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Library of the
JPale Divintrg School

The Books of
jfranfc Cbamberlain porter
Winkley Professor of
Biblical Theology

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THE TEACHING OF JESUS

THE
TEACHING OF JESUS
IN EIGHTEEN SECTIONS

ROBERT F. HORTON i • .
AUTHOR OF
"INSPIRATION AND THE bible'' "REVELATION AND THE BIBLE"
"THE CARTOONS OF ST. MARK " ETC

LONDON
ISBISTER AND COMPANY Limited
IS & 16 TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN
1895
fvAii? nrnmy SCHOOL j

Printed ly Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press.

ECCLESIiE NOSTRA
DE ME OPTIME MERITS
H^EC OPTIMA MEA
DEDICO

PREFACE

WHEN Wendt's exhaustive work, Lehre Jesu,
appeared, it was evident that a new starting-
point for theological reconstruction had been given
to the world. It was a matter of regret that so
magnificent a work should be marred by certain
presuppositions which belong to the Ritschlian
School. Beyschlag in his New Testament Theology
offered some minor criticisms of Wendt's work, but
did not unfortunately alter that defect, which was
the most serious blot on the Lehre Jesu, the attempt
to explain away one of the most indubitable elements
of the teaching of Jesus, the fact of His pre-existence.
I felt it my duty to give to my own Church the
main results of these two invaluable books, espe
cially in the hope that I might remove the great
defect, while passing on the splendid spoil which
these scholars had carried away from the study
of years.
I have now thrown the substance of eighteen
sermons on the subject into the present form. The
homiletic — though not the didactic — setting has
been, laid aside, in order to save time and space
With the utmost conciseness I have endeavoured

viii PREFACE
to sketch the teaching of Jesus as it has been pre
sented to us by the labours of such authorities as
Wendt and Beyschlag.
I cannot anticipate a large number of readers,
for it is the unhappy delusion of the Church that it
knows the teaching of Jesus. Possibly, if I were to
give the book a true but sensational title, "The
Revolution of Theology," the Church would pay
attention to it. On the other hand, men of the
world have small interest in the teaching of Jesus
because they have not marked the distinction be
tween it and the teaching of the Church. " Hear
the Church " has been the cry of centuries. They
have done so. " Hear Him " is, I would fain hope,
the cry of this book.
ROBERT F. HORTON.
Hampstead, September 1895.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Introduction: The Teaching of Jesus. . . .n

PART 1.— THE SYNOPTICS
The Kingdom  -25
The Son of Man  39
The Father ... . . -53
Sin .... . . . . 67
Righteousness  . . 81
Salvation . .  95
The Means of Salvation  109
The Church  125
The Judgment  139
PART II.— ST. JOHN
The Crown of the Teaching  155
The Nature of the Father  171
The Nature of the Son  187
The Pre-existence of Jesus  203
Eternal Life  219
The Death of Jesus  235
The Community of Believers  251
The Resurrection  267

THE TEACHING OF JESUS
THERE is a new breath in modern theology, as
if the air of spring were stealing from the stiff
lips of winter, and the Christian faith were about
to become again the animating spirit of men and
nations. It is due to a remarkable revival of interest
in the teaching of Jesus. The attraction of that
subject is amazing. When Wendt's careful and
exhaustive study appeared in an English form I
chanced to refer to it in a sermon, and letter after
letter came to me asking for particulars. I seemed
to hear the earnest voice of England saying, Tell us
what He taught.
Considering that His teaching is all contained
within the narrow compass of the four Gospels, one
would suppose that every one had some exhaustive
acquaintance with it. "What need," you might
ask, " for any book at all on the contents of the
most familiar and the most limpidly clear of all
English books ? Surely every one knows and
quotes the sayings of Christ ? " Yes, but few know
the teaching of Jesus. Few, even among theologians
and preachers, have made a study of it.
I had occasion last year to read through the

12 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
works of that great Puritan divine, John Howe ;
and in six octavo volumes of treatises and discourses
I found no allusion to the teaching of Jesus as such,
the teaching as a whole, the teaching as the main
authority in religion. Stranger still, quite recently
Dr. Denney has published some brilliant and in-
structi\7e lectures which he delivered at Chicago as
an informal manual of orthodox theology.1 In this
stimulating volume all the problems of religion are
handled. But there is no reference to the teaching
of Jesus, except when the lecturer wishes to treat of
the Church and the Last Judgment. He then refers to
the reputed sayings of our Lord upon these subjects
— almost the only subjects of His teaching on which
our records are confused and uncertain.
But the strangest fact of all is that when we go
back to the New Testament itself we find that the
most voluminous of the apostolic writers, St. Paul,
does not allude to the teaching except in the most
casual way. Though the oral tradition which is
embodied in our Gospels must have been current in
the apostolic circles, and familiar to those first wit
nesses as the alphabet of religion, it does not appear
to have formed the subject of their preaching.
What is the explanation of this anomaly ? It would
seem that the wonder of the Cross, the Resurrection
and the Ascension, obliterated in a blaze of glory
every other consideration. " He died for our sins
and rose again for our justification." "Himself
1 I am delighted to see that this book has already run through
several editions, and has been recognised as one of the great
contributions to theology of the year 1895.

THE TEACHING OF JESUS 13
bore our sins in His own body on the tree." "He
is the propitiation for our sins." The mind was
filled and dazed with that triumph over sin and
death, that entrance into heaven, and the door
opened to all believers. The first apostles stood in
adoring gratitude around an empty tomb, and
gazed up into heaven where they saw Christ sitting
at the right hand of God. Just as we think far less
of the sermons, powerful and witty as they were, of
Ridley, Hooper and Latimer, than of their heroic
martyrdom; just as Savonarola the teacher is
merged in Savonarola the sufferer; so, only in a
still higher degree, Jesus, the prophet of Galilee, the
lawgiver of the Sermon on the Mount, was almost
forgotten in Christ the crucified one, Christ the
risen one, Christ the returning judge.
Thus even from apostolic times the bias to which
I refer has been observable in the Church. The
teaching of Jesus has been neglected in favour of
the central fact in His saving work. At times, and
in many churches, the connection between the two
has been lost. And it needs little argument to prove
that Christianity, as we know it — as it has been
known since the beginning of the second century
— shows but slight and occasional traces of some
things which figured largely in the teaching of its
founder. And yet the reiterated insistence, and the bulk, of
the Gospel narrative in our New Testament, will
never let us rest content with the omission. Before
we can reach the first word of apostolic teaching
about Jesus, we have to read a fourfold record of His

14 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
teaching on religion and life, on the apostles them
selves, and on the whole course of human affairs.
We are not permitted to forget that in the first in
stance He appeared as a teacher. " They were all
amazed, insomuch that they questioned among
themselves, saying, What is this ? A new teach
ing!"1 " He taught them as one having authority."2
Thus they thought He must be one of the ancient
prophets redivivus.3 And even in looking back upon
His life at the moment of their bereavement, the
main impression left upon their minds was that of
" a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and
all the people."4
He was of course quite explicit in saying that He
was more than a prophet, nor is it possible for the
Church to rest content with the recognition of Him
as a teacher. His own teaching forbids such a
limitation. The work which He had come to do, the
work of which He said that He was straitened until
it was accomplished, was obviously something
greater and more arduous than simply the utterance
of truth. But we cannot think that His teaching was
only an incident. We cannot dismiss it as applic
able only to that place and time — as a preparation, a
scaffolding to pass away when the building should
be reared. For He expressly said that His word
should not pass away. And further, His saving
work is so vitally connected with His teaching, both
as a cause, a means, and an end, that if we lose
sight of the teaching the doctrine of redemption
1 Mark i. 27. 2 Matt. vii. 29.
3 Mark viii. 28 ; Matt. xvi. 14. 4 Luke xxiv. 19.

THE TEACHING OF JESUS 15
itself ceases to convince the understanding and to
grip the conscience.
It is the misfortune of the Church that she has
always been tempted, following the lines of the
Pauline epistles in a way which Paul himself never
would have done, to construct a theory of atone
ment, of justification, sanctification and redemption,
which is practically independent of her Lord's teach
ing. Thus she has often arrived at a view of salva
tion which does not include salvation from sin, and
at an expectation of eternal life which has no con
nection with a Christ-like life on earth.
But whenever, even for a moment, she has got
back to the teaching of her Lord, wonderful things
have happened. An Imitatio Christi has been written
for the lasting guidance of the devout, or a life of
St. Francis has been lived, a sweet and powerful
copy of the Lord's own life. And here in our day
again men are struggling back to that potent teach
ing. Leo Tolstoi is stirring Europe by an honest,
however one-sided, attempt to face and to frankly
accept it. And in thousands of minds less eminent
it is working like a seed, pushing through the dull
dust of the ages, and already filming the dry
branches of life with the green promise of spring.
I appeal, therefore, for your close and continuous
attention to a brief exercise in the teaching of
Jesus. It would hardly do to pass to our study of the
teaching without saying a word about the authority
and the source from which it is derived. It is all
contained in the four Gospels; but the Gospels

16 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
have been so pitilessly criticised, and so vehemently
assailed, that some careless observers have con
cluded that their authenticity has been discredited.
I have not time for a detailed proof of the fact
that modern inquiries have served rather to estab
lish than to weaken the trustworthiness of these
ancient records. But I will state in a sentence or
two the kind of reasons which allow us to believe
that we have here the genuine teaching of Jesus.
One clear fact may serve as the keystone of the
external evidence, which Bishop Lightfoot has
reared in the face of this generation, a noble and
durable arch sufficient in itself to support the belief
that our Gospels are genuine history, coming from
the circle of the eye-witnesses of the events. The
fact I select is this : Papias, whom Irenaeus in the last
quarter of the second century already speaks of as
an ancient (dpxaiog avrjp), tells us hoAV carefully he
gathered from the first disciples and their followers
the commandments which came from the Lord Him
self. He was inclined to trust the living voice
more than written records, and was therefore parti
cular to converse with these apostolic men as he
had opportunity. Here, then, is a contemporary of
the evangelists, whose life falls between 70 and
150 a.d. And it is he who gives us our earliest
notice of the Gospels. "Mark," he says, "who became
the interpreter of Peter, accurately, though not in
any particular order, wrote what he remembered
of Christ's utterances and deeds. It was his one
thought to omit nothing that he heard and to falsify
nothing. Matthew compiled the Logia (which may

THE TEACHING OF JESUS 17
mean the discourses, or possibly, as Dr. Charteris
thinks, the general narrative of the life) in the
Aramaic language, and every one rendered them as
he could."
It would be difficult to have earlier or more direct
testimony to the fact that our Gospel records come
from Peter and Matthew, two of the first disciples.
We have no such evidence for the poems of Homer
or the histories of Tacitus. With such evidence,
of which the fact I have stated is only an item, no
one would ever have questioned the antiquity and
the authenticity of the teaching, but that the con
tents of the Gospels necessarily pass a judgment
upon us all, and every Christless man is naturally
eager to disprove Christ.
The difficulty some have felt in realising how the
words of Jesus could be retained in the memory of
those that heard until Jhey were committed to writ
ing need not detain' ui. His sayings are of that
pithy and picturesque character that' easily makes a
lasting impression on the memory, and it is evident
that He took particular pains to fix His teaching in
the minds of the choosen few,1 so that, until they
were capable of grasping His meaning, they should
at least be secure of the words.
I may also, in passing, call your attention to a
curious little mark of the antiquity and authenticity
of the first three Gospels. In all three we find on
the lips of Jesus the saying that this generation (avrr)
yzvia) shall not pass away until all these things be
1 Mark iv. 10-32.

1 8 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
accomplished.1 " These things" include not only the
events of the destruction of Jerusalem, but also the
signs and wonders of the last day. Not only that
generation, but fifty generations more have passed
and yet all " these things " are not fulfilled. Now,
as we shall see, this apparent falsification of a
prophecy is probably due to a confusion in the
records of two very distinct discourses. But how
absolutely incredible it is that the confusion should
have occurred, and that the three evangelists should
have put into the Lord's lips a mistaken prediction,
if, " that generation " had passed away when they
wrote ! This curious blunder, therefore, which has
often been cited as an objection, is really an unde
signed and startling proof that the writers belonged
to the same generation as Jesus.
But now I must remind you that the external evi
dence never was and never could be the guarantee
for the teaching of Jesus. A teaching which comes
from God and is intended to save the world, will not
depend for its demonstration on documents or on
historical witnesses. It must carry its proof in itself.
And the overwhelming reason for believing that here
we have His teaching is, that the teaching itself, when
it is cleared of a few obvious excrescences, due to
Judaic or Ebionitic influences or to misunderstand
ings of the evangelists, stands out in a way which is
unmistakable. Never man spake like this Man. That
was the impression made from the first. It is the
impression made still. If we had only one evangelist,
it would be open to us to argue that he had invented
1 Mark xiii. 30 ; Matt. xxiv. 34 ; Luke xxi. 32.

THE TEACHING OF JESUS 19
this teaching. In that case he would have been Jesus,
and we should have offered to him the homage which
we now offer to the Lord. But four writers could not
have invented a body of teaching like this, as we
shall see directly we look at its characteristics. The
Person who produced this teaching is, as such, and
whatever He may be styled, the Master Spirit to
whom the ages bow down in adoration. The nine
teenth as the first century finds that it is impossible
to get beyond it.1
This conviction grows on every one who makes a
complete study of the whole. It will grow upon
each of us, I trust, as we proceed. But I may so far
anticipate as to state three at any rate of the con
clusions which are necessarily reached by such a
study. 1. First of all, though the teaching comes to us
apparently in broken fragments, it requires but small
ingenuity to piece the fragments together, and to
trace the outlines of the complete whole which existed
in the mind of Jesus.
In the ruined Abbey of St. Albans the restorers
found innumerable fragments of carved and painted
stone trodden into the ground behind the chancel.
When these were collected and patiently pieced
together the shrine of the saint was recovered, which
1 Professor G. J. Romanes remarked that the strongest evi
dence for Christianity was " the absence from the biography of
Christ of any doctrines which the subsequent growth of human
knowledge — whether in natural science, ethics, political economy,
or elsewhere— has had to discount. This negative argument is
- really almost as strong as is the positive one from what Christ
did teach."— Thoughts on Religion, p. 157,

20 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
stands now in its completeness, a visible proof that
the fragments had originally belonged to the whole.
In the same way we are able to take the scattered
utterances and thoughts of Jesus — many of them
individually are found of course in other teachers —
and to fit them together, until a lovely and harmoni
ous structure of doctrine rises before our eyes. That
some of His thoughts are anticipated by Jewish and
Ethnic thinkers does not detract from His originality,
because that consists not in isolated truths, but in
the remarkable doctrine in which they take their
appropriate and articulated place.
Let us vary the illustration. In the discourses
which have come down to us we see only one star or
one constellation at a time, while the greater part of
the sky is obscured with clouds. But as we come
to map out the points of light which are from time
to time revealed, we discover that the wide span of
starry heavens is over us. In His mind everything
is complete and consistent, whether He is touching
on one part or another at any particular time.
2. But this leads us to notice another peculiarity
of His method. He never argues or reasons, as if
He were seeking for truth, and arriving at it by the
ordinary processes. He simply asserts and declares.
/ say unto you, is the tone of His teaching, all the
more remarkable because He is so strangely meek
and lowly in heart. Thus it is what Beyschlag calls
" the mother speech of religion." It is always as if
the reservoirs were up in the heavens, and under
His supreme control. He smites the rock as He
will, and the waters gush out. Ws are so familiar

THE TEACHING OF JESUS 21
with the mariner of the four Gospels that it is diffi
cult to adequately appreciate this feature of the
Lord's teaching. But attempt to contrast His way
with St. Paul's. Note how He stands at the foun
tain-head, and, indeed, is the fountain, while St Paul,
with all his divine and eager conviction, with all his
inward experience, is still only the chief of those who
come to draw water from the fountain ; and you begin
to realise what a unique mark we have here on the
teaching of Jesus. The conviction grows upon you
that no one could have invented it.
3. But what are we to say of that chief wonder —
viz., the nature of the religion itself which is implied
and conveyed by the teaching of Jesus ? As we
come to grasp this, all misgiving about authenticity
fades away. Especially if we have trained ourselves
to recognise elements of divine truth in other re
ligions of the world, and can appreciate the finer side
of the Buddha, or of Confucius, or of Mahomet, what
an overwhelming impression is made on us by the
sublimity and simplicity, the truth, obvious at once
when stated, but elsewhere not attainable by man,
of the religion which Jesus taught! All that is
good in other religions has been gathered up and
preserved ; but all that is local and transitory in
them has disappeared. Most important things, un
known to them, are here revealed clear as the sun
at noonday. Religion is not a matter of nations
or races, but of man. It is not a matter of forms or
ceremonies, but of the spirit. It is not a matter of
mere outward action, but of the heart. It is not a
matter of correct opinion, but of love. "Perfectly moral

22 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
and morally perfect," this teaching makes the most
humiliating discoveries of human sin and the most
exacting demands of holiness. All the notions of
holiness entertained by Jew or Buddhist appear
formal and tarnished in comparison with what Jesus
means, and in His person exhibits, when He speaks
of holiness. And yet all is full of compassion and
grace. God appears not so eager to convince of sin
as to save sinners. The lofty ideal is seen stooping
to become real, and to catch up fallen man to itself.
This religion meets the deepest craving of the
human heart, because it is the religion of eternal life.
It addresses men as the possessors of a lost home
which it proposes to restore. It consecrates time
and earth by shedding on them the light of heaven
and of eternity.
And as for Him who propounds this splendid
religious conception, He gives one the impression
all the time of gazing into the face of God with un
troubled eye and unagitated heart. With no sins
of His own to confess, no atonement for Himself to
make, He is entirely at leisure to attend to the sin
ful world. Out of a perfect relation with God flows
His teaching like a crystal stream. It flashes with
light. It quenches the thirst of the soul. It cuts
deep channels, lays bare the heart, breaks it in
penitence and tears. No words from human lips
were ever like these. Though the whole body of
His teaching seems small as the disc of the sun in
a summer sky : like the sun, it pervades the world
with divine light and warmth, life and love.
In this light, as we abide, we see light. The

THE TEACHING OF JESUS 23
Seen becomes a vestibule to the Unseen ; the suffer
ings to which flesh is heir become the discipline in
the school of God. We are introduced at once to
the kingdom of God, which is here like the seed in
the soil, and is yet above like the harvest of the
world, a kingdom which is and is yet to be, homely
and comforting to the heart that receives it now, but
teeming with sublime expectations for the future.
When we begin to grasp what the truth is
which underlies all that He taught, we cannot
hesitate about its authenticity. As Rousseau said
of the person of Jesus Himself, Vinventeur en seroit
plus e'tonnant que le heros, so we may say with con
fidence that whoever conceived and gave to the
world this splendid vision, this interpretation and
justification of human life, would be, and must be,
the Saviour of the world.
Whence did He derive this teaching ? Not from
the East, nor from the West. Not from Jerusalem,
nor from the ancient Scriptures. If He quotes
them it is always as if He were their authority, not
they His. Think not that I came to destroy the law
or the prophets; I came not to destroy, but to fulfil?-
He fulfilled them only by bringing a kernel out
of the husk, and substituting Himself for them.
The product of the ancient Scriptures is Judaism.
Christianity could not be derived from them.
As no one can suggest any other origin for His
teaching, we may, and must, accept His own
account of it. All things have been delivered unto me
of my Father; neither doth any know the Father save
1 Matt. v. 17.

24 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
the Son, and He to whomsoever the Son willeth to
reveal Htm? My teaching is not mine but His that
sent me.2
The teaching is from God ; that is the only con
clusion we can reach. " See that ye refuse not
Him that speaketh from heaven." A charge lies
at the door of the Church that she has always been
saying, "Hear the Church." How little has she
insisted on this prior obligation, " Hear Him ! "
But the better day is coming. The new breath is
in the air. We have Him as the rock to which we
can continually resort. Churches and theologies
have failed us and confused us, and mourned their
failure and confusion. But Christ remains. He is
still in the chair of the Teacher. He still speaks
from the Mount.
Hushed be the noise and the strife of the schools,
Volume and pamphlet, sermon and speech,
The lips of the wise and the prattle of fools ;
Let the Son of Man teach !
Who has the key of the Future but He ?
Who can unravel the knots of the skein ?
We have groaned and have travailed and sought to be free :
We have travailed in vain.
Bewildered, dejected, and prone to despair,
To Him as at first do we turn and beseech :
"Our ears are all open ! Give heed to our prayer 1
O Son of Man, teach."
1 Matt. xi. 27. a John vii. 16.

THE KINGDOM
The kingdom of heaven is at hand (tryyucev — i.e., has
come near). — Matt. iii. 2; iv. 17.
THE kingdom of heaven ! This was the word
on the lips of Jesus when He began to teach.
It must have been used by Him every day, and
many times a day, during His crowded ministry.
And in the last notice we possess of His earthly
manifestation, when He was about to ascend to
heaven, we find Him for those forty days still
"speaking things concerning the kingdom of God."1
An idea which thus occupied His mind should
surely occupy ours. To understand what He meant
by it must be the condition of understanding His
teaching as a whole. If we miss the keynote, the
master-thought, of a teacher, we are likely to miss
everything. And in the case of Jesus the body of
doctrine is so compact, so closely related in its
several parts, that unless we grasp the ideas which
He regarded as central, there is small chance of
anything but confusion and misunderstanding. -
Yet what part does the teaching about the
kingdom of God play in the Church ? It is a
1 Acts i. 3.

26 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
strange fact that the beautiful phrase hardly
occurs in the New Testament when we have.passed
out of the Gospel narratives. The Church, broadly
speaking, has reached a tacit resolution to ignore the
phrase, or else to exploit it. If the words have
been used they have borne a meaning far removed
from the meaning of Jesus.
The kingdom of God has been understood as a
synonym for the Catholic Church. St. Augustine
turned the mind of Europe in that direction. Or it
has been understood as a periphrasis for the life of
the redeemed after death. Protestants have gener
ally accepted this explanation. But nothing can be
more evident to a student of the words of Jesus
than this : that His language about the kingdom is
not suitable to the Catholic Church, and that to con
fine His reference to the future life is literally to lose
His thought altogether.
It is therefore a melancholy fact that if Christian
men were asked suddenly to state what this
kingdom of heaven is which absorbed their Master's
thought — what this phrase means which sounds out
again and again in the records of the great bio
graphy — a large number would be able to give no
answer at all, and a still larger number would give
an answer, which, to say the least of it, was never
derived from Him or His words.
Here then, at the outset, we discover how " He
spake as never man spake." He was constantly
addressing the future as well as the present. His
words sought their audience a thousand or two
thousand years ahead. His ideas had to lie, like a

THE KINGDOM

27

seed-corn in a mummy's hand, waiting millenniums,
until they could enter appropriate soil and germinate.
He spoke of the kingdom of heaven. None who
heard Him could ever forget the phrase. No one
could record His utterances without constantly setting
it down. But because many remembered and recorded,
it did not follow that they understood. They were far
from understanding. They are of small help to us in
the matter. When we want to know what Jesus
meant, it is useless to ask the Church or the Fathers ;
it is not enough even to ask the apostles. We must
ask Him. The apostles missed some shades of His
meaning, the Fathers more, the Church, for weary
centuries, lost it altogether. The rosy colours of
the dawn faded into the light of common day. The
world under a Christian name grew sick and weary
again. Theologies waxed and waned. Faith became
stale, flat, and unprofitable. To-day a Christian
country is one in which a majority of the people
appear absolutely indifferent to religion ; a majority
of those who are not indifferent are without enthu
siasm, without passion, without zeal ; while the most
earnest are usually sectarian rather than religious,
capable only of interest in their Church, or their
system, or their shibboleth. And why? Because
we have ignored what He means by the kingdom of
heaven. We have allowed ourselves to be deprived
of the key of His teaching, and we cannot unlock the
door. But, says some one in protest, all Christians pray
again and again in every prayer, public and private,
Thy kingdom come ! How ridiculous it is to say

28 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
that we do not know what is meant by the kingdom !
But let me be understood. I bring no accusation
against the brethren. Of course I know that many
who use the phrase attach a meaning to it. But what
I venture to assert is, that the meaning is for the
most part not the meaning of Jesus. It is the mean
ing of evangelical hymns, or it is the meaning of
Hildebrand, or it is, essentially, the meaning which
prevailed in Judaism when Jesus came, the meaning
which He laboured to subvert. For we must come
now to close quarters, and observe how He borrowed
the phrase from the religious language of the day,
and how He transformed it. Unh appily we have kept
it more or less un transformed !
I. He took the phrase from the language of His
own day. We know that since the time of the
Maccabees the Book of Daniel had been among the
most popular books of deAOtion in Judaism. Jesus
was well acquainted with it, and frequently employed
expressions from it. Indeed, the opulent symbolism
and the gorgeous diction of the book might well give
it currency among a religious people, whose religion
was of an external and terrestrial type. There one
reads : " In the days of those kings shall the God of
heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be
destroyed, nor shall the sovereignty thereof be left
to another people ; but it shall break in pieces and
consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for
ever." And " I saw in the night visions, and,
behold, there came with the clouds of heaven One
like unto a son of man, and He came even to the
Ancient of days, and they brought Him near before

THE KINGDOM 2g
Him. And there was given Him dominion and
glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations,
and languages should serve Him : His dominion
is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass
away, and His kingdom that which shall not be
destroyed."1 This kingdom, which every pious Jew identified
with the aggrandisement of his own nation, coloured
the patriotism, and excited the expectation, of all who
were waiting for Messiah. In all the circles of
Jewish orthodoxy it was a topic of discussion, and
there was a prayer current, called the Kaddish : "May
He shortly cause His kingdom to come ! " Thus,
John the Baptist, whom all the people counted a
prophet, was frequent in his proclamation of the
coming kingdom. It was a designation of a good
and religious person like Joseph of Arimathaea, " who
also himself was looking for the kingdom of God."2
It was an eager question among the Pharisees "when
the kingdom of God should come ? " 3 It was a
theme of conversation even at a dinner-table, and a
devout mind in the Pharisaic coterie would say, as
well as feel, " Blessed is he that shall eat bread in
the kingdom of God." 4
It is not so easy for us to penetrate into the mixed
and frequently turgid associations of the phrase in
the popular mind. There were some, no doubt, who
expected a manifested theocracy — a glorious and
blessed reign of God over Israel, extending in ever
wider circles of conquest to the uttermost ends of
1 Dan. ii. 44, vii. 13, 14. 2 Mark xv. 43.
8 Luke xvii. 20. * Luke xiv. 15.

30 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
the earth. Their idea was that the nations would
become proselytes of the Gate, and the Law of Moses
would go out from Jerusalem as the religious code of
mankind. It was in itself a fine, if rather grandiose,
conception. But as it shaped itself in the common
mind, among a fallen and subject race, with proud
and bitter memories of the past, it was very far from
admirable. Indeed, it was not distinguishable from
a narrow and egotistic Chauvinism.
The ordinary Israelite in the crowds whom Jesus
addressed probably entertained ideas of this kind:
his eye was on the legendary glories of the kingdom
in the days of David and Solomon ; he exercised
his imagination on memories of sacked cities, rebels
put under the harrow, provinces annexed. No book
of the Bible was more palatable to him than that of
Esther, and at the feast of Purim he fed his heart on
the story of the persecuted Jews " standing for their
lives " in Shushan and throughout the Persian pro
vinces, and slaughtering their enemies by the my
riad. Or he pictured to himself the Roman Empire,
like that image of iron and clay struck to the dust
by the mysterious stone ; and that stone was Israel.
He was persuaded that the Jew should become the
head of the nations and not the tail. Jerusalem and
not Rome should be the capital of the earth. Je
hovah should take the place of Jupiter Capitolinus.
As in his own time all the tribes of Israel gathered
and went up to Jerusalem for the stated feasts, so,
with the coming of Messiah, should all mankind go
up. Israel would be the priesthood of the world,
and would occupy the kind of position which his-

THE KINGDOM 3X
torically has been realised by the Pope and the
hierarchy of the Western Church.
In a word, what the Jew understood by the king
dom of God was practically what Europe has known
for many centuries now as the Roman Church, with
this minor difference, that the Pope, cardinals and
priests would all be Jews.
These visions of splendour, of conquest, of ven
geance and gratified ambition, tinged always with
triumphant religious zeal, filled the minds of the
people. John the Baptist was not free from them,
as his puzzled and disappointed deputation to Jesus
shows. And they gave body and passion to the
prayer that the kingdom might come.
II. Now Jesus took the familiar phrase, and trans
formed it.
The announcement of the Baptist. He makes
His own word for word.1 But so far from using it
in the popular sense, so far even from accepting the
Baptist's view of the matter, He made it the main
business of His teaching to read into the words a
wholly different, and yet an obviously truer, mean
ing. Using parables for those who were not yet
advanced enough to understand — and few of us
even now are sufficiently advanced for Him to lay
aside parables altogether — but seizing every oppor
tunity of explaining " the mysteries of the kingdom "
to those who were able to receive,2 He spent laborious
hours and days in vindicating the grand idea by
entirely disentangling it from the worldly expecta-
1 Matt. iii. 2 ; Matt! iv. 17.
2 Matt. xiii. n ; Mark iv. 11.

32 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
tions, the national prejudices, and the materialistic
interpretations, which were current, and have been
current, among men. The boldness of this move is
incredible. It is almost as if some strong wise
teacher were to arise among us to-day, when the air
is thick with schemes of social reconstruction, and
were to address Socialists possessed with impossible
dreams, pressing crude and external reforms, with
the words : " Socialism is at hand ; I have come to
establish it on earth " ; and then were to proceed to
explain that Socialism would be realised by every
one becoming unselfish, unmercenary, and filled
with the spirit of love. Such a teacher would be
howled down by Socialist leaders to-day. The
Preacher of the kingdom of God, in the right sense
of the word, was crucified by those who professed
to belong to the kingdom of God in His day.
For mark the astounding and radical change He
made! He did not for a moment deny that the Jews
were, in the Old Testament sense, the kingdom of
God. No one was ever more patriotic than Jesus.
He was the first to admit the spiritual supremacy
of Judaism among the faiths of the world. The
Jew knew what he worshipped, for salvation was of
the Jews. Israel were the children at the Father's
table, whose bread must not be cast to the dogs.
But that was in the Old Testament sense. A new
day was dawning. / say unto you that many shall
come from the east and the west, and shall sit down
with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in the kingdom of
heaven, but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth

THE KINGDOM 33
into the outer darkness? And to the national repre
sentatives He said : The kingdom of God shall be
taken away from you and shall be given to a nation
bringing forth the fruits thereof?
In a word the kingdom of heaven was not heredi
tary or national at all. Such kingdoms were from
the nature of the case kingdoms of earth not of
heaven. The kingdom of heaven was moral and
spiritual ; and the conditions of entrance were of
the same quality.
First, always first, all important, is a state of the
soul. How reluctant men are always to be reminded
of this ! If it is a matter of donning a uniform and
fighting, or of adopting a party cry and shouting,
we are all very ready at once to enter the kingdom
and get the benefit of it. But this suggestion of an
inward preparation chills us to the marrow. Yet,
blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven, people who mourn, the meek, they who
•hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the
pure in heart, the peacemakers, they who suffer for
righteousness' sake — these are the true sons of the
kingdom.8 What ! on this showing hardly any one, Jew or
Christian, can be in the kingdom of heaven. Yet,
there is the law of the Sermon on the Mount,
written in imperishable letters. Moses could break
in pieces the tables of stone, but this table cannot
be broken. The kingdom of God is a state of the
soul, an inward relation between God and the souls
God has made, and a course of earthly conduct which
1 Matt. viii. 12. 2 Matt. xxi. 43. a Matt. v. 3.
c

34 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
results from this relation. And as a state of the
soul is not produced by the pomp of officials, the
pageantries of courts, the threats of armies, apoca
lypses, terrors, and other methods which have made
much noise in the world, the kingdom of heaven
has nothing to do with these. It does not employ
them ; except indirectly it is not affected by them.
Thus even the most gifted prophets of the old
regime were a little wide in their calculations.
They, including the last, John the Baptist, antici
pated an apocalyptic demonstration, a tremendous
crisis, a sudden coming of Messiah to His temple ;
they pictured Him with a fan in His hand, burning
the chaff with unquenchable fire, gathering the
wheat into His garners. He disappointed all these
expectations by the turn that He gave to the idea of
the kingdom. So astonishing was the contrast be
tween what he expected and what he saw that the
Baptist himself was half sceptical. For, here the
kingdom was coming, as it were, without any ob
servation. There was no immediate separation
between the good and the bad, no harvest of in-
gathered grain, with piles of the burning chaff.
But it was all very quiet and gradual, like leaven
working in the dough, or like a seed sown silently
in the ground. A mere word — not flashing swords
and gathering hosts — a mere word was flung broad
cast over varying soils, to be baffled, to be rejected,
to be destroyed, to make its potent way. How un
exciting it looked ! No king, then, in this kingdom
of heaven ! Nothing that we should call a king,
until disinlssing all ideas of common kingship,

THE KINGDOM 35
crowns, arms, and the glory of conquests, we can
understand That to guide nations in the way of Truth,
By saving doctrine and from error lead
To know, and knowing, worship God aright,
Is yet more kingly.
Yes, all expectations were frustrated ; the kingdom
of God was receiving a totally new signification.
III. What was the new signification ? According
to Jesus, heaven is a state in which the will of God
is ideally done, -and earth is a state in which the will
of God is habitually violated. The kingdom of
heaven comes to earth just in proportion as the
rebellious wills of men are replaced by the acknow
ledged will of God. Jesus was Himself the first
man who ever on earth did completely the
will of God; with Him therefore the kingdom
of heaven came to earth. For the first time in
human history the finger of God was working
absolutely through a human being, and for that
reason he could say, The kingdom of God is upon
you? The idea is very simple, but everything is involved
in it. The sincere and practical recognition that
God is sovereign ; the complete inward acceptance
of His sovereignty ; the mode of life which results
from this recognition, and this acceptance ; that is
the kingdom of heaven. It is possible to analyse
the idea into two component parts, but the parts are
not divided. One may discern, first, a relation to
1 Matt. xii. 28 ; Luke xi. 20.

36 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
God, loyalty, obedience, love, such as Jesus manifests
in His fellowship with the Father ; second, a relation
with men, unselfish, affectionate, rich in benignant
service, such as Jesus displays in all His earthly
life. That is the kingdom of God.
Thus from the moment that Jesus began, not only,
like John the Baptist, to preach, but in His own flaw
less person to manifest, this ideal relation of the
human soul with God and man, the kingdom began
to come. Immediately eager souls were smitten with
the love of it, and sought to possess it as besiegers
seek to force their way into a walled city.1 For to
see this kingdom is to desire. Already, from the
first day of His manifestation, there are several in it,
and the least in it is at once greater than John the
Baptist, though he was the greatest born merely of
woman. The prophets were not free from turgid,
earthly, and unregenerate ideas. But every one as
he enters the kingdom lays these aside, and lives
only in the Spirit.2
But while the coming of the kingdom began at
once with Jesus, the kingdom could only come by
slow degrees, by more and more. How could it be
otherwise than gradual when whosoever does not
receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no
wise enter therein? Not many, and they only by
throes and travail, become as children. Slowly, but
surely, the kingdom will come and the end will be
reached. The seed sown in weakness and secresy
will be raised in power. Out of the piled sheaves
1 Luke xvi. 16. 2 Matt. xi. ii.
3 Mark x. 15 ; Luke xviii. 17.

THE KINGDOM 37
of human history the children of the kingdom will
be gathered, and they will inherit the kingdom prepared
for them from the foundation of the world?
How lovely is the coming of the kingdom, utterly
unlike the coming of earthly sovereigns, and the
establishment of thrones on a land made slippery
with blood.
A farmer whose fields lay on the undulating slopes
of the Cheviots, a man careless, earthbound, sordid,
was out early one spring morning, when the ploughs
were in the furrow. In a hollow of the hills he
found himself alone. All the hedgerows were quick
and green. All the birds were singing. Soft white
clouds moved across the sky like a procession of
dancing children. Suddenly a thought smote him :
" Everything I see and hear is praising God — every
thing except me — I am not, I know not how." It
was the seed of the kingdom that had fallen into
his heart from heaven :
God taught his heart
To bear its part
And join the praise of Spring.
In such a way, silent, potent, unobserved, as the
spring works in the bound bosom of the ground,
comes the kingdom of God.
1 Matt. xxv. 34.

THE SON OF MAN
Dan. vii. 13, 14
WHEN one dwells upon the exquisitely simple
and convincing idea which is expressed in
the purified term, kingdom of heaven, one might be
tempted for a moment to suppose that the truth
stands out of itself, on its own footing, sufficient,
irrespective of Him who announced it. One does
not immediately notice that the same truth enunciated
by the Baptist, or preached by St. Paul, would not
have accomplished the object. There has always
been a danger of forgetting that the all-important
factor was the manifestation of the kingdom in a
person who completely embodied it. The world has
not wanted prophets and apostles who have asserted
that all religion lies in doing the will of God,
In la sua votuntade e nostra pace.
But what up to the time of Jesus was wanting to
the world was the exhibition of the will of God done,
and the religious power which flows out of it.
More than once in the Christian centuries men
have attempted to preach the kingdom of God which

40 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
Jesus preached, leaving out Jesus who preached it.
This disastrous omission, however, can never be
allowed by one who is determined to study and to
understand the teaching of Jesus in its entirety. For
in that teaching, next to the constant exposition of
the kingdom of heaven nothing occupies a more
constant and a more prominent place than the
exposition of Himself. Jesus is occupied in offering
and explaining His own person to mankind. This
is done with such modesty and with such exquisite
delicacy — self-assertion is so remote from His cha
racter and His method — that a careless reader of the
first three, or, as they are called, the Synoptic
Gospels, might easily overlook this most remarkable
feature of His teaching.
And here let us observe how humorously perverse
the human mind is in arguing against its chief good.
The divinity of Jesus is assailed in the same breath
on two self-contradictory pretexts : first, because in
the Synoptic Gospels He does not assert His divinity,
and second, because in the Fourth Gospel He is
represented as asserting it. In the latter case it is
said, " This man bears record of Himself, His record
is not true." In the former case it is said, " He
does not bear record of Himself ; if He were divine
He would have done so." Wonderful to state, the
course which He actually pursued was precisely
adapted to meet both these objections.
We will at present leave the Fourth Gospel out of
account, for it obviously stands in a category apart.
But in the Synoptic Gospels He adopts a mode of
self-designation, or self-revelation, which, from its

THE SON OF MAN 41
very peculiar character, is one of the most striking
proofs that could be given of His unique nature. It
is this : He chose a title which in its simplest
meaning was the Hebrew synonym for man, but in
its literary application was identified with the
promised deliverer and saviour whom Israel was
expecting. Determined to check all the false and
materialistic hopes which clustered about the name,
Messiah ; determined to gain recognition by purely
spiritual and moral claims which were the very
essence of His work ; determined therefore to show
Himself only to those who had eyes to see, and at
all costs to avoid a premature recognition from those
who were spiritually unsuitable, He called Himself
by the designation Son of Man. Nothing could be
simpler than that. Nothing could be more signifi
cant. But He held in His own hands the power of
declaring its significance.
It is very remarkable that men have been content
to read the Gospels for generations without even
seriously inquiring why Jesus assumed this singular
designation. And when the inquiry was suggested
the most strained and far-fetched interpretations were
offered. Yet a devout mind, using the Scriptures
alone as an aid, might quickly arrive at a conclusion.
And how is it likely that we should understand the
person and teaching of Jesus before we have taken
the trouble to examine the title by which He desired
to be known ? Could it have been a chance or a
meaningless freak, that He spoke of Himself as the
Son of Man ?
I. The Origin of the Name. Every student of

42 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
Scripture is aware that the expectations of the
kingdom of God in Israel were always connected
more or less distinctly with a Person who was
eventually to come, and to be anointed for the work
of establishing the reign of God on the earth. The
actual title of The Anointed, in Hebrew The Messiah,
in Greek The Christ, does not occur in any specific
connection with the Promised One in the canonical
Scriptures of the Old Testament. Taken from an
obscure passage in the Book of Daniel, however, it
became familiar in certain apocryphal writings, like
the Book of Enoch, and was in constant use among
the pious Jews who waited for the Hope of Israel.
In the more ancient writings the idea was developed
irrespective of any uniform and exclusive name.
More particularly the magnificent prophecy of the
Exile which forms the second part of Isaiah worked
out the pathetic picture of the Lord's servant, who
through suffering and reproach would establish a
world-wide reign. And in the last genuine prophecy
of the Old Testament occurred the startling promise :
" Behold I send my messenger, and he shall prepare
the way before me; and the Lord whom ye seek
shall suddenly come to His temple, and the messenger
of the covenant whom ye delight in, behold he
cometh, saith the Lord of Hosts."1
After the Captivity, it would seem, the thought of
Israel turned back to the monarchy which was now
no longer a fact but a memory. Reading and com
posing Davidic Psalms, inspired men pictured the
promised deliverer of the nation as another David.
1 Malachi iii i.

THE SON OF MAN 43
And in the last century b.c. there was a widespread
expectation that a scion of the royal house would
ascend the throne which had been vacant for five hun
dred years and reign in Jerusalem as David or
Solomon had done.
" We know that Messiah cometh " was the great
religious thought of that day. The mysterious fore
casts of Isaiah and of the elder prophets were in
the background. In the forefront was the vision
of a conquering hero, who, if a teacher to lead into
all truth, like another Moses, should still more be a
captain of armies like David, and a successful vindi
cator of his country's independence against foreign
oppression, like Judas Maccabaeus.
It is evident that during the long quiet years in
Nazareth, surrounded by these religious aspirations
of His people, some of them comparatively pure,
but most of them turgid and unspiritual, the convic
tion deepened in the heart of Jesus that He Himself
was the Person whom the prophets had dimly fore
seen, whom the nation was eagerly expecting. " The
narrative of His baptism," says a brilliant modern
writer,1 " with which the Gospels begin His public
life, is nothing but the birth history of this con
sciousness, His awakening at God's touch to a
clear sense of it, the anointing of the secret Child
of God to be the Son of God in the Messianic
sense." He knew that He was Messiah, the only Messiah
that should ever come to meet the desire of the
ancient seers, and to satisfy the ambitions of His
1 Beyschlag, New Testament Theology, i. 58.

44 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
contemporaries. But He could not claim or use the
name Messiah, because the notions which clung to
the name in the minds of the people were for the
most part absolutely misleading, and as far as
possible removed from the purpose of His mission.
He would not — He could not without endangering
His work — be known as Messiah, until there were
people who had the true Messianic ideas. But this
meant, notwithstanding all the prophets had written
and pious souls cherished, that He had to create in
the minds of men the true idea of what Messiah was
to be, before He could make known to the world
/ that speak unto you am He.
Thus He was, on the one hand, obliged to declare
to His nation that He was their Messiah, The
Christ ; and He was, on the other hand, prevented
from even mentioning at present the misleading
name. It was necessary, therefore, to keep His
claim before those whom He chose as the depositories
of His self-revelation, in such a form that it would
be without any ambiguity for an inquiring and
enlightened spirit ; and yet He must not say anything
to those who were still in a circle of false concep
tions. This purpose He accomplished by the title
that He assumed. For in the popular and widely
read Book of Daniel there was a vision of the worldly
kingdoms under the image of a lion, a bear, a
leopard, and an unnamed beast, which were to be
displaced by " one like a son of man coming in the
clouds of heaven," and assuming the dominion of all
the earth. Here the Hebrew periphrasis for man
was used in a specific and suggestive sense. The

THE SON OF MAN 45
outside hearer of His discourses might well carelessly
assume that the term was only an expression of
humility, as when a speaker to avoid egotism styles
himself "the individual that is addressing you."
But the inner circle, who had ears to hear, would
inevitably inquire, who is this Son of Man ? What
does He mean by adopting the phrase ? And with
recollections of Daniel and Enoch they would be
gradually led to the right surmise and the anticipated
confession. About fifty times in the Synoptic Gospels does
Jesus call Himself the Son of Man. It is perhaps
fair to assume that in the early days of His ministry,
before Peter's memorable discovery, and in that more
exoteric teaching which forms the substance of the
first three Gospels, Jesus habitually employed this
designation for Himself. It is very simple, and yet
how dignified it is ! Is it not strange that we have
been so indifferent to the inquiry, What was implied
in the dignified, simple, self-chosen name of Jesus ?
II. The Meaning of the Name. — Before we proceed
to consider what is implied in this proudly humble
name, we must observe that it did not survive in the
teaching of the Church. And here is one of the
many proofs that the Synoptic Gospels are of a
primitive date and come from the immediate group
of the first hearers and eye-witnesses. Even when
the Fourth Gospel was written, the term, which had
long ago served its purpose, was no longer in use,
and accordingly the evangelist prefers for the most
part the more dignified Son of God. This is only an
inference from the proportion of usage. In the

46 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
Synoptics of course Jesus calls Himself with suffi
cient distinctness the Son of God.1 And no one
can fail to see that where He employs the term
the meaning differs toto ccelo from the loose and
general way in which angels, magistrates, Israel and
individual Israelites, are called sons of God by Old
Testament writers.2 In the Fourth Gospel, on the
other hand, He in several important places calls him
self the Son of Man.3 But, broadly speaking, the
designation is a proof of very primitive and apostolic
records. When believers came to recognise that
Jesus was the Son of God, the dazzling fact pos
sessed them almost to the exclusion of humbler
ideas. The earliest struggles of the Church, it must
be remembered, were not to assert His divinity,
which was never questioned, but to maintain His
true humanity, which seemed to vanish in the efful
gence of divine glory.
If the name, however, was not maintained in the
Church it is none the less to be carefully studied as
an integral part of His own teaching. And we
must now question it to learn what it necessarily
implied. On the one hand, as has already been suggested,
His choice of the name may, and probably did,
imply that unassuming humility which is an unfail-
1 Matt. xi. 27, and the parables of the vineyard and of the
marriage feast of the Son ; cf. Matt. xii. 6 ; Matt. xxii. 2.
a See Gen. vi. 1 ; Job i. 6, ii. 1 ; Ps. lxxxii. 6 ; Ex. iv. 22 ;
Deut. xiv. 1 ; Hos. i. 10 ; cf. Ps. ii. 7 ; 2 Sam. vii. 14 ; Ps.
lxxxix. 27.
3 John iii. 13, 14 ; v. 27 ; vi. 27, 53, 62 ; viii. 28 ; xii. 23 ;
xiii. 31.

THE SON OF MAN 47
ing mark of true greatness. We recognise the
paltriness of any delight in titles and baubles of
that kind. No really significant or important person
ever cared to be my-lorded, or to catch the eye of the
vulgar with a coronet rather than a character.
Jesus certainly had no desire to be called a king.1
And in choosing the plain title Son of Man He
probably showed this characteristic of greatness.
We may also observe a lovely light thrown on His
nature by the fact that He, in using a term which
not only indicates humanity, but also, it would seem
from its suggestions elsewhere, some of the weak
ness and limitations of humanity, desired to identify
Himself with us as men. He had no inclination to
affright us or shame us with His splendour. Rank
and title dazzle and draw a crowd. But it is
humanity which attaches men. It is the unpreten-
tiousness of the approach, it is the Son of Man
reminding us in the first instance that He is a man
like ourselves, this it is which wins upon us all.
But with the passage in Daniel before our eyes
the reverse side of the title is equally unmistakable.
There, as the vision declared, the one like the Son
of Man comes in the clouds of heaven. His origin,
therefore is not earthly. He comes also to establish
a kingdom which, in contrast with the successive
empires of the world, is to stand for ever. Nor does
he, like even the greatest kings, Rameses, Nebu
chadrezzar, Alexander or Caesar, found a crumbling
dynasty of a few generations, himself crumbling into
dust before his transient throne has perished. The
1 John vi. 15.

48 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
Son of Man, in the vision, is heir to a regal dignity
which he will keep in his own hands through all
generations. With these suggestions of the passage from which
He selected His name, certainly His stupendous
claims were implicit from the first, though the time
had not come to make them explicit. He wished to
hint that a being not beginning with the earth, nor
ending with it, a being of quite another order, was
there among men as a Son of Man. He could found
the kingdom of heaven, because He alone came
from heaven and could return thither. He alone,
if we use the other form of the phrase, could estab
lish the kingdom of God, because He alone was
akin to God, and had come from God, and was at
home with the Ancient of days.
Thus very much was implicit, though little was at
first recognised, in the title. But keeping the name
— the Son of Man — before His immediate adherents,
He began to unfold its meaning to them in a way
that at present He could not do to the careless out
side hearers ; this He did by unveiling Himself in
all the simple grandeur of His moral perfection, and
all the astounding power of His spiritual life. It
was of course a gradual process, but little by little
the conviction was wrought in the mind of one at
least of His intimates, the conviction which found ex
pression in that memorable utterance, the pivot and
turning-point of the Synoptic narrative, when Jesus
asked, Who do men say that I the Son of Man am ?
and Peter answered, flinging away the false notions
of his race and of his generation, and obtaining at

THE SON OF MAN 49
least one flashing glimpse of the truth which Jesus
had been all along unfolding, " Thou art the Messiah,
the Son of the living God,"1 as if he meant to say in
a word, " I see it now, Son of Man means Messiah,
and that in Thee means Son of God."
That was the starting-point of all. That was the
true foundation. That was the guarantee of the
kingdom of heaven. Certainly it was coming to
earth. For not only had He who embodied it come,
but now one ordinary human being had recognised
who He was and had avowed a conviction that this
pure, holy, humble, simple being, engaged perpetually
with His Father's will, He and not a sceptred
monarch or a blood-stained conqueror, was the Hope
of Israel, the Founder of the kingdom.
Here let us pause for a moment, and allow a
secondary suggestion of this unique title to distil
upon our spirits like the dew. The word Humanity,
with all its sorrowful hints of weakness and vice, is
dear to our ears. Homo sum, humani nihil a me
alienum puto is one of the few sayings in Latin litera
ture which have a flavour of divine inspiration. As
the world grows old man draws to his fellow-man ;
by a subtle understanding men recognise that they are
related ; and, standing together, they view the perish
able earth as a thing apart from them. " Man " has
been uttered and chanted by the accumulating cen
turies ; and more and more the word carries in it the
thought of "God." Some day it will be impossible to
mention the word Man without waking the echo, God.
1 Matt. xvi. 16 ; Mark viii. 30 ; Luke ix, 20. r
D

Jo THE TEACHING OF JESUS
The sorrow of history is the comparative rareness
of humanity in it. It is as if humanity were only
born by degrees. Those repulsive brute empires,
Babylon, Media, Persia, Macedon, though they relate
to men, are they not intrinsically inhuman ? Were
they not secular illustrations of " man's inhumanity
to man " ? Nay, even now, with the world before
our eyes, can we pretend that any governments
outside the borders of Christianity are really human ?
Is the Turk human ? Is the Chinese Mandarin
human ? Was Lobengula human ? These are men,
but they are not human. The ape and the tiger are
stronger in them than the man. Our own govern
ment is partially human, because it is partially Chris
tian. Some faint aroma of mercy and justice and
truth is in our throne-rooms and State departments
because the Son of Man has passed through them.
But the blessed actual reign of the Son of Man,
His appropriate sphere, where willing subjects love
Him and express His will, stands in contrast with all
earthly governments, because it is absolutely humane.
It has no touch of savagery in it. It has no Holy
Office of the Inquisition, no High Commissions and
Star Chambers, no insolence of tyrannical priests, no
savage engines of social ostracism and contempt, no
delight in crushing sensitive souls by terrors and
bribes, by frowns and fawning smiles. In His
kingdom it would be impossible for a landlord to
hound out a tenant because he did not go to church,
or for a priest to affright a Dissenter with threats of
hell. All this is as remote from Him as humanity
is from inhumanity. Thus the reign of the Son of

THE SON OF MAN 51
Man seems feeble by comparison with worldly forces,
and men seriously believe that He would be worsted
if He lost the revenues of the Church, or if these
engines of tyranny were not employed to. make men
think alike. But the Roman Empire perished, and
the reign of Jesus survived. This gentle impalpable
power of meekness, sympathy, love, is stronger than
armies of State. The reign of the Son of Man will
be the only government which ultimately survives.
For, to touch one more suggestion, the sovereign
is the Son of Man coming out of heaven; that is to
say that ideal man is in heaven, cherished there in
prophetic assurance. The blessed region of the
Unveiled Face, that shining hierarchy of
Thrones, dominations, virtues, princedoms, powers,
where the bright ranks of unfallen spirits lead up to
the central Being of Light and Love unapproachable,
is not complete without man. In the heart of God,
man has a place of which he cannot be disseized.
Out of heaven issues the Son of Man to fetch men
thither. To that upper air we in a sense belong.
His very name delivers a message to us : " Dark,
defiled, demon-haunted spirit, black with venom and
despair, you, the worst of men, you are a man
therefore the Son of Man does not despair of you.
Rather, He has set His heart on saving you. He
has come to seek and to save that which is lost."
This is no wrathful prophet, no mouth of denun
ciation and anathema. It is the Son of Man. All
hope, all comfort, all divine redemption nestles in
the word.

THE FATHER
Matt. xi. 27:
THE difference between Jesus., and us — one
might say, if we see what it implies, the whole
difference — is that He is sinless, and we are sinful.
Humanum est errare. Sin enters so essentially into
the very definition of man, that but for the one
historical exception we should be inclined to say
that wherever man is, sin is. . In the abstract it
does not seem beyond the range of fancy to con
ceive a sinless human being. But to give it con
crete expression appears to be impossible. One
cannot find details to embody the idea. There is
in the pigments and the brush some element which
vitiates the portrait. While, therefore, we may
maintain as a theory that a man might be sinless,
experience is too strong for us, and we are con
vinced that no one actually is.
But, as Ullmann showed, in that treatise of his
which remains of permanent value, the sinlessness
of Jesus is established in. the region of history at
once by the faithful photographic portrait presented
in the Gospels, and by the self-consciousness of
Jesus expressed or implied by all His recorded

54 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
words. Here then can be no question of invention,
or legendary growth, or mythical construction,
because the idea itself is not conceivable except as
the reflection of a concrete fact. It is not an idea
that one brings to the Gospels : rather it is an idea
which comes for the first time out of the Gospels.
It does not lie on the surface. But slowly the
impression gains upon the student as he seriously
and reflectively handles the material : This is a
man without sin. It is misleading to quote texts.
Nothing but a detailed examination, such as Ull
mann has given, conveys the proof in its impressive
completeness. It is but the epitome of all He did
and said, when He exclaims This is my blood shed
for the remission of sins, implying that sin of His
own was not in His thought, but that He was free
to undertake the redemption of the world from sin,
unembarrassed by those hindrances which other men
would find in their own sinfulness.
Now when we meet with this one life, which,
contrary to all human experience, is free from sin,
we are tempted to say, Surely He is not human.
We take refuge in an indefinite term ; we say He is
superhuman. That, historically speaking, was the
first thought of the Church. In Docetism and Apol-
linarianism the conviction found different expres
sions, that His human life was more or less illusory.
The Logos took the place of the human soul; the
flesh and blood were not realities, but phantasmal.
Conscious of sin ingrained in us, we look with in
credulity on a nature like our own which is yet
unconscious of sin.

THE FATHER 55
But the Church had firm ground to tread on
when she met these heretical tendencies by the
assertion of Christ's full humanity. The Gospel
narratives put this point beyond question. Indeed,
the strongest argument against the view that the
Gospels are a product of the second century lies in
the fact that no writer of that period would have
ventured to represent Jesus in so thoroughly human
a way as the Evangelists represent Him in the
Gospels. In these documents He is seen tempted
like as we are, subject to all the infirmities of the
flesh ; not laying claim to omniscience, since He
frankly says that He knows not the day or the hour
of His return; nor yet to omnipotence, since He
affirms that to sit on His right hand and His left is
not His to give. Nay, startling as it sounds to a
dogmatic orthodoxy, He declines even the title
Good, which is incidentally addressed to Him, not,
of course, that any could convince Him of sin, still
less that He was conscious of it Himself, but
because He was so thoroughly aware of His
humanity, and of the divine nature which stood
over against it, that He could not allow for Himself
an appellation which is only appropriate to God.
It would have been impossible for Him in any way
to express more emphatically His true humanity.
And, indeed, as is coming to be more and more
recognised, the dazzling effect produced upon us by
the story of His life is not due to superhuman or
miraculous elements but to the fact that as a man
He lived; that, according to the words of an
apostolic writer, "God made Him perfect through

56 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
suffering " ; and that His life was an orderly
development from original innocence to completed
holiness. " He was man," say the Gospels. But when the
careless unobservant world wishes to add, "like
us," it is brought to a sharp stand. No, not like us,
because He was without sin. The first thing that
strikes us in ourselves is that we are sinful. The
fact that grows upon us in Him is that He is
sinless. I. Now the salient passage from which the text is
taken implies a truth, which is so simple, so magni
ficent, so joyful, that mankind seems unwilling to
accept it. Perfect sinlessness in a human being is
equivalent to oneness with God. A human soul with
out sin finds itself fully revealed as a son to a father
fully revealed. In this startling passage we see
Father and Son lying open to one another as if an
original relation had never been disturbed. They
are together in perfect harmony and mutual know
ledge. Here is a human soul, a soul unmistakably
human, which is "a perfect home of God, a sanc
tuary undefiled."
Needless to say, we are looking at this subject
just now not from the dogmatic, but from the
historical, point of view. And we find a human
being that differs from all other men in the fact
that He is sinless ; and in this sinless soul we find
a relationship with God, which seeks its nearest
earthly analogy in the relationship of father and
child. Like an undimmed and unwarped mirror it
reflects perfectly the face of God as the Father.

THE FATHER 57
It suggests at once, before we examine any speci
fic words of Jesus on the subject, that God is in
trinsically, by His very nature, the Father. If we
had never sinned, if we were undimmed and un
warped, that face would be reflected in our hearts ;
we should have been in that delightful relationship,
laid on His bosom, clasped to His heart. We
should not have been blindly seeking after God, if
haply we might find Him. He would have been
there all the time, like our nursing-mother on whom
we first opened our eyes. We should not have
been figuring idols and demons as the Supreme,
trembling before them and propitiating them ; we
should not have been munching the swine's husks
of atheism and agnosticism. If only we had been
free from sin and lived free from sin, we should
have known our Father, and been known of Him all
along. The king is as it were revealed to babes; for
of such is the kingdom of heaven. In spite of the
integuments of evil which grow up around us as
we grow there is in the heart of childhood a sweet
vanishing vestige of an original sinlessness, which is
to say the least of it as remarkable in experience as
the sorrowful counter-fact, original sin. There was
a vision about our cradle, a paradise in our nursery,
like the picture of man before the serpent tempted
Eve. The dark courses of the world had not flowed
through us ; the poisoned well within us was not yet
v \ unsealed. Wordsworth has described that blissful
^ V v experience of childhood. We have all had glimpses
of it, though in later life they are forgotten. No
oi.e can read the great Ode on the Intimations of

58 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
Immortality without at least a fleeting impression that
it records things that each of us has in a manner
known. With Jesus that heavenly state of childhood al
ways continued. What is revealed to babes, and
babes alone among men, was revealed unimpeded to
Him all through His life. For the floods of the
world obtained no entrance, and the well within was
not poisoned. Thus when childhood passed into
youth, His one thought was, / must be about my
Father's business,1 and when the man was prepared for
His life task, the confirmatory voice from Heaven was
" This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased."
It was all unbroken and continuous to Him, an
experience which presents itself in the Gospels so
unostentatiously precisely because it was to Him a
matter of course, a native and intrinsic fact which
acquired emphasis not by contrast with any inward
experience of a contrary kind, but only by the con
trast which growing acquaintance with the world
revealed between His own consciousness and that of
other men.
Thus it became plain to Him that He and He
alone could reveal the Father to men. Though He
never drew a formal contrast between Himself and
others, the conviction could not be evaded. He
alone was without sin. The intimate fellowship
with the Father which filled His soul was without
parallel in the hearts of others. And out of this
sweet and modest knowledge flowed that exquisite
invitation : Come unto me all ye that labour and are
1 Luke ii. 49.

THE FATHER 59
heavy laden, and I will give you rest? As if it were
breaking on Him with the joy of a discovery, and
He allowed His meek and lowly spirit to leap up
at the bliss of it : " Forlorn, blind, scattered children
of your Father, prodigal there by the swine trough,
proud elder brother, fretting and fuming without,
come unto me; I can bring you to the bosom of the
Father." II. But when He says Father, we must observe
that there is an originality and uniqueness in His
use of the term, which we may easily miss, from
our habit of using a word with many fine gra
dations of differing signification, until the two ends
of the scale are far removed as the poles from
one another. It has been said by Prof. Max Miiller
that there is no religion, which is sufficiently re
corded to be understood, that does not in some
sense or other apply the term Father to its Deity.
In the vague bearings of that fact we may lose what
is distinctive in the thought of Jesus. Zeus was
the father of gods and men in the Homeric poems.
Jehovah in the Old Testament was the father, if not
of the individual Israelite, yet of Israel as a whole.
" Thou shalt say unto Pharaoh " — ran the message
to Moses — "Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son,
my firstborn." 2 And so in Hosea, "When Israel
was a child I loved him, and called my son out of
Egypt,"3 and even "In the place where it was said
unto them, Ye are not my people, it shall be said
unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God."4
1 Matt. xi. 28, following on the text v. 27.
8 Ex. iv. 22. 3 Hos. xi. 1. * Hos. i. 10.

60 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
" Is Ephraim my dear son ? Is he a pleasant
child ? " we read in Jeremiah, " I do earnestly re
member him still."1 And in the Book of Isaiah,
" Thou, O Lord, art our father ; our redeemer from
everlasting is Thy name ; " 2 which is echoed in
Malachi, " Have we not all one Father, hath not one
God created us ? " 3
In Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom there was, on this
as on so many other points, a transition from Old to
New Testament ideas. Thus there is a prayer be
ginning "O Lord, Father and Governor of all my
whole life .... Father and God of my life."4
And the reproach urged against the good man by
the wicked is : " He calleth himself the child of the
Lord ... he maketh his boast that God is his
Father — if the just man be the son of God He will
help him." 5 And another prayer runs : " Thy pro
vidence, O Father, governeth the ship, for Thou hast
made a way in the sea."6
But penetrate behind the word to the idea, and it
soon appears that there is only a verbal connection
between the application of the term Father to God
in the Ethnic and Jewish religions, and the use
which Jesus makes of it. Broadly speaking, the
word was equivalent, in that earlier usage, to Creator;
it referred simply to the relation which God might
reasonably have with the creatures of His hands.
Seldom did it involve such an ethical idea, as when
the Psalmist says, " like as a father pitieth his
1 Jerem. xxxi. 20. 2 Isaiah lxiii. 16.
3 Mai. ii. 10. 4 Ecclus. xxiii. i, 4.
6 Wisdom ii. 16, 18. * Wisdom xiv. 3.

THE FATHER 61
children so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him."
But a spiritual affinity which should unite God and
man by a tie of love, and reveal God to man in an
actual, immanent, and personal sense, was not
dreamed of. When we come to examine carefully
what is implied by the words of Jesus, we are left
in no doubt. Nothing in any religion approaches
this relation of Jesus to the Father. It is absolutely
alone. It cannot even be described by terms bor
rowed from any other quarter ; for each expression
of it has a complete originality which could not have
been anticipated. Everything is perfectly simple
and limpid, and, being now very familiar to us, is
apt to pass unnoticed. But consider what is implied
by the authoritative assertion, Not every one that saith
unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of
heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which
is in heaven1 or the majestic, Every one who shall
confess me before men, him will I also confess before
my Father which is in heaven,2 or the mediatorial
intimacy of Whosoever shall do the will of my Father
which is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister and
mother? The confidence of a complete harmony
with the Father's thought is expressed in Every plant
which my heavenly Father planted not shall be rooted
out,* and of unbroken fellowship with Him in, My
Father which is in heaven revealed it unto thee.5 We
might continue quoting these references to the Father
throughout the Gospels. They are all alike; they
are all unlike anything else. A deep inner con-
1 Matt. vii. 21. * Matt. x. 32. 3 Matt. xii. 50.
* Matt. xv. 13. 5 Matt. xvi. 17.

62 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
sciousness unites Him with His Father, in a reA'er-
ence, a love, a lowly sense of equality which could
not be presented in words more distinctly than it is
here conveyed by the habitual language of Jesus.
The note which is struck in these sayings of Jesus
had never been struck before, nor has it ever been
struck since. Even the best, the most saintly,
of Christians has hesitated to use the words of
assured intimacy which came naturally to His lips.
Many of the holiest of the earth habitually speak of
the Almighty with a sense of awful distance. They
who have caught the spirit and words of Jesus will
think and speak of God as our heavenly Father.
In the secret passages of the soul a devout man may
say specifically " My Father " ; but how different is
the implication of the " my " ! With him it will be
a profound submission of spirit, an adoration, a
trembling tenderness, which thrills with joy and yet
hesitates as it rejoices, to use this bold familiarity
with God. In Jesus there is no trace of such a
misgiving. What shocked and outraged the Pharisees
in His mode of speech was an unmistakable fact,
however little it furnished a proper ground of offence.
He spoke of the Father, " making Himself equal with
God." It was the tone which in England we some
times hear when a father has lived in close and
sympathetic companionship with his son, and the
two are comrades and friends. The son behaves to
his father with a perfect sense of equality, though with
a reverence which is begotten of knowledge.
If therefore we allow ourselves to perceive what
is implied by this trait in the self-consciousness of

THE FATHER 63
Jesus, we become aware that the words "My Father"
on His lips are in effect a complete theology, a
theology which rendered all the elder systems im
mediately antiquated, a theology which left nothing
for later theologies to add. A new idea had glided
into the world, and a new possibility was thrown
open to man. Whoever saw Jesus, that calm un
troubled mirror in which the face of Another was
reflected, might henceforth say, as had never been
possible before, that he had " seen the Father."
III. — No man could know the Father save he to
whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him. A strange
thing happens if a man takes up his position for
awhile side by side with Jesus. He sees at once
that God is Father, his Father, and yet that he is
not God's son. A cry will presently escape his lips :
" What though God is essentially Father, even my
Father, if the width of the heavens is between us,
and I see on His face nothing but outraged love and
offended majesty ? " Nor is it left to the working
of his own conscience. Jesus is explicit in assuring
him — and us all — that something has to be done,
some moral change has to take place, a kind of
spiritual birth must be effected in order that ye may
become children of your Father in heaven?
This double revelation of the mind of Jesus is
very remarkable. Doubtless God is our Father.
Fatherliness is a quality in Him which we are at
liberty to interpret through the best fatherhood we
know. If ye, being evil, says Jesus, know how to
give good gifts to your children, how much more
1 Matt. v. 45, Stus •/ivnaBe viol toO ifarpis ifiuv.

64 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
shall your Father which is in heaven give good things
to them that ask Him? Yes, but sonship is a lost
quality in us. The fountains of our filial love are
dark with vice, or frozen with pride. They do not
flow, or flowing they emit poison. Somehow no man
knows the Father save he to whom Jesus reveals
Him.2 Thus Jesus, directly He opens His lips, begins to
make a powerful impression upon us. Man as He
is, He belongs to heaven, that better upper region,
peopled with happy spirits, where the will of God is
done. We belong to earth, where the Will is
violated. Or rather we are creatures with two
natures in us which strive for mastery, the one
earthly, the other heavenly. It is useless to suppose
that we can be at home on earth, for we are afflicted
with a great Heimweh. Yet it is equally idle to
think that we can win to heaven. We have but to
listen to Him to be assured of this. On the other
hand, we have but to listen to Him to be assured of
a beneficent purpose within Him. Sinless, He is
here to make us sinless ; the Son, He is here to make
us sons. His words exactly interpret us to ourselves.
What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and
to forfeit his life ?3 Evidently nothing. Yet, it is not
1 Matt. vii. n.
2 The filial feeling which" seems sometimes to be innate in
sweet clear spirits like Rahel, Richter, Emerson, who yet do
not share the Christian faith in Jesus, can be explained in the
light of the saying (Matt. xi. 27) only by admitting that Jesus
" wills to reveal the Father " to some " Israelites in whom is no
guile," though they do not as yet recognise the Son."
3 Mark viii. 36 ; Matt. xvi. 26.

THE FATHER 65
the will of your heavenly Father, that one of these little
ones should perish? And, as He proceeds to unfold
us to ourselves and to unfold God to us, so plainly
does He present Himself as the reconciliation, the
means by which the alienated children can be re
stored to their Father, that we become intensely
alive to the conflict which is raging.
Who can listen to Him long without perceiving
that heaven and earth are claiming us ! One or
the other must win. Behind the death of the body
— which is a detail — there awaits the soul of man a
glorious ascent or a sad descent. This life would
seem to be the parting of the ways, the punctum
discriminis. How intense becomes the agitation of
the question whether one is to arise and return to
his Father, or to waste his substance after an irre
trievable manner in the ways of debauchery and
swine ! 1 Matt, xviii. 14.

SIN
Mark iii. 29, Ipoxos alavlov &.fiapT$ii.aTos
THE teaching of Jesus on the subject of Sin and
its forgiveness is remarkable for this: it
avoids all speculation and adheres solely to the
practical issue. It would seem, that in comparison
with human theologians and preachers, He is more
eager to be rid of sin, and less disposed to discuss
it. Sinless Himself, and therefore acutely sensitive to
its evil and misery, He combats it like a thoroughly
healthy doctor, who spends little time in theorising,
but is always engaged in a close hand-to-hand con
flict with disease.
Theologians are of course persons, like the rest of
men, more or less blinded and paralysed themselves
by sin. Hence they take a curious interest, an in
terest which if they were without sin they could not
take, in speculating about the origin, the progress,
the expiations of sin. They stand by while men
are perishing and nicely balance arguments, or rear
airy structures in the region of the unknown.
Hence they often give the same impression as a
demonstrator who is dealing with a sick man, not
to cure the patient, but to instruct the student.

68 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
This mode of touching sin is entirely alien to the
method of Jesus. He has no doctrine about sin in
general, nor even about its origin. Whether He
shared the current view that it all sprang from the
sin of Adam, we are entirely unable to say. He
never referred to Adam, nor is it easy to imagine
Him handling the theory of original sin which is
contained in the Thirty-nine Articles or the West
minster Confession.
Sin was there before Him as an actual fact ; and
He was there to face and overcome it single-handed.
Yes, single-handed ; for He knows nothing of any
other beside Himself free from sin. He assumes
that every one needs to repent. He even used the
keen weapon of irony, in speaking of those righteous
persons which need no repentance? The very best,
most blameless, and most docile of human beings
with whom He came into contact, though they
might be in a relative sense without guile, needed
to be converted and to become as little children
before they could enter the kingdom of heaven.2
They were in the position of an unfortunate servant
who owes his master the impracticable sum of
£2,400,000. 3 For even if they should succeed in
doing all that they ought to do, such is their in
trinsic weakness and insufficiency that they would
be obliged to approach their Lord with the confession
that they were unprofitable servants. Just as surely
as He was sinless, all men are sinful.
Now, without forming any theory about sin, Jesus
treats it as a blindness of the soul. If only the eye
1 Luke xv. 7. a Matt, xviii. 3. 3 Matt, xviii. 23, 35.

SIN 69
were in a healthy state — that is, if the organ of
spiritual vision were normal, the light of God would
stream into the soul as it did with Him.1 But here
lies the mischief. The centre of life — the heart — is
wrong. In vain the light from without solicits
entrance; it plays on blind eyeballs. The light
within is darkness. The goodness which passes
muster among the Pharisees, or the' religious philo
sophy of the Scribes, is no better than the blunder
ing of those who know not the law. When the
blind leads the blind, leader and led fall into the
ditch. It is only the sinless who sees sin in this way. Men,
blundering in their blindness, define it as deeds of
omission or commission. Men prescribe religious
acts to counterbalance the evil acts. But a sinless
soul who sees is aware that the mischief is far
deeper than acts ; it recognises, therefore, no virtue
in acts which only appear religious. The Pharisee
offering up florid prayers, with appropriate costume
and genuflexion, in the Temple, does not seem so
good as the miserable and distressed man, acknow-
leged by every one to be laden with sin ; because this
one has at least been making the discovery that he
is blind, and in the horror of darkness cries for
light. Now, nothing is more reassuring in the treatment
of sin than to find that the physician has not lost
all power of discrimination. If Jesus had taught the
total depravity of human nature, we should have lost
confidence in Him, just as the world has lost confi-
1 Matt. vi. 22, 23 (Luke xi. 34, 36).

70 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
dence in the theology which taught it. It simplifies
matters to assume that black and white are the only
colours, or to hold that light passes into darkness
without any gradual transitions of twilight. For
systematic theology assumptions of this kind may be
necessary. Indeed, if we are going to give a com
plete scheme of things, we are bound to simplify the
premisses. The complexities of fact would shatter
our scheme.
Take the total depravity of human nature for
granted, and you have a fine inky background on
which to pencil out your wavering lines of light.
But this is to make a picture, not to delineate truth.
If Jesus had adopted this method, He might have
deeply impressed contemporaries, and produced a
fuliginous revival. But He would have ceased to
be the Master Teacher of the world, the Truth, the
luminous, sinless Eye that sees things just as they
are. He, as we have seen, recognises that no man
is free from sin, but He does not hold that every
man is entirely devoid of goodness. He distinguishes.
The good man out of his good treasure bringeth forth
good things, and the evil, evil? He is full of frank
delight in a good deed, though it is performed by so
heterodox and ill-favoured a person as a Samaritan.
Where theology would have been eager to dissect the
action and to prove that good works from such a
quarter could not really be good, He finds occasion
for admiring commendation. Go thou and do likewise,
is His comment on a deed of mercy which is totally
disconnected from all correctness of doctrine. He
1 Matt. xii. 35.

sm 71
has a doctrine which is all His own about children — ¦
a doctrine which He could not have held if He had
accepted the popular view of the Fall, or if He had
attached the meaning which has since been attached
to original sin. Speaking of children, He said, Of
such is the kingdom of God? It has been thought
possible to explain this saying away, and to show
that He only meant to teach that certain qualities of
childhood — simplicity, trustfulness, buoyancy of heart
— are qualities to be retained in the kingdom of God.
But, praiseworthy as these efforts are to claim Jesus
as a teacher of a doctrine which has made some
stir in the world, our present inquiry is directed
rather to finding out what He taught, as a criterion by
which to judge what has been advanced in His name,
than to hastily insist that all which the Church has
taught shall be in some way or other read into His
words. At present, His simple idea that children
should be allowed to come to Him, because to them
and their like the kingdom of God that He came to
preach belongs, places a wide gap between Him and
those who delight in describing all human beings, as
such, in the language which a prophet employs for a
people in a state of terrible degradation, and on the
eve of their punishment, " The whole head is sick,
and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the
foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but
wounds and bruises and festering sores."2 Indeed,
we have constantly to choose between Christ and
Theology. What has He to do with a grim, coarse
dogma, that sweeps all mankind into one net, makes
1 Mark x. 14. 2 Isa. i. 5, 6.

72 THE TEACHING OP JESUS
no distinctions between degrees of sin, but consigns.
multitudes, of every shade of moral turpitude, to the
dead level of a fiery lake and the measureless reaches
of eternal torture? He recognises the minutest
differences, so that stripes few or many will fall in
exact proportion to desert.1 And so sensitive is He to
the shades in that which Theology has covered with
one broad sweep of black, that He singles out certain
cities that had been notorious for their iniquity —
Sodom and Gomorrha, Tyre and Sidon — and dis
covers some elements of good in them, at least in
comparison with those unrepentant cities where His
own mighty works were done.2
We may say, then, that in His estimate of sin
there is a discrimination, a balance, a sanity, a
delicacy, which cannot be found elsewhere. Men
will deny sin altogether, or palliate it, until all moral
indignation dies away. Or else they will damn it
with loud and thunderous denunciation, making no
distinction between a needle-point and a mountain,
so that it be sin at all. Consequently, the human
treatment of sin is, like sin itself, grotesque and
distorted. An extravagance, chilling into indifference
or blazing into fanaticism, renders the handling of the
subject futile. The human teacher seldom escapes fac
titious elements. He diminishes or exaggerates. He
either makes little of the symptoms or overdoes his
indignation. There is the unreality of a stage-play
in his methods. But Jesus touches the matter with
a sensitive hand, which lightly but firmly follows
the contour, with this result: that with His treat-
1 Luke xii. 47, 48. 2 Matt. xi. 22.

sm 73
ment, sin stands out just as it is ; we are not para
lysed with horror, nor lulled with explanatory
apologies ; it appears hateful enough to set us on
overcoming it, yet compassable enough to forbid
despair of victory.
It is His tranquil and iinexcited analysis of sin
which leads us back to the root of evil in the evil
thought. We, see the rise and progress of sin in
the soul, from thought to deed, from deed to habit,
from habit to some unpardonable blasphemy or
other.1 In the motions of the heart, as in the
springs among the hills, the river of evil has its
source. There the arrest must be made. We are
not to wait until autumn to see the character of the
fruit. The tree is good or bad long before the fruit
appears, and with the tree we are concerned.2 In
our text, sin indulged becomes a binding tyranny,
from which there is no escape. And in marking the
fateful commencements of evil we are always to
remember that one may come to an extreme and
irreversible pass. Sins of every kind may be for
given — even a blasphemy against the Son of Man —
in this world, or, it is suggested, in the next. But
there is a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which
admits of no pardon here or there.3 He would not
particularise or explain. Nothing is gained by a
morbid analysis of strange sins. But He would
remind those who tread the perilous way that at a
certain point, unawares, the foot may touch the
descent of an abyss from which there is no return,
may reach the valley of Hinnom, where the spiritual
1 Matt. v. 22. 2 Matt. xii. 33. s Matt. xii. 31, 32.

74 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
refuse of the universe burns down in the corrup
tion of worms and the consuming of unquenchable
fires. An excitable Dominican monk, descanting on the
torments of hell, will scare the multitude into
penances, but will revolt thoughtful men with a
sense of extravagance. But the perfectly calm,
clear-sighted statement of Jesus on this subject
produces a different effect. If He is permitted to
speak, and He alone, not only are the acknowledged
sinners in Zion afraid, but the most cultivated and
the most thoughtful minds detect the note of truth,
and are led by the quiet hand into the unquestioned
secrets of the spiritual life. Sin is detected, the
roots of the plant are dug up. The dread possi
bility is avoided.
But it is time to notice an element in the teaching
of Jesus about sin, which has given rise to some
protest, and even to contemptuous rejection. Among
the current doctrines of His time was one which
identified the origin of Evil with a personal spiritual
being, the enemy of human souls, that ceaselessly
plots against the happiness and salvation of man.
Popular theology recognised this being in the
serpent of Eden, and in the one among the sons of
God that attempted the destruction of Job. Now
while Jesus never for a moment countenanced the
vagaries and the legends of the popular theology, it
is incontestable that He gave His sanction to the
idea as a whole. Evil was in His judgment the
work of an Enemy, who sows tares among the
wheat. In certain diseases and forms of insanity

sm 75
He traced the work of this malignant enemy. If
He employed the language of the day, and spoke
habitually in the pictorial method of parables, still
it is impossible to miss this underlying conviction
in all His thought, that in the world of nature, and
in the course of history, an actual personal power,
that is not to be traced up to God, a power that
apes God, and is opposed to God, must be recog
nised as the virtual prince of the present order.
Jesus expressly states more than once that He is
engaged in a victorious conflict with this power, and
is here in the world to destroy his works.1
The triviality and childishness of those who have
mingled mediaeval stories with the teaching of the
Bible have given us a natural distaste to the whole
subject. But it is part of the discipline of Jesus to
teach us to discover the kernel of truth in things
which credulity has rendered incredible and folly
has made ridiculous.
Yet recognising the Prince of this world as He
does, Jesus gives no countenance at all to a dualistic
theory. Only by entirely ignoring all His words
could the Manichean doctrine of an equal strife
beween Good and Evil be asserted. To Him, at
least, the Sinless One, and to all who in Him
enter the kingdom of heaven, the Enemy is a van
quished and enfeebled power, which, like the Devil
of popular tales, is almost childish in impotence.
There is no question of an equal war between God
and the Prince of this world. It is God's world.
The prolonged opposition of the Enemy, overcome
1 The actual expression is from i John iii. 8.

76 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
by the grace of God, results in a greater good.
Instead of regarding Matter or the corporeal ele
ments of man as intrinsically evil, and the realm of
the Evil Power, He quite expressly asserts that this
Power's realm is the Spirit. Matter is innocent
enough. Meats and drinks are to be enjoyed ; they
cannot defile a man.1 Asceticism never enters into
His thoughts of life, unless it be the asceticism of
sorrow, which refuses meat because the heart lan
guishes bereaved. If in the region of the perverted
human will the Enemy claims a usurped mastery of
the kingdoms of the world and their tawdry glory,
he has no control over nature, no rights against
God. God sends the sun and the rain. The birds
of the air are the subjects of the Father's care. To
God all things are possible? If the human soul has
surrendered its allegiance and chosen the Enemy,
still God, who marks the fall of the bird, counts the
hairs of the head of his creature man,3 holds the
control of each life within His own hands, and
directs even the apparently uncontrolled courses of
human history.4
If Jesus convinces us of the reality and power of
our tempter, it is He who breaks the power, and
secures for us the reality of victory.
Thus above all things He teaches the sovereign
strength of prayer.5 The free action of God is never
limited, but is determined all along by spiritual and
moral considerations of which the prayer of man is
1 Matt. xi. 19 ; xv. ii. 2 Matt. v. 45, vi. 26.
3 Matt. x. 29, 30. 4 Matt. xxiv. 22.
6 Matt. vii. 7-1 1, Mark xi. 24.

SIN 77
always one. What a godless and shortsighted know
ledge would describe as "miracles" are therefore
no miracles to Jesus. His assumption always is
that matter is in God's power, like a tool in the
hands of a workman. Undoubtedly God is always
guiding the world towards an ideal goal of perfection.
The World, and Life, and Time, which filled Shelley
with so passionate a melancholy, are to Jesus
merely an episode, a pang of birth, an entrance into
the order which endures. Behind the dark and
local night of human experience shines the illimitable
dawn. There awaits the world a Palingenesia, a new
Genesis, of which the first was but a type. We are
baffled who walk always in the black shadow of the
night, but He, entering the shadow, never lost the
clue of the Eternal Light.
This accounts for the fact that Jesus stood in the
presence of sin, free from all the hysterical horror
Which disqualifies one from undertaking the cure.
The Prince of this world reigns for a time, but Jesus
reigns for ever. Out of the shadow He summons
each beguiled and fallen soul with the grandest offer
of mercy, and a free forgiveness for every one who
repents. Impossible as it is for unaided sinful men
to see it for themselves, Jesus seesy and describes to
them, the picture of the Father, an almighty, living,
loving reality, who watches and waits for the return
of His prodigals, eager to welcome them home.
With, the one exception above referred to, all manner
of sins and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall
blaspheme can be forgiven to men. It does not seem
possible to Jesus to exaggerate the compassion of

78 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
God. As long, as wide, as deep as His unchange
able righteousness is His abounding mercy. Thus,
where Theology has treated of an angry God, Jesus
had dwelt upon a Father longing for His son to come
back. Where Theology has treated sin as guilt,
Jesus seems rather to regard it as a grim disease.
Consequently we miss in Him that irritation and
censoriousness which mark men's treatment of sin,
as we miss in men that extraordinary freedom and
unconditional alacrity of pardon which we find in
Him. Our attempts to preserve the doctrine of Atone
ment, and not to slight the meaning of Christ's sacri
fice, have often resulted in obscuring the richness
and freedom of the pardon which Christ Himself
declared. Not infrequently men have turned away
from the proffered pardon, bewildered and repelled
by the framework of doctrine which seems to have
been obtruded between the Soul and God. The
living and winning power of God has been lost in
an artificial scheme of abstractions. The Righteous
ness of the Law has been elaborately built up as a
barrier against pardon, with a view of producing a
real repentance; and then this difficulty has been
removed by a theory of Substitution, as if Christ by
His death satisfied the law, and so made pardon
possible. Such attempts to explain a truth that is
beyond our comprehension appeal rather to a
tedious logic than to the deeper elements in our
nature. And when doubt begins to question even
the logic of the situation, the whole framework will
hang, discredited, and out of gear, a positive check

SIN 79
to the message it was once designed to convey.
There are many souls that remain unpardoned, not
because the pardon of God would be incredible or
undesired, but because that cumbersome and un
intelligible mechanism seems to stand as a lifeless
obstruction to the advances of the Divine Love.
We are not concerned just now with inquiring into
the origin or use of such doctrinal systems. But,
for souls in the bewilderment which has just been
described, what hope and joy may lie in a reversion
to the teaching of Jesus !
It is impossible to imagine anything more un
embarrassed, more direct, more untechnical, than
His appeal to the conscience and the heart of men.
He appears to be entirely unconcerned about any
system. It is true, as I think we shall see, that
words of His imply an Atonement, a vicarious
sacrifice for sin which He had come to offer. But
never in His teaching does there occur a hint that
to understand this mysterious transaction, or to
hold a correct view of its processes, was a condition
to be interposed between a repentant sinner, and a
pardoning God. His word rather was, the Son of
Man has power on earth to forgive sins. And while
He required faith in Himself as a condition of
exercising His powers, never did He mention any
other condition, except the one on which He fre
quently dilated, that if a man would be forgiven he
must forgive his fellow men.
Whatever terms are, in the thought of God,
necessary to be imposed, in order that men may
receive the pardon of sin, Jesus keeps them in the

80 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
background, and meanwhile offers a free and un
conditional pardon to every one that repents. His
word is like a two-edged sword, revealing and
condemning sin. At His clear and faultless good
ness the conscience trembles like a guilty thing
afraid. But He has so ordered it that no penitent
soul can ever look fairly at Him without marking
an outstretched hand, and hearing a voice of supreme
compassion : Thy sins be forgiven thee; go and sin
no more.

RIGHTEOUSNESS
Matt. v. 20.
I WONDER if to any of you has ever come an ex
perience of this sort. Steeped in the theological
notions in the midst of which you were born, have
you, in reading the words of Jesus, ever felt uneasy,
from a suspicion — never uttered or breathed of
course — that they are not exactly orthodox ? One
theological Scotchwoman is reported to have said
frankly that she did not care much for the discourses
of Jesus because there was too much morality in
them ; by which she meant, not that they taught
counsels of perfection, but that they seemed to
attach salvation to good works in a way repudiated
by the Westminster Confession.
The term " good works " has a sinister sound to
evangelical ears. We usually feel that an explanation
is necessary. If righteousness is needed in order
to enter heaven, it is an imputed righteousness
only, the righteousness of Jesus, and not our own.
Certainly the discourses of Jesus betray no trace
of this doctrine. To suppose Him saying " My
righteousness shall be accepted instead of yours "
would be to render meaningless the most significant F

1 T

82 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
of all His utterances, that collection of sayings
which we call the Sermon on the Mount. Through
out that sermon He speaks in the plainest and sim
plest way about a righteousness which consists in
actually doing the will of the Father. To introduce
the idea of His doing the righteous deeds for us
would rob the whole argument of its application.
When a certain lawyer asked what he should do
to inherit eternal life, Jesus did not make the answer
which would naturally rise to the lips of Churchmen
or Evangelicals to-day, but He inquired how he read
what was written in the law; and when this very
exceptional scribe replied in language like that of
Jesus Himself, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
.... and thy neighbour as thyself," Jesus said, Thou
hast answered right; this do and thou shalt live? In the
same way, when a rich man addressed the same
question to Him, Jesus replied by quoting the five
commandments of the tables which bear upon our
dealings with our fellow-men, and when further
pressed added another, Go sell whatsoever thou hast
and give to the poor? And, as if to show that these
were not isolated cases, He on one occasion laid
down the broad general principle, Whosoever shall
do the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister
and mother?
All this is very unorthodox according to the form
which the Christian faith has frequently assumed
among us. Nor does there seem any way of main
taining the current form of doctrine, except that
which has been adopted — viz., to put the teaching of
' Luke x. 28. a Mark x. 21. 3 Mark iii. 35.

RIGHTEOUSNESS 83
Jesus into the background and to devise plausible
methods of explaining it away. And yet intrinsi
cally, as we shall see, Jesus is far from contradicting
Paul's doctrine of " the righteousness which is by
faith." Between the master and the great apostle
there is no collision. But Paul's writings are pe
culiarly easy to wrest,1 and it cannot be denied that
many worthy people, who suppose that they are
advocating Paul's views, contradict the teaching of
Jesus. We cannot therefore be too decisive in marking
that Jesus demands a real righteousness as the con
dition of entering into the kingdom of heaven, a
righteousness which differs from that of the Jewish
law only in being more inward, more intrinsic, more
searching and absolute, a righteousness which in
one place He does not hesitate to compare with
that of God Himself. Ye shall be perfect as your
heavenly Father is perfect? The forgiveness which
He offers to men — which we shall see He purchases
for men — is free. But as He knows what is in men
and searches the intentions of the heart, He only
grants forgiveness to those who will make it the
starting-point of a new life, to those — i.e., who re
pent according to Shakspeare's definition of repent
ance — Heart sorrow and a clear life ensuing.
Thus, with the teaching of Jesus before us, and
adopting His tests, we may be perfectly sure that
forgiveness has not been given, and that the sense
1 z Pet. iii. 16, 2 Matt. v. 48.

84 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
of forgiveness is simply a delusion of the deceitful
heart, where the result is not the type of conduct
and character which Jesus Himself prescribes. The
principle He enunciates, By their fruits ye shall know
them, applies to our self estimate as well as to the
estimation which others form of us.
From all this it will be evident that the place of
the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel literature is
not accidental. Necessarily the first task which the
Master must take in hand would be to show in
detail what is meant by Righteousness in the king
dom of God, and what manner of men consequently
they must be who would see life. By a set design,
which is accurately represented in the traditional
arrangement of the materials of which our Gospels
are composed, Jesus began by promulgating a law.
Over against the righteousness of the Scribes and
Pharisees, which was of an elaborate and conscien
tious, but not of a penetrating or inspiring, kind, He
set — not by any means a doctrine of imputed right
eousness — but a sketch of what a faultless righteous
ness would be which proceeded from the heart, and
from a right inward relation with God. The char
acter there depicted has met with general and sincere
admiration. Seldom has it been slighted except by
those who have theological systems which are at
variance with the teaching of Jesus to maintain.
The precepts of this law are very familiar to us all.
And it is when He has passed them all in review
that Jesus, with an impressive emphasis which no
human language could surpass, declaring that He
that doeih the will of my Father in heaven shall enter

RIGHTEOUSNESS 85
into the kingdom of heaven, utters a warning which,
one would have thought, might have terrified those
who deliberately set His teaching aside, Many will
say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy
by thy name, and by thy name cast out devils, and by
thy name do many mighty works ? And then will I
profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me,
ye that work iniquity, or, as the words imply, ye that
violate the Law1 this new law of the Sermon on the
Mount. And then every one which heareth these
words of mine and doeth them is likened to a man
whose house is solidly built, and every one that
heareth these words of mine and doeth them not is
likened to the man whose house comes about his
ears with the rising of the flood and the downrush
of the storm.
It would not be easy for any human language to
express more clearly that the actual fulfilment of this
searching series of moral injunctions is the condition
of entering the kingdom. Nor can we see how Jesus
could more deliberately have excluded the notions
which have played so large a part in modern
theology. But all this teaching of the Master
Himself, different schools of religious thought have
managed to make of none effect by their traditions.
Evangelical teaching has followed a course so
eccentric that at last it makes the teaching of Jesus
seem unorthodox. It has come to such a pass that
the Law of the New Covenant has been nowhere
so discredited as in the house of His friends. As
against His express words, every one that heareth these
1 Matt. vii. 23, ol ipyat'ofievoi rty avo/ilav.

86 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
words of mine and doeth them, a Christian lyric has
been composed to the effects-
Doing is a deadly thing, doing ends in death.
If we come to ask what explanation they would
give who have thus contrived to exactly reverse the
word of their Lord, we get the answer, which has
already been hinted at, that they are following the
doctrine of St. Paul. " He gave us the apple," they
say, " and we did eat." How indignant Paul would
be at this suggestion, as if he, and not Christ, had
been crucified for us ! What could be more evidently
fallacious than to set Paul against his Master,
whose slightest word was law to him. Personally
I am persuaded that St. Paul, rightly understood,
and put in his due subordination to the teaching of
his Lord and ours, does not contradict Jesus. As
this study proceeds we shall come quite naturally to
the meeting-point, where the thought of the servant
dovetails with that of his Master. But while there
is any apparent collision, while to an imperfectly
trained spiritual sense Paul seems to teach one doc
trine and our Lord another, it is of vast importance
that we should unhesitatingly give the preference to
our Lord. The Sermon on the Mount comes before
the Epistles of St. Paul, and must interpret them.
Nothing could be more misleading than to use the
Pauline Epistles to discredit the Sermon on the
Mount. The result of a shallow and ignorant play
upon words may easily be to make Paul explain the
Teaching of Jesus away.
But we are touching now on a sin of the Church,

RIGHTEOUSNESS 87
rather than a sin of inexpert and amateur theologians.
It is not the individual that has buried the teaching
of the Gospels under the metaphysics of the Epistles.
That is the work of the Fathers, the authoritative
Teachers of the Church, the Church itself. Indeed,
with sorrow and shame we must as Churchmen
confess that we have committed a sin against Christ.
We have repeated the offence which Judah com
mitted when the Book of the Law was lost in some
dusty and cobwebbed chamber of the Temple. We
need a new Josiah who will bring out from its hiding
the first grand Law of the kingdom of heaven, the
Law of the Sermon on the Mount, which lies covered
and practically lost under the piles of ecclesiastical
decisions, and under the burden of a traditional
exegesis. As this Law is read in our hearing — oh that we
had ears to hear ; oh that our ears were not dull and
deaf with age-long prejudice ! — as we study this Law,
we are exceedingly filled with confusion. There is
hardly a part of our practice or our creed, hardly an
institution in the Church or in the State, which does
not betray a departure from the faultless Law. So
startling is the contrast, that a great prelate of the
English Church ventured to say openly that the Law
was a counsel of perfection and could not be realised
in practice. To this has it come even in the most
enlightened part of Christendom. But we must
firmly insist : " To the law and to the testimony, if
they speak not according to this word surely there is
no morning for them."1 The morning will break
1 Isaiah viii. 20.

88 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
upon Christendom when we take the Sermon on the
Mount seriously and practically as our law of life.
Now we will look at this Law of the kingdom as
a whole. It is essential to look at it as a whole.
For unlike all other laws, its precepts are not
divisible. The Law is one. We are los.t if we lose
ourselves in detail. Let us fairly contemplate these
two vital characteristics of the Law as a whole.
First, it is directed from first to last against
ritualism, against the tendency to exalt tradition,
against the accumulated authority of an ecclesiastical
system which supersedes the immediate authority of
God. The righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees,
the conception of religion which finds its expression
in a series of outward observances, the mode of
judging conduct by that which meets the eye of
men and not by that which meets the eye of God
— these are the things which come under condemna
tion. It can therefore occasion small wonder that
the Church, in resuscitating all these features of a
bygone system, has sought to repress the teaching
of Jesus ; or that, in England, when increasingly the
popular religion leans on the example of pre-Christian
Judaism, and when those ideas of Temple and Priest
hood and Altar, which Jesus came to supersede, are
made the essence of Christianity, the teaching of Jesus
is ingeniously explained away. In the Church the
stress is laid on things which have no place in the
teaching of Jesus at all. He attaches no virtue to
church-going. He makes no distinction between
clergy and laity. He says nothing about sacred
buildings, vestments, external ordinances, as the

RIGHTEOUSNESS 89
means of grace. All these things belong to another
order of ideas. With Him the whole stress is laid
on such matters as, being reconciled with your
brother before you draw near to worship,1 or, to use
His own contrast with the elaborate prescriptions of
earthly religions, on judgment and the love of God?
His favourite quotation from the Scriptures is not
some description of the worship in the Tabernacle or
the Temple, but a word from the prophets to the
effect that what God wants from men is not sacrifices
but Mercy.
Mercy ! Think of that beautiful word. How
merciless Churches and dogmas are ! Yet how
can we catch the spirit of His teaching while we
think that our sacrifices, our Churches, our dogmas,
are more important than mercy? He flamed into
wrath against those who fasted and made long
prayers, and wore religious vestments, and yet over
looked judgment and the love of God? How scathing
He was to those who kept the Sabbath, or made
gifts to the church, and advanced these religious
deeds as a plea for neglecting some service of love
and pity to man !
Second. But if the first broad feature of His Law
is antagonism to a lifeless ritual, the second is His
rejection of Casuistry in moral conduct. With
clear insight, and a convincing simplicity, which
in any one else we should call genius, He penetrates
the thousand and one precepts of the Scribes, and
comes to the root of all right conduct. In one
thought of inexhaustible import He supersedes, not
1 Matt, v 24. i Luke xi. 42.

90 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
only the Judaism which was before Him, but all the
complicated and confusing systems of Jesuits and
Canonists, that have come after him. Musty volumes
and illegible parchments shrivel up in the flame of
His zeal. He brings us to the one perennial source
of religion and goodness in the twofold precept:
thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy
strength. And, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy-
self? All the breaches of the moral law, murder, adul
tery, divorce, swearing, retaliation, and indeed all
human actions, are referred to this one principle.
You will not escape here on quibbles and legal
technicalities. There are no formularies which
human chicanery may twist or evade. Everything
is tried at once by the essential test of Love, love to
God, love to man. This goes to the foundation of
the matter. Here everything is at once proved,
good or bad, of what sort it is. Whatever comes
from a fervent love to God, and an equal love to
men, is good, though it may seem misguided,
blundering, and ineffectual. All the deeds of
apparent worth, working out in useful results, gain
ing the applause of men, are yet bad if they do not
proceed from this twofold love. Not only hate, but
egotism, is ruinous to religion, and from God's
standpoint, to morality.
When all is thus simplified we may yet have
questions to put. For example, Who is my neigh
bour ? His answer is, Every one whom you can help
1 Mark xii. 30, 31.

RIGHTEOUSNESS

91

is your neighbour, stranger and Samaritan no less
than friend and Jew. Or we may ask, What form
must my love to my neighbour take ? His answer is,
All things whatsoever ye would that men should do
unto you, even so do ye also unto them? But what
particularly shall we do to them ? For a brief
answer this : Give and forgive. The world says,
Get. The Master says, Give. When thou makest
a feast, bid the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind;
and thou shalt be blessed, because they have not where
with to recompense thee? If you have money, employ
it to make friends who will be able to receive you
in the heavenly mansions.3 Again, the world says,
Stand on your rights, retaliate an injury. The
Master says, Resist not evil. Forgive the brother
that has sinned against you, not seven times only,
but as often as he sins.4 And never judge men.
Be faithful in rebuke, but never cease to love. Be
careful too not to throw obstacles in your brother's
way. In a word, love to our neighbour is a humble,
unselfish, tender, untiring beneficence to every one
that comes within our reach.
Or we may ask, What does He understand by
love to the Father, the strenuous and complete
love which His words describe? The answer
is given in the prayer which the children of God
are to address to their Father. It is the humble
and reverent devotion which places the hallow-
1 Matt. vii. 12. 2 Luke xiv. 14. 3 Luke xvi. 9.
4 Matt, xviii. 22. The seventy times seven is evidently an in
definite number.

92 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
ing of the Father's name and the coming of His
kingdom before all personal desires. It is the
trustful confidence in His perfect goodness, His
love which anticipates and supplies all our needs.
It is the sincere and heartfelt subjection of other
interests to His. His great foe, Mammon, is de
throned. Goods, friends, relatives, are all subordi
nated to the Father's will. It is God first, and the
rest by comparison nowhere.
And yet this exclusiveness of love to God is not,
in the thought of Jesus, exclusive at all. God
includes all. In this absorbing devotion to God,
and in this alone, all objects of affection re
cover their worth — yes, even self, which other
wise would be lost, is restored.1 Like a water-plant
which grows in the ooze of the river-bed but
only flowers when it gets above the surface into the
upper air, we are so made that until we get above
ourselves, above our surroundings, and penetrate
victoriously into the love of God, there is no blossom
or flower, no right love for men, no wholesome
occupation with the things of sense and time. Until
we are employed in Him, we stand all the day
idle.2 Thus the second commandment which is like unto it
grows out of the first. Disappointment is in store
for those who put the second before the first. A
human heart is not large enough to love the neigh
bour until it has been expanded by the love of God.
Love is a great achievement, which makes demands
on heart and soul and mind and strength, that is, on
1 Matt. xvi. 26. 2 Matt. xx. 6.

RIGHTEOUSNESS 93
everything which goes to make up a man. It is
achieved only by an active exercise towards the
source of love, God Himself. When the tendrils
of this plant have all been wrapped about God, the
plant acquires a miraculous expansiveness and can
reach out to men on every side.
Love God, and you will love men, is the way in
which Jesus understands the Old Law and frames
the New. Know your love to God by the growth of
your love to men, is His test and criterion of inward
religion, nor does He obscurely intimate that until
a soul is thus developed into its full power of self
less love, it is and must be a lost soul.
This then, in its startling directness and simplicity,
was the New Law. It did not so much abrogate the
Old Law as fulfil it. Yet the Old was bound to
pass when the New was once understood. For here
was the strong wine of the kingdom which could
not be put into the old bottles. No ecclesiastical
forms had, or have, been discovered which could
contain or express this thrilling truth — for it is the
truth which forms the nexus of the universe and
binds all created things and all righteous wills about
the throne of God. Here was the new Temple
which could only rise when the external Temple of
marble and gold had been razed in the dust. The
Church has greatly diverged from the teaching of
the Lord — but has she improved upon it ? Bent on
putting the new wine into old bottles she has lost
both. Determined to rebuild the Temple and to
magnify her gorgeous buildings and her ceremonials
of outward show, she has only succeeded in produc-

94 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
ing a petrified religion. Scandalised at the lowly
mount on which the Sermon was delivered, she has
crept back to Sinai, readopted the stone tables of the
Law, the Tabernacle, the Altar and the Priest. And
where is her Lord's idea of righteousness; what
place does it hold in her practice, or even in her
teaching ? It is to her a heterodoxy — a counsel of
perfection — a bundle of extravagant precepts, to be
decently explained away.
But again we must repeat that His Law holds,
His testimony cannot be antiquated : to the Law
and to the Testimony ; if they speak not according
to this word surely there is no morning for them.

SALVATION
Luke xix. g.
TO utter the Law of the kingdom, if that were all,
would do little towards saving men. As that
Law is more inward and more exacting than the Law
of Moses, it would of itself suggest only a more
divine despair, a desire working like a passion, and
a disappointment cruel as death. A high ideal does
not necessarily carry with it an enabling power; and
its presence, unless it is realised, must be a con
demnation. Jesus Himself was often conscious of this,
and said that it was better for those who had never
heard, than for those who had heard and disobeyed.
The Kiung-Tsze, or Princely Scholar, of Confucius
is a noble and attractive picture of what a Chinaman
should be, but there does not seem to be in the life
of Chinamen even a tendency to realise the ideal.
And if there has been some effective striving of at
least a few souls in Christendom to realise the Ser
mon on the Mount, it has been because Jesus had
something else than a mere law of righteousness to
declare. So beautiful is that Law, so intrinsically attrac
tive; and so perplexing is the comparative neglect

96 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
which it has met with at the hands of Christians;
that it can cause no wonder if some have been
tempted to confine the teaching of Jesus to the Ser
mon on the Mount, and to propound this fair ideal
as the means of saving the world. But that kind of
Socinianism has been foredoomed to failure, not
only because the Law is so difficult (more difficult
even than that of Moses, which yet no one ever fully
kept), but also for this still more intrinsic reason,
that Jesus Himself does not allow us to remain
within these arbitrary limitations of His teaching. If
we receive from His lips the flawless Law, there is
no reason why we should not receive from His lips
another announcement — viz., the announcement of
Salvation. Through His teaching from beginning to end rings
a glad message, the good news of a power that is
able to save. The doctrine of righteousness, indis
pensable as it is, does not stand by itself; but like a
precious gem is set in a ring of gold by which it can
be bound to the finger. The ring of gold is the
doctrine of grace. Jesus depicts His Father, the
Eternal God, in the infinitely attractive hues of
saving love. He represents Him as the Father who
waits in His palace, expectant and welcoming, for
the return of His prodigal children. But He goes
farther than this. Like a shepherd, who sets out
to recover the helpless and silly sheep that has
wandered, God is seen coming to seek His lost.
Jesus, in expatiating on His own intimate relation
with the Father, recognises Himself and His errand
on earth, as the expression of the Father's touching

SALVATION 97
anxiety to rescue and to win sinful men. The Son
of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost?
Every one will immediately acknowledge that this
line of thought and feeling underlies all that Jesus
says and does. It is impossible to read many para
graphs of any one of the Gospels — if our ears are
not too familiar with the words to notice what they
imply — without feeling that the presence of Jesus in
the world has, to Himself, this saving significance. A
chance reader who had no prejudice would never
think that He was living for any other purpose than
to save men.
It results from this peculiarity of thought and
feeling in Jesus that the message which He took
from the lips of John the Baptist, Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand, acquired at once a
new meaning. John intended a threat, Jesus intended
a promise. From John the words meant : Escape
for your life; the Judgment approaches, and the
Judge comes with the awful winnowing fan to sepa
rate the chaff from the wheat. From Jesus, as all
the Gospel shows, the same words mean : Change
your purpose, misguided children of men ; for your
Father's arms are open to receive His lost ones and
to draw them to His heart.
Jesus comes writing the tables of His new and
blessed law, not on stone, with thunders and tem
pests and threats, and the terror of possible failure,
but on human hearts with winsome gentleness, with a
heart-moving sorrow for sin, and with a great enabling
power. He has a royal road to hearts. If the new
1 (Matt, xviii. n.) Luke xv. 3; xix. 10. G

98 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
law is exacting, the new Lawgiver has a power which
Moses never claimed. There is no fear of a high
demand, if He who demands approaches us with
means of fulfilling it which He is ready to impart.1
To say that this doctrine was new is to say but
little. It was so miraculously new and unexpected
that we can safely say, the history of religions fur
nishes us with no parallel. Ingenuity has found in
the scattered religious utterances of the world
isolated sentences of the Sermon on the Mount —
not the articulated whole in its completeness and
cogency, but fragments which may in a sense de
tract from its originality. But no ingenuity has
found any parallel to this which is the distinctive
feature of the teaching of Jesus. No other teacher,
in propounding a supreme law of righteous con
duct, ever proposed himself as the means, always
at the side of the believer, by which the law can
be fulfilled. The law came by Moses, possibly, but
grace and truth by Jesus Christ.
But we must defer to the next section the precise
mode in which Jesus offers Himself as a Saviour.
For the present we have to turn back and inquire
what He means by salvation, when He says to a
man : To-day is salvation come to this house. The
meaning of Saviour must be determined by the
content of the term salvation. In the words and
thought of Jesus salvation is this : It begins in the
seeking and the saving love of God, anticipating all ;
which can only be compared to a feast 2 with tables
1 Hence that of St. Augustine : da quodjubes, jtibe quod vis.
8 Luke xiv. 16.

SALVATION 99
spread and servants going out into the streets and
lanes to invite all and every to come in and to partake
It is a feast of fat things, a banquet of great joy.
Thus, being very desirable, above all other posses
sions it is like a treasure or a pearl of price,1 which,
when one lights on it, one will endeavour to secure
at all costs. Yet it is so free, a gift of so uncon
ditional and unpurchasable a kind, that one can
in no wise buy it, or receive it in any other way
than as a present from God : whosoever will not
receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no
wise enter therein? But suppose a man will come at
the invitation to the feast, suppose he will receive
the gift in a childlike way, suppose the window in
the heart flies back for the light and love of God,
the anticipatory and seeking love of God, to flow in,
yes, suppose the man allows in his heart the least
communion with that marvellous love ; then a
wonderful thing happens. A process immediately
begins which may be compared with the yeast work
ing in the dough, or with a seed, which, if it has got
fairly embedded in the soil, will push and grow,
until it pierces the dark earth, and springs up ex
ultant to bear leaf and flower and fruit— a great
harvest, thirty, sixty, a hundred fold.
Yes, if but the process begins, if but the contact
takes place, if the grace of God effects an entrance,
the progress is startling. It is illustrated by the
familiar fact that to him that has, is given. If a man
has money, money begets money; it grows upon
him more and more even while he sleeps; it roll3
1 Matt. xiii. 46. a Mark x. 13.

ioo THE TEACHING OF JESUS
up in glittering piles until it hems him in, afflicts,
torments, and possibly overwhelms him. Every one
is eager to give presents to the rich; the poorest
will lend to him ; the most churlish will do him a
favour. It is not a fact to rejoice in ; it is a dark
and even sickening fact in the kingdom of Mammon.
But Jesus does not hesitate to borrow illustrations
from these base things with which we are all
familiar. And the fact which on the material side
is so offensive, and so discreditable to our human
nature, turned to the spiritual side, is full of bright
and beautiful encouragement. Let a man make but
the faintest response to the saving love of God in
his heart, and more love streams in through the
narrow chink. Let a seed get in at all, and it will
grow. This golden coin of the kingdom increases
at a compound interest. All the ministers of grace
are eager to give to this openhearted recipient.
Contact with God leads to converse, and converse
to communion, and communion to that new and
diviner indwelling, which was described as the
sonship of God. The embryo passes to the birth.
It is as if a new soul were born. Grace is not
withheld but is given in good measure, pressed
down and running over. Little by little the precepts
of the new law become intelligible and practicable.
The beatitudes fulfil themselves. All things are
possible to him that believeth. Deep and firm the
foundations are struck into the rock; and the fair,
stedfast mansion begins to rise.
But while we may thus in general terms char
acterise the idea of salvation, gathering together the

SALVATION 101
teaching of many rare and forcible images, it is
possible to trace out the process with even more
detail, and in a way which makes it more personal
to the individual soul. Though He avoided here,
as everywhere, anything like a systematic statement
which might seem to reduce the work of God to a
stereotyped order; and though it was always His
method to reject that kind of treatment in which
theologians and preachers have delighted ; yet there
are three stages, not sharply defined, but rather
melting into one another, three moments, as
philosophy might call them, in the progress of in
dividual salvation, which, without putting any
constraint upon His thought, we may distinguish
and discuss. There is The Call, Conversion, and
Adoption. The terms, or their equivalents, are
His own.
I. The Call is illustrated by the striking stories
already referred to, of the kingly banquet, in which
the guests are invited, but make excuses and refuse
to come. Then the invitation is extended to all,
and yet not to all, because the invitation is valid
only when it is received in a certain way, or rather
perhaps it should be said, the invitation passes by
like the wind unless the soul is in a receptive state.
For Jesus has His own doctrine of Calling and
Election, not very like that which Augustine, Calvin,
and Jonathan Edwards compiled out of the letters
of St. Paul, and their own hearts, nor yet altogether
that which has been substituted in Christendom to
day. Indeed, between the doctrine of Jesus on this
subject, and the doctrine of the schools, there is all

ro2 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
the difference that there is between the free song of
birds and the shriek of a steam whistle. With Jesus
the whole thought plays within the circle of human
freedom and the sacred exercise of the will ; appeal
ing to those delicate and subtle possibilities which
exist in every human heart. He invites a response,
and encourages the outstretching of a hand, the
heaving of a sigh, the hunger and the thirst after
righteousness. The Augustinian doctrine, on the
other hand, begins by practically denying the main
fact — viz., the human will, and ends, if it be pushed
to its legitimate conclusion, in the complete suppres
sion of those ethical elements in religion which to
Jesus are all-important.
He came not to call the righteous but sinners;1
as a physician does not visit those that are whole,
but the sick. That is, in a word, His doctrine of
the Call. There is a voice which goes out with the
utmsst freedom to mankind, inviting outcasts,
publicans and sinners, the mourners, the self-
distrustful, those who beat on their breasts with
the sigh of contrition, to come. The Call naturally
makes no impression on the self-satisfied, the
superior persons who need no repentance — to use
His gravely ironical phrase — and who thank God
that they are not as other men. Thus the Call is to
all who will accept it. But, sorrowful fact of the
perverted will and the blinded spiritual sense, it
seems that only a few have even the slightest desire
or can acknowledge the least feeling of need !
Nothing hinders Jesus from making the Call world-
1 Mark ii. 17.

SALVATION 103
wide ; but something in the human heart prevents
it from taking universal effect.
And as there is this limitation in the Calling, so
there is a further limitation, or perhaps the same
limitation occurring at a later stage, in the Election.
A guest appears to accept the invitation and comes
to the banquet, but has on no wedding-garment.
He is there quite out of place. Or to fall back on
another image, the seed has fallen into a soil which
seems to receive, but actually chokes it. The human
heart may not respond to divine grace, may be in
the mood that cavils and presumes. Some dark
movement of the will may reject the inner meaning
of the word, and set up a deadly opposition to the
course which conscience dictates. Though for a
moment the soul appears to respond, and comes
readily along with the company that gather in the
festal hall, it is entirely out of harmony with all that
is going on, it hasss_ no inward relation with God ; x
the main initial petitions, hallowed be thy name, thy
kingdom come, have no meaning for it. .Self-in
terested, base, perverse, it belongs to the outer
darkness. Malicious, bitter, revengeful, it has its
natural part in wailing and gnashing of teeth. Thus
it comes to pass, and no one says it with deeper or
more yearning sorrow than Jesus, that while many
are called, few are chosen?
To call is within the power of the supreme will,
and He calls every one. To be chosen depends on
these little, futile, darkened human wills, and but
few will accept the call. There is no narrowness or
1 Matt. xxii. n, ''- Matt. xx. 16 ; xxii. 14.

104 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
limitation in the love of God. He makes His sun
to rise upon the good and bad. He calls to Himself
all the souls of men. He chooses all who will be
chosen, all who make it possible by a readiness to
conform to the inward conditions of light and love
and truth, which make up the kingdom of heaven.
But some, many, at present even as it seems most,
make it impossible, choosing the broad way. They
are not serious. They would be glad enough to
enter heaven as it shapes itself to their imagination.
But the real heaven they have no taste for. The
appropriate garment for the feast is the righteous
ness of the new law, but this they have no mind
to put on. St. Augustine confesses that before his
conversion he prayed, but inwardly dreaded the
answer to the prayer, for salvation from his sins.
The sins were sweet, deliverance was a strait and
toilsome way. That is an experience which every
soul that is candid in self-examination will under
stand. But they who, sincere, eager, and humble,
respond to the saving love, they who, so far as they
at present can comprehend, desire wholly the pure
will of God, they who will take up the cross and
follow their Lord ; these are the Elect? They do
not respond because they are the elect; they are
the elect because they respond. These are the
violent who take the kingdom of heaven by storm,
souls smitten with the desire of holiness and the
vision of God, who will count all loss that they may
gain Him. Their names are written in heaven? In
their tender susceptibility to the heavenly love, in
1 Mentioned in Matt. xxiv. 24. 5 Luke x. 20.

SALVATION 105
their whole-hearted and gathering surrender to the
divine will, they begin, even from the early days of
their election, to become labourers in their Lord's
harvest,1 seeking and saving that which is lost.
II. But we have anticipated a little, because, as
was hinted, the three stages of salvation intermingle.
We turn back to the idea of Conversion. When a
man is called and chosen by virtue of this inner
response to the Father's saving love, this — which
is Christ's idea of repentance and believing in the
good news2 — is accompanied by immediate forgive
ness ; forgiveness accepted and realised constitutes
a true conversion — i.e., a genuine inward change at
the centre of heart and life, a turning to God, not
fitful but steady, resulting in the creation of a right
disposition which is the soil and the root of all
particular good actions. Except ye be converted and
become as little children ye shall in no wise enter into
the kingdom of heaven? When thou art converted,
strengthen thy brethren.*
St. Paul uses different words to express the same
truth ; where Jesus speaks simply of forgiveness
and turning to God, St. Paul employs language
which is almost technical, language which cannot be
understood without the intervention of theology ;
he speaks of faith and justification by faith. The
Church, to which theology has sometimes been
dearer than religion, has preferred the words of
Paul to those of Jesus. But the value of the words
of Jesus is that it is impossible to give them a
' Matt. ix. 35-38. " Mark i. 15.
' Matt, xviii. 3. * Luke xxii. 32.

106 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
technical meaning ; out of them no systems of the
ology can be constructed. They are direct and
unencumbered ; they do not savour of the schools,
but well up, like living streams which flow from the
everlasting hills. Consequently everything appears
much simpler, though it may be much profounder,
in His lips. The words of the beatitudes, or almost
any of His lucid, heaven-revealing words, will excite
an aspiration God- wards. The soul breathes the
prayer, God be merciful to me a sinner — the prayer
of His suggestion. A childlike faith springs up in
the heart towards Jesus. And He says quite sim
ply, Thy faith hath saved thee : thy sins be forgiven
thee; go in peace; sin no more. With treatment so
direct and powerful we become as one of these little
ones that believe on Him? It is no slight to the
great apostle to say that even he, with all his
powers of thought and expression, " never spake like
this man."
III. It is on this Call and Conversion that, accord
ing to Jesus, sonship to God, or as the apostles call it,
adoption follows.
It is to be observed that He does not sanction the
confusing notion which spreads the fatherhood of
God so wide that it becomes a mere synonym for
creatorship. No one can be more explicit than He
in asserting that ideally — i.e., in idea or intention —
all men are children of God. But as He, from His
union with the Father, attaches an infinite meaning
to the relation of Father and Son, He can hardly
regard men in their rebellious, sinful and prodigal
1 Mark ix. 42.

SALVATION I07
state as children of God in the real sense at all. The
prodigal only reaches his father's heart, only in the
real sense possesses a father, when he awakes to
the humiliating discovery, I am no more worthy to be
called thy son. While a man, among the swine-
troughs, is blandly confident of the fatherhood of
God, and his own accepted and discovered sonship,
he is, in the view of Jesus, as it were, not a son. God
may be his Father ; he is not God's son. We have to
become sons of God by an inward change, by a new
birth, by a spiritual affinity and ethical assimilation
to the Father. But directly that sorrowful and
humble cry issues from the awakened heart, and
the resolution is taken, / will arise and go to my
Father, the goal is already in sight, the Father runs
to meet the child. This is the view of Jesus, and
as a practical moral force, it is evidently far more
efficacious than the spurious charity which robs
fatherhood and sonship of all ethical significance.
There is a glorious goal to reach, a dazzling pos
session, the title deeds of which Jesus is prepared
to put into our hands. Beyond the little gate of
forgiveness, rises the steep, exhilarating path of
sanctification, which the children of God are to
climb, until, the ridge of death for ever passed, they
shall become in a full final sense, but half under
stood here, sons of God, being sons of the resurrec
tion? A soul called, forgiven, changed, laid like a lost
lamb on the shoulder of the Good Shepherd, to use
that simplest, most exquisite of images,2 responding,
1 Luke xx. 36. 2 Luke xv. 5.

108 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
as is but natural, with a passionate surrender to the
love which forgave,1 the lost child addresses himself
as a pilgrim to the way which leads back to his
father's home.
A twofold thought occupies the mind of the
returning one, the rights and the duties of sonship.
Jesus has expounded in word, and fully illustrated
by example, the extent of these. The rights are
summed up in the second half of the Lord's Prayer,
daily bread, continued forgiveness, deliverance from
sin, the open-hearted communion with God, the
surrender of all -earthly care. The duties are : to
claim these rights, to pray always and not to faint,
to forgive, to love, to watch against temptation, to
work in the vineyard; in a word, to live by the
law of the kingdom, for which power is ever given
in the present grace of the King.
Such is the nature, the manner, and progress of
human salvation according to the Teaching of
Jesus. 1 Luke vii. 47.

THE MEANS OF SALVATION
Matt. xxvi. 28.
WE have examined the idea of salvation as
Jesus presented it to men, an offer of free
grace for all to accept Avho will. But we were
obliged to defer for a moment the consideration of
that personal agency by which alone it could be
effected. That He from first to last is identified
with the salvation of men can scarcely be denied,
but what is His own specific teaching about the
relation between the salvation brought and Himself
who brought it ?
This most fascinating question is now before us.
A flood of light is shed on His teaching by the
recognition, which has only been made in quite
recent times, that there was a development in it. As
He grew in wisdom and stature from childhood ; as
His mission was gradually apprehended and ac
cepted ; so the narrative of the earlier Gospels gives
decided hints, that after His work was distinctly
conceived and vigorously commenced the means by
which it could be realised were by orderly degrees
unveiled before His eyes.
If all that He ultimately taught was clear and

no THE TEACHING OF JESUS
complete to Him from the beginning, we are
certainly landed in much confusion. If, for example,
He had seen at once the significance of His own
sacrificial death as the means of salvation, how
could He have said to the palsied man, Thy sins be
forgiven thee1 without any reference to Himself or
to His sufferings-? But light breaks in upon the
subject if we allow that while from the first He
knew in His own heart the fulness and freedom of
the Father's forgiveness, He only arrived by ex
perience at the discovery that the sole condition of
securing it to men lay in His own unspeakable
suffering and death.
There is a story of the Old Testament which
might have been designed to convey this thought
in a figure. It is the story of Isaac, the resigned
and loving son, who climbed the hill with his father
for a sacrifice, saying : " Here is the wood and the
fire, but where is the lamb ? " In the same manner
Jesus, with a lowly and watchful obedience, moved
along the way which was appointed for Him by His
Father, aware that there was a work for Him to do,
never deviating for a moment from the path. But
at a certain point the cross came in view, and He
saw that He must be a victim ; and " greatly amazed
and sore troubled " He began to speak of the death
which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.
At the first, in the buoyant confidence of truth,
and the convincing charm of the kingdom and the
heavenly fatherhood, He uttered His sublime
thoughts as if He expected men to accept them
1 Matt. ix. 5,

THE MEANS OF SALVATION m
gladly. He was too occupied with the Father and
the kingdom to speak of Himself. His own person
hardly came into consideration. His attention
seemed to be called to His position in relation to
the truth which He taught by the animosity which
was excited in the hearts of the rulers of the people.
He was driven to fall back on His inward authority.
And at last, as that animosity developed into
murderous hate, He began to settle it with Himself
that He must die, and that a world which was so
eager to kill its Saviour could not be saved except
by its Saviour's death.
In the fourth Gospel, which we are at present
reserving for separate study, everything is regarded
from the standpoint of the teaching long ago com
pleted ; and if we had only that Gospel, we should
know nothing of this development in our Lord's
human mind. But the Synoptics not only suggest,
they require it. Until we recognise the fact, their
records seem to be contradictory. When we recog
nise it we are drawn into a closer sympathy than
ever with Him who in all points, except that of sin,
shared our nature.
We have, therefore, to notice three stages in His
exposition of the means of salvation. He never
had to retract or even to modify what He said, but
each thought was merged in the next as the rings
of a tree's growth are included and retained in the
thickening stem. What He employed at the begin
ning as the means of salvation remains permanently
valid, though if it had remained alone it would have
been ineffectual. It passed on to a more powerful

H2 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
mode, which in its turn prepared the way for the
most powerful of all.
We fix our eyes on the Word, the Person, and
the Cross. The word precedes the person, and the
person prepares for the cross. The beginning
would not have availed without the end; the end
could not have been reached without the beginning
and the stage that came between.
And if our records require us to follow out the
means of salvation as they were gradually matured
in the mind of Jesus, we have our reward ; for in
this way everything connects itself with God's
recognised method in nature and history. The
analogy of human life, and the unfolding of its
meaning with the advance of years, and the faith
ful use of experience, comes to our aid in under
standing the most important of all human lives, and
the most decisive of all events that ever happened
upon the stage of history, or in the processes of
this habitable globe.
I. The means of salvation in the first instance
Jesus sought in the Word which He spoke to men,
that utterance of invisible truth which welled out of
His own pure consciousness. The words of a man's
mouth are as deep waters, a wellspring of wisdom, a
flowing brook.1 This proverbial saying applied in a
unique degree to one whose inner nature was united
with God as that of Jesus was. Up to the end Jesus
attached a remarkable significance to His Word, as
we can see from the saying in the fourth Gospel,
that His disciples were clean by the word which He
1 Prov. xviii. 4.

THE MEANS OF SALVATION 113
had spoken to them.1 But at the beginning it would
seem that He thought of Himself as the utterer of
the Word exclusively. This is implied by the first
assertion of His mission in the Synagogue of
Nazareth : The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
He anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He
hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them
that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the
Lord? Here He thought of Himself as the preacher,
and even the release, the recovery of sight, and the
restoration which He was to bring, would come in
the form of a proclamation, as the result of the
uttered word. The answer, which He- gave at the
beginning of His ministry, to John's puzzled inquiry,
whether He were Messiah, carries with it the same
idea : Go your way and tell John the things that ye do
hear and see : the blind receive their sight, and the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the
dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings
preached to them?
Here, it is true, the word was accompanied with
power, or, as the wondering people would say, with
miracles. But nothing is more remarkable in the
teaching of Jesus than His mode of treating these
miracles. To Him the word was everything, and
the miracle quite secondary. Indeed, the- miracles
only applied to those who received the word.
When men demanded miracles as a sign, He refused
them with a grieved indignation.4 Or if sign there
1 John xv. 3. 2 Luke iv. 18.
8 Matt, xi 5. ' Mark viii. 12. H

H4 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
was, it should be only a reference to the remarkable
preaching of Jonah, which turned the Ninevites to
repentance.1 The word was the sign. They who
perceived no miracle in the marvellous message of
the kingdom and in the limpid truths of the new
law, should not have their curiosity gratified by
miracles which could be of no possible use to them.
And yet He was quite aware that to seeing eyes the
powers He exercised were a necessary accompani
ment of the truth that He uttered : If I by the spirit
of God cast out devils, then is the kingdom of God
come upon you? His only concern is to maintain
that the message itself is of far more importance
than the signs and wonders which are sure to
follow it.
Thus the fullest illustration of this earlier method,
and of the stage at which He regarded the word as
the means of salvation, apart from any personal
operations of His own, is the Parable of the Sower.3
In that parable, according to His own interpretation,
He Himself is simply the sower, the agent through
whom the seed is cast upon the soil. The seed, on
the other hand, contains the potency in itself, and its
fruitfulness is determined by the receptivity of the
soil. Whoever allowed the word to enter his heart
and grow, would bear fruit ; but if the word were
plucked up, withered or choked, there would be no
result. Compare this detachment of the sower from the
seed, and this assurance that the seed in virtue of
1 Luke xi. 29. 2 Matt. xii. 28.
8 Matt. xiii. 18 ; Mark iv. 14.

THE MEANS OF SALVATION 115
its inherent power would accomplish the work, with
the later idea of Jesus presenting Himself as the
bread of life to be eaten; and it is impossible to
deny that there was a remarkable progress in His
conception of the means by which salvation could be
effected. It is through noticing only this germinal form of
His teaching about the means of salvation, and
through not recognising the progress in His thought
which is reflected in the Gospels, that some plausi
bility "fias been given to the belief that Jesus was
nothing but a teacher, proclaiming a truth which had
an intrinsic power in it irrespective of the Person
who proclaimed it. Jesus undoubtedly in the first
stage of His ministry spoke of Himself in that
way. There was an exquisite self-abandonment
in Him. In the glowing enthusiasm of those early
days, when the word He had to speak seemed self-
evident, and there could be no doubt but that all
who heard would receive it, He was not anxious to
obtrude Himself on the mind of His hearers. It
was the seed, not the sower, that seemed to Him
all important.
It would almost seem as if Jesus, in His complete
innocence, and guileless inexperience of human sin,
in spite of the temptation which followed His
baptism, did not realise that the world could not be
won merely by preaching, or by the declaration of
soul-subduing truth. Innocence never at first sus
pects, and on the first suspicion is unable to credit,
the dark mystery of evil in human life. A soul that
loves truth cannot conceive how souls should prefer

n6 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
a lie. And Jesus, in the faithful fulfilment of His
work had to discover — as His words were twisted
and misrepresented by evil hearers, and His works
were ascribed to Beelzebub — that a pitiless foe was
in possession of this world which He had come to
save, a strong man armed, whom He would have to
overcome in the stern grapple of death.1
2. The very remarkable passage, Matthew xi.
25-30, which is there closely connected with the un
belief and opposition His word had met with in
Galilee, marks distinctly the second, reflective stage
of His teaching about the means of effecting salva
tion : I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
that thou didst hide these things from the wise and
understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes 
All things have been delivered unto me of my Father;
and no one knoweth the Son save the Father, neither
doth any know the Father save the Son, and he to
whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him.
As time went on He found it impossible to ignore
the significance of His own person. He found, in
comparing Himself with other men, that He alone
stood in that intimate relation to the Father. The
conclusion was inevitable that He by His very
nature was a mediator, the one living link between
the heavenly Father and His erring, travailing, and
heavy-laden children. The fact must have lain in
His being from the commencement of His life. But
it was, apparently, realised in consciousness at a
certain point, at that season?
So meek and lowly of heart was He, so alien to
v Mark iii. 27, Matt. xii. 29, Luke xi. 21. Q Matt. xi. 25.

THE MEANS OF SALVATION 117
His nature was any kind of self-assertion, that He
was slow to recognise or to announce this supremely
significant fact. And, it would seem, this native
modesty and delicacy of a perfect soul made Him
always more inclined to hint at it, and trust to the
apprehension of His hearers, than to enforce it, in
what might have appeared a spirit of egotism.
But it was necessary to put constraint upon Him
self. Just as in a crisis of danger it will sometimes
happen that a timid and retiring woman suddenly
starts to the front, and, with unsuspected force of
will and salutary self-assertion taking the command,
and leading more turbulent spirits in quiescent
obedience, saves the situation, so — using the imper
fect human image — in the crisis of the world's salva
tion, Jesus, the meek and lowly one, found it
necessary suddenly to assert Himself, and for the
-world's good, unflinchingly to bring out His unique
nature and calling.
There is no psychological study more fascinating
than this human soul, which, without resigning for
a moment its position of incomparable humility,
makes claims, never made by men even in the ex
travagance of boasting or the exaltation of despotic
power. He that receiveth you, He said, receiveth
me, and he that receiveth me, receiveth Him that sent
me1 — i.e., God himself. And, every one that shall
confess me before men him shall the Son of man
also confess before the angels of God? Or, he that is
not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not
with me scattereth? Or more startling still, where
1 Matt. x. 40. 2 Luke xii. 8. 3 Matt. xii. 30.

n8 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
two or three are gathered together in my name, there
am I in the midst of them?
Language of this kind, perfectly simple, natural,
and modest as it is, implies a personal claim which is
quite unlike anything we find elsewhere in human
experience. He could not, in a false modesty, shirk
His great position. Like a general of an army, in
whom the refusal of self-assertion would become a
crime, He was unable, without imperilling the salva
tion of the world, to withhold the astounding truth.
He was, nor could He fail to recognise it, the per
sonal conqueror of the power of evil, entering the
strong man's house and binding him. He could not
disguise that on a personal relation with Himself
must therefore depend every man's share in the
conquest, every man's triumphant reconciliation with
God. He spoke with a calm conviction of His
victory: I saw Satan fall as lightning from heaven?
It would have been cruelty to men, a base desertion
of which He was incapable, if He had shrunk from
presenting His own power, which He was able to
communicate to them : / have given you power to
tread on scorpions and serpents, and all the powers of
the enemy, and nothing shall in any wise hurt you?
Truth required, the very word He preached re
quired Him to take this position. The claim was
absolutely quiet and absolutely firm. It was free
from ostentation; it was also free from hesitation.
And when once that point was reached, His ministry
asumed the form, Come unto me? The word of the
1 Matt, xviii. 20. 2 Luke x. 18.
3 Luke x. 19. * See Matt. xi. 28.

THE MEANS OF SALVATION 119
teacher became secondary, introductory, to the
teacher of the word ; and the attention of the
hearers, arrested by words such as never man spake,
was rapidly centred on Him who spake them. The
image of the sower passed into that of a shepherd
seeking his sheep.
3. But a third and final stage in the unveiling to
Himself of the means by which salvation should be
effected, came — and the point is very distinctly
marked in the Synoptic Gospels — at that moment,
when, in conflict with the rulers of the Jews and
their invisible ruler, Jesus perceived that He would
have to die, and to die not in the way that is the
common lot of men, but in a way which was invested
with a peculiar significance, a way which would
demand an unexampled endurance and suffering.
Only by death could He accomplish that which He
had prepared by living. This was the conviction
which settled in His mind, so that He began to
conceive His death as the supreme means by which
He would secure salvation for the world.
We are permitted to obtain some glimpses of the
way in which this truth dawned upon His conscious
ness, and of the agitation which it caused in His
spirit. When He began to teach His disciples that
the Son of man must suffer many things, and be
killed — when such language became open and un
ambiguous 1 — it not only caused a shock to His dis
ciples, but beyond all question it worked upon His
own soul in a manner which can only be explained
by the issue involved in His death : / have a baptism
1 Mark viii. 31-32.

120 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
to be baptised with, and how am I straitened till it be
accomplished?1 So powerfully did the thought affect
Him that it betrayed itself in His appearance, and
as He approached the altar of His sacrifice they
who saw Him were struck with amazement and
fear.2 Whether the meaning and precise bearings
of this baptism of death assumed a distinct shape in
His mind, our records do not enable us to determine.
There it seems like a dark, mysterious fact, big with
doom, which breaks upon Him like the sound of
angry seas heard in the night. Yet, it is evident,
He distinctly believed that His approaching death
was not only an incident of His life work, but an
integral part of His mode of saving men. For one
chance saying of His has been preserved, which, as
a sign of His habitual thought, is more impressive
than a deliberate elaboration of doctrine : the Son of
Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister
and to give His life a ransom for many? From one
point of view this saying provokes, rather than
satisfies, curiosity. For it is left indeterminate to
whom the ransom is paid, and how precisely the
release is effected. But as an indication of His own
thought about His death its importance cannot be
exaggerated. It was a common saying in Hebrew
that a man sold himself, or was sold to do evil.4
And more than once Jesus adopted a form of speech
which implied that man was bound prisoner to
Satan. How far this was mere metaphor, or a
1 Luke xii. 50. 2 Markx. 32. 8 Matt. xx. 28 ; Mark x. 45.
4 See 1 Kings xxi. 20, 25 ; 1 Mace. i. 15 : " They forsook the
covenant, and were sold to do mischief."

THE MEANS OF SALVATION 121
literal description of fact, who can say ? But clearly
men were, in His view, held in a bondage of sin
from which they were powerless to release them
selves because they were in no position to pay the
ransom which would set them free. And His death,
He saw, sufficed to pay that uncalculated price, and
so to purchase the deliverance of men.
At the Supper, on the eve of His departure, this
idea was not explained but carried into the heart
of the Church, never to depart, by an impressive
and tender symbolism. It does not seem to be
always recognised that a few pregnant words on a
great occasion may be of more significance than the
diffuse and flowing talk of a lifetime, when no stress
breaks up the deeper fountains of feeling or redeems
language from its tendency to extravagance. Thus
many have been unwilling to attach their due import
ance to these few brief sayings uttered under the
shadow of- the impending cross. The historical
associations and the sensitized perceptions of those
who sat at meat are overlooked, and the words torn
from their surroundings are taken in a cold and dis
connected bareness of suggestion. But remember
that the blood of the Paschal Lamb spared the Israel
ites in Egypt from the visitation of the destroying
angel. And remember that the most moving of all
the prophets, Jeremiah, had spoken beforehand of the
new covenant which was to be written on the heart
of the people. And then consider what was implied
by saying, This is my blood of the New Covenant
which is shed for many? And see if that addition is
1 Mark xiv. 24.

I22 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
not implicit in the whole situation : unto remission of

sins.

1

Certainly He must have felt that His blood shed
— i.e., His approaching death — was about to secure a
deliverance from sin, as the blood of the Paschal
Lamb saved the Israelites from slaughter. And by
connecting the Covenant with the blood He must have
meant that the new and inward cleansing, foretold by
Jeremiah, was to be accomplished by the death He
was preparing to undergo. If the details are left
indistinct, as it must be acknowledged that they are,
it is hardly conceivable how He could have more im
pressively indicated that His death was the supreme
means by which men could be saved ; nor could He
have shown more directly that its virtue was to be
appropriated by an individual act of faith than He
did by saying, Take eat, and drink ye all of this, and
this do in remembrance of me.
Here was a mystery which He never attempted to
explain ; nor have the explanations offered since the
time of the Apostles thrown any appreciable light
upon it. But His own action and His own words
leave us no alternative : when we would state the
means by which salvation is effected, according to
the teaching of Jesus, we must dwell not only on
His word and work, not only on the mediation of His
unique Person, but also on His death, the sacrifice
offered upon the cross for the sins of the world, and
assimilated by the powerful faith in Him which finds
its best symbol in the eating and drinking of His
flesh and blood. 1 Matt. xxvi. 28.

the means of salvation 123
Looking back we are bound to recognise that the
free proclamation of Pardon with which He began
Avas all along implicitly conditioned by that prevailing
sacrifice with which He ended.
The salvation which was depicted in the first ser
mon could only be achieved by the means depicted in
this filial action.

THE CHURCH
Matt. xvi. 1 8 ; xviii. 17.
THE world has heard more than enough of what
the Church says about Jesus, but how little has
it heard, as yet, of what Jesus says about the
Church ! It has been the hard lot of multitudes to
know Him only through the Church, and thus never
to get the criterion by which the Church itself is. to
be judged. For them the Church is Christianity,
and Christ is but a part of the Church. The Church
looms large, a venerable and beautiful building, the
growth of many ages, with crumbling images of the
saints, and storied windows of far-off and half-for
gotten things, intricate, attractive, bewildering, sub
duing, a sum of impressions rich in antique associa
tions, half Christian and half pagan, half worldly and
half heavenly, at least worldly enough to make
worldlings at home in it. And in some niche or
other of the great edifice is Christ, a conventional
Christ ; in the Virgin's arms it may be, or swung on
a colossal crucifix from the chancel roof. Perhaps a
great painter has made an altar-piece, or a fresco.
Perhaps a great composer has breathed a suggestion
of Him into the pipes of the high-built organ. Perhaps

126 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
a preacher, in the midst of much talk about Sacra
ments, Saints, Fasts, and Feasts of the Church,
confession, decoration, contribution, mentions with a
distant reverence, and a customary inclination of the
head, " Our blessed Lord."
Consider, a great part of Christendom has as yet
hardly looked upon Jesus, or heard Him speak.
" Look at the Church ; hear the Church," has been
the Gospel for the ages.
It is therefore a new idea to sit at His feet and
ask Him what He teaches about this institution
which, for good or evil, has practically superseded
Him. Has He in any way anticipated history and
spoken with prophetic censure and praise about the
Church which claims Him as founder ? Yes, He
has. What has to be said on this subject is revolution
ary. His teaching reads like a set indictment
against the historic Church. Men, heartsick and
disappointed, have passed scathing judgments on the
Church in each successive age. Jesus has antici
pated them all. From the first He announced what
He would do with the unfaithful steward ; He would
cut him off and appoint him his portion with the
hypocrites. Let us be careful how we approach His teaching
on this subject. If you come with a foregone con
clusion, if you are a special pleader for the Church
as we know it, you may read into His words the
abuses of Christendom. Every error has managed
to connect itself with some words of His, so that
tracking back the error we seem to run up into His

THE CHURCH 127
words as the source. Remembering this, we have
to ask simply what He meant — not, can His words
be twisted into a sanction of this or that practice,
but what was the first intention of His words ? If
His edicts were designed to correct the corruptions
of history, it is a transparent fallacy to justify history
by corrupting His words.
He is quit of all blame for the abominations which
have discredited the Church. The things which
have been the stumbling-blocks to honest souls have
no kind of authority in His teaching. They are
ancient, it is true, but not quite ancient enough.
They are not apostolic, but sub-apostolic. It would
be grossly unfair to charge upon St. Francis the
evils which developed in the Franciscan order within
a century after his death, because we are aware
how an astute Vatican exploited and reversed the
founder's beautiful ideas. It is equally unfair to
credit Jesus with the iniquities of the Church, the
greed, the ambition, the materialism, the cruelty of
priests, the idolatry of sacraments, the supple un
truthfulness of Jesuits. For, the world, Judaism,
the empire, Paganism, exploited His ideas. In the
lifetime of His contemporaries the mystery of evil
began to work. Ignatius, the little child, it is said,
whom He set in the midst as an example to His
disciples, already in the next generation, we must
believe if his epistles are genuine, introduced the
arch heresy. Before a second century had passed,
Tertullian, Irenaeus and Cyprian had admitted the
ideas which were gradually to reverse the teaching
of Jesus.

128 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
But here lay the wonder of God's wisdom. The
very men who were unconsciously drifting from
Jesus preserved His teaching to be their judge and
correction. These three Gospels remain, a source
of truth, pure and undefiled, when the waters which
flowed from them at the first became foul. We are
perpetually carried back to the Jesus who lived and
spoke among men. And as, with these Gospels in
our hands, we study simply what He said about the
Church, the whole worldly structure of the ages,
stained with stupidity, unreason, insolence, ambition
and avarice, passes away like the baseless fabric of
a dream, and we see the Church, His Church as He
conceived it, like a fair bride, chased from the altar
into the wilderness, pursuing her gentle and holy
course down the centuries, attracting slight notice
from men but close attention from heaven, per
secuted, despised, forsaken, yet cherished, glorified,
victorious. Sometimes for a day or a night she
tarries in some pretentious hostel which has assumed
her name, finding the door-keeper for the time
charitable and Christlike. But for the most part
she has been, and must be, in the wilderness, until
the cry rings through the midnight, " Behold the
Bridegroom cometh." I am conscious how difficult
it is for those who judge according to appearance,
and have no clear idea of the forces which ultimately
shape and determine events, to recognise this
astounding paradox; but the study we now essay
should make it clear that what Jesus means by His
Church has only an occasional and fitful connection
with what is known in history as the Church, the

THE CHURCH 129
Church which is the theme of ecclesiastical his
torians. Let us with an unbiassed mind examine the two
passages in which the word Church 1 occurs on the
lips of Jesus, and summon to our memory the
numerous sayings of His, which refer to the idea
without mentioning the name.
First, there is the promise addressed to Peter in
Matthew xvi. 18. There came a point in the
ministry of Jesus, after He had expounded the
nature of the kingdom of heaven, and shown how
its establishment on earth was connected with His
own person, when one solitary human being under
stood Him and believed. It was a fateful crisis in
history. Stand for a moment by that little group of
men at Caesarea Philippi, and listen to that heartfelt
avowal in answer to the question of Jesus, Whom say
ye that I am ? " Thou art the Christ," said one " the
Son of the living God."2 In all this world which
He had come to save, here was one simple and open
mind that recognised Him, only one. Crowding
multitudes with noisy acclamations had greeted Him
and offered Him ostentatious fealty. But they were
of no avail. On such outward and unspiritual
foundations no spiritual and inward structure could
be reared. But here was one man inwardly con-
1 It is well known to scholars that these two passages are not
of unquestioned authenticity. But believing them myself to be
authentic, and wishing to examine the teaching just as it has
come down to us, I have not thought it worth while to pause to
vindicate the passages.
2 May I be allowed to refer the reader to my own Cartoons oj
St. Mark, -p. 161, for this scene? 1

130 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
vinced, one man bound to him by a personal passion
of loyalty and love. In that one man He saw the
potency of everything; in that believing and con
fessing soul He already foresaw His Church. That
one soul was at present His whole Church. The
name of the man was Rock. And with a beautiful
allusion to his name, Jesus said, " On this Rock will
I build my Church."
One man alone at present ; but in the one was the
promise of all that should be. And therefore He
hastens to give to the representative man the
promises which will hold for those whom he re
presents. The gates of the invisible world shall
not prevail against that building which he sees rising
ideally into heaven. This confessor, and all con
fessors who shall follow, are immortal. To this one
man Jesus proceeds to entrust the powers which
the community of His believers would necessarily
possess. Using a phrase familiar at the time,
according to which the Rabbis were said to " bind "
or to " loose " when they declared anything to be in
accordance with, or contrary to, the Law, He
buoyantly declares : " Thou, believing soul, trusting
in me, shalt have power so to lay down the laws of
life and conduct on earth, that thy decisions shall
be ratified in heaven." This frank and passionate
confession of Christ has introduced the soul at once
into the kingdom of heaven, and established a
correspondence between what is done by it here
and what passes in the spiritual council chamber.
Here then is a rock on which the kingdom of heaven
can, even on earth, be established, a rock for the

THE CHURCH 131
moment precisely coextensive with this one man,
the rock, Peter.
Second. That we have got essentially the right
meaning of this famous passage becomes clearer
when we turn to the other occasion on which Jesus
used the word Church (Matt, xviii. 1 5-20). We are
here moved from Caesarea Philippi to Capernaum.
There the Church consisted for the present of one.
Here it is already " two or three." More than one
had now made the significant confession. There
would be an assembly, however small, of those who
believed ; the rock would not be a single stone, but
a building of lively stones fitted together, as Peter
himself says.1 It was time, therefore, to sketch in
a general way what the relation of the members was
to be.
And here observe, lest it should appear that the
power to loose and bind had been committed to
Peter as a personal prerogative, and not merely as
the essential power entrusted to a believer as such,
Jesus repeats to the company of believers the precise
words which He had uttered to Peter when Peter
was the sole believer.2 And, lest there should be
any foothold for the notion that He addressed those
first few believers as an Order, which should have
certain functions and prerogatives distinct from
those of the community of believers, He proceeds to
state in the most general and embracing terms what
He means by the society, to which these powers are
entrusted. He defines it as the assembly which is
constituted by men gathered together in His name
1 1 Peter ii. 5. 2 Matt, xviii. 18 and Matt. xvi. 19.

(32 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
with the consequent personal presence of Himself
in the midst.1
But as the community would thus be formed by a
personal relation of each individual to Himself, the
members could not be less than brothers. In a word
it would be a brotherhood. Everything would depend
on maintaining the brotherly feeling. If that were
lost the spell would be broken, and the ties would be
dissolved. A breach of brotherly love would be equi
valent to a wrench of him who should be guilty of it
from the person of Jesus. Accordingly, the primary
endeavour of the society would be to preserve this
unity of spirit, the bond of peace. If, therefore, one
of the brotherhood has committed an offence against
another, the injured one must at once strive- to gain
him by frank and affectionate remonstrance in
private. If that fails he must ask two or three
others of the community to come with him, to check
the unfairness of a possible bias, and to widen the
range of motives for reconciliation. If that fails, the
whole brotherhood must be informed of the root of
bitterness, the "little rift within the lute, which
by-and-by would make the music mute." If the
offending brother stands out against the repre
sentations of the whole brotherhood, he is by that
very fact excluded from the brotherhood. Where
the whole bond is love, the lack of love is excom
munication. If this contumelious individual is not
exorcised, and treated as a Gentile and a Publican,
the brotherhood itself must quickly lapse into the
mere dissolution of the Publican and Gentile world,
1 Matt, xviii. 20.

THE CHURCH i33
the society of the Christless everywhere and at all
times. But while the free and spontaneous fellowship is
maintained, each vitally related to Christ, Christ in
the midst of all, the society has a power which sur
passes all the combined powers of the world. It is
the power of consentaneous prayer. What it asks
shall be done for it by the Father which is in
heaven.1 Brief then as these passages of the Church's
foundation are, the idea is singularly clear. No
language could define more simply and directly what
Jesus means by the Church. The key to the idea
is a personal belief in Him and a personal confession
of His name. Such a belief and confession bring
the admission of the kingdom of heaven into the
soul. Receiving the kingdom of heaven as little
children, these confessors become the sons of God,
and therefore brothers. United with Him, Jesus
Christ, they are drawn together in a spiritual com
munity, and He is personally present with them.
Their prayers prevail ; their mutual discipline be
comes the shaping of life ; their decisions about what
is permissible or not have a heavenly significance
and a binding authority on the community.
It is a sweet and pure spiritual reality — the Church
as Jesus conceives it — a gracious liberty of love, a
mutual ministry, a common worship, an atmosphere
of self-forgetfulness, humility and prayer. It is a
creation of fire and dew, a kind of heavenly city
coming down on the earth. It is on the earth but
1 Matt, xviii. 19, 20,

134 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
quite unearthly. It can be bound in no buildings,
defined by no formulae, defiled by no abuses. All
the earthly societies called Churches are immediately
tested and tried by it. Touch them with this
Ithuriel's spear, and their quality becomes manifest.
Is the brotherhood there unbroken ? Does love
prevail ? Is Jesus in the midst ? Do they pray, and
praying receive ? Ah, this then is the Church. But
are they full of mutual rivalries, hatreds and con
tempts ? Have they no discipline of mutual ministry,
no prevalent prayer, no test of the inward relation
to Jesus ? Then that may be the Church of Rome,
or the Orthodox Church, or the Church of England,
or an Independent Church, but it is not what Jesus
Himself means by His Church at all.
But here is the most revolutionary feature in the
thought of Jesus. In His Church a hierarchy is
expressly forbidden. Ye know that the rulers of the
Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise
authority over them. Not so shall it be among you?
Be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your teacher and
all ye are brethren. And call no man your father on
the earth ; for one is your father, which is in heaven.
Neither be ye called masters; for one is your master,
even Christ?
We have heard it said that the Church is consti
tuted by a hierarchy of priests. In this hierarchy
each priest calls himself father, and the chief priests
holy fathers in God, while at the head of them all
is the Father, Papa, or Pope. We have seen in
history these high functionaries lording it over the
1 Matt. xx. 25. * Matt, xxiii. 8-10.

THE CHURCH 135
flock of Christ in a way which makes the authority
of kings and the insolence of tyrants seem slight by
comparison. We have heard the loud assumption
that the common people cannot know the truth but
must_-accept the teaching of the Church.
By all these things the Church has defined herself
very distinctly and has succeeded in showing that she
is not the Church of which Jesus spoke. In His
Church there are no priests, and there is no clergy,
except in the sense that the whole community of His
loyal ones form a clerus and ministering priesthood
in the world. Within its borders the only pre
eminence is that of sacrifice and service. - The only
exalted ones are those who are abased, those who
spend and are spent, and are in the footsteps of the
Lord who came not to be ministered unto but to
minister and to give His life a ransom for many?
Then, always on the assumption that the spiritual
should be first, and indeed everything, He adopted
two outward symbols to express the essential reality.
They who believed in Him should be inwardly
cleansed, therefore let them be outwardly baptised
with water which should mark and define the spiritual
fact. The society too of His confessors, living in
intimate brotherly love, sustained continually by His
imparted life, washed inwardly by the powerful
operation of His sacrifice, should seek to express
this divine reality by the repeated observance of the
last meal which He ate with them on earth. For
indeed it was His purpose not only to be in their
midst, but to be in each one, as a bread on which
1 Matt. xx. 28.

136 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
the soul could live, as a life-giving power which
would contain the element of cleansing.
The word " sacrament " is none of His coining.
The sacramental idea is the antithesis of His, who
taught that nothing entering into the physical
organism could affect the spiritual life.1
And now to throw together the ideas which com
plete His teaching about His Church: His con
fessors were to be a light in the world, a city on
a hill. Each one of them was to be a sacrifice
salted, as it were with fire,2 the community was to
be in the world as salt, saving the world from
corruption. Each one was to be severe to himself
but tender and affectionate to the rest. "What
the soul is in the body that Christians are in the
world," says that early Christian apology, the letter
to Diognetus. The Church was not to obtrude her
self, but to proclaim that supreme invisible kingdom
of God. Each member was to be a fisher of men,
going out to seek them, persuasively compelling the
lost world to come in, proclaiming on the house-tops
the message he had received in the ear.3
And as He despatched His messengers on this
world-wide mission, His heart melted with solicitude
and compassion over them. They would be like
sheep among wolves; proclaiming the kingdom of
peace they would be involved in weary strife.4
They would have to glide through the world, wise
as serpents, but harmless as doves.
He indulged them in no illusions. He did not
1 Matt. xv. 17 ; Mark vii. 18. 2 Mark ix. 49.
8 Matt. a. 27. 4 Lukex. 3, xii. 51, xxii. 35-37.

THE CHURCH 137
leave their weak faith to be shattered by unexpected
corruptions, by huge hypocrisies, by the veiled
enemy in the garment of light. He frankly foretold
all. Among His wide-sown wheat an enemy would
sow tares. False teachers would emerge — not like
His own sheep among wolves — but wolves in sheep's
clothing.1 Even the loudest professors who had
spoken and exorcised in His name would be rejected
if their life did not accord with His demands.2
From the first, therefore, He discouraged us from
going by appearances and loud-swelling pretensions,
and led us to fix our eyes on the consummation of
this age, when the mysteries would be cleared;
when His Church would be gathered, and the faith
ful would shine as the sun in the kingdom of His
Father.3 Though therefore the Church in the lips of Jesus
is very diverse from what is usually meant by the
Church in the lips of men, it is sufficiently distinct,
transparently simple, and undoubtedly attractive to
the human heart in a way that the Church in the
historical and human sense can scarcely be said
to be.
1 Matt. vii. 15-20. ¦ Luke xiii. 26, 27. 8 Matt. xiii. 43.

THE JUDGMENT
Matt. xxiv. 36.
IF there is no task more important than that of
understanding what Jesus Himself meant by
His Church, there is none more solemn, and more
heart-searching than that of studying what He
taught about judgment. Questions about the Church
. always seem a little remote and impersonal. But
judgment comes home to us. It is impossible to
forget that we who inquire what it means, are they
also who must be judged. Nor is -the solemnity of
the task lessened by the discovery of its difficulty.
Though He said much on the subject, it was for
the most part in parable or metaphor. Was His
purpose to baffle carnal and curious minds ? Did
He leave His thought vague and awesome, in
tending to strike home to men of all kinds, to force
inquiry, to make known the truth in proportion
to the sincerity of the search, to secure the end
that the truth discovered should not be flaunted
in pride, but only applied to the serious practice
of life?
Yet the difficulties of our task are not all of His
making or permission. We shall do well perhaps

140 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
to state clearly the hindrances which make it hard
to distinctly frame His teaching on the subject.
Partly, as He expressly tells us, the matter was
hidden from His own eyes, and known only to the
Father. Unlike some exponents of prophecy whom
we find in these days prepared to sketch the whole
course of coming events with exact dates, as if they
were admitted into the secret counsels of the Most
High, Jesus confessed that on one important point
at least knowledge was withheld from Him.
How that brief admission draws us to Him ! No
accurate mapping of the unknown future could be
so reassuring. It is like a hand reached out to us
in the darkness, as if He said : " Children, do I
not know that the sorest sorrow of humanity is its
ignorance about the future, its doom to walk in the
bewildering mists, to light unawares on what is to be,
to quit the hold of the life that is seen without a
detailed assurance of the life that is to be ? And do
I not share this sorrow too with you ? Be content,
even I do not know when the goal of this world's
history will be reached. My Father has not re
vealed it to me."
There are some who, to increase His glory, would
hush this up or explain it away. They would strike
down the gentle human hand held out to comfort us.
" Thou art God," they say, " only God ; though
Thou tellest us Thyself that Thou art human, we will
not believe Thee. Thy infallibility ceases where
Thou tellest us that Thou art not infallible." x Such
1 May I refer to Dr. Dale's striking remark that the heresies
of Apollinaris and Eutyches survive in the ultra-orthodox view

THE JUDGMENT 141
a dogmatic view has not only rendered the Gospel
narrative incredible, and encouraged the persistent
attacks of scepticism; but it has deprived the
Saviour's character and work of one of its most
enduring charms. The Church continues to write
apocryphal gospels for the supposed glory of Jesus.
But it is not possible to increase the glory which
shines from these authentic Gospels as they stand.
It is this perfect frankness of Jesus, His clear truth
ful eyes, the lowly renunciation of all pretence, the
ready confession of ignorance, that gives us our
supreme confidence in Him. The charlatan delights
in nothing so much as in boasting of a knowledge
which cannot be brought to the proof. He who is
very scrupulous in stating the limitations of his
knowledge, as eager to state what he does not as
what he does know, establishes at once a claim on
our trust. Consequently nothing inclines us to
believe all that He distinctly states about the judg
ment so much as this clear confession that there is
one thing which He cannot tell. We acquire a con
viction that nothing would induce Him to state what
He did not know. No detail will be supplied from
the resources of apocalyptic invention. Whenever
we can clearly interpret the imagery, and find what
He intrinsically means we shall know that the
result may be unquestioningly accepted.
At the same time, a complete ignorance about the
time when the final judgment should take place,
might well throw an air of uncertainty about much
of the mental nature of Jesus in the present day ? — Christian Doc
trine, pp. 54-59-

142 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
which would be said. At least with such a caution
from His own lips, we must be prepared to acquiesce
in ignorance about much which we should be well
pleased to learn. We must allow the existence here
of an initial difficulty which has not confronted us in
any other branch of our inquiry.
But partly also the difficulties arise from another
circumstance which is tolerably plain to a careful
reader of the Gospels : the first hearers of the dis
courses on this subject were in some uncertainty
about the connection of ideas. While the greater
part of His teaching was of so lucid, or so epi
grammatic a character that it lodged easily in the
memory, and appears in different documents with
only the slightest verbal changes ; the passages
which describe the final judgment betray by their
blurred appearance marks of a primitive con
fusion. In this chap. xxiv. of St. Matthew, for example,
the forecast of the destruction of Jerusalem, which
was to take place within that generation,1 between
thirty and forty years after Jesus spoke, is accom
panied by the statement that, immediately after the
tribulation of those days, shall occur the second
coming of the Son of man, and the final judgment
of the world. Here the facts known to us, who
have survived by many centuries the catastrophe of
1 Matt. xxiv. 34 : That yeved could mean the Jewish race is a
harmonistic theory which I cannot even entertain. I assume
that it means what in all Greek literature it always means — viz.,
the family existing at a given time, and, in a secondary sense,
the time which such a family exists together, or, as we call it,
a generation.

THE. JUDGMENT ; 143
70 a.d., leave us but two alternatives. Either the
evangelists have grouped the sayings of Jesus in a
misleading order, or if Jesus uttered them as they
now stand in: this chapter, He .fell into a great
mistake. r
Now in such: an alternative few of us can hesitate
for a moment! The evangelists appear in their
writings as very artless and, outside their own
subject, not specially well-informed men, who, when
they attempt interpretations of the Master's sayings,
not infrequently get wide of the mark. He, on the
other hand, appears, even in these unskilled pages,
as the most marvellous Being who ever opened His
lips to teach mankind. Where He tells us frankly
that He does not know a date we shall believe
Him ; but we shall be very slow to believe that He
could have made so great a blunder, and have
uttered it in so confident a way, as to say that
immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem His
second coming would take place, especially when
this collocation is directly followed by the state
ment, of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even
the angels of heaven, neither the Son?
We may say, therefore, that we have here an
internal proof of the fact that tradition had not
accurately recorded His specific forecasts of the final
judgment. There was an initial confusion between
certain things He had said concerning the downfall
of the temple and Jerusalem, and certain descrip
tions He had given of the Last Day, and the return
of the Son of Man as the Judge of mankind.
1 Matt. xxiv. 36.

r44 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
Possibly this confusion was permitted in order to
discourage from the outset the idle and demoralising
efforts of those who attempt to describe the course
of coming events. Certainly there could be no more
striking rebuke to this unprofitable occupation than
the fact that a prophecy put into the lips of Jesus,
as we have supposed, by His first biographers was
not fulfilled. That generation passed away and now
sixty generations more, and yet all these things of
v. 34 are not accomplished.
There are then two sources of difficulty which
have to be constantly remembered, the limitation of
the Lord's own knowledge on this subject, and a
confusion which must have been present from the
very first in the reports of His utterances touching
the future.
And yet, when all allowance is made for these
difficulties, His teaching on the two central and vital
principles is perfectly clear and overwhelmingly con
vincing. He leaves no doubt on either point :
Who will be the judge,
What will be the principle of the judgment.
Uncertainty rests, perhaps by design, on the time
when the judgment will take place. There is no
attempt to fix the point at which the fate of human
beings becomes irreversible. Jesus, for instance,
does not assume that the doom is fixed at the time
of the body's dissolution. And to the question
whether few or many should be saved, Jesus
opposes a most direct refusal to give any answer.1
1 Luke xiii. 23.

THE JUDGMENT 145
Let us try then to dismiss with the fewest pos
sible words the doubtful questions, in order that we
may concentrate our attention on the two points
that are certain. And we observe at once that, true
to its constant character, human nature delights to
exercise itself with the very things which Jesus left
uncertain, while it is very shy of meditating on those
things which He presents to us with the clearness
of day.
It will be enough if we convince ourselves by a
brief survey that these uncertainties are absolute
and designed.
1. The Time of the Judgment. In the examina
tion before Caiaphas, Jesus said : Henceforth ye shall
see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power,
and coming on the clouds of heaven? This remark
able announcement leaves us no option but to
believe that His sitting on the right hand of power,
and coming visibly on the clouds of heaven was an
event which began there and then with His cruci
fixion and the following occurrences. It suggests
that His coming is visible to those only who have
eyes to see, and that they who do not see Him
coming now will not be able ever to see Him
coming, except by some decisive change in them
selves. 2. The assumption made by the later Judaism,
1 Matt. xxvi. 64, &T'&pn could not mean " hereafter." It
definitely implies that the vision described began from that time.
See Matt, xxiii. 39 : " Ye shall not see me henceforth (dn-'dpn) and
John xiv. 7 "from now (&tr'&prC) ye know me." K

146 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
as well as by other religious systems, that imme
diately after death, the soul is carried before a judge
and its final destiny there and then irreversibly
fixed, is never distinctly affirmed by Jesus. If the
Parable of Dives and Lazarus, which is only a
parable, suggests it, the apologue of the sheep and
the goats distinctly states that this decision is
reached only Avhen the Son of Man comes on the
throne of His glory.1 But, if we are to interpret
Jesus by Himself rather than by Jewish and Pagan
presuppositions, we should gather that death is an
incident which may be ignored ; the soul passes on
into the next world precisely as it was in this, there
to receive stripes many or few. He implies that
sins may be forgiven in this world and the next.2
And the whole course of His teaching suggests that
the spiritual processes which are begun here must
work themselves out to their legitimate conclusions
of good or evil.
3. He observes a purposeful silence about the
number of those who shall be saved. Indeed from
His point of view the question would be misleading,
because its underlying assumption was that every
thing was determined in this life.
And in addition to all these points of uncertainty
it is to be observed that Jesus has a way of using
the word resurrection, which shows how irrelevant
many of the questions are with which we exercise
our minds. By resurrection He does not mean the
life beyond the grave, nor yet the resuscitation of
the material body, but rather a completed life in the
1 Matt. xxv. 31. 2 Matt. xii. 32.

THE JUDGMENT 147
living God. Hence He says : They that are ac
counted worthy to attain to that world and the resur
rection from the dead1 shall live a life emancipated
from earthly conditions. He speaks of the resurrec
tion of the fust2 as if to imply that in His sense of
the word the unjust will not rise at all. And thus
the sons of God attain to that condition, being sons
of the resurrection*
We have said enough to show that on many of
the points about which the Church tries to be pre
cise and dogmatic, Jesus prefers to be vague. Nay,
may we not say that implicitly He has decided
beforehand against some of the most confident
conclusions at which dogmatic Christianity has
arrived ?
But now we may turn to those two certainties on
which, as He left them indisputable, we cannot too
emphatically insist.
First. Jesus Himself is the appointed Judge of
men. It was no new idea that God should be
the Judge. The Old Testament was full of it.
But certainly here was a new and notable fact,
that He had delegated the function of judgment
to this Son of Man. All things have been delivered
unto me of my Father. We may speedily establish
the fact from His unequivocal utterances, and with
equal ease we can follow out what is implied by
it. The Son of Man shall come in the glory of His
Father, with His angels; and then shall He render
unto every man according to his deeds? In the
1 Luke xx. 35. 2 Luke xiv. 14.
8 Luke xx. 36. * Matt. xvi. 27.

148 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
interpretation of the parable of the Wheat and the
Tares, He says : The Son of Man shall send forth
His angels, and they shall gather out of His king
dom all things that cause stumbling, and them that
do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of'
fire? He declares in the plainest terms how He
will Himself close the door on those who have made
only a formal profession : Then will I profess unto
them I never knew you; depart from me, ye that
work iniquity? He Himself, by a process which He
describes in detail will separate between the sheep
and the goats, and utter the doom of each.3
But these clear statements of the fact derive their
significance from the particular meaning which He
gives to the function of the Judge. It does not:
seem to be so much a verdict passed by one who
has heard the evidence and sums it up impartially,
as a sentence which results from the touchstone of
His presence. He implies that He — partly the
word He has spoken, partly the works He has
done — but essentially He Himself is the standard
by which men will be tried. In some of His say
ings the idea of the Judge almost melts away,
becomes an inappropriate image. There appears
rather simply the gracious Saviour of men, the
only one who could really save them, and for that
reason the only one who can really judge them.
He is there, not only in the last day, but now
always in the course of human history, in our
midst, willing to save all who will accept His call,
1 Matt. xiii. 41. 2 Matt. vii. 23.
8 Matt. xxv. 34, 41.

THE JUDGMENT 149
rejecting literally no one, but for that reason pass
ing an unwilling verdict on those who will not come
unto Him that they might have life. It seems to
be in this sense that He regards His function of
judgment as beginning from the time of His mani
festation to men. And we almost gather that the
scene of a judgment bar, and the dramatic division
of all mankind into two classes at one moment, is
sketched for the sake of pictorial representation to
the multitude ; but that what fills the mind of Jesus
is that intrinsic determination of men's destiny by
contact with Himself in the field of human experi
ence. Following up this suggestion, which comes
more from a study of His modes of thought than
from an accumulation of particular utterances, we
arrive at the idea that He is the appointed Judge
of all mankind for this reason : at the long last,
when the ultimate destiny of every human being
will be determined, the one factor which will be
decisive must be the relation of each to Jesus. Only
the Christ-like will survive; every human element
which is un-Christ-like must perish everlastingly.
It is not the design of God that out of the human
race anything should effect a lodgment in eternity
which is out of Christ. Thus it can be no question
of a formal profession of crying Lord, Lord, and
recounting deeds done in His name. That is
nothing to the point. It is all a question of inward
resemblance to Christ.
Dante, with his poetic insight and the indignant
justice which overruled all dogmatic conceptions,
did not hesitate to put Popes in Hell. Augustine

ISO THE TEACHING OF JESUS
and the various theologies which have followed in
his wake have readily consigned to torment all who
were not of the elect. The Poet is much nearer to
the thought of Jesus than the theologian. The idea
that damnation is predetermined by the decree of
the Omnipotent is devilish. But Dante has at least
grasped the thought that the doom of men is fixed
by intrinsic qualities. Arbitrary formulae, outward
professions, garb, cowl, tiara, do not come into
consideration. But Dante was too far from the
Teaching of Jesus Himself to see precisely what He
meant. From Him we get this grand and simple thought :
to be like Him is everlasting life, resurrection, son-
ship to God. Whatever human being has received
this seed of life into himself, and is so maintained
and developed in a vital, spiritual union with Him,
can never die. But on the other hand, human
nature, which develops away from Him, chooses
for itself a character which incurs the judgment,
Depart from me, I never knew you. And that — even
though it should be a whole soul thus permanently
determined into hostility to Jesus — has no principle
of life in it at all. It falls tig KoXaaiv alcoviov, a
phrase which can only be interpreted by the con
trast of %o>r)v alcoviov? To be in Christ is life ever
lasting; to be out of Christ is punishment ever
lasting — i.e., a punishment which must last so long
as the condition out of Christ lasts.
Second. But as we obtain a clear view of the sense
1 Matt. xxv. 46.

THE JUDGMENT 151
in which Jesus is the judge, we are admitted at once
into the principle which determines the judgment.
We have several very precise utterances on the
subject. He is always very careful to separate
Himself from those who maintain that men will be
judged by the opinions they have held, or by their
external connection with a particular Church. It is
hard to say which is farther from His thought, the
churchman who tells the simple villager that every
one who does not belong to the Church of England
will be damned, or the "doctrinaire who says that
every one will be sent to hell who does not hold the
correct views about Scripture, the Trinity, the
Atonement, and so on. Jesus says sometimes : By
thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou
shalt be condemned,1 because the words are an expres
sion of the inner disposition of the heart. Or He says :
Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter
into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of
my Father which is in heaven? Or, He will render to
every man, according to his deeds? In the description
of His judgment which enters most into detail, the
decision turns upon loving ministry to others, given
or withheld, which He regards as ministry to Him.4 ,
But no saying of His takes us nearer to the centre
of the matter than : Every one who shall confess me
before men, him will I also confess before my Father
which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me
before men, him will I also deny before my Father
1 Matt. xii. 37. 2 Matt. vii. 21.
8 Matt. xvi. 27. 4 Matt. xxv. 31, et seq.

152 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
which is in heaven? In the light of the other
sayings it is impossible to mistake what He means
by confessing. It is the opposite of mere "pro
fessing." It is that manifestation of His reign, His
power, His presence, which can only be made by a
course of conduct in harmony with His will because
directed by His personal control.
The teaching which has been offered to men on
this subject has often had nothing but a verbal con
nection with the ideas of Jesus ; and it has some
times been a refuge of lie's which His word sweeps
ruthlessly away.
"What creed do you hold? Do you belong to
the true Church ? Are you baptized ? " Questions
like these will not so much as be asked. But this,
and this alone : " What art thou ? What through
thy probation, or through the spiritual circles thou
hast travelled, hast thou become ? Here is the
eternal standard — Jesus, this pure and self-less heart,
that sees God, this fountain of love and grace that
blesses men, this happy, restful spirit in the bosom
of the Father. What resemblance hast thou to
Him ? What relation hast thou with Him ? Art
thou such as He ? Art thou to the all-discerning
eye discernible as such ? Has life been an utterance
of Him, a deed of Him, a confession of Him, or the
reverse ? "
The selfish, the loveless, the malicious, the untrue,
have no part in Christ, but march for ever on the
descending road, the broad, easy, tormenting road of
Death ; torment for them ceases only with their
1 Matt, x, 32, 33.

THE JUDGMENT 153
being. But have you a part in Christ ; art thou
His ; hast thou His spirit ; art thou growing to
His stature? Then come thou blessed of the
Father, arid inherit the portion prepared for thee
in Him.
Thus Jesus speaks, dealing always not with vague
fictions and fancies, threats and hopes, but with truths
and facts which cannot be reversed.

THE CROWN OF THE TEACHING.
John xiv. 26.
WE have now traced the main outlines of the
Teaching as it has been preserved in the
three earliest evangelic records. We have not
digressed into detail, nor have we indulged in discur
sive expansion. We have tried to get as complete a
view as possible of the structure as a whole. This
is what Jesus taught in the audience of the people,
and — can we wonder? — "all the multitude was
astonished at His teaching."1
But we can hardly follow out the teaching as it
appears in the Synoptic Gospels without the convic
tion that what is there recorded implies more. If
He said so much, how can we avoid a belief that He
— at least on occasion, to some chosen hearers —
enlarged and explained ? Especially when His
design obviously was to gather a few intimate
friends to whom He could expound what the world
was not able to receive, we instinctively feel that He
must have unbosomed Himself to them ; He must
have spoken expressly without parables to them
what in these Memorabilia, which we call the
1 Mark xi. 18.

156 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
Synoptic Gospels, appears only in the form of hints,
dark sayings, or symbols.
We may at least distinguish seven points on
which the teaching in the Synoptics seems to be the
pledge of fuller statements; nay, one might say,
the keys surely would not have been given unless
there were corresponding locks to open. As we
study the Synoptics, and surrender ourselves to
their charm, we cannot but say to ourselves : If we
had been there in the private conferences when He
drew the disciples apart to rest awhile, or left the
scene of His labours for a sojourn in Decapolis ; if
we had been present with them in the silence and
the shadow of the night, by the well, or on the sea ;
we should have heard the enlargement of these
themes, the eager questions of awakened listeners,
the explicit and ever-memorable answers of the
Master. The seven points which must have been elaborated
are these :
I. The nature of that infinite Being whom Jesus
called with so appropriating and intimate a confi
dence, My Father.
2. How in His own consciousness Jesus perceived
Himself to be related to His Father.
3. Whence He had come : whether, like us, out of
the nothingness and forgetfulness of birth, or from
an antecedent existence.
4. What more explicitly might be the inner bless
ing of that salvation, the character and means of
which He had expounded.
5. What would He mean by the invitation to

THE CROWN OF THE TEACHING 157
come unto Him when He should, in the natural
course of events, be withdrawn from sight and touch
by the impending death.
6. What would be the law and the development of
the community which He was founding on earth by
proclaiming the kingdom of heaven, the society to
which sparingly He gave the name of Church.
7. Might we know anything more explicit of that
which awaits us behind the hills of death ?
He must have said much on these points which
the Synoptics do not record. They present the
springs of the arches, but do not follow them up into
the groining of the roof. Would such a building be
left roofless ? And further, it needs hardly be said
that a teaching so original and so profound, bound up
too, as it evidently was, with His Person, not His
earthly life only, but His death, and that after-
presence which was already promised by the resur
rection : lo, I am with you always, even to the end of
the world? — such a teaching was not to be grasped
in a moment or by hearsay ; it must have time to be
fused and harmonised by a living experience, inter
preted by reflection, connected by links of moral
assimilation. Essentially this was a doctrine which, as a merely
formal code, might mean little or nothing; all
would depend on the practical working of it. To.
enumerate its precepts, to learn its ideas, would be
but an insignificant part of the whole. The first thing
must be that there should be someone who would
live it all, someone who through the long years would ,
1 Matt, xxviii. 20.

158 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
make trial of its possibilities, test whether the
doctrine was of God, translate thought into action,
and show how the bright vision of that stainless
life, and the tender seed of the doctrine, might be
perpetuated when Jesus could be seen and heard no
more. The teaching of Jesus was of a kind that
could by no possibility be immediately recorded, for
this reason, that its very essence must be the trans
fusion which would take place in the experience ot
a believing, surrendered, and developed soul.
In a word, a study of the Synoptic records gives
rise of itself to a new demand. We want to know
not only what a reporter might have heard on the
hillside or in the precincts of the Temple, but also
how the matter would present itself to one who
occupied the position to which Jesus referred in the
words — to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him?
Now these demands which beforehand we should
inevitably make, these questions which we cannot
but prefer, are met by that book which is certainly
the most remarkable document in human literature,
the Gospel according to St. John. We have, I
trust, been impressed by the teaching as it occurs in
the other three Gospels ; but it is no disparagement
to them to say that they would remain incomplete
without the fourth. Indispensable as their witness is
— nay the fourth without them would hang in the
air, and appear unreal, unhistorical, the creation of
a constructive imagination — they without it would
remain like a building four-square, and well set on a
sure foundation, but lacking a roof. The Teaching of
1 Matt. xi. 27.

THE CROWN OF THE TEACHING 159
Jesus, and the biography of Jesus too, would remain
a roofless structure, a house hardly habitable for
the spirit of man, if we had not this mysterious
and unique book, which is called John's Gospel.
Here the teaching we have been trying to study
assumes a new aspect ; as if the fronds had unfolded
into the full leaf, or as if the parts had been pieced
together into an intelligible whole, this seems to be
the completion of what went before. Here the
words are fused and fashioned into the symmetrical
unity which in the early records was presupposed
but not expressed. Everything is translated from
the language of a certain epoch, a certain country, a
certain situation, into the language of all time and
all places. The teaching is the same, but changed.
The vocabulary is changed ; the ideas are the same.
It is the difference between the lesson which a child
has learnt by rote, and can easily repeat on leaving
school, and the lesson as it appears in the mature
and practised experience of life.
But it is important for us to mark several of the
phenomena of this book, which evidently is not
meant to supersede the others, but fulfils the
desirable purpose of completing and interpreting
them. First of all, St. John always presupposes the
other three. If we cannot say with certainty that
he had the Synoptic Gospels, as we have them, in
his hands, yet it is plain that the tradition em
bodied in them was familiar to him, and the general
contents of the narrative were so far taken for
granted, that he does not attempt to repeat what in

160 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
them has been well said. We are at liberty there
fore to assume that the teaching of Jesus in St.
John is to be explained, where necessary, by the
teaching in the three.
Again, St. John has a superior knowledge of the
framework and detail of the life, so that where the
Synoptics give scattered and disconnected episodes,
by no means agreeing even among themselves about
the connection of certain passages, St. John moves
along with a carefully marked chronological order.
It must be observed, however, that he does not use
this more accurate knowledge for the purpose of
exhibiting the development in the teaching; a fact
Which we gather entirely from the three ; but inter
preting always the beginning by the end, he intro
duces the whole body of the teaching at the several
occasions which his narrative embraces, with the
effect that it appears as a uniform and compacted
whole. Accordingly, while the fourth Gospel is the
best of all for tracing the main course of events in.
the life, it is the least serviceable of all for fixing the
date of any particular doctrine. As we have already
seen, the teaching has in the writer's mind been so
fused and harmonised by the experience of years
that it presents itself to him no longer as the diary
of the words of Jesus, but as the articulate and
completed Word itself, the Word embodied in a
human form.
Then, as to the authenticity of this unique
document ; there is an uncertainty which might be
of design, as if men were not to have the assurance
of this ripest truth of religious experience guaranteed

THE CROWN OF THE TEACHING 161
by science, but only by faith. Hence extreme views
are still taken about the authorship of the Gospel.
But when faith-has given us the cue, we observe a
curiously subtle and convincing guarantee of genuine^
ness in the notice of chapter xxi. 24, where some
unknown witnesses attest that .the disciple who
leaned upon the breast of Jesus at the Supper was
the author. The self-suppression which led him to
withhold his name as unimportant — and the way in
which he, at the same time conceals and obtrudes
his personality, thrusting himself forward veiled as
it were, is one of the most striking characteristics of
the composition — this self-suppression is not per
mitted to discredit the value of the testimony as a
first-hand witness. Even where doubt still lingers
about John the Apostle being the author, a candid
consideration of internal evidence convinces one
that here is the direct evidence of one who saw and
heard. But another point is to be noted. Wendt has
certainly succeeded in showing that the teaching of
Jesus in the fourth Gospel is essentially identical
with that in the other three. Misled by the varia
tion of form, critics have from different points of
view assumed that a totally new doctrine is intro
duced by St. John. They have attributed this to
the free creation of a religious or philosophical specu
lation suggested by anything rather than the his
torical person and life of Jesus. These vagaries of
criticism must be curbed by the discovery that so
far from differing, the vital and fundamental elements
in St. John's version of the teaching display the
L

1 62 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
most remarkable identity with those in the Synoptics,
an identity which is even emphasised by the varia
tion of form and of terminology. As we are now
about to see, the teaching in St. John is simply the
teaching of the Synoptics clothed upon, and articu
lated, and so carried out to its completion. It is
such an expression of the doctrines as might con
ceivably have been given by Jesus in the days of
His flesh to a circle of sympathetic listeners; but
much more strikingly it is such an interpretation of
His words as would gradually dawn on a devout
and believing soul, who, cherishing with a passionate
regard all that He ever said or did, had endeavoured
for many years to live it out in the way that He had
Himself directed.
We have therefore in St. John not only some of
the deeper and more inward thoughts of Jesus
which did not find a place in the Synoptic tradition,
but also a certain spiritual and experimental ex
pansion of His thought which He Himself had
mediated, not through His human lips in the days
of the flesh, but through the operations of the Spirit
promised and sent to those who believed.
But now we must consider for a moment the
astounding difference of form in the fourth Gospel,
to which allusion has been made. This difference
might conceivably be in part explained by a difference
in subject-matter. When the Master was speaking
about the kingdom of heaven, and the new law of the
kingdom for its citizens on earth, He might present
His thought in picturesque parables and aphoristic
sayings. While, on the other hand, such a mode of

THE CROWN OF THE TEACHING 163
speech might become inappropriate when He wished
to speak of the more inward things, eternal life
rather than the kingdom of heaven, or the -Son of
God, rather than the Son of Man. It is quite
intelligible that the crisp and pointed style of the
Sermon on the Mount would be best for a description
of the life, and the works, which would distinguish
the children of the kingdom ; but another and more
mystical mode of speech would be required when it
became necessary to explain how that life would be
produced by faith in Himself, and how therefore to
believe in Him would be to do the works of God.
: In so wonderful a mind as that of Jesus, there,
should be no difficulty in allowing room for many
modes of speech, and forms of teaching.
But that this does not account for the difference
in-. St. John's Gospel must be admitted. For pre
cisely the style which characterises the- words of
Jesus in that Gospel characterises also the narrative
itself. Indeed this mark of style more than once
makes it difficult to determine whether the evan
gelist is recording the words of Jesus, or proceeding
with words of his own.1 It is this fact which.
seems to place it beyond question that the writer
and not Jesus is responsible for the form, and the.
precise wording of these discourses. The Gospel.
of John does not as a rule give us, as the Synoptics
do, the exact words of Jesus, as it were stenographi-
cally recorded ; but it gives us the teaching of Jesus;
remembered and treasured iri substance, shaped in
the mystical consciousness of one who had been
1 See John iii. 16, &c.

1 64 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
revolving His ideas, and finding modes of expression
for them through a period of half a century or more.
Yet let us not be misunderstood. The actual
sayings of Jesus are there, unmistakable in their
originality, shining like gems with more than earthly
brilliance ; but they are set in the silver framework
of the disciple's thought. The disciple did not,
indeed could not, have invented them ; they are as
high above him as the stars are above the lamp
lights of the city street. Nay, so far from inventing
them, he was not always capable of understanding
them. On two occasions he essays interpretations
of the Master's words which are more than doubtful.1
But while he records the imperishable expressions
and thoughts of Jesus, he clothes them in a language,
and places them in a connection, of his own.
The recognition of this last fact brings, it should
be remembered, a relief to some of the difficulties
which all of us must have felt in the Gospel of
St. John. Occasionally the controversy between
Jesus and the Jews gives an impression of wrangling
which is little in the style of Jesus; and it is
remarkable that the passage which offends worst in
this particular, chapter viii., bears on its surface the
proof that it is not a correct record, but a careless
compilation. For at ver. 30 we are told that " as he
spake these things many believed on Him"; and
He proceeded to speak to those Jews who had
believed on Him; and yet a few verses lower down,
ver. 44, He is represented as saying to these
believers, " Ye are of your father the devil ; because
1 John ii. 19-22, xii, 32, 33.

THE CROWN OF THE TEACHING 165
I say the truth ye believe me riot." We could not
have a more emphatic reminder that 'we are bound
to allow for the interference, arid the imperfections,
of the biographer.
It is this manifestation of the earthen vessel con
taining the treasure that brings out the lustre of the
treasure. The limitations and crudities :of the
writer are the proof that he could not have invented
the thoughts which he attributes to Jesus ; : though
they remind us that he has clothed them in a dress
of his own. John is no doubt a striking personality;
the Gospel and Epistles have a peculiar stamp ; but
his genius, and the unquestionable power of his
writings, owe all their value, not to anything
intrinsic in them, but to the remarkable manner in
which they have conserved, fused, and interpreted
the teaching of Jesus, and those more mystical parts
of the teaching which the other records had lost or
overlooked. But let it not be thought that in saying this we
are passing any reflection on the author to whom
we owe so much. He himself observes more than
'once that the things which were said and done
were not at the time intelligible even to the dis
ciples, but became clear afterwards only on reflec
tion, and by an inward illumination.1 Indeed he
finds authority in the words of Jesus for the
method that he adopted, and those words are a
. further proof that we have rightly interpreted his
method : These things have I spoken unto you while
yet abiding with you. But the Comforter, even the
1 John ii, 22, xii. 16, xiv. 26.

166 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,
He shall teach you all ihingsf and bring lo your re'r-
membrance all that I said unto you? The teaching
of Jesus in the fourth Gospel is not only what was
spoken, while He was abiding with them ; it is not
only what was brought to their remembrance aifter-
wards ; it is also a fulfilment of that other part of
the promise, He shall teach you all things. If one of
the immediate circle of disciples who heard that
promise had not attempted such a spiritual recollec
tion, and enlargement of the teaching, this promise
would have remained unfulfilled.
No shadow of deception is chargeable on the
evangelist for this labour of love. When memory
did not accurately distinguish between words actually
spoken in those far-off years, and words breathed by
the Spirit in the secret intercourse with the risen
Lord, he would, as in the case just referred to,2 leave
it indeterminate whether he intended the language
to be attributed to Jesus on that occasion, or only to
the subsequent unfoldings of His spirit. From v. 19
in that passage, the light has come into the world, and
- men loved darkness rather than the light, for their deeds
' were evil, we should gather that the paragraph is the
comment of John, and not the continuation of the
discourse to Nicodemus. For in those words the
evangelist seems to be looking back on the rejection
of Jesus at the hands of men, which, when Jesus
was addressing Nicodemus, had certainly not de
clared itself. And again and again the form of the
language in the mouth of Jesus is more appropriate
1 John xiv. 25, 26. a John iii. 16-21.

THE CROWN OF THE TEACHING 167
to a.d. 90 than to a.d. 30. For instance the clause
introduced into the great prayer, and this is life
eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent,1 is from the
use of. the designation Jesus Christ, more like the
comment of the disciple in after years, than the
actual form in which Jesus would have addressed
the Father in the days of His flesh.
But we must recognise that the evangelist wrote
not only in good faith, but under the direction of the
Spirit. All was, if not exactly what Jesus said in
the years 30-33 a.d., yet exactly the utterance of
Jesus as it sounded in the vital experience of " His
own," not only in the year 90 a.d., but on and on
until now ; exactly as it will sound until His voice
shall be heard again by human ears.
But if we may explain in this way the very
striking differences between the fourth Gospel and
the other three, differences which haAre led a large
number of critics in modern times to reject the
authenticity of St. John altogether; if we may in
some such way as has been indicated maintain that
we have here a trustworthy source for the genuine
teaching of Jesus ; and if we can offer, as we have
proposed, some reasonable account of those features
in the work which cause perplexity even to devout
believers ; we are justified in reaching a very deci
sive conclusion. This is not only one source, it is
the most important source, of the teaching. With
out casting any slur on the others, we must recog
nise that none of them can give us what this author
** John xvii. 3.

168 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
does. As Beyschlag says, "with all its freedom
and subjectivity the fourth Gospel remains the most
faithful image and memorial of Jesus that any man
could produce." If it is not so verbally correct as the
others, it is much truer. For which is the truer, a
photograph or a portrait by a great master ? The
one, you say, must be correct, for it is the work of
the light itself. Yes, but we all know that a creative
artist can bring out much which is there, though the
light itself does not detect it. Or, for that matter,
which is truer, a reporter's verbatim account of a
speech, compressed at his own discretion into a
column or two, or the free reproduction of a sympa
thetic hearer, who has let the utterance sink into
his mind and commingle with his thought, and then
gives his impressions of it in his own way ? In the
first case there may not be a word or a sentence
which did not come from the speaker's lips, and yet
it may be a far less true account than is given in the
second case, though scarcely a word, or at least not
a sentence, is what the speaker said.
The fourth Gospel demands from a student of the
teaching an even closer and more meditative consi
deration than the other three ; because the mere
words count for little ; learning by rote accomplishes
nothing; it is necessary to get at the thoughts
behind the words, and at the truth behind the
thoughts. We must not for a moment overlook
what it is that we are handling ; unless we realise
the extraordinary characteristics of the work, we are
sure to blunder.
This is what comes before us : a disciple, the

THE CROWN OF THE TEACHING 169
beloved disciple, who heard all that others heard,
and much more in secret which he alone, or he
and a chosen circle, heard ; one who passionately
and tenderly received what he heard and made
it his own; one who at the giving of the Spirit
on the day of Pentecost, underwent that baptism
of illumination and power, and then for many
years, until all his contemporaries had passed away,
wrought out the doctrine in the founding of churches,
in the care of souls, in the service of the brethren,
in the perpetual insistence on the central truth of
religion ; this disciple, before the mists of death fell
upon his eyes, and when he was called to leave the
work of witness to which he had devoted his long
life, summoned all his powers, memory, thought,
experience, imagination, faith and prayer, and en
deavoured to give as nearly as he might the portrait of
Him, whom his hands had touched and his eyes seen,
full of grace and truth, a full-orbed star in the tender
twilight of the past.
And in the execution of the task he poured
out from the Master's lips those precious truths
which had become his own not only by the hearing
of the ear, but also by the experience of the heart ;
presented the very core and centre of the teaching ;
and gave to all of it that lofty and heavenly grace,
combined with that homely directness and simpli
city, which has made the fourth Gospel at once
the most human and the most divine of the four,
and has fitted it to be, more than any other com
position, the chosen means by .which the soul in
all ages comes to Christ.

THE NATURE OF THE FATHER
John vi. 57.
IT was a truth which could be spoken to all the
world that no man knoweth the Father save the
Son and he to whom the Son wills to reveal Him,
but the actual unveiling of the Father's face could
only be made — that is to say, Jesus could only will
to reveal Him — to such as are inwardly prepared for
so high and honourable a revelation. The mode
and result of this personal introduction to the
Father, and the kind of intimacy which may there
fore exist between the creature and the Creator, are
set out, for those who have eyes to see, in the
fourth Gospel.
We may describe the contribution which it, in
this matter, makes to the teaching of Jesus by a
simple human illustration : — There is a vast differ
ence between the knowledge which the outside
public and the inner circle may have of an eminent
man ; between, let us say, the Sir Thomas More,
who shone at the court of Henry VIII., and
perished on the scaffold, and the father known to
Margaret Roper; or between the Croriiwell who
struck terror into Europe, and the father whose

i72 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
heart broke over the death of Mrs. Claypole, the
beloved daughter ; or between Lord William Russell
as he appeared in the eyes of England, and as he ap
peared to the intimate love of the wife who spoke
of him as her "best and blessed friend." To the
public eye the man may be just and benevolent,
but distant and enigmatical, admired more than
loved, believed in rather than trusted. But in his
house he is unveiled ; his children know him as the
sympathetic friend, the gay and humorous com
panion; the wife thinks of him as the tender and
chivalrous lover. The cold reserves of admira
tion melt in the warm tides of love. Belief in
him seems a chill expression of a platitude; the
sentiment is rather a personal, unreserved and
passionate trust. He is, of course, the same
person; there is a perfect harmony between the
two aspects ; he could not, perhaps, be what he
is without, if he were not what he is within;
but they who know him from within would say
with some truth that the world which knows him
only from without can hardly be said to know him
at all.
The Synoptics present Jesus speaking about His
Father in that more external way in which the world
may know Him; St. John presents Jesus actually
showing the Father to receptive hearts. All that
the fourth Gospel contains about the Father is an
expansion from within of that central Synoptic say
ing, Matt. xi. 27. But what an expansion it is!
Jesus is making a revelation to His own, such as
He cannot make to the world. One is carried from

THE NATURE OF THE FATHER 173
the outer into the inner shrine, from the open and
bustling judgment of court and senate-house and
street, into the intimacy of the house. Here is God
the Father shown iri such a way that human beings
can approach Him> can dare the awful familiarity
of contact, and make the blissful experiment of
acquaintance. ' But the objection may occur: surely, now that
this Gospel is put into the world's hands, this
introduction to the intimacy of the Father is
furnished indiscriminately to all. Certainly those
who have made trial of this Way are puzzled to
know why every otae does not use it to come to
the Father. But this objection in a very singular
manner answers itself. The secret is not so open
as it looks. John Stuart Mill, who found much to
admire in the earlier Gospels, pronounced this
tedious and incomprehensible ; and the more vulgar
sort of infidelity delights to hold up these mystical
sayings to scorn. The fact is, a certain fitness is
presupposed before any one perceives what is in
these limpid words. They that love the light come
to the light. As the parabolic form of teaching was
avowedly designed to ward off the carnal and the
curious, so did these words of apparent simplicity
establish a test and erect a barrier of their own.
It was a primal doctrine of Jesus that pearls should
not be cast before swine; it is not the intention
of God that men who prefer the husks of error for
food should have the pearls of truth to trample on.
And it is a very notable fact which is brought to
light by the operation of this Gospel in the world,

174 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
that they who love husks will scorn the pearls and
pass by. Here is drawn the picture of God as a
Father, so attractive, so convincing, and so acces
sible, that one would say no man can resist the
appeal. But blinded eyes do not see; they even
prefer the broken light of the Synoptics to this un
clouded glory.
It might seem almost impossible to surpass the
picture of fatherly love presented in the parable of
the prodigal son. There surely, if anywhere, is
the living Father? But it has the defects of all
images ; it limits while defining. Using the noblest
human relation to illustrate the divine, it yet cir
cumscribes the divine in some sort to the human.
Ungracious as it is to criticise the matchless story,
we are bound to observe where it is inadequate, if-
we are to see how St. John has met the defects.
In the parable the Father remains at home awaiting
the son's return; there is no room for the idea that
the Father should be in any sense present in the
far country. Consequently it is the thought of an
absent rather than the impulse of a present Father
that suggests the return, and the repentance has the
air of being the son's spontaneous act rather than
the prompting of divine grace. This is, of course,
only to say that while God is described in imagery,
something must be sacrificed. There will be the
implication that He is in one place and not in
another, and that His actions are in time, as human
actions are.
But in the intimate teaching of Jesus, when He
1 John vi. 57.

THE NATURE OF THE FATHER 175
can speak to understanding hearts, He discards
parables ; and all these limitations disappear. Re
taining in the very term " Father " all the suggesT
¦tions of a patient love and an untiring readiness to
forgive, He yet describes God as Spirit — i.e., as
•" Being emancipated from time and space." Like
rthe wind blowing mysteriously where it lists, He is
moving invisible to fulfil His holy purposes every
where. It is inappropriate to say that He is here
or there, or even to say that He is everywhere.
For the form of thought by which we are bound to
posit all existence in space does not apply to Him.
Spirit has no spatial relations. The comparison
with an earthly father, or king, or householder, is
always limited by the fact that the term of com
parison is earthly. Flesh and blood confines the
thought to space. But when the term of com
parison chosen is the all-pervading, essential, irre
sistible atmosphere — that is the suggestion of the
word Spirit (irvevpa) — we are taken at once into a
more expansive region. It is a slight matter for
the atmosphere at one and the same time to enwrap
the globe, and to minister breath and life to every
creature, unembarrassed by the number or variety
of kinds. Though the withdrawal of the atmo
sphere, in an exhausted bell, would immediately
terminate the life of any, all are preserved alive by
the elastic, accessible, and yet impalpable air.
There is the true idea of God. He is not at any
time removed from the creature He has made,
which only in Him has its being. He is immanent,
actively at work ; and by an infinity of intelligence

176 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
and power, which it is not possible for us to con
ceive, and equally impossible to deny, He can
attend to His multiplicity of concerns at one and
the same time, with that concentration of energy
which a man gives to the least of his small affairs.
Jesus mentions the idea expressly only to show
the futility of sacred buildings.1 But that passage
goes farther than at first sight appears. For it
immediately suggests the conclusion that the only
essential temple of worship is the human spirit,
and that of course implies not only an omni
presence of God in a pantheistic sense, but par
ticularly a personal inward relation with every
human spirit, a condition which can only be
adequately shaped to our imagination by each one
regarding himself as the only conscious being in
the world, except God, with whom he is at close
quarters. But the thought may be seen to underlie all the
teaching of Jesus in this Gospel. As the wind
blows, so the Spirit — ever-present, unobserved by
human eye — approaches to recreate every human
soul.2 As distinct from the creation, and even the
derived life of men, the Father hath life in Himself,
and it was a peculiar gift transmitted to the Son.3
This is an important explanation of the term, the
living Father. There is no delusion commoner than
to suppose that life is an ultimate fact, and that
every living thing has life in itself. No, says Jesus,
God alone is the ultimate fact, and He alone has
life in Himself. The creation lives in Him, and at
1 John iv, 24. 2 John iii. 8. 3 John v. 26.-

THE NATURE OF THE FATHER 177
the withdrawal of His life becomes at once in
organic, a charred cinder, a waste of meaningless
atoms, Accordingly Jesus is particular to declare
that the Father is not a power withdrawn, leaving
the universe He has set in motion to proceed
mechanically by its own impulse, but my Father
worketh hitherto? He is in the world always at
work, always operating on the minds of men, fol
every one that hath heard from the Father and hath
learned cometh unto me? Nothing gives us a clearer
idea of the sense that Jesus had of the Father's all-
pervasive spirit than this conviction that though He
had come into the world to show men the Father,
it was always the Father that brought men to
Him. Or, to glance at the teaching of Jesus which
appears in the Epistle, — for it is impossible to
separate the Epistle and the Gospel; though the
one is avowedly a historical record and the other
is an effusion of the writer, there is as much of the
direct teaching of Jesus in the Epistle as in the
Gospel, it is a beautiful saying of the Epistle that
God is Light. Like the all-pervasive' light, the
light which searches all crannies, and attempts all
shuttered windows, the light which will not be
excluded except by darkness, the heavenly Fathei
is a diffusive, penetrating presence. He assails all
souls ; He enters chambers of souls even where
the greater part of the being is barred against
His entrance. He is found lying like a sunbeam
on some forlorn and miasmal place, sterilising the
1 John v. 17. 2 John vi. 45. M

178 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
germs of evil, cheering desolation itself. There
may be some souls that are blinded so that they
cannot see the light, incapable of God, as a mole
of sunshine. But Jesus knows nothing of such.
They who do not see the light are, to Him, souls
that love darkness rather than the light, men
plunged into the obscure caves of selfishness, of
worldliness, of sin. He makes no question but
that, if they had never so faint a desire for the
light, and would open their door to the width of a
chink, God, the circumambient light delicately solicit
ing entrance, would come in.
Jesus explains His own presence in the world as
an incarnate beam of that divine Light, which has
penetrated into the darkened chambers of human
sin, to transform the darkness into light. Again
and again He seeks to bring home to men that
their rejection of Him is an indication to them of
their own blinded state. If they are irritated with
Him, the beam of heavenly light shining in the
bewildering gloom of the world, that should remind
them that they are shutting their souls up against
God, the Light. This is so self-evident to Him that
He pleads with them, surprised and grieved, to
come into His light. / am come a light into the
world, that whosoever believeth on me may not abide
in darkness? As light might dispute with darkness
He appeals to men : / say these things that ye may be
saved. Ye will not come to me that ye may have life.
How can ye believe that receive glory one of another,
and the glory that cometh from the only God ye seek
1 John xii. 46.

THE NATURE OF THE FATHER i7g
not?1 They seem to Him as men who have
shut themselves in subterranean cellars to prefer
smoking rushlights, and will not come out into the
sun, that wooes and waits for them. And yet, as
to Him, God, the Light, is the reality, and the dark
ness is but an obstruction which must disappear,
He has an exultant assurance that the uplifted
Light will scatter the murk. /, if I be lifted up,
will draw all men unto me? He never doubts that
a time will come when the night shall have passed
for ever, and an astonished world, emergent from
the gloom, will recognise that Light is triumphant
and that He Himself was a beam from that primal
Light. But this image brings us to a truth, which is no
longer even an image of so unrestricted and un
limited a character as air and light. There is a
thought of God, not obscurely hinted at in all the
Gospels, but only expressed as an integral part of
the teaching of Jesus by the beloved disciple. The
last word could not be spoken until this was said :
God is Love. Whether Jesus actually uttered
those magical words, or only exhibited them in His
own person, so that the rapt observer found them
instinctively coming to his lips, is a matter of no
great importance. The words occur only in the
Epistle. The. thought throbs all through the Gospel.
It is expressed in words which no familiarity can
rob of their freshriess, words uttered by Jesus
Himself perhaps, but in any case learnt only from
Him, in that passage where the Light and the Love
John v. 34, 40, 44. 2 John xii. 32.

180 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
blend into one, where the love of the world is
regarded as the light of the world, and men's in
difference to the love is explained by their hatred
of the Light.1
The world, that disordered arena of human free
dom and sin, is described as hating? It hates God.
It hates Jesus. It hates the disciples of Jesus even
on account of their faint resemblance to Him,
There is no exaggeration in this description. Even
in this Christian and civilised community it is no
unfrequent experience to run upon this elemental
malignity of human nature ; you may see that
unhallowed fire in the eye, and hear that hiss of the
angry tongue which is like the poisonous sting of a
serpent. Here in England you may find men who
hate God, who force language to express their con
tempt of Jesus, and overwhelm His witnesses with
scurrilous and obscene scorn. Beyond the pale of
Christian influence this is far worse. The Moslem's
pitiless, bloodthirsty, lustful hatred of the Christian;
the fierce and murderous passions which always
lurk even under the smile of the yellow races; the
internecine savagery and devilry of the races that
inhabited the lovely islands of the Pacific, and of
vast populations in the dark continent of Africa —
certainly justify the broad statement of Jesus by an
accumulation of corroborative facts : The world
hates. But this world of malignant hate God loves. His
love is an eager and active purpose to save.3 Jesus
says : Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the
1 John iii. 16-21. 2 John xvii. 14. 8 John iii. 16.

THE NATURE OF THE FATHER 181
world1 before the dark possibilities of the perverted
will had come into the region of experience. And
yet He could add, Therefore doth the Father love me
because I lay down my life 2 for the world. God is
love in so marvellous a sense that while He loved
His obedient and loving Son, He could love also
His disobedient and hating world with a redemptive
passion, could send His beloved on the errand of
salvation, and make it an additional ground of love
to His Son, that He was ready to be sacrificed for
this graceless world.
This is that truth, God is Love; this is the illus
tration, and the proof of it.
But here, in the very statement of the truth,
emerges the old sore problem. If God is Spirit and
Light and Love, and God is creator of us all, how
comes it that there is a world which hates, a circle
of being however trivial and infinitesimal, which is in
so blinded and desolate an antagonism to Him that
the beloved Son must come and die in order to re
concile it to Him ? The difficulty was present to
the mind of Jesus, and His solution of it is the only
one we possess, and it goes as far as human thought
can follow. The world lies in darkness, though God
who made it is Love, because it is in the evil one ; a
usurping and rebellious spirit has acquired power in
the diseased will of men ; the works of this enemy
are in the world on every hand ; the Son of Man
was manifested to destroy his works. Alone, let us
hope, in the wide spaces of the air, and among the
uncounted myriads of habitable globes, this globe
1 John xvii. 24. 2 John x. 17.

1 82 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
has been the scene of this rebellious spirit's enter
prises. Every one that commits sin becomes the
bond slave of sin, and by a sorrowful inverted new
birth the child of this arch-foe of goodness.1
But if we ask how God, being Love, could ever
allow this rule of the enemy in the world which
He made, Jesus gives no direct answer : it does not
appear that the question ever presented itself to
men in His day : but He leads us to a point of view
from which, with a larger outlook, we see a pos
sible explanation, and can with confidence remit the
answer to the future. On a certain occasion the
disciples asked whether a blind man was born blind
as a punishment of his own sins in a previous state,
or of his parents' sins before his birth. Jesus
made the significant answer : Neither did this man
sin nor his parents; but that the works of God should
be made manifest in him? It would appear that the
healing of the blind occasions a rapture of joy which
they who have always seen cannot understand ; and
certainly it exalts the glory of God in a way that
would not have been possible if all men had always
enjoyed the unbroken exercise of sight. Is there
here a clue ? The triumph of the Prodigal's return
may occasion an ecstasy not otherwise to be ob
tained ; the victory over powers of evil may be a good
greater than untempted innocence; a Father mani
fested in a love which, discouraged by no excess
of rebellion, would press to the restoration of the
loss through every conceivable sacrifice and pain,
might be a Father loved and eternally served as He
1 John viii. 44. 2 John ix. 3.

THE NATURE OF THE FATHER 183
could not be even by the hosts of the elder and un-
fallen sons. Jesus has high thoughts of what He
calls the glory of the Father, the gleam and splendour
of the eternal Light, the divine self-realisation, issuing
in a self-revelation. Out of that glory Jesus Himself
issued. He showed it, as He shared it. He increased
it as He showed it. He certainly saw large illustra
tion, as well as increase of it, in His return to its cen
tral magnificence bringing His ransomed with Him.1
It was probably therefore. to Him self-evident
that, while the orders of sinless beings around the
throne could glorify the Father, there was a
possibility of expansion through conflict, of light
emerging brighter out of darkness. A lost world
redeemed, a fallen race restored, a company of
spirits, cleansed by sacrifice and purged by pain,
coming out of great tribulation with palms of victory
and songs of joy, might be an accession to that
unapproachable glory, the final cause for which the
whole creation has come into existence) and is
guided through its development. And if this is
the luminous thought of . Jesus, which of us is in a
position to dispute it, or to suggest an explanation
more fruitful or more probable ?
This then is the supreme revelation of the Father:
He is Spirit : He is Light : He is Love. The
secular problems, the mystery of sin, the shadow of
darkness, the curse of hate, are no disproof of His
stainless being, for they all await the manifestation
of His being in order to be solved, and banished
and destroyed. 1 John xvii. 22.

1 84 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
It may be said that even this fullest revelation of
the Father leaves much that is unexplained, some
thing even that is inexplicable. Perhaps so. But
no one can dwell for long together in the atmo
sphere of these Johannine writings, listening to this
heart of the teaching of Jesus, without the discovery
of a golden light penetrating the mists, and of a
subtle comfort entering the soul. An experience is
instituted which is itself the solution of many diffi
culties. One begins to engage in the serious conflict of
flesh with spirit, of light with darkness, of love with
hate. And victories are gained. Is there any bliss
like that inclination of the scale when the battle is
turned, and the flesh, and the darkness, and the
hate are vanquished ? That flicker of spiritual
flame over the conquered senses; that glimmer of
cold dawn over the hurtling shadows of the night ;
that tremble of melting love in which the floes
of hate dissolve and vanish : these are points of
bliss which at least to our experience can be in
no other way approached. Even with us, is it not
possible to draw some inference from the passionate
joy of saving a soul, of welcoming a prodigal, of restor
ing the fallen, of marking the gradual predominance
of the better elements in a struggling life? It is
surely not inconceivable that it was the largest
design of divine love, the mode of producing the
most effectual fruits of spiritual gain, and of eternal
joy, to admit Satan among the sons of God, that he
might go out to the tempting and trial of man. As
there could be no question of this subtle Prince of

THE NATURE OF THE FATHER 185
the air ultimately surviving, might he not serve a
purpose, and furnish the occasion by which the
spiritual thews and manhood of a race might be
established? Shall not the Eternal Father be
justified in His design of leading the little remnant
against the hosts of darkness, of ordaining conflict as
the means of victory, and sin as the pre-condition of
salvation ?
There shall be many sons made perfect through
suffering, brought to glory by the arduous way,
who shall lie near to the heart of God, and in their
excelling triumph fetch new music out of the triple
chords : God is Spirit, the living Father ; God is
Light, and in Him is no darkness ; God is Love,
and no words can go beyond.

THE NATURE OF THE SON
John x. 30.
THE revelation of an inward life possesses an
unfailing interest. We shall remember how
fascinating we found the glimpses which Marie
Bashkirtseff gave into her experiences, though she
was at the best a somewhat mean and sorry little
soul. Some years before, we were all captivated by
the beautiful, though profoundly saddening, spectacle
of Amiel's Journal Intime. It would almost seem that
if any one, even the most commonplace of persons,
could accurately exhibit the workings and develop
ment of his mind, we should find a charm in it,
simply because it is a human transcript ; though of
course the supposition is hardly possible, as a per
fectly commonplace mind has no power of self-
delineation. But suppose that some document presents to us
a genuine insight into the inner life of Jesus ; Jesus,
who, to say the least of it, is the most wonderful
human being that ever lived ; Jesus, compared with
whose influence on the human race, an ever-increas
ing influence from the beginning, that of the
greatest religious founders, rulers, conquerors,

1 88 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
thinkers and authors, seems superficial and evanes
cent ! Suppose it should show us in some degree
how He appeared to Himself, what passed in the
secret consciousness of the marvellous soul ! Sup
pose we should have, though not written by Himself,
something which corresponds to a Journal Intime of
Jesus !
Now, ir a sense, this is what is given us in the
Gospel of St. John.
The one thought which always filled the mind of
Jesus was that of His Father in heaven. How
precisely He was related, and felt Himself to be re
lated, to that invisible Father, the Synoptic Gospels
left in obscurity. They made it clear, as we said,
that the relation was unique, but that was all.
This Gospel, on the other hand, is very largely
occupied with those passages of His teaching which
lead an attentive and sympathetic hearer to that
mystic meeting-place where the channels of the
human soul and the divine being merge into one.
The interest of this individuality is unparalleled.
We may safely challenge any religion, or any
literature, to show anything that corresponds to it.
For a careful investigation reveals a consciousness
which is at once unmistakably human and unmis
takably divine. Nothing could be more undivided,
more harmonious, one might almost say more
natural, than the soul of Jesus. It betrays none of
those incongruous combinations which a scrupulous
theology, tenacious of orthodoxy, has discerned in it.
There is a person, one person, just as you or I can
only be described as one ; there is no intermixture

THE NATURE OF THE SON 189
of natures. But in examining the human soul and
becoming convinced of its humanity, we are led to
the equal conviction that it is divine. There is a
smooth, unbroken continuity in it. One passes,
without seam or juncture, from man to God in it,
from earth to heaven. Nor, brief as the document
is, could the impression be made more distinct or
overwhelming by any expansion or elaboration.
The study of this matter in the fourth Gospel
can be best disposed in two distinct parts. First,
there are the references which repeat and confirm
those revelations of the person of Jesus which we have
detected in the teaching of the Synoptics. Second,
there are those facts of His consciousness which
occur in the earlier Gospels only in faint hints and
far-off echoes, or not at all, but in St. John are
made quite distinct, and if not disconnected from
those more public utterances, yet, as the intimate
expression of a great soul showing Himself to His
friends, become virtually a new revelation.
This first line of study may be followed out in the
present section ; and it need hardly be said that the
value of it lies in the discovery that the two sources,
so different in form as St. John and the Synoptics,
absolutely agree in the main outlines of the person
ality of Jesus ; an agreement, be it observed, which
is very intelligible so long as we regard all the four
Gospels as the product of the immediate circle which
surrounded Jesus, and saw and heard Him during
His earthly career ; but an agreement which becomes
remarkable, and rich in evidential value, if further
inquiry requires us to bring the fourth Gospel down

190 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
into the middle of the second century. For, while
it is easily conceivable that a second-century writer
would servilely copy the documents of an earlier
day ; it is a very curious problem how such a writer,
with a complete change of style and form and
terminology, could yet so accurately portray the
identical unique consciousness which the artless
contemporary records had presented.
The second line of study must be deferred to
another section. It leads us to that fact of the
consciousness of JesuSj which might be inferred
from many hints in the Synoptics, but is certainly
never expressly mentioned in them — viz., His pre-
existence. Now to follow out those features of personality
which we have already traced in the earlier study,
as they appear in St. John. Jesus described Him
self, we saw, as Messiah, under the adapted desig
nation of Son of Man, and He also not obscurely
indicated His claim to be called the Son of God.
I. First, to examine the suggestion of His
Messiahship : — Notwithstanding the complete differ
ence of form, we find that His teaching in this
Gospel not only is the same in fact, but also follows
the same singularly marked intonation, as it did in
the Synoptics. Here, as there, He is from the time
of the Baptism aware that He is Messiah, and yet
here, as there, in all conversations with Jews, who
cherished the most misleading associations in con
nection with the title, He sedulously avoids using
the word itself. It is just the same situation that
we examined before ; He is bound to make a claim ;

THE NATURE OF THE SON 191
He is bound to identify Himself with one who was
expected; but He is bent on disconnecting Himself
from the expectations which had been forming in the
popular mind.
Thus, though in this Gospel it would seem that
from the first the disciples were of opinion that they
had found in Him the Messiah,1 He did not claim
the title Himself, except outside the borders of
Judaism in a conversation with a Samaritan, where
no misleading worldly hopes would prejudice the
value of the disclosure.2 His reserve on this
subject is even more marked in St. John than else
where. For here even the form of Peter's ultimate
confession, which has been dictated to him by the
Father, is not, Thou art the Messiah, as in the
Synoptics, but Thou art the Holy One of God.3
Even when Martha, towards the end of the life, says
to Him ; " I have believed that Thou art the Mes
siah,"4 He makes no reply. And especially, when
the prejudiced Jews pressed Him with the request,
" If thou art the' Christ, tell us plainly " 6 He refused
to tell them plainly. He simply pointed to His
works, to His character, to His word, those inward
and spiritual witnesses which were to regenerate the
idea of the Messiah before He could accept the
name ; and proceeded to declare that His questioners
were devoid of that moral fitness which could alorie

1 John i. 45.
2 John iv. 25 : The woman evidently expected Messiah simply
to be the declarer of truth, not a national liberator and the
founder of a political throne.
John vi. 69. 4 John xi. 27. 6 John x. 24.

192 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
recognise His office as He demanded that it should
be recognised.
All this not only echoes what we found in the
Synoptics, but it echoes the precise tone of the
language which Jesus employed on the subject.
Yet here, as there, He is explicit in claiming the
prophetic office, as when He quotes in reference to
Himself the adage A prophet hath no honour in his
own country? And possibly He classes Himself
with the prophets generally and with John the last
of the order particularly, when He says, using the
plural number, We speak that we do know, and bear
witness of that we have seen? Then in these dis
courses He delights to refer to Himself as " The
Sent " : Whom He sent him ye believe not; this is the
work of God, that ye believe on him whom He hath
sent : I am from Him, and He sent me : whom the
Father sanctified and sent into the world: whom
Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ? This was, of
course, a claim, without using the name Messiah,
to be that messenger described frequently by the
prophets of the Old Testament, who was to come
from God, the messenger whom the Rabbis called
Messiah. Here, too, though not so frequently, occurs His
chosen appellation The Son of Man. Some dozen
times it occurs. As in the vision of Daniel from
which we saw reason to think He took the name, He
was to be the Judge of the world because He was
the Son of Man.4 And the precise relation of this
1 John iv. 44. 2 John iii. 11.
John v. 38, vi. 29, vii. 29, *. 36, xvii. 3. 4 John v. 27.

THE NATURE OF THE SON 193
term to the more familiar name Messiah, the hesi
tating or questioning identification of the two in the
public mind, we are able to see in the inquiry of the
multitude, " We have heard out of the law that the
Messiah abideth for ever, and how sayest thou the
Son of Man must be lifted up ? Who is this Son of
Man ? "1 Here it is made plain, plainer even than in
the Synoptics, that He used the title Son of Man as
a veiled declaration of His Messiahship, and that
His hearers were actually impelled by His use of it
to make the kind of search which He intended to
provoke. And here, naturally, even more than in the ex
ternal record of His words and of the effect they
produced, it is plain that His mode of self-designa
tion became intelligible to His own. Slowly but
surely He conveyed to them the conviction of His
consciousness, that He was not only that prophet of
whom Moses wrote, and that heavenly messenger
described in the Book of Isaiah and seen in the
vision of Daniel, coming in the clouds of heaven,
but also One whom even prophets desired to see but
could not fully forecast, because He was more than
the ancient religion dreamed, a Being whom nothing
but the fact of His manifestation could adequately
declare. The course of St. John's Gospel exhibits
the growing impression of this revelation, as, in
language to which there is nothing parallel in the
first gospels,2 He explained, / am the light of the
world, he that follow eth me shall not walk in darkness ;
or, 1 am the way, the truth and the life ; no man cometh lo
John xii. 34. 2 John viii. 12. N

194 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
the Father but through me; x or, / am the resurrection
and the life, he that believeth on me though he was dead
yet shall he live;2 or, he that hath seen me hath seen the
Father ;3 or, he that honoureth not the son honoureth not
the Father who hath sent him?
II. But these expressions, already too remarkable
to be appropriate in merely human lips, prepare the
way for that discovery made in these more intimate
discourses which gives to the fourth Gospel a
character of its own.
The title Son of God was certainly claimed, if not
in so many words, when Jesus said, No man knoweth
the Father save the Son,5 in that significant and cen
tral passage to which we have had so frequent
occasion to refer in the earlier sections. It was
suggested also, as we saw, in some of the Synoptic
parables. But it never became a familiar expression
of His inner consciousness, still less an acknowledged
term applied to Him by outsiders. In the discourses
of the fourth Gospel, however, we find Jesus freely
and explicitly claiming it. After that point marked
in the Synoptics,6 at which Peter distinctly addressed
Him as the Son of the living God, the appellation
was, we gather from St. John, frankly accepted by
Jesus and employed by the disciples and other
members of His circle. And as it became the most
familiar and the most appropriate designation of
Him, St. John loses all count of the fact that there
had been a time in the ministry when it was used
with reserve, a time even before the disciples them-
1 John xiv. 6. 2 John xi. 25. 3 John xiv. 9.
4 John v. 23. 6 Matt. xi. 27. e Matt. xvi. 16.

THE NATURE OF THE SON 195
selves had recognised it, and he introduces the ex
pression into the earliest discourses that he records.
Whatever steps there might be in the discovery of
His heart that He was the Son of God, the discovery,
once made to men, would naturally override every
other thought, and gradually supersede every other
title. We must now therefore examine the revelations
of His consciousness on this important point. And
on the threshold of the subject comes that signifi
cant mode of speech, according to which He refrained
from coupling Himself and His disciples together in
a common sonship to God. If He encouraged them
to speak of Our Father, He did not include Himself
with them in such an address. Where He wished
to speak of the Father who was common to them
and Him He adopted the particular expression, My
Father and your Father. And thus, though the
actual occasion of the phrase throws it into the lips
of His adversaries, it was, we may rest assured, a
phrase of His own : " He said that God was his
own (t'Stov) Father" — His Father, that is, in a
peculiar and appropriate sense — "making Himself
equal with God."1 If there was some malicious
exaggeration of His enemies in this latter charge, as
Jesus seems to imply in the answer He makes, the
Son can do nothing of Himself , at least there is none
in the former phrase which exactly conveys the
thought running through all these discourses, that
God is His own Father. In another case He defines
still more nicely the precise position which He was
1 John v. 18.

196 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
conscious of holding. " Thou, being a man, makest
thyself God," said His enemies. To which He
replied with the most forbearing expostulation, Say
ye of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into
the world, Thou blasphemest ; because I said, I am the
Son of God ? 1 Here He just as certainly claims this
peculiar title, as He implicitly rebuts the precise
form of the allegation made against Him.
And indeed, if not a word of His own coining,
none expresses the thought which His conscious
ness is everywhere suggesting better than Only-
begotten.2 We only hesitate to claim it as a self-
chosen appellative because of the uncertainty to
which allusion has already been made, whether iii.
16-2 1 is to be understood as the discourse of Jesus,
or the comment of the evangelist.
Jesus is conscious that the Father has given to
Him, as the Son in this unique sense, the divine
prerogative of judgment,3 as we found stated and
depicted with suitable colours, in the Synoptics,
and that other divine prerogative of having life in
Himself.4 He is conscious even that the Father
reveals to Him all that He does, as if no secrets
Were kept from the Son in His bosom.6
Nothing could possibly surpass this sense of an
intimacy in which two persons are literally merged
in one.
In the Synoptics we saw how much was implied
1 John x. 36 : Dr. Dale has pointed out in his Christian Doctrine
the remarkable fact that Jesus never prays with His disciples,
but only for them. He does not use the Our Father which He
prescribes to them. 2 John iii. 16, 17.
3 John v. 22. 4 John v. 26. B John v. 20.

THE NATURE OF THE SON 197
in the sinlessness of Jesus. And here again the
precise point of the union between the Father and
the Son seems to lie in the unimpeded relation of a
sinless being. The will of the Son has never de
viated a hair's breadth from that of the 'Father.
This introduces an exquisite ethical meaning into a
relationship which might otherwise seem to be
merely ontological. As contrasted with the slave
of sin, He is the Son that abideth in the Father's
house for ever.1 This ethical tie is brought out in a
previous expression : He that sent me is with me;
He hath not left me alone; for I do always the things
that are pleasing to Him? He finds an evident
delight in dwelling upon this identity of His own
will with the will of God, which is a good definition
of sinlessness. It occurs again and again : I seek
not my own will but the will of Him that sent me; 3
/ am come down from heaven, not to do my own will
but the will of Him that sent me? It is, He says,
because He seeks the glory of Him that sent Him,
that He is true and no unrighteousness is in Him.6
This consciousness that He is without sin is the
most remarkable thing in the records of human
nature. He is constrained to utter it from a sense
of truth. If He shrank from it, it would involve
Him in an untruth which would itself be sin. /
keep His word? He says. This is a source of un
speakable rest and joy to Him : / have kept my
Father's commandments and abide in His love.7 Or
1 John viii. 35, 36. 2 John viii. 29. 3 John v. 30.
4 John vi. 38. 5 John vii. 18. 6 John viii. 53.
7 John xv. 10.

l98 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
perhaps never did He give a more revealing flash of
that serene, untroubled union which He always
maintained with His Father, than when He answered
the agitation of His disciples about the earthly food
by the saying : My meat is to do the will of Him that
sent me? Thus He mounts to that daring question,
which, in the light of this investigation, we cannot
take in any limited or partial sense, Which of you
convinces me of sin ? 2 Nay, the very principle of sin
itself, the ruler of this world, comes, and finds
nothing in Him? He has, so His exulting heart
assures Him, overcome the world?
This consciousness of a relation with the Father,
entirely undisturbed by sin, is so remarkable — and
how remarkable it is one only realises by trying to
conceive any other person who ever lived employing
similar language — that a certain school of modern
scholars has sought to rest the whole argument for
the divinity of Jesus on this, and this alone. Fol
lowing this line of thought, Wendt would suggest
that He was the Son of God, because He was sin
less, as if by such a moral victory, by such a course
of harmonious, sinless development, He reached for
the first time this unequalled relation with the Father.
Let us fully recognise that such a way of regarding
the matter is more fruitful, and in the end more
conservative of the historical authenticity of the
Christian gospel, than the perfectly abstract dogma,
that He was sinless because He was God. This
conclusion of a high and dry orthodoxy is utterly
1 John iv. 34. 2 John viii. 46.
3 John xiv. 30. John xvi. 33.

THE NATURE OF THE SON 199
sterile ; it robs His temptation of all reality, for
how can God be tempted ? — and it puts an im
passable gulf between us and Him. In this as in
other matters Wendt and the followers of Ritschl
have raised a too vehement protest against a theo
logical position which, as irrational, ceased to be
religious. But if we are determined to follow scrupulously
the guidance of His own teaching, and of that insight
which He Himself affords into His own conscious
ness, we must here part company from Wendt as
decidedly as from His opponents ; for the wonderful
prayer, John xvii. is unequivocal in showing that
the Sonship was not achieved, but essential and
eternal. His plea that, being sanctified and sent
into the world by the Father, He might without
blasphemy say I am the Son of God,1 is decisive
of the question that the Sonship antedated His
mission. To this we are bound to hold, and yet,
if we are not to deprive the events of this story
of all spiritual value we are bound also to admit
that, conscious of this essential and unbroken
Sonship as He became in the course of His life,
He yet was born into this world truly and abso
lutely man. Reflect on the narrative even of this
fourth Gospel, and you perceive that He was man
in such a sense, that His remaining sinless must
be regarded as the heroism of a moral energy, and
as truly miraculous as it would be if we had re
mained sinless through life.
III. There is one other point which has to be ob-
1 John x. 33-38.

200 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
served to complete the survey of those elements in
the teaching of the fourth Gospel which expound
and confirm what was said in the Synoptics on the
nature of Jesus.
If in this gospel the majestic claims involved in
the consciousness of Jesus are brought into clear
relief, here also the humble and prayerful dependence
of the Son on the Father is expressed in almost
every discourse, however fragmentary. Indeed, the
humanity, in the sense of subjection to, and reliance
on, the invisible God, is emphasised more than in
the Synoptics, where it is taken for granted. It
almost seems as if in some of the sayings there is a
conscious purpose to combat or forestall the heresy
that would deny the proper manhood of Jesus.
Thus He describes Himself as a man who has told
you the truth? It produces a decided impression to
enumerate the repeated repudiations of ever acting
apart from His Father. In every variety of detail
He affirms that He only does what He sees the
Father do, only says what He hears from the Father,
only gives what the Father has given to Him. My
teaching is not mine, but His that sent me:2 I do
nothing of myself, but as the Father taught me I speak
these things :3 I am come in my Father's name : i as I
hear I fudge? One of the most striking differences
between Him and an ordinary man is that we, as a
1 John viii. 40 : He uses the word &v6pairov in a peculiar way,
not merely an indefinite, unemphatic " one " which would be
expressed by the article, or at most by a pronoun, but as the
specific designation of humanity in contrast with Deity.
2 John vii. 16. 8 John viii. 28.
1 John v. 43. " John v. 30.

THE NATURE OF THE SON 201
rule, are so much more independent. We utter our
own ideas, do what we think right, act on our own
responsibility : He is entirely engaged in copying,
repeating, acting for, Another.
Thus this life is one of continuous prayer. His
language seems always trembling on the edge of
prayer : Father, I thank Thee that Thou heardest me,
and I knew that Thou hearest me always? When He
would send a great boon on men, He says, I will
pray the Father? Such a picture of careful and
prayerful dependence on God was never before seen.
As He felt, it rendered the two indistinguishable :
/ am in the Father : the Father is in me : 3 all mine
are Thine and Thine mine?
This modest merging of Himself in God, which
identifies the Son of Man and the Son of God with
the Father, has sometimes been cited to show that
He is only a man like ourselves. Surely the fact
proves just the opposite. This human soul which
does not breathe or move except as the instrument
of the Father's will, is, by that very fact, God mani
fested in the sphere of human life. He is from
heaven. To hear and to see Him is to hear and see
God. To reject Him is to reject the Father. He is
the divine Being brought into contact with human
souls, made a bread for the human spirit to eat and
live. When the Son of God is manifested to a man,
faith in Him becomes reconciliation with the Father,
the discovery and worship of God.6 Now is the Son
of Man glorified and God is glorified in Him?
1 John xi. 41. 2 John xiv. 16. 8 John xiv. 10.
John xvii. 10. s John ix. 35, 36. 6 John xiii. 31.

202 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
Nothing can lessen the mystery of this great
religious phenomenon. But our study of this Journal
Intime of Jesus lays bare to us a purely, a typically
human soul, prepared, developed, kept, growing up
in a perfectly human way ; and yet, wonderful to
state, quite free from sin, maintaining a life of free,
spontaneous, unbroken, identity with God ; with this
result that in Him is God's perfect revelation, not
only of the human, but also of the divine, indeed of
Himself. In the only way that is even conceivable
to man, the invisible and eternal spirit, God, has
become through an incarnation, manifest to man.
I and the Father are one.

THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF JESUS
John i. 18
WE come now to that part of the Teaching — that
part, let us say, of the Journal Intime of Jesus
— which reveals certain elements of His self-con
sciousness, never explicitly revealed in the Synoptics.
And when we observe closely what these are, and
how this part of His inner life was manifested to
Himself, we shall feel small wonder that facts of so
transcendent and so unusual a texture should have
obtained no lodgment in the merely hearsay reports
of His teaching. Here was certainly a truth which
could only be communicated to sympathetic hearers.
If it should be mentioned to the unsympathetic it
would be at the' best unintelligible, at the worst a
rock of offence. It was a truth which, stated baldly
in an unpropitious atmosphere, might make no im
pression at all, or might be attributed to delirations
of a heated fancy. If He was to state it in a way
to produce conviction, it must decidedly be stated to
the initiated, to men so trained and prepared that
He could admit them into an unreserved confidence
and unbosom Himself to them.
For there is a great deal in even the meanest

204 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
human being that can never be unfolded unless it
chance that a suitable audience presents itself. Even
we are not capable of revealing ourselves to every
body : to some natures we cannot reveal ourselves
at all. The secrets of our being lie buried down
below the reach of conjecture ; they come up into
the light only when reverent and understanding eyes
are there to see.
Now this seems to have been the fact : when in
the course of that natural and normal development,
which we have repeatedly seen must be assumed in
the case of Jesus as of others, His consciousness
reached its full and legitimate unfolding — an unfold
ing which was not to be expected at the beginning
but only as the result of the human life which He
came into the world to live — there lay in the very
core of His consciousness, like the ovary filled with
seed at the centre of a ripened flower, the unequivo
cal knowledge, or at least let us say, the unfaltering
inference, that His existence had not begun, like that
of other men, with the human birth, but rather before
the foundation of the world in the past eternity of
God. This conviction, appearing in the maturity ot
that unique consciousness, demands a careful study.
To careless and superficial observers it would be a
matter of incredulity or derision if it were observed
at all. But, happily for the delicate bloom of spiritual
fact, and the fine sheen of the pearls of God, they
remain entirely beyond the range of eyes that are
incapable of learning and profiting.
Imagine for a moment a diver who has taken a
deep and desperate plunge into the abyss of waters

THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF JESUS 205
in order to fetch up a treasure from the floor of the
sea. The stound of the dive, the rush and the
gurgle of the element, the difficulty of the enter
prise, perhaps even the absorption in the object
which he has in view — may drive from his recol
lection for the moment all thought of the upper
air from which he came. In the same way one may
conceive Jesus, the eternal Son of God, who has of
set purpose cast aside His prerogatives and the
enjoyment of the heavenly world, that He may dive
down into the depths of humanity and recover the
treasure that is lost. When first we observe Him,
He is in the depths. The search and the promise
of finding occupy His whole attention. We our
selves can think of nothing but His heroic and self-
sacrificing toil. But time passes, and presently, His
work achieved or in the way of achievement, He
begins to consider a return to the place from which
He came. Like the glimmering light through the
green waters, which brightens and broadens as the
diver nears the surface, the conviction clears in the
mind of Jesus, before He emerges into His proper
atmosphere, a growing conviction of the glory which
He had with the Father before the world was, and
of His rapidly approaching restoration to the glory.
If we are to apprehend a fact so mysterious, and
so removed from the region of a common experience,
we have but one course to adopt. We must dismiss
preconceived opinions and adhere very closely to
our records. We cannot, at least at the beginning,
allow ourselves any speculation. Philosophising is
quite out of place. Our one thought is to penetrate

206 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
— to put ourselves into the spiritual attitude in which
we are capable of penetrating — the consciousness of
Jesus. We must be open-eared for His words, and
open-hearted to their meaning. On the suspicion
of an improper spirit He will withdraw, veil Himself,
become impenetrable.
There are, as has been hinted, two lines within
which our discussion moves, and though it gives to
the inquiry an air of dogmatism, in the interests of
clearness we are perhaps justified in laying these
lines down beforehand :
I. The fact of His pre-existence does not come to
light except as the outcome of His fully developed
consciousness, and it is not therefore expressed until
a late stage in His teaching.
2. As such, and in its natural place, it occurs with
perfect distinctness.
I. We must realise the importance of giving a due
recognition to this first fact, a fact which has been
seldom or never recognised in systematic theology,
or in popular preaching. And because the fact has
not been observed, it has been easy to bring the
silence of the first three Gospels as a powerful argu
ment against the pre-existence of Jesus. In those
sources there is frequent reference made to what will
follow on the termination of His earthly career. He
will pass into the heavens ; He will sit at the right
hand of God : He will come again to judge the world.
But no reference is made to the fact that He occupied
that exalted condition before He came. Just to take
one instance out of many — when the Sadducees
question the reality of the resurrection, Jesus does

THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF JESUS 207
not, as in the case of Nicodemus, appeal to what He
has seen in the invisible world, but relies upon an
argument from the letter of the Law. If it be said
that there is one place, in the Parable of the Vine
yard, where the words of God, " I will send my Son,"
might imply that He was existing in heaven before
He was sent, we find ourselves precluded from this
argument by the fact that the same language is used
about the servants, the prophets, whose pre-existence
in heaven it is not proposed to maintain.1
Of course when we read Matthew, Mark and Luke,
we naturally carry into them truths which we have
derived from other writers ; so that it startles us to
find that if our New Testament consisted only of
these three documents we should have no reason to
say that Jesus existed before the miraculous birth of
Bethlehem. Yet this is certainly the fact. From
this fact it has been argued, that as the oldest
sources of the teaching know nothing of pre-
existence, its occurrence later cannot be referred to
Jesus Himself. Nor is there any way of meeting
this difficulty except by recognising that the con
sciousness of pre-existence was not there in the
mind of Jesus as a constant and dominating factor
from the beginning of His life, but emerged some
what in the manner which has been suggested.
This is so important a point that it may be well
to emphasise it in another way. The idea of pre-
existence was common in antiquity, derived, probably
enough, from Indian sources. Pythagoras and Plato
both definitely taught that the soul enters into the
1 Mark xii. 2, 4, 6 (Matt. xxi. 33 ; Luke xx. 9).

208 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
world from a previous state of existence through
the waters of Lethe. The idea occurs in the
Book of Wisdom, one of the most familiar of
books in the time of Jesus. And even in the New
Testament itself there is one passage, John ix. 2,
which implies it. Nay more, the idea is suggested
by some transient facts in every one's conscious
ness. It is difficult to read Wordsworth's "Ode
on the Intimations of Immortality from the Recol
lections of Childhood," without a haunting sensation
that the poet's assertion —
Not in entire forgetfulness
And not in utter nakedness ;
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home,
is the expression of our own conviction.
Considering then that the opinion is in itself
sufficiently natural, and was as a matter of fact
widely entertained in antiquity, we should certainly
have been prepared to find Jesus saying from the
beginning and constantly, that He had come into the
world from a previous state of existence. And we
might have expected that He would place His
difference from the common experience principally in
this that He had not passed through Lethe, but was
here in the world laden with distinct recollections of
the heaven from which He had come. Even with
the impressions we gather from other parts of the
New Testament, we certainly could not have been
surprised to find Him basing the whole body of His
exoteric teaching on the fact of His consciousness,
and claiming the belief of His hearers because He

THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF JESUS 209
spoke from a personal experience of that invisible
world which men have always dreamed of, but never
visited. When therefore we find the whole body of His
teaching as it is contained in our three earliest
sources without a trace of this thought, we must
admit that an explanation is required, nor can we be
astonished that many serious students have been
staggered. Wendt absolutely denies the pre-exist
ence of Jesus altogether, and even Beyschlag feels
bound to explain away the passages in St. John
which bear upon this point.
But while an explanation is certainly required,
I venture to believe that it is found in that idea,
which has all along proved so fruitful, the idea of the
natural development of Jesus. Only by degrees,
and in a perfectly normal way, did His consciousness
unfold. The exigencies of His humiliation required
that in this thing too He should not be separated
from His brethren. The truths which completed
His teaching were not realised even by Him in the
beginning. Facts even in Himself did not emerge
until the appointed time. Accordingly this truth,
which would break upon Him with a shock of inward
surprise, and would be cherished and revolved in
secret long before He would think of uttering it, did
not occur till the later passages of His teaching
And even then, in all probability, it produced no
definite impression on ordinary or unreceptive
hearers. Only to one who lay in His bosom could
it be unfolded. In the Synoptic tradition it found
no place. In the soul of John it found a place. To
o

210 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
him it became the explanation of everything, the
key-note of all the teaching. Every recollection of
those far-distant days was tinged with it, and he
could hardly recall a single discourse which did not
to his glowing recollection ring with the mighty
truth : " The Word became flesh and dwelt among
us." II. But this has brought us to the other limiting
line which marks out our discussion. In this fourth
Gospel, not only is the fact of the pre-existence
assumed by the writer in the opening passage on the
Logos, but it occurs on the lips of Jesus Himself, as
a part of His teaching concerning Himself, in a way
so distinct that no one who had not a theory to
maintain would ever dream of denying it.
No man, says Jesus, hath ascended into heaven,
but He that descended out of heaven, even the Son
of Man which is in heaven:1 what then if ye should
behold the Son of Man ascending where He was
before:2 before Abraham was, I am:3 I speak the
things which I have seen with the Father:* now, 0
Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self with the
glory which I had with Thee before the world was ?
Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world?
Nor is it only that these statements are explicit
and beyond the reach of misunderstanding. The
1 John iii. 13.
2 John vi. 62 : Wendt would have us believe that this verse is
merely an insertion of the redactor, saying that it breaks the
course of the argument. But no one ever felt this until the
passage was studied with a view of explaining away inconvenient
sayings. s John viii. 58.
4 John viii. 38. 6 John xvii. 5. 6 John xvii. 24.

THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF JESUS 211
supposition of the conviction in the heart of Jesus
may be traced, underlying all the discourses,
especially that central discourse about the Bread
of Life sent down from heaven, which is contrasted
with the teaching of even so great an earthly
prophet as Moses himself.1
When, therefore, scholars like Wendt and Bey
schlag set themselves to explain away these sayings,
and to show that the words do not mean what they
so precisely and variously express ; and when it is
argued that Jesus only intended to say that He had
pre-existed in idea, and was known to God in the
way that Jeremiah said he was known before he was
conceived in the womb ; we, with common English
minds, are baffled by the arbitrariness of German
theologians ; we are disposed to say, " Prove if you
will that John is incorrect, or that these sayings do
not come from Jesus at all ; but in the name of
simple straightforwardness, do not attempt to main
tain that these distinct statements are not intended
to convey the truth that Jesus existed as a conscious
person before He came into the world."
And when these scholars, and Wendt especially,
carry their prejudice so far as to say that if these
passages did mean what they say, that would dis
credit the fourth Gospel as a historical source
altogether, because of the contradiction thus involved
to the teaching in the other three, they are forget
ting how they themselves have established on
independent grounds the authenticity of St. John,
and have more than once insisted on the kind of
1 John vi. 32, 33.

212 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
development in the thought and self-consciousness of
Jesus which is required in order to solve the present
difficulty. When we have found the strongest reason
to place confidence in the contents of this fourth
Gospel as a whole, we are bound to posit the teach
ing in its entirety, and endeavour to understand it,
not thinking of so illogical a course as that of ab
ruptly dismissing whatever occurs here and not in
the other sources. If an idea like this of pre-exist
ence does not square with our presuppositions we
must revise our presuppositions. Certainly we
must not discard the idea unless we find it incom
prehensible in the light of the book, its genesis and
development, as we have come to understand it.
But so far from being inconsistent with that view
of the Gospel of St. John which we have been bound
to take, this truth and the manner in which it occurs
is in perfect harmony with that view. By our hypo
thesis the evangelist, after brooding for years on the
thought of Jesus, and working out His notions in
spiritual practice, grasped the flowers and fruit of all
He taught, and brought this last result to interpret
what went before. And further we have seen all
along that the unfolding consciousness of Jesus could
not possibly be intelligible to one who was still
entangled in the process. It was absolutely neces
sary to wait and to see whither it would lead.
Gradually He gained the knowledge of His mission ;
gradually came the certainty that He was Messiah ;
slowly He won the knowledge of His unique Son-
ship ; slowly He apprehended all, the suffering and
the death that was involved in His task. How

THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF JESUS 213
natural, therefore, that the long assimilation of His
experience in communion with the Father could
alone bring out the fact that He had been with the
Father so from the beginning, and had been at the
shaping of that Universe in which He was now, by
a voluntary surrender, a created part ! And if this
was the process of His own discovery, how inevitable ¦
was it that only a few, and they gradually, would
understand it, and that only in such vivid and
spiritually logical natures as those of St. John and
St. Paul could it attain its first clear expression and
formulation !
And one other argument may be added. When
we are compelled to recognise in these discourses of
St. John that this was part of the consciousness of
Jesus, just as we were compelled to recognise the
sense of perfect sinlessness, can we say, with any
show of reason, that the one is more incredible than
the other ? Both pre-existence and sinlessness are
facts of which we have no experience : if anything,
we have more immediate witness in our own con
sciousness of the former than of the latter. Wendt
and Beyschlag are most strenuous in maintaining
the sinlessness. What reason is there, except in
the demands of a foregone conclusion, for denying
the pre-existence ? Fairly stated, surely the notion
of a stainless human being growing up, and by
virtue of inward effort becoming the Son of God, and
attaining thereby to a share of His most exalted
prerogatives is encumbered with far more serious
difficulties than the notion which is, as we have said,
distinctly presented by this Evangelist, and was

214 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
afterwards worked out a little further in the Pauline
writings — viz., that the Son of God, a Being existent
in the Being of God before all time, the Being in
whose image ideally man was made, was enabled by
the eternal and unlimited power of God to enter into
the field of human history, and take His place, in no
counterfeit sense, among the sons of men. Where
tve are dealing confessedly with transcendental pheno
mena, and with a fact which every one admits stands
alone in human experience — a fact therefore, in
the very nature of the case, not of discovery but
of revelation — we may claim that the interpretation
presented in the New Testament is, apart from all
question of authority, intrinsically the most credible.
Nothing is gained by this modern attempt to dis
credit the pre-existence of Jesus — nothing even in
the way of rationality or credibility. The theory
which Wendt suggests is open to all the objections
of a materialistic and essentially unbelieving criti
cism ; nothing further can be said against the view
that Jesus was a true man, by virtue of His having
consented to divest Himself of all those elements in
His eternal nature which were not merely human,
and that consequently in no feigned or docetic
experience, but in a manner perfectly normal, He
passed through all the gradations and developments
of a proper human life, including the necessary oblitera
tion at first from His consciousness, and the gradual
recognition afterwards, of His pre-existence in an eter
nal state.
The difficulty indeed, does not, we may believe,
lie in the idea itself, but in the silence of the Synoptic

THE PRE-EXISTENCE OP JESUS 215
evangelists. This silence we have endeavoured to
explain, with what success the reader, after prayerful
thought, must judge. But as a further makeweight
against that perplexing silence let him remember
that St. Paul, who chronologically is an earlier
witness than even the first of the evangelists,
certainly entertained no doubt that Jesus came into
the world from a pre-existent state.
But if this fact of the pre-existence, as it is pre
sented in the Johannine teaching of Jesus, may be
considered established, observe that it is further
corroborated by the immediate explanation it offers
of much which occurs not only in the fourth, -but in
the earlier Gospels. That unapproachable union
and identity of Jesus with God, which never seems
sufficiently accounted for by the mere fact of sin
lessness — a fact which has almost a negative aspect
— receives a natural interpretation. A human being,
who was also in the centre of His personality,
however unconscious He might be of it at first,
identical with the supra-sensible and supra-human
Son that must be posited by any theory of God
which does not leave Him a solitary, isolated, un
related Being; such a human being, I say, would
instinctively, apart from conscious reflection or formu
lated speech, exhibit the characteristic which is most
striking in the portraiture of the Gospels. That air
of authority which was observable from the outset
of His career,1 apart from any expressed claim, or
words of sounding assumption, receives a legitimate
explanation. There is reason for that indefinable
1 Mark i. 27.

216 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
impression which He makes at the very first, that
He has arrived with a mission. To fall back on the
image which in some ways comes nearest to the
situation : He comes through the sea, the surge and
the surf of His humiliation, and appears among. us,
the lost and perishing mariners on the shore of
humanity; and He carries in His hand the rope,
which is attached to the eternal and immutable being
of God.
And it is here, in this crowning summit of His
teaching concerning Himself, that we for the first
time see exhibited the length and breadth of His
saving love.
It was this discovery which, when it was made,
prostrated those first disciples, John and Paul,
before His feet in grateful adoration. He who had
been among them in the meek garb of a humanity
like their own, He who had drawn them into an
open familiarity and called them friends, He who
had made no mention of His majesty, but veiled it
rather, permitting it to speak unobtrusively for itself,
was out of the bosom of the Father, the radiant Being
through whom the world was made! There was
love indeed, the very height of selfless, unprotesting
love ! Were we to lose sight of this supreme factor
in His manifestation, we should reduce His love to-
comparatively commonplace dimensions. Were He1
only a man, doing his duty, loving others as a man
does, dying for the truth, there would be a love
attractive and beautiful enough, no doubt, in its way.
But for proof of a love which can stir the world like
a passion, subdue the scoffer, and humble the proud,

THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF JESUS 217
a love which touches the quick because it comes
from the quick of the infinite heart, it is essential
to recognise who this was that wore so lowly a
mien. So only can we apprehend what sacrifice
was involved. Even the sacrifice of the cross is
after all only an incident in the sacrifice of one who
consented to lay aside His glory, and lose the con
sciousness of His own appropriate being, in the
redemptive passage through the ways of a lost
humanity.

ETERNAL LIFE
John iii. 15.
WHERE in the Synoptic teaching Jesus uses the
term, the kingdom of God, in the Johannine
teaching He substitutes eternal life. That the
two were synonymous on His lips is suggested even
by certain passages in Mark and Luke. For ex
ample, in the precisely parallel verses, Mark ix. 45
and 47, it may be observed that where life is used
in the first, kingdom of God is used in the second.
It is good for thee to enter into life halt, rather than
having thy two feet to be cast into hell: it is good for
thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye,
rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell. In
Luke xviii. 18 and 24 the identity is still more ex
plicit. "Good Master, what shall I do to inherit
eternal life ? " asks the ruler. Jesus in His answer
says, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into
the kingdom of God !
But the intention of the fourth evangelist to
employ the one term in the place of the other is
announced very early, in the third chapter. In that
passage Jesus interprets His own oracular utterance,
Except a man be ~born anew he cannot see the kingdom

220 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
of God,1 by the expression, So must the Son of Man
be lifted up, that whosoever believeth may in Him
have eternal life? After that, eternal life occurs fre
quently, and kingdom of God not at all, in the
Gospel. This is a very important fact to establish, and it
is too often overlooked. It would seem that kingdom
of God was the best term to use in speaking to Jews
who were already furnished by their prophets with
many theocratic ideas and expectations, which the
phrase kindled into life ; but it was not a suitable
term for the world at large, which drew its concep
tions of kingship from Ptolemies, Seleuci, and latterly
the idolatrous dominium of the Roman Caesars. If
mankind in all ages was to be reached, a simpler, a
more universal, a more inward and mystical term
must be employed. Kingship was a variable and
transitory idea. A time may even come when it
will have only an archaic meaning. But life, eternal
life, remains always, and always strikes home.
'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant
More life, and fuller, that we want.
We all chafe at the invidious restraint which
death imposes upon us, and are affected with a dis
dainful indignation at the " smell of mortality."
Accordingly Jesus translated His own phrase out
of the language of Judaism into the language of
mankind. He used the original term in His ministry
among His people, but He intimated that He would
use the translation among men at large. He had
1 John iii. 3. 2 John iii. 15.

ETERNAL LIFE 221
come to establish the kingdom of God, the divine
sovereignty in the rebellious human will, to gather
and train souls from the rival kingdom of sin, and
through regenerate men to establish even on earth
adominion of righteousness which would be connected
with the everlasting kingdom of the heavens. This
meant, in other words, that He had come bringing
life to the world, that men might have life and have
it more abundantly? For the realm of sin is the
realm of death. Absolute harmony with the will of
God is life, and that alone ; for He is the living
God, and all live unto Him. If men are dead in a
spiritual sense, He is no longer their God ; He is
not the God of the dead, but of the living.
But when He substituted this more abstract and
more personal idea of eternal life for the richly
coloured and far-reaching phrase, the kingdom of
God, He certainly had no intention of surrendering
that earlier image. On the contrary, the two ideas
were to be retained, as they are in our four Gospels
taken together, to interpret one another. One
might almost say that until we haye observed that
the terms are identical we never quite understand
. either. Like the terms " Son of Man " and " Son of
God," that go to make up the designation of Jesus
Himself, the terms " eternal life " and " kingdom of
God" go to make up the conception of the boon
which He has introduced into the world.
We may anticipate therefore much profit from
considering in more detail the identity of the two
ideas. And this we can do by first noticing how
1 John x. 10.

222 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
exactly the terms employed to describe the two
coincide, and then, how the means of establishing
the two are the same, while in the course of the
investigation we observe what new interpretations
are given to the idea of the kingdom, by regarding
it as eternal life.
I. Just as we saw that the kingdom of God was
described as come and yet coming, as a dream of
future realisation and yet a fact of realised expe
rience, and just as we got at the meaning of the
kingdom by studying this paradox ; so it is possible
to quote two strings of sayings which intertwine in
these Johannine discourses, the one establishing that
the eternal life is future, the other that it is present.
I. It is future. Whosoever drinketh the water that
I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that
I shall give him shall become in him a well of water
springing up unto eternal life? Work not for the
meat which perisheth, but for the meat which abideth
unto eternal life? He that reapetk receiveth wages and
gathereth fruit unto eternal life? He that hateth his
life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal?
In such expressions eternal life is evidently a goal
to be reached, a prize that is held out for future win
ning, a state of existence which lies beyond the range
of the life that now is. But,
2. In other passages it is no less distinctly men
tioned as something which already is here and now.
He that heareth my word and believeth Him that sent
me hath eternal life? This is the will of my Father,
1 John iv. 14. 2 John vi. 27. 3 John iv. 36,
4 John xii. 25. s John v. 24.

ETERNAL LIFE 223
that every one that beholdeth the Son, and believeth on
Him, have eternal life? He that believeth hath eternal
life? He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood
hath eternal life? Nay, so truly is it a gift of the
present that its possession will save a man from
even seeing death.4 I give unto them eternal life, and
they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them
out of my hand? Whosoever liveth and believeth on
me shall never die?
Here there is the same significant paradox which
we discovered in our study of the kingdom of God.
Eternal life is at once a future promise and a gift
now received. Impossible as it is — the very word
shows it — to confine eternal life to this life which
now is; the life which now is, according to the
thought of Jesus, is, or may become, the eternal life.
To miss this point is to miss just what is most
distinctive in His teaching. When we push the
kingdom of God into the future world, and forget
that the kingdom of God is among us already ; and
when we mean by eternal life the life of heaven, and
ignore the meaning of the saying He that believeth
hath eternal life; we are adopting the mode of
thought which divides between this world and the
world to come, and by so doing introduces a fatal
unreality into the teaching of the Gospel.
It occurs to me that there is an illustration in
literature of this peculiarity in the teaching of Jesus
1 John vi. 40 : The present force of ha. ?xv is l°st *n our Eriglish
translation, as well as the implied contrast or addition in the
next clause : " And I will raise him up at the last day."
2 John vi. 47. 3 John vi. 54. 4 John viii. 51.
* John x. 28, 6 John xi. 26.

224 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
concerning the eternal life, or kingdom of God, which
may give the reader a fresh grasp of the thought
underlying the words of Jesus. The first great
Christian poet, Dante, wrote about Hell, Purgatory,
and Heaven in so realistic a way, that no one can
avoid recognising his conviction that in the life to
come there are the states which He graphically
describes. But, as Lowell has pointed out, the
careful reader of the Divina Commedia is constantly
reminded that the poet, in the middle course of his
life, in that dismal wood of the exile, in his descent
ad inferos and his return thence, desires to indicate
that the scenes he paints are not future, but present.
The imagery points not to departed spirits in a world
beyond, but to spirits who were the poet's contem
poraries, many of them actually alive when he wrote,
occupying their several stations in Hell or Purgatory
or Paradise. This is no fanciful conjecture of a
commentator. Dante expressly says in the Convito,
" Wicked men may be called truly dead." His in
tention is to bring home to the conscience that we
are all now in this life either in Hell, or passing
through Purgatory to Paradise, or in the Heaven of
the Blessed already. Thus, Dante sees Frate Albe-
rigo in the Inferno, though he was not dead. And
in the description of Branca d'Oria, whom he meets
in Hell, he gives this truly terrific touch : " He still
eats and drinks and puts on clothes."
Certainly the poet had no intention of discrediting
the popular idea that the dead passed into a world
such as he depicted. Quite the contrary ; with a
sincere conviction he utters the theological teaching

ETERNAL LIFE 225
of his day. But just because he was a seer and not
a systematiser in theology, just by his own vivid and
penetrating power of piercing below the surface of
things, he was led to give an actual meaning to a
speculative dogma. Not only was he " the man
who had been in hell" as the astonished people
said ; but he was the man w,ho had shown hell,
and heaven too, to be in the actual world of ex
perience; the man who showed in what sense all
men were in heaven or hell.
Now in this suggestion, which the modern reader
cannot fail to see in the poem, Dante has caught the
idea of Jesus. A great poet breaks through the
cobwebs of ecclesiastical dogma. In the under
standing of Jesus, His significance, His meaning,
His methods, the poets often carry the palm.
Thus, all through the fourth Gospel the conviction
settles itself upon the reader that eternal life, though
expressed in terms of duration, and referred to a future,
is an actual possession in time. The kingdom of
God is among us, since Jesus has been among us.
The eternal life is within us, when we have believed
on Him. Examine His words carefully and you
find that" Jesus knows nothing of an eternal life in
the future for those of us who have it not in the
present. By eternal He means "belonging to an
order which does not, like this transitory world, pass
away." The life He gives is of that order. He
does not promise it as a future possession but He
offers it for present acquisition. We do not wake
into eternity after death. We are re-born into*
eternity now, and death becomes a negligible

226 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
quantity. That is the thought which sounds, like
"the trumpet of the last day, through the discourses
of Jesus : " You men, in these fields of time and
space, you now and here are living or dead. I offer
you life — you live. You refuse it — you die. The
last day is simply the ratification of To-day, eternity
the expansion of Now."
II. But we may now pause to consider for a
moment what further interpretation is given to the
idea of the kingdom of God by the employment of
the synonymous eternal life, and by the things
which Jesus says about this life. We shall find that
we are immediately led on to some vital and in
valuable additions, and shall appreciate the wisdom
of Jesus in not confining Himself to the earlier term.
In the Synoptic Gospels the kingdom of God
was the subject of the preaching of Jesus. But,
though His personality came more and more into
prominence, He did not connect Himself with the
Kingdom of God in any other way than that of the
divinely-appointed herald and exponent of it.
When, in the fourth Gospel, eternal life is pre
sented as the equivalent of the kingdom, it is much
more than the subject of His proclamation. It
becomes His personal production in a direct and
peculiar sense. As the Father hath life in Himself,
He says, even so gave He to the Son also to have life
in Himself,1 so that as an original fount of life He
could impart it to whom He would. This is life
eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom Thou hast sent? So that the kingdom
1 John v. 26. 2 John xvii. 3.

ETERNAL LIFE 227
of God is in this new light to be found through a
personal knowledge of God — as Father and Son —
of the Father sending the Son into the world.
Nay, we are carried further, and introduced into a
region of singular mystery and power by the state
ment that He not only gives the life, but He is the
life He imparts.1 Using the simple image of the
food by which the body is sustained, He announces
Himself as the bread of God which cometh down out
of heaven, and giveth life unto the world? Or using
the equally familiar image of water, He says: If
any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink:3
whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him
shall never thirst?
Even in the first mode of presentation it was
evident that it would be vain to preach the king
dom of God to a world which would not have Him
to reign over them, unless there should be some
power to effect a change in the world's desire, and
to engage the hearts of men to the obedience of
His will. But only when this new idea was em
ployed did it appear evident that Jesus had come
with a miraculous power, Avhich He could com
municate, to transform the affections and the aims
of men ; that He was, indeed, not a King only, not
a Teacher only, not a victim offered on an altar
only, but Himself an immediate principle of super
natural life, that would effect an entrance into every
willing heart, and there work out the moral and
spiritual birth to which He gave the name, eternal
1 John xiv. 6. 3 John vi. 33.
3 John vii. 37. * John iv. 14.

228 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
life. The hour cometh and now is, He said, show
ing by the now is that He referred to a present
spiritual resurrection, and not to the resurrection
of the body at the last day, when the dead shall hear
the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall
live? It was, therefore, more than was implied even in
the beautiful image of light ; / am the Light of the
world:2 the light is come into the world:3 I am come
a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me
may not abide in darkness? It is more even than
was implied in the splendid saying, The glory which
Thou hast given me, I have given unto them? More
than illumination, or instruction, more than dazzling
revelations of the eternal verities, He offered Him
self to be the transforming and sustaining life of
those who believe in Him, as direct a nourishment
to the soul of His disciple as the stock of the tree
is to the branch.6 And it is in view of this im
mediate and actual operation of Jesus on the soul
that we must interpret His use of the word salva
tion. Salvation was of the Jews;1 for He was every
inch a Jew. I say these things that ye may be saved3
He exclaims, after one of His proudly humble self-
assertions. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be
saved? I came not to fudge the world, but to save the
world,19 yes, literally to impart Himself as the life
to the dead and dying world.

1 John v. 25. 2 John viii. 12. 3 John iii. 19,
* John xii. 46. 5 John xvii. 22. 6 John xv. 1, &c.
7 John iv. 22. 8 John v. 34. 9 John x. 9.
10 John xii. 47.

ETERNAL LIFE 229
Arfe we not justified then in speaking of this
teaching as the roof of the building? If the richly
coloured and attractive sayings of the Synoptics had
stood alone, we should have seen the fair propor
tions of the kingdom of God, as a city in the
heavens, an ideal lying remote as a dream beyond
our reach. But here comes the crowning truth.
This is eternal life; the kingdom of God is the
actual communication of the Person of Jesus, that
stainless eternal Person, to the believing soul.
With this the city comes down out of Heaven to
the earth. Everything is practical, direct, super
natural. On the squared wall is set the covering
roof. III. And now to return to another evidence of
the identity of the kingdom and the life, which
reminds us that the eternal life is only an explana
tion and application of the kingdom of God : pre
cisely the same means which we saw were to be
employed for the establishment of salvation in the
Kingdom of God are expressly detailed as the
means of communicating eternal life, though of
course with that greater stress laid on the Person
of Christ which dictated the use of this more
spiritual mode of statement :
1. Here, as in the first Gospels, the constant
and never antiquated method of bringing life is
preaching, my word or words. Jesus has the words
of eternal life.1 If ye abide in my word, then are
ye truly my disciples; and ye shall know the truth, and
the truth shall make you free? He that heareth my
1 John vi. 68, a John viii. 32,

230 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
word, and believeth Him that sent me, hath eternal
life? On the other hand, he that receiveth not my
sayings hath one that j'udgeth him; the word that I
spake, the same shall fudge him in the last day?
Already ye are clean because of the word which J
have spoken unto you? If my words abide in you
ask whatsoever ye will and it shall be done unto you?
And so He protests to the Father : The words which
Thou gavest me I have given unto them? And it
was the view of His mission which He presented to
Pilate that He was born to bear witness unto the
Truth,6 which would refer primarily to His words.
Indeed, the peculiar importance which He attaches
to His own words and commandments in these
deepest and most solemn of His discourses may
give us a new ardour in prosecuting the study of
His teaching.
2. Here, too, as has been already observed at
some length, the Person of Jesus is brought into
prominence as the means of effecting eternal life;
so much so that He not obscurely hints that to
reject Him is to surrender all hope of Life.7 The
variety of images which He employs, the bread, the
water, the wine, lends a singular emphasis to the
idea that it is after all not merely a teaching, a
statement of truth, which saves, but, in the last
resort, a creative act, parallel in the spiritual world
to that which in the physical sphere forms and
educes the human embryo as a living soul. Jesus
1 John v. 24. 2 John xii. 48. 8 John xv. 3.
4 John xv. 7. 6 John xvii. 8. 6 John xviii. 37.
7 John xii. 47.

ETERNAL LIFE 231
very explicitly states that in this process there is a
mystery which it would be idle for Him to attempt
to explain. One could almost fancy that a familiar
passage in which He draws the parallel between
earthly and heavenly things of this kind1 once con
tained a suggestion, that, as the emergence of a
living organism, though it is a purely earthly thing,
remains an insoluble enigma, so the birth of the
invisible spiritual organism baffles all inquiry.
Perhaps He wishes to suggest that as both are
beyond analysis, and yet the one is the most
certain fact of all, we may rest content to recog
nise the other as a fact though it is impossible to
investigate the mode of its production. No study
of the processes relieves us of the wonder which
swathes the origin of physical life. How the germ
grows up into a man, or indeed what the germ is,
must to. all appearance go observed for ever, and
never explained.
And in the same way the approach of Jesus to
the soul through the simple gateway of an urgent
faith, creates a new spiritual organism, of a piece
and of a quality with His own. But who can tell
how ? If He was silent, who shall even pretend to
explain ?
3. Finally, the identification of Eternal Life with
the kingdom of God in the earlier teaching is verified
by the supreme method, which in each case was
recognised as the indispensable condition of securing
the object. The kingdom could not be. established,
as we saw, unless He who announced it, as the
1 John iii. 12.

232 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
servant of all, should give His life a ransom for
many. The thought of the promised realisation of
the kingdom of God was intimately connected in His
mind with the new covenant in His own blood.1
And just in the same way, His death, throughout
these discourses of John, presents itself to Him as
the sole means of securing eternal life for men.
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even
so must the Son of Man be lifted up that, whosoever
believeth on Him should not perish but have eternal
life? Far more perceptibly than in the earlier teaching
—as if St. John read back into all Jesus had said,
the interpretation of the cross — there throbs through
the discourses of this Gospel the heart-moving
conviction in the spirit of Jesus : " To give eternal
life to the world I must die." It becomes impressive
not by any detailed explanation of the mystery ;
which, indeed, He never attempts • to give ; but by
the stress and constant energy of His own thought
in this direction. Death looms before Him as the
significant method of victory, the purchase of the
boon which the whole world wants.
The examination of this all-important point we
must remit to a section by itself. But in closing
the study of the kingdom of God, interpreted as
eternal life, it is worth while to hint at a contrast
between the teaching of Jesus and the noblest
ethical ideal of antiquity. The Stoics taught that
the wise man was a king, who by a sovereign
control of his own passions and desires, and by a
» Luke xxii. 18-20. 3 John iii. 16.

ETERNAL LIFE 233
sublime self-poised indifference to the vulgar
ambitions and adulations of others, might be said
to rule his own realm in imperturbable security.
The wise man thus drew apart from the world
in a lofty and almost self-worshipping isolation.
This was, I repeat, the most dignified and inspir
ing conception of life which the great specula
tive thinkers of the ancient world were able to
form. Jesus presented Himself as the striking contrast
of this ideal, meek and lowly in heart. So far
from encouraging men to be kings, He refused the
title Himself. The only kingship He recognised
was the subduing sovereignty of God in the heart,
and the isolation of Stoicism, so far from being
admired, was emphatically condemned. As all
must be subjects of the heavenly King they must
be drawn together in the heavenly commonwealth.
And as the life so determined was imparted by His
own personal contact with each, all would be like
the limbs of one body, the branches of one tree.
In a word, the final thought of ancient philosophy
was a disintegrating individualism. The solidarity
of a new humanity in the supernatural body of
Jesus, the Son of God, was the message of the New
Faith.

THE DEATH OF JESUS
John xv. 13.
WE have repeatedly in these studies of the
teaching of Jesus been forced to a convic
tion that a choice has to be made between His view
of matters, and the view which has been subse
quently taken, even by the greatest of His followers.
Inspiration itself is never permitted to produce in
any man the full-orbed Tightness, and the complete
immunity from extravagance, which characterise the
Master's own teaching even when we see it only in
fragments. Such a choice we are compelled to make when
we are considering the Death of Jesus. It was a
subject which must have constantly engaged His
attention. Whenever He speaks of it, He conveys
an impression of having long brooded upon the mys
tery. His utterances, brief and pregnant, reveal in
a shadowy way the conception which had filled His
mind. But certainly there is a contrast between
the death as it shapes itself to Him, and the death
as it is reported and explained in the several
theologies which have been constructed during the
Christian ages. The contrast is partially concealed

236 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
by our inveterate habit of first imposing on the
thought of Jesus the interpretations contained else
where in the New Testament, and then imposing
on the thought of the New Testament itself the
views of later speculation. It is, therefore, a diffi
cult task to isolate the ideas of Jesus, and to think
of His death simply from His own point of view. But
when we succeed in doing so, we become aware
that not even John and Paul fully apprehended His
thoughts, while all subsequent interpreters have
been hampered by the supposed necessity of
approaching His ideas only through the interpreta
tions of these and the other Apostles.
-Perhaps we should turn back to the section in
which we examined what was said in the Synoptics
on the subject ; and then we can take up these
more intimate discourses to see what further light
they shed upon it. The agreement between the
two sources is manifest both in what is said and
in what is omitted. In the one, as in the other,
He makes it plain that His death was necessary
in order that He should accomplish the salvation of
the world, which He had in view. It was not to
Him a mere incident which was involved in the
course lying before him ; it was an essential, a
central, part of the course itself. But, if possible,
even less here than in Matthew and Luke does He
offer us an explanation of that insoluble mystery,
why, in what way, the death was the efficient
cause of the result. Curiosity is evidently not to
be gratified. We are brought into one of those
very numerous regions of the divine action, where

THE DEATH OF JESUS 237
the processes can be recognised, appreciated, and
accepted, but never explained. One thing, how-
eA'er, is immediately evident. Certain ideas which
have played a great part in human doctrines of
the Atonement, are not only absent, but pre
cluded ; and especially the idea which has effected
a separation between the Father and the Son, and
represented the suffering Son as offering a pro
pitiation to the vengeful ire of the Father. If a
phrase or two from St. Paul can be misquoted to
establish that monstrous doctrine, at least it can
find no foothold in any saying of Jesus. Now, if
our views of Scripture and revelation forbid us
to confine the doctrine of the Atonement to what
Jesus has Himself presented on the subject; if we
have reason to think that the Apostles were divinely
commissioned to amplify and interpret what He
said; if we are dissatisfied with the position that
we have here a mystery which defies explanation,
and claim in consequence for theology the right
of constructing a speculative and rational scheme
of the means by which Redemption is secured ;
we shall yet admit that His own thought on the
subject should be considered first, that He who
speaks from heaven may be heard before those
who speak from earth ; and we may, at least, de
mand as the touchstone of every theory which
the thought of theologians may suggest, that it
shall not be allowed at any point to contravene any
expressed idea of Jesus.
If even this last very modest plea is sustained, ;
many of the dismal theologumena which have dis-

238 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
tressed our childhood, and exasperated our maturer
judgment, will quietly melt away and be forgotten.
We will approach, therefore, the consideration of
His teaching about His own death in St. John's
Gospel. And perhaps we shall obtain a clearer im
pression if we recognise that there were two stages
in the doctrine. In the first instance there is the
profound and deepening conviction that His death
is necessary ; in the second, there is a more specific
realisation of the power which inflicts it, and the
issues involved in the infliction.
I. There was a deep-laid conviction in the mind
of Jesus that by dying He would reach men and
save them, as it would not be possible to do if He
shrank from the ordeal and the transformation of
death. Verily, verily I say unto you, except a grain of
wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself
alone ; but if it die it beareth much fruit? Here was
the idea that by dying He could multiply Himself,
and arise out of the earth, not an isolated seed, but
a rich harvest of souls. Elsewhere He exhibited
the necessity of death under another image. Re
garding Himself as the spiritual bread which could
give life to men, He felt that an indispensable pre
liminary of supplying the nourishment was that He
should be as it were ground in the mills of death
I am the living bread which came down out of heaven;
if any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever;
yea, and the bread which I will give is my flesh for the
life of the world? The same thought of course
underlies the image of the blood : He that eateth my
1 John xii. 24. 2 John vi. 51.

THE DEATH OF JESUS 239
flesh and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in
him? For as it is impossible to drink the blood of
an animal unless it is shed, so evidently in the
thought of Jesus, the world could not get the
personal benefit of His life-giving power, and inward
regeneration, unless He should consent to die. And
considering the occasion on which He employed the
analogy of the vine — viz., the eve of His death —
perhaps we are justified in surmising that in His
mind lurked the image of the tree, clipped, stripped
and pruned, un ii it would appear as a dead stock in
the ground, as a condition of a rich crop in the time
of grapes.2
He felt it was expedient for Him to withdraw
from the world as a human, fleshly being ; because
only so could He return as a life-giving Spirit. And
thus the burden of that last discourse was that He
must die and be lifted up, that He must be glorified
through death, before the Comforter could come.
"The Holy Spirit was not yet given because that
Jesus was not yet glorified," says the evangelist.3
To approach the world in any widely diffused, om
nipresent, personal sense, implied that as a being
limited in space and time He should cease to be.
It is not necessary for us to attempt a distinction
between what theology has called " the second and
third persons of the Trinity ; " for Jesus does not
anywhere sanction the kind of speculation out of
which these definitions grow. But it is, rather
necessary for us to observe that He does not dis
tinguish between the coming of the Comforter and
1 John vi. 56. a John xv. 1-8. s John vii. 39.

240 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
His own personal return to abide and operate in the
world. So far from labouring to distinguish between
the Son and the Spirit, the concern of Jesus is
rather to identify them. Thus, when He has
declared that in answer to His prayer the Father
will give to the disciples another Comforter that
shall be with them for ever, even the Spirit of truth,1
He immediately adds, I will not leave you desolate; I
come unto you? The promise, / will manifest myself
to him,3 is not distinguished from the approach of the
Comforter. And after all the detailed description of
the Spirit's work, leading into truth, recalling what
has been said, taking the things of Christ and
showing them to men, He sums up the whole by
saying, A little while and ye behold me no more, and
again a little while and ye shall see me?
Just as we saw that He declared to His judges
that " from now ye shall see me coming in the
clouds," so He categorically assured His disciples
that from the time of His departure through death —
and for that reason He joyfully incurred death — they
should behold Him exalted and drawing all men to
Him. And He discouraged them from expecting
any apocalypse or outward manifestation, rather
implying that through the Spirit He would Himself
be pervasively present, working powerfully on the
hearts of men, convincing the world of sin, of
righteousness, and of judgment.
All this was the true and constantly avowed
purpose of His mission ; to save men He had come
1 John xiv. 16. 2 John xiv. 18.
3 John xiv'. 21. 4 John xvi. i£.

THE DEATH OF JESUS 241
into the world ; and this was the way of saving
them. His teaching must be carried home in order
to affect and transform the heart. Not left to
rumour, or repetition, or dogma, it must have an
immediate and personal approach to the soul,
operating upon it as a creative force. And for this
purpose He saw that His death was an indispens
able step. So long as He was there in the flesh He
was limited ; beyond the portal of death He would be
emancipated. As therefore the everywhere operating
means of communicating eternal life to men, and of
establishing the kingdom of God in an actual reign
over their hearts, it was essential that He should
become spirit, and cease to be " flesh and blood."
This necessity was, as we have seen, constantly
before the mind of Jesus. But evidently, if this were
all, there remained a possibility, which, though the
facts have rendered it almost unthinkable, was open
to the power of God. For the mere purpose of
commencing a world-wide operation through a
spiritual agency, it was only necessary that He
should pass out of the present conditions of time
and space in some such way as story declared that
Enoch and Elijah had done. It would have sufficed,
if, at the appropriate time Jesus had gone up on
high, leaving the vesture of His mortality, and had
assumed His exalted station at the right hand of
God. Oil the supposition of His nature being such
as we saw it in previous sections to be there was no
need for Him to die, in order to resume the spiritual
condition which was naturally His. Supposing that
death is the mere termination of a prescribed course
Q

242 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
to a human organism ; this spirit, so little implicated
in the mere fleshly organism, could have very easily
slipped the leash and secured its freedom, either
before, or with, the natural decay of the body.
Supposing that death is to be regarded ethically as
a penalty of sin, there was obviously no necessity for
Him to die ; because He had not sinned.
In any case, for the accomplishment of the work
which is described in John xiv. -xvii. as the work of
the Comforter, there is no prima facie reason for,
and in the character and career of Jesus there is
every reason against, the awful humiliation, the
lonely agony, the contumelious cross, the passage
through the corruptions of the grave. All these
factors, faithfully described in the narrative, and
frankly accepted in the mind of Jesus, demand
an explanation. He must have had an explana
tion of them. Emphatic, therefore, and repeated
as is His thought, that His death was demanded
as a means of His glorification and of His return
to operate in the world under spiritual conditions
alone, evidently this is not all. He has some
thing else to say about His death. He has a
mode of regarding it which exalts it to a more
unique position than that of an episode in a long
process of self-emptying, incarnation, and resurrec
tion. He looks into the death itself and sees there
an actual, indispensable sacrifice, by which, and, we
should gather, by the special circumstances and
details of which, a particular result was accomplished.
And that result was the salvation of the world.
II. This specific, though mysterious, purpose of

THE DEATH. OF JESUS 243
the death is suggested in the discourse about the
good shepherd,1 who surrenders his life to the
wolves in order to spare his flock. The image
itself does not carry us very far ; for evidently if the
wolves succeeded in killing the shepherd the sheep
would easily become their prey. And the image is
indeed surrendered almost as soon as it is used ;
because Jesus says : 2 I lay down my life that I may
take it again. This has at once carried us into a
region of thought very far removed from the illustra
tion of the shepherd.
It is therefore our duty to set aside the mere
imagery, and to make an endeavour to follow the
thought of Jesus, which swells and heaves, throwing
up image after image, like crested waves on the
surface, but is always far deeper and larger than
any image which it employs. Here is the clear
assertion that His death spares His disciples from a
fate which otherwise would overwhelm them. If
Jesus had not died they would have perished. And
as the mere physical death does not come into con
sideration with Him, this is equivalent to saying : If
the agony and passion of the cross had not been,
men would have fallen victims to the spiritual
destruction, which, in the case of Jesus, could only
touch the body, because there was nothing in Him
besides on which it could feed.3
This death He does not regard as inflicted by the
Father. On the contrary the Father loves Him
because He lays down His life. Nay, strange to
say, He does not admit that any agent is responsible
1 John x. 11-18, ! John x. 17. 8 John xiv. 30.

244 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
for it, but distinctly asserts : I lay down my life;
no one taketh it away from me, but I lay it down of
myself? With this simple statement vanish all
notions of the Father inflicting death on the Son,
of the human instruments being anything more
than the occasion of the death, and of the malign
powers of evil obtaining any victory over Jesus
for a moment. Rather He distinctly claims that it
is a voluntary offering: its value lies in its spon
taneity. The Prince of this world cometh, and he hath
nothing in me; but that the world may know that I love
the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment,
even so I do?
It is a sheer act of love and obedience. Wrath,
violence, vengeance, retaliation, and all the dismal
passions which men so easily imagine, because they
so easily entertain, have here not so much as a
foothold. But in the mention of that shadowy form The
Prince of the World we seem to have a clue. On
another occasion, when a heavenly voice had declared
that the name of Jesus had been and should yet
further be glorified, Jesus said, Now is the judgment
of this world : now shall the Prince of this world be
cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto myself? Here, as in the Synoptics,
emerges the idea of a personal and malignant power
of evil, Avho has established an ascendancy over the
human race; and that ascendancy seems to be
broken, first, by the fact that he finds nothing in
Jesus but a sinless human being, but secondly, by
1 John x 18. 2 John xiv. 30, 31. 8 John xii. 31, 32.

THE DEATH OF JESUS 245
that sharp death-conflict in which Jesus engages.
The self-offering which is so profoundly gratifying
to the Father — -for their sakes I consecrate myself,
probably as a sacrifice, that they may be consecrated in
truth? — is a blow to the Prince of the world, which
breaks his spell over men. For, observe, the narra
tive of Christ washing the disciples' feet,2 covers the
saying in Matthew : the Son of Man came not to be
ministered unto but to minister, and this saying about
His self-consecration covers the concluding clause,
and to give His life a ransom for many.
The voluntary offering of love and obedience on
the cross, broke, it would seem, the power of that
malignant foe that leads men captive at his will.
It is rather surprising that there is nothing in the
fourth Gospel which corresponds to the blood shed
for the remission of sins in Matthew ; nor is there
any attempt to suggest that the divine forgiveness
waited on that sacrifice of the cross. But this is
not enough to justify Beyschlag in treating the
clause for the remission of sins as a spurious insertion
in the older source. For in the Johannine writings,
which are suffused with the thought of Jesus, just as
they suffuse the teaching of Jesus with their peculiar
terminology, we have not only " Behold the Lamb of
God, which taketh away the sin of the world,"3 which
is general, but the particular statements, " The blood
of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin, and He
is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours
only, but also for the whole world."4
1 John xvii. 19. z John xiii. 1-11.
3 John i. 29. * 1 John i. 7, ii. 2.

246 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
If, therefore, Jesus abstains from specifically
connecting His death in these discourses with the
forgiveness of sins, we may surmise that it is not
because He repudiates that idea; which certainly
colours the very source itself; but rather because
He did actually on the eve of the crucifixion direct
our thoughts to a more inclusive conception of His
death. If His blood was to be shed for the remis
sion of sins, and if intrinsically the free forgiveness
of the Father which He announced depended upon
that consecrated offering, it was in virtue of this
larger significance of the conflict, that His death
effected a positive victory over the one power which
was binding men in misery and iron, and ransomed,
not a few only, but the whole world1 from the cruel
tyranny of the foe.
Confining ourselves, therefore, as closely as we
can to His own language in this Gospel, we find the
situation shaping itself to our eye in the following
way. The world, that is, the scene of human
freedom, lies in the power of an enemy who holds
tyrannical sway over souls ; and in the spiritual
sense, as far as souls can be said only to live in the
love and obedience of God, this enemy slays them as
ravening wolves harry and destroy a helpless flock.
Jesus, entering the world, the arena where this
spiritual rebel exercises an obvious supremacy,
became in all points a man, and took upon Himself
all the conditions over which the foe had triumphed.
But Jesus held Himself entirely aloof from this
power of the world, and never admitted so much as
1 i John ii. 2.

THE DEATH OF JESUS 247
a breath of the evil to penetrate Him. And in that
sense even before His death He could say : be of
good cheer, I have overcome the world?
But He saw — and this is the point which He
leaves unexplained, the point of mystery which
defies every effort to penetrate — that if He exposed
His innocent life to the unchecked onslaught of this
malevolent power ; if without taking refuge in any
divine prerogatives, or screening body or soul
against the subtle and exasperated attacks, He would
resolutely face the consequences ; though He would
die apparently under the execration of the world,
numbered among its transgressors, indistinguishable
from the criminals on whom falls the vengeance of
men and God ; a supremely redemptive result would
follow. He would of course rise again ; He knew
that it was impossible for death to hold Him ; the
experience could, from the nature of the case, be
only a sharp and desperate crisis : but by that brief
and awful passage through death, that inward
wrestle, the meaning of which could be discovered
to the observer only by a few outward signs, He
saw that He could overthrow the enemy, and
obtain a victory over the world which would apply
not to His own person only, but potentially to the
whole race with which He had identified Himself.
The thought which led Him on, and rendered Him
inflexible, which set His face like a flint, and armed
that exquisite soul with the endurance of adamant,
was just that which obtains such various expression
all through the discourses of St. John. There was a
1 John xvi. 33.

248 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
great joy set before Him. If He consecrated Him
self in this act of unstinted sacrifice, if He did not
fail in the mysterious furnace to do His part, the
part which only He could do, the result would be
that henceforth whosoever believed on Him would
enter into His victory, would escape the bondage
that is in the world through lust, would receive an
actual divine pardon, based on eternal principles of
right, and would enter into His glory, which, through
the cloud of sin, thus shone bright upon a ransomed
world.1 That being the essential thought, present we may
surmise to Him, but never explicable to our minds,
which see only from the human side, it was as it
were only a derived result, that being thus lifted up,
He would draw all men to Him by the most powerful
appeal of a sacrifice unto death. Greater love hath
no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his
friends? It is not enough to say that the exhibition
of such love works a saving result on the believer,
because indeed the love which works the result is
already the love which has made this vast unfathom
able sacrifice. While we are merely regarding
Jesus as one who suffers death, a martyr for truth,
slain by the malignity of prejudiced and unprincipled
men, there is much to move admiration and even
1 I may observe that Dr. Dale's last utterance to the world on
the Atonement in his invaluable book Christian Doctrine, sug
gests a very interesting rationale of the sacrifice of Christ, on
the lines of his famous book on the subject. But I could not
possibly adopt it here, because evidently it has no point of con
nection with the Teaching of Jesus Himself.
2 John xv. 13.

THE DEATH OF JESUS 249
provoke imitation, but there is as yet nothing to
produce a love capable of transforming a sinful heart.
This love is only produced when we apprehend that
the death was not a mere human death, and was not
inflicted, intrinsically, by men at all, but was, as
Jesus Himself has explained, a perfectly voluntary
offering, inward and spiritual rather than merely
corporeal; a passionate, intense conflict with the
Power of Sin, which it is never possible for us to
fathom; a sacrifice, therefore, of an incalculable
value which He made as the indispensable condition
of securing our salvation.
It is this, as doubtless He foresaw, which provokes
the intense and transforming love of the sheep for
the Shepherd who died.
We seem therefore to be moving along the track
of His own thought most closely when we conceive
the death on the cross as a mighty conflict with the
power of evil which enslaves and ruins the world, a
conflict which through apparent defeat achieved an
actual triumph ; the supreme and crowning example
of the struggle between darkness and light, between
life and death, which appears to continue throughout
the drama of temporal history, but is predetermined
in its issue, the victory never being really doubtful.
The death and resurrection of Jesus are at once a
witness and a guarantee of the victory which is to
come. From morn to eve they struggled — Life and Death,
At first it seemed to me that they in mirth
Contended, and as foes of equal worth,
So firm their feet, so undisturbed their breath.

250 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
But when the sharp red sun cut through its sheath
Of western clouds, I saw the brown arm's girth
Tighten and bear that radiant form to earth.
And suddenly both fell upon the heath.
And then the wonder came ; for when I fled
To where those great antagonists down fell,
I could not find the body that I sought,
And when and where it went I could not tell ;
One only form was left of those who fought,
The long dark form of Death — and it was dead.1
1 Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse's magnificent sonnet, one of the
greatest, in my opinion, of this century, does not explicitly refer
to the great theme of the Passion on the Cross in connection
with which it is quoted. But, like all great poetry, it is greater
than it knows. Entering into one of the most moving thoughts
of human existence, it tracks it up, unconsciously, to the most
moving instance of the thought. And presumably treating only
of the passing of a human soul, it lays bare the significance of
that most momentous passing of the most momentous soul — the
death of Jesus.

THE COMMUNITY OF BELIEVERS
John xvii. 20, 21
IN this Gospel of St. John, which not only contains
the fulness of the teaching of Jesus, but also
marks the highwater line of New Testament thought,
the word Church does not occur at all. The word
which takes its place is Love. It is on the same
principle that the kingdom of God is translated into
eternal life, or repentance and forgiveness of sin
appear as new birth. There is an attempt made to
get at the essence of the idea, and to avoid any merely
external characterisation of it. Now a Church is, as
the event has proved, comparatively easy to make and
maintain, while love is always difficult. Yet where
love is not, the Church ceases.; and, on the other
hand, where the new commandment is accepted and
obeyed, where we love one another as Christ has
loved us, there is His Church. Men are always
anxious to define the Church beforehand by some
easily produced marks, such as orders or sacraments.
Jesus insists on defining it solely by love. By this
shall men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love
one to another? As He spoke all these deepest and
1 John xiii. 35.

252 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
highest of His sayings without so much as mention
ing the word, we also may avoid it. It is always
better to approach His ideas in His own way. And
it is remarkable that even now, as men become more
truly Christian, and enter more deeply into the
thought of this fourth Gospel, they use the word
Church less and less, while Love becomes more and
more the substitute for it.
In the great high-priestly prayer His thought is of
those who believe on Him, and them also that believe
on me through their word; that they may all be one;
even as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they
also may be in us; that the world may believe that
Thou didst send me? Union is to be sought and found
through the personal faith of individual souls in Him.
Accordingly the teaching in this Gospel gives a
remarkable prominence to the act, and to the attitude
— for the aorist and present tenses in the original
clearly distinguish the two — of believing in Him. In
the introduction of the Gospel a note is struck which
vibrates throughout : As many as received Him,
to them gave He the right to become children of
God, even to them that believe on His name ; which
were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but of God.2
First comes the faith of each ; then follows the
community of the faithful.
I. The individual must be born again. This is
purposely presented at the outset, in chapter iii.
Repentance and remission of sins, which were fre
quently mentioned in the Synoptics, here do not
1 John xvii. 20, 21. * John i. 12, 13.

THE COMMUNITY OF BELIEVERS 253
occur at all. On the other hand, that believing,
which was seldom mentioned in the Synoptics
except as the condition of physical healing, is here
repeated again and again. Nor is it any more
simply believing in the Gospel,1 it is rather believing
Jesus Himself. Faith is not so much the intellectual
acceptance of the message as the personal trust in a
Saviour. This change of terminology is what one might
expect. As we get into the core of the teaching of
Jesus we find Him little disposed to deal with
external things which may easily delude, but always
pressing firmly and persistently on central and
spiritual facts, which, in His view, are essential.
Repentance, forgiveness, conversion, these are
processes which have an outward expression, and
are defined as they strike an observer. They may
easily be ccnfused with external phenomena such as
tears and beating on the breast, or the absolution
uttered by a priest's lips, or a change of habit and
demeanour. Though their essence is far from being
merely formal, they may very easily be formal and
even mechanical. But come to the centre and spring
of these things, the unobservable element, which is
yet the essence of the whole matter to consciousness,
and what is it ? It is a faith in Jesus of such a kind
as produces an actual new birth ; and that intro
duction of a new spiritual creation under the surface
of a man's life is viewless and trackless as the
passage of the wind.2 There is a mystery which is
incapable of further analysis or explanation. It is
1 Mark i. 15. " John iii. 8.

254 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
the work of Jesus Himself, an operation of spirit
upon the inward life of a man. Stated in this way
it defies evasion. A man cannot say, " I have re
pented, or done acts of penance, I have received
absolution and am forgiven, I am born again because
I am baptised," and so cheat himself. For it is a
matter of an inward spiritual change which is its
own evidence, a birth within, no more doubtful than
the original birth of the body into the world of
sense. By this mode of speech Jesus has supplied
a searching test. He has taken the criterion of
religion out of the uncertainties and deadening delu
sion of external forms and placed it in the one
region of certainty, consciousness itself. Equally
clear is His assertion about the mode of the new
birth. He definitely explains that it is produced by
believing in Him.1 He that believeth on Him is not
fudged? Identifying the new birth, which is the
commencement, with eternal life, which is the con
tinuation, He says : Verily, verily, I say unto you, He
that believeth hath eternal life? Believe in God, believe
also in me? While ye have the light believe on the
light, that ye may become sons of light? To believe
on Him is the efficient cause of a birth — " becoming
sons of light " — a new birth of the Spirit. And this is
so constantly emphasised that we may say : not only
does the faith produce the new life, but where the
faith is, the life has already begun in embryo, though
it has not yet emerged into consciousness. Yes, in
a sense, the new life may be said to start from the
1 John iii. 15. 2 John iii. 18. 8 John vi. 47.
* John xiv. I. B John xii. 36.

THE COMMUNITY OF BELIEVERS 255
exertion of the will in the direction of obedience to
His word. If any man willeth to do His will, he shall
know of the teaching, whether it be of God? For, as
distinct from the will of the flesh,2 there is a will to
believe in Jesus which is already the work of the
Spirit, and the pledge of a completed birth which is
to be.
This initial act of faith, the will to believe, the
readiness to receive Jesus, so far as one sees, and to
go on further, as understanding extends, which is in
the Synoptics compared to a grain of mustard seed
sure to grow, is pregnant with promise. For here
Jesus likens it to the connection of a branch with
the parent stock of the vine.3 The act of faith has
established a connection with Jesus, and the con
tinuation of this act is equivalent to abiding in Him,
as the branch abides in the vine. The sap which is
not to be found in a severed branch, courses freely
through the branch that is connected with the stock ;
and the characteristic fruit of the vine appears. The
fruit is in this case the fulfilment of those command
ments — those counsels Of perfection — which were
detailed in such discourses as the Sermon on the
Mount. This realisation of the impossible com
mandments, a supernatural result of His own in-
working, produces a singular relation of intimacy
with Himself: If ye keep my commandments ye shall
abide in my love? And from this relation of love to
Him follows a new commandment, which is not
significant until the disciple is brought into this
1 John vii. 17. 2 John i. 13.
8 John xv. 1. 4 John xv. 10.

256 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
intimacy with his Lord : This is my commandment,
that ye love one another, even as I have loved you?
Here, like a veiled bride, the Church appears, un
named. Love was, as He says in the Synoptics, the ful
filling of the Law. And love is the outcome of
this new life which is maintained by a personal
faith in Him. And love will immediately produce
a Church. A new commandment I give unto you,
that ye love one another ; even as I have loved you,
that ye also love one another. By this shall all men
know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to
another? But before we follow up this suggestion, we must
pause for a moment to observe how this vital power
of the new life operates in the individual believer.
It must be noted that there is no thought of sub
stituting belief for action, or of setting faith, as St.
Paul called it, against works. For here, as in the
Synoptics, He says that the judgment of men will be
according to their works. Men shall come forth from
the tombs ; they that have done good unto the resurrec
tion of life, and they that have done ill unto the resur
rection of judgment? But a singularly hopeful turn
is given to the thought. The thought in itself fills
us with apprehension. It is well known that no one
is easy in the expectation of being judged according
to works, except those who to evil living have added
the callousness of a dead conscience. They who
have been the most worthy in the judgment of men
are precisely those who shrink most sensitively from
1 John xv. 12. 2 John xiii. 34, 35. 8 John v. 29.

THE COMMUNITY OF BELIEVERS 257
standing on their merits in the judgment of God.
But one saying of Jesus gives a new and quickening
significance to the principle. "What shall we do
that we may work the works of God ? " was a ques
tion once put to Him. And He replied : This is the
work of God, that ye believe — we might almost say, in
order to render the force of the present tense, that
ye live a life of faith — in Him whom He hath sent?
Here we are led to the very spring of a life which
can be acceptable with God. It is not a life of
striving by meritorious actions to secure a favourable
verdict at the judgment, but it is a life of vital union
by faith with Jesus Himself, a life in which all the
results of holy living are wrought in the disciple by
the constant and effective operation of the Master's
supernatural influence.
Faith in Jesus is the power of an endless life ; it
is a love which fulfils the law ; it is a security which
defies the judgment.
And before we pass on let us observe that this
faith is not the privilege of a few, but the oppor
tunity presented to all. Though the broad and
.simple invitation, Come unto me, all ye that labour, is
not repeated, Jesus implies again and again a perfect
freedom of access for whosoever will come to Him.
They shall all be taught of God. Nothing could be
wider than this. Every one that hath heard from the
Father and hath learned, cometh unto me? The
success of the call depends on the attention which is
given to it. Him that cometh to me I will in no wise
cast out?
1 John vi. 29. 2 John vi. 43. 3 John vi. 37.

R

258 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
In view of the small number who, to all appear
ance, accept the call it is possible, as we saw, to say,
Many are called but few are chosen. But the lan
guage of Jesus, both here and in the Synoptics, for
bids us to think of any favouritism. Rather our
attention is turned to an inner fitness. They who
love the light, they who love the truth, turn to Jesus,
the light and the truth. They believe under the
impulse of this inner affinity, drawn by the attrac
tion which light and truth have for such souls. But
every one might believe, and the same result would
follow. Whosoever will, is the form of invitation.
II. Now they who believe form the community ot
Jesus. In contrast with the world, He calls them
those whom Thou hast given me?
It is of course a far simpler matter to fix on
certain forms of ecclesiastical organisation, guaran
teed by traditional observances, and to assert that
all who maintain these observances and remain
within the border of these forms belong to the
Church of Jesus, good and bad, without regard to
inward faith or spiritual conformity to His ideas.
This course is so much simpler, and to human
minds, with an impetuous demand for definiteness,
so much more attractive, that it can occasion no
surprise to find that it has been adopted. But the
thought of Jesus is not only different, it is the
precise opposite of this. His one concern is to
establish only an inward and spiritual test. He is
scrupulous, with a care which of itself might estab
lish His superhuman wisdom, to avoid dropping
1 John xvii. g.

THE COMMUNITY OF BELIEVERS 259
even one word which might encourage that external
standard of judgment.
There is the world which He has come to save.
He does not begin by capturing Judaism, or the
empire, nations or institutions. His method is to
call out individuals, those who believe on Him.
This is His new flock, gathered from many folds.
With the utmost delicacy He distinguishes between
a fold, which is an external organisation, and a
flock, which is an aggregate of individuals. There
are many folds ; His sheep are found in all ; but
there is one flock, one Shepherd ; x that is, evidently,
a flock, the unity of which is preserved only by a
relation to the Shepherd. The children of God are
scattered abroad,2 but it is His personality that
gathers them together into one.
It is a gross and obvious thought to make a
Church in the human sense of the word, a community
of persons united by outward observances, an insti
tution which can take its place among the institu
tions of this world. But the idea of Jesus is all
His own. He proposes to link together through the
ages the souls that believe in Him, follow Him, and
love Him, and are consequently drawn into a fellow
ship of imperishable love.
This fellowship of souls He referred to as the
temple of His body.3 From the moment of His
resurrection this temple would begin to arise on the
foundation of His death. Each soul, believing,
1 John x. 16 : The contrast between atfXi), the equivalent of
Church in the Catholic sense, and iroljuit], the equivalent ol Church
in the spiritual sense, has never been sufficiently apprehended.
2 John xi. 52. 3 John ii. 19.

260 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
would be gathered to its appointed place in the
spiritual structure. The image of the temple merges
always into the image of the body. Each stone is a
lively stone ; each member of the body is built in by
the master builder. But, if we may leave the
images for a moment, His thought is this: — The
spiritual community, which is formed by a personal
faith in Himself, which is compacted together solely
by this quick and effectual union with Him, forms,
and will form for ever, an organism ; and this
organism is not only the final cause of His incarna
tion, but also the final cause of the creation of man.
Jesus is a pure idealist, from the standpoint of
earth ; from the standpoint of heaven He is the
only realist. All kingdoms, Churches, communities
must pass away. His alone will survive.
He prayed that these members of His body
should be one, in the same sense that He and the
Father are one.1 And that prayer has always been
answered, for, as He said : / know that thou hearest
me always? Ever from the beginning there has
been one flock, one shepherd. No fold, not even
the Roman, has ever succeeded in parting the flock
of Jesus. Baxter and Ken, Bunyan and Tillotson,
yes, Howe and Stillingfleet, have always been one,
one in Jesus. Even to-day, no doctrinaire theory
was ever able to keep Dean Stanley or Phillips
Brooks from the absolute and loving unity with the
other sheep which were not of their fold. The in
tolerance of Romanism or Anglicanism is simply
due to ignorance of the teaching of Jesus.
1 John xvii. 21. 2 John xi. 42.

THE COMMUNITY OF BELIEVERS 261
His flock, a gracious community of the Spirit,
feeds in the verdant pastures and beside the still
waters, and is hardly so much as aware of polemical
journals and the denunciations of bigotry. All who
are in Jesus are in His flock, nor can any be in His
flock who are not in Him : My sheep hear my voice,
and I know them, and they follow me; and I give
unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish,
and no one shall snatch them out of my hand? The
idea that He will reject those who have not been
able to see a divine institution in episcopacy, or the
mass, or the papacy, could never have been formed
— or formed, could never be entertained — by any
one who has with an exclusive obedience set him
self to hear the voice of the Shepherd, and to
seriously grasp what He means.
As the community of Jesus is spiritual so also is
its worship. Sacred buildings have no significance.
Everything turns on the worship being in spirit and
in truth? The only sacred building is the temple of
His body. Jesus in His most intimate moods was
very chary of even alluding to outward forms, know
ing their peril. We saw that, while He would have
nothing to say to sacred buildings, or ritual, He
evidently did adopt two simple observances, baptism
and the supper, as the symbols of His spiritual
community. But, perhaps because already when
John wrote the tendency to unduly emphasise these-
forms had appeared, this transcript from the inward
thought of Jesus, the fourth Gospel, quietly drops
all mention even of those simple observances. In
1 John x. 27, 28. 2 John iv. 21-24.

262 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
chapter iii. Jesus anticipates all error by explaining
that a man cannot be regenerated by water alone ;
for unless he is born of water and of the Spirit he can
not enter the kingdom of God.1 And that birth of the
Spirit is, as we have seen, the inward result of a
personal faith in Him. In the same way, though
the scene in the upper chamber on the eve of His
death is given at great length, all mention of the
supper and its institution is omitted ; while on the
other hand, again, error is forestalled by the dis
course in chapter vi., where Jesus shows that to eat
His body and drink His blood is not a rite at all,
but a deep inward assimilation of His spirit and His
power. And with a divine prevision, in reference
to this very discourse, He says : The words which I
have (just) spoken to you are spirit and are life?
This mode of treatment is certainly not intended to
discredit baptism and the Lord's supper ; but just as
certainly it for ever excludes the interpretation which
is known as sacramentarianism.
This community, animated by the real presence of
Jesus, has those extraordinary privileges and graces
which, mentioned in the Synoptics, are here given in
much fulness of detail. The hatred of the world,3 and
even active persecution,4 are from the nature of the
case inevitable. But this incidental feature almost
disappears in the glory of the blessing, as the spots
in the sun's disk are invisible when noon is ablaze.
To begin with, these who believe (not the world
1 John iii. 5.
2 John vi. 63 : The insertion of "just " gives the force of the
perfect tense, \e\d\rjKa. 8 John xv. 18-20. 4 John xvi. 1-3.

THE COMMUNITY OF BELIEVERS 263
of indifferent, formal, sceptical persons who are con
founded Avith the community of Jesus) have the
privilege to ask anything in His name, and to
receive what they ask for : Hitherto have ye asked
nothing in my name; ask and ye shall receive that your
joy may be full? Indeed their prayers for joy are
anticipated by Him : Now I come to Thee; and these
things I speak in the world, that they may have myj'oy
fulfilled in themselves? That joy is all inclusive and
is of an unearthly order ; in this world it appears like
a ray of outer sunshine penetrating a dark room
through the crevice of a shutter. And the outcome
of this believing prayer is not only joy but peace :
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not
as the world giveth, give I unto you? For joy, even
Christ's joy, would be an imperfect boon unaccom
panied by peace, even Christ's peace.
" Who are thy playmates, boy ? "
" My favourite is Joy,
Who brings with him his sister Peace to stay
The livelong day.
I love them both, but he
Is most to me."
" And where thy playmates now,
O man of sober brow ? "
" Alas ! dear Joy, the merrier, is dead.
But I have wed
Peace ; and our babe, a boy,
Newborn is Joy." 4
1 John xvi. 24. 2 John xvii. 13. 3 John xiv. 27.
4 This exquisite little lyric by Mr. J. B. Tabb, possibly with
out his own intention, expresses the peculiar difference between
Christ's joy and the merely human joy which we all so restlessly
desire.

264 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
Joy and Peace. Yes, incredible as it must seem
to those who confuse the Church of Christ with
external institutions, and try to interpret it through
polemical writings, it is a simple matter of fact that
in the true Church, always and everywhere, through
prosperity and adversity, in persecution as in rare
moments of relief, joy and peace abide.
Perhaps, however, the supreme privilege and
grace of this community is that its members are
witnesses for Him.1 Through them in the world
the Spirit works, convicting and converting. Their
mutual love marks them out as His disciples.2
This supernatural love, maintained in the face of
apparent impossibilities, convinces the world that
God has sent Jesus.3 Possibly if we all agreed in
opinion, and all belonged to one fold, there would
be nothing very superhuman in this love. But
when men of different Churches and different
opinions are united in Jesus, this affords a power
ful testimony of His reality. And through their
word others believe on Him.4
And although they who had been with Him from
the beginning,5 the first circle of apostles, had a
peculiar witness to give, which could not fall to
their successors — a witness, we may reverently
believe, embodied for ever in these four Gospels —
so that the community would rest on the apostles
and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief
corner stone, throughout the course of history ; yet
all who should believe through their word, as a
i John xv. 26, 27. " John xiii. 35. 8 John xvii. 21.
4 John xvii. 20. • John xv. 27.

THE COMMUNITY OF BELIEVERS 265
community of love and service, secure of His
presence through the observation of His com
mandments, would have their appropriate witness
to deliver, an apostolic succession, generation after
generation. And amongst other more material signs which
would follow them that believe, should be one of a
mysterious and inward nature. As, age after age,
the Holy Spirit should breathe on this community
of believers, their presence in the world would pro
duce a threefold conviction, of sin and righteous
ness and judgment.1 The regenerate community
will be a perpetual charge of sin against those who
do not believe in Jesus : a perpetual standard of
righteousness, maintained by the presence of Jesus
with them and with the Father; and a perpetual
reminder of judgment, as it succeeds in wresting
province after province from the Prince of this
world. And as this community should be knit together
by the Spirit alone, and should depend only on
spiritual means, it would, through that divine in
dwelling manifested by deed and word, not only
" bind and loose " as we saw in the Synoptics, but
forgive or retain the sins of men.2 It was spoken
not to the Twelve alone,3 nor to any one individu
ally, but to the disciples, as such, and the disciples
as a community. We must believe that it is spoken
to us in just the same sense, on just the same
1 John xvi. 8. 2 John xx. 23.
3 See John xx., where the Twelve (verse 24) are distinguished
from the body of disciples, verse 19.

266 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
terms, as it was to that first representative group.
Do we receive the Holy Ghost? Is He in our
Church community? Are His mighty powers ex
perienced by us, and manifested in love and by all
the other signs which Jesus has described ? Then
on us devolves the mysterious power which Jesus
does not explain, which none of the apostles even
ventured to explain : Receive ye the Holy Ghost;
whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto
them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained?
1 John xx. 23 : Every unbiassed student of the words of Jesus
and of the Epistles (e.g., 1 Cor. v. 3-5 ; 1 John v. 16) will
observe that it is quite impossible to find any genuine foundation -
for what is called priestly absolution in the New Testament.
The mysterious power given to the community of faith depends
on an actual reception of the Holy Ghost ; and nothing in
Scripture or experience tends to show that episcopal ordination,
as such, imparts the Holy Ghost to a man. To examine in detail
the interpretations which have been suggested for this verse
would lead us too far afield.

THE RESURRECTION
John xi. 25.
IT must by this time be clear to every reader that
in order to understand Jesus it is necessary to
surrender oneself to His teaching. It is all so
original, so far removed from the beaten tracks of
ordinary teachers, that to approach it with fixed
presuppositions is most surely to misread it. This
teaching has been given as the perpetual standard
by which everything shall be tried : He that refecteth
me, and receiveth not my sayings, hath one that
j'udgeth him; the word that I spake, the same shall
judge him in the last day? When, therefore, we
take our own theories to His sayings for support
rather than correction, using the standard which
is to test simply as an argument to confirm the
long errors of the ages, we expose ourselves to this
severest of all judgments, that we have no longer
any mode of arriving at truth ; we are handed over
blindfold to the mistakes of men.
Even in the Gospels themselves there are in
stances of preconceived ideas in the writers, slightly
warping the words of Jesus; though happily the
1 John xii. 48.

268 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
body of His undiluted sayings is so substantial
that it is possible to supply the corrections. But
the Church has so far lost the sense of His teach
ing and its significance that, without any attempt
to understand it as a whole, she unblushingly
singles out disconnected texts to support views of
her own, which are the exact antithesis of His
teaching when it is studied by itself in an unpre
judiced way.
Now on no subject was it harder, as we saw
before, to understand His ideas than on escha-
tology. When He spoke about the last things,
death and judgment, and the final condition of the
good and the evil, His hearers listened full of certain
traditional ideas of their own. Language which He
employed in His peculiar and penetrating way, they
were apt to take in a conventional sense. They
have preserved sufficient evidence that His thought
was of startling originality; but they also furnish
evidence that they constantly tended to reduce it
to the mere commonplaces of Rabbinical dogma.
Naturally enough every contracted and inadequate
interpretation of the first hearers has been very
dear to minds which are more eager to reach
definite dogmatic statements than to assimilate the
thought of Jesus.
The single expression, / am the Resurrection, at
once reminds us that we have to do with a doctrine
very far removed from those which appear both in
Jewish and Christian systems of theology. For
evidently it is not possible to tone down the phrase
into I shall rise again, or / shall raise others from

THE RESURRECTION 269
the dead. It is a peculiarly emphatic and quite
unique utterance.1
Now just as Jesus turns the thought of Mary
away from that remote and unknown resurrection
to which we all so instinctively refer, and fixes her
attention on the startling announcement, I am; so
it is clear to every careful reader of these discourses
that He had a remarkable and original doctrine, that
the resurrection is a present fact, that judgment is
now proceeding, and the final condition of men is
being from moment to moment decided. And it is,
in His mode of speaking, rather as a background
to these immediate and tangible realities, that the
vision of resurrection, judgment, heaven and
hell, as men popularly understand the terms, rises
indeterminate and vague, as if purposely sub
ordinated to the things of pressing moment.
It is a peculiar quality of His teaching to recall
the wandering fancy, and bring it to the point.
He never gratifies curiosity; but is always ready
to answer the question, "What shall I do that I
may inherit eternal life ? " He finds us always
eager to discuss the unknown, and to sketch
schemes of eschatology; nothing do men love
better than to launch away from the shore of
ascertainable reality, and on the shifting seas to
build their imaginary structures. But He rebukes
the tendency. "That with which you are con
cerned," He always seems to be saying, "is here
1 'E7C5 el/u ^ ivdoTamt. Of course iyiii alone, or el/u alone
would have expressed the idea. But tyd> lays stress on the per
son, and elp.t on the actual and present fact.

270 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
before you. The pressing question is whether now
you are risen from the dead. Why not judge your
own selves now ? Here is hell, close as the valley
of Hinnom, which lies outside the city walls. Here
also is eternal life for a man to possess and hold
immediately." Not, of course, that He denies those
ultimate things to which the whole creation moves ;
but He distinctly alters the centre of gravity. The
unknown future is intimately connected with the
present ; and all interest is centred in the present.
No man, holding fast to Christ's teaching, could fall
into the delusion that life is to be passed in specula
tion about coming events, or in relegating every
thing of importance to the unseen world.
There are then two lines of His thought which
have to be followed out, and it is important to attach
to them the relative importance which He attaches.
(i) There are the present realities which begin to
exist from the time of His own presence in the
world, and are to us all pressing as food and sleep
are pressing for our bodies. These are the things with
which alone we are vitally concerned, (ii) There
are the shadowy results of the world's history,
to which He frequently alluded, sometimes using
popular forms of speech, sometimes flashing a light
of His own upon them, but always making it clear
that He does not wish us to speculate, or to go
beyond what is written. It is not for you to know, is
His formula.1 His purpose is only to give us strong
assurance that all will be well in the dark and
mysterious night of death.
1 Acts i. 7.

THE RESURRECTION 271
I. The Present Realities, (i) Resurrection.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He says, in His most
impressive way, the hour cometh and now is, when
the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they
that hear shall live? It is not possible to refer this
saying to the isolated miracle of the raising of
Lazarus, partly because of the emphatic and now is,
but partly also because the words follow close upon
the wonderful assertion, He that heareth my word and
believeth Him that sent me, hath eternal life, andcometh
not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into
life? This connection must settle the interpretation.
The miraculous resurrection of Lazarus was simply
a symbol of a far more important truth than the
mere restoration to an earthly life conveys. It was
a visual illustration of a fact which is too inward and
subtle to come under the eye of observers at all.
The fact is this : that from the moment of vital faith
in Jesus a resurrection-life begins in the soul, and
this resurrection-life is of so predominant and
masterly a character that the death of the body may
be ignored. He that liveth and believeth in me shall
never die,3 He said, This is the bread which cometh down
out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die?
A bold utterance in a land where it was hard to tread
without stepping on a tomb, and in a Church where
for nineteen centuries the believers have shared the
common lot, and have perished even more lament
ably than the self-seeking world. But a paradox is
the best of teachers, because it arrests attention.
1 John v. 25. 2 John v. 24.
8 John xi. 26. * John vi. 50.

272 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
This teaching about the resurrection is quite
original. Other religions, and even Christianity
through most of its official teachers, have confined
the attention of men to a physical resurrection in the
future. Death has been accepted as a fact. But it
is to be vanquished by a miracle of new creation at
the last day. Jesus dwells serenely on a spiritual
resurrection which takes place through faith in Him.
He ignores death altogether. As He speaks, those
that are in the tombs hear His voice and come forth.5
St. Paul seemed to grasp and to build on the mighty
thought of the Master, when he declared that believers
were risen with Christ, and proceeded to argue that if
they were risen with Him they must live a life con
formable to the resurrection.
Too readily we take refuge in the heresy that this
is a figure of speech. We palm off on our conscience
the notion that we can be more or less risen with
Christ. But the language of Jesus brings us to a
stand. Nothing can be more definite than this.
Certainly we must, according to His thought, either
have heard the voice and come out of the tombs, so
that we are now living and living for evermore, or be
yet in our sins and therefore dead.
The life of the tombs is painfully real. How
well we all know it ! The sense of sick corruption
within ; the haunting memories ; the shuddering
declensions of the heart ; the scornful recognition of
our earthy kindred, " I have said to corruption, Thou
art my father ; to the worm, Thou art my mother
and my sister ; " the dismal effort to whitewash the
1 John v. 28.

THE RESURRECTION 273
outside, with pleasures and interests, and the affecta
tion of content, because the rank and noisome
atmosphere is intolerable.
Equally real and unmistakable is the life of
resurrection. When they who are in the tombs
come forth there is a complete change. Fragrance
breathes through the charmed air ; flowers blow ;
and the time of the singing of birds has come.
Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost
flood the inward life, like the coming in of the day,
and a firm hand lays hold on immortality.
The really pertinent question is therefore that
which seems to be presupposed in all these dis
courses of Jesus, not — What will happen at the last
day? Shall you and I wake out of the dust and
resume the garments of the flesh ? but — Are we risen
with Christ now, because according to His own
incomparable thought, / am the Resurrection and the
Life; he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he
live ?
(2) In the same way, here as in the Synoptics,
He regards His second coming and the judgment of
the world as beginning from His own death and
consequent ascent to glory. When He had appealed
to heaven, Father, glorify Thy name, and for the sake
of those that stood by the responsive voice had
sounded from heaven, He exclaimed, Now is the
judgment of this world? And His return in the
person of the Paraclete, which filled His thoughts in
the farewell discourse, would commence at once a
process of judgment.2 Indeed, as we have already
1 John xii. 31. 2 John xvi. n. S

274 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
seen, His word, which of course He knew would be
preserved by the recording power of the Holy Spirit,
would be the abiding judge of men.1
It is this unique idea of judgment, as a spiritual
process initiated by His incarnation and continued
by His Spirit, that explains a paradox, which the
evangelist feels to be so completely met by the body
of the discourses that he does not hesitate to leave
the apparently contradictory statements lying side by
side : The Father hath given all judgment unto the Son;2
He gave Him authority to execute judgment because He
is the Son of Man :3 and yet, / judge no man;*' I
came not to judge the world but to save the world?
This of course must mean that Jesus does not
judge men, as an earthly judge sits in judgment on
his fellows, or as we all so freely pass our opinions
upon one another. His purpose in the world is not
of this censorious or even judicial character. But,
from the moment of His completed work, when His
life, His death, His resurrection, and His return
through the Spirit were permanently before the
world, that was the factor by which every one
would be judged, or rather would judge himself.
Every one would settle his destiny by determining
what he thinks of Christ. " He that believeth on
Him is not judged ; he that believeth not hath been
judged already, because he hath not believed in the
name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is
the judgment, that the Light is come into the
Avorld."6 1 John xii. 48. 2 John v. 22. 8 John v. 27.
4 John viii. 15. 6 John xii. 47. 6 John iii. 18, 19.

THE RESURRECTION z<js
The historical manifestation of Jesus in its en
tirety was to constitute, and has constituted, a
standard by which men are necessarily tested. Just
as in the scenes of the judgment and crucifixion of
Jesus, every one concerned in the event seems to be
thrown up into a vivid light and judged — Pilate the
vacillating and shifty sceptic, the priests with their
prodigious religion and godlessness combined, Peter
the impetuous and as yet ill-balanced believer, Judas
the cankered and avaricious soul, betrayed rather
than betraying — so all mankind, as they are brought
to the touchstone of Jesus, are revealed and judged.
Just what we are, appears by our relation to Him.
Some of us see nothing to desire in Him at all —
though perhaps only a few. Therein they pro
nounce a verdict on themselves. Others believe
from fear, but are not transformed into His image.
By the image of Him in whom we believe we are
infallibly judged. Many pass Him by, look Him in
the face and pass Him by. There is no hostility, no
denial, no doubt. They are simply indifferent. The
lusts of other things occupy the soul. The life, the
death, the resurrection of Jesus, and His present
operation through the Spirit, are of no interest to
them. And this — such seems to be the thought of
Jesus — virtually judges them. They look the only
begotten Son of God in the face ; they survey His
character ; they hear His teaching ; they contem
plate His sufferings ; listlessly they hear that some
saw Him risen ; but they find no affinity with Him,
no personal sympathy or vivid relation. And in
this they are judged ; judged just as one is judged

276 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
who glances round the National Gallery and says,
" I see no pictures here to admire," or hears the
masterpieces of Beethoven and prefers the songs of
the music hall.
This of course implies that only they to whom
the truth has been presented can be judged by it.
Indeed, Jesus Himself declares that His contem
poraries would not have had sin if they had not seen
and hated Him. It was the presence of the Light
which made it an all-involuntary judge of those who
loved darkness rather than light. And as we are
assured that He came not to judge but to save the
world, we may perhaps assume — though Jesus never
states it in so many words — that every human soul
that ever lived will have the opportunity of believing
in Christ — such an opportunity as we have had and
have. In fact it seems to follow from the idea of an
absolute criterion of human life and conduct, that
every human being should be brought into contact
with it. And if, from the exigencies of history, this
criterion could only come into the region of histori
cal reality late in time, and then could only be made
known gradually to the subsequent generations of
men, there would necessarily be in the counsels of
God some mode of rectifying the accidents of tem
poral or spatial conditions, by bringing every human
being, even after the death of the body, to the definite
issue of a choice. Every one will be compelled to
say, or to show, what he thinks of Jesus, and by
that verdict, self-passed, every one will be judged.
(3) Thus a careful student of His words will
observe that Jesus regards heaven and hell as

THE RESURRECTION 277
states of being actually found in this present life.
He addresses His blinded and prejudiced opponents
as already in hell : Ye are cf your father the devil,
He says, and the lusts of your father it is your will
to do.1 Men already, while they are on the earth,
are capable of being born into that diabolical family
and household, just as they can be born of God ;
and Jesus does not hesitate to assert that certain
persons are in that awful situation. Or again, in
language the exact force of which is a little lost,
because we do not distinguish between the present
of custom and the present of fact, Jesus speaks of
those who are not in Him but cast forth as already
undergoing the penal fires : If a man abide not in meA
he is cast forth as a branch and is withered, and they
gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are
burning? Here He does not seem to be describing
in general terms what customarily happens, but rather
to be sketching what He observes before His eyes,
the boughs wrenched from His vitalising Person,
withered, cast into the fire, and perishing in the
flames. As Dante was to his generation " the man
who had been in hell," Jesus is the one Teacher who
in all generations touches this appalling subject with
a convincing sincerity; because, seeing the human
heart as it is, He describes the horrors into which it
is plunged by sin, and in denunciation of punishment
does not refer to what shall be, so much as to what
actually is, the verifiable outcome of wrongdoing.
On the other hand, His sketch of " His own " as
in the world but not of the world, presents all the
1 John viii. 44. * John xv. 6.

278 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
attractive features which are popularly associated
with heaven. His joy is theirs ; so is His peace ;
so even is His supernatural power. And though
they are on pilgrimage still, not yet having crossed
the river, they move through a land of Beulah. To
quote the beautiful words of the maiden Polissena,
one of " Christ's folk in the Apennines,"1 they " have
two heavens, one here and one beyond." Whatever
glories may lie far away in the future, their present
state deserves a heavenly designation, for, says Jesus,
the glory which Thou hast given me I have given unto
them, that they may be one, even as we are ; I in them,
and Thou in me, that they may be perfected into one?
That is certainly a delineation of a completed
heaven, to which it does not seem possible to add
any essential feature. And when it is further de
clared that the Father loves them as He loves Jesus,
no point can be said to be missing. It is a state on
earth, but it is no earthly state. And the great bulk
of the last discourse of Jesus remains unintelligible
until it is observed that He is laying down the lines
of a heavenly life which He intends His disciples
to live in Him on this side the grave.
II. But while this present and practical interest
is manifest in all that Jesus says about the last
things, as if this were indeed the last day in which
we are all living, since He came, this does not
prevent Him from referring here, quite as distinctly
as in the Synoptics, to a consummation in time of
the processes which are already in operation.
1 I refer to Miss Alexander's book of this name published by
Mr. Ruskin. 2 John xvii. 22, 23.

THE RESURRECTION 279
1. Quite apart from the present resurrection, which
occurs when the soul believes in Him, there is to be,
He declares, a general resurrection : They that have
done good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life;
and they that have done ill unto the resurrection of
judgment? But evidently He does not regard the
"resurrection of judgment " as in the real sense of
the term a resurrection at all, for it is only of
those who have entered into the relation of faith
with Himself that He can speak of being really
raised up. That which He hath given me : 2 every one
that beholdeth the Son and believeth on Him : 3 him
that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood I will raise
up at the last day?
Certainly Jesus permits Himself some obscurity
in this matter. For we may ask, if the believer is
not to see death, what is meant by / will raise him
up at the last day ? And if all shall rise, what is the
meaning of attaching the special promise to believers
only ? And again, does He mean to convey the idea
that between the natural death and that raising up
at the last day the soul of the believer shall be
unconscious, in the unnoticed sleep of death ? It is
all left vague and uncertain, as if to impress upon
men the necessity of seeking and obtaining their
real resurrection now. It is not safe to slip into
the drowsy tides of death unless there is already
wound about the spirit the infrangible cord of im
mortality. 2. The picturesque details of the judgment which
1 John v. 29. 2 John vi. 39,
" John vi. 40. 4 John vi. 54.

280 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
are to be found in Matthew and Luke are wholly
wanting in John. But the passage already quoted 1
seems to imply that, in addition to the implicit trial
by the standard of His incarnation which has been
necessarily proceeding ever since He was raised to
the right hand of God, there will be also a final
assembly of the whole human race before God to
receive the deeds done in the body. If Jesus
teaches this — though it is by no means an essential
part of the idea of final judgment — it is in itself by
no means inconceivable. Consider the meaning of
the star-dust at one end, and of an ant-hill at
the other end, of the scale of the Creation. The
mind that maintains those incalculable stellar
systems and at the same time animates the million
communities of ants, is certainly quite capable of
carrying out such an idea. The details may be
beyond our imagination, as presumably the mar
shalled forces of industry and war would be beyond
the comprehension of an ant ; but the fact is reason
able enough, and does not fail in impressiveness.
It is said that the whole present population of the
globe could stand in ten square miles of space ; and
that means that all the tribes of men since the world
began could stand in the area of a few English
counties. And supposing that time is no more, and
the unhasting eternities lie open for that long assize,
there is no difficulty in believing — that is, there is
no greater miracle involved than that which the
existence of a race like our own implies at every
turn — that the Maker of men will summon them all
1 John v. 29.

THE RESURRECTION 281
together before His dread bar, and patiently pass
iudgment on each through the Man whom He has
appointed. 3. But a final thought is brought out in gem-like
clearness by these last heart-to-heart utterances of
Jesus. It is that He personally will come again.
His coming through that other Comforter would
not dispense with another entrance into this world
of time and space : If I will that he tarry till I come,
what is that to thee ? 1 He asked, though that one did
not tarry more than a century, and now eighteen
centuries more have passed, and still Jesus has not
come again.
Yes, of all the words He uttered, none carry a
more unmistakable stamp of His personality, or ring
with a more genuine music of conviction, than those
in which He declared : In my Father's house are many
mansions; if it were not so I would have told you ; for
I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and
prepare a place for you, I come again and will receive
you unto myself; that where I am there ye may be
also? Father, that which Thou hast given me, I will
that where I am they also may be with me, that they
may behold my glory which Thou hast given me? With
our imperfect apprehensions of our present heavenly
possession we could hardly, for all the joy and peace
of the Christian life, repress some tearful sighs of
disappointment if this were all, if the best were not
to be. But here is a high and sufficient assurance.
The heaven we have is a pledge of the heaven which
is to be. Believing in Him, whose teaching has
1 John xxi. 22. 2 John xiv. 2-4. 3 John xvii. 24.

282 THE TEACHING OF JESUS
been occupying our minds and stirring our hearts,
we assuredly enter into a rest — but a rest remaineth
for the people of God. We have tasted a manna
sent down from heaven ; but the land flowing with
milk and honey is yet in reserve. Certain mansions
of our Father's house which lie along the line of
pilgrimage have been open to us, and we have re
peatedly in them been entertained with banquet and
with song. But, we surmise, sitting at the feet of
Jesus, that the starry heavens, "that wide and
shining house of God," are not more vastly removed
above the poor littleness of " this dim spot that men
call earth," than the range of mansions in the
Father's house excels even those fair habitations in
which we have sojourned.

INDEX OF REFERENCES TO PASSAGES
FROM THE GOSPELS

MATTHEW

MATTHEW—

iii. 2 .

3i
xi. 27 .
24, 46, 158,
iv. 17 .
31
172, 194
v. 3-10
33
28 .
59. "8
17 •
23
xii. 6 .
. 46
20 .
81
28 .
35. "4
22 .
73
29 .
. 116
24 .
89
3°
• "7
45
63, 76
31-33 •
73. 146
48 .
83
35
• 7°
vi. 22, 23
69
37
• 151
26 .
76
50
. 61
vii. 11
64, 76
xiii. n
¦ 3i
12
91
18
. 114
15-20
137
41
148
21
. 61
151
43
• 137
23
• 85,
148
46 .
• 99
viii. 12
.
33
XV. II
¦ 76
ix. 5 .
no
13
. 61
35-38
i°5
17
. 136
x. 27
136
xvi. 14
• 14
29. 30
76
16
49. 194
32
61
151
17
. 61
40
117
18
• "5
xi. 5
"3
19
• 131
11
36
26
64, 92
19 .
76
27
147. 152
22 .
72
xviii. 3
68, 105
25 .
116
11
• 97
284 INDEX TO PASSAGES FROM THE GOSPELS

MATTHEW-

MARK—

xviii. 14

. . 65

viii. 12

113

17

. 125

28

14

18

¦ 131

3°

• 49

19

• 133

31. 32

. ng

20

118, 132

36

. . 64

22

91

ix. 42 .

106

23

. 68

45.47

. v 2ig

35

. 68

49.

I35

xx. 6 .

• 92

x. 14 .

71

16 .

103

15 ¦

36.99

25 ¦

• 134

21 .

82

28 .

120, 135

32 •

120

xxi 33

207

45 •

120

43

33

xi. 18 .

155

xxii. 2

46

27

76

n

. 103

xii. 30, 31 .

90

14

. 103

xiii. 2, 4, 6

207

xxiii. 8-10

134

30 •

18

39

145

xiv. 24

121

xxiv. 22

79

xv. 43

29

24

104

34
18, 142
LUKE—
36
139. 142
h- 49
• 58
xxv. 31
146. 151
iv. 18 .
U3
34
37
vii. 47
108
46
150
ix. 20 .
49
xxvi. 28
rog, 122
x- 3
136
64
145
18, 19
. 118
xxviii. 20
157
20 .
104
28 .
. 82
MARK—
xi. 20 .
35
i. 15 .
105. 253
21 .
. 116
27 .
14. 215
29.
114
ii. 17 .
. 102
34-36
69
iii. 27 .
116
42 .
• 8g
29 .
67
xii. 8
. 117
35 •
82
23 •
144
iv. 10-32
,
17
47. 48 •
72
n .
31
5°
120
14 .
114
51 •
136
vii. 18, 19
136
xiii. 26, 27
137
INDEX TO PASSAGES FROM THE GOSPELS 285

LUKE—

JOHN—

xiv; 14
• 9L 147
iv. 22 .
228
•15
29
24 .
176
16
98
25
igi
xv. 5 .
. 107
34 ¦
ig8
;7 •
68, g7
36 •
222
xvi. g .
91
44
192
16 .
¦ 37
v. 17
177
17 •
¦ 2g
18
195
xviii. 17
• 36
20
196
18, 24
2ig
22 .
ig6, 274
xix. g .
¦ • 95
23
194
10 .
• 97
24 .
222,
230, 271
xx. g .
. 207
25
228, 271
35 •
147
26
176,
ig6, 226
36 ¦
107, 147
27
46
ig2, 274
xxi. 32
18
28
272
xxii. 18-20 .
. 232
29 .
256
27g, 280
32
• 105
3°
ig7, 200
35-37
. 136
34 •
I7g, 228
xxiv. 2g
¦ 14
38
40 .
. ig2
• 179
JOHN—
43 ¦
200
i. 13 •
• 255
44
179
18 .
202
vi. 15 .
47
2g .
• 245
27
46, 222
45
• 191
29.
192, 257
ii. ig-22
. 164, 25g
33 •
. 211
22 .
i65
37
¦ 257
iii. 3 .
. 220
39 ¦
• 279
5 ¦
262
40 .
223, 279
8 .
• 176, 253
45 •
177. 257
n .
. ig2
47-
223, 254
12 .
¦ 231
5i •
238
13. 14
46, 210
53-
. 46
15 •
219, 220, 254
54-
223, 279
16-21
. 163, 166,
56.
• 23g
180, 196, 232
57-
171. J74
18 .
• 254, 274
62 .
46, 210
ig .
166, 274
63-
•
. 262
iv. 14 .
222, 227
68 .
; 22g
21-24 .
. 261
69.
. 191
286 INDEX TO PASSAGES FROM THE GOSPELS

JOHN—

JOHN—

vii. 16

24, 200

xii. 24

. 238

17

• 255

25

. 222

18

197

31

. 244, 273

2g

. 192

32. 33 •

• 164, 179

37

227

34

¦ 193

39

• 239

46

178, 228

viii. 12

193, 228

47

228, 230, 274

15

• 274

48

230, 267, 274

28

• 46

xiii. 1-11

• 245

2g

• 197

31 ¦

46, 201

30

. 164

34

. 256
32
. 229
35
251, 264
35.36
• 197
xiv. 1
254
38 ¦
210
2-
4
. 28l
40
. 200
6
I94, 227
44
182, 277
7
• 145
46
. 198
9
¦ 194
51
. 223
10
201
55
197
16
201 , 24O
58
. 210
18
. 240
ix. 2 .
. 208
21
. 24O
3 ¦
. 182
25
. 166
35. 36 •
201
26
• 155. 165
*. g
. 228
27
. 263
10 .
221
30
198, 243, 244
n-18
243, 244
XV. 1
. 228, 239, 255
16 .
259
3
• H3. 230
17
181
6 .
¦ 277
24 .
. 191
7
¦ 230
27
. 260
xvi. 1-3
. 262
28 .
. 222
8 .
• 265
30 .
. 187
10 .
197. 255
36 . 1
g2, ig6, igg
12 .
256
xi. 25
ig4, 267
13 ¦
235. 248
26 .
223, 271
16.
. 24O
27.
• 191
18-20
. 262
41 .
. 201
24 .
. 263
42 .
. 260
26, 27
. 264
52.
¦ 25g
33-
198, 247
xii. 16
. 165
xvii. 3
167, I92, 226
23
46
5
. 210
INDEX TO PASSAGES FROM THE GOSPELS 287

JOHN—

JOHN—

xvii. 8

• 230
xvii. 22
183, 228, 278
9
258
23
278
10
. 201
24
181, 210, 281
n
• 273
xviii. 37
. 230
13
. 263
xx. ig
265
14
. 180
23
. 265
10
• 245
24
• 265
20, 21 .
251.
xxi. 22
281
"
252,
260, 264
24
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LITERARY WORLD:—
" It is a beautiful book, strong because so calm,
suggestive, and only not eloquent because no room is
found in it for mere rhetoric.''
LONDON, QUARTERLY :—
" It will profit busy men who have leisure enough
to digest as well as to read; and it will set preachers
thinking."

Zhc Gospel anb tbe Hoe
Series.
Q/Q Large Crown 8vo, gilt top. ^/O
EACH.  EACH,,,
New Volumes.
16. TEMPTATION AND TOIL. By the Rev. W.
Hay M. H. Aitken, M.A., Author of "The
Love of the Father," &c.
17. THE TEACHING OF JESUS. By R. F.
Horton, M.A., D.D., Author of "Revelation
and the Bible," &c.
18. THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD, And other
Sermons. By J. H. Bernard, D.D., Fellow
of Trinity College, Dublin.

Other Volumes in Preparation.

*

ISBISTER & CO., LIMITED,
COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C.
16

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