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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS.

STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS.

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D.

ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN.

NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER & COMPANY.
1872.
(Published by arrangement wifh, the Author^

PREFACE.
Some Studies on the Gospels are here offered to the
reader. I have never been able to consent with that
which so often is asserted — namely, that the Gospels are
in the main plain and easy, and that all the chief diffi
culties of the New Testament are to be found in the
Epistles. There are, indeed, by the gracious provision of
God, abundance of plain things — so plain that no way
farer, who seeks his waymarks, need err for lack of such,
— alike in these and in those. But when we begin to set
the hard things of one portion of Scripture against the
hard things of another, I cannot admit that they have
right who assume it as lifted above all doubt that those
of the Epistles infinitely surpass those of the Gospels.
How' often the difficulties of the Epistles are merely diffi
culties of form ; not of the thought, but of the setting
forth of the thought ; of the logical sequence, which only
requires a patient disentangling, and all is comparatively
clear. But in the Gospels it is not the form of the
thought, for that for the most part presents little or
nothing perplexing, but the thought itself, the divine fact

vi PREFACE.
or statement, which itself constitutes the difficulty. Nor,
if I am right in affirming it to be so, is this in any way
strange. For while there must be deep things everywhere
in Scripture, things past man's finding out, else it were
no revelation, surely it is nothing surprising that the Son
of God, who moved in all worlds as in regions familiar to
Him, who was not the illuminated, but the Illuminator
of all others, not inspired, but the Inspirer, should utter
the words of widest range and mightiest reach, those
which should most task even the enlightened spirit of
man to understand. Believing that it is thus with his
words, that they must be at once the highest and the
deepest of all, that in his life there must be mysteries
which find only their remote resemblances in the lives of
any other, I have often regretted that those who in our
time and Church have brought the choicest gifts to the
interpretation of the New Testament, have either restricted
themselves to the elucidation of the Epistles, as if these
alone would offer snfficient resistance to them ; or where
their work has embraced both, have wrought out this
latter portion of it with far more of thought and toil than
the earlier. Surely there are hard questions enough sug
gested by the Sermon on the Mount, if only we would
learn to look at it a little less superficially than now is
our wont, questions which have never yet received an
entirely satisfactory solution. So, too, in the great Prophecy
from the Mount there are knots, which, to my mind at
least, have never been perfectly untied. Neither is the
solemn judgment scene with which the twenty-fifth chapter

PREFACE. vii
of St. Matthew closes altogether so easy as it seems. The
limpid clearness of St. John's style conceals from us often
the profundity of the thought, as the perfect clearness of
waters may altogether deceive us about their depth ; and
we may thus be too lightly tempted to conclude that
while St. Paul may be hard, St. John at all events is easy.
I believe this to be very far from the case.
These Studies, written for the most part some years
ago, are the fruit of this conviction ; not that in them 1
have gone out of my way to seek the hard passages in
the Gospels, although I have not shunned such. They
are the fragments of a much larger scheme, in which I
had not advanced far before I saw plainly that I could
never hope to complete it; and which I thereupon laid
aside. Gathering up lately a portion of what I had
written, for publication, I have given it as careful a
revision as my leisure would allow, have indeed in
many parts rewritten it,, seeking to profit by the results
of the latest criticism, as far as I have been able to
acquaint myself with them. For my labours I shall be
abundantly repaid, if now, when so many controversies
are drawing away the Christian student from the rich
and quiet pastures of Scripture to other fields, not per
haps barren, but which can yield no such nourishment
as these do, I shall have contributed aught to detain
any among them.

Palaoe, Dublin:
March 8, 1867.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
i. THE TEMPTATION  i
2. THE CALLING OF PEILIP AND NATHANAEL . . 66
3. CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN . . .83
4. THE SONS OF THUNDER  138
5. WISDOM JUSTLFIED OF HER CHILDREN . . .147
6. THE TERSE ASPIRANTS  156
7. THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT, AND THE
NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS . . .168
8. THE TRANSFIGURATION  184
9. JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL FIRE FROM
HEAVEN ON THE SAMARITAN VILLAGE . .215
10. TEE RETURN OF TEE SEVENTY . . . .225
11. TEE PHARISEES SEEKING TO SCARE TEE LORD FROM
GALILEE ........ 237
12. TEE UNFINISHED TOWER AND TEE DEPRECATED WAR 246
13. ZACCHAHUS  *6z
14. TEE TRUE VINE  *73
15. TEE PENITENT MALEFACTOR  287
16. CERIST AND TEE TWO DISCIPLES ON TEE WAY TO
EMMAUS  3i3

STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS.

i. THE TEMPTATION.
Matt. iv. I — n ; Mark i. 12, 13; Luke iv. 1 — 13.
Op the Temptation of our Lord we possess three records .
two more full, in the first and third Gospels, one more
summary, in the second. St. John has no report of it,
and indeed no allusion to it, except indeed we are to find
one in the words of Christ, ' The prince of this world
cometh, and hath nothing in Me ' (xiv. 30) ; though, of
course, even then the reference could not be exclusively
to it ; but only to it as the supreme moment in which
' the prince of this world ' wrought his worst, that so he
might have 'something' in Him, as through sin he has
something in every other child of Adam. Origen (on
Matt, xxvii. 32) calls attention to the fact that, with all the
significance which the Temptation possesses, occupying
as it does a place in the foreground of two Gospels and,
although more briefly, of a third, no place has been found
for it, any more than for the Transfiguration, in the
fourth. He suggests as a reason for this omission that
it did not belong to the theology, using this term in its
strictest sense ; not, that is, to the divine, but rather to the
B

2 THE TEMPTATION.
human, aspect of Christ's person and work ; He being
tempted not as He was God, who cannot be tempted
with evil (Jam. i. 13), but as He was man. It cohered
therefore intimately with the predominant purpose and
aim of the three earlier Gospels that the Temptation
should find a place in them, with the intention of the
fourth that it should be absent there.
Assuredly Origen is right in starting with the assump
tion that some explanation is to be looked for; that there
is nothing of haphazard in the admissions and exclusions
of the several Evangelists ; that a prevailing idea in each
Gospel accounts for what it has, and wjiat it has not ; and
why it has, or has not, this or the other incident or
discourse. Indeed I am persuaded that, notwithstanding
all which has been already accomplished, devout students
of Scripture may for a long time to come find an ample,
almost inexhaustible, field of study in the tracing out
in each the operation of this ever active law of exclusion
and inclusion. At the same time we need not look so far
as he has looked for an explanation of the important fact
which he has thus noted ; and which, indeed, almost all
must have observed. The record of the Temptation in
the previous Gospels does not to me make strange the
omission of it in St. John's, but rather accounts for it ;
seeing that his Gospel was certainly intended to be
supplementary to those which went before; not to go
over ground which they had sufficiently gone over
already ; but to treasure up precious aspects of the life
of Christ, of his words and works, which they had passed
by. Such was the spiritual opulence of that life that
only so, only through a ' four-sided Gospel,' as Origen him
self has called it, could that life be adequately presented

THE TEMPTATION. 3
to the Church. This supplementary character of St.
John's Gospel, when once admitted, at once explains why
he did not relate what those who went before him had
so fully related.
This history of our Lord's Temptation in the wilder
ness ought never to be contemplated apart from that of
his Baptism. It is certain, at least, that we shall miss
much of its significance, if we dissociate it even in thought
from the solemn recognition of the Son by the Father,
and salutation of Him from heaven, with which the
Evangelical History in all its three narratives has knit
it so closely (Matt. iii. 16, 17; Mark i. 9-11; Luke iii.
21, 22). The Church of old did not shrink from calling
her Lord's Baptism his second nativity.1 It is true,
indeed, that when some of the early sects made it his
first divine nativity (and Ebionites and Gnostics,2 op
posed in so much else, had a common interest in this),
she then fell back upon the mightier fact, the Incarnation,
in the assertion of which alone she felt herself to possess
a Son of God in any but a deceptive and merely illusory
sense. The Baptism may thus have fallen somewhat out
of sight, and .not come to its full honours, or to all the
prominence which, except for these disturbing causes, it
would have obtained.
It is not however here my part to consider the Baptism
more than under a single aspect, namely, in its con-
1 See a sermon to this effect which used to be ascribed to Augustine,
but which the Benedictine Editors have rightly adjudged to the Appendix
{Serm. 135), in which this is strongly set forth, pushed almost to a periloua
excess. a The followers of Basilides, as Clemens of Alexandria tells us {Strom.
i. 21), kept a feast of the Baptism, which they ushered in with a night,
spent in the reading of the Scriptures.
b2

4 THE TEMPTATION.
nection with the Temptation. The Son in that Baptism
had received his heavenly armour, and now He goes
forth to prove it, and try of what temper it is. Having
been baptized with water and the Holy Ghost, He shall
now be baptized with the fire of temptation ; even as
there is another baptism, the baptism of blood (Matt.
xx. 22), in store for Him : for the gifts of God are not
for the Captain of our salvation any more than for his
followers the pledge of exemption from a conflict, but
rather powers with which He is furnished, and, as it
were, inaugurated thereunto j1 and thus that word with
which the Temptation is introduced, ' Then was Jesus led
into the wilderness^ a word which links this event so
closely with the Baptism, is much more than a mere
' then,' designating succession of time ; for indeed it
denotes rather the divine order in which the events of
the Saviour's life followed one another, and is intended
to call our attention to this.
And as with the Baptism, so also with the Temptation.
We cannot estimate too highly the importance of the
victory which was then gained by the second Adam, or
the bearing which it had, and still has, on the work of
our redemption. Milton showed that he had a true feeling
of this, when he wrote a poem which contained nothing
more than a history of this victoriously surmounted
temptation, and called it Paradise Regained; setting it,
as the story of the second Adam's victory, over against
Paradise Lost, or the story of the first Adam's defeat. It
is not too much to say, as Augustine said often, that the
entire history, moral and spiritual, of the world revolves
1 As Chrysostom {Horn. 13 in Matt.) well says here; not yap dm two
ITiafier 2>7r/Ui, ovx Iva apyyg, aXX Iva noXe/xyr,

THE TEMPTATION. 5
around two persons, Adam and Christ^1 To Adam was
given a position to maintain ; he did not maintain it, and
the lot of the world for ages was decided. And now with
the second Adam the second trial of our race has arrived.
All is again at issue. Again we are represented by a
Champion, by One who is in the place of all, — whose
standing shall be the standing of many, and whose fall,
if that fall had been conceivable, would have been the
fall of many, yea of all. Once already Satan had thought
to nip the kingdom of heaven in the bud, and had nearly
succeeded. If it had not been for a new and unlooked-for
interposition of God, for the promise of the Seed of the
woman, he would have done it. He will now prove if
he cannot more effectually crush it,, and for ever. Then,
on that first occasion, there was still a reserve, the pattern
according to whom Adam was formed ; who should come
forth in due time to make what Adam had marred ; — but
He failing, there was none behind ; the last stake would
have been played, — and lost.
' Then was Jesus led of the Spirit into the wilderness.'
If it be asked, of what Spirit He was thus led, un
doubtedly of the Spirit of God — in the words of Jeremy
Taylor, ' He was led by the good Spirit to be tempted of
the evil.' Some few have understood it otherwise, and
that it was the same evil Spirit who afterwards en
countered Him in the wilderness, who first led Him
thither.2 But this is certainly a mistake. We have here
1 Op. Imp. Con. Jul. ii. 163 : Unde fit ut totum genus humanum quodam-
modo sint homines duo, primus et secundus. Serm. 90 : Venit unus contra
nnum; contra unum qui- sparsit unus qui collegit .... Homo et homo;
homo ad mortem, et homo ad vitam.
' See Spanheim, Bub. Evan., L. They have often found an argument in

6 THE TEMPTATION.
one, and of course the most signal and transcendant,
of those stirrings from the Spirit of God to some heroic
achievement whereof we have many anticipations in lower
forms of the spiritual life in the Old Testament, as in
Moses (Acts vii. 23), in Gideon (Judg. vi. 34), in Samson
(Judg. xiii. 25; xiv. 19). The Captain of our salvation
went into the wilderness, drawn by another, but at the
same time freely ; in the words of one of the Schoolmen,
as an athlete going of his own accord,1 or, to cite Jeremy
Taylor once more, ' not by an unnatural violence, but by
the efficacies of inspiration, and a supernatural inclination
and activity of resolution.'
The scene of the Temptation was the ' wilderness'
What wilderness we are not told ;2 and all which it
imports us to note is that it was a wilderness, in which
this encounter of the good and the evil, each in its highest
representative, found place. There could have been no
fitter scene, nor so fit. The waste and desert places of the
earth are, so to speak, the characters which sin has visibly
impressed on the outward creation; its signs and its
the amov eKp&XXei of Mark i. 12, as though no such violent driving or
thrusting forth as this word implies could have been ascribed to the Holy
Spirit. There is no force in the argument. '~EK.jiaklei.v in Hellenistic use
continually signifies not a violent thrusting out, but an orderly putting
forth. Thus, ' Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will send
forth (Iva kufSalij) labourers into his harvest ' (Matt. ix. 38) ; the householder
bringeth forth (ktLpaKku) out of his treasure new and old (Matt. xiii. 52 ;
cf. John x. 4 ; Jam. ii. 25) ; and with this milder use of the word agree the
avf/xQi and the vyero by which St. Matthew and St. Luke severally de
scribe the bringing of the Lord upon the scene of his temptation.
1 Quasi athleta sponte procedens (Aquinas).
2 Tradition places the scene of the Temptation in ' the wilderness that
goeth up from Jericho ' (Josh. xvi. 1 ; cf. Josephus, Antt. x. 8. 2), which ex
tended a great part of the way to Jerusalem (Josh, xviii. 12), and fixes it
more immediately on a steep and rugged mountain rising like a wall of rock
from the plain, and subsequently called Quarantana, from the quarantain, or
forty days of fasting, which the Lord had there observed.

THE TEMPTATION. 7
symbols there ; the echoes in the outward world of the
desolation and wasteness which sin has wrought in the
inner life of men. Out of a true feeling of this men have
ever conceived of the wilderness as the haunt of evil
spirits. In the old Persian religion Ahriman and his evil
spirits inhabit the steppes and wastes of Turan, to the
north of the happy Iran, which stands under the dominion
of Ormuzd ; exactly as with the Egyptians, the evil Typhon
is the lord of the Libyan sand-wastes, and, Osiris of the
fertile Egypt.1 This sense of the wilderness as the haunt
of evil spirits, one which the Scripture more or less allows
(Matt. xii. 43; Isai. xiii. 21, xxxiv. 14; Rev. xviii. 2),
would of itself give a certain fitness to that as the place
of the Lord's encounter with Satan ; but only in its
antagonism to Paradise or the Garden, do we see yet
higher fitness in the appointment of the place. The
garden and the desert are the two most opposite poles of
natural life ; in them we have the highest harmonies and
the deepest discords of nature. It was just that the first
Adam, so long as he stood in his original uprightness,
should be a dweller in the Garden ; that his outward
surroundings should correspond to his inner life, that
there should be no disagreement between them ; and it
was there, in the garden of Eden, that his temptation went
forward. Being worsted in the conflict, he was expelled
therefrom ; and he and that race whose destinies were
linked with his, should henceforth inhabit an earth which
was cursed for his sake.2 It is true, indeed, that in this as
1 Creuzer, Symbolih, vol. i. p. 223.
2 Ambrose {Exp. in Luc. iv. 7) : Convenit recordari quemadmodum de
paradiso in desertum Adam primus ejectus sit; ut advertas quemadmodum
de deserto ad paradisum Adam secundus reverterit .... In deserto Adam,
in deserto Christus ; sciebat enim ubi posset invenire damnatum, quem ad
paradisum, resoluto errore, revocaret.

8 THE TEMPTATION.
in so much else the curse was in part mercifully lightened,
and the earth was not all desert ; yet for all this its desert
places do evermore represent to us what the whole of it
might justly have been ; the curse concentrates itself upon
them. The second Adam therefore, taking up the conflict
exactly where the first had left it, and inheriting all the
consequences of his defeat, in the desert does battle with
the foe ; and conquering him there, wins back the garden
for that whole race, whose champion and representative
in this conflict He had been. And this is not the less
true, however as yet that garden blooms not again ; or
blooms only in part ; for in the higher culture and more
complete subduing to the needs and delights of men, of
those regions where the faith of Christ is owned, we may
see already pledges and promises of that complete restora
tion of the earth to all its original fertility and beauty,
which Christ's victory over Satan in the wilderness shall
one day have brought about.
While we are upon this point, it is worthy of note that
St. Mark, briefly as he records the Temptation (and two
verses are all that he affords to it, i. 12, 13), yet gives us
an intimation which we should look for in vain in the
fuller accounts of the other Evangelists, and one which
we should not slightly or carelessly pass over. His
record of this event, in its summary brevity as compared
with theirs, is very like his record of the Lord's appearance
to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus (xvi. 12, 13)
as compared with that of St. Luke (xxiv. 13-34). Not
indeed that this is always his manner ; for brief as his
Gospel is on the whole, he can relate events with far greater
breadth than either St. Matthew or St. Luke ;. as witness
his account of the healing of the Gadarene demoniac

THE TEMPTATION. 9
(v. 1-20), and of the lunatic boy (ix. 14-29), compared
with theirs. On the present occasion he tells us of the
Lord that, being in the wilderness, ' He was with the wild
beasts' (ver. 13). Now this notice is certainly not intro
duced, as many interpreters would have us to believe,
merely to enhance the waste desolation and savage solitude
of that scene, but at once throws us back, as it was
intended to throw us back, on the Paradisiacal state which
in the second Adam had bloomed anew. ' He tvas with
the wild beasts' — which owned Him for their rightful
Lord ; He was with them, as Adam had been before he
sinned. In Him, the second Adam, the ideal man of the
eighth Psalm, the Adamic prerogatives, lost and suspended
so long, after the Deluge only partially recovered (Gen.
ix. 2) fully reappeared (cf. Gen. i. 26, 28 with Ps. viii.).1
The Apocryphal Gospels, whose marvellous is in general
merely the monstrous, and which so seldom pourtray the
divine Child with any traits which are really divine, are
not here so remote at once from ideal and from historic
truth, as is commonly their case. One of these tells of the
Child Jesus that in his flight to Egypt the lions and the
leopards played harmlessly about Him, and accompanied
Him upon his way.2
This resumption of dominion by the second Adam over
the revolted animal world should be more or less continued
in his saints. They too should ' take up serpents ' (Mark
xvi. 18) ; should tread on serpents and scorpions (Luke x.
19), so reversing the threat of Jeremiah viii. 17; Paul
1 Giles Fletcher, in his too much neglected poem, Christ's Triumph on
Earth (ver. 1-40), has seized the meaning of these words better than any
that I know.
2 Thilo, Codex Apocryphus, p. 394.

10 THE TEMPTATION.
should shake the venomous beast from his hand and feel no
harm (Acts xxviii. 5 ; cf. Job v. 22, 23 ; Ezek. xxxiv. 25 ;
Hos. ii. 18). And a true sense of this, as an ultimate prero
gative destined for redeemed man, appears, though often in
extreme caricature, in the innumerable legends of saints,
to whose word and will the wildest creatures are obedient,
who summon the fishes to their preaching, who cross
rivers on the backs of crocodiles, and accomplish a thou
sand other feats of a like kind. Nor can we say that this
dominion has wholly departed even from man in his natu
ral estate ; the fragments of his sceptre still remain in his
hands ; ' Every kind of beasts is tamed, and hath been
tamed, of mankind ' (Jam. iii. 7; cf. Sophocles, Antigone,
343-351, a lyrical echo from heathendom of the same
truth) ; but this sceptre which he only wields with diffi
culty, and with frequent uprisings of his rebellious
vassals against him, Christ, as was manifest during these
forty days, wielded with an absolute authority. So much
we may read in those words, 'He was with the wild
beasts.' To that wilderness He, 'the glorious Eremite' was led,
'to be tempted of the devil' Very remarkable is the
prominence which Satan assumes in the New Testa
ment, compared with the manner in which he and the
whole doctrine concerning him are kept in the background
in the Old. There, after the first appearance of the
adversary in Paradise, which even itself is a veiled ap
pearance, he is withdrawn for a long while altogether
from the scene ; nay, there is but a glimpse of him, a
passing indication here and there of such a spiritual head
of the kingdom of evil, through the whole earlier economy
— as in the first and second chapters of Job, Zech. iii. 1, 2

THE TEMPTATION. n
and 1 Chron. xxi. 1 ; he is only referred to twice in the
Apocrypha (Wisd. ii. 24 ; Ecclus. xxi. 27) . This may
partly be explained by an analogy drawn from things
natural, namely that where the lights are brightest, the
shadows also are darkest. Height and depth are correla
tives of one another. It is right which first reveals
wrong ; and hate only can be read as hate in the light of
love ; and unholiness in the light of purity. But this does
not explain the reticence of Scripture altogether. No
doubt in that childhood of the human race men were
not yet ripe for this knowledge. For as many as took it
in earnest, and as it deserves to be taken, for them it
would have been too dreadful thus to know of a prince
of the powers of darkness, until they had known first of a
Prince of Light. Those, therefore, whom God is educa
ting are not allowed to understand anything very distinctly
of Satan, till with the spiritual eye it is given to them to
behold him as lightning fall from heaven ; then indeed,
but not till then, the Scripture speaks of him plainly and
without reserve. We may perhaps take a hint from this
in the teaching of children. The order which was
observed of God in the teaching of our race, the reticence,
almost entire, but not perfectly so, which was observed in
the childhood of our race, may be profitably observed
also with children ; as also with those whose faculties are
as yet spiritually undeveloped. ' I write unto you little
children,' says the apostle St. John, ' because ye have
known the Father' (1 John ii. 13) ; this was what they
had learned from him, even a heavenly Father's love ; but
he proceeds : 'I have written unto you, young men, be
cause ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you,
and ye have overcome the wicked one ' (ver. 14) . To them.

12 THE TEMPTATION.
to the strong, it was given to know that they wrestled not
against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness
in heavenly places (Ephes. vi. 12).
' And when He had fasted forty days He was afterward
an hungred.' How are we intended to understand a fast of
this length, manifestly impossible to man under ordinary
conditions ? Not by bringing in, as some have done,
Christ's divine power as the explanation of all ; which
would indeed rob this fact of its significance for us. We
must seek the explanation elsewhere. We are far too
much accustomed, in a stiff dualism, to conceive of the
spiritual and material as of two worlds altogether apart,
with a rigid line of demarcation between them, so that
the powers and influences of the higher cannot pass over
effectually to operate in the sphere of the lower. Yet all
the experience of our daily life contradicts this, and we
note the higher continually making itself felt in the region
of the lower. The wayworn regiment, which could
scarcely drag itself along, but which revives at the well-
known air, and forgets all its weariness, what does it
but declare that the spirit is lord not merely in its own
domain, but is meant to be, and even now in no incon
siderable degree is, the lord of the provinces of man's
life that lie beneath it ? Matter, instead of offering a stub
born resistance to spirit, proves in many and marvellous
ways to be plastic to it. Sensuality debases and degrades
the countenance ; purity and love ennoble it, casting a
beam even upon the outward shape. What is the resur
rection of the body, or the ultimate glorification of nature,
or the larger number of those miracles wrought by the
Lord in the days of his flesh, but the workings of spirit

THE TEMPTATION. 13
upon matter ? So too it fared with his forty days' fast.
To bring in here his divine power, or to suppose that He
then fasted otherwise than as a man, is, as has been urged
already, to rob the whole transaction of its meaning.
Upborne and upholden above the common needs of the
animal life by the great tides of spiritual gladness, in the
strength of that recent Baptism, in the solemn joy of that
salutation and recognition from his Father, He found and
felt no need for all these forty days. As a slighter
incident of the same kind He forgets hunger and thirst, or
rather feels them no more, by the well of Samaria, in the
joy of winning a lost soul (John iv. 31-34). In the lives
of other men there are quite enough of analogies, which,
however removed from this, do yet witness in their lower
measure for this same predominance of the spirit, for the
dominion which it is able to exercise over the workings of
the natural life. All intenser passions, a mighty joy, an
overwhelming sorrow, an ecstatic devotion, all these have
continually been found to bring a temporary release with
them from the necessities of the animal life, and though
not for so long a time, still to suspend its claims for a
season. Thus Paul at the crisis of his conversion was three
days without eating or drinking (Acts ix. 9).
For forty days this fast of the Lord's endured. But
wherefore for exactly this number, for forty, and neither
more nor less ? We are the more tempted to ask this
question from the frequent recurrence of this same number
under circumstances not altogether dissimilar. Of precisely
this same length were the fasts of Moses (Deut. ix. 9) and
Elijah (1 Kin. xix. 8) ; He the Head of the New Covenant
in nothing coming short of those who stood as the Chiefs
and Representatives of the Old, of the Law, and of the

i+ THE TEMPTATION.
Prophets (Matt. xvii. 3). And yet his fast of forty days
is not determined by theirs ; but rather theirs and his
are alike determined by the significance which this
number, forty, in Holy Scripture everywhere obtains.
On a close examination we note it to be everywhere there
the number or signature of penalty, of affliction, of the
confession, or the punishment, of sin.1 Thus it is the
signature of the punishment of sin in the forty days and
forty nights during which God announces that He will
cause the waters of the deluge to prevail (Gen. vii. 4, 12) ;a
in the forty years of the Israelites' wanderings in the
desert (Num. xiv. 33; xxxii. 13, 14; Ps. xcv. 1.0); in
the forty stripes with which the offender should be beaten
(Deut. xxv. 3 ; 2 Cor. xi. 24) ; in the desolation of Egypt
which should endure forty years (Ezek. xxix. 11). So
also is it the signature of the confession of sin ; Moses
intercedes forty days for his people (Deut. ix. 25) ; the
Ninevites proclaim a fast of forty days (Jon. iii. 4) ;
Ezekiel must bear for forty days the transgression of
1 Jerome {In Amos. ii. io) : Ipse Dominus fecit nos exire de seculo, et
per annos quadraginta, qui numerus semper afiiictionis et jejunii, luctus est
et doloris, per tribulationes et angustias pervenire in terram sanctam. And
again (In Jon. iii. 4) : Porro quadragenarius numerus convenit peccatoribus,
et jejunio et orationi, et sacco et lacrimis et perseverantise deprecandi : ob
quod et Moyses quadraginta diebus jejunavit in monte Sina ; et Elias fugiens
Jezebel, indicta fame terrae Israel, et Dei desuper ira pendente, quadraginta
dies jejunasse describitur. Ipse quoque Dominus, verus Jona missus ad prav
dicationem niundi, jejunavit quadraginta dies. Cf. In Ezek. xxix. 11. Thus
too Origen (In Deut. xxv. 3) : Semper observavimus numerum quadraginta
malis obnoxium esse. Unde Moses quadraginta diebus jejunavit, et post eum
Elias. Quin et Salvator noster a diabolo tentatus non manducavit quadra
ginta diebus et quadraginta noctibus ; et magnum diluvium in terra, contigit,
cum Deus imbrem fecisset quadraginta diebus et quadraginta noctibus.
Compare Augustine, Qucest. in Gen. qu. 169 ; Serm. 125, §9; De Cons.
Evang. ii. § § 8, 9. In both these latter places he attempts, not very suc
cessfully as it seems to me, to give the rationale of forty as this number of
penitence. 2 Ambrose, De Noi et Arcd, xiii. § 44,

THE TEMPTATION. 15
Judah (Ezek. iv. 6) ; forty days, or twice forty in the
case of a maid child, are the period of a woman's purify
ing after child-birth (Lev. xii. 2-5 ; cf. Ps. Ii. 5 : ' in
sin hath my mother conceived me'). And in agreement
with all this, resting on the forty days' fast of her Lord,
is the Quadragesimal Lent fast of the Church ; with the
selection of this Scripture of the Temptation to supply
the Gospel for the first Sunday in that season, as being
the Scripture which, duly laid to heart, will more than
any other help us rightly to observe that time.1
On one of these forties Tertullian dwells with peculiar
emphasis ; often bringing out the relation between the
forty days of our Lord's Temptation and the forty years
of Israel's trial in the wilderness. His fast as the true
Israel, as the fulfiller of all which Israel after the flesh
had left unfulfilled, the victor in all where it had been the
vanquished, was as much a witness against their carnal
appetites (for it was in the indulgence of these that they
sinned continually, Exod. xv. 23, 24; xvi. 2, 3 ; xvii. 2, 3 ;
Num. xi. 4, 33) 2 as a witness against Adam's.8 It was
by this abstinence of his declared that man was ordained
to be, and that the true man would be, lord over his
lower nature. In this way Christ's forty days' fast is the
1 Augustine, Serm. 210.
2 De Bapt. 20 : Dominus quantum existimo, de figura, Israelis exprobra-
tionem in ipaum retorsit. Namque populus mare transgressus, in solitudine
translatus per quadraginta annos, illic cum divinis copiis aleretur, nihilo-
minus ventris et guise meminerat, quam Dei. Deinde Dominus post aquaru
segregatus in deserto, quadraginta dierum jejnnia cmensus, ostendit non pane
viverehominem Dei, sed Deiverbo; tentationesque plenitudini et Lmmoderan-
tise ventris adpositas, abstinentia elidi.
8 De Jejun. 6 : Immo novum hominem in veteris sugillationem virtute
fastidiendi cibum initiabat, ut eum, diabolo rursus per escam tentare quaarenti,
fortiorem fame totft ostentaret ; and again, c. 5 : Nam ot primus populus
primi hominis resculpserat crimen.

16 THE TEMPTATION.
great counter-fact in the work of redemption, at once to
Adam's and to Israel's compliances with the suggestions
of the fleshly appetite ; exactly in the same manner as the
unity of tongues at Pentecost is the counter-fact to the
confusion of tongues at Babel (Gen. xi. 7, 8 ; Acts ii. 6-1 1),
to which the Church would draw our attention in the
selection of the latter as one of our Whitsuntide lessons.
Fo'r forty days that arrest of the sense of bodily need
had continued ; but at the expiration of these the need,
suspended so long, made itself felt in its strength ; 'He
teas afterward an hungred.' The Tempter sees, and
thinks to use his opportunity ; and the Temptation proper,
dividing itself into three successive acts, begins. But
before we enter upon these, a few words may fitly find
place on more than one subject of the deepest practical
interest. And first, the assertion of the existence of a Tempter
at all, of a personal Wicked One, of the devil, this, as is
well known, is a stumblingblock to many. Not urging
here the extent to which the veracity of Christ Himself is
pledged' to the fact, I will content myself with observing
that it is not by Scriptural arguments alone that it is sup
ported. There is a dark mysterious element in man's life
and history, which nothing else can explain. We can
only too easily understand the too strong attractions of
the objects of sense on a being who is sensuous as well as
spiritual ; the allowing of that lower nature, which should
have been the ruled, to reverse the true relation, and to
become the ruler. We can understand only too easily
man's yielding, even his losing, of himself in this region of
sense. But there is a mystery far more terrible than this,
a phenomenon unintelligible except upon one assumption.

THE TEMPTATION.

17

Those to whom the doctrine of an Evil Spirit is peculiarly
unwelcome have been at infinite pains to exorcise theology ;
and from that domain at least to cast Satan out, even
though they should be impotent to cast him out from any
other. All who shrink from looking down into the
abysmal depths of man's fall, because they have no eye
for the heavenly heights of his- restoration, seem to count
that much will have been gained thereby; although it
may be very pertinently asked, as indeed one' has asked,
What is the profit of getting rid of the devil, so long as
the devilish remains ? of explaining away an Evil One, so
long as the evil ones who remain are so many V- What
profit indeed ? Assuredly this doctrine of an Evil Spirit,
tempting, seducing, deceiving, prompting to rebellion and
revolt, so far from casting a deeper gloom on the destinies
of humanity, is full of consolation, and lights up with a
gleam and glimpse of hope spots which seem utterly dark
without it. One might well despair of oneself, having
no choice but to believe that all the strange suggestions of
evil which have risen up before one's own heart had been
born there ; one might well despair of one's kind, having
no choice but to believe that all its hideous sins and; all
its monstrous crimes had been self-conceived and bred
within its own bosom. But there is hope, if ' an enemy
have done this ;' if, however the soil in which these wicked
thoughts and wicked works have sprung up has been the
heart of man, yet the seed from which they sprung had
been there sown by the hand of another.
And who will venture to deny the existence of this
1 Goethe, in the spirit of finest irony, puts these words into the mouth of
Mephistopheles :
' Den Bdsen sind sie los, die bosen sind geblieben.'
C

18 THE TEMPTATION.
devilish, as distinguished from the animal, in man ?
None certainly, who knows aught of the dread possi
bilities of sin lurking in his own bosom, who has studied
with any true insight the moral history of the world. In
what way else explain that men not merely depart from
God, but that they defy Him ; that, instead of the un
godly merely forgetting God and letting Him go, His
name is as often or oftener on their lips than on those of
them that love and serve Him ? How else explain the
casting of fierce words against Him, the actual and active
hatred of God which it is impossible not to recognize in
some wicked men ? What else will account for delight
in the contemplation or in the infliction of pain, for strange
inventions of wickedness, above all, of cruelty and lust —
' lust hard by hate ' ? What else for evil chosen for its
own sake, and for that fierce joy which men so often
find in the violation of law, this violation being itself
the attraction ; with all those other wicked joys, ' mala
gaudia mentis,' as the poet in a single phrase has charac
terized them so well?
The mystery is as inexplicable as it is dreadful so long
as man will know nothing of a spiritual world beneath
him, as well as one above him ; but it is only too easy
to understand, so soon as we recognize man's evil as not
altogether his own, but detect behind his transgression an
earlier transgression and an earlier transgressor — one who
fell, not as man fell, for man's fall was mercifully broken
by that very flesh which invited it ; but who fell as only
Spirits can fall, from the height of heaven to the depth of
hell ; fell never to rise again ; for he was not deceived,
was not tempted, as was Adam ; but himself chose the
evil with the clearest intuition that it was the evil, for-

THE TEMPTATION. 19
sook the good with the clearest intuition that it was the
good ; whose sin therefore in its essence was the sin
against the Holy Ghost, and as such, not to be forgiven
in this world nor in the world to come. All is explicable
when we recognize the existence of such a Spirit ; who,
being lost without hope of redemption himself, seeks to
work the same loss in other of God's creatures, and
counts it a small triumph to have made man bestial,
unless he can make him devilish as well. Such a per
sonal Tempter innumerable moral and spiritual phenomena
of this fallen world at once demand and attest; and
such a Tempter or devil existing, it lay in the necessity
of things that he should come into direct and immediate
collision with Him who had one mission in the world,
and that, to destroy the works of the devil.
But freely admitting the existence of such a Tempter,
the Temptation of Christ, that He should have been
tempted at all, or having been tempted, that such im
measurable worth should be attached to his victory
over temptation, this has a difficulty of its own, which
has more or less clearly presented itself to many, I sup
pose to every one who has sought at all to enter into the
deeper significance of this mysterious transaction. The
difficulty and dilemma may be stated thus : Either there
was that in Christ which more or less responded to the
temptation — how then was He without sin, seeing that
sin moves in the region of desires quite as really as in
that of external acts ? or there was nothing in Him that
responded to the suggestions of the Tempter — where then
was the reality of the temptation, or what was the signi
ficance of the victory which in the wilderness He won ?
The secret of the difficulty which these alternatives
02

20 THE TEMPTATION.
present to our minds, so that sometimes it appears to us
impossible that Christ's Temptation should have been real,
leaving Him as it did wholly unscathed, lies in the mourn
ful experience which we in our own spiritual life have
made, namely, that almost all of our temptations involve
more or less of sin, that the serpent leaves something
of his trail even there where he is not allowed to nestle
and make his home. Conquerors though we may be,
yet we seldom issue from the conflict without a scratch, —
a hurt it may be which soon heals, but which has left its
cicatrice behind it. Yery seldom indeed we come forth
from these fires, as the Three Children, without even so
much as the smell of fire having passed upon us (Dan.
iii. 27). The saint, if he shine as a diamond at last, yet it
is still as a diamond which has been polished in its own
dust. For we may take up arms against the evil thought,
we may rally the higher powers of our souls, and call in
the might of a Mightier to put the evil and its author to
flight, yet this we seldom do till it has already found
some place within us.1 The fiery darts may have been
quenched almost as soon as they alighted ; they may not
therefore have set on fire in us the whole ' course of
nature ' (Jam. iii. 6) ; but they should have been warded
off and extinguished, before they alighted, by that shield
of faith, which the apostle bids us to assume against them
(Ephes. vi. 16). 2 Ours may have been but a moment's
1 There is in respect of the sin, to adopt a fine distinction of Peter Lom
bard and some others of the Schoolmen, the propassio or inception, even
where there is not the passio. Few have exercised a keener moral oversight
of their own hearts than Thomas a Kempis, and he traces thus the genesis of
evil in the heart of man (Be Imit. Christ, i. 13. 5) : Primo occurrit menti
simplex cogitatiq ; deinde fortis imaginatio ; postea delectatio et motus pravus
et assensio. Itaque paulatim ingreditur hostis malignus ex toto, dum illi non
resistitur in principio.
2 See Origen, De Princ. iii. 2. 4,

THE TEMPTATION. 21
acquiescence in the temptation. But thus momentary
and seemingly involuntary as it was, and graciously and
surely as it will be included in the daily forgiveness, yet
even this moment during which the evil was not abhorred
and loathed is irreconcilable with the idea of a perfect
holiness ; for this is as a mirror whose perfect bright
ness no lightest breath has ever troubled or tarnished for
an instant Of course the reconciliation of an absolute
sinlessness in Christ with the reality of the temptations to
which He Was exposed lies in this, that there was never
in Him this momentary delectation ; even as there need
not be in us ; and would not be, if we always were, and
had always in time past been, upon our highest guard.
It is not of the necessity of a temptation that it should in
the least defile. The fact that it does so, is only the sad
accident and adjunct of too many of ours, even of those
against which sooner or later we take up arms, and by
God's grace do not suffer them to embody themselves in
sinful acts, or even in sinful desires deliberately enter
tained. So naturally in the estimate which we form of
the matter does sin follow on temptation, that when the
apostle had affirmed of Christ that He was ' in all points
tempted like as we are,' he counts it needful at once to
add, 'yet without sin' (Heb. iv. 15), without the sinful
results which in men almost inevitably follow.1
It is quite true that even from these temptations them
selves we may derive good; that they, even with issues
1 Bengel has some good words here on the promptness of our Lord's
resistance to each proffered temptation : Quomodo autem sine peccato ten-
tatus, oompati potest tentatis cum peccato? In intellectu, multo acrius
anima Salvatorispercepit imagines tentantes, quam nos infirmi ; in voluntate
tam oeleriter incursum earum retudit, quam ignis aquas guttulam sibi
objecta'

22 THE TEMPTATION.
sorrowful for the time as these, may yet be to us sources
of ultimate strength ; that thus it may prove with us as
with the oyster, which stops with a precious pearl the
hole in its shell which was originally a disease ; as with
the broken limb, which, having been set, may be stronger
than if it never had been broken. It may fare with us as
islanders of the Southern Ocean fancy that it fares with
them ; counting, as they do, that the strength and valour
of the warrior whom they have slain in battle passes into
themselves, as their rightful inheritance ; for so it proves
indeed with the Christian man and the temptations which
he conquers and slays ; and this, even though the victory
may have been won not without hurts to himself, gotten
in the conflict. The strength which lay in the temptation
has shifted its seat, and passed over into the man who has
overcome the temptation.1 The great Church writers of
all times, all to whom any largeness of utterance has been
granted, who have bravely looked man's true condition
in the face, have not feared to speak bold words on this
matter; words indeed, like all other words on the subject
of grace, capable of being wrested and abused by the
licentious and falsehearted, of being therefore held up by

1 Our theologians of the seventeenth century were fond of illustrating
this truth by aid of the legend that the viper's flesh {(h/picurf, from Qijpiov, see
Acts xxviii. 5), ' theriac,' ' triacle,' and last of all ' treacle,' was the most potent
antidote for the viper's bite. Thus Jeremy Taylor : ' There is a vTCEpviKafiev
in St. Paul. We are more than conquerors. Non solum viperam terimus,
sed ex ea antidotum conficimus. We kill the viper and make treacle of
him ; i. e. not only escape from, but get advantage from temptations.' And
Hales : ' Wonderful, therefore, is the power of a Christian ; who not only
overcomes and conquers and kills the viper, but, like the skilful apothecary,
makes antidote and treacle of him.' So too Gurnall : 'The saints' ex
periences help them to a sovereign treacle made of the scorpion's own flesh
(which they through Christ have slain), and that hath a virtue above all
others to expel the venom of Satan's temptations from the heart.'

THE TEMPTATION. 23
the timid as antinomian provocations ; but words which
for all this ought not the less to be spoken. Such Augus
tine abounds in, as often as he treats of St. Paul's thorn
in the flesh, or of St. Peter's fall ; yet always keeping
within just limits ; which limits another overpasses when,
treating of the last and of all the spiritual gains which in
the end the apostle obtained through it, he exclaims,
0 felix culpa ! A fault or sin is never ' happy,' is always
unhappy ; it is ever ' infelix culpa,' whatever good by the
grace of God and by that wondrous alchemy of heaven
which draws gold from dross, may be educed from it;
and those who employ any other language or think any
other thought about sin, are perilously near, however
little they may guess it, to them whom the apostle Paul
has denounced (Rom. iii. 5-8).
But this, the absolute rejection and repudiation of every
suggestion in any way contrary to the perfect will of God,
a repudiation in every case reaching to the earliest mo
ment of its presentation to Him whereunto it is possible
in imagination to travel back, this is not all. There is
another point of difference between Christ's temptations
and ours ; namely, that all our Lord's temptations were
addressed to Him from without, were distinct suggestions
of the Evil Spirit.1 Those who, in their anxiety to do away
with an external Tempter, or from any other motive,
resolve the Temptation into an internal conflict with
thoughts of self-indulgence, vain-glory, ambition, disturb,
1 Gregory the Great (Moral, xxiv. 1 1): Hostis noster quanto magis nos
sibi rebellare eonspicit, tanto amplius expugnare contendit. Eos enim
pulsare negligit, quos quieto jure possidere se sentit. Hoc enim in seipso
Dominus sub quadam dispensatione figuravit, qui diabolum non nisi post
baptisma se tentare permisit, ut signum nobis quoddam futuras conversionis
innueret, quod membra ejus postquam ad Deuin proficerent, tunc acriorea
tentationum insidias tolorareot.

24 THE. TEMPTATION
whether they are aware of it or no, that image. of a perfect
holiness which is essential to the character and office of a
Redeemer; who only as He was Himself without sin could
save others from their sins ; but who would not, if this
were admitted, have been without it. We cannot con
ceive of the temptation of the first Adam reaching him
except from without. That he should have been his own
tempter is irreconcilable even with the more negative
holiness which we ascribe to him. It would have been
infinitely more inconsistent with the more positive holiness
of the second Adam.1 One of Schleiermacher's most gifted
pupils, who finished his brief career while as yet it was
uncertain in what camp he would ultimately be found,2
1 Gregory the Great (Horn. 1 6 in Eeang.) : Sciendum nobis est, quia
tribus modis tentatio agitur, suggestione, deleotatione, et consensu. Et nos
cum tentamur plerumque in delectationem, aut etiam in consensum labimur,
quia de carnis peccato propagati, in nobis ipsis etiam gerimus unde certa-
mina toleremus. Deus vero, qui in utero Virginis incarnatus, in mundum
sine peccato venerat, nihil contradictionis in semetipso tolerabat. Tentari
ergo per suggestionem potuit, sed ejus mentem peccati delectatio non mo-
mordit. Atque ideo omnis diabolica ilia tentatio foris non intus fuit.
Compare F. Spanheim (Bub. Evang. li.) : Distinguendum inter tentationem
admotam et admissam, inter suggestionem mali externam et internam, inter
suggestionem insinuatam et receptam. Tentatio ilia ratione tentatoris mala
erat, non ratione tentati, adinota quippe Christo duntaxat, non admissa,
externa non interna, insinuata tantura non recepta. Camero (Myrothee.Eocmg.
on Heb. iv. 13, p. 315) has a lively illustration : Tentatus fuit igitur Christus
in omnibus, et quidem quod ad sensum doloris attinet, eadem ratione qua
nos; sine peccato tamen, quod nobis non contingit. Nam (utamur enim
hoc exemplo) quantumvis aquam puram et limpidam exagites, non fit tur-
bida ; sed si aquam puram quidem, ut videtur, sed in cujus im& .parte ccenura
est vel limus, agitaveris, continuo quae visa est <pura aqua, videtur lutulenta
aut certe turbidula.
2 TJsteri. He has two articles on the Temptation in the Theol. Stud, und
Erit. 1829, p, 449.; 1832, p. 76,8 ; from the former of which my oitation is
taken. Nothing can be more masterly than the manner in which he deals
not with this.oniy, but with ,all the attempts to explain away the Temptation,
which at different times have .been proposed,; showing the inner contradictions
which they involive ; though, having effectually done this, he cannot be
content without adding another attempt of his own.

THE TEMPTATION. 25
has on this point some admirable remarks : ' It is not dif
ficult to draw a very attractive picture of the inner
temptation of Jesus, such as sTiall not be unlike the Choice
of Hercules, standing, as Prodicus has described him, at
the point where the two ways separated before him. One
may find it also comforting and elevating that Christ was
in all points tempted like as are we. Only how stands it
then with what follows, " yet without sin," if we examine
that statement psychologically and dogmatically ? For
first of all it must be remembered that if such an inner
struggle and conflict of thoughts existed in the mind of
Jesus, and if He remained for an instant undecided and
doubtful in regard of them, then both trains of thought
must be regarded as his own, and the possibility of a
decision upon one side as well as upon the other be
admitted. Hereby Jesus will be coordinated with all other
men, in whom the conflict of the good with the evil finds
place ; and we must conceive of this conflict not merely
in the beginning of his public career ; but where once a
struggle has found plaee, it can revive again, needs nothing
more than the suitable conditions to reproduce it; and
only through patience and perseverance can a skill in the
vanquishing of temptation be attained. This psychological
consequence excludes the hypothesis of such an inward
struggle as was limited to one certain moment of time ;
and there would be nothing else but to say, " Jesus had
within Him besides the good also an evil principle, against
which He needed to be ever on his guard, though it is
only in the history of the Temptation that this struggle is
symbolically attached to a definite moment in his life." But
were Jesus constituted so, then were He not the Christ, but
a man as others are, submitted to the same conditions, with

26 THE TEMPTATION.
a flesh and spirit contrary to one another ; consequently
not a Redeemer, but Himself needing a redemption ; and
not only the words in St. John on his oneness with the
Father, but those in the other Gospels on his dignity as
Messiah, are either not authentic ; or, if He actually spoke
them, He either deluded Himself or deceived mankind.'1
In the scholastic theology of the Middle Ages the dis-
1 H. de S. Victore, the Augustine of the Middle Ages, has an interesting
passage on this matter (Be Saaram. n, pars i, c. 7): Sunt alii qui de
affectibus humanis in Ohristo (quos secundum veritatem naturae cum huinani-
tate et in humanitate suscepit) quaedam non solum falsa sed horrenda etiam
affirmare non timuerunt. Quia enim apostolus ait, Non habemus Pontificem
qui non possit compati infirmitatibus nostris, tentatum autem per omnia:
asserunt humanum affectum in Ohristo motus etiam vitiorum sensisse, absque
consensu tamen rationis : secundum earn concupiscendi rationem qua nos qui
peccatores sumus ex ilia originali corruptione quam portamus illicitos ap-
petitus, et motus concupiscentiaa surgentis et vitii tentantis delectationem
etiam inviti sentire solemus. Hos autem motus idcirco Christum in carne
sua voluntarie sustinuisse, ut quasi illis tentantibus resistendo victor existeret,
quatenus et sibi tentationem vitiorum superando prseinium justitise acquireret,
et nobis in tentatione positis resistendi et vincendi in semetipso exemplum
formaret. Sed absit a sensu Christiano ut ullani in ilia carne sacrosancta
Agni immaculati inordinatee delectationis et concupiscentisa illicitae titilla-
tionem aliquo modo fuisse, aut dicat, aut credat ; qui si vel aliquam pravae
delectationis radicem aut motum concupiscendi inordinatum in ilia fuisse
dicereinus, profecto ab omni vitio liberam negaremus. Qiiomodo autem
vitium mundaret, si vitium portaret ? motus quippe inordinatus ex infirmi-
tate concupiscendi surgens cum ipsa tantum corruptione de qua oritur, non
solum poena est, sed culpa : quae tamen in baptizatis ad damnationem non
imputatur, quia per gratiam novae regenerationis excusatur. Hsec tamen
corruptio per gratiam Sacramenti non quidem accipit ut culpa non sit, sed
ut damnabilis non sit .... Quapropter illam infirmitatem humanae naturae
quae poena est, solum cum susceptione carnis Christum assumsisse veraeiter
dicimus : illam vero, quae sic poena est ut etiam culpa sit, nullatenus admisisse
indubitanter affirraamus. Neque enim sic victorem vitiorum dicere volumus,
ut eum ipsa quae vinceret vitia portasse aliquarido ac sensisse dicamus.
Propterea enim per solam poenam infirmari consensit, ut eos qui et in culpa
et in poena aegrotabant, primum a culpa justificaret, postea a pcena liberaret.
Compare the careful words of Augustine himself (Op. Imperf. con. Jul. iv.
48) : Non dicimus nos Christum, felicitate carnis a nostris sensibus se-
queatratae, cupiditatem vitiorum sentire non potuisse; sed dicimus, eum
perfectione virtutis, et non per carnis concupiscentiarn procreata carne,
cupiditatem non habuisse vitiorum.

THE TEMPTATION. z-j
cussion was carried on with considerable animation whether
a possibility of not sinning (a posse non peccare) or an
impossibility of sinning (a non posse peccare) should be
ascribed to the Lord. The first had been, in the patristic
period, the position of Theodore of Mopsuestia and of as
many as, without being actually Nestorians, had yet theo
logical tendencies which inclined them to advance as far
as might be in that direction ; while the second had been
maintained by Augustine. It was with this, as with so
many of the earlier discussions, which were resumed and
carried out yet further in the period of the medieval
revival of theology; Abelard, as was naturally to be
expected, taking up the position of Theodore of Mop
suestia, Anselm and others upholding the Augustinian
teaching.1 This question could never have been so much
as started, except in a Nestorian severance of the Lord
into two persons, and thus in the contemplation of a
human person in Him as at some moment existent apart
from the divine. When we ascribe to Him two natures,
but these at no time other than united in the one person
of the Son of God, the whole question at once falls to the
ground. And such is the Church's faith. Christ was
perfect man in the sense of having every thing belonging
to the completeness of the human nature ; but the person
is the Son of God ; his human body and soul at the very
moment of their union with one another were also united
with the Eternal Word, so that there is not, nor ever has
been, any human person to contemplate, or in regard of
whom to put this question ; while in respect of the Christ,
and in the manhood after it was taken up into the God
1 Neander, Kirch. Oesch. vol. v. p. 968.

28 THE TEMPTATION.
head, even Abelard himself does not ascribe to Him the
possibility of sinning.1
When it is asked, as it continually has been, Where is
the worth of an obedience which could not have not been
rendered ? where is the glory of not sinning on the part
of One who could not sin ? the question has its rise in the
confusion of a moral and a physical necessity. God
cannot lie, God cannot do evil ; but shall we therefore
cease to praise and glorify Him for his holiness and truth ?
He cannot, because He will not. The angels now cannot
sin ; they have so drunk in the glory of God, that, as we
believe, they are lifted above the possibility of falling.
But does it therefore follow that their obedience, then
when they might have followed those 'who kept not their
first estate, but left their own habitation' (Jude 6), had
a worth ; which now that they cannot, it has ceased to
possess ? There is something better and higher, as
Augustine and Anselm have taught, than the liberum
arbiirmm, even though that should on each separate occa
sion of choice choose the good; and that better is the
Ubertas, the beata neoessitas boni ; which so soon as the
creature has attained, it would certainly be strange to
affirm of it that this highest has reduced it to the state
of the lowest, to the condition of stocks and stones^
which indeed cannot do wrong, but for the same causes
that hinder them from this, can as little do right.2
When two antagonists enter the lists, our moral certainty
1 Ad Rom. p. 539 : Cum hominem qui Deo unitus est, possibile sit peocare,
non tamen postquam unitus est vel dum unitus est. Christum vero, i. e.
D«nm simul et nominem modis omnibus impossibile est peeoare, cum vide
licet ipsum Christi nomen Dei et hominis exprimat unionem.
2 See on this matter a very interesting discussion by Anselm, Cur Deu$
Homo? ii. io.

THE TEMPTATION. 29
that one will overcome, may take away the breathless
expectation and interest with which we might otherwise
mark the several stages of the conflict, but cannot affect
the real excellence and merit of the victor.
But all this, namely that the temptations were thus pre
sented from without and not born from within, and, again,
that they found not even a moment's acquiescence, con
sent and entertainment in that holy soul, does not hinder
in the least that what was offered may have presented
itself as infinitely desirable. In the reality of the tempta
tions we are bound to believe, nor will it be very hard to
understand, in part at least, where that reality consisted
when we a little consider them one by one, which now it is
time to do. To these considerations some words of Pro
fessor Mill on this very matter may prove a fitting introduc
tion. ' If,' he says, ' the highest* virtue does not exclude
that instinct inseparable from humanity; to which pain is
an object of dread and pleasure of desire ; which prefers
ease and quiet to tumult and vexation, the regard and
esteem of others to their scorn and aversion; to which ill-
requited toil or experienced unkindness are sources of
corroding anguish and depression; — this very conjuncture
which presents but one of these, objects of dread as the
concomitant of doing God's will, or associates one of their
desirable opposites with neglect or disobedience^-every
such conjuncture must produce a conflict between duty
and these necessary instincts of humanity, sufficient to
constitute temptation in the strictest sense.'1
'And when the Tempter came unto Him, he said, If
Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be
1 Eke Sermons on the Temptation, 1844, p. 37.

30 THE TEMPTATION.
made bread.' A certain external likeness which might
exist between stones and bread (cf. Matt. vii. 9) explains
why on those more than on anything else Christ should
have been challenged to display his power. It has been
often asked, Putting his suggestion thus, did the Tempter
indeed know Him whom he assailed to be the Son of God ?
or was the suggestion merely tentative, to make Him re
veal Himself, and show by his reply what manner of person,
and clothed with what power, He was ? The question has
been variously answered. The ancients probably are
right, who for the most part reply, that the Evil Spirit
was thus taking the measure of Him whom by a true
instinct he recognized for his mortal foe ;l fearing the
worst ; but at the same time still uncertain with whom he
had to do. The first words which he utters, 'If Thou be
the Son of God,' Christ was destined to hear again
in the hour of a keener suffering even than this. He
should be again taunted and provoked, and in exactly the
same language (Matt, xxvii. 40), to prove his Messiahship,
and in this very act of proving to render void the whole
work which as Messiah He came to accomplish ; but then
as now He is able to leave the vindication of his Sonship
in his Father's hands.
That to which Satan here challenges the Lord, to ' com
mand that these stones be made bread,' was not sinful in it
self, but would have been sinful for Him. To have complied,
would have been a defeat of his whole mediatorial work. If
on each sharper pressure of the world's suffering and pain
upon Himself, He had fallen back on the power which as
1 So Hilary : Erat in diabolo de metu suspicio, non de suspicione cognitio.
Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xi. 21): Dubitavit de illo daemonum princeps,
eumque tentavit, an Christus esset explorans, quantum se tentari ipse permisit,
ut hominem quem gerebat ad nostra? imitationis temperaret exemplum.

THE TEMPTATION. 31
Son of God He possessed, and so exempted Himself from
the common lot of humanity, where would have been the
fellow-man, the overcomer of the world by his human
faith, and not by his divine power ? 1 The whole life of
faith would have disappeared. At his Incarnation the
Lord had merged his lot with the lot of the race ; the
temptation is, that He should separate Himself from them
anew : ' Son of God, put forth thy power.' When in
some besieged and famine-stricken city, when in hard
straits during the march through some waterless desert,
a captain or commander refuses special exemptions from
the lot of his suffering fellow-soldiers, when a Cato pours
upon the sands the single draught of water which
has been procured in the African desert and brought for
his drinking,2 such a one in his lower sphere acts out what
the Lord in the highest sphere of all acted now. His
miracles shall be all for the needs of others, never for his
own.8 He who made the water wine, could have made
1 Aquinas : Diabolus justitia. Dei, non potentia, superandus fuit. Com
pare Augustine, De Trin. xiii. 14.
2 Lucan, Pharsal. ix. 510:
Excussit galeam, suffecitque omnibus unda.
Compare Plutarch, Alex. 42.
' All this I ventured long ago to embody in a brief poem :
1 He might have reared a palace at a word,
Who sometimes had not where to lay his head ;
Time was, and He who nourished crowds with bread,
Would not one meal unto Himself afford.
Twelve legions girded with angelic sword
Were at his beck, the scorned and buffeted ;
He healed another's scratch ; his own side bled,
Side, feet, and bands, with cruel piercings gored.
Oh wonderful the wonders left undone !
And scarce less wonderful than those He wrought;
Oh self-restraint, passing all human thought,
To have all power, and be as having none !
Oh self-denying love, which felt alone
For needs of others, never for its own !'

32 THE' TEMPTATION.
the stones bread ; but to that He was solicited by the need
of others, to this only by his own. And this abstinence
of self-help was the: law of his whole life, a life as won
derful in the miracles which it left undone as in those
which it wrought.
The stress of this, as of each other of the subsequent
temptations, consisted in the fact that what Satan proposed.
did lie in the final purposes of the ministry of the Son
of God ; and that it was only in it's premature anticipa
tions that the sin consisted, Thus it did lie in final-
issues of his ministry for man that the desert should
blossom as a rose (Isai. xxxv. l ; lxv. 25), that all strait-
ness, hunger, poverty, want, all sweat of the brow, hardly
wringing from the soil the pittance of the day, and leaving
little or no opportunity for higher mental or moral culture,
that all these consequences of the primeval curse upon the
earth (Gen. iii. 17, 18) should cease and come to an end
— that, so to speak, the stones should become bread. But
the temptation was, to begin instead of ending with this,
to bring about an outer world of abundance otherwise
than as the expression and the result of an inner kingdom
of righteousness. And in the Lord's refusal to do this is.
involved the condemnation of every plan for redressing
the hard lot of humanity which does not begin from the
root, which thinks to make men happier without making
them holier, all communist schemes, all the profane mil-
lenarianism of an Owen or a Fourrier. It is no heavenly
root, but quite another, out of which these grow. They
are not of good, and cannot come to good. Yet who will
dare measure the strength of this temptation, as it may
have presented itself to Him who beheld with a compas
sion at once human and divine the infinite toil and want

THE TEMPTATION. 33
of the children of men; for I believe we mistake alto
gether when we find in his own immediate hunger that
which gave the whole, or even the chief, stress and force
to this temptation. Standing as He did at the centre of
humanity, and commanding all the diverging fines to their
extreme circumference, that hunger was to Him but as
the key and interpreter to all the hunger, all the need, all
the distress which the children of Adam had ever felt, or
should ever feel, until the great and glorious day when
the primeval curse should be lightened from off the earth,
and it should again yield its foison with the free bounty
of Paradise. His own hunger was included ; but this did
not exclude, rather took in that of every one besides.
And to be able to stay all this, to speak the word and
bring it all to an end, who, with a sinful and therefore a
selfish heart, is at all in a position to estimate what this
temptation was to the great Lover of the bodies and the
souls of men ? But now for the answer.
The Tempter had said, ' If Thou be the Son of God :'
Christ does not reply, 'I am ;' nor find here, as He easily
might, a reason for not complying with the challenge ;
since answering so, He would indeed have overcome the
adversary, but He would have overcome him only for Him
self, and not also for us. No other, being only a man, and
not in that peculiar sense ' the Son of God,' could have
silenced him in the same way. The answer would have
stood apart, and would have fitted no other lips but his
own.1 But the answer which He gives is one which every
other may employ as freely as He did : 'Man shall not live
1 Ambrose (Exp. in Luc. v. 20) : Non enim quasi Deus utitur potestate
(quid enim mini proderat ?) sed quasi homo, commune sibi arcessit auxilium.
Of. Augustine, Enarr. z'in Ps. ex. 10, 11.
D

34 THE TEMPTATION.
by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God.' He throws his broad shield not merely
over Himself, but over all those whom He has called his
brethren, and with whom in his Incarnation He has made
common part and lot ; and saying, ' Man shall not live '
He declares that He will not separate Himself from his
race. These words are drawn, as indeed are both the
other passages which He cites, not merely from the Old
Testament, but from the history of Israel's forty years'
temptation in the wilderness, and from that as it is re
sumed in the Book of Deuteronomy. And this certainly
is not for nothing, nor without its significance ; but finds
its explanation in the fact that Israel was the figure of
the Son of man, was ' the servant of God,' that should
have fulfilled all righteousness, but did not ; in which
fact we must seek the justification of St. Matthew's use
of Hosea's words, 'Out of Egypt have I called my
Son' (Matt ii. 13; cf. Hos. xi. 1). Christ, as there has
been already occasion to urge, is not merely the second
Adam, but the true Israel, and the true servant of
God (Isai. xiii. 1), who as such should testify by his obe
dience that man truly lives only in and by the everlasting
word. The words were originally spoken by Moses in reference
to the manna: 'He fed thee with manna which thou
knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that He
might make thee know that man doth not live by bread
only; but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of the Lord doth man live ' (Deut. viii. 3). But
this being so, what, it may be asked, was their special
appropriateness at a moment like the present? They
had this fitness. In the giving of the manna, and in the

THE TEMPTATION.

35

feeding of the people thereby, lay a signal proof that
God was not limited to ordinary means ; but, as then He
created ' a new thing ' with which to sustain his people,
so now He could feed one who trusted in Him, altogether
without any external helps and appliances whatever. God
is Himself the nourisher, and not the bread or anything
else. The manna was but the help to a weak faith ; for
that did not really nourish any, but only God's might
which worked in and through the manna. And thus the
Lord does not mean by this quotation that man wants
something besides bread, has a soul which must be sus
tained by heavenly food, as his body is by earthly; and
that if that be fed, it imports little how this may fare.
His words are still more to the point. The creative word,
the ffiyuai Qeov, which alone imparts to the bread its sus
taining power, can sustain, even as He is confident that
in the present need it will sustain, apart from the bread.1
The answer is in fact a keener way of saying, ' I have
meat to eat that ye know not of (John iv. 31). I am not
pressed, as thou suggestest, and as thou wouldst fain have
Me to believe; I live upon God.'8 'God,' as Jeremy
Taylor has said, applying these words, 'will certainly give
us bread, and till He does we can live by the breath of
1 Cocceius : Potest Deus vivificare absque pane, et sine verbo Dei ne panis
quidem ad vitam est. Spanheim (Dub. Evang. 58) : Tentator objiciebat, vel
fame ipsi esse pereundum, vel lapides oonvertendos in panem, alioquin
nullum dari medium ipsius conservandi. Immo, inquit Dominus, media in-
numera alia dari possunt praeter panem: qnamcunque enim rem placet Deo
adhibere ad sustentationem hominis ea sufficere potest, vel verbum solum
promissionis egrediens ex ore Domini.
a It is a beautiful Jewish legend to which Philo (De Somn. i. 6) refers,
that Moses during his forty days' fast on Mount Horeb was fed by the melo
dies of heaven, the music of the spheres — by which he goes on to say, if
our ears were now purged to drink them in, we too might equally be sus
tained. Not unlike this in spirit is the saying quoted by Schoetgen (Hor.
Heb. vol. i. p. 87) : Justi perfecti ex splendore Schechinse comedunt.
d2

36 THE TEMPTATION.
his mouth, by the word of God, by the light of his coun
tenance, by the refreshment of his promises. If the
fleshpots be removed He can alter the appetite; and
when our stock is spent, He can also lessen the necessity;
or if that continues, He can drown the sense of it in a
deluge of patience and resignation.'1
' Then the devil taketh Him up into the holy city, and
setteth Him on a pinnacle of the temple.' Characteristically
enough it is St. Matthew who thus calls Jerusalem ' the
holy city.' To him, the Jew, it was eminently such (cf.
xxvii. 53 ; Isai. xlviii. 2 ; Iii. l ; Dan. ix. 24 ; Rev.
xi. 2; xxi. 2; Eccl. xxxvi. 13; 1 Mace. x. 31), 'the
city of the Great King' (Matt. v. 35). In the parallel
record of St. Luke, it is simply 'Jerusalem.' I should he
unwilling to interpret this ' taketh ' with Hammond, as
though it were, ' carried Him through the air ; ' for such
a rapture and flight, a yielding of Himself so far to the
will of the adversary, seems inconsistent with the dignity
which in the midst of all his humiliation the Son evermore
preserved. They who will have it so, observe that it is
nothing strange if He who allowed Himself to be buffeted,
scourged, crucified by the servants of the devil, should
yield Himself thus far to the violence of their master ;
and that all which concerns us is to keep in mind that it
was a violence which could not have been exercised upon
Him, unless He had willingly submitted Himself to it.2
But certainly the language which St. Matthew uses does
not require, hardly justifies, such a meaning as this. The

• Life of Christ, i, 9.
2 Deyling : Noli in hac re diaboli potentiam sed potius Servatoris pati-
entiam mirari.

THE TEMPTATION. 37
word we have translated "taketh' (7tapa%.an(3avei) is the
same which all three Evangelists employ when they
would describe the Lord's leading up with Him his chosen
apostles to the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. xvii. 1 ;
Mark ix. 2; Luke ix. 28; and often elsewhere). That
which may have in part induced this interpretation,
namely, the supposition that the 'pinnacle1 of the temple'
was some giddy point, unattainable except by such aerial
flight, is a mistake. Whatever it may have been, it cer
tainly was not this ; for in the history of the martyrdom
of James the Just, given by Hegesippus and preserved for
us by Eusebius,2 the martyr is set on this same 'pinnacle,'
which he could only have reached by ordinary means,
that from thence he may harangue the people below, and
when he disappoints the expectation of the Jews who had
set him there, is by them cast headlong down.
' And saith unto Him, If Thou be the Son of God, cast
Thyself down ; for it is written, He shall give his angels
charge concerning Thee, and in their hands they shall bear
Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash thy foot against a
stone.' The temple was plainly the fitting place for this,
the peculiarly theocratic temptation, as the wilderness
had been for that addressed to the fleshly appetite, and
as the high mountain should be for the temptation yet in
store from the world ; even as it has been fancifully sug
gested that the Tempter assumed different shapes in suc
cession, an eremite in the wilderness, an angel of light on
1 Urepiyiov, which the grammarians explain by aKpari/prnv, the diminu
tive of nripv!;, a wing, pinna or penna in Latin ; the latter being the form in
which the word, literally employed, assumes ; while pinna, with its diminu
tive pinnaculum, is the winglike lappet of a building. For the different
views of what this wrEpbytav of the temple actually was, see Deyling, Obss.
Sac., vol. ii. p. 371
' H.E.n.%i.

3 8 THE TEMPTATION.
this pinnacle of the temple, a king when he offered on
the mountain the world-kingdoms to the Lord. Ex
panding this temptation a little, we may better realize
to ourselves wherein consisted its enticing power. What
the Tempter suggested may have been very nearly as
follows : ' Be acknowledged the Christ at once. Give of
thy own free accord that which those in whose hands it
will lie to accept or reject Thee will so often demand,
namely, " a sign from heaven " (Matt. xii. 38 ; xvi. 1 ;
Luke xii. 54, 56). Descend with a pomp of angels up
holding and upbearing Thee, in the midst of an admiring
people. Thou art appointed to be the Christ. Why take
the way of a long and tedious recognition? Why con
sent to be despised and rejected — bringing all which thus
Thou wilt bring of evil on Thyself and on them that
reject Thee, when by one noble venture of faith, having
moreover a Scripture warrant for this, thou mightest at
a single bound leap to that remote consummation which
is indeed in the intentions and purposes of God ?'
With what marvellous skill has the Tempter shifted in
an instant the whole line of his assault. In that first
temptation he urged the Lord to a distrust of his Father's
love, so that He must help Himself, if He is indeed to be
helped at all ; but now he urges not indeed to trust that
love overmuch, for this is impossible, but to put it to the
proof in a way of his own choosing, and not of God's
appointing. If he cannot entangle Him in the sin of
diffidentia, perhaps then in that of prcefidentia, — if such
a word may be allowed. Satan too has learned some
thing else in that first encounter ; he has learnt that the
Scripture is the law of Christ's life ; the sphere in which
He lives and moves. On a word of that Scripture the

THE TEMPTATION. 35
Lord had grounded his refusal to make the stones bread.
Here then is a word of that same Scripture, which
should induce Him to consent to that which is now put
before Him. ' Makest Thou so much of that word ?
Hopest Thou on its assurance for such a miracle in thy
behalf? Then see in that which I now set before Thee,
how Thou mayest show yet more gloriously thy con
fidence in the favour of God toward Thee.'
That ninety-first Psalm which the adversary quotes, is
written not concerning the Son of God in particular, but
concerning the faithful generally. Yet for all this it can
not be said that there was any abusing or mis-quoting of
it in applying the promise which it contains, as Satan now
does, to Christ; since whatever was written concerning
the faithful in general, must be eminently true concerning
Him who is the Head of the faithful. Origen then,1 it
must be admitted, has not right here, when he accuses
Satan of a fraudful transfer to Christ of what was written
about others, and in this respect of perverting Scripture ;
an accusation which Chrysostom and Jerome repeat.
That there is and must be somewhere a lie in the appli
cation even of words of truth on the part of him who is
a har and only a liar is certain. He lies, as St. Bernard
has very well shown, leaving out, as he does, one little
clause, which would have altered the whole character of
the quotation. 'He shall give his angels charge con
cerning Thee,' this much Satan cites ; but the words
following ' to keep Thee in all thy ways,' these he omits
altogether.2 But that to which he now challenged the

1 Horn. 31. in Luc.
2 Mendacium abscondens per Scripturam sicut omnes hseretici, as Irenaeus
observes (v. 3 1) ; and none had greater experience of their devices.

4.0 THE TEMPTATION.
Lord was not ' a way' appointed by his heavenly Father
for his treading, and in which as such He might be sure
that he would not stumble (John xi. 9, 10), but a preci
pice from which He would have wantonly chosen to fling
Himself down ; and the promise of being kept in all his
ways no one has a right to take to himself, who has
exchanged his appointed ways for any such headlong ,
precipices as that now suggested to the Lord.1
' Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not
tempt the Lord thy God ; ' written, indeed, in almost every
page of Scripture, but the special reference is to Deut. vi.
16. But first, in that ' It is written again ' of Christ, lies
a great lesson, quite independent of that particular Scrip
ture which on this occasion He quotes, or of the use to
which He turns it. There lies in it the secret of our
safety and defence against all distorted use of isolated
passages in Holy Scripture. Only as we enter into the
unity of Scripture, as it balances, completes, and explains
itself, are we armed against error and delusion, excess or
defect on this side or the other. Thus the retort, 'It is
written again,' must be of continual application ; for,
indeed, what very often are heresies but onesided exag
gerated truths, truths rent away indeed from the body
1 Bernard {In Ps. Quis Latitat, Serm. 15) : Scriptum est, inquit, Quoniam
angelis suis mandavit de te, et in manibus tollent te. Quid scriptum est,
maligne, quid scriptum est? Angelis suis mandavit de te. Quid man-
davit f Animadvertite et videte quoniam subticuit malignus et fraudulentus
quod malignitatis suae commenta dissolveret. Quid enim mandavit?
Nempe quod in psalino sequitur : Ut custodiant te in omnibus viis tuis.
Numquid in praecipitiis ? Qualis via haec de pinnaculo templi mittere se
deorsum ? Non est via haec, sed ruina ; et si via, tua est, non illius. Frustra
in tentationem capitis intorsisti, quod scriptum est ad corporis consolatio-
nem. Delitzsch : Es ist nicht die Rede von Gefahren, die man aussucht,
sondern von solchen, die den Gerechten ungesucht auf den Lebenswegea
begegnen.

THE TEMPTATION. 41
and complex of the Truth, without the balance of the
counter-truth, which should have kept them in their due
place, coordinated with other truths or subordinated to
them ; and so, because all such checks are wanting, not
truth any more but error ?x
It is a weapon at once offensive and defensive, a sun
at once and a shield, which the Lord on this occasion
draws from the armoury of God : ' Thou shalt not tempt
the Lord thy God.' The same apparent difficulty which lies
in St. James' declaration that ' God tempteth not any man '
(i. 13), when set over against so many other passages in
which a tempting of man is ascribed to Him (Gen. xxii. 1 ;
John vi. 6), lies also in St. James' statement made at the
same place that ' God cannot be tempted ' as compared
with so many other, in which men are charged with the
sin, or warned against the sin, of tempting God ; such as
Exod. xvii. 2; Num. xiv. 22; Ps. Ixxviii. 18, 56; Acts
v. 9; xv. 10; and the present. But here, as there, the
contradiction lies only on the surface, and as soon as we
descend a little below this, it quite disappears. There is
a sense in which men 'tempt' God, as no doubt there is
also a sense in which they cannot ' tempt ' Him. They
' tempt ' God, when they mistrust the resources of his
wisdom, his power, his goodness ; when they will not
believe Him on his simple word, but challenge Him to
make present and immediate experiment of these before,
they will give Him credit for possessing them. Thus
when the children of Israel exclaimed, ' Can God furnish
a table in the wilderness ? ' (Ps. Ixxviii. 19) this question
1 Tertullian {De Pudic. 16): Est hoe solenne perversis et idiotis et
haereticis, alicujus capituli ancipitis occasione adversus exeroitum senntiate-
rum Instrumenti totius armari.

42 THE TEMPTATION.
of theirs was in the strictest sense of the word a ' tempting'
of God ; as the Psalmist expressly declares ' They tempted
God in their heart ' — ' they tempted God, and limited the
Holy One of Israel' (ver. 41). In like manner Ahaz
refuses to ask a sign from God, sheltering himself behind
the precept of Deut. vi. 16; and pretending to believe
that to ask of God that sign which God bade him ask,
would be such a ' tempting' of Him as is there forbidden;
' I will not tempt the Lord ' (Isai. vii. 12) . Not otherwise
we are told that the adversaries of the Lord ' came, and
tempting desired that He would show them a sign from
heaven' (Matt. xvi. 1), that is, putting Him to the proof,
refusing to accept, without this proof given, his claims
to be the Messiah. And when Satan would have .the
Saviour to cast Himself down headlong from the pinnacle
of the temple, this would have been in the strictest sense,
as He Himself declares, a ' tempting' of the Lord his God,
that is, a putting of Him to the proof, as being doubtful,
until that proof was made, whether He would indeed help
and save.
God may ' tempt' man as often as He will ; for there is
always an element of weakness in every man, justifying
the temptation, which shall either reveal this weakness to
him through a fall, and thus send him to the source of all
true strength, or through a victorious struggle with it,
leave him in fuller possession of God's strength than before.
But men may never lawfully 'tempt' God, in whom there
are no such discoveries to be made, and whom then they
honour most, when they believe the highest, noblest, great
est things about Him to which their hearts can attain. It
was for Christ to believe in the loving-kindness and faith
fulness of God, that He would uphold Him in all his ways,

THE TEMPTATION. 43
without ' tempting ' or putting Him to proof, as the ad
versary had suggested. Such a tempting could only have
sprung from a secret unbelief; and would have been for
Him an abandonment at the outset, of that life of faith
which He came to live on earth, and by which to over-.
come the Wicked One.
In this refusal of Christ's are implicitly condemned all
who run before they are sent, who thrust themselves into
perils to which they are not called ; all who would fain be
reformers, but whom God has not raised up and equipped
for the work of reformation; and who therefore for
the most part bring themselves and their cause to
gether to shame, dishonour, and defeat ; with all those
who presumptuously draw drafts on the faithfulness of
God, which they have no scriptural warrant to justify
them in believing that He will honour.
It is well known that in the different Gospels this
second temptation and the third follow in different order.
In St. Matthew the temptation to vainglory (' Cast Thyself
down') comes first, and that to worldliness (' All these
things will I give Thee ') follows after ; while in St. Luke
first the kingdoms and their glory are offered, and only
when these are rejected, the temptation to spiritual pride
is suggested. Which, it may be asked, was the true, or
rather the actual, succession ? for both orders may in a
deeper ideal, though not in an historic sense, be true. In
favour of St. Luke's it may be urged that spiritual wicked
nesses seem the latest and subtlest temptations of the
Evil One; those who have overcome all other, are ex
posed to, and sometimes overcome by, these ; the white
devil, as one has said, being more to be feared than the
black; and temptations arranged to follow in such a

44 THE TEMPTATION
sequence and method as shall be most effectual ((tedoMai
•j&clvyic) are especially attributed to Satan (Ephes. iv.
14; vi. 11). But on the other hand, in favour of St.
Matthew's succession it may be said that the words, ' Get
thee behind Me, Satan,' would scarcely occur in the middle
of the Temptation, being rather the final and authorita
tive dismissal of the Tempter, after which he would no
longer presume, for the present at least, to molest the
Lord. And altogether this fact seems to outweigh the
arguments which support the other succession ; not to say
that St. Matthew's ' then ' (ver. 5) and ' again ' (ver. 8)
mark a closer knitting together of the incidents in the
order of time than aught in the more loosely connected
scenes in St. Luke.1
' Again the devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high
mountain, and sheweth Him all the kingdoms of the world
and the glory of them; and saith unto Him, AU these
things wiU I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship
me.' The inner connexion between this third temptation
and that which went before may be as follows : ' Well, if
Thou art not the Son of God, as is plain from thy in
ability to make bread, thy refusal to cast thyself boldly
forth on the riches of his grace, worship me, and receive
what I will give Thee, the kingdoms of the world and
1 In Greswell's Dissertations there is one On the Order of the Temptations,
vol. ii. p. 192. Von Meyer (Blatt. far hbhere Wahrheit, vol. v. p. 262) thinks
the succession to have been differently given by the different Evangelists, of
a purpose and for our instruction, because the order of these temptations is
different in different men, and in the same man at different times. Aquinas,
who has anticipated so much, has anticipated also this (Summ. Theol. pars
3% qu. 41, art. 4) : Videntur Evangelistaa diversum ordinem tenuisse ; quia
quandoque ex inani gloria venitur ad cupiditatem, quandoque e converse
Augustine (De Cons. Evang. ii. 16) does not absolutely deoide in favour
of one order or the other.

THE TEMPTATION. 45
the glory of them' By these last words I understand all
which the kingdoms possessed of fairest, riehest, best, the
flower and crown of all their splendours gathered to a
head (Isai. xxxix. 2 ; Matt. vi. 29 ; Rev. xxi. 25, 26).
But before we proceed further it is worth while to enquire
how we are to understand the ' shewing ' to Him of all these.
An optical illusion is entirely inadmissible ; such is not
reconcilable with the Church's idea of her divine Head. It
is quite impossible that in anything, great or small, He can
have been played upon or deceived, least of all by the
Spirit of lies.1 That Satan pointed out the quarters in
which the several kingdoms of the world lay, does not
seem to me altogether to satisfy and exhaust the force of
this ' sheweth ;' least of all when we bring in St. Luke's
' in a moment of time ;'2 although many interpreters have
been satisfied with such an explanation.3 Jeremy Taylor
reaches out after something more : ' By an angelical power
he draws into one centre species and ideas from all the
kingdoms and glories of the world, and makes an ad
mirable map of beauties, and represents it to the eye
of Jesus.' But whatever the manner of the shewing
1 Grotius strangely enough, while he allows this (neque ocnlos neque vim
imaginatricem Christi illusam puto), suggests notwithstanding a mere phan
tasmagoria of this kind : Nimirum quasi in pictura ponens [diabolus]
omnem qui unquam esset regiae fortunes apparatum. The suggestion of
Milton (Par. Reg. iv. 40) is different ; and is not attended by the same
objections : ' By what strange parallax or optic skill
Of vision, multiplied through air, or glass
Of telescope, were fruitless to enquire.'
' 'Ev BTLypjj xp6vov=h arS/ity iv frtiry btydaXpov (1 Cor. xv. 52).
s Origen : Ateypafs t£ 16ya ripi oi/ctfiy^w/v, . . . tear yap T/Siivaro avrovr rovr
ronovr elg eva rlmav irpbr deapiav aa/iarix^v hyayeiv; Maldonatus: Eeipsai
ostendissd, non ita ut viderit, sed ita ut cujusque regni plagam digito desig-
naverit. Bengel : Per enumerationem et indigitationem fortasse. So
Aquinas, Summ. Theol. pars 3% qu. 41, art. 4,

46 THE TEMPTATION.
was, a shewing rather than a telling is skilfully imagined,
as might have been expected from the great artificer
of falsehood. The eye is the inlet of desire ; there
is nothing so soon enticed and led away. ' It is,' as
Bishop Andrews has said, ' the broker between the
heart and all wicked lusts that be in the world' (Job
xxxi. 1, 7).
I have quoted the words in which this proffer of the king
doms of the world is made, as more briefly recorded by St.
Matthew. At the same time the qualifying addition which
appears in the report of St. Luke is very significant : ' All
this power will I give Thee, and the glory of them ; for that
is delivered unto me ; and to whomsoever I will I give it.'
Liar as he is from the beginning, the Tempter does not
venture to claim the kingdoms of the world and their glory
as of absolute right his own. Manichseans enough there
are in the world, who believe that the devil is really its
lord and king ; but he in whose favour the Manichsean
explanation of the world's riddle has been started, does not
himself venture to assert it. The world is not Satan's
own; nor his at all except in so far as it has been
'delivered' to him; that through it and the countless
seductions which it offers he may on the one hand
exercise and prove the faith of God's elect, to their greater
final reward, on the other seduce those who are waiting
and willing to be seduced from their allegiance to their
liege Lord and rightful king ; or that in other ways he
may work out the higher ends of God's providence and
grace. So far indeed it had been suffered to come into
his hands ; he is now, in Christ's own words, ' the prince
of this world' (John xii. 31), in the words of his apostle,
' the prince of the power of the air' (Ephes. ii. 2), 'the

THE TEMPTATION. 47
god of this world ' (2 Cor. iv. 4) ; able to give to those
who serve him, ' his power, and his seat, and great autho
rity ' (Rev. xiii. 2) . But whatever dominion he possesses
in it, he possesses not of right, but by usurpation on his
part, by permission upon God's, even as he himself must
acknowledge here. To him it might be said, as to one of
his servants it was said, ' Thou couldest have no power at
all, except it were given thee from above' (John xix. n).
This was originally no wicked world (Gen. i. 31) ; a
' mundus' indeed, but no ' mundus immundus,' as Au
gustine so often loves to declare.
Satan is playing for a high stake, and does not grudge
therefore ito make a great offer. It is not often that
Bishop Andrews allows himself in irony so fine and so
effective as he does in one of his Sermons on the Tempta
tion ; contrasting this offer, the kingdoms offered to
Christ and rejected by Him, with the unutterably paltry
bribes, the mess of pottage (Gen. xxv. 34), the Babylonish
garment (Josh. vii. 21 ), the two changes of garments
(2 Kin. v. 23), the thirty pieces of silver (Matt. xxvi. 15),
for which we are so often contented to barter all. I
cannot refuse to quote a part : ' There be some that will
say, They were never tempted with kingdoms. It may
well be ; for it needs not, when less will serve. It was
Christ only who was thus tempted ; in Him lay a heroical
mind that could not be allured with small matters. But
with us it is nothing so, for we esteem far more basely of
ourselves. We set our wares at a very easy price ; he
may buy us even dagger-cheap, as we say. He need
never carry us so high as the mount. The pinnacle is
high enough ; yea, the lowest steeple in all the town would
serve the turn. Or let him but carry us to the leads and

48 THE TEMPTATION.
gutters of our own houses, nay, let us but stand in our
windows or our doors, if he will give us but so much as
we can there see, he will tempt us throughly; we will
accept it and thank him too. He shall not need to come
to us with kingdoms. If he would come to us with thirty
pieces, I am afraid many of us would play Judas. Nay,
less than so much would buy a great sort, even " handfuls
of barley and pieces of bread" (Ezek. xiii. 19). Yea
some will not stick to buy and sell the poor for a pair of
shoes, as Amos speaketh. ... A matter of half a crown,
or ten groats, a pair of shoes, or some such trifle will
bring us on our knees to the devil.'
But this temptation, how mighty an attraction it must
have had — not indeed that attraction for Him on whom
it was now brought to bear, which it would possess
for mean and vulgar souls ; but one which the very love
and pity and yearning sympathy for all the children of
men that dwelt in Him, must have lent it. Nothing
was more righteous than that all the kingdoms of the
world should be Christ's, nothing more certain than that
He, as Messiah, should one day be heir of all. Feeling then
and knowing Himself to be the rightful king of men, and
to have the power of infinitely blessing them as their
king, with such prophecies going before of his kingdom
and what his kingdom should be, as Isai. xxxii. 1-8,
Ps. lxxii., He must have unutterably desired, and it
belonged to the perfection of his nature that He should
so desire, that the kingdoms of the world should be his.
How many bleeding hearts were waiting to be bound up
by Him ; how many who now sat " in darkness were
waiting for fight from Him ; what truths were waiting for
Him to utter; what wrongs were waiting for Him to

THE TEMPTATION. 49
redress, what strongholds of oppression for Him to cast
down. The power of accomplishing all this, of redressing
all the oppressions of the earth, of stanching all those
fountains of tears, of imparting all that knowledge of his
Father's love, this was ' the glory,' the 5d£a, which the
royalty of the world wore in his sight; here was the
allective force which this temptation possessed. We note
ever, even among the sinful children of men, that the
nobler the character of a man, the nobler also the sem
blance which a temptation, that is indeed to exercise any
power upon him, must assume. Sordid sins, sins of a
manifest selfishness, will have little or no seductive power,
nay, will rather repel than attract him. The temptation
may be a messenger of Satan's, but it must in some sort
know how to transform itself into an angel of light, before
it can obtain a hearing from him, or at all events before
it can mightily allure. And if this be true of men in
whom is any nobleness of nature, how much more must
it have been true in respect of Him who was the noblest
of all.
At the same time, when we are seeking to measure
what was the dynamic force of this third temptation, we
must not leave out of account, as an element herein, that
in this offer lay the prospect of evading and overleaping
all the toil and pain and suffering, to which otherwise a
Saviour of the world was bound in. The kingdoms of
the world should be his, as an easy gift ; instead of being,
as otherwise they must be, a painful prey wrung at the
cost of his own life's blood from the usurper. It is from
this point of view, and from vividly realizing to ourselves
the mighty temptation which the prospect of thus escaping
the cross, and not drinking the cup, must have had for

50 THE TEMPTATION.
Him who knew all which that cross and that cup meant,
that we must explain that 'Get thee behind me,
Satan' (Matt. xvi. 23), with which at a later day Christ
rebukes the chief of his apostles, when he too must needs
play the Hinderer, and with his 'That be far from
Thee' (ver. 22), would fain persuade his Lord that the
suffering of many things was not, and need not be, his
portion ; that there was another way besides that by the
steps of his cross whereby He might ascend to his throne.
The saying has perplexed many. Could He who spoke
no random word, for whom Satan was the personal em
bodiment of all evil, have called by this name a servant
of his own, visited a passing fault of his with so terrible
a rebuke ? They have recoiled from admitting this ; and
yet how escape the admission ? In this way, I believe.
Christ saw with the lightning glance of his spirit in the
words of St. Peter a suggestion not so much of his as of
Satan's ; who was using the servant, and making him the
organ and unconscious instrument by which he brought
to bear his engines of temptation against the Master.
Christ beheld Satan, so to speak, lurking behind Peter,
suggesting by him, as he had in the wilderness suggested
more directly, that there was a shorter way to the
kingdom of his glory than by the cross of his shame ; and
to him the words are properly and primarily addressed;
although in reaching him enough glances off from them
to constitute a wholesome and most real rebuke for Peter.
The words of rebuke which are spoken then are precisely
the same as those spoken now, to mark that the Lord recog
nized in the remonstrance of Peter the recurrence of a temp
tation, whose strength He had known before, and no doubt
still knew ; but which He had already met and overcome.

THE TEMPTATION. 51
But the price to be paid for that power of prodigally
blessing others, in which after all lay the main stress
of this temptation, what was that to be ? It was no more
than an act of homage to him from whom He should
receive the investiture of the kingdom. This price before
now men not altogether mean or base, men not altogether
without noble aspirations for the good of their fellow
men, have consented to pay ; having persuaded them
selves that a righteous end justified the unrighteous means,
that the power ill-gotten might yet be so well used as to
cause the fraud, or violence, or other wrong by which it
was obtained to be forgotten altogether. Some among
those who ended with being the very worst and wickedest
in the French Revolution, saw, no doubt, an ideal kingdom
floating before their eyes, which they were striving to
realize, and which they linked with good for many, and
not merely with some selfish good for themselves. But
while no other way of bringing about that which they
desired seemed open to them, they were willing, that so
they might hasten and make sure the coming of this
kingdom, to fall down and worship Satan; and what
hideous service they rendered him at the last is written
in such characters of blood as will leave their names a
hissing and an execration for ever. And that act of
homage which the Tempter now asked of Christ, what
did it imply ? Simply that of Christ He should become
Antichrist — nothing short of this. Height and depth are
but two aspects of the same fact ; and just as Lucifer, ' son
of the morning,' could only fall as he did fall, the height
to which he was exalted being the measure of the depth
to which he fell, and, fallen, could not be any other than
the prince of darkness, so for Him who was tempted now

52 THE TEMPTATION.
there was no alternative but to be the Christ, or if not
this, to be Antichrist. No wonder that such a proposal
should call forth such an answer as it does.
Hitherto the suggestions of the Wicked One, however
fraudful, have been capable of a favourable interpretation ;
the first might have been called forth by sympathy, how
ever ill-timed, with the Lord's hunger ; the second by the
desire, however premature, that He should openly assert
the dignity of his person and office, and make manifest to
all the world his dearness to God. But this is capable of
no such favourable interpretation. The Tempter has
shown himself now in his true colours, one who can no
more be so much as mistaken for an angel of light, but
manifestly the leader of the great apostasy from the
worship and service of the true God. Therefore the
altered tone of the reply : ' Get thee behind me, Satan.'1
The divine patience gives room now to the divine indig
nation, such as the character of this suggestion required.
He who simply declines an infamous proposal inade
quately satisfies the claims which virtue and honour,
outraged and insulted in his person, make upon him.
Indignation in such a case is not merely justifiable, but
is required, is of the essence of a true righteousness. Such
an indignation speaks out in this reply of Christ.
And now He proceeds to justify the word of defiance
to the outrance with which He has replied, even as with
1 Tn-oye bwiaa pov (cf. 2 Kin. ix. 18, IntorpeQe wpbc rb b-viou pov), rendered
by Tyndale 'Avoid, Satan,' by the Ehemish, • Avaunt, Satan,' is strangely
enough rendered in our Version in two different ways, 'Get thee hence, Satan,
in Matthew ; ' Get thee behind Me, Satan, ' in Luke. The words belong properly
only to the earlier, having been brought by transcribers to the later, Gospel,
from the text of which they are now omitted in the best critical editions.

THE TEMPTATION. 53
such only He could reply, to the last proposal of the
Tempter; to justify to the fearful name of 'Satan,' adver
sary, opposer of all good, which He has given him.
This He does from a word from the Scripture, to act in
direct disobedience to which that adversary would fain
have induced Him : 'for it is written, Thou shalt worship
the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve ' —
' written ' at Deut. vi. 13, and again at x. 20 ; cf. Rev.
xix. 10. Out of the mouth of the Son of God there
might have proceeded a two-edged sword of his own
(Rev. i. 16) ; but ' the sword of the Spirit ' which he
prefers to wield is again the written word ; even as armed
with this He comes victoriously forth from his third and
last encounter with the foe. ' Thou hast magnified thy
word above all thy name ' (Ps. cxxxviii. 2). ' Blessed is
he,' exclaims Bishop Andrews here, ' that has his quiver
full of such arrows.'
' Then the devil leaveth Him,' or, in the far more
noticeable words of St. Luke, marking two important
points which St. Matthew had passed over, 'And when
the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from
Him for a season.' We observe first the words, ' all the
temptation,' which we shall scarcely press too far, if we
infer from them that the three temptations just recorded,
with which our great Forerunner was assailed, embrace
the whole circle of human temptation, so that we have
here the evidence, to use Jackson's words, of ' Christ's
mastery over Satan at his three principal weapons.' These
' three principal weapons ' we are wont to express under
the three terms, the world, the flesh, and the devil;
answering, as has often been observed, to the three

54 THE TEMPTATION.
enumerated by St. John, ' the lust of the flesh, the lust
of the eyes, and the pride of life' (l John ii. 16).1 In
the suggested gratification of the appetite, contrary to the
will of God, was the temptation of the flesh; in the
proffered kingdoms with their glory, the temptation of
the world ; while, although all the temptations were from
the devil, yet that was especially the devilish temptation
which said to Him that in vain-glory and spiritual pride
He should cast Himself headlong from the pinnacle of the
temple; another 'son of the morning' (cf. Isai. xiv. 12),
but falling from a far higher height than any from which
ever his Tempter fell.
Nor should we fail further to observe the very note
worthy parallelism between this Temptation which Christ
surmounted in the desert and that other under which our
first parents succumbed in the garden. ' When the woman
saw ' (' through false spectacles of Satan's making,' as
Jackson adds) ' that the tree was good for food ' (the
solicitation of the flesh), ' and that it was pleasant to the
eyes' (the solicitation of the world),' and a tree to be desired
to make one wise' (the solicitation of the devil), ' she took
of the fruit thereof and did eat' (Gen. iii. 6). In that
first sin were the lineaments of every other sin, as in this
victory over temptation the lineaments, and very much
more than the lineaments, of every other victory.2
1 Augustine (in loc.) : Tria sunt ista, et nihil invenies unde tentatur
cupiditas humana nisi aut desiderio carnis, aut desiderio oculorum, aut
ambitione saeculi. Per ista tria tentatus est Dominus a diabolo. Cf. De
Vera Relig. 38.
2 See on this matter Gregory the Great, Horn. xvi. 2, 3 ; Aquinas (Sum.
Theol. 3a, qu. 41, art. 4) : Non dixisset Scriptura quod consummate omni
tentatione diabolus recessit ab illo, nisi in tribus praemissis esset omnium
materia delictorum ; quia causae tentationnm causae sunt cupiditatum, scilicet
carnis oblectatio, spes glorise, et aviditas potential Compare Jackson, Trea
tise of the Divine Essence and Attributes, vm. ii. 10

THE TEMPTATION. 55
Having thus ' ended all the temptation^ launched every
one of his fiery darts, and seen them every one fall
quenched and blunted to the ground, 'the devil leaveth
Him; for that word shall first be shewn true on the
Prince of the faithful, to which each one of his people
shall set afterwards his seal, ' Resist the devil, and he will
flee from you' (Jam. iv. 7). He 'leaveth Him,' but as
St. Luke is careful to add, 'for a season.' Room is left in
these words for a later assault, and it is in fact implied in
them that such a later assault was in reserve and should
in due time arrive. Nor can we be in any doubt in re
gard of the period to which the sacred historian looks on ;
that, as one great Temptation signalized the opening of the
Saviour's ministry, so another should signalize its close,
the Temptation in the wilderness being followed in due
time and completed by the Temptation in the garden ;
even as the Lord Himself, whether looking backward or
not, yet certainly looking forward to that second Tempta
tion, when now it was close at hand, exclaimed, ' The
prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me'
(John xiv. 30) ; nothing, that is, on which he could lay
his finger, and claim it for his own.
The two wrestlings with the Evil One differed indeed
from one another, and so may be contrasted with one
another. Their difference consisted mainly in this, that
whereas in the first he brought to bear against the Lord
all things pleasant and flattering, if so he might by aid of
these entice or seduce Him from his obedience, in the
second he thought with other engines to overcome his
constancy, tried Him with all painful things, as before with
1 Completa omni tentatione illecebrosd, is Augustine's significant limitation
of these words (De Trin. iv. 1 3).

56 THE TEMPTATION.
all pleasurable, hoping to terrify, if it might be, from
his allegiance to the truth, Him whom manifestly he
could not allure. In Augustine's words, having tried
the door of desire, and found that closed, he tried after
wards, and with the same unsuccessful issues, the door of
fear ; the second Temptation of the garden dividing itself,
like that of the wilderness, into three acts following close
on one another (Matt. xxvi. 44). And the same illustrious
teacher goes on to urge that as it was with the Captain
of our salvation, so also it must be with every one of those
who fight under his banner. They too shall need to
tread under foot both the lion and the adder, to resist,
that is, now a threatening, now a flattering, world. In
deed, it was with the very purpose of teaching them how
they should do all this, that He Himself also suffered
being tempted.1 Jeremy Taylor adds another reason
why for our sakes our blessed Lord should have accom
plished all the temptation; namely, that keeping this in
remembrance, none hereafter, because they were greatly
tempted, should therefore misdoubt of the divine love.
' The holy Spirit did drive Jesus into the wilderness to be
tempted by the devil. And though we are bound to pray
instantly that we fall into no temptation, yet if, by divine
permission, or by an inspiration of the holy Spirit, we be
engaged in an action or course of life that is full of
temptation and empty of comfort; let us apprehend it as
an issue of divine providence, as an occasion of the
rewards of diligence and patience, as an instrument of
virtue, as a designation of that way in which we must
glorify God; but no argument of disfavour, since our
1 Augustine (Serm. cxxii. 2) : Ad hoc enim pugnat Iinperator, ut milites
discant.

THE TEMPTATION. 5-
dearest Lord, the most holy Jesus, who could have driven
the devil away by the breath of his mouth, yet was by
the Spirit of his Father permitted to a trial and molesta
tion by the spirit of darkness.'1
' And behold, angels came and ministered unto Him ' —
that is, to the Son of man, to the second Adam ; even as
in Jewish legend they are said to have danced before the
first Adam on the day of his creation.2 It could not
indeed be said that they were here fulfilling that office
which in the Epistle to the Hebrews is ascribed to them, ,
as ' ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who
shall be heirs of salvation ' (i. 14) ; for here was not one
of these ' heirs of salvation,' but the very Author of this
salvation to all others. We have in like manner an
angel appearing to Him and strengthening Him in another
great hour of his temptation (Luke xxii. 43). It is pro
bable that on this occasion they brought food (cf. 1 Kin.
xix. 5) ; the word of the original (hivixovovv) may imply
as much ; and that word, ' Man did eat angels' food ' (Ps.
Ixxviii. 25), may have thus received its highest fulfilment;
nor less may they have celebrated with songs of triumph
this transcendant victory of the kingdom of light over the
kingdom of darkness. So much the Christian poet of our
age has suggested :
' Nor less your lay of triumph greeted fair
Oar Champion and your King,
In that first strife whence Satan in despair
Sank down on scathed wing ;

1 Life of Christ, part 1, sect. 9, § 7.
* See Eisenmenger, Entdecht. Judenth. vol. ii. p. 17. The Mahometans
have borrowed this legend from the Jews,

? 8 THE TEMPTATION.
Alone He fasted, and alone He fought;
But when his toils were o'er,
Ye to the sacred Hermit duteous brought
Banquet and hymn, your Eden's festal store.'

A few words in conclusion. It is nothing wonderful
that the endeavours should have been many, to explain
away the Temptation, to exhaust it of its supernatural
element, and so to reduce it to the level of an occurrence
explicable by the laws habitually at work around us and
within us. Now, if our Lord's life had been itself such
an occurrence, it would be certainly perplexing to find a
fragment of wonder such as this is, intruding into the
midst of that life ; nor would the instinct be unnatural,
which, as it every where desires moral harmony and
keeping, should endeavour in some way or another to get
rid of an event, out of all such harmony and keeping with
the other events of that life. But if the manifestation of
the Son of God in the flesh be itself the wonder of all
wonders, then that this should be surrounded by a group
of secondary wonders, that there should be nothing
common in his life, or, to speak more accurately, very
much altogether uncommon, this might have been ex
pected beforehand. What would indeed be startling and
perplexing would be the absence of every thing super
natural from such a life — the fact that He whose name is
Wonderful (Isai. ix. 6) should have fallen at once into
the common course and order of things, and never either
by what He did, or what was done in respect of Him,
have testified that there was any difference between Him
self and the other children of men. Those, however, who
will not be satisfied until the light which falls upon the
earthly path of our Lord, and lights it up with a glory not

THE TEMPTATION. 59
of earth, has for them faded into the light of common day,
have been very busy with this history ; and that for a
long time past ; for it is quite a mistake to suppose that
the attempts to explain away the Temptation into a
dream, or a vision, or a parable, or an inner conflict, or
an encounter with a tempter of flesh and blood, into any
thing in short but that which on its face it announces
itself to be, are of very recent origin, and belong exclu
sively to the neology of later years. It is abundantly
evident that the Scriptural theologians of the seventeenth
and beginning of the eighteenth century had earnestly
to resist attempts which in their time also were rife, to
reduce the Temptation to an every day occurrence.1
Thus for some the Temptation is a vision. The
explanation is untenable. It is manifest that the sacred
historians did not mean to relate this event as a vision.
When they have to tell of such, they make quite clear
what they intend (Acts ix. 12 ; x. 3, 10 ; xi. 5 ; xviii. 9 ;
xxii. 17) ; and, which goes still more directly to the root-
of the matter, no one can accept this explanation without
implicitly renouncing the Church's faith concerning her
Saviour and her Head. Christ had no visions ; it lay in
the necessity of his divine nature that He should have
none. There was never a door opened in heaven (Rev.
iv. 1) for Him, before whom the heavenly world lay
always manifest and bare (John v. 19, 20). He could
not be at one time or another ' in the Spirit ' (Rev. i. 10),
who was always in the Spirit ; the higher spiritual world
being no strange element, into which He was rapt at
1 It needs only to refer in proof to Wolf, Cures Philol. vol. i. p. 66, and
the many treatises which he enumerates there, from whose titles it is plain
that in his time the matter was in eager debate.

60 THE TEMPTATION.
intervals (2 Cor. xii. 21), but his permanent abiding place.
He had no special communications or revelations from
his Father, inasmuch as his whole life was one of entire
and unbroken intercommunion with Him (John v. 17,
19). Even those which might appear such special com
munications directed to Himself, are carefully explained
to have another motive and reason : ' This voice came
not because of Me, but for your sakes ' (John xii. 30 ;
cf. xi. 41, 42). Massillon speaks very grandly in words
quoted below (they are found in a sermon On the Divinity
of our Lord), on this absence of all rapture on the part
of the Son of God ; shows that it was a necessary conse
quence of his Divinity that He should never at any
moment of his life be borne out of Himself, as were the
prophets of the Old, and, though more rarely, the apostles
and others of the New, Dispensation (Acts x. 10 ; xi. 5 ;
xxii. 17 ; 2 Cor. xii. 2, 4; Rev. i. io).1 The idea alike of
the vision and of the trance or ecstasy is that of a depres
sion or partial suspension of the actings of the lower life,
so to prepare for a better reception of impressions or
communications from a higher world ; the setting of the
garish sun of this world, that the pure stars of a heavenly

1 Nos prophetes eux-memes annoncant les choses futures, sans perdre
l'usage de la raison, ni sortir de la gravite" et de la deeence de leur ministere,
entraient dans un enthousiasme divin ; il fallait souvent que le son d'une
lyre reveillat en eux 1'esprit prophetique : on sentait bien qu'une impulsion
e"trangere les animait, et que ce n'etait pas de leur propre fonds qu'ils tiraient
la science de l'avenir, et les mysteres caches qu'ils annongaient aux homines.
Jesus-Christ prophetise comme il parle ; la science de l'avenir n'a rien qui
le frappe, qui le trouble, qui le surprenne, parcequ'il renferme tous les temps
dans son esprit ; les mysteres futurs qu'il annonce, ne sont point dans son
ame des lumieres soudaines et infuses qui l'eblouissent ; ce sont des objets
familiers qu'il ne perd jamais de vue, et dont il trouve les images au-dedans
de lui ; et tous les siecles a venir sont sous l'immensite de ses regards
comme le jour present qui nous eclaire.

THE TEMPTATION. 61
firmament may appear.1 But in Christ this could have
been never needed ; in whom existed at all times a per
fect balance and harmony of all faculties and powers ; in
whom there was no predominance of the lower, which
could at any instant obscure or "stand in the way of the
perfect actings of the higher.
The same objection, only in a greater degree, forbids
an explaining of the Temptation as a dream, which, in
deed, is only a subordinate kind of vision ; namely that it
is impossible to reconcile it with the idea of the Son of
God. Even servants of God, who have made any con
siderable advances in the spiritual life, are seldom com
municated with in this manner. Rather the dream is the
channel of communication with the heathen, with an
Abimelech (Gen. xx. 3), a Laban (Gen. xxxi. 24), a Nebu
chadnezzar (Dan. ii. 1 ; iv. 5), a Pilate's wife (Matt, xxvii.
19), with the wise men from the East (Matt. ii. 12) ; or
with others who, standing higher than these, yet in the
measure of their spiritual attainments fall very far below
the more eminent saints of God, a Solomon for instance
(1 Kin. iii. 5) ; and it is expressly brought out as part of
the dignity of Moses, that while God spoke, and made
Himself known to other and inferior prophets by visions
or dreams, He spoke mouth to mouth with him (Num.
xii. 5-8 ; Deut. xxxiv. 10) .2 How much more then would
there belong to the Son of God at every moment the
perfect clearness of waking vision. Indeed all mental
1 Augustine (De Div. Qumst. ii. qu. 1) defines an ecstasy, Mentis
alienatio a sensibus corporis, ut spiritus hominis divino Spiritu assumptus
capiendis atque intuendis imaginibus vacet.
2 See J. Smith, Select Discourses,^. 169, 254, for an interesting account,
bearing on this very matter, of what the Jewish Doctors called the gradiaa
Mosaicus of prophecy, and its superiority over all other.

62 THE TEMPTATION.
illusions of every kind were so far from Him that I must
needs esteem it a mistake when in Paradise Regained
Milton makes Him to dream of feasts in his hunger in
the wilderness.
Another attempt to empty the Temptation of its mys
terious element was made in the seventeenth century,
and taken up in the beginning of our own by Paulus
and by others. They saw in the Tempter here a
mortal man, an emissary from the Sanhedrim, or pos
sibly the High Priest himself, who would fain try of what
metal this youthful prophet from Galilee, to whom the
Baptist had just borne such glorious witness, was made,
and whether he might not be seduced and bribed into the
service of the old corrupt theocracy ; instead of witnessing
against it and its ministers, as the examples of the earlier
prophets and many perilous indications in the Baptist's
career, made too probable would be the course He would
take.1 This cannot need more than to be stated and left.
Unbelief has its cast-off garments, of which even itself is
now ashamed, and this is of them.
The suggestion of others that the Temptation was a
conflict on our Lord's part with no outward but an in
ward foe, with the solicitations of appetite, of ambition, of
worldliness, which, born in his own mind, sought to draw
Him away from the narrow and painful path appointed
for his treading, is equally untenable, and this for reasons
which have been stated already ; namely that it is directly
contrary to the idea of a Saviour, who as such must be
a Holy One, and this absolutely and completely, that
thoughts soliciting to evil should have thus spontaneously
See Spanheim, Dub. Evang. 51.

THE TEMPTATION. 63
risen up within Him. Christ could be tempted only
from without ; not from within.1 Coming as He did, not
in this sinful flesh of ours, to which evil is native, and
in which it inevitably rises up, but coming, as the apostle
expressly tells us, 'in the likeness of sinful flesh' (Rom.
viii. 3), where the 'likeness' is plainly introduced to
qualify the ' sinful,' for with the flesh itself He had not
likeness, but identity (1 John iv. 2 ; John i. 14), evil could
in no other way be present to Him.2
One more proposed explanation will complete the list.
All the foregoing ones, if they are not really reconcil
able with the sacred narrative, are yet presented by their
advocates as being so. They have none of them avowedly
cast off allegiance to the Word of God, as that within the
limits of which they must move, and by which they must
submit to be tried. But there are who withdraw from
this narrative all real historic foundation whatever, who
see only a mythus here ; that is, who see in this victorious
encounter of the Prince of Light with the prince of dark
ness a portion of that fabulous halo of glory with which
the infant Church encircled the head of its Founder; not
thereby meaning to deceive ; but unconsciously giving an
outward shape and subsistance to the hopes, yearnings,
expectations, and desires, which filled its heart as to what
1 There is an essay by Gelbrieht (I have never seen it), An male de animo
Jesu sentiendum sit si b neipa^uv iv t% ipi/pu Christus ipse, i. e. mentis ipsius
cogitata fuerint t Alteb. 1 8 1 5. How the writer answers the question which
he thus puts I do not know. How he ought to have answered it, there can
be no doubt. Ullmann (Sundlosigkeit Jesu, 5th edit., p. 116 sqq.) answers it
in the negative, does his best to show that the absolute sinlessness of the
Saviour is not brought into question by the admitting of such an explana
tion of the Temptation, but in this fails altogether.
2 Augustine (Serm. clxxxiii. 8) Misit Deus Filium suum non in simili-
tudinem carnis, quasi caro non esset caro, sed in similitudinem carnis peccati,
quia caro erat, sed peccati caro non erat.

64 THE TEMPTATION.
the Messiah ought to be, and therefore what He must have
actually been. Strauss1 ingeniously gathers up the Old
Testament preparations for the growth of such a mythus
as this, the rudiments of it which we may trace there ; as
that Moses and Elijah had both fasted their forty days ;
that Israel, the collective son of God, as Christ was the
personal Son, had been tempted forty years in the wilder
ness, with much more of the same kind.2 This must stand
or fall with the whole mythical scheme of the Gospel;
and it would be lost labour to undertake its refutation
here. Only I will observe that the nearest real parallel
to our Lord's Temptation which the Old Testament
actually offers, he has not referred to. It is furnished
by the history of Solomon (i Kin. iii. 5-15). The resem
blance, indeed, is only a remote one ; yet assuredly it was
a temptation, when the Lord, appearing to the youthful
king, and offering to him what he would, gave him the
opportunity of choosing riches or long life in place of the
heavenly wisdom, if so he had been inclined. At the
same time in his case, as one comparatively weak in all
the actings of the spiritual life, the temptation came from
God and not from Satan, and did not therefore concen
trate in itself the whole power of temptation.
The mythic parallel which meets us in heathendom,
although wanting an historic basis, and thus only painted
as upon a cloud, is much nearer — that, I mean, of
Hercules, when at the beginning of his course he beheld
before him the two ways, of pleasure, and of toil, and
was severally solicited to walk in the one and in the other.
And the parallel will be felt to be closer, if only we will
1 Leben Jesu, 1837, vol. i. p. 471 sqq.
' Compare Gfrorer, Das Jahrhundert des Heils, vol. ii. p, 379-387.

THE TEMPTATION. 65
keep in mind that heroic character of his life and work,
which many of the later legends about him have done
so much to obscure, substituting mere strength and
animal good-nature in its room. It was not thus that he
was conceived at the first ; but rather as the man who in
a noble devotedness to his fellows girded himself up to
undergo all labours and to affront all dangers for their
sakes. Buttmann in his interesting essay upon Herakles1
seeks to prove that this ' Temptation of Hercules ' is not a
later addition to the legend, which we owe to the sophist
Prodicus, but lay in the heart, and belonged to the original
stuff, of the my thus. And since it is certain that any man
who has ever wrought, or who is conceived as having
wrought, anything deserving of memory for his fellow-
men, could only have effected this by such a noble post
ponement of pleasure to duty, and that this postponement,
which acted itself perfectly out in the Son of God, must,
though in weaker forms, act itself out anew in every
champion of the truth, and can scarcely help coming to a
head at some turning point of his life, there is nothing
improbable in this supposition.
1 In the Mythologus, vol. i. p. 246 ; compare Pauly, Real-Encyclopadie,
vol. iii. p. 1 1 80.

66 THE CALLING OF

2. THE CALLING OF PHILIP AND
NATHAN AEL.
John i. 43-51.
We are told of Saul, that when 'he saw any strong
man, he took him unto him ' (l Sam. xiv. 22) ; and as
we read the catalogue of David's worthies (2 Sam. xxiii.
8-39), we may well believe that he in no other manner
filled the ranks of his host. And as these the ancient
kings, as Saul and as David, so too the Son of David, the
true King of Israel, wherever He saw any man ' fit for
the kingdom of God,' He claimed him for his own, ' took
him unto Him.' This He did not by any exercise of out
ward power, but by those secret attractions which draw
the brave to a braver, the noble to one noblest of all.
In this first burst of his ministry, his triumphs in this
kind rapidly succeed one another. ' The day following,'
following, that is, the day on which He enlisted three of
the foremost among his future disciples, He makes two
more his own ; these also great ones, even though they
may not attain to the first three. On this day 'He would
go forth into Galilee ;' the words imply that He was
about to undertake the journey thither, but had not
actually begun it ; ' and findeth Philip.' The fact that
Philip, though born a Jew, for he should be one of the
twelve apostles of the Lamb, thus bears a Greek name,
and he is not the only apostle who does so, is a remark-

PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. 67
able illustration of the extent to which Galilee (' Galilee
of the Gentiles'), had been hellenized, penetrated through
and through with the customs and language of Greece.
It is well worthy of note how often this finding recurs in
this chapter ; Christ finding disciples as here ; disciples
finding each his friend, as at ver. 41, 45 ; and reporting
how they have at once been found by, and have them
selves found, the Messiah (ibid.). It is the chapter of
the Eurekas.
Thus finding Philip, He 'saith unto him, Follow Me!
This ' Follow Me ' might seem at first sight no more than
an invitation to accompany Him on that journey from
the banks of Jordan to Galilee, on which He was just
setting forward. It meant this (thus compare Matt. ix. 9 ;
Luke v. 27) ; but at the same time how much more. It
was an invitation to follow the blessed steps of his most
holy life (Matt. xvi. 24; John viii. 12 ; xii. 26; xxi. 19 ;
Rev. xiv. 4), to be a partaker at once of his cross and his
crown. How much of this Philip may have understood
at the moment it is impossible to say ; but whether mueh
or little, he is not disobedient to the heavenly calling.
No doubt he had been more or less prepared for it by
some accounts which he had obtained from his fellow-
townsmen Andrew and Peter, of what had passed between
them and the Lord on the day preceding. As much is
intimated by the Evangelist in his mention exactly at this
point of his narrative, that 'Philip was of Bethsaida, the
city of Andrew and Peter,' a fact which at once ac
counted for the acquaintance into which he had been
brought with all which had passed between them and the
Lord. But Philip, being himself thus ' masterfast ' — if it be

F 2

68 THE CALLING OF
permitted to revive a word which with others of a similar
termination, as 'rootfast,' 'shamefast,' 'bedfast,' did useful
service in the language once1 — cannot be content till he
has introduced his friend into the glorious liberty of the
same service with himself, until he has done what in him
lies to make his friend a sharer of his treasure and his
joy. It could not be otherwise ; for if in one sense this
treasure of the kingdom of heaven is one, ' which when
a man hath found, he hideth' (Matt. xiii. 44), in another
sense it is one which will not let him rest till he has made
others partakers of the same. ' Philip findeth Nathanael,2
and saith unto him, We have found Him of tvhom Moses
in the Law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth,
the son of Joseph.' There is error and imperfection still
cleaving to his own knowledge. In all likelihood Naza
reth was at this time for him the birthplace of the Lord
—not an unimportant error, though slight as compared
to that which ' son of Joseph ' would have involved, had
he held fast to it after better teaching, had it belonged to
any other than the rudimentary period of his faith.
Strangely enough De Wette and others have argued
from these words, thus faithfully recording the first im
pressions of Philip, his imperfect theology, and the extent
to which partial error was mingling still with the truth
which he had learned, not that he at this time, but that
St. John when he composed his Gospel, either knew
nothing of the birth at Bethlehem and the miraculous
Conception, or gave no credit to them. The fact is that
' It appears in Skelton, The Paston Letters, and elsewhere.
2 The name, which corresponds to our Theodore (Gift of God), occurs in
the Old Testament. A Nethaneel is prince of the tribe of Issachar (Num.
i. 8) ; one too of David's elder brothers bears this name (i Chron. ii. 14) ;
and eight other Nethaneels are mentioned there.

PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. 69
St. John, as a truthful narrator, records not what Philip,
if at that time he had been better instructed, ought to
have said, but what in that twilight of his knowledge he
actually did say ; even as it is not in the least wonderful
that in one brief interview he had not become acquainted
with the most secret and mysterious events in the life of
his future Lord ; events of which even apostles themselves
only obtained gradual glimpses, as they were able to bear
them. The partial error which clave to Philip's faith did
not hinder him from grasping that central truth which
in good time would detach from itself whatever, not of
its own nature, was cleaving to it. He is sure that this
whom they have found is He ' of whom Moses in the Law '
(see Gen. iii. 15; xlix. 10; Num. xxiv. 17, 19; Deut.
xviii. 15-19) 'and the prophets' (see 2 Sam. vii. 12-16;
2 Sam. xxiii. 1-7; Isai. vii. 14; ix. 6 ; liii. ; Ezek. xxxiv.
23-31)' ' did write.'
One weak point in Philip's statement, one apparent
flaw in the credentials of the Messiah whom he announces,
Nathanael detects at once; for indeed his objection, ' Can
there any good thing come out of Nazareth ? ' contains
more than a reference to the general low esteem and
disrepute in which Nazareth was held (Matt. ii. 23), the
unlikelihood therefore that aught preeminently good
would come forth from it. The difficulty which he feels,
and which in consistency with his guileless character he
at once expresses, is the same as theirs who somewhat
later objected, ' Shall Christ come out of Galilee ? Hath
not the Scripture said that Christ cometh out of the town
of Bethlehem, where David was ?' (John vii. 41, 42 ; cf.
ver. 52) ; the difference between him and those other
gainsayers being, that he gladly dismisses his difficulty

70 THE CALLING OF
yearning as he does to believe ; while they gladly cling
and hold fast to theirs, exempting them, as it seems to do,
from the unwelcome necessity of believing. This ' good
thing,' which Nathanael is persuaded that Nazareth cannot
yield, must be understood as that one ' good thing,' that
' gift of 'God' (John iv. lo),in which all other good things
are included ; and is a distinct reference on the part of
one not probably unversed in the prophecies which
went before of Christ, to the clear fore-announcing in
them that Messiah's going forth in time should not be
from Galilee, therefore not from Nazareth, but from
Bethlehem in Judaea (Mic. v. 2).
Philip's ' Come and see,' which is all the reply he makes
to the objection of his friend, is manifestly an echo of
Christ's ' Come and see ' of the day preceding (ver. 39).
That immediate personal intercourse which had proved
so effectual in the case of Andrew and another (Philip, as
has been noted already, had no doubt heard from his
fellow-townsmen how they had been won for the truth),
shall not prove less effectual in the case of Nathanael. It
was a wise answer then, and is often a wise one now.
The highest heavenly things are in their nature incapable
of being uttered in words, and ' Come and see, come and
make proof of them,' is sometimes the only true reply to
difficulties about them, an indication of the only effectual
way by which those difficulties shall be removed. There
are truths in the heavenly world which, like the sun in
the natural world, can only be seen by their own light ;
which in no other way will be seen at all. Philip has a
confidence which the result abundantly justified, that in
that holy presence, if only he could bring his friend
within the range of its influence, all preconceived objec-

PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. 71
tions would dissolve and disappear. Perplexities might
still remain, but he would be content to adjourn the
solution of them to a later day, which indeed is what faith
is summoned to do evermore.
He who ' knoweth the proud afar off, his eyes are also
on the faithful of the land that they may dwell with Him
(Ps. ci. 6) ; and in Nathanael He recognizes at once one
of these. Him therefore He prevents with that word of
highest praise, saying, not to him, but yet of him, and
intending that he should hear, ' Behold an Israelite indeed,
in whom is no guile! ' An Israelite indeed] Nathanael
pertained not only to that Israel after the flesh of which
St. Paul speaks (1 Cor. x. 18), but to the ' Israel of God '
(Gal. vi. 16), which the apostle is so careful to distinguish
from it ; a Jew not outwardly, but inwardly (Rom. ii. 28, 29 ;
ix. 6; Phil. iii. 3); in whom this name of highest honour
was not merely a name, or worse than this, a contradic
tion of all which he truly was (Rev. iii. 9) ; but who ful
filled in his innermost life all whereof that name was the
promise and the pledge. 'Israelite' was the title which
on many accounts the Jew was best pleased to bear.
There were others who were Abraham's seed as well as
he ; the Ishmaelite and the Edomite ; but ' Israelite ' was a
title exclusively his own. And then too it was the theo
cratic title (Acts ii. 22 ; iii. 12 ; v. 34 ; xiii. 16 ; Rom. ix. 4 ;
xi. 1 ; 2 Cor. xi. 22) ; a record of the glorious achievements
of their forefather. Jacob ; a name which he had won from
God Himself, when by faith and prayer he had prevailed
even with Him (Gen. xxxii. 28). He who knew what
was in man declares of Nathanael that he is a true
descendant of this Israel ; not of Jacob merely ; for in
Jacob, the supplanter, there was guile : it was indeed the

¦jz THE CALLING OF
most marked fault and failing of his character (Gen. xxvii.,
xxx. 37-43; xxxi. 20), until that character had been
ennobled and elevated by a divine discipline, till he had
struggled out of Jacob into Israel (Gen. xxxii. 24-32 ;
Hos. xii. 4).
At the same time this absence of guile which Christ
imputes to Nathanael must not be pressed too far. This
guileless nature is as the kindly soil in which all excellent
graces will flourish (Luke iii. 21 ; viii. 15; x. 6) ; but does
not do away with the necessity of the divine seed, out of
which alone they can spring. He who is ' without guile '
is not therefore without sin ; this, at least, could only be
asserted of One (1 Pet. ii. 2) ; but rather he is one who
seeks no cloke for his sin ; does not excuse, palliate, hide,
diminish, or deny it. Being a sinner, he confesses it, and
thus finds pardon for the sin which he confesses. So
David had declared long ago (Ps. xxxii. 1, 2) ; to whose
words Christ is probably here distinctly referring.1
Some have enquired, How did the Lord know of Na
thanael that he was this true Israelite which He here
avouches him to be ? Was it from any previous familiar
ity ? It may have been so in part. He who knew what
instruments He would need for the work which He was
meditating, may before this have seen in Nathanael, or
heard about him, what gave Him assurance that there were
fitnesses in him for a future disciple, perhaps for a future

1 Augustine (in loc.) has excellent observations : Quid est, in quo dolus
non est? Forte non habebat peccatum? forte non erat aeger? forte illi
medicus non erat necessarius ? Absit. Nemo hie sic natus est ut illo medico
non egeret. ... Si dolus in isto non erat, sanabilem ilium medicus judicavit,
non sanum ; . . . videt istum sanabilem quia dolus in isto non erat. Quo-
modo dolus in illo non erat ? Si peccator est, fatetur se peccatorem esse.
Si enim peccator est, et justum se dicit, dolus est in ore ipsius.

PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. 73
apostle, even for one of the twelve foundation stones of
the Heavenly Jerusalem. Yet there is not the slightest
necessity for assuming such a previous acquaintance.
Christ read, as often as He needed to read, not merely
the present thoughts, but also so much as He desired of
the past histories, of those who came in contact with Him ;
and this He did not merely by that natural divination, that
art of looking through countenances into souls, interpreting
the inner life from the outward bearing, which all men in
a greater or less degree possess, and He doubtless in the
largest measure of all (Isai. xi. 3); but ' in his spirit ' (Mark
ii. 8), by the exercise of that divine power, which was
always in Him, though not always active in Him. It was
thus, for example, that He read the life-story of that
Samaritan woman (John iv. 17, 18; cf. v. 14); where it
is impossible to presume a previous acquaintance ; it was
thus far most probably in the instance before us.
This simplicity or absence of folds, this guilelessness or
absence of deceit, which the Lord imputes to Nathanael,
reveals itself in his reply, ' Whence knowest Thou me?'
There is no affectation here of declining the praise ; no
seeming to consider it as a compliment which he does not
rightly deserve ; but only a question of admiration how the
Lord should have known him so exactly, and declared
him so truly. And then in proof that this was no happy
guess, no random arrow which, shot at a venture, had yet
hit the mark, the Lord refers him to some circumstance
which we do not exactly know, but which Nathanael
entirely understood : ' Before that Philip called thee, when
thou wast under the figtree, I saw thee! The mere sitting
of an Israelite under his figtree was of itself too common
an occurrence (1 Kin. iv. 25; Mic. iv. 4; Zech. iii. 10)

74 THE CALLING OF
to yield such a sign. It is plain that our Lord must here
refer to some passage, outward or inward, in Nathanael's
life, most probably inward and spiritual, some earnest
prayer, some great mental struggle, the overcoming, it
may be, of some strong temptation, which under that fig-
tree had lately found place ; immediately, as it would
seem, before Philip had found him, and invited him to
Jesus ; for that call too the Lord declares to be known to
Him ; known therefore as well, though not imputed, the
slighting words with which Nathanael at first received
the invitation. Now however he makes altogether good
that hasty speech which he uttered then. This word of
Christ is enough ; he feels as the Psalmist, ' 0 Lord,
Thou hast searched me and known me ; Thou compassest
my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all
my ways' (Ps. cxxxix. l, 3); feels that He before whom he
stands is a searcher of hearts ; and at once that full and
free confession of faith, which only the confessions of Peter
(Matt. xvi. 16), of Martha (John xi. 27), and of Thomas
(John xx. 28), all those too at much later periods of Christ's
ministry, matched or surpassed, ' Rabbi, Thou art the Son
of God, Thou art the King of Israel,' breaks forth from his
lips. A word or two upon each of these ascriptions, being as
they are, the first an acknowledgment of the dignity of
Christ's person, the second of the greatness of his office.1
And first, ' Thou art the Son of God! We do not here
suppose for an instant that Nathanael, giving this title to
the Lord, intended by it all which the Nicene Fathers
intended, and which we intend, by the same; and yet
' Bengel : Confessio de persona et officio Christi.

PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. 75
nothing less was wrapped up in that title, to be unfolded
from it in due time. And it meant much, even on Natha
nael's lips, and was no mere language of honour uttered
at random. How much it meant we may clearly perceive
from the active opposition, the earnest hostility, which this
title awoke on the part of the Scribes and Pharisees, as
often as the Lord implicitly or explicitly claimed it as his
own (John v. 18; x. 30-39). But however these may
have denied the superhuman character of Messiah, there
were enough glimpses of this in the Old Testament to
explain how as many as had searched more deeply into it,
or whose vision was less obscured and distorted by pre
conceived prejudices, should have recognized in Him one
who was partaker of the divine nature, and therefore ' the
Son of God! It is sufficient to refer to Ps. ii. 7, 12;
Isai. ix. 6. We are then justified in ascribing nothing
short of such a recognition to Nathanael.
And the words which follow, ' Thou art the King of
Israel] words in which the ' Israelite ' accepts, owns, and
does homage to Israel's king, avouches himself a subject
of his,1 amount very nearly to the same thing. He who
said in that second Psalm, ' Kiss the Son lest He be angry '
(ver. 12), said also of the same, 'Yet have I set my King
upon my holy hill of Zion ' (ver. 6 ; cf. Zeph. iii. 15 ; Isai.
ix. 7 ; Jer. xxiii. 5, 6). In all these passages the identity
of Israel's King and Israel's God is plainly involved ; and
the same looks plainly out from many other prophecies
concerning the Messiah, as eminently from the 72nd Psalm.

1 Lampe: Et quia testimonium quod Jesus ei tanquam vero Israelites
exhibuerat, conscientia bona fretus admiserat, hinc sigillatim suum nomen
inter subditos hujus regni profitetur, ac Jesu tanquam suo legitimo Eegi in
obsequium se addicit.

76 THE CALLING OF
But to him that hath shall be given. He who hears
and believes shall one day walk not by faith, but by sight.
Thus shall it fare with Nathanael. ' Jesus answered and
said unto Mm, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under
the figtree, oelievest thou t Thou shalt see greater things
than these. And He saith unto him, Verity, verily, I say
wnto yoio, Hereafter shall ye see heaven open, and the angels
of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man!1
This ' Verily, verily] this double amen, which here occurs
for the first time, is peculiar to St. John ; he only records
our Lord's use of it, but he on very many occasions. It
comes most fitly from the lips of Him, who is Himself the
1 This is the first occasion in the recorded Evangelical history upon which
our Lord used and applied to Himself the name of ' Son of man.' Bengel's
note on this phrase is a wonderful specimen of the close packing of matter
the most interesting and the most important in his Gnomon. There are
materials in this note which it would not be very difficult to expand into a
volume. I quote a part: Frequens apud Evangelistas et diligentissime
observanda est haec nomenclatura, qua nemo nisi solus Christus, a nemine
dum Ipse in terris ambularet nisi a semetipso, appellitatus est Filing hominis.
Primum Joh. i. 52, ut primum reperti fuere qui Eum Messiam et Filium
Dei (ibid. ver. 50) agnoscerent ; et deinceps saspissime, ante praedictionem
passionis et post. Nam ab iis qui fidem in Ipsum suscipiebant, dictus est
Filius David. Eecte suspicati sunt Judaei, ea designari Messiam (Joh.
xii. 34). Nam ut Adamus primus cum tota progenie dicitur Homo, sic
Adamus secundus (1 Cor. xv. 45) dicitur Filius hominis ; non ea notione
qua filii hominis, id est tenues, opponuntur filiis viri, id est potentibus
(Ps. xlix. 3), quave homines communiter dicuntur filii hominum (Marc.
iii. 28; Ephes. iii. 5; Ezek. ii. 1, et passim), sed cum articulo b vlbg tov
avQptmov. Videtur articulus respicere prophetiam, Dan. vii. 13. Unus hie
nempe homo est, quem Adamus, post lapsum, ex promissione expectavit pro
tota sua, progenie ; 6 Sevrepog, secundus (1 Cor. xv. 47), quem omnis prophetia
Veteris Testamenti indigitavit, qui totius generis hu-mani jura et primogeni-
turam sustinet (Luc. iii. 23, 38) et cui uni, quod bumani nominis nos non
poeniteat (Ps. xlix. 21), debemus (Eom. v. 15). Porro hac appellatione
Christus, inter homines ambulans, et expressit et pro oeconomia illius
temporis occultavit (cf. Matt. xxii. 45) inter homines, et Satanam celavit,
se esse tov Tlbv, Filium absolute dictum, id est Filium Dei, promissum
datumque homini (Gen. iii. 15; Isai. ix. 6), ortumque ex homine (Heb.
ii. 11), perinde uti uno exaltationis vocabulo et crucem et glorificationem
suam insignivit (Joh. xii. 32).

PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. 77
Amen (Rev. iii. 14), the God of truth (Isai. lxv. 16), in
whom all the promises of God are Yea and in whom
Amen (2 Cor. i. 19 ; cf. Num. v. 22 ; Neh. viii. 6). How
different too the majestic, 'I say unto you,' of Christ from
that, ' Thus saith the Lord,' of all the prophets preceding —
they bearers of the word of another, He the utterer of his
own. In the promise itself with which the Lord rewards the
commencing faith of Nathanael (cf. Ezek. i. 1 ; Matt. iii. 6 ;
Acts vii. 55 ; x. 11) we are at once, as by almost all ex
positors ancient and modern is admitted, thrown back
upon that wondrous ladder which Jacob saw, reaching
from earth to heaven, with the Lord at the summit, and
angels of God ascending and descending upon it (Gen.
xxviii. 12) -1 What Israel saw, the true ' Israelite ' shall
behold the same f yea what one saw but in dream, the
other shall behold in waking reality; and more and
better even than this ; for then God was a God afar off;
the Lord stood above the ladder and spake from heaven ;

1 Witsius indeed (Melct. Leid. p. 296) suggests that the reference here
may after all not be to this passage, as we all take for granted, but to
another : Non diffiteor interim fieri potuisse ut et alio respexerit Dominus.
Magnam aflinitatem cum hoc dicto habet Dan. vii. 13, 14, ubi Messias
vocatur Filius hominis, et reprsasentatur ut Filius Bei, veniens in nubibus
coeli ad Antiquum Dierum, additurque datum ei esse dominatum et regnum.
Quum itaque professus esset Nathanael Jesum esse Filium Dei et Eegem
Israelis, utrumque admittit Jesus, protestaturque se revera esse filium
hominis, de quo prophetaverit Daniel, quod manifestum futurum ipse prss-
nunciat ex insigni illo ministerio sibi ab angelis exhibendo. Nam sicut ad
majestatis divinse gloriam facit quod thronus Antiqui Dierum myriadibus
angelorum cinctus sit, ita et argumentum cselestis regni in filio hominis est,
quod iidem angeli ad ipsius nutum quaquaversum volent, adscendentes et
descendentes prout jusserit. This is certainly ingenious; but does not
shake one's conviction that the other and generally received allusion is the
true one.
2 Augustine (Serm. cxxii. 5) Quasi diceret, Cujus nomine te appellavi,
ipsius somnium in te apparebit. Of. Con. Faust, xii. 26. Grotius: Quod
ibi in somnio vidit Israel idem vigilans visurus dicitur verus Israelita.

78 THE CALLING OF
but now standing at its foot, He speaks as the Son of man
from earth, for now the Word has been made flesh ; and
the tabernacle of God is with men (Rev. xxi. 3).
At the same time there is that in this promise of Christ
which has at all times perplexed interpreters not a little.
This is plain from the omission of 'hereafter] or 'from
henceforth]1 in many Greek copies ; the absence of which,
however, while it might lighten, would not remove the
difficulty ; as again from various gratuitous suppositions,
as of some special, though unrecorded, vision of angels
vouchsafed to Philip and Nathanael. It appears not less
in the fact that several expositors, Augustine for instance
uniformly,2 explain away these ' angels ' into messengers of
the New Covenant, apostles and others, who should find
in Christ the middle point of all their spiritual activity —
going forth from Him, and returning to Him (Luke x. 1, 17) .
These all can only be regarded at the best as devices
for escaping such difficulties as this passage may offer, not
as methods of solving them. Equally unprofitable, and
leading as little to a true solution, are all those enquiries
as to whether this word of Christ's might not have
been fulfilled at the Baptism, when we are told that the
heavens were divided (Mark i. 10 ; cf. Ezek. i. 1), or at the
Temptation, when angels ministered to Him (Matt. iv. 11),
or at the time of the Agony, when an angel strengthened
Him (Luke xx. 43), or at some other moment when we
may presume angels in especially near communion with the
Lord. He who thus asks when this promise was fulfilled,
declares by the fact of making such an enquiry that he
1 'An-' apn, whieh some suppose to have found its way here from Matt,
xxvi. 64.
2 Con. Faust, xii. 26 ; Enarr. in Ps. xliv. 8 ; In Ev. Joh. Tract. 7.

PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. 79
has failed to enter into the meaning of the promise. We
can select no single moment as that in which it found its
fulfilment, because it was being fulfilled evermore.
Assuredly the Lord would indicate by these wondrous
words that He should henceforward be the middle point
of a free intercourse, yea, of an uninterrupted communion,
between God and men; that in Him should be the
meeting place of heaven and of earth (Ephes. i. 10;
Col. i. 19) ; which should be no longer two, as sin had
made them, separated and estranged from one another,
but one, now that righteousness had looked down from
heaven, and truth had flourished out of the earth.1 And
this the glory of Christ they, his disciples, should behold,
and should understand that they too, children of men,
were by Him, the Son of man, made citizens of a kingdom
which, not excluding earth, embraced also heaven. From
earth there should go up evermore supplications, aspira
tions, prayers, — and these by the ministration of angels
(Rev. viii. 3, 4), if some still want a certain literal fulfil
ment ; — from heaven there should evermore come down
graces, blessings, gifts, aid to the faithful and punishment

1 Calvin on this point says well: Multum autem errant meo judicio qui
anxie quaerunt tempus et locum, ubi et quando Nathanael et reliqui ccelum
apertum viderint. Potius enim quiddam continuum designat, quod semper
extare debebat in ejus regno. Fateor quidem aliquoties discipulis visos
fuisse angelos, qui hodie non apparent; . . . sed si probe reputemus quod
tunc factum est, perpetuo viget. Nam quum prius clausum esset regnum Dei,
vere in Ohristo apertum fuit. Chemnitz (Harm. Evang. c. 25) : Docet
igitur Christus, officium suum esse caelum aperire, et caelestia rursus con-
jungere cum genere humano, quod per peccatum et a Deo et a Sanctis
angelis avulsum fuerat. It is very noticeable that the only occasion on
which that phrase of depth and meaning inexhaustible, namely, ' the king
dom of God ' (paatleia tov deov), occurs either in the Old Testament or the
Apocrypha, it is with a manifest allusion to Jacob's dream, in which dream,
vouchsafed to the patriarch, it is said, ' Wisdom shewed him the hingdom of
God' (Wisd. x. 10).

80 THE CALLING OF
for them that would hurt them (Rev. viii. 5; Acts xii. 7, 23).
Heaven and earth should henceforward be in continual
interchange of these blessed angels,
' And earth be changed to heaven, and heaven to earth ;
One kingdom, joy and union without end : '
the Son of man, Jesus of Nazareth, being the central
point in which these two kingdoms met,1 the golden clasp
which bound them indissolubly together.2 And so it is
only according to the right order that these angels should
be described as first ascending, and only then descending ;
when we might rather have anticipated that they would
have descended first, and ascended afterwards. The
order of priority here can only be rightly understood,
when we lift ourselves above all notions of space or room
or of a local heaven. The angels needed not to come
down on the Son of man, before they went up from Him;
but where He was, there were they. The person of the
Son of man was, so to speak, the point of starting for
them ; and because the Lord here contemplates Himself
not as in heaven but on earth, they therefore ascend first,
and only afterwards descend.3
1 Calvin: Ideo super ipsum ascendere et descendere dicuntur: non quod
illi soli ministrent, sed quod ejus respectu atque in ejus honorem complect-
antur sua cura totum Ecclesiae corpus.
2 The heathen parallel to this of Jacob's ladder, thus binding heaven and
earth together, — that which is, as it were, a feeling after this glorious union
which Christ here at once proclaims and constitutes, — is the golden chain by
which poets feigned that this earth of ours was linked to the throne of
Zeus. 1 Plato in a beautiful passage (Symp. 23) describes the middle powers
which maintain the commerce between heaven and earth, gods and men,
in language that forcibly reminds us of this of our Lord. I will quote his
words, for though sufficiently familiar, I have never seen them brought into
relation with the Scripture before us: Kal yap nav to 6aipbvvov psra^v cart
Beov Te Kal Bvjjtov, ipp?pevov Kal dianopBpevov Beo'iq to. ira/)' avdpimuv, Kal iv-
Spimoif ra wapa Beov, tov phi rag Sefjoeit; Kal Bvaiag, rav de rdf eTrmifejf Tt
Kal 'apmfSaq tov Bvoiov • iv piou de bv aptyorepav avprTjipol, acre rd Ttav avrb
avT6> ow$e6iodai.

PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. 81
A few words in conclusion on the question whether
this Nathanael of St. John is one and the same with the
Bartholomew of the synoptic Gospels. The identifying
of the two, which, when once suggested, carries so much
probability with it, and which in modern times has found
favour with so many, was quite unknown to the early
Church. Indeed Augustine more than once enters at
large into the question, why Nathanael, to whom his Lord
bore such honourable testimony, whom He welcomed so
gladly, was not elected into the number of the Twelve.
The reason he gives is curious. He sees evidence in
Nathanael's question, ' Can there any good thing come out
of Nazareth ? ' that this disciple was a Rabbi, learned in
the wisdom of the Jewish schools (that he should be
numbered among fishermen, John xxi. 2, makes this
unlikely, yet not impossible) ; but such the Lord would
in no case choose to lay the foundations of his Church
(cf. l Cor. i. 26) ; lest that Church might even seem to stand
in the wisdom of man rather than in the power of God.1
The arguments for the identity of the two, which identity
was first suggested, I believe, by Rupert of Deutz in
the twelfth century, are very strong. They are mainly
these ; that Nathanael's vocation here is coordinated with
that of apostles, as of equal significance ; that on a later
occasion we meet him in the midst of apostles, some
named before him, some after (chap. xxi. 1, 2) ; that the
three earlier Evangelists never mention Nathanael, the
fourth never Bartholomew ; that Philip and Bartholomew
1 Enarr. in Ps. lxv. 2; In Ev. Joh. tract, vii. § 17. Cf. Gregory the
Great (Moral, xxxiii. 16) : Praedicatores infirmos abjectosque habere studuit
Dominus; unde in Evangelio Natbanaelem laudat, nee tamen in sorte
praedicantium numerat ; quia ad praBdicandum eum tales venire debuerant,
qui de laude propria nihil habebant. a

82 THE CALLING OF PHILIP AND NATHANAEL.
in the catalogue of the apostles are grouped together, as
a pair of friends, but with Philip first, even as he is here
the first in Christ (Matt. x. 30 ; Mark iii. 18) ; that the cus
tom of double names seems to have been almost universal
at that time in Judaea, so that all or well nigh all the
apostles bore more than one ; to all which may be added
that Bartholomew is no proper name, signifying only son
of Tolmai. All these arguments in favour of the identity,
with nothing against it, bring it very nearly to a certainty,
that he to whom the promise of the vision of an opened
heaven, with angels ascending and descending on the Son
of man, was vouchsafed, was no other than Bartholomew
the apostle.^

3. CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
John iv. i — 42.
it is very characteristic of the Eastern colouring of Scrip
ture, that so many of its most interesting events should
find place in the neighbourhood of wells, and in one way
or other stand in some direct connexion with them. By a
well of water the loveliest idyllic scene in Genesis, rich as
it is in such, I mean the first meeting of Abraham's servant
with the future wife of Isaac, is laid (Gen. xxiv. 11-28) ;
there Jacob's first greeting of Rachel (Gen. xxix. 1-10) ;
with a well too is closely linked an important passage in
the life of Moses (Exod. ii. 17). But deeper, more
attractive, laying a mightier hold on the Church in all
aftertimes than any or all of these, is the discourse which
found place by Jacob's well, of which we have a record
in the fourth chapter of St. John.
The Evangelist explains to us first what the circum
stances were which brought it about : ' When therefore the
Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made
and baptized more disciples than John, . . . He left Judosa
and departed again into Galilee! This quitting of Judaea
and retiring to the safer Galilee as here recorded, I identify
with Matt. iv. 12, Mark i. 14, Luke iv. 14, in the synoptic
Gospels. As Christ had taught his disciples that there
were occasions when they might withdraw from the malice
<J2

84 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
of their foes (Matt. x. 23), so He was Himself withdrawing
here. That malice, as He knew, would be roused to the
uttermost by the manifest successes of his ministry, by
the multitude of disciples whom He had baptized — more
even than the Baptist himself (iii. 26-30) ; although the
mere ministerial act of baptism, as the Evangelist is careful
to note, He accomplished by other hands than his own ;
' though Jesus Himself baptised not, but his disciples '
(cf. Acts x. 48 ; 1 Cor. i. 14-16), He reserving the baptism
with the Holy Ghost for Himself. He had left Judaea, the
head-quarters of all the bitterest opposition to Himself
and to his work ; and as, in retiring to Galilee, He did not
choose to take the circuit of Peraea, which was the manner
with some of the stricter sort of Jews, who would come
into no contact whatever with the heretical Samaritans, 'He
must needs go through Samaria! 1 St. John is thus careful
to note that this was no mission to the Samaritans which
the Lord undertook. On the contrary, the law which He
imposed on his disciples, 'and into any city of the
Samaritans enter ye not ' (Matt. x. 5), this, during the days
of his flesh, He imposed also on Himself. He was not sent
' but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ' (Matt. xv. 24 ;
Acts xiii. 46) ; and if any grace reached Samaritan or
heathen, it was, so to speak, but by accident, a crumb
falling from the children's table.
' Then cometh He to a city of Samaria, which is called
Sychar! ' The unusual form in which the name of this
city here appears, must not hinder us from recognizing in
it the Sichem where Abraham built an altar (Gen. xii. 6) ;
under the oak in whose neighbourhood Jacob buried the
idols of his household (Gen. xxxv. 4) ; the city which
1 See Josephus, Vita, § 52.

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 85
Simeon and Levi so cruelly and treacherously wasted,
forfeiting their birthright thereby (Gen. xxxiv. ; xlix.
5-7); not far from which Joseph was sold (Gen. xxxvii. 12);
the last resting place of his bones (Josh. xxiv. 32) ; a city
thus of ancient fame in Scripture, as of great political
importance at some periods of Jewish history ; so much
so that in all likelihood, had the tribe of Ephraim
attained to the leadership of the nation instead of Judah,
had this tribe not forfeited and let go the preeminence
which it possessed for a time (Ps. Ixxviii. 67), Shechem
instead of Jerusalem would have been the metropolis of
the kingdom. It was in Joshua's time the centre to which
the tribes were gathered (Josh. xxiv. 1) ; the seat of the
abortive kingdom of Abimelech (Judg. ix.) ; a city twice
mentioned by the Psalmist (Ps. Ix. 6 ; cviii. 6) for no other
reason than its dignity and strength; the place whither
the ten tribes were gathered on that fatal day when the
great schism of the nation actually began, and for a while
the chief city of the revolted ten (1 Kin. xii. 1, 25), that
is until the capital was transferred first by Jeroboam to
Tirzah, and finally by Omri to Samaria (1 Kin. xvi. 14).
With the building by the Samaritans of the temple on
Mount Garizim, of which more presently, Shechem,
standing immediately at the foot of the mountain on the
ridge or saddle that joins it to Mount Ebal, became the
ecclesiastical metropolis of the Samaritans, the middle
point of their worship, and continues such to this day for
the feeble remnant of them which survives.1
1 It is now known as Nabulus, a corruption of Neapolis, which name was
given to the city by the Herodians, who in the Eoman times adorned and in
part rebuilt it. On all which conoerns Nabulus, Garizim, the Samaritans
of the past and of the present, see Eobinson's Researches in Palestine, vol. iii.
pp. 92-139. There is much too of original information in the article

5 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
But if'Sychar be thus identified with Sichem, or Sychem
(Acts vii. 16), and only a few, as Ewald for example,
refuse to identify them, how are we to account for the
form which the word has here assumed ? We must for
this keep in mind the enigmatic character of St. John's
Gospel, the mystical significance which he loves to trace
in names, either to find or to suggest (see ix. 7; xi. 16).
His Gospel, apparently less, is indeed far more, thoroughly
steeped in the Old Testament, connected with it by finer
and subtler links, than any one of the other three. A
change in the form of the word, if only it were significant,
would be quite in the spirit of the Old Testament, and in
agreement with the importance which names everywhere
there assume ; being continually modified, now for the
better, as Abram into Abraham (Gen. xvii. 5), Sarai into
Sarah (Gen. xvii. I5),0shea into Jehoshuah(Num. xiii. 16);
now for the worse, thus Bethel into Bethaven (Hos.
x.5), Achan, because he troubled Israel (Josh. vii. 25),
reappearing as Achar (1 Chron. ii. 7); or it may be that
a new name is superadded to the old (Gen. xxxii. 28 ;
xxxv. 10 ; Judg. vi. 32), sometimes puts the old quite out
of. use ; this new also being sometimes for honour, or
more rarely for dishonour.
How deeply seated in our nature this tendency to the
changing or modifying of names is, the curious ways in
which it is evermore at work, springing as it does out of
a sense that the name connotes, or if it does not connote,
should be made to connote, the thing which is named,
there need no examples to prove.1 Nor has the kingdom
Samaria, in Herzog's Encyelopddie, vol. xiii. pp. 359-391 ; and also in
Heidenheim's Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift, No. i. pp. 1-43 ; 78-128, who,
p. 14, gives further notices of the literature on the subject.
1 Various illustrations of this tendency to bring the name and the thing

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 87
of grace refused to avail itself of this instinct, as the many
instances just cited in proof abundantly testify. St. John
by this turn of the word, which has brought it into closest
connexion with the Hebrew for a lie, declares at what
rate he esteemed the whole Samaritan worship, declares
by anticipation at what rate it was esteemed by his Lord
(see ver. 22). If religion be anything higher than the
expression of man's spiritual needs and desires, if it rest
not on what man has thought and felt about God, but on
that which God has revealed about Himself, and only has
worth as it is the true revelation by God of Himself to his
creatures, then that whole worship was a hollow thing, a
husk with no kernel within; and, professing as it did to
be much more than this, was a lie. If it sound severe on
the part of the beloved apostle to say thus, and if some
urge, as against this explanation of ' Sychar ' put here for
Sichem, that he never could have said it, one can only
reply that the truth is severe, that in very faithfulness
it must declare darkness to be dark, and bitterness to be
bitter ; cannot affirm that the one is light, or the other
sweet ; or, when men have left God's truth, and are
worshipping instead of this some invention of their own,
that their worship is any other than a lie.
This city was ' near to the parcel of ground that Jacob
gave to his son Joseph' (Gen. xxxiii. 19; xlviii. 22; Josh.
xxiv. 32). ' Now JacoVs well x was there! Of Jacob's
into a real relation with one another I have given in The Study of Words,
12th edit. pp. 24-30.
1 It would certainly have been preferable to render mrrf here by ' foun
tain' or 'spring' than '¦well;'1 for we can better understand 'a springing
fountain ' than a ' springing well ' (ver. 14). n^ and fpeap, it may be ob
served, are used now the one, and now the other, throughout this chapter :
but there is always sufficient reason to account for the use of one or of the
other: thus Ttnyfi twice in this verse, and at verse 14, <ppiap at verses 11,12.

88 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
well there is no mention in the Old Testament ; though
we learn there that it was the custom of the patriarchs to
dig wells (Gen. xxi. 30 ; xxvi. 18). There seems no
reason whatever to call in question its identity with the
well which the Samaritans of the neighbourhood designate
by this name to the present day. The digging of it must
have been a work of enormous labour. Maundrell, who
visited it in 1697, gives this account : ' It is dug in a firm
rock, and contains about three yards in diameter, and
thirty five in depth, five of which we found full of
water.' The rock has since crumbled, or in other ways
the well has been in part filled in, and a recent measure
ment gives a depth of seventy five feet only, the spring at
the bottom being choked. ' Jesus therefore, being wearied
with his journey, sat thus1 on the well ; and it was about
the sixth hour! The weariness of Christ, so soon to be
the refreshment of one, should in due time be the refresh
ment of all. St. John perhaps may name the exact hour,
in this way to bring more vividly to our consciousness
the oppression and burden of the time ; it was ' the sixth
hour] exactly the heat of the middle noon. Yet we must
not leave out of sight that elsewhere he notes the hour,
Our Translators, who have rendered both by ' well ' have failed to mark the
alternation of words; which the Vulgate has noted, rendering the first by
' fons,' the second by 'puteus.' And indeed ' all the Old Versions except the
Anglo-Saxon render the Greek literally, giving a different term for Ttrr/fi
and for fypkap'' (Malan, Notes on the Gospel according to St. John, p. 49). The
two Augustine here discriminates well (In Joh. Evang. Tract. 15) : Omnis
puteus fons, non omnis fons puteus. Ubi enim aqua de terra manat et usui
praebetur haurientibus, fons dicitur : sed si in promtu et superficie sit, fons
tantum dicitur ; si autem in alto et profundo sit, ita puteus vocatur nt fontis
nomen non amittat. We have QpeaTov ¦Knyri, Prov. v. 15.
1 0«ra?, which may be explained with Chrysostom, dVAuf ml ag Irvxe.
Bengel : Sic, uti qualiscumque loci opportunitas ferebat, sine pompa, solus,
ut qui non prae se ferret expectationem Samaritidis, sed merse lassitudinis
causa quietem vellet capere. Admiranda popularitas vita? Jesu 1

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 89
where it is difficult to say what of emphasis the story gains
thereby, as i. 39 ; xix. 14. Perhaps here, as there, it is
the significance of the event, which makes its every detail
of interest to himself, and as he judges to his readers.
' There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water; '
a woman,1 not of the city of Samaria, for that was some
six miles distant, but of the country (so Acts viii. 5),
still called by the name of that city which had been once
its capital. To that same well she oftentimes may have
come already ; day by day, perhaps, during many a weary
year in the past. And now she came once more, little
guessing how different was to be the issue of this day's
coming from that of all the days which had gone before.2
The benefit and blessing which here lay, as it were, in
ambush for her, was not indeed, as she was fain at the
first to imagine, that she should never need to come and
draw water from that well again (ver. 15) ; but, far better
than this, that in the midst of that and all other the
weary toil, outward and inward, of this earthly life, she
should have within herself a fountain of joy, springing up
unto life eternal, should draw water with joy from un
failing wells of salvation.
She had probably already filled her pitcher, when the
stranger at the well, whom she may have seen only to
avoid, for she recognized in him those unmistakeable
features of Jewish physiognomy with which the Samaritans
had nothing in common, to her surprise addressed her,
and to her greater surprise addressed her with a request ;

1 The Eoman martyrology knows her name, Photina, the names also of
her children.
2 Augustine: Venit mulier ad puteum, et fontem quem non speravit,
invenit.

90 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
'Give me to drink' (cf. Gen. xxiv. 16, 17). A real thirst,
witnessing against all docetic notions concerning the
person of the Lord (cf. John xix. 28 ; Matt. xxi. 18), was
one motive of his request ; though that which He most
truly thirsted after was her faith, the salvation of her
soul;1 for we see hunger and thirst not so much for
gotten as disappearing (ver. 31, 32) in the joy of winning
such a lost soul for the kingdom of his Father. In
this request of his, and in the discourse to which it was
the prelude, there was a threefold testimony against the
narrow-heartedness of his age and people — against that
of the Jew who hated the Samaritan, of the Rabbi who
would have thought scorn to hold this familiar intercourse
with a woman (see ver. 27), of the Pharisee who would
have shrunk from this near contact with a sinner (Luke
vii. 39).
The notice which follows, 'for his disciples were gone
away into the city to buy meat] is commonly interpreted,
as explaining the constraint under which He lay of asking
this favour of the woman. The disciples were gone, and
had left Him ' nothing to draw with ' (ver. 11), such as,
had they been present, would have been at his command.
But how very unlikely that such should have been part
of their travelling gear ; or if so, that they should have
carried it with them into the town. The notice inter
posed here has no such superficial meaning. The Lord,
allowing the disciples all to leave Him, had of intention
made this solitude for Himself, that He might the easier
win to repentance and confession of sin the poor sinner
for whom He had appointed this meeting, though she
1 Augustine : Hie autem qui bibere quaerebat, fidem ipsius mulieris
quaerebat

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 91
knew it not ; x for while there is none who may not take
to himself that beautiful line of the Dies Irce,
Quoerens me sedisti lassus,
to her of first and best right it belongs. This absence of
theirs was designed, was part of his counsel of love in her
behalf. The freedom from interruption which it afforded
He now improves to the uttermost ; for, Himself the great
' Fisher of men' (cf. Luke v. 10), He is as watchful and
eager to take a single soul by the angle as a vast multitude
of souls at once by the casting net or the sean ; giving here
a lesson to those whom He sends into the world to ' catch
men,' which they will do well never to forget. Heng-
stenberg, indeed, thinks that all had not left, that St. John
was a witness of the interview which he describes ; but
for this there is no shadow of ground.
He who asks a favour places himself, in the estimate
of a common mind, though often it is exactly the contrary,
in a position of inferiority to the person from whom
the favour is asked, and with whom it lies to grant or
to withhold it. And thus there was a certain satisfac
tion which she could not conceal, a gratifying of her
national vanity, wounded so often by Jewish taunts, in
thus having a Jew a petitioner for a favour from her, a
Samaritan. The humiliation, for such she esteemed it,
was much greater than if she, a Samaritan, had been a
suitor for an equal favour from a Jew ; inasmuch as the
holding aloof and the refusing to be on terms of com
munion, either social or ecclesiastical, had been at the
first, and still was, mainly on the side of the Jews ; who
1 Corn, a Lapide : Factum id est tacita Dei providentia, ut, discipulis
omnibus in urbem dimissis, solus ipse, liberius cum muliere impudica ejus
pudori consulens ageret.

92 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
denied, rightly as regarded the fact, though wrongly in
respect of the temper in which they did it, that the
Samaritans had any claims to be considered as heirs with
themselves of the promises made to Abraham and his
seed. It was, as St. John expresses it, for the words are
not the woman's, but his, the Jews that would ' have no
dealings with the Samaritans] no familiar intercourse, that
is, and indeed none of any kind which they could avoid ;
and only as a consequence necessarily involved in this,
that the Samaritans had no dealings with the Jews ; and
so it had been from the beginning (Ezra iv. 1-3). The
woman therefore, not certainly a daughter of Rebekah in
this (see Gen. xxiv. 17-20), instead of complying with his
request, asks, with a feeling that for the present the tables
are turned, and with the intention that He shall feel this
also, 'How is it that Thou, being a Jew, askest drink of
me, which am a woman of Samaria ? ' An Israelite she
would have called herself, for such the Samaritans claimed
to be, as descending from the tribe of Ephraim. A 'Jew'
for them was one of the tribe, or at most of the king
dom, of Judah.
If we take this as the temper out of which her question
proceeds, the Lord's reply will then exactly meet the
thought of her heart. He is not the receiver, but the
giver. ' Thou errest in thinking that it is I who need thy
help, when thou rather hast need of mine. If thou
knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee,
Give me to drink ; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and
He would have given thee living water! This ' gift of God'
has been very variously interpreted. Augustine under
stands by it the Holy Ghost. Hengstenberg will not
allow that there can be any question on the matter, but

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 93
refers to Isai. ix. 5, ' to us a Son is given] and to John
iii. 16, as decisive proofs that Christ designated Himself
as 'the gift of God! By ' the gift of God' Grotius and
others understand the Lord more generally to mean that
gracious and golden opportunity vouchsafed to her, and
as yet to her alone among all her people •] ' If thou
knewest this, and what it is to have met Me here, the
Saviour of the world, thou wouldest have been a petitioner
of mine, for a far better gift than any I have sought at
thy hands.' Lampe, citing Rom. vi. 23, where ' eternal life'
is styled ' the gift of God ' (^dpio^a there, $&pov here),
and strengthening his position by the aid of such passages
as Isai. Iv. 1 ; Rev. xxii. 17, understands generally that
' eternal life ' to be ' the gift of God] whereof here the
Saviour speaks. But these explanations, one and all,
seem to me either too vague and indefinite, or otherwise
beside the mark; and the right interpretation to have
been strangely overlooked by most expositors ; not indeed
by all, for Stier has it. To me this carries such conviction
that, unless so many had missed, I should have been
tempted to say that it was impossible to miss it. ' The gift
of God ' is here an anticipation of what is immediately to
follow, namely, 'He would have given thee living water!
' If thou knewest,' the Lord would say, ' that God has
given to souls thirsting in the wilderness of this world
water of life, such as will slake the thirst, not of their
bodies but of their souls, and " who it is that saith to thee,
Give me to drink," even He that has that water to bestow,
whom the Father has made to be Himself a fountain and
spring of this life, then, instead of moving the embers of
that wretched quarrel between Samaritans and Jews, thou
1 Occasio nempe quam tibi nunc Deus praestat, quantumvis Samaritidi.

94 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
wouldest have asked these waters at his hands.' The
' living water ' seems to me, beyond all doubt, to be itself
' the gift of God ' whereof Christ speaks.1
Having asked for water He sets forth this 'gift' under
the image of water ; as at John vi. 48-51, where men are
waiting on Him for the bread that perishes, He sets forth
the same under that of bread. In this as in every thing
else a pattern to those who come after, He links on the
heavenly to the earthly, uses the earthly as a ladder by
which He mounts up to the heavenly. At the same time
He must have been quite prepared for a temporary mis
understanding of his words. 'Living water' is not neces
sarily equivalent with 'water of life' (Rev. xxi. 6; xxii.
1, 17) in the highest spiritual sense of the words. On the
contrary there are natural waters which have, and in their
lower sphere deserve, this name ; that is, fresh springing
waters, as contrasted either with rain-water gathered into
cisterns, or indeed with any other, the water of reser
voirs ; and in this natural sense the phrase often occurs
in the Old Testament ; as at Gen. xxvi. 19 ; Lev. xiv. 5 ;
Cant. iv. 15.2 Here, however, the words are used in their
highest sense, — waters, which coming from Him in whom

1 There is a singular decorum in the use of words here. The woman has
said, not unnaturally, ' How is it that Thou askest (aireZf) of me ?' But
aWelv is a word of petition as from an inferior to a superior, in this different
from ipurdv, which has more of equality in it (see my Synonyms of the
New Testament, § 40). But when Christ refers to that request of hers, He
does not take up and allow her word. It is not on his lips, ' who it is that
asketh of thee? but ' who it is that saith to thee ' ( 6 teyav aoi) ¦ while the
asking He goes on to describe as the proper attitude for her ; ' thou wouldest
have asked (yrv^ac) of Him.' There lies often in little details like this an
implicit assertion of the unique dignity of his person, which it is very
interesting and not unimportant to trace.
2 In all these places the LXX. have v6up f5v)=viv:um flumen, vivua
fons, in Latin.

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 95
is the absolute life, who is the avto^ari (John i. 4 ; v. 40) ;
impart life to as many as they reach. We have a mag
nificent symbolism of this, the life-giving power of these
waters, Ezekiel xlvii. 9 : ' Every thing shall live whither
the river cometh ;' that is, the river issuing from under
the threshold of the House of God (ver. 1 ; cf. Rev.
xxii. 1 ; Joel iii. 18; Zech. xiv. 8).
Yet although she misses the deeper meaning of his
speech, taking the figurative literally, and the spiritual
naturally (cf. John iii. 4 ; vi. 53), there is that in the
words and bearing of this Stranger, which has already so
far inspired her with respect, that the ' Sir] which was
absent from her first answer, finds place in her second ;
however she may hardly maintain herself through the
whole of her answer at the level of respect which this
opening word would imply. Indeed she proceeds with
the evident intention of showing Him that these preten
sions of his involve an absurdity : ' Thou hast nothing to
draw with,1 and the well is deep ; -from whence then hast
Thou this living water? From this well it cannot be
that Thou wilt draw that living water of which Thou
speakest, for the well is deep ' (as we have seen, more than
a hundred feet deep, with only a few feet of water at the
bottom), ' and Thou hast no means with which to draw it
up. And even if Thou hadst discovered another well '
1 The avrfajpn here, ' bucket ' in most of our early Versions, ' hauritorium '
in Augustine (which word has not found its way into any of our Dictionaries
of later Latinity), must not be confounded with the vSpia or water-pot which
the woman presently leaves behind in her haste to communicate her good
tidings to her people (ver. 28). It is the ' situla, generally made of skin,
with three cross sticks tied round the mouth to keep it open. It is let down
by a rope of goats' hair, and may be seen lying on the curb stones of almost
every well in the Holy Land ' (Malan). We may suppose the woman to
have held this in her hand, while she talked to the Lord, and reminded
Him that He had nothing of the kind.

96 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
(for this is the connexion of ver. 11 and 12), 'art Thou
greater than our father Jacob' (cf. viii. 52), for such she
calls him, though with no shadow of right1 (Matt. x. 5) ;
' who gave us the well, and drank thereof hinlself, and his
children ; ' — or ' his sons ' rather, ' since one daughter to
twelve sons would not make them rexva tov 'laxufi in a
narrative written in Greek ' (Malan), — ' and his cattle!
The word rendered ' cattle ' (OpEfifiata) probably includes
household servants as well. That Jacob himself and his
sons should have drunk of that well might be taken as an
evidence of its sweetness, that his servants and flocks and
herds should have drunk of it, of its abundance,2 the
waters of it thus satisfying the needs of him and of all
that were his. ' Art Thou greater,' she would imply,
' that so Thou couldst give to those waters, even if Thou
couldst discover such, a higher consecration, or constitute
them waters, of greater price to us than these with which
the patriarch Jacob has endowed us ?' There speaks out
in this question of hers a certain slight resentment at
what seems to her an intentional depreciation of this holy
well, for such no doubt it was esteemed by these Samari
tans. That well was one of the venerable memorials of
the past (it is possibly alluded to Gen. xlix. 22 ; Deut.
xxxiii. 28), by aid of which they sought to put themselves
in connexion with the early patriarchal history. It lay,
as we have seen, in the parcel of ground given by Jacob
to his son Joseph (ver. 5, 6), and it was from Joseph that
the Samaritans boasted their descent. This we should

1 Theophylact : ¦Karkpa iavrije ¦Koienai rbv 'IaKa(3, elg t%v 'lovSaiKrjv
evyeveiav avTTjv owuBovaa.
1 Theophylact : Tb Si Kal avrbg il avrov emev, iirawbc; iari riJQ tov Mcrof
jjSvttjtoc • to 6e Kal to. Bpippara airov, ivdeiKTiKdv ion Tij<; aipBoviaf,

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 97
conclude from the fact of their claiming to be the repre
sentatives of the ten tribes, of which Ephraim, descended
from Joseph, was chief; but Josephus twice expressly men
tions the fact.1 Here is the key to the voluble eloquence,
not unmixed with a certain tartness, of her reply. The
woman suspects, though she cannot quite understand his
words, that He, a Jew, means to cast a slight upon the
venerable traditions and memorials which her people
claimed as especially, if not peculiarly, their own.
The Lord does not entangle Himself in a direct reply
to the question, 'Art Thou greater than our father Jacob f
which could lead to no result ; and yet implicitly He does
reply. For as, in magnifying the bread which He would
give, as compared with the manna which Moses gave,
He reminds his hearers that those who ate the manna died
notwithstanding, leaving them to draw the conclusion
that He, who gives bread which if a man eat thereof he
shall not die, must be greater than Moses, who could give
no such ' salve of immortality ' (John vi. 49, 50) ; even
so the same follows here : 'lam greater than your father
Jacob ; for this water which you boast to have received
from him does not slake thirst for ever. Whosoever
drinketh of this water shall thirst again. But it is other
wise with the water of which I am the dispenser. Who
soever shall drink of the water that I shall give him shall
never thirst! It is needless to observe of how much wider
application the words, ' shall thirst again] are than to the
matter immediately in hand. All human suppliances for
the satisfying of the cravings of the body or of the soul,
have in them this defect, that they do not satisfy for ever.
They only serve to dull and deaden the present sense of
Antt. ix. 14. 3 ; xi. 8. 6.
H

98 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
the want, but do not remove it. That want after a while
revives again in its strength ; for man is full of hunger
and thirst; a fact which may, indeed, be his heaven,
yet may also be his hell. But the water which Christ
gives, slakes the spirit's thirst, and slakes it for ever — not,
of course, as though one draught of it would do this ; it
is he who drinks, and who continues to drink, that shall
not thirst any more.
It is worth our while here to note how Christ gathers to
a head innumerable promises and invitations of the Old
Testament, and claims them as fulfilled in Himself; thus
eminently Isai. Iv. 1; cf. xii. 18; xlviii. 21; xlix. 10;
even as this is by no means the only place in the New
Testament where He sets forth the blessings which He
imparts to the children of men by aid of the same figurative
language, at once so beautiful, so familiar, and so intelli
gible to all ; thus see John vi. 35 ; vii. 37 ; Rev. vii. 16 ;
xxi. 6. He is Himself the true ' fountain of Jacob ' (Deut.
xxxiii. 28) ; this name He implicitly challenges as his own.
There is only One, who can be what Christ here declares
that He is, namely, ' a fountain of living waters ' (see Jer.
ii. 13; xvii. 13), and that is God. On the strength of
this saying Augustine rightly claims Ps. xxxvi. 9, ' With
Thee is the fountain of life,' as fulfilled in Christ, and
brings that passage into closest connexion with this.1
But what, it may be fitly asked, is the exact force of
the promise which follows, ' But the water that I shall give
him shall be in him? a well of water springing up into
everlasting life '? Is it not this ? ' He who receives this

1 De qua ergo aqua daturus est, nisi de ilia, de qua dictum est, Apud Te est
fons vita? ? Nam quomodo sitient, qui inebriabnntur ab ubertate domus tuae ?
2 Origen here asks, Tig Se iv iavra "exav m/yifv, Sifijoai o\6g re eorai ;

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 99
living water of Me shall become himself in some sort,
although of course only in a secondary sense, a springing
well ; no cistern merely to contain,1 but a springing foun
tain out of which shall flow, these same waters ;2 shall
minister to others the same salvation which has been
already ministered to himself;'3 even as the Lord expresses
the same truth elsewhere : ' He that believeth on Me, out
of his belly shall flow rivers of living water ' (John vii. 38).
The image of the spark which, fastening where it lights,
kindles into a flame and spreads, or of the seed which,
taking root, shoots up again into the air,4 either of these
would lend itself more perfectly to the setting forth of
the truth which Christ here proclaims. He does not how
ever think good to travel out of the circle of images which
1 H. de S. Victore (In Eccles. Horn. 2) : Scimus namque quia cisterna
idcirco foditur, ut aqua extrinsecus colleota in earn defluat, et ex ea rursum in
usus hominum trtmsitura hauriatur. Sed haec quia venam vivam non habet,
quantumlibet magna et aquarum collectione redundans videatur, aliquando
exhauriri potest et exsiccari; quia cum sublatum fuerit et consumptum
quod aliunde infunditur, nihil ei de suo superest unde reparetur. Sed fons
qui vivam habet venam, etiamsi modicus est, deficere tamen omnino non
potest, neque effusionis suae defectum aliquando sentit, cui sine defectu
semper de proprio incrementum accedit.
2 The imperial philosopher of Eome uttered a great truth, but an im
perfect one, saw much but did not see all, did not see that this spring
of water must be fed, and fed evermore, from the ' upper springs,' if it is not
presently to fail, when he wrote, ivSov j&iire- ivSov r) nrfyi/ tov ayaBov, Kal ael
avajiXvem Swapivr/, iav ael ondizTrig. Cf. Plutarch Be Virt. et Vit. 1.
s Origen quotes with approbation Heracleon's interpretation of these words,
the same which I have given above : ovk amBavag Se to, aKhopevov, Sirfyfjoaro,
Kal tovc .ptxa'kapfSavovTag tov avodev imxopr/yovpevov irXovaiog Kal airrovg
eKfikvaai e\g rrjv eTeparv al&viov ^ofjv to. emKexopr/yr/piva avrolg. Gregory of
Nyssa, in his Homilies on The Song of Solomon, has some beautiful remarks
in the same sense on Cant. iv. 15, where the Bride is compared to "a well of
living waters.' I quote a few words : tovto Si) rb ntivTUfv irapaSogdTaTov
iravTuv yap tuv <j>pe&Twv h avarf/pan to vSap ixovruv, pbvri 7} ~Nvp<pi] SicI-oSikov
iv kavTTj, txa T^ vSap, acre to pev (3a6og kxuv tov typ'eaTog, tov Si irorapov rd
heiKivijrov. 4 Maldonatus : Loquitur de aqua tanquam de planta aut semine aliquo quod
jactum in terra nascatur.
H2

100 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
the well and the water supply. And not only shall these
waters spring up, but they shall spring up ' into everlasting
life! They shall find their own level : they shall return
whither they came : coming from God, they shall go to
God again.1 There is a tacit comparison here with the
waters of this world. Whatever upward impulse these
may receive, it is presently spent, and they fall back to
the earth again ; but the water of life is borne upward by
a supernatural impulse, till it reaches again that heaven
from which it came.2
Olshausen and others have invited us to notice, upon
these words, the contrast between this promise of Christ
and another of the Son of Sirach. In a glorious passage,
one of the noblest in the books not directly inspired of
the Bible, Wisdom praising herself exclaims, ' They that
eat me shall yet be hungry, and they that drink me shall
yet be thirsty ' (Ecclus. xxiv. 21 ). We are invited to note
here the deep insight into the different blessings of the Old
and of the New Covenant, which a comparison between
the promises of the two passages affords — the blessing of
the Old Covenant, the awakening of the desire, that of
the New, the satisfying of this same desire ; there the
blessing, so to speak, on its more negative, here on its
more positive, side. Now whatever truth there may be
in the fact thus stated, and a relative truth there is, yet I
scarcely think that we can fairly trace it here. When
Christ says that he who drinks of the water which He
1 Grotius : Emphasis est in voce saliet. Solent enim aquae salire ad alti-
tudinem usque sua? originis.
2 Lampe : Elegans hie latet oppositio inter has aquas et illas quae ex
tcaturigine terrestri proliciuntur. Quantocunque enim impetn prorum-
pant, vix tamen ultra aliquot pedes in aerem elevantur. Hie vero sistuntur
aquae quae vi plane supernaturali in caelum ipsum et vitam aeternam
saliunt.

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 101
gives ' shall never thirst] it is surely meant that he shall
never thirst for any other water save this living water
which He Himself imparts.1 He too, no less than the
Wisdom of the elder Covenant, would say that for this
water he shall thirst and thirst again. This, that he does
so thirst again, that draughts of the waters of life breed
no satiety, such as the draughts from the fountains of this
world's joy so quickly bring about, that these waters
kindle the thirst which they assuage, is not the infelicity
of him who drinks, but his blessedness rather. No one
counts that it was faring ill with David, then when he ex
claimed, ' My soul is athirst for God, even for the living
God.' How many, as they read, have rather yearned that
they might be athirst with him, only mourn that their
own thirst is so languid, while they know that there is a
river of God at which this thirst may be at once stilled
and quickened, stilled in all which implies a want and a
discomfort, quickened in all which shall drive it to seek
for ever new supplies from Him, who is the indeficient
fountain of all good.2 Only so could it have been said,
' Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteous
ness' (Matt. v. 6; cf. Isai. xii. 3 ; xliv. 3; Ps. lxxxvii. 7).
There is a certain blind longing after this springing
water awakened in the soul of this poor sinner, who had
thirsted so long, who now at this time was seeking to
slake her thirst at one of the muddiest pools of sensual
gratification ; and out of this she exclaims, ' Sir, give
' Cocceius : cum ea satietate non pugnat sitis ct fames justitiae, et spes
atque vndoTaotg et expectatio bonorum Dei in hac vita et translationis in
alteram. 2 Thus Drusius excellently well, reconciling the words of the earlier
Wisdom with the words of the later : Qui aquam sapientiae bibit sitit et non
sitit. Sitit, id est, magis magisque appetit id quod bibit. Non sitit. quia ita
expletur ut alium potum non desideret.

102 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
me this water, that I thirst not'1 (cf. John vi. 34), though
still there is confusion and contradiction in her mind
about it, for she imagines that it will exempt her from the
toil of coming to draw from that well any more — ' neither
come hither to draw!
How are we to explain the check and abrupt turn
which the conversation here receives, this ' Go call thy
husband, and come hither] with which our Lord seems to
interrupt it, just at its most interesting point ? Is it, as
some say, that being about to confer on her a benefit, He
would not confer it on her alone ; but on her and her
husband together ? This can hardly be — is indeed con
tradicted by the fact that Christ knew perfectly well
about her, that her relations to him with whom she was
living were not those of a wife to her husband. The
words can only be taken as spoken with the intention of
calling out that very answer which they did call out ; of
bringing her in this way to a wholesome shame. They
attain the object with which they were uttered. The
confession, indeed, which they elicit, 'I have no hus
band] is only a half confession; not all the truth, and
yet true as far as it goes ; and for the truth's sake which
it contains He accepts and allows it : ' Thou hast well said,
I have no husband;' with an emphasis on 'husband]
which is marked in the Greek by its position in the sen
tence, and which might have been so marked in our Version
— ' Husband I have not! This she has ' said well ' (cf.
Matt. xv. 7; Luke xx. 39), inasmuch as she had spoken
1 Sedulius (Carm. Pasch. 229) :
Orat inexhausti tribui sibi dona fluenti,
jEternam positura sitim, qua nemo carere
Dignus erit, Domini nisi mersus gurgite Christi.

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 103
the truth; for a true confession is always 'well' made,
however ill it may be that the making of such a confession
should be required. He proceeds, with how firm and
at the same time how gentle a hand, to draw her from
the hiding places in which she may still have hoped to
lie hid, to unroll before her the blurred and blotted scroll
of her past existence : 'for thou hast had five husbands,
and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband. In that
saidst thou truly! Many words, He would imply, which
she had spoken had not been true, but this mournful
testimony which she had thus borne against herself was
true. Meyer, including in these 'five husbands ' him
whom she now had, and making him the last of the five,
and not a sixth added to them, argues from this that
' husbands ' must not be taken strictly ; but must probably
include paramours, since certainly the last was such.
But the argument rests on a misunderstanding. He with
whom she is now living is not one of the five ; but she,
falling ever deeper and deeper in degradation, is now
content to go without the legal sanction to her condition
which in other times she may have required. Hitherto,
we may well suppose, her life had been full of manifold
disorders ; the five husbands had scarcely made room for
one another by death ; even in that case there must have
been unseemliest hastening of nuptials, most inordinate
desires, which no dealings of God could chasten or restrain.
But doubtless there had been worse than this ; husbands
whom she had forsaken; or whom she had compelled
by breach of wedlock to put her away (Deut. xxiv. 1, 2 ;
Matt. xix. 9).1
: Augustine has called this with which we are dealing a history, plena
rnvsteriis et gravida saeramentis. Fully admitting it to be this, I yet

104 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
Whether the Lord told her more which is not recorded
(ver. 29 would seem to imply as much), or so told her
this as to make her understand that He knew much
more, the woman feels that she had to do with one
who knows all the wretched secrets of her disordered life,
and out of this feeling exclaims, ' Sir, I perceive that thou
art a prophet ; for such intuitive knowledge as this could
only be God's, or theirs to whom God should give it
(1 Sam. ix. 19; 2 Kin. v. 26; vi. 12). She did not sup
pose, as some in modern times have supposed, that Christ
had obtained the information about her from some of her
neighbours ; but she saw in Him a prophet, and one who
by the exercise of his prophetic gift had thus been able
to tell her ' all things that ever she did' (ver. 29) . There
is no necessity of assuming that, in the case of every one
with whom the Lord came in contact during the course
of his ministry, He knew every detail of his anterior
find it impossible to accept the allegorical interpretation of these 'five hus
bands,' which Hengstenberg traces here. For him this woman is, so to
speak, the representative of that Samaria out of which she comes, of its past
idolatry, its present will-worship, its future conversion — her relations with
her five husbands, and with him who was not her husband, having by
divine Providence been so overruled as exactly to set forth the history up to
that moment of her people. "He refers us to 2 Kin. xvii. 24, where we find
the five nations, the colluvies gentium out of which the Samaritans grew,
bringing with them into their new seats each its own god, see ver. 29-31 ;
and he further cites Josephus (Anlt. ix. 14. 3) : ol Se perotuaBhreg elg rr}v
Xapapeiav Xovdaloi, eKaaroi Kara Wvog ISlov debv elg rijv Sapapelav Kopioavreg,
vevre S' rjuav, Kal rovrovg, Ka6i>g i)v irdrpiov aiirolg, oe/36pevoi. With these her
idol gods Samaria lived in a real communion, but one as lightly broken off
as it had been knit ; while He whom now she had was no legitimate hus
band of hers, for, ' thy Maker is thy husband,' true concerning the Jewish
Church, was utterly false in respect of the Samaritan. It is certainly an
ingenious suggestion, resting upon a very remarkable coincidence, but is
scarcely more. When it is attempted to carry through the allegory it
breaks down and that in parts essential ; thus these five false gods were con
temporaneous ; while her five husbands had one succeeded the other ; her sin
had not been polyandry.

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 105
history ; but wherever this was needed for the interests
of the kingdom of God, for the work of that ministry
which He had come to fulfil, for the best interests of that
soul which He sought to win, there through an act of his
will He could by his divine Spirit unlock the past, read
not merely what was now passing, but all which had ever
passed in the hearts, or which had been externally
wrought in the lives, of those with whom He had to do
(John ii. 25; v. 14). It concerned the counsels of his
love that He should thus know concerning this poor
sinner, and therefore He knew.
Her whole tone is now changed. It was half earnest
before, in that request, ' Sir, give me this water * (ver. 15) ;
but it is whole earnest now ; and it is quite a missing
of the real earnestness which she now feels to take her
words which follow : ' Our fathers worshipped in this
mount ; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where
men ought to worship] as though they were intended to
draw off Him with whom she was speaking from pressing
home upon her those unwelcome truths about her own
life,1 by suggesting some general question, in which her
people indeed might possibly have the worst ; but which
yet brought home no peculiar personal shame to herself.
The suggestion is ingenious, but it is much more in cha
racter with the effectual work which is being wrought, as
the issue proves, in her soul, to ascribe these words to
quite another motive. Hitherto she had never been really
enough in earnest about the worship and service of God,
to feel any misgiving or anxiety in respect of that great
* So Massillon in a striking Lent Sermon on this history : Nouvelle artifice
dont elle s'avise pour detourner la question de ses niceurs, qui lui deplait,
et qui I'embarrasse, elle se jette habilement sur une question de doctrine, les
contestations entre Jerusalem et Garizim.

106 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
controversy which was so eagerly debated between her
people and the Jews. And yet, if the Jews were right,
what was the whole Samaritan worship but a lie ; not
merely a service which God had not commanded, but
which was contrary to his command, with unsoundness
and rottenness at its very core ? She had hitherto troubled
herself nothing about this ; she had taken things as she
found them. But the time of such indifference was past;
it became all-important for her to know in which of the two
channels the line of blessing indeed ran, whether salvation
was of the Samaritans or of the Jews ; and hence her
question, or rather her statement of the point at issue,
which though not put in the form of a question, is
evidently presented to the Lord that He may, if possible,
satisfy her mind about it.
But whom does she mean by ' our fathers] on whom
she would fain rely and lean as 'having worshipped in this
mount] on Mount Garizim, which rose up immediately
before them; and given to it that consecration which
her people claimed as peculiarly its own? There are
two answers, and there is certainly something to be said
for both. Some understand by ' our fathers' the founders
of the Samaritan worship, the builders of the temple on
this mountain, and they urge that, ' Our fathers wor
shipped] set over against ' Ye worship] will admit no
other interpretation. They would find the exact ex
ample here of one, who walking in a vain conversation
defends it as having been received by tradition from her
fathers (l Pet. i. 18). So Meyer, Alford, and others ; yet
I cannot so understand the words. The woman is
declaring her position to a Jew, and doing what she can
to maintain it as against him. But what force would it

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 107.
have with him to declare that from the beginning of that
schism which he condemned throughout, her people had
worshipped at Garizim ? Take on the other hand ' our
fathers ' as the common fathers of Jew and Samaritan
alike, at least as those whom the Samaritans claimed for
'fathers] some, as Adam, Seth, Noah with right, others,
as the later patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with no
right at all ; and then there is some cogency in what she
alleges, if only it had been true. They worshipped here ;.
in manifold ways they did honour to this mountain, and
'ye say that in Jerusalem] a place never heard of till a
late period of our history (2 Sam. v. 6, 7), occupied by the
Canaanite to the time of David, ' is the place where men
ought to worship! She knew that there was one such
place, and one only, where the Lord would manifest his
presence and put his name there, and that to this place
all should resort (Deut. xii. 5). They could not then
both be right, Jerusalem and Garizim ; nay one must
be utterly wrong; but which was it? Would He, this
prophet, resolve this question for her, and if she and her
people were wrong, convince her that they were so ?
But first, a word or two more on this assertion of hers,
' Our fathers worshipped in this mount] in further con
firmation of the interpretation which I have preferred.
A modern writer, who has derived much of his informa
tion from personal intercourse with the Samaritan High
Priest,1 tells us what they now believe, what in all likeli
hood they believed in our Saviour's time, about Mount
Garizim ; the honour, dignity, and preeminence which for
it they claimed. It is for them the holy mountain of the
world ; on its summit was the seat of Paradise ; from the
1 Petermann, in Herzog's Encyclopadie, vol. xiii. p. 337, art. Samaria.

108 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN
dust of Mount Garizim Adam was formed ; and the spot
is still pointed out where he reared his first altar ; the
place too where Seth did the same. Garazim is the Ararat
of Scripture, on which the Ark rested (Gen. viii. 4) ;
which the waters of the Flood had never overflowed ;
and which thus no dead thing borne by these waters had
touched to defile. They point out further the exact spot
on which Noah reared an altar to the Lord when the
Flood has subsided (Gen. viii. 20) ; and the seven steps,
on each of which he offered a burnt offering, which led
up to it, are existing still. The altar too is to this day
standing on which Abraham had bound his son, and the
spot known where the ram was caught in a thicket by
its horns (Gen. xxii. 13). At the summit of Garizim is
Bethel, where Jacob slept and saw in a dream that won
drous ladder which reached from earth to heaven (Gen.
xxviii. 12, 19). There is a good deal more of the same
kind ; but this is enough. That poor woman, who may
have accepted all this with implicit faith, would have had
.warrant more than enough for her boast, ' Our fathers
worshipped in this mount] if only a small ' part of it had
been true.
With a deep and solemn earnestness, such as the great
ness and importance of the announcement which He was
making deserved, the announcement namely of a universal
religion, the Lord replied. First indeed, and as a neces
sary condition of this, He proclaims the passing away of
every form of religion which is tied to a local centre, by
anticipation condemning Mahometanism here, as a retro
grade step in the spiritual history of humanity — so to
make room for that faith, which should have its centre
everywhere and its circumference nowhere. There was

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 109
here, I say, a condemnation of every religion tied to a
local centre ; for when Christ replied, ' Woman, believe Me]
the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor
yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father] annulling thus such
earlier precepts as that of Deut. xii. 5, 6, this ' ye ' must
suffer no such limitation as should restrict it to the Sama
ritans alone, and to this question of the woman in respect
of the place where they ought to worship. The words
may refer, as Meyer says, to the future conversion of the
Samaritans, ' who thereby set free, from the service on
Garizim should not thereupon be brought to the service
at Jerusalem' ; but they have a much wider scope ; in this
' ye ' are included all the children of men, all the nations
of the earth, as one by one they shall be brought into the
true fold. Christ does not indeed use the communicative
'we] as another prophet would have done, as would
have suited every other save Him who was the only-be
gotten of the Father ; but, excepting Himself, his words
do not except any other.
The question which the woman had asked could not
be resolved but in favour of Jerusalem ; yet very ob
servable is the manner in which, before the Lord thus
pronounces the claims of Garizim untenable and without
a warrant, He lifts up the whole matter in debate into a
higher sphere, and shows how in a little while the very
subject matter of it will have disappeared altogether.
That there could be such a controversy as this, whether
at Jerusalem or at Garizim men ought to worship the
Father, the very existence of such a dispute had its rise
1 Bengel has a subtle observation here : Ad Judseos et discipulos saepe
Christus dixit, Bico vobis (yer. 35). Uno hoc loco ad Samaritida, Crede mihi.
Illi magis obligati erant ad credendum, quam haec. Hanc proportionem
sequuntur formulae.

no CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
in the fact that even true religion itself hitherto had
moved among ' elements of this world ' (Gal. iv. 3), and had
owned a ' worldly sanctuary ' (Heb. ix. l),from which now
it was about to disengage itself for ever; and once dis
engaged from these, the controversy would be possible no
more, but that great prophetic word of Malachi would be
fulfilled, ' and in every place incense shall be offered unto
my name, and a pure offering' (Mai. i. 11).
As concerns, indeed, the present and the past nothing
can be more absolute than the decision which Christ
pronounces in favour of Jerusalem and its worship, and
against Garizim and the will-worship which was esta
blished there : ' Ye worship ye know not what 1 we know
what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews! This
neuter ' what ' has often made a difficulty ; we should cer
tainly have expected, 'Ye worship ye know not whom]
and again, ' We know whom we worship.' Some there
fore have made this ' what' to express rather the manner
than the object of worship. But it was more probably
selected to express the unreal character of their whole
worship, the absence of any relation on their part to a
personal God. It will then find its exact parallel in
St. Paul's' use of ' the Godhead ' (to delov) at Acts xvii. 29.
God is only truly worshipped of them whom He has shewn
how to worship Him, and who worship Him in the way
that He has shewn. He is only known of those to whom
He makes Himself known. The Samaritan was eminently
an invented religion ; more so in many respects than the
traditional heathenism, which may have still kept traces,
not wholly effaced, of the original revelation; a name
without a power, a temple without a temple's God. The
altar they reared was, in the saddest sense of the words,

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 111
' To an Unknown God,' and one whom by means of that
worship they could never know. The other ' ivhat' in
the second clause of the sentence will then be there only
for the sake of concinnity. Had the assertion stood alone,
it would have been, ' We know whom we worship! LWe' —
for Christ here makes common part with his people, and
speaks at once in his human character, therefore as a
worshipper, and in his Jewish character, therefore as a
worshipper at Jerusalem and in and through the service
of the temple, — 'we know what we worship, no dream and
imagination of man's own heart, but One who has ap
pointed ways by which He may be approached, and who,
sitting between the Cherubim, meets them who approach
Him by these.' A Jew might be full of darkness, many
were so, in respect of the God whose name he bore,
whose worshipper he professed to be ; but that was his
separate individual guilt, and sprang from a refusing to
use, or from a not using aright, that knowledge of God
to which he had been called ; meanwhile every Jew, who
was such in truth and not in name only, knew what and
whom he worshipped. It was otherwise with the Sama
ritan. He did not fail in the right application of what
his religion taught him of God ; but that religion itself
was a device of man, a vanity and a lie, no help to him in
the finding of God, but a hindrance rather.
A rapid oversight of the circumstances under which
the Samaritan worship came into being, and the conditions
of its existence at this time, will enable us best to under
stand the uncompromising severity of the verdict which the
lips of truth have just pronounced against it. It is true that
the upgrowth of the Samaritan worship, with the building
of the temple on Mount Garizim, which for two hundred

112 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
years, according to Josephus, but probably for more
nearly three hundred, was an offence and a provocation to
those who worshipped on Mount Moriah (the rivalry of
the religions has survived the destruction of both temples),
is clothed in much obscurity ; yet not so great as to hide
from us the unreal character which clung to it from the
first. To regard Samaritanism as in any sense a con
tinuation of the schism, political and religious, of the Ten
Tribes1 is altogether misleading. It is true, as mentioned
already, that the Samaritans at a later day claimed their
descent from the tribe of Ephraim ; in which, as they
affirmed, the true line of God's promises ran, appealing in
proof to Gen. xlix. 22-26 ; Deut. xxxiii. 13-17 ; and
ignoring, as some tell us, Eli and Samuel and the house
of David altogether. But this was an after-thought.
The only real thread of connection between the two is
the well-known fact recorded in the Second Book of Kings
(xvii. 24-28), namely, that when the heathen colonists
planted by the king of Assyria in the land left desolate
by the deportation of its Israelitish inhabitants, were
annoyed in their new seats by lions, these 'proselytes of
the lions,' as the Jews loved insultingly to call them,
sought and obtained that a priest from among those who
had been thus carried away might be sent back to teach
them ' the manner of the God of the land,' hoping so to
avert his displeasure. But one of Jeroboam's priests,
himself entangled in the idolatries of Dan and Bethel, was
not likely to accomplish much, and from the sacred nar
rative we gather that he accomplished nothing at all, in
the way of extirpating the various idolatries which the
Persian and Median colonists had brought with them
'As Witsius does in his Decaphylon, ch. 3, and many mors.

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 113
(ver. 29-41) ; some of these idolatries surviving in forms
the most hideous (see ver. 31) ; however he may have
managed to combine with these certain outward cere
monies, and to impart a knowledge of certain outward
facts, of the true religion.
When the children of the Captivity, restored to their
own land, were engaged in the rebuilding of their temple,
the Samaritans, as is familiar to all, requested, not on the
ground of a common nationality, for that they do not
venture to plead, but as seeking the same God with them,
to be allowed to share in the work ; with, of course, the
condition understood, that the temple, reared by both,
should be common to both (Ezra iv. 1-3). The Jews
refused ; and they could not do otherwise. The Jewish
Church might even then receive proselytes one by one
into its bosom ; but the time of any freer larger adoption
of the nations was yet far off; and it was God, not man,
who must determine when the hour for this had arrived.
For the present their strength lay in their isolation.
That alone could preserve them from the infinite spiritual
dangers which surrounded them. Mingling with the
heathen, or suffering these to mingle with them, they
would soon have learned their works. The Samaritans
resent the refusal ; put many spiteful hindrances in the
way of the work ; and the seeds of an enmity which has
lasted to this day, seeds hereafter to spring up in ten
thousand bitternesses of hate and scorn and wrong on the
one side and on the other, were sown.
There are no means of tracing the steps by which the
Samaritan worship in the course of time eliminated from
itself the grosser heathen elements which it contained (its
kernel was heathenish to the last, see ver. 22), or the
1

u4 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
modifications which it underwent, until at last it became
so plausible a counterfeit of the truth, that it did not
hesitate to enter the lists even of theological argument;
disputing, — -it does so here by the mouth of this woman
-—as to which was the truth, and which the lie. But
though the several steps of this transformation may be
out of our power to trace, there was one event, or series
of events, which must have exercised an enormous in
fluence in bringing such a result about, which perhaps
alone would have made it possible. This was the seces
sion from Jerusalem of one or more members of the high-
priestly family ; accompanied or followed by that of other
distinguished refugees ; who for one cause or another
driven from Jerusalem, or malcontents quitting it of their
own accord, found refuge and welcome in Samaria, and
brought a knowledge with them of the Jewish ritual and
of the Jewish theology to those whose faith and worship
must till their arrival have been a very poor, maimed, and
ignorant thing.
Josephus1 has a story exactly of the kind, which cannot
indeed pass muster as he tells it ; but which yet is gene
rally recognized as possessing a foundation of historic
truth, as the more or less inaccurate version of an
event recorded thus by Nehemiah : ' And one of the sons
of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the High Priest, was son in
law to Sanballat the Horonite ; therefore I chased him
from me ' (xiii. 28); or, if not this, to be another event of
a like character, which in the telling has been more or
less confused with this. If indeed Josephus refers to the
same event as Nehemiah, then, besides other mistakes, he
has placed it some eighty years after the date when it
1 Antt. xi. 7. 2, and 8. a.

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 115
really happened. His story is of one Manasses, brother
of Joiada the High Priest, who about the year b. c. 332,
was chased from Jerusalem on account of a marriage
which he had contracted with the daughter of Sanballat,
the Persian governor of Samaria, and which, when re
quired, he refused to dissolve. He was received with
open arms by his father in law, who undertook to rear for
him on Mount Garizim, the highest mountain in Samaria,
a temple more magnificent than that from which he had
been driven ; where he should himself exercise the office
of High Priest. The worship there was in this way set
on a far more formidable footing than it had before
attained ; not to say that the secession, once begun, was
presently reinforced by other fugitives and apostates.,
many of them priests, who, now that a rallying point and a
refuge was prepared for them, fell away as Manasses had
done. Such is the story of Josephus ; not without serious
inaccuracies, but having also some substratum of truth.
The temple thus reared was destroyed by John Hyrcanus
b. c. 129 j1 but the worship continued on Mount Garizim,
which by this time the Samaritans had learned to regard
as the holiest mountain in the world,2 some sort of
edifice no doubt occupying the place of the temple which
had disappeared. Nor could the imitation have been a
contemptible one ; else it could never have excited the
intense jealousy which evidently among the Jews it did
excite.8 Everything in fact may have been there, — except
1 Antt. xm. 9. 1 ; B. J. 1. ». 6.
2 Josephus (Antt. xvm. 4. 1) : Taptfclv, b ayvbrarov avrolg bpav imeDaprrai.
9 A story recorded by Josephus (Antt. xm. 3. 4) is singularly illustra
tive of the fierceness with which the rival claims of Jerusalem and Garizim
were debated, not on these spots merely, but wherever Jew and Samaritan
encountered. Certain of the one religion and of the other at Alexandria
besought Ptolemy Philometor to decide which were in the right, pledging
1 2

u6 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
the presence of God. There was but one flaw, but that
was a fatal one : ' Ye worship ye know not what!
But if thus with them, it was very different with the
Jews : ' We know what we worship ' (Rom. iii. 2 ; Luke
xvi. 29), 'for salvation is of the Jews' (Isai. ii. 3; Gen. xii.
2, 3; Zech. viii. 23; Mic. iv. 2). This 'salvation] where
we should beforehand have expected Him to be named who
was the Author of that salvation, the Saviour (cf. Rom.
ix. 5), this abstract for the concrete, may remind us of
exactly the same language on the lips of the aged Simeon,
'for mine eyes have seen thy salvation' (ro cuTripiov
there), uttered at a moment when he held the infant
Saviour in his arms (Luke ii. 30), and of the words of the
dying Jacob, ' I have waited for thy salvation, 0 Lord '
(Gen. xlix. 18). Because salvation was thus of the Jews,
therefore they knew what they worshipped,1 and not vice
versd, because they knew what they worshipped, there
fore salvation was of them. He who set them to minister
salvation to the world, as a necessary condition of this
gave them to know Himself, whom they must first know
before they could declare to others.
But this declaration of our Lord's, quite irrespective
of its bearing on the controversy between the rival
Churches, is very important as setting the seal of his abso
lute authority on. the Jewish institutions as divine, di
rectly appointed of God for the bringing of mankind to
the knowledge of his Name. Wherever Christ's words are
him beforehand to put to death those against whom his decision should be
given. He solemnly heard their several pleadings and proofs alleged ; which
done, he decided, as he could not do otherwise, in favour of the Jews, slay
ing, according to the request and agreement made, the advocates of Garizim.
'So rightly Lampe: In expectatione enim hujus salutis totus cultua
Mosaicus fundatus erat.

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 117
accepted as rule and law, these words of his, spoken by the
well of Jacob, will vindicate for Israel in that period
which went before the Incarnation a position altogether
different from that of every other nation of the earth.
Israel was the channel through which the salvation of
God should be conveyed to the world. It was the aloe
tree, in many aspects unsightly enough, but which yet
should blossom at last in one c bright consummate flower,'
and having so fulfilled its mission should then wither and
die.1 Doubtless there were, as the illustrious Alexan
drian teachers loved to trace, preparations for Christ going
forward in the Gentile world, as well as within the limits
of the Jewish Church ; that had its nponaiSeia too ; but
in many respects this was negative rather than posi
tive ; and even where positive, it was very far from being
that direct immediate discipline, nurture, and training
which was their exclusive privilege, ' of whom as concern
ing the flesh Christ should come, who is over all, God
blessed for ever ' (Rom. ix. 5).
Christ has spoken already of the where men shall wor
ship the Father, that it shall be ' neither in this mountain,
nor yet at Jerusalem] but everywhere (cf. 1 Tim. ii. 8 ;
Zeph. iii. 11) ; He proceeds to speak (having disposed by
way of parenthesis of the question moved by the woman),
of the how : ' The hour cometh, and now is, when the true
worshippers shallworship the Father* in spirit and in truth;
for the Father seeketh such to worship Him! The ' now is'
declares that this is a future which has already com
menced. The dispensation of the Spirit, in which God the
1 Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xvii. 11): Ipse Jesus substantia populi ejus, ex
quo natura est carnis ejus.
2 Grotius : Tacite Novi Foederis suavitatem innuit, cum Deum Patrem
vocat, Rom. viii. 15 ; Gal. iv. 16.

uS CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
Spirit shall be spiritually worshipped is not merely some*
thing which is to be hereafter ; she stands already upon
its threshold. Prophesied of long since (Jer. iii. 16 ;
Hagg. ii. 7-10; Zeph. iii. 9; Isai. xiv. 23), it has now
actually begun (cf. v. 25). As an immediate consequence
of this, a very slight one, compared with the far more
momentous which the fact involves, she shall not need to
mend her present erroneous faith by betaking her to Jeru
salem, instead of to Garizim. The time for this is over.
We shall best understand what this worshipping ' in
spirit and in truth' means, if we deal with these statements
one by one, only afterwards considering the relation in
which they stand to one another. And first, ' in spirit! St.
Paul speaks of himself and those of ' the true circumcision,'
corresponding to the ' true worshippers' of this passage, as
worshipping ' in the Spirit of God ' (Phil. iii. 3) ; of the
Spirit helping our infirmities (Rom. viii. 26) ; St. Jude of
' praying in the Holy Ghost ' (ver. 20); this being the divine
element and sphere in which prayer has its rise, and in
which it moves. It will follow that only there, where the
mystery of the New Birth has found place, will this con
dition of a true worship be fulfilled. In his fallen nature
man is not spirit, but flesh (Gen. vi. 3). Latent and sup
pressed, overlayed by the flesh, utterly unable to extricate
itself from the superincumbent load, there is a spirit in
him, an organ, that is, for the reception of the divine
Spirit, and one which by that Spirit may be quickened
into the activities of prayer and worship. Little as this
neophyte in the school of Christ may have understood of
all this, she will yet have gathered from that utterance
of his, still more plainly from a word which is presently to
follow (ver. 24), that a living God must be worshipped in a

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 119
living manner, by that which is highest and best in man,
and by that informed and quickened by a breath or Spirit
of his own.
He adds, ' and in truth! Where the Spirit is, there is
the truth ; He, as the Spirit of truth, excluding not merely
all the grosser falsehoods of the heathen religions, but all
subtle self-delusions in which worshippers who are not
' true ' may be so easily entangled ; as the service of the lips
offered instead of the service of the heart (Ps. 1. 16 ; Isai.
xxix. 13 ; Matt. xv. 8) ; with all substitutions of the out
ward for the inward, as of bullocks and goats in place of
thanksgivings and paying of vows (Ps. 1. 8-11); thousands
of rams and rivers of oil in lieu of justice and mercy and
a humble walking with God (Mic. vi. 7, 8). Nor does
the worshipping ' in truth ' exclude only what is false.
It excludes also what as worship is partial, rudimentary,
imperfect. Those whom God enables to worship must
have passed through the lower and more imperfect stages
of a religious training, have left behind them types and
shadows, elements of this world, have been by the Spirit
introduced into the world of spiritual realities, and must
now be moving and acting in it.1 ' The law came by Moses,
but grace and truth by Jesus Christ' (John i. 17). In
these words, upon which the whole Epistle to the He
brews may be said to be an extended commentary, there
is a clear antithesis between the Mosaic law, -with all
Levitical institutions, and the ' truth.' Not antagonistic,
which God forbid, they are yet distinct from one another.
One has 'a shadow of good things to come,' the other
1 Augustine : Foras ieramus, intro missi sumus. Intus age totum. Et
si forte quseris aliquem locum altum, aliquem locum sanctum, intus exhibe
te templum Dei. In templo vis orare, in te ora. Sed prius esto templum
Dei, quia ille in templo suo exaudiet orantem.

120 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
' the very image ' (elx&v) 'of the things' (Heb. x. 1).
The earlier may have, and has, prophetic outlines, typical
preformations ; ' but the body' (o<3lua=d/l570£ta here) 'is of
Christ' (Col. ii. 7). What to 'worship in truth' is, th.'s
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has exactly de
clared : ' Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter
into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and
living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through
the veil, that is to say, his flesh ; and having a High Priest
over the house of God ; let us draw near with a true heart
in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled
from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure
water' (x. 19-22).1
' God is a Spirit!2 Expositors have sometimes sought
to go very deep into the meaning of these words, to find
in them metaphysical announcements concerning the
nature of God. Doubtless they are of an infinite depth ;
but that exquisite saying of Gregory the Great's,8 that
Scripture has depths for an elephant to swim in and
shallows which a lamb can wade, is capable of being
pushed a little further. Oftentimes the same Scripture
is at once a depth for one and a shallow for another,
1 Keeping in mind that Christ has said elsewhere ' I am the Truth '
(John xiv. 6), we shall scarcely err if to what has been said we further add
— and many of the Fathers engaged in controversy with the Arians have
here shown us the way, — that we have the whole mystery of the Trinity
in these words declared to us, the Father to be worshipped, as He only can
be worshipped, in the Spirit and the Truth. So Athanasius; Basil the
Great, in a passage full of the deepest theology, De Spir. Sancto, 26 ; and
Ambrose, Be Spir. Sancto, iii. 11, 81.
2 On these words see a remarkably able article by Ackermann in the
Theol. Stud, und Frit. 1839, PP- 873-944, Ueber irvevpa, v^ig, und Geist.
It deals pp. 940-941. with this verse.
8 At least I have never traced it higher than the prefatory Epistle to his
Commentary on Job : Divinus etenim sermo sicut mysteriis prudentes exercet,
sic plernmque superficie simplices refovet. Quasi quidam quippe est fluvius,
ut ita dixerim, planus et altus, in quo et agnus air bulet et elephas natet.

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 121
and thus is it here. We should do little honour to the
Lord's skill in teaching, his adaptation of his words to
the needs of his hearers, if, seeking after high things, we
failed to find in these words some simple truth, such as
that poor ignorant woman with whom He talked was
capable of grasping, and such as at that moment she
needed. ' God is a Spirit /' — we must not miss, assuredly
she did not miss, the significant image on which this
word (spiritus from spirare, as 7tvsvf/.a from 71j>ho),
reposes ;' like the wind therefore, to which He is likened,
breathing and blowing where He will, penetrating every
where, owning no circumscriptions, tied to no place,
neither to Mount Zion nor to Mount Garizim ; but rather
filling all space with his presence (Ps. cxxxix. 7 ; 1 Kin.
viii. 27; Isai. lxvi. 1), in his essence and, as involved in
this very title, free. On this it follows that ' they who
worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth ' — on
all which there has been already occasion to speak.
How far, we may fitly pau&e for a" moment to enquire,
does a declaration like this of the spiritual character of
all true worship exclude forms, how far does it allow
them ? That it has not been counted to exclude them,
the practice of the Church in all ages sufficiently declares.
At the same time it must be accepted as, in the first place,
stamping on them a subordinate and secondary character.
They may be henceforth the vehicles of devotion ; they
can never in the New Covenant themselves constitute
devotion. Then too, secondly, it is plain that there is
allowance here for only so much of these as there is a
reasonable expectation can be taken up and quickened
1 It need hardly be remarked that in the Hebrew or Aramaic, which the
Lord in all likelihood spoke with this woman, the identity of spirit, breath,
and wind is quite as strongly marked.

122 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
by the Spirit which is in the worshippers. So soon as
ever they are in excess of this, directly they overlay the
inner life, instead of setting it forth, are present for their
own sakes, and not for the sake of something of which
they are the bearers, directly they tempt men to stop
short with them, instead of passing and pressing through
them to Him who is behind them all, they are of the
things which Christ intended here to exclude. The
idiosyncrasies of men, of nations, of the same people at
different epochs of its spiritual growth, are so various that it
can never be easy to fix the exact point where what should
nave been a help is in danger of becoming a hindrance.
So long as man even at his best estate is at once weak
and sinful, it will be always an alternative of dangers.
On the one side, though worshipping One who is Spirit,
he is not himself all spirit ; but body and spirit ; and
as such craves a certain body for his devotions (a
' spiritual body ' it should be), cannot afford for long not
to find one; the wine of devotion, having no vessels to
hold it, will inevitably be spilt and lost. On the other
hand, entirely lawful concessions to this just craving of the
human heart may be turned into occasions of mischief.
Over and over again God had need to cast a slight on his
own temple-worship, its gifts and its sacrifices, when these
had become not means any longer, but ends, to his
people; not helps to bring them into his presence, but
substitutes for that presence. And if that which was of
divine appointment was itself thus liable to abuse, how
much more that which is of man's devising. But it is
impossible in a matter like this to do more than lay down
the principle which should guide in rejecting or allowing.
Nowhere will prudence, charity, mutual forbearance, be

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 123
more needed than in the application of this principle ; for
wherever the line is drawn, it is certain that some will
have to tolerate more of forms than they think desirable,
and others to put up with less.
Something this poor sinner understands, but not much,
of what has just been said to her. He with whom she
speaks has brought her into deep waters, deeper than
any in which she can find a footing, transported her
into a sphere of truths far larger than she can grasp.
This setting aside at once and for ever of the controversy
between her people and his people, as something of no
future interest whatever, this setting forth to her of an
other Father beside that ' father Jacob,' this worship in
spirit and in truth, there is that in her which dimly and
obscurely responds to it all. We may take her words
which follow, ' / know that Messias cometh, which is called
Christ ; when He is come, He will tell us all things ' 1 — as
a cry of helplessness. 'I see not my way in this new
world into which Thou hast brought me; but one is
coming, the Messias, the Prophet promised to our fathers ;
I can only wait in confidence that He will lead us into all
truth, tell us all which it most concerns us to know.' At
the same time there pierces through her words, as it seems
to me, a timid presage and presentiment, such as she
hardly dares own, much less ventures to utter, ' Thou
perhaps art He whom we look for.'
The word 'Messias ' occurs only twice in the New
Testament; here, and in Andrew's announcement to
his brother Peter, of the Saviour whom he has found
'. There are two curious examples of this same adjourning of perplexed and
difficult questions to the decision of a prophet that should come hereafter
in the Maccabsean times (1 Maoc. iv. 46 ; xiv. 41).

124 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
(John i. 41). It is there explained by the Evangelist as
' being interpreted, The Christ,' or The Anointed ; the title
being drawn first from Ps. ii. 2 ; xix. 7 (xx. 6. E. V.) ; and
then from Dan. ix. 25, 26. It is exceedingly difficult to
say whether ' which is called Christ] is here also an inter
calation of the Evangelist, or a part of her designation of
the Saviour whom she looks for. That St. John has ex
plained ' Messias' once does not make it theleast unlikely
that he should explain it again; for see xi. 16; xx. 24;
xxi. 2 ; indeed the fact that he has done so before leads
me on the whole to conclude that he is doing so again,
and that these words are not the woman's, though they
would have fitted in very well to her speech, but the
Evangelist's. As neither Psalms nor Prophets were ac
cepted by the Samaritans, the name ' Messias' must have
made its way to them from the theological schools of the
Jews. With the exception of the name, there is nothing
in their expectation of the Messiah which she might not
have derived from that Pentateuch, which and which
only, as is familiar to all, the Samaritans received. To
this day they mainly ground their expectations of a
Messiah on Deut. xviii. 15-19 — a true foreshewing of Him ;
but at the same time, if taken alone, a most meagre and
inadequate one, as giving no hint either of his kingly or
priestly office, but of his prophetic only ; even, as it will
be observed, it is only prophetic functions which she
ascribes to Him here.1
It is not a little remarkable that our Lord, who so
carefully concealed from the multitude of his Jewish
1 The rise of at least one false Christ about this same time, or a little
later, among the Samaritans — I refer in particular to Dositheus, — is evidence
that Messias-hopes and expectations were stirring among them no less than
among the Jews.

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 125
followers the fact of His Messiahship, beyond the circle
of his own disciples revealing it but to one (John ix. 31),
who so strictly charged the disciples themselves that they
should not make Him known (Matt. xvi. 20), sealing with
the seal of absolute silence the lips of the three who had
been witnesses of his Transfiguration (Matt. xvii. 9 ;• Mark
ix. 9), does yet here announce Himself without reserve to
this Samaritan woman, and not to her only, but to the
Samaritans in general during his brief sojourn among
them, so that before He quits them they confess, ' This is
indeed the Christ, the Savioivr of the world ' (ver. 42) . And
yet the different dealing in the different circumstances is
intelligible enough. One of our Lord's chief difficulties
during the whole course of his ministry among his own
people was to keep that ministry clear of political excite
ments, to avoid rousing those turbulent expectations
of a change in their outer condition, which the Jewish
multitude associated most closely with the coming of
Messiah. Thus so soon as ever these supposed that they
beheld such in Him, they sought, we are told, ' to take
Him by force, and to make Him a king' (John vi. 15), to
carry Him away with them and instal Him at once as
King Messiah at Jerusalem — He to avoid this being
obliged to conceal Himself from them ; even as nothing
would have so effectually marred and brought to ruin
his whole work as any attempt of the kind, and this
whether it were defeated at once, or crowned with a tem
porary success. There were other reasons, no doubt,
which will help to explain why Luther's work abode,
and Savonarola's came to nothing; yet this, no doubt,
was a chief reason, namely that Luther's was a Church
Reformation and nothing else, leaving any other to follow,

126 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
as follow in its own good time it must ; while that of the
Italian friar would fain have been a Reformation of the
Church and State in one. But the Samaritan expectation
of a Messiah, if in some respects weaker and feebler, was
yet mingled with far fewer disturbing elements ; not to
say that the acceptance of a Jewish Messiah upon their
parts could arouse no worldly hopes or expectations in
their hearts ; nay rather must sound the death-knell of
any proud hopes for their nation which they hitherto
may have cherished, and caused them to bid a lasting
farewell to these.1 To them, to this woman, and after
wards to her fellow-countrymen, He could declare Him
self without fear of the consequences, and He did so : ' I
that speak with thee am He!2 What a glorious fulfilment
this of Isai. lxv. l : ' I said, Behold Me, behold Me, unto
a nation that was not called by my name.'
'And upon this, came his disciples and marvelled that
He talked with the woman! 8 The oriental contempt of
woman speaks out very strongly in the sayings of the
Jewish Rabbis, and at this time the disciples had not
1 Godet (Commentaire sur VEvangile de S. Jean) : Quelle contraste entre
la notion du Messie telle que l'exprime cette femme [ver. 2.5], et les notions
cbarnelles et de nature toute politique que Jesus rencontrait sans cesse en
Israel sur ce sujet ! Sans doute Tenement royal manque a la notion saraari-
taine du Messie. Mais combiea 1'absenee de oet element n'est-elle pas
preferable a l'alteration profonde qu'il avait subie chez les Juifs ! L'idee est
incomplete, mais non pas fausse ; et voila pourquoi Jesus peut se l'appliquer,
et se dire ici le Christ, ce qu'il n'a fait en Israel qu'au dernier moment
(xvii. 3 ; Matt. xxvi. 64).
5 Let it be permitted to adapt to this poor bondwoman of sin, at this blessed
crisis of her life, words written long before concerning another bondwoman,
when grace, though far lower grace than this, was vouchsafed also to her:
Kal avetjigev b Bebg rovg bfyBa'Xpovg avT-rjg, Kal elSe </>peap vSarog (avrog (Gen.
xxi. 19).
3 There are some beautiful remarks on Christ's relations to women, and
the influence He exerted on them, in Guizot's Meditations on the Essence of
Christianity', Eighth Meditation, p. 281, English translation.

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 127
themselves unlearned it. Yet while they marvelled, they
were at the same time hindered by respect and awe from
expressing their surprise : 'Yet no man said, What seekest
Thou? or, Why talkest Thou with her?' None ventured to
ask the reason of this unusual conversation (John xxi. 12).
Evidently it never entered into their thoughts that what
He was asking from her was her faith; that what He
was talking about with her was the worship of the Father
in spirit and in truth. Meanwhile the woman, availing
herself of their arrival, which naturally caused a pause
and break in the conversation, quits the spot — but this
in the hope that she may presently return again, and not
return alone.
As a sort of pledge of this her return, or perhaps rather
in the forgetfulness of a great joy, ' she left her water-pot]
as apostles before her had left their nets (Matt. iv. 20) ; so
soon has she learned to prefer the water which Christ
gives to the fountain which Jacob gave ; ' and went her
ivay into the city, and saith unto the men, Come, see a man,
which told me all things that ever I did! Little as she
could have desired at other times to direct attention to
the events of a life which could ill bear any very close
inspection, all shame of this kind is for the present over
borne and swallowed up in feelings of wonder and of joy.
This ' all things that ever I did ' must, of course, be taken
as the exaggeration of one still lost in amazement at that
marvellous revelation of the leading outlines and so many
of the mournful secrets of her past history. It is with
her now as with him whom St. Paul contemplates as
coming into the Christian assembly, who is there ' con
vinced of all, and judged of all ; and thus are the secrets
of his heart made manifest, and so falling down on his

128 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
face, he will worship God, and report that God is in you
of a truth' (l Cor. xiv. 24, 25). Such a judgment, and
one still higher, she has formed of Him who had thus
made manifest the secrets of her heart and life : 'Is not
this the Christ?' A more accurate rendering of her
question, ' Whether is this the Christ ?', would not really
alter the meaning ; only instead of seeking to force her
own conviction on those whom she addresses, she will be
rather putting it to them to judge, and to draw con
clusions of their own. The character of this woman, the
scandals of whose life must have been sufficiently notorious,
can have added no particular weight to the announce
ment which she now made, or to the invitations to her
fellow-townsmen which she gave ; yet her evident earnest
ness, with the strength of her own convictions lending
force to her words, overbears all other considerations.
They do not hesitate, but at her invitation ' they went out
of the city, and came unto Him!
In the interval between her departure and their arrival
a short but deeply interesting discourse between the Lord
and his disciples has found place. We know from ver. 8
that ' his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy
meat! They have prepared the food which they had
bought, and now they 'prayed Him, saying, Master, eat!
But since then a higher spiritual joy has suspended all
sense of a lower bodily necessity : ' I have meat to eat that
ye know not of! Let them eat; but for Himself He
needs not this earthly sustenance.1 As his thirst had been
not so much after the water of Jacob's well as after her
conversion who had come to draw water thence, so now
1 This is no doubt the force of that iya flpaoiv ex<j, in which He tacitly
distinguishes Himself who needed not, from them who needed, this food.

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 125
his -hunger is not for the food which they have prepared,
but for those whom He beholds already hastening from
the neighbouring city, that they may hear and receive
his word. The disciples, perplexed, can only suppose
that supplies have been brought Him from some quarter
of which they are ignorant : ' They say one to another,
Hath any man brought Him aught to eat ? ' He explains his
meaning, and of what meat He is speaking : ' My meat is to
do the will of Him that sent Me'1 (cf. Ps. xl. 8) ; this was
the ' hidden manna ' that He spake of, ' sweeter,' as the
Psalmist long before had said, 'than honey and the
honeycomb' (Ps. xix. 10; cxix. 103); ' and to finish2 his
ivork! With such zeal did He set Himself to the carrying
through of this, which his Father had set Him to accom
plish, that a little later He could say, ' I have finished the
work- which Thou gavest Me to do' (John xvii. 4). In
these words there is involved an answer to that question
of theirs, which they longed, but did not venture, to put to
Him, namely, why 'He talked with the woman! They could
not now fail to understand that his conversation with her
had no trivial motive, that it was for the winning of her into
that kingdom of grace which his Father had sent Him into
this world, and anointed Him with the Spirit, at once to
declare and to found (Isai. lxi. 1-3) . If any doubt ex
isted on this point, the words which follow (ver. 35-38),
1 One of the Apocryphal Gospels, the Protevangelium Jacobi Minoris, c. i.
supplies an interesting parallel. Joachim, the father of the Blessed Virgin,
retiring to the wilderness, declares his resolve to fast there till God shall
grant him his heart's desire ; ko.1 lorai poi % evxtj fipapa Kal irdpa.
a Lampe : Vox refaiSu, a riXog, designat non solum opus ad finem ducere,
sed etiam ita, ut actu omnes illas partes et qualitates habeat, quae ad opus
illud requirebantur, atque adeo ut respondeat secundum omnes partes sueb
delineationi, suoque scopo, cui est destinatum (Act. xx. 24 ; Jac. ii. 22 ;
1 Joh. ii. 5; iv. 12, 17, 18). X

130 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
difficult though in some details they are to us, would
have removed it.
The passage, I have just said, is difficult — more so, as it
seems to me, than is generally recognized, and almost every
explanation of it is encumbered with its own embarrass
ments. However satisfactory an explanation may prove
in one part, it is almost sure to be forced and artificial in
another. There is always something unreal in the going
off into general observations on the relations between the
spiritual sower and the spiritual reaper. What we almost
always seem to want is some explanation which shall more
closely attach these verses to the events which at the moment
are actually going forward, and on which these words are
a commentary. The interpretation which follows appears
to me to possess this recommendation. And first, the Lord
reminds his disciples of some words which, no doubt, had
lately fallen from their lips, as they looked out on that
broad expanse of corn-land, which, as modern travellers
assure us, stretches out before the eyes of one who stands,
as they stood, beside Jacob's well: 'Say not ye, There
are yet four months, and then cometh harvest ? ' So it may
be in the harvest of nature ; but in the harvest of grace
there is a quicker ripening than this : ' Behold, I say
unto you, Lift up your eyes (cf. Gen. xiii. 14, 15), and look
on the fields, for they are white already to harvest' (cf.
Isai. xlix. 18 ; Ix. 4). That they may understand of what
harvest He is speaking, He directs their attention to the
multitude already covering the space that lay between
the city and the place where they stood, and who were
only waiting, so to speak, to be gathered into the heavenly
garners. He proceeds to encourage his disciples to a work thus

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 131
made ready to their hands, addresses to them an exhorta
tion, the same which the prophet Joel had addressed to
others long before : ' Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest
is ripe ' (iii. 13) ; but he bidding to a harvest of death,
Christ to a harvest of life : ' and he that reapeth receiveth
wages, — or better, receiveth a reward]1 — ' and gathereth
fruit unto life eternal! Here is a twofold magnifying of the
spiritual reaper's office ; he has his own reward, by anti
cipation and in part upon earth ; he has it in full fruition
in heaven ; and, in addition to this, he ministers salvation
to others; for this 'gathereth fruit unto life eternal' I
cannot understand, with Hengstenberg and others, layeth
up a further and heavenly reward for himself; for the
'fruit' (xap7t6g) is identical with the 'harvest' (Oepxffiog),
and any interpretation which separates them brings con
fusion into the whole passage; cf. Matt. xiii. 30; iii. 12.
His work, then, having these two promises, is neither an
ill-requited nor a mean one ; not ill-requited, for he
receives a reward ; nor mean, for his harvest is of souls,
which shall be saved through Christ for ever.2 But
why has the Lord of the harvest thus graciously brought
to this early ripeness that harvest now spread forth before
their eyes ? The answer follows : ' that both he that
1 MiaBSg, a word not seldom used for that ' reward ' which of free grace
God reserves for His servants here and hereafter, Matt. v. 12 ; x. 41, 42;
1 Oor. iii. 8, 14 ; 2 John viii.
' Juvencus in the following lines, which are a favourable specimen of
his poetry, gives, as it seems to me, the right explanation (Evang. Hist. ii.
Quatuor hinc menses lffitse ad primordia messis
Frugiferse aestatis certe superesse putatis.
Erigite ergo oculos, albentes cernito campos,
Cunctaque maturam jam rura exposcere messem.
Nunc quicunque metet, pulchri mercede laboris,
Vitalique dehinc gaudebit frtfge redundans,
Et sator accipiet messorum gaudia lsetus.
k 2

1 32 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
soweth, and he that reapeth, may rejoice together! Here
the emphasis must lie on the concluding word, ' together!
Seldom indeed can this be the case. There is too often
an interval, not seldom a long and dreary one, between a
sowing and a reaping time. Often before the reaping
time has arrived, the sower is in his grave. If both of
them rejoice, yet seldom is it one and the same jubilee
which they celebrate together, such as that which Christ
announced that He is now about to celebrate in common
with His disciples.
' And herein] — in that which has just happened and is
happening, — 'is that saying true] the proverb approves
itself to be a genuine one, finding its fulfilment, as a pro
verb worthy of the name will do, in the actual events of
life, ' One soiveth and another reapeth!1 There is no
exception in the present instance to the general law, that
men enter on the labours of their predecessors. 'You,'
the Lord would say, 'are about to enter upon mine.'
This monition shall keep them humble, whatever suc
cesses may await them. ' You desired just now to know
why I talked with the woman, what I could have been
seeking from her. I was a sower then, you shall be
reapers in the harvest which frOm that sowing has so
quickly sprung up. I sent you to reap that whereon ye
bestowed no labour! We best understand this past, '/
sent you ' {aitkctsika!), by supposing our Lord to travel
1 The words in the Ajax of Sophocles, 645,
aKK ear' aXrfiyg 17 PpoTiov napotpia,
exBpav aSupa Supa, kovk bvfjaipa,
are not exactly parallel. Ajax there affirms the proverb which he cites to
contain a maxim, not false, but true, therefore atyBi/g : our Lord affirms this
saying which He has cited to be a genuine one, to be ah/Bcvbg, such as
deserves to pass muster, and to take its place among the recognized sayings
of men.

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 133
back in thought, and to plant Himself, as He speaks, at
the moment when He first gave them their commission,
sent them forth as ambassadors of his grace, labourers in
his harvest field.1 ' Other men laboured, and ye are
entered into their labours! This plural, ' other men] or
' others] as it would be better rendered, must not lead us
astray, as it has led so many, and induce us to refer this
to the prophets and other principal labourers in the older
Covenant, who underwent their hard apprenticeship under
the Law (Gal. iv. 3; Acts xv. 10); as though the anti
thesis were between them and the apostles of the New.
It is rather between Christ Himself and his apostles ;
between the Master and the servants, not between two
different companies of the servants. He is the sower, they
are the reapers ; and as compared with his labours, theirs
might be esteemed as none at all. What a glimpse have
we here of the travail of his soul in the redemption of
mankind — when He who certainly would not underrate
what his servants wrought for Him, nor forget any labour
of their love (Rev. ii. 2, 3), could yet speak in such- a
language as this ; all this labour and all this toil of theirs
quite disappearing from his sight, when brought side to
side with his own.2 Truly He trod the winepress alone ;
and of this He counts it good to remind them at the
present moment, who were about to share with Him
in the triumphs of the time.
'So when the Samaritans were come unto Him, they
' Lampe : Utitur tempore praeterito, Ego misi vos, quia missio eorum a
vooatione Christi incipiebat, licet deinceps complementum suum acceperit.
a We may profitably bring together, we were probably meant to bring
together, the KeKoirtc.Kaocv of this ver. 38, and the 6 oiv 'Ijjcrovg Kenomaaig of
ver. 6.

i34 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
besought Him that He would tarry with them! While
orthodox Jews besought Him that He would depart out
of their coasts (Matt. viii. 34), drove Him with violence
(Luke iv. 29), or plotted to scare Him by fraud (Luke
xiii. 31,32), from among them, poor heretical Samaritans
make it their petition that He would tarry with them ; so
have the first become last, and the last first. Nor did
they make this petition in vain. Although during his
earthly ministry sent only to the lost sheep of the house
of Israel, so that his personal contact with any other was
exceptional, and in one way or other was noted as such,
' He abode there two days! Assuredly these days were in
finitely precious to many — He during them preparing their
hearts for that glad and free acceptance of the message of
the Gospel, which after his resurrection it is recorded that
Philip found in ' a city of Samaria ' (Acts viii. 5), it is
difficult not to think in this city, the headquarters of the
Samaritan worship — and, as it would seem, ' in many vil
lages of the Samaritans ' as well (ver. 25). Nor were these
days of preparation only. This, as He has intimated
already, was a sowing time and a reaping time all in one
— the two drawn into marvellous nearness with one
another. The Evangelist gives us assurance of this, in
forming us as He does, that ' many more believed because
of his word / and these, having believed, ' said unto the
tvoman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying ; for
we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed
the Christ, the Saviour of the world! St. John loves to
mark the advancing steps of faith, and how those who
believe come to believe more strongly, pass on from faith
to faith, from a weaker to a firmer, from a lower to a
higher ; compare ii. 1 1 ; xvi. 30 ; xx. 8. This speech of

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 135
her fellow-townsmen to the woman has nothing rude or
offensive1 about it, rather, indeed, the contrary : 'We set
our own seals to the truth of thy report. We have heard
Him ourselves, the gracious words which He speaks, the
authority with which He speaks them ; He has so com
mended Himself to us, with such demonstration of the
truth, that we bow to his claims, and, quite irrespective of
any witness of thine, take Him for what He avouches
Himself to be, the Christ, the Saviour of the world!
The fact that the Scripture allows and accepts this
confession of theirs, sees in it not an act of credulity but
of faith, and this, notwithstanding the very slight external
proofs which to them He could have produced, attesting and
making good his pretensions to be the Messiah, is very in
structive. It is an evidence that the Scripture ascribes to
man' a spiritual organ for the recognition of the highest
truth, when this is presented to him ; that it regards the
truth, — and Christ is the Truth (John xiv. 6), — as avto-
7tLatog, visible by its own light, and carrying its own con
viction with it. In alf this matter the woman may be
said to have fulfilled for her fellow-countrymen the office
which the Church fulfils for her children. She too wit
nesses of Christ ; and then those brought to Him through
this witness find in Him such fulness of grace and truth,
that they set to their own seals that He is the Christ, and
have another and a better witness of this in themselves.2
1 Some indeed have urged that Mid, by which the Samaritans describe
the report of the woman, is properly garrulous talk; thus Calvin: Videntur
jactare Samaritani sibi solidius jam esse fulcrum quam in lingua mulieris,
quae ut plurimum futilis esse solet. But laXui has no such slighting usage
in Scripture ; at John viii. 43 it is ascribed to Christ.
3 Grotius: Notarunt veteres in Mc Samaritidi Ecclesiae esse figuram,
quae nos adducit ad verbum divinum; nos verbo, maxime propter ipsius
majestatem et sanctitatem, credimus. Confer 1 Reg. x. 6, 7.

136 CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.
This is the only occasion on which the phrase, 'Saviour
of the world] appears in the Gospels, as only once else
where in the New Testament, namely, in the First Epistle
of St. John (iv. 14; cf. 1 Tim. iv. 10). Remarkably
enough, though when we look a little closer most naturally,
it occurs first on the lips of these Samaritan converts.
Such language, with the mighty truth which was bound
up with it, was still a long way off from Jewish thought,
had not as yet risen above the horizon in the, minds of
apostles themselves ; for these, even after the Resurrec
tion itself, demanded, ' Wilt Thou at this time restore
again the kingdom to Israel?' (Acts i. 6; cf. Luke i. 68-
79; xxiv. 21) by their question testifying that their
horizon reached no further than this, that this restoration
was the ultimate limit of their hopes ; even as the first
half of the Book of Acts gives evidence how slowly, with
how many reluctancies oh the part of some, it broke upon
their minds that theirs was a commission as wide as the
world, that their risen Lord was not King of Israel only,
but 'Saviour of the world' as well.
Many circumstances made the reception of this truth
easier to Samaritans. When they had once accepted
Jesus as the Messiah, there was every inducement at work
in their minds to contemplate Him not so much this King
of Israel, as the Saviour of the world. From his lips
they no doubt had learned, as the woman who first
brought them to Him had learned, that their pretensions
as the seed of Abraham were utterly baseless, that only
as He was this Saviour of all men could they have any
part or lot in Him.1 The Jew might cling to his exclusive
1 Calvin : Colligimus Evangelii summam intra biduum familiarius illis
fuisse a Ohristo traditum, quam hactenus Hierosolyniee fuisset. Et Christus

CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. 137
prerogatives, and passionately refuse to forego them.
These Samaritans were under no such temptation. Such
exclusive prerogatives were not, and never had been,
theirs. In their acknowledgment of a Jewish Messiah
they have passed a judgment on the whole past religious
history of their nation, have confessed that, which up to
this moment they had so obstinately denied, that ' salva
tion is of the Jews ; ' and it only remained for them to
accept that jdace which in the economy of this ' salvation
was assigned to them, to rejoice that, although ' of the
Jews] it was not for them alone ; to welcome Him who,
being first King of Israel, was also Saviour of the world.1
salutem quam attulerat, toti mundo conimunem esse testatus est, quo melius
intelligerent ad se quoque pertinere. Neque enim tanquam legitimos
hseredes ad participandam salutis gratiam eos vocavit, sed docuit se venisse
ut in Dei familiam extraneos admitteret, ac pacem afferret iis qui procul
erant. 1 Some preparations they may have found for this in the prophecy of the
Shiloh, 'Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be* (Gen. xlix. 10).
It is true that the Samaritans of the present day refer this to Solomon ;
but of old they referred it, and rightly, to the Messiah (Hengstenberg,
Christologie, vol. i. p. 76. Compare three instructive sermons by Bishop
Horsley, Sermons, 1829, vol. i. pp. 364-415).

4. THE SONS OF THUNDER.
Mark iii. 17.
The mention of the new name given by the Lord to the
two sons of Zebedee is one of the innumerable precious
notices which we owe exclusively to St. Mark. From
him alone we learn that the three foremost apostles, equal
in so much else, were also equal in this, that they all
obtained a new name, and that name imposed on them
by the Lord Himself. Yet this new and magnificent
title of ' Boanerges] or ' sons of thunder] with which
the two sons of Zebedee were adorned, is not without its
difficulties and obscurities. For, leaving out of sight
those of the formation of the word, which are not in
considerable, it must strike every thoughtful reader as
remarkable, that while the name Peter, or its Aramaic
equivalent Cephas, just before recorded as added by the
Lord to Simon, recurs continually in the sacred narrative,
is so stamped upon him as in the end almost entirely to
displace the name which he bore while yet a fisher not of
men but of fishes, this name, the imposition of which is
related in exactly the same language and with the same
emphasis, never once reappears in Scripture ; ' you never
find James called Boanerges, or John so called, either by
themselves or by others ' (Lightfoot) .

THE SONS OF THUNDER. i3g
Various explanations of this fact have been offered.
Thus it has been ingeniously suggested that the name
was, so to speak, a dual name, and belonged to the two
apostles, not severally and independently one of the other.
but only as a brother-pair, and in their connexion one with
the other, in the same way that Dioscuri belonged to
Castor and Pollux, or to Zethus and Amphion; which
being so, the occasions of its use must have been of rarest
occurrence, and with the early death of James (Acts
xii. 2) must have ceased altogether, the name itself be
coming, as one might say, extinct with him.1 And yet,
ingenious as this explanation must be owned to be, it is
doubly at fault. Even granting that this was such a dual
name, and only proper as applied to the pair, yet of such
opportunities for its use quite sufficient occur in the
Gospel history to prove the inadequacy of this explana
tion. The two make together their petition that they
may have the first and foremost places in Christ's king
dom (Mark x. 37). Together they propose to call down
fire on the inhospitable village of the Samaritans (Luke
ix. 54). They are named together as accompanying
Peter on that night made memorable by the second
miraculous draught of fishes (John xxi. 2). But besides
all this, the assumption on which the explanation rests is
erroneous. There may be some ambiguity in our Version.
' He surnamed them Boanerges ; ' but there is none in the
original. Anyone turning to it will at once perceive that
St. Mark distinctly implies that each of the twain, by
himself and apart from the other, was by the Lord called
a ' son of thunder ;' that, while the Evangelist records the
'name' Peter as given to Simon, when he tells of James
1 So Theodoret : vlmig f}povrijg rrjv ijvvaplda tov aitoaTSkav 'eKakeae,

140 THE SONS OF THUNDER.
and John it is no longer the ' name ' (ovo^ia) but the
' names ' (ovofj-ata), ' sons of thunder] which they receive ;
and thus no room is left for such a solution of the diffi
culty. But may not this difficulty be of a much simpler
solution? Of no other than this, that the surname
Boanerges, being common to both apostles, would not
have sufficiently designated which of them was intended ;
and that this inconvenience may have hindered it from
ever growing into an appellation ; which, indeed, there was
no need that it should do, having been given with quite
another object and intention.
A more important question lies behind this — What was
the meaning and purpose of this name ? That it was in
tended as a name of honour was never for an instant
doubted by Christian antiquity ; and indeed, since all
acknowledge the title given to Simon, which immediately
precedes it, to have been such an honourable super-
addition, it seems wholly inconceivable that there should
have been another name imposed on two other of the
Elect Twelve in quite a different intention and spirit. In
deed there are few interpretations of Holy Scripture
more monstrous in their kind than that other supposition,
namely, that the two sons of Zebedee acquired this
addition, 'sons of thunder] from the untimely and
passionate request of theirs, that they might be allowed
to call down fire from heaven on the inhabitants of that
churlish Samaritan village (Luke ix. 54) . Calmet was,
I believe, the first who started this explanation,1 at least
I have not seen it traced to an earlier source, but it has
found much acceptance since. Thus Tholuck, as quoted
' In his Dictionnaire, 1730

THE SONS OF THUNDER. 141
below,1 assumes it as certain, and affirms that the name
was imposed upon them-' to remind them evermore of that
inner foe with whom they needed to contend.'
But not to urge that there is nothing about thunder
in that, passage, nor yet at 2 Kin. i. 9-11, to the pre
cedent of which the two apostles avowedly refer ('as
Elias did'), the deriving of their name from this fault
of theirs goes counter to the whole tenour and analogy
of Scripture. The new name there is evermore the
expressing and fixing of the new nature ; it is the record
of some notable achievement, some glorious confession by
word or deed, through which the servant of God, who
thus wins this name, has been permanently lifted up into
a higher region of being than that which he moved in
before (Gen. xxxii. 26 ; Judg. vi. 32 ; Acts iv. 36, 37 ;
Matt. xvi. 18). It marks some signal epoch or crisis of
his spiritual life, which with its results by aid of this new
title is stamped upon him for ever (Num. xiii. 16; Gen.
xvii. 5, 15). The essence then of the new name being
throughout all the res't of Scripture at once the expressing
and the fixing of the new nature, it is quite impossible
that here it should be exactly the reverse ; namely, the
seizing of a transient and momentary outcoming of the
old nature, and the imparting of a fixity and permanence
to that. Simon's habitual firmness, not his momentary
weakness, his confession, not his denial, of his Lord, was in
corporated in his name, Cephas, or Peter, or the Rock ; nor
can we doubt that in like manner the Lord expressed at
' Wir finden ein blindes natilrliches Feuer bei ihm [Johannes] in jenem
Zuge, der Luc. ix. 54 erzahlt wird. Die hierbei bewiesene Gesinnung scheint
tief aus seinem Character hervorgegangen zu sein, denn Christus legte wegen
dieses Unfalls ihm und seinem Bruder den Namen fioavepyeg, viol Ppovrijg
bei, um sie immer an ihren innern Feind zu erinnern.

i42 THE SONS OF THUNDER.
once the noblest and most characteristic features of these
two apostles in this designation which he gave them.
Even in the kingdoms of this world a king does not fasten
on one of his noblest and most honourable captains a
title which shall remind of his single defeat, but rather
one which shall be the abiding record of the most glorious
victories which he has won. Not Teneriffe, but the Nile,
is bound up with Nelson's title. And if thus in this lower
world of ours, how much more certainly in the kingdom
of grace.
It is not easy to see what the motive was for abandon
ing the earlier exposition. It is true tha,t we cannot link
the giving of this name with any particular incident in
the lives of these two, as we can the new name which
Abram (Gen. xvii. 5), which Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 28),
which Gideon (Jud. vi. 32), which Simon (Matt. xvi. 16-
18), which Joses (Acts iv. 36), and perhaps also which
Saul (Acts xiii. 7-9) acquired, with incidents in their
lives. It must be allowed also that the usual conception
of St. John, and of the character of his ministry, is some
what different from that of a ' son of thunder! And yet a
little deeper insight into the matter will, I am persuaded,
afford us much which will help to explain and justify the
bearing of this name by his brother and by himself.1
There can, of course, be no difficulty in regard to
St. James. We have not, indeed, very much in his history
accounting for and illustrating this name ; but then we
1 Tillemont : Jesus-Christ en les appellant a l'apostolat, leur donna le
surnom de Boanerges pour marquer la fermete et la grandeur de leur foy,
et parcequ'ils fetoient destines a, faire eclater la majeste" de Dieu dans tout
l'univers, a ne pas aimer la terre, mais a la faire trembler pour la soumettre
a J&us-Christ, a ne point craindre toute la puissance des hommes, mais a
se tenir toujours eleves au-dessus d'eux.

THE SONS OF THUNDER. 143
have not much in any shape about him ; and in what we
have there is nothing -which does not perfectly agree
with, or even confirm, we may say, its fitness. And here,
indeed, when we are gathering notices which should
account for their being so called, that fiery zeal of his
and of his brother, who would have burnt up the village
that refused the shelter of a night to their Lord, may be
fitly adduced as illustrating this title, though utterly mis
leading when cited as explaining and justifying it. . It
illustrates this title, because it shews us what in these two
apostles was the natural groundwork of their character ;
a groundwork which Christ certainly did not dissolve ;
but rather, calling them these c sons of thunder] recog
nized ; even while by the same act He pledged Himself
to purify it from whatever of earthly and carnal mingled
with it, and threatened to spoil it. The very failings
which on that memorable occasion the brother apostles
displayed were failings of no common souls ; were as
luxuriant weeds, which, weeds as they were, testified for
the richness of the soil out of which they sprang and its
capacity for bearing the very noblest fruits. In their
sense of righteousness and judgment, in their indignation
against sin, — all this, indeed, displaying itself in an im
patient and untimely severity, which would have consumed
the sinners and the sin together, rather than the sin
alone, with a saving alive of the sinners, — we see the 'sons
of thunder' on their natural side, and as they would have
been but for that grace, which, retaining and exalting all
the good of the natural character, did at the same time
transform it from human to divine, separate all the
drossy elements of earth, and retain only the pure gold of
heaven.

144 THE SONS OF THUNDER.
And the early martyrdom- of James, the fact that he,
first of the apostles, stained with his blood the perse
cutor's sword (Acts xii. 2), we may accept this as a
further attestation that he indeed was all that his name
implied. A 'son of thunder] and as such, arousing,
startling, terrifying, he may have caused the thunders of
the divine displeasure against sin to be heard with a
clearness and an energy which drew on him the peculiar
and early hatred of the ungodly world1 — the holiness of
his life lending additional weight and terror to his words
— for in him, no doubt, that saying will have found its
fullest application, ' Cujus vita fulgor, ejus verba tonitrua.'
And then, in respect of John, much of the embarrass
ment which some feel, when they would make an estimate
of what in him there is to justify this title, arises from
their leaving the Apocalypse out of consideration (it is
singular how often this is done), and regarding St. John
as if he were the author of the Gospel and Epistles alone.
Certainly those who'forget the Apocalypse, or adjudge its
authorship to some other than St. John, must find this
word of the Lord's only inadequately fulfilled in the
writings which will then remain to him. For without
denying that much in his Gospel too is like thunder out
of a clear heaven, — the Fathers were especially fond of
quoting in proof the very, opening words of the Gospel,2
— yet in the Apocalypse those which eminently may be
called the thunder-voices make themselves to be heard,
and do so with a greater loudness and distinctness than

1 So Chrysostom (Horn. $6 in Matt.) : ovtq yap jpi ofoSpbg ml flapvg
'lovSaioig, ag Kal tov 'Sp6Sriv Tavrrpi Supeav peylarqv vopiaai xaPt0'a'!^al T0'f
'lovdaioig, el iKeivov av'ehn.
' See Suicer, Thes. s. v. /3povr#.

THE SONS OF THUNDER. 145
in any other book of the New Testament.1 It need not
be observed that the thunder in Scripture is no mere
natural phenomenon. We do not read there that it
thunders, but that God thunders.2 It is there evermore
regarded as the voice of God (Ps. xviii. 13 ; xxix. 3 ;
lxviii. 33 ; lxxvii. 18 ; civ. 7 ; Job xxvi. 14 ; xxxvii. 4, 5 ;
xl. 9 ; l Sam. vii. 10, LXX.), and especially as the voice of
his displeasure against the sins of men (1 Sam. xii. 17, 18).
The terror which it inspires springs from the interpreta
tion of it which everyone unconsciously makes, from the
sense which everyone has, that it is such a voice in nature,
with which God is speaking, and speaking in anger, to a
sinful world.8 And what book is there in Scripture so
full of these voices of God as that with which the Canon
is sealed ? Nor certainly can it be regarded as a mere
accident that, with the exception of this passage about
St. John, only in his own writings is there any mention
of thunder in the New Testament at all. In his Gospel,

1 'Bpovrbtyavog is an epithet given in the Greek Church to St. John. The
brothers received the name of "-sons of thunder,'' in Theophylact's words
og peyaXoK^ipvKag Kal BeoTwyiKaTarovg. Epiphanius says of St. John: vlbg
bvrog [IpovTijg rij oheia peyafaxbavia acrep e/c nvav vefe^av tuv T?jg trofiag
alvtyparuv tjjv evoe^ iiplv ivvoiav tov Tlov aviJKe. See the valuable collec
tion of passages from the Greek Fathers in Suicer, Thes. s. v. Ppovry.
Bengel among moderns has well expressed the same : Magnifica appellatio.
Tonitru in Scriptnra et terribile et festivum quiddam est. Evangelium item
mundum terret, piis lsetitiam et fructum affei-t. That there is a natural
fitness in such an application of Ppovrf/, the parallel use of ftpovrav in pro
fane Greek attests. Pericles had the name of 'OMp-rrmg, as, like Zeus himself,
lightning and thundering (ioTpaxr; i/3p6vra. Aristophanes, Acharn. 531 ;
cf. Vesp. 624) over Greece. In the ' geminos, Auofulmina belli Scipiadas,'
of Virgil we have not the identical, but a closely cognate, image.
2 J. Grimm, in an article, Ueber die Namen des Donners, in his Klein.
Schrift. vol. ii. p. 421, has some interesting proofs of the many nations among
whom the same language prevails.
¦ Gregory the Great (Moral, xxix. 24) : Quid enim per tonitrunm nisi
prsedicatio superni terroris accipitur ?

146 THE SONS OF THUNDER.
it is but a passing notice (xii. 29) ; in the Apocalypse,
however, the thunders constitute a prominent part of the
divine machinery and symbolism (Rev. iv. 5 ; vi. 1 ; viii. 5;
x. 3, 4 ; xi. 19 ; xiv. 2 ; xvi. 18 ; xix. 6). Surely he
whose ear was opened, first himself to catch, and then to
give back to the Church and to the world, these thunder
voices, must be allowed to have approved himself that
'son of thunder] even to our understanding, which the
Lord has named him.1

1 There is an able and interesting article by Gurlitt in the Theol. Stud, und
Frit. 1829, pp. 715-738, on the word Boanerges, and the intention with
which this name was given to the sons of Zebedee. It is more valuable,
however, as containing a history of the past exegesis, than as itself arriving
at any satisfactory results.

5. WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER
CHILDREN.
Matt. xi. 16, 19 ; Luke vii. 31-35.
As nothing whieh was wrought among the children of
men escaped the notice of the Lord, so nothing was so far
beneath Him but that He was willing to use it for the
setting forth the truths of his kingdom. Those truths
had in themselves such inherent dignity and grandeur
that they needed not to fear anything from being brought
into this contact. We have a striking example of this, his
fearless use of the common and the familiar, in that com
parison with which He closes his testimony to the character
and work of the Baptist : ' But whereunto shall I liken
this generation? It is like unto children silting in the
markets, and calling unto their fellows, and saying, We have
piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned
unto you, and ye have not lamented! Here the Lord
finds in the sports and altercations of boys playing in the
streets that which shall serve his turn, shall set forth and
illustrate the truth which He has in hand. One group of
these children, in that spirit of imitation so characteristic
of their age, has been acting now a marriage, and now a
funeral; has been piping now, and mourning then-; but in
the end complains that another band, whose help they
needed, and whom they would fain have drawn into their
L 2

148 WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN.
sports, as mourners at their mock funeral, If they would
not be revellers at their mock marriage, have stood
peevishly aloof, and refused altogether to take a share in
their games : ' We have piped unto you, and ye have not
danced ; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not
lamented! 1
Christ proceeds to explain ivhy and wherein that gene
ration were like to these to whom He has just compared
them : ' For John came neither eating nor drinking ' (cf.
Luke i. 80 ; Matt. iii. 4 ; ix. 14) ; ' and they say, He hath a
devil! We should not have learned except from these
words that such a taunt was addressed to the Baptist ;
that they said of the servant wThat we know that more
than once they said of the Master (John vii. 20 ; viii. 48) ;
at the same time it is exactly the manner of taunt which
his manner of life, exaggerated, and extravagant as it
must have seemed to many, was likely to provoke. 'The Son
of man came eating and drinking' (cf. Matt. ix. 14; Luke
xiv. 1 ; John ii. 1-11 ; xii. 2), ' and they say, Behold a man
gluttonous, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and
sinners' (Luke vii. 39; xv. 2 ; xix. 7; Matt. ix. 10, 11).
Few, I think, who at all reflect on the matter, will
deny that the ordinary explanation of this similitude is
encumbered with not inconsiderable difficulties. This, as
needs hardly to be observed, makes the children, who
complain of the wayward humour of their fellows, and
that they cannot draw them into any games which they
suggest, to be Jesus and John ; and the meaning will then
1 Vorstius (De Adag. N. T. c. xi.): Ea verba Salvator tribuit pueris
sedentibus in foro, qui ludendo imitari solent qua? a majoribus natu serio
agi viderunt, et nunc nuptias celebrant, nunc funera deducunt ; neque tamen
quosdam qui morosiores sunt, movere possunt, ut et ipsi talibus operam
navent.

WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN. 149
be, This is a generation which it is impossible to please.
No ways of God are right in its eyes. If He send a pro
phet, stern, severe, calling to repentance, holding aloof
from sinners, a wilderness preacher, a man himself of fasts
and austerities, as was John, they say he is melancholy
mad ; ' He hath a devil! If He send One gracious and
condescending, who mingles with all the common works,
and walks in all the common ways of men, eating and
drinking with them, they say, ' Behold a man gluttonous,
and a wine-bibber] with no eminent sanctity about Him.
John took up a sadder strain, but the men of this genera
tion would not fall in with it ; he mourned to them,
but they would not lament. Jesus took up a more joyful
note ; He piped to them ; but neither would they consent
with Him ; they would not dance ; but found fault with
the graciousness and condescension of the One as much
as with the strictness and severity of the other.
All this is well put by Henry More : ' Such was the
perverse and wicked ignorance of those crooked super-
stitionists, that true goodness in no kind of dress would
please them. In John the Baptist there was that eminent
severity and austerity of life accompanying an unre-
provable integrity and purity of heart, that he might,
one would think, have commanded them to that which
was good ; but he must have a melancholy devil in him.
Our Saviour came in a more pleasant and careless garb,
laying aside that awful and rough severity that was in
the other, intermingling Himself with all companies, taking
not at all upon Him, being as other men are in every
thing, sin only excepted ; (which manner of life as it is
of more perfection than the other, as supposing more be
nignity of nature, and more firm radication in goodness,

1 50 WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN.
so fewer men are capable of it, much less unsteady and
unresolved youth, who are to fly from suspected com
pany as from the devouring plague ;) yet, I say, these
wretched Pharisees, as true detesters of real holiness
and godliness, whatever they pretend in the shadow there
of, cannot give our Saviour a good word, but interpret
his goodnature good-fellowship, or debauched company-
keeping ; and his serviceable intermingling Himself with
all sorts of men (publicans and sinners not excepted) for
their good, friendship and countenance to what is evil.' 1
Such is the common explanation ; and the sense which
the passage, so interpreted, renders up is a perfectly satis
factory one. The only question is, whether our Lord's
words yield themselves to it, whether there be not serious
difficulties in this allotment of the several portions of the
dramatic action here brought before our eyes. In the
first place, Christ says, ' This generation is like unto
children ; but, according to the received explanation as
given above, it would be Jesus and John who were like
the children complaining that it was impossible to chime
in with the shifting moods of their fellows, and not that
generation at all. Maldonatus, as is usual with him,
manfully acknowledges this difficulty; but seeks to get
rid of it by urging that not part must be compared with
part, but the whole with the whole ; and adduces as a
parallel case Matt. xiii. 24 : ' The kingdom of heaven is
likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field ; '
not being, indeed, likened to him alone, but to all which
follows. But the case is not exactly in point, for at any
rate he, the sower, was included in that whereto the king
dom was compared ; while here the perverse generation
1 On Godliness, viii. 13.

WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN. 151,
has no resemblance to the children who complain, and to
whom they are likened, but only to the children that are
complained of. We cannot then accept this solution.
And then, further, since John's ministry preceded the
Lord's, and in the interpretation (ver. 18) is the first
named, we should expect to find ' We have mourned unto
you] which was St. John's work, adduced the first, and
not, as both in St. Matthew and St. Luke it is, the last.
Would it not then be better to shift altogether the
dramatis persona;, and, reallotting the parts, to make, as
Euthymius, Stier,1 and Alford have done, the children
sitting in the markets, and now mourning and now
piping, to be the Jews, the generation of which the Lord
just before had spoken ; and the companions of whom
they complain, to be Jesus and John ? The fundamental
thought will still be nearly the same, although expressed
in a somewhat different manner, although it will not be
now any more Jesus and John who are introduced finding
fault with that generation, but that generation finding
fault with them. The Jews, as according to this explana
tion the Lord will declare, wanted John to be laxer ; they
would fain have had him give up his strict ascetic ways,
his rigid separation from sinners, his stern summonses to
repentance ; and complained that he would not do so,
that he would not dance to their piping (John v. 25).
Christ Himself was equally, as they accounted, at fault,
though in an opposite extreme. They could as little
understand a prophet such as He was (Matt. ix. 11; Luke
xv. 2). They mourned to Him, and He would not
lament. The bridegroom and the bringer of joy, He
would not change for any sadder note, that note of joy
1 Seden Jesu, in looo.

152 WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN.
to which the Gospel that He preached was set (Luke v.
30-35), any more than John to please them would
change and renounce the note of a sterner sadness to
which his preaching of the law was attuned.
Each messenger and prophet of God the men of that
generation desired to be something other than what he was
— their distaste and disaffection extending really far deeper
than to the particular manner and fashion of the one or
of the other, to the severity of the one, or to the laxity,
as they chose to call it, of the other — their objection being
indeed to any messenger of God, in whatever guise he
came. As it was then, so is it at all times. Some ex
claim, ' The Gospel is too strict, too severe ; it demands
too much :' these are the finders of fault in John; while
others say, ' It is too lax, too free ; it encourages sin ; '
these finding fault with the Lord; the two forms of
murmuring and opposition being, strange to say, found
sometimes united in the same persons. The ambassadors
of Christ, who have to call men alternately to fasts and
festivals of the spirit, must expect from the world such a
captious and hostile criticism as this ; it is part of that
which they have to bear. They must look for a similar
indignation, that they will not at the world's bidding be
exactly the contrary of that which they were sent to be ;
this indignation being indeed the covert under which men
escape from the summons, now to a spiritual joy, and now
to a spiritual sorrow.
But while it was thus with that generation, ' Wisdom
is justified of her children! All did not so evade the law
by pleading the Gospel, nor the Gospel by pleading the
law. Some recognized in these two, and in the harmony
of these two, the law being good no less than the Gospel,

WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN. 153
if only used lawfully, ' the manifold wisdom of God ;' out
of which He sent not a John only, nor a Christ only, but
one and the other, the severe and the mild, the stern and
the gracious, the preacher of the law and the preacher of
grace, that so He might win men by the one or by the
other, or else by handing them over from the one to the
other (Gal. iii. 42; John i. 35-40).
Such seems to me the general drift and tenour of these
latest words ; which yet may claim to be more closely
examined, presenting as they do, by the acknowledge
ment of all, more difficulties than one. And first, seeing
that the Lord is clearing the dealings of God with men,
in other words, clearing his own, why, it might be asked,
does He let his own personality fall into the back ground,
and affirm, not of Himself, but of Wisdom, that she ' is
justified of her children ?' He may seem, but He does not
really do this. 'Wisdom' here is no abstract quality,
no attribute of God, any more than at Luke xi. 49 ; but
a person ; even the same of whom such glorious things
are spoken in the Book of Proverbs, who appears there
as building her mystical house, sending forth her maidens,
gathering to herself all those who are willing to hear her
voice ; being, indeed, no other than the Word as yet not
made flesh, or rather that divine Word in all his dealings,
both before the Incarnation and after, with the children
of men •] who, being this absolute Wisdom, must have
1 Hilary (in loo.) : Ipsum se Sapientiam vocavit. Bengel : Non enim
jam dicitur Filius hominis, ut versu prsecedente, sed Sapientia; quarum
appellationum altera convenit statui Christi conspicuo, altera omnibus
temporibus (Luc. xi. 49). Porro Sapientia hoc loco dicitur, quod Ipse
optime sciat quid faciendum sit, et actiones Ipsius, purissima. aocommoda-
tione ad peccatores plenae, non debuerunt sub censuram voCari (Prov. viii.
1, 32). Grotius too much lets go that the Sofia is herself a person, when he
adduces fiovty tov Qeob (Luke vii. 30) as an absolute equivalent; though,

154 WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN.
chosen wisest ways in which to deal with them, and who
therefore should not have been lightly charged with way
wardness and folly. This word ' Wisdom' which Christ
uses here has the advantage that by aid of it He is able to
include in a common justification both his own dealings
and those of John, which last he would fain vindicate not
less than his own.
But 'justified of her children ' — what may be the exact
force of this phrase ? ' To justify,' in the uniform lan
guage of the New Testament, is to recognize and declare
as righteous — falsely, it may be ; that not being righteous,
which thus declares itself, or is declared by others, to be
so (Luke x. 29 ; xvi. 27) ; or, and this is far the commoner
usage, truly — the realities in the moral world correspond
ing with the declaration thus made about them. Thus of
course is it here, where Wisdom is contemplated as on
her trial, perversely accused by some, and needing there
fore to be 'justified" by others.1 When it is said that she
is justified ' of her children] these last can be no other
than as many as have accepted her teaching, and now walk
in her ways. It is not that we are to contemplate these as
pleading her cause before the world, and so acquitting
her of these unjust imputations. She needed not their
advocacy, and 'babes' (Matt. xi. 25) as they were, they
this excepted, he has perfectly seized the intention of these words : % cofia
hie nihil aliud est quam quod apud Lucam vii. 30, povlf/ roil Beov,
sapientissimum nimirum Dei consilium Judaeos et Johannis severitale et
Ohristi comitate ad poenitentiam revocantis, ne quid inexpertum relinqneret,
atque etiam ne quid illi causari possent . . . Johannes, ut pcenitentiae prseco,
ad severitatem compositus, Christus comis ut veniae largitor.
1 Bengel : Sapientia justifieata est; hoc est, criminatores illam ream fecere,
seandalizati sunt in ea (ver. 23), eoque rem adduxere, ut demum justificari
debueritipsa, et justa asseri ostendique, omnes ejus actiones ad absorbendam
injustitiam, justitiamque implendam comparatas esse, cum tamen sine excep-
tione fuisset amplectenda.

WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN. 155
could thus have done little to serve her. But yet in another
sense it was out of the mouths of these babes and sucklings
that her praise was perfected. In the fact that there
were these children of Wisdom, that she had gathered so
many round her, who owned her for their spiritual mother,
hereby and herein she was justified, acquitted of all those
frivolous charges and all that unrighteous blame which
had been heaped upon her.1 As Jesus spake these words,
He may have looked round at the little company of his
disciples. These were his justification and John's ; these
did themselves constitute a vindication of Wisdom's ways
in the face of a gainsaying world.2
1 So Jerome rightly, with only the fault that he limits the ' children* too
exclusively to the apostles ; they properly include all the converts whom
either John or the Lord had made : Ego, qui sum Dei virtus et Sapientia
Dei, justifecisse ab apostolis, filiis meis, comprobatus sum.
2 Meyer (in loc), as it seems to me, has seized the meaning exactly :
Und gerechtfertiget worden (das heisst, als die wahre Weisheit dargestellt
worden) ist die Weisheit (die in Johannes und mir zur Offenbarung ge-
kommen ist) von Seiten ihrer Kinder, Has heisst, von Seiten ihrer Verehrer
und Anhanger, welche eben dadurch, dass sie sich ihr angeschlossen haben
nnd sich von ihr leiten lassen, jene, TJrtheile des profanum vulgus als
unrichtig dargestellt und die Weisheit factisch gerechtfertiget haben. Die
(factische) Bewahrung ist der Weisheit von ihren Verehrern gehommen (air6,
nicht m6). There is more than one other explanation of these certainly
difficult words, which I have not cared to deal with in the text, as they
certainly appear to me wholly untenable. That which has found most
favour I will give in Gerhard's words (Harm. Evang. 56) : Divina Sapientia
a filiis suis justificatur, hoc est quasi in judicium pertrahitur, disoeptatur
cum ea, de jure accusatur, taxatur, reprehenditur, ut iu qua nunc hoc nunc
illud desideretur. Et qui debebant esse filii sapientise divinse, hoc est
obedientes discipuli, illi sumunt sibi, qnasi pro tribunali sedentes, jus vocis
decisivse, ut pro libitu suo vel pro vel contra divinam sapientiam possint
pronunciare. Not to speak of other objections, this explanation rests on the
ascription to the verb SMauAv of a meaning whieh in Biblical Greek it
never possesses. It is never there to judge and declare guilty, but always,
to judge and declare righteous. The only exception to this which I know
is Ps. lxxiii. 13, where it means neither one nor the other, but is used as=
ayvi&iv. Gerhard seeks to sustain his interpretation by aid of Isai. xliii. 9 ;
2 Kin. xv. 4 ; but neither passage helps him in the least.

6. THE THREE ASPIRANTS.
Matt. viii. 18-23 ; Luke ix. 57-62.
' The manifold wisdom ' of Christ, which shewed itself in
his drawing and attaching of souls to Himself, and of
which there has just been occasion to speak, must often
fill us with devout admiration; but it never does this
more than when there are brought before us in quick
succession moral and spiritual conditions, which have
much apparent similarity, and which yet are most diversely
treated by Him.1 Such we have here. There are two,
or adding one of whom St. Luke alone keeps record, three,
who either in their own intention or in the Lord's, are
candidates for admission into the inner circle of disciples,
into the circle, that is, of those who should not merely
themselves receive the truth, but, as Christ's witnesses,
should be actively employed in imparting the knowledge
of that truth to others. The occasion which gave room
for such a dealing with these souls was as follows : ' Now
when Jesus saw great multitudes about Him, He gave com
mandment to depa/rt unto the other side! One of what we
may call the lesser crises in his ministry here arrived. There
1 Augustine (Serm. 100) : Obtulit se unus, ut eum sequeretur, et repro-
batus est; alius non audebat, et excitatus est; tertius differebat, ut culpatua
est.

THE THREE ASPIRANTS. 157
is growing up around Him that tumult and excitement, in
cident on the gathering of enormous crowds, with expecta
tions raised to the highest, which more than anything else
threatened to defeat his plans, to alter, against his will,
the whole character of the work which He was working ;
which, therefore, by all means He sought to avert or to
repress (Luke xiv. 25-33; x*x- 11_27)> or, where this
was . beyond his power, to withdraw Himself from it
(John vi. 15). The retirement which at such seasons
served Him best He found upon the other side of the lake
of Galilee ; until, indeed, the eagerness of the multitude
had learned to follow Him even thither (John vi. 2).
Such a retreat to that other side He is about now to
undertake. Who will go with Him, and thus give more
explicit announcement than he may yet have had the
opportunity of giving, that he casts in his lot with
Christ? First there offers himself a Scribe — ' one Scribe] as
St. Matthew says, with, perhaps, an emphasis on the ' one]
to mark how unfrequent such offers were. And his words
sound fairly, 'Master, I will follow Thee whithersoever
Thou goest! They almost remind one of the great
hearted words of Ittai to David : ' Surely in what place
my lord the king shall be, whether in death or life, even
there also will thy servant be' (2 Sam. xv. 21). Nor is
there any reason to suppose that this aspirant to disciple
ship means at the time otherwise than he speaks. Yet
is there not indeed in him that true devotedness to Christ,
which shall lead him so to follow that Lord in this world,
that in the world to come he shall follow Him whither
soever He goeth (Rev. xiv. 4).1 These words have more
1 Calvin : Vult quidem hie Christum sequi, sed mollem et amcenam viam,

iS8 THE THREE ASPIRANTS.
in them of Peter's confident asseveration, 'Lord, I am
ready to go with Thee, both unto prison and to death'
(Luke xx. 33). At all events, they inspire Him, who
knowing all things (John xxi. 17), ' knew what was in man '
with no greater confidence than those other words here
after should do ; for with no welcome for this volunteer,
but rather a repulse, He answers, ' The foxes have holes,
and the birds of the air have nests ; 1 but the Son of man
hath not where to lay his head!2 In other words, ' Lookest
thou for worldly commodities through the following of
Me ? In this thou must needs be disappointed. These
cannot be my follower's portion, since they are not mine.
Beasts have dens, and birds have shelters, which they may
call their own; but the Son of man is homeless and

et hospitia bonis omnibus reperta somniat, quum per spinas ambulandum
sit Christi discipulis, et per continuas eerumnas ad crucem pergendum. Ergo
quo magis festinat, eo minus paratus est. Perinde enim facit ac si in
umbra, et deliciis, sine sudore et pulvere, extra telorum j actum militare
vellet. 1 KaTacKTjv^oecg is so rendered in the Versions preceding, as well as in the
Authorized Version. The Vulgate in like manner has ' nidos ; ' but an earlier
Latin version 'diversoria,' while Augustine has 'nidos' (Serm. c. i)and 'diver-
soria ' (Con. Faust, xxii. 48) and ' tabernacula ' (Qucest. xvii. in Matt. qu. 5) ;
these latter, with the equivalent English 'shelters,' (Chrysostom substitutes
Karayuyia), are on all accounts preferable renderings. For, in the first place,
birds do not retire to their nests except at one brief period of the year ; and
then, secondly, KaTaoKipt&o-eig has so much more naturally the more general
meaning of shelters, habitations, latibula, cubilia, or, more strictly, umbracula
ex ramis et frondibus arborum contexta (Corn, a Lapide), Wohnungen (de
Wette), that one must needs agree with Grotius : Quin vox haec ad arborum
ramos pertineat dubitaturum non puto qui loca infra, xiii. 32; Marc. iv. 32,
et Luc. xiii. 9, inspexerit. He might have added Ps. civ. 12 ; Dan. iv. 18,
LXX. See Fischer, Be Vitiis Lex. N. T. pp. 285-290; and on <pale6g
(=TOJrof, oh to 8r/pia Kotparai, Hesychius) see p. 287, note.
2 Very curious is the turn which Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. xc, Serm. 2)
gives to these words : Vulpes in te foveas habent ; volucres caeli nidos in te
habent; vulpes dolus est, volucres cseli superbia est . . . Potest in te habitare
superbia et dolus ; Christus non habet ubi in te habitet, ubi reclinet caput
suum. Quia inclinatio capitis, humilitas Christi est. Cf. Serm. c. 1.

THE THREE ASPIRANTS. 159
houseless upon earth ; He has not where to lay his
head. It is with Him as with Jacob at his poorest estate,
when, fleeing from his brother's wrath, he tarried all
night at Haran, and took of the stones of that place, and
put them for his pillow' (Gen. xxviii. 11). Nor does
this answer of Christ our Lord come out to us in all its
depth of meaning, till we realize that hour when upon
his cross He bowed his head, not having where to lay it,
and having bowed it thus, gave up the ghost (John
xix. 30).
Whether the issue was here as in the case of that rich
young man (Matt. xix. 22), whether this one also with
drew, we are not informed -1 it is most probable that he
did so. But whatever was the issue, this reply of Christ
was not meant any more than his reply to that other,
merely and only to repel ; but rather to throw back this
candidate for the honours of discipleship on deeper heart-
searchings ; that, having made these, he might either fall off
altogether, not beginning to build a tower which he could
not finish, or that he might join himself to the Lord in
quite another spirit from that in which he made his
present offer of service (Luke xiv. 25-33).
But checking this one, the Lord incites another; for
He knew there Was more truth in the backwardness of
him to whom He addresses Himself now. than in the
forwardness of that other who had just addressed Him.
It was, as we learn from St. Luke, in reply to a ' Follow
Me] from the lips of Christ that this one answered, ' Lord,
1 Corn, a Lapide : Quod audiens siluit, ac spe sua frustratus, ab oculis
Christi se subduxit, ut tacite hie innuit MatthsBus. Tertullian (Adv.
Marcion. iv. 23), besides taking this for granted, assumes further that we
are to read in these words an absolute rejection of him on the Lord's part, j
which seems to me a mistake.

160 THE THREE ASPIRANTS.
suffer me first to go and bury my father! In the early
Church this was oftenest, if not always, understood, ' My
father now lies dead ; suffer me, before I attach myself, to
Thee, to render the last offices of piety to him.' Not a
few in later times, I know none earlier than Theophylact,1
but with him agree Grotius, Calvin, Bengel, and others,
have understood it otherwise — as though his father was
now in extreme old age, with one foot, as we say, in the
grave; and that the request of this son was, that he
might be permitted to tend and cherish his few days
that remained; being ready, when these offices of filial
observance were no more required of him, to obey this
bidding. But there is every reason for adhering to the
earlier interpretation. It is little likely that a disciple,
or one ripe for being a disciple, would at such a crisis
have asked respite from service for a period so utterly un
certain as this would have been.2 Moreover, a son would
scarcely speak in such language of attendance on a father
that yet lived. The point too of Christ's rejoinder would
thus be missed : 'Let the dead bury their dead ; let the
spiritually dead bury the naturally dead— which naturally
dead He, designating as ' their dead] implies to belong, and
to have belonged, to the same sphere of death as those who
shall now perform the last offices for them. At the same
time by the former ' dead ' we must rather understand
those in whom the spiritual life is as yet unawakened, than
urge with any emphasis their death in trespasses and sins ;
that must of necessity be implied, yet rather on its nega
tive than its positive side. ' The spiritually dead, those
1 Theophylact : rb yap Baipai ivravdu, tovto ar/paivef to impeXelag aijwoai,
axpi Kal Trjg Ta<j>7J(±
3 Maldonatus : Verisimile non est eum quem Christus cognoscens vooabat,
tarn longi tamque incerti temporis inducias petivisse.

THE THREE ASPIRANTS. 161
who are not quickened as thou art with the spirit of a
new life, are yet sufficient for the fulfilling of this office
which would now call thee away from Me, namely, the
burying of the naturally dead ; they can perform it
as well as thou, and, under present circumstances, thou
must be contented to leave it to them.'1 When
duties come into collision, sacred duties • such as that
which this man pleaded (and how sacred for a pious
Jew they were we see from Tob. iv. 3 ; xiv. 10, 11 ; not
to mention the frequent notice in the early history of
the due performance of these offices by children to their
parents, Gen. xxv. 9; xxxv. 29 ; 1. 13), even these must
give way to more sacred yet. Christ had said to this man,
' Follow Me ;' so that now that word held good, ' Whoso
loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of
Me.' And then, in words which we owe to St. Luke alone,
Christ justifies this his withdrawing of him from attend
ance on the dead. He had fitness for a work which, if
not directly with the living, was yet with those who were
capable of being made alive : ' Go thou, and preach the
kingdom of God, spread far and wide (hiayyeUke) the
glad tidings of life, which as many as hear shall live.2
One of my royal priesthood (Lev. xxi. 1-12), a Nazarite

1 Hilary : Admonetur ut meminerit quod Pater sibi vivus in caelis est
.... mortuos autem eos esse, qui extra Denm vivant. Et idcirco mutua
mortuis officia relinquenda, ut inorttti sepeliantur a mortuis ; quia per Dei
fidem vivos vivo oporteat adhaerere. Augustine (Be Civ. Bei, xx. 6) :
Habent enim et anima? mortem suam'in impietate et peccatis . . . ut scilicet
in anini& mortui, in corpore mortuos sepelirent. Cf. Be Trin. iv. 3 ;
Serm. c. 1. Corn. aLapide: Ludit Christus in voce mortuos. Prius enim
mortuos spiritualiter, fide gratiaque Dei destitutos significat. Posterius
mortuos corporaliter intelligit.
3 That the antithesis is between death and life Augustine well brings out
(Serm. lxii.) : Docuit magister quid deberet praeponere. Volebat enim eum
esse vivi verbi praedicatorem ad faciendos victuros.
M

162 THE THREE ASPIRANTS.
of mine (Num. vi. 7), having fellowship with Me who am
the Life, thy occupation is henceforth with the living, and
not with the dead.'1
A third, of whom only St. Luke makes report, offers
himself for discipleship, ' Lord, I will follow Thee ; — yet
this with a condition, and craving time for farewells which
he fain would interpose ; ' but let me first go bid them
farewell who are at home at my house ' — this rendering of
our English Version being preferable to that which some
would substitute, but let me first set in order the things
in my house!2 But he too must learn that there is no
dallying 'with a heavenly vocation, that when this has
reached a man, no room is left him for conferring with
flesh and blood (Gal. i. 16) ; to him too, as to the king's
daughter of old, the word of that precept has come,
'Forget also thine own people and thy father's house'
(Ps. xiv. 10) ; while his worst foes, those who will most
effectually keep him back from God, may be those of his
own household (Matt. x. 36, 37). The Lord therefore will
give no allowance to his request, shuts out at once all
dangerous delays and interludes between the offer of
service and the actual undertaking of it : ' And Jesus
said unto him, No man having put his hand to the plough,
and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God! He who
1 Tertullian, with allusion to these two passages, one (Lev. xxi 12) for
bidding the High Priest to go in to any dead body, or to defile himself for
,his father, the other (Num. vi. 7) extending the same prohibition to the
¦Nazarite, goes on to say (Adv. Marc. iv. 23) : Puto autem et devotioni [that
is, to the Nazarite vow] et sacerdotio destinabat, quem praadicando regno
Dei imbuerat.
2 'AnoTaSiao-Bai Tdig elg tov 61k6v pov, which the Vulgate translates, renunciare
ihis quae [al. qui] domi sunt ; but Beza better, ut valedicam iis qui sunt
>domus mesa ; so Tertullian, suis valedicere parantem. There is required
of Jiim an aworaaaeoBat (see Luke xiv. 33) in quite another sense from that
which he contemplates.

THE THREE ASPIRANTS. 163
holds the plough must not look behind him; if he does,
he spoils the furrow, and mars the work which he has
undertaken. Remarkably enough this careless marring
of the furrow has lent a word to the Latin, and through
the Latin to our own language ; ' delirare,' originally
to deviate from the ' lira,' which is strictly the little
ridge of earth thrown up by the share between the two
furrows, and then the furrow itself. The discipleship of
Christ is such a putting of the hand to the plough, for the
breaking up of the hard soil of our own hearts, for the
breaking up of the hard soil of the hearts of others. We
have the same image, Luke xvii. 7 ; 1 Cor. ix. 10. It sets
forth the laboriousness of the work better than the more
usual image of sowing (Matt. xiii. 3), and, so to speak,
carries us a step further back in the spiritual husbandry.
But he who having put his hand to the plough, and thus
begun well, shall afterwards, Christ does not say turn
back, but who shall even so much as look back, in token
that his heart is otherwhere than in the task before him
(Gen. xix. 26 ; Luke xvii. 32 ; 2 Tim. ii. 4; Phil. iii. 14),
he may still have his hand on the plough ; but having
fallen away in heart and affection from his work, he makes
no straight furrows, he breaks not up aright any fallow
ground ; he ' is not fit] or rather, is of no service and
profit, 'for the kingdom of God! Indeed, unless kept to
his work as an hireling, it is likely that he will presently
leave his plough in the half-drawn furrow, and be found
to have exchanged toil and exposure abroad for the com
forts and ease of his own hearth (Acts xiii. 13; xv. 38).
The reference to i Kin. xix. 19, which is generally
here made, is not much to the point, except as an illus
tration by way of contrast. This bidding farewell to them
M 2

1 64 THE THREE ASPIRANTS.
of his house was permitted to Elisha ; being included in
the feast which he makes ver. 21 ; it is refused to this
disciple. The comparison of that passage with this is in
structive thus far, as shewing how much more urgent is
the call of the Master than of the servant ; how much less
it will brook question or delay.
What if those other two, and this third whose call St.
Luke has associated with theirs, were, as one has suggested,
Judas Iscariot, Thomas, and Matthew?1 In the second
and third instances the summons is so plainly to a high
work in the kingdom of God (that ' Follow Me ' of Christ
ever implying as much, Matt. iv. 19; ix. 9; xix. 21 ;¦
John i. 43), and there is altogether so marked an emphasis
about these calls, that it is difficult to suppose them calls
merely to discipleship. These were aspirants and can
didates m their own eyes, or in their Lord's, to a higher
grade, to the apostolate itself. Indeed one of the three
was a disciple already (Matt. viii. 21), whom the Lord here
draws into a closer circle of service ; and if another had
already set his hand to the plough (Luke ix. 62), the same
might be affirmed of him. Moreover, it is very noticeable
that in immediate sequence to the words thus exchanged
by Christ with these three, St. Luke proceeds, ' After these
things the Lord appointed other seventy also,' seeming
thereby very distinctly to mark that what had just passed
had relation to the Twelve ; at all events to exclude one
and all of these now mentioned from the Seventy. But if
not disciples, what else but apostles could any of them
have been ? nor does the fact that St. Matthew's chrono-

1 The Gnostics, as Ireneeus (1. 8. 3) tells us, found in them severally
the representatives of the man vliKbg, irvevftaTMbg, and fvxt-itbc.

THE THREE ASPIRANTS. 165
logical order is here preferable to St. Luke's take from
the significancy of this hint. In St. Matthew also we
note that it is very shortly after the incidents which have
just been recorded, that the Twelve are definitively set
apart, that the number of those whom the Lord had been
gathering one by one, appears complete (x. 1). Some in
the early Church were moved by these or like probabilities
to suppose that in one at least of these instances we had
to do with the calling of an apostle, with that namely of
Philip. This Clement of Alexandria1 takes for granted;
which, however, could not be ; for he was already called
(John i. 43) ; as were Andrew and Peter (John i. 40,
41), James and John (Luke v. 1-11), and Bartholomew
(= Nathanael, John i. 46-52) . Three more of the apostles,
the other James, Lebbseus (=Jude), and Simon the Ca-
naanite may have been ' brethren of the Lord ;' who could
not then have been identical with any of these three. If
such they were, and if we have the calling of apostles
here, it can be of no other than those whom I have named.
At all events the conjecture has enough of psychological
and other likelihood about it to be worth following up a
little further.
Thus the first who offered himself was one whom the
Lord evidently welcomed with no pleasure, whom He
would fain have put back from Him, whose large pro
fessions inspired Him with no confidence. And how
remarkable is the Lord's reply to these professions. He
to whom all hearts were open, sees as with a glance in
the heart of this offerer what perhaps at the moment was
altogether concealed from himself. There is nothing to
be gotten, He tells him, no worldly advantage to be gained,
1 Strom, iii. 4.

1 66 THE THREE ASPIRANTS.
through a following of that Son of man, who is poorer
even than the poorest1 — as though He already beheld in
spirit the unhappy disciple, who, disappointed of his large
worldly expectations, should seek to redress a little the
wrong which he counted he had suffered by purloining
from the common stock (John xii. 6), and should end with
making merchandize of the Lord of Glory Himself.
But while he, making this offer of himself, is rather
repelled than welcomed, the other two have, as we have
seen, summonses and invitations more or less direct to
attach themselves ever closer to their Lord ; and if they
be the two who have just been suggested, there is ad
dressed to each the exact encouragement and reproof
which he probably would have needed. 'Suffer me first
to go, and bury my father! How characteristic of the
melancholic Thomas is the excuse and the hindrance
which are pleaded here — of him, who at a later day, in
the very presence of the Lord and Prince of life, could
only express his affection to Him by those words, ' Let us
also go that we may die with Him' (John xi. i6) ; who
even after the empty tomb, and the testimony of the
women and of his fellow apostles, could not disengage
himself from thoughts of death and the grave, nor be
persuaded to believe that the Lord had risen indeed
(John xx. 24, 25). How characteristic was it of him in
whose mind death was thus uppermost, that on the present
occasion also the duties to the dead should seem to him
to overbear those to the living. And Christ's answer and
reproof exactly meets the disease and infirmity of his soul;
' Thou belongest to the new creation ; not to the old
1 Cajetan : Spem lucri tollit htec responsio.

•THE THREE ASPIRANTS. 167
world of death, but to the new world of life. Go thou
and preach the kingdom of God. Disperse to others the
words of that life with which thou thyself hast been
quickened.' ,•
And the third, who cannot obey the calling till he has
bade a solemn farewell to all in his house, might very well
be St. Matthew ; who, being refused this, did not therefore
at this time accompany the Lord ; but to whom that Lord
a little later so spake that he obeyed ; and whose farewell
feast, after he had thrown in his lot with Christ, s>o that
then there was no indecision in his asking to be permitted
to make it, the Lord allowed, and Himself sanctioned and
adorned with his own presence (Matt. ix. 9, 10 ; Luke v.
27, 29) ; and that, although He had disallowed it, so long
as it was made the condition of obedience.

168 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT,

7. THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT,
AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD
VESSELS.
Matt. ix. 14-17 ; Mark ii. 18-22; Luke v. 33-39.
The feast which Levi made, probably as a sort of leave-
taking to the other publicans, now that he had found for
himself a better service than that of the Roman Emperor,
was very fruitful in rich and precious instruction. There
was first the Saviour's answer to those who complained,
not to Him, but concerning Him, that he ate with pub
licans and sinners (ver. 12, 13) ; and there was then his
answer to a second remonstrance, on the part not now of
the Pharisees alone, as we might conclude from St. Luke
(v. 33), nor yet of John's disciples alone, as we might
gather from St. Matthew (ix. 14), but a remonstrance
coming from these and those, as St. Mark (ii. 18), recon
ciling the other two narratives, informs us.' That remon
strance couched itself in these words, ' Why do we and
the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not f ' It is
with this, and the answer which this called out, that I
occupy myself here.
There is something strange at first sight in finding the
disciples of John associated with the disciples of the Pha
risees ; and making common cause with them, rather than
with Him to whom their Master had borne such signal
witness (John i. 29, 36 ; iii. 26-36) ; for it needs not to
observe that the fault which was thus imputed to Christ's

AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 169
disciples, if indeed a fault, would have redounded upon
Him, under whose eye and with whose encouragement
they bore themselves thus. But one or two considera
tions will help to account for a momentary coalition of
this kind. In the first place, while there was no jealousy
on the Baptist's part, but the noblest absence of jealousy,
at the larger successes and the transcendant dignity of
the Lord, there was by no means the same entire freedom
from such a passion on the part of some of his disciples -1
and the after-history of too many of his scholars, who
degenerated, as is well known, into an heretical sect which
never admitted Christ as the highest, too surely testified of
this. It is plain they did not look with a wholly unenvious
eye at Him increasing, and John decreasing (John iii. 26-
31 ; iv. 1). Moreover, while each true disciple of John
would have held with the Lord and found himself on his
side on almost every other point of difference beween
Him and the Pharisees, and of course in every essential,
here in this external matter would be his one point of
contact with them, and of a greater apparent nearness to
them than to Him. And thus, without any serious forget-
fulness of the instructions of their master, now probably
withdrawn from them, and lying in Herod's dungeon, with
out any deliberate purpose of strengthening the hands of
Christ's enemies,2 they may have found themselves for this
once, and on this single point, upon their side ; and incau
tiously, though not meaning to embarrass Him in the least,
1 Chrysostom however puts this somewhat too strongly: Zn^oTvirag ael
irpbg aiirbv elxov ol 'lodvvov paBr/Tai.
3 Jerome (in loc.) makes a severer estimate of their fault in this question :
Nee poterant discipuli Johannis non esse sub vitio, qui calumniabantur eum,
quem sciebant magistri vocibus prajdicatum ; et jungebantur Pharisaais, quos
a Johanne noverant condemnatos [Matt. iii. 7].

170 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT,
they may have put this question at once in the Pharisees'
name, and in their own : ' Why do we and the Pharisees
fast oft, but thy disciples fast not ? '
He answers their question with another, and with one
which could hardly help causing them to remember the
latest testimony which their master had borne to Him
(see John iii. 29) ; which implied that He was well aware
of the exact form which that testimony had taken : ' Can
the children of the bridechamber1 mourn as long as the
bridegroom is with them ?' The disciples are of course ' the
children of the bridechamber ; ' not to be confounded with
' the friend of the bridegroom ' 2 (John iii. 29), who is one,
while they are many (Judg. xiv. 11) ; just as the office of
the Baptist was filled by him singly and alone, being not
indeed higher than the Apostolate, but distinct from it.
Christ here presents Himself as ' the Bridegroom •] intend
ing, as we may very well suppose, to remind the disciples
of John that under this very aspect their own master had
so recently hailed Him. 3 How large an amount of the
Old Testament in this single phrase does He claim for
' '¦Children of the bridechamber'1 is a phrase which has been sometimes
wrongly understood, but abundant parallels in the New Testament make its
meaning sufficiently clear. ' The children,"1 — or better, ' thesons,^ — -where the
term is used in a figurative sense, are those who stand in near and intimate
relation, but at the same time, a relation of subordination to that of which
they are set forth as the children. The following, I believe, are all the
passages in which vidg or viol occur in this figurative sense : fiaaikeiag (Matt.
viii. 1 2 ; xiii. 38); irovripov (Matt. xiii. 38); yeewrjg (Matt, xxiii. 1 5) ;
ppovTtjg (Mark iii. 1 7) ; elprjvrig (Luke x. 6) ; alavog (Luke xvi. 8 ; xx. 34) ;
QoTbg (Luke xvi. 8; John xii. 36); avaoraatag (Luke xx. 36); aizAeiag
(John xvii. 12; a Thess. ii. 3); TrapaKlyoeag (Acts iv. 36); Sia/36Xcm (Acts
xiii. 10); aireiBeiag (Eph. ii. 2 ; v. 6 ; Col. iii. 6). The idiom is rarer in the
Septuagint than one would expect, but we have there vlbg Swipeug (1 Kin.
i. 52); avopiag (Ps. lxxxviii. 23); BavaTov (2 Sam. xii. 5); frav (Gen. xi.
10) ; with perhaps one or two others.
2 The paranymph or 'best man' =vvp<pay ay 6g (Gen. xxvi. 26; Judg. xiv.
20). 3 Chrvsostom : avapipvfyjKuv avrovg tov tov 'ladwov prju&Tov.

AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 171
Himself, and as finding its fulfilment in Him ; as the whole
of the Song of Songs ; the 45th Psalm ; Hosea ii. 19, 20.
How many marriages, more or less mystical there, does He
claim as pointing to this, the crowning mystery of all ; as
of Adam with Eve, of Isaac with Rebecca, of Joseph with
the daughter of Potipherah, of Moses with the Ethiopian
woman, of Boaz with Ruth, of Solomon with the princess
of Egypt, of Hosea with Gomer. How much in the New
Testament, only hereafter to be uttered, does He already
anticipate in this significant word (Matt. xxii. 1 ; xxv. 1 ;
2 Cor. xi. 2; Eph. v. 23-32; Rev. xix. 7, 9; xxi. 2).
He, ' the Bridegroom] was now with them ; it was not
indeed that the marriage of the Lamb was yet arrived ;
that should not be till long after ; but these were his
espousals ; for as such espousals the brief period of his
first sojourn upon earth might be fitly regarded; during
which indeed He did but as it were salute the bride, whom
hereafter, but only after a long intervening period of
absence, He should lead home. He would not trouble
with untimely mourning the brief gladness, so soon to
disappear, of the present hour. The bridegroom was yet
to ' be taken from them] — in that phrase ' taken from them '
there lies already the hint that his absence should be no
voluntary withdrawing upon his part — a removal rather
by violence, — and then they who were so jocund now
should have both reason enough and time enough to
mourn. Our Lord contemplates the whole time between
his death and his second coming as a time suitable for
mourning, being the time of his absence from his Church.
It might be objected to this interpretation of the words,
it has been objected by Olshausen, that He was given
back to his Church at the Resurrection. This is so fai

1 72 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT,
true, that the mourning is now a mourning of hope and not
of despair ; the Church mourns not for a dead, but only
for an absent Lord ; but still she mourns ; and the measure
of her love to Him will be the measure of her yearning for
Him and for his return. At the same time it is true that
within this period of her mourning there will be alterna
tions of joy and sorrow ; the Church will have festivals
as well as fasts ; she will have, that is, some periods when
her sense of her Lord as taken away will be the fore
most thought and most vivid feeling in her mind; she
will have other periods, when she will put off for a while
her garments of heaviness, and anoint herself with the oil
of gladness ; although only for a while, and as well know
ing that she shall not put them off for ever, that ever
lasting joy shall not be upon her head, till her Lord has
come back to her again. The note of sorrow is the key
note of the Church during all the time that her Lord is
taken from her ; ' then shall they fast!
There is something of an infinite compassion, of a
pitying consideration, in this the Lord's determination
not to trouble, nor yet suffer to be troubled by others,
this present joy — seeing as He did into the depths of time,
and all the weary and painful way which was yet to be
travelled over before the final and triumphant goal was
won. And as this question was put to Him at a feast,
and at one which He would not see troubled, so we
may trace something festal and festive in the whole cha
racter of his reply ; for that too has to do with a bridal
feast, with garments and with wine. In festal images He
clothes the justification of his disciples and of Himself.1
1 Bengel : Magna cum sobrietate et festivitate respondet Dominus ; a
vestibus et vino (quorum usus erat in convivio) parabolas desnmit jucundas
ad confutandam quisrentium tristitiam.

AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 173
The images are two, and this is the first : ' No man put-
teth a piece of new cloth upon an old garment, for that
which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and
the rent is made worse! In St. Luke's report of these
words of Christ, some points are more distinctly made than
in St. Matthew's, and indeed the whole image, or 'parable]
as by him, and by him only, it is called, appears to a
certain degree in a modified form. It there stands thus :
' No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old ;
if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece
which was taken out of the old agreeth not with the new!
The absurdity of such a course is here more strongly
marked than in St. Matthew. There it is mainly, if not
entirely, the destruction of the old which so unwise a
mending would entail, that is urged ; but here that the
new is also sacrificed, without any benefit thereby accruing
to the old ; a truth to be brought out yet more vividly in
the perishing of the wine and the wine-skins together.
In St. Matthew it is but a piece of new cloth, new, as not
having yet passed under the fuller's hands, which is lost;
while here a new garment is totally sacrificed, a patch cut
out from it, that so this profitless experiment may be
tried. The emphasis which the Lord lays on this reckless
destruction of the serviceable for the sake of the unservice
able will come more plainly out when instead of, ' if other
wise, then the new maketh a rent] we render the words
as we ought, ' if otherwise, he will also tear the new ; ' 1
destroy it, and that for the sake of the old, which after
1 In the Greek, el Sepi/ ye, Kal to mivbv ax'^ei (or better oxicei), which Tyndale
had rightly given ; '¦for if he do, then breaketh he the new;'' but which was
rendered by Beza, who has not seldom exercised an injurious, influence on
our Version, Alioqui et illud novum findit vetus ; making to koivov a nomi
native, and supplying rd ¦nalaibv as an accusative governed by oxioei.

174 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT,
all is not profited thereby ; seeing that, after the patch is
made, the two have no agreement together. The glaring
contrast, the discord between old and new, rendering the
garment such as no one would willingly put on, and there
fore useless, is the point in the parable here ; not as in
the earlier Evangelists, the energy with which the stronger
new will inevitably tear itself clear of the weaker and
worn-out old.
I return to the words as recorded by St. Matthew. As
making room for their true exposition and that of those
other which follow, it may be needful just to notice and
set aside one strange misconception of their whole mean
ing and intention. I refer to their's who understand by
the 'piece of new cloth' which no- man ' putteth upon an
old garment] as by the ' new wine ' which ' no man putteth
into old bottles] the fasts and austerities of John's disciples
and of the Pharisees ; which Christ would not venture as
yet to impose on his own disciples, however John and
the Pharisees might safely impose them upon theirs ; who
were more inured and thus better able to bear them. It
is marvellous to find an interpreter like Hammond content
thus to explain Christ's words : ' Young novice disciples
that were not yet renewed by the coming of the Spirit
upon them, and so were not strong enough for such, must
not presently be overwhelmed with severe precepts such
as fasting, &c, lest they fall off and be discouraged.'
One is tempted to ask, Were the disciples of John and of
the Pharisees ' renewed by the coming of the Spirit upon
them,' that they could bear what Christ's disciples could
not bear. Maldonatus, an interpreter of. greater exe-
getical talent than Hammond — indeed of the very highest,
where the necessity of maintaining at all costs Roman

AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 175
doctrine does not warp his interpretation — is here in the
same hopeless confusion. It is not to be denied that there
were some in old time who had shewn them the way in
this the perversest of all interpretations. Yet these, some
are cited below,1 were the exception ; for the most part the
early interpreters grasped rightly the meaning of Christ's
words. Thus in the Greek Church very distinctly Origen,
Basil the Great,2 Isidore, and Cyril;8 and in the Latin
Hilary,4 and Augustine.5 The last sees the highest fulfil-
1 Thus Tertullian of course (Adv. Marc. iv. 11) : Humiliter reddens
rationem quod non possent jejunare filii Sponsi, quamdiu cum eis esset
Sponsus, postea vero jejunaturos promittens ; nee discipulos defendit, sed
potius excusavit ; and yet he too has implicitly given the right explana
tion elsewhere, when speaking of the Lord's Prayer he says (Be Orat. 1) :
Discipulis Novi Testamenti novam orationis formam determinavit ; oportebat
enim in hac quoque specie novum vinum novis utribus recondi, et novam
plagulam novo adsui vestimento. So too Theophylact has missed the
meaning : panog ovv ayvafyov 7 vrjOTela Kal olvog v'eog- ipanov iralaibv Kal
aoKbg, % aoBeveia tov paBjjTav. It is curious to find Beza consenting to this
explanation: Ista vero utraque similitudine significat Christus haberi hu-
manra infirmatatis rationem a Deo, qui non sinat nos supra vires tentari,
ideoqne paulatim militios laboribus suos assuefaciat, quod in ipsis etiam
apostolis prcestitit.
2 The regeneration, as he rightly implies, with the daily renewal which
the regeneration alone renders possible, constitutes the new vessel, capable
of receiving the new wine (Horn, in Ps. xxxii.) : oi pev ovv hvaKaivovpevoi
r/pepa Kal f/pipa Kal tov Kacvbv olvov anb Trjg apviTiOV T?/g akrfiivfig xuPovvTeS
aoKol elvai TieyovTac iv r£ TZvayyeTiia icacvoi.
3 See Cramer's Catena, in loc.
* Pharisaaos et discipulos Johannis nova non accepturos [dicit] nisi novi
fierent. ' Thus Serm. eclxvii. 2 : Isti ebrii sunt ; musto pleni sunt. P debant, et
aliquid verum dicebant. Impleti enim erant utres novo vino. Audistis
cum Evangelium legeretur, Nemo mittit vinum novum in utres veteres; spi-
ritalia non capit carnalis. Oarnalitas vetustas est, gratia novitas est. Quan-
toenmque homo in melius fuerit innovatus, tanto amplius capit quod verum
sapit. Elsewhere (Qumst. Evang. ii. 18) Augustine seems to me less firmly
to grasp Christ's meaning ; while Jerome strangely enough in the very same
passage (in loc.) gives the two explanations, the wrong and the right, which
indeed mutually'exclude one another ; first the wrong : Quod dicit [Dominus],
hoc est : Donee renatus qnis fuerit, et veteri homine deposito per passionem
meam, novum hominem induerit, non potest severiora jejunii et continentiaa
sustinere prascepta. Presently, without any consciousness that he is alto-

176 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT,
ment of that word concerning the new wine in the new
vessels in the gifts of Pentecost ; and loves to put this saying
of the Lord in relation with that which was spoken by
the mockers then, and yet was deepest truth. ' These
men are full of new wine' (Acts ii. 13).1
The meaning, as these are all agreed, is this ; No man,
that is, no man of prudence (for the very consequence
which He indicates as sometimes following, shews that
some men do make and have made this mistake), seeks to
piece out an old garment with a new patch ; but when the
garment is indeed worn-out (for 'old' here can mean no
thing short of this), he perceives that it would be no true
economy to endeavour with a new piece which would
not match with the faded and threadbare old, and which
moreover that worn-out texture would not have strength
to retain, to fit it for use again. On the contrary, if
poverty do not hinder (for this is tacitly understood), he
puts on a garment new altogether, and in this presents
himself at the bridal feast. They proceed to explain,
that as such an ancient garment, the great Author of
all the economies in the Church of God would here
characterize that elder economy, given by the hand of
Moses ; whereof these obligatory fasts, which men were
gether changing his ground, he passes on to the right : Veteres utres debe-
mus intelligere Scribas et Pharisaaos. Plagula vestimenti novi et vinum
novum, prsecepta Evangelica sentienda, qua? non possunt sustinere Judsei, ne
major scissura fiat. Tale quid et Galatee facere eupiebant,. utcum Evangelio
Legis prsecepta miscerent, et in utribus veteribus mitterent vinum novum.
1 Serm. xxvi. : Utres novos utres veteres mirabaatur ; et calumniando non
innovabantur, nee implebantur. Serm. eclxvii. : Utres novi erant ; vinum
novum de caelo expectabatur, et venit ; jam enim fuerat magnus ille Botrus
calcatus et glorificatus. So too in one of Adam of St. Viator's magnificent
Pentecostal hymns (see my Sacred Latin Poetry, p. 192) :
Utres novi, non vetusti,
Sunt capaces novi musti.

AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 177
now seeking to thrust on his disciples, formed an integral
part, and of the entire of which they stand as the sign and
the symbol here. This likening of that elder dispensation
to such a worn-out garment may seem harshly spoken ;
yet the language is not stronger than that which St. Paul
uses, Gal. iv. 3, 9 ; nor than that employed in the Epistle
to the Hebrews (Heb. vii. 18), where the apostle speaks
of the disannulling of the commandment which went
before 'for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof
' It would profit nothing,' Christ would here say, ' to seek
to attach my new as a supplementary patch to that old
of yours. They would not hold together. My doctrine
is something different from that which you would have
it ; something more than a mere supplement to yours, to
make that good, where it is defective ; to repair that, where
it is out-worn. It is something which is all of a piece, not
a righteousness of works, eked out and patched here and
there with the righteousness of faith, but from head to
foot a new garment for souls.' It was exactly such a
piece of patchwork as this, which the Galatians actually
attempted, and for which St. Paul chides them so
earnestly (Gal. iii. 2, and throughout).
And then, as that first comparison had chiefly to do
with things, the other which follows, namely of the wine
and the bottles, has chiefly to do with persons ; as that
with doctrine, something therefore more external, even as
a garment is worn on the outside of the body, this with
life, that which is more inward, as wine is inwardly
received.1 Fqr we must not regard this as a mere saying
over again what Christ had said already. Our Lord often
1 Bede : Vino siquidem intus reficimur, veste autem foris tegimur.
N

178 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT,
repeats Himself (thus Matt. xiii. 31, 32 compared with
ver. 33; and again ver. 44 writh ver. 45, 46; or Luke
xiv. 28-30 compared with ver. 31, 32 ; or xv. 4-7 with
ver. 8-10), but never merely repeats Himself; it is the
same, but in some novel point of view, in some deeper
aspect. Still keeping close to the bridal feast, and to
the images which it suggests, He goes on to say, ' Neither
do men put new wine into old bottles, else the bottles break,
and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish (cf. Job
xxxii. 19); but they put new wine into new bottles] and both
are preserved! No prudent man, who means to keep
his wine for the feast, pours it new, and not as yet having
worked off its fermenting strength, into skins old, and
therefore weak and stiff, and possessing no power to
expand. If the new piece of cloth was the new doctrine,
which Christ refused to make merely supplementary to the
old, the new wine, as was just remarked, will be the new life,
which they only can contain, who are willing to become
new vessels — ' willing to become,' I have said ; for spiritual
things in this differ from things natural, that all are old
vessels at the first, a Paul as much as a Oaiaphas ; only among
these old vessels, some are willing to be made new, and
thus continent of the new life ; while others not only are
old, but are determined to remain in their oldness, even
after the renewing powers have been brought nigh them,
and offered to them for their acceptance ; Osheas that
1 N i 0 v olvov and k a i v o ii g aonovg : but both of necessity translated ' new ' in
our Version. Yet the variation in the original is instructive, as helping us
to seize the distinction between the words. The wine is viog, — what our
ancestors called stum, or wine of the present year, — in which the process
of fermentation has not yet taken place; the bottles or skins (see the Diet.
of the Bible, art. Bottle), are mivol, ' new'' in the sense of unused, such as have
not through wear and tear lost at once their strength and power of expan
sion. See my Synonyms of the New Testament, § 60.

AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 179
will not be Joshuas, Jacobs that will not be Israels, and
Simons that will not become Peters. In the words, ' neio
bottles] we have in fact a hint at the mystery of regenera
tion ; and this language He only had a right to use who
had power to say also, ' Behold, I make all things new '
(Rev. xxi. 5). There was a restricted sense, indeed, in
which Christ's apostles were ' new vessels] ' new 1 cloth]
even when He took them. They were far newer, at least,
than those who had grown old in their frauds and hypo
crisies, the Pharisees and their adherents.
There is another point in which this second comparison
is in advance of the first. In that, namely, of the piece
of cloth, the new holds itself passive in regard of the old ;
we can hardly, that is, attribute to it the power of itself
actually tearing out from the old, however such a rent
might and would follow on the attempt to combine the one
with the other. But in this second comparison the new
wine puts forth an active power for the bursting of the
old vessels.2 Here a new aspect of the truth is presented
to us, namely, the perilous power which mighty truths
of God exert., whe# they are received by men who are
not thoroughly renewed and transformed by them, who
remain old men still ; — the imminent danger of the truth,
so far as these men are concerned, being utterly lost, like
wine spilt on the ground ; and the men themselves, like
the bursten vessels, perishing with it. What a key have
we here to Peasants' Wars, Anabaptist and other anti-
1 A hint of this may lie in the ayaipvog of St. Matthew and St. Mark ; which
our Translators have rendered ' new,'1 but have suggested ' raw or unwroughV
— '¦undressed'1 would be still better — in the margin. Bengel gives the true
intention of the word.: Discipulos rudes, novos et integros, nulla peculiari
disciplina imbutos, snmsit Jesus.
8 Gregory the Great (Mor. xxiii. 11): Quia sancti Spiritus fervor non
solum veteri sed etiam nova vita vix capitur.
h2

180 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT,
nomian excesses in old times and in new ! On how
many a saddest page in the history of the Church, in the
history too of innumerable lives that have made utter
shipwreck of themselves, do these words throw light.1
Keeping in mind the mournful comment upon these
words which the Church's history has thus so abundantly
1 An article in the Zeitschrift fur Lutherische Theologie und Kirche,
1866, pp. 240-251, with the title, Eine religiose Bewegung in Finnland, sup
plies as mournful a commentary on these words as could well be found. It
is the miserable record of a religious awakening among the poor neglected
Lapps and Finns some twenty years ago— which, for want of wise guidance
being allowed to become merely subjective, and to divorce itself altogether
from the Word of God as its rule, and from the order of the Church as
explaining that rule, ended in blasphemous excesses which remind one of
nothing so much as the frightful extravagancies of the Brethren of the Free
Spirit in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (see Gieseler, Kirch. Gesch. vol.
11. pt. ii. p. 629). It is indeed startling, and at the same time wonderfully
instructive as shewing the fixed and narrow limits within which error moves,
to meet not merely the speculations, but not seldom the very phrases of those
licentious pantheists, reproducing themselves among the rude and ignorant
children of the North. A faithful Swedish pastor who sought, but when
matters were beyond remedy, to bring back these unhappy people to the
Word and the Testimony, sets down in his Diary their retorts of a single day
to his godly warnings. I omit a part, and the rest I prefer to leave in his
own language : Urn Gott fiirchten zu mussen, muss man silndigen ; wir siin-
digen nicht, denn wer den Geist hat, braucht nicht zu sundigen ; wir
fiirchten daher auch Gott nicht. Wir sind die Glieder Gottes, welche Gott
nicht strafen kann ; denn Er kann seine eigenen Glieder weder strafen noch
verdammen. Wir sind gestorben, und konnen nicht sterben. Wir haben
nicht leibliche, sondern geistliche Glieder. Wir sind auf der neuen Erde
wohnhaft ; wir sind geistlich, heilig, gerecht. Wir sind die Bibel, das neue
Testament, der Sinai. Unser Leib ist das Gesetz; daher haben wir auch
das Eecht zu urtheilen und zu verdammen. Wir sind Gott der Vater, Gott
der Sohn, und Gott der heilige Geist. Der Sohn hat seine Macht, die jetzt
bei uns wohnt, verloren. Der Geist in uns hat die Macht zu todten. Der
Pfarrer, der nicht laugnet dass er Fleisch hat, ist sterblich und gehort dem
Teufel. Wir konnen das Innere aller Menschen durchschauen, nnd wie
Christus sagte, Hebe dich weg von mir, Satan, so haben wir auch das Eecht
euch Teufel zu nennen, und mit euch als solchen zu verkehren. Ihr liigt,
wenn ihr sagt, ' Vater Unser, der du bist im Himmel !' Ihr solltet sagen,
' Vater Unser, der du bist in der Holle,' denn so lange ihr unbekehrt seid,
so ist der Teufel euer Vater. Die Kinder sollen ihren Eltern fluchen, damit
der Fluch auf diese Weise sich riickwartz zu unaeren Stammeltern verpflanzen
Kbnne — with not a little more to the same effect

AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. \i
supplied, we may more fully understand that gracious
unwillingness on the Lord's part to put the old vessels to
this trial, lest they should burst and perish in the process
of the new wine's fermentation. His words involve, as I
cannot but believe, a recognition that even those whose
service is not the highest, may yet be allowed by Him,
that many lower forms of service besides the service in
the freedom of the Spirit will yet find merciful acceptance
with God. Many an earnest Pharisee, many a rigid dis
ciple of John, many an elder brother of the parable, if
only he has been true to the light which he had, and has
not had the more excellent way offered to him, and deli
berately refused that, shall not be rejected nor cast out.
I will only observe, before leaving these words, that in
them are condemned as hopeless, declared to be bound
over to inevitable failure, not this attempt only, but all
attempts to combine into one scheme and system hetero
geneous materials, having no true affinity with one an
other. They refuse to coalesce ; one proves too strong
for the other. It has been often tried. There is such
evident power and vitality in the great Christian ideas,
that even those who have refused to accept Chris
tianity as a whole have continually sought to borrow
from it in part ; to deck their own, which they will not
renounce, with shreds and patches derived from it ; to
quicken with sparks from a higher source systems from
which all proper life, if ever they had such, has long since
departed. When the Neo-Platonists of the second and
third centuries sought to give a new currency to the myths
of an effete heathenism, by making them the vehicles of
Christian ideas, of truths which would never have stirred
in the thoughts of men, if Christ had not lived and taught

1 82 THE NEW PIECE ON THE OLD GARMENT,
r
and died, this was at once a sewing of the new patch
upon the old garment with which it did not agree, and a
pouring of the new wine into the old vessels which were
quite incapable of containing it. The same results have
in every case followed. As in the material world only
substances which have affinity to one another will chemi
cally unite, so the truth has ever attested itself to be the
truth by refusing to combine with anything except itself.
But having thus justified Himself, and in Himself his
disciples also, the Lord concludes in words which only
St. Luke has preserved for us, ' No man also having drunk
old wine straightway desireth new : for lie saith, The old
is better! He graciously proceeds, that is, to make excuse
for the disciples of John (He would scarcely have thought
it necessary to make one, if the Pharisees had been the
only ones offended) ; explains how it came to pass that
these took the offence that they did, could not at once
find themselves in his doctrine and fife. He throws his
shield over them, lest his disciples, being delivered from
the assault, should themselves be tempted to become
assailants in their turn, and to manifest impatience with all
who failed to recognize and accept at once and without
hesitation their Lord's word and doctrine as the highest
and the best. He will check any such intolerance and
impatience on their parts. Was it to be expected that
their own, to which these had been accustomed so long,
should grow out of favour with them on the instant, even
though He offered to them something better in its room ?
If the new wine did taste somewhat harsh and rough to
their palates at the beginning, this was only in the natural
and necessary order of things ; no man used to the old

AND THE NEW WINE IN THE OLD VESSELS. 183
straightway desireth the new, even though it be of a
much higher quality. But let them have time and op
portunity little by little to wean themselves from that
old, and doubtless there would be found among them
those who would grow into liking of this new, which
indeed in a higher sense is the oldest of all (Gal. iii. 17 ;
1 John ii. 7, 8).1
Wonderful, and rare as it is wonderful, is the spirit of
mildness and of toleration for all which is not absolutely
sinful, so that it shall be allowed to endure till it drop
away of itself, which speaks out in these words. St. Paul
entered into his Master's spirit, and acted in practical con-,
formity with it, when he would do nothing to force the
Jewish converts to forsake their ceremonial law, earnestly
as he must have desired to see this serious obstacle to an
entire fusion of the Jewish and Gentile Churches, this
perilous thing, liable to so mnch abuse, removed out of
the way ; but was content to wait patiently till it should
fall off of itself — as a husk falls off, when the fruit which
it has protected so long, is at length fully formed.
Reverence for that which has been consecrated by time,
with an acknowledgement of the mighty force which
custom and habit exercise on the spirits of men, and at
the same time a warning to the disciples not to over
look this in their impatient expectation that all men,
whatevertheir past training and discipline may have been,
should accept and embrace a more excellent wTay on the
very first moment that it is presented to them, all this
utters itself in these gracious words.
•
1 Bengel : Paulatim mutantur habitus animorum.

8. THE TRANSFIGURATION.
Matt . xvii. 1-13 ; Mark ix. 2-13 ; Luke ix. 28-36.
There has been no little debate and difference of opinion
on the relation in which the Transfiguration stands to the
words of- Christ which went immediately before, ' Verily,
I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not
taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his
kingdom] or, 'till they have seen the kingdom of God
come with poioer ' (Mark) ; or ' till they see the kingdom of
God' (Luke). The point in debate has been this —
namely, how far, the Transfiguration is to be itself regarded
as a fulfilment of these words ; whether that was a coming
of the Son of man in his kingdom, a coming of the king
dom of God with power ; and, if accepted as such, in
what sense it was such a coming. That the coming of
which Christ here speaks is not the coming of the Son of
man to judge the world, of which a little while before He
spoke (ver. 27), is evident ; for He has said that there
are those present who shall live to see it ; that it shall fall
within the lifetime of some of that generation who are
the Lord's immediate hearers. To this coming, then, at
the end of the world to judge the world He cannot refer.
But are we therefore compelled to find in the Trans
figuration the fulfilment of his statement, that some stand
ing there should not taste of death till they had seen Him

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 185
coming in his kingdom ? I cannot believe that we are.
There seem to me, indeed, two most serious objections
to our doing so. The first is this. Mighty event as
the Transfiguration doubtless was, and it stands between
the Temptation in the wilderness, and the Agony in the
garden, as the culminating point in our Lord's ministry
upon earth, still the transient glory of it, even grant
ing its unutterable significance for Himself and for the
Church of all times, fails to satisfy and exhaust language
so vast as this, ' the Son of man coming in his kingdom]
'the kingdom of God coming with power! Great as is
the Transfiguration, it is hardly great enough for such
words as these. But, further than this, it seems im
possible to think that our Lord can have used such lan
guage of an event removed from the moment at which
He utters it by no more than the interval of a week.
This is excellently put by Bishop Horsley,1 little favour
as his own explanation of the passage deserves to obtain :
'If the time described as that when the Son of man
should be seen coming in his kingdom be understood to
have been the time of the Transfiguration, what will be
the amount of the solemn asseveration in the text?
Nothing more than this — that in the numerous assembly
to which our Lord was speaking, composed, perhaps, of
persons of all ages, there were some, — the expressions
certainly intimate no great number, — but some few of
this great multitude there were, who were not to die
within a week ; for so much was the utmost interval of
time between this discourse and the Transfiguration.
Our Lord and Master was not accustomed to amuse his
followers with any such nugatory predictions. The like
1 Sermons, vol i. p. 39.

186 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
argument sets aside another interpretation, in which our
Lord's ascension and the mission of the Holy Ghost are
considered as the "coming in his kingdom" intended in
the text. Of what importance was it to tell a numerous
assembly (for it was not to the disciples in particular, but
to the whole multitude, as we learn from St. Mark, that
this discourse was addressed) — to what purpose, I say,
could it be, to tell them that there were some among
them who were destined to live half a year?'
For myself, I can find no satisfactory explanation of this
prediction except such a one as shall recognize its fulfil
ment in that mightiest judgment act of the Son of man,
which the world has yet seen, which, so far as we can
understand, it will ever see, until his final coming as the
Judge of quick and dead. I refer to that tremendous catas
trophe, the destruction of Jerusalem, — when, indeed, that
old Jewish economy passed away with a great noise ; and,
extricated from that wreck and ruin, there emerged what
it is not too much to call a new earth and a new heaven ;
when the things shaken were removed to the end that
Christ's saints might receive a kingdom which could not
be moved. This event, when the Lord spake, was some
forty years distant, or more. To men of full age it was not
then a mere nugatory prediction, that they should live to
see this event, at once so terrible and so magnificent, the
close of one seon, and the commencement of another;
divided from them, as it was, by so many years ; even as
these words of Christ compel us to believe that, if only for
one apostle, yet for more than one of the disciples then
standing there, it was fulfilled. The passage will thus
be brought into instructive relation to other Scriptures,
on which it will throw, and from which it will receive,

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 187
light. For example, what other explanation can that
announcement, ' Verily, I say unto you, This generation
shall not pass till all be fulfilled ' (Matt. xxiv. 34), obtain ?
A consummation of all things, not, indeed, the final and
exhaustive one, in some sort only a rehearsal of that, it is
here declared should find place before that whole genera
tion in whose hearing the Lord spake, should have died.
Again, when speaking concerning John, the Lord says to
Peter, ' If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to
thee?' (John xxi. 22), this 'till I come' cannot be in
terpreted of the final coming ; for an ' If I will,' spoken
by those lips, is very much more than a mere expression
of power, that He could keep John in life if He chose.
The words must be accepted as expressing not merely
what He could do, but what He intended to do. It is
clear, however, that He did not intend this disciple whom
He loved, to tarry till his final coming ; for, not to say
that there would have been something monstrous in a life
protracted so, we know the place and date of his death.
It follows that his ' till I come ' must receive another
interpretation, and that can be no other than one which
will put that statement into closest connexion with this
wherewith we are dealing now. Let me observe, before
leaving this subject, that, accepting the judgment on the
Jewish Church as a coming of the Lord,1 all difficulty in
respect of such passages as Jam. v. 8, 9, will at once be
removed. Yet a little while, St. James reminds them to
whom he writes, and the tyrannous oppression which they
endure from Jewish adversaries will have for ever passed
away ; yet a little while, and Christ will have sent his
1 Hammond has more than one able note upholding this interpretation,
thus here, and on Matt. xxiv. 3.

188 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
armies, Himself their invisible Captain, and destroyed the
city of those murderers, and delivered his own from their
tyranny for ever.1
But is there then, it may be asked, no real connexion
whatever between these words of Christ, and the Trans
figuration, which in all three of the synoptic Gospels is
brought into such close and significant juxtaposition with
it, which all three are so careful to declare to have
followed . on the seventh day succeeding ? A most real
connexion — the Transfiguration was a prelude and a
pledge of that which should be hereafter. In that it was
clearly shown that He spoke not at random, who spoke of
his kingdom. It was shown that He had a kingdom to
eome in ; a glory ready at any moment to burst forth,
however for the moment it might be covered and con-

1 It must be freely owned that nearly all the early expositors, the Fathers
and medieval interpreters, findin the glory of the Transfiguration that which
for them satisfies and fulfils the prediction that has just gone before, ' There
be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of
man coming in his hingdom.'1 At the same time, when their statements are
closely examined, it will be found that in almost every instance they have
felt themselves obliged to moderate and temper these, so that the Trans
figuration shall in fact be rather a prelude and prophecy of the coming in
glory than the very coming itself. I quote a few passages in proof. And
first one or two from the Greek Fathers. Thus Basil the Great (Horn, in
Ps. 44) : elSov Se ai)Tov rb KaMog IleTpog Kal ol viol rfjg /3povT?jg iv t£> bpei, Kal
T a tt poo ipia Tyg evS 6% ov avTov w; apova lag bfBaTipolg Xafieiv KaTJj^B^oav.
Theodoret {Ep. 145), having spoken of the glories of our Lord's person and
vestment, goes on: eSiSa^e Sia tovtuv Tijg Sevrepag eirityaveiag tov
rpbirov. So too the Latin Fathers. Thus Augustine (Exp. Ep. ad Gal.
c. ii.) : Ipsis tribus se in monte Dominus ostendit in significatione regni sui,
cum ante sex dies dixisset, Sunt hie quidam, &c. And Leo the Great (Serm.
94) : In regno suo, id est, in regid claritate. Anselm (Horn. 4) : Venientem
in regno suo viderunt eum discipuli sui, qui in ea claritate viderunt fulgen-
tem in monte, in qua peracto judicio ab omnibus Sanctis in regno suo vide-
bitur. And in the modern Roman Catholic Church, Maldonatus : Christus
Transfigurationem regnum suum vocat, non quia proprie regnum, sed quia
futuri regni imago erat . . . Illud ipsum regnum tres illi apostoli non in ipso
sed in figura, non praasens, sed per transennam ostensum viderunt.

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 189
cealed from the eyes of men, from the eyes even of
those who were in closest communion with Him. The
Transfiguration is an earnest in hand of a glory
hereafter to be revealed.
But while the relation in which the Transfiguration
stands, and on which the Evangelists lay so marked an
emphasis, to that memorable prediction of the Lord's, is
worthy of our exactest study, it is not less important to
observe another connexion in which it stands, and in
which they are all careful to place, it, namely, with the
first distinct announcement which the Saviour has made
to his disciples, of his sufferings, rejection, and death
(Matt. xvi. 21 ; Mark ix. 31 ; Luke ix. 22), an announce
ment which had so greatly startled, surprized, and dejected
them. For indeed this connexion supplies us with a very
weighty hint for the right understanding of this solemn
scene, and of the ends which it was meant to serve, as a
confirmation of their faith, and as helping them to confirm
the faith of others. How deep and lasting an impression
it had made on them we best gather from the fact that
more than thirty years after, St. Peter refers to it as an
evidence to himself, an evidence therefore to all who
received his word, that in declaring to them ' the power
and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ,' he had not followed
cunningly devised fables (2 Pet. i. 15—19). To them
who had just heard of the sufferings of Christ there was
here vouchsafed a prophetic glimpse into the glory which
should follow, that in the strength of this they might not
be troubled nor offended at the prospect of these suffer
ings now, nor at the sufferings themselves which pre
sently should arrive. Nor may we regard it merely as
an act of condescension to their weakness. This would

190 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
be to rob the Transfiguration of very much of its meaning.
For the Lord Himself also this prelibation of glory
had doubtless its highest significance. It was a mighty
strengthening and refreshing of Himself, no less than of
his disciples, against that coming day of humiliation and
agony. He did not merely manifest to others that glory
which should one day be his, but became more fully con
scious of it Himself, and that He already possessed it ;
however He might voluntarily defer its full manifestation ;
— not to say that in this momentary breaking forth of
that inward splendour, for the most part hindered and
restrained by the sackcloth covering of the flesh, there
was a step in the progressive glorifying of that humanity
which He had assumed. But it will be better not to
anticipate what will presently find its fitter place.
' After six days Jesus taketh with Him Peter and James
and John! Not without a meaning is it so carefully noted
by all the Evangelists that it was ' after six days ' (Mat
thew, Mark) — the 'eight days after'1 of St. Luke being no
contradiction, but only a different way of counting, leaving
as it does the six complete days between — that the Trans
figuration found place. There are six days of the world's
work, which the seventh day's glory, of which we have
here a foretaste, is to follow. Three of his disciples the
Lord takes with Him, that in the mouth of two or three
witnesses every word may be established (Deut. xix. 15) ;
these three, the flower and crown of the apostolic band, the

1 Gerhard (Loci Theoll. xxxii. 2) : Post dies sex Christus coram discipulis
transfiguratur ; sic exacto hujus vitaa sextiduo succedet sternum sabbatum,
in quo piorum corpora clarificabuntur. Quid tota haac vita aliud est quam
sex dies laboris S illos sequetur quies sabbati, et piorum gloria aaterna.

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 191
'coryphaei,' as Chrysostom calls them, and not now alone
favoured above the rest (Matt, xxvi/37; Luke viii. 51) ;
they are Peter, who loved Him so much (John xxi. 17),
and John, whom He loved so much (John xxv. 20), and
James, who should first attest that death could as little as
life separate from his love (Acts xii. 1) ; being the same
three who should hereafter be witnesses of the deepest
depth of his humiliation in the Agony of the garden, and
who therefore were thus fitly forearmed by what they now
beheld against what they should then behold.
Having taken these, He ' leadeth them up into an high
mountain apart by themselves! The tradition which makes
Mount Tabor to have been this 'high mountain] though
for many ages not so much as called in question, does not
date farther back than the fourth century, Cyril of Jeru
salem1 being the first to mention it. Indeed there is an
earlier tradition still, which places the scene of the Trans
figuration on the Mount of Olives, near Jerusalem,2 but
one which seems to have obtained little acceptance. Tabor
having been once fixed on (it probably was so, as the
highest and goodliest mountain in Galilee, rising in an
almost perfect cone from the plain,8 and,, though unnamed
in the New, of frequent commemoration in the Old Testa
ment; thus see Judg. iv. 6, 14; viii. 18; Ps. lxxxix. 12;
Jer. xlvi. 18), there were built churches, and presently
monasteries, on its summit — three of the former to corre
spond to the three tabernacles which Peter was not
permitted to build ! But while evidence in favour of
1 Catech. xii. 16. In the Greek Church the festival of the Transfiguration
(Aug. 6) has derived its name, Td Oaflopiov, from this tradition.
' Ritter gives in proof a reference, Itin. Anton. Aug. et Hierosolytanum,
ed. Parthey, 1848, which I have not verified.
* A6<j>og paoToeiSf/g Polybius (v. 70. 6) calls it.

192 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
Tabor there is absolutely none, that against it is strong, is
indeed decisive. ' The historical data which we possess,
shew that the summit of the mountain was employed
without any intermission between the times of Antioehus
the Great, 218 b. c, and the destruction of Jerusalem
under Vespasian, as a stronghold, and was by no means
the scene of peace and solitude whither one would flee,
anxious to escape the turmoil of the world. The con
secration which quiet and seclusion give was only reached
after the fortresses which once crowned its summit had
been laid low.'1 It is impossible therefore that Tabor
can have been that ' holy mountain,' to which the Lord
retired that He with his three disciples might be there,
' apart by themselves! It may perhaps have been Hermon,
or one of the spurs of the Antilebanon. But, whatever
mountain it was, it certainly is not for nothing that this
and so many other of the most memorable events in Holy
Scripture find place upon mountains ; as the offering of
Isaac (Gen. xxii. 14), the giving of the old Law (Exod.
xix.; Deut. xxxiii. 2), and of the new (Matt. v. 1), the
last decisive conflict between Jehovah and Baal (1 Kin.
xviii.), the apparition of the risen Lord (Matt, xxviii. 16) ;
from 'a very high mountain' the vision of the New Jeru
salem is vouchsafed to Ezekiel (xl. 2), and to St John
(Rev. xxi. 10) . It was not by accident that in the days of
his flesh the Lord was wont to withdraw to a mountain for
prayer (Matt. xiv. 23 ; Luke xxi. 37 ; John vi. 15), even
as, according to St. Luke, it was for prayer that He retired
to this the mount of his Transfiguration. Towering above

1 Bitter, Comparative Geography of Palestine, English translation, vol. ii.
p. 313 ; compare Robinson, Bibl. Researches, vol. iii. pp. 220-225 i Herzog,
Encyelopddie, art. Thabor

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 193
the smoke and stir of this dim and lower earth, advancing
their heads into a purer atmosphere and one nearer to
heaven, they have in them a sort of natural ' Sursum corda,'
which constitutes them fittest spots for such nearer com
merce with God, or special communications from Him.1
Being there, 'He was transfigured before them! St.
Luke, writing primarily for Greek readers, avoids this word,
' transfigured] or transformed ; (' metamorphosed' would be
a still closer rendering), which St. Matthew and St. Mark
do not shrink from employing. He avoids it, probably,
because of the associations of the heathen mythology,
which would so easily, and almost inevitably, attach them
selves to it in the imagination of a Greek.* He is satis
fied with telling us ' that the fashion of his countenance
was altered;' adding to this that it was 'as He prayed'
that this marvellous change came over Him (cf. Isai. lxv.
24 ; Dan. ix. 21 ; 2 Cor. iii. 18, where the significant
word [Aevafiopfyovpeda occurs). It was a change not
without its weaker analogies, and prophetic anticipations
in other personages of Scripture, in Moses for example,
when the skin of his face shone after he had come from
talking with God upon the mount (Exod. xxxiv. 29-35) ;
which circumstance therefore Hilary rightly calls a figure
of the Transfiguration.8 Another such figure, though
1 Witsius (Be Glorif. Jesu in Monte, 7) : Sed et ipsa Transfiguratio vide-
batur montem poscere, eumque sublimem ; ut loci ratio responderet con-
ditioni glorias in qua tunc Christus conspiciebatur.
' Jerome warns against such an abuse of peTspopf&Bri here : Nemo putet
pristinam eum formam amisisse; non substantia tollitur, sed gloria com-
mutatur. Anselm : Non formam humani corporis amisit, sed suam suorumque
glorificationem praamonstravit. In naming this great event, the German
theology, calling it ' die Verklarung,' or 'the Glorification ' (it is frequently
' Clarificatio ' in the early Lutheran divines), has seized this point, not
exactly the same as our ' Transfiguration.'
3 Figura transfigurationis.

i94 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
not now an anticipation, but a reminiscence of it, the
martyrdom of St. Stephen affords, when those who looked
at him ' saw his face as it had been the face of an angel '
(Acts xvi. 15) ; and how often at the departure of holy
saints and servants of God has some such gleam of the
coming glory been observed to light up their countenances
even here.
But in the Lord of glory it was not the countenance
only, which thus wore a splendour different from the
common ; in addition to this, ' his raiment was white and
glistering ; ' 1 or, as St. Mark has it, ' became shining, ex
ceeding white as snow' (cf. Rev. i. 14), 'so as no fuller on
earth can white them! It was probably night, when this
marvellous spectacle was vouchsafed to the disciples.
Such an assumption best explains ' the next day ' of Luke
ix. 37. This, if it was so, must have infinitely enhanced
the grandeur of the vision ; although the brightness doubt
less was such as would have paled even the noonday sun
(Acts xxii. 10). Indeed all words seem weak to the
Evangelists, all images to fail them here. St. Mark, whose
words I have quoted, borrows one image from the world of
' Bengel : k^aarpanTav, ab intra, gloria corporis translucente, et poros
vestimenti permeante; compare the eiOuipfovai, which the Lord ascribes
and promises to his saints, Matt. xiii. 43. Aevrng it; aoTpawTuv is not 'white
and glistering ' (E. V.) ; but iSjaoTp&TTTav (cf. Ezek. i. 4, 7 ; Nah. iii. 3) is
the modal explanation of Aewc<5c, ' white,' and so white that it was 'glistering'
as well. This last word is a happy one; 'effulgent,' which hardly existed
in the language when our Version was made, would not express it as well,
while 'fulgurant,' and 'effulgurant,' are too merely Latin words. As
* glistering ' in like manner we are to understand the ' raiment white as snow '
of the angel at the empty tomb (Matt, xxviii. 3) ; not the garment of inno
cence, but of glory ; the same angel being described in St. Luke as clothed
' in shining garments ' (acrTpairTovoaig) ; so too ' the great white throne ' of
Rev. xx. 11 is equivalent to 'the throne of glory' of Matt. xxv. 31, for
light at the utmost intensity is white ; from this, too, we may further
explain Dan. vii. 9; Rev. i. 14.

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 195
aature, another from that of man's art and device ; by
these he struggles to set forth and reproduce for his
readers the transcendant brightness of that light which
now arrayed, and from head to foot, the person of the
Lord, breaking forth from within, and overflowing the
very garments which He wore ; until in their eyes who
beheld, He seemed to clothe Himself with light as with
a garment, light being indeed the proper and peculiar
garment of Deity (Ps. civ. 2 ; Hab. iii. 4). In the cir
cumstance that his glory was not one which was lent
Him, but his own, bursting forth as from an inner fountain
of light, not merely gilding Him from without ; not play
ing, like that of Moses, on the skin and surface of his
countenance, perhaps also in its being a glory which
arrayed not his face alone, but his entire person, we have
those tokens of superiority, those prerogatives of the
Master above the servants, which we are evermore able to
trace even in matters wherein one or another of these
may seem to have anticipated, and thus to have come
into some sort of competition with Him.1
I have lightly touched already, and shall have occasion
1 Witsius (Melet. Leid. p. 306) : Quorsum ea omnia? Et Christi causa,,
et nostri. Christi intererat ut haac ipsi evenirent, quippe quem Pater hac
quadam caalestis gloriaa anticipatione ad instans certamen animare constituit.
Quum diflicultates prophetici muneris suscipiendse essent, apertura eaali,
descensu Spiritus, et compellatione Patris gratissima, mirabiliter animatus
est (Matt. iii. 16). Nunc quum instaret tempus quo se ut Pontifex Patri
oblaturus erat iBquum fuit ut splendidis vestibus exornatus, ex earum ac
faciei suaa fulgore experiundo discenet, quaa post sui oblationem gloria ipsum
maneret in caalis. Instabat hora, qua controversia ipsi de regno eontu-
meliosissimum in modum movenda, et regni professio in crimen morte
piandum imputanda, regiaque ipsius dignitas infami ludibrio exponenda
erat. Sed insolita hac plus quam regii splendoris exhibitione clarius demon -
stravit Rex caalorum quanto ipsum in honore haberet, quam Assuerus olim
Mardochaao, in omni isto invidiosaa pompaj apparatu, quem ei per Hamanem
prtestari jussit. O 2

196 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
to dwell further on some aspects, in which the Trans
figuration may be regarded as designed to strengthen and
encourage the hearts first of those who witnessed it, and
then of all those to whom their witness came. But in
addition to these it has ever been contemplated in the
Church as a prophecy of the glory which the saints shall
have in the resurrection.1 As was the body of Christ on
the Mount, so hereafter shall their bodies be. It is diffi
cult not to recognize a direct reference to the Transfigura
tion in the words of St. Paul, where he speaks of Christ's
body of glory to which hereafter the body of our humilia
tion shall be conformed (Phil. iii. 21) ; while in passages
out of number we have hints of the luminous character
of the future glorified bodies of the redeemed (Dan. xii. 3 ;
Matt. xiii. 43 ; 1 Cor. xv. 43 ; Col. iii. 4 ; 1 Pet. v. 1 ;
Rev. iii. 4, 5 ; Wisd. v. 7) ; all these Scriptures pointing
to the glorious, conformity of their bodies then, with all
which his body at this time was, who now shewed in
Himself, as the first fruits of the new creation, what here
after He should shew in all them that were his.
' And behold ' (wonder within wonder), ' there appeared
unto them Moses and Elias, talking with Him! 2 The

1 Leo the Great (Serm. xciv.) : In transfiguratione illud principaliter
agebatur, ut de cordibus discipulorum scandalum cruois tolleretur ; sed non
minore providentia spes Sanctaa Ecclesiaa fundabatur, ut totum corpus
Christi agnosceret quali esset commutatione donandum, ut ejus sibi honoris
consortium membra promitterent, qui in capite praafulsisset. Gregory the
Great (Moral, xxxii. 6) : In transfiguratione quid aliud quam resurrectionis
ultima gloria nunciatur? So in the Greek service-books: Sel^ai fimMpevog
Trig avaoTaoeug t?)v "KapTrp6T7ira.
* One of the best and soundest of the Mystics, Richard of St. Victor,
warning against visions, and urging the necessity of trying all such by the
Word of God, of making that the standard by which all subjective revela
tions should be tried, whether they were indeed of God, or only delusions
of the enemy, has some striking admonitions drawn from this presence of

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 197
question, How the disciples knew these two to be Moses
and Elias, is surely an idle one ; and the suggestion that
they gathered their knowledge from the conversation
which they overheard, or -that they recognized the horns
of Moses, or the ascetic garments of Elias, merely super
fluous. That elevation of their whole spiritual life, that
ecstatic state of a divine clairvoyance, if we may use this
word without offence, in which alone they could have
seen these sights at all, will have left them in no doubt
concerning those whom they now saw, holding this con
verse w^h their Lord. Their recognition of them we
must regard as immediate and intuitive.1 It is the same
question as is sometimes asked about Paul, namely, how
he should have seen in a vision a man whose name he
knew to be Ananias (Acts. ix. 12). It can only be replied
that the vision which shewed him the man, imparted to
him also the name of the man.
But while this question may thus be dismissed, we
cannot so dismiss another, namely, why the two who
appear should be exactly Moses and Elias ? It was not
merely that among all the prophets and saints of the
Moses and Elias with the Lord in the Mount (Benjamin Minor, Ixxxi.) :
Sed si jam te existimas ascendisse ad cor altum, et apprehendisse inontem
ilium excelsum et magnum, si jam te oredis Christum videre transfiguratum,
quidquid in illo videas, quidquid ab illo audias, non ei facile credas, nisi
ocurrant ei Moyses et Elias. Suspecta est mihi omnis Veritas quam non
confirmat Scripturarum auctoritas, nee Christum in sua, clarificatione recipio,
si non assistant ei Moyses et Elias. Compare Thauler, Homilm, 1553,
p. 540.
1 As Sedulius (Carm. Pasch. 286) puts it well :
Ignotos oculis viderunt lumine cordis.
He proceeds with verses which are worth quoting, on the purpose of their
appearing : Ut major sit nostra fides, hunc esse per orbem
Principium et finem, hune Alpha viderier, hunc ii,
Quem medium tales circumfulsere prophetaa.

198 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
Old Testament these were the two, of whom the one had
not died (2 Kin. ii. 2 ; cf. Ecclus. 48), and the other had
no sooner tasted of death than probably his body was
withdrawn from under the dominion of death and of him
that had the power of death (Deut. xxxiv. 6 ; Jude 9); the
two, therefore, whose apparition in glorified bodies before
the day of resurrection had less in it perplexing than that
of any others would have had. This was something ; but
much more that these two were the acknowledged heads
and representatives, the one of the Law, the other of the
prophets; in which Law and prophets the whole Old
Testament is commonly summed up (Matt. vii. 12).1
' And they were talking with Jesus! What the matter
of this august conference was only St. Luke tells us, namely,
that ' they spake of his decease,2 which He should accom-
1 It behoved the Lord, in Tertullian's words (Adv. Marc. iv. 22), cum
illis videri, quibus in revelationibus erat visus ; cum illis loqui, qui eum
fuerant locuti ; cum eis gloriam suam communicare, a quibus Dominus
glorise nuncupabatur ; oum principalibus suis, quorum alter populi informator
aliquando, alter reformator quandoque, alter initiator Veteris Testamenti,
alter consummator Novi. Augustine (Serm. 232) : Evangelium testimonium
habet a Lege et prophetis. Ideo et in monte quando voluit ostendere
Dominus noster Jesus gloriam suam, inter Moysen et Eliam stetit. Medius
in honore ipse fulgebat ; Lex et prophetas a lateribus adtestabantur. Cf.
Serm. 78 : Hie Dominus, hie Lex et Prophetaa ; sed Dominus tanquam
Dominus ; Lex in Moyse, Prophetia in Elia ; sed ipsi tanquam servi, tan-
quun ministri. Ipsi tanquam vasa, ipse tanquam fons. Moyses et Pro-
phetaa dicebant, et scribebant ; sed de illo implebantur, quando fundebant.
cf. Be Boctr. Christ, ii. 25 ; Leo the Great (Serm. 94) : Quid hoc stabilius,
quid firmius verbo, in cujus praadicatione Veteris et Novi Testamenti con-
cinit tuba, et cum Evangelica doctrina antiquarum protestationum instru-
menta concurrunt? Adstipulantur enim sibi invicem utriusque foederis
paginaa, et quem sub velamine mysteriorum praacedentia signa promiserant
manifestuin atque perspicuum praasentis gloriaa splendor ostendit.
a Tifv eS-oSov. The word is not without its special solemnity. He who
has an elooSog (Acts xiii. 24) into the world, has also an e^oSog out of the
world. St. Peter employs the same word of his own 'decease,' 2 Pet. i. 15;
cf. Wisd. vii. 6 ; for a similar use of iKfSaaig, see Heb. xiii. 7 ; of afi^ig, Acts
xx. 29. Bengel : Vocabulum valde grave, quo continetur Passio, Crux,

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 199
plish at Jerusalem;' of that 'decease' prefigured by the
types of the law (Num. xxi. 9 ; Exod. xii. 46) fore-an
nounced by the oracles of the prophets (Zech. xii. 10;
Isai. liii. 9).1 'Decease' has now become so mere a
synonym for death, it has so much lost its proper sense
of departure, i. e. out of this life (decessus), that, as we
read in the English, we are in danger of missing, indeed
we can hardly help missing, an allusion which must at
once suggest itself to every reader of the Greek. We
fail to mark the relation, which the sacred historian could
scarcely not have intended us to recognize, between this
'exodus' and an earlier; to recognize in this an 'accom
plishing' or fulfilling, as he is careful to note, by the
Saviour at Jerusalem of an 'exodus' (Heb. xi. 22)
which Moses and Joshua had begun in Egypt and in the
wilderness, but had not accomplished (Heb. iv.) ; the
' exodus,' that is, or going out of God's people, their
Captain and Commander leading the way, from this
present evil world.
The unity of the Old and New Covenant is wonderfully
attested in this apparition of the princes of the Old in
solemn yet familiar intercourse with the Lord of the New ;
and not the unity only, but with this unity the subordina
tion of the Old to the New, that ' Christ is the end of the
law' (Rom. x. 4), and the object to which all prophecy
Mors, Resurrectio, Adscensio. The Latin excessus, which is an exact
parallel, has precisely the same more solemn use ; thus Cicero (Rep. ii. 30) :
Post obitum, vel potius excessuin Romuli. It is noticeable that Chrysostom
twice reads S6$av here ; which is not a mere inadvertence, for he comments
on the word which he thus reads. There is no vestige of any such reading
having ever existed.
' Gerhard (Harm. 87) : Institutum itaque fuit colloquium de illo ipso
articulo, quo apostoli paulo ante offensi fuerant; nimirum de passione et
morte Servatoris nostri, Jesu Christi.

200 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
pointed (Acts x. 43; xxviii. 23; Rom. iii. 21), that there
fore the great purpose of these had now been fulfilled ;
all which was declared in the fact that, after their testimony
thus given, Moses and Elias disappear, while Christ only
remains. It need hardly be observed what strength there
was here, and in the remembrance of this scene, for the
disciples, when they should afterwards behold their Lord
put to death as a breaker of the law of Moses, as a false
snatcher to Himself of the words of the prophets.
'But Peter and they that were with him ivere heavy
with sleep ; and when they were awake, they saw his glory,
and the two men that stood with Him! These words are
too often misunderstood, indeed, until the translation is
corrected, they can hardly fail to be misunderstood. It
is usual to take the disciples to task for this sleep of theirs
at such a moment,1 and to find a parallel to it in the sleep
of the same three in the garden of Gethsemane (Matt.
xxvi. 40-45). The parallel is altogether misleading. That
was a somnolence not without its guilt ; while they were
sleeping that untimely sleep, they should have been
watching and praying, seeking strength for themselves
and help for their Lord. But that the eyes of the diseiples
here ' were heavy with sleep] this might be, and was, an
evidence of human infirmity — of the inability of this frail
nature of ours to bear a weight of glory, when it is laid
upon it, but this was all.2 The true parallels to the words

1 Thus Gerhard (Loci Theoll. xxxii. 2) : Discipuli somno erant gravati,
per quem denotatur nostra somnolentia, quod gloriam vitaa aaternaa non
satis aastimamus ac meditamur.
3 Chrysostom has a right insight into the matter: vnvov evravBa KakCsi
\b AovKagJ tov tto^vv Kapov tov hirb Tijg bijieMg EKeivTjg avrotg iyyivbpevov
And Ambrose : Somno gravati erant. Premit enim incomprehensibilis
splendor divinitatis nostri corporis sensus.

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 201
before us are Gen. xv. 12; Dan. x. 9; Zech. iv. 1; and
we may add, as materially helping to illustrate what the
condition of the three apostles was, Num. xxiv. 4. Theirs
in fact was an ecstatic state, one of a divine clairvoyance ;
even as in such only would they have been capable of
beholding what they then beheld ; their eyes burdened
with sleep, but they not asleep ; for having resisted all the
temptations of this frail nature to succumb under the
burden of this glory — and what a burden it is to be the
immediate recipient of any divine revelation Daniel has
often told us (vii. 28; viii. 27; x. 8, 11, 16) — 'having
kept themselves awake throughout ' (for this, and not ' when
they were awake] is the right rendering),1 ' they saw his
glory, and the two men that stood with Him! The disciples
saw this vision, as indeed it only could have been seen,
'in spirit' (Acts x. 10; xi. 5; xxii. 27; 1 Cor. xiv. 15;
Rev. i. 10) ; whether in the body or out of the body they
could not, any more than St. Paul in a later ecstasy
(2 Cor. xii. 3), have told.2 It is from this point of view,
and keeping this in mind, that we must explain another
notice which also we owe exclusively to St. Luke — his
comment, namely, on St. Peter's proposal which presently
follows — to wit, that he made it ' not knowing what he
said! Tertullian long ago gave the right explanation of
this 'not knowing what lie said]3 which many have
1 AiaypTr/opJjoavreg, not vigilantes (Vulg.), nor cum evigilassent (Beza),
nor postquam experreeti sunt (Castalio), which all are in error. Aiayprjyo-
piu Rost and Palm rightly render durchwachen, and refer to Herodian,
iii. 4. 8 : iraoqg Trig wicrbg Smypr/yopqoav-eg.
3 Compare Philo, Quis Rer. Biv. Hceres, § 53, who there and elsewhere
has much to say on the true character of the Scriptural eiun-aatg, which word
he found in his Septuagint at Gen. ii. 21 ; xv. 12.
" Adv. Marc. iv. 22 : In spiritu enim homo constitutus, praasertim cum
gloriam Dei conspicit, vel cum per ipsum Deus loquitur, necesse est exoidat

202 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
subsequently missed.1 It is no apology upon the part of
the Evangelist for St. Peter's untimely proposal, still less
a judgment upon it. Shortsighted, inopportune it may
have been ; and, while testifying for his zeal and for his
delight in that heavenly communion, in some sense it was.
This, however, is not what St. Luke would affirm ; but
that he so spake, being out of himself, not indeed demens
but amens, rapt into another world, a world of fear and
wonder, into conditions altogether remote from the com
mon ; as appears still more plainly in the parallel state
ment of St. Mark ; 'for he wist not what to say, for they
were sore afraid!
To return, however, to his actual words : 'Then answered
Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to le
here ; if Thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles, one
for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias! This
proposal, as St. Luke, again significantly completing the
other Evangelists, informs us, he made, ' as they departed
from Him!2 It is too brief a converse, too transient a
glimpse and foretaste of the heavenly glory. He will
fain detain these august visitors. Wherefore should all
these marvels of the higher world be shewn to them, only
to be withdrawn again in an instant. ' It is good for us to
be here ' — better, as no doubt he felt, than to be rejected of
the Jews, better than to suffer many things of the Elders
and Chief Priests and Scribes, and be killed (Matt. xvi.
21). But that holy retirement in which they were was
sensu, obumbratus scilicet virtute divina .... Interim facile est amentiam
[=lKOTaoiv] Petri probare. Quomodo enim Moysem et Eliam cognovisset
nisi in spiritu ?
1 Gerhard for example : Hanc vocem ex carnali inscitia profectum esse
Lucas testatur, Non enim noverat quid loqueretur.
3 A somewhat feeble rendering of iv i-<p SiaxupKeaBai airovg an" airoii,
on which Beza rightly comments, e conspectu abrepti.

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 203
( good] as he esteemed it, not merely as a safe withdrawal
from all this evil, but also for the sweetness which he
found in the communion and fellowship which it offered.
' But what,' exclaims Anselm in a sermon of extraordinary
richness and beauty, from which I have already quoted one
or two fragments, ' if the contemplation of Christ's glorified
manhood so filled the apostle with joy that he was un
willing to be sundered from it, how shall it fare with them
who attain to the contemplation of his glorious Godhead ?
and if it was so good a thing to dwell with two of his
saints, how then to come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to
the general assembly and Church of the firstborn that are
written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to
these, not seen through a glass and darkly, but face to
face?' But tarrying on the summit of that mountain they will
need, as the apostle conceives, that some kind of shelter
be provided for them ; so are things earthly confused
with things heavenly in his mind. He, ever prompt
for action, as ready with the labour of his hands as with
the love of his heart, aided by the other two, will
quickly prepare some slight booths of the branches of
trees, or of whatever else may come to hand, in which
they may tarry : ' let us make here three tabernacles, one
for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias!1 That
there is any allusion here to the Feast of Tabernacles,
that St. Peter is measuring here the heavenly felicity by
that poor earthly copy, I cannot for an instant believe ;
and altogether it seems to me that he is very needlessly
schooled and found fault with by modern commentators,
and, indeed, by some ancient interpreters as well, for
1 Ambrose : Impiger operarius communis obsequii ministerium pollicetur.

204 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
these words of his. At the same time, that there is a
certain fault in them is unquestionable. In this proposal
he did not maintain himself at the height of that great
confession which he had so lately made (Matt. xvi. 16).
He who could thus speak, even though he meant it
honourably for his Master, yet plainly declared, thus
putting those other two on the same level with Him,
that he did not yet perceive how far that Master
transcended all other, even the princes of the elder dis
pensation, how far higher a dispensation had begun with
Him j1 herein revealed his own need of the teaching of
that vision and that voice, which was presently to be
vouchsafed to him and to his fellows ; for we have a
right to see in what immediately succeeds the answer from
heaven to that word of his : 2 ' while he yet spake, behold
a bright cloud overshadowed them] not the disciples, but
the legislator and the prophet, and perhaps also Him that
was the Lord alike of them both.
A cloud is the constant symbol, or if not always this,
the accompaniment, of the divine presence (Exod. xiv. 19 ;
xix. 16; xxxiii. 9; xl. 34; 1 Kin. viii. io; Ps. civ. 3;
1 Jerome : Erras, Petre, sicut et alius Evangelista testatur, Nescis quid
dicas. Noli tria tabernacula quaarere, cum unum sit tabernaculum Evangelii,
in quo Lex et Prophetae recapitulanda sunt. Nequaquam servos cum Domino
conferas. a Augustine (Serm. 78.) : Videt hoc Petrus, et humana sapiens tanquam
homo : Bomine, bonum est, inquit, nos hie esse. Taadium patiebatur a turba,
invenerat solitudinem montis ; ibi habebat Christum panem mentis. Ut-
quid inde discederet ad labores et dolores, habens in Deum sanctos amores,
et ideo bonos mores ? Bene sibi volebat esse ; unde et adjunxit, Si vis,
faciamus hie tria tabernacula : Tibi unum, Moysi unum, et Elias unum. Ad
haac Dominus nihil respondit : sed tamen Petro responsum est. Haac enim
eo loquente, nubes lucida venit, et obumbravit eos. Hie quaarebat tria
tabernacula: nobis unum esse, quod humanus sensus dividere cupiebat,
responsum caaleste monstravit. Verbum Dei Christus, Verbum Dei in Lege,
Verbum in Prophetis. Quid, Petre, quaeris dividere? Magis te oportet
adjungere. Tria quaaris ; intellige et unum.

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 205
Isai. xix. 1 ; Dan. vii. 13). There is a manifest fitness in
the symbol. The clouds of our lower world veil, sheath,
render tolerable to mortal eyes the splendour of the
heavens, the brightness of the sun, which otherwise we
could not endure to behold. But in the Old Testament,
a ministration of condemnation (2 Cor. iii. 9), the cloud
is a dark cloud, a thick cloud (1 Kin. viii. 12) ; for God,
though in part revealing, is also in part a God that hideth,
Himself (Isai. xiv. 15) ; it is often a cloud charged with
thunder and lightning, and all the dread artillery of
heaven (Exod. xix. 16; Ps. cvii. 2; xviii. 12) ; for there
was in that dispensation the utterance of God's displeasure
against the sins of men. But the cloud which now over
shadows these is ' a brifht cloud f yet, bright as it is, still
serving the purpose of veiling the more intolerable bright
ness within, even that of God's very presence in this the
Schechina or place of his dwelling; and making possible
for mortal and sinful men to stand in that presence and
live, which would else have been impossible for them
(Exod. xxxiii. 20; Judg. xiii. 22) .a
It may seem strange at first that even to this cloud
a power of thus overshadowing and concealing should
be ascribed ; yet it is not really strange ; for light in its
utmost intensity performs the effect of darkness, hides
as effectually as the darkness would do. Thus see 1 Tim.
vi. 16,2 and compare the words of Milton, ' dark with

1 Ambrose : Ut apostoli Dei loquentis majestatem interposita nube ferre
possent. 2 Anselm, quoting these words of St. Paul, ' Who dwelleth in light un
approachable,' and then the words of Moses, ' And Moses drew near unto
the thick darkness where God was' (Exod. xx. 21), and bringing both
passages into connexion with this present, says profoundly, Ilia oaligo et
ista nubes atque ilia lux idem sunt.

zo6 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
excess of light ;' and of Wordsworth, ' a glorious privacy
of light;' in like manner Philo affirms of the highest
light that it is identical with darkness (yvofyog), even as it
is the character of extremes evermore to meet. Thev
were hidden in that blaze of intolerable light from the
eyes of the disciples, who 'feared as they entered into the
cloud' (Luke ix. 34), feared with that fear which ever
more falls on sinful men when brought suddenly into im
mediate nearness with the pure and awful presences of
heaven. They may have feared too that their Lord was
now about to be taken from them, to anticipate the day of
his Ascension, and to mount already the cloud-chariot which
was one day to bear Him from their sight (Acts i. 9) ; for
the Transfiguration must have made plain to them as to
Himself that He needed not the painful passage of death
by which to enter into glory ; that if He still laid down
his life, it was not of necessity, but of freest love.
And then it must have been fear upon fear, when
'behold, a voice out of the cloud] the same voice which
had once before been heard at the Baptism (Matt. iii. 17),
and which should salute Him again as He stood on the
threshold of his Passion (John xii. 28) ; and thus at the
beginning, at the middle, and at the close of his ministry,
'This is my beloved1 Son, in whom I am well pleased;
hear ye Him! This voice is said by St. Peter to have
come 'from the excellent glory' (2 Pet. i. 17) ; from Him,
that is, who dwelt in the cloud, which was the symbol
and the vehicle of the divine presence.2 In respect of
1 'Ayairtrrdg in St. Matthew and St. Mark ; but h.Kke'keypkvog (cf. ivXeKTbg,
Luke xxiii. 35) seems now recognized as the true reading in St. Luke.
2 St. Peter in this same passage, looking back at the privilege vouchsafed
to him and to the 'sons of thunder,' speaks of himself and them as 'eye
witnesses of the majesty ' (inbrcTat yevrfievreg rijg pzya'keultTiiTog). 'JLnbTmig,

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 207
the heavenly salutation itself, the emphasis "should not be
so much laid on ' This ' as on ' Son •] for the true parallel to
the present salutation of the Son by the Father, with the
installation of the Son in the highest place of the kingdom,
is to be found at Heb. i. 1 : ' God who at sundry times
and in divers manners spake in time past unto the
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken
unto us by his Son.' He is to be heard above all others,
because He is not a servant in the house of another, as
were Moses and Elias, but a Son in his own (Heb. iii. 5).
In the words themselves of this majestic installation there
is a remarkable honouring of the Old Testament, and of
it in all its parts, which can scarcely be regarded as acci
dental; for the three several clauses of that salutation are
drawn severally from the Psalms (Ps. ii. 7), the Prophets
(Isai. xiii. 1), and the Law (Deut. xviii. 5) ; and, as we
shall see, they do together proclaim Him concerning
whom they are spoken to be the King, the Priest, and the
Prophet of the New Covenant. St. Peter therefore might
very fitly declare that in this voice from heaven ' He
received from God the Father honour and glory' (2 Pet.
i. 17). And first, ' This is my beloved Son;' but the
King's Son is Himself the King ; ' yet have I set my King
upon my holy hill of Sion' (Ps. ii. 6). And then, ' in
whom I am well pleased;' holy, therefore, harmless and
undefiled, fairer than the children of men (Ps. xiv. 2), the

a technical word, too weakly rendered ' eye-witness,' though it would not
be easy to suggest a better rendering, sets well before us the light in which
the apostle regarded his and their relation to the things which they were
permitted to behold. The enbwTrig is properly one admitted and initiated
into secret and holy mysteries, the Eleusinian for example, or any othei
reserved from the common gaze. Such an initiation, he would imply, into
the secretest and holiest mysteries of all, had been theirs.

208 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
sceptre of whose kingdom is a sceptre of righteousness
(Heb. i. 8), for in no other could God take a perfect
pleasure; and thus the Priest who could and should
offer Himself without spot to God (Heb. ix. 14 ; 1 John
iii. 5). But then, further, He is the One whom all are
commanded to obey: 'Hear ye Him;' therefore hence
forth the sole Prophet of his Church ; Moses, or the Law,
has passed away, for that was the shadow and outline of
good things to come (Col. ii. 17 ; Heb. viii. 5 ; x. 1), while
in Him is the substance of good things actually present;
Elias, or the prophets, has passed away, for in Him all
prophecy is fulfilled (Luke xvi. 16 ; 1 Cor. xiii. 8). They,
belonging as they did to a merely .preparatory dispensa
tion, vanish ; but Christ, who is the Head of an everlasting
dispensation, after whom we do not look for another,
remains ; and this will explain how it came to pass that
' when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save
Jesus only!1
But before accompanying the Lord and his three dis
ciples, as they descend again from that Mount of Vision
to this common workday world of ours, with all its labour

1 I have made more than one citation from a long and interesting passage
on the Transfiguration in Tertullian (Adv. Mare. iv. 22). Marcion, in his
assault upon the Old Testament and the old Economy, as proceeding from
another God than the author of the New, had found iu this transaction not
Christ preferred to Moses and Elias, but Christ honoured and Moses and
Elias dishonoured. Tertullian's reply is admirable throughout. Strange,
he says, if this were intended, that they should appear talking with Him,
which is an evidence of familiarity ; sharing in the same glory, which is an
evidence of favour and acceptance. These are some of the concluding words :
Itaque etsi facta translatio sit auditionis a Moyse et Helia in Christo, sed
non ut ab alio Deo, neo ad alium Christum, sed a Creatore in Christum
ejus, secundum decessionem Veteris, et successionem Novi Testamenti.
Tradidit igitur Pater Filio discipulos novos, ostensis prius curn illo Moyse
et Helia in claritatis praarogativa, atque ita dimissis, quasi jam et officio et
honore dispunctis.

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 209
and suffering and sin, we may pause for a word or two
on a subject common to all the Evangelists, but on which
St. Matthew dwells most in detail. All have told us of
the fear which overcame the three, even while they felt
it most good and blessed to be there. But amazing as
had been the sights which they saw, it would appear that
it was not these so much as the voice from heaven, the
awfulness of that direct speaking of God with man, which
man is so little able to endure (cf. Hab. iii. 2, 16 ; Exod.
xx. 19; Heb. xii. 19), that brought them to the extremity
of their fear : ' And when the disciples heard it, they
fell on their face, and were sore afraid' — this fear of
theirs uttering itself, as is so constantly its manner (Gen.
xvii. 1 ; Josh. v. 14 ; Judg. xiii. 20 ; Ezek. i. 28 ; Dan.
viii. 17; Luke xxiv. 5; Acts ix. 4; Rev. i. 17), in an
attitude, suggested by those moral instincts of awe, by
that sense of his own utter unfitness to stand face to face
with the holiness of God, which any near revelation of
that holiness must inevitably awaken in the heart of man.1
To hide the face is the first impulse and instinct of such
a moment (Exod. iii. 6; 1 Kin. xix. 17) ; to fall on the
face is the most effectual way of so doing, and at the same
time of Outwardly expressing the inner conviction that
for man there is no standing in his own right before
God. 1 Witsius (Be Glorif. Jesu in Monte, 39) : Quoties enim cunque Deus
suam animis notris majestatem illustribus documentis ingerit, toties nostras
non vilitatis solum sed et impuritatis et omnigenaa indignitatis conscientia
vivide expergiscitur ; unde fit ut ad tarn sublimis puritatis et magnifi-
centissimaa glorias praasentiam trepidemus. Neque id solis contingit im-
probis, quibus formidolosa semper vindicis Dei cogitatio est, sed et piis,
imo et amicis Dei' ac familiaribus, quibus eo venerabilior semper summi
Numinis majestas est, quo clarius conspicitur ejus bonitas ; et qui nunquam
sibi ipsis magis sordent, quam cum in liquidissima se divinso Glorias luce
contuentur.

210 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
' And Jesus came and touched them ; ' as He, now the
Incarnate Word, and once the Angel of the Covenant, had
touched Daniel (Dan. x. 10), and Jeremiah (Jer. i. 9), and
Ezekiel (Ezek. ii. 2) ; as by the hand of a ministering
spirit He had touched the lips of 'Isaiah (Isai. vi. 7); as here
after, the glorified Son of man, walking among the golden
candlesticks, He should, under circumstances not unlike,
touch or lay his right hand once more upon one of these
same three (Rev. i. 17). And with that touch there goes
also the reassuring word, that ' Fear not] which even
the holiest need so much, when God has shewn them their
unholiness, the depths of their corruption, the abundant
cause which as sinful men they have to fear, cause so
abundant that no other but He can enable them to lay
this fear aside (Judg. vi. 23 ; Dan. x. 12 ; Matt, xxviii. 5 ;
Luke v. io).1
An important discourse follows, which the Lord held
with his three favoured disciples, as they were descending
from the mount, and leaving all its mysterious marvels
behind them. And first the charge to silence, the seal
which was set upon their lips, not to be removed till after
the Resurrection : 'And as they came down from the

1 Witsius : Non caruit successu ea Christi compellatio, quippe qua ex-
pergefacti velut a veterno aliquo apostoli, accurate omnia circumspexerunt.
Sed quocunque oculos verterent, nihil eorum deprehenderunt quaa nuper
tarn admiranda ipsis videbantur. Neminem viderunt, nisi solum Jesum,
sueta, forma, solito amictu. Non decebat diutius in terra commorari Mosera
et Eliam, quorum ministerium neque cum Jesu magisterio, neque cura
. apostolorum functione miscendum aut confundendum erat. Discessit
. igitur Moses, discessit Elias ; imo siluit vox ipsa caalestis Patris, quaa serael
locuta est, ut semper audiatur Filius. Christus ipse deposita nuperaa Trans-
: figurations gloria ad pristinum servi statum habitumque rediit ; tempora-
riam enim earn gloriam esse decuit, quae non nisi praaludium aaternaa fuit;
inultaque adhuc perpetienda restabant Ohristo, antequam asterna ilia
potiretur.

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 211
mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision1 to
no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the
dead! The three Evangelists here remarkably complete
one another. St. Matthew, thus mentioning the injunc
tion to silence, does not mention how well the disciples
obeyed it; while St. Luke, mentioning the fact of silence
— 'they kept it close, and told no man in those days any
of those things which they had seen] — does not state that
this was in obedience to an express command; only St.
Mark, with his own characteristic fulness of detail, records
both the express command given by the Lord, and the
observation of it by the disciples (ix. 9, 10). That ' Tell
the vision to no man] implies that they were forbidden to
reveal what they had seen even to their fellow-apostles
themselves — a hard precept, yet one which was obeyed
by them. At the same time, however strict the silence
which they kept, we cannot imagine that even so the
vision was only for themselves, and altogether lost upon
the others. There must have pierced through the whole
demeanour of these three, as they returned to fellowship
with the others, evident tokens that they had not been
for nothing on that holy mount. The others, in one
way or another, must have been convinced that they had
seen sights and heard words which had strengthened and

1 "Opapa, not in use distinguishable from birraoia (Luke i. 22 ; Acts xxvi. 19 ;
¦j. Cor. xii. 1), or from bpaaig (Acts ii. 17 ; Rev. ix. 17), is exactly ' a vision ;'
what a man most truly sees, but sees because God enables him to see it, be
cause it is shewn to him ; which he sees, as the three disciples saw this vision,
ev nvevpan, as contrasted with iv vol (1 Cor. xiv. 15, 16). So bpapa is invaria
bly used in the Acts, where alone, with the exception of this one passage,
it occurs in the New Testament; but there no less than eleven times
(vii. 31 ; ix. 10, 12 ; x. 5, 17, 19 ; xi. 5 ; xii. 9 ; xvi. 9, 10 ; xviii. 9 ; cf. Gen.
xv. 1 ; Dan. ii 19 ; Exod. iii. j).
p2

212 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
reassured their faith, and must have found in this a
strengthening and reassuring of their own.
But out of what motive shall we explain this charge to
silence, not to be broken until the Resurrection had found
place (cf. Matt. xvi. 20, 21) ? Best, perhaps, out of this.
The mystery of Christ's sonship should not be revealed to
the world, till it was attested beyond all doubt, till He
was ' declared to be the Son of God with power by the
resurrection from the dead ' (Rom. i. 4), and by that
Ascension, which was, so to speak, the necessary com
plement of his Resurrection. It could only be a matter
of dispute, and, resting as it did on his miraculous con
ception, of profane discussion, till then. A little more
light upon this point might have increased the guilt of
those who rejected and crucified Him; but would not
have served to bring them to the obedience of faith.
St. Mark does not merely connect, and bind into one, the
two statements of his fellow Evangelists ; he also adds
what they have wholly passed over, namely, the perplexity
which this language of their Lord occasioned them :
' They kept that saying with themselves, questioning one
with another what the rising from the dead should mean'
(cf. John xx. 9). Not the rising from the dead, but the
death which must have gone before, and which could
alone render a rising from the dead necessary or possible,
it was that which, running counter to all their prejudices
and preconceptions, perplexed them so much (Luke xxiv.
22-24; John xii. 24). Yet on this they do not venture
to ask any explanation ; but on something else closely
connected with all which they had just beheld. ' And
his disciples asked Him, saying, Why then say the
Scribes that EUas must first come?' That momentary

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 213
glimpse which had been vouchsafed to them of Elias
reminded them of the place which he occupied in the
economy of salvation (Mai. iv. 5, 6). They had seen
him, but only for an instant. That transient glimpse
could not satisfy the. largeness of prophetic announce
ments about him. How are they to understand his
disappearance, that they are returning with their Master
alone ? How was this to be reconciled with a cardinal
point in the Jewish theology, namely, that Elias should
go before the Messiah ? nay, how was it reconcilable with
their Master's claims to be the Messiah ? The reference
to what the Scribes said on this matter, leads us to gather
that these urged, as a capital and decisive objection against
his Messiahship, that no Elias went before Him ; while
yet the prophecies of the Old Testament had solemnly
closed with a pledge that Elias, going before, should
prepare the way of the Lord. This stumbling-block
to their faith the Scribes may have laid in the way of the
disciples. Will their Lord graciously remove it out of
their path ?
The great Interpreter of prophecy gives right to that
interpretation of the prophetic word which the Scribes
maintained : ' Elias truly shall first come, and restore
all things. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already,
and they knew him not, and have done unto him whatso
ever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer
of them. Then the disciples understood that He spake
unto them of John the Baptist! Elias had first come.
Whether he had so come in the person of John the
Baptist, as that he should not hereafter come in his own,
whether the prophecy of Malachi found in 'him its ex
haustive fulfilment, and not a partial and initial one only,

214 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
is a question than which few in modern times have more
divided interpreters ; but one upon which it is unnecessary
here to enter, as not immediately belonging to the matter
in hand. Enough, that in John the Baptist that word
which cannot be broken had found a fulfilment; whether
a further fulfilment awaits it, this still remains to be seen.

9. JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL
FIRE FROM HEAVEN ON THE SAMA
RITAN VILLAGE.
Luke ix. 51-56.
We have here one of the memorable incidents of our Lord's
last journey to Jerusalem : ' And it came to pass, when the
time was come that He should be received up, He stedfastly
set his face to go to Jerusalem! I should prefer to render
the second clause of this sentence, ' when the days of his
Assumption1 were fulfilled! Such a rendering would
not lose nor dissolve, as does our present, that word at
once so solemn and so sweet, with which the Evangelist
mitigates, even as imagination in these things is so potent
to mitigate, the bitterness of his Lord's passion and death ;
1 Some understand by our Lord's a.valt)ipig, which is spoken of here, his
ready acceptance among men; and make the Evangelist to say that the
days of this his acceptance were completed, had now come to an end ; which
he proceeds to illustrate and to prove by the churlish refusal on the part of
the Samaritans to receive Him now, as contrasted with the glad acceptance
which He found from them at an earlier date (John iv. 39-42). But this
is certainly a mistake. It is true that avakippig occurs only here in the New
Testament, so that its meaning in Scriptural Greek cannot be fixed by a com
parison of other passages where it appears ; but ava7w.pj3aveoBai is the solemn
word everywhere employed to express our Lord's taking up into heaven
(Mark xvi. 19; Acts i. 2, 11, 22; 1 Tim. iii. 16), and in like manner to
express that which was, so to speak, the rehearsal of this, namely, the rap
ture of Elias in the Old (2 Kin. ii. 10; 1 Mace. ii. 58 ; Ecclus. xlviii. 9) ; and
in the same sense an apocryphal Jewish book bears the title, 'kvaXrrtyu;
Hoaiog. See Suicer, Thes., s. v. avaT^ivg.

216 JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL FIRE
looking on as he thus does to the issue and the end,
to the taking up of Christ into heaven, to his reception
in his heavenly home and into his Father's glory. In
that ' stedfastly set his face'1 is implied that He addressed
Himself to this work, as One whom no threatenings of
his adversaries should arrest, no difficulties nor dangers
turn away from the accomplishment of his purpose.
The disciples at first followed trembling, as we plainly
gather from Mark x. 32. He Himself, as there described,
' went before. them,' after the manner of some leader who
heartens his soldiers by choosing the place of danger for
himself.2 ' And sent messengers before his face] probably ' two and
two,' as He afterwards sent the Seventy ' into every city
and place, whither He Himself would come ' (Luke x. 1) ;
and yet, seeing that He was not sent but to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel, not now to prepare his spiritual
way, but simply as harbingers, to use that word in its
most proper sense. 'And they ivent, and entered into a
village of the Samaritans, to make ready 8 for Him ; and
they did not receive Him, because his face was as though
He would go to Jerusalem! This refusal of theirs was
no piece of ordinary inhospitality, such as the Samaritans
were wont to shew to Gafilsean pilgrims on their way to
the feasts at Jerusalem.4 It was not merely as such a
1 'Bor^fc to irpbouTTov: cf. Jer. xxi. io; Ezek. vi. i; xxviii. 21. So
rdoceiv to npboawov (2 Kin. xii. 17); eroipd^eiv to np6aairov (Ezek. iv. 3);
efioTavai wpbouTrov (Lev. xvii. 10). But St. Luke makes probably here
especial allusion to Isai. 1. 7 : eBr/Ka to wpbouirbv pov ag arepeav nfrpav.
2 More intrepidi ducis, as Grotius puts it well.
3 'EToipaoai to which we may supply geviav, this phrase froipa&iv %eviav,
to prepare a lodging, occurring Philem. 22.
4 The enmity even to these ordinary pilgrims reached often much further
than to a mere refusal of these common rights of hospitality. Josephus (B. J.

FROM HEAVEN ON THE SAMARITAN VILLAGE. 217
pilgrim, that they shut their doors against Him ; but this,
we must remember, was Christ's solemn progress from
Galilee to Judaea as Messiah, with these messengers every
where announcing Him as such. But, as they esteemed
it, a Messiah going to Jerusalem to observe the feasts there,
did by this very act proclaim that He was no Messiah ;
for on Garizim, as they believed, the old Patriarchs had
worshipped1 (John iv. 20), consecrating it to be the holy
mountain of God — which therefore, and not Jerusalem,
the Christ, when He came, would recognize and honour
as the central point of all true religion.
There is no need to suppose John and James to have
been themselves the ' messengers] or harbingers, who
endured this repulse. The two sons of Zebedee were
more probably with their Lord, formed part of his imme
diate retinue, at the time when some others brought back
the tidings of the village which, refusing to receive Him,
had missed the opportunity of entertaining, not angels

ii. 12. 3-7) relates at full the bloody retaliations with which, during the
governorship of Quadratus, some of the fiercer sort of the Jews avenged the
murder of a Galilaean pilgrim, or of several Galilsean pilgrims, as he states
it in another account (Antt. xx. 6. 1), wasting a whole district with a
slaughter which spared none, and, as the sons of Zebedee would fain have
here done, destroying with tire the villages of these hateful schismatics.
The treacherous lyings in wait on the part of the dwellers in Samaria
which called forth these bloody revenges will have begun very early, if, as
St. Jerome's Hebrew teacher assured him, they were already denounced by
the prophet Hosea (vi. 8, 9) : Quorum quum intelligentiam quaarebam ab
Hebraao, ita nobis expositum est. Sacerdotes Bethel, imo fanatici Bethaven,
temporibus Paschae et Pentecostes et Scenopegiaa, quando per Sichem eun-
dum erat ad Hierosolymam, ponebant in itinere latrones, qui insidiarentur
pergentibus, ut magis vitulos aureos in Dan et Bethaven quam in Hieroso-
lyinis et in templo adorarent Deum. Wetstein (on John iv. 20) gives some
specimens from Jewish books of the courtesies by word of mouth which
were wont to be exchanged between the Samaritans and the Jewish pilgrims
who passed through the land on their way to Jerusalem.
1 See p. 107.

218 JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL FIRE
but the Lord of angels, unawares. Upon this provocation
all their suppressed and smouldering indignation against
the schismatics in whose territory they were journeying,
breaks forth. At this instance of contempt shewn to
their Lord and to themselves (for no doubt a feeling of
personal slight mingled with their indignation, however
little they may have been themselves aware of this), the
'sons of thunder,' — sons of thunder indeed, as Jerome
exclaims,1 — will fain play Old Testament parts. They feel
that a greater than Elias is here ; for they are fresh from
the Mount of Transfiguration, where they had seen how
the glory of the great prophet of the Old Covenant paled
and waned before the brighter glory of Him whom they
served, the Lord of the New (ver. 28-36) ; an outrage
therefore against Him, and a rejecting of Him, should
therefore be not less terribly avenged.
Out of their sense of this, ' they said, Lord, wilt Thou
that we command fire to come down from heaven, and con
sume them, even as Elias did?' Their allusion is, of
course, to the destruction of the two scornful captains with
their fifties by the fire which Elijah called down upon
them (2 Kin. i. 10, 12). If he spared not those of his
own people, should they shrink from executing judgment
on heretical Samaritans ? 2 With all of carnal and sinful
which mingled with this proposal of theirs, yet what in
sight into the dignity of their Lord, and the greatness of
the outrage which was an outrage against Him, does it
reveal ; what faith in the mighty powers with which He

1 And Ambrose : Quid enim mirum, filios tonitrui fulgurare voluisse ?
' Jerome (Ad Algas. 5) : Si ad servi Eliaa injuriam ignis descendit de
caalo, et non Samaritas sed Judaeos consnmsit incendium, quanto magis ad
contemptum Filii Dei in impios Samaritas debet flamma venire ?

FROM HEAVEN ON THE SAMARITAN VILLAGE. 219
was able to equip his servants ! How mighty a power this
was in the eyes of one of these two is evidenced from the
fact that, when in the Apocalypse he records the great
wonders and lying signs of the false prophet, the only
sign which he specially names is, that ' he maketh fire
come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of
men ' (Rev. xiii. 13) . And yet it might almost seem as
though, with all this confidence of theirs, there was a
latent and lurking sense upon their part of a certain
unfitness in this their proposal; and thus, out of no
desire to intrude into their Lord's office, but only out of
a feeling that this avenging act might not exactly become
Him, they proffer themselves as the executors of the
judgment. It will become the servants, though it would
not perfectly become the Lord.
Already, as would seem, He who was the pattern of a
perfect patience had turned to go, that He might seek
in another village the hospitality denied Him in this.
They meanwhile had lingered behind, loath to leave the
guilty village altogether unpunished. But now on
this word of theirs, 'He turned] and turning 'rebuked
them : Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of! 1
We must beware here of extenuating these words of our
Lord, as though ' what manner of spirit ' did but signify
' what temper ;' so that they might be paraphrased
'The emphasis in the English sentence should be on the second 'ye.'
The emphatic position of the vpelg at the end of the sentence, which it
would have been hard to reproduce in English, which our Version has not
attempted to reproduce, and, indeed, its introduction at all, sufficiently in
dicates this. Bishop Andrews well : ' Vos is no idle word. It makes a
plain separation between them and. Elias. You, why you are of my spirit.
The disciple and the Master are of one spirit. But if ye be of my spirit,
my spirit is in specie columbm, not aquilm ; not of the eagle that carrieth
Jupiter's thunderbolt, but of the dove that brings the olive-branch in her
bill.'

220 JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL FIRE
thus — ' Ye know not that ye are speaking out of your
own hasty passionate temper, being hurt as much by
the slight upon yourselves as that put upon Me,1 even
while ye suppose ye are zealous for my glory and for
oothbij else.' But 'spirit'' here means not the spirit of
i man ; not his own spirit, but rather the spirit of God ;
and the laying is a far weightier one than such an
extenuation of its sense would leave it. ' You are missing,'
Christ wouh* say, ' your true position ; which is, having
been born of the spirit of forgiving love, to be ruled by
that spirit, and not by the spirit of avenging righteousness.
You aro losing sight of the distinction between the Old
Covenant and the New, missing the greater glory of the
latter, and that it is the higher blessedness to belong to
it.' Thus Hammond rightly : ' Christ tells them they know
not of what spirit they are, that is, they considered not
under what dispensation they were.' 2
1 Thus C. a Lapide : Ncscitis quis spiritus vos impellat ; putatis enim vos
a Spiritu Dei agi, cum agamini spiritu humano impatientiaa et vindictaa.
2 The elvai Tivog of the original, expressing as it does a relation of de
pendence of one upon the other, Augustine (Con. Adimant. 17) gives rightly,
cujus spiritus filii estis. This whole clause, ovk olSare olov ¦xvevparbg tore
ipelg, is wanting, as is well known, in many, indeed in most, of the primary
authorities, in A, B, and C, being therefore omitted by Lachmann and
Tischendorf. I cannot for all this believe it to have no right to a place in
the text. It is found in D, in several early Versions and Fathers ; and
not to urge, Who could have ventured, — we may confidently ask — Who
would have been able, to invent words so exactly touching the central point
of the whole matter as these do ? This marvellous fitness of theirs seems
of itself to preclude the notion of an unauthorized insertion ; while, on the
other hand, the temptations were many to an unauthorized omission of
them. Hastily and superficially regarded, they might seem to favour a
Manichaaan antagonism between the Old Testament and the New, to involve
a slight on Elias, as though his spirit was contrary to the spirit of
Christ and to that which Christ's disciples ought to entertain. We know
that out of some such feeling as this, the words of the verse preceding,
ag Kal "Uliag inobjo-', the genuineness of which nobody calls in question, are
omitted in some MSS., in the Codex Vaticanus itself. Add to all this that

FROM HEAVEN ON THE SAMARITAN VILLAGE. 221
It behoves us to see clearly that there is no slight cast
here on the spirit of Elias. Both spirits, that which
breathed through and informed the prophets and saints
of the Old Covenant, as well as that which should inform
the disciples of the New, are divine.1 The difference be
tween them is not of opposition, but only of time and of
degree. The spirit of the Old Testament was a spirit
of avenging righteousness; God was teaching men by
terrible things in righteousness his holiness. But the spirit
of the New Covenant, not contrary but higher, is that of
forgiving love ; in it He is overcoming man's evil with
his good. There was, indeed, pardoning grace in the Old
(Mic. vii. 18; 2 Kin. vi. 21, 22), even as there is avenging
justice in the New ; fire does come down from God out
of heaven and consume his enemies (Rev. xx. 9 ; cf.
xi. 5) ; in it too ' God is a consuming fire ' (Heb. xii.
29) ; and that same Lord who spake these words shall
be Himself revealed in flaming fire to take vengeance on
such an abrupt termination as arpaipelg Si i7reripnoev avrolg is nearly, if not
quite, inconceivable. Christ cannot but have put his disciples in a right
point of view for understanding the error into which they had fallen. Vet,
if we omit this clause, we must then conclude with these words, ' And He
turned and rebuked them;' seeing that those which follow, 'for the Son of
man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them,' do certainly possess
no right to a place in the text, having been brought in from Matt, xviii. 1 1 ;
Luke xix. 20.
1 The severity of the God of the Old Testament on that occasion, and
the lenity of Christ on this, with his distinct refusal to do, or to suffer his
servants to do, 'as Elias did,' was one of Marcion's favourite antitheses, or
contradictions between the Old Testament and the New, by the aid of which
he sought to prove that they could not have come from the same Author.
Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 23) replies : Agnosco Judicis severitatem; e con-
trario Christi lenitatem increpantis eandem animadversionem destinantes
discipulos super istum viculura Samaritarum. Agnoscat et haereticus ab
eodem severissimo Judice promitti hanc Christi lenitatem: Harnndinem
quassatam non comminuet, et linum fumigans non extinguet. Talis utique
mnlto magis homines non erat crematurus. Nam et tunc ad Heliam, Non
in igni (inquit Dominus), sed in spiritu miti.

222 JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL FIRE
them that know not God (2 Thess. i. 8) ; even now
severity and goodness go hand in hand.1 At the same
time each economy has one predominating tone, from
which it takes its character.2
The two apostles, however, were for the moment failing
to recognize this. In a confusion of the Old and the
New, in a not knowing of 'what manner of spirit ' they
were, they had fallen back on the rudiments of God's
education of his people, when it was their privilege to go
on unto perfection, and to teach the world the far greater
might of meekness and of love ; even as it is deeply in
teresting to remember that it was one of these very two
who brought somewhat later to the inhabitants of Samaria
the perfect gifts of the Holy Ghost (Acts viii. 14; cf.
2 Cor. xiii. 10). They did not understand that there
was blood which should speak better things than that of
Abel (Heb. xii. 24). The blood of Abel cried well, when
it cried for vengeance (Gen. iv. 10), since vengeance, or
in other words, the violent restoration of the disturbed
balances of justice, is the Lord's (Rom. xii. 19) ; but the
blood of Christ spake even better things, for it spake of
pardon and forgiveness, the pardon and forgiveness
even of those by whom that blood had been shed. In
their missing of all this there was a fault and matter of

1 Grotius : Habet quidem et Evangelium sua ultimas necessitatis tela, qua
in Ananiam Petrus, in Elymam Paulus exercuit ; sed usi iis sunt apostoli, ubi
nulla esse suspicio poterat iracundiaa semet sub Dei obtentu vindicantis ; usi
sunt in praafractas malitiae homines, quibus nulla species ignorantias patro-
cinabatur. 2 Augustine (Con. Adim. 17) : Nam haec est brevissima et apertissima
differentia duorum Testamentorum, timor et amor. Hlud ad veterem, hor
ad novum hominem pertinet ; utrumque tamen unius Dei misericordissima
dispensatione prolatum atque conjunctum. •

FROM HEAVEN ON THE SAMARITAN VILLAGE. 223
blame, yet blame by no means so severe as some are
disposed to find.1 They were rebuked for choosing that
which, perfectly good in its own. time, was only not good
now, because a better had come in, for returning to the
lower level of the Old Covenant, when Christ had lifted
them up to the higher level of the New. I quote from
a sermon of Bishop Andrews — it is one of those referred
to in the last note : ' Elias' spirit, I hope, was no evil spirit.
No ; but every good spirit, as good as Elias', is not for
every person, place, or time. Spirits are given by God,
and men inspired with them, after several manners, upon
several occasions, as the several times require. The times
sometimes require one spirit, sometimes another. Elias'
time, Elias' spirit. As his act good, done by his spirit, so
his spirit good in his own time. The time changed ; the
spirit, then good, now not good. But why is it out of
time ? For " the Son " of man is come. As if He should
say, Indeed, there is a time to destroy (Eccles. iii. 3) ;
that was under the law, ignea lex, the fiery law, as Moses
calls it ; then a fiery spirit would not be amiss. The
spirit of Elias was good till the Son of man came, but
now He is come, the date of that spirit is expired. When
the Son of man is come, the spirit of Elias must be gone ;
now specially, for Moses and he resigned lately in the
Mount. Now no lawgiver, no prophet, but Christ.'

1 This incident furnished a favourite text to the English divines of the
seventeenth century for sermons on the anniversary of the Gunpowder
Treason. Andrews, Jeremy Taylor, Allestree, Tillotson, and many more,
have found here their argument. Yet, faulty as the two disciples were, their
fire from above resembled so little the fire from beneath which the incendiaries
of the Gunpowder Plot would have kindled, that one must needs think they
are used somewhat hardly in being brought, with whatever explanations,
into any comparison with them.

2Z4 JAMES AND JOHN OFFERING TO CALL FIRE, ETC.
'And they went to another village ;' probably not this
time a Samaritan one,1 and found, as we gather from the
narrative, the hospitality there which had been refused
them in the first.
' It is Mpav, not aXfa/v.

10. THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY.
Luke x. 17-20.
Some have supposed that for the convenience of his narra
tive St. Luke omits, or rather defers, various intermediate
events, and links the return of the Seventy directly with
their sending forth. Others, who will not allow that there
is any such overpassing of intervening incidents, assume
that the return of some at least of their number may
have followed closely on their sending forth — so closely
that nothing which the sacred historian desired to record
happened in the interval. The question is not a very
important one, nor is it easy to come to any decision about
it. But whether sooner or later, those whom Christ had
sent forth, 'returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even
the devils are subject unto us through thy name! It will
be observed that in his charge to the Seventy (ver. 2-16)
our Lord had given them no distinct commission to cast out
devils, as He had to the Twelve (Matt. x. 8 ; Luke ix. 1) ;
but some tentative efforts of theirs, some ventures of faith
in this direction, even without distinct authority, had
been crowned with success-. An acknowledgment that
this at once surpassed their commission and their hopes
seems to lie in that utterance of theirs, ' Lord, even the
devils are subject unto us ; not diseases only, over which
Thou gavest us power (ver. 9), but the devils as well.
Q

226 THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY.
The work, in which a little while ago apostles themselves
were foiled (ix. 40), has not lain beyond the limits of our
powers, has not baffled us.'
Such exultation was most natural ; yet was there in it
something of peril for those who entertained it, and for
their own spiritual life. One need not exactly affirm
that ' through thy name' comes in only as a formal and a
saving clause at the end, and that the entire emphasis of
the passage lay really on what preceded — ' are subject unto
us / ' 1 still there may have been something of this ; it could
scarcely have been otherwise. There is, indeed, nothing
more perilous for a man than the first discovery that
spiritual powers wait upon his beck, that he too can
wield the powers of the world to come ; lest he should
find in this a motive to self-elation, instead of giving all
the glory to God. The disciples at the present moment
were exposed to this temptation, as we might conjecture
even if we had only these words of theirs ; but as is
certain, when we put together with these the words of
earnest warning which the Lord presently addresses to
them (ver. 20), suggesting to them a safer and a truer
joy than that which they were now too incautiously
entertaining. Yet while we must needs recognize a certain self-
satisfaction and self-elation, which mingles with, and
makes itself felt in, this report which they bring back of
the successes of their ministry, this will not warrant the
interpretation made by some, of Christ's words which
1 Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. xci.) : Redeuntes dixerunt, Domine, ecce daa-
¦monia nobis subjecta sunt. Dixerunt quidem, in nomine tuo ; sod ille videt
in eis quia in ips& glorificatione gaudebant et extollebant se, et ibant inde in
superbiam, et ait illis, conservans nomina illorum apud se, Nolite gaudere in
hoc ; gaudete autem quad nomina vestra sunt scripta in caalis.

THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. 227
follow ; ' And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as light
ning fall from heaven! Here, they urge, is a warning
to the disciples against that sin of pride which their Lord
detected in them ; as though He had said, ' Be not lifted
up ; beware of the first beginnings of a sin, which may
end in so fearful a catastrophe as that which I once
beheld' — beheld, that is, in his preexistent glory and
before the world was — the fall, namely, of one through
pride even from the height of heaven itself. ' Swift and
sudden as the descent of the lightning was that fall, from
the highest to the lowest, from a throne of light even to
the blackness of darkness for ever. And even such a
casting down may be yours, if you forget your humility,
and are lifted up in heart.'1 I cannot so take the words.
The warning I believe to be reserved for ver. 20, and
that for the present the Lord freely shares in their joy,
even as his own presently breaks forth, at these tidings
of the great things that they had wrought (ver. 21, 22).
Any interpretation of this passage seems to me altogether
at fault, which makes it say other than what the Saviour
on another occasion said, ' Now is the judgment of this
world, now shall the prince of this world be cast out'
(John xii. 31), or, ' cast down,' as some read, which
would bring that passage into yet closer verbal connexion
with this.8
1 So Gregory the Great (Moral, xxiii. 6) : Mire Dominus, ut in discipulorum
cordibus elationem premeret, mox judicium ruinas retulit, quod ipse magister
elationis accepit; ut in auctore superbiaB discerent, quid de elationis vitio
formidarent. Compare Ambrose, De Fugd Smc. 7 ; Bernard, In Bed. Eccles.
Serm. v. 6 ; Stella : Quare Dominus Jesus, ut optimus medicus animarum, ut
roboraret suorum discipulorum animos adversus pestiferum morbum inanis
glorias, proponit exemplum Luciferi, qui ob superbiam a tanta et tam suprema
felicitate dejectus est, quia de donis a Deo acceptis insolenter gloriatus est.
* Kara [M.ri8r/oeTat, instead of iKpyhfifiaerai : but there is no sufficient reason
for disturbing the received reading. Q 2

228 THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY.
Those who understand the Lord to allude to that great
original fall of the ' son of the morning,' anterior to the
fall of man, yet do not all accept the words in the same
sense. Some make them to contain that warning against
pride which has just been mentioned. Others find in
them equally a check to the undue elation of the dis
ciples, but from another point of view : ' Think not so
much of these petty exorcisms which you have been per
mitted to achieve.1 I have seen another sight ; the very
prince of the whole kingdom of wickedness, and him in
whose defeat the defeat of each one of his subordinate
ministers was involved, cast out from heaven itself,' —
with, of course, the underthought of having been Himself
the victorious author of his defeat. The supporters of
these expositions commonly urge that no other satisfies
the words ' from heaven ;' Satan, they say, may at a later
moment have fallen into a deeper depth than before,
but how fallen 'from heaven' in the days of Christ's
flesh ? how could He speak in this language of any fall
of Satan which He was only now beholding, seeing that
long since, at the instant of his first sin, he had been cast
out from his first habitation (Jude 6), from his place
among the ' sons of God ' (Job xxxviii. 7), in the heavenly
places ? But this difficulty arises from giving an em
phasis to the word ' heaven] which it was not intended
to bear, and which in this very chapter there is plain
evidence that it need not have ; for see ver. 15 : ' And
thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be
thrust down unto hell.' For the right . understanding
1 So Theophylact : ptj Bavpa&re el Saipoveg vplv iinoTaooovTai.- b yap apx<^>
avrZxv irahai KaTeireoev brf ovpavov* el yap Si Toig avBp&Troig ovx iaparo tovto,
aXK ovv ipol eBeapelTO ry ruv aop&Tuv Beup<f. 'Qc aarpanr) Si Karineaev, iwel
$ag J/v, Kal &pxayyeh>g, Kal £oa<p6pog, el Kal oKbrog yiyove.

THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. 229
either of that passage or of this we must dismiss the more
solemn use of ' heaven] in which it signifies the holy place,
the more immediate seat and habitation of God and of
the blessed spirits, and only associate with the word the
notion of elevation and preeminence— so that in fact
Christ would be saying here, ' I beheld Satan fall from
the high places of his pride and power.'1
What this fall of his might mean, and what the sub
jection of the devils to the Seventy had to do with it,
may presently be considered ; but it will be desirable
first to confirm this interpretation of ' heaven ' here by one
or two further quotations. We have then in Isai. xiv., the
description of the fall of the king of Babylon, typifying
as he does a mightier enemy of the Church of God ; and
there the prophet exclaims, ' How art thou fallen from
heaven, 0 Lucifer, son of the morning!' (ver. 12) ; and if
it be urged that 'from heaven ' is a figure there, justified
and explained by the comparison of the king to the
morning star, it may be rejoined that there is quite as
much justification in the comparison of Satan here to the
lightning. Then, too, at Ephes. vi. 12, the warfare of
the faithful is declared at this present time to be with
'spiritual wickedness in high places,' or, as it might be still
more accurately translated, ' in heavenly places ' (kv tolg
irtovpaviois) , which can only mean, as our Translators
have rightly understood it, in high seats of authority.
And then further, the passage in Rev. xii. 7-11, ' There
was war in heaven] is referred by all good expositors
to that destroying of the works of the devil which was
the consequence of the triumphant life and death and
1 Compare Cicero (Phil. ii. 42) : Collegam de cmlo detraxisti, — robbed him,
that is, of the splendour and honour which before were his.

230 THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY.
ascension of the Son of God. There is described in its
full consummation that which the Lord here with pro
phetic eye has already beheld.
But if Christ be not here speaking of that original fall
of Satan, in which he left his first habitation, but rather,
as I am persuaded, of some fall within the fall, some pre
sent dejection of Satan from those seats of his power and
his pride, which during the four thousand years of his
domination he had reared and constructed anew, and
from which he was now being thrust out again — what
reason, it may be asked, had the Lord for in spirit be
holding this at the present moment? These few and
petty exorcisms, were they not far too slight and insignifi
cant a matter to justify so magnificent a saying ? As
suredly, if contemplated as the efficient cause of that fall ;
but not, if seen as its evidences and accompaniments. As
Christ drew proofs of a victory over Satan, which must
have been accomplished by Himself, from his own ex
pelling of devils (Matt. xii. 28, 29), so He found proofs
of the same victory in like works done by his disciples.
The power of the strong man could not but indeed be
broken, when not merely the Stronger Himself could
spoil his goods at his pleasure, but the very weaklings
among his servants could go in and out of his domain,
and do there at their will.1 The Lord in no way links
the headlong and shameful fall of Satan from on high
with what they had wrought, as if that had anything to
do with effecting it. That fall, that new stripping him of
so large a part of the power and strength which he still
1 Corn, a Lapide : Non novam mihi rem narratis, nam cum vos nuper
mitterem ad evangelizandum videbam daemonem sua potestate a me privatum
quasi de caalo cadere, ao per vos magis casurum.

THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. 231
retained, was the fruit of the Incarnation, of the life and
death and exaltation of the Son of man.
But this new triumph of the kingdom of good over the
kingdom of evil in their respective heads, which Christ
evermore in the spirit saw, at certain moments of his life
He realized with intenser vividness than at others. And
this moment of the return of the Seventy was one of these
solemn and festal moments of his life. He employs the
imperfect tense Qdeupovv), to make clear that He had
foreseen the glorious issue even when He sent them forth.
This which they now announce to Him is even as He
had surely expected : ' I saw, as I sent you forth, Satan
fall like lightning from heaven.' Already He beheld the
whole idol-worship of the heathen world, whereof Satan
was the soul and informing principle (1 Cor. x. 20),
giving way, its splendour departing, its oracles dumb,
its temples forsaken — till, instead of riding on the high
places of the earth, and claiming the homage of the great
and noble and learned of the world, it should creep into
obscure corners, and after surviving awhile as the despised
superstition of ' pagans ' or villagers, expire altogether.
This and much more of the same kind, the putting down
of how many of the enormous wickednesses of the world,
the casting down of how many strongholds of evil, was
implied in the power which his disciples put. forth. See
ing the greatest in the least, He saw a pledge of the great
exorcism of the heathen world in these slighter cures
which his disciples had been strong to effect.
He proceeds : ' Behold, I give you power to tread on
serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the
enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you! The
reading, ' / have given you] arose from a misunderstanding

23 2 THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY.
of the passage. Hitherto He had not given them this
power ; they indeed, as we have seen, had in faith antici
pated some portion of it ; and He, finding they were the
men to make the right use of it, now imparts it to them
in all its fulness, according to that law of his kingdom,
' To him that hath shall be given.' In the form of the
promise there is manifest allusion to Ps. xci. 13 ; perhaps
also to Isai. xi. 8 ; 1 and, whether directly so intended or
not, we may certainly recognize here a very gracious
reading backward and reversing of a threatening made
under the elder Covenant, ' Behold, I will send serpents,
cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and
they shall bite you, saith the Lord' (Jer. viii. 17). The
physical consequences of man's sin, which may be traced
through all regions of lower life, do in the animal world
concentrate themselves with an especial malignity in the
poisonous adder, in the stinging scorpion ; which there
fore are fitly used as the symbols and representatives of
all that has most power and most will to hurt and to
harm; of all forms of deadliest malice exercised by Satan
and his servants against the faithful (Ezek. ii. 6). Amid
all this deadliest malice of the enemy they should go,
themselves unharmed ; and, shod with the preparation of
the Gospel of peace, should tread it all under their feet :
' and nothing shall by any means hurt you! And yet,
while we thus transfer, and rightly, the serpent and
scorpion into the region of spiritual wickedness, and
see here a pledge and promise that the faithful should
be kept from the powers of evil, we must not so
exclusively do this as to leave out a literal fulfilment as
1 Compare the TtaiSiov vi/mov (LXX.) there with the vf/mm of ver. a 1.

THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. 233
well ; such as found place when St. Paul shook the viper
from his hand (Acts xxviii. 5), when St. John, if that
indeed was so, drank of the poison-cup ; and in this
respect the passage contains the promise of the same
character as that made by the Lord after his resurrection
(Mark xvi. 18).
But with the enlarged commission, for it is 'all the
power of the enemy ' which it is now given them to pre
vail against, comes also, and as I believe comes for the
first time in this discourse, the word of warning : ' Not
withstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject
unto you', but rather rejoice, because your names are written
in heaven! They were not forbidden altogether to rejoice
in these mighty powers as exercised by them, forbidden
only to make them the chiefest matter of their joy.
The reason is obvious. These a man might possess, and
yet remain unsanctified still (Matt. vii. 22, 23; 1 Cor.
xiii. 2) ; these at best were only the privilege of a few,
not therefore of the essence of a Christian's joy. There
was that in which they might rejoice with a joy which
should not separate them from any, the least of their
brethren, a joy which they had in common with all.1
There was that in which they might rejoice without
fear, namely, in the eternal love of God, who had so
loved as to ordain them unto everlasting life. This
1 Augustine (Eharr. inPs. cxxx.) : Redierunt apostoli, et dixerunt Domino,
cum missi essent a Domino, Ecce, Domine, in nomine tuo etiam daemonia
nobis subjecta sunt. Vidit Dominus quod tentaret eos superbia ex potentia
miraculorum ; et ille, qui medicus venerat sanare tumores nostros, continuo
ait, Nolite in hoc gaudere, quia daamonia vobis subjecta sunt, sed gaudete
quia nomina vestra scripta sunt in caalo. Non omnes Christiani boni daamonia
ejiciunt ; omnium tamen nomina scripta sunt in caslo. Non eos voluit
gaudere ex eo quod proprium habebant, sed ex eo quod cum ceteris salutem
tenebant. Inde voluit gaudere apostolos, unde gaudes et tu.

234 THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY.
mention of ' names written in heaven ' (cf. Isai. iv. 3 ;
Heb. xii, 23, 'the Church of the firstborn, which are
written in heaven ') is the nearest allusion to ' the book
of life,' ' the Lamb's book of life,' ' the book of God,' ' the
book of the living,' or simply ' the book,' which anywhere
occurs in the Gospels ; but the image is one which else
where runs through all Scripture (Exod. xxxii. 32, 33 ;
Ps. lxix. 29 ; Dan. xii. 1 ; Phil. iv. 3 ; Rev. iii. 5 ; xiii. 8 ;
xx. 12; xxi. 27). It expresses under an image what
St. Paul expresses without one, where he speaks of God's
eternal purposes of love toward his saints (Ephes. i. 4, 5) .
The Lord has administered, where He saw this was
needed, a wholesome rebuke to that pride, of which He
detected the germs in his disciples ; but this does not
hinder Him from rejoicing in this new victory of the
kingdom of light over the kingdom of darkness, — a matter
of the greater joy, that it was these 'babes' by whose
hands this victory had been won : they of the household
were dividing the spoil. 'In that hour Jesus rejoiced1 in
spirit, and said, I thank Thee, 0 Father, Lord of heaven
and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise

1 The forms ayaXfa.au (for ayaXka), and ayaWiamg, belong to sacred Greek
exclusively, being found only in the New Testament, the Septuagint, and'
in writings dependent upon these ; 'ayaXkiapa, which is also found in the
Septuagint, does not occur in the New Testament. 'AyalliaoBai is often
in the New Testament joined with ^aipecv, as at Matt. v. 12 ; Rev. xix. 7 ;
cf. Tob. xiii. 13 ; in the Septuagint oftener with ev<f>paiveo6ai. It is stronger
than xa'lPSLVi f°r this las* mav be in spirit and with no external manifesta
tions ; but ayaKkCaaBai, is to exult, so to rejoice as with outward tokens to
testify the inward joy, as an old expositor, Stella, here puts it well : Non
est intelligendum quod antea in gaudio interiori non fuerit, sed interioris
gaudii quasdam signa nunc exterius demonstravit ; ideo convenientissime
dixit, Exultavit. Exultatio nam que dicitur quasi extra se saltatio, quyndo
videlicet ex abundantia gaudii interioris signa lastitiaa foras erumpunt. v

THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY. 235
and prudent, and revealed them unto babes : even so,
Father ; for so it seemed good in thy sight! Precisely the
same words with a slightly different introduction occur
at Matt. xi. 25, 26 ; where they cannot possibly be the
record of the same discourse ; for they have the same
perfect fitness there as here ; they are embedded in one
narrative quite as deeply as in the other. A careful
comparison of the two passages can, I think, leave no
doubt on our minds that Christ did from time to time
repeat Himself in nearly or quite the same words ; which,
after all, is not at all so wonderful in Him, each of whose
utterances being perfect, could never be changed for the
better. The all-important character of that which He is utter
ing here may well explain its repetition ; setting, as He
does, his seal to that word of the prophet, 'Woe unto
them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in
their own sight' (Isai. v. 21 ; cf. Prov. iii. 5, 7), and, be
it observed, not merely thanking God for what He has
revealed, but for what He has hidden, that the same
things, revealed by Him to some, were by Him hidden
from others. There is then, if these words mean aught,
such a thing as a punitive hiding and a penal blindness.
The hand of the Lord may be upon those who withstand
the truth, so that they shall not be able to see the sun of
righteousness (Acts xiii. 11). That there are those from
whom God hides his truth in displeasure may be a very
terrible fact ; but a fact may be very terrible, and yet true
notwithstanding ; and here is one of which we can only
get rid by dealings the most violent with this and with
other plainest statements of Scripture (Isai. vi. 10 ; Matt.
xiii. 11-15; Luke xix. 42; John ix. 39). Christ here

z36 THE RETURN OF THE SEVENTY.
thanks his Father for two things, first, that He has hidden
from the wise and prudent ; and, secondly, that what He
has hidden from them He has revealed to babes ; the
hiding and revealing being recognized by Him as alike
his Father's work, and the judgment and the grace alike
matters for which He renders thanks. The words of
St. Paul, l Cor. i. 26-29, suPPty a remarkable parallel to
this whole saying ; while the early history of the Church,
from which Scribes and Pharisees, the Gamaliels, and all
or nearly all of the disputers of this world, stood aloof,
fishermen meanwhile and publicans, and men ignorant
and unlearned, finding their place therein, furnishes the
best commentary.

il. THE PHARISEES SEEKING TO SCARE
THE LORD FROM GALILEE.
Luke xiii. 31-33.
The Lord lingers too long in Galilee ; so, at least, to his
adversaries it seems. He is there comparatively secure
among his friends and adherents ; every day adding to
the number of these ; confirming his word by signs fol
lowing (Matt. xv. 28 ; John iv. 46) ; his reputation grow
ing; all men holding Him for a prophet (Matt. viii. 27 ;
ix. 8, 33) ; so that He will hardly be reached by
the extremest malice of his foes. Gladly would these
scare Him from the shelter of that safe retreat into the
toils which have been set for Him at Jerusalem (Mark
xi. 18; Matt. xxi. 46). And even if they do not quite
succeed in this, it will be something if they can deliver
themselves from his unwelcome presence in Galilee, at
the same time involving Him in the discredit of an ignoble
flight. It was that if possible, this at any rate, which they
proposed to themselves, when they made to Him the
communication which follows.
' The same day there came certain of the Pharisees' —
came, no doubt with a friendly and confidential mien,
and as men to whom, whatever secondary differences
might exist between them, his safety was dear, — ' saying
unto Him, Get Thee out, and depart hence, for Herod will

238 THE PHARISEES SEEKING TO SCARE

Thee! The words curiously remind us of another
similar plot and intrigue, by which it wTas sought, and
equally in vain, to terrify a prophet of the Old Covenant
from the appointed sphere of his labours; Jeroboam
playing there the part of Herod here ; Amaziah, the priest
of Bethel, of the Pharisees ; and the prophet Amos sustain
ing there the part which our Lord sustains here. There
too Amaziah, with apparently no unfriendly meaning,
although he had just before denounced the overbold
prophet to the king (had the Pharisees done the same in
the present instance?), came to Amos, saying, '0 thou
seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there
eat bread, and prophesy there ; but prophesy not again
any more at Bethel, for it is the king's chapel, and it is
the king's court '(Amos vii. 10-17; CI>- ^-sai- xxx- 10> 1]0-
As the Pharisees here, so the priest of the Calves there
takes nothing by his move, but goes utterly baffled and
defeated away.
We may affirm, with tolerable certainty, that Herod
Antipas entertained no such design of killing Jesus as by
these Pharisees is ascribed to him here. He had enough
of prophet's blood on his hands in the murder of John
the Baptist, and can scarcely have wished to have more.
A weak, frivolous, unworthy prince, yet he is nowhere
charged in Scripture with seeking to compass the Lord's
death. Even the crime of the Baptist's death, who came
into far more direct collision with him, he had been
entangled in unawares. When he heard of the fame of
the Lord, he satisfied himself with saying to his servants,
' This is John the Baptist ; he is risen from the dead,
and therefore mighty works do show forth themselves in
him ' (Matt. xiv. 2) ; he devises no plots of open or secret

THE LORD FROM GALILEE. 239
violence against Him. The report of Christ's miracles
appears to have excited his curiosity (for his doctrine he
cared nothing), so that when Pilate sent Jesus to him, 'he
was exceeding glad, for he was desirous to see Him of a
long season, and he hoped to have seen some miracle
done by Him ' (Luke xxiii. 8) ; but it is plain, both
from this account and from his conduct in sending the
Lord back unharmed to Pilate, with nothing worthy of
death done to Him (Luke xxiii. 15), that he had no
enmity against Him for the past, nor fear of Him for the
future. We may say, further, that had he cherished that
murderous thought in his heart which the Pharisees
impute to him, ' that fox ' is not the style with which he
would have been characterized by the lips of truth ; but
if the Lord had been pleased to designate him with any
title of the kind, He would have styled him ' that wolf,'
or ' that leopard,' by the name of some animal, of which
bloodthirstiness, and not cunning, is the prevailing feature.
Add to all this, that if Herod had been known really
to entertain such designs, the Pharisees, who were now in
deadliest conflict with the Lord, would have been the last
to warn Him of his danger, or in any way to assist Him in
escaping from the snares which were being laid for his life.
The only point upon which it is possible to raise a
question seems to me to be this, namely, whether this was
a gratuitous invention on the part of the Pharisees, sug
gested possibly by sOme flying rumours, to which, how
ever, they gave no credit themselves, of Herod's ill-will
to Christ — such rumours as the Baptist's murder might
easily have occasioned ; whether the tale they bring was
thus a mere invention of their own, devised with the
purpose of terrifying the Lord from those quarters ; or

240 THE PHARISEES SEEKING TO SCARE
whether they and Herod understood one another, and
he, possibly disquieted at this period by the growing
number of Christ's adherents, may have been willing to
use their assistance, and to allow them to use the terror
of his name, so to induce the Lord quietly to withdraw
to some other part of the land.
Those who are disposed to see an understanding here
between Herod and the Pharisees, urge that in the words
of Christ's reply, ' Go ye, and tell that fox] there is an
intimation that such a collusion existed, and that it had
not escaped Him. They professed to be his friends, and
to bring Him this warning out of goodwill, and meaning
to defeat the purpose of Herod; but sending them to
him with that message, the Lord will imply that He
perfectly apprehends the relation in which they and
Herod stand to one another — how that Herod was wait-
ing to learn from their lips the success of their stratagem,
and the spirit in which He Himself had received that
announcement which they brought : ' This is my answer
to him that sent you, whose emissaries you have con
descended to become — to that fox, who thinks with his
paltry wiles and transparent devices to scare the lion
from his own domain.'
Yet I cannot but believe that their view is a truer one,
the many interpreters, ancient and modern, who have
seen in this report which the Pharisees bring to Jesus a
pure invention of their own, a fiction wholly of their own
devising. They did but pretend the malice of Herod,
who, if he had desired to rid himself of the Lord's pre
sence, had other means at his command ; and who certainly
was on no such friendly terms with the Pharisees as to
make very probable any understanding between them.

THE LORD FROM GALILEE. 241
Nor need the words, 'Go ye, and tell that fox] cause any
difficulty here. The Lord, in that spirit of finest irony
which is not alien from the spirit of deepest love and
loftiest truth, so far fell in with, or seemed to fall in with,
the aspect of the matter which they presented to Him,
and to be deceived by it, that He used its language — not
at the same time failing to let them perceive that their
wretched covert intrigues were open and manifest to Him.
The 'fox' was really in their own hearts, and to this
'fox ' He indeed addresses Himself.1 Some of the early
interpreters ingeniously urge in this sense the words
• this fox] as one actually present, rather than 'that fox]
one at a distance,2 which might have beforehand been
expected. If there be anything in this, our Version has
not preserved it, and the Vulgate as little.8 It was they,
the Pharisees, who were themselves offended at his' con
tinued presence in the land ; it was to their own selves they
should indeed carry the message back. This explanation
has the further advantage, that so the decorum which
our Lord ever preserved in regard of the powers that be,
however unworthy were those who might actually represent
them at the time, will be perfectly maintaineo^fwhich
decorum might seem violated, ifjtfee "message were really
intended for Herod, and hot rather to stop short with
these intriguing" Pharisees themselves.
But the reply which they were to carry back to ' that
fox] in other words, to accept themselves, is not without
1 Maldonatus : Christus non Herodem, sed Pharisaaos ipsos qui Herodem
sibi minabantur, vulpem appellavit. Non quod haac verba de Herode non
dixerit, sed quod in persona Herodis, quam illi sibi induebant ut ipsum
deterrerent, eos notaverit atque refellerit.
2 Thus Theophylact: oh yap elm, T?j ak&meiu eKeivij, aXXa ravry.
3 We have ' that fox ;' the Vulgate, ' vulpi Mi.'
R

242 THE PHARISEES SEEKING TO SCARE
a certain amount of obscurity : ' Behold, I cast out devils,
and I do cures to-day and to-morrow] and the third day
I shall be perfected! The general meaning of the answer
is not hard to catch : ' So far from being interrupted in
my ministry by any tidings of the kind you bring, be they
false or true, by your wish, or by Herod's wish, to be rid
of my presence at once, I shall proceed on my way, I
shall do as before I have done, I shall put forth my
beneficent powers, casting out devils, healing the sick for
the present (' to-day '), for the future (' to-morrow '), and
only at a remoter period (' the third day ') will my life
and course reach their appointed term.'2 The words
are exactly parallel to others spoken on not a very dis
similar occasion, when his timid disciples would have
dissuaded Him from affronting the dangers of Judaea ;
to whom He replied : 'Are there not twelve hours in the
day ? If any man walk in the day he stumbleth not,
because he seeth the light of this world' (John xi. 9;
cf. ix. 4). 'To-day and to-morrow and the third day'
will here exactly correspond to the 'twelve hours ' there,
a^nifying as they do a certain fixed appointed time. Not
of necessicy-a^yery brief time, but rather the contrary ;
for an intention upoit Ills Joart to make his further sojourn
in Galilee a brief one was exactlyihat which the Pharisees
would have been best pleased to hear, while, it was very
1 ~Zi]pepov Kal avpiov : cf. Josh. xx. 18, 28 ; and for a similar method of
counting backward to the third day, Susan. 15.
2 Cajetan : Per hodie et eras et tertiam diem universi temporis requisiti
ad opus suum perfectio significatur. Calvin : Hodie et eras defungar munere
ir.iiii divinitus injuncto ; ubi ad finem stadii ventum fuerit, tunc in sacrificium
offerar. There is frequently a certain solemnity about this indication of the
third day ; such as is scarcely wanting here ; thus see Gen. xxii. 4 ; xxxi. 22 ;
xxxiv. 25 ; xl. 20; xiii. 18; Exod xix. 11, 16; : Kin. xii. 12; 2 Kin. xx. 5;

THE LORD FROM GALILEE. 243
far from his purpose at all to gratify them by the announce
ment which He made.1 Least of all do these words signify
—which would be a meaning utterly trivial — that the
time of his actual tarrying in Galilee should extend over
two literal days, and that on the third He should quit it,
even as the verse following can as little mean that He
would occupy three such actual days in the journey from
that spot to Jerusalem. What He says is this : ' There is
for Me a predetermined time, during which I shall labour
unhindered. No malice nor intrigues of my enemies
shall prevail to abridge that time.2 Instead of fleeing, as
you suggest, I will leisurely accomplish my work this
day and to-morrow ; and then when the third day conies
i" shall be perfected, I shall finish my course : the things
concerning Me will have an end ; which, however ' (for all
this is implied in the word), ' shall be no abrupt nor pre
mature one, cutting off my life in the midst of my days,
with my work unfinished, in an obscure corner of a re
mote province ; but a death which shall be the solemn and
fit conclusion of my life, the completion and consummation
of all which I came into the world to accomplish.' 8
1 Maldonatus: Non id agebat Christus, ut Pharisaaos consolaretur ; quod
profecto fecisset, si illis significasset brevi se post tempore moriturum. Quid
enim erat quod illi magis optarent? sed volebat potius augere materiam
invidias atque doloris.
* Stella: Fallimini, si creditis vos aut Herodes quod versutia humana
possit aliquid contra potentiam Dei et ejus voluntatem. Vos dicitis quod
Herodes mortem mihi molitur, et vos non moleste fertis; sed inanis est
deliberatio ejus, quia non est in manu ejus mors mea, quia nemo toilet
aniinam meam a me. Potestatem enim habeo ponendi animam meam, et sic
cum voluero ponam earn et moriar.
s To make rekevovpai a middle verb, completing it with ra epya, and find
ing as the meaning, ' on the third day I finish,' i.e. ' my works,' sadly mars the
force of this passage. It is not for nothing that the two active verbs which
go before are exchanged for this passive. Our English, 'IshMlbe per
fected,' is very good ; a vast improvement on ' / make an end,' of the earlier
¦ 2

244 THE PHARISEES SEEKING TO SCARE
There may seem a slight contradiction between the
statement of the verse which has just been considered,
and of that which now follows : ' Nevertheless,1 I must
walk to-day, and to-morroiv, and the day following ; ' for
here the Lord speaks of ' the third day ' as one of the
days of his walking, while there He contemplated it as
the day on which He should be perfected and finish his
course. But there is no real contradiction. He contem
plates his death as being, in fact, the crowning work of
his life. As little does this verse 33 contain a mere
repetition of the statement of that which went before.
Hitherto He has but stated the fact that his ministry
should continue; now He is giving the grounds in the
divine order and fitness of things why it should continue,
why He should walk and work unlet and unhindered.
' This my death here in this remote Galilee, with which
you threaten Me, is impossible ; for it can not be that a
prophet, and therefore least of all He who is the chief of
the prophets, perish out of Jerusalem. That city which
Versions , as is also the Vulgate, Oonsummor. Compare, for similar uses
of TelewvoBai, Phil. iii. 12; Acts xx. 24; Heb. v. 9; xii. 23. More than
once Augustine transfers this word from Christ to Christ's Church, and
finds in it a prophecy of the three stages of the spiritual life through
whicli He causes it in each of its members to pass, namely, the forgiveness
of sins, the restoration to health, the consummation in glory; thus Con.
Jul. Pelag. vi. 19: Ecce, inquit, ejicio daamonia, et sanitates perficio hodie et
eras, et tertia die consummor. Expulsio quippe est dasmoniorum remissio
peccatorum ; perfectio sanitatum, quaa fit proficiendo post baptismum ; tertia
consummatio est, quam suaa quoque carnis immortalitate monstravit, in-
corruptibilium beatitudo gaudiorum. Cf. Enarr. in Ps. ex. 46.
1 What the exact force of this ' Nevertheless ' (n^) is, expositors have
often not troubled themselves to consider; it seems to me best given by
Maldonatus, whose commentary on the whole of this difficult passage is
masterly : Refertur non ad omnia praacedentia, sed ad illud tantum ultimum
et tertid die consummor, quasi dicat quamvis tertia die moriturus sim
tamen interim nemo me impedire poterit, quominus hoc intermedio tempore
miracula faciam.

THE LORD FROM GALILEE. 245
has been the murderess of all the prophets from the
beginning (Isai. i. 21), which has ever claimed this dread
ful prerogative to herself, as she is chief in favours, to be
also chief in guilt, she shall not forego it now ; she shall
continue to the end the seat of all the deadliest enmity
to the kingdom of God.' But the words reach much
further than this, much further than to the stating merely
of such a general fact as this. They have a direct refer
ence to those with whom the Lord is speaking now, and
contain the finest irony on their affected interest in his
welfare. ' You have come, expressing your alarm for
my safety, should I tarry longer here. You may lay aside
your apprehensions. My danger is not in Galilee, nor
yet from Herod. I shall not perish here, but in Jeru
salem, your seat, your head-quarters, where you reign
supreme. When the day of my death, or of my con
summation, arrives, you, and not Herod, will be the
authors of the murderous deed.' 1
1 Calvin : Vosne ut ab Herode mihi caveam monetis, quos video meos
fore carnifices?

246 THE UNFINISHED TOWER

12. THE UNFINISHED TOWER AND THE
DEPRECATED WAR.
Luke xiv. 25-33.
Omt Lord on more than one occasion during his earthly
ministry found a multitude in his train ; loosely attached
to Him ; but who at the same time would inevitably have
detached themselves from Him and fallen away, so soon
as ever a day of temptation had arrived. Nothing could
be further from his desire than such a following as this.
' They that are with Him are called and faithful and
true ' (Rev. xvii. 14) ; and such will abide with Him
unto the end. But not so these ; to whom therefore He
turned, and spake words repelling rather than inviting.
They who in this world would enlist recruits keep out of
sight what is hard, painful, and dangerous in the work to
which they invite them ; but not so He, who desired that
none should join themselves to Him without a clear
knowledge beforehand of all to which they were engaging
themselves. To a Paul, on the very threshold of his con
version, He will shew what great things he must suffer
for his name's sake (Acts ix. 16). Ezekiel at his first
commission is told plainly to what manner of men, such
as could be likened only to thorns, briars, scorpions, he
is sent (Ezek. ii. 6). And to this multitude Christ ad
dressed one of his hard sayings — one after the hearing of
which we can hardly doubt that many went back and

AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 247
walked no more with Him (cf. Johnvi. 66). A sad con
summation, yet better far than that they should throw in
their lot with Him, afterwards to be offended, and to fall
from Him, in that day of trial which was sure before long
to arrive (Matt. xiii. 21).
We read then that ' there went great multitudes with
Him; and he turned, and said unto them, If any man
come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife,
and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own
life also, he cannot be my disciple! Let us here notice,
by the way, the profound confidence in a guiding, inter
preting Spirit who should be ever at work in his Church,
which these words of Christ reveal. Take them literally,
and they stand in direct contradiction to the whole
teaching of the rest of Scripture, in contradiction to the
teaching of Moses, of the prophets, of the apostles, of
Christ Himself; they enjoin an immorality; require of
men to hate those whom it is their prime duty to love.
And yet Christ spake the words notwithstanding, satisfied
to leave to that interpreting Spirit to put them in harmony
with all which elsewhere is commanded in the Scripture,
or written by the finger of God on the heart of man.
But in other ways also the unparalleled boldness of
Christ's teaching, the tremendous claims which He makes
on those who offer to join themselves to Him, may well
fill us with marvel and with awe. How intolerable the
pride and presumption of any less than the greatest,
lower than the highest, to impose the conditions of
discipleship which He here imposes, to demand of men
the sacrifices which He here demands ; and this, be it
observed, not in the name of One whose messenger He is ;
but in his own ; standing forth as Himself the object, to

248 THE UNFINISHED TOWER
whom all this measureless devotion of all men is justly
due, who, claiming it all, claims nothing but his own.
When I ask myself what are the proofs of Christ's
divinity which the Scripture affords, when I enquire
whether He did Himself there claim to be God, I find
evidence of this not so much in a certain number of
texts where this in as many words is asserted — though
these are most needful — but far more in the position
toward every other man which He uniformly, and as a
matter of course, assumes. What man, that was not
man's Maker as well as his fellow, could have required that
father and mother, wife and children, should all be post
poned to him ; that, where any competition between his
claims and theirs arose, He should be everything and
they nothing ? that not merely these, which, though very
close to a man are yet external to him, but that his very
self, his own life, should be hated, when on no other
conditions Christ could be loved. It is nothing strange
or unreasonable that man's Creator, the author of his
being, the supreme and absolute Good, should demand all
this of his creatures (Exod. xxxii. 27 ; Deut. xxxiii. 9) ;
but that Jesus of Nazareth should' challenge the same
unreserved devotedness on the part of all men, should
require that every other duty of every other man should
yield to the duty to Him, that every other love should
subordinate itself to the love of Him ; how could this be,
except as He also stood in the place of God, and was
God? But these are thoughts which, followed out as they
deserve, would lead us too far from the subject imme
diately in hand. Christ has spoken of the absolute re
nunciation of all, even of a man's own life, that last

AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 249
citadel of selfishness, as he who ought best to know,
had long since proclaimed (Job ii. 4), that citadel, where
it may still make itself strong when every outwork has
been abandoned x — He has spoken of this as the condition
without which no man could be his disciple. But this
self which needs to be renounced is oftentimes a very
subtle one, the self of him who proposes to serve God,
but to serve Him in his own strength, and not in God's ;
who may have renounced much, but has not renounced
a vain confidence in his own powers, and that these will
enable him to carry to a successful end a service thus
undertaken. Christ uses two similitudes, borrowed from
two enterprizes, the one grave to a private man, the other
even to a king ; by aid of the first He warns us of the
shameful close which may attend a service in this spirit
begun ; while in the second He points out to all the only
wise course for the avoiding of such perils as would thus
lie before them. This is the first : ' For which of you,
intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and
counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it ?
Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not
able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him,
saying, This man began to build, and was not able to
finish! And this the second : ' Or what king, going to
make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and
consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet
him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or
else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an
ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace! 2
1 As Gregory the Great here says well (Horn, xxxii.) : Nee tamen sufficit
nostra relinquere, nisi relinquamus et nos.
3 'Ev Sim x&i-aoiv. See for the same idiom, indeed for exactly the same
words, 1 Mace. iv. 29 ; and with the ovpjSaKelv elg irbfapov compare ovp.
0aMv elg uaxfp>. Josephus, Antt. vi. 5. 2.

250 THE UNFINISHED TOWER
The comparison of the Christian life, sometimes that of
the individual, sometimes that of the collective Church,
to the carrying up of a building is frequent in Scripture
(Matt. vii. 24-27 ; Ephes. ii. 20-22 ; 1 Cor. iii. 9 ; 1 Pet.
ii. 4, 5) ; and not less frequent the likening of it to the
waging of a war (1 Cor. xvi. 13 ; 1 Thess. v. 8 ; Ephes.
vi. 11-17 ; 2 Tim. ii. 3, 4; iv. 7). But the fitting in of
these words to their place here, the making them to
illustrate the matter directly in hand, is not so easy as is
often carelessly taken for granted. Indeed the current
interpretation of this passage is far from satisfactory ; and
we have only to look a little closely at it to perceive the
very serious difficulties with which it is encumbered.
I believe, indeed, that by that interpretation words among
the most profound and far reaching which our Lord
spake upon earth, are made to take comparatively a
slight and trivial meaning. That interpretation may be
stated as follows. Christ would have the candidates for
admission within the circle of his disciples to consider
diligently with themselves, and accurately to weigh,
whether they have strength and means to carry them
triumphantly through the arduous enterprize which they
meditate ; and if, as the result of this calculation, they
discover that they have not, then to renounce the enter
prize altogether ; and not, as some foolish builder, to
begin the tower of the Christian life, which they will
prove unable to carry to the end ; like some rash king to
challenge to the conflict powers, the powers, that is, of
the kingdom of darkness, which are twice as strong as
they are, with which therefore they cannot hope to wage
a successful war.

AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 251
This explanation labours under a double defect. In
the first place, according to all the other teaching of
Scripture, the disciple who indeed builds and completes
the tower, is not one who has counted the cost, and found
that he has sufficient; he whose warfare is crowned
with victory is not he who has calculated the opposing
forces, and found that those at his command are more
and mightier than any which can be brought against him ;
but he rather who, having counted the cost, has found
that he has not enough, that the outlay far exceeds any
resources at his command, that he begins and must
continue a bankrupt to the end; having nothing in
himself, that so he may possess all things in God ; who,
having taken the measure of his own forces and of
those of the adversary, has understood that this war
fare is one not to be waged at his own charges, has
learned to cry, ' Who is sufficient for these things ? ' and
sought to a mightier for aid. All other Scripture teaches
us, in the glorious words of Charles Wesley's hymn, to be
' strong in self-despair,' and not in self-confidence ; that
emptiness is indeed the one condition of fulness ; that,
however sad a thing it may be in this world to end with
being a bankrupt, in the spiritual world it is the best
thing which can happen to begin with being such ; a
man's poverty being there his riches, and his weakness
his strength ; for such are the strange paradoxes of the
kingdom of heaven.
This is one blemish — a most serious one ; but there is
another behind. Granting that this objection could be
set aside, is it conceivable that Christ should counsel in
such a case, and having made such a discovery, not so

252 THE UNFINISHED TOWER
much as to begin the too costly tower;1 or, more mar
vellous still, not so much as to provoke the too potent foe,
but on the contrary, to make terms with him, to engage
not to molest him, if he will not molest us, whom to
defy to the uttermost is our first duty and only safety
(i Pet. v. 9; Ephes. vi. 11-16), whose works to destroy
was once the work of Christ in his own person, will be
his work through his Church to the end ? What sort of
peace would that be ? Can we imagine that the Lord
would give the allowance of his word to such abject
resolves as these ? for what, after all, are they who leave
off to build, who, in place of challenging, make conditions
with the enemy, but the Demases who forsake not Paul
only, but Paul's Lord, having loved the present world;
who, when tribulation comes or even threatens, straight
way are offended and fall away; who see the wolf
coming and flee ? ' The fearful' of Rev. xxi. 8, the tradi
tores, the thufificati, of early Church history, all these
did in that sense count the cost, and gave over to build ;
having challenged the king of the dark kingdom, shrunk
from meeting him in battle. But can we suppose that
Christ had a word of allowance for these ? that they could
plead that they were acting on his advice ? and yet, adopt
ing the common interpretation, how could we avoid so
doing ?
But it is not so. These sayings of our Lord contain a
far other lesson than this, one in far closer harmony with
the other teaching of Scripture. What that teaching is,
the words with which Christ follows up and applies
all which He has here said, sufficiently declare : ' So like-
1 As Maldonatus asks well, who sees the difficulty, but not the way out
of it, Deinde quomodo nos Christus dehortaretur ne Christiani efficeremm- ?

AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 253
wise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he
hath, he cannot be my disciple! In that 'forsaketh'
(6.7totdaaerat), or 'renounces,' 'bids good by to,' 'takes
farewell of,' lies the key to the whole passage. Christ sees
the multitudes addressing themselves to his discipleship
with one kind of furniture and apparatus for it ; such as
He knows will utterly fail them, when the stress of the
trial comes ; He warns them of their need of quite an
other. It is the poor, those who, counting up their
means, discover that they have not enough to carry
through the work, and that of their own they never will
have enough, and who therefore renounce all that they
have, it is these, and not the rich, not, that is, they who
walk in a vain conceit of their own riches (Rev. iii. 17),
who are able to finish this tower.1 How it fares with
the others, what a swift and shameful coming to the end
of all their fancied resources inevitably awaits them, this
Christ puts vividly before our eyes in the words which
follow (ver. 29, 30) . He gathers up in these the world's
judgment upon them who, professing to forsake it, were
yet of it all the while, and who sooner or later reveal
that they were so. The world cannot pardon that they
should ever have affected any higher service than its
own ; and even while' it receives back its prodigals,
receives them with taunt and with scorn ; the salt which
has lost its savour is trodden under foot, not of God,
but, doom more ignominious far, is trodden under foot
of men (Matt. v. 13). Nor are worldly and wicked men
the only mockers. The scorners here include, as more
'Gregory the Great (Horn. 37): Hoc enim inter terrenum et caaleste
rcditicium distat, quod terrenum aadificium expensas colligendo construitur,
cteleste vero aadificium expensas dispergendo. Ad illud sumtus facimus,
si non habita colligainus ; ad istud sumtus facimus, si et habita relinquamus.

254 THE UNFINISHED TOWER
than one in olden time has urged, not these men only,
well pleased when any scheme of higher service, which
threatened to put them and their lives to rebuke, has
come to nought; but fallen spirits as well, the angels
to whom men are a spectacle (l Cor. iv. 8) ; who, so
far as they can rejoice in aught, rejoice in dishonour
done to God; and who, being first our tempters, are
afterwards, when we have yielded to their temptations,
our mockers and scorners as well:1 ' This man (the con
tempt makes itself still more felt in the original), 'began
to build, and was not able to finish!
Such uncompleted buildings, open to all the winds and
rains of heaven, with their naked walls, and with all
which has been spent upon them utterly wasted, are
called in the language of the world, which has often so
true a word, This man's, or that man's, Folly; arguing
as they do so utter a lack of wisdom and prevision on
their parts who began them. Such, for example, is
Charles the Fifth's palace at Granada, the Kattenburg at
Cassel. They that would be Christ's disciples shall see
to it that they present no such Babels to the ready scorn
of the scornful; beginning, as though they intended to
take heaven by storm, to build up a tower which should
reach even thither, and anon coming to an end of all their
resources, of all their zeal, all their patience, and leaving
nothing but an utterly baffled purpose, the mocking-stock
of the world, even as those builders of old left nothing but
a shapeless heap of bricks to tell of the entire miscall
culation which they had made. Making mention of 'a
tower] I cannot but think that the Lord intended an
1 Gregory the Great (Horn. 37): Ipsos irrisores patimur quos ad malum
persuasores habemus.

AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 255
allusion to that great historic tower, the mightiest failure
and defeat which the world has seen, that tower of Babel,
which, despite of its vainglorious and vaunting beginning,
ended in the shame and confusion of all who undertook
it (Gen. xi. 1-9).1
It is well worthy of remark, and indeed I have briefly
remarked already (p. 177), how greatly our Lord loves
to bring out some truth which He would very earnestly
enforce and commend to men, by two successive images ;
like, and yet unlike ; approaching it from different quarters ;
the second oftentimes going deeper into the heart of the
matter than did the first, at all events presenting it in
some aspect under which the first did not, perhaps in the
nature of things could not, present it; the two in this
manner mutually completing one another. It is thus for
example with the parables of the mustard-seed and the
1 A characteristic passage in Jeremy Taylor's Sermons, Of Luhewarm-
ness and Zeal, contains no direct reference to these words of our Lord, yet
such can scarcely have not been intended : ' So have I seen a fair struc
ture begun with art and care, and raised to half its stature ; and then it stood
still by the misfortune or negligence of the owner, and the rain descended,
and dwelt in its joints, and supplanted the contexture of its pillars ; and
having stood awhile like the antiquated temple of a deceased oracle, it fell
into a hasty age, and sunk upon its own knees, and so descended into ruin :
so is the imperfect, unfinished spirit of a man ; it lays the foudation of a
holy resolution, and strengthens it with vows and arts of prosecution, it
raises up the walls, sacraments and prayers, reading and holy ordinances ;
and holy actions begin with a slow motion, and the building stays, and the
spirit is weary, and the soul is naked, and exposed to temptation, and in the
days of storm take in every thing that can do it mischief; and it is faint
and sick, listless and tired, and it stands till its own weight wearies the
foundation, and then declines to death and sad disorder, being so much the
worse because it hath not only returned to its first follies, but hath super
added unthankfulness and carelessness, a positive neglect, and a despite of
holy things, a setting a low price to the things of God, laziness and wretched
ness: all which are evils superadded to the first state of coldness, whither
he is with all these loads and circumstances of death easily revolved.'

256 THE UNFINISHED TOWER
leaven (Matt. xiii. 31-33) ; the former setting forth the
outward development, the second the inward operation,
of the truth ; it is thus again with the Hid Treasure and
the Pearl (Matt. xiii. 44-46), the first putting before us one
who has found, the second one who has sought as well as
found, the kingdom of heaven. So too, as we have
seen, the new wine in the old vessels is something more,
and contains a profounder lesson, than the new patch
upon the old garment (Matt. ix. 16, 17). Another ex
ample we have here, where the king, measuring before
hand his own forces and the forces of the adversary whom
he is tempted to challenge to the conflict, tells us some
thing which the builder, sitting down to count the cost of
the tower which he is planning to erect, would not have
told. There is sometimes a further gain in a duplicate
illustration such as this ; and such gain is here. Any
misgiving as to the correctness of the interpretation which
has been here put upon the first similitude must, I am
persuaded, disappear, with a careful study of the second.
That in the sphere of things natural the course which
Christ here recommends is the only wise one, this is self-
evident. Any other would be fraught with uttermost
hazard, with almost inevitable ruin, to him who pursued
it. War indeed is sweet, as the ancient proverb assures
us, to those who have never tried it;1 and examples out
of number of kings who, committing themselves to an
unequal struggle, have drawn down ruin on themselves
and on their kingdom, history sacred and profane will
alike supply. Croesus in profane history, Amaziah (2 Kin.
xiv. 8-12) and Josiah (2 Kin. xxiii. 29, 30) in sacred,
will suggest themselves at once. Hezekiah, on the con-
1 rAtxoif cmeipifi Tcb'kepog,

AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 257
trary, wise betimes, and knowing how much over
matched he would prove in conflict with the great king
of Assyria, sends an ambassage, while the other is yet at
a distance, desiring conditions of peace : ' I have offended ;
return from me ; that which thou puttest on me will I
bear ' (2 Kin. xviii. 14) .
But it is with the spiritual counterpart of this wisdom
that we have here to do. The exposition which I have
felt bound to reject, that, I mean, which makes the king
who might come with his twenty thousand against him
who with ten thousand should imprudently provoke a
war, to be the devil, altogether paralyses ver. 32 ; for
what can be the meaning of sending an ambassage to
him, and desiring of him conditions of peace ? How can
we conceive, as has been urged already, counsel such as
this issuing from the lips of the Lord ? Lange, who
clings to the common interpretation, can only evade the
difficulty which it offers in this way : ' peace here accord
ing to the sense of the image can only mean a truce, and
the request for peace only the avoiding of a premature
conflict, to which the Christian as yet is unequal.' It is
a still poorer escape to urge, as does Calvin, that all parts
of such a parabolic saying as this must not be pressed,
that some in the interpretation may be very well allowed
to fall away. This in itself is most true ; yet what
part could be pressed, if this, in which the whole teach
ing evidently culminates, might not be so?1 But how
1 Gerhard (Harm. Evang. 120) in like manner owns that not njerely we
must not press this part of the similitude, but in the application go quite
counter to it, which it is difficult to think was the Lord's intention : Tan
tum hoc observemus in hac militia, quo a propositi parabola discedimus :
ut quandoquidem hie hostis nunquam nobis honestas pacis conditiones pro-
ponit, nos etiam nunquam cum ipso paciscamur, nee ullam pacem vel otium
ab ipso expectemus, quamdiu mortalem hanc vitam in his terris degimus.
S

258 THE UNFINISHED TOWER
profound is the lesson here, when we recognize in this king
who might come against us with his twenty thousand,
with a might altogether overpowering ours, no other
than God Himself. He is a true fighter against God, a
deo(ia%o$ quite as truly, though in another way, as the
openly ungodly, who would fain be anything in his sight,
who, face to face with God, would assert himself at all ;
who does not renounce all that he hath, and, as that
which is the dearest to him, and cleaves closest to the
natural man, his own righteousness the first of all.1
The book of Job will supply the amplest and richest
materials for the illustration of these words. The patri
arch himself was sorely tempted to be such a fighter
against God, with his ten thousand to challenge Him with
his twenty thousand. Early indeed in the great and
terrible struggle of his life he has glimpses more than
one of the madness of provoking to the conflict of
righteousness such an adversary; as, for instance, when
he exclaims, ' How should man be just with God ? If
he will contend with Him, he cannot answer Him one of
a thousand' (ix. 2, 3) ; and again, ' If I wash myself with
snow-water, and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt
1 Bengel : Haac igitur rogatio pacis exprimit odium animas proprias [ver.
26], quo quis, omni suitate abnegata, meraa se gratiaa committit. ^Hdificator
pecunias, belligerator copias, discipulus parentes et caritates omnes abnegat
et impendit. Illi habent apparatum positivum, hie negativum. Maldonatus,
who has almost always something valuable on the harder passages in Scrip
tures, sees clearly that the king coming with his twenty thousand cannot
be Satan, with whom we never must have peace, nay rather a irSXepog
ao-n-ovSog: but only doubtfully suggests that by him God Himself may be
intended: Mittere vero legationem et rogare quaa pacis sunt non est a
diabolo, hoste capitali nostro, pacem petere, quocum perpetuum nobis bellum
gerendum est, nee pacem unquam licet pangere. Nam et in pace vincimur ;
hoc enim pejus et turpius ; quod in bello quidem, ut milites decet, repug-
nantes atque resistentes, in pace volentes, sine vulnere, sine sanguine,
superamur.

AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 259
Thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall
abhor me ' (ix. 30, 31) ; but at other times he is very far
from having renounced all that he has ; thus see xxiii.
3-5, and indeed that chapter throughout. It is only at
the last that he altogether does so, lays his hand upon
his mouth, confesses that he has nothing with which to
answer God (xl. 4), and abhors himself in dust and ashes
(xiii. 5, 6) ; demands, that is, conditions of peace, and,
having demanded, obtains them (xiii. 7-17). St. Paul
would have been another such fighter against God, if
those things which he once counted gain he had resolved
to count gain to the end ; if, refusing to submit himself
to the righteousness of God, he had stood out upon a
righteousness of his own (Phil. iii. 3-9). But he also on
the way to Damascus learned better; and when, with
his face to the ground, he asked, 'What wilt Thou have
me to do ?' he, too, was exactly falling in with that
which Christ here declares to be the only wisdom for
every man, demanding conditions of peace from that far
mighter King, with whom it is impossible for flesh and
blood, for sinful man, to contend.1
1 I know none in the ancient Church, and only Bengel and Stier among
modern interpreters, who have grasped the meaning of this portion of
Scripture with at all so firm a hand as Gregory the Great has done. I have
already quoted words of his on the only way in which the necessary cost
for the building of the tower is to be got together. He too has apprehended
rightly what so few have apprehended, namely, that the king who might
come against us with his twenty thousand, with whom therefore it is
prudent to make terms betimes, is not Satan, but God; thus Horn. 37 in
Evang. : Rex contra regem ex aaquo venit ad praslium, et tamen si se per-
pendit non posse sufficere,'legationem mittit, et ea quaa paois sunt postulat.
Quibus ergo non lacrymis veniam sperare debemus, qui in illo treraendo
examine cum Rege nostro ex aaquo ad judicium non venimus ? quos nimirum
conditio, infirmitas, et causa inferiores exhibet .... Quid ergo agendum est,
fratres, nisi ut dum nos cum simplo exercitu contra duplum illius sufficere
non posse conspicimus, dum adhuc longe est, legationem mittamus, et
rogemus ea quaa pacis sunt ? Longe enim esse dicitur, qui adhuc praasens
¦ 2

2&o THE UNFINISHED TOWER
We may take an example from the opposite side.
The Pharisee in the parable (Luke xviii. 9-14), when he
enumerated the long catalogue of his virtues, was pre
cisely one who was refusing to forsake all that he had,
rather was hugging this all as closely as he could. He
was calculating his means, and finding that he had
enough to finish the tower; he was mustering his forces,
and so disastrously overrating their strength, that he did
not fear to set himself in battle-array against Him who
resisteth the proud, and giveth grace only unto the
humble. The publican, on the contrary, in the same
parable, was avowing that for the carrying up of the tower
he had not enough, he had nothing; that the war was
one in which he could not so much as look his mightier
Adversary in the face; and exclaiming, 'God be merciful
to me a sinner,' he threw down his arms, and sought,
while there was yet time, conditions of peace.
Let me observe, before quitting this matter, that there
is a certain fine irony in our Lord's falling in so far with
man's dream of being something and being able to hold
his own even in the face of God, as to speak of him
as a king over against another king, king against king —
in his so far falling in with man's dream of self-righteous
ness, and estimate of his own powers, as to speak of
the ten thousand which he could bring against the
twenty thousand of God, as though he were only over
matched in the proportion of two to one ; while, indeed,
a day will arrive, when he who in Christ's school has

per judicium non videtur. Mittamus ad huno legationem, lacrymas nostras,
mittamus misericordias opera, cognoscamus nos cum eo in judicio non posse
consistere, pensemus virtutem ejus fortitudinis, rogemus ea quaa pacis sunt.
Hasc est nostra legatio, quaa Regem venientem placat.

AND THE DEPRECATED WAR. 261
learned anything which he ought to learn, will be ready
to cry, ' I cannot answer Thee one thing in a thousand.'
I ought not to leave unnoticed that some modern
Roman Catholic expositors have sought to escape the
difficulties which I have stated to cleave to the common
interpretation of Christ's words here in this way. They
plead that they are not addressed to the whole body of
disciples or candidates for discipleship, but only to as
many as might be meditating whether they should under
take or not the so-called ' counsels of perfection.' These
are warned that they should accurately consider before
hand whether they have strength sufficient for the fulfill
ing of these; and, if they discover that they have not,
should not so much as attempt them. All this, as may
be seen in the words of one quoted below, is ingenious
enough ;l and undoubtedly some difficulties would so be
evaded ; but such an explanation contains no help for us,
who believe that all Christians are invited to be perfect,
as their Father in heaven is perfect (Matt. v. 48), and who
further can trace no intimation that these words were-
addressed to a select few, an inner circle, but on the
contrary a statement the most distinct that they were
spoken to ' great multitudes ' (ver. 25).
1 Cajetan : Significatur regis nomine professurus statum perfections vitas.
Bellum adversus alium regem est perfectior vita ad superandum mundum,
quantum ad licita communiter aliis, puta, habere agros, vacare humanis
negotiis, et reliqua hujusmodi, hominibus quidem licita, apostolicaa autem
perfectioni interdicta. Et describitur mundus duplicata, potentia adversus
profitentem vitam perfectiorem, quia et pugnat oommuni impugnatione,
trahendo ad illicita communiter omnibus, et pugnat speciali impugnatione,
trahendo ad interdicta apostolicaa vitas. Si enim, considerate proprii animi
dispositione, imparem se videt tanto proelio, sapienter praavenit, rogans ea
quas pacis sunt, non aggreditur statum perfections vitaa, contentus otatu
commnni.

13. ZACCH^EUS.
Luke xix. i-io.
The Lord is on his way to Jerusalem, on that last journey
thither, which was so rich in incidents, and whereof
St. Luke has preserved for us so full and faithful a record.
' And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. And
behold there was a man named Zacchmus, which was the
chief among the publicans!1 It was only natural that
Jericho, from its position close to the fords of Jordan
(Josh. ii. 1), and as the frontier city on entering the land
from Persea, set, too, as it was in the richest plain of
Palestine, and that which abounded most in the choicest
productions of that favoured land, in the rare and costly
balsam above all,2 should be the seat of an officer of a
somewhat superior rank, who should there preside over
the collection of the revenues of the state.

1 His superior dignity probably suggests avfa not avBpanag, twice used
in regard of him (ver. i, 7). Whether he was one of the publicani, the
farmers of the revenue, or held some intermediate rank between these and
the portitores, the actual collectors of the customs and taxes, is uncertain;
but the latter is the more probable supposition. The fact that the pnblicani
were generally Romans, and Roman knights, would not indeed of itself be
decisive on the matter ; for Josephus tells us that Jews sometimes attained
to this dignity. Yet is it more probable that the apxtreMivf/g belonged
himself to the rel&yai, although, as the name implies, having many sub
ordinate officers under him.
* Pliny, Hist. Nat. xii. 54.

ZACCHjEUS. 263
Such an officer was Zacchseus ; one too who had not
failed to win that wealth, for the sake of which he had
been content to brave the contempt of his fellow-country
men, and, as a traitor to the national cause, to come
under their uttermost scorn. And yet, rich as he
was, he had not, as the sequel shews, incurred the woe
of those rich who are full, and who have so received their
consolation here, that all longings for a higher consolation
are extinct in them (Luke vi. 24). We may take, as an
evidence of this, the fact that ' he sought to see Jesus, — who
He was 1' not 'who He was' in the sense of 'what
manner of person ; ' but, ' which He was ' of that confused
multitude, to distinguish Him from his company.1 And
he sought this, as the issue proves, out of no mere
curiosity, such as Herod's (Luke xxiii. 8) ; but much more
nearly in the temper of those Greeks who at the feast
desired to see Jesus (John xii. 21). He may not have
known, or given any account to himself, out of what
motives this anxiety to see the Lord had its rise ; yet
assuredly there were yearnings here, unconscious they
may have been, of the sick man toward his Healer, of
the sinner toward his Saviour.
Outward circumstances are unfavourable to the accom
plishment of his wish. ' He could not ' see Him 'for the
press, because he was little of stature! 2 So earnest, how
ever, is he in the matter, that, rather than be defeated of
his longing, he devises a way for the satisfying of it, which
1 Maldonatus: Quis esset eorum quos in conferta et confusa videbat
turba. 3 Augustine (Serm. 1 74) : Noli te extollere ; pusillus esto, Zacchasus esto.
Sed dicturus es, Si Zacchaaus fuero, pras turba, non potero videre Jesum.
Noli esse tristis ; adscende lignum, ubi pro te pependit Jesus, et videbis
Jesum; with much other profitable adaptation of the words.

264 ZACCH^EUS.
will involve, indeed, a certain compromise of his dignity,
but from which he does not on this account shrink.
Many, no doubt, will wonder that he, a rich man, and of
some official position in the city, should climb up, like one
of the populace, into a tree, the better to see a spectacle
passing below. But there is that in him which will not
allow such respects as these to have any weight at the
present. He has not, or he overcomes, that false pride,
out of which so many precious opportunities, and often
times in the highest things of all, are lost.1 Jericho and
the neighbourhood was famous for its palms (' the city of
palm-trees,' Deut. xxxiv. 3; Judg. iii. 13). No stately
palm-tree, however, but a tree of much humbler name,
plays its part in this story. There are no sycomores now
in the plain of Jericho, although found elsewhere in the
Holy Land (Robinson) ; but a sycomore on this occasion
bore fruit of the noblest kind ; so that Fuller with good
right exclaims, ' Who dares say sycomores are always
barren? See one here loaden with good fruit.'2 For
into one of these Zacchaeus climbs, hoping, it may be, for
he has run before the multitude, effectually to conceal
himself in its leafy screen, before the throng of the crowd

1 Calvin : Signum enim vehementis desiderii fuit, arborem conscendere,
quum divites ut plurimum sint fastuosi, seque specie gravitatis venditent.
Neque enim Christi conspectum sine caelesti instinctu tantopere expeteret.
Sic Dominus saape priusquam se hominibus manifestet, caecum illis affectum
inspirat, quo feruntur ad ipsum adhuc latentem et incognitum.
" A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, ii. 12. Prom these words it is obvious
that Puller took for correct the old derivation of avKopupaia, finding pupbg
foolish, and not papov the mulberry tree, in the latter half of the word :
porro sicomorus ficus fatua dicitur, eo quod inanes ficus generat (Stella ;
and so Augustine, Serm. 1 74, § 3). This, it need hardly be said, is an error,
the sycomore deriving its name from a resemblance to the fig in its fruit, to
the mulberry in its leaves. Ambrose (Exp. in Luc. ix. § 90) : Zacchasus
in sycomoro, novum novi temporis pomum.

ZACCHJEUS. 265
come by ; these will be the less likely to remark him, as
their attention will be turned in quite another direction.
If this was at all his expectation, he is disappointed
in it ; for ' when Jesus came to the place He looked up ; '
and He, who knows how to find his own in the most
unlikely places, who had seen Nathanael under the fig-
tree, with sure and unerring glance discerned Zacchasus
in the sycomore, and at once laid bare his hiding-place ;
addressing him by his name, for ' He calleth his own
sheep by name ' (John x. 3) ; and drawing him forth
from his concealment with that word, 'Zacchasus, make
haste and come down! This dealing of the Lord with
Zacchaeus is not unlike his compelling of the woman with
an issue of blood to come out of the crowd, and to
confess before all that she had touched Him, and why
(Luke viii. 47). . Like that, it is meant for the overcoming
of a false shame ; and the words are not without a certain
delicate rebuke that he should have chosen that method
of seeing the Lord, instead of coming boldly forward, and
joining himself to his disciples. Yet that faint rebuke
was made good at once by the very gracious words that
follow : 'for to-day I must abide at thy house;1 words of
an extraordinary grace, for while the Lord accepted many
invitations into the houses of men (Luke vii. 36; xiv.),
yet we do not read that He honoured any but this one
by thus offering Himself to his hospitality. ' Adopting
the royal style,' as the author of Ecce Homo puts it well,
' which was familiar to Him, and which commends the
loyalty of a vassal in the most delicate manner, by
freely exacting his services, He informed Zacchasus of his
1 Augustine (Serm. 113): Volebas videre transeuntem ; hodie hie apud
te invenies habitantem.

266 ZACCHuEUS.
intention to visit him, and signified his pleasure that a
banquet should be instantly prepared.'
The word of gracious command was not spoken in
vain. Zacchasus was as ripe fruit, which dropped into
the Saviour's lap at his first and lightest touch : 'He
made haste and came down, and received Him joyfully!
Each had found what he was looking for, the Saviour
and the sinner ; the Shepherd had found his sheep, and
the sheep its Shepherd. Some, as usual, were displeased
— as many as conceived of the Christ as a prince of
Pharisees, rather than a Saviour of sinners. These, ' when
they saw it, all murmured, saying, That He was gone to be a
guest with a man that is a sinner!1 Could He not have
chosen some other for his host ? Jericho was a city of
priests, as well as a city of publicans. The Talmudists
tell us that there were almost as many priests there as
at Jerusalem itself; so that it is a stroke from the life to
introduce in the parable of the Good Samaritan the
priest and the Levite, as passing exactly along that road
which led from one of these cities where they dwelt to
the other where their duties lay (Luke x. 31, 32). With
such a choice of hosts from whom to select, would it not
have better become a preacher of righteousness to
select some other than this sinner, whose house to honour
with his presence ? Surely it was ill done by a favour
so signal to reverse that just sentence of social excom
munication under which the publicans, and Zacchseus
among the number, lay (Luke xv. 2).
Probably the murmurers, with these words of discon
tent on their lips, with these thoughts of displeasure in
1 Augustine (Serm. 184): Hoc erat, reprehendere quod in domum aagroti
intravit medicus.

ZACCHSEUS. 267
their hearts, followed , to the house of Zacchasus. But
they meet there with a practical refutation of their dis
content; there it is plainly shewn that the Lord had
chosen well, when He chose this man for his host and
entertainer. He was one who was as smoking flax, which
they would have quenched outright, but which the Lord
with only a breath of his mouth fanned into a light
flame. Christ's presence in his house forms a parallel by
way of contrast to his presence in the house of the
Pharisee (Luke vii. 36; cf. xiv. 1). There he could
bring no blessing, for there was there no sense of need ;
there the Pharisee esteemed that he was honouring the
Lord, not that he was being honoured by Him.
Some place what follows on the next day, assuming
the Lord to have tarried a night under the roof of
Zacchseus, and that on the following morning, perhaps as
his divine guest was about to depart, Zacchseus stood
forth and made this profession of a new life, with a
making good, so far as this might be, of the faults of his
old. Yet I cannot but esteem the ' to-day' of ver. 5 to be
too clearly taken up by 'this day' of ver. 9, to allow of
such a supposition.1 Rather the meal was ended at
which he had been permitted to entertain his Lord ; and
he then stood forth, making that practical answer to these
murmurers, which ought to have silenced, and perhaps
did silence some of them ; for it shewed that he had not
received the grace of God in vain ; it shewed what the
condescending love of the Saviour could effect, how it
could separate a man for ever from his old conversation,
1 Nothing can be built on KaTokvaai, as though, which some urge, this
must imply the tarrying for a night. We have in Xenophon {Anal. 1. 10. 19),
KaraXvaai rb orparevpa npbg a pi a to v.

268 ZACCHSEUS.
to walk henceforward in newness of life. In the presence
then of them all (see ver. 11), ' Zacchasus] who had so long,
like another Levi, sat at the receipt of custom, 'stood] or
stood forth, ' and said unto the Lord / Behold, Lord, the
half of my goods I give to the poor • and if I have taken
anything from any man by false accusation] I restore him
fourfold! The present, 1 1 give] expresses the fixedness
of his resolve. Although this distribution of his goo"ds is
still future, yet that future to him is as if actually present.
To make it stand for a past, and to accept this ' I give]
and ' I restore] as an expression of his past conduct in
the stewardship of this worldly mammon, as though
Zacchseus had been another Cornelius, ' a devout man,
which gave much alms to the people' (Acts x. 2), is a
curious missing and marring of the whole point of this
incident, in fact a most notable piece of Pharisaic ex
egesis.2 Zacchseus might, and would even then, have
1 The verb avKotyavrelv occurs in the New Testament only here and at
Luke iii. 14. It is rendered there, ' to accuse falsely ;' here ' to take any
thing by false accusation ;' and in the Geneva, ' to take by forged cavillation.'
The use of the word as to defraud or to wring out by chicane is not un
common in the Greek orators. Rettig (Theoll. Stud, und Frit. 1838, p. 775)
observes that, while the story of the forbidden export of figs from Attica,
and of the ovKoQdvrqg as one who denounced this, its, as all now admit, a
later invention to explain the word, still it is so manifestly connected with
cvkov and ^>aiveiv, that in them the key to unlock its meaning must be
looked for. He suggests that the oviaxfmvTijg was originally one who informed
against him who made to the State too small returns of his property for
the purposes of taxation ; and the figtree being a chief source of wealth
in Attica, informed against him who returned the number of these, or the
crop derived from them, below the mark. He observes that avKbfiiog, an
informer, and cvKaC,eiv=avKo<j>avTelv, both point in the same direction.
' Maldonatus : Aliqui interpretantur quasi antequam ad ipsum Christus
venisset, solitus fuisset dimidiam bonorum suorum partem pauperibus dare,
et si quid quem defraudasset, quadruplum reddere. Cyprian (Be Op. et
Eleem.) is one of these ; but many more adhere to the true interpretation,
as Irenaeus (Con. Hair. iv. 12), who sees in this to which Zacchasus adjudges
himself, solutionem praateritaa cupiditatis ; and Tertullian, Adv. Ma-xion.
iv. 37.

ZACCHSEUS. 269
needed the higher righteousness of Christ, but he would
scarcely have been until this day one of the 'lost!
Salvation would not on that day have first come to his
house. But it is not thus. All this which he now an
nounces of a giving of his own, and a restoring of that
which is another's, is rather to be taken as the first-fruits
of Christ's visit, the outward utterance of the mighty in
ward change that had passed upon him. Now is he a
righteous man according to that rule of the prophet
(Ezek. xviii. 21, 22 ; xxxiii. 15), and his name and he are
agreed.1 Yet while the words, 'If I have taken anything from
any man] must not be regarded as expressing only a
possible case, which the speaker regards as very impro
bably an actual, neither must they be pressed too far in the
other direction. It is not, indeed, such a confident clearing
of himself as Samuel's (1 Sam. xii. 3); yet neither, on the
other hand, is it to be accepted as the confession and
admission of an habitual unrighteousness, a free allowing
of himself hitherto in chicane and wrong. Zacchasus had
been hitherto no extortioner. Had he been so, had he
been conscious that his were in the main treasures of
wickedness, gotten together by fraud and wrong, it would
have been ridiculous to offer as a gift half of them to the
poor, before it was seen whether the whole would satisfy
the demands of justice, might not be swallowed up in
acts of restitution, with such addition as the law re
quired. Without, however, having been this extortioner,
he yet feels that, according to that higher standard of right
which he recognizes now, some of his gains may prove to
1 1 ^ T= Justus. Without restitution, as Augustine (Ep. liv. ad Maced.)
says well, poenitentia non agitur, sed fingitur.

270 ZACCHSEUS.
have been unfairly acquired ; for, as the Italian proverb
has it, there is seldom a great stream into which some
turbid water has not entered. Any such injustice he will
make largely good, even to a fourfold restitution, calmly
adjudging against himself that which David in his ex
treme indignation adjudged against him that had taken his
neighbour's lamb (2 Sam. xii. 6), imposing a maximum
of penalty on himself; much more than the law save in
some exceptional cases required (Exod. xxi. 9).
The words that follow are spoken to Zacchseus, but in the
hearing of the multitude, and for them no less than for
him. This appears in the third person, under which he is
addressed. As meant for him, they are an acceptance,
on the Lord's part, of this offering of his goods as the
true expression of a higher offering, even of a dedication
of himself to God : ' This day is salvation come to this
house!1 As addressed to the multitude, they contain a
further justification of the grace shewn to this man that
was a sinner. Sinner as he is, salvation has yet come
to his house, 'forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham'
(cf. xiii. 16); one therefore to whom this mercy was due ;
for their view, as may here be fitly observed, is worthy
of no acceptance who assume Zacchseus to have been a
heathen, and the Lord therefore to style him 'a son of
Abraham ' only in an ethical sense, a follower, that is, of
the faith of Abraham (Matt. iii. 9; Rom. iv. 12). It is
well known that some, both in ancient and modern times,

1 On the words ' to this house,' rather than ' to this man,' Grotius deli
cately remarks, ut ostendat relatam hospitii gratiam. Yet hardly so ; the
parallel is to be rather found in such passages as Acts xvi. 33, 34. It is
doubtless for the sake of this verse that this Scripture supplies in the
Roman Catholic Church the Gospel for the servioe on the occasion of the
dedication of churches.

ZACCHSEUS.

271

have so understood it, or at least have suggested this as
possible,1 but in the face of all evidence alike external
and internal. Zacchseus (Zaccai) is a Jewish name, oc
curring Ezra ii. 9; Nehem. vii. 14; 2 Mace. x. 19, and in
the Talmud. Had he been not merely ' a sinner] but ' a
sinner of the Gentiles] the murmuring multitudes would
assuredly have urged as the head and front of Christ's
offending, not ' that He was gone to be a guest with a
sinner] but with 'a Gentile' — which, indeed, would
have been in their sight so enormous an aggravation of
the offence, that it would have been impossible they
should pass it over without notice. Neither did it belong
to the fitness of the Lord's earthly life, ' a minister ' as
He was 'of the circumcision, to confirm the promises
made unto the fathers' (Rom. xv. 8), that He should
violate the ordinances and customs of the Jews, which, so
acting, He would have done (Acts x. 28 ; xi. 2, 3 ; Gal.
ii. 12). As little can any argument be founded on that
word ' lost] as applied to Zacchseus ; for elsewhere the
Lord speaks of ' the lost sheep of the house of Israel ;'
and if, as surely is the case, the gulf between what a man
is, and what he was intended to be, is the truly tragic
thing in his destinies, is that which alone furnishes the
proper measure of his loss and of his fall, who, then, so
' lost ' as a son of Abraham, that, not being a heathen, was
yet sunk down to a level with the heathen ? Such was
Zacchseus ; and such ' lost ' as he was the Son of man
declares that He was come ' to seek and to save!
This said, He seems to have moved forward without
1 Thus Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 37 : Zacchasus, allophylus fortasse),
Cyprian, Chrysostom, Maldonatus, Stella, and others. Some, on the other
hand, have identified him with Matthias, the future apostle ; Clement of
Alexandria (Strom, iv. 6) for example.

272 ZACCHSEUS.
further delay on his journey toward Jerusalem, leaving
that 'house' poorer in this world's riches, certainly by
one half, and probably by more than one half, than if He
had never entered into it ; and yet, as He Himself de
clares, how immeasurably richer too ; for One bringing
salvation had lodged within it; and, though He was now
quitting it for ever, the salvation which He had brought
with Him remained behind.

14. THE TRUE VINE.
John xv. 1-6.
Many interpreters have thought it necessary to look in
the external world for some object which will have sug
gested this similitude to the mind of the Lord. Some,
for example, who suppose that his 'Arise, let us go
hence,' with which the preceding chapter concluded, was
not acted on at once, but that He lingered still, have
imagined to themselves a spreading vine, whose branches
found their way into the chamber in which He and his
disciples had just celebrated their last supper tpgether (Ps.
cxxviii. 3) . But surely those words of his, ' Arise, let
us go hence,' leave no room for this supposition. Ote the
part of the disciples there could have been no tarrying,
after they had received such a summons ; and when the
Lord used these words, He must have intended what He
said. When others suggest that passings as He may very
well have done, through a vineyard on his way to the
brook Kedron, He found his motive there, one can only
reply that this and every other suggestion of like kind
appear merely and altogether superfluous ; that it becomes
us far better to believe that, as all worlds, natural and
spiritual, lay ever open before Him, and the innermost
essences of things, so he drew freely from this inexhaus
tible storehouse whatever was most, adapted to his present
X

274 THE TRUE VINE.
need. There was quite enough to suggest this image of
closest union between Him and his people in that sacra
ment of union, which had just been instituted by Him,
and in which He had declared of the fruit of the vine, of
the ' pure blood of the grape ' (Gen. xlix. 1 1 ; Deut. xxxii.
14), blessed and consecrated by Him, ' This is my blood
of the New Testament, which is shed, for many for the
remission of sins.' We may dismiss then, as unnecessary,
all speculations on the external motive which He found
for this discourse.
At the same time when our Lord affirms of Himself,
' I am the true vine] with what, it may be very fitly asked,
does He liken Himself, over what claim a superiority;
for in that 'true' He manifestly claims actually to be
what some other persons or things falsely pretended to
be, or else to be fully and perfectly what they only par
tially, inadequately, and most imperfectly were ? The
word which He employs is decisive that it is the latter
which He intends ; a to keep which in mind will help us
much to understand what follows. And first, He certainly
does not liken Himself, which is Lampe's suggestion, to
that golden vine of exquisite workmanship, a symbol no
doubt of the theocracy, which was one of the chief orna
ments of Herod's temple, nor avouch Himself as ' the
true vine] by comparison with it. And if not to that
dead work of man's art and device, as little does He name
Himself ' the true vine] as contradistinguished from the
1 For the distinction between ahfirig and akifiuvbg see my Synonyms of
the New Testament, § 8. 'AlvBiig (=verax) is the true as set over against the
false (Rom. iii. 4) ; ! afafitvbg (=verus) is the true as set over against the
imperfect, the inadequate, that which has at best but types, shadows, and
outlines of the truth ; as Origen puts it well, vpbg avriSmaToTi^v oiuag Kal
Hmov ml eU6vog (cf. John i. 9 ; vi. 32 ; Heb. viii. a). <

THE TRUE VINE. 275
natural plant. Not a few have understood Him thus.
Tholuck, for example, has done so : ' The Saviour would
intimate here that the relation which finds place between
the vine and its branches is one which reveals itself in
its highest potency in the spiritual relation between the
Saviour and them that believe on Him ; the kingdom of
nature being a prophecy of the kingdom of grace, so that
in this last are found continually the fulfilments of the pro
phecies of the kingdom of nature.' 1 This last, being most
true, and earth the shadow of heaven, and the things on
earth the copies of things in the heavens, is yet not the truth
of this passage. An antagonism far deeper, and moving
far more distinctly in the region of moral and spiritual
things, the Lord would indicate here. The key to the
right understanding of this statement lies, as was long
ago noted by Grotius,8 in some words of Jeremiah, ' Yet
I had planted thee a noble vine ; wholly a right seed ;
how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a
strange vine unto Me V (ii. 21) 8 and Christ, claiming to be
' the true vine ' claims perfectly to realize in Himself that
divine idea which Israel after the flesh had altogether
failed to fulfil. Set as this ' right seed,' it had become
' an empty vine,' which brought forth fruit to itself (Hos.
x. 1), and none to God; and should end in becoming that
' vine of the earth,' the clusters of whose grapes should
be cast into the winepress of the wrath of God (Rev.
xiv. 18-20). In confirmation of this view it is hardly
1 So Maldonatus : Quia melius et perfectins homines in se per fidem natos
nutrit, quam sarmenta sua natnralis vitis.
* Ergo cum se illam veram vitem vocat, intelligit sibi demum excellenter
competere ista epitheta, Jer. ii. 21. Genuina, non fera vitis.
• 'Eyi) Se fybrewa at ap-rrelov KOOKOtybpov, naoav ahficv^v iraj tOTphpfc etf
iTMpiav, $ ipireXog 1} aMuorpia ; (IiXX.)
T2

276 THE TRUE VINE.
necessary to observe that not in these passages only, but
continually in the Old Testament the Jewish Church is
set forth as a vine or vineyard (Ps. lxxx. 8-16 ; Isai. v. 1;
Cant. viii. n ; Ezek. xix. 10-14), ^s reDuked for not
being a true vine, for bearing grapes of Gomorrah, bitter
fruit or none (Isai. v. 4 ; Deut. xxxii. 32 ; cf. 2 Kin. iv.
39), our Lord taking up the same language in the New
(Luke xiii. 6; Matt. xxi. 33). But what Israel should
have been, and was not, this Christ, the true Israel, was.
' And my Father is the husbandman! 1 This passage
was a very favorite one with the Arians ; as many slight
allusions or longer discussions on the part of those who
took share in the Church's great conflict with these gain-
sayers, abundantly attest. The reason is obvious. The
doctrinal statement of this verse, not qualified by other
statements, was capable of being made to imply an entire
subordination on the part of the Son to the Father, the
relations in fact of a creature to a Creator. Augustine
and other theologians before him are careful to reply that
it is in his humanity that Christ is ' the true vine! It was
of the very essence of his mediatorial work, of the days
man who should lay his hands upon both, that as on the

1 The word which our Lord uses here is yeopybg, not apmTurvpybg. It is
true that apneTuovpybg would more directly designate the actual cultivator
of the vine, whose own hands dress and prune it; yet at the same time
his office is altogether a subordinate one (see Luke xiii. 7) ; while yeapybg,
by Philo distinguished from yeairbvog or the actual labourer, in no way
marks out a humble social status, as is sufficiently shown by such a passage
as 2 Chron. xxvi. 10, where of King Uzziab. it is said that he was a 'husband
man1 (yeapybg fjv). Noah in like manner is called avBparrog yeopybg yf/g
(Gen. ix. 20). So too by the yeupyoi of Matt. xxi. 33-41 are intended the
chiefs and leaders of the Jewish theocracy. Not that the yeapybg need in
the least be assumed to ' purge ' or prune only by the hand of others. The
labour of the vineyard is exactly of that lighter kind, in which the pro
prietor might be well pleased himself to take a share.

THE TRUE VINE. 277
one side He could say, 'I and my Father are one,' so
upon the other, ' I and my brethren are one ;' and He is
here asserting the latter relation, not excluding the
former.1 But while the vine and the vine-branches must
thus both be partakers of the same nature, for He that
sanctifieth and they that are sanctified must both be of
one (Heb. ii. il), He will presently challenge for Him
self, as Augustine does not fail to notice,2 a share in the
work of the husbandman, an office, which, only as He is
one with the husbandman of this allegory, He could have
any right to challenge for his own. He too has power
to purge or cleanse through his word (ver. 3). Neither,
when we affirm that in his humanity He was ' the true
vine] may we leave out of sight for a moment, that it
was a divine humanity in which he was this, in a
humanity united to his divinity, ennobled, deified, through
this union ; for only so could it have become a life-giving
humanity to the world.8
Affirming his Father to be 'the husbandman] He
excludes none from his Father's husbandry — not even, as
1 Ambrose (Be Fide, iv. 12): Illud quoque ad separandam Patris et Filii
divinitatem objicere consueverunt, quia Dominus dixit in Evangelio, Ego
sum vitis vera, et Pater meus agricola est ; agricolam et vitem diversaa esse
naturaa dicentes, et vitem in agricolaa esse potestate. Ambrose answers
rightly: Dominus vitem se esse dixit, incarnationis suaa significans sacra-
mentum. Basil the Great (Con. Eunom. iv. 3) puts the argument of the
Arians: el apireXog, tjtaolv, b "LoTTjp, KkijpaTa Si iipelg, yeapybg Se b JiaTrjp' to.
Si Kj^i/para bpofv^ piv rft hpireTiU, f) Si apnelog oi>x bpatjrvf/g to yeapya, bpo-
tyurjg piv ijplv b Tlbg, Kal uipog f/pelg amov, oi>x bpotyvrjg Se b Tlbg Tip Tlarpl,
iUa Kara, navra iMbrpiog. Basil replies as Ambrose.
3 Augustine : Denique cum de Patre tanquam de agricola dixisset, quod
infructuosos palmites tollat, fructuosos autem purget, ut plus afferant fruc-
tum; continuo etiam seipsum mundatorem palmitum ostendens, Jam vos,
inquit, mundiestis propter sermonem quem locutus sum vobis. Ecce et ipse
mundator est palmitum, quod est agricolaa, non vitis, officium.
* Augustine : Quamvis autem Christus vitis non esset, nisi homo esset,
tamen istam gratiam palmitibus non praaberet, nisi etiam Deus esset.

*78 THE TRUE VINE.
Chrysostom will have it, Himself, the vine, any more than
his disciples, the vine-branches. He too learned obedi
ence by the things which He suffered. All the trial and
temptation of his walk upon earth, all 'the contradiction
of sinners ' which was allowed to come upon Him, all in
which it pleased the Father to bruise Him and put Him
to grief (Isai. liii. 10), all the awaking of the sword
against Him, Jehovah's fellow (Zech. xiii. 7), this was
throughout the discipline of his Father's love ; to which
He was submitted the first, that He might so become a
pattern to all those who came after. ' Wonder not,' He
would implicitly say to his disciples, 'at the sufferings
which are coming upon Me ; they are part of my Father's
husbandry ; still less wonder at your own ; for " if these
things be done in the green tree, what shall be done in
the dry ?" ' — all being ' dry trees ' when brought into com
parison with Him. That suffering which to flesh and
blood is always so unwelcome He sets here in how com
forting a light. It is a mark of the watchful care with
which the heavenly husbandman is tending the vine, and
the branches of the vine.
' Every branch in Me that beareih not fruit He taketh
away! There are then branches in Him, which are
unfruitful, and which therefore are removed. Christ
here anticipates the future condition of his Church ; He
contemplates a Church in which men shall find them
selves in Him ; as all infants baptized into Christ are in
Him ; planted together in the likeness of his death ; but
for whom it remains themselves to determine whether by
believing and obeying, they shall make the potential
blessings of this position actually their own ; whether that
fellowship with Christ, which has been so freely given to

THE TRUE VINE. 279
them, shall unfold itself into the new creation, into the
whole Christian life ; whether faith shall keep open the
channels through which the power and grace and
strength of Christ may flow into the soul, or unbelief
shall stop them. The branches which shall have thus
doomed themselves to unfruitfulness ' He taketh away!
In the natural world branches of the vine, which are not
good for that to which they were specially ordained,
namely for the bearing of fruit, are good for nothing.
There are trees which may be turned to secondary uses,
if they fail to fulfil their primary. Not so the vine. As
timber it is utterly valueless (Ezek. xv. 3, 4). It is with it
exactly as with the saltless salt, which, having lost its
savour, is fit only to be cast out of doors ; both of them
being meet emblems of the spiritual man who is not
spiritual, who is good neither for the work of this world
nor of a higher. But on this ' He taketh away ' what
further might be fitly said may be better reserved for
ver. 6, where the doom of the barren branches is more
in detail set forth.
'And every branch that beai-ethfruit, hepurgeth1 it, that
it may bring forth more fruit! 2 They assuredly are right
who recognize in this ' Hepurgeth ' no direct, but only a
secondary, allusion to temptations and afflictions, as the

1 Alpei, mBaipei: suavis rhythmus, as Bengel observes; but it is nothing
more, for the words are not related to one another.
' Pliny (Hist. Nat. xiv. 14): [Numa], ex imputata vite libari vina diis,
nefas statuit; ratione excogitata ut putare cogerentur, alias aratores, et
pigri circa pericula arbusti; cf. c. xxii. Prom whomsoever this remarkable
prohibition came, it had, we may be quite sure, a much deeper meaning
than that merely economical which the Roman naturalist (naturalist in both
senses of this word), ascribes to it here ; has its points of contact with Heb.
xii. 5-1 1, its dim reachings-out after a symbolic setting forth of the truth
which there is declared.

280 THE TRUE VINE.
means by which this purging is effected. It is the whole
process of sanctification, the circumcision of the Spirit, by
whatever discipline brought about, of which Christ is
speaking, and to which He pledges his Father here. At
the same time, seeing that afflictions play so large, so
necessary a part in this process of sanctification, it is in a
secondary sense most true that there is here a reference
to these. Regarded as a means of this purifying, as
an evidence of the intention of the heavenly husband
man that the fruit-bearing branches shall be more fruitful
still, these may be welcomed, may be contemplated in
some sort as rewards of obedience. St. James bids the
faithful to welcome them, for the blessing they bring
with them (i. 2-4, 12), and compare Heb. xii. 11 ; Rom.
v. 3-5. To how many dealings of God with his own,
mysterious, inscrutable, inexplicable otherwise, will this,
kept properly in mind, furnish us with a key. Oftentimes
the fine gold of some saint appears to us as if cleansed
from all its dross ; but the inexorable refiner, who sees
with other eyes than ours, and detects remains of dross
where we see only gold, flings it again into the furnace,
that so it may be purer yet. Augustine has a striking
image in illustration. Many a time, he observes, a por
trait seems perfect in the judgment of all eyes save those
of the artist who drew it. Others would fain see him
now to hold his hand ; they count that he cannot improve
it, perhaps may mar it ; but he returns it to the easel,
touches and retouches still. And why ? Because, being
this artist, there floats before his mind's eye an ideal per
fection, to which hitherto his work has not attained ; but
to which he would fain see it approach more nearly yet.
'Now ye a/re clean through the word which I have spoken

THE TRUE VINE. 281
unto you' — ' clean ' and yet needing to be ' cleansed! x We
have a hint here of the mystery of that double relation
in which every believing man stands to God, of that
double relation which is more fully and dogmatically
stated in some of the Pauline Epistles ; but which is yet
distinctly anticipated here, and at John xiii. 10. The
faithful in Christ Jesus are ' clean] being by faith justified
from all things, and having thus a standing-ground before
God ; which yet is in some sort an ideal one, — their
actual state, although ever approximating to this, yet still
failing to correspond to it, — they therefore needing by
the same faith to appropriate ever more and more of
that sanctifying grace, those purifying influences, which
continually stream forth from Him on all them that are
his ; and by aid of which He is bringing them to be all
that, which for his sake his Father has been already
willing to regard them.3

1 KaBapol, and yet of those whom the husbandman KaBaipei (ver. 2). Here
there is a real connexion between the words, which we would gladly have
seen reproduced in our Version. Augustine : Mundi atque mundandi. Neque
enim, nisi mundi essent, fructum ferre potuissent; et tamen omnem, qui
fert fructum, purgat agricola, ut fructum plus afferat. Fert fructum, quia
mundus est ; atque ut plus afferat, purgatur adhuc. Quis enim in hac vita
sic mundus, ut non sit magis magisque mundandus?
a Gerhard (Harm. Evang. 1 77) : Quia dixerat Patrem purgare palmites
fructuosos Christo insitos, ideo docet duplicem esse purgationem, videlicet
purgationem primam, quae est ipsa justificatio in remissione peccatorum
consistens, atque insitionem in Christum, verain illam vitem, indivulso nexu
conjunctam habens; et purgationem secundam, quaa consistit in quotidiana
renovatione ac veteris Adami mortifioatione, quaa non semel tantum fit, sicut
regeneratio et in vitem insitio, sed singulis diebus repetitur, et per totara
vitam continuatur. . . . Quia mundatio fit per verbum, ergo non immediate,
sed per ministros Ecclesiaa verbum praadicantes et sacramenta administrantes,
qui in hoc mnndationis opere sunt Dei ewepyoi (1 Cor. iii. 9). . . . Christus
non dicit, Mundi estis propter sermonem, quem inspiravi vobis, sed, quem
locutus sum vobis. Ergo verbo praadicato et audito vim mundandi tribuit,
quam ipso actu exserit, si fide reoipitur.

282 THE TRUE VINE.
' Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear
fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye,
except ye abide in Me! Our Lord in his first words here
does not say, as He is so often taken to say, ' If you abide
in Me, I will also abide in you.' The second clause in
this sentence is not promise, any more than the first ; they
are precept both : ' Take heed that ye abide in Me, and
that I abide in you.'1 The next verse, where the same
words recur, and still more ver. 7, are decisive on this
matter ; see also vi. 56. It is of course only in a very
restricted sense that the relations between Him and them
are mutual. There is no correlation of forces. He is
throughout and only a giver, they are throughout and
only receivers.2 The mystical use of this word ' to abide,'
representing as it does the innermost fellowship and com
munion of the faithful with their Lord, and of their Lord
with them, and occasionally representing a higher mystery
still (John xiv. 10 ; xv. 10), is peculiar to St. John, but
is very frequent both in his Gospel and in his Epistles, in
the language of his Lord, and in his own which he has
learned from that Lord.8
1 We must not therefore complete Kgya iv ip.lv with peva, but with
peiva. Bengel gives it well : Facite ut maneatis in me, et ut ego maneam in
vobis. Godet's words are worth quoting here (Comm. sur I'Eeang. de
S. Jean) : En moi exprime l'etat dans lequel le Chretien fait abstraction de
tout ce qui est sa sagesse, sa force, son merite propre, pour puiser tout en
Christ, sous ces differents rapports, par l'intime aspiration de la foi. Et
c'est la l'unique condition de l'activite de Christ en nous. Je"sus le fait
sentir en supprimant a dessein le verbe dans la proposition suivante. Et
moi en nous. Par cette ellipse il enveloppe le second de ces deux faits dans
le premier de telle sorte que la oil le premier s'accomplit, le second ne peut
manquer d'arriver. De cette maniere Faction de Christ est mise hardiment
sous l'empire de notre liberte", aussi bien que la n6tre propre.
' Augustine : Ita in vite palmites sunt, ut viti non conferant, sed inde
accipiant, unde vivant ; ita vero vitis est in palmitibus, ut vitale alimentum
subministret eis, non sumat ab eis.
* Besides the piveiv iv epoi here, or h ama (1 Ep. ii. 6) we have also

THE TRUE VINE. 283
1 1 am the vine, ye are the branches! Our Lord willingly
repeats great truths which He would deeply imprint on the
minds of his disciples ; thus see John iii. 3, 5 ; vi. 48, 51 ;
but in those places, as in this, with a variation, with a
greater fulness on the second occasion than on the first,
or with some other modification, which sufficiently justi
fies the repetition. In the present instance He now for
the first time explicitly calls the disciples ' the branches]
however there may have been as much involved in words
which He had uttered already. So, too, while He had
already declared the abiding in Him to be the one con
dition of all fruit-bearing, He adds a promise now, that
he who abides in Him shall not only bear fruit, but shall
bear it abundantly : 'He that abideth in Me, and I in
him, the same bringeth forth much fruit ; for without Me
ye can do nothing!
It is a poor and inadequate interpretation of these last
words to make them to mean, ' Ye can do nothing until
ye are in Me, and have my grace.' It is rather, ' After
ye are in Me, ye can even then accomplish nothing except
as ye draw life and strength from Me ; only through a
putting forth of my power which is in you can ye com
mence, carry forward, or bring any work to a good effect.
From first to last it is I that must work in and through
you.' We have a warning here to the regenerate man
that he never seek to do aught of himself; not a declara
tion that the unregenerate is unable to do aught. Christ
does not mean, ' Out of and apart from Me ye are power-
phieiv iv Tt) ayairy. (xv. 9) ; ev Tip Xbyo (viii. 31) ; iv to ipori (1 Ep. ii. 10) ;
iv tt) Si6axy{i Ep. ix.) ; iv rip ILarpi (1 Ep. ii. 24) ; iv Tip Qeu (1 Ep. iv. 16),
all expressing, though from slightly different points of view, the same
blessed and transcendant truth ; and then, as the fearful contrast to all these,
there is the piveiv iv rjj onoHa (xii. 46); ev rift 6avar<p{i Ep. iii. 14).

284 TEE TRUE VINE.
less for good ; ' but, ' Being in Me, only through putting
forth of my power, suffering Me effectually to work
in and through you, can you accomplish anything' —
a truth which needs to be evermore repeated, for it is
evermore in danger of being forgotten by us. The words
are frequently appealed to by Augustine and others
engaged in controversy with the Pelagians of old ; 1 even
as in the formularies and symbolic books of the Reformed
Churches they constantly appear as a dictum probans
against all open or covert Pelagianism.
' If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch,
and is withered' (cf. Ezek. xvii. 24; Matt. xxi. 19 ; Mark
xi. 20, 21 ; Luke xxiii. 31). Some will fain have it that
in giving these words their spiritual significance we must
reverse their order, urging that the branch, because
withered, is therefore cast forth, and not, because cast
forth, therefore withered. But it is not so, either in the
natural world or the spiritual ; and there is no sufficient
reason for deserting the actual sequence, of Christ's
words, which only the strongest necessity should compel
us to abandon. But, so far from such necessity existing,
the declaration, as it now stands, yields a" lesson the most
solemn, one which, changing the order of the words, we
should in good part miss. An unfruitful branch is not
' withered] when broken off from its parent stock and
stem ; on the contrary, it retains a deceitful greenness and
1 Thus Augustine (Con. duos Ep. Pelag. ii. 8) : Dominus autem ut respon
deret futuro Pelagio, non ait, Sine me difficile potestis aliquid facere, sed
ait, Sine me nihil potestis faeere. Et ut responderet futuris etiam istis in
eadem ipsa Evangelica sententia, non ait, Sine me nihil potestis perficere,
sed, facere. Nam si perficere dixisset, possent isti respondere, non ad incipi-
endum bonum, quod a nobis est, sed ad perflciendum, esse Dei adjutorium
necessarium. Dominus cum ait, Sine me nihil potestis facere, hoc uno verbo
initium finemque comprehendit.

THE TRUE VINE. 285
freshness for a little while ; deceitful, because upon all this
the sentence of death has irrevocably passed. Churches,
which, through abandonment of the Catholic faith, indi
viduals who, by unbelief and by the sins which spring from
unbelief, have separated themselves off, and in the awful
but secret judgments of God have been separated off, from
Christ their Head, may keep for a while the show and
semblance of life, may deceive others, may deceive even
themselves — so long, that is, as any residue of that good
thing which they have gotten from Christ remains. But
little by little, sooner or later, they come to an end of all
which they took with them. It fails and dies out, and,
once wasted and gone, there is nothing to replace it; and
thus death, moral and spiritual, steals over all ; they are
' withered] this withering of theirs being not seldom evi
dent to the eyes of all.
'And men gather them;' or, better, 'and they gather
them] bring them together into one bundle of death,1
leaving who the gatherers are in the awful obscurity
which rests upon it in the original. Some words of
Isaiah, ' When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall
be broken off; the women come, and set them on fire'
(xxvii. 11), constitute an interesting parallel. The ga
therers are the angels, the ministers of the divine anger,
to whom the final execution of the divine judgments is
everywhere committed (Matt. xiii. 41, 49 ; xxiv. 31 ; Luke
xix. 24; Rev. xix. 24). 'And cast them into the fire, and
they are burned ;' or, in its simplicity more terrible still, and
they burn ' cf. Ezek. xv. 4). But all which is here expressed
or implied, of ' the fire ' (Matt. iii. 10), ' the flame ' (Luke
l2vv6yovat: cf. ovXtet-ovoi, Matt. xiii. 41 ; and Isai. xxiv. 2.

286 THE TRUE VINE.
xvi. 24), 'the flaming fire' (2 Thess. i. 8),'the furnace of fire'
(Matt. xiii. 42, 50), 'the gehenna of fire' (Matt. v. 22;
Mark ix. 43), 'the lake of fire' (Rev. xx. 15; xxi. 8),
' the everlasting fire ' (Matt. xxv. 41 ; Jude 7), with all the
secrets of anguish which words like these, if there be any
truth in words, must involve, demands rather to be
trembled at than needs to be expounded.
We pause here. It is true that echoes and remi
niscences of this allegory still recur through the chapter,
very distinctly in the next three or four verses, where
exhortations are clothed in imagery which it offers, pro
mises linked with a fulfilling by disciples, of all which
the fact of being branches in Him implies, means by
which these shall abide in his love declared ; but these
reminiscences are ever growing weaker and weaker ; the
vine and the vine-branches more and more fade out of
sight ; so that after this verse there is nothing which of
necessity links itself on to this allegory, or which would
not be perfectly intelligible without any reference to it,
and supposing that Christ had never uttered it. Here,
therefore, is the fittest place to pause.

1$. THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.
Luke xxiii. 39-43.
We might beforehand have anticipated that, were the
history of the penitent malefactor recorded in one Gospel
only, it would be in the Gospel of St. Luke ; which is above
all the Gospel of pardon and grace, and among the Gospels
the correlative of the Pauline Epistles among the Epistles.
St. Luke, the companion of St. Paul, lays, more than any
other Evangelist, the groundwork upon which the latter
builds ; teaching historically that which St. Paul teaches
dogmatically, namely, that where sin abounded, grace did
much more abound (vii. 47 ; xv. ; xix. 10). We have in
the history before us an example, and a very notable
one, of that wondrous law of selection, according to
which, out of the inexhaustible treasure-house of our
Lord's sayings and doings upon earth, each Evangelist
severally appropriates that which agrees best with his
special purpose and aim. Such a law we may continually
recognize, so soon as the eye is once opened to look for
and expect it.
We read in the verses which immediately precede this
wondrous story, of the wild flood of blasphemy and scorn
which foamed and raged so fiercely round the foot of the

28b THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.
cross ; how his soul that hung on that cross was pierced
and stabbed with taunts and reproaches, with words of
malignity and hate, sharper and keener far than the nails
which had torn his hands and his feet, or the spear which
should penetrate his side. We read how heathen and Jew,
as in a dreadful rivalry, vied with one another, which
should heap most of outrage upon the Christ of God;
the very chiefs of the Jewish nation, throwing off not
merely all dignity, but all decency and decorum, and in
the fierce delight of gratified hatred not caring to main
tain even the religious hypocrisies which should have
hindered them from openly rejoicing in the sufferings of
another, being the first and foremost of all in this crucifying
afresh, this moral crucifixion superinduced upon the phy
sical, of the Son of God (Heb. vi. 6). And then, as though
to crown all, St. Matthew (xxvii. 38) and St. Mark (xv. 32)
relate that two fellow-sufferers with our Lord, two who,
fulfilling the prophecy made long before (Isai. liii. 9, 12),
were crucified with Him, fell in with and took up the
taunts of the crowd, railed upon Him, mocked his pre
tensions, bade Him, if He were the Christ, to save Himself
and them — a fearful example, whether one only, or, for
a while at least, both acted thus, that the Greek proverb
which ascribes to sufferings such a teaching power,1 comes
not always true, that there are whom their own suffer
ings and the just punishments of God do not soften, but
only harden and exasperate the more ; ,so that they may
howi upon their bed, nay, writhe upon their cross, and
yet not repent them of the evil which has provoked these
plagues, but only go forward, adding new sin to their
1 Haft^/mra, paB^para, or in Latin, Nocumenta, documenta.

THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 289
old, fierce, impenitent, and defiant to the last (Rev. xvi. 9,
11, 21 ; 2 Chr on. xxviii. 22) }
St. Luke, indeed, tells us that not both, but that 'one of
the malefactors which were hanged railed on Him, saying,
If Thou be Christ, save Thyself and us! A question
presents itself here, Does the statement of the earlier
Evangelists, and the necessity of harmonizing the several
relations, require us to assume that he, who later in the
day became a penitent, joined at first in these blasphemous
ravings of his fellow-malefactor and of the multitude, and
only after a while separated his lot from theirs, being
convinced and converted by all the wondrous evidences of
a divine grace and love which shone out in the suffering
Lord ? To this, which of course enhances the marvel of
his conversion, making it still more sudden and mira
culous, many interpreters in all ages have considered
themselves bound by the statements of the preceding
Evangelists ; as counting that only by such an assump
tion was it possible to reconcile St. Luke's account with
theirs. Thus Chrysostom,2 Theophylact, Leo the Great.8
Ambrose is more doubtful.4 Augustine, on the contrary,
is strong that one only blasphemed,6 urging as a parallel

1 The effects of crucifixion were very various on those who endured it.
While the Christian martyrs would praise God from their cross, or exhort
the beholders to embrace that faith for the sake of which they were willing
to endure even that worst, some would spit on the bystanders (Seneca, Be
Vitd Beatd, 19), or reveal hidden iniquities of their former life, or blaspheme
their judge, to render which last impossible it was not unfrequent to gag
them ; Cicero mentions a slave whose tongue was cut out before crucifixion for
fear of inconvenient revelations which he might make from his cross (Pro
Cluent. 66 ; cf. Justin, Hist. xxii. 7).
2 See Suicer, Thes. s. v. ^cmfa.
3 Usque ad crucem reus, fit Christi repente confessor.-
4 Fortasse et iste prius conviciatus est.
' De Cons. Evang. iii. 16.

290 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.
case the words of Heb. xi. 33, ' they stopped the mouths
of lions,' when, in fact, it was but one, namely Daniel,
who did so ; ' they were sawn asunder ;' when, in all like
lihood, the allusion is but to one, namely to Isaiah. His
parallel cases do not seem to me very convincing, yet, on
the whole, I must decidedly incline to the conclusion at
which he has arrived. The internal evidence in its
favour is strong. The rebuke with which the penitent
malefactor rebukes his fellow is very little like that of
one, who has just been partaker in the sin which he
condemns. His deliberate remonstrance, with no word of
reference to himself, ' Dost not thou fear God, being in
the same condemnation?' sounds not at all like the re
monstrance of one, — would have fitted ill, in that shape
at least, to the lips of one, — who had just before been
joining in the blasphemies, which all of a sudden he
condemns.1 Up to the moment when his fellow-malefactor joined
in the railings of the multitude, he, we may suppose, had
listened in silence ; the work of grace which had begun
in him sometime since, in his prison perhaps, going
rapidly forward ; for all around him and about him was
such as would rapidly ripen a man for heaven, or for
hell. The other it ripened for hell, him for heaven.
He had heard all — in silence, though with deep horror
of soul ; but now he can keep silence no longer. There
is a time to speak (Eccles. iii. 7), as well as a time to
keep silence, and now for him that time has arrived. ' In
that ' Save Thyself and us] in that plural ' us] the other
is seeking to draw him into the same blasphemy with
1 Cajetan : Hasc namque verba sonant non posnitentem convicii proprii, sed
increpantem alterius, quod simul cum aliis insultet Jesu.

THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 291
himself, is presenting this as the common taunt of them
both. Need is therefore that he should speak, that he
should separate himself off by a clear and distinct avowal
from the other's sin, and not, by any longer holding his
peace, become partaker of it. The English Version here,
' Dost not thou fear God ? ' is doubly at fault, missing the
emphasis twice. Read rather, ' Neither dost thou fear
God ?' 'It is nothing so strange,' he would say, ' that these
secure sinners, whom justice has not yet overtaken, for
whom God's judgments are as yet far out of sight, should
dare thus to open their mouths against the Holy One of
God ; but thou, upon thy cross, with such teaching as
that might give thee, with such evidence as that affords
that God is not mocked, that men eat the fruit of their
doings, dost thou venture upon the same? neither
dost thou fear God?'1 He goes on, ' being in the smne
condemnation! Two reasons are here alleged why he
should have refused to become partaker of the sin of
those mockers ; the first, which already lay in that ques
tion we have just dealt with, that he was in condemna
tion, that judgment had overtaken him ; the second, that
Jesus was a fellow-sufferer ; community of suffering might
have well inspired forbearance and pity of the one for
the other.
And then, lest this word should seem to imply that
they all shared in a common cross because they had
¦Maldonatus: Non dubito quin bonus ille et fidelis latro perversum
ilium latronem cum Judaais voluerit comparare, quaa comparatio in ilia dic-
tionenec obscure delitescit; quasi dicat, Non solum illi qui pcena carent,
sed nee tu, qui in eadem poena es, Deum times? Corn, a Lapide : Esto,
Scribaa et Judaai liberi et validi non timeant Deum, ideoque snbsannent
Christum ; tu tamen, qui in cruce torqueris et ad mortem tendis, deberes
timere Deum.

292 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.
shared in a common or like crime, he separates and
distinguishes between Christ's cross and theirs. The
condemnation indeed is common to all ; but not so the
guilt ; ' and we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward
of our deeds ; but ihis man hath done nothing amiss • so
far from having committed enormous crimes, as we have,
there is no smallest fault or error in Him;'1 — another
reason why he should be spared these outrages and
insults. If these are for any, they are for the wicked,
not for the holy.2
Let us, before proceeding further, endeavour to realize
to ourselves what manner of persons these ' malefactors '
probably were, how they had deserved this name, and
by the course of what crimes they had reached a Roman
cross, as the end of their conversation, as the due reward
of their deeds. To understand this will, I am persuaded,
help us not a little to understand how one of those
crucified with Jesus should, even in the hour of his own
worst suffering, have turned to the Lord with scorn and
defiance, the other with penitence and prayer. Both these
facts may, through such an enquiry, become more intel
ligible to us. 'Malefactors' is the name by which St.
Luke calls them; 'thieves' (according to our Version) the
two earlier Evangelists ; from whom, and from the blend
ing of whose record with his, we have learned to speak of
' the penitent thief Our Translators would have done
1 Maldonatus : oiiSev aroirov, nihil quod virum bonum non deceat ; quibus
verbis indicare voluit non solum nullum magnum scelus, sed nullum etiam
vel levissimum peccatum in Christo esse. Vet aroirog is too often used in
Hellenistic Greek as a mere equivalent of irovypbg (it is joined with it,
2 Thess. iii. 2), to allow us very confidently to press this.
2 Maldonatus : Cum in eadem qu4 Christus pcena verseris, et, quod plus
est, tu quidem merito, ille vero immerito, tamen neque poanas societas, neo
ejus te movet innocentia, ut ejus misereare.

THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 293
much better to maintain the distinction which the
Scripture maintains between him, the 'robber,' or vio
lent spoiler (see Matt. xxi. 13; xxvi. 35; Luke xxii. 52;
John xviii. 40 ; 2 Cor. xi. 26), and the ' thief,' or secret
purloiner (Matt. vi. 19; John xii. 6; 1 Thess. v. -2; Rev.
iii. 3; xvi. 15). Many passages have suffered in our
Version from the neglect of this distinction, but none so
seriously as that with which we now have to do.1
These two were not ' thieves,' as we have called them,
but robbers. Having vindicated this title for them, we
may further enquire what at this time the name probably
implied, and whether more than lies on the surface of the
word. To answer this question aright, we must put side by
side the application of the title of ' robber ' to Barabbas
(John xviii. 40), and the other notices of him which the
Gospels supply, and read all in the light which contem
porary history affords. Barabbas, this ' robber ' accord
ing to St. John, was, we are told, ' a notable prisoner '
(Matt, xxvii. 16) ; 'which lay bound with them that had
made insurrection with him, who had committed murder
in the insurrection ' (Mark xv. 7) ; ' who for a certain
sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into
prison ' (Luke xxiii. 19) ; plainly a ringleader in one of
those fierce and fanatic outbreaks against the Roman
domination, which on a large scale or a small so fast
succeeded one another in the latter days of the Jewish
commonwealth. This at once explains how it was pos
sible for the Chief Priests with their religious pretensions
to shew the interest on his behalf which they did (Matt.
xxvii. 20; Mark xv. 11), explains no less the enthusiasm
1 On the distinction between tyorifc and KUirrrig see my Synonyms of th*
New Testament, § 44.

294

THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.

with which the Jewish populace demanded his liberation
(Luke xxiii. 18). He was the popular hero, who had
sought to realize his own and their idea of the kingdom
of God by violence and blood. He had actually been
that which they wanted the Lord to be, and which
because He would not be, they were now so eager to
destroy Him. He had wrought, we may well believe, in
that false Messias spirit, which was filling with wild and
insane hopes the whole nation, and rapidly hurrying it
to that final conflict with the Roman power, in which as
a nation it should be for ever broken in pieces. There is
every likelihood that the two malefactors crucified with
Jesus belonged to the band of Barabbas. For good or
for evil they knew something about the Christ, and that
He was One who could deliver his own; the taunt
uttered by the one expresses this, no less than the prayer
of the other. There is much to make this probable.
Barabbas, as we have seen, had been cast into prison
' with them that had made insurrection with him.' Two
of the chief of these Pilate may have been very well
pleased to send to execution on this occasion. It is
abundantly plain from John xix. 15, 19-21, that he was
willing in any way to retort on those who had driven him
to what his conscience told him was a hideous injustice,
to the condemnation (for this much he could see), of a
perfectly innocent man. As he evidently sought in that
title over the cross to do an extreme displeasure to the
Jews, so he may have sought the same in this : ' If you
compel me against my better mind to send this man to
the cross, I will send, to keep him company, two of the
servants of your Messiah.'
Such seems to me a more probable explanation — I

THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 295
speak but of the human explanation — of these malefactors
sharing in the cross of Christ, than to suppose that the
additional indignity of being thus ' numbered with the
transgressors' was devised for Him by the Pharisees.
Doubtless they were quite capable of such a malignity,
and insults of exactly this character have not seldom been
heaped on high-soul'ed sufferers in the concluding scene
of their lives. Thus in the French B,evolution, when
some noble royalist was sent to the guillotine, it was con
stantly managed to mix up his execution with that of
forgers, highwaymen, murderers, or the like ; that their
shame and disgrace might, if possible, redound upon him ;
and this last drop of bitterness might not be wanting
in his cup of pain. It is not that the Pharisees would have
been behind the worst in modern times in any such subtle
inventions of hate ; but the ordering of malefactors to
execution lay in other hands than theirs ; and there is
nothing to make us think that Pilate would have devised
any additional insult for Him whom he would have
certainly set free, if his consciousness of innumerable acts
of violence and rapine and wrong, whereof the Jews
might accuse him to Caesar, had not made him the
miserable coward that he was. It was the Pharisees
whom he desired, so far as he dared, to wound.
Whether, indeed, Barabbas had actually played the
part of a false Christ, setting himself up as the true, we
have no means of knowing. It is certainly far from
unlikely. Keeping in mind the significance of names in
Scripture, we can hardly fail to recognize a fearful
mockery in his name, Barabbas, or ' Son of the Father ; '
as though in the very name which he bore, not to speak
of the work which he wrought, he should be. the devil's

296 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.
counterfeit and caricature of the true Holy One of God.
This suggestion would acquire increased probability, if it
could certainly be affirmed that he was not merely named
Barabbas, but Jesus Barabbas, the lying counterpart, even
to his human name, of the true Saviour of men. So, as
is well known, three manuscripts, at Matt, xxvii. 17, even
to this day read, and two of the older Versions, the
Armenian and the Syriac ; and that this was the prevailing
reading in the time of Origen is sufficiently clear from
some words which he uses ; for, speaking of many copies
in which Barabbas was not called also Jesus, he implies
that, many as they were, they were still in the minority.1
In support of this remarkable reading, which Tischendorf,
Fritzsche, Meyer, Rinck2 approve, but Lachmann, Alford,
Tregelles3 reject, it maybe urged, that while we can scarcely
conceive anyone daring to introduce the sacred name of
Jesus, to give it to Barabbas, while it is difficult, almost
impossible, to imagine such a thought suggesting itself to
the mind of any, we can very well understand that many
transcribers should have been shocked to find it there;
and marring the text, which they impertinently sought to
mend, have ventured to omit it. Certainly too, it must
be allowed that there appear vestiges of the existence of
such a reading in the text as it now stands ; the words,
' which is called Christ,' twice introduced after the human
name of our blessed Lord on the occasions when Barabbas
is brought into opposition to Him (Matt, xxvii. 17, 22),
and nowhere else, seem to be employed by Pilate out of
a necessity to distinguish between Him and another who
1 In multis exemplaribus non continetur quod Barabbas etiam Jesus
dicebatur, et forsitan recte, ut ne nomen Jesus conveniat alicui iniquorum.
* Lucub. Grit. p. 285.
1 On the Printed Text of the Greek Testament, p. 194.

THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 297
bore the name of Jesus as well. It is at first strangely
startling to think that this identity of name could possibly
have existed ; and yet He who bore every other scorn
and shame, why should He not have also borne this ?
All which has just been said being kept in remem
brance, it will surprise us less, that so many elements of
nobleness should display themselves in strength in one of
these malefactors, than if we regarded him merely as a
criminal of that meaner stamp whom we designate as a
thief, or even as a robber, in our ordinary use of that
word. His had been no petty larcenies ; as little in all
likelihood had he meant at the beginning to have his
living by violence and wrong. Those whom the Romans
with a certain amount of truth called 'robbers,' were often
times wild and stormy zealots, maintaining in arms a last
and hopeless protest against that yoke of the stranger,
which God had imposed on his people for the chastise
ment of their sins, and which therefore it behoved them
meekly to accept. This may have been one of these,
seeking at the outset of his career to work by the wrath
of man what he counted the righteousness of God.1
Presently a fugitive from Roman justice, compelled to take
to the mountains, and to live there by rapine, he may
have gradually learned less and less to discriminate
between friend and foe, may have earned only too well
the title under which he was at last to expiate his offences
on a Roman cross.
His own confession implies as much (ver. 41). How
easily, under such conditions, those who have begun with
1 In the record by Josephus of the final agony of Jerusalem the ^rfkoriig
and the Xijariig become nearly, or indeed altogether, convertible terms ; thus
see B. J. iv. passim.

a98 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.
quite another aim degenerate into banditti, how imper
ceptibly and yet how surely the outlaw melts into the
brigand, the story of Dolcino's Apostolicals, as of the Ca-
misards in the Cevennes, abundantly teaches us ; while in
the history of Jephthah we see how under more favour
able circumstances this freebooter may rise into the chief
and champion of his people (Judg. xi. 3, 11). He would
do this the more easily, inasmuch as he would never by his
lawless occupation have wholly forfeited his own respect or
the respect of his fellow-countrymen ; David, indeed, him
self for a while was little better than such a freebooter as
this (1 Sam. xxii. 2). Least of all would he forfeit this at a
time when the whole framework of social fife was dislo
cated and disjointed as it was at this period in Judaea;
and when the disorganization of society seemed half to
justify acts which would have been wholly unjustifiable
at another time. It is easy to perceive how a class like
this, while it would enlist some among the worst, would
also gather some into its ranks who, though miserably
perverted now, might under more favourable circum
stances have stood forth among the noblest of their age
and nation. It is not altogether unlikely that an apostle
of the Lord, Simon Zelotes, had been, as his name would
indicate, on the very verge of becoming one of these;
until in Christ he had found a more excellent way, had
discovered that the truth, and the truth only, could make
him free, or help him to make others free. But these
worst and best, however they might accidentally be yoked
together, and called by a common name, would yet only
be waiting for some contact with the truth, to reveal them
selves in the essential differences of their character, dif
ferences which up to that decisive moment may have been

THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 299
concealed alike from others and from themselves. So it
fared with this malefactor and the other. The decisive
moment had now arrived. Heaven and hell claimed each
its own. Of these two, so long yokefellows in evil, it was
manifest at length that one had in him that which was
akin to and was drawn to the light ; the other, that which
hated the light, repelled the light, and was in return
repelled by it into a yet deeper darkness of its own.1
Few as are the words which this penitent utters in his
brief address to his fellow-sinner, and then in his still
briefer to his Saviour, they yet are sufficient to reveal to
us a most authentic work of grace going forward within
him. He is, in the first place, deeply convinced of his
sin. There is no more certain sign of an effectual work of
the Holy Spirit of God than a readiness on the sinner's part
to accept and acquiesce in his punishment, whatever that
punishment may be, to put his mouth in the dust, and to
say, 'Thou art righteous, 0 God, that doest this;'
' Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the
punishment of his sin ?' (Lam. iii. 19 ; cf. Ezra ix. 6, 7 ;
' Luke xv. 18, 19) while, on the other hand, there can
be no surer token of an impenitent and obdurate heart
than the refusal of the sinner to receive correction, to
humble himself under the mighty hand of God (Isai. i.
5; ix. 10; Jer. v. 3; Luke xv. 14, 15; Rev. ix. 21;
xvi. 2i). And this man even in that bitter cross saw
1 There are many apocryphal legends about these two robbers ; which
may be found in Thilo, Codex Apocryphus, pp. 93, 143, 58°- Their very
names are there given, but variously, Dimas, or Dysmas, and Gestas,
Titus and Dumachus ; this last possibly a corruption of Qeop&xog. In one of
these legends it is told how the converted robber more than thirty years
before had allowed the blessed Virgin and her Child to pass unharmed on
their flight to Egypt, against the desire of the other, who would have
despoiled the fugitives.

300 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.
nothing more than he had earned, ' the due reward of his
deeds! How profound the conviction, how unreserved
upon his part is the confession, of sin !
And then how many other principal graces show them
selves actively working in him1 — all compressed, it is
true, and this by the very necessities of the case, within
the narrowest limits of time ; but in their intension
making up for what in extension they have not and can
not have. Ignorant he may very well have been of that
special precept in Moses' law, 'Thou shalt in any case
rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him ' (Lev.
xix. 17) ; but love is the fulfilling of the law, and love will
not suffer him to keep silence now. They two may in
times past have been frequent partners in guilt, associates
in many a deed of violence and wrong, strengthening one
another in wickedness ; but now, himself a penitent, he
would fain lead his fellow-sinner by the same blessed
path of contrition, repentance, and faith, which he him
self is treading.
And then, too, what courage, what boldness speaks out
in his confession of Christ, in his declaration, ' This man
hath done nothing amiss; and still more in his open
turning to Him as the one Helper and Saviour. Some
1 Thus Gregory the Great (Moral, xviii. 40) : Libet mentis oculos ad
ilium latronem reducere, qui de fauce diaboli ascendit crueem, de cruce
paradisum. Intueamur qualis ad patibulum venerit, et a patibulo qualis
abscessit. ... In corde fidelium tres summopere manere virtutes testatur
Apostolus, dicens, Nunc autem manent fides, spes, caritas. Quas cunctas
subita repletus gratia et accepit latro, et servavit in cruce. Fidem namque
habuit, qui regnaturum Dominum credidit, quem secum pariter morientem
vidit. Spem habuit, qui regni ejus aditum postulavit, dicens, Memento mei,
Domine, dum veneris in regnum tuum. Caritatem quoque in morte sua viva-
citer tenuit, qui fratrem et collatronem pro simili soelere morientem, et de
iniquitate sui arguit, et ei vitam quam cognoverat, praadicavit, dicens,
Neque tu times Deum, etc.

THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 301
perhaps might be tempted to rejoin, that at. such a moment
this did not cost him much, that for him, hanging on that
cross, and doomed before many, hours there to expire, the
motives which would operate on others, the fear of men's
reproach, the desire of their applause, must all have alike
passed away. But this is a great mistake, as will be
evident if only we call to mind how often men, above
all those who know no higher support, have in such a
dreadful hour sustained themselves to the last on the
sympathies of the beholders, when they have known
these to be theirs ; how bold bad men, mainly upheld by
these, have gone down with no sign of weakness, but as
with flying colours, to hell. So far from costing him
nothing, it must have required a mighty effort upon his
part to separate himself, as now no doubt he did, from all
the sympathies of all who surrounded his cross, and thus
openly to cast in his lot with the crucified Galilaean.
Hitherto, as a victim of Roman justice, as one of the
' robbers ' described just now, that is, as one of the latest
champions of Jewish freedom, a member probably of the
band of Barabbas, and sharing in the popular interest
which he excited, this man had been an object of sym
pathy and admiration to all the scorners and blasphemers
of Calvary. He would have become so still more, openly
joining, as his companion did, in their insults and outrages
against the Holy One of God. But to all this he prefers
the reproach of Christ, which surely he did not escape,
when he made that bold confession of his faith, ' Lord,
remember me, when Thou comest into Thy kingdom!
And if other graces manifest themselves in him, yet
more than all other what a wondrous faith proclaims itself
in these words of his. To believe that He, whose only

302 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.
token of royalty was the crown of thorns that still clung
to his bleeding brows, was a king, and had a kingdom,1
to believe that He, on whose own eyes the mists of death
were already hanging, was indeed the Prince of life,
wielding in those pierced hands, nailed so helplessly to
the cross, the keys of death and of hell, that He could
shut and none could open, could open and none could
shut ; that it could profit something in that mysterious
world whither they both were hastening to be remem
bered by this crucified man — that was a faith indeed.
What was the faith of any other to his faith ? Everything
seemed to give the lie to Christ's pretensionr Disciples
and apostles themselves had fallen away and fled. They
had trusted once, but they trusted no more, ' that it was
He which should have redeemed Israel' (Luke xxiv. 21).
They had now renounced that hope ; and, indeed, every
other hope ; and then, in the midst of this universal
unbelief, one, all whose anterior life might seem to have
unfitted him for this heroic act of faith, does homage, not
indeed in outward act, for his limbs are nailed to the tree,
but in heart and word, to Jesus as the King of Israel, as
the Lord of the spirits of all flesh. Truly we may say of
his faith that it was itself one of the miracles of the cruci
fixion;2 that in his conversion we have one of those
1 Bengel : Kegem profitetur, talem, qui mortuus mortno benefacere
possit. 2 Augustine often magnifies the faith which breaks forth thus unexpect
edly in this man, as a bright sun from behind thickest clouds. Thus (Serm.
23a): Magna fides; huic fidei quid addi possit, ignore Titubaverunt
ipsi qui viderunt Christum mortuos susoitantem ; credidit ille qui videbat
secum in ligno pendentem. Quando illi titubaverunt, tunc ille credidit.
Qualem fructum Christus de arido ligno percepit? . . . Non solum credebat
resurrecturum, sed etiam regnaturum. Pendenti, crucifixo, cruento, haerenti,
Cum veneris, inquit, in regnum tuum. Et illi, Nos sperabamus [Luc. xxiv.
zi]. Ubi spem iatro invenit, diseipulus perdidit. Compare Serm. 285.

THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 303
glimpses of glory with which the Father is ever careful to
light up the deepest depths of the humiliation of the Son.
But it will be well worth while to look a little closer
and more in detail at his words. ' Lord ' need not in
itself be more than a general term of respectful address :
it is oftentimes this, and nothing further ; thus Matt. xxv.
20, 24; John iv. 11; xii. 21; xx. 15, and elsewhere.
But it may have a much deeper, and a theological
meaning; and such no doubt it possesses here. For
without assuming, which would indeed be absurd, that
this untaught man meant by his 'Lord' all which we
mean by Jehovah or Lord, yet was there on his part the
recognition of a divine character in Christ. His 'Lord'
of itself would not be sufficient to prove this, but only as
it is read in the light of what follows, 'Remember me,
when Thou comest into thy kingdom! For that ' Remember
me' is no mere counterpart of Joseph's petition to the chief
butler of Pharaoh (Gen. xl. 14; cf. Ecclus. xxxvii. 6), but is
itself a prayer, even as the prayers of the Jews constantly
clothed themselves in this same form (Nehem. xiii. 14, 22,
31, and often in the Psalms ; for another kind of remem
brance see Rev. xvi. 19). But seeing that it was now at
length abundantly evident that Christ's kingdom was not
here, nor on this side of the grave, it must have been plainly
in the glory of some kingdom to be revealed hereafter that
he desired, through Christ's remembrance of him, a part.
The words themselves of his prayer should not stand
exactly as in the English Version they do. Our Trans-
Leo the Great (Serm. 51: Quaa istam fidem exhortatio persuasit? quaa
doctrina imbuit ? quis praadicator accendit ? Non viderat prius acta mira-
cula ; cessaverat tunc languentium curatlo, caacorum illuminatio, vivificatio
mortuorum; ea ipsa quaa mox erant gerenda non aderant; et tamen
Dominum confitetur et Regem, quem videt suppli'ii sui esse consortem.

304 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.
lators have on various occasions failed to mark the
distinction between the prepositions equivalent in the
Greek to our 'into' and 'in;'1 seldom however incurring
thereby so grave a loss as here. It is not, ' when Thou
comest into thy kingdom] as though Christ's kingdom
could even in thought be contemplated as apart from
Himself; but, 'when Thou comest in thy kingdom] — the
words are correctly rendered at Matt. xvi. 28 — ' when
Thou shalt appear as a king with all thy royalties around
Thee and about thee, the angels ten thousand times
ten thousand with Thee, and Thyself the centre of all'
(Dan. vii. 15; Matt. xxv. 31; 2 Thess. i. 7; Jude 14).
Christ does not and cannot come into his kingdom ; He
comes in it and with it, brings his kingdom with Him, and
where He is, there is his kingdom too.2 He who could
ask this had taken in what Pilate could not take in, that
this man was a king, and that He would one day return
to establish his kingdom upon earth.3
The reply of our Lord is a glorious example of what
1 Thus elg has not its proper meaning, Rom. v. 5 ; nor ev, Rom. ii. 5 ; v.
ai. On this, which is a fault common to many Versions of the New Testa
ment, see Winer, Gramm. § liv. 4, 5, 6.
' Maldonatus forsakes his Vulgate, which, sharing the error of our Version
and of so many other, has here, in regnum tuum ; but he : ev ttj j3aoi?^ia
oov, in regno tuo. Itaque non est sensus, Cum veneris ad regnandum, sed,
Cum veneris, jam regnans ; cum veneris, non ad acquirendum regnum, sed
regno jam acquisito, quemadmodum venturus ad judicium est.
3 In the Evangelium Nicodemi (pars 2*, c. 10) the petition put into the
mouth of this penitent, though substantially the same, is formally different.
It is as follows : Kvpie, ore [brav ?] fSamXevaeig, prj pov eirilaBy. As that
apocryphal gospel dates probably as early as the second century, it is just
possible that the difference hero may, as Tischendorf (Evangelia Apocrypha,
p. lxix.) suggests, represent another tradition of the words (verba latronis
ita discedunt a Lucaa textu, ut ex alia veterrima traditione fluxisse vide-
antur) ; but to me it seems far more probable that we have here no more
than a not perfectly accurate recollection of the words as they stand in St.
Luke.

THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 3oj
we may not unfitly call the prodigalities of the kingdom
of heaven, of the answers to prayer, infinitely larger and
more liberal than the suppliant in the boldest ventures
of faith had dared to suggest. In two points the grant
ing of this suppliant's petition immeasurably transcends
the petition itself. All which he had been bold to ask,
was that he might be remembered of the Lord. But one
may remember the absent, may do them good at a dis
tance, and keeping them at distance still. This to have
done would have fulfilled the measure of all which he
had desired. But for him, the first-fruits of the cross, the
first who should set his seal to that word of the prophecy,
' I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me,' for him
Christ has better than remembrance in store ; far better
than this — ' thou shalt be with Me!
And not this only ; he shall be with Him on that very
day.1 Christ's ' to-day] besides containing an announce
ment of his own departure out of this world within the
limits of that day, contains also a pledge and promise for
this poor pardoned sinner, that he too should find speedy
release from all his agonies — a release indeed far
speedier than according to common probabilities he
might have looked for. Crucifixion, with all its suffer
ings, was so little mortal, that persons taken down from
their cross, and duly cared for, have been known to
recover. In the lingering torture of this punishment the
1 This is often urged by Augustine ; thus Serm. 232 : Quid ei dixerit
Dominus audiamus : Amen, dico tibi, hodie mecnm eris in Paradiso. Tu
differs te; ego agnosco te ; . . . in vasisti in regnum csalorum ; vim fecisti,
oredidisti, rapuisti. Non te differo ; tantaa fidei hodie reddo quod debeo.
Compare Serm. 327. 2. Instead of the rich and pregnant brevity of that
prayer and this answer to that prayer, the Narratio Josephi (Tischendorf,
Evangelia Apocrypha, p. 442) puts a speech of twenty lines into the'mouth
of -the penitent, and one somewhat longer into that of our Lord.
X

306 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.
seats of life were so little assailed, that it was by no means
an uncommon case for criminals to expire at length of
mere hunger on their cross ; while, besides the breaking
of the legs, by which the death of these two was hastened,
various other methods were occasionally employed for ac
celerating, when this was thought desirable, the fatal close.
They were sometimes suffocated by the smoke of fires
lighted below, or were torn in pieces by wild beasts. But
for him within a few brief hours, before that day had
closed, it should be well. He should be at rest, and
more than this — in Paradise and joy. The coming of
Christ in his kingdom might very well be a remote con
tingency. In all likelihood this petitioner more or less
looked onward to it as such. But it is no remote boon
which the Lord will bestow upon him ; that very day he
shall taste the sweetness of it : 'To-day shalt thou be with
Me in Paradise!1
We must not, however, dismiss without further notice
a word on which so much has been written, a promise
the form of which in times past has perplexed not a few.
As many, indeed, as assume 'Paradise' to be equivalent to
heaven, and, in fact, identical with the kingdom of glory,
cannot fail to find a difficulty here, inasmuch as Christ
Himself was not on that day in heaven, but in Hades ;
and these suggest various ways of escaping from this
perplexity ; which, however, is one of their own creating.
A not unfrequent one is the separation of ' to-day ' from
the words which follow, with the joining of it to those
which precede : ' Verily, I say unto thee to-day, thou
1 The promise of these words can hardly fail to remind us of another
'Thou shalt be with me,' Samuel's to Saul (i Sam. xxviii. 19); that also in
Sheol, in the world of spirits ; but that announcement how unlike to this ; as
full of fear and terror, as this is of hope and joy.

THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 307
shalt be with Me in Paradise!1 Theophylact says of those
who offer this explanation, that they ' do violence to the
words ;'2 a judgment, I think, in which most will concur.8
By others, who in like manner make Paradise equivalent
to heaven, or at least fail to see its identity with Hades,
or rather with the happier half of Hades, it is said that
however his human soul was that day in this latter place,
yet, according to his divine nature everywhere present, He
was in Paradise, — that is, as they understand it, in heaven.
This is the usual interpretation in the early Church,4
and in the medieval,5 and generally in the modern Roman

1 In the Evangelium Nicodemi, 26, the words are actually transposed, and
stand thus, af/pepcm Xiya aoi, pef 'ipov k.t.%.
2 'E/c^iC^ovrai to Jyijpa.
8 The first I know who makes mention of this way of escape from an
imaginary difficulty is Hesychius, a presbyter of .Jerusalem, who probably
wrote in the fifth century (Qucest. 47) : nog ?/ imboxeoig tov Kvpiov vpbg tov
\no~rrp> neTTAi/poTai, bn ofypepov per1 ipov eai) iv Tip ¦KapaSeiao-, Merd yap rbv
oravpbv b Xpiarbg elg "AiSov em ry i?ievBepia tov veKpov napayiverac. eSei Se Kal
tov Avottjv (scil. Trapayiveodai elg "AiSov), inrevBwov bvra to vbpa T-ijg Qvceug.
He goes on to state, but does not approve of, this solution : nveg phi ovrog
avayivaanovoLv, 'Apfpt Xiyo 001 aijpeporv- elra emfipovoLv, bn pef ipov eai) iv tQ
TapaSeiau. 'Thus Augustine (Ep. ad Bardanum, 187); and this, although he has
excellently well prepared the way for the right explanation by the distinction
which he draws between Paradise, the waiting place of happy spirits, and
heaven, or the kingdom of glory (restat igitur ut in inferno intelligatur
esse paradisus, ubi erat illo die futurus -esse secundum humanam animam
Christus). This, however, he suggests only to abandon it again, and to
take refuge in the omnipresence of Christ, who according to his divine nature
was everywhere, and therefore that day in heaven. For similar explanations
of the Greek Fathers see Suioer, Thes. s. v. Xijarfig.
5 Anselm in one of his deeply pathetic Orationes (the 42nd) expresses
himself thus : Et quid hoc est, o rex desiderabilis ? Tu clavis affligeris, et
paradisum promittis. Tu pendes in ligno, et latroni dicis, Hodie mecum
eris in paradiso! Et, o desiderium animarum, ubi est paradisus, quia dicis
latroni, Hodie mecum eris in paradiso ? An paradisus tecum est, et ubi tu
vis, paradisus est? An tu indubitanter paradisus es, quia tain confidenter
promittis, Hodie mecum eris in paradiso? Credo, Domine, credo certe quod
ubi tu vis, et ubi tu es, ibi paradisus est; et esse tecum, hoc est esse in
paradiso. Compare Aquinas, Sum. Theol. 3", 5a. 4.
x2

308 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.
Catholic.1 But it is not universal. Severus, the great
leader of the Monophysites, has seen his way perfectly
here ;2 the only drawback to his exposition of this passage
being that he makes Paradise here absolutely, and, so
to speak, locally, identical with the Garden of innocence
of our first parents ; the truth being that in the evolution
of theology in the later Jewish schools that Garden had
lent a name to the happy place where the souls of the
faithful, released from the burden of the flesh, are waiting
their perfect consummation and bliss ; and that it is of
this Paradise our blessed Lord is speaking. Jeremy
Taylor8 has traced excellently well the history of the word,
and what upon his lips it signified now : ' Our blessed
Saviour told the converted thief that he should " that day
be with Him in Paradise." Now without peradventure
He spake so as He was to be understood, meaning by
"Paradise" that which the schools and pulpits of the
Rabbies did usually speak of it. By " Paradise" till the
1 Corn, a Lapide : Certum enim est Christum cum latrone die illo quo
obiit non ascendisse in caelum, sed descendisse ad limbum patrum; ibique
eis visionem suae divinitatis impertivisse, itaque eos beasse ; quare tunc
Christus eorum sortes mutavit ; fecit enim ut limbus esset paradisus, ut
inferi essent superi, ut infernus esset caalum. Ubi enim est Christus, ibi est
paradisus ; ubi est visio Dei et beatitudo, ibi est caalum.
* Valuable fragments of his Commentary on St. Luke are preserved in
Cramer's Catena. A few words of his on this matter I will quote : rd Si
aAjjBig rijg e^nyfiaeog, tovtS ion' Ta iirrjyyeApeva f/piv ayaBa. [SaoLAeia ioTlv
ovpavov, oitxl n elg tov ¦KapaSeusov elaaSog, i/ jj ivavoSog. all' laug ipel Tig o?
ravrbv ioTiv 7j paoiAila tuv ovpavov Kal b napaSeiaog, Svo irpooqyopiav ovcav
nepl iv irpaypa to vnoKelpevov. aKk' )}- tov lepov ypappdrov SiSaamXia Se'iKvv-
civ ag ov ravTov ionv, a2X eKaripov iroAv rb Stafopov. Having vindicated the
higher dignity of the paaiAeia tov ovpavov, he proceeds : ij Si ipyaaia tov
irapaSeioov [SavavaSg Tig oiiK ijv, aAA' elxe AoyiKJjv evi^poavvryv 'avapzpiypivrpi
Kal favoiov Belov anbXavaiv. 'iicre b AyaT7}g tov pev TzapaSeiaov TervxiKCV
rd Si ev ekitiai Tijg fiaaikeiag tov ovpavov perd tov hi? alovog SiKaiav ovk im-
piaaro, tov Qeov nepl lipov Kpelrrbv tl Kpo/3Xefapevov, Iva pi) xuP'C 'fj""*' Teleia-
Baoi. ' A Funeral Sermon on Sir George Balstone.

THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 309
time of Esdras it is certain the Jews only meant that
blessed garden in which God once placed Adam and
Eve ; but in the time of Esdras, and so downward, when
they spake distinctly of things to happen after this life,
and began to signify their new discoveries and modern
philosophy by names, they called the state of souls ex
pecting the resurrection of their bodies by the name of
Gan Eden, the garden of Eden. ... It is therefore
more than probable that when the converted thief heard
our blessed Saviour speak of Paradise, or Gan Eden, he
who was a Jew and heard that on that day he should be
there, understood the meaning to be that he should be
there where all the good Jews did believe the souls of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to be placed.'
This is the only occasion during the days of his flesh
on which (so far at least as we know), Paradise was made
mention of by our Lord. Once too He mentions it in his
glory (Rev. ii. 7), and once it is on the lips of his chief
apostle (2 Cor. xii. 4). These are the only times that it
occurs in the New Testament. Hanging on the accursed
tree his thoughts may well have travelled back to another
tree, even the tree of life, standing in the Paradise of
God ;x in that Paradise, which by all this travail and sore
agony He was at this instant winning back for the chil
dren of men, quenching in his own blood that fiery
flaming sword which, since the sin and sentence of Adam,
had kept it against them; even as he was opening for
them the gates of another Paradise, and, as a Stronger,
wresting from the strong one the keys of death and of
hell (Rev. i. 18).
1 Bengel: In paradiso: in quo feliciores arbores quam in Golgatha; cum
hninortalitate, Rev. ii. 7-

310 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.
As I cannot but hope that materials for sermons may
sometimes be sought in these Studies, I will not bring
this one to a close without one or two practical observa
tions. There is sometimes a tendency to regard the grace
vouchsafed to this penitent as exceptional, as not to be
brought within the ordinary laws of God's dealings with
the children of men. We may sometimes hear it said, that
as that moment when the Son of God hung upon the cross
was a moment unlike every other in the moral and spi
ritual history of the world, so there were graces vouch
safed then, unlike those of any other moment, larger, freer,
more marvellous ; such as were proper to that time and
no other ; the gates of mercy being, so to speak, thrown
open more widely than at other times ; and that therefore
no conclusions can be drawn from what then found place
as to what will find place when events have returned to
their more ordinary course. This is sometimes urged,
and chiefly out of a desire to withdraw the temptation to
a deferred and late repentance, which the acceptance of
this penitent at the closing moment of his life might
else seem to hold out to others. I confess that even the
desire to avert such an abuse, cannot persuade me to
accept this explanation of the grace which he obtained. "
The laws of God's kingdom, the conditions under which
grace may be obtained, are unchangeable. This man
was accepted and forgiven exactly on the same grounds
as those on which any other will find pardon and accept
ance, because he repented, and believed, and obeyed.
Time does not exist for God ; and if only this repentance,
faith, and obedience of his were genuine, whether they
were spread over the forty or fifty years to which his life
in the natural course of things might have been pro-

THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR. 311
longed, or concentrated into the few hours upon the cross
which he actually did survive, this made and could make
no difference in God's sight. I have said, ' if only these
were genuine,' which in the present instance we know
that certainly they were ; for this is the fatal danger of
all repentance postponed to the last, and thus withdrawn
from all trial and proof, that the man, little as he may
guess this, may be deceiving himself; that in all likeli
hood his repentance is not genuine, is not sincere ; that
almost certainly it is not so, when it has been deferred on
so mean a speculation as this, of giving to God the least
and obtaining from Him the most, grinding the corn of
life, and, according to the old proverb, giving the flour to
the devil, and only the bran to God. It is by the pressing
of this, the almost universal self-delusion of death-bed
repentances, that we must rescue this Scripture from dan
gerous abuse, from proving a temptation and a snare, not
by excepting the dealing of God with this man from the
category of his usual dealings in the kingdom of his
grace and power.
One word more. We have admired, and with abun
dant reason, the faith of the poor penitent, who could
believe, even in such an hour as that was, in the royalties
of Christ, that the title set in bitter mockery over his
head, spake nothing more than the truth, that He was a
king, and would yet come in his kingdom, and that it
would be well with them who should be then remembered
of Him. But let us not finally take leave of this history
without reverently admiring also his faith to whom this
prayer was addressed, his confidence, not to be shaken by
all which was happening round Him, which was finding

312 THE PENITENT MALEFACTOR.
place within Him, in his divine Sonship ; his, who could
believe that, crucified through weakness, He was yet
Lord over all, that all things had been delivered into his
hands by his Father, that He could grant to this suppliant
for his favour all which he asked, and much more than
he asked ; who dispensed as confidently his favours from
that cross of shame as the kings of the earth dispense
theirs from their thrones of glory ; who in this promise
claimed and avouched all worlds as his own. Not when
the victory had been already won, and He had been
declared to be the Son of God with power by the Resur
rection from the dead (Rom. i. 4), did He say to the
beloved apostle, ' I am He that liveth and was dead ;
and behold I am alive for evermore ; and have the keys
of death and of hell' (Rev. i. 18), with a calmer and
more majestic confidence than to this poor suppliant man
He declares in the hour of his own agony, ' To-day shalt
thou be with Me in Paradise! Truly this is the Lord of
life ; and then, when He thus spake, was gloriously
fulfilled that which so many of the early Fathers thought
they found written as a prophecy of the triumphs of the
cross in the 96th Psalm, and which is equally true
whether there fore-announced or not, Regnavit a ligno
Deus.

16. CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES
ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS.
Mark xvi. ia, 13 ; Luke xxiv. 13 — 35.
We have a slight hint of this beautiful little history, and
indeed the history itself, but in barest outline, at Mark
xvi. 12. He has there very much such a summary
abridgement of it as he has of the Temptation elsewhere
(i. 12, 13). At the same time, for the breadth and ful
ness of detail, which render it one of the most interesting
records of the Great Forty Days, we are altogether in
debted to St. Luke.
The Resurrection had taken place already ; but the
disciples had refused to credit it. The Sun of Righteous
ness, which seemed to have set forever, had again risen
with healing on his wings ; but the disciples, not without
grave fault of their own, are walking on in darkness still,
in a darkness which in some sort they have made for
themselves. So it fares with these two, of whom we here
read : ' And behold, two of them went that same day to a
village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about
threescore furlongs! The name of one of these favoured
wayfarers we learn a little further on. It was Cleopas
(ver. 18), who must not be identified with the Cleopas of
John xix. 25.1 Who the other might be we are not told.
1 This Ktebing is short for Kfabnarpog, while that (K/Uwrdf) is an Aramaio
name.

314 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES
Apostle he certainly was not; and those who suggest
Bartholomew or James cannot reconcile this with the
fact that the two report the mysterious interview to the
Eleven (ver. 23), could not therefore themselves belong to
the Eleven. Neither is it at all likely that the unnamed
disciple was St. Luke himself; for this, again, seems
scarcely reconcilable with the announcement of the Evan
gelist that the account which he gives in his Gospel was
delivered to him by those who were ' eyewitnesses,' as
well as 'ministers of the word' (i. 2) ; herein implicitly
affirming that such ' eyewitness ' he had not himself been,
that he had not himself beheld, as these two beheld, the
risen Lord. Jerome and others suppose that they may
both have been of the Seventy; which is probable enough ;
but we cannot affirm it with any certainty. The village
of Emmaus, north of Jerusalem, and mentioned by Jose
phus,1 to which they were journeying, ought not to be
confounded, as it has often been, with another Emmaus
in the plain of Judaea, and not ' threescore furlongs] or
something more than seven miles, from Jerusalem, but
not less than twenty from the capital city. All modern
attempts to discover the site of this village have- been
unsuccessful. ' And they talked together of all these things which had
happened. And it came to pass that, while they communed
together and reasoned, Jesus Himself drew near, and went
with them. But their eyes were liolden, that they should
not know Him' (cf. John xx. 14; xxi. 4). While St.
Mark seems to lay the cause of the non-recognition of the
Lord on the part of his disciples to his changed ap
pearance (' after that He appeared in another form unto two
1 B. J. vii. 6. 6.

ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS. 315
of them '), St. Luke finds it rather in their ' holden eyes!1
'And He said unto them, What manner of communications
are these that ye home one to another, as ye walk, and
are sad?'2 From more than one word here, we may
take it for granted that the two disciples were in earnest
debate ; not unduly striving nor contending ; but still re
garding from different points of view, and each urging
upon the other his own interpretation of, that stupendous
event, of which they had just been the witnesses. To
them thus earnestly debating, and allowing this earnest
ness to shew itself in their outward mien, the Lord joined
Himself, in guise the most unpretending, as a fellow-
traveller on the same road with themselves ; but at the
same time as one himself interested in the matter which
could interest them so strongly, and moved no less by the
settled sadness of their countenances ; and who, out of no
idle curiosity, would fain learn, if this might be permitted,
what it was that stirred and saddened them so much.
The two disciples, as I think we may gather from their
reply, were not perfectly pleased to be accosted, and in
terrupted in their confidential discourse with one another,
by one who seemed to have no right to meddle with the
sacredness of their sorrow. They cannot forbear ex-
1 The two statements are excellently reconciled by St. Augustine (Serm.
239. 2): Alia enim effigies visa est, retentis oculis non apertis.
2 ' And are sad ' is hardly an adequate rendering of Kal iore oKvBpanoi,
though it might be difficult to improve it. ZnvSpoTrbg, occurring in the
New Testament only here and at Matt. vi. 16 (where Basil the Great ex
changes it well with oTvyva^ov), and in the Old at Gen. xl. 7 : Dan. i. 10 ;
Sirac. xxv. »3, from mvBpbg (and that from anv&pai) and <ty>, is better ex
pressed by the German 'traurig,' as it would be by our own 'dreary,' if
' dreary ' still kept the exact force which it had at the beginning ; see for
this in Richardson's English Bictionary the quotation from Gower;
another in Richard of Hampole's Pricke of Conscience:
' Now es a man light, now es he hevy,
Now es he blithe, now es he drery.1
It expresses the downcast look of a settled grief, pain, or displeasure.

316 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES
pressing their surprise that such a question should have
been put to them: ' And the one of them, whose name
was Cleopas, answering said unto Him, Art thou only a
stranger at Jerusalem, and hast not known the things
which are come to pass there in these days ?' The English
Version is not here perfectly satisfactory. It seems to
attribute the questioner's ignorance of what must be the
cause of their grief to his being ' a stranger ' or sojourner
at Jerusalem. But, not to say that such an event as the
rejection and crucifixion of one who claimed to be the
Messiah must have been just as well known to the
pilgrims at the feast as to the actual dwellers at Jerusalem,
the words will not bear this meaning. They are not
without a certain difficulty ; but on the whole it will be
best and simplest to render the first clause in the sentence
thus, 'Dost thou lodge alone at Jerusalem?' 'Dwellest
thou,' that is, 'in solitude there, apart from the busy con
course of men, and thus so withdrawn from acquaintance
with all which is passing in the city, that no tidings have
reached thee of the mighty and marvellous events which
within the last few days have befallen ?' The disciples,
in the all-absorbing interest which those events have for
them, take for granted that, if only known, they must
have the same for every other ; and they have, more
over, been so blown abroad, that nothing but an absolute
isolation from all company with his fellow-men can have
hindered their questioner from having knowledge of them.1
1 Beza: Tu solus commoraris Hierosolymis? with a shifting of the
emphasis from napoiKelg to pbvog. AH which could be urged against this
rendering is that irapoiKelg thus fails to obtain its full force, and is too much
rendered as though it were KaroiKelg : but the other explanations, such as
are offered by Theophylact, Castalio (quoted by Beza), Meyer, and others,
seem to me either absolutely untenable, or encumbered with far more
serious difficulties than is this.

ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS. 317
The Lord's answer, 'What things?' is exactly adapted
to draw from the disciples a further communication.
Had He replied that He knew, this would naturally have
prevented Cleopas from entering further into a matter
already familiar to his interrogator ; and, of course, He
could not answer that He did not know. His question
serves the purpose for which it was intended : 'And they
said unto Him, Concerning Jesus of Nasareth, which was
a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all
the people' (cf. Acts vii. 22). From this answer of theirs
it is evident that the mystery of Christ's divine nature
was hidden from them as yet ; or if at any time they had
caught glimpses of it, these now were completely obscured
by the thick shadows which during the last days had
closed around their Lord. Jesus was to them ' a prophet]
and, as we presently see, the prophet, He that ' should have
redeemed Israel] the Messiah therefore ; but the Jewish
anticipations of a Messiah (and they had not lifted them
selves above these), did not involve more than glorious
human prerogatives. That Messiah should come, and
that God should come, they expected both ; but that both
promises should be fulfilled in one and the same person,
that these two stars of hope, which had lighted Israel
through long ages of gloom, should in the actual fulfil
ment blend and become one star, this was a mystery hidden,
we may say, or almost hidden, from prophets and kings,
from those who most waited for the consolation of Israel.
They go on to complain of the reception which, notwith
standing all these glorious manifestations of his power both
in word and work, He had found from the spiritual chiefs
of the people : ' and how the Chief Priests and our rulers
delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified

318 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES
Him. But we trusted' (they speak of it as a trust which
they must now renounce, which indeed they have re
nounced), 'that it had been He which should have redeemed
Israel!1 To say, as some do, that this redemption which
they looked for at the hands of the Messiah was merely a
deliverance from the yoke of their worldly oppressors, is
certainly a mistake. It may have been thus with many ;
but there were always those who understood that the
deliverance must reach much deeper than this ; that to
be a redemption worth the name, it must be a redemption
from sin, from the bondage of unruly appetites and in
ordinate desires. It was indeed true that this deliverance
would necessarily, in God's good providence, have drawn
after it that other deliverance ; that if Israel had turned
to God, and welcomed his Anointed, the yoke of its
Roman lords would, in one way or another, have soon
been broken from its neck ; for this bondage was but an
echo of the other ; and thus the faithful in Israel may
very possibly have blended, in all likelihood did blend,
the two deliverances into one ; but still this outward re
demption was not in their thoughts the beginning,
still less was it the whole, of the redemption. In the
prophecy of the father of the Baptist the two redemptions,
from the yoke of evil and from the yoke of their foreign
oppressors, are wonderfully blended together. He whom
God shall raise up, a horn of salvation for his people, shall
deliver them from their enemies ; but this, that they may
'Augustine (Serm. 235. § 2): Quando enim cum illis fuerat ante
passionem, omnia praedixerat, passurum se fuisse, moriturum, tertio die re-
surreoturum ; omnia praedixerat ; sed mors illius, illorum oblivio fuit. Sio
perturbati sunt, quando eum viderunt in ligno pendentem, ut obliviscerentur
docentem, non exspectarent resurgentem, nee tenerent promittentem. Nos,
inquinnt, sperabamus quia ipse erat redemturus Israel. 0 discipuli,
sperabatis ? ergo jam non speratis.

ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS. 319
4
serve Him in righteousness and true holiness all the days
of their life (Luke i. 68-79; cf- Jonn """• 31-^)-
They go on : ' And besides all this] in addition to that
cruel death inflicted on Him by our rulers, and sufficiently
explaining the sadness which Thou hast noted in us, ' to
day is the third day since these things were done. We
might .have had some glimpses of hope up to this present
time, seeing that while He was alive, He more than once
uttered mysterious words not merely about his own death,
words which we have found only too true, but also about
a triumphant reversal of that doom of death, mysterious
words about what should happen on the third day after
his death ; but this day has arrived, and is unmarked by
any change.' How much unbelief is there here. The
third day has come, but it has not gone ; and how could
they be sure that He had not already made good his
words ? indeed, there was much to render it likely that
He had. Their own words which follow imply as much :
' Yea, and certain ivomen of our company made us aston
ished, which were early at the sepulchre. And when they
found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also
seen a vision of angels, which said that He was alive'
(ver. 1-10; John xx. 1, 2). The hesitating, doubting
disciples will not confidently affirm of this that it was a
mere subjective imagination of these women; as little
pledge themselves to its objective reality. They speak of
it therefore as ' a vision of angels] leaving this matter un
decided. They go on to tell of the visit of Peter and
John to the sepulchre ; ' and certain of them which were
with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the
women had said! But, having thus stated all which gave
them warrant for hope, they yet leave off with the

320 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES
mournful, desponding words — ' but Him they saw not ' (cf.
ver. 12; John xx. 3-10).
They have poured out all their hearts before Him. If
is now his turn to speak. He still, indeed, preserves his
incognito ; their eyes are holden as at the first, so that
they still see in Him no more than the sympathizing
stranger, who has joined himself to them in the way.
Much, no doubt, they must have wondered when they
found in Him a scribe instructed to the kingdom ; one
who took the part of their former hopes against their
present fears ; one whose very rebukes, earnest as they
were, must have been welcome ; for it was their despair
which He rebuked ; and just so far as they acknowledged
those rebukes to be just, their despair must have given
place to hope, their sorrow have been turned into joy.
' And He said unto them, 0 fools, and slow of heart to
believe all that the prophets have spoken! Some of the
Scripture they had believed, as much as fell in with their
preconceived notions, prejudices, and opinions ; which is
so often the way with us all ; but not ' all that the prophets
had spoken! Man's word, and woman's word, and angels'
words, they had paid more or less hged to all these ; but
God's word, that word which liveth and abideth for ever,
they had not built and established themselves on it. Of
that word they had not enquired, nor sought to learn
from it how it should fare with the Christ of God ; else
they would have found that the very things over which
they were mourning, as the defeat and discomfiture of all
their high-raised expectations, had long ago, even from
the beginning, been fore-announced and declared needful
preliminaries to his entrance into his glory. They
would there have learned that these sufferings and this

ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS. 321
death, so far from giving the lie to their Lord's pretensions
as the Christ, were actually laid down in Scripture as
things without the endurance of which the true signs
of the Messiah would have been wanting in Him ; that
through the vestibule of death it was appointed for Him
to pass into the palace of life : ' Ought not Christ to have
suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?' They
hitherto had not spoken of Christ but in a roundabout
manner, as 'He that should have redeemed Israel' (ver.
21) ; but the Lord at once employs this word which
stood at the centre of all Jewish hopes. They err who
conclude from hence that Christ had entered into his
glory already ; He did not do this till his Ascension, and
this which He is speaking now is not history, but doctrine.
Did not the Scripture announce a suffering Messiah before
a reigning and glorious One ?
'And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He ex
pounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concern
ing Himself " (cf. ver. 44; John i. 45; Acts xxvi. 22, 23;
1 Pet. i. 11). What, we may reverently enquire, were the
passages to which the great Prophet of the New Covenant
mainly referred, as having in Himself been fulfilled ? And
first, what prophecies of a suffering Messiah did He recog
nize and allow, claim in the books of Moses for his own ?
He began, as we can hardly doubt, with the prot-
evangelium; the Seed of the woman, who should bruise
the serpent's head, or, in other words, inflict on him a
wound which should be deadly, was not Himself to escape
unscathed altogether; this same serpent should bruise
his heel (Gen. iii. 15). And then there were the types,
claimed by the Lord in the days of his flesh, or by those
who wrote concerning Him, as fulfilled in Him ; the
Y

;i2 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES
brazen serpent (Num. xxi. 9 ; John iii. 14) ; the paschal
Lamb (Exod. xii. 46 ; John xix. 36) ; and as the types,
so also the typical persons ; Joseph, who from the lowest
humiliation of the pit and the dungeon passed to the highest
place of dignity and honour, even to the right hand of
the throne ; David, who suffered so much and so long
from the persecutions of Saul — these, with many more.
And when the august Interpreter of the things in Scripture
concerning Himself reached the prophets, it can be little
doubtful that the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah was the
central prophecy which He expounded. Around this
there would be grouped the great prophetical Psalms of
the Crucifixion— the Psalms are specially referred to, not
here, hat ver. 44 — as eminently the twenty-second, claimed
by the (Lord upon his cross (Matt, xxvii. 46 ; Mark xv.
24), and the fortieth, claimed in like manner for Him by
his apostle (Heb. x. 5) ; then further Daniel ix. 26 ; and
the book of the prophet Jonah ; while Zechariah would
prove rich in prophetic glimpses of all which had just on
Calvary been fulfilled, as xii. 10 ; xiii. 7. These disciples
had assumed that Jesus of Nazareth could not be the
Christ, because He had suffered these things ; the Lord
shews them from all Scripture that He could not be the .
Christ, unless He had suffered these things.
And now, while He was still engaged in opening to
them the Scriptures, 'they drew nigh unto the village,
whither they went; and He made as though He would have
gone further ;' not, that is, pretended, but actually would
have gone further, unless they had detained Him; by
thus offering to proceed, proving them, whether his words
had taken any mighty hold upon them cr not ; and
whether there was any desire upon their part for further

ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS. 323
communion with Him (cf. Mark vi. 48). It was seen
that there was so. Much they had heard, yet they evi
dently desired to hear still more. ' But they constrained
Him, saying, Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and
the day is far spent. And He went in to tarry with 'them''
— to be their guest now, as two of their number at the
outset of his ministry had been his (John i. 39).
'And it came to pass, as He sat at meat with them, He
took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them!
He, in some sort the guest, assumes at once the place of
the host, and, as at other times (Matt. xiv. 19 ; xv. 36 ;
xxvi. 26), the prerogatives of the householder or goodman
of the house, to whom this blessing and giving of thanks
of right belonged. 'And their -eyes were opened, and
they knew Him ; and He vanished out of their sight. ' He
was known to them, as they themselves report to the
Eleven, 'in breaking of bread' (ver. 35). This might
seem to imply that there was something in the act of
breaking of bread by which they recognized at last with
whom they had to do. At the same time the words,
' their eyes were opened] going before ' they knew Him]
and put evidently as the condition of their knowing,
imply that it was not a mere natural conclusion which
they drew from something which they saw Him do, but
a supernatural enlightenment, a ceasing of the condition
indicated at ver. 16, where it is said, ' their eyes were
holden! But what was there, it may be asked, in this
'breaking of bread' by which they knew Him? Some
answer that this was a celebration of the Holy Eucharist,1
and that they recognized the form of consecrating words.
* Thus Augustine (Serm. 239): In panis fractione cognoscitur, quia ibi
percipitur, ubi vita aeterna percipitur. Tl

324 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES
But, in the first place, certainly these two were not pre
sent at the institution of the Holy Eucharist, for only
apostles, which these are not, were there. And then, in
the second place, it is an entirely gratuitous assumption
that this was an Eucharistic celebration. Roman Catholics
are fond of asserting that it was so, thus to find warrant
and authority for reception under one kind, only bread
being mentioned here. The blessing of the bread can of
itself prove nothing. It is quite true that this is mentioned,
and that it constituted an essential part of the Eucharistic
celebration (Mark xiv. 22) ; but as at other times also He
blessed the bread (Mark vi. 41), no argument can be
drawn from hence ; and for us the absence of one of the
constituent elements of this sacrament may well be de
cisive that no such sacrament was here. The words can
scarcely mean more than that at that solemn moment
their Lord revealed to them who He was. The manner
of his disappearance, like that of all his comings and
goings after the Resurrection, is mysterious (John xx.
19, 26), and quite unlike anything which had found place
before. His body, it is evident, was not any longer sub
mitted to the same laws as those to which ours are
submitted now, and to which his own had been hitherto
submitted. ' And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn
within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while
He opened to us the Scriptures ? ' They wonder that this
had not enabled them long since to guess who it was that
had thus been speaking with them. The nearest parallel
to this of the heart burning within them may be found in
the words of the Psalmist, ' While I was musing, the fire
burned; then spake I with my tongue' (Ps. xxxix. 3).''

ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS. 325
With such tidings to tell, they do not tarry any longer at
Emmaus. ' They rose up the same hour, and returned to
Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them
that were with them! Yet if they imagined that they were
the first to bring the glad tidings, in this they were dis
appointed — if disappointment it could be called ; they did
but contribute another stream to swell the great floodtide
of joy, which every moment was rising higher and higher.
They found the Eleven, and them that were with them,
able to answer good tidings with good ; nay, as it would
seem, preventing their good tidings with those which they
had themselves to tell, with evidence coming in from one
quarter and another, and now from the very chief among'
themselves, that the barriers of the grave had indeed been
broken, that their Lord was in truth that Conqueror of
death, that Prince of life, which in their unbelieving ears
He had proclaimed Himself to be : ' The Lord is risen
indeed, and hath appeared to Simon' (cf. 1 Cor. xv. 5).
And yet, anticipated though their tidings had been, every
confirmation of a fact so marvellous, so far transcending
all experience and all hope, must have been welcome ;
welcome therefore their confirmation of it, as they threw
their symbol into the common stock of hope ripening
nOw into glorious certainty, as ' they told what things were
done in the way, and how He was known of them in
breaking of bread!1

1 This Scripture, besides its literal and historio meaning, may possibly
have a symbolic meaning as well. Such Hugh of St. Victor has traced in it
(Miscel. i. 100): Jesus in via ambulantibus faciera suam abscondit, osten-
surus earn in patria. Propterea in fine viaa cum discumbere coepissent, fregit
Jesus panem ut interiora ejus patescerent, et ibi eum agnoverunt, quia post
vitaa hujus cursum in regno caelorum cum Abraham et Isaac et Jacob dis-
cumbentes, et super mensamejusedenteset bibentesin aaterno convivio, Jesu

325 CHRIST AND THE TWO DISCIPLES. ETC.
eflaritatena ividebmnt. Nunc autem interim in via peregrii.ns apparet, ut
exilium nostrum :agnoscamus, et quod alia est patria nostra. Et colloquendo
corda ad amorem inflammat, sed oculos ad contemplationem adhuc non
revelat. sQni ergo in via ex «ermonibus Jesu ignem amoris eorde concipiunt,
in fine viaa claritatem ejus videbunt. Sunt itaque linguaa igneaa quaa
veniunt ad nos ; et verba flammantia quotidie Christum nobis loquentem
atidimus ; quia spiritum Christi non habet, qui verba Christi audiendo non
ai'det. I will fill this page with one quotation more from the same illus
trious theologian, its right to a place here consisting in the commentary
which it supplies to those words of the disciples, ' Bid not our heart burn
within usf' though indeed I- am more tempted to quote it as a magni
ficent specimen of what mediaeval Latin in the hands of a great master, who
had some great truth to set forth, could accomplish (In, Eccles. Horn, i):
In meditatione quasi qurBdam lucta est ignorantiaa cum scientia, et lumen
veritatis quodammodo in media caligine erroris emioat; velut ignis in ligno
viridi, primo quidem difficile apprehendit, sed cnm flatu vehementer excitatus
fuerit, et acrius in subjectam materiam exardescere coeperit, tunc magnos
quosdam fumosaa caliginis globos exurgere, et ipsam adhuc modicaa seintil-
lationis flammam rarius in-terl-ucentem obvolvere videmns: donee tandem,
paulatim crescente ineendio, vapore omni exhausto et caligine disjecta,
splendor serenus appareat. Tunc victrix flamraa in omnem crepitants rogi
congoriem discurrens, libere dominatur; subjectamque materiam eircum-
volitans, ac molli attaetu perstringens larabendo exurit ac penetrat : nee prius
quiescit, quam interna penetrando succedens totum quodammodo traxeritiu
se, quod invenit praater se. Postquam autem ineendio id quod exurendnm
est concrematurn a sua quodammodo natura totum in ignis similitudinem
proprietatemque transierit, tunc omnis fragor decidit et strepitus sopitur,
atque ilia flammarum spieula e medio sublata tolluntur, saavusque ille et vorax
ignis, cunctis sibi subjectis et arnica quadam similitudine concorporatis,
in alts, se pace silentioque componit ; quia jam non invenit nee diversum
aliquid praater se, nee adversum contra se. . . . Sic nimirum carnale cor, quasi
lignum viride, et necdum ab humore carnalis eoncupisoeiatiaa exsiecatum, si
quando aliquam divini timoris seu dilectionis scintillam conceperit, primum
quidem pravis desideriis reluctantibus passionum et perturbationum fumus
exoritur ; deinde, roborata mente, cum fiamina amoris et validius ardere et
clarius splendere coeperit, mox omnis perturbationum caligo evanescit ; et
jam punt mente animus ad contemplationem veritatis se diffundit. Novissime
autem, postquam assidua, veritatis contemplatione cor penetcatum fuerit, et
ad ipsum summaa veritatis fontem medullitus toto animaa affectu intraverit,
tunc in idipsum dulcedinis quasi totum ignitum, et in ignem amoris con-
versum, ab omni strepitu et perturbatione pacatissimum requiescit.