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From the Library of
CHARLES HOPKINS CLARK
Class of 1871
1929

A People's Life of Christ

Br THE SAME AUTHOR
THE GOSPEL OF THE
HEREAFTER
i2mo, cloth, net, $1.50

Circulation in English — 70,000 copies
Norwegian translation (made by a Judge of the
Supreme Court of Norway, assisted by the
Bishops of Christiania and Trondheim) —
jth Edition
Applications for translation rights have come
from Holland, Sweden and Japan
The Bishop of London says : "For the first time,
it makes the life beyond the grave so attractive as to
be something to be looked forward to. I have just
given away twenty copies. It has already com
forted many stricken souls and taken away the fear
of death from many."

Heinrich Hofmann
THE S'"'N OF MAX
Engraved from the Famous Painting of "Christ and the Rich Young Ruler"

A PEOPLE'S
LIFE OF CHRIST

By
J. PATERSON-SMYTH, B.D., LL.D.,Litt.D., D.C.L.
Author of "The Gospel of the Hereafter," "The Bible in
the Making," "How We Got Our Bible," "Life
and Letters of St. Paul," etc.

New York Chicago
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1920, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANV

S m 3

New York : 1 58 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London : 2 1 Paternoster Square
Edinbuigh : 75 Princes Street

TO MY BOY
IN THE UNSEEN

CONTENTS

BOOK IV
Capernaum

I.

How Jesus Came to Capernaum

• 159

II.

Capernaum By the Sea .

. 168

III.

The Call of the Four .

. 178

IV.

The First Sabbath

. 183

V.

A Prophet in His Own Country .

191

VI.

A Prodigal and a Publican .

202

VII.

Two Dinner Parties

. 213

VIII.

The Multitudes ....

221

IX.

One Day in Capernaum .

231

X.

The Beginning of Trouble

241

XI.

The Kingdom of God

253

XII.

The Sermon on the Mount

263

XIII.

The Twelve 

271

XIV.

The Funeral at Nain .

281

XV.

On Holiday 

288

XVI.

C.ESAREA PHILIPPI ....

298

XVII.

Farewell to Galilee .

309

BOOK V
Memories of the Jerusalem Road
I. An Author Collecting Memories of the
Road 
II. First Attempt on Jerusalem .
III. A Lost Story of the Gospels
IV. The Teachings of the Road .
(/. The Fatherhood of God)
V. The Teachings of the Road .
(II. The Brotherhood of Man)

319328338
347355

CONTENTS 9
VI. The Teachings of the Road . . . 364
(III. Responsibility)
VII. The Teachings of the Road . . . 374
(IV. The Great Assize)
VIII. The Second Attempt on Jerusalem . 380
IX. The Raising of Lazarus .... 388
X. One Man Must Die for the People . 395
XI. The End of the Road .... 400

BOOK VI
Jerusalem
I. Palm Sunday  413
II. Denunciations  421
III. The Traitor  427
IV. The Last Supper  431
V. Gethsemane  438
VI. A Jewish Investigation .... 443
VII. The Roman Law Court .... 450
VIII. Calvary  459
IX. A Lost Chapter in the Life of Christ . 469
X. The Resurrection  475
XI. An Old Man's Easter Memories . .481
XII. The Training of the Forty Days . .491
XIII. Returning to the Father . . . 499

Index

503

BOOK I
In the Beginning

BEFORE THE WORLD WAS
" ~W ^ THE BEGINNING WAS THE Word and the
1 Word was with God and the Word was
-M. God." Here we first touch the life of Christ.
In the life of any great man of the earth we begin
with his birthday, his first appearance in this world.
That is his beginning. But in our Lord's life our
thought must go back to the eternal world where He
belongs, in which this world of ours is but a mere
modern incident. The whole fabric of our faith rests
on the fact that beyond this world which we know,
beyond the stars and planets, beyond the realms of
matter and space and time is the real world, the world
of the Eternities — the world of God and of the holy
angels, the world from which this, and all worlds
come. We cannot see that world. We cannot map
out its continents and shores. No gleam of its golden
cities has ever touched our eyes. But we believe that
it is all around us from Eternity, and He who came
from thence has told us things about it.
He has told us not only that it is an infinitely holy
world but, what perhaps touches some of us more
nearly, that it is an infinitely kindly, friendly world,
that they on that side are keenly interested in us on
this side. From the Bible point of view the galleries
of the Unseen are crowded with spectators watching
with deep interest our life on earth. " We are com
passed about with a great cloud of witnesses." Jesus,
*3

14 IN THE BEGINNING
to whom that eternal world is His native air, is always
feeling this. He tells of the Father looking on us
with love and pain. He tells of the joy in Heaven
over one sinner that repents on earth; of the earth-
children's guardian angels " always beholding the face
of the Father which is in Heaven." He tells of Abra
ham in that Unseen life rejoicing to see His day here,
so interested is that world in ours. In the story of the
Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah, two of the great
old world saints, came out from that Unseen life to
meet their Lord and speak to Him — of what? Of
Pharaoh and the Red Sea — of Ahab and Naboth's
vineyard — the things that interested them most on
earth? Ah, no. They also had been caught up into
the kindly interest of the great souls who are watch
ing us from the galleries of Creation. " They spake
of His decease which He should accomplish at Jeru
salem." Does it not suggest the deep, absorbing in
terest which they and their great comrades within the
Veil were taking in the drama of Redemption on
earth ?
This is all comparatively modern — only two thou
sand years ago. But St. Paul tells the Ephesians that
this deep interest in us has been from the beginning,
that the coming of the Christ was no mere afterthought.
It was the eternal purpose of God's love, he says, from
the foundation of the world that the eternal Christ
should save humanity, that the poor earth-children
should be gathered into the arms of the Father. God
was always caring.
Keeping all this in mind we shall better understand
what the Bible teaches, that ' every incoming of God
into human experience is prepared there in the Un
seen before it expresses itself here in the Seen. It is

BEFORE THE WORLD WAS 15
known on that side for what it is, long before the
moment comes for its manifestation on this side.'
There in that kindly world " in the beginning was the
Word and the Word was with God and the Word was
God." There in God's loving purpose in the far eter
nities the Incarnation was prepared " for us men and
for our salvation."
So we have to go very far back for the story of
our Lord's life, beyond the farthest point that imagi
nation can reach, countless ages before the Genesis
story when in the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth, limitless time behind the Incarnation
" when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the
days of Herod the King."
That is St. John's attitude in his story of Christ.
I love to think of that dear old Bishop of Ephesus,
"the disciple whom Jesus loved," sitting down to
write before he died his " Life of our Lord," his " Gos
pel of an old man's memories."
But behind the memories of the human Jesus, who
had been so affectionate with him in those three years
in Palestine, lies the deeper solemn thought of the
eternal Christ, " whose goings forth have been from of
old from everlasting." " In the beginning was the
Word and the Word was with God and the Word was
God." Then he thinks how that eternal Christ had
been caring for this poor world in the ages before the
Incarnation. Far away back in that dim past, when
the world had no thought of Him, " He was in the
world and the world was made by Him and the world
knew Him not." " In Him was life, and that life was
the light of men." " He was the true light that light-
eneth every man coming into the world."

16 IN THE BEGINNING
It is all mystery. Human thought cannot dwell in
that rarified atmosphere. We can but whisper won-
deringly to ourselves, "The Christ was always here.
His presence in the Universe was the condition of its
life. His presence in man brought the light of Con
science. All the time from the beginning of this
world One was standing in the midst of us whom we
knew not." That is what St. Augustine meant in say
ing that Christianity has been with us since the Crea
tion. That was the daring thought in the mind of
Tertullian, that through all the ages, Christ had been
preparing Himself for Incarnation.
St. John thinks of Him as in the world before
the Incarnation revealing the infinite God through
Nature and Intellect and Conscience. So he uses a
term familiar in Greek and Jewish thought of the
time, " the Word of God." " In the beginning was
the Word." A strange term at first sight to signify
the Christ. But it expressed the thought in the
Apostle's mind, and it had the advantage of being
familiar in a similar sense to Greek philosophy and
Jewish thought of his day. Roughly we may give its
meaning here as that which reveals or manifests God.
Greek philosophy put some such meaning on the term.
Men could not see or touch the infinite Source of all
things. They could only know Him in His manifesta
tion in the world around them. And so by a fine poetic
figure they called this manifestation of God His
" Word." See the idea. How does any one manifest his
thought and inner being? By his word which he
speaks. By his word he expresses himself, puts him
self in communication with you, makes his thoughts

BEFORE THE WORLD WAS 17
and feelings known, gives effect to his will. The word
proceeding from his thought and will carries the im
print of his inner mind and character. By his word
you get to know him.
Now how is one to know the infinite, invisible, in
comprehensible God? Only by His manifestation of
Himself in the conscience of men, in the wonders of
life, in storm and sunshine, in the midnight heavens, in
the wonder of the dawn, in the beauty of the earth and
the glory of the sea, in the golden cornfields feeding
the world. These are the manifestations of God, His
Word to men. Whatever power produced these was
thought of even by pagan philosophers as the Word of
the Supreme Being.
So far even pagan thought could go. But the
Apostle's thought went far deeper. He knew of a
fuller manifestation. For three years he had walked
the fields of Palestine with One who, he now felt, was
the fuller Manifestation, the fuller Word of God to
the world. So he goes on, " The Word became
flesh." The Word, who from the beginning had been
manifesting God in the wonders of nature and the
mysteries of life, at length in the fullness of time passed
to the fuller manifestation. " The Word became
flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the
glory as of the Only-begotten, full of grace and truth."
That was the climax of the revelation of the Godhead,
the revelation not merely of God's power and great
ness, the revelation of God's heart, of God's tender
ness, of God's infinite friendliness and lovingkindness.
Thus we see the Apostle's thought when he calls Him
in fullest sense The Word of God.
But the poor world had to wait a long time for

18 IN THE BEGINNING
that manifestation. We do not know why God,
delayed the Incarnation so long. But we know that
He was caring for that desolate world before Christ
came. And we know that He has all eternity to make
up to them for their loss. God has a good deal of time
to do things between this and the other side of eternity.
One's heart goes out to those poor pagan men in
that lonely world before Christ. They had their
aspirations after good as we have. 'JThey had anxiety
and suspense. They had pain as keen as ours over
their boys who died in battle. They were afflicted as
we are in mind, body and estate. And they had no
kindly God to turn to. They made pathetic guesses
about Him. Their philosophers proved a Creator
from His manifestations in Nature ; but Nature could
only tell that He is great and powerful. Civilized na
tions embodied their guesses in Jupiters and Junos.
But alas! they were not beings that troubled people
could pray to. As for the poor savage, he was only
frightened by the resistless powers of Nature. He
heard the fierce storm wind rushing along and the
trees crashing in the forest, and the thunder and hail
and fire mingled with the hail, and he cowered in his
cave and made idols and fetishes and cried to them to
appease the Great Being or Beings who were so power
ful. These poor idols were his attempt at a manifesta
tion of God.
As one reads ancient history the thought must often
come that the poor lonely old world was " groping
after God if haply they might find Him." And their
philosophies and mythologies and idols and fetishes
were the measure of all that they could attain to. It is
pathetic. No one to tell them what they wanted to
know. Is He a personal God with a heart in Him?.

BEFORE THE WORLD WAS 19
Is there anything in Him of justice or lovingkindness ?
Could He hear a poor mother crying over her dead
child? Does He ever think about us at all? Surely
it is pathetic. If I did not believe that God was caring
and that He would some day in some world make up
to them for all they had lost, I should think it was
cruel of Him to leave them thus.
Oh, those generations old,
Over whom no church bells tolled,
Sightless, lifting up blind eyes
To the silence of the skies,
For the innumerable dead
Is my soul disquieted.
Trust them with God, says the Divine revelation.
Christ is caring for them. Christ will not forget them.
They are amongst the crowds to whom He went
straight from the Cross in the three days when He
proclaimed the good news to the " spirits in prison."
Still Thy love, O Christ arisen,
Yearns to reach those souls in prison,
Through all depths of pain and loss
Sinks the plummet of Thy Cross.
Never yet abyss was found
Deeper than that Cross could sound.
So we leave these old-world men with Christ. Where
better could we leave them?
Thus the long dark centuries rolled on. And
still God gave no sign. But all the time in those
old-world days the Divine purpose was working out,
unhasting, unresting. In divers ways " Christ was

20 IN THE BEGINNING
preparing for Incarnation." We do not know enough
to trace His path in history. We can only guess and
look for occasional glimpses of it. We see the pro
cession of the ancient empires, Assyrian and Baby-
Ionian, Persian and Greek and Roman. And we hear
the old prophets tell that these were part of a great pur
pose, that Jehovah was working out some great de
sign. One day we come on a clearer glimpse. One day
two thousand years before the Incarnation we see a
young shepherd on the Syrian hills, stirred with high
aspirations, called to separate from idolatrous home
and kindred to go out not knowing whither he went.
And Abram heard the inward call of the Eternal and
set out on his divine mission. All unknowingly he
went forth, an old-world John the Baptist, " to prepare
the way of the Lord." Thus began the training of the
Jewish race. They were secluded that they might be
open to receive a new revelation. They were sepa
rated from the idolatry and polytheism of their an
cestors that they might learn of the one God. They
were disciplined and trained in the knowledge of
Jehovah as no nation had ever been before. All down
their history they heard prophet voices telling of God's
righteous will. And down through the web of
prophecy ran like a golden thread the mysterious prom
ise of some future day when in them and their seed
should all the nations be blessed. Again and again in
prophetic visions of their future appeared and reap
peared a dimly seen figure, perhaps human, perhaps
divine — the son of David — the Son of Man — the Son
of God — the Servant of Jehovah, the Wonderful, the
Counsellor, the Prince of Peace of whose government
there should be no end — the Lamb to be led as a sheep

BEFORE THE WORLD WAS 21
to the slaughter on whom the Lord should lay the
iniquity of us all.
All this set men expecting, looking forward. But
God still kept silence. Nothing happened. The Jew
ish kings and prophets passed away and the sorrowful
days of the Exile came. The Jews were scattered all
over the earth. And the world went on its way re
joicing and sorrowing, struggling and sinning. And
still God gave no sign.

II
A WORLD PREPARING
AT last the time drew near. And as it came,
behold a marvellous thing. The world begin
ning to make ready! Like the unconscious
ocean responding with its tides to movements in the
moon, Earth seems unconsciously responding to move
ments in the Eternal World. When that World was
preparing to send us the Christ, this world began to
make ready. Looking back now, long after the event,
one can hardly fail to see what seems a Divine shaping
of history in preparation for Him.
Here are the facts. When the Christ was coming,
three races held the chief influence in the world — the
Greek, the Roman and the Jew. The polished Greek,
the powerful Roman, the hated and despised Jew.
They were the prominent peoples of the civilized world.
Nay, they were the civilized world. No others
counted. Pilate recognized this when he put his in
scription of the Cross " in Hebrew and Greek and
Latin." Now if these three peoples in the generation
before Christ, without knowing or intending, seem
almost as if conspiring together to prepare for His
coming, is it too much to say that it at least suggests a
Divine preparation? Men who do not take Christ into
account may look on it as the chance happenings of
history. But I think Christians, who recognize the
stupendous thing about to come, will feel as they read
the history of the time that not only the Baptist but
22

A WORLD PREPARING 23
the world around was sent to " prepare the way of the
Lord." At any rate, this is what happened.
First, the Roman made the road for the com
ing of the King. A century before Messiah's day
the world was intensely localized and subdivided and
broken up into separate little nations, with their sepa
rate religions and customs and laws, their jealousies
and suspicions, their constant wars, their bristling
frontiers barring communication. The land was har
assed by skirmishing bands, the sea was impassable by
reason of pirates. Humanly speaking, a century be
fore Christ no Palestine movement could ever have
spread beyond Palestine. It was humanly impossible
for a universal Gospel to win free course through the
world. Just at this crisis came a striking change. The
Romans accomplished it. When Jesus came, instead
of frontiered nations separated and suspicious, He
found a levelled world with the fences down. Rome
had welded the incoherent kingdoms into one, smash
ing up the separated patriotisms and religions, federat
ing the world into a single great monarchy. The
Roman roads traversed the civilized world, the iron
power of the Caesars kept universal peace. The high
way was open for the coming of the King. One has
but to watch the free unrestricted journeys of St. Paul
all over the Empire to see what the Roman peace and
the Roman road and the Roman world-unity meant
for the spread of the new religion.
So far the Romans and the Road. What of the
Greeks? An open road for the coming gospel was
of little avail without a common language to carry
it through the world. The Jew spoke Aramaic, the

24 IN THE BEGLNNING
Roman knew Latin, the many peoples spoke languages
as confused as at Babel. But as the day drew near
when Messiah was coming, the Greek, all unknowing,
was doing his part to prepare the way of the Lord.
His beautiful flexible tongue became the chief language
of the Empire. Men all around the Mediterranean
while speaking their own language also learned to use
Greek. It became the language of the whole civilized
world. Thus the vehicle was prepared for carrying
the new teaching.
Again we get our object lesson in the travels of St.
Paul. Alike to Romans and Corinthians, to the pol
ished Athenians and the rude pagan tribes in the high
lands of Galatia, we hear him tell in a tongue " under
stated of the people " the wonderful works of God.
The Greek, the Roman and the Jew. Pioneers
preparing the way of the Lord. The Roman cleared
the road, the Greek supplied the language. What
of the Jew ? What could he accomplish ? Hated and
despised by the dominant races, shut up in his little
far-off corner of the Empire, what was to be expected
of him in a world-wide movement?
To him who seeks God's hand in the preparation for
the Christ, the Jew of Messiah's day is the most strik
ing instance of all. Secluded for centuries amongst
the hills of Palestine, he had been keeping for the
world the Oracles of God, the teaching of spiritual re
ligion, the prophecies of a Golden Age in which the
Coming One should come. Then came what seemed
to the Jew the tragedy of the Captivity. To us, look
ing back on it long after the event, it seems, like many
another tragedy of history, a distinct working out of
the purpose of the Almighty.

A WORLD PREPARING 25
For the Exile scattered the Jews throughout the
world. As a gardener transplants his young trees
from the nursery to place them out over the land, so
God transplanted Israel and scattered him among the
nations. After the Captivity only a small minority
returned to Palestine. The bulk of the exiles settled
in their new homes or spread themselves out for trade
among the nations around. Historians of the time
tell us that there was no nation where the Jews had not
settled, growing in power and in commercial influence.
They were everywhere in force throughout the Em
pire. Outside the Empire their great colonies in
Babylon and Alexandria were a headquarters for the
race. Like the Greater Britain which we speak of to
day, so was the " Greater Israel " spreading through
the civilized world vastly outnumbering the Palestine
stock, but ever looking back to Jerusalem as exiles to
their home. They were one-eighth of the whole popu
lation of Egypt. We form some idea of their num
bers and of the extent of their wanderings as we watch
a group of them fifty years later, come back for the
annual Pentecost to Jerusalem, " Parthians and Medes
and Elamites and dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judea
and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and
Pamphylia, in Egypt and the parts of Libya about
Cyrene, strangers from Rome, both Jews and prose
lytes, Cretes and Arabians."
They were everywhere, and everywhere they carried
with them their religion and their sacred Books, as we
read, " Moses hath in every city them that preach him,
being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day."
And everywhere, above all, they clung to their na
tional hope of the Messiah who should come. That
coming of Messiah was the supreme culmination. For

26 IN THE BEGINNING
that Judaism existed. " The prophets," says their
Talmud, " prophesied only of Messiah." " For Mes
siah only was the world created." True, they did not
know when Messiah would come. True, they had
narrow unspiritual thoughts of Him as the deliverer
and exalter of the Jews. They looked not for a light
to lighten the Gentiles but only for the glory of His
people Israel. Yet, even so, think what it meant as a
preparation for the Christ to have people with such
beliefs spread everywhere among the heathen.
Though personally disliked, they had a very wide
influence. The more thoughtful of their pagan neigh
bours, dissatisfied with their own wretched polytheism
and idolatry, felt the attraction of a religion in their
midst which proclaimed with no uncertain sound One
God, lofty and holy, who valued religious conduct,
who cared for men, who listened to prayers, who in
tended some great thing in the future for humanity.
In every city proselytes from heathendom were joined
to the synagogue, and outside these a far larger num
ber of " adherents " (" devout men " they are called in
the Acts), like the centurion in the New Testament,
were attracted to the doctrines and acquainted with
the Scriptures of Israel, and formed a fringe of partly
leavened Gentile life around the Synagogue.
And — a very important factor in this connection —
about two hundred years before Christ, the Hebrew
Bible had been translated into Greek, the common
tongue, the famous Septuagint Bible, which could be
read by Jew and Gentile, which proclaimed to Jew
and Gentile alike a righteous God and some Great One
who was to come.
Though the bulk of the Jews were blinded and their
hearts were holden, though Palestine crucified Messiah

A WORLD PREPARING 27
when He came, yet we have but to turn again to the
story of St. Paul with the Synagogue forming every
where the seed-bed of the Church, to realize the enor
mous influence of that scattered Israel in helping " to
prepare the way of the Lord."
Surely it is significant that just when the Son of
God was about to come into the world, the three great
peoples who composed that world should have uncon
sciously conspired to make ready His path. Surely it
should at least suggest a Divine Hand reaching forth
to fashion out of many elements a great result.

Ill
A WORLD SET THINKING
BUT beside those external changes, geographical
and political, we seem to see an equally signifi
cant internal preparation in the thoughts and
feelings of men at that time. It was a tired, dis
couraged, dissatisfied world which awaited the coming
of Christ. It sorely needed some one to help and
hearten it up. Of course that was true in some meas
ure at all times before He came. But humanity was
growing. Conscience was asserting its supremacy.
Men were thinking more and feeling their dissatis
factions more.
Let us look again at these three races, the Greek,
the Roman, and the Jew.
There were the Greeks, the proud, eager, rest
less, beautiful Greeks, with their noble art and litera
ture and philosophy, and their love of the beauti
ful, and their poetic imagination which peopled
Olympus with the gods. To this day the whole civi
lized world looks to these ancient Greeks with wonder
and gratitude. We owe to them the best of our cul
ture. Above all things they stood for culture. Never
was any nation prouder of its culture. Never had any
nation better reason to be proud.
But, alas, we have learned in the recent Great War
days what culture can come to without religion, and
the poor Greeks of that day were learning what Ger
many may some day learn fos. her eternal good, that
the world cannot get on with culture only. I picture
28

A WORLD SET THINKING 29
these Greeks as like the modern Parisians, a light,
pleasant, quick-witted people, who like to amuse them
selves, to enjoy themselves. But the enjoyment was a
good deal on the surface. Down underneath life was
a bit pathetic. Their best days were over. The golden
age of Greece was in the past. Their political in
tegrity was lost. They spent their time in frivolity,
and worse. Profligacy and corruption were eating
like a cancer, and their beautiful religion had no power
to check their bad propensities. How could it ? Even
in the best days their beautiful gods on Mount
Olympus were not very moral. You could not imagine
any one offering them spiritual prayers.
In the simplicity of their lusty youth-time their gods
had been real to them. They believed in their gods.
They were not a bad sort of gods. Jove was the good-
natured father and creator. Their gods fought with
them at the Pass of Thermopylae, where the famous
three hundred laid down their lives for Greece and
for right.
But now they were a hopeless and effeminate race.
Though they kept up their forms and their images,
they had utterly lost all real belief. Their mythology
had become a fairy tale. " Men had climbed up into
Olympus and found no gods there." And so it was
a lonely world for the poor Greeks. The Bishop of
Tokyo told the writer lately that this is the condition
of Japan to-day. In young, happy days nations and
men can get on with frivolity and pleasure, and
statues and poetry, but there are days when these
things fail. In our sorrowful times we want a god of
some kind to turn to. Even Jupiters and Junos will
be some use, provided we believe in them. But, alas,
if we do not!

30 IN THE BEGINNING
Look at the Romans. The Romans were in
no decline like the Greeks. Theirs was a brave,
magnificent world in its pride of power and mastery
and success. But historians tell us that underneath
this showy power and magnificence was a sink of rot
tenness. Family life was unspeakable. Tyranny and
cruelty were rampant. The people were degraded and
brutalized. Their favourite amusements were the
hideous slaughters in the arena. Slavery was the
curse of the Empire. Two men out of three who
walked the streets of Rome were slaves, and two
women out of every three, and two girls out of every
three subject to every whim of their masters, to every
suggestion of passion or lust. The slaves were
wretched. The best of them crowded to Christianity
when it came. The worst of them debauched Rome.
They brought in new unnatural vices. They cor
rupted the masters. They corrupted the chil
dren. Every passion of the golden youth of Rome
was ministered to by them. The Roman boys grew
old and jaded and rotten with vice before they were
out of their teens. A half century later St. Paul in
dicates the position in his terrible first chapter of the
Epistle to the Romans. God gave men up to un-
cleanness through the lusts of their own hearts. With
all its pride and magnificence that Roman world was
a lonesome world for individual men and women. A
world without God. Whenever one was in sorrow,
whenever one was disgusted with himself, whenever
one had aspirations after Right, there was no god to
pray to except the goddess Rome and the deified
emperor who was worshipped as representing Rome.
Put yourself in their place. Think how you would
feel. '

A WORLD SET THINKING 31
But that is not the main point. That was true of
Paganism always. The main point is that the best
of the Romans were sick of it all. Any uplift would
be welcome. There were fine characters amongst
those pagan men. We remember later on how the
Roman centurions in the New Testament felt attracted
towards Christianity when they came in contact with
it. It is pathetic to see how the leaders of Roman
thought felt the position. It was an age of philoso
phers groping for truth and groping for some guid
ance for conduct. Men had advanced beyond the un
thinking stage. They were thinking hard. With
their heaven, like the Greek heaven, empty of gods,
they tried to think out some sort of religion to live by.
They studied the mystery of Conscience. They rec
ognized its authority. For Conscience, said one of
them later on, is a sort of inward divinity. That was
a long step forward for pagan people.
Their Stoic philosophers evolved a noble teaching.
" Seek virtue. Listen to the voice of Conscience.
For Conscience is a sort of inward divinity. Prob
ably there is some great Being behind it. But even if
not, follow that voice." Was not that a fine attitude
for pagan men ?
Surely God was helping. The Coming One, who
lighteneth every man coming into the world, was
lightening their hearts.
There were longings, yearnings, strivings,
For the good they comprehend not.
And the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touched God's right hand in that darkness
And were lifted up and strengthened.
They did their best, these old thinkers, and it was a

32 IN THE BEGINNING
very good best. But it was all speculation. They had
no solid foundation, as the Jews had, to build a relig
ion on. So their highest efforts failed. Their
speculations could not stand the rough and tumble of
life. Their fine theories never gripped the common
people. They touched the high water mark of unaided
human reason in trying to think out a religion for
itself. But they failed.
They failed. But does it not seem that just when
pagan men were thus seeking for light — at the very
time when these highest efforts of unaided humanity
had broken down — does it not seem worth note that
just at this crisis of the world's history the Christ
should come?
What of the Jew, the third great division of
the world? Probably some one will retort that
however it might be with the Greek and the Roman,
the Jew, at any rate in his obstinate perversity, was in
no receptive mood for the coming of the Christ.
I think that is an exaggeration. You are judging
by the bigoted, prejudiced Jew, who is prominent in
the New Testament just because of his opposition.
Remember that many of the best of the Jews saw the
prophetic hope fulfilled in Jesus and became the first
and most devoted members of the young church.
As we study the writings of the time, we find that,
like the Greeks and the Romans, thoughtful Jews too
were dissatisfied with their religion. The travelled
Jew, away from Palestine, was broadened by his con
tact with other peoples and his sympathy with much in
Gentile learning. He grew out of touch with the
Palestine exclusiveness. Living in kindly relation with
his pagan friends, he felt that Judaism which could

A WORLD SET THINKING 33
not take them in could never be a religion for all
humanity. Jehovah was the tribal God of Israel only.
The rest of the world could only reach Him through
Israel, through circumcision, through burdensome
rules of an alien people whom they disliked. The
position was an impossible one. We have the writings
of such Jews trying to reconcile their religion with
broader hopes of a religion for all.
If it were only possible that Judaism with its noble
theology could blossom out into a great world-em
bracing religion, with no distinction of Jew and Gen
tile, Greek and Barbarian, bond and free! And the
really thoughtful Jew knew that that was in the vision
of the prophets of old, that one day from the stem of
Judah should spring the spreading flower of a world-
religion to bless all humanity when Messiah should
come. There is this, too, to be considered. Earnest
spiritual men of St. Paul's type had outgrown the Law.
Paul says it was meant to be outgrown, that it was
only temporary, a schoolmaster (child-leader) to lead
men to Christ. And in revealing the misery of his
own spiritual struggles before his conversion, he
shows how earnest Jews were seeking some more
hopeful approach to God. To such men Christ
would be a joyful discovery.
But the most striking, the perfectly startling thing
to one who does not know it, is the tense expecta
tion of the whole Jewish world in that generation
when Christ came. I am bold to say that no na
tional history has ever shown a more arresting, con
vincing phenomenon than that mental attitude of the
Jewish world when Jesus was coming.

34 IS THE BEGINNING
The last of the prophets who had prophesied of the
Coming One had been five hundred years dead. And
nothing had happened. One might well expect that
men should forget or give up hoping after five hun
dred years. Yet here is a whole race on the tiptoe
of expectation just as the time drew near. A whole
popular literature had sprung up expressive of that
expectation in the interval between the Old Testament
and the New. There is no space here to tell of this
literature. Here is a little specimen from one of its
books, the Book of Enoch. It was current in the two
generations before Christ. St. Jude knew it. Doubt
less Jesus knew it. I have often thought that it was
there He got His favourite title for Himself, " The
Son of Man."
" And in my vision I saw that with the Eternal was one
whose countenance was like man and his face full of
graciousness. And I asked the angel, and he said unto
me, ' This is the Son of Man with whom dwelleth
Righteousness and who reveals all that is hidden. . . .
And this Son of Man will be a staff to the righteous
and a light to the Gentiles and the hope of those who
are troubled in heart. All who dwell on the earth shall
bow the knee before him. For this reason he had been
chosen before the foundation of the world and for
evermore." These books indicate the growing expectancy. But
in the beginnings of the Gospels you find it throbbing
on every page. The messages of the old prophets had
crystallized into a definite hope. That hope sprang
into eager questioning whenever a leader appeared.
When Judas of Galilee came in the days of the taxing,
much people followed him, hoping he was Messiah.
When John the Baptist appeared, what was the first

A WORLD SET THINKING 35
thought? "All men mused in their hearts of John
whether he was the Christ or not." What was the
first question when he started his preaching, " Tell us,
Art thou Messiah ? Art thou he that should come ? "
One cannot but feel that we are in an atmosphere of
tense expectation.
Only now, looking back, can we realize the position.
We have seen at a certain period of history the great
nations of earth unconsciously making a pathway for
the Christ, and the whole Jewish race on tiptoe of
expectation of Him, and the poor world at its lowest
blindly groping for some uplift.
And just then, THB CHRIST CAMBl

BOOK II
When the Christ Came

THE NATIVITY
JUST then the Christ came. " In the fulness of
time God sent forth His Son." Forth from the
Eternal World into this world. Keep both
worlds in view all the time.
We have come now to that event in the history of
our race for which all previous history was only a
preparation, that stupendous event which bridged over
the chasm between God and man, when He came down
to earth in human guise " whose goings forth have
been from of old from everlasting."
And the first thing that strikes one — so utterly un
likely, so almost incredible at first sight — is the simple,
ordinary way in which the great thing happened. If
He had come with mighty cataclysm and rending of
the Heavens, that was to be looked for. But to come
in this simple, ordinary way! And yet, on second
thought, is not this God's method in working all His
wonders ? Is it not " just like Him," as we say ? That
is how they do things in that Eternal World. In the
building of an oak, in the making of a planet, in the
wonder of the dawn, in the miracle of the yellow har
vest — that seems God's method always, quiet, simple,
unnoticed. So Jesus came in utter, unexpected simplicity, not
with pomp or glory or rending of the heavens, but
gently, quietly, as the dew comes or the dawn. Here
39

40 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
is a stupendous happening, beyond the grasp of
thought, and so easily does it blend with the simplest
elements of life around that we feel some difficulty in
retaining any wonder and awe. One feels almost as
if reading an ordinary village chronicle.
So easily, simply, naturally, did the Christ become
man. The story opens in a country village, secluded
among the hills of Galilee. In the village street is a
carpenter's shop and a country carpenter working at
his bench with saw and hammer and chisel, making
tables and chairs, and ploughs and cattle yokes for
the countryside around. He is working hard and
working happily, with the thought of his betrothal in
his heart and of the home which he is preparing for
his bride.
Down the village his betrothed dwells, Mary, the
daughter of Anna, a peasant girl though of royal
blood, working in her home spinning and breadmaking
and drawing water from the well with the other
village girls in the evening. We know her as a
maiden gracious and modest; we picture her to our
selves with a beautiful face to match her beautiful
soul. And Joseph the carpenter loved her. All accounts
suggest that he was older than she, and perhaps for
that reason he thought of her more tenderly. He liked
to watch her passing and to dream of their coming
life together. And, surely, it was pleasant to her to
meet him after his work and hear him talk of his
brave plans and hopes. For Galilee was free from the
strict conventions about lovers that obtained in the
South in Jerusalem.

THE NATIVITY 41
But other and higher things were also in their
thoughts. These two were no ordinary lovers, wrapped
up in themselves and their future. Joseph, we are
told, was " a righteous man," and Mary's was a pure
and lofty soul, fit to be chosen for God's eternal pur
pose. They were religious as all lovers ought to be in
this solemn, beautiful crisis of their lives. Mingled
with their happiness was the thought of God and His
goodness, and surely they sometimes talked together
of what was so much in the minds of all religious
Jews just then, the greater hope of Israel, the Messiah
to come. And we picture the girl going home after
these meetings and kneeling by her cottage window to
pray to God for her lover's life and her own.
Who could dream that in that simple setting should
be wrought the Miracle of the Ages! The Unseen
World, so long watching its preparation with enthrall
ing interest, were now shifting to earth the drama of
Redemption. And they were to play their part in its
opening scenes.
One day — one night, perhaps, at her prayers — came
suddenly on the maiden a stirring of her whole being
and the awe of the Supernatural, and an Angel vision
and a voice from the Unseen,
" Hail, thou that art highly favoured,
The Lord is with thee."
And as she bowed there, trembling in astonishment and
awe, in that hour came to her the tremendous an
nouncement that the great hope of Israel, the hope of
the long ages, was to be fulfilled at last.
" Fear not, Mary, thou hast found favour with God.

42 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
And behold, thou shalt conceive and bring forth a Son,
and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great
and shall be called the Son of the Highest . . . and
of his kingdom there shall be no end. The Holy Ghost
shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High
shall overshadow thee. Wherefore, also, that holy one
to be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
And Mary said,
"Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it unto me
according to thy word."
And the angel departed from her. Silence alone be
comes us here, and the veil drawn before a woman's
heart. No note or comment must intrude on the
sacred reticence of that story, which could only have
come to us through Mary herself.
A woman, overwhelmed with her tremendous
secret such as no woman's heart before had ever
borne, is " going with haste into the hill country of
Judea " — to tell a woman. Not even to her betrothed
can she unburden her thoughts. A woman at such a
time needs a woman. Her cousin, Elizabeth, was the
wife of a country priest, and the Angel said she also
was in the purpose of the Almighty. Another man-
child was coming into the world to be the herald to
Israel of the coming of Messiah.
So Mary came to the priest's house in the hills of
Hebron, and the two women met and told their stories
to each other and went over the details wonderingly
again and again. Never could either forget the sacred
experiences of those three months while they com
muned with each other and with their own souls and
with God, night and day, in that quiet little house on

THE NATIVITY "43
the hillside. And the busy world outside, occupied
with its own little projects, went on unknowing of the
great thing which had come to pass.
The Blessed Virgin returned to her Nazareth home.
No longer the light-hearted girl who had left it. In
these three months the girl had become a woman,
grown in spiritual stature, living very close to God in
a new wonder-world, brooding all alone in trembling
joy over the transcendent mystery locked in her heart.
Not even Joseph knew. But as the months passed, the
wondering joy in her eyes became shadowed with cruel
pain as she slowly realized the horrible suspicion that
was coming to her lover, the awful trial of his faith.
Think of the agony to both of them that day when
Joseph, her betrothed husband, " being a just man and
not willing to make her a public example was minded
to put her away privily." Truly, already the sword
was piercing through her soul that the thoughts of
many hearts should be revealed.
Those days of misery passed. In the visions of
the night when the spirit-world touches human souls,
the message of God came to that tortured man and
he awoke assured, ashamed, happy, to take unto him
Mary his wife, to watch with reverent tenderness over
that maiden-mother and the unborn Christ. But
Mary could not easily forget those days. Such experi
ences leave marks on a woman's heart.
Three months later. The sun is setting over the
Bethlehem hills, touching the bare uplands of the
wilderness of Judea and the purple mountains of Moab
far off against the sky. On the valley road to
Bethlehem is a straggling procession of travellers, and
amongst them a young countrywoman, wearily riding,

44 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
with her husband beside her leading the ass. " For
there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all
the world should be enrolled. And Joseph also went up
from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth unto the city
of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of
the house and lineage of David, to enrol himself with
Mary, his betrothed wife, being great with child."
So they draw near to Bethlehem through a land
alive with historic memories. In the pastures beside
them Ruth long ago gleaned in the fields of Boaz. In
that hollow to the right outside the gates, brave men
had died to bring David a drink of water from the
Well of Bethlehem. A little off the road is a memorial
sacred to all Jews, where the light of Jacob's life went
out when " Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan
and I buried her by the roadside on the way to Ephrath
(which is Bethlehem)."
But their thoughts are preoccupied with greater
things soon to come to pass. And Joseph is hastening
to find rest and shelter for his companion. Those last
miles have been very trying for her. At ordinary
times there would be no anxiety about lodging, for
in the friendly East hospitality is a sacred duty. But
the travellers for the census have crowded the town.
There is no room anywhere for the belated wayfarers,
not even in the inn.
It was nobody's fault. Nobody knew Who was
coming, except the adoring crowd looking down from
the ramparts of the World from which He came, and
they in that world of Goodwill would not blame us
though they might well have enjoyed the unconscious
irony of it all — the Lord of the Universe coming to
this little world of His and they have no room for
Him.

THE NATIVITY 45
They were glad to take refuge at last in one of the
natural caves in the hillside where cattle were bedded.
And there, with no kindly woman hand to aid her,
came the pains of childbirth on that lonely woman, and
" she brought forth her son and wrapped him in
swaddling clothes " — there was no one else to do it —
and laid him in the manger with the cattle around him
for his first infant sleep.
Did ever baby enter this world in lowlier guise?
And do we not all love Him the more for it? Some
how it would spoil the picture if He had been born in
a palace with princesses to wait on Him and high
priests in attendance. That poor little baby, whom
nobody noticed, comes to us in His helplessness with
such clinging appeal, as if trusting Himself utterly to
us, as if bidding for our affection, wanting us to be
fond of Him. So touchingly, appealingly did the
Christ-child come.
But that is only half the story of His birthday.
The angels are coming in. Two worlds are in the
picture. Keep the whole picture in view, else the
story will go wrong.
Simply, ordinarily as the coming of the dawn,
happened this tremendous thing in the history of the
universe, the coming of the Lord of Glory into human
life. On the earthly side just a stable, a manger, the
cattle in the stalls, a woman wrapping her baby in
swaddling clothes. Nothing of wonder in it. Noth
ing of awe. Until the World from which He came
flashes in upon the scene, where high over the stable,
outside in the starlight, was the heavenly host, stirred
to its depths at the coming of the Christ-child.
Remember it is all one story, all one picture — the

46 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
Divine Babe on the earth, who had come from the
heavens, and over Him in the heavens the angels out
side rejoicing and keeping His birthday. Again I re
peat, in the life of the Christ keep always in your con
sciousness the World from which He came. We be
lieve in it all right. But we are dull and slow of
heart. We let it slip out of view. And so our picture
gets out of focus.
No part of the Christ story has so touched our
imagination as this inrush from the other world ; how
its music swelled and died over the pasture-fields of
Bethlehem with its glad tidings of great joy which
should be to all people; how the hosts of Heaven, as
they listened, could not restrain their delight, breaking
forth in the eternal anthem of their world above, —
Glory to God in the Highest !
But unless we keep habitually in mind that other
world, that eager, interested, enthusiastic world, its
very wonder and beauty tend to separate it from us,
to make the picture of the angels from Heaven rather
misty and cloudlike beside that of the manger and the
Baby on the earth. Now that must not be. Any
haziness as to the reality and close presence of that
world puts the whole story out of gear. For this is
no mere exquisite poetic fancy, hallowed by sweet
associations of childhood. It is just part of the story
of the Baby and the swaddling clothes. Both must go
together. Both are equally real. It takes both to
complete the picture.
Jesus, to whom that World was His native air, al
ways sees the two worlds together. He speaks of
Heaven and angels and spirits as familiarly as we
speak of our native town and the friends that we know.
When He looks upon a little child on earth, He sees

THE NATIVITY 47
also its guardian angel before the Father's face in
Heaven. When He sees a sinner repenting on earth,
He sees the joy in the presence of the angels. He
feels that that native world of His is always around
Him, always interested in our world.
We have already noted that every incoming of God
into human life, every spiritual uplift which this
world received, is begun in that world before we
know anything about it here. It is known on that
side long before its manifestation on this side. Think,
then, how we should expect such a stupendous project
as this Incarnation of the Eternal Son to have been
acclaimed in Heaven at the beginning, and followed
with adoring interest when the stage was shifted to
earth, and we shall see how fittingly comes in the
angei joy that night over the glad tidings that should
be to all people, " Unto you is born this day, in the
city of David, a Saviour who is Christ the Lord."

II
THE VIRGIN BIRTH
AS the question has in recent years been coming
into public discussion and often causing un
easiness and doubt, it seems desirable to insert
a brief chapter here on the Virgin Birth of the Lord.
The questioning does not come from unbelievers
only. There are Christian men who claim that it does
not affect the belief in Christ's divinity and ask that it
be left an open question, that for the relief of doubt
the statement be deleted from the Creed " conceived
by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary."
Freely giving all credit for honesty of purpose one
can but designate this hazy attitude as a grievous mis
take. Nothing has occurred to justify it. In the long
run it must affect belief in the Divinity. It was not
for nothing that the Church made this statement so
prominent in her Creed. For this is the lesson which
history has taught, that whoso loosens men's belief in
the Virgin Birth of the Lord is loosening the keystone
in the doctrine of the Incarnation.
It is difficult to deal briefly with this large subject.
Let me try, first, to state the historical position indicat
ing how this doctrine was placed in the Creeds ; second,
to deal with objections and doubts; and third, to em
phasize the vital importance of keeping this teaching
embedded in the faith.
First the historical position. During the lifetime of
48

THE VIRGIN BIRTH 49
our Lord the question was never thought of amongst
the disciples. Until they had realized the Deity of
Christ such a thing would have seemed absurd, prepos
terous, incredible. The holy reticence of the Virgin
Mother, who " kept all these things and pondered them
in her heart," leads us to believe that the story was not
divulged, except perhaps to a very small circle of inti
mates. How could it be ? Think of the delicacy and
natural reserve on such a subject, at a time when Jesus
was only regarded as man. With our solemn rever
ence for the mystery of the Incarnation, it is hard to
think ourselves back into the position. But history
brings us sharply down to earth telling the coarse slan
ders suggested later by the enemies of Christianity.
Could the Blessed Mother herself ever forget that aw
ful day when even Josfeph her espoused husband had
doubted her? Until, in later days, she realized Christ's
Deity and the stupendous meaning of that Virgin
Birth, how could she reveal to a suspicious world an
experience that must seem to them unmeaning and im
possible ?
Always remember that Jesus was received by the
disciples as a man. That was evidently the Divine
purpose. Jesus so willed it. As a man He won their
affection, admiration and reverence; gradually their
feelings deepened into wonder and awe — into perplex
ity and suspense. They did not know what to think.
And He did not help them ; He kept the Divine secret.
Even when they caught glimpses of it, He forbade
them to speak ; even after the Transfiguration He bade
them keep silence till " the Son of Man be risen from
the dead." It was only as the end drew near that He
began to reveal Himself. " Ye believe in God, believe
also in Me " ; " I and My Father are one " ; " The Holy

50 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
Ghost whom I will send from the Father "; " One day
I am coming to judge the quick and the dead."
But it was not until after the Resurrection, and the
mysterious Forty Days, and the Ascension into heaven,
and the coming of the Holy Ghost, that the stupendous
revelation dawned fully upon them, and with adoring
awe they realized Who had been with them all those
wondrous three years in Palestine, as they wrote:
" The Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us, and
we beheld His glory, the glory of the Only Begotten of
the Father."
This was quite irrespective of any Virgin Birth.
Most of them knew nothing about it, and if they had
never heard of anything earlier than they knew, their
belief would be unshaken. " We know that the Son
of God is come." But think what a delightful confir
mation and rounding off of their belief when the long-
guarded secret at length was revealed in the atmos
phere thus fitted to receive it. It would have had no
meaning before. Now its significance was apparent.
It cleared away perplexities from the mystery of the
Divinity. It fitted into the Incarnation as the key fits
into the lock; as the lost piece fits into the broken
puzzle. It came, of course, from the Virgin Mother direct,
or through her intimate circle, probably St. John and
the holy women her companions. We know nothing
of its first announcement. We know nothing of the
evidence which satisfied the Church. We know that
"Mary the Mother of Jesus was with the brethren."
We know that in a few years the knowledge was all
over Palestine ; that after it had lived some years in the
oral traditions, it was written down by St. Matthew
and more fully by St. Luke, that the Church sent out

THE VIRGIN BIRTH 51
these Gospels as expressing her belief and incorporated
that belief into her very earliest Creeds. Here is the
Roman baptismal creed about the year 100: " Born of
the Holy Ghost from the Virgin Mary." And in all
the ages since, unchanging, unwavering, she has made
it her central statement of the Incarnation in her
Creeds. To this very day in every part of the world,
she bids her children keep reciting this their belief in
the Incarnation. " In Jesus Christ His only Son our
Lord who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of
the Virgin Mary."
Keep things in their right order as they happened to
the disciples. First had to come the overwhelming
conviction of the Deity of Christ. Only when men
recognized this could the question of the Virgin Birth
be discussed at all. Without this it would have no sig
nificance. Only when they were worshipping the as
cended Christ as God could the full conviction and full
significance come of the Divine secret of Mary: " The
Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the
Highest shall overshadow thee, therefore also that
Holy One that shall be born of thee shall be called the
Son of God." Then, it fitted in like the key to the
lock, like the missing piece of a puzzle rounding off and
making conceivable the fact of His Divinity.
When was it made public? Not after many years
when legends might have had time to grow. No. Just
after the Resurrection. Professor Harnack, the great
est authority for this period, himself not believing in
the Virgin Birth, admits : It was the common property
of Christians everywhere about the end of the first cen
tury, and therefore must be ascribed in Palestine to the
first decades after the Resurrection.

52 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
What is the evidence for it ? The only possible evi
dence for any historical fact after so many years is
that the men of that day, the only ones in a position to
judge the evidence, believed it and put it forth as an
authoritative statement about their Lord. And that
they certainly did.
The very fact that St. Matthew and St. Luke wrote
it down as their account of the Church's belief and that
the Church accepted and put forth these Gospels as a
true account of her belief, should be sufficient to show
this. It is extraordinary how people miss this point.
To read the arguments against the Virgin Birth, one
would think that St. Matthew and St. Luke were the
only witnesses, as if they were writing some theories
of their own which they wanted the Church to believe.
Realize this fact — that they were only writing down
the Church's beliefs. Grip on to this statement and
learn it by heart. The Church did not believe the Vir
gin Birth because it was put into these Gospels, but it
was put into these Gospels because the Church believed
it. St. Matthew and St. Luke have the whole Church
behind them.
If people would remember this and keep their heads
and keep their common sense, we should have less talk
about this objection, the chief difficulty of Christian
doubters, that the other New Testament writers do not
witness to the Virgin Birth.
Let me deal with this now. Never mind infidel ob
jections for the moment. This is the most formidable
difficulty put forward by Christian doubters. St.
Mark does not mention the Virgin Birth. Neither
does St. John. Nor St. Paul in his many voluminous
epistles. Does not this suggest that they did not be-

THE VIRGIN BIRTH 53
lieve it? The objection looks serious until you con
sider it.
First keep clearly in mind that the Church's accept
ing the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke as a cor
rect statement of her teaching is evidence of the wide
spread belief on this subject. Why then did not St.
Mark record it ? Open his book and you will see that
he is only telling of the public life of Jesus. He
starts off with the Baptism and the Mission to Galilee.
He never touches anything earlier, while St. Luke aims
as he says to teach " all things from the very first."
You can hardly use Mark as a witness on either side.
Why did not St. John mention it ? I do not know.
But keep in mind that he must have been familiar with
the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, that he knew
in any case that the Virgin Birth was in his lifetime ac
cepted throughout the Church — that his purpose was to
supplement the other Gospels, to write only that which
was not written already. This was written already.
If that is not sufficient answer take notice of this that
St. John is looking at Christ's birth from the side of
Heaven not of earth. He, too, writes about the birth
of Christ, but instead of telling that Jesus was born in
Bethlehem of Judea he tells how Jesus came down
from the higher world. This is his preface telling of
Christ's birth corresponding to the prefaces of St.
Matthew and St. Luke. " In the beginning was the
Word and the Word was with God and the Word was
God. . . . And the Word became flesh and taber
nacled amongst us and we beheld His glory." Doej
this seem as if St. John was opposed to the Church's
belief in his day ?
As for St. Paul. Why cannot people remember
that we have no record at all of his story of the Life

54 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
of Christ which was the constant every-day preaching
of himself and all the apostles? He had his regular
course of teaching on Christ's life. " My Gospel," he
calls it, " how Jesus Christ rose from the dead accord
ing to my Gospel."
We have no record of that Gospel, that life of Christ
which he daily preached. Therefore, if you think he
did not preach in it the Virgin Birth no one tan contra
dict you. But here is a vitally remarkable fact. If
St. Paul did not write a Gospel, St. Luke, his disciple
and close companion, did write a Gospel, while he was
in St. Paul's company. All the years that he was in
close touch with St. Paul he had two manuscripts in
hand, one a diary of the life of St. Paul, to be after
wards published as the Acts of the Apostles. Another
much more precious and important, to be published
first, a Life of his blessed Lord. It was believed that
St. Paul had chosen him to do it. That St. Paul was
his collaborator; that it was St. Paul's teaching; the
early Church called it St. Paul's Gospel. Here are
two fathers of the second century — Irenaeus, in Gaul,
says, " Luke put down in a book the Gospel preached
by Paul " ; Tertullian, in Africa, says, " Luke's digest
was usually ascribed to Paul." And this is the Gospel
that gives such special prominence to the Virgin Birth
of Jesus !
In the face of such facts surely the silence of the
Epistles is not important. The Epistles scarcely ever
touch the life of Christ. They were special letters on
special occasions, mainly to deal with current contro
versial questions. Evidently this question did not
come up for discussion. Probably because nobody dis
puted it.
I have here stated the chief difficulty of Christian

THE VIRGIN BIRTH 55
doubters, the silences of the New Testament. Judge
if it is serious enough to disturb the Creeds. Infidels,
of course, make short work of the whole question.
" Virgin births do not happen in human experience."
Granted. But Christs do not happen either. What
the Bible asserts is that both happened once and that
one belongs to the other. It does not convince the in
fidel, but it breaks the point of his argument with
Christian men. We are not arguing with infidels.
For men who do not believe in the Deity of Christ, this
question can have no meaning or credibility.
Now for the last point, the importance of keeping
this teaching embedded in our Christian faith. Some
Christian men — very few in number — have asked that
for the relief of honest doubters the statement be re
moved from the Creeds, " conceived by the Holy
Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary."
The questioning of the Virgin Birth is no new thing.
It is as old as the Church, as old as the heretic Cerin-
thus, the opponent of St. John. It has come up at
various times. It has come up in our day. But with
this difference. In early days all the challenge came
from outside, from men who disbelieved the Deity of
Christ. The two ideas, the Deity of Christ and the
Virgin Birth, went together. Men accepted both to
gether or denied both together. In our day has come
the attempt to separate them. Some men who are be
lievers in the Divinity of the Lord claim that the Vir
gin Birth be left an open question.
It is a kindly attempt for the sake of the doubter to
make the Christian Creed easy to believe. But you
cannot make the Christian Creed easy to believe. The
Christian Creed can never be made easy to believe. It

56 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
is the most tremendous, the most incredible thing in
the whole universe to believe. That God became man!
That the Word became Flesh !
Make belief easy! Nay, the serious thing is that
this doubt will make belief hard, instead of easy. For
surely some day your thinker must think back to ask
himself, How did God become man ? All deep thinkers
must face that and try to solve it. Here is an old
heresy which denied the Virgin Birth, and this was its
best attempt to solve its question. " The heavenly
person Christ descended from high heaven in the fif
teenth year of Tiberius Caesar and united Himself to
the human person Jesus who was at that time about
thirty years old." How does that strike you as a guess
to replace the Virgin Birth? That was the best they
could do and other heretics tried and did no better.
Try if you can do any better, believing the Incarnation,
while denying the Virgin Birth. There is no sense in
talking thus of making belief easy.
We are told that God could as easily accomplish the
Incarnation, if Jesus were the child of Joseph and
Mary. Granted. With God all things are possible.
But vhy not the Virgin Birth, which the evidence
points to ? It might be as easy for God thus to accom
plish the Incarnation. But would it be as easy for us
to believe it? Why do we want to make guesses for
ourselves as to what God might have done? Why not
accept that which the Church and the Bible assert that
God has done — and which fits into the Incarnation as
the key fits the lock ?
No. Both doctrines must stand or fall together.
All experience shows it. Take for example this in
stance where a great German theologian, who taught
the Incarnation denied the fact of the Virgin Birth.

THE VIRGIN BIRTH 57
But his pupils in the end kept both doctrines together,
accepting or denying them together. One set as they
grew more deeply into the thought of Christ's Deity
felt compelled to keep the Virgin Birth beside it. The
other set rejected the two together and became Uni
tarians. That is the conclusion to which experience points.
Both will ultimately go together. Half-way houses,
half-way positions only lead to a minimized Chris
tianity and are never safe.
Turn from this theological discussion about our
Lord to the personal thought of that dear Lord Him
self. Think with wondering, adoring awe of the mys
tery of the Incarnation — that the Word became Flesh
— that God became man — that He who stoops to love
us and whom we try to love is the Christ the Eternal
Son of God, whose goings forth have been from of old,
from everlasting — And as you think of the Chrict-child
in the dear old Christmas story, rest happy and peace
ful in the simple old faith. Nothing has happened or
can happen to disturb it. What the Church has been
saying for two thousand years she will keep on saying
till there are years no longer. " I believe in Jesus
Christ His only Son our Lord, who was conceived by
the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary."

Ill
BOYHOOD
IN the biography of any great man to many of us
the most fascinating part is the story of his boy
hood, the child's artless prattle, the natural unself-
conscious talk of the growing boy, the development of
his mind, the little anecdotes about him, the details of
his life in which we like to think we see signs of com
ing greatness.
We have often wondered and felt disappointed that
the Gospels give us no story of the childhood of Our
Blessed Lord. Did the Evangelists not know ? Why
did not His mother, who must have told the stories
about His birth, tell people also about the incidents of
His boyhood? Perhaps she did, and the village
friends, more interested in their own children, forgot.
More probably she did not. The Gospels repeatedly
present her as observing and marvelling and pondering
over the events of the Childhood. They suggest a
quiet, reticent woman, wrapped in loving, reverent
thought of her mysterious Child, solemnized by the
memories of His miraculous birth; seeing the high
destiny before Him, but not knowing how it should be
accomplished and, therefore, often puzzled ; noting in
tensely the strange things that were happening, trying
to fit them into her ideas, thinking and wondering and
holding her peace. " Mary kept all these things and
pondered them in her heart." But she does not seem
to have talked much about them.
58

BOYHOOD 59
One cannot help wondering as to how she regarded
Him. Did she think of her boy Jesus as Divine, the
Eternal Son of God?
The Gospel story makes it impossible to think so.
Our own reason forbids it. Else how could He be
brought up as a natural human boy, subject to His
parents, "growing in wisdom and stature and in fa
vour with God and man " ? How could she have re
proached Him for lingering in the Temple in the midst
of the Doctors ? How could she have dealt with Him
at all as her child ? The thought of His Divinity would
have overwhelmed everybody and made it impossible
to treat Him as human. The family life would have
been impossible, inconceivable. The purpose of the
Incarnation would have been frustrated that He should
be Very Man and grow gradually in personal life and
human consciousness.
No, she did not think of Him as God. She knew
that He was the promised Messiah, but the Jews had
very vague notions about the Messiah. She knew that
His miraculous birth set Him apart. But she could
not have realized that stupendous secret of His Divin
ity which only came to her in later years.
Not even the disciples realized it until near the end.
The secret of the Divinity was kept through most of
His earthly life, that He might grow gradually in a
man's experience of men, that men should know Him
as a human friend, that Peter should question Him,
that John should lay his head upon His breast, that
little children should nestle confidingly in His arms,
that publicans and harlots should talk to Him and take
courage. How could these things be if they realized
that He was God?
,We see Him gradually disclosing the secret as the

60 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
end drew near. We see in the Apostles a gradually
growing wonder and awe. We see them startled at
times by passing glimpses of the truth and bidden to be
silent. But it was not until He died and rose again,
it was not fully until He had ascended to His glory and
sent the promised Holy Ghost, that the full conscious
ness of the tremendous mystery came upon them and
they looked back on the cherished memory of those
three years of His companionship, wondering how
their eyes were holden that they should not know what
they knew now, that " the Word was made flesh and
tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory, the
glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of
grace and truth."
May we reverently, hesitatingly go a step further?
We are on holy ground, facing eternal mysteries. But
we cannot help thinking about Him. We desire to
understand Him so far as we may. What was the
Divine Child's consciousness about Himself?
Remember we have to believe in His humanity no
less than in His Divinity. He became " Very Man,"
like us in all things but that in which we could not bear
to have Him like us, our folly and wilfulness and sin.
The boy Jesus was a human boy. One wonders when
did His higher consciousness begin to unfold ? When
did He begin to be aware of the stirring of unfathom
able depths within His soul? Did a feeling of awe
come over Him as sometimes in His boyish prayers He
caught faint suggestions of a forgotten greatness, of a
world of light and beauty far transcending anything
He ever saw on earth? Did the growing child ever
wonder who He was, ever try to understand His vo
cation and the reason of His presence here?

BOYHOOD 61
We know that His acceptance of the limitations of
humanity meant a certain shutting out of the full con
sciousness of His true dignity in the Eternal World.
He could not otherwise have been Very Man. Yet
there is probably more to say. It is an interesting sug
gestion that the secret of Jesus may have been some
how in His subconscious mind, " under the threshold "
of consciousness, while His ordinary waking con
sciousness was truly and really that of a natural human
boy. Much study has been given in late years to the
phenomena of our subconscious mind with its store
house of forgotten memories that lie " under the
threshold " and now and then, upon sudden excitation,
float up, one and another, into our consciousness. One
sometimes reads of a lost child living with Indian
tribes or in some poor man's home for twenty years
and at times, when some crisis comes to stir the depths,
becoming vaguely conscious of dim memories of a
noble home and beautiful surroundings and a shadowy
mother's face somewhere in the distant past. Perhaps
something like that was true of the Divine Child in
Nazareth. We cannot think it irreverent to allow such thoughts
thus far, but we must not presume further.
At any rate, though so little is recorded, we may
without hesitation try to picture for ourselves His
childhood, and meditate about it. We may study the
knowledge that we have of His surroundings and let
imagination touch it with reverent hand. All the more
if we seem to notice in His later utterances some refer
ences to His boyhood memories.
Think first of Nazareth, His home, the most sacred
spot on this earth, the background of all His memories

62 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
of childhood and youth. He was Jesus of Nazareth
always to the people. That was the title nailed to the
Cross, and He who spoke from the Heavens to Saul of
Tarsus was " Jesus of Nazareth whom thou perse-
cutest." You want some idea of Nazareth to begin with.
Here is Palestine stretching out before me. I am
looking north. To my left is the blue Mediterranean,
to my right the line of the Jordan running parallel.
Now get in your mind's eye a broad valley cutting right
across these lines through the hill country of Central
Palestine from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan.
That is the Valley of Jezreel. The land north of it is
Galilee. Now stand about the centre of that valley,
looking northward, and you are facing the Nazareth
road leading up into a natural amphitheatre in the hills.
There in that natural amphitheatre in the hills is the
boy- world of Jesus.
I have been trying to picture Him in that little
world. Thinking of scenes in one's own boyhood is a
help. And I have, hanging before me in my study, a
large photograph of that amphitheatre in the hills,
where I can see the identical mountains and valleys
that He saw, and the very fields where He walked, and
the little mountain town nestling white against the dark
rocks behind. I can watch Him in imagination mov
ing through it all.
Spite of the ruin caused by Turkish rule, the main
features of the scene are little changed since His day.
He, too, saw such narrow, crooked streets, and the
houses outside among the fields and gardens, and the
vineyards on the terraced hills, and the green valleys
bright in the springtime with lily and larkspur and dog-
rose and white anemone and all that profusion of rich

BOYHOOD 63
and varied wild flowers which makes one of the chief
beauties of Northern Palestine. There are the very
mountain tracks of His long walks, and the high hill
behind the town from which on clear days He could
see Tabor and Hermon and the mountains of Gilboa,
where Saul and Jonathan died, and the rough high
lands of Galilee spread out like a map, and far away
the dark waters of the Mediterranean Sea. In that
unchanging East, the same children are still shouting
in the streets, and the same girls are at the village well,
and on the roads are the same country people in their
picturesque dress, who all know each other. Aye, and
the very birds of the air that He talks about, many of
them quite familiar to ourselves, the lark and the
thrush, and the robin, and the wagtail running over the
pebbles in the brook, and the crowds of common spar
rows that He says God took note of though their
market value was only two for a farthing.
That is Nazareth, His home. In the carpenter's
cottage in one of these streets He lived, a natural hu
man boy in a natural human family. There were
other children besides Jesus in that home. You re
member the taunt of the Nazareth neighbours, who
would not accept Him as a prophet because they knew
His artisan family who used to live in the next street.
" Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? Are not
His brothers James and Joses and Judas and Silas?
Are not His sisters here with us? "
We need not here discuss the oft-debated question as
to whether they were Mary's younger children or the
children of Joseph by a former marriage. Much has
been written on both sides without leading to any
widely accepted conclusion. Enough for us to know,

64 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
that there were brothers and sisters growing up with
Him in the home.
It needs an effort to pass from thinking of the Eter
nal Son, whose goings forth have been from of old
from everlasting, to thinking of and trying to visualize
a little boy in Nazareth going on messages for His
mother and sweeping up the shavings in the carpenter's
shop, to see Him among the children playing in the
market-place the games of the unchanging child-world
such as our children play to-day.
Did you ever think how unchanging is that child-
world, that world which changes nothing in all the
passing centuries, playing the same sort of games to
day and singing the same sort of rhymes as their child-
world has been doing since the Tower of Babel? As
you hear the children to-day singing in the streets
" London Bridge is broken down " and " Round and
round the mulberry bush," so two thousand years ago
you might have heard the Nazareth children:
" We have piped and ye not rakedtoon,
We have mourned and ye not arkedtoon."
And Jesus remembered that rhyme one day in the
midst of a solemn discourse. In English it reads:
" We have piped unto you and ye have not danced, we
have mourned to you and ye have not wept." But
Jesus was quoting one of the old familiar rhymes of
His childhood. This is one of those delightful little
discoveries of Biblical scholars. You cannot get it
rhyming in the English or in the Greek. Only in the
language of the Nazareth children. And I shall never
again hear the children singing in the market-place
without thinking of that rhyme and the child Jesus at
play.

BOYHOOD 65
Probably many little unnoticed touches in His illus
trations came to Him half unconsciously from such
memories of His childhood. For example, I see a boy
one day tenderly replacing a little bird fallen from the
nest and feeling somehow that God was caring, that
even " a little sparrow cannot fall to the ground with
out the Father knowing." I see a workman's wife, in
that Nazareth cottage by the workshop, losing a coin
that means so much to her that she " lights a candle
and sweeps the house and seeks diligently till she find
it." I see a woman in her home measuring out the
three measures of flour for the weekly bread-making.
Three measures happen to be her usual weekly quantity
for her little family. She is mixing leaven with it.
And there is a small boy, no higher than the bread
board, running his fingers through the flour and asking
a child's endless questions about the What and the
How and the Why of what mother is doing. I think
He was looking back on some such child memory when
He told that " the kingdom of God was like the leaven
which a woman hid in three measures of meal until the
whole was leavened." How often have such little pic
tures flashed back into our minds when bigger things
have been forgotten.
The child came to earth with no infinite knowledge.
He had to learn even the facts of His religion. But if
the effect of such teaching lies mainly in what the
learner's mind brings to it, think what it meant to this
Child. His first teaching of religion would, of course, come
from His mother. That is God's gift to mothers all
the world over, though with the Jews it is the father on
whom the responsibility is laid. Think of the sacred

66 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
hours when Mary put her Child to bed, teaching Him
His prayers, telling Him of the Father, with the ab
sorbing thought in her heart of the great destiny before
Him. O Mary mother, and in a lesser degree every
mother to whom such charge is given, Blessed art thou
among women. Alas for the mother and child where
that is not realized !
The Jews were especially particular about the re
ligious training of children. Even in a pagan land
with a pagan father we remember young Timothy and
his Jewish mother, " From a child thou hast known
the Holy Scriptures." Directly a child learned to
speak, his religious teaching began. He learned the
" Shema," corresponding to our Creed ; for hymns, he
learned the simpler psalms; for history, the story of
God's dealings with Israel. Even before he learned
anything he could not toddle through the door without
seeing the folded Mezuzah with its sacred words nailed
to the door-post, the sign of the Divine guard over
Israel's homes.
Everything around was teaching him religion; the
Sabbath meal, the Sabbath lamp, the weekly syna
gogue, the annual celebrations, the Harvest Festival,
the Feast of Weeks, the Day of Atonement, the Pass
over, for which the men left the village for Jerusalem
every year. Think what it meant to this Son of Mary
to find the thought of God so wo»en into ordinary life.
So gradually, humanly " the Child grew and waxed
strong in spirit, and the grace of God was upon Him,
and daily He increased in wisdom and stature and in
favour with God and man."
When He was about six years old He would go to
the synagogue school of the town, taught by the coun-

BOYHOOD 67
try rabbi. The Jews of that day set high importance
on the school. It was unlawful to live where there
was no school for the children. Up to ten years of
age the Bible formed the text-book.
So I see the little Boy going to school with His
brothers and sisters. I see Him seated with His fel
lows in semicircle on the floor learning from His
teacher the Word of God. How stupidly we often
teach the Bible to children! I wonder what sort of
man was that old rabbi who had the teaching of Jesus.
Do you remember how Longfellow in the Golden
Legend pictures the scene?
" Come hither Judas Iscariot,
See if thy lesson thou hast got
From the rabbinical book or not.
And now little Jesus, the carpenter's son,
Let us see how thy task is done."
When He could read, the chief, probably the only
books He had access to were those of the Sacred Scrip
tures. Jewish writers mention books of children's
portions, such as the story of Genesis. We shall think
more fittingly later on how much the Bible meant to the
growing Boy. Here we have but to emphasize that
the central foundation of His education from early
childhood was the sacred influence of the Scriptures.
How one wishes that it might be so in all our homes !
But to Him we know that all God's world would
be sacred and educative. Beside the Written Word,
lay around Him in all its beauty the Unwritten Word,
the Father's great Book of Nature, the Song without
words of which the Bible supplies the words and

68 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
through which the Father was always speaking to Him.
We feel that a special consciousness of the Father's
presence was always with Him. Very mysterious and
beautiful and wonderful is the Divine communing with
a child's soul, even before reflection begins. How
much more so with the Divine Child!
I look at the Nazareth photograph hanging in my
study and I think of the Boy wandering over that open
hillside amidst beautiful Nature, the manifestation of
God; seeing God's green hills and laughing streams,
and God's sun rising to light the world and sinking in
crimson glory into the waters of the Great Sea; seeing
the Father's flowers and birds and beasts, and delight
ing in them, and loving them, and feeling that the
Father also delighted in them and loved them. In all
His references to Nature afterwards He makes you
feel this. God is behind it all, interested in it all.
God loves the little lambs sporting in the fields. God
watches the poor sheep going astray. God feeds the
birds of the air, which toil not neither do they spin.
God sees the young sparrow fallen out of the nest.
He clothes the grass of the field. He decks for His
pleasure the wild flowers of the hillside, so that " Solo
mon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
And when the Nazareth farmer flings the wheat into
the ground, the Child saw that the life is from God
which miraculously springs up, " first the blade, then
the ear, and after that the full corn in the ear."
Did any other boy on earth ever enjoy Nature and
love it and see God in it as this Nazareth Boy ! Think
if we could bring up our children like that! To see
God stirring in the life of Nature, to watch with rever
ence the unfolding of a bud, to feel that the hurting of
a little bird or the trampling on a bed of wild flowers

BOYHOOD 69
was a taking the name of the Lord our God in vain.
Think what a joyous natural thing a child's religion
could be made, with the thought of the kindly, affec
tionate Father so near to him always. Surely Jesus
was a happy child in that free, simple boyhood in Naz
areth before the consciousness of the world's pain and
sin began to press upon His heart.

IV
YOUTH AND MANHOOD
WHEN He was twelve years old comes the
one recorded story of His youth, the only
break in the long silence of thirty years.
One wonders why? Is there a purpose in telling this?
Is it intended to suggest a crisis in His development?
Did perhaps the first dawning of the Christ-conscious
ness come to Him then?
When a Jewish boy was twelve he became a " Son
of the Law" by a ceremony analogous to Confirma
tion or to the ceremony in any religious body by which
a child is admitted to full Church privileges. His
childhood was over. The serious responsibilities of
religion came to him. And he could now go to the
Festivals with the grown-up men. So we read of
Jesus that " His parents went up every year to Jeru
salem at the Feast of the Passover," and when He was
twelve years old " He went up with them to the
Feast." The prominence given to this incident challenges
our attention. I see a silent, thoughtful Boy, who has
been looking forward to this for months, setting out in
keen excitement with the band of Nazareth pilgrims,
coming down the Nazareth road to the Plain, watching
the new groups that swell the procession at every cross
road, passing historic places of Patriarch and Prophet,
being told of Elisha as they rested at Shunem, passing
70

YOUTH AND MANHOOD 71
by Gibeah, the birthplace of King Saul, joining in the
joyous chant of the processional psalms — the Songs of
Degrees as they are called in our Psalter — as the pil
grims caught the first sight of Jerusalem in the dis
tance. As the mountains stand round about Jerusalem,
So is the Lord round about His people
From this time forth for evermore.
I was glad when they said unto me,
Let us go up to the house of the Lord.
My feet are standing within thy gates, O Jerusalem.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
They shall prosper that love thee.
Peace be within thy walls
And prosperity within thy palaces.
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God
I will seek thy good.
It is hard for us to think ourselves into the thoughts
of an enthusiastic Jewish boy, still more of this Boy,
as He saw for the first time sacred Jerusalem. To
Him it was no mere capital of the nation, no mere city
clothed with historic memories. It was the Holy City,
associated with His religion, with His prayers, with
His Bible, with the most sacred moments in the life of
His race. When the pilgrims entered by the Damas
cus Gate they were entering the City of God.
It was surely for Him a day to be remembered.
And all that week the wonder and reverence would
grow. Think of His solemn feeling as He entered the
stately temple, the House of His Father, the centre of
Israel's worship all the world over. Think how His
spirit would stir within Him as He saw the vast

72 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
crowds, more than a million of devout Jews from
every nation under Heaven, thronging the streets,
camping on the hills, all come together with one intent
— to worship the Father in His holy Temple! No
doubt some of His elders, cynical and disillusioned,
would discount the reality of much of that worship.
But disillusions do not come till we are older than
twelve! Surely that sight would stir Him to the
depths. Think of Him again that solemn night when each
family, or group of families, held in some " upper
room" their celebration of the Passover which,
through all the centuries, had been pointing forward to
Himself. When the lamb that was slain and the un
leavened bread and the herbs were on the table, when
the youngest boy present, probably Jesus Himself,
asked the question in the appointed ritual, " What
mean ye by this service ? " and the oldest man at the
feast solemnly replied, " It is the sacrifice of the Lord's
Passover, who passed over the houses of the children
of Israel and delivered our houses." Surely, such a
scene would stir strange thoughts in the Boy.
And then the rabbis. For some reason the story
dwells specially on His intercourse with the rabbis.
The Jewish Talmud tells us that the members of the
Temple Sanhedrin were accustomed at Festivals to sit
on the Terrace to teach. It was simple, popular teach
ing. Anybody might come. Anybody might ask
questions. And one day the Boy, straying through the
stately courts with the wonder in His eyes amid the
new strange impressions crowding upon Him, suddenly
found Himself on the Terrace!
In a moment mother and friends and everything else

YOUTH AND MANHOOD 73
were forgotten. Here was His young soul thirsting
for knowledge, starved by the ignorant old rabbi in
Nazareth. There were the great teachers of the na
tion, the men who knew!
All that day I see Him eagerly listening. At night
I see Him straying in the city when He could not find
His friends. I suppose some kindly woman was good
to the lost Child and gave Him food. Next morning
He is in His place again, listening, thinking. And
sometimes He asks eager questions. And at last the
old rabbis begin to notice Him, and to get interested,
and finally to " wonder at His understanding and an
swers." From what we know of them otherwise, we should
not expect much help from Jewish rabbis in the awak
ening of a boy's mind. But much might depend on
the boy. Even dry-as-dust theologians may sometimes
remember that they were once boys themselves; and
the fresh, eager mind of such a Boy as He might well
appeal to the best in the teachers. And the best of
these Jewish rabbis were much more than mere formal
theologians. There were deep thinkers and noble
souls amongst them. Such names as the Rabbi Hillel,
and Shammai, and Gamaliel, who afterwards taught
Paul, are cherished to this day in Jewish history as the
noblest of the leaders of religious thought. And these
all lived and were probably present that day on the
Terrace. For they would surely not be absent at
Passover. Jesus, in later days, had not much opinion of rabbis
in general. But here these rabbis and He were evi
dently interested in each other. They set the Child
thinking, and I am sure He set them thinking.
One wonders what He thought about their teach-

74 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
ing. One wonders what sort of questions He
asked. There were so many things He would want to
know — perhaps of God's purposes for Israel, of the
Messianic hope, of the significance of the Passover,
perhaps of the mystery of suffering and sin existing
side by side with the Father's love. How one wishes
to hear His questions and the answers. Evidently
they are the important thing if the story is intended to
suggest a crisis in the Child's life. But St. Luke only
knows what Mary knew, and she only came in at the
end. He seems to have got his information from her.
Frankly, the story is disappointing in its incomplete
ness. One hopes that some of those greater rabbis were
there capable of entering into His eager thoughts. It
looks well for them, at any rate, that He should stay
on listening and questioning, as the time slipped by un
noticed for the Nazareth pilgrims' departure, till after
three days, distracted with anxiety, Joseph and His
mother, seeking Him, found Him there " in the midst
of the Doctors, hearing them and asking them ques
tions." When Mary saw Him she was " astonished."
Astonished, probably, to find her shy Child in close in
tercourse with the Great Rabbis. But more than that
I think. The Child Himself seemed somehow differ
ent. There was a new look in His eyes. Something
must have happened !
Ah ! yes. Jerusalem had happened, and that private
Passover, and the Temple of His Father, and that mil
lion of men bowing before God, and this questioning
of the rabbis. From the prominence given to this lat
ter, we can hardly doubt that it counted largely, though

YOUTH AND MANHOOD 75
the written record of it does not help us much. At any
rate, something had doubtless happened in the Child's
soul. This story of the first Passover, the one break in the
silence about the Childhood, was surely told to mark
some crisis in His life.
How true to nature is Mary's reproachful question,
" Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us ? " Just what
any mother would say when, after days of anxiety,
seeking a strayed child and imagining all sorts of ter
rible possibilities, she suddenly comes on him safe and
happy and evidently quite unconscious of her and her
anxiety. The poor human mother was thinking of
the family uneasiness. Like many another mother she
failed to enter into the mysterious thoughts stirring in
the heart of her Child.
In His reply we have the first recorded words of
Jesus. It suggests how beautifully she must have
taught Him of the Father. It suggests that she had
probably told Him already of His mysterious birth and
His special relation to God. " Why, mother, how is it
that you are surprised ? Should you not expect to find
Me here occupied in the things of My Father, in the
house of My Father?"
But it suggests also more than that. He seems to
speak now as one who was already somehow a little
apart from her life, as one beginning to think thoughts
that even she could not share. We reverently conjec
ture that the slumbering instinct of the Eternal was
awakening in the Child, lighting up the dim conscious
ness in Him already, that He was somehow different
from those about Him, from the children He had
played with and the parents who reared Him up. The

76 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
development of a boy's mind is gradual, unseen, as the
rising of the sap in a young tree at springtime. Some
times there come crises in that development. Even to
an ordinary boy of twelve there are solemn moments
in life, as some of us can remember, looking back on
our childhood, when God visits the young soul in se
crecy and silence and our elders know nothing of it.
What may come to any son of man at twelve years of
age, we may surely expect to come in infinitely deeper
sense to the Divine Son of Man under the solemn, ex
citing influences of that Passover week.
Some glimmering of this must have come to His
mother, for we read, " they understood not the saying
which He spake unto them . . . but His mother
kept all these things in her heart." It was not the
only time, as we see later, that His mother did not
understand Him. In later life it was unavoidable that
He should often have to stand apart and not be under
stood. But it must have been a bit lonely for Him
now — only twelve years of age — to have to think His
thoughts alone. The beginning of the loneliness of
Jesus. All this gives more emphasis to the next little
statement, " He went down with them and came to
Nazareth and was subject unto them." To a thought
ful boy, even if He were an ordinary human boy, such
high thoughts and such high happenings would tend to
make the dull village life distasteful. Might He not
stay with the great teachers in Jerusalem ? Might He
not remain there in His Father's house and learn great
things and do great things " about His Father's busi
ness " ? Had He done so, we should have, doubtless,
found high and holy reasons for it. But the Divine

YOUTH AND MANHOOD 77
Child had learned and hereby teaches us that simple
obedience and distasteful occupations may be some
times still more high and holy in the sight of the
Father. For us who chafe at the dull routine of life it
is good to learn that routine was His appointed lot.
For Jesus at present that monotonous daily round
was " His Father's business." For He was only
twelve and the simple home life and subjection to His
parents was, doubtless, the best preparation for His
future. No unnatural stimulation should be His, no
precocious growth, no flattery or admiration. The
young life was to develop naturally, normally, health
fully, wholesomely. The Boy was to grow to man
hood unnoticed, unknown. Probably He did not know
then that the Divine guidance, shown later perhaps in
the duty to provide for a widowed mother, would keep
Him for eighteen years more in that obscure village
life. So with the new questionings in His heart and
the new wonder in His eyes, the Child went home to
Nazareth to grow in fitness for His coming life-work
for us men and for our salvation.

THE CARPENTER
NOW we take a long step forward. Eighteen
years have passed. We glance once more at
the Nazareth home. The Divine Boy has
grown to manhood. Joseph the carpenter is dead and
the lonely widow has sobbed out her grief in the arms
of her beloved Son. Ah, it was good to have Him near
her in the day of her sorrow, good to have Him to
stand by her in all the lonely years to come until, as He
was leaving the world, from the agony of the Cross,
He commended her to the care of His closest friend,
"Woman behold thy son, Son behold thy mother!"
It seems that He had to work for her support. Per
haps the brothers and sisters were married and had
homes of their own. " Is not this the carpenter, the
son of Mary ? " said the Nazareth neighbours, who
ought to know the position. So we think of Jesus as
He grew into manhood working as a carpenter, sup
porting His widowed mother.
Behold the Son of God in His lowly humility ! A
workman at his trade, a carpenter earning money.
Do we want to know His views of trade and of money ?
Consider some lessons of that carpenter's shop. He
made ploughs and cattle yokes. And you may be sure
they were good ploughs and cattle yokes. The farmer
who wanted honest work would come to Him for it.
And so He taught mankind forever the dignity of
7»

THE CARPENTER 79
honest labour in the sight of God. Then, as now, peo
ple looked down on the working man. His Nazareth
neighbours sneered, "Is not this the carpenter?"
" The mechanic's occupation," says Cicero, " is de
grading. A workshop is incompatible with anything
noble." Think how Jesus the artisan has ennobled
all honest work. The carpenter at his bench can feel
comradeship with his Lord.
I don't know right where His shed may have stood,
But often as I've been a-planing my wood
I've took off my hat just when thinking of He
At the same work as me.
And I'll warrant He felt a bit pride like I've done
At a good job begun.
So I comes right away by mysen with the Book,
And I turns the old pages and has a good look
At the text I have found that tells me as He
Were the same trade as me.
Consider, too, that He must have had to deal with
money, to buy wood, to sell His work, to make bar
gains with customers. And so the Christ has taught
us that all business life may be holy, that handling
money is no more ignoble than handling the patriot's
sword, that the shop counter and the office desk may be
kept pure from evil as the altar of God.
Linger a moment more in that carpenter's shop. I
like to think that the children were not discouraged
from coming into that workshop amongst the shavings.
They liked Jesus. He was in favour with God and in
favour with man, says the Gospel. And we are sure
that He was in favour with children. We know that
the Carpenter loved to have children about Him. And
doubtless He had the habit of telling them stories, for
He was always telling stories in His later life, and we

80 WHEN THE CHRIST CAME
can hardly believe that He never did it before. And,
surely the children learned from the stories in that
workshop more of God's love and God's care than
from all the religious teaching of the synagogue school.
As the close of His waiting time drew near, we dare
not try to follow the great thoughts stirring in Him as
He wrought at the bench by day or climbed in the
evening the Nazareth hills, contemplating in solitude
the mystery of His future, or staying, as in later days,
on the mountain top " continuing all night in prayer
to God."
We look up to Him from afar in His life of utter
self-surrender and unbroken communion with the
Father. We think of Him living in daily intercourse
with the inspired Dreamers and Poets and Prophets of
His nation. In these days it is worth while thinking
about this. Nothing should so deepen our reverence
for the Bible as the thought of how He regarded it.
He had only the Old Testament, of which many think
rather disparagingly to-day. He tells us where it is
imperfect, leading on to something higher. But all
His life it was the Bible of His education, the Bible of
His ministry. He took for granted its fundamental
doctrines. He accepted it as the preparation for Him
self, and taught His disciples to find Him in it. He
used it to justify His mission and illumine the mystery
of the Cross. Above all, He fed His own life on its
contents, and in the great crises of His life sustained
Himself upon it as the solemn Word of God.
So the quiet years rolled on till " Jesus began to be
about thirty years old." Then at last the crisis ar
rived. His time was come!

THE CARPENTER 81
That year the whole land was throbbing with a keen
excitement. After five centuries of silence a prophet
had come again to Israel. And the people were
clamouring, " Art thou Elijah? " For in the popular
belief Elijah was to come again, and when Elijah
should come Messiah's feet were on the threshold.
John the Baptist was stirring an expectant nation to
its depths, " Repent ye ! for Messiah is coming ! The
Kingdom of God is at hand. I am the promised mes
senger sent before His face to prepare His way before
Him." The excitement culminated seventy miles off in the
Jordan valley. The villagers were crowding to hear
4nd bringing back the news. All Nazareth was ex
cited. They could talk of nothing else.
And Jesus heard and understood. One night He
laid down the carpenter's tools for the last time. It
was the end of the long quiet years of waiting.
" Then Jesus arose and went from Galilee to the
Jordan to John to be baptized of him."

BOOK III
The First Year

THE BAPTISM
TURN back for a moment — thirty years back
to the day when the Virgin Mary after the
Annunciation " went with haste into the hill
country of Judea to tell Elizabeth and when Elizabeth
heard the salutation of Mary the babe leaped in her
womb for joy " as if doing homage to his coming
Lord. The two children were born within a few months of
each other. While thinking of the boyhood of Jesus
in Nazareth we have lost sight of that other boyhood
in the old clergyman's house on the hills of Hebron.
John is very important in the story of Our Lord's
life. He is the last of that long line of prophets who
stand out prominent and lonely like mountain peaks on
the horizon of Israel's past who came to declare the
Divine will and to point to the coming Day of the
Lord. John is great enough — no greater, says Jesus, was
ever born of woman — to have a whole chapter, or
many chapters to himself. But not here — our eyes
must be kept always on the Central Figure. This
other must only be sketched lightly in for the purpose
of the picture. It is told of a great artist who painted
the Last Supper that when some one remarked on the
exquisite beauty of some detail in the picture he in-
85

86 THE FIRST YEAR
stantly dashed his brush across it lest anything should
for a moment draw attention from the Christ.
Little as we know of Jesus in His youth we know
still less of John. The preparation of the two was
very different. The Christ who was to identify Him
self utterly with us as one of ourselves was brought up
in the close intimacy of village life with all sorts of
people. His humble forerunner was brought up alone.
We picture him a silent lonely boy, precocious as an
old man's only child would be without brothers or sis
ters, without playmates or companions, learning from
his parents the destiny before him, happiest in solitude,
wandering in the wild hill country for days together,
thinking, brooding.
We see him in his manhood a hermit in the wilder
ness far from the haunts of men, an enthusiast with
the dreamer's eyes, an ascetic cutting himself off from
human ties, denying himself lawful ease, in fasting and
penitence seeking self-mastery, clothing himself in hair
cloth, feeding on beggar's food of locusts and wild
honey. And all the time meditating on every utter
ance of the prophets of his nation through whom God
in old days spoke to men. Their sterner side, the de
nouncing of sin and their calls to repentance strongly
appealed to a man of his temperament. But it was
only as a fringe to the central thought which absorbed
him in the prophetic writings, that mysterious line of
thought running like a broken thread for eight cen
turies through the web of prophecy, the dream of a
Golden Age, of a Kingdom of God, of a day in the
future when some great Coming One should come.
Out of this he wove his vision of the future. But it
was hard to weave. It was difficult, perplexing, con
tradictory. Even Isaiah, his favourite author, could

THE BAPTISM 87
not help him much. For the Messiah who was to be
called "Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God of
whose Kingdom should be no end" was also to be
" led as a lamb to the slaughter, on whom the Lord
should lay the iniquities of us all." A very perplexing
study — this coming Messiah.
He knew that he himself was mysteriously linked
with that Coming One. His father had doubtless told
him of the angel message at his birth that " he should
go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah."
That had for him a very solemn meaning. For he
knew the old prophecy " I will send Elijah before
Him." He was familiar with the poetic notion wide
spread amongst the common people — " One day Elijah
shall come again and when he shall appear then Mes
siah's feet are on the threshold." No wonder life had
an awful seriousness for this man. He felt himself in
some way the destined watchman for Messiah and he
watched for Him " as they that watch for the morn-
ing. One feels drawn to that pathetic figure in his rough
hairy robe in the gloomy fastnesses of the hills, in the
desolate wilderness by the Dead Sea. Always alone.
Thinking out his perplexities, fighting his hours of
doubt and despondency when they came. No one to
encourage, no one to praise him. He thought nothing
of himself, " I am but a voice in the wilderness." He
sought nothing for himself and he got nothing. ¦ He
was but to hold open the door for others. The Great
Baptizer was never to be baptized himself. He was to
have no happy companionship with Jesus as others had.
When others were bringing in the Kingdom which he
proclaimed, he was to be murdered in a prison cell.
A pathetic, lonely soul. But thus God has often

88 THE FIRST YEAR
trained the greatest of His prophets and preachers.
In his solitude, through simple faith in his God, was
wrought the deep earnestness, the firm belief in his
message, the utter disregard of the face of man which
made him fit to prepare the way of his Lord. In this
solitude the Divine presence became more real and
that Unseen World from which Messiah should come.
At last his time came. I read " Now in the fifteenth
year of Tiberius Caesar Pontius Pilate being governor
of Judea and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, Annas
and Caiaphas being the high priests, the Word of God
came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.
And he came into all the region round about Jordan
preaching the baptism of repentance unto remission of
sins, as it is written in the book of Isaiah the prophet,
' The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ye
ready the way of the Lord. Make His paths
straight.' "
It was a miserable downtrodden people to whom
John came. The hand of them that hated them lay
sore upon them. The names just mentioned indicate
the position. Tiberius Caesar was an imperious master.
Pontius Pilate more than any governor before him
set all their religious scruples at defiance. The high
priests were an open scandal to their office and the
mass of the people scarce deserved any better. Like
people like priest. Palestine had lost heart. The spirit
of the old Israel seemed dead. The only sign of life
was in the Nationalists of the North, the rebellious
Home rulers in the free highlands of Galilee who hated
to have the foreigner ruling over them and dreamed of
the great old days when Jehovah was their king. It is
interesting to find one of these rebels a brother of

THE BAPTISM 89
Jesus, Simon who for that reason is called Zelotes.
These were a constant source of trouble to the Govern
ment. They wanted to bring ia an outward kingdom
of God by the sword and they that took the sword per
ished by the sword. But they never gave up hoping.
Some day that Kingdom of God would come.
And, strange as it may seem in their miserable con
dition that hope was widespread amongst the people.
A moment ago I wrote " the old spirit of Israel
seemed dead." But it was only in seeming. Beneath
all the surface deadness and depression, like the dead
roots beneath the snows of winter, lay the deep strong
hope of the coming deliverance — a hope that could be
stirred to life by any sudden excitation.
The most striking and startling thing in their history
is the silent tense expectation of the whole Jewish
world in that generation. No national history has ever
shown a more arresting, convincing phenomenon than
that attitude of Judaism just when Messiah was com
ing. The last of the prophets who had told of the
Coming One had been five hundred years dead, and
nothing had happened.
Yet here is the first thought when the Baptist ap
peared. " All men mused in their hearts of John
whether he were the Christ or not." Here is the first
eager question: "Tell us, art thou Elijah who should
prepare the way ? Art thou the Christ ? Art thou He
that should come?" One feels oneself in an atmos
phere of tense expectation.
Now suddenly from the wilderness a voice came
ringing out: " The Kingdom of God is at hand."
Jerusalem began to grow excited. Startling ru
mours arose as if out of the air. There was talk of a
holy hermit in the mountains, a mysterious man like

90 THE FIRST YEAR
the popular vision of Elijah, with a robe of camel's
hair and a leathern girdle about his loins. Some one
knew some one else who had heard him in the hills. A
little later excited voices were declaring in the city:
" We have heard him, we have seen him. He is Elijah
come back! He is denouncing our sins! He is call
ing to repentance! He is proclaiming the Kingdom!
He is saying startling things about Him who is to
come ! "
Within a month the whole countryside is up and ex
cited. The roads are crowded with pilgrims hastening
to the Jordan — men and women, town folk and country
folk, traders and tax gatherers, soldiers and farmers,
Scribes and Rabbis. Long afterwards Jesus recalls
that excited rush to the Jordan. " What went ye out
into the wilderness to see ? "
It was a solemn, stirring time in Palestine. At first
sight it seems little different from what we remember
ourselves. In Wales, in Ireland, in America have been
periods of spasmodic excitement when for months to
gether a whole countryside went wild about religion
and then the excitement died down, often with little
permanent result.
But here there is a vast difference. John was not
merely calling to repentance. This repentance was
only in preparation for the great thing to come, as
when Israel purified itself at Sinai long ago to prepare
to hear the voice of God. So closely was penitence
connected with the advent of Messiah that there was a
Jewish saying: If Israel really repented for one day
the Son of David would come.
" Repent ye " rang the stern words of the preacher.
" Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

THE BAPTISM 91
Think you it is a light thing this coming of the king
dom ? Do you imagine yourselves ready for it in your
careless security ? Repent ye ! Prepare ye ! It is the
crisis of your race. The axe is already laid to the root
of the tree. Take heed lest it be cut down and cast
into the fire. Away with your hypocrisies and shams
and unrealities! Bring forth fruits worthy of re
pentance. For Messiah is coming whose fan is in His
hand and He shall winnow the chaff from the wheat,
the shams from the realities. And think not to say
within yourselves, we have Abraham to our Father.
For God is able of these stones to raise up children
unto Abraham.
" No ! I am not Messiah. I am not that Prophet.
I am but a voice crying in the wilderness, ' Prepare ye
the way of the Lord.' His feet are already on the
threshold the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy
to unloose. I am only sent to prepare you for Him
and I only baptize with water unto repentance. He
shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire."
John was moving from place to place up the river
northward with the crowds daily increasing. He had
reached Bethabara, twenty miles from Nazareth, when
one day a quiet young Nazareth peasant came down
the hill road and stood unnoticed in the crowd.
This is what he saw.
An enthusiast of flashing eyes and wasted face,
standing high on the bank pouring out his soul. And
around him a crowd of excited people, some cynical,
questioning, some wondering and perplexed, the
greater part caught up in the wave of religious emotion
sobbing out their penitence. A great crowd of them.
For " there went out unto him Jerusalem and all Judea

92 THE FIRST YEAR
and all the region round about Jordan and were bap
tized of him in the Jordan confessing their sins."
That was what Jesus saw.
Day after day He watched them. And then — one
day when the baptisms were over and John stood alone
— Jesus alone walked out to him into the water. And
as He comes I watch the Baptist's face — the sudden
start passing into close attention — into curiosity, per
plexity, wonder. Then the eager, awestruck question
ing in his gaze, " Who is it ? "
They must have met in childhood, but evidently not
in manhood, for John says, " I knew Him not."
Probably he did not know whether Messiah was al
ready on earth or whether He would come suddenly
from Heaven in power and great glory. But in that
Presence he felt moved to the depth of his being.
Something in this Man before him was stirring strange
premonitions. And then — Jesus raised His eyes and looked him
straight in the face. And then — he knew ! — he knew !
He whom he had dreamed of all those lonely years,
straining his ears to catch the coming of His feet — the
Messiah, the hope of Israel — He is come !
Can you imagine the tumult in the mind of the man,
the astonishment, the prostrate humility, the sudden
change of tone. A moment since he had been scathing
imperiously the proudest of the Pharisees. " Ye ser
pents, ye generation of vipers ! " Now all his courage
and confidence is gone — what ! Thou ! " I have need
to be baptized of Thee and comest Thou to me? "
But Jesus gently bade him continue his office. True
He had no need to be baptized into repentance. But
this baptism was an initiating into the kingdom of
faithful souls. And Jesus would submit to it with the

THE BAPTISM 93
humblest of them all. " Suffer it to be so now, for
thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." So He
suffered him. John laid his hands on Him and bowed
Him beneath the water. Thus was He initiated into
His office. His private life closed. The new period
opened. The humble villager from the workshop of
Nazareth was henceforth the Messiah of God.
For then — something happened which neither of
them would ever forget. As Jesus went up out of the
water praying — praying perhaps His favourite prayer,
Father, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done — sud
denly to them both the Heavens opened and a vision
like a Dove lighted upon Jesus and a voice was heard
by them — a voice Divine, " This is My beloved Son in
whom I am well pleased." And John knew of a cer
tainty that he had found the Christ.
Once in later days, in a moment of black despond
ency in his dungeon there came to him a passing doubt.
One of his own disciples remembers it after his death,
how he sent two of them to ask, "Art thou He that
should come or do we look for another? " But there
was no doubt now. After the Baptism he said sol
emnly to his audience, "One is standing in the midst of
you whom ye know not." After the Temptation when
he next saw Jesus he cried, " Behold the Lamb of
God."

II
THE TEMPTATION
"r* ¦ "\HEN was Jesus led up into the wilderness to
1 be tempted of the devil." It is just after
JL the Baptism. Then, we are told — im
mediately — the scene changes — in outward environ
ment — in inward experience. From the Baptism to
the Temptation. From Light to Darkness. Straight
from the opened Heaven and the voice of the Father
was Jesus led up into the wilderness to be tempted of
the devil.
Its prominence in the Gospels makes it quite clear
that this was no mere incident but a solemn and most
important crisis in the life of Jesus. It seems that He
was meditating on His tremendous life-work, strug
gling with its perplexities, seeking the way out, and
that Satanic agencies of awful power were struggling
with Him, trying to tempt, to mislead, to deflect Him
from His course. He who became man to found the
Kingdom of God must begin by encountering and de
feating as man the powers of the Kingdom of Evil.
One day the Lord told this story of the Temptation
to some of His disciples. Probably in all its deep
realities it was beyond their comprehension. Probably
He put it in simple form for them. But even in this
simple form one wonders how they took it. Were
they just as puzzled as we are? Did they express
their perplexity and ask questions and receive answers
94

THE TEMPTATION 95
as in that other mystery (St. John VI) of the Living
Bread that came down from Heaven? We are not
told. Perhaps it was intended that we should puzzle
it out for ourselves. So we have to face it.
At the very outset it starts two difficult questions.
Are we to take the story just as it reads — external,
literal, actual — with evil spirit voices audible in the
air and a dark powerful being visible to the sight and
bearing Jesus bodily to the mountain top, to the
pinnacle of the Temple? Or is this only His pic
turesque way of describing the contest in His own
soul? If we were watching the Temptation should
we have just seen a lonely man amid the desolate rocks
of the wilderness, absorbed in thought — standing on
guard for forty days against invisible powers of evil
that were testing out His soul — meditating on His life-
work, considering and rejecting one plan after an
other suggested to Him, plans seemingly plausible but
tainted with evil. Some of us will feel that this seems
more natural, more like what happens to ourselves.
It makes His temptation more like to our own.
Our alternatives would to Jesus be practically the
same, for of course He would recognize the evil one
beside Him whether visible or not. I think either
supposition is quite allowable to us, provided only that
we recognize the suggestions that came to Him as real
temptations and that they arose not in His sinless soul
but were impressed on Him from outside.
Which at once inevitably starts the much more
serious question, How could the Lord Jesus be tempted
at all in any real sense, since He was without sin?
Temptation in our case implies some evil disposition in

96 THE FIRST YEAR
ourselves to respond to the temptation. His humanity
was sinless. Was Jesus' temptation then a mere sham
fight with no real danger, no real struggle ?
God forbid ! Else what comfort would it be to me
in my temptation? Mine is certainly no sham fight.
I know that to my bitter cost. What use to point me
for my encouragement to a Divine Conqueror in shin
ing armour that no dart could pierce. A thoughtful
old man, an unbeliever, said one day to the writer, "If
your Christ is God, His temptations are no comfort to
me." And it was difficult to answer him convincingly.
One felt it was a true instinct in that old man that
craved to find beside him a living human friend who
had been tempted really, tempted sorely like as he him
self had been and who could feel with him and help
him as a wise elder brother who knew.
And yet — Could the sinless Christ be really tempted ?
The Bible distinctly says Yes.
Now think this out. Sinlessness does not mean that
enticements to sin can never present themselves, or be
felt as enticements. It only means that they are never
consented to, never yielded to; that in face of this
enticement the will keeps loyal. There is a difference
wide as the sky between a keenly felt temptation from
without and the stain of a guilty consenting thought
within. So Temptation is nothing derogatory. Nay,
the proudest, happiest memories in a true man's life are
the memories of conquered temptations. Alas! we
have not many such.
Yet in our deep reverence we shrink from the
thought of Our Lord even feeling any temptation.
But is not that because we fail to realize His utter
self -surrender in becoming man? While always re
membering that He is Very God we must emphasize

THE TEMPTATION 97
that He was made Very Man for us men and for our
salvation. It was a Man, not a God, who conquered in
the temptation. When our Chief condescended to
come and fight beside us He laid down His shining
armour and fought as our comrade on foot in the
ranks. He exempted Himself from nothing. He was
tempted like as we are.
Whether we can understand it or not we are taught
that Jesus in taking our human nature took with it all
the legitimate human cravings of that nature, the same
physical tendencies and desires that in us furnish the
inlets to sin. He felt the keen pain of hunger as I do,
His thirst on the Cross was so torturing that He
begged for a drink; His body shrank sensitively from
pain; His spirit was almost crushed by mental agony
in Gethsemane. Naturally would come the temptation
to escape these things " if it be possible." He would
not be human otherwise. So we are distinctly told
that His sinless nature was liable to sore temptation;
that the struggle was often severe ; that He conquered
only with real effort. For what saith the Scriptures ?
" In that He suffered being tempted He is able to suc
cour them that are tempted." And again, " We have
not an high priest who cannot sympathize with our
infirmities, having been in all points tempted like as
we are yet without sin." These were not Jesus' first
temptations or His last. All His previous life He was
subject to temptation as we are. And all His after
life, for Satan here departed only " for a season."
Even in Gethsemane temptation was with Him. "If
it be possible, let this cup pass from me." And He
tells His disciples so touchingly at the end of His life,
" Ye are they who have continued with me in my
temptations." But He always won out.

98 THE FIRST YEAR
So far for our poor weak efforts to understand.
Now turn to the story itself. I see Jesus that day
coming up out of the Jordan, His soul stirring with
deepest emotions. He is passing through a supreme
spiritual crisis. The Voice from Heaven, the Con
secration of the Holy Ghost, the consciousness of
supernatural powers, the beginning of His life enter
prise, the realization of the tremendous thing it is go
ing to mean " to be about His Father's business."
Then — not of His own motion but in simple obedi
ence to the Divine impulse from the Father — " was
Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be
tempted of the devil."
In such overwhelming tumult of thoughts and emo
tions one wants to get away from people to be alone —
to think. I see Him passing through the crowd on the
river bank wandering away alone — up the winding
path up into the hills away amongst the woods. All
night long He keeps going, oblivious of all around
Him till He finds Himself amongst the desolate rocks
and caves of the wilderness with the wild beasts.
There all alone for forty days, St. Luke says, He
was " led in the wilderness tempted of the devil." I
want to fix your attention on these forty days. We
many of us almost ignore them in thinking of what
happened afterwards. We are wrong. The more
one studies it, the more one suspects that this was the
supreme time of His conflict, these terrible forty days
in which the strain of mental excitement was so tense
that He was unconscious that He had had no food.
Can you even faintly imagine the strain on a man that
would keep Him in that state for forty days ?
When a man is under terrible strain he is oblivious
of all about him, unconscious that he has eaten noth-

THE TEMPTATION 99
ing. If you find him suddenly waking to a conscious
ness of his hunger should you not think that the
strain was easing off? The story of the recorded
temptations suggests this, a sense of relief after tension,
a sudden waking up from some keen strain of soul, a
coming back to earth as it were when the forty days'
strain was over and He became conscious for the first
time of His craving hunger. It must have been a
fearful time those forty days. It catches one's
breath, the attempt to realize it. It suggests a vast
mysterious spirit universe with invisible evil powers
around us, striving with man, striving with God. I
sometimes wonder if that forty days brought into His
favourite prayer a new petition: " Lead us not into
temptation but deliver us from the Evil One."
What these forty days meant of rapt mysterious
spiritual conflict Jesus never told to mortal man. I
suppose it could not be told in language intelligible to
us. Perhaps it was only at the end that the Divine
event became human enough to talk of. I dare to
think of Him these forty days, unconscious of earth,
His spirit away in the infinities of the spirit world in
awful conflict, grim, incessant, pitiless. He is away
beyond our ken. The hunger is the first sign of His
coming back to us. Perhaps only then began the part
of the Temptation that we could understand.
After the forty days of strain we read He hungered.
Such severe hunger we know nothing of. Those who
have suffered for many days tell us of the urgent,
imperious craving. Jesus was no trained ascetic like
the Baptist. At this moment His healthy human body
craved intolerably for food. In the dim light, to a
hungry man, the scattered stones would suggest loaves.
Probably too the terrible depression would bring

100 THE FIRST YEAR
morbid doubts. He was faint with starvation. He
was alone with the devil. We know what intense de
pression and loneliness can do at such a time, sug
gesting doubts, making every good thing doubtful and
unreal. This is the moment for the first recorded attack.
" If thou be the Son of God." If thou be ! Art thou
sure? May not this wild fanatic Baptist be wrong?
May not the Voice from Heaven and the Holy Dove
be a hallucination? Before starting on this mission
and leading others astray test thyself. Try if thou
canst even save thyself from starvation and death.
Son of God — if thou be the Son of God command that
these stones become bread.
Why not? At first sight it would seem a reason
able and innocent thing. He is conscious perhaps for
the first time of illimitable powers. There lay the
temptation. Why should not He exercise this super
natural power? He exercised it later in feeding the
multitude and in turning water into wine. Why not
now? There lies the subtlety of this temptation. It would
be stupid to suggest to Him a thing plainly wrong.
Do we not all feel that our worst temptations are
those in which we tempt ourselves to ask about some
desirable action, Am I quite sure that this is wrong?
Faint and depressed though He was, in the keen pain
of hunger Jesus saw that He ought not to do this.
Why? We can only reverently conjecture. Was it
not that He was led up of the Spirit into this keen
testing and that He must not ease it off? Was it not
too that He must not use for Himself and His own
ease the power that He held for the service of others?

THE TEMPTATION 101
Was it not that He must trust Himself utterly to the
care of the Father, doing nothing of Himself to help
Himself? Having for our encouragement consented
and submitted Himself to the conditions of our poor
humanity He cannot break these conditions by doing
miracles for His own relief. That would take Him
out of our class. For, you see, if He would do this
now, why should He not do it again and again to save
Himself from poverty, want, homelessness, this poor
human Son of Man who had not where to lay His
head? Why should He not escape the agony of
Gethsemane? Why should He not save Himself when
a similar temptation was offered in His dying agony,
" If thou be the Son of God save thyself and come
down from the Cross."
No! He saved others. Himself He cannot save,
either then or now. If He cannot live without wrong
He is content to die. He has never been so near
death before, that famishing Christ.
There are times when we too could ease ourselves
and make life pleasanter and get money and prosperity
and provide better for our families if we would not
be too particular about absolute submission to God's
holy will. "A man must live," we say. In this vic
tory Jesus speaks to us from the wilderness. " My
child, I know the temptation of the Breadwinner. I
have been through it. Learn from me. Learn from
that dead boy on the battlefield of France. A man
need not live. A man can die rather than betray the
right." Now comes the next Temptation.
By faith in God — through the word of Scripture
Jesus had won. Now the Evil One meets Him on His

102 THE FIRST YEAR
own ground. Since you have such faith in God show
this faith. Cast yourself from the pinnacle of the
Temple in the sight of the assembled priests and
worshippers. That will show perfect faith. That will
be a crowning sign of Messiahship, for it is written of
old, " He shall give His angels charge of thee and on
their hands they shall bear thee up that thou dash not
thy foot against a stone."
How are we to interpret this temptation? Did
Satan take the Saviour bodily up and place Him on a
pinnacle of the Temple? We know enough of the
power of the spirit world to make this quite credible.
Or is this a pictorial way of expressing a deep spiritual
temptation suggested to Him ?
He had doubtless been thinking out His life plan.
The consciousness of His supernatural powers must
have been a great temptation. How could He best
bring to the poor troubled world the blessing of the
Kingdom of God? Should He unfurl the banner of
the Kingdom with the hosts of Heaven at His com
mand ? Should He win allegiance at once by showing
His miraculous powers? The people looked for mir
acles as the proof of Messiah's claims. They would
not accept Him otherwise. We see them later again
and again demanding a sign from Heaven. Should
He give them now an incontestable sign, a sensational
advertisement of religion? Should He come forth
as a mighty wonder-worker? If He should cast Him
self from the heights into the midst of the assembled
worshippers or start in some miraculous way corre
sponding to this, He would certainly be received with
rapturous acclaim, and from the Temple could go
forth in triumphant march, crowned with continual
miracles, bowing all people to His sway.

THE TEMPTATION 103
" There is your opportunity," whispers the tempter
in His ear. Son of God — if thou be the Son of God
cast thyself down. Show yourself allied with the Al
mighty. Bring in with power this Kingdom of God
with which you think to bless humanity. Thus with
out suffering and weary delay — thus will you reach
your goal.
Would not this be a real temptation to the Son of
Man ? Not for His own sake, of course. Even Satan
knew that no thought of personal ease or glory would
be any temptation to Him. It is only we who can be
tempted by coarse bait like that. But for the sake of
the poor troubled sinful world to whom He might bring
more quickly the Kingdom of God. Jesus must have
thought about this miracle plan else He could hardly
have treated it as a temptation. It must have appealed
to Him for the moment at least.
But He knew that wonder and faith are very differ
ent things. To startle men by ' miracle would not
necessarily make them better. He is come to gain
men not by His power but by His love. He is sent
to reveal the affection, the tender pain and self-sacrifice
of God. If that would not win men then nothing
would win them. So He looked on the two alterna
tives. On the one hand a weary road, disappoint
ments, delays, sufferings, the Cross. On the other
hand the age-long expectation of Israel that Messiah
should lead them triumphant from the sanctuary of
the Temple.
And Jesus made His choice.
He thought of the easy miracle plan only to reject
it. In the path of duty He would unhesitatingly cast
Himself from the pinnacle of the Temple or the
pinnacle of the Universe. But unless one is clearly in

104 THE FIRST YEAR
the path of duty it is only presumption to challenge
God to give His angels charge. Jesus said, " It is
written ' thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.' "
"Then the devil taketh Him into an exceeding
high mountain and sheweth Him all the kingdoms of
the world in a moment of time." Perhaps it means
literally what it says that " in the body or out of the
body " Satan took Our Lord into a high mountain and
by miraculous spirit power showed Him all the king
doms of the world and the glory of them.
But probably it rather means that Jesus is thinking
out His future plans for bringing in the Kingdom of
God and has presented to His mind the Messianic
vision when He should have the heathen for His in
heritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for His
possession. There is His promised kingdom. The
desert vanishes. The world appears. And still to
imagination the horizon keeps widening. The whole
beautiful world lay before Him in the sunshine with
its cities and palaces, its armies and peoples rich and
grand and powerful and all bowing in lowly homage
before its Lord who made it.
He longs to realize that vision that He might bring
happiness and nobleness to an evil world! What a
world it would be if Jesus were its King! But how to
accomplish it? "All these things will I give," said
Satan, " and the glory of them, if thou wilt do homage
to me."
Evidently we are to understand that He was tempted
to do something which on reflection appeared to Him
equivalent to an act of homage to the evil spirit.
Perhaps to bring in His kingdom by force as Mo
hammed did. Or perhaps more probably " It can be

THE TEMPTATION 105
brought in quickly and easily if you will make some
compromise and ally yourself with the great ones of
the world; with the Roman power: with the scribes
and Pharisees. All great movements have been ac
complished thus. It is only thus that the world can be
won. As if some popular preacher to-day should be
tempted to think " I shall do more good for God, I
shall be more influential and people will listen to me
better, and I shall preach religion more effectively by
compromising a little, keeping friends with the power
ful, not clashing with popular prejudice, by putting less
emphasis on certain important truths which I deeply
feel." What the tempter said to Jesus is largely true. We
can all win some portion of the world and its glories
if we are content to pay the devil's price. Do homage
unto me. The Church has not always escaped that
temptation trying to " overcome the world " by com
promise and bargain with those who seemed the
masters of it.
But Jesus will make no compromise with an evil
world. It will mean a slow, painful process by love,
self-denial, self-mastery, self-surrender, by committing
Himself defenseless to men to do what they will with
Him. It is a long, weary task. It will take many cen
turies to accomplish. Even now after two thousand
years it is not half accomplished yet. But it will be.
The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms
of our God and of His Christ and He shall reign for
ever and ever. For this steep difficult path of duty
Satan offers his easy road, level and alluring, at the
cost of a little homage to evil. But Jesus will have
none of it.
" Get thee behind me, Satan, for it is written, Thou

106 THE FIRST YEAR
shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt
thou serve."
Now we have done. See what we have learned.
(1) That Our Lord to whom we confess our failures
can sympathize in our temptations, "having been in all
points tempted like as we are yet without sin." The
fact that He did not yield does not make His sympathy
the less. Just think of it. Here are three of us,
brothers, straining up a mountain steep. The height
up to victory is one hundred degrees. At fifty degrees
my breaking-point comes. My brother gasps on to
seventy degrees and then fails. He can sympathize
with me. He knows. But the elder brother panting
beside us, trying to cheer us on, refuses to give in. The
darkness is coming but He struggles on. The sweat is
pouring down. He is gasping for breath. But He
keeps on. Through stress and pain He wins out. Can
He not sympathize as much as the brother who has
failed? He has suffered more than either of us.
(2) And He has done what the other brother did not.
He has shown me the possibility of winning. That
is the second lesson, the cheering, inspiriting lesson
of the Temptation. " O my poor dispirited tempted
brother," says the triumphant Jesus from the wilder
ness, " Come on and win ! For you can win. There
is no reason why you should not. You have lost
heart. You have taken to submissive sentimental talk
about the power of temptation and the sadness of
failure. It is very touching, very sentimental. But
it is cowardly talk. It is not true. Be a man! Try
again in my strength. I have taken your humanity
to show what humanity can do. I fought beside you
as a man with no help that you have not — no help but

THE TEMPTATION 107
simple faith in God. Mine was an infinitely harder
fight than yours. And I won. And because I in the
greater fight won, you in the lesser fight can win also."
Then the devil leaveth Him and behold angels came
and ministered to Him. An earnest of what will come
to His poor servants too after every conquered tempta
tion.

Ill
THE FIRST DISCIPLES
A WEEK later. With a sense of rest and re
lief from tension we turn from the desolate
wilderness and that conflict with devils to
follow the Lord back into the ordinary human inter
course that He loved among the simple, friendly
peasants of Galilee.
Were it not for the loving memories of the aged
St. John fifty years later, we should have lost a most
interesting story of the week after the Temptation.
The days when Jesus found His first disciples. The
Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke give
the chief events of the Lord's life. They represent
the common history, the common Gospel taught to the
young Church, first orally and then later on in these
written books. But there are many gaps in their
story. Here is one where they pass straight from the
Temptation to the Ministry in Galilee with no note
of any happenings between.
But away in distant Ephesus there was an old
disciple reading these Gospels and as he read, filling up
in thought the gaps in the story. As he reads of the
Temptation I fancy him saying, Ah, they have left out
those wonderful days after the Temptation! As he
reads of Jesus publicly calling the disciples to office he
thinks, they have said nothing of "the days when we
disciples first got to know Him.
108

THE FIRST DISCIPLES 109
St. John had some memories that the others had not,
sweet intimate memories in those precious three years
when he lived so close to Jesus. And as he thought of
them he told them to his people, and as he told them
they were written into his Gospel.
Among all his memories one stands prominently
out — the memory of an afternoon at four o'clock fifty
years ago — the hour when he first met his Lord. That
is the red-letter day in his life. He cannot leave that
out. So he sketches in memories of the week after
the Temptation and that red-letter day is the centre of
his picture. It is interesting to be able to say that it
was probably Saturday the Sabbath. For he gives a
sequence of four morrows and on the third day after
these was the wedding in Cana. Now the uniform
custom of the Jews fixed Wednesday for a maiden's
wedding. So we count back from Wednesday to the
previous Thursday. «
Watch the scenes as he groups them. First day,
Thursday. He is with the Baptist at Bethabara. He
and a group of young comrades with the longing for
higher things had come with the crowds from Galilee
to hear the new prophet. They responded to him at
once and became his disciples and stayed on beside him
until the call of the fishing season should hurry them
back to the Lake.
The mission of John had so stirred the whole land
that the Pharisees in Jerusalem thought it worth while
to send a deputation to inquire about him. On this
Thursday, probably the day before Jesus returned
from the Wilderness, they arrived. The great Mis-
sioner met them quite frankly. He had nothing to
conceal.

110 THE FIRST YEAR
"Tell us who art thou?"
" I am not the Christ."
" What then, Art thou Elijah? "
" I am not."
" Art thou that prophet? "
" No."
" Well, then, who art thou that we may give an an
swer to them that sent us ? What sayeth thou of thy
self?" " I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness —
Prepare ye the way of the Lord as said Isaiah the
prophet." " Why then baptizest thou if thou art not the Christ,
neither Elijah, neither the prophet ? "
" I baptize with water. In the midst of you stand-
eth one whom ye know not."
" On the morrow " the Baptist is standing with some
of his intimates when, suddenly from that path on the
hill-slope where he had disappeared six weeks ago,
Jesus appears walking towards them, a tired man
surely, with the strain of the awful forty days showing
on Him ; with the light of another world in His eyes.
The Baptist had doubtless wondered where He had
disappeared to. Now he recognizes Him at once and
eagerly, reverently points Him out to his companions.
" Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins
of the world. This is He of whom I spake to you
already. I beheld the Spirit descending as a Dove out
of Heaven and it abode on Him and I have seen and
bear witness that this is the Son of God."
And the old bishop of Ephesus feels young again as
he remembers how his heart stirred in him that day
at the first sight of Him for whom Israel had longed

THE FIRST DISCIPLES ill
through the ages who was to take the world's sin and
lift the world's burden.
Memory goes on. Again on the morrow, the Sab
bath, in the afternoon, he and his comrade Andrew
are talking with their master, talking surely about
Jesus, when on the path below by the river Jesus
passed. I can see the Baptist excitedly gripping the
arm of his young companion, " Look ! Behold the Lamb
of God!" The Lamb of God. They could not
realize all that meant till they saw that Lamb of God
sacrificed on Calvary. But, moved by a sudden im
pulse, greatly daring, " these two disciples who heard
John speak followed after Jesus." Probably the Bap
tist encouraged them to do so. No personal attach
ment to himself must hold them now. He was there
only as the herald of his Lord.
I can see the two young fishermen starting down the
path shyly, timidly, awkwardly, half-hoping, half-fear
ing that Jesus might speak to them. And Jesus hear
ing the footsteps turned round and beheld them follow
ing as surely through all the ages He turns to timid
disciples where He beholds them wishing to follow
Him. Kindly, encouragingly He asks them, " What
seek ye ? " Perhaps He is testing them, making them
ask their own hearts what they seek. He wants them
to know. He does not mind ignorance, weakness,
stupidity, anything, if only one can feel " I seek God.
I seek service with Thee."
The embarrassed young countrymen hardly know
what to reply. " Master, where dwellest thou ? " Ah !
Jesus knew what they wanted. " Come with Me," He
said and He took them to His poor little lodging and
they abode with Him that day. John remembers so

112 THE FIRST YEAR
clearly, looking back over half a century. " It was
about the tenth hour " (four o'clock). How could he
ever forget? Think what it meant in the light of
after days to have been all that evening there alone
with Jesus, sharing His simple hospitality, questioning
Him, talking to Him easily and naturally, listening as
He told them perhaps of His pain for men's troubles
and sins, of His enthusiastic plans and hopes for this
Kingdom of God. And as His sympathy drew them
out to talk shyly of their own aspirations I feel sure
that He said — it would be just like Him to say it —
" One day I shall want you both to stand by me and
help." That is the sort of appeal that draws out the
best in a man.
Think of these two young men coming back that
night under the starlight, their pulses stirring with
wonder and enthusiasm, their hearts swelling with a
great reverent affection for their new friend. " Aye
they would follow Him, follow Him to the death ! "
The whole world was changed for them that night.
Earth was never the same again.
" One of the two," says John — with characteristic
modesty he will not name himself as the other — " One
of the two was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother." So
happy is Andrew over his intercourse with Jesus that
he goes at once to find his brother. " Simon, we have
found the Christ ! " Not merely the Baptist has told
us. We have found Him for ourselves. That con
viction came from his evening with Jesus. Blessed
are they who from the depths of their own experience
can say, We have found the Christ. Blessed still more
who bring another to find Him.
So "he brought him to Jesus." That was how

THE FIRST DISCIPLES 113
Peter — the rash, impulsive, affectionate, blundering
Peter came into the group. As he came Jesus looked
on him and then gave him a new name. Perhaps
he was distrusting himself for his impulsiveness and
wavering, and that Jesus saw it as He looked on him,
reading his soul. " Simon, son of John, I know all
about you. You shall one day be strong where you
have been weak. You shall one day be called Cephas
the Rock." That is how the Lord puts heart into
men, seeing with loving insight what they can be
come. John is going over in memory that far back scene.
Peter is long since dead, gone to be with his Master in
the spirit land, but the old disciple still remembers the
expression in Jesus' eyes as He looked upon Peter
that day, as doubtless he remembers that other day
three years later when again " Jesus looked upon
Peter and Peter went out and wept bitterly."
The next day is a picture of the Cana Road, a
beautiful wooded part of the main road through
Palestine. Jesus is starting for Galilee. He is to stop
at Cana for a wedding. The three young friends go
with Him, for their homes are in the neighbourhood
and they too are invited to that wedding. On the road
Jesus finds Philip. I dare say He knew him already.
Now Philip has an intimate friend, Nathaniel Bar-
Tolmai who lives in Cana. We judge this Nathaniel
a devout Jew. A quiet, meditative man who lived
much in communion with God. Surely he and Philip
had often talked together of the Coming Hope of
Israel. Scarce could Philip wait for his arrival in Cana to
seek out his friend.

114 THE FIRST YEAR
" Nathaniel, listen! We have found Him of whom
Moses in the Law and the Prophets did write."
"Who is he?"
" Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
But Nathaniel is sceptical. He does not expect
Messiah to come in this casual way. He is probably
an older man too cautious to be carried off his feet by
this young enthusiast. He answers in the contemptu
ous proverb of the day, " Can any good thing come of
Nazareth?" Philip will not argue with him. " Come and see,"
he says. Aye, Come and see. That is the best reply to
doubters about Jesus. Philip feels that to meet Jesus
will settle the question. One look, one word from
Him will go farther than all arguments. He brings
Nathaniel out to meet the others. "And Jesus looking
on him (note again how John recalls the expression
in his Master's eyes), Jesus looking on him saith, " Be
hold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile."
That look holds Nathaniel, puts him at once in
spiritual affinity with the speaker. There is an in
stinctive perception by which true souls recognize each
other all the world over.
He hesitates for a moment. " Why, how do you
know about me ? " he asks.
"Ah, I know all about you. Before Philip called
you when you were under the fig tree I was looking on
you." For some reason these words had a startling effect.
It could not have been merely the supernatural knowl
edge about the fig tree. That would hardly account
for the utter wonderment, the instant, complete sur
render involved in his rapturous confession. But I
can imagine what would account for it. If you had

THE FIRST DISCIPLES 115
gone to hide yourself in the secret seclusion of that fig
tree where no eye could see — to be alone with God in
some deep spiritual crisis. If you saw in the eyes
and words of Jesus that He was aware of your every
thought and aspiration and utterance in that secret
place. If you felt His appreciation, His sympathy in
those secret longings of your soul — might not that
startle you to cry with Nathaniel in amazed comprehen
sion, " Rabbi, thou art the son of God ! Thou art the
King of Israel!"
Yes. He was the Son of God. But for the present
He prefers to veil His divinity and to be with these
young comrades as one of themselves. He answers
with the title that He loved best all His life — the Son
of Man — the Son of the common people. " Verily,
verily I say unto you, Ye shall see the heavens opened
and the angels of God ascending and descending on the
Son of Man." It is not easy to see the appropriate
ness of the reply. But we know it was the custom of
pious Jews in their daily devotions to meditate on
certain portions of the Old Testament. One wonders
if Nathaniel's meditation under the fig tree that
morning had been on Jacob's vision and the angels of
God ascending and descending. That would at once
give point to the words and greatly deepen the convic
tion of Nathaniel that He who stood before him knew
every thought in his heart.
I like to think of that aged disciple cherishing with
reverent affection those memories of his youth. I
like to think how God in human guise taught these
young men religion. Not by proving His Godhead or
frightening them about the fate of sinners, but just by
loving them, making friends with them, letting them

116 THE FIRST YEAR
know Him. The whole suggests a delightful charm,
a wonderful human attractiveness in Jesus. By in
stinctive perception true hearts welcomed Him, loved
Him. They could not help it.
So it was then. So it is now. Those young dis
ciples are representatives of countless crowds all down
the ages, who have felt drawn to Him by spiritual
affinity, by that spell which His personality laid upon
them. That is how Jesus always wins allegiance from
humble, open-minded men. We cannot meet Jesus in
person as they did but maybe if we prayerfully studied
this story of His life, seeking just to know Him, we
too like these young men might get attracted to Him
and trust Him and want to be a little bit like Him.
And when we have grown thus to know Him the
other lesson is apparent on the very surface of this
story. The way in which these early disciples spread
His religion was simply by bringing a comrade to
know Him. If we each of us did that, the Kingdom
would come at once. I came on a quaint old writer
the other day who made this startling statement: " If
there were only just 100 real Christians this year to
start with, and each Christian brought just one friend
each year to know his Lord the whole world would be
at His feet in 25 years ! " I did not believe it, but I
added up the figures. Next year 200, then 400, 800,
1,600 and so on, doubling each year. In the 25th year
it made 1600 millions — more than the whole popula
tion of the earth. What friend says to friend — what
comrade says to comrade — what mother says to child.
Oh! the mothers — God bless them — they are almost
the only ones doing it. Almost every mother would
like her child to know Jesus. It is through the
mothers that the Kingdom has got even as far as it has.

IV
THE CANA WEDDING
ON the following Wednesday three days later
Jesus went to a village wedding which had
some important results in His life. " Now
the third day," says St. John who was with Him,
" there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee. And the
mother of Jesus was there, and Jesus also was invited
and His disciples to the marriage."
Judging from His mother's prominence and her
anxiety about the arrangements and her directions to
the servants, it was evidently a wedding in the family.
Either the bride or the bridegroom was a near relative
of Jesus. I like to think of the little village maiden
with the white veil and the myrtle wreath in her hair,
glad and proud because Jesus had come to her wed
ding. Probably she had known Him from childhood,
since her home was only four miles away. Perhaps
she was one of the children to whom He told stories
in the carpenter shop, and now on the day of her
woman's joy she wanted her Cousin, whom she
admired and loved as a big elder brother and who was
already becoming known as a Teacher sent from God —
she wanted Him to honour her wedding and to see
her happiness and to bless her. Therefore Jesus was
invited to the marriage.
And Jesus came. With all His great thoughts and
plans and responsibilities, with the destiny of humanity
117

118 THE FIRST YEAR
resting on His shoulders — Jesus accepted the invitation.
Jesus came to the wedding. And Jesus enjoyed com
ing. Some people think of Jesus as one who would go to
a wedding as a solemn duty — a superior clerical per
son with pious intent to speak a word in season to
the guests. Don't you believe it ! Jesus was too nat
ural and kindly and sympathetic for any such attitude.
He came because He enjoyed coming. No man on
this earth enjoyed life as Jesus did. He just loved it.
He enjoyed every bit of it. He delighted in nature.
He delighted in little children. He enjoyed His friend
ships and could not bear to be without them. He
enjoyed so much the happy intercourse of social gath
erings, especially amongst the poor, that the Pharisees
called Him a glutton and winebibber, a friend of pub
licans and sinners.. It was a spiteful slander to be
sure, but the point is that it could never have been said
at all about Him unless He was joyous and happy in
social life and ate His bread with gladness.
Jesus made happiness wherever He came because
He was so happy Himself. He laughed pleasantly at
weddings. He loved meeting people. He is constantly
cheering up despondent people. Cheer up, He says.
Be of good cheer. Why of course He was happy.
The happiest people in the world to-day are those who
are doing most for others and the people who have
joyous ideas of God and perfect trust in God, and
the people of boundless optimism who know that they
must finally succeed, who know that death only means
birth into a fuller life and that evil is a thing which
one day must vanish forever. None of us could help
being happy if we were like Him.

THE CANA WEDDING 119
Add to this the joy of His life-work, helping unholy
men to be holy and unhappy souls to be happy and
feeling the infinite, happy, holy world above watching
Him with eager sympathy. In His joy over a sinner
won back to righteousness He hears even the angels of
God rejoicing.
I don't know where we got our widespread notion
of the Jesus of a sad countenance. Certainly not from
the Gospel story. I suppose it originated in Isaiah's
prophecy of " the man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief." The great painters have persistently repeated
that in their pictures and their pictures have made us
carry it into His life story — to the spoiling of it. True
He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
Lovingly, thankfully we acknowledge it. But to feel
for others and to die for others does not destroy the
joy of a great soul. Nay, to such an one the enthu
siasm of self-sacrifice is a joy in itself. Ask the lad
who on the battle-field faces death in No Man's Land
to bring in a wounded comrade. To be able to die
for men would be, I think, an additional element in the
inner joyousness of Jesus.
Humanly speaking, it was that gaiety of heart, that
inner joyousness that carried Him through. He never
lost it. Not even in the saddest days. Only three
hours before Gethsemane He reminds His disciples
how happy they had been together and His last wish is
that when He was gone the joyousness which He had
had all His life might remain with them and that
their joy might be full. Why, Jesus and His disciples
were, at least in the earlier days, just the happiest and
brightest set of comrades on this earth. He says Him
self one day, and I think He must have said it laugh
ingly, " We are like a bridal party on a honeymoon —

120 THE FIRST YEAR
the children of the bridechamber when the bridegroom
is with them." " Why don't your disciples fast and
mourn ? " asked the gloomy Pharisees. " They don't
want to fast and mourn," says Jesus ; " we are too
happy together. The children of the bridechamber
do not fast while the Bridegroom is with them. The
days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken
away from them. Time enough to mourn then. Let
us wait till the trouble comes." Nay, Jesus was not of
a sad countenance. We know that His personality
was very attractive, and sad countenances are not
usually very attractive. We don't like them. And
He did not like them. He even enjoins His disciples —
" When ye fast be not of sad countenance."
And Jesus was God. As you picture Him happy
at this wedding feast, learn of Jesus the kindly nature
of the Godhead. God likes weddings. God likes
happiness. Here in Cana of Galilee see the eternal
Christ, so human, so natural, happy in a little festive
gathering of villagers, sympathizing with the joy of
young lovers in their marriage, and say to yourself,
That is God. That is how God feels. God of course
cares above all for holiness and nobleness in us. But
God is not a sort of magnified clergyman, interested
only in Churches and preaching and sacraments, stand
ing apart from us in our lighter moments. The Father
is interested in all His children's interests. He enters
into all pure human feelings and enjoyments. He
sanctions and blesses all natural relationships. He is
interested in the birds of the air and the wild flowers
of the field and the young lambs sporting in the
meadows and the children playing in the market-place
and the mother's tender thought for her baby and the

THE CANA WEDDING 121
shy young bride meeting her bridegroom. God likes
to see us enjoying ourselves. God made music and
art. God gave us humour and laughter to help us over
the rough bits of the road. To set a group of people
merrily, innocently laughing is to do the will of the
Father which is in Heaven. Don't you think religion
would be a very simple, lovely thing, don't you think
it would be more attractive to our children if we would
learn it from Jesus' point of view ?
Now an awkward thing happened. Remember this
was a peasant wedding. They were poor people, to
whom a wedding feast was a strain on their resources.
In the midst of the festivities comes a painful pause.
Some one suddenly discovered that the wine had run
short. A mere trifle, some man may say. No woman
would say it. At any rate the little bride of Cana
would not say it as she thought how she and her bride
groom would be shamed before their friends. And
Jesus did not say it. Jesus knew the proud sensitive
ness of a peasant family and how keenly they would
feel the shame of failing in hospitality at such a
time. His mother whispered to Him — I suppose only John
heard her — " They have no wine."
Did she expect a miracle? We cannot tell. He
had never yet done anything miraculous and one would
think miracles belonged to higher occasions than help
ing out a supper. Perhaps it was that she had always
been so accustomed to lean on Him in her difficulties
since Joseph died that she turned instinctively to Him
now. She knew He would care — that He would help
in some way if He could. After all it is not a bad
sort of faith to come and tell your troubles to Jesus

122 THE FIRST YEAR
even if you cannot see anything that can be done at
the time.
Yet His answer shows that He felt her urging Him
to do something. His answer as we have translated it
rather jars on us, " Woman, what have I to do with
thee." But we have only the bare words, not the tone
of voice or the expression in His eyes which make such
a difference in the meaning. The word, Woman, too,
which sounds harshly to us, was an ordinary mode of
address even when expressing respect and affection.
Augustus uses it to Queen Cleopatra. In the classics
persons of highest rank are thus addressed. It was
thus that Jesus addressed the Magdalen weeping at the
tomb. And you remember His dying words to His
mother at the Cross, " Woman behold thy Son." I
notice, too, that she does not seem hurt or dissatisfied.
She knows Him too well for that. She sees His sym
pathy. If she cannot understand she can trust, so she
simply tells the servants, " Whatsoever He saith unto
you do it."
No — Jesus was not impatient with her. Yet His
answer must have been a reminder to her that there
was a change in their relation. She must not now
presume as in the days when He " went down to Naz
areth and was subject unto her." He had a great mis
sion. He had thoughts now which she could not
share. Personal relations must not interfere. It was
a hard lesson for a mother to learn, a lesson which had
to be repeated to Mary again and again. She would
remember that other answer which surprised her in
His boyhood, " Wist ye not that I must be about My
Father's business."
It looks as if He hesitated for a moment about

THE CANA WEDDING 123
doing that miracle. I do not think it irreverent to sug
gest that He came to that wedding without any such
intention. He had chosen to assume human limita
tions. He did not necessarily always look into the
future. We read once that He was surprised at some
thing unexpected. If it were so here He had to make
quickly a sudden decision. He had not yet begun His
public life. He was as it were standing on the thresh
old. To begin miracles would mean the crossing of
the Rubicon and plunging at once into the great life
struggle which ended at Calvary. Was this the Fa
ther's guidance that He should begin it now — this
loving impulse to save His young friends from being
shamed ? In such impulses we usually find God's will
for ourselves.
In a moment His decision was made. A week ago
He had refused to turn stones into bread to relieve His
own hunger. Now He would turn water into wine to
save the feelings of His friends. That is God.
" Fill the waterpots with water ! " And they filled
them up to the brim. And He said, Draw out now
and bear unto the president of the feast. And they
bare it. And when the president of the feast had
tasted the water that was made wine and knew not
whence it was (and asked not whence it was, like many
of ourselves with God's gifts to us) the president of
the feast said to the bridegroom, " Thou hast kept the
good wine until now."
Do you think that young bride and bridegroom
would easily forget what their Cousin had done for
them at that marriage feast? Pity somebody could
not have told the little bride of Cana that day that her
wedding was to be the most famous wedding in all the
world's history — that two thousand years after we

124 THE FIRST YEAR
should be studying the story as the beginning of the
manifestation of God to men.
For this wedding marked a crisis in the history of
Jesus, not only the beginning of His public life-work
but also the beginning of His revealing who He was.
That is how St. John feels about it. " This beginning
of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee and manifested
His glory and His disciples believed on Him."
This " beginning of miracles " seems a fitting place
to speak of the miracles of Our Lord. Some people
think that miracles are rather a stumbling-block in the
Gospels. They could believe the story more easily if
the miracles were left out. Perhaps so. But the
evangelists were not writing to suit people's beliefs.
They were simply telling the story as they knew it.
And miracles were certainly no stumbling-block to
them. The nineteenth century physical science used to in
sist, " Nature works by uniform laws. We see no mi
raculous interruptions. Therefore any story of miracle
must be regarded as at least doubtful." But twentieth
century science is more modest. It confesses that it
only knows the sequence of phenomena. It knows
nothing of causes or of the Will behind causes. For
Cause means a Will behind. If a unique occurrence
such as the Incarnation be admitted science would be
willing to admit that unique events which we call mir
acles might be expected to accompany it. To the rev
erent mind, to him who has the sense of wonder, the
universe is full of magic and mystery. "As for me,"
says Walt Whitman, " I see nothing else but miracles.
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle."
How did this miracle manifest His glory? By

THE CANA WEDDING 125
showing who He was. The Lord of Nature. I do
not suppose those young disciples understood all this
at the time. They had only known Him a few days.
But St. John is looking back after the Crucifixion and
Resurrection and after fifty years of meditating about
his Lord. He knew now who He was. He had al
ready written, " He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by Him and without Him was
not anything made that was made." He had made
the world. He had been giving the harvest and turn
ing water into wine in the vineyards all through the
ages. I remember one day travelling through the Rhone
Valley in Switzerland when this thought came back to
me of the miracle in Cana. It was pouring rain. The
slopes of the valley were clothed with vines. The
water was falling heavily on the vineyards. In an
other month the vine-gatherers would come and find
that water turned into wine. And the wine would be
brought to the feasts of the world and the ruler of the
feast would taste the water that was made wine and
know not whence it was. " That fine flavour," he
says, "that delicate aroma. It comes from the hot sun
and the nature of the grapes and the chemical con
stituents of the soil on that particular hillside." That
is all. He sees no farther. He never realizes the sol
emn glory that surrounds all common life when God is
working His miracles in the wheat-field and out in the
vineyards turning water into wine.
Miracles are only helpful when they teach us that
that solemn glory is around us all the time. In a mir
acle the great Worker just shows Himself for a mo
ment that we may remember that He is working when
no miracles are seen. The miracle only makes the hid-

126 THE FIRST YEAR
den glory visible. The extraordinary only shows that
the ordinary is divine — like the lightning flash that
manifests for a moment the stupendous electric power
that is working through the Universe.
So Jesus manifested His glory as the disciples looked
back in after years. But though the miracle mani
fested His glory we are not to think that that was His
reason — certainly not His chief reason for doing mir
acles. He was in no hurry to manifest His divinity.
He was rather chary with His miracles. He would do
no miracles for miracles' sake to force compulsory be
lief. But being Divine He exerted Divine power when
He saw fit, for the instruction of His disciples and es
pecially for bringing comfort and happiness to men.
If a clamorous crowd demanded miracles for a sign
He rebuked them. "An evil and adulterous genera
tion seeketh for a sign." If He was tempted to turn
stones into bread for Himself He refused. But if a
young bride was in danger of being shamed before her
neighbours — if a widow at Nain had lost her only boy
— if a little girl at Capernaum was sick of a fever or a
blind beggar was crying out in misery by the roadside,
Jesus would do miracles without hesitation.
And these miracles manifested His glory even if not
done for that purpose. "A poet does not write poetry
to show that he is a poet. A generous man does not
give gifts to show that he is generous. But it shows
it." Jesus did not do miracles to prove that He was
Divine. But it proved it to all true hearts who had a
capacity for knowing Him.
After all, miracles are a very poor revelation of God.
It is a vulgar, shallow thought that looks to power as
God's chief glory. That is but the lowest side of it.
When Moses cried to God, " Shew me Thy glory," he

THE CANA WEDDING 127
was told, " I will make all my goodness pass before
thee." God's chief glory is not His power but His
goodness, His sympathy, His generosity, His infinite
loving-kindness. The impulse to save a straitened
family from embarrassment at their wedding feast is a
far nobler revelation of God than a miracle turning
water into wine.
As we read how " Jesus was invited to this marriage
and His disciples," do we not wish that Jesus were in
vited more to all our marriages and that young people
would prepare for this solemn ordinance as they pre
pare for Confirmation and Holy Communion ? I don't
know how this young couple at Cana prepared for their
marriage. But I know what their Church directed.
The Jewish wedding in Our Lord's day was much more
than an occasion of festivity and merriment. Mar
riage was a very solemn thing. The young people
were exhorted to prepare for it by fasting and prayer
and confession of sin. God was kept in all their
thoughts when marriage was impending. The old
Rabbis had a saying that Jehovah Himself blessed the
cup at the marriage of our first parents and Michael
and Gabriel were the groomsmen and the angels sang
the bridal hymn.
The Marriage Service of the Church strikes a still
higher note. Ittells how Jesus adorned and beautified
marriage by His presence and first miracle in Cana of
Galilee. It declares marriage to be a holy estate sig
nifying the mystical union between Christ and His
Church and that therefore it is not to be enterprised or
taken in hand lightly or wantonly, but reverently, so
berly, discreetly and in the fear of God. Aye, surely
it ought not. When God gives two young hearts to

128 THE FIRST YEAR
each other — when a man is taking a woman's life into
his hand and a woman is taking a man's life into her
hand, for better for worse, for richer for poorer till
death do them part — surely it is a solemn moment in
life — surely there should be less of lightness and flip
pancy and more of the solemn, joyous, touching
thought that the Father is interested in His children's
happiness and offering His benediction all the days of
their life.
There are marriages and marriages.
There are marriages which in a few years have be
come flat, stale and unprofitable — there are marriages
where the two have remained lovers all their lives long.
The difference is not only as to whether there is real
love in the marriage, but mainly whether there is God
in it. Even real love is not safe without that. One
should always advise young lovers that the days before
marriage be spent much in prayer and thought and sol
emn resolutions. Be sure the wedded life will be the
happier for it. Be sure the wedding day will lose none
of its brightness if Jesus be called as in Cana to the
marriage.

THE ANGRY CHRIST
AFTER the Cana wedding Jesus started to go
up to Jerusalem to the Passover. The route
lay along the blue Lake of Galilee through the
meadows and garden of that lovely land — the Garden
of Princes, as it was called. At first He struck north
ward to Capernaum, where some of His young dis
ciples had their homes by the lakeside and where He
could best join one of the pilgrim caravans going up to
the Feast. We read that His mother and brothers were
in His company as far as Capernaum. He stayed only
a few days and nothing important happened. We
might have left this visit unnoticed but that it helps to
fix attention on Capernaum as we pass. For this story
will have much to do with that beautiful little town on
the lakeside. It became Jesus' home, " His own city,"
the centre for His Galilean ministry and the scene of
the most familiar stories in the Gospels.
Thence He went on to Jerusalem to the Passover as
He had probably done every year since that first Pass
over of His boyhood.
But there was a difference now. It was no longer a
private worshipper, it was a national Reformer, though
not yet publicly declaring Himself as Messiah, who
went up to the house of His Father to open His min
istry in the capital city. The capital in every nation is
129

130 THE FIRST YEAR
the centre forming public opinion. Perhaps for that
reason He would make His first public appearance
there before the chiefs of His people and the vast Pass
over crowds assembled from all over the world.
If they had only known it at Jerusalem it was a
crisis in their history, as it is written in Malachi the
prophet: "The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly
come to His temple as a purifier and refiner of silver,
even the Messenger of the Covenant whom ye delight
in." Alas ! they did not delight in Him this first Passover.
The second Passover we have no knowledge of. The
third Passover they crucified Him.
One can hardly wonder. It was almost a foregone
conclusion. Democracy had not yet been born. The
people had no power. Power and privilege lay in the
hands of a clerical aristocracy, the Scribes and Phari
sees, who were bigotedly self-satisfied with their re
ligion as it was, and a political aristocracy, the Hero
dians, whose interests lay with Herod and Herod's
business, as the minion of the Roman Emperor was to
keep the people in subjection.
Like the privileged classes in all ages they are deter
mined to keep things as they are. Now comes out into
the arena a Reformer, an Enthusiast, a religious Revo
lutionary, who is determined not to leave things as
they are. His sympathy is with the people. He does
not like these privileged classes, with their tyranny and
self-righteousness and their contempt of the poor and
outcast. He hates the hollow formalism of their re
ligion and the pettiness of their notions about God.
And He has not the least hesitation in expressing Him
self frankly about them. A conflict was inevitable.

THE ANGRY CHRIST 131
Only two events stand out in this visit, the cleans
ing of the Temple and the interview with Nicodemus.
The Temple was to every Jew a sacred ensign. The
eyes of Israel's exiles scattered in many lands turned
to the Holy City and the Temple of Jehovah, the centre
of their national worship. To Jesus the Temple was
the visible symbol of the Father's presence. " Wist ye
not, said the Boy of twelve, that I must be in my
Father's house about my Father's business." He
loved the House of God. He was very jealous for its
honour. Year after year He had indignantly seen its
desecrations and sympathized with the murmurings of
the pious worshippers. Probably He had this in His
mind now as He drew near to Jerusalem.
For the avarice of a greedy priesthood had made the
Temple into a great money-making machine. The
beautiful outer Court was a noisome cattle mart, " the
Bazaars of the Sons of Annas," the high priest. The
shouts of the market, the din of the money changers,
the bleating of sheep and the lowing of oxen disturbed
even the devotions of the people in church. It was a
huge system of graft and a most profitable business,
and the Church had a large rake-off from its dishonest
gains. The Temple revenues were enormous.
We know how easily abuses are passed over when
they contribute to public convenience and when power
ful money interests are behind them. It was necessary
of course to have cattle markets and changers of
money. The scandal was that simple folk should be
cheated under the roof of God's house, that worship
pers should be disturbed by the unseemly traffic, that
the Church should reap enormous gains from these
questionable dealings of cattlemen and money changers.
The people were ashamed of it. We learn that the

132 THE FIRST YEAR
Temple market was most unpopular. But the fact
that the whole race had put up with it for so many
years, marks a real lack of reverence and devo
tion. St. John has in mind a day in that Passover week.
The city is densely crowded. The streets are ablaze
with colour. All around the Temple are multitudes of
worshippers in their picturesque national costume — not
only the men of Palestine, but devout men from every
nation under Heaven. The most pious of Israel's race
from every land assembled at their Holy Place to wor
ship God. Surely a sight to stir the heart of the
Christ. Hour after hour the Temple is filled and emptied.
New worshippers in turn are moving towards the en
trance. In the beautiful outer Court of the Gentiles,
open to the sky, with its stately cloisters and exquisitely
carved pillars, a crowd is waiting its turn to enter and
worship. But the cattle are trampling all over the
court and the bankers and collectors are rattling their
coins and sellers and bargainers in unseemly tumult are
audible in the Holy Place itself.
Many take it as a matter of course. They are used
to it now. Many are murmuring as they have mur
mured for years. It was not so in our day, said the
old men from afar; none dare do more than murmur
through fear of the priests.
Now there is a sudden commotion at the gate and
all eyes are turned to see the young prophet from Gali
lee. For people are talking about Him already. The
Galileans who have come up are spreading His fame.
There are rumours of His connection with the famous
Baptist. Men are talking, too, of miracles performed

THE ANGRY CHRIST 183
in the city. People are beginning to wonder and
inquire. So Jesus enters. Not the meek and lowly Jesus of
our pictures nor the friendly Jesus of the Cana wed
ding. This is a very different Jesus— ^a stern, master
ful man, striding in imperious anger through the Court
like a king coming to chastise misbehaving servants.
Indignantly He turns on the rulers of the Temple and
into the sudden silence falls His ringing rebuke, " Take
these things hence! Make not my Father's house a
house of merchandise ! "
No wonder He startled them. The people are star
ing in wonder and awe. " My Father's house ! "
Who is this that uses such words, who presumes to
take this imperious attitude to the leaders of the
Church? His glance is proud and high, like one of
the prophets of old, as He drives the cattle through the
gates and hurls to the ground the money changers'
desks. The authorities are positively frightened, too
dumbfounded to resist Him. I can see some Scribe or
Pharisee coming up to remonstrate, " It is written that
thus we shall worship Jehovah. It is written that we
shall offer the sacrifice at His altar." " It is written,"
thundered the indignant Christ, " My house shall be
called a house of prayer. But ye have made it a den
of thieves ! "
The chiefs of the Church were offended beyond
remedy. The Pharisees had had their authority pub
licly challenged. The Priests had had their grafting
business openly disgraced. They would never forgive
this. Jesus that day practically sealed His fate in
Jerusalem. And He knew it.
Two years later at Passover time again they would

134 THE FIRST YEAR
conspire in that very place to take away His life.
Was He thinking of that when they asked Him for a
sign, " What sign shewest Thou for doing this thing? "
And calmly He gave the sign. Destroy this Temple,
He said (the Temple of my body) and in three days I
will raise it up.
No one, it would seem, understood Him at the time.
It remained a puzzle. But they remembered it. At
His trial His enemies said, " He has threatened to
destroy the Temple." On Calvary they sneered,
" Thou that destroyest the Temple and buildest it in
three days, save thyself now." After the Resurrection
the disciples remembered and understood. " In three
days I will raise it up."
That was how Jesus began His public career. Not
a very tactful way to begin. No. Tactfulness is very
good in its place, but there are times when only blazing
indignation will suffice. No man ventured to resist
Him. The sympathy of the frightened people was on
His side, rejoicing to see one do what they dared not.
The conscience of the offenders themselves was on His
side. They knew they were wrong and He forced
them to think of it. And there was something of awe
and dread in this royal, compelling, Messianic vindica
tion of the purity of the worship of God. And surely
above all was the look in the eyes of the Christ, the
awesome impression made by " the wrath of the
Lamb." The wrath of the Lamb !
It is wholesome for us to think on this side of Our
Lord's character. Why does not some great artist
paint an angry Christ? For our usual pictures of

THE ANGRY CHRIST 135
Jesus with mild, gentle face, and our usual teaching
about Jesus in His meekness and love are in danger of
presenting a false, one-sided picture that does not ap
peal at all to red-blooded men. They cannot help feel
ing that love with no capacity for hatred and anger is
a mawkish, colourless thing. They feel that righteous
anger, anger which makes men afraid, is part of a
strong man's character. And they are right. For
Jesus, who alone exhibited perfect manhood, was again
and again angry.
We learn from Jesus that anger is Divine. But we
need also to learn from Jesus what anger should be in
a strong man's life. For much of our anger is weak
ness, not strength, — petulance, ill-temper, passion that
we are too weak to control. And much of our anger
is selfish because some one has injured ourselves. And
much of our anger is relentless and bitter and unfor
giving. Therefore I bid you pause to behold the angry
Christ. He is indignant here with covetousness and
graft, trading on the piety of simple people. He is
angry later oh when a set of narrow bigots bring up
their petty little Sabbath rules to keep Him from heal
ing a suffering man. " He looked round about on
them with anger." He is angry again at the very
thought of a man who should seduce one of the little
ones. " It were better for him that a millstone were
tied about his neck and that he were drowned in the
depths of the sea." He exposes with fierce anger and
merciless satire the tyranny and hypocrisy that kept
men back from God. Look at that awful 23rd
of St. Matthew, " Woe unto you Scribes and Phari
sees, ye hypocrites, ye play-actors, ye whited sepul
chres! Ye blind guides! Ye bind grievous burdens

136 THE FIRST YEAR
on men's shoulders and touch them not yourselves
with one of your fingers ! Ye compass sea and land to
make one proselyte and make him more a child of hell
than yourselves ! Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers,
how can ye escape the damnation of hell ! "
That is your meek and lowly Jesus when His anger
is stirred! If you want to see real terrible wrath, if
you want God's view of tyranny and cant and hypoc
risy, behold the angry Christ.
Where did we get our notion of a jellyfish Chris
tianity that thinks it almost wrong to be angry at all ?
I have heard repeatedly during the war that our anger
against some of the outrages in Flanders was not ac
cording to Christ. Not according to Christ? Why,
the man that is not angry at such things is not a Chris
tian at all. He has no part or lot with Christ.
Anger is Divine. We do well to be angry. We
should be angry oftener if we were nobler men. But
let our anger be patterned on the anger of Christ.
( 1 ) Learn first that He was never angry at wrongs
to Himself. Men might do what they would to Him,
reject Him, despise Him, mock at Him, spit on Him,
nail Him in bitter agony to the Cross. Amid the
shouts of mockery on the Calvary slopes He is thinking
of the ignorant temporary excitement of the mob.
" Father, forgive them, they do not know what they
are doing just now."
But let grafters pollute the house of God, let hypo
crites make the people disgusted with religion — let men
oppress the weak — let one seduce a young girl into
ruin and sin — and straightway the terribleness of His
wrath is upon them.
That is Jesus. No personal resentment. If a man

THE ANGRY CHRIST 137
smite Him on the one cheek He would turn the other.
And He bids you do the same — if it is your own cheek.
But if it be the cheek of some helpless one that is smit
ten — that is a very different story.
(2) Learn, too, that His anger is but the other side
of His love. Does any one think His anger inconsist
ent with His love ? Why, His love is the very basis of
His anger. Because He loved the oppressed He hated
the oppressor. Because He loved that ruined girl He
would blast the seducer. Because He loved to see peo
ple rejoicing in the presence of the Father His wrath
seared the hypocrites who were degrading religion.
(3) But especially learn for your comfort and en
couragement that His wrath is always trembling on the
brink of forgiveness. His anger is against wilful,
deliberate wickedness — against the hypocrite, the un
loving, the obstinately unrepentant. But the first sign
of sorrow would touch Him into tenderness. For the
tyrant and the hypocrite He thunders parables of de
nunciation. To the penitent poor struggler at the first
sign of goodness He has stories like the Lost Sheep and
the Prodigal Son. Such is the quality of the anger of
Jesus. Be as angry as you will if you will be angry
like Him.

VI
NICODEMUS
YOU can imagine the excitement in the city that
night. In the face of the whole Jewish world
from every land this young Teacher had chal
lenged the chief authorities of the Church and nation
and denounced them publicly as a den of robbers!
Imagine such a charge against our House of Bishops !
Or imagine in our Senate a holy man reverenced by
the people, striding in imperious anger through the
Chamber and in the name of God and Righteousness
proclaiming the whole assembly a set of grafters.
Don't you think the city would be a bit excited over it ?
You may be sure that at every dinner table in Jeru
salem that night, in every group in the streets, they
were talking of the mysterious young Prophet and the
sensation He had made in the Temple. Partisans of
the established order were hostile and critical. But
many thoughtful people even amongst the Pharisees
were impressed by His action. At any rate He was a
holy man and a fearless champion of Right. And
there were whispers that He might be something more.
The Galileans had brought strange rumours from the
North. I wonder if John and his young comrades told
of the Baptist's declaration about Him. The Bap
tist's word would go far with men just then.
Perhaps they did. More likely I think they did not.
Probably Jesus forbade them. For His miracles and
138

NICODEMUS 139
the unavoidable talk about Him were becoming rather
embarrassing, drawing around Him the wrong sort of
people. The Jerusalem crowd like the Galilean crowd
thought of the Kingdom of God as, of course, a King
dom of Righteousness, but prominently as a kingdom
of power and greatness for their nation, a return of
Israel's ancient glory when Jehovah Himself should be
their king and Messiah their leader to temporal power,
the viceroy of Almighty God.
With such notions in the air it would take little to
gather around Him a very embarrassing crowd, enthu
siastic for one who should do honour to their nation
but cold and indifferent to His real purpose, the spir
itual uplift of human souls. So He seems to have kept
a good deal aloof in Jerusalem, discouraging all prema
ture popularity.
But people could not be prevented from thinking
about Him. Many of all classes were thinking. St.
John selects one prominent instance to tell us of.
" Now there was a man of the Pharisees named
Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews." This man is think
ing things out. In spite of the hostile attitude of his
fellows this daring young Prophet has greatly appealed
to him. He is wondering about Him. He wants to
find out. He seems at heart honest and earnest. But
he is a timid, conservative ecclesiastic, and that type of
man in any age does not easily commit himself. So he
steals out alone in the night under the Passover moon
concealed by his long mantle, keeping on the shady side
of the street until he finds the house where Jesus is
staying, probably with His disciple John.
I can see John showing in the distinguished visitor
into the poor little upper room which he shares with his

140. THE FIRST YEAR
Master and remaining there listening and remembering
things that he is one day to tell the world. Is it irrev
erent to wish that he had remembered it better? He
has only preserved for us a few brief notes. We have
to read between the lines and fill it up as best we can.
We gather that Nicodemus wanted to hear about
this Kingdom of God which Jesus had come to estab
lish and also that he had the popular notions about it.
He expected, as most others did, a temporal kingdom
of glory and prosperity for Israel. Every Israelite, of
course, would be by birth a member of it. He had
hopes that Jesus might turn out to be the promised
Messiah. Being an old man and wise and of high po
sition in the religious world, perhaps he had the kindly
thought that his counsel and influence might be of
value to the young enthusiast who had begun so reck
lessly this morning. And no doubt if Jesus were
founding a kingdom such as he expected he would have
been a valuable ally.
But if he had any such patronizing thought the quiet
dignity of Jesus must have put him in his place at once.
For he addresses this young peasant with deepest re
spect. " Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come
from God, for no man can do such miracles as thou
doest except God be with him."
What he was going on to say we can only conjecture,
for Jesus abruptly cuts him short, as if reading and an
swering the questions in his mind. " Verily, verily, I
say unto thee, Except a man be born again he cannot
see the Kingdom of God."
We assume that He explained more fully what He
meant. ^ " Rabbi, your notion is utterly wrong. Be
fore you go further let me put you right. This is no
kingdom of politics and earthly power and privilege.

NICODEMUS 141
This is a kingdom of faithful souls, of men and women
with a great ideal, loyal to God in the inmost recesses
of the heart. For this something more is needed than
Jewish birth and privilege. Except a man — any man,
Jew or Gentile, — be born again, born from above, born
of the Spirit of God, he cannot enter into this Kingdom
of faithful souls."
One wonders why this should so puzzle a thoughtful
religious rabbi. The idea of spiritual rebirth was not
strange to a Jew. A Gentile received into Judaism
was thought of as reborn. Perhaps the puzzle was
that every man, even a Jew, should need to be reborn,
for, Every Israelite, said the Rabbis, has his part in the
World to come. Jesus must mean something different
from what he meant. " I don't understand," he says.
" How can a man be born when he is old ? "
How? Jesus does not explain the "how." He
appeals to the man's own experience. " You know the
difference between fleshly and spiritual, between the
natural man who lives for this world and the spiritu
ally minded man whose heart is set on God. Now that
which is born of the flesh is flesh. The spiritual is that
which is born of the Spirit. The spiritual mind, the
passion for high ideals, does not come by chance or by
natural growth. The Spirit of God must accomplish
it. As for the ' how,' let that alone. That is beyond
you. The influence of God's spirit is free as the wind,
mysterious as the wind. Hear that wind blowing now
amongst the trees outside. Thou canst not tell whence
it cometh or whither it goeth. So is every one that is
born of the Spirit. My kingdom is a kingdom of
Spirit-born men, born of the Spirit of God."
The old Rabbi gives it up. " How can these things
be?"

142 THE FIRST YEAR
"Art thou the teacher of Israel and understandest not
these things? If you cannot understand the simple
fact that it requires God's Spirit to make a man spir
itual how shall you believe when I tell you of deeper
heavenly mysteries? For I only can tell them. No
man hath ascended into Heaven for this knowledge,
only the Son of Man who is in Heaven (even now).
You have many more surprising things to learn before
you can understand Me and My Kingdom. I am not
coming as you think to a princely throne to show God's
power but to a shameful Cross to show God's self-
sacrifice. For as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness to save Israel, even so shall the Son of Man
be lifted up."
Imagine the state of mind of the great Rabbi as he
listened. Here is this obscure young peasant, without
learning of the schools, without recognition by the
Church, quietly, unself -consciously taking His place as
his superior, claiming to be from Heaven and to know
the counsels of God and to be the light of the world
and the source of eternal life. Surely He must be a
victim of illusion or else there must be in Him some
thing divine.
That is all. We do not know how the conversation
ended, for the closing words are evidently St. John's
own comment. And we do not know how the great
Rabbi received it all, whether he understood or whether
he went away sorrowful. We should like to know.
For he appeals to us as an honest truth seeker in spite
of his caution and timidity. Whatever the result, it
did not break his attachment to Jesus. Twice after
wards we hear of him. Each time he is befriending
Jesus and each time with his characteristic caution.
Once when the rulers were about to do violence to Him

NICODEMUS 143
Nicodemus makes a non-committal defense of Him.
" Doth our law condemn any man without a hearing? "
And again when Jesus was dead and Joseph of Ari-
mathea was burying Him we are told that " Nicode
mus, who came to Jesus by night," brought his secret
gift of spices, the last thing he could do for the young
Friend whom he admired even though death had now
evidently marked Him as a failure.
So the Rabbi Nicodemus moves out of the picture.
But we must not pass on without thinking a little more
about that question which so puzzled him.
This much at least we can say. It is a lesson in the
evolution of humanity. God has magnificent ambi
tions for our race. As from the lower creation He
evolved the higher being Man, so from this natural man
God is evolving the still higher being, the spiritual man
— the man in touch with God. The natural man has
the capacity for rising into the spiritual man as a cater
pillar has the capacity for rising into a butterfly. But
every caterpillar does not evolve into a butterfly. And
every natural man does not evolve into a spiritual man.
He could but he does not. To accomplish this, Jesus
says he must have personal dealings with God. His
life must be vitalized by God's Holy Spirit. The natu
ral man may become a fine type of natural man as the
caterpillar may become a fine type of caterpillar. But
the finest type of caterpillar is not a butterfly. He has
missed his destiny. And a fine type of natural man is
not a spiritual man. He needs the vitalizing touch of
the Spirit of God.
The Baptist had in some degree taught that lesson
already. " I can prepare you," he said. " I can bap
tize you with water unto repentance. But the Coming

144 THE FIRST YEAR
One only can give you spiritual life. He only bap
tizeth with the Holy Ghost and with fire."
Perhaps to some of us as to Nicodemus this seems a
hard saying. But had we not better think about it
since Jesus is so insistent on it? Too many of us are
content with being improved caterpillars, decent, re
spectable types of natural man. And the Spirit of God
in His ambition for us is waiting, waiting. All around
us like the air we breathe — like the soft wind which
bloweth where it listeth.
His the gentle voice we hear
Soft as the breath of even,
Which checks each fault and calms each fear,
And speaks of Heaven.
And thou canst not tell whence. Thou canst not tell.
That is the hopeful thought. I must not confine that
free breath of God to the saintly soul living amid all
the privileges of the Church.
If I hear of a rough soldier brought up in an evil
home, who has learned to swear but not to pray, but
who is loved by his comrades for utter unselfishness
and who at last dies in Christ fashion to save another,
I am to think that every good and perfect deed is from
above. I am to think what Jesus says of that myste
rious breath of God — " Thou canst not tell."

VII
HOW THE BAPTIST DIED
WE do not know how long Jesus stayed in
Jerusalem after the Passover crowds from
all nations had scattered homeward. Not
long, we imagine. Somehow Jerusalem was uncon
genial. Cathedral towns are often prejudiced and
self-satisfied and rather under the influence of the pre
vailing clerical tone. True, Jerusalem crowded around
Him, impressed by His miracles, but I read the curious
statement that " Jesus did not trust them, for He knew
all men." I suppose this meant that He knew they
would follow Him until they found out, but no longer.
They did not want what He wanted. His path was
not their path. His ideals cut straight across theirs.
And when they clearly saw the position, they would
crucify Him.
So He retired into the country with His disciples.
For perhaps eight months of His public life He moved
about quietly amongst the farmers and village people
of Judea. We have no record of these eight months,
the kindly deeds of miracle that He did, the gracious
words of teaching which He said. We do not know
why. Humanly speaking it might be because the fish
ing season was on and John had to go back to his work
in Galilee. We would give much to-day for that story.
Without it we can only judge from the little that we
know. i45

146 THE FIRST YEAR
Did you ever go on a walking tour through the old
country villages in England or France with a few con
genial companions ? Somehow I always think of these
Judean wanderings as something like that. This first
year was a time of peaceful obscurity. The second
was a year of stress and storm. The third a time of
trouble and danger and death.
I think this first was Jesus' brightest, happiest year.
It was early summer in the country and Jesus loved the
country. He and His young companions were happy
and care- free. They had no money, but that did not
matter where people were so hospitable. I think of
the little company as they tramped the country roads,
enjoying the brown hills and the sound of running
streams, talking to the children who ran out from the
cottages, giving pleasant good-day to the travellers
whom they met. They would come on a blind man or
a poor leper at a lonely crossroad and heal him. They
would rest in a sunny village in the hills when they
were tired. There was no hurry. Jesus always leaves
that impression. God is the one quiet, unhurried
Worker in the Universe. He has eternity to do things.
What Jesus had to do was just to live His life, to ren
der Christianity into the simple language of daily work
and rest. And the villagers who had heard the Jeru
salem rumours about Him would gather around in the
evening and the Master would talk to them and tell
them His delightful parable stories, lifting up their
whole thoughts of life and of God's love. And then
they would be asked to some one's supper. There
would be no restraint or awkward silences in the cot
tage where Jesus was a guest. And one day the
woman of the house would have her little boy in hope
less disease and Jesus would hear of it and lay His

HOW THE BAPTIST DIED 147
healing hands on the little lad and bind that mother's
heart to Him forever. I think that was how Jesus be
gan preaching the Kingdom. He did not at first de
mand their allegiance. Perhaps He did not denounce
their sins. But He won their allegiance by the spir
itual attraction of His life and sinners in His presence
began wishing to be like Him.
And if some day afterwards after the rumours came
that their kindly visitor had been murdered in the city
and risen again in His power — if that mother and these
villagers learned that their mysterious Guest had come
down to earth to represent God to men — don't you
think they would have very happy beliefs about the lov-
ableness and friendliness of God?
I read once in a schoolboy book that to the savage
and the schoolboy and the primitive man everywhere,
there are two kinds of God — a lovable God and a God
who must be squared. The first is worshipped from
sheer admiration and reverence because he is a good
and lovable God and an able God capable of godlike
achievements. The second is worshipped as a measure
of precaution lest, being enormously powerful and
rather uncertain in his actions, he might perhaps rend
his votaries.
I think that is true. And I have not any doubt as
to which idea of God these Judean peasants would get
from Jesus.
As we follow Him over the countryside these long
summer days we — unexpectedly for us — find ourselves
in the neighbourhood of John the Baptist not many
miles off over the hills. It is rather a surprise. We
somehow fancied the great Baptizer's mission was
done on that critical day when he baptized Messiah and

148 THE FIRST YEAR
proclaimed to his disciples " the Lamb of God who
taketh away the sins of the world." Probably his mis
sion was done and he only waited the signal to retire,
the signal of a people's acclamation and a nation on
the march following the Christ.
But no such signal has come. Months have elapsed
and he has seen nothing and heard little of the Messiah
for whom he has waited all his life. No sign has come
that Jesus has declared Himself, that Messiah has
wrought redemption in Israel.
So John is still waiting his signal to retire. It is
coming. Sooner than he expects and in a very differ
ent way. Herod and the Pharisees are seeing to that.
Meanwhile he goes on preaching Righteousness and the
coming kingdom and surely with a new and more con
fident note since that unforgettable day by the Jordan.
He probably talked more intimately of Jesus now that
he had seen Him, for the people said afterwards when
Jesus had become famous, " John did no miracle, but
all things that he told us of this Man were true."
John's mission goes on. But with a difference
which shows that his work is drawing to a close. The
crowds are no longer following. His influence is wan
ing. The first excitement about him has died down.
His disciples begin to grow jealous for their Master.
A few months ago the world was gone after him, he
was the greatest power in Israel, but just at the zenith
of his popularity he had suddenly paused and pointed
to One greater than himself. From that day his de
cline began. They do not quite understand. They
hear the increasing fame of the new Prophet. They
see the accustomed crowds no longer. And they are
sore vexed, for they dearly love their brave, silent
master who is being deserted.

HOW THE BAPTIST DIED 149
Things come to a point one day in their dispute with
a Jew about purifying. Probably this Jew had been
with Jesus and was drawing comparisons derogatory to
John's baptism. They can keep silent no longer.
" Master, He to whom you bare witness beyond Jor
dan, behold He is baptizing and all men come unto
Him." Only then did they really know how great was the
man they followed. Never greater than in this hour
of his failure. " It is all right," he said ; " my day is
over. When I am gone a brighter day will come. To
that I look forward. You remember how I told you
all along that I am nobody, that I am not the Christ
but the messenger before Him. I am but the humble
friend of the Bridegroom rejoicing in His success. I
am going away into the silence, but in that silence fall
ing around me I hear the voice of the Bridegroom.
Therefore I rejoice. He must increase. I must de
crease. This my joy therefore is fulfilled."
It takes a big man to feel like that. Thus the great
Baptist lays down his office. These are his last public
words recorded. A month later he lies in the Black
Dungeon of Machaerus facing death.
Take notice that it is at this point the three first
Gospels begin the story of Our Lord's ministry in Gali
lee. And note, too, that that is the only ministry with
which they are concerned. Judea and Jerusalem they
have practically nothing to do with until they followed
the Master when He went up to die. They all begin
their story at the same point. " When Jesus heard
that John was delivered up He withdrew into Galilee."
For " He knew that the Pharisees had heard that He
was making even more disciples than John." Which

150 THE FIRST YEAR
meant that they were watching Him and that His ar
rest would speedily follow. And that would not suit
His plans. His arrest was to come too and His im
prisonment and death. But He could not have them
happening just now. His time was not yet come.
So He closed His pleasant ministry in the Judean
hills and passed through Samaria into Galilee. But
before following Him let us stay for a little to see the
last of John the Baptist.
The black fortress of Machaerus was one of the
southern defenses of Palestine. A grim, gloomy pile
of black lava rocks looking out over the desolate
waters of the Dead Sea. A fitting place this to break
the spirit of the man who had dared to say the truth to
Pharisee and Priest, to call adultery by its right name
though the adulterer was a king. Here through the
long hot summer lay the Baptist in his dungeon accus
tomed all his days to the free air of heaven. Above
him on the slopes was the palace of Herod. Across
the black waters lay the scene of his boyhood and the
wilderness where he had striven with his great
thoughts of Jehovah and his dreams of Messiah and
the Kingdom of God. Ah, that Kingdom of God
which seems so long in coming. And Messiah and the
Holy Dove that touched Him on the Jordan!
Sometimes his old disciples came to visit him in his
prison and bring him news of the outer world. The
only news he cared for was news of his Lord. These
disciples had been scattered after his arrest. Some had
obeyed his pointing and followed Jesus to Galilee. But
they were perplexed and rather disappointed. Noth
ing exciting had happened. Messiah did not take to
Himself His power and reign nor give any public sign

HOW THE BAPTIST DIED 151
of the Restoration of Israel. They would tell John
how He was moving about amongst the people, that
vast crowds were hanging on His words, but that He
was so little regardful of the characters He associated
with that the Pharisees called Him " the friend of pub
licans and sinners."
And again they would tell of His simple teaching,
the little story parables which He told to the people.
And one day after some startling miracles just after
the raising of the Widow's son at Nain I read that
" the disciples of John came and told him these
things." And the grave, silent prisoner listened, thinking —
brooding. Little they knew the concealed trouble in his heart.
A little later comes the startling revelation, a story
which on any less authority we should hardly have be
lieved. We shift the scene forward for a moment to Galilee
where Jesus is gone. In the crowd around Him are a
couple of tired, depressed men with the stains of travel
on them. Jesus turns to meet them as they draw near.
And in a moment the whole trouble comes out.
" Master, John the Baptist has sent us to ask, Art
thou he that should come or look we for another ? "
Art thou He that should come! Just think of it!
The proclaimer of the Christ expressing his doubt of
Him! Think of the artless honesty of a story that
records that so simply. Think what an agony of
doubt the man must be in to send such a question.
What shall we say? That he was a weakling?
That he had lost his faith and was unworthy to be the
herald of the Christ ? Ah ! no. The man who thinks

152 THE FIRST YEAR
that knows little of the psychology of doubt or the tor
ture of a great soul whose belief is shaken.
" Sad losses have ye met,
But mine is heavier yet,
For a believing heart is gone from me."
I think of that free son of the desert shut up for
months in his hot, gloomy dungeon. A temperamental
man, a man of moods with the solitude and restraint
getting on his nerves. The deepest religion could
hardly save one's faith in that black dungeon of Ma
chaerus. There are bright days when he can hear as
it were the voice of the Bridegroom. But there are
days of perplexity. For John is expecting things to
happen — to see, before he dies, his life-dream coming
true. And Jesus is moving so slowly. In John's day
as in ours — whether we want glory for Israel or right
eous victory over Germany — it is a keen test of faith
when God moves slowly.
To a great, lonely soul upheld all his life by a fore
seen vision, it is no light matter, at the end when death
is facing him, to have to doubt.
At any rate it was good to have one like Jesus to go
to. Ah! Jesus understood. He always understands.
The Jesus of the Temptation knew what morbid de
pression could do. He sends back to His poor servant
a message that he will understand of the fulfilment of
bright prophecies familiar to them both. " Go your
way and tell John what ye have seen and heard, the
blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up and
the poor have the good news preached unto them."
We know nothing further. We assume that John

HOW THE BAPTIST DIED 153
took fresh grip of his courage and hope. Probably he
was ashamed of his doubt and felt that it would lower
him in the eyes of his Lord. And we hope that some
body told him before he died what Jesus said about him
when the messengers were gone. "Among them that
are born of women there is no man greater than John."
Think of the generous Son of God saying that of
His poor servant just when he was so ashamed of him
self, and whisper this to your own heart, If it be pos
sible to say a generous word of me when I am ashamed
of myself I can trust Him to do it.
Never be afraid of Jesus in honest doubt and per
plexity. Doubt is only sinful when you are content
to doubt. If you cannot believe what else can you do
but doubt? Only do not rest in it. It is an unwhole
some atmosphere. Tell a wise friend. Tell your
clergy if you find them worthy. But especially tell
your Lord. Be frank and fearless with Him. He
will understand. So long as a man can do what the
Baptist did — go to Christ with his doubt, his faith has
not got very far wrong.
Now with renewed faith the poor captive can sing
his Nunc Dimittis even if death be near. And death
is very near. But he is to have some curious experi
ences before the end. One day King Herod surprises
him with a visit. Another day he sends for him to
talk to him in the palace. They get to know each
other. This Herod is a queer mixture — mean and
treacherous and sensual and cruel, but yet with some
good in him. I never yet knew a bad man without
some good in him. God made man in His image and
the worst of us has not yet entirely defaced it. That
bit of good is the one thing that God may get hold of.

154 THE FIRST YEAR
There was not much to get hold of in Herod. His
family history was bad. All his surroundings were
bad. Perhaps not all. If there was a woman in his
life just now dragging him down there had been an
other woman in his life long ago. Not his mother.
In the Acts of the Apostles, in the list of clergy at
Antioch I read of " Manaen, the foster-brother of
Herod." It sets me wondering about the humble
woman who reared these two boys, one to be an adul
terer, a tyrant, a murderer ; the other to be a preacher
of the Gospel of Christ. I wonder if Herod owed to
her the little good that was in him.
He liked John. He was influenced by him. His
conscience was stirred by him. I read that he heard
him gladly and did many things because of him. St.
Mark says that one of his reasons for keeping John in
prison was to save him from the murderous plots of
the Queen Herodias. For Herodias hated John as
only an insulted woman can hate. If no man can love
as a woman can no man also can hate as a woman can.
" Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." Herodias
had betrayed her first husband. She had carried on an
intrigue with his brother Herod while Herod was a
visitor in her house. And Herod's young Arab wife
heard it and fled to her father and so made room for
Herodias in the palace. And Herodias knew and the
whole court knew that this daring prophet had said
publicly to her husband, " It is not lawful for thee to
have her." Kings and Queens did not count much
with John where righteousness was concerned. But
Herodias did not forget. She could bide her time.
Three months later. It is Herod's birthday. The
stately hall in the palace of Machaerus is blazing

HOW THE BAPTIST DIED 155
with lights and around the board he has gathered a
brilliant assembly, his lords and captains and chief es
tates of Galilee. As the night goes on, the revelry
grows fast and furious. Even the prisoner in his
dungeon can hear the music and shouting. And at the
height of it all Herodias springs a new sensation by
sending in her beautiful daughter Salome to entertain
the guests. Salome is what we would call a " fast so
ciety girl." She can dance for them the sensual East
ern dances which no decent Jew would tolerate. The
guests are watching her graceful postures and applaud
ing to the echo. The half-drunken king is so pleased
that he swears before them all that she may ask what
she pleases even to the half of his kingdom.
The excited girl goes to consult her mother and re
turns to the boisterous company with a new hard look
in her eyes. And the plaudits and the laughter cease
and the drunken men are half sobered as they hear that
clear young voice in its cruel demand, " I will that thou
give me here in a charger the head of John the Bap
tist." Bad as they are they are troubled and ashamed.
They know that holy prophet is loved by the people and
they know very well why Herodias wants his head.
Even Herod in his cups is sobered by the horror.
Herodias has won out. She has trapped the king at
last. His depraved notions of honour leave him no
escape. " The king was exceeding sorry, nevertheless
for his oath's sake he would not reject her. And he
sent and beheaded John in the prison."
" The king was exceeding sorry." Aye, and he was
sorrier afterwards. When the curses of the populace
were ringing in his ears, " for all the people looked on
John as a prophet." The conscience which led him to

156 THE FIRST YEAR
listen and do many things because of John, that con
science now shook him over the pit of hell. Sleeping
or waking he thought of John. That dead blood
stained face was ever looking him in the eyes. When
he heard, a little later, of the miracles of Jesus, his con
science made him cry in superstitious dread, " It is
John come back." They told him it was perhaps
Elijah or one of the prophets. " No," he cried, " it is
John. It is John, whom I beheaded ; he is risen from
the dead and therefore mighty works do show them
selves in him ! "
Thus did his outraged conscience deal with King
Herod. And thus at last came John's signal for retirement
in the moonlight call of the headsman in his dungeon.
And the bleeding head was brought in before the rev
ellers and the girl carried the ghastly trophy to her
mother. And the disciples buried the headless body
and " went and told Jesus." And the brave, lonely
prophet passed into the Unseen to watch again for his
Lord till two years later straight from the Cross came
the triumphant Christ to preach His Gospel to the
dead, to unfurl His banner and set up His Cross in that
mysterious Land of the Departed. There John met
again " the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of
the world."

BOOK IV
Capernaum

HOW JESUS CAME TO CAPERNAUM
WE now come to another crisis in the story,
what the Evangelists seem to regard as the
opening of the story proper, the beginning
of the public ministry in Galilee. They indicate it by
a bold landmark. " Now when John was delivered
up Jesus came to Galilee preaching the Gospel of God
and saying, The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God
is at hand. Repent ye and believe the Gospel."
If our Bibles were properly edited, this crisis would
be indicated by a broad space and the beginning of a
new section. The reader should mark it carefully in
his Bible.
This public ministry is what the Evangelists are
mainly concerned with. All that went before they
treat as preparatory, the solemn background to their
story. We have been studying that stupendous back
ground, the age-long preparation for His coming, the
eternal purpose in that kindly world from which He
came, the centuries of Jewish prophecy, the eager ex
pectation of Messiah, the pagan world unconsciously
setting the stage for Him. Then His birth, His boy
hood, the manhood of the young Carpenter with His
dreams of the future. Then the great day when He
159

160 CAPERNAUM
came forth from His seclusion, the Baptism, the
Temptation, the first meeting with His young com
rades, the first visit to Jerusalem, the happy mission
tour amongst the Judean hills brought to a close at
the arrest of the Baptist.
In the Evangelists' plan all this is but the Prologue
or Preface. They point back to it. They start out
from it. But their main story begins at this definite
point. The new story will bring us to a new town, not
generally prominent as it should be in our thoughts
about Jesus. There are four towns prominent in His
life. Bethlehem where He was born, Nazareth
where He was reared up, Jerusalem where He died,
and that little fisher town where we are now to live
with Him for more than a year, the centre of the Gali
lean life, Capernaum by the Lake.
This is the story of Capernaum.
The main sources for this Galilean story are the
first three Gospels. St. John does not help us much
here. The story had been sufficiently told already.
Here seems a fitting place for a note on these first
three Gospels. Notice first that they cannot accurately
be called Lives of our Lord. They are rather col
lections of reminiscences, incidents and discourses
treasured in the minds of the first disciples, but not al
ways set down in consecutive order.
The first generation of Christians had no consecutive
written life of Our Lord. Most of them only knew
what they learned every Sunday in church in separate
portions like our " Gospel for the day," and the stories
that were afloat generally through the community,
gathered from men who had seen and heard the Lord.

HOW JESUS CAME TO CAPERNAUM 161
They knew the order of events at the beginning, the
Incarnation, the Baptism, the Temptation. They
knew the order of events at the end, the journey to
Jerusalem, the Trial, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection,
the Ascension. But of the history between, the cen
tral story of His life on earth, while they knew famil
iarly and cherished in their hearts the separate incidents
and discourses, they only knew them as separate inci
dents and discourses, without being always able to
place them in their right order. And the result of
this appears in the written Gospels, which are simply
a record of the unwritten Gospel as the first Christians
were taught it. The first three Gospels represent ver
sions of the Life of Our Lord as it was taught in the
region where each Evangelist lived, supplemented by
information gathered by the writer from eye-witnesses
or from other sources.
The first Gospel written was that of St. Mark, and
it will surely make more vivid and interesting his story
of these Galilean days if we keep in mind that it is
mainly a record of the story as St. Peter used to tell
it. St. Mark had little personal knowledge of the
Lord's life, but he was in close touch with the man who
knew it more intimately than any other. Peter was
his close friend. " Marcus my son," he calls him.
Here is the statement generally accepted by scholars,
which comes from Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, just
after St. John's death.
" Mark, the interpreter of Peter, wrote down ac
curately, yet not in order, all that Peter told as said or
done by Christ. For Mark himself did not hear the
Lord nor was a disciple of His but ... of Peter who

162 CAPERNAUM
used to give teachings to suit the immediate wants (of
his hearers) but not as making a connected narrative
. . . so that Mark made no mistake. For he took
care of one thing, not to leave out anything he heard or
give anything in a wrong way."
We might almost call his book The Gospel of St.
Peter, and thinking of it thus we find many interesting
little touches suggesting Peter behind it. For in
stance, as we think of Jesus in Capernaum lodged in
Peter's house and read that one morning He rose up
for prayer " a great while before day," we can well
imagine Peter as he told it remembering how he
heard Him that morning moving about in the next
room. St. Matthew, we learn on the same authority, wrote
in native Aramaic a collection of Logia or Sayings of
Our Lord, which was afterwards expanded by him or
by others into our present Gospel, using a good deal of
St. Mark's material.
St. Luke, we assume, learned his Gospel first in his
native church, probably Antioch, but he has a good
deal of material from St. Matthew and St. Mark and,
doubtless, from the many little sketches that he refers
to in his first chapter. We shall see later on that he
learned much also from the many disciples whom he
met during his attendance on St. Paul, men who must
have largely helped him in that unique section in the
middle of his Gospel, The Memories of the Jerusalem
Road. In all three Gospels we find related much in the same
way the doings and sayings of the Lord so familiar
to us, but not always in the same order, which makes
it difficult to tell consecutively the story of this Gali
lean ministry.

HOW JESUS CAME TO CAPERNAUM 163
Now we are ready for the story.
The time is the year a. d. 27. The scene is the
region bordering the Lake of Galilee and the centre of
it His home, Capernaum by the Lake.
The previous section closed with His tour in the
South through the Judean villages. We saw Him
strike northward to Galilee " when John was delivered
up," but instead of following Him we delayed a little
in the South to watch the fate of the Baptist. We are
now free to follow Him to the scene of His public
ministry beside the Galilean Sea.
Doubtless there were many happenings on His way
to Galilee which we shall never hear of in this life.
St. John recalls one as they passed through Samaria
into Galilee, the Samaritan woman at the well.
I think when they reached the Galilean border at
the crossroads He bade good-bye to His companions
(probably Peter and Andrew and Philip and perhaps
John). He was going westward, perhaps home to
Nazareth. They had to go eastward, home to their
fishing. They had been a good while away already
and their work was waiting. We must remember that
theirs was yet but an unattached companionship. They
had not yet been called to any definite mission. They
had just had some happy months with Jesus. He had
taken them with Him on that pleasant summer wan
dering on the hills and had won from them that hero
worship which only enthusiastic young men could give.
And they would never forget those days.
I think of them at the border bidding Him good-bye
and going off happy and excited to tramp over the
hills home to Capernaum. For they had hopes at
least, if not a definite promise, that they should one
day be allowed to help Him in His great life-work,

164 CAPERNAUM
and they probably knew that ^before long He would
follow them to the Lake.
Doubtless it was part of His plan and an important
part of their education that they should be away from
Him for a few months. Jesus had a great respect for
men's personality. He never rushed people. He liked
them to have time to think. This waiting time was
good for thinking. I picture them daily at their fish
ing, looking for His coming, talking of Him to each
other, and thinking about Him and learning to love
Him more and to miss His presence, and so growing
in unconscious preparation for the great work of the
future. And Jesus took His solitary way westward along
the Nazareth road, and so passes out of our sight.
There was no one to tell what happened in those
weeks. So far as we can judge He was alone, as
much as the people would let Him be. For His fame
was spreading and the men of Galilee were telling of
the happenings in Jerusalem at the Passover, " for
they also had been at the Feast." I suppose He wanted
time to think out His plans. I suppose in the syna
gogues and evening gatherings when the village people
came around Him He told them wonderful things
about the Father's care for them and His project of a
Kingdom of God to come on earth. But we are not
told anything except one little incident in St. John's
recollections. One day on His wanderings He came to Cana. I
suppose He stayed with " Nathaniel of Cana of Gali
lee," the man whom He had drawn into the circle of
His friendship on that memorable visit a few months
before. I can imagine Nathaniel receiving Him with

HOW JESUS CAME TO CAPERNAUM 165
reverent joy as He came in tired one evening. I can see
him the next morning showing Him his garden and the
seat under the fig tree where a spiritual crisis had come
to him. And have you any doubt that He got a de
lighted welcome that day from the little bride of Cana
at whose wedding He had turned the water into wine ?
It was pleasant to have a day or two to rest among such
friends. Not much resting time remained. For already the
news of His arrival had spread far and wide. All
Galilee was excited. Twenty miles away Capernaum
was on tiptoe of expectation, for the young fisher dis
ciples were home with exciting news. They told that
He, whose fame was already spreading through Gali
lee, was soon coming to their town. And the cripple
in his pain and the mother with her sick child were
wondering hopefully what might happen when the
Great Healer came.
Here comes in the incident related by St. John.
While Jesus was at Cana of Galilee that day with
Nathaniel and the little bride of Cana, twenty miles
away in Capernaum, in the upper town where the
wealthier people lived, was a very sorrowful home. A
" nobleman " or courtier of Herod was living there
and his only child lay dying. He heard the town
rumour that Jesus was coming. But He would come
too late. One can imagine the passionate cry of the
mother, " Do not wait ! He is at Cana already. Who
knows but He might come to save our child ! "
That evening he is in Cana post-haste. " Master,
could you come ? My boy is dying ! "
It was always a disappointment to the Lord that
nobody seemed to want Him except as a healer. No
body seemed to care about His Gospel and His King-

166 CAPERNAUM
dom. Sadly He looks at the man representing the
general unspiritual attitude. " Except ye see signs
and wonders ye will not believe."
The poor father does not understand. He does not
want to understand. " O, Sir, come down ere my
child die ! " Jesus could not resist that. In a mo
ment His power-thought reached that distant home
and He looked into the eyes of the tortured man. " Go
thy way, thy son liveth." Something in that look made
it impossible to doubt. And next morning as his reek
ing horses were in sight of Capernaum he met the
joyful message from his wife. "Tell me when?"
" Yesterday, sir, at the seventh hour the fever left
him." And Herod's officer knew that at that very hour
Jesus had said, " Thy son liveth." And himself be
lieved and his whole house. They gained far more
than the life of their boy. That family, who had
never seen His face, through gratitude for His kindly
thought of their child became His first disciples in
Capernaum. Through gratitude God gets His best
disciples. " What shall I render to the Lord for all
His benefits which He hath done unto me ? "
So Herod's officer and his family pass out of the
story. Perhaps. But here is an interesting conjec
ture. Only two of Herod's people are in the later story.
Years after we find Manaen, Herod's foster brpther, a
companion of St. Paul. But long before that we find
"Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, who
ministered to Him of her substance," who lingered at
the sepulchre on the Resurrection day, mourning for
the dead Christ. One wonders if she was the wife of
that officer of Herod, the mother of that little boy who

HOW JESUS CAME TO CAPERNAUM 167
was sick at Capernaum. For then, as now, the moth
ers are always those whom Jesus most easily gets.
Very soon the nobleman's family had the oppor
tunity of thanking Him in person. Before me as I
write is a photograph of the lake road as it leaves
Cana, winding down along the slopes to Capernaum.
It runs through rough, open country with a beauty
of its own as the wild shrubs break into flower in the
springtime. I can picture the " nobleman " there
urging on his horses, impatient to get back to his boy.
I can see the Lord Himself some days later walking
down the same road to begin His public ministry in
Galilee. A few miles on an opening in the hills shows
the Lake lying below and Chorazin, Bethsaida and
Capernaum clustered on its western shore. I picture
Peter and Andrew and Philip and others meeting Him
on the road, and the Capernaum townspeople staring
and gathering in groups as they watched their neigh
bours coming with the stranger Rabbi.
And there is a tax-gatherer named Matthew in his
office by the public road watching, perhaps, that day the
coming of the Stranger. Years afterwards he re
membered and realized its importance and wrote in his
Gospel of the time, " when Jesus came to Capernaum
by the sea in the borders of Zebulon and Naphtali,
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah,
The land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, towards
the sea beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The
people which sat in darkness saw a great light, and to
them which sat in the region and shadow of death, to
them did the Light spring up."
So Jesus came to Capernaum.

II
CAPERNAUM BY THE SEA
CAPERNAUM by the Sea. The little fisher
town of Galilee. The second home of Jesus.
The scene of the most familiar stories in the
Gospels. Once the most favoured spot on earth.
" Thou Capernaum, which art exalted up to Heaven
. . . if the mighty works which have been done in
thee had been done in Sodom it would have remained
to this day."
To follow Jesus in His Galilean ministry you must
see Galilee, you must see the Lake, you must see
Capernaum.1 Galilee was the wild highland province in the
North amid the mountains. Galilee was to Judea what
Scotland was to England in olden days. The North
and South disliked each other. The Southern regarded
the Northern as an inferior people. " Out of Galilee
ariseth no prophet." " Can any good thing come out
of Nazareth ? " They despised their lack of culture.
They sneered at the rough burr of the Galilean accent.
A Galilean in Jerusalem in the days of Our Lord was
as noticeable in speech as a Scotchman in London.
They detected Peter at once. " Thou art a Galilean,
thy speech bewrayeth thee."
1 1 am assuming what most Biblical scholars believe, that the
mound of ruins called Tel-Hum at the N. W. corner of the
Lake marks the site of Capernaum. 1 68

CAPERNAUM BY THE SEA 169
And the free mountain people resented this attitude.
They were haughty as the proud Highlander to the
Lowlander of the plains. And with some reason. They
were the patriots, the rebels, while the Judeans sub
mitted tamely to oppression. " Their country," says
Josephus, " was never without brave men." They dif
fered from the Southern, says the Jewish Talmud, " in
caring for honour rather than money." Perhaps that
was one reason why Jesus chose Galilee as the cradle of
His Gospel. A Galilean Himself, He went south after
His Baptism. He tested Jerusalem. He toured for
some months in the land of Judea. Perhaps He was
deciding between the North and the South. And when
He had decided, when the time was come, " He went
north into Galilee preaching the Gospel of God and
saying, The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God
is at hand. Repent ye and believe the Gospel."
Galilee was proud, too, of its greater prosperity.
This " land of Asher and Naphtali " had water in
abundance, the rivers from Lebanon, the springs among
the hills. " Asher his bread shall be fat,
He shall yield royal dainties."
The country was widely cultivated and thronged with
villages. It was surrounded by wealthy Gentile na
tions. The great roads of the old world traversed its
plains. The romance of them was not then spoiled
by smoky railways.
These great white roads, full of colour and move
ment, stand out prominently in the picture. There
was the great caravan road between Damascus and the
Mediterranean, the famous " Way of the Sea " that
Isaiah tells of, " the Way of the Sea over Jordan in

170 CAPERNAUM
Galilee of the nations." The Romans paved it and
took tolls of its traffic, and in one of its toll places, as
it passes Capernaum, Matthew sat at the receipt of
custom. There was the broad eastern road coming
straight from Arabia. And the Great South Road to
Egypt, where the Midianite merchants long ago picked
up Joseph on the way and sold him to Potiphar, the
captain of the guard, where merchant caravans with
their lumbering camels, and soldiers and officials and
travellers from many lands were passing every day
since the time of Abram.
The Great Roads kept Galilee in touch with the
romantic outer world. Perhaps Jesus thought of that
too when choosing His stage. " Of all things in
Galilee," says a famous recent traveller,1 " the sight of
these immemorial roads taught and moved me most,
not only because they were trodden by the patriarchs,
and the chariots of Assyria and Rome have rolled along
them, but because it was up and down these roads Jesus
saw passing the immortal figures in His parables.
Along them came the merchantmen seeking goodly
pearls, the King departing to receive a kingdom, the
friend on a journey, the householder arriving suddenly
upon his servants, the prodigal son coming back from
the far-off country." The far-off country! What a
meaning has this frequent phrase of Christ, when you
stand in Galilee by one of her great roads, roads which
so easily carried willing feet from the pious homes of
Asher and Naphtali to the harlot cities of Phoenicia,
roads which were in touch with Rome and Babylon.
So in making the background for the picture of
Jesus in Galilee, think of the mountain tribes in their
gay, sunny land, of the hum of their busy life, of the
1 George Adam Smith, Geography of the Holy Land.

CAPERNAUM BY THE SEA 171
men of all nations passing daily across the stage out
into the unknown romantic world, the " Far Country."
You will the better understand His crowded, colourful
life and the multitudes springing up around Him at
every great crisis.
But you must see the Lake of Galilee, the heart and
centre of it all, and the home which He had chosen,
Capernaum by the Lake.
First see the Lake of Galilee. See a very deep,
central valley cutting Palestine from North to South,
through which the river Jordan flows. Down in this
deep valley near its beginning in Galilee, down at the
base of the mountains, down deep, six hundred and
eighty feet below the level of the ocean, with the land
beside it rising in cliffs and terraces, lies the Galilean
Lake. Quite a little lake, about twelve miles by six.
It is hard to realize that around that little lake was
staged the central story of humanity.
To the tourist of to-day it is a dreary, barren place,
though with a wild, desolate beauty of its own. It is
sadly changed since the old days. For the curse of
Turkish rule has been on the land for centuries. The
sturdy men of Galilee were taxed out of existence.
The farmers were crushed and had no heart to work.
The trees were cut down ruthlessly and no man re
planted. A land of oppressed people, a land denuded
of trees is bound to go like Galilee.
For one thousand years the Christian world has
felt the shame of it, that the sacred ground where the
Son of God had walked should be in the cruel hands of
the infidel. Eight hundred years ago Peter the Her
mit went forth throughout Europe to stir the knights

172 CAPERNAUM
of Christendom to the First Crusade. Another at
tempt followed and another and another, seven Cru
sades in all. Their story is among the great romances
of history, associated with heroic names familiar to us
all, Frederick Barbarossa and Baldwin of Jerusalem
and the Sultan Saladin and Richard of the Lionheart.
We have even the story of a Children's Crusade in the
Middle Ages, a beautiful, pathetic tale, a host of boy
enthusiasts setting out amid the applause of multitudes,
only to die on the road or be captured by the pirates
of Algiers.
The Crusades ended in failure. The Turk held his
grip. But even as I write a marvellous thing has
happened. After the seven Crusades, after one thou
sand years of failure, England has sent out the eighth,
a new Crusade. And England has won! Truly we
are living in wonderful times, so wonderful that we
have almost ceased to wonder. At the close of the
Great War, amid the shouts of victory and the crash of
falling empires, we have almost lost sight of this great
thing that has happened. The Last Crusade is fought.
The Holy Land is free. Palestine has its chance once
more. Who can tell what lies hidden in the future.
Will Palestine repeat its Old Testament story? Will
it be peopled again by the ancient race? Will it ever
bloom again as the Garden of the Lord, the beautiful
land which Jesus knew?
For in the days when Jesus knew it it was a very
different Galilee. Josephus and other travellers have
told of its beauty. In the lands now bare of trees
were beautiful woods. Where marshes are now there
were noble gardens. Where a few wretched ruined
villages stand to-day was a fringe of prosperous towns
bordering the Lake. The traveller to-day sees only a

CAPERNAUM BY THE SEA 173
few lonely boats on the water. Then there was a
busy fishing fleet and king's barges and crowds of
pleasure boats from royal Tiberias and the lake towns.
There was a very prosperous fishing trade. The
lake fish had a high reputation in Jerusalem and the
Syrian towns, and even as far off as Rome. Vegeta
tion around the Lake was so brilliant that it was almost
looked on as a miracle. For Nature, says Josephus,
collected here the plants of every clime. Down by
the hot lake shore grew tropical fruits, and terrace by
terrace ascending gave the trees of many climates bear
ing fruit and flowers for ten months of the year.
Jehovah, said the Rabbis, created seven seas, but the
sea of Galilee was His delight.
Not the desolate Palestine of to-day, but this bright,
sunny picture is the background that belongs to the
Evangelists' story.
Now let us locate Capernaum in the picture. Im
agine yourself back in the days of Our Lord. Stand
at the foot of the Lake at Tarichae, the village of the
Pickleries, where the fish were prepared for export to
the great towns. Look northward to Mt. Hermon
with its brilliant crown of snow. Then, in a boat,
move northward along the western shore. Passing
bright villages whose names do not concern us, we
come in about six miles to the lovely white city of
Tiberias, the home of Herod, the political capital of
Galilee. A gay, festive, half-pagan town, bright with
uniforms of soldiers and officials and the train of the
court, with its fast society, its painted courtesans and
the gay, wicked, holiday life of a fashionable Roman
watering place. Behind it is the sanatorium of Em
maus, where rich patients from all lands came to the

174 CAPERNAUM
hot springs. If we ever wonder at the number of
sick mentioned in the Capernaum story, we must re
member that the sanatorium of Emmaus was only a
few miles away.
Moving north from Tiberias to the northwest cor
ner of the Lake, the cliffs gradually recede, leaving
room for the rich plain of Gennesareth. Just where
they begin to recede lies the village of Magdala, whence
Mary the Magdalene comes into the story. Just two
miles beyond lie close together Chorazin, Bethsaida,
Capernaum. The names are only too familiar. " Wo
unto thee, Chorazin ! Wo unto thee, Bethsaida ! And
thou, Capernaum! which art exalted to Heaven."
Drop anchor there a few yards from the beach, just
beyond the Capernaum landing-stage, where the big,
clumsy fishing boats are pushing out to sea and the
sailors are shouting to each other, and merry children
are laughing and building castles in the sand. You
are just about where Jesus told the Parable of the
Sower, where He used to " enter into the boat and
pray them to thrust out a little from the land, lest the
multitude should throng Him, and He taught the
people out of the boat."
Straight before you lies Capernaum amid its trees
and gardens. High on the slope is the inevitable
Roman barracks, hated of the people; but the present
chief of the garrison is a friend, a pagan centurion in
sympathy with the religion of Jehovah. " He loveth
our nation and hath built us our synagogue." In the
street below is the white synagogue which he built,
where Jesus preached on several Sabbaths. Back
among the trees in the bright gardens on the hill are
the " up-town " people's houses. There lived Jairus,
the ruler of the synagogue, and " the nobleman whose

CAPERNAUM BY THE SEA 175
son was sick at Capernaum." And in one of these
homes Jesus went to dine with the wealthy Simon the
Pharisee that day when a sinful woman " washed His
feet with her tears and wiped them with the hairs of
her head."
Now run your eye along the water-front past the
crooked streets and the open-fronted shops, past the
little harbour with its furled brown sails. There is
Bethsaida, which means the Fisher's Town, practically
almost a part of Capernaum. Old Zebedee lives there,
a master fisherman, owning several boats, with his sons
James and John and their mother Salome, whom we
shall meet by and by as the ambitious " mother of
Zebedee's children," seeking high places in the King
dom for her sons.
There on the strand is Simon Peter's house, where
he lives with his family. His wife's mother lives with
them and his young brother Andrew. Take special
notice of that house of Peter, for behind one of its
windows is the sacred little room where Jesus lodged
whenever He was in Capernaum. Through the roof
of that house the palsied man was lowered with ropes
tied to his bed. On that bit of strand before the door
the Capernaum folk crowded on that famous day
when " At even ere the sun was set
The sick, O Lord, around Thee lay."
Look on still to the right where the broad white
Roman road, the Way of the Sea, from Damascus to
the Mediterranean, skirts the northern shore of the
lake, where all day long are passing soldiers and
travellers and Syrian caravans of Eastern goods for
Europe. The Romans collected taxes from them as

176 CAPERNAUM
they passed. And beside that road, just where it
touches the town, see the golden eagle standard mark
ing the Roman custom-house where one Matthew
whom we know, the son of Alphaeus, sits at the receipt
of custom.
Now turn right round and look straight across the
water at the view which Peter saw whenever he
opened his door, the view which lay as background in
the memory of the Apostles when in after days they
told the story of Jesus in Galilee.
Across the lake, six miles away, is the rough wild
country of the Gerasenes, rising in slopes and terraces
to the skyline. Thither the boat was headed every
time when Jesus asked, as He so often did, " Let us
go unto the other side." Somewhere on these moun
tains He continued all night in prayer to God. There
He found the mad demoniac wandering among the
tombs. Down these bare slopes " the herd of swine
ran violently down a steep place and were choked in
the sea," and the people said that the devils had entered
into them. At the southern end were the moors,
famous in Jewish history, where Sisera hurried to cool
his parched throat at the tent of Jael the wife of
Heber the Kenite. At the northern end is the " desert
place " where tradition places the feeding of the five
thousand who followed the Lord when He took His
tired disciples on holiday. " Come ye apart into a
desert place and rest a while."
And down below, as in a mirror, the whole picture
is repeated in the still waters of the Lake. In these
waters the disciples earned their daily bread. There
Jesus used to teach the people out of the boat; there
was the miraculous draught of fishes; there in one of

CAPERNAUM BY THE SEA 177
its sudden storms the frightened disciples were "toil
ing" in rowing, and the Lord came to them in the
darkness walking on the sea. And there, too, on one
of these headlands that morning after the Resurrection
the Master, whom they had seen crucified, called from
the shore and John cried to his comrades, " It is the
Lord," and Peter flung his fisher coat about him and
rushed to Him, wading through the water.
Get that picture clearly in your minds, the busy
fishing towns with the boats on the strand, the dark
blue lake in its framing of hills, the rough country of
the Gerasenes at the further side, and you have the
setting of the central story in the Gospels when Jesus
came to Capernaum.

Ill
THE CALL OF THE FOUR
ST. MARK writes as the beginning of the
Capernaum story the calling of the first apostles.
Which looks as if Peter, to whom it meant so
much, had told him that it was the beginning. It is a
very brief, rapid little sketch. St. Matthew repeats it
almost verbatim. The Antioch Church had evidently
a fuller account, which St. Luke gives us. We have
to weld the two together.
Surely it was a delight to His young fisherman
friends to meet their beloved Master again that day
when He entered into Capernaum. But the joy of the
meeting and the claims of hospitality must give way to
the pressing call of their work. A night or two later
I see them start off fishing with their partners. A
wild night on the Lake, " fisherman's luck," no fish in
the usual haunts, the nets torn and covered with sand.
For I see in the morning two battered boats beached
on the shore and " the fishermen were gone out of
them washing their nets." And Jesus is out already on
the beach. And the townspeople are gathering around
Him, respectfully curious, " pressing on Him to hear
the Word of God." Not yet clamouring for miracles.
They were too shy of the Stranger yet. And Jesus
liked them best that way, for He had greater blessings
for men than even healing their sick.
178

THE CALL OF THE FOUR 179
I see Him entering into one of the boats, which was
Simon's, and He prayed him to thrust out a little
from the land. And the people crowded to the water's
edge, looking out over the sunny lake to the yellow
hills of Gadara. And He taught the people out of the
boat. And when the teaching was over something hap
pened. In the midst of the great things Jesus could
think of the small things. He could think of those
tired fishermen and their profitless night's work. He
knew what it meant to poor working men. So " when
He had left speaking He said unto Simon, Put out into
the deep and let down your nets for a draught. And
Simon said, Master, we have toiled all night and took
nothing, but at Thy word I will let down the net."
It was not the weary acquiescence of a tired, despond
ent man. He knew the Master too well for that. It
meant, " We did no good last night, we see less chance
to-day, but if You tell us that is a different matter."
"And when they had this done they enclosed a
great multitude of fishes, and their nets were breaking.
And they beckoned unto their partners in the other
boat that they should come and help them, and they
filled both the boats so that they began to sink. But
Simon Peter, when he saw it, fell down at Jesus'
knees saying, Depart from me for I am a sinful man,
O Lord ! For he was amazed and they that were with
him at the draught of fishes which they had taken.
And so were also James and John who were partners
with Simon."
Keep in mind all through this story that one chief
purpose He had was to train the men to whom He
would commit His great project. Already He had

180 CAPERNAUM
begun to train them. Already He had begun to amaze
them. They would be more amazed still. For as yet
they had not even begun to learn the greater wonder
that He who had just filled their nets by the magic of
His will was He who created the, fishes of the sea and
whatsoever walketh in the paths of the sea.
Is not it just like Peter, that impetuous cry, so like
his confused utterance later on the Mount of Trans
figuration, " not knowing what he said." " Depart
from me ! " It was the very last thing that he wanted.
It was just the awe of a deeply wrought soul feeling
his weakness in the wonder of that power and his sin
fulness in the presence of that pure white holiness. He
had seen much already to call forth that feeling in
Jesus' presence. It was something much more than
the miracle of the fishes that brought Peter to his knees
that day.
Well for us all often that Jesus does not take us at
our word. " Depart from me for I am a sinful man."
" Nay," said Jesus, " fear not, from henceforth thou
shalt catch men." Which makes us suspect at once
that He had a deeper purpose in this miracle than
merely compensation for a bad night's fishing. Al
ready He was training them for discouraging days to
come. Never had it seemed less likely that fish should
be caught. But Jesus was with them and their nets
were bursting. He meant it as a lesson. Did they
look back on it in after days as a parable of encourage
ment ? " From henceforth thou shalt catch men." Did
they remember it that wonderful Pentecost day when
Peter told of the Christ to that most unlikely crowd
in Jerusalem who had just crucified the Lord, with
the startling result that out of that crowd " there was

THE CALL OF THE FOUR 181
added to them that day about three thousand souls."
Three thousand souls! The nets were bursting! I
can imagine them that night flushed with wonder and
excitement. " Oh, could it be that He was standing
there to-day invisible ! Peter, you remember our great
haul in Capernaum that day when there seemed no
hope of fish ? Did He mean this ? He said we should
catch men. He said He would be with us always.
Was He really beside us to-day? Are the old days
come back ? "
" From henceforth thou shalt catch men." No
doubt Peter knew that this was a reference to the call
which they expected. And surely he who fell at Jesus'
feet, bowed down by his sinfulness, rose all the fitter
for his holy task. But this was no fit moment for
such solemn call. These were no cloistered saints who
could sit at leisure indulging in spiritual emotions.
They were rough fishers at their work. The boats
had to be cleaned. The nets had to be mended. The
haul had to be packed in boxes for the fish-dealers in
Tiberias and Jerusalem. So it was by and by when
that work was done that Jesus said to Simon and
Andrew his brother, " Come ye after me and I will
make you to become fishers of men." And going on
to the next boat where the partners were mending
their broken nets, " He called James the son of Zebe
dee and John his brother, and they left their father
Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants and went
after Him."
They took this as their definite call, not as mere
disciples, mere learners any more, but as helpers and
comrades beside Him in His life-work. It was the
further step in what had begun that day when they

182 CAPERNAUM
met Him by the Jordan six months ago, when two of
them sat alone with Him for hours in His little room
and heard of His enthusiastic plans for the future of
the world and all life was changed for them forever.
There is the beginning of the Kingdom of God!
Was ever a more weak unpromising beginning ? Think
how it would appear that day to any sensible man of
the world. Five men walking up the strand in an
obscure fishing village. One of them an enthusiast
imagining himself sent to found a Kingdom of God.
The other four, ignorant young fishermen under his
spell without any idea of where they were going or
what they had to do. And the bewildered Zebedee
sitting in the boat with his hired servants shaking his
wise old head and wondering how soon those foolish
boys of his would have sense and return to their work.
But look back on it to-day in the light of the later
history ! Surely " the foolishness of God is wiser than
men, the weakness of God is stronger than men."

IV
THE FIRST SABBATH
SO far as we can judge it is the following Sabbath
in Capernaum which makes St. Mark's next
picture, when Jesus made His first public ap
pearance in church and made His first public declara
tion in Galilee concerning His mission. Morning serv
ice in the Synagogue was usually at nine o'clock. And
people were in time in those days. " Walk fast to
church," said the Rabbis ; " walk slowly home that
you may have time to think." I see the village people
that morning on every path that led to the Centurion's
new white Synagogue on the hill. Not very different:
except in dress from the people in our own day in any
country town going to church. The farmers and
fisherfolk are coming with their families. Old Zebe
dee is there, awkward in his Sabbath clothes, with his
wife and his big sons James and John. Andrew is
walking with Peter and his family, and probably the
Master is walking with them. And Jairus, the ruler of
the Synagogue, from the upper town and " the noble
man whose son was sick at Capernaum," and surely
with him the mother of the child to see and hear Him
who had saved their boy. The streets are thronged
and bright with colour. The Synagogue to-day will
be crowded to the doors. For they know that the
Stranger is sure to be in church, and it is the custom
for the ruler of the Synagogue to invite any prominent
visitor to preach. 183

184 CAPERNAUM
Now they are in church. If there were time I
could almost report for you the whole of the church
service. The chief Minister rises to begin the prayers.
Listen to the opening prayer as Jesus probably heard
it that morning: —
" Blessed be thou, O Lord, King of the world, who
formest the light and createst the darkness, Who makest
peace and createst everything. . . . Blessed be the
Lord our God for the glory of His handiwork and for
the light-giving lights which He has made for His praise,
etc. Amen."
Then the second prayer: —
" With great love hast Thou loved us, O Lord our God,
and with overflowing pity hast Thou pitied us, our
Father and our King. For the sake of our fathers who
trusted in Thee . . . have mercy upon us and teach
us. Enlighten our eyes in Thy Law. . . . Unite our
hearts to love and fear Thy Name. For Thou art a
God who preparest salvation and hast chosen us from
among all nations. . . . Blessed be the Lord who in
love chose His people Israel ! Amen."
So the prayers went on and after the prayers came
the reciting of the old Jewish creed, the " Shema,"
" Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, etc.,"
and after the Creed rolled out the sonorous response of
the people. Jesus is joining in it and Peter and
Zebedee with that crowded congregation.
" True it is that Thou art our God and the God of our
fathers, our King and the King of our fathers, our
Saviour and the Saviour of our fathers. . . .
Jehovah shall reign world without end! Blessed be the
Lord who saveth Israel. Amen/'

THE FIRST SABBATH 185
Then you can see Jesus and the whole congregation
bowing their heads for the six Benedictions, begin
ning:-— "Blessed be the Lord our God, the God of our fathers
the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. . .
Blessed art Thou, Jehovah, the shield of Abraham. .
Blessed art Thou, Jehovah, who quickenest the dead,
. . . Thou art Holy and Thy Name is Holy. Amen
Blessed art Thou, Jehovah, God, the only One. Amen.'
So proceeds the liturgical part of the service. Then
came " the First and Second Lessons." When the
Liturgy was over I see the Minister approach the Ark
and reverently take the Roll of the Law and then the
Roll of the Prophets. At the reading of the Prophets,
" Here followeth the sermon," if there be present any
Rabbi or prominent person. And here I see the Min
ister looking at the Visitor in Peter's seat, " Sir, if
you have any word of exhortation for the people, say
on. Amid tense expectation He comes forward through
the crowded church. He begins by reading the lesson
from the Prophets. It would be very interesting to
have a report of that sermon. Quite probably we have
if we only knew where to look for it. For we have
in the Gospels many records of His sayings separate
and disconnected without any note of time or place.
For instance, St. Matthew, whose chief object was to
collect " the Sayings," seems to have gathered quite a
number of them after the Sermon on the Mount. It is
not at all likely that all the sayings in four long chap
ters of St. Matthew were said at one time. Long ser
mons were not His custom. As we look through these
sections for that opening manifesto in Capernaum, we

186 CAPERNAUM
find there the identical words that St. Mark uses in
this story of the Capernaum Church Service, " They
were astonished at His doctrine, for He taught them
as one having authority and not as the Scribes."
And some of the preceding words would fit in quite
naturally in this opening sermon of His Gospel in
Galilee. We can well imagine Him, after proclaiming
the Kingdom, guarding Himself against a suspicion
that attached to Him that He was overthrowing the
old Law. " Think not that I am come to destroy the
Law and the Prophets. I am not come to destroy but
to fulfil." Then with calm authority He proceeds to
lift that old Law on to a higher and nobler meaning,
surely a daring thing to do. " Ye have heard in the
Law that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt
not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of
the judgment. But I say unto you, Whosoever is
angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judg
ment. Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt
not commit adultery, Thou shalt not forswear thyself,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, etc., I pro
claim to you higher and deeper meanings for all these
laws." That was a startling, daring, authoritative way to
treat the Bible, " I say unto you." If we are right in
seeking here the Capernaum discourse, we can well
understand St. Mark telling of this congregation at
Capernaum, " They were astonished at His doctrine,
for He taught them as one having authority and not
as the Scribes."
Jesus never got that sermon finished. For even as
He spoke there arose a wild disturbance. There was .
a lunatic there, a demoniac, listening, a man with a

THE FIRST SABBATH 187
double personality, his own and that of the evil spirit
which controlled him. The excitement was too much
for his poor, clouded brain. " Ea ! Ea ! What have
we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? I know
thee who thou art, the Holy One of God ! "
You can imagine the disturbance in that crowded
church, the frightened women, the people springing to
their feet. But as they look at Jesus they grow quiet
at once. His calm, pitying eyes are on the poor,
demented creature. Then came His words of stern
authority who came to destroy the power of the Evil
One, " Hold thy peace ! Come out of him ! "
"And when the unclean spirit had torn him and
cried with a loud voice, he came out of him. And
they were all amazed. What new thing is this?
With authority He commandeth the unclean spirits
and they obey Him ! "
The Sabbath is not over yet. It was an excited
crowd that walked home from church that day, talking
of the things which they had seen and heard. James
and John are walking now with the Lord and with
Peter. We learn from Jewish writers that in spite
of their rigid Sabbatarian notions, what we should call
" Sunday dinner " was a hospitable custom of the
day. Apparently James and John were invited to
dinner in Peter's house to meet the Master. So Jesus
came home down the harbour road " to the house of
Simon and Andrew with James and John."
But the Sunday dinner was not ready. The house
was in confusion. The "great fever," the common
scourge of that hot, low lakeside, had suddenly
stricken the housekeeper, the mother of Peter's wife.
The Master came in and laid His hand upon her " and

188 CAPERNAUM
immediately the fever left her and she arose and min
istered unto them."
Then came the Sabbath evening rest, as much as
people could rest on that exciting day. The rules were
very strict. There must be quiet everywhere until the
setting of the Sabbath sun. But " at even when the
sun was set " the picture is presented, so familiar
through our favourite hymn. Those in Peter's house
could hear the beginning of hurried footsteps and the
eager talking and the sounds of a gathering crowd,
and when they looked out, behold, " the whole city was
gathered together at the door." All over the strand,
down to the waterside amongst the boats and the
brown nets drying on the shore, were the fevered
bodies lying on their mats, and the mother with her
pining baby, and the rough man leading his blind boy,
and here and there a demoniac held by strong hands.
And Jesus in the doorway looking on it all.
A painful sight. Yes, but to Him surely a touch
ing, beautiful sight as well. All that tender love and
sympathy, all that wistful desire to help which brings
poor humanity in touch with God, so manifest in the
faces of that waiting crowd, with their sick, gathered
together at the door. One thing at least is clear in the
sorrowful mystery of pain, it brings out the divine
in man. The pain in our hearts for our dear ones
suffering, the longing to help, the utter self-sacrifice
of a mother for her child, these are reflections of the
Father's heart, the instincts buried deep in the soul of
the world when in the image of God made He man.
Jesus would feel closely akin to them that day.
For their sympathy was but a faint shadow of His
own. All through the Gospels that lesson is empha
sized, the keen, tender, human sympathy of Christ for

THE FIRST SABBATH 189
individual suffering people. And more than that. We
are taught that He healed people at the cost of strain
and loss to Himself. " Somebody hath touched me,"
He said, when a woman surreptitiously touched Him
and was healed. " Somebody hath touched me, for I
feel that strength is gone out from me." So as He
moved amongst those afflicted ones His heart was sore
for them. I see Him stoop first to take up a sick baby
in His arms while the sobbing mother kneels before
Him and a withered boy on crutches is hobbling up
to Him. And the blind and the halt stretch forth their
hands. And the fevered patients are eagerly waiting
their turn. And as He touched them into health He
felt strength going out from Him. So St. Matthew
in telling this story gives a beautiful new meaning to
the prophecy of Isaiah, " He hath borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows." St. Matthew puts it thus,
" He took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses."
He took them on Himself and at His own cost healed
them. Surely He was tired that night.
Doctors and clergy know the exhausting nerve strain
of hours amid severe suffering if one has really let
his heart go out in sympathy. The Lord, in addition,
was giving of His strength to heal. We may well
believe that He was very tired as He lay down on
His mat in Peter's room that night with the pleasant
feeling that He had left so many happier and better.
But for Him there was a deeper need than bodily
repose. Before the dawn, " a great while before
day," Peter heard Him steal out of the house — this
is one of the little touches in St. Mark that suggests
Peter behind him. With the golden dawn touching

190 CAPERNAUM
the hilltops and the lake in its silent beauty lying be
low, Peter found Him kneeling on the brown hillside,
resting His soul in undisturbed communion with the
Father. That was His constant need in all His
earthly life. Even He could not go for long without
it. Still less can we if we would be strong and happy.
So He bids us always to keep coming to the Father.
There He planned with Peter a tour over the hills
through the villages of Galilee " that I may preach the
good news there, for therefore am I sent." So began
another unrecorded journey, another of the unwritten
chapters in His life. Doubtless there were precious
utterances that we shall never know, deeds of power
and love that we shall never hear of. The Capernaum
story shows how rapidly events crowded each other in
His busy days. Yet in His solitary tour before He
came to Capernaum we hear of only one miracle, " the
nobleman's son," and here, where He was probably a
month or two away, we glean just one incident, the
healing of a leper.
And this happens repeatedly. Whole tracts of His
public life are passed over almost in silence. It is
curious, this reserve of the Gospel story. We have
only got mere glimpses of the life of Our Lord. Only
some things were written. Doubtless they are suf
ficient. " These things are written," says St. John,
" that ye might believe." And a note at the close of
his Gospel, with a touch of Eastern exaggeration, re
minds us of the unwritten chapters. " There were
many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they
should be written every one I suppose that even the
world itself could not contain the books which should
be written."

V
A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY
IN this tour I place His rejection by His native
town of Nazareth. It is one of these unplaced
incidents in the Gospels which might very well be
long here. Many lives of Our Lord place it before the
Capernaum story. And St. Luke seems to bear them
out. But the other evangelists do not. And the
Lord's own words at Nazareth seem to settle the ques
tion. " Ye will surely say to me, Whatsoever things
we have heard done in Capernaum do also here in
thine own country."
So we follow Him in thought as day by day He
moved through the villages, till one evening " He came
to Nazareth, where He had been brought up."
There was the village street where He had played
with the other children, and the old rabbi's school
where He had learned His lessons with them, and the
well from which He had carried water for His mother,
and the carpenter's shop, and the farmers for whom
He made the ploughs and cattle yokes, and the old
friends who had been kind to Him when He was a
little boy, and the hills where He roamed in His young
manhood with the big mysterious thoughts surging in
Him. Wherever our roaming, whatever our experi
ences, the little home town can touch us as no other
place on earth. 191

192 CAPERNAUM
Though scarce a year had passed since He left it
to meet the Baptist, it must have seemed like many
years, so much had happened, so utterly had life
changed for Him. He had gone out an obscure young
peasant with mysterious visions of the future, He came
back after His wondrous experience conscious that He
was the Messiah of God.
We would give much for the story of these few
days. Did the old friends of His childhood come
round that night to greet with respect and affection
that young townsman who had grown so famous?
Was His mother there in the old home behind the
workshop? Think of meeting her under such con
ditions and sitting up to talk with her half the night
of the things which she had " pondered in her heart "
all the long years since the angel Gabriel came.
But the Bible draws a veil across, perhaps lest we
should make too free with the humanity of the Son
of God.
We are only told the story, the shameful, disappoint
ing story of His visit to the Synagogue on the Sabbath
day. The surroundings are just as in the Synagogue
at Capernaum, the crowded church, the intense excite
ment, the young Rabbi called for the reading of the
Prophets. If He read, as is probable, the lesson for
the day, it was surely a remarkable coincidence that He
should unroll the volume at the 61st of Isaiah: —

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath
anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor, to pro
claim release to the captives and recovering of sight to
the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach
the acceptable year of the Lord."

A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY 193
Then He rolled up the roll and gave it to the minister
and sat down. And the eyes of all in the Synagogue
were fastened on Him.
You can feel the tense pause. Then the thrill
through that whole congregation as He calmly an
nounced : —
" To-day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears."
That is all that is recorded of the sermon. It is
enough. It accounts for all the excitement following.
For it is a distinct assertion that He was the Messiah
whom Israel had dreamed of through the centuries,
and a proclamation of the sweet sympathy and gra
ciousness of His Messiah mission.
Surely it startled them. Yet we gather that His
winsome way of telling it touched them deeply, for in
spite of all their prejudice and suspicion we read, "All
wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of
His mouth." We have repeated hints of this magnet
ism when He spoke. How could it be otherwise?
The heart of Jesus revealing in every word and look the
kindly attitude of God to men.
But there are all sorts of people in a congregation
and moods change even in the same people. At first
He won them and carried them off their feet by His
words of grace. But as He went on He could see a
change. Cavillings and murmurings and whisperings
among themselves. " Is not this the carpenter, the
son of Mary? Are not His sisters with us? Why
does not He do here what He did in Capernaum ? "
We can see at once several causes of prejudice and
antagonism. First, He was too well known. A
prophet hath no honour in his own country. Messiah
would be expected as a mysterious being appearing

194 CAPERNAUM
suddenly from the unknown. They had known Him
familiarly from childhood. To many there He was
an old schoolfellow and playmate. His family were
living round the corner. There was, also, the petty
class snobbery. And for snobbery commend me to a
country town. True they were gracious words which
He spake. But they were spoken by the village car
penter. And there were people there who thought
themselves much better than a villager carpenter, rich
people, professional people, people who owned a little
property. And many even of His own class would
be as quick as any to join in the sneer against an up
start workman who had set up to teach his betters.
" They were offended in Him."
The story is so perfectly natural. Just what would
happen in any country town to-day. " Who is this
setting up as Messiah ? Is not this the carpenter who
worked with Joseph, the man whom we hired to make
our chairs and tables and cattle yokes? His brothers
are common men, James and Joses and Simon. His
sisters are living in the next street."
It is very human. Many of us would not be above
it ourselves.
They were jealous, too, of the rival Capernaum,
another characteristic of country towns. " If this
townsman of ours is so great, why does He not do
here in His own country the mighty works that have
made Capernaum famous ? "
Altogether it is a pitiful little exhibition of human
nature as it is. But it is all so human and natural, so
like ourselves, that we have no right to take the
superior attitude so usual in condemning Nazareth.
Rather say, It is just like us. We are no better. We
are all a pretty contemptible lot. And yet we are

A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY 195
the people that Jesus makes allowance for as He did
for them. I think He made allowance for them. I
know He said, "A prophet hath no honour in his
own country."
They went to awful extremes in Nazareth. The
fanatics crowded and jostled Him as He came out and
nearly pushed Him off the edge of the hill road to the
ravine below. Of course He was cut to the heart,
saddened and disappointed, as He is cut to the heart,
saddened and disappointed by us every day. But the
Christ is too great and too noble to resent or bear
grudges. He has no illusions as to the sort of people
we are. Spite of it all He wants to bless us if we do not
prevent Him, if we do not throw away our opportunity.
Nazareth threw away its great opportunity. Passing
through the midst of them He went His way. And
so far as we know Nazareth never saw Hira again.
Now I have an important thought to present, a side
of Christian evidences not sufficiently dwelt on.
As I watch these Nazareth people sneering at the
presumption of their village carpenter, I am impressed
with the seemingly utter hopelessness of the project be
fore Him. How could a man in His position accom
plish anything ? I am thinking what a puzzling prob
lem He presented to the thinking men of His day and to
the thinking men of our day who regard Him only
as a man.
To the men of His day He was, of course, only a
man. A noble, kindly, strangely attractive man. But
only a man. They knew His social position. A work
ing man in the lower ranks of life, associating with
common people. This Nazareth story shows how that
would prejudice His position. They saw that this

196 CAPERNAUM
working man's knowledge of the world and His inter
course with educated men must be very limited. He
was shut out from the influences that would give wis
dom and refinement and breadth of thought and fit
Him to be a leader of men. Nearly all His life was
spent in manual labour, a life certainly not favourable
to mental development.
They saw, too, that this untaught artisan, dreaming
of His kingdom, was a lone, unfriended man. He
had no patrons or protectors to take Him by the hand.
The men of influence took no notice of Him. The
Government was suspicious of Him. The Priests and
leaders were bitterly hostile.
Add to this that He came forward of His own ac
cord. No one invited Him. No one wanted Him.
He was not called as a leader in some great national
crisis. He came of Himself. One could understand
Him as the leader of a popular revolution, stirring an
excitable people to revolt. But He steadily discouraged
this attitude. He refused the role of a popular hero.
He said His Kingdom was not of this world.
Was there ever a more hopeless position for a world
reformer ?
But wonderingly they watched this man laying
His hand on blind eyes and they saw; putting His
fingers in deaf ears and they heard ; touching the leper
and the sick and they recovered ; commanding unclean
spirits and they obeyed; nay, it was even said that
Death itself could not resist Him. Capernaum told
of Jairus' daughter; a crowd at the Nain funeral told
of a dead man come alive ; all Jerusalem was electrified
over the story of Lazarus. No wonder they were
puzzled.

A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY 197
Then they saw this uneducated peasant, who had
spent His life at the bench, not only claiming a knowl
edge of highest spiritual truth, but assuming an au
thority that no holiest prophet before Him had ever
dreamed of assuming. He actually took it on Him to
forgive men's sins. He took it on Him to correct their
Holy Bible itself. " Ye have heard that it was said
(in your Bible) to men of old time . . . But I
say unto you higher and deeper things." Nay, He
even dared to say things about Himself which no sane
man should ever have said, which could hardly be
regarded as other than blasphemy. Yet said them so
sanely and calmly and with such quiet authority that
it was hard to regard Him as mad or irreligious.
Listen to Him.
" The Son of Man shall be crucified . . . and
in three days He shall rise again. Verily, verily, I
say unto you, He that heareth my words and believeth
on Him that sent me hath everlasting life. He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father. Whatsoever ye
shall ask the Father in my name I will give it to you.
The Holy Ghost whom I will send unto you from the
Father. The Son of Man shall come in His glory and
all the holy angels with Him and before Him shall be
gathered all nations for judgment. I appoint unto you
a kingdom as my Father hath appointed unto me. I
am the Light of the world; I and my Father are
one." Imagine the horror of a thoughtful Jew in the face
of such stupendous claim. It was madness. It was
blasphemy. And yet  Browning hits off the
probable attitude in the shrinking apologetic " Epistle
of an Arab Physician " who had spoken with Lazarus
of Bethany:

198 CAPERNAUM
This man so cured regards the curer then,
As — God forgive me ! who but God Himself !
Creator and Sustainer of the world
That came and dwelt in flesh on it a while
— 'Sayeth that such a One was born and lived,
Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house,
Then died with Lazarus by for aught I know
And yet was — what I said nor choose repeat
The very God ! Think Abib, dost thou think !
Aye, this Nazareth carpenter was a problem. He
kept men busy thinking. Look again at His lordly, in
dependent attitude to the people and their leaders.
One would think this unfriended peasant might at least
try to conciliate His public.
Nay, He comes as their master, the teacher, re
prover, reformer of His age. Though tender as a
woman to penitent sinners, He lashed the popular evils
with unsparing hand. The people winced under His
rebukes. "An evil generation." "An evil and adul
terous generation." " It shall be more tolerable for
Sodom in the judgment than for you." Not a good
way to gain popularity.
Perhaps He was wiser with the clergy and leaders.
Listen to Him. Like an angry King scourging his un
faithful servants, " Wo unto you, Scribes and Phari
sees, play-actors. Ye shut the Kingdom of Heaven
against men. Ye love greetings in the market-place
and the uppermost seats at feasts. Ye hypocrites. Ye
play-actors. Ye blind guides. Ye serpents. Ye gen
eration of vipers, how shall ye escape the damnation of
hell!" Think of bishops and clergy and gentry and rulers
of the people in our day listening to such scathing re
bukes. From whom? Not an aged venerable priest

A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY 199
of ripe experience and recognized authority. No. Is
not this the carpenter, the son of Mary ? How know
eth this man learning having never learned? Little
wonder they were offended in Him. Little wonder
they demanded " that He should be crucified." And
He heard the demand and calmly He consented. So
they killed Him. That was their way to settle the
problem. But that did not settle the problem. He
became a harder problem than ever when His followers
began to proclaim the resurrection from the dead.
That problem remains to-day but infinitely inten
sified. For we have to add this stupendous fact that
ever since that alleged Resurrection this Man has been
steadily winning the world's allegiance, that now after
2,000 years this Nazareth workman is thought of with
awe as Almighty God.
In our day, too, there are men who think of Jesus of
Nazareth as a good man, a holy teacher, but only as a
man with foolish, mistaken followers, who believed
that He was God and imagined all sorts of unbelievable
events — the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Coming
of the Holy Ghost — things that could not possibly have
happened. I am not here censuring any honest thinker. The
Deity of Christ is a tremendous thing to believe, and
every honest thinker has a right to face the problem
straight. But he must face the whole problem.
Call up again that scene in the Nazareth synagogue
with the people sneering at the presumption of their
young village carpenter. Put yourself in their place.
Picture a similar scene to-day. The workshop of a
common carpenter down in one of our back streets.
And inside a young man in worn clothes working at

200 CAPERNAUM
his bench, a hard-handed working man, born of humble
parents, associating all his life with common people,
having no intercourse with cultivated men, no access
to books, little time for reading or study, a man with
nothing noticeable about him, for we know nothing of
his high thoughts and lovable character.
Suppose this young man, whom you have often hired
for carpenter work in your homes, suppose he set out to
stir the conscience of this city. Suppose we invited
him to preach in our church. Would not some of you
say, " Is not this the carpenter ? " Would not you be
offended in him ?
What would you say if you were told that that
young artisan was going to revolutionize humanity,
that 2,000 years hence many millions would be de
votedly attached to him, that men would treasure his
slightest word so that if a lost saying of his were any
where discovered the whole civilized world would be
stirred by the news ? What would you say if some one
prophesied to you that in 2,000 years all over the
world, amongst the highest and most intelligent races
of earth, that young carpenter would be worshipped as
God? Is there anything more unbelievable in the whole
history of the world than that the carpenter of Naz
areth, whom His townsmen sneered at, should be wor
shipped all over the earth to-day as God; that after
2,000 years of studying and testing and examining His
life He should be increasingly prayed to and adored;
that the few words which He spake and the story of a
few months of His life should be the greatest uplifting
power that this world has ever known ?
Only a mere man, an unfriended young man, a

A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY 201
carpenter, three and thirty years old. Only three years
of that time in public, if public it might be called, going
about a few obscure towns in Palestine. Only a few
comrades of His own social standing to be the nucleus
of His world-kingdom. He had no time to organize or
mature a system of religion. He left no code of laws,
no body of divinity. Only a few unpremeditated
words uttered, it would seem by chance, at the way
side, at the well, or in familiar intercourse with friends.
Not a line, not a word of writing. Just a few spoken
truths left behind Him.
And then He died. They killed Him. Only a man
was He? Surely the problem should keep one busy
thinking.

VI
A PRODIGAL AND A PUBLICAN
WE have placed the Nazareth story in that first
tour from Capernaum because we do not
know where else to place it. We really
know almost nothing about that journey. Peter and
his comrades evidently went. But we are not
taken with them. St. Mark keeps us in Caper
naum. He just shows us Jesus starting from the
lakeside and then, as it were, keeps us there waiting
for His return. Then the story is resumed.
" When Jesus again entered into Capernaum it was
noised abroad that He was home." (R. V. margia)
You see Capernaum is now regarded as " home."
Again St. Mark resumes his rapid word-pictures. He
is seeing through Peter's eyes a densely crowded house,
crowded " so that there was no room to receive them,
no not so much as about the door, and Jesus spake the
word unto them." The narrative suggests Peter's
house, though the crowd would suggest a larger build
ing. The picture is of the inner courtyard of a Jewish
house open to the sky, with a raised gallery lightly
roofed opening back into the living-rooms. From that
gallery Jesus is speaking, and around Him are probably
friends and members of the family and some promi
nent people. There is a little touch in St. Luke's men
tion of these prominent people which sets one thinking.
" There were Pharisees," he says, " and doctors of the
Law from Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem."
302

A PRODIGAL AND A PUBLICAN 208
We know that the authorities of Jerusalem are not
very friendly, that His visit to the Passover and the
Cleansing of the Temple have not impressed them fa
vourably. So one feels a bit suspicious of the visitors
from Jerusalem and Judea.
Picture, then, the people listening, the courtyard
crammed tight, and the dense crowd outside the door
craning their necks to hear and see, interested, curious,
inclined to believe, and these dignitaries of the church
in the place of honour near Jesus. Naturally the peo
ple look to them for a lead. A well-known writer sug
gests that it was like Israel gathered on Mt. Carmel to
witness the issue between Elijah and the priests of
Baal. I think this is too severe. These Jerusalem
clergy were not yet distinctly hostile, just watchful,
critical, suspicious.
Suddenly comes a startling interruption. Every
body is looking upward, wondering what had hap
pened. This is what had happened.
When it was noised abroad that Jesus was home, the
news came to a hopeless paralytic on his sick-bed. We
can read between the lines enough to make us suspect
that he had brought this trouble on himself, that he had
wrecked his constitution in a dissipated life and wasted
his substance in riotous living. He had sown his wild
oats and was reaping the crop. Perhaps he had gone
away over the Great White Roads, out from his pure
village home to the harlot cities of Phoenicia in the
" far country." Perhaps the Lord had him in mind in
the story of the Prodigal going out into that far coun
try. Now he lies there a helpless wreck. We have
all seen such wrecks. And his bitterest thought is that
he has brought it on himself. The narrative suggests

204 CAPERNAUM
that he is truly penitent. But what is the good of it?
God could not forgive a man who had ruined his own
life and probably, in the doing of it, ruined other lives
as well.
Doubtless, like many a prodigal, there was some
thing attractive in him. Your prodigal is often a very
attractive fellow. At any rate he had friends who
tried to rouse him out of despondency. And one day
they come to tell him that " Jesus is home." Jesus
had cured cases as hopeless as his, and Jesus, they said,
was most kindly when men were most miserable.
" Come on, let us carry you to Him. Who knows
what may happen."
So in his helplessness and remorse they bring him to
Jesus. But they cannot get even anywhere near the
door. They might try to-morrow. But the Prophet
might be gone to-morrow, and these good fellows
hated to disappoint their friend. Now that they had
stirred some hope in him he longed to get near Jesus
and feared that he should miss Him. Then a bright
idea occurred to them. Fishermen have often to use
their wits to get out of an awkward place. " Let us
get some rope out of the boats here on the beach and
climb to the roof."
That was how the sermon of Jesus was interrupted.
A noise in the roof, the tiles stripped away, the light
shining in, and Jesus looks up to see four brown
sailor faces looking eagerly down with their four cords
tied in sailor knots at the corners of the mattress. And
down through the roof swings the poor, frightened
paralytic, down to the very feet of the Lord. I can
imagine His good-natured smile at the kindly trick.
" Jesus seeing their faith," says the evangelist. He
loved to see the unselfish affection for their friend, but

A PRODIGAL AND A PUBLICAN 205
He specially loved to see people trusting Him and de
termined not to be put off.
So He looked into that white face at His feet, and
through the unutterably sad eyes so wistfully calling to
Him, He could see right into the miserable remorse
behind. Ah! Jesus knew what was troubling him
most. And His heart went out to him. " Cheer up,
my son, be of good cheer." That was His favourite
word to desponding people always. " Be of good
cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee ! "
Here is the proof of my assumption that the man
was troubled about his sins. Jesus would never say
this to him otherwise. You can see the startled won
der of the man. " Who is this that knows my inner
thoughts and puts His finger right on the hidden
pain? " Something in Jesus' look carried instant con
viction and the whole story suggests that he felt him
self forgiven, that as the words were spoken the sense
of God's pardoning love was shed abroad in his heart.
But if he was surprised, surely, though for another
reason, his friends were surprised. Every one was
surprised. We ourselves would have been surprised.
This was not at all what they expected. The man had
come to be healed of bodily disease. The healing of
his soul seemed a less important thing. Why should
he be put off with religious talk about the forgiveness
of sins?
That was where Jesus differed from them. Aye,
and differs very often from us. When we seek others'
good we frequently put religion second. See, for ex
ample, how Social Service appeals to us more than mis
sionary effort. We are all thankful for the growing
interest in the workers, and the poor, and the old, and

206 CAPERNAUM
the sick. We feel that Christ desires His Church to
care for them as He did Himself. Surely we are
right. It is a prominent duty of the Church. But
keep it in its right place. Put first things first. With
Jesus the first thing was to teach the Father's love and
the forgiveness of sins. The chief thing was to cure
the disease in the heart of the world. We say, It is a
great thing to build fine houses in the slums. Jesus
says, Yes, but it is a greater thing to build fine souls to
dwell in them. We say, It is a blessed thing to bring
poor strugglers happiness and comfort. Yes, says
Jesus, but it is a more blessed thing to bring them God.
Jesus pities them infinitely more than we. But Jesus
knows what they most need. That is where our valua
tion differs from His. That is why there was surprise
here, that He should have thought first of the man's
soul. But there was more than surprise in the Jerusalem
visitors. There was anger and suspicion. The
Scribes and Pharisees began to reason, " Who is this
that speaketh blasphemies ? Who can forgive sins but
God alone?"
"And because He was God," says St. Augustine,
" He heard them thinking." And He accepted their
challenge of His claim to Divinity. " Why reason ye
these things in your hearts? Whether is it easier to
say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise and
walk ? You think in your hearts that I am blasphem
ing. You think that any pretender may use such
words since there is no way of testing them. But that
ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on
earth to forgive sins, I say unto thee, Arise, take up
thy couch and go home." And immediately he took up
the couch and went forth before them all.

A PRODIGAL AND A PUBLICAN 207
What the man felt we can easily imagine. What
the Scribes felt we are not told. We know there was
nothing good to tell. But the simple people, less hard
ened by prejudice, more receptive of Divine impres
sions, " were all amazed and glorified God saying, We
never saw it on this fashion ! "
Ah ! why could not those bigots let the people alone ?
Jesus could always get the big heart of the people. In
all ages it is the narrow, unloving bigot, be he Christian
or Jew, Protestant or Roman Catholic, High Church
or Low, who is the curse of religion just because he is
unloving. Here love would have rejoiced to see that
cripple healed and from that would have gone on to
inquire sympathetically about the kindly power that
had healed him. It was the unloving heart that kept
them from God. " He that loveth not knoweth not
God, for God is love." The bigot is not the man who
fights against our opinions. The bigot, whatever pious
words he may use, is the man with the shrivelled heart
who fights unlovingly. Such men were they who ulti
mately brought Jesus to the Cross, and all through His
teaching He leaves the impression that the worst sin in
all the world is the sin of an unloving heart.
The people could not help being influenced by their
leaders. So the serpent crept into the little Eden of
Galilee. From that day began whisperings and hints
and suspicions till, in the end, Capernaum looked
askance at Him. And all the time the heavenly host
was watching how men were treating their Lord.
The picture which comes next in all three evan
gelists means a further shock to the men from Jerusa
lem.

208 CAPERNAUM
By the side of Peter and Andrew and James and
John, who were already beginning to be recognized as
His close attendants, He is going to place one of
the class most scorned and disliked all over Pales
tine. I wonder if even the other disciples liked it at
first. You remember the great, white Roman road, " the
Way of the Sea," from Damascus, skirting the north
east shore of the lake, and the white building whose
eagle standard marked the Roman custom-house just
beyond the Capernaum landing-place, where Levi or
Matthew, the son of Alphaeus, " sat at the receipt of
custom." The Capernaum people did not like him or
his occupation. The Roman oppressor was levying
taxes on the subject races and one of that race was
making money by collecting these taxes from his fel
low-countrymen. And worse than that. The publi
can usually farmed the taxes of the district, paying a
lump sum to the government and making his profits by
extra charges. John the Baptist knew all about it.
" What shall we do ? " asked the publicans coming to
his baptism. " Exact no more," said he, " than that
which is appointed you." We can quite believe that
Matthew made his money in that usual way and then
resolved, as that other publican when he came under
the influence of Jesus. " If I have wronged any man,"
said Zaccheus, " I restore him fourfold."
One day, we are told, " Jesus was teaching by the
seaside and all the multitude resorted unto Him," the
townspeople, and the crowd of strangers, and the fish
ermen in the boats, and the passengers at the landing-
place, and the busy caravans stopping on the white road
by the custom-house. And as He returned " He saw

A PRODIGAL AND A PUBLICAN 209
Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the receipt of cus
tom. And He said unto him, Follow me. And he
arose and followed Him."
To a superficial reader the incident is puzzling. It
seems so unlikely that Jesus should suddenly call a man
of that class and that a man of that class should arise at
once and leave his business to follow the call of a
Stranger. Ancient writers tell how sceptics sneered at
the story. " Either the evangelists were romancing or
Matthew was a fool." But, of course, we assume that
much happened before this call. We should have had
the same difficulty about the other Apostles if St. John
had not put us right. For we are only told that Jesus
saw two fishermen in a boat and called them and they
followed Him. If St. John had not recorded many
years later the touching circumstances in which those
young fishermen had first come to know and love the
Lord long before this public call, we should never have
known of it. Probably many other difficulties in the
Bible story would vanish similarly if we knew all the
circumstances. No. Jesus did not do these unnatural things. And
Jesus did not lightly allow men into the fellowship of
the Apostles. He waited and tested and received or
rejected after full consideration. There was that
Scribe who wanted to join Him. " Master, I will fol
low thee whithersoever thou goest." One would think
a converted Scribe would be a valuable follower. But
Jesus tested him. " Foxes have holes, the birds of the
air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to
lay His head." And the Scribe dropped out. There
was the rich young man who went away sorrowful.
Jesus wanted him. " Jesus beholding him loved him."
He ought to have been an Apostle or at least a disciple.

210 CAPERNAUM
But Jesus risked losing him by a supreme test, " Go and
sell all that thou hast and come." And that young
man went away sorrowful, for he had great posses
sions. The Lord certainly did not choose His Apos
tles lightly. He did not call Matthew till he was ready
to be called. There must have been previous inter
course. One wonders how Matthew began his connection
with Jesus. I notice that he is " Levi the son of
Alphaeus." And that three other Apostles are also
sons of Alphaeus; probably the same man. If so,
Matthew was their brother, though they might not care
to acknowledge him, and probably also a family con
nection of Jesus. So it is not unlikely that he might
have known Jesus in his boyhood and lost sight of
Him when he disgraced his family by becoming a pub
lican, and that Jesus renewed the acquaintance when
He found him in the Capernaum custom-house. Mat
thew could not help liking Him, for He was probably
the only one of his family connections who would
speak to him at all. I think he was always ashamed of
his trade when Jesus came in. I picture to myself one
day while Jesus was in the office a poor fisherman
coming in who was in arrears with his taxes, that he
pleaded with Matthew to give him time, not to sell his
boat and nets or the cottage that sheltered his wife and
child. I think Matthew wished that Jesus were not in
the office that day. But he would not yield. Business
is business. If he were too soft with people he would
never get on. And I imagine Jesus as He went out
just looking at him, as He looked at Peter the night of
his denial — and that was all.
But after the fisherman had gone I think somehow

A PRODIGAL AND A PUBLICAN 211
Matthew did not feel quite comfortable. And that
night the thought of the fisherman's wife and child
came between him and his sleep. And I do not think
he foreclosed on the boat and nets next day. And I
think he grew ashamed to meet Jesus and gradually be
gan to hate his extortionate trade and to wish he could
win the approval of Jesus of Nazareth.
I imagine the soul of the man growing through the
silent influence of Christ. I see him hanging on the
outskirts of the daily crowd by the seaside near the
custom-house. I see him yearning for better things,
sometimes telling Jesus of the thoughts stirring in his
heart. This is only my speculation. But it is not a baseless
speculation. For at any rate I know something of the
kind was happening in the soul of that publican to
make him fit to be an Apostle. And the Lord knew it,
as He knows every thought of shame or penitence or
good desire in any of us. And so one day He came to
the tax-gatherer's office and said unto him, " Follow
me," and Matthew heard Him with surprise and de
light. "And he arose and left all and followed Him."
But the stigma of the old life remained. Matthew was
always diffident on account of it. Mainly on his ac
count Jesus was sneered at as " the friend of publi
cans." And poor Matthew humbly writes himself
down in the list in his own Gospel as " Matthew the
publican." We can safely assume that the other six Apostles
could tell us similar stories of their acquaintance with
the Master before they were called. I wish they had
told. One would specially like to hear Judas Ish-
Kerioth, Judas the man of Kerioth, the only one chosen
outside of Galilee. How could Jesus ever have chosen

212 CAPERNAUM
him? There must have been something promising
about the man. There must be some striking, pathetic
experiences in his previous story to explain why Jesus
put Judas Iscariot in the number of the Twelve.

VII
TWO DINNER PARTIES
NEXT comes the story of two dinner parties
at which Jesus was guest.
After his call Matthew did rather a brave
thing. He gave a farewell dinner to the staff of the
office and the publicans of the district around to cele
brate this crisis in his life. He would let his comrades
see what Jesus meant to him, and what new hopes and
enthusiasms were stirring in his heart. His religion
made him feel brave enough to face possible jests of
his friends. And his religion did not make him feel
so good, so superior, that he could not associate with
the old comrades, many of whom, with all their faults,
had been kindly friends in the past.
But think of his daring to ask Jesus to come and
dine with them! He must have known the Master's
heart well to venture on that. And think of the sur
prise of these outcasts of society to receive the invita
tion. You can hear them talking together about it at
the custom-house. " Little we have to do with holy
prophets in any capacity, but to meet Jesus of Nazareth
in social friendship at a dinner! Wait till the Phari
sees and Scribes hear of it, who would not let their
garments touch us in the street. No wonder people
like this friendly prophet. No wonder Matthew Levi
is eager to follow Him. Maybe if we had had one
like Him to teach us our religion we might be different
men to-day." 213

214 CAPERNAUM
And Jesus knew how to dine with publicans and sin
ners as a friendly man would dine with friends. Men
would feel at home with Him. Of course there was
something in Him that would make it impossible to
take liberties, impossible to have conversation unfit for
His presence. That was a dignity innate in Himself.
But be sure there was no aloofness, no note of patron
izing condescension that might hurt. Jesus treated
every man respectfully. I see Him sitting beside His
host, dipping with him in the dish. I hear Him join
ing pleasantly in the talk at the table, and somehow,
half unconsciously, the guests would rise to the occa
sion. He could enter into their feelings and bring out
the very best in them. And I am quite sure every man
at Matthew's table that day felt himself a better man
for having been there.
But think of the shock to the Scribes and Pharisees
and respectable religious folk of Capernaum. They
could not but hear of it. Jesus was too famous. This
dinner party was too outrageous. Imagine to yourself
a holy Brahmin in India dining with the lowest pariahs.
I do not see how they could have been present with
any self-respect or without violating the privacy of the
publican's feast. There was a good deal of freedom in
Jewish social life but not such freedom as that. There
fore it was probably next day in one of the lakeside
gatherings that they attacked the disciples, " Why eat-
eth your Master with publicans and sinners ? " It was
quite a reasonable question to ask. " Why does He
like to be with such people?" But it does not seem
to have occurred to them at all to ask, Why do they like
to be with Him? Men of their class do not usually
care to associate with religious people. The whole

TWO DINNER PARTIES 215
story of Jesus leaves the impression that publicans and
harlots and outcasts of every kind did really like being
with Him. Why ?
Surely because they had a sense of kindliness and
hopefulness and sympathy which they were little ac
customed to, which won and attracted them in spite of
themselves. Because in all His stainless purity which
shamed and humbled them they could see that He was
thinking the best of them, making the best of them, see
ing the good in them so nearly buried by the evil. He
made them feel hopeful for themselves. He made
them feel that sinful and reprobate as they were, they
were of infinite value in the sight of God.
That was the secret of His attraction. That was
why " the publicans and sinners drew near unto Him "
and " the common people heard Him gladly." He saw
good in them. He made friends with them. He
trusted them. He opened His heart to them. And
all the teaching and warning and advising in the world
does not count in comparison with that. The sullen,
hardened publican, scorned by society and scorning it
in return, felt that this Man of infinite purity had no
scorn for him at all. The woman, whom good people
shunned like a leper, felt to her astonishment that He
did not shun her, but spoke to her comfort and consid
eration and hope.
That was why they liked to be with Him. Keep
firmly in your thoughts that this is God. This is
God's heart, God's feelings, God's hopefulness. For
when we are asked what our God is like, we can only
point to Jesus.
A little later came the other dinner.
It fits in with the Lord's friendly attitude to the

216 CAPERNAUM
better sort of Pharisee that St. Luke records three oc
casions of His dining in a Pharisee's house. The first
of these (Chap. VII) comes amongst the incidents of
Capernaum and its neighbourhood, and evidently be
longs to this early period before the hostility of the
Pharisees had hardened against Him.
After one of His busy days Jesus had an evening
engagement to dine with Simon the Pharisee. He
would walk from Peter's house, through the narrow
streets, by the new Synagogue, up to the Upper Town
amongst the trees and gardens where the wealthier
people lived. That dinner has been heard of through
out the world, not because of Simon's stately home and
beautiful surroundings, but because of a poor sorrow
ful " woman that was a sinner," who intruded herself
on the feast. The narrative suggests that she had met
Jesus already and had some deep cause for gratitude to
Him. I picture to myself a miserable girl, seduced
and forsaken, remembering in agony the innocent old
home amongst the hills, and the old father and mother
whom she dares not face any more, and the God whom
she can never pray to again.
Society has rightly a wholesome horror of her sin.
But it does not discriminate. Many a " fallen woman"
is so because she is vicious. But many a girl has a pa
thetic story to tell of her fall and the lover whom she
trusted, and we damn her into the outer darkness with
out asking. And her fellow-women are the worst.
But Jesus would listen to her. We do not know this
woman's story, but we know that there was no pity for
her, no future, no hope here or hereafter. Until one
day she met Jesus. Maybe she was there at one of His
touching presentations of God such as we meet later,
as the shepherd seeking his lost sheep over the desolate

TWO DINNER PARTIES 217
mountains, as the father of the lost prodigal longing
for his child. Maybe one day she told Him her miser
able story and poured out her penitent soul before Him
and heard, like that other adulteress in St. John,
" Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more."
At any rate there had been some previous dealing with
Jesus, which had stirred new hope in her and changed
all life for her forever, before she crept in to that feast
of Simon with the passionate gratitude in her heart.
The narrative has difficulties, but I think it is usually
misread. The woman did not come merely to express
penitence. Her attitude is clearly that of passionate
gratitude for something. Surely He had met her be
fore and had taught her of God's fatherhood and God's
forgiveness. Perhaps she was just leaving Capernaum
to begin a new life, aye, perhaps to go back to her
mother, and had no other chance before she left of
showing her love. Otherwise there would seem little
excuse for her intrusion.
You can see that the host was friendly to Jesus,
but clearly he was condescending. There was a dif
ference between a Pharisee of his position and the
young preacher who was known as a Nazareth car
penter. Servants are quick to take the tone from their
master or mistress. The courtesies offered to wealth
ier guests need not be extended to Him. It was hon
our enough for Him to be guest in a gentleman's house.
He thought Jesus did not notice it, but He did.
An Englishman's house is his castle, they say. An
Eastern man's house was not. Strangers are freer to
pass in and see the guests. But not this sort of
stranger. The guests were reclining on couches
around the board, their feet resting on cushions behind.

218 CAPERNAUM
Suddenly a passionate sobbing was heard. A woman
with unveiled face and hair unbound, the sign of a
fallen woman, was kneeling on the ground behind the
Lord, in her hand an alabaster box of ointment. Her
tears were raining on His feet, " and she wiped them
with the hairs of her head and kissed His feet and
anointed them with the ointment." Her emotion was
intense. Simon the Pharisee was greatly scandalized. His
respectability was compromised. What business had
this wanton in his house ? The whole thing was shame
ful. The woman's touch was a pollution. Evidently
he was too polite to express his feelings since Jesus did
not seem to object. But he was free to think. And
he thought hard things. "If this man were a prophet
He would have known what manner of woman this is
that toucheth Him." His thoughts were evident in his
face. At any rate Jesus read them. " Guard your
thoughts, for they are read in Heaven," says St. Au
gustine. And He spoke out straight.
" Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee."
With grudging respect he answers :
" Master, say on."
" Simon, there was a certain creditor who had two
debtors. One owed five hundred pence, the other fifty.
When they had nothing to pay he forgave both. Now
which of these two will love him most ? "
" I suppose," said the annoyed Pharisee with an air
of indifference, "I suppose he to whom he forgave
most." " Thou hast rightly judged. Now, Simon, do you
see this woman? I came into your house. You did
not even offer me water for my feet. She has wetted

TWO DINNER PARTIES 219
my feet with tears and wiped them with her hair.
You gave me no kiss of greeting. She, from the time
I came in, has not ceased to kiss my feet. My head
with oil you did not anoint. She has anointed my feet
with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins,
which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much ; but
to whom little is forgiven the same loveth little."
Of course He did not mean that sinning much had a
certain advantage since it led to loving much. He was
taking Simon at Simon's own valuation. " You do
not feel that God has much to forgive you. She, with
her infinite sense of her sin, cannot control her adoring
gratitude." Then He lays His hand on the sobbing woman at
His feet. " My child, thy faith hath saved thee. Thy
sins are forgiven thee. Go in peace," or rather, more
accurately, " Go into peace."
And we are sure she went into peace, whatever be
her after story. Many think that here she disappears
from history. But there is a widespread, persistent
opinion in the Western Church from early days, identi
fying this penitent woman with Mary the Magdalene.
Whether it be true or not it is hard to eradicate it now.
It is embedded in centuries of Christian art and litera
ture. The name of Magdalene has become a synonym
for a penitent fallen woman, and all over Christendom
our Rescue Homes are called after the name of Mary
the Magdalene.
It may be true. There is much to say for it. The
Talmud says that Magdala had an evil name for its
licentious women. The Jews regarded harlotry as
demon possession, and she was the woman " out of
whom Jesus had cast seven devils." There is also this

220 CAPERNAUM
persistent belief in the Western Church. And there
may well have been some wonderful experience of the
grace of Christ to account for her supreme devotion to
Him. We shrink from identifying this friend of the Lord
with that poor soiled woman in Simon's house. And
yet, if it be so, is there any more touching story in the
Gospels than that of the utter devotion of a once fallen
woman in her adoring gratitude for His love who had
saved her? Humbly she followed in the little group
of women who ministered to Him. With breaking
heart she watched Him die on Calvary. Regardless
of scorn and insult she followed His body to the tomb
and was first at the sepulchre on the Easter morning
while it was yet dark and saw the first sight of the
risen Lord. She, supposing Him to be the gardener,
saith unto Him, " Sir, if thou hast borne Him hence
tell me where and I will take Him away." Jesus saith
unto her, " Mary ! " And she fell at His feet, " My
Master! My Master!"

VIII
THE MULTITUDES
WE cannot get these pictures right of Jesus in
Capernaum and throughout Galilee without
sketching in always the background of mul
titudes. Always you feel the presence of the friendly
crowds, the popularity of Jesus. It comes rather as a
surprise. We think of Him as despised and rejected
of men. We have been so obsessed with the thought
of the national rejection that we have not been much
noticing the crowd of simple, honest faces always
about Him, listening, liking, applauding.
Evidently He was immensely popular. Popularity
was thrust on Him. Every page of the record has en
thusiastic crowds around Him. We read, " the multi
tude thronged Him." "All men are seeking thee."
"All the city was gathered together at the door."
" They came to Him from every quarter." " They
ran to Him from every city." " The people hung on
Him listening." " His mother and brethren could not
come at Him for the crowds." The woman with the
issue of blood came behind Him in the press. He had
to feed five thousand men that followed Him to the
desert. A crowd was waiting beneath the Mount of
Transfiguration. Crowds, enthusiastic crowds, press
ing on Him all the time. " So many coming and going
that there was no leisure so much as to eat." He
231

222 CAPERNAUM
seemed to draw them like a magnet. They liked to be
near Him. They were not merely curious crowds but
crowds who were fond of Him.
And, mark you, this was not merely in the early
Galilee days. It continued right through. Even to
the end. Even in hostile Jerusalem. When St. John
says " the Jews sought to kill Him " he is speaking of
the hostile Pharisee party. The people, the masses
never sought to kill Him. They were His friends, His
champions. They crowded the streets in the Palm
Sunday procession. Next morning, in the Temple,
" all the people came near unto Him." The Pharisees
said, " If we let Him alone all men will believe on
Him." And again, " Perceive ye how ye prevail noth
ing, behold the world is gone after Him."
Right to the end He was the popular hero. The
people championed Him. He was always safe when
they were about. When His enemies sought to seize
Him " they feared the people." " They said, Not on
the Feast Day lest there be an uproar among the peo
ple." They had to get Judas to betray Him " in the
absence of the multitude." They had to arrest Him
at night when the people were in bed. True, there was
a crowd at the early morning trial yelling out, " Cru
cify Him " — a packed jury persuaded by the priests
that they should ask Barabbas and destroy Jesus. But
the big crowd at Calvary that day who saw Jesus dead
" when they saw what was done beat their breasts and
returned." If I were a Christian Jew I should challenge the
statement that the Jewish people rejected Christ. The
authorities did. The nation in its official capacity did.
And the people were priest-ridden cowards who could
only beat their breasts as they returned from Calvary.

THE MULTITUDES 223
If the spirit of their famous ancestors were in them
that day they would have torn asunder priest and
Pharisee and soldier ere a hair of His blessed head was
touched. For cowards though they were, the heart of
the common people was with Him right through. And,
I say it with reverence, I think Christ in the judgment
will remember that for Israel.
One feels glad for Him that He had that pleasure
during this trying year in Galilee. For surely it was a
pleasure to have kindly faces about Him even if there
was not yet any widespread desire to yield to Him.
Few of them, at least then, became His disciples. They
were ignorant people. They were largely of the earth
earthy. They could not rise to understand His high
ideals. But though they could not understand they
had an affectionate regard for Him. In their enthusi
asm they thought one day to seize Him and make Him
a King. He soon disillusioned them. He wanted not
an outward throne in Israel but an inward throne in
their hearts. And the disillusion was a keen disap
pointment to them. But they did not give Him up for
that, even though their leaders were busy sowing sus
picions. It is a curious position. It sets one thinking
about His feeling towards them. Probably it is ex
pressed in His words to one of His admirers. " Jesus
beholding him loved him and said unto him, One thing
thou lackest, come and follow me."
He liked them. Some one has said God likes the
common people. That is why He made so many of
them. And they liked Him. They could not help lik
ing Him. He was so human, so friendly, so pleasant.
And He was one of themselves. He was a man of the
people and understood and sympathized with them as

224 CAPERNAUM
only a man of the people could. This was no leisured
philosopher lecturing poor people. No man in the
crowd was poorer or had worked harder than He.
They knew it was a penniless, homeless man who told
them to put righteousness above comfort, that it was a
workman who knew the meaning of being weary and
heavy laden who told of God's rest for a world that
was tired, " Come unto Me and I will give you rest."
And He had a genius for looking for the best in men
though He knew the worst in them. He thought the
best of them. He hoped the best for them. He made
the best of them. That draws out the best in men. I
read the other day of one of His followers, a Univer
sity professor. One of his students says of him, " He
always assumed that we meant to be decent fellows and
so we had to be."
Yes, one feels glad for Him amid all the disappoint
ment and misunderstanding and hate and treachery
that the simple people cared for Him. And does not
one feel a bit more hopeful of poor humanity in its re
lation to God ? For these were not saints but ordinary
sinful people. And this was God in human form who
so attracted them. Maybe we are not quite so bad as
the theologians tell us, so " very far gone from original
righteousness." Maybe God would attract us all if we
really got to know Him.
Which suggests a serious question. In this story
of old the multitudes thronged Him, the people were
fond of Him. It is not so to-day. The bitterest dis
appointment about religion to-day is that the masses
are estranged from the Church.
They were estranged from the Church in Jesus' day
too. But it is a much more serious matter to-day.

THE MULTITUDES 225
Nobody noticed then. Nobody cared. The working
class was the under dog. They did not count. They
are not going to be the under dog in future. They are
going to count. In this world-reconstruction after
the war not kings nor autocrats but the people are to
rule. That is what makes the estrangement of the
masses so especially important. For who is to rule
these rulers ? Who is to check and guide them ? You
have some check on a king. You can dethrone him if
he deserve it. You have no check on a whole people if
they go wrong. You cannot dethrone them. There
is no check but religion. No guide but Christ. Alas
for the new world after the war if the democracy re
mains estranged from the Church!
Why are the multitudes estranged to-day? They
would say, It is the fault of the Church, the fault of
professing Christian people. And it is a striking fact
that the masses who are hostile to Christianity are
somehow not at all hostile to Christ. I have been
reading an anti-Church writer, a popular leader of the
working classes. He inveighs passionately against
Christianity. But curiously he adds, " Jesus was not
like that. If Jesus were here we should be crowding
around Him as of old." I wonder, would they? I
think they would. Whether they would obey Him or
not is another question. It is true that they themselves
are largely to blame. There is too much sentimental
questioning as to why the masses do not come to
church. The chief reason is that they do not want to
come to church. They do not care enough for serious
things. But the Church, too, must be largely to blame.
Surely she should be able to present Christ so as to

226 CAPERNAUM
attract them. Something is wrong. I wish we knew
exactly what.
I asked an educated working man. " Let the
Church come out boldly," he said, " as her Master
would on the side of the masses, on the side of labour
against capital. Then you would see the multitudes
following again." But that is not true. Her Master
took no sides except that of Right against Wrong, of
Selfishness against Unselfishness, quite irrespective of
classes. No. A partisan church would not represent
Christ and would not, in the long run, attract even the
workers. If Jesus did not flatter the higher classes
neither did He flatter the multitudes who followed
Him. He loved them but He dealt bravely and truly
with them. Of all who ever served the people, Jesus
was the frankest. He told them their faults. He
preached to them Unselfishness. He bade them play
the game. He told them that happiness comes not
from outward prosperity.
His Church's business is to follow His lead. For
instance, in the Labour question many are insisting
that the clergy should be trained to know the problems
of Industry. I see no necessity. In the matter of
production there are three partners : the Capitalist, who
provides means for labour; the Worker, by hand or
brain, who produces or distributes; the Consumer,
without whom the others would have no place. For
merly the Capitalist usurped power over the others.
Now the Worker is trying to do so. And the Con
sumer would probably do the same if he could. The
Church's place is to represent her Lord, to say to Cap
italist and Worker and Consumer alike, " Sirs, ye are
brethren, why do ye wrong one to another? One is
your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren."

THE MULTITUDES 227
But if the Church must not take sides in the war
fare of classes who are now very well able to fight for
themselves, there is one class that she must always take
sides with, — the poor, the helpless, the oppressed. And
she has not been doing it. Often has their bitter cry
gone up to her Lord, " Your Christians are so busy
saving their souls that they have not time to save us."
The Church was more regarded as the champion of the
helpless in the old mediaeval days, when
" In Westminster's royal halls,
Robed in their pontificals,
England's ancient prelates stood
For the people's right and good."
If ever the Church is to present her Lord aright that
the multitudes may follow Him again, she must go out
into the open to champion the helpless. She must in
sist on the necessity of Social Religion.
What do we mean by Social Religion?
There are two favourite saints in the Greek Church
— St. Cassian and St. Nicholas. Cassian is the type
of individual Christianity. He takes great care of his
own soul and his own salvation; he has six services a
day, with fasts and scourgings. Nicholas is of an
other type. His life is spent in service. He helps the
poor for Christ's sake ; he tends the sick ; he champions
the oppressed ; he loves the little children.
Cassian, according to the legend, enters heaven, and
is questioned by the Lord :
" What hast thou seen on earth, Cassian, as thou
camest hither? "
" Lord, I saw a waggoner floundering in the mud."
" And didst thou not help him? "

228 CAPERNAUM
" Nay, Lord ; I was coming into Thy presence, and
I feared to soil my white robes."
Afterwards Nicholas comes in, all stained and soiled
with mire.
" Why so stained and soiled, Nicholas ? " asks the
Lord. " I saw a poor waggoner," said Nicholas, " flounder
ing in the marsh ; and I had to put my shoulder to the
wheel, and help him out."
"Thou didst well, Nicholas," said the Lord.
" Thou, Cassian, since thou didst carefully guard the
white robes of thy baptism, shalt have a day every year
dedicated to thy honour. Thou, Nicholas, since thou
didst help thy brother out of the mire — thou shalt have
four." Which things are an allegory. God will bless and
prosper His Church in proportion to the help which
she gives to His poor children floundering in the mire,
for whom Christ died.
Which things are also an illustration of the two
types of religion in the Church to-day. The first is
occupied with the overwhelming thought of one's own
soul, one's own salvation, one's own devotion to God,
one's responsibility for one's own spiritual life. This
we may call Individual Religion. Let no man make
light of it in his enthusiasm for Social Service. For it
is the foundation of all religion. It has been in all
ages the inspiration of saints and heroes, who have sac
rificed everything for holiness of life. It is in the
deepening and strengthening of this individual religion
lies the great hope for the future of the Church and of
the world. But as it deepens and strengthens, it re
mains no more individual religion. As religion grows,
there comes to it its crown and blossom. More of the

THE MULTITUDES 229
Christlikeness passes into it — the love and pity for all
our fellow-men; the pain at all the evils which beset
them; the indignation against all the wrong that is
done them; the generous enthusiasm to spend and be
spent for them ; the resolve at all costs that they shall
get the chance at least to live out the best that is in
them. If ever the Church of God is to raise the masses, if
ever she is to rouse men's enthusiasm for her Lord, she
must rise to a higher and broader ideal of religion.
She must not only try to comfort the miserable; she
must gird herself to cut off the sources of their misery.
She must not merely try to reform a few drunken and
immoral, whilst leaving a condition of things which
makes it almost impossible for them to be other than
drunken and immoral. She must concern herself with
social conditions in so far as they affect the characters
of the people; she must teach the State that national
character is more important than national wealth; she
must call out the best of her children — her hard-
headed, sensible laymen, her business men, her profes
sional men, her working men — and demand of them
that they shall give to Christ's business some of the
time and thought and energy which they give to their
own business ; she must insist for the well-dressed peo
ple streaming out of the churches on Sunday that God's
purpose for them is not fulfilled when they have given
all attention to edifying their own souls; that beyond
their own salvation and edification their thoughts must
go forth not only to the heathen abroad, but also to
their helpless brethren at home — to the tenement room,
and the hospital, and the workhouse, and the drink-
shop, and the pawnshop, and the poor, neglected chil
dren in evil homes. These thines must be made the

230 CAPERNAUM
business of the Church; and if men tell us that the
Church must keep to her proper business of saving
souls, we reply: Good enough for the Church to save
souls in the way that her Master did. Yes, the
Church's proper business is saving souls, if we under
stand Christ's method of saving souls — touching them
with the beauty of the self-sacrificing life; teaching
them, through love of the brother whom they have
seen, to believe in the love of God whom they have not
seen. Maybe then the estranged masses would learn
to know Him as in Galilee. Maybe we should get the
multitudes around Him again.

IX
ONE DAY IN CAPERNAUM
WE are to sketch a specimen day of Our
Lord's life ia Capernaum. The Gospel
story is so much made up of separate inci
dents brought together, not always in consecutive
order, that only once in the Capernaum life are we
able to sketch a continuous day where the sequence of
events is clearly given, where we are told by
St. Mark, i. e., probably by St. Peter, that these things
happened within twenty-four hours (St. Mark IV
and V).1
The time is about March a. d. 28. A spring morn
ing by the lakeside with the bright sunshine rest
ing on the pleasant little town and the green hills be
hind, touching the rippling lake into a silver sea dotted
with brown sails.
Jesus is in His boat anchored off the beach. His
boat. The boat which He had asked Peter to place at
His disposal, that it should wait on Him, His pulpit,
His rest place, His means of travelling on the Lake.
What a relic it would be if we had it to-day! The
shore is crowded down to the water's edge, a mass of
bright colour in the morning sun, a great multitude.
For His fame has spread far and wide. All sorts of
people are there. Townspeople and visitors from the
1 Perhaps St. Matthew IX and XIII give each a specimen day,
but it is doubtful. 231

232 CAPERNAUM
regions around — Pharisees from Jerusalem, women
with sick babies, merchants and travellers on the Great
White Road behind, stopping curiously to observe and
listen — earnest people, grateful people, careless people,
curious people, puzzled people, with a sprinkling of
people critical and suspicious. But, most important of
all, that group of young fishermen for whose sake
mainly the teaching is given. For it must always be
kept in mind that one of the chief purposes of His life
was the training and teaching of the men who should
carry on His teaching when He had left the earth.
He is teaching this morning a solemn lesson about
the Kingdom, that men must be in the right attitude to
receive or respond to it. That they themselves are
responsible. Here is the great crowd listening. In an hour they
will be scattered. Some will profit eternally. Some
will not profit at all. Why ? The answer is important
for those people, important for the disciples in their
future preaching, important for all in every age who
listen to the teaching of the Word of God. Why is
this difference? Listen. It is God Himself who an
swers. Because, says Jesus, the effect of the teaching
depends on the character of the hearers. Therefore
He says, " Take heed how ye hear." The world to
day is impatient for " good preachers," and rightly.
But the Lord here puts the emphasis rather on " good
hearers." The preacher must realize his responsibil
ity. But, says the Lord, the hearer must also realize
his. The character of the hearer determines the re
sult. Notice how briefly, tersely, arrestingly Jesus teaches
that lesson. There is a farmer on the hillside at his

ONE DAY IN CAPERNAUM 233
spring sowing. Jesus is silently watching him. The
people naturally look with Him. Then He turns
abruptly to the crowd : —
" Hearken. Behold a sower went forth to sow. Some
seeds fell on the trampled path and the birds of the air
devoured it. Some fell among thorn roots and the thorns
sprang up with it and choked it. Some fell on rocky
ground with no deepness of earth and it withered under
the hot sun. Some fell on good ground, the ground of
an honest, good heart, and it alone bore fruit, thirty, sixty,
a hundred fold. He that hath ears to hear let him hear."
That is all. It was a very short sermon. But a
very arresting sermon. Most of them, we learn, did
not understand it. Not even the disciples at first. But
whether they understood it or not, that little picture
would stick. They would talk about it, guess about it,
ask each other's opinion about it. But when once they
saw the meaning they would never forget it. That
was the value of His parable teaching. He knew it
had to be carried in men's memory for years and He
put it in the form most convenient for carrying.
Then He went up to Peter's house to dinner and
afterwards instructed the disciples more fully on that
parable. St. Matthew suggests another great crowd in
the afternoon. Perhaps that was the time of the kin
dred parables of the Mustard Seed and the grain grow
ing secretly. Probably there were questions asked
and answered and miracles of healing as He moved
amongst the people. Evidently there was excitement
in the air that day. Something seemed to stir special
enthusiasm in the hearers, for we find men coming for
ward offering to be His helpers. A Scribe said, I will

234 CAPERNAUM
follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest. Another said,
I will follow Thee after my father has died. He
tested them and turned them down. They were not
sufficiently in earnest. He had no use for mere flashes
of emotional enthusiasm.
So passed that long, hot afternoon. Now it was late
evening and He was growing tired. There had been a
good deal of strain that day. " Bring around the
boat," He said, " let us go to the other side." That
other side, lonely and desert, was always attractive to
Him when He was tired. In a few minutes the boat
was at the landing-place, the sails were up, and " they
took Him as He was into the boat and the disciples
followed with Him." Probably they did not quite like
the look of the sky as they started. But the Master
wished it and He was tired. The people were so ex
cited about Him that day that a number of boats put
out to follow Him.
It was a long sail of seven miles in the teeth of the
wind. Jesus, lying in the stern sheets very weary,
soon fell asleep. And as He slept the spray was wet
ting Him and the storm was rising and the clouds were
gathering black over the farther shore. In the centre
of the Lake the storm broke. Peter and his comrades
knew what was coming. But there is no time to run
for shelter. They must face it out. The storms on
that lake come with startling suddenness. The lake
lies deep in a mountain gorge and the wind sweeps
through that gorge as through a funnel. Now the
strong fishing smack is tossing like a paper boat and the
" other little boats that followed " are nearly blown out
of the water. Peter and his comrades were accus
tomed to storms. Probably never before had they
faced such a storm as this. Never before had they

ONE DAY IN CAPERNAUM 235
cried in terror to a landsman as the boat began to sink,
" Lord, save us, we perish ! " I suppose it was Peter
who blurted out in the extremity of their danger,
" Lord, carest thou not that we perish ! " Already
they were learning to turn to Him in every trouble.
They were learning their life lesson.
Quiet and self-possessed the Master woke. Then
He arose and rebuked the winds and said unto the sea,
" Peace ! Be still ! " And the wind ceased and there
was a great calm. "And the men marvelled (perhaps
the men in the other boats) and said one to another,
What manner of man is this that even the winds and
the sea obey Him ! "
I have repeatedly pointed out that in His words and
deeds the training of His future Apostles was chiefly
in His mind. Surely this tremendous miracle was part
of their training. They had by and by to face a hos
tile world and to trust Him utterly even when He was
not with them. Clearly they were not yet able to trust
even when He lay asleep beside them. Is not that
what He meant when He turned to them gasping in
their sudden relief, " Why are ye so fearful? Have ye
not yet faith ? " Thus, gradually, patiently, step by
step, He taught them that unconquerable trust in Him
by which in after days they " turned the world upside
down." Their experience of this night was a great
step forward.
Except the miracles of raising men from the dead,
this is the most tremendous miracle in the Gospel story,
incredible for one who disbelieves the Divinity of
Christ. The Apostles, after the Resurrection, told it
simply as one amongst the many strange things that
happened to them. By that time they had seen so
many things to wonder at that they had ceased to won-

236 CAPERNAUM
der. If we believe that God rules, that Christ arose
from the dead, that He who set going the winds and
the waves did not leave Himself powerless amongst the
forces of Nature, we take this miracle as simply an
incident in the great Miracle of the Ages, the coming
of the Son of God to men.
Now from the storm of the natural world we pass
to a storm of the mysterious spirit world of which we
know so little, which lay open and manifest to the eyes
of the Christ as the storm of the Galilean lake.
The tempest during the night had driven the boat to
the southern end of the Lake, to the coasts of the half-
heathen Gadarenes. In the morning twilight the dis
ciples land near the old cemetery, following their Mas
ter with a new, solemn awe. And scarce have they left
the shore when a new fear is upon them. There are
horrible cries amid the rocks and graves, and a big,
murderous lunatic, absolutely naked, clashing his
broken chains, is charging down upon them. I sup
pose that wild storm had excited him to frenzy. All
that night he had been rushing through the storm,
howling, revelling in the mad outburst of nature.
They recognize him at once as " the madman of Ga
dara," the terror of the whole countryside, " who had
his dwelling in the tombs and no man could any more
bind him, no, not with chains, because he had been
often bound and the chains had been rent asunder by
him and the fetters broken in pieces, and no man had
strength to tame him. And always, night and day, in
the tombs and in the mountains, he was crying out and
cutting himself with stones."
He had another madman with him who stood peer
ing from the rocks. Quietly Jesus went forth to meet

ONE DAY IN CAPERNAUM 237
them. Suddenly the furious creature stopped when he
saw Him and threw himself beseechingly prostrate at
His feet. Perhaps some momentary glimpse of sanity
drove him there for protection. But it passed in a mo
ment. In our ignorance of the spirit world we can
only say what happened. There seemed in the poor
wretch a double personality. Some evil spirit power
regained possession of his mind. " What have I to do
with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of the Most High? I
adjure Thee by God, torment me not ! "
Perhaps it was to awaken him to self-recollection
that Jesus asked his name. It was in vain. The evil
spirit, the strong man armed was keeping his palace.
" My name is Legion, for we are many." But a
stronger than he had come upon him and overcame
him. " Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit ! "
And in a moment the poor, demented creature had
come to himself, become his own man again, standing
in a sane world with a brotherly hand on his shoulder.
Men had tried men's way of taming him. Jesus tried
God's way.
One does not know how to take the rest of the story.
That in the midst of the excitement a terrified herd of
swine ran violently down the precipitous slope and
were choked in the sea, that the onlookers attributed
this to the evil spirits passing into them, that much is
clear. For the rest, I prefer to be silent. There is
something more profitable to think of as the story
closes. The swineherds fled and reported what had
happened. And the crowds coming out saw the Mad
man of Gadara " sitting at the feet of Jesus clothed
and in his right mind."
The frightened Gadarenes besought Jesus to depart
out of their borders ; their swine were more important

238 CAPERNAUM
to them than their souls. So He entered into the boat
to return to Capernaum. And the " Madman of Ga
dara " began to publish in Decapolis what great things
Jesus had done for him, and all men did marvel.
In a couple of hours they are back at the Capernaum
landing-stage, and St. Mark says there was a great
multitude gathered to meet Him by the sea. You can
see them crowding the wharf, gathering on the strand,
watching out eagerly for His well-known boat.
Doubtless rumours were rife about the happenings last
night. Some of the boats caught in the storm had
arrived hours ago and told of the stilling of the tem
pest, and early boats from Gadara would have passed
on the tale about the madman of Gadara and the swine.
So it was an excited crowd that waited by the sea.
They receive Him reverently as He steps from the
boat, but they are packed too close to avoid thronging
and pressing as He gets through.
There is a man pressing through the crowd to find
Him, a man who had been all night waiting, going to
apd fro through the wild storm between the sickroom
and the shore.
" O, Master, my little daughter ! She is at the point
of death. Come and lay Thy hands on her and she
shall live!"
Probably Jesus knew the child. It did not take Him
long to know children, and this was Jairus, the ruler
of the Synagogue where He used to preach on Sabbath
days. " He went with him," says St. Mark, and a
great multitude, choking the narrow streets, followed
and thronged Him. "And a woman, which had an
issue of blood twelve years and had suffered many
things of many physicians and was nothing bettered

ONE DAY IN CAPERNAUM 239
but rather grew worse, came in the crowd behind and
touched His garment."
How natural it all is ! Poor woman, in her shame
faced modesty she could not tell Him of her woman's
disease. If she could only touch Him secretly! But
she could not. He instantly perceived that strength had
gone out from Him. We have noticed this before.
Jesus did not heal without loss of vitality, without giv
ing of Himself. Call it superstition if you will, this
touching His garment. No poor soul, ignorant or su
perstitious, can ever reach out to Him without re
sponse. Only He wanted her superstition to rise into
real faith. His eye is upon her, kindly, invitingly, till
she came and fell down before Him and told Him all
the truth. And He said unto her, " Daughter, thy
faith hath healed thee. Go in peace and be whole of
thy plague."
Only a few minutes' interruption, but it seemed
like an hour to the impatient father whose child was
at Death's door. Ah, it is too late after all. There is
his servant now whispering in his ear, " Thy daughter
is dead; do not trouble the Master any more."
Think of the Lord's quiet sympathy with that poor
father. With the destiny of the whole world resting
on His shoulders His heart is suffering with Jairus.
" Fear not ! Only believe, keep trusting me still." So
He kept on His way to the house. Think of the sensi
tive delicacy which turned out the howling hired
mourners from the death chamber and directed that no
one should come in but Peter and James and John and
the father and mother of the damsel. Then watch the
tender child-love in Him as He touches caressingly
that dead young face. Talitha cumi. "My little

240 CAPERNAUM
girlie, rise up." And note that quiet, common-sense
direction like any doctor at a bedside, " Now see that
something is given her to eat."
It was a tired, happy Jesus that lay down in Peter's
little room that night ; surely with the pleasant thought
of the poor lunatic, and the little girl's mother, and all
the poor sufferers that He had made happy that day.
That is what makes the happiness of God. That is the
God whom we have to do with in the struggle of life,
in its pain and sorrow, in the hour of death, in the Day
of Judgment. Thanks be to God.
So ends the story of one day in Capernaum.

THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE
ABOUT nine months have passed since Jesus
came to Capernaum. Nine bright, happy
months, healing the sick, cheering the de
spondent, making happiness everywhere. Out every
day in the bright springtime in the boat or on the hill
side with the simple, happy country people about Him.
He was telling them things of God that were strangely
attractive. They were like children discovering new
beauties in life. For here was a young peasant man
talking to poor peasants, talking joyously as one who
had no worries or cares, who felt poverty no trouble,
who felt God so near, who put heart into men and bade
them not fret for the morrow. Sordid human life was
transformed by His presence. Men caught visions of
" The Life Beautiful " here and hereafter. It was de
lightful to be with Him.
These were the golden days in the ministry of Jesus,
the Romance of Galilee. The disciples adored Him.
The people admired Him. They all loved Him and
were happy with Him. And He was happy with them.
Never again had He so happy a time. The Pharisees
did not like it. They could not understand this gay,
happy religion. They thought a religious man should
be mourning and fasting. But He smilingly told them,
We are too happy for that, happy as a bridal party.
241

242 CAPERNAUM
Can the children of the bride-chamber fast while the
bridegroom is with them? But He added with sad
premonition, The days will come when the bridegroom
shall be taken away from them. Ah, yes. The days
would come. The days were coming when unloving
hearts would spoil forever the happy golden days in
Galilee. We are approaching a turning point in the life of
Jesus, where we can hear far off the mutterings of
gathering storm and see the troubled dawn of the com
ing days when the bridegroom should be taken away
from them.
Already were little rifts within the lute. We notice
that He was suspected of revolutionary tendencies and
had to guard Himself. " Don't think that I am come
to destroy the Law and the Prophets." At the healing
of the man let down through the roof He had shocked
and angered the Pharisees by authoritatively forgiving
sin. Then He was freer than strict Church people
liked in associating with all sorts of undesirable people.
He had caused serious offense in choosing a despised
publican as His disciple. A few spiteful people had
begun to sneer and call names. He was a gluttonous
man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sin
ners. But as yet these seemed but trifles, inevitable in
the progress of any popular leader.
Now, suddenly, unexpectedly, we note a marked
change. All at once in Capernaum, without apparent
reason, the ugly whisperings take voice, the hostility
becomes pronounced. He is charged publicly as a
Sabbath breaker, a revolutionary, an irreligious man.
He is unorthodox. He is disloyal to the Church. He
does not keep the fasts. He works His miracles

THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE 243
through Satan. " He casts out devils by Beelzebub the
prince of the devils." Alas for the bitterness of
spiteful souls, for the cloud come over the sunny days
in Galilee.

Reading only the first three Gospels, the source
of this Capernaum story, this sudden opposition is
difficult to account for. But long after these Gospels,
St. John wrote his reminiscences, filling up the gaps in
the narrative, and there we seem to find a probable ex
planation. There is a story early in St. John (Chap.
V) which belongs evidently to this early Capernaum
period, where he tells us that at a certain feast of the
Jews 1 Jesus went up to Jerusalem. This is news to us.
The Capernaum story gave no hint of any visit to
Jerusalem. Probably St. John was up in Jerusalem at
the time, as he frequently was, perhaps making ar
rangements with the Jewish fishermen about consign
ments of fish from the Lake.
" Now there is in Jerusalem," he says, " by the
sheepgate a pool, called in Hebrew Bethesda, having
five porches. In these lay a multitude of impotent
folk, blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of
the water." Jesus is there watching them. He no
tices especially one poor paralytic of thirty-eight
years' standing. For months he had lain at the Be
thesda Pool, daily listening to the dreary chatter of
people about their ailments, daily losing hope. Sud
denly he feels a kindly hand upon his shoulder.
" Do you want to be made whole ? "
1 It would have saved much controversy if St. John had told
what feast it was. The question is important for the chronology
of our Lord's life. But since there is no clear decision we shall
not discuss it here.

244 CAPERNAUM
" Oh, Sir, there is no hope for me. I have no friend
when the water is troubled to put me into the pool.
Another always steppeth in before me."
"Arise, take up thy bed and walk ! "
"And straightway the man was made whole and took
up his bed and walked. And the same day was the
Sabbath." Which accounts for what follows. The Jews said
unto him, " It is the Sabbath. It is not lawful for
thee to carry thy bed." But he answered them, " He
that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up
thy bed and walk."
Now note the response. Not, Who is he that did
this blessed, wonderful thing for thee after all thy
misery ? but, Who is the man who told thee to carry thy
bed ? See the spirit of it. Quite orthodox, quite cor
rect, very zealous for the Sabbath rules, but absolutely
irreligious. For the essence of religion is love. Love
to God and love to man. And the Mohammedan or
the heathen with the loving heart stands far higher in
God's sight than the most orthodox churchman without
it. Mere orthodoxy without love spells bigotry. And
bigotry is little more than spite and faultfinding and
ill-temper masking under the cloak of religion. Jesus
had to face a good deal of bigotry. And He hated and
exposed and trampled on it every time.
" Who told you to carry your bed? " The man did
not know, for Jesus had passed into the crowd. After
wards Jesus met him in the Temple. A good place to
find him, suggesting his gratitude to God. And as
they parted He said to him, Now you are made whole
do not fall back into your old sin lest a worse thing
befall you.
And the man told the Jews that it was Jesus who

THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE 245
had made him whole. And for this cause did the Jews
persecute Jesus because He did these things on the
Sabbath day. But Jesus answered them, My Father is
always doing good, Sabbath or no Sabbath. My
Father worketh hitherto and I work. Therefore the
Jews sought the more to kill Him because He not only
broke the Sabbath but called God His own Father,
making Himself equal with God.
They actually " sought to kill Him." That week
in their bigot zeal they would have anticipated Calvary
and slain the Son of God a year before His time.
This short visit marks a crisis in His life, the turning
of the tide against Him. If the Capernaum historians
had told us of this visit, we should not have been
puzzled at the change of attitude when He returned.
The story from Jerusalem and, no doubt, emissaries
from Jerusalem followed Him back to Capernaum.
Things will never again be as pleasant in Capernaum.
When He came back, emissaries from Jerusalem seem
to have followed Him to the lakeside, spying on Him,
reporting to Jerusalem, stirring up bad feeling. And
now there are two distinct parties here in His native
province, — the adherents of the Scribes and Pharisees
who are out to make trouble, and " the multitudes "
who still follow Him and admire Him and champion
Him, though they cannot help being in some degree
influenced by the suspicious attitude of the others.
This visit to Jerusalem marks the setting in of a
definite, settled hostility that will pursue Him to the
end. Already they had sought to kill Him. Already
we begin to see Calvary in the distance.
St. Mark's next picture presents Jesus in Caper-

246 CAPERNAUM
naum, after His return from Jerusalem, walking
with His disciples through the cornfields on the Sab
bath day, perhaps on their way to church. For some
reason " they were an hungered." They had had no
breakfast. St. Matthew emphasizes this. And the
disciples plucked the ears of corn and did eat, rubbing
them in 'their hands. Some of the hostile party met
them on the path and at once turned on their Master.
" Why do thy disciples do that which is not lawful
on the Sabbath day?"
What was the wrong? Why should they turn on
Him? Why? Forsooth, because for sake of the
slave and the labourer in the field God's law forbade
threshing and winnowing on the Sabbath, and these
pious people had decreed that rubbing the ears of
grain in the hand is the same as threshing and blowing
away the husks is winnowing ! To us such silly bigotry
seems rather amusing than otherwise. Yes, because it
is not our own bigotry. These men saw nothing
amusing in it. They took themselves quite seriously.
Your true bigot always takes himself seriously. He
is too deficient in sense of humour to be able to smile
at himself. We need not talk. We, too, can remem
ber solemn denunciations about trifles just as important
as rubbing corn in the hands, when we were told that
religion was in danger, that some doctrine of the
Faith was involved. A kindly spirit and a saving
sense of humour would have avoided a good deal of
trouble in the Jewish Church and the Christian.
Think of the patience of Christ. The Lord of the
Universe condescending to reason with this foolish
ness! He could always be patient with foolishness.
If it were not for the spiteful bitterness behind it!
This is what He had to put up with all through the

THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE 247
coming days. Try to sympathize with Him. Think
of the thankless task that the Son of God set Him
self in coming to save humanity.
Kindly, patiently, He comes down to their level,
reasoning with them as we do with little children.
" Your Sabbath notions are utterly missing the mean
ing of the Father. The Sabbath was made for man
and not man for the Sabbath."
On the next Sabbath the Scribes and Pharisees
seem to have laid a trap for Him to put Him wrong
openly before the people. When Jesus arrived at
church that morning, there was a man there in the
Synagogue with a withered hand, and they watched
whether He would heal him on the Sabbath day. It
looks like an arranged plan. Notice the change of
attitude. On His first appearance in that Capernaum
synagogue He had openly healed a demoniac on the
Sabbath and the people sympathized with wondering
delight. No watching or questioning.
Jesus looked on the man with his useless arm and
the pitiful entreaty in his eyes. A tradition has
come down through the lost " Gospel to the Hebrews "
that the man appealed to Him. " I am a stonemason
making a living by my hands. I pray thee, Jesus, re
store me that I may not shamefully have to beg my
bread." And they watched Him, challenging Him to
break the Sabbath. The callousness of these men
roused His indignation. Jesus, looking round on them
with anger, accepted their challenge. He said to the
man, " Stand forth ! " And then to the others, " Is it
lawful on the Sabbath day to do good or to do harm
(by leaving the good undone) ? What man of you
if he have a sheep fall into a pit on the Sabbath day

248 CAPERNAUM
will not lift it out? Is not a man of more value than
a sheep ? " And they held their peace. The congrega
tion watched the contest in silent excitement. Then
saith He to the man, " Stretch forth thy hand." And
his hand was restored whole as the other.
One would think that this miracle should have been
an unanswerable argument. But these bigots took no
kindly pleasure in that. The bigot heart cannot be
lieve any one right but himself. Nothing can persuade
him. When the light is shown him he calls it dark
ness. When proof comes he explains it away. Was
there ever such an example as these Scribes and
Pharisees opposing Jesus ? Even His mighty miracles
they said were done by collusion with Satan. He
casteth out devils through Beelzebub, the prince of the
devils. That is the obstinate sin against light. That,
says Jesus, is the sin against the Holy Ghost which
hath never forgiveness. For every one who sees
God's light and obstinately rejects it in spite of his
conscience is blinding himself, drawing blood, as it
were, on the spiritual retina. These men, in spite of
conscience, rejected the light. In bitter bigotry they
called it darkness, and in the end tried to put it out for
ever on Calvary. In pity for this poor stonemason
He had accepted their challenge and broken the Sab
bath, and by His miracle put them openly to silence.
And they were filled with madness and took counsel
how they might destroy Him, just like their friends
in Jerusalem a few weeks ago. They would have
done it too, only that the multitudes would not let
them touch Him. There are times when we get rather
ashamed of our common humanity.
These are not the only charges against Him.

THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE 249
The Sabbath was only a little part of the controversy.
Try to understand the position.
The Son of God came down to earth to put religion
on its right basis, to lay down authoritatively what
His inspired prophets had been trying to teach long
ago, — that Religion meant righteousness and love, not
petty external rules and restrictions ; that men were not
slaves but the children of the Father who needed and
craved for their love.
The cardinal sin of Judaism lay in substituting for
this love a service of external formal rules and re
strictions. Look at the religion that Jesus found in
the nation which was to represent God to men. To
fast twice in the week was to be pious. To give public
alms was to be benevolent. To wear phylacteries and
repeat formal prayers in the street was to be devout.
To hate publicans, to shun sinners, to dislike and de
spise Gentiles was a mark of loyalty to God. The
Sabbath was the central test. All the petty, slavish,
little rules which the Scribes had bound upon the
Sabbath were the prominent demands of religion.
You can imagine how Jesus would hate these mis
erable misrepresentations of God. He censured the
blind guides and their beggarly little rules. He re
peatedly broke their Sabbath. I think He sometimes
went out of His way to break it, that He might rebuke
their false thoughts and restate the Divine purpose,
" The Sabbath was made for man and not man for
the Sabbath."
The Sabbath question is a good example of the
whole controversy. The Sabbath was made for man,
He said, for man's happiness, for man's highest good-
Examining the various passages in the Old Testament

250 CAPERNAUM
we find always the fundamental, twofold purpose.
Men were to have holiday from work and they were to
rejoice in the Lord in their holiday. Rest and Wor
ship. The Father's kindly law for His children's
good. (1) The weekly holiday was that they should rest,
recuperate, enjoy themselves, be happy. God said to
men and women at their work, to the children at school,
to the slave in his bonds, to the beast under the yoke,
Rest and enjoy yourselves and have a good time one
day in every seven. Some of the Jews would rather
work and make their slaves and cattle work. " When
will the Sabbath be gone that we may buy and sell
and get gain ? " But the Father would not allow His
holiday to be spoiled. Thou and thy manservant and
thy maidservant and thine ox and thine ass. All shall
have holiday. The Sabbath was made for man.
(2) But for complete man. Not merely for the
body which gets tired. Man is more than his body.
The " I," the self, the man as he stands beneath the
eye of God and enters into relations with God, the
man who is destined for the eternal adventure of the
Hereafter is much more than the mere temporary body
through which he manifests himself. So the Father,
thinking of man's highest good, said not merely,
Come apart and rest, but, Come apart with Me and
rest a while. Rejoice in your holiday but rejoice in
the Lord. Think high thoughts. Give your souls a
chance to grow. Remind yourself of God's loving
purpose for your temporal and your eternal good.
Such was the Sabbath, the good gift of God, the
Sabbath made for man. Behold God in the Creation
story looking on this Sabbath which He had made,
" and behold it was very good."

THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE 251
Now in the patient Christ in the cornfield behold
God again looking on His Sabbath that men had
spoiled, and behold it was very bad. The Jewish
church people had spoiled God's holiday, taken the
gladness out of it, covered it with irritating rules and
restrictions, which caused almost more weariness than
work itself. A healer must not do a kindly deed, a
cripple cured must not lift his cushion, a man must
not walk more than so many yards, a woman must not
have a needle in her clothes, disciples must not rub
corn in their hands lest they should come into condem
nation. The Father was a jealous, irritating ruler,
and man was a worried slave of this Sabbath holiday.
And when Jesus came down with the free air of
Heaven fluttering their little parchment rules, they
took counsel to kill Him and cursed Him as a Sabbath
breaker in the name of the Lord.
Make no mistake about the attitude of Jesus to
these Jews. For it is the attitude of God. Judge
them fairly and be sure He judged them fairly.
Does any one think that Jesus would condemn an
honest man who sincerely questioned and opposed Him
because His teaching seemed revolutionary ? God for
bid. That would be utterly unfair. For to them He
was merely a new teacher. They did not think of
Him as divine. Does any one think He would con
demn a loving-hearted man who in his zeal for God
had mistaken thoughts about the Sabbath? God for
bid. Lovingly, sympathetically He would correct him
and bless him.
Settle it down deep in your hearts that when God
condemns any man it is not for honest doubts or mis
takes but for deep moral fault in the man's own soul.

252 CAPERNAUM
It was the vicious spirit, the unloving heart in these
men that condemned them. That was why they could
not recognize the Divine when they saw it. The
unloving heart can never know God. " He that loveth
not," says the apostle, " knoweth not God." He that
loveth is on the way towards God. The more you
love any one, wife or husband or child or friend, the
more you love even the dog that follows you, the
more likely you are to find the way back to the uni
versal heart of the Father. The unloving heart is the
cardinal sin. Not drunkenness, nor impurity, nor any
other sin can compare with it in the eyes of Christ.
" The publicans and harlots shall go into the Kingdom
before you."
The unloving heart spoils happiness everywhere. It
spoiled the happiness even of Jesus in Galilee. Never
more now to the close of His life shall He have back
again those happy first days in Capernaum.

XI
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
AT last there came a day which stands forth
above other days in the story of Capernaum,
nay, in the story of the world, when Jesus
began to lay the permanent foundations of His King
dom of God on earth. For many months He had been
preparing. Vast, friendly crowds were following.
Disciples were attending Him from town to town.
But it was all a one-man movement depending on one
single life, which was menaced by steadily growing hos
tility, even by the beginning of conspiracies to destroy
Him. He knew that His death was within sight. It
was time to lay down permanent foundations for His
Kingdom. We must here interrupt the story to think about
that Kingdom.
Ask students of history, Who are the men who
have inspired the big things, the things pure and
honourable and lovely and of good report that stand
out beautiful in the world's story? Unanimously they
reply, the enthusiasts, the men of great ideals, who
saw visions and dreamed dreams, and wrought, and
suffered, and perhaps died to work them out and so
made this world a nobler place to live in.
That is true. The enthusiasts of the large vision
down through the ages have been the pioneers in the
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254 CAPERNAUM
uplift of humanity. But this story of the Gospels is
to teach us that all their visions are but fragments and
reflections of the Great Vision brought down from
heaven 2000 years ago, that these enthusiasts have
behind them the Master of all Enthusiasts, who began
to see His visions and dream His dreams in a car
penter's workshop, and then came forth to show them
to men and to work, and suffer, and die to make
them realities.
I am thinking of some of the enthusiasts whom I
have known and loved, with their eager projects for
the good of man. There were men eager about Mis
sions to the heathen, about Temperance, about Housing
of the Poor, about Playgrounds for city children,
about Old Age Pensions. I have one friend, now
within the Veil, who was so excited about the helpless
classes in his city, and especially about slum children,
that every talk with him was bound to end in passionate
words about it. He was a plain, humble man, but so
persistently did he keep on about his ideals that he actu
ally forced the hand of a set of us in that city to
found a valuable Social Service Union. Truly this
would be a poor world if you took those eager enthu
siasts out of it !
With all deep reverence I say that such enthusiasts
suggest to me, far off, the thought of Our Lord. Did
you ever think of His central enthusiasm, the special
subject that bulked so prominently in His thought that
it seemed as if He-^if we may reverently say it —
could not help talking about it.
What was it? Think. It was the centre point of
all His teaching, the Vision that filled His outlook into
the future of the world. It was the subject of His

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 255
very first sermon. His last instructions in the days
after the Resurrection pertained to it. The twelve
Apostles were sent out to teach it. The seventy dis
ciples got it as their subject. His whole teaching bore
on it. Almost every parable was an illustration of it.
If you look through a Concordance you find the title
of it about a hundred times in the Gospels.
Just as I have said. As every great human teacher
who is capable of enthusiasm has some central ideal
that is so prominent in his thoughts that he will con
tinually talk of it, so in all reverence we may say of
the Divine Teacher that He had such a central ideal
too. He called this ideal of His " The Kingdom of God."
You remember His very first proclamation, " The
Kingdom of God is at hand," His very last teaching
before His Ascension, " being seen of them forty days
and speaking of the things concerning the Kingdom of
God." You remember how nearly all His parables
were illustrations of it. The Kingdom of God is like
Mustard Seed, like Leaven, like Hid Treasure, like a
Draw-net, and so on and on through the series. The
Kingdom of God! The Kingdom of God!
That is my first thought. That Jesus had one great
central enthusiasm that seemed to Him more impor
tant than anything else, and that He called it " The
Kingdom of God."
Now what did He mean by this Kingdom of God?
Was it merely a future Heaven to look forward to
after death ? Emphatically, No. It was clearly some
present thing. Something that first of all concerned
this earth, that had to begin and grow and spread for
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256 CAPERNAUM
His word-pictures show that. It is as a little seed
which shall grow into a spreading tree. It is as leaven
which spreads in meal till the whole is leavened. It is
as seed growing secretly. It is as a corn of wheat
springing up, first the blade, then the ear, after that the
full corn in the ear. Evidently it is a living, growing
thing, spreading gradually on earth for earth's bless
ing and good.
It was a lovely project to make a lovely world.
It was a vision far off of a nobler humanity, of
Courage and Heroism, of Righteousness and Love,
of true men and pure women, of kindly hearts and
helpful hands, of Knights of God going out to sweep
oppression from the earth, to pull the poor sinful world
straight. It was Jesus' vision of a Golden Age on
earth, a Kingdom where a righteous, loving God should
rule and where men should by love serve one another.
Let the sweet, fair vision rise before you. Christ's
ideal for His Church. A band of loyal hearts fol
lowing Him for love of Him, walking through this
world ennobling life, then trustfully stepping out with
Him off the edge of the world into the thrilling ad
venture of the Hereafter. Of all the romantic ex
peditions which this world has seen, there is none
more romantic than this to which Jesus called men by
the Galilean lake long ago, to which He is calling them
on the banks of the St. Lawrence to-day. When you
are older than Methuselah in another life you will be
still feeling the thrill of it, always standing on the edge
of wonders.
For years He had brooded on His vision on the hills
of Nazareth. It developed as He made chairs and
cattle-yokes for the people. Try to get into sympathy
with Him in His thoughts. If His vision materialized

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 257
Earth would be singing unto the Lord a new song, and
when their life here was over the members of His
Kingdom should pass within the Veil to be a Kingdom
of God in the Unseen Land. That was the vision of
the young Enthusiast in the Nazareth workshop. His
Kingdom of God.
But it was no Utopia, no mere dreamer's vision.
He proclaimed it as a practical project to be real
ized. First He told men it was already in existence. Note
His alternate name for it, The Kingdom of Heaven.
Note the form in which He bids us pray for it.
Thy Kingdom Come ( t t- tt
Thy Will be Done { In Earth as it is in Heaven"
That is, as it already exists in Heaven.
Which brings at once the stirring thought so easily
ignored in the materialism of earth-life, that this King
dom is already existing with all its powers and all its
laws in the Spirit-world from which He came. He
is only founding a colony on earth of the already
existing Kingdom in Heaven. That Kingdom there
is behind the enterprise, throwing out its colony into
a new region, as the great Roman Empire used to do.
That is the idea which St. Paul gave to the Philippians.
" Our citizenship is in Heaven." You Philippians are
a proud colony of imperial Rome. Rome is behind
you. Her citizenship is yours. Her power and priv
ileges, her pride and position belong to you. Your
citizenship is in Rome. But you Christians in Philippi
are citizens also of a greater empire, the King
dom of Heaven, whose colony was founded here by
its King. Your citizenship is in Heaven. The whole

258 CAPERNAUM
Spiritual Universe, the God of that Universe, the
angels, and archangels, and all the company of Heaven
are responsible for you.
That is the inspiring thought to bring hope and
courage in despondent days. Christians of the old
world needed it in troubles and persecutions. Chris
tians of to-day need it in these difficult days when
men are saying Christ has failed, His Kingdom is
toppling down. Nay. Lift up your hearts, lift them
up unto the Lord! The whole Spiritual Universe is
behind that little Kingdom. Therefore the powers of
Hell cannot prevail against it. Spite of all reverses
Christ must finally win.
Hour after hour on the seashore you watch the tide,
now advancing a little, now falling back. But always
inevitably the tide comes in! Century after century
men have watched the spiritual tide advancing, reced
ing. But God is behind it. The tide is coming in.
One day, spite of all reverses, " The kingdoms of this
world shall become the Kingdom of our Lord and of
His Christ and He shall reign for ever and ever."
Is not this the explanation of the quiet confidence,
the happy optimism of Our Lord in those discouraging
three years in which He was founding His Kingdom?
Of course there were tremendous difficulties. This
poor, degraded race must be roused to believe in the
Heavenly Vision, and rise to it, and want it, and yield
their wills to it. Yes. But He was not in a hurry.
He had all time before Him. And failure was im
possible. Millions would die in ignorance of it and
pass into another life. But the Vision of the Kingdom
was waiting them in that other life too. Jesus could
wait. He was not in a hurry. He was but sowing the

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 259
seed of Heaven in a little seed-plot in Palestine. He
was but gathering a nucleus of faithful hearts to whom
He would commit His undertaking, and then He would
be with them always to the end of the world. He
could afford to wait.
But He did more than that to make it an attainable
reality. At the close of His three years' life on earth,
after the Resurrection and Ascension, this is what men
had learned about the Kingdom. That He who pro
claimed it was God, that God had come in human guise
to dwell with men that men might know of certainty
what God was like who was behind that Kingdom —
not only the unutterably holy Deity but the generous,
sympathetic, kindly Father and Friend. The poor
world had been guessing blindly about the great and
awful Being who held them in His hand. They saw
the terrors of Nature around, the fierce storm wind
crashing through the forest, the thunder and hail and
fire mingled with the hail, and they wondered what
He was like who was above all life. Now they knew.
When they had learned that Jesus was God they had
learned what God was like. They had seen Him with
the children's arms around His neck. They had seen
Him cheering on poor outcasts who had little hope.
They saw His love, His self-sacrifice, His pain over
their failures, His tender solicitude. They did not
know at first that this was God, not even those who
knew Him best. They only knew Him as the bravest,
tenderest, most lovable Comrade that ever men had.
Little by little the ineffable mystery was dawning on
them. Think what it meant when they knew ! when
He rose from the dead, when the Holy Spirit came,
when they learned with wonder and awe that He who

260 CAPERNAUM
had walked beside them as their Comrade and Friend
was the eternal God !
But far more than that they had learned that He
came to take human flesh upon Him, to incarnate Him
self in humanity that the nature of God, the Spirit of
God, the power and strength of God should be infused
into poor, sinful men. Have you ever seen an anaemic
girl dying in a hospital because she cannot make red
blood? A strong, virile man stands beside the bed,
the surgeon makes an incision in his vein and in hers,
and the strong tide of life passes into her from him
and new power comes. Something like that is the
meaning of the Incarnation. Something like that is
the meaning of that holy Sacrament " for the strength
ening and refreshing of our souls." That was His
answer to poor sinners struggling with their sins. " I
am come," He said, " that they may have life and may
have it more abundantly." That in the new power of
the Kingdom of God the poorest struggler may be able
to rise higher than the great saints of the earlier world.
And more still, that He had come to die for the sins
of the world, " to give His life a ransom for many."
Then He rose from the dead. And He thrilled them
with the hope of an exciting future. He told them
there was no death, that life went straight on, that
His Kingdom was going forward into a wondrous life
pervaded by the love of God.
Such are some of the things which the Gospel of
the Kingdom meant.
He trusted men to carry out His project.
In younger days some of us have wondered how He
could bear to think of unconverted people in His town,
in Palestine, throughout the world, without wanting to

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 261
go right off and convert every one of them, or at least
tell them of His Good News. We thought they must
be all lost if they did not hear of it before they died.
Evidently Jesus did not think so. God's thoughts are
not as our thoughts. His Gospel has taught us to
trust all men to the Eternal Love, which willeth not
that any should perish. No man shall miss the draw
ing nigh of the Kingdom whether it be in this world
or in the World to Come. No man will be lost through
ignorance. No man will be lost until the Father has,
as it were, put His arms around Him and looked him
in the eyes with His Eternal Love and been rejected.
So Jesus' chief work was not the preaching to indi
viduals and converting individuals, but rather the
starting of a Society which should go on through the
ages proclaiming " The Kingdom of God has drawn
nigh." It is touching to see how He trusted men with this
project. There is nothing which stirs some of us like
being trusted, especially when we do not deserve it.
Men did not give Him much reason to trust them dur
ing His three years on earth. But He could look
beneath the surface. No one ever believed in men and
trusted men as Jesus did.
I have met somewhere a quaint old legend that
when the Lord returned to Heaven the angel Gabriel
asked Him, " Master, did you accomplish your pur
pose? Did you convert all men to be citizens of the
Kingdom ? "
" No," He said, " I only founded the Kingdom and
told a few men about it and left it to grow."
" But Lord, how will the world know? "
" Peter and James and John and the rest will teach
them."

262 CAPERNAUM
" But they may forget, or neglect, or fail."
" They will not fail. I am trusting them."
No, they did not fail. And the Church has not
failed. But, alas, the brightness of that early vision is
dimmed. The saddest stories in history are those
which tell how the noble ideals of reformers have been
degraded by their followers. We have low, selfish
ideals of that Kingdom as merely a means of getting
to Heaven ourselves. We have divisions and separa
tions instead of a united Church going forth trium
phantly to establish the Kingdom. We are a pretty
poor sort of people to trust the Kingdom with. But
we shall do better. We have not failed.
So we have to keep in mind in studying this story
His prominent purpose of starting that little Society
which should go on through the centuries. Day by
day for three years He was keeping around Him a
little group that He had chosen as the nucleus of His
future Church, showing them His ideals, inspiring
them with His thoughts, touching them with His life,
so that when He should ascend into Heaven He would
have ready for His purpose a trained, consecrated band
of men on whom the Holy Ghost should come.

XII
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
SO the great day came when the Lord would
begin His daring venture to realize His vision,
to place this Kingdom of His dreams with solid
feet upon the earth. And He did not mean to accom
plish it Himself. He was going to entrust it to men.
As when a generous war leader calls to him a man
shamed for cowardice and makes him a hero by en
trusting him with a dangerous mission, so Jesus with
generous trust would commit His great enterprise to
poor humanity so pitifully disappointing Him and yet
so pathetically desiring to be worthy. " I will trust
them," He said ; " they will rise to the trust and I will
be watching over them till the end of the world."
So He would appoint twelve men to begin with,
" that they might be with Him " in close, familiar in
tercourse, that He might teach them, and give them
His full confidence, and inspire them with His en
thusiasm, and mould them to His likeness, and thus
make them the nucleus of His coming Kingdom. It
was a splendid venture of God's generous faith in
man. He did not choose men of position, learning or in
tellectual power. One wonders why. Considering the
tremendous task before them, one would think He
might have chosen better for His Kingdom than these
unlearned and ignorant fishermea In ten minutes'
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264 CAPERNAUM
thinking you could pick out what would seem a far
better Twelve. Such men, say, as die Capernaum
nobleman, or Nicodemus, or Joseph of Arimathea, or
Lazarus, or the young Ruler, or Jairus, or Saul of Tar
sus, who was up at Jerusalem just then, a theological
student in the college. Men of culture, and ability,
and knowledge of affairs, men who had influence to
push the project and money to back it up. Yet He did
not choose them.
Perhaps, humanly speaking, He could not get them.
The young Ruler, at any rate, who seemed so fit to be
an apostle, shrank from the ordeal and went away
sorrowful. Not many would rise to Jesus' demand as
these fishermen did to leave all and follow Him.
Or, perhaps for this first stage He did not want
men of influence and position. Just now what was
needed was trustworthy witnesses to the fact on
which the Kingdom rested, that the Eternal Son of
God had come to earth and lived with men and died
for men and rose again and proclaimed a Kingdom of
God upon earth. Now the best witnesses to a fact are
plain, practical, unimaginative men, not easily carried
away by fancies or theories, and so thoroughly im
pressed and convinced of the fact that they would risk
even their lives on the truth of it. For instance, in the
sceptical theories about the Resurrection, that the wit
nesses were visionaries who in rapt devotion imagined
these seances with the risen Lord, what an assurance it
gives to think of these practical, unimaginative men in
their commonplace life, washing their nets, and daring
the storms, and packing fish for the markets. One does
not easily fancy visionaries in such an environment.
Add to this their deep faith in God, their daily com
panionship with Him for years, their utter surrender

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 265
to and enthusiasm for His Kingdom, and perhaps
you will have reason to think that they might be just
what He wanted. At any rate, He chose them.
It is the eve of their Ordination day. A still sum
mer night on the Peaks of Hattin, near the shores of
the Lake of Galilee. There, under the silent stars, all
the night long, lay a solitary Man rapt in close com
munion with Heaven. While below, in the villages and
on the hill slopes, the crowds who followed Him were
asleep. " Jesus went up into the mountain and con
tinued all night in prayer to God." How often He
must have done this. It was His great relief and re
freshment and help in the hard strain of His life on
earth, with the great burden of humanity resting upon
Him. He could not do without it. He knew what
it meant to Him and He knew what it would mean to
His poor, struggling disciples. Therefore, He keeps
telling them to try it for themselves. For, He says,
every poor struggler may come thus like a little child
to the Father and tell Him of his cares and troubles,
and efforts, and aspirations, and the Father will listen
to him and love him and help him.
Now that summer night is lightening to dawn.
The day is breaking, with the reddening sky and the
fresh breeze from the lake, and the chirping of birds
wakening to the appearance of day. Gradually the hill
slopes are dotted with people. The disciples and the
multitude are seeking Him. As they draw near His
look suggests something solemn and unusual. Evi
dently the disciples have some knowledge of what is
coming as they gather nearer around Him on the sum
mit.

266 CAPERNAUM
"And when He was set His disciples came unto
Him." Then amid solemn, wondering silence He calls
twelve names. " Simon ! " and Simon came. " An
drew ! " and Andrew came. Then James and John and
the others in their order, ending with Judas Iscariot,
who afterwards betrayed Him. He called unto Him
whom He would and they came unto Him.
That simple ceremony on the hill that morning was
one of the great events of history, the beginning of a
little society, the Christian Church, which should go
out through all the ages proclaiming His Kingdom, the
planting of a seedling in which He saw far off a great
spreading tree with the fowls of the air lodging in its
branches. Then to the disciples, waiting in silent expectation,
came what we might call their Ordination Sermon.
" He opened His mouth and taught them " the ideals
of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God was no new
idea to the Jews. In ancient days it was their proudest
boast that God was King in Israel. And in the most
depressing times of their history, their prophets per
sistently pointed to a Golden Age when there should be
a Kingdom of God again. But, naturally, the people
read their own low thoughts into it. That coming day
was to be a Day of Holiness, it is true, but prominent
in their thoughts was " Der Tag," — The Day some
what in the German sense. A day when Messiah
should lead Israel to victory, when the nations which
oppressed them should bow beneath their feet, and
Israel should rule gloriously. They already believe
that Jesus is the Messiah, and now He is going to speak
to them of the Kingdom of God.
Then Jesus opened His mouth and taught them — not

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 267
of triumph and revenge and wealth and self-assertioa
That was not His ideal of a happy world.
Blessed are they who are content to be poor, not cling
ing to or tangled up in their possessions.
Blessed are the meek who do not assert themselves.
Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the
children of God.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteous
ness for they shall be filled.
Blessed are they who suffer for righteousness' sake for
theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
So begins the Ordination Sermon of the Twelve,
His presentation of the Kingdom beyond the stars
which they were to proclaim on earth. We have St.
Paul's version of it twenty years later, his picture of
the man who is a subject of the Kingdom.
He suffereth long and is kind, he envieth not, he
vaunteth not himself, is not puffed up, seeketh not his
own, is not easily provoked, doth not behave himself
uncourteously, beareth all things, believeth all things,
hopeth all things.
Such is Christ's vision of a happy world, His King
dom of God on earth, that He bids us pray for ; " Thy
Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven." Surely
Earth itself would be almost Heaven enough if His
Kingdom should come.
Now He goes on to impress on them their respon
sibility and His deep trust in them. Hear Him tell
those simple, ignorant men to whom He was com
mitting His project: "Ye are the salt of the earth.
Do not lose your saltness. Ye are the light of the

268 CAPERNAUM
world. Let your light shine before men." Only a
generous heart could trust like that. Only the gen
erous heart of God could believe in men as Jesus be
lieved. And He got great results.
The first sixteen verses in the fifth of St. Matthew
seem an Ordination Sermon addressed to the Twelve.
Then, with the people listening, He goes on to explain
about the Kingdom. He shows how the old religion
of Israel was related to the new. The old was a prepa
ration for the new. The Law and the Prophets were
founded on the eternal distinction of Right and
Wrong. That can never pass away. " Think not that
I am come to destroy the Law and the Prophets. I am
not come to destroy but to fulfill." The foundations,
God and Right and Duty and Love, must stand for
ever. They belong to the Upper Kingdom in the
spiritual world which God is extending to earth.
Therefore, love as before but love in God's way.
Love even your enemies. Do good to them that hate
you. Pray as before but pray in deep reality. Enter
into thy closet and shut to thy door and come as
little children to the Father. Ask, and it shall be
given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall
be opened. Give alms as before but secretly, in God's
sight for God's sake. Judge not unkindly the deeds
of others. Judge generously, sympathetically, as God
does. And trust Him to the uttermost. You poor,
fretted children of men, the Father wants you to live
a happy, care-free life in His presence. That is what
they do in the Upper Kingdom. Behold the birds of
the air, who cannot sow nor reap, and God takes care
of them. Behold the wild flowers of the field, that toil
not to spin their robes of beauty, yet Solomon in all his

,THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 269
glory was not arrayed like one of these. Are not ye
of more value than they? Do not worry. You are
in the Father's house. Your heavenly Father know
eth that ye have need of ail these things.
Therefore, be not anxious for the morrow. For
God will be in the morrow, in the morrow of life car
ing for you, in the morrow of death waiting for you.
There is nothing in all the wide world worth fretting
about except sin. For " God's in His Heaven, All's
right with the world." Therefore, seek ye first the
Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all will
come right for you here and hereafter.
Surely the noblest teaching ever given on earth.
The veriest unbeliever acknowledges this, to whom
Christ is only a great preacher of Righteousness.
Therefore, in this chorus of praise a warning is needed.
Beware of the sceptical attitude so common to-day
which lauds Jesus as the loftiest of human teachers and
the Sermon on the Mount as " the best thing in the
Gospels." Nay, the best thing in the Gospels is the Gospel it
self, the assurance that the Son of God has come, the
manifesting of the righteousness and love and self-
sacrifice of God in the person and life and death of the
Eternal Son, by which He touches our hearts and wins
our love, and makes us desire to follow these ideals
for ourselves. The Christ of God was more than a
mere preacher of Righteousness. Alas for this poor
world if Jesus only came to preach " Sermons on the
Mount!" This was the Eternal Son of God through whom
the worlds were made, telling authoritatively of God's
Kingdom in the world from which He came and pat-

270 CAPERNAUM
terning His earthly kingdom upon it. Sceptics tell us
that God cannot be really known, that the God of our
conceptions is after all only a man-made God, a pro
jection of our own highest thoughts of what God
ought to be. A great sceptical writer pictures a man
standing on a snow-clad mountain slope at dawn. The
sun behind throws a gigantic shadow of the man all
down the snowfield. And the man looks on this pro
jection of himself and calls it God. " Thus does poor
humanity make its gods. God is but a man's God made
by man's guessing, imagining, hoping."
Nay, this God whom Jesus reveals is not a man's
God. This is God's God. The Christ was not guess
ing, imagining, hoping. He knew. And He came
down to live and die on earth because He wanted us
to know. To know God, to understand God, to think
from God's standpoint, to learn the law of the King
dom above which He taught us that day in the Ser
mon on the Mount.

XIII
THE TWELVE
PEOPLE generally think of the Twelve Apostles
vaguely and impersonally. They are names
rather than men. Just a group of saintly fig
ures, all pretty much alike, perhaps with halos round
their heads as in the church windows. But, of course,
to those who knew them they were people much like
ourselves and by no means all alike. They were a
group of living, warm-blooded men, quite diverse in
appearance and character and temperament and dis
position, and in that diversity a very interesting set of
people to know. And if we would think of them like
that we might learn to discriminate so as to know them
when we meet them, and perhaps to learn, too, how
Jesus wanted all sorts of people then and wants all
sorts of people now to serve in His Kingdom, even
people like ourselves.
I am writing this in a New England fishing village
by the Atlantic. Before me is a lake-like expanse of sea
about twelve miles by six, about the size of the Sea of
Galilee, shut in by islands on the far side. And I am
meeting daily with fishermen and owners of boats, men
of the class of Peter and James and Andrew. They
are brave, quiet, hard-working men. Many are deeply
religious men, though silent and reserved about it.
They are interesting personalities when you get to
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272 CAPERNAUM
know them. One you remember by his quick, shrewd
thought; one by his grim, narrow sense of right; one
by his half sad, half humorous views of life. There is
a curious vein of sentiment too, so frequent in men
who lead primitive lives, often an unexpected apprecia
tion of beauty, silent, inarticulate.
Nightly, before dawn, their clumsy boats go out to
the fishing grounds. Sometimes they come in with a
heavy haul, sometimes they " have toiled all night and
have taken nothing." It is a rough, dangerous life.
To a landsman it seems a dull, monotonous life and
the men seem dull, monotonous men — until you get to
know them, until one tries to tell you of the wonder of
the dawn at sea and the beauty of the lone morning
star, or another tells his yarn of the excitement in a
sudden storm, or in the rare contest with a shark or
giant sunfish, or, as we talk of the fisher apostles of
long ago an old salt wonders with dry Yankee humour
how St. Peter must have felt when he got a brutal
dogfish in his net.
It helps to bring life before one in " Capernaum by
the Sea." This is the type of men of whom Jesus made
apostles. These are the fishermen whom Jesus knew,
with their half articulate thoughts, their desire for
God, and their affection for Himself, their stories and
dry humour which must have often made Him smile in
the happy gaiety of these Galilee days before the big
troubles came.
What a hold He had on them ! How intimately He
knew them, that young dreamer John, that sober-faced
Thomas, that excitable Nationalist rebel Simon the
Cananean, that impulsive, irrepressible Peter for whom
He had such an affection in spite of his faults. And
the two inseparables, Philip and Nathaniel. And all

THE TWELVE 273
the rest of them down to Ish-Kerioth, the lone Judean,
who was never quite at home with these men of the
North. They were all very human with plenty of hu
man faults. But Jesus would have been very lonely
without them. His was a nature that craved for
friendship and they gave it unstinting.
In the first group are, naturally, the biggest men,
the enthusiasts, the leaders, the. men of most force of
character and most eager devotion to Jesus and His
great purpose. They are two pairs of brothers — Peter
and Andrew, James and John. These four are close
friends. And they were the first of the band to make
the acquaintance of Jesus. We remember their first
meeting more than a year ago. One of themselves,
writing in his old age the Gospel of St. John, recalls
every detail, even the very hour. It was about four
o'clock in the afternoon. Two of them, Andrew and
John, were standing with the Baptist at the Jordan
when Jesus passed by. " Behold," said the Baptist,
" the Lamb of God." And the two young men started
after Jesus timidly, half hoping, half fearing that He
might speak to them. And He did. He took them
to His little lodging and they stayed all that wonder
ful evening with Him, sharing His supper, sharing
His thoughts. And as they came away that night, out
under the silent stars, their hearts swelling with a
great new love and hope and enthusiasm, the world
was for evermore changed for them. Their hearts
were bound to Him forever.
And one of the two was Andrew, Simon Peter's
brother. He findeth his own brother Simon and
brought him to Jesus. And I suppose John brought
his brother James.

274 CAPERNAUM
These four go together. I watch them as they fol
low Jesus in the way coming down from the Mount.
Peter is rather a senior man, not young, not old
(" When thou wast young thou girdest thyself, when
thou art old another shall gird thee"), a big, rough
fisherman with weather-beaten face, humorous, kindly,
affectionate, a favourite with his comrades, a man who
has his weaknesses which Jesus will correct, a man of
hasty impulses, a man who makes mistakes as every
man worth while does.
In his great heart is a deep, reverent affection for
Jesus and an older man's instinct to take care of his
younger Leader since He will not take care of Him
self. He is allowed a freedom of remonstrance beyond
the others. Once he presumed too far. But Jesus
knew him too well to misunderstand.
Beside Peter is, not his brother Andrew, but John,
his constant comrade. " Peter and John " are always
together in the story. John is not a leader but he is
a deeper character than Peter. John is a thinker. One
pictures him a youth with fine face, gentle and schol
arly, with the dreamer's eyes ; a man who, walking this
green earth, sees " a door opened in Heaven," and the
man who is quickest of all to apprehend the high
thoughts of his Master. He and his brother have hot
impulses beneath for which Jesus playfully used to call
them " Sons of Thunder." But no man else was ad
mitted to such close intimacy as John. He is " the
disciple whom Jesus loved."
Andrew goes with James. The chief thing we know
of him is that he brought his brother to Jesus. Church
tradition says he was crucified and on his cross kept
telling men about his Lord. That is the origin of the
St. Andrew's cross. James we know least about. He

THE TWELVE 275
died young. But we know that Jesus used to call him a
Son of Thunder, and that he was important enough for
Herod to cut off his head. Herod got hold of two of
this group, James and Peter, and God allowed James
to die while He saved Peter. Perhaps he might have
been the greatest of all if he had lived. But God had
other use for him in the life beyond. And he and
Peter know now why God let him die then. Surely
they must often have talked of that when they met in
the larger life forty years later.
Such are the first group. The big men, the passion
ate, enthusiastic men. James the fearless man who
died for Christ, Andrew the practical man who worked
for Christ, John who thought deeply without speaking,
and Peter who spoke often without thinking, that im
petuous, blundering Peter, the most human of them all.
One likes to think how Jesus was drawn to him though
he was a blunderer and for three hours a coward. It
makes us hopeful for some of ourselves, who are also
blunderers and cowards but who deep in our hearts can
feel with poor Peter, " Lord, thou knowest all things,
thou knowest that I love thee."
That is the first group. Are some of us saying,
" Ah, well, I certainly do not belong there. I am not
an enthusiast. I am a dull, cold man. I often have
doubts. Sometimes I am afraid that I do not belong
to Christ at all. And yet I would not give Him up
for all the world. I do not see myself in Peter's
group, at any rate."
Well, let us see the next group walking together,
Philip and Nathaniel Bar-Tolmai and Matthew and
Thomas. These are very different men. They love
Jesus too. But they are smaller men, useful, practical

276 CAPERNAUM
men, but not capable of being leaders. They are
thoughtful, rather sceptical. It took some of them a
long time to believe that Jesus was divine. They could
not help it. They were built that way.
Look at Philip. One day Jesus asked him, "Whence
shall we buy bread to feed this multitude in the des
ert ? " This He said to prove him. But Philip did not
rise to the test. Instead of saying, " Lord, you know
you can do all things," he begins to calculate the price
in the baker's shop. " We cannot do it, Lord. It
would take two hundred pennyworth of bread." An
other day Philip appeals for proof. " Show us the
Father and it sufficeth us." And Jesus turns to him
with the gentle rebuke, " Have I been so long with you
and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father." That was
Philip. Wanting proofs. Wanting to see. Not a bad
thing either, if not carried too far.
His comrade, Nathaniel, was like him yet unlike.
He, too, was a slow, cautious man and somewhat
doubting. One day Philip comes eagerly to tell him
about Jesus the Messiah. Nathaniel has his doubts
about Jesus the Messiah. " Can any good thing come
out of Nazareth ? " But the moment he met Jesus
his doubting was over. He was a silent, meditative
man who, under the fig tree in his private garden, read
and prayed and thought about God. In such a man
the spiritual insight grows rapidly. He had not been
many minutes with Jesus before he cried, " Rabbi,
thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel."
Nathaniel was a very lovable friend for Philip to have,
an honest, pure-minded man who would sympathize
deeply and speak candidly. "An Israelite indeed,"
said Jesus, " in whom is no guile."

THE TWELVE 27?
Thomas we always think of as " the Doubter." He
always saw the dark side of things. " Lord, we know
not whither thou goest and how can we know the
way ? " And when Jesus was going back into danger
at the death of Lazarus, Thomas was sure He could
not escape being killed. And he refused to believe in
the Resurrection on the testimony of his fellow
apostles. He would give all the world to believe it,
but it was too good to be true. Thomas was built that
way. There are others built that way. It is far harder
for some men than for others to believe in Christ. And
they are often men of honest and good heart. And
when they find Jesus they are often the staunchest of
all. Such was Thomas. Though he could not see the
way he would follow Jesus in it to the end. Though
he felt that Jesus must be killed if He went to Laz
arus' funeral, the faithful heart cried out, " Let us also
go that we may die with Him." And if he was slow
in believing that Jesus was risen yet, when convinced,
his faith rose highest of them all. " My Lord and my
God ! " No one else had ever called Jesus God.
Matthew is paired with Thomas. Two silent, diffi
dent men. We do not know much about him. He was
a son of Alphaeus — probably Cleopas — and, if so, a
cousin of the Lord. He had been an outcast from his
family, a publican, a tax-gatherer. But when the spell
of Jesus fell upon him he responded nobly. " Im
mediately he left all and followed Him." His official
training probably stood him in good stead when he was
preparing that collection of " Logia " or " Sayings "
of Jesus, which afterwards developed into our Gospel
of St. Matthew. And it was at the feast which
Matthew prepared in his house that the murmurings
of the scribes and Pharisees drew from Jesus that

278 CAPERNAUM
great declaration, in which His whole Gospel seems to
be summed — " I came not to call the righteous but
sinners to repentance."
The last group scarce appear at all in the Gospels
or in the later story of the Acts, probably because their
work was in more distant lands. They are types of
that multitude of faithful souls in all ages whose silent
work is only known to God, whose names are in the
Book of Life. They were Matthew's three brothers,
sons of Alphaeus, James the Little and Jude and Simon
the Rebel, very strict Jews, all the stricter perhaps be
cause their brother was a publican. James, the little
man, became later the Bishop of Jerusalem. Jude
wrote that stern, gloomy epistle in the New Testament.
Simon was a Nationalist, a rebel against Rome. We
might class them as intensely earnest, rather narrow
and bigoted, the men who objected to Peter eating with
Gentiles and who had little sympathy with Paul's revo
lutionary ideas of a world-wide Church where Gen
tile and Jew stood equal. We know such men to-day.
Narrow men but intensely earnest. Such men will
grow broader through their connection with Jesus.
They need to grow broader. But they are valuable
men in opposing errors and innovations. The Church
has often had cause to be grateful to such men.
And last and least of all is Judas Iscariot, the finan
cial man, the man of affairs, who looked after the
business end of the Mission. That is an important
work always in the Church. Business men, who can
not teach or preach, are doing most useful service in
consecrating their business abilities to the Church,
though I do not suppose they would feel complimented
by our comparing them to Judas.

THE TWELVE 279
One wonders why the Lord chose Judas, or why
Judas cared to come. Certainly not for monetary rea
sons. There was not much picking or stealing to be
got out of twelve poor missioners. There is some pa
thetic story, which we shall never know, of his first
meeting with Jesus which would explain why Jesus
kept him at His side. He must have been attracted to
Jesus. Perhaps, knowing his weakness, he felt safer
with Him. True, he fell to lowest depths. But I can
not forget that he wanted to be with Jesus, and I can
not forget that in his agony of remorse he was a big
enough man to fling back the bribe in the face of his
tempters and go away and hang himself. A smaller
man would not have done that. Jesus had a greater
hold on him than he knew, and it drove him mad to
see Him condemned and to feel that he had betrayed
Him. " Good for that man if he had never been born."
But will Jesus ever forget him ?
So Jesus called all sorts of men to be apostles. In
His service is work for all sorts of people, the geniuses
and enthusiasts and blunderers and doubters and ig
norant and stupid. There are elements of greatness in
all of us which He will develop, and elements of evil
which contact with Him will destroy. He wants us all
and calls us all.
He wants amongst the clergy the enthusiast, the
spiritual genius, the prophet of the Lord. He wants,
also, that poor, shy, awkward pastor without much
genius or eloquence or power of organization, but
whose loving life is a continual sermon. Amongst
the lay people He needs the genial, kindly soul who
makes religion so attractive, and the silent, reserved
man, honoured for his sense of right. He needs the

280 CAPERNAUM
clever woman novelist whose books lift the world a
little nearer to God, and the simple little mother, the
sunshine of her home, whose children rise up and call
her blessed. He wants us all and calls us all, and by
His grace can make all of us a blessing to the world.

XIV
THE FUNERAL AT NAIN
JESUS is coming home, down the hill road, after
the Sermon on the Mount. "After He had
ended all His sayings in the ears of the people,
He entered into Capernaum." And the twelve were
with Him, fresh from their ordination, with a new,
deeper solemnity in their hearts, thinking, listening,
observing and thus, unknowingly, fitting themselves
for the future.
They see a poor leper come to Him on the road.
" Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." And
Jesus said, " I will, be thou clean."
An hour later they come on another happening even
more interesting and instructive. They have entered
the town. The narrow, crooked street is packed with
an eager, admiring multitude following. The Master
is on His way to His little room in Peter's house when
the way is stopped by a deputation of the Capernaum
elders with a most unusual request — that He would do
a kind deed for a heathen soldier. The Roman cap
tain from the barracks on the hill is greatly distressed
about a young slave lad in his household who is in
terrible pain, grievously tormented and at the point of
death. It was not often that a Jew would ask favours for
a heathen. But this is a very unusual heathen ; a man
with a big heart who was fond of his slave boy, a man
with a big soul who felt the emptiness of his pagan
281

282 CAPERNAUM
creed and saw in the Jewish worship of the One Holy
God some satisfaction for his soul's deep needs. Such
are the men of honest and good heart who we believe
must always find Jesus, if not in this world in the
world to come ; " the children of God who are scattered
abroad." Such men are drawn to Christ like the steel
to the magnet.
Of course he knew about Jesus. His fellow official
was " the nobleman whose son was sick in Caper
naum." For months past he could hardly get through
the streets for the crowds, nor miss hearing reports of
what the young prophet had said. But he could only
reverence Him afar off. He was only a "sinner of the
Gentiles." Therefore, his Jewish friends came inter
ceding for him. " He is worthy that thou shouldest
do this for him, for he loveth our nation and hath built
us our synagogue."
And Jesus went with them. But the centurion, as
he saw Him coming, felt that he had been too bold.
Think of a proud Roman officer feeling thus towards a
Jew ! Surely Jesus must have impressed him strangely,
suggesting the legends of his old gods coming down
to earth. He actually seems to have seen what the
Apostles themselves hardly recognized yet, that this
Jesus of Nazareth was more than mortal man. When
He was yet far from the house, he sent friends to
Him saying, " Lord, trouble not thyself, for I am not
worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof.
Wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come
unto thee. Only say the word and my servant shall
be healed."
Surely Jesus loved the humility of the man as well
as his faith. The true heart has always a sense of its

THE FUNERAL AT NAIN 283
own unworthiness. " Lord, I am not worthy, but I
need thee and I trust thee." That is a safe passport to
the heart of Jesus. All the fitness He requireth
Is to feel your need of Him.
So, says St. Augustine, while he counted himself
unworthy that Jesus should enter his house he was
counted worthy that Jesus should enter his heart.
But more remarkable is the loftiness of his faith.
His soldier training gave form to his faith. The in
visible world was to him a camp of mighty living
forces where the authority of Jesus was paramount.
" I myself am a man under authority. I can order a
soldier Go, and he goeth, Come, and he cometh, Do
this, and he doeth it."
Jesus was greatly pleased. No such faith had ever
met Him before. Coming from a Gentile man, it
seems to suggest to Him the vision of His coming
Kingdom universal in the world, spreading far beyond
the limits of the Chosen People, and a warning to that
People who were already disappointing Him. " When
Jesus heard it He marvelled and said to them that fol
lowed, ' Verily, I have not found so great faith, no,
not in Israel. And I say unto you that many shall
come from the East and the West and shall sit down
with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of
Heaven, but the sons of the Kingdom shall be cast out
into the outer darkness where shall be weeping and
gnashing of teeth." That was bitter hearing for the
Jews. "And He said to the centurion, ' Go thy way,
as thou hast believed so be it done unto thee.' And his
servant was healed in that hour."

284 CAPERNAUM
So the centurion was rewarded and the Jews were
warned, and the apostles had learned another life les
son. And the Master had added another to the
offenses which His enemies were scoring up against
Him. That was a striking miracle. But it was as noth
ing to the tremendous happening of the day after. It
must have been very exciting to follow Jesus in those
days. Every day brought fresh surprises. We are
thankful that St. Luke has rescued from oblivion the
story of the funeral of the widow's son.
The day after — or, as some manuscripts read
" shortly after " — He went to a city called Nain, and
His disciples went with Him and a great multitude.
Nain was a little mountain town in South Galilee near
the place of the Witch of Endor, about twenty miles
from Capernaum. Nain means pleasant, beautiful,
and probably deserved its name though it is a desolate
spot to-day. The ruins of the old village are still to
be seen nestling picturesquely on the slopes of Little
Hermon, and the remains of the old gateway where
Jesus met the funeral, and the ancient burial caves
about a mile away. So it is easy to reconstruct the
picture as Jesus and His followers were drawing near
to the town, probably in the evening. A simple, peace
ful, pastoral scene, the cattle grazing on the hillside, the
farmers returning from the field, the children playing
about the city gate, the evening sun softly touching
the trees and roofs of the bright, pleasant, restful little
town. All bright, peaceful, happy. When suddenly
the note of tragedy creeps in. They hear in the dis
tance a strident wailing, and soon through the town
gate emerges the head of a long funeral procession.

THE FUNERAL AT NAIN 285
Such a very tragic funeral! On the wicker bier the
body of a dead lad, bound in the white grave clothes,
with the head and shoulders bare, and in front of the
bier a stricken, tottering woman. " He was the only
son of his mother and she was a widow." It is a pic
ture of human life with its touching contrast of happi
ness and sorrow, with the deep tragedies suddenly ris
ing in the midst of easy, comfortable lives.
Everywhere every one gives way to a funeral. With
respectful sympathy Jesus and His followers draw
aside to let the mother pass with her dead son. She
has no eyes for Him who "is standing on the roadside
with His heart going out to her.
I am picturing that picture.
I am thinking of that mother, and the countless
mothers through the ages, passing before Jesus with
that dead son. And of the deeper tragedy when the
lad is spiritually dead, bound not in grave clothes of
linen but in the bonds of imperious evil habit, and the
bearers, his careless companions, are carrying him to
his ruin ; and the mother, sobbing out her broken heart,
has no eyes for Jesus at the roadside. And I know
that Jesus is always in the picture though she see Him
not, and " He has compassion on her." We have seen
enough of such pictures without going to Nain for
them. Somewhere at every hour is repeated the agony
of King David in the chamber over the gate.
Somewhere at every hour
The watchman on the tower
Sees messengers that bear
The tidings of despair.
O Absalom, my son.
The boy goes forth from the door
Who shall return no more.

286 CAPERNAUM
With him their joy departs,
The light goes out in their hearts,
In the chamber over the gate
They sit disconsolate,
And for ever the cry will be,
Would God I had died for thee,
O Absalom, my son.
The most heart-breaking picture in the memory of
any man is that where he has seen a mother crying
over her son dead, or, still worse, going straight to his
ruin. And the central lesson of the story of Nain is
this: Keep Jesus always in the picture having compas
sion on her. No weak, unavailing compassion is His.
It is the compassion of the Almighty, All-loving God,
who has taken that dead boy into a nobler life, who is
watching over that sinful one with more pain than his
mother's, and all through this world and the world to
come seeking that which is lost if so be that He may
find it. Only that gospel can make such pictures bear
able. He is looking on that tortured woman. Her hand
is on His heartstrings. In a moment He has touched
the bier and they that bare it stood still. And the
words of power thrilled through the dead heart and
brain, thrilled through the spirit world where that soul
had gone. " And he that was dead sat up and began
to speak. And He delivered him to his mother." De
livered him to his mother. Was not it " just like
Him," as we familiarly say? We reverently mean,
was not it " just like " God? Does it not deepen our
hope of the glad day that is coming when, in the land
of the Hereafter, He will take your boy and mine and
deliver him to his mother ?
For this is truly God's heart that we see. And this

THE FUNERAL AT NAIN 287
story is no fairy tale. It really happened. For there
was a multitude following Jesus and another crowd at
the funeral. And they told it everywhere. They knew
that they were telling an incredible story. It ought to
be easy to contradict it. This report went forth into
the whole of Judea and all the region round about.
And fear took hold on all, and they glorified God say
ing, " A great prophet has arisen amongst us " and
" God hath visited His people."
Does some impatient mother cry with quivering
heart, Why does not this pitiful Lord raise my boy
too and all our boys ? Ah, you know you do not mean
it. You would not dare call him back if you could.
There were many widows in Israel in the days of Jesus,
as broken-hearted as the widow of Nain. And Jesus
had compassion on them. But He did not bring back
the boys. Why He did it here we know not. I humbly
think it was reluctantly and for some great reason.
Surely He would not do it otherwise. For if we are
right in our belief that death means birth into a larger
life, the evolution of a soul into a freer, nobler exist
ence, it would be like putting the chicken back into
the egg, putting the child back into the womb, bringing
the butterfly back to be a caterpillar again. Three
times He did it in the whole of His life. He only could
tell why. But we can reverently conjecture why He
would not do it more.
Keep your boy in your thoughts. Keep him in your
prayers. Thank God for that larger life into which he
has gone. In that free, growing life he will be well
worth waiting for in the day when God in His good
time will deliver him to his mother.

XV
ON HOLIDAY
THE ordination of the Twelve marks a crisis
in their lives. Up to this they had been with
Him intermittently, as they could, in the in
tervals between their fishing expeditions. Now they
were to give up their secular avocations, to " leave all
and follow Him," and trust for their support to their
own little savings and the hospitality of the people.
He had only a short time to be with them now. So
from this point forth He seems to have concentrated
on them, teaching and training them for the day when
He should be gone from them. And from this time
forth we must keep them specially in our minds as we
think of His miracles and His teachings in their pres
ence. They did not know it but these things were
chiefly intended for training.
One day, soon after their solemn call, He sends
them forth on a mission tour by themselves to proclaim
the Kingdom of God. Evidently this is a training
for their future life-work. They must learn to stand
on their own feet without His physical presence. They
must go in simple trust, taking no purse nor scrip.
They must go solemnly as God's ambassadors, and to
that end He says, " I give you power to work mir
acles, and everywhere you go proclaim, ' The King
dom of God is drawn nigh.' " It is easy to see how
288

ON HOLIDAY 289
such expeditions would count in preparing them for
the days to come.
So they went out from Him two and two, probably
as they are paired in the lists of the Apostles, Philip
with Bartholomew, Matthew with Thomas, etc. And
surely He was praying for them and upholding them
while they were gone.
Sooner than we expected we find them back in
Capernaum. Probably they had hurried back with the
sad tidings that met them. Everywhere in the South
the dark rumour was spreading that Herod had mur
dered John the Baptist at Machaerus. But the news
had reached Him already, for " the disciples of John
buried the body and went and told Jesus."
The Twelve came back enthusiastic, delighted with
their success. " Lord, even the devils were subject
unto us in thy name." And the Lord was glad and
thankful. These simple men, these babes in Christ are
already learning to bring the blessing of the Kingdom
to men.
And here comes a delightful touch in this picture
of our Lord. He is going to take them on holiday.
They had come back to find Him troubled about the
Baptist's death and troubled, probably, about another
thing too. They find Capernaum seething with ex
citement. Multitudes from all over Galilee are crowd
ing around Him. They, too, are stirred over the Bap
tist's death and raging against the tyranny of Herod.
They want to see Jesus and listen to His teaching.
But in view of what happened next day one suspects
that there was more than that, secret whisperings and
hopes of a popular revolution with Messiah at its head.
Perhaps this last outrage would rouse Him to take His

290 CAPERNAUM
place and deliver the people of God from the yoke of
oppression. The evangelist pictures the turmoil in
Capernaum, the excited multitude, the many coming
and going, crowding and clamouring around the tired
little company, no rest, " no leisure so much as to eat."
Then Jesus spake the very word they needed.
" Come away with me into a country place and rest
a while." He knew they wanted rest. That Mission had been
a hard pull. There was over-tension of mind and
body. The strain of this crowd was bad for them.
They needed perfect change and rest. Doubtless He
Himself needed it more than any of them. One likes
to think of Jesus needing change and rest like our
selves. He thought it was good for them all to get
away amid the fields and woods and mountains and
streams, to relax the tension, to rest the mind, to com
mune with God. " Come away to the country with
Me and rest."
It brings Him nearer to us, this wise, kind invita
tion. Jesus is always like that. He knoweth our
frame and remembereth that we are but dust, and it is
good for those of us who have much work and nerve-
strain to feel His sympathy in our need of rest, to feel
that holiday time as well as work time is the will of a
kindly God.
So they are off on holiday.
Peter has run the clumsy lugger to the wharf. The
Master is seated. They all clamber in. Now the red-
brown sail is set. They are steering northeast to the
country hills, away from the bustle and strain and ex
citement — on holiday — rejoicing to feel a boat under
them again, laughing and talking and interrupting

ON HOLIDAY 291
each other as they eagerly remind each other of the
mission experiences, and then with the anger and sor
row in their hearts tell Jesus what they have heard of
the dead Baptist in Machaerus.
But, like many busy men who sorely need a holiday,
they find that that holiday is not easy to get. That
multitude on the shore cannot be kept back. Jesus is in
the full tide of His popularity. The crowds have noted
the direction of the boat, and now they can be seen
hurrying together by the road round the north end of
the lake, even women with sick children trying to keep
up with the procession.
So they had scarce landed when the crowd was
upon them. His plan for a quiet holiday was de
feated. How pleasantly He took it ! These thousands
of people intruding on His solitude, thwarting His
purpose. But they wanted Him, wanted Him badly.
That is always enough for Jesus. Those mothers with
the sick children went to His heart. So He received
them graciously and told them delightful things about
the Fatherhood of God, " and healed those that had
need of healing."
So passed long hours of strain and effort. Then the
evening was come. And Jesus was thinking of those
tired, hungry people. And surely thinking also of the
instruction of His Twelve. How far already had they
learned to trust Him? So He turns to Philip. He
sets Philip thinking. " Where shall we get bread,
Philip, that these may eat? " This He said to prove
him. But Philip does not rise to the proof. " It can
not be done, Master. It would take two hundred
shillings' worth of bread."
Jesus does not argue with him. He knows when to
be silent. He lets the thought sink in. He will see

292 CAPERNAUM
by and by how the others will respond. But they are
no better. When the day began to wear away they
came to Him. " Master, send them away, the day is
far spent. Let them start for the villages and get
something to eat." Jesus said, " Give ye them to eat."
" Lord, how could we do it? Shall we buy in this des
ert two hundred shillings' worth of bread ? " Evi
dently Philip had been talking.
Then Jesus proceeded to act. Great was the deed
of kindness to the hungry multitude. Greater still in
its far-reaching effects the lesson to the twelve men of
still imperfect faith. "How many loaves have ye?
Go and see." And they told Him they had only five
loaves and two fishes, their own little supper. So He
directed that the people should sit down in companies
on the green grass in hundreds and fifties. "And He
took the five loaves and two fishes, and looking up to
Heaven He blessed and brake and gave to the disciples
to set before them." Take note of the solemn words,
" He looked up to Heaven and blessed and brake and
gave to the disciples." Almost the very words at the
institution of the Eucharist later on. We shall see in
a few moments that the thought of that Eucharist
was in His mind, the Bread from Heaven to feed poor
human souls. He was beginning to prepare the Twelve
for the mystery of the Holy Communion.
All four evangelists tell of this miracle. The
Twelve saw it. The multitudes saw it. We simply
receive it as recorded. We believe in simple faith that
it was wrought by His power who, as Lord of the Har
vest, does a similar and greater miracle every year of
our lives, multiplying for us each little grain of wheat
thirtyfold, sixtyfold, an hundredfold.

ON HOLIDAY 293
Scarce was the supper over when trouble began.
When the people saw the miracle they grew wildly ex
cited. He perceived that they meant to take Him by
force and make Him king. This is only one indica
tion of the widespread feeling that would need but little
to bring to a head. In the excited condition of Galilee
just then, excited all the more by the murder of the
Baptist, five thousand men could start a revolution. It
was Passover time when the whole Jewish world
was crowding to Jerusalem. If they could escort Him
to Jerusalem now, gathering rebel multitudes around
them as they went, and proclaim Him as King of the
Jews amid the representatives of the nation from all
over the world assembled at the Passover !
It was a serious danger. Nothing that His worst
enemies could do would be so fatal to His purpose. If
the Kingdom of God could be made to appear as an
earthly political movement, it would wreck all that
He had accomplished, and the saving of the world
would have to begin again some other way.
He had to disappear at once. Apparently even the
Twelve were in sympathy with the crowd, for He had
to constrain them, to force them to embark at once
without Him and start for home while He sent the
multitudes away.
Then Jesus departed into the mountain to pray.
That was His refuge in every crisis. He could not do
without it. A crisis was coming now. Jerusalem was
growing more hostile. The death of the Baptist
showed what He must expect. The widespread desire
of Galilee to make Him the hero of a popular revolu
tion would force an issue soon. The end was draw
ing near.
The twilight deepened into darkness and the dark-

294 CAPERNAUM
ness into denser midnight, and the rising storm was
howling through the hills, and still the lonely Christ
was there upon the mountain, continuing all night in
prayer to God. Reverently we conjecture that His
life-work was in His thoughts, and this poor sinful
world, and the peasant crowd that He had fed, and His
chosen Twelve who should build the Kingdom. They
were all unconscious of His thought and prayer for
them. The great world, that lay such a burden on His
heart, knew not and thought not of the lonely Watcher.
The five thousand were asleep in the villages below.
The Twelve were frightened that He was not with
them in the storm. Just like ourselves, when the storm
is rising and the wind is contrary and we are frightened
and despondent in some gloomy outlook. And we for
get, nay we often altogether doubt that He is watching
and caring and interceding for us all.
A red stormy dawn was lightening in the east. He
is watching the disciples in the fury of the gale " toil
ing in rowing, for the wind was contrary." They had
been blown down the lake. They were in serious dan
ger and the danger was increasing. Surely He was
teaching them in a wonderful way, step by step. In
the previous storm it was daylight and He was with
them in the boat, and they learned that in His pres
ence no danger could come. But they must learn to
trust Him when He was not visibly present, to walk
by faith, not by sight. The young Church must be
launched in a stormy world when He has gone to the
Father. What will they do without Him when the
tempests come? As the eagle pushes her young over
the cliff and when they are terrified soars down to
save them, so Jesus lets them forth into the danger, as

ON HOLIDAY 295
they will have to go in later years, without His visible
presence that they may learn that unseen He is with
them always. When you wonder at the fearless faith
of these men in their later story always keep in mind
this strange schooling which they had had.
Now, suddenly, in the twilight dawn, " in the fourth
watch of the night," they see Jesus near them walking
on the sea. At first they were terrified and cried out
for fear, as we when He comes to us in some hour of
darkness and dread, perhaps to lift one of our dear
ones into the larger life. We, too, are terrified and
cry out for fear. But over the howling storm they
hear His voice as, thank God, some of us have learned
to hear it when the storm is passed: "Be of good
cheer, it is I, be not afraid."
But the teaching is not over yet. In the sudden re
bound into confidence in His presence one of them
cries out. Of course it is Peter, that impetuous, af
fectionate Peter, who seldom takes time to think be
fore he speaks, who leaps into the water first and then,
when he is in, sees the dangerous waves. " Lord, if it
be thou, bid me to come." In the sudden reaction of
shame at his fright he feels he can outdo every one in
confidence in his Lord. Is not that Peter all over?
Just as in that night before the Crucifixion, " Though
all shall be offended yet will not I."
Jesus said unto him, " Come." He had a real af
fection for this impulsive Peter. He .loves those im
petuous people that often make mistakes. " And when
Peter was come down out of the ship he walked on the
water to come to Jesus." Yes, while he looked to Jesus
he could do it. But when he looked away and saw
the wind boisterous he was afraid, and beginning to
sink he cried, " Lord, save me, I perish ! " But he had

296 CAPERNAUM
to do with one who would not let him greatly fall.
Jesus stretched forth His hand and caught him, and
when he was safe came the gentle rebuke, " O thou
of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" You
could have come all right if you had not begun to
doubt. Was not that a lesson worth the learning?
Ah, these Apostles were getting wonderful training.
Even yet the teaching of that day is not over.
They have still to learn a deeper sacramental meaning
in this Feeding of the Multitude. St. John remembers
what the other Gospels have left out. After they
reached Capernaum and had rested and eaten, Jesus is
out again in the afternoon by the sea. And the ex
cited crowd is around Him. And they cannot talk or
think of anything but the Miracle of the Loaves. And
Jesus falls in with their mood. But He startles them
as He had never startled them before.
" Labour not for the bread which perisheth but for
that Bread which abideth unto everlasting life, which
the Son of Man will give unto you. I am the Bread
of Life. I am the true Bread that came down from
Heaven. Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink His blood ye have no life in you."
No wonder He startled them. Puzzle and perplex
ity is on every face. Questions and remonstrances
pour in upon Him. Even the Apostles feel this is be
yond them. Probably we have only a condensed re
port. May we presume to suggest the thought which
He conveyed: —
There is a food for the soul as well as for the body.
Yesterday your bodies were weak and tired. When
I fed you with the loaves, new strength and courage
came. So is it also in the life of the soul. In a way

ON HOLIDAY 297
that you cannot now understand, I convey my own
life and strength to men. I am come that ye may
have life and have it more abundantly. He that f eed-
eth on Me shall live by Me.
One does not wonder they were silent in puzzled
surprise. Perhaps to those accustomed to Eastern
teachers it was not quite so puzzling as it seems. To
us, who have learned how through the Holy Sacrament
the Christ conveys to men His life and strength, it is
easier to understand now. But it is no wonder they
called it a hard saying, that after it some of them
walked no more with Him, that He turned sadly
even to the Twelve, " Will ye also go away? " " Nay,"
said the poor puzzled Apostles, " Lord, to whom
should we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."
They learned in some degree the meaning later. We
know in some degree the meaning now. " The body
of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee,
preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take
and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee,
and feed on Him in thy heart by faith with thanks
giving."

XVI
C/ESAREA PHILIPPI
NOW comes a most critical week in the train
ing of the Twelve.
There are signs of an approaching crisis
in the Galilean ministry. The multitudes are less in
evidence. We are hearing more about the Twelve.
The time is drawing near " when He is to be received
up and must steadfastly set His face to go to Jeru
salem." More and more from this time forward He
seems thinking about the end, and preparing for it.
And this preparation is more and more centering on
the men who shall carry on His project when He is
gone. They have been more than two years with Him
and they are very backward still. They are not yet
weaned from the petty Jewish idea of a temporal Mes
siah to win glory for the nation. They have no idea
at all that His path of self-sacrifice is to end in an ig
nominious death and in rising from the dead to begin
the great world-wide spiritual Kingdom. The end is
drawing near and must not catch them unprepared.
More than ever He seems desirous to be alone with
them. And it is not easy. That day when He bade
them " Come apart with Me " and found a multitude
waiting on the further shore is but a specimen of what
was happening all the time. His fame is at its height.
298

O^ESAREA PHILIPPI 299
His miracles are centering the attention of the whole
nation. The hope or the fear of a Messianic revo
lution is growing. So wherever He went He cannot
get privacy.
Evidently that is why we read that at this time He
took them away outside Palestine into the land of the
Canaanite, the region of Tyre and Sidon where He
healed the daughter of the Syrophenician woman.
And after that to other secluded places we hardly know
where. St. Mark says, " He went into the parts of
Dalmanutha," wherever that was, somewhere in the
wild region around the lake. We see little of Him.
Just glimpses here and there.
Here are two glimpses, the beginning and end of
a most critical week. This is the first. Away in
Northern Galilee at the sources of the Jordan in the
magnificent scenery at the base of Mt. Hermon lies
the beautiful little city of Caesarea Philippi. Some
where there, in one of the mountain gorges above the
town, He is retired with the Apostles. St. Luke says
He was apart from them alone in prayer. As He rises
from His prayer He comes across to the little group.
" Tell me, what do the people think about me ? Who
do they say that I am?"
" Master, some like King Herod think that you are
John the Baptist risen. Some say you are Elijah come
back to earth — Some that you are Jeremiah or one of
the old prophets."
Doubtless He knew very well what people thought
and only asked with a further purpose in view. Sud
denly He sprung the question direct upon them.
" But who say ye that I am ? "
That was what really mattered. He was leaving

300 CAPERNAUM
His Kingdom of God in their care. How much had
they learned or even conjectured from these two years
of teaching and familiar intercourse ? Prompt and un
hesitating Peter speaks for them all. " Thou art the
Christ the Son of the living God! "
That was a tremendous discovery, the great crisis
in the training of the Twelve. If ever Christianity
loses its power it will be if men weaken on that central
fact. One gets uneasy in these days at the tendency
to make belief easier, to explain away miracles, to
water down the creeds. Beware lest it lead to water
ing down the Christ. That is the rock on which every
thing rests. " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the liv
ing God!"
Evidently that response moved Him deeply.
" Blessed art thou, Simon Bar Jona, for flesh and blood
hath not revealed this to thee but my Father who is
in Heaven." It meant so much to Him just then. He
could trust His men. They were at last beginning to
see the light, to recognize that He was no mere leader
of a national revolution but One from Heaven come
down to earth, the King of the spiritual Kingdom of
God. That was a great step gained.
But only a step. They still expected that because
He was so great He would lead Israel gloriously to a
spectacular success and they should see the Kingdom
of God come with power. So He must go on to pre
pare them for a terrible disillusion which coming un
expectedly might shatter their faith. He had given
passing hints already but to no purpose. Now on their
awestruck hearts was beginning to dawn the tremen
dous " secret of Jesus," who He was. Straightway He
charges them strictly to keep that secret to themselves.

OESAREA PHILIPPI 301
It must be a secret between Him and them. Tell no
man. The time for full disclosure is not yet. The
Eternal Christ must die as man before the world shall
recognize Him as God.
This meant terrible, sorrowful disclosures. From
that time forth He began to teach them: " The Son of
Man shall be delivered into the hands of men and they
shall kill Him and after that He is killed He shall
rise the third day."
One would think that was plain enough. But you
can see that it was not. It startled them. It puzzled
them. But they could not take it literally. How
could they? Here was their adored Master whom
they had just recognized as Divine who had come to
win the world for His Kingdom of God. And now
at the very beginning He talks of being killed ! Surely
He must intend some hidden mystical meaning. You
could not expect these men to rise to the conception
of a God whose greatness consisted largely in His
capacity for utter self-sacrifice, who for the sake of
men should submit to shame and spitting and agony
and death and then rising triumphant over death
should win men to loving obedience all the world over.
No. It could not be literally true. They were
startled for the moment. Just a bad passing fright.
That was all. " They understood not that saying "
and were afraid to ask Him. They would not in
quire too closely. They would try to forget it.
But Jesus cannot let them forget it. Later on He
repeated it. Then they began to be frightened. Poor
Peter felt as if a cold hand had gripped his heart.
Impetuously, presumptuously he begins to remon
strate. " God forbid ! Lord, this shall not happen to
thee!"

302 CAPERNAUM
Why did Jesus turn so sternly on him? Did it
bring back the temptation in the Wilderness when Sa
tan had suggested how He could win without such
tragedy? The passionate pleading of affection often
makes a duty harder, as when a young wife with her
little children whispers the doubt to her husband going
out to face death in the war. " My husband, must this
duty necessarily come on thee ? " Was this misery in
Peter's face Satan tempting Him again? Something
must explain that terrible rebuke to the man who so
loved Him. " Get out of my sight, you Tempter.
You are thinking like men, not thinking like God ! "
Thinking like God ! What does He mean ? Turn
ing to them all He tells them, " Thinking like God
means utter self-sacrifice for Right. You are think
ing like men. You want me to save my life. He that
wants to save his life shall lose it. He that is will
ing to lose his life for the highest good shall save it.
That path is mine and he that would come after me
must deny himself and follow me on that path."
A high lesson indeed. Evidently too high yet for
them. For even after all this they do not yet take it
in that Jesus must die. It seems incomprehensible to
us. But you have to think of the obstinate way men
cling to preconceived ideas, of the tendency in all of
us to try to put away unpleasant thoughts, of that
buoyancy in human nature that makes us hope that
somehow painful things will not happen. Surely there
was some undercurrent of uneasiness. But it was
after all this that they disputed one day who should be
the greatest in the coming Kingdom, that the mother
of Zebedee's children asked that her sons should rule
at His right hand and His left. Nay, it was after all
this that the Crucifixion took them by surprise and

OESAREA PHILIPPI 303
they utterly despaired when the dead Jesus was laid
in the grave. We are strange people, we humans.
This little glimpse through the trees on that moun
tain gorge marks the beginning of a never-to-be-for
gotten week amid the wild grand solitudes of Mt.
Hermon. We have no record of its intimate inter
course. Jesus and the Twelve together. But we
know that it was no ordinary week in the schooling of
the Apostles. It opens with this picture of the great
confession, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Liv
ing God." It was to close with a greater scene, the
solemn climax of the Transfiguration and that glimpse
through the Veil into the Unseen World where Jesus
belonged. For we are told of its closing day that " after six
days He took Peter, James and John and went up into
the mountain to pray. And He was transfigured be
fore them." These men told the story after the
Resurrection. They were forbidden to tell it before.
By putting together the three separate accounts in the
Gospels we get some idea of this second picture in
their memories.
They were alone in the darkness of a summer night
high amid the slopes of Mt. Hermon. The Master
was apart from them rapt in prayer. When they had
said their own little prayers they lay down to sleep in
their cloaks. Some time in the night they were
awakened by a sense of brightness and glory and that
consciousness of strange happenings that sometimes
breaks even through our sleep. And their eyes opened
on a sight never given to mortal man before. They
seemed in a new world. I suppose they thought they
had died and gone to Heaven.

304 CAPERNAUM
The Master was still praying. And as He prayed,
the fashion of His countenance was changed. Drawn
by the nearness of the Father and the touch of the in
visible world the Divinity within Him shone out
through the vesture of flesh and His raiment became
glistening, exceeding white as no fuller on earth can
white them. And through the veil of that spirit world
which had sent Him here, came spirit forms, the
spirits of Moses and Elijah, the great leaders of
Israel, who had gone in there so long ago. They ap
peared in glory and spake of His departure, His " out
going" which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.
They spake of His " outgoing " as those other spirit
forms had sung of His " incoming " thirty years ago
on the Bethlehem plains. Ah, that spirit world was
keeping close in touch with Him !
Whatever may be said . about the phenomena of
modern " Spiritualism," there can be no question of
the real " Spiritualism " high and true that surrounds
the life of Jesus in the Gospels. From the spirit crowd
that hailed His birth on the Bethlehem plains down to
the " two men in white apparel " who appeared at His
Ascension we have continual incursions from another
world, voices, appearances, indications not to be ques
tioned of a sphere outside our own, intensely inter
ested in the drama of our Redemption. No honest
reader of the Gospels can ignore it.
We believe that that world is equally around us still.
If we cannot see it, it is only that the light is wrong,
that the glare of this world obscures it. Just as
happens every day when the glare of the sunlight re
vealing to us every little flower and leaf and insect
shuts out from us the great Universe which stands
forth in the midnight sky. The light is wrong for it

C^ESAREA PHHJPPI 305
If we never got darkness to correct our vision we
might never believe in that starry world at all. Maybe
only the closing of our eyes in the darkness of death
will put us in the right light for seeing that spirit
world. But we firmly believe that it is around us
all the same as it so manifestly was in the life of
Jesus. The three bewildered men gazed and gazed in
dumb astonishment to the end till the vision was pass
ing. Then the irrepressible Peter could not contain
himself any longer. Dazed by the sight he felt himself
in heaven. And poor Peter had not been having much
of heaven lately with the hints of his Master's death,
with the memory of that stern rebuke. No wonder
he wants to keep his heaven as long as he could.
" O Master, let us stay. It is good for us to be
here. Let us make three tabernacles, one for thee,
one for Moses, one for Elias." It was a wild thing
to say and it is delightfully natural to hear his apolo
getic way of telling the story against himself. (Re
member that St. Mark is really the Gospel of St.
Peter. ) "I did not know what I was saying, for we
were sore afraid."
"And while he yet spake, behold a bright cloud over
shadowed them and behold a voice out of the cloud
which said, This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him.
And they fell on their faces and knew no more till
Jesus came and touched them, and they looked up and
saw the cold dawn upon the mountain and saw no
man save Jesus only."
The vision was past. The gates of the Unseen had
closed again and they found they had not got to heaven
after all.

306 CAPERNAUM
So prominent was the Transfiguration in the teach
ing of the early Church that the story is embedded in
all three of the Synoptic Gospels. What shall we
think of it? That it was a vision, a dream with no
objective reality ? Surely not. At any rate, the men
who saw it never thought that. Long afterwards the
aged John remembers that night as a great reality when
" we beheld His glory, the glory of the Only Begotten
of the Father." And Peter kept telling the story to
the Church. " We were eye-witnesses of His majesty
and heard the voice from Heaven when we were with
Him in the holy mount." * Any doubt of its reality
comes from our materialist minds, not realizing the
constant presence close to us of the spirit world which
is presented all through the Gospels as very near al
ways and very deeply occupied with Jesus.
Reverently meditate for a moment on that scene.
Look at the Lord Himself, rapt in prayer, steadfastly
setting His face to go to Jerusalem to die. May we
reverently say that He needed prayer for Himself,
that in it His soul might be calm and still in the un
ruffled peace of the Father's presence. Was this the
answer to His prayer, bringing the exile back for the
moment to the precincts of His home, to hear the ap
proval of the Father, to be glorified with "the glory
which He had before the world was " ?
Think what it would mean to the bewildered apos
tles, how it would exalt and solemnize their thoughts
of the Master, that He who moved daily with them in
human comradeship was reverenced and adored beyond
the sky. And what a revelation of the nearness of
'2 Peter L 16-10. Though this epistle may not have been
written by St. Peter, it would at least aim to represent his teach
ing.

OESAREA PHILDPPI 307
the Unseen World! How they could understand the
Lord's quiet, confident optimism about His Kingdom
in the face of all the disappointment and seeming
failure. How could it fail! The omnipotent world
beyond — " God and the holy angels and the spirits of
just men made perfect " — was pledged to its success.
That world was watching in closest sympathy. Here
were two spirit visitants who had left this earth cen
turies before. They had risen far above earthly
thoughts, caught up into the large enthusiasms of that
other life. Moses did not talk of Pharaoh and the
Red Sea. Elijah was not thinking of Naboth's vine
yard. Those old memories were trivial now. " They
spake with Him of His decease which He should ac
complish at Jerusalem." Does it not suggest at once
how they and their great comrades within the Veil
were watching eagerly their Master's life on earth and
the great crisis of man's redemption, the greatest event
in the history of their race?
And, passing to a smaller issue which closely touches
ourselves, does not this thought, so fully confirmed by
our Lord, of the deep sympathy and interest of that
other land help us to believe, or at least to hope that
our dear ones in that spirit land to-day living and
conscious and remembering, are watching and thinking
of our life on earth and loving and helping and pray
ing for us who are still in this world of shadows.
That was the bright happy belief of the early Church.
Some of the greatest of the old fathers loved to pic
ture it. The galleries of the Unseen Land crowded
with spectators. Like the " old boys " coming back
on the anniversaries to a great English school watching
the games and contests in which they had played long
ago. Some such thought was in the mind of him who

308 CAPERNAUM
wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. Seeing that that
spirit land is watching the contest, " seeing that we
are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,
God and the holy angels and the spirits of just men
made perfect, let us run with patience the race set
before us."

XVII
FAREWELL TO GALILEE
THAT wonderful week opening with the Great
Confession and closing with the Transfigura
tion marks a new crisis in the history of the
Lord. He seems different, higher, greater, more
apart. He is contemplating the end. "As the time
draws near that He should be received up He is stead
fastly setting His face to go to Jerusalem." But we
must not anticipate.
Sharp and sudden is the transition after the
Transfiguration, from the harmonies of heaven to the
discords of earth. Peter thought it would be good to
remain in the peace of the heavenly surroundings.
But they must not. The earth life and its troubles are
calling. As they come down we catch the few questioning
words, " Master, why say the Scribes that Elijah must
first come?" "The Elijah who was to come," He
says, " has come and they did unto him whatever they
listed." They killed him in the Machaerus dungeon.
As down the long slope they come to the other dis
ciples they hear disturbing sounds, the noise of a
crowd, sharp voices and scornful words. Evidently
the people have discovered their retreat. Evidently,
too, something unpleasant has happened, for the nine
disciples are silent and confused and the scribes are
3°9

310 CAPERNAUM
there mocking and taunting. Suddenly the people see
Jesus approaching and " when they saw Him they were
amazed." Perhaps at some change in His appear
ance, some added trace of majesty after that night of
wonders. But His eyes are on those malignant scribes. He
takes the shrinking disciples at once under His pro
tection. " What is it all about ? What question ye
with them ? " The scribes are taken aback, the dis
ciples are silent. But an excited man from the crowd
throws himself before Him, kneeling down, " O Mas
ter, I beseech thee look upon my son, for he is my only
child." He tells the pitiful tale of the lunatic boy
possessed by an evil spirit throwing himself into the
fire and into the water. "And I besought thy dis
ciples to cast it out and they could not." This ex
plains the mockery of the scribes sneering at the dis
ciples and doubtless at their Master. Such a poor,
spiteful, pitiful business in contrast to the sweet vision
of Heaven last night!
" O faithless generation, how long shall I be with
you? Bring the boy to me. Now tell me how long
has he been thus? "
" He has been so from a child. O Master, if thou
canst do anything, have compassion on us ! "
"If thou canst! Cannot you trust me more than
that?" And straightway the father of the child cried out
with tears, " Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief ! "
surely a cry of faith that touched Him to the heart,
what many a poor honest doubter has cried to Him
since. And immediately the evil spirit was cast out
and Jesus lifted tenderly the poor grovelling boy and
gave him back to his father.

FAREWELL TO GALILEE 311
Naturally the defeated disciples asked Him as they
departed, " Lord, why could not we cast him out.?"
And Jesus told them. Because of their lack of faith,
because their spiritual level had been lowered and this
was a miracle of special difficulty. A lesson which
some of us can translate for ourselves. There are
days when through our neglect, our spiritual life is at
a low ebb and we are less able than at other times to
cast out our devils. For each of us one kind of devil
is hardest to cast out. We need to get to our knees
when this kind comes. " This kind goeth not out but
by prayer and fasting."
No use in remaining in retreat now that the peo
ple have discovered them. So they start homeward to
Capernaum. The days in Capernaum are fast draw
ing to a close. And because the time is short He must
give more attention than ever to the Twelve. He must
avoid as far as possible the crowds and public miracles
and keep His chosen band nearer to Himself. St.
Mark tells us how He tried to avoid recognition on the
way back, by untrodden ways, by the track through
the hills, and He would not that any man should know.
And on the way He talked again of His approaching
death. But they needed many lessons before they could un
derstand that. One sometimes imagines that if we
were there we would have learned faster. Just look
at them on the mountain road going home. The Mas
ter is walking in front thinking His high thoughts and
they are straggling in twos and threes behind whisper
ing between themselves. They do not want Him to
hear. " For, by the way, they were disputing to
gether who should be the greatest " in the new king-

312 CAPERNAUM
dom. Evidently they had got it into their heads
that a crisis was coming in the development of this
Kingdom. Probably too there was some jealousy that
Peter and James and John had again been chosen for
special intimacy. Do not judge them hardly. Their
Master did not. They were not yet self-sacrificing
saints, these simple young countrymen. Visions of
some great future were in their minds and each won
dered how he himself would figure in it.
Jesus did not interfere. He did not usually inter
fere much in men's private thoughts and ever chose
the right moment to speak. They thought He had not
noticed. But next evening as they sat resting in
Peter's house, with quiet humour He springs the ques
tion on them, " Now tell me what you were disputing
about on the way?" I see the quick, shamefaced
glances at each other. They looked everywhere but
at Him. They knew that He knew and in confusion
they held their peace. I see Peter's little boy rubbing
against His knee. The child was fond of Him. His
little playmate welcoming Him home. So He lifts
him to His knee and that child nestling in His arms
is an acted parable. " Look at him," said Jesus.
" Whosoever shall humble himself like this little
child, the same is greatest in the Kingdom."
So through the heart of a little child He taught
His lesson against jealousy and self-seeking. The
heart of a little child was very dear to Him, type of the
sweetest graces in His Kingdom. An unspoiled child
does not feel that he is humbling himself through the
lowliest service. He seeks not great things. He
makes no claim. He just goes where he is told and
takes what is given to him. He adapts himself pleas
antly to life. He is quite unself-conscious. He has

FAREWELL TO GALILEE 313
nothing of his own and lives in happy trust in his
parents. And Jesus says that to be religious is to be
like that in the Father's house, that the chief condition
of greatnes in the sight of God is to have the heart of
a little child.
But there are other lessons to teach from the text
of Peter's little boy. As the child nestles in His arms
He is looking into the future, to the innocent children
grown to evil manhood and womanhood through en
ticement or evil example of others. Even we our
selves feel sore at times watching an innocent, at
tractive child in the home of godless parents. We
wonder that God should entrust such people with chil
dren's souls. It is something to think that God Him
self feels as we do. " It were better," said the in
dignant Christ, " for a man to have a millstone tied
round his neck and he be cast into the sea than that he
should mislead one of my little ones. Take heed that
ye despise them not, for in heaven their guardian
angels always behold the face of my Father which is
in Heaven."
Even the Twelve needed this warning. Women and
children did not count for much before Jesus came.
I place here on one of these days of His farewell to
Capernaum that other delightful picture of the chil
dren brought for blessing ere He departed. The story
stands in the Gospels without mark of time or place
except that it was about this period and that He was
going away from somewhere. I think of the mothers
of Capernaum, sorry that He is going, whom their
children are fond of and wanting His farewell bless
ing for the little ones. They are lingering about the
door while He is teaching His solemn lessons to the

314 CAPERNAUM
disciples. And these self-important disciples are in
dignant that at such a time He should be disturbed by
mere women and children. This is one of the few
times when He is angry with them. " When Jesus
saw it He was much displeased and said, Suffer the
little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for
of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. And He took
them up in His arms and blessed them. And He de
parted thence."
We note a few more traces of teaching before
He left. One day John asked Him: " Were we right
in forbidding a man who followeth not with us who
was teaching and healing in thy name ? " and Jesus
said, Forbid him not. He that is not against us is on
our side.
Another day Peter wants to know about forgiveness.
How oft must I forgive? Until seven times? Nay,
said Jesus, but until seventy times seven. The times
to forgive are unlimited. For how can a man for
given so greatly by God — forgiven ten thousand talents
— take his brother by the throat who owes a hundred
pence ?
So in careful teaching, in close intercourse passed
these last days in Capernaum. Little of miracles or
of public teaching. Jesus and His twelve men to
gether. Before He departs let us glance at the position.
For His great purpose the ministry in Galilee seems
almost a failure, though we must never forget that
He got eleven of His twelve apostles there. At first
the people received Him gladly. He was so different
from their haughty clergy. He was a friend of the
common people. And he was the hero of the National-

FAREWELL TO GALILEE 315
ist patriots who, like the Irish to-day, wanted " Israel
a nation." They hoped for a second Judas Macca-
baeus, who should lead them to freedom. But gradu
ally they became puzzled and dissatisfied with His
ideals. It is the trouble always of reformers with the
wider vision. Men occupied with their little local am
bitions could see no higher meaning in His Kingdom
of God. He was doing nothing to overthrow their
enemies or to restore the kingdom to Israel. And the
hints and suspicions of their honoured rabbis and the
Jerusalem Scribes and Pharisees were having their
effect. He was overturning the Law of Moses and
breaking the Sabbath and casting out devils through
Beelzebub. So the people became gradually estranged.
When after the feeding of the Five Thousand He
turned down their final effort to make Him a King and
put them off with that mystical discourse about the
Bread from Heaven many even of His closer followers
" walked no more with Him." That day marked a
serious defection. Even the Twelve seemed shaken.
Jesus felt it so deeply that He turned sadly to them,
" Will ye also go away ? "
The test of a great soul is how he faces failure.
Jesus faced it calmly in sublime confidence. Not
merely because He was Divine but because He was a
man walking in the path of duty and trusting every
thing to the Father. It is only the great souls who
take inevitable failures calmly and go on even unto
death, leaving results with God.
He is going on now to face what His destiny has
still in store. " Now that the time was well nigh come
that He should be received up He steadfastly set His
face to go to Jerusalem. Sadly He bids good-bye to
His native province which had failed Him. As He

316 CAPERNAUM
sorrowed later over Jerusalem so He sorrowed now
over those pleasant places by the Lake, his home
through many vicissitudes for more than a year. One
can picture Him on the Jerusalem road turning back
for the last look.
" Woe for thee, Chorazin, Woe for thee, Bethsaida.
And thou, Capernaum, which wast exalted to Heaven
shalt be cast down to Hades. For if the mighty works
which have been done in thee had been done in Sodom
it would have remained to this day."

BOOK V
Memories of the Jerusalem Road

Ii
AN AUTHOR COLLECTING MEMORIES
OF THE ROAD
SO Jesus bade farewell to Capernaum by the
Lake. " When the time was well nigh come that
He should be received up, He steadfastly set His face
to go to Jerusalem."
And these are " The Memories of the Jerusalem
Road." The main source of them is a new section which
St. Luke has inserted right in the middle of the Gospel
story, a section of about three hundred verses peculiar
to his book. The other Gospels have not got it St.
Matthew and St. Mark tell of the Galilean ministry
and then, with a brief passing reference to the interval,
transfer their story to the week before the Crucifixion,
as if little had happened between. St. Luke keeps
with them in the Galilean story and goes on with them
to the time of the Passion. But right between the two
he inserts these Memories of the Road which he has
collected, bridging over the interval between Caper
naum and Calvary. Unfortunately, this is obscured
in our present method of printing the Gospels. It
would make so much for clearness if we should edit
St. Luke so as to make this section stand out dis
tinctly, headed by the Evangelist's solemn introduc
tion, " Now when the time was well nigh come that
3*9

320 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
He should be received up, He steadfastly set His face
to go to Jerusalem." At any rate, the reader should
carefully mark it in his Bible. (Ch. IX, 51, to XVIII,
One likes to think of this young author with his
literary instincts and his absorbing interest in his new
book. He is travelling with St. Paul and always
carrying about in his baggage his two precious manu
scripts. One is a Diary, which is some day to appear
as a Life of Paul in the Acts of the Apostles. But
that is to be a later and secondary affair. Far more
important to him is the other, the notes which he is
collecting for the great work which has absorbed him
for years, a Life of the Blessed Lord Himself. This
is to be published first. This is what mainly occupies
his thoughts. Paul is apparently collaborating with
him.' Probably the impulse to write it came from
Paul. They are collecting material everywhere. As
they travel together they are continually meeting old
disciples, men who had been with Jesus thirty years
ago, and coming on well authenticated memories of
incidents and discourses not yet gathered into the
central tradition. Thus came the story of the Angels
and the Shepherds, probably come down through the
Virgin Mother herself. Thus came the priceless para
bles of the Lost Sheep and the Prodigal. Thus came
this whole section of Memories of the Road, memories
of that pathetic half year after Jesus left Galilee on the
road to His death.
'It must not be too literally insisted on that everything here
belongs to the Jerusalem Road. A few incidents inserted rather
suggest an earlier date. But with this caution, the title here
given to the whole section is justified "Memories of the Jeru
salem Road."
* See Book II, chap. 2.

MEMORIES OF THE ROAD 321
I can imagine the eager interest of the young writer
collecting his material. I can feel his delight when he
first came on the story of the Prodigal. I can see
him one day beginning his " Memories of the Road "
with this distinctive opening sentence, " Now when the
time was come that He should be received up, He
steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem."
As we study this section, we find that it is not, as w<!
might have expected, the record of a straight journey
to Jerusalem to His death. That need have occupied
only a few days, whereas the record of the road is six
months long.
It is rather a record of the roads outside Jeru
salem during six months in which He seems, as it
were, besieging the city, making repeated attempts on
the Capital of His nation. For in every country the
Capital is the centre of influence. And in Jerusalem
at the Festivals He could get the ear of the whole
Jewish world assembled from all lands. Reverently
we conjecture that before He was received up the Lord
would make His appeal to assembled Israel, if they
would let Him. He desired to come to the centre of
His nation to gather her children as a hen gathereth
her chickens under her wings.
"And they would not."
They would not.- Every time He entered they at
tempted His life, so that He had to withdraw. For
He must not die yet. His time is not yet come. He
has much still to do before He dies, much still to tell
of the heart of the Father. If He cannot tell it in
Jerusalem He must tell it where He can, in the wilder
ness, in the little frontier villages, and trust to the
memory of His disciples to bear it on. So for six

322 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
months, repulsed from Jerusalem, He is telling His
gospel in the country outside. Three times He ven
tures in, always at Festival time. Twice He is driven
out by the violence of His enemies. The third time
He comes in to die. His time is come.
Thirty years later St. John writes his reminis
cences of the same period, quite a different set of
memories. Curiously, St. Luke's record keeps alto
gether outside Jerusalem. And, curiously too, St.
John's stories of the same period keep altogether in
side. We could hardly have read either intelligently
without the other. It is like the double story of the
siege of Paris in 1870, where one writer was outside
and could not get in and the other was inside and could
not get out.
We have a Town story and a Country story which
we have to piece together. The Town story is St.
John's. It tells nothing of the Road or of the happen
ings outside. It meets Jesus, as it were, whenever He
enters the city, and tells of what happens there till His
enemies drive Him out, and, as it were, waits inside
till He comes in again. It never follows Him out. It
never passes the gates. That is the Town story.
The Country story is St. Luke's. Starting from
Capernaum it goes with Jesus on the road towards
Jerusalem, but never follows Him in until the end.
It leaves Him at His entrance, waits, as it were, out
side the gates to catch Him up again when He comes
forth, follows Him persistently till He ventures in
again, and then again leaves Him, waits for Him out
side. We have to weave these two together for the
Record of the Road.
So far as we can follow it, it makes a pathetic

MEMORIES OF THE ROAD 323
picture, this record of the last six months of the Son
of Man on earth. Even before He left Galilee the
toils were closing around Him. Already He was in
danger. It is of these closing Capernaum days that
we are told, " Jesus walked in Galilee for He could
not walk in Judea, for the Jews sought to kill Him."
And now, in this winter of a. d. 28, when He stead
fastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, the Record of
the Road is the record of a hunted, persecuted Man.
It tells of six months of mighty works indeed and
momentous teachings, but of six months of troubled
wanderings in the winter, interrupted by brief so
journs in remote frontier villages; six months, if not
of actual flight, of ever recurring avoidance of mur
derous designs now approaching their appalling climax.
It is on this road to Jerusalem we are told that He said
pathetically to one who offered to follow Him, " Foxes
have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the
Son of Man hath not where to lay His head."
We follow Him now in the early days of the Road.
The great national Harvest Festival, the Feast of
Tabernacles, in Jerusalem, was drawing near when
Jesus bade good-bye to Capernaum, leaving us as well
as His brethren and disciples uncertain whether He
meant to appear at the Festival or no. Many things
are uncertain about this journey. It would seem that
He intended to make it an impressive progress, teach
ing and preaching. He sent messengers, two and two,
before His face to prepare for Him. One of these
couples, probably James and John, reached a frontier
village of Samaria and were rudely repulsed by the
jealous Samaritans, " because His face was as though
He would go to Jerusalem." The disciples were in-

324 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
dignant. James and John wanted to call down fire
from Heaven as Elijah did. But Jesus quietly ac
cepted the rebuff, " Ye know not what manner of spirit
ye are of. Let us go to another village." Probably
another couple, a week or two later, reached the vil
lage of Bethany, near Jerusalem, and went to the most
important house in the village, where one Lazarus lived
with his sisters Martha and Mary. Theirs was a very
different reception. In spite of the certainty of
clerical disapproval in the city near by, preparations
were joyfully made to receive this young Prophet from
the North who was stirring the country to its depths,
whom, doubtless, they had often talked of together.
Jesus was on the road behind His messengers. We
know nothing definite here as to the incidents of this
journey. The time was short. Probably the happen
ings were few. When He arrived at Bethany the
house would be en fete for the Festival, the green
booths erected in the courtyard and in the garden, and
the ladies of the house busy in preparation for His
coming. Here comes in that pleasant picture of
Eastern hospitality when the tired Jesus rested in the
house of His new friends, when Martha was cumbered
with much serving and Mary sat at His feet and heard
His words.
Pause for a little here in this home which counted
for so much to the Master in the sorrowful days that
followed. So far as we know, this was their first
meeting. Out of it arose a very beautiful friendship,
which has attracted the interest of Christendom in all
the ages to this pleasant home in Bethany. For in this
home some of His happiest hours were spent. Here
we see Jesus in private life relaxing from the heavy

MEMORIES OF THE ROAD 325
strain in the intimacy of home. Good is it for any
public man to have such relief and refreshment. Jesus
had a delightfully human need of friendship. Even in
Gethsemane, sustained by communion with the Father,
He wanted also the sustaining of the friends who had
come with Him. Do not go away from me. " Tarry
ye here and watch with me."
Such friendship He got in this Bethany home. And
we know how He enjoyed it and responded to it.
Every time He drew near to Jerusalem He seems to
have stayed in this house. Night after night in the
troubled week of the Passion He rested His tired soul
going home to Bethany. And there He came back to
bid farewell to earth. On the Day of the Ascension
" He led His disciples out as far as to Bethany." There
He passed from them and was carried up into Heaven.
" Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus."
They are types of the Master's friends whom we
know in all ages. We all know Martha, the elder one,
the worker, the good housekeeper, capable, strenuous,
bustling, a little brusque and impatient in manner but
with a heart of gold, with her reverence for the Master
tempered by the woman's mothering instinct towards
the persecuted young Prophet who had not where to
lay His head. The Martha of our own day is of the
salt of the earth, the good manager, the skilful nurse,
the strenuous, capable woman on whom most of the
work falls. She has her faults, and she is often mis
understood. She does not talk much of that religion
which is the ruling power of her life. She hides her
feelings. She hates sentiment. She does not suffer
fools gladly. But under a dry, caustic humour she
hides a very loving heart. Young people jest at her

326 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
but come to her in their troubles, and laugh about her
tenderly, affectionately when she is gone. The
Marthas are great helpers of the world.
Some of us have met Mary, the gentle, gracious
woman, thoughtful, meditative, prayerful, with the
eager, receptive soul of a child, thrilling to the great
thoughts of the Master whom she adored. Some who
do not know her compare her disparagingly with her
practical sister as a dreamer, neglecting commonplace
duties for the indulgence of mystic contemplation of
God. Her friendship with Jesus is sufficient answer.
He would have no sympathy with such attitude. The
story simply suggests a devotional soul to whom the
Divine was very real, one of " the pure in heart who
see God," and is the more lovable for it. Both sisters
gave to Him the sympathy and reverent affection that
eased the burden of His toilsome days. They repre
sent the best types of Christian women in the world
to-day. They are very different in temperament, but
He loved them both alike.
We know little of their brother, that silent Lazarus,
who speaks no word in the story. It has been sug
gested that he was the young ruler who once made the
Great Refusal, whom Jesus, beholding, loved him and
kissed him on the brow. All we know is that Jesus
was especially attached to him, that though He had a
deep affection for Martha and Mary even they recog
nized Lazarus as preeminent in His heart. " He whom
Thou lovest," they call him.
Such is the little family who made "home" for
Jesus when the world was hard on Him. By and by
He made home for them in His Eternal Kingdom,
" that where I am there ye may be also." Which sets
us thinking. Here are no romancings but solid facts.

MEMORIES OF THE ROAD 327
Martha and Mary and Lazarus are living and loving
still in the wondrous life of the Hereafter; Jesus is
still building His Kingdom on earth, and the world is
still hard on Him; and there are families all too few
in this world to-day, simple, loving people, who put
Jesus first ; families where, as in the family of Bethany,
the Master feels at home.
Thus He rested that evening on the Road, talking
with Lazarus in the garden, sitting with the sisters be
fore He retired to sleep, walking, perhaps, to the bend
of the road whence He could see across the valley the
lights of the city where a million Jews from all na
tions were assembled for the Feast of Tabernacles.
To-morrow He would go in to the Festival.

II
FIRST ATTEMPT ON JERUSALEM
IT is the 18th of the month Tisri, or October,
a. d. 28. Jerusalem and the country around is
en fete for the Feast of Tabernacles, the Harvest
Festival, the brightest, gladdest holiday of all the year,
the feast of a nation resting from its work, " the feast
of Ingathering at the end of the year when thou hast
gathered in thy labours out of the field." Everybody
went to this popular Festival. Vast multitudes crowd
the streets, men of many lands from the Danube to the
Euphrates, friends greeting friends who had not met
for a year. They are living in the open air, dwelling
in booths. Bordering every street, crowning the city
walls, filling all the open spaces are the booths of green
branches of olive and vine, with bunches of ripe fruit
hanging over each booth. In these pleasant bowers
the people kept holiday, commemorating dramatically
the old Wilderness days when their fathers dwelt in
tents. Like our own Christmas, it had, doubtless, much of
careless merrymaking mingled with its religious de
votion. But the prominent thought was thanksgiving
to God. The Church was much in evidence. Five
hundred priests were up for the ceremonies. The
Temple was crowded all the day long. Amid the
chanting of priests and the sounding of silver trumpets
3*8

FIRST ATTEMPT ON JERUSALEM 329
the people rejoiced, praising the Lord. No other
festival so expressed the joyous side of their religion.
" He who has not seen this festival," said the rabbis,
" does not know what joy means."
This year there is a new note of interest amongst
the crowds. Beneath all the festivities and rejoicings
and greeting of friends is an undercurrent of specula
tion and expectancy. Everywhere they are whisper
ing of Jesus of Nazareth. They dare not talk openly
for fear of the priests. This past year has made Him
famous. Judean and Galilean are taking sides in dis
pute, and the pilgrims from far-off lands are hearing
strange things about this mysterious young prophet
who is reviving the old national dreams of Messiah.
Ah! if only these dreams were like those of their
great Prophets! Surely this national gathering were
then a notable opportunity for proclaiming His King
dom. But Israel's dream was of the earth earthy, of
national glory and vengeance, not of a kingdom of
God. On this 18th of October the Festival is half over and
there is keen disappointment that Jesus has not come.
But the wiser old Jews feel that the peace of the city
is safer without Him. His presence just now might
be a serious danger. For the Galileans are acclaim
ing Him as Messiah and King, and the clerical rulers
are determined to crush Him, and there is very in
flammable material in the city in that million of Jews
assembled from all nations in all the fanaticism of
patriotism and religion.
But Jesus is coming. We put aside St. Luke's
Country Record for the moment and turn to the Town

330 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
Story of St. John. Here are some of the pictures
passing in his mind.
The fourth day of the Feast. The outer court of
the Temple crowded with worshippers waiting their
turn to get in to the Service. Judean and Galilean are
disputing together. The foreign pilgrims are listen
ing and trying to understand, and John the disciple is
in the crowd overhearing the murmured talk around
him. "Where is He?"
"What think ye? That He will not come to the
Feast?" " He is a good man."
" Nay, He but deceiveth the people."
" Think ye that He is truly the Messiah, the Christ? "
" Nay, how could the Christ come out of Galilee ! "
" Hath not the Scripture saith He cometh of David's
seed and of Bethlehem, David's city? "
" We know this man, whence He is. When Mes
siah cometh He will come out of the Unknown. No
man will know whence He is."
Suddenly they become conscious that something is
happening, as though a light breeze had ruffled that
sea of humanity, and in a moment all eyes are turned
to where a Man is standing in the centre of the great
court by a pillar. And the foreigners see for the first
time the tall young countryman with strangely attract
ive face standing in His blue and white travel-worn
robe. And a stillness falls of wonder and reverence,
such as the Gospels often seem to suggest, at the ap
pearance of Jesus. Who can account for these in
stinctive feelings? Charles Lamb once said, "If
Shakespeare suddenly appeared in this room we should
all rise to our feet. If Jesus entered, we should in-

FIRST ATTEMPT ON JERUSALEM 331
stinctively kneel down." I think people always felt
like that when Jesus appeared.
Then says St. John, " He taught them." We do
not know what He taught them. But we know that
now and henceforth there ran through His teaching a
revelation of Himself as the Lord from Heaven. In
Galilee He had moved humanly, companionably, among
men, bidding even His apostles to be silent as to what
they knew or guessed about His divinity. Now we
see Him gradually disclosing Himself as the Eternal
Son come forth from God for the world's salvation.
And though this tremendous disclosure was beyond
them yet, we know that He impressed them deeply.
Stranger though He was to the great majority at the
Feast, again and again we read, " Many believed on
Him." From His lips fell the high thoughts from
above, and true hearts will always respond to the
highest. For the germ of the Divine is in the heart
of humanity. Bad as we are, we were made in the
image of God.
But many did not respond to Him. Hereby hangs
a solemn truth. The very presence of Jesus, then as
now, was a touchstone testing human souls. There
was something in Him which inevitably appealed to the
best side of men, which thrilled down deep in those in
stincts for good which lie buried deep in the heart of
humanity. If you were a true man and met Jesus,
you could not resist Him. If you had any high ideal
of God, you could not help seeing that ideal in Him.
That was the reason why true hearts responded. That
was the condemnation of those who resisted Him.
He was not their ideal because God was not their
ideal. " If God were your Father," said He, " ye

332 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
would love me, for I came forth from God." And
again, " He that is of the Truth heareth my voice."
" My teaching is not mine but His that sent me. He
that willeth to do God's will, He shall recognize the
teaching." So He lays down the illuminating principle that it
is the heart and will rather than the mere intellect
which finds God. It is the aspiration of the heart
after the Divine Reality which finds that Divine
Reality. The most ignorant peasant, aspiring after
the right, recognizes the Father's voice like a little
child. The wisest sage without such aspiration misses
it. That is the sweet reasonableness of the religion of
Jesus. That is the encouragement for the simple and
ignorant. Not the wisdom of the wise but the heart
of the child is needed to find God.
Keep your eyes still on that crowd. Evidently He
had made a tremendous impression. For as He passes
out and the spellbound audience get their breath again,
again John the disciple hears the low-voiced comment:
" Is not this He whom they seek to kill? And, lo,
He speaketh openly and they say nothing to Him.
Can it be that the rulers indeed know that this is the
Christ?" Alas, no ! They have far other thoughts. But they
dare not lay hands on Him with that sympathetic
multitude around. If they have fallen under His spell
for the moment, they soon recover themselves as they
pass from His presence. And their anger rises at the
talk outside. For there are men there not afraid to
talk, free sons of Israel from far-off lands, who scorn
the abject attitude of priest-ridden Jerusalem. Jesus
had greatly impressed them. For we read " of the

FIRST ATTEMPT ON JERUSALEM 333
multitudes many believed on Him, and they said, When
the Christ cometh will He do greater things than this
man hath done ? "
This was not pleasant hearing for the rulers. We
read, " When the Pharisees heard the multitude mur
muring these things concerning Him the chief priests
of the Pharisees sent officers to take Him." So when
in the evening He stood again in the court there were
police uniforms visible in the crowd, and Jesus knew
why they were there. They were an indication of
what was coming. Sadly He turns to the people.
" Only a little longer shall I be with you," He said,
" then I go my way to Him that sent me." But the
officers were men as well as policemen, and as they
looked and heard they had no heart for the business
in hand. The spell of Jesus was on them too.
Now the scene changes. The police are before the
Council. " Why have ye not brought Him?" asked the Sanhe
drim. " We could not touch Him. Never man spake like
this man."
"Are ye also led away?" sneered the angry coun
cillors. " Have any of the rulers believed on Him,
or of the Pharisees ? But this accursed common peo
ple who know not the Law."
Clearly the rulers have not it all their own way.
Not only the crowd but even their own police officers
are beginning to think for themselves. Nay, even the
Council itself is not unanimous. St. John sees at
least one venerable rabbi sitting silent, dissenting,
more in sympathy with the police than with his
clerical brethren. The Rabbi Nicodemus has not for
gotten the young Teacher whom he had secretly visited

334 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
that moonlight night at the Passover. He, too, has
fallen under the spell of Jesus. Now, as then, he had
no courage to stand out with Him. But the old man
had admiration for Him and lingering affection. He
would say a timid word for Him now that He was in
danger. But he was repulsed with withering scorn.
These overbearing clergy turned fiercely on him.
" Ha! Art thou also of Galilee? Search and see, for
out of Galilee ariseth no prophet." And Nicodemus
had no courage for further protest.
Prepare for another picture in the memory of
St. John. It is the last day, the Great Day of the
Feast. Its prominent feature is the ceremony of the
Water-drawing. He sees the great morning proces
sion to the Pool of Siloam. At its head are the priests
in their gorgeous vestments, led by one bearing the
golden pitcher. Behind them a vast concourse of pil
grims in festive array, waving their branches of wil
low and palm, singing the processional psalms of
praise to Jehovah. Through the long crooked streets,
by the beautiful gardens, beneath terraces swarming
with sightseers, they reach Siloam and draw the water
with songs of rejoicing. Probably Jesus is in that
procession, sharing with all true hearts in the praise of
the Father.
Now the scene changes. The multitude is back in
the Temple. It was a stirring sight which John the
disciple saw. The stately altar with its vested priests,
the great surging mass of humanity, the riot of colour,
the waving palms, the robes of many nations, the sea
of eager faces, brown faces pale with the fervour of
excitement, white faces browned by tropical suns.
All, for the moment at least, stirred to the depths,

FIRST ATTEMPT ON JERUSALEM 335
caught up in the enthusiasm of praise to Jehovah.
Surely it was not all mere outward ritual. Israel was
for the moment nearer to its God.
All eyes are fixed on the high ceremonial as the
water with the wine is poured out upon the altar to
symbolize the giving of water in the desert long ago,
to thank God for showers from Heaven on the thirsty
land, and more than that, to pray Him for showers of
blessing on their thirsty souls. The rabbinical writers
dwell on this thought. And surely there were dis
satisfied, thirsting souls that day in the midst of all the
outward hilarity, wanting God, wanting satisfaction
for the craving in their hearts which their evil priest
hood and their outward ceremonial could not give.
Then the silver trumpets ring joyously out and the
great Hallelujah swells through the church, " O give
thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy
endureth forever."
Now comes a dramatic pause while the sacrifices
come in. I suggest this as the critical moment in the
memory of St. John. For here, in the waiting silence
rang out a clear, solitary voice, " If any man thirst let
him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on
me, as the Scripture saith, Out of his heart shall flow
rivers of living water." It is the Son of God Himself
looking on dissatisfied souls and promising a happy
fulfilment of their desires. It is not an interruption
but an interpretation of the ceremonial. Doubtless St.
John did not quite understand it at the time, but writ
ing long after in the light of later days when the great
gift of Pentecost had come to the Church, he adds,
" This spake He of the Spirit which they that believed
on Him should receive."
Think of the sensation in the Temple at that moment.

336 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
Was He divine? Was He mad? This lone, mysteri
ous Prophet saying of God's gift to the thirsting souls
of the world, "If any man thirst, let him come unto
me!" The evening celebration only increased their be
wilderment. We assume that it was when the golden
candelabra were lighted and the worshippers with
blazing torches sang their rejoicings for that pillar of
light which had led their fathers in the desert, that
the word of Jesus came to them again. " I am the
Light of the world. He that followeth me shall not
walk in darkness but shall have the light of life."
This was awful blasphemy. But more awful was
to come. There was a movement in the crowd to
seize Him. But something of awe and wonder held
them back. " No man laid hands on Him," we are
told, " for His hour was not yet come." Solemnly
He continued, " I am going away from you and ye
shall seek me and shall not find me. Whither I go ye
cannot come. Ye are from beneath. I am from
above. Ye are of this world. I am not of this world.
Except ye believe that I am ye shall die in your sins."
That " I am " was an awful expression, the most
solemn, sacred title of God Himself. They would
remember how Moses spake to the Israelites of old,
" I am hath sent me unto you."
The hearers are aghast.
"Who art thou?"
" Even the same which I told you from the be
ginning. One day ye shall know. When ye have
lifted up the Son of Man then shall ye know that
I am and that I do nothing of myself, but as the
Father taught me."

FIRST ATTEMPT ON JERUSALEM 337
And again the next day He repeats that solemn title,
" Before Abraham was I am."
Surely these assembled pilgrims from many lands
went home with a strange story. No man had ever
heard such words before. And they were not without
effect. "As He spake these things, many believed on
Him." But the others called it blasphemy. "They took up
stones to cast at Him, but Jesus was hidden and went
forth out of the Temple."
Is it possible to realize that tremendous position?
" O Jerusalem, thou knowest not this day of thy
visitation! One standeth in the midst of you whom
ye know not ! " He who had come for His brief mo*
ment to earth, whose goings forth were from of old,
from everlasting, stood in human guise amongst them
at this Festival, as they dramatically reproduced the
old wilderness days. He had been with their fathers
in those wilderness days. He had called Israel of old
to teach religion to the world. He would call Israel
now to a fuller revelation of the heart of God towards
men. And the tragedy of it was that they did not
know and did not care to know. They were too dull
and evil-hearted to know. And He wanted them to
know before they killed Him.
So ends His first attempt on Jerusalem.
Unless He would face immediate death He must
now escape from the city. He has made wonderful
use of these three days. But with the departure of
the friendly multitude His life is no longer safe. He
must flee now to the wilderness with His little band
and there continue the message that He would leave
for the world, which Jerusalem would not hear.

Ill
A LOST STORY OF THE GOSPELS

W

E have passed over two incidents in the
Festival week which should be noticed.

One day Jesus and His disciples, as they passed,
saw a blind young man seeking alms at the Temple
gate, and as he turned his poor, sightless eyes on them
some one told them that he had been born blind.
Which at once set the disciples curiously speculating.
Since suffering, they thought, must be the result of
sin, an interesting problem was raised, " Master, who
did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born
blind?" There are many who speculate thus about the mys
tery of life's troubles, who raise no hand to relieve
them. The compassionate heart of Jesus had no
patience with such speculations just then. " It was
neither for his sin nor his parents'," He said, "but
that the works of God should be made manifest." Of
course He did not mean, This man was born blind that
I might work a miracle, but that such suffering is a
Divine call to work the works of God, the works of
sympathy and help. Life's suffering, He says, is
God's call to relieve it. That is the work of God and
we are all God's fellow-workers when engaged in such
work. Jesus was representing the Father by loving
33»

A LOST STORY OF THE GOSPELS 339
and helping that blind man as the Father would have
done. We represent the Father when we make men
feel that God is thinking of them and through us is
helping them. And many an afflicted one through
such love of the brother whom he has seen has learned
to believe in the love of God whom he has not seen.
I notice that this was but one of the little chance
opportunities of doing kindness and Jesus seized it at
once. He did not wait to gather funds and found a
Social Service Institute for blind men. That is a fine
thing to do. But the lesson here is that of doing the
little every-day kindnesses that come in our way.
Jesus was only " passing by " and saw one blind man
and immediately concentrated His attention on him.
Life is full of these little opportunities. As you pass
through life you see every day a big heap of human
trouble and a little heap of human happiness, and if
you can lift even a little grain off one heap to put it
upon the other, Jesus says you are doing the works
of God.
The blind man heard Him speak of doing the works.
of God. He knew not what that meant till he felt the
friendly hand upon his shoulder as Jesus stooped to
anoint his eyes with clay. " Now go to the Pool of
Siloam and wash." And he went and washed and
came seeing. Who can imagine the tremendous thing
that had happened to him, the unutterable wonder and
joy as he rallied from the first shock and entered a
new world of light and glory and beauty and far-flung
spaces and stately buildings and faces of men and
women with the souls looking through. To a man
who had never seen this world before, it must have
seemed like entering heaven. Was this what Jesus
meant bv the works of God ? Could he ever show his

340 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
gratitude sufficiently to the Man who had done this
for him !
Soon an excited little crowd is around him.
" Is not this the blind beggar of the Temple gate ? "
" Certainly it is he."
" Nay, but he looks like him."
A pair of eyes make a great difference in a face.
" Yes," cried the bewildered man in his strange, new
world. "Yes, I am he!"
" But tell us, how were your eyes opened ? "
" The man that is called Jesus did it."
"Where is He?"
" I don't know where He is. I don't know where
anything is yet."
Some one suggests, apparently with hostile intent,
" Let us bring him to the Pharisees in the Coun
cil." So they brought to the Pharisees him that was born
blind. "And it was the Sabbath day," says St. John.
So immediately we look out for trouble. That rabid
Sabbatarianism, the curse of Jewish religion, would
surely bring Jesus into the danger line again.
The man stands before the council with the crowd
around him.
" What of this Jesus? Tell us what happened."
" He put clay on mine eyes and I washed and do
see." Then breaks out a division in the council itself.
" This man is not of God for He keepeth not the
Sabbath." " Well, but how can a sinful man do such miracles ? "
In their perplexity they ask the man,
"What do you think yourself about Him? "

A LOST STORY OF THE GOSPELS 341
The man knows his danger but will not be brow
beaten. " I think He is a prophet."
" Ye think He is a prophet ! We think you are an
impostor! Go bring his parents before us."
So the parents are brought. But they will not com
mit themselves. They knew the power of this terrible
hierarchy. They knew that the priestly decree had
gone forth, If any man confess Jesus to be Messiah he
shall be excommunicated.
" Certainly this is our son. Certainly he was born
blind. But we know nothing more. He is of age.
Ask himself." So the parents in their fright.
Again the young beggarman is called up. " Give
glory to God ! We know this man is a sinner." But
in the wonder and delight of his new world he is
beyond all fear of them now. He will be loyal at all
costs to the unknown Friend whom they hate, who has
changed all life for him.
" Whether He be a sinner or no I know not, but
one thing I know, that whereas I was blind now I see.
We know that God heareth not sinners. Since the
world began was it ever heard that any man opened
the eyes of the blind? If this man were not of God
He could do nothing."
They answered and said, " Thou wast altogether
born in sin. Dost thou teach us ? " And they cast
him out. The ban of the church was put on him.
Henceforth he shall sit at the Temple gate no more.
No longer shall he worship in the house of God. He
shall have no employment from any God-fearing man.
Shunned as a leper, he goes forth an excommunicated
Jew. But he bears it all for this unknown Jesus.
And Jesus heard it and sought the poor outcast.

342 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
And as he poured out his gratitude, surely Jesus taught
him of the Eternal Love which had sent Him down to
earth to work the works of God until the man's soul
was ripe for a final question, " Dost thou believe on
the Son of God?" And he said, " Lord, I believe,"
and he worshipped Him. So in that day when the
door of the earthly Church was closed against him, the
door of the Kingdom of Heaven was opened, and a
poor blind beggar saw the light of God when the
proud teachers of Israel missed it.
So the blind beggar passes off the stage. But
probably he means more to the world than we know.
For if, as is conjectured, Jesus spoke publicly of his
case and of the cruel shepherds that had cast this poor
sheep out of the fold, then we owe to this blind beggar
the beautiful parable, that immediately follows, of
The True Shepherd and the Hirelings.
Not through false shepherds who tyrannize over the
flock can men be shut out from the fold of God. " I
am the true door of the sheep. The hireling shepherd
careth not for the sheep. I am the Good Shepherd.
The Good Shepherd giveth his life for his sheep.
Therefore doth the Father love me, because I lay down
my life. No man taketh it away from me. I lay it
down of myself. As the Father knoweth me even so
know I the Father, and I lay down my life for the
sheep." So through the blind beggar comes this lovely
parable. The other incident belongs to one of the " Lost
Stories " of the Gospels. There are many lost stories
of the life of Jesus. This is one of the very few that

A LOST STORY OF THE GOSPELS 343
have been recovered. It is set down in the midst of
St. John's Gospel where it should not be, where it is
out of place. St. John did not write it. Nor did any
of the other evangelists. St. Luke did not find it in
compiling his Memories of the Jerusalem Road. It
does not appear at all in the original Gospels. But it
lived and was handed down in the memories of early
disciples, till one day, long after the Gospels were
published, some one wrote it in the margin of one of
the Gospel manuscripts. By and by some transcriber
copied it into the text, and its appeal was so strong that
a place had to be made for it. So was rescued from
oblivion this touching little story of The Woman taken
in adultery.
As the modern novel in our day parades its un
savoury sex problems, so did the Pharisees in the days
of Christ. As He stood one day in the intervals of
worship in one of the Temple courts, they bring to
Him, with brutal indelicacy, a woman caught in
adultery in the very act. You can see the leering
looks and the sobbing woman with her face hidden in
her hands. The whole thing was shameful, repulsive.
But since He had chosen to cast in His lot with sinful
humanity, Jesus could not escape contact with things
shameful and repulsive. It was not the first or the sec
ond time such women had come before Him. We
know of the fallen woman at Simon's feast, and of the
harlots who crowded with the publicans to hear Him.
And there was a suspicion that He was too lenient
in dealing with such outcasts. He spoke hopefully to
them. He was tender with them. He often led them
to penitence and to God. He knew that many were
the victims of men, more sinned against than sinning.

344 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
Doubtless He hated the false morality of their day
and ours, which damned the fallen woman and let the
fallen man escape. But there was more than this in
the charges against Him. He actually asserted that
the sins of respectable people, covetousness, bitterness,
the unloving heart, were blacker in God's sight than
even sins of fleshly frailty. The proud, pious
Pharisee, with his hypocrisy and his scorn of the com
mon people, was more hateful in His sight than even
the woman in her shame. One day He said it straight
out to these sanctimonious clergy, " The very pub
licans and harlots go into the Kingdom of God before
you." Now this is dangerous talk for a public reformer.
It is so easy to misunderstand or misinterpret. Most
of us would be afraid to say it straight out lest we be
charged with making light of sins of personal im
purity. But Jesus did not hesitate to say it straight
out because it needed to be said. It is not making
light of the sins of the flesh to say that there are sins
of the spirit worse and more dangerous and more
difficult to cure, all the more so because they are re
garded more lightly. The clever business man, who
unscrupulously wrecks his competitors, the spiteful
lady, who smilingly hints slanderous things about her
neighbour, would come quite confidently to church in
Jerusalem or in Montreal and be very much startled at
being placed below some woman who had fallen. But
Jesus would place them there. And they would not
like it. Neither did the Pharisees.
So we can perceive the trap which they laid for Him
here. " Master, Moses decreed that such women
should be stoned. What sayest Thou ? " But He
knew their hearts. These were no pure-minded peo-

A LOST STORY OF THE GOSPELS 345
pie, honestly shocked and pained by this abominable
sin. Such people would never have dragged the
wretched woman publicly before Him. It was a ma
licious plot to compromise Him with the public.
He would not further degrade the wretched woman
by looking on her shame. He turned away as though
He saw not, and stooped down and wrote on the
ground. In the embarrassing silence we can conjec
ture His thoughts of her and of them. Which was
the worse, the shameful thing that this woman had
done, or the malignant attitude of her sanctimonious
accusers ? When they persisted in spite of His silence,
He raised Himself and looked on them. And as He
looked into their hearts, He forced them to look too, —
" And the ghosts of forgotten actions came floating
before their sight,
And things that they thought were dead things were
alive with a terrible might."
He arraigned them sternly at the bar of Conscience.
" He that is without sin among you, let him cast the
first stone. And they, when they heard it, went out
one by one, beginning from the eldest even unto the
least. And Jesus was left alone and the woman where
she was." She did not go. She could not, while He
who had protected her looked down upon the ground
like a brother bowed beneath a sister's terrible sin.
The story suggests that He had pierced her conscience
too, that a broken and contrite heart lay before Him in
her agony of a woman's shame. Then He lifted up
Himself and looked on her. " Woman, where are
they ? Did no man condemn thee ? " " No man,
Lord." " Neither do I condemn thee. Go thy way.
From henceforth sin no more."

346 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
We are looking into the heart of God. That was
Christ's way of healing sin. We cannot cast out adul
tery by stoning it with stones. But Christ can touch a
human heart by tenderness and forgiveness and a new
woman arises to go and sin no more.

IV
THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD
I. THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD
JESUS' attempt on Jerusalem in that exciting Fes
tival Week has resulted, as He knew it would, in
His expulsion from the city. So we lay aside the
Town Record of St. John to take it up again two
months later, when He returned at the Feast of Dedi
cation, since St. John's record does not follow Him
outside. We return to St. Luke and the Country Record of
the Road, following Jesus into the wilderness. The
places are not recorded. We do not know where He
went. Probably through the Perean district beyond
Jordan. And we do not quite know the order of the
teachings and incidents recorded. St. Luke keeps sim
ply presenting his collection of pictures of the wander
ings one by one with seldom any clear indication of
time or place. Perhaps they are in consecutive order.
More probably they are not. " One day " he says this
happened. "Another day " that happened. "After
these things " something else happened.
We notice that the whole period seems rich in teach
ings rather than in incidents, as if the Lord, as His
time drew near, was desirous of leaving for the world
in the memory of His disciples the many things He
had to say which they would not let Him say in Jeru-
347

348 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
salem. The limits of space forbid any treatment in
detail. It seems best to collect here some of the most
prominent thoughts in these Teachings of the Road
without regard to sequence.
Prominent above all the teachings of Jesus is
that of the Fatherhood of God, and the most precious
page in the Memories of the Road is that which tells
how He taught it as He went up to die.
I see the young author, St. Luke, writing his new
book, gathering up stories not already recorded. I
think of his excitement that day when he first heard
from men who had been with Jesus on the Jerusalem
road, the stories of the Lost Sheep and the Prodigal.
He knew that Jesus had always been teaching the
Fatherhood of God. But surely never with such ex
quisite pathos as here. What a delight to get this as a
chapter in his new Gospel !
The story probably belongs to Jericho just before
the end of the Road, when Jesus had dined with Zac-
cheus and his publican friends, "And the Pharisees and
Scribes murmured saying, This man receiveth sinners
and eateth with them." He had already got a bad
name for this. He would receive and talk with publi
cans and harlots and outcasts of any kind, and it was a
constant surprise to the Pharisees and Scribes that He
should like to associate with such people. The more
surprising thing did not seem to occur to them at all
that they should like to associate with Him. For
surely it is not usual for outcasts and sinners to like be
ing with One utterly holy and pure. But evidently
they did like to be with Him.
And then He told the Pharisees why He liked to be

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 349
with them. He told of the pain and love in the Father
hood of God. He told them His three little parables
of the shepherd who had a hundred sheep, and the
woman who had ten pieces of silver, and the father
who had two sons, and each of them had lost one, and
just because they had lost one were more concerned
about that one than about all the rest. The point in
the stories is that something was temporarily lost,
something of great value to the owner, and because it
was lost He was greatly concerned just as we would be.
The whole emphasis is on the feelings of the owner.
They are parables of the Fatherhood. They are not
parables of the Lost Sheep or the Lost Coin or the Lost
Son. It is not the sheep or the coin or the son that
Jesus is thinking of. It is the feeling of the person
who has lost them. The parables are about God, reve
lations of the heart of the Father. He is the shepherd
who has lost his sheep and is out on the weary
road to find it. He is the woman seeking diligently
for her lost coin. He is the father whose heart is sore
for that prodigal son in the far country.
There is the infinite pathos in the Fatherhood of
God. Elsewhere Jesus tells of God's love to His faith
ful children. " Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's
good pleasure to give you the kingdom." " Your
heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
things." " When ye pray to Him say, Our Father."
All that is most comforting for His faithful children.
But all that does not touch us like this pathetic picture.
The Father's pain and loss. The sore heart wanting
His child back.
Listen to this revelation of the Father's heart, not
by a mere man, not even by an apostle. The Only Be
gotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath

350 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
revealed it. That it is God's loss more than yours
when you go astray. That God suffers more than you
suffer by your godless life. That He cares more than
you care for your return to good. That was a start
ling thought to the Pharisees. It is a startling, almost
incredible thought to some of ourselves. And yet it
ought not to be if we would look, as Jesus bids us do,
at the reflection of God in all human love around us.
It is the love losing the loved one that suffers the
most. It is the poor old father whose hair turns gray
when his boy has gone wrong, not the boy himself who
often does not care. Oh the agony one has seen in the
faces of fathers and mothers who would suffer any
pain in this life, who would go into the outer darkness
in the next life if it were possible, if by any means they
could save the thankless child. The memory rises be
fore me of one dear old friend. " We have known
each other for years," she said, " but I never told you
of my secret sorrow, my only boy who went wrong and
fled from this country. For ten years I have not heard
of him. I do not know to-day if he is alive or dead,
but God help me, he is never out of my thoughts day
or night."
It seems almost incredible that Jesus meant just that
when He told of God's loss. Every mother on this
earth, if she never saw a Bible, has in her heart the
revelation of the tenderness of God. Jesus said so.
Judge the Father by the best in yourselves. If ye be
ing evil know how to care thus for your children, how
much more does the Heavenly Father? Could any
man stay away from Him if he believed that?
And again He touches the depths of each parent's
heart. The Father rejoices in His faithful children
but all the good children cannot compensate for the one

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 351
bad one. There are ninety-nine sheep safe out of the
hundred, and nine coins out of the ten, and one boy out
of the two. But God is not satisfied. No one escapes
in the crowd. The Father's pain and longing is for
each separate one. Does any reader know the misery
of seeing one son drifting into vice while the others are
happy and good ? Would all your good boys make up
for that one? Would not the pain be ever there for
that erring son? Would not the cry of your heart be
ever rising up, the heart of the great God echoing in
yourself, My boy. My boy. I must seek that which
is lost until I find it. O thank God forever for that
revelation. That is what Jesus says. God is like that
only infinitely more so. It would be too good to be
true if Jesus had not said it.
And then He tells of the earnestness of God's seek
ing. The woman sweeping the house and seeking dili
gently. The father at the gate projecting his thoughts
and will into the heart of that lost son among the husks
and the swine troughs. The shepherd ever out on the
desolate mountains seeking that which is lost until he
find it. " Until he find it," Jesus says. The Father
does not console Himself for your loss by fellowship
with beings who have never sinned. He does not con
tent Himself by putting others in to fill the blank. He
is not a great labour employer who can hire fresh
hands to take the place of the failures. No, says our
Blessed Lord, He is the Father. He wants you. He
misses you. He goes after that which is lost until He
find it.
"Until He find it." God only knows how much
that means. How much in this world. How much in
the next world. Sometimes one almost hopes that

352 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
such a love can never be ultimately defeated. There
is only one thing that can defeat Him, the sinner's own
will. That can. And so the Lord elsewhere pathetic
ally puts it, " If so be that He may find it."
One of the best of Bulwer Lytton's stories tells of
a father whose boy had wandered away into the wild
iniquity of London life, tells how he went on in his
recklessness and sin regardless of the misery he was
causing in his home. And then is pictured for us the
broken-hearted old man, a high-minded, honourable
soldier, exhausting every effort night after night,
month after month, wandering through the city streets,
haunting every gaming saloon and place of evil resort.
He cared not that strangers suspected his morality.
He cared not for anything but to find that son who was
breaking his brave old heart.
It is a picture, a faint but truthful picture according
to Jesus, of our Father seeking the lost. That son
never dreamed of the old father thus caring. He
thought of him only as stern and indignant, cursing
him who had dishonoured the proud old name. Just
like ourselves when we are rebelling against God. Our
first thought is His anger, His vengeance, His cold,
dispassionate watching of our sorrow and remorse.
Our last thought is that the Father is suffering, long
ing, hoping.
And yet the last thought is the true one. Jesus says
here that the depths of God's heart are stirred by our
evil doing. He makes diligent search. He leaves no
stone unturned. He is beforehand with us in our re
pentance. Every stirring of remorse and penitence
and hope is prompted by Him.
It is hard to believe it. It is too good to believe.

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 353
And yet surely I must believe it. I have the word of
Christ Himself that it is true, the shepherd seeking, the
woman sweeping, the father grieving. I have the con
firmation of it deep in my own heart as I think what I
should do if my child went wrong. A mother said to
me one day, If my boy were missing in the blessed land
not all the angels in Heaven could hold me from going
out into the outer darkness to seek for my boy till I
found him. That was not irreverence. It was a re
flection of God's heart. It is a poor business if God is
not good as that mother. And I have the further con
firmation from men themselves, who have told me
again and again of the disturbings and promptings, of
the agony and remorse, of the wishes and resolves a
thousand times made and broken. " It is just Hell,"
said a man to me one day. Nay, it was not hell. It
was the shepherd seeking, the woman sweeping, the
outraged Father in His stern love seeking that which
was lost if so be that He might find it. As the man
spoke to me I thought of this parable, Christ's revela
tion of the Fatherhood, and I felt we were on holy
ground. That spirit world is all around us. If our
eyes were opened to spiritual sight, if our ears were
purged from the noises of earth, we might see at such
times the footsteps of Christ, we might hear in such
struggles the pleading of God, seeking that which is
lost until He find it.
And if He find it there is joy in the presence of the
angels of God. The joy of the Father is imaged by
Christ in the day of the Prodigal's return. It is im
aged in lowlier way in the unutterable gladness of that
old father in Lord Lytton's tale, when, after months of
grieving and praying and searching through the Lon-

354 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
don slums he at last found his son. And that son was
so surprised and startled and touched to the heart at
the discovery of that untiring love, that his whole life
was changed and he started manfully in a new career
and won honour for the old father whose life he had so
darkened. Who can tell the gladness of that old man as he
heard on every side the praises of his boy. He had
sought for that which was lost and he had found it.
That is God. That is the Father so far as poor hu
man minds can guess at Him. We do not half believe
it. It is too good to be true. But it is true all the
same. Christ has declared it. It is no fairy tale. It
is true and it belongs to every one of us. We are not
orphans. God is our Father. It says to the poor
struggler longing to be faithful, Fear not, little flock,
it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the king
dom. It says to every wretched sinner away in the far
country, Arise and come back to the Father.

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD
II. THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN
THE Fatherhood of God stands first in the
thoughts of Jesus for His Reconstruction of
Human Society. From it inevitably follows
the Brotherhood of Man. If the Father is caring so
dearly for His poor human children, surely it must
please Him that they care for each other, and surely
He must be angry with any one among them who
brings to another unhappiness or sin. So Brotherhood
stands out prominent in the ideals of Christ. Unbroth-
erliness is the supreme sin.
Again I am reminded of the interesting time St.
Luke had in collecting these Memories of the Road.
One day he found the delightful stories of the Lost
Sheep and the Prodigal, parables of the tender father
hood of God. Another day he came on the startling
picture of Dives and Lazarus, Christ's stern indictment
of the Unbrotherliness of Man. Its dramatic force
gives it special prominence as a centre for the other
teachings on the subject.
It is a Romance of Two Worlds, a Drama in two
parts,— Scene I, This World; Scene II, The World to
Come. Scene I. A lordly mansion. Wealth and pomp
and luxury, halls bright with laughing guests, ante-
355

356 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
chambers filled with obsequious servants. And in the
centre of the stage the master of it all, " a rich man
clothed in purple and fine linen and faring sumptuously
every day." In the near distance " a beggar named
Lazarus, lying at his gate, full of sores and desiring to
be fed with the fragments that fell from the rich man's
table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores."
A simple little picture, so vivid that you are forced
to see it. A picture of society in the days of Christ,
and, alas, equally a picture of society in our day —
gaunt, haggard poverty and proud, luxurious wealth
standing close together, looking each other in the face.
Keep your eyes on the Rich Man all the time. It is
his story. His is the portrait that Jesus is sketching.
The other characters belong only to the setting. And
note that this is simply the story of a Rich Man, not of
a wicked Rich Man, nor a dishonest Rich Man, nor a
cruel Rich Man, just an ordinary commonplace Rich
Man. Neither he himself nor his world see anything to
blame. He is not charged with any evil conduct nor
with acquiring his wealth by dishonourable means. It
is not even said that he was harsh to the poor. Laza
rus would not be daily at his gate unless he were ac
customed to get the broken meats. He was capable of
friendship with his wealthy guests. Probably he went
to church and paid his tithes and was a highly respected
man in his own circle.
What was his sin ? An unloving heart, an utter dis
regard of the Divine law of Brotherhood. He was
willing that the scraps should go to Lazarus with the
dogs at the gate. But he never thought of any closer
relation. He never dreamed that Lazarus was a
brother with a brother's claim for sympathy and

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 357
friendship. The Great Gulf between Rich and Poor
lay between them, widening every day, and he never
thought of crossing it by a kindly word or a thought of
friendly interest. That was his sin. An unloving
heart. He never saw the Divine fact of Brotherhood.
One day he was to see it. And the Great Gulf too.
When it was too late.
The curtain rises on another world. " It came
to pass that the beggar died and was carried by
the angels into Abraham's Bosom. The rich man also
died and was buried."
Jesus paints all His pictures against the background
of the Eternal World surrounding this world as the
sea surrounds the land. So He lifts the curtain again.
But on a far other scene amid the dread solemnities of
the After Life. He would teach men that death does
not close the life drama. Life goes on. Character
goes on. Responsibility goes on. Memory and Con
science pass out with man into the solemn Otherworld.
The spot-light is still on Dives. It is his story that is
being told. As the curtain rises we get a glimpse of
him. Away in the dim distance amid the solitudes of
great spaces, a little shrivelled soul in the infinite loneli
ness. And in torment. For Conscience is awake now
that has slept through the years when he fared sump
tuously every day. The jar of death has awakened it.
He sees. He knows. And the poor soul naked and
afraid has no relief, nowhere to turn. " In Hades he
lift up his eyes, being in torment." It is an awesome
picture which Jesus draws. Not the crude mediaeval
fancies of a material hell of fire and flames. But in
finitely more solemn and impressive. In the vast soli
tudes of the infinite spaces a lonely soul in torment.

358 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
I sat alone with my Conscience
In that land where time has ceased,
And discoursed of my former living
On the earth where the years increased.
And the vision of all my past life
Was an awful thing to face
Alone, alone with my Conscience,
In that weird and lonely place.
Did that " lonely place " reveal to him the loneliness
of an unbrotherly world? In the awful solitude he
lifts up his eyes to find some friendly face. He sees
Lazarus afar off in Abraham's Bosom and he prays
that Lazarus should be sent to bring the sympathy and
comfort which he had never thought of offering Laza
rus on earth. " Send Lazarus." He has forgotten
for a moment that he is no longer the rich man who
can order Lazarus about. But he is bidden, " My son,
remember thy lifetime when thou hadst the good things
and Lazarus the evil things."
Aye, he remembers — himself and Lazarus — his own
unbrotherliness and the loneliness of the sick pauper,
and he sees with horror the " great gulf " which he
and his like had dug between them. It all looks so
much worse in the clear vision there. And now in the
white light of eternity he sees that he who is digging a
gulf between himself and his brother is digging a gulf
between himself and God. " Between us and you
there is a great gulf fixed." Does he remember that
there was a time when he could have bridged that gulf
with a few kindly words? Now it has become un
fathomable. It does not belong to the subject, but it is worth a
momentary digression to point out in passing that the
purpose of this parable was not to reveal the mysteries

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 359
of the Afterworld. Jesus was teaching the social duty
of Brotherhood. He but lifted the curtain for a mo
ment to follow Dives into the Unseen to show the
eternal consequences of the unbrotherly life. Let no
man strain the meaning of all the pictorial details.
There is a " great gulf " to-day between the unbroth
erly rich and the poor in this world. There is a great
gulf between bad people and good people in this or any
other world. Between Dives, who had come into that
world selfish and godless, and the holy souls at rest in
the Lord there is, of course, a great gulf fixed. And
so long as Dives remains a selfish, godless soul that
great gulf must remain fixed. Surely Jesus did not
mean to teach that good men in that world of love can
not pity or help worse men. God forbid. That would
not be the Jesus that we know. I read it as a stern
discipline of God that the unbrotherly man must stand
unhelped till he learn the misery of unbrotherliness.
But men who have forgotten the Fatherhood of God
have drawn unwarranted conclusions from this parable
of the Brotherhood of Man. They have gathered
from it the doctrine of an endless hell, whereas hell
does not come into the story at all. The Revised Ver
sion puts that right for you. Not in Hell but in
Hades, in the life immediately after death, Dives lift
up his eyes in torment of soul. They have gathered
from it that death fixes every man's fate irrecoverably
forever. This is presuming beyond what is written.
Jesus pictures the great gulf between good and evil
with Dives on the wrong side. But when we ask with
hushed voices if Christ will never bridge that gulf, if
Dives must be on the hither side to all eternity, there
is no answer. It did not concern the purposes of the
story. If you seek the answer you must seek it else*

360 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
where in the teaching of Jesus, in the Fatherhood of
God who has pain forever over one sinner that repent
eth not, in the Good Shepherd wandering forever on
the Desolate Mountains seeking that which is lost, if so
be that He may find it. I know nothing of the ulti
mate fate of Dives, but I know there is no " great
gulf " too deep for Christ.
Through all depths of pain and loss
Sinks the plummet of His Cross.
Never yet abyss was found
Deeper than that Cross could sound.
Thus Jesus sketched His immortal cartoon "Un
brotherliness " as He saw it in His day. Dives is its
representative and He sends Dives to the Place of Tor
ment for it. And He says if others do not wish to
share his fate they had better remember God's law of
Brotherhood. Another day He touches the subject again in the
story of the Good Samaritan, where a despised Samari
tan — a German as we should put it — is brought in to
teach the meaning of neighbourliness. Again and
again the same thought comes up. You must forgive
your offending brother till seventy times seven. You
must be kindly and helpful even if he is ungrateful,
" for the Father is kind to the unthankful and the evil
and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." And
" This is my commandment, that ye love one another."
" One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are breth
ren." It is needless to quote further. The Law of
Brotherhood is everywhere.
But the most powerful comment on the cartoon of
Dives is His tremendous picture of the Judgment,
where it would almost seem that Brotherliness or Un-

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 361
brotherliness were the factors deciding destiny. The
Judge is the Son of Man, the Brother of Humanity.
Kindness or unkindness to the least of these His breth
ren is done unto Himself. Unnoticed He has been
moving through human life, looking through the eyes
of the lonely and troubled who were longing for broth
erhood. Men did not know that He was looking.
The kindly hearts saw nothing worth notice in their
little kindnesses. The unbrotherly are astonished that
one should observe their unbrotherliness. But He was
noting it all. " I was hungry and ye gave me meat,
thirsty and ye gave me drink, sick and in prison and ye
visited me. Come, ye blessed of my Father. For in
asmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these my
brethren ye did it unto Me."
That is a tremendous emphasis to lay on the Law
of Brotherhood. We need to remember it. Lazarus
at the gate is His illustration of the world of suffering
and need lying at our doors now as then, and Dives
comes to warn us.
In this city to-day the poor are herded together like
rabbits in a warren, in miserable dwellings at exorbi
tant rents, and you cannot stir the city to do anything.
Every summer little children are dying for lack of
playgrounds and open spaces in our crowded slums.
Poor old women beyond their work have no Old Age
Pensions or other relief, as they have in the Old Coun
try. There are lonely under-paid girls in shops, living
in conditions that bring dangerous temptations. If I
do not dwell on the unbrotherly struggle of Capital and
Labour it is only because workmen are learning to fight
for themselves since the Church would not fight for
them. They are unbrotherly too, in this day of their

362 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
power. They are a menace to society. They have
learned unbrotherliness in a bitter school. The Chron
icles of Labour in the past make sorrowful reading —
women and little children working in mines, sweat
shops and factories where the poor were exploited,
starvation wages, homes where modesty and decency
were impossible. Our daughters with baseborn babies
Have wandered away in their shame.
If your daughters had slept where they did,
Your daughters would do the same.
And Christ was looking. And we were not caring.
They were not our families who lived in wretched
houses. They were not our children who were
tempted. Only Christ's poor faunilies. Only God's
poor children.
Said Christ the Lord, " I will go and see
How the men, my brethren, believe in Me."
Great organs surged through arches dim
Their jubilant floods in praise of Him,
And in church and palace and judgment hall
He saw His image high over all.
But still wherever His steps they led
The Lord in sorrow bent down His head,
And from under the heavy foundation stones
The Son of Mary heard bitter groans.
Then Christ sought out an artisan,
A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,
And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin
Pushed from her faintly want and sin.
These set He in the midst of them,
And as they drew back their garment's hem
Through fear of defilement, " Lo, these," said He,
" Are the images ye have made of Me ! "

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 363
What wonder that He was fierce at the unbrotherli
ness of man. What wonder He sent Dives to the Place
of Torment.
" All ye are brethren." We must not limit it to the
relation between Rich and Poor. Sympathy and
friendship and kindliness in our own circles is equally
the rule of the Brotherhood. God wants a happy
world. And this great duty He lays upon us all, the
sacred duty of giving Pleasure.
It all comes to this. In the Social Reconstruction of
Society to-day, the world's great need is Christ. Men
are teaching laws of economics and principles of Utili
tarianism and ethical persuasions on the duty of doing
good. ' But they are leaving out Christ. And they are
not succeeding. And they know it. Our political and
industrial and social leaders feel their impotence, their
lack of some great spiritual impulse to make the proj
ects work. It is religion that is needed. It is not
enough to tell us to do right. We want a pressing mo
tive and a power. Jesus supplies the motive in the
Fatherhood of God and His tender care for us and for
our brethren that brought the Eternal Son to Calvary.
And He supplies the power. By the power of His
Holy Spirit, through Prayer and Sacrament, character
is ennobled and we become willing to do things trouble
some to ourselves. " The love of Christ constraineth
us." And this is the message that we have of Him,
" that he who loveth God love his brother also."

VI
THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD
III. RESPONSIBILITY
PROMINENT also in the teachings in the Memo
ries of the Road is Jesus' great parable of the
Responsibility of Life. Probably it was taught
more than once with variations to fit the hearers. St.
Luke gives us one rendering of it near the end of the
Road when Jesus was " nigh unto Jerusalem and they
thought the Kingdom of God was immediately to ap
pear." St. Matthew has another version which he
places a week later, the version familiar to us as the
Parable of the Talents. This latter has the fuller
teaching. The centre thought is this, that men's chief business
in life is to be faithful stewards of a trust reposed in
them by God. Men of that day looked on wealth and
all other advantages as their own property to be used
for themselves. Men of our day do the same. We
try to check them by external force, by income tax and
special levies on extravagant wealth. Jesus went to the
root of the matter. The true remedy is change of
heart, change of view-point. Men must learn to see
life as it really is in relation to God, in relation to eter
nity. This, says the Eternal Son, is life as God sees it.
God is our Father. All we are brethren. And our
position with respect to God and to each other is as
when " a man going into a far country called his own
servants and delivered unto them his goods, to one five
364

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 365
talents, to another two, to another one to trade there
with for him."
Practically, it comes to this. That God sends each
one of us into the world to accomplish a certain life-
work, to help Him in pulling this poor old world
straight. That He endows each one with more or less
ability for the accomplishing of this purpose. That
He will one day ask of each of us, My child, show me
thy work. How hast thou accomplished the life-pur
pose to which I set thee and for which I endowed thee ?
How much is the world better, how much is your own
life better, for your having lived?
Here is how our Lord puts it. There is a rich
householder owning slaves. " Bondservants " is the
Greek word used, suggesting, I suppose, that because
God has created us and preserved us and redeemed us
and endowed us with all our gifts and powers, we of
right belong to Him altogether, body and soul. There
fore, according to the parable, no honourable man has
a right to say, My neighbour may lawfully choose to
serve God and I may lawfully choose not to serve Him.
No, we are not our own ; we belong to God whether we
like it or not.
The rich householder is going away on a journey,
and before going he calls out those servants of his to
set them their work. There is the picture. The castle
gates are open. The chariot is ready. The long, red-
covered table is laid in the hall, dotted over with little
piles of gold and silver — one talent, two talents, five
talents — and the great householder stands looking into
the face of each servant, gauging his capabilities, giv
ing him more or less of trading capital according to the
task set him. He knows them all intimately. In that

366 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
patriarchal household he has watched the little children
tumbling in their play, and they have grown to man
hood in his presence. Trading is not quite our idea of
slaves and their work. We think of " Uncle Tom's
Cabin," and the black slave sent out each day to work
in the fields. But if your slaves are men of clever
brain and poor physique, you would not get the best
value out of them that way. Then as now the Jews
are born traders. Some in a small way. Some in a
great business. Each according to his ability. So
that if you had to teach this parable of responsibility
to the Jews, I cannot imagine any way that would more
appeal to them than this way in which our Lord puts it.
Now watch the servants at the long, red-covered
table as the talents are handed across. Who owns
these talents? Surely the Master. They are His
stock-in-trade to be used for His profit. " Lord, you
delivered unto me five talents, two talents," etc.
Then watch the servants at God's long counting-
table here in the world to-day. Whose are the talents
with which they are entrusted? Wealth, influence,
position, intellect, business ability, beauty, attractive
manners, health — all the long list of talents and gifts.
Whose are they? God's. What are they given for?
For trading. For His profit. What profit does He
want ? He has a great work to do for this poor world,
to make it happier, holier, nobler every way, and He
will not do it except through His servants. If they
will not work, the poor world's blessing must wait.
There is no other way. Therefore are our talents
given. Why, if we would only think of it, this word " tal
ents " is itself a remarkable proof of how this convic-

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 367
tion has wrought itself into our thoughts and language.
One of the most fascinating of studies is the study of
words and their origins. We use this word freely in
ordinary life. Where did we get it ? Out of this par
able of Christ's. When we speak of a talented boy, a
statesman, a lawyer, of great talents, what did it origi
nally mean ? What should it mean now ? That that
boy, that statesman, that lawyer has received great
gifts from God, on trust, for God's use, to trade with
them for God, for the sake of his brethren. No man,
or woman, or Church, or nation, ever received any gift
or endowment for himself alone, but that with it he
might help others to make life better and nobler.
And if that be so, that all the talents are God's en
dowments, see what follows.
What becomes of the wretched snobbery of wealth,
or birth, or intellect ? "I was born rich. I was born
of good family. I was born with intellectual gifts."
Well, be thankful for them. These are great gifts, but
they carry great responsibilities. And surely they do
not justify any man in looking down upon another to
whom the Father has given smaller gifts. You had
no more right than the other to come into the world in
that rich or well-born or clever family. The Father
planned it so for you surely that you might help the
more. Noblesse oblige.
Or how can a man dare to use these talents of the
Master merely for his own gain, his own advancement,
forgetting God, forgetting his brethren ?
Or how can a man comfort himself on his death-bed
with the thought that he never had done much harm to
any one ? In all the difficulties of diagnosing a man's
spiritual state that is one of the most frequent that
clergy meet with. You try to probe the man, to find

368 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
out his state, and he coolly tells you, " I do not think
God can have much against me. I do not think I ever
wilfully did any harm to anybody." Fancy a man
talking like that! As if God had sent him here and
endowed him with abilities just that he might keep
from doing harm. Fancy one of our big builders com
ing to see his work and finding a man that he paid and
fed sitting idle on the scaffolding. " I am not doing
any harm," says the man. " I am not dropping any
bricks down on the people in the street." As if the
employer was paying and feeding him merely for that.
Life would be very different if we realized Christ's
teaching in the parable. We should feel the words
that we utter in the Confession, " We have left undone
the things that we ought to have done."
That is the first point. All our talents were given by
the Master that we might use them for good.
Now face another thought. Somebody is saying
in his heart, These talents seem very unfairly distrib
uted. Why do we not start fair if God is making us
responsible ? We are not in the same position socially.
We are not all equally rich, or strong, or clever, or at
tractive in manner. Two boys in the same class, two
girls in the same home, two people in the same pew
differ enormously in ability, physical, intellectual,
moral, spiritual.
Yes, even moral and spiritual. That is the hardest
part of the mystery. It is really easier for some people
than for others to be kind and generous, to keep their
tempers, to make other people happy. It is really easy
for one man to believe and trust in God, while another,
born with a sceptical temperament, finds it very much
more difficult. This is a deep mystery. I do not un-

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 369
derstand it. I shall not try to explain it. It lands us
in the mysteries of heredity and other deeper per
plexities. But Jesus does not ignore that difficulty. He faces
it as a fact. He recognizes that God gives to one one
talent, to another two, to another five. He does not
stop to explain it. But He says we need not worry
about it. For the Gospel, the Good News in the par
able is this, that it is not all mere chance, that God
knows, that God cares, that God discriminates, that by
and by the man with the poor endowment will, if he be
faithful, receive the same glad, hearty approval as the
other. " Well done, good and faithful servant," God
says. Good and faithful, not good and brilliant, not
good and successful. We cannot all be that. But
thank God we can all be faithful each in his own little
part, and that is all that God asks.
Therefore do not lose heart. Do not complain. Do
not say it is unfair. Do not think it is all chance.
God has planned that one should have more endow
ments than another, but that means also more responsi
bility. Somehow it would seem as if this diversity of
gifts were a necessity of God's working. Some time
ago I watched the organ builders at work in a church.
All the pipes were scattered over the pews, from the
great eighteen-foot diapason down to the little shrill
whistle the size of one's little finger. And I saw that
the builder was as careful in the tuning of the little one
as of the great. He did not want the little one to do
the work of the great. Each made its own sound and
so the music came out right. One wonders if it is so
also with the great Master playing on the keyboard of
the Universe. Does He get the music best by the
diver sitv of the notes?

370 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
Touch for a moment the next thought in the par
able. The men went off to increase the talents. Two
of them used them, and so increased them. One of
them failed to use, and lost. From which arises at
once God's law of trading with all His talents, God's
law of Spiritual Profit and Loss. Here it is briefly
stated, He that useth increaseth. He that useth shall
not lose. It is the law of all God's talents, bodily,
mental, and spiritual.
1. He that useth increaseth. All over nature it is
true. Look at a blacksmith's arm, why is it so power
ful as compared with yours ? He that useth increaseth.
Look at a blind man in his keen sense of touch, dis
tinguishing the black from the white cat by touching its
fur. Look at the trader with the quick turnover. He
that useth increaseth.
And so too in spiritual life. The old Christian man
who has used his soul, his spiritual talent, his sense of
God's presence, his need of prayer, sees all increase by
using till at last his soul grows strong and noble and
God becomes very near and real, and his Bible becomes
to him his joy and peace, and everything that he does
and everything that is done to him, and everything that
is done against him, all somehow deepen his spiritual
life, all are bringing him near to God.
2. And he that useth not shall lose. One of these
men did not use his talent. He did not steal it or mis
use it, only left it unused. He had a feeling of the
littleness of life. He had only one talent and did not
think it worth while bothering about. So he buried it
to save trouble and thought he could keep it unused.
But he could not.
This, too, is a law of God in all life. Look at the
fakir's arm in India, shrivelled to the bone by disuse.

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 371
Look at Dr. Manette, in Dickens' "Tale of Two
Cities," losing his power of speech through not using it.
Look at the mole living underground in the dark and
losing its sight. There are in the Mammoth Caves of
Kentucky whole races of blind fish and frogs living in
the darkness. Their eyes seem all right until you
touch them with a knife, then they go to dust. That
is nature's law. Nature says if you do not use them
you shall not keep them. He that useth not shall lose.
And that too is awfully true in the spiritual life. A
man for years neglects prayer, Bible-reading, church-
going, Holy Communion, meditation about God. Then
he wonders that infidelity is growing in him, that he
cannot believe or pray. It is the great law: he that
useth not shall lose.
Carlyle tells a story out of the Koran of dwellers by
the Dead Sea, to whom Moses came. They neglected
Moses. They refused to use the teaching of Moses.
And so Moses departed. When next they were found,
says the Koran, they were turned into apes. By not
using their souls they lost them, and now they look out
into the dreariest, most undecipherable universe.
" Only once in seven days they remember that they
had souls." And Carlyle mockingly asks, " Hast thou
never, my reader, met with specimens of these, who
only once in seven days remember that they had
souls?" Now we come to the picture of The Master's Re
turn. Note first the attitude of the servants, " Lord,
you gave me" two talents, five talents. Ah yes, all
good work, for God has underneath the glad, grateful
acknowledgment that it was God who had given all
that they had to begin with. Non nobis, Domine.

372 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
The faithful workers think of God as the great giver.
The unfaithful think of Him as the great demander,
" Lord, I knew thee to be a hard man," etc.
Then look at the encouraging attitude of the
Great Householder in this parable. He loved to
praise, He hated to find fault, He expected good
things from these poor servants of His, and He is
so glad that they have not quite disappointed Him.
True, they are stupid and faulty, they might have done
better. The man with his four talents would probably
feel small coming after the man with ten. But listen
to the generous, hearty praise, the glad, cheery " Well
done ! " of Him who delights to praise and hates to
blame. Think of the heartening up that comes to a
poor servant when a master unexpectedly puts his hand
on his shoulders, " Well done ! Well done ! " Ah,
that is the Master we have to do with. Do not forget
it in despondent times. God is not looking to find
fault or pick holes in you. He is looking for any good
in you and rejoicing to find it.
One thing more. When a man has developed his
talents and abilities, what is God's reward? Is it to
cease work, to sit down in a big church in heaven for
all eternity ? What is the reward for work according
to this parable ? The reward is more and grander and
higher work. Just as on earth, when a man has done
well in a small position, he gets a bigger position where
he can do greater work. Thus Jesus lifts the curtain
of eternity to show us that we are in a more spacious
universe than we knew. When this life is over, He
says, life goes on. What you call death, the end of this
career, is but birth into a new and more exciting career
whose prospects should stir the very blood within you.

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 373
The Afterworld is not mere rest and finality, but con
stant and delightful progress. The good servant has
not reached his goal but sighted a newer and diviner
goal. Joyously he goes on. " Well done, good and
faithful servant, faithful over a few things I will make
thee ruler over many things, ruler over five cities, over
ten cities." That is God's reward. Not sitting idle
forever in Heaven. Not like the poor retired business
man dozing in the chimney corner till he is sick of it.
But eternal, untiring service of everlasting youth and
vigour, giving oneself for the service of others, letting
oneself go out in sympathy with others, helping and
blessing the universe of God, perhaps going out with
Christ into the outer darkness to seek that which is
lost, if so be that we may find it. That is the joy of
the Lord for him who will use his talents, the joy of
unselfish service forever and ever.

VII
THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD
IV. THE GREAT ASSIZE
ALL through the teaching in the " Memories of
the Road " runs the thought of the Eternal
World encircling this world of time as the sea
encircles the land. In the parables of Dives, of the
Rich Fool, the Virgins, the Talents, everywhere, the
issues lead up to the World Beyond. Jesus keeps lift
ing the curtain for glimpses of a farther horizon, giv
ing the true perspective to human life by seeing us al
ways in a wide, spacious Universe where both worlds
are one. And most prominently of all in His pictures
of the Judgment. Men must see life truly by seeing
Eternity around it and regulate conduct by constant
reference to the final verdict of God.
No teaching of His got more prompt response in the
conscience of His audience. For no sensible man,
Christian or non-Christian, doubts the probability at
least of a final Judgment of some kind. You may
challenge the heathen and the infidel, who doubts
everything else in the Bible, challenge him to assert a
belief that there shall never be any judgment for the
deeds done in the body. He dare not. And why ? Be
cause the conviction has an authority deeper and more
fundamental than the Bible. The conviction is woven
374

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 375
into the very fibre of our moral being. The Con
science, which God has placed in us, demands it as a
necessity. There is a rough common sense, a rough
moral sense in us all which imperatively demands that
it shall not be the same in the end for Herod and John
the Baptist, for Jezebel and Mary of Bethany, for
Father Damien who sacrificed his life for the lepers
and Napoleon who waded through bloodshed to a
throne. Conscience insists, " It ought to be." And Jesus
places on this conviction the seal of His confirmation,
" It shall be." They that have done good shall go to
the Resurrection of Life, they that have done evil to
the Resurrection of Condemnation. There is no real
doubt anywhere about the fact. The details need not
be pressed. Whether, for example, we are to take lit
erally His dramatic picture of the Great White Throne
with all humanity gathered before it. All that is im
portant is this, that whether in a day or in an age,
whether in the flash of a moment or in the slow, grad
ual growth of character towards the Right Hand or
the Left, There shall be, says Conscience, There shall
be, says the Christ, one day a Judgment, a great sorting
of human souls.
Now comes the question. On what principle shall
this Judgment be made? And again comes the reply
of Conscience and again comes the confirmation of
Him who endowed us with Conscience, " It shall be a
judgment according to character." The question on
that day is, What have they become, good fish or bad,
sheep or goats, wheat or tares? That is unquestion
ably the teaching of Christ. God in Eternity will
judge every man according to his fully developed char-

376 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
acter. Not according to appearances or professions
or beliefs or shibboleths, but according to the true final
reality of his being, according to his likeness or unlike-
ness to the nature of Christ.
Therefore that Judgment will be a much more seri
ous matter than asking, " Do you believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ ? " To believe in Him is the most impor
tant thing for any man. For that is the highest power
in the Universe to change the heart and ennoble the
life. But it is that ennobled life which counts. Even
though it be the most important question on earth, I
doubt if any man will ever be asked in the Judgment,
Do you believe in Jesus Christ? The final test is,
What has that faith wrought in you ? What have you
become ? It is very striking that Our Lord, who says
so much about this believing and trusting, does not
speak of it at all when depicting the Judgment. There
it is, What has he become? Loving or Loveless,
Wheat or Tares, Sheep or Goat ?
Let no one misunderstand here. Let no poor dis
ciple be frightened, as he thinks how God must be
judging him to-day. Fear not. Judgment will not
come till you are ready for it. God sees the trend of
each life. God is judging to-day not what we have
become but what we are becoming. And He who
judges cares more for our eternal good than we care
ourselves. Which brings to us the solemn thought that the
Judgment is not merely something away in the future.
It is going on to-day. Every day we are becoming.
Every day Acts are growing into Habits, and Habits
growing into Character, and Character is fixing eternal
Destiny. Every day we are growing into ways of

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 377
thinking and feeling about certain things, of liking or
disliking certain things, of keeping or not keeping God
and Right foremost in our lives. We are becoming
the people who shall go to the Right hand or the Left.
The Bible would suggest not that God comes out of
His place to put us at the Right hand or Left, but that
we sort ourselves. To use an illustration of Ian Mc
Laren, It is as if sheep and swine were feeding in a
field together. When the night comes, the sheep of
their own accord will go to the fold and the swine of
their own accord will go to the stye. Those who have
groped after Christ on earth will be on one side, be
cause of their own choice they are of one kind, and
those who have lived for self and sin will be on the
other side, because of their own choice they are of an
other kind. We are growing each day towards the
Right hand or the Left as we shall stand in the Great
Assize. But Jesus tells us more than the principles of Judg
ment. He tells us the one thing that takes the horror
and fearsomeness out of it. The Son of Man Him
self shall be our Judge. He who understands us and
loves us and died upon the Cross for us, who longs with
a great longing that no one of us would be lost. Here
is no great Police Magistrate coldly investigating, but
the Divine human Elder Brother, who in all His deal
ings with men drew out the best in them and hoped the
best for them and looked for the smallest good in the
midst of their evil, who could see the good motive be
hind the mistaken action, who could see the sorrow and
remorse deep in men's hearts when others saw only
their failure and their sin. Watch Him in the Judg
ment picture searching out the little deeds which good

378 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM EOAD
people have forgotten. Lord, when saw we thee hun
gered, etc.
All His teachings on Judgment must be read in the
light of this. Everything must be in keeping with
Him. Read the unutterable joy in His " Come ye
blessed," and the unutterable pain if He must say
" Depart." When you read of Damnation and of
Everlasting Punishment, keep your eyes always on the
face of Christ and whisper to your puzzled heart that
nothing can happen out of character with Him. His
poor servants have felt this and been perplexed by
teachings which jar horribly. Scholars have felt this
and gone back to reread their New Testament. You
see some of the results in the present Revised Bible
where the word Everlasting is everywhere significantly
altered, and the words Damn and Damnation have
vanished forever out of the Word of God. The word
Damn reads Condemn without saying to what or for
how long. The word Everlasting means agelong or
belonging to the future age.
There is no space here to discuss the subject beyond
this: There are three words about Judgment that
have been grievously misread — Damnation, Hell, Ever
lasting. Let me make the statement straight out and
challenge any scholar to contradict it, that there is
nothing in Christ's words in the original language of
the Bible that justifies the use of these English words
in the meaning that we now attach to them, a meaning
that was not in them when our Authorized Version
was printed, and therefore the Revised Version has
practically swept them all away. In that Judgment no
man will be lost whom it is possible for God to save.
No man will be lost till the Father has, as it were, put
His arms around him and looked him in the eyes with

THE TEACHINGS OF THE ROAD 379
His unutterable love and been rejected. It is not for
us to presume into unrevealed mysteries or to lighten
the awful fate of age-long punishment or chastisement.
But it is for us to assert that the Divine Brother is
the Judge and that the Bible bids us look forward to
when Gehennas shall be no more, when evil and the
Evil One shall have vanished forever out of the whole
wide Universe of God.
So Jesus stamped indelibly on the consciousness of
humanity this solemn thought of Judgment. He
forced men to project themselves in imagination to the
Great Assize in that spiritual world of realities where
money counts for nothing and love counts for every
thing, where all the external things of earth have
dropped away like the dead leaves of autumn, and the
self stands naked and alone in the light of the clear
white righteousness of God. I myself alone with my
Conscience. The little easy judgments that satisfied
me on earth are shrivelled up in the atmosphere of that
new world, and on the amazed soul pours in from
every side the white light of truth. No more self-flat
tery. No more self-deceiving. In that day I shall
know myself as I never did before. And in that day
I should be grievously frightened for myself if my
dear Lord were not there to be my judge. That is the
steadying point in the awesomeness of the Great As
size. " We believe that Thou shalt come to be our
Judge."

VIII
THE SECOND ATTEMPT ON JERUSALEM
SUCH are some of the prominent teachings of the
Memories of the Road.
Now it is December A. d. 28. Two months
have elapsed since His expulsion at the Feast of Taber
nacles. These two months' wanderings have brought
Him back to the danger line again, to the house of
Lazarus and Martha and Mary. Again it is festival
time in Jerusalem, the Feast of Dedication, commemo
rating the national deliverance two hundred years ago
by their great hero leader, Judas the Maccabee. The
heel of the Roman conqueror is on their necks, and
there are patriots there who have shared in more than
one abortive rebellion. And a mysterious Messiah is
in procession through the land. It is inevitable that
men should be thinking of Jesus.
" Now," says St. John, " it was the Feast of Dedi
cation and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the
Temple in Solomon's Porch." He had ventured in,
perhaps alone, that morning, probably in spite of anx
ious fears in the home at Bethany. He must attempt
Jerusalem again, where the festival crowds are assem
bled, if, perchance, they will give Him a hearing before
the end.
He is walking in the Cloisters of Solomon, shelter
ing, perhaps, from the winter rain, when the excited
patriots catch sight of Him. Is it an omen from
380

THE SECOND ATTEMPT ON JERUSALEM 381
Heaven ? Has the Deliverer appeared suddenly on the
Festival of Deliverance ?
Like the Irish or the Poles, in ferments of national
feeling they can see nothing more important than po
litical triumph. They know that He claims a higher
mission, but they have no sympathy just now with any
thing higher.
"Art thou come as another Judas the Maccabee ? "
" How long dost thou make us to doubt ? "
" If thou be Messiah, tell us plainly ! "
Ah! yes, He is the Messiah, but what profit to tell
them who seek but a leader of revolution, while His
patriot ambition is for a noble nation in the Kingdom
of Righteousness and of God. God's will for Israel is
concerned with higher things than petty national ambi
tions. What should it profit a godless little country to
win political power which they would misuse as the
Romans did? What profit to Israel if it should gain
dominion over the whole world and lose its own soul ?
" Art thou Messiah? Tell us plainly."
" I have told you already," He patiently replies,
" and ye believe not. If ye were my sheep, if your
hearts beat true to high aspirations, ye would recognize
me. Even the works that I do in my Father's name
bear witness of me." How much more He said to
them we are not told, save that He startled them at the
close by the tremendous assertion of His Divinity.
" 1 and the Father are one! "
Instantly there is a stupefied silence. Not even the
Nationalist enthusiasm is proof against this. Then a
sudden outburst of Oriental rage, a yelling mob rush
ing for the big stones. And in a moment Jesus, alone
and defenseless, is facing death. We remember
Stephen. Death is not far off when an Eastern mob

382 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
gets roused. Again they seem about to anticipate Cal
vary. But His hour is not yet come. Calmly He
faces the furious crowd with the stones upraised.
" I have done many good works among you. For
which of them do ye stone Me ? "
" For blasphemy we stone thee, because that thou,
being a man, makest thyself God."
Some in our day express doubt whether Jesus ever
definitely claimed to be Divine. The mob with the big
stones had little doubt what He claimed. And it
frightened them. There was something in Him that
overawed their superstitious minds. They dropped
the stones, staring stupidly at Him, and Jesus walked
through them and went out of the city for the last
time. Next time He comes He will let them have their
will of Him.
But as He goes His heart is sore for Jerusalem. As
He ascends the hill road on His way to the Bethany
home, you can see Him looking back on that fair city
which had again cast Him out. " O Jerusalem, Jeru
salem. Thou that killest the prophets and stonest
them that are sent unto thee! How often would I
have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth
her chickens under her wings and ye would not. Be
hold, your house is left unto you desolate. Ye shall see
Me no more till the day that ye shall cry, Blessed is He
that cometh in the name of the Lord ! " * Which
prophecy was fulfilled on the first Palm Sunday.
There was relief in the anxious hearts at Beth
any. They had hardly expected Him to come out
1 Luke XIII, 34, records this in the Memories of the Road. St.
Matthew inserts it in the week of the Passion, which gives a
much less probable setting for it.

THE SECOND ATTEMFI ON JERUSALEM 383
alive. He did not stay long with them. Soon He
passed from them into the wilderness again, to prepare
for the end. And as they bade Him good-bye, Martha
and Mary little dreamed of the big sorrow about to
fall on their happy home and how sorely they would
want Jesus ere they saw Him again.
He went away, we are told, to the other Bethany be
yond Jordan, to the place where John baptized at the
first. And again the multitudes came crowding after
Him, and they said, " John did no miracles, but what
soever things he spake of this man were true." And
many believed on Him there. He is back again where
His life-work had begun, where the Holy Dove had
descended upon Him. And again great things hap
pened and great things were said which we can only
place conjecturally.
One day, in a country synagogue, He had to face
again, as in Galilee, the fanatic Sabbatarianism which
had degraded God's blessed holiday. A poor woman
in the congregation had been for eighteen years bowed
down with hardening of the joints, so that she could in
no wise lift herself up. As her wistful eyes sought
Him, He called her and laid His hands on her and im
mediately she was made straight and glorified God.
The stupid, old, country rabbi angrily protested and
Jesus was very indignant. " Ye hypocrites, ye play
actors, can ye never be real ? Ye loose your ox or ass
and lead it away to water on the Sabbath. Ought not
this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for
eighteen years, be loosed from her bonds because it is
the Sabbath Day?" And in spite of lifelong preju
dice, the heart of that congregation stirred in sympathy
with Him, and adl the multitude rejoiced for the glori
ous things done by Him.

384 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
Another day they challenged Him on the marriage
question, and He made that definite pronouncement
which has stood through ages as a barrieragainst laxity
and divorce. The world never needed it more than it
does to-day. " For this cause shall a man leave father
and mother and cleave unto his wife, and they twain
shall become one flesh. What therefore God hath
joined together, let no man put asunder."
One day a lawyer came with evil purpose tempting
Him. " Master, what shall I do to get eternal life? "
And Jesus put in one sentence for him the whole of
religion. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart and thy neighbour as thyself." But he, will
ing to justify himself, asked, " Who is my neigh
bour ? " And so came down to us another utterance
about the Brotherhood of Man, the parable of the
Good Samaritan.
Again, one day He was dining in a Pharisee's house.
The guests were men imbued with the pettiness of their
class, and the table talk turned on the importance of
tithings and ritual and ceremonial washings before
meat. Jesus, as usual, went to the heart of the matter.
These things are all right, He said, if religion is be
hind them. But some of you who observe these most
scrupulously pass over the weightier matters of the
Law, righteousness and the love of God. These things
ought ye to have done and not leave the other undone.
There is a multitude of such incidents in St.
Luke's note-book. We have not space to record them.
But one more we must make room for. Somewhere
here comes the story of what Dante calls " The Great
Refusal," the story of the rich young man who went
away sorrowful.

THE SECOND ATTEMPT ON JERUSALEM 385
A young man, it would seem, such as Jesus ever
sought, with honest and good heart, seeking the right.
He was a religious young Pharisee, prominent in the
Church, a ruler of the synagogue, trying, like Saul of
Tarsus, to keep the Law and yet with a haunting lack
in his life and a vision sometimes dawning of what he
might be, a vision such as we often have in our youth,
which all his external observance could not satisfy.
One day he came with deep reverence to Jesus, running
to Him and kneeling before Him. " Good Master,
what shall I do to obtain eternal life ? "
We cannot help liking him. He is young and youth
is the time of heroic aspirations. He is honest and
sincere, and he has high ideals. The heart of Jesus
went out to him at once. He only could look into his
soul and see its longings, its honesty, its strength, and
its weakness. And, like a wise physician, He treats
this special case. " Why callest thou me good ? God
only is good. If thou wouldest enter into life, keep
the commandments."
Alas ! what a disappointment ! That is what he had
been wearily doing for years, obeying the countless lit
tle rules of the Church, doing the external deeds, trying
to satisfy his soul. Is this all the Great Prophet could
tell him ?
" O Master, I have been trying to keep them from
my youth up. What lack I yet ? "
And Jesus knew he had been trying and knew why
he was dissatisfied. Never did His heart so go out to
any inquirer. Jesus, beholding him, loved him and
kissed him on the brow. Then, looking him straight
in the eyes, He risked a heroic remedy and challenged
him to face it. " My son, there is one thing that would
satisfy your craving. If you would be satisfied, if you

386 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
would be perfect, go and sell all that you have and give
it to the poor, and come and follow Me."
This, of course, is not meant for all mea A wise
physician of souls gives the special advice needed for
each individual case. Jesus, as the Master of spiritual
pathology, was here dealing with a special pathological
case, an earnest soul worthy a big test. And this was
for him a very big test. Lay aside your wealth and
your honoured position in the world and take your
place with the poor, shabby followers of a homeless
Man. It was a big stake to risk. But the prize would
be the friendship of the Son of God. Perhaps Jesus
thought of him for the apostolic band. If the young
enthusiast before Him could rise to this high test, it
would be the beginning of a splendid manhood. He
might be the noblest of all the Apostles.
He had to decide. How little he dreamed that the
eyes of the world down the future would be focussed
on his decision. Jesus watched him. It was the su
preme crisis of his life. Was he big enough for such
a test? For a moment it seems so. His eyes are
flashing with the glimpse of heroic possibilities. Then
he stops — and thinks — and hesitates — and fails. He
finds there is something he values even above his
heart's ideal. And the light died out of his eyes and
" he went away sorrowful for he had great posses
sions." He went away sorrowful. And he had made Jesus
sorrowful, as so many of us have done in all the ages.
One day, when we know even as we are known, I think
our deepest regrets will be that we have so often disap
pointed Him. We know no more of that young ruler.
Maybe in the hurt to his soul through his Great Refusal
he flung himself into the sins and dissipations of a

THE SECOND ATTEMPT ON JERUSALEM 387
wealthy young man. Maybe he came back to Jesus
before the end. Some suggest that this story belongs
earlier in the history and that this young ruler was
Lazarus of Bethany. I do not know. I do not see
much reason to think it. But one thing I know, that
he could never forget that supreme moment in his life.
And another thing I know, that Jesus would never for
get through eternity that young man whom He had
loved and kissed on the brow.
So St. Luke's record goes on following Jesus amid
such teachings and incidents through these two months
of retirement, till one day came a sudden interruption.
A messenger in breathless haste from the sisters in
Bethany, " Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick ! "

IX
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS
OFTEN looking back on our lives, we have rea
son to remember trivial incidents that have led
to most important events. We cannot judge
what is great or little in our lives. One day in this
quiet retirement by the Jordan came a hurried message
from the sisters at Bethany. " Lord, behold he whom
thou lovest is sick." It made little impression on the
disciples. They were sorry for the moment, but it
seemed of no great consequence. Looking back after
wards they could see that it was the summons to Cal
vary. Jesus knew, even as the messenger arrived, that
Lazarus was already dead. Yet for two days He re
mained quietly where He was, continuing His final
teachings for the world. But all the time Lazarus of
Bethany was in His thoughts. He was seeing the
Divine guidance. The time was near that He should
go to the Father. But He would startle the sluggish
soul of Jerusalem before the end.
On the third morning He roused the disciples.
" Come, let us go to Judea again."
" To Judea again ! Why, Lord, they have been just
seeking to kill thee there. Goest thou thither again ? "
" There are twelve hours in the day," He answered,
" in which a man may work." A man is immortal
while God has duties for him. " Our friend Lazarus
sleepeth and I go to awake him."
" But, Lord, if he sleep he will do well."
" Nay, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your
388

THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 389
sakes that I was not there that ye may believe. Now
let us go to him."
How reluctantly they went and how greatly they
feared for their Master's life we learn through the
loyal, desponding Thomas. " If He go to Judea He
goes to His death. Let us also go that we may die
with Him!"
In the village of Bethany, in the glory of spring
time, two desolate women are mourning their dead.
In the garden the flowers are blooming and the birds
are singing joyously. But " in the garden there is a
sepulchre," and God's joyous world seems but mocking
them in their pain. All Nature is out of sympathy.
Every budding tree and leafy hedge, every bird and
flower is telling of life. And Lazarus is dead! Only
Jesus could teach those poor mourners the lesson of
the springtime which the wise, kindly souls in that
other world know, that winter forever shall result in
spring, that death means birth into a larger life.
The sisters are still true to character. Mary is
weeping in her darkened room, thinking bewildering
thoughts. The messenger has come back alone with
his strange report, " This sickness is not unto death
but for the glory of God." And yet Lazarus is dead !
The practical Martha is caring for the guests who have
come in kindly sympathy to visit and console. Sud
denly some one announces that Jesus is coming, and the
quiet, silent woman can restrain herself no longer.
She is hurrying down the road to the outskirts of the
village. She is sobbing out her heart before her
brother's closest friend. " Lord, if thou hadst been
here my brother had not died ! "
" Martha, thy brother shall rise again."

390 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
You can read between the lines how that answer has
disappointed her. It sounds so like the trite con
dolences she has been hearing all day. " Oh yes,
Lord, I know that he will rise at the Last Day." As
if she would say, That is not much comfort, it is too
far away. And if we are honest we must confess our
selves in sympathy with Martha. It may not sound
religious but it is very human. The Resurrection at
the Last Day does not comfort us much if it be taught
as it usually is, as an isolated, far-off fact with nothing
between. We believe in it as a mysterious, magnificent
crisis in our future story when the Unseen spirit life
shall rise to a nobler stage. But we are little people.
We need to be helped over the tremendous interval.
If Lazarus is dead, it is little comfort to his sister to
know that he shall live again in some far future day.
But Jesus is not pointing to a far future day. Lazarus
is living now in the spirit world. His life goes on.
He cannot die. For " I am the Resurrection and the
Life. He that liveth and believeth in me shall never
die." Life in touch with God is immortal. Life out
of touch with God He does not speak of here. Life
out of touch with God He would not call life at all.
Lazarus is living and is coming back to show it.
Martha is puzzled, she does not understand all this,
but she believes utterly in Jesus and leaves her puzzles
to Him. " Yea, Lord, I believe thou art the Christ,
the Son of God who should come into the world."
Now Mary is hurrying to meet Him with the same
heart-broken cry, the one thought of both sisters since
the funeral day. " Lord, if thou hadst been here my
brother had not died." But something in His ap
pearance awes and silences her, — a look of strain and

THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 391
trouble and inward agitation. The Evangelist him
self was evidently greatly impressed. " He groaned
in spirit and was troubled." At the tomb he again
sees Him groaning in spirit. On the way to the
tomb he sees tears on His face.
We do not know the meaning. It does not seem
natural to think of it as grief for a sorrow that He
was just about to remove. Might it be reluctance to
bring back His friend, even for an important purpose,
into the miseries of this sinful world? Might it be
because — since we have already seen, His miracles
were not wrought by a mere word of power but in
some mysterious way by the giving of Himself — that
greatest of miracles meant a correspondingly great
strain. Even when a poor woman in Capernaum
touched Him for healing, He perceived that strength
had gone out from Him. For we love to believe that
His miracles were no cheap exercise of power. They
were wrought at cost to Himself. He gave His
strength to give strength to others, His life to give
life to others. Not only on the Cross but all through
His days He was giving Himself for others.
By this time the crowd from the house had gathered
around Him.
" Where have ye laid him? "
" Lord, come and see."
As befitted his station, Lazarus was probably buried
not in the public cemetery but in his own private tomb.
" In the garden " was a favourite place of interment.
So they led Jesus to the garden amid the flowers of
the springtime, little thinking how very soon they
would be burying Jesus Himself amid these flowers of
the springtime, " in a garden " not far away.
Jestis said, " Take ye away the stone." Martha is

392 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
horrified lest the poor body be exposed in the dis
honour of death. But He silences her with a word
and sets her heart and the hearts of all that assembly
bounding with excitement. " Said I not that if thou
wouldest believe thou shouldest see the glory of God? "
Then after a public thanksgiving to the Father, His
word of almighty power went sounding into that tomb
and into that spirit world where the departed one
stood. " Lazarus, come forth ! " Then a solemn,
awful pause, while men held their breath in horror
and expectation. In that pause tremendous things
were happening on that border land where both worlds
meet. Then he that was dead came forth, bound in
the grave clothes. And Jesus said, " Loose him and
let him go."
That is the end of the story. For a moment we
are allowed to gaze on the triumphant Christ and the
dead man alive in his sisters' arms, and the crowd
holding their breath in astonishment and awe. Then
the curtain falls. And the crowd goes away. And
we go away. To think. To wonder. Perhaps to
doubt. First of all men doubt, Is the story true? No shame
to any one to doubt that. The story challenges doubt.
They ask, Why did St. John alone record this tre
mendous happening? But that objection equally ap:
plies to the raising of the widow's son. Is it true?
Why did St. Luke alone record it? Why did only
Matthew and Mark record the raising of Jairus'
daughter? We do not know. But we may con
jecture. Remember that these Gospels were written
after the stupendous fact of the Resurrection of the
Lord Himself. By that time, to the men who had

THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 393
been with Jesus, life had grown so full of wonders
that nothing was especially wonderful. We think the
raising of Lazarus should be the prominent thing in all
the Gospels. Nay, the raising of Lazarus and of the
widow's son fall into subordinate place beside the tre
mendous things that happened after the Crucifixion.
Now look at the other side. Whenever you find it
not easy to believe that a certain thing happened, it is a
good test to ask, Is it easy to believe that it did not
happen? Did St. John invent a deliberate untruth?
Did he dream it or imagine it? Why, every little
detail is circumstantially given, the message to the
Wilderness, the journey to Bethany, the meeting with
Martha and Mary, the crowd of Jewish spectators,
many of them hostile to Christ, who could challenge
the truth of such a story in a moment. St. John says
it was the great public event which led to the Crucifix
ion. Is it easier to believe that the story is false than
to believe that the Son of God who rose from the
dead raised Lazarus?
Then we cannot help thinking of Lazarus. Even
in the presence of the victorious Christ at the tomb, we
cannot keep our eyes off Lazarus. Often in this
history we have wished to know the further life of
men who have for a moment crossed the stage with.
Jesus. Above all others Lazarus. The man who
went into the world beyond the grave and came back.
How did he look on this world? Why did he not
tell of that world which Jesus pictured in His story of
Dives as a world of vivid conscious life and thought
and memory? " Where wert thou, brother, these four days ?
There lives no record of reply."

394 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
Why did he not tell ? Probably because he had noth
ing to tell. There may well be, after the strain of
death, a brief period of repose in which nothing is
known, from which one wakens refreshed as a child in
the morning. Or perhaps in that brief, bewildering
experience it was impossible to adjust or coordinate
his thoughts, or to find human words to express them
afterwards. Think, if in a world of blind, deaf men
one got his sight and hearing for an hour and then
relapsed, what could he tell to his comrades or even
fully realize to himself? The man would be just
dazed and unable to express it. The men to whom
he might try to tell it would have no faculties to take
it in, nor any experience to help them in picturing it.
A blind man cannot picture colour, a deaf man cannot
imagine music, however much you tell him. We are
the blind, deaf men in this universe of God. If one
of us should pass to that world where the eyes of the
blind are opened and the ears of the deaf are unstopped,
surely it would be hard at first even to realize what
had happened, much more to communicate it if he
should be able to return to earth.
I think of Lazarus as a man dazed by the tre
mendous thing that had flashed on him, as it were, for
a moment. Surely he went softly all his days, a quiet,
silent man with a far-off look in his eyes, as one who
has dreamed a wondrous dream and cannot recall it.
Thus Jesus taught again that death was not an
ending. Only one lesson more was needed and that
was coming soon, when the Christ of God Himself
arose from the dead and brought life and immortality
to light through the Gospel.

ONE MAN MUST DIE FOR THE PEOPLE
THAT was an awed and silent crowd around
the tomb of Lazarus, standing stupefied at
the gates of the world unseen. As in a
dream they watch Jesus departing. As in a dream
each moves silently home. Words are vain things at
such a moment.
" Many of them believed." They had doubted and
wondered. They were afraid of the priests. They
dreaded the revolution that Jesus might bring. No
priests nor politics can restrain them now. " No man
can do these miracles except God be with Him."
But, the historian adds, some of them went as hostile
informers to the Pharisees to report this thing which
Jesus had done. And we recall with dread His
warning in the story of Dives. No miracle will con
vert men who desire not good. " Neither will they be
persuaded though one rose from the dead."
If anything could make us ashamed of our common
humanity and teach the evil of a godless world and
the patience of God, the story of the world's treatment
of Jesus should do it. For the world is doing to
Jesus now what the Jerusalem people did to Jesus then.
In brief, telling strokes St. John sketches it in. He
manifests Himself as the Light of the world and the
darkness comprehended it not ; as the Shepherd of the
sheep and they will not hear His voice; as the Life of
395

396 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
men and they will not come that they may have life;
as the Love of God and they hate Him the more; as
the Truth to make men free and they choose the
father of lies. And now, when He reveals Himself
as the Resurrection and the Life, they respond by a
combination to bring Him to His death.
" And still He keeps on loving us,
Loving all along."
Within an hour the chief Pharisees had received
the report. Before night all Jerusalem was ringing
with the news. The populace was excited. The posi
tion grew dangerous. It needed but this to inflame
the multitude to carry Jesus of Nazareth in triumph
as King and to bring down the terrible might of the
Roman power.
It was necessary to call immediately a council of the
Sanhedrim. That night the meeting was held in the
house of Caiaphas the Highpriest. It was the most
serious crisis in Jerusalem for many years, and every
senator was present. One fear was in every heart, a
popular revolution with Jesus as its centre just at the
critical time when the whole Jewish race was assem
bling for the Passover. And then the end. The
vengeance of powerful Rome, the overthrow of their
Church with its rich endowments.
There were faces there troubled, doubting, bewil
dered, faces white with consternation and anger.
" What are we doing? This man is doing many mir
acles. The people are getting out of hand. If we
let Him alone they will all believe on Him. The Pass
over crowd will rise in insurrection to make Him King,
and tiae Romans will come to destroy our Temple and
our nation."

ONE MAN MUST DIE FOR THE PEOPLE 397
Some argued one thing and some another. But the
temper of the meeting was for action not argument.
This is no time for debating. Miracle or no miracle,
this man is a national danger.
Then the Highpriest, the president, arose in his
place; a keen, dark man with clever face, a leader of
men, who could go straight to his point without scruple.
" Ye know nothing at all. There is only one way
out. Do you not see that it is better that one man
should die for the people that the whole nation perish
not. This man must die ! "
" That one man should die for the people." See
how St. John catches hold of the phrase. The High
priest, he says, was unconsciously prophesying better
than he knew, that Jesus was about to die for the
nation, and not for that nation only but for all God's
children scattered abroad through the world.
That was the final decision of the conclave. Whether
by secret assassination or by legal process, Jesus must
die and without delay. The safety of the Church and
the nation required it. " Salus populi suprema lex."
Forty years after in the horrors of the Siege, they
learned the lesson which Germany has learned lately,
which all nations need to learn, that you cannot save
a church or nation by doing what is wrong, that bad
ethics can never be good politics. For God ruleth in
the affairs of men. So in the Hall of Evil Counsel
that night they brought a curse upon their nation, and
in their wickedness wrought unconsciously the will of
God that one man should die for the nation, that the
Good Shepherd must lay down His life for the sheep.
And the great spirit world watched wonderingly
what men were doing to their Lord. And God in
Heaven kept silence.

398 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
From that hour Jesus was doomed. But the au
thorities had to go warily. They dare not seize Him
openly. In the excitement and enthusiasm after the
raising of Lazarus any attempt on His life would have
but precipitated the revolution which they dreaded.
In their embarrassment it was some relief to hear that
Jesus had disappeared. Somehow that secret doom
became known. One thinks again of Nicodemus, that
timid old senator, who had never lost his kindly feeling
for the young prophet. Perhaps he had sent down
private warning after the meeting. So Jesus retired
away into the wilderness to some place called Ephraim,
no one knows where, to spend peacefully with His dis
ciples His last few weeks preparing for the end. They
had to hide close this time, for the bloodhounds were
after Him ; the order had gone out " that if any one
knew where He was he should show it that they might
take Him."
That little camping place among the hills of Ephraim
should be, if we could identify it, one of the Holy
Places of the world. It was somewhere in the wilder
ness of Judea, somewhere near the scene where He had
laid His life plans three years ago when He was " led
up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil."
Now He could look back on the whole interval be
tween. "If thou wilt bow to me," said Satan, " and
take the easy path, the kingdoms of the world and the
glory of them shall be thine." If He would fall in
with the popular wishes and condone the evil of their
chiefs and leave their ecclesiastical corporation un
touched, there need be no Crucifixion. But He had
chosen otherwise. So He faces death. He had fore
seen it all and had chosen it willingly. " No man
taketh my life from me. I lay it down of myself."

ONE MAN MUST DIE FOR THE PEOPLE 399
These are His last quiet days, the preparation for
Calvary. Then as the Passover draws near when the Lamb of
God should be offered up, He sets forth for Jerusalem
to die.
Now behold a dramatic picture. The pilgrim
Christ in the lone hills of Ephraim is " steadfastly set
ting His face " on the Jerusalem road, and, all un
knowing, from every land, the whole Jewish world
is crowding to meet Him. Like our " Greater
Britain " beyond the Seven Seas was the " Greater
Israel " spread through the earth, vastly outnumbering
the Palestine stock, ever looking to Jerusalem as exiles
to their home, crowding back every year in their
myriads to the Passover. Watch the great hosts as
sembling from every quarter. The descendants of the
exiles who had remained in Babylon, the Jewish col
onies from far Alexandria, the merchants from Rome,
from Greece, from Asia Minor, from every Mediter
ranean harbour, from every port and mart of the
civilized world, " Parthians and Medes and Elamites
and dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia,
in Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in
Egypt, in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, strangers
from Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Ara
bians," all unconsciously converging to the stage of the
central drama of history, where they and that pilgrim
Christ should meet.

XI
THE END OF THE ROAD
THE Record of the Road is nearly over. The
end of the Road is in sight. Jesus has de
cided that the time has come. He is going
up to Jerusalem to die.
The Passover is near and it promises to be the most
dangerous, exciting Passover ever held in Jerusalem.
For the multitudes, sufficiently excited already, are
stirred beyond measure by the raising of Lazarus. In
the streets, in the bazaars little else is talked of. The
road to Bethany is daily crowded with sightseers to
see the empty tomb and the home of a man who had
come back from the other world. Surely God hath
visited His people and Messiah is come who shall set
Israel free!
The rulers, unable to deny the miracle, are desper
ately holding the people in leash. For if the crowds
from all nations coming in should be caught up in
this excitement the end of all things is near. Their
chief hope is that Jesus will keep away. It is the one
question in Jerusalem for friend and enemy alike.
" What think ye? Will He come to the Feast? "
Aye, He will come. If they could but see Him
as He comes! Not the daring leader of Revolution
whom they feared or desired marching in pride of
400

THE END OF THE ROAD 401
power to the Capital, but a silent, sorrowful Man with
the light of another world in His eyes, walking apart
in a world which had disappointed Him. Here is a
vivid picture, one of Peter's memories of the road as
he taught it to St. Mark. " We were in the way going
up to Jerusalem and Jesus went before us, and we were
amazed, and as we followed we were afraid. And
He began to tell us what things should happen unto
Him." The picture stands out distinct. The lone mountain
road in the wild country of Ephraim, the group of
frightened disciples in wonder and perplexity, with
their eyes on Him who walks before them silent and
apart. Far otherwise were they accustomed to travel
with Him in the free, happy comradeship of the
Galilee days. The relation is changing. For months
past their love and admiration have been deepening into
solemn reverence. There is a growing sense of awe
and wonder and mystery, a thrill of impending crisis.
He is passing beyond them. They cannot understand.
They do not know what to expect. But certainly the
farthest off thought is that of failure and death.
One would think they could not misunderstand Him
now. Twice already, though in less detail, He had
warned them of what was coming. But clearly they
do misunderstand. He cannot mean it literally. This
dying and rising has some mystic meaning. How could
He suffer death who has just brought Lazarus from the
dead? For they, too, are caught up in the throbbing
expectancy of the nation, and that miracle of Bethany
has brought the Kingdom nearer. The day of Israel's
glory is coming. Perhaps it will come now amid the
Passover crowds when " the Lord God shall give unto
Him the throne of His father David and He shall

402 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
reign over the house of Jacob forever and of His
kingdom there shall be no end." To enthusiasts in
this golden cloud of preconceived ideas it was quite
possible to misunderstand Him even now.
As we follow them on the road we see how per
sistent was their illusion. No better proof could be
given than this incident a day or two later.
Their path has struck into the highway from the
North, where they meet the long train of Passover
pilgrims from Galilee. I see the Capernaum folk
getting together, resting together in the evening. And
there in the moonlight I see a woman draw near to
Jesus. We have seen that woman before, two years
ago, in a street in Capernaum walking to Synagogue
on the Sabbath to hear His first sermon with her hus
band Zebedee and her sons. A consuming ambition
is in her proud old heart. An unworthy ambition?
Who shall say? It is the ambition of a faithful
woman who followed Jesus to the Cross, a mother's
ambition not for herself but for her sons. The day of
triumph is coming for Jesus and His Kingdom. Her
two sons are in the three highest in the confidence of
their Master. She has often heard them speculating
who shall be greatest.
They know or divine their mother's purpose as she
approaches. " Master, will you grant me a mother's request ? "
Gracious, as of a King, is the reply,
"What wilt thou, Mistress, that I should do for"
thee?" " Grant that these my two sons may sit on thy
right hand and on thy left in thy Kingdom."
With what kindly pity He looks on that mother

THE END OF THE ROAD 403
and her sons. How little they realize the disillusion
that is coming !
" Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink
of the cup that I have to drink of and to be baptized
with the baptism that I am to be baptized with? "
Doubtless James and John think of troubles inci
dental to revolutions, of risking life to defend Him if
the need should arise. Fearlessly they reply, " We
are able."
And He knew they were. He knew that they would
die for Him if necessary. He knew them better than
they knew themselves. He sees us all capable of better
things than we know. As they stood there before
Him, selfish and ambitious, did He look forward to
the testing of the far off years when " Herod slew
James, the brother of John, with the sword " and the
aged John went to his martyr death in devoted loyalty
to his beloved Lord? Surely the pathos of some such
vision was in His solemn reply: —
" Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of
and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall
ye be baptized. But to sit on my right hand and on
my left is not mine to give, but to those for whom it
hath been prepared."
And yet they saw not. Did their mother not see?
A woman's instinct is wondrous keen where her heart
is concerned. Did no cold premonition touch her as
she looked in the face of that beloved Master? The
gaiety of the old Capernaum days is gone. He seems
more solemn, more unearthly, more apart. Not like
a King going to His Kingdom. Rather like a King
going to His death. What is this cup and this ominous
baptism for Himself and for her boys?
O mother of Zebedee's sons, such thoughts will come

404 MEMORD3S OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
if they come not to-day. To thee and those brave sons
who were to be at His right hand and His left. For
the day of bitter disillusion is near when thou shalt
bow before that Lord upon His cross of shame and on
His right hand and His left two convicted thieves !
The incident is not yet closed. Surely it was an
added pain to Jesus at this solemn crisis to see this
self-seeking even in the inner circle of the Twelve.
In dealing with us men He has to be accustomed to
disappointment. " He knoweth our frame, He re-
membereth that we are but dust." The apostles are
naturally indignant. There is a sullen restraint in their
attitude to James and John. They are very human,
those Apostles. But such tempers cannot abide in
the presence of Jesus. He called them unto Him.
Once before He had reproved their jealousy of each
other by setting a little child in their midst. Now He
repeats His lesson in gentle reproof to them all. And,
to do them justice, they remembered it well in the
after years.
" The kings of the Gentiles lord it over men and
their great ones exercise authority over them. But it
is not so among you. Service is the true measure of
greatness. Whosoever would be great among you,
let him serve most. Whosoever would be first of all,
let him be the servant of all. For the Son of Man
came not to be served but to serve and to give His
life a ransom for many."
The procession moves on.
A few days later we have another picture of the
Road. They are nearing Jerusalem now. The pil
grim crowd from the North is approaching Jericho and
the townspeople are crowding through the gates to

THE END OF THE ROAD 405
meet them. For the rumour has got abroad that Jesus
is amongst them who raised Lazarus of Bethany from
the dead, who, men say, is coming the Messiah of God
to deliver Israel from the Roman yoke. Their enthu
siastic reception testifies to His hold on the people.
How could His disciples in the midst of such scenes
anticipate anything but triumph for their Lord?
In the crush of the multitude, amid the shouts and
acclamations, a blind beggarman is almost trampled
down at the gate.
" What does it mean? " he asks, and the passers-by
answer with a joyous shout,
" Jesus of Nazareth passeth by ! "
And in a moment a wild hope is in the blind man's
heart. Jesus, who healed that blind man in Jerusalem !
Jesus is passing! Jesus is escaping him! Like a
drowning man with his last hope slipping from him
he puts his whole soul into that desperate cry. Even
above the uproar Jesus heard it: —
" Jesus ! Thou son of David, have mercy on me ! "
Again and again rang out the passionate appeal by
the name which the multitudes loved to call Him.
The people tried to silence him but no one could silence
him. " Thou son of David, Thou son of David, have
mercy on me ! "
And the compassionate heart of Jesus went out to
him as it must always to him or to you or to me when
we sorely want Him. No shouting of multitudes can
prevent His hearing. He stopped the whole procession
on the spot.
" Call him," He said.
And friendly people came to the blind man.
" Bartimaeus, be of good cheer! Arise! He is
calling thee ! "

406 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
He flung off his old robe. They lead him trembling
to Jesus.
" What wilt thou, my son, that I should do unto
thee?" " Oh, Rabboni, that I may receive my sight! "
And immediately he received his sight and followed
Jesus in the way.
There is silence in the multitude, the awe of the
supernatural. Then the enthusiasm breaks forth re
doubled. The heart of the people is touched by that
kindly deed. Not by power but by love does the
Christ win humanity. The story of Bartimaeus soon
got abroad. Now the whole city has come together.
Everybody wants to see Jesus.
A well-dressed man on the edge of the crowd is
straining to see, for "he is little of stature." And
though he is a rich man nobody makes way for him.
For this is Zaccheus, the publican, the Chief of Cus
toms in Jericho, whose riches they say come from
wrongful extortions. The story suggests a deeper
motive than mere curiosity. Nothing will keep him
back. The town boys, as is boys' custom from time
immemorial, are swarming in the trees to look down
on the procession. And this sober grown man of
wealth and position will sacrifice his dignity to get up
beside them in his deep desire to see the face of Jesus.
The story of Matthew in the customs' office in Caper
naum has doubtless reached the Jericho custom-house.
There are thoughts and aspirations in the heart of this
man, a great longing to see Matthew's friend.
So that is Jesus ! That tall, white prophet with the
brave, kind face, moving in silent dignity down in that
crowd, the Great Jew who does not scorn publicans

THE END OF THE ROAD 407
and sinners ! How little we know the secret cravings
and dissatisfactions in the hearts of ordinary people of
our acquaintance. Like many around us whom we
pass unnoticed, this lonely rich man had an unsatisfied
soul, longings which no one but God could satisfy.
Else would Jesus never have paused and looked up
into that tree and spoken to the man as if He had no
other purpose in coming to Jericho than to meet him.
"Zaccheus, make haste and come down, to-day I must
abide at thy house." And Zaccheus learned to his
astonishment what we all can learn for our eternal
good, that no poor soul can ever long for Jesus without
Jesus knowing it.
Think what it meant to that despised publican to
have Jesus come in and eat with him and talk with
him and understand him, understand not only the evil
in him but the craving for good. There is wondrous
power in a love that can understand a man and be
lieve in him in spite of his faults.
There are two men in each of us, the man as the
world knows him and the real man as God knows him.
The Jericho people knew Zaccheus as a publican and a
sinner, a man who did not go to church, a man who
disliked them as they disliked him. Jesus knew his
shyness, his desire for friendship, his longing after
better things. And Jesus knew why he did not go to
church amongst people who looked down on him and
his family. Trust God not to misunderstand you
even if every one else does.
All that was worst in Zaccheus was hardened by the
scorn of his neighbours. But his hardness broke down
before the heart that understood him and trusted him.
We know nothing of that wondrous evening, of their
intercourse together. But we know that Jesus bound

408 MEMORIES OF THE JERUSALEM ROAD
that man to Him in loyalty forever. And we see the
inevitable result in the vow which he made to Him as
they parted next day. " Lord, from this day forward
the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have
done any wrong to any man I will restore him four
fold." But the Jericho townspeople were vexed. The
popular enthusiasm was chilled. " He is gone to be
guest with a man who is a sinner." Here I would
place the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Prodigal,
which St. Luke has inserted in these Memories of the
Road. If we assume that next day, after the example
of St. Matthew, Zaccheus invited his friends to a
farewell dinner to the Lord, we have by far the most
probable setting to be found anywhere in the Gospels.
" The publicans and sinners drew near unto Him and
the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, This man re
ceiveth sinners and eateth with them." That was His
offense. He had eaten with publicans. If this con
jecture be correct, if this dinner brought the stories of
the Lost Sheep and the Prodigal, we owe to Zaccheus
a bigger debt than we knew.
If any man be in Christ he is a new creature. " To
day," said Jesus, "is salvation come to this house." So
Zaccheus parted from his new-found Friend never to
see His face again on earth. Two weeks later he
heard that they had crucified Him in Jerusalem.
That is all we know of Zaccheus. There is a legend
that he became prominent in the Church, that in later
years he became bishop of Csesarea. There is another
little legend dimly in my memory, which I met with
somewhere long ago. A very aged man, little of
stature, every morning tending the ground around an

THE END OF THE ROAD 409
old sycamore tree near Jericho. " Old man," asked
a passing stranger one day, " why carest thou thus for
the old sycamore tree ? " " Because," said the old
man, and his eyes grew young as he said it, " from the
boughs of that tree I first beheld my Lord."
This is the end of the Memories of the Road. When
we next see the Lord He is entering Jerusalem to die.

BOOK VI
Jerusalem

PALM SUNDAY
TWELVE miles up the wild hill road between
Jericho and Jerusalem where the traveller in
the parable " fell among thieves," and the
pilgrim procession is passing by Bethany through rows
of Bethany villagers crowded on the roadside to see
Jesus of Nazareth who had raised Lazarus from the
dead. As they see in the crowd the eager faces of the
Bethany family come to welcome them, Jesus and His
comrades drop out of the procession which continues
its way to Jerusalem. This is on Friday, " six days
before the Passover."
Next evening, when the Sabbath is over, there is a
banquet in Bethany in honour of Him who had brought
Lazarus from the grave, and as we should expect
" Martha served and Lazarus was one of them that sat
at meat." And Mary is in her little room unwrapping
a precious alabaster vase and her face is white with
unutterable pain, for she more than others is in the
secrets of the Master and her woman's heart has di
vined that He is come to Jerusalem to die. The twelve
apostles are present. Amongst them take special note
of one, not prominent before, that red-haired man of
moody, sullen face who shall win undying infamy ere
the week is out. Irritable, disillusioned, disappointed,
with evil purposes already forming in his heart, he is
utterly out of sympathy with that company. For the
413

414 JERUSALEM
moment he hates them all and would vent his ill
humour on them.
When Mary in her uncalculating extravagance of af
fection pours her costly gift over the Master's feet, he
can see nothing in it beautiful or touching. It is a
stupid, foolish extravagance. " It might have been sold
for three hundred pence and given to the poor." In his
ill-temper he would reprove indirectly even the Master
who permitted this. The soul of Judas is in black
mood this night.
Jesus rebukes him and defends the gracious deed.
Utilitarian considerations are not the only ones in
life. Sentiment counts for something. Some of the
noblest stories in history — the Three Hundred at
Thermopylae — the Light Brigade at Balaclava — are
stories of " waste." All life is the more beautiful for
beautiful lives of women " wasted " in patient sacrifice
without apparent result. Waste of love is not waste.
The spikenard may be poured out vainly in uncalculat
ing devotion, but the world is filled with the odour of
the ointment. This waste that men murmured at gave
pleasure to Jesus and He gratefully accepted it. If
they had only known that it was the last time such
tribute could ever be paid Him, that within a week He
would be lying dead in Joseph's tomb, they who mur
mured with Judas would hardly have grudged Him
that " waste " the expression of a woman's soul poured
out. They did not know. But Jesus did. " Let her
alone. Against the day of my burying hath she done it.
Ye have the poor always with you. Whensoever ye
will ye can do them good but Me ye have not always.
She has done to me a beautiful deed and wherever my
gospel is preached throughout the world this shall be
told of her."

PALM SUNDAY 415
Next morning all Bethany awoke in pleasant excite
ment, conscious that their village was the centre of
observation. For they were housing Jesus of Naza
reth, the prophet of God who had raised their towns
man Lazarus from the dead, who, men said, was come
as the Liberator of Israel. All the long pilgrim cara
vans turned to gaze as they passed. The Passover tents
on the hillside were pouring crowds into the village.
The whole countryside was astir. Even the sight
seers from Jerusalem were already crowding in. Beth
any in a night had become famous.
One thinks of Jesus that sunny morning returning
to breakfast from His morning prayer on the hills,
passing through the gathering crowds, with the dis
ciples coming to meet Him elated and expectant.
Never had His authority stood so high before. Never
before had they felt themselves so prominent in the
world. What was their silent Master intending?
Something surely was bound to happen now. By and
by their excitement deepened as Peter and John came
out to them. " We are sent to Bethphage for a young
ass colt on which never man sat. He is going to ride
to-day in procession to Jerusalem ! " Soon the news
spread through the excited crowds. What wonder if
the disciples began to dream day-dreams — of a crisis
coming — of a Kingdom of God at hand ? The judges
in ancient Israel rode on white asses. And there was
an old Scripture prophecy, a prophecy of Messiah:
" Behold thy King cometh to thee, O daughter of Zion,
meek and having salvation ; lowly and riding upon an
ass, upon a colt the foal of an ass." Small blame to
them if they dreamed dreams that day amid the excited
crowds of Bethany.
And across the valley in Jerusalem is similar ex-

416 JERUSALEM
citement. The pilgrim strangers have caught it from
the men of Galilee. The whole race of Israel is repre
sented at that Passover. The city is crowded with
strangers. The hill-slopes are covered with tents and
encampments, a million fanatic patriots from all over
the earth. And every one is talking of Him. Many
had seen or heard of Him in the Festivals before and
had carried the report of Him to far-off lands. Very
varied are the opinions about Him. The knowledge
that the clerical caste is against Him does not make
Him the less popular with many in that crowd. And
now, like wildfire, the rumour is running — the caravans
through Bethany are spreading it as they come: Jesus
of Nazareth is coming for the Feast, He who raised
Lazarus of Bethany from the dead, He, who the Gali
leans say, is the Messiah of God !
Yes, He is coming, coming to His death. Twice al
ready has He attempted Jerusalem. Twice they drove
Him out by murderous assault. Now they will drive
Him out no more. He has done with His quiet, un
obtrusive methods. This day He is openly, publicly
asserting His Messiahship and claiming recognition at
the nation's hands. And He knows what the end
will be.
So in humble pageant He rides in from Bethany and
His followers as in a dream march exultant beside
Him, swelling with pride at the popular enthusiasm.
The road is lined with crowds as for a royal procession.
A shouting multitude is before Him and following.
Now a larger crowd from the city swarms out to escort
Him, telling each other of the raising of Lazarus.
Every moment the enthusiasm increases. The common
road is not good enough for His progress. The Gali-

PALM SUNDAY 417
leans are carpeting the way with their garments. The
multitudes are strewing His path with green boughs
and the applauding shouts are audible in Jerusalem it
self! "Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of
David! Blessed is the King of Israel who cometh in
the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest ! "
While the multitude is acclaiming "the King of
Israel that cometh," it is easy to understand day
dreams and illusions in His disciples. But it is a dan
gerous treason-cry and His enemies are noting it. Be
fore many days it shall stand in mockery as His title
on the Cross. And alas ! it is the cry which gives the
main secret of the enthusiasm. Not longings after
righteousness nor delight in His high ideals, not even
the personal attraction to Himself, though that counted
largely in His fellow-countrymen from the North. No,
but the hope of an Israelite King, the mad fantastic
dreams of a fanatic crowd who forgot their common-
sense in the excitement of the moment — dreams of Je
hovah delivering His people — visions of the Great
Miracle-worker who raised Lazarus from the dead
riding to the capital in power irresistible, of the power
of imperial Rome collapsing before Him, of Pilate and
his grim garrison fleeing as chaff before the wind. Yet
perhaps it was not so mad or fantastic after all. For
there were men there that day who saw forty years
later a rapid revolution with less prospects than now,
which suddenly swept the power of Rome out of Jeru
salem. Yes, but brought it back later in a terrible re
venge which laid their beautiful city in ruins and for
ever blotted out Israel as a nation.
Jesus knew what would happen, what must in
evitably happen to such a people as this who had turned

418 JERUSALEM
from their high destiny as spiritual leaders of the
world to battle with great Rome for temporal power.
Did no one observe His face as He rode silently on?
No proud joy there of a leader rejoicing in the accla
mations of His people. Compassionate, sympathetic,
as with children in their foolishness, but with high
solemn glance out into the far distances. And unutter
ably sad. The face of a patriot sorrowing for His
country, of a King who had failed riding to His death.
Now the road turns suddenly to the northward and
here at this angle the city which had been hidden by
the shoulder of the mountain bursts suddenly in all its
glory on the view. The dream city of the Jew. The
city of God. The centre of the national memories.
" Jerusalem the joy of the whole earth." No other
sight could so stir the heart of a Jew. And His heart
is deeply stirred, but with sorrow and pain, that He
could not have saved His nation and their glorious city
from its doom. Oh, if they who had been born to the
highest destiny on earth had but received Him, sent
from God to them to accomplish their destiny ! What
a future there might have been for Israel and its lovely
city, the centre of the spiritual empire of the world !
To the consternation of His followers He utters His
thought aloud. " Oh, if thou hadst known, even thou,
in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace
— but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days
shall come upon thee that thine enemies shall cast a
trench about thee and lay thee even with the ground
and thy children within thee . . . because thou
knowest not this time of thy visitation ! " It was an
awful vision before His eyes. Men in that multitude
saw it forty years later. The landscape covered with
Roman encampments. The beautiful city a shape-

PALM SUNDAY 419
less ruin with the vultures hovering over the countless
crosses to feast on festering bodies of crucified Jews.
The country desolate. The people almost exterminated
or sold into slavery. Israel as a nation wiped out for
ever. "Alas, thou knowest not this time of thy visi
tation!" To those who were near, it was a terrible utterance,
gripping like an icy hand upon their hearts. But prob
ably not many heard it. The first Gospels do not even
mention it. It was not until long after that it came to
the ears of St. Luke. The procession moved happily on
unknowing. The acclamations were redoubled.
" Master," cried some angry Pharisees in the crowd,
" rebuke thy disciples." " Nay," said Jesus, " if these
should hold their peace the very stones would cry out."
As the tumultuous crowd swept in through the gates
the foreign pilgrims came running to ask what it
meant and the answer of the multitude rang back like a
triumphal chant: This is Jesus, the prophet of Naza
reth of Galilee ! And the baffled priests and Pharisees
cried angrily to each other, " Perceive ye how ye pre
vail nothing. Behold, the whole world is gone after
Him!" Doubtless there were some anxious moments for the
authorities. It seems evident that the leader of that
multitude, if He were so minded, could that night have
cleared Jerusalem of the Roman power. But nothing
happened. There was no revolution. Pilate and his
cohorts remained undisturbed. Jesus, having dis
missed the multitudes, passed into the Temple. One
cannot help wondering what the multitudes thought.
Were they disappointed ? Did they hope that the great
doings would come later on?

420 JERUSALEM
We have no clear record of the close of this eventful
day. One expects a dramatic close such as the cleans
ing of the Temple which the Synoptic Gospels place
here on this day or the next. But St. John puts it very
much earlier in the history, and it seems improbable that
it could have happened twice. If we omit it here the
scenes of Palm Sunday close with St. Matthew's de
lightful little picture of Jesus with the children.
" Jesus entered into the temple of God." Into the
house of His Father where He had come first as a
little boy of twelve one day long ago. Surely that day
came back to Him as He entered unexpectedly on a
multitude of young children assembled in the church
probably for a great Passover Children's Service.
And, imitative as all children, of what they had heard
in the streets, the little ones impulsively sprang to their
feet as they saw Him. " Hosanna ! Hosanna to the
Son of David ! " That is all they could remember. He
was greatly pleased and the clergy were greatly vexed
that He should be. " Hearest thou what they say ? "
asked the indignant chief priests. " Yes," He said,
" I hear them. Have ye never read, Out of the mouth
of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? "

II
DENUNCIATIONS
THAT Palm Sunday procession rather fright
ened the chief priests. Jesus of Nazareth was
very much more powerful than they had
thought. And at the moment they could not tell how
He might use His power. He could probably have
rallied the whole nation around Him in a revolution
against Rome. And though they feared that as dan
gerous it was not the worst thing to be feared. In fact
if that were His aim the Pharisees might even have
gone over to Him, for they were intensely Nationalist.
The main trouble was that He would not let religion
alone. He would revolutionize the Church. He would
overthrow " the party of order." He was an icono
clast, a Root-and-Branch Reformer. In a church ruled
rigidly by the clerical caste He was an anti-clerical.
The issue was plain. The Jewish Church must revo
lutionize itself or Jesus of Nazareth must die. And
they had already decided the issue. " Hands off the
Church. This man must die ! "
But they were astute men. They had learned a les
son. To seize Him openly would turn the people
against them. They must play a waiting game. Prob
ably when the Passover crowds were gone home their
chance would come.
Meantime if they could manage to discredit Him
with the people as indifferent to national aspirations,
421

422 JERUSALEM
as disloyal to Moses and the Church, as a blasphemer
against Jehovah; or if they could discredit Him with
the government as a dangerous disturber of the peace,
something might be accomplished. But they must walk
warily. " Then went the Pharisees and took counsel together
how they might ensnare Him in His talk." That was
the first step — to ensnare Him in His talk — to preju
dice Him with the people or with the Roman power —
to trap Him all unsuspicious in His guileless simplicity
that He might say something that could be used against
Him. So on the Monday and Tuesday as He taught in the
Temple in the intervals between the services, they had
men " planted " to ask Him questions. Some of these
questions have been recorded for us.
The Capitation Tax was a brilliant idea. The Jews
did not like taxes. Most of us do not. And a tax is
especially hateful when it is a mark of servitude to a
foreign over-lord. Of course the crafty leaders did not
go themselves with their question. That would be too
apparent. They sent young disciples with their op
ponents, the Herodians, as if they had been disputing
the matter together. With innocent face the schemers
come to the great Rabbi to settle this case of conscience
for them. They had been well schooled. " Master, we
know that thou art true and teachest the way of God
in truth, neither carest thou for any man, for thou re-
gardest not the person of men. Tell us therefore, what
thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar
or not ? "
It was a clever little trap. To say " Yes " would turn
the populace against Him ; to say " No " would render

DENUNCIATIONS 423
Him liable to a charge of treason. There was some
thing to be said on the Nationalist side. There was
something too to be said for Caesar who had to pay the
cost of government and the upkeep of the Great White
Roads. But Jesus declines such discussion. " Why
tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? Show me the money.
Whose is this image and superscription? " " Caesar's."
" Then by using his coinage you recognize his author
ity. Pay therefore to Caesar what belongs to Caesar
and to God what belongs to God." And they were not
able to take hold of the saying before the people.
By and by come the Sadducees who deny the Resur
rection, to get a laugh against Him with their time-
honoured old case of the woman who had had seven
husbands. " In the Resurrection whose wife shall she
be ? " He is in no mood for this ill-timed trifling.
The people are listening and in a moment He has lifted
them to a higher plane, to that atmosphere where love
ties are spiritualized and refined. " Ye do err, not
knowing the Scriptures nor the truth of God. In the
Resurrection life they neither marry nor are given in
marriage but are as the angels. And as for your doubts
about the Resurrection, have ye not read what Moses
himself has taught you that God is the God of Abra
ham and Isaac and Jacob. Now God is not the God
of dead men, but of living. They are all living in His
sight. Ye do greatly err." That was a telling ad
hominem argument, and the people enjoyed it thor
oughly. Even some of the Scribes could not help ap
plauding, " Master, thou hast well said ! "
Then the Pharisees conspire together and send a
Pharisee lawyer to test Him with one of the vexed
questions of the schools. Of the 613 precepts and
commandments in the injunctions of the Scribes some

424 JERUSALEM
of course were of major and some of minor impor
tance, and the schools of Shammai and Hillel disputed
as to " lighter " and " heavier " commands. They
would publicly test this Rabbi. " Master, which is the
great commandment of the Law ? " Jesus again
deigned to answer seriously and all the rabbinical
quibbles were forgotten as they heard that noble pro
nouncement: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart. This is the first and great command
ment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself. These two commandments
are the centre of all religion.
The hearers are deeply impressed. Even the ques
tioning lawyer has the grace to be ashamed of himself.
He was a bigger man than his fellow-conspirators
deemed. " Truly, Master, thou hast well said. To
love God with all one's heart and one's neighbour as
oneself is more than all burnt-offerings and sacrifices."
And Jesus recognized an honest man and looked him in
the face in kindly approval. " Thou art not far from
the Kingdom of God ! " "And after that no man
durst ask Him any more questions."
But they were not to get off so easily. It was His
turn now to ask questions.
" What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is He?
If David called Him Lord, how is He then His Son?
" Hear another question. A man had two sons.
He sent them to work in his vineyard. The first re
fused and then repented and went. The second said, I
go, Sir, and went not. Which of the two did the will
of his father?"
" The first ! " they cried impulsively, not immedi
ately catching His drift.

DENUNCIATIONS 425
"Aye," He said, " the first, and you are the second.
Verily I say unto you, the publicans and harlots who
repented and went go into the Kingdom of God before
you!" And then He turned to the people in their hearing
and told them in a scathing parable of the great God
who trustingly let out His vineyard of Israel to those
wicked husbandmen, and they stoned His servants who
came asking for fruits, and they crowned their iniquity
by murdering His beloved Son. " What, therefore,
shall the lord of the vineyard do to them? Must He
not miserably destroy them and give the vineyard to
others?" " God forbid," cried the startled hearers.
" Nay, God will not forbid. I say unto you that the
Kingdom of God shall be taken from Israel and given
to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof ! "
And then as they stood there cowering before Him,
those hireling shepherds whom God had entrusted with
His flock, the anger of the Lord rose mightily within
Him. Like a master rebuking his unfaithful servants
He pilloried them publicly before all the people and so
lashed them with the scourge of His fierce indignation
that they never could forget it as long as they lived.
" Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites !
Ye who shut the Kingdom of Heaven against men, who
neither enter in yourselves nor suffer them to enter,
who compass sea and land to make one proselyte and
make him more a child of hell than yourselves. Woe
unto you, ye blind guides who strain out the gnat and
swallow the camel, who make your petty little rules
about anise and cummin and leave out the weightier
matters of the Law, justice and mercy and faith, who

426 JERUSALEM
cleanse the outside of the cup and platter and within it
is full of extortion and excess. Woe to you, you
whited sepulchres, who appear outwardly righteous to
men but inwardly are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Woe unto you ! Ye build and adorn the sepulchres of
prophets whom your fathers killed and say to your
selves, We would not have killed them. Fill ye up the
measure of your fathers' guilt. God is sending you
prophets and wise men and ye will kill them and
scourge them from city to city. On you shall come the
guilt of the righteous blood shed upon the earth from
the blood of Abel to the blood of Zachariah, whom ye
slew between the temple and the altar. Verily all these
things shall come upon this generation! "
"And Jesus walked out of the Temple." And never
entered it again.
So spake the angry Son of God to men who had
betrayed their trust. It is a solemn revelation of that
kindly Christ. There is a soft, lazy notion amongst
men of our day that God does not get very angry at all
with sin now — that He is the kind, good-natured, easy
going Father who judges evil-doing as merely weak
ness, who just wants His child to stop crying and be
happy. God forbid ! As He spake to men of old, He
is speaking to men still. Many a man in agony of peni
tent remorse has said as stern things as this to himself
because he heard a Divine voice speaking them within.
Blessed is he who listens and speaks it for himself.
He is very near to finding out good things about God.

Ill
THE TRAITOR
WHEN He thus left the Temple for the last
time He had virtually pronounced His own
death sentence. Before the assembled
crowds He had so denounced the whole hierarchy of
the Church that if they let it pass they could never hold
up their heads in Jerusalem again. Either He or they
must go under now.
While He rested that night with His disciples, one
of the Twelve was missing. The clerical leaders had
called an emergency meeting. Something must be
done, and soon, to silence Jesus of Nazareth. But
what ? The people were the trouble. They were dis
appointed that nothing had come of the Sunday pro
cession. Their enthusiasm was ebbing. Some were
growing hostile. But still somehow Jesus had a pow
erful hold on them. If He were to be arrested it must
be " in the absence of the multitude," and night or day
in that excited week the multitude was never very far
to find. It might be necessary to wait till the people
had gone home. They must wait and see what chance
would turn up for them.
The chance was nearer than they thought. Outside
in the moonlit shadows a skulking figure is challenged
by the officer of the guard. " Bring me in to the
Council. It is in the matter of Jesus of Nazareth."
And so the traitor came into the presence of the con-
427

428 JERUSALEM
spirators. An unexpected piece of luck. One of His
own close frends who could catch Him unguarded.
"And they were glad and covenanted to give him
money. And he consented and sought opportunity to
deliver him unto them in the absence of the multitude."
In these few words the evangelist relates the most
awful act of treachery in the history of humanity and
brands before a horrified world the man who broke
faith with Christ, the traitor who played the part of
friend that he might betray to His death the Master
who loved him.
Can any one account for it? We are told that
avarice was his ruling passion and that he betrayed his
Master to an awful death in order to gain thirty pieces
of silver. One hesitates to believe it. It sounds weak,
inadequate, unconvincing. He was an unutterable vil
lain, it is true, but a man does not commit such unutter
able villainy for the bribe of a few pounds or dollars
and then fling back the bribe in the teeth of the givers.
And besides it does not fit in with the facts or with the
man. For this man had it in him to be more than a mere
crawling money seeker. Three years ago he was a
clever, devout young Jew interested in his religion and
its Messianic hopes. One day he met Jesus of Naza
reth and the two were attracted to each other. Else
would Jesus never have called him into the fellowship
of the apostles nor would Judas have responded to His
call. There was not much in the possible pickings
from a few travelling preachers to attract him. Judas
like the others left all and followed Him and he con
tinued with Him when others " walked no more with
Him." This man was no monster. He was a man

THE TRAITOR 429'
like ourselves. He had great possibilities for good.
But he had great possibilities for evil too. We are not
trying to whitewash him — only to understand him.
No doubt he was covetous, but that alone does not
explain. Now put ambition as the ruling passion and
see if it does not fit the story better. Assume that
ambition disappointed led to bitterness, and bitterness
to alienation from Jesus, and alienation to hostility,
and hostility to treachery. He thought of Jesus as out
to found an earthly kingdom. They all thought that.
And he was ambitious like James and John for a high
place. And he was disappointed. He was in a sub
ordinate position. He never " attained even to the
first three." I think of him, the lone Judean never
quite at home with that band of Galileans, and so the
more inclined to feel jealous and envious when others
were chosen before him — at the house of Jairus, — at
the Mount of Transfiguration. As time went on the
kingdom itself grew rather doubtful. Jesus did not
seem to want it. He took no advantage of His popu
larity. When they tried to make Him a king He re
fused. Judas would grow suspicious, discontented,
alienated. One suspects that the Palm Sunday proces
sion brought things to a head. That morning stirred
eager hopes in them all, that public triumphal proces
sion, that multitude acclaiming " the King of Israel in
the name of the Lord." It looked as if Jesus had but
to put forth His hand to gratify all their ambitions.
And He would not do it. He let the opportunity pass.
He let the enthusiasm cool. And then in His stern in
dictment of the hierarchy of Israel He destroyed His
last chance. Judas had wasted his years on a fruitless
cause and would feel resentful and angry with the
Arisionary who had disappointed him.

430 JERUSALEM
Of course the others were disappointed too. But
they did not grow soured. They trusted Jesus. They
were so personally devoted to Him that so long as He
was with them nothing else mattered much. Judas
was different. For a good while past something had
been coming between him and his Master. Maybe
some secret sin other than his ambition and avarice,
something that was rotting out the soul of the man
and making him shrink from and dislike the presence
of Jesus who could look into his heart. And once he
had grown estranged from Jesus there was nothing to
check his soul's deterioration. We cannot trace the
psychological progress of a soul that had been yielding
to the influence of evil till at last in the terrible words
of the Evangelist, " Satan entered into him." It seems
intended as a literal statement of fact.
" See yonder man in whose great brain I entered
Working strange madness within."
The horrified disciples could see no other explana
tion of his infamy. He was possessed, demented. He
was so bitter and angry and resentful towards the Mas
ter that he was determined to do Him harm. He was
so carried beyond himself by some terrible possession
that he did not see the unutterable horror to which he
was tending.
We shall meet him again when he did see.

IV
THE LAST SUPPER
OF the Wednesday we know nothing. Jesus
did not come into the city. The multitudes
looked for Him in vain. Either in the seclu
sion of the Bethany home or in some quiet solitude in
the hills He was alone, preparing for the end, probably
in intervals communing with the Twelve, bracing them
against the coming days. Possibly some of the long
discourses of the next evening recorded by St. John
may belong to this time of solemn retreat. They seem
rather long and many for a single sitting after all the
incidents of the Supper.
Thursday evening was the time of the Paschal feast
and the disciples ask, " Where wilt thou that we pre
pare?" Why did not He tell them straight out ? His
answer reminds us that He was in constant danger that
week. It suggests the cautious watchfulness of a hunted
man afraid of being arrested before the time, like
Prince Charlie in the Highlands with secret watch
words and plans. Nobody must know beforehand lest
it should get out. Especially Judas must not know
beforehand. Peter and John do not know as they set
out. " Go into the city where the women come from
the wells. Note the unusual sight of a man bearing a
pitcher. That is the secret sign. He is watching for
you and will go forward without speaking. Follow
him to the house where he entereth in."
43*

432 JERUSALEM
Of course the head of the house was a disciple. It
is an interesting conjecture that he was the father of
John Mark, whose upper room was in later days a
favourite meeting place of the apostles. For if so, it
brings a curious little incident into line. Mark tells at
the arrest of a young man with only his linen night-
garment on, who when the soldiers seized him left the
garment in their hands and fled from them naked.
Readers have wondered why this incident should be
dragged in. There seems no reason for telling it.
But picture the traitor doing the most likely thing of
first leading his men to the Upper Room, where he had
just left Jesus, and then finding Him gone, following
to Gethsemane, and young Mark springing hurriedly
from his bed and racing ahead to warn them, and the
soldiers trying to intercept him. You see how natural
and how interesting this little story becomes.
And when the hour was come He sat down and
the twelve apostles with Him. The farewell supper
after those three happy years together. There is an
especial tenderness in His heart to-night. " Jesus
knowing that the time was come that He should depart
to the Father, having loved His own which were in the
world He loved them to the end." " With desire I
have desired to eat this Passover with you before I
suffer." " Ye are they who have continued with me
in my temptations."
Yes, they had. And yet even at this crisis they
could not behave themselves courteously and humbly.
What a disappointment they were, a set of good-
hearted, ill-mannered children. They disputed for
places at the table, who should be highest. Even
Judas, with the thirty pieces of silver in his pocket,

THE LAST SUPPER 433
seems to have tried for a high place. At any rate he
got it, beside the Master Himself. And later on he
wished he had not.
Jesus was silent. He seemed not to have noticed.
But they soon saw He had. For a little later at the
ceremony of the hand-washing, " He riseth from sup
per and layeth aside His garment, and took a towel and
girded Himself . . . and began to wash the dis
ciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel wherewith
He was girded." They had put off their sandals as
they entered the room and reclined with hot, tired,
dusty feet. There was usually at entertainments a
slave to do the foot-washing. There was no slave here
and no one else humble enough to do it — except the
Lord of the Universe, who had so often taught them,
the greatest is he that serveth. Startled, self-reproach
ful, they kept silence till He came to Peter.
" Never, Lord, never to the end of the world, shalt
thou wash my feet ! "
" Peter, if I wash thee not thou hast no part with
me. Then, with his usual impulsiveness, he is off to the
other extreme. " Lord, not my feet only, but also my
hands and my head ! "
So He went the round. Think of Him washing the
feet of Judas and the secret horror of the man who
knew where those feet had taken him last night. And
then when He had resumed His place He uttered His
quiet rebuke: "If I, your Master and Lord, have
washed your feet, surely you might wash one another's
feet. I have washed you and ye are clean, but not all,
alas, not all." Was this a warning to Judas that He
knew, a last appeal before the final step was taken?
And did the traitor's hypocritical smile fling His sym-

434 JERUSALEM
pathy back on Him ? For immediately He was greatly
troubled in spirit and said, " Verily I say unto you,
One of you shall betray me ! "
Nothing so impresses on us the emotional strain of
that night as the response of these men in their sud
den consternation. Everything was upset. Feeling
was at high tension. The poor disciples, humbled by
the foot-washing, felt so self-reproach fui that for the
moment they almost imagined they might be capable of
even this, " Lord, is it I ? " and another said, " Is it I ? "
Afterwards they remembered with horror the hardened
impudence of the traitor, " Lord, is it I ? " They could
not forget that. Then Peter makes a sign to John.
"Ask Him who is it? " John was at the right hand of
Jesus and Judas evidently at the left. But Jesus
did not answer plainly, probably out of delicacy to the
traitor. " He to whom I shall give the sop." And
He gave the sop to Judas first, being next Him. And
says the evangelist, " When he had received the sop
Satan entered into him."
Probably at the moment even John did not more
than suspect, for the others too received the sop after
Judas. If they had known who the traitor was they
would hardly have risked letting him go. But
Jesus felt now that further delay was vain. " What
thou doest, do quickly." And even then He said it so
guardedly that they thought He was sending Judas on
some business. But Judas knew that it meant his dis
missal from the band and with anger in his heart, "hav
ing received the sop he went out and it was night."
That little flash of memory came back to them after
wards. The lighted room, the open door, the blank
darkness outside where the traitor had gone.

THE LAST SUPPER 435
His going seemed to clear the air. Jesus turned to
comfort the little band who had been growing more
and more depressed. All hope of the earthly kingdom
was already scattered to the winds — there was the
dread of losing the Master whom they dearly loved —
and now there was the horror of an unknown traitor in
their midst. Surely they needed comfort looking out
into the unknown.
And their Master, as always, was putting Himself in
their place. No thought for Himself. He was think
ing of them.
" Now is the Son of Man glorified. My little chil
dren, only a little longer am I with you. Let not your
hearts be troubled. Ye trust in God. Trust also in
me. I go to prepare a place for you and I will come
again and receive you to myself that where I am ye
may be also. And fear not desolation in the life now
before you. I will not leave you orphans, I will come
to you. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that
will I do that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not
as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your
heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."
Near the close of the Paschal supper Jesus rose
solemnly in His place and they could see that some
great purpose was in His mind. The Jewish Passover
looking back to a great deliverance was now to be in
vested with a new meaning looking forward to a
greater Deliverance. So has come down to us the
Christian Passover, the Christian Eucharist. The ear
liest tradition of what happened that night is that which
was taught to St. Paul " that the Lord Jesus the same
night that He was betrayed took bread and when He

436 JERUSALEM
had given thanks He brake it and said, Take, eat, this
is my body which is broken for you. Do this in re
membrance of me. After the same manner also He
took the cup when He had supped, saying, This cup is
the new covenant in my blood. This do as oft as ye
drink it in remembrance of me."
This is not the place for teaching or controversy
about that Holy Sacrament. All Christians see in it a
badge of Christian fellowship and a memorial forever
of Him who died for our sins. Most Christians see
also that it is very much more, however they may
differ in phraseology expressing it, even the conveying
of His life into the life of men, " the strengthening
and refreshing of our souls by the Body and Blood of
Christ as our bodies are by the bread and wine."
' Now it is almost midnight. Final farewells must
be said. Full of tenderness for that pitiful little band
left to face the world He pours out His soul, commend
ing them to the Father. " Lifting up His eyes to
Heaven He prayed : ' Father, the hour is come, glorify
thy Son. I have glorified thee on the earth. I have
accomplished what thou hast given me to do. I have
manifested thy name to the men whom thou hast given
me. Now I am no more in the world, but these are
left in the world and I come to thee. Holy Father,
keep them in thy name. I pray not that thou shouldest
take them out of the world but keep them from the
Evil One. Sanctify them in thy truth. Thy word is
truth. As thou didst send me into the world so am I
sending them. Let the world know that thou didst
send me and lovest them as thou lovest me. Neither
pray I for these alone but for all them that shall believe
on me through their word. Father, I will that wheit

THE LAST SUPPER 437
I am they may be with me. O, righteous Father, the
world knew thee not, but I knew thee and these have
known that thou didst send me. Let the love where
with thou lovedst me be in them and I in them.' "
Then when they had sung a hymn, the Passover
Hallel (probably Ps. cxviii), they went out into the
Mount of Olives.

V
GETHSEMANE
THEY had to go carefully in that midnight
walk lest they be tracked to their retreat, for
danger was around them and treachery was
in the air. Peter remembers one pathetic incident as
they moved through the shadows. He had good cause
to remember it, and St. Mark heard him tell it often
in later days.
"All ye," said Jesus, " shall be offended because of
me this night, as it is written, I will smite the shepherd
and the sheep shall be scattered." Their hearts sank
within them. Was it not bad enough that one should
be a traitor? Did He mean that they would scatter
and leave Him in danger ? Peter cannot stand this.
" If every one should be offended, Lord, yet will
not I!"
" Peter, this very night before the cock crow thou
shalt three times deny that thou knowest me."
No wonder the horrified Peter should vehemently
reply, " If I were to die with thee I would not deny
thee." Likewise also said they all.
The Master in silence lets it pass. He is in no mood
for talking now. An awful oppression of soul is on
Him. He has borne up for a long time. He can bear
it no longer. There is a terrible conflict before Him
and the instinctive craving is on Him for solitude and
43»

GETHSEMANE 439
prayer. And yet — how it touches one's heart — that
natural human desire for some friendly heart near
Him. " I must go yonder and pray. But don't be
very far from me. Keep near me, you three, and
watch with me."
Then from the frightened three He hurries forward
about a stone's throw into the shadows. He must be
on His knees. The crisis of His destiny is on Him.
We would veil our faces before the eternal Christ
struggling in His mysterious agony. But it is meant
that we should see. He is on His knees now with His
face to the ground and the sweat like great drops of
blood gathering on His brow and from His tortured
soul goes up that cry of uttermost agony — many a
stricken soul has prayed it since then: Father, if it be
possible let this cup pass from me !
Who can explain for us that terrible conflict which
rent the soul of the Son of Man that night? What
was this bitter cup that He shrank from? We know
of the horrible experiences before Him next day. But
who that knows Him could imagine for a moment that
such things should have so disturbed Him? There
must have been in that hour, in some way beyond our
ken, some awful burden laid by the Sin-bearing for
human souls on the sinless soul of the Christ, some
deadly conflict with the powers of darkness that after
the Temptation " departed for a season." Was the
season over? Was the Evil One battling again in the
supreme contest with God in human flesh ?
He is struggling with Himself, struggling to bend
His human will down to the line of duty. And almost
failing, one would think. " Father, if it be possible let
the cup pass ! " Let the infidel and shallow critic carp

440 JERUSALEM
at it as weakness. To us it is the touch which brings
the human Brother beside us, a man like unto His
brethren. He is nearer and dearer to us because of it.
He would not be the same to us at all if it cost Him
nothing. That cup cannot pass. He must win His battle.
But we dare not further intrude.
% sjc :je :{: 5{s % 5[.
At last came the end and the relaxing of the tension
" Father, if this cup may not pass except I drink it,
Thy will be done." And the storm ceased and there
was a great calm.
Three times He turned from His prayer to the
friends who were to help Him by their nearness and
sympathy. And they failed Him — failed Him miser
ably every time. In the midst of His agony they were
fast asleep. And He went away and prayed the more
earnestly, and again He turned to them — and again
they were asleep. He must tread the winepress alone.
How our hearts rise gratefully to Him in His sympathy
with these poor sleepers. We know what we should
say in our hurt at such desertion. " Much they care
for me and my trouble ! " Not so Jesus. He knew
them too well. He knew it was not that they did not
care, but that they were tired men, dead tired after the
strain of that day. " The spirit is willing," He said,
" only the flesh is weak." That is the Jesus whom we
have to turn to, who can see the good in us when all
misunderstand. But they have slept too long. They should have
been on guard, knowing the danger which threatened
Him that night. He Himself is the first to see it com
ing, the flashing of lights, the sound of rough voices,

GETHSEMANE 441
the youth in the white nightrobe racing to warn Him,
the Sanhedrim police drawing near through the trees
" with lanterns and torches and weapons."
Not Roman soldiers, as usual in our pictures. It is
worth noting here that Pilate and his soldiers had
nothing to do with the arrest. Judas received " the
band and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees,"
and it was these who made the arrest. If Pilate sent
soldiers he would have to know why. If Roman sol
diers arrested Him they would take Him in charge and
lodge Him in the Roman barrack, and they certainly
would not have surrendered Him to Jewish priests to
judge Him. The guilt must fall entirely on the Jews.
The Roman law never touched Jesus till the Jews
brought Him into Pilate's court.
" Lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand ! " Judas has
chosen his time well. That midnight visit to Geth
semane gave him the chance he wanted. The disciples
are caught off guard and surrounded. And now the
traitor throwing off all disguise comes forward into the
light. In all the infamous story of Judas is nothing
more infamous than this signal of his to the police,
" Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is He. Seize
Him and hold Him fast." And he came forward in
friendly greeting and said, " Hail, Master ! " and kissed
Him! For the honour of our poor humanity one
would like to believe that our race of itself could not
sink quite so low, that it was because " Satan entered
into him."
But the honour of our humanity is not safe with any
of them just now. Jesus came forward and surren
dered Himself. " Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth. I am
He. You have no charge against these. Let these go
their way." So they let them go. And they went!

442 JERUSALEM
they went! Though Peter rushed in blustering to
slice off Malchus' ear, panic seized them all. It is a
pitiful, almost incredible tale. " Then all the disciples
forsook Him and fled."

VI
A JEWISH INVESTIGATION
SO He is led away, majestic, alone, with the hands
of the rough Temple guard on His shoulders.
Did the traitor go with them exulting in His
success? Or did he suddenly, horror-struck by his
sin, slink away like our first parents " amongst the
trees of the garden " ? Jesus had looked him straight
in the face. " Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man
with a kiss ! " Had his hell already begun ?
They led Jesus away to Annas first, the ex-primate
of the Jewish Church, that covetous old priest whose
family, so the Talmud says, were making a fortune out
of the degradation of the Temple. Jesus had called it
" a den of thieves." Annas would not forget that.
This was no court, only an informal gathering of coun
cillors as they were assembling waiting for the Sanhe
drim court to open at dawn. There in the dead of night
with no friend to see fair play they tried to wring out
of Him some ground of accusation. Annas began to
question Him of His disciples and His teaching. To
which Jesus replies: " What need of this questioning?
I have spoken openly to the world, in the Temple and
in the synagogue, where these councillors here were
usually present. Ask these what I said."
The old priest looked offended. He was not accus-
443

444 JERUSALEM
tomed to such talk, and one of the officers of the court
noticing this slapped the prisoner across the face.
" How dare you answer the high priest so ! " One
remembers a similar scene in the trial of St. Paul when
the high priest commanded them to smite him on the
mouth and Paul lost his temper, " God shall smite thee,
thou whited wall ! " But this was not Paul. With
quiet dignity Jesus replies: " If I have spoken evil bear
witness of the evil, if not why smitest thou me? "
They did not get much out of this secret enquiry.
" Take Him away," said Annas, " to be judged by
Caiaphas and the Sanhedrim court." And again one
sees what chance He had of a fair trial. " Now Caia
phas," says St. John, " was he who gave counsel to the
Jews that one man should die for the people."
So Jesus was led down the stairs to cross the open
courtyard where the police and the servants were gos-
sipping around the fire. And in that open courtyard
was tragedy for one of His disciples. Peter and John,
ashamed of running away, had returned cautiously to
the house of Annas to see what would happen. John
was known to the servants, perhaps through his pre
vious fishing trade, and got permission to bring in
Peter. But the sharp portress at the gate recognized
Peter as he passed. "Art thou not one of this fellow's
disciples ? " Peter, taken suddenly, answered with a
lie. " No, I am not." But the girl was not satisfied.
She muttered her suspicions as he hurried past to lose
himself in the group around the fire. He was warm
ing himself at the fire and pretending to be at ease.
But that girl would not let him alone. " Certainly you
are one of them," cried several voices. " You are a
Galilean. Your accent betrays you."

A JEWISH INVESTIGATION 445
" Certainly I am not," he excitedly replies, " I don't
know what you are talking about."
Now came a worse fright. One very dangerous
man was studying him closely, a kinsman of Malchus,
whose ear Peter had cut off.
" Did I not see thee in the garden with Him ? "
In the old fisher-days Peter could probably swear as
well as another and now in his fright the old habit
caught him. He began to curse and to swear. " I do
not even know the man ! "
But the curses froze on his lips. Even before he
turned round he felt that he had been overheard.
For just at this moment Jesus was being led bound
through the court on His way to the Council. And a
cock was crowing outside in the early dawn. "And the
Lord turned and looked upon Peter. And Peter went
out and wept bitterly."
Now Jesus faces a more important enquiry. The
court of the Sanhedrim is assembled in the council-
room within the Temple bounds and Caiaphas the high
priest is in the president's chair.
Volumes have been written about the Sanhedrim
court and its wise humane provisions against the mis
carriage of justice in the days when it had the power of
life and death. And Christian writers arguing from
this have declaimed against the shameless illegality of
this trial of Jesus. And sceptics have doubted the ac
curacy of the Gospels since it seems inconceivable that
any court should conduct such a travesty of its own
legal system. The real situation seems to be that this
was not a criminal trial at all but rather what we
should call a " Grand Jury " investigation to prepare an
indictment for submission to the Roman court. The

446 JERUSALEM
power of life and death was not allowed to the San
hedrim at this time. Recent writers on Roman law es
pecially since the discovery of the Oxyrinchus papyri,
inform us that it could never occur to a Roman mind
at this period that any person in a Roman province
could be tried for his life by any but Roman authority.
This court of Caiaphas then was a " Grand Jury " to
prepare a charge for the prosecution in the Roman
court. And they must present a charge that would
appeal to Pilate. Ecclesiastical offenses, Sabbath
breaking or rebellion against the hierarchy or casting
out devils through Beelzebub would be laughed out of
court. They were in a difficulty. Even with false
witnesses the best they could get was a charge that He
had threatened to pull down the Temple. He had said
something like that and it might be made a charge of
revolutionary intention and Pilate would have to pay
attention to it, for he himself had got into trouble at
headquarters for offenses against the Jewish temple.
But it would not make a strong case. Could not they
get something from the Prisoner Himself that would
tell with the Governor ?
But Jesus held His peace, protesting nothing, ex
plaining nothing. And this silence angered them.
The high priest sprang up in fierce impatience. " Why
don't you answer? You hear what these are witness
ing against you." But Jesus held His peace. It
would almost seem as if the blustering Caiaphas was
growing uneasy. There seems something of fear and
awe in that solemn appeal, " I adjure thee by the Liv
ing God to tell us whether thou art Messiah the Son of
the Blessed?"
And Jesus said, " I am, and one day ye shall see
the Son of Man seated on the right hand of power and

A JEWISH INVESTIGATION 447
coming in the clouds of heaven." Then the high priest
rent his clothes. What further need have we of wit
nesses? Ye have heard His blasphemy? What is
your sentence? And they all condemned Him to be
worthy of death.
So the investigation ended. They had not a very
good case yet, but it was the best they could do. Blas
phemy would not count for much in a Roman court.
But it would count for something, for the wise Roman
Government had ordered Pilate to be careful in the
more serious matters of Jewish religion. But " I am
the Messiah " might count for much. The govern
ment had had serious troubles with false Messiahs be
fore now.
And then — a horrible thing that we hate to tell.
The court became a bear-garden. They flung the Pris
oner about as only an Eastern mob could do. "And
some began to spit on Him and to blindfold Him and
to buffet Him, crying, Prophesy to us, thou Messiah,
who is he that smote thee? And the officers received
Him with blows of their hands."
Caiaphas and the council saw it and held their
peace. Probably Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus
saw it — and could do nothing. And I think Judas
Iscariot saw it and went mad. For this seems the only
place where this incident of Judas will fit in. " Judas
Iscariot when he saw that He was condemned, repented
himself." As the procession moves forth to Pilate's court with
the bound Prisoner in their midst I see a demented man,
haggard and dishevelled, struggling in the grasp of the
Temple police, shouting fiercely at the priests, flinging
his fistfuls of silver on the marble floor at their feet.

448 JERUSALEM
Conscience at last has the wretched traitor by the
throat. The horrors of hell are upon Him. As the
police throw him contemptuously out into the street, I
see him rushing away as if ridden by demons, away
through the streets, through the lonely roads, away to
the desolate Field of the Potters.
" O God ! I kissed Him with the traitor's kiss ! I
thought they might not condemn Him. I thought the
people might save Him. I thought He would save
Himself. I have sinned! I have betrayed the inno
cent blood ! I sold Him for thirty pieces of silver ! I
threw it at their feet, but they did not care. Nobody
cares now. Except Jesus — and I have sent Him to
His death. He knew I would betray Him but He
risked His life and kept me near Him. And I kissed
Him with the traitor's kiss ! "
Then the end. " He departed and went and hanged
himself." The only decent thing in the whole infa
mous transaction.
He might have done better than hang himself. Yes.
He might in his madness have attempted a rescue on
the Calvary road and died for Jesus on a Roman spear.
He might have flung himself in his remorse at the foot
of the Cross and let Jesus do to him what He would.
Yes. He might have done better. Suicide is itself
a crime. But he might have done worse too — a great
deal worse. He might have endured to live on and
brave out his sin and curried favour with the priests
and persuaded himself he had done well for Church
and State. He might have kept his pieces of silver and
added to them and grown rich and fat and comfortable
and damned his soul ten times deeper. And because
he did not, because he had at least the grace to feel that
he was too bad to live and to go out and hang himself

A JEWISH INVESTIGATION 449
— we cannot help, deep down in our hearts, thinking a
little better of him and hoping that God, maybe,
thought a little better of him too.
So Judas passed through the " Traitors Gate " out
into another world. " He went to his own place."
Many have speculated about that place. Better let it
rest. If any sin could damn a man his sin should. If
ever any hope for him arises in our hearts it is not
because of anything in the character of Judas but of
something that we cannot help clinging to in the nature
of Christ.

VII
THE ROMAN LAW COURT
I AM thinking of an old friend who in his schoolboy
historical essays had only two designations, "The
best man that ever lived " or " The worst man
that ever lived." He knew only blacks and whites.
And the histories of Jesus are too often vitiated by
such tendency. Now you cannot write true history
that way. There are none utterly black in human ex
perience. And none utterly white — save One.
Pilate had very bad faults, the chief one affecting the
trial of Jesus being his anxious dread of that jealous
old emperor at Rome. But he was a fair judge — and
more — he was in sympathy with his Prisoner and tried
to save Him.
The procession of priests and elders and scribes
soon forgot the interruption of Judas as they moved
on to the Praetorium where Pilate held his court. This
was the real trial which should decide the Prisoner's
fate. It was now about seven o'clock in the morning and
as soon as preliminaries were arranged the governor
opened court. At once we feel in a new atmosphere,
calm, dignified, judicial. In a Roman law court unless
we know to the contrary we may always assume a fair
45<>

THE ROMAN LAW COURT 451
trial. The prisoner's interests are carefully looked
after. All writers on Roman law emphasize this. In
the trial of St. Paul, later on, Festus lays down the gen
eral principle. " There is a certain man left prisoner
by Felix about whom the chief priests and elders of
the Jews informed me, asking for sentence against him.
To whom I answered that it is not the custom of the
Romans to give up any man before that the accused
have the accusers face to face and have had opportu
nity to make his defense." This principle of fair play
was firmly established in Roman procedure. There
fore one must hesitate before accepting the widely
made charges of unfairness and illegality in this trial
before Pilate.
The evangelists are reporting varying traditions of
the trial. It is not always easy to reconcile them or to
fit in the questions and answers. Taking as a basis the
usual procedure of Roman law courts in the provinces,
let us try to construct the trial.
The scene is in the open air, the courtyard of
Pilate's palace. There is the governor on the judg
ment seat, alert and soldier-like, with the imperious at
titude of a ruling race. He dislikes and fears those
troublesome Jews who have got him into difficulties
more than once. He has a Roman's scorn for their
provincial religious bigotries, but he has stern orders
from Rome not to irritate them unnecessarily.
Now the Roman law had no place for a public prose
cutor. Charges must be brought by citizens before the
law can act. The Sanhedrim representatives are be
fore him as prosecutors and the judge opens proceed
ings with the usual set question :
" What accusation bring ye against this man ? "

452 JERUSALEM
It has been argued from this that he knew nothing
about Jesus, which is very improbable. At any rate,
this proves nothing. It is the formal opening question.
One does not understand the rather impertinent reply,
"If he were not a malefactor we would not have
brought him here." Perhaps not having a good case
they were fighting for time. Pilate promptly rebukes
them. " If ye have no serious indictment to lay before this
court, if it be some matter of your national customs,
take Him and judge Him yourselves."
" It is not permitted to us," they reply, " to put any
man to death."
Which indicates at once that they are arraigning
Him on a capital charge. Whereupon Pilate insists
on a definite indictment, probably in writing. This is
what that careful historian St. Luke has got for us:
" We have found that this man is (1) perverting the
nation, (2) forbidding tribute to Caesar, (3) saying
that He Himself is Messiah — a King."
The first charge is ambiguous. They probably hope
it will pass unnoticed. The second is clearly untrue.
Jesus has almost said the opposite. The third is a dan
gerous charge under the Julian law of treason and
Pilate is bound to take it very seriously.
According to the custom of the court he calls on the
accused to plead " Guilty or not guilty ? Art thou the
King of the Jews ? " Jesus sees the ambiguity of the
question: "Sayest thou this thing of thyself or is it
what others tell thee ? Do you ask if I claim to be king
in your sense of the word or are you referring to Jew
ish reports of my being Messiah? "
"Am I a Jew ? " is the scornful retort. " What care
I for your Jewish reports ? Thine own nation and the

THE ROMAN LAW COURT 453
chief of the priests have brought thee before me.
What hast thou done? Art thou a king? "
" Yes," said Jesus, " I am, but my kingdom is not of
this world, else would my servants fight."
Pilate wants a more explicit answer. " Thy king
dom ? Art thou then a king ? "
"Yes, I am a king, the King of all truth-seekers.
Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice."
"Truth!" scoffs the contemptuous Roman, "who
shall say what is truth ? "
But he has evidently come to the conclusion that this
Messiah does not really design any overt action against
Rome. Then he seems to have conferred with the prosecu
tors. " I find no fault in Him," that is, no real ground
for this charge of treason. This is usually called a
verdict of acquittal and it is claimed that it should
have ended the trial. So it should, and probably would,
if it were a verdict of acquittal. What Pilate probably
meant was that though Jesus did claim to be Messiah
and did not disclaim being a king, and though His fol
lowers and fellow-countrymen interpreted this as re
bellion against the Roman power, yet he, Pilate, be
lieved they were mistaken and that Jesus had no inten
tion of rebellion against the Empire. Technically He
could be brought in guilty but He really was innocent
of treasonable intent. Therefore Pilate wished the
prosecutors not to press the charge.
They insisted on pressing it. Jesus' confession cou
pled with His followers' belief brought Him within the
Julian law of treason. They could get His condemna
tion on that and they felt that they could force Pilate's
hand by playing on his dread of the emperor. " Whoso
maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar."

454 JERUSALEM
It is easy to say that Pilate should have ignored
them. So he should. But it needed some courage.
He knew that there was nothing which the Roman
Government more dreaded than an assumption of Mes
siahship in Palestine. It had cost them dearly already.
And he could see in his mind's eye the charge that
might go before Tiberius Caesar, with whom he was no
favourite. " This man confessed in open court that
he claimed to be Messiah. There is clear evidence
that the Jewish people and his own followers inter
preted this as revolution. Against this was only Pi
late's private opinion that the man himself did not
really mean all that his followers thought he did. And
on this private opinion and against this evidence he has
set the man free." Pilate was really in an embarrass
ing position. He might be forced on technical grounds
to pronounce the death sentence against his own con
viction. Now comes a dramatic little incident in the trial, the
page boy bringing a note from the Governor's wife,
" Have thou nothing to do with this just man, for I
have suffered many things this night in a dream be
cause of Him." Dreams and omens would startle the
bravest of Romans. Julius Caesar was murdered be
cause he neglected Calpurnia's dream. That letter did
not make Pilate happier.
And still the clamour went on around him. " He
stirreth up the people beginning in Galilee." In his
perplexity he catches at the word Galilee: " Is the man
a Galilean ? Of Herod's jurisdiction ? Could I throw
my responsibility on Herod who is in Jerusalem just
now ? "
So he sent him to Herod. Perhaps the Galilean

THE ROMAN LAW COURT 455
ruler will be interested in the Galilean prophet and ex
press an opinion. But that wily old Jew was too clever
to be caught. He was not going to mix himself up
with a treason trial. And the Prisoner's lofty attitude
vexed him. Jesus would not open His lips to the Bap
tist's murderer. So Herod and his officers set Him at
naught and put an old purple robe on Him in mockery
of His kingship and sent Him back. There is no es
cape for Pilate that way.
In the interval of waiting the position has grown
worse. The priests have been exciting the people.
Now Pilate is getting nervous and losing his grip. In
a weak moment he appeals to the people. " Ye have a
custom that I should release to you one prisoner at the
Passover. Will you have Jesus of Nazareth ? " " No ! "
cried the mob with a fierce, angry shout. " Not this
man, but Barabbas ! Barabbas ! Barabbas ! Barabbas ! "
Why Barabbas ? Evidently because Barabbas was a
political prisoner in jail for insurrection. Though it
was but some petty brawl, at any rate he had had the
courage to strike against Rome, and the sympathy of
the mob was with any man who was " against the
government." The real offense of Jesus in their eyes
was that He had not been in insurrection as they had
hoped. And probably in his heart Pilate knew it.
The responsibility of decision is thrown back on him.
He hesitates. And in such a position he who hesitates
is lost The rough soldiers are beginning to feel
ashamed for him and longing to hear a curt soldierly
order to clear this rabble out of the court. He has to
decide and he has not the heart to decide bravely. In
his perplexity he utters the question that has been trou
bling him all the morning:
"What shall I do with Jesus which is called Christ?"

456 JERUSALEM
The mob knew very well what they wanted done
with Him. The fierce cry rings out, " Let Him be
crucified ! " Ah ! but they have not had the troubling
thoughts about Him that Pilate had. This silent Pris
oner has strangely impressed him. He has talked to
Him and conferred with Him. He does not know
what to think of Him. He has never seen any one
like Him before. There is a look in those eternal eyes
which he cannot understand, attracting him towards
something beautiful and high, yet repelling him with a
sense of awe and mystery. His wife's strange dream
too stirs superstitious fear in him.
" Crucify Him ! Crucify Him ! "
Pilate's temper is roused. " I will not crucify Him.
I will scourge Him and let Him go ! "
So the order goes to the guard-room and soon the
white exhausted Prisoner is strapped to the scourging
post and His blood is flowing and His nerves are quiv
ering under the brutal lash of the executioner. Surely
the lowest scum of the Roman soldiery were in the bar
rack room that morning! Who else could have the
heart for horse-play with that silent, tortured Man?
They crushed a wreath of thorns upon His brow.
They flung Herod's purple cloak again over His bleed
ing shoulders. They put a reed in His right hand and
mocked Him, crying, Hail, King of the Jews !
Just then Pilate (we hope not knowing what they
had done) was making his last appeal for pity. He
ordered his Prisoner out before the people. "Then
came Jesus forth wearing the crown of thorns and the
purple robe and Pilate said unto them, Behold the
Man!" Was ever such a moment on this earth before ! The

THE ROMAN LAW COURT 457
Eternal Christ of God, who had come to die for man,
standing in patient dignity bleeding and mocked before
the lowest of His creatures. Had they no heart — no
pity? Had " Satan entered into them " too?
"Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"
Pilate stands watching Him, wondering and per
plexed. And now come back again his superstitious
fears as a clear accusing voice rings out across the
court :
" He ought to die because He made Himself the Son
of God!"
The Son of God! "Then was Pilate the more
afraid and entered again into the palace and asked
Him, ' Whence art thou ? ' But Jesus gave him no
answer." It was too late for answers now.
And this seems to make him the more afraid still.
" Speakest thou not to me ? Knowest thou not that I
have the power to crucify or release thee ? "
As a superior condescending to an inferior, as a
judge trying to make some little allowance for a cul
prit, Jesus speaks:
" Thou couldest have no power against me except it
were given thee from above. Bad as thou art they that
delivered me to thee have greater sin than thine."
What shall Pilate do with this Jesus which is called
Christ? He wants to stand by Him. His conscience
tells him he ought. But before his mind's eye is that
fierce old Tiberius, cruel, irritable, suspicious. He is
conscious of the implied threat in that challenge of the
Jews: If thou let this man go thou art not Caesar's
friend. What shall he do ? At any rate he will try to
save his face and throw back the responsibility where it
belongs. " When he saw that he prevailed nothing,
but rather that a tumult was arising, he took water and

458 JERUSALEM
washed his hands before the multitude, saying, ' I am
innocent of the blood of this righteous man. See ye
to it.' And all the people answered and said, His
blood be on us and on our children ! "
We need not go on. We know the end. How the
poor coward with the eyes of Jesus resting on him in
this great crisis of his decision gave up the struggle.
" Then he delivered Him unto them to be crucified."
That is what Pilate did with Jesus who was called
Christ. And for that dastard act he has stood in the
pillory for two thousand years wherever the Christian
creed is said, " Suffered under Pontius Pilate."

vm
CALVARY
THEY have laid Him unresisting on that rough
black cross. Through His hands and feet
they drive the cruel spikes. Now by com
bined effort the cross is lifted up and dropped into its
socket, tearing through nerve and muscle in the merci
less shock. And the Son of God in His awful pain is
looking forth — on the fair city that has cast Him out
to die, and the soldiers at His feet throwing dice for
His clothes and the priests brutally exulting in their
victory and the holiday crowd out to see the spectacle.
The world in miniature is there before Him — the world
for which He is dying.
"And the world knew Him not." One day it shall
know. And the meaning of it all. And down through
the centuries that horrible black cross, emblem of
shame and ignominy unspeakable, shall be the sign of
the noblest thought that has ever touched humanity, the
emblem of the self-sacrifice of God.
" And the people stood beholding." Ah, be fair to
that people ! It was not a multitude all hostile to Jesus.
We are not all utterly bad. Jesus trusted us. He
thought us worth His self-sacrifice. We should not be
worth saving at all if we were as bad as some tell us.
We are told that one cannot trust the good instincts of
humanity. That the crowd who cried Hosanna in the
459

460 JERUSALEM
Palm Sunday procession was the crowd that cried
afterwards, Let Him be crucified ! Don't you believe
it! That fanatic priest-ridden Jerusalem rabble does
not represent the big heart of the multitude who even if
they did not follow Him admired Him and championed
Him and would not let the Pharisees lay their wicked
hands on Him. God has a bigger grip than that on the
heart of humanity. There were sorrowful crowds
from Galilee who remembered the dear old Capernaum
days, and thoughtful strangers from all over the world
whom He had roused for the moment to nobler think
ing, and a Roman centurion who deemed Him a Son
of God, and daughters of Jerusalem who wept and la
mented Him, and the multitude who were beating
their breasts as they returned — not to speak at all of
His close followers who were breaking their hearts.
Jesus was not altogether deserted in His pain.
But that Calvary crowd presenting the world in
miniature in its attitude to the Christ held also preju
diced bitter enemies and the Evangelists in their sore
ness give them special prominence. There were taunts
and jeers and triumphant sneering that He had met the
fate which He deserved and the priests and Pharisees
and leaders of the Jews were not ashamed to demean
themselves by shouting with the rabble: "If thou be
the Son of God come down now from the cross ! Let
this Christ, this King of Israel, come down that we may
believe ! He saved others, Himself He cannot save ! "
He hears it. He knows it. Himself He cannot,
must not save. But His heart is troubled for these
mockers. He thinks not of Himself in His mortal
anguish, but of them in their meanness and degradation
and sin. At last He breaks the silence. From men in

CALVARY 461
all their sinfulness He turns with trustful heart to the
great Father who made them.
" Father, forgive them ; they know not what they
do!" Behold the revelation of the heart of God! He is
too great to bear grudges. He is troubled and con
cerned for them rather than angry, concerned that they
are showing up worse than they really are. Think of
the generous heart of that dying Jesus who could actu
ally try to find an excuse — not merely forgive — not
merely pray for — but actually try to find something to
say in their favour. There was very little that could
be said, but He looked for it and said it. Their preju
dice, their upbringing, their ignorance about Him.
They do not know what they are doing. If they real
ized it they would not do it. Father, forgive !
We must all stand before the Judgment seat of God.
But it is something to remember of Him who made
allowance even for these : " We believe that thou shalt
come to be our Judge."
Surely they did not hear Him. The mockers
themselves could hardly be proof against that. In that
uproar of shouting and mockery and derision only
those very close to the Cross could have heard.
One at least heard. With astonishment and awe.
And it seems to have touched a long silent chord un
touched perhaps since his childhood and his mother.
" Now there were two malefactors crucified with Jesus,
one at His right hand, another at His left." Both
joined at first in the mockery of this " Messiah."
What use a Messiah if not a Messiah of the sword?
" If thou be Messiah save thyself and us ! " Now one
is growing silent. I see him grim and stubborn, scowl-

462 JERUSALEM
ing at the crowd, too busy with his own pain to think
of Another's. Then that brave, silent dignity begins
to touch him. The magnetism of Jesus is drawing
him. His heart misgives him, he is ashamed of him
self, ashamed of that coward crowd mocking a helpless
man. And then — it happened. Jesus speaks, and that rob
ber holds his breath as he hears, not cries of pain or
curses that come so easily to himself. " They do not
know what they are doing. Father forgive ! " And
lo ! a miracle. In an instant the man is changed, sud
denly converted! The beauty of the Christ character
has done for him in a moment what all the remedial
legislation of the Empire had failed to do in years —
wakened within him a reverence for the good, a sorrow
for the past, a dim dawning of beautiful ideals. And
with it an awe and wonder at this mysterious Messiah
crucified for calling Himself the Son of God. A Jeru
salem criminal would have heard talk about His claims
and His Kingdom. That is what they are killing Him
for. Who is He, this Man of Mystery ? What is He ?
Again his companion joins in the reviling. No won
der with such an example before him. Gray-haired
priests, learned scribes, venerable doctors of the law.
No wonder he should revile. But that grim, silent
comrade of his will stand it no longer. " Dost thou
not fear God with thyself in the same condemnation?
And we indeed justly. We get the due reward of our
deeds. But this Man hath done nothing amiss ! "
See the high possibilities of a poor human soul
touched into beauty by contact with Christ. Rever
ence, penitence, humility — then angry, unselfish cham
pioning of the Sufferer beside him — then higher still,
that strange instinct of faith, the conviction that this is

CALVARY 463
no ordinary man. He is fainting in his agony. Death
is drawing near, whatever death may mean, uncon
sciousness, nothingness — he does not know. From his
frightened heart goes forth the desperate cry, " Jesus,
remember me when thou comest in thy Kingdom ! "
And the heart of Jesus went out to the poor soul,
the first fruits of His death for men. He can scarce
turn His head to look at him. His parched lips can
hardly form the words. But there is the majesty of a
king in that response of the dying Christ. " Verily I
say unto thee, This day shalt thou be with me in Para
dise." So came to that poor robber forgiveness and peace
and a promise of life at the other side of death. If
any one knew Jesus knew. If He meant anything He
meant this : " To-night when our dead bodies are hang
ing on the cross you and I will be together in that
World of the Departed and we shall recognize each
other as the two men who hung upon the cross this
morning." Three hours later He, the Lord of that
World, passed in and waited for the dying thief.
Twice already has He broken the silence. First as
a priest, and never had men so generous a priest as
He, interceding for those who were pursuing Him to
His death. Then as a King, speaking right royal
words, promising a poor robber a share in His King
dom. And now we hear Him speak again, not as a
priest nor as a king, but as the human Son of Man in
His dying hour with a mother and a friend to think of
and human obligations to discharge towards them.
It is blazing noontide. Three hours of torment have
passed. The shouting has ceased. The people are
getting tired of the show and scattering over the hill.

464 JERUSALEM
By the cross stand the soldiers in the sweltering heat
with their centurion sitting his horse still as a statue.
They do not mind that a little group who had " stood
afar off " should draw near now at the end to see their
Friend die.
So " there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother,"
with her friends. She has no care for scorn or mock
ery, no eyes for the stately rabbis as they pass. She is
the mother. No one shall hold her back. There is no
earthly comfort for her now but to be near Him,
though she may not even wipe His brow or cool His
burning lips. There she stands in her tearless pain, the
Mater Dolorosa with " the sword piercing through her
heart," with her whole soul in agonized gaze on His
face who hangs above her. He is Messiah. He is her
Lord. She does not forget that, though the mystery
is beyond her. But just now above all else He is her
son, the infant who lay upon her breast long ago, the
bright brave Boy of the Nazareth workshop, the youth
who worked for her when her husband died.
It was awful to look at Him thus. Yes. And no
one knew it better than He Himself. It was no place
for her now as the crisis of His agony drew near. In
all His pain, in all His great thoughts for the world's
redemption and the glory that is to come, He is not
too occupied to think of His widowed mother about to
be doubly widowed now. His dying eyes are on the
two in that little group, the mother who bore Him, the
comrade who was closest to Him in life and in death.
"Mother, behold thy son! Son, behold thy
mother ! " "And from that hour that disciple took her
to his own home."
So, gently, lovingly, thoughtfully, He detaches

CALVARY 465
Himself from the last earthly ties and turns alone to
face the deeper, more terrible experience yet to come.
It is impossible for human thought to understand or
conceive the horror of the next three hours, when to
the torture of bodily pain is added the unspeakable
mental agony of some mysterious spiritual struggle.
Fittingly it is covered by darkness, the darkness per
haps of the coming earthquake. A dense gray haze is
deepening over the scene; the outline of Olivet, the
towers and domes of Jerusalem grow dim and indis
tinct. " Now from the sixth hour there was darkness
over all the land until the ninth hour."
Was it a sign of God's displeasure, a protest of Na
ture against the wickedness of that day when they tried
to put out the Light of the World? Was it a reverent
veil over that mysterious struggle ? Was it a last con
science call to the city and people ? Darkness over all
the land.
No man saw Him in that crisis of His agony. We
are told that the three hours of darkness were hours of
silence. Not till the close, which was the close of His
life, was the silence broken by that cry which told how
those hours of darkness had been spent. It made a
tremendous impression on the Watchers of the Cross.
It is the only word from the Cross preserved in the
first two Gospels. It is the only one in which the
very syllables uttered have been recorded, as if the
hearers could never get them out of their heads.
Three hours of silence, of darkness, of struggle un
speakable, and then that great cry of unutterable relief.
" About the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice,
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani. My God ! My God! why
didst Thou forsake me! "
A cry, I repeat, of unutterable relief. Not " Why

466 JERUSALEM
hast Thou forsaken me." The Greek of the Gospels
uses the aorist tense, " Why didst thou." It is over
now. The relief is come. But it was utter forsaken
abandonment while it lasted. "My God! My God,
why didst thou ! "
Think of the daring confident honesty of the Gos
pels which recorded that cry alone as the last word of
the dying Christ. No wonder that infidels should
fasten upon it. The noble young enthusiast found His
mistake at the end. He had sacrificed all for a splen
did idea. He hoped all along that God would acknowl
edge Him. But inexorable death taught Him His
error and His last terrible cry was a cry of despair and
disillusion. God had forsaken Him. His splendid
self-sacrifice was in vain. No Christ was He.
Who are we that we should understand the deep se
crets of the Almighty? We know that the Crucified
One was the eternal Son of God. If we reverently try
to conjecture the meaning we see but one key to the
mystery: that He was the Divine Sin-bearer of the
world's sin. We may not be able to pronounce exactly
what that means. We may differ about our theories
of Atonement. But we at least believe that " God
made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin," that
" His own self bare our sins in His own body on the
tree," that " He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of
our peace was upon Him and by His stripes we are
healed." Somewhere here lies the secret of the awful three
hours' struggle, the cup for whose passing, if it be
possible, He had prayed in Gethsemane, to the drinking
of which He had there devoted Himself.

CALVARY 467
Further than this we presume not. We know at
least that it was for us He suffered this abandonment.
Yet once Immanuel's orphaned cry His universe hath
shaken ;
It went up single, echoless. My God I am forsaken !
It went up from His holy lips amid His lost creation
That no man else need ever cry that cry of desolation.
Now. that the supreme spiritual struggle is over the
bodily craving asserts itself. It is a sign that His
spirit is at rest. As in the dread forty days of the
Temptation, He never thought of food, but when the
strain was off " He was afterwards an hungered," so
it is here. How truly human He is ! And how win
some is His frank trustfulness in the innate kindliness
of a rude Roman soldier. He said to him, " I thirst."
And immediately a sponge of vinegar is raised to His
dying lips. One would like to be that soldier who
brought it.
Then cometh the end. The six hours on the Cross
have worn out His strength. The pulse of life is beat
ing very low. But He is at rest in unspeakable relief.
Reverently one imagines His quick vision of the past :
the commission from the Father, the types and
shadows, the ancient prophecies, the helpless world, the
rejected love, the agony and bloody sweat, the Cross
and passion, the laving down His life for these poor
human brethren. " It is Finished ! " He cries in the
glad confidence of a work well done. It is finished!
It is accomplished! Father, into Thy hands I com
mend my spirit. " And having said thus He gave up
His spirit."
But not to rest, or die, or go to Heaven. His earth

468 JERUSALEM
adventure is not yet completed. He would bring His
victor tidings into the spirit-world to tell the men of
earth who have crossed the border.
So comes another chapter in the Life of Christ, and
we, standing on tiptoe on the edge of the world, look
out over the wall to try with wondering hearts to
follow Him in thought into that new adventure in the
Hereafter.

IX
A LOST CHAPTER IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST
THIS journey of the Lord into the world of the
Dead has been made a prominent article of
the Christian faith. Unfortunately, in our
stupid conservatism, we retain the phrase as in our
early Prayer-books, " He descended into Hell," and
therefore people misunderstand and avoid it. And so
this solemn statement has become " The Lost Article
of the Creed," and popular theology leaves out the
most wonderful chapter in the life of Jesus amongst
men. In the innocent early English " the hell " meant
the Unseen, the "covered in." In the old English
game of forfeits, " the hell " was where laughing girls
hid to escape being kissed, and to this day I believe in
the country parts of Devon a thatcher who " covers
in," is still called a " hellier." Theologians are not
always blessed with common sense. The old phrase,
with its terrible later meaning, remains in the Creed,
and each generation of children has to be taught that
it should read, " He descended into the Unseen, into
the world of the Departed, in the great waiting life
after death."
Men ask, Where passed the Spirit of Jesus when He
died ? " Straight to Heaven," one says. " Nay,"
said the Lord Himself after the Resurrection, " I have
not yet ascended to My Father." Where, then, did
His spirit go? 469

470 JERUSALEM
" Nobody can tell." Yes, one Person could tell, and
only one — He only could have told of His solitary
temptation in the wilderness and He evidently told it.
He only could have told of His visit to the world of
the departed, and evidently He told it. After the
Resurrection He was with them forty days, teaching
the things concerning the Kingdom of God. In these
unrecorded teachings He surely told them this. Why ?
Because the knowledge of it was so widespread in the
early Church and there was no one else to tell it.
There is a popular notion that we have only some
obscure verses of St. Peter and St. Paul in favour of
such teaching. Not at all. St. Peter and St. Paul
were only two in the crowd of teachers of the early
days, who proclaimed triumphantly this visit of the
Lord to the World of Departed Men.
St. Peter is thinking of it in his first sermon, " His
soul was not left in Hades." That by itself would
prove nothing. But when I find the same St. Peter,
long afterwards, telling circumstantially in his First
Epistle (iii. 18) that when his Master was put to
death in the flesh He was made more alive in His
spirit, in which spirit He went and preached to the
spirits in safe-keeping, " for which cause was the glad
news preached to them that are dead" (iv. 6), it
seems a fair inference that Peter had some definite in
formation. Then I find St. Paul (Eph. iv. 9) writing
of the gifts bestowed by the ascended Lord. The word
" ascended " causes him to pause abruptly. " Now
that He ascended, what is it but that He descended first
into the lower parts of the earth (i. e., the world of the
departed) , that He might fill all things ? " Hades and
Heaven alike had felt the glory of His presence.

A LOST CHAPTER IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST 471
But far more convincing is the fact that immediately
after the Apostles' days in the first Christian literature
outside the New Testament, we find the knowledge
widespread in the Church. We read the writings of
the ancient bishops and teachers beginning at the death
of St. John, the very men on whom we depend for
information as to Baptism and Holy Communion and
the authenticity of the Gospels, and there we find
prominent in their teaching the Gospel of the Lord's
visit to the world of the Dead.
For example, Justin Martyr, who was born about
the time of St. John's death, feels so strongly about
the Descent into Hades that he actually charges the
Jews with mutilating a prophecy of Jeremiah fore
telling it.
Irenaeus, the famous Bishop of Lyons in France,
a little later tells how the Lord entered the world of
the dead preaching to the departed and all who had
hopes in Him and submitted to His dispensations re
ceived remission of sins.
Then away in Egypt hear St. Clement of Alexan
dria, born about fifty years after St. John's death. He
has most interesting little touches in his chapter on the
descent into the world of the dead. He asserts as the
direct teaching of Scripture that Jesus preached the
Gospel to the dead, and he thinks that the souls of the
Apostles must have taken up the same work when they
died, and that not merely to Jews and saints but to the
heathen as well, as was only fair, he says, since they
had no chance of knowing.
St. Clement's great disciple, Origen, comes next.
His evidence comes in curiously. A famous infidel
named Celsus is laughing at this widespread belief of
the Church. " I suppose your Master when He failed

472 JERUSALEM
to persuade the living, had to try if He could persuade
the dead." Origen meets the question straight.
" Whether it please Celsus or no, we of the Church as
sert that the soul of our Lord, stript of its body, held
converse with other souls, that He might convert those
capable of instruction."
In Western Africa this teaching is presented by an
other great teacher, Tertullian. In Jerusalem, Cyril,
the bishop, in his Catechetical Lectures teaches it with
a ring of gladness and triumph. He sees Christ not
only with the souls who had once been disobedient but
also in blessed intercourse with the strugglers after
right who had never seen His face on earth. He pic
tures how the holy prophets crowded to the Lord —
how Moses and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and
Samuel and John the Baptist ran to Him with the cry,
" O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy
victory? For the Conqueror hath redeemed us ! " *
So we find our " Lost Chapter " in the Life of Jesus.
It was one of the glad notes in the Gospel harmony in
the purest and most loving days of the Church, the
days nearest our Lord and His Apostles. It was a
note of triumph. It told of the tender thoughtful love
of Christ for the faithful souls who had never seen
Him. It told of the universality of His Atonement.
It told of Victory beyond this life — that He who came
to seek and to save men's souls on earth had carried
His " good news " into the world of the dead while
His body lay in the grave. That He passed into the
Unseen as Saviour and Conqueror. That His banner
was unfurled and His cross set up in the world of
departed men. That the souls of the ancient world
1 Sec Plumptre " The Spirits in Prison."

A LOST CHAPTER IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST 473
might turn to Him and live. That the spirits of old-
world saints and prophets had welcomed Him with re
joicing. That even men of lower place had yet found
mercy. In the " many mansions " was a place even
for them.
This, then, is the joyous meaning of the " Descent
into Hades." What a vivid reality it gives to that
world of the Departed which men think of so vaguely.
Was there ever before or since in the Universe such a
scene, such a preaching — such a Preacher — such an
audience? Could the wildest flights of imagination
go further ? Yet it is all stated as a sober fact
Stand we again on Calvary on the evening of that
Good Friday. The Eternal Son of God dying on the
Cross with His heart full of pain for that world which
He is redeeming ; and yet full of triumph too and glad
anticipation. He has finished the work that was given
Him to do. He is leaving His Church with that
blessed gospel of salvation to preach through the cen
turies to all souls on earth. But what of the souls who
had gone out from earth without knowing Him ? The
Church replies through her Bible and her creed and
her early teachers that He was not forgetting them.
He is going forth in a few moments " quickened in
spirit " to bring His glad Gospel to the waiting souls.
The first great missionary work of the Church.
May we not reverently see His anticipations of it in
His departing words as He started on His mission,
" Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit (in the
journey on which I am going)." May we not read it
in the " au revoir " not " good-bye " to the thief be
side Him, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Para
dise " ? May we not dwell on the joy and gratitude

474 JERUSALEM
and love which must have shaken that world within
the veil as the loving Conqueror came in among them ?
And may we not reverently follow Him still in thought
when He returned to earth and, as we conjecture,
somewhere in the forty days after the Resurrection
told His disciples of that marvellous experience? For
how else could they have learned it?
Realize the wonder of this adventure of Jesus ! In
this world men lifting a dead body from the Cross.
In a world near by men exulting in His coming to
their great spirit-land across the border. All are His
brethren. No world frontier can keep Him from His
own. Love finds the way. " For neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature is able to
separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord."

X
THE RESURRECTION
WE take up again the story on this earthly
side. It was worth while, that hopeful
glimpse of the spirit-world beyond, for we
have to come back to a very unhopeful world here.
That Saturday was a heart-breaking Sabbath to the
poor disciples. They saw only a dead body lifted
from the Cross. They could know nothing of that
wondrous adventure where He had gone. They are
in the depths of despondency. Their hearts were
bound up in Jesus. They had risked everything on
Jesus. And Jesus is dead. His enemies have won
out after all. How could He have died ? How could
He have failed? And yet — and yet what else is the
meaning of it? One moment it seems impossible but
that God must vindicate Him before the world. The
next their hearts grow cold at the memory of that
awful death-cry, My God, I am forsaken!
It is the one thing most evident from the frag
mentary accounts that have come down to us, that no
where on the wide earth that day could be found a
more hopeless, desponding group of people than the
disciples of Jesus who lay vanquished and dead in the
tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. The spring of their
life is broken. There is nothing to do, nothing to
hope, nothing to look forward to. The men are
gloomily wondering if they must go back to their fish-
475

476 JERUSALEM
ing. The sobbing women are preparing spices to em
balm a dead body. Jesus is dead. The end of all
things is come.
For the moment as we put ourselves in their place
our hearts are sore for them. But we know what is
coming. Twenty-four hours after look at them again.
Dazed and awe-struck, wild with excitement, but sol
emnized by the first dawning of an unutterable glad
ness — in the city and out of it meeting each other,
rushing to each other, crying excitedly to each other:
The Lord is risen ! He is come back from the dead !
He has appeared to Simon! He has spoken to Mary!
He has sent messages to us all ! He came to us in the
Upper Room ! We are to meet Him in Galilee !
" They believed not for joy." It was too good to
be true. They loved even to remember that horrible
yesterday, deepening by contrast the gladness of to-day.
As the days went on and they grew more accustomed
to His presence, all life was revolutionized for them.
They were changed men forever. They were living in
a new world of wonder and romance. Their beloved
Comrade and Master was God in human disguise.
And they went out in the strength of that unshakeable
conviction to " turn the world upside dowa"
The whole Easter story moves in an atmosphere of
joy. And that joy, if we think about it, is one of the
strongest of Christian evidences. For, is there any
way to account for it but in the truth of the stupendous
incredible fact which they proclaimed that the Christ
of God had risen from the dead and brought life and
immortality to light through His Gospel?

THE RESURRECTION 477
There are those who claim to account for it other
wise, and people who begin to have doubts about the
Resurrection often imagine that if they knew the best
that clever sceptics could say it would probably over
throw their faith. Now, when children are afraid of
a bogey on the dark stairs, it is good that one pull the
sheet off and show them the bogey. I would send
such to the ablest sceptical books even at the risk of
losing their half-belief — it would be no great loss —
that they might see for themselves the very best that
has been said.
The sceptic, however honest and fair, cannot avoid
being influenced by his fixed presuppositions — that
Jesus was only human — that miracles do not happen —
that therefore the Resurrection cannot be a fact. But
unless the Gospel story is intentional fraud — and he
does not think that it is — he has to face the very seri
ous problem of the immediate and universal joy at the
Resurrection of Christ.
He does not usually explain it as legend. Legend
cannot account for it. Legends can grow rapidly in
an excited atmosphere. Many a baseless legend has
gained acceptance within a century. But this had no
time at all to grow. Within a week the despondent
disciples were convinced and rejoicing. Within two
months Peter was challenging the Jews to their teeth
in Jerusalem itself within sight of Calvary and the
sepulchre, " Ye killed the Prince of Life whom God
raised from the dead." Before a single Gospel had
been written Paul, a contemporary of Jesus, was risk
ing his whole Gospel on the truth of the Resurrection.
" If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and
your faith is also vain."
Legend is barred out.

478 JERUSALEM
Here is a theory that once had some vogue but is
seldom put forward now. There is something suspi
cious in Pilate's surprise that Jesus should be already
dead. Crucifixion is a slow process. One takes a
good while to die. Perhaps Jesus was not quite dead.
Perhaps the poor, cramped, nerve-shaken man was
awakened from His death-like swoon by the cold tomb
and the sharp pungent spices ! What a likely explana
tion of the Easter story ! We have to account for the
sudden joy of the Apostles, for cowards turned into
heroes, for the powerful conviction that conquered the
world — and we are told of Jesus of Nazareth and His
disciples conniving at a miserable deception, of a poor
crawling spectre whispering and skulking and hiding
and dying again in a few years ! Was that what has
stirred the world to enthusiasm for the Lord of Life?
Is that what James and Peter and Paul died for ? Did
the great Christian Church arise on such a foundation ?
The most persistent and plausible theory, the theory
which practically holds the ground to-day, is that of
" Visions," beginning with that of Mary Magdalene.
A hysterical woman who greatly loved might so easily,
in the dim light of dawn, be mistaken through her
vivid emotions and desires. Quite true. That is ex
actly what the hard-headed apostles suspected of her
and her woman friends. " Their words seemed to
them as idle tales and they believed them not." It re
quired more than that to make them believe.
But, we are told, the apostles themselves were not
difficult to persuade — that when once the report had
got abroad it would be natural for them to expect to
see Him — that our knowledge of ghost stories and
spiritualistic seances shows how credulous people will
believe what they expect. But if the Gospel story be

THE RESURRECTION 479
not wilfully untrue the Resurrection of Jesus was the
last thing that they expected. And rough, hard-headed
fishermen are not likely subjects for sentimental hallu
cinations. And all through their lives they kept con
fidently declaring that He had held converse with them
again and again, that for forty days He had lived in
termittently among them " teaching the things per
taining to the Kingdom of God." And that forty days
itself is a remarkable limit for mere imaginary visions.
Unanimously it is declared that He rose on the third
day and after forty days passed from earth. One
would think if once the contagion of seeing visions
caught on it could hardly be limited so circum
stantially. These are actually the most plausible theories of
fered to explain the belief in "A Resurrection that
could not have taken place." Fraud and connivance
or apparitions and hallucinations are the basis of the
world-belief in the Resurrection.
Opposite these are the simply told facts of the old
story tested through nineteen centuries from every
angle, and disciples who were very " slow of heart to
believe," but when they believed believed utterly and
without wavering.
If ever doubt should come, face it frankly and hon
estly. Study the most thoughtful of sceptical explana
tions, and then turn to the simple conviction of the
rough fishermen who told the story: We twelve men
knew Jesus of Nazareth. Some of us were brought
up with Him. All of us were three years with Him.
We saw Him crucified. We saw Him dead. And
we saw Him alive again in radiant bodily existence.
We saw Him repeatedly. He was forty days with us.

480 JERUSALEM
He talked with us and taught us. He sent us out on
this mission Many of us repeatedly saw Him in Jeru
salem. Behind us are five hundred brethren in Galilee,
most of whom are still living. We are absolutely,
positively certain, and we tell it for your sakes that ye
may believe that He who tabernacled with us was the
Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

XI
AN OLD MAN'S EASTER MEMORIES
NO detailed narrative has come down to us of
the successive appearances of the risen
Christ and the intercourse of the Forty
Days. Just a collection of several little stories as they
impressed this one or that one — this group or that.
There were evidently many more appearances than
those recorded in the Gospels. St. Paul gives several
others, and St. John expressly says in speaking of the
Resurrection sign given to the doubting Thomas, that
there were many other such " signs " which are not
written in this book. " But these are written that ye
may believe." The statement too that " He was with
them forty days teaching the things concerning the
Kingdom of God " suggests long and repeated inter
course. In all their after lives the central memories of every
disciple would cluster around these few weeks, but the
grouping would not be the same — the mental picture
would be different in each. One of them fifty years
after lets us look at his picture.
St. John, as we know, wrote his Gospel very many
years after the other Gospels. He was then an old
man, living far away from the scenes of his boyhood.
The young peasant of the Lake of Galilee was now
481

482 JERUSALEM
the beloved bishop of the Church of Ephesus. But the
old man's eyes are ever turning back to the past —
above all to those three wonderful years when he had
walked the fields of Galilee with Jesus — " the disciple
whom Jesus loved." How wonderful were those
years, looking back on them through the golden haze
of Resurrection and Ascension, " when we beheld His
glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth."
The old comrades were gone, James and Peter and
Andrew and Philip were long ago departed to be with
their Master in the Unseen, and he was left alone of
all that band, brooding as an old man will on the
precious memories of the past.
I'm growing very old. This weary head,
That hath so often leaned on Jesus' breast,
In days long past that seem almost a dream,
Is bent and hoary with its weight of years.
I'm old, so old I cannot recollect
The faces that I meet in daily life :
But that dear Face and every word He spake
Grow more distinct as others fade away,
So that I live with Him and the holy dead
More than the living.
And how his people loved to hear the old man's
memories of those years ! They had probably, at least
one, of the other Gospels in writing. But it was
so different to hear their dear old bishop telling what
he remembered — and he remembered so many things
not written in their book. Year after year he told them
what he knew, and as he told it repeatedly the story
grew into shape, and so there came to us the Gospel
of St. John, the gospel of an old man's memories.

AN OLD MAN'S EASTER MEMORIES 483
How many things he had to tell his people outside
their gospel story ! His first meeting with Jesus — the
marriage at Cana — the mysterious sacramental teach
ing about " the Bread of God that cometh down from
heaven " — that precious discourse and prayer after the
first communion — the story of that awful day of deso
lation when he saw Jesus dead and all hope seemed
gone for ever, and then his personal memories of the
Resurrection and of the great forty days after it.
In this gospel of his memories he does not tell of
the Resurrection itself. He is recalling the day when
into his despair and desolation there crept the first
dawning belief that the dear Lord was back with them
alive. Something happened that forced immediate convic
tion. " Then I saw and believed," he says.
" Master, tell us," they would ask, " what did you
see ? Why did you believe ? "
" I will tell you. It was this way. ' On the first day
of the week, Mary Magdalene went early to the tomb
while it was yet dark. She saw the stone rolled away
and the tomb empty. Terrified she rushed back to
tell Peter and me. We ran full speed to see. I was
the younger, I got there first and I looked into the
tomb and saw it was as Mary had said. But I went
not in. Then as I looked Peter arrived and went
straight in, and I saw him beholding, gazing, staring
at the empty grave-clothes and the napkin lying
rolled up away by itself.
" ' Then I went in, and when I saw what Peter had
seen — then I saw and believed.' "
Now, what do you think made St. John believe?
Empty grave-clothes would not make him believe any
more than they made Mary believe. The body might

484 JERUSALEM
have been taken away. Why did Peter stare so at
the appearance of the winding sheet and the napkin
apart by itself? And why did John — when he saw
what Peter had been staring at — immediately believe ?
Some fifteen years ago, Dr. Latham, the master of
Trinity Hall, Cambridge, was in Constantinople ; while
visiting the cemetery he saw several funeral proces
sions come in.1 The corpses were carried on biers on
men's shoulders. They all lay face upwards. The
grave-clothes were all alike. The face, neck and upper
surface of the shoulders were in every case uncov
ered, so that between the grave-clothes and the napkin
that enveloped the top of the head, a space of a foot
or more, the body was wholly bare.
Remembering how slowly customs change in the
East, and how especially slowly burial customs change
everywhere, it seemed a safe assumption that this
was exactly how Jesus' body was dressed when it was
laid in the grave.
Now picture to yourself that dead body laid in the
grave, the winding sheet reaching up to the shoulder
and then the bare shoulders and neck, and the napkin
around the crown of the head. Then ask yourself what
appearance would the winding sheet and napkin pre
sent, suppose the body turned to dust, or vanished, or
exhaled or spiritualized without disturbing the wrap
pings. Now follow Peter as he went into the sepulchre. At
once he saw that something most unusual had taken
place. The linen clothes were lying — lying as if the
body were still in them, except that they had fallen
flat, for the body was gone out of them, but it had not
' latham, " The Risen Master."

AN OLD MAN'S EASTER MEMORIES 485
displaced them. Moreover, he saw that the napkin
that had enveloped His head was lying on its raised
step by itself, still with its "roll" in it; it too had
fallen a little flat, for the head was gone out of it, but
otherwise it was undisturbed. Indeed the evangelist
uses a word which properly applies to the head around
which the napkin is rolled, not to the napkin itself. It
was a " rolled-round " napkin, he says.
All this arrested Peter's eye. John looked in and
only " sees," but Peter, when he went in and was ar
rested by this remarkable phenomenon, " beholds " (a
different Greek verb) the cloths as they lie and the
rolled-round napkin in the place by itself. If he had
seen that the linen cloths had been unwrapped from the
body, and then had been folded up and laid on the
ledge, and if he had seen that the same attention had
been shown to the napkin, he would have gathered no
more from that than that the body was gone, and he
saw that in any case. Any hands might have unwound
the cloths and folded them up so carefully. But, from
what he saw, it was plain that no hands had been there
at all. The body had simply moved out, exhaled it
self out of the cloths without disturbing them or loos
ing their fastenings and the cloths had fallen flat — the
head had simply moved out of the napkin without dis
turbing it, and then it also had fallen flat. It seemed
plain to them that the body had not been removed ; it
had actually risen. No man's hand had done it; it
had been done by the mighty power of God.
" Then went in also that other disciple, which came
first to the sepulchre, and he saw and believed." To
see that the body was gone was not to believe. But to
see that the body had gone out of the cloths without
disturbing them, .though they had been wound round

486 JERUSALEM
and round, and that the head had gone out of the nap
kin, leaving it " wound round " still — that was to be
lieve that Jesus had risen from the dead.
The men were astonished, but they did not lose
their heads. They had eyes to observe, they had a
mind to believe. They evidently saw all there was to
be seen, and they tell us. And it is remarkable that in
doing so they say nothing of a heap of spices. For
spices had been freely used about the body of Jesus.
A hundred pounds of spices had been used, wrapped
carefully within the folds of the linen cloths. Where
were these spices now? If the cloths had been un
wound from the body, they would have dropped in a
great heap upon the ledge or floor of the tomb. It is
plain that they had not so dropped. They were in
visible to Peter and John. For the body had risen
without disturbing the wrappings and the spices were
still concealed within its folds.
Thus the old man told of the first startled dawning
of hope. But I can imagine his people asking " Is
that all?"
" All ! Why, no. I am only speaking of my first
conviction that the Lord was risen. After that we saw
Him — over and over again. Sometimes I was present.
Sometimes I was not."
" But, master, tell us your own memories of that
time." " I remember that day after Peter and I got back.
We were eagerly trying to tell what we had seen when
suddenly Mary of Magdala burst in on us all trem
bling and excited. ' I have seen the Lord ! ' she cried,
' actually seen Him ! He has spoken to me ! He bade
me come and tell you! I did not recognize Him at

AN OLD MAN'S EASTER MEMORIES 487
first I was frightened at the empty tomb and I thought
it was the gardener who might tell me what they had
done with the body. He just looked at me for a mo
ment. And my heart stood still ! And then — He just
called my name in the old familiar tones, " Mary ! "
And I knew ! I knew ! I fell down at His feet and
cried, Rabboni! Rabboni! And He bade me come
and tell you all ! '
" That evening again we were all together. We had
fastened the doors through fear of the Jews, for the
feeling was bitter against us that week. We were
talking and wondering and tremblingly hoping — we
hardly knew what. Some of the women had told us of
angels at the tomb. But we did not believe them. We
thought even Mary's story might have come from an
overwrought fancy. But Peter had just come in with
a strange new look in his eyes and he told us positively
and solemnly that the Lord had appeared to him. He
would not talk about it. He has never talked about
it since. But he was sure — sure. We were utterly
astonished. The excitement was so intense that even
when two disciples from the Emmaus road burst in
with fresh tidings they could not get a chance to speak
for the cries of delight that met them. ' The Lord is
risen! The Lord is risen! He has appeared to
Simon! ' When they got a chance they told us how
He had met them and walked and talked with them
and was known unto them in the breaking of bread.1
So we listened and wondered and hoped and rejoiced.
Then — suddenly — a solemn silence fell — Jesus

1 St. John does not put this incident in his record, probably be
cause it was already fully told by St. Luke. But it evidently
belongs to this meeting where he was present, and would most
probably be related in his reminiscences to his people.

488 JERUSALEM
was present I No one had heard Him come.
No one had unbarred the door, but He was there!
We were frightened. We thought it was His ghost.
But He looked on us in the old way and spake in His
own voice. We heard the old familiar greeting,
Peace be unto you ! and we could doubt no longer. It
was no ghost. It was Himself in radiant bodily form.
Then He breathed on us and said ' Receive the Holy
Ghost. As my Father hath sent me so send I you.'
And, oh! we disciples were glad when we saw the
Lord! " I remember how we told Thomas that night and he
would not believe us. ' It is impossible,' he said, ' you
must be mistaken. Except I shall see the wounds and
the print of the nails I will not believe.'
" All that week we went about dazed, like men in a
dream, and then the following Sunday the Lord sud
denly came to us again. We never knew when He
would come or from whence.. This time Thomas
was with us. And I shall never forget how He talked
to Thomas and shewed him His wounded hands and
feet and how Thomas was so astonished and so broken
with joy that he could only fall down in adoration
and cry, ' My Lord and my God ! '
" Ah, yes. We saw Him many other times during
the forty days after the Resurrection. I remember es
pecially one of those days — and Peter never forgot it
to the end of his life. We had all been bidden by the
Lord to meet Him in Galilee. We were back in the
homeland, back in Capernaum by the lake side with all
its memories of the old happy days together. While
we waited for His promised coming to the mountain,
one morning we had a wonderful experience. We had

AN OLD MAN'S EASTER MEMORIES 489
been out all night fishing in Peter's boat — Peter and
my brother James and I and Thomas and Nathaniel
and two others. We had no success. All night we
toiled and rowed and flung the nets, but we caught
nothing, just as on that other day three years before,
when He first called us. Just as the day was breaking
we saw Him on the shore. Oh, I knew, I felt sure that
it was He. But I could not speak. The others did
not know Him in that dim dawn.
" Then we heard His voice clearly across the water.
' My children, cast your net on the right side of the
boat, and ye shall find.' They cast the net wearily, and
without much hope. But the moment they tried to
pull it in, a great wonder and dread fell on them.
They could not pull it in, it was so heavy with fishes.
Then I could not keep quiet any longer. ' Oh,' I cried,
' it is the Lord ! it is the Lord ! ' And Peter flung him
self straight into the sea, for we were near the land
and we all got into the little boat and hurried after
him. And there was Jesus Himself on the shore,
Jesus my Lord and my God !
" And when we had breakfasted off the fish, Jesus
asked Peter : ' Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me ? '
' Yea, Lord.' ' Then feed my lambs.' And again He
asked him, ' Simon, do you really love me ? ' ' Oh,
Lord, You know I do.' Then He asked the third time
and I could see Peter was hurt because He asked the
third time, and he cried to Him, ' Lord, You know all
things, You know that I love You.' And Jesus said
to him, ' Follow Me.' Then He prophesied how Peter
should die.
" I was just behind. Peter turned and looked at me.
They used to call me ' the disciple whom Jesus loved,'
and Peter said to the Lord :

490 JERUSALEM
" ' Lord, what shall John do? '
" How I waited for the answer ! I don't yet know
what it meant. ' If I will that he tarry till I come
what is that to thee ? '
" Dear master, could He have meant that you are
not to die at all ?
" Ah, I know not. I have lived so long now, and
they are all gone long ago, and that rumour did go
forth among the disciples at the time that I should not
die. Yet I know He did not say that, but ' if I will
that he tarry till I come.' "
These are only some of St. John's personal memo
ries. Others told of the meeting with James and with
the five hundred brethren in Galilee. Was there a
meeting with His mother which no one has recorded ?
The Forty Days of " teaching concerning the King
dom of God " suggests extended interviews. If we had
a full account of the happenings of these Forty Days
we should probably realize more than we can do now
the fullness and variety of demonstration which lay
behind that confident, unshakeable conviction of the
early Church.

XII
THE TRAINING OF THE FORTY DAYS
ALL through the life of Jesus we have been
tracing His prominent purpose — the training
of the men to whom He would commit the
carrying out of His Kingdom on earth after His visible
presence was withdrawn. That training went on still
after He rose from the dead in the mysterious Forty
Days before the Ascensioa Aye and after the Ascen
sion down through the centuries. " I have many
things yet to say to you but ye cannot bear them now.
But when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He will shew
you all things and bring all things to your remem
brance whatsoever I have said unto you."
We glance briefly now at the training of the dis
ciples in the revelation of the Forty Days.
The first thing we notice is that it was not a spec
tacular demonstration to the world. It was not a reve
lation to everybody — not to the enemies or to the care
less crowds in Jerusalem. It was a revelation to His
own disciples. " Him," says St Peter, " God raised
up and manifested Him not to all the people, but unto
witnesses chosen before of God, even to us who did
eat and drink with Him after He rose from the
dead." * The manifestation was not intended to con-
¦Acts X. 40.
491

492 JERUSALEM
vince and overawe gainsayers and outsiders, but to
assure and comfort and discipline and teach the men
on whom the future of His Church depended. In any
case the outsiders and the careless crowd would not
have been able to understand or appreciate these
revelations. It required a certain preparation, a cer
tain fitness. A mere coarse physical miracle the crowd
could understand, but not the miracle of the Lord's new
life. If He had been raised to the old natural human
life as Lazarus was it would have been easy for any
one to understand and test that. All the careless
crowd could be made witnesses that Jesus who had
been crucified was alive again, the very same man.
But that was not at all what happened. That would
not have revealed the Deity of Christ nor indicated
how, through the ages, He could be invisibly present
with His people all over the world. It would have
been no pledge of a new, endless, glorified life. The
chasm between the seen and the unseen would have
been still unbridged.
No, what is revealed is not the continuance of a
mode of existence with which we are acquainted, but
a new mode of existence which before that time was
undiscovered and unknown. Slowly and wonderingly
men began to see how different was the Resurrection
life from the poor ordinary life of man. The wonder
of Jesus' risen life helped them to see how life is in
dependent of its present conditions, how we can re
tain old thoughts and feelings without being bound by
the limitations under which they were shaped.
The stories of the Resurrection and After are very
fragmentary. There are large gaps. We do not know
the consecutive order of events. Probably if we knew

THE TRAINING OF THE FORTY DAYS 493
all we should see more clearly the Divine purpose in
the manifestations of the risen Christ and appreciate
the Divine order in which it was worked out. But
even as it is, the design is evident. (1) To demon
strate the reality of the Resurrection and the identity
of " this same Jesus " who rose from the dead. (2)
To prepare them for the coming withdrawal of His
visible presence, to enable them to realize the future
abiding supernatural presence when that visible pres
ence should be withdrawn.
The first was easy enough. The second by no means
so. The wild delight of that Easter Day seemed to
leave little room for any further thought than this:
The Lord is risen. The beloved Comrade and Master
is back with us. He whom we saw dead is alive again.
He whom we trusted should have redeemed Israel has
not failed us after all. Oh, the deep, overmastering
gladness of it, when they had utterly lost heart, when
they had seen His enemies triumphant, when they had
seen Him dead, when they had prepared spices to keep
His body from decay ; the wild delight of finding that
He was alive, that He had conquered death and come
back as victor into the midst of them again !
Probably at first they did not stop to think whether
it was a simple coming to life under the old conditions
like Lazarus. Probably they did not know, and I sup
pose they did not care to know, that the Resurrection
was the beginning of a new order, that it was a new,
mysterious, glorified life into which the Lord had
risen. But they had to be taught this, else they never could
grip the great thought of His continued and abiding
presence all the days to come, not with them only but
with the whole Church of the future.

494 JERUSALEM
Studying carefully we can see now that in all His
appearances, step by step, He was teaching of that new
life as they could bear it. In His very first appearance
(it was to Mary Magdalene) that lesson was begun.
In her first wondering joy she throws herself at His
feet, "Rabboni! My Master!" She had found
again the Friend whom she had lost; but no more
than that. She has no loftier title than the old one,
My Master! My Teacher! He is to her the same
human Jesus. His Resurrection is but a return to the
old life. She would clasp His feet with loving, rever
ent hands. Therefore in His reply He corrects and
raises her thought: "Touch me not. Do not take hold
of Me. Do not cling to Me. Things are changed.
But go and tell My brethren to meet Me." It was the
first indication that the old intimacy is to be exchanged
for a higher fellowship.
So with the disciples on the Emmaus road that even
ing. They felt the mystery in His presence. Their
hearts burned within them as He walked and talked
with them. But He did not reveal Himself until the
end. Then when they knew Him He remained visible
just long enough to make them certain of His identity.
As the old familiar intercourse was about to be re
sumed He withdrew Himself from their sight, and so
the truth dawned on them that He belonged to a new
order, that the claims of the invisible world were on
Him, a world into which they could not follow Him
yet. Then He appears in the midst to the assembled dis
ciples — suddenly, unexpectedly, "when the doors were
shut." We in our present ignorance cannot know the
change which was wrought in our Lord's Resurrec
tion body, yet there is something of the mystery re-

THE TRAINING OF THE FORTY DAYS 495
vealed which claims our reverent attention. Doors and
walls made no obstacle to Him. They were terrified
and thought they had seen His ghost. But He com
forted them and showed them that it was He Himself
in radiant bodily form, quite recognizable but no
longer subject to earthly conditions.
And so through all the other appearances. He is
seen and recognized only as He wills and when He
wills. He appears in the midst and is no longer seen
coming. He appears unexpectedly and as suddenly
disappears. He arranges to meet the disciples in Gali
lee but does not go with them. When they are there
He suddenly appears. He speaks to Thomas words
which show that He was present and listening un
known to them all when Thomas expressed his doubt.
Thus the conviction of His unseen presence would
gradually grow on them.
As the Forty Days went by the awe and wonder
deepened. They see Him no longer subject to human
needs nor bound by natural laws of earth. How tired
He used to be, and hungry and thirsty — how glad He
was of shelter in the Bethany home. All this is
changed. The risen Christ needs neither shelter nor
rest. Forty Days He lingers in the world but in no
earthly home. Steadily the conviction grew that their
Lord was moving in another and higher sphere of ex
istence than that of the old days on earth.
He was felt to be different and yet the same. He
retained the little peculiarities of voice and manner,
the little unconscious gestures which distinguish one
man from another. And the same heart beat in His
breast. His love was as in the old days, strong and un
changed. His memories of the old days went on with-

496 JERUSALEM
out a break. The old themes of conversation were
quietly resumed as if the chasm of death and the three
days in the world of the Departed had not intervened
at all. Before His death He had told them, "After I
am risen I will go before you into Galilee." Now He
says, " Tell my brethren to go unto Galilee ; there shall
they see me as I have told you." Before His death
He told them, " The Holy Ghost will come to you."
Now He bids them wait on in Jerusalem for the fulfil
ment of that promise which, said He, " Ye have heard
of Me." Continuity was unbroken between the old life
and the new.
And His treatment of men was the same, Peter for
example. We know His training of Peter in the Gali
lee days. Watch His further treatment of him after
the Resurrection. First, that touching message from
the tomb: Go tell my disciples and especially tell Peter,
Peter who is breaking his heart over his faithless de
nial, Peter who hardly counts himself my disciple any
more. Tell Peter especially. Then the private inter
view which Peter would never divulge ; then the three
fold question, Lovest thou me, corresponding to the
threefold denial — the same treatment continued, the
same skilful, tender hand carrying on his education
So also in the case of Thomas. Everywhere it is
impressed on them that the Lord who has returned
victorious over death is the same to His friends as ever.
He stoops to cheer feeble faith with the same gentle
ness. He rebukes with the old tender gravity. In
every act they recognize the heart of the earthly Jesus
unchanged by death.
At once we notice a change from their old attitude
of respectful affection. Solemn reverence and awe

THE TRAINING OF THE FORTY DAYS 497
and humble adoration had come into it. They used
to be like a band of brothers in familiar intercourse.
They would sit with Him and eat with Him. One of
them would almost recline upon His breast at supper.
Now all this old free intimacy is over. We hear of
their worshipping Him, of recognizing Him as My
Lord and My God.
Gradually, but surely, they learned the lesson of the
Forty Days, that it was the Eternal Son of God in dis
guise who had been their Comrade and Friend, that He
had passed into a higher order, that He could be pres
ent with them when they saw Him not, that a spiri
tual and eternal fellowship was to take the place of the
temporal and visible.
So effectually did they learn it that at last they could
look forward calmly to the great parting which was
to come. The most convincing proof that they had
learned it is in the story of the Ascension. There we
might surely have expected sorrow and desolation, the
feeling that earth was a poorer place for ever. There
is no sorrow, no desolation. Earth is not poorer but
richer and grander. " He was parted from them."
" And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy ! "
For they had learned His lesson of the Forty Days.
He would be "with them always to the end of the
world." May we not learn something for ourselves too from
the Lesson of the Forty Days — some hints of the
life destined one day for men. So far as we can
gather from these manifestations of the Risen Lord
we too when we die and our friends who have died
will remain the same men and women and yet become
very different men and women. Our life will not be

498 JERUSALEM
broken in two but transfigured. We shall not lose
our identity, our memory, our love. We shall still be
ourselves. We shall know and be known. We shall
preserve the little traits of character which individual
ize us here but glorified by an ennobling change of
motive and aim.
It is not true that in the dim realm of the Hereafter
Life all must for ever remain obscure to us on earth.
We cannot know much. " It doth not yet appear what
we shall be." But the Unknown Life is not all un
known now. The Passion week tells of His comfort
to the poor robber: To-day shalt thou be with Me and
we shall know each other as the two who hung upon
the cross this morning; the Easter manifestations tell
of One who was dead like our dead once; who went
through the dark river as they did and reached the
further shore, yet when He came back to meet again
His friends on earth was as human and as much their
own as ever. The river of death had not washed out
the memory of the old days nor destroyed the affection
for the old friends. Does it not lead us to hope and
believe the same of our dear ones whose hands we
have folded reverently beneath the winding sheet and
to " comfort one another with these words."

xni
RETURNING TO THE FATHER
BUT this happy, wondrous, awesome intercourse
must have its end. The visit of the Eternal
Son to earth, that visit which began in the
Bethlehem manger, is over. As He Himself so simply
¦puts it, " I came out from the Father and came into
the world; again, I leave the world and go unto the
Father." Of course. One cannot even conceive any other
ending. Try to imagine the Lord of the Universe
remaining on this little planet, living — where? — in Je
rusalem or London or Paris or Rome? Where He
lived for the time He would be present. Everywhere
else He would be absent The bare thought is belit
tling and absurd.
He must withdraw Himself in bodily presence that
in spiritual presence He should be close to His poor
brethren everywhere at all times, that any poor soul
might at any moment enter into his closet and shut
to his door and be with Him. " It is expedient for
you that I go away."
There is a simple child notion of the Ascension — of
His body passing through Earth's atmosphere into the
ether beyond and then on and on through infinite
spaces to the throne of the Eternal Heavens. It is a
499

500 JERUSALEM
child notion. Literally conceived it leads to childish
questions: Is Heaven a place or a state of being? Is
it a place in some fixed local direction ? How can there
be any Above or Below on a planet constantly revolv
ing? But our child notion, though a misapprehension, is
not so bad for a rough working idea — a simple symbol
of the truth which the Ascension represents, that the
Lord in His spiritual body was passing into the in
visible order, returning to that sphere of being from
which He came.
We believe that the visible event which we call the
Ascension was His kindly condescension to simple hu
man minds. We naturally connect that higher life
which is beyond our present comprehension with the
blue heavens above, or the starry heights beyond the
blue. In concession to this simple thought, instead of
just disappearing as at other times, He rose from the
earth and a cloud received Him. It only meant that
He had passed from our present sphere of existence to
another sphere beyond our ken.
So one day came the last interview, the final fare
well. He was teaching His last lesson of the things
concerning the Kingdom of God. " All power is given
unto me in Heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost,
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have
commanded you. And lo, I am with you alway to the
end of the world."
Then He led them out towards Bethany for the final
good-bye. And He lifted up His hands in blessing.
And while He blessed them He was parted from then?

RETURNING TO THE FATHER 501
and carried up into Heaven. Jesus of Nazareth was
gone. Our story breaks off here. It has no ending. As
we saw in the first pages it had no beginning, going
back into the dim eternities behind, so now it breaks
off incomplete, it has no ending, looking forward into
unseen ages to come.
The Gospel story is but an episode of three and
thirty years in the history of the Life and Work of
Jesus Christ for men. The chapters behind it are in
the records of eternity. The future chapters are still
to be written in the records of that other world. One
has visions of humanity in that other world reading it
when " the Books are opened in Heaven." Aye, one
has visions of humanity in that other world writing it
— of great souls of earth continuing their activities in
the Hereafter, of thinkers and painters and poets

" Each in his separate star,
Painting the thing as he sees it
For the God of Things as they are."
There lies the continuation of the Life of Christ, that
life and work for men which goes on to the Consum
mation of the Ages when Death and Hell, and Evil
and the Evil One shall be cast into the Lake of De
struction, when Evil shall have vanished out of God's
Universe for ever and God shall be all in all.
" Then," says the inspired Apostle, " then cometh
the end." Then perhaps the great souls in the Li
braries of Heaven shall write finis on Christ's work
for men.

502 JERUSALEM
The Ascension is but the close of the little human
episode of three and thirty years.
Three and thirty years ago as men count time, from
the kindly World above, a little Baby came into this
world of ours to live and die for men. And the
Heavenly host broke bounds that Christmas night in
adoring sympathy with the self-sacrifice of God.
" Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace good
will to men ! "
For three and thirty years with wonder and pain
they watched the things that men were doing to their
Lord. Now the end of this episode is come. His mission
is accomplished. He returns with poor humanity on
His heart for ever — returns triumphant to the Infinite
Life, to the throne of the Universe, to the Presence of
the Father and the heavenly hosts and the anthems of
the Christmas angels.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye
lifted up, ye everlasting doors ; and the klng of
Glory shall come in. Who is the King of Glory?
Even the Lord of Hosts. He is the King of
Glory.

the end

Index

Agony, the, 439
Andrew, 273
Angels, 45, 502
Anger of Christ, 134, 426
Annas, 443
Anointing, 218, 414
Apostles, 271
Arrest,_ 441
Ascension, 499
Augustine, 16, 283
Baptism, 85
Baptist, the, 86, 109, 149
Barabbas, 455
Bartimaeus, 405
Bethany, 324, 389, 413, 500
Bethany beyond Jordan, 383
Bethesda Pool, 243
Bethlehem, 44
Bethsaida, 175
Bible, Jesus and the, 80, 186
Bigotry, 207, 252
Boyhood of Jesus, 58
Brethren of Jesus, 64
Brotherhood, 355
Gssarea Phiwppi, 298
Caiaphas, 396, 444
Call of Apostles, 178
Cana wedding, 116
Capernaum, 159
Carpenter, the, 78, 93
Census, 44
Child world, 64
Children's rhymes, 64
Children and Jesus, 79, 312,
420
Church and the Masses, 225
Clearing the Temple, 131
Confession, the great, 299
Crucifixion, 459
Crusades, 172

5<>3

Damn, Damnation, 378
Dedication feast, 380
Demon possession, 186, 310
Disciples, the first, 108
Dives and Lazarus, 355, 395
Divorce, 384
Doubt, 152
Dying thief, 462
Easter memories, 481
Education of children, 66
Emmaus, 487
Enoch, book of, 34
Everlasting punishment, 378
Expectation of Messiah, 33, 8i,
89
Fatherhood of God, 347
Feeding five thousand, 292
Feet washing, 433
Fishes, draughts of, 179, 489
Forgiveness, 205, 218, 461
Gabriei,, legend of, 261
Galilee, 168-171
Gethsemane, 438
Good Samaritan, 360
Good Shepherd, 342
Good will of multitude, 231
Gospels, 161
Greater Israel, 25
Great gulf, 359
Great refusal, 384
Greek, Roman and Jew, 22, 28
Hades, 359, 469
Hallel, 434
Harnack, 51
Hereafter, the, 307, 372, 394
Herodl 153
Herodias, 154
Herodians, 422
Holiday, on, 288

504

INDEX

Holy Communion, 296, 431, 435
Holy Spirit, 93, 143, 305
Husbandmen, wicked, 425
Iren^us, 54, 471
Iscariot, 212, 278, 413, 427,
441, 448
Jairus, 174
Jericho, 404
Joanna, 166
John Baptist, 86, 109, 149
Joyousness of Jesus, 119
Judgment, the, 374, 461
Justin Martyr, 471
Kingdom of God, 253
Kiss, the traitor's, 448
Koran, 371
Larour problems, 226
Lake of Galilee, 171
Lamb of God, 93
Lazarus of Bethany, 388, 393
Lazarus and Dives, 355, 395
Light of the world, 336
Living water, 335
Lost sheep, the, 349, 408
Lost, seeking the, 347
Love of children, 79, 312
Mach.srus, 150
Magdalene, 219, 483, 494
Marriage, 127-8, 384, 423
Martha and Mary, 325, 389,
464
Matthew, 167, 208, 277
Memories of childhood, 65
Messianic expectation, 33, 81,
89
Miracles, 121, 124
Multitudes, the, 221, 427
Nain, 281
Nathaniel, 114, 164, 275
Nativity, 39
Nature, love of, 68
Nazareth, 62, 192
Neighbour, 355
Nicholas, St., legend of, 227
Nicodemus, 138, 333, 398

Nobleman's son, 164
Optimism of Jesus, 258
Ordination of Twelve, 265
Origen, 47
Oxyrinchus papyri, 446
Pai,m Sunday, 413
Paul's gospel, 54
Peter, 113, 273, 299, 308, 438,
484, 489, 496
Philip, 43, 275, 291
Pilate, 450
Pilate's wife, 454
Popularity of Jesus, 221
Prayer, 190, 265, 294, 297, 436
Problem of Jesus, 195
Prodigal son, 349, 408
Publicans, 208
Punishment, eternal, 378
Raising of Lazarus, 388
Resurrection, the, 475
Rhymes of the children, 64
Roads, the great white, 170
Ruler, the young, 384
Sabbath, 246, 249, 383
Sadducees, 423
Salome, daughter of Herodias,
155
Salome, wife of Zebedee, 402
Samaritan, the good, 360
Sanhedrim, 396, 445
Science and miracles, 124
Septuagint, 26
Sermon on Mount, 263
Simon the Pharisee, 215
Sin-bearing, the, 439, 466
Slavery, 30
Social Service, 205, 228, 361
Solomon's porch, 380
Sons of thunder, 274
Sower, the, 233
Spiritualism, 304
Stoics, 31
Storm on Lake, 234, 294
Synagogue service, 184
Tabernaci.es, feast of, 323
Talents, 364

INDEX

505

Tax-gatherers, 208
Temptation, the, 94
Tertullian, 16, 54, 472
Thomas, 275, 389
Training of Apostles, 235, 291,
295 ,.
Transfiguration, 303, 304
Turkish rule, 171
Twelve, the, 271
Virgin birth, 48
Voices from Heaven, 93, 305
Walking on sea, 295
" Way of the sea," 169

Wedding in Cana, 116
Widow's son, 281
" Woman ! " 121, 464
Word, the, 15
World preparing for Christ,
22
Wrath of the Lamb, 134
Writing on the ground, 345
Young man in linen garment,
432
Young Ruler, 384
Zaccheus, 406
Zebedee, 175, 182

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