMUNION 269
that was still — the voice of brotherhood from
the higher level. It was this that brought them
into the desert — the hope to be in some sense,
however small, the recipients of something
from the Master's hand.
I think the defect of the disciples was that
they did not see this want of the multitude.
It did not seem to them that the new evangel
could have anything to do with the struggles
of common life ; its power to them lay in pro
claiming a higher than the natural bread. It
never occurred to them that to toil with success
for the natural bread man needs something
more than the natural — more, at least, than the
material. They had not realised the fact that
what helps the son of toil to win his material
bread is the voice of his brother man — the
voice of human sympathy, of friendly interest,
of encouraging approbation. They had not
realised it, but Jesus had. He felt that His
disciples had not yet appreciated the downward
sweep of His gospel. They had appreciated
its power to lead men to heaven, but not its
power to bring men nearer to earth — not the

270 THE FIRST COMMUNION
effect upon the earth which such a power would
produce. Jesus resolved that the disciples
should learn this, that the multitude should
learn this. He instituted on this spot the first
communion ; He based it on an earthly ground
— a secular ground. The Last Supper was to
be inaugurated on the fact of heaven's love for
earth; the First was instituted on the basis
of earth's need for heaven. The ladder was
stretched from above to below, not from
below to above. From the hand of the Master
the secular bread descended to the nearest
disciple ; from the nearest disciple it passed
to the whole league of pity ; from the league
of pity it was transmitted to the nearest of the
multitude ; from him it passed to his brother ;
from his brother it was handed to the next
in nearness — until from the hill to the plain
there reverberated the joy of one gift from a
common hand.
f\ THOU, who loadest me with benefits,
^^ help me to pass them round. My
brother is down among the multitude and he

THE FIRST COMMUNION 271
wants communion with me. He wants the
communion more than the bread. He can
get bread in the villages as the result of
daily toil ; but that is not communion bread ;
it is not accompanied by the touch of a human
hand. Teach me, as Thy disciples were taught,
that my brother waits for this touch. Teach
me that the greatest want of man is sympathy
with his fellow-man. Enable me to remember
that when I receive a precious thing from
another I am more glad for the giving than for
the gift. Let me put myself in the place of the
multitude. Let me remember that the human
heart is, deep down, always the same. Let
me cease to impute to the multitude the mere
sordid desire for gain. Let me learn that to
them as to me the bread of life is sweetest
when it comes from a brother's love. When
I shall receive this lesson I shall no more
deem that the presence of the crowd dims
my communion with Thee.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE JOY OF JESUS
WE have now reached the widest field in
which Jesus has yet stood. Remember what
His course has been. It has been a progress
from above to below. He has been struggling
down into union with humanity. He has
begun on the heights. Standing where we
now do — in the wilderness of Bethsaida — let
us cast back our eye to that other wilderness
which beheld the dawn. Between the two
deserts there is the length of a universe. In
the wilderness of temptation Jesus was alone
so far as man was concerned ; in the wilderness
of Bethsaida He was the centre of a multitude.
In the wilderness of temptation He was'
assailed by questions regarding the super
natural; in the wilderness of Bethsaida He
was met solely by the question of bread. In

THE JOY OF JESUS 273
the wilderness of temptation His attention
was riveted on the prospect of a Divine
Empire; in the wilderness of Bethsaida He
considered only the needs of a human soul.
His course from the one desert to the other
was a descent into the heart of humanity,
and it was not precipitous but gradual. We
have marked the stages of its progress. We
have seen the life of Jesus moving at first
alone — unaccompanied by any guild of
sympathy. We have seen the formation of
a league of pity consisting at first of raw,
undisciplined youths, as ignorant of this
world as of the world to come. We have
seen Jesus proceed to discipline this band,
or, which is the same thing, to make them
disciples. We have seen Him in that course
of discipline follow the natural order of the
development of human sympathy — proceed
from the rare to the common, from the ab
normal to the universal. He has step by step
been leading the mind of the disciple from the
home circle into a wider circle, from sympathy
with a few into sympathy with the multitude.
S

274 THE JOY OF JESUS
But in this desert of Bethsaida the Master
has taken a step beyond even that ; He has
sought to make the multitude themselves
disciples. For remember, that is the real
significance of the first communion. It is
a communion. It is not merely a giving of
bread ; it is a passing of bread. Every man
in this feast who is ministered unto becemes
himself a minister. It is not the simple
reception of a gift ; it is the reception of a
gift with the view to communicate it. This is
a new departure in the gospel of Jesus. The
multitude have become themselves a ministry.
Jesus Himself is impressed with the step in
advance. He reveals in His own person an
experience new to His disciples ; ' At that
hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit' I understand the
words to mean, ' This is one of the rare occa
sions on which Jesus showed exuberant joy.' I
do not think the conclusion to be conveyed
is that His natural temper was melancholic. I
think Jesus was by nature joyous. I cannot
hear His notes of exclamation on the lily of
the field and the bird of the air without feeling

THE JOY OF JESUS 275
that He was open to impressions of gladness
from the natural world. But the world with
which Jesus had to deal was not the natural
world ; it was the sphere of the human. What
He missed in the human was just the presence
of joy. Nature made Him glad ; man made
Him grave. He felt what a difference there
was between the multitude of the lilies and the
multitude of human souls. He felt that the
former grew spontaneously, that the growth of
the latter was impeded. He felt that what im
peded the growth of the latter was the absence
of joy, the presence of care, the vision of a cloud.
Jesus, then, was made sad by man's sadness.
This shows that joy was in the nature of Jesus.
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews has a
curious expression, ' Consider Him who endured
this contradiction of sinners against Himself!
Does it not imply that he regarded the sorrows
of Jesus as thrust upon Him from the outside,
as foreign to His original nature ? We speak
of the ' Man of sorrows.' Yet I think the
deepest note in the soul of Jesus was not
sorrow but joy. There is a ring of optimism

276 THE JOY OF JESUS
about Him which no cloud can wholly repress,
which brings a voice of comfort even to His
darkest hour. It was this underlying capacity
for joy that really accounted for the exuberance
of this moment of gladness. Jesus looked
upon the joy of the human multitude. For
the first time in His experience they seemed
to have caught the spontaneity of the lily of
the field. At the sight of their return to natu
ralness Jesus Himself bounded back to His
original spirit, to His native air of brightness.
His actual experiences of gladness may have
been fewer than His experiences of pain ; but
this is only to say that He was for years out
of His element. The pain came from His
environment ; the joy was all His own.
But let us consider more deeply this present
burst of joy. Is it not based on a strange
ground? 'At that hour Jesus rejoiced in
spirit and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord
of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these
things from the wise and prudent and hast
revealed them unto babes; even so, Father,
for so it seemed good in Thy sight.' For a

THE JOY OF JESUS 277
spirit like that of Jesus one would think this
no subject of congratulation. Why thank the
Father for limiting a benefit, nay, for limiting
the only benefit which in the eye of Jesus was
worth possessing? He was joyous over the
gladness of the poor ; but why congratulate
Himself that the poor are to get a revelation
which shall be concealed from the rich ? To
rejoice at the opening of a door was well ;
but if the opening of one door caused another
door to shut, ought not this to have been a
damping of His joy? What real good could
after all be reaped by the elevation of one
class through the suppression of another ? It
is quite possible that the care thrown upon me
may lift you into spontaneity ; but in that case
it will to the spectator be a mixed gratification.
If the multitude are made happy by the
impoverishment of the rich, if the gospel is
revealed to babes in order that the wise and
prudent may be excluded from heaven, then
has the kingdom of Christ simply substituted
one caste for another, and there is no adequate
ground for the joy of Jesus.

278 THE JOY OF JESUS
But to read thus is utterly to misread. The
joy of Jesus was actually occasioned by the
opposite feeling. Where to Him lay the hope
involved in the conversion of the multitude?
Was it that a class which until now was
despised had succeeded in supplanting the
class which had towered above it? No; it
was that a class had been illuminated which
possessed an element common to all classes.
The multitude cannot understand what the
wise and prudent understand ; but the wise
and prudent can all grasp what the multitude
understand. If you reveal a truth to the
rational inquirer you reveal it to the com
paratively few ; but if you reveal it to babes
you tell it to all. We are not all profound
reasoners, but we all possess an element of
childhood. There is not a man in this world
who does not keep in his heart a survival of
the child. We are not like the butterfly that
leaves its former self behind when it begins to
soar. We carry that self along with us on
our upward flight. Nay, I doubt if our flight
itself is not winged by the spirit of our child-

THE JOY OF JESUS 279
hood. No memories survive like childhood's
memories; no hopes are so tenacious; no
faiths are so permanent. There are times in
which intellectual belief seems wrecked on
the rocks of science and when on every side
reason- looks for land in vain. Yet faith
abides, and abides through the survival of
childhood. The associations of the old home,
the memories of the family altar, the words at
a mother's knee, the reminiscences of a Sabbath
School, the echoes of voices that were once
lifted in praise and are now unheard among
men — all these bind us to the shore. The
instinct of the child within us outweighs the
reason of our riper years.
In the light of this fact let us now read again
this remarkable outburst of the joy of Jesus ;
we shall see that it can only read in one way.
Why does He address the Father as ' Lord of
heaven and earth ' ? Is it to round a phrase
of invocation ? Jesus never does that ; He
employs no idle word. He calls the Father
'Lord of heaven and earth' because He is
thinking of the Father's universality. And

280 THE JOY OF JESUS
why at this time is He thinking of the
universality? It is because in His own
ministry the Father has just given a proof of
it He has called to the service of the king
dom the men of low degree. He has called
them by an appeal to the child -nature which
is their only nature. That call is a voice to
all mankind, for all men have the nature of
the child. If it had spoken even to the eye
or to the ear it would not have been universal ;
physical beauty requires a sense ; cultured
music demands a training. But the life of
childhood is in every man — rustic and philoso
pher, peasant and peer. Time cannot outgrow
it ; experience cannot drown it ; sorrows can
not starve it ; arguments cannot kill it. It
remains steadfast amid the varied, changeless
amid the mutable — the same yesterday and
to-day and for ever.
If I were allowed to paraphrase this exu
berant utterance of Jesus, I should put it
thus : ' Lord of the wide spaces, Thou hast
been worthy of Thy wideness. Thou hast
revealed Thyself through a glass that belongs

THE JOY OF JESUS 281
to all men. Thou hast not appealed to a rare
gift. Thou hast not spoken to the man of
genius in his genius. Thou hast spoken to
him and to all others through a chink which
has been left open in the wall of every heart —
the instinct of the child. Thou hast addressed
a universal faculty; therefore it becomes
possible for all men to hear.'
The joy of Jesus, then, came from the pro
spering of His cause. But let us not forget
that there was in it an element deeper than
even that. It was the fact that the prospering
of His cause was a compensation to the Father.
This I take to be the meaning of the seemingly
irrelevant words which follow : ' All things are
delivered unto me of my Father.' I under
stand Jesus to say : ' I have undertaken this
mission for the sake of the Father. I began it
with the view of making up to Him for what
the world had failed to give Him. It is for
this I have sought to yield myself to His will ;
it is for this I have sought to bring others
to His will. I should like to make amends to
Him for the long neglect He has suffered in the

282 THE JOY OF JESUS
past. Therefore it is that I rejoice to-day over
this first communion, this first meeting with
the hands of the multitude. It is a step of
restitution to the Father — a short step, a feeble
step, but still a step in the right way.' That
is what Jesus meant, and it is deeply significant.
It tells us that in the mind of Jesus the idea of
atonement is the dominant idea. The satis
faction of the Father is with Him a perpetually
present aim. It is not merely something
which He hopes to achieve by one isolated
act in the future. It is something which He
would accomplish by gradation — which He
would mature by life and crown by death.
Every step in the achieving of that purpose
is to Him a step of gladness ; every retardation
of that purpose is to Him the heavy foot of
care. The ultimate source of the joy of Jesus
is the sense that joy is passing through the
heart of His Father.
1 "* NTER, then, my soul, into the joy of
-* — ' thy Lord. It is a vicarious joy — the
joy for another ; but it is not on that account

THE JOY OF JESUS 283
foreign to thee. Bethink thee, how few of a
man's desires in this world are for himself
alone! When he strives for honours, he has
friends whom he wants to make glad. When
he strives for wealth, he has, in fact or in
prospect, those whom he fain would nourish.
Jesus asks from thee nothing that is unhuman
when He bids thee enter into His joy. He
asks thee to put thyself sympathetically in
the place of the Father, to say, ' Will not this
gladden His heart?' — to rejoice with the
thought of His joy. That is the joy of thy
Lord ; enter within its gates. Put thyself
into sympathy with the aims of the all- Father.
When thou seest a deed of kindness, say ' How
glad the Father will be ! ' When thou hearest
of a life redeemed, say ' How glad the Father
will be ! ' When the calendar of crime is
lessened, say ' How glad the Father will be ! '
When a mission field is ripe for harvest, say
' How glad the Father will be ! ' So shall thy
heart beat responsive to the Heart of the
universe ; so shalt thou enter into the joy of
thy Lord.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT
In the stage at which we have now arrived we
have had a glimpse of the Portrait at a very
unwonted angle. We have seen the counte
nance of Jesus lit up with an expression of
cloudless joy. I cannot yet leave this place in
the gallery ; it is a point of observation which
throws a new light upon many things. Let us
stand for a few moments longer in this spot so
full of fresh tints, so rich in varied aspects.
I have said that Jesus was standing on a
wider plane than any He had hitherto occupied.
I have always indeed regarded the experience
described in the closing verses of Matthew xi.
as marking the distinctive dividing line in the
life of Jesus. It is the boundary between the
old and the new. I should divide the life of
Jesus into two great parts. The one ends with
281

THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT 285
the first, the other culminates with the second,
communion. In the one we witness the
steps by which Jesus sought to descend into
humanity ; in the other we behold the process
by which Jesus strove to draw humanity up to
Him. The symbol of the one was the breaking
of bread in the desert; the symbol of the
other was that broken body which Jesus said
should draw all men unto Himself.
It is at the close of this first period that we
have found Jesus bursting forth into an expres
sion of exuberant joy. I regard this as the
most unclouded moment He had yet experi
enced — the most unclouded He ever was to
experience previous to the shadows of the
cross.1 No previous moment had revealed such
unqualified triumph ; no future moment was
to reveal such a conquest of care until the
utterance of the final charge, ' Go ye and teach
all nations.' In the second period we stand for
the most part beside His cross ; here we stand
in front of His crown. We have seen the

1 The Transfiguration was not such a moment, as I may
hereafter have occasion to show.

286 THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT
cause of His joy. His mission had been
victorious, and that victory had been the
Father's approving smile ; more effectually
than the voice on the banks of Jordan had it
said, ' This is my beloved Son in whom I am
well pleased.' It was the time when a new
force had been gathered into the kingdom.
The multitude had ceased to be mere spec
tators ; they had become actors in the scene ;
they had helped to pass the cup. There was
visible the dawn of a wider ministry than men
had yet seen ; it was meet to make merry and
be glad.
But in the passage from Matthew — which
gives the fullest account of this matter — the
main stress is laid on the effect of this joy of
Jesus. After lifting up His eyes to heaven in
a flash of rapture He bends them down to
earth in a gaze of pity : ' Come unto me, all
ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest.' I have elsewhere pointed out
the comprehensive sweep of this sympathy.1
It covers every form of possible suffering, for
1 My Aspirations, p. 72.

THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT 287
there are only two classes, after all — those
who toil and those who bear. But what I
wish to point out now is the seeming paradox
in the present origin of this sympathy. Is it
not a strange thing that the hour of Christ's
exuberant personal joy should be the hour of
His intense sympathetic paint We do not
wonder that in contemplating the cross He
should have drawn all men under the wing of
His compassion. But that the most exhaus
tive expression of sympathy with human toil
and human heaviness should have come from
the one unique moment of absolute rapture,
that the downward glance of pity should have
followed immediately upon the upward look
of triumphant joy — this is something which
makes us wonder.
And yet there is no ground for wonder.
It is quite true, as I have said in foregoing
chapters, that sympathy with sorrow requires
personal experience of sorrow. But it is equally
true that personal experience of sorrow de
mands the knowledge ,of a previous joy. I
cannot feel for the weary and the heavy-laden

288 THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT
unless I myself have felt the weariness and
the weight ; but I never could have known
these experiences unless I had first known
their opposites. Every complaint on my part
supposes the interruption of a previous joy ;
and it is to the joy and not to the grief that
the heart makes its ultimate appeal in relieving
human pain.
All our charities must have a background of
optimism. Where have our asylums for the
blind originated? Not from blindness, but
from sight. We are absolutely safe in affirm
ing that a world of born-blind men would
never have devised such institutions, any more
than a world of the insane would have founded
lunatic asylums. The Son of Man had the
constitution of human nature. His sympathy
with pain came from His experience of
pleasure. He must have had a peculiarly
vivid sense of His own capacity for joy. '/
will give you rest ' — the pronoun is emphasised
in the Greek. When one professes to have
a special power of giving rest he must also
profess to have specially known the charm of

THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT 28^
its sensation. The ultimate source of Christ's
charity toward the struggling masses was, like
that of all charity, an impression of the delight
derivable from the opposite experience; His
sympathetic pain had its root in a personal joy.
If so, where could this sympathetic pain find
a more appropriate moment for its expression
than this moment of unclouded radiance ?
The desert of Bethsaida seems at first sight
the antithesis of those blue heavens to which
the eyes of Jesus were lifted up in rapture.'
But in reality the uplifted gaze of rapture was
the fitting preparation for the downward look
of pity. It was from the height of His rest
that Jesus viewed His own moments of struggle
in the past ; His ' rejoicing in spirit ' implies
the memory of a weight, from which He had
been set free. Even so it was from the height
of rest that He looked at the struggling multi
tude. Their struggle, methinks, never seemed
so hard to Him as then — never so heavy and
arduous as when it stood out against the
background of an opposite experience already
realised as a present possession. T

290 THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT
What, now, was the nature of this rest
which Jesus promised ? That question is best
answered by asking another — what was the
nature of that rest which Jesus feltt He
Himself points us to this mode of inquiry :
' Take my yoke upon you ' ; ' Learn of me';' My
yoke is easy and my burden is light.' What,
then, are we to learn of Him t Listen again :
' Ye shall find rest unto your souls.' When He
says ' rest unto your souls,' He tells us in effect
that the secret of His own rest came from
within. If you take my chronology, if you
regard the exaltation of Jesus as an accom
paniment of the first communion, you will see
that it actually was so. There had come no
change to the outward life of Jesus, except in
the increase of His labours and the augmenta
tion of His burdens. There was no diminution
of arduous work, no relaxation of the yoke of
humanity. The multitude were still there with
their pains and their penalties ; the wilderness
had not broken into singing, the desert had not
begun to blossom as the rose. But through
that multitude there had passed a change of

THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT 291
thought. They had come to think differently
— that was all. But that was a transformation
of the whole environment. Without lifting a
grain of sand it redeemed the waste places of
the desert. Without lessening one hour of toil
it made the yoke of Jesus easy and His burden
light. A man may do the same amount of
work for another man's child as he does for his
own ; but he is not bearing in each case the
same amount of yoke. The multitude had at
first been mere spectators of Jesus. His work
for them had been simply a work of pity, and
therefore it had involved weariness. But when
they entered into the relation of love to Jesus,
when they accepted from Him the hand of
fellowship, the token of communion, they
changed His pity into sympathy. Jesus
conceived for them the interest of a blood-
relationship ; He had the same work for His
hands, but He had found ' rest unto His soul!
Such I understand to be the biographical
foundation of these remarkable words. And
now, having acquired the experience for Him
self, Jesus proclaimed it to the multitude. ' Ye

292 THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT
shall find rest unto your souls.' It is a strange
message to proclaim to the multitude, a strange
ground of hope to set before the toiling masses!
One would imagine that what they wanted was
to find rest for their bodies. One would think
the deepest need of earthly comfort on the
part of the working classes of that day was
just the relaxation of labour, just the lifting of
life's burdens. It sounds at first almost like a
mockery to hear one address these struggling
classes as if they were intellectual sceptics or
anxious inquirers. Is it not an ignoring of
their actual environment to treat them simply
as the pupils in a school, and to prescribe for
them a purely mental food — ' Ye shall find rest
unto your souls ' t
I answer, No. I say that this promise of
mental rest is of all others the promise most
appropriate to the toiling masses of that day.
For, I want to direct attention to the fact that
what made that day to the labouring classes
harder than our day was not the comparative
amount of servile labour ; it was the degra
dation involved in servile labour. To the eye

THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT 293
of that Roman world the labour of this multi
tude was ignoble, for, whether hired or unhired,
it was servile labour. Startling as it may
sound, it is profoundly true that the main
weight which pressed upon the workmen of
that day was the weight of an idea, of a
thought. Probably they did not do more work
than is now done in the household by every
good mother in England. But the difference
lay here — to the mother it is a glory ; to them
it was a shame. Even from a physical point
of view the source of their weariness was an
idea, and the rest they needed was rest from
an idea. They were in a state of unrest, not
because they moved the hands and the feet,
but because their mind was carrying a burden.
Their toil was a badge of inferiority. They
bore the name of servant, and the name of
servant was the mark of low caste. What they
did was done without enthusiasm, because it
was done without the impulse of self-will ;
they felt that they were not their own.
Therefore it was that Jesus proposed to
impart rest, not from without, but from within.

294 THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT
Any other proposal would have been beside
the mark. If their outward burdens had been
diminished by one-half they would have
remained equally heavy-laden, for the thought
that depressed them would have still been
there. Jesus proposed to remove the thought,
to get rid of the idea. Nay, He proposed to
impart a new idea. He proposed to ennoble
the act of service, to make the name of servant
a synonym not for the lowest but for the
highest. He offered to place it where the
name of emperor was then placed — on a throne.
It was a mental rest He promised, a change
of mind ; He came to alter not the thing but
the thought. Yet the change in the thought
has altered the thing. This mental rest has
become a mechanical power, the strongest of
all mechanical powers. The transformation in
idea has produced a transformation in fact ;
the rest which began in the soul has penetrated
to the body.
Let us take one instance. Jesus claims for
His gospel the power to emancipate from
slavery : ' The truth shall make you free.' It

THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT 295
has made men free ; it has been the main factor
in breaking the shackles of the bondsman.
But how has it broken these shackles? Not
by the command, ' Loose him and let him go.'
Christianity for centuries brake no outward
bond ; it laid no external hand on the fetters
of the slave. What, then, has been loosing
these fetters? The infusion of a new idea
into the souls of all men — master and servant
alike. Every man of every rank has his hours
of burden-bearing. Jesus proclaimed the dig
nity of these hours. He told both master and
servant that each had his time for service, and
that to each that time ought to be a glory — a
source not of shame but of pride. The bearing
of burdens was in the new regime to be the
badge not of degradation but of nobleness ;
the Son of Man Himself had come to minister.
What has been the effect of this message on
the life of man ? It has been twofold — inward
and outward. On the one hand, in his hours of
burden he has said, ' This is a phase of human
dignity.' On the other hand, he has said,
' Being a phase of human dignity, it should

296 THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT
not be forced on any man ; man's service to
his brother should be a voluntary thing.' It
is this latter thought which, more than any
other, has melted the chains of slavery. I say
'melted,' not 'snapped.' A thought like this
has required time to grow, to develop, to
ramify. It has had to root out from every
department of life associations of exactly the
opposite kind. But if slow, the end has
been sure. Man's humanity to his brother has
come from the sense of his brother's dignity;
and the charity which is kind has proceeded
from the faith which is aspiring.

f~\ THOU, who hast set before me a door of
^^ rest, show me the secret of that door.
I often refuse to enter in by it. It seems to
lead the wrong way. I want to reach outward
fields, and it ushers me z'wdoors ; it is a rest
' unto the soul! Teach me my error in refus
ing to enter in. Teach me that to reach the
outward fields I must pass through the house
of the soul. I have tried to get into rest by

THE UNCLOUDED MOMENT 297
another way. I have strayed through the
paths of pleasure ; I have lain down in green
pastures; I have walked beside the quiet
waters ; but I have forgotten the ' restoring of
my soul! Restore my soul, O Lord ; before
all things, give me x'wdoor rest. In vain shall
I lie in the green pastures if there is no summer
in my heart. In vain shall I walk by the quiet
waters if there is no stillness in my mind. Put
summer in my heart; put stillness in my mind;
and then the pastures will all be green and
the waters will all be quiet. Let me come into
the outward fields through the postern gate of
my own dwelling. All things will smile if my
heart smiles ; all things will speak peace if my
spirit is calm. I shall fear no valley of humilia
tion, I shall dread no shadow of care, when
Thou shalt give rest unto my soul.

CHAPTER XXV
THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE
I have one other glance to cast at the phase
of the Portrait we have been considering. In
this moment of exuberant joy, and in the
midst of His invitation to the labouring and
the laden, Jesus utters these remarkable words,
' I am meek and lowly in heart.' That they
express on the part of Jesus a retrospective
consciousness of the secret of His human
development I have no doubt. But we are
to consider here not the retrospective but
the present meaning of the words. Jesus
has promised the multitude rest; Although
theirs is a physical burden, He has promised
them rest through the mind — rest to the soul.
As a cure for their outward ailments He has
virtually bidden them accept Him as their
teacher. What in this light is the meaning
193

THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE 299
of the words, ' I am meek and lowly in heart ' ?
It is clearly this : ' Do not fear that in coming
to my teaching you will need to rise too high
in the scale of intellect. You will not need
to rise at all. I will come down to you. I
will do with the intellectual bread as I did
with the physical bread — break it. I am quite
fit to descend to your capacity. I can bring
my revelation into the valley ; I can, like the
Father, make it known to babes. No teacher
shall be simpler in his tuition, for simplicity
belongs to knowledge and not to ignorance;
it is the highest who best serve the lowest.'
The words, then, were prompted by the
impulse to reveal. I cannot but direct atten
tion to the fact that this impulse came forth
so powerfully at this particular moment. It
was a moment of joy, exuberant joy. It is
when the spirit is joyful that it is most re
vealing. I have often been struck with words
written by the author of the Acts. He tells
that a disciple said of the Master, 'Being
exalted, He hath shed forth this which you
see.' 'Being exalted, He hath shed forth' —

300 THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE
exaltation always helps revelation. I do not
think grief does ; the hour of depression is
not commonly an hour of revealing. But joy
opens the gates of the spirit. It unbars the
windows of the soul and lets us see through.
It gives back the natural tendency to the
human heart — the tendency to speak out that
which is in it. It is joy and not sorrow that
says, ' Let there be light' As I believe in
the human development of the Son of Man I
am not afraid to apply the principle to Jesus.
What, then, is this intellectual lowliness of
Christ? It is the adoption of that form of
teaching which is called speaking in parables
— clothing a truth in the dress of a story.
I do not mean to say that it owed its adop
tion to the desert of Bethsaida. I mean that
in the desert of Bethsaida Jesus told the
multitude He would ever give them this bread.
What, then, was this bread? Where lay the
educative element of the parable? I think
there is a prevalent misconception on this
point. The popular answer is, 'The parables
appealed to the homespun experience of the

THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE 301
working classes.' That was their picture ; but
I doubt very much if it was their lesson. A
deeper consideration may tend to modify our
view that the lowliness of Christ's teaching
involved also a lowliness of aim.
Let me lead you back to the ground of
Christ's exuberant joy — 'I thank Thee, O
Father, that Thou hast revealed these things
unto babes.' It was a recognition of the fact
that the Divine education of man was to begin
by an appeal to the child. Now, in the life
of the child, what is the first thing we seek
to educate ? Is it the eye ? the ear ? the hand ?
No ; in order to train these we must first
rouse another faculty. What is that? It is
the sense of wonder. We do not need philo
sophy to tell us that. Ask the nurse, ask
the mother, how she tries to stimulate the
child's outer sense. She will tell you it is
by wakening an inner sense — wonder. She
points the child to certain objects by notes
of exclamation, by cries of admiration, by
questions suggesting astonishment — what is
that! do you see that! We are told that

302 THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE
the children of Israel were fed by manna.
The word 'manna' means 'What is it?' In
this sense all children are fed by manna ; they
enter the world's palace through the gate of
wonder. Now, in dealing with the multitude, Jesus
proposed to follow the method of the mother
with the child — to begin by stimulating their
wonder. The main object of the parable was to
wake this wonder. It was not to teach them
prosaic or homespun things; it was to show
them that even prosaic things have an element
which puzzles the onlooker. If He takes them
to their own fireside, it is to show them that
the sparks fly upward. If He brings them
along a familiar road, it is that He may lead
them to a barred gate. If He conducts them
through the natural world, it is that in the
natural world they may find spiritual law.
The essence of the parable in Christ's view
is not what it reveals but what it conceals.
Its object is to rouse a feeling of mystery, a
sense that there is something hid under the
common soil. The discovery that in our most

THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE 303
familiar sight there is more than meets the
eye, in other words, the discovery that some
thing is concealed, is in the view of Jesus the
most valuable of all revelations. The parable
causes the multitude to exclaim, 'Behind the
veil ! Behind the veil ! '
Do you doubt this exposition ? Listen, then,
to what seems to me a direct affirmation of
it on the part of Jesus. The disciples ask
Him, 'Why speakest Thou to the multitude
in parables?' If the essence of a parable
was its prosaicness, they ought to have thought
it very appropriate to the multitude. Clearly
they did not think it appropriate ; they thought
the lesson to the multitude beyond them.
Listen now to Christ's answer: 'Because it is
given unto you to know the mysteries of the
kingdom of heaven ; but unto them which
are without, all things are done in parables,
that seeing they may see and not perceive,
and that hearing they may hear and not under
stand, lest at any time they should be con
verted and I should heal them.'
Let me try to paraphrase this answer of

304 THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE
Jesus : ' You, my earliest friends, have come
to know that there are things, yea, even things
of experience, beyond the veil of sense. But
the outside multitude have all their lives been
feeding on the eye and ear; they have faith
in nothing which they cannot see or taste or
handle. I should like to teach them the mys
tery that lies in their own sphere. I should
like to show them that the world which they
call real is surrounded by depths unfathom
able. I should like to wake them to the truth
that in the very things which they see there
are problems which they cannot understand,
that in the very objects they think most
familiar there are secrets which no man can
penetrate. Therefore it is that I have bid
them consider how the lily grows, and ponder
how the bird of the air supports its wing; it
is that they may learn that in the midst of
sight they are in the presence of the unseen.
Therefore it is that I give them parables from
their own rural life — to make that rural life
itself a subject of speculation. I wait for their
wonder. The moment when they begin to

THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE 305
wonder will be their turning-point — their con
verting point I should not like to miss that
moment ; whenever it comes their chance of
being healed has come. There may be seed
below, which in the hour of waking wonder
may leap into life. Let me labour at the
parable lest I lose the golden grain.'
Such is my reading of a passage which
expositors have tortured to make it say the
opposite of what is its literal meaning. You
say, Am I to believe that Jesus spoke in par
ables to the multitude in order to conceal
truth? No, not to conceal — it was to reveal
that something was already hid. What is
wonder but just a waking to the sense that
there is something hid ? Happy are the multi
tude that are so awakened! Our first years
are not years of much reverence. We look
upon religion as having its special sphere of
mystery from which common things are ex
cluded. It is a moment of glorious revela
tion when a man can see mystery in common
things, when he can say, ' I see, and yet I do
not understand.' It is what Wordsworth calls
U

306 THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE
a 'presence that disturbs'; but it is glorious.
It is a mist before the eyes ; but it means
heat, not rain. It is seemingly a barred
gate ; but it is really the first step of entrance
within the holy temple.
I have said that the disciples were impressed
with the inappropriateness of the parable to
the multitude. And the reason is plain. The
disciples underrated the capacity of the multi
tude. Jesus had a much higher sense of their
capacity than His disciples had, because He
had a much higher sense of the capacity of
childhood. The parable problem was only a
part of the childhood problem. When little
children were brought to Jesus the disciples
forbade them. Why? Because they thought
Jesus was abandoning 'the mysteries of the
kingdom.' In truth it was the reverse. Jesus
received the little children with a view to
lead them to these mysteries by another way.
They could not find them by reflection, but
they could reach them by wonder. The dis
ciples were thinking of a child's simplicity;
Jesus was considering its power to scale the

THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE 307
heights : ' Of such is the kingdom of heaven.'
The disciples viewed the child as helpless for
spiritual flight ; the eye of Jesus rested on its
hidden wing.
And this explains something which must
have struck every student of the mind of
Jesus — His love for children. I suppose about
the fact there is no doubt. It meets us directly
or indirectly on every page of the sacred narra
tive. It lies at the root of His parabolic
teaching; it is the light of His unclouded
moment; it is the centre of His message to
the apostolic ring. But more than all these
do we note His familiar name for His dis
ciples — ' These little ones.' We can understand
why it should have been applied, as it was
applied, to the pupils in a Jewish school ; but
that Jesus should have made it a term of
endearment for grown men seems strange.
He was not anxious to establish an analogy
between Himself and the Jewish teachers ;
why, then, call His followers by a name which
suggested the pupils of these teachers ? The
answer is luminous — it is because it was to

308 THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE
Him a dear name, a precious name, a name
of fond associations. It is because nothing
suggested to Him so much endearment as
that epithet 'Little one'; He could use no
name more tender to His own heart. He
gives them other epithets in official moments ;
He calls them servants; He calls them dis
ciples; He calls them friends. But in the
hour of danger, in the hour of need, in the
hour of coming trial, the old name re-asserts
itself, and the deepest instinct of His heart
reveals itself. There is a whole volume of
biography in this one voice of Jesus, 'These
little ones.'
And whence Christ's love for the child-
nature? Was it the helplessness of that
nature? No, it was its latent energy. It
was because He saw more chance of combus
tion here than anywhere else. There was
more possibility of lighting here the fire He
came to kindle — that fire whose first spark
is wonder, and whose final blaze is revelation.
The first spark was lighted by the parable.
Jesus said to the child-nature which lay in

THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE 309
the heart of the multitude, 'What you see
on earth is like something in heaven ; guess
what it is.' He never tells them till they
give it up. The guess is to Him a Divine
thing even though it be wide of the mark.
The seeking for the gate and the knocking
at the gate have a value apart from the open
ing of the gate. It may be a great thing to
have a mystery solved; but to manifest that
there is a mystery is, I think, a work greater
still. S~\ THOU, who art the door into all truth,
^-^ reveal to me that there is a time to
knock as well as a time to open. I am often
distressed at the barriers to my sight. I say
at these times, ' If I could see clearly, Thou
wouldst be pleased with me, Thou wouldst
come to me.' It never strikes me that the
obscure moment is itself Thy coming. Teach
me that truth, O Lord. Let me learn that
Thy coming is ever with clouds. Reveal to
me, as to Saul of Tarsus, that Thy glory
begins by blinding the natural eye. When

3io THE VOICE TO THE MULTITUDE
I wake to a world of wonder, when I ask,
like the Israelites, 'What is it?' do not let
me think this a profane questioning; do not
let me imagine that it parts me from Thee.
Tell me that the knocking is a portion of
the prayer, that the questioning is an act of
the service. Tell me that I have learned the
silence by hearing Thy step, that I have
learned the darkness through the rising of
the dawn. So shall my hour of inquiry be
an hour of deep solemnity; so, when the
clouds have gathered, shall I say, 'Behind
the veil ! Behind the veil ! '

CHAPTER XXVI
the line of transition
I HAVE now traced the course of Jesus down
one half of the Pauline ladder. You will
remember how Paul describes it — as a descent
from the mount to the valley. We have
followed, so far, the steps of this process. We
have seen Jesus begin by ' emptying Himself
of all conscious power — consenting to be led
blindfold by the Father's will. We have seen
Him begin His mission standing on the height
with only a vague and undetailed view of the
work before Him — taking, indeed, the form of
a servant, but as yet rather of the angel than
of the man. Then we beheld Him in the like
ness of man — inaugurating a league of pity
and training its members for the field. At
last, where we now stand, we see Him in what
Paul calls ' the likeness of men ' — of ordinary,
working, struggling men. In the intercourse 311

312 THE LINE OF TRANSITION
with that multitude in the desert of Bethsaida.
He meets with humanity on its secular side.
Instead of insisting that they shall rise to
Him, He goes down to them, and breaks to
them the bread of communion on their own
ground. The first stage of that communion
is now complete ; Jesus has entered into fellow
ship with the secular world. Its second and
higher stage is still to come ; the secular world
must enter into fellowship with Jesus.
The opening of this second period is the
real beginning of the life of the Man of sorrows,
for it is the lifting of man's moral as dis
tinguished from his physical burdens ; it is
Christ's bearing of human sin. It will, when
it comes, be an experience foreign to Jesus.
It will be more foreign to Him than the sorrows
of the desert multitude. To commune with
the physically toiling, to be in contact with the
physically laden, was not alien to the soul of
Jesus; but to be in contact with evil was.
When this second period comes it will reveal
to Jesus a new experience ; it will overshadow
the ideal of His approaching kingdom. The

THE LINE OF TRANSITION 313
point is one of such deep significance that I
should like to dwell upon it for a moment.
Jesus had in His soul the ideal of a future
kingdom. I think this ideal blazed out more
brightly after the success of the first mission.
I have no doubt whatever that to the human
soul of Jesus there was present at this time
the hope of a near realisation ; this is the view
of most religious thinkers, and particularly of
the most evangelical. I have no doubt that,
as He stood in the desert of Bethsaida, and
surveyed the first act of Christian communion,
there swam before His eyes the prospect of
a kingdom not only to be realised on earth
but to be realised in His own visible presence.
He had come to give His life to the Father in
whichever way it might be demanded, nay, He
was giving His life now. But why should
not the result of this living surrender be the
establishment of a kingdom of righteousness,
a kingdom which He Himself should remain
to build, and whose glory He should witness
with His earthly sight ?
So Jesus asked Himself. He asked Himself

314 THE LINE OF TRANSITION
that question in spite of the labour and the
ladenness which He saw in the desert. One
would think the sight of the toiling multitude
would have dispelled so near a prospect. So
it would, if Jesus had looked upon life's physical
burdens as incompatible with His kingdom.
But He did not. It did not occur to Him
that these must be abolished to make room
for the reign of righteousness. On the con
trary, His promise of rest to the soul implied
that the coming of the kingdom need not wait
for their abolition. The reign of righteousness
was to be manifested precisely in the support
of those physical burdens from which the reign
of ^righteousness had recoiled. Jesus is never
weary of emphasising the inwardness of His
kingdom. It is at the root of every parable —
the sower, the leaven, the mustard-seed, the
pearl. If anything is certain in the world it
is that, in the view of Jesus, the coming of the
kingdom of God had to wait for no external
condition. Its coming was to be 'without
observation,' and therefore it was to be inde
pendent of outward things.

THE LINE OF TRANSITION 315
But was it to be independent also of inward
things ? No ; and here lay the possibility for
an interrupted ideal. The kingdom was not
to be alien to the continuance of human toil,
but it was to be alien to the continuance of
human sin. For, what was this kingdom which
glittered in the eyes of Jesus? Was it a
hereditary monarchy? Was it a republic?
Was it a democracy? No, it was none of
these — or rather in one sense it was all of
them. It was a community in which men were
to start equal, inasmuch as all former grounds
of distinction, without being superseded, were
to be deemed irrelevant. But by and by the
highest type of character was to come to the
front, and rule by moral influence. Starting
from the level of a spiritual democracy, the
best, men were to rise to the surface, and reign ;
and their power was to be proportioned to
their excellence. Paul says, in speaking of
the resurrection life, 'Every man shall rise in
his own order.' Where did he get that ? From
a heavenly vision ? No, from a verbal or
written record of the earthly teaching of Jesus.

316 THE LINE OF TRANSITION
He got it from the parables — from the seed
that bore in different degrees, from the talents
that received their respective rewards. The
kingdom of Jesus was to be a kingdom whose
thrones and principalities and powers were to
be filled by the different grades of the life of
sacrifice. The men dead to self — 'the dead
in Christ ' — were to rise first. The least were
to be the greatest. The humanitarian souls
were to lead in the van. They were to lead
because they had most power to bend. They
were to be appointed judges of the world's sin
because they were at the head of the league
of pity. Jesus Himself declared that His right
to sit on the throne of judgment was to rest
upon the fact, not of His supernaturalness, but
of His intense intimacy with the weakness of
human nature : ' The Father hath given Him
authority to execute judgment because He is
the Son of Man!
Now, it requires no prophet to see that if
ever Jesus is to be wounded it will be here.
If ever He is to make the transition from the
man of joy to the man of sorrows, it will be

THE LINE OF TRANSITION 317
through this ideal of the kingdom. I call this
ideal of the kingdom the transition line between
the Christ who fed the multitude and the Christ
who hung on the cross. If Jesus had merely
aspired to be a benefactor, He might have
reaped on earth perpetual joy. But that was
only one half of the aspiration of Jesus. He
had been appeasing the hunger of the multi
tude, and the thought had given Him joy.
But He, too, was hungry, thirsty. There was
a part of His nature which earth had not
satisfied, which was as much the desert to Him
as Bethsaida was to them. He longed for the
day when the relation between Him and the
multitude should be reversed. At present He
was the giver and they were the receivers ; He
yearned for the time when they should be the
givers and He the receiver. He had communed
with them on their own ground ; He wanted
them to commune with Him on His ground.
He was seeking a kingdom — a kingdom in
which the good should be paramount and the
bad subordinate. What if the good should not
be found? What if the bad should so out-

3iS THE LINE OF TRANSITION
number them that a kingdom would be im
possible? Would not this be the solitude of
the Son of Man ? In His deepest nature Jesus
had always been alone ; no disciple had as yet
become a companion. But He had been cheered
by the prospect of a City of God, of voices
harmonious with His own. If that prospect
should fade, if these voices should cease to
sound in the ear of hope, Jesus must be
wounded in His innermost heart — His ideal
of a broken solitude.
Now, even where we stand, the first sight of
a cloud appears. It is a little cloud, no bigger
than a man's hand ; but what startles us is the
fact that we have seen it before. As we look
closer we remember where we have seen it ;
it was in the first desert — the desert of tempta
tion. There Jesus had received the suggestion
of raising a kingdom by force. Here that
suggestion is repeated. It comes as the direct
result of the great communion miracle. The
multitude had received miraculous bread, and
they had received it from the hand of Jesus ;
they had been recognised as a social factor.

THE LINE OF TRANSITION 319
They were exultant they were enthusiastic ;
and they expressed their enthusiasm in a very
drastic manner. They suggested an outward
revolution. They would make Jesus a tem
poral king ; they would put Him on the throne
of David ; they would revive the glories of
the ancient Jewish line. That proposal closed
the day of triumph with an hour of sadness.
In the thought of Jesus, it emptied the desert
in a moment ; He felt suddenly alone. And
because He felt alone He desired to be alone.
He withdrew into the solitude of the mountains.
What was the cause of His sadness? Was it
because the multitude desired something which
He did not desire ? No ; but because the
thing which they desired showed how little
they were in sympathy with His real purpose.
He felt alone amid the crowd because the ideal
of the crowd was miles distant from His ideal.
There is no loneliness like the separation in
sympathy — the solitude of the soul. Five thou
sand may be in contact with your hand — as
they were with the hand of Jesus in the desert
of Bethsaida ; but if they are not in contact with

320 THE LINE OF TRANSITION
your ideal, if they do not love what you love,
the desert of Bethsaida remains a desert still.
I call this withdrawal of Jesus into the
mountain solitude the crossing of the transition
line. It is the first distinctive step in His
passage to the cross. From the communion
of the desert to the communion of the upper
room is a path of ever-deepening sorrow
brightened only by one or two partial gleams.
It is a path of increasing sorrow because it is
a path of increasing solitude. From this time
the crowd begins to melt away. It is the
period when He is ' found in fashion as a man '
— a battered, broken, wayfaring man. Men
had expected to find a king ; here they ask,
' Where are the signs of royalty ! ' From this
time forth I date the beginning of the change
from the man pressed by the crowd to the man
who trod the winepress alone.
Singularly enough, immediately after the
scene in the desert, the historian puts upon
the canvas a picture which, to my mind, bears
the stamp of the change. The impression is
all the more remarkable because the attitude

THE LINE OF TRANSITION 321
ascribed to Jesus is apparently one of triumph.
In the dead of night He is seen issuing from
His mountain retreat and walking alone upon
the sea. As our eye meets that strange
apparition, what is the thought registered in
our hearts ? If a preacher were asked to
deliver a sermon embodying what the scene
symbolises, what would its moral be? The
majesty of Jesus ? The power of Jesus ? The
fearless calm of Jesus? I do not think it
would be any of these. To my mind, the
overmastering suggestion would be the solitude
of Jesus. To be alone on the sea must be
the acme of loneliness ; to be alone on the sea
at the dead of night must be solitude per
sonified. One man out of the mass of
humanity attempts to come to Him ; it is
Peter Bar-Jona, ' Lord, if it be Thou, bid
me that I come to Thee on the water'; but
even he falters, and, instead of bringing a
companion's strength, requires to be himself
supported. Leaving in abeyance that super
natural element which lies beyond my subject,
and keeping the eye purely on the picture as
x

322 THE LINE OF TRANSITION
it has been painted, I see in this narrative a
prelude, a foreshadowing. It is the anticipa
tion in miniature of what is to be unfolded
through many experiences. To Him there
are indeed coming the watches of a night in
which He is to walk upon a lonely sea, in
which He is to come into contact with depths
that none can share. The Son of Man walking
alone upon the sea by night may be a spectacle
of majesty, but it is the majesty of a solitary
grief that sinks not beneath its flood of waters.
And yet, this second period, this period of
loneliness, is to lead to a communion compared
to which the crowd in the desert of Bethsaida
is as a drop to the ocean. The lonely road is,
after all, to be the real way to the City of God.
It is a curious question : What would have
been the effect if Jesus had died amongst the
mountains of Bethsaida? What impression
would He have left upon the world if He had
passed away in what would have been called
the blaze of His fame ? And the answer must
be, ' Very little.' ' How do you know that,' you
say, ' seeing the event has not taken place ? '

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Because we of modern times have been per
mitted to watch the pilgrimages of human
thought to the shrine of Jesus. And, strangely
enough, they have all taken the lonely road.
They have crowded the places once the most
silent. It is the Cross that has drawn the
thoughts of all men — even Easter Day is
a magnifying of the Cross. Christmas is
crowned, but it is a borrowed crown — borrowed
from Calvary ; we keep Christmas Day because
it is the prelude to another Day — the Day on
which the Son of Man completed His obedience
by death. The Sermon on the Mount is
crowned, but it, too, has a borrowed crown ;
what meaning would its bold paradoxes convey
unless reflected in the light of a victorious
Calvary ! The main attraction of the life of
Jesus has centred round His second period.
Why ? I do not ask here why it is so for the
Christian ; but why is it so for the world as
a world? Is it that this period is more full
of miracles ? It is not more full. Is it because
it is richer in moral teaching ? In mere moral
teaching it is less rich. It is because this

324 THE LINE OF TRANSITION
second period has revealed something more
original than miracle, more original than moral
teaching. It is because men have seen a new
kind of strength, a new order of heroism, a
new estimate of greatness. They have seen
force measured, not by what it has done, but
by what it has forborne to do — by its refusal
to purchase pleasure at the expense of purity.
They have seen the power of passive strength —
a strength that can decline to lift its own
imprisoning gates — a strength that can bear
for love and will not cry. This second period
has been a creative period. It is the Cross
that has kindled our admiration for the Cross.
Jesus Himself has wreathed the garland with
which the world has crowned Him. The light
by which we see Him is the light He has
Himself diffused. The music by which He
has drawn the crowd is the music of His own
Name. A ND now, Son of Man, Thou art going
¦**- forth upon the sea. Thou art leaving
the crowd in Bethsaida that Thou mayest travel

THE LINE OF TRANSITION 325
over the lonely deep. May I go with Thee ?
Bid me that I come to Thee on the waters !
When I see Thee on the waters it is not Thy
majesty that moves me ; it is Thy loneliness.
They have all gone away from Thee. The
crowds of the first communion have dropped
from Thee like autumn leaves. There is no
man brave enough to stand beside Thee in
the storm ; Thou art all alone. Bid me come
to Thee, O Lord ! I have followed Thee in
Thy joy. I have been with Thee when the
multitude pressed and thronged. I have heard
Thy voice of majesty on the Mount. I have
seen Thy hand of beneficence break bread in
the desert. Whenever I have been in want I
have sought Thee. But now Thou art to be
in want — athirst for human love. The multi
tude are no longer to be the suppliants ; it is
Thou. Thine will be a deeper hunger than
that of the crowd when Thou shalt stand upon
the lonely sea. Thou shalt not go alone ; /
will follow Thee where Thou goest. Through
the dark watches of the night, through the
cold surgings of the wave, through the vast

326 THE LINE OF TRANSITION
spaces of the solitude, I will follow and find
Thee. I have bid Thee come to me on the
land; bid me come to Thee on the waters.
Thou hast answered my prayer, and I will
respond to Thine.

Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
at tbe Edinburgh University Press